point where religion taught the
world that it had laws of its own, besides those of mere experience and
morality, therefore the world complained, and would fain shake off the
thraldom.

Owen relieved her by a voluntary proposal to turn down
Whittington-street, and see the child. Perhaps he had an inkling that
the chapel in Cat-alley would be in full play, and that the small maid
would be in charge; besides, it was gas-light, and the lodgers would be
out. At any rate softening was growing on him. He looked long and
sorrowfully at the babe in its cradle, and at last,--

'He will never be like her.'

'No; and I do not think him like you.'

'In fact, it is an ugly little mortal,' said Owen, after another
investigation. 'Yet, it's very odd, Lucy, I should like him to live.'

'Very odd, indeed!' she said, nearly laughing.

'Well, I own, before ever I saw him, when they said he would die, I did
think it was best for himself, and every one else. So, maybe, it would;
but you see I shouldn't like it. He will be a horrible expense, and it
will be a great bore to know what to do with him: so absurd to have a son
only twenty years younger than oneself: but I think I like him, after
all. It is something to work for, to make up to him for what _she_
suffered. And I say, Lucy,' his eye brightened, 'perhaps Honor will take
to him! What a thing it would be if he turned out all she hoped of me,
poor thing! I would be banished for life, if he could be in my place,
and make it up to her. He might yet have the Holt!'

'You have not proposed sending him to her?'

'No, I am not so cool,' he sadly answered; 'but she is capable of
anything in an impulse of forgiveness.'

He spent the evening over his letter; and, in spite of his sitting with
his back towards his sister, she saw more than one sheet spoilt by large
tears unperceived till they dropped, and felt a jealous pang in
recognizing the force of his affection for Honor. That love and
compassion seemed contemptible to her, they were so inconsistent with his
deception and disobedience; and she was impatient of seeing that, so far
as he felt his errors at all, it was in their aspect towards his
benefactress. His ingratitude towards her touched him in a more tender
part than his far greater errors towards his wife. The last was so
shocking and appalling, that he only half realized it, and, boy-like,
threw it from him; the other came home to the fondness that had been wit