The delight with which Hilary looked forward to the arrival of her brother, was a stimulus to every power of her mind; and the ecstasy with which she threw her arms around the tall, slight, graceful youth on his presenting himself, seemed at the moment a compensation for all past anxiety and wrong. Maurice was returned to her, and returned with the same loving smile, and dancing eyes, and cheerful voice which had dwelt in her memory for so large a portion of her life; he was the same! could she be thankful enough for this blessing, not only for her own, but still more for her father’s sake? How delighted she was to watch her father’s eye brighten, and his voice assume a more lively tone, as Maurice laughed and talked, questioned and commented, with the gayety of youth at home and happy. For Maurice was always happy; his boyhood had been all joy and sunshine, so far as he could remember; his school-life had been cheerful and pleasant; and his ship! oh, that had been the happiest on the station; the captain the most considerate, the first lieutenant the best fellow in the world, and all his messmates, great and small, appeared to deserve the same character; and now, though for a short time, the blank in their home was felt and mourned by him, and he looked grave when he saw the empty chair and the disused work-table placed back in a corner: yet his joyous spirit soon rose again, and with so many blessings left, so much still unchanged, he said and felt it would be ungrateful to repine that one had been taken. So, when, in company of Hilary, he had visited the spot where his step-mother was buried, and talked with his sister of her last hours, and heard what they had since discovered from her written papers, that she had been warned by a physician some months before, that, in all human probability, her days were numbered, and that she would not survive her next confinement, and when they had recounted her kindness and her virtues, and shed tears together at the memory of past times, and made a solemn engagement to return her affection for them as children, if possible, in double care and attention to the interests of her daughters, Maurice turned his thoughts to other objects, and endeavored to show his reverence for the dead by his consideration for the living. Cheerfulness was what was needed in his dear old home; cheerfulness to restore the tone of his father’s spirits, to cheer Sybil, to excite Gwyneth, and, above all, to aid and comfort and sustain his darling Hilary.