less

but the fate of their father's literary offspring was still undecided. At last, despairing of the expected letter, and the handsome offer sure to be contained therein, Basil wrote somewhat curtly to Messrs. H. and B., requesting an immediate decision. By return of post arrived not only the decision, but the MS. itself, rather the worse for thumbing and lying about in dusty offices.

Messrs. H. and B. presented their compliments to Mr. Hope, and begged to assure him that the MS. was not at all in their line. It certainly displayed considerable talent, but extreme opinions were expressed with too much unreserve; there was much, both in incident and in sentiment, that was calculated to offend the public mind; and Messrs. H. and B. would advise Mr. Hope seriously to consider the advisability of retaining the MS. in its unpublished state, or of giving it entirely a new complexion.

Basil was furious and disgusted. He abjured authorship for ever; from that moment he washed his hands of it; he bade Lilian stow away the waste paper in one of her lumber chests, and desired that the subject might never be renewed between them. And so faded away Basil Hope's airy castles; but his disappointment was not keener than Lilian's.

From that time Basil seemed wearied of the society of books; and the babies he vowed were always crying, while Lilian was so absorbed in nursing them, talking to them, and singing them to sleep, that she had no leisure to bestow upon him. Bridget still remained at Bryndyffryn; the term for which she had engaged herself had passed away, but she could not, and would not leave her mistress to keep house, cook the dinners, iron the muslins, and nurse the young ladies; and though money was very scarce, and Basil's El Dorado visions of the gain of authorship

were all dissipated, making pecuniary straits appear doubly irksome, Lilian felt that retaining the energetic, honest, faithful Bridget, was her most economical plan.

Meanwhile Basil began to absent himself from home; he returned to his piscatorial habits, and finding no difficulty in obtaining leave for all the streams and lyns in the neighbourhood, he was pretty soon busy again with reels, and lines, and hooks. He spoilt Bridget's best saucepans in the manufacture of varnish for his lines and traces; he strewed the parlour with little bits of silk, feathers, dubbing, and bristles, to be converted into artificial flies, and he drove Lilian to desperation by his contradictory directions respecting a landing-net which she had incautiously engaged to make for him.

On the 12th of August Basil came home almost at midnight. He was in high spirits. He had met Captain Leavers and several of his old friends at the Albion, at Bangor, and Leavers had taken a cottage on the Llanberris-road, where he meant to stay all the winter, and do some extra shooting and pike fishing. "Now, I shall have some society at last," he exclaimed in great glee; "the governor may banish me, but he cannot exile my friends. I am getting quite reconciled to the country now; we shall have a capital winter, and I shall be out of the way of the brats. How they do scream, Lily; can't you give them some Daffy's Elixir, or something of that sort? Don't look so shocked, it's quite a regular thing."

Poor Lilian, her heart sunk within her; and she wept bitterly when he went away to clean his rifle. Captain Leavers and his friend Mr. Daubeny were, she knew, Basil's arch tempters. Basil's evil genius had found him out, even at lonely Bryndyffryn. He had no principle, no religion, no home affections.

Oh! where would it all end? Iilian felt that her trials were thickening, while the two other objects she had hoped to attain, long ere this, seemed more distant than ever.

CHAPTER XXVII.

LOST OR STRAYED.

"As thou hast been created fair,
And beautiful in form,

So be it thy first wish and aim,
Thy spirit to adorn

With meekness and humility,

And love both pure and warm."

THE DOVE ON THE CROSs.

TIME passed on; the twins grew and prospered. They were still pale, small children; but as the months rolled away, their little limbs became rounder and firmer; they cried less, and crowed and laughed more; and they cut their first teeth with less than the usual amount of suffering and noise. They had scarcely passed their first birthday, when a little sister, who was called Maude, made her appearance, and she had just learned to run alone, when Lilian became once more the mother of a son.

Bridget did not leave Bryndyffryn; indeed, what Lilian would have done without her seemed incomprehensible. The Welsh maiden, who so exasperated Basil by her lack of culinary genius, was married to Dr. Williams' footboy! and a new specimen of Cambrian femininity had taken her place in the small household. Henceforth, potatoes could be boiled without the interference of Bridget, who was always in request in the

nursery; after a few lessons the cloth could be laid, and the hearth swept up by Nest without more than an average number of disasters; but her temper was something quite terrible. She was easily offended, and with difficulty appeased; and after a storm, there was generally a fit of sullenness, which time only had the power to dispel.

Bridget was everything to Lilian; friend, servant, companion-all but confidante. Cooking the master's dinner, nursing the babies, tending her mistress through her confinements, with all the sagacity of an experienced monthly nurse, dressing and working for the twins, taking a turn at gardening-all came in her way; and as she curtly said to Nest, in reply to her declar ration that" she would not be nurse, and lady's maid, and cook, and gardener all in one-"It was no matter what honest work anybody did, it all went into the day's labour, and counted up respectably when night came.'

No one but Bridget knew what a difficult and weary task keeping house at Bryndyffryn had come to be. Expenses had greatly augmented, and though Basil's allowance had been increased, the sum entrusted to Lilian for domestic purposes was disagreeably small. How she learned to contrive frocks for the little girls -how little she cared about new things for herself— how she managed to dine day after day upon remnants, when Basil was from home, as now frequently happened, was a mystery. Little had Lilian imagined the time would ever come when a dish of trout, a basket of apples from the vicarage, or a brace of birds in the shooting season would be hailed with thankfulness, as a valuable present. True, Basil was constantly going out with his rod and with his rifle; but few and far between were the additions he made to his wife's economical larder.

One bright summer afternoon, Lilian sat in the large parlour, busily plying her needle; the baby was crowing in Bridget's arms; Miss Maude was crawling about on the floor; and the twins were busily occupied in putting their dolls to bed. Lilian was still beautiful and graceful, but she was greatly changed since the days when Eleanor was her guest. She looked much older, she was very thin and pale, and there was a sorrowful, care worn expression on her face, that would have touched even the proud Olivia, had she seen it. Her dress, too, was so unlike the elegant array of Mrs. Hope in her fashionable days-a print-dress, a plain muslin collar, fastened with an antiquated brooch, that had once been her mother's, and a dark serviceable apron was her afternoon costume. Still, the simple, inexpensive dress fitted perfectly; the colour, a pretty pink, looked fresh, and in keeping with the bright summer day; the unembroidered collar was of snowy purity though not quite so smooth as it might have been, had there been no little arms to wind lovingly round mamma's neck, no baby hands to snatch at all that presented itself. The dark braids of her hair were however carefully arranged, and in the heavy plaits behind, the twins had succeeded in fastening a beautiful white rose. No one could fail to recognize in Lilian, the lady, and the pure-minded woman; and though the furniture of the large low parlour was much the worse for nearly four years' wear and tear, nothing was visible to betray the careless mother and the untidy mistress. Everything bore witness to extreme purity and painstaking; and at the same time, alas! to most painful economy.

"Shall I go and get tea, ma'am? and see to the fowl for master's dinner," asked Bridget, when the clock struck five.

"No thank you, Bridget. I think I will get tea