teringly, Lady Augusta," said
he, slowly, and like one laboring with some painful reflection. "Of
fortune--if that mean wealth--I have more than I need. Friends--what the
world calls such--I suppose I may safely say I possess my share of. But
as to station, by which I would imply the rank which stamps a certain
grade in society, and carries with it a prestige--"

"It is your own whenever you care to demand it," broke she in. "It is
not when the soldier mounts the breach that his country showers its
honours on him--it is when, victory achieved, he comes back great and
triumphant. You have but to declare that your labours are completed,
your campaign finished, to meet any, the proudest, recognition your
services could claim. You know my father," said she, suddenly changing
her voice to a tone at once confidential and intimate--"you know how
instinctively, as it were, he surrounds himself with all the prejudices
of his order. Well, even he, as late as last night, said to me, 'Dunn
ought to be one of us, Augusta. We want men of his stamp. The lawyers
overbear us just now. It is men of wider sympathies lets technical less
narrowed, that we need. He ought to be one of us.' Knowing what a great
admission that was for one like him, I ventured to ask how this was to
be accomplished. 'Ministers are often the last to ratify the judgment
the public' he pronounced."

"Well, and what said you to that," asked Dunn, eagerly.

"Let him only open his mind to Lady Augusta," said she. "If he but have
the will I promise to show him the way."

Dunn uttered no reply, but with bent-down head walked along, deep in
thought.

"May I ask you to lend me your arm, Mr. Dunn?" said Lady Augusta, in
her gentlest of voices; and Dunn's heart beat with a strange, proud
significance as he gave it.

They spoke but little as they returned to the cottage.

CHAPTER XXXIX. "A LETTER TO JACK"

Long after the other inhabitants of the Hermitage were fast locked in
sleep, Sybella Kellett sat at her writing-desk. It was the time--the
only time--she called her own, and she was devoting it to a letter to
her brother. Mr. Dunn had told her on that morning that an opportunity
offered to send anything she might have for him, and she had arranged a
little packet--some few things, mostly worked by her own hands--for the
poor soldier in the Crimea.

As one by one she placed the humble articles in the box, her tears fell
upon them--tears half pleasure and ha