THE day after a great festivity in a great house is generally a dull one. It begins late; for both servants and guests are wearied, and there is nothing about it which is not inferior to other days except the luncheon, which in the way of “sweets,” at all events, is always exceptionally good. Sir Richard, however, who went through life as nearly as could be to an automaton, was up at his usual time; and descending to the empty breakfast-room, beheld, seated in an arm-chair which he had wheeled to the window, a little wizzened old man, in brightest Hessian boots, drab breeches, and a cut-away coat with flap-pockets of the fashion of half a century ago.

“Dr Haldane!” exclaimed the young man in extreme amazement. “God bless my soul and body!”

“I hope he will, sir,” rejoined the visitor drily, extending three fingers somewhat stiffly.

“No, sir; surely your whole hand!” cried the baronet warmly. “Your face is the pleasantest sight—save that of my dear mother's—that I could hope to set eyes on in Mirk Abbey; and I am not going to be fobbed off with such a salutation as that.”

“You get nothing more from me, Richard, unless the business I have come about—very much against the grain, I can tell you—gets satisfactorily accomplished.”

“Does it relate to my dear mother, sir?”

“Of course it does, young man. What else, do you think, would have had power to break my resolution—to bring me hither—to this room, in which I have not set foot these twenty years, and where I last sat, side by side—with—— But what is that to you? I suppose a man is not very likely to be moved by the memories of a dead father, who pays no respect to the feelings of his living mother.”

“I am not aware, Dr Haldane,” began Sir Richard with some haughtiness——

“I know that, sir,” broke in the other impetuously. “You are so wrapped up in selfishness—you and that scampish brother of yours—that neither of you have any thought except for your own miserable quarrels. You were not aware, I dare say, that their constant repetition is driving your mother into her grave, as they have already driven her from her once happy home; and it is because you don't know it—because you won't see it—that I am come hither, once for all, to inform you of the fact. But perhaps such a little matter has no interest in your eyes: in which case, I assure you, since it is entirely for her sake, and not at all for yours, that I have come, I shall be exceedingly glad to go away again.”

“Have you any message to deliver, Dr Haldane,” asked the baronet with an angry flush, “direct from my mother, or are you merely stating your own doubtless valuable, but quite unasked-for opinions?”

“I have a message from her to deliver to you, and to the rest of you, young man; and if you think it worth while to send for your brother and sister, you had better do so.”

The young man rang the bell, and gave the necessary orders. Dr Haldane took up a book of family prayers that lay beside him, and grunted cynically as he read Sir Richard's name on the title-page. “What a work for a fellow like this to write his name in, who drives his mother out of her own house!” muttered he, and then affected to be immersed in the contents. The baronet did not reply, but occupied himself in opening his letters, one of which was from Madame de Castellan. That lady expressed herself as “desolated” at the news of her old friend's departure from the Abbey, the cause of which she was dying to hear. “If, however,” ran the postscript, “the absence of my Lady was for any reason likely to continue, might not Mary Forest be despatched, at all events in the meantime, to Belcomb, where Madame was absolutely without any waiting-maid at all—with the exception of old Rachel—until another could be procured from France, to supply the place of wicked Annette, departed almost without a word of warning.”

“Cunning old wretch!” murmured Sir Richard, crumpling up the pale thin paper with its scratchy foreign caligraphy, and throwing it into the grate. “She thinks of nothing but herself.”

“How odd!” exclaimed the little doctor bitterly. “The lady's case must be quite unique.”

Not a word more was spoken by either until Letty entered, a little pale, but looking exquisitely lovely.

“Dear Dr Haldane, who would have thought of seeing you here? How pleased I am!”

The doctor rose with alacrity from his seat, and kissed her affectionately upon the forehead.

“I am sure,” said she with earnest gravity, “that you have brought us news of dearest mamma.”

“So you have thought of her, have you, little one?” answered he fondly. (Letty was about three inches taller than the doctor.) “I fancied she would have been no longer missed. Everybody was so happy here yesterday, I am told; and everything went on so well without her.”

“It did not, indeed,” returned Letty indignantly. “Nothing seemed to go right in her absence, notwithstanding all I could do; and as for being happy, I can answer for myself and my brothers, that not five minutes elapsed all day without our thinking of her, and grieving for her loss. And oh, dear Dr Haldane, do you know why she has left us in this sad manner, and when we shall see her back again?”

“I have her own explanation of why she has left Mirk Abbey,” replied the doctor; “but as for her return, that will depend upon yourselves—I mean upon Sir Richard and Captain Lisgard. For you, Letty, she bids me say have been at all times what a loving child should be to a parent.—Master Walter, your servant, sir.—No; I will not shake hands with a man who ruins his mother by gambling debts, and breaks her heart with hatred of his own brother.”

“That is not true, at least I do hope, Walter?” said Sir Richard quickly.

“No; false, upon my honour,” returned the captain. “My mother never told you to say that, sir.”

“Not quite that—no, she did not,” admitted the little old man, whose eyes had begun to lose their hard and inexorable expression, notwithstanding his harsh words, from the moment that Walter entered the room. It was so difficult even for a social philosopher to be severe and stern with that young man. “Yet I am bound to say, Walter, that it is you who have been most to blame with respect to that good mother, who only lives but for her children, and whose very love for them has compelled her to withdraw herself from beneath this roof. I will not now dwell upon your clandestine marriage; I leave yourself to imagine how the want of trust in your best friend as well as parent evinced in that hasty step must have wounded her loving heart. Nor do I wish—that is to say, your mother herself requests me not to bear hardly upon you with respect to your gambling debts. You know the full extent of them perhaps—yes, I was afraid of that—better than she does even yet; but she has paid enough of them already to seriously embarrass her own affairs.”

“I have made a solemn promise never to bet or gamble more, Dr Haldane,” said the captain hoarsely.

“I am glad of it, Walter; but what I was about to say was, that in this case, as well as in that of your marriage, it was not so much the error itself, as the want of frankness evidenced by your concealment of the matter. To be ashamed of having done wrong, is a proper feeling enough; but if it be not accompanied by the acknowledgment of the offence, it only shews one to be a coward, not a penitent. However, bad as your conduct has been in these two particulars, your mother would doubtless have done her best to forget, as she hastened in both instances to forgive it. But what she could not forget, since it happened every day and every hour, were the quarrels between yourself and your brother.” Here the doctor turned sharply round on the young baronet, who had been hitherto listening, not, perhaps, without complacency, to the catalogue of his brother's misdeeds.—“I think, from what I have seen myself, Richard, that it is you who are most in fault here. It is no use your looking proud and cold on me. I never cared three brass farthings for such airs, though they now and then misbecame even your poor father, who was worth a dozen of you. But this ridiculous assumption of superiority—founded upon mere accident of birth—naturally offends a high-spirited young man like Walter, who, if he was in your place, would certainly not make himself odious in that way, however he might fail in other matters belonging to your position, which suffers nothing, I readily allow, in your able hands. That you have the administrative faculty in a high degree, sir, I concede; but this is not Russia, and if it were, you are not the Czar.”

“No man in Mirk ever called me a tyrant, Dr Haldane.”

“Perhaps no man ever dared, sir; but I dare to say that a son whose conduct is such that his mother can no longer bear to witness it, is something worse than a tyrant. And be sure that if you continue so to behave, you will never see her face under this roof again.”

“My God, but this is very horrible!” cried Sir Richard, striking his forehead. “I had no idea—I never dreamed that matters were coming to any such pass as this.—Walter—brother, did it seem to you that we were so very like to Cain and Abel?”

The two young men embraced, perhaps for the first time in their lives.

“Oh, when you tell her what you have seen, sir, do you think my mother will come back?” cried Richard, with the tears in his fine eyes.

“I cannot say that; I am sure, however, that she will be greatly comforted. May I tell her that this is not a mere impulse of the moment, but that you are resolved from this time forth to be brothers indeed?”

“I will do my very best, Walter.”

“And I mine, Richard,” answered the other. “Don't reproach yourself like that”—for the vast frame of his elder brother shook with sobs—“it is much more my fault than yours: and you have been very good to me about my debts; kinder than most fellows in your position would have been—yes, you have, Dick; yes, you have. How very, very long it is since I have called you Dick; not since we were at school together! You used to call me Watty, then, you know.”

“Yes, Watty; yes. I had almost forgotten it. Let us go to our mother at once, lad—as we used to do when we made up our quarrels in the old times—and ask her to come back again, and take her place here, where we all miss her so much.—Where is she, Dr Haldane?”

“I don't know—that is, I may not tell, my boy,” returned the old gentleman hesitatingly, who, with Letty's hand fast clasped in his, was staring out of window as hard as he could, but his eyes were very dim.

“Have you nothing more to tell us, sir?” asked Sir Richard humbly.

“Well, no, boys. The letter”——

“The letter!” ejaculated Letty; “I remember now that dear mamma told me herself that when this very thing should come to pass—although I little knew at the time to what she was alluding—we should find a letter in her desk.”

“It is not there now: she put it into my hands, and I—I tore it up,” observed the doctor. “I have told you faithfully all that it contained, with one exception. I do not choose to speak of that, dear Letty, and I have your mother's permission not to do so.”

“Let me speak of it, then,” said Sir Richard, stealing his arm round his sister's waist, and kissing her very tenderly. “The message the doctor will not give respects yourself, dear, and his son Arthur. My foolish pride”——

“Pride, indeed!” broke in the little old man impetuously; “your confounded impertinence, I call it.”

“Very well, doctor,” continued the baronet smiling; “let it be so, if you will. I had the audacity to suppose, Letty, that Mr Arthur Haldane was not good enough for you.”

“Nor is he,” contested the little doctor with irritation. “Nobody's good enough for Letty Lisgard. But he is as good as can be found in England, that I will say, though the young man is my own son. And if he does not make you a pattern husband, I'll cut him off with a shilling.”

“I shall be glad to give you away to such an honest fellow, Letty,” said the baronet warmly; “so let that matter be considered settled.”

It was very pleasant to see the blushing girl hiding her tearful face in the old man's arms. “O mamma, mamma,” murmured she, “how happy I should be if you were but with us!”

“Well, well, that will be soon, I hope, my dear,” said the doctor, patting her silken head. “I will do all I can on my part to persuade her: I am sure I shall make her happy with this news.”

“Yes; but in the meantime,” said Letty, “how terrible it must be for her to be all alone. If you know where she is, can you not at least send Forest to be with her?”

“No, no; but, by the by, I have forgotten to do your mother's bidding with respect to that very person. She expressly desired that until her own return to Mirk, Mary may be sent to Belcomb, where Madame de Castellan is just now in saddest need of her.”

“Ay, she writes to me that she has lost her French maid,” said Sir Richard, picking up the crumpled note: “in that case, Mary had better go off at once.”

“There is worse trouble at Belcomb than that,” remarked the doctor gravely. “That poor fellow Derrick, who, I hear, made so much disturbance at the fÊte yesterday, has met with a sad accident.”

“Why, the man was put in the Cage quite safe,” said Sir Richard.

“Yes; but unfortunately for himself, he was let out again, and starting in the dark over Mirkland Hill, whole drunk, and half mad, the poor wretch wandered into the mill-yard.”

“Through that gap in the wall!” exclaimed the baronet with excitement. “Didn't I say the very last time we went by, that some accident would happen there, through that man Hathaway's neglect?”

“Well, it has happened now, with a vengeance,” pursued the doctor drily. “I was sent for this morning at two o'clock, to Belcomb, where this poor fellow had been carried, because it was a better place for him to lie in than the mill. Hathaway had been working overtime, it seems; the sails were going till near midnight, and the story is that this poor fellow strayed beneath them, and was absolutely taken up and carried round; but, at all events, he lies there, very ill—dying, I think—with concussion of the brain, and Heaven knows what beside. I dare not-move him even to examine his ribs.”

“Good God! what can we do for him?” exclaimed Sir Richard. “Is there nothing we can send?”

“He has everything he requires, or that he ever will have need of, poor fellow, in this world. But old Rachel is not a good hand at nursing, while Madame de Castellan, although good-natured enough—for a Frenchwoman—is quite incapable of such a task; so you couldn't do better than send Mary, as Madame has requested, though little knowing how much she would have need of her: her assistance will be invaluable, and indeed some sort of help must be had at once. I am going over there myself immediately, and will take her in my gig, if you can spare her, Miss Letty, and will tell her to get ready.”

“By all means,” cried Letty, hastily leaving the room upon that errand.

“Of course, all notion of prosecuting this poor fellow is now put out of the question, whatever happens,” observed the doctor.

“Quite so—quite so,” answered the baronet eagerly. “Poor drunken wretch; I am sure I'm very sorry. And I tell you what, Dr Haldane, if this man dies, there should be some sort of deodand laid upon that Mill. Hathaway ought to be punished for wilful neglect.”

“That won't bring the poor man to life again, though,” observed the doctor.

“No, of course not; though, if one may be allowed to say so, he really led such a sad life, by all accounts, it seems almost as well that he should end it. It would be a happy release, I mean, if he was to die, poor fellow; don't you think so?”

“Yes, I do. It would be better for himself, and better for others,” returned the doctor very gravely.

“Just so,” said Sir Richard; “better for all concerned. Poor man!”