"What is the matter, my child?" said Mr. Thornton, taking her hand. "Your lip is trembling, and you look angry."

"I think I am angry," said Lucy, "but I do not wish to be angry, only firm; you have done me a great wrong, uncle, and yourself too." "Lucy, what is the meaning of this strange manner ?"

"You have sacrificed me to family pride," said Lucy; "accepting a trust from one who laid down his life for the honour of his family and the glory of his king, you have betrayed it; you have allowed me to go on doubting the truest heart that ever beat, and you have almost driven me into marrying out of spite a person I could never love."

Contemplating the abyss upon which her woman's judgment had tottered, Lucy was almost beside herself with anger against him who had stood between her and Jacob.

"Lucy, you are mad or I am dreaming," said Mr. Thornton, his every action betokening the greatest amazement.

"I am not mad, uncle; you are not dreaming. It is now four years since you found me a happy girl, and you have made my life a burden to me."

"Lucy, Lucy!" exclaimed her uncle.

"What did I care for fortune, when you had thrust from me all I cared to live for?"

Lucy had satisfied herself, in a conversation with Allen, that Mr. Thornton had intercepted her letters to Jacob and kept back Jacob's letters to herself.

"I do not understand you, niece; and all my love for you will not permit me to listen to this language. Since first I had the happiness of restoring you to the world, and fulfilling a sacred trust confided to me by my nephew and by your father, you have been continually in my thoughts; it has been my chief delight to sacrifice myself for your happiness."

"Happiness!" exclaimed Lucy, with sorrowful dignity and with a composure before which Mr. Thornton grew confused and troubled. "Happiness! Was it not enough that my poor mother should die of a broken heart, that my dear, dear father, should have his last moments embittered by your miserable family pride? Was not this a sufficient sacrifice, but the Thornton blood, the Thornton escutcheon, the Thornton portrait gallery should demand another victim ?"

"When you are mistress of yourself, Miss Thornton," said her uncle, "I will listen to you: meanwhile I will seek elsewhere for information concerning the change which has come over you.

Ingratitude is not a Thornton vice.

you are not yourself."

You are not well, Lucy;

Mr. Thornton began to have some faint idea of the situation; but he was too much overcome to collect his thoughts and meet it. "Do not leave me, uncle," said Lucy; "I will try and be calm. Pray sit down; we must understand each other now."

"Then be good enough without this strange declamation-which is an accomplishment I did not know you possessed, my child-to explain yourself."

"I will," said Lucy, the tears starting in her eyes. found me I was happy, if I was poor.

happiness ?"

A great deal, thought Mr. Thornton.

"When you

What have riches to do with

"I was poor, but contented and happy in the love of one who, if he had neither name nor fortune to recommend his suit, would not have soiled his fingers with dishonour; no, not for a dukedom."

Mr. Thornton now saw the situation clearly, and at once chided himself mentally for thinking that he could hope to turn that youthful attachment which Allen had discovered in the first hours of their triumphant discovery of the Thornton heiress.

"You knew of my engagement, and you broke it ruthlessly by improper means; you did not even take the trouble to consider whether he was worthy of my love; you did not even seek to know the secret of my own heart; you intercepted his letters."

Mr. Thornton winced at this. It was a blow; it struck his pride roughly; it brought the colour into his face.

"Yes, leagued with your own servant, to make me doubt a true and noble heart; and I was weak enough to believe ill of him. The Thornton blood was not noble enough to give me a true woman's strength, and faith, and generosity. I have behaved like the wretched thing I had nearly become-a lady of fashion, a queen in society, a West-end belle. I despise myself for the very narrowness of my escape."

"Be calm, Lucy; be calm," said Mr. Thornton. He did not know what else to say. That reference to the letters was a blow which seemed to render him helpless.

Between her tears Lucy's eyes flashed anger, sorrow, and indignation. She sobbed and paced the room like one distraught.

"And to think that I should have doubted him!" she went on. "To think that finery and jewels and those empty dolls in the Row should have overshadowed his image, should have dimmed the remembrance of that last day at Cartown! To think that Mr. Max

Walton, a lord's son, who makes bets on his conquest of a woman, should have filled the very smallest corner of my thoughts for a moment! To think that I could not have guessed what had been done to deceive me!"

"Be calm," said Mr. Thornton again, "you do not think what you say."

"Oh, Mr. Thornton! "Was this worthy of you? ancestors ?"

Uncle, if you will," said Lucy, softening.

Was this worthy of your great and noble

"Damme if I think it was !" exclaimed the old man, starting up from his seat and striding across the room. "I never was in such an infernal fix in my life. 'Pon my soul I don't quite know where I am. If they had told me that my niece Lucy could have abused her proud old uncle in this strain I would have said they lied. Damme, I would have fought my own brother to the death for half the accusations she has made against me. But a woman!—what the devil are you to do with a woman?"

tuous.

As Lucy softened in her manner, Mr. Thornton began to be tempesHe had no other resource. He did not know what to do or say. Lucy having given full rein to her anger, now, like a woman, found relief in sympathetic tears.

“Uncle, I am only a woman," she said. "I have been sorely tried. I did not mean to say all I have said. I know it is all a mistake." "Mistake, damme! A fine mistake," said Mr. Thornton, marching about the room.

"I know you did not mean to be unkind; you would have made me a queen could."

if you

"Unkind, damme!-heaven forgive me for swearing in presence of a lady-nothing was farther from my thoughts."

Lucy followed him as he paced the room.

"I have no doubt you thought it was for my own good."

"Good!—I would have died for you. Damme, I would have done factory work myself for you sooner than you should have been unhappy!"

Lucy took his hand. The two went marching away from one end of the room to the other.

"I could never marry Max Walton," said Lucy.

"Damn Max Walton !-shade of the Thorntons forgive me-you shall not be coerced."

Lucy slipped her arm through her uncle's, and laid her head on his shoulder.

"Forgive me, uncle-dear uncle," she said in her winning voice.

Colonel Thornton stopped suddenly. "God bless you, my child," he exclaimed, and the next moment he was fairly sobbing over her.

"I could not bear to lose your good opinion, Lucy, to say nothing of your love; it was as much that old fool Allen's fault as mine; I am as big an ass as he is; forgive me, darling; promise never to say an unkind word again to me; I'm only an old woman, a silly old woman; I could not get on at all without you, Lucy, my dear, dear child.” The old man stroked her head and fondled her hands.

"I am so very very sorry," sobbed Lucy. "I ought to have explained myself to you long ago, ought to have told you all; it is I who am to blame."

"No, no, my dear Lucy; say no more about it; put your arms round my neck; I had a little sister like you when I was a boy; she died when I was a boy, too; I am an old man now, Lucy, a very old man; there, my dear child, there, there!"

The subdued old man rocked Lucy to and fro in his arms and crooned over her, and Lucy was stung with remorse and sorrow so deeply that at last she fainted and lay still as if she were dead.

The shock was very brief; Lucy opened her eyes at the first drop of water which the old man hurriedly flung in her face.

"Don't ring," she whispered. "I shall be better in a moment." He bathed her temples, and kissed her, and chafed her hands, and the colour returned to her cheeks.

"Let me ring for a little sherry," he said calmly, and wiping all traces of emotion from his face.

"Yes, dear," said Lucy.

"Bring some sherry and a biscui t," said Mr. Thornton.

When the wine was brought and the servant had disappeared, the old man filled a glass for Lucy, which he insisted upon her drinking

at once.

"Now Lucy, one more you must drink this. I am going to propose a toast." Lucy smiled and took the glass.

"His health," said the Colonel, emptying his glass and turning it up German fashion.

Lucy sipped her wine and looked up at her uncle, her eyes full of gratitude and love.

"What has passed is to be a secret, Lucy."

"Yes, dear," said Lucy.

"And now, my child, where is he?"

"In Neathville," said Lucy, her eyes seeking the ground.. "Thought so," said her uncle. "Let him come to me, Lucylet him come at once."

"Yes, dear uncle," said Lucy; "and you have forgiven my rash and cruel and unkind words ?"

"We will forgive each other," said the Colonel. "Let us seal a bond of peace and love."

He took her face in both his hands, kissed her tenderly, patted her head, and saying, "Let him come to me at once," left the room.

CHAPTER XLIV.

AFTER THE STORM.

Two lovers wandering by the sea. That was the picture of the calm which followed. Two lovers walking hand in hand, with the sea playing a quiet, soothing accompaniment to their thoughts. The storm was over. The tempest had left behind the calm which always follows passion. I fear Messrs. Ginghem, of Paternoster Row, London, would not have been quite satisfied with Jacob's last letter if they could have been witnesses of his occupation just then.

It was a sunny summer evening. The dreamy music of the ebbing water fell like balm upon the spirit. It awakened sympathetic responses in two beating hearts. It was full of a sweet solace. Lucy's thoughts wandered dreamily to London, where the season was throbbing and pulsating and boiling up and steaming like a hot spring. She thought of herself sauntering down the Row, then sauntering home to dress for dinner, with Max Walton lingering at her side, trying to win his bet; she saw herself being taken in to dinner by Lord Folden; she heard her praises being sung later on at night by Lady Miffits; and she shuddered at the narrow escape she had had of a fashionable life in the Max Walton sense. A little more heartlessness, she thought, a little less love of Jacob and the old days, and she would have ridden straightway into the thick of it; a little looser rein, away she would have gone, establishing herself on that giddy height of vanity to which her uncle and Max Walton would have led her. She would have outshone other women both in beauty and jewels, until a new belle came to take the town by storm, and eclipse her, and tear her heart with jealousy. And what would have become of Jacob Martyn?

The quiet music of the ocean summoned Jacob's thoughts back to Middleton and the cottage at Cartown. There was one transient shadow upon his happiness just then. There was a pang of regret in the thought that his father was not living to see the sunshine of Lucy's face, and to know that his only son was going to be successful and happy at last.