er, to prevent the tears from
springing, 'home is wherever we are together!' 'Never fear, mother,'
echoed Oliver, with knitted brow and clenched hands, 'I will win it
back.'

Oliver was a quiet lad, of diligent, methodical habits, and willingly
accepted a clerkship in a mercantile house, which owed some obligations
to his father. At the end of a couple of years he was sent to reside
in South America; and his parting words to his mother were--'When you
see me again, Cheveleigh shall be yours.'

'Oh, my boy, take care. Remember, 'They that haste to be rich shall
not be innocent.''

That was the last time she had seen Oliver.

Her great object was to maintain herself independently and to complete
Henry's education as a gentleman. With this view she took up her abode
in the least eligible of her houses at Northwold, and, dropping the
aristocratic name which alone remained of her heiress-ship, opened a
school for little boys, declaring that she was rejoiced to recall the
days when Henry and Oliver wore frocks and learnt to spell. If any
human being could sweeten the Latin Grammar, it was Mrs. Frost, with
the motherliness of a dame, and the refinement of a lady, unfailing
sympathy and buoyant spirits, she loved each urchin, and each urchin
loved her, till she had become a sort of adopted grandmamma to all
Northwold and the neighbourhood.

Henry went to Oxford. He gained no scholarship, took no honours, but
he fell neither into debt nor disgrace; he led a goodnatured easy life,
and made a vast number of friends; and when he was not staying with
them, he and his mother were supremely happy together. He walked with
her, read to her, sang to her, and played with her pupils. He had
always been brought up as the heir--petted, humoured, and waited on--a
post which he filled with goodhumoured easy grace, and which he
continued to fill in the same manner, though he had no one to wait on
him but his mother, and her faithful servant Jane Beckett. Years
passed on, and they seemed perfectly satisfied with their division of
labour,--Mrs. Frost kept school, and Henry played the flute, or shot
over the Ormersfield property.

If any one remonstrated, Henry was always said to be waiting for a
government appointment, which was to be procured by the Ormersfield
interest. More for the sake of his mother than of himself, the
Ormersfield interest was at length exerted, and the appointment was
conferred on him. The immediate consequ