Hopes and Fears

the welcome reply, and in another second her arms were round Robert's neck. There was a thorough brotherly greeting between him and Sir Bevil; each saw in the other a man to be respected, and Robert could not but be grateful to the man who brought him Phoebe.

Her eyes were on the alert to judge how he had been using himself in the last half-year. He looked thin, yet that might be owing to his highly clerical coat, and some of his rural ruddiness was gone, but there was no want of health of form or face, only the spareness and vigour of thorough working condition. His expression was still grave even to sadness, and sternness seemed gathering round his thin lips. Heavy of heart he doubtless was still, but she was struck by the absence of the undefined restlessness that had for years been habitual to both brothers, and which had lately so increased on Mervyn, that there was a relief in watching a face free from it, and telling not indeed of happiness, but of a mind made up to do without it.

She supposed that his room ought to satisfy her, for though untidy in female eyes, it did not betray ultra self- neglect. The fire was brisk, there was a respectable luncheon on the table, and he had even treated himself to the Guardian, some new books, and a beautiful photograph of a foreign cathedral. The room was littered with half-unrolled plans, which had to be cleared before the guests could find seats, and he had evidently been beguiling his luncheon with the perusal of some large MS. sheets, red-taped together at the upper corner.

'That's handsome,' said Sir Bevil. 'What is it for? A school or almshouses.'

'Something of both,' said Robert, his colour rising. 'We want a place for disposing of the destitute children that swarm in this district.'

'Oh, show me!' cried Phoebe. 'Is it to be at that place in Cicely Row?'

'I hope so.'

The stiff sheets were unrolled, the designs explained. There was to be a range of buildings round a court, consisting of day-schools, a home for orphans, a creche for infants, a reading-room for adults, and apartments for the clergy of the Church which was to form one side of the quadrangle. Sir Bevil was much interested, and made useful criticisms. 'But,' he objected, 'what is the use of building new churches in the City, when there is no filling those you have?'

'St. Wulstan's is better filled than formerly,' said Robert. 'The pew system is the chief enemy there; but even without that, it would not hold a tenth part of the Whittingtonian population, would they come to it, which they will not. The Church must come to them, and with special services at their own times. They need an absolute mission, on entirely different terms from the Woolstone quarter.'

'And are you about to head the mission?'

'To endeavour to take a share in it.'

'And who is to be at the cost of this?' pursued Sir Bevil. 'Have you a subscription list?'

Robert coloured again as he answered, 'Why, no; we can do without that so far.'

Phoebe understood, and her face must have revealed the truth to Sir Bevil, for laying his hand on Robert's arm, he said, 'My good fellow, you don't mean that you are answerable for all this?'

'You know I have something of my own.'

'You will not leave much of it at this rate. How about the endowment?'

'I shall live upon the endowment.'

'Have you considered? You will be tied to this place for ever.'

'That is one of my objects,' replied Robert, and in reply to a look of astonished interrogation, 'myself and all that is mine would be far too little to atone for a fraction of the evil that our house is every day perpetrating here.'

'I should hate the business myself,' said the baronet; 'but don't you see it in a strong light?'

'Every hour I spend here shows me that I do not see it strongly enough.'

And there followed some appalling instances of the effects of the multiplicity of gin-palaces, things that it well-nigh broke Robert's heart to witness, absorbed as he was in the novelty of his work, fresh in feeling, and never able to divest himself of a sense of being a sharer in the guilt and ruin.

Sir Bevil listened at first with interest, then tried to lead away from the subject; but it was Robert's single idea, and he kept them to it till their departure, when Phoebe's first words were, as they drove from the door, 'Oh, thank you, you do not know how much happier you have made me.'

Her companion smiled, saying, 'I need not ask which is the favourite brother.'

'Mervyn is very kind to me,' quickly answered Phoebe.

'But Robert is the oracle! eh?' he said, kindly and merrily.

'Robert has been everything to us younger ones,' she answered. 'I am still more glad that you like him.'

His grave face not responding as she expected, she feared that he had been bored, that he thought Robert righteous over much, or disapproved his opinions; but his answer was worth having when it came. 'I know nothing about his views; I never looked into the subject; but when I see a young man giving up a lucrative prospect for conscience sake, and devoting himself to work in that sink of iniquity, I see there must be something in him. I can't judge if he goes about it in a wrong-headed way, but I should be proud of such a fellow instead of discarding him.'

'Oh, thank you!' cried Phoebe, with ecstasy that made him laugh, and quite differently from the made-up laughter she had been used to hear from him.

'What are you thanking me for?' he said. 'I do not imagine that I shall be able to serve him. I'll talk to your father about him, but he must be the best judge of the discipline of his own family.'

'I was not thinking of your doing anything,' said Phoebe; 'but a kind word about Robert does make me very grateful.'

There was a long silence, only diversified by an astonished nod from Mervyn driving back from the office. Just before setting her down, Sir Bevil said, 'I wonder whether your brother would let us give something to his church. Will you find out what it shall be, and let me know? As a gift from Juliana and myself-you understand.'

It was lucky for Phoebe that she had brought home a good stock of satisfaction to support her, for she found herself in the direst disgrace, and her mother too much cowed to venture on more than a feeble self-defensive murmur that she had told Phoebe it would never do. Convinced in her own conscience that she had done nothing blameworthy, Phoebe knew that it was the shortest way not to defend herself, and the storm was blowing over when Mervyn came in, charmed to mortify Juliana by compliments to Phoebe on 'doing it stylishly, careering in Acton's turn-out,' but when the elder sister explained where she had been, Mervyn, too, deserted her, and turned away with a fierce imprecation on his brother, such as was misery to Phoebe's ears. He was sourly ill-humoured all the evening; Juliana wreaked her displeasure on Sir Bevil in ungraciousness, till such silence and gloom descended on him, that he was like another man from him who had smiled on Phoebe in the afternoon. Yet, though dismayed at the offence she had given, and grieved at these evidences of Robert's ill-odour with his family, Phoebe could not regret having seized her single chance of seeing Robert's dwelling for herself, nor the having made him known to Sir Bevil. The one had made her satisfied, the other hopeful, even while she recollected, with foreboding, that truth sometimes comes not with peace, but with a sword, to set at variance parent and child, and make foes of them of the same household.

Juliana never forgave that drive. She continued bitter towards Phoebe, and kept such a watch over her and Sir Bevil, that the jealous surveillance became palpable to both. Sir Bevil really wanted to tell Phoebe the unsatisfactory result of his pleading for Robert; she wanted to tell him of Robert's gratitude for his offered gift; but the exchange of any words in private was out of their power, and each silently felt that it was best to make no move towards one another till the unworthy jealousy should have died away.

Though Sir Bevil had elicited nothing but abuse of 'pigheaded folly,' his espousal of the young clergyman's cause was not without effect. Robert was not treated with more open disfavour than he had often previously endured, and was free to visit the party at Farrance's, if he chose to run the risk of encountering his father's blunt coldness, Mervyn's sulky dislike, and Juliana's sharp satire, but as he generally came so as to find his mother and Phoebe alone, some precious moments compensated for the various disagreeables. Nor did these affect him nearly as much as they did his sister. It was, in fact, one of his remaining unwholesome symptoms that he rather enjoyed persecution, and took no pains to avoid giving offence. If he meant to be uncompromising, he sometimes was simply provoking, and Phoebe feared that Sir Bevil thought him an unpromising protege.

He was asked to the Christmas dinner at the Bannermans', and did not fulfil Augusta's prediction that he would