a passion they are all alike, and don't mind what they say." "It's because he grudges you to me," said poor John, with a sigh, "and I don't much wonder;" upon which Kate clasped her two pretty hands on his arm, and beguiled him out of his troubles. This was one of the Sunday evenings which it was his privilege to spend with her. Mr. Crediton was oldfashioned, and saw no company on Sundays, and that was the day on which John was free to come to spend as much of it as he pleased with his betrothed. At first he had begun by going to luncheon, and remaining the whole afternoon in her company; but very soon it came to be the evening only which was given up to him. Either it was that Mr. Crediton made himself disagreeable at luncheon, or that he thrust engagements upon Kate, reminding her that she had promised to read to him, or copy letters for him, or some altogether unimportant matter. Mr. Crediton, though he was so much the best off of the party that he had thus the means of avenging himself, was not without grievances too; indeed, had he been consulted, he would probably have declared himself the person most aggrieved. His only child was about to be taken from him, and her society was already claimed by this nameless young man, without any particular recommendation, whom in her caprice she preferred. The Sunday afternoons had been the banker's favourite moment; he had nothing to do, and his doors were shut against society, and his child was always with him. No wonder that he used all the means in his power to drive back the enemy from that sacred spot. And Mr. Crediton had means in his power, unlike Mrs. Mitford, who sat, more alone than he, by her bedroom window all the hours when she was not at church, and wiped noiselessly again and again the tears out of her eyes. John's mother suffered more from this dreary change than words could say. She had not the heart to sit down-stairs except when it was necessary for that outline of family life consisting of prayers and meals, which, to Dr. Mitford's mind, filled up all possible requirements. Mrs. Mitford did not tell her husband nor any one what she was thinking. There seemed no longer any one left in the world who cared to know. And she could not punish Kate as Mr. Crediton could punish John. Probably she would not have done it if she could, for to punish Kate would have been to punish him too; but oh, she sometimes thought to herself, if her horse had only run away with her before somebody else's door, this might never have been! Thus it will be seen that this pretty young lady and that first caprice for the subjugation of John which came into her mind before she had seen him, in the leisure of her convalescence, had affected the friends of both in anything but a happy way. Indeed nobody except perhaps Kate herself. got any good out of the new bond. To her, who at the present moment was not called upon to make any sacrifice or give up anything, the possession of John, as of some one to fall back upon, was pleasant enough. She had all her usual delights and pleasures, lived as she had always lived, amused herself as of old, was the envy of her companions, the ringleader in all their amusements, the banker's only, much-indulged, fortunate child; and at the same time she had John to worship her on those Sunday evenings which once had rather been dull for Kate. When Mr. Crediton dozed, as he sometimes did after dinner, or when he was busy with the little private pieces of business he used to give himself up to on Sunday evenings, there was her lover ready to bow down before her. It was the cream and crown of all her many enjoyments. Everybody admired, petted, praised, and was good to Kate, and John adored her. She looked forward to her Sunday ramble round the old-fashioned garden, sometimes in the dark, sometimes in the moonlight, with an exquisite sense of something awaiting her there which had a more subtle, penetrating, delicious sweetness than all the other sweets surrounding her. And she felt that he was happy too as soon as she had placed her little hand on his arm — and forgot that there was anything in his lot which could make him feel that he had bought his happiness dearly. Kate was young, and knew nothing about life, and therefore was unconsciously selfish. She was happy, without any drawback to her happiness; and so, naturally and as a matter of course, she took him to be, forgetting that he had purchased that hour on the Sunday evenings by the sacrifice of all the prejudices and all the habits and prospects and occupations of his life. This unconsciousness was one from which she might awaken any day. A chance word might open her eyes to it, and show her, to her own disgust and confusion, the immense price he was paying for so transitory a delight; but at present nothing had awakened such a thought in her mind, and she was the one happy among the five most intimately concerned. Next after Kate in contentment with the new state of affairs was Dr. Mitford, who saw a prospect of a very satisfactory" settlement in life" for his said, and almost hated him; and pondered, with a sourd sense of cruelty and wrongdoing, how he might be got rid of and removed out of the way. son though he did not feel any very great by an effort; and, while John had his satisfaction in the preliminaries. It was a moment of delight on those Sunday evenpain to him, though a mild one, that John ings, was, for his part, anything but dehad abandoned the Church and become a lighted. It even made him less good a man. clerk in a banker's office. It was a pain, He sat and fretted by himself, and found it and a little humiliation too, for everybody very difficult to occupy his mind with any in Fanshawe Regis, and even the neighbour-other subject. It vexed him to think of his ing clergymen, shook their heads and were Kate thus hanging on a stranger's arm. Of very sorry to hear it, and wounded Dr. Mit- course he had always known that she must ford's pride. But, after all, that was a marry some time, but he had thought little trifling drawback in comparison with the of it as an approaching calamity; and then substantial advantage of marrying so much it had appeared certain that there would be money as was represented by Kate Credi- a blaze of external advantage, and perhaps ton. "And fond of her too," he would say splendour, in any match Kate could make, to himself in his study when he paused in which perhaps, prospectively at least, would one of his articles and thought it over. lessen the blow. If it had exalted her into But yet the articles were interrupted by the higher circles of the social paradise, be thinking it over as they had never been felt as if the deprivation to himself would used to be. It gave him a passing twinge have been less great. But here there was now and then, but it was he who suffered nothing to make amends no salve to his the least after Kate. wounded tenderness. Poor John! Mr. As for Mr. Crediton, there was a certain Crediton had the justice now and then to sullen wrath in his mind which he seldom feel that John was paying a hard price for suffered to have expression, yet which his felicity. "Serve the fellow right," he plagued him like a hidden wound. To think that for this lout, this country lad, his child should, as it were, have jilted him, made light of all his wishes, shown a desire to separate herself from him and the life which As for Mrs. Mitford she was simply unhe had fenced round from every care, and happy, without hoping to mend matters, or made delightful with every indulgence that thinking any more than she could help heart could desire. He had gone out of his about the cause. She had lost her boy. way to contrive pleasures for her, and to To be sure it was what most mothers have to surround her with everything that was bril- look forward to; but she, up to the very liant and fair like herself. She was more last, had been flattering herself that she like a princess than a banker's daughter, should not be as most mothers. All had thanks to his unchanging, unremitting been so carefully devised to keep him at thoughtfulness; and this was how she had home, to secure to him the life which, in her rewarded him the very first opportunity she soul, she believed to be the one which would had. Mr. Crediton was very sore and suit him best. The change was so sudden wroth, as fathers are sometimes. Mothers and so great, that it stupefied her at first. are miserable and lonely and jealous often She had to prepare him for going away, him enough, heaven knows! but the fathers are whom all his life she had been preparing to wroth with that inextinguishable wonder stay in his natural home, to repeat and imhow the love-making of some trumpery prove his father's life, to carry out and deyoung man should, in a day or two or a velop her own; she had to make up her week or two, obliterate their deeper love mind to live altogether without him, she and all the bonds of nature which lies as who had expected not only his society to deep in the heart as does the young impulse make her happy, but his aid to make somewhich calls it forth. Mr. Crediton was thing of her work. It was she who had angry, not so much, except at moments, been for all these years the real spiritual with Kate, as with the world, and nature, head of Fanshawe Regis. Dr. Mitford had and things in general and John. He done the "duty," and had preached the sercould not cross or thwart his child, but he mons, but every practical good influence, would have been glad in his heart if some- every attempt to mend the rustic parish, to thing had happened to the man whom his curb its characteristic vices, or develop its child loved. Such sentiments are wicked, better qualities, had come from his wife. and they are very inconsistent-but they And she had laboured on for years past, exist everywhere, and it would be futile to with the conviction that her son would perdeny them; and the consequence was, that fect everything she began; that he would Mr. Crediton was much less happy after his bring greater knowledge to it, and a more daughter's engagement, and put up with it perfectly trained mind, and all the superior understanding which such humble women hold to be natural to a man. When she had to give up this hope, it seemed to her at first as though the world had come to an end. What was the use of doing anything more, of carrying on the plans which must now die with her? The next new curate would probably care nothing about her schemes, and even might set himself to thwart her, as new curates sometimes do when a clergy woman is too active in a parish. And she was sick of the world and everything in it. The monotony of her life, from which all the colour seemed to have died out in a moment, suddenly became apparent to her, and all the failures, and obstructions, and hindrances which met her at every side. What could she do, a weak woman, she said to herself, against all the powers of darkness as embodied in Fanshawe Regis? Would it not be best to resign the unprofitable warfare and sink back into quiet, and shut out the mocking light? Wherever she went the people asked her questions about Mr. John. Was he not to be a clergyman after all? Was it along o' his lass that wouldn't let him do as he wished? What was it? Mrs. Mitford came home with her heart wearied by such inquiries, and sick with disappointment and misery. And she would go up to the room in which he was born, and cry, and say to herself that she never never could encounter such inquiries again. And oh, how dreary it was sitting down-stairs for the few moments which necessity and Dr. Mitford required, in those summer nights when the moths were flying by scores in at the open window, and dimness reigned in all the corners, and the lamp shone steady and clear on the table! In all the obscurity round her, her son was not lurking. He was not ready to step in by the open window as he had done so often. He was with Kate Crediton, giving up his whole heart and soul to her; and his father and mother rang for the servants, and had prayers, as though they had never had any children. What a change, what a change it was! Mrs. Mitford knew that it was impossible to thwart providence, let its plans be ever so unsatisfactory; but oh, she said to herself, why did not Kate's accident happen close to the Huntleys, or to any house but hers? Other boys were not so romantic, not so tender-hearted; and other mothers had heaps of children, and could not brood over the fortunes of every individual among them, as Mrs. Mitford, with an ache of helpless anger at herself, knew that she brooded over John's. But all was in vain. She could not mend matters now. She could not mend her own bleeding, aching heart. And after all it was best to go back to her work, whatever might come of it, and do her best. She could bear anything, she thought, but those Sunday nights -moments which had once been so sweet, and were now so solitary. She said not a word to any one, and tried hard to keep herself from thinking; and she wrote kind, cheerful letters to her boy, who, for his part, was so very good in writing regularly -so unlike most young men, as she told the people. But after she had finished those cheery, pleasant, gossiping letters, with all the news of the parish in them, Mrs. Mitford would sit down and have a good cry. Oh what a change there was! how silent the house was, how ghostly the garden where she was always thinking she heard his step! The servants came in and went out again, and the father and the mother would sit together softly without a word, as if they had no child. Thus it will be seen that, of all concerned, it was Mrs. Mitford who suffered most; but that none were satisfied, or felt the slightest approach of anything like happiness in the new state of afairs, unless, indeed, it might be Kate. CHAPTER XV. THERE is nothing so hard in human experience as to fit in the exceptional moments of life into their place, and bring them into a certain harmony with that which surrounds them; and in youth it is very hard to understand how it is that the exceptional can come only in moments. When the superlative either of misery or happiness arrives, there is nothing so difficult to an imaginative mind as to descend from that altitude and allow that the commonplace must return, and the ordinary resume its sway. And perhaps, more than any other crisis, the crisis of youthful passion and romance is the one which it is most difficult to come down from. It has wound up the young soul to an exaltation which has scarcely any parallel in life; even to the least visionary, the event which has happened - the union which has taken place between one heart and another- -the sentiment which has concentrated all beauty and lovableness and desirableness in one being, and made that being his — is something too supreme and dazzling to fall suddenly into the light of common day. John Mitford was not matter of fact, and the situation to him was doubly exciting. It was attended, besides, by the disruption of his entire life; and though he would readily have acknowledged that the rest of his existence could not be passed in those exquisite pangs and delights - that mixture of absolute rapture | into this, shivering as into an ice-cold bath, in being with her, and visionary despair at her absence which had made up the story of his brief courtship; yet there was in him a strong unexpressed sense that the theory of life altogether must henceforward be framed on a higher level that a finer ideal was before him, higher harmonies, a more perfect state of being; instead of all which dreams, when he came to himself he was seated on a high stool, before a desk, under the dusty window of Mr. Crediton's bank, with the sound of the swinging door, and the voices of the public, and the crackle of notes, and the jingle of coin in his ears, and a tedious trade to learn, in which there seemed to him no possible satisfaction of any kind. He had said that a clergyman's was the only work worth doing, with the sense that it was the only work for mankind in which a man could have any confidence. He had said so, while in the same breath he had expressed his want of absolute belief; and the one sentiment had not affected the other. But here he found himself in a sphere where it did not matter to any one what he believed — where he was utterly out of the way of influencing other people's thoughts - and had none of that work within reach which seems almost indispensable to men of his training - work which should affect his fellow-men. So long as he knew what two and two make, that seemed to be all the knowledge that was required of him. With a sense of surprise which almost stupefied him, he found that all the careful education of his life was as nought to him in his new sphere. If it did not harm him-which sometimes he thought it did at least it was totally useless. The multiplication table was of more use than Homer or Virgil; and John's mind was the mind of a scholar, not of an active thinker, much less doer. He was the kind of man that dwells and lingers upon the cadence of a line or the turn of a sentence -a man not always very sure which were the most real-the men and women in his books, or those he pushed against in the public ways. "We are such stuff as dreams are made of." Fancy a man with such words in his mouth finding himself all at once a dream among dreams, gazing vaguely over a counter at the public, feeling himself utterly incapable of any point of encounter with that public such as his education and previous training suggested, except in the way of counting out money to them, or adding up the sums against them. What a wonderful, wonderful change it was! And then to come down to this from that exaltation of love's dream-to jump out of all the excitement of youthful plans and fancies, visions of the nobler existence, ecstasy of first betrothal! The shock was so immense that it took away his breath. He sat all silent, chewing the cud of sweet and bitter fancy for days together, and then got his hat and walked back to the shabby little rooms he had taken on the outskirts of Crediton, stupefied, and not knowing what he was about. What was he to do when he got there? He ate his badly-cooked and painfully-homely meal, and then he would sit and stare at his two candles as he stared at the public in the bank. He did not feel capable of reading — what was the good of reading? Nothing that he had within his reach could be of any use to him in his new career, and his mind was not in a fit condition for resuming any studies or seeking out any occupation for itself. When Kate made inquiries into his life on the Sunday evenings, he found it very difficult to answer her. What could he say? There was nothing in it which was worth describing, or which it would have given her, he thought, anything but pain to know. "But tell me, have you nice rooms - is there a nice woman to look after you?" Kate would say. "If you don't answer me I shall have to go and see them some day when you are at the bank. I will say you are my cousin, or something. Or perhaps if I were to tell the truth," she added, softly, with her favourite trick, almost leaning her head against his arm, it would interest her, and she would take more pains." 66 "And what would you say if you said the truth?" said foolish John. Poor fellow! this was all he had for his sacrifice, and naturally he longed for his hire, such as it was. "I should say, of course, that you were a nearer one still, and a dearer one," said Kate, with a soft little laugh; "what else? but oh, John, is it not very different? That dear Fanshawe Regis, and your mother, and everything you have been used to. Is it not very, very different?" she cried, expecting that he would tell her how much more blessed were his poor lodgings and close work when brightened by the hope of her. "Yes, it is very different," he said, in a dreamy, dreary tone. The summer was stealing on; it was August by this time, and the days were shortening. And it was almost dark, as dark as a summer night can be, when they strayed about the garden in the High Street, which was so different from the Rectory garden. There were few flow 66 But you don't grudge it ?" she said, softly. Oh, John, there is something in your voice. you are not sorry you have done so much? for nothing but me?" ers, but at the farther end some great lime-on together up and down under the big trees, old and vast, which made the gravel- lime-trees, she gazing up at him, he bendpath look like a woodland road for twenty ing down to her, as they had done in the paces or so. She could not see his face in old garden at Fanshawe when he confided the dark, but there was in his voice some- his difficulties to her. He had thrust off thing of that inflection which promised a violently that series of difficulties, abandonflattering end to the sentence. Kate was a ing the conflict, but only to let a new set little chilled, she did not know why. of difficulties seize upon him in still greater strength than the former. And the whole was complicated by a sense that it was somehow her doing, and that a complaint of them was next to a reproach of her. But still it was not in nature, his mouth being thus opened, that John could refrain. I seem to be always complaining," he said "one time of circumstances, another time of myself; for it is of myself this time. Many a fellow would be overjoyed, no doubt, to find himself in the way of making his own fortune, but you can't think how little good I am. I suppose I never was very bright. If you will believe me, Kate, not only shall I never make any fortune where your father has placed me, but I am so stupid that I cannot see how a man may rise out of such a position, nor how a fortune is to be made." Sorry!" he said, stooping over her “sorry to be called into life when I did not know I was living! But, Kate, if it were not for this, that is my reward for everything, I will not deny that there a great difference. I should have been working upon men the other way; and one gets contemptuous of money. Never mind, I care for nothing while I have you." "I never knew any one that was contemptuous of money," said Kate, gravely; people here say money can do everything. That is why I want you to be rich." 66 Dear," he said, holding her close to him, "you don't understand, and neither did I. I don't think I shall ever be rich. "But people do it," said Kate, eagerly; How should I, a clerk in a bank? Your" one hears of them every day. Of course father does not show me any favour, and it I don't know how. It is energy or someis not to be expected he should. Who am thing-making up their minds to it; and I, that I should try to steal his child from him? Since I have been here, Kate, there are a great many things that I begin to understand "What?" she said, as he paused; raising in the soft summer dark her face to his. 66 Well, for one thing, what a gulf there is between you and me!" he said; "and how natural it was that your father should be vexed. And then, Kate-don't let it grieve you, darling - how very very unlikely it is that I shall ever be the rich man you want me to be. I thought when we spoke of it once that anything you told me to do would be easy; and so it would, if it was definite anything to bear if it was labouring night and day, suffering tortures for you of course though papa may look cross he must be favourable to you. John, you know he must. If I thought he was not, I should make him- I don't know what I should not make him do You must not make him do anything," said John. 66 You may be sure I don't mean to give in- I shall try my best, and perhaps there may be more in me than I think. I suppose it is seeing you, and being so far apart from you, that is the worst. Except to-night-if the Sundays came, say three times in a week "I don't think I should like that," said Kate; "but seriously, you know, don't you like to see me - are you-jealous?" she asked, with a little laugh. The talk had been too grave for her, and she was glad to draw it down to a lower sphere. Here Kate interrupted him with a little "If I were," he said, with a sudden glow sob of excitement, holding his arm clasped of passion, "I should go away. I have in both her hands: "Oh, John, do I want never faced that idea yet; but if I were you to suffer ?" she cried. You should-jealous, as you say have everything that was best in the world if it was me "But I don't know how to grow richI don't think I shall ever know," said John, with a sigh. Up to this moment he had restrained himself and had given no vent to his feelings, but when the ice was once broken they all burst forth. The two went "What?" she cried, with the curiosity of her kind, clinging to him in the fondest proximity, yet half pleased to play with her keen little dagger in his heart. "That would be the end," he said, with a long-drawn breath. And a thrill of excitement came over Kate which was more pleasurable than otherwise. Had she really |