BLACK SHEEP!

BY THE AUTHOR OF "LAND AT LAST," "KISSING THE ROD,"
&c. &c.

CHAPTER VIII. GLAMOUR.

WHEN George Dallas had dined, he left the
coffee-room, and retired to the bedroom which
he had ordered, and which looked refreshingly
clean and comfortable, when mentally contrasted
with the dingy quarters on which he had turned
his back in the morning. It was yet early in
the evening, but he was tired; tired by the
excitement and the various emotions of the day,
and also by the long hours passed in the fresh
balmy country air, which had a strange soporific
effect on a man whose lungs and limbs were
of the town, towny. The evening air was still
a little sharp, and George assented readily to the
waiter's proposition, made when he perceived
that no more orders for drink were to be elicited
from the silent and preoccupied young man,
that "a bit of fire" should be kindled in his
room. Over that "bit of fire" he sat long, his
arms folded on his breast, his head bent, his
brow lowering, his eyes fixed on the glowing
embers. Was he looking at faces in the fire—
his parents' faces, the faces of friends, whom
he had treated as enemies, of enemies whom he
had taken for friends? Were reproachful eyes
looking at him from out the past; were threatening
glances in the present flashed upon him?
He sat there, black and moody, a long while,
but at length his fixed gaze relaxed, the muscles
of his mouth softened, broke into a slow smile,
and a light came into his dull gloomy eyes.
Then he rose, took his pocket-book from his
breast-pocket, made some memoranda at the
back of the sketch taken that day in Sir
Thomas Boldero's park, put back the book,
and, once more settling himself near the fire,
lighted his pipe and began to smoke.

The musing look remained upon his face, but
it was no longer painful, and, as he smoked, he
fell to building castles in the air, as baseless,
maybe, as the vapour which curled in fantastic
wreaths about his face, but tenanted by hope,
and inspired by higher and better resolves than
had animated George Dallas for many a day.
The twin angels, love and gratitude, were near
him; invisibly their soft white wings were
fluttering about him, refreshing the jaded heart
and the stained brow. His mother, and the girl
whom he had that day seen for the second time,
and recognised with feelings full of a bitter and
evil impulse at first, but who had soon
exercised over him a nameless fascination full of a
pure and thrilling delight, such as no pleasure
of all his sin-stained life had ever previously
brought him; of these two he was thinking.
If George Dallas could have seen his mother at
the moment, when he, having laid his exhausted
pipe upon the little wooden chimneypiece, and
hastily undressed, lay down in his bed, with
his hands clasped over the top of his head, in
his favourite attitude when he had anything
particular to think of, he would have found her not
only thinking but talking of him. Mr.
Carruthers was absent, so was Clare; she had the
grand stately house all to herself, and she
improved the occasion by having tea in her dressing-
room, having dismissed her maid, affianced to
a thriving miller in the village, to a tête-à-tête
with her lover, and summoning her trusty friend
Mrs. Brookes to a confidential conference with
her. The two women had no greater pleasure
or pain in their lives than talking of George.
There had been many seasons before and since
her second marriage when Mrs. Carruthers
had been obliged to abstain from mentioning
him, so keen and terrible was her suffering on
his account, and at such seasons Ellen
Brookes had suffered keenly too, though she
had only vaguely known wherefore, and had
always waited until the thickest and darkest of
the cloud had passed, and her mistress had
once more summoned courage to broach the
subject never absent from the mind of either.

There was no reticence on this occasion; the
mother had taken a dangerous step, and one
whose necessity she indeed deeply deplored,
but she had gotten over the first great effort
and the apprehension connected with it, and now
she thought only of her son, she dwelt only
upon the hope, the confidence, the instinctive
belief within her, that this was really the turning-
point, that her prayers had been heard, that
the rock of a hard and stubborn heart had been
struck and had yielded, that her son would
turn from the old evil paths, would consider his
ways and be wise for the future. So she sat
and talked to the humble friend who knew her
and loved her better than any one else in the
world knew or loved her, and when she at
length dismissed her and lay down to rest there