a curious tenacity. Madame Vandeleur had, at length, to take him away from her knee absolutely by force, and to carry him crying from the room, his little arms extended towards the "pretty lady" whom he was so reluctant to leave.

"Mon Dieu!" muttered Marie to herself. "It was a little dangerous, that experiment. But, happily, it has ended well. She has not changed her mind!"

CHAPTER XII.

A QUIET WEDDING.

No, Claudia Estcourt had not changed her mind. Yet the danger apprehended by Madame Vandeleur had not been wholly without foundation. For one moment-just one moment-as she had sat with her child's arms clasped about her neck, Claudia had vacillated in her purpose. For one moment she had asked herself should she abandon that purpose? Should she, at this eleventh hour, acknowledge her clandestine marriage and claim her child? Should she brave her father's shocked displeasure, and risk the loss of Douglas Awdry's love? Should she expose herself to the gossip and scandal of Society? Yet, on the other hand, stand forth a free woman-her hidden bonds and chains riven, her secret revealed, with nothing in her life to conceal, no further need for plotting and dissimulation-above all, no further reason for dreading discovery, for living with an oppressive sense of danger ever hanging over her head.

For one moment the balance of motive forces had hung evenly poised, but for one moment only. Then a strong "I dare not " had leaped upon a weak "I would," and the brief indecision was over.

If during the next few weeks-very busy weeks they were-Claudia recalled that indecision at all, it was to congratulate herself upon having in no way yielded to it.

As she had told Madame Vandeleur, she was about to be married, and to be married at once. On the very evening of that day whereupon she had accepted his hand, Captain Awdry-after obtaining her father's sanction to the suggestion-had pressed Claudia to assent to a very quiet but immediate marriage, in order that, upon his return to England, she might go with him as his bride. A little startled, at first, by this proposal, Claudia had, nevertheless, soon been brought to yield to it-and quite as much because her own inclinations urged VOL. CCLVIII. NO. 1851.

R

acquiescence, as because her lover's circumstances seemed to render it advisable.

The second son of his father-who had been married twiceDouglas Awdry belonged to a family which, wherever it had originally sprung from, had been established in Berkshire for so many generations that it had come to be looked upon as one of the oldest, if not the very oldest, in the county. No higher title than that of Squire had, as yet, been borne by any head of the family-although, by marriage, much blue blood had enriched the race, and although it was currently believed that a Baronetcy, if not a Peerage, had been offered to more than one of its representatives. Whether this were true or no, it is certain that, relying on their antiquity and wealth, the Awdrys held their heads very high, and were wont to boast themselves independent of such adventitious rank, and the equals, at all events, of all those whose handles to their names were of recent acquirement.

Of this family, Captain Douglas Awdry-ex-officer (for he had now resigned his commission) of a cavalry regiment stationed for some time in Quebec-had lately, and very unexpectedly, become the chief. Left an orphan at an early age, Douglas had been brought up under the guardianship of a half-brother, upon whom had devolved the fine entailed estate of Clavermere Chase.

More than twenty years Douglas's senior, and a man of very studious and somewhat unsocial habits, this last Squire Awdry had remained unmarried until quite late in life; and Douglas himself, as well as all the friends and acquaintances of the family, had long learned to consider the reversion of the property as secure to the younger brother.

At the age of forty-five, however, Squire Awdry had suddenly fallen in love with and married a lady of little more than half his age. Two boys had been born of this union; and Douglas, who had gone out to Canada very shortly after it had taken place, had then, of course, entirely relinquished all idea of the inheritance which he had once looked upon as his own. Nevertheless, it had come to him and earlier than, in the course of nature, he had ever had a right to expect. One letter, received about a month before the opening of this story, had announced to him the deaths of his two young nephews through the attack of some contagious disorder. A second, following by the next post, had conveyed the intelligence that his half-brother (who had been absent from home at the time, travelling in Norway) had succumbed to the shock of being informed of this double catastrophe in a cruelly sudden manner. For to his children the quiet, staid man had shown a passionate attachment,

such as Douglas, who had never received from him any treatment but that of cold severity, could scarcely have believed it to have been in his nature to feel.

Now, had he been nearer, Captain Awdry would, without question, have repaired at once to Clavermere on receipt of these tidingstidings which, in spite of his personal gain through them, the young man sincerely sorrowed over, though, naturally, with a less keen sorrow than would have possessed him had his relations with his brother been more affectionate. But, at that date, communication between America and England was by no means so rapid as it has since become, and, as Douglas knew, his brother must of necessity be buried long before he could arrive there. Seeing, then, that he could not be in time for the funeral, and believing that the young widow (whom he had heard was overwhelmed by her affliction) would greatly prefer not to have her solitude intruded upon for a few weeks by the arrival of the new proprietor, he had decided not to hurry his departure from Quebec.

When, however, the news had come to him that his sister-in-law had already vacated the Chase, and retired to a smaller estate bequeathed to her by his brother, Douglas had looked upon the matter in a different light. He had then become anxious to return to England as soon as possible. But he had been equally anxious to take with him the wife he had chosen, and so had agreed to put off his voyage for the six additional weeks which Miss Estcourt had declared to be the shortest possible time in which she could make her arrangements.

For, poor girl, she had other arrangements to make than those simple and innocent ones which concerned her trousseau! She had that expedition to carry out to the lonely farm-house on the Beauport Slopes, and her bargain with Madame Vandeleur to effect. And when that matter had, as we have seen, been brought to a successful issue, there was another difficulty to face, viz., the legal appointment of a trustee for the little Claude's property. But that difficulty, also, had been met and overcome-not, however, without the aid of much misrepresentation and falsehood.

Ah! what a tangled web we weave,
When first we practise to deceive.

And in that falsehood Miss Ella Thorne had felt constrained to take a conspicuous part.

Under pretence of visiting their old school-mistress, Mrs. Campion, the two girls had taken a trip to Montreal, and had there sought

out a gentleman who was a distant connection of Ella's, and well known to her by repute as a strictly conscientious and honest man. By profession this gentleman was an attorney, and after a little trouble, and by dint of an entire mis-statement of the case, he had been induced to accept the position of trustee for the £3,000, handed over to him by deed of gift in favour of Claude Stephens Vandeleur. He had, however, insisted on having the name of the child's adoptive father, Paul Vandeleur, and also that of a clergyman in Boston (whose name Claudia could never afterwards recollect) associated with his own as co-executors, albeit that he undertook himself the principal responsi bility of finding an investment for the property.

As a matter of course, all these arrangements were not conducted quite out of hand, and after the return of the young ladies to Quebec, a good deal of correspondence took place under cover to Ella Thorne.

But, at length, the business was settled, and Claudia Estcourt began to breathe freely--more freely than she had done for years.

Now, she fancied, she had taken a sponge and wiped out the history of the past. She had made a tabula rasa of her old life; "Out of the nettle danger" she had, at last, "plucked the flower safety." Her husband was dead, her child finally disposed of. Now she would cast the recollection of that dreadful mistake of her girlhood wholly away from her, and enter upon her new existence unfretted by fear or anxiety on its account. Henceforth, too, she resolved she would keep her conscience void of such offences as had stained it through these bygone years; she would cultivate, in word and action, the most perfect truth and candour. Although obliged to keep her promised husband in ignorance of events that had preceded their marriage, she would be open with him as the day as to all that should occur after it. Thus compounding for transgressions of the past with resolutions of virtue for the future, Claudia hoped and believed that all would be well with her. She had yet to learn, poor child, that a logical necessity presides over the sequence of events in the moral world, as well as in the physical. That as surely as law governs the succession of visible phenomena, that all cause must have an effect, so in the less tangible realms of human thought and conduct, law is likewise supreme, and no deed, once done, can escape inevitable consequences--although those consequences may be of a nature impossible to predict with any assurance.

Meanwhile, however, gathering courage from her past immunity from detection, and full of blind confidence in those measures she had taken as at the same time relieving her sense of obligation to the child and shielding her from all future trouble on his account

Claudia, we repeat, had resolved to cast her fears to the winds, and in a great measure she had succeeded in doing so. The weddingday drew on apace, and each hour that intervened seemed to bring some fresh augury of future happiness, to paint the horizon of her new life with ever brighter tints. Heart and fancy alike enthralled by the handsome manly lover, who, day by day, appeared to grow more devoted, more passionately attached to her, the girl basked and sunned herself in this warm glow of affection, striving to feel satisfied that no chill of disappointment or misery could ever surprise her. As for Douglas Awdry, he, indeed, trod, during these few weeks of waiting for her, upon enchanted ground. And when at length his girlish bride stood by his side at the altar, the fairest and sweetest picture his eyes had ever rested on, it seemed to the young man that life had no further bliss to bestow, that the summum bonum of existence was already his. As had been arranged, the wedding was a very quiet one, although, owing to the fact that both Captain Awdry and Miss Estcourt were conspicuous figures in Quebec society, it had been difficult to keep it so. Ella Thorne remained with her old school friend until after the ceremony, in which she figured as sole bridesmaid, and on the following day returned to her home in Kingston. The bride and bridegroom embarked directly after their marriage for England; and if the voyage across the Atlantic could have been taken as protypifying their voyage together through life, the latter would indeed have proved a serene and delightful one. Never within his memory, as the captain declared, had he made a more favourable or rapid passage, or known a spell of such mild and delicious weather. Scarcely a ripple disturbed the tranquillity of the sun-lit waves upon which the married lovers gazed day by day, feeling as though they were floating, in truth, upon a magic ocean of bliss. To have realised how those placid waters would look under another aspect, darkened by storm and lashed into threatening fury, into devouring rage, would have been almost as difficult after those weeks of continuous serenity, as to have imagined their own lives broken upon by disquieting doubt, or wrecked by a tempest of passion and pain.

Several times during the weeks of his daughter's brief engagement Mr. Estcourt had hinted at a probability that he would very shortly give up his house and his business in Canada and come to reside in London, in order that he might be near to the beloved and only child, whom he had given, with somewhat inexplicable readiness, into the hands of another. Not, however, he had explained, that he intended, as yet, wholly to relinquish his connection with commerce,