ove
and reverence, but with no painful recollections to come between her
and that fair, bright vision of happy old age. Alas! for the memories
that her brother had sown to spring up round him now!

Apart from all these vipers of his own creating, James after all felt
more in the cession of Cheveleigh than did his sister. These were days
of change and of feudal feeling wearing out; but James, long as he had
pretended to scorn 'being sentimental about his forefathers,' was
strongly susceptible of such impressions; and he was painfully
conscious of being disinherited. He might have felt thus, without any
restoration or loss, as the mere effect of visiting his birthright as a
stranger; but, as he received all humbly instead of proudly, the
feeling did him no harm. It softened him into sympathy with his uncle,
and tardy appreciation of his single-minded devotion to the estate,
which he had won not for himself, but for others, only to see it first
ungratefully rejected, and then snatched away. Then, with a thrill of
humiliation at his own unworthiness, came the earnest prayer that it
might yet be vouchsafed to him to tend the exhausted body, and train
the contracted mind to dwell on that inheritance whence there could be
no casting out.

Poor Oliver was fretful and restless, insisting on being brought down
to his study to watch over the packing of his papers, and miserable at
being unable to arrange them himself. Even the tenderest pity for him
could not prevent him from being an exceeding trial; and James could
hardly yet have endured it, but for pleasure and interest in watching
his sister's lively good-humour, saucy and determined when the old man
was unreasonable, and caressing and affectionate, when he was violent
in his impotence; never seeming to hear, see, or regard anything unkind
or unpleasant; and absolutely pleased and gratified when her uncle, in
his petulance, sometimes ungraciously rejected her services in favour
of those of 'Roland,' who, he took it for granted, must, as a man, have
more sense. It would sometimes cross James, how would Isabel and the
children fare with this ill-humour; but he had much confidence in his
wife's sweet calm temper, and more in the obvious duty; and, on the
whole, he believed it was better not to think about it.

The suffering that the surrender cost Oliver was only shown in this
species of petty fractiousness, until the last morning, when his nephew
was helping him acros