The day and the night had passed, and the new morning had come, before the husband and wife could trust themselves to speak calmly of the Secret, and to face resignedly the duties and the sacrifices which the discovery of it imposed on them.

Leonard's first question referred to those lines in the letter which Rosamond had informed him were in a handwriting that she knew. Finding that he was at a loss to understand what means she could have of forming an opinion on this point, she explained that, after Captain Treverton's death, many letters had naturally fallen into her possession which had been written by Mrs. Treverton to her husband. They treated of ordinary domestic subjects, and she had read them often enough to become thoroughly acquainted with the peculiarities of Mrs. Treverton's handwriting. It was remarkably large, firm, and masculine in character; and the address, the line under it, and the uppermost of the two signatures in the letter which had been found in the Myrtle Room, exactly resembled it in every particular.

The next question related to the body of the letter. The writing of this, of the second signature ("Sarah Leeson"), and of the additional lines on the third page, also signed by Sarah Leeson, proclaimed itself in each case to be the production of the same person. While stating that fact to her husband, Rosamond did not forget to explain to him that, while reading the letter on the previous day, her strength and courage had failed her before she got to the end of it. She added that the postscript which she had thus omitted to read was of importance, because it mentioned the circumstances under which the Secret had been hidden; and begged that he would listen while she made him acquainted with its contents without any further delay.

Sitting as close to his side, now, as if they were enjoying their first honey-moon days over again, she read these last lines—the lines which her mother had written sixteen years before, on the morning when she fled from Porthgenna Tower:

"There can be no doubt, now," said Leonard, when his wife had read to the end; "Mrs. Jazeph, Sarah Leeson, and the servant who disappeared from Porthgenna Tower, are one and the same person."

"Poor creature!" said Rosamond, sighing as she put down the letter. "We know now why she warned me so anxiously not to go into the Myrtle Room. Who can say what she must have suffered when she came as a stranger to my bedside? Oh, what would I not give if I had been less hasty with her! It is dreadful to remember that I spoke to her as a servant whom I expected to obey me; it is worse still to feel that I can not, even now, think of her as a child should think of a mother. How can I ever tell her that I know the Secret? how—" She paused, with a heart-sick consciousness of the slur that was cast on her birth; she paused, shrinking as she thought of the name that her husband had given to her, and of her own parentage, which the laws of society disdained to recognize.

"Why do you stop?" asked Leonard.

"I was afraid—" she began, and paused again.

"Afraid," he said, finishing the sentence for her, "that words of pity for that unhappy woman might wound my sensitive pride by reminding me of the circumstances of your birth? Rosamond! I should be unworthy of your matchless truthfulness toward me, if I, on my side, did not acknowledge that this discovery has wounded me as only a proud man can be wounded. My pride has been born and bred in me. My pride, even while I am now speaking to you, takes advantage of my first moments of composure, and deludes me into doubting, in face of all probability, whether the words you have read to me can, after all, be words of truth. But, strong as that inborn and inbred feeling is—hard as it may be for me to discipline and master it as I ought, and must and will—there is another feeling in my heart that is stronger yet." He felt for her hand, and took it in his; then added—"From the hour when you first devoted your life to your blind husband—from the hour when you won all his gratitude, as you had already won all his love, you took a place in his heart, Rosamond, from which nothing, not even such a shock as has now assailed us, can move you! High as I have always held the worth of rank in my estimation, I have learned, even before the event of yesterday, to hold the worth of my wife, let her parentage be what it may, higher still."

"Oh, Lenny, Lenny, I can't hear you praise me, if you talk in the same breath as if I had made a sacrifice in marrying you! But for my blind husband I might never have deserved what you have just said of me. When I first read that fearful letter, I had one moment of vile, ungrateful doubt if your love for me would hold out against the discovery of the Secret. I had one moment of horrible temptation, that drew me away from you when I ought to have put the letter into your hand. It was the sight of you, waiting for me to speak again, so innocent of all knowledge of what happened close by you, that brought me back to my senses, and told me what I ought to do. It was the sight of my blind husband that made me conquer the temptation to destroy that letter in the first hour of discovering it. Oh, if I had been the hardest-hearted of women, could I have ever taken your hand again—could I kiss you, could I lie down by your side, and hear you fall asleep, night after night, feeling that I had abused your blind dependence on me to serve my own selfish interests? knowing that I had only succeeded in my deceit because your affliction made you incapable of suspecting deception? No, no; I can hardly believe that the basest of women could be guilty of such baseness as that; and I can claim nothing more for myself than the credit of having been true to my trust. You said yesterday, love, in the Myrtle Room, that the one faithful friend to you in your blindness, who never failed, was your wife. It is reward enough and consolation enough for me, now that the worst is over, to know that you can say so still."

"Yes, Rosamond, the worst is over; but we must not forget that there may be hard trials still to meet."

"Hard trials, love? To what trials do you refer?"

"Perhaps, Rosamond, I overrate the courage that the sacrifice demands; but, to me at least, it will be a hard sacrifice of my own feelings to make strangers partakers in the knowledge that we now possess."

Rosamond looked at her husband in astonishment. "Why need we tell the Secret to any one?" she asked.

"Assuming that we can satisfy ourselves of the genuineness of that letter," he answered, "we shall have no choice but to tell it to strangers. You can not forget the circumstances under which your father—under which Captain Treverton—"

"Call him my father," said Rosamond, sadly. "Remember how he loved me, and how I loved him, and say 'my father' still."

"I am afraid I must say 'Captain Treverton' now," returned Leonard, "or I shall hardly be able to explain simply and plainly what it is very necessary that you should know. Captain Treverton died without leaving a will. His only property was the purchase-money of this house and estate; and you inherited it, as his next of kin—"

Rosamond started back in her chair and clasped her hands in dismay. "Oh, Lenny," she said simply, "I have thought so much of you, since I found the letter, that I never remembered this!"

"It is time to remember it, my love. If you are not Captain Treverton's daughter, you have no right to one farthing of the fortune that you possess; and it must be restored at once to the person who is Captain Treverton's next of kin—or, in other words, to his brother."

"To that man!" exclaimed Rosamond. "To that man who is a stranger to us, who holds our very name in contempt! Are we to be made poor that he may be made rich?—"

"We are to do what is honorable and just, at any sacrifice of our own interests and ourselves," said Leonard, firmly. "I believe, Rosamond, that my consent, as your husband, is necessary, according to the law, to effect this restitution. If Mr. Andrew Treverton was the bitterest enemy I had on earth, and if the restoring of this money utterly ruined us both in our worldly circumstances, I would give it back of my own accord to the last farthing—and so would you!"

The blood mantled in his cheeks as he spoke. Rosamond looked at him admiringly in silence. "Who would have him less proud," she thought, fondly, "when his pride speaks in such words as those!"

"You understand now," continued Leonard, "that we have duties to perform which will oblige us to seek help from others, and which will therefore render it impossible to keep the Secret to ourselves? If we search all England for her, Sarah Leeson must be found. Our future actions depend upon her answers to our inquiries, upon her testimony to the genuineness of that letter. Although I am resolved beforehand to shield myself behind no technical quibbles and delays—although I want nothing but evidence that is morally conclusive, however legally imperfect it may be—it is still impossible to proceed without seeking advice immediately. The lawyer who always managed Captain Treverton's affairs, and who now manages ours, is the proper person to direct us in instituting a search, and to assist us, if necessary, in making the restitution."

"How quietly and firmly you speak of it, Lenny! Will not the abandoning of my fortune be a dreadful loss to us?"

"We must think of it as a gain to our consciences, Rosamond, and must alter our way of life resignedly to suit our altered means. But we need speak no more of that until we are assured of the necessity of restoring the money. My immediate anxiety, and your immediate anxiety, must turn now on the discovery of Sarah Leeson—no! on the discovery of your mother; I must learn to call her by that name, or I shall not learn to pity and forgive her."

Rosamond nestled closer to her husband's side. "Every word you say, love, does my heart good," she whispered, laying her head on his shoulder. "You will help me and strengthen me, when the time comes, to meet my mother as I ought? Oh, how pale and worn and weary she was when she stood by my bedside, and looked at me and my child! Will it be long before we find her? Is she far away from us, I wonder? or nearer, much nearer than we think?"

Before Leonard could answer, he was interrupted by a knock at the door, and Rosamond was surprised by the appearance of the maid-servant. Betsey was flushed, excited, and out of breath; but she contrived to deliver intelligibly a brief message from Mr. Munder, the steward, requesting permission to speak to Mr. Frankland, or to Mrs. Frankland, on business of importance.

"What is it? What does he want?" asked Rosamond.

"I think, ma'am, he wants to know whether he had better send for the constable or not," answered Betsey.

"Send for the constable!" repeated Rosamond. "Are there thieves in the house in broad daylight?"

"Mr. Munder says he don't know but what it may be worse than thieves," replied Betsey. "It's the foreigner again, if you please, ma'am. He come up and rung at the door as bold as brass, and asked if he could see Mrs. Frankland."

"The foreigner!" exclaimed Rosamond, laying her hand eagerly on her husband's arm.

"Yes, ma'am," said Betsey. "Him as come here to go over the house along with the lady—"

Rosamond, with characteristic impulsiveness, started to her feet. "Let me go down!" she began.

"Wait," interposed Leonard, catching her by the hand. "There is not the least need for you to go down stairs.—Show the foreigner up here," he continued, addressing himself to Betsey, "and tell Mr. Munder that we will take the management of this business into our own hands."

Rosamond sat down again by her husband's side. "This is a very strange accident," she said, in a low, serious tone. "It must be something more than mere chance that puts the clew into our hands, at the moment when we least expected to find it."

The door opened for the second time, and there appeared, modestly, on the threshold, a little old man, with rosy cheeks and long white hair. A small leather case was slung by a strap at his side, and the stem of a pipe peeped out of the breast pocket of his coat. He advanced one step into the room, stopped, raised both his hands, with his felt hat crumpled up in them, to his heart, and made five fantastic bows in quick succession—two to Mrs. Frankland, two to her husband, and one to Mrs. Frankland again, as an act of separate and special homage to the lady. Never had Rosamond seen a more complete embodiment in human form of perfect innocence and perfect harmlessness than the foreigner who was described in the housekeeper's letter as an audacious vagabond, and who was dreaded by Mr. Munder as something worse than a thief!

"Madam and good Sir," said the old man, advancing a little nearer at Mrs. Frankland's invitation, "I ask your pardon for intruding myself. My name is Joseph Buschmann. I live in the town of Truro, where I work in cabinets and tea-caddies, and other shining woods. I am also, if you please, the same little foreign man who was scolded by the big major-domo when I came to see the house. All that I ask of your kindness is, that you will let me say for my errand here and for myself, and for another person who is very near to my love—one little word. I will be but few minutes, Madam and good Sir, and then I will go my ways again, with my best wishes and my best thanks."

"Pray consider, Mr. Buschmann, that our time is your time," said Leonard. "We have no engagement whatever which need oblige you to shorten your visit. I must tell you beforehand, in order to prevent any embarrassment on either side, that I have the misfortune to be blind. I can promise you, however, my best attention as far as listening goes. Rosamond, is Mr. Buschmann seated?"

Mr. Buschmann was still standing near the door, and was expressing sympathy by bowing to Mr. Frankland again, and crumpling his felt hat once more over his heart.

"Pray come nearer, and sit down," said Rosamond. "And don't imagine for one moment that any opinion of the steward's has the least influence on us, or that we feel it at all necessary for you to apologize for what took place the last time you came to this house. We have an interest—a very great interest," she added, with her usual hearty frankness, "in hearing any thing that you have to tell us. You are the person of all others whom we are, just at this time—" She stopped, feeling her foot touched by her husband's, and rightly interpreting the action as a warning not to speak too unrestrainedly to the visitor before he had explained his object in coming to the house.

Looking very much pleased, and a little surprised also, when he heard Rosamond's last words, Uncle Joseph drew a chair near to the table by which Mr. and Mrs. Frankland were sitting, crumpled his felt hat up smaller than ever, and put it in one of his side pockets, drew from the other a little packet of letters, placed them on his knees as he sat down, patted them gently with both hands, and entered on his explanation in these terms:

"Madam and good Sir," he began, "before I can say comfortably my little word, I must, with your leave, travel backward to the last time when I came to this house in company with my niece."

"Your niece!" exclaimed Rosamond and Leonard, both speaking together.

"My niece, Sarah," said Uncle Joseph, "the only child of my sister Agatha. It is for the love of Sarah, if you please, that I am here now. She is the one last morsel of my flesh and blood that is left to me in the world. The rest, they are all gone! My wife, my little Joseph, my brother Max, my sister Agatha and the husband she married, the good and noble Englishman, Leeson—they are all, all gone!"

"Leeson," said Rosamond, pressing her husband's hand significantly under the table. "Your niece's name is Sarah Leeson?"

Uncle Joseph sighed and shook his head. "One day," he said, "of all the days in the year the evilmost for Sarah, she changed that name. Of the man she married—who is dead now, Madam—it is little or nothing that I know but this: His name was Jazeph, and he used her ill, for which I think him the First Scoundrel! Yes," exclaimed Uncle Joseph, with the nearest approach to anger and bitterness which his nature was capable of making, and with an idea that he was using one of the strongest superlatives in the language—"Yes! if he was to come to life again at this very moment of time, I would say it of him to his face—Englishman Jazeph, you are the First Scoundrel!"

Rosamond pressed her husband's hand for the second time. If their own convictions had not already identified Mrs. Jazeph with Sarah Leeson, the old man's last words must have amply sufficed to assure them that both names had been borne by the same person.

"Well, then, I shall now travel backward to the time when I was here with Sarah, my niece," resumed Uncle Joseph. "I must, if you please, speak the truth in this business, or, now that I am already backward where I want to be, I shall stick fast in my place, and get on no more for the rest of my life. Sir and good Madam, will you have the great kindness to forgive me and Sarah, my niece, if I confess that it was not to see the house that we came here and rang at the bell, and gave deal of trouble, and wasted much breath of the big major-domo's with the scolding that we got. It was only to do one curious little thing that we came together to this place—or, no, it was all about a secret of Sarah's, which is still as black and dark to me as the middle of the blackest and darkest night that ever was in the world—and as I nothing knew about it, except that there was no harm in it to any body or any thing, and that Sarah was determined to go, and that I could not let her go by herself; as also for the good reason that she told me she had the best right of any body to take the letter and to hide it again, seeing that she was afraid of its being found if longer in that room she left it, which was the room where she had hidden it before—why, so it happened that I—no, that she—no, no, that I—Ach Gott!" cried Uncle Joseph, striking his forehead in despair, and relieving himself by an invocation in his own language. "I am lost in my own muddlement; and whereabouts the right place is, and how I am to get myself back into it, as I am a living sinner, is more than I know!"

"There is not the least need to go back on our account," said Rosamond, forgetting all caution and self-restraint in her anxiety to restore the old man's confidence and composure. "Pray don't try to repeat your explanations. We know already—"

"We will suppose," said Leonard, interposing abruptly before his wife could add another word, "that we know already every thing you can desire to tell us in relation to your niece's secret, and to your motives for desiring to see the house."

"You will suppose that!" exclaimed Uncle Joseph, looking greatly relieved. "Ah! thank you, Sir, and you, good Madam, a thousand times for helping me out of my own muddlement with a 'Suppose.' I am all over confusion from my tops to my toes; but I can go on now, I think, and lose myself no more. So! Let us say it in this way: I and Sarah, my niece, are in the house—that is the first 'Suppose.' I and Sarah, my niece, are out of the house—that is the second 'Suppose.' Good! now we go on once more. On my way back to my own home at Truro, I am frightened for Sarah, because of the faint she fell into on your stairs here, and because of a look in her face that it makes me heavy at my heart to see. Also, I am sorry for her sake, because she has not done that one curious little thing which she came into the house to do. I fret about these same matters, but I console myself too; and my comfort is that Sarah will stop with me in my house at Truro, and that I shall make her happy and well again, as soon as we are settled in our life together. Judge, then, Sir, what a blow falls on me when I hear that she will not make her home where I make mine. Judge you, also, good Madam, what my surprise must be, when I ask for her reason, and she tells me she must leave Uncle Joseph, because she is afraid of being found out by you." He stopped, and looking anxiously at Rosamond's face, saw it sadden and turn away from him after he had spoken his last words. "Are you sorry, Madam, for Sarah, my niece? do you pity her?" he asked, with a little hesitation and trembling in his voice.

"I pity her with my whole heart," said Rosamond, warmly.

"And with my whole heart, for that pity I thank you!" rejoined Uncle Joseph. "Ah, Madam, your kindness gives me the courage to go on, and to tell you that we parted from each other on the day of our getting back to Truro! When she came to see me this time, it was years and years, long and lonely and very many, since we two had met. I was afraid that many more would pass again, and I tried to make her stop with me to the very last. But she had still the same fear to drive her away—the fear of being found and put to the question by you. So, with the tears in her eyes (and in mine), and the grief at her heart (and at mine), she went away to hide herself in the empty bigness of the great city, London, which swallows up all people and all things that pour into it, and which has now swallowed up Sarah, my niece, with the rest. 'My child, you will write sometimes to Uncle Joseph,' I said, and she answered me,'I will write often.' It is three weeks now since that time, and here, on my knee, are four letters she has written to me. I shall ask your leave to put them down open before you, because they will help me to get on further yet with what I must say, and because I see in your face, Madam, that you are indeed sorry for Sarah, my niece, from your heart."

He untied the packet of letters, opened them, kissed them one by one, and put them down in a row on the table, smoothing them out carefully with his hand, and taking great pains to arrange them all in a perfectly straight line. A glance at the first of the little series showed Rosamond that the handwriting in it was the same as the handwriting in the body of the letter which had been found in the Myrtle Room.

"There is not much to read," said Uncle Joseph. "But if you will look through them first, Madam, I can tell you after all the reason for showing them that I have."

The old man was right. There was very little to read in the letters, and they grew progressively shorter as they became more recent in date. All four were written in the formal, conventionally correct style of a person taking up the pen with a fear of making mistakes in spelling and grammar, and were equally destitute of any personal particulars relative to the writer; all four anxiously entreated that Uncle Joseph would not be uneasy, inquired after his health, and expressed gratitude and love for him as warmly as their timid restraints of style would permit; all four contained these two questions relating to Rosamond—First, had Mrs. Frankland arrived yet at Porthgenna Tower? Second, if she had arrived, what had Uncle Joseph heard about her? And, finally, all four gave the same instructions for addressing an answer—"Please direct to me, 'S. J., Post-office, Smith Street, London'"—followed by the same apology, "Excuse my not giving my address, in case of accidents; for even in London I am still afraid of being followed and found out. I send every morning for letters; so I am sure to get your answer."

"I told you, Madam," said the old man, when Rosamond raised her head from the letters, "that I was frightened and sorry for Sarah when she left me. Now see, if you please, why I got more frightened and more sorry yet, when I have all the four letters that she writes to me. They begin here, with the first, at my left hand; and they grow shorter, and shorter, and shorter, as they get nearer to my right, till the last is but eight little lines. Again, see, if you please. The writing of the first letter, here, at my left hand, is very fine—I mean it is very fine to me, because I love Sarah, and because I write very badly myself; but it is not so good in the second letter—it shakes a little, it blots a little, it crooks itself a little in the last lines. In the third it is worse—more shake, more blot, more crook. In the fourth, where there is least to do, there is still more shake, still more blot, still more crook, than in all the other three put together. I see this; I remember that she was weak and worn and weary when she left me, and I say to myself, 'She is ill, though she will not tell it, for the writing betrays her!'"

Rosamond looked down again at the letters, and followed the significant changes for the worse in the handwriting, line by line, as the old man pointed them out.

"I say to myself that," he continued; "I wait, and think a little; and I hear my own heart whisper to me, 'Go you, Uncle Joseph, to London, and, while there is yet time, bring her back to be cured and comforted and made happy in your own home!' After that I wait, and think a little again—not about leaving my business; I would leave it forever sooner than Sarah should come to harm—but about what I am to do to get her to come back. That thought makes me look at the letters again; the letters show me always the same questions about Mistress Frankland; I see it plainly as my own hand before me that I shall never get Sarah, my niece, back, unless I can make easy her mind about those questions of Mistress Frankland's that she dreads as if there was death to her in every one of them. I see it! it makes my pipe go out; it drives me up from my chair; it puts my hat on my head; it brings me here, where I have once intruded myself already, and where I have no right, I know, to intrude myself again; it makes me beg and pray now, of your compassion for my niece and of your goodness for me, that you will not deny me the means of bringing Sarah back. If I may only say to her, I have seen Mistress Frankland, and she has told me with her own lips that she will ask none of those questions that you fear so much—if I may only say that, Sarah will come back with me, and I shall thank you every day of my life for making me a happy man!"

The simple eloquence of his words, the innocent earnestness of his manner, touched Rosamond to the heart. "I will do any thing, I will promise any thing," she answered eagerly, "to help you to bring her back! If she will only let me see her, I promise not to say one word that she would not wish me to say; I promise not to ask one question—no, not one—that it will pain her to answer. Oh, what comforting message can I send besides? what can I say—?" She stopped confusedly, feeling her husband's foot touching hers again.

"Ah, say no more! say no more!" cried Uncle Joseph, tying up his little packet of letters, with his eyes sparkling and his ruddy face all in a glow. "Enough said to bring Sarah back! enough said to make me grateful for all my life! Oh, I am so happy, so happy, so happy—my skin is too small to hold me!" He tossed up the packet of letters into the air, caught it, kissed it, and put it back again in his pocket, all in an instant.

"You are not going?" said Rosamond. "Surely you are not going yet?"

"It is my loss to go away from here, which I must put up with, because it is also my gain to get sooner to Sarah," replied Uncle Joseph. "For that reason only, I shall ask your pardon if I take my leave with my heart full of thanks, and go my ways home again."

"When do you propose to start for London, Mr. Buschmann?" inquired Leonard.

"To-morrow, in the morning early, Sir," replied Uncle Joseph. "I shall finish the work that I must do to-night, and shall leave the rest to Samuel (who is my very good friend, and my shopman too), and shall then go to Sarah by the first coach."

"May I ask for your niece's address in London, in case we wish to write to you?"

"She gives me no address, Sir, but the post-office; for even at the great distance of London, the same fear that she had all the way from this house still sticks to her. But here is the place where I shall get my own bed," continued the old man, producing a small shop card. "It is the house of a countryman of my own, a fine baker of buns, Sir, and a very good man indeed."

"Have you thought of any plan for finding out your niece's address?" inquired Rosamond, copying the direction on the card while she spoke.

"Ah, yes—for I am always quick at making my plans," said Uncle Joseph. "I shall present myself to the master of the post, and to him I shall say just this and no more—'Good-morning, Sir. I am the man who writes the letters to S. J. She is my niece, if you please; and all that I want to know is—Where does she live?' There is something like a plan, I think? Aha!" He spread out both his hands interrogatively, and looked at Mrs. Frankland with a self-satisfied smile.

"I am afraid," said Rosamond, partly amused, partly touched by his simplicity, "that the people at the post-office are not at all likely to be trusted with the address. I think you would do better to take a letter with you, directed to 'S. J.;' to deliver it in the morning when letters are received from the country; to wait near the door, and then to follow the person who is sent by your niece (as she tells you herself) to ask for letters for S. J."

"You think that is better?" said Uncle Joseph, secretly convinced that his own idea was unquestionably the most ingenious of the two. "Good! The least little word that you say to me, Madam, is a command that I follow with all my heart." He took the crumpled felt hat out of his pocket, and advanced to say farewell, when Mr. Frankland spoke to him again.

"If you find your niece well, and willing to travel," said Leonard, "you will bring her back to Truro at once? And you will let us know when you are both at home again?"

"At once, Sir," said Uncle Joseph. "To both these questions, I say, At once."

"If a week from this time passes," continued Leonard, "and we hear nothing from you, we must conclude, then, either that some unforeseen obstacle stands in the way of your return, or that your fears on your niece's account have been but too well-founded, and that she is not able to travel?"

"Yes, Sir; so let it be. But I hope you will hear from me before the week is out."

"Oh, so do I! most earnestly, most anxiously!" said Rosamond. "You remember my message?"

"I have got it here, every word of it," said Uncle Joseph, touching his heart. He raised the hand which Rosamond held out to him to his lips. "I shall try to thank you better when I have come back," he said. "For all your kindness to me and to my niece, God bless you both, and keep you happy, till we meet again." With these words, he hastened to the door, waved his hand gayly, with the old crumpled hat in it, and went out.

"Dear, simple, warm-hearted old man!" said Rosamond, as the door closed. "I wanted to tell him every thing, Lenny. Why did you stop me?"

"My love, it is that very simplicity which you admire, and which I admire, too, that makes me cautious. At the first sound of his voice I felt as warmly toward him as you do; but the more I heard him talk the more convinced I became that it would be rash to trust him, at first, for fear of his disclosing too abruptly to your mother that we know her secret. Our chance of winning her confidence and obtaining an interview with her depends, I can see, upon our own tact in dealing with her exaggerated suspicions and her nervous fears. That good old man, with the best and kindest intentions in the world, might ruin every thing. He will have done all that we can hope for, and all that we can wish, if he only succeeds in bringing her back to Truro."

"But if he fails?—if any thing happens?—if she is really ill?"

"Let us wait till the week is over, Rosamond. It will be time enough then to decide what we shall do next."

CHAPTER II.
WAITING AND HOPING.

The week of expectation passed, and no tidings from Uncle Joseph reached Porthgenna Tower.

On the eighth day Mr. Frankland sent a messenger to Truro, with orders to find out the cabinet-maker's shop kept by Mr. Buschmann, and to inquire of the person left in charge there whether he had received any news from his master. The messenger returned in the afternoon, and brought word that Mr. Buschmann had written one short note to his shopman since his departure, announcing that he had arrived safely toward nightfall in London; that he had met with a hospitable welcome from his countryman, the German baker; and that he had discovered his niece's address, but had been prevented from seeing her by an obstacle which he hoped would be removed at his next visit. Since the delivery of that note, no further communication had been received from him, and nothing therefore was known of the period at which he might be expected to return.

The one fragment of intelligence thus obtained was not of a nature to relieve the depression of spirits which the doubt and suspense of the past week had produced in Mrs. Frankland. Her husband endeavored to combat the oppression of mind from which she was suffering, by reminding her that the ominous silence of Uncle Joseph might be just as probably occasioned by his niece's unwillingness as by her inability to return with him to Truro. Remembering the obstacle at which the old man's letter hinted, and taking also into consideration her excessive sensitiveness and her unreasoning timidity, he declared it to be quite possible that Mrs. Frankland's message, instead of re-assuring her, might only inspire her with fresh apprehensions, and might consequently strengthen her resolution to keep herself out of reach of all communications from Porthgenna Tower.

Rosamond listened patiently while this view of the case was placed before her, and acknowledged that the reasonableness of it was beyond dispute; but her readiness in admitting that her husband might be right and that she might be wrong was accompanied by no change for the better in the condition of her spirits. The interpretation which, the old man had placed upon the alteration for the worse in Mrs. Jazeph's handwriting had produced a vivid impression on her mind, which had been strengthened by her own recollection of her mother's pale, worn face when they met as strangers at West Winston. Reason, therefore, as convincingly as he might, Mr. Frankland was unable to shake his wife's conviction that the obstacle mentioned in Uncle Joseph's letter, and the silence which he had maintained since, were referable alike to the illness of his niece.

The return of the messenger from Truro suggested, besides this topic of discussion, another question of much greater importance. After having waited one day beyond the week that had been appointed, what was the proper course of action for Mr. and Mrs. Frankland now to adopt, in the absence of any information from London or from Truro to decide their future proceedings?

Leonard's first idea was to write immediately to Uncle Joseph, at the address which he had given on the occasion of his visit to Porthgenna Tower. When this project was communicated to Rosamond, she opposed it, on the ground that the necessary delay before the answer to the letter could arrive would involve a serious waste of time, when it might, for aught they knew to the contrary, be of the last importance to them not to risk the loss of a single day. If illness prevented Mrs. Jazeph from traveling, it would be necessary to see her at once, because that illness might increase. If she were only suspicious of their motives, it was equally important to open personal communications with her before she could find an opportunity of raising some fresh obstacle, and of concealing herself again in some place of refuge which Uncle Joseph himself might not be able to trace.

The truth of these conclusions was obvious, but Leonard hesitated to adopt them, because they involved the necessity of a journey to London. If he went there without his wife, his blindness placed him at the mercy of strangers and servants, in conducting investigations of the most delicate and most private nature. If Rosamond accompanied him, it would be necessary to risk all kinds of delays and inconveniences by taking the child with them on a long and wearisome journey of more than two hundred and fifty miles.

Rosamond met both these difficulties with her usual directness and decision. The idea of her husband traveling any where, under any circumstances, in his helpless, dependent state, without having her to attend on him, she dismissed at once as too preposterous for consideration. The second objection, of subjecting the child to the chances and fatigues of a long journey, she met by proposing that they should travel to Exeter at their own time and in their own conveyance, and that they should afterward insure plenty of comfort and plenty of room by taking a carriage to themselves when they reached the railroad at Exeter. After thus smoothing away the difficulties which seemed to set themselves in opposition to the journey, she again reverted to the absolute necessity of undertaking it. She reminded Leonard of the serious interest that they both had in immediately obtaining Mrs. Jazeph's testimony to the genuineness of the letter which had been found in the Myrtle Room, as well as in ascertaining all the details of the extraordinary fraud which had been practiced by Mrs. Treverton on her husband. She pleaded also her own natural anxiety to make all the atonement in her power for the pain she must have unconsciously inflicted, in the bedroom at West Winston, on the person of all others whose failings and sorrows she was most bound to respect; and having thus stated the motives which urged her husband and herself to lose no time in communicating personally with Mrs. Jazeph, she again drew the inevitable conclusion that there was no alternative, in the position in which they were now placed, but to start forthwith on the journey to London.

A little further consideration satisfied Leonard that the emergency was of such a nature as to render all attempts to meet it by half-measures impossible. He felt that his own convictions agreed with his wife's; and he resolved accordingly to act at once, without further indecision or further delay. Before the evening was over, the servants at Porthgenna were amazed by receiving directions to pack the trunks for traveling, and to order horses at the post-town for an early hour the next morning.

On the first day of the journey, the travelers started as soon as the carriage was ready, rested on the road toward noon, and remained for the night at Liskeard. On the second day they arrived at Exeter, and slept there. On the third day they reached London by the railway, between six and seven o'clock in the evening.

When they were comfortably settled for the night at their hotel, and when an hour's rest and quiet had enabled them to recover a little after the fatigues of the journey, Rosamond wrote two notes under her husband's direction. The first was addressed to Mr. Buschmann: it simply informed him of their arrival, and of their earnest desire to see him at the hotel as early as possible the next morning, and it concluded by cautioning him to wait until he had seen them before he announced their presence in London to his niece.

The second note was addressed to the family solicitor, Mr. Nixon—the same gentleman who, more than a year since, had written, at Mrs. Frankland's request, the letter which informed Andrew Treverton of his brother's decease, and of the circumstances under which the captain had died. All that Rosamond now wrote, in her husband's name and her own, to ask of Mr. Nixon, was that he would endeavor to call at their hotel on his way to business the next morning, to give his opinion on a private matter of great importance, which had obliged them to undertake the journey from Porthgenna to London. This note, and the note to Uncle Joseph, were sent to their respective addresses by a messenger on the evening when they were written.

The first visitor who arrived the next morning was the solicitor—a clear-headed, fluent, polite old gentleman, who had known Captain Treverton and his father before him. He came to the hotel fully expecting to be consulted on some difficulties connected with the Porthgenna estate, which the local agent was perhaps unable to settle, and which might be of too confused and intricate a nature to be easily expressed in writing. When he heard what the emergency really was, and when the letter that had been found in the Myrtle Room was placed in his hands, it is not too much to say that, for the first time in the course of a long life and a varied practice among all sorts and conditions of clients, sheer astonishment utterly paralyzed Mr. Nixon's faculties, and bereft him for some moments of the power of uttering a single word.

When, however, Mr. Frankland proceeded from making the disclosure to announcing his resolution to give up the purchase-money of Porthgenna Tower, if the genuineness of the letter could be proved to his own satisfaction, the old lawyer recovered the use of his tongue immediately, and protested against his client's intention with the sincere warmth of a man who thoroughly understood the advantage of being rich, and who knew what it was to gain and to lose a fortune of forty thousand pounds.

Leonard listened with patient attention while Mr. Nixon argued from his professional point of view against regarding the letter, taken by itself, as a genuine document, and against accepting Mrs. Jazeph's evidence, taken with it, as decisive on the subject of Mrs. Frankland's real parentage. He expatiated on the improbability of Mrs. Treverton's alleged fraud upon her husband having been committed without other persons besides her maid and herself being in the secret. He declared it to be in accordance with all received experience of human nature that one or more of those other persons must have spoken of the secret either from malice or from want of caution, and that the consequent exposure of the truth must, in the course of so long a period as twenty-two years, have come to the knowledge of some among the many people in the West of England, as well as in London, who knew the Treverton family personally or by reputation. From this objection he passed to another, which admitted the possible genuineness of the letter as a written document; but which pleaded the probability of its having been produced under the influence of some mental delusion on Mrs. Treverton's part, which her maid might have had an interest in humoring at the time, though she might have hesitated, after her mistress's death, at risking the possible consequences of attempting to profit by the imposture. Having stated this theory, as one which not only explained the writing of the letter, but the hiding of it also, Mr. Nixon further observed, in reference to Mrs. Jazeph, that any evidence she might give was of little or no value in a legal point of view, from the difficulty—or, he might say, the impossibility—of satisfactorily identifying the infant mentioned in the letter with the lady whom he had now the honor of addressing as Mrs. Frankland, and whom no unsubstantiated document in existence should induce him to believe to be any other than the daughter of his old friend and client, Captain Treverton.

Having heard the lawyer's objections to the end, Leonard admitted their ingenuity, but acknowledged at the same time that they had produced no alteration in his impression on the subject of the letter, or in his convictions as to the course of duty which he felt bound to follow. He would wait, he said, for Mrs. Jazeph's testimony before he acted decisively; but if that testimony were of such a nature, and were given in such a manner, as to satisfy him that his wife had no moral right to the fortune that she possessed, he would restore it at once to the person who had—Mr. Andrew Treverton.

Finding that no fresh arguments or suggestions could shake Mr. Frankland's resolution, and that no separate appeal to Rosamond had the slightest effect in stimulating her to use her influence for the purpose of inducing her husband to alter his determination; and feeling convinced, moreover, from all that he heard, that Mr. Frankland would, if he was opposed by many more objections, either employ another professional adviser, or risk committing some fatal legal error by acting for himself in the matter of restoring the money, Mr. Nixon at last consented, under protest, to give his client what help he needed in case it became necessary to hold communication with Andrew Treverton. He listened with polite resignation to Leonard's brief statement of the questions that he intended to put to Mrs. Jazeph; and said, with the slightest possible dash of sarcasm, when it came to his turn to speak, that they were excellent questions in a moral point of view, and would doubtless produce answers which would be full of interest of the most romantic kind. "But," he added, "as you have one child already, Mr. Frankland, and as you may, perhaps, if I may venture on suggesting such a thing, have more in the course of years; and as those children, when they grow up, may hear of the loss of their mother's fortune, and may wish to know why it was sacrificed, I should recommend—resting the matter on family grounds alone, and not going further to make a legal point of it also—that you procure from Mrs. Jazeph, besides the viv voce evidence you propose to extract (against the admissibility of which, in this case, I again protest), a written declaration, which you may leave behind you at your death, and which may justify you in the eyes of your children, in case the necessity for such justification should arise at some future period."

This advice was too plainly valuable to be neglected. At Leonard's request, Mr. Nixon drew out at once a form of declaration, affirming the genuineness of the letter addressed by the late Mrs. Treverton on her death-bed to her husband, since also deceased, and bearing witness to the truth of the statements therein contained, both as regarded the fraud practiced on Captain Treverton and the asserted parentage of the child. Telling Mr. Frankland that he would do well to have Mrs. Jazeph's signature to this document attested by the names of two competent witnesses, Mr. Nixon handed the declaration to Rosamond to read aloud to her husband, and, finding that no objection was made to any part of it, and that he could be of no further use in the present early stage of the proceedings, rose to take his leave. Leonard engaged to communicate with him again in the course of the day, if necessary; and he retired, reiterating his protest to the last, and declaring that he had never met with such an extraordinary case and such a self-willed client before in the whole course of his practice.

Nearly an hour elapsed after the departure of the lawyer before any second visitor was announced. At the expiration of that time, the welcome sound of footsteps was heard approaching the door, and Uncle Joseph entered the room.

Rosamond's observation, stimulated by anxiety, detected a change in his look and manner the moment he appeared. His face was harassed and fatigued, and his gait, as he advanced into the room, had lost the briskness and activity which so quaintly distinguished it when she saw him, for the first time, at Porthgenna Tower. He tried to add to his first words of greeting an apology for being late; but Rosamond interrupted him, in her eagerness to ask the first important question.

"We know that you have discovered her address," she said, anxiously, "but we know nothing more. Is she as you feared to find her? Is she ill?"

The old man shook his head sadly. "When I showed you her letter," he said, "what did I tell you? She is so ill, Madam, that not even the message your kindness gave to me will do her any good."

Those few simple words struck Rosamond's heart with a strange fear, which silenced her against her own will when she tried to speak again. Uncle Joseph understood the anxious look she fixed on him, and the quick sign she made toward the chair standing nearest to the sofa on which she and her husband were sitting. There he took his place, and there he confided to them all that he had to tell.

He had followed, he said, the advice which Rosamond had given to him at Porthgenna, by taking a letter addressed to "S. J." to the post-office the morning after his arrival in London. The messenger—a maid-servant—had called to inquire, as was anticipated, and had left the post-office with his letter in her hand. He had followed her to a lodging-house in a street near, had seen her let herself in at the door, and had then knocked and inquired for Mrs. Jazeph. The door was answered by an old woman, who looked like the landlady; and the reply was that no one of that name lived there. He had then explained that he wished to see the person for whom letters were sent to the neighboring post-office, addressed to "S. J.;" but the old woman had answered, in the surliest way, that they had nothing to do with anonymous people or their friends in that house, and had closed the door in his face. Upon this he had gone back to his friend, the German baker, to get advice; and had been recommended to return, after allowing some little time to elapse, to ask if he could see the servant who waited on the lodgers, to describe his niece's appearance, and to put half a crown into the girl's hand to help her to understand what he wanted. He had followed these directions, and had discovered that his niece was lying ill in the house, under the assumed name of "Mrs. James." A little persuasion (after the present of the half-crown) had induced the girl to go up stairs and announce his name. After that there were no more obstacles to be overcome, and he was conducted immediately to the room occupied by his niece.

He was inexpressibly shocked and startled when he saw her by the violent nervous agitation which she manifested as he approached her bedside. But he did not lose heart and hope until he had communicated Mrs. Frankland's message, and had found that it failed altogether in producing the re-assuring effect on her spirits which he had trusted and believed that it would exercise. Instead of soothing, it seemed to excite and alarm her afresh. Among a host of minute inquiries about Mrs. Frankland's looks, about her manner toward him, about the exact words she had spoken, all of which he was able to answer more or less to her satisfaction, she had addressed two questions to him, to which he was utterly unable to reply. The first of the questions was, Whether Mrs. Frankland had said any thing about the Secret? The second was, Whether she had spoken any chance word to lead to the suspicion that she had found out the situation of the Myrtle Room?

The doctor in attendance had come in, the old man added, while he was still sitting by his niece's bedside, and still trying ineffectually to induce her to accept the friendly and re-assuring language of Mrs. Frankland's message. After making some inquiries and talking a little while on indifferent matters, the doctor had privately taken him aside; had informed him that the pain over the region of the heart and the difficulty in breathing, which were the symptoms of which his niece complained, were more serious in their nature than persons uninstructed in medical matters might be disposed to think; and had begged him to give her no more messages from any one, unless he felt perfectly sure beforehand that they would have the effect of clearing her mind, at once and forever, from the secret anxieties that now harassed it—anxieties which he might rest assured were aggravating her malady day by day, and rendering all the medical help that could be given of little or no avail.

Upon this, after sitting longer with his niece, and after holding counsel with himself, he had resolved to write privately to Mrs. Frankland that evening, after getting back to his friend's house. The letter had taken him longer to compose than any one accustomed to writing would believe. At last, after delays in making a fair copy from many rough drafts, and delays in leaving his task to attend to his niece, he had completed a letter narrating what had happened since his arrival in London, in language which he hoped might be understood. Judging by comparison of dates, this letter must have crossed Mr. and Mrs. Frankland on the road. It contained nothing more than he had just been relating with his own lips—except that it also communicated, as a proof that distance had not diminished the fear which tormented his niece's mind, the explanation she had given to him of her concealment of her name, and of her choice of an abode among strangers, when she had friends in London to whom she might have gone. That explanation it was perhaps needless to have lengthened the letter by repeating, for it only involved his saying over again, in substance, what he had already said in speaking of the motive which had forced Sarah to part from him at Truro.

With last words such as those, the sad and simple story of the old man came to an end. After waiting a little to recover her self-possession and to steady her voice, Rosamond touched her husband to draw his attention to herself, and whispered to him—

"I may say all, now, that I wished to say at Porthgenna?"

"All," he answered. "If you can trust yourself, Rosamond, it is fittest that he should hear it from your lips."

After the first natural burst of astonishment was over, the effect of the disclosure of the Secret on Uncle Joseph exhibited the most striking contrast that can be imagined to the effect of it on Mr. Nixon. No shadow of doubt darkened the old man's face, not a word of objection dropped from his lips. The one emotion excited in him was simple, unreflecting, unalloyed delight. He sprang to his feet with all his natural activity, his eyes sparkled again with all their natural brightness; one moment he clapped his hands like a child; the next he caught up his hat, and entreated Rosamond to let him lead her at once to his niece's bedside. "If you will only tell Sarah what you have just told me," he cried, hurrying across the room to open the door, "you will give her back her courage, you will raise her up from her bed, you will cure her before the day is out!"

A warning word from Mr. Frankland stopped him on a sudden, and brought him back, silent and attentive, to the chair that he had left the moment before.

"Think a little of what the doctor told you," said Leonard. "The sudden surprise which has made you so happy might do fatal mischief to your niece. Before we take the responsibility of speaking to her on a subject which is sure to agitate her violently, however careful we may be in introducing it, we ought first, I think, for safety's sake, to apply to the doctor for advice."

Rosamond warmly seconded her husband's suggestion, and, with her characteristic impatience of delay, proposed that they should find out the medical man immediately. Uncle Joseph announced—a little unwillingly, as it seemed—in answer to her inquiries, that he knew the place of the doctor's residence, and that he was generally to be found at home before one o'clock in the afternoon. It was then just half-past twelve; and Rosamond, with her husband's approval, rang the bell at once to send for a cab.

She was about to leave the room to put on her bonnet, after giving the necessary order, when the old man stopped her by asking, with some appearance of hesitation and confusion, if it was considered necessary that he should go to the doctor with Mr. and Mrs. Frankland; adding, before the question could be answered, that he would greatly prefer, if there was no objection to it on their parts, being left to wait at the hotel to receive any instructions they might wish to give him on their return. Leonard immediately complied with his request, without inquiring into his reasons for making it; but Rosamond's curiosity was aroused, and she asked why he preferred remaining by himself at the hotel to going with them to the doctor.

"I like him not," said the old man. "When he speaks about Sarah, he looks and talks as if he thought she would never get up from her bed again." Answering in those brief words, he walked away uneasily to the window, as if he desired to say no more.

The residence of the doctor was at some little distance, but Mr. and Mrs. Frankland arrived there before one o'clock, and found him at home. He was a young man, with a mild, grave face, and a quiet, subdued manner. Daily contact with suffering and sorrow had perhaps prematurely steadied and saddened his character. Merely introducing her husband and herself to him, as persons who were deeply interested in his patient at the lodging-house, Rosamond left it to Leonard to ask the first questions relating to the condition of her mother's health.

The doctor's answer was ominously prefaced by a few polite words, which were evidently intended to prepare his hearers for a less hopeful report than they might have come there expecting to receive. Carefully divesting the subject of all professional technicalities, he told them that his patient was undoubtedly affected with serious disease of the heart. The exact nature of this disease he candidly acknowledged to be a matter of doubt, which various medical men might decide in various ways. According to the opinion which he had himself formed from the symptoms, he believed that the patient's malady was connected with the artery which conveys blood directly from the heart through the system. Having found her singularly unwilling to answer questions relating to the nature of her past life, he could only guess that the disease was of long standing; that it was originally produced by some great mental shock, followed by long-wearing anxiety (of which her face showed palpable traces); and that it had been seriously aggravated by the fatigue of a journey to London, which she acknowledged she had undertaken at a time when great nervous exhaustion rendered her totally unfit to travel. Speaking according to this view of the case, it was his painful duty to tell her friends that any violent emotion would unquestionably put her life in danger. At the same time, if the mental uneasiness from which she was now suffering could be removed, and if she could be placed in a quiet, comfortable country home, among people who would be unremittingly careful in keeping her composed, and in suffering her to want for nothing, there was reason to hope that the progress of the disease might be arrested, and that her life might be spared for some years to come.

Rosamond's heart bounded at the picture of the future which her fancy drew from the suggestions that lay hidden in the doctor's last words. "She can command every advantage you have mentioned, and more, if more is required!" she interposed eagerly, before her husband could speak again. "Oh, Sir, if rest among kind friends is all that her poor weary heart wants, thank God we can give it!"

"We can give it," said Leonard, continuing the sentence for his wife, "if the doctor will sanction our making a communication to his patient, which is of a nature to relieve her of all anxiety, but which, it is necessary to add, she is at present quite unprepared to receive."

"May I ask," said the doctor, "who is to be intrusted with the responsibility of making the communication you mention?"

"There are two persons who could be intrusted with it," answered Leonard. "One is the old man whom you have seen by your patient's bedside. The other is my wife."

"In that case," rejoined the doctor, looking at Rosamond, "there can be no doubt that this lady is the fittest person to undertake the duty." He paused, and reflected for a moment; then added—"May I inquire, however, before I venture on guiding your decision one way or the other, whether the lady is as familiarly known to my patient, and is on the same intimate terms with her, as the old man?"

"I am afraid I must answer No to both those questions," replied Leonard. "And I ought, perhaps, to tell you, at the same time, that your patient believes my wife to be now in Cornwall. Her first appearance in the sick-room would, I fear, cause great surprise to the sufferer, and possibly some little alarm as well."

"Under those circumstances," said the doctor, "the risk of trusting the old man, simple as he is, seems to be infinitely the least risk of the two—for the plain reason that his presence can cause her no surprise. However unskillfully he may break the news, he will have the great advantage over this lady of not appearing unexpectedly at the bedside. If the hazardous experiment must be tried—and I assume that it must, from what you have said—you have no choice, I think, but to trust it, with proper cautions and instructions, to the old man to carry out."

After arriving at that conclusion, there was no more to be said on either side. The interview terminated, and Rosamond and her husband hastened back to give Uncle Joseph his instructions at the hotel.

As they approached the door of their sitting-room they were surprised by hearing the sound of music inside. On entering, they found the old man crouched upon a stool, listening to a shabby little musical box which was placed on a table close by him, and which was playing an air that Rosamond recognized immediately as the "Batti, Batti" of Mozart.

"I hope you will pardon me for making music to keep myself company while you were away," said Uncle Joseph, starting up in some little confusion, and touching the stop of the box. "This is, if you please, of all my friends and companions, the oldest that is left. The divine Mozart, the king of all the composers that ever lived, gave it with his own hand, Madam, to my brother, when Max was a boy in the music school at Vienna. Since my niece left me in Cornwall, I have not had the heart to make Mozart sing to me out of this little bit of box until to-day. Now that you have made me happy about Sarah again, my ears ache once more for the tiny ting-ting that has always the same friendly sound to my heart, travel where I may. But enough so!" said the old man, placing the box in the leather case by his side, which Rosamond had noticed there when she first saw him at Porthgenna. "I shall put back my singing-bird into his cage, and shall ask, when that is done, if you will be pleased to tell me what it is that the doctor has said?"

Rosamond answered his request by relating the substance of the conversation which had passed between her husband and the doctor. She then, with many preparatory cautions, proceeded to instruct the old man how to disclose the discovery of the Secret to his niece. She told him that the circumstances in connection with it must be first stated, not as events that had really happened, but as events that might be supposed to have happened. She put the words that he would have to speak into his mouth, choosing the fewest and the plainest that would answer the purpose; she showed him how he might glide almost imperceptibly from referring to the discovery as a thing that might be supposed, to referring to it as a thing that had really happened; and she impressed upon him, as most important of all, to keep perpetually before his niece's mind the fact that the discovery of the Secret had not awakened one bitter feeling or one resentful thought toward her, in the minds of either of the persons who had been so deeply interested in finding it out.

Uncle Joseph listened with unwavering attention until Rosamond had done; then rose from his seat, fixed his eyes intently on her face, and detected an expression of anxiety and doubt in it which he rightly interpreted as referring to himself.

"May I make you sure, before I go away, that I shall forget nothing?" he asked, very earnestly. "I have no head to invent, it is true; but I have something in me that can remember, and the more especially when it is for Sarah's sake. If you please, listen now, and hear if I can say to you over again all that you have said to me?"

Standing before Rosamond, with something in his look and manner strangely and touchingly suggestive of the long-past days of his childhood, and of the time when he had said his earliest lessons at his mother's knee, he now repeated, from first to last, the instructions that had been given to him, with a verbal exactness, with an easy readiness of memory, which, in a man of his age, was nothing less than astonishing. "Have I kept it all as I should?" he asked, simply, when he had come to an end. "And may I go my ways now, and take my good news to Sarah's bedside?"

It was still necessary to detain him, while Rosamond and her husband consulted together on the best and safest means of following up the avowal that the Secret was discovered by the announcement of their own presence in London.

After some consideration, Leonard asked his wife to produce the document which the lawyer had drawn out that morning, and to write a few lines, from his dictation, on the blank side of the paper, requesting Mrs. Jazeph to read the form of declaration, and to affix her signature to it, if she felt that it required her, in every particular, to affirm nothing that was not the exact truth. When this had been done, and when the leaf on which Mrs. Frankland had written had been folded outward, so that it might be the first page to catch the eye, Leonard directed that the paper should be given to the old man, and explained to him what he was to do with it, in these words:

"When you have broken the news about the Secret to your niece," he said, "and when you have allowed her full time to compose herself, if she asks questions about my wife and myself (as I believe she will), hand that paper to her for answer, and beg her to read it. Whether she is willing to sign it or not, she is sure to inquire how you came by it. Tell her in return that you have received it from Mrs. Frankland—using the word 'received,' so that she may believe at first that it was sent to you from Porthgenna by post. If you find that she signs the declaration, and that she is not much agitated after doing so, then tell her in the same gradual way in which you tell the truth about the discovery of the Secret, that my wife gave the paper to you with her own hands, and that she is now in London—"

"Waiting and longing to see her," added Rosamond. "You, who forget nothing, will not, I am sure, forget to say that."

The little compliment to his powers of memory made Uncle Joseph color with pleasure, as if he was a boy again. Promising to prove worthy of the trust reposed in him, and engaging to come back and relieve Mrs. Frankland of all suspense before the day was out, he took his leave, and went forth hopefully on his momentous errand.

Rosamond watched him from the window, threading his way in and out among the throng of passengers on the pavement, until he was lost to view. How nimbly the light little figure sped away out of sight! How gayly the unclouded sunlight poured down on the cheerful bustle in the street! The whole being of the great city basked in the summer glory of the day; all its mighty pulses beat high, and all its myriad voices whispered of hope!

The afternoon wore away and the evening came, and still there were no signs of Uncle Joseph's return.

Toward seven o'clock, Rosamond was summoned by the nurse, who reported that the child was awake and fretful. After soothing and quieting him, she took him back with her to the sitting-room, having first, with her usual consideration for the comfort of any servant whom she employed, sent the nurse down stairs, with a leisure hour at her own disposal, after the duties of the day. "I don't like to be away from you, Lenny, at this anxious time," she said, when she rejoined her husband; "so I have brought the child in here. He is not likely to be troublesome again, and the having him to take care of is really a relief to me in our present state of suspense."

The clock on the mantel-piece chimed the half-hour past seven. The carriages in the street were following one another more and more rapidly, filled with people in full dress, on their way to dinner, or on their way to the opera. The hawkers were shouting proclamations of news in the neighboring square, with the second editions of the evening papers under their arms. People who had been serving behind the counter all day were standing at the shop door to get a breath of fresh air. Working men were trooping homeward, now singly, now together, in weary, shambling gangs. Idlers, who had come out after dinner, were lighting cigars at corners of streets, and looking about them, uncertain which way they should turn their steps next. It was just that transitional period of the evening at which the street-life of the day is almost over, and the street-life of the night has not quite begun—just the time, also, at which Rosamond, after vainly trying to find relief from the weariness of waiting by looking out of window, was becoming more and more deeply absorbed in her own anxious thoughts—when her attention was abruptly recalled to events in the little world about her by the opening of the room door. She looked up immediately from the child lying asleep on her lap, and saw that Uncle Joseph had returned at last.

The old man came in silently, with the form of declaration which he had taken away with him, by Mr. Frankland's desire, open in his hand. As he approached nearer to the window, Rosamond noticed that his face looked as if it had grown strangely older during the few hours of his absence. He came close up to her, and still not saying a word, laid his trembling forefinger low down on the open paper, and held it before her so that she could look at the place thus indicated without rising from her chair.

His silence and the change in his face struck her with a sudden dread which made her hesitate before she spoke to him. "Have you told her all?" she asked, after a moment's delay, putting the question in low, whispering tones, and not heeding the paper.

"This answers that I have," he said, still pointing to the declaration. "See! here is the name, signed in the place that was left for it—signed by her own hand."

Rosamond glanced at the paper. There indeed was the signature, "S. Jazeph;" and underneath it were added, in faintly traced lines of parenthesis, these explanatory words—"Formerly, Sarah Leeson."

"Why don't you speak?" exclaimed Rosamond, looking at him in growing alarm. "Why don't you tell us how she bore it?"

"Ah! don't ask me, don't ask me!" he answered, shrinking back from her hand, as she tried in her eagerness to lay it on his arm. "I forgot nothing. I said the words as you taught me to say them—I went the roundabout way to the truth with my tongue; but my face took the short cut, and got to the end first. Pray, of your goodness to me, ask nothing about it! Be satisfied, if you please, with knowing that she is better and quieter and happier now. The bad is over and past, and the good is all to come. If I tell you how she looked, if I tell you what she said, if I tell you all that happened when first she knew the truth, the fright will catch me round the heart again, and all the sobbing and crying that I have swallowed down will rise once more and choke me. I must keep my head clear and my eyes dry—or how shall I say to you all the things that I have promised Sarah, as I love my own soul and hers, to tell, before I lay myself down to rest to-night?" He stopped, took out a coarse little cotton pocket-handkerchief, with a flaring white pattern on a dull blue ground, and dried a few tears that had risen in his eyes while he was speaking. "My life has had so much happiness in it," he said, self-reproachfully, looking at Rosamond, "that my courage, when it is wanted for the time of trouble, is not easy to find. And yet, I am German! all my nation are philosophers!—why is it that I alone am as soft in my brains, and as weak in my heart, as the pretty little baby there, that is lying asleep in your lap?"

"Don't speak again; don't tell us any thing till you feel more composed," said Rosamond. "We are relieved from our worst suspense now that we know you have left her quieter and better. I will ask no more questions; at least," she added, after a pause, "I will only ask one." She stopped; and her eyes wandered inquiringly toward Leonard. He had hitherto been listening with silent interest to all that had passed; but he now interposed gently, and advised his wife to wait a little before she ventured on saying any thing more.

"It is such an easy question to answer," pleaded Rosamond. "I only wanted to hear whether she has got my message—whether she knows that I am waiting and longing to see her, if she will but let me come?"

"Yes, yes," said the old man, nodding to Rosamond with an air of relief. "That question is easy; easier even than you think, for it brings me straight to the beginning of all that I have got to say."

He had been hitherto walking restlessly about the room; sitting down one moment, and getting up the next. He now placed a chair for himself midway between Rosamond—who was sitting, with the child, near the window—and her husband, who occupied the sofa at the lower end of the room. In this position, which enabled him to address himself alternately to Mr. and Mrs. Frankland without difficulty, he soon recovered composure enough to open his heart unreservedly to the interest of his subject.

"When the worst was over and past," he said, addressing Rosamond—"when she could listen and when I could speak, the first words of comfort that I said to her were the words of your message. Straight she looked at me, with doubting, fearing eyes. 'Was her husband there to hear her?' she says. 'Did he look angry? did he look sorry? did he change ever so little, when you got that message from her?' And I said, 'No; no change, no anger, no sorrow—nothing like it.' And she said again: 'Has it made between them no misery? has it nothing wrenched away of all the love and all the happiness that binds them the one to the other?' And once more I answer to that, 'No! no misery, no wrench. See now! I shall go my ways at once to the good wife, and fetch her here to answer for the good husband with her own tongue.' While I speak those words there flies out over all her face a look—no, not a look—a light, like a sun-flash. While I can count one, it lasts; before I can count two, it is gone; the face is all dark again; it is turned away from me on the pillow, and I see the hand that is outside the bed begin to crumple up the sheet. 'I shall go my ways, then, and fetch the good wife,' I say again. And she says, 'No, not yet. I must not see her, I dare not see her till she knows—;' and there she stops, and the hand crumples up the sheet again, and softly, softly, I say to her, 'Knows what?' and she answers me, 'What I, her mother, can not tell her to her face, for shame.' And I say, 'So, so, my child! tell it not, then—tell it not at all.' She shakes her head at me, and wrings her two hands together, like this, on the bed-cover. 'I must tell it,' she says. 'I must rid my heart of all that has been gnawing, gnawing, gnawing at it, or how shall I feel the blessing that the seeing her will bring to me, if my conscience is only clear?' Then she stops a little, and lifts up her two hands, so, and cries out loud, 'Oh, will God's mercy show me no way of telling it that will spare me before my child!' And I say, 'Hush, then! there is a way. Tell it to Uncle Joseph, who is the same as father to you! Tell it to Uncle Joseph, whose little son died in your arms; whose tears your hand wiped away, in the grief time long ago. Tell it, my child, to me; and I shall take the risk, and the shame (if there is shame), of telling it again. I, with nothing to speak for me but my white hair; I, with nothing to help me but my heart that means no harm—I shall go to that good and true woman, with the burden of her mother's grief to lay before her; and, in my soul of souls I believe it, she will not turn away!'"

He paused, and looked at Rosamond. Her head was bent down over her child; her tears were dropping slowly, one by one, on the bosom of his little white dress. Waiting a moment to collect herself before she spoke, she held out her hand to the old man, and firmly and gratefully met the look he fixed on her. "Oh, go on, go on!" she said. "Let me prove to you that your generous confidence in me is not misplaced."

"I knew it was not, from the first, as surely as I know it now!" said Uncle Joseph. "And Sarah, when I had spoken to her, she knew it too. She was silent for a little; she cried for a little; she leaned over from the pillow and kissed me here, on my cheek, as I sat by the bedside; and then she looked back, back, back, in her mind, to the Long Ago, and very quietly, very slowly, with her eyes looking into my eyes, and her hand resting so in mine, she spoke the words to me that I must now speak again to you, who sit here to-day as her judge, before you go to her to-morrow as her child."

"Not as her judge!" said Rosamond. "I can not, I must not hear you say that."

"I speak her words, not mine," rejoined the old man, gravely. "Wait before you bid me change them for others—wait till you know the end."

He drew his chair a little nearer to Rosamond, paused for a minute or two to arrange his recollections, and to separate them one from the other; then resumed.

"As Sarah began with me," he said, "so I, for my part, must begin also—which means to say, that I go down now through the years that are past, to the time when my niece went out to her first service. You know that the sea-captain, the brave and good man Treverton, took for his wife an artist on the stage—what they call play-actress here? A grand, big woman, and a handsome; with a life and a spirit and a will in her that is not often seen; a woman of the sort who can say, We will do this thing, or that thing—and do it in the spite and face of all the scruples, all the obstacles, all the oppositions in the world. To this lady there comes for maid to wait upon her, Sarah, my niece—a young girl then, pretty and kind and gentle, and very, very shy. Out of many others who want the place, and who are bolder and bigger and quicker girls, Mistress Treverton, nevertheless, picks Sarah. This is strange, but it is stranger yet that Sarah, on her part, when she comes out of her first fears and doubts, and pains of shyness about herself, gets to be fond with all her heart of that grand and handsome mistress, who has a life and a spirit and a will of the sort that is not often seen. This is strange to say, but it is also, as I know from Sarah's own lips, every word of it true."

"True beyond a doubt," said Leonard. "Most strong attachments are formed between people who are unlike each other."

"So the life they led in that ancient house of Porthgenna began happily for them all," continued the old man. "The love that the mistress had for her husband was so full in her heart that it overflowed in kindness to every body who was about her, and to Sarah, her maid, before all the rest. She would have nobody but Sarah to read to her, to work for her, to dress her in the morning and the evening, and to undress her at night. She was as familiar as a sister might have been with Sarah, when they two were alone, in the long days of rain. It was the game of her idle time—the laugh that she liked most—to astonish the poor country maid, who had never so much as seen what a theatre's inside was like, by dressing in fine clothes, and painting her face, and speaking and doing all that she had done on the theatre-scene in the days that were before her marriage. The more she puzzled Sarah with these jokes and pranks of masquerade, the better she was always pleased. For a year this easy, happy life went on in the ancient house—happy for all the servants—happier still for the master and mistress, but for the want of one thing to make the whole complete, one little blessing that was always hoped for, and that never came—the same, if you please, as the blessing in the long white frock, with the plump, delicate face and the tiny arms, that I see before me now."

He paused, to point the allusion by nodding and smiling at the child in Rosamond's lap; then resumed.

"As the new year gets on," he said, "Sarah sees in the mistress a change. The good sea-captain is a man who loves children, and is fond of getting to the house all the little boys and girls of his friends round about. He plays with them, he kisses them, he makes them presents—he is the best friend the little boys and girls have ever had. The mistress, who should be their best friend too, looks on and says nothing—looks on, red sometimes, and sometimes pale; goes away into her room where Sarah is at work for her, and walks about and finds fault; and one day lets the evil temper fly out of her at her tongue, and says, 'Why have I got no child for my husband to be fond of? Why must he kiss and play always with the children of other women? They take his love away for something that is not mine. I hate those children and their mothers too!' It is her passion that speaks then, but it speaks what is near the truth for all that. She will not make friends with any of those mothers; the ladies she is familiar-fond with are the ladies who have no children, or the ladies whose families are all upgrown. You think that was wrong of the mistress?"

He put the question to Rosamond, who was toying thoughtfully with one of the baby's hands which was resting in hers. "I think Mrs. Treverton was very much to be pitied," she answered, gently lifting the child's hand to her lips.

"Then I, for my part, think so too," said Uncle Joseph. "To be pitied?—yes! To be more pitied some months after, when there is still no child and no hope of a child, and the good sea-captain says, one day, 'I rust here, I get old with much idleness; I want to be on the sea again. I shall ask for a ship.' And he asks for a ship, and they give it him; and he goes away on his cruises—with much kissing and fondness at parting from his wife—but still he goes away. And when he is gone, the mistress comes in again where Sarah is at work for her on a fine new gown, and snatches it away, and casts it down on the floor, and throws after it all the fine jewels she has got on her table, and stamps and cries with the misery and the passion that is in her. 'I would give all those fine things, and go in rags for the rest of my life, to have a child!' she says. 'I am losing my husband's love: he would never have gone away from me if I had brought him a child!' Then she looks in the glass, and says between her teeth, 'Yes! yes! I am a fine woman, with a fine figure, and I would change places with the ugliest, crookedest wretch in all creation, if I could only have a child!' And then she tells Sarah that the Captain's brother spoke the vilest of all vile words of her, when she was married, because she was an artist on the stage; and she says, 'If I have no child, who but he—the rascal-monster that I wish I could kill!—who but he will come to possess all that the Captain has got?' And then she cries again, and says, 'I am losing his love—ah, I know it, I know it!—I am losing his love!' Nothing that Sarah can say will alter her thoughts about that. And the months go on, and the sea-captain comes back, and still there is always the same secret grief growing and growing in the mistress's heart—growing and growing till it is now the third year since the marriage, and there is no hope yet of a child; and once more the sea-captain gets tired on the land, and goes off again for his cruises—long cruises, this time; away, away, away, at the other end of the world."

Here Uncle Joseph paused once more, apparently hesitating a little about how he should go on with the narrative. His mind seemed to be soon relieved of its doubts, but his face saddened, and his tones sank lower, when he addressed Rosamond again.

"I must, if you please, go away from the mistress now," he said, "and get back to Sarah, my niece, and say one word also of a mining man, with the Cornish name of Polwheal. This was a young man that worked well and got good wage, and kept a good character. He lived with his mother in the little village that is near the ancient house; and, seeing Sarah from time to time, took much fancy to her, and she to him. So the end came that the marriage-promise was between them given and taken; as it happened, about the time when the sea-captain was back after his first cruises, and just when he was thinking of going away in a ship again. Against the marriage-promise nor he nor the lady his wife had a word to object, for the miner, Polwheal, had good wage and kept a good character. Only the mistress said that the loss of Sarah would be sad to her—very sad; and Sarah answered that there was yet no hurry to part. So the weeks go on, and the sea-captain sails away again for his long cruises; and about the same time also the mistress finds out that Sarah frets, and looks not like herself, and that the miner, Polwheal, he lurks here and lurks there, round about the house; and she says to herself, 'So! so! Am I standing too much in the way of this marriage? For Sarah's sake, that shall not be!' And she calls for them both one evening, and talks to them kindly, and sends away to put up the banns next morning the young man Polwheal. That night, it is his turn to go down into the Porthgenna mine, and work after the hours of the day. With his heart all light, down into that dark he goes. When he rises to the world again, it is the dead body of him that is drawn up—the dead body, with all the young life, by the fall of a rock, crushed out in a moment. The news flies here; the news flies there. With no break, with no warning, with no comfort near, it comes on a sudden to Sarah, my niece. When to her sweet-heart that evening she had said good-by, she was a young, pretty girl; when, six little weeks after, she, from the sick-bed where the shock threw her, got up, all her youth was gone, all her hair was gray, and in her eyes the fright-look was fixed that has never left them since."

The simple words drew the picture of the miner's death, and of all that followed it, with a startling distinctness—with a fearful reality. Rosamond shuddered, and looked at her husband. "Oh, Lenny!" she murmured, "the first news of your blindness was a sore trial to me—but what was it to this!"

"Pity her!" said the old man. "Pity her for what she suffered then! Pity her for what came after, that was worse! Yet five, six, seven weeks pass, after the death of the mining man, and Sarah in the body suffers less, but in the mind suffers more. The mistress, who is kind and good to her as any sister could be, finds out, little by little, something in her face which is not the pain-look, nor the fright-look, nor the grief-look; something which the eyes can see, but which the tongue can not put into words. She looks and thinks, looks and thinks, till there steals into her mind a doubt which makes her tremble at herself, which drives her straight forward into Sarah's room, which sets her eyes searching through and through Sarah to her inmost heart. 'There is something on your mind besides your grief for the dead and gone,' she says, and catches Sarah by both the arms before she can turn way, and looks her in the face, front to front, with curious eyes that search and suspect steadily. 'The miner man, Polwheal,' she says; 'my mind misgives me about the miner man, Polwheal. Sarah! I have been more friend to you than mistress. As your friend I ask you now—tell me all the truth?' The question waits; but no word of answer! only Sarah struggles to get away, and the mistress holds her tighter yet, and goes on and says, 'I know that the marriage-promise passed between you and miner Polwheal; I know that if ever there was truth in man, there was truth in him; I know that he went out from this place to put the banns up, for you and for him, in the church. Have secrets from all the world besides, Sarah, but have none from me. Tell me, this minute—tell me the truth! Of all the lost creatures in this big, wide world, are you—?' Before she can say the words that are next to come, Sarah falls on her knees, and cries out suddenly to be let go away to hide and die, and be heard of no more. That was all the answer she gave. It was enough for the truth then; it is enough for the truth now."

He sighed bitterly, and ceased speaking for a little while. No voice broke the reverent silence that followed his last words. The one living sound that stirred in the stillness of the room was the light breathing of the child as he lay asleep in his mother's arms.

"That was all the answer," repeated the old man, "and the mistress who heard it says nothing for some time after, but still looks straight forward into Sarah's face, and grows paler and paler the longer she looks—paler and paler, till on a sudden she starts, and at one flash the red flies back into her face. 'No,' she says, whispering and looking at the door, 'once your friend, Sarah, always your friend. Stay in this house, keep your own counsel, do as I bid you, and leave the rest to me.' And with that she turns round quick on her heel, and falls to walking up and down the room—faster, faster, faster, till she is out of breath. Then she pulls the bell with an angry jerk, and calls out loud at the door—'The horses! I want to ride;' then turns upon Sarah—'My gown for riding in! Pluck up your heart, poor creature! On my life and honor, I will save you. My gown, my gown, then; I am mad for a gallop in the open air!' And she goes out, in a fever of the blood, and gallops, gallops, till the horse reeks again, and the groom-man who rides after her wonders if she is mad. When she comes back, for all that ride in the air, she is not tired. The whole evening after, she is now walking about the room, and now striking loud tunes all mixed up together on the piano. At the bed-time, she can not rest. Twice, three times in the night she frightens Sarah by coming in to see how she does, and by saying always those same words over again: 'Keep your own counsel, do as I bid you, and leave the rest to me.' In the morning she lies late, sleeps, gets up very pale and quiet, and says to Sarah, 'No word more between us two of what happened yesterday—no word till the time comes when you fear the eyes of every stranger who looks at you. Then I shall speak again. Till that time let us be as we were before I put the question yesterday, and before you told the truth!'"

At this point he broke the thread of the narrative again, explaining as he did so that his memory was growing confused about a question of time, which he wished to state correctly in introducing the series of events that were next to be described.

"Ah, well! well!" he said, shaking his head, after vainly endeavoring to pursue the lost recollection. "For once, I must acknowledge that I forget. Whether it was two months, or whether it was three, after the mistress said those last words to Sarah, I know not—but at the end of the one time or of the other she one morning orders her carriage and goes away alone to Truro. In the evening she comes back with two large flat baskets. On the cover of the one there is a card, and written on it are the letters 'S. L.' On the cover of the other there is a card, and written on it are the letters 'R. T.' The baskets are taken into the mistress's room, and Sarah is called, and the mistress says to her, 'Open the basket with S. L. on it; for those are the letters of your name, and the things in it are yours.' Inside there is first a box, which holds a grand bonnet of black lace; then a fine dark shawl; then black silk of the best kind, enough to make a gown; then linen and stuff for the under garments, all of the finest sort. 'Make up those things to fit yourself,' says the mistress. 'You are so much littler than I, that to make the things up new is less trouble than, from my fit to yours, to alter old gowns.' Sarah, to all this, says in astonishment, 'Why?' And the mistress answers, 'I will have no questions. Remember what I said—Keep your own counsel, and leave the rest to me!' So she goes out; and the next thing she does is to send for the doctor to see her. He asks what is the matter; gets for answer that Mistress Treverton feels strangely, and not like herself; also that she thinks the soft air of Cornwall makes her weak. The days pass, and the doctor comes and goes, and, say what he may, those two answers are always the only two that he can get. All this time Sarah is at work; and when she has done, the mistress says, 'Now for the other basket, with R. T. on it; for those are the letters of my name, and the things in it are mine.' Inside this, there is first a box which holds a common bonnet of black straw; then a coarse dark shawl; then a gown of good common black stuff; then linen, and other things for the under garments, that are only of the sort called second best. 'Make up all that rubbish,' says the mistress, 'to fit me. No questions! You have always done as I told you; do as I tell you now, or you are a lost woman.' When the rubbish is made up, she tries it on, and looks in the glass, and laughs in a way that is wild and desperate to hear. 'Do I make a fine, buxom, comely servant-woman?' she says. 'Ha! but I have acted that part times enough in my past days on the theatre-scene.' And then she takes off the clothes again, and bids Sarah pack them up at once in one trunk, and pack the things she has made for herself in another. 'The doctor orders me to go away out of this damp, soft Cornwall climate, to where the air is fresh and dry and cheerful-keen,' she says, and laughs again, till the room rings with it. At the same time Sarah begins to pack, and takes some knickknack things off the table, and among them a brooch which has on it a likeness of the sea-captain's face. The mistress sees her, turns white in the cheeks, trembles all over, snatches the brooch away, and locks it up in the cabinet in a great hurry, as if the look of it frightened her. 'I shall leave that behind me,' she says, and turns round on her heel, and goes quickly out of the room. You guess now what the thing was that Mistress Treverton had it in her mind to do?"

He addressed the question to Rosamond first, and then repeated it to Leonard. They both answered in the affirmative, and entreated him to go on.

"You guess?" he said. "It is more than Sarah, at that time, could do. What with the misery in her own mind, and the strange ways and strange words of her mistress, the wits that were in her were all confused. Nevertheless, what her mistress has said to her, that she has always done; and together alone those two from the house of Porthgenna drive away. Not a word says the mistress till they have got to the journey's end for the first day, and are stopping at their inn among strangers for the night. Then at last she speaks out. 'Put you on, Sarah, the good linen and the good gown to-morrow,' she says, 'but keep the common bonnet and the common shawl till we get into the carriage again. I shall put on the coarse linen and the coarse gown, and keep the good bonnet and shawl. We shall pass so the people at the inn, on our way to the carriage, without very much risk of surprising them by our change of gowns. When we are out on the road again, we can change bonnets and shawls in the carriage—and then, it is all done. You are the married lady, Mrs. Treverton, and I am your maid who waits on you, Sarah Leeson.' At that, the glimmering on Sarah's mind breaks in at last: she shakes with the fright it gives her, and all she can say is, 'Oh, mistress! for the love of Heaven, what is it you mean to do?' 'I mean,' the mistress answers, 'to save you, my faithful servant, from disgrace and ruin; to prevent every penny that the captain has got from going to that rascal-monster, his brother, who slandered me; and, last and most, I mean to keep my husband from going away to sea again, by making him love me as he has never loved me yet. Must I say more, you poor, afflicted, frightened creature—or is it enough so?' And all that Sarah can answer, is to cry bitter tears, and to say faintly, 'No.' 'Do you doubt,' says the mistress, and grips her by the arm, and looks her close in the face with fierce eyes—'Do you doubt which is best, to cast yourself into the world forsaken and disgraced and ruined, or to save yourself from shame, and make a friend of me for the rest of your life? You weak, wavering, baby woman, if you can not decide for yourself, I shall for you. As I will, so it shall be! To-morrow, and the day after that, we go on and on, up to the north, where my good fool of a doctor says the air is cheerful-keen—up to the north, where nobody knows me or has heard my name. I, the maid, shall spread the report that you, the lady, are weak in your health. No strangers shall you see, but the doctor and the nurse, when the time to call them comes. Who they may be, I know not; but this I do know, that the one and the other will serve our purpose without the least suspicion of what it is; and that when we get back to Cornwall again, the secret between us two will to no third person have been trusted, and will remain a Dead Secret to the end of the world!' With all the strength of the strong will that is in her, at the hush of night and in a house of strangers, she speaks those words to the woman of all women the most frightened, the most afflicted, the most helpless, the most ashamed. What need to say the end? On that night Sarah first stooped her shoulders to the burden that has weighed heavier and heavier on them with every year, for all her after-life."

"How many days did they travel toward the north?" asked Rosamond, eagerly. "Where did the journey end? In England or in Scotland?"

"In England," answered Uncle Joseph. "But the name of the place escapes my foreign tongue. It was a little town by the side of the sea—the great sea that washes between my country and yours. There they stopped, and there they waited till the time came to send for the doctor and the nurse. And as Mistress Treverton had said it should be, so, from the first to the last, it was. The doctor and the nurse, and the people of the house were all strangers; and to this day, if they still live, they believe that Sarah was the sea-captain's wife, and that Mistress Treverton was the maid who waited on her. Not till they were far back on their way home with the child did the two change gowns again, and return each to her proper place. The first friend at Porthgenna that the mistress sends for to show the child to, when she gets back, is the doctor who lives there. 'Did you think what was the matter with me, when you sent me away to change the air?' she says, and laughs. And the doctor, he laughs too, and says, 'Yes, surely! but I was too cunning to say what I thought in those early days, because, at such times, there is always fear of a mistake. And you found the fine dry air so good for you that you stopped?' he says. 'Well, that was right! right for yourself and right also for the child.' And the doctor laughs again and the mistress with him, and Sarah, who stands by and hears them, feels as if her heart would burst within her, with the horror, and the misery, and the shame of that deceit. When the doctor's back is turned, she goes down on her knees, and begs and prays with all her soul that the mistress will repent, and send her away with her child, to be heard of at Porthgenna no more. The mistress, with that tyrant-will of hers, has but four words of answer to give—'It is too late!' Five weeks after, the sea-captain comes back, and the 'Too late' is a truth that no repentance can ever alter more. The mistress's cunning hand that has guided the deceit from the first, guides it always to the last—guides it so that the captain, for the love of her and of the child, goes back to the sea no more—guides it till the time when she lays her down on the bed to die, and leaves all the burden of the secret, and all the guilt of the confession, to Sarah—to Sarah, who, under the tyranny of that tyrant-will, has lived in the house, for five long years, a stranger to her own child!"

"Five years!" murmured Rosamond, raising the baby gently in her arms, till his face touched hers. "Oh me! five long years a stranger to the blood of her blood, to the heart of her heart!"

"And all the years after!" said the old man. "The lonesome years and years among strangers, with no sight of the child that was growing up, with no heart to pour the story of her sorrow into the ear of any living creature, not even into mine! 'Better,' I said to her, when she could speak to me no more, and when her face was turned away again on the pillow—'a thousand times better, my child, if you had told the Secret!' 'Could I tell it,' she said, 'to the master who trusted me? Could I tell it afterward to the child, whose birth was a reproach to me? Could she listen to the story of her mother's shame, told by her mother's lips? How will she listen to it now, Uncle Joseph, when she hears it from you? Remember the life she has led, and the high place she has held in the world. How can she forgive me? How can she ever look at me in kindness again?'"

"You never left her," cried Rosamond, interposing before he could say more—"surely, surely, you never left her with that thought in her heart!"

Uncle Joseph's head drooped on his breast. "What words of mine could change it?" he asked, sadly.

"Oh, Lenny, do you hear that? I must leave you, and leave the baby. I must go to her, or those last words about me will break my heart." The passionate tears burst from her eyes as she spoke; and she rose hastily from her seat, with the child in her arms.

"Not to-night," said Uncle Joseph. "She said to me at parting, 'I can bear no more to-night; give me till the morning to get as strong as I can.'"

"Oh, go back, then, yourself!" cried Rosamond. "Go, for God's sake, without wasting another moment, and make her think of me as she ought! Tell her how I listened to you, with my own child sleeping on my bosom all the time—tell her—oh, no, no! words are too cold for it!—Come here, come close, Uncle Joseph (I shall always call you so now); come close to me and kiss my child—her grandchild!—Kiss him on this cheek, because it has lain nearest to my heart. And now, go back, kind and dear old man—go back to her bedside, and say nothing but that I sent that kiss to her!"

CHAPTER IV.
THE CLOSE OF DAY.

The night, with its wakeful anxieties, wore away at last; and the morning light dawned hopefully, for it brought with it the promise of an end to Rosamond's suspense.

The first event of the day was the arrival of Mr. Nixon, who had received a note on the previous evening, written by Leonard's desire, to invite him to breakfast. Before the lawyer withdrew, he had settled with Mr. and Mrs. Frankland all the preliminary arrangements that were necessary to effect the restoration of the purchase-money of Porthgenna Tower, and had dispatched a messenger with a letter to Bayswater, announcing his intention of calling upon Andrew Treverton that afternoon, on private business of importance relating to the personal estate of his late brother.

Toward noon, Uncle Joseph arrived at the hotel to take Rosamond with him to the house where her mother lay ill.

He came in, talking, in the highest spirits, of the wonderful change for the better that had been wrought in his niece by the affectionate message which he had taken to her on the previous evening. He declared that it had made her look happier, stronger, younger, all in a moment; that it had given her the longest, quietest, sweetest night's sleep she had enjoyed for years and years past; and, last, best triumph of all, that its good influence had been acknowledged, not an hour since, by the doctor himself.

Rosamond listened thankfully, but it was with a wandering attention, with a mind ill at ease. When she had taken leave of her husband, and when she and Uncle Joseph were out in the street together, there was something in the prospect of the approaching interview between her mother and herself which, in spite of her efforts to resist the sensation, almost daunted her. If they could have come together, and have recognized each other without time to think what should be first said or done on either side, the meeting would have been nothing more than the natural result of the discovery of the Secret. But, as it was, the waiting, the doubting, the mournful story of the past, which had filled up the emptiness of the last day of suspense, all had their depressing effect on Rosamond's impulsive disposition. Without a thought in her heart which was not tender, compassionate, and true toward her mother, she now felt, nevertheless, a vague sense of embarrassment, which increased to positive uneasiness the nearer she and the old man drew to their short journey's end. As they stopped at last at the house door, she was shocked to find herself thinking beforehand of what first words it would be best to say, of what first things it would be best to do, as if she had been about to visit a total stranger, whose favorable opinion she wished to secure, and whose readiness to receive her cordially was a matter of doubt.

The first person whom they saw after the door was opened was the doctor. He advanced toward them from a little empty room at the end of the hall, and asked permission to speak with Mrs. Frankland for a few minutes. Leaving Rosamond to her interview with the doctor, Uncle Joseph gayly ascended the stairs to tell his niece of her arrival, with an activity which might well have been envied by many a man of half his years.

"Is she worse? Is there any danger in my seeing her?" asked Rosamond, as the doctor led her into the empty room.

"Quite the contrary," he replied. "She is much better this morning; and the improvement, I find, is mainly due to the composing and cheering influence on her mind of a message which she received from you last night. It is the discovery of this which makes me anxious to speak to you now on the subject of one particular symptom of her mental condition which surprised and alarmed me when I first discovered it, and which has perplexed me very much ever since. She is suffering—not to detain you, and to put the matter at once in the plainest terms—under a mental hallucination of a very extraordinary kind, which, so far as I have observed it, affects her, generally, toward the close of the day, when the light gets obscure. At such times, there is an expression in her eyes as if she fancied some person had walked suddenly into the room. She looks and talks at perfect vacancy, as you or I might look or talk at some one who was really standing and listening to us. The old man, her uncle, tells me that he first observed this when she came to see him (in Cornwall, I think he said) a short time since. She was speaking to him then on private affairs of her own, when she suddenly stopped, just as the evening was closing in, startled him by a question on the old superstitious subject of the re-appearance of the dead, and then, looking away at a shadowed corner of the room, began to talk at it—exactly as I have seen her look and heard her talk up stairs. Whether she fancies that she is pursued by an apparition, or whether she imagines that some living person enters her room at certain times, is more than I can say; and the old man gives me no help in guessing at the truth. Can you throw any light on the matter?"

"I hear of it now for the first time," answered Rosamond, looking at the doctor in amazement and alarm.

"Perhaps," he rejoined, "she may be more communicative with you than she is with me. If you could manage to be by her bedside at dusk to-day or to-morrow, and if you think you are not likely to be frightened by it, I should very much wish you to see and hear her, when she is under the influence of her delusion. I have tried in vain to draw her attention away from it, at the time, or to get her to speak of it afterward. You have evidently considerable influence over her, and you might therefore succeed where I have failed. In her state of health, I attach great importance to clearing her mind of every thing that clouds and oppresses it, and especially of such a serious hallucination as that which I have been describing. If you could succeed in combating it, you would be doing her the greatest service, and would be materially helping my efforts to improve her health. Do you mind trying the experiment?"

Rosamond promised to devote herself unreservedly to this service, or to any other which was for the patient's good. The doctor thanked her, and led the way back into the hall again.—Uncle Joseph was descending the stairs as they came out of the room. "She is ready and longing to see you," he whispered in Rosamond's ear.

"I am sure I need not impress on you again the very serious necessity of keeping her composed," said the doctor, taking his leave. "It is, I assure you, no exaggeration to say that her life depends on it."

Rosamond bowed to him in silence, and in silence followed the old man up the stairs.

At the door of a back room on the second floor Uncle Joseph stopped.

"She is there," he whispered eagerly. "I leave you to go in by yourself, for it is best that you should be alone with her at first. I shall walk about the streets in the fine warm sunshine, and think of you both, and come back after a little. Go in; and the blessing and the mercy of God go with you!" He lifted her hand to his lips, and softly and quickly descended the stairs again.

Rosamond stood alone before the door. A momentary tremor shook her from head to foot as she stretched out her hand to knock at it. The same sweet voice that she had last heard in her bedroom at West Winston answered her now. As its tones fell on her ear, a thought of her child stole quietly into her heart, and stilled its quick throbbing. She opened the door at once and went in.

Neither the look of the room inside, nor the view from the window; neither its characteristic ornaments, nor its prominent pieces of furniture; none of the objects in it or about it, which would have caught her quick observation at other times, struck it now. From the moment when she opened the door, she saw nothing but the pillows of the bed, the head resting on them, and the face turned toward hers. As she stepped across the threshold, that face changed; the eyelids drooped a little, and the pale cheeks were tinged suddenly with burning red.

Was her mother ashamed to look at her?

The bare doubt freed Rosamond in an instant from all the self-distrust, all the embarrassment, all the hesitation about choosing her words and directing her actions which had fettered her generous impulses up to this time. She ran to the bed, raised the worn, shrinking figure in her arms, and laid the poor weary head gently on her warm, young bosom. "I have come at last, mother, to take my turn at nursing you," she said. Her heart swelled as those simple words came from it—her eyes overflowed—she could say no more.

"Don't cry!" murmured the faint, sweet voice timidly. "I have no right to bring you here and make you sorry. Don't, don't cry!"

"Oh, hush! hush! I shall do nothing but cry if you talk to me like that!" said Rosamond. "Let us forget that we have ever been parted—call me by my name—speak to me as I shall speak to my own child, if God spares me to see him grow up. Say 'Rosamond,' and—oh, pray, pray—tell me to do something for you!" She tore asunder passionately the strings of her bonnet, and threw it from her on the nearest chair. "Look! here is your glass of lemonade on the table. Say 'Rosamond, bring me my lemonade!' say it familiarly, mother! say it as if you knew that I was bound to obey you!"

She repeated the words after her daughter, but still not in steady tones—repeated them with a sad, wondering smile, and with a lingering of the voice on the name of Rosamond, as if it was a luxury to her to utter it.

"You made me so happy with that message and with the kiss you sent me from your child," she said, when Rosamond had given her the lemonade, and was seated quietly by the bedside again. "It was such a kind way of saying that you pardoned me! It gave me all the courage I wanted to speak to you as I am speaking now. Perhaps my illness has changed me—but I don't feel frightened and strange with you, as I thought I should, at our first meeting after you knew the Secret. I think I shall soon get well enough to see your child. Is he like what you were at his age? If he is, he must be very, very—" She stopped. "I may think of that," she added, after waiting a little, "but I had better not talk of it, or I shall cry too; and I want to have done with sorrow now."

While she spoke those words, while her eyes were fixed with wistful eagerness on her daughter's face, the whole instinct of neatness was still mechanically at work in her weak, wasted fingers. Rosamond had tossed her gloves from her on the bed but the minute before; and already her mother had taken them up, and was smoothing them out carefully and folding them neatly together, all the while she spoke.

"Call me 'mother' again," she said, as Rosamond took the gloves from her and thanked her with a kiss for folding them up. "I have never heard you call me 'mother' till now—never, never till now, from the day when you were born!"

Rosamond checked the tears that were rising in her eyes again, and repeated the word.

"It is all the happiness I want, to lie here and look at you, and hear you say that! Is there any other woman in the world, my love, who has a face so beautiful and so kind as yours?" She paused and smiled faintly. "I can't look at those sweet rosy lips now," she said, "without thinking how many kisses they owe me!"

"If you had only let me pay the debt before!" said Rosamond, taking her mother's hand, as she was accustomed to take her child's, and placing it on her neck. "If you had only spoken the first time we met, when you came to nurse me! How sorrowfully I have thought of that since! Oh, mother, did I distress you much in my ignorance? Did it make you cry when you thought of me after that?"

"Distress me! All my distress, Rosamond, has been of my own making, not of yours. My kind, thoughtful love! you said, 'Don't be hard on her'—do you remember? When I was being sent away, deservedly sent away, dear, for frightening you, you said to your husband, 'Don't be hard on her!' Only five words—but, oh, what a comfort it was to me afterward to think that you had said them! I did want to kiss you so, Rosamond, when I was brushing your hair. I had such a hard fight of it to keep from crying out loud when I heard you, behind the bed-curtains, wishing your little child good-night. My heart was in my mouth, choking me all that time. I took your part afterward, when I went back to my mistress—I wouldn't hear her say a harsh word of you. I could have looked a hundred mistresses in the face then, and contradicted them all. Oh, no, no, no! you never distressed me. My worst grief at going away was years and years before I came to nurse you at West Winston. It was when I left my place at Porthgenna; when I stole into your nursery on that dreadful morning, and when I saw you with both your little arms round my master's neck. The doll you had taken to bed with you was in one of your hands, and your head was resting on the Captain's bosom, just as mine rests now—oh, so happily, Rosamond!—on yours. I heard the last words he was speaking to you—words you were too young to remember. 'Hush! Rosie, dear,' he said, 'don't cry any more for poor mamma. Think of poor papa, and try to comfort him!' There, my love—there was the bitterest distress and the hardest to bear! I, your own mother, standing like a spy, and hearing him say that to the child I dared not own! 'Think of poor papa!' My own Rosamond! you know, now, what father I thought of when he said those words! How could I tell him the Secret? how could I give him the letter, with his wife dead that morning—with nobody but you to comfort him—with the awful truth crushing down upon my heart, at every word he spoke, as heavily as ever the rock crushed down upon the father you never saw!"

"Don't speak of it now!" said Rosamond. "Don't let us refer again to the past: I know all I ought to know, all I wish to know of it. We will talk of the future, mother, and of happier times to come. Let me tell you about my husband. If any words can praise him as he ought to be praised, and thank him as he ought to be thanked, I am sure mine ought—I am sure yours will! Let me tell you what he said and what he did when I read to him the letter that I found in the Myrtle Room. Yes, yes, do let me!"

Warned by a remembrance of the doctor's last injunctions; trembling in secret, as she felt under her hand the heavy, toilsome, irregular heaving of her mother's heart, as she saw the rapid changes of color, from pale to red, and from red to pale again, that fluttered across her mother's face, she resolved to let no more words pass between them which were of a nature to recall painfully the sorrows and the suffering of the years that were gone. After describing the interview between her husband and herself which ended in the disclosure of the Secret, she led her mother, with compassionate abruptness, to speak of the future, of the time when she would be able to travel again, of the happiness of returning together to Cornwall, of the little festival they might hold on arriving at Uncle Joseph's house in Truro, and of the time after that, when they might go on still farther to Porthgenna, or perhaps to some other place where new scenes and new faces might help them to forget all sad associations which it was best to think of no more.

Rosamond was still speaking on these topics, her mother was still listening to her with growing interest in every word that she said, when Uncle Joseph returned. He brought in with him a basket of flowers and a basket of fruit, which he held up in triumph at the foot of his niece's bed.

"I have been walking about, my child, in the fine bright sunshine," he said, "and waiting to give your face plenty of time to look happy, so that I might see it again as I want to see it always, for the rest of my life. Aha, Sarah! it is I who have brought the right doctor to cure you!" he added gayly, looking at Rosamond. "She has made you better already. Wait but a little while longer, and she shall get you up from your bed again, with your two cheeks as red, and your heart as light, and your tongue as fast to chatter as mine. See the fine flowers and the fruit I have bought that is nice to your eyes, and nice to your nose, and nicest of all to put into your mouth! It is festival-time with us to-day, and we must make the room bright, bright, bright, all over. And then, there is your dinner to come soon; I have seen it on the dish—a cherub among chicken-fowls! And, after that, there is your fine sound sleep, with Mozart to sing the cradle song, and with me to sit for watch, and to go down stairs when you wake up again, and fetch your cup of tea. Ah, my child, my child, what a fine thing it is to have come at last to this festival-day!"

With a bright look at Rosamond, and with both his hands full of flowers, he turned away from his niece to begin decorating the room. Except when she thanked the old man for the presents he had brought, her attention had never wandered, all the while he had been speaking, from her daughter's face; and her first words, when he was silent again, were addressed to Rosamond alone.

"While I am happy with my child," she said, "I am keeping you from yours. I, of all persons, ought to be the last to part you from each other too long. Go back now, my love, to your husband and your child; and leave me to my grateful thoughts and my dreams of better times."

"If you please, answer Yes to that, for your mother's sake," said Uncle Joseph, before Rosamond could reply. "The doctor says she must take her repose in the day as well as her repose in the night. And how shall I get her to close her eyes, so long as she has the temptation to keep them open upon you?"

Rosamond felt the truth of those last words, and consented to go back for a few hours to the hotel, on the understanding that she was to resume her place at the bedside in the evening. After making this arrangement, she waited long enough in the room to see the meal brought up which Uncle Joseph had announced, and to aid the old man in encouraging her mother to partake of it. When the tray had been removed, and when the pillows of the bed had been comfortably arranged by her own hands, she at last prevailed on herself to take leave.

Her mother's arms lingered round her neck; her mother's cheek nestled fondly against hers. "Go, my dear, go now, or I shall get too selfish to part with you even for a few hours," murmured the sweet voice, in the lowest, softest tones. "My own Rosamond! I have no words to bless you that are good enough; no words to thank you that will speak as gratefully for me as they ought! Happiness has been long in reaching me—but, oh, how mercifully it has come at last!"

Before she passed the door, Rosamond stopped and looked back into the room. The table, the mantel-piece, the little framed prints on the wall were bright with flowers; the musical box was just playing the first sweet notes of the air from Mozart; Uncle Joseph was seated already in his accustomed place by the bed, with the basket of fruit on his knees; the pale, worn face on the pillow was tenderly lighted up by a smile; peace and comfort and repose, all mingled together happily in the picture of the sick-room, all joined in leading Rosamond's thoughts to dwell quietly on the hope of a happier time.

Three hours passed. The last glory of the sun was lighting the long summer day to its rest in the western heaven, when Rosamond returned to her mother's bedside.

She entered the room softly. The one window in it looked toward the west, and on that side of the bed the chair was placed which Uncle Joseph had occupied when she left him, and in which she now found him still seated on her return. He raised his fingers to his lips, and looked toward the bed, as she opened the door. Her mother was asleep, with her hand resting in the hand of the old man.

As Rosamond noiselessly advanced, she saw that Uncle Joseph's eyes looked dim and weary. The constraint of the position that he occupied, which made it impossible for him to move without the risk of awakening his niece, seemed to be beginning to fatigue him. Rosamond removed her bonnet and shawl, and made a sign to him to rise and let her take his place.

"Yes, yes!" she whispered, seeing him reply by a shake of the head. "Let me take my turn, while you go out a little and enjoy the cool evening air. There is no fear of waking her; her hand is not clasping yours, but only resting in it—let me steal mine into its place gently, and we shall not disturb her."

She slipped her hand under her mother's while she spoke. Uncle Joseph smiled as he rose from his chair, and resigned his place to her. "You will have your way," he said; "you are too quick and sharp for an old man like me."

"Has she been long asleep?" asked Rosamond.

"Nearly two hours," answered Uncle Joseph. "But it has not been the good sleep I wanted for her—a dreaming, talking, restless sleep. It is only ten little minutes since she has been so quiet as you see her now."

"Surely you let in too much light?" whispered Rosamond, looking round at the window, through which the glow of the evening sky poured warmly into the room.

"No, no!" he hastily rejoined. "Asleep or awake, she always wants the light. If I go away for a little while, as you tell me, and if it gets on to be dusk before I come back, light both those candles on the chimney-piece. I shall try to be here again before that; but if the time slips by too fast for me, and if it so happens that she wakes and talks strangely, and looks much away from you into that far corner of the room there, remember that the matches and the candles are together on the chimney-piece, and that the sooner you light them after the dim twilight-time, the better it will be." With those words he stole on tiptoe to the door and went out.

His parting directions recalled Rosamond to a remembrance of what had passed between the doctor and herself that morning. She looked round again anxiously to the window.

The sun was just sinking beyond the distant house-tops; the close of day was not far off.

As she turned her head once more toward the bed, a momentary chill crept over her. She trembled a little, partly at the sensation itself, partly at the recollection it aroused of that other chill which had struck her in the solitude of the Myrtle Room.

Stirred by the mysterious sympathies of touch, her mother's hand at the same instant moved in hers, and over the sad peacefulness of the weary face there fluttered a momentary trouble—the flying shadow of a dream. The pale, parted lips opened, closed, quivered, opened again; the toiling breath came and went quickly and more quickly; the head moved uneasily on the pillow; the eyelids half unclosed themselves; low, faint, moaning sounds poured rapidly from the lips—changed ere long to half-articulated sentences—then merged softly into intelligible speech, and uttered these words:

"Swear that you will not destroy this paper! Swear that you will not take this paper away with you if you leave the house!"

The words that followed these were whispered so rapidly and so low that Rosamond's ear failed to catch them. They were followed by a short silence. Then the dreaming voice spoke again suddenly, and spoke louder.

"Where? where? where?" it said. "In the book-case? In the table-drawer?—Stop! stop! In the picture of the ghost—"

The last words struck cold on Rosamond's heart. She drew back suddenly with a movement of alarm—checked herself the instant after, and bent down over the pillow again. But it was too late. Her hand had moved abruptly when she drew back, and her mother awoke with a start and a faint cry—with vacant, terror-stricken eyes, and with the perspiration standing thick on her forehead.

"Mother!" cried Rosamond, raising her on the pillow. "I have come back. Don't you know me?"

"Mother?" she repeated, in mournful, questioning tones—"Mother?" At the second repetition of the word a bright flush of delight and surprise broke out on her face, and she clasped both arms suddenly round her daughter's neck. "Oh, my own Rosamond!" she said. "If I had ever been used to waking up and seeing your dear face look at me, I should have known you sooner, in spite of my dream! Did you wake me, my love? or did I wake myself?"

"I am afraid I awoke you, mother."

"Don't say 'afraid.' I would wake from the sweetest sleep that ever woman had to see your face and to hear you say 'mother' to me. You have delivered me, my love, from the terror of one of my dreadful dreams. Oh, Rosamond! I think I should live to be happy in your love, if I could only get Porthgenna Tower out of my mind—if I could only never remember again the bed-chamber where my mistress died, and the room where I hid the letter—"

"We will try and forget Porthgenna Tower now," said Rosamond. "Shall we talk about other places where I have lived, which you have never seen? Or shall I read to you, mother? Have you got any book here that you are fond of?"

She looked across the bed at the table on the other side. There was nothing on it but some bottles of medicine, a few of Uncle Joseph's flowers in a glass of water, and a little oblong work-box. She looked round at the chest of drawers behind her—there were no books placed on the top of it. Before she turned toward the bed again, her eyes wandered aside to the window. The sun was lost beyond the distant house-tops; the close of day was near at hand.

"If I could forget! Oh, me, if I could only forget!" said her mother, sighing wearily, and beating her hand on the coverlid of the bed.

"Are you well enough, dear, to amuse yourself with work?" asked Rosamond, pointing to the little oblong box on the table, and trying to lead the conversation to a harmless, every-day topic, by asking questions about it. "What work do you do? May I look at it?"

Her face lost its weary, suffering look, and brightened once more into a smile. "There is no work there," she said. "All the treasures I had in the world, till you came to see me, are shut up in that one little box. Open it, my love, and look inside."

Rosamond obeyed, placing the box on the bed where her mother could see it easily. The first object that she discovered inside was a little book, in dark, worn binding. It was an old copy of Wesley's Hymns. Some withered blades of grass lay between its pages; and on one of its blank leaves was this inscription—"Sarah Leeson, her book. The gift of Hugh Polwheal."

"Look at it, my dear," said her mother. "I want you to know it again. When my time comes to leave you, Rosamond, lay it on my bosom with your own dear hands, and put a little morsel of your hair with it, and bury me in the grave in Porthgenna church-yard, where he has been waiting for me to come to him so many weary years. The other things in the box, Rosamond, belong to you; they are little stolen keepsakes that used to remind me of my child, when I was alone in the world. Perhaps, years and years hence, when your brown hair begins to grow gray like mine, you may like to show these poor trifles to your children when you talk about me. Don't mind telling them, Rosamond, how your mother sinned and how she suffered—you can always let these little trifles speak for her at the end. The least of them will show that she always loved you."

She took out of the box a morsel of neatly folded white paper, which had been placed under the book of Wesley's Hymns, opened it, and showed her daughter a few faded laburnum leaves that lay inside. "I took these from your bed, Rosamond, when I came, as a stranger, to nurse you at West Winston. I tried to take a ribbon out of your trunk, love, after I had taken the flowers—a ribbon that I knew had been round your neck. But the doctor came near at the time, and frightened me."

She folded the paper up again, laid it aside on the table, and drew from the box next a small print which had been taken from the illustrations to a pocket-book. It represented a little girl, in gypsy-hat, sitting by the water-side, and weaving a daisy chain. As a design, it was worthless; as a print, it had not even the mechanical merit of being a good impression. Underneath it a line was written in faintly pencilled letters—"Rosamond when I last saw her."

"It was never pretty enough for you," she said. "But still there was something in it that helped me to remember what my own love was like when she was a little girl."

She put the engraving aside with the laburnum leaves, and took from the box a leaf of a copy-book, folded in two, out of which there dropped a tiny strip of paper, covered with small printed letters. She looked at the strip of paper first. "The advertisement of your marriage, Rosamond," she said. "I used to be fond of reading it over and over again to myself when I was alone, and trying to fancy how you looked and what dress you wore. If I had only known when you were going to be married, I would have ventured into the church, my love, to look at you and at your husband. But that was not to be—and perhaps it was best so, for the seeing you in that stolen way might only have made my trials harder to bear afterward. I have had no other keepsake to remind me of you, Rosamond, except this leaf out of your first copy-book. The nurse-maid at Porthgenna tore up the rest one day to light the fire, and I took this leaf when she was not looking. See! you had not got as far as words then—you could only do up-strokes and down-strokes. Oh me! how many times I have sat looking at this one leaf of paper, and trying to fancy that I saw your small child's hand traveling over it, with the pen held tight in the rosy little fingers. I think I have cried oftener, my darling, over that first copy of yours than over all my other keepsakes put together."

Rosamond turned aside her face toward the window to hide the tears which she could restrain no longer.

As she wiped them away, the first sight of the darkening sky warned her that the twilight dimness was coming soon. How dull and faint the glow in the west looked now! how near it was to the close of day!

When she turned toward the bed again, her mother was still looking at the leaf of the copy-book.

"That nurse-maid who tore up all the rest of it to light the fire," she said, "was a kind friend to me in those early days at Porthgenna. She used sometimes to let me put you to bed, Rosamond; and never asked questions, or teased me, as the rest of them did. She risked the loss of her place by being so good to me. My mistress was afraid of my betraying myself and betraying her if I was much in the nursery, and she gave orders that I was not to go there, because it was not my place. None of the other women-servants were so often stopped from playing with you and kissing you, Rosamond, as I was. But the nurse-maid—God bless and prosper her for it!—stood my friend. I often lifted you into your little cot, my love, and wished you good-night, when my mistress thought I was at work in her room. You used to say you liked your nurse better than you liked me, but you never told me so fretfully; and you always put your laughing lips up to mine whenever I asked you for a kiss!"

Rosamond laid her head gently on the pillow by the side of her mother's. "Try to think less of the past, dear, and more of the future," she whispered pleadingly; "try to think of the time when my child will help you to recall those old days without their sorrow—the time when you will teach him to put his lips up to yours, as I used to put mine."

"I will try, Rosamond—but my only thoughts of the future, for years and years past, have been thoughts of meeting you in heaven. If my sins are forgiven, how shall we meet there? Shall you be like my little child to me—the child I never saw again after she was five years old? I wonder if the mercy of God will recompense me for our long separation on earth? I wonder if you will first appear to me in the happy world with your child's face, and be what you should have been to me on earth, my little angel that I can carry in my arms? If we pray in heaven, shall I teach you your prayers there, as some comfort to me for never having taught them to you here?"

She paused, smiled sadly, and, closing her eyes, gave herself in silence to the dream-thoughts that were still floating in her mind. Thinking that she might sink to rest again if she was left undisturbed, Rosamond neither moved nor spoke. After watching the peaceful face for some time, she became conscious that the light was fading on it slowly. As that conviction impressed itself on her, she looked round at the window once more.

The western clouds wore their quiet twilight colors already: the close of day had come.

The moment she moved the chair, she felt her mother's hand on her shoulder. When she turned again toward the bed, she saw her mother's eyes open and looking at her—looking at her, as she thought, with a change in their expression, a change to vacancy.

"Why do I talk of heaven?" she said, turning her face suddenly toward the darkening sky, and speaking in low, muttering tones. "How do I know I am fit to go there? And yet, Rosamond, I am not guilty of breaking my oath to my mistress. You can say for me that I never destroyed the letter, and that I never took it away with me when I left the house. I tried to get it out of the Myrtle Room; but I only wanted to hide it somewhere else. I never thought to take it away from the house: I never meant to break my oath."

"It will be dark soon, mother. Let me get up for one moment to light the candles."

Her hand crept softly upward, and clung fast round Rosamond's neck.

"I never swore to give him the letter," she said. "There was no crime in the hiding of it. You found it in a picture, Rosamond? They used to call it a picture of the Porthgenna ghost. Nobody knew how old it was, or when it came into the house. My mistress hated it, because the painted face had a strange likeness to hers. She told me, when first I lived at Porthgenna, to take it down from the wall and destroy it. I was afraid to do that; so I hid it away, before ever you were born, in the Myrtle Room. You found the letter at the back of the picture, Rosamond? And yet that was a likely place to hide it in. Nobody had ever found the picture. Why should any body find the letter that was hid in it?"

"Let me get a light, mother! I am sure you would like to have a light!"

"No! no light now. Give the darkness time to gather down there in the corner of the room. Lift me up close to you, and let me whisper."

The clinging arm tightened its grasp as Rosamond raised her in the bed. The fading light from the window fell full on her face, and was reflected dimly in her vacant eyes.

"I am waiting for something that comes at dusk, before the candles are lit," she whispered in low, breathless tones. "My mistress!—down there!" And she pointed away to the farthest corner of the room near the door.

"Mother! for God's sake, what is it! what has changed you so?"

"That's right! say 'mother.' If she does come, she can't stop when she hears you call me 'mother,' when she sees us together at last, loving and knowing each other in spite of her. Oh, my kind, tender, pitying child! if you can only deliver me from her, how long may I live yet!—how happy we may both be!"

"Don't talk so! don't look so! Tell me quietly—dear, dear mother, tell me quietly—"

"Hush! hush! I am going to tell you. She threatened me on her death-bed, if I thwarted her—she said she would come to me from the other world. Rosamond! I have thwarted her and she has kept her promise—all my life since, she has kept her promise! Look! Down there!"

Her left arm was still clasped round Rosamond's neck. She stretched her right arm out toward the far corner of the room, and shook her hand slowly at the empty air.

"Look!" she said. "There she is as she always comes to me at the close of day—with the coarse, black dress on, that my guilty hands made for her—with the smile that there was on her face when she asked me if she looked like a servant. Mistress! mistress! Oh, rest at last! the Secret is ours no longer! Rest at last! my child is my own again! Rest, at last; and come between us no more!"

She ceased, panting for breath; and laid her hot, throbbing cheek against the cheek of her daughter. "Call me 'mother' again!" she whispered. "Say it loud; and send her away from me forever!"

Rosamond mastered the terror that shook her in every limb, and pronounced the word.

Her mother leaned forward a little, still gasping heavily for breath, and looked with straining eyes into the quiet twilight dimness at the lower end of the room.

"Gone!!!" she cried suddenly, with a scream of exultation. "Oh, merciful, merciful God! gone at last!"

The next instant she sprang up on her knees in the bed. For one awful moment her eyes shone in the gray twilight with a radiant, unearthly beauty, as they fastened their last look of fondness on her daughter's face. "Oh, my love! my angel!" she murmured, "how happy we shall be together now!" As she said the words, she twined her arms round Rosamond's neck, and pressed her lips rapturously on the lips of her child.

The kiss lingered till her head sank forward gently on Rosamond's bosom—lingered, till the time of God's mercy came, and the weary heart rested at last.

CHAPTER V.
FORTY THOUSAND POUNDS.

No popular saying is more commonly accepted than the maxim which asserts that Time is the great consoler; and, probably, no popular saying more imperfectly expresses the truth. The work that we must do, the responsibilities that we must undertake, the example that we must set to others—these are the great consolers, for these apply the first remedies to the malady of grief. Time possesses nothing but the negative virtue of helping it to wear itself out. Who that has observed at all, has not perceived that those among us who soonest recover from the shock of a great grief for the dead are those who have the most duties to perform toward the living? When the shadow of calamity rests on our houses, the question with us is not how much time will suffice to bring back the sunshine to us again, but how much occupation have we got to force us forward into the place where the sunshine is waiting for us to come? Time may claim many victories, but not the victory over grief. The great consolation for the loss of the dead who are gone is to be found in the great necessity of thinking of the living who remain.

The history of Rosamond's daily life, now that the darkness of a heavy affliction had fallen on it, was in itself the sufficient illustration of this truth. It was not the slow lapse of time that helped to raise her up again, but the necessity which would not wait for time—the necessity which made her remember what was due to the husband who sorrowed with her, to the child whose young life was linked to hers, and to the old man whose helpless grief found no support but in the comfort she could give, learned no lesson of resignation but from the example she could set.

From the first the responsibility of sustaining him had rested on her shoulders alone. Before the close of day had been counted out by the first hour of the night, she had been torn from the bedside by the necessity of meeting him at the door, and preparing him to know that he was entering the chamber of death. To guide the dreadful truth gradually and gently, till it stood face to face with him, to support him under the shock of recognizing it, to help his mind to recover after the inevitable blow had struck it at last—these were the sacred duties which claimed all the devotion that Rosamond had to give, and which forbade her heart, for his sake, to dwell selfishly on its own grief.

He looked like a man whose faculties had been stunned past recovery. He would sit for hours with the musical box by his side, patting it absently from time to time, and whispering to himself as he looked at it, but never attempting to set it playing. It was the one memorial left that reminded him of all the joys and sorrows, the simple family interests and affections of his past life. When Rosamond first sat by his side and took his hand to comfort him, he looked backward and forward with forlorn eyes from her compassionate face to the musical box, and vacantly repeated to himself the same words over and over again: "They are all gone—my brother Max, my wife, my little Joseph, my sister Agatha, and Sarah, my niece! I and my little bit of box are left alone together in the world. Mozart can sing no more. He has sung to the last of them now!"

The second day there was no change in him. On the third, Rosamond placed the book of Hymns reverently on her mother's bosom, laid a lock of her own hair round it, and kissed the sad, peaceful face for the last time.

The old man was with her at that silent leave-taking, and followed her away when it was over. By the side of the coffin, and afterward, when she took him back with her to her husband, he was still sunk in the same apathy of grief which had overwhelmed him from the first. But when they began to speak of the removal of the remains the next day to Porthgenna church-yard, they noticed that his dim eyes brightened suddenly, and that his wandering attention followed every word they said. After a while he rose from his chair, approached Rosamond, and looked anxiously in her face. "I think I could bear it better if you would let me go with her," he said. "We two should have gone back to Cornwall together, if she had lived. Will you let us still go back together now that she has died?"

Rosamond gently remonstrated, and tried to make him see that it was best to leave the remains to be removed under the charge of her husband's servant, whose fidelity could be depended on, and whose position made him the fittest person to be charged with cares and responsibilities which near relations were not capable of undertaking with sufficient composure. She told him that her husband intended to stop in London, to give her one day of rest and quiet, which she absolutely needed, and that they then proposed to return to Cornwall in time to be at Porthgenna before the funeral took place; and she begged earnestly that he would not think of separating his lot from theirs at a time of trouble and trial, when they ought to be all three most closely united by the ties of mutual sympathy and mutual sorrow.

He listened silently and submissively while Rosamond was speaking, but he only repeated his simple petition when she had done. The one idea in his mind now was the idea of going back to Cornwall with all that was left on earth of his sister's child. Leonard and Rosamond both saw that it would be useless to oppose it, both felt that it would be cruelty to keep him with them, and kindness to let him go away. After privately charging the servant to spare him all trouble and difficulty, to humor him by acceding to any wishes that he might express, and to give him all possible protection and help without obtruding either officiously on his attention, they left him free to follow the one purpose of his heart which still connected him with the interests and events of the passing day. "I shall thank you better soon," he said at leave-taking, "for letting me go away out of this din of London with all that is left to me of Sarah, my niece. I will dry up my tears as well as I can, and try to have more courage when we meet again."

On the next day, when they were alone, Rosamond and her husband sought refuge from the oppression of the present in speaking together of the future, and of the influence which the change in their fortunes ought to be allowed to exercise on their plans and projects for the time to come. After exhausting this topic, the conversation turned next on the subject of their friends, and on the necessity of communicating to some of the oldest of their associates the events which had followed the discovery in the Myrtle Room.

The first name on their lips while they were considering this question was the name of Doctor Chennery; and Rosamond, dreading the effect on her spirits of allowing her mind to remain unoccupied, volunteered to write to the vicar at once, referring briefly to what had happened since they had last communicated with him, and asking him to fulfill that year an engagement of long standing, which he had made with her husband and herself, to spend his autumn holiday with them at Porthgenna Tower. Rosamond's heart yearned for a sight of her old friend; and she knew him well enough to be assured that a hint at the affliction which had befallen her, and at the hard trial which she had undergone, would be more than enough to bring them together the moment Doctor Chennery could make his arrangements for leaving home.

The writing of this letter suggested recollections which called to mind another friend, whose intimacy with Leonard and Rosamond was of recent date, but whose connection with the earlier among the train of circumstances which had led to the discovery of the Secret entitled him to a certain share in their confidence. This friend was Mr. Orridge, the doctor at West Winston, who had accidentally been the means of bringing Rosamond's mother to her bedside. To him she now wrote, acknowledging the promise which she had made on leaving West Winston to communicate the result of their search for the Myrtle Room; and informing him that it had terminated in the discovery of some very sad events, of a family nature, which were now numbered with the events of the past. More than this it was not necessary to say to a friend who occupied such a position toward them as that held by Mr. Orridge.

Rosamond had written the address of this second letter, and was absently drawing lines on the blotting-paper with her pen, when she was startled by hearing a contention of angry voices in the passage outside. Almost before she had time to wonder what the noise meant, the door was violently pushed open, and a tall, shabbily dressed, elderly man, with a peevish, haggard face, and a ragged gray beard, stalked in, followed indignantly by the head waiter of the hotel.

"I have three times told this person," began the waiter, with a strong emphasis on the word "person," "that Mr. and Mrs. Frankland—"

"Were not at home," broke in the shabbily dressed man, finishing the sentence for the waiter. "Yes, you told me that; and I told you that the gift of speech was only used by mankind for the purpose of telling lies, and that consequently I didn't believe you. You have told a lie. Here are Mr. and Mrs. Frankland both at home. I come on business, and I mean to have five minutes' talk with them. I sit down unasked, and I announce my own name—Andrew Treverton."

With those words, he took his seat coolly on the nearest chair. Leonard's cheeks reddened with anger while he was speaking, but Rosamond interposed before her husband could say a word.

"It is useless, love, to be angry with him," she whispered. "The quiet way is the best way with a man like that." She made a sign to the waiter, which gave him permission to leave the room—then turned to Mr. Treverton. "You have forced your presence on us, Sir," she said quietly, "at a time when a very sad affliction makes us quite unfit for contentions of any kind. We are willing to show more consideration for your age than you have shown for our grief. If you have any thing to say to my husband, he is ready to control himself and to hear you quietly, for my sake."

"And I shall be short with him and with you, for my own sake," rejoined Mr. Treverton. "No woman has ever yet had the chance of sharpening her tongue long on me, or ever shall. I have come here to say three things. First, your lawyer has told me all about the discovery in the Myrtle Room, and how you made it. Secondly, I have got your money. Thirdly, I mean to keep it. What do you think of that?"

"I think you need not give yourself the trouble of remaining in the room any longer, if your only object in coming here is to tell us what we know already," replied Leonard. "We know you have got the money; and we never doubted that you meant to keep it."

"You are quite sure of that, I suppose?" said Mr. Treverton. "Quite sure you have no lingering hope that any future twists and turns of the law will take the money out of my pocket again and put it back into yours? It is only fair to tell you that there is not the shadow of a chance of any such thing ever happening, or of my ever turning generous and rewarding you of my own accord for the sacrifice you have made. I have been to Doctors' Commons, I have taken out a grant of administration, I have got the money legally, I have lodged it safe at my banker's, and I have never had one kind feeling in my heart since I was born. That was my brother's character of me, and he knew more of my disposition, of course, than any one else. Once again, I tell you both, not a farthing of all that large fortune will ever return to either of you."

"And once again I tell you," said Leonard, "that we have no desire to hear what we know already. It is a relief to my conscience and to my wife's to have resigned a fortune which we had no right to possess; and I speak for her as well as for myself when I tell you that your attempt to attach an interested motive to our renunciation of that money is an insult to us both which you ought to have been ashamed to offer."

"That is your opinion, is it?" said Mr. Treverton. "You, who have lost the money, speak to me, who have got it, in that manner, do you?—Pray, do you approve of your husband's treating a rich man who might make both your fortunes in that way?" he inquired, addressing himself sharply to Rosamond.

"Most assuredly I approve of it," she answered. "I never agreed with him more heartily in my life than I agree with him now."

"Oh!" said Mr. Treverton. "Then it seems you care no more for the loss of the money than he does?"

"He has told you already," said Rosamond, "that it is as great a relief to my conscience as to his, to have given it up."

Mr. Treverton carefully placed a thick stick which he carried with him upright between his knees, crossed his hands on the top of it, rested his chin on them, and, in that investigating position, stared steadily in Rosamond's face.

"I rather wish I had brought Shrowl here with me," he said to himself. "I should like him to have seen this. It staggers me, and I rather think it would have staggered him. Both these people," continued Mr. Treverton, looking perplexedly from Rosamond to Leonard, and from Leonard back again to Rosamond, "are, to all outward appearance, human beings. They walk on their hind legs, they express ideas readily by uttering articulate sounds, they have the usual allowance of features, and in respect of weight, height, and size, they appear to me to be mere average human creatures of the regular civilized sort. And yet, there they sit, taking the loss of a fortune of forty thousand pounds as easily as Croesus, King of Lydia, might have taken the loss of a half-penny!"

He rose, put on his hat, tucked the thick stick under his arm, and advanced a few steps toward Rosamond.

"I am going now," he said. "Would you like to shake hands?"

Rosamond turned her back on him contemptuously.

Mr. Treverton chuckled with an air of supreme satisfaction.

Meanwhile Leonard, who sat near the fire-place, and whose color was rising angrily once more, had been feeling for the bell-rope, and had just succeeded in getting it into his hand as Mr. Treverton approached the door.

"Don't ring, Lenny," said Rosamond. "He is going of his own accord."

Mr. Treverton stepped out into the passage—then glanced back into the room with an expression of puzzled curiosity on his face, as if he was looking into a cage which contained two animals of a species that he had never heard of before. "I have seen some strange sights in my time," he said to himself. "I have had some queer experience of this trumpery little planet, and of the creatures who inhabit it—but I never was staggered yet by any human phenomenon as I am staggered now by those two." He shut the door without saying another word, and Rosamond heard him chuckle to himself again as he walked away along the passage.

Ten minutes afterward the waiter brought up a sealed letter addressed to Mrs. Frankland. It had been written, he said, in the coffee-room of the hotel by the "person" who had intruded himself into Mr. and Mrs. Frankland's presence. After giving it to the waiter to deliver, he had gone away in a hurry, swinging his thick stick complacently, and laughing to himself.

Rosamond opened the letter.

On one side of it was a crossed check, drawn in her name, for Forty Thousand Pounds.

On the other side were these lines of explanation:

The first thing Rosamond did, when she and her husband had a little recovered from their astonishment, was to disobey the injunction which forbade her to address any grateful letters to Mr. Treverton. The messenger, who was sent with her note to Bayswater, returned without an answer, and reported that he had received directions from an invisible man, with a gruff voice, to throw it over the garden wall, and to go away immediately after, unless he wanted to have his head broken.

Mr. Nixon, to whom Leonard immediately sent word of what had happened, volunteered to go to Bayswater the same evening, and make an attempt to see Mr. Treverton on Mr. and Mrs. Frankland's behalf. He found Timon of London more approachable than he had anticipated. The misanthrope was, for once in his life, in a good humor. This extraordinary change in him had been produced by the sense of satisfaction which he experienced in having just turned Shrowl out of his situation, on the ground that his master was not fit company for him after having committed such an act of folly as giving Mrs. Frankland back her forty thousand pounds.

"I told him," said Mr. Treverton, chuckling over his recollection of the parting scene between his servant and himself—"I told him that I could not possibly expect to merit his continued approval after what I had done, and that I could not think of detaining him in his place under the circumstances. I begged him to view my conduct as leniently as he could, because the first cause that led to it was, after all, his copying the plan of Porthgenna, which guided Mrs. Frankland to the discovery in the Myrtle Room. I congratulated him on having got a reward of five pounds for being the means of restoring a fortune of forty thousand; and I bowed him out with a polite humility that half drove him mad. Shrowl and I have had a good many tussles in our time; he was always even with me till to-day, and now I've thrown him on his back at last!"

Although Mr. Treverton was willing to talk of the defeat and dismissal of Shrowl as long as the lawyer would listen to him, he was perfectly unmanageable on the subject of Mrs. Frankland, when Mr. Nixon tried to turn the conversation to that topic. He would hear no messages—he would give no promise of any sort for the future. All that he could be prevailed on to say about himself and his own projects was that he intended to give up the house at Bayswater, and to travel again for the purpose of studying human nature, in different countries, on a plan that he had not tried yet—the plan of endeavoring to find out the good that there might be in people as well as the bad. He said the idea had been suggested to his mind by his anxiety to ascertain whether Mr. and Mrs. Frankland were perfectly exceptional human beings or not. At present, he was disposed to think that they were, and that his travels were not likely to lead to any thing at all remarkable in the shape of a satisfactory result. Mr. Nixon pleaded hard for something in the shape of a friendly message to take back, along with the news of his intended departure. The request produced nothing but a sardonic chuckle, followed by this parting speech, delivered to the lawyer at the garden gate.

"Tell those two superhuman people," said Timon of London, "that I may give up my travels in disgust when they least expect it; and that I may possibly come back to look at them again—I don't personally care about either of them—but I should like to get one satisfactory sensation more out of the lamentable spectacle of humanity before I die."

CHAPTER VI.
THE DAWN OF A NEW LIFE.

Four days afterward, Rosamond and Leonard and Uncle Joseph met together in the cemetery of the church of Porthgenna.

The earth to which we all return had closed over Her: the weary pilgrimage of Sarah Leeson had come to its quiet end at last. The miner's grave from which she had twice plucked in secret her few memorial fragments of grass had given her the home, in death, which, in life, she had never known. The roar of the surf was stilled to a low murmur before it reached the place of her rest; and the wind that swept joyously over the open moor paused a little when it met the old trees that watched over the graves, and wound onward softly through the myrtle hedge which held them all embraced alike in its circle of lustrous green.

Some hours had passed since the last words of the burial service had been read. The fresh turf was heaped already over the mound, and the old head-stone with the miner's epitaph on it had been raised once more in its former place at the head of the grave. Rosamond was reading the inscription softly to her husband. Uncle Joseph had walked a little apart from them while she was thus engaged, and had knelt down by himself at the foot of the mound. He was fondly smoothing and patting the newly laid turf—as he had often smoothed Sarah's hair in the long-past days of her youth—as he had often patted her hand in the after-time, when her heart was weary and her hair was gray.

"Shall we add any new words to the old, worn letters as they stand now?" said Rosamond, when she had read the inscription to the end. "There is a blank space left on the stone. Shall we fill it, love, with the initials of my mother's name, and the date of her death? I feel something in my heart which seems to tell me to do that, and to do no more."

"So let it be, Rosamond," said her husband. "That short and simple inscription is the fittest and the best."

She looked away, as he gave that answer, to the foot of the grave, and left him for a moment to approach the old man. "Take my hand, Uncle Joseph," she said, and touched him gently on the shoulder. "Take my hand, and let us go back together to the house."

He rose as she spoke, and looked at her doubtfully. The musical box, inclosed in its well-worn leather case, lay on the grave near the place where he had been kneeling. Rosamond took it up from the grass, and slung it in the old place at his side, which it had always occupied when he was away from home. He sighed a little as he thanked her. "Mozart can sing no more," he said. "He has sung to the last of them now!"

"Don't say 'to the last,' yet," said Rosamond—"don't say 'to the last,' Uncle Joseph, while I am alive. Surely Mozart will sing to me, for my mother's sake?"

A smile—the first she had seen since the time of their grief—trembled faintly round his lips. "There is comfort in that," he said; "there is comfort for Uncle Joseph still, in hearing that."

"Take my hand," she repeated softly. "Come home with us now."

He looked down wistfully at the grave. "I will follow you," he said, "if you will go on before me to the gate."

Rosamond took her husband's arm, and guided him to the path that led out of the church-yard. As they passed from sight, Uncle Joseph knelt down once more at the foot of the grave, and pressed his lips on the fresh turf.

"Good-by, my child," he whispered, and laid his cheek for a moment against the grass before he rose again.

At the gate, Rosamond was waiting for him. Her right hand was resting on her husband's arm; her left hand was held out for Uncle Joseph to take.

"How cool the breeze is!" said Leonard. "How pleasantly the sea sounds! Surely this is a fine summer day?"

"The calmest and loveliest of the year," said Rosamond. "The only clouds on the sky are clouds of shining white; the only shadows over the moor lie light as down on the heather. Oh, Lenny, it is such a different day from that day of dull oppression and misty heat when we found the letter in the Myrtle Room! Even the dark tower of our old house, yonder, looks its brightest and best, as if it waited to welcome us to the beginning of a new life. I will make it a happy life to you, and to Uncle Joseph, if I can—happy as the sunshine we are walking in now. You shall never repent, love, if I can help it, that you have married a wife who has no claim of her own to the honors of a family name."

"I can never repent my marriage, Rosamond, because I can never forget the lesson that my wife has taught me."

"What lesson, Lenny?"

"An old one, my dear, which some of us can never learn too often. The highest honors, Rosamond, are those which no accident can take away—the honors that are conferred by Love and Truth."

THE END.

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TRISTRAM'S THE LAND OF MOAB. The Result of Travels and Discoveries on the East Side of the Dead Sea and the Jordan. By H. B. Tristram, M.A., LL.D., F.R.S., Master of the Greatham Hospital, and Hon. Canon of Durham. With a Chapter on the Persian Palace of Mashita, by Jas. Ferguson, F.R.S. With Map and Illustrations. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $2 50.

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MOTLEY'S DUTCH REPUBLIC. The Rise of the Dutch Republic. By John Lothrop Motley, LL.D., D.C.L. With a Portrait of William of Orange. 3 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $10 50.

MOTLEY'S UNITED NETHERLANDS. History of the United Netherlands: from the Death of William the Silent to the Twelve Years' Truce—1609. With a full View of the English-Dutch Struggle against Spain, and of the Origin and Destruction of the Spanish Armada. By John Lothrop Motley, LL.D., D.C.L. Portraits. 4 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $14 00.

NAPOLEON'S LIFE OF CÆSAR. The History of Julius CÆsar. By His late Imperial Majesty Napoleon III. Two Volumes ready. Library Edition, 8vo, Cloth, $3 50 per vol.

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MACGREGOR'S ROB ROY ON THE JORDAN. The Rob Roy on the Jordan, Nile, Red Sea, and Gennesareth, &c. A Canoe Cruise in Palestine and Egypt, and the Waters of Damascus. By J. Macgregor, M.A. With Maps and Illustrations. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $2 50.

WALLACE'S MALAY ARCHIPELAGO. The Malay Archipelago: the Land of the Orang-Utan and the Bird of Paradise. A Narrative of Travel, 1854-1862. With Studies of Man and Nature. By Alfred Russel Wallace. With Ten Maps and Fifty-one Elegant Illustrations. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $2 50.

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ORTON'S ANDES AND THE AMAZON. The Andes and the Amazon; or, Across the Continent of South America. By James Orton, M.A., Professor of Natural History in Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, N. Y., and Corresponding Member of the Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia. With a New Map of Equatorial America and numerous Illustrations. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $2 00.

WINCHELL'S SKETCHES OF CREATION. Sketches of Creation: a Popular View of some of the Grand Conclusions of the Sciences in reference to the History of Matter and of Life. Together with a Statement of the Intimations of Science respecting the Primordial Condition and the Ultimate Destiny of the Earth and the Solar System. By Alexander Winchell, LL.D., Chancellor of the Syracuse University. With Illustrations. 12mo, Cloth, $2 00.

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LOSSING'S FIELD-BOOK OF THE REVOLUTION. Pictorial Field-Book of the Revolution; or, Illustrations, by Pen and Pencil, of the History, Biography, Scenery, Relics, and Traditions of the War for Independence. By Benson J. Lossing. 2 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $14 00; Sheep, $15 00; Half Calf, $18 00; Full Turkey Morocco, $22 00.

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ALFORD'S GREEK TESTAMENT. The Greek Testament: with a critically revised Text; a Digest of Various Readings; Marginal References to Verbal and Idiomatic Usage; Prolegomena; and a Critical and Exegetical Commentary. For the Use of Theological Students and Ministers. By Henry Alford, D.D., Dean of Canterbury. Vol. I., containing the Four Gospels. 944 pages, 8vo, Cloth, $6 00; Sheep, $6 50.

ABBOTT'S FREDERICK THE GREAT. The History of Frederick the Second, called Frederick the Great. By John S. C. Abbott. Elegantly Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $5 00.

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ABBOTT'S NAPOLEON AT ST. HELENA; or, Interesting Anecdotes and Remarkable Conversations of the Emperor during the Five and a Half Years of his Captivity. Collected from the Memorials of Las Casas, O'Mears, Montholon, Antommarchi, and others. By John S. C. Abbott. With Illustrations. 8vo, Cloth, $5 00.

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ALCOCK'S JAPAN. The Capital of the Tycoon: a Narrative of a Three Years' Residence in Japan. By Sir Rutherford Alcock, K.C.B., Her Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary in Japan. With Maps and Engravings. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $3 50.

ALISON'S HISTORY OF EUROPE. First Series: From the Commencement of the French Revolution, in 1789, to the Restoration of the Bourbons, in 1815. [In addition to the Notes on Chapter LXXVI., which correct the errors of the original work concerning the United States, a copious Analytical Index has been appended to this American Edition.] Second Series: From the Fall of Napoleon, in 1815, to the Accession of Louis Napoleon, in 1852. 8 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $16 00.

BARTH'S NORTH AND CENTRAL AFRICA. Travels and Discoveries in North and Central Africa: being a Journal of an Expedition undertaken under the Auspices of H.B.M.'s Government, in the Years 1849-1855. By Henry Barth, Ph.D., D.C.L. Illustrated. 3 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $12 00.

HENRY WARD BEECHER'S SERMONS. Sermons by Henry Ward Beecher, Plymouth Church, Brooklyn. Selected from Published and Unpublished Discourses, and Revised by their Author. With Steel Portrait. Complete in 2 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $5 00.

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BOSWELL'S JOHNSON. The Life of Samuel Johnson, LL.D. Including a Journey to the Hebrides. By James Boswell, Esq. A New Edition, with numerous Additions and Notes. By John Wilson Croker, LL.D., F.R.S. Portrait of Boswell. 2 vols., 8vo, Cloth, $4 00.

DRAPER'S CIVIL WAR. History of the American Civil War. By John W. Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York. In Three Vols. 8vo, Cloth, $3 50 per vol.

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DRAPER'S AMERICAN CIVIL POLICY. Thoughts on the Future Civil Policy of America. By John W. Draper, M.D., LL.D., Professor of Chemistry and Physiology in the University of New York. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $2 50.

DU CHAILLU'S AFRICA. Explorations and Adventures in Equatorial Africa, with Accounts of the Manners and Customs of the people, and of the Chase of the Gorilla, the Crocodile, Leopard, Elephant, Hippopotamus, and other Animals. By Paul B. Du Chaillu. Numerous Illustrations. 8vo, Cloth, $5 00.

DU CHAILLU'S ASHANGO LAND. A Journey to Ashango Land: and Further Penetration into Equatorial Africa. By Paul B. Du Chaillu. New Edition. Handsomely Illustrated. 8vo, Cloth, $5 00.

BELLOWS'S OLD WORLD. The Old World in its New Face: Impressions of Europe in 1867-1868. By Henry W. Bellows. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $3 50.

BRODHEAD'S HISTORY OF NEW YORK. History of the State of New York. By John Romeyn Brodhead. 1609-1691. 2 vols. 8vo, Cloth, $3 00 per vol.

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BULWER'S HORACE. The Odes and Epodes of Horace. A Metrical Translation into English. With Introduction and Commentaries. By Lord Lytton. With Latin Text from the Editions of Orelli, Macleane, and Yonge. 12mo, Cloth, $1 75.

BULWER'S KING ARTHUR, A Poem. By Lord Lytton. New Edition. 12mo, Cloth, $1 75.

BURNS'S LIFE AND WORKS. The Life and Works of Robert Burns. Edited by Robert Chambers. 4 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $6 00.

REINDEER, DOGS, AND SNOW-SHOES. A Journal of Siberian Travel and Explorations made in the Years 1865-67. By Richard J. Bush, late of the Russo-American Telegraph Expedition. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $3 00.

CARLYLE'S FREDERICK THE GREAT. History of Friedrich II., called Frederick the Great. By Thomas Carlyle. Portraits, Maps, Plans, &c. 6 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $12 00.

CARLYLE'S FRENCH REVOLUTION. History of the French Revolution. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $3 50.

CARLYLE'S OLIVER CROMWELL. Letters and Speeches of Oliver Cromwell. With Elucidations and Connecting Narrative. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $3 50.

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DOOLITTLE'S CHINA. Social Life of the Chinese: with some Account of their Religious, Governmental, Educational, and Business Customs and Opinions. With special but not exclusive Reference to Fuhchau. By Rev. Justus Doolittle, Fourteen Years Member of the Fuhchau Mission of the American Board. Illustrated with more that 150 characteristic Engravings on Wood. 2 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $5 00.

GIBBON'S ROME. History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. By Edward Gibbon. With Notes by Rev. H. H. Milman and M. Guizot. A new cheap Edition. To which is added a complete Index of the whole Work, and a Portrait of the Author. 6 vols., 12mo, Cloth, $9 00.

HAZEN'S SCHOOL AND ARMY IN GERMANY AND FRANCE. The School and the Army in Germany and France, with a Diary of Siege Life at Versailles. By Brevet Major-General W. B. Hazen, U.S.A., Colonel Sixth Infantry. Crown 8vo, Cloth, $2 50.

HARPER'S NEW CLASSICAL LIBRARY. Literal Translations.

The following Vols, are now ready. 12mo, Cloth, $1 50 each.

CÆsar. — Virgil. — Sallust. — Horace. — Cicero's Orations. — Cicero's Offices, &c. — Cicero on Oratory and Orators. — Tacitus (2 vols.). — Terence. — Sophocles. — Juvenal. — Xenophon. — Homer's Iliad. — Homer's Odyssey. — Herodotus. — Demosthenes. — Thucydides. — Æschylus. — Euripides (2 vols.). — Livy (2 vols.).