CHAPTER XIX.

TUTOR AND PUPIL.

As honour cannot heal a wound, though it may help us to get one, so determination cannot make soft the bed which it has compelled us to lie on. It can only enable us to endure hardness. Very bare and melancholy looked the old lodging-house in Gower Street to poor Nelly's eyes, when she re-entered it as her own mistress; lonely and full of bitter memories, though the rooms she had taken were not those which her mother and herself had tenanted of yore. Her bedroom looked now to the front, and the parlour, which was to be her studio, to the back, where a long strip of desolate garden ground ran out, and was terminated by a dead wall. Mrs. Hansel, the landlady, was indeed profuse in her welcome, and even didactic also it was a credit both to landlady and lady, she said, when a party' came back to their old quarters as in this case-but Nelly missed Mrs. Wardlaw's loving looks, and the kind and cheerful accents of her honest spouse. Upon the whole, she had not felt so miserable since her father's death; for at her mother's there were hopes for her still, though she had tried to persuade herself otherwise. But now there was no hope that a young girl could call such. The knowledge that she had given sorrow to two noble natures, as she believed those of Raymond and Mr. Milburn to be,

was no slight addition to her sense of woe, which was indeed

almost overwhelming.

There had been young and delicately nurtured women before her, doubtless, who in lonely London lodgings, friendless and almost moneyless, had been sustained by strong ambition and had lived to justify their aspirations. But she felt that hers was not one of those exceptional characters; she had no conviction of success, no consciousness of genius to support her. If these even fell short of their ideal, they attained to something; their art, their talent, at least procured them a due subsistence: but in Nelly's case to procure this had become her chief if not her highest aim, and if she fell short of it, she would fail miserably indeed. Her practice with her brush at Sandybeach had much disheartened her; she had observed the sketches of others, who themselves had made no particular mark in the world, to be much superior to her own; she could not do much better than even Mr. Milburn, who was but a desultory amateur, while that little sketch, slight as it was, from her father's hand, which she had become possessed of, was infinitely beyond her powers. Yet she had never heard him spoken of as having any especial skill as an artist. It was plain that her only chance was application and incessant work, and that very evening she despatched a line to Mr. Pearson to ask him to call upon her. If you are the same gentleman that I met at Sandybeach,' she wrote, it will be a happy chance for me indeed should you have a little time for teaching at your disposal.'

She received no reply the next day, nor the next, and almost in despair she took counsel of Mrs. Hansel as to what should be done.

6

Well, Janet shall step round with you and call upon the

gentleman, if you please, Miss; for you see you couldn't well go alone.'

Nelly had not seen this, having been deterred from that course by shyness rather than by any sense of impropriety, but she at once acknowledged to herself that the good woman was right. Suppose this Mr. Pearson should turn out to be a stranger, or indeed in any case, it would not have been becoming.

for

'But is your daughter well enough to walk so far?' said Nelly, poor Janet was an invalid, a little deaf, and somewhat lame. 'Oh yes, it will do her good to walk a little way, the doctors say: and the poor dear is so pleased when she can make herself useful. It is mostly but sitting work as she can do, and she can keep company with you, Miss, if you please-and do her needlework all the same-when your tutor comes.' Here was a difficulty (which had never occurred to Nelly) at once suggested and got over. At the same time it impressed her unpleasantly with a sense of her own ignorance of the world and her general incompetence. What mistakes might she not commit, what precautions might she not averlook! How difficult was the whole course of life before her, and how unskilled she was to navigate it!

That very afternoon Mr. Pearson called, and delighted indeed was she to find in him her Sandybeach preserver. Her pleasure, however, was damped at seeing him look so ill and worn.

'I have only just got your letter, my dear young lady,' said he kindly, or you may be sure you would have seen me earlier. I have been out of town on business.'

'I fear you have been working too hard, Mr. Pearson; it seems quite selfish in me to wish to add to your labours.'

Nay, drawing and painting never hurt me; I have had other

work on hand of a more harassing nature: but that is over now, at all events for the present. To teach you will be a great pleasure. How strange it is that we should meet again in this manner!'

'It is most fortunate for me,' said Nelly simply.

'I hope so, I trust so. Miss Conway, consider me your friend as much as your tutor. If I am saying too much, forgive me— but after what happened down at the seaside, it seems as if Fortune intended me to be of service to you.'

'It does indeed,' said Nelly gratefully.

There was something in this poor artist which inspired her with trust and confidence. He was so outspoken and so frank-on everything except his own troubles-that a less unsuspicious person than herself might have well believed in him.

When Janet came into the room, and dropped into a chair with her needlework in her hand, Mr. Pearson raised his eyebrows, then murmured, To be sure,' and sighed. Nelly was not the least afraid of him, but the sense of his eccentricity did not wear off by any means. It seemed to her that the expression of premature age in this poor man, his pre-occupation, strange looks and incoherent talk, were all the result of trouble. In his teaching-for she took her first lesson then and there he was very quiet and patient. In the middle of it, a letter came for her, which being marked immediate,' she asked leave to open: otherwise she would have postponed the reading of it till she was alone-for the handwriting was that of Raymond Pennicuick.

6

'You seem disturbed,' said Mr. Pearson gently. 'You have had no bad news, I hope?'

No: not exactly.'

'You said I might be your friend, Miss Conway,' continued her companion earnestly. If the matter is one in which I can be of any help, I need not say I am at your service.-Let me see the letter.'

He took it out of her unresisting hand. It was a great liberty, of course, yet she experienced no sense of resentment. There was something in his manner so genuinely kind and honest, that it was impossible to be offended with him. Moreover, she felt the need of advice and sympathy as she had never felt it before. She had not a friend on earth, as it happened, who could give her an opinion upon the matter in question, without bias or prejudice.

'Dearest Nelly,' ran the letter. My father hears from Sandy beach that you have left your friends, and come to live in London alone, in hopes to earn your own living. I make no remark on this, because you know beforehand how I must regard such a course of conduct, how my heart bleeds for you when I think of the loneliness you must at present feel, and of the hard things that must be in store for you. I hate myself, because I am at this moment in the midst of luxuries and comforts, and you are in your melancholy lodgings alone. However, I have no right, alas, to interfere in your arrangements. What I now write about is a communication that my father has received from Mr. Wardlaw. He urges upon him, now that he is in Parliament, that his first duty is to bring your poor father's case under the notice of the Government, in order that some sort of provision should be made for you. As you have refused all assistance, even from those whose greatest happiness it would be to serve you, it is possible that even the idea of a government pension may be disagreeable to you. But I venture to think that you are bound to consider other things than your own feelings in the matter. If I wished to be selfish, I might urge that your acquiescence in this plan would give my father an opportunity of publicly rebutting certain infamous though vague charges which have been recently made against him in the newspapers concerning his conduct at Dhulang: but I prefer to press upon you a less personal argument. I would remind you that various more or less distorted accounts have got abroad respecting the catastrophe that happened to Captain Conway; and that you owe it to his memory to have the matter placed in its true light. From all that I know or have heard of his character and