‘Then you really think it meant that I shall’’ he cried, tremblingly.  ‘O don’t!  I can’t die!’

‘Your brother called on what he loved best,’ said Albinia.  ’It may mean nothing.  Or rather, it may mean that your dear twin-brother is watching for you, I am sure he is, to have you with him, for what makes your mortal life, however long, seem as nothing.  It was a call to you to be as pure on earth as he is in heaven.  O Gilbert, how good you should be!’

Gilbert did not know whether it frightened him or soothed him to see his superstition treated with respect—­neither denied, nor reasoned away.  But the ghastliness was not in the mere fear that death might not be far off.

The pillow had turned a little on one side—­Albinia tried to smooth it—­the corner of a book peeped out.  It was a translation of The Three Musqueteers, one of the worst and most fascinating of Dumas’ romances.

‘You wont tell papa!’ cried Gilbert, raising himself, in far more real and present terror than he had previously shown.

‘How did you get it?  Whose is it?’

’It is my own.  I bought it at Richardson’s.  It is very funny.  But you wont tell papa?  I never was told not; indeed I was not.’

’Now, Gilbert dear, will you tell me a few things?  I do only wish what is good for you.  Why don’t you wish that papa should hear of this book?’

Gilbert writhed himself.

‘You know he would not like it?’

‘Then why did you take to reading it?’

‘Oh!’ cried the boy, ’if you only did know how stupid and how miserable it has been!  More than half myself gone, and Sophy always glum, and Lucy always plaguing, and Aunt Maria always being a torment, you would not wonder at one’s doing anything to forget it!’

‘Yes, but why do what you knew to be wrong?’

‘Nobody told me not.’

’Disobedience to the spirit, then, if not to the letter.  It was not the way to be happier, my poor boy, nor nearer to your brother and mother.’

‘Things didn’t use to be stupid when Ned was there!’ sobbed Gilbert, bursting into a fresh flood of tears.

’Ah!  Gilbert, I grieved most of all for you when first I heard your story, before I thought I should ever have anything to do with you,’ said Albinia, hanging over him fondly.  ’I always thought it must be so forlorn to be a twin left solitary.  But it is sadder still than I knew, if grief has made you put yourself farther from him instead of nearer.’

‘I shall be good again now that I have you,’ said Gilbert, as he looked up into that sweet face.

’And you will begin by making a free confession to your father, and giving up the book.’

’I don’t see what I have to confess.  He would be so angry, and he never told me not.  Oh!  I cannot tell him.’

She felt that this was not the right way to begin a reformation, and yet she feared to press the point, knowing that the one was thought severe, the other timid.