dren only to have the pang of
losing them, she gladly cast this foreboding aside as selfish, and
applied herself impartially as she hoped to weigh the duty, but trembling
were the hands that adjusted the balance. Alone as she stood, without a
tie, was not she marked out to take such an office of mere pity and
charity? Could she see the friend of her childhood forced either to
peril his life by his care of his motherless children, or else to leave
them to the influences he so justly dreaded? Did not the case cry out to
her to follow the promptings of her heart? Ay, but might not, said
caution, her assumption of the charge lead their father to look on her as
willing to become their mother? Oh, fie on such selfish prudery imputing
such a thought to yonder broken-hearted, sinking widower! He had as
little room for such folly as she had inclination to find herself on the
old terms. The hero of her imagination he could never be again, but it
would be weak consciousness to scruple at offering so obvious an act of
compassion. She would not trust herself, she would go by what Miss Wells
said. Nevertheless she composed her letter to Owen Sandbrook between
waking and sleeping all night, and dreamed of little creatures nestling
in her lap, and small hands playing with her hair. How coolly she strove
to speak as she described the dilemma to the old lady, and how her heart
leapt when Miss Wells, her mind moving in the grooves traced out by
sympathy with her pupil, exclaimed, 'Poor little dears, what a pity they
should not be with you, my dear, they would be a nice interest for you!'

Perhaps Miss Wells thought chiefly of the brightening in her child's
manner, and the alert vivacity of eye and voice such as she had not seen
in her since she had lost her mother; but be that as it might, her words
were the very sanction so much longed for, and ere long Honora had her
writing-case before her, cogitating over the opening address, as if her
whole meaning were implied in them.

'My dear Owen' came so naturally that it was too like an attempt to recur
to the old familiarity. 'My dear Mr. Sandbrook?' So formal as to be
conscious! 'Dear Owen?' Yes that was the cousinly medium, and in
diffident phrases of restrained eagerness, now seeming too affectionate,
now too cold she offered to devote herself to his little ones, to take a
house on the coast, and endeavour to follow out his wishes with regard to
them, her good old friend supp