were my speculations as to the appearance of poor Kate's child realised. It was thin, delicate, pinched, and tiny. It had very little hair, although some months old. I noticed the wee hands, the little bent legs that would not straighten, above all the open blue eyes, which seemed fixed in an almost weird outlook. The nurse handled it delicately and skilfully. She seemed sensible of its frailty, and, though rapid in her motions, worked with the care of a glass-blower.

I was struck with its inactivity, and longed to hear it cry. Its composure was not to be ruffled. The bath, the grand enjoyment of the healthy baby, seemed in nowise to affect it; would it not plunge out with those thin little legs, and grasp the edge with its tiny fist? It lay with painful composure in the nurse's hand, and though I fancied that its fixed blue eyes sometimes followed me, I never could detect in its face the least change of the still marble-like expression.

"Does it never cry?" my aunt asked.

"Sometimes, madame," answered the nurse.

fully good baby."

"But it is a wonder

I stooped and kissed the little fellow as he was lifted out of the bath, and when he was dressed the nurse gave him to me to hold whilst she prepared his food. My inexperienced arms soon made him restless, and in a very few moments he began to cry. So strange a cry !—it was like the echo of a dying baby's wail.

I leaned over him, watching him. I endeavoured to trace in the tiny early lineaments a resemblance to his parents; but could find none. I might have fancied there was an expression of the mother in the mouth; but as I scrutinised the impression wore away. He seemed to me a weird little bairn. I would have given something for more babyhood about him.

His arrival however gave an impetus to time. The days rolled away more briskly than I ever remember them to have done. I soon got into the way of handling the little fellow; I sometimes dressed him, often walked out with him, to allow the active and mercurial little Frenchwoman to devote herself to dressmaking for the family, including herself. But though pretty well all my time was bestowed on the baby, my devotion was unrewarded by the faintest recognition. The stolid stare of his blue eyes looked no life; the little form lay as composed in my arms or in his cot as an invalid's; he seemed to receive no benefit whatever from the food he took, though he consumed enough, in my inexperienced sight, to satisfy a dozen babies; and with the exception of a small increase of hair, I could note no perceptible indications of growth whatever.

My inexperience saved me from anxiety, and the nurse's conduct corresponded with my notions that what appeared to me to be unnatural was in reality wholly incidental to babyhood. She was very

much devoted to the child, coining a new endearing term for it every day. Had there been any grounds for anxiety I felt sure her solicitude would have betrayed them.

After some weeks Major Rivers came down to Lorton to see us. His manners towards his child were full of affection. He took the little creature in his arms; kissed it several times with almost impassioned gestures.

"Poor motherless mite!" he exclaimed, holding the baby up, and receiving its supernaturally steady gaze full upon his face. "Wee parched thing—what makes thee so spare? Art thou always thus to symbolise by thy weak wail, thy slow unconscious eyes, thy lean quiet limbs, the death that gave thee life, and the sorrow that thou didst bring with thee? Celestine," he said to the nurse, "see that he wants for nothing to make him fat. How does he sleep?" "Very well, monsieur." "What is his age now?" "Six months, monsieur." "Is he fond of his aunt ?"

"He is too young," I answered, "to be fond."

He looked at me earnestly, then abruptly turned to Celestine. He remained in the nursery, playing with and caressing his child for some time. In his conduct towards me I noticed a kind of shyness that puzzled me to understand. Yet, though he directed his conversation largely to my aunt and to the nurse, I saw that pretty well every other sentence was levelled at me. For he would pause after his remarks, and give me a quick searching glance, as if noting the effect of his words.

I confess that I was perfectly happy in his society. His presence, which my love made sweet, was refined by the associations that hung about it of my dead sister. Her death was still very, very recent, and I had not yet sobbed out my lamentations, as the tear-stained cheeks of the baby, after I had been hanging over it, would sometimes testify. But the presence of Major Rivers, so far from recalling Kate to me with the bitter vividness that I might have expected, seemed to soothe, to diminish, even to obliterate my sorrow, by subordinating it, so to speak, to my passion. But how carefully I kept my love hidden from him! I felt that it was impossible for him to detect it. In my innocence I considered too that my refusal to share his home was a masterstroke; for, I thought, should he ever have had any reason to suspect my love, he will certainly have his suspicions shaken or put to flight by this resolute refusal of his offer.

On leaving, after this visit, he asked me if I had changed my mind. Now that I knew the baby, had learned to love it, would I not come and take care of it for him at Newtown?

"You are unfair in pressing such an invitation on me," was my rejoinder.

"It is you, not I, who are unfair," he exclaimed. "You are as cynical as a poem by Swift, and will make no allowance for human infirmities which men call passions. I am a father, Maggie, and want to have my child with me.'

"A reasonable and natural desire."

"But, though selfish, I am not cruel. I will not allow the little pet to come to me unless he can be properly attended to. But if you came with him he could live with me. I could then enjoy, not only the kisses of my boy, but the society of my sister."

"If I were your sister I should not be so resolute in my refusal. But there this conversation must end. When will you be down again ?"

"Shortly. Have you any of the money left I gave you?"

Certainly I have. Lorton has its failings, but extravagance is not one. I have yet to learn the art, even with the charge of a baby, to spend fifty pounds in so short a time."

"I meant," he said, "to open a banking account for you here. But I have changed my mind. I shall do nothing of the sort. I think I shall even refuse to supply you with money. I shall starve you into compliance with my wishes."

We were standing in the hall. I met his gaze as I spoke, and there was something in it that dyed my cheeks crimson. Annoyed, irritated with myself for a display of feeling for which there was no substantial cause whatever, I took his hand, shook it, and muttering good-bye, almost ran away. Halfway up the stairs I heard the hall-door bang, and knew that he was gone.

What had I done? I had twice confounded my first confusion by my abrupt leave-taking. And what brought the blood to my cheek? What construction would he place upon my obvious embarrassment? I pressed my hand to my forehead and felt it very hot. I peered into a looking-glass, and saw a heightened colour on my face and a wild. unnatural brilliancy in my eyes.

Yet what was I to care for any impression my appearance or my conduct might make upon him? What was this man to me? I pressed my hands tightly across my questioning heart, as if I wanted to suppress, to stifle, the reply that I knew would be vouchsafed to my

answer.

Major Rivers did not visit Lorton again for some time. During the interval of his absence I received several letters from him, but in one only did he allude to my living at Newtown. As yet my aunt had received no letter from George. The eagerness with which she awaited the arrival of the post, and the disappointment which followed its

visits or its absence, were of the most strained and painful kind. In vain I endeavoured to show her that by no possibility could she hope to hear from George under six or eight months; to her the laws of geography were neutralised by affection, and she computed, not by distance, but by desire.

Baby, who at the commencement seemed born to astonish time by defying its influence, eventually yielded and grew. But as I got to know more of it, I became more apprehensive of the insecurity of its life. A hint indeed had been given me by the doctor who had vaccinated him; I was enjoined by him to exercise the utmost vigilance against every contingency of illness. I hardly needed the precaution. Nothing was plainer than that the little fellow's constitution rested on a most infirm and precarious basis. I judged that the least attack might prove fatal to him, and devoted my whole attention to seeing that he was properly attended and rightly fed. In justice to the little French nurse, however, I must confess that her own excitable devotion rendered my own care almost supererogatory.

TEMPLE BAR.

FEBRUARY 1872.

"Good-bye, Sweetheart!"

A TALE IN THREE PARTS.

BY RHODA BROUGHTON, AUTHOR OF "COMETH UP AS A FLOWER," ETC.

IF

CHAPTER XII.

WHAT JEMIMA SAYS.

F I imagine that Lenore's composed cheerfulness and equable serenity are the result of a strain so strong, as to be unable to be kept up beyond one evening, I am mistaken. I find her the same the next morning, and the morning after that, and the morning after that. She talks more than usual: ordinarily indeed, she is too lazy to take the trouble of talking merely for the sake of contributing her share to the general stock that forms family conversation, but now she talks resolutely to any one who will talk to her. She lounges away less time than usual in her own room; always she is to be seen in the general sitting-rooms, by all comers and goers, working and reading tranquilly. She drives out with Sylvia to pay morning calls; she walks out with me into the village, carrying broth and jelly. Sometimes I try to surprise her face off guard, to see her features fall into the haggard lines of hopeless angry grief in which I saw them so lately; but I fail; her face seems to be never in dishabille. She actually plays with the children!—gambols which, I confess, remind me of the millennium, when, we are told, the weaned child shall play on the cockatrice's den. On the third day, I am sitting pondering these things in the drawing-room, which Lenore has just left with a light and buoyant tread. Sylvia, with one of her spasmodic fits of maternity upon her, is trying, with alternate peevish coaxings and caressing abuse, to lead, or rather push, pull, and mildly flagellate her offspring along the rosy path of learning. In this case, it is theological

VOL. XXXIV.

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