red then on
his heart as well as his ear. He frowned:

"Pshaw! woman, you have no feeling!" said he, and walked out of the
house, pulling his hat over his brows. That was the only rude speech
Mr. Morton had ever made to his better half. She treasured it up in her
heart and memory; it was associated with the sister and the child; and
she was not a woman who ever forgave.

Mr. Morton walked rapidly through the still, moon-lit streets, till he
reached the inn. A club was held that night in one of the rooms below;
and as he crossed the threshold, the sound of "hip-hip-hurrah!" mingled
with the stamping of feet and the jingling of glasses, saluted his
entrance. He was a stiff, sober, respectable man,--a man who, except at
elections--he was a great politician--mixed in none of the revels of his
more boisterous townsmen. The sounds, the spot, were ungenial to him. He
paused, and the colour of shame rose to his brow. He was ashamed to be
there--ashamed to meet the desolate and, as he believed, erring sister.

A pretty maidservant, heated and flushed with orders and compliments,
crossed his path with a tray full of glasses.

"There's a lady come by the Telegraph?"

"Yes, sir, upstairs, No. 2, Mr. Morton."

Mr. Morton! He shrank at the sound of his own name.

"My wife's right," he muttered. "After all, this is more unpleasant than
I thought for."

The slight stairs shook under his hasty tread. He opened the door of No.
2, and that Catherine, whom he had last seen at her age of gay sixteen,
radiant with bloom, and, but for her air of pride, the model for a
Hebe,--that Catherine, old ere youth was gone, pale, faded, the dark
hair silvered over, the cheeks hollow, and the eye dim,--that Catherine
fell upon his breast!

"God bless you, brother! How kind to come! How long since we have met!"

"Sit down, Catherine, my dear sister. You are faint--you are very much
changed--very. I should not have known you."

"Brother, I have brought my boy; it is painful to part from
him--very--very painful: but it is right, and God's will be done." She
turned, as she spoke, towards a little, deformed rickety dwarf of a
sofa, that seemed to hide itself in the darkest corner of the low,
gloomy room; and Morton followed her. With one hand she removed the
shawl that she had thrown over the child, and placing the forefinger of
the other upon her lips-lips that smiled then--she whispered,--"We will
not wake him, he is so tired. But I would not