raph
itself, in a letter to Audley,--a letter that she designed to convey
scorn and pride--alas! it expressed only jealousy and love. She could
not rest till she had put this letter into the post with her own hand,
addressed to, Audley at Lord Lansmere's. Scarce had it left her ere she
repented. What had she done,--resigned the birth-right of the child
she was so soon to bring into the world, resigned her last hope in her
lover's honour, given up her life of life--and from belief in what?--a
report in a newspaper! No, no; she would go herself to Lansmere; to
her father's home,--she could contrive to see Audley before that letter
reached his hand. The thought was scarcely conceived before obeyed.
She found a vacant place in a coach that started from London some hours
before the mail, and went within a few miles of Lansmere; those last
miles she travelled on foot. Exhausted, fainting, she gained at last the
sight of home, and there halted, for in the little garden in front
she saw her parents seated. She heard the murmur of their voices, and
suddenly she remembered her altered shape, her terrible secret. How
answer the question,

"Daughter, where and who is thy husband?" Her heart failed her; she
crept under the old pollard-tree, to gather up resolve, to watch, and to
listen. She saw the rigid face of the thrifty, prudent mother, with the
deep lines that told of the cares of an anxious life, and the chafe of
excitable temper and warm affections against the restraint of decorous
sanctimony and resolute pride. The dear stern face never seemed to
her more dear and more stern. She saw the comely, easy, indolent,
good-humoured father; not then the poor, paralytic sufferer, who could
yet recognize Nora's eyes under the lids of Leonard, but stalwart and
jovial,--first bat in the Cricket Club, first voice in the Glee Society,
the most popular canvasser of the Lansmere Constitutional True Blue
Party, and the pride and idol of the Calvinistical prim wife; never from
those pinched lips of hers had come forth even one pious rebuke to
the careless, social man. As he sat, one hand in his vest, his profile
turned to the road, the light smoke curling playfully up from the pipe,
over which lips, accustomed to bland smile and hearty laughter, closed
as if reluctant to be closed at all, he was the very model of the
respectable retired trader in easy circumstances, and released from the
toil of making money while life could yet enjoy the del