I

“ ‘In this treatise,’ ” read Professor Thurstane, laying down his pen and taking up his manuscript, “ ‘I desire to present the philosopher, not as a man destitute of emotion or passion, but as one having both under such perfect control that he can say to this or that emotion or passion “go,” and it goeth, or “come,” and it cometh.’ Yes, I think that will do for a beginning.” He broke off abruptly, exclaiming, “Confound it, who’s that?” as a timid rap sounded at his door.

The Professor looked sharply round to see if his bolt were drawn. “Who’s there?” he thundered again, upon which a thin, quavering voice, that one could vow belonged to an elderly spinster, replied:

“Cousin John, something particular; I can’t shout it through the keyhole.”

“Let it alone then.”

“But I must, if you don’t open your door.”

“Shout it then, and be done with it.”

A long pause ensued, as if the owner of the timid knuckles couldn’t quite make up her mind what to do. Then just as the Professor was beginning to congratulate himself that he might get back to his work, the lady’s voice was heard again:

“It’s really serious, or I wouldn’t disturb you. Nellie has been skating all the afternoon on the pond with Piers, and it’s getting dark”⁠—here a pause for breath⁠—“and I’ve sent for her, and she won’t come in”⁠—another pause for breath⁠—“and I’ve been out to her; but as soon as she sees me on one side of the pond, she skates round to the other, and I can’t catch her.”

No answer from the Professor, but a low chuckling sound as if he were laughing.

“Cousin John, what am I to do?” pursued the lady.

“Nothing.”

“But it’s getting dark.”

“Let it get dark.”

“I’ve always done my duty in the house⁠—”

“Confound it!” shouted the Professor, “will you go away and leave me in peace? This is the hundred-and-fiftieth interruption I’ve had today, and⁠—”

But the lady didn’t hear the conclusion of the sentence. With the Professor’s voice raised to that pitch, her only terror was lest he might open his door, so she fled precipitately.

Now this Professor was by no means a typical specimen of “the poor and learned fraternity.” He was one of those unlucky individuals, who, between two stools, had fallen to the ground. Nature had intended him for a bookworm, fate had decreed that he should be a country gentleman. At a comparatively early age he had attained to the dignity of a professorship at his university; he had scarcely, so to speak, seated himself in the professorial chair, when, through the death of his elder brother, the paternal acres and the family mansion fell to his lot, and from henceforward the Professor lived out two lives in snatches. By fits and starts he was the Professor, by fits and starts the country gentleman. Inclination and fate seemed ever at cross purposes with him, inclination was forever sending him behind the iron bolt of his study door, fate was forever dragging him out of that study. First an orphan nephew⁠—Piers⁠—was thrown on his hands; he was no sooner started in life and promising to do well for himself as a barrister, than an orphan niece⁠—Nellie⁠—came upon the scene. This was a more serious responsibility still, for the young lady was not only a remarkably pretty girl, but an heiress into the bargain.

The Professor did his best to throw the half of his responsibilities on someone else’s shoulders. He invited an elderly spinster cousin to take up her abode in the house as Nellie’s chaperon, and at the same moment laid a quiet little plot on his own account to make up a match between Piers and Nellie with as little delay as possible. This desirable event, it seemed to him, would at one and the same moment relieve him of the anxiety of two youthful careers, and restore to him the possibility of a quiet life.

With this end in view Piers was invited to the house as often as possible, and the young people allowed to see as much as they liked of each other; a course of proceeding which sometimes greatly scandalised the spinster cousin, who had been so well looked after up to the age of thirty-five, that her matrimonial chances had suffered, and who now at fifty-five years of age was beginning to think her hope of a wedding-ring a forlorn one.

“The simpleton,” said the Professor to himself, as he once more dipped his pen into his ink, “I gave her a hint yesterday not to be in such a hurry to light the lamps in the drawing-room.” He turned to his manuscript once more. “Yes, I think there’s a nice ring about that can say to this or that emotion ‘go,’ and it goeth⁠—heavens and earth! another interruption! That’s Piers’ knuckles; I should know them among a thousand.”

He rose slowly from his chair, and laid his hand upon his big bolt.

“Now,” he soliloquised, “to what emotion shall I be giving admittance if I draw back this bolt? Well, I may say to any I please, since it is the philosopher’s prerogative to command his emotions as a captain commands his soldiers. Well, now, the emotion I will summon for this interview will be calmness⁠—icy, impenetrable calmness. Nothing shall induce me to lose my temper, no matter how he may try it. Confound it! what are you in such a hurry for?” This was added in a loud, irritable tone, as the raps increased in peremptoriness. “Well, now you are let in, what do you want?” This was asked as, the bolt drawn back, he stood face to face with his nephew.

The Professor was short and stout, with bushy eyebrows and bald head; the young man who faced him was dark, thin-featured, and tall; decidedly good-looking, but also as decidedly his good-looking face had a cloud of annoyance upon it.

“Well, I don’t know that I’ve very much to say, except that I think of returning to town tonight, and⁠—”

The Professor’s face grew crimson. “Going!” he repeated, “what on earth do you mean? Does Nellie know?”

“Nellie knows, and Nellie doesn’t care twopence-halfpenny whether I go or stay.”

The Professor began to storm. “If she doesn’t care twopence-halfpenny the fault is yours,” he said. “I’ve given you every opportunity⁠—”

Piers laid his hand on his uncle’s arm. “Stop,” he said, “don’t let there be any mistake. I’ve been only too glad to make use of every opportunity you’ve given me, and this afternoon, as we came back from the ice, I asked her to marry me.”

“And she said?”

“She said that she couldn’t make up her mind whether she would or she wouldn’t.”

“And you said?”

“I told her that the mere fact of her answering in that fashion showed that she had made up her mind; that this wasn’t the answer a girl would give to a man if she really cared for him.”

The Professor threw up his hands, and turned up his eyes. “Of all the pieces of folly,” he began, “to take such an answer as final! Why, you’ll no sooner be out of the house than she’ll want you back again.”

“Will she? I very much doubt it.”

“A pretty girl, and twenty thousand pounds,” ejaculated the Professor, and again he threw up his hands and eyes.

“Two very good things apart,” interrupted Piers; “but conjoined not so nice, especially if the girl gives herself airs on the strength of her twenty thousand pounds.”

“Confound it, let me speak, will you!” but another rap at the door interrupted him now, and without waiting for permission the door opened, and Nellie came in.

She was small and slight, with large violet eyes, and such coils and masses of dark hair wound about her head that it seemed as if it must be almost too much for the small head to carry. Her face, usually pale, was flushed with exercise and the keen, frosty air. She was dressed in a seal fur from head to foot, and dangled her pretty seal cap on one finger.

“I’ve come to announce visitors,” she said, addressing her uncle. But the Professor scarcely seemed to hear her, his thoughts were full of his grievance.

“Piers is going,” he exclaimed, still at fever heat, “going⁠—going⁠—going⁠—do you understand?”

“Is he?” was Nellie’s calm rejoinder. For a moment she turned to Piers: “Oh, if you must go today, you’d better go into the drawing-room at once, and see the visitors. They are cousins, and are most anxious to see you, for they say that your father and their father were great chums.”

Piers, glad to escape from Nellie’s presence, left the room immediately.

The Professor’s attention was caught now. “More relatives,” he groaned, “I didn’t know I had another in the world save and except the Spanish Harleys.”

“The very same,” said Nellie. “It is they who are downstairs. I met them on the doorstep as I came in. They own to the names of Beatrix and Guy.”

“Beatrix and Guy! Bless my soul! Are they going to throw themselves on my hands, because I’m the head of the family? They went to Granada fifteen years ago with their father and mother⁠—the mother was in a consumption and their father turned wine-grower⁠—for the sake of the climate. Both died, I remember. Ah, time passes!” He gave a sigh to the memory of the days gone by. Then a sudden terror seized him. “What are they like, Nellie? Tell me quickly.”

“Oh, Guy is very, very handsome, tall, fair, and very distinguished-looking, a lovely moustache, and⁠—”

“Confound his moustache! What is she like, that’s what I want to know?”

“Oh, I suppose some people would call her handsome, but she is not in the least the style I admire. She is very tall, and dressed very fashionably, the loveliest furs⁠—”

“Confound her furs! Does she look⁠—look⁠—lively, and⁠—and active, and⁠—and⁠—”

“I should think she was very lively, yes, and active too; for, although I only stayed five minutes in the room with them, she told me she could never keep still for long together, she must always be doing something for somebody.”

“That’s it,” cried the Professor, excitedly. “That’s Beatrix to the backbone. When I last saw her she was a handsome tomboy of fifteen or sixteen, and I have a vivid recollection of her climbing the old yew-tree, and dropping my Plato into the thrush’s nest. Then, when I fetched a ladder for I was never good at climbing⁠—and had got well into the upper branches, she made off with the ladder, and left me shouting and whistling to the gardeners the entire afternoon.” His eyes wandered anxiously towards his beloved volumes, as if he felt them already to be in danger. “But she shan’t come in here; no, I vow she shan’t! Tell her I’m ill with the measles, gout, scarlet-fever, anything, only keep her away from me!”

“I fancy they’ve come to stay a day or two,” put in Nellie, a little mischievously.

“Stay! I vow they shan’t! Take my message, do you hear? To think I should be worried in this way when I might be committing to paper my immortal thoughts! Where’s Lavinia?” he demanded. “She’ll take my messages ever so much better than you.”

“As I passed a window just now,” said Nellie, demurely, “I saw a figure swathed in thick shawls like a mummy, going towards the pond. It might have been Cousin Lavinia going to look for me. I dare say she’ll be back in half an hour.”

But at that very moment the door was pushed open, and the figure “swathed in thick shawls like a mummy” entered. It was, as Nellie supposed, Cousin Lavinia, and her features showed sharp and pinched with the cold, and her breath seemed all gone.

“I’ve been running⁠—running everywhere⁠—” she began.

The Professor turned sharply upon her.

“Now you two are going to begin, I suppose. I won’t have it; no, I tell you I’ll have no wrangling here. Is this my study, or is it not, I ask you? Will you oblige me by going downstairs to continue your discussion?” he said, almost at white heat now, and throwing back his door to expedite their departure.

They were no sooner on the doormat than the door was shut behind them, and the bolt sent into its socket with a pronounced clang.

“Heavens and earth,” they could hear him groan, “what it is to be the head of the family!”

Nellie and Cousin Lavinia looked at each other.

“There are visitors below,” said the latter. “I wanted to ask him whether I was to invite them to stay. Christmas is just at hand, and⁠—”

“Oh, ask them by all means!” said Nellie, giving a mischievous look at the closed door, and with a vivid picture of the handsome Guy still in her mind’s eye. “I should tell them, if I were you, that Uncle John will be delighted if they’ll spend ten days or a fortnight with us.”

II

“I don’t admire her in the least, Mattie; she’s not at all my style,” said Nellie, addressing her pretty little maid, with whom, like most girls brought up without companions of their own age, she was on very confidential terms.

It was the evening of the day on which the newly-found cousins had arrived, and Nellie, as she dressed for dinner, was speaking her mind freely about them.

“I only saw her for a minute, Miss Nellie,” said Mattie, “and I thought she had on a lovely travelling-dress and hat.”

“Oh, I dare say she knows how to dress; although I think her hat was much too young for a woman of her age,” said Nellie, a little spitefully. “From what Uncle John said, she must be over thirty. Fancy a woman on the wrong side of thirty wearing a hat at all! I’m quite certain on the very day I’m twenty-nine⁠—especially if I’m an old maid⁠—I shall begin to wear prim all-round-the-face bonnets, tied with big ribbon bows under my chin.”

It may be mentioned in passing that Piers and Beatrix had seemed to get on remarkably well together during the short period of afternoon tea, and that Piers, at the request of the latter, had consented to put off his return to town.

“Your father was so good to my father at one time, when he was in great trouble, that I have always felt I should like to know you,” Beatrix had said, frankly, as she thanked him for his ready compliance with her wish.

Hair-brushing went on for a moment or two in silence. Then Mattie, who loved to make Nellie talk, in order to secure scraps of news to retail in the servants’ hall, began again.

“The gentleman isn’t thirty, Miss Nellie, is he?” she asked. “I met him as he crossed the gallery, on his way to his room, just now. I did think him handsome!”

“Thirty! no, not five-and-twenty. Handsome, I should think he was,” she added, enthusiastically. “Such eyes! I dare say he’s a trifle conceited. I caught him looking at himself in the glass, once or twice, and more than once or twice he seemed to be admiring his white hands and delicate fingernails. I wonder how many girls are in love with him!”

Then, as if to change the subject, she suddenly turned round, and faced Mattie with the question:

“How is Dick? Have you seen him this morning?”

Pretty Mattie flushed to the roots of her hair. “Only for five minutes, Miss Nellie; he was exercising the horses round the paddock, and⁠—”

“Ah, it’s lucky for you our grounds join the Squire’s, or you wouldn’t see him half so often. Has Dick had any more offers of marriage, lately?”

“None, Miss Nellie, since the one I told you of, from that horrid widow at the livery stables. She’s forty-five, if she’s a day, Miss Nellie.”

“Ah! and that’s the third offer that young man has had! I think, Mattie, you’re a lucky girl. I’d give anything to have a lover that every other woman in creation wanted to marry.” She paused a moment, and then added, in a quieter tone, “Now, Mattie, tell me honestly, could you fancy any woman, old or young, falling desperately⁠—mind, I say desperately⁠—in love with my cousin Piers?”

“He’s a little grave and dignified, Miss Nellie,” began Mattie, stammering a little over her reply. “But⁠—but I’m sure he’s devoted to you.”

“Oh, yes, I dare say he is, and that’s possibly why” She broke off abruptly. “I want a little extra jewellery tonight; my carbuncle and diamond set will do. I want to look particularly⁠—ah! who is that?” For at that moment, Beatrix’s voice was heard at the door, asking if she might come in, and before Nellie could say yea or nay, she had turned the handle, and stood upon the threshold.

Nellie was right, when she said that Beatrix Harley knew how to dress; but she was undoubtedly wrong, if she imagined that in her dress, costly and tasteful, though it might be, lay her chief attraction. Dressed in fustian, or in velvet, Beatrix would still have been a charming woman; charming by reason of her vivacity and grace of manner, as much as by reason of her personal appearance. In figure, she was tall and stately, and owned to the brightest of brown hair and eyes, and a delicate complexion. Vivacity, and love of fun, were perhaps more than anything else impressed upon her features; one had only to look at her, to be sure that the account she had given of herself was a true one, and that she must be always moving and doing, “going in for something or other,” as she so often phrased it, or life would have been an impossibility to her.

If Nellie had spoken out all the truth in her confidences with Mattie, she would have said, “Somehow, beside her I feel myself small and insignificant, indifferently dressed, and lacking in manner; and that’s why I’m not prepared to be very cordial with her.”

The feeling deepened in Nellie’s mind as Beatrix, after a moment’s critical survey of Nellie’s toilet, said, in a caressing tone:

“What a sweet little blossom she will be in a year or two!”

Nellie tossed her head, and began, hurriedly, to put on as much jewellery as her small hands, arms, and throat could reasonably carry.

Beatrix clasped her fifth bracelet for her. “Finished now, aren’t you?” she said. “Now, Nellie, I want you to show me Cousin John’s door; I’m going to rouse him out of his lair, in other words, make him take me down to dinner tonight.”

“Oh, impossible!” cried Nellie. “Not to be thought of! If he doesn’t come down we never dare disturb him. Oh, you don’t know the state of mind he’s in today.”

“State of mind!” repeated Beatrix, arching her brows.

“I mean,” corrected Nellie, “the state of mind he would be in if he were disturbed. Oh, if you only knew how much better it is for him to be locked in.”

Beatrix laughed. “My dear, he wouldn’t believe I was in the house if I didn’t make my presence felt.”

“Oh, you’ve no idea how he’ll storm.”

“Then he must be taught not to storm,” laughed Beatrix. “It was always good fun teaching Cousin John. Come along, Nellie, show me his door. To think”⁠—this was said half to herself⁠—“that, after fifteen years’ absence from England, Cousin John shouldn’t be one of the first to give me a welcome!”

After his stormy interviews with his young relatives, the Professor had found it a little difficult to get into vein for his work again. It was a rule of the house, that if he did not appear at the dinner-table he was on no account to be disturbed; so he confidently counted on a good five or six hours’ work before bedtime came round. The first of those hours he spent in mending his pen and muttering over and over again to himself the opening words of his treatise on “Philosophy as an aid to the control of the emotions.” The second was passed in collecting certain references in Plato and Aristotle, which he had marked for quotation. It was not till the third of those hours was halfway through that he found his thoughts flowing easily from the nib of his pen once more; and lo, just as he was beginning to feel that after all he would have something to show for his day’s work, soft and low there came another rap at his door, and a voice, which had not fallen upon his ear for over fifteen years, was heard, saying, “Cousin John, may I come in?”

The Professor changed to all sorts of colours; he glanced at his bolt, and then began to write away harder than ever. “He’s pretending not to hear,” whispered Beatrix to Nellie. “We’ll rap in turns, my knuckles are getting sore,” and slowly and steadily the raps increased in strength and rapidity.

Between the pauses of their rappings they could, by listening closely, hear the Professor’s pen scratching away hard and fast.

“I wonder if he has tied his pocket-handkerchief over his ears,” said Beatrix. “I remember at one time he had a trick of doing that when he didn’t want to hear outside noises. Give up rapping, dear, and let us sing; he won’t be able to shut that out.”

“Sing!” cried Nellie. “What on earth can we sing that’ll charm the bolt back?”

“Do you know the air of ‘Sweet Jenny Jones’? Well, sing these words to it:

How charming is divine philosophy,
Not harsh and crabbed as some dull fools suppose.

You take soprano, I’ll sing seconds.”

“The words won’t go, something wrong with the syllables,” Nellie whispered back.

“Make them go. Put in an Albani-like trill when you’re short of a syllable,” said Beatrix.

And then together they suddenly broke into the oddly-joined words and melody.

The Professor gave a groan and dropped his pen.

“It’s more than flesh and blood can bear,” he exclaimed. “She is evidently as active as ever. Yes, I must open the door a crack to get rid of her. Coming, coming!” he shouted, for the voices of the singers seemed gradually to be reaching a high pitch. “But she shan’t come in here; and no power on earth shall get me downstairs to be engulfed in all sorts of distractions when I might be coining golden thoughts for all ages!”

But he did both the things against which he vowed so strenuously, and that in the easiest and most natural way in the world.

Directly the door opened a crack and the Professor peeped out, Beatrix gave it a little push with her foot which laid the room bare to view.

“You dear old John! You haven’t altered a bit,” she exclaimed, linking her arm in his. “I knew you would open your door directly you realised who we were outside. Oh, what a comfortable study you have! Now why should you trouble to come downstairs and dine with us? Let us come up and dine with you instead. Tell the servants to wheel that big table into the middle of the room, and let them clear that writing-table for a sideboard, and the thing’s done!”

The Professor went downstairs arm-in-arm with her at once.

III

It was the last day of the old year, and, there could be no denying the fact, Nellie was in a very bad temper indeed.

The self-invited guests had now been a fortnight in the house, and during that fortnight, to Nellie’s fancy, Beatrix had turned things generally upside down. She had taken entire possession of the Professor, and had altogether made a new creature of him. It was funny to see her driving him in the little pony-cart into the village, or anywhere else she chose to go, and entertaining him meanwhile with light talk as if he were an ordinary beef-eating individual instead of one who had walked in converse with the Muses from his earliest years. It was funnier still to see him at the close of such drives and talks walking calmly up to his study and saying a pleasant word to anyone who chanced to be near before shutting himself in, instead of, as of yore, rushing frantically up the stairs as if he were being pursued by ten thousand fiends, and informing the household generally, as he clanged to his door, that he was “The sport of fate, and that his relatives, one and all, were thorns in his side and scourges to his flesh.”

All this might be very well, Nellie admitted; but what was not so well was the change which had come over Piers during this fortnight. As long as he and she had known each other he had been her devoted slave; and, let her snub him as she would, he rarely broke into rebellion, or if, in a brief moment of anger, he had packed up his portmanteau and departed, it had always been to return in a day or so more humble and submissive than ever. But now things were reversed with a vengeance. Morning, noon, and night found him in Beatrix’s society, and for the whole of this fortnight he had not said one civil thing to her. On Christmas morning he had even forgotten to wish her a happy Christmas; and when, later on in the day, a quiet dinner to elderly neighbours had been followed by elderly games of whist, he had persistently chosen Beatrix for his partner, and had let Nellie fall to the lot of anyone who chose to take her.

Piers’s seemingly eccentric conduct, however, admitted of a very simple explanation. Beatrix, at a glance, had seen the state of affairs between him and Nellie, and characteristically had set herself to arrange matters properly for the young people.

“You are too devoted! Take my word for it,” she had said to Piers, “I know more about girls than you do. ‘Keep her at arm’s length, and you may beckon her with your finger,’ says one of our Spanish proverbs, and if you act upon it you will find Nellie as tame and tractable as a dove. How are you to begin? Oh, it’s easy enough; just transfer your devotion from Nellie to me, in other words carry on an outrageous flirtation with me from morning till night, and the thing is done. By the way, just to set your mind at rest, I may tell you that when I leave here I am going straight to London to marry a man to whom I’ve been engaged for the past ten years. Now, we’ll begin at once; we’ll invariably converse in the lowest of tones, and, directly Nellie comes near us, we’ll stop talking in the very middle of a sentence.”

But it was not only Piers’s and Nellie’s future, that Beatrix set herself to arrange, she boldly attacked the Professor as to what he would do when the two were married.

“To all appearance,” said the Professor grimly, “that desirable event is not likely to take place.”

“Oh, yes, it is; and forewarned is forearmed. Are you going to advertise for a housekeeper, and be generally preyed upon by some greedy creature, intent on pocketing five pounds out of every twenty you give her? Or are you going to ask that dear little old maid, who manages your house so well, to marry you; she only loses her temper where Nellie is concerned; and, consequently, when Nellie is out of the house, she will have no excuse for so doing.”

The Professor started aghast, and fled hurriedly. But, all the same, Beatrix noticed that, from that time forward, he treated Cousin Lavinia with a studied attention, which seemed to imply that she had suddenly grown to occupy a more important position in his mind.

And a casual remark to Cousin Lavinia sent the worthy little spinster’s thoughts running in the same direction.

“I’ve done my duty in the house whatever comes of it all, I vow I have!” she exclaimed one morning, as she watched the exasperating Nellie at the hall-door, allowing Guy to hold her hand in his, and fasten every one of the nineteen buttons her glove owned to.

“Well, and when Nellie is married, I suppose you will continue to do your duty in the house, and not allow Cousin John to marry his cook, or advertise for a housekeeper?” said Beatrix.

“What do you mean?” cried Cousin Lavinia, blushing like a girl in her teens. But though she didn’t wait for Beatrix’s answer, she subsequently broke out into uncommonly smart cap-ribbons, and wonderfully-embroidered neckties.

Beatrix treated Guy’s and Nellie’s flirtation very nonchalantly.

“It means nothing, absolutely nothing,” she said to Piers more than once, when she noted his eyes jealously fixed upon the two. “If you take notice of it, it becomes serious, and we lose our game; let it alone, and it dies a natural death. Guy is much too feather-headed to win any girl’s love for a continuance; they all flirt with him and then throw him over. I’ve no doubt I shall make something of him before I’ve done with him; but he’s not promising material, I’ll admit.”

Very unpromising, if he were judged by Beatrix’s standard of straightforward manliness. Guy Harley was not the man to say that “twenty thousand pounds and a pretty girl were two good things apart.” On the contrary, he would have said, had he spoken out all his thoughts, “What does the prettiness matter, so long as the twenty thousand pounds is secure? I have good looks enough and to spare for two.”

In effect this was what he was saying to himself every day, of these days of his flirtation with Nellie.

“I know she has a bad temper; her eyes flash like diamonds whenever she looks at Beatrix. But twenty thousand pounds! Why, if I can win her, I can settle down in England at once, as an independent gentleman, instead of toiling for years in a Spanish countinghouse.”

Anyone seeing Nellie for the first time in those days would have agreed with Guy, that she had a very bad temper; and on this last day of the old year, that temper had shown itself in all sorts of uncomfortable ways. At dinner⁠—a dinner at which the Professor was not present⁠—she had startled everyone, Cousin Lavinia especially, by saying that she intended going to Paris to study medicine. Why should she not be a lady-doctor if she liked?

“Why not, indeed?” said Beatrix, good-temperedly. “I’ll chaperon you, little Nellie.”

“In my young days⁠—” began Cousin Lavinia.

“Ah, the world has gone round once or twice since then,” interrupted Nellie, in so disagreeable a manner that Cousin Lavinia in self-defence must have asserted herself, if Beatrix had not at once commenced a series of interesting anecdotes of life in Granada, where so much of her girlhood had been passed.

In the drawing-room it was the same thing. Beatrix was the sunshine, so to speak, of the small party assembled there, and Nellie its wet blanket.

Beatrix seated herself at the piano, and in her beautiful contralto voice sang song after song of the sunny South. Piers turned over her music, and in the pauses between each song they engaged in low-voiced, confidential talk.

Nellie walked away to the window, and, drawing up the blind, stood looking out on the snowy landscape, rendered still more white and glistening by a full moon on high. It was like a little bit of fairyland. One could fancy that all sorts of elves and gnomes were lurking beneath the trees and shrubs, bowed down into a variety of fantastic shapes by the snow, and that by-and-by would emerge a weird company and make for the clear surface of the pond in the near distance, there to go through their midnight gambols.

That pond started an idea to Nellie’s mind.

“I would give anything⁠—anything,” she exclaimed, suddenly clasping her hands together ecstatically, “to go out skating by moonlight.”

“It would be heavenly,” murmured Guy, lounging in a chair at her elbow.

“Oh, delightful beyond everything!” cried Beatrix, with her fingers on a final chord. “Everybody has danced the New Year in or sung it in; but I’ve never heard of it being skated in.”

Cousin Lavinia rose with great dignity from her chair.

“It is a rule in this house,” she said, bringing out her words with great asperity, “that every light should be out by eleven.”

“Except Cousin John’s,” murmured Beatrix.

Cousin Lavinia turned upon her. “I have done my duty in this house, I hope,” she said, her dignity increasing upon her. “It is not part of my duty to enter Cousin John’s study and extinguish his lamp. It is, however, part of my duty to maintain order and propriety in the house, and, with my permission, no one” (looking at Nellie now) “shall go careering about the grounds in the dead of night.”

After that nothing more was said about moonlight skating. The party broke up early that night. Beatrix was the first to leave the drawing-room. There seemed a good deal of subdued talk between her and Piers before she went, and Nellie thought she saw Beatrix scribbling something on a scrap of paper. But she could not be sure, for she turned her back angrily on them, and did not even reply to Beatrix’s cheery “Good night, pussy.”

Piers departed within five minutes of Beatrix. The drawing-room led into the library, and people generally went out of the room that way. Nellie retarded her departure for a few moments, for she could hear Piers at one of the writing-tables in the library, and it occurred to her that there was a letter she wished to direct, and put into the letter-box before she went up to bed. In the old days the two could have sat quite comfortably at one writing-table, now a dinner-table would not have kept them far enough apart. Nellie waited till she heard Piers pass out of the library. Then she went in, took up the pen he had just laid down, and began to address her letter. As she did so, a quarter-sheet of notepaper, lying on the floor, caught her eye. Prompted by instinctive, rather than intentional curiosity, she picked it up and read just these three words inscribed on it in pencil, in a small, cramped hand, “At twelve tonight.”

Nellie stood gazing at it motionless, her thoughts all one angry flame of jealousy. This was Beatrix’s handwriting, not a doubt. She had not as yet seen Beatrix’s writing to note it, but she was sure this was here, just the nasty, cramped, sly, little hand of a person who pretended to be very frank, and yet all the time was playing a sly, underhand game. And also not a doubt it had been written and handed to Piers in the drawing-room, and Piers, as he had sat writing at that table, had pulled it out of his pocket. And the appointment was most likely for the midnight skating on the pond, which Nellie herself had started as an original idea.

For a moment tears filled her eyes, and the “nasty, sly little writing” swam away in mist. Then pride came to her aid. “Let them meet, let them skate, and welcome,” she said to herself. “I couldn’t make myself care if I tried. Piers is nothing to me; she is nothing to me⁠—oh, yes, she is, though I hate her, and I’ve a great mind to sit up here all night, and when they come down⁠—no, that wouldn’t do either, they would think I was jealous of Piers, when I don’t care twopence-halfpenny about him. But someone shall spoil her little game. I know what I’ll do!” here Nellie crept back to the drawing-room door and peeped in. Cousin Lavinia and Guy were leaving the room by another door which led by a different way to the upper quarters.

“Good night!” Cousin Lavinia was saying, “I hope you’ll enjoy your smoke; but don’t forget that it is the rule of the house that all lights should be extinguished by eleven.”

Then Nellie knew that Guy, according to his usual custom, was going to the smoking-room for half an hour before he went up to bed. Now, should she follow him there, put the scrap of paper into his hand, and tell him that he ought to look after that bold, flirting sister of his? Nellie rehearsed all she would say, all he might say, and then found that she had not courage for the task. So she decided that she would slip the quarter-sheet of paper under the door, give a rap to draw his attention to it, and then disappear before he had time to open the door. There would be no necessity to explain to him her reason for thus doing, for of course he would recognise his sister’s writing and be on the alert at once.

Guy, reclining comfortably on a lounge, enjoying at one and the same moment a delightful cigar and a Spanish newspaper, was a little startled to hear suddenly two sharp raps at the door.

“Come in,” he said, then waited a moment, and said “Come in” again, wondering who, of that remarkably quiet household, was the one likely to intrude on the gentlemen’s quarters at that⁠—for them⁠—late hour.

But when, after a moment or so, no one availed themselves of his invitation to enter, he got up from his lounge and went to the door and lo! the scrap of paper pushed beneath it caught his eye. For a moment all was bewilderment to him; then things began to clear themselves. “By Jove, an appointment!” he exclaimed. “I had no idea she would go so far as that. It’s a trifle forward of her to take the initiative in this way; but still, twenty thousand pounds is twenty thousand pounds, and is not to be picked up every day in the week. For of course it’s Nellie’s writing, a little, cramped, schoolgirlish hand⁠—just what one would expect from a girl shut up as she has been all her life.”

And then he opened the door, and looked right and left to see if a glimpse of Nellie was to be had. But, instead of Nellie, his eyes were met by the sight of Beatrix, fully dressed, coming down the stairs.

“Oh, Guy, give me one of those Spanish newspapers that came today,” she exclaimed, as she approached; “since it is the rule of the house”⁠—here she mimicked Cousin Lavinia’s tone⁠—“not to skate the New Year in, I’m going to read it in with news of my old friends in Granada! What on earth is the matter? You look as if you had seen a ghost!”

Guy, in a most mysterious manner, beckoned his sister into the smoking-room, and when he had shut the door, spread the scrap of notepaper before her, saying: “Do you know Nellie’s writing?”

“I’m not sure that I do. Why! That’s not from her!”

“I don’t know who it’s from if not from her,” said Guy. “It was put under this door just now in a most mysterious fashion, and if you couple the fact with her wish for a little moonlight skating⁠—”

“Really, Guy,” interrupted Beatrix, “your vanity carries you too far. It’s much more likely to be from one of the housemaids, or the cook. Nellie, indeed! I’d go and ask her at once, only I wouldn’t like to insult her so far. Put it behind the fire, and go to bed. Give me the newspaper. Thank you. Good night.”

But when Beatrix had got back to her room she did not feel half so sure as she had seemed to Guy, as to the writer of the brief note. If not written and delivered by Nellie, by whom, then, was it written and delivered? Who else was there in the house likely to make an appointment with Guy? Not Cousin Lavinia, assuredly, nor any one of the maids. In spite of her assurance, Beatrix knew that they were all too well looked after by Cousin Lavinia to be guilty of such an indiscretion. A vague feeling of uneasiness took possession of her. Then a sudden thought struck her, and her eyes grew merry once more. “Capital idea!” she said, clapping her hands together softly. “Guy at once concludes this missive comes from Nellie, because his thoughts have been full of Nellie all the week. Now I’ll just, by the way of experiment, put a similar note under the doors of my other relatives this night, and I shall watch the result with great interest. It will show me which way their proclivities incline, and at the same moment keep Nellie from committing any outrageous piece of folly by letting her find the whole house astir at the midnight hour. And, to prevent any likeness to anyone’s writing, I’ll print the three little words.”

So Beatrix there and then in a firm hand wrote in printing letters, “At twelve tonight,” on three several scraps of paper. One scrap she deposited under Cousin Lavinia’s door; one under Piers’s door, whence a light streaming from beneath seemed to indicate that he was reading beside his fire; and one under the study door, behind which sat the Professor, intent on consuming his midnight oil and giving its product to the world in the shape of his golden thoughts on philosophy as an aid to the control of the emotions.

In every case she accompanied the delivery of the note with a sharp rap, to draw attention to it, and at the Professor’s door with such a hailstorm of raps that he jumped out of his chair, forgot his good breeding, and indulged in a string of exclamations such as had not fallen from his lips since Beatrix had been in the house.

When this was accomplished she went stealthily down the stairs and took up her position in the hall below, lighting a gasalier, but turning it so low as to be scarcely visible. Round this hall ran a gallery, and from off this gallery the bedrooms, and the Professor’s den also, opened.

Cousin Lavinia was putting her corkscrew curls into paper when the rap at her door, and the note pushed beneath it, caught her attention and set her heart fluttering.

For a moment she gazed at the three little words in amazement, then her expression grew rapturous. “It’s from him him!” she said, softly. “Dear John! he wishes to begin the New Year with his hand in mine and words of love upon his lips!” It did not in the least to her fancy matter that the hand was disguised, there was no one in the whole house likely to make an appointment with her but Cousin John, who, in spite of his irritable temper, she had invariably reverenced as a being of an altogether superior order. Of course she would meet him, here, there, anywhere the whole world through. “And I will attire myself,” she murmured, “as one who wishes to make herself worthy of so great an honour.” So the little old maid went to a big trunk that had not been opened for years, and took out, first, a huge crinoline measuring three yards round, and then a delicate white tarlatan dress profusely trimmed with blush rosebuds. It was the dress in which, more than thirty years previously, she had made her first and last appearance at a ball, and which she had kept locked up and carefully strewn with lavender till a fit occasion for wearing it should arise.

Meantime, the Professor on the opposite side of the gallery, indulging in wild speculations as to the writer of his little note, could only come to one conclusion: “Philosophy has given me the key to human character; there is but one person in the house capable of writing that note⁠—Beatrix. Now I think of it there is a degree of mystery attached to her sudden journey to England” (he knew nothing of the lover in London to whom Beatrix had been engaged for ten years), “and her conduct since she has been in the house has exhibited⁠—yes, I may say it without vanity⁠—the tenderest solicitude on my behalf. She wishes to encourage my advances she knows I would make them diffidently⁠—so she as good as says to me, ‘Come and meet me, love, at an hour free from distractions, when calmly we can discuss the question of the suitability of a matrimonial alliance.’ Ah, Lavinia is a good sort of creature enough, but beside Beatrix, nowhere!”

“I’m not what I was,” he went on, sorrowfully. “I am a little bald, and she has such a beautiful head of hair! Perhaps my old black velvet cap might improve me.”

He went to a drawer beneath one of his bookcases and took thence a rusty black velvet cap. The light was dim and his eyes, bereft of glasses, did not discover that the cap was turned inside out, and that what he thought was a silk tassel was really a strip of the well-worn lining hanging loose.

Nellie, though passed over by Beatrix, was to have a missive she did not expect under her door that night. Piers, sitting gloomily over his fire with a law book on his knee, which he was making believe to study, was a little startled by the rap at his door. “I wonder, I wonder how it will end? Beatrix says it will be all right, but what if it be all wrong and Nellie and I are parted for life!” he was at that moment saying to himself. One glance, however, at the little missive seemed to tell him that everything would be all right. Of course it was from Nellie. “My darling,” he cried, rapturously kissing the note, “she wants to forgive and forget, and for us two to cross the threshold of the year together!”

And there and then he took up his pen and wrote:

“God bless you, darling! With pleasure! At twelve tonight in the big window in the hall, where eight years ago I first saw your sweet face. Always your true

Then, to make quite sure that Nellie received it, he went along the gallery, called “Nellie, Nellie,” twice at her door, and then put his note beneath.

Beatrix, sitting below in the hall in her dark corner, had her eyes regaled with a variety of strange sights.

First Piers made his appearance on the side of the gallery over her head, and came down the stairs leading to the hall at such an unconscionable pace that only a special Providence could have saved him from a fractured skull in the dim light.

He evidently did not see that the gasalier was lighted, and took his cigar-lights from his pocket as if to light it. Then, as he noted the bright moonlight streaming in through the window, he altered his mind and went straight to the window recess, making a big, dark blot there in the brilliant silver light.

After this there came the sound of a door opening very timidly overhead, and then a small, slight figure came creeping down the stairs, step by step.

But those timid feet had scarcely touched the bottom of the stairs before the big, dark blot moved⁠—no, sprang⁠—from out the bright light of the window, took her hands in his, and⁠—

Well, to Beatrix it seemed all incoherence; but she said to herself comfortingly: “I dare say they understand what they’re saying to each other, and I’m sure it is all right.”

At that moment a circumstance occurred which fairly startled her, and for which she could give no explanation.

Another small, slight figure, but this one clad in cloak and hat, made its appearance at the farther end of the hall, and seemed about to cross it, but, catching sight of Piers and Nellie in the window recess, drew back into a corner, and there appeared to stand waiting.

Before Beatrix had time to carry speculation as to this mysterious figure very far, two doors opening simultaneously at opposite ends of the gallery overhead, attracted her attention. From one emerged an almost unrecognisable figure in huge crinoline and full flowing tarlatan dress, profusely decorated with blush roses; from the other came the short, stout Professor, in his ragged velvet cap. Each, it may be remarked, mindful of the proprieties of life, carried a night-light.

“Now, to what emotion am I opening this door?” the Professor had soliloquised as he drew back his bolt. “To peace and the happy tranquillity of subdued affections!” And then he had almost run straight into the arms of Cousin Lavinia.

“Cousin John, dear Cousin John!” she exclaimed, “my heart is full; I have no words to express my feelings.”

The Professor extricated himself with difficulty.

“Confound it, madam! who are you?” he spluttered. Then he drew a long breath. “Oh‑h! Corkscrew curls! Cousin Lavinia!”

“It’s time I threw a little light on the scene,” thought Beatrix, emerging from her corner, and turning on the light of the gasalier to its fullest extent.

Piers and Nellie let go each other’s hands, and came forward blinking very hard. Guy, at that very moment on the point of coming downstairs, stared for a moment at them, and then retired. Simultaneously the small, slight figure, rushing from out its dark corner, appealed piteously to Nellie:

“Oh, Miss Nellie, Miss Nellie! I didn’t mean any harm! There’s a servants’ ball tonight at the Squire’s, and⁠—and ‘Sir Roger de Coverley’ is to be danced at twelve precisely, and everyone is to dance with their sweethearts, and kiss them as they go down the middle! And I knew if I didn’t dance with Dick he’d be dancing with that horrid housemaid at the Hall, so I made him promise to come and fetch me directly the dance began. And I told him we’d fall in at the bottom, and nobody would notice me. And I’d show you Dick’s note, Miss Nellie, reminding me of twelve tonight, if I hadn’t pulled it out of my pocket somewhere⁠—”

“What⁠—what is all this confusion, and clang, and clamour, may I ask?” said the Professor, in loud, irritable tones, making his way down the stairs as fast as possible, as if to get ahead of Cousin Lavinia, who, in her enormous globular skirts, persistently kept pace with him, step by step; “for what purpose are we all assembled here at this extraordinary hour?”

“For the purpose of dancing the New Year in, Cousin John,” answered Beatrix, looking up at the big clock, whose hands now pointed at five minutes to twelve. “Mattie, don’t you think ‘Sir Roger’ can be danced just as well here as in the Squire’s hall, provided your sweetheart is present? Run and fetch Dick; I dare say he’s just outside the door. It’s a charming dance for three couples.”

She walked to the piano as she finished speaking, and struck up the first chords of the cheery old melody.

The Professor paused for a moment to take in the situation, and then he hurriedly approached Beatrix. “Be my partner, Beatrix,” he said, insinuatingly, and with a double meaning. “She can play for us,” nodding towards Cousin Lavinia.

Beatrix, with her fingers still playing the dancers towards their partners, tried to explain, “I’m going to be married⁠—in a fortnight⁠—didn’t you know? One can’t throw over a man in a minute when one’s been engaged to him for ten years. There’s Cousin Lavinia waiting for you.”

Piers and Nellie had already taken their places at the top of the room, Mattie and Dick stood waiting at the bottom, so the Professor and Cousin Lavinia took up their position midway.

Cousin Lavinia’s curtsies, in her voluminous skirts, and the Professor’s acknowledgement of them by the removal of his turned-inside-out velvet cap were a sight to be remembered.

And at the very moment that the bells from the village church came clanging through the frosty air, to give their welcome to the New Year, Nellie’s lips received their first love-kiss.