knew to Alfred's disadvantage, and a vast deal
more that she did not know, with her accustomed
florid eloquence. The truth was, that Mrs.
Hutchins (to whom Jerry Shaw presented Jack
as a cousin of " Miss Bell," and at the same
time a friend of Mr. Charlewood) began to
have sundry misgivings as to the policy of her
violent animosity to Clement and the scandal
she had spoken of him to Betty. If Mr.
Charlewood were still on good terms with
Mabel, it might be no passport to the favour of
the latter to abuse him; and a good or bad
word from Miss Bell was important to a person
employed as Mrs. Hutchins was in the Thespian
Theatre. By Clement's consent, Jack and Mr.
Shaw undertook to induce Walter to return
home with them, thinking that a stranger's face
would be less likely to startle the truant than
the sight of his brother arriving unexpectedly.
They accordingly watched Alfred enter and
leave the tavern, and immediately on his
departure made their way to Walter, with what
result the reader knows.

It is needless to speak of Mrs. Charlewood's
joy over her re-found boy, or of the relief of
mind to Clement and Penelope at finding their
brother alive and safe, although looking broken
and abject. For the first two days after his
return home, Walter did not recover either his
health or his self-possession sufficiently to face
Clement and Penelope. He shut himself
in his own room, on the excuse—but too
well founded—of indisposition, and refused to
see any one except his mother, who left her own
sick-bed to tend him. But by degrees, as he
became aware of the forbearing kindness which
actuated all around him, a spring of good feeling
and gratitude was touched in his weak but
not wholly depraved nature, and he began to
come amongst the family again, and even to
make some approach towards asking pardon for
the suffering he had caused them, and to
promise amendment. In his heart, spite of all
he had said to Alfred Trescott, he was
inexpressibly thankful to have been compelled, as
it were, to return home without making the
first advances towards a reconciliation himself.
He told himself and told his mother that within
four-and-tweiity hours of the time when Jack
surprised him in a drunken slumber on the
tavern bed, he should have been aboard an
emigrant ship, and on his way to Australia.
But at the bottom of his conscience he well
knew that it would not have been so. Clement
had one interview with his brother alone, and
what passed between them he never fully
disclosed to any one; but the two chief points
spoken of were the discovery of Alfred's secret
and malignant enmity, and the project discussed
between Clement and his sister Penelope, of
applying to old Stephens on Walter's behalf.
Walter caught at the idea of going abroad, and
even added a postscript to Clement's letter,
begging the old clerk (in a strain of very
unwonted candour and humility) to hold out a
helping hand to him, and promising solemnly
not to dishonour his recommendation.

To Jack Walton, as he called himself, the
whole family were extremely grateful, and the
singular circumstances of his first introduction
to them made an intimacy arise between them
with peculiar rapidity. " But, after all, we owe
it to Mabel Earnshaw, first and foremost, that
I have got my boy back again," said Mrs.
Charlewood, staunchly. She had never
relinquished her old liking for Mabel, although the
fact of the latter's having gone on the stage
continued to be, theoretically, an unforgiven sin.
It was at Mabel's intercession, and in deference
to Mabel's pleadings, that Corda was spared
any questioning as to what she knew of her
brother's anonymous writings. The fact that
the child had written the note to Mr. M'Culloch,
justifying Clement against the evil that had
been said of him, could not be doubted; and
once on the right track, a thousand pieces of
internal evidence came to light, all showing
plainly that Alfred Trescott, and he only, had
been Clement's anonymous maligner. At first
Clement had been utterly unable to conceive
any sufficient motive for so persistent and bitter
a hatred; but old Jerry Shaw, piecing
together what lie had observed for himself of
Alfred's pursuit of Mabel, and what he had
gathered from Corda's artless talk about Mr.
Charlewood's attachment to her dear " Miss
Bell," had arrived at a pretty accurate conclusion
on the subject,  which conclusion he
communicated to Jack, who in turn communicated
it to Clement.

"The ruffian was jealous of you, it seems,'*
said Jack. " He had the outrageous audacity
to aspire to my cousin Mabel, and hated you,
as I suppose he would have hated any one who
was in a position to have the chance of being
on an intimate footing in Mrs. Saxelby's house."

"Then your cousin never——" Clement
stopped abruptly.

"Never thought of him? Good God, Charlewood,
is it possible that you, who have known
Mabel so well and so long, can ask such a
question?"

Jack spoke with indignant warmth, but
Clement was so far from being offended by it,
that he shook him heartily by the hand, and
said, humbly, that he begged pardon, that the
idea was monstrous, and that he ought to have
known better.

It has been stated that, at Mabel's intercession,
no steps were taken which could make
Corda aware of the discovery that had been
made. But Jack insisted upon enlightening
Lady Popham as to the true character of her
protege without delay, and volunteered to
accompany Clement on the visit which was to
be made for that purpose.

They had a terrible time of it with my lady.
For nearly an hour she persisted in disbelieving
all their statements, called them vile
calumniators and treacherous scandal-mongers, abused
them in very choice Italian, and flounced up
and down her drawing-room in a whirlwind of
wrath. Then suddenly, and quite without any
preparation, she veered round to a firm and