"He has been leading me through the wilderness in His own way," continued Mr. Henry, scarcely above a whisper. "But for the dreadful trouble that fell upon me, I might not have found my road thus early: and then where should I have been now? The doctors think, you know, that under the most prosperous auspices I could not have lived to be thirty. Oh, Sir Simon, God sees and knows what we do not see, and He has been guiding me home." "You could be surrounded by so many more comforts at Pond Place," resumed Sir Simon, when he had overcome a troublesome cough. "But not with more love. I have everything I want, and see how my friends come round me. Not an instant am I left. Before one goes, another comes. Sometimes," he added, with a gay smile, "they arrive as if it were a levée, and we have to borrow Mother Butter's kitchen chairs. My mother and Mary are here nearly always; Dr. Brabazon and his daughter come, my pupil Rose comes, the masters come, the boys come, and you come, you know, Sir Simon. How could I be better off?" "I should have liked you to get well and live, that I might do something for you; set you up in a coach-and-four, or some little thing of that sort," contended Sir Simon, with an expression of face half cross, half piteous. Mr. Henry shook his head with a smile: coaches-and-four don't always bring happiness with them, or drive their owners on the best road to it. "Could any one have been more bountiful than you, Sir Simon? You have—" "Tush!" crossly interrupted Sir Simon. "Is it not my duty to do it, as Robert Trace cannot? 'Twould be a second fraud on my part if I didn't." The allusion was this. Sir Simon Orville had hastened to announce his intention of refunding to Mrs. Paradyne, and with interest, the three thousand pounds her husband had put into the Liverpool firm, and which had been lost in the vortex. Not only that: he avowed that George's future education and career should be his care. "Why did you not confide in me?" cried Sir Simon. "Why did you not tell me you were a Paradyne. I'd have helped you on." "Tell you, Sir Simon! It seemed to me always a species of fraud on my part to receive the many little favours you were ever wishing to show me." "The odd thing to me is, that you should have so fully put credence in your father's guilt," observed Sir Simon. "Knowing him as you did." A slight flush, as of remorse, shone in the fading cheeks. No opportunity had been given him of believing otherwise. His mother, so impressed with it herself, had succeeded in imparting her impressions to him, beyond possibility of doubt. "Where is Raymond Trace, Sir Simon?" he asked in a whisper. "I should so like to have seen him again. He said he would come, but he did not."