"Has Mr. Sidney the patience to wait for me, or care for a long engagement, of which he may eventually tire?"

"Patience!--care for an engagement!" he almost shouted.

"Then when he asks me again," said Harriet, "I will give him my answer.

But," with an arch smile towards him, "I will wait till I am asked."

"Bless you, my dear girl!" exclaimed old Hinchford, "I feel like a father towards you already--as for waiting, every true boy and girl will wait for each other--why shouldn't they, if they love one another, eh, Sid?"

His hand came heavily on Sid's shoulder, and knocked off his son's gla.s.ses.

"Ah! why shouldn't they, if they are sure of love lasting all the long time between engagement and marriage. Harriet! dear Harriet!" he exclaimed, "I will ask you presently."

"When the old fogies are out of the way, and the courtship can be carried on in the recondite style," cried his elated father; "a sly dog this, who will not be embarra.s.sed by witnesses--eh, Wesden?"

Wesden gave a short laugh--a double-knock species of laugh, in which he indulged when more than usually hilarious.

"Ah! that's it!" he said; "and as for waiting, why Mrs. Wesden and I are an old couple, and mayn't keep you waiting so long as you fancy, Sidney.

It isn't much money, but----"

"That will do, sir," said Sidney, hastily; "I must support my wife, not let my wife support me. Harriet," turning to the daughter, with an impetuosity almost akin to fierceness, "is it not time to return to Camberwell?"

"Oh! ho!--do you hear that, Wesden?" cried the father.

Mr. Hinchford had forgotten the downfall of his son's air-built castle, in the happiness which he believed would make amends for it to Sidney.

And if Sidney were content--why, he was.

Harriet was glad of an excuse to escape. Two old gentlemen talking of love affairs--her love affairs--before the suitor, was scarcely fair, and her position was not enviable. And besides that, Sidney Hinchford's manner had not been comprehensible, and required explanation; she could almost believe that he did not desire an engagement; there was so little of the impa.s.sioned lover in his new demeanour. There was a mystery, and she would be glad to have it dissipated.

Harriet went away, escorted by her lover, and the two fathers drew their chairs closer to the fire and drank the health of the happy couple as they went out at the door.

"This is a proud day for you and me--to have such children, and to see them growing up fonder and fonder of each other every day--eh, Wesden?"

"Yes. I have been uneasy about Harriet, and leaving her alone in the world. She will be always happy with him, and have a good protector."

"That she will. How the little girl would have clapped her hands at this!"

"What little girl?" asked Wesden.

"Why, Mattie, to be sure. Mattie, who used to play the mother almost to those two, her seniors, and be always as interested as a mother in making a match between them."

"Ah!--Mattie!--yes!"

Mr. Wesden looked about for his pipe and his pipe-lights on the mantel-piece.

Mr. Hinchford drew his favourite meerschaum from his coat-pocket. The two old men faced each other, and began to smoke vigorously.

"I wonder where that girl has got to?" suggested Hinchford.

"It's impossible to say. In good hands, I hope."

"I'd lay a heavy wager that she knows whose birthday it is to-day,"

commented Mr. Hinchford; "she was a girl who never forgot anything."

"Ah--perhaps so!"

"And I think she might have cleared up the fog, if you had waited a bit, Wesden."

"Why didn't she, if she could?"

"I don't know. I promised to believe in her, and somehow I do."

"Can anything in the world account for a girl her age being out all night?" said Wesden.

"Ah! that looks bad--I can't get over that!" said Mr. Hinchford, giving his head one sorrowful shake.

Poor Mattie!--poor stray! whose actions, the best and most unselfish, were not to be accounted for, or done justice to in this world.

CHAPTER II.

SIDNEY'S CONFESSION.

Sidney Hinchford escorted Harriet Wesden home to Camberwell. A most unromantic walk down the Newington Causeway--sacred to milliners and counter-skippers--the Walworth Road, Camberwell Road, and streets branching thence to melancholy suburbs--and yet a walk that was the happiest in the lives of these two, though looked back upon in after years through tear-dimmed eyes, and sighed for by hearts that had been sorely wrung. Such a walk as most of us may have taken once in life--seldom more than once--a walk away from sober realism into fairy-land, where everything apart from love was a something to be utterly despised, and where love first rose to fill our souls with promise. What if the story ended abruptly, and the waking came, and one or two of us fell heavily to earth--we did not die of the wounds, and we see now that the fall was the best thing that could have happened for us. We look back at the past, and regret not the sunshine that dazzled us there.

And yet there was a stern story to relate, and Sidney had escorted Harriet Wesden home, believing in the darkness rather than the light upon his way. He went forth regarding life literally, and he found himself, after awhile, in the land of romance, wherein sober existence had no dwelling-place.

Let him tell the story in his own way.

Harriet and Sidney had not proceeded a long distance together before he began.

"I think that I must have puzzled you very much, Harriet, by this evening's behaviour--by the way in which I received your kindness--more than kindness. There was a reason, and I am going to explain it."

"Is it worth explanation?" asked Harriet.

"I think so--you shall judge. It is an explanation that I cannot give my father, for it would break his heart, I think, with the long suspense which would follow it."

"So serious an explanation as that, Sidney?"

"Yes. Is it not odd that, with my character for straightforwardness, I should have been all my life keeping back the truth?"

"From him--for his sake, only, Sidney?"

"Perhaps for my own--to save myself from a host of inquisitive questions, and an attention that would irritate rather than soothe--I am a very selfish man."

"I don't believe that yet awhile."