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"Such things will happen whether you can bear to think of them or not," said the Doctor. I said you would go down and see her to-morrow. We've all held out a long time the lot of us. I don't like to think of the first gap myself, but somebody must make a beginning, you know."

"The Chileys were always older than you," said Mrs. John. "I remember in poor Mrs. Marjoribanks's time; - they were quite elderly then, and you were just beginning. When my Tom was a baby

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"We were always of the same set," said the Doctor, interrupting her without hesitation. "Lucilla, they say Cavendish has got hold of the Rector. He has made believe to be penitent, you know. That is cleverer than anything you could have done. And if he can't be won back again it will be serious, the Colonel says. You are to try if you can suggest anything. It seems,' said the Doctor, with mingled amusement and satire, and a kind of gratification, "that Ashburton has great confidence in you."

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"It must have been the agent," said Lucilla. "I don't think any of the rest of them are equal to that. I don't see, if that is the case, how we are to win him back. If Mr. Ashburton had ever done anything very wicked, perhaps "

"You are safe to say he is not penitent anyhow," said Dr. Marjoribanks, and he took his candle and went away with a smile. But either Mr. Ashburton's good opinion of Lucilla, or some other notion, had touched the Doctor. He was not a man who said much at any time, but when he bade her good-night, his hand drooped upon Lucilla's shoulder, and he patted it softly, as he might have patted the head of a child. It was not much, but still it was a good deal from him. To feel the lingering touch of her father's hand caressing her, even in so mild a way, was something quite surprising and strange to Miss Marjoribanks. She looked up at him almost with alarm, but he was just then turning away with his candle in his hand. And he seemed to have laid aside his gloom, and even smiled to himself as he went up-stairs. "If she had been the boy instead of that young ass," he said to himself. He could not have explained why he was more than ordinarily hard just then upon the innocent, far-distant Tom, who was unlucky, it is true, but not exactly an ass, after all. But somehow it struck the Doctor more than ever how great a loss it was to society and to herself that Lucilla was not "the boy." She could have continued, and perhaps extended, the practice,

whereas just now it was quite possible that she might drop down into worsted-work and tea-parties like any other single woman while Tom, who had carried off the family honours, and was "the boy" in this limited and unfruitful generation, was never likely to do anything to speak of, and would be a poor man if he were to live for a hundred years. Perhaps there was something else behind that made the Doctor's brow contract a little as he crossed the threshold of his chamber, into which, no more than into the recesses of his heart, no one ever penetrated; but it was the lighter idea of that comparison, which had no actual pain in it, but only a kind of humorous discontent, which was the last articulate thought in his mind as he went to his room and closed his door with a little sharpness as he always did, upon the outside world.

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Aunt Jemima, for her part, lingered a little with Lucilla down-stairs. My dear, I don't think my brother-in-law looks well tonight. I don't think Carlingford is so healthy as it is said to be. If I were you, Lucilla, I would try and get your papa to take something," said Mrs. John, with anxiety, "before he goes to bed."

"Dear aunt Jemima, he never takes anything. You forget he is a doctor," said Miss Marjoribanks. "It always puts him out when he has to go out in the evening; and he is sad about Mrs. Chiley, though he would not say so." But nevertheless Lucilla knocked at his door when she went up. stairs. And the Doctor, though he did not open, growled within with a voice which reassured his dutiful daughter. "What should I want, do you think, but to be left quiet?" the Doctor said. And even Mrs. John, who had waited at his door, with her candle in her hand, to hear the result, shrank within at the sound and was seen no more. And Miss Marjoribanks, too, went to her rest, with more than one subject of thought which kept her awake. In the first place, the Rector was popular in his way, and if he chose to call all his forces to rally round a penitent, there was no saying what might come of it; and then Lucilla could not help going back in the most illogical manner to her father's caress, and wondering what was the meaning of it. Meantime the snow fell heavily outside, and wrapped everything in a soft and secret whiteness. And amid the whiteness and darkness, the lamp burned steadily outside at the garden-gate, which pointed out the Doctor's door amid all the closed houses and dark garden-walls in Grange Lane-a kind of visible succour and help always at hand for those who were

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suffering. And though Dr. Marjoribanks | wind, though there was no wind even on was not like a young man making a practice, that silent snowy day to carry the matter. but had perfect command of Carlingford, Dr. Marjoribanks was dead. It put the and was one of the richest men in it, it was election out of people's heads, and even well known in the town that the very poor- their own affairs for the time being; for est, if in extremity, in the depths of the had he not known all about the greater part wildest night that ever blew, would not seek of them- seen them come into the world help there in vain. The bell that had and kept them in it and put himself alroused him when he was young, still hung ways in the breach when the pale Death near him in the silence of his closed-up approached that way? He had never made house when he was old, and still could make very much boast of his friendliness or been him spring up, all self-possessed and ready, large in sympathetic expressions, but yet when the enemy death had to be fought he had never flinched at any time, or desertwith. But that night the snow cushioned ed his patients for any consideration. Carthe wire outside, and even made white cor- lingford was sorry, profoundly sorry, with nices and columns about the steady lamp, that true sorrow which is not so much for and the Doctor slept within, and no one dis- the person mourned as for the mourner's turbed him; for except Mrs. Chiley and a self, who feels a sense of something lost. few chronic patients, there was nothing par- The people said to themselves, Whom could ticularly amiss in Carlingford, and then it they ever find who would know their conwas Dr. Rider whom all the new people stitution so well, and who was to take care of went to, the people who lived in the innumer- So-and-so if he had another attack? To able new houses at the other end of Carling- be sure Dr. Rider was at hand, who felt a ford, and had no hallowing tradition of the little agitated about it, and was conscious superior authority of Grange Lane. of the wonderful opening, and was very ready to answer, "I am here; " but a young doctor is different from an old one, and a living man all in commonplace health and comfort is not to be compared with a dead one, on the morning at least of his sudden ending. Thank heaven, when a life is ended there is always that hour or two remaining to set straight the defective balances, and do a hasty late justice to the dead, before the wave sweeps on over him and washes out the traces of his steps, and lets in the common crowd to make their thoroughfare over the grave.

CHAPTER XLIV.

THE talk of this evening might not have been considered of any importance to speak of, but for the extraordinary and most unlooked-for event which startled all Carlingford next morning. Nobody could believe that it was true. Dr. Marjoribanks's patients watied for him, and declared to their nurses that it was all a made up-story, and that he would come and prove that he was not dead. How could he be dead? He "It cannot be the Doctor," Mrs. Chiley had been as well as he ever was that last said, sobbing in her bed, "or else it has evening. He had gone down Grange Lane been in mistake for me. He was always a in the snow, to see the poor old lady who healthy man and never had anything the was now sobbing in her bed, and saying it matter with him—and a great deal youngwas all a mistake, and that it was she who er than we are, you know. If anything has ought to have died. But all those protesta- happened to him it must have been in mistions were of no avail against the cold and take for me," said the poor old lady, and she stony fact which had frightened Thomas was so hysterical that they had to send for out of his senses, when he went to call the Dr. Rider, and she was thus the first to Doctor. He had died in the night without begin to build the new world on the foundacalling or disturbing anybody. He must tions of the old, little as she meant it. But have felt faint, it seemed, for he had got up for the moment everything was paralysed and taken a little brandy, the remains of in Grange Lane, and canvassing came to a which still stood on the table by his bedside; standstill, and nothing was discussed but but that was all that anybody could tell Dr. Marjoribanks- how he was dead, about it. They brought Dr. Rider, of though nobody could or would believe course; but all that he could do was to ex-it; and how Lucilla would be left, and who amine the strong, still frame, old, and yet her trustees were, and how the place could not old enough to be weakly, or to explain such sudden extinction, which had ceased its human functions. And then the news swept over Carlingford like a breath of

ever get used to the want of him, or would ever look like itself again without his familiar presence. It was by way of relieving their minds from the horror of the idea,

that the good people rushed into consulta- | be feeling, and cry out, like all the rest of tions what Lucilla vould do. It took their the world, that it could not be true. But, minds a little off the ghastly imagination of to be sure, that was a state of feeling that that dark room with the snow on the window, and the late moonlight trying to get into the darkness, and the white rigid face inside, as he was said to have been found. It could not but make a terrible change to her- indeed, through her it could not but make a great change to everybody. The Doctor's house would, of course, be shut up, which had been the most hospitable house in Carlingford, and things would drop into the unsatisfactory state they used to be in before Miss Marjoribanks's time, and there would no longer be anybody to organize society. Such were the ideas the ladies of Grange Lane relapsed into by way of delivering themselves from the pain of their first realization of what had happened. It would make a great change. Even the election and its anticipated joys could not but change character in some respects at least, and there would be nobody to make the best of them; and then the question was, What would Lucifla do? Would she have strength to "make an effort," as some people suggested; or would she feel not only her grief, but her downfall, and that she was now only a single woman, and sink into a private life, as some others were inclined to believe.

could not last long. There are events for which something higher than accident must be held accountable, were one ever so ready to take the burden of affairs on one's own shoulders; and Lucilla knew, when she came to herself, that if she had watched ever so long or so closely, that could have had no effect upon the matter. After a while the bewildering sense of her own changed position began to come upon her, and roused her up into that feverish and unnatural activity of thought which, in some minds, is the inevitable reaction after the unaccustomed curb and shock of grief. When she had got used to that dreadful certainty about her father, and had suddenly come with a leap to the knowledge that she was not to blame, and could not help it, and that though he was gone, she remained, it is no censure upon Lucilla to say that her head became immediately full of a horror and confusion of thoughts, an involuntary stir and bustle of plans and projects, which she did all she could to put down, but which would return and overwhelm her whether she chose it or not. She could not help asking herself what her new position was, thinking it over, so strangely free and new and unlimited as it seemed. And it must be recollected that Miss Marjoribanks was a woman of very active mind and great energies, too old to take up a girl's fancy that all was over because she had encountered a natural grief on her passage, and too young not to see a long future still before her. She kept her room, as was to be expected, and saw nobody, and only moved the household and superintended the arrangements in a muffled way through Thomas, who was an old servant, and knew "the ways" of the house; but notwithstanding her seclusion and her honest sorrow, and her perfect observance of all the ordinary restraints of the moment, it would be wrong to omit all mention of this feverish bustle of thinking which came into Lucilla's mind in her solitude. Of all that she had to bear, it was the thing that vexed and irritated and distressed her the most as if, she said to herself indignantly, she ought to have been able to think of anything! And the chances are that Lucilla, for sheer duty's sake, would have said, if anybody had asked, that of course she had not thought of anything as yet; without being aware that the mere shock, and horror, and profound commotion had a great deal more to do than anything else in producing tha

Inside the house, naturally, the state of affairs was sad enough. Lucilla, notwithstanding the many other things she had had to occupy her mind, was fond of her father, and the shock overwhelmed her for the moment. Though she was not the kind of woman to torture herself with thinking of things that she might have done, still at the first moment the idea that she ought not to have left nim alone that she should have sat up and watched or taken some extraordinary unusual precaution was not to be driven away from her mind. The reign of reason was eclipsed in her as it often is in such an emergency. She said it was her fault in the first horror. "When I saw how he was looking, and how he was talking, I should never have left him," said Lucilla, which indeed was a very natural thing to say, but would have been an utterly impossible one to carry out, as she saw when she came to think of it. But she could not think of it just then. She did not think at all that first long snowy, troubled day, but went about the house, on the bedroom floor, wringing ner hands like a creature distracted. "If I had only sat up,” she said; and then she would recall the touch of his hand on her shoulder, which she seemed still to THIRD SERIES. LIVING AGE. VOL. XXXII. 1485.

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fluttering crowd of busy, vexatious specula- knew of it, the pain of the accusation was

tions which had come, without any will of hers, into her heart.

It looked a dreadful change in one way as she looked at it without wishing to look at it in the solitude of her own room, where the blinds were all down, and the snow sometimes came with a little thump against the window, and where it was so dark that it was a comfort when night came, and the lamp could be lighted. So far as Carlingford was concerned, it would be almost as bad for Miss Marjoribanks as if she were her father's widow instead of his daughter. To keep up a position of social importance in a single woman's house, unless as she had herself lightly said so short a time since, she were awfully rich, would be next to impossible. All that gave importance to the centre of society-the hospitable table, the open house-had come to an end with the Doctor. Things could no more be as they had once been, in that respect at least. She might stay in the house, and keep up to the furthest extent possible to her its old traditions; but even to the utmost limit to which Lucilla could think it right to go it could never be the same. This consciousness kept gleaming upon her as she sat in the dull daylight, behind the closed blinds, with articles of mourning piled about everywhere, and the grey dimness getting into her very eyes, and her mind distressed by the consciousness that she ought to have been unable to think; and the sadness of the prospect altogether was enough to stir up a reaction, in spite of herself, in Miss Marjoribanks's mind.

And on the other side she would no doubt be very well off, and could go wherever she liked, and had no limit, except what was right and proper and becoming, to what she might please to do. She might go abroad if she liked, which perhaps is the first idea of the modern English mind when anything happens to it, and settle wherever she pleased, and arrange her mode of existence as seemed good in her own eyes. She would be an heiress in a moderate way, and aunt Jemima was by this time absolutely at her disposal, and could be taken anywhere; and at Lucilla's age it was quite impossible to predict what might not happen to a woman in such a position. When these fairer possibilities gleamed into Lucilla's mind, it would be difficult to describe the anger and self-disgust with which she reproached herself- for perhaps it was the first time that she had consciously failed in maintaining a state of mind becoming the occasion; and though nobody but herself

acute and bitter. But how could Miss Marjoribanks help it?-the mind travels so much quicker than anything else, and so far, and makes its expeditions in such subtle, stealthy ways. She might begin by think ing of her dear papa, and yet before she could dry her eyes might be off in the midst of one of these bewildering speculations. For everything was certain now so far as he was concerned; and everything was so uncertain, and full of such unknown issues for herself. Thus the dark days before the funeral passed by- and everybody was very kind. Dr. Marjoribanks was one of the props of the place, and all Carlingford bestirred itself to do him the final honours; and all her friends conspired how to save Lucilla from all possible trouble, and help her over the trial; and to see how much he was respected was the greatest of all possible comforts to her, as she said.

Thus it was that among the changes that everybody looked for, there occurred all at once this change which was entirely unexpected, and put everything else out of mind for the moment. For to tell the truth, Dr. Marjoribanks was one of the men who, according to external appearance, need never have died. There was nothing about him that wanted to be set right, no sort of loss, or failure, or misunderstanding, so far as anybody could see. An existence in which he could have his friends to dinner every week, and a good house, and good wine, and a very good table, and nothing particular to put him out of his way, seemed in fact the very ideal of the best life for the Doctor. There was nothing in him that seemed to demand anything better, and it was confusing to try to follow him into that which, no doubt, must be in all its fundamentals a very different kind of world. He was a just man and a good man in his way, and had been kind to many people in his lifetime - but still he did not seem to have that need of another rectifying completer existence which most men have. There seemed no reason why he should die- a man who was so well contented with this lower region in which many of us fare badly, and where so few of us are contented. This was a fact which exercised a very confusing influence, even when they themselves were not aware of it, on many people's minds. It was hard to think of him under any other circumstances, or identify him with angels and spirits - which feeling on the whole made the regret for him a more poignant sort of regret.

And they buried him with the greatest signs of respect. People from twenty miles

off sent their carriages, and all the George and thought that at last she might have a Street people shut their shops, and there long talk with aunt Jemima, who was a was very little business done all day. Mr. kind of refuge in her present loneliness, and Cavendish and Mr. Ashburton walked side gave her a means of escape at the same by side at the funeral, which was an affect-time from all this bustle and commotion of ing sight to see; and if anything more unbecoming thoughts. could have been done to show their respect This was enough surely for any one to which was not done, the corporation of Car- have to encounter at one time; but that lingford would have been sorry for it. And very night another rumour began to murthe snow still lay deep in all the corners, mur through Carlingford a rumour more though it had been trampled down all about bewildering, more incredible still, than that the Doctor's house, where the lamp was not of the Doctor's death, which the town had lighted now of nights; for what was the been obliged to confirm and acknowledge, use of lighting the lamp, which was a kind and put its seal to. When the thing was of lighthouse in its way, and meant to first mentioned, everybody (who could find point out succour and safety for the neigh- it in their heart to laugh) laughed loud in bours, when the physician himself was lying the face of the first narrator with mingled beyond all hope of succour or aid? And scepticism and indignation. They asked all the Grange Lane people retired in a him what he meant by it, and ridiculed and sympathetic, awe-stricken way, and decided, scoffed at him to his face. "Lucilla will be or at least the ladies did, to see Lucilla the richest woman in Grange Lane," people next day, if she was able to see them, and said; "everybody in Carlingford knows that." to find out whether she was going to make But after this statement had been made, the an effort, or what she meant to do. And town began to listen. It was obliged to lisMrs. Chiley was so much better that she ten, for other witnesses came in to confirm was able to be up a little in the evening, the story. It never might have been found though she scarcely could forgive herself, out while the Doctor lived, for he had a and still could not help thinking that it was great practice, and made a great deal of she who had really been sent for, and that money; but now that he was dead, nothing the Doctor had been taken in mistake. could be hid. He was dead, and he had And as for Lucilla, she sat in her room and made an elaborate will, which was all as cried, and thought of her father's hand upon just and righteous as a will could be; but her shoulder- that last unusual caress which after the will was read, it was found out was more touching to think of than a world that everything named in it had disappeared of words. He had been fond of her and like a bubble. Instead of being the richest, proud of her, and at the last moment he Dr. Marjoribanks was one of the poorest had showed it. And by times she seemed men in Carlingford, when he shut his door to feel again that lingering touch, and cried behind him on that snowy night. It was a as if her heart would break: and yet, for revelation which took the town perfectly by all that, she could not keep her thoughts storm, and startled everybody out of their .steady, nor prevent them from wandering senses. Lucilla's plans, which she thought to all kinds of profane out-of-door matters, so wicked, went out all of a sudden, in a and to considerations of the future, und estimates of her own position. It wounded her sadly to feel herself in such an inappropriate state of mind, but she could not help it; and then the want of natural light and air oppressed her sorely, and she longed for the evening, which felt a little more natural,

THE COUNTY CROP FOR CHIGNONS. CHIGNONS! CHIGNONS ! CHIGNONS! For Sale, by Order of Government, several cwt. of HAIR cut from the HEADS of FEMALE CONVICTS in conformity with the Regulations established in Her Majesty's Gaols throughout the United Kingdom. In Lots, of every description of colour. The attention of PERRUQUIERS, PERFUMERS and others is invited to this opportunity of securing an adequate Supply of Material for

certain dull amaze and dismay, to which no words could give any expression. Such was the second inconceivable reverse of fortune which happened to Miss Marjoribanks, more unexpected, more incomprehensible still than the other, in the very midst of her most important activities and hopes,

the manufacture of CHIGNONS of every Shade
and Hue. A Liberal Allowance will be made
to PURCHASERS on taking a QUANTITY.-N. B.
The whole of the HAIR representing the ave-
rage COUNTY CROP of the United Kingdom
has been carefully subjected to a DISINFECTING
PROCESS and exposed to a temperature of 212*
Fahrenheit.
H. WADDINGTON.
Punch.

WHITEHALL Jan. 1, 1866.

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