to feel where she was, realize that this was Redclyffe,
and whisper to her little girl that it was her father's own home. She
knew it was the room he had destined for her; she tried, dark as it
was, to see the view of which he had told her, and looked up, over the
mantel-piece, at Muller's engraving of St. John. Perhaps that was the
hardest time of all her trial, and she felt as if, without his child
in her arms, she could never have held up under the sense of desolation
that came over her, left behind, while he was in his true home. Left,
she told herself, to finish the task he had begun, and to become fit to
follow him. Was she not in the midst of fulfilling his last charge, that
Philip should be taken, care of? It was no time for giving way, and here
was his own little messenger of comfort looking up with her sleepy eyes
to tell her so. Down she must go, and put off 'thinking herself into
happiness' till the peaceful time of rest; and presently she softly
re-entered the sitting-room, bringing to both its inmates in her very
presence such solace as she little guessed, in her straightforward
desire to nurse Philip, and take care Charles was not made
uncomfortable.

That stately house had probably never, since its foundation, seen
anything so home-like as Amabel making tea and waiting on her two
companions; both she and Charles pleasing each other by enjoying the
meal, and Philip giving his cup to be filled again and again, and
wondering why one person's tea should taste so unlike another's.

He was not equal to conversation, and Charles and Amabel were both
tired, so that tea was scarcely over before they parted for the night;
and Amy, frightened at the bright and slipperiness of the dark-oak
stairs, could not be at peace till she had seen Arnaud help Charles
safely up them, and made him promise not to come down without assistance
in the morning.

She was in the sitting-room soon after nine next morning, and found
breakfast on one table, and Charles writing a letter on the other.

'Well,' said he, as she kissed him, 'all right with you and little
miss?'

'Quite, thank you. And are you rested?'

'Slept like a top; and what did you do? Did you sleep like a sensible
woman?'

'Pretty well, and baby was very good. Have you heard anything of
Philip?'

'Bolton thinks him rather better, and says he is getting up.'

'How long have you been up?'

'A long time. I told Arnaud to catch Markham when he came up, as
he a