about it tomorrow. How horrid it will be here when you are all gone!'
'We are not gone yet,' said Wilmet, repressively. 'And if you please, Alice, do not talk of this.'
'No,' said Felix, 'it must be entirely a family matter. I know we can trust to you.'
'Thank you. I'm so glad I was there. It is so nice to have a secret of yours-and this is a beauty! Why, you'll be a great man with a house in London, just like Mr. Underwood of Centry.'
'Pleasing ambition,' Cherry could not help muttering, with an ironical smile, as Alice laughed and nodded herself away.
'Ready sympathy is a pleasant thing,' returned Felix.
'You don't mean that you think this feasible?' said Wilmet, with a negative inflection in her voice.
'I think it ought to be considered before it is absolutely too late.'
Both were surprised, having always thought that he considered his destiny as fixed; and as Geraldine looked on while the other two discussed pounds, shillings, and pence, it was plain to her that he had an inclination to the change. The probability of rising, the benefit of lodging Edgar, the nearness to Alda, the probable openings for the younger lads, were advantages; but against these Wilmet set the heavy London house-rent, rates and taxes-from which they were free-the expense of living, the loss of her present situation, the dangers of deterioration of health. As to Edgar, his habits must be formed, he was already in a respectable family, and Lance and Bernard ought not to be risked for his sake. In fact Wilmet looked on London with a sage country girl's prudent horror of the great and wicked capital; and when that experienced man of the world, Felix, tried to prove that she did it injustice, he was met with a volley of alarming anecdotes. He hinted that ladies' schools might need teachers there, but was met by the difficulty of forming a new connection; and when he suggested that Cherry's talent might be cultivated, Wilmet hotly exclaimed, 'She could never go about to classes and schools of art!'
'Not alone, certainly, said Cherry,' wistfully.
'Edgar is as good as nobody, and I should be of no use in places like that,' added Wilmet.
'I'm afraid you don't look very chaperonish,' said Felix, contemplating the fair exquisitely-moulded face, the more Grecian for the youthful severity that curved the lip and fixed the eye. 'If we could only turn her inside out, Cherry, she would be a dozen duennas in one!'
'And then the Pursuivant. You would not like to desert poor Pur,' added Cherry.
'I could do that better in town in some ways.'
'Mr. Underwood would think that as bad as Edgar's drawing,' said Wilmet. 'No, no, Felix, you have learnt one business thoroughly, and it would be foolish to begin a fresh one now. Besides, how about Mr. Froggatt?'
'Of course I should do nothing in such haste as to inconvenience Mr. Froggatt,' said Felix;' and no one is more anxious for our real benefit, if this were possible.'
'But you see it won't do,' reiterated Wilmet.
'Perhaps not,' he answered, with more of a sigh than his sisters expected.
Rather nettled, Wilmet set to work with pencil and paper to calculate expenses, Geraldine looked up at Felix, who had taken up a book, and began to whistle, 'For a' that, an' a' that.'
Presently Wilmet, by way of making assurance sure, went off for her account-book; when he looked up and said,' How should you have liked this, Cherry?'
'I don't know. I've not thought. Did you?'
'I hadn't time before our Pallas Athene settled it; and I believe she is right, if she would not lay it in quite so hard. It only seemed a pity to lose our last chance of a lift in life without at least considering it.'
'I thought you did not care about lifts in life.'
'I ought not. But when it is brought home that we have slipped down two degrees in the social scale, it is tempting to step up one again! However, it plainly cannot be.'
Yet when Wilmet mustered her irrefragable figures to prove how much poorer they would be in London than on their present income at Bexley, he would not go into details, saying that he wanted to hear no more about it, in a tone that a little hurt her. He was so uniformly gentle and gracious, that what would have passed unnoticed in most brothers, was noticed anxiously in him; and as Wilmet darned his shirt sleeve, a glistening came between her eyes and her needle, as she felt the requital of her prudence rather hard. Must all men pant to be out in the world, and be angry with women for withholding them?
Nor was Geraldine devoid of the old prick, when she thought of the degrees in the social scale in connection with the words about tradesmen and merchants.
Wilmet was not quite happy without knowing that the letter of refusal was written, and was more vexed than she liked to show when Felix laughed at her for supposing he could have made time to write it on a busy Saturday, even if there had been any London post to send it by. Poor Alice Knevett got a considerable snubbing for bursting in to ask the decision, and lamenting over it when she had heard it; but she stood her ground with a certain pertinacity of her own: and so late in the evening, that Wilmet had gone up to put Stella to bed, Felix came up with the letter in his hand. It was so carefully expressed, that Cherry could not help saying saucily that it was worthy of the editor of the Pursuivant; while Alice, much impressed by the long words, enthusiastically broke out, 'It is a most beautiful letter, only it ought to have said just the other thing!'
'Why, what would you have done without Cherry?' said Felix.
'I'd have come to stay with her! And it is such a pity! A merchant is a gentleman, and I am sure you could get to be anything-a member of Parliament, or a baronet, or-' as if her imagination could not go farther; but she looked up at him with a dew of eagerness glistening in her bright hazel eyes. 'I was telling Cherry it does seem such a dreadful horrible pity that you should be nailed down in this little hole of a place for life.'
Felix smiled-a man's superior, gratified, but half melancholy smile -as he answered, 'At any rate, you won't lose the pleasures of imagination or of pity.'
'But I want to see you have the spirit to try,' cried Alice, eagerly. 'I know you could.'
'It would not be right,' said Felix, sitting down by her, and in full earnest gentleness and gravity setting before her the reasons that Cherry had hardly thought it worth while really to explain-namely, the impossibility of their being able to pay their way and meet the needful expenses, and the evils of the young, inexperienced household residing in London, resigning security for dependence.
Alice, flattered by being treated as a sensible person, said, 'Yes,' and 'I see,' at all the proper places; then drew a sigh, saying, 'It is very good in you.'
'I knew you would see it in the right light,' replied Felix.
'Oh!' but the sigh recurred. 'I can't help being sorry, you know.'
'There is nothing to be sorry for,' he said gratefully. 'I was disappointed at first myself; but for sheer usefulness to one's neighbour, I believe that this present position, if I have sense to make use of it rightly, is as good as any; and the mere desire of station and promotion is-when one comes to look at it properly- nonsense after all.'
She opened her eyes in amazement, and made a little exclamation.
'They may be well when they come,' said Felix in answer: 'but I have thought it over well to-night, and I see that to do anything doubtfully right for their sake would be a risk for all that I have no right to run.'
Alice hung her head, overcome by the pure air of the region where he was lifting her; and in a sort of shyness at the serious tone in which he had spoken, he added, smiling,
'Then you'll forgive the 'sound of it.''
'O Mr. Underwood,' she said, in the simplest and most earnest voice that Cherry had ever heard from her, 'I'm ashamed to recollect that nonsense!'
CHAPTER XIV. WHAT IT MAY LEAD TO
'I never was so berhymed since I was an Irish rat,
which I can scarcely remember.'-As You Like It.
'Dim memories haunt the child,
Of lives in other beings led-
Other, and yet the same.'
KEBLE.
In the autumn Alda made a visit at home. She had, as usual, gone with Mr. and Mrs. Underwood to their German baths, and had there fallen in with a merry set of her intimates in London, who had persuaded her to join them in an expedition to the Tyrol, which lasted till the end of September. On her return, she was dropped at
