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turned from London, leaving Madeleine am away from home, my heart softens to all the pleasures of her first season even towards that old bear; I think inthere. Only one untoward circumstance dulgently of his wig, and am almost occurred; it was the postponement of Lord persuaded that shoes are becoming. He Barr's voyage to the Arctic regions, in has been intervening, in some way, beconsequence of the illness of the friend tween papa and Clement. I don't know who was to have accompanied him. This any particulars, but that Clement has had implied the loss of a year in the fulfilment a direct communication from Mr. Conyof his darling project, and was, of course, beare, which never happened before in any a disappointment. He took it very well, quarrel or scrape, and that it has had a however, Madeleine said, considering how very marked effect upon him. He has much his heart had been set upon it. My been obliged to agree to go home when I father smiled at the passage in her letter go, and to stay quietly at Beech Lawn for which dwelt on Lord Barr's resignation to some time. Of course, money is at the circumstances; and, of course, he set it bottom of it. I suppose papa has had to down to her own influence. pay some heavy sums for him; and that he has now really made up his mind that this shall be the last time; that, henceforth, Clement must take the consequences of whatever he does. Anyhow, whatever has been said to him, Clement believes it this time, and I conclude that is because it has been said by Mr. Conybeare.

"Lady Olive intended to remain in London until late in June-not until the formal end of the season. Neither she nor Madeleine would have liked to lose more of the beauty of the summer in the country. It was very beautiful, though Wrottesley had no claim to be classed among especially picturesque or typical places. The homely, tranquil, sunny, scented loveliness of meadow and hedgerow, of orchard and winding wood-paths, characterised the country around our quiet midland town. We knew it all so well, and loved it so much. Nothing made Madeleine forgetful of her home or indifferent to it. If one half of her letters was filled with accounts of what she was seeing and doing in the great world of London, the other half was filled with questions, reminiscences, and messages to people at home.

"I confess it is a great drawback to my pleasure in going home that Clement is to be at Beech Lawn. He will make himself odious to papa, and me, and everybody. I wonder why young men are such selfish and unfeeling creatures; I don't mean all young men-but those who have so much to enjoy, and have life made so easy to them? It is horrid to have to feel that one's only brother is the single drawback in one's life. The garden at the Dingle House must be looking lovely. I suppose Agrippa basks in the porch all day. And Mrs. Frost's chickens ?-she could sell them well here; but don't tell her I hinted at such a thing. Do you remember Frosty introducing Lord Barr to the basse-cour? "That's the marchioness with the stuckup tail, and the duchess is the lame one; but the beauty of the lot is Lady Mary." "You must be looking for news from Australia soon. Be sure to let me know when it comes.'

"Clement has not been very attentive to me,' she wrote, not very long before her return. 'I'm afraid he has no liking for respectability, and, as he says, cannot stand the dulness of it, though I should think no house in London is less dull than Lady Olive's. I am sorry, for his own sake, that he does not come oftener; but I am glad, for my own, for he has made himself very disagreeable more than once; "It was the first week in June, and my and I can see he always produces a bad father and Griffith expected that letters impression. His manners are so familiar from Australia would reach us about that and so contemptuous, and he is altogether time. They had been somewhat surprised so "slang"-I believe that is the only word that Mrs. Pemberton had not written for what I mean-that I am always un- sooner to announce her approaching decomfortable and ashamed of him. He does parture, as my uncle's letter had informed not care for anything like good society- my father that he had already disposed of calls it a "nuisance," and "all humbug,' Mount Kiera Lodge (that was the name and seems to me to be more and more un- of his residence), and therefore she would like a gentleman. Papa is much more have had no troublesome business matters strict with him than he used to be, and I to detain her. The expected letters think he is advised to this both by Lady arrived; and the packet proved much Olive and Mr. Conybeare. Now that I more voluminous than my father was

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prepared for. Again, it seemed mystery was to attend the correspondence from the antipodes. The thick packet was opened by my father at the breakfasttable, and its contents proved to consist of three separate portions; each enclosed in a wrapper, and marked in succession I., II., III.

"My father opened enclosure No. I. It was a letter written by Mrs. Pemberton, dated from Sydney, and it told my father that she had left Mount Kiera Lodge, and was about to sail from Sydney in a ship called the Albatross; accompanied by her step-daughter, two servants, and-an unexpected bit of intelligence this!-her infant son. Mrs. Pemberton added that she had not had the courage to write in the interval, or until she could tell us she was safe, and the child living and well. She wrote very cheerfully, and expressed pleasure in the hope of seeing us, and receiving from us a welcome to England for her husband's sake.

"This letter my father, having glanced over it, read aloud to Griffith and myself. "We may look for the Albatross in three or four weeks,' said Griffith. She will arrive at Plymouth, I suppose?'

"How delighted Mrs. Pemberton and Ida must be with the baby,' was my first

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Pembertons would reach England just as Lady Olive and Madeleine would be returning to Wrottesley.

"What a difference the baby will make,' said I, beginning again with the topic which chiefly interested me.

"Very considerable,' said my father, gravely, and a very desirable one, I should say. Of course your cousin's fortune will be much smaller, which I consider a great advantage, and her position with her step-mother will be pleasanter and more secure.'

"I have very dim notions about those long voyages,' said Griffith, 'but I suppose there's information about them in the Treasury.' By this name we called a special little shelf in my father's room where he kept guide books, postal guides, a gazetteer, and other useful but uninteresting literature. 'Anyhow, Mr. Cony beare is sure to know. Shall you go to meet Mrs. Pemberton, sir?'

"Meet her? I! I never thought of such a thing! It seems unnecessary, for so short a journey, after so long a voyage. And yet, I suppose it would be kind too.'

"The idea was quite startling to me. My father, who hardly ever went as far as Wrottesley, and could not be induced to dine out of his own house, contemplating a journey. I suppose my countenance expressed my surprise, for my father laughed, and said:

"Audrey does not seem to think I should be of much use. I entirely agree with you, my dear. But I don't see why you might not go in my place, Griffith. I suppose you could get leave for a few days for the purpose.'

"I have no doubt of it, sir. I will speak to Mr. Conybeare to-day.'

"This was all as it should be. The project I had formed would be most fitly initiated by so proper an attention on Griffith's part; and the first face in which she should see, the first voice in which she should hear, a welcome to her father's native land, would have a special charm for Ida Pemberton. In my eager insistance upon having everything my own

"These are merely papers referring to business matters, which Mrs. Pemberton has sent on to me in advance, as a precaution,' he remarked, dropping the parcel into the capacious pocket of his dressing-way, in my youthful sanguineness, I would

gown.

"I was glad he was not going to wrap himself up in the reading of them just then, for I wanted to talk. This would be a piece of news worth writing to Madeleine. And what a busy and exciting time we should have of it at the end of the month, with all these arrivals. The

have been ready to descry sound sense in the argument by which Miss Austen's immortal Mrs. Norris sought to persuade the solemn baronet of 'Mansfield Park,' that the most effectual prevention of love between two cousins was to bring them up together; whereas, if they should chance to meet, as strangers, the tender

passion would inevitably spring into spontaneous existence.

"I like to linger in my recollections of the past over this little episode. The time was almost ended during which I had the unhesitating confidence of girlhood in the future, the certainty that whatever I very much and very earnestly wanted to happen inevitably must come to pass; the time was near beginning which should teach me that the least-expected event is the likeliest. I walked into the town with Griffith that morning, and we talked with great animation over the prospect of Mrs. Pemberton's arrival. I quite envied Griffith his projected journey to meet the travellers. I had never been twenty miles beyond Wrottesley in my life, and everything outside that distance was the magnificent unknown.

"Griffith was right. Mr. Conybeare knew all about ships from every part of the globe. We might confidently look for the Albatross at the end of June. And he had received very graciously Griffith's request for a short holiday when that time should have arrived. Of course Griffith must meet his relatives on their landing, he said. The poor widow lady would be forlorn indeed, if there should be no one to hold out a hand to her on this side of the world. And Mr. Conybeare himself would do Griffith's work for him. This was very kind on the part of the bear, and I considered myself bound in fairness to communicate it to Madeleine.

"The lively summer weeks went by. All that the country had to boast of beauty was at its brightest and best. Beech Lawn was all in order to receive its young mistress, and the Dingle House had been smartened up, to the extent of the limited resources at the command of myself and Frosty, in honour of the unknown guests who, my father had decided, must come to us in the first instance at all events. Had my uncle been in the case, things would have been very different, but we could manage for Mrs. Pemberton, Ida, and one maid. My father had given me a few emphatic instructions concerning the arrangements to be made for their reception, but he said little in reference to them; and the enclosures in the packet, which had also contained Mrs. Pemberton's letter, must have been of as private and confidential a nature as poor Mr. Pemberton's only communication to his brother-in-law, for

neither Griffith or I ever saw them after they had disappeared into the pocket of my father's dressing-gown, nor did he make any allusion to them.

"Lady Olive and Madeleine Kindersley were to reach Wrottesley three days before the time when the shipping agents advised Griffith that the Albatross might be looked for. Madeleine had had a great deal of going out and gaiety, and I expected to see her looking tired. Her last letter was full of her satisfaction at getting back to Beech Lawn, and candidly avowed that one element in it was a reprieve about Clement. He was going to Switzerland with a 'safe' friend for six weeks, before coming to Beech Lawn.

"It might be all a dream,' said Madeleine to me, on the day after her return, when she and I were in my room, in the midst of our first talk, and I might never have stirred from this chair, at this window. Only that the trees are all in full dress, and the lawn never looked so lovely, and the roses are perfectly delicious, and it was all bare when I went away. But here we are again, exactly as we were then; and yet, how much has happened in that time.'

"I looked at her curiously. With my first glance at her had come an impression that she was changed. She was handsomer, and more self-possessed, though her old characteristic, ineffable sweetness, was still salient. She had the 'cachet which only intercourse with society gives. The finished young woman of the great and busy and luxurious world—I had never seen one of the category before, but I knew the specimen when I saw it-must have contrasted strangely with the mere country-girl I was then.

"Yes; she was changed, but only to be “་ beautified with new graces; by the refining, not the hardening, contact of the world. The transparent simplicity of her character was undimmed. I looked at her with such hearty admiration that Madeleine laughed.

"Your big black eyes lump all the compliments of the season into one; and it is the most acceptable of all,' she said. 'Look, Audrey'-and she pointed towards the walk under the wall-'there's more of it. Lady Olive and your father walking together, just as they did before we went away.'

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I looked out, and there they were. In very serious conversation, too, to judge

by my father's frequent shake of his bended head as he walked by her ladyship's side.

"Madeleine and I soon got on the subject of Lord Barr, and she was as unembarrassed as she was eloquent in his praise. Of course, she was sorry that he had been disappointed about his trip to the Arctic regions; but she was very glad otherwise, because he would be a great deal at Wrottesley during the winter, and he was really delightful.

"And he will like it just as well as travelling in all sorts of outlandish places,' said Madeleine; for, after all, the people he likes best in the world are Lady Olive and Mr. Lester, and, I flatter myself, I

come next.'

"I was not much wiser in affairs of the heart than when I had told Mrs. Lipscott that I had never seen anybody who was in love-not much; but I was a little, just sufficiently, wiser, to feel certain that Mr. Lester had been quite right, and that Miss Minnie Kellett would never have an opportunity of seeing Madeleine in the character of a pretty Countess of Linbarr. We got through a great number of topics before we were called down to luncheon; and on our way Madeleine inspected the rooms which had been got ready for Mrs. Pemberton and my cousin Ida.

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posed to make for my brother's comfort on the way.

"Griffith wrote from Plymouth. He had seen the shipping people, and they had told him that the Albatross was a very fine vessel, and remarkably punctual. They had little doubt of her arrival within a day or two. He could pass the time very agreeably in the interval, for to him all was novelty. Two days elapsed, and he wrote again. The ship had not yet arrived; but the weather was delightful; and he had been to Mount Edgecumbe. Two more days, and still the ship had not arrived. Three days, and Griffith wrote to Mr. Conybeare. There was some uneasiness about the ship, and he was obliged to ask for an extension of leave. It was granted; and then there came a few feverish days, when life seemed to be all watching and waiting; when Madeleine and I roamed about together, but very silent; and Lady' Olive came and sat or walked with my father; and when we were all together we said very little of the apprehension that was in the minds of each of us.

"At last we had a few lines from Griffith, saying that he would start for home next day. He acknowledged that the gravest apprehensions concerning the fate of the ship prevailed.

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I cannot stay here any longer,' he added, as it may be weeks before the truth will be known, if an accident has occurred. I will make the best arrangement I can in case the ship comes in all right, and settle that I am to be sent for the moment there is any news of her.'

"Great consternation fell upon us when this letter came. I never saw my father so much disturbed. Madeleine came to us every day, and Mr. Lester also. From him we learned about the oceans which the Albatross would have to traverse; and when he left us we would conjure up the most harrowing possibilities. So the lovely summer days went by far otherwise than we had dreamed of them. Griffith returned, and we felt a kind of terror when he came back alone, as if he had been seeing ghosts.

"And then-the days grew into weeks; and suspense was unrelieved. No news came to us of the Albatross.

The Right of Translating Articles from ALL THE YEAR ROUND is reserved by the Authors.

Published at the Office, 26, Wellington St., Strand. Printed by CHARLES DICKENS & EVANS, Crystal Palace Press.

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VOL. XVI.

388

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