No Name

'Yes, yes—a good fellow; a quiet, good fellow. Frank and I have always got on smoothly together.'

'You have got on like father and son, haven't you?'

'Certainly, my dear.'

'Perhaps you will think it harder on him when he has gone than you think it now?'

'Likely enough, Magdalen; I don't say no.'

'Perhaps you will wish he had stopped in England? Why shouldn't he stop in England, and do as well as if he went to China?'

'My dear! he has no prospects in England. I wish he had, for his own sake. I wish the lad well, with all my heart.'

'May I wish him well too, papa—with all my heart?'

'Certainly, my love—your old playfellow—why not? What's the matter? God bless my soul, what is the girl crying about? One would think Frank was transported for life. You goose! You know, as well as I do, he is going to China to make his fortune.'

'He doesn't want to make his fortune—he might do much better.'

'The deuce he might! How, I should like to know?'

'I'm afraid to tell you. I'm afraid you'll laugh at me. Will you promise not to laugh at me?'

'Anything to please you, my dear. Yes: I promise. Now, then, out with it! How might Frank do better?'

'He might marry Me.'

If the summer scene which then spread before Mr. Vanstone's eyes had suddenly changed to a dreary winter view—if the trees had lost all their leaves, and the green fields had turned white with snow in an instant—his face could hardly have expressed greater amazement than it displayed when his daughter's faltering voice spoke those four last words. He tried to look at her—but she steadily refused him the opportunity: she kept her face hidden over his shoulder. Was she in earnest? His cheek, still wet with her tears, answered for her. There was a long pause of silence; she waited—with unaccustomed patience, she waited for him to speak. He roused himself, and spoke these words only: 'You surprise me, Magdalen; you surprise me more than I can say.'

At the altered tone of his voice—altered to a quiet, fatherly seriousness—Magdalen's arms clung round him closer than before.

'Have I disappointed you, papa?' she asked, faintly. 'Don't say I have disappointed you! Who am I to tell my secret to, if not to you? Don't let him go—don't! don't! You will break his heart. He is afraid to tell his father; he is even afraid you might be angry with him. There is nobody to speak for us, except—except me. Oh, don't let him go! Don't for his sake—' she whispered the next words in a kiss—'Don't for Mine!'

Her father's kind face saddened; he sighed, and patted her fair head tenderly. 'Hush, my love,' he said, almost in a whisper; 'hush!' She little knew what a revelation every word, every action that escaped her, now opened before him. She had made him her grown-up playfellow, from her childhood to that day. She had romped with him in her frocks, she had gone on romping with him in her gowns. He had never been long enough separated from her to have the external changes in his daughter forced on his attention. His artless, fatherly experience of her had taught him that she was a taller child in later years—and had taught him little more. And now, in one breathless instant, the conviction that she was a woman rushed over his mind. He felt it in the trouble of her bosom pre ssed against his; in the nervous thrill of her arms clasped around his neck. The Magdalen of his innocent experience, a woman —with the master-passion of her sex in possession of her heart already!

'Have you thought long of this, my dear?' he asked, as soon as he could speak composedly. 'Are you sure —?'

She answered the question before he could finish it.

'Sure I love him?' she said. 'Oh, what words can say Yes for me, as I want to say it? I love him—!' Her voice faltered softly; and her answer ended in a sigh.

'You are very young. You and Frank, my love, are both very young.'

She raised her head from his shoulder for the first time. The thought and its expression flashed from her at the same moment.

'Are we much younger than you and mamma were?' she asked, smiling through her tears.

She tried to lay her head back in its old position; but as she spoke those words, her father caught her round the waist, forced her, before she was aware of it, to look him in the face—and kissed her, with a sudden outburst of tenderness which brought the tears thronging back thickly into her eyes. 'Not much younger, my child,' he said, in low, broken tones—'not much younger than your mother and I were.' He put her away from him, and rose from the seat, and turned his head aside quickly. 'Wait here, and compose yourself; I will go indoors and speak to your mother.' His voice trembled over those parting words; and he left her without once looking round again.

She waited—waited a weary time; and he never came back. At last her growing anxiety urged her to follow him into the house. A new timidity throbbed in her heart as she doubtingly approached the door. Never had she seen the depths of her father's simple nature stirred as they had been stirred by her confession. She almost dreaded her next meeting with him. She wandered softly to and fro in the hall, with a shyness unaccountable to herself; with a terror of being discovered and spoken to by her sister or Miss Garth, which made her nervously susceptible to the slightest noises in the house. The door of the morning-room opened while her back was turned toward it. She started violently, as she looked round and saw her father in the hall: her heart beat faster and faster, and she felt herself turning pale. A second look at him, as he came nearer, re-assured her. He was composed again, though not so cheerful as usual. She noticed that he advanced and spoke to her with a forbearing gentleness, which was more like his manner to her mother than his ordinary manner to herself.

'Go in, my love,' he said, opening the door for her which he had just closed. 'Tell your mother all you have told me—and more, if you have more to say. She is better prepared for you than I was. We will take to-day to think of it, Magdalen; and to-morrow you shall know, and Frank shall know, what we decide.'

Her eyes brightened, as they looked into his face and saw the decision there already, with the double penetration of her womanhood and her love. Happy, and beautiful in her happiness, she put his hand to her lips, and went, without hesitation, into the morning-room. There, her father's words had smoothed the way for her; there,