THROUGH THE FURNACE:

Book the First.

MARTHA'S STORY.

CHAPTER VII.

AFTER THE FUNERAL.

By the blessing of Providence my presence of mind did not entirely desert me, even in that moment of agony and bewilderment. I ran into the hall and called to a lad who was a kind of page in our simple household. I despatched this boy post-haste for my uncle's medical man, and then went back to the dining-room.

My uncle Geoffrey had pushed one of the sofa pillows under his son's head, and was wiping Bernard's blood-stained lips with a handkerchief, which he could scarcely hold in his shaking hand. Three or four sheets of paper lay scattered on the ground near my cousin's prostrate figure. My heart sank within me as I saw those scattered sheets and recognized the writing that covered them; for it was my sister's.

"She has killed my son," cried my uncle, still wiping Bernard's lips in a helpless, nervous way, that showed how completely his mind had been unhinged by the shock that had come upon him so suddenly.

"But, dear uncle, what has happened, what does it all mean?" I asked.

"Read that," he answered, pointing to the letter, "and then you will know what a base and treacherous creature we have loved and trusted. Read your sister's letter to the man who was to have been her husband."

I heard the doctor's voice in the hall, and I gathered up the scattered sheets of Sophy's letter hastily as he entered the room. His presence brought with it the comfort and composure that always seem to accompany a medical man whom we trust. He made very light of my cousin's illness. It was only a fainting fit, he said, and some small blood vessel had been broken. I think he understood at once, with the subtle instinct of his profession, that something had happened, and he set himself at once to restore quiet, by reassuring words and prompt action.

"Now, my dear Mr. Champion, and my dear Miss Martha, I really must banish you before I can do anything. There is nothing seriously amiss with your cousin, and I will have him right in a few minutes if you leave us to ourselves. Relations, however affectionate, are always so dreadfully like a crowd in the street, in the matter of hustling and suffocating a patient. Mr. Bernard's room is ready for him I suppose? Yes, that is all right. We will get him to bed immediately, and in half an hour we will have him as well as ever he was in his life."

I saw that as the doctor said this he watched my uncle Geoffrey's face very anxiously, while he contrived, half by persuasion, half by a very gentle kind of force, to get him out of the room.

My uncle went into the study and shut the door after him. I went to the drawing room, where the pretty old-fashioned silver teatray, with its quaint Indian china service, was waiting for me on the table, near the bright, red fire. The hissing urn, the fire, the crimson curtains cosily drawn, my uncle's luxurious chair wheeled close to the hearth, and the London papers airing on the white sheep-skin rug, all made such a pretty picture of domestic comfort. And I had fancied that this evening would be so happy!

I sat down by the lamp and looked at my sister's letter. A hasty glance at the first page told me what I had suspected from the moment in which I had seen my cousin's white face, as he lay upon the ground. Sophy had run away from the home that had sheltered her so long. She had left us a week before the day fixed for the wedding. She had gone away from us to marry Lawrence Annesley. I only read. enough to tell me this, and then I went to see if I could assist in any arrangements that might be necessary for my cousin's comfort.

I found that very little was required. Repose, our doctor said, was the only medicine needed for his patient's complete recovery. He told me he was more uneasy on my uncle's account than for Bernard.

"Your cousin's constitution is powerful enough to support any shock," he said; "but we must be very careful of the rector. I am afraid there is some mental disquietude at the bottom of this attack of your cousin's, some anxiety that is, no doubt, shared by his father. I think your uncle is in his son's room. I have given Bernard a hint; and I know he will do all he can to restore composure to his father's mind."

"Bernard is better, then. He has quite recovered from the fainting fit."

"Yes. He only requires now to be kept very quiet. I have forbidden Mr. Champion to stay with him more than ten minutes."

My uncle came out of Bernard's room while I was talking to the doctor. He came slowly down-stairs and into the dining room, where

Mr. Jefferson and I had been standing. The doctor stopped to talk to him for a few minutes, while I ran back to the drawing room to pour out a cup of tea, which I brought for my uncle.

"Yes, that is quite right, Miss Patty," said Mr. Jefferson, as I carried it into the room. "Mr. Champion will take some tea. You may be quite easy about your son, sir," he added, turning to my uncle. "Mr. Bernard will do very well, and will be able to attend to his duty to-morrow as well as he did yesterday."

"That is very possible," answered my uncle, sadly. "Bernard is not the man to abandon his duty. I have no doubt you have done the very best that can be done for him, my dear Jefferson. But there are a few diseases that do not come within the compass of your art, and a broken heart is one of them. My son has received a blow to-night which he will never recover so long as he lives."

My uncle was taking the cup of tea from my hands as he spoke. He looked up at me with the gentlest and tenderest expression in

his eyes.

"You must not think that I shall love you any the less for this, my dear," he said, softly.

"It doesn't do to attach too much importance to a young man's trouble, my dear Mr. Champion," said the doctor; "young men do not, as a rule, break their hearts. A disappointment coming upon a man of your age or mine is likely to strike home, for it comes after a long course of disappointments. It is the last straw, you know, under which the camel is likely to lie down and die; but what a load the animal will carry while he is young and hopeful, and has not yet discovered that his life is to be made up of bearing other people's burdens! You need have no uneasiness about your son. With such a chest and such shoulders as he has, a man cannot die of a broken heart. He will knock under for a week or so perhaps, and then he will shake his grief away from him, as a young racehorse shakes off a gadfly, and will be all the better man for his trial."

us.

Mr. Jefferson and my uncle shook hands, and then the doctor left When the door closed upon him, I knelt at my benefactor's feet and implored him to be comforted. Even now, I thank God when I remember that evening; I thank God with all my heart, when I remember that I was permitted to afford some consolation to that dear and noble friend.

He talked to me as freely as if I had been his child, and told me how my cousin had opened the letter, and how, after reading the first page, he groaned aloud, with a strange gurgling noise in his throat, and then fell like a dead man at his father's feet. Little by little I told my uncle all the story of the past, and what I had done in my desire to separate my sister from Lawrence Annesley.

"You acted for the best, my dear," he said; "I do not doubt that

for a moment; but it would have been better to have spoken-nothing is so good as the truth. The blow would have been heavy then, but it falls so much more heavily now."

All that evening I sat with my dear uncle. He was very calm, but it seemed to me as if Bernard's grief was quite as much his as it was Bernard's: the stroke that had fallen so suddenly had crushed the father as well as the son.

"I loved her so dearly," he said; "she has been false to me as well as to him. If she had come to me--if she had trusted me, as she might have done,-I could have softened this grief for my boy. But to steal away from the house like some criminal; to let things go on so long, and then to desert my son. It has been too cruel, Patty— it has been too cruel. Heaven help me to feel as a Christian should, but it will be very difficult for me to forgive her."

"She has been tempted away, uncle Geoffrey," I said; "she did not mean to go this morning. I know that, for she asked me to stay at home with her, and promised to spend all the day at home. Ah, if I had only stayed!"

"It has been the will of Providence that my son should suffer this grief," my uncle answered gravely. "How easy it is to recognize God's will in the stroke that afflicts us, and yet how difficult not to be angry with the instrument that works His will. Don't cry, Patty; I will try to forgive your sister. It is all the more difficult for me to forgive her because I love her so much. Let me think of her when she was a little child, with her head nestling on my breast; let me remember her as she was when I first brought her to this house."

We sat together, sometimes talking sadly of what had happened, sometimes silent, until the usual hour for evening prayer. I rang the bell, and the servants came quietly in and took their places. It seemed to me as if they all had guessed the nature of our trouble. My sister's disappearance-the letter-these had helped them, no doubt, to solve the mystery. They were servants who had lived with us for a long time, and I believe they felt very sincerely for us in our sorrow; as servants will in households where the gulf between the parlour and the kitchen is bridged over by small kindnesses and friendly sympathy with humble pleasures and vexations.

My uncle Geoffrey read the simple evening prayer. His tones were unbroken, but the voice was low and faint, and the sound of it gave me unspeakable pain. Ah, how shall I ever forget all the sorrow of that sad night, and the bitter grief that followed it!

My uncle kissed and blest me as he bade me good night. I thank God for the inspiration that urged me to tell him at that moment what until then I had never in all my life expressed in any form of words. I told him that an orphan girl, who might have been a

friendless castaway but for him, cherished the memory of his goodness in her heart of hearts, and would so cherish it until that heart was cold in death. His bounties were so freely given, and carried with them so little sense of obligation, that until that night I had never said even so much as this. If I had waited to say it after that night, I should have waited until it was too late.

They found my uncle Geoffrey sleeping very peacefully the next morning; but it was in the sleep of death. He had long been suffering from a heart disease, and it seemed but too probable that the shock of his son's grief had killed him. My cousin came to tell me what had happened.

"Do you remember what I said to you a long time ago, Patty,” he asked, after he had sat in silence for some time, with his face hidden by his folded arms; "I have no Christian feeling for any one who touches my father. Sophy Champion has been the cause of his untimely death, and I will never forgive her so long as I live."

I will not dwell upon that sad time. No words that I can write would tell how much I suffered. We suffer these things, and live through them. I think a merciful stupor comes down upon us, in which the first sharp anguish passes by-felt only in a dim, confused manner, like the pain of an operation endured under the influence of chloroform. The sorrow that comes afterwards is the worst,-the blank, dreary sorrow that takes possession of us when we are calm enough to realize how much we have lost.

My uncle Geoffrey's funeral train left the dear old home under the cold spring sunlight which was to have looked upon my sister's bridal. It was a bitter day for Bernard and for me; one of those days whose bitterness comes back to us with every recurring year, inseparable from the season and the atmosphere. As I stood by my uncle's grave I felt and knew that my youth was gone from me for ever. Oh, what a careless, happy time it seemed to have been now that it was gone. The memory of every foolish tear I had ever shed reproached me like the memory of a sin. Had I ever been sufficiently grateful for so many blessings, had I ever known how many they were, until now, when they were gone.

We went home to the rectory very sorrowful. We were only guests on sufferance now in that house which had so long been our home. Bernard was to go to his new duties in a few weeks-the bright spring weeks which were to have been devoted to his wedding tour;-and for myself, I had to find some new home, to make some new plans for my future. I had made none as yet. Could I think of the future, when he who had been so dear to me in the past lay lifeless in the home he had made so happy.

My uncle's will was read by the lawyer who had made it. As