When the fly jumbled into Bellevue, the lighted window, which always illuminated the little street, shone brighter than ever in the profound darkness of this late night, when all the respectable inhabitants for more than an hour had been asleep. Papa and Mamma, somewhat drowsily, yet with a capacity for immediate waking-up only to be felt under these circumstances, had unanimously determined to sit up for the girls; and the window remained bright, and the inmates wakeful, for a full hour after the rumbling “fly,” raising all the dormant echoes of the neighbourhood, had rolled off to its nightly shelter. The father and the mother listened with the most perfect patience to the detail of everything, excited in spite of themselves by their children’s companionship with “the great,” yet considerably resenting, and much disappointed by the failure of those grand visions, in which all night the parental imagination had pictured to itself an admiring assembly hanging upon the looks of those innocent and simple girls. Mr and Mrs Atheling on this occasion were somewhat disposed, we confess, to make out a case of jealousy and malice against the fashionable guests of Mrs Edgerley. It was always the way, Papa said. They always tried to keep everybody down, and treated aspirants superciliously; and in the climax of his indignation, under his breath, he added something about those “spurns which patient merit of the unworthy takes.” Mrs Atheling did not quote Shakespeare, but she was quite as much convinced that it was their “rank in life” which had prevented Agnes and Marian from taking a sovereign place in the gay assembly they had just left. The girls themselves gave no distinct judgment on the subject; but now that the first edge of her mortification had worn off, Agnes began to have great doubts upon this matter. “We had no claim upon them—not the least,” said Agnes; “they never saw us before; we were perfect strangers; why should they trouble themselves about us, simply because I had written a book?”

“Do not speak nonsense, my dear—do not tell me,” said Mrs Atheling, with agitation: “they had only to use their own eyes and see—as if they often had such an opportunity! My dear, I know better; you need not speak to me!”

“And everybody has read your book, Agnes—and no doubt there are scores of people who would give anything to know you,” said Papa with dignity. “The author of Hope Hazlewood is a different person from Agnes Atheling. No, no—it is not that they don’t know your proper place; but they keep everybody down as long as they can. Now, mind, one day you will turn the tables upon them; I am very sure of that.”

Agnes said no more, but went up to her little white room completely unconvinced upon the subject. Miss Willsie saw the tell-tale light in this little high window in the middle of the night—when it was nearly daylight, the old lady said—throwing a friendly gleam upon the two young controversialists as they debated this difficult question. Agnes, of course, with all the heat of youth and innovation, took the extreme side of the question. “It is easy enough to write—any one can write,” said the young author, triumphant in her argument, yet in truth somewhat mortified by her triumph. “But even if it was not, there are greater things in this world than books, and almost all other books are greater than novels; and I do think it was the most foolish thing in the world to suppose that clever people like these—for they were all clever people—would take any notice of me.”

To which arguments, all and several, Marian returned only a direct, unhesitating, and broad negative. It was not easy to write, and there were not greater things than books, and it was not at all foolish to expect a hundred times more than ever their hopes had expected. “It is very wrong of you to say so, Agnes,” said Marian. “Papa is quite right; it will all be as different as possible by-and-by; and if you have nothing more sensible to say than that, I shall go to sleep.”

Saying which, Marian turned round upon her pillow, virtuously resisted all further temptations, and closed her beautiful eyes upon the faint grey dawn which began to steal in between the white curtains. They thought their minds were far too full to go to sleep. Innocent imaginations! five minutes after, they were in the very sweetest enchanted country of the true fairyland of dreams.

While Charlie, in his sleep in the next room, laboriously struggled all night with a bloodless apparition, which smiled at him from an open doorway—fiercely fought and struggled against it—mastered it—got it down, but only to begin once more the tantalising combat. When he rose in the morning, early as usual, the youth set his teeth at the recollection, and with an attempt to give a reason for this instinctive enmity, fiercely hoped that Lord Winterbourne would try to take from his father his little inheritance. Charlie, who was by no means of a metaphysical turn, did not trouble himself at all to inquire into the grounds of his own unusual pugnacity. He “knew he owed him something,” and though my Lord Winterbourne was a viscount and an ex-minister, and Charlie only a poor man’s son and a copying-clerk, he fronted the great man’s image with indomitable confidence, and had no more doubt of his own prowess than of his entire goodwill in the matter. He did not think very much more of his opponent in this case than he did of the big folios in the office, and had as entire confidence in his own ability to bring the enemy down.

But it was something of a restless night to Papa and Mamma. They too talked in their darkened chamber, too proper and too economical to waste candlelight upon subjects so unprofitable, of old events and people half forgotten;—how the first patroness of Agnes should be the daughter of the man between whom and themselves there existed some unexplained connection of old friendship or old enmity, or both;—how circumstances beyond their guidance conspired to throw them once more in the way of persons and plans which they had heard nothing of for more than twenty years. These things were very strange and troublous events to Mr Atheling and his wife. The past, which nearer grief and closer pleasure—all their family life, full as that was of joy and sorrow—had thrown so far away and out of remembrance, came suddenly back before them in all the clearness of youthful recollection. Old feelings returned strong and fresh into their minds. They went back, and took up the thread of this history, whatever it might be, where they had dropped it twenty years ago; and with a thrill of deeper interest, wondered and inquired how this influence would affect their children. To themselves now little could happen; their old friend or their old enemy could do neither harm nor benefit to their accomplished lives—but the children!—the children, every one so young, so hopeful, and so well endowed; all so strangely brought into sudden contact, at a double point, with this one sole individual, who had power to disturb the rest of the father and the mother. They relapsed into silence suddenly, and were quieted by the thought.

“It is not our doing—it is not our seeking,” said Mr Atheling at length. “If the play wants a last act, Mary, it will not be your planning nor mine; and as for the children, they are in the hands of God.”

So in the grey imperfect dawn which lightened on the faces of the sleeping girls, whose sweet youthful rest was far too deep to be broken even by the growing light, these elder people closed their eyes, not to sleep, but to pray. If evil were about to come—if danger were lurking in the air around them—they had this only defence against it. It was not the simple faith of youth which dictated these prayers; it was a deeper and a closer urgency, which cried aloud and would not cease, but yet was solemn with the remembrance of times when God’s pleasure was not to grant them their petitions. The young ones slept in peace, but with fights and triumphs manifold in their young dreams. The father and the mother held a vigil for them, holding up holy hands for their defence and safety; and so the morning came at last, brightly, to hearts which feared no evil, or when they feared, put their apprehensions at once into the hand of God.