ently repeated my
question; the rector, at the time, officiously assisting him to descend
from the carriage, and leaving me to get out as I could.

"Did you hear Madame Pratolungo?" Oscar asked. "Is Lucilla found?"

"Dear Oscar, we hope to find her, now you have come."

That answer revealed to me the secret of Mr. Finch's extraordinary
politeness to his young friend. The last chance, as things were, of
preventing Lucilla's marriage to a man who had squandered away every
farthing of his money, was the chance of Oscar's arrival in England
before the ceremony could take place. The measure of Oscar's importance
to Mr. Finch was now, more literally than ever, the measure of Oscar's
fortune.

I asked for news of Grosse as we went in. The rector actually found some
comparatively high notes in his prodigious voice, to express his
amazement at my audacity in speaking to him of anybody but Oscar.

"Oh, dear, dear me!" cried Mr. Finch, impatiently conceding to me one
precious moment of his attention. "Don't bother about Grosse! Grosse is
ill in London. There is a note for you from Grosse.--Take care of the
door-step, dear Oscar," he went on, in his deepest and gravest bass
notes. "Mrs. Finch is so anxious to see you. We have both looked forward
to your arrival with such eager hope--such impatient affection, so to
speak. Let me put down your hat. Ah! how you must have suffered! Share my
trust in an all-wise Providence, and meet this trial with cheerful
submission as I do. All is not lost yet. Bear up! bear up!" He threw open
the parlor door. "Mrs. Finch! compose yourself. Our dear adopted son. Our
afflicted Oscar!"

Is it necessary to say what Mrs. Finch was about, and how Mrs. Finch
looked?

There were the three unchangeable institutions--the novel, the baby, and
the missing pocket-handkerchief There was the gaudy jacket over the long
trailing dressing-gown--and the damp lady inside them, damp as ever!
Receiving Oscar with a mouth drawn down at the corners, and a head that
shook sadly in sympathy with him, Mrs. Finch's face underwent a most
extraordinary transformation when she turned my way next. To my
astonishment, her dim eyes actually sparkled; a broad smile of
irrepressible contentment showed itself cunningly to _me,_ in place of
the dismal expression which had welcomed Oscar. Holding up the baby in
triumph, the lady of the rectory whispered these words in my ear:--"What
do you think he has done since you have been aw