"By the time that I had come to man's estate, it was understood-indeed, my uncle told me so with his own lips, not knowing the pain he caused me (though, if he had known, he would have told me still)—that you were one day to be Richard's bride; and from that moment I strove to put you from my heart, to live my life without that hope which was the breath of it-to forget you; to forsake you. Uncle Matthew knew about it. I besought him, upon my knees, to let me go elsewhere, away from Hilton, not to doom me to be the spectator of Richard's triumph. But I was useful to him in his trade, for which my brother had no aptitude, and he refused to let me go. I do not blame him; I blame none but one. The old man knew not what it was to love, or, at least, to love like me. Take some other girl,' said he, and she will cure your itch for this one.' It would have been good advice to most men of my age; but to me it was useless. I had no eyes for other girls but you, though you were blind to me. If you had not been so, you must have noticed how I shrank from your society, avoided the temptation of your presence, and when I could not avoid, resisted it. It was to lead my mind away from you, quite as much as through any natural diligence of my own, that I applied myself to business, and showed no fancy for the pleasures that attracted others of my years. There was, it seemed, but one pleasure in life for me-the right to call you mine, and that Fate had denied me. Yet not for a single instant did the idea occur to me of usurping Richard's place not because it was impossible to do so (although I knew it was so), but because I had so reverent a regard for the object of my brother's love. It would have been bliss even to think of you as mine-I dreamt of it sometimes, when Heaven seemed to have sent the dream, and Hell the waking-but I never permitted myself to do so. You were sacred from me-an adored, but forbidden thing. : It might have been so to the end, perhaps, had not Richard himself proved base. He had won you, and for all I knew up to that time, was worthy of you; he had not, indeed, that reverence for you which I had, and wore that gracious prize -your love—as lightly as the flower in his button-hole. But that was his way-a way that pleased you well, and therefore was the right one. I was very humble, and confessed my way the wrong; and if I could not wish him joy, I wished Richard no harm, and certainly not the greatest harm of all-that he should lose you. I knew he drank and gamed, but was content, for your sake and for his, to deem such errors but spots upon the surface, blots of youth, which time would cleanse. I did not judge him by myself, who had no taste for cards nor wine, and therefore was not tempted. But a day came when perforce my eyes were opened, and I saw clearly what this Richard was. You have heard how, when my uncle was on his deathbed, or supposed to be so, some thief, disguised-pistol in handcompelled him to set his name beneath some bond. A cowardly and cruel deed in any man, but in one to whom he had been benefactor, a crime unparalleled for baseness and for greed. Men said, indeed, that it was Richard, but I, for one, denied it, as you know. It could not be, for Richard was as the apple of his eye, whose trespass he had forgiven a score of times, and to whom he had left all he loved on earth— his gold. Yet it was Richard. Uncle Matthew told me so with his own lips an hour before his death. "I have no hopes of the wild lad,' he said, 'unless Maggie Thorne should wed him; yet because I loved him once, I have given him one chance, which, if any grain of grace is left in him, he cannot miss. If the remembrance of his old uncle shall induce him only to see my body put in earth, he shall still go shares with you, John, in what I have to leave.' "I think the old man meant me to give him warning, and I did so; but I was sorely tempted to be silent, not, Heaven knows that I coveted my brother's portion, but, because, if he was poor, that might have been an obstacle to his marriage —at all events, for the present, and I was already bent upon deferring, and, if possible, preventing it. Even yet, I swear, I never thought of substituting myself for him, but only of saving you from such a mate. It seemed so horrible that my uncle, who had such good cause to know how vile he was, should have thought of Richard only, not of you. He had no hopes of him, he had said, unless Maggie Thorne should become his wife. But what hopes, if that happened, thought I, could there be for Maggie Thorne! "You know on what sort of terms we brothers lived together here at Rosebank, and who it was that led the other a dog's life. Well, I bore all that. It was nothing, or next to nothing, compared with what I suffered when I thought of the life he would one day lead you. Never shall I forget the hour when I first found out-what was a well-worn jest with his gay companions-that he was faithless to you. That seemed to me-who was faithful to you without cause-a heinous crime and blasphemy. Not you yourself, had it come to your own ears, could have resented it with a greater indignation. I had long known that he was unworthy of you; that not one of your many virtues had any reflection in him ; but I had hitherto believed that at least your love for him was reciprocated. But now I felt how hard, indeed, it was that Richard, who could be happy with another, should become your husband, while I, who had no happiness save in you, should live my life alone. For the first time the thought of supplanting him was sown within me, and though I strove to tread it down, it grew and grew. It was not without a struggle even that I compelled myself to keep silence respecting your rival; the temptation to inform you, in some private manner, of Richard's infidelity-which I knew would cool your passion for him, and perhaps make you read him aright in other respects-was strong within me; yet I withstood it. I could no longer persuade myself that in making such a revelation I should be only actuated by the wish to save and serve you; I knew that 'self' would be my object, and I shrank from the baseness of building my future home upon the wreck of Richard's. A circumstance, however, now took place which dissipated all my scruples. Dennis Blake has doubtless told you of it: I allude to my brother's forgery of the thousand-pound bill. I redeemed it, I confess, with the vague intention of holding it over him in terrorem-of compelling him to leave the town and you; but when I found, from his own lips, that he had made you the innocent instrument of his crime, I swore to myself that you should never wed with such a villain. The letter which Richard left behind him was written at my dictation, and under the threat of immediate prosecution: he had no choice but to accept my terms. I gave him a hundred pounds-the last I had in the world—and he left Rosebank, promising that he would never return thither, or claim you for his wife. That very night, within two hours of his departure, he did return-to meet his death." A mist, not of tears, here fell on Maggie's eyes; her whole frame shook; a noise was in her ears of dreadful blows, and of cries that grew fainter and fainter. "Mamma, mamma! 'ook, 'ook!" little Willie was dragging at her skirts, and pointing to his favourite illustration that lay open on the carpet-"'ook at naughty man!" She looked mechanically, then turned away with a quick shudder it was Cain slaying Abel! : CHAPTER XXXVIII. HOW IT HAPPENED. "Do you still hear me, Maggie, or have I already said so much you cannot listen to more? Have patience with me, and hear all it is but fair; for though Richard be dead, I am dead also. Put yourself in my place, in that hour of triumph, when, as I thought, I had swept Richard from your path for ever; your path, I say, not mine, for it was your safety, and not the far-off possibility of my own success with you, that made me happy! He was gone! His power for evil over you was past! He could now never drag you down with the weight of his grossness and his vices! And it was I who had saved you! "It was four in the morning, yet I had not gone to bed, but was in the sitting-room, debating with myself what was to be done in the morning; how I should simulate ignorance of my brother's intention to leave home when I took his letter to your father's house, picturing to myself how you would receive the news-when I heard the front door open, and his uneven steps in the passage. I knew at once that he had seen Dennis Blake and learned all. My having cashed the forged bill was, in effect, an acknowledgment of its authenticity, and had placed Richard out of my power. It seemed to me, who guessed what Fate had in store for me, that the supreme misery of that moment in which I beheld you once again his slave-could never be surpassed. 'So, so, my model brother!' were his first mocking words, 'you are not |