oung cousins saw each other daily. Then Miss
Doughty went away to Scotland with her parents; and the youth took
upon himself the pleasant duty of going to see the party take their
departure from St. Katherine's Wharf. October found the party again
assembled at Tichborne Park; and there Roger took farewell of uncle,
aunt, and cousin, to go to Ireland and join his regiment; and Miss
Doughty, whose schooldays were not yet ended, went down to a convent
at Newhall, in Essex. When Roger got a short leave of absence, his
first thought was to visit his uncle and aunt, who had so affectionate
a regard for him. There was a summer visit to Upton, in Dorsetshire,
for a week, when Miss Doughty happened to be there; and there was a
visit to Tichborne in January 1850, when there were great festivities,
for Roger then attained his majority; again the cousins took farewell,
and met no more for eighteen months. No wonder Roger loved Tichborne,
with all its associations. In that well-ordered and affectionate
household he found a tranquillity and happiness to which he had been a
stranger in his own home. In his correspondence with his father and
mother at this time there were no lack of tokens of a loving son; but
no one was more sensible than Roger of the miseries of that life which
he had led up to the day when he came away to pursue his studies at
the Jesuit College, and to learn to be an Englishman. But there was
another association, long unsuspected, yet growing steadily, until it
absorbed all his thoughts, and gave to that neighbourhood a glory and
a light invisible to other eyes. Roger had spent many happy hours with
his cousin; she had grown in those few years from a girl almost into a
woman, and he had come to love her deeply. To her he said not a word,
to Sir Edward he dared not speak, but one day Roger took an
opportunity of confiding to Lady Doughty the new secret of his life.
His aunt did not discourage the idea; but Miss Doughty was still but a
girl of fifteen; and there was the grave objection that the twain were
first cousins. And besides, though Roger was of a kind and considerate
disposition, truthful, honourable, and scrupulous in points of duty,
he had certain habits which assumed serious proportions in the mind of
a lady so strict in notions of propriety. He had in Paris acquired a
habit of smoking immoderately. In the regiment he had been compelled,
by evil customs then prevailing, to go through a noviciate in the
matt