been talking to her by preconcerted arrangement
on the subject. "I fear he has given him
a great deal of trouble. I remember in many
of his letters he said he was not blest, like me,
with a son of whom he could be proud."

George reddened violently as his mother's
harmless words showed him how she had
concealed all her grief from her brother, and struck
him with sudden shame and confusion in his
step–father's presence. Mr. Carruthers felt
inexpressibly confused also, and as readiness was
not the Grand Lama's forte, he blundered out:

"Well, my dear, never mind about his son.
You would be glad to see your brother Mark,
wouldn't you?"

Mrs. Carruthers looked earnestly at him as
she raised herself from her pillows, and the
faint colour in her check deepened into a dark
flush as she said:

"Glad to see my brother Mark! Indeed I
should be. Is he here too?"

So, after long years, the brother and sister
met again, and Mark Felton was a little diverted
from his anxiety about his son by the interest
and affection with which his sister inspired him,
and the strong hold which George Dallas gained
upon the affections of a man who had been
sorely wounded in his own hopes and
expectations. He was not under any mistaken
impression about his nephew. He knew that George
had caused his mother the deepest grief, and
had for a long time gone as wrong as a young
man could go short of entering on a criminal
career. But he divided the good from the evil
in his character, he discerned something of the
noble and the generous in the young man, and
if he laid too much to the account of circumstances,
and handled his follies too tenderly, it
was because he had himself suffered from all the
grief which profligacy, combined with cold and
calculating meanness, can inflict upon a parent's
heart.

George Dallas yielded easily to the influence
of happiness. His gay and pleasant manner
was full of fascination, and of a certain easy
grace which had peculiar charms for his
Transatlantic uncle; and his love for his mother was
a constant pleasure to her brother to witness,
and an irresistible testimony to the unspoiled
nature of the son. True, this affection had not
availed to restrain him formerly, but the partial
uncle argued that circumstances had been
against the boy, and that he had not had fair
play. It was not very sound reasoning, but
there was nothing to contradict it just at present,
and Mr. Felton was content to feel rather
than to reason.

Mr. and Mrs. Routh had arrived at Homburg
immediately after Mr. Felton and George had
reached that place of fashionable resort. Their
lodgings were in a more central situation than
those of Mr. and Mrs. Carruthers, and were
within easy reach of all the means of diversion
which the wicked little resort of the designing
and their dupes commanded. George Dallas
did not see much of Routh. He has been
disturbed and impressed by Mr. Felton's exceedingly
emphatic expression of opinion respecting
that gentleman; he had been filled with a vague
regret, for which now and then he took himself
to task, as ungrateful and whimsical, for having
renewed his intimacy with Routh. His levity,
his callousness, respecting the dreadful event
concerning which he, had consulted him, had
shocked George at the time, and his sense of
them had grown with every hour's consideration
of the matter, and they were many, in which he
had since engaged. Nothing had occurred to
him to reverse or weaken the force of Routh's
opinion; but he could not get over his
heartlessness. They met, indeed, frequently. They
met when George and his uncle, or his step–
father, or both, walked about the town and its
environs, or in the gardens; they met when
George strolled about the salons of the Kursaal,
religiously abstaining from play; it was strange
how the taste for it had passed away from him,
and how little he suffered, even at first, in
establishing the rule of self–restraint; but they
rarely met in private, and they had not had half
an hour's conversation in the week which had
now elapsed since Routh and Harriet had
arrived at Homburg.

But George had seen Harriet daily. Every
afternoon he escorted his mother during her
drive, and then he called on Mrs. Routh. His
visits tortured her, and yet they pleased her
too. Above all, there was security in them.
She should know everything he was doing;
she should be quite sure no other influence,
stronger, dangerous, was at work, while he
came to her daily, and talked to her in the old
frank way. Routh shrank from seeing him, as
Harriet well knew, and felt, also, that there
was security in his visits to her. "He will
keep out of George's way, of course," she said
to herself, when she acquiesced in the expediency
of following Dallas to Homburg, and the
necessity for keeping him strictly in sight, for
some time at least. "He will not undertake
the daily torture. No; that, too, must be my
share. 'Well, I am tied to the stake, and there
is no escape; only an interval of slumber now
and then, more or less rare and brief. I don't
want to tie him to it also—he could not bear it
as I can.'"'

And she bore it—well wonderfully well, on
the whole, though the simile of bodily torture is
not overdrawn as representing what she
endured. By a sort of tacit mutual consent, they
never alluded to Deane or the discovery of the
murder. George, who never could bear the
sight of a woman's suffering, had a vivid recollection
of the terrible emotion she had undergone
when he disclosed the truth to her, and
determined to avoid the subject for the future. She
understood this, but she felt tolerably certain
that, if any new complication arose, if any occasion
of doubt or hesitation presemted itself,
George would seek her advice. She should not
be kept in ignorance, and that was enough.
She had ascertained, before they left London,
that George had not mentioned the matter to Mr.