The Two Sides of the Shield

en path enjoying the contrast with the heat, glare, and noise of the day. The central one was a tall, slender lady, with a light shawl hung round her s

coming!' th

e has answered my

uld be very much obli

when you made me a sign not to go on asking questions before the little ones. And yo

warned, and perhaps it is best that you should know ho

the higher regions, but I think that was more from he

nce you were only six ye

here I never saw him or his wife in the holidays except once, when I believe she wa

ady?' cried Gillian. 'Aunt Emily

he same by Aunt Em

t she wasn't a lady; and Aunt Jane that she

hatter so, how is mamma t

e all been hard on

has done it, jus

poor who got kil

n't say poor when

at I was thinking of her death as of her having come into a family whe

to do very well withou

now?' cried Gillian,

om all I ever heard of her, I should think she was, a

pretension that exasperated them all at

t!' said Gillian. 'I suppose she

en had to go to the bar. It somehow always gave him a thwarted, injured feeling of working against the grain, and he cultivated all these scientific pursuits to the utmost, getting more and more into opinions and society that distressed grandpapa and Uncle William. So he fell in with Mr. Hay, a professor at a German university. I can hear William's tone of utter contempt and disgust. I believe this poor man was exceedingly learned, and had made some remarkable discoveries, but he was very poor, and lived in lodgings at Bonn with his daughter in the small way people are content to do in G

re at the Cape, wa

e was much excuse. Maurice had learnt that the old professor was dying, and his daughter had nothing, and w

ry kind and noble in h

h. Claude did his best to close the breach, but there had been something to forgive on both sides, and perhaps SHE was prouder than the Mohuns themselves. Oh! my dears, I hope you

e quite out

nd when I wrote to him and to his wife, I only received stiff, formal answers. They were abroad when we were in London on coming home, and they would not come to see us at Belfast, so that I could never make acq

ins. I have been trying to remember Dolores on that dreadful Sunday at the hotel, when Uncle Maurice came to see us, just when papa was setting off for Bombay, but it all seems confusion. I

she was thankful,

as you would be done by. It might have worried her then perhaps, but it would have made it easier for her

e happy with such a number to play wit

all merry enough as children and young people, there always seems to have been a lack of something fostering and repressing. There was a kind of desolateness in our life, though we did not understand it at th

very full, as the perception swept over them in one flash what their lives would

id Gillian presently. 'It seems as if

ds supplying her with a real home, wandering

is as bad as Peter Grievous! How

ncy your Aunt Jane told me she was called at home. I hope Wilfred will n

illian; 'but Wilfre

d to the verge of distraction yesterday bec

xed his ears!'

o him well,' sai

than any one else can be. Wilfred is the only one of you all who ever seemed

ot quite certain to be nice

he mother. 'If we show him our anxiety to shield her

al, 'and if she is any way rationa

sh he could go to s

nother year, and I can only hope that as he grows stronger, he may become more manly. Meantime w

e qua

n, or we shall not have fi

nvenience of daily governess, tutor, and masters. She herself had grown up on the old system which made education depend more on the family than on the governess, and she preferred honestly the company and training of her children to going into society in her husband's absence. Therefore she arranged her habits with a view to being constantly with them, and though exchanging calls, and occasionally accept

the five-year-old baby of the establishment-sufficient reasons to detain Lady Merrifield in England after more than twenty years of travels as a soldier's wife, so that scarcely three of her children had the same birthplace. She had been able to see very little of her English relations, being

ent abode, the whole family had stayed there for three months. Her brother Maurice, however, she had scarcely seen, and she had been much pained at being included in his persistent avoidance of the whole family, who felt that he resented their displeasure at his marriage even more s