cy by her pretty Hindoo songs. With him she
walked out, and with him she came in; she would read to him for hours,
whether he snored or listened; and, really, both mother and son were
several long weeks before their scheming could come to any thing. A
_tete-a-tete_ between Julian and Emily appeared as impossible to manage,
as collision between Jupiter and Vesta.

However, after some six weeks of this sort of mining and counter-mining
(for Emily divined their wishes), all on a sudden one morning the
general received a letter that demanded his immediate presence for a day
or two in town; something about prize-money at Puttymuddyfudgepoor.
Emily was too high-spirited, too delicate in mind, to tell her guardian
of fears which never might be realized; and so, with some forebodings,
but a cheerful trust, too, in a Providence above her, she saw the
general off without a word, though not without a tear; he too, that
stern, close man, was moved: it was strange to see them love each other
so.

The moment he was gone, she discreetly kept her chamber for the day, on
plea of sickness; she had cried very heartily to see him leave her--he
had never yet left her once since she could recollect--and thus she
really had a head-ache, and a bad one.

Julian Tracy gave such a start, that he knocked off a cheffonier of
rare china and glass standing at his elbow; and the smash of mandarins
and porcelain gods would have been enough, at any other time, to have
driven his mother crazy.

"Charles alive?" shouted he.

"Yes, Julian--why not? You saw him off, you know: cannot you remember?"

Now to that guilty wretch's mind the fearful notion instantaneously
occurred, that Emily Warren was in some strange, wild way bantering him;
she knew his dreadful secret--"he _had_ seen him off." He trembled like
an aspen as she looked on him.

"Oh yes, he remembered, certainly; but--but where was her letter?"

"Never mind that, Julian; you surely would not read another person's
letters, Monsieur le Chevalier Bayard?"

Emily was as gay at heart that morning as a sky-lark, and her innocent
pleasantry proved her strongest shield. Julian dared not ask to see the
letter--scarcely dared to hope she had one, and yet did not know what to
think. As to any love scene now, it was quite out of the question,
notwithstanding all his mother's hints and management; a new exciting
thought entirely filled him: was he a Cain, a fratricide, or not? was
Charles alive afte