If the end of the vacation were a relief on Lucy’s account, Albinia would gladly have lengthened it on Gilbert’s. Letters from his tutor had disquieted his father; there had been an expostulation followed by promises, and afterwards one of the usual scenes of argument, complaint, excuse, lamentation, and wish to amend; but lastly, a murmur that it was no use to talk to a father who had never been at the University, and did not know what was expected of a man.

The aspect of Oxford had changed in Albinia’s eyes since the days of her brother. Alma Mater had been a vision of pealing bells, chanting voices, cloistered shades, bright waters—the source of her most cherished thoughts, the abode of youth walking in the old paths of pleasantness and peace; and she knew that to faithful hearts, old Oxford was still the same. But to her present anxious gaze it had become a field of snares and temptations, whither she had been the means of sending one, unguarded and unstable.

Once under the influence of a good sound-hearted friend, he might have been easily led right, but his intimacy with young Dusautoy seemed to cancel all hope of this, and to be like a rope about his neck, drawing him into the same career, and keeping aloof all better influences. Algernon, with his pride, pomposity, and false refinement, was more likely to run into ostentations expenditure, than into coarse dissipation, and it might still be hoped that the two youths would drag through without public disgrace; but this was felt to be a very poor hope by those who felt each sin to be a fatal blot, and trembled at the self-indulgent way of life that might be a more fatal injury than even the ban of the authorities.

She saw that the anxiety pressed heavily on Mr. Kendal, and though both shrank from giving their uneasiness force by putting it into words, each felt that it was ever-present with the other. Mr. Kendal was deeply grieving over the effects, for the former state of ignorance and apathy of the evils of which he had only recently become fully sensible. Living for himself alone, without cognizance of his membership in one great universal system, he had needed the sense of churchmanship to make him act up to his duties as father, neighbour, citizen, and man of property; and when aroused, he found that the time of his inaction had bound him about with fetters. A tone of mind had grown up in his family from which only Sophy had been entirely freed; seeds of ineradicable evil had been sown, mischiefs had grown by neglect, abuses been established by custom; and his own personal disadvantages, his mauvaise honte, his reserved, apparently proud manner, his slowness of speech, dislike to interruption, and over-vehemence when excited, had so much increased upon him, as, in spite of his efforts, to be serious hindrances. Kind, liberal, painstaking, and conscientious as he had become, he was still looked upon as hard, stern, and tyrannical. His ten years of inertness had strewn his path with thorns and briars, even beyond his own household; and when he looked back to his neglect of his son, he felt that even the worst consequences would be but just retribution.

Once such feelings would have wrapt him in morbid gloom; now he strove against his disposition to sit inert and hidden, he did his work manfully, and endeavoured not to let his want of spirits sadden the household.

Nor was he insensible to the cheerful healthy atmosphere of animation which had diffused itself there; and the bright discussions of the trifling interests of the day. Ulick O’More was also a care to him, which did him a great deal of good.

That young gentleman now lived at his lodgings, but was equally at home at Willow Lawn, and his knock at the library door, when he wished to change a book, usually led to some ‘Prometheus’ discussion, and sometimes to a walk, if Mr. Kendal thought him looking pale; or to dining and to spending the evening.

His scrapes were peculiar. He had thoroughly mastered his work, and his active mind wanted farther scope, so that he threw himself with avidity into deeper studies, and once fell into horrible disgrace for being detected with a little Plato on his desk. Mr. Goldsmith nearly gave him up in despair, and pronounced that he would never make a man of business. He made matters worse by replying that this was the best chance of his not being a man of speculation. If he were allowed to think of nothing but money, he should speculate for the sake of something to do!

Before Mr. Goldsmith had half recovered the shock, Mr. Dusautoy and Mr. Hope laid violent hands upon young O’More for the evening school twice a week, which almost equally discomposed his aunt. She had never got over the first blow of Mr. Dusautoy’s innovations, and felt as if her nephew had gone over to the enemy. She was doubly ungracious at the Sunday dinner, and venomously critical of the choir’s chanting, Mr. Hope’s voice, and the Vicar’s sermons.

The worst scrape came in March. The Willow Lawn ladies were in the lower end of the garden, which, towards the river, was separated from the lane that continued Tibb’s Alley, by a low wall surmounted by spikes, and with a disused wicket, always locked, and nearly concealed by a growth of laurels; when out brake a horrible hullabaloo in that region of evil report, the shouts and yells coming nearer, and becoming so distinct that they were about to retreat, when suddenly a dark figure leapt over the gate, and into the garden, amid a storm of outcries. As he disappeared among the laurels, Albinia caught up Maurice, Lucy screamed and prepared to fly, and Sophy started forward, exclaiming, ‘It is Ulick, mamma; his face is bleeding!’ But as he emerged, she retreated, for she had a nervous terror of the canine race, and in his hand, at arm’s length he held by the neck a yellow dog, a black pot dangling from its tail.

‘Take care,’ he shouted, as Albinia set down Maurice, and was running up to him; ‘he may be mad.’

Maurice was caught up again, Lucy shrieked, and Sophy, tottering against an apple-tree, faintly said, ‘He has bitten you!’

‘No, not he; it was only a stone,’ said Ulick, as best he might, with a fast bleeding upper lip. ‘They were hunting the poor beast to death—I believe he’s no more mad than I am—only with the fright—but best make sure.’

‘Fetch some milk, Lucy,’ said Albinia. ‘Take Maurice with you. No, don’t take the poor thing down to the river, he’ll only think you are going to drown him. Go, Maurice dear.’

Maurice safe, Albinia was able to find ready expedients after Sir Fowell Buxton’s celebrated example. She brought Ulick the gardener’s thick gauntlets from the tool-house, and supplied him with her knife, with which he set the poor creature free from the instrument of torture, and then let him loose, with a pan of milk before him, in the old-fashioned summer-house, through the window of which he could observe his motions, and if he looked dangerous, shoot him.

Nothing could look less dangerous; the poor creature sank down on the floor and moaned, licked its hind leg, and then dragged itself as if famished to the milk, lapped a little eagerly, but lay down again whining, as if in pain. Ulick and Albinia called to it, and it looked up and tried to wag its tail, whining appealingly. ‘My poor brute!’ he cried, ‘they’ve treated you worse than a heathen. That’s all—let me see what I can do for you.’

‘Yes, but yourself, Ulick,’ said Albinia, as in his haste he took down his handkerchief from his mouth; ‘I do believe your lip is cut through! You had better attend to that first.’

‘No, no, thank you,’ said Ulick, eagerly, ‘they’ve broken the poor wretch’s leg!’ and he was the next moment sitting on the summer-house floor, lifting up the animal tenderly, regardless of her expostulation that the injured, frightened creature might not know its friends. But she did it injustice; it wagged its stumpy tail, and licked his fingers.

She offered to fetch rag for his surgery, and he farther begged for some slight bits of wood to serve as splints, he and his brothers had been dog-doctors before. As she hurried into the house, Sophy, who had sunk on a sofa in the drawing-room, looking deadly pale, called out, ‘Is he bitten?’

‘No, no,’ cried Albinia, hurrying on, ‘the dog is all safe. It has only got a broken leg.’

Maurice, with whom Lucy had all this time been fighting, came out with her to see the rest of the adventure; and thought it very cruel that he was not permitted to touch the patient, which bore the operation with affecting fortitude and gratitude, and was then consigned to a basket lined with hay, and left in the summer-house, Mr. Kendal being known to have an almost eastern repugnance to dogs.

Then Ulick had leisure to be conducted to the morning-room, and be rendered a less ghastly spectacle, by some very uncomfortable sticking-plaster moustaches, which hardly permitted him to narrate his battle distinctly. He thought the boys, even of Tibb’s Alley, would hardly have ventured any violence after he had interfered, but for some young men who aught to have known better; he fancied he had seen young Tritton of Robbles Leigh, and he was sure of an insolent groom whom Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy, to the great vexation of his uncle, had recently sent down with a horse to the King’s Head. They had stimulated the boys to a shout of Paddy and a shower of stones, and Ulick expected credit for great discretion, in having fled instead of fought. ‘Ah! if Brian and Connel had but been there, wouldn’t we have put them to the rout?’

Nothing would then serve him but going back to Tibb’s Alley to trace the dog’s history, and meantime Lucy, from the end of the passage, beckoned to Albinia, and whispered mysteriously that ‘Sophy would not have any one know it for the world—but,’ said Lucy, ‘I found her absolutely fainting away on the sofa, only she would not let me call you, and ordered that no one should know anything about it. But, mamma, there was a red-hot knitting-needle sticking out of the fire, and I am quite sure that she meant if Ulick was bitten, to burn out the place.’

Albinia believed Sophy capable of both the resolution and its consequence; but she agreed with Lucy that no notice should be taken, and would not seem aware that Sophy was much paler than usual.

The dog, as well as Ulick could make out, was a waif or stray, belonging to a gipsy deported that morning by the police, and on whom its master’s sins had been visited. So without scruple he carried the basket home to his lodgings, and on the way, had the misfortune to encounter his uncle, while shirtfront, coat, and waistcoat were fresh from the muddy and bloody fray, and his visage in the height of disfigurement.

Mr. Goldsmith looked on the whole affair as an insult to every Goldsmith of past ages! A mere street row! He ordered Mr. More to his lodgings, and said he should hear from him to-morrow. Ulick came down to Willow Lawn in the dark, almost considering himself as dismissed, not knowing whether to be glad or sorry; and wanting to consult Mr. Kendal whether it would be possible to work his way at college as Mr. Hope had done, or even wondering whether he might venture to beg for a recommendation to ‘Kendal and Kendal.’

Mr. Kendal was so strongly affected, that he took up his hat and went straight to Mr. Goldsmith, ‘to put the matter before him in a true light.’

True light or false, it was intolerable in the banker’s eyes, and it took a great deal of eloquence to persuade him that his nephew was worth a second trial. Fighting in Tibb’s Alley over a gipsy’s dog, and coming back looking like a ruffian! Mr. Goldsmith wished him no harm, but it would be a disgrace to the concern to keep him on, and Miss Goldsmith, whom Mr. Kendal heartily wished to gag, chimed in with her old predictions of the consequences of her poor sister’s foolish marriage. The final argument, was Mr. Kendal’s declaration of the testimonials with which he would at once send him out to Calcutta, to take the situation once offered to his own son. No sooner did Mr. Goldsmith hear that his nephew had an alternative, than he promised to be lenient, and finally dispatched a letter to U. More, Esquire, with a very serious rebuke, but a promise that his conduct should be overlooked, provided the scandal were not repeated, and he should not present himself at the bank till his face should be fit to be seen.

Mr. Kendal mounted him the next morning on Gilbert’s horse, and sent him to Fairmead. The dog was left in charge of Bridget, who treated it with abundant kindness, but failed to obtain the exclusive affection which the poor thing lavished upon its rescuer. By the time Ulick came home, it had arrived at limping upon three legs, and was bent on following him wherever he went. Disreputable and heinously ugly it was, of tawny currish yellow (whence it was known as the Orange-man), with a bull-dog countenance; and the legs that did not limp were bandy. Albinia called it the Tripod, but somehow it settled into the title of Hyder Ali, to which it was said to ‘answer’ the most readily, though it would in fact answer anything from Ulick, and nothing from any one else..

Ever at his heels, the ‘brazen Tripod’ contrived to establish an entrance at Willow Lawn; scratched till Mr. Kendal would interrupt a ‘Prometheus talk’ to let him in at the library door; and gradually made it a matter of course to come into the drawing-room, and repose upon Sophy’s flounces.

This was by way of compensation for his misadventures elsewhere. He was always bringing Ulick into trouble; shut or tie him up as he might, he was sure to reappear when least wanted. He had been at church, he had been in Miss Goldsmith’s drawing-room, he had been found times without number curled up under Ulick’s desk. Mr. Goldsmith growled hints about hanging him, and old Mr. Johns, who really was fond of his bright young fellow clerk, gave grave counsel; but Ulick only loved his protege the better, and after having exhausted an Irish vocabulary of expostulation, succeeded in prevailing on him to come no farther than the street; except on very wet days, when he would sometimes be found on the mat in the entry, looking deplorably beseeching, and bringing on his master an irate, ‘Here’s that dog again!’

‘Would that no one fell into worse scrapes,’ sighed Mr. Dusautoy, when he heard of Ulick’s disasters with Hyder Ali, and it was a sigh that the house of Kendal re-echoed.

Nobody could be surprised when, towards the long vacation, tidings came to Bayford, that after long forbearance on the part of the authorities, the insubordination and riotous conduct of the two young men could be endured no longer. It appeared that young Dusautoy, with his weak head and obstinate will, had never attempted to bend to rules, but had taken every reproof as an insult and defiance. Young men had not been wanting who were ready to take advantage of his lavish expenditure, and to excite his disdain for authorities. They had promoted the only wit he did understand, broad practical jokes and mischief; and had led him into the riot and gambling to which he was not naturally prone. Gilbert Kendal, with more sense and principle, had been led on by the contagion around him, and at last an outrageous wine party had brought matters to a crisis. The most guilty were the most cunning, and the only two to whom the affair could actually be brought home, were Dusautoy and Kendal. The sentence was rustication, and the tutor wrote to Mr. Dusautoy, as the least immediately affected, to ask him to convey the intelligence to Mr. Kendal.

The vicar was not a man to shrink from any task, however painful, but he felt it the more deeply, as, in spite of his partiality, he was forced to look on his own favourite Algernon as the misleader of Gilbert; and when he overtook the sisters on his melancholy way down the hill, he consulted them how their father would bear it.

‘Oh! I don’t know,’ said Lucy; ‘he’ll be terribly angry. I should not wonder if he sent Gilbert straight off to India; should you, Sophy?’

‘I hope he will do nothing in haste,’ exclaimed Mr. Dusautoy. ‘I do believe if those two lads were but separated, or even out of such company, they would both do very well.’

‘Yes,’ exclaimed Lucy; ‘and, after all, they are such absurd regulations, treating men like schoolboys, wanting them to keep such regular troublesome hours. Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy told me that there was no enduring the having everything enforced.’

‘If things had been enforced on poor Algernon earlier, this might never have been,’ sighed his uncle.

‘I’m sure I don’t see why papa should mind it so much,’ continued Lucy. ‘Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy told me his friend Lord Reginald Raymond had been rusticated twice, and expelled at last.’

‘What do you think of it, Sophy?’ asked the vicar, anxiously.

‘I don’t feel as if any of us could ever look up again,’ she answered very low.

‘Why, no; not that exactly. It is not quite the right way to take these things, Sophy,’ said Mr. Dusautoy. ‘Boys may be very foolish and wrong-headed, without disgracing their family.’

Sophy did not answer—it was all too fresh and sore, and she did not find much consolation in the number of youths whom Lucy reckoned up as having incurred the like penalty. When they entered the house, and Mr. Dusautoy knocked at the library door, she followed Lucy into the garden, without knowing where she was going, and threw herself down upon the grass, miserable at the pain which was being inflicted upon her father, and with a hardened resentful feeling, between contempt and anger, against the brother, who, for very weakness, could so dishonour and grieve him. She clenched her hand in the intensity of her passionate thoughts and impulses, and sat like a statue, while Lucy, from time to time, between the tying up of flowers and watering of annuals, came up with inconsistent exhortations not to be so unhappy—for it was not expulsion—it was sure to be unjust—nobody would think the worse of them because young men were foolish—all men of spirit did get into scrapes—

It was lucky for Lucy that all this passed by Sophy’s ear as unheeded as the babbling of the brook. She did not move, till roused by Ulick O’More, coming up from the bridge, telling that he had met some Irish haymakers in the meadows, and saying he wanted to beg a frock for one of their children.

‘I think I can find you one,’ said Lucy, ‘if you will wait a minute; but don’t go in, Mr. Dusautoy is there.’

‘Is anything the matter?’ he exclaimed.

‘Every one must soon know,’ said Lucy; ‘it is of no use to keep it back, Sophy. Only my brother and Mr. Cavendish Dusautoy have got into a scrape about a wine party, and are going to be rusticated. But wait, I’ll fetch the frock.’

Sophy had almost run away while her sister spoke, but the kind look of consternation and pity on Ulick’s face deterred her, he in soliloquy repeated, as if confounded by the greatness of the misfortune, ‘Poor Gilbert!’

‘Poor Gilbert!’ burst from Sophy in irritation at misplaced sympathy; ‘I thought it would be papa and mamma you cared for!’

‘With reason,’ returned Ulick, ‘but I was thinking how it must break his heart to have pained such as they.’

‘I wish he would feel it thus,’ exclaimed Sophy; ‘but he never will!’

‘Oh! banish that notion, Sophy,’ cried Ulick, recoiling at the indignation in her dark eyes, ‘next to grieving my mother, I declare nothing could crush me like meeting a look such as that from a sister of mine.’

‘How can I help it?’ she said, reserve breaking down in her vehemence, ‘when I think how much papa has suffered—how much Gilbert has to make up to him—how mamma took him for her own—how they have borne with him, and set their happiness on him, and yielded to his fancies, only for him to disappoint them so cruelly, and just because he can’t say No! I hope he wont come home; I shall never know how to speak to him!’

‘But all that makes it so much the worse for him,’ said Ulick, in a tone of amazement.

‘Yes, you can’t understand,’ she answered; ‘if he had had one spark of feeling like you, he would rather have died than have gone on as he has done.’

‘Surely many a man may be overtaken in a fault, and never be wrong at heart,’ said Ulick. ‘There’s many a worse sin than what the world sets a blot upon, and I believe that is just why homes were made.’

Lucy came back with the frock, and Ulick, thanking her, sped away; while Sophy slowly went upstairs and hid herself on her couch. For a woman to find a man thinking her over-hard and severe, is sure either to harden or to soften her very decidedly, and it was a hard struggle which would be the effect. There was an inclination at first to attribute his surprise to the lax notions and foolish fondness of his home, where no doubt far worse disorders than Gilbert’s were treated as mere matters of course. But such strong pity for the offender did not seem to accord with this; and the more she thought, the more sure she became that it was the fresh charity and sweetness of an innocent spirit, ‘believing all things,’ and separating the fault from the offender. His words had fallen on her ear in a sense beyond what he meant. Pride and uncharitable resentment might be worse sins than mere weakness and excess. She thought of the elder son in the parable, who, unknowing of his brother’s temptation and sorrow, closed his heart against his return; and if her tears would have come, she would have wept that she could not bring herself to look on Gilbert otherwise than as the troubler of her father’s peace.

When her mother at last came upstairs, she only ventured to ask gently, ‘How does papa bear it?’

‘It did not come without preparation,’ was the answer; ‘and at first we were occupied with comforting Mr. Dusautoy, who takes to himself all the shame his nephew will not feel, for having drawn poor Gilbert into such a set.’

‘And papa?’ still asked Sophy.

‘He is very quiet, and it is not easy to tell. I believe it was a great mistake, though not of his making, to send Gilbert to Oxford at all, and I doubt whether he will ever go back again.

‘Oh, mamma, not conquer this, and live it down!’ cried Sophy; but then changing, she sighed and said, ‘If he would—’

‘Yes, a great deal depends upon how he may take this, and what becomes of Algernon Dusautoy; though I suppose there is no lack of other tempters. Your papa has even spoken of India again; he still thinks he would be more guarded there, but all depends on the spirit in which we find him. One thing I hope, that I shall leave it all to his father’s judgment, and not say one word.’

The next post brought a penitent letter from Gilbert, submitting completely to his father; only begging that he might not see any one at home until he should have redeemed his character, and promising to work very hard and deny himself all relaxation if he might only go to a tutor at a distance.

This did not at all accord with Mr. Kendal’s views. He had an unavowed distrust of Gilbert’s letters, he did not fancy a tutor thus selected, and believed the boy to be physically incapable of the proposed amount of study. So he wrote a very grave but merciful summons to Willow Lawn.

Albinia went to meet the delinquent at Hadminster, and was struck by the different deportment of the two youths. Algernon Dusautoy, whose servant had met him, sauntered up to her as if nothing had happened, carelessly hoped all were well at Bayford, and, in spite of her exceeding coldness, talked on with perfect ease upon the chances of a war with Russia, and had given her three or four maxims, before Gilbert came up with the luggage van, with a bag in his hand, and a hurried bewildered manner, unable to meet her eye. He handed her into the carriage, seated himself beside her, and drove off without one unnecessary word, while Algernon, mounting his horse, waved them a disengaged farewell, and cantered on. Albinia heard a heavy sigh, and saw her companion very wan and sorrowful, dejection in every feature, in the whole stoop of his figure, and in the nervous twitch of his hands. The contrast gave an additional impulse to her love and pity, and the first words she said were, ‘Your father is quite ready to forgive.’

‘I knew he would be so,’ he answered, hardly able to command his voice; ‘I knew you would all be a great deal too kind to me, and that is the worst of all.’

‘No, Gilbert, not if it gives you resolution to resist the next time.’

He groaned; and it was not long before she drew from him a sincere avowal of his follies and repentance. He had been led on by assurances that ‘every one’ did the like, by fear of betraying his own timidity, by absurd dread of being disdained as slow; all this working on his natural indolence and love of excitement, had combined to involve him in habits which had brought on him this disgrace. It was a hopeful sign that he admitted its justice, and accused no one of partiality; the reprimand had told upon him, and he was too completely struck down even to attempt to justify himself; exceedingly afraid of his father, and only longing to hide himself. Such was his utter despair, that Albinia had no scruples in encouraging him, and assuring him with all her heart, that if taken rightly, the shock that brought him to his senses, might be the blessing of his life. He did not take comfort readily, though soothed by her kindness; he could not get over his excessive dread of his father, and each attempt at reassurance fell short. At last it came out that the very core of his misery was this, that he had found himself for part of the journey, in the same train with Miss Durant and two or three children. He could not tell her where he was going nor why, and he had leant back in the carriage, and watched her on the platform by stealth, as she moved about, ‘lovelier and more graceful than ever!’ but how could he present himself to her in his disgrace and misery? ‘Oh, Mrs. Kendal, I forgive my father, but my life was blighted when I was cut off from her!’

‘No, Gilbert, you are wrong. There is no blighting in a worthy, disinterested attachment. To be able to love and respect such a woman is a good substantial quality in you, and ought to make you a higher and better man.’

Gilbert turned round a face of extreme amazement. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘I thought you—’ and went no farther.

‘I respect your feeling for her more than when it was two years younger,’ she said; ‘I should respect it doubly if instead of making you ashamed, it had saved you from the need of shame.’

‘Do you give me any hope?’ cried Gilbert, his face gleaming into sudden eager brightness.

‘Things have not become more suitable,’ said Albinia; and his look lapsed again into despondency; but she added, ‘Each step towards real manhood, force of character, and steadiness, would give you weight which might make your choice worth your father’s consideration, and you worth that of Genevieve.’

‘Oh! would you but have told me so before!’

‘It was evident to your own senses,’ said Albinia; and she thought of the suggestion that Sophy had made.

‘Too late! too late!’ sighed Gilbert.

‘No, never too late! You have had a warning; you are very young, and it cannot be too late for winning a character, and redeeming the time!’

‘And you tell me I may love her!’ repeated Gilbert, so intoxicated with the words, that she became afraid of them.

‘I do not tell you that you may importune her, or disobey your father. I only tell you that to look up and work and deny yourself, in honour of one so truly noble, is one of the best and most saving of secondary motives. I shall honour you, Gilbert, if you do so use it as to raise and support you, though of course I cannot promise that she can be earned by it, and even that motive will not do alone, however powerful you may think it.’

Neither of them said more, but Gilbert sighed heavily several times, and would willingly have checked their homeward speed. He grew pale as they entered the town, and groaned as the gates swung back, and they rattled over the wooden bridge. It was about four o’clock, and he said, hurriedly, as with a sort of hope, ‘I suppose they are all out.’

He was answered by a whoop of ecstasy, and before he was well out of the carriage, he was seized by the joyous Maurice, shouting that he had been for a ride with papa, without a leading rein. Happy age for both, too young to know more than that the beloved playfellow was at home again!

Little Albinia studied her brother till the small memory came back, and she made her pretty signs for the well-remembered dancing in his arms. From such greetings, Gilbert’s wounded spirit could not shrink, much as he dreaded all others; and, carrying the baby and preceded by Maurice, while he again muttered that of course no one was at home, he went upstairs.

Albinia meantime tapped at the library door. She knew Mr. Kendal to be there, yearning to forgive, but thinking it right to have his pardon sought; and she went in to tell him of his son’s keen remorse, and deadly fear. Displeased and mournful, Mr. Kendal sighed. ‘He has little to fear from me, would he but believe so! He ought to have come to me, but—’

That ‘but’ meant repentance for over-sternness in times past.

‘Let me send him to you.’

‘I will come,’ said Mr. Kendal, willing to spare his son the terror of presenting himself.

There was a pretty sight in the morning-room. Gilbert was on the floor with the two children, Maurice intent on showing how nearly little Albinia could run alone, and between ordering and coaxing, drawing her gently on; her beautiful brown eyes opened very seriously to the great undertaking, and her round soft hands, with a mixture of confidence and timidity, trusted within the sturdy ones of her small elder, while Gilbert knelt on one knee, and stretched out a protecting arm, really to grasp the little one, if the more childish brother should fail her, and his countenance, lighted up with interest and affection, was far more prepossessing than when so lately it had been, full of cowering, almost abject apprehension.

Was it a sort of instinctive feeling that the little sister would be his best shelter, that made him gather the child into his arms, and hold her before his deeply blushing face as he rose from the floor? She merrily called out, ‘Papa!’ Maurice loudly began to recount her exploits, and thus passed the salutation, at the end of which Gilbert found that his father was taking the little one from him, and giving her to her mother, who carried her away, calling Maurice with her.

‘Have you nothing to say to me?’ said Mr. Kendal, after waiting for some moments; but as Gilbert only looked up to him with a piteous, scared, uncertain glance, be added; ‘You need not fear me; I believe you have erred more from weakness than from evil inclinations, and I trust in the sincerity of your repentance.’

These kind words softened Gilbert; he assured his father of his thanks for his kindness, no one could grieve more deeply, or be more anxious to atone in any possible manner for what he had unwittingly done.

‘I believe you, Gilbert,’ said his father; ‘but you well know that the only way of atoning for the past, as well as of avoiding such wretchedness and disgrace for the future, is to show greater firmness.’

‘I know it is,’ said Gilbert, sorrowfully.

‘I cannot look into your heart,’ added Mr. Kendal. ‘I can only hope and believe that your grief for the sin is as deep, or deeper, than that for the public stigma, for which comparatively, I care little.’

Gilbert exclaimed that so indeed it was, and this was no more than the truth. Out of sight of temptation, and in that pure atmosphere, the loud revel and coarse witticisms that had led him on, were only loathsome and disgusting, and made him miserable in the recollection.

‘I am ready to submit to anything,’ he added, fervently. ‘As long as you forgive me, I am ready to bear anything.’

‘I forgive you from my heart,’ said Mr. Kendal, warmly. ‘I only wish to consider what may be most expedient for you. I should scarcely like to send you back to Oxford to retrieve your character, unless I were sure that you would be more resolute in resisting temptation. No, do not reply; your actions during this time of penance will be a far more satisfactory answer than any promises. I had thought of again applying to your cousin John, to take you into his bank, though you could not now go on such terms as you might have done when there was no error in the background, and I still sometimes question whether it be not the safer method.’

‘Whatever you please,’ said Gilbert; ‘I deserve it all.’

‘Nay, do not look upon my decision, whatever it may be, as punishment, but only as springing from my desire for your real welfare. I will write to your cousin and ask whether he still has a vacancy, but without absolutely proposing you to him, and we will look on the coming months as a period of probation, during which we may judge what may be the wisest course. I will only ask one other question, Gilbert, and you need not be afraid to answer me fully and freely. Have you any debts at Oxford?’

‘A few,’ stammered Gilbert, with a great effort.

‘Can you tell me to whom, and the amount?’

He tried to recollect as well as he could, while completely frightened and confused by the gravity with which his father was jotting them down in his pocket-book.

‘Well, Gilbert,’ he concluded, ‘you have dealt candidly with me, and you shall never have cause to regret having done so. And now we will only feel that you are at home, and dwell no longer on the cause that has brought you. Come out, and see what we have been doing in the meadow.’

Gilbert seemed more overthrown and broken down by kindness than by reproof. He hardly exerted himself even to play with Maurice, or to amuse his grandmother; and though his sisters treated him as usual, he never once lifted up his eyes to meet Sophy’s glance, and scarcely used his voice.

Nothing could be more disarming than such genuine sorrow; and Sophy, pardoning him with all her heart, and mourning for her past want of charity, watched him, longing to do something for his comfort, and to evince her tenderness; but only succeeded in encumbering every petty service or word of intercourse with a weight of sad consciousness.