then, and she sat in utter silence, waiting for this heavy tide of penitence to sweep by. No wonder the time seemed to her so long before her brother rose, and, without seeming to see her, quickly left

the room.

Her hand shook inexplicably when she took up the letter he had dropped. What must it be to have wrought such a change in him-a change she could not understand, yet which seemed already to have banished that one look which had for months been deepening in his face?

The letter was not very long, yet minute after minute Drury's aunt stood with it in her shaking hands, slowly, very slowly, mastering its contents. At first the words were like a foreign language to her; then they danced and vanished as she tried to hold and fit them with a meaning; then at last they stood clear and horrible before her eyes, and she read them through with beating heart and hurried breath.

'I write this, father'-thus the letter ran; the writing so unsteady as to be often almost illegible—because I know that I am dying. I have felt death probable for many days; but this morning, for the first time, I allowed Nora to send for a physician. I allowed her-understand that, please, father, for it has been her earnest wish ever since she came to me; and more than once she has brought a doctor to my very door (when I have lain quiet after my delirium) and begged me to see him, promising that she would stand by me and prevent but you do not yet understand why I would see no one, nor am I able to write coherently, even now that I have begun. It is not possible that I recover, so this letter will reach you soon, and will tell you what perhaps Nora will, in her pure unselfishness, guard honourably as my secret still, to be buried with me. father, she has never guessed—never, God bless her for her trust in you, and even in me !-of that vile suspicion which I taught you to nourish against her; which indeed I, or Aunt Caroline in her mistaken loyalty to her sister's son, first implanted in your heart so subtly. But I am not even yet confessing, though I know my hours are numbered, and I have much to say.

For,

'Nora-sitting in her constant place beside me-begs me not to write, and says that she will take you any message I give her word for word-so little can she guess how you may look coldly upon her when all is over and you are summoned here. But I know what that old suspicion was, against which you fought so hard, and I know that it will rise up with added strength and strengthen another worse still when you hear how I lay here dying and Nora admitted no one to my room. It is because I know this, and how easy I have made it for you to mistrust her, and as my only return for her goodness-I cannot write of that while her dear eyes look into mine with a smile so

brave and compassionate, and her gentle hands wait to take this from me and to lay me back to rest-it is because I know what doubt may rest upon her motive, that I must write to you before I die. Father, do you guess what my confession is to be? It was I who unmoored and sent to certain destruction the boat in which Ernest lay asleep. It was I, your son and his twin-brother! It was one moment's work only, and done after only one moment's thought. I heard the awful tempting voice for just that instant, and in that instant the means lay to my hand. I stood and loosened the cord, and the boat glided on.

From that moment my life has been a heavy dream, and I have often and often wondered was it I who did it. I have-for I have been insane in many moments since then-recalled the day, and wondered who it was who stood on the river bank, and so quietly unknotted the rope, then turned and sauntered among the trees, and lived through the endless agony which followed. I loved Ernest,

father, though the words may sound like mockery now, and it was only the fear of an exposure of my college debts which had brought me to that morbid and desperate state when the Tempter could be all-powerful. If I were your eldest son I knew my creditors would wait, and it was done in that one moment. Day and night I pray now that God will help all those who, in such a moment of horrible temptation, see the sin lying so ready to their hand.

After that moment's yielding, the other sins followed easily; but to-night I can feel that even you will forgive me. O my father, if you could hear me cry to you in my pain and penitence ! O father, though these words will read coldly, they are written through hot and blinding tears, and my cry to you for pardon for my one awful crime and for the despicable insinuations which came so easily to me in my craven fear of detection, is wrung from a broken heart. Father-dear father, always so kind to your boys, so loving and so generous, so gentle with their faults, giving them always yourself so noble an example-forgive me!

I was obliged to leave this last night. Nora put it away for me, never glancing at it, but looking kindly into my eyes. Tonight I think I can finish. I have so little more to say, except

adieu, and how can I say that? to let me see your dear face once and loving because you will not know-but if not, I shall have thought of you last of all, and longed for you most of all the world; and died believing that we should meet again; for Christ, in His infinite compassion, has taken even my sin upon Himself.

Perhaps God will be so pitiful as again-the face that will be kind

'My hand grows so weak. Father, Nora saw me unfasten Ernest's boat; but though I knew this, I had no fear of her turning your heart against your son-no fear; not because I rightly guessed

she would not believe it deliberately done, but because I knew her even then to be as true and pitiful as she has proved herself.

'When I felt this illness seizing me, and knew I should be delirious, and that this sin would certainly be confessed in my delirium, I came here, and-selfish ever-sent to beg Nora to come, because she had seen all I could betray, and, as I felt sure, would guard my secret still. I knew you were away, and I hoped the illness would not last-indeed I fully believed so then. She came -leaving her own child even when he was suffering-and knowing her you know how she has fulfilled her pitying task.

Earnestly and tearfully she from the first pleaded with me to send for you, and even still more earnestly for me to see a physician; but I knew he would insist on help for Nora, and my fear was too intense to admit another into my sick room. I am sure quite sure, father-that no physicians could have saved me; but I daresay they will make a suspicious tale to you of Nora's constant and solitary attendance on me. You will believe all, and understand all, when you read this.

'I can bear now at last to look into her pure eyes, and, O father, it is such a joy to me to feel that she does not know, and never will know, the vile suspicion which I tried to inculcate, when for myself I feared those doubts and innuendoes which escaped after the inquest. She has forgiven me all she knows, and I shall die with her hand in mine, thankful to feel how she and you, my father, will be happy now in our dear old home, with the little one, who will be so much better a son-and so much more worthily take your place at last-than I should have done.

'Shall you be in time, my father? If not, it will be my fault, not yours nor Nora's, for she has begged me every day, almost every hour, to let her summon you; and never until yesterday would I consent-never until they told me I could not live. Farewell, father. Perhaps on your journey you are whispering (as you used to whisper so tenderly to us long ago), " God bless my boy!" Ah, such a pleasant thought!'

Not again did Miss Macnair try to read the blurred unsteady lines, but, like her brother, she fell upon her knees in the silence; and though no words passed her trembling lips, perhaps even those broken sobs could reach the Mercy Seat and plead for pardon.

Through that long illness Nora Sutton was nursed by hands as tender, and hearts as loving, as her own had been; and on the very day when the Squire, in his long daily search, found the first snowdrops, he brought her down-stairs, and let her lie and look out once more upon her beautiful home, like a snowdrop herself,' her husband said, when she tenderly touched the blossoms with her lips.

A month later on, the Squire brought her the first spring

rose, and, laying it beside her cheek, told her, in the glad and tender voice of the old days, that the rivalry was just as great as it had used to be when she ran wild about the park, with roses always in her flying hair, and he had loved her more than all the world, though he did not think he knew it then any more than she did.

But even as he said it, the Squire knew it was not the child Nora who had come back to him; nor would he have had it so. His wife now was so exquisitely precious to him, that he could hardly believe in a time when he loved her only for her bright prettiness and her girlish simplicity and true-heartedness.

And now?

Now the summer roses are in their fullest blossom at High Sutton, and Miss Macnair is wandering among them, a devoted but most serenely happy slave to her godson, the healthy little heir of High Sutton, whom even her boundless indulgence will not spoil.

Once again the Squire and Nora are running a race, while their laughter flies among the trees, and a small competitor, running in advance, looks back with brilliant eyes and tangled locks, and claps her hands to see that she has beaten papa and mamma. And when the race is over the Squire sets the tiny girl upon his shoulders, and, laughing down into his young wife's face, asks her if she will kindly try to recollect that he is an elderly man.

To which Nora answers most sedately that it is impossible; and then draws down his handsome face and kisses it, pulling the baby's yellow locks the while. And presently Miss Macnair, who meets them, and brings little Carleton to join the game, wonders for the hundredth time if any one can ever pretend to decide what will prove an unequal marriage.'

CONCERNING TUSCULUMS

Ir is a question which many members of the English public have asked, when we may again expect among us a leader of public opinion who shall exercise anything like the national influence of Palmerston ; and the secret of Palmerston's power as a popular force was that he was true, beyond any politician of his time, to what may be called the social traditions of English statesmanship. The private life, tastes, and habits of public men are things almost as important, so far as their hold upon the mind of their countrymen is concerned, as their public conduct; and, roughly speaking, the more these charm the national imagination and appeal to the national sentiment, the more durable and penetrating, the more subtle and well received, will be their political authority. The instincts and the prejudices of the British schoolboy survive in the breasts of those who compose the adult British public. The youth who shuns the cricket-field and the fives-court in play-hours is regarded with suspicion and dislike; the statesman who cannot and will not unbend the bow in the same fashion as do his humbler fellow-beings may be the saviour of his country, but will never be the idol of the multitude. The art of popularity in great men may be summed up as a mastery of that happy knack by which, on chosen occasions, a sympathetic chord is struck in the vulgar bosom. To sway the crowd it is necessary to show that one can appreciate the likes and dislikes of the crowd; that one is not above their passions and not always superior to their foibles. The two statesmen most personally liked and most personally influential during this century have been Lord Melbourne and Lord Palmerston, and popularity and influence were derived through the exercise of the self-same arts. Both had the same measure of frank and felicitous geniality, the same insight into popular modes of feeling, the same intuitive perception of the right thing to say, and the fitting moment when it should be said.

In the Letters of Runnymede Lord Melbourne was described as one whom, says the writer, 'I would condemn to no severer solitude than the gardens of Hampton Court, where you might saunter away the remaining years of your ludicrous existence sipping the last novel of Paul de Kock while lounging over a sun-dial.' Of Palmerston it was said, in the same work, Methinks I can see your lordship, the Sporus of politics, cajoling France with an airy compliment and menacing Russia with a perfumed cane.' Both Melbourne and Palmerston had something of the abandon of manner and the apparently dégagé attitude of mind of which the idea is conveyed in these character