red for, or who
cared for me--and now--Sancta Maria, ora pro nobis."

His lips moved in a paroxysm of prayer--helpless, parrot-learnt, Latin
prayer; yet, being in earnest, it seemed to do him good. The mother,
as if she heard in fancy that pitiful cry, which rose to my memory
too--"Poor William!--don't tell William!"--turned and spoke to him
kindly, asking him if he would go home with us.

He looked exceedingly surprised. "I--you cannot mean it? After Lord
Luxmore has done you all this evil?"

"Is that any reason why I should not do good to his son--that is, if I
could? Can I?"

The lad lifted up those soft grey eyes, and then I remembered what his
sister had said of Lord Ravenel's enthusiastic admiration of Mr.
Halifax. "Oh, you could--you could."

"But I and mine are heretics, you know!"

"I will pray for you. Only let me come and see you--you and your
children."

"Come, and welcome."

"Heartily welcome, Lord--"

"No--not that name, Mrs. Halifax. Call me as they used to call me at
St. Omer--Brother Anselmo."

The mother was half inclined to smile; but John never smiled at any
one's religious beliefs, howsoever foolish. He held in universal
sacredness that one rare thing--sincerity.

So henceforward "Brother Anselmo" was almost domesticated at Rose
Cottage. What would the earl have said, had a little bird flown over
to London and told him that his only son, the heir-apparent to his
title and political opinions, was in constant and open association--for
clandestine acquaintance was against all our laws and rules--with John
Halifax the mill-owner, John Halifax the radical, as he was still
called sometimes; imbibing principles, modes of life and of thought,
which, to say the least, were decidedly different from those of the
house of Luxmore!

Above all, what would that noble parent have said, had he been aware
that this, his only son, for whom, report whispered, he was already
planning a splendid marriage--as grand in a financial point of view as
that he planned for his only daughter--that Lord Ravenel was spending
all the love of his loving nature in the half paternal, half lover-like
sentiment which a young man will sometimes lavish on a mere child--upon
John Halifax's little blind daughter, Muriel!

He said, "She made him good"--our child of peace. He would sit, gazing
on her almost as if she were his guardian angel--his patron saint. And
the little maid in her quiet way was very fond of h