r sympathy
four loving hearts can carry amongst them.

"With love to the dear boy, believe me, dear cousin, your loving and
sympathising fellow-mourner,--

"Edward Oliphant."

Mrs Ingleton, highly gratified, handed the beautiful letter first to
her son, then to Mr Armstrong.

Roger was hardly as taken with it as his mother.

"Civil enough," said he, "and I dare say he means all he says; but I
don't warm to the prospect of being cherished by him. Besides, there is
something a trifle too neat in the way he invites his whole family to
Maxfield. What do you think, Armstrong?"

Mr Armstrong was perusing the letter with knitted brows and a curl of
his lips. He vouchsafed no reply until he had come to the end. Then he
shook the glass ominously out of his eye and said--

"I'll tell you that when I see him."

Roger knew his tutor well enough to see that he did not like the letter
at all, and he felt somewhat fortified in his own misgivings
accordingly.

"I wonder what mother will do with them all?" said the boy. "Surely we
aren't to have the place turned into a nursery for two years."

"I understand the young people are more than children," said the tutor.

"So much the worse," growled Roger.

On the morning before the "Oriana" was due, Mrs Ingleton suggested to
her son that it would be a polite thing if he were to go to town and
meet the travellers on their arrival. Roger, not particularly charmed
with the prospect, stipulated that Mr Arm strong should come with him,
and somewhat shocked his fond parent by expressing the hope that the
vessel might be a few days late, and so allow time for a little jaunt in
London before the arrival of his new guardian.

Mr Armstrong meekly acquiesced in the proposal, and scarcely less
exhilarated than his pupil, retired to pack for the journey.

Roger meanwhile occupied the interval before starting by writing a
letter in the study. Since his father's death he had taken quiet
possession of this room, one of the pleasantest in the house. A feeling
of reverence for the dead had prompted him to disturb its contents and
furniture as little as possible, and hitherto his occupation had
scarcely extended beyond the arm-chair at the fire, and the writing-
table. To-day, however, as he sat biting his pen and looking for an
inspiration out of the window, his eye chanced to rest for a moment on a
frame corner peeping from behind a curtain. He thought nothing of it
for a while, a