probably have come on. Every-day cares and difficulties had fallen away from her, and she was transported into a region where Sebastion dimly felt his sympathy and interest would never be called on to follow. Some book would perhaps have been the magician that had worked the spell; Alice had been carried away to dream-land, and Sebastion did not possess the countersign that could have lured her back: he had to wait outside the charmed door, and very long and weary waiting it often was. After one of these fits of dreaming, Alice would suddenly wake up, with a thirst for knowledge strong upon her. Studies, that Sebastion did not even know by name, absorbed all her thoughts for the time; and in this mood, overcoming her timidity, she would often form sudden intimacies with one or other of the guests who frequented Earle's Court. Old learned men found pleasure in talking to the intelligent young girl who, for the time, showed such in terest in their pursuits, and such desire to be taught; and Sebastion stood apart, listening while they "chattered," stony names "Of shale and hornblende, rag, and trap, and tuff, Amygdaloid and trachyte," and felt further away from Alice, more alone, than he had ever done when, on the lonely mast-head, with sky and sea around, memory had consoled him with cherished pic tures. He made up his mind at last quite suddenly, to go away, and did not give any particular reason for his resolution to anyone. He met with little opposition, for as he was not to enter into possession of the property bequeathed him by his grandfather for the next four years, his friends thought it wise in him not to relinquish his profession at that time; and he succeeded without difficulty in getting a berth in a ship that was going to China, where there was a prospect of a war breaking out. When the brief contest was over, his friends heard that he had got his promotion and left his ship; but the next letter, instead of announcing his return to Kingsmills, informed them that he had gone abroad again with a friend, in company with whom he designed to make a tour of discovery in a very little known part of Africa. After that, nothing more had been heard of him till he appeared suddenly in Miss Earle's parlour, on the night of Caroline's first party. He came back, as he told himself, a grownup man; with pursuits and interests of his own; a name which he had already dignified with one or two worthy actions; a work cut out for himself in the world; with that old longing for home and sympathy, that old intense desire to be of consequence to some one, overlaid with more weighty interests and projects that stood him instead of intimate ties. So he told himself, very emphatically, as he walked along the Kingsmills streets towards the house where he was to meet his uncle and cousin. The first tones of a low eager voice, the touch of a trembling hand, one glance of an appealing face turned up to his, told him something quite different, though for the time, he shut his heart very resolutely against the contradiction. 128 CHAPTER V. "Toiling, rejoicing, sorrowing, Each morning sees some task begin, Each evening sees it close, Something attempted, something done, Has earned a night's repose." LONGFELLOW. "LATE again, Harry," said Mr. Meyer to the last comer of a troop of noisy boys, who, whispering, talking, and laughing, had, by twos and threes, assembled in the parlour at the Leasows, which looked into the yard. It was half-past seven on a cold, cloudy March morning, when the aspect of the world without, especially of that part of the world commanded by Mr. Meyer's parlour-window, the sloppy manufacturing yard, and the misty |