"He is rather astounded, but he owns that the estate can bear it, for old Halliday had saved a great deal, and there will be more before Hector comes of age."

"And Hector?"

"Yes, we get him back. I am fellow-trustee with Captain Gordon, and as to personal guardianship, I fancy the captain found he could not make the boy happy, and thinks you no bad specimen of our training."

"Famous!" cried Harry. "Hector will hurrah now! Is that all?"

"Except legacies to Captain Gordon, and some Scottish relations. But poor Margaret ought to hear it. Ethel, don't be long in coming."

With all Ethel's reputation for bluntness, it was remarkable how her force of character made her always called for whenever there was the least dread of a scene.

She turned abruptly from Harry; and, going outside the window, tried to realise and comprehend the tidings, but all she could have time to discover was that Alan's memory was dearer to her than ever, and she was obliged to hasten upstairs.

Her father quitted the room by one door, as she entered by the other; she believed that it was to hide his emotion, but Margaret's fair wan face was beaming with the sweetest of congratulating smiles.

"I thought so," she said, as Ethel came in. "Dear Ethel, are you not glad?"

"I think I am," said Ethel, putting her hands to her brow.

"You think!" exclaimed Margaret, as if disappointed.

"I beg your pardon," said Ethel, with quivering lip. "Dear Margaret, I am glad--don't you believe I am, but somehow, it is harder to deal with joy than grief. It confuses one! Dear Alan--and then to have been set on it so long--to have prayed so for it, and to have it come in this way--by your--"

"Nay, Ethel, had he come home, it was his great wish to have done it.

He used to make projects when he was here, but he would not let me tell you, lest he should find duties at Maplewood--whereas this would have been his pleasure."

"Dear Alan!" repeated Ethel. "If you are so kind, so dear as to be glad, Margaret, I think I shall be so presently."

Margaret almost grudged the lack of the girlish outbreak of rejoicing which would once have forgotten everything in the ecstasy of the fulfilled vision. It did not seem to be what Alan had intended; he had figured to himself unmixed joy, and she wanted to see it, and something of the wayward impatience of weakness throbbed at her heart, as Ethel paced the room, and disappeared in her own curtained recess.

Presently she came back saying, "You are sure you are glad?"

"It would be strange if I were not," said Margaret. "See, Ethel, here are blessings springing up from what I used to think had served for nothing but to bring him pain and grief. I am so thankful that he could express his desire, and so grateful to dear Harry for bringing it to light. How much better it is than I ever thought it could be! He has been spared disappointment, and surely the good that he will have done will follow him."

"And you?" said Ethel sadly.

"I shall lie here and wait," said Margaret. "I shall see the plans, and hear all about it, and oh!"--her eyes lighted up--"perhaps some day, I may hear the bell."

Richard's tap interrupted them. "Had he heard?"

"I have." The deepened colour in his cheek betrayed how much he felt, as he cast an anxious glance towards Margaret--an inquiring one on Ethel.

"She is so pleased," was all Ethel could say.

"I thought she would be," said Richard, approaching. "Captain Gordon seemed quite vexed that no special token of remembrance was left to her."

Margaret smiled in a peculiar way. "If he only knew how glad I am there was not." And Ethel knew that the church was his token to Margaret, and that any "fading frail memorial" would have lessened the force of the signification.

Ethel could speak better to her brother than to her sister. "Oh, Richard! Richard! Richard!" she cried, and a most unusual thing with both, she flung her arms round his neck. "It is come at last! If it had not been for you, this would never have been. How little likely it seemed, that dirty day, when I talked wildly, and you checked me!"

"You had faith and perseverance," said Richard, "or--"

"You are right," said Margaret, as Ethel was about to disclaim. "It was Ethel's steadiness that brought it before Alan's mind. If she had yielded when we almost wished it, in the time of the distress about Mrs.

Green, I do believe that all would have died away!"

"I didn't keep steady--I was only crazy. You and Ritchie and Mr.

Wilmot--" said Ethel, half crying; then, as if unable to stay, she exclaimed with a sort of petulance, "And there's Harry playing all sorts of rigs with Aubrey! I shan't get any more sense out of him to-day!"

And away she rushed to the wayfaring dust of her life of labour, to find Aubrey and Daisy half-way up the tulip tree, and Harry mischievously unwilling to help them down again, assuring her that such news deserved a holiday, and that she was growing a worse tartar than Miss Winter. She had better let the poor children alone, put on her bonnet, and come with him to tell Mr. Wilmot.

Whereat Ethel was demurring, when Dr. May came forth, and declared he should take her himself.

Poor Mr. Wilmot laboured under a great burden of gratitude, which no one would receive from him. Dr. May and Ethel repudiated thanks almost with terror; and, when he tried them with the captain, he found very doubtful approval of the whole measure, so that Harry alone was a ready acceptant of a full meed of acknowledgments for his gallant extraction of the will.

No one was more obliged to him than Hector Ernescliffe, who wrote to Margaret that it would be very jolly to come home again, and that he was delighted that the captain could not hinder either that or Cocksmoor Church. "And as to Maplewood, I shall not hate it so much, if that happens which I hope will happen." Of which oracular sentence, Margaret could make nothing.

The house of May felt more at their ease when the uncongenial captain had departed, although he carried off Harry with him. There was the better opportunity for a tea-drinking consultation with Dr. Spencer and Mr. Wilmot, when Margaret lay on her sofa, looking better than for months past, and taking the keenest interest in every arrangement.

Dr. Spencer, whose bright eyes glittered at every mention of the subject, assumed that he was to be the architect, while Dr. May was assuring him that it was a maxim that no one unpaid could be trusted; and when he talked of beautiful German churches with pierced spires, declared that the building must not make too large a hole in the twenty thousand, at the expense of future curates, because Richard was the first.

"I'll be prudent, Dick," said Dr. Spencer. "Trust me not to rival the minster."

"We shall find work next for you there," said Mr. Wilmot.

"Ay, we shall have May out of his family packing-box before many years are over his head."

"Don't mention it," said Dr. May; "I know what I exposed myself to in bringing Wilmot here."

"Yes," said Dr. Spencer, "we shall put you in the van when we attack the Corporation pen."

"I shall hold by the good old cause. As if the galleries had not been there before you were born!"

"As if poor people had a right to sit in their own church!" said Ethel.

"Sit, you may well say," said Mr. Wilmot. "As if any one could do otherwise, with those ingenious traps for hindering kneeling."

"Well, well, I know the people must have room," said Dr. May, cutting short several further attacks which he saw impending.

"Yes, you would like to build another blue gallery, blocking up another window, and with Richard May and Christopher Tomkins, Churchwardens, on it, in orange-coloured letters--the Rivers' colours. No disrespect to your father, Miss May, but, as a general observation, it is a property of Town Councillors to be conservative only where they ought not."

"I brought you here to talk of building a church, not of pulling one to pieces."

Poor Dr. May, he knew it was inevitable and quite right, but his affectionate heart and spirit of perpetuity, which had an association connected with every marble cloud, green baize pew, and square-headed panel, anticipated tortures in the general sweep, for which his ecclesiastical taste and sense of propriety would not soon compensate.

Margaret spared his feelings by bringing the Cocksmoor subject back again; Dr. Spencer seemed to comprehend the ardour with which she pressed it on, as if it were very near her heart that there should be no delay. He said he could almost promise her that the first stone should be laid before the end of the summer, and she thanked him in her own warm sweet way, hoping that it would be while Hector and Harry were at home.

Harry soon returned, having gone through the court-martial with the utmost credit, been patronised by Captain Gordon in an unheard-of manner, asked to dine with the admiral, and promised to be quickly afloat again. Ere many days had passed, he was appointed to one of the finest vessels in the fleet, commanded by a captain to whom Captain Gordon had introduced him, and who "seemed to have taken a fancy to him," as he said. The Bucephalus, now the object of his pride, was refitting, and his sisters hoped to see a good deal of him before he should again sail. Besides, Flora would be at Ryde before the end of July.

It was singular that Ethel's vision should have been fulfilled simultaneously with Flora's having obtained a position so far beyond what could have been anticipated.