he must think of it as of martyrdom-is that he had made a little advance in his pleading, a comfort to you?" he continued, bending, and scattered his eloquence to the winds with in his pity and wonder, over the trembling a set of dreadful arguments which were all wife, who burst forth into fresh tears as he her own. spoke and forgot her momentary horror.

CHAPTER XVI.

"O Frank, go and speak to him, and tell him how miserable I am, and what a dreadful THE Curate of St Roque's found his brother thing it would be; tell him everything Frank. in his library, looking very much as he alOh, don't leave him till you have persuaded ways looked at the first glance. But Gerald him. Go, go; never mind me," cried Mrs. was not reading, nor writing, nor doing anyWentworth; and then she went to the door thing. He was seated in his usual chair, by after him once more. "Don't say I sent for his usual table, with all the ordinary things you. He he might not be pleased," she around; some manuscript - lying loosely said, in her faltering, eager voice; "nd, O about, and looking as if he had thrown down Frank, consider how much hangs upon what his pen in disgust, and pushed it away from you say." When he left her, Louisa stood him in the middle of a sentence-was on the at the door watching him as he went along table, and an open book on his other hand; the passage towards her husband's room. It but neither the book nor the MS. occupied was a forlorn hope; but still the unreasoning, him; he was sitting leaning his head in his uncomprehending heart took a little comfort hands, gazing blankly out through the winfrom it. She watched his figure disappearing dow, as it appeared, at the cedar, which flung along the narrow passage with a thrill of its serene shadow over the lawn outside. He mingled anxiety and hope; arguing with Ger- jumped up at the sound of his brother's voice, ald, though it was so ineffectual when she but seemed to recall himself with a little diffitried it, might still be of some avail in stronger culty even for that, and did not look much hands. His brother understood him, and surprised to see him. In short, Frank read could talk to him better than anybody else in Gerald's eyes that he would not at that could; and though she had never convinced moment have been surprised to see any one, anybody of anything all her life, Mrs. Went- and that, in his own consciousness, the emerworth had an inalienable confidence in the ef-gency was great enough to justify any unfect of being talked to." In the momentary looked-for appearance, though it might be stimulus she went back to her darkened room from heaven or from the grave. and drew up the blind, and went to work in a tremulous way; but as the slow time went on, and Frank did not return, poor Louisa's courage failed her; her fingers refused their office, and she began to imagine all sorts of things that might be going on in Gerald's study. Perhaps the argument might be going the wrong way; perhaps Gerald might be angry at his brother's interference; perhaps they might come to words-they who had been such good friends-and it would be her fault. She jumped up with her heart beating loud when she heard a door open somewhere; but, when nobody came, grew sick and faint, and hid her face, in the impatience of her misery. Then the feeling grew upon her that those precious moments were decisive, and that she must make one last appeal, or her heart would burst. She tried to resist the impulse in a feeble way, but it was not her custom to resist impulses, and it got the better of her; and this was why poor Louisa rushed into the library, just as Frank thought

"I am glad you have come," he said, after they had greeted each other, his mouth relaxing ever so slightly into the ghost of his old smile; you and I always understood each other, and it appears I want interpretation now.

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And one interpretation supposes many," he said, with a gleam, half of pathos, half of amusement, lighting up his face for a moment; "there is no such thing as accepting a simple version even of one man's thoughts. You have come at a very fit time, Frank-that is, for me.”

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"I am glad you think so," said the other brother; and then there was a pause, neither liked to enter upon the grand subject which stood between them.

"Have you seen Louisa?" said Gerald. He spoke like a man who was ill, in a preoccupied, interrupted way. Like a sick man, he was occupied with himself, with the train of thought which was always going on in his mind whatever he might be doing, whether he was working or resting, alone or

in company. For months back he had car- dar, and stood there with his back turned to ried it with him everywhere. The cedar- Frank and his eyes going slowly over all the tree outside, upon which his thoughtful eyes long processes of his self-argument, laid up fell as he looked straight before him out of as they were upon these solemn levels of the library window, was all garlanded with shadow. "Yes-you have gone so far with the reasonings and questionings of this pain- me; but I don't want to take you any farful spring. To Frank's eyes, Gerald's atten- ther, Frank. Perhaps, when I have reached tion was fixed upon the fluttering of a certain the perfect peace to which I am looking fortwig at the extremity of one of those broad, ward, I may try to induce you to share it, but solemn, immovable branches. Gerald, how- at present there are so many pricks of the flesh. ever, saw not the twig, but one of his hard- You did not come to argue with me, did est difficulties, which was twined and twined you?" and again the half-humorous gleam in the most inexplicable way round that little of old came over Gerald's face as he looked sombre cluster of spikes; and so kept look-round. "Louisa believes in arguing," he ing out, not at the cedar, but at the whole said, as he came back to the table and took confused yet distinct array of his own troub- his seat again; "not that she has ever gained led thoughts. much by it, so far as I am aware. Poor girl! she talks and talks, and fancies she is persuading me; and all the time my heart is bleeding for her. There it is," he exclaimed, suddenly hiding his face in his hands. "This is what crushes one to think of. The rest is hard enough, Heaven knows-separation from my friends, giving up my own people, wounding and grieving, as I know I shall, everybody who loves me. I could bear that; but Louisa and her children—God help me, there's the sting!"

"If you have seen Louisa, she has been talking to you, no doubt," he said, after another little pause, with again the glimmer of a smile. "We have fallen upon troubles, and we don't understand each other, Frank. That's all very natural; she does not see things from my point of view: I could not expect she should. If I could see from hers it might be easier for us all; but that is still less to be expected; and it is hard upon her, Frank-very hard," said Gerald, turning round in his old, ingenious way, with that faculty for seeing other people's difficulties which was so strong a point in his character. "She is called upon to make, after all, perhaps, the greater sacrifice of the two; and she does not see any duty in it-the reverse, indeed. She thinks it a sin. It is a strange view of life, to look at it from Louisa's point. Hers will be an unwilling, unintentional martyrdom; and it is hard to think I should take all the merit and leave my poor little wife the suffering without any compensation!" He began to walk up and down the room with uneasy steps, as if the thought was painful, and had to be got rid of by some sudden movement. "It must be that God reckons with women for what they have endured, as with men for what they have done," said Gerald. He spoke with a kind of grieved certainty, which made his brother feel, to start with, the hopelessness of all argument.

"But must this be? Is it necessary to take such a final, such a terrible step?" said the Perpetual Curate.

"I think so." Gerald went to the window, to resume his contemplation of the ce

They were both men, and strong men, not likely to fall into any sentimental weakness; but something between a groan and sob wrung out of the heart of the elder brother at the thought of the terrible sacrifice before him, echoed with a hard sound of anguish into the quiet. It was very different from his wife's trembling, weeping, hoping agony; but it reduced the curate more than ever to that position of spectator which he felt was so very far from the active part which his poor sister expected of him.

"I don't know by what steps you have reached this conclusion," said Frank Wentworth; "but even if you feel it your duty to give up the Anglican Church (in which, of course, I think you totally wrong,") added the High Churchman, in a parenthesis, "I cannot see why you are bound to abandon all duties whatever. I have not come to argue with you; I dare say poor Louisa may expect it of me, but I can't, and you know very well I can't. I should like to know how it has come about all the same; but one thing only, Gerald-a man may be a Christian without being a priest. Louisa-"

"Hush! I am a priest or nothing. I can't

trace again that painful way. It was a path, once trod, never to be returned upon; and already he stood steadfast at the end, looking back mournfully, yet with a strange composure. It would be impossible to describe the mixture of love, admiration, impatienceeven intolerance-which swelled through the mind of the spectator, as he looked on at this wonderful sight, nor how hard he found it to restrain the interruptions which rushed to his lips, the eager arguments which came upon him in a flood, all his own favorite fences against the overflow of the tide which ran in lawful bounds in his own mind, but which had inundated his brother's. But though it was next to impossible to keep silence, it was altogether impossible to break in upon Gerald's history of this great battle through which he had just come. He had come through it, it was plain; the warfare was accomplished, the weapons hung up, the conflict over; and nothing could be more apparent than that he had no intention of entering the battle-field again. When he had ended, there was another pouse.

relinquish my life!" cried the elder brother, | had been led from one step to another, lifting his hands suddenly, as if to thrust without any lingering touch of possibility in away something which threatened him. Then the narrative that he might be induced to rehe rose up again and went towards the window and his cedar, which stood dark in the sunshine, slightly fluttered at its extremities by the light summer-wind, but throwing glorious level lines of shadow, which the wind could not disturb, upon the grass. The limes near, and that one delicate, feathery birch which was Mrs. Wentworth's pride, had all some interest of their own on hand, and went on waving, rustling, coquetting with the breezes and the sunshine in a way which precluded any arbitray line of shade. But the cedar stood immovable, like a verdant monument, sweeping its long level branches over the lawn, passive under the light, and indifferent, except at its very tops and edges, to the breeze. If there had been any human sentiment in that spectator of the ways of man, how it must have groaned and trembled under the pitiless weight of thoughts, the sad lines of discussion and argument and doubt, which were entangled in its branches! Gerald Wentworth went to his window to refer to it, as if it were a book in which all his contests had been recorded. The thrill of the air in it tingled through him as he stood looking out; and there, without looking at Frank, except now and then for a moment when he got excited with his subject, he went into the history of his struggle-a history not unprecedented or unparalleled, such as has been told to the world before now by men who have gone through it, in various shapes, with various amounts of sophistry and simplicity. But it is a different thing reading of such a conflict in a book, and hearing it from lips pallid with the meaning of the words they uttered, and a heart which was about to prove its sincerity by voluntary pangs more hard than death. Frank Went- ments. Will you go back and go over it worth listened to his brother with a great deal of agreement in what he said, and again with an acute perception of mistakes on Gerald's part, and vehement impulses of contradiction, to which, at the same time, it was impossible to give utterance; for there was something very solemn in the account he was giving of himself, as he stood with his face half turned to the anxious listener, leaning on the window, looking into the cedar. Gerald did not leave any room for argument or remonstrance; he told his brother how he

"I am not going to argue with you," said Frank Wentworth; "I don't even need to tell you that I am grieved to the heart. It isn't so very many years ago," said the younger brother, almost too much touched by the recollection to preserve his composure, “since I took all my opinions from you; and since the time came for independent action, I, too, have gone over all this ground. My conclusions have been very different from yours, Gerald. I see you are convinced, and I can say nothing; but they do not convince me-you do not convince me, nor the sight of your faith, though that is the most touching of all argu

again?" said the curate, spurred, by a thought of poor Louisa, to contradict himself, while the words were still on his lips.

"No," said Gerald; "it would be of no use, Frank. We should only grieve each other more."

"Then I give up that subject," said the younger brother; "but there is one matter which I must go back to. You may go to Rome, and cease to be a priest of the Anglican Church; but you cannot cease to be a man, to bear the weight of your natural du

ties. Don't turn away, but hear me. Ger- but firm tones, laying his hand on his broth

ald, Louisa-"

more,

"Don't say any more. Do you imagine I have not thought of that?" said Gerald, once with a gesture of pain and something like terror; "I have put my hand to the plough, and I cannot go back. If I am not a priest, I am nothing." But when he came to that point, his cedar-tree no longer gave him any assistance; he came back to his chair, and covered his face with his hands.

er's arm. And it was at this moment, when in his heart he felt that his influence might be of some avail, and when all the powers of his mind were gathering to bear upon this last experiment, that the door opened suddenly, and poor Louisa, all flushed and tearful, in womanish hot impatience and misery that knew no prudence, burst, without any warning, into the room.

"I can't bear it any longer!" cried the "Louisa is your wife; you are not like a poor wife. “I knew you were talking it all man free from the honds of nature," said the over, and deciding what it was to be; and Curate of St. Roque's. "It is not for me to when one's life is hanging on a chance, how can speak of the love between you; but I hold one keep quiet and not interfere? O Gerald, it, as the Scripture says, for a holy mystery, Gerald! I have been a true wife to you. I like the love of Christ for his Church-the know I am not clever; but I would have died most sacred of all bonds," said the young to do you any good. You are not going to man, with a certain touch of awe and emo- forsake me!" cried poor Louisa, going up to tion, as became a young man and a true lover. him and putting her arms round him. "I He made a little pause to regain command of said Frank was to tell you everything, but a himself before he continued, "and she is de- man can never tell what is in a woman's pendent on you-outwardly, for all the com- heart. O Gerald, why should you go and fort of her life-and in her heart, for every-kill me! I will never oppose you any more; thing, Gerald. I do not comprehend what whatever you want, I will give in to it as that duty is which could make you leave her, freely as if it were my own way. I will all helpless and tender, as you know her to make that my own way, Gerald, if you will be, upon the mercies of the world. She her- only listen to me. Whatever changes you self says "--and poor Louisa's complaint grew please, O Gerald, I will never say a word, into pathos under the subliming force of her nor your father, nor any one! If the bishop advocate's sympathy-"that she would be should interfere, we would all stand up for like a widow, and worse than a widow. I am you. There is not a soul in Wentworth to not the man to bid you suppress your convic-oppose-you know there is not. Put anytions because they will be your ruin, in the thing you please in the church-preach how common sense of the word; but, Geraldyour wife-"

you please-light the candles or anything. Gerald, you know it is true I am saying- I am not trying to deceive you!" cried the poor soul, bewildered in her folly and her grief.

Gerald had bent his head down upon his clasped hands; sometimes a great heave of his frame showed the last struggle that was going on within him—a struggle more pain- "No, Louisa, no-only you don't underful, more profound, than anything that had stand," said her husband, with a groan: he gone before. And the voice of the curate, had raised his head, and was looking at her who, like his brother, was nothing if not a with a hopeless gleam of impatience in the pity priest, was choked and painful with the force and anguish of his eyes. He took her little of his emotion. He drew his breath hard be- hand and held it between his own, which were tween his words: it was not an argument, trembling with all this strain-her little tenbut an admonition; an appeal, not from a der, helpless woman's hand, formed only for brother only, but from one who spoke with soft occupations, and softer caresses; it was authority, as feeling himself accredited from not a hand which could help a man in such God. He drew closer towards the voluntary an emergency-without any grasp in it to martyr beside him, the humbleness of his reverential love for his elder brother mingling in that voice of the priest, which was natural to him, and which he did not scruple to adopt. "Gerald,-your wife," he said, in softened

take hold upon him, or force of love to part -a clinging, impotent hand, such as holds down, but cannot raise up. He held it in a close tremulous pressure, as she stood looking down upon him, questioning him with eager,

hopeful eyes, and taking comfort in her igno- | in a hysterical fit, and laid her on the sofa. rance from his silence, and the way in which He had to stand by her side for a long time he held her. Poor Louisa concluded she was

holding her hand, and soothing her, with yet to win the day. deeper and deeper shadows growing over his "I will turn Puseyite, too," she said, with face. As for Frank, after pacing the room a strange little touch of attempted laughter, in great agitation for some time, after trying "I don't want to have any opinions different to interpose, and failing, he went away in a from my husband's; and you don't think your fever of impatience and distress into the garfather is likely to do anything to drive you den, wondering whether he could ever find out of the Church? You have only given us means to take up the broken thread, and a terrible fright, dear," she continued, be- urge again upon his brother the argument ginning to tremble again, as he shook his which, but for this fatal interruption, he head and turned away from her. "You did thought might have moved him. But gathnot really mean such a dreadful thing as send-ering thoughts came thick upon the Perpeting me away. You could not do without me, ual Curate. He did not go back to make Gerald-you know you could not." Her another attempt, even when he knew by the breath was getting short, her heart quicken- sounds through the open windows that Louisa ing in its throbs—the smile that was quiver- had been led to her own room up-stairs. He ing on her face got no response from her hus- stood outside and looked at the troubled band's downcast eyes. And then poor Louisa house, which seemed to stand so serene and lost all her courage; she threw herself down secure in the sunshine. Who could have at his feet, kneeling to him. "O Gerald, it supposed that it was torn asunder in such a is not because you want to get rid of me? hopeless fashion? And Louisa's suggestion You are not doing it for that? If you don't came into his mind, and drove him wild with stay in the Rectory, we shall be ruined-we a sense of horror and involuntary guilt as shall not have enough to eat! and the Rec- though he had been conspiring against them. iory will go to Frank, and your children will" The Rectory will go to Frank." Was it be cast upon the world—and what, oh, what his fault that at that moment a vision of Lucy is it for, unless it is to get rid of me?" cried Wodehouse, sweet and strong and steadfastMrs. Wentworth. "You could have as much a delicate, firm figure, on which a man could freedom as you like here in your own living lean in his trouble-suddenly rose up before -nobody would ever interfere or say what the curate's eyes? Fair as the vision was, are you doing? and the bishop is papa's old he would have banished it if he could, and friend. O Gerald, be wise in time, and don't hated himself for being capable of conjuring throw away all our happiness for a fancy. it up at such a time. Was it for him to If it was anything that could not be arranged, profit by the great calamity which would I would not mind so much; but if we all make his brother's house desolate? He could promise to give in to you, and that you shall not endure the thought, nor himself for finddo what you please, and nobody will inter- ing it possible; and he was ashamed to look fere, how can you have the heart to make us in Gerald's face with even the shadow of such all so wretched? We will not even be re- an imagination on his own. He tapped at spectable," said the weeping woman; "a the library window after a while, and told family without any father, and a wife with his brother that he was going up to the Hall. out her husband-and he living all the time! Louisa had gone up-stairs, and her husband O Gerald, though I think I surely might be sat once more, vacant yet occupied, by his considered as much as candles, have the altar writing-table. "I will follow you presently," covered with lights if you wish it and if said Gerald. Speak to my father without you never took off your surplice any more, I any hesitation, Frank; it is better to have it would never say a word. You can do all that over while we are all together-for it must and stay in the Rectory. You have not the be concluded now." And the curate saw in heart-surely-surely, you have not the heart the shadow of the dim apartment that his -all for an idea of your own, to bring this brother lifted from the table the grand emterrible distress upon the children and me?" blem of all anguish and victory, and pressed "God help us all!" said Gerald, with a upon it his pale kips. The young man turned sigh of despair, as he lifted her up sobbing away with the shadow of that cross standing