“Not to-night, Richard,” exclaimed Lady Lisgard with deep emotion. “Let not tonight, sacred to the memory of your common father, be a witness to your mutual accusations. In this room, almost at this very hour, but a few years back, he died, bequeathing you with his last breath to my tenderest care. Here it was that you kissed his white lips, weary with prayers for your future welfare; here it was that you promised, in return, to be good and dutiful sons. I know--I think, at least--that you both love your mother. No, I will kiss neither of you while thus unreconciled. That was not all that he required of you: he would have bidden you, could he have looked forward to this evil time, to love one another also; and O Richard! O Walter! hark to those bells, that seem to strive to beat their message into the most stubborn ears. Do you not hear what they say?--Letty, dear, do you tell them, then, for there are no lips better suited to deliver it.” The young girl lifted up her head from her mother's lap, to gaze into her eyes; then, with exquisite pathos and softness, repeated, like a silver peal of bells: “Peace and good-will, peace and good-will, peace and good-will to all mankind.” Sir Richard looked at his brother fixedly, but no longer in wrath. “It is my part to make the first advance,” said he, “although I was not the first to quarrel;” and he frankly stretched forth his hand. The other paused a second; then reading on his mother's anxious lips: “For _my_ sake, Walter,” he grasped his brother's fingers. There was grace in the very delay, as in the motion tenderness and genial ease, but scarcely the warmth of reconciliation. It was more like the action of a woman who wishes to please; and if you had seen the small hand apart from its owner, as it lay with its one glittering ring half hid in the other's huge white palm, you would have said it was a woman's hand. CHAPTER II. THE WAITS.