"You are almost as old as I am, sir," he said.
"Has all your long experience as a lawyer not
hardened you yet?"

"I never knew how little it had hardened me,"
replied Mr. Pendril, quietly, "until I returned
from London yesterday to attend the funeral. I
was not warned that the daughters had resolved on
following their parents to the grave. I think their
presence made the closing scene of this dreadful
calamity doubly painful, and doubly touching.
You saw how the great concourse of people were
moved by it—and they were in ignorance of the
truth; they knew nothing of the cruel necessity
which takes me to the house this morning. The
sense of that necessity—and the sight of those
poor girls at the time when I felt my hard duty
towards them most painfully—shook me, as a
man of my years and my way of life, is not often
shaken by any distress in the present, or any
suspense in the future. I have not recovered it
this morning: I hardly feel sure of myself yet."

"A man's composure—when he is a man like
you—comes with the necessity for it," said Mr.
Clare. "You must have had duties to perform as
trying in their way, as the duty that lies before
you this morning."

Mr. Pendril shook his head. "Many duties as
serious; many stories more romantic. No duty
so trying; no story so hopeless, as this."

With those words, they parted. Mr. Pendril
left the garden for the shrubbery path which led
to Combe-Raven. Mr. Clare returned to the
cottage.

On reaching the passage, he looked through the
open door of his little parlour, and saw Frank
sitting there in idle wretchedness, with his head
resting wearily on his hand.

"I have had an answer from your employers in
London," said Mr. Clare. "In consideration of
what has happened, they will allow the offer they
made you to stand over for another month."

Frank changed colour, and rose nervously from
his chair.

"Are my prospects altered?" he asked. "Are
Mr. Vanstone's plans for me not to be carried
out? He told Magdalen his will had provided
for her. She repeated his words to me; she
said I ought to know all that his goodness and
generosity had done for both of us. How can
his death make a change? Has anything
happened?"

"Wait till Mr. Pendril comes back from Combe-
Raven," said his father. "Question him—don't
question me."

The ready tears rose in Frank's eyes.

"You won't be hard on me?" he pleaded
faintly. "You won't expect me to go back to
London, without seeing Magdalen first?"

Mr. Clare looked thoughtfully at his son; and
considered a little, before he replied.

"You may dry your eyes," he said. "You
shall see Magdalen before you go back."

He left the room, after making that reply, and
withdrew to his study. The books lay ready to
his hand, as usual. He opened one of them, and
set himself to read in the customary manner.
But his attention wandered; and his eyes strayed
away from time to time, to the empty chair opposite
—the chair in which his old friend and gossip
had sat and wrangled with him good humouredly
for many and many a year past. After a struggle
with himself, he closed the book. "Damn the
chair!" he said: "it will talk of him; and I
must listen." He reached down his pipe from
the wall, and mechanically filled it with tobacco.
His hand shook; his eyes wandered back to the
old place; and a heavy sigh came from him
unwillingly. That empty chair was the only earthly
argument for which he had no answer: his heart
owned its defeat, and moistened his eyes in spite
of him. "He has got the better of me at last,"
said the rugged old man. "There is one weak
place left in me still—and he has found it."

Meanwhile, Mr. Pendril entered the shrubbery,
and followed the path which led to the lonely
garden and the desolate house. He was met at
the door by the man-servant, who was apparently
waiting in expectation of his arrival.

"I have an appointment with Miss Garth. Is
she ready to see me?"

"Quite ready, sir."

"Is she alone?"

"Yes, sir."

"In the room which was Mr. Vanstone's
study?"

"In that room, sir."

The servant opened the door; and Mr. Pendril
went in.

GIGANTIC ATTRACTION.

I NEVER, from the story-book period of childhood,
entirely shook off my intense distrust of
every thing that, in human form, approached
exaggerated proportions. Many a delightful polka
have I sacrificed to the craven fear (I am of
the feminine gender) which prompted me to
transfer some immensely tall partner to my
sister—rather than put finger on his colossal
arm. Strangely enough, mingled with all this
was a kind of fascination that irresistibly
impelled me to approach, or converse about, the
thing I feared. To gaze, however, was one
thing; to touch, another.

This lingering impression of my childhood
was destined to involve me, when grown up, in
a singular train of circumstances:

Twenty years since, in the course of a few
weeks' residence at M——, in the south of
France, I happened to be passing down the
principal street, when my eye was caught by a
placard intimating that the "Greatest Man of
the Age" had arrived at M——, and had
consented to receive its citizens without any more
marked distinction of rank, sex, or age, than was
conveyed in the charge of five sous for children
under eight, as against one franc for those of
any riper age. Monsieur Dermot O'Leary
requested that, in view of the immense concourse
to be expected from the catholic nature of this