aid hastily,
"Excuse me. I'll just go and see what is the matter; pray, stay till I
come back." With that he sprang forward; in a minute he was in the midst
of the group, that parted aside with the most obliging complacency to
make way for him.

"But what's the matter?" he asked impatiently, yet fearfully. Not a
voice answered. He strode on, and beheld his nephew in the arms of a
woman!

"God bless my soul!" said Richard Avenel.

CHAPTER XVIII.

And such a woman!

She had on a cotton gown,--very neat, I dare say, for an
under-housemaid; and such thick shoes! She had on a little black straw
bonnet; and a kerchief, that might have cost tenpence, pinned across
her waist instead of a shawl; and she looked altogether-respectable, no
doubt, but exceedingly dusty! And she was hanging upon Leonard's neck,
and scolding, and caressing, and crying very loud. "God bless my soul!"
said Mr. Richard Avenel.

And as he uttered that innocent self-benediction, the woman hastily
turned round, and darting from Leonard, threw herself right upon Richard
Avenel--burying under her embrace blue-coat, moss rose, white waistcoat
and all--with a vehement sob and a loud exclamation!

"Oh! brother Dick!--dear, dear brother Dick! And I lives to see thee
agin!" And then came two such kisses--you might have heard them a mile
off! The situation of brother Dick was appalling; and the crowd, that
had before only tittered politely, could not now resist the effect of
this sudden embrace. There was a general explosion! It was a roar! That
roar would have killed a weak man; but it sounded to the strong heart
of Richard Avenel like the defiance of a foe, and it plucked forth in an
instant from all conventional let and barrier the native spirit of the
Anglo-Saxon.

He lifted abruptly his handsome masculine head, and looked round
the ring of his ill-bred visitors with a haughty stare of rebuke and
surprise.

"Ladies and gentlemen," then said he, very coolly, "I don't see what
there is to laugh at! A brother and sister meet after many years'
separation, and the sister cries, poor thing. For my part I think it
very natural that she should cry; but not that you should laugh!"

In an instant the whole shame was removed from Richard Avenel, and
rested in full weight upon the bystanders. It is impossible to say how
foolish and sheepish they all looked, nor how slinkingly each tried to
creep off.

Richard Avenel seized his advantage with the promp