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dear girl, that I would come again this morning, and she has been waiting and watching for me, and thinking that I had forgotten. And her last word was to remind me of the oath I took to protect her child-and even that I must break. And she is about me now; I feel it; despising me for my weakness and my falsehood. But she cannot think me more degraded than I think myself."

Colonel Mordaunt is shocked at the expression; he cannot bear that it should be connected, even wrongfully, with any action of Irene's.

"Degraded! my darling, what can make you use such a term with reference to yourself you who are everything that is true and noble ?"

"True, to break my promise to the dying -noble, to swear an oath and not fulfil it! O, very true and noble! I wish you could see my conduct as it looks to me."

"If that is really the light in which you view the matter, Irene, I will oppose no further obstacle to the satisfaction of your conscience. You shall keep your promise, and adopt the child."

At that she lifts her tear-stained face and regards him curiously.

"Are you in earnest, Philip?". "Quite in earnest! I could hardly jest on such a subject."

"O thank you! thank you-you have made me feel so happy;" and, regardless of spectators (for though the room is nearly cleared by this time, the laundress and some of her children still remain in attendance), up comes her sweet mouth to meet his. Colonel Mordaunt is already repaid for his generosity. And then Irene turns to the bed.

"Myra," she says, as naturally as though the poor mother were still alive, “I will be true to my word! I will take your little one and bring him up for you; and when we meet again you will forgive me for this last breach of faith."

At this appeal Mrs. Cray pricks up her ears; she understands it at once, and the idea of getting rid of Tommy is too welcome to be passed over in silence; but, being a cunning woman, she foresees that it will strengthen his claim if she professes to have been made aware beforehand of

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"which I'm sure it will be a blessing to him, and may be he'll be a blessing to her. Ah, you see I knows all about it; I've been a mother to that poor girl as lies there, and who should she tell her troubles and 'opes to, if it wearn't to me? But I kep' her misfortune close, didn't I, mum?—not a word passed my lips but that all the village might have heard, which it's proved by not a soul knowing of it, except ourselves and Joel-and one or two neighbors, maybe, and my brother as lives over at Fenton. But now she's gone-poor dearand you've promised to do kindly by the child, I don't care who knows it, for it can't harm no one."

"Then your niece told you of my wife's offer to look after her little boy?" says Colonel Mordaunt, falling into the trap.

"O lor! yes sir; a many times; which I've looked forward to her doing so, knowing that no lady could break her promise: and she's always been so fond of Tommy, too; I'm sure he'll take to her jist as though she was his mother. And it's a fine thing for the child; though it'll near break my heart to part with him."

This last assertion is a little too much, even for Colonel Mordaunt's softened mood, and he rises to his feet hastily.

"Come, dearest," he says to his wife, "it is time we were going."

"And Tommy?" she replies, inquiringly. "You don't want to take him with you now, surely?" is the dubious rejoinder. "No, I suppose not; but-how will he come?"

"Lor, mum! I'll bring him up this evening-he shan't be kep' from you, not half an hour more than's needful; but I must reddle him up a bit first, and give him a clean face."

"O, never mind his face," begins Irene; but her husband cuts her short.

"There, there, my love! you hear, the child will be up this evening. Surely, that is all that can be required. Good evening, Mrs. Cray. Come, Irene." And with one farewell look at Myra's corpse, she follows him from the room.

All the way home the husband and wife sit very close to each other, but they do not speak. The scene they have just witnessed has sobered them. Colonel Mordaunt is the first to break the silence, and he does so as the carriage stops before the hall-door of the Court.

"I'm thinking what the d-1 you'll do with it!" he ejaculates, suddenly.

"With the child? O, a thousand things!"' she says, joyously.

Her voice startles him; he turns and looks into her face; it is beaming with happiness and a wonderful new light that he has never seen there before.

"Why, Irene," he exclaims, as he hands her out, "what is this? You look as if you had come into a fortune."

"Because I have such a dear, good old husband," she whispers, fondly, as she passes him and runs up stairs to dress for dinner.

Of course the whole conversation at the dinner-table is furnished by the discussion of Mrs. Mordaunt's strange freak. By the time Irene descends to the dining-room, she finds the story is known all over the house; and the opinions on it are free and various. Mrs. Cavendish holds up her hands at the very idea.

"My dear colonel, you spoil this child. Fancy, letting her adopt the brat of no one knows who the trouble it will give youthe money it will cost!"

"O, Irene has promised faithfully I shall have no trouble in the matter," laughs the colonel, who, having once given his consent to the arrangement, will never betray that it was against his will; "and as for the expense-well, I don't think one poor little mortal will add much to the expenditure of the household."

"Particularly as I intend to pay for him out of my pin money," says Irene.

"But the nuisance, my dear; no money will pay for that. Ah! you wont believe me now-but by-and-by-wait a bit-you'll see!" with mysterious nods and winks, of which her niece takes no notice.

"She'll have to end by turning him into a buttons-boy," remarks her husband, who is secretly delighted with the pantomime.

"I'm sure I shall do nothing of the sort," says Irene, quickly, and then calms down again. "I mean that I shall grow too fond of the child to make him into a servant."

"You fond of a baby, Irene, says Mary Cavendish; "that is just what puzzles me -why I'm sure you always said you hated children."

"O, very well, then! keep your own opinion-you know so much more about it than I do," with a little rising temper.

"Irene, my darling!" says the colonel, soothingly.

"Why do they all set upon me, then, Philip? What is there so extraordinary in my wishing to befriend a wretched little outcast? I'm sure, I almost begin to wish I had never seen the child at all.”

"Let us change the subject," is her husband's only answer.

But when the dinner is over and the evening draws to a close, Irene begins to move restlessly up and down the house. She has already taken her maid Phoebe into her confidence, and the girl, being country bred and with no absurd notions above her station, is almost as delighted at the prospect of having the little child to take care of as her mistress. And they have arranged that he is to sleep in Phoebe's bed, which is large and airy. And before the housemaid comes up with a broad grin on her countenance to announce that Mrs. Cray, the laundress, has brought "a little boy for missus," these extravagant young women have sliced up half a dozen or more good articles of wear, in order that the young rascal may have a wardrobe.

In the midst of their arrangements, Master Tommy, clean as to the outside platter, but smelling very strong, after the manner of the Great Unwashed, even though they dwell in villages, is introduced by his guardian. Irene cannot talk to Mrs. Cray tonight, she dismisses the subject of poor Myra and her death struggles summarily; and thrusting a five-pound note into the laundress's hand, gets rid of her as soon as she decently can. She is longing to have the little child all to herself, and she does not feel as though he were really her own until the woman who beats him is once more outside the door. And then she turns to Phoebe triumphantly.

"And now, Phoebe, what shall we do with him?"

"I should wash him, ma'am," replies Phoebe, following the advice of the great Mr. Dick, with respect to David Copperfield.

"Of course, we'll give him a warm bath. Run down stairs and get the water, Phoebe. And is this his nightgown?" examining the bundle of rags that Mrs. Cray left behind her. "O, what a wretched thing! but, luckily, it is clean. He must have new nightgowns, Phoebe, at once, and-"

"He must have everything new, ma'am, bless his heart" exclaims Phoebe, enthusiastically, as she disappears in quest of the water. When she is gone Irene lifts the child on her knee, and gazes in his face. "Tommy," she says, gently, "Tommy, will you love me?"

"Iss," replies Tommy, who has seen her often enough to feel familiar with her.

"You are going to be my little boy now, Tommy."

"Iss," repeats Tommy, as he surveys the wonderful fairy-land in which he finds himself. It must be recorded of Tommy, that, with all his faults, he is not shy.

In another minute Phoebe is back with the water, and the bath is filled, and the two women undress the child together and plunge him in, and sponge and lather him, kneeling on each side the bath the while, and laughing at their own awkwardness at the unaccustomed task. And then Tommy gets the soap into his eyes, and roars, which cheerful sound attracting Colonel Mordaunt's attention as he mounts the stairs, causes him to peep into the open bedroom door unseen. And there he watches his young wife and her maid first kiss the naked cupid to console him, and then return to the soaping and splashing, until they have made him smile again. And when the washing is completed, and Phoebe stretches out her arms to take the child and dry him, Colonel Mordaunt sees with astonishment that her mistress will not allow it.

"No, no, Phœbe! give him to me," she says, authoritatively, as she prepares her lap to receive the dripping infant; and then, as the servant laughingly obeys her orders, and carries the bath into the next room, he watches Irene's lips pressed on the boy's undried face.

"My little Tommy!"" she says, as she does so.

He sees and hears it, turns away with a sigh, and a heart heavy, he knows not wherefore, and goes down stairs as he ascended them, unnoticed.

A week has passed. Poor Myra's form has just been left to rest beneath a rough hillock of clay in the churchyard, and Joel Cray is seated in the sanded kitchen of his mother's cottage, his arms cast over the deal table, and his head bent down despairingly upon them.

Mrs. Cray, returning abruptly from naving just "dropped in" to a neighbor's to display her "black" and furnish all funereal details, finds him in this position.

"Come, lad," she says, roughly, but not unkindly, "it's no use frettin'; it wont bring her back agin."

"There's no call for you to tell me that, mother," he answers, wearily, as he raises two hollow eyes from the shelter of his hands; "it's writ too plainly here ”—striking his breast-"but you might have warned me she was goin'."

"Warned you! when all the world could see it! Why, the poor creetur has had death marked in her face for the last six months; and Mrs. Jones has jest bin a sayin' it's a wonder as she lasted so long," replies Mrs. Cray, as she hangs her new bonnet on a nail in the kitchen wall, and carefully folds up her shawl.

"All the world but me, you mean. It would have come a bit easier if I had seen it, perhaps. Why, 'twas only the other day I was begging of her to be my wife, and now, to think I've just come from burying her! O good Lord!" And down sinks the poor fellow's head again, whilst the the tears trickle through his earthstained fingers.

Mrs. Cray loves her son after her own fashion. It is, in a great measure, her love for him and sympathy with his disappointment that have made her hard upon Myra and Myra's child; and she desires to give him comfort in his present trouble. So she draws a chair close beside him, and sits down deliberately to tear open all his worst wounds. But it is not entirely her want of education that begets this peculiarity, for the example has been set her, ever since the world began, by people as well-meaning, and far less ignorant than herself.

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Now, where's the good of thinkin' of that, lad ?" she says, as soothingly as her harsh voice will permit. "She'd never have bin yours had she lived ever so long; and all the better, too, for no woman can make a good wife when her fancy's fixed upon another man."

"And if hers were, you needn't remind a feller of it," he replies, uneasily.

"O, but I says it for your good. Not that I wants to speak a word against the poor thing as is gone; for when a fellowcreetur's under the ground, let his faults

be buried atop of him, say I; that's my maxim, and I keeps to it. Still, there's no denying poor Myra were very flighty, and a deal of trouble to us all. I'm sure I thought this afternoon, when I see the handsome grave Simmons had dug for her, and all the village looking on at the burial, and Tommy brought down from the Court by the colonel's lady herself, in a bran new suit of black, and with a crape bow and a feather in his hat, that no one would have thought as seed it that we was only burying a—”

"Mother, what are you going to say?" demands Joel, as, with clenched hand and glowing eyes, he springs to his feet.

"Lor, you needn't fly out so! I wasn't going to say nothing but the truth."

"The truth! But is it the truth? Who knows that it's the truth ?"

"Why, you wouldn't be after saying as she was an honest woman, Joel?"

"I don't know. I'd rather be saying nothin' of her at all. My poor girl, trodden down and spit on! And she, who was the bonniest lass for miles round Priestley! Mother, I must leave this place!"

"Leave! when you've just got such a fine situation under Farmer Green! Have you lost your senses, lad ?"

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I don't know, and I don't care. I don't seem to have nothin' now; but I can't bide here any longer; there's somethin' in in the air that chokes me."

"But where would you be going?"

"I can't tell that, either. Jest where chance may take me. Only, be sure of one thing, mother-I don't come back to Priestley till I've cleared her name or killed the man who ruined her."

"You are going in search of him, Joel?" "It's bin growing on me over since that evening I came home and found her dead. I wont believe that Myra was the girl to give herself over to destruction; but if she were-well, then, the man who destroyed her must answer for it to me."

"But what'll I do without you?" commences Mrs. Cray, as her apron goes up to receive the maternal droppings of despair. "You'll do well enough, mother. If I didn't feel that, I wouldn't go. And the child (if it wasn't for her, I could say, 'Curse him but I wont. No, Myra, never you fear; he'll allays have a friend in me), he's off your hands, and well provided for. So you've nothin' but your own little ones to look after. And you'll have friends at the Court, too. You wont miss me."

"But how are you ever to find the gentleman, Joel?"

"I know his name was "Amilton,' and I'll track that name through the world till I light on him. And I saw him once, mother. 'Twas only for a few minutes, but I marked him well-a tall upstanding feller, with dark hair and biue eyes. The child's the very moral of him, curse him! And I'll search till 1 come acrost that face again; and when I comes acrost it, we'll have our reckoning, or I'm much mistaken."

"And how shall you live meanwhile ?” * "As I always have lived, by my hands. And now, mother, put up my bundle, and let me be going."

"To-night, lad? O, you can't be in ear

nest!"

"Yes, to-night. I tell you there's something in the air of this place that stops my breathing. I could no more lie down and sleep in my bed here, while she lies out yonder with the lumps of clay upon her tender breast, than I could eat while she was starvin'. Let me go, mother. If you don't want to see me mad, let me go where I can still fancy she's a living here with you, and that coffin and that shroud is all a horrid dream."

And so, regardless of his mother's entreaties or his own well-doing, Joel Cray goes forth from Priestley. Whilst the neighbors are preparing to retire to their couches, and the dead woman's child, alike unconscious of his motherless condition and the stigma resting on his birth, is lying, flushed and rosy, in his first sleep in Phobe's bed, the uncouth figure shambles slowly from the laundress's cottage, and takes the highroad to Fenton, which is on the way to the nearest town. But before he quits the village he passes, a little shamefacedly, even though the dusk of the summer's eve has fallen and he is quite alone, through the wooden wicket that guards God's acre, and finds his way up to the newmade grave.

But it looks so desolate and mournful, covered in with its hillock of damp red earth, that he cannot stand the sight, and as he gazes at it, his honest breast begins to heave.

"I can't abear it," he whispers, hoarsely, "to leave her here-the thought of it will haunt me night and day."

And then be stoops and gathers up a

morsel of the uninviting marl studded with rough stones.

"And to think you should be lying under this you whose head should be resting on my bosom-O my darlin', my darlin'! my heart'll break!"

And for a few moments the poor wretch finds relief in a gush of tears.

"I'm glad no one saw 'em," he ponders, quaintly, as the last of the low sobs breaks from his laboring bosom; "but I feels all

the better. And I swear by 'em-by these here tears which the thought of you has drawed from me, Myra, that I don't look upon your grave again until I've had satisfaction for the wrong he's done you. O my lost darlin', I shall never love another woman! Good-by, till we meets in a happier world than this has been for both of us!" And when the morning breaks he is miles away from Priestley.

[TO BE CONTINUED.]

UNDER THE ROSE.

BY ELIZABETH BIGELOW.

"KATHARINE! Katharine! Where has the child vanished? You really must excuse her, Mr. Waldron. She is so thoughtless and wayward!"

And Katharine, a white heap, crouched in the corner of the piazza, could hear the little soft sigh that came from her stepmother's pretty lips to give emphasis to her words.

Just then a provoking breeze stirred the leaves of the tall orange tree that concealed her, and she lost Mr. Waldron's reply. How much she would have given to hear it! And yet it was probably only some polite commonplace, if he had condescended to speak about her at all.

They had gone back to the drawing room; she heard her stepmother's soft purring tones just outside the window; then the music crashed out again and drowned everything.

Katharine stole softly to the window, and pulled the drapery aside, just enough for one little peep.

Yes, it was as she had thought. Mr. Waldron was dancing with her stepmother. She could see her blonde ringlets fluttering against his shoulder, and the arch smile with which she glanced up into his face. He would be abundantly consoled for her desertion! thought Katharine, bitterly.

She had promised to dance this dance with him, and she had run away. Run away from what she had been looking longingly forward to all the evening, the prospect of which had enabled her to bear patiently Dick Bentley's unceasing chatter of his college boat races, and his open "spooning" of herself (as she had heard one of his friends call it), had made her so

amazingly good-natured as to dance with every one of her brother Tom's friends who asked her, whom she usually treated with ineffable contempt as "small boys." And now to be back again, to be in her stepmother's place, what would she not have given! Yet the keen jealous pain in her heart which had drawn her away was as strong-stronger than ever. No! she did not want to be there; to have him looking down into her face in that tender way she knew so well, and which only meant-now she knew it that he thought of her as a child, a rather pretty child," who would be pleased with a little petting. How did he look at her stepmother? she wondered. She was not a child; she was a beautiful woman-how beautiful she had never realized until to-night, thought Katharine. She had just blossomed out of her widow's weeds, and she looked so fresh and bright! There! he was stooping to fasten her bracelet now. Was not his manner as tender as it had ever been to her? Poor Katharine! her "one little peep" was too much for her. She let the curtain fall, and rushed away, she scarcely knew or cared where.

Out into the moonlighted, rose-scented garden, away down one of the long paths, anywhere, to be away from the glaring lights, and the gay music that jarred upon her so, to be away from those two, so happy in each other's presence that they had already forgotten her existence.

She sat down on the steps of a little arbor over whose sides, formed of interlaced boughs, a rose vine, now a mass of bloom, ran riot.

The scent of the roses was heavy, sicken

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