sojourn in India, Helen and her cousin Edward had never met, though sundry letters had passed between them, by means of which the former had been made aware of the various events that had occurred in her family.

Her brother Robert lay in an unhonoured and a forgotten grave; for he had died the death of the dissipated, and left few to mourn his end. From one of the many haunts of vice, frequented by reckless and desperate youths, the body of a man, white and miserably attenuated, was one day brought on the shoulders of hired attendants to a West End London Hospital. A few short hours more, and the wretched burthen having ceased to be a living thing, a verdict of Natural Death from Epilepsy' was returned by the jury, who had been summoned to 'sit' ruined remnant of mortality.

upon that

They may have been right (those men who knew so little), but the old Doctor (far though he was from that dismal Inquest room) knew

the cause of his boy's death better, and sorrowed for it heavily. Then other changes came, changes which led to a distaste for the old house that had been his father's, and for the home which Death had made desolate; and so, before the grass had time to flourish on the grave of the long complaining wife (the listening to whose daily complaints had grown to be almost a necessary habit of his existence), the Doctor decided on breaking up his establishment, giving up 'business,' and retiring into the questionable pleasures of 'private life.'

In a new home, far removed from that which he had so long called his, and in the enforced idleness of his present position, it was difficult to drive away the thoughts (not unmixed with their due portion of self-accusation) that crowded upon him: and many a rousing memory of the daughter he had so lightly valued, forced itself upon his notice; for alone with his self-upbraidings he had, in the weakness of his advancing years, no

courage to cope with the foes his accusing conscience brought in array against him.

Then came illness, the first his iron frame had known, and the neighbours, ready as neighbours ever are to anticipate the worst, pronounced that the old man was breaking.' And so in truth he was, but the breaking crushed the bitterness from his heart, and ere his summons came, he wrote a letter full of tenderness to Helen; a letter in which pardon for her fault was mingled with self-reproach for the neglect which had been its cause.

The letter was sent to Edward Burrowes to forward to his cousin, but when the missive reached the distant station where Helen had so longed for one remembering word from those she had forsaken, the erring daughter was no longer there. She had sailed with Philip Thornleigh to England; and many a month had passed away, and the old man was in his grave when his daughter at last read the words which told her she was for

given.

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CHAPTER VI.

'We are blushing roses

Bending with our fullness,

'Midst our close-capp'd sister buds
Warming the green coolness.

'Hold one of us lightly

See from what a slender

Stalk we bow'r in heavy blossoms,

And roundness rich and tender.'-LEIGH HUNT.

Ir was a dreary day in January, and land and sea were obscured by heavy storms of sleet and snow, which fell in unbroken violence from the leaden-coloured sky. On the waves of the wind-tossed Solent, a large ship, with troops on board and with many a reef in her tempest-worn sails, was to be seen battling her way towards Spithead. On that ship weather-beaten mariners on the shore fixed their eyes curiously, spying at her through glasses all bespotted with the driving

VOL. I.

H

It

snow, and pronouncing various opinions on the name and nature of the new arrival. was a cold, welcome home, and a cheerless prospect for those who, during many a year (while baking under Indian suns), had been longing for, and 'babbling of green fields' at home; but to those who hoped to see their sunshine on the faces of glad relations and expecting friends, it mattered little that the cold wind blew, and that England's coldest shoulder was turned towards her returning children.

In that ship were Colonel Thornleigh and the beautiful woman who, during the long voyage, had been seen so rarely by any of the other passengers on board the vessel. It was not the Colonel's regiment that was coming home in the good ship 'Theseus;' nor were there among the few lady passengers any with whom he was personally acquainted; but still Helen adhered strictly to the privacy of her own cabin, only leaving it at those hours when she and Philip could