"Mercy! Yes, mother, surely I showed
him more mercy than he deserved! I gave
six months' grace."

"Six months' grace. After five-and-
twenty years of procrastination, how short
those six months will seem to him!"

"And how long the five-and-twenty
years seemed to you! But I told him the
facts of the case plainly. The chance of
buying the business I have set my heart
on will remain open to me for yet half a
year longer. If by the end of that time I
have not given my answer, the chance will
be lost. He must repay the money he stole
by that time."

"Stole, Hugh! You did not use that
word to him?"

"No, mother, I did not use that word;
but I should have been justified in using
it."

"And how did he—did he seem? Was
he angry and defiant, or did he seem secure
of his power to pay the money?"

"He was greatly taken by surprise; but
he has great self-command. And he is so
clever and specious that I do not wonder at
his having imposed on you. He tried to
take a high hand with me, and reminded
me that he had been my father's friend.
'Yes; a false friend,' said I. Then he was
silent. I did not reproach him with violence.
I could not have brought myself to speak
even as harshly as I did, had he met me in
a different spirit."

"Do you think he will really have a
difficulty in repaying the money? I cannot
understand it. He must be rich. Every
one says that the firm is so prosperous."

"He recovered himself after a minute or
so, and began to expatiate on the brilliant
prospects of the speculations in which he
is engaged. He waxed eloquent at the
sound of his own voice; but I stopped him.
'Deeds, not words, are the only arguments
that I can accept from you, Mr. Frost,' said
I. 'You have not now got a woman and a
child to deal with. l am a man, and I shall
exact my own unflinchingly.' Before I left
he offered me his hand, but I could
not take it."

"You refused his hand? That must
have cut him to the quick. He is such a
proud man."

"So am I," retorted Hugh, dryly.

Zillah bent silently over her work. Hugh
did not see the tears that brimmed up into
her eyes. Hugh did not guess the sharp
pain that was in her heart. He had so fully
and freely forgiven whatever injury his
mother's weakness had occasioned to him:
he had such pity in his man's heart for the
unmerited sufferings that this frail, delicate,
defenceless woman had undergone from her
youth upward, that it never entered into his
mind how her sensitive conscience made her
attribute to herself a large share of the
contempt and disgust he expressed for Mr.
Frost.

"I am at least an accomplice in defrauding
my son of his inheritance!" said the
poor woman to herself. "Hugh does not
mean to be unkind; but he must feel that
all blame thrown upon Sidney Frost reflects
on me."

The next time Mrs. Lockwood spoke, it
was on an indifferent topic; and her son
was hurt that she should so resolutely, as
it seemed to him, shut him out from any
confidential communion with her.

There needed some link between them;
some one who, loving both, should enable
them to understand one another. Maud
might have done this good office. She
might have served them both with head
and heart. But Maud was not there, and
the days passed heavily in the widow's
house.

ART. TALKERS AND DOERS.

"WHAT a contrast between these grand
works by the old masters, with their glowing
colours and their mellow tones, and
the flimsy raw-looking productions of the
moderns which we are accustomed to see
on these walls! How is it that people can't
paint now-a-days? Is there some secret
for the mixing of colours, and the
preparation of pigments, which has been lost?
Are modern eyes less accurate and less
discerning than the eyes of old were? Or
is it that art has long since reached the
culminating point of perfection, and is now
in a state of hopeless decline: or, worse,
absolutely dead, and galvanised into a faint
show of life, which is no life?"

At the exhibition of pictures by old
masters, at the Royal Academy, this is the
tone of all sorts of people, connected—
unprofessionally for the most part—with the
art world. These cognoscenti give utterance
to sentiments expressive of the
sublimest contempt for all that is new in art,
and of the most fulsome and indiscriminate
worship of all that is old. And
these sentiments are put forth, be it
remarked, by the said connoisseurs—or
"knowers," as the word may be literally
rendered—with amazing comfort to themselves,