the house was almost within a stone's-throw of bedford square; one of a good street. its drawing-room windows were thrown open to the fine evening twilight, and a lady sat at one of them in a musing attitude. she was very nice looking, with a clear healthy colour on her cheeks, and soft bright dark eyes that had a thought in them beyond her years, which may have been six or seven-and-twenty. the features were well-formed; the shapely mouth, its rather thin and decisive lips, and the pretty pointed chin, spoke of innate firmness. her hand, displaying its wedding-ring and keeper, was raised to support lightly her head, the slender fingers touching the smooth dark brown hair. she was perfectly still; not a movement betrayed that she heard or saw aught but her own thoughts; not a rustle stirred the folds of her soft silk dress, lying around her.

"shall i tell him, or not?" she murmured at length. "i have never had any concealment from him yet, nor he from me; but then i know it will pain and worry him. he has certainly changed a little: in the old days it seemed that anxiety could never touch him; that he would always throw it from him with a light word. heigho! i suppose it comes with the cares of life."

a moment's pause, during which she was again still as before, and then the soliloquy was resumed.

"i could keep it from him, if needs were: the postman gave me the letter as i was going out, and no one knows of its arrival. but still--i don't like to begin it; and he might feel vexed afterwards: for of course he must come to know of it sometime. oh dear! i never felt so irresolute before. they used to say at home i was so very downright. i wonder which would be right to do? if i were sure he----"

the room door was pushed open with a sudden whirl, and a little child came flying in with outstretched arms and a shouting, joyous laugh.

"mamma, mamma!"

"nelly!"

the arms were entwined together, the golden head with its shower of silken curls, nestled on the mother's bosom. oh, but she was of rare loveliness, this child; with the delicately fair features, the great blue eyes, the sunny hair, and ever-sunny temperament.

"now, nelly! you know you have been told over and over again not to be so boisterous. fancy a little lady, just five years old, coming in like that! it might have been a great rude dog."

another sweet, joyous laugh in answer, a host of kisses pressed by way of peace-offering on the gentle face, bent down in reproof more mock than real.

"nurse was running to catch me. she says it's bedtime." and, to confirm the assertion, the french clock on the mantlepiece at that moment told out eight.

"so it is. come and say goodnight to papa, nelly."

taking the child's hand she went out into what seemed a flood of light, after the gradually darkening room. the hall-lamp threw its rays upwards; on the gleaming silk of her pale blue dress, on the white fairy robes of the child, on the well-carpeted stairs. in the front room below, the tea stood ready by the evening fire: they went through to another room; and the mother spoke.

"nelly has come to wish papa goodnight."

seated at the table of this inner room was a gentleman writing fast by a shaded candle. he looked up with a sunny smile of welcome, and you saw the likeness then between the child and the father. the winning, beautiful features; the fair, bright complexion; the laughing blue eyes; the gay, happy temperament: all were the same.

it was james channing. sunny hamish, as he used to be called. he was but thirty; a tall, well-proportioned, but as yet very slender man; rising over six feet, altogether attractive, handsome to look upon. nelly, forgetting her lecture, flew into his arms with a shout and a laugh, as she had into those of her mother.

"and what may this young lady have been about that she has not come to see me before, this evening?" he asked.

"nurse kept her out rather late, hamish, for one thing, and i knew you were busy," came the answer; not from the child, but from mrs. channing.

"yes, i am very busy. i have not any minutes to give even to my darling nelly tonight," he fondly said, kissing the bright hair and the rosy lips. "nelly must go to bed and dream of papa instead."

"you'll have time when the ship comes home, papa," said the child.

"lots of time then."

"the ship is to be a book."

"ay."

"and it will bring great luck?"

"yes. please god."

the last words were murmured in a tone suddenly hushed to reverence; low and happy; hopeful with a great, glad, assured hope, cheering to listen to; a trusted hope that lighted up the whole countenance of the man with its radiance, and shone forth in beams from his blue eyes. but he said no more; not even to his wife and his little child could he speak of the sanguine joy that anticipation wrought within him.

with too many kisses to be counted, with good nights spoken yet and yet again, nelly was released and disappeared with her mother. the child had been trained well. there was some indulgence on the parents' side--perhaps that is indispensable, in the case of an only child--but there was neither trouble nor rebellion on hers. little nelly channing had been taught to obey good laws; and, to do so, came to her naturally.

mrs. channing took her upstairs and turned into her own dressing-room, as usual. she deemed it well that the child should say her prayers in solitude, and, always when practicable, in the same place. nelly sat down of her own accord by her mother, and was quite still and quiet while a very few easy verses from the bible were read to her; and then she knelt down to say her simple prayers at her mother's knee.

"god bless my darling little nelly, and make her a good girl!" said mrs. chaining, as she took her out and resigned her to the nurse.

"are you ready for tea, hamish?" she asked when she went downstairs again.

"quite. but, ellen, i think i shall have to trouble you to bring it to me tonight."

"are you so very busy?"

"ay. look here."

he pointed with his pen to some papers on the table. "those are proof sheets: and i must get this manuscript in tomorrow, or they will not insert it in the next month's number."

"hamish, i hope you are not doing too much," she gravely said. "i don't like this night-work."

he laughed gleefully. "too much! i only wish i had too much to do, ellen. never fear, dear."

"i wish you would teach me to correct the proofs."

"what an idea!"

"i shall teach myself, sir."

"it would be waste of time, young lady. i could not let anybody go over my proofs but myself."

"you vain fellow! i wonder if self-conceit is indigenous to you literary men? are they all as vain as hamish channing?"

he took up the pen-wiper and threw it at her. but somehow ellen was not in a mood for much jesting tonight. she put the pen-wiper--a rosette of red cloth--on the table again, and went and stood in silence with her hand on his shoulder. he turned his head.

"what is it, love?"

"hamish, i would bring in your tea willingly; you know it; but i think it would do you more good to leave this work, if only for five minutes. and i have something to say to you."

"very well. i can't come for a quarter of an hour. you are a regular martinet."

ellen channing left him and sat down in the other room to wait; and this will afford the opportunity for a word of explanation. amidst the very very many people in all classes of life, high and low, on whom a certain recent panic had wrought its disastrous effects, was hamish channing. the bank, of which he had been manager in helstonleigh, was drawn into the vortex by the failure of another bank, and went in its turn. honourable men had to do with it; they sacrificed their own property in the emergency, and not a creditor suffered; every one was paid in full. it could not be reorganized, and it left hamish without employment. his wife's father, mr. huntley, had been one of the principal shareholders, and on him had fallen the greater weight of the heavy loss. it fell, too, at a time when mr. huntley could not afford to sustain it. he possessed a large property in canada, but it had latterly begun to yield him little or no return. whether in consequence of local depreciation, or of mismanagement (or perhaps something worse) on the part of his agents there, he knew not, and he sent his son out to see. the young man (he was three or four years younger than mrs. channing, and quite inexperienced) seemed not to be able to grapple with the business; he wrote home most confused and perplexing accounts, of which mr. huntley could make nothing. at length that gentleman resolved to go out himself; and the letter we have heard mrs. channing alluding to today was from him. it was the second news they had received, the first having merely announced his safe arrival: and the accounts this last contained were so gloomy that ellen channing would fain have kept them from her husband.

it must be distinctly understood that the failure of the bank in helstonleigh was in no way connected with ill-management. had a quorum of the wisest business-men in the world been at its head, they could neither have foreseen its downfall nor averted it. therefore hamish channing came out of that, as he had out of every untoward thing all his life, untarnished in honour and in character. a small secretaryship was offered him in london, which he accepted; and he removed to the great city, with his wife and little daughter, his goods and chattels, there to set up his tent. a very small income had been settled on ellen when she married; the larger portion of her fortune was to accrue to her on her father's death. whether it would be much, or little, or any, under the altered state of affairs, it was impossible now to say.

but it was not on the secretaryship that hamish channing depended for fame and fortune. a higher and dearer hope was his. that hamish possessed in a high degree that rarest of all god's gifts, true genius, he had long known. writers of talent the world has had, and had in abundance, men and women; of real genius but few. perhaps, after all, the difference is not very distinguishable by the general mass of readers. but, to those who possess it, its characteristics are unmistakable. the divine light (is it too much to call it so?) that lies within them shines as a very beacon, pointing on to fame; to honour; above all, to appreciation: the knowledge that they are different from their fellow-mortals, of a higher and nobler and rarer order, and that the world will sometime recognize the fact and bow down in worship, is never absent from the consciousness of the inner heart.

but, with the gift, james channing also possessed its almost invariably accompanying attribute: a refined sensitiveness of feeling. and that is a quality not too well calculated to do battle with rude, every-day life. should the great hope within him ever meet with a stern, crushing disappointment, his inability to bear the shock would in all probability show itself in some very marked degree. no one but himself knew or suspected the extreme sensitiveness of his every feeling; it had been hidden hitherto under the nonchalant ease of manner, the sunny temper which made hamish channing's great charm. when the bank was broken up, and with it his home and his greater means of living, it was not felt by him as many another man would have felt it: for it seemed only to render more feasible the great aim of his life--the devoting himself to literature. years ago he had begun to write: and the efforts were first efforts, somewhat crude, as all first efforts, whether given to the world or not, must of necessity be, but they bore unmistakably the stamp of genius. his appointment to the bank and his marriage interrupted his writing; and his genius and pen had alike lain dormant for some six years. his wife's father, mr. huntley, had procured his later appointment to the london secretaryship, and hamish did not venture to decline it and devote himself wholly to literature, as he would have liked to do. the pay, though small, was sure; ellen's income was smaller still, and they must live; so he accepted it. his duties there occupied him from nine to four: and all his available time beyond that, early and late, was devoted to writing. the day's employment was regarded as but a temporary clog, to be given up as soon as he found his income from literature would justify it. to accomplish this desirable end, he was doing a great deal more than was good for him and taking too little rest. in point of fact, he had, you see, two occupations, each one of which would have been sufficient for an industrious man. what of that? hamish never so much as cast a thought to it.

oh, with what a zest had he re-commenced the writing, laid aside for so long! it was like returning to some glad haven of rest. joy filled his whole being. the past six years had been heavy with suppressed yearning; the yearning to be about the work for which he knew god had pm-eminently fitted him: but his duties had been onerous, his time nearly fully taken up; and when he would have snatched some moments from night for the dearer work, his wife and his anxious friends had risen up in arms against it, for he was not over-strong, and some delicacy of constitution was preached about. besides, as mr. huntley said, a writing manager might alarm the bank's patronizers. but he had it all his own way now, and made good profit of his writings. papers on social questions of the day, essays, stories, were in turn written, and taken by different periodicals. they had to be written, apart from other hopes and views, for the style in which they lived required additional means to support it, beyond his salary and his wife's money. it was not much style, after all, no extravagance; three maidservants, and little company; but everybody knows how money seems to melt in london.

he had been at this work now for a year. and his wife was beginning to grow anxious, for she knew he was doing too much, and told him he was wearing himself out. if he could but resign the secretaryship! was ever in her secret hopes and thoughts just as much as his; and she wished her father could get his canadian affairs well settled, so as to allow the necessary addition to her income. hamish laughed at this. he was living in a glad dream of future fame and fortune: that it would inevitably come, he felt as sure of as though it lay at hand now, ready to be picked up. he was writing a long work; a work of three volumes; and this was the precious gem on which all his hopes and love and visions were centred. the periodical writing had to be done, for its returns were needed; but every spare moment, apart from that, was devoted to the book. a light of gladness beamed from his eyes; a joy, sweet as the chords of some soothing melody, lay ever on his spirit. oh, what is there of bliss and love in the world that can compare with this! and it is known to so few; so few: by all else it can never be so much as imagined. do not mistake it, you who read, for the pleasurable anticipation of a man or woman who may from chance causes have "taken up" the profession of literature, and look for the good, substantial and otherwise, that it is to bring. the two are wholly different; the one is born of heaven, the other of earth. but that man must live, hamish channing amidst the rest, the thought of money being one of the returns, would be distasteful; never, as i honestly believe, accepted as such without a blush: the dross of earth mingling with the spiritualized, exalted, pure joy of eden. it is well that this same gift of genius with its dear pleasures and its attendant after-pains--for they come--should be vouchsafed to a unit amidst tens of thousands!

mrs. channing sat waiting for him; the tea standing before her, herself thoughtful. the room was of good size and handsomely furnished, its chairs and curtains of rich purple cloth. their furniture had been a present from mr. huntley when they married, who was not one to do things niggardly. as mrs. channing sat, facing the inner door, the windows were behind her; the fireplace, with its ornaments and its large chimney-glass on her left; a piano on one side it, a white marble-topped cabinet with purple silk lining to its glass-doors on the other; and on her right, stood the sideboard, and other furniture. the inner room, used exclusively by hamish for writing, had horsehair chairs, and a bookcase running all along the side of the wall.

the door opened, and hamish came in. he had a small bundle in his hand; proof sheets done up for the post, and sent them out at once by the maid, as he sat down to tea. which he seemed inclined to swallow at a gulp, and to eat his piece of bread-and-butter wholesale, ever anxious to get back to his labour and the glowing visions of promise connected with it.

"hamish, i do believe you like your writing better than you like me!" ellen said to him one day almost passionately. and for answer, mr. hamish in his sauciness had said he was not sure but he did.

he sat there at tea, now, talking gaily as usual. his wife interrupted him, telling of the letter she had received, and its unfavourable news. he listened with his sunny smile.

"i had great mind not to tell you at all, hamish," she confessed. "papa's temperament is nearly as sanguine as yours; and if he writes in poor spirits, saying he fears it may turn out that he is a ruined man, i know things must be very bad."

"but why have hesitated to tell me, ellen?"

"to save you anxiety. don't you see what it implies? if papa loses his property, the fortune that would have been mine sometime will be lost too."

had she been speaking of the probable loss of some mere trifle, he could scarcely have heard it with more equanimity. it seemed to hamish that the future was, according to human foresight, in his own hands.

"never mind, ellen, we have a resource that cannot be lost. i will take care of you, heaven aiding me; you shall have every needful and substantial good in abundance."

"yes, that is just it. you work too much already: you would work more then."

hamish laughed. "do you know what i wish, ellen? i wish the day were four-and-twenty hours long instead of twelve, and that i had two sets of brains and hands."

"how are you getting on?"

"oh, so well. it is all right, my darling. and will be."

they were interrupted by a visitor--mr. roland yorke. there had been a casual meeting once or twice, but this was the first time he had been there. they invited him to come; but roland had the grace to be ashamed of a certain escapade of his in the days gone by, which brought disgrace for the time being on arthur channing, and he had rather held back from appearing. this he partially confessed.

"it would have been so different, you know, hamish, had i returned with a few millions from port natal, and gone home to atone to arthur in the face and eyes of all the town, and done honour to him for what he is, the best man living, and heaped a fortune upon him. but i have not been able to do that. i'd rather rush off again to port natal and its troubles, than i'd go within miles of helstonleigh."

"and so, to mend it, you thought you would keep miles away from me," said hamish, with his glad smile of welcome. "i think there's only one person in the world would be more glad to see you than i, and that's arthur himself."

"i know. i know what a good fellow you always were. but i hadn't the face to come, you see. it was annabel made me now."

suddenly shaking both their hands in the heartiest manner, with a grip that brought pain to mrs. channing, who wore rings, roland fell to at the tea. hamish, remembering his appetite of old, rang the bell for some good things to be brought in; and roland was speedily in the midst of the most comfortable enjoyment, mentally and bodily. he gave them his own confidence without the least reserve, both as to present and past; gravely telling everything, including the nearly embraced hot-pie scheme of commerce, which made hamish hold his sides, and the having met gerald at mrs. bede greatorex's party.

"i rather expect gerald here this evening," remarked hamish.

"do you?" said roland, his mouth full of savoury pie. "he won't be too pleased to see me; he means to cut me, i'm nearly sure. do you see much of him, hamish?"

hamish explained that he did. they were both in the literary line; and gerald had some good engagements as a reviewer.

"where's his wife?" asked roland. "yes, please, mrs. channing, another cup; plenty of milk and sugar.

"in the country; somewhere in gloucestershire. gerald is not too communicative on that score."

"don't you think, hamish, he must have been a great duffer to go and marry before he knew how he could keep a wife?"

hamish raised his eyebrows with the good-natured indifferent manner that roland so well remembered in the days gone by; but answer made he none. where hamish channing could not praise, he would not blame. even by his immediate relatives gerald's imprudent marriage was tacitly ignored, and the lady augusta yorke had threatened to box roland's ears in ireland, when he persisted in asking about it.

"i always knew gerald would not go into the church," remarked roland. "i wouldn't; they say tod threatened to run off to sea if they talked to him of it: somehow we boys have a prejudice against following my father's calling. i'll tell you a secret, hamish: if a fellow wants to be made, to have his nonsense knocked out of him, he must go to port natal. do you remember the morning you saw me decamping off for london on my way to it?"

"don't i," said hamish, his lips parting with merriment at the remembrance. "there was commotion that day at helstonleigh, roland; in galloway's office especially."

"and dear old arthur buried his wrongs and went to the rescue; and poor dying jenkins got out of his bed to help. he was nothing but a calf, poor fellow, a reed in mrs. j.'s hands, but he was good as gold. i say, she's altered."

"is she?"

roland nodded. "the going to port natal made me, hamish," he resumed; and hamish was slightly surprised at the serious tone. "i should have been one of the idlest of the family batch but for the lesson i got read to me there. i went out to make my fortune; instead of making it, i had to battle with ill-fate, and ill-fate won the day. they call it names of course; a mistaken enterprise, a miserable failure; but it was just the best thing that could have happened for me. i was proud, stuck-up ignoramus; i should have depended on carrick, or anybody else, to get my living for me; but i mean now to earn it for myself."

when hamish went to his work later, leaving ellen to entertain their guest, roland followed him with his eyes.

there was a change in hamish channing, apparent to one even as unobservant as roland. the face was thinner than of yore; its refined features were paler; they looked etherealized, as it seemed to roland. the sweet-natured temperament was there still, but some of its once gay lightness had given place to thought. the very frequent mocking tone had been nearly entirely laid aside for one of loving considerateness to all.

"what are you looking at?" questioned ellen, struck with roland's fixed gaze and unusual seriousness.

"at him. he is so changed."

"older, do you mean?"

"law bless you, no. of course he is older by more than seven years; but he is very young-looking still; he does not look so old as i do, and i am two years his junior. i used to think hamish channing the handsomest fellow living, but he was nothing then to what he is now. i hope you won't consider it's wrong of me to say it, mrs. channing, but there's something in his face now that makes one think of heaven."

"mr. yorke!"

"there! i knew what it would be. mr. ollivera flies out at me when i say wrong things. other people don't say them. it must have been that port natal. i thought i was dead once, over there," added roland, passing on to another topic with his usual abruptness.

ellen smiled; she had spoken in surprise only. roland yorke, who had brought his chair round to the fire, sat opposite to her, his elbow on his knee, his head bent forward.

"i don't mean that it makes one think he is going to heaven--going to die before his time; you need not be afraid, mrs. channing. it was not that kind of thought at all; only that the angels and people about, up there, must have just such faces as hamish's; good, and pure, and beautiful; and just the same sweet expression, and the same loving-kindness in the tone of voice."

roland stopped and pulled at his dark whiskers. mrs. channing began to think he had also changed for the better.

"many a one, remembering the past, would have just turned their backs upon me, mrs. channing. instead of that, he is as glad to see me, and makes me as cordially welcome as if i were a lord, or a prize pig sent him at christmas. what did i nearly die of? you ask. well, of fever; but i got all sorts of horrid torments. i had the eye-epidemic; it's caused by the dust, and i thought i was going blind. then i had what they call natal sores, a kind of boil; then i nearly had a sun-stroke; the heat's something awful, you know. and i got the ticks everlastingly."

"do you mean the tic-douloureux?"

"law bless you! a port natal tick is an insect. it sits on the top of the grass waiting for you to pass by and darts into your legs; and no earthly thing will get it off again, except tugging at it with tweezers. they have no wings or mouth, nothing but a pair of lancets and a kind of pipe for a body, covered with spikes. oh, they are nice things. when i set up that store for leeches and candles and pickled pork, i used to go and get the leeches myself, to save buying; lots of them grow in the rivulets round about; but i would bring home a vast many more ticks than leeches, and that didn't pay, you know. where's the little thing?"

"nelly? she has gone to bed."

"she is the prettiest child i ever saw."

"she is just like her papa," said mrs. channing, whose cheeks were flushing softly with pardonable love and pride at the praise of her child.

"so she is. when will his book be out?"

"ah, i don't know. he is getting on quickly, he tells me. i think he is a ready writer."

"i suppose most men of genius are that," remarked roland. "he does not talk much about it, does he?"

"not at all. a very little to me. these wonderful hopes and dreams that lie down deep within us, and go to make up the concealed inner life of our dearest feelings, cannot be spoken of to the world. i have none," she added, slightly laughing; "i am more practical."

"hamish is so hopeful! it is his temperament."

"hopeful!" repeated mrs. channing; "indeed he is: like nothing i ever saw. you have heard of day-dreams, mr. yorke; well, this book is his day-dream. he works at it late and early, almost night and day. i tell him sometimes he must be wearing himself out."

"one never does really wear out from work, mrs. channing. i used to think i was wearing out at old galloway's; but i didn't know what work was until i got to natal. i learnt it then."

"did you sit up to work at night at port natal?"

"only when i had not got a bed to go to," answered candid roland. "mine was not that kind of work, sitting up to burn the midnight oil; it lay in knocking about."

"that's quite different."

"what puzzles me more than anything is, that gerald should have turned author," resumed roland. "henry ollivera was talking about genius at our place the other day. why, according to what he described it to be, gerald yorke must have about as much genius as a walking gander."

ellen laughed. "hamish says gerald has no real genius," she said. "but he has a good deal of talent. he is what may be called a dashing writer."

"well, i don't know," disputed roland, who was hard of belief in these alleged qualities of his brother. "i remember in the old days at home, when gerald was at the college-school, he couldn't be got to write a letter. if lady augusta wanted him to write a letter to carrick, or to george out in india, she would have to din at him for six months. he hated it like poison."

"that may have been idleness."

"oh, we all went in for that," acknowledged roland. "i should have been a very lazy beggar to the end of time but for the emigration to port natal."