too much for her strength.'

'The willing heart goes all the way,' said Louis; 'and maybe it will be
more wholesome than London, and sitting up.'

Isabel coloured and sighed; but added, that it would be infinite relief
on the children's account to keep some one so gentle-handed, and so
entirely to be trusted.

James's decision was immediate. He called the letter a farrago, but
his laugh was mixed with tears at the faithful affection it displayed.
'It was mere folly,' he said, 'to think of keeping her without wages;
but, if she would accept such as could be afforded after taking a rough
village girl for her food to do the hard work, the experiment should be
made, in the hope that the present straits would only endure for a
short time.

This little event seemed to have done him much good, and put him more
at peace with the world. He was grateful for Lord Ormersfield's
kindness and forbearance, and the enforced rest from work was
refreshing him; while Isabel had never been so cheerful and lively in
her life as now, when braced manfully for her work, full of energy, and
feeling that she must show herself happy and courageous to support his
depressed spirits. She was making a beginning--she was practising
herself in her nursery duties, and, to her surprise, finding them quite
charming; and little Kitty so delighted with all she did for her, that
all the hitherto unsounded depths of the motherly heart were stirred
up, and she could not think why she had never found out her true
happiness. She looked so bright and so beautiful, that even Lord
Ormersfield remarked it, pitying her for trials which he thought she
little realized; but Louis augured better, believing that it was not
ignorance but resolution which gave animation and brilliancy to her
dark eye and cheerfulness to her smile.

Fitzjocelyn took her to Dynevor Terrace in the afternoon to settle the
matter with Charlotte; and, on the way, he took the opportunity of
telling her that he had been reading Sir Hubert, and admired him very
much, discussing him and Adeline with the same vivid interest as her
own sisters showed in them as persons, not mere personages. Isabel said
they already seemed to her to belong to a world much farther back than
the last fortnight.

'There is some puzzle in the middle,' said Louis. 'I can't make out
the hero whose addresses were so inconvenient to Adeline, and who ran
away from the pirates. He began as a crabbed old troubadour, w