ing 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 God, 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 attitude, her hands clasped over her
broom. The gentleman was a country-looking boy--'

'Bearing himself like a sensible, pugnacious cock-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 al