engagement to you, instead of making me weaker, will strengthen and help me in my duty; that-thatI can't well express what I mean,' and, indeed, the lad's voice was choked with his own earnestness; 'but what I want to say is, that you should let me go away from you full of hope and spirit, and not thinking of your poor miserable face here at home.'

Oliver, don't reason with me-I can't help feeling as I do!' And then, as a child checked from its sorrow for a moment, goes back, with sudden passion, to its first plaint, she burst almost wildly into tears, and hid her face down on his breast.

If she had never really loved him before; if she had mistaken emotions roused by a handsome face and pleading voice and sunset walks, and her own first girlish pleasure in being admired; if she had blindly received all this counterfeit for the true coin hitherto, in these moments of parting she was, at least, not mistaken. She loved him now. When women waved their handkerchiefs and wept over the Guards on that dull autumn day when they marched through the streets of London before they left for the Crimea; when women wept over the shattered few-the gaunt wan heroes' faces which another year brought back to them-they were under just the same influence which rent this poor little country girl's heart now; about the strongest emotion (save one) that women's hearts are capable of, and one simulating genuine passion so well that with the breast tightening under its direct influence, the hands clasped warmly in the parting hero's own, it would require a much cooler and more impartial analyst than poor Esther to determine the actual ingredients of which it is made up. She loved him; she was quite sure of that; and he was leaving herhe was going away to die for his country and she was to remain here with half the world between them in this dull, silent old home of hers in Countisbury. The realities of the case; balls at Malta, flirtations in Bombay, probability,

almost certainty, of the mutiny being over before Mr. Carew reached India; the necessity of putting their engagement upon some tangible and business-like footing; all these things, which to a Dashwood at seventeen would have occurred as a matter of course, never entered into Esther's brain. She had already done a great deal for Mr. Carew by the help of her own imagination; had put a great deal of purple and fine linen upon him out of the treasury of her own vivid fancy; now, chance effected the finishing stroke to the ideal she had all along been creating. She saw him as a hero. Yes, if she had not really loved him before she loved him now; and Oliver felt it. Perhaps, little as Esther could have believed it then, he was more in earnest than she was, when, clasping her in his arms, he swore to be true to her till death; that, as she was his first, she should be his last love; and that neither time, nor distance, nor any change, save in herself, should efface her from his heart.

And I? Ah, Oliver! you will have plenty of things to think of and to do; but I-you will write to me very often, won't you?'

'Of course. I am a horrid letterwriter in general, but you'll not mind that, Esther.'

'As if your letters could be horrid to me!'

'And you must answer them regularly, not crossed, if you can help it, and tell me all that you are doing, you know.'

'I shall be doing nothing. I shall tell you all I feel.

'Oh, yes-' Mr. Carew had a vague feeling that such letters could not be very long, and I think he was relieved. Long letters required long answers; and, as an Eton boy should, he had dreadful misgivings as to his own spelling and general diction. This sort of thing, under the shade of a sycamore, was easy enough, or in a ball-room, or at archery fêtes, or even on lonely moonlit moors;-but letters! Whether I write or not, Esther, and whether my letters express it or not, remember that I love you, that I shall never love any one again as I

do you, and now-now Esther, my own dear love, I must leave you indeed.'

It was five minutes longer before they parted, and at the end of that time Esther had not spoken one word about their engagement and the footing on which it should be placed; neither had it entered Carew's mind to disclose the truth concerning his own future position, which, with a boy's foolishness, he had till now kept from her. I don't think a dozen words that could be reduced to typography had passed between them, at all, during these minutes. They held each other's hands; they looked, as cyes under twenty-two do look, when their possessors believe that they love and know that they must part; and then, then, Esther stood alone under the shadow of the sycamore and knew that the first act of her life was over for ever. Play such a part again in sober earnest! look back upon this as on a rehearsal-as Rachel or Talma might have looked back to the first crude awakening of their powers-as the maestro looks back from his glorious Mass in C to the first vague dream which foreshadowed it in his youth!-when did such heresy (such truth) ever enter a heart as honest, and as ignorant of itself, as was Esther Fleming's at scarce eighteen!

CHAPTER XII.

MISS JOAN EVINCES HER STRENGTH OF MIND.

Is love, in the majority of cases, strengthened or weakened by the absence of its object? A great authority, and one prone to terrible truth in such matters, tells us that for the malady of love there is one humiliating but almost specific cure-absence. Another, and a philosopher, lays down as an axiom that the sentiment is strongest, the passion weakest in the absence of the beloved object. Passing over all pretty little poetic platitudes about the purifying effect of time and distance upon the affections, I think we may conclude that not

absence, but the application of other stimulus, cures: that not the mere fact of being left, but being left alone, fosters love and keeps it alive. 'L'homme a sa force et l'exercise de sa puissance: il agit, il va, il s'occupe, il pense, il embrasse l'avenir et y trouve des consolations. La femme demeure; elle reste face à face avec le chagrin dont rien ne la distrait; elle descend jusqu'au fond de l'abime qu'il a ouvert, le mesure et souvent le comble de ses vœux et des larmes.'

Mr. Carew in four-and-twenty hours was with his regiment on its way to the East; Esther, alone and unoccupied, was dreaming of him among the lonely silence of the Countisbury hills. Could absence under such opposing circumstances by any possibility bring about a precisely similar form of result?

One thing it undoubtedly did for Esther Fleming's love: it idealized it marvellously. It was not easy to be very poetic about Mr. Carew, however much you adored him, in his presence. His handsome, boyish, sunburnt face was one you could not be sentimental about if you would; his constant flow of animal spirits, his hearty ringing laugh, were all things that set romance at defiance. But away; gone to that far post of danger from whence she should possibly never see the brave young face return; Esther could dream him into a position much. nearer her own ideal than he had ever come in reality. If the feeling had dimly struggled up in her mind at times, during their three weeks' friendship, that she was, in truth, Carew's superior; that there were thoughts of hers, girl though she was, to which he could never reach, feelings he could never share, she was too innately generous for such convictions to trouble her in his absence now. She remembered his tender words, his manly tender words of love for her, not those little occasional tokens of mental inferiority which had made the blood start with such a sense of uneasy shame into her face when they were together. 'What does intellect matter?' she questioned herself once, once only-and this was

after she had been made censorious by some rather curious grammar in Mr. Carew's first letter-'Should I prefer some conceited clever gentleman, who could write me pretty verses and think of nothing but his own ability, to the simple, manly heart that is mine so entirely?'

And then Mr. Carew's letter, of course, went through quite an ovation of remorseful tenderness. It would have been more truthful to say, 'Should I prefer a man who could be brave and handsome, and yet write grammatically, and possess at least as much brains as myself into the bargain?' But Esther did not want to be truthful; she wanted to make out the strongest possible case in favour of the man she had promised to love; and aided by her imagination, and still more, as I have said, by the happy chance of her lover's absence, she succeeded in doing so.

Indeed, this letter, after her first disappointment as to its ability had past, was a strong tie that bound her afresh to Oliver. A very young woman always believes she finds some new clue to the character of the man who loves her in the first letter she receives from his hand. Those words, my promised wife,' 'your attached till death,' and others of a like kind which occurred several times in it, appealed to all that was deepest in Esther's heart. Now that she saw these things written she felt how solemn the tie was that held her to Oliver, how sacred were the promises she had tacitly taken upon herself. She began to think, not so much of the handsome lad she had known for three weeks among the moors, as of the man who called her his promised wife, and who wrote himself hers until death. And it is always a gain for a commonplace lover when he begins to lose his individuality!

Esther had long held opinions of her own as to what should constitute the character of a man she could love; and as soon as Oliver, by dint of absence and imagination, was placed on the throne of this visionary ideal, the girl's memory clung to him with passion-passion

of which she had not experienced the slightest, the most passing throb in his presence. She made pilgrimages to all the places where they had been together. She found, or thought she found, the exact spot where Oliver Carew first spoke to her of love, gathered up some withered petals of the wild roses on the bank, and wore them next her heart in a little locket-from whence she was first obliged to dispossess

a

lock of poor David Engleheart's grizzled hair. She liked more than ever to spend her evenings in the house place, the only room in the house that had known Oliver's presence, and to dream, sitting there in the spot she had sat by him, that she could still see his handsome face shining on her in the golden light. Even to walk down to the hotel where he had lodged and look up, shy and blushing, to the window where he used to stand, made her pulses thrill strangely. To walk alone and think of him among the odorous lanes at night took her into a world of passion more subtle and delicious than any to which word or look of Mr. Carew's had had power to transport her when she was with him.

6

'I thought you would have pined a little for the knight who loved and who rode away,' said Joan, spitefully, to her once; and instead of that you look better and happier than ever. I am glad to see you are so tough-hearted, Esther, after all the nonsense David has talked since you were four years old about your sensitiveness and your warm affections and your painful depths of feeling.'

'Why should I grieve for Mr. Carew?' said Esther, rather hypocritically. Surely, Joan, you would not have me break my heart for every well-looking stranger one chances to meet upon our moors? If Mr. Carew liked to ride away, I am sure it is much better that I shouldn't trouble my head any more about him.'

Partly because he had himself desired that their engagement should be secret, and partly influenced by her own vague terror of Joan's tender mercies towards all lovers,

Esther had told Oliver to send her letters under cover to poor David. Miss Engleheart's suspicions as to the existence of any positive engagement were, therefore, suspicions only. But she had sufficiently sharp intuitions, even in love matters, to tell her that Esther's placid face, after the terrible paleness of the first two days passed off, betokened confidence at least in Carew's good faith; and the extreme lowness of David's spirits, and the visible change in his demeanour towards Esther, strengthened her in her belief that not only was the girl's heart won, but that David himself was perfectly conscious of the desperate folly of his own longcherished dreams.

This was precisely the state of things at which Miss Joan had desired to arrive; and for several weeks after Oliver's departure she was unusually lenient in her conduct to Esther, never questioning her as to her lonely musings on the garden terrace or the moors, or the absent and distracted way in which she went through the daily routine of her work at home. But when, gradually, David began, as of old, to be the girl's companion; when, instead of Esther sitting alone in the starlight on the terrace, David got back to her side as he had used to do before Carew ever came; when long conversations and lingering walks and evening readings became once more the staple of David Engleheart's life, Miss Joan's milder feelings underwent a sudden and sharp revulsion. Esther was making David her confidant; it was not for him but for Oliver that the girl's face flushed up as she talked to him. David, poor fool! was listening for another to all the tender nonsense he had coveted to hear at first-hand, and would end by becoming more hopelessly besotted by his ridiculous passion than ever: perhaps, if Carew did prove false, would end by winning Esther, not to love him-Joan never thought that-but to accept his honest love and ugly face in exchange for the false fair stranger she had failed to win.

With Joan to think was to act.

She did not confine herself to acrimonious playfulness with Esther and scarcely-veiled contempt for the besotted fool David; she resolved to part them. Mrs. Tudor had already invited Esther to spend some months of the coming winter with her in Bath; and so, without any discussion of the matter even with her mother, Joan wrote and proposed to her aunt that Esther should join her at once at the seaside. 'Her visit will, of course, be for three months, as you proposed,' Miss Engleheart wrote; and if a month of it is spent at the seaside with you now she must return to us one month earlier in the spring. The change to a gay watering-place will be a treat to the girl after her life here, and I will pay her travelling expenses from Weymouth to Bath.'

Mrs. Tudor was not unfrequently amiable when it involved no difficulty of any kind to herself to be SO. After all, she wanted the girl more in her seaside lodgings than at Bath. She could go to market instead of Wilson; she could carry her air-cushion to the beach; she could play piquet of an evening. The two first offices Mistress Wilson-Aunt Tudor's own maidperformed with exceeding sulkiness (and all demonstrations of nerves on the part of Wilson made Mrs. Tudor miserable; where should she find such an inestimable, faithful creature, one so versed in wigs and dyes and paint and scandals, at only twenty-five pounds a year again?): for cards-and cards in some shape, even without playing for money, were a necessary aliment to Aunt Tudor's life-she was reduced to the doctor's wife when, with professional kindness, that lady would come and sit with her an hour or two of an evening. Yes, Esther would be a decided relief. Mrs. Tudor wrote back quite an affectionate response to her niece's appeal; and Joan, without any note of warning or preparation, announced to Esther at once that she should pack up her things and start.

It was a moment of triumphant glory to Miss Engleheart when she

broke out with the sudden news to David. He was sitting in his little sanctum in the sinking autumn evening with Esther; the futile pretext of tying flies to occupy his hands, but his eyes-those great foolish eyes of his, as Joan would call them, under the evil influence that possessed her! those foolish, and not at all handsome eyes of his, fixed with their accustomed mute adoration upon his companion's face. Esther had not, as you know, one particle of a coquette in her nature; and of all living creatures she would least have led astray poor simple, trusting David. But it is difficult to speak of the thing nearest one's heart without some unconscious softening of the voice; to speak of love and of a distant lover without some of the incense originally meant for the object of supreme worship shedding its dangerous sweetness upon the senses of the unhappy neophyte who is humbly playing his little part of assisting at the altar. Esther was thinking wholly of Oliver, and not one whit of David, as, blushing and eager, she knelt by his side and repeated to him some solemn unimportant bit of intelligence out of Carew's last letter; but I must confess there was enough in the beauty of her flushed face, in the childish grace of her familiar attitude; enough in the unconscious charm of her perfect confidence and the guilty start of poor David on suddenly hearing Joan's vicious snap at the handle of the door, to justify all that lady's preconceived visions as to the peril of this prolonged and unchecked intimacy.

'Esther, you will go to Aunt Tudor to-morrow morning.'

simply speechless and stupefied, unconscious what further vials of wrath Joan might be about to pour upon his head. Just when he was beginning to get a little happy again, to have at least two or three hours of daily confidences from Esther-you must remember there are human beings, even men, who would rather be the confidant of a passion than go for nothing in it, would rather be talked to about another lover than not hear any mention of love at all-for this woman's inexorable sharpness to have dragged his poor secrets to light again, and for her to be avenged upon him thus! He could scarce have felt more hopelessly miserable had she said, David Engleheart, you will marry me tomorrow morning.' Indeed, I almost think, of the two, it would have crushed him less: provided, always, that Esther might have been present at the wedding.

'You will start, by the coach, at five to-morrow morning, and get to Weymouth in time for a late tea;' Joan's voice sounded quite genial and good-humoured. Nothing pleases Aunt Thalia more than to find people don't want to eat, so I'll put you up some hard-boiled eggs and sandwiches for the journey. What are you looking so odd for, child? I thought it would be a treat for you to get away a month or two sooner from home, and see a little gaiety at a place like Weymouth.'

'I like home better than Aunt Tudor, Joan. I don't care about gaieties at all; and if you please I will write myself and tell her so!' Her voice broke again.

Miss Joan seated herself with that peculiar angular sharpness that always betokened the advent of a few forcible opinions, and looked straight into David Engleheart's face. David, shall I tell you what ails the girl?' she remarked with perfect callousness to her victim's nervous writhes and deprecating gestures. Shall I tell you what ails our little Esther?'

Joan, if you please, I would rather

'Our little Esther fancies herself in love with Mr. Oliver Carew.'