She thrust a letter into my hand, and, going away with a rapid step to the window, stood there with her back to me, looking out. I saw her standing against the light, playing restlessly with the tassel of the blind. In her desire to seem composed, or else in the mere excitement which boiled in her veins, she began to hum a tune. I don't think she knew herself what it was. The letter which she professed to have taken so easily was worn with much reading, and it had been carried about, folded and refolded a hundred times. There was no sign of indifference in all thatand this is what it said: been bad, and things had gone wrong; and then something with a sort of laugh that he had got other thoughts in his mind at last, as she knew all along he would, and that she was glad. What could she mean?" I did not know what she could mean, but I resolved to go and see Ellen to ascertain what the change was. It is easier, however, to say than to do when one is full of one's own affairs, and so it happened that for a full week, though intending to go every day, I never did so. It was partly my fault. The family affairs were many, and the family interests engrossing. It was not that I cared for Ellen less, but my own claimed me on every hand. When one afternoon, "I got your last letter, dear Ellen, on about a fortnight after, I was told that Tuesday. I think you must have written Miss Harwood was in the drawing-room in low spirits. Perhaps you had a feeland wished to speak to me, my heart up-ing, such as we used to talk about, of braided me with my neglect. I hurried what was happening here. As for me, to her and led her away from that public nobody could be in lower spirits than place where everybody came and went, to this leaves me. I have lost heart altomy own little sitting-room, where we might gether. Everything has gone wrong; the be alone. Ellen was very pale; her eyes business is at an end: I shut up the office looked very dry and bright, not dewy and to-day. If it is in any way my fault, God soft as they used to be. There was a forgive me! But the conflict in my heart feverish look of unrest and excitement has been so great that I sometimes fear about her. "There is something wrong," it must be my fault. I had been low I cried. "What is it? Chatty told me enough before, thinking and thinking how -something about John." the end was to come between you and me. Everything has gone wrong inside and out. I had such confidence, and now it is all going. What I had most faith in has deceived me. I thought I never was the man to change or to fail, and that I could have trusted myself in any circumstances; but it does not seem so. why should I keep you hanging on when all's wrong with me? I always thought I could redeem it; but it hasn't proved so. You must just give me up, Ellen, as a bad job. Sometimes I have thought you wished it. Where I am to drift to, I can't tell; but there's no prospect of drifting back, or, what I hoped for, sailing back in prosperity to you. You have seen it coming, I can see by your letters, and I think, perhaps, though it seems strange to say so, that you won't mind. I shall not stay here; but I have not made up my mind where to go. Forget a poor fellow_that was never worthy to be yours.-JOHN RIDGWAY." "I don't know that it is anything wrong," she said. The smile that had frightened Chatty came over her face a smile that made one unhappy, the lip drawn tightly over the teeth in the most ghastly mockery of amusement. “No; I don't know that it is anything wrong. You know I always expected—always, from the moment he went away. that between him and me things would soon be at an end. Oh, yes, I expected it, and I did not wish it otherwise; for what good is it to me that a man should be engaged to me, and waste his life for me, when I never could do anything for him?" Here she made a little breathless pause, and laughed. "Oh, don't, Ellen, don't!" I cried. I could not bear the laugh; the smile was bad enough. Why not?" she said, with a little defiance; "would you have me cry? I expected it long ago. The wonder is that it should have been so long of coming. That is," she cried suddenly after a pause, "that is if this is really what it means. I took it for granted at first; but I cannot be certain. I cannot be certain! Read it, you who know him, and tell me, tell me! Oh, I can bear it quite well. I should be rather glad if this is what it means." And My hands dropped with the letter in them. The rustle it made was the only sign she could have had that I had read it, or else instinct or inward vision. That instant she turned upon me from the window with a cry of wild suspense: "Well?” "I am confounded. I don't know what to think. Ellen, it looks more like guilt to the office than falsehood to you." "Guilt-to the office! Her face blazed up at once in scorching color. She looked at me in fierce resentment and excitement, stamping her foot. "Guilt -to the office! How dare you? How dare you?" she cried like a fury. She clenched her hands at me, and looked as if she could have torn me in pieces. "Whatever he has done," she cried, "he has done nothing he had not a right to do. Do you know who you are speaking of? John! You might as well tell me I had broken into your house at night and robbed you. He have anything to blame himself for with the office?-never! nor with any one. What he has done is what he had a right to do I am the first to say so. He has been wearied out. You said it once yourself, long, long before my eyes were opened; and at last he has done it and he had a good right!" She stood for one moment before me in the fervor of this fiery address; then, suddenly, she sank and dropped on her knees by my side. "You think it means that? You see it? don't you see it? He has grown weary, as was so natural. He thought he could trust himself; but it proved different; and then he thought he could redeem it. What can that mean but one thing?-he has got some one else to care for him. There is nothing wrong in that. It is not I that will ever blame him. The only thing was that a horrible doubt came over me this morning if it should not mean what I thought it did! That is folly, I know; but you, who know him, put away all that nonsense about wrong to the office, which is out of the question, and you will see it cannot be anything but one thing." "It is not that," I said. She clasped her hands, kneeling by my side. "You always took his part," she said in a low voice. "You will not see it." Why did she tremble so? Did she want to believe it, or not to believe it? I could not understand Ellen. Just then, from the room below, there came a voice singing. It was Chatty's voice, the child whom she had taught, who had been the witness of their wooing. She knew nothing about all this; she did not even know that Ellen was in the house. What so natural as that she should sing the song her mistress had taught her? It was that which Ellen herself had been humming as she stood at the window. "Listen!" I said. "You are answered in his own words-'I will come again.' This was more than Ellen could bear. She made one effort to rise to her feet, to regain her composure; but the music was too much. At that moment I myself felt it too much. She fell down at my feet in a passion of sobs and tears. Afterwards I knew the meaning of Ellen's passionate determination to admit no meaning but one to the letter. She had taken him at his word. In her certainty that this was to happen, she had seen no other interpretation to it, until it was too late. She had never sent any reply; and he had not written again. It was now a month since the letter had been received, and this sudden breaking off of the correspondence had been so far final on both sides. To satisfy myself, I sent to inquire at the office, and found that no blame was attached to John; but that he had been much depressed, unduly depressed, by his failure to remedy the faults of his predecessor, and had left as soon as his accounts were forwarded and all the business details carefully wound up, and had not been heard of more. I compelled, I may say, Ellen to write, now that it was too late; but her letter was returned to her some time after. He had left the place, and nothing of him was known. CHAPTER VIII. THIS little tragedy, as it appeared to me, made a great impression on my mind. It did not make me ill; that would have been absurd. But still it helped, I suppose, to depress me generally and enhance the effect of the cold that had hung about me so long, and for which the elder ones, taking counsel together, decided that the desire of the younger ones should be gratified, and I should be made to go to Italy for the spring. The girls were wild to go, and my long-continued, lingering cold was such a good excuse. For my own part, I was quite unwilling; but what can one woman, especially when she is their mother, do against so many? I had to give in and go. I went to see Ellen before we started, and it was a very painful visit. She was still keeping up with a certain defiance of everybody. But in the last two months she had changed wonderfully. For one thing, she had shrunk into half her size. She was never anything but a little woman; but now she seemed to me no bigger than a child. And those cheerful, happy brown eyes, which had so triumphed over and smiled at all the privations of life, looked out from two hollow caverns, twice as large as they had ever been before, and ways. Oh! if one could only tell what is going to happen. She might have had a nice family by this time, and the eldest little girl big enough to run in and play at his feet and amuse her grandpa. He always was fond of children. But we'll never see Ellen's children now!" cried the poor woman. "And you think it is my fault!" I could not reproach her; her black cap with the flowers, her little woollen shawl about her shoulders, grew tragic as she poured forth her trouble. It was not so dignified as the poet's picture, but yet, like him, she Saw the unborn faces shine Beside the never-lighted fire; and with a groan of misery felt herself the slayer of those innocents that had never been. The tragic and the comic mingled in the vision of that "eldest little girl," the child who would have amused her grandpa had she been permitted to come into being; but it was all tragic to poor Mrs. Harwood. She saw no laugh, no smile, in the situation anywhere. We went to Mentone, and stayed there till the bitterness of the winter was over, then moved along that delightful coast, and were in Genoa in April. To speak of that stately city as a commercial town seems insulting nowadays and yet so it is. I recognized at once the type I had known in other days when I sat at the window of the hotel and watched the people coming and going. It reminded me of my window in the Road, where, looking out, I saw the respectable City people clerks like John Ridgway, and merchants of the same cut though of more substantial comfort wending their way to their business in the morning, and to their subur"How do you think she is looking? ban homes in the evening. I do not know She will not say a word to me about him that I love the commercial world; but I not a word. Don't you think she has like to see that natural order of life, the been too hasty? Oh! I would give every-man "going out to his work and labor till thing I have if she would only go with you and look for John, and make it up with him again." "I thought you could not spare her," I said, with perhaps some cruelty in my intention. She wrung her hands, and looked piteously in my face. "You think it is all my fault! I never thought it would come to this; I never thought he would go away. Oh, if I had only let them marry at first! I often think if she had been happy in her own house, coming to see her father every day, it would have been more of a change for him, more company than having her alVOL. XXXIII, 1674 LIVING AGE. the evening." The fashion of it is different in a foreign town, but still the life is the same. We changed our quarters, however, after we had been for some time in that city, so-called of palaces, and were lodged in a suite of rooms very hard to get up to (though the staircase was marble), but very delightful when one was there; rooms which overlooked the high terrace which runs round a portion of the bay between the inns and the quays. I forget what it is called. It is a beautiful promenade, commanding the loveliest view of that most beautiful bay and all that is going on in it. At night, with all "Ah! you have seen his face," I said; and then, before she had spoken, it suddenly flashed on myself in a moment. "John Ridgway!" I cried. "Mother," said Chatty, quite pale, “I think it is his ghost." its twinkling semicircle of lights, it was a | And he puzzled as much as he interested continual enchantment to me; but this or me. Whom was he like? I never even any of my private admirations are not asked myself, Who was he? He was nomuch to the purpose of my story. Sitting body I had any way of knowing. Some at the window, always my favorite post, I poor employé in a Genoa office; how became acquainted with various individ- should I know him? I could not feel at ual figures among those who haunted this all sure, when I was cross-examined on terrace. Old gentlemen going out to sun the subject, whether I really remembered themselves in the morning before the heat any one whom he was like; but yet he was too great; children and nursemaids, had startled me more than I can say. Genoese women with their pretty veils, Genoa, where we had friends and faminvalids who had got up the stairs, I can-ily reasons for staying, became very hot not tell how, and sat panting on the as the spring advanced into early summer, benches, enjoying the sea air and the sun- and we removed to one of the lovely little shine. There was one, however, among towns on the coast at a little distance, this panorama of passing figures, which Santa Margherita. When we had been gave me a startled sense of familiarity. settled there for a few days Chatty came It was too far off to see the man's face. in to me one evening with a pale face. He was not an invalid; but he was bent, "I have just seen your old gentleman,' either with past sickness or with present she said. "I think he must live out care, and walked with a drooping head here;" but I saw by the expression of and a languid step. After watching him her eyes that there was more to say. for a time, I concluded (having always a She added after a moment, “And I know great weakness for making out other whom he is like." people's lives, how they flow) that he had some occupation in the town from which he escaped, whenever he had leisure, to rest a little and refresh himself upon the terrace. He came very regularly, just at the time when Italian shops and offices have a way of shutting up, in the middle I went out with her instantly to where of the day, very regularly, always, or she had seen him, and we made some almost always, at the same hour. He inquiries, but with no success. When I came up the steps slowly and languidly, began to think it over, he was not like stopped a little to take breath, and then | John Ridgway. He was bent and stoopwalked half-way round the terrace to a ing, whereas John was erect; his head certain bench upon which he always drooped, whereas how well I recollected seated himself. Sometimes he brought poor John's head thrown back a little, his his luncheon with him and ate it there. hat upon the back of it, his visionary outAt other times, having once gained that look rather to the skies than to the place, he sat quite still in a corner of it, ground. No, no, not like him a bit; but not reading, nor taking any notice of the yet it might be his ghost, as Chatty said. other passers-by. No one was with him, We made a great many inquiries, but for no one ever spoke to him. When the moment with no success, and you noticed him first he startled me. Whom may suppose that I watched the passerswas he like? His bent figure, his languid by from my window with more devotion step, was like no one I could think of; than ever. One evening in the sudden but yet, I said to myself, he is like some- nightfall of the Italian skies, when darkbody. I established a little friendship ness comes all at once, I was seated in with him, though it was a friendship with- my usual place, scarcely seeing, however, out any return; for though I could see the moving figures outside, though all the him he could not see me, nor could I dis- population of the place seemed to be out, tinguish his face; and we never saw him sitting round the doors, and strolling leianywhere else, neither at church, nor in surely along enjoying the heavenly coolthe streets, not even on the festas when ness and the breeze from the sea. At the everybody was about; but always just further end of the room Chatty was at the there on that one spot. I looked for him piano, playing to me softly in the dark as as regularly as the day came. My she knows. I like to be played to, and now mother's old gentleman," Chatty called and then striking into some old song such him Everybody is old who is not young as I love. She was sure to arrive sooner to these children; but though he was not or later at that one with which we now had young he did not seem to me to be old. I so many associations; but I was not think ing of that, nor for the moment of Ellen | reluctance to come in with me, to talk as or her faithful (as I was sure he was still) of old. He told me he had a situation in lover at all. A woman with so many chil- an office in Genoa, and that his health dren has always plenty to think of. My was bad. "After that fiasco in the Lemind was busy with my own affairs. The vant, I had not much heart for anything. windows were open, and the babble of I took the first thing that was offered, the voices outside high-pitched, re- he said, with his old vague smile; "for sounding Italian voices, not like the mur- a man must live-till he dies." "There mur of English - came in to us as the must be no question of dying-at your music floated out. All at once, I suddenly age," I cried. This time his smile almost woke up from my thinking and my family came the length of a momentary laugh. concerns. In the dusk one figure de- He shook his head, but he did not contached itself from among the others with tinue the subject. He was very silent a start and came forward slowly with bent for some time after. Indeed, he said head and languid step. Had he never nothing, except in reply to my questions, heard that song since he heard Ellen break till Chatty left the room, and we were off, choked with tears unshed, and a de- alone. Then all at once, in the middle spair which had never been revealed? He of something I was saying—"Is shecame quite close under the window where married again?" he said. I could see him no longer. I could not see him at all; it was too dark. I divined him. Who could it be but he? Not like John Ridgway, and yet John; his ghost, as Chatty had said. I did not stop to think what I was to do, but rose up in the dark room where the child was singing, only a voice, herself invisible in the gloom. I don't know whether Chatty saw me go; but, if so, she was inspired unawares by the occasion, and went on with her song. I ran down-stairs and went out softly to the open door of the inn, where there were other people standing about. Then I saw him quite plainly by the light from a lower window. His head was slightly raised towards the place from which the song came. He was very pale in that pale, doubtful light, worn and old and sad; but as he looked up a strange illumination was on his face. His hand beat the air softly, keeping time. As she came to the refrain his lips began to move as if he were repeating after his old habit those words, "I will come again.' Then a sudden cloud of pain seemed to come over his face he shook his head faintly, then bowed it upon his breast. In a moment I had him by the arm. "John," I said, in my excitement; "John Ridgway! we have found you." For the moment, I believe, he thought it was Ellen who had touched him; his white face seemed to leap into light; then paled again. He took off his hat with his old formal, somewhat shy, politeness "I thought it must be you, madame," he said. He said "madame" instead of the old English ma'am, which he had always used this little concession to the changed scene was all the difference. He made no mystery about himself, and showed no "Married again!" "It is a foolish question. She was not married to me; but it felt much the same; we had been as one for so long. There must have been some-strong inducement - to make her cast me off so at the end." This he said in a musing tone, as if the fact were so certain, and had been turned over in his mind so often that all excitement was gone from it. But after it was said, a gleam of anxiety came into his half-veiled eyes. He raised his heavy, tired eyelids and looked at me. Though he seemed to know all about it, and to be resigned to it when he began to speak, yet it seemed to flash across him, before he ended, that there was an uncertainty - an answer to come from me which would settle it, after all. Then he leaned forward a little, in this sudden sense of suspense, and put his hand to his ear as if he had been deaf, and said "What?" in an altered tone. "There is some terrible mistake," I said. "I have felt there was a mistake all along. She has lost her hold on life altogether because she believes you to be changed." "Changed!" His voice was quite sharp and keen, and had lost its languid tone. In what way-in what way? how could I be changed?" "In the only way that could matter between her and you. She thought, before you left the Levant, that you had got to care for some one else - - that you had ceased to care for her. Your letter," I said, "your letter!" -half frightened by the way in which he rose, and his threatening, angry aspect "would bear that interpretation." 66 My letter!" He stood before me for |