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rew a sigh, saying, 'It is very good in you.'
'I knew you would see it in the right light,' replied Felix.
'Oh!' but the sigh recurred. 'I can't help being sorry, you know.'
'There is nothing to be sorry for,' he said gratefully. 'I was disappointed at first myself; but for sheer usefulness to one's neighbour, I believe that this present position, if I have sense to make use of it rightly, is as good as any; and the mere desire of station and promotion is--when one comes to look at it properly-- nonsense after all.'
She opened her eyes in amazement, and made a little exclamation.
'They may be well when they come,' said Felix in answer: 'but I have thought it over well to-night, and I see that to do anything doubtfully right for their sake would be a risk for all that I have no right to run.'
Alice hung her head, overcome by the pure air of the region where he was lifting her; and in a sort of shyness at the serious tone in which he had spoken, he added, smiling,
'Then you'll forgive the "sound of it."'
'O Mr. Underwood,' she said, in the simplest and most earnest voice that Cherry had ever heard from her, 'I'm ashamed to recollect that nonsense!'
CHAPTER XIV
WHAT IT MAY LEAD TO
'I never was so berhymed since I was an Irish rat, which I can scarcely remember.'--As You Like It.
'Dim memories haunt the child, Of lives in other beings led-- Other, and yet the same.' KEBLE.
In the autumn Alda made a visit at home. She had, as usual, gone with Mr. and Mrs. Underwood to their German baths, and had there fallen in with a merry set of her intimates in London, who had persuaded her to join them in an expedition to the Tyrol, which lasted till the end of September. On her return, she was dropped at Bexley, where her sisters were greatly edified by her sketch-book, a perfect journal in clever scenes and groups, like the 'Voyage en zig-zag.' Two of the gentlemen seemed always in waiting on the graceful outline that d