“Pray do not say any more,” said Colin, confused and blushing; “no house could be more--no house could be _so_ agreeable to me. You are all very kind. It was only my--my own--” What he was going to say is beyond the reach of discovery. He was interrupted by a simultaneous utterance from all the three persons present, of which Colin heard only the soft tones of Matty. “He does not mean it,” she said; “he only means to alarm us. I shall not say good-bye, nor farewell either. You shall have no good wishes if you _think_ of going away. False as a Campbell,” said the siren under her breath, with a look which overpowered Colin. He never was quite sure what words followed from the elder people; but even Lady Frankland became fervent when she recalled what Charley had been before the advent of the tutor. “What we should do with him now, if Mr. Campbell was to leave and the house full of people, I tremble to think,” said the alarmed mother. When Colin returned to the house it was with a slightly flattered sense of his own value and importance new to him--with a sense too that duty had fully acquitted and justified inclination, and that he could not at the present moment leave his post. This delicious unction he laid to his soul while it was still thrilling with the glance and with the words which Matty, in her alarm, had used to prevent her slave’s escape. Whatever happened, he could not, he would not, go; better to perish with such a hope, than to thrive without it; and, after all, there was no need for perishing, and next year Oxford might still be practicable. So Colin said to himself, as he made his simple toilette for the evening, with a face which was radiant with secret sunshine, “It was only my--my own--.” How had he intended to complete that sentence which the Franklands took out of his mouth? Was he going to say interest, advantage, peace? The unfinished words came to his mind involuntarily when he was alone. They kept flitting in and out, disturbing him with vague touches of uneasiness, asking to be completed. “My own--only my own,” Colin said to himself as he went downstairs. He was saying over the words softly as he came to a landing, upon which there was a great blank staircase-window reaching down to the floor, and darkly filled at this present moment with a grey waste of sky and tumbling clouds, with a wild wind visibly surging through the vacant atmosphere, and conveying almost to the eye in palpable vision the same demonstration of its presence as it did to the ear. “My own--only my own. I wonder what you mean; the words sound quite sentimental,” said Miss Matty, suddenly appearing at Colin’s side, with a light in her hand. The young man was moved strangely; he could not tell why. “I meant my own life, I believe,” he said with a sudden impulse, unawares; “only my own life,” and went down the next flight of stairs before the young lady, not knowing what he was about. When he came to himself, and stood