prepared a welcome for him, such as no one could have dared to expect. His lordship thought his niece not only likely to be happier, but to occupy a more distinguished position with such a man as Norman May, than with most persons of ready-made rank and fortune.
The blushing and delighted Dr. May had thought himself bound to speak of his son's designs, but he allowed that the project had been formed under great distress of mind, and when he saw it treated by so good a man, as a mere form of disappointed love, he felt himself reprieved from the hardest sacrifice that he had ever been called on to make, loved little Meta the better for restoring his son, and once more gave a free course to the aspirations that Norman's brilliant boyhood had inspired. Richard took the same view, and the evening passed away in an argument--as if any one had been disputing with them--the father reasoning loud, the son enforcing it low, that it had become Norman's duty to stay at home to take care of Meta, whose father would have been horrified at his taking her to the Antipodes. They saw mighty tasks for her fortune to effect in England, they enhanced each other's anticipations of Norman's career, overthrew abuses before him, heaped distinctions upon him, and had made him Prime Minister and settled his policy, before ten o'clock brought their schemes to a close.
Mary gazed and believed; Margaret lay still and gently assented; Ethel was silent at first, and only when the fabric became extremely airy and magnificent, put in her word with a vehement dash at the present abuses, which grieved her spirit above all, and, whether vulnerable or not, Norman was to dispose of, like so many giants before Mr. Great-heart.
She went upstairs, unable to analyse her sentiments. To be spared the separation would be infinite relief--all this prosperity made her exult--the fair girl at the Grange was the delight of her heart, and yet there was a sense of falling off; she disliked herself for being either glad or sorry, and could have quarrelled with the lovers for perplexing her feelings so uncomfortably.
Though she sat up till the party returned, she was inclined to be supposed in bed, so as to put off the moment of meeting; but Margaret, who she hoped was asleep, said from her pillow, 'Ask dear Norman to let me give him one kiss.'
She ran down headlong, clutched Norman as he was taking off his greatcoat, told him that Margaret wanted him, and dragged him up without letting him go, till she reached the first landing, where she stood still, saying breathlessly, 'New Zealand.'
'If I wished to fail, she would keep me to it.'
'I beg your pardon,' said Ethel, claiming heartily his caress. 'I was wrong to doubt either of you. Now, I know how to feel! But Margaret must not wait.'
The happy youth, in the flush of love and joy, bent gently, almost tearfully, down in silence to the white form, half seen in the twilight, whose hopes had fleeted away from earth, and who was calmly, softly gliding after them. Hardly a word was uttered, but of all the many heartfelt thoughts that had passed while the face was pressed into Margaret's pillow, and her sympathising arms round the neck, surely none was ever deeper, than was his prayer and vow that his affection should be like hers, unearthly, and therefore enduring.
The embrace was all; Margaret must not be agitated, and, indeed, the events of the day had been too much for her, and the ensuing morning brought the fluttering of heart and prostration of strength, no longer a novelty and occasion of immediate terror, but the token of the waning power of life.
Till she was better, her father had no thoughts for aught else, but, as with many another invalid, the relief from present distress was as cheering as if it had been recovery, and ere night, her placid look of repose had returned, and she was devising pretty greetings for her newest Daisy.
Perhaps the sobering effect of these hours of anxiety was in Norman's favour, on entering into conversation with his father. Those visions, which had had their swing the night before, belonged to the earlier, more untamed period of Dr. May's life, and had melted away in the dim room, made sacred by lingering mementos of his wife, and in the sound of that panting breath and throbbing heart. His vehemence had been, after all, chiefly against his own misgivings, and when he heard of his son's resolution, and Meta's more than acquiescence, he was greatly touched, and recurred to his kind, sorrowful promise, that he would never be a stumbling-block in the path of his children. Still he owned himself greatly allured by the career proposed by Lord Cosham, and thought Norman should consider the opportunities of doing good in, perhaps, a still more important and extensive field than that which he had chosen.
'Time was that I should have grasped at such a prospect,' said Norman; 'but I am not the man for it. I have too much ambition, and too little humility. You know, father, how often you have had to come to my rescue, when I was running after success as my prime object.'
'Vanity fair is a dangerous place, but you who have sound principles and pure motives--'
'How long would my motives be pure?' said Norman. 'Rivalry and party-spirit make me distrust my motives, and then my principles feel the shock. Other men are marked by station for such trials, and may be carried through them, but I am not.'
'Yet some of these men are far from your equals.'
'Not perhaps in speechifying,' said Norman, smiling; 'but in steadiness of aim, in patience, in callousness, in seeing one side of the question at once.'
'You judge rightly for your own peace; you will be the happier; I always doubted whether you had nerve to make your wits available.'
'It may be cowardice,' said Norman, 'but I think not. I could burn for the combat; and if I had no scruples, I could enjoy bearing down such as--'
Of course Dr. May burst in with a political name, and--'I wish you were at him!'
'Whether I could is another matter,' said Norman, laughing; 'but the fact is, that I stand pledged; and if I embraced what to me would be a worldly career, I should be running into temptation, and could not expect to be shielded from it.'
'Your old rule,' said Dr. May. 'Seek to be less rather than more. But there is another choice. Why not a parsonage at home?'
'Pleasant parishes are not in the same need,' said Norman.
'I wonder what poor old Rivers would say to you, if he knew what you want to do with his daughter! Brought up as she has been--to expose her to the roughness of a colonial life, such as I should hesitate about for your sisters.'
'It is her own ardent desire.'
'True, but are girlish enthusiasms to be trusted? Take care, Norman, take care of her--she is a bit of the choicest porcelain of human kind, and not to be rudely dealt with.'
'No, indeed, but she has the brave enterprising temper, to which I fully believe that actual work, in a good cause, is far preferable to what she calls idleness. I do not believe that we are likely to meet with more hardship than she would gladly encounter, and would almost- -nay, quite enjoy.'
'You do not know what your aunt has had to go through.'
'A few years make a great difference in a colony. Still, it may be right for me to go out alone and judge for her; but we shall know more if my aunt comes home.'
'Yes, I could trust a good deal to her. She has much of your mother's sense. Well, you must settle it as you can with Meta's people! I do not think they love the pretty creature better than I have done from the first minute we saw her--don't you remember it, Norman?'
'Remember it? Do I not? From the frosted cedar downwards! It was the first gem of spring in that dreary winter. What a Fairyland the Grange was to me!'
'You may nearly say the same of me,' confessed Dr. May, smiling; 'the sight of that happy little sunny spirit, full of sympathy and sweetness, always sent me brighter on my way. Wherever you may be, Norman, I am glad you have her, being one apt to need a pocket sunbeam.'
'I hope my tendencies are in no danger of depressing her!' said Norman, startled. 'If so--'
'No such thing--she will make a different man of you. You have been depressed by--that early shock, and the gap at our own fireside--all that we have shared together, Norman. To see you begin on a new score, with a bright home of your own, is the best in this world that I could wish for you, though I shall live over my own twenty-two years in thinking of you, and that sweet little fairy. But now go, Norman--she will be watching for you and news of Margaret. Give her all sorts of love from me.'
Norman fared better with the uncle than he had expected. Lord Cosham, as a philanthropist, could not, with any consistency, set his face against missions, even when the cost came so near home; and he knew that
