Short Fiction

I

“£200 Reward. Disappeared from her home, Amy, only daughter of Stephen Warden, Esq., of the High Elms, Harleyford. Age, 17; height, 5 ft. Dark hair and eyes, oval face, small nose, mouth, and chin; remarkably small hands and feet; dressed in dark blue silk walking costume, broad brimmed felt hat, with light-blue ostrich feather. Jewellery worn⁠—a gold butterfly brooch, and butterfly earrings; on the third finger of left hand, an antique ruby ring⁠—one large stone, surrounded with eight small diamonds, set in a garter with buckle; motto on garter, ‘Sans espoir je meurs.’ The young lady was last seen on the morning of the 14th of August, leaving the park lands, and entering the high road leading to Dunwich. Information to be given to Inspector Smythe, Dunwich Police Station, who will pay the above reward on the young lady’s restoration to her family, or portions of the amount according to the value of the information received.”

The above handbill appeared one bright summer’s morning on the walls of Dunwich Police Station, and on all the principal buildings of that busy manufacturing town.

Hardworking men of business found time, in the midst of their buying and selling, to stop and read, and wonder how it was possible that any young lady, well looked after, as Miss Warden undoubtedly was, well-known, too, in the neighbourhood, and surrounded by relations, friends, and servants, could thus disappear from their very midst, at noonday, and leave no trace of any sort.

Harleyford was situated about five miles from Dunwich, and Mr. Warden’s house about three from the local railway station. A well-traversed high road led from his estate to the market town⁠—Dunwich. This the young lady had been seen to enter about ten o’clock on the morning of the 14th of August, by some country people, with whom she exchanged greetings. From that moment nothing more had been seen nor heard of her, and it was, as the country people expressed it in their broad Leicestershire dialect, “as though the earth had opened, and swallowed her up,” so completely had all traces of her been lost.

Well-to-do tradesmen and thriving farmers, passing by, read the handbill with a sort of shudder. Here was a young lady taking her usual morning walk on a bright summer’s day; she wishes her neighbours a gay good morning with a nod and a smile, goes on her way, and lo! nothing more is seen or heard of her. After this, who was safe? And with a sigh and a shiver, and a thought of their own young daughters at home, they went their way to ponder over the strange occurrence.

The county people by scores left their cards on Mr. and Mrs. Warden; heard how they had waited breakfast for their daughter, then luncheon, then dinner⁠—how they had sent their men far and near to scour the country⁠—how every river had been dragged, every infirmary and hospital searched, every railway official questioned and cross-questioned as to whether the young lady had been seen entering either station⁠—how the parents had racked their brains to discover any possible or impossible pretext which could drive their daughter from her home⁠—how that now, well-nigh brokenhearted, after a fortnight of wearying suspense, they had folded their hands and prayed for any news, even the worst that might come.

“It is beyond mystery,” said old Lady Nugent to her young lady companion, driving along the very same high road which had seen the last of poor Amy, and looking right and left in the hedges, as though she expected to find some traces of her there; “If the girl had had any love troubles, one could understand it better; for the young, foolish things at seventeen are often driven to some desperate folly by a man’s wicked eyes. But everyone knows she could have made the best match in the county if she had liked. There’s young Lord Hardcastle, who absolutely worships her⁠—fastidious and faultfinding as he is; and as for Frank Varley, the rector’s son, with his £10,000 a year, he is positively mad after her.”

“Yes, my lady,” responded the companion, “and it is well known that neither Mr. nor Mrs. Warden cared in the least whom she chose. Ah! she was always a coquette, even in the schoolroom. Those young, bright things with so much money, and so many chances generally choose badly after all, and run away with some groom, or footman. Depend upon it, my lady⁠—”

“Don’t be an idiot, Matthews,” interrupts the dowager, “talk about things you understand. It has been ascertained beyond doubt that no one but Miss Warden is missing, far or near. Besides, the young lady, however playful and vivacious she might be with her equals in station, was too wellborn and well-bred to permit the slightest familiarity from an inferior. She would not have suffered such a thing any more than I should myself,” with a withering glance at Matthews. “Tell George,” she added, pulling violently at the check-string, “to drive past the police station. I want to see what they have put in the handbills.”

And, as the old lady drives through the crowd of stragglers gathered about the station-house doors, two others, with white, anxious faces, are standing there, reading the printed lines. Tall, fair, muscular Frank Varley, the rector’s scapegrace son, the best rider, runner, and rower in the county⁠—the first in all mischief⁠—in all breakneck adventures⁠—and yet more sought after at balls and garden parties, than the richest lord, or the most eligible unmarried baronet⁠—his mother’s darling and pride, and a constant source of anxiety and apprehension to his father.

As he reads, his brow darkens. “By heaven!” he mutters through his set teeth, “there has been foul play somewhere. She held my hand for a moment only, at the ball the night before, under the large oleander tree, and called me her own Frank; and then, coquette as she is, the next minute she told me she meant her own brother Frank⁠—I had been so good to her. Shall we all sit still with folded hands, and let a girl like that be stolen from our very midst? A thousand times, no!” And then aloud, with a full-drawn breath, “By heaven! no corner of the earth shall hide her from me; by land and by sea, by night and by day, I will search the whole world through, till I find her, living or dead.”

“You are right,” exclaims a voice at his elbow, and Lord Hardcastle’s dark pale face, with thin, clear-cut features, looks over his shoulder. (“Kid-gloved Hardcastle” he was sometimes called by his sporting and boating friends, on account of his super-refinement and dainty fastidiousness.) “You are right; there has been some foul play here⁠—some deed of iniquity which must be brought to light. We, who have been rivals hitherto, may well join hands now.” He extends his thin white hand, which Varley grasps in a strong, firm hold. “I repeat your own words; ‘no corner of the earth shall hide her from me; by land and by sea, by night and by day, I will search the whole world through till I find her, living or dead.’ ”

II

While the townspeople and country folks read and wondered at the printed handbills, the father and mother of the missing girl wandered about their now desolate home, listless, aimless, well-nigh brokenhearted. The first sharp pang, it is true, was past, and the sorrow had settled down to a dull leaden weight on heart and brain. The servants walked about the house slowly and silently, speaking in subdued voices. Day and night lay old Presto, Amy’s favourite deerhound, at the house door, waiting and listening, and never seeming to eat nor sleep. Her maid carefully each day fed her birds and watered her flowers, and everyone in the household vied with each other in endeavouring to carry out every known wish or fancy the young lady had ever had (and it must be confessed they were not a few) as they would endeavour to carry out the wishes of some dear one dead. On every side, in every room, were traces of the lost darling. Here, the open piano with a roll of new music; there, the uncovered harp. In the little morning room piece after piece of unfinished needlework, and here in a little “studio,” as Amy was pleased to call it, numberless pencil sketches, an oil landscape commenced, a watercolour three-parts done, and a crayon head, “all but” finished. A whole tableful of china-painting accessories, and commenced cups, saucers, and plates; and there, in a corner, a cabinet of fretwork tools, with brackets, card trays, and picture frames enough to stock a small shop.

From all this it may be seen that the young lady’s tastes and pursuits were numerous and varied⁠—change, to her, the one great necessity of life. A too great indulgence from her earliest infancy had developed in her character an impatience of restraint, an impetuosity and wilfulness which, unless it had been counterbalanced, as in her case it was, by an unusually loving, playful, tender disposition, would have rendered her imperious and domineering. As it was, everyone in the household, from her father downwards, adored her and bowed to her sway. “I must not be kept waiting an instant” was a remark which might be heard every hour of the day from Miss Amy’s lips. And kept waiting she never was, for the simple reason that it was an impossibility to keep her in any posture of tranquillity for five minutes at a time. Every thought or idea that entered into her brain must be executed there and then and, scarcely completed, must be thrown on one side to make way for another.

“Were you ever thus in your very young days, Stephen?” Mrs. Warden would sometimes enquire of her husband. And the husband would smile and shake his head, and declare he had never been half so fascinating as his wilful, loving, teasing little daughter, “the music and sunshine of his life,” as he was wont to call her.

And now all was changed! The music was hushed, the sunlight had died out. Would the shadows ever be lifted from the home again? Would the quick, light step ever be heard again, and the sweet, young, ringing voice, exclaiming in its old familiar tones, “I must not be kept waiting an instant?”

So the father and mother asked themselves, as, standing side by side in their dining room verandah, they looked across the bright August landscape to where the groom was leading out Amy’s pony for its morning canter.

Mr. Warden, at this time, was about forty-five years of age, looking considerably younger. A well-featured, muscular man, with energy, determination, and many other good qualities plainly written on his face. A more complete contrast to him than his wife could not well be imagined. She was very tiny, very fair, very gentle, with amiability, want of will, and weakness of character marked in every line and feature. Her one god was her husband, her one thought how to please him, and her every opinion and wish was simply an echo of his.

“A doll, my dear, nothing more,” was old Lady Nugent’s summing up, after her first introduction to Mrs. Warden, some twelve years previously. Mr. Warden had come among them a perfect stranger, buying one of the largest estates in the county which happened to be for sale. He had resided, so he had said, nearly all his life in the south of France, but his family and connections were well known in the Midland Counties as wealthy and nobly connected. Of his wife, however, nothing was known, nor could be discovered, so she was set down, and perhaps justly, as having been an English governess in some French family, and as such, most probably, Mr. Warden had first known her.

“What men can see in dolls to induce them to marry them, I cannot see,” pursued the dowager, “they simply need a glass case, some good clothes, and their work in life is done.” Nevertheless, in spite of Lady Nugent’s comments, Mrs. Warden had been well received in Harleyford for her husband’s sake, and now, in the time of her sorrow, nothing could exceed the kindness and sympathy extended to her on all sides. Carriage after carriage sweeps along their drive, letter after letter is brought to the house, some containing wild and improbable suggestions, others opening here and there a door of hope, all full of warm and earnest sympathy, and offers of help.

“What can any of them do that has not already been done?” says Mr. Warden, handing to his wife a joint letter from Frank Varley and Lord Hardcastle, relating their solemn vow, and placing their services at Mr. Warden’s disposal.

“They are noble young fellows, and worthy of a truehearted girl’s love. But what can they do? God help us all and teach us how to act for the best, for my brains are nearly worn out with thinking and supposing.”

“The gentleman from London, sir, Mr. Hill, wishes to see you,” says the butler at his elbow, having entered the room with a quiet, solemn tread, as though serving at a funeral feast.

“Ah, the detective,” says Mr. Warden, thankful to have the pressure of thought lifted for an instant; “show him into the library; I will see him at once.”

Mr. Hill, a slight, gentleman-like man, with the eye of an eagle, and the nose of a deerhound, seats himself at the library table, and spreads his memoranda before him.

“I bring you my latest report, Mr. Warden, and I grieve to say it amounts to very little. The only additional information I have obtained, and that, I fear, is scarcely reliable, is from the postman, John Martin. He tells me that on the morning of the 14th he met your daughter in the park lands, and, at her request, handed to her her morning’s letters. I questioned him as to how he recollected it was on that day, and he at once admitted he could not be positive, as it was the young lady’s custom, whenever she met him, thus to ask for and receive her letters. I questioned him as to the general appearance of her letters, whether directed in masculine or feminine handwriting⁠—(I beg your pardon, sir, such questions must be asked)⁠—and his reply is, he never recollects bringing Miss Warden any but letters in ladies’ writing. You must take the evidence for what it is worth; I fear it counts for very little, but, such as it is, I have entered it in my case book.”

“I scarcely see whither your questions tend,” remarks Mr. Warden, somewhat stiffly. “Miss Warden, I am convinced, had no correspondents with whom I am unacquainted. She has been brought up at home, under careful supervision, and has never visited anywhere without Mrs. Warden or myself. If you are inferring some unknown attachment existed, such a supposition is entirely without foundation. I have every reason to believe that my daughter’s affections have been given, and with my approval, to a very dear young friend and neighbour.”

“All this I know, sir. Indeed, I think there is very little you or anyone else can tell me on this matter. There is not a man or woman in the place whom I have not sounded to their very depths, questioned and cross-questioned in every imaginable way. I have here, in my pocket, a map of my own sketching, containing every field and river, every shady nook and hollow within thirty miles round. I have also a directory with the names, ages, occupation, and household of every human being within the same area. Very little, indeed, remains now to be done.”

“Don’t tell me that,” exclaims Mr. Warden, excitedly, jumping to his feet, and pacing the room; “don’t tell me that your work here is over, and no result for your three weeks’ labour. Don’t, I implore you, crush me down into utter despair. Have you no hope, ever so slight, to hold out to me⁠—no advice of any sort to give?”

“I have both, Mr. Warden,” replies the detective, calmly; “I need not tell you now how I have worked out my theory, nor how, step by step, I have come to the conclusion that your daughter is not dead. This is the hope I hold out to you.”

“Then, if not dead, worse than death has happened to her,” groans the poor father, covering his face with his hands; “better death, than dishonour.”

For a moment both are silent; then, Mr. Warden, slowly recovering himself, enquires, “And what is the advice you have to give, Mr. Hill? let me have that, at any rate.”

“Simply to watch, and to wait, sir; at present, nothing more can be done. We have exhausted every theory, we have followed out every clue, or pretence of one. If there are accomplices in the matter, my presence here puts them on their guard, and as long as I remain nothing will transpire; when I have left, and things have settled down to their usual course, I feel sure someone will betray him or herself unawares. I repeat, wait and watch; and directly your suspicions are aroused in the slightest degree, communicate with me, and I will advise you to the best of my ability.”

“Wait!” groans Mr. Warden, “wait! ‘let things settle down to their usual course;’ how is it possible for a man to live through such a life of torture and suspense? Is there nothing⁠—absolutely nothing⁠—that can be done before you leave us?”

“Only one thing, and that, with your permission, I will do at once. With the men of your household, I have been on tolerably familiar terms, and know pretty well what they could, or could not do; but about the women I am not so sure. If you will allow me, I will have the whole of your female servants in here in succession, from the scullery maids, upwards⁠—take their names, ages, occupations, etc., from their own lips. I may, possibly, seem to you, sir, to ask a great many irrelevant questions, but while I am questioning, I am watching and noting, and I will undertake to say there will be no one with a guilty conscience who will hide it from my eye.”

Mr. Warden rings the bell, and gives the order to the footman, who conveys it to the housekeeper, who forthwith summons all the maids of the household to be paraded in succession before their master, and the detective.

Mr. Hill requests that the housekeeper will remain in the room the whole time. “I may have occasion,” he explains, “to refer to you from time to time, as to the truth or otherwise of some of the statements made.”

First, the kitchen-maids enter, looking very red, and very much ashamed of themselves. Mr. Hill glances at them, looks them through and through, and contents himself with simply noting down their names, ages, and position in Mr. Warden’s household. The cooks are almost as quickly dismissed, and between the exit of one staff of servants and entrance of another, Mr. Hill’s eyes are occupied in scrutinizing the elderly housekeeper, and in addressing to her various friendly remarks.

The housemaids undergo a much longer examination; one girl turns red, another pale. One answers wide of the mark, and is reprimanded by Mr. Hill; another is detected in a wilful fib by the housekeeper, who forthwith brings her to book. Eventually, however, they are dismissed, and the detective, turning to the housekeeper, enquires where Miss Warden’s maid is.

“I have to apologize for her, sir,” replies the housekeeper, “will you kindly excuse her? The poor girl was taken with a violent sick-headache about an hour ago, and went to lie down in her own room. I believe, however, I can answer any questions for her you may wish to put.”

“About an hour ago,” muses Mr. Hill, “just when the order for the servants’ parade was given out.” Then, aloud to the housekeeper, “Is this young person often troubled with violent headaches, Mrs. Nesbitt?”

“Oh dear no, sir,” replies Mrs. Nesbitt, “I never knew her taken in this way before, but you see we have all of us had such an upset, sir, lately. Dear me! such an upset!” and the old lady glances furtively at her master.

“Exactly, Mrs. Nesbitt, exactly,” said Mr. Hill, sympathetically. “That is just what I am thinking. Will you kindly take a message from me to this young person? Tell her I have merely one or two unimportant questions to put as a matter of form, as to her duties, etc., as Miss Warden’s maid, but I must have the answers from her own lips. If it will suit her better I will go with you to her own room, but in any case I must see her.”

Mrs. Nesbitt at once departs on her errand, and after a delay of some ten minutes, returns with the maid, a round-faced, small-featured girl, somewhat fashionably dressed for her position, and with an assumption of refinement and dignity evidently intended as a copy of her young mistress’s style.

Mr. Hill preserves his careless suavity of manner, regrets, politely, he should have been compelled to disturb her, hopes she will soon recover her usual health. Meantime his eye is fixed full on her face, and throughout the short interview his gaze is never once lifted.

“Your name, if you please?” he asks.

“Lucy Williams,” replies the girl, quivering and tremulous under his fixed gaze.

“Are your parents living, Miss Williams?”

“No,” she replies, shortly, “I have no relations of any sort.”

“Not even a brother,” he enquires, “who was once gamekeeper on an estate the other side of Dunwich, and who subsequently sailed for America?”

Here the girl breaks down utterly, and gives way to a flood of tears. “How dare you insult me thus?” she enquires angrily. “What do you know of my brother Tom? He may be dead and buried for anything I care.”

“I know very little about your brother Tom, Miss Williams, beyond the fact of his having caused your parents a great deal of anxiety. In fact it was the disgrace of their son’s dismissal from his situation, charged with conspiring with poachers to rob his master, which, I believe, broke their hearts. However, I have only one more question to ask. Have you seen or heard anything of your brother since his return to this neighbourhood? He was seen, I believe, not very far from this house on the morning of the 15th of August.”

Another passionate burst of sobbing from the girl, and this time an appeal to Mr. Warden.

“Will you allow me, sir, to be insulted in this way in your presence?” she demands. “I vow and declare since I have been in your service, I have always been an honest, faithful servant; I have never wronged anyone by word or deed. I have always”⁠—here another flood of tears.

“Gently, gently, Lucy,” expostulates Mr. Warden, “no one is bringing any charge against you.” Then, to the detective, “Is it not possible to waive this question, Mr. Hill? I really think you are going almost too far.”

“I will waive it with a great deal of pleasure, sir, and as far as that goes, I do not see any necessity for prolonging the interview. Miss Williams, I should certainly advise you to get a little quiet sleep in your own room, it will do more for you than anything else. Good morning, Mrs. Nesbitt, I am much obliged to you for the trouble you have taken for me.” He politely opens the door for the housekeeper, who conducts the still sobbing girl out of the room.

Then the man’s manner undergoes an entire change. He turns abruptly to Mr. Warden. “Keep your eye on that girl, sir; I have not passed the greater part of my life among rogues of all sorts not to know a guilty face when I see it. That girl is keeping something back, but what I am at present at a loss to imagine. Take my word for it, within a fortnight she will do one of two things, either request permission to leave on account of the dullness of the house or else run away. I think the latter, from the irresolution and want of nerve she has shown this morning, but I am not sure. I can only reiterate the advice I have already given you, watch and wait, and the moment your suspicions are aroused, communicate with me.”

And the detective takes his leave, and as Mr. Warden’s horses convey him swiftly along the high road to Dunwich, he shakes his head gravely and mutters, “This is a bad business, and I fear there is worse to come. I was never before so thoroughly at a loss; I cannot see one inch before me in the matter; however, we can only watch and wait.”

III

It seemed strange, at first, to the good people of Harleyford to see young Lord Hardcastle and the rector’s son daily in close and friendly intercourse, accustomed, as they were, to see each politely ignored by the other, or else spoken of in terms of supercilious contempt. It was certainly a strange sight to see the young men constantly walking side by side in earnest conversation, or else riding to and from each other’s houses. Lord Hardcastle’s weakness had hitherto been nearsightedness whenever Varley had happened to cross his path. “Who was that you recognized just now?” he would say to a companion, if he happened to have one at the time, and on being informed it was the rector’s son, would remark, carelessly⁠—

“Oh, the young giant whose brains have run into muscle; let us talk of something interesting.”

Frank Varley, in his turn, would speak in no measured terms of “that kid-gloved dandy⁠—that embodiment of priggishness and polite literature.”

But now all was changed. A common sorrow had drawn them to each other, and their intense and true love for, and devotion to poor Amy, had rendered them so far unselfish as to enable them to work together with determination and courage.

Mr. Warden’s reply to their letter had been a brief, “Come and see me; we will talk the matter over.” And arm in arm the young men had responded to his invitation.

“I am very grateful to you both,” was Mr. Warden’s greeting, “I know not how to express my thanks; but what can anyone do that has not been already done?”

“See here, Mr. Warden,” broke in Frank, impetuously, “I don’t care what other people have or have not done, I must do something. I shall go mad if I sit here idle any longer. I have no doubt that detective fellow you had from London did his work superlatively well, but still it is possible he may have left something undone. Let me ride through your plantations once more; let me have men down here, and drag over again that cursed water, yonder.” He pointed through the window to a silvery little stream which flowed at the bottom of Mr. Warden’s lawn and flower garden. Deep water it was here and there, and here and there clogged with long grasses and rushes; but on and on it went, until at length it fell into the noble river upon which the town of Dunwich is built.

“My poor fellow, do it if you will,” is Mr. Warden’s reply, “do it a hundred times over, if it is any gratification to you; I fear the result will be the same to your efforts as to mine. But tell me in your turn, have you nothing to suggest? You, Lord Hardcastle, have the reputation of having more brains than most of us, tell me if you can propose anything to lighten this terrible time of suspense? Have you thought well over the possibilities and impossibilities of this dreadful affair, and do you see any glimmer of hope anywhere for us?”

“Have I thought well over it?” repeats Hardcastle; “you might better ask me, ‘do I ever think of anything else?’ for day and night no other thought ever enters my mind; hour after hour do I sit thinking over, and weighing in turn, each circumstance, however slight, which has occurred in connection with the loss of your daughter. I have looked at the matter, not only from my own point of view, and worked out my own theories threadbare, but have endeavoured to put myself, as it were, in other people’s bodies, to hear the matter with their ears, and see it with their eyes! and then have I exhausted every possible or impossible theory which they might have. Nowhere, alas, can I see any clue to the mystery. Indeed, each day that passes renders it more terrible and difficult. It is impossible she can be dead⁠—”

He pauses abruptly; large drops of perspiration stand out upon his forehead, and his outstretched hand trembles with suppressed emotion. “Had she been lying dead anywhere in the whole land, her body would by this time have been brought to you, or at any rate news of how and where she died.”

“Hush, hush!” breaks in Mr. Warden pitifully, as, pale and tottering, he catches hold of Lord Hardcastle’s arm; “don’t speak to me in this way, Hardcastle, or you will kill me outright; this last month has made an old man of me, and a feather’s weight would knock me over now. If you can see more clearly than any of us what lies in the future, for mercy’s sake hold back the blow as long as possible.”

There is a pause of some minutes; at last, Varley jumps to his feet, impatiently⁠—

“For Heaven’s sake, my dear fellow,” he exclaims, “don’t croak any more than you can help, but help us a little with your wisdom and advice. I have Mr. Warden’s permission to travel over the old ground again, and we are to commence this very hour; tell us what you purpose doing?”

“I shall wait and watch,” replies Hardcastle, unconsciously repeating Mr. Hill’s own words, “the clue will discover itself somewhere, somehow, when we least expect it; here, more likely, than anywhere else; and it needs a hearing ear and a seeing eye to seize and follow it up. You may wander hither and thither, if you will, I shall remain here, and wait and watch.”

“Strange,” said Mr. Warden, musingly, “your words are the echo of what was said to me yesterday, by the professional detective I employed.” Then he related to them in detail the examination of the servants by Mr. Hill, and his parting advice.

“Have the girl, Williams, in at once, Mr. Warden,” exclaims Frank, “question her as to what she has, or has not done; let me,” he adds, eagerly, “ask her one or two questions; depend upon it, they will be to the point.”

But to this the two other gentlemen object, Mr. Warden considering it an unjust thing to attach suspicion to the girl on account of the misdeeds of her brother; and Lord Hardcastle alleging that by so doing they would defeat their own object by putting the girl on her guard. “Let us wait and watch,” once more he implores. But Frank shakes his head, “Waiting and watching may suit some men,” he says, “but for me it is an impossibility. I must do something, and at once, or I shall blow my brains out; that is, if I have any,” he adds, with a grim smile, and a shrug of his shoulders.

Forthwith he departs to organize a body of volunteers once more to scour the whole county⁠—to search commons and through woods⁠—to cut fern and furze from shady hollows and dark corners, where, by any chance, a secret might be hidden. Once more to drag rivers and streams, and search under hedges, and in reed-grown ditches; and finally to question and re-question every man, woman, and child far or near, as to their recollection of the day’s occurrences of the 14th of August.

This was the plan of action Frank had sketched out for himself, and bravely indeed, did he carry it out. Volunteers by the score came forward, for the sympathy expressed for Mr. Warden was heartfelt, and Amy’s loss had cast a gloom over the whole county. Not a man or woman in the countryside but what would have gone to the other end of the world to have lifted from the sorrowing father and mother this dark cloud of suspense. As for the young lady herself, they would have laid down their lives for her; for her kindly, pleasant ways and pretty queenly airs, had won all hearts. And thus, high and low, rich and poor joined hands with Frank Varley, and searched with a will, working early, and working late⁠—earnest men, at earnest work.

IV

At this time Lord Hardcastle began to be a daily visitor at the High Elms. “My own house is very dreary to me,” he had said, “may I come to you very often for an hour or so, without feeling I am intruding?” And Mr. Warden had bade him welcome, but had warned him that he would find the High Elms more than “dreary.” “To me the place is silent and gloomy as a vault or graveyard,” he said, “but I am sure the presence of a real friend like yourself will be a great comfort to Mrs. Warden, now that I am such a poor companion for her.” Thus, it came to pass that daily, about noon, Lord Hardcastle might be seen riding up the steep avenue which led to Mr. Warden’s house, returning generally about dusk to his solitary dinner, for being an orphan, and without any near relative, and naturally of a studious, reserved disposition, his privacy was very seldom broken into by chance visitors, or casual acquaintances.

As time went on, however, he frequently accepted Mr. Warden’s invitation to dine and sleep at his house; and on these occasions he would devote the entire morning to Mrs. Warden and her occupations; generally after lunch walking or riding with Mr. Warden. Thus, a week or ten days slipped away; Frank Varley and his band of volunteers working hard meantime. Then suddenly, an unexpected calamity befell the village of Harleyford⁠—an epidemic of smallpox broke out, and threatened to be of a virulent nature. A groom of Mr. Warden’s, calling on one of the villagers, caught the disease, and returned to the High Elms, only to sicken and die. Mr. Warden, habitually kind and thoughtful to his dependants, had had the best local medical advice that could be procured, and in addition, nurses, and all approved disinfectants, etc., from the Dunwich Fever Hospital. Yet, in spite of these precautions, Lord Hardcastle, one morning, on entering the house, was met by the housekeeper with a face so long and melancholy he could see at once some fresh calamity had occurred.

“What is it, Mrs. Nesbitt?” he enquired, without waiting for the old lady to speak, “Has your master or mistress taken the infection, or if not, what has happened?”

“Both, I fear, sir, are seized,” replied the housekeeper, sadly; “I have sent for Doctor Mills and Doctor Hayward, and two additional nurses from the hospital; but as yet, no one has come. And oh, sir! something else has happened: Lucy Williams has disappeared in some mysterious manner; not a soul has seen her since last night. It seems, indeed,” added the old lady, clasping her hands, while the tears rained from her eyes, “as though a curse had fallen upon the house. Where will it all end! Heaven knows: I tremble to think who may be taken next.”

This was startling news indeed, although, perhaps, nothing more than might have been expected from the state of affairs at the High Elms. Mr. and Mrs. Warden’s health had been considerably shaken by the days and nights of suspense they had passed through. Consequently it would not be a matter of surprise if they were the next to fall victims to the disease.

Then again with regard to Lucy Williams, were they not watching the girl, and waiting for her to make a move in some direction?

However, there was no time to be lost in speculation, there was work to be done. Lord Hardcastle wrote a brief note to Varley⁠—

“Leave off your searching and dragging at once; there is something else for you to do. Lucy Williams has disappeared. Come over immediately. I will have all necessary information collected, and ready to place in your hands by the time you arrive. This, if you will, you can convey to Inspector Hill, Scotland Yard. It may save time. Start, if possible, by the 2:10 p.m. train.

This note he despatched by one of the grooms, mounting the man on his own horse, a high-bred roan, which knew how to go like the wind when need was. Unfortunately there was some uncertainty as to where Varley was to be found. The rectory in those days saw but little of him, and his work had lately taken him to a woodland some four or five miles distant.

Hither the man, by Lord Hardcastle’s direction, rode in quest, only, unfortunately, to see the volunteers returning by different routes, after another fruitless search. On enquiry, he found that Varley had ridden still farther on to the nearest post-town, most likely on some false scent.

Hither again the man followed him, and, fortunately, met him slowly riding towards home, thinking, perhaps, of another day of useless search ended, and where it would be best to recommence on the morrow.

He read Hardcastle’s note, and then looked at his watch. The hands pointed at two o’clock.

“Here,” he exclaimed in a perfect whirl of passion and vexation, “have I been wasting precious time over this confounded woodland, and the real work waiting for me! That girl will have twenty-four hours start of us. No train till 6:30 tonight! Arrive at London about nine o’clock. The police, I suppose, set to work the first thing in the morning! The girl has a fair chance of escape, I must say, but, thank Heaven, there is something definite to be done at last! Here,” he called to the groom, “ride alongside of me, and tell me all that is to be known about the girl Williams and her flight!”

But the man had little, or nothing, to tell beyond the fact that the girl had gone. All his information had been obtained at secondhand, and, like the housekeeper and other servants, the man seemed almost bewildered with the strange events occurring in such rapid succession in the household.

Meantime Lord Hardcastle was carefully collecting all the information that was to be had relative to the girl’s disappearance, questioning each of the servants in succession.

It appeared she had taken her supper with the other servants as usual at 10 o’clock on the previous night, or rather had attempted to do so, for she complained of feeling very ill, of pains in her head and back, and declared she was unable to eat. One of the maids had taunted her by enquiring whether it was the same sort of headache she had had when Detective Hill was in the house. This was met by an indignant rejoinder, and then the girl angrily left the room, as the others thought, to go to bed. The next morning she did not make her appearance at the servants’ breakfast, and the housekeeper, with whom Lucy was somewhat a favourite, determined to allow her a little latitude, thinking possibly the girl might really need rest and quiet.

Time slipped by, and Mrs. Nesbitt, occupied in household matters, did not again think of Lucy Williams until about half-past ten; then going to her room to enquire for her, found the door locked, and received no reply to her repeated knockings. Without consulting her master, she desired one of the men to break open the door, and entering, found that the bed had not been slept in, and the room in a great state of confusion. They had not had time to inform their master of the fact, before his bell was rung hurriedly, and he gave orders that Dr. Hayward should immediately be sent for, as Mrs. Warden and he were feeling far from well. “Stricken in body, as well as mind, Nesbitt,” he had said sadly. “It doesn’t matter much, there is not a great deal left to live for now.”

Mrs. Nesbitt had not dared to inform him of the fresh calamities. “And I am indeed thankful, sir,” added the poor old lady, “that you have come into the house to lift some of this heavy responsibility off my shoulders.”

“Let me see Lucy’s room, Mrs. Nesbitt,” said Lord Hardcastle.

The housekeeper immediately conducted him to the servants’ quarters.

“Is this exactly the condition in which you found the room?” he enquired, as Nesbitt threw back the door for him to enter.

“Indeed, sir, and I grieve to say that it is,” she replied. “To think that any young girl in this house could leave a room in such a state is more than I can understand,” and she sighed again.

Lord Hardcastle looked attentively round. A box, half open, and the contents partially drawn out, stood at the foot of the bed. A dress, bonnet and walking jacket lay upon a chair, evidently thrown there in a hurry, and a whole pile of burned letters was heaped in the fire-grate. Here and there the charred scraps had been fluttered on to the floor, most likely by the rapid passing and repassing of the girl while preparing for her flight.

“And to think that we might all of us have been burned in our beds last night,” moaned the housekeeper, “for aught she cared, the wicked girl!”

“Tell me, Mrs. Nesbitt,” interrupts Lord Hardcastle, “do you know the extent of Lucy Williams’s wardrobe? how many bonnets or hats had she do you think?”

“It’s that which puzzles me, sir. I know for certain, she had but two, for she told me only yesterday, she would not buy another just now, in case we might have to go into mourning for our dear young lady, and she complained that both were so shabby she was ashamed to be seen in them. And there they both are; she must have left the house with nothing on her head.”

“Or else in someone else’s!” remarks Lord Hardcastle. “It was yesterday you say she spoke of her hats; from her remarks I should imagine her flight was not thought of until suggested by the taunts of the other maid. Consequently her plans would not be properly matured nor well laid. So much the better for our chance of finding her. Tell me, Mrs. Nesbitt, could you or anyone else speak as to the contents of Miss Warden’s wardrobe, and had Lucy Williams any means of access to it.”

“She had sole charge of it, sir, after our dear young lady left. You see Mrs. Warden and everyone else so liked and trusted Lucy that everything was left in her hands, except the jewel case, which was removed to Mrs. Warden’s room. I don’t believe anyone but Lucy could speak for a certainty as to what Miss Warden had or had not.”

“We will go now, if you please, to Miss Warden’s room,” says Lord Hardcastle, giving one more glance at the untidy chamber. “This door must be secured and sealed till the police have seen the room. I will see if by any chance she has left any letters behind her.”

But on looking through the drawers and boxes no papers of any sort are to be found, and it seems to the housekeeper, that few if any of the girl’s clothes have been removed.

In an hour’s time, Lord Hardcastle has a small packet of carefully written notes ready for Varley’s assistance and guidance.

“I have not time,” he wrote, “to give you in detail the bases upon which my suppositions rest, I have simply dotted down one or two facts which I have ascertained beyond doubt, and one or two ideas which may perhaps be useful to you.

“In the first place, the girl’s flight if intended at some future period, was certainly not thought of for today, until late last night. This I am sure of from the hurried and scanty nature of her preparations.

“Secondly, she has not gone away in her own clothes, but most likely in Miss Warden’s; at any rate in one of Miss Warden’s bonnets and walking jackets.

“Thirdly, she has most probably appropriated other properties of Miss Warden’s, as the young lady’s room and its contents have been left in her sole charge.

“Hence it follows (fourthly), that she has probably taken the train to London, travelling by the first this morning, as she would be anxious to dispose of her spoil and would only dare to do so in the metropolis.

“Fifthly, the girl has gone away very ill. My own impression is, that the smallpox is in her system, and that she will not hold up as far as to London.

“Sixthly, her only friend in London, as far as can be ascertained, is a Miss or Mrs. Kempe, who resides at 15, Gresham Street North, High Street, Hackney.”

V

Dr. Hayward’s report of Mr. and Mrs. Warden’s health was far from satisfactory. “The lady,” he said, in reply to Lord Hardcastle’s enquiries, was undoubtedly suffering from smallpox, which in her weak state of health, had taken strong hold of her. As to Mr. Warden, he could not be sure; he feared some disease was latent in his system; he was altogether below par, and the anxiety and grief he had gone through had completely undermined his constitution⁠—

“Do what you can for them, while you can, my dear, young friend,” he added (he had known Hardcastle from his boyhood), “and spare them, as far as possible, the details of this sad business.”

So Lord Hardcastle had sent for his portmanteau, and a few favourite books, and begged of Mrs. Nesbitt a room in some quiet corner of the house, “A room, if you please, with cool, quiet colouring, no reds, or blues, or yellows, to flash out from the walls, and some soft thick carpet on the floor,” he had said, his wonted fastidiousness once more asserting itself. But he was more than repaid for any temporary inconvenience he might suffer, by the look of grateful thanks which crossed Mr. Warden’s careworn face, and his warm pressure of the hand, as he thanked his young friend for his kind unselfishness in thus voluntarily sharing the dreariness and desolation of their home. Dreary it was, indeed, to one who had known it in the old days. No light footsteps on the stairs, or sudden opening of doors, and a bright young voice pouring forth a flood of question, answer, and exclamation in a breath; no croquet, nor tennis balls here and there on the lawn, nor galloping of pony’s feet up the long steep avenue. A silence as of death appeared to have fallen upon the house, and the father and mother, stricken and weary, looked in each other’s pale faces and wondered “could this be the home of a month ago?”

And as Lord Hardcastle began to grow accustomed to the routine and family life of the household, two thoughts gradually forced themselves into his mind, which he felt would lead him somewhere, although utterly at a loss to imagine where.

Thrown as he was daily into close and intimate relations with Mr. and Mrs. Warden, he could not help reflecting on the strangeness of the fact, that neither in appearance, disposition, nor manner, did Amy in the slightest degree resemble either parent. The more closely he observed them, the more the dissimilarity became apparent.

The second fact which forced itself upon his notice, related solely to Mrs. Warden. Sincere as her grief for her daughter’s loss undoubtedly was, it soon became apparent to Lord Hardcastle, that it was nevertheless simply a reflected sorrow, that is to say, it struck her through her husband; she grieved for his loss, more than for her own, and was brokenhearted because she saw that grief was slowly killing him day by day. No one but a very close observer would have noted these things, and Lord Hardcastle was a very close observer, and more than that, a logical one. He did not believe in the possibility of sudden and disconnected facts occurring in the human world any more than in the world of nature. “There is a reason for these things, although at present it eludes me,” he would say to himself time after time. Long after midnight might the shaded lamp be seen burning from his bedroom window, and could anyone have lifted the curtain, they would have seen Hardcastle, with head resting on his hands, and elbows on the table, no books before him, nor any pretence of writing materials, but a whole world of thought evidently passing and repassing through his brain.

Meantime enquiries were set on foot on all sides as to the girl Williams. Frank Varley had ascertained from the station master at Dunwich, that a young girl, veiled and exceedingly well dressed, had left by the first train on that morning⁠—

“I should not have noticed any number of ladies at any other time, sir,” said the man, “but it is quite the exception for any but work people or business men to travel up by the 5:09 a.m. train.”

Varley had farther ascertained from the guard, that the lady had travelled first class, and had seemed very faint and tired. Arriving at the Midland Station, his work suddenly and unexpectedly became very easy to him. The officials there at once informed him of a lady having been taken alarmingly ill on alighting from the early morning train. The porter who told him, said that he himself had fetched a cab for her, and, scarcely conscious, she had given some address at Hackney, where she wished to be driven, but the name of the street had entirely slipped his memory.

Frank did not waste time in further enquiries. He at once telegraphed to Detective Hill fullest particulars of Lucy’s flight, and where he expected to find her, requesting him to follow him there as soon as possible. Then he sprang into a cab, and gave the man orders to drive to Gresham Street, Hackney.

An hour’s drive brought him to the farther side of that northern suburb⁠—a terra incognita to Frank, whose knowledge of London was limited to the club quarters, and west-end-squares and parks. Two or three busy roads were crossed, with flaring gas jets and goods very freely distributed on the pavement in front of the comparatively empty shops. Then a sudden turn brought him into a quiet street of some twenty or thirty two-storied houses, inhabited mostly by dressmakers, machinists, and journeymen of all kinds. Although poor, there was an air of quiet industry about the place, which gave Frank the hope that Lucy Williams’s friends might prove respectable, honest people. Dismissing his cab, he knocked at the door of No. 15; a few minutes elapsed, and it was opened by a tall, thin, pale woman of about thirty years of age, very neatly dressed, and with a look of settled anxiety and grief upon a face plain, but still frank and honest.

“Ah! I expected you, sir,” she said, quietly, “or at least someone in pursuit tonight. If you have come in search of Lucy Williams, I beseech you take these, and let the girl die in peace.”

She opened her hand, and held out something glittering; there was no light in the narrow doorway, but the glimmer of a gas-lamp lower down the street fell upon a small heap of splendidly cut diamonds, and was flashed back in a thousand brilliant hues. These Frank readily identified as the brooch and earrings Miss Warden had worn at the county ball the last night he had seen her. He took them from the woman’s hand⁠—

“Yes, I want these,” he said, “but I also want your friend, and must and will see her. Don’t attempt to hinder me, but take me at once to where she is.”

“Have mercy, sir,” pleaded the woman, “the poor girl cannot live very long, she is standing on the verge of the dark river. Do not! oh do not, I implore you, turn her thoughts from the only One who can carry her over! I have read to her, I have prayed⁠—”

“Be quiet!” interrupted Frank, for he began to fear there might be some trickery behind all this; lest she might be delaying his entrance in this way, in order to give the girl time to escape. “Be quiet,” he repeated, “and take me at once to the girl, or I shall find my way by myself.” Then the woman yielded, and once more pleading for mercy for her friend, opened a door on her left hand, and Frank found himself in a small, hot room, only lighted by a low fire flickering in the grate.

A faint moaning from the bed denoted it was occupied. “Can you not bring me a light?” said Frank, “I can’t see which way to turn.” At the sound of a man’s voice, a figure started up in the square old-fashioned bed, exclaiming in a high-pitched, feverish voice⁠—

“Have they come for me? Let me die in peace, I entreat you! Oh, sir, I will tell you everything, everything; only let me stay here.” Then, clasping her hands, and swaying herself to and fro she exclaimed⁠—

“Tom knows all about it; I did it for him, only for him!” Then she fell back exhausted, evidently in a high state of delirium, muttering again and again, “Tom, only for Tom.”

Frank readily recognised Lucy’s voice, but it was too dark to see her face. The woman came forward and endeavoured to soothe her; “Hush, Lucy,” she said, “don’t think about Tom now, although God knows I would lay down my life for him. Turn your thoughts to One able to save both you and Tom if you will repent and believe. Hear what He said to the dying thief on the cross.” Then she commenced reciting the Scripture story from memory. But again Frank interrupted her⁠—

“See here,” he said, “I am not a heathen, nor an infidel, but I want to know what you have done towards bringing the girl round. Have you had a doctor in?”

“A doctor, sir,” replied the woman, “since Lucy came into the house I have not ceased reading and praying with her for one five minutes; if it is the Lord’s will she will recover, and live to repent of her sins; but if she must die, why should I waste precious time trying to cure her poor body, while Satan is striving to steal her soul.”

“Hush! my good woman,” said Frank, “I will stay here with your friend, and do my best to fight the devil for you; you must go at once and get a doctor in. Here, take my card, get the best and nearest doctor; tell him I will be answerable for all charges.”

“I go, sir,” replied the woman; then, once more bending over the bed, she murmured, “Lucy, Lucy, while there is yet time, turn to the Lord; do not forget what He has said to all who go to Him in tears and penitence.” Then Frank took her by the arm, and led her out of the room, reminding her that there still might be a chance of saving her friend’s life.

Left thus unexpectedly alone with the girl, Frank determined to make one more effort to get at the truth. How ill she was, he scarcely knew, but getting more accustomed to the dim light of the room, he could see that her face was crimson with fever, and her eyes wild and staring. He approached the bed quietly, and bending over her, said in a low tone⁠—

“Lucy Williams, do you know me? I have come a long way to ask you a question, will you try to answer it?”

The girl started up in bed with a loud cry. “Tom, Tom!” she exclaimed, evidently mistaking Varley for her brother; “Why do you stay here? I thought you were at Liverpool; you will never, never get off!” Then she sank back on her pillows, and recommenced breathing heavily.

Frank waited a few minutes and thought he would try once more. This time he began differently. “Lucy,” he said, in a kind, soothing tone, “I have no doubt your brother is safe somewhere by this time, it is about your young mistress I wish to speak, your dear Miss Amy. Can you tell me where she is or do you know what led her to leave her home?” But now the girl’s terror redoubled; she clasped her hands and hid her face in the pillows. “Do not take me away, sir,” she implored, “let me die here in peace! I did it for Tom⁠—he knows, he will tell you⁠—only leave me here till the morning?” Then her mutterings became incoherent, and she tossed wildly from side to side.

It was evidently useless; nothing more could then be attempted, and Varley drew away from the bed and leant against the window ledge. Had he been of an imaginative temperament, the scene in which he was playing a part would have excited his nerves horribly. Not a sound in the house save the tick, tick, of a large Dutch clock fixed in a corner near the window. Now and then a feeble flame would spring up in the half-filled grate and cast a gaunt shadow across the ceiling. A badly silvered oval mirror hung over the mantelpiece and seemed to reflect all sorts of weird shapes; and every now and then, from the poor worn out bed in the darkest corner of the room, came a sob or moan, or the girl’s half-muttered delirious fancies.

“I shall be glad when this is over,” said Frank to himself. “How long that woman is. The girl may be dead before morning and we none the wiser for what she knows!” He tried to catch a sentence here and there of her wanderings, but it told him nothing beyond the fact that her brother was somehow mixed up in the affair, and her one anxiety was for his safety.

At length, after what seemed to Frank an hour’s waiting, but which in reality was but half the time, footsteps stopped outside in the silent street. In a few moments two figures entered the room and a brisk sharp voice exclaimed, “A light, Miss Kempe, and quickly; do you suppose I can attend a patient in the dark?” Then Miss Kempe groped in the depths of a corner cupboard, and presently produced a small end of a small candle ensconced in a large flat candlestick; this Frank quickly lighted with one of his cigar matches, and exchanging greetings with the doctor, turned with him towards the bed.

The doctor held the candle low, throwing the light on the girl’s face, then he shook his head. “Are you afraid of infection?” he said, turning to Frank, “if so you had better go home at once.”

“Afraid!” repeated Varley, “No, I am not afraid of anything under heaven when I have an object in view. But what is it? What is she suffering from?”

“Suppressed smallpox. A very bad case; something on her mind, too, I should say,” this with a keen glance at Frank, “Twenty-four hours will see the end of it.” Then he turned to Miss Kempe and proceeded to give her some necessary directions.

And twenty-four hours did see the end of it. About an hour before midnight, Frank was joined in his watch by Detective Hill, who at once offered to take sole charge of the case. “No,” said Frank decisively, “as long as there is the shadow of a chance of the shadow of a clue being given I shall remain. Your ears are sharpened by your practice and profession, but mine, Mr. Hill, by something with which your profession has nothing to do.”

“Gentlemen,” said the doctor, as the grey dawn began to struggle through the narrow panes, and light up the poorly furnished room. “It is perfectly useless for either of you to remain. The delirium has ceased, and the girl has fallen into a state of stupor from which she will never waken. She will never speak again.”

Still they stayed on. The Detective, as the day wore away, went in and out for his meals or a breath of fresh air, for the small room had become stifling. But Frank never stirred. “She may die at any moment,” he thought, “and it’s just possible that at the very last her energies may rekindle, and she may make some sign that will need interpretation.”

So he waited and waited. The doctor came in and out, attending neighbouring patients and returning at intervals. The old clock went tick, tick, in the corner, and Miss Kempe, on her knees at the bedside, prayed audibly for the poor dying one. “Will you not join me, sir,” she had said to Frank, “in wrestling for this poor sinner’s soul?”

“I won’t say I won’t join you, Miss Kempe,” Frank had replied, “but you must let me stay here by the window.”

And thus towards evening the girl passed away in her sleep; she made no sign, she did not even lift her hand, and Frank, with a sigh and a pitiful look at the once bright-faced Lucy Williams, thankfully made his escape into the fresh air.

He was soon joined by Detective Hill. “So sir,” he said, “it is all over, and there is little more we can do beyond setting a watch on the house and the woman there.”

“How so,” exclaimed Frank, “do you suspect she is mixed up in the affair? To me she seemed an honest sort of person, although somewhat of a fanatic.”

“So she is, sir, a really good woman I believe, a sort of a mission woman, I think they call her, connected with the Plymouth Brethren. I have, however, made a few enquiries about her, and I find that she was at one time engaged to be married to Tom Williams, but gave him up on account of the dissolute life he was leading. For his sake I suspect she has shown all this kindness to Lucy, and I think it more than probable that the fellow not hearing from his sister will endeavour to communicate with her through this woman.”

“Then it has not been altogether time wasted in following the girl here? I was beginning to lose heart again, and to imagine that once more the clue had slipped through our fingers. You mean to have this woman watched, Mr. Hill. Very good. May I ask you to allot this task to me? I cannot rest, I must be doing something, you know.”

“Pardon me, sir, the man has already been chosen for the work. Your presence in this neighbourhood is unwise, and arouses suspicion, and instead of being the watcher, you would be the one watched. A man of their own class must do the work. The man I have chosen is the postman on this beat. He is an old ally and friend of mine, and has taken a room opposite No. 15 for the purpose. We must pay him well, sir, that’s all, and we may count on a minute report of Miss Kempe’s daily doings; including, as a matter of course, the first foreign or country letter she receives.”

“Very well, you must do things your own way, I suppose. But what about the Liverpool police, are they on the watch for the man? Is there nothing I can do there? I dare say,” added Frank, apologetically, “you think me a confounded fool, but I must be doing something. I think I must start off for Chicago, Australia, or somewhere! If you can’t find work for me, I must find it for myself.”

“But why go so far, sir? You may be of more use nearer home. Only one thing I must beg of you, leave this neighbourhood at once. If these people get it into their heads that they are watched, our difficulties will be increased tenfold. I can’t say for certain,” the Detective added, reflectively, “but it’s just possible you might be of use at Liverpool. I can give you the names of one or two chums of Tom Williams, and if you can contrive to get it known among them that Lucy has died, and left her brother her clothes and savings, it will, no doubt, reach the fellow’s ears, and the bait may draw. You see, these people are sharp enough to know the difference between a detective and a gentleman, and would be more likely to attach faith to a report coming through you, than from Scotland Yard.”

“Very well, then, I start for Liverpool at once. I have given orders for the girl’s funeral, and arranged that Miss Warden’s walking dress and diamonds shall be sent back to her parents. I have only kept this, Hill,” and Frank took from his pocketbook a small bow of lace and ribbon. “You see, I remember her wearing it, and if it’s missed, you’ll know I have it,” and he replaced it reverently in his breast-pocket.

“And now, before we part, Mr. Hill,” continued Frank, “I want you honestly and candidly to give me your own private opinion on this matter. How, and in what way, do you consider Lucy Williams to be concerned in Miss Warden’s disappearance?”

“Well, sir, it’s a difficult question to answer,” replied Mr. Hill, looking sideways at Frank. “I only feel sure of one thing in this affair, and that is that Miss Warden is alive and well somewhere. All else must be conjecture. My own impression is that she left her home voluntarily, and that she is staying away voluntarily. In such cases the maid generally possesses, to some extent, the confidence of her mistress, and acts according to some prearranged plan. Even the diamonds for instance⁠—”

“Stop,” shouted Frank, in a voice that made the detective start, “I can’t stand this. Say another word, and I shall knock you down! No power in Heaven or earth shall make me believe such a story as that. No, no, it implies too much! Could a girl with her mouth and eyes have deliberately set herself to deceive her parents and friends? Could she⁠—no, no, I will not hear it. Tell me anything but such a black story as that, Hill.”

“Well, sir, I have no wish to give offence. You asked for my opinion, but it is extremely difficult in such a case as this to have one.” This with a respectful glance at Frank’s Herculean arm and well-developed muscles.

Two hours after this Frank was well on his way to Liverpool. Anxious, worried, disappointed as he was at the unforeseen ending to his journey, he could not help feeling at heart more hopeful than he had hitherto been. “Alive and well somewhere,” he kept repeating to himself over and over again, not as an incentive to his work, for he needed none, but for the ring of comfort the words brought.

“Nothing can ever shake my faith in that girl, nothing can ever make me doubt her truth and purity,” he said, as he entered one or two facts in his notebook for future experience and guidance. “But how the mystery deepens and thickens, supposing her to be alive and well somewhere!”

VI

Shortly after his arrival at Liverpool, Frank received two letters from Harleyford. The first from his mother, ran thus⁠—

“My Dearest Boy⁠—

“We received your telegram, with your address, yesterday, and I need not say how thankful your father and I were to hear that you were safe and well, and that you had some settled place of abode, where a letter could be sent. We had begun to fear that with your usual impetuosity, you would be starting off on some long journey, and it would be weeks or months before there would be any means of communicating with you.

“I know, where a young lady is concerned, it is almost always lost labour to attempt to reason with a young man, so it is with little hope of success that I make one more appeal to your common sense.

“My dearest Frank, can you possibly imagine that you, unversed and inexperienced in such matters, can hope to meet with success where well-trained professional men have failed? Have not the science and ingenuity of first-class London detectives been exhausted in this search, and what can you hope to do? To my mind one of two things is certain; either Miss Warden met with some accident (to us unaccountable) and is long since dead; or else she has contracted some mésalliance, and is remaining voluntarily hidden from her friends. In either case, search for her, as far as you are concerned, is equally fruitless; for dead or living she could never be your wife.

“My son, be reasonable, give up a task for which you are utterly unsuited, and which renders your father and myself equally miserable. We are ‘wearying’ for you, as your old Scotch tutor used to say, and the rectory seems very cheerless with my Frank’s chair so long unoccupied.

“The sculling match will be coming off soon, and I hear that Benson is likely to be the favourite. What do you wish done about Sultana? I know you objected to Robert riding her, but she has grown far too frisky for your father to mount. Let us have a long letter as soon as you possibly can, and thankful, indeed, shall I be if it contains the welcome news that you will soon be amongst us again.

Then there followed a long postscript.

“Do you remember your old playfellow, Mary Burton? I have her staying with me now (she came over from the Denver’s) and she has grown into one of the sweetest, handsomest girls, I have ever seen. She is just twenty-one, and has come into her mother’s large property at North-over-Fells. She is very anxious to know if you are at all like the Frank of old times, but I tell her a mother’s description of her only son cannot be a trustworthy one, so she must wait till she sees you, and judge for herself. Adieu.”

“Dear mother!” said Frank, when he read her letter, “God bless her, she means kindly, and may say things to me no one else would dare to!”

Then he wrote a short reply.

“Dearest Mother⁠—

“Please not to expect me at the rectory until you see me. I have serious work on hand, which nothing but death or success will induce me to give up. Thanks for all your news.

“Robert may ride Sultana, but tell him, I’ll thrash him if he spoils her mouth. I am delighted to hear such good accounts of Mary Burton, but I have other thoughts in my head than old playfellows and sweethearts just now.

Mrs. Varley read his letter, and sighed and cried over it. Then she showed it to Mary Burton, who sighed and smiled over it.

“Why are such coquettes as Amy Warden sent into the world to turn men’s brains, Mary, will you tell me that?” said Mrs. Varley. “If she had lived, she would have been a most unsuitable wife for Frank, with her self-willed, impatient temper. Will you wait for him, Mary? Do you think he is worth waiting for?”

And Mary had confessed that she thought he was worth waiting for, and had sighed and smiled again. Why should she not smile, indeed? There was no rival beauty in her way now!

Frank’s second letter was from Lord Hardcastle, and contained a brief summary of events at Harleyford⁠—

“I grieve to say,” he wrote, “that Mrs. Warden is in a very weak state of health. Indeed I think far more seriously of her than Hayward does, and have suggested that further medical advice should be called in. Mr. Warden has pulled himself together wonderfully, for his wife’s sake, and seems, to a certain extent, to have recovered some of his old strength and energy.

“With regard to Lucy Williams, my own opinion is very strong and decided. I fail to see matters in the light in which Hill, in his report to us, has placed them. He seeks to imply that she has been acting in concert with Miss Warden, or upon some prearranged plan, and was probably commissioned by her mistress to sell the diamonds to supply her with money. To my mind he is shooting beyond the mark in such a supposition. I can only look upon the girl as a common thief of a very ordinary type, who took advantage of the state of confusion into which the ‘High Elms’ was thrown, to take possession of her mistress’s jewellery and clothes. She has probably stolen far more than we know, and when Mrs. Warden becomes stronger (if she ever does) and able to go into the matter, no doubt many things will be missed.

“I think in following this track, you are most probably wasting time and energy. Still, as you say one must do something, and it is just possible that in following up one clue you may come upon another, so I will say no more, but wish you ‘God speed’ with all my heart.”

Frank growled tremendously over this letter⁠—

“It’s all very well,” he muttered, “for Hardcastle to sit quietly at home and throw cold water on all my attempts; how on earth does he think the clue is to be found if one does not look after it? He says so little, it is difficult to get at the man’s real thoughts on the matter. It is easy to say it is perfectly useless doing this or doing that, but what in Heaven’s name does he think ought to be done?”

What indeed! Not once or twice, but every hour in the day did Lord Hardcastle ask himself the same question. He felt like a man walking in a circle, forever on the verge of a mystery, but never approaching any nearer than a circle permitted. Become now one of the family at the High Elms, not a look, not a word, not a tone of any one of the household ever escaped his observation. Mrs. Warden’s severe illness had thoroughly incapacitated her for the exertion of receiving visitors, and the family had gradually become all but isolated from their neighbours. An occasional morning caller, leaving cards only, the daily visit of the doctor, and the arrival of the London post, was all that occurred to break the day’s monotony.

Thus the summer wore slowly away, the short autumn days began to grow chill and stormy, the sad old house looked drear and gray among the tall, dark elms. Very drear and very gray Lord Hardcastle thought it, as he rode slowly along the steep avenue leading through the park. He had been transacting some business in Dunwich for Mr. Warden, and, somewhat weary and dispirited, was returning in the afternoon twilight. He looked right and left on a damp misty landscape. The equinoctial gales had set in early, and the trees were already brown and leafless. Heavy rains, too, had flooded the country round, and the stream running through the Park was swollen and turbid, threatening to overflow its banks. Dark clouds were gathering overhead, and a flight of rooks whirling low and flapping their black wings, with their mournful cawing, completed the desolateness of the scene.

“It is like entering a graveyard,” he thought, as he rode along. Then his memory went back to one bright sunny morning, when riding up this same avenue he had met Amy and her father, well-mounted, coming from the house. Very lovely had she looked in the summer sunshine, with her fresh, girlish beauty, and almost royal dignity of manner.

“À bien-tôt, Lord Hardcastle,” had been her salutation as she cantered past, and the sweet, ringing voice echoed in his ears still⁠—aye, and would until he died. Was it the many-sidedness of Amy’s character (if the expression be allowed) which made her so dangerously fascinating? With Varley, generally speaking, her manner had been that of a finished coquette, alternately commanding or persuading, wilful or gentle, as the fancy seized her. With Hardcastle, on the contrary, her bearing was that of a stately, high-bred lady; her impatience and impetuosity of temper only shown in the vivacity and variety of her conversation. Was it, could it be all over now forever? Was all this bright beauty and loveliness but a memory⁠—a thing of the past? All this and much more passed through Lord Hardcastle’s mind as he drew near to the house, standing out grim and gray against the dark, threatening sky.

“Bad news again, sir,” said the man who came forward to take his horse, “Mrs. Warden is much worse, but would insist on getting up this afternoon. Doctor Hayward has been sent for, and master would like to see you at once in the morning room.”

Thither Lord Hardcastle immediately went. The morning room was one of the prettiest sitting rooms in the house⁠—Amy’s favourite in the old days, on account of its long French windows opening on to the lawn, and from which might be seen a charming miniature landscape of woodland and park, and the silvery rippling stream now so dark and swollen.

Mr. Warden came forward to meet him. “She would come down and sit here,” he whispered; “a sudden change has set in, and I have sent for Hayward; I fear he will be caught in this storm, for a storm we shall certainly have.” As he spoke, a crash of thunder shook the house from basement to roof, and flash after flash of brilliant lightning followed in quick succession.

“Let me move your chair, dear,” he said, tenderly, “a little way from the window; it is a grand sight, but almost too much for your nerves.” She yielded at once to his wishes, as she had yielded all through their married life; and still further to shield her from the bright flashes he stood between her and the window, bending over her in an almost lover-like attitude, so as not to lose any of her words, for her voice had grown alarmingly faint and weak.

“This reminds me of old times, Stephen,” she said, looking up in his face. At this moment a pitiful howl from old Presto, the hound, rang through the room. The dog himself trembled violently and began to sniff first under the windows, then at the door. Mr. Warden rang the bell. “Don’t turn him out, Stephen,” said his wife, “I like him here at my feet. Don’t you remember he was often like this in a storm. Poor old doggie,” she added, stooping down to smooth his large head, “stay with me as long as you can.”

Mr. Warden made no reply. Something in his throat seemed to choke him. Lord Hardcastle looked from one to the other. Then he wrote on a slip of paper, “The man must have missed Hayward somehow; I will go myself after him,” and placing it where Mr. Warden would see it, hurriedly departed on his mission.

And now the storm seemed to have reached its height. Flash after flash lighted up the otherwise dark room, peal after peal crashed over the roof, and the rain dashed in torrents against the window panes. “We will have lights,” Mr. Warden had said, but his wife had objected, urging that she wished to see the storm in all its grandeur and beauty. “We have had dark days together lately, dear,” she said plaintively, looking up in his face, “but I feel they are ending now. Something tells me that your Amy will come home again”⁠—Another mournful howl from Presto interrupted her, and again the bright pink and purple of the lightning played about the room.

“I never saw Presto so frightened before,” she exclaimed. “How strange it is! I used to be so nervous and terrified in a thunderstorm, and tonight I feel so happy, as if I were beginning my girl’s life over again.” She broke off suddenly, looking towards the window. “What was that?” she exclaimed, “surely I heard something more than the rain!”

“Yes,” said her husband, trying to steady his nerves, which were almost beyond his control, “it is the bough of the oleander against the glass. How the wind is rising! It is indeed an awful tempest!”

And now Lord Hardcastle and Dr. Hayward came in, drenched to the skin and out of breath with their hurried ride, then the dog, with one prolonged howl, flew past them as they entered. “Something is wrong,” said Hardcastle. “Hey, Presto! go, find!” and opening a side door he let the dog out into the stormy night.

The doctor went softly into the middle of the room and looked at his patient. The hectic flush was fading from her face, and she seemed to be sinking into a sweet sound sleep.

“I am so thankful to see her thus,” said Mr. Warden, “she has been so feverish and excitable all day, I think the storm must have upset her nerves.”

“Hush!” said the doctor, solemnly, holding up his hand, “this is not sleep; this is death, Mr. Warden; she will soon be beyond the sound of storm and tempest.” He yielded his place to the husband, who, kneeling by her side, took her thin white hand in his. Hardcastle and the doctor withdrawing to a further corner of the room, waited and watched for the end to come.

Gradually the storm subsided, and the rain settled down into a slow steady fall. The breathing of the patient became slower and fainter, and the doctor whispered to Hardcastle that the end was at hand. At that moment a long low wail sounded on the outside of the window, and Hardcastle, peering through the dark panes, could see Presto’s brown head and glittering eyes pressed close against the glass.

He crept softly out of the room to call the dog in, fearful lest he might disturb the solemn watch in the chamber of death. “Quiet, old doggie,” he said, stooping down to pat the hound, all wet and mud-covered as he was. But what is this! What is it makes the young man start and tremble, and his lips and cheeks turn pale? What is it brings that look of horror into his face, and makes his eyes distend and his nostrils quiver? What is this hanging in shreds between the dog’s firmly-set teeth? What is it? Only a few tattered remnants of dark-blue silk!

VII

Mrs. Warden passed away before midnight; only the doctor and her husband were with her at the last moment, for Hardcastle, bareheaded and trembling with excitement, had followed the hound out into the dark night.

“Find, Presto, find,” he exclaimed, urging the dog forward. But Presto needed no urging, he bounded rather than ran over the sodden grass and under the dripping trees; no stars, no moon, no light anywhere, and Hardcastle, breathless and stumbling, with difficulty kept up with the eager hound, who turns neither to the right nor to the left, but makes straight for the deep rushing stream, straight on to the low, sloping bank; and there the dog stops and trembles.

“Which way, Presto? Forward, forward!” shouts Hardcastle. But the dog will not stir a step now, and stands quivering on the brink of the stream; Hardcastle mounts the bank after him, and, bending forward, looks up and down the river. Not a sound save the rush and whirl of the waters, the moaning of the wind in the dark trees, and the pitiless splash, splash of the rain. Not a sign of life nor death in the flood, but as he turns to descend the slippery bank, something lying in the roots of an overhanging willow tree catches his eye. One arm clinging to a low bough, one arm in the cold, dark waters, and in another instant he holds in his hand a girl’s low-crowned felt hat, with pale-blue ostrich feather. “My God! and is this the end?” He cries out in the bitterness of his heart, then, feeling how utterly useless and helpless he is alone and single-handed in the dark, he rushes back to the house.

“I want men, I want lights,” he calls in a hoarse voice; “quickly, in Heaven’s name, down to the stream!” Down to the stream they follow him, with lights, and ropes, and drags. No time is lost in setting to work; lanterns are swung on ropes across the river, the men, with Hardcastle at their head, are wading through the swollen waters⁠—hand in hand, throwing ropes, dragging, shouting, lest some poor soul might still be struggling in the dark flood.

What does it matter? There she lies, face downwards, among the reeds and tall rushes in the river’s mud. What does it matter! The men may shout⁠—the waters rush⁠—aye, and her warm, truehearted lover kneel by her side, and call her by her sweet name, never more will those dark eyes open to the light of day, nor those red lips be unsealed to tell their story of sorrow and wrong! Clasp her tight, and clasp her long, Lord Hardcastle, then yield her up forever to the shadows, the doubt, the darkness of the grave.

They brought her in, and laid her on her own dainty little bed. The storm had ceased now; day dawned, the birds carolled and twittered at the casement, and the bright sunshine streamed in through Amy’s rose-coloured curtains, and fell sideways on her pale, grey face. Silent, hopeless, and awestricken the father and lover gazed upon their darling; the search is ended now⁠—there she lies in her blue silk dress, all torn and mud-stained; her dark hair unwound and lying round her in long, damp coils; her tiny hands still clasped as though in prayer, and a look of agony and terror in her half-closed eyes. Alas! how changed. What terrible ordeal can she have passed through since she last lay sleeping here. There are lines on her brow, and dark circles beneath her eyes which tell of tears and sorrow; a pained look about the chiselled mouth which the Amy of old days never wore. Lord Hardcastle bends over her reverently⁠—he will not even kiss her forehead, dead as she lies, for he dared not have done so living. Kneeling as he would to his sovereign, he takes her damp, cold hand in his to press to his lips; as he does so, something glittering on the third finger of her left hand catches his eye. What is it! Not the antique ruby ring with its quaint motto, “sans espoir je meurs,” only a plain gold band encircles the tiny finger⁠—a simple wedding-ring!

They buried Mrs. Warden and Amy on one day⁠—on one day, but not in one grave. People in Harleyford wondered much at this; and they wondered still more, when, shortly afterwards a splendid granite monument was placed over the mother’s grave, with name, age, date, birth, and death engraved in clear-cut letters; while Amy’s resting-place was shadowed only by a simple marble cross with but one word inscribed, “Aimée.”

VIII

The news of Amy’s death was telegraphed to Frank at Dublin. Thither, following some imaginary clue, he had gone, and eager and hopeful at heart, the sudden tidings nearly proved his deathblow. Before the day closed which brought the news, Frank was lying helpless and unconscious on a bed of fever.

Mrs. Varley trembled for her son’s life; fortunately her address was known to the proprietor of the hotel where Frank was staying, and he had immediately telegraphed to her her son’s danger.

“Mary,” she said, addressing Miss Burton, “have you courage to cross the Channel with me to try to save my poor boy? The rector will follow next week if there’s any need, but he cannot leave his parish at an hour’s notice.”

And Mary had expressed her willingness to start there and then for Dublin. What would she not do for one who had always been as a brother to her? So the two ladies took passage in a packet crossing the next day, and arrived at Dublin to find Frank raving and tossing in the delirium of brain fever.

Then followed days and nights of weary watching and nursing.

“He may pull through yet, madam,” said the good old doctor, addressing Mrs. Varley, but peering wonderingly at Mary through his spectacles. He had been told that the sudden death of a young lady was the cause of the illness. Who, then, was this other young lady so devoted in her attentions to the sufferer? “He may pull through yet, madam; he has a constitution of iron and the frame of a giant, not to speak of the two angels who watch over him day and night!” This in a rich Irish brogue, with a gallant bow right and left to the two ladies.

And Frank did pull through. Gradually the fever in his brain subsided, and though weak and helpless as a child, the doctor pronounced him out of danger.

But with returning consciousness came back the sense of sorrow and loss, and Mrs. Varley’s heart ached for her son as she saw the look of utter blank misery and despair settle down upon his once bright, happy face. “Get him to talk of his sorrow” had been the doctor’s advice, and gently and gradually his mother had led him on to speak freely of poor Amy and her terrible ending.

“We all suffer with and for you, my son,” said Mrs. Varley, sitting by Frank’s easy chair in the early twilight, the glow from the fire alone lighting the room, “but my feeling for you does not prevent me feeling for someone else very near and very dear to me, and who is just now suffering as much as, or, perhaps, more than you.”

Frank’s eyes expressed his wonder. Of whom could his mother be speaking? Wrapped up in his own misery, he had had no thought for the sorrows of others.

“Don’t try to talk to me, Frank, dear,” continued his mother. “You must forgive me if I say that sorrow is apt to make one selfish and unobservant. Otherwise you would have noticed not only the grief and anxiety in my face, which has made an old woman of me the last few weeks, but also the grief in a sweet young face which has been watching yours very sadly for many a day and night.”

“Mother, mother,” exclaimed Frank, passionately, for now his mother’s meaning was unmistakable. “Why did you bring the girl here? You knew it was useless. Why didn’t you leave me here to die? God knows I have nothing left to live for now!”

“Miss Burton did not come for you alone, Frank, she came for my sake also. She has been to me as a daughter in my trouble, and as a daughter she came with me here. Your father could not leave his parish, and was it right that I should travel all these miles alone to face such an illness as yours? The difficulty, however, will soon be ended, as Mary tells me she must leave us tomorrow; she has friends here in Dublin. Your danger is past, she says, and she is no longer needed. Believe me, Frank, it is not your return to health which is driving her away, but your coldness and indifference, and (forgive me, dear) your ingratitude.”

“What is it you want me to do, mother?” asks poor Frank, piteously. “Not marry her! I have no love to offer any woman now. My heart is crushed and broken, and a dozen Mary Burtons couldn’t mend it.”

“I know that, Frank, dear,” replied his mother, very sweetly, “but if you have a broken heart to carry about with you, it should teach you to be very tender to the broken hearts of others, especially to so good and true a heart as Mary’s. A few kind words to her just now would make her, if not happy, at any rate a little less miserable than she is now.”

“Tell me what to say, then,” said Frank, wearily, “and let me say it at once. You don’t want me to ask her to marry me? The words would choke me, I think.”

“No, my son, not that. I only want you to thank her for her kindness and care through your illness (for, indeed, she has nearly worn herself out in saving your life), and I want you just to say four little words to her. ‘Don’t leave us, Mary.’ This for your mother’s sake, for what could I do without her? May I send her to you, Frank?” she added, after a pause.

Then Frank, wearied with the discussion, gave a feeble assent, and Mrs. Varley left the room immediately, thankful for her partial success, and hoping much from the coming interview between her son and Mary.

Very softly Mary entered the room, and went straight up to Frank. Then, for the first time, he noticed how pale and sad the girl had grown.

“How white you are looking, Mary,” he said, kindly. “Are you feeling ill? Will you take my chair a moment?” at the same time attempting to rise.

“No, no,” said Mary in an instant, flushing scarlet, “you are still an invalid, and must not think of politeness. Mrs. Varley said you wanted to see me. What is it, Frank?”

“Mary,” he said, taking both her hands in his, “I want to ask you to forgive my abominable rudeness and ingratitude to you. I want to thank you for all you have done for me. I am so ashamed I have not done this before, but I have been so miserable, so brokenhearted.” Then the poor fellow broke down utterly, and weakened by his long illness and unable to control himself, covered his face with his hands, and wept and sobbed like a child.

“Frank, Frank,” pleaded Mary. “For all our sakes restrain yourself; you will kill me if you give way like this. What can I do for you? I would lay down my life to give you an hour’s happiness.”

Still Frank sobbed on, and Mary, bending over him as a mother would over a sick child, drew his head on to her shoulder, and soothed and comforted him.

Gradually the passion of his grief subsided, and he lay back, with his head on her shoulder, worn out and exhausted.

Then Mrs. Varley gently turned the handle of the door, and entered the room.

“Thank God for this,” she exclaimed. “Mary, don’t move. Frank, dear, she is the one wife out of all the world you should have chosen, and you may well be thankful to have won such an one. God bless you both. I will write to your father tonight.”

Frank was on the point of asking his mother what he had said or done that she should congratulate and bless him in this way, but Mary’s white face and trembling hands checked the words on his lips, so he merely said, with a weary sigh, “Mother, I must go to bed at once, I am utterly worn out,” and tottered rather than walked to the door. Mrs. Varley followed him. “I may tell your father it is all settled, may I not?” she said, in a low voice, as she held open the door for him. Frank glanced back at Mary leaning still over the back of the armchair, and her drooping figure and tearful face pleaded her own cause. “Tell him what you like, mother,” he replied, wearily, “only let me rest tonight.” Besides, after all, what did it matter? The best of his life was gone, anyone who would might have the broken remnants.

Very angry indeed was the rector when he received his wife’s letter containing the news of his son’s engagement. “It is absolutely indecent,” he wrote back, “it is gross disrespect to the living and the dead. Everyone knows the hopes my son cherished with regard to Miss Warden, and now, within a fortnight after her death, he is engaged to someone else. I will have nothing whatever to do with such an arrangement. Mr. Warden is an old and valued friend of mine, and how could I look him in the face if I countenanced such conduct on the part of my son? Is he a child or a lunatic that he cannot learn to control his own feelings and bear up against a bereavement? Let him make up his mind to bear his sorrows as a man should and as other people have had to before him.”

In reply to this, Mrs. Varley wrote a long letter pleading, not so much the wisdom of her own conduct, as the necessity of the case.

“Frank is neither a child nor a lunatic,” so ran the letter, “but he has strong passions and an impetuous temper which would very rapidly carry him down hill if once he turned that way. Add to this his broken health and spirits, and you will see I have had no light task to perform in endeavouring to restore him to what he once was. The physician here tells me his only chance of recovering health and strength is to start at once on a long foreign tour⁠—under any circumstances he must not think of returning to Harleyford for another year. What then, do you advise? Can you leave your parish for so long a time to travel with your son through Europe (she knew the rector hated travelling, or indeed any kind of bodily exertion) or do you consider that I should be a suitable companion for him under the circumstances? Is there anyone of his own friends fit for such a task, or who could do for him all that a tender loving wife will do? What would it matter to Mr. Warden, or to anyone else likely to criticise his conduct, if Frank fell into a course of reckless dissipation, or ended his life by his own hand⁠—and this, let me tell you, is another terror I have had always before me. No, no, my dear husband, see things in their right light I beseech you; you must give way in this matter, and believe me it is as much for your own happiness as your son’s that you should do so.”

And the rector did give way as might have been expected, and not only consented to his son’s wedding, but went over to Dublin and performed the ceremony himself, and also sketched out the wedding tour for the young people⁠—a trip through the American continent first, and a final run through the chief cities of Europe.

“Hardcastle has the best of it now,” said poor Frank, sadly, to himself, as he stood waiting for his bride in the vestry of the little Irish church where the ceremony was to take place. “He has no mother to talk him into a marriage he has no heart for. Not but that I shall do my best to make her happy, for she is sweet and good, but I cannot tear the other memory out of my heart.”

Thus it was that Frank and Mary became man and wife within a month of poor Amy’s death, and the rector and Mrs. Varley returned to Harleyford to sustain, as best they might, the inquisitiveness and criticism of their neighbours.

IX

Very slowly and wearily the days went on at the High Elms. Lord Hardcastle, now become an acknowledged inmate of the house, scarcely recognised himself in the life he was leading, so completely were his occupations and surroundings reversed. Habituated to the quiet monotony of a life of study, broken only by a yearly visit to London to attend the meetings of the various scientific societies of which he was a member, it was not the solitude of the house which jarred upon his nerves and feelings. He had from his earliest youth been accustomed to keep his impulses and passions well under control, and his highly nervous temperament had ever been perfectly balanced by his well cultivated reasoning powers. Under the trying circumstances through which he had passed, his health had not suffered in the slightest degree, and yet here was he, reasonable and self-contained as ever, in a state of nervous irritability for which he could not account. “It is an atmosphere of mystery that I am breathing,” he would say to himself, “at every turn something confronts me for which I am totally unprepared. Why, for instance, the inscription on Amy’s grave? and why is it that I, who loved her so truly and who held her cold and lifeless in my arms, have as yet no feeling of utter blank despair in my heart, but only some strong undefinable impulse which is forever urging me on, on, on, in the search for the truth?” And the more he thought the more he wondered, until his brain became as it were sick and giddy with revolving so constantly round one centre.

Mr. Warden, on his part, seemed to have settled down into the absolute quietude of a hopeless, aimless life. He had become altogether an old man in his ways and habits, and was leading the life of one who knows the future will have no good thing in store for him, and who therefore lives entirely in the memory of the past. About Mrs. Warden, and her illness and death, he would talk freely, but when once or twice Lord Hardcastle had purposely mentioned Amy’s name to him, he had either abruptly quitted the room or else so pointedly turned the conversation that another remark on the subject would have been impossible.

“It cuts him to the heart even to hear me speak of her, and he must know she is never out of my mind,” thought Lord Hardcastle, as he looked across the library to where Mr. Warden was sitting with an open volume before him, but his eyes dreamily fixed on the window pane⁠—his thoughts evidently far away.

“See here, Mr. Warden,” he said suddenly, crossing the room to him, “I may seem impertinent to you in what I am about to ask, but I have a real reason for asking the question. I loved your daughter living (God knows how truly) and I love her dead. If she had lived she might never have been my wife⁠—who can tell⁠—but her good name, dead as she is, is as dear to me as though she had been. Will you tell me⁠—I ask it as a great favour⁠—why you had inscribed on her tomb a name so different to the one we were accustomed to know her by?”

“It was her right name, the one she was christened,” said Mr. Warden dreamily, his thoughts still far away and his eyes looking beyond his book.

Then Lord Hardcastle summoned together all his courage, and making a great effort asked the one question which had occupied his mind through so many sorrowful days, and to which, indeed, his former question was but intended to lead the way.

“Mr. Warden, tell me one thing else, I beg of you; indeed it is not from idle curiosity I ask it, was Aimée the name of Miss Warden’s mother?”

At these words Mr. Warden visibly started, and his face grew ashy pale; then controlling himself with an effort, he replied “Mrs. Warden’s name was Helen, I thought you knew.”

“Yes, I knew that; forgive me, Mr. Warden, if my conduct seem grossly impertinent to you. I know I have not the slightest right to ask these questions, but if you think I have in any way been to you as a son through these long sorrowful days, as a son I beg for the confidence of my father.”

“A son! ah, you have indeed been to me as a son in my affliction! But you are probing old wounds now, my young friend, and asking for a story sadder than the one you know already, because there is sin and crime mixed up in it.”

There was a pause, neither spoke for some minutes. Mr. Warden shaded his face with both hands, and his thoughts wandered back to his bright young days when sorrow seemed a faraway thing and death a hideous impossibility. The long sorrowful years that had since come and gone, faded from his memory; he no longer saw the room where he sat, nor even his companion, and rushing back upon him in full force came the recollection of young, strong passions, early hopes and fears, bright sunshiny hours when life was better worth having than it now was.

At length he uncovered his face and began speaking slowly as one in a dream. “I can see her now, see her as she stood the first day I saw her, in the lonely mountain country. Her feet on the black-red lava, the glowing sunset behind her head, her rich dark beauty flashing back every gold and crimson ray. I can see yet, her long white dress with its bright coloured ribbons and the dark-faced nurse by her side who scowled and frowned at me as my eyes expressed the wonder and admiration I felt. There and then I could have knelt at her feet and worshipped her as a goddess. Young and passionate, I poured out my all of love and devotion at her shrine; she vowed she loved me as I loved her; she took my heart into her keeping⁠—played with it⁠—broke it⁠—and threw it on one side forever.”

He paused, overcome by his recollections. Lord Hardcastle leaned forward breathlessly. Here was Mr. Warden voluntarily according the confidence he was so eager to obtain.

Presently Mr. Warden recommenced. “I married her according to the rites of her own Church. I can see her now in her royal beauty (she had the blood of Spanish kings in her veins) as she swept down the aisle, the small head thrown back, the dark eyes sometimes flashing, sometimes drooping, the full-parted lips and the delicate nostril. Lord Hardcastle,” he said suddenly turning to the young man, “You thought my daughter lovely, I suppose, but compared with her mother, my first Aimée, she was but as the wild white daisy to the queenly lily.”

Again he paused, then once more recommenced⁠—

“For four short years we lived together, in perfect love but not in peace, for her wilful, passionate temper raised many storms between us. At last I felt it my duty to endeavour to curb, if I could not conquer, her waywardness; but I found the task altogether beyond me⁠—I had so indulged her every whim and fancy that she would not brook the slightest control at my hands. Her nurse, Isola, added not a little to our difficulties; she worshipped her young mistress as a being of a superior order, and was continually representing to her that I had become harsh and tyrannical of late, whereas I was simply endeavouring to teach my wife how to acquire a little self-control. Seeing this, I contrived one morning to have a long quiet talk with Isola on the matter. I assured her my one object was to secure the peace and happiness of her young mistress, and begged her to aid me in my efforts as far as possible.

“But it was useless. Isola was loud and stubborn in her Cevenol patois. Mademoiselle (so she still called my wife) was perfect. What would I? Did I wish to freeze the warm southern blood in her veins, and teach her the cunning and caution of the cold-hearted northerners? Had not Aimée’s father and mother, each in dying, committed their darling to her care, and no power in heaven or earth would induce her to betray the trust. ‘I love those who love her,’ the poor ignorant faithful creature concluded, ‘and those who hate her, I hate also with an undying hatred.’ These last words she almost hissed in my face, then abruptly turned and left me, taking my little girl by the hand, telling her to come and gather lilies to make a crown for her dear mamma.

“Then I went to Aimée herself, and asked if she were ready to give me some real proof of her love, for I had come to ask her a great favour⁠—

“ ‘What is it?’ said Aimée, petulantly, ‘I have not loved you so well lately, for you have been cross and cruel to me.’

“How lovely she looked that morning, angry and scornful though she was. I remember she was threading some bright Andalusian beads, one of our little girl’s lily crowns, half-faded, drooped over her forehead, and an Indian scarf, draped round her waist, fell in folds over her white dress. Poor, poor Aimée! My girl-wife! then scarcely nineteen years of age⁠—till I die, your image will remain in my mind fresh and glowing, as on that last morning I looked on your sweet face!

“The favour I had to ask was a very simple one. I merely wished to take my wife and daughter to England, and introduce both to my friends and relations, from whom I had been, to a certain extent, alienated during my long residence in France. But the one thing which I begged with great earnestness was, that Isola should be left behind with her own people. I explained to her that my motive in asking this was a kind one. Isola should be well cared for during our absence, and, as I loved my wife well, I wished to have her all to myself, for a short time at any rate.

“Then the storm burst. It was terrible to see my wife’s anger⁠—

“ ‘Did I wish to kill her in some secret place,’ she asked, ‘that I should thus take her away from her own bright land, and the one, the only one who loved her truly?’

“The scene was indescribable; in vain I attempted to reason with, or calm her. In a perfect whirlwind of fury, she swept out of the room.

“I would not trust myself to follow her, so much had my temper been aroused. So calling to my little girl, who was playing in the garden, we went together for a long ramble among the mountains; I thought that perhaps alone with my little one in the sweet air I might somewhat recover my calmness, and would better arrange my plan of action for the future. We did not return until nearly evening, Amy singing and scattering flowers as we went. At the door of my house I was met by one of the servants, who handed to me a letter from my wife, and in answer to my enquiry, informed me that she and Isola had gone out immediately after I had, and not since returned.

“With a foreboding of calamity, I opened the letter and read these words, they are burnt into my memory.

“ ‘You no longer love me. Your every look and action prove it. For many months I have seen your love slipping away from me, and I have not cared to stretch out my hand to keep it. I go to one who has worshipped me from my earliest childhood, to my cousin in Arragon. In his house, and in his presence, I will see you if you wish, but never seek to win me back to your home again, for I have torn your image out of my heart.

“I staggered like a man who had received a heavy blow; the room swam round and round before my eyes; then all was darkness, and I fell heavily to the ground. Lord Hardcastle, do I weary you? When you asked for my confidence just now, did you expect to hear such a story as this of Amy’s mother?”

“No, I did not, Mr. Warden; and may I ask you, did Amy ever know of her mother’s guilt, or did she imagine that your second wife was her real mother?”

“No, to both your questions. Amy was told her mother was dead, as far as she could be made to understand what that was; but her fascinating image was so deeply rooted in the child’s mind, that I do not believe she ever forgot her. Later on⁠—but no, I will not anticipate, but will tell you in proper order each successive event.

“When I came to my senses, I fully realized the depth of my misery, and at once took measures to ascertain if my wife had really done as she threatened. Alas! it was only too easily ascertained⁠—the shamelessness of her conduct was absolutely appalling. Stricken to the heart, though I was, I made no effort to win her back; ‘she has ceased to love me, let her go,’ was the one thought in my mind, and henceforth my little Amy would have all my love and care.

“I hastened to take her to a place where her mother’s name and sin would be unknown. So I left the Haute Loire province, and settled at St. Sauveur, near Bordeaux. There I engaged an excellent English governess for her (the lady who afterwards became my wife) and by study and incessant occupation endeavoured to divert my thoughts.

“About a year after we had been at St. Sauveur, I was startled one morning by the appearance of Isola standing at the gate. My first thought was that she had come to me with a message of penitence from my wife. Then, however, noticing she was clad in deep mourning, I guessed she had far different tidings to bring.

“ ‘Your mistress is dead,’ I asked, at once anticipating the worst. She bowed her head.

“ ‘Tell me everything, Isola,’ I gasped, hoping still there might be some message of love or repentance for me.

“ ‘There is nothing to tell,’ she replied coldly, ‘she is dead, that is all.’

“ ‘But where, when, how?’ I insisted, my soul thirsting and hungering after my wife.

“ ‘She took cold, she would not take care, and so she died, that is all,’ was the reply.

“ ‘And not a word or message for me, or for her daughter?’

“Then the woman laughed a harsh scornful laugh.

“ ‘What would Monsieur have? Don Josef took care of her, and gave her all she wanted. He was by her side when she died, and held her in his arms.’

“I had no heart to ask more; and when Isola turned her back on me without another word or salutation of any sort, I did not seek to detain her. The least sign of penitence would have brought back my old love for my wife, but to die thus, as she had lived, in sin, was the bitterest blow of all.

“My great fear at this time was lest Amy should know, by some means, any part of this terrible story. I endeavoured, and successfully, to confuse her infant mind, by constantly speaking of her mother as her governess, and the thought soon suggested itself to me, that if she had another mother given to her, the recollection of the first would be completely obliterated. Accordingly, some short time after Aimée’s death, I married my second wife. The result you know, a life of peace and comparative happiness until now.”

Again Mr. Warden paused, his calmness was evidently failing him, and it was with increased effort and difficulty that he finished his narration.

“Soon after my second marriage,” he continued, “I left St. Sauveur, hoping still farther to blot the recollection of her early days from Amy’s young mind. To a certain extent I believe I succeeded; I imagined I had quite done so, when one day, some two years ago, to my great surprise, she suddenly asked me⁠—

“ ‘Papa, dear, tell me about that beautiful lady who used to play with me when I was a child; wasn’t she my very own mamma?’

“Then it was I told my little daughter the first and only lie I ever uttered, and assured her that that beautiful lady was her governess, and that Mrs. Warden was her very own mamma.

“ ‘Is that the truth, papa?’ asked Amy, looking up into my face; and again I assured her that was the truth. ‘Then,’ said the child, persistently, ‘I love the governess better than my own mamma, for she used to kiss and play with me, and hold me in her arms, but this mamma only does embroidery, and receives visitors all day.’ The words cut me to the heart; there never was much affection between Amy and her stepmother, their characters were so opposite, and every year the want of sympathy between them became more and more apparent. Not one of my friends and relatives knew of my second marriage; they imagined Mrs. Warden to be my first and only wife, and Mrs. Warden, without any near relatives, found no difficulty in concealing the fact that she had married a widower. We had lived such a completely isolated life among the French peasantry, that there was no fear of Amy ever hearing her mother spoken of in England; and yet, after all these precautions, here was nature asserting herself in this extraordinary manner.” Then Mr. Warden broke off abruptly. “Lord Hardcastle, I can tell you no more of this sad story. What it has cost me to talk to you thus, you will never know; let us not speak on the subject again.”

“How can I thank you, Mr. Warden?” exclaimed Hardcastle earnestly, springing forward, and clasping Mr. Warden’s hand, “how can I ever thank you for this proof of your confidence in me? For weeks past as I have thought and thought over this matter, like a man in a dream almost, my thoughts have ever led me back to you, as holding in your hands the solution of the mystery. I feel nearer the truth tonight than I have ever felt before. One ray of light breaks through the darkness, and we will follow where it leads. Mr. Warden, will you leave your home here for a time⁠—it is dreary enough, Heaven knows⁠—and with me visit the scenes of your first love and sorrow? Do you feel equal to it? Who knows but what the truth may lie hidden somewhere there. I cannot explain to you the workings of my own mind just now; I must try to think the matter out. At present I can only see Isola’s hatred of you, and Amy’s strong resemblance to her dead mother in impetuosity and vehemence of character. But there are other lights and shadows in the picture which must fall into their own place before it can be complete.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Warden, sadly, “Amy was a pale likeness (if I may use the expression) of her mother in mind and body. She resembled her in form and outline, so to speak, but lacked the full, brilliant colouring which made her mother so dangerously fascinating. Strange to say, the likeness was never so apparent to me as when she was lying cold and lifeless in her coffin; then I felt tempted to ask myself, is this Amy, or is it her mother?”

“And I, too,” said Lord Hardcastle, quietly, “saw a look in Amy’s face then I had never seen before. Mr. Warden, I have now but one object in life, to rescue Amy dead, as I would have rescued her living, from scorn or dishonour. I want to write the name she has a right to bear, on her now nameless tomb. I want to be able to hold up the picture of the girl I love so truly, in all her innocence, and purity, and beauty, and to say to all the world, ‘this is the one I have loved in life, whom I love in death, and whom I shall love after death, through eternity!’ ”

Mr. Warden looked up at the flushed, earnest face of the speaker, then he said very quietly⁠—

“Lord Hardcastle, I thought I knew you intimately; I find I have never really known you until today. Yes, I will go with you to Le Puy or anywhere else you may choose. I feel equal to it, and after all, for an old man like me it doesn’t much matter in what corner of the world he may lay his bones!”

X

Before starting for France, Lord Hardcastle received two letters. The first, from Detective Hill, ran thus:⁠—

“Sir⁠—

“It is now so long since I have received any orders from Mr. Warden, that I venture to write to you, fearing he may be ill, and knowing you have his entire confidence in the matter on which I am engaged.

“Since I sent in my last report relative to Miss Kempe’s movements, nothing of importance has occurred, until yesterday, when she received a letter enclosing another, evidently foreign. The outside envelope was too thick to enable my man (the postman if you will remember, sir) to discover what stamp was on the letter, but the crackle of the thin, foreign paper was unmistakable. As I write (at the window opposite her house) there are evident signs of packing up and departure going on in her room. I shall feel much obliged if you will transmit to me further instructions on Mr. Warden’s behalf. The woman may possibly be leaving England, and I am anxious to know whether the investigation is to be continued, and the woman still watched, as I must necessarily appoint very different men for foreign work.

To this, Lord Hardcastle sent a brief reply⁠—

“Sir⁠—

“Mr. Warden and myself think you are attaching too much importance to Miss Kempe and her movements, and that it really is not worth while to pursue this matter further. We are hoping for better results from another quarter.

The second letter was from Frank Varley, written on the eve of his wedding-day, and ran as follows:⁠—

“Dear Hardcastle⁠—

“I dare say you have but one feeling in your heart for a poor, weak-minded wretch like me, that of utter unmitigated contempt. I don’t attempt to justify myself, for under present circumstances it would be impossible. I am only writing to enclose a small packet⁠—a blue bow of ribbon. You will know, old fellow, to whom it belonged, and why I am sending it to you. I couldn’t find it in my heart to put it behind the fire.

“Poor Varley,” said Lord Hardcastle, when he read this. “He spent his strength for nought, and gave in before the race was half run! And yet who am I that I should pity or blame him? The end alone will show whose life has been best worth living!”

And now the preparations for the journey to France were completed, and one dull misty November afternoon, Mr. Warden and Lord Hardcastle said a long goodbye to the High Elms. Very damp, very cold and dreary the old house looked as they turned the corner of the steep avenue.

“Not in this world,” said Mr. Warden, mournfully, “shall I call any place home again.”

What could Lord Hardcastle say in reply? He clasped his old friend’s hand with a firmer, tighter clasp, while the thought ran through his own mind⁠—

“What will our coming back here be like?”

Early in the evening they arrived in London. The preparations for their journey had been very simple. No servants, very little luggage, and their destination even kept secret. Mr. Warden had informed his agents he would be travelling through Europe for some months for his health, and had given various postes restantes in France to which his letters were to be sent. He would advise them, he said, of any change in his plans should his inclination lead him in any other direction.

It was not without serious thought and anxiety that Lord Hardcastle had undertaken this journey. There could be no doubt that Mr. Warden’s strength had given way very much lately, and it was incurring a heavy responsibility to induce a man at his age, and with his broken health, to go so far on what might prove to be a fool’s errand after all. “But,” reasoned Hardcastle, “he will certainly die if he remain in his own desolate home, brooding over his sorrows. Action and movement will do more for him than anything else, and if we can but lift the cloud from the dead girl’s grave, we shall both feel our life has not been spent for nought.”

The roar of London at first sounded strangely in their ears, accustomed as they were to the saddest and quietest of households. Lord Hardcastle took upon himself the various small duties which travelling involves, and at once gave orders to be driven to Charing Cross Station. Leaving Mr. Warden at the hotel, he directed a porter to place their luggage in the booking-office to be in readiness for the morning tidal train, while he exchanged some English money for present use. There appeared to be a crowd of some sort round the booking-office, and the porter placed the baggage a little on one side, waiting his turn.

At this moment Lord Hardcastle’s attention was attracted by a tall figure clad in a long, grey travelling cloak, the hood of which was drawn low over her face. She brushed past him, but he could not see her features, for her head was bent low, as though wishing to hide her face. Something peculiar in the swing of her walk arrested his attention; it was not ungraceful, but seemed as it were to keep time to some song or tune sounding in her ear, so even and regular were her steps. She was evidently in a hurry to save some train, and was crossing towards the third class ticket window, when Lord Hardcastle’s luggage caught her eye. She stood still, looked round her on every side, then bending down, read attentively the labels on each box. At this moment the porter advanced to take charge of his baggage, and the woman, evidently altering her plans, walked slowly out of the station.

Lord Hardcastle returned to the hotel, and the woman in grey passed completely out of his mind. Finding Mr. Warden very much tired with the journey to London, he proposed that they should rest quietly the next day, and pass over to Boulogne during the night. To this Mr. Warden agreed readily.

“I must husband my strength,” he said, “for it is slipping away rapidly. I feel now as if I were embarked upon my last mission, which must be well executed, or not at all.”

Lord Hardcastle looked up at him anxiously. How sad, and old, and worn the dear, kind face had grown lately! How white the hair, and sunken the cheeks, and the eyes with a faraway, mournful look, which said as plainly as words could speak, “it will soon be over now, and I shall be at rest.”

“Don’t speak like that, Mr. Warden,” he said, “or you will take away my last remnants of courage. Who can tell what may yet lie before us.”

“Who can tell, indeed,” echoed Mr. Warden, “who can tell.” He shivered as he spoke, and looked so really ill that Lord Hardcastle began to feel seriously uneasy about him, and begged him to see a doctor before he left England.

“No,” said Mr. Warden, firmly, “the night soon will come when no man can work. Let us not anticipate it by an hour. Not until we have played the last card we hold will we give up the game.” Then he said good night, and went to his own room.

The next day rose dark and stormy, and Hardcastle trembled to think of the effect a rough passage might have on Mr. Warden in his weak state of health. He did not, however, offer any farther opposition to their journey, knowing it would be useless, and besides this, an undefinable feeling in his own mind kept urging him on to the native land of the two Aimées.

“I cannot explain why,” he said to himself, as they landed at Boulogne in the chill early dawn of the following day, “but I somehow feel as if we had only now struck upon the right track, and that all we have hitherto done has been so much lost time. I know there must be a reason for this feeling; some finer sense in my being must have seized upon some fact in this strange history which my coarser and more logical faculties have failed to perceive.”

So occupied was he with his own thoughts, that he had not noticed that he had become separated from his companion in the narrow landing-place, and had drifted into a crowd of porters, with their various loads, making for the customhouse.

Where was Mr. Warden? He looked right and left along the Quai, and there, standing half hidden behind some bales, stood the same tall grey figure he had noticed at Charing Cross Station. It was unmistakable now; the woman, for some reason, was evidently watching and following them; and, doubtful whether their separation was accidental or intentional, was at a loss whom she should keep in sight. Following the turn of her head, Lord Hardcastle could see Mr. Warden some little way in advance, and, hastening towards him, the woman suddenly passed in front, and disappeared down some narrow passage.

“Let her go,” thought Hardcastle; “somewhere, somehow, we may meet again. I shall know her long stooping figure and swinging gait anywhere.” Then, hastening forward, he soon overtook Mr. Warden, and calling a carriage, desired to be driven to the Hôtel de la Cloche, situated somewhere in the heart of the town.

Lord Hardcastle had foreseen before starting that their journey must necessarily be performed by easy stages; they had, therefore, booked only as far as to Boulogne, intending to rest there a day or two to decide upon their route to Le Puy.

The Hôtel de la Cloche stands in one of the quietest parts of the town, a little back from the broad, brick-built street, in a grassy, moss-grown quadrangle. An arched corridor runs round this quadrangle, and above this are built the various outbuildings of the hotel. A small fountain, with an insufficient supply of water, plays in the courtyard, and very miserable and dreary it looked under the dull November sky from the windows of the room which Mr. Warden had selected for a sitting-room.

More than ever sad and weary he seemed as he seated himself in front of a large wood fire he had ordered to be made. A pretence of lunch or dinner had been gone through, and the short November day was already closing in, the heavy stonework above the windows adding not a little to the gloom of the room. Lord Hardcastle had tried unsuccessfully various topics of conversation, feeling the necessity of arousing Mr. Warden from the sadness of his own thoughts.

“Tell me, Mr. Warden,” at length he said, almost despairing of success, “something about Le Puy; it is an unknown land to me. I have never visited that part of France.”

“Le Puy!” exclaimed Mr. Warden, suddenly arousing himself, “Ah, that is a country worth living in! It is a land of variety and beauty, of sunshine and solitude; less terrible than Switzerland, it is, at the same time, more interesting, because more varied. It is a land of extinct volcanoes; at every turn one is brought face to face with nature under a new aspect. Here some mighty convulsion has upheaved gigantic rocks; there in the valley lie fertile plains watered by gushing mountain torrents; above all tower and frown the fantastic Cevennes, cut and fashioned into all sorts of wonderful shapes, and everywhere reigns a silence and solitude only to be found in the lonely mountain regions. Ah! it is a land of glory and beauty! But, my young friend, you will scarcely see it with my eyes; to me it is the saddest and sweetest of all lands, for there I first loved and first suffered, and there my two Aimées were born and grew to beauty.” Then he paused, and presently added, in a mournful, passionate tone, “My poor little Amy! I fancy I see her now, creeping along the narrow mountain path, or looking over the verge of some deep ravine, both hands filled with wild flowers and grasses. She would never own to feeling frightened or nervous at the giddy height, but if she felt her little feet slipping, she would call out impatiently, ‘Papa, papa! take my flowers, quickly please, I must not be kept waiting an instant.’ It is almost too much for me to recall those days, Lord Hardcastle,” he sighed, wearily, “I think I will see if I can get a little sleep; perhaps in the morning I shall feel brighter and stronger.”

Then he left the room, saying good night, and that he did not wish to be disturbed until the morning.

Lord Hardcastle looked after him sadly. “He will reach Le Puy,” he thought; “his spirit will keep him up as far as that, but he will never come back again. Have I done wisely in inducing him to leave his home? But what home has he left? Only a mere skeleton or husk of one. This is our last and only chance; we are bound, at any cost to try it.”

The wood fire crackled and burned, the window panes grew dark and darker, and long, fantastic shadows began to flicker across the oak-panelled wall, to the low, arched ceiling.

Hardcastle’s thoughts wandered far away to the lonely house at Harleyford⁠—vividly came back to him the stormy, windy night, the piteous howling of the dog, and poor Amy lying cold and wet and lifeless in his arms. Picture after picture of the past passed before his eyes⁠—the dear dead face as it looked in the grey of the early morning, the strange, pained old look that had spread itself over the features until they almost seemed strange and unknown to him.

The fire crackled, the weird shadows leapt from floor to ceiling, and Hardcastle, drowsy with the overnight’s journey, began to see strange shapes in the room, and fantastic visions began to mix with his waking thoughts. He fancied he was standing amidst the rocky, silent scenery Mr. Warden had just described to him. The mountain mists were rolling away from peak and crag, the summer sun was mounting the horizon, and there, on the verge of some terrible precipice, stood Amy⁠—bright, beautiful, girlish as ever, both hands filled with flowers, which she playfully held out to him.

Tremblingly he advanced towards her, hoping to save her from what appeared instant death without alarming her; but the mountain mist swooped down upon them, enveloping Amy and himself in its damp folds. Then it lifted again, but no Amy was to be seen, and there, advancing slowly towards him, was the tall, stooping figure in grey, whom he had seen that morning on the Quai. She, too, stretched out her hands to him, but what she held he could not at first see. Nearer and nearer she drew, the mountain mists still clinging to her long, trailing skirt, and hiding her face as with a veil. In another instant her cold, thin hands held his, and a deep, sad woman’s voice said, slowly and distinctly, “Take it, keep it, and let the poor sinner go.” Then he felt a ring placed upon his little finger, and there, flashing out in the mist and darkness was Amy’s antique ruby ring.

What was it woke him at this moment? What was that noise sounding in his ears still? Could it be a door or a window shutting? He started to his feet and looked round the room. Nothing appeared to have been disturbed, the books and papers on the table were just as he had left them. Then he pushed aside the curtains, and looked out into the dreary quadrangle. The fountain sent up a feeble spray towards the leaden sky. The corridor looked damp and dismal as ever. Were his eyes deceiving him? Was he thoroughly awake, or could it be that there, slipping in and out between the pillars like a shadow almost in the dimness of the light, was the grey, stooping figure of his dream?

He sprang to the door, and flinging it back, let in a flood of light from the staircase and landing. Then he paused in amazement, for there, on the little finger of his left hand, sparkled and glittered an antique ruby ring with garter and buckle, and the motto, in old French letters, “Sans espoir je meurs!”

XI

“Take it, keep it, and let the poor sinner go!” Through long days and sleepless nights the words echoed and reechoed in Lord Hardcastle’s ears. That they were spoken by an actual human voice he was positively certain, but all enquiries respecting the grey veiled figure proved fruitless, and from that time he saw her no more.

Very carefully and gently he broke the news of the restoration of Amy’s ring to Mr. Warden, feeling the necessity that every circumstance connected with their search should be known to him as it occurred, for who could tell what might happen next?

Mr. Warden listened very calmly to the strange story⁠—

“It is the beginning of the end,” he said. “Heaven only knows what the end will be! Stranger things than this are, no doubt, in store for us. Keep the ring, Hardcastle, who can have a greater right than you to wear it?”

And Hardcastle kept the ring, and registered yet another vow in his own heart in much the same words he had vowed hand-in-hand with Frank Varley, that “by night and by day, by land and by sea, he would search the whole world through” to clear the name of the girl he loved.

Mr. Warden daily grew weaker and weaker. They rested a week at Boulogne, and then travelled by easy stages to Le Puy. After eight days’ quiet travelling they reached the picturesque old city, and though tired and worn out to the last degree, Mr. Warden insisted on being at once driven to a small quiet inn (it could scarcely be called hotel) situated halfway between the town and his old mountain home.

“À l’Aigle des Montagnes” was the sign which hung over this quiet little hostelry, and its dedication could not possibly have been better chosen. Perched high in the second belt of rocks which surrounds Le Puy, it seemed incredible, when looked at from the plateau beneath, that aught but eagle’s wings could mount so far. A narrow, winding path, made to admit the “little cars” of the country, with not an inch to spare on either side, led to the inn. To an inexperienced traveller the road seemed terrible and dangerous, but the hardy, surefooted mountaineer made but light of it. What to him was a precipice, first on this side, then on that, and occasionally on both? Once arrived at the summit the view was simply magnificent, bounded only by the distant Cevennes, and showing, in all its sparkling beauty, the windings of the Loire and its many tributaries.

Hither some twenty years previously Mr. Warden had first come, and with an artist’s appreciation of the grand and the beautiful, had returned again and again to paint the wild mountain scenery and ruined châteaux which were hung here and there like eagle’s nests among the rocks.

Since those old days the place had twice changed hands, and the present proprietor was totally unknown to him. Nevertheless the place and its surroundings could not fail to revive many bitter memories and days both sad and sweet to him, and on the second day after their arrival, Lord Hardcastle saw in him such a rapid change for the worse, that he at once gave orders that a doctor should be sent for from Le Puy.

“It is useless, Hardcastle,” said Mr. Warden, when he heard the order given. “No doctor can do anything for me now. Let them get me a few tonics, which I can prescribe for myself, so that I may rally for a few days, and pay a visit to my old home here. Open the window,” he added impetuously, “this soft, sweet air brings life back to me.”

Then Hardcastle placed for him a low easy chair close to the casement, whence he could look right and left upon the mountain panorama, and even catch a glimpse of a turret of his old château standing high among the distant rocks.

Mr. Warden gazed long and earnestly upon the magnificent landscape, drinking in every sight and sound, as a dying man might gaze upon some loved scene whose memory he wished to carry with him into eternity. Lord Hardcastle dared not disturb him, he leaned over the back of his chair without a word, and endeavoured, as far as possible, to follow the train of his thoughts.

Suddenly Mr. Warden turned his head and looked Hardcastle full in the face. He spoke excitedly, and his voice appeared almost to have regained its old strength and firmness.

“Hardcastle,” he said, “you have done a great deal for me, I know you will do one thing more. It may be the last favour I shall ask of you. Come here, stand at my right. You see, just between those sugarloaf crags, the west turrets of my old home⁠—the Château D’Albiac it was called in those days. It stands on the highest ground in Cassagnac. A little to the right there is a low well-cultivated valley, with about five or six peasants’ houses dotted here and there. In one of these Isola’s people lived, and there my darling Aimée was reared as her foster-child. Will you go there for me, and if you can find her, bring her here to me. I have one or two questions to ask, which she only can answer.”

“Gladly,” replied Hardcastle. “It has been my intention from the first to seek this woman out and question her. As soon as the doctor arrives, I will leave you in his charge, and set off without further delay.”

“No,” said Mr. Warden decisively, “you must set off at once; you do not know these mountain paths as I do, and to a stranger they are full of difficulties and dangers. Cassagnac is nearly six miles from here. You laugh at the distance. Five miles of these mountain paths is no light thing, I can assure you. If you start at once on one of the little mountain ponies, you will not arrive at Cassagnac till nearly sunset. Then you will have at least three miles further to go before you can get a night’s lodging, for you cannot possibly by any means return here until tomorrow.”

“Until tomorrow,” echoed Hardcastle sadly, and the thought flashed through his brain “what if he be not here tomorrow?”

Mr. Warden read his thoughts, “It is not so near as that Hardcastle,” he said quietly; “but it is not far away. Go at once, I implore you, for days and hours are getting precious to me now. Your doctor will be here before long; the people of the house are good and kind, and I feel at home with them. Go at once, I beg of you; let me not feel I have had my journey here for nothing. Ah! if my young strength would come back to me for one day, how gladly would I set off with you!” Then he leaned back in his easy chair wearied out, and once more begging Hardcastle to start immediately, closed his eyes as though he wished to sleep.

Hardcastle had no choice but to obey. He went at once to the innkeeper and his wife, and gave them strict orders to be constantly in and out of Mr. Warden’s room during his absence, and one to remain with him throughout the night. Then he wrote a few lines to the doctor, requesting him to remain until his return on the morrow. Even with these precautions his heart misgave him, and he could scarcely summon courage to start on his journey.

However, he felt further contention with Mr. Warden would be worse than useless⁠—it would be positively injurious to him, so with another farewell glance at his friend, apparently sleeping quietly in the window seat, he set off on his little mountain pony.

Then it was that the Cevenol scenery burst upon him in all its wild grandeur. It was not one magnificent picture which met his eye, but a hundred or more, for every turn of the steep mountain path brought to view some fresh tableau of startling beauty. But the one thing which struck him most was the solitude, the intense silence which reigned everywhere. The rush and roar of the falling torrent, the scream of a distant wild bird, and once only the lowing of some oxen, evidently yoked to one of the rude cars of the country, these were the only sounds which broke the perfect stillness of the scene.

“Cassagnac,” he thought, “must be a very tiny village, for its highway to be so little frequented.” It had slipped his memory, so full it was of other thoughts, that none but the hardiest or poorest of the villagers would remain to face the terrible winter of these parts, when roads and valleys alike are choked with snow. In fact he was journeying on to a deserted village, for, by the end of November at latest, most of the peasants have taken refuge in more accessible localities.

Quietly and steadily the little pony kept on his way, never swerving an inch right or left; the gritty lava crunched under his feet, and now and then a huge boulder would fall from the path into the deep ravine below, with an echoing crash. Hardcastle had provided himself with a plan of the country⁠—a rudely sketched one, drawn out by the landlord of the “Aigle des Montagnes,” for the use of his guests⁠—but he scarcely needed it, so well did the little pony know his road.

As the afternoon went on the Château D’Albiac stood out plainly in front of him. But although apparently so near it was yet some little distance off, for the pathway, ever mounting, took many curves and bends, and Lord Hardcastle found he could not possibly arrive there before twilight set in. The sun sank lower and lower, the shadows lengthened and deepened, and although the air for the time of year was remarkably balmy and mild, Hardcastle could not repress a shudder as he took the last curve which brought him face to face with the old château. Was it the silence and loneliness of the place which so oppressed him, or was it that his nerves had been shaken by the strange events through which he had lately passed? A feeling he could not understand took possession of his mind. He felt almost like a man walking in a dream, seeing strange sights and hearing strange sounds, so unreal, so unlike anything he had ever seen was the mountain picture around him. There, straight in front of him, stood the old château, the highest point in the rocky landscape. Every door barred, every window shut, not to be opened till the following spring. The sun sank lower and lower, the shadows lengthened and deepened, the rocks began to take fantastic shapes against the evening sky, lighted in the west by the long golden and purple streaks of the dying day. Not a sound broke the intense silence of the place, and Hardcastle, throwing the reins on his pony’s neck, in perfect stillness drank in the beauty and glory of the scene. The sun, with a farewell scarlet light, fired the windows of the old château, danced upon peaks and crags of fantastic shape, and sent a flood of glory upon two solitary female figures standing on one of the highest points of the worn-out volcanoes.

“I must be dreaming! It is a land of visions here; I have lost control over my own senses;” said Hardcastle, aloud, as he pressed forward to get a nearer view of what seemed to him an illusion. Two figures at such a time, in such a scene of loneliness and solitude! Nearer and nearer he drew. What did he see? Breathless and nerveless he leaned forward deprived alike of speech and power. Mountains, crags and sunlight swam before his eyes and faded away into mist, while the words of Mr. Warden, in the study of Harleyford, rang and echoed in his ears. “I can see her now⁠—see her as she stood the first day I saw her in the lonely mountain country. Her feet on the black-red lava, the glowing sunset behind her head, her rich dark beauty flashing back every gold and crimson ray. The long white robe she wore, and the dark-faced nurse by her side.” There, straight in front of him, was the literal realization of the picture in all its details, for there, awestruck and silent as himself, stood Amy Warden and Isola the nurse!

XII

The time passed slowly and heavily to Mr. Warden during Lord Hardcastle’s absence. The Docteur Lemoine arrived in due course, the ribbon of the Legion of Honour fastened in his buttonhole, and a general air of got-up-for-the-occasion about him. It was not often, indeed, that he had a patient of Mr. Warden’s standing to attend. His experiences, as a rule, were limited to the dying beds of the simple peasantry about him, for it is not often that a Cevenol mountaineer calls in the aid of a doctor⁠—rarely, indeed, until the patient is beyond the hope of recovery.

He looked inquiringly at Mr. Warden, and was proceeding to ask him a multitude of questions, when the latter stopped him. “My friend,” he said, “I shall be your patient for such a very short time that it is really not worth while for you to take a great deal of trouble about me. My disease is mental, not bodily, and what I most require is rest and quiet. What you want to know you must find out from your own observation, and I will promise to take any remedy you may prescribe.”

“But,” expostulated the doctor, “I have been called in to attend M’sieur, who I am told is suffering. What will you? There are questions I must ask. My profession⁠—”

“Doctor Lemoine,” again interrupted Mr. Warden, “what I wish is that you should stay in the house in case of need till my friend returns. The people here will make you very comfortable, and you can come into my room and look at me as often as you like; only, I beg, do not trouble me with any questions.”

Then the doctor bowed and withdrew, and was compelled to content himself with questioning the landlord and his wife of their strange guest, and in his broad mountain patois declared again and again that such treatment was unheard of, incredible; that if he had not seen death itself written on the stranger’s features he could not have supported such an insult.

So the time wore slowly away; the afternoon faded into evening, and Mr. Warden retired early to rest, carefully attended by the kindhearted innkeeper.

The next morning rose grey and misty, and Mr. Warden could not repress a feeling of anxiety for his young friend traversing the (to him) unfamiliar mountain paths. What if he had missed his way and had been benighted in some lonely, unfrequented road. What if Isola’s people had proved treacherous, and looking upon him as his (Mr. Warden’s) emissary, had maltreated or perhaps murdered him! A hundred such suppositions rushed through his brain, as weak and feverish he lay on his couch in his sitting-room.

The Docteur Lemoine came in from time to time, entreating him to calm himself, and prescribing tonics or light stimulants.

Towards noon the mist began to lift, but still no sign of Lord Hardcastle. Two, three, four, five o’clock passed, and Mr. Warden started to his feet in a state of feverish excitement. “I can bear this no longer,” he said, ringing the bell violently. “We must at once organize a searching party. Doctor, don’t stand there gazing at me; we may want your help now; we have delayed too long as it is!”

As he spoke the door opened, and Lord Hardcastle slowly and quietly entered the room. His face was very pale, but a look had come into his eyes, a quiet triumphant sort of look, which seemed to say plainly “we have fought a good fight and have conquered at last.”

“Thank Heaven, Hardcastle, you are safe! What has happened? Tell me quickly, for I can see you have something to tell me,” said Mr. Warden, sinking back once more on to his couch.

“Yes, much has happened, Mr. Warden, and I have a great deal to tell you. But you must nerve yourself to bear the news, and prepare to receive a great surprise. Doctor, where are your tonics? we shall want them just now, and then, I hope and trust, get rid of them all forever!”

“Hardcastle, Hardcastle! speak out I implore you; this is simply torture; you speak as if you had some good news to tell. Great Heavens, what good news can there be for me, with wife and daughter both dead and buried in darkness and disgrace!”

“Yes, Mr. Warden, I will speak out plainly,” replied Lord Hardcastle calmly. “Are you sure both wife and daughter are dead and buried? Listen to me. When Isola came to you and told you your wife was dead, she told you a lie. This she was ordered to do by your wife, who had soon wearied of her life of sin and returned with her to these mountains. Thoroughly repentant, and anxious to repair the wrong she had done you, she framed this lie in order that you might forget her, and in a second marriage lose the recollection of the misery of the first. Isola, only too glad once more to have her young charge in her own care, faithfully fulfilled her mission. This I have heard from Isola’s own lips, and I must say truer or more passionate devotion than hers to her mistress, I have never seen.”

“My wife not dead,” repeated Mr. Warden slowly, as though scarcely able to grasp the fact. “Where is she Hardcastle? Take me to her or bring her to me! my poor, poor Aimée! Is she waiting for my forgiveness before she will come?”

“I did not say that your wife was living now, Mr. Warden; she died about two months since. It is a sad, sad story,” he spoke very slowly now, pausing long between each sentence. “In England, one stormy night in September, we will pray that she lost her footing in the dark, and fell into the swollen stream; she lies buried in Harleyford churchyard.”

Then Mr. Warden sprang to his feet and threw up his arms with an exceeding bitter cry.

“My Aimée, my poor Aimée! I see it all now, it was she who stood outside the window in the rain and tempest. No, no, Hardcastle, you cannot blind my eyes. There was no accidental slipping into the dark river, she could not bear the sight of my love and devotion to another woman, and in her madness and jealousy threw away her life.”

“Let us rather hope, Mr. Warden,” said Lord Hardcastle gravely, “that the same feeling of penitence and self-sacrifice which induced her long years since to send you a fictitious message of her death, led her to render the fiction a reality in order to save you from the disgrace of an exposure of your sorrows, and that you might live in peace with the one whom you had chosen.”

Mr. Warden made no reply, he sunk back in a chair and covered his face with both hands.

Then the doctor interposed; he had been gazing in amazement from one to the other, totally unable to understand their English, yet thoroughly comprehending that something startling and wonderful, and of great importance to Mr. Warden, had occurred.

“See how M’sieur suffers,” he said angrily, addressing Lord Hardcastle, “he cannot sustain any more such news. Cannot Milord wait until tomorrow for the rest which must be said?” Then he handed to Mr. Warden a glass of wine.

“There is no reason why I should wait until tomorrow,” replied Hardcastle, speaking loudly to attract Mr. Warden’s attention, “he has heard the worst now, all that remains to be told is good news.”

“Good news!” exclaimed Mr. Warden, “what good news can there be for me? My wife, my daughter!⁠—Ah! my other Amy, have you heard of her, Hardcastle? Tell me quickly what you know, where is she, living or dead?”

“I have heard of her, I have seen her, I have even spoken with her. Mr. Warden! can you bear good news, the best of news? Your daughter Amy is in this house now, and waiting only for a word from you⁠—” He paused, for Mr. Warden once more risen to his feet, had suddenly staggered and fallen back senseless in his chair.

Now the little doctor took the lead⁠—

“I have obeyed Milord too long, in resting here so tranquilly. You must follow my orders now,” he said, severely and dictatorially.

“Willingly,” replied Lord Hardcastle, as he assisted to remove Mr. Warden to a couch. “I only stipulate one thing, and that is, that when my friend opens his eyes they shall rest first on the being he loves best in the world, his only daughter.”

And they did so rest. Amy crept noiselessly into the room, paler, thinner, graver than in the old days, and kneeling by her father’s side, took his hand in hers.

The movement aroused him. He opened his eyes, and they rested full on her face. Amy controlled herself admirably.

“Papa, dear,” she said, “you must not speak till I give you permission; I am going to turn both doctor and nurse (with a smile at Hardcastle) out of office, and endeavour to cure you myself.”

“I am cured already,” replied Mr. Warden, as he held his daughter tightly clasped in his arms, “you are only just in time, Amy; a few more days’ delay, and you would have been indeed an orphan,” then he checked himself. How much did his daughter know? How should he tell her what she must be told?

“Miss Warden knows all she need know,” said Lord Hardcastle, rightly interpreting his thoughts. “She has also, on her part, very much to tell you, but I do implore you wait at least for a day before you talk over the sad events of the past few months.”

He spoke earnestly, and as he did so laid his hand entreatingly on Mr. Warden’s arm, which still encircled Amy’s waist. Then, for the first time, Amy saw glittering on his little finger her own ruby ring.

“Papa, dear,” she exclaimed in her old, quick, imperious manner, “will you ask Lord Hardcastle what right he has to wear a ring of mine?”

“I have no right whatever to do so, Miss Warden,” said Hardcastle gravely. Then he drew the ring from his finger, and handing it to her with a low bow, left the room.

XIII

At this time Mr. Warden received his first packet of English letters from the poste restante at Le Puy.

Among others there was one from Inspector Hill, which ran as follows:⁠—

“Scotland Yard,
“Nov. 20th.

“Sir⁠—

“I think it right you should be informed of certain facts which have come to my knowledge respecting some jewellery belonging to Miss Warden, viz., a diamond necklace, earrings, and brooch, which have already been restored to you through Mr. Varley, and an antique ruby ring which Miss Warden was supposed to have worn the day she left home, but which in reality was left by her on her toilette table with the diamonds which she had worn on the previous night at the Leicestershire county ball.

“My informant is a Miss Marian Kempe, whom you may possibly remember I have mentioned once or twice in my reports to you as a relative of the girl Lucy Williams, at one time Miss Warden’s maid.

“This girl Williams, if you will remember, I stated had a most disreputable brother who had been convicted of connivance with poachers to rob his master’s estate. On his release from prison he returned to his native place, and once more fell into his old dissolute habits. He appears, on several occasions, to have had interviews with his sister at your house, and to have threatened her in various ways if she could not find sufficient money to enable him to reach New York, or some other large city, where he hoped, by false written characters, to find some means of support.

“Then occurred Miss Warden’s mysterious disappearance, and the jewellery lying loose upon the table proved too strong a temptation for the girl, who at once secreted the diamonds and ring, and when asked by you for the dress in which to describe Miss Warden in the advertisements, cleverly included the ring in the description. This ring she at once handed over to her brother, who immediately started for Liverpool, intending to wait there for farther supplies which his sister had promised, if possible, to procure for him.

“The diamonds she appears to have kept back for a time in case they should be asked for, but in the state of confusion into which your house was thrown, and Mrs. Warden being too ill to interest herself much in the matter, they were not missed; in fact, I believe, the jewel case was not even opened when handed over to Mrs. Warden’s care.

“The girl most probably intended to dispose of the diamonds in London, and afterwards to have escaped with her brother to New York, when, as you know, she was seized with smallpox, and died at the house of her relative, the Miss Marian Kempe whom I have already mentioned.

“This Miss Kempe is, undoubtedly, a woman of good character, holding extreme religious views, and willing to sacrifice everything in the discharge of her duty. She was at one time engaged to be married to Tom Williams, and although the match was broken off, is evidently still very much attached to the man. About a week since she came to me in travelling dress, and appeared very much fatigued with a long journey she said she had just taken across the channel. She also seemed much agitated, and asked me in an excited tone if I ever read the Gospel, and if I knew who it was Christ came to seek and to save? ‘See here, Miss Kempe,’ I said in reply, ‘if you are alluding to publicans and sinners, I conclude you have something to say to me about that rascal, Tom Williams. If so, say it at once, please, for I have no time for sermonizing, I assure you.’ ‘He is no rascal,’ she said, indignantly, ‘he is a repentant sinner, and will yet, please God, be numbered among the elect.’ Then she proceeded to tell me a very extraordinary story. How that Tom Williams arrived at Liverpool, intending to wait there for Lucy; how he waited and waited, and at length received, through some secret channel, the news of her death, and that the diamonds had been restored to you. In his haste to escape, he took passage in the first steamer he came across, which chanced to be a trader bound for Boulogne. It is also possible he imagined himself to be safer across the channel than across the Atlantic. Landing at Boulogne, he appears to have had some drunken quarrel with an Italian seaman, who wounded him severely in the thigh with a large clasp knife. Tom was eventually carried by some passersby to a quiet lodging-house on the Quai, and the woman of the house showed him a great deal of kind attention. A fever set in after this stabbing affair, and Tom was reduced to a very low ebb. Utterly friendless, in a foreign country, and at death’s door, his thoughts turned to Miss Kempe as the one most likely to help him out of his troubles. He consequently made an appeal to her, couched in very penitent language, and implored her, by her past affection for him, to help him out of his sin and misery. This letter he sent under cover to some comrade in London, who posted it to Miss Kempe’s address. The bait succeeded admirably. The woman at once locked up her room, disposed of a few valuables she had, and started for Boulogne. At Charing Cross Station, when about to take her ticket for the night train, she caught sight of your luggage on the platform, addressed to Boulogne. She at once concluded you were in pursuit of Tom, and determined to wait and watch your proceedings. She, however, crossed the next morning, and hurrying to Tom, informed him of your approach, and asked what he thought it best to do. ‘This is what they want, Marian,’ he said, drawing the ring from under his pillow, ‘take it to them, and beg me off.’ This she seemed afraid to do, and waited about the hotel all day before she could make up her mind to enter. When at length she summoned courage to do so, she wandered by chance into your sitting-room, and finding Lord Hardcastle asleep by the fire, the idea occurred to her of placing the ring on his finger as he slept, thus avoiding embarrassing questions, and thinking, poor, foolish woman, that if your property were restored to you, you would no longer wish to prosecute the rascal. Her object in coming to me was twofold. First, to assure me of the genuineness of the man’s repentance, and secondly to find out, if possible, your intention on the matter.

“Of course nothing would be easier than to bring the man to justice. I have not the slightest belief in his penitence, and I farther think, if he should recover, he will induce this infatuated woman to marry him for the sake of her small savings.

“I must ask your pardon, sir, for this long letter I have unwillingly troubled you with, and awaiting your orders, beg to remain,

To this Lord Hardcastle wrote in reply, at Mr. Warden’s request⁠—

“Sir⁠—

“Mr. Warden wishes me to thank you for your letter, and to inform you that he cannot ask you to recommence your former investigation for the simple reason that Miss Warden has returned to her family and friends, and will in due time communicate all that is wished to be known.

“As for Tom Williams, Mr. Warden has not the least intention of prosecuting him provided he gives up his malpractices and leads a sober, honest life. Please to have him informed of this, and also strongly counsel Miss Kempe to return to her home and keep her money in her own hands.

XIV

Amy’s story took long to tell. Not in one continuous narrative, but at long intervals, and in answer to many questions did she give her father the history of the days she had spent away from home.

And this is the substance of her narrative.

On that bright August morning, the day after her first ball, she went out of the house with a light step and a gay young heart. No thought of care or sorrow in her mind, on the verge of womanhood, with a life full of promise and brightness stretching out before her, the world, as it were, at her feet, and the crown of her youth and beauty on her head, suddenly a dark cloud fell over it all, shutting out the brilliant landscape and sunlight, and enveloping youth, beauty, hope and promise, the whole of the glory of the summer’s day, in the mist and darkness of the valley of the shadow of death.

Amy Warden, thinking only of her last night’s scene of triumph (for such it had been to her) walked gaily through her father’s grounds till she came almost to the verge of the park lands. Here she met the postman. “My letters, if you please,” she said, exchanging a kind “good morning” with the man. He handed two to her in feminine handwriting, and passed on. The first she quickly disposed of, it was from a young girl friend, declining an invitation of Amy’s for the following day. The second, in a strange foreign hand, although bearing the London post mark, she opened as she quitted the park for the Dunwich high road. It was (as has already been stated) market day at Dunwich, and two or three villagers from Harleyford passed at this moment with whom she exchanged greetings, and who, for the time, drew her attention from the letter.

Once more turning her eye upon the page, she read words which made park, woodland and road alike swim before her eyes, and which sent her young blood rushing to her face and back again with a chill to her heart. Recovering herself partially, she turned back into the park lands, and there, under the shadow of the great trees, read through her letter.

It was written partly in Cevenol patois, partly in good French, and thus it ran:⁠—

“Ma Mignonne⁠—

“Hast thou forgotten Isola, thy nurse? Hast thou forgotten the one who rocked thee in her arms to sleep, and led thee over the mountain to gather wild campions to weave garlands and crowns for thy beautiful mother? Dost thou know thou hast a mother living now among those mountains? Has he who shadowed and cursed her young life told thee the story of her suffering and wrong? For twelve long years, ma cherie, has she lived a life of loneliness and sorrow, and now she lies on a bed of sickness and pain with the hand of death upon her. She is wearying for thee, my Aimée, wilt thou not go to her? I am in London, and I wait all day long at your great Midland Station, for I know thou wilt come. I shall know your sweet face among a thousand, for have I not seen it night after night in my dreams? And thou! thou wilt know Isola, thy old nurse, by her brown hood and cloak of the mountains.”

In utter bewilderment and amazement, with every nerve in her body jarring and trembling, Amy read and reread her letter, and as she did so the conviction of its genuineness and truth forced itself upon her. Two thoughts only remained on her mind, the first, “my father told me a bitter cruel lie when he denied my mother to my face, and placed another in her stead;” the second, “my mother still lives! If I hasten I may yet see her before she dies. My darling, beautiful mother, whom unknowingly I have loved all through my life.”

Her anger against her father was only exceeded by one feeling, her intense, fervent love for her mother, whose image now stood out distinctly in her young memory. Isola’s words had brought back a whole world of recollections, the crowns of flowers, the mountain paths, the things which to her had seemed before but floating fancies or childish dreams, now took their right form as distinct vivid realities.

Not knowing anything of the circumstances which had brought about Mr. Warden’s separation from his first wife, to her excited imagination he appeared a perfect monster of wickedness, a cruel, fickle tyrant, who had cast off one who loved him truly, for the sake of another woman⁠—

“He told me a lie,” she kept repeating to herself again and again, “to make me love that other woman, and to steel my heart against my own mother.”

Then the picture of that mother, lying sick unto death, rose before her mind, and one thought swept away every other.

“I will go to her at once,” she said with a wild cry, “at any risk, at any cost. Who knows, I may yet perhaps save her life.”

With Amy, to think was to act; not a moment’s hesitation now. There was another way to Dunwich station, besides the high road⁠—a quiet way, which led through fields and lanes, a little circuitously, perhaps, and for that reason not likely to be traversed on the busy market day by any but gipsies or tramps. This road Amy at once took; she knew there was a train leaving for London about noon, and this she determined if possible to save. What was a five miles walk to a girl at her age, young, active and strong; besides had she not one all-absorbing thought to shorten her road, and lend wings to her feet⁠—

“I am going to the mother I have dreamed of and loved all through my young life.”

Once arrived at Dunwich, she was pretty sure to escape recognition. The station (a junction, with a large amount of traffic) was on market days positively crowded, and Amy, passing rapidly through the throng, took her ticket, and seated herself in the London train without more than a casual glance from the guard, to whom she was personally unknown.

Then she had time for thought. But the more she thought, the more the difficulties of her position grew upon her. How could she act for the best? It was simply an impossibility for her to consult her father on the matter, for would not all his efforts be directed to keep her mother out of her rightful position, and would he who had lived so long in sin (so she thought) with another, be likely to have any sympathy for her in her present undertaking.

“I will wait and consult with Isola,” was the young girl’s thought as the train whirled her on towards London, “she will most likely know what my mother’s wishes are,” and as she thought of that mother, and the years of suffering her father’s cruelty had condemned her to endure, every feeling was absorbed in one indignant resolve to leave no means untried to have that mother righted and restored, if not to happiness, at least to peace and honour.

As the train entered the London Station, she noticed a woman clad in a long brown cloak, with a peasant’s hood drawn over her head, whom she quickly identified as Isola; not from her recollection of her nurse’s face, for here memory failed her, nor yet alone from her dress, which, though strange, seemed familiar to her, but the woman was evidently waiting and watching, and her long earnest gaze into each carriage as the train drew up at the platform, could not fail to strike the most casual observer⁠—

“Ma bonne, ma bonne,” said Amy in a low voice, as she jumped from the train, stretching out both hands towards her nurse⁠—

“Holy mother!” exclaimed the woman, seizing Amy’s hand, and passionately kissing it⁠—

“Which of my two children is it that I see? The eyes, the voice, the hands, the hair are her mother’s own. My child, bless the Saints and Holy Mary whenever you look at your sweet face in the glass, for thou wilt never be without thy mother’s portrait all thy life long.”

Then followed question and answer in rapid succession. Amy ascertained from Isola that her mother had entered the convent of St. Geneviève, some few miles distant from their old home. Isola breathed not a word of her mother’s transgression, nor how she had abandoned husband and child for the caprice of a moment. Isola’s intense love for, and devotion to her mistress, blinded her to all her faults; she could see her in but one light, that of a wronged, suffering woman, and as such she spoke of her. She dwelt long upon Mr. Warden’s harshness and cruelty to his young wife, and told Amy how at length his treatment became insupportable, and they were compelled to seek another home; how that her mother had eventually taken vows in the Convent of St. Geneviève, seeking in religion the happiness she could not find in the world. Isola made no mention of the lie passed off on Mr. Warden respecting his wife’s death. To her mind the one weak point in Aimée’s character was her love for her husband and her real penitence for her fault. This to Isola was simply incomprehensible⁠—

“The man hates you, why should you love him?” was her argument. “He treated you badly, you did well to leave him.”

Nevertheless, whatever order Aimée gave must be carried out to the very letter, and with the blind unreasoning fidelity of a dog, she obeyed her mistress’s slightest wish.

Thus it was, that intentionally or unintentionally, Isola’s narrative conveyed a very wrong impression to Amy’s mind. The young girl scarcely realized her own feelings towards her father, so completely had they been reversed⁠—

“I could not have believed all this Isola, even from your lips,” she said passionately, “if he had not himself told me a lie, and denied my own mother to my face.”

So they journeyed on. Miss Warden had only a few sovereigns in her purse, but Isola seemed to be well supplied with money⁠—

“Where does all your money come from?” asked Amy wonderingly, as she noticed Isola’s well-filled purse. Isola pointed to her ears, despoiled of ornaments⁠—

“You sold them!” exclaimed Amy, “why, they must have represented the savings of at least twenty years,” she added, recollecting the practice of the French peasantry to invest their earnings in jewellery, and especially in earrings, which they exchange for others more valuable as they rise and prosper in the world. Isola bowed her head⁠—

“Could they be yielded to one more worthy, or to one who had a greater right?” she enquired earnestly.

Tears filled Amy’s eyes at the proof of such devotion, and she said no more.

By the time they arrived at Folkestone, Amy had become more calm and collected. She endeavoured to mark out for herself some plan of action⁠—

“I think Isola,” she suggested, “we will telegraph to my father from here that I am safe and well, and that he will hear from me again.”

“Mon Dieu!” exclaimed Isola, “and be stopped by the police on landing at Boulogne! No, no, my child, wait till thou hast safely reached thy mother, then telegraph, write, or do what thou wilt.”

Amy saw the force of the argument, and contended no more, but it was difficult, nay impossible for a girl who had loved her father so passionately as she had, to shut out altogether from her imagination the agony of mind he must be suffering at her unaccountable absence. But what could she do? The difficulties of her position seemed insuperable, and her mind had become so bewildered, she felt she could scarcely now distinguish between right and wrong. Besides, the one all-absorbing intense desire to see her mother had taken such possession of her, that every other feeling was comparatively deadened.

They crossed by the night mail to Boulogne, and thence without delay continued the route to Le Puy. A wearisome journey, and which, to Amy, seemed endless, so long and dreary seemed the hours which kept her apart from her idolised mother. At length it was accomplished, and at the time that the whole country round Harleyford had risen to join in the fruitless search, and Frank Varley and Lord Hardcastle had clasped hands in a solemn vow to rest not day nor night till the wanderer was brought home, Amy was lying in her mother’s arms at the Convent of St. Geneviève, or kneeling by her side kissing her hands, feet, or dress, in a perfect ecstasy and bewilderment of joy that her wildest imaginings were at last realized, and that she had found a mother indeed.

“Ah,” said Amy, here breaking off her narrative and drawing a long breath. “No one could have painted my mother to me as she really was and as I found her. It would have needed a special inspiration to have done so. To describe material beauty, the beauty of form, colour, and outline⁠—yes, it can be done; but to paint the many transparent tints of a sunbeam, or the light and shadow of a handful of the sparkling, rippling stream! It is impossible. When one can be found to do this then may he begin to paint my mother in all her changeful, wondrous beauty. As a very empress, as a star in a dark sky she shone out among the little brown nuns at St. Geneviève. They were all so little, so brown, so old, not a young face among them. Not one of them had been the other side of the mountains for more than thirty years. They were all most kind and courteous, and so indulgent to my mother in all her caprices, treating her almost as a wayward, spoilt child, and only insisting on such matters as were absolutely necessary to keep up the discipline of the convent. In her tiny bare little room, in her coarse brown-grey dress, my mother had passed ten of the best years of her life. It is marvellous to me, knowing her as I now do, that the routine and confinement of a convent life had not broken her spirit and quite worn her out. Oh, papa, I hate routine, I hate discipline, I detest a quiet, orderly life, and yet I feel as if, should I live to be withered, and brown, and old, I should like to come here to these kind little nuns and end my days in peace with them.”

Amy sighed wearily; she often sighed now. The strange events through which she had lately passed had tried her beyond measure, but the bitterest trial of all had been the choice she had been compelled to make between her father and her mother. To believe in the truth of the one was to acknowledge the falsehood of the other, and it was hard indeed for her young, loving heart to choose between the two.

Mr. Warden looked at his daughter anxiously. She was greatly changed, and he could not but feel that his bright, lighthearted Amy would never come back again. Now and then flashes of her old self would shine out, and she would look up in his face with her own laughing eyes, but it was only now and then, and the Amy of today was a sadder, paler, more thoughtful being than the Amy of six months ago.

“Amy, dear,” said Mr. Warden, tenderly, “tell me one thing and I will ask no more questions tonight. Did your mother ever allude in any way to the wrong she once did me, or did you learn this story from someone else?”

“From Lord Hardcastle,” replied Amy. “When I first saw my mother, as she clasped me in her arms, she said, ‘my darling, do you know the whole truth, and can you love me still?’ I, imagining she referred to your neglect and cruelty, and her impatience and flight as described by Isola, replied that I did know the whole truth, and I loved her better than ever. After this nothing more was said by either of us on the matter. It was not until Lord Hardcastle stood before me on the rocks and insisted, with his thin pale face and solemn manner, that I should hear the whole truth and then judge between my parents, that I knew what had really occurred. Papa, papa, I felt then I should hate him forever and ever for having cast down my idol from its pedestal. Yet,” she added, tearfully, “I ought to be grateful to him, too, for has he not given back to me my own dear father, and cleared away the cloud that had risen up between us?”

“Thank God for that, indeed, my child, and had it not been for him, Amy, your father would not be here talking to you now. A few more such days of grief and anxiety would have worn out the last remains of my strength. I owe Lord Hardcastle a debt I can never repay, and it pained me beyond measure the other day to hear your abrupt question as to his right to wear your ring. You must have wounded him deeply.”

“But, papa, dear, that was because he was not equal to the occasion. Some gentlemen I know, such as Mr. Varley for instance, would have said ‘if I had but the right to wear it,’ or some such polite speech. Of course I should have thought it very impertinent and great nonsense. But no one will ever accuse Lord Hardcastle of talking nonsense! He mounts his high horse immediately, gives me back my ring with scarcely a word, and with the air of an emperor walks out of the room!”

“Amy,” said Mr. Warden, after a moment’s pause, “you spoke of Frank Varley just now; do you care to know what has become of him?”

“Yes,” said Amy, looking up eagerly, “where is he, papa? What did he do when he heard I was lost? Tell me, don’t keep me waiting an instant,” she added in her old tone and manner.

“For one whole month, my child,” said Mr. Warden, carefully watching his daughter’s face, “he was brokenhearted, inconsolable, in fact all but a madman. The next,” he said this very slowly, for he was loth to strike the blow, “he was engaged to Mary Burton, and married ten days afterwards.”

A start, a shiver, a very flushed and then a very pale face, that was all, and then Amy repeated in a strangely quiet tone, “Married to Mary Burton! I remember her well, that large, fair, good-looking girl, who didn’t know how to make men look at her! We won’t talk any more today, papa. The little doctor will scold me if I keep you up late and tire you. Ah!” she said with a sigh and a look towards the mountains, “I think those little brown nuns at St. Geneviève have a far better time of it than we who stand out here in the cold and storm to fight our life’s battle!”

XV

“She was like a wild bird beating its wings against its prison bars,” said Amy, continuing her narrative a few days before they started for England. “The excitement and pleasure of seeing me had acted magically on her, so much so that I found it difficult to realize the truth of Isola’s description of her before my coming. In a day or two, however, the excitement subsided, and I became seriously alarmed. She seemed possessed by a spirit of unrest, and I began to fear for her reason. No sleep at night, no rest for one five minutes in the day. She fulfilled all her religious duties faithfully (they were not heavy ones, and the Abbess was indulgent) but every spare moment she spent with me was passed in one ceaseless moan. ‘I must see him; there will be no peace for me till I have looked at the dear face again. Help me, my child, help me!’ I knew not what to do for the best. I felt it would be useless to consult the Abbess, or even the Convent Confessor, on the matter, as their experience in the world’s ways was even less than mine, and they looked upon everything in the light of their religion. Besides, I knew there was no possibility of their allowing my mother outside the walls, even in charge of a sister, for their rules on this point were strict. What could be done? I felt, too, that you ought to be written to by someone, but by whom? Mercy to Mrs. Warden, whom I was convinced was ignorant of my mother’s existence, withheld my hand, and whom could I trust in such a matter, or to whom, indeed, could I expose my father’s guilt? I felt confident in my own mind that you would naturally guess whither I had gone, and would possibly frame some excuse for me to Mrs. Warden and others. But, O, my father, I have no words to express the agony, the absolute torture of mind I suffered at the thought of your unworthiness, of your cruelty to one whom I believed to be so noble and good as my mother.

“The difficulties, too, of my position were very great. The Abbess was kindness itself to me, and bade me stay with my mother as long as I pleased, but she was constantly asking me questions as to my family and connections, and I, not knowing how much of my mother’s story had been confided to her, was fearful of betraying my mother every hour of the day. Latterly, however, all these anxieties gave way to one more terrible than all. Little as I knew of such cases, I felt sure that my mother was in a state bordering on madness, and every day that passed increased her danger. Isola, who came daily to see us, had but one thought in her mind, how to save my mother, and was forever suggesting to me some wild plan, which I felt to be either wrong or impracticable. At one time she would propose I should receive a letter, informing me of your death; at another she suggested I should frame some story that would prove you to be utterly base, and unworthy of any woman’s love. But that I could not do, for deep down in my heart there was a feeling I could not explain, nor put into words, but which made me angry or indignant whenever Isola began to anathematize you.

“At length, one evening after I had gone to my own room, utterly worn out with my mother’s excitement and misery, a sudden thought came into my head. ‘Why not gratify her, why not enable her to see the man she so blindly worships?’ Then it flashed across my mind how easily the thing could be done! I had but to assume my mother’s nun’s dress and hood, and no ordinary observer could have told it was not my mother herself. She in my dress would easily be permitted to pass the portress’s lodge, and once outside the convent walls Isola would be at hand with further disguises, if necessary, and means of facilitating the journey to England.

“I felt, as you may imagine, I was incurring heavy responsibility in acting thus. But what was to be done? I had no one to advise me. I knew that you ought to be communicated with, and it was simply an impossibility for me to leave my mother in the state she was in. Once I had hinted at the advisability of my going back to consult with you as to what ought to be done, but she became perfectly frantic at the bare thought of such a thing, and throwing herself at my feet, had implored me ‘not to quench the last ray of light in her life.’

“Isola entered heart and soul into my plan. ‘I will go with her,’ she exclaimed. ‘She is too much of a child to be trusted by herself in the world. Where she wanders thither will I go, where she dies there will I die, and there will I be buried.’ I gladly consented to this, as Isola had already once made the journey to England, and would know all the details of the route. My mother, too, was so bright and quick, and her remembrance of the English you taught her so perfect, that I had scarcely any fear of difficulties arising on the road. My one and only anxiety was how would she conduct herself in her interview with you. Would she act quietly and with discretion, or would she cause some open scandal and disgrace to you and to your family? I did my best to prevent this by exacting from her a solemn promise that she would not go down to Harleyford, but remain in London at the hotel where Isola stayed, write to you from there, and there wait your reply. My heart misgave me when she made me this promise. Yet, I thought to myself, after all it doesn’t much matter what she says or does in England. The truth will have to be made known to the world, and the rightful wife acknowledged. ‘Ah! it was a weary, bitter time,’ ” and here Amy broke down utterly. “My brain aches now when I think of it, and a pain comes into my heart which, I think, will be there till my dying day.”

“Poor child!” said Mr. Warden, tenderly smoothing the masses of dark hair which clustered upon Amy’s white forehead, as she laid her head wearily on his shoulder. “My poor little girl, you have been too much tried. You were too young to bear so heavy a load of responsibility and sorrow. For an old worn-out heart like mine a little suffering, more or less, cannot make much difference, but for you, in your bright, fresh girlhood, it was hard indeed to bear up against such a complication of mistakes and wrongdoing.”

“Yes,” said Amy, wearily, going on with her story, “it was very hard and very miserable, and after my mother had started, I nearly broke down altogether.

“Our plan succeeded beyond our hopes even. In the evening twilight, in the dress in which I left my home, my mother passed out of the Convent gates, with Isola, on the pretext of visiting some old friends on the other side of Le Puy. You, my father, had you seen her then, might have mistaken her for your own daughter, so complete was the resemblance in face, form, and figure. Perhaps she looked a little paler, a little thinner, and a few years older (certainly not more) than I did six months ago, but it would have needed younger and keener eyes than those of the old nuns to have discovered this. And I, in my mother’s dress and hood, had not the slightest fear of detection. I had become so accustomed to the daily routine of the convent, that I knew to the least iota every one of my mother’s religious duties. Latterly, too, she had been so weak and ill she had been allowed to remain very much in her own room. I had acquired, or rather reacquired, the singing intonation peculiar to the Cevenol peasant, and knowing our voices were so nearly one pitch and tone, had no fear of discovery on this point. I drew the hood a little more closely over my face; I was perhaps a little less sociable and friendly with the sisters, and thus for three days I escaped detection.

“But on the fourth day I knew that Père Ambroise, the Confessor, was expected, and I determined that with him I would attempt no further concealment. He was a personal friend of my mother’s; it was he who induced her to enter the Convent of St. Geneviève, and it was his wise counsels, I don’t doubt, which had restrained and quieted her impetuous temper, as long as it was possible to do so. Such a dear old man, papa, he ought to be made a bishop at the very least, instead of ending his days here as Curé and Confessor to twenty or thirty little nuns. I contrived to meet him as he entered the convent garden, and while walking with him towards the house, told him, in as few words as possible, the story of my mother’s escape, and my reason for planning it. At first he was very angry, although not so much as might have been expected, considering the heavy sin he believed to have been committed.

“ ‘La petite Sœur (that was the name my mother was known by on account of her comparative youth) ought to have consulted me,’ he said, ‘I have taught her for many years, and she might have relied on my counsels.’

“ ‘Would you have let her go had she done so?’ I asked.

“ ‘Without doubt, no,’ he exclaimed, earnestly.

“ ‘Was there any other way of saving her life or reason?’ I asked again⁠—

“ ‘My daughter,’ he replied, very gently, ‘you are very young, but I pray that long ere you have reached my age, you will have learned that there are some things to be thought of before life or reason, and that a man or woman must be at times prepared to sacrifice both rather than honour, faith, or the service of God.’

“I felt so ashamed that he should have to speak to me in this way, that I knew not what to say. I felt how wrongly I had acted from first to last. But what was I to do? I was altogether bewildered, and began to wish I had consulted the good Father before. However, it was too late now. I could only repeat I was very sorry to have grieved and offended him, but perhaps if he knew the whole of my story he would not judge me so harshly.

“ ‘I do not ask for your confidence, my daughter,’ he replied, ‘there may be things in your family history you would not care to repeat, but I had a right to expect your mother’s confidence, and now I find it was but half-given.’

“Then he told me how I had made myself amenable to the laws of the country in thus assisting in the escape of a nun⁠—

“ ‘But,’ he added kindly, ‘you, my child are too young to be prosecuted on such a matter, and Isola too old. She will return and repent, she is too true a daughter of the Church not to do so, but your mother never will. The world has had her heart throughout her sojourn here, and the world will claim its own.’

“Then he told me I was welcome to stay here as long as I pleased, as guest at the convent, or if I had other friends with whom I would prefer staying, he would have much pleasure in conducting me to them. Was he not a splendid man, papa?” added Amy enthusiastically, “he looked so noble and so good while he was speaking, he made me feel thoroughly ashamed of my own conduct, and the part I had played throughout. Of course I told him I would remain gratefully with the nuns till I heard from my mother or you, and then determining there should be no further deceit on my part, told him how I expected to hear through Isola’s nephew, a young woodcutter in the neighbourhood.

“How anxiously I longed and waited for news you may imagine, but a whole week passed, and still not a word. At length, about ten days after my mother’s departure, and when I was feeling positively sick with suspense, and a dread of what was coming, Isola herself, to my great amazement, appeared at the convent gates. I hastened down to her, dreading I knew not what.

“ ‘Where is my mother?’ was my first question⁠—

“ ‘I left her in London,’ replied Isola, ‘she ordered me to return here to thee and await her orders, and I have done so. It was hard to part from her, she looked so young and beautiful, but she told me she would manage now her own affairs; that she was going down to the little country village to see him she loved so well, and that thou wouldst need an escort back to thy own country. I gave her all the money I had, and my old brown hood and cloak, and here I am, my child, to take care of thee.’ Then she handed to me a few short hurried lines from my mother, telling me ‘she was safe and happy, and knew well what she should do; that it might be some little time before she wrote again, but when all was happily arranged she would send for me, and I know,’ she concluded, ‘all will be happily arranged. I shall win him back; I have loved him so well I cannot lose him.’

“My heart sank as I read the note. Something told me the worst was to come, and as day after day slipped by, and not a line not a message from either father or mother, my brain began to grow dazed and stupid, and I think I really lost the power of reasoning. I dared not write to you; I felt how justly angry you must be with me, whatever your own fault, for having acted so madly and foolishly. I wandered backwards and forwards from the convent to Isola’s cottage, from Isola’s cottage to the convent, hoping for news, praying for news, and feeling the suspense to be more than I could bear. O, papa, papa!” concluded Amy, breaking down once more, and giving way to a passion of tears, “if you had not come when you did, your poor little Amy would have lost her reason altogether, or else have laid down to die from sheer weariness and sickness of heart.”

Gently and tenderly Mr. Warden soothed his daughter.

“My poor little girl,” he said, “you have been too much tried for one so young. This is the last time we will talk over this sad story, but before we lay it on one side forever, you must hear one or two things it is only right you should know. Lord Hardcastle has told you no doubt most of what occurred during your absence, and all our grief for your loss, but did he tell you the part he has played throughout; what he has been to me all through our trials; and how it was he who guided us here? Tell me that Amy!”

“No,” replied Amy, “he has never mentioned anything of that kind to me. Indeed he has scarcely spoken to me the last few days, and whenever he looks at me, his eyes grow so large and cross, that I feel sure he is thinking in his own mind, ‘what an immense deal of trouble this self-willed silly girl has given us all! what a pity everyone is not as sensible and clever as I am!’ ”

Then Mr. Warden commenced from the very beginning, and told Amy every particular, even to the smallest detail, of all that had occurred during her absence. He spared her nothing. All his own grief and despair he laid bare before her, the solemn vow, too of Frank Varley and Lord Hardcastle, and how each had played their part. He recounted to her all the terrors of that dreadful night when death was in the house and the baying hound betrayed her mother’s presence. Step by step he led her on through the sad story of the finding of her mother’s body, his own brokenhearted sorrow, and Lord Hardcastle’s intense grief. Amy never lifted her eyes from his face, but drank in his every word and tone. Like one awaking from a dream, silent and enthralled she sat and listened. As Mr. Warden repeated to her Lord Hardcastle’s words in the library at the High Elms, “I want to be able to hold up a picture of the girl I love so truly, in all her innocence, and beauty, and purity, and to say to all the world, this is she whom I have loved in life, whom I love in death, whom I shall love after death, through eternity!” Amy sprang to her feet with clasped hands, exclaiming⁠—

“Papa, papa, what is this, I do not understand.” At this moment the door opened and Lord Hardcastle entered the room. Anything more embarrassing could not be imagined. Carried away by his feelings, Mr. Warden had spoken loudly, and Amy’s high-pitched voice must have rung the length of the corridor. For a moment all were silent, and Amy, confused and nervous, leant over the window-ledge, dropping stones and dry leaves from the flower-boxes on to the verandah beneath.

Lord Hardcastle was the first to recover himself.

“Mr. Warden,” he said, “I have come in to say goodbye; I shall leave, I think, before daylight tomorrow, for a little run through Spain. I am rather interested in Dr. Lytton’s account of the Moorish excavations going on just now. You are looking so thoroughly well and happy, that I quite feel my services are no longer needed.”

He spoke carelessly, almost indifferently, but there was a mournful ring in the last few words which went straight to Amy’s heart.

“He must not go, he shall not leave us in this way,” she exclaimed, suddenly turning from the window, addressing her father, but stretching out her hands to Lord Hardcastle. The old bright look had come back to her eyes, the old imperious tones sounded once more in her voice, “How can we thank him? What can we do for him who has done so much for us. Lord Hardcastle,” she continued, turning impetuously towards him, with flushed face and sparkling eyes, “I was very rude to you a short time ago, can you forgive me? You were wearing my ruby ring, will you take it back again, and keep it forever and ever in remembrance of my gratitude to you? I have so little to offer,” she added apologetically, with a little sigh, drawing the ring from her finger and holding it towards him.

“But I want something more than the ring to keep forever and ever,” said Lord Hardcastle, in low earnest tones, for Amy’s voice and manner, told him that the icy barriers between them were broken down at last. “Not now, Amy,” he added tenderly, as he felt the little hand he had contrived to secure, trembling in his own; “not now, for we have scarcely as yet passed from beneath the cloud of the shadows of death, but by-and-by, when the dark winter days have come and gone, and the bright spring sun shines down once more upon us, then I shall hope to come to you and ask not only for this little hand, but for all you have to give, even for your own sweet self!”

There was yet one more dark shadow to fall before the travellers started on their homeward journey. Amy had proposed to her father that they should pay a farewell visit to the little brown nuns at St. Geneviève, to thank them for their hospitality to her. Mr. Warden gladly acceded to her request, and the visit was paid the day before they started for England. On leaving the convent, they purposed visiting Isola in her lonely little hut in the valley, intending to make some permanent provision for her comfort for the rest of her life.

“Poor faithful creature,” said Mr. Warden pityingly, as they descended by the wild steep footway, “I would gladly ask her to return with us, were it not for the recollection of falsehood and misery which her face brings with it.”

Before they reached the hut, however, they were met by Isola’s nephew, the young woodcutter, of whom mention has already been made. He looked grave and sad, and lifting his hat respectfully to Mr. Warden, waited for him to speak.

“How is your aunt this morning, André,” said Amy, “shall we find her within?”

The young man shook his head.

“She is gone, mademoiselle, she will never return. This morning at daybreak the angels carried her soul away. Since mademoiselle left us, she wearied and sickened, she eat nothing, she never slept. There in the window is her lace cushion with the bobbins untouched, and day and night she sat and moaned in her wicker chair. Yesterday, when I tried to make her take some food, she turned her face to the wall, ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘the summer flowers are faded and dead, why should the withered leaf hang upon the bough?’ She never spoke to me afterwards, and this morning, when I went to her room to ask how she was, I found her lying dead and silent on her bed. Will mademoiselle come in and see her as she lies? She looks beautiful with her wreaths and garlands of flowers.”

This, however, Mr. Warden would not permit, for he felt his young daughter had already been tried beyond her strength, and Amy, with the mists of tears hanging over her eyes, looked her last at the Cevenol valley, and said a long farewell to the beautiful solitude.

And so the winter snows and clouds came and went, and the spring sun shone out once more, calling into life and being a thousand sweet sights and sounds. It lighted up the grey house at Harleyford, and fell slantwise through the tall elms on to the tender grass beneath. It shone through the east window of Harleyford Old Church, on to a quiet wedding party assembled there one bright May morning, and played in many coloured beams on two monuments standing side by side in the grassy graveyard.

And far away in the lonely valley of the Cevennes, the same spring sunshine lighted up a quiet weed-grown resting-place, and fell in quivering lines and curves upon a simple wooden cross, engraved in rude peasant’s carving, with these few words⁠—

“Isola.”

“Fidèle jusques à la mort.”

Buried among the Welsh mountains it was⁠—an old grey stone two-storied house, running into towers, and odd gables, and queer old-fashioned outbuildings with three-cornered windows and five-cornered doors. “The Eyrie” it was called in the liquid unpronounceable language of the district, and it seemed a not inappropriate title when looked at from the low-lying glen at the foot of the brown rugged mountains which shut in this quiet little homestead. For a homestead it was in every sense of the word; one need but cross the somewhat weedy lawn, where wild birds of all sorts and sizes, and squirrels also, loved to congregate, and enter the drawing-room by one of the long narrow French windows, to find tokens of comfort and refinement and a lady’s ruling hand in every nook and corner. An Erard’s grand piano, a harp, an easel in a good northern light, a sculptured group in pure marble, and a delicately-painted medallion on the walls, were the first things that met the eye. But hidden away in corners were greater treasures still: old and priceless books in the deep shelves of the library, rare prints and engravings in the capacious portfolios, and, hanging on the walls of the large central hall, were pictures which Owen Tremarten had spent a lifetime and a fortune in tracing out and purchasing. This hall was the favourite resort of the master of the house, and here stood in a deep recess his daughter’s favourite instrument, a magnificent deep-toned organ. Hour after hour would he pass here wandering among his pictures and listening to dreamy fugue or sonata, or some wild triumphal march which would come springing from under his daughter’s slight yet firm fingers. Perhaps as he sauntered up and down in the dim twilight or golden summer’s afternoon the bright fresh maiden of eighteen would fade into the image of the girl-mother laid so many years ago in her early grave, and his own romance of love and passion would be lived through once more⁠—who can tell?

But now in this early spring morning the hall stands wide open and empty. Lettice Tremarten has too keen an appreciation of fresh air and sweet sights and sounds not to be among them when they are at their best. Besides, has she not a whole colony of friends and neighbours (feathered and otherwise) dependent upon her? There on the lawn in the very midst of them all she stands⁠—a slight tall figure with a small head crowned with a mass of curly, wavy brown hair⁠—hair which never could be reduced to order and submission, and which had a trick of defying hairpins and ribbons, and would tumble over the girl’s eyes whenever she turned up her face to meet yours, as she was rather fond of doing at times, or it would tumble the other way and hang like a thick veil over neck and shoulders as she stooped to gather the flowers for her fresh morning’s vases, or to feed the fat lazy blackbirds and robins which came trooping and twittering from all corners at her approach.

That is what they are doing at the present moment, and the lawn, kept wild and untrimmed by Miss Lettice’s own orders, “because the squirrels like something rough and tangly under their little toes,” is literally alive with life and sound. The robins have ventured the nearest to her neat little garden-boots, and in close proximity to them balances itself a lame barndoor fowl, whose broken leg Lettice herself had bound up and mended, and who was consequently a special favourite, although for laying purposes absolutely useless. Behind these cluster and flutter a varied collection of wild singing-birds, linnets, thrushes, yellowhammers, and finches. Even tomtit leaves his pecking and insect-hunting on the down-side of the sycamore, and joins the twittering throng.

Into the very midst of them dashes old Brownie, Lettice’s curly retriever, scattering the little pensioners right and left with a heavy bark, intended, no doubt, for a ponderous “good morning.” “Down, Brownie, how dare you!” scolds Lettice, placing one little foot on old Brownie’s well-furred neck to enforce obedience. Then the crumb-scattering goes on for another ten minutes or so, Lettice amusing herself by making her feathered friends fly hither and thither for her favours, and throwing the last morsel at a chattering magpie, perched on the low bough of a mountain ash, who had somehow, so she judged, through timidity or cowardice, failed to secure for himself a proper portion.

Then she turns her basket upside down.

“They won’t believe it’s all gone, Brownie,” she says, releasing the dog, “till they see it bottom upwards.” The sunlight glances and quivers through the aspens and alders which skirt the lawn; behind them babbles and tumbles a narrow running brook, while the semicircle of the mountains in the distance forms a glorious background to the picture. The barndoor fowl cackles and flutters on to Lettice’s shoulder, and is very quickly fluttered off again with a reprimand from the young lady. Brownie released disperses the tiny feathered tribe in all directions, and finally starts off in full pursuit of a mischievous-looking squirrel, who, after a few bounds and gambols, ensconces himself in safety in a tall horse-chestnut, and curls up his tail in defiance at the dog’s vain efforts to dislodge him.

Lettice’s eyes sparkle with delight⁠—some said those eyes of hers were blue, some said they were grey, some hazel; anyhow, they were large, and changeful, and brilliant⁠—her pretty little mouth breaks into all sorts of pleasant smiles, and she nods her head at the blue hills now catching wonderful lights and shadows as the sun mounts higher in the heavens.

“Oh, you dear little kids and goats up there!” she exclaims; “I’ll have some of you down here before long.”

Of course she cannot see the “dear little kids and goats,” but she knows that halfway up the mountains there is fair pasturage for them, and no doubt at this very moment they are enjoying it, and she may just as well talk to them as to any other creature.

Then for a few minutes she stands still and enjoys the freshness and beauty of the morning scene. All around her the earth seems full of sunlight and colour and song, the tangled verdure on the lawn never seemed greener nor fresher; surely the little brook never babbled so prettily before, and those delicious lilacs and violets never before gave out so lovely a perfume. She stoops to gather a few hyacinths for her waistbelt; Brownie picks up the empty basket, and stands patiently waiting for further orders. Lettice gives one upward farewell look at the blue hills, and something of sadness and longing passes over her face.

“Yes, you dear old mountains,” she says aloud, “I have known and loved you a long time, but for all that I should like to see a little of what is going on on the other side of you.”

At this moment the sound of wheels is heard on the drive running round the house, as the coachman, throwing back the stable-door, brings out the pony-phaeton for the day.

Lettice bounds forward to pat her favourite ponies and rub their “dear little noses.” An elderly gentleman comes down the front steps, followed by two elderly ladies, one tall and stout and the other tall and thin. Both are dressed in the latest London fashion.

“Lettice, I am driving your aunts into the village; will you come?” inquires the gentleman.

The tall stout lady interposes⁠—

“Not in that dress, may I beg, Lettice. Dear me! each time I pay you a visit here you seem to me to be more unsophisticated and untidy than before. Owen, Owen, that girl sadly wants pruning and training!”

Lettice flushes a little and laughs a little.

“I hadn’t the least intention of going into the village this morning, Aunt Rosamond,” she replies; “I have so very much to do.”

The tall thin lady, who is emotional in temperament and active in disposition, begins now.

“I suppose ‘so very much to do,’ Lettice, means dawdling about the whole morning with a paintbrush in your hand and spoiling two or three sheets of good cardboard.” Then as the fresh spring breeze catches Lettice’s brown hair, and the aforesaid brown hair, in response to a somewhat impatient toss of the head from the young girl, tumbles en masse to her waist, the lady exclaims, “I wonder⁠—I wonder what would they say to you in a London drawing-room!”

Lettice finishes rubbing the pony’s nose.

“Dear old Fiddle!” she says, giving him a farewell pat. She goes to the other pony and repeats the operation, ending with a “Dear old Falstaff!” Then she looks up at her aunts. “Aunt Judith! Aunt Rosamond!” she exclaims, “I wish, instead of scolding me so much, you would take me back to London with you, and prune and train me there.” Here a start of surprise from papa. Lettice turns on him. “Yes, papa dear, I would really like to go up just for one short season and see what they would say to me in a London drawing-room. I wouldn’t stay a day after, and then I’d come back and settle down here forever and ever.”

Papa touches up Fiddle and Falstaff impatiently with his whip.

“Go in, pussy,” he says, “and don’t talk nonsense.”

Lettice throws him a kiss and a bright smile. Aunt Rosamond begins sotto voce, but has to raise her voice above the crunching of the wheels on the gravel and the ring of the ponies’ hoofs, and Lettice hears her say distinctly, “The child is quite right, Owen. It is your duty to give her a season in London⁠—it is high time⁠—” But the rest of the sentence is lost to her as the phaeton whirls into the flinty high road.

And Lettice stands silent and pensive in front of the long drawing-room windows. Shall she go in and have a quiet morning’s sketching, or bend her back over her embroidery frame, or wander away with Brownie to the clear lake into which falls the little babbling brook, and give him a good half-hour’s splashing and washing, or shall she⁠—But here her speculations and plannings are suddenly brought to a close by a quaintly-dressed stooping old figure with a basket of tools, who comes up from a side walk and salutes her with a respectful “Good morning, Miss Lettice, and what orders for the day, if you please?”

Lettice looks up vexed at having her meditations interrupted. “Oh, Roberts!” she exclaims, recognising the head gardener. “Orders? Oh, dear, no! I never give any when you startle me in this way⁠—just when I am so busy thinking.” The old man begins to apologise. “No, don’t do that, only don’t bother me again.” The old man touches his hat and turns to go away. “Oh, stay, Roberts, I forgot,” exclaims the young lady. “I have one very particular order to give. There is a quantity of chickweed and groundsel growing up in the violet-beds. On no account have it weeded out⁠—not the least morsel of it⁠—my canaries are quite pining for some. Now don’t grumble, Roberts, but go away as fast as you can, and leave me to finish my thinking.”

Her “thinking,” however, seems doomed not to be finished this morning, for she hears the iron gate leading from the high road swing back and a firm quick footstep on the gravel.

What is the matter with Brownie’s collar that at this particular moment Lettice must stoop down and adjust it so carefully with both hands? Brownie wags his tail gratefully, still keeping firm hold of his mistress’s basket. A kind frank voice at Lettice’s side wishes her “Good morning” and extends a hand towards her. Lettice looking up, and returning the “Good morning” in somewhat demure tones, sees a tall well-made young man of about eight-and-twenty or thirty⁠—a man with no particular beauty in face or figure, as plainly as words can speak, “I am doing my duty honestly and well, and there is nothing in this world worth the trouble of a lie.”

Lettice does not take the offered hand; she is still (on her knees now) busy manipulating Brownie’s collar.

“Brownie’s curls are too long, Dr. Herron,” she begins apologetically; “they almost hide his new collar; I think I must cut them off; he is looking quite effeminate.”

“Can I be of any service, Miss Tremarten?” asks the doctor, entering into the spirit of the thing, and he too goes down on his knees and commences fumbling about Brownie’s curls, and then somehow their eyes meet, and Lettice’s flash and then droop, and then somehow their hands get very close together, and then Lettice jumps up flushing and shy and yet intent on fun.

“Dr. Herron,” she begins, “I have such glorious news to tell you⁠—I mean I would have told you if everyone hadn’t been out and if you could have come into the house for half-an-hour’s chat.”

“This is the very place for glorious news,” says the doctor brightly, looking round at the pretty garden scene and the lovely mountain picture beyond, and then letting his gaze rest upon the sweet dimpling face in front of him.

“Oh, I can’t stay out here a moment longer,” exclaims Lettice, “I have such a world of things waiting for me indoors, so the good news must keep for another time,” and she makes a little movement towards the house.

“And I too,” says the doctor, again rising to the occasion, “have a world of things waiting for me⁠—not indoors but out⁠—and can only give you three minutes, Miss Tremarten, to hand over your list of sick poor people to be seen after, for I’m off for a long ride.”

Lettice is piqued, and determines to take good aim this time. “Oh, I can’t think about the poor people this morning,” she says, again adjusting Brownie’s collar; “they must find someone else to look after them now, for I’m going back with Aunt Rosamond to London for the season.”

“To London!” echoes the doctor in blank amazement, and Lettice, with her hair rippling over her eyes, enjoys his surprise. “To London, Miss Tremarten! Do you really mean to tell me that your father has given his consent to your going?”

“Oh no,” replies Lettice blithely, “no one has given any consent at present, for,” she adds slyly, “it hasn’t been asked; but of course I am going, because I have arranged it all in my own mind, and whatever I arrange always does happen.”

Dr. Herron stands a long three minutes silent and thoughtful. Lettice, intolerant of silence and thought in other people, however much she may like to indulge in both herself, commences a long lecture to Brownie on the “disgraceful manner in which he has conducted himself towards the rabbits and squirrels of late.” Brownie, all respect and submission, elevates one ear and lowers the other as the discourse goes on.

“Miss Tremarten,” says the doctor at length, drawing a full breath, “will you put aside fun for a little while and let me have a quiet five minutes’ talk with you? I have sometimes thought that such a contingency as this might arise, but certainly was not prepared to meet it so soon.”

“I can’t stay another minute,” interrupts Lettice positively. “Are you coming in for a game of chess with papa tonight? Goodbye,” and she holds out her hand.

The doctor takes the hand and keeps it.

“Lettice,” he exclaims, “you know perfectly well what I have to say to you.”

Lettice looks down demurely.

“I haven’t the slightest idea, Dr. Herron⁠—”

“Now, do you mean to tell me,” he says in low earnest tones, and still retaining his hold on her hand, “that you have forgotten all about the letter I sent to you a short time ago, and which you have never condescended to answer?”

Lettice is flushing and nervous now, but still puts a brave face on the matter.

“Oh no, I”⁠—with marked emphasis⁠—“haven’t forgotten it, but I thought you had.”

“What could make you imagine such a thing?” asks the doctor in downright sober earnest.

“Because,” and here by a dexterous movement she releases her hand, “you never spoke about it after you had sent it, and I naturally thought you had forgotten it.”

Dr. Herron bites his lip to keep back his own smiles now.

“Will you never give over fun and teasing, Lettice?” he says. “But now you can answer me⁠—one little word will do,” and again somehow he gets possession of the hand, and his face is very close to hers.

Lettice looks down on the gravel-path, unconquered still.

“Please let me go, Dr. Herron. Let it be till I return from London. I couldn’t tie you down with any promises, you know. I’m quite sure you will have altered your mind by the time I come back, and I’ll really take your letter up to town with me, and⁠—and⁠—and”⁠—here she hesitates and stumbles and picks herself up again, shakes her hair over her eyes, and compels the doctor to release her hand so that she may fasten it back again, and then looking a little sideways at him, completes her sentence⁠—“and take great, great care of it. Goodbye, Dr. Herron.” And she is gone.

And Dr. Herron, looking after her as she flutters across the sunlit lawn and disappears under the grey stone portico of the old house, wonders whether in any corner under heaven there ever existed, or could exist, so sweet and fascinating, and withal so wilful and untamed, a being as Lettice Tremarten.

As Lettice anticipated, she had little or no difficulty in persuading her father that at least one season in London was an absolute necessity in every girl’s life.

“You know, dear,” she exclaimed, when “talking the matter over” with him, “I feel quite ashamed when I have to tell people I have never seen the parks nor been to the Opera, nor, what is worst of all, kissed the Queen’s hand. It is really quite too dreadful. And Marian Goodlake, when she came over from Aberystwyth on her wedding tour, said ‘I had grown to look quite rustic.’ And Aunt Rosamond, every time she comes, tells me I am ‘so unsophisticated.’ And you know, papa, that means a great deal. Don’t you remember you called Betsy Williams ‘unsophisticated’ the other day when she went up to London to receive the twenty pound legacy that had been left to her, and she took the lawyer’s cheque to Drummond’s and told one of the clerks that she ‘didn’t want to inconvenience him by taking so much money at once, but she’d have a little at a time as it suited him?’ And some day, papa, I shall be doing something like that, and then you’ll be ashamed of me and be very, very sorry that you didn’t let me go to London with Aunt Rosamond.”

Lettice paused for breath. Papa smiled.

“I suppose, pussy, it must be,” he said. “I knew some day you’d have to go, but I didn’t think ‘some day’ was so near at hand. In fact, you seemed to me still a child in short petticoats till the other day I was startled out of my belief by Dr. Herron⁠—”

“There is that dreadful Brownie after the squirrels again,” interrupted Lettice, and, utterly regardless of Aunt Judith’s neuralgia, she flung back the drawing-room window and started in full pursuit of the dog.

Mr. Tremarten quietly got up and closed it after her.

“Who is this Dr. Herron that we see and hear so much of?” asked Aunt Rosamond as Lettice disappeared among the shrubs and brushwood.

“He is the son of that Colonel Herron who died in Burma some ten years ago,” replied Mr. Tremarten. “His uncle, Sir Wilfrid Herron, of Herron Court, in Northampton, is the head of the family, and in due course the title and estates must descend to our friend the doctor here. Sir Wilfrid, however, has never shown the least kindness towards his brother’s children⁠—their mother jilted him in early life, I believe. Colonel Herron somehow managed to run through whatever fortune he and his wife had, and our Dr. John prefers working at a profession he has always liked, to support himself and sister, instead of hanging about doing nothing and waiting for dead men’s shoes. An eccentric individual, no doubt, he seems to you, Rosamond,” he added after a pause.

“Not half so eccentric an individual as you seem to me, Owen,” retorted the sister. “The want of common sense you have shown in the bringing up of that daughter of yours is to me marvellous. Not content with burying her for the first eighteen years of her life in absolutely conventual seclusion, with birds, and dogs, and horses as her sole companions, you throw her into the society of an attractive⁠—yes, certainly attractive⁠—but most ineligible bachelor, and what do you expect will come of it, let me ask you?”

Owen winced a little at this allusion to the secluded life he had chosen to lead ever since the death of his young wife within a year of their marriage. However, he replied calmly enough⁠—

“Something has come of it already, Rosamond, at least as far as the doctor is concerned, for about a month since he applied to me for permission to make Lettice an offer of marriage, and I told him he had my best wishes for his success.”

Aunt Rosamond flushed crimson with anger.

“Now, Judith, did you ever hear of such a piece of folly?” she exclaimed, turning to her sister. “Owen, do you really know what you are doing? Have you so low an opinion of your daughter’s attractions and her position in society that you think a country doctor, living absolutely from hand to mouth, a suitable husband for her? Don’t talk to me about his prospects,” she added, as she saw her brother about to speak; “I know people who know Sir Wilfrid well, and he is as likely as not to live for another twenty years. Do, I beg of you, let the girl have a chance; at any rate, don’t tie her down to a husband before she knows her own mind and what better things life has to offer her.”

Aunt Rosamond is in a high state of fermentation now. Her lips compress as she finishes speaking, her aquiline nose rises higher and higher, and one foot commences beating a rapid tattoo on the footstool.

Aunt Judith, who has an immense belief in her sister’s superior wisdom, and an intense love for her, interposed now.

“Owen,” she exclaimed, in her usual high-pitched, sharp tones, “I am quite sure Rosamond will be ill if you continue to excite her in this way.”

“I really don’t see anything to excite her in the subject we are discussing,” replied Owen in mild astonishment. “I have not the slightest wish to hurry my little girl into a marriage of any sort, and I am quite willing she should spend a year, or two if you wish it, with you both in London, and see as many men as you please. Honestly speaking, if I must have a son-in-law I prefer John Herron to any man I have ever known, but I’m not at all sure that Lettice’s mind is made up one way or another.”

Thus it was all settled eventually according to Aunt Rosamond’s wishes, and, with many injunctions to papa not to be dull while she was away, and to the doctor and the doctor’s sister, Mary Herron, to come up every day to the house to “keep papa cheerful,” Lettice started for London and plunged headlong into the gaieties and dissipation which opened before her dazzled eyes.

“Everything is lovely here,” she wrote to her father about two months after her arrival in London, after she had been to her first drawing-room, danced at a royal duchess’s ball, and been by common consent pronounced the débutante of the season. “It is quite too delicious, and it you would only leave your pictures and books for a few weeks and come here to go out with me I should have nothing in the world to wish for. Everyone is so nice, and I do nothing but enjoy myself from morning till night. I get a glorious canter in the parks every morning. Then there are pictures to be seen or shopping to be done (such wonderful shops too, papa). Always two or three nice people come in to lunch. Then there are calls innumerable to be made afterwards; then a dinner, to be followed by two, or sometimes three, dances. And that is where my troubles begin. Aunt Rosamond will insist on dragging me home by midnight. Isn’t it too bad of her? Just when everything is at the very best, and I have thoroughly entered into the fun of the thing, she puts on that funny frown of hers and looks at the door, and then I know that unless I throw up all the rest of my partners and smile sweetly and say, ‘I’m quite ready, Aunt Rosamond,’ I shall be well scolded all the way home, and Aunt Judy will chime in every other minute with ‘It’s quite true, Rosamond. Lettice, how can you persist in exciting and worrying your aunt in this way?’ and poor little me shrinks into the corner of the carriage and doesn’t dare open her mouth.”

Then followed a long list of inquiries about the dumb pets and favourites, among which Brownie and the lame barndoor fowl reigned supreme, and a wonder whether Dr. Herron came in for his nightly game of chess, and whether Mary ever played to papa some of those dear old fugues in the twilight. Finally came a short postscript:⁠—

“Among other nice people I have met frequently a Captain Ivie McCormack and his sister Lilla (Elizabeth really). He (Captain Ivie that is) says he was at Rugby with Dr. Herron, and remembers him perfectly. Also there is a most irreproachable earl, a great agriculturist, a splendid cattle-breeder, and an enthusiast on all matters connected with trades-unions and strikes. Can you guess whom I mean?”

This postscript was read out in the pleasant twilight evening at “The Eyrie” in a pause after a hard-fought game of chess between Mr. Tremarten and Dr. Herron, and with Mary Herron, tall, sedate, and womanly, seated in Lettice’s place at the organ.

“You see my little girl says nothing about coming home just yet, doctor,” said Mr. Tremarten, folding up his letter.

The doctor was knitting his brows furiously. “Ivie McCormack⁠—Ivie McCormack,” he was saying half to himself, “yes, I remember him perfectly also, and unless he has altered immensely since I knew him, he’s not a fit person for your daughter or any woman living to associate with.”

On that selfsame evening, but a little further on towards midnight, or rather day-dawn, the personages under discussion⁠—Captain Ivie McCormack and his sister Lilla⁠—were seated in a daintily-furnished boudoir in their house in Mayfair, a few doors from the quiet old family mansion of the Misses Tremarten. There is a soft reading-lamp on a side table which suffices to light the somewhat small room, itself a bijou in delicate rose pink and turquoise blue. Miss Lilla and her brother have just returned from a reception “small and early,” at which they have encountered Lettice and her aunts, and have retired to the lady’s sanctum sanctorum to discuss the events of the evening, which seem somehow to be of unusual interest and importance to them.

Miss McCormack has thrown off her swansdown opera-cloak, and is leaning back in a low chair fanning herself with some Indian feather fan. She is a large woman, well-made, dark-complexioned, with prominent features, and in style and dress affects the Oriental. In age she may be about thirty years, but under the soft light of the lamp looks considerably younger. Her brother⁠—“Captain Ivie” as he was generally called by his more intimate friends⁠—is his sister’s junior by about a year or two, and strongly resembles her in face and figure⁠—resembles with a difference, for whereas in Lilla’s face strong determination and will were marked in every line and feature, there was in the brother’s⁠—whether real or assumed it would be difficult to say⁠—a look of languor or weariness which effectually prevented real feeling of any sort finding expression in his handsome features. He has, in addition to the above-mentioned advantages, just a soupçon of aristocratic drawl in his speech, a slow, dignified way of moving about a room, an interested, deferential manner of listening to ladies’ conversation, very captivating and fascinating, more especially to quite young girls. However, it must not be supposed but what at times this fascinating manner is laid on one side, especially when the speaker happens to be a sister and there is no one at hand to note the captain’s ill-temper. Two or three times while Miss McCormack has been talking he has jumped up from his chair and sat down again, but as she has kept steadily on with her discourse, utterly ignoring his irritability and impatience, he contents himself with walking rapidly to and fro in the small space allowed by the innumerable tables and chairs in the tiny sitting-room.

“You know, Ivie,” Miss McCormack concluded her long harangue with saying, “you know perfectly well I shall never pay another sixpence of your debts. I have all but beggared myself to clear you so far already, and I am perfectly certain if it hadn’t been for your disreputable ways I shouldn’t be a spinster at the present moment. Your only chance, I tell you, is to fascinate some girl (with money, of course) in her first season, and stick to her in spite of everyone and everything. You’d better make the most of your handsome face while it lasts, for I tell you plainly you are beginning to look horribly old and careworn” (here the captain glanced somewhat nervously at his own reflection in a mirror opposite), “and every season you and your ways become better known. My own belief is that you’ll end with selling out, and will finish your days as a billiard-marker in some low tavern⁠—” She breaks off suddenly. “Do sit down, Ivie; you annoy me so tramping up and down in that style. Remember you are not in barracks. We must talk matters over, and what way is there out of the difficulty if you set your mind so obstinately against matrimony?”

The captain throws himself into a low chair and flings one long arm over the gilt back.

“What way?” he mutters. “By Jove! I’d just as soon be bullied by a wife as a sister.”

“Don’t be rude, Ivie,” Lilla rejoins. “You ought to be grateful to me for taking so much trouble. I don’t know another sister who would stand what I’ve stood for you. You never had any brains to spare, you know” (here the captain impatiently kicks over a footstool at his feet), “and if I don’t put you in the way of getting a rich wife, of course you’ll end in some disreputable manner. Now there’s Lettice Tremarten⁠—”

Now the captain jumps to his feet.

“Look here, Lilla,” he says, “let’s understand each other. Once for all, let me tell you, whatever traps and snares I set for my own interest and yours, I’m not quite villain enough to put them just in the way of that sweet little innocent girl. We’ll drop that, please.”

Lilla merely raises her arched eyebrows and goes steadily on⁠—

“Oh, are you really hit at last, Ivie? I wasn’t aware⁠—that will make things go all the better. As I was saying, there’s Lettice Tremarten. Not bad-looking.”

“Not bad-looking!” growls the captain. “Why, she’s heavenly!”

Lilla resumes⁠—

“I’m not a man, Ivie, to rave over a milk-and-water girl of eighteen. I repeat, she’s not bad-looking, although she has been brought up in a very absurd manner in a sweetly-simple style absolutely ridiculous in these days. However, perhaps her bringing up may turn out to be rather an advantage to you than otherwise, as she will find it all the more difficult to realise the nature and extent of your sins against society.”

“For heaven’s sake, Lilla, don’t wind about in that way!” ejaculates the captain. “Come to the point at once and be done with it, and let my sins alone.”

“If you intend to be rude, Ivie, you had better leave the room. I really have no interest in the matter beyond getting you off my hands. The first heiress you succeed in catching I shall hail as an angel of deliverance, and shall be kind and attentive to in the extreme. Why you should fly into one of your tempers whenever Miss Tremarten’s name is mentioned is a mystery to me. Those old-maid aunts of hers have no one else to leave their money to. Her father, judging from his tastes and habits, cannot be a poor man. Altogether, I should say she must eventually come into some twenty-five or thirty thousand a year. If you can manage the affair yourself by all means do so; but you know, as a rule, you make a mess of nearly everything you put your fingers into.”

Captain Ivie draws a long breath.

“Lilla, what a fool you are not to let a man smoke in your room! A puff would stand for a whole volley.”

“Thanks,” says Lilla sweetly, “I don’t admire the habit. I was saying, if you think you can manage this little affair by yourself by all means do so, but it you want my assistance I am quite willing to take the unpleasant part off your hands.”

“If they allowed petticoats in Parliament, by Jove! you’d make yourself a name,” mutters the captain.

Lilla takes no heed.

“You have so far done the pleasant part to perfection, with your looks of intense admiration and the rapt attention you have paid to her silly schoolgirlish talk. I believe the girl is in love with you without knowing it. I caught her once or twice this evening looking at you in a very spoony manner. All you have to do is to keep up your wonderful fascination, and⁠—” Here she hesitates a little.

“And⁠—and⁠—” repeats the captain, now awakened to real interest by his sister’s last sentences.

“And leave the rest to me,” finishes Lilla with a short laugh. “Good night, Ivie, I’m too tired to say another word.”

And the captain, with his full knowledge of Lilla and her resolute temper, is perfectly certain that not another word will be said.

While Lettice’s fate and fortune are being thus discussed by her friends and acquaintances, the Misses Tremarten themselves are beginning to feel a little anxiety on the matter.

Lettice and her affairs generally came upon the tapis in the early morning after breakfast while Lettice was enjoying her canter in the park, for neither of the Misses Tremarten being equestrians, they were obliged to hand over the chaperonage of their niece to a middle-aged matron of active habits and without encumbrances in the shape of single ineligible sons.

“I am not altogether pleased with the result of Lettice’s first season,” said Aunt Rosamond on one occasion as she and her sister sat quietly with their books and work in their pleasantly-furnished drawing-room.

Aunt Judith suspended her knitting for a moment, and commenced in her weak, quavering voice⁠—

“Satisfied! No; how could you be? The girl is self-willed and ill-trained, and unless she turns over a new leaf the sooner she goes back to her father the better.”

“I won’t say that,” the elder lady replied; “but still I am not satisfied with the turn matters are taking. Of course a great deal must be laid to the charge of the foolish education she has had and her total ignorance of the ways and small etiquettes of society. At the same time, unless she can be very well looked after during the next month, she will find herself not a little talked about at the end of the season.”

“It’s too much anxiety by far,” chimed Aunt Judith. “It will wear you out altogether.”

“I wouldn’t mind that,” replied Aunt Rosamond; “I can soon recruit when I go up to the North. I should feel well repaid if I could see Owen’s child making a really creditable marriage⁠—a marriage, indeed, that she ought to feel bound to make considering what her prospects are. At one time I dreaded the idea of her settling down as a country doctor’s wife, but now I begin to fear she will choose even a worse fate than that. You see I hoped so much from this introduction to Lord Lochiel, and now it is ending in worse than nothing, for a man at his time of life doesn’t like to be played fast and loose with⁠—”

“Ah,” interrupted Miss Judith with a deep sigh, “if we could only teach her what wickedness it is to play football with men’s hearts⁠—”

“Football! football!” echoed Lettice, coming into the room at that moment bright and radiant from her morning’s ride, with a bunch of yellow roses in her hand, which she arranged tastefully in the bosom of her riding-habit while she was talking. “Football! Who is going to play, auntie? How I should enjoy a game if it were not the very middle of summer and everyone at tropical heat! Is the irreproachable earl starting it among his tenantry?”

Aunt Rosamond frowned severely.

“Lettice, when you speak of my friends I will thank you to speak of them respectfully. Tell me, if you please, who were your companions this morning.”

“Oh, Mrs. St. John Waters and I started alone, afterwards ever so many joined us for a chat (all such nice people, auntie), among others Lilla McCormack and her brother.” This was said with a mischievous twinkle of the eye.

The aunts exchanged glances.

“Lettice,” said Aunt Rosamond sternly, “you see a great deal too much of the McCormacks to please me. Lilla is all very well, but please remember I won’t have you carrying on a flirtation with that Captain Ivie.”

“But auntie, you know,” pleaded Lettice, “I couldn’t flirt⁠—I am too unsophisticated! There was no one to teach me at home, and no one to practise on except poor old Roberts and Dr. Herron.” Here she drew down the corners of her little mouth deprecatingly.

“Don’t interrupt me, Lettice,” said Aunt Rosamond angrily. “It seems to me you know quite as much about flirtation as any young lady of your age, and perhaps a little more. What I want to impress upon you is that it is incumbent upon a niece of mine and living under my roof to conduct herself at all times with propriety and to be wise in the selection of her intimate friends. And one thing let me warn you of, Lettice: I tell you frankly I won’t incur the responsibility of having you here another season, so this will be your one and only chance of making a creditable marriage, therefore you had better be prudent and⁠—”

“Make hay while the sun shines,” laughs Lettice. “Yes, auntie, and I have such a world of hay to make this morning that I must set about it this very minute.”

“Captain and Miss McCormack,” announced the footman at that moment, throwing back the drawing-room door.

Aunt Rosamond looked annoyed. Lettice rose instantly and shook hands warmly with Miss McCormack, gave a more subdued welcome to Captain Ivie, and said very softly to him as she passed out of the room, “Aunt Rosamond thinks I see too much of you. I really daren’t stay and talk this morning. Goodbye till tonight.”

“Really, Ivie,” said Lilla to her brother that same night as they drove home from a ball at which the captain had managed to secure Lettice for no less than three round dances⁠—“really, Ivie, you have made wonderful progress considering how short a time you have known that girl. What an immense restraint, too, you must have put upon yourself to confine your attentions absolutely to one young lady for a period of three weeks!”

“Hang it, Lilla,” broke in Ivie, “can’t you give a man credit for having a heart in his body even though he has been in the habit of handing it about in small portions? I tell you that girl, as you call her⁠—”

“Will be your wife before the end of the season if you play your cards properly and secure her before she has had time to find you out,” interrupted Lilla; “but if you allow society to rub off the rough edges of her rusticity or simplicity⁠—whichever you like to call it⁠—then she’ll throw you over as the others have done.”

After that identical ball there was heavy and prolonged consultation in the Misses Tremarten’s dressing-room as they too discussed the events of the evening and Miss Lettice’s deportment.

“It is not to be allowed,” said Aunt Rosamond with decision as she laid aside her lace lappets and jewelled pins for the nightcap of common life. “I know she is utterly ignorant of les convenances, but we are not, and her stupidity or wilfulness will be laid to our charge. Three round dances (the only three she danced) with Captain McCormack this evening, and when Lord Lochiel comes up for one quadrille she is ‘too tired,’ and that in spite of my frowns.”

“And I too frowned as hard as you did,” echoed Aunt Judith, “and I told her when I said good night just now that we should have much to say to her in the morning.”

“I don’t know that saying is much good, she is so heedless and self-willed. We must just bring all this flirtation and folly to an end, and make our flitting as soon as ever we can. It has this moment occurred to me we may as well accept Mrs. Rosneath’s invitation to Perth. Her estate joins Lord Lochiel’s, and he will soon be running down for the shooting. No doubt the McCormacks and the other undesirables will be off to Baden or Rome or Venice, and in this way we shall get clear of the whole objectionable clique.”

And while her aunts are thus plotting and contriving her future, Lettice stands barefooted in her long white nightdress at her bedroom window above. Her brown hair has fallen all tangled and wavy over her forehead and down to her waist, and in spite of the lateness of the hour her eyes are bright and her cheeks flushed. She has put out her lights and thrown open her window to say good night to the clear golden moon and myriads of silver stars shining out in the summer’s sky, and is drinking in the fresh sweet air which comes to her redolent of the plants in the balcony below.

“Now over there is the west,” she is saying to herself, “and down there somewhere are the dear old Welsh hills, and here is a great big kiss going to dear papa.” She gathers one off her lips and throws it into the silent night air. “And here is another for Lilla McCormack,” she says, throwing a second as far as her arm will reach; “and here is a third for⁠—” But the rest of the sentence she whispers to herself.

The London season has ended, another act in life’s drama has been played out, and the actors, wearied with failure or dazzled with success, as the case may be, have one and all taken flight to hide their disappointment or freshen their laurels by Scottish hillsides or Swiss lakes, or any other of Nature’s strongholds that wealth or fashion may dictate.

Lettice and her aunts are ensconced for a long visit at Mrs. Rosneath’s wide, ugly, yet, beyond everything else, comfortable mansion in Perthshire, and Captain and Miss McCormack have suddenly discovered that there is a charming little shooting-box to let at Ingleside, not ten miles distant from Rosneath.

“The very place beyond any other,” Lilla said to her brother as she signed and sealed her letter accepting the agent’s offer of the house. “What consternation there will be in the camp when we put in our first appearance at Rosneath, and those wise old ladies find themselves out-generalled by a young tactician like me! By the by, they nearly put a stop to your running with their absurd surveillance of that girl the last few weeks.”

Captain Ivie fidgeted. Bent as he was upon marrying Lettice, he could as yet scarcely bring his mind to the planning and scheming which Lilla conceived to be the only way of winning her.

He took up Lilla’s letter.

“It’s a cursed country for riding,” he said⁠—“hard, flinty, and rough. I know it well⁠—”

“Of course you know it well,” interrupted Lilla with a short laugh which grated unpleasantly on her brother’s ear. “Isn’t that delightful Scotch manse where you spent six weeks flirting with the minister’s daughter somewhere near? What was the name of the girl⁠—Miss Maggie Forbes or Ford? However, she’ll not be likely to trouble us, so it doesn’t much matter.”

Captain Ivie winced again.

“ ’Pon my life, Lilla,” he said, “I’d back you against any woman living in the art of making disagreeable speeches; you know well enough that thing has been over and done with long ago as far as I’m concerned.” Then he lit a cigar and went out.

“Over and done with long ago,” was it? No doubt as far as he was concerned it might be, but would the old Scotch pastor tell the same tale as he watched his pretty little daughter’s rosy cheeks grow pale and her bright eyes become heavy and tear-dimmed while she waited day after day for the letter which the handsome and fascinating captain had promised his sister would send, inviting her to stay at their London home as his promised wife?

Somewhere near Ingleside Captain Ivie had met with a riding accident, had been carried to the manse, and had been carefully nursed and tended by the pastor’s only daughter. It was an old story: the patient got well and the nurse fell sick, but with another complaint, and then there had followed a little love episode (one among a thousand in the captain’s life) which he was pleased to declare was now “all over and done with.”

It was very true that the surveillance over Lettice towards the end of the season had been severe, and Lettice had rebelled against it proportionately. Her opportunities for meeting either the captain or Miss Lilla had considerably dwindled owing to the tact and determination of Aunt Rosamond, who resolutely refused all invitations for Lettice where she thought there was the slightest chance of encountering the McCormacks.

On the one or two occasions, however, that Lettice and Captain Ivie had met it must be admitted that they each made the most of their opportunity.

“They’ll frown and look savage if I dance with you, Captain McCormack, and scold me all the way home. (They always begin when we’re all shut in together, and they know I can’t get away.) But I won’t dance with anyone else tonight, I promise you that.” And Lettice would keep her word, and to everyone who came up “Hoping they might have the pleasure,” she would be “Oh, so sorry, but I really am too tired,” and she would sit as a wallflower for the rest of the evening.

“Can she really be in love with the man?” wondered Aunt Rosamond more than once; “and is she really clever enough to be laying her plans to marry him?” So dispensing with Goodwood and the last few balls of the season the lady hurried on their departure to the North, and a full ten days before the London world had spread its wings to take flight they were fairly ensconced as members of the Rosneath household.

“Oh, this is like dear old Wales again!” exclaimed Lettice as the blue Auchterils burst upon her view with their layers of grey mist towering peak over peak above the silent lakes. “Auntie Judie, I really think I must have been getting homesick without knowing it. I have been so good and quiet lately, but those darling little hills will wake me up to life again, and you really won’t be able to hold me in now.”

“Won’t be able to hold her in now! Heavens!” groaned Aunt Rosamond in spirit, “have we ever been able to do so? What can a good Providence have in store for us now, I wonder?”

This question, however, was fated to have a very speedy solution, for Aunt Rosamond had scarcely begun to feel at home at Rosneath, had only just had time to choose a comfortable light corner for her writing-desk in the morning-room and a particular reclining-chair in the drawing-room for her own special use, when, to her unspeakable horror, Mrs. Rosneath announced the fact that Captain McCormack had taken Ingleside for the shooting season.

“Taken Ingleside! that man!” exclaimed Aunt Rosamond, in her surprise betraying herself. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Rosneath,” she added, “if he is a friend of yours, but he has made himself a little unpleasant to me.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” replied her hostess, “because we all like Captain Ivie so much. He is an old friend of my husband’s⁠—a little fast perhaps, but still so delightful.”

“Lettice,” interrogated Aunt Rosamond, as soon as she found herself alone with her niece, “did you know the McCormacks had taken Ingleside, and would be down upon us here in a day or two?”

“Oh yes, auntie,” laughed Lettice, “I knew it two days ago. Lilla wrote and told me they were coming, but I didn’t say a word to you lest you should carry me off bodily just as I had begun to have a little fun.”

Aunt Rosamond paused to collect her thoughts, frowning severely as she did so.

“Aunt Rosamond,” pleaded Lettice, thinking a little explanation might be timely, “if you only knew⁠—”

“I know exactly what that man is and what he is trying to do, Lettice,” said Aunt Rosamond angrily; “and let me tell you, once for all, that I will not for the rest of the time you are under my care allow the slightest approach to a flirtation on your part with him.”

“Auntie,” said Lettice, batting a tennis-ball high in the air as she spoke⁠—they were standing together on the lawn⁠—“I’ve told you over and over again that I can’t flirt, and never shall be able to. The only reason I”⁠—here another ball was sent into the neighbouring bushes⁠—“like to talk to Captain McCormack is”⁠—a third ball rises and falls and is sent off again⁠—“that he once knew that dear old Doctor Herron who is taking such care of papa, and we are always talking about him all the time you think I am flirting.” Here Lettice put both little hands into her tennis-apron’s pocket. “Auntie, all the balls are gone; I’m so sorry, but I must run and find them while I remember where they are,” and away she flew.

And Miss Tremarten, left standing alone in the sunshine under a big green umbrella, tried to see her way out of the difficulties which beset her on every side. “If she goes back to Wales free and unfettered she will be certain to marry that country doctor,” she argued to herself; “if she sees much more of that captain it will end in an elopement I’m convinced, and if I take her from here tomorrow she will lose all chance of winning the” (mark, not that) “earl. Is there any possible road out of such a maze of troubles?”

So the old lady stood thinking and thinking in the bright sunshine with the birds twittering all round her. The sound of young merry voices and the click click of croquet balls and mallets came to her from the other side of the hedge, for Mrs. Rosneath’s house had begun to fill now, and there was also a constant flux and reflux of visitors from Lord Lochiel’s, which adjoined Rosneath.

And as the old lady stood there her mind was made up and her plan of action formed. Yes, Lettice was tiresome, Lettice was headstrong, but as yet she had not done anything egregiously wrong. She was her only brother’s only child, and the young mother who had lived and died in those faraway years had been a much-cherished friend. Then, too, the girl was her own and Judith’s heiress, and how much more creditable and respectable would it be that the family estates and property should pass into the hands of a Countess Lochiel than into those of a country doctor’s wife or a Mrs. McCormack! Aunt Rosamond shuddered in fancy as the dreadful combination of syllables passed through her mind. “She may think herself very clever, and Miss Lilla McCormack may think herself very clever, and the captain no doubt fancies he has brains, but perhaps they will find that someone else has brains too.” And the lady slanted her green sunshade carefully over her eyes and went back to her shady nook in the drawing-room perfectly satisfied with the part she had resolved to play.

Her plan, after all, was a very simple one. She would stay at Rosneath another eight days only. In a week’s time there was to be a grand archery fête and distribution of prizes at Lochiel Castle. Lettice’s skill in archery was pronounced, and far above the average; her dress too, of dark green and cream, suited her à ravir, and there was little doubt but what with her bright delicate beauty and the prestige of her previous successes she would be the queen of the day. Lord Lochiel, whose attentions had been marked and unremitting since their arrival at Rosneath, would, she was sure, fairly succumb to such a combination of attractions, and no doubt his coronet would be at Lettice’s feet before the end of the day. “If Lettice accepts him,” argued the lady⁠—and what girl could be proof against a coronet?⁠—“I shall the next day carry her off to Paris before she has had time to alter her mind, and also to order her trousseau, for there shall be no long engagement, I’ll take care of that. And if she refuses him I shall carry her off all the same. We’ll do Paris, and the Alps, and Switzerland, and Vienna, and Rome, and⁠—and⁠—” here the energetic old lady was compelled to pause and arrange her geographical knowledge⁠—“and New York,” she went on, “and Niagara, and Utah, and Mexico, and Heaven only knows where we won’t go before I let her return to either of her disreputable suitors.”

But while Aunt Rosamond was so comfortably planning out her own and her niece’s future, Captain and Miss McCormack were spinning a web of a somewhat different texture.

Very close and confidential had been the talk of brother and sister during their drive over the last ten miles of their journey which brought them to Ingleside.

“It’s your last chance, Ivie,” said the sister; “it’s now or never without a doubt. Follow out my advice to the very letter, or else you’ll ruin everything.”

“I suppose I must,” replied Ivie, twirling his long silken moustache, for Lilla had fairly talked him into obedience now. “I should be very sorry, though, ’pon my honour, if it all fell through, and Lettice⁠—Miss Tremarten I mean⁠—were compromised in any way.”

“You idiot!” said Lilla in low angry tones. “You haven’t the sense of a tomtit even, I declare. Don’t you see that the girl must be compromised, or else it will fall through? How do you mean to get her, I should like to know, if not in the way I propose? Do you mean, after you have talked her over, to go to her father and tell him that you have little more than your pay to live on⁠—that you are up to your eyes in debt, and have given paper enough to the Jews to write a volume of sermons on, and then are you fool enough to imagine he will give you his handsome daughter with her fortune unfettered by settlements and trustees? Bah! I’ve no patience with such imbecility.” And Miss Lilla resolutely shut her mouth and refused to open it for the rest of the journey.

Lettice wondered much at not seeing either Captain Ivie or his sister for two or three days after their arrival, of which she had heard through her maid.

Lilla’s orders to her brother, however, had been very positive on that head.

“Don’t on any account show yourself at Rosneath till the archery day, Ivie. Here’s Lochiel’s card,” she said, handing it to him. “Depend upon it the old dragons will carry off the princess at once if the disreputable knight makes his appearance on the scene. Their maid told mine the other day when they met in the village that they were to leave the day after the fête. I’ve no doubt the clever old ladies imagine that Miss Lettice in dark green will knock Lord Lochiel over completely, but perhaps there are some others as clever as they, and Miss Lettice, instead of carrying off a coronet, may be carried off herself. But for Heaven’s sake, Ivie, don’t forget it’s your very last chance; if you let that day pass it’s all up with you. Once they get her away from here your little game is over.”

The day for the archery fête dawned in brilliant blue sky and golden sunshine, and, best of all, without even the rustle of a soft south wind.

“Of course the irreproachable earl will think of the immaculate tenants,” said Lettice to her aunts as she buckled on her waistbelt and counted up her arrows. “I only hope there won’t be a crowd.”

“My dear,” said Aunt Rosamond, “some day you may be very sorry for the way in which you habitually speak of a very dear friend of mine and one worthy of all esteem.”

Aunt Rosamond spoke so gently (for her, that is) that Lettice was moved to instant penitence.

“Auntie, please forgive me,” she said, going up to the old lady and kissing her. “I don’t know why I am so ill-tempered this morning. I think I’m getting a little tired of all this gaiety, there seems so much to get through today before bedtime. First the shooting, then the dinner, then the ball, and it seemed as if a crowd would add to the tiresomeness of it all.”

It flashed through Aunt Rosamond’s mind that it was just possible that the unexplained absence of Captain Ivie and his sister from the gaieties of the neighbourhood might have something to do with Lettice’s weariness and irritability. However, she very wisely abstained from any questions.

“My dear,” she said kindly, “you are a little overdone. Directly after the prizes are given away you had better go into the library at Lochiel (it will be the quietest room in the house such a day as this) and have a long rest, then you will be bright and fresh by dinnertime.”

And the good old lady’s mind wandered away to another possibility⁠—viz., what if, from a hint she might let fall, Lord Lochiel were to choose the same quiet room for a little rest, and what if⁠—But here her thoughts were broken off by the announcement that the carriage was waiting that was to take them to the castle.

“A rosebud garden of girls,” was Lord Lochiel’s comment, as, having welcomed Lettice and her aunts, he led them through the winding paths of the shrubberies to where, in a pleasantly-shaded corner of the grounds, the targets had been placed. Some twenty or thirty young ladies, dressed becomingly in the archer’s green and silver, were sauntering hither and thither on the smoothly-shaven lawn; others, in gauzy pink or maize, wandered in and out trying the points of the arrows, sometimes even essaying a shot, and a low murmur and ripple of talk and laughter mingled with the pleasant twitter of the birds in the big firs above, and the humming of the heather-fed bees.

“It is quite too delightful,” exclaimed Lettice, rousing herself with an effort, and making up her mind, once for all that she would thoroughly enjoy her day. Lettice’s idea of a day’s enjoyment, however, was certainly not to spend it in the company of a middle-aged nobleman and two elderly maiden aunts, so she quickly made her way to the centre of the girl-throng and fluttered in and out like the rest.

Perhaps she had never looked so lovely before. The birds, and the sunshine, and the flowers had swept away the clouds of discontent and annoyance which had certainly begun to gather on her low, smooth brow. Her bright brown hair had already begun to curl and ripple below the rim of her dark green hat (“What will it be by the end of the afternoon?” sighed Aunt Rosamond), and her eyes were beaming and sparkling with that hidden light of merriment and mischief which those of Lettice’s friends who knew her best were wont to call “danger signals.”

“Scotland seems to suit Miss Tremarten,” said Lord Lochiel to Aunt Rosamond, as he noted the pretty rose tint on Lettice’s cheeks, the bright coral lips, and the light, joyous, musical laugh which came across to them where they stood, a little apart from the more youthful guests.

Aunt Rosamond assented, and fell to wondering in her own mind how Lettice’s quiet rest in the library could be best arranged, and however would it be possible for Lord Lochiel to detach himself, even for half-an-hour, from this crowd of guests and tenants.

For a crowd it certainly was. The earl’s invitations had been given on a most extensive scale. He was a popular man⁠—that is to say, a locally popular man among all classes of the community, being known far and near as a good landlord, with an aptitude for farming land and breeding cattle. How he came to be fascinated by so light and fun-loving a creature as Lettice Tremarten it would be difficult to explain, but that he was so attracted was evident to the most careless observer or most zealous toxophilite of that gay garden throng.

“Now that you have done your part, Miss Tremarten, may I ask you to give me a few minutes? I want to show you a splendid beast⁠—a Cromarty bull I mean; I shall put him in for the next agricultural.”

So Lord Lochiel at Lettice’s elbow, as, amid a storm of applause, she succeeded in making two or three good hits.

“Oh no,” said Lettice lightly, “I am going to stay here the whole day through, without ever once moving, till all the shooting is over. I want to see everything and speak to everyone,” and she plunged into light talk with a somewhat insipid young attaché on her other side.

Aunt Rosamond frowned⁠—Lettice could feel the frown at ten yards distance. But what were frowns to her today? She had made up her mind to thoroughly enjoy everything, let those frown who would, let those stay away who would!

Yet those who stood nearest to Miss Lettice, with her flashing face and sparkling eyes, on that bright, sunshiny morning, might have noted that ever and anon, as a slight stir among the visitors and a forward movement on the part of Lord Lochiel denoted the arrival of another guest, a look of inquiry (anxiety almost) would pass over her face, to be followed by one a shade darker as the newcomer took his or her place among the spectators.

For neither Captain nor Miss McCormack had made their appearance.

“Now I’m thoroughly tired out, auntie,” whispered Lettice to Miss Tremarten as a clock in the distance chimed four. “I’m going to steal away, not to the library, but to the little dressing-room they’ve given me, and I’m going to lock myself in for a good two hours’ sleep.”

“Lettice!” began Aunt Rosamond (oh! that wilful girl, thus to frustrate all the plans of her elders and betters), “the library is larger, cooler, you’ll be more refreshed⁠—”

“Now don’t begin, there’s a dear,” said Lettice. “You stay here and see who’ll get the gold arrow. I know: that girl with so much orange about her will carry all before her. Don’t come and tell me, auntie, though, for I shan’t let you in, and”⁠—(this in a laughing whisper)⁠—“and don’t you be flirting with anyone while I’m away.”

And Lettice, slipping in and out among the assembled guests, gained a narrow shaded path which led, with many turns and windings, through the orchard and vegetable gardens to the house.

“Miss Tremarten! Miss Tremarten!” said a soft, low voice at her side.

Lettice started and turned pale. Oh yes, she knew the voice well enough. Was it not the one she had been longing and listening for all the time she had seemed so busily occupied with her bows and arrows, and chatting and laughing so pleasantly with her friends?

But where could it come from? The narrow winding path she was following was skirted on one side by a thick hedge of holly and other evergreens, through which she could still catch glimpses of the bright and varied dresses of the ladies in the distance. On the other side a light low fence, overhung by a few alders and ash-trees, marked the division of the castle flower-garden from a series of low-lying meadows where Lord Lochiel’s shorthorns were calmly grazing.

Lettice looked round her on every side. “Miss Tremarten!” again called the voice, and now through the interlaced boughs of some overgrown wild bush Lettice could plainly distinguish Captain McCormack’s face and figure.

“Oh, Miss Tremarten,” the captain went on, “I’ve been waiting here so long for you⁠—that is, in fact, I’ve been waiting everywhere to get a few minutes alone with you.”

“Alone with me, Captain McCormack!” repeated Lettice, amazed. She was scarcely prepared to have the request placed before her thus abruptly.

“I can’t stop to explain, Miss Tremarten. I’ve bad news⁠—confounded bad news⁠—don’t know how to break it to you⁠—bad hand at that sort of thing. Lilla has had a spill in a mad sort of a gallop she was having just now, and is dangerously hurt. She is lying at a farmhouse close by. I’ve come like the wind to tell you. Poor girl! she says she knows she will die, and must see you before she goes.”

Lettice drew a long breath. She had nearly said “Thank God!” when the captain mentioned Lilla’s name, for her fears had flown to her father at the first thought of bad news. Then she turned sick and bewildered. “How can I go, Captain McCormack?” she said; “who will take me? If I ask Aunt Rosamond she’ll put me in prison at once.”

“Come in my cart⁠—I have it round the corner,” said the captain, “only come at once, for Heaven’s sake⁠—for poor Lilla’s sake I mean⁠—if you want to see her alive.”

Lettice hesitated another moment. It was all so strange and unexpected⁠—wonderful, too, it was to see Captain McCormack thus strangely agitated, he who was so calm and nonchalant as a rule. It was almost like some spectre or phantom rising up in the midst of a revel. She paused bewildered and uncertain.

“Am I to go back and tell her you won’t come?” asked Ivie impatiently. “I didn’t think you were so cold-hearted a friend.”

“No, no, I’m not cold-hearted,” replied Lettice hurriedly, “but I must tell Aunt Rosamond.”

“And do you think Aunt Rosamond will let you come? I implore you, Miss Tremarten, not to think of the small etiquettes of society at such a time as this. There is a gate just at the end of this walk which leads into the meadow, and another in the meadow which leads into the high road. If you will only make haste⁠—if you would just for once forget that you are a young lady, and remember only that you are a true, tenderhearted woman⁠—”

Lettice did not wait for another appeal. To be reproached with having sunk her womanhood in young-ladyism was more than she could bear. Without another word she ran lightly along the narrow path, swung back the tiny iron gate, and hastily followed Captain Ivie across the meadow to the high road.

There stood a small light phaeton, to which were harnessed a pair of thoroughbred fast-going ponies. A man held their heads. “Here, Ellis,” said Captain McCormack to him, “you must explain everything to Miss Tremarten and Lord Lochiel. Please make haste” (this to Lettice); “it is a matter of life and death.”

Lettice sprang lightly into the phaeton, Ivie was by her side in an instant, the man let go the horses, and with a rear and a plunge they started off at a tremendous pace along the dusty high road.

Then it was Lettice began to ask a few questions. “How was it Lilla was riding and you were driving, Captain McCormack?” she said.

“She altered her mind at the last moment. Overnight she told me I was to drive her over here for the archery, and I ordered Dido and Daniel to be harnessed. Then this morning she came down in her riding-habit and said she had had a letter from Mary Loder (Miss Willis that was), wishing her to meet her at Auchterarder and go on to Perth with her. Lilla is due at Perth next week, but she thought it would be pleasanter to go with Mary than to travel alone, and as Donegal wanted a good gallop she said she would take it out of him and throw over the archery altogether. You know, Miss Tremarten, she is never particularly fond of young ladies’ society. However, they had got this thing ready, so I jumped in and went with her, meaning, of course, to be back for the ball tonight; then that hard-mouthed brute shied at something, Heaven only knows what, and pitched her over. Poor girl! I made sure her neck was broken. Hey, Daniel, steady! what are you pulling at?” This to the pony.

“Where did it happen? where is she lying?” was Lettice’s next question.

“Oh, close by,” replied Ivie, “a⁠—that is, at Ardvaroch, not very far from here.”

“At Ardvaroch?” repeated Lettice. She did not know much of the geography of the neighbourhood. She knew there were waterfalls at or near Ardvaroch, and that it was something of a show place, but she had an idea it was somewhere among the blue Auchterils.

“A⁠—that is, near Ardvaroch,” resumed Captain McCormack, seeing her surprise; and then they drove on some distance in silence.

Presently Lettice recommenced: “Captain McCormack, how much further have we to go? We have been nearly an hour as it is.”

“Oh, we’re nearly there, Miss Tremarten; another ten minutes only.” And again he whipped up the ponies.

Another ten minutes passed, and another and another, and Lettice began to feel chill and strange. A sudden turn in the road had brought them into a tract of desolate, flinty country. The fair pastureland, with its well-fed cattle and pleasant-looking cottages, had altogether disappeared. Wild, uncultivated fields skirted either side of the road, with here and there a ragged brown fir, and the dark heather-crowned hills stood out in gloomy distinctness against the changing light of the autumn sky.

“Captain McCormack,” began Lettice once more, “have you any idea how I’m to get back again?”

“Oh, Lettice,” exclaimed the captain, “talk about getting to her if you will. My poor Lilla! even now it may be all over with her.”

Lettice made no reply. Somehow she could not realise the captain’s grief, and there was an unreality, a mystery about it all which greatly puzzled her. “Well, anyhow I must finish what I’ve begun,” she reasoned, trying to reassure herself. “Aunties will be in an awful rage when I get back, no doubt, and will pack me off home tomorrow, I daresay, but won’t papa be glad to see me, that’s all! Heigho! those dear old Welsh hills!”

So they went on and on, Lettice wondering when and where and how the journey would end. The sun began to fire the western sky, the shadows began to lengthen and the hills to glow orange and scarlet instead of purple and brown, when suddenly the captain drew rein before a low stone-built cottage which stood sideways to the lonely road.

“Is this the farmhouse?” asked Lettice in surprise.

“Queer place, isn’t it?” rejoined the captain; “they call it farmhouse about here, but where the farm is I don’t know.”

A woman came out, but her Scotch was so broad that Lettice made no attempt to understand her. The captain somehow made her comprehend that the lady wanted to see the sick lady upstairs, and “Send your husband, my good woman,” he added, “to see to my ponies.”

A man came out as he spoke, and Lettice, leaving the captain to look after his horses, followed the woman up a flight of somewhat dark narrow stairs.

They entered a low-roofed room, and there, stretched on a mattress on the floor or on some improvised bed, Lettice could trace in the growing darkness the outline of her friend.

“Thank God, Lettice, you are come!” said Lilla in a faint voice. “It was selfish of me to send for you, but if you only knew what I have suffered and what was on my mind when I fell⁠—”

Lilla stopped suddenly, for Lettice, overtired with the day’s excitement and fatigue, had broken down utterly, and flinging herself on to the floor by the side of her friend, had hidden her face in the pillows, and was sobbing convulsively.

“Oh, hush‑sh, my darling,” said Lilla. “Now I feel how selfish I’ve been. Oh do forgive me, but when I fell I had but one thought on my mind. Oh, hush‑sh, hush‑sh, dear, don’t give way so.”

“No‑o,” said Lettice, partially recovering herself, “I won’t give way. But don’t have anything on your mind, Lilla. I’ve heard papa say that our poor old vicar, Wynne Williams, didn’t get well because he had something on his mind, and you won’t get well if you’ve anything on your mind. Tell me what it is at once, dear.”

“Oh, it was about poor old Ivie, Lettice. You know we have been everything to each other for so many years, and I’ve taken care of him all through his life. He is so brokenhearted about me, and what will he do when I’m gone if you don’t take pity on him?”

Lettice started. She had not expected this. Her face was still hidden in the pillows, but Lilla felt her hand tremble in her clasp.

“But you’re not going to die, Lilla; I know you won’t; and Captain Ivie doesn’t really care a bit about me⁠—”

“Oh yes, dear, he does,” interrupted Lilla; “he is almost mad about you, but doesn’t dare ask you because he is so poor and you will be so dreadfully rich, and if I die⁠—”

Lettice looked up, sobbing still. “Now, Lilla”⁠—a sob⁠—“don’t talk like that”⁠—another sob. “If you die (but of course you won’t) I promise you I’ll marry Captain Ivie. There, you’ve nothing on your mind now, so be quiet.”

Then she laid her head down on the pillows and sobbed again.

Lilla made no reply. It wasn’t quite the answer she expected to have, but still she felt she must be contented with it. She had, so she hoped, in some sort paved the way for her brother to go in and win.

Presently the captain came up. Lettice did not lift her head. Somehow she felt she couldn’t look him in the face just then. “I know, Miss Tremarten,” he said very softly, “you will be glad to hear that the doctor, who came to my sister while I was away fetching you, doesn’t think there are any bones broken⁠—in fact, he hopes tomorrow we shall be able to get her back to Ingleside.”

“Thank God!” murmured Lettice. Still she did not lift her face.

“I fear you will not be able to get back to Rosneath tonight,” the captain went on. “It is dark now⁠—past eight”⁠—and he tried by the dim light shining through the narrow panes to look at his watch⁠—“the roads are so bad and my poor ponies so worn out⁠—”

“No,” said Lettice faintly, “I feel I couldn’t travel tonight⁠—I should break down on the road. I will stay here with Lilla, but someone must take a letter to Aunt Rosamond.”

She lifted her head wearily for an instant, then it fell back on the pillow once more, for in good truth she was utterly overdone.

“Poor child, she is worn out!” said Captain Ivie with something of remorse in his tone. Then he went to the narrow window, and by what little light was left scribbled a few hasty lines on a leaf of his pocketbook. This he held out to Lettice. “The man downstairs will take it. Will you read what I’ve written, Miss Tremarten,” he said, “and tell me if there’s anything else to say to your aunts?”

Then he struck a cigar-match, and by its light Lettice’s weary eyes managed to make out the following words in the captain’s bold hand:⁠—

“McKenzie’s Cottage, Ardvarroch.

“Miss Tremarten is safe and well, but thoroughly worn out.

“You’ve put two r’s together in Ardvaroch,” said Lettice, brightening up for an instant, “and there’s only one. Oh, and please tell them to send for me the first thing in the morning. Oh dear me,” she added, with another sigh, “I shall soon get back to dear papa now.”

The captain returned to the window and recommenced writing. “The first thing in the morning,” he repeated, as though he were writing the words; then he turned again to Lettice. “Miss Tremarten,” he said kindly, “the next room to this will be unoccupied, for the good woman of the house will be in and out attending to Lilla all night; will you like to lie down there? We’ll call you directly your people come in the morning. Stay, you must have some brandy-and-water and a biscuit or something before you lie down.” He hastily mixed some in his flask and handed it to her.

Lettice rose wearily. “I am so ashamed of myself to break down like this; I will just lie down for a little while, and then I’ll come back and help nurse Lilla through the rest of the night.” She stooped over Lilla and smoothed her hair, kissing her affectionately, then Captain Ivie held back the door of the little room for her to pass out, and opening another which joined it on the dark narrow landing, with many apologies introduced Lettice to her room.

“It’s such horrible accommodation, Miss Tremarten; not even a light to be found in the house. I suppose these good people are always in bed by sunset.” He bent, reverently almost, over her little hand, which he retained for a minute in his own, looking up in her face with a gaze so intense that Lettice thrilled and trembled under it, and could scarcely command her voice to bid him “Good night” as she shut the door of the room.

What was it made her draw the bolt which she felt under the handle of the door, and then try the door itself to see that it really was properly secured? What strange feeling of distrust or dread was it that made her take a close survey of the tiny ill-furnished room to see if there were any cupboards or hiding-places in it? and why was it that when she threw herself on the low hard bed which stood under a narrow high window, instead of falling, as she had anticipated, at once into a heavy dreamless sleep, her heart beat so fast, and her breath came and went so quickly, that rest was impossible?

“It’s so hot and close,” she murmured to herself; “and I’m sure if I had a light I should see it is all frightfully dirty. Oh dear! what a funny day this has been!”

Then she stood up on the bed and tried if the window would open wider; it was a narrow casement, and the people of the house had evidently never felt the need of fresh air, for one half of the window remained from disuse so firmly fixed that it resisted all her efforts to open it, so she gave up the attempt, and was about to throw herself once more on the little hard bed when Captain Ivie’s voice, speaking softly to the woman of the house in the paved yard under the window, fell upon her ear.

“As the inn is so near, my good woman, I should much prefer your sleeping there. You see it’s of the first importance to my sister that the house should be perfectly quiet; she’s a little sick and faint, that’s all, with overriding, and a good night’s rest will set her up again all right. Your husband has gone over to the inn already with the horses, and tell him, please, to bring them round the first thing in the morning at sunrise. Good night; I won’t forget to pay you well for turning you out of your house in this unceremonious way. Oh, stay⁠—bring me a candle.” Then he came in.

What was this? Lettice’s brain was in a feverish whirl, and her heart beat violently. What was this maze of lies and contradictions?⁠—the woman sent out of the house to sleep, Lilla “only a little sick and feverish,” the man despatched, not to Lochiel, but to the little inn, and, after all, a candle in the house; were they deceiving her⁠—playing off some trick on her for a purpose of their own? Her breath came and went rapidly, and she trembled from head to foot as now she could hear Captain Ivie’s step mounting the narrow stairs.

He paused for a moment outside her door, as though he were listening for her movements, then he went on to his sister’s room, and Lettice heard the door close after him.

And suddenly, to her amazement, a streak of light, narrow and faint at first, but afterwards wider and brighter, showed on the partition which separated her room from Lilla’s, and, groping softly her way towards it, she found it came through a division in the skirting-board from the wall, and through this crack also came to her the sound of voices⁠—Lilla’s and Captain Ivie’s.

“I tell you, Ivie,” the former was saying in low but positive tones⁠—“I tell you I know perfectly well what to do without any advice from you. Haven’t I arranged the whole thing from beginning to end, and isn’t it all owing to me that you’ve got on so well so far?”

“Yes, Lilla, quite true,” replied the captain in the same guarded tones, “you’ve made me a bigger villain than I ever thought it was in me to be.”

“Don’t be a fool,” interrupted Lilla. “Wait till you’ve got the girl and thirty thousand a year, and then⁠—”

“Ah, then,” said Ivie with a sneer, “I suppose you think you’ll have the earl and thirty thousand a year.”

“Why, Ivie, you’re getting quite clever,” said Lilla tauntingly; “you’ll be able to manage your own affairs soon. But, instead of standing here quarrelling, you had far better be practising how to make love to the young lady in the morning, for after I’ve gone, everything will rest on your own shoulders. Hark!” she broke off suddenly, “what noise was that? Can the girl be awake and moving about?”

What noise was that? Only a sob from poor Lettice, who, brokenhearted on the other side of the partition, listened to the revelation of her friends’ treachery. Ivie and his sister listened intently for a few seconds, and Lettice held in her breath and her sobs with a strong hand, for now she was determined to know the worst.

“It was your fancy,” said Ivie. “She is so thoroughly worn out, and the dose of brandy I gave her was so strong, she’ll sleep no doubt till the morning.”

“Very well, then, Ivie, for the last time let me tell you my plan, and see if you understand it all thoroughly. Now I shall leave here as soon as that man brings a horse round, go on to Auchterarder and take train to Perth, where I shall stay at the Loders’, at Ingleside. They think I am there at the present moment. No one imagines me here with you. Our little device as to Ingleside will make them lose a great deal of time, more especially as Ellis won’t give any message at all until he sees she’s missed. Then he’ll send up word by someone that Captain Ivie drove her to Ingleside, that she’s there at the present moment, and then he’ll make off as fast as he can. I can fancy the consternation there will be among the two old ladies and their old maid. Miss Judy will go into hysterics, and Aunt Rosamond will try to keep her quiet and hush up matters from Lord Lochiel and the other people in the house till they’ve sent to Ingleside to fetch the young lady. Then, when they come back without her, the old aunts won’t believe she isn’t there, and then they’ll go themselves and cross-question our people, who won’t know anything at all, and there’ll be a lot of time lost and it’ll be nearly ten o’clock at night, and too late to do anything till the morning, which gives the game into your hands, Ivie,” she finished, with a triumphant ring in her voice.

“I’m not so sure of that,” muttered Ivie, with no triumphant ring in his voice.

“Then you ought to be, with everything made straight and plain before you. What! do you mean to tell me that your powers of persuasion are so small that you really can’t talk a girl over when she is already halfway in love with you? Oh, if I had your part to play I’d do it to perfection. Swear to her you’re dying for her and all that sort of thing, tell her you’ve done it all⁠—plotted, lied, sinned⁠—all for her sweet sake, and are ready to do it over and over again to win her, etc., etc., etc., and so on ad infinitum, making the best possible use of your handsome eyes all the time. Frighten her with the terrible anger of her father and relatives, scare her with the thought of the censure society will fling upon her and the way in which she will be talked about if the whole caravanserai from Lochiel Castle come down and find her with you. Meantime have the horses brought round and hurry matters on; tell her you can hear the crack of the Lochiel riding-whips and Aunt Judy’s hysterics; and if in the end you don’t carry her off triumphantly in your chariot, why⁠—”

“Why what?” growled Ivie.

“Why you deserve to lose her. What does it matter even if they overtake you and bring her back, the girl will be fairly compromised, and that they’ll have the sense to see, and they’ll know perfectly well that if you don’t marry her no one else will. You can make your own terms on the matter. As I told you, the game is in your hands entirely now.”

“Lilla,” said her brother, as he opened the door to go downstairs, “I believe you are the fiend himself incarnate!”

“Thanks,” said Lilla indifferently, “your sister. Good night.”

For a few minutes Lettice lay like one stunned on the floor by the side of the partition. Her brain refused at first to take in the whole blackness and treachery of the plot which had been weaved against her, her blinding, choking tears ceased, and she felt almost as though her whole being had been turned into stone. Little by little, however, the truth began to creep into her mind that there she was with these two, literally in prison till the morning, and the morning light which brought her friends to the rescue would bring also upon her the scorn and censure of the world.

“Oh, papa! papa!” she moaned in her heart, “if you could only see your little girl now! And Dr. Herron I know would kill Captain Ivie if he could get at him.”

The thought of these two so far away brought back a little strength and hope to her heart. Was there really no way of escape from the perils which beset her? Should she make an appeal to Ivie⁠—throw herself on his honour? Ah no! what could he do? He would, no doubt, pretend to aid her escape and rejoice to show himself anywhere and everywhere in her company only to draw her more closely into his toils. And Lilla? Could she trust one who had already bitterly deceived her? She clasped her hands together⁠—“My God! is there no way of escape?” She dared not move, scarce breathe, for fear of betraying herself, but, sitting there on the floor, she felt almost as though her reason were leaving her, so terrible was the strain of anguish she endured.

Presently the sounds of heavy breathing came to her from the next room, and she could tell that Lilla was asleep, still she dared not move, for she could hear Ivie walking slowly backwards and forwards in the room beneath her own. “Would he really play the gaoler thus right on till morning?” thought Lettice. She had not noticed the house sufficiently on entering to tell its exact geography, but she felt sure there was but one staircase to it, which ran straight down into the little sitting-room where Ivie was, and one back and one front door both opening out of the same apartment.

O the suspense, the terribleness of those minutes Lettice passed, crouched on the bare boards listening to Ivie’s regular soldier-like tread beneath! With each creak of his footsteps her heart seemed to bound and then stand still. Would they never cease⁠—would they never cease, or would the day dawn and find her still kneeling there hopeless and helpless?

But at length they did cease, and, thank Heaven! Lettice could hear Ivie pull off his boots, then there came the creak of an old wooden bedstead as though he had thrown himself heavily upon it, and then all was still.

Yet she dared not move; she crouched lower and lower to the floor till her ear almost touched the boards, and after a few seconds of anxious terror and suspense she could hear that he too, like his sister, slept.

With limbs stiffened and cold, with her brain scorching and burning, she rose from the floor, and then almost staggered and fell. What time had she before her? Ah, perhaps only an hour at most, for Captain Ivie might rouse at any moment, possibly would, to make sure his prey had not escaped him. Something shining on the rickety old table caught her eye⁠—the glass of brandy-and-water Ivie had mixed for her. Very thankfully she took a long draught of it, and felt some little strength and energy come back to her; then very softly, very slowly, she crept on to her bed once more, and leaning out of the window took a survey of the yard beneath.

A fresh wind was rising now, and an old fir-tree on the other side of the wall was beginning to creak and toss its arms, a few light clouds were flying across the somewhat pale watery moon, and a sound of rush and tumble in the distance told her there must be some falling water near.

And as her eyes became accustomed to the half-gloom of the autumn night she could trace the outline of some low-built outhouse close under her casement. Was it three feet below⁠—was it six feet? She could not tell⁠—her sight and brain were alike bewildered; all she felt and knew was she must reach it somehow, and then take her chance of whatever means of escape offered themselves. An old curtain hung by the window; could she trust it? Ah no! its supports were, no doubt, rotten like the rest of the house, and would come down with a crash and betray her. There was only one way, and she mounted on the narrow ledge, crept on hands and knees through the half-opened casement, and then, holding her breath and feeling her life in her hands, dropped noiselessly on to the roof beneath.

She paused for an instant to collect her courage. Not safe yet⁠—oh no! but outside the prison-bars at any rate⁠—and looking down with thankfulness she saw that the outhouse sloped gradually to the low stone wall which separated the courtyard from the road. Another light spring and she has gained the wall⁠—yet one more and Lettice stands free in the desolate Scotch road.

Not another house in sight, not a signpost or stone even to tell whither the road ran, or roads rather, for branching right and left of the cottage were two other roads leading⁠—whither?

Which way should she take? Which way had she travelled that very afternoon, which seemed now such long ages ago, so much had she lived through as she listened and lay on the floor? The fresh soft wind fanned her cheek, her brown hair had fallen down as she made her last spring and now hung low to her waist, her pretty archery dress showed oddly in the weak changing moonlight, and her silver belt gleamed and sparkled. Lettice knelt down on the wide flinty road. “O God!” she said, “I’m all alone and don’t know which way to turn; please show me.”

A little bird started out of a stunted hawthorn by the roadside and flew straight in front of her. Lettice hailed it as an omen. With a joyful cry she sprang forward to follow it. “Ah,” she said to herself, “I’m sure it came in answer to my prayer; that must be the way to Rosneath.”

Poor child! She did not know her little feet were swiftly and surely bearing her in an exactly opposite direction.

It was not until at least two hours after Lettice’s departure with Captain McCormack that her absence was discovered. If Miss Lilla McCormack had been a veritable prophetess or a professional clairvoyante she could not have more accurately described the state of consternation that ensued at Lochiel, and the line of conduct each individual chose to adopt.

The Misses Tremarten had retired to the dressing-room that Lord Lochiel had provided for their comfort at five o’clock. Their maid, who also acted as Lettice’s for the day, was to be dismissed at six to wait on the young lady, and it was not until she returned with the alarming disclosure that Miss Lettice’s room was vacant that any inquiry was made. Then it was that Ellis (Captain McCormack’s man), when he saw the maid running hither and thither, asking everyone if they knew where her young lady was to be found, came forward and made his statement.

“Captain McCormack desired his compliments to Miss Tremarten, and he had driven Miss Lettice Tremarten over to Ingleside that afternoon.” Then the man, having sent this message up to the ladies, made his escape as rapidly as possible, returning to Ingleside, there to carry out Captain McCormack’s further orders.

The maid went up to her mistress with the message, and, as Lilla had prophesied, Aunt Judith went into hysterics immediately, thereby considerably adding to Aunt Rosamond’s distress and perplexity.

“If you would only keep quiet, Judith,” she said, when the sobbing began to subside a little, “I could think what we had better do.”

“Do!” said the emotional lady in her highest key, “send for Lord Lochiel, send for lady Elizabeth Mackreth” (this was Lord Lochiel’s half-sister, who was acting hostess for the time being), “telegraph to Owen, telegraph⁠—”

“Hush, Judith, for Heaven’s sake don’t make any more noise. Do you think I want everyone in the house to know of my niece’s follies and indiscretions? Here, Matthews” (this to her maid), “go to Lady Elizabeth’s maid and tell her to say to her mistress that the Misses Tremarten (all three, mind) are a little fatigued and beg to be excused from dinner, but they will join the dance in the course of the evening. Then come back to me.”

The maid took her message, and came back bringing Lady Elizabeth’s regrets, etc.

“Now,” said Aunt Rosamond, “go down to Williams” (this was the coachman who had driven them to Lochiel from Rosneath) “and tell him to go at once to Ingleside, where Miss Lettice has been spending the afternoon with Miss McCormack, and tell him to wait for her and bring her back as quickly as possible.”

So the maid went and despatched the man, and Aunt Rosamond employed the two hours and a half occupied in his going and returning by endeavouring to soothe her sister’s nerves and to account satisfactorily to herself for her niece’s absence.

“It is only her utter ignorance that makes her transgress in this way,” she argued. “If she had had a mother she would have learnt all these matters with her alphabet. It all comes from the eccentricities of her education. No doubt that fast, strong-minded young woman” (meaning Lilla) “sent her brother over to fetch her on a sudden freak. They have forgotten how the time has passed while they have been gossiping and flirting, and will be thankful enough when Williams arrives to help them over the difficulty of getting home.”

This was all very plausible, and Aunt Rosamond repeated the same arguments over and over again till she had almost succeeded in persuading herself into believing them. As for Miss Judith, she sat silent, rocking herself and shaking her head, for although she could not bring herself to contradict her sister even on so important a matter as this, she naturally took the sentimental and emotional view of the case, and concluded in her own mind that Lettice and Captain Ivie had eloped.

But when Williams returned with the startling announcement that “Miss McCormack had left that morning on a visit to friends at Perth, and that Captain Ivie was to drive with her as far as Auchterarder, but had not as yet returned,” even Aunt Rosamond began to feel that matters had taken a serious turn.

“I don’t believe a word of it,” she said as the maid gave her the man’s message. “This is some trick on Miss McCormack’s part. Judith, if you go off into hysterics again I shall lock you in by yourself till you come to!” (this severely to her sister.) “Heavens! I must consult someone⁠—not Lord Lochiel; certainly not. Matthews, go to Mrs. Rosneath and ask her if she will be so very kind as to come to me here for five minutes, but be sure not to give her the message till she’s quite alone.”

It was now about nine o’clock in the evening; dancing had commenced, and the absence of Miss Lettice Tremarten, who was supposed to be the belle of the ball, was being very freely commented upon. Lord Lochiel, not satisfied with his sister’s explanation of the matter, had commissioned one of the servants to make special inquiries on his own part as to the young lady’s health and whether there was a possibility of her so far overcoming her fatigue as to join the dancers, and Mrs. Rosneath had just expressed her intention of going personally to inquire for the Misses Tremarten when Aunt Rosamond’s message was brought to her.

“What is it, what is it, my dear friend?” she exclaimed in genuine alarm and anxiety as she entered Aunt Rosamond’s room.

“Now don’t you make a fuss, there’s a good creature,” said Aunt Rosamond, “or else I shall regret having sent for you. Nothing serious has happened, only Lettice went out this afternoon and hasn’t returned.” Even now she would try to screen her niece, and couldn’t bring herself to mention Captain McCormack’s name in conjunction with hers. “I’ve sent to Ingleside, thinking perhaps she might have gone over to see Miss McCormack, and now I want you to send someone over to Rosneath to see if any freak has taken her there, and then will you be so very kind as to say to all who ask after her that she has sprained her ankle severely, and regrets that she cannot dance tonight?”

But all the time the brave old lady talked so calmly and held her head so high she was saying in her own heart⁠—“I know she has run away, I know she has run away. Oh, if we can only get her back without a fuss!”

Mrs. Rosneath looked very grave.

“I fear you are taking matters too lightly, Miss Tremarten,” she said. “You ought to take someone into your counsel. You must at least allow me to tell my husband.”

And Mr. Rosneath, when he was told, looked graver still, and suggested that Lord Lochiel should be consulted on the matter. This, however, Aunt Rosamond positively forbade.

“I want two or three things done, Mr. Rosneath, but if you are going to make a fuss and tell everyone in this way, I must get someone else to do them for me,” said the old lady irritably.

“You may command me to any extent, Miss Tremarten,” said Mr. Rosneath, somewhat coldly it must be owned.

“Very well, then, my own belief is that the McCormacks know something about this” (this was the utmost she could bring herself to admit), “and I think someone should go there at once and question that man (Captain McCormack’s groom, I believe) who gave a message to my maid, and get out of him exactly what he knows on the matter.”

“That shall be done, Miss Tremarten⁠—I will go myself. Your next wish?”

“I next want a telegram sent to Lettice’s father to come here at once. Can that be managed tonight?”

“I fear not,” replied Mr. Rosneath, “for every station far and near has been closed more than an hour ago, and not even a luggage-train will pass through till five in the morning, or we might have signalled that to stop and carry a message. What else is it you wish done?”

“Why, I want everyone in the house to be told that Lettice sprained her ankle severely after the archery this morning, and consequently cannot move off her bed, and I don’t want anybody to be coming up and down fussing after us. I’ve locked Judith and old Matthews up together in the next room, and there they’ll stay till the morning. It’s the only way to keep them quiet.”

“I will leave this last matter in Mrs. Rosneath’s hands. I’ve no doubt she’ll do her best to prevent inquiries, but I’ll go at once to Ingleside and see the man you refer to.” And without further delay he set off.

Two more hours of painful suspense passed. How Aunt Rosamond lived through them she scarcely knew, for in spite of the brave face she put upon it her heart inwardly misgave her. She had not dined, and for a woman at her time of life this is a serious matter, and she dared not release her maid to send her even for a cup of tea for fear of any indiscretion on her part.

Ever and anon there would come a louder moan from Miss Judith in the adjoining room, and Matthews would tap at the intermediate door and “beg Miss Tremarten to come in to her.”

“No,” Aunt Rosamond replied, “I shan’t go in and you shan’t come out, either of you. Give her some vinegar.”

So the time wore away. Once Lady Elizabeth Mackreth sent up to inquire for the ladies, and Aunt Rosamond answered in person that they were all quite well and had all gone to bed, or “at least going,” she added in answer to the servant’s look of amazement.

At a little before midnight Mr. Rosneath returned, tired with his long ride and with a very grave look on his face.

“I’ve come at once to you, Miss Tremarten,” he said, glancing down at his dusty boots and coat, “but I have no good news to bring; indeed, I fear matters have taken a very serious turn.”

“You’ve seen that man?” asked Aunt Rosamond, palpitating all over.

“Yes, I’ve seen him, and forced him to confess a great deal. At first he was very loath to speak, and repeated over and over again that Captain McCormack had sent him with the message that Miss Lettice had driven with him to Ingleside, and he had nothing more to tell; however, I threatened him, and I believe succeeded in frightening him, for it ended with his admitting that he knew that Captain McCormack and Miss Tremarten started for Perth at four this afternoon, and that most probably by this time they are on their road to London.”

“I don’t believe it,” said Aunt Rosamond in low unsteady tones, turning very white as she spoke.

Mr. Rosneath made no reply. They were standing in front of a gilt-framed mirror, and, glancing into it, he was struck by the sudden look of age which had passed over the lady’s face.

“Mr. Rosneath,” said she, speaking in the same low, unsteady tones, “what can be done?”

“I fear, nothing until the morning. It is useless to attempt to organise a party in pursuit at this time of night, with the moon setting and no telegraph-wires to be got at. If you will allow me to consult Lord Lochiel and⁠—”

“But that I will not allow,” said Aunt Rosamond with emphasis. “We must wait now until we see what the morning will bring.”

And while Aunt Rosamond and Mr. Rosneath were consulting together, with grave faces and foreboding hearts, Lettice’s weary little feet were stumbling along the hard white road which led she knew not whither. Oh! if there were but a living soul anywhere to be found⁠—tramp, gipsy, what you will, or finger-post, or landmark of any sort to tell her whither her steps were wandering! O for the gleam of a cottage light or the shadow of some friendly rooftree⁠—anything that held out the hope of some rest and refuge, for her strength was flagging now, and she felt as though she could not hold out much longer.

And then the moon went down.

The wind blew colder as the darkness gathered about her.

“Oh! will the morning never come?” sighed poor Lettice, as on and on she went more slowly now, for her feet were aching and sore. “Is it only the wind that I hear?” she said, pushing back her hair from her ears and standing still for an instant in a gloomy narrow lane into which the flinty high road had gradually dwindled. Then her heart misgave her as a loud gust swept over her head, scattering some dry leaves from the wayside trees, and bringing with it a few large drops of rain.

Dark shadows all round her, a grey stone wall on either side, the wind going and coming in heavy gusts, and sobbing itself out in the old firs. No hat on her head, her feet blistered, and every nerve in her body burning and thrilling, on she went, stumbling at times, almost staggering against the flinty outline of the wall, now the only guide she had to keep her in the path which led she knew not whither. She dared not stop to rest⁠—she knew if once she sat down the roadside she would never rise up again. Her brain was sick and dizzy; she could not think, she scarcely felt, was hardly conscious, indeed, of her own self, her own being, in that windy, drizzling darkness.

And then, somehow, mingled with the wild sighing of the wind there came the baying of a dog. Whence the wind brought it she did not know.

“If I am going farther from it I must still keep on,” she thought to herself, so she staggered and stumbled on, catching her breath as the breeze swept by. “If I keep on and on,” she thought, “the day must dawn some time or other, and then some people must be about, and they’ll find me and help me along to get somewhere.”

Another wild gust of wind swept down, and again sounded the baying of the dog. “Ah, thank God!” sighed poor Lettice, “I’m not wandering away from it, after all.” And this⁠—what was this soft grey light gradually spreading among the night clouds and marking the line of the pebbly path under her feet? Can it really be the day dawning at last? can that dim, dark outline in the far distance be the grand old Auchterils? Ah, now the rugged stone walls begin to show brown and grey, the low-lying fields take shape and distinctness. A pool of water shines silvery and ghostlike almost at her feet, with a few slender trees grouped about, and there a little to the right of it, almost hidden by the luxuriance of the hedge in which it stands, is a small low gate. The dog is baying loudly now as Lettice stumbles forward and swings it back. A neat little two-storied house stands in front of her, and then⁠—all is darkness and dimness again, for Lettice has fallen senseless on the gravel path.

But kind friends are at hand. The dog has roused the small household, strong arms are round her, and a young girl and an old man are at her side.

“Dinna be afraid, my dear,” said a gentle voice from under a red handkerchief which had been hastily tied over grey locks⁠—“dinna be afraid, my dear, ye’re among friends. I am the minister, do you ken? and this is my daughter Maggie.”

And exactly at the time they were carrying Lettice into the manse between them the woman McKenzie was knocking at the door of her little cottage to rouse Captain McCormack and his sister. Ivie started up with an anathema. “This is ‘daybreak’ with a vengeance,” he exclaimed. Then he opened the door to admit the woman, and hastened upstairs to rouse Lilla.

“They’ll soon bring your horse round,” he explained. “You know you want to be off and away before she wakes.”

They were interrupted by a knock at the bedroom door and a torrent of broad Scotch from the woman McKenzie, who stood outside on the landing holding in her hand a small silver brooch.

Captain Ivie took it from her. “Is this yours, Lilla?” he said, holding it out to her. As he did so it flashed through his mind that he had seen the tiny ornament before. Could it have been in Lettice’s dainty green and silver dress as they drove along the road to Ardvaroch? “Where did you find it?” he demanded of the woman.

The woman indicated the yard at the back of the house with her hand, and commenced her explanation.

Ivie did not wait to hear it. With a whole world of doubt and suspicion in his mind he rushed to Lettice’s door and knocked loudly.

No reply.

He repeated the knocking, and then, unable longer to restrain his impatience, with a wrench and a crack he forced back the rotten lock and woodwork of the door, and entered the room. Lilla followed him.

Captain Ivie stood transfixed. “Where⁠—where has she gone!” he stammered, gazing round him vacantly.

Lilla began to recover herself. “Well, I should say back to Lochiel if she has any sense in her head. Anyhow, it’s all up with you, Ivie, and no mistake this time. I suppose it’s sauve qui peut now. I shall go on to Perth to the Loders, and simply deny the whole affair from beginning to end. I wash my hands of you and your misdeeds utterly for the future.” And she left the room to hasten on her preparations for starting.

Ivie still stood motionless as though he did not hear her. Another dread was beginning to force itself upon him. What if the poor little thing had not returned to Lochiel! Something, no doubt, had aroused her suspicions overnight and she had taken flight, but how could she, alone and undirected in the dark, find her way over the fifteen miles which separated Ardvaroch from Lochiel? What if she had wandered out of the road or met with some misadventure? It was too horrible to think of. “Lilla may cry sauve qui peut if she will,” he said aloud. “I know I’m black as the devil himself, but I’m not quite black enough for that.”

He went down to Lilla.

“I’m going at once to the inn where McKenzie is, and will tell them to send round my cart with Dido and Daniel for you. I shall take Donegal and ride over to Lochiel and see if she is there all right.”

“You are mad!” screamed Lilla after him. But he took no heed and went.

How Aunt Rosamond lived through that terrible night of suspense she did not know. Mrs. Rosneath kindly offered to sit up with her.

“No,” said the old lady resolutely, “if you’ll only be kind enough to let everything go on as usual. We are supposed to be shut in for the night. Well, let us be shut in, and tomorrow no doubt something will occur to show us what we ought to do. Only make everyone believe Lettice is laid up with a sprained ankle.”

Next came Lady Elizabeth Mackreth, very solicitous, as became a hostess, and wishful to see Lettice and say good night.

“I dare not disturb her” (“Heavens! I’ve told enough lies for her!”⁠—this in her own heart), “and I fear I must say goodbye as well as good night, Lady Elizabeth, for I know we shall have to start so very early tomorrow, before you will be down. We leave Mrs. Rosneath’s tomorrow en route for Paris or Wales, I’m not quite sure which.” Lady Elizabeth looked politely surprised. “Lettice will be so sorry,” continued Miss Tremarten, “but I fear it must be. Good night.”

Lady Elizabeth went away with the impression that her guest was slightly deranged. She had not known Miss Tremarten very long nor very intimately, and was quite at a loss to understand her extraordinary behaviour on this occasion.

Poor Aunt Rosamond! She knew perfectly well that her structure of lies was built upon a very shallow foundation, and that sooner or later it must crumble into dust, but nevertheless she resolved that while she could she would do what she could for this niece of hers who had brought her so much anxiety and heartache.

And with the morning there came a very great and welcome surprise to Aunt Rosamond, which was nothing more nor less than the appearance of Dr. Herron on the scene. Miss Tremarten had just released her sister and Matthews, after ascertaining that they were in a more reasonable and calmer state of mind, and was consulting with them as to the possibility of arousing the Rosneaths and commencing the day’s work of telegraphy and inquiry which she knew was before her, when a servant brought a message that Dr. Herron was below and wished to see her.

“Dr. Herron!” exclaimed the old lady joyfully. Under other circumstances she would have wished him, to say the least, in another hemisphere, but with this accumulation of responsibility upon her shoulders she was ready almost to fall down and worship him.

“Let him come up at once,” she said. “Now, Judith, be calm, I beg; don’t interrupt us, or else I shall lock you and Matthews up together again. Matthews, stay where you are; I won’t trust you out of my sight.”

Dr. Herron entered, frank and honest-looking as ever, although perhaps a little graver than when Lettice last said goodbye to him in the flower-garden of her pleasant country home.

He quickly explained his unexpected arrival.

“Mr. Tremarten was very uneasy after receiving your last letter,” he said to Aunt Rosamond, “and could not understand why, if there were any cause for anxiety on your part with regard to the insulting attention paid by Captain McCormack to Miss Tremarten, she could not return home at once. He did not at all approve of your plan of taking her for a long trip through Europe and America; he did not at all like the idea even of her coming here for the archery fête after the impertinent manner in which you have been annoyed and followed. He did not feel equal (his health has not been good lately) to the long journey so far North, and I as an old friend volunteered to come in his stead, and express more fully than could be done by letter his wishes respecting his daughter. By dint of rapid travelling I arrived at Perth late last night, could get nothing on wheels to bring me on, so was compelled to wait till daybreak. Before the sun was up I was, and here I am.”

In all this Dr. Herron was scarcely so honest and plainspoken as was his wont. If he had told the simple, unvarnished truth, it would have run somewhat in this fashion:⁠—

“I have suffered agonies of torment ever since I heard that scoundrel McCormack was on friendly terms with your niece, and the torment reached its culminating point when your last letter told us of his daring to follow you here to Scotland. I said to Mr. Tremarten, ‘There is much behind all this, or why should they be so anxious to carry her off for a tour round the world? That archery fête may bring matters to a crisis, and Heaven only knows what will follow. Look here, Mr. Tremarten, if you can stay here quietly while mischief is being done I can’t. You’ve not been particularly strong lately, and are scarcely fit to travel. I would like the journey, and if you’ll allow me will start at once.’ ”

However, Aunt Rosamond had too much on her mind at that moment to criticise Dr. Herron’s forms of expression very closely, and was only too thankful to welcome him as a friend in this her sore necessity.

“Dr. Herron,” she said very gravely, “I have a sad story to tell you. God knows I’ve been telling lies enough since last night, but to you, at any rate, I will tell the simple truth.” And she told it in all its sadness from beginning to end.

No one interrupted the old lady; she told her story her own way in a simple, direct fashion. Once or twice her voice quivered and she seemed to choke down a sob in her throat, and once only Aunt Judith gave a slight moan from the sofa where she sat, and then looked nervously towards her sister, expecting an instant sharp reproof.

Dr. Herron did not move a muscle as he stood listening in front of Aunt Rosamond, but the veins stood out ominously on his broad forehead, and his fingers were clenched into his hand with the force of the restraint he put upon himself.

Then he spoke very quietly. “Miss Tremarten, someone else has been telling lies here besides you. You are making a great mistake in believing the infamous story that has been told you. Lettice may be wilful, Lettice maybe wild, but elope with that scoundrel she could not. She will come out of this purer than ever. We won’t waste time going over old ground; we will⁠—”

But Dr. Herron’s sentence is not to be finished. There is another rap at the door, and the servant brings in a telegram, which Aunt Rosamond opens hurriedly, reads with one glance, and then falls back in her chair half-unconscious for the thrill of joy that bounds through her heart.

This is what she read:⁠—

“From Andrew Forbes,
“The Manse, Lownhead.

“Your puir lassie is safe and under my roof.”

Dr. Herron picked up the telegram and read it through.

“Thank God!” he said, drawing a long breath. “I will go to her at once, and if well enough will bring her back here with me.”

Were the surprises and interruptions of that morning never to end? There is another rap, and this time it is Captain McCormack who wishes to see Miss Tremarten.

“How dare he!” exclaimed Aunt Rosamond, aflame with anger. “Dr. Herron, what shall I do with him?”

“Serve him as you did your sister last night,” growled the doctor. “Lock him up somewhere till I come back. I can’t stop to settle accounts with him now.”

“Lock him up?” repeated the lady. “Where can I put him? There’s only the observatory”⁠—a small round tower built out from the castle parapet⁠—“There’s a big key in the door too,” added the old lady reflectively, “but however am I to get him there?”

“Send down word that you wish to see him in the observatory. First have the big key put on the outside. Then, when he’s fairly in, go up the stairs yourself, lock him up, and put the key in your pocket.”

“Ah,” said Aunt Rosamond, “that’s something worth doing. Judith, be quiet!” Judith was again laughing and sobbing on the sofa. “Dr. Herron, one moment.” The doctor paused on the threshold. “Will it be possible to get Lettice back here in the dark somehow?⁠—smuggle her in without any fuss?”

“I don’t think it would,” answered Dr. Herron, “and I don’t think it would be worth while trying either.”

“But,” pursued the lady, “you see I’ve told so many lies one way or another already, and I really don’t know how to account for it all without connecting Lettice’s name with Captain McCormack’s unless I make up another little story.”

“Tell the simple truth, Miss Tremarten, when you know what it is,” was Dr. Herron’s parting advice, “and see who’ll come out of it blackest⁠—Lettice or Captain McCormack.”

Then he went down to Lord Lochiel to explain his appearance at the castle and to ask for a horse or some means of conveyance to the manse at Loanhead.

It was midday when Dr. Herron arrived at the quiet little parsonage. Miss Maggie Forbes, a gentle-looking, soft little maiden of about Lettice’s own age, met him at the door, rightly guessing the object of the doctor’s visit. “She’s lying down now in the little parlour where we laid her this morning,” she said. “She has been asleep for hours, and lies so still I’m almost frightened when I look at her. Please come in.”

Dr. Herron went in.

The room was small and but scantily furnished, for the good old pastor had not much money to spend upon the refinements or luxuries of life. A high narrow bookcase, flanked by a spindle-legged square table, were the first things that caught the eye on entering. A faded green carpet covered the floor, and long muslin curtains hung on either side of the somewhat low window, which was still further shaded by hanging creepers and a balcony full of plants.

A large old-fashioned sofa stood against the wall sideways to the light, and on this, with a good supply of pillows and a warm striped rug thrown over her, lay Lettice in a calm sweet sleep.

“As a lily among thorns, as a white dove among crows,” was or might have been Dr. Herron’s thought as he looked down on the pure pale face. She slept so lightly she scarcely seemed to breathe. Of course the bright brown hair was tumbling all over the face, and half veiled the neck and arms besides; one little hand supported her head, the other lay outside on the bright-coloured rug. Dr. Herron instinctively and professionally put his two fingers on the wrist.

“She’ll likely have an illness,” said Miss Maggie, anxiously looking up in the doctor’s face.

“She’ll likely have no such thing,” said Dr. Herron indignantly. “She’s too young and healthy for that. All she’ll want will be some long quiet hours of sleep and some good nourishing food directly she wakes.”

As he spoke a rosy flush of colour passed over Lettice’s face, there was a slight fluttering of her breath, and she opened her eyes. Her gaze wandered from Dr. Herron to Maggie, and thence round the small room with its faded furniture.

Gradually the recollection of the terrors of the past night came back to her mind, and she shuddered and closed her eyes, as though she would shut them out from her sight.

Dr. Herron bent over her.

“You see, Lettice,” he said, taking possession of her hand, “I was so tired of waiting for an answer to my letter (written no matter how long ago) that I have come myself in person to beg for it.”

“How very undignified!” said Lettice. “It looks almost like being in a hurry.”

“Then it looks like exactly what it is,” replied Dr. Herron, thankful to hear the old ring in Lettice’s voice and to see the old sparkle in her eye; “but we won’t have any talking just yet, please. I want you to have some good food and another long sleep, and then perhaps tomorrow or next day we can begin the journey back to Wales.”

Lettice made no reply, and closed her eyes once more. It was all so unreal to her, like some delicious dream almost, as it might be a falling asleep in purgatory and an awakening in paradise.

But before Dr. Herron returned to Lochiel that evening he had much to hear, and, self-contained and calm-tempered man as he was, he found it difficult to restrain his indignation and anger as Lettice told simply and plainly the whole story of the McCormacks treachery and falsehood. Dr. Forbes and his daughter were present at the time by Dr. Herron’s express wish, “for,” he argued wisely enough, “the story, in one form or another, will be sure to be spread about the country, and it is as well you should hear the real facts of the case from the young lady’s own lips.”

“To think it should be the very same captain after all, father,” sobbed poor Maggie in her father’s arms, after Dr. Herron had gone, and Lettice had been comfortably settled in Maggie’s own room for a good night’s rest. “The very same captain, father, I know, because I showed Miss Tremarten the photograph he gave me, and she said he was the very same captain. And father” (this in a very low whisper), “I’m not at all in love with him now, and never, never want to see him again.”

“Then thank the guid Lord that your eyes are opened, my child,” replied the old pastor, “and another time be sure not to give away your heart till you get something for it in return. Something for nothing is never the way to bring grist to the mill,” concluded the old Scotchman sententiously.

The day which had passed so pleasantly for Lettice and Dr. Herron at the manse had been trying in the extreme to Aunt Rosamond. Hide it as she would, the suspense and anxiety of the past twenty-four hours had told upon her terribly. If she had been equal to it she would have gone off with the doctor to fetch back her niece, but after the overnight’s vigil she felt it was perfectly useless to attempt so long a journey.

“If I had screamed like you, Judith, or cried like you, Matthews, I daresay I should not have felt it so much,” said the old lady to her sister after Dr. Herron had started; “but as it is, my only outlet has been a number of small lies, which I daresay have done as much harm as good. You and I, Judith, I am bound to say, cut a very poor figure in the whole affair. We first take this girl away from her father, in order to save her from an entanglement with a country doctor next let her carry on a flirtation under our very eyes with a disreputable captain, and then suffer the country doctor to come upon the scene again to save her from the aforesaid captain. Now I ask you, mightn’t the doctor just as well have had her at first without all this fuss?”

Judith opened her eyes in amazement. “Indeed,” she said humbly, “I thought you really wanted the girl to come to London. I didn’t urge it⁠—”

“Now don’t argue, Judith,” said Aunt Rosamond; “you don’t do it well. You’ve no reasoning powers whatever. There is no satisfaction to be got out of the affair from beginning to end, except⁠—yes, perhaps⁠—a little. Matthews, did you put the large key on the outside of the observatory door?”

Matthews answered in the affirmative, and without another word Miss Tremarten took her way up the steep narrow steps which led to the castle observatory.

It was situated at an angle of the building, and was simply a large square room which had been built out by a former earl who had developed astronomical instead of agricultural tendencies. It had been out of use for more than a generation, and had served at different periods as a receptacle for lumber of various kinds, such as old pictures and antique furniture, which had no special interest for the present earl, and one or two worn-out musical instruments. These with some large old-fashioned telescopes in different stages of dilapidation constituted the sole furniture of the room.

It certainly struck Captain McCormack as very odd that Miss Tremarten should select this out-of-the-way little corner of the house for their interview. There was a damp, unused smell too about the room as he entered which struck him as far from agreeable, and accordingly he went to the rather narrow window, which he succeeded in opening, and leaned out. There was, as might be imagined, a splendid view from this height not only of the castle grounds but also of the surrounding country. Captain Ivie, however, “did not go in for that sort of thing,” as he had more than once phrased it to his intimate friends, and at the present moment his mind could hold but one thought⁠—where was Lettice? what had become of her? In fact, he could not have looked at a printed map of the world with more indifference than he gazed upon the magnificent panorama which surrounded Castle Lochiel. “Of course I shall come out of all this very badly,” he thought to himself as he leaned out. “Everything will look very black against me, and how in Heaven’s name I’m to float along is more than I can tell. Still if I could only know that no harm had come to her through me it would be a sort of consolation after all⁠—” His soliloquy was cut short by the sudden shutting of the heavy oak door behind him with a loud bang. “Ah!” he thought, “it was my opening the window⁠—strange, too, I didn’t feel a current.” His amazement, however, was increased when he heard the creak of the key in the lock and realised that he was locked in. At first he imagined it must be one of the servants in passing, who, seeing the door open and not knowing he was there, had pulled it to and locked it. Then as he began to think over the strangeness of the whole affair it suddenly flashed across his mind that for some purpose or other he had been literally trapped and caged. His anger knew no bounds; at first he stamped, called vehemently, shook the door and beat it violently with anything and everything that came to hand⁠—an old chair till it split in two, and a rotten violin till that too succumbed to the strength of the oak. Then as it occurred to him that whoever had shut him in was probably at hand to enjoy his discomfiture and anger, he subsided a little and took a calm survey of the situation. Were there any means of escape by the window? and again he leaned out, and this time with still less inclination to enjoy the landscape. No, not even a ledge; it was just a little jutting square room built out from the castle parapet, nothing above it save a turret with some ornamental slits, nothing beneath till one came to the castle grounds a hundred feet or so below.

“Well, I suppose there is nothing for it but to grin and bear it,” he said to himself, feeling for his cigar-case as he spoke. But alas! even that consolation was to be denied him, for the cigar-case was comfortably reposing in the pocket of his overcoat, left behind at Ardvaroch in his hurried departure that morning.

“And this is the only satisfaction I have had out of the whole affair,” said Aunt Rosamond to her sister as she laid the big key upon the table in her dressing-room. “I haven’t enjoyed anything so much since I was a child and caught a big ugly spider which had trapped ever so many butterflies, and put him in a scent-bottle and corked him down. I feel now as if I had caught the biggest and ugliest spider that ever was, and I don’t think he’ll be in a hurry to spin his webs again!”

Then the old lady called for her writing materials, and penned a short note to Lady Elizabeth Mackreth, begging her to excuse the absence of herself and sister for the day, and asking her to suspend all judgment upon the oddity of her proceedings until the return of Dr. Herron in the evening, when everything would be satisfactorily explained.

Lady Elizabeth showed the note to her brother.

“Really,” she said, “I think a little explanation is due to us.”

“My dear Elizabeth,” said Lord Lochiel, “I have had more than half an explanation already from Dr. Herron, and if I had known the young lady’s affections were so far engaged I would not have pressed my attentions upon her as I did; and after all, as you said yesterday, she is very young for a man at my time of life, and, with settled tastes and pursuits such as mine, matrimony is not the absolute necessity it would be to a younger man.”

And as evening drew near Aunt Rosamond began to have some misgivings as to the imprisonment of Captain Ivie.

“I think we had better let him out,” she said to her sister. “I think if we can get him away from the castle before Dr. Herron comes back it would be as well. You see if Dr. Herron tries to thrash him he may object, and perhaps there will be murder done, and Lettice’s name will be brought in again, and there’ll be more fuss than there’s been already.”

So she gave Matthews the key and desired her to tell Captain McCormack that Miss Tremarten had sent her to let him out.

Matthews took the key with much misgiving at heart.

“Perhaps he’ll knock me down when he comes out,” thought the old body; “and the key’s mighty heavy to turn; maybe ’twill break in the lock.”

Matthews couldn’t hear a sound as she listened outside the door of the observatory, for Captain Ivie had by this time subsided into something of dullness and apathy.

At the first creak, however, of the key in the lock he roused up. “Who the ⸻’s at the door?” he roared, introducing a strong noun.

“Now don’t, there’s a good soul,” said poor old Matthews, “or you’ll make me tremble so I won’t be able to turn the key.”

“Take both hands,” shouted the captain, “and do it quickly, or else by Heaven⁠—”

“Now don’t,” said Matthews. “I’m shaking so already I don’t know what to do with myself.”

“There, don’t shake,” said Captain Ivie, fearing lest his liberator might be panic-stricken and take flight. “I’d give you a sovereign not to shake if I could get at you.”

“Put it under the door,” said Matthews.

Ivie did so, and Matthews somehow found strength and courage to turn the key.

“Miss Tremarten’s compliments, sir, and she sent me up to let you out, for she thought you’d been locked in long enough,” said Matthews, trembling.

“Where is Lord Lochiel?” asked Ivie. “They shall answer for this.”

“In the drawing-room with the ladies,” answered Matthews, glad to see the last of Captain McCormack.

To the drawing-room he went. A number of guests were assembled in the larger drawing-room variously occupied, and a little apart from the others sat Lady Elizabeth engaged in conversation with Mrs. Rosneath. Lord Lochiel was not to be seen.

Ivie strode angrily into the room. “Where is Lord Lochiel?” he said, going up to Lady Elizabeth. “Lady Elizabeth, I’ve many times been your guest and your husband’s⁠—”

Lady Elizabeth looked up at him, ignored him, and continued her conversation with Mrs. Rosneath. “You were saying, Mrs. Rosneath⁠—” Then, as Ivie stood there glaring at her, she said in Arctic tones, “I’ve no doubt you’ll find Lord Lochiel in the library, Captain McCormack.”

In the corridor outside the drawing-room Captain McCormack came upon Lord Lochiel and Dr. Herron.

Dr. Herron looked him full in the face. “As I was saying to you just now, Lord Lochiel,” he said slowly and distinctly, “there are some curs on whom even a good thrashing is a waste of labour, and consequently other means have to be adopted to restrain their vicious propensities.”

Ivie turned upon him.

“Have I to thank you, sir, for the insult put upon me today?”

“Most assuredly,” replied Dr. Herron; “but thank Lord Lochiel, not me, if you please, that you have been let off so lightly.”

Lord Lochiel interposed, calling to a servant who stood near.

“Show Captain McCormack the way out,” he said. “Captain McCormack, I have the honour to wish you good day.”

“I shall call you to account for your words, sir,” said Ivie in farewell thunder to Dr. Herron.

“By all means,” replied the doctor, “only you must make haste about it, for I leave for Wales the day after tomorrow.”

But somehow Captain Ivie thought better of it, and never did call Dr. Herron to account for his words.

And when “the day after tomorrow” came it found a motley gathering assembled on the up-platform of the little country station. In one corner stood Aunt Rosamond, a little worn and worried-looking still, perhaps, for the twenty-four hours of keen anxiety she had passed through, with Lord Lochiel at her elbow, for their kindhearted host had insisted on coming down himself to see the last of his guests, even to the neglect of a local agricultural dinner, for which he had been preparing speeches and cattle-breeding statistics for the last fortnight. A few yards from these two stood Miss Judith, in close converse with the old Scotch pastor, to whom the whole party felt somehow they owed a debt of gratitude impossible to discharge, and who had a quiet persistent way of putting on one side all attempts at thanks and acknowledgments one would hardly have expected from his gentle blue-eyed physique.

“If Lettice’s father were here, Dr. Forbes,” Miss Judith was saying in her high-pitched quavering voice (more quavering than ever now for the recent hysterics she had gone through)⁠—“if he were here he would insist on⁠—”

“If the father is at all like the daughter,” interrupted Dr. Forbes, “he is very likely to win his own way to everyone’s heart. Look how she’s got over my shy little lassie there. With their two heads so close together⁠—plotting mischief, no doubt⁠—one would think they had known each other for years instead of a short twenty-four hours.”

He pointed as he spoke to Lettice, with Dr. Herron in attendance of course, who, side by side and hand in hand with Maggie, was chirping and twittering like any little bird in earnest low-voiced talk.

Lettice was looking bright and radiant and as full of smiles and dimples as ever. Never before had her brown hair seemed more crisp and curled and tangled, never before had her eyes shone more changefully with the depth of fun and happiness within. As for quiet, sedate Miss Maggie, her head was bent low, and, looking under her poke sunbonnet, one could see the trace of a tear or two which Lettice’s earnest and reiterated expressions of gratitude had somehow brought to the surface. Lettice noted them with one of those quick sidelong glances of hers, but didn’t mind them in the least. She knew they didn’t come from a sore heart now, and she knew too she could soon drive them away with her light talk and fun.

“Look at those aunties of mine,” she began, stopping short in the midst of her farewell acknowledgments. “It is quite too shocking the way they are carrying on with those two middle-aged gentlemen. Why, Maggie, if you don’t take care you’ll be having Aunt Judie for a stepmother before you know where you are.” Miss Maggie looked up aghast. “You may well look shocked, dear; I assure you those two aunts are a very great anxiety to me, and will be till I can get some obliging creature who wears a coat and hat to take them off my hands. Such fun this morning, Maggie. I thought Lord Lochiel was going to make Aunt Rosamond an offer over the breakfast-table. I could see it in his face; and he did! But it was only a propitiatory offering after all, in the shape of a bull or young heifer which he thought papa might like to cross with a Welsh breed. You should have seen Aunt Rosamond’s face as she tried to express her gratitude. ‘I’m afraid my brother doesn’t at all understand the mysteries of cattle-breeding. Beef, Lord Lochiel, in any shape or form, I could undertake⁠—it would be only a question of packing⁠—but a bull! What could we do with the thing when we put up in London for the night?’ ”

Miss Maggie is rippling over with laughter now at Lettice’s perfect reproduction of Aunt Rosamond’s voice and manner. Here Dr. Herron joins in.

“Yes, I don’t quite see how it could have been managed. Matthews certainly might have charged herself with the bull’s comforts if you young ladies had not seen fit to overload her in the way you have with a kitten and puppy-dog.”

He glances to the farther end of the platform as he speaks, where stands poor old Matthews, the picture of patient endurance, with the nose of a tabby kitten peeping out of a black bag she holds in one hand, and grasping with the other a leathern lead which a small shaggy Skye is straining to its fullest extent. Both animals had been pets of Miss Maggie’s, fallen in love with by Lettice, and presented to her by the former young lady as a token of enduring friendship.

Lettice turns upon him brightly. Depend upon it she has yet another arrow left in her quiver, and the doctor will have the benefit of it.

“Oh, Dr. Herron,” she begins demurely enough, in the sweetest, softest whisper possible, “I had nearly forgotten. Do you know I had a letter from papa this morning?⁠—such a letter! I really do think he and Mary have been flirting finely while we’ve been away, and I think they’ll be married, and then, you know, our engagement must be broken off at once, because you’d be my uncle, and it would be quite too dreadful to marry one’s uncle.”

“Yes,” replies Dr. Herron, “it would be quite too dreadful to marry one’s uncle, and I don’t see any way out of it, Lettice” (this in an equally low voice, and looking down into the clear bright eyes), “unless we get married first, and then, if your papa likes to marry his own daughter-in-law⁠—my sister that is⁠—no one can have anything to say against it.”

And married first they accordingly were.

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.