“I should like it to be Walter,” said Mrs. Hamlyn.

“Walter!”

“Yes, I should.  I like the name for itself, but I once had a dear little brother named Walter, just a year younger than I. He died before we came home to England.  Have you any objection to the name?”

“Oh, no, no objection,” he slowly said.  “I was only thinking whether you would have any.  It was the name given to my first child.”

“That can make no possible difference—­it was not my child,” was her haughty answer.  So the baby was named Walter James; the latter name also chosen by Eliza, because it had been old Mr. Monk’s.

In the following spring Mr. Hamlyn had to go to the West Indies.  Eliza remained at home; and during this time she became reconciled to her father.

Hubert brought it about.  For Hubert lived yet.  But he was just a shadow and had to take entirely to the house, and soon to his room.  Eliza came to see him, again and again; and finally over Hubert’s sofa peace was made—­for Captain Monk loved her still, just as he had loved Katherine, for all her rebellion.

Hubert lingered on to the summer.  And then, on a calm evening, when one of the glorious sunsets that he had so loved to look upon was illumining the western sky, opening up to his dying view, as he had once said, the very portals of Heaven, he passed peacefully away to his rest.

II.

The next change that set in at Leet Hall concerned Miss Kate Dancox.  That wilful young pickle, somewhat sobered by the death of Hubert in the summer, soon grew unbearable again.  She had completely got the upper hand of her morning governess, Miss Hume—­who walked all the way from Church Dykely and back again—­and of nearly everyone else; and Captain Monk gave forth his decision one day when all was turbulence—­a resident governess.  Mrs. Carradyne could have danced a reel for joy, and wrote to a governess agency in London.

One morning about this time (which was already glowing with the tints of autumn) a young lady got out of an omnibus in Oxford Street, which had brought her from a western suburb of London, paid the conductor, and then looked about her.

“There!” she exclaimed in a quaint tone of vexation, “I have to cross the street!  And how am I to do it?”

Evidently she was not used to the bustle of London streets or to crossing them alone.  She did it, however, after a few false starts, and so turned down a quiet side street and rang at the bell of a house in it.  A slatternly girl answered the ring.

“Governess-agent—­Mrs. Moffit?  Oh, yes; first-floor front,” said she crustily, and disappeared.

The young lady found her way upstairs alone.  Mrs. Moffit sat in state in a big arm-chair, before a large table and desk, whence she daily dispensed joy or despair to her applicants.  Several opened letters and copies of the daily journals lay on the table.