THE PANELLED HOUSE. 135

I.
ESCOTT’S COUNSELLOR.

Come, come away, frail, feeble, fleshly wight :

Ne let vain words bewitch thy manly heart,

Ne divelish thoughts dismay thy constant spright :

In heavenly mercies hast thou not a part ?

Why shouldst thou then despair that chosen art ?

SPENSER.

We must return back a few weeks in order of time,
and take up the thread of the chronicle of the
second sister’s life.

Winny is nineteen now. She is perhaps hardly
as pretty as she was at sixteen: she is not only
slight now, but positively thin, and the pretty
bloom she used to have is not nearly so bright as
it was. Beauty which blossoms early often goes off
the first, more especially if the spirits exceed the
physical strength, as Winny’s did.

Nevertheless what her face has lost in bloom, it
has gained in expression. There is more in her
eyes now than mere lustre and brown velvet soft-
ness: there is more in the meaning of her mouth
than mere arch fun. Winny has come to know
something of life by this time: no one but herself
knows exactly in what way. Those who live with
her see but little difference in her: she is as full of
nonsense and chatter when she is excited, and the
tones of her voice are as gleeful as ever, so that
you would think that she had not a care in life.
But look at her when she is alone—and you would
see the eyes grow grave, the mouth lose its arch-
ness and fall into a tender curve something like
that of a mother watching her child: and she
would sit abstracted, a different Winny from the
gay little chatterbox who was the pet of Lyke.
You might guess with unfailing accuracy who was
the subject of Winny’s thoughts at these times.
It was Escott Armyn.

The half-childish compact she had made with
him three years ago had drifted her on—whither
may be easily guessed. She and Escott were not
engaged: there had never been any outspoken
declaration of love from him, or any acceptance of
it from her. Nevertheless they tacitly accepted
the fact, that they belonged to one another, and
would probably marry each other some day in the
far future. Winny could not imagine herself the
wife of any one but Escott, nor Escott the husband
of any one but her. She was a little bit of a flirt
still—an innocent flirt, it is true; getting into
serapes merely by dint of giving way to her natural
love of pleasing and making herself agreeable at
the moment ; but no image among all her friends
and admirers ever for one moment displaced Exscott’s,
which lay mirrored in the depth of her heart.

What could she see in him to take her fancy ?
Every one who knew them both would have asked
this in amazement, had they known how matters

stood with her. Escott was a favourite with no
one. His behaviour to his father was commented
upon with shakes of the head and elevation of the
eyebrows: it was decided among Lyke gossips
that he would never come to any good, and when
he was “ploughed for Mods” they all said, “I
told you so.” He was not particularly prepossessing
in his appearance either: to ordinary eyes he was
a tall, dark, heavy-faced young man, with an ill-
tempered mouth ; and the very idea of bright, sweet
little Winny Williams taking a fancy to him would
have been scouted as preposterous.

What did she see in him? I am inclined to think
that Winny was not so wrong as her aunts would
have thought her. She perceived and loved the
possible, not the actual Escott Armyn: she read
and believed in the dormant capabilities of good
which lay in his still perplexed and chaotic being.
She did not blind her eyes, as Nest in her place
might have done, to his actual faults: on the con-
trary, she saw them very clearly. But taking him
all in all, she loved him notwithstanding. Hers was
a protecting, motherly sort of love: not the love
which aspires and worships, but the love which
folds round and covers. It was a very unselfish
love. Winny would have sacrificed herself to
Escott any day, even if she had been assured of
her own future unhappiness, so long as she believed
that she could make him better and happier. I do
not think that even at this time she pictured the
future life which she believed that they were to
lead together as one of unclouded happiness: the
chief happiness she thought of was that of being
always at hand to soothe him in his ill-temper, or
comfort him in his fits of depression or passionate
repining. He said that a talk with her did more
to set him right than any thing else: and what
then would it be when she was always with him ?

Meanwhile, there was no denying that her in-
fluence had done much for Escott during these few
years. Considering his antecedents, and that he
lacked the spring of true principle in himself, he
had hitherto kept wonderfully free from scrapes in
his Oxford career. It was true that he had failed in
his Mods, and that that could be laid to no account
but his own idleness: but yet, his friends said, he
might have done it easily if he had not chosen to
take up the time in which he ought to have been
working for it with making a translation of Heine’s
songs. It was the old spirit of wilfulness, which
had led to so much unpleasantness between him
and his father—the very fact of being bidden to
do any thing made him immediately decide to do
the opposite. And though, no doubt, it was very
improving pastime to indite, while he thought of
Winny—

Thow’rt like unto a blossom,
So pure and sweet and fair ;

SS SS