pain to behold than decided opposition, that resignation which has its foundation in pride, not in humility, as its possessors suppose.  Emmeline’s submission was none of these.  Her duties as daughter and sister and friend, as well as those to the neighbouring poor, were, if possible, more actively and perseveringly performed than they had even been before.  Not one of her former favourite employments was thrown aside.  The complete unselfishness of her nature was more clearly visible than ever, and was it strange that she became dearer than ever to those with whom she lived?  Her parents felt she was twining herself more and more around their hearts, and beheld, with inexpressible anguish, that though her young mind was so strong, her fragile frame was too weak to support the constant struggle.  She never complained; there was no outward failing of health, but there was a nameless something hovering round her, which even her doting parents could not define, but which they felt too forcibly to shake off; and notwithstanding every effort to expel the idea, that nameless something brought with it alarm—­alarm defined indeed too clearly; but of which even to each other they could not speak.

Time passed, and Herbert Hamilton, as the period of his ordination was rapidly approaching, lost many of those painfully foreboding feelings which for the last three years had so constantly and painfully assailed him.  He felt stronger in health than he had ever remembered to have done, and the spirit of cheerfulness, and hope, and joy breathing in the letters of his Mary affected him with the same unalloyed feelings of anticipated happiness; sensations of holiness, of chastened thanksgiving pervaded his every thought, the inward struggle appeared passed.  There was a calm upon his young spirit, so soothing and so blessed, that the future rose before him unsullied by a cloud; anticipation was so bright, it seemed a foretaste of that glorious heaven, the goal to which he and his Mary looked—­the home they sought together.

Percy had also obtained honourable distinction at Oxford; his active spirit would not have permitted him to remain quiet in college so long, had he not determined to see his brother ordained ere he commenced the grand tour, to which he looked with much zest, as the completion to his education, and render him, if he turned it to advantage, in all respects fitted to serve his country nobly in her senate, the point to which he had looked, from the first hour he was capable of thought, with an ardour which increased as that long-desired time approached.

The disgraceful expulsion of Cecil Grahame from Cambridge opened afresh that wound in his father’s heart which Annie had first inflicted, but which the conduct of Lilla had succeeded in soothing sufficiently to bid her hope it would in time be healed.  The ill-directed young man had squandered away the whole of his mother’s fortune, and behaved in a manner that rendered expulsion inevitable.  He chose to join the army, and, with a painfully foreboding heart, his father procured him a commission in a regiment bound for Ireland, hoping he would be exposed to fewer temptations there than did he remain in England.