Chapter 5 CONFESSING HIS LOVE.

NORSTON'S REST" was now in a state of comparative quiet. The throng of visitors that had made the place so brilliant had departed, and, for the first time in months, Sir Noel could enjoy the company of his son with a feeling of restfulness; for now the discipline of school and college lay behind the young man, and he was ready to begin life in earnest.

After travelling a while on the continent he had entered upon the dignity of heir-ship with all the pomp and splendor of a great ovation, into which he had brought so much of kindly memory and generous purpose that his popularity almost rivalled the love and homage with which his father was regarded.

Sir Noel was a proud man-so proud that the keenest critic must have failed to discover one trace of the arrogant self-assumption that so many persons are ready to display as a proof of superiority. With Sir Noel this feeling was a delicate permeation of his whole being, natural to it as the blue blood that flowed in his veins, and as little thought of. Profound self-respect rendered encroachment on the reserve of another simply impossible. During the stay of his son at "The Rest" one fond hope had possessed the baronet, and that grew out of his intense love of two human beings that were dearest to him on earth-the young heir and Lady Rose Hubert.

It could not be asserted that ambition led to this wish; though the lady's rank was of the highest, and she was the inheritor of estates that made her a match even for the heir of "Norston's Rest." The baronet in the isolation of his long widowerhood had found in this fair girl all that he could have desired in a daughter of his own. Her delicacy of bloom and beauty appealed to his ?sthetic taste. Her gayety and the spirituelle sadness into which it sometimes merged gave his home life a delightful variety. He could not think of her leaving "The Rest" without a pang such as noble-hearted fathers feel when they give away their daughters at the altar. To Sir Noel, Lady Rose was the brightest and most perfect being on earth, and the great desire of his heart was that she should become his daughter in fact, as she already was in his affections.

Filled with this hope he had watched with some anxiety for the influence this young lady's loveliness might produce upon his son, without in any way intruding his wishes into the investigation; for, with regard to the perfect freedom which every heart should have to choose a companionship of love for itself, this old patrician was peculiarly sensitive. Having in his own early years suffered, as few men ever had, by the uprooting of one great hope, he was peculiarly anxious that no such abiding calamity should fall on the only son and heir of his house, but he was not the less interested in the choice that son might make when the hour of decision came. With all his liberality of sentiment it had never entered the thoughts of the baronet that a man of his race could choose ignobly, or look beneath the rank in which he was born. To him perfect liberty of choice was limited, by education and family traditions, to a selection among the highest and the best in his own proud sphere of life. Thus it became possible that his sentiments, uttered under this unexplained limitation, might be honestly misunderstood.

Some months had passed since the young heir had taken up his home at "The Rest"-pleasant months to the baronet, who had looked forward to this period with the longing affection which centred everything of love and pride on this one human being that man can feel for man. At first it had been enough of happiness that his son was there, honored, content-with an unclouded and brilliant future before him-but human wishes are limitless, and the strong desire that the young man should anchor his heart where his own wishes lay grew into a pleasant belief. How could it be otherwise, when two beings so richly endowed were brought into the close companionship of a common home?

One day, when the father and son chanced to be alone in the grand old library, where Sir Noel spent so much of his time, the conversation seemed naturally to turn upon some future arrangements regarding the estate.

"It has been a pleasant burden to me so far," said the old gentleman, "because every day made the lands a richer inheritance for you and your children; but now I am only waiting for one event to place the heaviest responsibility on your young shoulders."

"You mean," said the young man, flushing a little, "that you would impose two burdens upon me at once-a vast estate and some lady to preside over the old house."

The baronet smiled, and answered with a faint motion of the head.

Then the young man answered, laughingly:

"There is plenty of time for that. I have everything to learn before so great a trust should be given me. As for the house, no one could preside there better than the Lady Rose."

The baronet's face brightened.

"No," he said, "we could hardly expect that. In all England it would be difficult to find a creature so lovely and so well fitted to the position."

Sir Noel faltered as he concluded this sentence. He had not intended to connect the idea of this lady so broadly with his wishes. To his refined nature it seemed as if her dignity had been sacrificed.

"She is, indeed, a marvel of beauty and goodness," answered the young man, apparently unmindful of the words that had disturbed his father. "I for one am in no haste to disturb her reign at 'Norston's Rest'."

Sir Noel was about to say: "But it might be made perpetual," but the sensitive delicacy natural to the man checked the thought before it formed itself into speech.

"Still it is in youth that the best foundations for domestic happiness are laid. I look upon it as a great misfortune when circumstances forbid a man to follow the first and freshest impulses of his heart-"

Here the baronet broke off, and a deep unconscious sigh completed the sentence.

Young Hurst looked at his father with awakened interest. The expression of sadness that came over those finely-cut features made him thoughtful. He remembered that Sir Noel had entered life a younger son, and that he had not left the army to take possession of his title and estates until after mid-age. He could only guess at the romance of success or disappointment that might have gone before; but even that awoke new sympathy in the young man's heart for his father.

"I can hardly think that there is any time of life for which a man has power to lay down for himself certain rules of action," he said. "To say that any man will or will not marry at any given period is to suppose him capable of great control over his own best feelings."

"You are right," answered Sir Noel, with more feeling than he usually exhibited. "The time for a man to marry is when he is certainly in love."

"And the person?" questioned the young man, with a strange expression of earnestness in his manner.

"Ah! The person that he does love."

Sir Noel, thinking of his ward, was not surprised to see a flood of crimson rush over the young man's face, nor offended when he arose abruptly and left the library.

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