"You must love me more than anybody else, my little Hetty," said Robert, with a jealous desire to lay claim to the child's chief affection.

"Oh, I couldn't do that," she answered, frankly, "I could never do that. I love the other Hester more, and Carl. I call him Carl now, because he told me, He said Hester was the dearest name in all the world to him; and now he had lost the other Hester I was to belong to him. I am to write to him very often, when I am well enough; and I shall begin my letters 'My dear Carl.' What ought I to call you ?"

He could not answer her, and he laid her down again upon the sofa, from which he had lifted her, arranging the cushions about her carefully, and with the most gentle hands. He came every day to see her; and so did Mr. Waldron, whose heart opened to her with the doting fondness of a grandfather. Very smooth and very soft was the path her little feet were treading, but it tended downward to the grave; though for some weeks no one knew it except Grant, who would not mar the slight consolation that came to Robert in this close attendance upon his little daughter.

One day, when the summer was finest, Robert took her with him to Aston Court, and the child's languid feet walked up and down the grassy length of the terrace with him. Mr. Waldron came up and took her away from him to show her the aviary; and he heard his name called by his sister's authoritative voice.

"Who is that child, Robert?" she inquired. "You don't know ?" he said, in an accent of incredulity.

"No; how should I?" she asked. "But her face reminds me of some one. Who did you

say she was?"

"Rose Morley's child," he answered, in a hoarse whisper.

"Rose Morley's child!" she exclaimed, "but I never knew she had any child. I am sure nobody ever mentioned it to me. Wherever

has she been all this time?"

"Sister," said Robert," the child is mine." Miss Waldron gazed into his face, with an expression of bewilderment; then a faint and tardy blush tinged her cheek, and her eyelids fell. She began instantly to wonder what would be the most befitting course for her to adopt.

"Robert," she said, sternly, "your sin has

indeed found you out! I hope you feel how vile a sinner you are! But I will act the part of a sister, a Christian sister, and take charge of that child of sin and shame, and see to her welfare for time and eternity. On condition, however, that you give her up to me entirely, and never see her again."

Miss Waldron ceased, with an air of selfcommendation. She expected her brother to acknowledge her generosity thankfully; but he did not answer her immediately, and when he did it was in broken and faltering sentences.

"I should like her to be happy," he said; "I wish her to be good. I want her to learn about God after a different fashion to my own learning. She must be with some one as merciful and tender as Christ was upon the earth."

"And I?" gasped Miss Waldron.

"You are not that," he said; " you are nothing like that. God knows how utterly selfish my life has been; but not more than yours, not more selfish than yours in its good deeds. I don't believe you love anybody besides yourself. You know it. Whom have you loved? No; I could not give the care of the child to you."

Miss Waldron stared at him with stony eyes.

It had never happened to her to have her piety questioned; she had never questioned it herself. And here was her unregenerate brother hinting with bare effrontery that she was not the favourite daughter of heaven.

"If any one is near to the very heart of Christ," continued Robert, "it is Hester. She is not for ever brooding over her own soul; but she cares for others, she loves others. It is when I think she might have loved me, that I feel my sin has indeed found me out."

Miss Waldron would listen to him and his profane words no longer. She retired with unbending dignity to her room, where she locked herself in before giving way to her. emotions. The only relief she could think of was to pour them out into the sympathising heart of David Scott, whose deafness was such as to make writing the easiest mode of communicating the infinite varieties and minute shades of her inner life. The tears flowed down upon her paper, and impeded her progress; but she did not lay aside her pen, until she had written sixteen pages, worthy of being published in her memoirs, when her life should be written for the benefit of unborn generations.

CHAPTER XII.

THREE MONTHS' SUSPENSE.

By-and-by some inkling of the truth began to ooze out in Little Aston. Nobody suspected the existence of Rose, who was half-living, half-dying in the house, tended by the old Frenchwoman with singular fidelity; but it became generally believed that instead of John Morley being ill with fever, neither he nor Hester were dwelling in their own house. The sagacity of Little Aston was at no loss to account for their absence. It had been long known that John Morley was deeply involved in debt, and without doubt he was in hiding somewhere from his creditors. As soon as this report gained universal credence, Mr. Waldron came forward as the principal creditor, holding a mortgage upon the house, and undertook to satisfy all other claims, on condition that everything was left to him. He closed up the shop, put the place into the joint guardianship of Lawson's mother, and the poor woman to whom, it was well known, Hester had given a shelter in the out