was another scene of love, on the next landing, where Frederick was lying in wait for his father, and pounced upon him with boisterous affection. It is a monotonous story, but a happy one.
“Been to school in those splendid clothes, Fred?”
“Half-holiday, Wednesday, papa.”
“Ah, so it is. And where have you been? To the Zoological Gardens?”
“No, we were going there with mamma, but a gentleman came, and so mamma was obliged to send us out for a walk by ourselves, me and Clara.”
“Who was that, Fred?”
“I don’t know him. I saw him just for a minute. He was an ugly-looking fellow.”
“Hush, sir, you mustn’t call names, and, above all, never use them to people who come to see us, because that is worse than rude, it’s unkind. I suppose you thought him ugly because he kept you from going to the beasts.”
“Well, you take us on Sunday?” said Fred, declining the discussion.
“We’ll hear what mamma says,” replied Mr. Lygon, going to his dressing-room.
When he came out again, he gave a rap at the bed-room door as he passed, and crying, “Six, mother,” descended to the drawing-room, where he found Walter, who was breathing on his new blades, watching the breath-damp evaporate, and tenderly wiping the steel with the corner of a table-cover. He had conscience enough, however, to feel that this last proceeding was exceptionable, and with one of those irresistibly sly looks which disarm remonstrance, he pocketed the knife, and began to hang on to his father’s well-knit arm, and raise himself from the ground by his hands.
“There, my boy, a little of that will do on a hot day,” said Mr. Lygon, laughingly swinging him away. “What did mamma say to the present?”
“She didn’t call me to come in, so I couldn’t show it her.”
“And how is Eutropius?”
“Oh, he’s very well, thank you,” said Walter; “and so’s Numa Pompilius who was very bilious and Ancus Martius who wore moustachios, and all the rest of ’em. Shall I tell mamma to come down?” he added, as if not particularly eager to undergo a classical examination.
“If you like.”
In a quarter of a minute he was knocking very loudly at the bed-room door. Apparently the summons was without effect, for it was repeated with additional pertinacity.
“Mamma won’t answer me,” said Walter, coming back to the room rather discomfited.
“Have you been doing anything rude, or wrong?” said Mr. Lygon.
“No, indeed, papa,” said Walter, whose face was truthfulness itself. “We had quite a game, me and ma, when I came in from school, racing round the dining-room table, and kissing one another.”
“Can she be unwell?” said Mr. Lygon, running up-stairs.
No answer was given to his knock, or voice, and he tried the door. It was not fastened, and he partly opened it and spoke again. No answer, and he entered. No wife was there.
“Why, she must have gone down-stairs, Walter, before I came from my room,” said the father, laughing at the boy, who had followed him up-stairs.
Walter did not laugh in return. He looked grave for a moment, and then dashed down-stairs with even greater celerity, if possible, than was his wont. It did not take that earnest searcher many seconds to fly into every room in the lower part of the house, and he returned to his father, who was adjusting some prints on the bed-room walls.
“Mamma’s not down-stairs.”
Is there any sort of instinct which warns a loving creature of a sorrow at hand—a sorrow in which the dearly loved one is implicated?
“Look up-stairs,” said his father, promptly, and noticing a sudden pallor on the child’s face.
Walter sprang away on the instant; but before he was on the topmost stair his father held in his hand the key of the mystery. Lygon’s eye had fallen on an ivory box on a small table. The box was open, and a letter addressed to himself was placed upright in it, placed as with intention that his notice should be attracted by the paper.
His wife had written the direction, but the note he took from the envelope was not in the graceful though irregular hand he loved so well. It was a man’s writing.
But he opened the note calmly enough—why should he not have done so?—we do not live in a world of melodrama, and a married lady living at Brompton may be suddenly called away from her home without any necessity for her husband’s being alarmed. Her sister has been taken ill, and the doctor has sent a hasty line of summons, or Mr. Vernon—
But it is not her father’s small writing—it is a stranger’s hand.
“Laura Vernon has no choice, and must obey the call which removes her. All pursuit or inquiry will be in vain. But silence may be rewarded.”
That was all. And the last five words were written in a hurried hand, and as if unwillingly, and were blotted, as if they had been added at the last moment.
“Laura Vernon.”
Arthur Lygon’s heart had long since ceased to throb at the sight or sound of that name. From the day when an agitated bride had exchanged it for another, and he had clasped her to that heart in the earnestness of as true a love as a woman may desire, the girl-name’s power of magic had been surrendered to another word of charming. To read the old word, and in a stranger’s writing, and as the opening of that strange message, was a thing to do in the wild yet calm madness of a dream, but there—there—in the bedroom of the house, with all the common-place comfort of an orderly household around him, the very summons to dinner about to be given, the children—
“She is not up-stairs, papa.”
“Mamma has gone out,” said Mr. Lygon, as calmly as he had ever spoken. “Go down-stairs,