tonly wasted, but you must take him as he is. The loss is mine. I mourn for the eloquence that he might have launched into the night, the vows which he might have called on the rising sun to attest and register. In lieu of such a record, I have to do the humblest duty, that of telling the exact truth. Miserable and disturbed, he waited for the day, and when the morning was somewhat advanced, he bathed, dressed, and left his room as calmly, to outward appearances, as he had done on the preceding day.
With prompt resolve that there should be no shadow of suspicion in his household, Mr. Lygon had, within an hour from receiving the mysterious message, gone down-stairs, and in the presence of the children, but not addressing the falsehood to them—we are strange creatures—had informed a servant that a very dear friend of himself and of Mrs. Lygon lay at the point of death in Herefordshire, and that she had most properly hurried off in hope to be in time to see the departing lady. He managed, as if accidentally, to drop into the explanation a word or two implying that the dying friend was rich, thus certain to convey an impression which would be at once acceptable to domestics, for whom the information was intended. He trusted that in five minutes they would be cunningly nodding their heads in approval of their mistress’s cleverness in looking after the interests of her family; and he was not deceived. He even went through the ceremony of the dinner, and his silence and thoughtfulness were easily accounted for by his servants. It had been cruel work, however, to contend against the chatter of the children.
“Has the lady ever been here, papa?” demanded Frederick. “Do we know her?”
“No, no, dear.”
“Have I seen her?” asked Walter, who, as the eldest, deemed that his prolonged experience had probably embraced the acquaintance in question.
“No, Walter. But we’ll not talk about it any more, dears. The loss of one whom we love is a very sad thing, and at present we do not know what it may please God should happen. So we will not speak any more about it until we hear from mamma.”
And, as may easily be supposed, the few hours during which it was necessary to support appearances seemed anything but few or brief to Arthur Lygon; but they passed. His children’s last kisses were warm upon his cheek when he once more locked himself into the room in which a happy father had, on three anxious, happy days, presented a newly-born child, for the kiss of a pale but smiling mother—of her who had left him, and all of them.
When Mr. Lygon, accompanied by little Clara, proud of being her father’s companion, and almost prouder of being placed in charge of carpet-bag and cloaks, reached Lipthwaite, he drove straight to the house of Mr. Berry, but found that the latter had taken his pony and ridden across to the Abbey. Mrs. Berry had gone into the town, but the servant, who knew Mr. Lygon well, and was rapturous at the sight of the little girl of whom much had been heard, but who had never visited the place where her beautiful mother had been married, was as ready with the hospitality of Cromwell Lodge as the owners could have been. Lunch was to be ready in ten minutes, and an early dinner should be got for Miss Clara, and, in the meantime, would she have some strawberries and cream after the journey?
“Thanks, Hester, thanks. But, no, we will not have anything at present. We’ll leave our things, and take a walk. I want to show my little girl the Hill and the view, and when we come back, I dare say that your master or mistress will have returned.”
Hester made another struggle to administer refreshment of some kind.
“Indeed she does not want anything,” said Mr. Lygon. “It is but two hours since we breakfasted. Look here, Hester, I see the great telescope is still sticking out at the library window.”
“Master is never tired of looking through that, sir, and finding out all that goes on up on the Hill.”
“Well, if he comes in before we return, tell him to look there for us. Now, Clara, darling.”
“But let me just cut a paper of sandwiches for Miss Clara,” pleaded Hester. “The air up there gives people such an appetite, if we might guess, master says, by the awful great baskets they take up with ’em.”
“We shall be all the readier for lunch, Hester, thank you,” said Mr. Lygon, leading Clara away with him.
The child was delighted with the walk, with the little tree bridge over the clear water, in which she actually saw a fish, and with the ascent of the height, and her merry chatter rattled out unceasingly. She was never much at a loss for talk, but the best orators are aided by accidents, and when Miss Clara’s discourse was helped by such sparkling incidents as the scramble of a real squirrel up a tree close to her, by the vision of a little snake writhing across the path, and the meeting a boy with a hedgehog, which he presented to her in the kindest and uncouthest manner, and which she carried a good way, to the extreme detriment of her prettily fitting little green gloves (when releasing it being utterly out of the question with her, her father transferred it to his pocket), it may easily be imagined that her voice was very busy with the echoes of our hill.
“Oh! if mamma could only see this lovely place,” she exclaimed, as they turned out of some shade, stood on the rocky edge, and saw the rich country below flooded with the sunshine of a summer noon.
“My child, she knows every bit of this hill, and all round it, as well as I do, and better.”
And indeed it was true, for it was around, and about, and over the hill that Laura Vernon had guided Arthur Lygon in the happy days when he was persuading her to let him be her guide over the Hill of Difficulty called Life.
“Oh! I wish she was here.”
“So do I, love,” said Mr. Lygon, in a voice which he endeavoured, not very successfully, to make a cheerful one.
They followed to its end a path which was about two-thirds up the hill, and which, winding through a thick shade, terminated on an open, on