"You have all been very good to me since I fell ill. I come to thank you, and to say I must give up'

Yes, yes," said Sir Thomas; "but you can't imagine that I will let you suffer for your exertions on my son's behalf, and for the regard you have shown to my family?"

"I wish you would understand," said Colin, with vexation. "I have explained to Lady Frankland more than once. It may seem rude to say so; but there was no regard for your family involved in that act, at least. I was the only one of the party who saw that your son had gone down. I had no wish to go down after him; I can't say I had any impulse, even; but I had seen him, and I should have felt like his murderer if I had not attempted to save him. I am aware it is an ungracious thing to say; but I cannot accept praise which I don't deserve," said Colin, his weakness bringing a hot, sudden color over his face; and then he stopped short, and looked at Sir Thomas, who was perplexed by this interruption, and did not quite know how to shape his reply.

to you all about it." And so the goodhearted squire went away, thinking everything was settled. After that it was very strange for the two who had been so much together to find themselves again in the same room, and alone. As for Colin, he did not well know what to say. Almost the last time he had been by Matty'e side without any witnesses was the time when he concluded that it was only his life which he was throwing away for her sake. Since that time, what a wonderful change had passed over him! The idea that he had thought: her smile, the glance of her eyes, worth such a costly sacrifice, annoyed Colin. But still her presence sent a little thrill through him when they were left alone together. And as for Miss Matty, there was some anxiety in her eyes as she looked at him. What did he mean? Was he taking a desperate resolution to declare his sentiments? or what other reason could there be for his unusual silence? for it never occurred to her to attribute it to its true cause.

"My uncle thinks you have consented to "Well, well," said the baronet; "I don't his plan," said Matty; "but I suppose I' exactly understand you, and I dare say you know what your face means better than he don't understand yourself. Most people that does. Why are you so hard upon us, I are capable of doing a brave action give wonder? I know well enough that Harry queer explanations of it. That's what you and you never took to each other; but you mean, I suppose. No fellow that's worth used to like the rest of us,-or, at least, I' anything pretends to fine motives, and so thought so," said the little siren. She gave forth. You did it because you could not one of her pretty glances at him under her help it. But that does not interfere with eyelashes, and Colin looked at her across the my gratitude. When you are ready to go, table candidly, without any disguise. Alas! you will find a credit opened for you at my he had seen her throw that same glance at bankers, and we must see about letters of various other persons, while he stood in the introduction and all that; and I advise you, corner of the drawing-room observing everyif you're going to Italy, to begin the lan-thing; and the familiar artillery this time guage at once, if you don't know it. Miss had no effect. Matty used to chatter enough for six when we were there. I dare say she'd like nothing better than to teach you," said Sir Thomas. He was so much relieved by the possibility of turning over his difficult visitor upon "I did not say anything about respect," Matty that he forgot the disadvantages of said Miss Matty, with pouting lips. "We such a proposal. He got up, delighted to used to be friends, or, at least, I thought so. escape and to avoid any further remon- I never imagined we were to break off into strance, and held out his hand to Colin. respect so suddenly. I am sure I wish Harry "Delighted to see you down-stairs again," had been a hundred miles away when he said the baronet; "and I hope you'll bring came to disturb us all," said the disarmed your friend to dinner with you to-night, enchantress. She saw affairs were in the Good-by just now; I have, unfortunately, an engagement ”–

"I have the greatest respect for everybody at Wodensbourne," said Colin; “you did me only justice in thinking so. You have all been very good to me."

most critical state, and her words were so far true that she could have expressed her feelings best at the moment by an honest fit

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"Write and explain?" said Matty. "You have twice said you would write. Do you mean that you are going away?"

of crying. As this was impracticable, Miss "There is neither guilty nor innocent that Matty tried less urgent measures. "We I know of," said Colin ; you have all been have caused you nothing but suffering and very kind to me. It is very good of you to vexation," said the young lady, dropping her take the pains to understand me. I don't voice and fixing her eyes upon the pattern mean to take advantage of Sir Thomas of the table-cover, which she began to trace Frankland's kindness; but I am not such a with her finger. "I do not wonder that churl as to fling it back in his teeth as if it we have become disagreeable to you. But were pride alone that made mere fuse it. It you should not condemn the innocent with is not pride alone," said Colin, growing red, the guilty," said Miss Matty, looking sud-"but a sense of justice; for what I have denly up into his eyes. A touch of agita- done has been done by accident. I will tion, the slightest possible, gave interest to write and explain to Sir Thomas what I the face on which Colin was looking; and mean." perhaps all the time he had known her she had never so nearly approached being beautiful, as certainly, all the time, she had never so narrowly escaped being true. If things had been with Colin as they once were, the probability is that, moved by her emotion, the whole story of his love would have poured forth at this emergency; and, had it done so, there is a possibility that Matty, carried away by the impulse of the moment, might have awoke next morning the affianced wife of the farmer's son of Ramore. Providence, however, was kinder to the pair. Colin sat on the other side of the table, and perceived that she was putting her little delicate probe into his wound. He saw all the asides and stage directions, and looked at her with a curious, vicarious sense of shame.

"As soon as it is possible," said Colin; and then he perceived that he was speaking with rude distinctness. "Indeed, I have been taking advantage of your kindness too long. I have been a useless member of the household for six weeks at least. Yes, I must go away."

"You speak very calmly," said Matty. She was a little flushed, and there were tears in her eyes. If they had been real tears she would have hidden them carefully; but as they were only half real, she had no objection to let Colin see that she was concealing them. "You are very composed about it, Mr. Campbell. One would think you were going away from a place distasteful to you, or, at least, which you were totally indifferent about. I dare say that is all very right and proper; but I have a good memory, and it appears rather strange to me."

Colin, indeed, in his new enlightenment, was hard upon Matty. He thought it was all because she could not give up her power over the victim, whom she intended only to torture, that she had thus taken the trouble It was altogether a trying situation for to reopen the ended intercourse. He could Colin. If she had been able to seduce him no more have believed that at this moment, into a little recrimination, she would have while he was looking at her, such a thing succeeded in dragging the reluctant captive was possible as that Matty might have ac-back again into his toils; which, having by cepted his love, and pledged her life to him, this time entirely recovered her senses, was than he would have believed the wildest all Miss Matty wanted. Her downcast, nonsense that ever was written in a fairy tale. So the moments passed, while the ignorant mortal sat on the opposite side of the table,—which was a very fortunate thing for both parties. Nevertheless, it was with a certain sense of contempt for him, as, after all, only an ordinary blind male creature, unconscious of his opportunities, mingled with a thrill of excitement, on her own part, natural to a woman who has just escaped a great danger, that Miss Matty listened to what Colin had to say.

tearful eyes, the faltering in her voice, were wonderfully powerful weapons, which the young man was unable to combat by means of mere indifference. Colin, however, being a man of impulses, was never to be calculated on beforehand for any particular line of conduct; and on the present occasion, he entirely overleaped Miss Matty's bounds.

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Yes, it is strange," said Colin, "Perhaps nothing but the sight of Death, who has been staring into my eyes for some time, could have shown me the true state of affairs. I

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have uttered a great deal of nonsense since I came to Wodensbourne, and you have listened to it, Miss Frankland, and perhaps rather enjoyed seeing my tortures and my delights. But nothing could come of that; and when Death hangs on behind, everything but love flies before him," said Colin. "It was pleasant sport while it lasted; but everything, except love, comes to an end."

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Except love," said Miss Matty. She was terribly piqued and mortified on the surface, and a little humble and sorrowful within. She had a sense, too, that, for one moment, at the beginning of this interview, she had almost been capable of that sentiment which Colin exalted so highly; and that, consequently, he did her injustice in speaking of it as something with which she had nothing to do. "I remember hearing you talk of that sometimes in the midst of what you call nonsense now. If you, did not understand yourself, you can't expect that I should have understood you," she went on. To tell the truth, Miss Matty was very near crying. She had experienced the usual injustice of human affairs, and been punished for her vanity just at that moment when she was inclined to do better; and her heart cried out against such cruel usage. This time, however, she kept her tears quite in subjection and did not show them, but only repeated, "You could not expect that I should understand you, if you did not understand yourself."

in love any longer. "I was not such a fool after all," he said to himself; which was a great consolation. As for Matty, she cried heartily when she got to her room, and felt as if she had lost something. Nor did she recover until about luncheon, when some people came to call, and it was her duty to be entertaining, and relieve Lady Frankland. I hope you said everything that was proper to Mr. Campbell, my dear," said the lady of the house when lunch was over. And so that chapter came to an end.

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CHAPTER XXV.

AFTER this interview, it was strange to meet again the little committee up-stairs, and resume the consideration of ways and means, which Sir Thomas would have settled so summarily. Colin could not help thinking of the difference with a little amusement. He was young enough to be able to dismiss entirely the grave thoughts of the previous night, feeling in his elastic, youthful mind, as he did, something of the fresh influence of the morning, or at least,-for Colin had found out that the wind was easterly, a thing totally indifferent to him in old times,

of the sentiment of the morning, which, so long as heart and courage are unbroken, renews the thoughts and hopes. Money was a necessary evil, to Colin's thinking. So long as there happened to be enough of it for necessary purposes, he was capable of No; that is true at least," said Colin, laughing at the contrast between his own with eyes that strayed beyond her, and had utter impecuniosity and the wealth which gone off in other regions unknown to Matty.was only important for its immediate uses. This which had piqued her even at the height of their alliance gave her an excuse for her anger now.

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Though he was Scotch, and of a careful, money-making race, this was as yet the aspect which money bore to the young man. He laughed as he leaned back in his easychair.

"And when you go off into sentiment, I never understand you," said the young lady. "I will leave l'incomodo, as the Italians say. "What Lauderdale makes up by working That shall be your first lesson in the language for years, and what we can't make up by which my uncle says I am to teach you,' any amount of working, Sir Thomas does said the baffled little witch; and she went with a scrape of his pen," said Colin. away with a glance half-spiteful, half-wist-Down-stairs they need to take little thought ful, which had more effect upon Colin than about these matters, and up here a great a world of words. He got up to open the deal of thought serves to very little purpose. door for her, weak as he was, and took her | On the whole, it seems to me that it would hand and kissed it as she went away. Then be very good for our tempers and for our Colin took himself laboriously up-stairs, minds in general if we all had plenty of having done his day's work. And so unrea- money," said the young philosopher, still sonable was the young man, that Matty's last laughing. He was tolerably indifferent on glance filled his heart with gentler thoughts the subject, and able to take it easily. While of the world in general, though he was not he spoke, his eye lighted on his mother's face,

who was not regarding the matter by any usually marked the beginning of a long means so lightly. Mrs. Campbell, on the contrary, was suffering under one of the greatest minor trials of a woman. She thought her son's life depended on this going to Italy, and to procure the means for it there was nothing on earth his mother would not have done. She would have undertaken joyfully the rudest and hardest labor that ever was undertaken by man. She would have put her hands, which indeed were not accustomed to work, to any kind of toil; but with this eager longing in her heart she knew at the same time that it was quite impossible for her to do anything by which she could earn those sacred and precious coins on which her boy's life depended. While Colin spoke, his mother was making painful calculations what she could save and spare, at least, if she could Colin stopped short when he looked at her; he could not laugh any longer. What was to him a matter of amused speculation was to her life or death.

not earn.

"There canna but be inequalities in this world," said the mistress, her tender brows still puckered with their baffling calculations. "I'm no envious of ony grandeur, nor of taking my ease, nor of the pleasures of this life. We're awfu' happy at hame in our sma' way when a's weel with the bairns; but it's for their sakes, to get them a' that's good for them! Money's precious when it means health and life," said Mrs. Campbell, with a sigh ;" and it's awfu' hard upon a woman when she can do nothing for her ain, and them in need."

discussion, she went to the other end of the room for her work. It was Colin's linen which his mother was putting in order, and she was rather glad to withdraw to the other side of the room, and retire within that refuge of needlework, which is a kind of sanctuary for a woman, and in which she could pursue undisturbed her own thoughts. After a while, though these discussions were much in Mrs. Campbell's way, and she was not disinclined in general to take part in them, she lost the thread of the conversation. The voices came to her in a kind of murmur, now and then chiming in with a chance word or two with the current of her own reflections. The atmosphere which surrounded the convalescent had never felt so hopeful as to-day, and the heart of the mother swelled with a sense of restoration, a trust in God's mercy which recently had been dull and faint within her. Restoration, recovery, deliverance— Nature grows humble, tender, and sweet under these influences of heaven. The mis tress's heart melted within her, repenting of all the hard thoughts she had been thinking, of all the complaints she had uttered. "It is good for me that I was afflicted," said the Psalmist; but it was not until his affliction was past that he could say so. Anguish and loss make no such confession. The heart, when it is breaking, has enough ado to refrain from accusing God of its misery, and it is only the inhumanity of human advisers that would adjure it to make spiritual merchandise out of the hopelessness of its pain.

"I've known it hard upon a man," said Matters were going on thus in Colin's Lauderdale; there's little difference when chamber, where he and his friend sat talkit comes to that. But a hundred pounds," ing; and the mother at the other end of the he continued, with a delightful consciousness room, carefully sewing on Colin's buttons, of power and magnificence," is not a bad began to descend out of her heaven of thanksum to begin upon; before that's done, there fulness, and to be troubled with a pang of will be time to think of more. It's none of apprehension, lest her husband should not see your business, callant, that I can see. If things in the same light as she did, but might, you'll no come with me, you must even stay perhaps, demur to Colin's journey as an unbehind. I've set my heart on a holiday. A warrantable expense. People at Ramore did man has a little good of his existence when not seek such desperate remedies for failing he does nothing but earn and eat and eat and health. Whenever a cherished one was ill, earn again as I've been doing. I would like they were content to get the best doctors," to take the play, awhile, and feel that I'm and do everything for him that household living." care and pains could do; but, failing that, When the mistress saw how Lauderdale the invalid succumbed into the easy-chair, stretched his long limbs on his chair, and and when domestic cherishing would serve how Colin's face brightened with the look, the purpose no longer, into a submissive half sympathetic, half provocative, which grave, without dreaming of those resources

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