hard; and if he chooses, he can do more than even Sydney Calcott.'
'If!' said the Earl.
Jane here entered with another cup and plate, and Lord Ormersfield sat down to the breakfast-table. After some minutes' pause he said, 'Have you heard from Peru?'
'Not by this mail. Have you?'
'Yes, I have. Mary is coming home.'
'Mary!' she cried, almost springing up—'Mary Ponsonby? This is good news—unless,' as she watched his grave face, 'it is her health that brings her.'
'It is. She has consulted the surgeon of the Libra, a very able man, who tells her that there is absolute need of good advice and a colder climate; and Ponsonby has consented to let her and her daughter come home in the Libra. I expect them in February.'
'My poor Mary! But she will get better away from him. I trust he is not coming!'
'Not he,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'Dear, dear Mary! I had scarcely dared to hope to see her again,' cried the old lady, with tears in her eyes. 'I hope she will be allowed to be with us, not kept in London with his sister. London does her no good.'
'The very purport of my visit,' said Lord Ormersfield, 'was to ask whether you could do me the favour to set aside your scholars, and enable me to receive Mrs. Ponsonby at home.'
'Thank you—oh, thank you. There is nothing I should like better, but I must consider—'
'Clara would find a companion in the younger Mary in the holidays, and if James would make Fitzjocelyn his charge, it would complete the obligation. It would be by far the best arrangement for Mary's comfort, and it would be the greatest satisfaction to me to see her with you at Ormersfield.'
'I believe it would indeed,' said the old lady, more touched than the outward manner of the Earl seemed to warrant. 'I would—you know I would do my very best that you and Mary should be comfortable together'—and her voice trembled—'but you see I cannot promise all at once. I must see about these little boys. I must talk to Jem. In short, you must not be disappointed'—and she put her hands before her face, trying to laugh, but almost overcome.
'Nay, I did not mean to press you,' said Lord Ormersfield, gently; 'but I thought, since James has had the fellowship and Clara has been at school, that you wished to give up your pupils.'
'So I do,' said the lady, but still not yielding absolutely.
'For the rest, I am very anxious that James should accept Fitzjocelyn as his pupil. I have always considered their friendship as the best hope, and other plans have had so little success, that—'
'I'm not going to hear Louis abused!' she exclaimed, gaily.
'Yes,' said Lord Ormersfield, with a look nearly approaching a smile, 'you are the last person I ought to invite, if I wish to keep your nephew unspoiled.'
'I wish there were any one else to spoil him!'
'For his sake, then, come and make Ormersfield cheerful. It will be far better for him.'
'And for you, to see more of Jem,' she added. 'If he were yours, what would you say to such hours?'
The last words were aimed at a young man who came briskly into the room, and as he kissed her, and shook hands with the Earl, answered in a quick, bright tone, 'Shocking, aye. All owing to sitting up till one!'
'Reading?' said the Earl.
'Reading,' he answered, with a sort of laughing satisfaction in dashing aside the approval expressed in the query, 'but not quite as you suppose. See here,' as he held up maliciously a railway novel.
'I am afraid I know where it came from,' said Lord Ormersfield.
'Exactly so,' said James. 'It was Fitzjocelyn's desertion of it that excited my curiosity.'
'Indeed. I should have thought his desertions far too common to excite any curiosity.'
'By no means. He always has a reason.'
'A plausible one.'
'More than plausible,' cried James, excitement sparkling in his vivid black eyes. 'It happens that this is the very book that you would most rejoice to see distasteful to him—low morality, false principles, morbid excitement, not a line that ought to please a healthy mind.'—
'Yet it has interest enough for you.'
'I am not Fitzjocelyn.'
'You know how to plead for him.'
'I speak simple truth,' bluntly answered James, running his hand through his black hair, to the ruin of the morning smoothness, so that it, as well as the whole of his quick, dark countenance seemed to have undergone a change from sunny south to stormy north in the few moments since his first appearance.
After a short silence, Lord Ormersfield turned to him, saying 'I have been begging a favour of my aunt, and I have another to ask of you,' and repeating his explanation, begged him to undertake the tutorship of his son.
'I shall not be at liberty at Easter,' said James, 'I have all but undertaken some men at Oxford.'
'Oh, my dear Jem!' exclaimed the old lady, 'is that settled beyond alteration?'
'I'm not going to throw them over.'
'Then I shall hope for you at Midsummer,' said the Earl.
'We shall see how things stand,' he returned, ungraciously.
'I shall write to you,' said Lord Ormersfield, still undaunted, and soon after taking his leave.
'Cool!' cried James, as soon as he was gone. 'To expect you to give up your school at his beck, to come and keep house for him as long as it may suit him!'
'Nay, Jem, he knew how few boys I have, and that I intended to give them up. You don't mean to refuse Louis?' she said, imploringly.
'I shall certainly not take him at Easter. It would be a mere farce intended to compensate to us for giving up the school, and I'll not lend myself to it while I can have real work.'
'At Midsummer, then. You know he will never let Louis spend a long vacation without a tutor.'
'I hate to be at Ormersfield,' proceeded James, vehemently, 'to see Fitzjocelyn browbeaten and contradicted every moment, and myself set up for a model. I may steal a horse, while he may not look over the wall! Did you observe the inconsistency?—angry with the poor fellow first for having the book, and then for not reading the whole, while it became amiable and praiseworthy in me to burn out a candle over it!'
'Ah! that was my concern. I tell him he would sing another note if you were his son.'
'I'd soon make him! I would not stand what Louis does. The more he is set down and sneered at, the more debonnaire he looks, till I could rave at him for taking it so easily.'
'I hoped you might have hindered them from fretting each other, as they do so often.'
'I should only be a fresh element of discord, while his lordship will persist in making me his pattern young man. It makes me hate myself, especially as Louis is such an unaccountable fellow that he won't.'
'I
