for indignation.

The incensed silence he

maintained expressed volumes, all the more aggravating because I was quite unable to understand a word of their meaning.

Again he looked quickly at me--he seemed impelled to do so and perceiving the flushed astonishment in my face, not unmixed, I am sure, with irritation, all trace of displeasure vanished at once from his features, and, smiling with an expression that carried my thoughts and feelings back to former days, said pleasantly,

"I see, Miss Denzell, you are as much surprised at the alteration time as wrought in my appearance as I am in that of yours. I could almost persuade myself I have been absent for seven instead of only two years-three I mean yes, three," correcting himself hastily; then, turning to grandmamma, he changed the subject, saying, "I purpose going to London the end of this week, Lady Denzell,”—he did not call her grandmamma, as formerly; "can I do anything for you in town? Sariann has, no doubt, told you of my change of intention and purpose of devoting my energies to the Bar?"

"Yes," rejoined grandmamma, regretfully, “and I am for many reasons very sorry for it. In the first place we shall see but little of you-"

"No great loss in that," murmured Charles, gloomily.

"-But little of you," resumed grandmamma ; "for of course the scene of your labours will be in London, where your time will principally be passed; and, in the next, I should have been truly glad that your poor father, whose strength has failed much of late, could have had that sympathetic support and assistance in his professional duties which none can so well render him as an affectionate and clever son."

I thought to myself, "You are in my opinion -you hard, selfish man-anything but an affectionate son. I can tell you whose fault it principally is that his health is failing that he has aged so rapidly; it is because of the grief occasioned him by the mental suffering and hastened death of his fondly loved wife— all through you-and his ceaseless anxiety, distress, even shame, during your unexplained, heartless absence." I knew it to be wrong, but, so it was, I felt I liked Charles none the better

for my belief in his innocency of any actual

crime. I would much rather he had looked guilty, shame-faced, and humbly, repentantly depressed. My sympathy-my pity, ratherwould then have been awakened. I should have felt that a really desperate position in some degree excused the desperate measures he had resorted to in order to escape a retributive punishment, the disgrace of which might have fallen as heavily on his family as on himself.

"Love," I mentally decided, with feelings of angry disgust, "yes, silly, contemptible love, was undoubtedly the cruel worker-out of the whole woful tragedy. An agony of grief— that, very likely—and maddened pride, of which latter no one could for a moment doubt Charles Beechley's possession to a most unholy extent, had rendered him blindly indifferent, if not utterly forgetful, of everything and every one but the object of his passion. His apparent self-contentment, therefore, irritated my temper. I longed to give him, in Patterson's words, 'a good, large bit of my mind.' What right had he, who had made others so miserable, to be himself so composed and satisfied? Did no thought of his poor mother haunt him?-no

feeling of remorse at recollection of those

bitter waters of affliction with which he had filled her last chalice of life to the brim? But to return.

Charles did not answer grandmamma. He sat with bowed head, his arms resting on his knees, and gazing fixedly on the floor. A gloomy and vexed, but not angry, expression contracted his features. Glancing quickly up and, to my extreme annoyance, again detecting me watching him curiously, his brows knit, but whether the same incensed light burned in his eyes that before startled me I know not, for immediately he turned them down. When a minute or two after he rose to depart, his countenance wore only its first look of moody sadness.

CHAPTER IX.

QUESTION AND ANSWER.

SOME days after the foregoing visit, upon returning in the morning from a walk with my governess, we found Charles Beechley, and grandmamma resting on his arm, strolling together in the garden. Charles looked lighter and happier, I thought, and greeted Miss Pitt and me with somewhat of the cheerfulness of old times. Indeed, during the whole of his stay, which was nearly half an hour, he was so pleasant, so full of an amusing, laughter-exciting humorousness (though he did not once laugh himself, and even his smile was too cynical, too peculiar, to be, in my opinion, agreeable), that I began to entertain far kindlier feelings towards him than at our first interview.

In the evening I asked grandmamma whether