Hopes and Fears

'To see about it,' began Honor, but the words were strangled in a transported embrace.

'Dearest, dearest Miss Charlecote! Oh, I knew it would all come right if we were patient; but, oh! that it should be so right! Oh! Mervyn, how could you?'

'Ah! you see what it is not to be faint-hearted.' And Phoebe, whose fault was certainly not a faint heart, laughed at this poor jest, as she had seldom laughed before, with an abandon of gaiety and joyousness. The quiet girl was absolutely thrown off her balance, laughed and cried, thanked and exclaimed, moved restlessly, and spoke incoherently.

'Oh! may I tell Bertha?' she asked.

'No, I'll do that,' said Mervyn. 'It is all my doing.'

'Run after him, Phoebe,' said Honor. 'Don't let Bertha think it settled!'

And Bertha was, of course, disappointingly indifferent.

Lady Bannerman's nature was not capable of great surprise, but Miss Charlecote's proposal was not unwelcome. 'I did not want to go,' she said; 'though dear Sir Nicholas would have made any sacrifice, and it would have looked so for them to have gone alone. Travelling with an invalid is so trying, and Phoebe made such a rout about Maria, that Mr. Crabbe insisted on her going. But you like the kind of thing.'

Honor undertook for her own taste for the kind of thing, and her ladyship continued, 'Yes, you must find it uncommonly dull to be so much alone. Where did Juliana tell me she had heard of Lucy Sandbrook?'

'She is in Staffordshire,' answered Honor, gravely.

'Ah, yes, with Mrs. Willis Beaumont; I remember. Juliana made a point of letting her know all about it, and how you were obliged to give her up.'

'I hope not,' exclaimed Honor, alarmed. 'I never gave her up! There is no cause but her own spirit of independence that she should not return to me to-morrow.'

'Oh, indeed,' said Augusta, carelessly letting the subject drop, after having implanted anxiety too painful to be quelled by the hope that Lady Acton's neighbourhood might have learnt how to rate her words.

Mr. Crabbe was satisfied and complimentary; Robert, rejoiced and grateful; and Bertha, for the first time, set her will upon recovering, and made daily experiments on her strength, thus quickly amending, though still her weakness and petulance needed the tenderest management, and once when a doubt arose as to Miss Charlecote's being able to leave home, she suddenly withered up again, with such a recurrence of unfavourable symptoms as proved how precarious was her state.

It was this evidence of the necessity of the arrangement that chiefly contributed to bring it to pass. When the pressure of difficulty lessened, Mervyn was half ashamed of his own conquest, disliked the obligation, and expected to be bored by 'the old girl,' as, to Phoebe's intense disgust, he would speak of Miss Charlecote. Still, in essentials he was civil and considerate, and Honor carefully made it evident that she did not mean to obtrude herself, and expected him to sit loose to the female part of the company. Divining that he would prefer the start from home not to be simultaneous, and also favouring poor Bertha's shuddering horror of the direct line of railway to London, she proposed that the ladies should work their way by easy journeys on cross lines to Southampton, whilst Mervyn settled his affairs at the office, and then should come to them with Robert, who had made it possible to take an Easter holiday in which to see them safe to their destination in Switzerland.

Phoebe tried to acquiesce in Miss Charlecote's advice to trust Mervyn's head to Robert's charge, and not tease him with solicitude; but the being debarred from going to London was a great disappointment. She longed for a sight of St. Matthew's; and what would it not have been to see the two brothers there like brothers indeed? But she must be content with knowing that so it was. Mervyn's opposition was entirely withdrawn, and though he did not in the least comprehend and was far from admiring his brother's aims, still his name and his means were no longer withheld from supporting Robert's purposes, 'because he was such a good fellow, it was a shame to stand in his way.' She knew, too, rather by implication than confession, that Mervyn imagined his chief regrets for the enormous extravagance of the former year, were because he had thus deprived himself of the power of buying a living for his brother, as compensation for having kept him out of his father's will. Whether Mervyn would ever have made the purchase, and still more whether Robert would have accepted it, was highly doubtful, but the intention was a step for which to be thankful; and Phoebe watched the growing friendliness of the long estranged pair with constantly new delight, and anticipated much from Mervyn's sight of St. Matthew's with eyes no longer jaundiced.

She would gladly, too, have delayed the parting with Miss Fennimore, who had made all her arrangements for a short stay with her relatives in London, and then for giving lessons at a school. To Phoebe's loyal spirit, it seemed hard that even Miss Charlecote's care should be regarded as compensating for the loss of the home friend of the last seven years, and the closer, dearer link was made known as she sat late over the fire with the governess on Easter Sunday evening, their last at Beauchamp. Silent hitherto, Miss Fennimore held her peace no longer, but begged Phoebe to think of one who on another Sunday would no longer turn aside from the Altar. Phoebe lifted her eyes, full of hope and inquiry, and as she understood, exclaimed, 'O, I am glad! I knew you must have some deep earnest reason for not being with us.'

'You never guessed?'

'I never tried. I saw that Robert knew, so I hoped.'

'And prayed?'

'Yes, you belonged to me.'

'Do I belong to you now?'

'Nay, more than ever now.'

'Then, my child, you never traced my unsettled faith?-my habit of testing mystery by reason never perplexed you?'

Phoebe thought a moment, and said, 'I knew that Robert distrusted, though I never asked why. There was a time when I used to try to sift the evidence and logic of all I learnt, and I was puzzled where faith's province began and reasoning ended. But when our first sorrow came, all the puzzles melted, and it was not worth while to argue on realities that I felt. Since that, I have read more, and seen where my own ignorance made my difficulties, and I have prized-yes, adored, the truths all the more because you had taught me to appreciate in some degree their perfect foundation on reasoning.'

'Strange,' said Miss Fennimore, 'that we should have lived together so long, acting on each other, yet each unconscious of the other's thoughts. I see now. What to you was not doubt, but desire for a reason for your hope, became in poor Bertha, not disbelief, but contempt and carelessness of what she did not feel. I shall never have a sense of rest, till you can tell me that she enters into your faith. I am chiefly reconciled to leaving her, because I trust that in her enfeebled, dependent state, she may become influenced by Miss Charlecote and by you.'

'I cannot argue with her,' said Phoebe. 'When she is well, she can always puzzle me; I lose her when she gets to her ego. You are the only one who can cope with that.'

'The very reason for keeping away. Don't argue. Live and act. That was your lesson to me.'

Phoebe did not perceive, and Miss Fennimore loved her freedom from self-consciousness too well even for gratitude's sake to molest her belief that the conversion was solely owing to Robert's powers of controversy.

That one fleeting glimpse of inner life was the true farewell. The actual parting was a practical matter of hurry of trains, and separation of parcels, with Maria too busy with the Maltese dog to shed tears, or even to perceive that this was a final leave-taking with one of those whom she best loved.

CHAPTER XXIII

Tak down, tak down the mast of gowd,

Set up the mast of tree,

It sets not a forsaken lady

To sail so gallantly.-Annie of Lochroyan

'Quaint little white-capped objects! The St. Wulstan's girls marching to St. Paul's! Ah! the banner I helped to work! How well I remember the contriving that crozier upon it! How well it has worn! Sweet Honey must be in London; it was the sight she most grudged missing!'

So thought Lucilla Sandbrook as a cab conveyed her through the Whittingtonian intricacies.

Her residence with Mrs. Willis Beaumont was not a passage in her life on which she loved to dwell. Neither