The 'Thank you, my Lord,' came with great pleasure and alacrity.

'Some day, when you are a foreman, perhaps I may bring Miss Clara to see copper-smelting. Only mind, that you'll never go on soundly, nor even be fit to make your pretty tidy nest for any gentle bird, unless you mind one thing most of all; and that is, that we have had a new Life given us, and we have to begin now, and live it for ever and ever.'

As he raised himself, holding out his pale, slender hand from his white sleeve, his clear blue eyes earnestly fixed on the sky, his face all one onward look, something of that sense of the unseen pa.s.sed into the confused, turbulent spirit of the boy, very susceptible of poetical impressions, and his young lord's countenance connected itself with all the floating notions left in his mind by parable or allegory. He did not speak, as Louis heartily shook his hardy red hand, and bade him good speed, but his bow and pulled forelock at the door had in them more of real reverence than of conventional courtesy.

Of tastes and perceptions above his breeding, the very sense of his own deficiencies had made him still more rugged and clownish, and removed him from the sympathies of his own cla.s.s, while he almost idolized the two most refined beings whom he knew, Lord Fitzjocelyn and Charlotte Arnold. On an interview with her, his heart was set. He had taken leave of his half-childish grandfather, made up his bundle, and marched into Northwold, with three hours still to spare ere the starting of the parliamentary train. Sympathy, hope, resolution, and the sense of respectability had made another man of him; and, above all, he dwelt on the prospect held out of repairing the deficiencies of his learning.

The consciousness of ignorance and awkwardness was very painful, and he longed to rub it off, and take the place for which he felt his powers.

'I will work!' thought he; 'I have a will to it, and, please G.o.d, when I come back next, it won't be as a rough, ignorant lout that I'll stand before Charlotte!'

'Louis,' said Mary Ponsonby, as she sat at work beside him that afternoon, after an expedition to the new house at Dynevor Terrace, 'I want to know, if you please, how you have been acting like a gentleman.'

'I did not know that I had been acting at all of late.'

'I could not help hearing something in Aunt Catharine's garden that has made me very curious.'

'Ha!' cried Louis, eagerly.

'I was sowing some annuals in our back garden, and heard voices through the trellis. Presently I heard, quite loud, 'My young Lord has behaved like a real gentleman, as he is, and no mistake, or I'd never have been here now.' And, presently, 'I've promised him, and I promise you, Charlotte, to keep my Church, and have no more to do with them things.

I'll keep it as sacred as they keeps the Temperance pledge; for sure I'm bound to him, as he forgave me, and kept my secret as if I'd been his own brother: and when I've proved it, won't that satisfy you, Charlotte?'

'And what did Charlotte say?'

'I think she was crying; but I thought listening any more would be unfair, so I ran upstairs and threw up the drawing-room window to warn them.'

'Oh, Mary, how unfeeling!'

'I thought it could be doing no good!'

'That is so like prudent people, who can allow no true love under five hundred pounds a year! Did you see them? How did they look?'

'Charlotte was standing in an att.i.tude, her hands clasped over her broom. The gentleman was a country-looking boy--'

'Bearing himself like a sensible, pugnacious c.o.c.k-robin? Poor fellow, so you marred their parting.'

'Charlotte flew into the house, and the boy walked off up the garden.

Was he your Madison, Louis? for I thought my aunt did not think it right to encourage him about her house.'

'And so he is to be thwarted in what would best raise and refine him.

That great, bright leading star of a well-placed affection is not to be allowed to help him through all the storms and quicksands in his way.'

Good Mary might well open her eyes, but, pondering a little, she said, 'He need not leave off liking Charlotte, if that is to do him good; but I suppose the question is, what is safest for her?'

'Well, he is safe enough. He is gone to Illershall to earn her.'

'Oh! then I don't care! But you have not answered me, and I think I can guess the boy's secret that you have been keeping. Did you not once tell me that you trusted those stones in Ferny dell to him?'

'Now, Mary, you must keep his secret!'

'But why was it made one? Did you think it unkind to say that it was his fault?'

'Of course I did. When I thought it was all over with me, I could not go and charge the poor fellow with it, so as to make him a marked man.

I was only afraid that thinking so often of stopping myself, I should bring it out by mistake.'

Mary looked down, and thought; then raised her eyes suddenly, and said, as if surprised, 'That was really very n.o.ble in you, Louis!' Then, thinking on, she said, 'But how few people would think it worth while!'

'Yes,' said Louis; 'but I had a real regard for this poor fellow, and an instinct, perhaps perverse, of shielding him; so I could not accuse him on my own account. Besides, I believe I am far more guilty towards him. His neglect only hurt my ankle--my neglect left him to fall into temptation.'

'Yet, by the way he talks of you--'

'Yes, he has the sort of generous disposition on which a little delicacy makes a thousand times more impression than a whole pile of benefits I hope and trust that he is going to repair all that is past.

I wish I could make out whether good intentions overrule errors in detail, or only make them more fatal.'

Mary was glad to reason out the question. Abstract practical views interested her, and she had much depth and observation, more original than if she had read more and thought less. Of course, no conclusion was arrived at; but the two cousins had an argument of much enjoyment and some advantage to both.

Affairs glided on quietly till the Sat.u.r.day, when Lord Ormersfield returned. Never had he so truly known what it was to come home as when he mounted the stairs, with steps unlike his usual measured tread, and beheld his son's look of animated welcome, and eager, outstretched hands.

'I was afraid,' said the Earl, presently, 'that you had not felt so well,' and he touched his own upper lip to indicate that the same feature in his son was covered with down like a young bird.

Louis blushed a little, but spoke indifferently. 'I thought it a pity not to leave it for the regulation moustache for the Yeomanry.'

'I wish I could think you likely to be fit to go out with the Yeomanry.'

'Every effort must be made!' cried Louis. 'What do they say in London about the invasion?'

It was the year 1847, when a French invasion was in every one's mouth, and Sydney Calcott had been retailing all sorts of facts about war-steamers and artillery, in a visit to Fitzjocelyn, whose patriotism had forthwith run mad, so that he looked quite baffled when his father coolly set the whole down as 'the regular ten years' panic.' There was a fervid glow within him of awe, courage, and enterprise, the outward symbol of which was that infant yellow moustache. He was obliged, however, to allow the subject to be dismissed, while his father told him of Sir Miles Oakstead's kind inquiries, and gave a message of greeting from his aunt Lady Conway, delivering himself of it as an unpleasant duty, and adding, as he turned to Mrs. Ponsonby, 'She desired to be remembered to you, Mary.'

'I have not seen her for many years. Is Sir Walter alive?'

'No; he died about three years ago.'

'I suppose her daughters are not come out yet?'

'Her own are in the school-room; but there is a step-daughter who is much admired.'

'Those cousins of mine,' exclaimed Louis, 'it is strange that I have never seen them. I think I had better employ some of my spare time this summer in making their acquaintance.'

Mrs. Ponsonby perceived that the Earl had become inspired with a deadly terror of the handsome stepdaughter; for he turned aside and began to unpack a parcel. It was M'Culloch's Natural Theology, into which Louis had once dipped at Mr. Calcott's, and had expressed a wish to read it.

His father had taken some pains to procure this too-scarce book for him, and he seized on it with delighted and surprised grat.i.tude, plunging at once into the middle, and reading aloud a most eloquent pa.s.sage upon electricity. No beauty, however, could atone to Lord Ormersfield for the outrage upon method. 'If you would oblige me, Louis,' he said, 'you would read that book consecutively.'

'To oblige you, certainly,' said Louis, smiling, and turning to the first page, but his vivacious eagerness was extinguished.

M'Culloch is not an author to be thoroughly read without a strong effort. His gems are of the purest ray, but they lie embedded in a hard crust of reasoning and disquisition; and on the first morning, Louis, barely strong enough yet for a battle with his own volatility, looked, and owned himself, dead beat by the first chapter.

Mary took pity on him. She had been much interested by his account of the work, and would be delighted if he would read it with her. He brightened at once, and the regular habit began, greatly to their mutual enjoyment. Mary liked the argument, Louis liked explaining it; and the flood of allusions was delightful to both, with his richness of ill.u.s.tration, and Mary's actual experience of ocean and mountains. She brought him whatever books he wanted, and from the benevolent view of entertaining him while a prisoner, came to be more interested than her mother had ever expected to see her in anything literary. It was amusing to see the two cousins unconsciously educating each other--the one learning expansion, the other concentration, of mind. Mary could now thoroughly trust Louis's goodness, and therefore began by bearing with his vagaries, and gradually tracing the grain of wisdom that was usually at their root; and her eyes were opened to new worlds, where all was not evil or uninteresting that Aunt Melicent distrusted. Louis made her teach him Spanish; and his insight into grammar and keen delight in the majestic language and rich literature infected her, while he was amused by her positive distaste to anything incomplete, and playfully, though half murmuringly, submitted to his 'good governess,' and let her keep him in excellent order. She knew where all his property was, and, in her quaint, straightforward way, would refuse to give him whatever 'was not good for him.'

It was all to oblige Mary that, when he could sit up and use pen and pencil, he set to work to finish his cottage plans, and soon drew and talked himself into a vehement condition about Marksedge. Mary's patronage drew on the work, even to hasty learning of perspective enough for a pretty elevation intelligible to the unlearned, and a hopeless calculation of the expense.