ing?"

I could not answer; but I kept my hands clasped over the miniature, that
she might not see what they contained.

"Will you not answer? Am I not your friend,--almost your sister? Come,
shall I call mamma?"

"Yes--yes; go--go."

"No, I will not go yet. What have you there? What are you hiding?"

And innocently, and sister-like, those hands took mine; and so--and
so--the picture became visible! There was a dead silence. I looked up
through my tears. Fanny had recoiled some steps, and her cheek was very
flushed, her eyes downcast. I felt as if I had committed a crime, as
if dishonor clung to me; and yet I repressed--yes, thank Heaven! I
repressed the cry that swelled from my heart and rushed to my lips:
"Pity me, for I love you!" I repressed it, and only a groan escaped
me,--the wail of my lost happiness! Then, rising, I laid the miniature
on the table, and said, in a voice that I believe was firm,--

"Miss Trevanion, you have been as kind as a sister to me, and therefore
I was bidding a brother's farewell to your likeness; it is so like
you--this!"

"Farewell!" echoed Fanny, still not looking up.

"Farewell--sister! There, I have boldly said the word; for--for--" I
hurried to the door, and, there turning, added, with what I meant to be
a smile,--"for they say at home that I--I am not well; too much for me
this; you know, mothers will be foolish; and--and--I am to speak to your
father to-morrow; and-good-night! God bless you, Miss Trevanion!"

PART IX.

CHAPTER I.

And my father pushed aside his books.

O young reader, whoever thou art,--or reader at least who hast been
young,--canst thou not remember some time when, with thy wild troubles
and sorrows as yet borne in secret, thou hast come back from that hard,
stern world which opens on thee when thou puttest thy foot out of the
threshold of home,--come back to the four quiet walls wherein thine
elders sit in peace,--and seen, with a sort of sad amaze, how calm and
undisturbed all is there? That generation which has gone before thee in
the path of the passions,--the generation of thy parents (not so many
years, perchance, remote from thine own),--how immovably far off, in
its still repose, it seems from thy turbulent youth! It has in it a
stillness as of a classic age, antique as the statues of the Greeks.
That tranquil monotony of routine into which those lives that preceded
thee have merged; the occupations that they have found sufficing