ting things, which half broke my heart; and he would listen to Ann's slightest suggestion, and wait on her, and look to her for comfort which I ought to have given him, and believe all his mother or Barbara said, until I grew a mere cipher; and then once-it was soon after Leigh's birth-we quarrelled. It was almost our only quarrel, I think; and I know now I said bitter things, which made him very, very angry; and from that time we have lived separate lives. I could not help it then; I would not help it since. And it has ended at last in his leaving me!— leaving me to be the scorn and laughing-stock of the world! Maggie, what can I do? How can it end, but in ruin to us and to our children?"

"My poor little Ethie," Margaret said, "you have had many and bitter trials. That Philip and Ann were once engaged is very probable, and that they still have a warm brotherly and sisterly love and sympathy for each other, I believe; but I must and do acquit Philip of any disloyalty to his wife, though he may not have taken the right method of showing either his love or his power."

"If he had only dealt honestly by me and told me," Ethel said meekly, "I would not, I could not have blamed him. I can see as plainly as any one how superior Ann is to me; I can acknowledge how much better she was fitted to be his companion, and the helper and adviser in his political life. But he chose me, he sought me out, he told me he loved me, and I believed him."

"Ethel, this is wrong," Margaret said. "You must not suppose for an instant that Philip is unfaithful to you. You have been placed in a difficult position, and he has not made allowance for your youth and inexperience. The past you must learn to forget, but the future is before you, and it is your duty to retrieve the mistakes you have been led into. Take my advice: begin by having Ann and the children with you; banish all feeling of jealousy towards your cousin; strive earnestly to make yourself what will most please your husband, and resolutely turn away from hard thoughts of him or any thing he may have unguardedly spoken, which only rankle in the heart the more you dwell on them. You will find solace and employment with the children; and in educating and training them, Ann will be a great help to you. Promise me that tomorrow you will drive me over to Bonchurch, and arrange it with your cousin."

Ethelind looked up pitifully into Margaret's face.

"I cannot promise now," she said; "but I will think of it, and tell you by and by."

It was moonlight when they landed under Cause's care; and Margaret left Ethel to Stephens' charge, as she turned into her aunt's house.

Ann Leigh had driven over with the children to see their mother, and, finding she was out, had come down and spent a pleasant day with Aunt Sarah. The shy invalid had shaken off her "Leigh coldness and reserve,' and had bared her heart to the calm quiet old Quakeress, whom few

would have selected as a confidante and adviser in affairs connected with the heart's affections and disappointments.

They had freely discussed Ethelind's unhappy separation from her husband. And Ann, while she readily acknowledged how great her love had once been for Philip, most fully acquitted him of ever having given her any return. They had been destined for each other from their cradles, there was no doubt; but the love, she well knew, had been only on her side.

The terrible accident which placed Philip in her brother's position bound him in honour to her, while it determined her the more resolutely to break it off. It was long before he would consent to her decision, and longer before he could be made to see the necessity of his marrying, which he felt would close for ever the only chance he had of fulfilling a compact which keenly affected his own honour in regard to her, whom he had always loved and admired, though only as a fond brother loves and admires a sister. And Ann told how much she had loved Ethelind from the first moment she had seen her, and how she had tried to guard and shield her from the exclusiveness and pride of her aunt and cousins; how her own affections had centred in little Beatrice, and how much she now feared she had acted injudiciously in taking her away from her mother. She had promised Miss Waldron that if only Ethelind would allow her, she would go to Redenham, at whatever cost, with her and the children, where, devoting themselves to the little ones, they might lead new and better and more useful lives for the future.

The next morning Ethelind, on a low stool at Miss Waldron's side, with her bright wavy hair resting against the old lady's muslin kerchiet and drab-silk dress, listened as meekly and attentively as a little child to all that Margaret and her aunt urged in regard to her future conduct. And with something like hope gleaming out of her haggard eyes, and all her assumed coldness gone, she was trying to believe them when they assured her Philip's love was not gone past all hope of redemption.

CHAPTER XL.

ONE morning Margaret was startled by the announcement of "Lord Redcar." She was deep in the perusal of one of Guy's never-failing letters. Margaret had never met Lord Redcar; but it was not a time for ceremony.

"Mrs. Vyvian," he said, "I see you guess the purport of my visit, by that letter lying on the table. I too have had one from your husband, and also from the chaplain at Scutari, an old friend of mine. There is no doubt Redenham has been poking about those horrid hospitals, and picked up fever, and though not alarmingly ill, yet, with his mind unhinged from over-work and anxiety, he is less able to bear up against it; and if we could accomplish getting Lady Redenham out there, she would be able to look after him and bring him home. I know there are a hundred difficulties, but I don't believe they are insuperable. Though I have never

had the pleasure of meeting you before, I ventured to come to you before going to Lady Redenham. My yacht is now on her way to Malta, where I am to join her. What say you to Lady Redenham and yourself starting with me to-morrow to overtake her? We could take Lord Redenham on board at Scutari, and so get free of malaria, and his wife would be there to nurse and care for him. Your husband's note suggests the movement, though he did not know that, by a mere chance, I had not already started for Marseilles."

Margaret looked at the bright honest eyes of the speaker, and tried to collect her energies, so as first to break it as she best could to Ethel, and then arrange for their sudden and hurried journey.

It is astonishing how much an energetic will can accomplish. Before nightfall, all was arranged! Ann Leigh, with the children, and accompanied by Aunt Sarah, were to go to Redenham together for the autumn; while Ethelind and Margaret, with Mrs. Edwards and Stephens as an escort, were to accompany Lord Redcar to Malta, to meet the steamyacht he had freighted with an endless store of comforts for the sick and wounded in the Crimea.

Until that eventful voyage, Margaret knew nothing of Lord Redcar; but his unwearied care and anxiety for Ethel's comfort, his ready resources in all difficulties, his unfailing good temper, and his honest straightfor ward opinions, soon won golden opinions from her, and she really did marvel how Grace had so long withstood his importunities.

"Never mind, Mrs. Vyvian," he said one night, as they sat chatting on the deck of the Flirt, "I do not give up all hope. Your sister is worth waiting for, and I mean to win her. I am not easily repulsed when the prize is worth having. I know I have a warm friend in Mrs. Aylmer, and I hope to add you to my number. But I would rather, after all, she should choose me because she loves me, than because her friends recommend me. God grant, if I do get her, I may take warning by Redenham, and not make such a mess of it as he has contrived to do. However, it is all right now with him. When I left him a month ago in the Crimea, he was as wretched as it was possible for a fellow to be; and, but for very shame, would have returned to England, and thrown himself at Lady Redenham's feet, and begged her to forgive his madness."

"Poor Ethie, if only she could believe it!" Margaret replied. "Never mind, Mrs. Vyvian; she will believe it fast enough when they meet, if, indeed, this horrid fever has not made an end of him. But it is of no use anticipating evils. I always try to see the bright side of every thing. I am sure we never could have been sent into such a bright, beautiful world just to make it dark and gloomy by our own gloomy previsions. If a fellow's conscience is clear, and his faith sound, surely if clouds and storms and this dreadful bloodshed, and the thousand ills that man's passions, rather than God's will, afflict us with, we need not fear the result. It is good for us all to be tried in the furnace occasionally; it proves our metal, and we ring the clearer and shine the

brighter afterwards. Between ourselves, you know, much as Redenham loved his wife, he has never to my mind done her full justice. The Leigh pride, you know, is proverbial, and their exclusiveness so great, that nothing but some awful lesson like this could make them believe they were mortal. If Redenham is only safe out of his illness, I will stake any thing that from henceforth your sister, Mrs. Vyvian, will rule the

roast.'"

But no such bright hope could, or would, raise the cloud of doubt and misgiving from Ethel's sad heart. She took all the blame to herself; her own folly stood out before her perpetually. She looked the mere shadow of herself, as the anchor of the Flirt fell in the clear deep waters of the Bosphorus, too far gone for even tears of thankfulness, when Lord Redcar returned on board with the intelligence that Redenham was so far recovered as to be quite free of fever, and only suffering from its usual prostrating effects, and longing anxiously for her presence.

How her loving heart bounded as she urged Lord Redcar to land her instantly, and take her to the quiet apartment the good chaplain's care had provided for him at Scutari; and how impatient she felt at the delays which, even at the very door, seemed to beset her! And then how, all in a moment, as it were, her courage failed her, as she turned the handle of the door, and, creeping stealthily into the darkened room, found herself enclosed in two large loving arms outstretched to welcome her, in an embrace which admitted of no misconception, and which seemed as if it never could again set her free. "My Ethie, my own darling, my precious wife!" was all she heard, all she cared to hear then; until, on her trembling knees, she had sunk down beside her husband, and in an agony of tears poured out the full tide of sorrow and repentance, which had so bitterly weighed her down.

The outpourings of those two repentant hearts was only meant for each other; and when, half an hour later, Margaret came in to see the invalid, she felt there was no longer reason to doubt that, if God spared their lives, a new and brighter era had opened on Lord and Lady Redenham's future existence.

Scarcely had Lord Redenham been removed on board the Flirt, when news came down from the Crimea of that terrible attack on the Redan, and with it the intelligence that Guy Vyvian was amongst those dangerously, though it was hoped not fatally, wounded. How Margaret bore the news, she never afterwards could remember. She only knew how heartily she thanked God she had come out with Ethelind to the Black Sea, and was thus enabled, with the aid of Lord Redcar, to be, within a few hours of the battle, by her husband's sick-bed; while the Flirt, with Ethelind and Lord Redenham on board, proceeded on her voyage to England.

And Guy Vyvian, the strong, stalwart man, wearing, as his men believed, a charmed life, because, amidst the death and carnage of battle and bloodshed and famine, in the full vigour of his mental and bodily

powers, he had almost defied danger in the fearless discharge of his duty, -ever ready to succour the sick and wounded; always with a firm will, but kind word, to all under his authority,-now, at the end of the battle, with victory ringing in the ears of that heroic army, that he should be stricken, cast a shadow and deep gloom where joy and gladness would otherwise have reigned.

How gratefully Margaret looked back to the events which had contributed to make her Guy's wife, enabling her to nurse and care for him; and when the doctors agreed that he must, if it were possible, be removed to London for the operation which was to extract the deeply imbedded bullet from his hip (the result of which operation even she, with her hopeful heart, dreaded to anticipate), with Lord Redcar still with her to aid and assist, they took their passage in one of the many crowded steamers whose ghastly freight told the horrors of battle in all its sickening reality.

Neither Philip nor Ralph, as weeks afterwards they slept anxiously on board the Ripon at Portsmouth in search of Margaret and her husband, could believe their eyes when they fell on the thin attenuated figure, with deep sunk eyes and haggard features, extended on a mattress on deck, propped up by cushions, and supported by his pale careworn wife.

At sight of those two beloved faces, Margaret's heart leapt for joy. For the first time, hope sprung up in her heart.

Many of Guy's own men were there, to assist in bringing him ashore,rough, bearded fellows, still showing traces of sickness and wounds, yet emulous who should do most for their beloved leader; and in their unpolished, genuine care for Margaret, whose time and money had been expended in behalf of their wives and children, touching the hearts of all who witnessed that landing.

CHAPTER XLI.

THE twentieth of August 1857 was a glorious burst of bright warm sunshine. Scarcely a fleck of cloud floated in the deep blue sky. The gray walls of Redenham, and the rich foliage of the ancient oaks, were bathed in a glow of brilliant light. In the clear bosom of the Mere the blue sky above, and the shadow of the umbrageous forest around it, were clearly reflected, its surface only ruffled by the occasional darting of trout, or the ripple of the moorhen and her brood among the sedge, or the stately swans who floated so proudly, watching with curious eyes the motley groups congregating round the white marquees which had been pitched on the soft green turf intervening between the lake and the castle. Flags of all colours decorated the tents; and while the bells from Leigh-Delamere pealed out a welcome, and bands of music were playing, the crowd of gaily-dressed yeomen came flocking in, over hill and dale, to celebrate the young Lord Leigh's sixth birthday and the return of peace, by laying the first stone of the new church and rectoryhouse for Leigh Moss, which Ann Leigh and Lady Redenham were