indifferent to eyesight and everything other matter here are the facts of the else, in the chills of that advanced age. "Nelly, you are not too civil," said Mrs. Eastwood, touching the toe of Nelly's pretty shoe with her own velvet slipper, in warning and reproof. The girl drew her toes out of the way, but did not make any apology. She was not fond of Mrs. Everard, nor indeed was any one in the house. "Of course, I don't mean that your decision had anything whatever to do with Frederick's illness," Mrs. Everard resumed, "that I don't need to say. He might have been ill at home as much as abroad. I am speaking now on the original question. Of course, if Frederick had not gone away, you would have been spared this anxiety, and might have nursed him comfortably at home. But this is incidental. What I am sorry for is that you are bringing a girl into your house whom you know nothing of. She may be very nice, but she may be quite the reverse. Of course one can never tell whether it may or may not be a happy change even for her but it is a great risk for you. It is a very brave thing to do. I should not have the courage to make such an experiment, though it would be a great deal simpler in my house, where there is no one to be affected but myself." "I don't see where the courage lies," said Nelly; "a girl of sixteen. What harm could she do to any one?" "Oh, a great deal of harm, if she chose," said Mrs. Everard; "a girl of sixteen, in a house full of young men ! One or the other of them will fall in love with her to a certainty if she is at all pretty "Oh, please!" said Mrs. Eastwood; "you do think so oddly, pardon me for saying so, about the boys. Frederick is grown up, of course, but the last young man in the world to think of a little cousin. And as for Dick he is a mere | boy, and Jenny! Don't be vexed if laugh. This is too funny." case. Frederick is ill, you don't know how or with what; he has taken a long and dangerous journey. "Not dangerous, dear, not danger ous "Well, not dangerous if you please, but long and fatiguing, and troublesome to a man who is ill. He has gone on to Pisa in a bad state of health. You know that he has reached so far; and you know no more. Of course he will be anxious to get home again as quick as possible. What if he were to get worse on the road? There is nothing more likely, and the torturing anxiety you would feel in such cir cumstances I need not suggest to you. You will be terribly unhappy. You will wait for news until you feel it impossible to wait any longer, and then when your strength and patience are exhausted, you will rush off to go to him—most likely too late." "Oh, have a little pity upon me! Don't talk so - don't think so "I can't stop my thoughts," said Mrs. Everard, not without a little complacency, "and I have known such things to happen before now. What more likely than that he should start before he is equal to the journey, and break down on the way home? Then you would certainly go to him; and my advice is, go to him now. Anticipating the evil in that way you would probably prevent it. In your place I would not lose a day." "But I could not reach Pisa,” said Mrs. Eastwood, nervously taking out her watch, "I could not reach Pisa, even if I were to start to-night, before they had left it; and how can I tell which way they would come? I should miss them to a certainty. I should get there just when they were arriving here. I should have double anxiety, and double expense "If they ever arrived here," said Mrs. Everard, ominously; "but indeed it is not my part to interfere. Some people can bear anxiety so much better than others. I know it would kill me." Mrs. Eastwood very naturally objected to such a conclusion. To put up with the imputation of feeling less than her friend, or any other woman, in the circumstances, was unbearable. "Then you really think I have reason to be alarmed," she said in a tremulous voice. "I hope you will always think it as funny," said the Privy Councillor solemnly, "but I know you and I don't think alike on these subjects. Half the ridiculous marriages in the world spring out of the fact that parents will not see when boys and girls start up into men and women. I don't mean to say that harm will come of it immediately but once she is "I should not have any doubt on the in your house there is no telling how you subject," said her adviser. "A young are to get rid of her. However, I sup-man in delicate health, a long journey, pose your mind is made up. About the cold February weather, and not even a doctor whom you can rely upon to see must certainly fall on the culprit's own him before he starts. Recollect I would head. not say half so much if I did not feel quite sure that you would be forced to go at last and probably too late." CHAPTER X. THE ARRIVAL. "Oh don't say those awful words!" said the poor woman. And thus the con- To the reader who is better acquainted versation went on, till Brownlow ap- with the causes and the character of Fredpeared with the lamp, interrupting the erick Eastwood's detention on his jouragitating discussion. Then Mrs. Eve-ney than either his mother or her Privy rard went her way, leaving her friend in Councillor the fears entertained by these very low spirits with Nelly, who though ladies in respect to his health will scarcekept up by a wholesome spirit of opposi-ly appear deserving of much consideration, was yet moved, in spite of herself, by the gloomy picture upon which she had been looking. They sat together over the fire for a little longer, very tearful and miserable, while Mrs. Everard went home, strong in the sense of having done her duty, "however things might turn out." tion. His health, indeed, very soon came right again. Two days' rest at Pisa, the substitution of the vin du pays for champagne, and the absence of other excitements, made him quite equal to contemplate the journey home without anxiety, so far as his own interesting person was concerned. He had difficulties enough, however, of another kind. He obliged to stay a day longer than he intended, in order to fit out his cousin with various things pronounced by Mrs. Drain was "Must you really go, Mamma?" said Nelly, much subdued, consulting her watch, in her turn, and thinking of the hurried start at eight o'clock to catch the night train, and of the dismal midnight crossing of that Channel which travellers | ham to be indispensable. She had to be hate and fear. "It will be a dreadful journey. Must you really go?" "What do you think, Nelly?" said Mrs. Eastwood, beginning to recover a little. "I have the greatest respect for Jane Everard's opinion, but she does always take the darkest view of everything. Oh, Nelly, what would you advise me to do?" This was an infallible sign that the mercury had begun to rise. "Pressure had decreased," to use a scientific term. The mother and daughter made up their minds, after much discussion, that to catch the night train would be impossible, and that there might perhaps be further news next day. "If that is your opinion, Nelly?" Mrs Eastwood said, as they went upstairs, supporting herself with natural casuistry upon her child's counsel. The fact was that she saw very clearly all the practical difficulties of the question. She loved advice, and did not think it correct for "a woman in my position" to take any important step without consulting her friends; and their counsel moved her deeply. She gave all her attention to it, and received it with respectful conviction; but she did not take it. It would be impossible to overestimate the advantage this gave her over all her advisers. "I knew she had made up her mind," Mrs. Everard said next day, with resignation. Whatever might happen she had done her duty; and the consequences clothed in something more fit for a journey than the thin black frock which Niccolo had ordered for her at her father's death. Pisa did not afford much in the way of toilette; but still the dress and cloak procured by Mrs. Drainham were presentable, and the fastidious young man was extremely grateful to the physician's pretty wife for clothing his companion so that he should not be ashamed to be seen with her, which would have been the case had the poor child travelled as she intended in her only warm garment, the velvet cloak. "It must have been a stage property in its day," Frederick said, looking at the many tints of its old age with disgust. Innocent hid it away instantly in the depths of her old trunk, and sat proudly shivering with cold in her thin frock through all the long evening, the cold, long, lingering night which preceded their departure. She thought her cousin would have come to her; but Frederick wisely reflected that he would have enough of her society for the next few days, and preferred the Drainham's comfortable drawing-room instead. Poor Innocent! she stood in the old way at the window, but not impassive as of old, looking for some one this time, and trying with a beating heart to make him out among the crowd that moved along the Lung' Arno. This expectation engrossed her so much that she forgot to think of the change that was about to come upon Santissima Madonna!" cried Niccolo, "you will die of cold, my poor young lady; you have nothing but this thin dress, which cannot keep you warm. Where in the name of all the saints is your cloak?" "I have put it away. It is ugly; it is not fit to wear," cried Innocent. "It is a thing of the theatre. Why did you let me wear it?" and she put off his hand gently enough, but coldly, and continued her watch. "A thing of the theatre!" cried Niccolo, indignant, "when I bought it myself at the sale of the pittore Inglese, who died over the way; and you looked like a princess when you put it on, and warm as a bird in a nest. But I know who it is that turns you against your old dresses and your old way of living and your poor old Niccolo. It is the cousin. I hope he will be to you all we have been, Signorina. But in the meantime my young lady is served, and if she does not eat, the maccaroni will be cold. Cold maccaroni is good for no one. The cousin will not come to-night." her life. I do not know, indeed, that she | solitary meal. He touched her shoulder was capable of thinking of anything so caressingly with his hand. complex as this change. She had wandered from one place to another with her father, living always the same dreary, secluded life, having such simple wants as she was conscious of supplied, and nothing ever required of her. I believe, had it been suggested to her unawakened mind that thenceforward she must do without Niccolo, this would have been the most forcible way of rousing her to thought of what was about to happen. And, indeed, this was exactly the course which was about to be taken, though without any idea on the part of Niccolo of the effect it would produce. He came in as usual with his little tray, the salad heaped up, green and glistening with oil just as he liked it himself. Beside it, as this was the last evening, was a small, but smoking hot, dish of maccaroni, a morsel of cheese on a plate, and a petit pain, more delicate than the dry Italian bread. The usual small flask of red wine flanked this meal, which Niccolo brought in with some state, as became the little festa which he had prepared for his charge. Tears were in the good fellow's eyes, though his beard was divided in its blackness by the kind smile, which displayed his red lips and white teeth. He arranged it on the little table close by the stove, placed the chair beside it, and "But I do know," said Niccolo; "he trimmed the lamp before he called upon went to the house of the English doctor his Signorina, whose position by the win- half an hour ago, and bid me tell the Sidow he had immediately remarked with a gnorina to be prepared at ten to-morrow. shrug of his shoulders. He had taken Come, then, to the maccaroni. When care of her all her life; but I am not everything else fails it is always good to quite sure that the good Niccolo was not have maccaroni to fall back upon. Chiha glad to be relieved of a charge so embar-buon pane, e buon vino, ha troppo un mirassing. His own prospects were cer- colino." tainly brightened by her departure. He "I do not care for maccaroni," said had served her father faithfully and long Innocent. She turned from the window, with but poor recompense, and now the however, with a dawning of the pride of reward of his faithfulness was coming to a woman who feels herself slighted. Niccolo in the shape of a better place, Niccolo, I do not want anything: you with higher wages and a position which can go away." was very splendid in his eyes. Never was heart more disposed to entertain a romantic devotion for the child he had nurtured; but it is difficult for the warmest heart to give itself up in blind love to an utterly unresponsive being, whether child or man, and as Innocent did not love Niccolo or any one else the separation from her was less hard than it might otherwise have been. Nevertheless, there were tears in his eyes, and his heart was softened and melting when he arranged her supper for her, and went to the cold window to call her to her "You do not know," said Innocent, turning a momentary look upon him, which was half a defiance and half a question. 66 "And this is how she parts with the old Niccolo!" he cried. "I have carried her in my arms when she was little. I have dressed her, and prepared for her to eat and drink all her life. I have taken her to the festa, and to the church. I have done all for her-all! and the last night she tells me -'I do not want anything, Niccolo; you may go away.'" "The last night?" said Innocent, moved a little. She shivered with the cold, and with the pang of desertion, and with that new-born sense of her loneliness which had never struck her before. She knelt down by the stove to get a little warmth, and turned her eyes inquiringly upon him. She knew what he meant very well, and yet she did not know. care." - young lady," he said, wiping the great tears from her eyes with his own red handkerchief, a service which he, indeed, had performed many a time before. "Carissima Signorina mia! There will never "The last night," said Niccolo. "To-be a day of my life that I will not think morrow evening you will be upon the of you, nor shall I ever enter a church great sea; you will be on your way to without putting the blessed Madonna in your relations, to your England, which mind of my poor, dear, well-beloved cannot be colder than your heart, Signo- young lady who has no mother! Never, rina. I weep, for I cannot forget that carina! never, my child, my little misyou were once a little child, and that I tress! You may always rely upon your carried you in my arms. When I reflect old Niccolo; and when my young lady that it is fifteen years, fifteen years that marries a rich milordo she will come back I have taken care of you, from the mo- to Pisa, and seek out her old servant, and ment your nurse left you, disgraziata! say to the handsome, beautiful young and that after to-morrow I shall see you husband-This is my old Niccolo, that no more! Whatever has to be done for brought me up!' Ah, carina mia," cried you must be done by others, or will not the good fellow, laughing and crying, and be done at all, which is more likely. applying the red handkerchief first to InWhen you want anything you may call nocent's cheeks and then to his own; 'Niccolo, Niccolo;' but there will be no "that will be a magnificent day to look Niccolo to reply. If I were to permit my- forward to! The young Milordo will say self to think of all this I should become immediately, 'Niccolo shall be the Maespazzo, Signorina though you don't tro della casa; he shall live and die in my service.' Ah, my beautiful Signorina, Innocent said nothing; but slowly the what happiness! I will go with you to reality of this tremendous alteration in England or anywhere. You were born to her lot made itself apparent to her. No be our delight!" cried Niccolo, carried Niccolo! She could not realize it. With away by his feelings, and evidently imNiccolo, too, many other things would agining that the giorno magnifico had ardisappear. She looked round the lofty rived already. Innocent, however, did bare walls, which, indeed, had few attrac- not follow these rapid vicissitudes of feeltions, except those of use and wont, and ing. To get one clear idea into her mind Sometimes she faintly it dawned upon her that her whole was difficult enough. life and everything that was familiar to looked at him, sometimes into the little her was about to vanish away. Large fire, with its ruddy embers. tears filled her eyes; she turned to Nic- was giddy, her heart dully aching. All colo an appealing, beseeching look. "I was going away from her; the room, the do not understand," she cried, with a walls, seemed to turn slowly round, as if panting breath; and put out her hands, they would dissolve and break up into vaand clung to him. He who was about to pour. The very dumbness of her heart be left behind was the emblem of all the made this vague sense of misery the more known, the familiar-I do not say the terrible; she could say nothing. She dear-for the girl's heart and soul had could not have told what she felt or what been sealed up, and she loved nothing. she feared: but all the world seemed to But she knew him, and relied upon him, be dissolving about her into coldness and and had that child's trust that he would darkness and loneliness; the cold penenever fail her, which is often all that a trated to her very soul; she was miserchild knows of love. No Niccolo! She able, as we may imagine a dumb animal did not understand how existence was to to be, without any way of relieving itself go on without him. She clung to him of the confused pain in its mind. with a look of sudden alarm and dismay in her dilated eyes. The good Niccolo was satisfied. He had not wished or attempted to rouse that miserable, vague sense of desertion and abandonment of which he had no comprehension; but he was satisfied to have brought out some evidence of feeling, and also that his dramatic appeal had produced the due effect. My dearest 66 Her head Niccolo, after a while, became alarmed, and devoted himself to her restoration with all the tender kindness of his race. He rushed to the trunk, and got out the old mantle, in which he wrapped her; he put the scaldino into her hands, he brought her wine, and petted and smiled her back into composure. He carried the largest scaldino in the house, full of the reddest embers, into her stony bedroom. And next morning Innocent's old world did break up into clouds and vapours. For the last time she stole over to the little church in the dark morning, and said the Lord's Prayer, and then sat still, looking at the little altar, where this time the candles were lighted, and a priest saying mass. The mass had nothing to do with Innocent. The drone of the monotonous voice, the gleam of the candles, made no sort of impression upon her. Her imagination was as little awakened as her heart was. If she thought of anything at all it was, with a sore sense of a wound somewhere, that Frederick had left her, that he had not come near her, that he was happy away from her; but all quite vague; nothing definite in it, except the pang. And then Santa Maria della Spina, and the high houses opposite, and the yellow river below, and the clustered buildings about the Duomo, and all Pisa, in short, melted into the clouds, and rolled away like a passing storm, and the new world began. "It is not the cold," he said to himself, angry, sea, which had to be crossed to "it is the sorrow, poverina! poverina! England. It was not a "silver streak " Let no one say after this that she has not that day. There are a great many days a tender heart." And when she went to n the year, as the traveller knows, in bed Niccolo stayed up all night-cheer- which it is anything but a "silver streak." ful, yet sad to finish the packing, to set In short, few things wilder, darker, more everything straight, and to leave the tempestuous, and terrible could be conapartment in such order that the Mar-ceived than the black belt of Channel chese Scaramucci might have no griev-across which Innocent fought her way in ance against his tenant, and as small a the Dover steamboat to where a darker bill of repairs as possible. Good, kindly shadow lay upon the edge of the boiling, soul; he was rather glad though on the water, a shadow which was England. For whole that to-morrow he was going to the a wonder she was not sea-sick. Frednew master, who was rich, and kept a erick, whose self-control under such cirnumber of servants, and who, being a cumstances was dubious, had established Milordo, might perhaps be cheated now her in a corner, and then had left her, not and then in a friendly way. coming near her again till they entered the harbour, which was no unkindness on his part, but an effort of self-preservation, which the most exigeant would have ap proved. He had been very good to her on the journey, studying her comfort in every way, taking care of her almost as Niccolo had done, excusing all her little misadventures with her hand-bag, and the shawl she carried over her arm. He had let her head rest upon his shoulder; he had allowed her to hold his hand fast when the steamboat went up and down on the Mediterranean. These days of fatigue had been halcyon days of perfect repose, and confidence in her companion. The poor child had never known any love in her barren life, and this kindness, which she did not know either, seemed in her eyes something heavenly, delicious beyond power of description. It had never been possible for her to cling to any one before, and yet her nature and breeding both made her dependent, and helpless in her ignorance. Frederick appeared to her in such a light as had as yet touched nothing else in earth or heaven. Her heart woke to him and clung to him, but went no further. Her eyes searched all the dark figures on the deck in search of him when self-preservation drove him from her side. A cloud — an additional cloud-came on the world when he was absent. She felt no interest in the darksome England which loomed out of the mists; no curiosity even about the home it enclosed, or the unknown women who would hereafter so strangely affect her happiness. She gazed blankly at the cliffs rising through the fog, at the lights blown about by the wind, which shone out upon the stormy sea, and the bustle on the shore of the crowd which awaited the arrival of the steamer. All that she felt was again that ache (but slighter than before) to think that Frederick liked to What kind of a strange phantasmagoric world this was, full of glares of light and long stretches of darkness; of black, plunging, angry waves, ready to drown the quivering, creaking, struggling vessel, which carried her and her fortunes; then of lights again wavering and dancing before the eyes, which were still unsteady from the sea; and once more the long sweep of the railway through the night, more lights, more darkness, succeeding and succeeding each other like the changes in a dream we need not attempt to describe. It was four days after their start from Pisa, when her strength was quite worn out by the continuous and unusual fatigue both to body and mind, her nerves shaken, and all her powers of sensation dulled, when, shuddering at the sight, she came again to the short, but |