[Illustration: text decoration] CHAPTER II. _York._ I’ll not be by, the while; My Liege, farewell; What will ensue hereof, there’s none can tell; But by bad courses may be understood That these events can never fall out good. _King Richard the Second._ New Year’s day at last arrived, the time so anxiously waited for by Forsyth; a cold clear winter morning; and Mary, invited specially by her sister-in-law, leaves home to help--to help in some little preparations for the evening, was the reason or plea assigned by Mrs. James to secure Mary on that morning; and even Christian had nothing to object to a request so reasonable, though it must be said that Christian did not like her sister to be much among Mrs. James’s friends. Nor had Mary herself been wont to like it either, but the Mary of a year ago is not the Mary of to-day; she has not grown indifferent to Christian’s wishes; very far from that, Mary was perhaps more nervously anxious to please Christian than ever in all lesser things; she felt that a kind of atonement, a satisfaction to her conscience, for her encouragement of the one engrossing feeling of her heart, of which she dared not indeed seek Christian’s approval. For the thought that in this most important particular she was deceiving, or at least disingenuous to her dearest friend, concealing from her what it so concerned her to know, gave Mary, acting thus contrary to her nature, many a secret pang. But though this secret clouded her brow and disturbed her peace at home, she hid it in her own heart. Still how strange that Mary should be lightsome and happier with her brother’s wife, whose character was in every respect so inferior to her own, than with her gentle sister; yet so it was, and Mary’s heart beat quicker when she entered James’s house, and quicker still when she saw there was some other visitor before her. Who it was she needed not to ask, for Forsyth sprung to her side, as she entered the cheerful room, with low-voiced salutation, and a glance that brought the blush to her cheek, and caused her fair head to bend over the merry little boy that came running to her knee, and hailed her as “Aunt Mary.” “Call me uncle, James, that’s a good little fellow, call me Uncle Walter,” said Forsyth. Mary’s blush grew deeper; but James the younger was said to resemble Aunt Christian in many things, and in nothing more than in disliking Forsyth; and he was not to be conciliated, either with sugar-plum or toy, but remained steadfast in his childish instinct of dislike, so he said bluntly, “No,”--a bad omen this; but Forsyth was not to be discouraged, and Mrs. James, nettled a little by it, proceeded at once to open the campaign. Some new music was lying on the table, and she pointed to it. “See, Mary, here is a present from Mr. Forsyth,” she said, laughingly, “but there is a condition attached to it which depends on you for its fulfilment.”