He said at length, 'I fear 'tis Edmond Willowes.'

'Who's he?'

'A young fellow of Shottsford-Forum--a widow-woman's son,' the other told

him, and explained that Willowes's father, or grandfather, was the last

of the old glass-painters in that place, where (as you may know) the art

lingered on when it had died out in every other part of England.

'By G--- that's bad--mighty bad!' said Lord Uplandtowers, throwing

himself back in the chaise in frigid despair.

They despatched emissaries in all directions; one by the Melchester Road,

another by Shottsford-Forum, another coastwards.

But the lovers had a ten-hours' start; and it was apparent that sound

judgment had been exercised in choosing as their time of flight the

particular night when the movements of a strange carriage would not be

noticed, either in the park or on the neighbouring highway, owing to the

general press of vehicles. The chaise which had been seen waiting at

Lornton Inn was, no doubt, the one they had escaped in; and the pair of

heads which had planned so cleverly thus far had probably contrived

marriage ere now.

The fears of her parents were realized. A letter sent by special

messenger from Barbara, on the evening of that day, briefly informed them

that her lover and herself were on the way to London, and before this

communication reached her home they would be united as husband and wife.

She had taken this extreme step because she loved her dear Edmond as she

could love no other man, and because she had seen closing round her the

doom of marriage with Lord Uplandtowers, unless she put that threatened

fate out of possibility by doing as she had done. She had well

considered the step beforehand, and was prepared to live like any other

country-townsman's wife if her father repudiated her for her action.

'D--- her!' said Lord Uplandtowers, as he drove homeward that night. 'D---

her for a fool!'--which shows the kind of love he bore her.

Well; Sir John had already started in pursuit of them as a matter of

duty, driving like a wild man to Melchester, and thence by the direct

highway to the capital. But he soon saw that he was acting to no

purpose; and by and by, discovering that the marriage had actually taken

place, he forebore all attempts to unearth them in the City, and returned

and sat down with his lady to digest the event as best they could.

To proceed against this Willowes for the abduction of our heiress was,

possibly, in their power; yet, when they considered the now unalterable

facts, they refrained from violent retribution. Some six weeks passed,

during which time Barbara's parents, though they keenly felt her loss,

held no communication with the truant, either for reproach or

condonation. They continued to think of the disgrace she had brought

upon herself; for, though the young man was an honest fellow, and the son

of an honest father, the latter had died so early, and his widow had had

such struggles to maintain herself; that the son was very imperfectly

educated. Moreover, his blood was, as far as they knew, of no

distinction whatever, whilst hers, through her mother, was compounded of

the best juices of ancient baronial distillation, containing tinctures of

Maundeville, and Mohun, and Syward, and Peverell, and Culliford, and

Talbot, and Plantagenet, and York, and Lancaster, and God knows what

besides, which it was a thousand pities to throw away.

The father and mother sat by the fireplace that was spanned by the four-

centred arch bearing the family shields on its haunches, and groaned

aloud--the lady more than Sir John.

'To think this should have come upon us in our old age!' said he.

'Speak for yourself!' she snapped through her sobs. 'I am only one-and-

forty! . . . Why didn't ye ride faster and overtake 'em!'

In the meantime the young married lovers, caring no more about their

blood than about ditch-water, were intensely happy--happy, that is, in

the descending scale which, as we all know, Heaven in its wisdom has

ordained for such rash cases; that is to say, the first week they were in

the seventh heaven, the second in the sixth, the third week temperate,

the fourth reflective, and so on; a lover's heart after possession being

comparable to the earth in its geologic stages, as described to us

sometimes by our worthy President; first a hot coal, then a warm one,

then a cooling cinder, then chilly--the simile shall be pursued no

further. The long and the short of it was that one day a letter, sealed

with their daughter's own little seal, came into Sir John and Lady

Grebe's hands; and, on opening it, they found it to contain an appeal

from the young couple to Sir John to forgive them for what they had done,

and they would fall on their naked knees and be most dutiful children for

evermore.

Then Sir John and his lady sat down again by the fireplace with the four-

centred arch, and consulted, and re-read the letter. Sir John Grebe, if

the truth must be told, loved his daughter's happiness far more, poor

man, than he loved his name and lineage; he recalled to his mind all her

little ways, gave vent to a sigh; and, by this time acclimatized to the

idea of the marriage, said that what was done could not be undone, and

that he supposed they must not be too harsh with her. Perhaps Barbara

and her husband were in actual need; and how could they let their only

child starve?

A slight consolation had come to them in an unexpected manner. They had

been credibly informed that an ancestor of plebeian Willowes was once

honoured with intermarriage with a scion of the aristocracy who had gone

to the dogs. In short, such is the foolishness of distinguished parents,

and sometimes of others also, that they wrote that very day to the

address Barbara had given them, informing her that she might return home

and bring her husband with her; they would not object to see him, would

not reproach her, and would endeavour to welcome both, and to discuss

with them what could best be arranged for their future.

In three or four days a rather shabby post-chaise drew up at the door of

Chene Manor-house, at sound of which the tender-hearted baronet and his

wife ran out as if to welcome a prince and princess of the blood. They

were overjoyed to see their spoilt child return safe and sound--though

she was only Mrs. Willowes, wife of Edmond Willowes of nowhere. Barbara

burst into penitential tears, and both husband and wife were contrite

enough, as well they might be, considering that they had not a guinea to

call their own.

When the four had calmed themselves, and not a word of chiding had been

uttered to the pair, they discussed the position soberly, young Willowes

sitting in the background with great modesty till invited forward by Lady

Grebe in no frigid tone.

'How handsome he is!' she said to herself. 'I don't wonder at Barbara's

craze for him.'

He was, indeed, one of the handsomest men who ever set his lips on a

maid's. A blue coat, murrey waistcoat, and breeches of drab set off a

figure that could scarcely be surpassed. He had large dark eyes, anxious

now, as they glanced from Barbara to her parents and tenderly back again

to her; observing whom, even now in her trepidation, one could see why

the _sang froid_ of Lord Uplandtowers had been raised to more than

lukewarmness. Her fair young face (according to the tale handed down by

old women) looked out from under a gray conical hat, trimmed with white

ostrich-feathers, and her little toes peeped from a buff petticoat worn

under a puce gown. Her features were not regular: they were almost

infantine, as you may see from miniatures in possession of the family,

her mouth showing much sensitiveness, and one could be sure that her

faults would not lie on the side of bad temper unless for urgent reasons.

Well, they discussed their state as became them, and the desire of the

young couple to gain the goodwill of those upon whom they were literally

dependent for everything induced them to agree to any temporizing measure

that was not too irksome. Therefore, having been nearly two months

united, they did not oppose Sir John's proposal that he should furnish

Edmond Willowes with funds sufficient for him to travel a year on the

Continent in the company of a tutor, the young man undertaking to lend

himself with the utmost diligence to the tutor's instructions, till he

became polished outwardly and inwardly to the degree required in the

husband of such a lady as Barbara. He was to apply himself to the study

of languages, manners, history, society, ruins, and everything else that

came under his eyes, till he should return to take his place without

blushing by Barbara's side.

'And by that time,' said worthy Sir John, 'I'll get my little place out

at Yewsholt ready for you and Barbara to occupy on your return. The

house is small and out of the way; but it will do for a young couple for

a while.'

'If 'twere no bigger than a summer-house it would do!' says Barbara.

'If 'twere no bigger than a sedan-chair!' says Willowes. 'And the more

lonely the better.'

'We can put up with the loneliness,' said Barbara, with less zest. 'Some

friends will come, no doubt.'

All this being laid down, a travelled tutor was called in--a man of many

gifts and great experience,--and on a fine morning away tutor and pupil

went. A great reason urged against Barbara accompanying her youthful

husband was that his attentions to her would naturally be such as to

prevent his zealously applying every hour of his time to learning and

seeing--an argument of wise prescience, and unanswerable. Regular days

for letter-writing were fixed, Barbara and her Edmond exchanged their

last kisses at the door, and the chaise swept under the archway into the

drive.

He wrote to her from Le Havre, as soon as he reached that port, which was

not for seven days, on account of adverse winds; he wrote from Rouen, and

from Paris; described to her his sight of the King and Court at

Versailles, and the wonderful marble-work and mirrors in that palace;

wrote next from Lyons; then, after a comparatively long interval, from

Turin, narrating his fearful adventures in crossing Mont Cenis on mules,

and how he was overtaken with a terrific snowstorm, which had well-nigh

been the end of him, and his tutor, and his guides. Then he wrote

glowingly of Italy; and Barbara could see the development of her

husband's mind reflected in his letters month by month; and she much

admired the forethought of her father in suggesting this education for

Edmond. Yet she sighed sometimes--her husband being no longer in

evidence to fortify her in her choice of him--and timidly dreaded what

mortifications might be in store for her by reason of this _mesalliance_.

She went out very little; for on the one or two occasions on which she

had shown herself to former friends she noticed a distinct difference in

their manner, as though they should say, 'Ah, my happy swain's wife;

you're caught!'

Edmond's letters were as affectionate as ever; even more affectionate,

after a while, than hers were to him. Barbara observed this growing

coolness in herself; and like a good and honest lady was horrified and

grieved, since her only wish was to act faithfully and uprightly. It

troubled her so much that she prayed for a warmer heart, and at last

wrote to her husband to beg him, now that he was in the land of Art, to

send her his portrait, ever so small, that she might look at it all day

and every day, and never for a moment forget his features.

Willowes was nothing loth, and replied that he would do more than she

wished: he had made friends with a sculptor in Pisa, who was much

interested in him and his history; and he had commissioned this artist to

make a bust of himself in marble, which when finished he would send her.

What Barbara had wanted was something immediate; but she expressed no

objection to the delay; and in his next communication Edmund told her

that the sculptor, of his own choice, had decided to increase the bust to

a full-length statue, so anxious was he to get a specimen of his skill

introduced to the notice of the English aristocracy. It was progressing

well, and rapidly.

Meanwhile, Barbara's attention began to be occupied at home with Yewsholt

Lodge, the house that her kind-hearted father was preparing for her

residence when her husband returned. It was a small place on the plan of

a large one--a cottage built in the form of a mansion, having a central

hall with a wooden gallery running round it, and rooms no bigger than

closets to follow this introduction. It stood on a slope so solitary,

and surrounded by trees so dense, that the birds who inhabited the boughs

sang at strange hours, as if they hardly could distinguish night from

day.

During the progress of repairs at this bower Barbara frequently visited

it. Though so secluded by the dense growth, it was near the high road,

and one day while looking over the fence she saw Lord Uplandtowers riding

past. He saluted her courteously, yet with mechanical stiffness, and did

not halt. Barbara went home, and continued to pray that she might never

cease to love her husband. After that she sickened, and did not come out

of doors again for a long time.

The year of education had extended to fourteen months, and the house was

in order for Edmond's return to take up his abode there with Barbara,

when, instead of the accustomed letter for her, came one to Sir John

Grebe in the handwriting of the said tutor, informing him of a terrible

catastrophe that had occurred to them at Venice. Mr Willowes and himself

had attended the theatre one night during the Carnival of the preceding

week, to witness the Italian comedy, when, owing to the carelessness of

one of the candle-snuffers, the theatre had caught fire, and been burnt

to the ground. Few persons had lost their lives, owing to the superhuman

exertions of some of the audience in getting out the senseless sufferers;

and, among them all, he who had risked his own life the most heroically

was Mr. Willowes. In re-entering for the fifth time to save his fellow-

creatures some fiery beams had fallen upon him, and he had been given up

for lost. He was, however, by the blessing of Providence, recovered,

with the life still in him, though he was fearfully burnt; and by almost

a miracle he seemed likely to survive, his constitution being wondrously

sound. He was, of course, unable to write, but he was receiving the

attention of several skilful surgeons. Further report would be made by

the next mail or by private hand.

The tutor said nothing in detail of poor Willowes's sufferings, but as

soon as the news was broken to Barbara she realized how intense they must

have been, and her immediate instinct was to rush to his side, though, on

consideration, the journey seemed impossible to her. Her health was by

no means what it had been, and to post across Europe at that season of

the year, or to traverse the Bay of Biscay in a sailing-craft, was an

undertaking that would hardly be justified by the result. But she was

anxious to go till, on reading to the end of the letter, her husband's

tutor was found to hint very strongly against such a step if it should be

contemplated, this being also the opinion of the surgeons. And though

Willowes's comrade refrained from giving his reasons, they disclosed

themselves plainly enough in the sequel.

The truth was that the worst of the wounds resulting from the fire had

occurred to his head and face--that handsome face which had won her heart

from her,--and both the tutor and the surgeons knew that for a sensitive

young woman to see him before his wounds had healed would cause more

misery to her by the shock than happiness to him by her ministrations.

Lady Grebe blurted out what Sir John and Barbara had thought, but had had

too much delicacy to express.

'Sure, 'tis mighty hard for you, poor Barbara, that the one little gift

he had to justify your rash choice of him--his wonderful good

looks--should be taken away like this, to leave 'ee no excuse at all for

your conduct in the world's eyes . . . Well, I wish you'd married

t'other--that do I!' And the lady sighed.

'He'll soon get right again,' said her father soothingly.

Such remarks as the above were not often made; but they were frequent

enough to cause Barbara an uneasy sense of self-stultification. She

determined to hear them no longer; and the house at Yewsholt being ready

and furnished, she withdrew thither with her maids, where for the first

time she could feel mistress of a home that would be hers and her

husband's exclusively, when he came.

After long weeks Willowes had recovered sufficiently to be able to write

himself; and slowly and tenderly he enlightened her upon the full extent

of his injuries. It was a mercy, he said, that he had not lost his sight

entirely; but he was thankful to say that he still retained full vision

in one eye, though the other was dark for ever. The sparing manner in

which he meted out particulars of his condition told Barbara how

appalling had been his experience. He was grateful for her assurance

that nothing could change her; but feared she did not fully realize that

he was so sadly disfigured as to make it doubtful if she would recognize

him. However, in spite of all, his heart was as true to her as it ever

had been.

Barbara saw from his anxiety how much lay behind. She replied that she

submitted to the decrees of Fate, and would welcome him in any shape as

soon as he could come. She told him of the pretty retreat in which she

had taken up her abode, pending their joint occupation of it, and did not

reveal how much she had sighed over the information that all his good

looks were gone. Still less did she say that she felt a certain

strangeness in awaiting him, the weeks they had lived together having

been so short by comparison with the length of his absence.

Slowly drew on the time when Willowes found himself well enough to come

home. He landed at Southampton, and posted thence towards Yewsholt.

Barbara arranged to go out to meet him as far as Lornton Inn--the spot

between the Forest and the Chase at which he had waited for night on the

evening of their elopement. Thither she drove at the appointed hour in a

little pony-chaise, presented her by her father on her birthday for her

especial use in her new house; which vehicle she sent back on arriving at

the inn, the plan agreed upon being that she should perform the return

journey with her husband in his hired coach.

There was not much accommodation for a lady at this wayside tavern; but,

as it was a fine evening in early summer, she did not mind--walking about

outside, and straining her eyes along the highway for the expected one.

But each cloud of dust that enlarged in the distance and drew near was

found to disclose a conveyance other than his post-chaise. Barbara

remained till the appointment was two hours passed, and then began to

fear that owing to some adverse wind in the Channel he was not coming

that night.

While waiting she was conscious of a curious trepidation that was not

entirely solicitude, and did not amount to dread; her tense state of

incertitude bordered both on disappointment and on relief. She had lived

six or seven weeks with an imperfectly educated yet handsome husband whom

now she had not seen for seventeen months, and who was so changed

physically by an accident that she was assured she would hardly know him.

Can we wonder at her compound state of mind?

But her immediate difficulty was to get away from Lornton Inn, for her

situation was becoming embarrassing. Like too many of Barbara's actions,

this drive had been undertaken without much reflection. Expecting to

wait no more than a few minutes for her husband in his post-chaise, and

to enter it with him, she had not hesitated to isolate herself by sending

back her own little vehicle. She now found that, being so well known in

this neighbourhood, her excursion to meet her long-absent husband was

exciting great interest. She was conscious that more eyes were watching

her from the inn-windows than met her own gaze. Barbara had decided to

get home by hiring whatever kind of conveyance the tavern afforded, when,

straining her eyes for the last time over the now darkening highway, she

perceived yet another dust-cloud drawing near. She paused; a chariot

ascended to the inn, and would have passed had not its occupant caught

sight of her standing expectantly. The horses were checked on the

instant.

'You here--and alone, my dear Mrs. Willowes?' said Lord Uplandtowers,

whose carriage it was.

She explained what had brought her into this lonely situation; and, as he

was going in the direction of her own home, she accepted his offer of a

seat beside him. Their conversation was embarrassed and fragmentary at

first; but when they had driven a mile or two she was surprised to find

herself talking earnestly and warmly to him: her impulsiveness was in

truth but the natural consequence of her late existence--a somewhat

desolate one by reason of the strange marriage she had made; and there is

no more indiscreet mood than that of a woman surprised into talk who has

long been imposing upon herself a policy of reserve. Therefore her

ingenuous heart rose with a bound into her throat when, in response to

his leading questions, or rather hints, she allowed her troubles to leak

out of her. Lord Uplandtowers took her quite to her own door, although

he had driven three miles out of his way to do so; and in handing her

down she heard from him a whisper of stern reproach: 'It need not have

been thus if you had listened to me!'

She made no reply, and went indoors. There, as the evening wore away,

she regretted more and more that she had been so friendly with Lord

Uplandtowers. But he had launched himself upon her so unexpectedly: if

she had only foreseen the meeting with him, what a careful line of

conduct she would have marked out! Barbara broke into a perspiration of

disquiet when she thought of her unreserve, and, in self-chastisement,

resolved to sit up till midnight on the bare chance of Edmond's return;

directing that supper should be laid for him, improbable as his arrival

till the morrow was.

The hours went past, and there was dead silence in and round about

Yewsholt Lodge, except for the soughing of the trees; till, when it was

near upon midnight, she heard the noise of hoofs and wheels approaching

the door. Knowing that it could only be her husband, Barbara instantly

went into the hall to meet him. Yet she stood there not without a

sensation of faintness, so many were the changes since their parting!

And, owing to her casual encounter with Lord Uplandtowers, his voice and

image still remained with her, excluding Edmond, her husband, from the

inner circle of her impressions.

But she went to the door, and the next moment a figure stepped inside, of

which she knew the outline, but little besides. Her husband was attired

in a flapping black cloak and slouched hat, appearing altogether as a

foreigner, and not as the young English burgess who had left her side.

When he came forward into the light of the lamp, she perceived with

surprise, and almost with fright, that he wore a mask. At first she had

not noticed this--there being nothing in its colour which would lead a

casual observer to think he was looking on anything but a real

countenance.

He must have seen her start of dismay at the unexpectedness of his

appearance, for he said hastily: 'I did not mean to come in to you like

this--I thought you would have been in bed. How good you are, dear

Barbara!' He put his arm round her, but he did not attempt to kiss her.

'O Edmond--it _is_ you?--it must be?' she said, with clasped hands, for

though his figure and movement were almost enough to prove it, and the

tones were not unlike the old tones, the enunciation was so altered as to

seem that of a stranger.

'I am covered like this to hide myself from the curious eyes of the inn-

servants and others,' he said, in a low voice. 'I will send back the

carriage and join you in a moment.'

'You are quite alone?'

'Quite. My companion stopped at Southampton.'

The wheels of the post-chaise rolled away as she entered the dining-room,

where the supper was spread; and presently he rejoined her there. He had

removed his cloak and hat, but the mask was still retained; and she could

now see that it was of special make, of some flexible material like silk,

coloured so as to represent flesh; it joined naturally to the front hair,

and was otherwise cleverly executed.

'Barbara--you look ill,' he said, removing his glove, and taking her

hand.

'Yes--I have been ill,' said she.

'Is this pretty little house ours?'

'O--yes.' She was hardly conscious of her words, for the hand he had

ungloved in order to take hers was contorted, and had one or two of its

fingers missing; while through the mask she discerned the twinkle of one

eye only.

'I would give anything to kiss you, dearest, now, at this moment!' he

continued, with mournful passionateness. 'But I cannot--in this guise.

The servants are abed, I suppose?'

'Yes,' said she. 'But I can call them? You will have some supper?'

He said he would have some, but that it was not necessary to call anybody

at that hour. Thereupon they approached the table, and sat down, facing

each other.

Despite Barbara's scared state of mind, it was forced upon her notice

that her husband trembled, as if he feared the impression he was

producing, or was about to produce, as much as, or more than, she. He

drew nearer, and took her hand again.

'I had this mask made at Venice,' he began, in evident embarrassment. 'My

darling Barbara--my dearest wife--do you think you--will mind when I take

it off? You will not dislike me--will you?'

'O Edmond, of course I shall not mind,' said she. 'What has happened to

you is our misfortune; but I am prepared for it.'

'Are you sure you are prepared?'

'O yes! You are my husband.'

'You really feel quite confident that nothing external can affect you?'

he said again, in a voice rendered uncertain by his agitation.

'I think I am--quite,' she answered faintly.

He bent his head. 'I hope, I hope you are,' he whispered.

In the pause which followed, the ticking of the clock in the hall seemed

to grow loud; and he turned a little aside to remove the mask. She

breathlessly awaited the operation, which was one of some tediousness,

watching him one moment, averting her face the next; and when it was done

she shut her eyes at the hideous spectacle that was revealed. A quick

spasm of horror had passed through her; but though she quailed she forced

herself to regard him anew, repressing the cry that would naturally have

escaped from her ashy lips. Unable to look at him longer, Barbara sank

down on the floor beside her chair, covering her eyes.

'You cannot look at me!' he groaned in a hopeless way. 'I am too

terrible an object even for you to bear! I knew it; yet I hoped against

it. Oh, this is a bitter fate--curse the skill of those Venetian

surgeons who saved me alive! . . . Look up, Barbara,' he continued

beseechingly; 'view me completely; say you loathe me, if you do loathe

me, and settle the case between us for ever!'

His unhappy wife pulled herself together for a desperate strain. He was

her Edmond; he had done her no wrong; he had suffered. A momentary

devotion to him helped her, and lifting her eyes as bidden she regarded

this human remnant, this _ecorche_, a second time. But the sight was too

much. She again involuntarily looked aside and shuddered.

'Do you think you can get used to this?' he said. 'Yes or no! Can you

bear such a thing of the charnel-house near you? Judge for yourself;

Barbara. Your Adonis, your matchless man, has come to this!'

The poor lady stood beside him motionless, save for the restlessness of

her eyes. All her natural sentiments of affection and pity were driven

clean out of her by a sort of panic; she had just the same sense of

dismay and fearfulness that she would have had in the presence of an

apparition. She could nohow fancy this to be her chosen one--the man she

had loved; he was metamorphosed to a specimen of another species. 'I do

not loathe you,' she said with trembling. 'But I am so horrified--so

overcome! Let me recover myself. Will you sup now? And while you do so

may I go to my room to--regain my old feeling for you? I will try, if I

may leave you awhile? Yes, I will try!'

Without waiting for an answer from him, and keeping her gaze carefully

averted, the frightened woman crept to the door and out of the room. She

heard him sit down to the table, as if to begin supper though, Heaven

knows, his appetite was slight enough after a reception which had

confirmed his worst surmises. When Barbara had ascended the stairs and

arrived in her chamber she sank down, and buried her face in the coverlet

of the bed.

Thus she remained for some time. The bed-chamber was over the dining-

room, and presently as she knelt Barbara heard Willowes thrust back his

chair, and rise to go into the hall. In five minutes that figure would

probably come up the stairs and confront her again; it,--this new and

terrible form, that was not her husband's. In the loneliness of this

night, with neither maid nor friend beside her, she lost all

self-control, and at the first sound of his footstep on the stairs,

without so much as flinging a cloak round her, she flew from the room,

ran along the gallery to the back staircase, which she descended, and,

unlocking the back door, let herself out. She scarcely was aware what

she had done till she found herself in the greenhouse, crouching on a

flower-stand.

Here she remained, her great timid eyes strained through the glass upon

the garden without, and her skirts gathered up, in fear of the field-mice

which sometimes came there. Every moment she dreaded to hear footsteps

which she ought by law to have longed for, and a voice that should have

been as music to her soul. But Edmond Willowes came not that way. The

nights were getting short at this season, and soon the dawn appeared, and

the first rays of the sun. By daylight she had less fear than in the

dark. She thought she could meet him, and accustom herself to the

spectacle.

So the much-tried young woman unfastened the door of the hot-house, and

went back by the way she had emerged a few hours ago. Her poor husband

was probably in bed and asleep, his journey having been long; and she

made as little noise as possible in her entry. The house was just as she

had left it, and she looked about in the hall for his cloak and hat, but

she could not see them; nor did she perceive the small trunk which had

been all that he brought with him, his heavier baggage having been left

at Southampton for the road-waggon. She summoned courage to mount the

stairs; the bedroom-door was open as she had left it. She fearfully

peeped round; the bed had not been pressed. Perhaps he had lain down on

the dining-room sofa. She descended and entered; he was not there. On

the table beside his unsoiled plate lay a note, hastily written on the

leaf of a pocket-book. It was something like this:

'MY EVER-BELOVED WIFE--The effect that my forbidding appearance has

produced upon you was one which I foresaw as quite possible. I hoped

against it, but foolishly so. I was aware that no _human_ love could

survive such a catastrophe. I confess I thought yours _divine_; but,

after so long an absence, there could not be left sufficient warmth to

overcome the too natural first aversion. It was an experiment, and it

has failed. I do not blame you; perhaps, even, it is better so. Good-

bye. I leave England for one year. You will see me again at the

expiration of that time, if I live. Then I will ascertain your true

feeling; and, if it be against me, go away for ever. E. W.'

On recovering from her surprise, Barbara's remorse was such that she felt

herself absolutely unforgiveable. She should have regarded him as an

afflicted being, and not have been this slave to mere eyesight, like a

child. To follow him and entreat him to return was her first thought.

But on making inquiries she found that nobody had seen him: he had

silently disappeared.

More than this, to undo the scene of last night was impossible. Her

terror had been too plain, and he was a man unlikely to be coaxed back by

her efforts to do her duty. She went and confessed to her parents all

that had occurred; which, indeed, soon became known to more persons than

those of her own family.

The year passed, and he did not return; and it was doubted if he were

alive. Barbara's contrition for her unconquerable repugnance was now

such that she longed to build a church-aisle, or erect a monument, and

devote herself to deeds of charity for the remainder of her days. To

that end she made inquiry of the excellent parson under whom she sat on

Sundays, at a vertical distance of twenty feet. But he could only adjust

his wig and tap his snuff-box; for such was the lukewarm state of

religion in those days, that not an aisle, steeple, porch, east window,

Ten-Commandment board, lion-and-unicorn, or brass candlestick, was

required anywhere at all in the neighbourhood as a votive offering from a

distracted soul--the last century contrasting greatly in this respect

with the happy times in which we live, when urgent appeals for

contributions to such objects pour in by every morning's post, and nearly

all churches have been made to look like new pennies. As the poor lady

could not ease her conscience this way, she determined at least to be

charitable, and soon had the satisfaction of finding her porch thronged

every morning by the raggedest, idlest, most drunken, hypocritical, and

worthless tramps in Christendom.

But human hearts are as prone to change as the leaves of the creeper on

the wall, and in the course of time, hearing nothing of her husband,

Barbara could sit unmoved whilst her mother and friends said in her

hearing, 'Well, what has happened is for the best.' She began to think

so herself; for even now she could not summon up that lopped and

mutilated form without a shiver, though whenever her mind flew back to

her early wedded days, and the man who had stood beside her then, a

thrill of tenderness moved her, which if quickened by his living presence

might have become strong. She was young and inexperienced, and had

hardly on his late return grown out of the capricious fancies of

girlhood.

But he did not come again, and when she thought of his word that he would

return once more, if living, and how unlikely he was to break his word,

she gave him up for dead. So did her parents; so also did another

person--that man of silence, of irresistible incisiveness, of still

countenance, who was as awake as seven sentinels when he seemed to be as

sound asleep as the figures on his family monument. Lord Uplandtowers,

though not yet thirty, had chuckled like a caustic fogey of threescore

when he heard of Barbara's terror and flight at her husband's return, and

of the latter's prompt departure. He felt pretty sure, however, that

Willowes, despite his hurt feelings, would have reappeared to claim his

bright-eyed property if he had been alive at the end of the twelve

months.

As there was no husband to live with her, Barbara had relinquished the

house prepared for them by her father, and taken up her abode anew at

Chene Manor, as in the days of her girlhood. By degrees the episode with

Edmond Willowes seemed but a fevered dream, and as the months grew to

years Lord Uplandtowers' friendship with the people at Chene--which had

somewhat cooled after Barbara's elopement--revived considerably, and he

again became a frequent visitor there. He could not make the most

trivial alteration or improvement at Knollingwood Hall, where he lived,

without riding off to consult with his friend Sir John at Chene; and thus

putting himself frequently under her eyes, Barbara grew accustomed to

him, and talked to him as freely as to a brother. She even began to look

up to him as a person of authority, judgment, and prudence; and though

his severity on the bench towards poachers, smugglers, and

turnip-stealers was matter of common notoriety, she trusted that much of

what was said might be misrepresentation.

Thus they lived on till her husband's absence had stretched to years, and

there could be no longer any doubt of his death. A passionless manner of

renewing his addresses seemed no longer out of place in Lord

Uplandtowers. Barbara did not love him, but hers was essentially one of

those sweet-pea or with-wind natures which require a twig of stouter

fibre than its own to hang upon and bloom. Now, too, she was older, and

admitted to herself that a man whose ancestor had run scores of Saracens

through and through in fighting for the site of the Holy Sepulchre was a

more desirable husband, socially considered, than one who could only

claim with certainty to know that his father and grandfather were

respectable burgesses.

Sir John took occasion to inform her that she might legally consider

herself a widow; and, in brief; Lord Uplandtowers carried his point with

her, and she married him, though he could never get her to own that she

loved him as she had loved Willowes. In my childhood I knew an old lady

whose mother saw the wedding, and she said that when Lord and Lady

Uplandtowers drove away from her father's house in the evening it was in

a coach-and-four, and that my lady was dressed in green and silver, and

wore the gayest hat and feather that ever were seen; though whether it

was that the green did not suit her complexion, or otherwise, the

Countess looked pale, and the reverse of blooming. After their marriage

her husband took her to London, and she saw the gaieties of a season

there; then they returned to Knollingwood Hall, and thus a year passed

away.

Before their marriage her husband had seemed to care but little about her

inability to love him passionately. 'Only let me win you,' he had said,

'and I will submit to all that.' But now her lack of warmth seemed to

irritate him, and he conducted himself towards her with a resentfulness

which led to her passing many hours with him in painful silence. The

heir-presumptive to the title was a remote relative, whom Lord

Uplandtowers did not exclude from the dislike he entertained towards many

persons and things besides, and he had set his mind upon a lineal

successor. He blamed her much that there was no promise of this, and

asked her what she was good for.

On a particular day in her gloomy life a letter, addressed to her as Mrs.

Willowes, reached Lady Uplandtowers from an unexpected quarter. A

sculptor in Pisa, knowing nothing of her second marriage, informed her

that the long-delayed life-size statue of Mr. Willowes, which, when her

husband left that city, he had been directed to retain till it was sent

for, was still in his studio. As his commission had not wholly been

paid, and the statue was taking up room he could ill spare, he should be

glad to have the debt cleared off, and directions where to forward the

figure. Arriving at a time when the Countess was beginning to have

little secrets (of a harmless kind, it is true) from her husband, by

reason of their growing estrangement, she replied to this letter without

saying a word to Lord Uplandtowers, sending off the balance that was

owing to the sculptor, and telling him to despatch the statue to her

without delay.

It was some weeks before it arrived at Knollingwood Hall, and, by a

singular coincidence, during the interval she received the first

absolutely conclusive tidings of her Edmond's death. It had taken place

years before, in a foreign land, about six months after their parting,

and had been induced by the sufferings he had already undergone, coupled

with much depression of spirit, which had caused him to succumb to a

slight ailment. The news was sent her in a brief and formal letter from

some relative of Willowes's in another part of England.

Her grief took the form of passionate pity for his misfortunes, and of

reproach to herself for never having been able to conquer her aversion to

his latter image by recollection of what Nature had originally made him.

The sad spectacle that had gone from earth had never been her Edmond at

all to her. O that she could have met him as he was at first! Thus

Barbara thought. It was only a few days later that a waggon with two

horses, containing an immense packing-case, was seen at breakfast-time

both by Barbara and her husband to drive round to the back of the house,

and by-and-by they were informed that a case labelled 'Sculpture' had

arrived for her ladyship.

'What can that be?' said Lord Uplandtowers.

'It is the statue of poor Edmond, which belongs to me, but has never been

sent till now,' she answered.

'Where are you going to put it?' asked he.

'I have not decided,' said the Countess. 'Anywhere, so that it will not

annoy you.'

'Oh, it won't annoy me,' says he.

When it had been unpacked in a back room of the house, they went to

examine it. The statue was a full-length figure, in the purest Carrara

marble, representing Edmond Willowes in all his original beauty, as he

had stood at parting from her when about to set out on his travels; a

specimen of manhood almost perfect in every line and contour. The work

had been carried out with absolute fidelity.

'Phoebus-Apollo, sure,' said the Earl of Uplandtowers, who had never seen

Willowes, real or represented, till now.

Barbara did not hear him. She was standing in a sort of trance before

the first husband, as if she had no consciousness of the other husband at

her side. The mutilated features of Willowes had disappeared from her

mind's eye; this perfect being was really the man she had loved, and not

that later pitiable figure; in whom love and truth should have seen this

image always, but had not done so.

It was not till Lord Uplandtowers said roughly, 'Are you going to stay

here all the morning worshipping him?' that she roused herself.

Her husband had not till now the least suspicion that Edmond Willowes

originally looked thus, and he thought how deep would have been his

jealousy years ago if Willowes had been known to him. Returning to the

Hall in the afternoon he found his wife in the gallery, whither the

statue had been brought.

She was lost in reverie before it, just as in the morning.

'What are you doing?' he asked.

She started and turned. 'I am looking at my husb--- my statue, to see if

it is well done,' she stammered. 'Why should I not?'

'There's no reason why,' he said. 'What are you going to do with the

monstrous thing? It can't stand here for ever.'

'I don't wish it,' she said. 'I'll find a place.'

In her boudoir there was a deep recess, and while the Earl was absent

from home for a few days in the following week, she hired joiners from

the village, who under her directions enclosed the recess with a panelled

door. Into the tabernacle thus formed she had the statue placed,

fastening the door with a lock, the key of which she kept in her pocket.

When her husband returned he missed the statue from the gallery, and,

concluding that it had been put away out of deference to his feelings,

made no remark. Yet at moments he noticed something on his lady's face

which he had never noticed there before. He could not construe it; it

was a sort of silent ecstasy, a reserved beatification. What had become

of the statue he could not divine, and growing more and more curious,

looked about here and there for it till, thinking of her private room, he

went towards that spot. After knocking he heard the shutting of a door,

and the click of a key; but when he entered his wife was sitting at work,

on what was in those days called knotting. Lord Uplandtowers' eye fell

upon the newly-painted door where the recess had formerly been.

'You have been carpentering in my absence then, Barbara,' he said

carelessly.

'Yes, Uplandtowers.'

'Why did you go putting up such a tasteless enclosure as that--spoiling

the handsome arch of the alcove?'

'I wanted more closet-room; and I thought that as this was my own

apartment--'

'Of course,' he returned. Lord Uplandtowers knew now where the statue of

young Willowes was.

One night, or rather in the smallest hours of the morning, he missed the

Countess from his side. Not being a man of nervous imaginings he fell

asleep again before he had much considered the matter, and the next

morning had forgotten the incident. But a few nights later the same

circumstances occurred. This time he fully roused himself; but before he

had moved to search for her, she entered the chamber in her

dressing-gown, carrying a candle, which she extinguished as she

approached, deeming him asleep. He could discover from her breathing

that she was strangely moved; but not on this occasion either did he

reveal that he had seen her. Presently, when she had lain down,

affecting to wake, he asked her some trivial questions. 'Yes, _Edmond_,'

she replied absently.

Lord Uplandtowers became convinced that she was in the habit of leaving

the chamber in this queer way more frequently than he had observed, and

he determined to watch. The next midnight he feigned deep sleep, and

shortly after perceived her stealthily rise and let herself out of the

room in the dark. He slipped on some clothing and followed. At the

farther end of the corridor, where the clash of flint and steel would be

out of the hearing of one in the bed-chamber, she struck a light. He

stepped aside into an empty room till she had lit a taper and had passed

on to her boudoir. In a minute or two he followed. Arrived at the door

of the boudoir, he beheld the door of the private recess open, and

Barbara within it, standing with her arms clasped tightly round the neck

of her Edmond, and her mouth on his. The shawl which she had thrown

round her nightclothes had slipped from her shoulders, and her long white

robe and pale face lent her the blanched appearance of a second statue

embracing the first. Between her kisses, she apostrophized it in a low

murmur of infantine tenderness:

'My only love--how could I be so cruel to you, my perfect one--so good

and true--I am ever faithful to you, despite my seeming infidelity! I

always think of you--dream of you--during the long hours of the day, and

in the night-watches! O Edmond, I am always yours!' Such words as

these, intermingled with sobs, and streaming tears, and dishevelled hair,

testified to an intensity of feeling in his wife which Lord Uplandtowers

had not dreamed of her possessing.

'Ha, ha!' says he to himself. 'This is where we evaporate--this is where

my hopes of a successor in the title dissolve--ha, ha! This must be seen

to, verily!'

Lord Uplandtowers was a subtle man when once he set himself to strategy;

though in the present instance he never thought of the simple stratagem

of constant tenderness. Nor did he enter the room and surprise his wife

as a blunderer would have done, but went back to his chamber as silently

as he had left it. When the Countess returned thither, shaken by spent

sobs and sighs, he appeared to be soundly sleeping as usual. The next

day he began his countermoves by making inquiries as to the whereabouts

of the tutor who had travelled with his wife's first husband; this

gentleman, he found, was now master of a grammar-school at no great

distance from Knollingwood. At the first convenient moment Lord

Uplandtowers went thither and obtained an interview with the said

gentleman. The schoolmaster was much gratified by a visit from such an

influential neighbour, and was ready to communicate anything that his

lordship desired to know.

After some general conversation on the school and its progress, the

visitor observed that he believed the schoolmaster had once travelled a

good deal with the unfortunate Mr. Willowes, and had been with him on the

occasion of his accident. He, Lord Uplandtowers, was interested in

knowing what had really happened at that time, and had often thought of

inquiring. And then the Earl not only heard by word of mouth as much as

he wished to know, but, their chat becoming more intimate, the

schoolmaster drew upon paper a sketch of the disfigured head, explaining

with bated breath various details in the representation.

'It was very strange and terrible!' said Lord Uplandtowers, taking the

sketch in his hand. 'Neither nose nor ears!'

A poor man in the town nearest to Knollingwood Hall, who combined the art

of sign-painting with ingenious mechanical occupations, was sent for by

Lord Uplandtowers to come to the Hall on a day in that week when the

Countess had gone on a short visit to her parents. His employer made the

man understand that the business in which his assistance was demanded was

to be considered private, and money insured the observance of this

request. The lock of the cupboard was picked, and the ingenious mechanic

and painter, assisted by the schoolmaster's sketch, which Lord

Uplandtowers had put in his pocket, set to work upon the god-like

countenance of the statue under my lord's direction. What the fire had

maimed in the original the chisel maimed in the copy. It was a fiendish

disfigurement, ruthlessly carried out, and was rendered still more

shocking by being tinted to the hues of life, as life had been after the

wreck.

Six hours after, when the workman was gone, Lord Uplandtowers looked upon

the result, and smiled grimly, and said:

'A statue should represent a man as he appeared in life, and that's as he

appeared. Ha! ha! But 'tis done to good purpose, and not idly.'

He locked the door of the closet with a skeleton key, and went his way to

fetch the Countess home.

That night she slept, but he kept awake. According to the tale, she

murmured soft words in her dream; and he knew that the tender converse of

her imaginings was held with one whom he had supplanted but in name. At

the end of her dream the Countess of Uplandtowers awoke and arose, and

then the enactment of former nights was repeated. Her husband remained

still and listened. Two strokes sounded from the clock in the pediment

without, when, leaving the chamber-door ajar, she passed along the

corridor to the other end, where, as usual, she obtained a light. So

deep was the silence that he could even from his bed hear her softly

blowing the tinder to a glow after striking the steel. She moved on into

the boudoir, and he heard, or fancied he heard, the turning of the key in

the closet-door. The next moment there came from that direction a loud

and prolonged shriek, which resounded to the farthest corners of the

house. It was repeated, and there was the noise of a heavy fall.

Lord Uplandtowers sprang out of bed. He hastened along the dark corridor

to the door of the boudoir, which stood ajar, and, by the light of the

candle within, saw his poor young Countess lying in a heap in her

nightdress on the floor of the closet. When he reached her side he found

that she had fainted, much to the relief of his fears that matters were

worse. He quickly shut up and locked in the hated image which had done

the mischief; and lifted his wife in his arms, where in a few instants

she opened her eyes. Pressing her face to his without saying a word, he

carried her back to her room, endeavouring as he went to disperse her

terrors by a laugh in her ear, oddly compounded of causticity,

predilection, and brutality.

'Ho--ho--ho!' says he. 'Frightened, dear one, hey? What a baby 'tis!

Only a joke, sure, Barbara--a splendid joke! But a baby should not go to

closets at midnight to look for the ghost of the dear departed! If it do

it must expect to be terrified at his aspect--ho--ho--ho!'

When she was in her bed-chamber, and had quite come to herself; though

her nerves were still much shaken, he spoke to her more sternly. 'Now,

my lady, answer me: do you love him--eh?'

'No--no!' she faltered, shuddering, with her expanded eyes fixed on her

husband. 'He is too terrible--no, no!'

'You are sure?'

'Quite sure!' replied the poor broken-spirited Countess. But her natural

elasticity asserted itself. Next morning he again inquired of her: 'Do

you love him now?'

She quailed under his gaze, but did not reply.

'That means that you do still, by G---!' he continued.

'It means that I will not tell an untruth, and do not wish to incense my

lord,' she answered, with dignity.

'Then suppose we go and have another look at him?' As he spoke, he

suddenly took her by the wrist, and turned as if to lead her towards the

ghastly closet.

'No--no! Oh--no!' she cried, and her desperate wriggle out of his hand

revealed that the fright of the night had left more impression upon her

delicate soul than superficially appeared.

'Another dose or two, and she will be cured,' he said to himself.

It was now so generally known that the Earl and Countess were not in

accord, that he took no great trouble to disguise his deeds in relation

to this matter. During the day he ordered four men with ropes and

rollers to attend him in the boudoir. When they arrived, the closet was

open, and the upper part of the statue tied up in canvas. He had it

taken to the sleeping-chamber. What followed is more or less matter of

conjecture. The story, as told to me, goes on to say that, when Lady

Uplandtowers retired with him that night, she saw near the foot of the

heavy oak four-poster, a tall dark wardrobe, which had not stood there

before; but she did not ask what its presence meant.

'I have had a little whim,' he explained when they were in the dark.

'Have you?' says she.

'To erect a little shrine, as it may be called.'

'A little shrine?'

'Yes; to one whom we both equally adore--eh? I'll show you what it

contains.'

He pulled a cord which hung covered by the bed-curtains, and the doors of

the wardrobe slowly opened, disclosing that the shelves within had been

removed throughout, and the interior adapted to receive the ghastly

figure, which stood there as it had stood in the boudoir, but with a wax-

candle burning on each side of it to throw the cropped and distorted

features into relief. She clutched him, uttered a low scream, and buried

her head in the bedclothes. 'Oh, take it away--please take it away!' she

implored.

'All in good time namely, when you love me best,' he returned calmly.

'You don't quite yet--eh?'

'I don't know--I think--O Uplandtowers, have mercy--I cannot bear it--O,

in pity, take it away!'

'Nonsense; one gets accustomed to anything. Take another gaze.'

In short, he allowed the doors to remain unclosed at the foot of the bed,

and the wax-tapers burning; and such was the strange fascination of the

grisly exhibition that a morbid curiosity took possession of the Countess

as she lay, and, at his repeated request, she did again look out from the

coverlet, shuddered, hid her eyes, and looked again, all the while

begging him to take it away, or it would drive her out of her senses. But

he would not do so as yet, and the wardrobe was not locked till dawn.

The scene was repeated the next night. Firm in enforcing his ferocious

correctives, he continued the treatment till the nerves of the poor lady

were quivering in agony under the virtuous tortures inflicted by her

lord, to bring her truant heart back to faithfulness.

The third night, when the scene had opened as usual, and she lay staring

with immense wild eyes at the horrid fascination, on a sudden she gave an

unnatural laugh; she laughed more and more, staring at the image, till

she literally shrieked with laughter: then there was silence, and he

found her to have become insensible. He thought she had fainted, but

soon saw that the event was worse: she was in an epileptic fit. He

started up, dismayed by the sense that, like many other subtle

personages, he had been too exacting for his own interests. Such love as

he was capable of, though rather a selfish gloating than a cherishing

solicitude, was fanned into life on the instant. He closed the wardrobe

with the pulley, clasped her in his arms, took her gently to the window,

and did all he could to restore her.

It was a long time before the Countess came to herself, and when she did

so, a considerable change seemed to have taken place in her emotions. She

flung her arms around him, and with gasps of fear abjectly kissed him

many times, at last bursting into tears. She had never wept in this

scene before.

'You'll take it away, dearest--you will!' she begged plaintively.

'If you love me.'

'I do--oh, I do!'

'And hate him, and his memory?'

'Yes--yes!'

'Thoroughly?'

'I cannot endure recollection of him!' cried the poor Countess slavishly.

'It fills me with shame--how could I ever be so depraved! I'll never

behave badly again, Uplandtowers; and you will never put the hated statue

again before my eyes?'

He felt that he could promise with perfect safety. 'Never,' said he.

'And then I'll love you,' she returned eagerly, as if dreading lest the

scourge should be applied anew. 'And I'll never, never dream of thinking

a single thought that seems like faithlessness to my marriage vow.'

The strange thing now was that this fictitious love wrung from her by

terror took on, through mere habit of enactment, a certain quality of

reality. A servile mood of attachment to the Earl became distinctly

visible in her contemporaneously with an actual dislike for her late

husband's memory. The mood of attachment grew and continued when the

statue was removed. A permanent revulsion was operant in her, which

intensified as time wore on. How fright could have effected such a

change of idiosyncrasy learned physicians alone can say; but I believe

such cases of reactionary instinct are not unknown.

The upshot was that the cure became so permanent as to be itself a new

disease. She clung to him so tightly, that she would not willingly be

out of his sight for a moment. She would have no sitting-room apart from

his, though she could not help starting when he entered suddenly to her.

Her eyes were well-nigh always fixed upon him. If he drove out, she

wished to go with him; his slightest civilities to other women made her

frantically jealous; till at length her very fidelity became a burden to

him, absorbing his time, and curtailing his liberty, and causing him to

curse and swear. If he ever spoke sharply to her now, she did not

revenge herself by flying off to a mental world of her own; all that

affection for another, which had provided her with a resource, was now a

cold black cinder.

From that time the life of this scared and enervated lady--whose

existence might have been developed to so much higher purpose but for the

ignoble ambition of her parents and the conventions of the time--was one

of obsequious amativeness towards a perverse and cruel man. Little

personal events came to her in quick succession--half a dozen, eight,

nine, ten such events,--in brief; she bore him no less than eleven

children in the eight following years, but half of them came prematurely

into the world, or died a few days old; only one, a girl, attained to

maturity; she in after years became the wife of the Honourable Mr.

Beltonleigh, who was created Lord D'Almaine, as may be remembered.

There was no living son and heir. At length, completely worn out in mind

and body, Lady Uplandtowers was taken abroad by her husband, to try the

effect of a more genial climate upon her wasted frame. But nothing

availed to strengthen her, and she died at Florence, a few months after

her arrival in Italy.

Contrary to expectation, the Earl of Uplandtowers did not marry again.

Such affection as existed in him--strange, hard, brutal as it was--seemed

untransferable, and the title, as is known, passed at his death to his

nephew. Perhaps it may not be so generally known that, during the

enlargement of the Hall for the sixth Earl, while digging in the grounds

for the new foundations, the broken fragments of a marble statue were

unearthed. They were submitted to various antiquaries, who said that, so

far as the damaged pieces would allow them to form an opinion, the statue

seemed to be that of a mutilated Roman satyr; or if not, an allegorical

figure of Death. Only one or two old inhabitants guessed whose statue

those fragments had composed.

I should have added that, shortly after the death of the Countess, an

excellent sermon was preached by the Dean of Melchester, the subject of

which, though names were not mentioned, was unquestionably suggested by

the aforesaid events. He dwelt upon the folly of indulgence in sensuous

love for a handsome form merely; and showed that the only rational and

virtuous growths of that affection were those based upon intrinsic worth.

In the case of the tender but somewhat shallow lady whose life I have

related, there is no doubt that an infatuation for the person of young

Willowes was the chief feeling that induced her to marry him; which was

the more deplorable in that his beauty, by all tradition, was the least

of his recommendations, every report bearing out the inference that he

must have been a man of steadfast nature, bright intelligence, and

promising life.

* * * * *

The company thanked the old surgeon for his story, which the rural dean

declared to be a far more striking one than anything he could hope to

tell. An elderly member of the Club, who was mostly called the Bookworm,

said that a woman's natural instinct of fidelity would, indeed, send back

her heart to a man after his death in a truly wonderful manner

sometimes--if anything occurred to put before her forcibly the original

affection between them, and his original aspect in her eyes,--whatever

his inferiority may have been, social or otherwise; and then a general

conversation ensued upon the power that a woman has of seeing the actual

in the representation, the reality in the dream--a power which (according

to the sentimental member) men have no faculty of equalling.

The rural dean thought that such cases as that related by the surgeon

were rather an illustration of passion electrified back to life than of a

latent, true affection. The story had suggested that he should try to

recount to them one which he had used to hear in his youth, and which

afforded an instance of the latter and better kind of feeling, his

heroine being also a lady who had married beneath her, though he feared

his narrative would be of a much slighter kind than the surgeon's. The

Club begged him to proceed, and the parson began.

DAME THE THIRD--THE MARCHIONESS OF STONEHENGE

By the Rural Dean

I would have you know, then, that a great many years ago there lived in a

classical mansion with which I used to be familiar, standing not a

hundred miles from the city of Melchester, a lady whose personal charms

were so rare and unparalleled that she was courted, flattered, and spoilt

by almost all the young noblemen and gentlemen in that part of Wessex.

For a time these attentions pleased her well. But as, in the words of

good Robert South (whose sermons might be read much more than they are),

the most passionate lover of sport, if tied to follow his hawks and

hounds every day of his life, would find the pursuit the greatest torment

and calamity, and would fly to the mines and galleys for his recreation,

so did this lofty and beautiful lady after a while become satiated with

the constant iteration of what she had in its novelty enjoyed; and by an

almost natural revulsion turned her regards absolutely netherward,

socially speaking. She perversely and passionately centred her affection

on quite a plain-looking young man of humble birth and no position at

all; though it is true that he was gentle and delicate in nature, of good

address, and guileless heart. In short, he was the parish-clerk's son,

acting as assistant to the land-steward of her father, the Earl of Avon,

with the hope of becoming some day a land-steward himself. It should be

said that perhaps the Lady Caroline (as she was called) was a little

stimulated in this passion by the discovery that a young girl of the

village already loved the young man fondly, and that he had paid some

attentions to her, though merely of a casual and good-natured kind.

Since his occupation brought him frequently to the manor-house and its

environs, Lady Caroline could make ample opportunities of seeing and

speaking to him. She had, in Chaucer's phrase, 'all the craft of fine

loving' at her fingers' ends, and the young man, being of a

readily-kindling heart, was quick to notice the tenderness in her eyes

and voice. He could not at first believe in his good fortune, having no

understanding of her weariness of more artificial men; but a time comes

when the stupidest sees in an eye the glance of his other half; and it

came to him, who was quite the reverse of dull. As he gained confidence

accidental encounters led to encounters by design; till at length when

they were alone together there was no reserve on the matter. They

whispered tender words as other lovers do, and were as devoted a pair as

ever was seen. But not a ray or symptom of this attachment was allowed

to show itself to the outer world.

Now, as she became less and less scrupulous towards him under the

influence of her affection, and he became more and more reverential under

the influence of his, and they looked the situation in the face together,

their condition seemed intolerable in its hopelessness. That she could

ever ask to be allowed to marry him, or could hold her tongue and quietly

renounce him, was equally beyond conception. They resolved upon a third

course, possessing neither of the disadvantages of these two: to wed

secretly, and live on in outward appearance the same as before. In this

they differed from the lovers of my friend's story.

Not a soul in the parental mansion guessed, when Lady Caroline came

coolly into the hall one day after a visit to her aunt, that, during that

visit, her lover and herself had found an opportunity of uniting

themselves till death should part them. Yet such was the fact; the young

woman who rode fine horses, and drove in pony-chaises, and was saluted

deferentially by every one, and the young man who trudged about, and

directed the tree-felling, and the laying out of fish-ponds in the park,

were husband and wife.

As they had planned, so they acted to the letter for the space of a month

and more, clandestinely meeting when and where they best could do so;

both being supremely happy and content. To be sure, towards the latter

part of that month, when the first wild warmth of her love had gone off,

the Lady Caroline sometimes wondered within herself how she, who might

have chosen a peer of the realm, baronet, knight; or, if serious-minded,

a bishop or judge of the more gallant sort who prefer young wives, could

have brought herself to do a thing so rash as to make this marriage;

particularly when, in their private meetings, she perceived that though

her young husband was full of ideas, and fairly well read, they had not a

single social experience in common. It was his custom to visit her after

nightfall, in her own house, when he could find no opportunity for an

interview elsewhere; and to further this course she would contrive to

leave unfastened a window on the ground-floor overlooking the lawn, by

entering which a back stair-case was accessible; so that he could climb

up to her apartments, and gain audience of his lady when the house was

still.

One dark midnight, when he had not been able to see her during the day,

he made use of this secret method, as he had done many times before; and

when they had remained in company about an hour he declared that it was

time for him to descend.

He would have stayed longer, but that the interview had been a somewhat

painful one. What she had said to him that night had much excited and

angered him, for it had revealed a change in her; cold reason had come to

his lofty wife; she was beginning to have more anxiety about her own

position and prospects than ardour for him. Whether from the agitation

of this perception or not, he was seized with a spasm; he gasped, rose,

and in moving towards the window for air he uttered in a short thick

whisper, 'Oh, my heart!'

With his hand upon his chest he sank down to the floor before he had gone

another step. By the time that she had relighted the candle, which had

been extinguished in case any eye in the opposite grounds should witness

his egress, she found that his poor heart had ceased to beat; and there

rushed upon her mind what his cottage-friends had once told her, that he

was liable to attacks of heart-disease, one of which, the doctor had

informed them, might some day carry him off.

Accustomed as she was to doctoring the other parishioners, nothing that

she could effect upon him in that kind made any difference whatever; and

his stillness, and the increasing coldness of his feet and hands,

disclosed too surely to the affrighted young woman that her husband was

dead indeed. For more than an hour, however, she did not abandon her

efforts to restore him; when she fully realized the fact that he was a

corpse she bent over his body, distracted and bewildered as to what step

she next should take.

Her first feelings had undoubtedly been those of passionate grief at the

loss of him; her second thoughts were concern at her own position as the

daughter of an earl. 'Oh, why, why, my unfortunate husband, did you die

in my chamber at this hour!' she said piteously to the corpse. 'Why not

have died in your own cottage if you would die! Then nobody would ever

have known of our imprudent union, and no syllable would have been

breathed of how I mismated myself for love of you!'

The clock in the courtyard striking the hour of one aroused Lady Caroline

from the stupor into which she had fallen, and she stood up, and went

towards the door. To awaken and tell her mother seemed her only way out

of this terrible situation; yet when she put her hand on the key to

unlock it she withdrew herself again. It would be impossible to call

even her mother's assistance without risking a revelation to all the

world through the servants; while if she could remove the body unassisted

to a distance she might avert suspicion of their union even now. This

thought of immunity from the social consequences of her rash act, of

renewed freedom, was indubitably a relief to her, for, as has been said,

the constraint and riskiness of her position had begun to tell upon the

Lady Caroline's nerves.

She braced herself for the effort, and hastily dressed herself; and then

dressed him. Tying his dead hands together with a handkerchief; she laid

his arms round her shoulders, and bore him to the landing and down the

narrow stairs. Reaching the bottom by the window, she let his body slide

slowly over the sill till it lay on the ground without. She then climbed

over the window-sill herself, and, leaving the sash open, dragged him on

to the lawn with a rustle not louder than the rustle of a broom. There

she took a securer hold, and plunged with him under the trees.

Away from the precincts of the house she could apply herself more

vigorously to her task, which was a heavy one enough for her, robust as

she was; and the exertion and fright she had already undergone began to

tell upon her by the time she reached the corner of a beech-plantation

which intervened between the manor-house and the village. Here she was

so nearly exhausted that she feared she might have to leave him on the

spot. But she plodded on after a while, and keeping upon the grass at

every opportunity she stood at last opposite the poor young man's garden-

gate, where he lived with his father, the parish-clerk. How she

accomplished the end of her task Lady Caroline never quite knew; but, to

avoid leaving traces in the road, she carried him bodily across the

gravel, and laid him down at the door. Perfectly aware of his ways of

coming and going, she searched behind the shutter for the cottage door-

key, which she placed in his cold hand. Then she kissed his face for the

last time, and with silent little sobs bade him farewell.

Lady Caroline retraced her steps, and reached the mansion without

hindrance; and to her great relief found the window open just as she had

left it. When she had climbed in she listened attentively, fastened the

window behind her, and ascending the stairs noiselessly to her room, set

everything in order, and returned to bed.

The next morning it was speedily echoed around that the amiable and

gentle young villager had been found dead outside his father's door,

which he had apparently been in the act of unlocking when he fell. The

circumstances were sufficiently exceptional to justify an inquest, at

which syncope from heart-disease was ascertained to be beyond doubt the

explanation of his death, and no more was said about the matter then.

But, after the funeral, it was rumoured that some man who had been

returning late from a distant horse-fair had seen in the gloom of night a

person, apparently a woman, dragging a heavy body of some sort towards

the cottage-gate, which, by the light of after events, would seem to have

been the corpse of the young fellow. His clothes were thereupon examined

more particularly than at first, with the result that marks of friction

were visible upon them here and there, precisely resembling such as would

be left by dragging on the ground.

Our beautiful and ingenious Lady Caroline was now in great consternation;

and began to think that, after all, it might have been better to honestly

confess the truth. But having reached this stage without discovery or

suspicion, she determined to make another effort towards concealment; and

a bright idea struck her as a means of securing it. I think I mentioned

that, before she cast eyes on the unfortunate steward's clerk, he had

been the beloved of a certain village damsel, the woodman's daughter, his

neighbour, to whom he had paid some attentions; and possibly he was

beloved of her still. At any rate, the Lady Caroline's influence on the

estates of her father being considerable, she resolved to seek an

interview with the young girl in furtherance of her plan to save her

reputation, about which she was now exceedingly anxious; for by this

time, the fit being over, she began to be ashamed of her mad passion for

her late husband, and almost wished she had never seen him.

In the course of her parish-visiting she lighted on the young girl

without much difficulty, and found her looking pale and sad, and wearing

a simple black gown, which she had put on out of respect for the young

man's memory, whom she had tenderly loved, though he had not loved her.

'Ah, you have lost your lover, Milly,' said Lady Caroline.

The young woman could not repress her tears. 'My lady, he was not quite

my lover,' she said. 'But I was his--and now he is dead I don't care to

live any more!'

'Can you keep a secret about him?' asks the lady; 'one in which his

honour is involved--which is known to me alone, but should be known to

you?'

The girl readily promised, and, indeed, could be safely trusted on such a

subject, so deep was her affection for the youth she mourned.

'Then meet me at his grave to-night, half-an-hour after sunset, and I

will tell it to you,' says the other.

In the dusk of that spring evening the two shadowy figures of the young

women converged upon the assistant-steward's newly-turfed mound; and at

that solemn place and hour, the one of birth and beauty unfolded her

tale: how she had loved him and married him secretly; how he had died in

her chamber; and how, to keep her secret, she had dragged him to his own

door.

'Married him, my lady!' said the rustic maiden, starting back.

'I have said so,' replied Lady Caroline. 'But it was a mad thing, and a

mistaken course. He ought to have married you. You, Milly, were

peculiarly his. But you lost him.'

'Yes,' said the poor girl; 'and for that they laughed at me. "Ha--ha,

you mid love him, Milly," they said; "but he will not love you!"'

'Victory over such unkind jeerers would be sweet,' said Lady Caroline.

'You lost him in life; but you may have him in death _as if_ you had had

him in life; and so turn the tables upon them.'

'How?' said the breathless girl.

The young lady then unfolded her plan, which was that Milly should go

forward and declare that the young man had contracted a secret marriage

(as he truly had done); that it was with her, Milly, his sweetheart; that

he had been visiting her in her cottage on the evening of his death;

when, on finding he was a corpse, she had carried him to his house to

prevent discovery by her parents, and that she had meant to keep the

whole matter a secret till the rumours afloat had forced it from her.

'And how shall I prove this?' said the woodman's daughter, amazed at the

boldness of the proposal.

'Quite sufficiently. You can say, if necessary, that you were married to

him at the church of St. Michael, in Bath City, in my name, as the first

that occurred to you, to escape detection. That was where he married me.

I will support you in this.'

'Oh--I don't quite like--'

'If you will do so,' said the lady peremptorily, 'I will always be your

father's friend and yours; if not, it will be otherwise. And I will give

you my wedding-ring, which you shall wear as yours.'

'Have you worn it, my lady?'

'Only at night.'

There was not much choice in the matter, and Milly consented. Then this

noble lady took from her bosom the ring she had never been able openly to

exhibit, and, grasping the young girl's hand, slipped it upon her finger

as she stood upon her lover's grave.

Milly shivered, and bowed her head, saying, 'I feel as if I had become a

corpse's bride!'

But from that moment the maiden was heart and soul in the substitution. A

blissful repose came over her spirit. It seemed to her that she had

secured in death him whom in life she had vainly idolized; and she was

almost content. After that the lady handed over to the young man's new

wife all the little mementoes and trinkets he had given herself; even to

a locket containing his hair.

The next day the girl made her so-called confession, which the simple

mourning she had already worn, without stating for whom, seemed to bear

out; and soon the story of the little romance spread through the village

and country-side, almost as far as Melchester. It was a curious

psychological fact that, having once made the avowal, Milly seemed

possessed with a spirit of ecstasy at her position. With the liberal sum

of money supplied to her by Lady Caroline she now purchased the garb of a

widow, and duly appeared at church in her weeds, her simple face looking

so sweet against its margin of crape that she was almost envied her state

by the other village-girls of her age. And when a woman's sorrow for her

beloved can maim her young life so obviously as it had done Milly's there

was, in truth, little subterfuge in the case. Her explanation tallied so

well with the details of her lover's latter movements--those strange

absences and sudden returnings, which had occasionally puzzled his

friends--that nobody supposed for a moment that the second actor in these

secret nuptials was other than she. The actual and whole truth would

indeed have seemed a preposterous assertion beside this plausible one, by

reason of the lofty demeanour of the Lady Caroline and the unassuming

habits of the late villager. There being no inheritance in question, not

a soul took the trouble to go to the city church, forty miles off, and

search the registers for marriage signatures bearing out so humble a

romance.

In a short time Milly caused a decent tombstone to be erected over her

nominal husband's grave, whereon appeared the statement that it was

placed there by his heartbroken widow, which, considering that the

payment for it came from Lady Caroline and the grief from Milly, was as

truthful as such inscriptions usually are, and only required pluralizing

to render it yet more nearly so.

The impressionable and complaisant Milly, in her character of widow, took

delight in going to his grave every day, and indulging in sorrow which

was a positive luxury to her. She placed fresh flowers on his grave, and

so keen was her emotional imaginativeness that she almost believed

herself to have been his wife indeed as she walked to and fro in her garb

of woe. One afternoon, Milly being busily engaged in this labour of love

at the grave, Lady Caroline passed outside the churchyard wall with some

of her visiting friends, who, seeing Milly there, watched her actions

with interest, remarked upon the pathos of the scene, and upon the

intense affection the young man must have felt for such a tender creature

as Milly. A strange light, as of pain, shot from the Lady Caroline's

eye, as if for the first time she begrudged to the young girl the

position she had been at such pains to transfer to her; it showed that a

slumbering affection for her husband still had life in Lady Caroline,

obscured and stifled as it was by social considerations.

An end was put to this smooth arrangement by the sudden appearance in the

churchyard one day of the Lady Caroline, when Milly had come there on her

usual errand of laying flowers. Lady Caroline had been anxiously

awaiting her behind the chancel, and her countenance was pale and

agitated.

'Milly!' she said, 'come here! I don't know how to say to you what I am

going to say. I am half dead!'

'I am sorry for your ladyship,' says Milly, wondering.

'Give me that ring!' says the lady, snatching at the girl's left hand.

Milly drew it quickly away.

'I tell you give it to me!' repeated Caroline, almost fiercely. 'Oh--but

you don't know why? I am in a grief and a trouble I did not expect!' And

Lady Caroline whispered a few words to the girl.

'O my lady!' said the thunderstruck Milly. 'What _will_ you do?'

'You must say that your statement was a wicked lie, an invention, a

scandal, a deadly sin--that I told you to make it to screen me! That it

was I whom he married at Bath. In short, we must tell the truth, or I am

ruined--body, mind, and reputation--for ever!'

But there is a limit to the flexibility of gentle-souled women. Milly by

this time had so grown to the idea of being one flesh with this young

man, of having the right to bear his name as she bore it; had so

thoroughly come to regard him as her husband, to dream of him as her

husband, to speak of him as her husband, that she could not relinquish

him at a moment's peremptory notice.

'No, no,' she said desperately, 'I cannot, I will not give him up! Your

ladyship took him away from me alive, and gave him back to me only when

he was dead. Now I will keep him! I am truly his widow. More truly

than you, my lady! for I love him and mourn for him, and call myself by

his dear name, and your ladyship does neither!'

'I _do_ love him!' cries Lady Caroline with flashing eyes, 'and I cling

to him, and won't let him go to such as you! How can I, when he is the

father of this poor babe that's coming to me? I must have him back

again! Milly, Milly, can't you pity and understand me, perverse girl

that you are, and the miserable plight that I am in? Oh, this

precipitancy--it is the ruin of women! Why did I not consider, and wait!

Come, give me back all that I have given you, and assure me you will

support me in confessing the truth!'

'Never, never!' persisted Milly, with woe-begone passionateness. 'Look

at this headstone! Look at my gown and bonnet of crape--this ring:

listen to the name they call me by! My character is worth as much to me

as yours is to you! After declaring my Love mine, myself his, taking his

name, making his death my own particular sorrow, how can I say it was not

so? No such dishonour for me! I will outswear you, my lady; and I shall

be believed. My story is so much the more likely that yours will be

thought false. But, O please, my lady, do not drive me to this! In pity

let me keep him!'

The poor nominal widow exhibited such anguish at a proposal which would

have been truly a bitter humiliation to her, that Lady Caroline was

warmed to pity in spite of her own condition.

'Yes, I see your position,' she answered. 'But think of mine! What can

I do? Without your support it would seem an invention to save me from

disgrace; even if I produced the register, the love of scandal in the

world is such that the multitude would slur over the fact, say it was a

fabrication, and believe your story. I do not know who were the

witnesses, or anything!'

In a few minutes these two poor young women felt, as so many in a strait

have felt before, that union was their greatest strength, even now; and

they consulted calmly together. The result of their deliberations was

that Milly went home as usual, and Lady Caroline also, the latter

confessing that very night to the Countess her mother of the marriage,

and to nobody else in the world. And, some time after, Lady Caroline and

her mother went away to London, where a little while later still they

were joined by Milly, who was supposed to have left the village to

proceed to a watering-place in the North for the benefit of her health,

at the expense of the ladies of the Manor, who had been much interested

in her state of lonely and defenceless widowhood.

Early the next year the widow Milly came home with an infant in her arms,

the family at the Manor House having meanwhile gone abroad. They did not

return from their tour till the autumn ensuing, by which time Milly and

the child had again departed from the cottage of her father the woodman,

Milly having attained to the dignity of dwelling in a cottage of her own,

many miles to the eastward of her native village; a comfortable little

allowance had moreover been settled on her and the child for life,

through the instrumentality of Lady Caroline and her mother.

Two or three years passed away, and the Lady Caroline married a

nobleman--the Marquis of Stonehenge--considerably her senior, who had

wooed her long and phlegmatically. He was not rich, but she led a placid

life with him for many years, though there was no child of the marriage.

Meanwhile Milly's boy, as the youngster was called, and as Milly herself

considered him, grew up, and throve wonderfully, and loved her as she

deserved to be loved for her devotion to him, in whom she every day

traced more distinctly the lineaments of the man who had won her girlish

heart, and kept it even in the tomb.

She educated him as well as she could with the limited means at her

disposal, for the allowance had never been increased, Lady Caroline, or

the Marchioness of Stonehenge as she now was, seeming by degrees to care

little what had become of them. Milly became extremely ambitious on the

boy's account; she pinched herself almost of necessaries to send him to

the Grammar School in the town to which they retired, and at twenty he

enlisted in a cavalry regiment, joining it with a deliberate intent of

making the Army his profession, and not in a freak of idleness. His

exceptional attainments, his manly bearing, his steady conduct, speedily

won him promotion, which was furthered by the serious war in which this

country was at that time engaged. On his return to England after the

peace he had risen to the rank of riding-master, and was soon after

advanced another stage, and made quartermaster, though still a young man.

His mother--his corporeal mother, that is, the Marchioness of

Stonehenge--heard tidings of this unaided progress; it reawakened her

maternal instincts, and filled her with pride. She became keenly

interested in her successful soldier-son; and as she grew older much

wished to see him again, particularly when, the Marquis dying, she was

left a solitary and childless widow. Whether or not she would have gone

to him of her own impulse I cannot say; but one day, when she was driving

in an open carriage in the outskirts of a neighbouring town, the troops

lying at the barracks hard by passed her in marching order. She eyed

them narrowly, and in the finest of the horsemen recognized her son from

his likeness to her first husband.

This sight of him doubly intensified the motherly emotions which had lain

dormant in her for so many years, and she wildly asked herself how she

could so have neglected him? Had she possessed the true courage of

affection she would have owned to her first marriage, and have reared him

as her son! What would it have mattered if she had never obtained this

precious coronet of pearls and gold leaves, by comparison with the gain

of having the love and protection of such a noble and worthy son? These

and other sad reflections cut the gloomy and solitary lady to the heart;

and she repented of her pride in disclaiming her first husband more

bitterly than she had ever repented of her infatuation in marrying him.

Her yearning was so strong, that at length it seemed to her that she

could not live without announcing herself to him as his mother. Come

what might, she would do it: late as it was, she would have him away from

that woman whom she began to hate with the fierceness of a deserted

heart, for having taken her place as the mother of her only child. She

felt confidently enough that her son would only too gladly exchange a

cottage-mother for one who was a peeress of the realm. Being now, in her

widowhood, free to come and go as she chose, without question from

anybody, Lady Stonehenge started next day for the little town where Milly

yet lived, still in her robes of sable for the lost lover of her youth.

'He is _my_ son,' said the Marchioness, as soon as she was alone in the

cottage with Milly. 'You must give him back to me, now that I am in a

position in which I can defy the world's opinion. I suppose he comes to

see you continually?'

'Every month since he returned from the war, my lady. And sometimes he

stays two or three days, and takes me about seeing sights everywhere!'

She spoke with quiet triumph.

'Well, you will have to give him up,' said the Marchioness calmly. 'It

shall not be the worse for you--you may see him when you choose. I am

going to avow my first marriage, and have him with me.'

'You forget that there are two to be reckoned with, my lady. Not only

me, but himself.'

'That can be arranged. You don't suppose that he wouldn't--' But not

wishing to insult Milly by comparing their positions, she said, 'He is my

own flesh and blood, not yours.'

'Flesh and blood's nothing!' said Milly, flashing with as much scorn as a

cottager could show to a peeress, which, in this case, was not so little

as may be supposed. 'But I will agree to put it to him, and let him

settle it for himself.'

'That's all I require,' said Lady Stonehenge. 'You must ask him to come,

and I will meet him here.'

The soldier was written to, and the meeting took place. He was not so

much astonished at the disclosure of his parentage as Lady Stonehenge had

been led to expect, having known for years that there was a little

mystery about his birth. His manner towards the Marchioness, though

respectful, was less warm than she could have hoped. The alternatives as

to his choice of a mother were put before him. His answer amazed and

stupefied her.

'No, my lady,' he said. 'Thank you much, but I prefer to let things be

as they have been. My father's name is mine in any case. You see, my

lady, you cared little for me when I was weak and helpless; why should I

come to you now I am strong? She, dear devoted soul [pointing to Milly],

tended me from my birth, watched over me, nursed me when I was ill, and

deprived herself of many a little comfort to push me on. I cannot love

another mother as I love her. She _is_ my mother, and I will always be

her son!' As he spoke he put his manly arm round Milly's neck, and

kissed her with the tenderest affection.

The agony of the poor Marchioness was pitiable. 'You kill me!' she said,

between her shaking sobs. 'Cannot you--love--me--too?'

'No, my lady. If I must say it, you were ashamed of my poor father, who

was a sincere and honest man; therefore, I am ashamed of you.'

Nothing would move him; and the suffering woman at last gasped,

'Cannot--oh, cannot you give one kiss to me--as you did to her? It is

not much--it is all I ask--all!'

'Certainly,' he replied.

He kissed her coldly, and the painful scene came to an end. That day was

the beginning of death to the unfortunate Marchioness of Stonehenge. It

was in the perverseness of her human heart that his denial of her should

add fuel to the fire of her craving for his love. How long afterwards

she lived I do not know with any exactness, but it was no great length of

time. That anguish that is sharper than a serpent's tooth wore her out

soon. Utterly reckless of the world, its ways, and its opinions, she

allowed her story to become known; and when the welcome end supervened

(which, I grieve to say, she refused to lighten by the consolations of

religion), a broken heart was the truest phrase in which to sum up its

cause.

* * * * *

The rural dean having concluded, some observations upon his tale were

made in due course. The sentimental member said that Lady Caroline's

history afforded a sad instance of how an honest human affection will

become shamefaced and mean under the frost of class-division and social

prejudices. She probably deserved some pity; though her offspring,

before he grew up to man's estate, had deserved more. There was no

pathos like the pathos of childhood, when a child found itself in a world

where it was not wanted, and could not understand the reason why. A tale

by the speaker, further illustrating the same subject, though with

different results from the last, naturally followed.

DAME THE FOURTH--LADY MOTTISFONT

By the Sentimental Member

Of all the romantic towns in Wessex, Wintoncester is probably the most

convenient for meditative people to live in; since there you have a

cathedral with a nave so long that it affords space in which to walk and

summon your remoter moods without continually turning on your heel, or

seeming to do more than take an afternoon stroll under cover from the

rain or sun. In an uninterrupted course of nearly three hundred steps

eastward, and again nearly three hundred steps westward amid those

magnificent tombs, you can, for instance, compare in the most leisurely

way the dry dustiness which ultimately pervades the persons of kings and

bishops with the damper dustiness that is usually the final shape of

commoners, curates, and others who take their last rest out of doors.

Then, if you are in love, you can, by sauntering in the chapels and

behind the episcopal chantries with the bright-eyed one, so steep and

mellow your ecstasy in the solemnities around, that it will assume a

rarer and finer tincture, even more grateful to the understanding, if not

to the senses, than that form of the emotion which arises from such

companionship in spots where all is life, and growth, and fecundity.

It was in this solemn place, whither they had withdrawn from the sight of

relatives on one cold day in March, that Sir Ashley Mottisfont asked in

marriage, as his second wife, Philippa, the gentle daughter of plain

Squire Okehall. Her life had been an obscure one thus far; while Sir

Ashley, though not a rich man, had a certain distinction about him; so

that everybody thought what a convenient, elevating, and, in a word,

blessed match it would be for such a supernumerary as she. Nobody

thought so more than the amiable girl herself. She had been smitten with

such affection for him that, when she walked the cathedral aisles at his

side on the before-mentioned day, she did not know that her feet touched

hard pavement; it seemed to her rather that she was floating in space.

Philippa was an ecstatic, heart-thumping maiden, and could not understand

how she had deserved to have sent to her such an illustrious lover, such

a travelled personage, such a handsome man.

When he put the question, it was in no clumsy language, such as the

ordinary bucolic county landlords were wont to use on like quivering

occasions, but as elegantly as if he had been taught it in Enfield's

_Speaker_. Yet he hesitated a little--for he had something to add.

'My pretty Philippa,' he said (she was not very pretty by the way), 'I

have, you must know, a little girl dependent upon me: a little waif I

found one day in a patch of wild oats [such was this worthy baronet's

humour] when I was riding home: a little nameless creature, whom I wish

to take care of till she is old enough to take care of herself; and to

educate in a plain way. She is only fifteen months old, and is at

present in the hands of a kind villager's wife in my parish. Will you

object to give some attention to the little thing in her helplessness?'

It need hardly be said that our innocent young lady, loving him so deeply

and joyfully as she did, replied that she would do all she could for the

nameless child; and, shortly afterwards, the pair were married in the

same cathedral that had echoed the whispers of his declaration, the

officiating minister being the Bishop himself; a venerable and

experienced man, so well accomplished in uniting people who had a mind

for that sort of experiment, that the couple, with some sense of

surprise, found themselves one while they were still vaguely gazing at

each other as two independent beings.

After this operation they went home to Deansleigh Park, and made a

beginning of living happily ever after. Lady Mottisfont, true to her

promise, was always running down to the village during the following

weeks to see the baby whom her husband had so mysteriously lighted on

during his ride home--concerning which interesting discovery she had her

own opinion; but being so extremely amiable and affectionate that she

could have loved stocks and stones if there had been no living creatures

to love, she uttered none of her thoughts. The little thing, who had

been christened Dorothy, took to Lady Mottisfont as if the baronet's

young wife had been her mother; and at length Philippa grew so fond of

the child that she ventured to ask her husband if she might have Dorothy

in her own home, and bring her up carefully, just as if she were her own.

To this he answered that, though remarks might be made thereon, he had no

objection; a fact which was obvious, Sir Ashley seeming rather pleased

than otherwise with the proposal.

After this they lived quietly and uneventfully for two or three years at

Sir Ashley Mottisfont's residence in that part of England, with as near

an approach to bliss as the climate of this country allows. The child

had been a godsend to Philippa, for there seemed no great probability of

her having one of her own: and she wisely regarded the possession of

Dorothy as a special kindness of Providence, and did not worry her mind

at all as to Dorothy's possible origin. Being a tender and impulsive

creature, she loved her husband without criticism, exhaustively and

religiously, and the child not much otherwise. She watched the little

foundling as if she had been her own by nature, and Dorothy became a

great solace to her when her husband was absent on pleasure or business;

and when he came home he looked pleased to see how the two had won each

other's hearts. Sir Ashley would kiss his wife, and his wife would kiss

little Dorothy, and little Dorothy would kiss Sir Ashley, and after this

triangular burst of affection Lady Mottisfont would say, 'Dear me--I

forget she is not mine!'

'What does it matter?' her husband would reply. 'Providence is

fore-knowing. He has sent us this one because he is not intending to

send us one by any other channel.'

Their life was of the simplest. Since his travels the baronet had taken

to sporting and farming; while Philippa was a pattern of domesticity.

Their pleasures were all local. They retired early to rest, and rose

with the cart-horses and whistling waggoners. They knew the names of

every bird and tree not exceptionally uncommon, and could foretell the

weather almost as well as anxious farmers and old people with corns.