it was with Gerald, for even to Dolores he had not told half what Ludmilla related.
'MY DEAREST MRS. HENDERSON,
'It is a long time since I received your dearest, kindest of letters, and if I did not answer it sooner, it was not from want of gratitude, but attendance on my poor dear mother and assistance to our landlady occupies me at every minute that I can spare from giving music lessons to some private families, and an evening class. I am very thankful to be able to earn something, so as to take off something of the burthen on my dear brother's shoulders. For, alas! the care and support of my mother and me weigh very heavily upon him. The proprietor of the Lacustrian has parted with his other clerk, and my brother has the entire business of not only writing, extracting for, and editing the paper, but of correcting the press, and he dares not remonstrate or demand better payment, as we live from week to week, and he could not afford to be dismissed. He is at the office all day, beginning at six in the morning to meet the central intelligence, he only rushes home for his meals, and goes back to work till twelve or one o'clock at night. Even then he cannot sleep. I hear him tossing about with the pain in his back that sitting at his desk brings on, and his hands are so tired by writing, and with the heat, which has been dreadful for the last few weeks, and has taken away all the appetite he ever had. You would be shocked to see him, he is so thin and altered; I cannot think how he is to continue this, but he will not hear of my writing to Lady Travis Underwood. He is never angry, except when I try to persuade him, and you never saw anything like his patience and gentleness to my poor mother. She never did either, she cannot understand it at all. At first she thought he wanted to coax the confession out of her, and when she found that it made no difference, she could not recover from her wonder-he, whom she had deserted in his babyhood, and so cruelly injured in his manhood, to devote himself to toiling for her sake, and never to speak harshly to her for one moment. She knew I loved her, and she had always been good to me, except when O'Leary forced her to be otherwise, but his behaviour has done more to touch her heart than anything, and I am sure she is, as Pere Duchamps says, a sincere penitent. She is revived by the summer heat, and can sit under the stoop and enjoy the sweet air of the lake; but she is very weak, and coughs dreadfully in the morning, just when it is cooler, and my brother might get some sleep. She tries to be good and patient with us both, and it really does soothe her when my brother can sit by her, and talk in his cheerful droll way; but he can stay but a very short time. He has to rush back to his horrid stuffy office, and then she frets after him and says, 'But what right have I to such a son?' and she begins to cry and cough.'
'Ah!' said Clement, as Geraldine, unable to speak for tears, gave him the letter. 'This is a furnace of real heroism.'
'Christian heroism, I am sure,' said Geraldine. 'Oh, my boy, I am proud of him. He will be all the better for his brave experiment.'
'Yes, he had an instinct that it would be wholesome, besides the impelling cause. Real hardship is sound training.'
'If it is not too hard,' said she.
''Let not their precious balms break my head,'' said Clement.
'I do not like that pain in the back. Remember how he dragged his limbs when first we had him at home, and how delicate he was up to thirteen-only eight years ago!'
'Probably it will not last long enough to do him much harm.'
'And how nobly uncomplaining he is!'
'This has brought out all the good we always trusted was in reserve.'
'Better than Emilia's experiment,' sighed Geraldine.
For Emilia Vanderkist, before her year was over, was at home, having broken down, and having spent most of her holidays with Mrs. Peter Brown, the wife of Sir Ferdinand's partner. She had come back, not looking much the worse for her hospital experience, but with an immense deal to say of the tyranny of the matron, the rudeness of the nurses to probationers, the hardness and tedium of the work to which she had been put, and the hatefulness of patients and of doctors.
Anna sympathized with all the vehemence of her sisterly affection, and could hardly believe her aunts, who told her that things must have changed in a wonderful manner since the time of Angela's experiences, for she had been very happy in the same place, and made no complaints.
Emilia had written to her cousin Marilda to express her willingness to return so soon as the Travis Underwoods should come home, and in the meantime she remained at Vale Leston, not showing quite as much tolerance as might be expected of the somewhat narrow way of life of her sisters. She did not like being a lodger, as it were, in Sophy's bedroom; she found fault with the parlour-maid's waiting, complained of the noise of the practising of the three little sisters, and altogether reminded Geraldine of Alda in penance at home.
Major Harewood was detained longer than he expected, for on arriving at Genoa he found that Menotti had migrated, and had to follow him to his villa on the Apennines, where, in the first place, he had to overcome the old man's suspicions that he was come to recover Benista's means on behalf of his family, and then at last was assured that the man had been dead long before 1870. Still John Harewood thought it well to obtain positive evidence, and pursued the quest to Innspruck, where Menotti averred that the man had been left by his companions dying in the care of some Sisters of Charity.
So it proved. At Innspruck, the record of the burial of Giovanni Benista, a native of Piedmont, was at length produced, dated the 12th of February, 1868, happily and incontestably before Zoraya's marriage to Edgar Underwood!
John Harewood made haste to telegraph the tidings to Vale Leston and to Jonesville, and came home exultant, having dispelled the cloud that had brooded over the family for nearly a year, and given them freely to enjoy the wedding.
Would they do so the more or the less for Emilia's announcement that she had a letter from Mr. Ferdinand Brown, eldest son of Sir Ferdinand's partner, offering her marriage, and that she had accepted him? He was, of course, a rich man, but oh! how Emily, Annie, and Gerald had been wont to make fun of him, and his parents.
'But, my dear Nan,' said she, 'I shall be able to do much more good in that way.'
'Oh!'
'And really I cannot go back to those intolerable backgammon evenings at Kensington Palace Gardens.'
CHAPTER XXXIII. A MISSIONARY WEDDING
Till the smooth temper of my age might be Like the high leaves upon the holly tree.-SOUTHEY.
The neighbourhood said that nothing was ever done at Vale Leston according to the conventionalities, and the Devereux wedding was an instance.
Lancelot had brought word that Bishop Norman May had actually arrived from New Zealand for a half-year's visit, bringing with him the younger missionary Leonard Ward, and that Dr. May's happiness was unspeakable. 'A renewed youth, if he needed to have it renewed.'
Clement and William Harewood went over to see them, and returned greatly impressed, and resolved on convoking the neighbourhood to be stirred in the cause of the Pacific islands. At the same time, one of the many letters from Lady Rotherwood about arrangements ended with-'My husband hopes you will be able to arrange for us to be introduced to your connections of the May family, the Bishop, Mr. Ward, and the good old doctor of whom we have heard so much.'
'We must invite them all to the wedding,' said Mrs. Harewood, who, as still inhabiting the Priory, would be the hostess.
'Certainly,' returned William Harewood, 'but I don't think Mr. Ward would come. He looks like an ancient hermit.'
'The best way,' said Mrs. Grinstead, 'would be to finish up the wedding-day with a missionary garden- party.'
'Geraldine!' said Lady Vanderkist from her sofa, in feeble accents of dismay; but Mrs. William Harewood hardly heard, and did not notice.
'It would be the most admirable plan. It would give people something to do, and make a reason for having ever so many more.'
'Baits cleverly disposed,' said William. 'The S.P.G. to attract Ward, Ward to attract the Marquis, and the Marquis to attract the herd.'
'Everybody throngs to the extremest outskirts of a wedding,' said Geraldine.
