went creaking up the stairs to his wife's sitting-
room, in order to divert his thoughts as soon as
possible. He saw things by a clearer light now,
and the recollection of his former conduct to
George troubled him.

He found his step-son and Mark Felton in
Mrs. Carruthers's room. The day was chilly
and gloomy, and eminently suggestive of the
advantages possessed by an English country
mansion over the most commodious and expensive
of foreign lodging-houses. George had
just placed a shawl round his mother's shoulders,
and was improving the fastenings of the
windows, which were in their normal condition in
foreign parts.

"Mark has been talking about Poynings,"
said Mrs. Carruthers, turning to her husband
with a smile, "and says he never saw a
place he admired more, though he had only a
passing glimpse of it."

Mr. Carruthers was pleased, though of course
it was only natural that Mr. Felton should
never have seen any place more to be admired
by persons of well-regulated taste than
Poynings.

"Of course," he said, with modest admission,
"if you come to talk about the Dukeries, and
that kind of thing, there's nothing to be said
for Poynings. But it is a nice place, and I am
very fond of it, and so is Laura."

He was rather alarmed, when he had said this,
to observe his wife's eyes full of tears. Tears
indicated recollection, and of a painful kind, he
thought, being but little acquainted with the
intricate symptoms of feminine human nature,
which recollection must be avoided, or turned
aside, in a pleasurable direction.

Now George's cleverness was a direction of
the required kind, and Mr. Carruthers
proceeded to remark that George must make
drawings for his mother of all the favourite
points of view at Poynings.

"There's the terrace, George," he said, " and
the 'Tangle,' where your mother loves to spend
the summer afternoons, and there's the beechwood,
from the hill behind the garden, and the
long avenue. There are several spots you will
like, George, and—and," said Mr. Carruthers,
magnanimously, and blushing all over his not
much withered face, like a woman, "I'm only
sorry you are to make acquaintance with them
so late in the day."

He put out his hand, with true British
awkwardness, as he spoke, and the young man took
it respectfully, and with an atoning pang of
shame and self-reproach. But for his mother's
presence, and the imperative necessity of self-
restraint imposed by the consideration of her
health and the danger of agitation to her,
George would have inevitably have told his step-
father the truth. He felt all the accumulated
meanness of an implied falsehood most deeply
and bitterly, and might have been capable of
forgetting even his mother, but for a timely
warning conveyed to him by the compressed
lips and frowning brows of his uncle. As for
his mother, neither he nor Mr. Felton could
judge of the effect produced upon her by the
words of her husband. She had turned away
her head as he began to speak.

"I was just going to tell Laura what I
thought of doing, if you and she approve,"
Mr. Felton hastened to say. "You see, I am
getting more and more anxious about Arthur,
and I don't think he will turn up here. I
thought if George and I were to go on to Paris
and make some inquiries there—I know pretty
well where he went to there, and what he did.
We need not make more than a few days' delay,
and then go on to London, and join you and
Laura there. What do you say?"

"I think it would do nicely'," said Mr.
Carruthers. "You and George would hardly like
our rate of travelling under any circumstances."
It would have afforded any individual endowed
with good humour and a sense of the ludicrous
great amusement to observe the pleasure and
importance with which Mr. Carruthers implied
the seriousness of his charge, and the immense
signification of a journey undertaken by Mrs.
Carruthers of Poynings. "We shall stay some
time in town," he continued, "for additional
medical advice; and then, I hope, we shall all
go down to Poynings together."

"I have secured rooms for George and
myself in Piccadilly," said Mark Felton, in a
skilfully off-hand manner. "It would never do for
two jolly young bachelors like him and me to
invade Sir Thomas Boldero's house. Even"—
and here Mr. Felton's countenance clouded
over, and he continued, absently—"even if
Arthur did not join us; but I hope he will—I
hope he will."

Mr. Carruthers was singularly unfortunate in
any attempt to combine politeness with
insincerity. He had a distinct conviction that his
wife's nephew was a "good-for-nothing," of a
different and more despicable order of good-for-
nothingness to that which he had imputed to his
step-son in his worst days; and though he would
have been unfeignedly pleased had Mr. Felton's
inquietude been set at rest by the receipt of a
letter from his son, he was candidly of opinion
that the longer that young gentleman abstained
from joining the family party, the more peaceful
and happy that family party would continue to
be.

However, he endeavoured to rise to the
occasion, and said he hoped "Mr. Arthur"
would accompany his father to Poynings, with
not so very bad a grace considering.

The diversion had enabled George to recover
himself, and he now drew a chair over beside
his mother's, and began to discuss the times and
distances of their respective journeys, and other
cognate topics of conversation. Mr. Carruthers
liked everything in the planning and settling
line, and it was quite a spectacle to behold him
over the incomprehensible pages of Bradshaw,
emphasising his helplessness with his gold
spectacles.

"I suppose ten days will see us all in London,"
he said to Mr. Felton, "if you leave this with
George to-morrow, and we leave on Monday.