ergyman's
hard task here any harder for the sake of my feelings. Late incumbent's
daughters are proverbially inconvenient. No, I would not stand in the
way, but it makes me feel as if my work in St. Wulstan's were done,' and
the tears dropped fast.

'Dear, dear Honora!' began the old lady, eagerly, but her words and
Honora's tears were both checked by the sound of a bell, that bell within
the court, to which none but intimates found access.

'Strange! It is the thought of old times, I suppose,' said Honor,
smiling, 'but I could have said that was Owen Sandbrook's ring.'

The words were scarcely spoken, ere Mr. Sandbrook and Captain Charteris
were announced; and there entered a clergyman leading a little child in
each hand. How changed from the handsome, hopeful youth from whom she
had parted! Thin, slightly bowed, grief-stricken, and worn, she would
scarcely have known him, and as if to hide how much she felt, she bent
quickly, after shaking hands with him, to kiss the two children,
flaxen-curled creatures in white, with black ribbons. They both shrank
closer to their father. 'Cilly, my love, Owen, my man, speak to Miss
Charlecote,' he said; 'she is a very old friend of mine. This is my
bonny little housekeeper,' he added, 'and here's a sturdy fellow for four
years old, is not he?'

The girl, a delicate fairy of six, barely accepted an embrace, and clung
the faster to her father, with a gesture as though to repel all advance.
The boy took a good stare out of a pair of resolute gray eyes, with one
foot in advance, and offered both hands. Honora would have taken him on
her knee, but he retreated, and both leant against their father as he
sat, an arm round each, after shaking hands with Miss Wells, whom he
recollected at once, and presenting his brother-in-law, whose broad,
open, sailor countenance, hardy and weather-stained, was a great contrast
to his pale, hollow, furrowed cheeks and heavy eyes.

'Will you tell me your name, my dear?' said Honora, feeling the children
the easiest to talk to; but the little girl's pretty lips pouted, and she
nestled nearer to her father.

'Her name is Lucilla,' he answered with a sigh, recalling that it had
been his wife's name. 'We are all somewhat of little savages,' he added,
in excuse for the child's silence. 'We have seen few strangers at
Wrapworth of late.'

'I did not know you were in London.'

'It was a sudden measure--all my brother's doing,' he said; 'I am q