the full force of many beautiful similes and many apt allusions, which had been till now a mere dead letter. And one branch of inquiry naturally led to another and to another, till the field of investigation became tantalizingly extensive. It was to Lilian like walking in a paradise of flowers, with permission to cull all, but with time only for the gathering of a few. There was a fear lest, in flitting from flower to flower, in order to see which was most worthy of selection, the limited season should pass by, and fewer than might have been remain appropriated to herself. But always when Basil came downstairs, whether he were conversable or sullen, the books were laid aside. The history, the bicgraphy, the poetry, and the novel were alike dismissed when his step was heard in the vestibule, and Lilian took up her work-basket, that was always at hand, and sewed while it pleased him to talk, or to smoke his cigar in reserved silence. 66 That Lilian was strangely altered could not fail to be apparent to Basil; but what had wrought the change he did not trouble himself to inquire. She was often very pale and quiet, but she always looked cheerful when he made his appearance. She never reproached him as formerly; and all through that long, dreary winter, though doomed to hours of solitude, she did not utter a single complaint. Certainly," he muttered to himself one day, when for a moment he descended to the parlour, and saw the bright face which his wife raised from the volume in her hand, "certainly some women thrive better in adversity than in affluence. Here is Lilian sitting alone for hours on a cold, dark, wet January day, in a solitary house, without hope of visiting, or concerts, or operas, or new novels, or even the day's paper, looking as bright and serene as if all the world was at her feet, while a few months ago all the fêtes and operas in London could not content her; she was always fretting, or sulking, or crying in her own room-really it is altogether incomprehensible." Then Basil began to notice that the tone of her conversation was much improved. Lady-like and refined it had ever been, and, to a certain extent, sparkling and amusing; but now her remarks and sentiments betrayed an amount of cultivation for which he had never given her credit. He little dreamed how, for the sake of making herself a suitable companion for her more highly educated husband, she had patiently toiled like a child over the arcana of different languages; how she had waded through thick volumes of history and biography, and puzzled herself over rudimentary pamphlets on various sciences! True learning had proved to her, as it does to all its singlehearted votaries, "its own exceeding great reward;" but, in the first place, the desire of improvement had originated in the hope of rendering her society more agreeable to her husband, and thereby winning him to love his home, and seek for pleasure within its precincts. Whether her work of gaining back his heart was progressing she could not tell. Sometimes she hoped it was; he would linger after dinner and chat very confortably over the fire, and in the evenings he now and then volunteered to read to her, as he used to do in the dear old time. Still, she feared the deep steady love, that, with all its intensity, all its trust, its passion, and its truth, should make beautiful the every-day paths of married life, had died quite away; or rather that it had never existed; for "love is love for evermore ! " She trembled lest she had never been loved as she and as all true-hearted noble men and women look to be loved; she was afraid passion and gratified fancy had alone dictated the sentiment, which led Basil to prefer her to other women;" And what more did I deserve ?" she asked herself bitterly; "never was woman more unfit to take upon herself the sacred obligations of marriage. True, I loved him with all my heart; but that was not enough. I thought only of my pleasures, not of my trials, as Basil's wife; and now the pleasures, at least, such as I then called pleasures, are gone, and the trials are come upon me. Perhaps now it is too late-perhaps we shall always go on to our lives' end, in this sad, unsatisfactory way— perhaps the barrier, the void will be always there, and there will never, never be the union of heart and soul!" But Lilian had one bright hope, that as yet she only whispered to herself, as a secret too sweet and precious to be named even to Miss Williams. When the early roses came, when the blossoms faded on the trees in the orchard, and when the birds sang their sweetest melodies she hoped God would give her another little child, and with very different feelings from those which had heralded the advent of her firstborn; she anticipated the time when, if it pleased God, she should again be the mother of a living child. Surely Basil would love her once more-love her as he used to do; or if he had never truly loved, take her to his inmost heart, when he saw her nursing and tending the little one, who had come to them in their poverty and in their solitary mountain-home. But it would not take the place of the lost one who lay in his little grave, in the sombre old chapel at Hopelands. That one was, and would ever be, distinct and individual in the mother's heart; the new hope would never absorb the old, departed joy, the great joy that is given to women when they remember not their anguish and sorrow, for joy that a man is born into the world. Lilian always thought of her dead babe, as many a mother thinks of her son, who is gone away into a far country, never to return while she lives in her thoughts he was hers always; still her beautiful child whom on earth she had lulled to sleep on her bosom; but who now needed no more parental care, no more watchings, no more lullabies, for he listened ever to the "angels' song." And she wondered whether the babe who was to come with the early summer would be like his little brother; and as soon as the infant mind began to unfold she meant to talk to the child of the other baby that belonged to her and Basil; who had gone so early to see his Saviour face to face, to walk the golden streets of heaven, and hold converse with the saints and prophets, and martyrs of olden time, and with the spirits of all the just made perfect. Do we think enough of heaven? Are there any among us who think of it as they ought? Stand still one minute, pause in the busy round of mortal life, and look back to the very foundation of the Church militant. Force back the waves of time, read reverently the dim pages of the past, and take note of the the men who walked with God, of whom the world was not worthy. The proto-martyr Abel; the translated Enoch ; Abraham, the father of the faithful; Isaac, who meditated in the fields at evening-time; Moses, the man of God, whom God honoured by calling him specially "My servant Moses;" Joshua, who led the children of Israel over Jordan; David, the shepherd-king, the sweet singer of old time; Elijah, borne heavenward in a chariot of fire, and all the prophets, and all the sairts and martyrs that ever walked the earth; all, all the glorious company of heaven are gathered there, out of every land and tongue, and kindred, and clime; a great multitude, whom no man can number, walking the glorious streets, and dwelling in the many man sions prepared for the redeemed. Such is the blessed company with whom we are to mingle in the heavenly country. We shall sit down with those whose names have thrilled our childish spirits, and made our hearts in manhood burn within us; and above all, we shall be face to face with Him whose name has been first and sweetest in the hymns we sang on earth; whose voice spoke to our souls the word of pardon and peace, and whose presence has been with us always, from the cradle to the tomb. No pain, no parting, no sighing nor weeping, no sin. 'Death, like a narrow stream, divides CHAPTER XXVI. DISAPPOINTMENTS. "None but an author knows an author's cares, COWPER. THE winter had passed away, the spring was wellnigh melting into summer, when one morning Miss Williams came to Basil, with a face all smiles and tears, to congratulate him on the birth, not of the expected son and heir, but of twin daughters. Very different was the advent of these young ladies from that of their elder brother. Then Basil had paced the house in distracted alternations of hope and despair; then he had hurried from his wife's room to despatch a special messenger to Hopelands, with the welcome intelligence that an heir of the third generation was born |