'He was never in sight, then, of the-boat?'
'No, darling; would to God he had been!'
'Why?'

'Why?' he echoed in pained surprise. He might have saved his brother's life-just think of that haunting thought for him--ay, and even for me! Ernest might have been saved if one of us had been in time.'

'Might have been saved!' repeated Nora, with strange suppressed vehemence. No, no; the current was so strong and rapid there, that in one moment it was over, and hope was dead.'

'My darling-my poor darling!' murmured Mr. Sutton, drawing his wife to his side again. It has been a terrible shock for you. Come with me into the light and warmth, my child. Come and give your own sweet words of comfort to poor Drury.'

'No,' she said, and shrank again from his caressing touch; 'Drury will-hate to see me.'

'My dear, you wrong him sadly. Deeply as he is mourning his twin-brother, he must know that even if he had seen what you saw he could not have rescued Ernest. Besides, my darling,' continued the Squire, with a pitiful effort to speak in his natural tone, 'Caroline is totally unnerved, and who can help us all like my own dear wife? Come.'

'She sent me from her,' said Nora softly; but'-with one hurried sob-'I will come.'

Miss Macnair, when they reached her room, was still crying aloud for Ernest. Demonstrative as was her grief, it was terribly sincere; for the only person in all the world on whom she had lavished any wealth of affection, was her sister's elder son. And now her cries for him-and her sobs, when memory told her she must cry in vain-were torturing to hear.

But both cries and sobs were silenced by one spasmodic effort, when Nora came gently up to the bed and laid one hand on hers.

'Go away!' she said with bitter slowness. 'Do you think that a caress of yours can reconcile me to a grief which it is beyond your power to imagine? You have your own son-go to him, and you will soon be comforted.'

'My little one can in no way take Ernest's place, Miss Macnair,' said Nora, with great gentleness.

'No,' replied Caroline Macnair icily, And then her tears gushed out afresh. his anger against her because she was in young wife from the room.

not while Drury lives.' And Mr. Sutton, curbing grief, could only lead his

'Come away,' pleaded Nora vacantly when they reached the hall, and the chill night air blew on them from the open door; the house is stifling me.'

He turned aside to get her a shawl, but she hurried on; and

when he followed her out upon the terrace, he found her standing opposite Drury, and both their faces were pallid in the gloom.

'He was not rowing; he was lying idly in the boat-lying with his head upon the seat in the stern, I think asleep.'

So Nora was saying as the Squire came up to her, and she did not cease or turn while he folded the shawl about her.

'That accounts,' said Drury, addressing his father, but without removing his eyes from Nora's face, for the story Reynolds has been telling me, and is waiting now to tell you. He says that twice during this afternoon he passed that shady nook on the river, where Ernest has always been so fond of idling. The first time was early, and Ernest had drawn up his boat there and was tying it to one

of the pollards, waiting, he told Reynolds, for Mrs. Sutton. I do not know why he should choose to wait below the boat-house, knowing what the current to the Fall would do, if the cord broke. It was rash, and unlike Ernest.'

'Yes, he waited there for me,' said Norah quietly, still standing opposite Drury, and gazing eagerly at him through the gloom, as she listened to what he had heard of his brother.

'Perhaps so,' returned the young man absently; but later on, when Reynolds passed the second time, he fancied Ernest lay asleep in the boat, the oars beside him, his head, just as Nora said, on the seat in the stern. The boat was still fast, Reynolds says; the cords twisted round the pollard and knotted. It must have been a feeble careless knot, and I think Reynolds ought to have seen to it, knowing the danger for Ernest.'

A feeble careless knot indeed!' replied the Squire, his chest heaving with emotion. 'My poor, poor boy!'

Would that account for all?' asked Nora, still with the same immovable questioning gaze.

'I suppose so,' returned Drury gravely, in his heavy sadness; but it cannot lessen the anguish of his loss-to me especially.' Then he turned away and hurried from them, while his father looked after him with deep compassion.

This day,' he said sorrowfully to himself, will leave its mark upon my boy's whole life. He is not one to grieve for an hour and then forget; and they were twins.'

Then the strong man lost his self-control, and Nora in a moment was the comforter, calm and earnest. An hour afterwards the lamp-light filled the rooms again, and Nora was hovering about the tea-table, trying, gently and bravely, to help and cheer them all.

So the night fell upon the saddened house; and it was only when the chamber-doors were closed that the new deep grief held ruthless sway once more, and made the night hours drag heavily.

There is no need to tell how the days passed before the young

heir of High Sutton was laid in the great vault which had been opened only once before. There were the official forms to go through; but the verdict of Accidental death' shed no further light upon that evening's mystery and misfortune, and took no edge from the grief.

When the Squire and his son returned, after the cruel form had been gone through, Nora met them, slowly and sadly walking towards them in the sunshine.

'My darling,' the Squire said, trying to rouse himself from his deep and heavy depression, as he drew her hand tenderly through his arm.

'Is-more known?' she asked, looking wistfully across her husband into Drury's face.

tion.

'Accidental death,' said Drury, gently turning aside her ques

'Tell me, Wynter,' she pleaded, 'is-no more known?'

'One man,' returned the Squire, evidently speaking with unwillingness, wished, after the inquest was officially over, to insinuate that the matter should be looked into further.'

'Why?'

Here is Caroline,' he said, without answering.

'If any one wished that the matter should be looked into,' began Miss Macnair, betraying, equally by her words and the rigid compression of her lips, that she had overheard her brother's last remark, they mean that there has been foul play; and the matter must be looked into, Drury.'

It struck them all as curious that she should address herself to her nephew in answering her brother-in-law; and no one had replied when she spoke again, with slow distinctness :

'It means that the boat had been loosed purposely from the pollard, and left to float direct to the rapids, and-to certain death!'

'Caroline,' interrupted the Squire, his voice shaken by anger as well as pain, 'would you-who loved him-be the one to cloud, even for one moment, our fair remembrances of our boy?'

There was no other word uttered then; but a chill had fallen among them, whose shadow could be lifted never again.

As the days passed, after his son's funeral, Mr. Sutton grew seriously alarmed about his wife's health; for since the hour of Ernest's death her colour, her spirit, and her appetite had entirely left her, and she moved about the house white and quiet as a ghost, though her words were still bright, and her hands prompt in their care and kindly deeds.

'I must take Nora away,' he said, rousing himself one day from a long sad reverie, when Miss Macnair came suddenly upon him. 'Why?' she inquired, with a note of extra coldness in her voice. 'I cannot bear to see her as she is. She owns to no pain, she THIRD SERIES, VOL. VIII. F.S. VOL. XXVIII.

с

will see no doctor, and take no rest. It-it is as if she were fading from our sight.'

'It is strange,' mused Miss Macnair. 'She says she does not suffer, yet it is hard to believe-knowing how she herself has owned that Ernest stood in her son's way-that her sufferings have been mental since my dear Ernest met that strange death which she alone witnessed. I always think she would have suffered less since, if she had at once disburdened her mind of all she saw or— knew. Some pressure has been heavy on her mind ever since that hour when she ran shrieking from the spot.'

'Spot!' cried the Squire huskily. She was in the park, not far from us; and—'

But his sister-in-law had caught sight of Nora in the distance, and went to join her, leaving the bitter seed to take slow root in the heart which still was so unwilling to receive it, and fought so hard against the cruel insinuation.

All that evening there was a curious watchfulness in her husband's manner which Nora could not help but notice; yet withal an added tenderness to her-if that were possible. He noticed that her voice was sweet and kind, as of old, yet there was something different all its old brightness was gone, and he wondered now that he had never noticed any change beyond her weariness and pallor.

:

He fancied that Drury watched her too, and he marked how her eyes avoided his always, though she would glance at him when his head was bent above his book or when he was talking to some one else. Then she would let her eyes rest upon him, sometimes removing them slowly with an effort, and sometimes swiftly closing or turning them, as if in sudden pain.

'How it saddens her,' mused the Squire to himself, to witness Drury's undiminished grief. My poor boy! Will he ever get over that shock, and will he ever again take an interest in the estate, as he should do doubly now? I must get Nora, before she goes, to tempt him back to his old pursuits; and, if possible, to his brother's old pursuits too. He will be better and happier when he has once assumed his rightful position as heir.' By which it was plain that Drury had not taken upon himself any of his brother's prerogatives.

'Nora, my darling,' said the Squire that very night, 'I want to travel for a little time, and I cannot go without you. Will you come-you and I alone ?'

His heart leaped with joy to hear her quick and glad assent: 'O Wynter, how kind you are to me!' she cried, tears falling quickly down her white cheeks. It is for my sake that you say it. O my husband, will you be satisfied with me alone?'

His own eyes were not dry when he folded his arms about the

slender figure.

'Satisfied, my love! What else in all the world

do I need when you are with me?'

'You have your son too-Drury, I mean. Wynter,' she said, turning to him in sudden pitiful earnestness, if one of us lost all claim to your great, great love and kindness and compassion, you— you would still have the other.'

'But I have both,' he answered, smiling fondly as he kissed her earnest face; not to mention my darling sleeping in the next room. Is he to go with us, little wife ?'

In one moment she read his wish-that he could have her to himself, free from all care and all responsibility; and she answered lovingly that she only wished for her husband for that time. So it was settled they should go together; and two days afterwards they were upon their way to Italy.

'This absence of ours will be the best thing in the world for Drury,' the Squire had said, while he waved his last good-bye to the young man who stood, quiet and grave, upon the station platform. 'He will rouse himself to superintend matters for me, and to write to us, and to exert the authority I have thus tacitly vested in him. Poor Drury! I trust too that time will a little soften his grief for his twin-brother. His was a deeply-rooted love, my darling, was it not, for all his quietness? The consciousness of that makes me trust in his firm affection for us, in spite of his absent undemonstrative manner.'

For me, you mean,' said Nora, with her gentle smile, as she recalled Drury's chilly leave-taking. Nothing could ever have allowed you to doubt his love for you, Wynter. And do not fret that he does not love me as-we used to hope he might. He feels Ernest's death recalled to him, I fancy, by even my very presence. It will wear off perhaps.'

!'

Perhaps he echoed tenderly. As if anything else were possible.'

CHAPTER III.

MEETING THE BLOW.

Ir was a fair spring day. Thrushes sang in that old pollard from which Ernest's boat had sped to destruction; and from the elms higher up the river the blackbirds answered with their full rich notes. The meadows below the Fall were golden-sweet with buttercups, and the roses filled the great house with a perfume which was the very life-breath of the spring.

The Squire and his wife have reached home, and its beauty and its calm have filled their hearts with a rest and gratitude which are but fitting tributes to the glory of such a day and such a scene, and fit preparatives for the peaceful joyous years which seem to stretch before them in the golden future.