"What is the matter?" asked several voices. Captain Rupert came close to her with a presage of trouble. All eyes were turned on her in surprise, as a torrent of crimson rushed over her face and brow and vanished as quickly, leaving her almost as pale as her dress.

"Well, madam, what have you got there?" said his lordship.

"Why, it is Kevin!" she cried, bursting into a peal of rapturous laughter. "Kevin who has wrung all your hearts and brought the tears into your eyes. Kevin is the poet, the master we have been worshipping-Kevin whom you despised."

"Kevin!" was echoed around.

"Yes, Kevin," she said, standing on her tip-toes, and smiling down on them in her triumph. "Look at the name for yourselves— K-e-v-i-n, and the other is his sirname. Bessie said he had written a book. Didn't she, Captain Wilderspin ?"

"I do not know. I was not there," said Rupert, too much amazed to say anything more.

"Allow me to introduce my old comrade, Kevin, to my dear and noble friends," she went on, making a gleeful courtesy all round, and waving the precious volume above her head. "You who have all been so good to me-you were afraid I should be ashamed of him when he appeared. My lord, have I reason to be ashamed?" suddenly wheeling about and facing him with eyes full of saucy triumph. "No, you baggage, no."

"Will no one congratulate me?" said Fan, with a sudden pathetic change of manner, folding her two little hands over the book and glancing wistfully round.

"I congratulate you," said Captain Rupert, and walked out of the room with a jealous heart.

"I will try and be glad," said Herr Harfenspieler, rubbing his nose vehemently with his pocket-handkerchief.

"Mamzelle!"

"I love you!" said the signora, eagerly; but she did not look more pleased than Captain Rupert.

"You expect us to be glad," said his lordship, "because this is a great fellow whom we can do nothing to serve.'

Fan looked up at him with wide, grateful eyes, remembering all his bounty to her for years.

"You can shake him by the hand, my lord."

"Little Simpleton, is that a benefit ?"

"No small boon, and no small honour," lifting the old man's hand and kissing it impulsively; and then Fan, smiling a loving look all round upon her friends as if thanking them for their scraps of sympathy, turned away abruptly, still hugging her book, and disappeared.

A solemn silence reigned in the room for some seconds after she went. His lordship, striding about the floor, was the first to speak.

"After all, we are a pack of fools," he said. "We ought to be thankful that the fellow is, as she says, one to be not ashamed of.”

"As the husband of the Baroness Ida we might all greet him as a friend," said Herr Harfenspieler. "Except in that character I do not like him-in spite of the genius that has spoken to my heart."

"Captain Wilderspin is the only person who has serious cause to be displeased," said the signora.

"Ha!" ejaculated his lordship.

"I do not think we shall hear any more of his suit," continued the signora, beginning her sentence on a triumphant note, and ending it on a sad one.

"The genius of music may still carry the day," said Herr Harfenspieler. "We may yet have the happiness of presenting our queen of song to the world.”

His lordship glared round at them as if they had been plotting somebody's death. He was ashamed to confess how completely he had gone over to the enemy. In the few hours that had elapsed since that morning he had changed so thoroughly as to be more willing to have Fan for a beloved daughter than to see her a successful prima donna. Confounded for a moment at coming face to face with his own inconsistency, the next he remembered nothing but the pair of red-rimmed eyes that had confronted him so bravely in his study.

"By heaven! he shall not jilt her for any far-fetched jealousy!" he shouted. "You pair of heart-murderers! robbers of the joys of youth! hypocrites! with your tender melodies, and poetic sympathy with human feelings-you would send the fellow away, and put forth a crushed creature to give expression with her own misery to your humbugging music!"

And emphasizing this outburst with a scowl of displeasure he marched out of the room.

Arrived in her own chamber, Fan threw open her window and trimmed her lamp and sat down to spend the night in reading Kevin's book. Weeping and laughing with delight, her eyes flew over the pages that were intended for herself alone, and that told the story of their early comradeship, their parting, and his continued, fruitless, but never hopeless search. An exquisite sense of happiness settled on the young girl's heart as the mysterious union of their lives, long believed in, became so suddenly proved to her. The history of the princess, related to her on the island long ago, had its place in the poem; but not in death would her prince be restored to her; the ending of the real life-story would be the fulness of joy. Had she, indeed, been his inspiration, his genius, the cause of his attaining the heights he had reached? Overwhelmed with bliss she lay back in her chair to dream over what she had read, and the first sunbeam found her fast asleep; a smile of paradise on her parted lip, her small oval face bleached

of its roses by the intensity of her passion of gladness, the shadow of her eyes darkened by half-dried tears. Soon the room was full of light gilding the slim young figure in the chair with its crisp white wrappings; a fresh breeze suddenly sprang up and blew a drift of roseleaves over her face, her bosom, her little folded hands that rested on the open book; and with a slight shiver she awakened.

While bathing and dressing, she considered about how she was to communicate with Kevin, concluding to write him a letter, for which Herr Harfenspieler would supply the address. She laughed to think of her two old letters of long ago, and how they failed to reach him, of course, because he was not there where she sent them, but gone out into the wide world to look for her. Herr Harfenspieler was an early riser; she should find him in the garden by this time; and arrayed in all her morning beauty and freshness she went forth to look for him. The old musician was already airing himself among the flowers, humming melodious ditties to himself in a broken voice, and when he saw her approach in her crisp, cambric gown of white and delicate green, with her daisy-pink cheeks and the rings of her hair yet dewy from her bath, his heart smote him for the love he was hoping to exclude from her young life. He could have wished she had been one of the more robust-tempered, strong-minded sort of women who stand in little need of love, and only borrow its sentiments occasionally to give plaintive meaning to their artistic work.

"And yet in spite of her tenderness, there is something hardy about the creature," he reflected, studying her firm elastic movements as she hastened to meet him. "She might weather a gale as well as the strongest, and her song be all the fuller, enriched by a note from the storm. Certainly his lordship had me there; for I believe the crown of art is for those who have suffered."

"Meinherr, I want to speak with you."

'Willingly, my pupil, but after we have sung. We will give the freshness of the morning to our work."

And he led her out of the sunshine into the music-room.

Overwhelming joy seemed to have given a new power and sweetness to her voice, and having heard her with pride and delight, the professor paused in the lesson and gazed into her young face with a strange, uneasy, half-angry expression in his eyes.

"Can we suffer her to fail us?" he asked himself. "Shall we bear to lose her, having brought her so far as this? I cannot-I will not have it."

"Now I have earned the right to speak, meinherr. I am writing to my friend, Kevin. Will you give me his address ?"

Meinherr frowned. "My pupil, I do not know it. When the Baroness Ida von Walden wrote to me, they were on the eve of starting upon a journey, she and your poet-friend, probably on their wedding-tour."

The words came to him like an inspiration in the cause of art. They were not exactly untrue, for he had concluded in his own mind that the barcness was devoted to her poet, and what young man, especially in his circumstances, could resist her? There had been nothing in her letter to suggest a wedding trip; but a little exaggeration might be held lawful, considering his pupil's case, thought the professor.

All the light had gone off Fanchea's face, as she stood amazed, looking her master straight in the eyes.

"Do you mean that he is married, meinherr ?"

"I conclude so-from her letter. Why, my child, what difference can it make? You did not want to marry him yourself, little one? What would Captain Rupert say to that?"

Fan made a gesture of impatience.

"He has nothing to do with it, meinherr. I will never marry him. I did not think of marrying, but I wanted Kevin to love me best. And wives are loved the best. I would rather he had not married."

"Then you are a silly little one, and do not know what is good for your friend. Listen to me, my child; your Kevin is a poor young man; only the other day he was tilling his land, and now he will be the husband of a great lady with wealth and power to do as he pleases in the world. Why should a poor little maid like you, to whom, it seems, he has been very true and affectionate, wish to deprive him of his prosperity ?"

"I do not, I do not," said Fanchea; "but," with a quivering lip, "in the old, old days he loved me best."

"He loved you as a brother, and probably he will love you so still. You were a child, you see; you are still one, and the Baroness Ida is a lady. When you marry Captain Rupert'

"I will never marry," said Fan.

66

"Wisely said, my pupil. The priests and priestesses of art are the better of their freedom. I have not married; the signora has no husband. Now if you are ready, let us try this lovely aria once again!" "No, I will not sing any more; I am tired," said Fan.

"As you will, my pupil; go out and get the breeze. You had not enough of it before I brought you in." And well satisfied with the conversation the Harfenspieler drew forth his violin; and Fan, as she hurried away to her own solitude, heard the moans and wails of exquisite tenderness with which the musician answered the yearnings of his own lonely heart.

"I thought he would have loved me the best," mourned Fan. “I wanted him to love me the best!"

She picked up the precious book that had told her so much, and now as she turned it over with jealous eyes she seemed to see the Baroness Ida on every page. To only the one tale of his early days

On reading a Page in Cardinal Newman's "Apologia." 187

and hers, had she any claim; the rest had been written of the experience of the years with which she had had nothing to do. The strange beautiful foreign lady had a right to his poetry as well as to his heart.

"He was fond of me as a child," thought she, "but wives are loved the best. He will expect to find me still a child, to be led by the hand, I to walk on his left side and she on his right; but I fear I cannot walk with them at all. I did not think about marrying, but I wanted him to love me the best." A burst of weeping interrupted her reflections. " "He is more lost than if I never had found him," she went on ; "for he will not be the same, and neither shall I. What could I do for him now, except sit and watch him write poetry for a beautiful lady? I wanted to keep my singing all for him, that it might help him with his wonderful thoughts; but she will do all that for him, and more.

"Well, let her have him!" cried Fan, at last, having wept her heart dry; and, gathering her courage round her, she made up her mind to the worst. "He does not want me; he never can love me the best. at least, I will please my benefactors and go upon the stage."

Then,

ON READING A CERTAIN PAGE OF THE "APOLOGIA."

A

GAIN betrayed! Another of thy deeds,

Performed by stealth to help a brother's needs,

Divulged by happy accident at last.

Not listlessly thy tranquil years have passed,

"My dear friend, Dr. Russell, the present President of Maynooth, had perhaps more to do with my conversion than anyone else. He called upon me in passing through Oxford in the summer of 1841.

*

*

I do not recollect that he said a word on the subject of religion. He sent me at different times several letters; he was always gentle, mild, unobtrusive, uncontroversial. He let me alone."

In the original edition of the "Apologia pro Vita Sua" these words are found at page 317, which corresponds with page 197 of the later form of that work called "The History of my Religious Opinions.' The passage, which is given also at page 52 of "Characteristics of John Henry Newman," has been recently referred to by the Athenaum, The World, Irish Times, Freeman, and other journals in their obituary notices of the late President of Maynooth College. Dr. Russell's death, which makes possible the publication of these lines written so long ago as 1864, occurred on the 26th of February, 1880. "Eternal rest grant to him, O Lord!"

VOL. VIII., No. 82.

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