"Yes," said Elizabeth, seriously, "I do. But if you cannot overcome it in this case, how are you going to overcome it at all?"

"I don't know, Miss Heron."

"You said that you wished to take pupils," Elizabeth went on, too much interested in the subject to notice the mistake made in her name; "you told my uncle so, I believe. Will you get them more easily in England than here?"

"I shall no doubt find somebody who will forego the advantages of a 'character' for the sake of a little scholarship," said Stretton, rather bitterly. "Some schoolmaster, who wants his drudgery done cheap."

"Drudgery, indeed!" said Elizabeth, softly. Then, after a pause--"That seems a great pity. And you are an Oxford man, too!"

Stretton looked up, "How do you know that?" he said, almost sharply.

"You talked of Balliol last night as if you knew it."

"You have a good memory, Miss Heron. Yes, I was at Balliol; but you will not identify me there. The truth will out, you see; I was not at Oxford under my present name."

He thought he should read a look of shocked surprise upon her face; but he was mistaken. She seemed merely to be studying him with grave, womanly watchfulness; not to be easily biassed, nor lightly turned aside.

"That is your own affair, of course," she said. "You have a right to change your name if you choose. In your own name, I dare say you would have plenty of friends."

"I had," he answered, gravely, but not, as she noticed, as if he were ashamed of having lost them.

"And you have none now?"

"Absolutely none."

"Through your own fault?" She wondered afterwards how she had the courage to ask the question; but, at the moment, it came naturally to her lips, and he answered it as simply as it was asked.

"No. Through my misfortune. Pray ask me nothing more."

"I beg your pardon," she said. "I ought not to have asked anything. But I was anxious--for the children's sakes--and there was nobody to speak but myself. I will say nothing more."

"I shall beg of you," said Stretton, trying to speak in as even a tone as hers, although the muscles round his lips quivered once or twice and made utterance somewhat difficult, "I shall beg of you to tell what I have said to Mr. Heron only; you and he will perhaps kindly guard my secret. I wish I could be more frank; but it is impossible. I trust that, when I find employment, my employers will be as kind, as generous, as you have been to-day. You will tell your uncle?"

"What am I to tell him?" she said, turning her eyes upon him with a kindly smile in their serene depths. "That you will be here to-morrow at nine o'clock--or eight, before the day grows hot? Eight will be best, because the boys get so terribly sleepy and cross, you know, in the middle of the day; and you will be able to breakfast here at half-past ten as we do."

He looked at her, scarcely believing the testimony of his own ears. She saw his doubt, and continued quietly enough, though still with that lurking smile in her sweet eyes. "You must not find fault with them if they are badly grounded; or rather you must find fault with me, for I have taught them nearly everything they know. They are good boys, if they are a little unruly now and then. Here is my uncle coming from the house. You had really better wait and see him, will you not, Mr.

Stretton? I will leave you to talk business together."

She rose and moved away. Stretton stood like a statue, passionately desiring to speak, yet scarcely knowing what to say. It was only when she gave him a slight, parting smile over her shoulder that he found his voice.

"I can't thank you," he said, hoarsely. She paused for a moment, and he spoke again, with long gaps between the sentences. "You don't know what you have done for me.... I have something to live for now.... God bless you."

He turned abruptly towards the sea, and Elizabeth, after hesitating for a moment, went silently to meet her uncle. She was more touched than she liked to acknowledge to herself by the young man's emotion; and she felt all the pleasurable glow that usually accompanies the doing of a good deed.

"Perhaps we have saved him from great misery--poverty and starvation,"

she mused to herself. "I am sure that he is good; he has such a fine face, and he speaks so frankly about his troubles. Of course, as my uncle says, he may be an adventurer; but I do not think he is. We shall soon be able to judge of his character."

"Well, Betty," said Mr. Heron, as he came up to her, "what success? Have you dismissed the young man in disgrace, or are we to let him try to instruct these noisy lads every morning?"

"I think you had better try him, uncle."

"My dear Elizabeth, it is not for me to decide the question. You know very well that I could not do what you insist upon doing for us all----"

"Don't tell Mr. Stretton that, please, uncle."

Mr. Heron stopped short, and looked at her almost piteously.

"Dear child, how can I go on pretending to be the master of this house, and hiring tutors for my children, when the expense comes out of your purse and not out of mine?"

"My purse is wide enough," said Elizabeth, laughing. "Dear uncle, I should hate this money if I might not use it in the way I please. What good would it be to me if you could not all share it? Besides, I do not want to be gossiped about and stared at, as is the lot of most young women who happen to be heiresses. I am your orphan niece--that is all that the outside world need know. What does it matter which of us really owns the money?"

"There are very few people of your opinion, my dear," said her uncle.

"But you are a good, kind, generous girl, and we are more grateful to you than we can say. And now, shall I talk to this young man? Have you asked him any questions?"

"Yes. I do not think that we need reject him because he has no references, uncle."

"Very well, Elizabeth. I quite agree with you. But, on the whole, we won't mention the fact of his having no references to the rest of the family."

"Just what I was about to say, Uncle Alfred."

Thereupon she betook herself to the house, and Mr. Heron proceeded to the bench on the cliff, where he held a long and apparently satisfactory colloquy with his visitor. And at the end of the conversation it was decided that Mr. John Stretton, as he called himself, should give three or four hours daily of his valuable time to the instruction of the more youthful members of the Heron family.

CHAPTER XVII.

PERCIVAL'S HOLIDAY.

"Hey for the South, the sunny South!" said Percival Heron, striding into his friend Vivian's room with a lighted cigar between his teeth and a letter in his hand. "I'm off to Italy to-morrow."

"I wish to Heaven that I were off, too!" returned Rupert, leaning back in a lounging-chair with a look of lazy discontent. "The fogs last all the year round in London. This is May; I don't know why I am in town at all."

"Nor I," said his friend, briskly. "Especially when you have the cash to take you out of town as often as you like, and whenever you like, while I have to wait on the tender mercies of publishers and editors before I can put fifty pounds in my pocket and go for a holiday."

"You're in luck just now, then, I am to understand?"

"Very much so. Look at that, my boy." And he flourished a piece of thin paper in Vivian's face. "A cheque for a hundred. I am going to squander it on railway lines as soon as possible."

"You are going to join your family?"

"Yes, I am going to join my family. What a sweetly domestic sound! I don't care a rap for my family. I am going to see the woman I love best in the world, and, if she were not in Italy, I doubt whether wild horses would ever draw me from this vast, tumultuous, smoky, beloved city of mine--Alma Mater, indeed, to me, and to scores of men who are your brothers and mine----"

"Now, look here, Percival," said Rupert, in a slightly wearied tone, "if you are going to rant and rave, I'll go out. My room is quite at your disposal, but I am not. I've got a headache. Why don't you go to a theatre or a music hall, and work off your superfluous energy there by clapping and shouting applause?"

Percival laughed, but seated himself and spoke in a gentler tone.

"I'll remember your susceptibilities, my friend. Let me stay and smoke, that's all. Throw a book at my head if I grow too noisy. Or hand me that 'Review' at your elbow. I'll read it and hold my tongue."