er name.

"He bade me say," she continued, "that if your future course of life
should take you to London, you are to go to him, and look to him as
another father. He has no child of his own," he said, "and you shall
be to him as a son."

"I will be no one's son but yours,--yours and my father's," he said,
again embracing her.

And then, when, under his mother's eye, he had eaten and drank and
made himself warm, he did go to his father and found both his sisters
sitting there. They came and clustered round him, taking hold of
his hands and looking up into his face, loving him, and pitying
him, and caressing him with their eyes; but standing there by their
father's bed, they said little or nothing. Nor did Sir Thomas say
much;--except this, indeed, that, just as Herbert was leaving him,
he declared with a faint voice, that henceforth his son should be
master of that house, and the disposer of that property--"As long as
I live!" he exclaimed with his weak voice; "as long as I live!"

"No, father; not so."

"Yes, yes! as long as I live. It will be little that you will have,
even so--very little. But so it shall be as long as I live."

Very little indeed, poor man, for, alas! his days were numbered.

And then, when Herbert left the room, Emmeline followed him. She had
ever been his dearest sister, and now she longed to be with him that
she might tell him how she loved him, and comfort him with her tears.
And Clara too--Clara whom she had welcomed as a sister!--she must
learn now how Clara would behave, for she had already made herself
sure that her brother had been at Desmond Court, the herald of his
own ruin.

"May I come with you, Herbert?" she asked, closing in round him and
getting under his arm. How could he refuse her? So they went together
and sat over a fire in a small room that was sacred to her and her
sister, and there, with many sobs on her part and much would-be brave
contempt of poverty on his, they talked over the altered world as it
now showed itself before them.

"And you did not see her?" she asked, when with many efforts she had
brought the subject round to Clara Desmond and her brother's walk to
Desmond Court.

"No; she left the room at my own bidding. I could not have told it
myself to her."

"And you cannot know then what she would say?"

"No, I cannot know what she would say; but I know now what I must
say myself. All that is over, Emmeline. I cannot ask her to marry a
beggar."

"Ask