cussions of ways and means, which even a listening angel might have almost envied, because of the divine alchemy with which their human hands could transmute filthy lucre into pure love. brace her heart for this sacrifice, and to | And then they fell to still homelier diswin strength to say that if it was to be well with her child, then it should be weli with her. Yet at the thought of the vanishing of the days of quiet love and labor in which her wrung heart had found all the rest it could ever find in this world, she could scarcely repress the last cry of patient anguish, "How long, O Lord, how long!" And while Mrs. Sinclair sat thus, Tom and Olive strolled slowly down the road where she and Robert had travelled on that wild December morning when our story commenced, but which was now rich with wild flowers, bright in the summer sunshine. And Tom said to Olive that he would never have dared to ask her to love him, if he had meant such love to disturb the sacred duties already in her life that he thought the love of life should mean two gladly bearing together the double duty that had been divided between them. And then they said to each other that they could not at once very clearly see how their future was to work itself out, but that surely their love would be strong enough to grapple with all details, and not a sickly sentiment on which no cross wind must blow, lest it slay it altogether. And they said, too, that their duty was owed to good people, who were not likely now to prove themselves inconsiderate and selfish for the first time in their lives; though of course they must expect to find them human, with all the little human moods and weaknesses, which, after all, seem but a cement to bind together human virtues. And Tom said to Olive that he thought those must have a very poor idea of all that is involved in twain being made one, who feel that such unity is endangered if not nursed in solitude; and that he thought there is little fear of any household, however constituted, not falling in the main into right relations around any married pair who love, honor, and respect each other. And then Olive said softly, that Isaiah had made it one of the signs of national prosperity that "old men and old women should dwell in the streets of Je rusalem, and every man with his staff in his hand for very age." Then they had come nearer to particulars, and Tom said that he feared Mrs. Sinclair might shrink from life in London, and Olive answered that she was sure her mother would be happy anywhere with those she loved. And then they said how, in London, she would not be far from Stockley, and might, perhaps, have a double home if she wished. | That night Tom Ollison told Mrs. Sinclair that he would never take her daughter from her, but that Olive had well nigh promised in her mother's name that he should be accepted by her as a son. And Mrs. Sinclair put her hands on his shoulders and drew down his face and kissed him with the fond, motherly kiss which he had not known for years. And she longed to ask him and Olive to forgive her for the doubt and pain she had felt that afternoon, but she kept silence because she thought it would hurt them even to hear of it. And then she went away and wept a little, because she had never seen her Robert's wife, and because she could not help believing that her own son would fain be as kind and good as Tom, but had somehow failed to seem so. EPILOGUE. AFTER all, Tom Ollison and Olive Sinclair were married sooner than they had dared to hope on that summer day when they had stood hand in hand among the wild flowers on the road over the cliffs. Life's path broadened before their feet, as it ever does before the true heart and the resolute will. And now they live in the old house in Penman Row, and Olive has brightened the shady rooms with the pretty tastes and fancies which love and happiness have developed in her, as the warmth of spring brings out the crocuses and snowdrops. As Tom sits at the head of the table in the dining-room (for Mr. Sandison has said that he is only too delighted to abdicate the post of carver and sit aside at leisure to criticise his successor), Tom wonders if it can be the same dreary room into which he was ushered on his first arrival in London, for everything seems different except the quaint mirrors and the comfortable cat, who has exchanged the old coat on which he then lay for a soft red cushion. The upper rooms are Olive's more especial domain; but more and more often, as she sits in the twilight playing on the piano and crooning old songs, Peter Sandison steals up-stairs and sits listening in the shadows. Mrs. Sin. clair found the gloom and excitement of London life rather too much for her at first, and made long visits to her old friends the Blacks at Stockley; but as time passed on she seemed able to store up the cheerfulness and calm she gathered there, and to bring them back with her, along with the big nosegays and stuffed hampers which Mrs. Black never failed to send. By her own choice her special apartment was the wide, low attic which had formerly been Tom's room; and her son-in-law gave her an exquisite surprise by bringing her familiar household gods from the far north to furnish it. Better "goods" could have been bought near at hand for less than the cost of the transit of the old chests and clumsy chairs, but he wanted to give her "a gift," and she seemed already to live so wholly in the spirit, that one need give her naught but what also had its value wholly in the spirit, consecrated by tender emotion, by memory, and by hope. twain represent its active life and its ma terial progress, its very existence is rooted in the martyred life of him who, taking nothing for his own, bore all and forgave all, and in the loving heart of her who is still waiting for the return of that prodigal son of modern life, who has mistaken gold for food, success for satisfaction, and worldly power for the peace which passeth understanding. Tom and Olive know well that the son whom she sees so seldom is in the mother's heart when she goes away and sits for hours in the quiet attic, where no sound penetrates save Kirsty Mail's gentle footfall as she goes to and fro in the chamber where Grace Allan still lies, cut off from speech and hearing, but with a pleading look softening her hard eyes, and a habit of kindly clasping bending her stiff fingers. Tom and Olive are so happy together that they do not resent the shad ows of sin and sorrow amid which they carry sunshine; and their home is not less sacred to them because they often say to each other that it seems to be a miniature It was hard to find the point of view copy of the workings of God's providence from which Robert and Etta Brander re-in its widest ranges, and that while they garded the new arrangements in Penman Row. They came there once or twice: but the West End of London is very far away from its other quarters, and a lady who, like Etta, never travels except in her own brougham, and is very fearful of its panels being scratched, cannot venture often into the City. Besides, Etta's constitution is steadily growing less adapted to London, except during the few weeks of "the season." She is always trying the climate of some new watering-place, or the effects of some fashionable "cure for those vague maladies which occupy those who have nothing else to do. Robert has his fine house very much to him. self, and though it is not very far from Ormolu Square, he does not see much of his wife's parents, he and Mr. Brander having separated their business interests. The younger man considered that the elder was getting "slow" and subsiding into grooves, where he himself would never have made the fortune he had made, and with which, therefore, Robert was not going to be content. The wheel of life goes fast with Robert Sinclair, and his face has a wan, hunted look, not like those who live by hardest daily labor, but more like that of the needy adventurers who hang on the very outskirts of honesty. He is rich and likely to be richer, though none know so well as himself what sharp corners he still turns sometimes, and how near ruin may be, after all. Sometimes he asks querulously, if life is worth the living. But it has never yet dawned on him that perhaps he has made a bad bargain, and that love, and friendship, and duty, high thoughts, and pleasant house From Temple Bar. THE HOME LIFE OF A COURT LADY. WE generally think of "the beautiful Molly Lepell" as one of that gay group of maids of honor, more merry than wise, so prominent in the memoirs of their time, who attended Caroline of Anspach when the "young court" of the Prince and Princess of Wales drew all the wits and beauties from the "old court" of George I. The town career of these young women was one unbroken round of gaiety. A drawing-room at Leicester House every morning, an evening assembly there twice a week; balls, masquerades, ridottos,* operas, and plays; growing magnificence in dress, growing extravagance in play, an increasing value set on showy accomplishments and a witty tongue, combined to make the " "young court brilliant, at "A most entertaining sort of assembly," says Mrs. Delany; "you are at liberty to wander about as much as you please, and there is dancing, tea, coffee, chocolate, and all sorts of sweetmeats. (Autobiography and Correspondence, vol. i., p. 253.) tractive, corrupt, and godless - the best school imaginable for sharpening the brain and hardening the heart. When rusticating at Richmond Lodge or Hampton Court, however, not only the scene but the whole daily routine was radically changed, and its attendant hardships are pathetically described in one of Pope's letters to the Blounts. The unhappy victims were condemned to eat Westphalia ham in a morning, ride over knowledged charms. But not one of rumor's thousand tongues breathed a I whisper against her fair fame, or associated her with the intrigues which appear then to have been as much a matter of course to a fine lady as her toilet. Though in the court, she was not of it, yet all the courtiers, male and female, were her friends, and she carried into retirement a strong interest in her old companions, whose follies neither involved nor alienated her. Gay might well call her "youth's youngest daughtersweet Lepell," for she became a maid of honor at fourteen! Yet even this precocious preferment was less incongruous than that which, according to the Duchess of Marlborough, made her which they" a cornet in her father's regiment as soon as she was born." Her birthplace was Sark, of which island the Lepells were called "lords-proprietors," and she may have owed to a certain extent the soft and spirituelle vivacity of her manners, and her love for France and all things French, to the force of early association. No wonder he exclaims, his sympathy rising even to solemnity, "The life of a maid of honor is of all things the most miserable!" But not without alleviations! The wits and beaux of the day followed them to their riverside retreats, and fluttered round Pope, her devoted admirer, was proud them in open adoration. Swift growled of wearing her chains; he tells Broome, out compliments veiled in roughly playful in March, 1720: "I am now constantly abuse; Pope and Gay sang their praises engaged at home in attending a lady I in more polished verse; Lord Chesterfield have a true friendship for, who is here at the courtly, Lord Peterborough the ro- Twickenham in hopes of a recovery by mantic, "Hervey, fair of face" and bitter our air from a dangerous illness Mrs. of tongue, worshipped at their shrine. Lepell."* Pope, no doubt, like all the The flattery which had only been "polite rest of the world, would have been "surin town, grew tender in the country. prised to hear " that his lively invalid was "Mrs. Lepell walked with me three or then married to one of the most noticeable four hours by the moonlight," says Pope, figures of even that dazzling and depraved "and we met no creature of any quality time-John Hervey, second son of the but the king giving audience to the vice- first Earl of Bristol. Hervey's personal chancellor all alone under the garden distinction and grace, his polished manwall." Yet with all the high-flown love-ners and cultivated mind, united so making to which they were subjected, the strangely to ghastly disease, a cold heart, maids of honor had hearty animal spirits, a calculating brain, and a complete negarode on the garden rollers, shook the tion of religion and morality, have been windows (and the nerves) of solitary stu- immortalized in the withering couplet dents at midnight, jumped down-stairs which concludes Pope's picture of "Sposinging "Over the hills and far away,' and rejoiced in practical jokes like a set of boisterous schoolgirls. Mary, daughter of Brigadier-General Lepell, was the favorite of all the giddy party. Others might be as beautiful, but she had in perfection that art of pleasing which disarms envy itself. Others might be as witty, but their wit was poisoned by coarseness. When others were as much admired they paid the penalty of detraction, which, in that age of unbridled license and scandal, nearly always attended ac Carruthers' Life of Pope, p. 135. rus:" Beauty that shocks you, parts that none can trust, Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust. Yet Hervey had the power of attracting and retaining regard; for against the piti less malignity of such foes as Pulteney and Pope, and the doubtful support of such allies as Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, we may set, for so much as it was worth, the unwavering attachment of Elwin's Pope, Letters, vol. iii., p. 45. Queen Caroline, and what was of infinitely more value, the anxious tenderness of Hervey's excellent father and the sorely tried but faithful affection of his wife. Their marriage, in accordance with what almost amounted to a fashion at that time, was not at first avowed. Contemporary publications state that it took place in the autumn of 1720, but in the spring of 1719 a letter from Lord Bristol affectionately claims Molly Lepell as his daughter, though speaking of her marriage as "secret." Croker says that the private marriage of another maid of hon or, Mary Bellenden, to Colonel Campbell, afterwards Duke of Argyll, was public at the same time, and his theory is that made they influenced each other . . . all parties might be fearful of having offended by making a choice without the consent of their royal patrons, and they for mutual support agreed to brave the storm together, and announced their marriages and consequent resignations just previous to the courtly epoch of the birthday.f Molly Lepell's marriage was happier than might have been anticipated from the character of the bridegroom. Lady Louisa Stuart in her "Introductory Anecdotes" to her grandmother's letters, says that the young couple "lived together on very amicable terms, as well-bred as if not married at all,' but without any strong sympathies, and more like a French couple than an English one;" as if the average "English couple" of those days, especially when moving in fashionable circles, had been so very tender and do. mestic! But the letters themselves show that for some time, at all events, this polite indifference did not exist. In July, 1721, we find Lady Mary quite out of pa tience with their conjugal affection: Mrs. Hervey and her dear spouse [she writes to her sister Lady Mar] visited me twice or thrice a day, and were perpetually cooing in my rooms. I was complaisant a great while; but (as you know) my talent has never lain much that way. I grew at last so weary of those birds of paradise, I fled to Twickenham The "inscrutable" Caroline, who ridiculed her husband, hated some of her children and coldly tolerated others, and dropped friend after friend when each bad served her turn, showed positive fondness for Lord Hervey up to the last hours of her life. She called him "her child, her pupil, her charge." She frankly avowed that she could not bear him out of her sight, adding, "It is well I am so old," she was then fiftyone, and fourteen years Hervey's senior, "or I should be talked of for this creature." (Lord Hervey's Memoirs, vol. i., p. 382.) ↑ Introduction to Lord Hervey's Memoirs, vol. i., P. 25. as much to avoid their persecutions as for my own health.* Hervey would indeed have been hard to please had he shown early and confirmed neglect of such a wife. Lady Louisa herself concedes that by the attractions she retained in age she must have been singularly captivating when young, gay, and handsome; and never was there so perfect a model of the finely polished, highbred, genuine woman of fashion. Her manners had a foreign tinge which some called affected, but they were gentle, easy, dignified, and altogether exquisitely pleasing. And Lord Chesterfield said the word "pleasing" always reminded him of her, "who not only pleased herself, but was the cause of pleasing in others." Like all "sprigs of quality" in those days, the Herveys were often at Bath, and some of Lady Hervey's † letters to Mrs. Howard give amusing glimpses of the humors of the place. Lord Peterborough is here [she writes in June, 1725] and has been so some time, though by his dress one would believe he had not designed to make any stay, for he wears boots all day, and as I hear must do so, having brought no shoes with him. [Boots were then considered only suitable for riding-gear.] It is a comical sight to see him, with his blue ribbon and star, and a cabbage under each arm, or a chicken in his hand, which, after he himself has purchased at market, he carries home for his dinner. Some months later she gives the same correspondent a little family news: I tell you that Bab, our own lean, pale-faced Arm yourself with faith to believe me when Bab [her sister-in-law, Lady Barbara Hervey] has been queen of a ball, and has been the ob ject of sighs, languishments, and all things proper on such occasions: and to surprise you yet more, I must inform you that her flirt is master of ten thousand pounds a year. I do not doubt but that Lady Bristol will tell you of it, for she is brimful of that (and cases of quadrille).‡ Lady Bristol, who had an imperious and uncertain temper, and piqued herself on her power of saying sharp things, was no doubt occasionally dictatorial to her beautiful daughter-in-law, who may not always have taken her caprices patiently. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu puts the case after her own peculiar fashion: "All *Letters and Works of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, vol i., p. 457. In 1723 her husband succeeded to the title by the death of his brother Carr. Letters to and from Henrietta Countess of Suffolk, vol. i., p. 195. our acquaintances are now mad," she tells | means of restoring my spirits than the exerher sister: "they do such things! such cise and hartshorn I now make use of. I do monstrous and stupendous things! Lady not suppose that name still subsists; but pray Hervey and Lady Bristol have quarrelled let me know if the thing itself does, and if in such a polite manner that they have they meet in the same cheerful manner to sup as formerly. . . . I pass my mornings at presgiven one another all the titles so liberally ent as much like those at Hampton Court as I Bestowed amongst the ladies at Billings- can, for I divide them between walking and gate." It would take a less "lively " pen the people of the best sense of their time. than Lady Mary's to convince us that But the difference is, my present companions Lady Hervey, whose perfect good breed- are dead, and the others were quite alive. ing and gracious dignity are recorded by all who knew her, ever descended to "Bil. lingsgate," and if so, no further faith can be put in physiognomy. For never was sweeter or more gentle expression than that of her smiling face in the Strawberry Hill miniature. But that she did occa. sionally retaliate on Lady Bristol by a little malicious teasing, we have her own testimony: Pray, when you are so kind as to write to me," she asks Mrs. Howard, "get sometimes one body, sometimes another to direct your letters. For curiosity being one of the reigning passions in a certain person" [Lady Bristol], "I love prodigiously both to excite and to baffle it." In 1728 Lord Hervey tried to relieve the ill-health which was constitutional with him (but which his father attributed to the use of "that detestable and poisonous plant, tea,") by a journey to Italy - Lady Hervey and four young children remaining with Lord Bristol at Ickworth. this seclusion she heard from Mrs. How ard, who was then at Hampton Court, and says in reply: In Mrs. Howard's reply she says: Hampton was very different from the place you knew... frizelation, flirtation, and dangleation are now no more, and nothing less than a Lepell can restore them to life. To tell you my opinion freely, the people you now converse with " [her books] are much more alive than any of your old acquaintance." In Lady Hervey's rejoinder, we see something of that home life at Ickworth which gives so much more true a clue to her character than the youthful gaieties with which she is generally associated : 66 I have had frequent accounts from my lord of his being very much out of order abroad, [she writes]; and at home I have had the pain of seeing and the fatigue of nursing Lady Ann [her sister-in-law] in a violent and for a great while dangerous distemper. I pass twelve or thirteen hours a day in her room, and dine by her bedside at seven or eight o'clock at night. I can never leave her whilst her fever is upon In her, for she will take nothing but from me, nor do anything but at my request. Lord and Lady Bristol are in the greatest concern for her. The latter has been herself so ill that for many days she has not been able to bear going into her daughter's room. My spirits, which you know were once very good, are so much impaired, that I question if even Hampton Court breakfasts could recover them, or revive the Schatz who is extinguished in a fatigued nurse, a grieved sister, and a melancholy wife. * The place your letter was dated from recalled a thousand agreeable things to my remembrance. I wish I could persuade myself that you regret them, or that you could think the tea-table more welcome if attended as formerly by the Schatz [a nickname shared by Lord and Lady Hervey]. If that were possible, it would be the means (and the only one at this time) to make me wish to exchange Ickworth for any other dwelling in England. I really believe a frizelation would be a surer His complaint was epilepsy; and to ward off its attacks he adopted that strict regimen to which Pope cruelly alludes in his "Sporus," as, to disguise its traces, he is said to have painted his face. Lord Hailes (preface to the Duchess of Marlborough's "Opinions") describes Hervey's "daily food" as a small quantity of asses' milk and a flour biscuit; once a week he indulged himself with eating an apple." His own statement to Dr. Cheyne, his physician, is-"I never take any liquid but water or milk-tea; I eat no meat but the whitest, youngest, and tenderest - nine times in ten, nothing but chicken. I seldom eat any supper; if any, nothing absolutely but bread and water. Two days in the week I eat no flesh; my breakfast is dry biscuit, not sweet, and green tea. I have left off butter as bilious. I eat no salt, nor any sauce but bread sauce the attacks made upon me by ignorance, impertinence and gluttony are innumerable and incredible." |