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LONDON:

ROBSON AND SON, GREAT NORTHERN PRINTING WORKS,

PANCRAS ROAD, N. W.

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TEMPLE BAR.

M

APRIL 1865.

Sir Jasper's Tenant.

BY THE AUTHOR OF "LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET," &c. &c.

CHAPTER VIII.

AN UNWELCOME LETTER.

ARCIA DENISON sat in a comfortable little nook by the fireplace in the amber drawing-room, whose shrouded grandeurs had something of a ghastly look in the chill wintry light. Christmas was close at hand, and Marcia was employed in carrying out certain arrangements for the comfort of her poor, in conjunction with the curate of Scarsdale, a very simple-minded young man, and a devoted admirer of Miss Denison, whose serene presence was apt to affect him with a temporary paralysis of his intellectual faculties.

Yes, he was a very meek young man; with smooth flaxen hair, which no amount of manipulation from the hot tongs of the village barber could have tortured into curl; and mild blue eyes, whose gentleness of expression almost melted into a watery weakness, suggestive of cold in the head. He was not a happy young man, for he despised himself, and he adored Miss Denison; but he would have died any manner of death

from being hurled headlong from the topmost pinnacle of Roxborough Cathedral, to being torn piecemeal by half-a-dozen of the big draught-horses on Sir Jasper's home-farm-rather than have rendered up the secret of his idolatry; for Miss Denison was an heiress, and it was possible that his devoted love might have been confounded with the mercenary yearning of the fortune-hunter. So Mr. Winstanley Silbrook allowed concealment to feed upon his damask cheek, and only regretted that the agonies of his hidden passion did not consume the peachy and unromantic bloom of his beardless visage. He would like to have carried his sufferings on his brow, inscribed in unmistakable characters, which Marcia must have read every time she saw him, and which might in the end have inspired the placid love that grows out of pity-a sentiment which is as the weakest skim-milk when compared with the fire-water of a genuine unreasoning affection. There is no social law which forbids a man to carry what characters he pleases upon his brow; and the delicacy which prevented Mr. Silbrook revealing his

VOL. XIV.

B

passion in any form of words could not have hindered him from avowing it in every feature of his face. But unluckily he was not gifted with what is generally called a speaking face. He might have carried the secrets of an empire under that mild and meaningless mask, more inscrutable than the marble brow of a Napoleon, looming massively above unfathomable eyes. His heart had been slowly breaking for the last three months, and there were no outward tokens of the ruin within; unless, indeed, occasional pimples-with an obstinate tendency to gather on a forehead which, but for pimples, might have been Shakespearian, and apt to muster stealthily in the dead of the night, like a rising of Chartists on Kennington Common-might be taken as evidence of the inward struggle for ever going on behind that brow.

Mr. Silbrook was the most modest of men; but if he had a strong point, he felt that strong point was his brow. To-day he had brushed his smooth flaxen hair away from the bony prominences which phrenologists had mapped-out for him in the most flattering manner, and he presented a shiny expanse of forehead to Miss Denison's contemplative eyes. He was painfully nervous in the presence of his divinity, and it was a considerable relief to him this morning to find that Marcia was not alone. Dorothy Tursgood was seated before a little table at some distance from her mistress, ready to act as secretary, and swelling with the importance of her duty. The business was rather a long one; but the curate was unutterably happy, deliciously ill at ease, in a tumult of love and sheepishness, as he sat opposite to Miss Denison, with a list of names in his hand, and suggested the people who were to receive help, and the kind of help most required by them. If the list could have gone on and on, like the endless web in a paper-mill,-if he could have sat upon that hearth-rug for ever, with his shining forehead reflecting the glow of the fire, and incipient pimples basking in the ruddy blaze,how happy he might have been! But the clocks never stop, except in fairy-tales, where the princesses go to sleep for a century at a stretch, to wake, beautiful and smiling, when Prince Charming comes to claim them. The gray old boatman never lays down his oars: the "plishplash" goes on for ever,-even when our ears are beguiled by sweeter sounds into a fatal unconsciousness of that solemn measure. Winstanley Silbrook, sitting in the amber drawing-room at Scarsdale, forgot that he had any other duty than that of assisting Miss Denison in her benevolent arrangements; and even when the business was finished, he loitered still, very loath to dissolve the spell which bound him to that comfortable hearth.

"I have ordered luncheon for you in the dining-room, Mr. Silbrook," Marcia said, during the pause that succeeded the completion of the morning's business. "You know papa's habits; he takes nothing but a biscuit and a little wine-and-water between breakfast and dinner; so you will excuse his joining you. I am quite an old maid myself, and take a cup of tea at this time.”

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