CHAPTER XIV.

THE PARABLE OF THE SWORD. LISABETA was no more seen before my window in the garden ; and whenever we happened to meet in passages or on the stairs, the old lady was generally engaged humming some psalm tune in a half-conscious waysignifying that while her mind was occupied neither in love nor hatred to me, it was occupied ; so that any chance word of courtesy in passing might easily be dispensed with on either side. I had offended her; at the best, she “could not make me out;" and now I began to feel lonely, shut out as I was from all apparent, active sympathy on every hand.

For several days, indeed, there was enough to think about in the prospect of a letter from Mr. Lamont: the letter which—dreaded at first, dreaded less as time went by, and at last almost desired---never came ! Well, there could be only one explanation of that; he had got cured sooner than had been anticipated, and was already on his way to exile before Lisabeth's untoward composition arrived in Brighton. Yes, he must have gone ; and then I discovered that at the bottom of my heart I never believed he would go !

Heaven knows whether I am more wicked or unreasonable than other women ; but Miss Lamont fell sick about this time, and I declare I was not very, very sorry; for it gave me something new to think of. Much weariness, a little irritation, and too frequent a mind to brood over the differences between my lot and that of my companions, quickly succeeded the brief period when the delights of independence and the indulgence of innocent youthful dreams made every day pleasant. If Mr. Lamont had gone, there was an end to all speculation about omens, you see.

Obedience to my guardian's wishes was no longer a merit; and the pretty parliament of thoughts and fancies which used to assemble in my heart to discuss these things might as well be dismissed. And how could I spare them, since there was nothing to fill their place ? For meanwhile I had got back no nearer to madame or her daughter. Common kindness never failed amongst us, but we knew we were at cross purposes about Arthur Lamont, and the delicacy which veiled our contrary ideas on that subject muffled our sympathies also. But when Charlotte fell sick new sympathies were awakened, fresh interests were excited : and that is why I was not exceedingly sorry for it.

Fever it was which seized Miss Lamont--a low fever ; not dangerous but very troublesome. All madame's pupils were sent home as a matter of prudence, and (without my knowledge) Mr. Denzil was consulted about me. In his answer he said he himself was in great trouble, and could only suggest that if there was any danger of infection, the doctor might be induced to take me into his house for a while; but he left the question entirely to my feeling and discretion. I chose to remain of course; slipping a little note into madame's reply, to tell him how glad I should be if I could turn his trouble into happiness, in requital for his generosity to me.

As soon as the pupils had gone away, and the house was hushed, and life was all resolved into a plan for nursing Charlotte, matters began to mend. We were drawn together again-madame, Lisabeth, Charlotte, and myself--and were quite happy with our fever. Valley House was turned into a sort of nunnery for the nonce-with liberty of speech enough, if it were only soft and kind, and charming sloppy meals and sweet spoon-meats all day long. Never was there hate with chicken-broth or jealousy with jellies. Our differences were subdued : in the presence of sickness we each forgot the world—I my Mr. Lamont and his omens, madame her debts, Lisabeth her suspicion and resentment, and Charlotte—no, it would be too much to say she ever forgot that which had made her heart a desolation and a solitude, though she became more gentle, more human than I had ever known her to be.

Indeed, it was not long before I found that Charlotte accepted this illness as the natural but tardy end of her injuries, or cheated her imagination with that view of it.

I was sitting with her one afternoon when she lay very pale and weak, but with a lustre in her eyes which seemed to cast a light, a borrowed light, over all her face. And they were usually as dull as drowned eyes, and so heavy that you might count one, two, three, while they moved to look at you. She herself was conscious how they were burning now, for she asked me to give her her hand-glass, and stared into these eyes, saying—"I thought so !"

“ And what did you think ?" I asked, prepared to combat any evil auguries she might have found in her face.

“Why, don't you see how brilliant I am ?”
“ But is it not always so with people in these dreadful fevers ? "

“ Yes," said she, with her brother's very voice and manner, “ all these dreadful fevers :-fever of youth, fever of love, fever of death. This is how I used to look, Margaret, when I was as young as you are; but those other two fevers have cooled out years ago. This is the third, I suppose."

“You know you do not suppose so, really. What does Doctor Mitchell say ?”

“Give me that book," pointing to a volume which lay on a little table at her bedside, “ and I'll read you a story."

“But what Doctor Mitchell says isn't a story," I said, trying a little joke since she would be so serious.

“ He would find it difficult, though, to explain my case so well as this legend does."

Thereupon she began to read from the book-a volume of Scandinavian legends printed in the German tongue. The story I half forget, and shall

spoil it in telling. It was about a smith who made armour for heroes, shirts of iron that were soft as flax, and impenetrable as the rock. But presently a sword was forged which no mail could keep out. The smith thought and hammered, and hammered and thought, to no purpose. The sword clove the work of weary days and nights at a blow. But the smith would not be discouraged, and at last, with infinite labour and cunning, he forged a shirt of mail ten times finer and stronger than any he had made before. He put it on, and going to the hero of the sword, bade him strike. “I had better not," said he. " Strike !” cried the smith ; "you are afraid your fine blade will be broken.” The other struck a downright stroke, and the smith laughed, for he had not even felt the blow. "Shake yourself !” said the swordsman. The smith shook himself and fell apart : he was cloven asunder.

“ There !” said Miss Lamont, as the book dropped from her tired hand.

“ I make nothing of that, except that it is a ghastly story, unfit for you to read just now.”

“On the contrary, a very fit one; besides, it is familiar enough to me. Shall I tell you ? Many years ago, I was stricken like that. My heart was cloven asunder; and I have been obliged to keep very still to keep alive. But it will hold together no longer, I think. It has been shaken by the hand that dealt the blow."

Shaken by the hand that dealt the blow! Is it so ? thought I. llas Mr. Lamont told her, then, that her lover was a cheat and perfidious ?—Perhaps he had done so before he went away. But probable as this explanation of Charlotte's figurative language appeared, I could not conceive it to be the true one; and, encouraged by the confidence she had shown me, I began to consider whether I might not ask her whose was the hand she spoke of, when I saw that she had fallen asleep.

Idly-for I understood little of German-I took up the book from which she had read, to pass away the moments with romance, while she had gone to learn once more that death may be sweeter than life. And as soon as I opened the leaves I made a discovery.

True, no instinct, no voice of nature told me, when my eyes rested on a paper covered with verses, that I looked on my father's handwriting! But I recognized it as the same as that which Charlotte had tested my acquirements with on my first evening at Valley House. I knew that the lines before me had been traced by the false lover and unfaithful friend, who, without being wickeder than many a man who goes about the world free and honoured, had ruined two lives beside his own. Two ? Three ! four ! if I had only known it: but much of my knowledge was yet to

come.

The eagerness with which I gazed on this yellow leaf blinded me for a long while to the words written on it. I saw there only pictures out of the story Mr. Lamont had told me; and glad I am to remember that it was the bettermost pictures I saw. The scenes wherein the captain of hussars appeared conscience-stricken and foreboding, the memory that “ he would not fire, for he was tired of his life"—these things always occurred to me first, and remained in my mind last, whenever I thought of him. I never imagined him the handsome, high-bred young man, winning as a woman; he was always to me the changed and remorseful figure which stalked away from Mr. Lamont's tent" in such a mood that I lost all my anger." How glad I am that it was 50—1, his daughter !

Presently these obscuring visions floated from between my eyes and the paper. I read; and found it to be a poem based on the very legend Charlotte had repeated! The verses were written, apparently, just after the “ pleasant afternoon of agony" of which Mr. Lamont had spoken, and they compared her broken heart to the cloven man, exactly as she had compared it. Moreover, there were phrases in the poem which she had used : “keep very still to keep alive,” and “shook by the hand that dealt the blow." Only, the writer evidently meant his own hand; for the gist of the poem was that he feared to meet her any more, lest, trembling at his presence, the sundered heart should fall apart : whereas, if she kept very still, it might be healed by the slow-distilling balsams of time.

I was now satisfied that when Charlotte Lamont said her heart had been shaken asunder by her brother's hand (for it was that which dealt the blow, according to her belief), she spoke of nothing he had revealed, but uttered an unconscious prophecy of what he could reveal! How many times bave we all delivered such chance prophecies, in times of sickness or excitement! What Miss Lamont meant to say, and what slie thought she felt, was that her brother's reappearance had shocked her so much that her health had given way; but this was a fond, flattering delusion, cherished for its own sake, as all the delusions of her life had been cherished for many a year. She little knew how easily he could shake to the ground her very self, which, as it now existed, was nothing but a mistake.

Thinking all this, and much beside—painfully thinking how easy it is to fill the world with pain—I glanced from the old faded paper in my hand to her who had read it so many times with grateful grief, and saw that she was awake again, and watching me.

I stammered excuses, but she put them aside.

“No matter," said she—her mind fevered as well as her body—“I've had an opportunity of seeing that a poet can not only infuse his soul into his reader's soul, but into his face too. Read those verses for me, Margaret."

“No," said I, we have had enough of murdered men and broken hearts."

“And yet you have a heart of your own to break, and I know, poor little fool, it is in a fair way of breaking now! But we will take care of that I'll take care of that! Whether I get well, or whether I am to die, I'll tell you my story for your own sake; and if after that you fondle your illusions, so much the worse for you.”

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“ And if you do," I thought to myself as I left the room rather angry, "I may be obliged to tell you his story; and if that destroys your illusions, so much the better for you ! For they have lost all life and grace; they are nothing but dry bones ; and it would be well if you left off fondling them, and turned to your own flesh and blood ! ”

CHAPTER XV.

OLD HOPES AND NEW.

After a little while Charlotte Lamont began to recover—unwillingly, I do believe. Much of her later life must have been tinctured by secret misgivings that she had kept up her romance too long; and it was a sincere pleasure to her to think that her brother's return had kindled the smouldering ashes of her sorrow into a blaze, that its fires had seized upon her blood, and that she should die because of her faithful blighted love at last. This idea, this romantic hope it was that made her so much more gentle and human for a time. But she recovered; and when the doctor insisted on her leaving her sick-room “for a change" every day, there was an end to all that : she became her cold perverted self again-colder, indeed, and more perverse than ever.

At length the house was purged of the last breath of infection ; Charlotte needed no other nursing than the cook's; and madame made a journey to London to see the parents of her pupils, and arrange for their return.

The next day after her departure was Sunday—one of those sweet Sabbaths when the very earth seems to rest from labour and change, and the air has nothing to do but to spread abroad the praise that ascends from the churches. Charlotte had not yet ventured from the house; but the afternoon was sunny and warm as any day in spring, though November had come; and I proposed to her that we should go to church together, a walk of nearly half a mile. “Not to-day,” she said ; “ Lisabeth shall send us some tea into your room, and there we'll sit and look into the garden and talk."

We went to my room, and Lisabeth sent in the tea, and we sat and looked into the garden; but we did not talk very readily. Not a word was said, except some few about currant-bushes and currant-jelly, for half an hour.

But Miss Lamont had come to speak of more momentous things, and presently she began. I have said before that her speech was cold and distant, like an echo.

“I am going to redeem my promise, Margaret," she said abruptly. “Do you remember the first evening you passed in this bouse I gave you a book to read ? I pretended, you know, that I wanted to learn how you had been taught; but the truth is I had been struck by your voice, which

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