t among his other children
pleased to see them smile and sometimes to hear them laugh. They were
all getting better; Valentine took care they should not want for
amusement, and Crayshaw, who, to do him justice, had not yet heard of
little Janie's death or of Nancy's extremely precarious state, did not
fail to write often, and bestow upon them all the nonsense he could
think of. After his short sojourn in Germany, he had been sent back to
Harrow, and there finding letters from the Mortimers awaiting him, had
answered one of them as follows:--

LINES COMPOSED ON RECEIVING A PORTRAIT OF
GLADYS WITH BLOB IN HER ARMS.

I gazed, and O with what a burst
Of pride, this heart was striving!
His tongue was out! that touched me first.
My pup! and art thou thriving?

I sniffed one sniff, I wept one weep
(But checked myself, however),
And then I spake, my words went deep,
Those words were, "Well, I never."

Tyrants avaunt! henceforth to me
Whose Harrow'd heart beats faster,
The coach shall as the coachman be,
And Butler count as master.

That maiden's nose, that puppy's eyes,
Which I this happy day saw,
They've touched the manliest chords that rise
I' the breast of Gifford Crayshaw.

John Mortimer was pleased when he saw his girls laughing over this
effusion, but anxiety still weighed heavily on his soul--he did not
live on any hope of his own, rather on Emily's hope and on a kiss.

He perceived how completely but for his father's companionship he had
all his life been alone. It would have been out of all nature that such
a man falling in love thus unaware should have loved moderately. All the
fresh fancies of impassioned tenderness and doubt and fear, all the
devotion and fealty that youth wastes often and almost forgets, woke up
in his heart to full life at once, unworn and unsoiled. The strongest
natures go down deepest among the hidden roots of feeling, and into the
silent wells of thought.

It had not seemed unnatural heretofore to stand alone, but now he longed
for something to lean upon, for a look from Emily's eyes, a touch from
her hand.

But she vouchsafed him nothing. She was not so unconscious of the kiss
she had bestowed as he had believed she would be; perhaps this was
because he had mistaken its meaning and motive. It stood in his eyes as
the expression of forgiveness and pity,--he never knew that it