"Don't tell Me of a mother's love," continued
Miss Fluke, joining her hands together on her
breast, and then separating them widely, with
the palms turned outward, which gesture she
repeated at every clause of her discourse:
"Don't tell me of fond indulgence. Don't tell
Me of self-sacrifice. Where is the sense of duty
in a parent who allows her child to be lost
before her eyes, and does not stir a finger to save
her? I call your mother not weak, but wicked.
Inexcusably wicked, Mabel Earnshaw."

The words had no sooner passed her lips than
Dooley, who had planted himself in front of the
chair on which she was seated, raised his tiny
hand, and struck a blow upon Miss Fluke's
cheek, with such right good will, that the mark
of four small fingers and a thumb were visibly
impressed on it, in crimson lines;
immediately afterwards he raised a prolonged bellow,
and, bursting into floods of tears, hid his face
in his sister's lap, and kicked convulsively.

The proceeding was so sudden and so unforeseen,
that for an instant both Mabel and Miss
Fluke were paralysed with astonishment. As
soon, however, as Mabel recovered her presence
of mind, she called Betty, and consigned the
sobbing child to her care. "Oh, Dooley,
Dooley, I am so sorry and so shocked."

As to Miss Fluke, she arose and stood erect,
receiving all Mabel's apologies with rigid
inflexibility.

"You know how distressed I am that
this should have happened," said Mabel,
earnestly, "and I hope you will forgive poor
Dooley; he is but a baby."

"Of course I forgive him," said Miss Fluke, in
her hardest tones. "I forgive everybody. It is
my duty so to do. But it is very sad and terrible
to see the old Adam so violent and ungovernable
in so young a child. If he was My little
boy, he should have a sound whipping, and be
kept on bread and water until he had learnt Dr.
Watt's beautiful hymn by heart—that one that
says:

But, children, you should never let
Your angry passions rise.

However, I have no more to say on the subject.
I merely desire to know from your own lips,
Mabel, if the awful news that I hear about you
is true."

"Miss Fluke," said Mabel, regarding her
visitor steadily, "I might fence with you, and
ask what news you allude to; or I might
decline to answer a question so couched; or
I might inquire by what right you put the
question at all. But I prefer to answer you
clearly, and with what good humour I can
command. I am going on the stage, or at least
I am going to make an attempt to do so. I
shall be under the care of a relative whom I
dearly love and thoroughly respect, and who is
herself an actress. Mamma has given her
consent to my plan. I am thoroughly resolved to try
it, and nothing you can possibly say can shake
my resolution for an instant. Will you shake
hands with me, Miss Fluke, and say no more
on this subject? I am willing to believe you
have acted from a sense of duty. Will you not
judge as charitably of me?"

Mabel held out her hand with a frank winning
gesture; but Miss Fluke drew herself up to
her full height, and, folding her arms tightly,
answered:

"No, Mabel, certainly not. I couldn't think
of such a thing on any account whatsoever. I
shall make a point of praying for you specially
every Sunday, and I trust your heart may be
turned, and you may be brought to see the
error of your ways; but;"  here Miss Fluke
became so very upright that it seemed as if she
must positively be standing on tiptoe;  "but I
can make no compromise with sin!" Thus
concluding, Miss Fluke drew her shawl round her
with great energy, and marched majestically
out of the room and from the house.

CHAPTER XII. "MY NATIVE LAND, GOOD NIGHT."

UNDER a dark blue sky, studded with myriads
of twinkling stars, and through an atmosphere
so still that the smoke from the tall black funnel
curled in a long roll, and melted faintly into air
in the far distance behind her, a steamer was
cutting her way through the waters of St.
George's Channel towards the Irish shore. The
long track of foam from her paddles glistened
white upon the dark sea, and, save for the strong
vibrating pulse of the machinery, there was
scarcely any motion in the ship, except now and
then a long gentle rolling swell, as if old Ocean
were lazily turning in his sleep. Most of the
passengers had gone below. Two or three men,
wrapped in rough coats, tramped with measured
step up and down the deck, stopping always at
precisely the same spot in their walk, and
executing a resounding stamp before they turned
to pace back again.

The deep night sky watched golden-eyed
above, the deep waters slept placidly below, and
in all the air was a calm silence and the salt
savour of the sea.

To one leaving home alone, and for the first
time, the sense of change and strangeness
is necessarily much greater when the journey
is made by sea than by land. In the latter
case, the parting from familiar objects is more
gradual; and the constantly varying scenes that
meet the eye, melt imperceptibly into one another,
without any strong line of demarcation between
the old and well-known and the new and
strange. But to the unaccustomed traveller on
ship-board, the change is complete. Such a
traveller is cut off from all familiar sights and
sounds, without any gradual process of preparation,
and is almost as strange and lone as though
embarked upon some unknown planet for a
sail through space.

Thus at least felt one inexperienced voyager
on the Irish mail steam-packet bound from
Liverpool to Kingstown. Mabel Earnshaw sat
apart on deck, gazing with her outward eyes
at the blue moonless heavens, but seeing with
the vision of the spirit a busy panorama
unrolling itself before her. All her thoughts were
retrospective. The young, strong in their