“A comfortable life they would have had, poor things, in that case,” laughed her mother, “though I agree that it would have been prettier.  But I don’t trouble myself about that, my dear.  You know, in all equity, Allen ought to have a share in that property.  It was only the old man’s caprice that made it all or none; and Elvira is only doing what is right and just.”

“And Allen’s love was a real thing, when he was the rich one.  So I told Essie; and besides, Allen would never make any hand of poverty, poor fellow.”

“I think and hope he will make a much better hand of riches than he would have done without all he has gone through,” said her mother.

Allen showed the same feeling when he could talk his prospects over quietly with his mother.  These four years had altered him at least as much for the better as Elfie.  He would not now begin in thoughtless self-indulgence, refined indeed and never vicious, but selfish, extravagant, and heedless of all but ease, pleasure, and culture.  Some of the enervation of his youth had really worn off, though it had so long made him morbid, and he had learnt humility by his failures.  Above all, however, his intercourse with Fordham had opened his eyes to a sense of the duties of wealth and position, such as he had never before acquired, and the religious habits that had insensibly grown upon him were tincturing his views of life and responsibility.

It was painful to him to realise that he was returning to wealth and luxury, indeed, monopolising it,-—he the helpless, undeserving, indolent son, while all the others, and especially his mother, were left to poverty.

Elfie wanted Mother Carey and all to make their home at Belforest, and still be one family as of old.  Indeed, she hung on Mother Carey even more than upon Allen, after her long famine from the motherly tenderness that she had once so little appreciated.

Of such an amalgamation, however, Mrs. Brownlow would not hear, nor would she listen to a proposal of settling on her a yearly income, such as would dispense with economy, and with the manufacture of “pot-boilers.”

No, she said, she was a perverse woman, and she had never been so happy as when living on her husband’s earnings.  The period of education being over, she had a full sufficiency, and should only meddle with clay again for her own pleasure.  She was beginning already a set of dining-table ornaments for a wedding-present, representing the early part of the story of Undine.  Babie knew why, if nobody else did.  Perhaps she should one of these days mould a similar set for Sydney of the crusaders of Jotapata!  Then Allen bethought him of putting into Elvira’s head to beg, at least, to undertake Armine’s expenses at the theological college for a year, and to this she consented thankfully.  Armine had been thinking of offering himself as Allen’s successor for a year with Sir Samuel; but two days’ experience as substitute convinced him that Allen was