His arrival had been anticipated all the day, for his sister and the child Hester had thought and talked of nothing else. Annie had put the finishing touches to his room with her own hands; and Hester had been carried there by Grant to place upon the dressing-table a pincushion upon which she had marked with pins the word "Carl." She had to be carried up and down stairs now; and the pony, which had occasionally borne her quietly along the lanes and across Aston Court Park, had not been mounted for some days past, though it was brought to the door every morning, that she might look at it with her pensive and gentle smile. Yet the chill shadow of her formal and unnatural life was passing away, and her smile was gayer, and her weak laughter more ready. She was sitting restfully upon Robert Waldron's knee, with her head lying upon his shoulder, when Carl entered, and with a shrill yet feeble cry of delight, she stretched out both her arms to him.

"You love Carl best still," said Robert, mournfully, when she was transferred to his arms, and was looking up into his face with of vivid and childish joy.

eyes

"He knew me first," said the child, "long and long before you knew me. I couldn't help loving him best. Have you found the other Hester yet, Carl ?"

"Not yet," he answered, kissing the child's quivering mouth.

"I should like you to find her before I die," she said, with a long-drawn sigh of anxiety. "You won't be so sorry for me if you have her."

"There is no clue to them yet," said Robert, in a hopeless tone.

"I have a fancy," answered Carl, " that if I could see Hester's home again, some intimation might come to me,-some inspiration, I may as well call it, to lead me to where she may be found. It is nothing but a superstition, but it is there in my mind."

"I will go with you to-morrow," said Robert.

Carl looked up steadily at him with an expression of surprise and inquiry. He did not know whether he had ever seen Rose since the time when he and Grant had been summoned by Madame to her aid. Before the child, who was listening with eager curiosity, he could ask no question. Little Hester turned her earnest face also towards Robert.

"Is the other Hester's home near here?" she

asked of him.

"Yes," he said.

"Then you know her?" she continued. Robert nodded, for his only reply.

"And you never spoke of her to me," she went on, reproachfully, "not when I told you all about her. You never said you knew her. I told you that she said my poor mother was gone to live with her, and you never told me it was somewhere near here. It was not kind to me. I might have seen my mother. O Carl, take me with you to-morrow to see my mother."

She was too weak to cry aloud, but the silent tears ran down her cheeks, and she sobbed quietly to herself as she hid her face against Carl's breast. Robert 'could endure his own pain no longer. The child's preference for Carl,

-his own child,—stung him to the quick; yet he controlled all token of his natural jealousy. He kissed the small thin palm which hung listlessly down by Hester's side, and pressed Carl's hand warmly. Then with a great grief and hunger in his heart he went out into the night, and walked home slowly through deep

darkness.

VOL. III.

K

CHAPTER XIII.

AN INSPIRATION.

CARL and Robert went down to John Morley's house with Grant, when he called to see Rose the next morning. While he prepared her gently for the excitement of seeing Carl, the latter accompanied Robert through every other part of the house. Madame was with them, and availed herself of the opportunity to give her tongue play. Her son, she told them, had had an access of his malady since last night, and had taken an unusually strong dose of opium, the effects of which had not worked off. His attic was unoccupied, and there was now no trace of work in it. Hester's seat was still

in its place in the broad dormer window; but it was covered with dust, as was also the binding-press. A press-pin lay in one corner, as if it had been flung there hastily; it was rusty, but when Carl stooped to pick it up, a singular revulsion, possible to a sensitive temperament like his, caused him to shrink from touching it. His face was white when he turned

away, and he hastened to quit the work-room. Downstairs the old Frenchwoman had cleaned and put everything into a cold desolate order, altogether unlike the warm living displacement and disarrangement of a house which has inmates. Carl looked about him with a chill sense of disquiet and disappointment. He felt that he should gain no hint of Hester from these rooms, empty, swept, and garnished. It had been a superstition,—one of those superstitions which are apt to follow closely in the track of a passionate love; and though he half-laughed at himself, he gave it up with reluctance.

By the time they had gone through all the deserted rooms, Rose was ready to receive Carl. He found her calm almost to apathy, until, as if she suddenly recollected why she had wished to see him, she began to speak about her child. Then Carl, who had been warned by Grant to avert from her as far as possible any extreme agitation, judged it to be best to tell her the whole truth at once.

"She is here, in Little Aston," he said, in a tone of singular sweetness, which soothed her feverish disquietude; "my sister Annie has charge of her, and I am come from her this