Robert Hunter sat in his chambers--as it is the fashion to call offices now. They were in a good position in Westminster, and he was well established; he had set up for himself, and was doing fairly--not yet making gold by shovelfuls, as engineers are reputed to have done of late years, but at least earning his bread and cheese, with every prospect that the gold was coming.

Plans were scattered on the desk at which he sat; some intricate calculations lay immediately before him. He regarded neither. His eyes were looking straight out at the opposite wall, a big chart of some district being there, but he saw it not; nothing but vacancy. Very unusual indeed was it for Robert Hunter the practical to allow his thoughts to stray away in the midst of his work, as they had done now.

During the past few months a change had come over his heart. It was of a different nature from that which, some two or three years before, after the death of his wife, had changed himself--changed, as it seemed, his whole nature, and made a man of him. Even now he could not bear to look back upon the idle, simple folly in which his days had been passed; the circumstances that had brought this folly home to his mind, opened his eyes to it, as it were, had no doubt caused him to acquire a very exaggerated view of it; but this did no harm to others, and worked good for himself.

With the death of his wife, Robert Hunter had, so to say, put aside the pleasant phase, the ideal view of life, and entered on the hard, the stern, the practical--as he thought for ever. He had not calculated well in this. He forgot that he was still a young and attractive man (though his being attractive or the contrary was not at all to the purpose); he forgot that neither the feelings nor the heart can grow old at will. It might have been very different had his heart received its death-blow; but it was nothing but his conscience; for he had not loved his wife. But of that he was unconscious until lately.

Love--real love--the sweet heart\'s dream that can never but once visit either man or woman, had come stealing over Robert Hunter. Never but once. What says a modern poet?

"Few hearts have never loved; but fewer still

Have felt a second passion. None a third.

The first was living fire; the next, a thrill;

The weary heart can never more be stirred:

Rely on it, the song has left the bird."

Truer words were rarely said or sung. The one only glimpse of Paradise vouchsafed to us on earth--a transitory glimpse at the best--cannot be repeated a second time. When it flies away it flies for ever.

Ah, how different it was, this love, that was making a heaven of Robert Hunter\'s life, from that which had been given to his poor dead wife--the child-wife, who had been so passionately attached to him! He understood her agony now--when she had believed him false to her; when he, her heart\'s idol, had apparently gone over to another\'s worship--he did not understand it then. When inclined to be very self-condemnatory, to bring his sins and mistakes palpably before him, he would ask himself, looking back, what satisfaction he had derived from my Lady Ellis\'s society, taking it at its best. A few soft glances; a daily repetition of some sweet words; a dozen kisses--they had not been more--snatched from her face; and some hand pressing when they met or parted. Literally this was all: there had been nothing, nothing more; and Mr. Hunter had not even the poor consolation of knowing now that any love whatever on his side, or hers, had entered into the matter from the beginning to the ending. It was for this his wife had died; it was for this he had laden his conscience with a weight that could never wholly leave it. He was not a heathen; and when, close upon the death, remorse had pressed sorely upon him, an intolerable burthen of sin grievous to be borne, he had, in very pity for his own miserable state, carried it where he had never before carried anything. Consolation came in time, a sense of mercy, of help, of pardon; but the recollection could never be blotted out, or the sense of too late repentance quit him.

He remembered still; he repented yet. Whenever the past occurred to him, it brought with it that terrible conviction--a debt of atonement owing to the dead, which can never be rendered--and Robert Hunter would feel the most humble man on the face of the earth. This sense of humiliation was no doubt good for him; it came upon him at odd times and seasons, even in the midst of the new passion that filled his heart.

"Shall I ever win her?" he was thinking to himself, seated at his for once neglected desk. "Nay, must I ever dare to tell her of my love? A flourishing engineer, with his name up in the world, and half a score important undertakings in progress, might be deemed a fitting match for her by her people at the Red Court; but what would they say to me? I am not to be called flourishing yet; my great works I must be content to wait for; they will come; I can foresee it; but before then some man with settlements and a rent-roll may have stepped in."

It was not a strictly comforting prospect certainly, put in this light; and Mr. Hunter gave an impatient twist to some papers. But he could not this morning settle down to work, and the meditations began again.

"I know she loves me; I can see it in every turn of her beautiful face, hear it in every tone of her voice. This evening I shall see her; this evening I shall see her! Oh, the----"

"Mr. Barty is here, sir."

The interruption came from a clerk; it served to recal his master to what he so rarely forgot, the business of every-day life. Mr. Barty was an eminent contractor, and Robert Hunter\'s hopes went up to fever-heat as he welcomed him. One great work entrusted to him from this great man, and the future might be all plain sailing.

He was not wholly disappointed. Mr. Barty had come to offer him business; or rather, to pave the way for it; for the offer was not positively entered on then, only the proposed work--a new line of rail--discussed. There was one drawback--it was a line abroad--and Robert Hunter did not much like this.

Mary Anne Thornycroft had not many friends in London; nearly all her holidays during the half-year had been passed at Mrs. Macpherson\'s. Susan Hunter invariably accompanied her; and what more natural than that Robert should (invited, or uninvited, as it might happen) drop in to meet his sister? There had lain the whole thing--the intercourse afforded by these rather frequent meetings--and nothing more need be said; they had fallen in love with one another.

Yes. The singular attraction each had seemed to possess for the other the first time they met, but increased with every subsequent interview. It had not needed many. Mary Anne Thornycroft, who had scarcely ever so much as read of the name of love, had lost her heart to this young man, the widower Robert Hunter, entirely and hopelessly. That he was--at any rate at present--no suitable match for her, she never so much as glanced twice at: the Thornycrofts were not wont to regard expediency when it interfered with inclination. Not a word had been spoken; not a hint given; but there is a language of the heart, and they had become versed in it. Clever Mrs. Macpherson, so keen-sighted generally in the affairs of men and women, never so much as gave a thought to what was passing under her very eyes; Miss Hunter, who had discernment too, was totally blind here. As to the professor, with his spectacled eyes up aloft in the sky or buried in the earth, it would have been far too much to suspect him of seeing it. A very delightful state of things for the lovers.

When Robert Hunter reached Mrs. Macpherson\'s that dark December evening, he saw nobody in the drawing-room. He had been invited to dinner; five o\'clock sharp, Mrs. Macpherson told him; for the professor had an engagement at six which would keep him out, and she did not intend that he should depart dinnerless.

This was Miss Thornycroft\'s farewell visit; in two days she was going home for Christmas, not again to return to school. She had invited Susan Hunter (who would remain at school until March), to come down during the holidays and spend a week at the Red Court Farm; and her brother was to accompany her.

It wanted a quarter to five when Mr. Hunter entered. The drawing-room was not lighted, and at first he thought no one was in it. The large fire had burnt down to red embers; as he stood before it, his head and shoulders reflected in the pier-glass, he (perhaps unconsciously) ran his hand through his hair--hair that was darker than it used to be; the once deep auburn had become a reddish-brown, and--and--some grey threads mingled with it.

"How vain you are!"

He started round at the sound--it was the voice he loved so well. Half buried in a lounging chair in the darkest corner was she. She came forward, laughing.

"I did not see you," he said, taking her hand "You are here alone!"

A conscious blush tinged her cheeks; she knew that she had stayed in the room to wait for him.

"They have gone somewhere, Susan and Mrs. Macpherson--to see a new cat of the professor\'s, I think. I have seen so many of those stuffed animals."

"When do you go down home?"

"The day after to-morrow. Susan has fixed the second week in January for her visit. Will that time suit you?"

"The time might suit," he replied, with a slight stress on the word "time," as if there were something else that might not. "Unless, indeed--"

"Unless what?"

"Unless I should have left England, I was going to say. An offer has been made me to-day--or rather, to speak more correctly, an intimation that an offer is about to be made me--of some work abroad. If I accept it, it will take me away for a couple of years."

She glanced up, and their eyes met. A yearning look of love, of dire tribulation at the news, shone momentarily in hers. Then they were bent on the carpet, and Mr. Hunter looked at the fire--the safest place just then.

"Are you obliged to accept it?" she inquired.

"Of course not. But it would be very much to my advantage. It would pave the way for--for----" He hesitated.

"For what?"

"Wealth and honours. I mean such honours (all might not call them so), as are open to one of my profession."

A whole array of sentences crowded into her mind--begging him not to go; what would the days be without the sunshine of his presence? They should be far enough apart as things were; he in London, she at home; but the other separation hinted at would be like all that was good in life dying out. This and a great deal more, lay in her thoughts; what she said, however, was cold and quiet enough.

"In the event of your remaining at home, then, the second week in January would suit you? It is Susan who has fixed it."

Not immediately did he reply. Since the first intimation of this visit to Coastdown, a feeling of repugnance to it had lain within him; an instinct, whenever he thought of it, warning him against accepting it. Ah! believe me, these instinctive warnings come to us. They occur oftener than we, in our carelessness, think for. Perhaps not one in ten of them is ever noticed, still less heeded; we go blindly on in disregard; and, when ill follows, scarcely ever remember that the warning voice, if attended to, would have saved us.

Just as Robert Hunter disregarded this. But for his visit, destined to take place at the time proposed, the great tragedy connected with the Red Court Farm had never taken place.

Stronger than ever was the deterring warning on him this evening. He said to himself that his repugnance lay in the dislike to be a guest in any house that Lady Ellis was connected with; never so much as thinking of any other cause. He fully assumed there would be no chance of meeting herself: he knew she lived in Cheltenham. Miss Thornycroft had once or twice casually mentioned her stepmother\'s name in his presence, but he had not pursued the topic; and the young lady did not know that they had ever met.

"You do not reply to me, Mr. Hunter. Would the time be inconvenient for you?"

"It is not that," he answered, speaking rather dreamily. "But--I am a stranger to your father: would he like me to intrude, uninvited by himself?"

"It would be a strange thing if I could not invite a dear school friend, as Susan is, down for a week, and you to accompany her," returned Miss Thornycroft, rather hotly. "You need not fear; papa is the most hospitable man living. They keep almost open house at home."

"You have brothers," returned Mr. Hunter, seeking for some further co............