CHAPTER I.

Produced by Clare Graham, using scans from the Internet Archive

JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY.

BY [M.E. Braddon] THE AUTHOR OF

"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET,"

ETC. ETC. ETC.

Published by Tinsley Brothers of London in 1863 (third edition).

THIS STORY

Is Dedicated

TO

MY MOTHER

CONTENTS.

VOLUME I

CHAPTER I. THE MAN WITH THE BANNER.

CHAPTER II. LITTLE MARY.

CHAPTER III. ABOUT THE LINCOLNSHIRE PROPERTY.

CHAPTER IV. GOING AWAY.

CHAPTER V. MARCHMONT TOWERS.

CHAPTER VI. THE YOUNG SOLDIER'S RETURN.

CHAPTER VII. OLIVIA.

CHAPTER VIII. "MY LIFE IS COLD, AND DARK, AND DREARY."

CHAPTER IX. "WHEN SHALL I CEASE TO BE ALL ALONE?"

CHAPTER X. MARY'S STEPMOTHER.

CHAPTER XI. THE DAY OF DESOLATION.

CHAPTER XII. PAUL.

CHAPTER XIII. OLIVIA'S DESPAIR.

CHAPTER XIV. DRIVEN AWAY.

* * * * *

VOLUME II.

CHAPTER I. MARY'S LETTER.

CHAPTER II. A NEW PROTECTOR.

CHAPTER III. PAUL'S SISTER.

CHAPTER IV. A STOLEN HONEYMOON.

CHAPTER V. SOUNDING THE DEPTHS.

CHAPTER VI. RISEN FROM THE GRAVE.

CHAPTER VII. FACE TO FACE.

CHAPTER VIII. THE PAINTING-ROOM BY THE RIVER.

CHAPTER IX. IN THE DARK.

CHAPTER X. THE PARAGRAPH IN THE NEWSPAPER.

CHAPTER XI. EDWARD ARUNDEL'S DESPAIR.

CHAPTER XII. EDWARD'S VISITORS.

CHAPTER XIII. ONE MORE SACRIFICE.

CHAPTER XIV. THE CHILD'S VOICE IN THE PAVILION BY THE WATER.

* * * * *

VOLUME III

CHAPTER I. CAPTAIN ARUNDEL'S REVENGE.

CHAPTER II. THE DESERTED CHAMBERS.

CHAPTER III. TAKING IT QUIETLY.

CHAPTER IV. MISS LAWFORD SPEAKS HER MIND.

CHAPTER V. THE RETURN OF THE WANDERER.

CHAPTER VI. A WIDOWER'S PROPOSAL.

CHAPTER VII. HOW THE TIDINGS WERE RECEIVED IN LINCOLNSHIRE.

CHAPTER VIII. MR. WESTON REFUSES TO BE TRAMPLED ON.

CHAPTER IX. "GOING TO BE MARRIED!"

CHAPTER X. THE TURNING OF THE TIDE.

CHAPTER XI. BELINDA'S WEDDING DAY.

CHAPTER XII. MARY'S STORY.

CHAPTER XIII. "ALL WITHIN IS DARK AS NIGHT."

CHAPTER XIV. "THERE IS CONFUSION WORSE THAN DEATH."

CHAPTER THE LAST. "DEAR IS THE MEMORY OF OUR WEDDED LIVES."

THE EPILOGUE.

JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY.

VOLUME I.

CHAPTER I.

THE MAN WITH THE BANNER.

The history of Edward Arundel, second son of Christopher Arundel

Dangerfield Arundel, of Dangerfield Park, Devonshire, began on a

certain dark winter's night upon which the lad, still a schoolboy, went

with his cousin, Martin Mostyn, to witness a blank-verse tragedy at one

of the London theatres.

There are few men who, looking back at the long story of their lives,

cannot point to one page in the record of the past at which the actual

history of life began. The page may come in the very middle of the

book, perhaps; perhaps almost at the end. But let it come where it

will, it is, after all, only the actual commencement. At an appointed

hour in man's existence, the overture which has been going on ever

since he was born is brought to a sudden close by the sharp vibration

of the prompter's signal-bell; the curtain rises, and the drama of life

begins. Very insignificant sometimes are the first scenes of the

play,--common-place, trite, wearisome; but watch them closely, and

interwoven with every word, dimly recognisable in every action, may be

seen the awful hand of Destiny. The story has begun: already we, the

spectators, can make vague guesses at the plot, and predicate the

solemn climax; it is only the actors who are ignorant of the meaning of

their several parts, and who are stupidly reckless of the obvious

catastrophe.

The story of young Arundel's life began when he was a light-hearted,

heedless lad of seventeen, newly escaped for a brief interval from the

care of his pastors and masters.

The lad had come to London on a Christmas visit to his father's sister,

a worldly-minded widow, with a great many sons and daughters, and an

income only large enough to enable her to keep up the appearances of

wealth essential to the family pride of one of the Arundels of

Dangerfield.

Laura Arundel had married a Colonel Mostyn, of the East India Company's

service, and had returned from India after a wandering life of some

years, leaving her dead husband behind her, and bringing away with her

five daughters and three sons, most of whom had been born under canvas.

Mrs. Mostyn bore her troubles bravely, and contrived to do more with

her pension, and an additional income of four hundred a year from a

small fortune of her own, than the most consummate womanly management

can often achieve. Her house in Montague Square was elegantly

furnished, her daughters were exquisitely dressed, her sons sensibly

educated, her dinners well cooked. She was not an agreeable woman; she

was perhaps, if any thing, too sensible,--so very sensible as to be

obviously intolerant of anything like folly in others. She was a good

mother; but by no means an indulgent one. She expected her sons to

succeed in life, and her daughters to marry rich men; and would have

had little patience with any disappointment in either of these

reasonable expectations. She was attached to her brother Christopher

Arundel, and she was very well pleased to spend the autumn months at

Dangerfield, where the hunting-breakfasts gave her daughters an

excellent platform for the exhibition of charming demi-toilettes and

social and domestic graces, perhaps more dangerous to the susceptible

hearts of rich young squires than the fascinations of a _valse a deux

temps_ or an Italian scena.

But the same Mrs. Mostyn, who never forgot to keep up her

correspondence with the owner of Dangerfield Park, utterly ignored the

existence of another brother, a certain Hubert Arundel, who had,

perhaps, much more need of her sisterly friendship than the wealthy

Devonshire squire. Heaven knows, the world seemed a lonely place to

this younger son, who had been educated for the Church, and was fain to

content himself with a scanty living in one of the dullest and dampest

towns in fenny Lincolnshire. His sister might have very easily made

life much more pleasant to the Rector of Swampington and his only

daughter; but Hubert Arundel was a great deal too proud to remind her

of this. If Mrs. Mostyn chose to forget him,--the brother and sister

had been loving friends and dear companions long ago, under the beeches

at Dangerfield,--she was welcome to do so. She was better off than he

was; and it is to be remarked, that if A's income is three hundred a

year, and B's a thousand, the chances are as seven to three that B will

forget any old intimacy that may have existed between himself and A.

Hubert Arundel had been wild at college, and had put his autograph

across so many oblong slips of blue paper, acknowledging value received

that had been only half received, that by the time the claims of all

the holders of these portentous morsels of stamped paper had been

satisfied, the younger son's fortune had melted away, leaving its

sometime possessor the happy owner of a pair of pointers, a couple of

guns by crack makers, a good many foils, single-sticks, boxing-gloves,

wire masks, basket helmets, leathern leg-guards, and other

paraphernalia, a complete set of the old _Sporting Magazine_, from 1792

to the current year, bound in scarlet morocco, several boxes of very

bad cigars, a Scotch terrier, and a pipe of undrinkable port.

Of all these possessions, only the undrinkable port now remained to

show that Hubert Arundel had once had a decent younger son's fortune,

and had succeeded most admirably in making ducks and drakes of it. The

poor about Swampington believed in the sweet red wine, which had been

specially concocted for Israelitish dealers in jewelry, cigars,

pictures, wines, and specie. The Rector's pensioners smacked their lips

over the mysterious liquid and confidently affirmed that it did them

more good than all the doctor's stuff the parish apothecary could send

them. Poor Hubert Arundel was well content to find that at least this

scanty crop of corn had grown up from the wild oats he had sown at

Cambridge. The wine pleased the poor creatures who drank it, and was

scarcely likely to do them any harm; and there was a reasonable

prospect that the last bottle would by-and-by pass out of the rectory

cellars, and with it the last token of that bitterly regretted past.

I have no doubt that Hubert Arundel felt the sting of his only sister's

neglect, as only a poor and proud man can feel such an insult; but he

never let any confession of this sentiment escape his lips; and when

Mrs. Mostyn, being seized with a fancy for doing this forgotten brother

a service, wrote him a letter of insolent advice, winding up with an

offer to procure his only child a situation as nursery governess, the

Rector of Swampington only crushed the missive in his strong hand, and

flung it into his study-fire, with a muttered exclamation that sounded

terribly like an oath.

"A _nursery_ governess!" he repeated, savagely; "yes; an underpaid

drudge, to teach children their A B C, and mend their frocks and make

their pinafores. I should like Mrs. Mostyn to talk to my little Livy

for half an hour. I think my girl would have put the lady down so

completely by the end of that time, that we should never hear any more

about nursery governesses."

He laughed bitterly as he repeated the obnoxious phrase; but his laugh

changed to a sigh.

Was it strange that the father should sigh as he remembered how he had

seen the awful hand of Death fall suddenly upon younger and stronger

men than himself? What if he were to die, and leave his only child

unmarried? What would become of her, with her dangerous gifts, with her

fatal dowry of beauty and intellect and pride?

"But she would never do any thing wrong," the father thought. "Her

religious principles are strong enough to keep her right under any

circumstances, in spite of any temptation. Her sense of duty is more

powerful than any other sentiment. She would never be false to that;

she would never be false to that."

In return for the hospitality of Dangerfield Park, Mrs. Mostyn was in

the habit of opening her doors to either Christopher Arundel or his

sons, whenever any one of the three came to London. Of course she

infinitely preferred seeing Arthur Arundel, the eldest son and heir,

seated at her well-spread table, and flirting with one of his pretty

cousins, than to be bored with his rackety younger brother, a noisy lad

of seventeen, with no better prospects than a commission in her

Majesty's service, and a hundred and fifty pounds a year to eke out his

pay; but she was, notwithstanding, graciously pleased to invite Edward

to spend his Christmas holidays in her comfortable household; and it

was thus it came to pass that on the 29th of December, in the year

1838, the story of Edward Arundel's life began in a stage-box at Drury

Lane Theatre.

The box had been sent to Mrs. Mostyn by the fashionable editor of a

fashionable newspaper; but that lady and her daughters being previously

engaged, had permitted the two boys to avail themselves of the

editorial privilege.

The tragedy was the dull production of a distinguished literary

amateur, and even the great actor who played the principal character

could not make the performance particularly enlivening. He certainly

failed in impressing Mr. Edward Arundel, who flung himself back in his

chair and yawned dolefully during the earlier part of the

entertainment.

"It ain't particularly jolly, is it, Martin?" he said naively, "Let's

go out and have some oysters, and come in again just before the

pantomime begins."

"Mamma made me promise that we wouldn't leave the theatre till we left

for good, Ned," his cousin answered; "and then we're to go straight

home in a cab."

Edward Arundel sighed.

"I wish we hadn't come till half-price, old fellow," he said drearily.

"If I'd known it was to be a tragedy, I wouldn't have come away from

the Square in such a hurry. I wonder why people write tragedies, when

nobody likes them."

He turned his back to the stage, and folded his arms upon the velvet

cushion of the box preparatory to indulging himself in a deliberate

inspection of the audience. Perhaps no brighter face looked upward that

night towards the glare and glitter of the great chandelier than that

of the fair-haired lad in the stage-box. His candid blue eyes beamed

with a more radiant sparkle than any of the myriad lights in the

theatre; a nimbus of golden hair shone about his broad white forehead;

glowing health, careless happiness, truth, good-nature, honesty, boyish

vivacity, and the courage of a young lion,--all were expressed in the

fearless smile, the frank yet half-defiant gaze. Above all, this lad of

seventeen looked especially what he was,--a thorough gentleman. Martin

Mostyn was prim and effeminate, precociously tired of life,

precociously indifferent to everything but his own advantage; but the

Devonshire boy's talk was still fragrant with the fresh perfume of

youth and innocence, still gay with the joyous recklessness of early

boyhood. He was as impatient for the noisy pantomime overture, and the

bright troops of fairies in petticoats of spangled muslin, as the most

inveterate cockney cooling his snub-nose against the iron railing of

the gallery. He was as ready to fall in love with the painted beauty of

the ill-paid ballet-girls, as the veriest child in the wide circle of

humanity about him. Fresh, untainted, unsuspicious, he looked out at

the world, ready to believe in everything and everybody.

"How you do fidget, Edward!" whispered Martin Mostyn peevishly; "why

don't you look at the stage? It's capital fun."

"Fun!"

"Yes; I don't mean the tragedy you know, but the supernumeraries. Did

you ever see such an awkward set of fellows in all your life? There's a

man there with weak legs and a heavy banner, that I've been watching

all the evening. He's more fun than all the rest of it put together."

Mr. Mostyn, being of course much too polite to point out the man in

question, indicated him with a twitch of his light eyebrows; and Edward

Arundel, following that indication, singled out the banner-holder from

a group of soldiers in medieval dress, who had been standing wearily

enough upon one side of the stage during a long, strictly private and

confidential dialogue between the princely hero of the tragedy and one

of his accommodating satellites. The lad uttered a cry of surprise as

he looked at the weak-legged banner-holder.

Mr. Mostyn turned upon his cousin with some vexation.

"I can't help it, Martin," exclaimed young Arundel; "I can't be

mistaken--yes--poor fellow, to think that he should come to this!--you

haven't forgotten him, Martin, surely?"

"Forgotten what--forgotten whom? My dear Edward, what _do_ you mean?"

"John Marchmont, the poor fellow who used to teach us mathematics at

Vernon's; the fellow the governor sacked because----"

"Well, what of him?"

"The poor chap with the banner!" exclaimed the boy, in a breathless

whisper; "don't you see, Martin? didn't you recognise him? It's

Marchmont, poor old Marchmont, that we used to chaff, and that the

governor sacked because he had a constitutional cough, and wasn't

strong enough for his work."

"Oh, yes, I remember him well enough," Mr. Mostyn answered,

indifferently. "Nobody could stand his cough, you know; and he was a

vulgar fellow, into the bargain."

"He wasn't a vulgar fellow," said Edward indignantly;--"there, there's

the curtain down again;--he belonged to a good family in Lincolnshire,

and was heir-presumptive to a stunning fortune. I've heard him say so

twenty times."

Martin Mostyn did not attempt to repress an involuntary sneer, which

curled his lips as his cousin spoke.

"Oh, I dare say you've heard _him_ say so, my dear boy," he murmured

superciliously.

"Ah, and it was true," cried Edward; "he wasn't a fellow to tell lies;

perhaps he'd have suited Mr. Vernon better if he had been. He had bad

health, and was weak, and all that sort of thing; but he wasn't a snob.

He showed me a signet-ring once that he used to wear on his

watch-chain----"

"A _silver_ watch-chain," simpered Mr. Mostyn, "just like a

carpenter's."

"Don't be such a supercilious cad, Martin. He was very kind to me, poor

Marchmont; and I know I was always a nuisance to him, poor old fellow;

for you know I never could get on with Euclid. I'm sorry to see him

here. Think, Martin, what an occupation for him! I don't suppose he

gets more than nine or ten shillings a week for it."

"A shilling a night is, I believe, the ordinary remuneration of a

stage-soldier. They pay as much for the real thing as for the sham, you

see; the defenders of our country risk their lives for about the same

consideration. Where are you going, Ned?"

Edward Arundel had left his place, and was trying to undo the door of

the box.

"To see if I can get at this poor fellow."

"You persist in declaring, then, that the man with the weak legs is our

old mathematical drudge? Well, I shouldn't wonder. The fellow was

coughing all through the five acts, and that's uncommonly like

Marchmont. You're surely not going to renew your acquaintance with

him?"

But young Arundel had just succeeded in opening the door, and he left

the box without waiting to answer his cousin's question. He made his

way very rapidly out of the theatre, and fought manfully through the

crowds who were waiting about the pit and gallery doors, until he found

himself at the stage-entrance. He had often looked with reverent wonder

at the dark portal; but he had never before essayed to cross the sacred

threshold. But the guardian of the gate to this theatrical paradise,

inhabited by fairies at a guinea a week, and baronial retainers at a

shilling a night, is ordinarily a very inflexible individual, not to be

corrupted by any mortal persuasion, and scarcely corruptible by the

more potent influence of gold or silver. Poor Edward's half-a-crown had

no effect whatever upon the stern door-keeper, who thanked him for his

donation, but told him that it was against his orders to let anybody go

up-stairs.

"But I want to see some one so particularly," the boy said eagerly.

"Don't you think you could manage it for me, you know? He's an old

friend of mine,--one of the supernu--what's-its-names?" added Edward,

stumbling over the word. "He carried a banner in the tragedy, you know;

and he's got such an awful cough, poor chap."

"Ze man who garried ze panner vith a gough," said the door-keeper

reflectively. He was an elderly German, and had kept guard at that

classic doorway for half-a-century or so; "Parking Cheremiah."

"Barking Jeremiah!"

"Yes, sir. They gall him Parking pecause he's berbetually goughin' his

poor veag head off; and they gall him Cheremiah pecause he's alvays

belangholy."

"Oh, do let me see him," cried Mr. Edward Arundel. "I know you can

manage it; so do, that's a good fellow. I tell you he's a friend of

mine, and quite a gentleman too. Bless you, there isn't a move in

mathematics he isn't up to; and he'll come into a fortune some of these

days--"

"Yaase," interrupted the door-keeper, sarcastically, "Zey bake von of

him pegause off dad."

"And can I see him?"

"I phill dry and vind him vor you. Here, you Chim," said the

door-keeper, addressing a dirty youth, who had just nailed an official

announcement of the next morning's rehearsal upon the back of a

stony-hearted swing-door, which was apt to jam the fingers of the

uninitiated,--"vot is ze name off zat zuber vith ze pad gough, ze man

zay gall Parking."

"Oh, that's Mortimore."

"To you know if he's on in ze virsd zene?"

"Yes. He's one of the demons; but the scene's just over. Do you want

him?"

"You gan dake ub zis young chendleman's gard do him, and dell him to

slib town here if he has kod a vaid," said the door-keeper.

Mr. Arundel handed his card to the dirty boy.

"He'll come to me fast enough, poor fellow," he muttered. "I usen't to

chaff him as the others did, and I'm glad I didn't, now."

Edward Arundel could not easily forget that one brief scrutiny in which

he had recognised the wasted face of the schoolmaster's hack, who had

taught him mathematics only two years before. Could there be anything

more piteous than that degrading spectacle? The feeble frame, scarcely

able to sustain that paltry one-sided banner of calico and tinsel; the

two rude daubs of coarse vermilion upon the hollow cheeks; the black

smudges that were meant for eyebrows; the wretched scrap of horsehair

glued upon the pinched chin in dismal mockery of a beard; and through

all this the pathetic pleading of large hazel eyes, bright with the

unnatural lustre of disease, and saying perpetually, more plainly than

words can speak, "Do not look at me; do not despise me; do not even

pity me. It won't last long."

That fresh-hearted schoolboy was still thinking of this, when a wasted

hand was laid lightly and tremulously on his arm, and looking up he saw

a man in a hideous mask and a tight-fitting suit of scarlet and gold

standing by his side.

"I'll take off my mask in a minute, Arundel," said a faint voice, that

sounded hollow and muffled within a cavern of pasteboard and

wickerwork. "It was very good of you to come round; very, very good!"

"I was so sorry to see you here, Marchmont; I knew you in a moment, in

spite of the disguise."

The supernumerary had struggled out of his huge head-gear by this time,

and laid the fabric of papier-mache and tinsel carefully aside upon a

shelf. He had washed his face before putting on the mask, for he was

not called upon to appear before a British public in martial semblance

any more upon that evening. The pale wasted face was interesting and

gentlemanly, not by any means handsome, but almost womanly in its

softness of expression. It was the face of a man who had not yet seen

his thirtieth birthday; who might never live to see it, Edward Arundel

thought mournfully.

"Why do you do this, Marchmont?" the boy asked bluntly.

"Because there was nothing else left for me to do," the stage-demon

answered with a sad smile. "I can't get a situation in a school, for my

health won't suffer me to take one; or it won't suffer any employer to

take me, for fear of my falling ill upon his hands, which comes to the

same thing; so I do a little copying for the law-stationers, and this

helps out that, and I get on as well as I can. I wouldn't so much mind

if it wasn't for--"

He stopped suddenly, interrupted by a paroxysm of coughing.

"If it wasn't for whom, old fellow?"

"My poor little girl; my poor little motherless Mary."

Edward Arundel looked grave, and perhaps a little ashamed of himself.

He had forgotten until this moment that his old tutor had been left a

widower at four-and-twenty, with a little daughter to support out of

his scanty stipend.

"Don't be down-hearted, old fellow," the lad whispered, tenderly;

"perhaps I shall be able to help you, you know. And the little girl can

go down to Dangerfield; I know my mother would take care of her, and

will keep her there till you get strong and well. And then you might

start a fencing-room, or a shooting-gallery, or something of that sort,

at the West End; and I'd come to you, and bring lots of fellows to you,

and you'd get on capitally, you know."

Poor John Marchmont, the asthmatic supernumerary, looked perhaps the

very last person in the world whom it could be possible to associate

with a pair of foils, or a pistol and a target; but he smiled faintly

at his old pupil's enthusiastic talk.

"You were always a good fellow, Arundel," he said, gravely. "I don't

suppose I shall ever ask you to do me a service; but if, by-and-by,

this cough makes me knock under, and my little Polly should be

left--I--I think you'd get your mother to be kind to her,--wouldn't

you, Arundel?"

A picture rose before the supernumerary's weary eyes as he said this;

the picture of a pleasant lady whose description he had often heard

from the lips of a loving son, a rambling old mansion, wide-spreading

lawns, and long arcades of oak and beeches leading away to the blue

distance. If this Mrs. Arundel, who was so tender and compassionate and

gentle to every red-cheeked cottage-girl who crossed her

pathway,--Edward had told him this very often,--would take compassion

also upon this little one! If she would only condescend to see the

child, the poor pale neglected flower, the fragile lily, the frail

exotic blossom, that was so cruelly out of place upon the bleak

pathways of life!

"If that's all that troubles you," young Arundel cried eagerly, "you

may make your mind easy, and come and have some oysters. We'll take

care of the child. I'll adopt her, and my mother shall educate her, and

she shall marry a duke. Run away, now, old fellow, and change your

clothes, and come and have oysters, and stout out of the pewter."

Mr. Marchmont shook his head.

"My time's just up," he said; "I'm on in the next scene. It was very

kind of you to come round, Arundel; but this isn't exactly the best

place for you. Go back to your friends, my dear boy, and don't think

any more of me. I'll write to you some day about little Mary."

"You'll do nothing of the kind," exclaimed the boy. "You'll give me

your address instanter, and I'll come to see you the first thing

to-morrow morning, and you'll introduce me to little Mary; and if she

and I are not the best friends in the world, I shall never again boast

of my successes with lovely woman. What's the number, old fellow?"

Mr. Arundel had pulled out a smart morocco pocket-book and a gold

pencil-case.

"Twenty-seven, Oakley Street, Lambeth. But I'd rather you wouldn't

come, Arundel; your friends wouldn't like it."

"My friends may go hang themselves. I shall do as I like, and I'll be

with you to breakfast, sharp ten."

The supernumerary had no time to remonstrate. The progress of the

music, faintly audible from the lobby in which this conversation had

taken place, told him that his scene was nearly on.

"I can't stop another moment. Go back to your friends, Arundel. Good

night. God bless you!"

"Stay; one word. The Lincolnshire property--"

"Will never come to me, my boy," the demon answered sadly, through his

mask; for he had been busy re-investing himself in that demoniac guise.

"I tried to sell my reversion, but the Jews almost laughed in my face

when they heard me cough. Good night."

He was gone, and the swing-door slammed in Edward Arundel's face. The

boy hurried back to his cousin, who was cross and dissatisfied at his

absence. Martin Mostyn had discovered that the ballet-girls were all

either old or ugly, the music badly chosen, the pantomime stupid, the

scenery a failure. He asked a few supercilious questions about his old

tutor, but scarcely listened to Edward's answers; and was intensely

aggravated with his companion's pertinacity in sitting out the comic

business--in which poor John Marchmont appeared and re-appeared; now as

a well-dressed passenger carrying a parcel, which he deliberately

sacrificed to the felonious propensities of the clown; now as a

policeman, now as a barber, now as a chemist, now as a ghost; but

always buffeted, or cajoled, or bonneted, or imposed upon; always

piteous, miserable, and long-suffering; with arms that ached from

carrying a banner through five acts of blank-verse weariness, with a

head that had throbbed under the weight of a ponderous edifice of

pasteboard and wicker, with eyes that were sore with the evil influence

of blue-fire and gunpowder smoke, with a throat that had been poisoned

by sulphurous vapours, with bones that were stiff with the playful

pummelling of clown and pantaloon; and all for--a shilling a night!

CHAPTER II.

LITTLE MARY.

Poor John Marchmont had given his address unwillingly enough to his old

pupil. The lodging in Oakley Street was a wretched back-room upon the

second-floor of a house whose lower regions were devoted to that

species of establishment commonly called a "ladies' wardrobe." The poor

gentleman, the teacher of mathematics, the law-writer, the Drury-Lane

supernumerary, had shrunk from any exposure of his poverty; but his

pupil's imperious good-nature had overridden every objection, and John

Marchmont awoke upon the morning after the meeting at Drury-Lane to the

rather embarrassing recollection that he was to expect a visitor to

breakfast with him.

How was he to entertain this dashing, high-spirited young schoolboy,

whose lot was cast in the pleasant pathways of life, and who was no

doubt accustomed to see at his matutinal meal such luxuries as John

Marchmont had only beheld in the fairy-like realms of comestible beauty

exhibited to hungry foot-passengers behind the plate-glass windows of

Italian warehouses?

"He has hams stewed in Madeira, and Perigord pies, I dare say, at his

Aunt Mostyn's," John thought, despairingly. "What can I give him to

eat?"

But John Marchmont, after the manner of the poor, was apt to

over-estimate the extravagance of the rich. If he could have seen the

Mostyn breakfast then preparing in the lower regions of Montague

Square, he might have been considerably relieved; for he would have

only beheld mild infusions of tea and coffee--in silver vessels,

certainly--four French rolls hidden under a glistening damask napkin,

six triangular fragments of dry toast, cut from a stale half-quartern,

four new-laid eggs, and about half a pound of bacon cut into rashers of

transcendental delicacy. Widow ladies who have daughters to marry do

not plunge very deep into the books of Messrs. Fortnum and Mason.

"He used to like hot rolls when I was at Vernon's," John thought,

rather more hopefully; "I wonder whether he likes hot rolls still?"

Pondering thus, Mr. Marchmont dressed himself,--very neatly, very

carefully; for he was one of those men whom even poverty cannot rob of

man's proudest attribute, his individuality. He made no noisy protest

against the humiliations to which he was compelled to submit; he

uttered no boisterous assertions of his own merit; he urged no

clamorous demand to be treated as a gentleman in his day of misfortune;

but in his own mild, undemonstrative way he did assert himself, quite

as effectually as if he had raved all day upon the hardship of his lot,

and drunk himself mad and blind under the pressure of his calamities.

He never abandoned the habits which had been peculiar to him from his

childhood. He was as neat and orderly in his second-floor-back as he

had been seven or eight years before in his simple apartments at

Cambridge. He did not recognise that association which most men

perceive between poverty and shirt-sleeves, or poverty and beer. He was

content to wear threadbare cloth, but adhered most obstinately to a

prejudice in favour of clean linen. He never acquired those lounging

vagabond habits peculiar to some men in the day of trouble. Even

amongst the supernumeraries of Drury Lane, he contrived to preserve his

self-respect; if they nicknamed him Barking Jeremiah, they took care

only to pronounce that playful sobriquet when the gentleman-super was

safely out of hearing. He was so polite in the midst of his reserve,

that the person who could wilfully have offended him must have been

more unkindly than any of her Majesty's servants. It is true, that the

great tragedian, on more than one occasion, apostrophised the

weak-kneed banner-holder as "BEAST" when the super's cough had

peculiarly disturbed his composure; but the same great man gave poor

John Marchmont a letter to a distinguished physician, compassionately

desiring the relief of the same pulmonary affection. If John Marchmont

had not been prompted by his own instincts to struggle against the evil

influences of poverty, he would have done battle sturdily for the sake

of one who was ten times dearer to him than himself.

If he _could_ have become a swindler or a reprobate,--it would have

been about as easy for him to become either as to have burst at once,

and without an hour's practice, into a full-blown Leotard or

Olmar,--his daughter's influence would have held him back as securely

as if the slender arms twined tenderly about him had been chains of

adamant forged by an enchanter's power.

How could he be false to his little one, this helpless child, who had

been confided to him in the darkest hour of his existence; the hour in

which his wife had yielded to the many forces arrayed against her in

life's battle, and had left him alone in the world to fight for his

little girl?

"If I were to die, I think Arundel's mother would be kind to her," John

Marchmont thought, as he finished his careful toilet. "Heaven knows, I

have no right to ask or expect such a thing; but Polly will be rich

by-and-by, perhaps, and will be able to repay them."

A little hand knocked lightly at the door of his room while he was

thinking this, and a childish voice said,

"May I come in, papa?"

The little girl slept with one of the landlady's children, in a room

above her father's. John opened the door, and let her in. The pale

wintry sunshine, creeping in at the curtainless window near which Mr.

Marchmont sat, shone full upon the child's face as she came towards

him. It was a small, pale face, with singularly delicate features, a

tiny straight nose, a pensive mouth, and large thoughtful hazel eyes.

The child's hair fell loosely upon her shoulders; not in those

corkscrew curls so much affected by mothers in the humbler walks of

life, nor yet in those crisp undulations lately adopted in Belgravian

nurseries; but in soft silken masses, only curling at the extreme end

of each tress. Miss Marchmont--she was always called Miss Marchmont in

that Oakley Street household--wore her brown-stuff frock and scanty

diaper pinafore as neatly as her father wore his threadbare coat and

darned linen. She was very pretty, very lady-like, very interesting;

but it was impossible to look at her without a vague feeling of pain,

that was difficult to understand. You knew, by-and-by, why you were

sorry for this little girl. She had never been a child. That divine

period of perfect innocence,--innocence of all sorrow and trouble,

falsehood and wrong,--that bright holiday-time of the soul, had never

been hers. The ruthless hand of poverty had snatched away from her the

gift which God had given her in her cradle; and at eight years old she

was a woman,--a woman invested with all that is most beautiful amongst

womanly attributes--love, tenderness, compassion, carefulness for

others, unselfish devotion, uncomplaining patience, heroic endurance.

She was a woman by reason of all these virtues; but she was no longer a

child. At three years old she had bidden farewell for ever to the

ignorant selfishness, the animal enjoyment of childhood, and had

learned what it was to be sorry for poor papa and mamma; and from that

first time of awakening to the sense of pity and love, she had never

ceased to be the comforter of the helpless young husband who was so

soon to be left wifeless.

John had been compelled to leave his child, in order to get a living

for her and for himself in the hard service of Mr. Laurence Vernon, the

principal of the highly select and expensive academy at which Edward

Arundel and Martin Mostyn had been educated. But he had left her in

good hands; and when the bitter day of his dismissal came, he was

scarcely as sorry as he ought to have been for the calamity which

brought him back to his little Mary. It is impossible for any words of

mine to tell how much he loved the child; but take into consideration

his hopeless poverty, his sensitive and reserved nature, his utter

loneliness, the bereavement that had cast a shadow upon his youth, and

you will perhaps understand an affection that was almost morbid in its

intensity, and which was reciprocated most fully by its object. The

little girl loved her father _too much_. When he was with her, she was

content to sit by his side, watching him as he wrote; proud to help

him, if even by so much as wiping his pens or handing him his

blotting-paper; happy to wait upon him, to go out marketing for him, to

prepare his scanty meals, to make his tea, and arrange and re-arrange

every object in the slenderly furnished second-floor back-room. They

talked sometimes of the Lincolnshire fortune,--the fortune which

_might_ come to Mr. Marchmont, if three people, whose lives when Mary's

father had last heard of them, were each worth three times his own

feeble existence, would be so obliging as to clear the way for the

heir-at-law, by taking an early departure to the churchyard. A more

practical man than John Marchmont would have kept a sharp eye upon

these three lives, and by some means or other contrived to find out

whether number one was consumptive, or number two dropsical, or number

three apoplectic; but John was utterly incapable of any such

Machiavellian proceeding. I think he sometimes beguiled his weary walks

between Oakley Street and Drury Lane by the dreaming of such childish

day-dreams as I should be almost ashamed to set down upon this sober

page. The three lives might all happen to be riding in the same express

upon the occasion of a terrible collision; but the poor fellow's gentle

nature shrank appalled before the vision he had invoked. He could not

sacrifice a whole train-full of victims, even for little Mary. He

contented himself with borrowing a "Times" newspaper now and then, and

looking at the top of the second column, with the faint hope that he

should see his own name in large capitals, coupled with the

announcement that by applying somewhere he might hear of something to

his advantage. He contented himself with this, and with talking about

the future to little Mary in the dim firelight. They spent long hours

in the shadowy room, only lighted by the faint flicker of a pitiful

handful of coals; for the commonest dip-candles are

sevenpence-halfpenny a pound, and were dearer, I dare say, in the year

'38. Heaven knows what splendid castles in the air these two

simple-hearted creatures built for each other's pleasure by that

comfortless hearth. I believe that, though the father made a pretence

of talking of these things only for the amusement of his child, he was

actually the more childish of the two. It was only when he left that

fire-lit room, and went back into the hard, reasonable, commonplace

world, that he remembered how foolish the talk was, and how it was

impossible--yes, impossible--that he, the law-writer and supernumerary,

could ever come to be master of Marchmont Towers.

Poor little Mary was in this less practical than her father. She

carried her day-dreams into the street, until all Lambeth was made

glorious by their supernal radiance. Her imagination ran riot in a

vision of a happy future, in which her father would be rich and

powerful. I am sorry to say that she derived most of her ideas of

grandeur from the New Cut. She furnished the drawing-room at Marchmont

Towers from the splendid stores of an upholsterer in that thoroughfare.

She laid flaming Brussels carpets upon the polished oaken floors which

her father had described to her, and hung cheap satin damask of

gorgeous colours before the great oriel windows. She put gilded vases

of gaudy artificial flowers on the high carved mantel-pieces in the old

rooms, and hung a disreputable gray parrot--for sale at a

greengrocer's, and given to the use of bad language--under the stone

colonnnade at the end of the western wing. She appointed the

tradespeople who should serve the far-away Lincolnshire household; the

small matter of distance would, of course, never stand in the way of

her gratitude and benevolence. Her papa would employ the civil

greengrocer who gave such excellent halfpennyworths of watercresses;

the kind butterman who took such pains to wrap up a quarter of a pound

of the best eighteenpenny fresh butter for the customer whom he always

called "little lady;" the considerate butcher who never cut _more_ than

the three-quarters of a pound of rump-steak, which made an excellent

dinner for Mr. Marchmont and his little girl. Yes, all these people

should be rewarded when the Lincolnshire property came to Mary's papa.

Miss Marchmont had some thoughts of building a shop close to Marchmont

Towers for the accommodating butcher, and of adopting the greengrocer's

eldest daughter for her confidante and companion. Heaven knows how many

times the little girl narrowly escaped being run over while walking the

material streets in some ecstatic reverie such as this; but Providence

was very careful of the motherless girl, and she always returned safely

to Oakley Street with her pitiful little purchases of tea and sugar,

butter and meat. You will say, perhaps, that at least these foolish

day-dreams were childish; but I maintain still, that Mary's soul had

long ago bade adieu to infancy, and that even in these visions she was

womanly; for she was always thoughtful of others rather than of

herself, and there was a great deal more of the practical business of

life mingled with the silvery web of her fancies than there should have

been so soon after her eighth birthday. At times, too, an awful horror

would quicken the pulses of her loving heart as she heard the hacking

sound of her father's cough; and a terrible dread would seize her,--the

fear that John Marchmont might never live to inherit the Lincolnshire

fortune. The child never said her prayers without adding a little

extempore supplication, that she might die when her father died. It was

a wicked prayer, perhaps; and a clergyman might have taught her that

her life was in the hands of Providence; and that it might please Him

who had created her to doom her to many desolate years of loneliness;

and that it was not for her, in her wretched and helpless ignorance, to

rebel against His divine will. I think if the Archbishop of Canterbury

had driven from Lambeth Palace to Oakley Street to tell little Mary

this, he would have taught her in vain; and that she would have fallen

asleep that night with the old prayer upon her lips, the fond foolish

prayer that the bonds which love had woven so firmly might never be

roughly broken by death.

Miss Marchmont heard the story of last night's meeting with great

pleasure, though it must be owned she looked a little grave when she

was told that the generous-hearted school-boy was coming to breakfast;

but her gravity was only that of a thoughtful housekeeper, who ponders

ways and means, and even while you are telling her the number and

quality of your guests, sketches out a rough ground-plan of her dishes,

considers the fish in season, and the soups most fitting to precede

them, and balances the contending advantages of Palestine and Julienne

or Hare and Italian.

"A 'nice' breakfast you say, papa," she said, when her father had

finished speaking; "then we must have watercresses, _of course_."

"And hot rolls, Polly dear. Arundel was always fond of hot rolls."

"And hot rolls, four for threepence-halfpenny in the Cut."--(I am

ashamed to say that this benighted child talked as deliberately of the

"Cut" as she might have done of the "Row.")--"There'll be one left for

tea, papa; for we could never eat four rolls. They'll take _such_ a lot

of butter, though."

The little housekeeper took out an antediluvian bead-purse, and began

to examine her treasury. Her father handed all his money to her, as he

would have done to his wife; and Mary doled him out the little sums he

wanted,--money for half an ounce of tobacco, money for a pint of beer.

There were no penny papers in those days, or what a treat an occasional

"Telegraph" would have been to poor John Marchmont!

Mary had only one personal extravagance. She read novels,--dirty,

bloated, ungainly volumes,--which she borrowed from a snuffy old woman

in a little back street, who charged her the smallest hire ever known

in the circulating-library business, and who admired her as a wonder of

precocious erudition. The only pleasure the child knew in her father's

absence was the perusal of these dingy pages; she neglected no duty,

she forgot no tender office of ministering care for the loved one who

was absent; but when all the little duties had been finished, how

delicious it was to sit down to "Madeleine the Deserted," or "Cosmo the

Pirate," and to lose herself far away in illimitable regions, peopled

by wandering princesses in white satin, and gentlemanly bandits, who

had been stolen from their royal fathers' halls by vengeful hordes of

gipsies. During these early years of poverty and loneliness, John

Marchmont's daughter stored up, in a mind that was morbidly sensitive

rather than strong, a terrible amount of dim poetic sentiment; the

possession of which is scarcely, perhaps, the best or safest dower for

a young lady who has life's journey all before her.

At half-past nine o'clock, all the simple preparations necessary for

the reception of a visitor had been completed by Mr. Marchmont and his

daughter. All vestiges of John's bed had disappeared; leaving, it is

true, rather a suspicious-looking mahogany chest of drawers to mark the

spot where once a bed had been. The window had been opened, the room

aired and dusted, a bright little fire burned in the shining grate, and

the most brilliant of tin tea-kettles hissed upon the hob. The white

table-cloth was darned in several places; but it was a remnant of the

small stock of linen with which John had begun married life; and the

Irish damask asserted its superior quality, in spite of many darns, as

positively as Mr. Marchmont's good blood asserted itself in spite of

his shabby coat. A brown teapot full of strong tea, a plate of French

rolls, a pat of fresh butter, and a broiled haddock, do not compose a

very epicurean repast; but Mary Marchmont looked at the humble

breakfast as a prospective success.

"We could have haddocks every day at Marchmont Towers, couldn't we,

papa?" she said naively.

But the little girl was more than delighted when Edward Arundel dashed

up the narrow staircase, and burst into the room, fresh, radiant,

noisy, splendid, better dressed even than the waxen preparations of

elegant young gentlemen exhibited at the portal of a great outfitter in

the New Cut, and yet not at all like either of those red-lipped types

of fashion. How delighted the boy declared himself with every thing! He

had driven over in a cabriolet, and he was awfully hungry, he informed

his host. The rolls and watercresses disappeared before him as if by

magic; little Mary shivered at the slashing cuts he made at the butter;

the haddock had scarcely left the gridiron before it was no more.

"This is ten times better than Aunt Mostyn's skinny breakfasts," the

young gentleman observed candidly. "You never get enough with her. Why

does she say, 'You won't take another egg, will you, Edward?' if she

wants me to have one? You should see our hunting-breakfasts at

Dangerfield, Marchmont. Four sorts of claret, and no end of Moselle and

champagne. You shall go to Dangerfield some day, to see my mother, Miss

Mary."

He called her "Miss Mary," and seemed rather shy of speaking to her.

Her womanliness impressed him in spite of himself. He had a fancy that

she was old enough to feel the humiliation of her father's position,

and to be sensitive upon the matter of the two-pair back; and he was

sorry the moment after he had spoken of Dangerfield.

"What a snob I am!" he thought; "always bragging of home."

But Mr. Arundel was not able to stop very long in Oakley Street, for

the supernumerary had to attend a rehearsal at twelve o'clock; so at

half-past eleven John Marchmont and his pupil went out together, and

little Mary was left alone to clear away the breakfast, and perform the

rest of her household duties.

She had plenty of time before her, so she did not begin at once, but

sat upon a stool near the fender, gazing dreamily at the low fire.

"How good and kind he is!" she thought; "just like Cosmo,--only Cosmo

was dark; or like Reginald Ravenscroft,--but then he was dark too. I

wonder why the people in novels are always dark? How kind he is to

papa! Shall we ever go to Dangerfield, I wonder, papa and I? Of course

I wouldn't go without papa."

CHAPTER III.

ABOUT THE LINCOLNSHIRE PROPERTY.

While Mary sat absorbed in such idle visions as these, Mr. Marchmont

and his old pupil walked towards Waterloo Bridge together.

"I'll go as far as the theatre with you, Marchmont," the boy said;

"it's my holidays now, you know, and I can do as I like. I am going to

a private tutor in another month, and he's to prepare me for the army.

I want you to tell me all about that Lincolnshire property, old boy. Is

it anywhere near Swampington?"

"Yes; within nine miles."

"Goodness gracious me! Lord bless my soul! what an extraordinary

coincidence! My uncle Hubert's Rector of Swampington--such a hole! I go

there sometimes to see him and my cousin Olivia. Isn't she a stunner,

though! Knows more Greek and Latin than I, and more mathematics than

you. Could eat our heads off at any thing."

John Marchmont did not seem very much impressed by the coincidence that

appeared so extraordinary to Edward Arundel; but, in order to oblige

his friend, he explained very patiently and lucidly how it was that

only three lives stood between him and the possession of Marchmont

Towers, and all lands and tenements appertaining thereto.

"The estate's a very large one," he said finally; "but the idea of _my_

ever getting it is, of course, too preposterous."

"Good gracious me! I don't see that at all," exclaimed Edward with

extraordinary vivacity. "Let me see, old fellow; if I understand your

story right, this is how the case stands: your first cousin is the

present possessor of Marchmont Towers; he has a son, fifteen years of

age, who may or may not marry; only one son, remember. But he has also

an uncle--a bachelor uncle, and your uncle, too--who, by the terms of

your grandfather's will, must get the property before you can succeed

to it. Now, this uncle is an old man: so of course _he'll_ die soon.

The present possessor himself is a middle-aged man; so I shouldn't

think _he_ can be likely to last long. I dare say he drinks too much

port, or hunts, or something of that sort; goes to sleep after dinner,

and does all manner of apoplectic things, I'll be bound. Then there's

the son, only fifteen, and not yet marriageable; consumptive, I dare

say. Now, will you tell me the chances are not six to six he dies

unmarried? So you see, my dear old boy, you're sure to get the fortune;

for there's nothing to keep you out of it, except--"

"Except three lives, the worst of which is better than mine. It's kind

of you to look at it in this sanguine way, Arundel; but I wasn't born

to be a rich man. Perhaps, after all, Providence has used me better

than I think. I mightn't have been happy at Marchmont Towers. I'm a

shy, awkward, humdrum fellow. If it wasn't for Mary's sake--"

"Ah, to be sure!" cried Edward Arundel. "You're not going to forget all

about--Miss Marchmont!" He was going to say "little Mary," but had

checked himself abruptly at the sudden recollection of the earnest

hazel eyes that had kept wondering watch upon his ravages at the

breakfast-table. "I'm sure Miss Marchmont's born to be an heiress. I

never saw such a little princess."

"What!" demanded John Marchmont sadly, "in a darned pinafore and a

threadbare frock?"

The boy's face flushed, almost indignantly, as his old master said

this.

"You don't think I'm such a snob as to admire a lady"--he spoke thus of

Miss Mary Marchmont, yet midway between her eighth and ninth

birthday--"the less because she isn't rich? But of course your daughter

will have the fortune by-and-by, even if--"

He stopped, ashamed of his want of tact; for he knew John would divine

the meaning of that sudden pause.

"Even if I should die before Philip Marchmont," the teacher of

mathematics answered, quietly. "As far as that goes, Mary's chance is

as remote as my own. The fortune can only come to her in the event of

Arthur dying without issue, or, having issue, failing to cut off the

entail, I believe they call it."

"Arthur! that's the son of the present possessor?"

"Yes. If I and my poor little girl, who is delicate like her mother,

should die before either of these three men, there is another who will

stand in my shoes, and will look out perhaps more eagerly than I have

done for his chances of getting the property."

"Another!" exclaimed Mr. Arundel. "By Jove, Marchmont, it's the most

complicated affair I ever heard of. It's worse than those sums you used

to set me in barter: 'If A. sells B. 999 Stilton cheeses at 9 1/2_d_ a

pound,' and all that sort of thing, you know. Do make me understand it,

old fellow, if you can."

John Marchmont sighed.

"It's a wearisome story, Arundel," he said. "I don't know why I should

bore you with it."

"But you don't bore me with it," cried the boy energetically. "I'm

awfully interested in it, you know; and I could walk up and down here

all day talking about it."

The two gentlemen had passed the Surrey toll-gate of Waterloo Bridge by

this time. The South-Western Terminus had not been built in the year

'38, and the bridge was about the quietest thoroughfare any two

companions confidentially inclined could have chosen. The shareholders

knew this, to their cost.

Perhaps Mr. Marchmont might have been beguiled into repeating the old

story, which he had told so often in the dim firelight to his little

girl; but the great clock of St. Paul's boomed forth the twelve

ponderous strokes that told the hour of noon, and a hundred other

steeples upon either side of the water made themselves clamorous with

the same announcement.

"I must leave you, Arundel," the supernumerary said hurriedly; he had

just remembered that it was time for him to go and be browbeaten by a

truculent stage-manager. "God bless you, my dear boy! It was very good

of you to want to see me, and the sight of your fresh face has made me

very happy. I _should_ like you to understand all about the

Lincolnshire property. God knows there's small chance of its ever

coming to me or to my child; but when I am dead and gone, Mary will be

left alone in the world, and it would be some comfort to me to know

that she was not without _one_ friend--generous and disinterested like

you, Arundel,--who, if the chance _did_ come, would see her righted."

"And so I would," cried the boy eagerly. His face flushed, and his eyes

fired. He was a preux chevalier already, in thought, going forth to do

battle for a hazel-eyed mistress.

"I'll _write_ the story, Arundel," John Marchmont said; "I've no time

to tell it, and you mightn't remember it either. Once more, good-bye;

once more, God bless you!"

"Stop!" exclaimed Edward Arundel, flushing a deeper red than

before,--he had a very boyish habit of blushing,--"stop, dear old boy.

You must borrow this of me, please. I've lots of them. I should only

spend it on all sorts of bilious things; or stop out late and get

tipsy. You shall pay me with interest when you get Marchmont Towers. I

shall come and see you again soon. Good-bye."

The lad forced some crumpled scrap of paper into his old tutor's hand,

bolted through the toll-bar, and jumped into a cabriolet, whose

high-stepping charger was dawdling along Lancaster Place.

The supernumerary hurried on to Drury Lane as fast as his weak legs

could carry him. He was obliged to wait for a pause in the rehearsal

before he could find an opportunity of looking at the parting gift

which his old pupil had forced upon him. It was a crumpled and rather

dirty five-pound note, wrapped round two half-crowns, a shilling, and

half-a-sovereign.

The boy had given his friend the last remnant of his slender stock of

pocket-money. John Marchmont turned his face to the dark wing that

sheltered him, and wept silently. He was of a gentle and rather womanly

disposition, be it remembered; and he was in that weak state of health

in which a man's eyes are apt to moisten, in spite of himself, under

the influence of any unwonted emotion.

He employed a part of that afternoon in writing the letter which he had

promised to send to his boyish friend:--

"MY DEAR ARUNDEL,

"My purpose in writing to you to-day is so entirely connected with the

future welfare of my beloved and only child, that I shall carefully

abstain from any subject not connected with her interests. I say

nothing, therefore, respecting your conduct of this morning, which,

together with my previous knowledge of your character, has decided me

upon confiding to you the doubts and fears which have long tormented me

upon the subject of my darling's future.

"I am a doomed man, Arundel! The doctors have told me this; but they

have told me also that, though I can never escape the sentence of death

which was passed upon me long ago, I may live for some years if I live

the careful life which only a rich man can lead. If I go on carrying

banners and breathing sulphur, I cannot last long. My little girl will

be left penniless, but not quite friendless; for there are humble

people, relatives of her poor mother, who would help her kindly, I am

sure, in their own humble way. The trials which I fear for my orphan

girl are not so much the trials of poverty as the dangers of wealth. If

the three men who, on my death, would alone stand between Mary and the

Lincolnshire property die childless, my poor darling will become the

only obstacle in the pathway of a man whom, I will freely own to you, I

distrust.

"My father, John Marchmont, was the third of four brothers. The eldest,

Philip, died leaving one son, also called Philip, and the present

possessor of Marchmont Towers. The second, Marmaduke, is still alive, a

bachelor. The third, John, left four children, of whom I alone survive.

The fourth, Paul, left a son and two daughters. The son is an artist,

exercising his profession now in London; one of the daughters is

married to a parish surgeon, who practises at Stanfield, in

Lincolnshire; the other is an old maid, and entirely dependent upon her

brother.

"It is this man, Paul Marchmont the artist, whom I fear.

"Do not think me weak, or foolishly suspicious, Arundel, when I tell

you that the very thought of this man brings the cold sweat upon my

forehead, and seems to stop the beating of my heart. I know that this

is a prejudice, and an unworthy one. I do not believe Paul Marchmont is

a good man; but I can assign no sufficient reason for my hatred and

terror of him. It is impossible for you, a frank and careless boy, to

realise the feelings of a man who looks at his only child, and

remembers that she may soon be left, helpless and defenceless, to fight

the battle of life with a bad man. Sometimes I pray to God that the

Marchmont property may never come to my child after my death; for I

cannot rid myself of the thought--may Heaven forgive me for its

unworthiness!--that Paul Marchmont would leave no means untried,

however foul, to wrest the fortune from her. I dare say worldly people

would laugh at me for writing this letter to you, my dear Arundel; but

I address myself to the best friend I have,--the only creature I know

whom the influence of a bad man is never likely to corrupt. _Noblesse

oblige!_ I am not afraid that Edward Dangerfield Arundel will betray

any trust, however foolish, that may have been confided to him.

"Perhaps, in writing to you thus, I may feel something of that blind

hopefulness--amid the shipwreck of all that commonly gives birth to

hope--which the mariner cast away upon some desert island feels, when

he seals his simple story in a bottle, and launches it upon the waste

of waters that close him in on every side. Before my little girl is

four years older, you will be a man, Arundel--with a man's intellect, a

man's courage, and, above all, a man's keen sense of honour. So long as

my darling remains poor, her humble friends will be strong enough to

protect her; but if ever Providence should think fit to place her in a

position of antagonism to Paul Marchmont,--for he would look upon any

one as an enemy who stood between him and fortune,--she would need a

far more powerful protector than any she could find amongst her poor

mother's relatives. Will _you_ be that protector, Edward Arundel? I am

a drowning man, you see, and catch at the frailest straw that floats

past me. I believe in you, Edward, as much as I distrust Paul

Marchmont. If the day ever comes in which my little girl should have to

struggle with this man, will you help her to fight the battle? It will

not be an easy one.

"Subjoined to this letter I send you an extract from the copy of my

grandfather's will, which will explain to you how he left his property.

Do not lose either the letter or the extract. If you are willing to

undertake the trust which I confide to you to-day, you may have need to

refer to them after my death. The legacy of a child's helplessness is

the only bequest which I can leave to the only friend I have.

"JOHN MARCHMONT.

"27, OAKLEY STREET, LAMBETH,

"_December_ 30_th_, 1838.

* * * * *

"EXTRACT FROM THE WILL OF PHILIP MARCHMONT, SENIOR, OF MARCHMONT

TOWERS.

"'I give and devise all that my estate known as Marchmont Towers and

appurtenances thereto belonging to the use of my eldest son Philip

Marchmont during his natural life without impeachment of waste and from

and after his decease then to the use of my grandson Philip the first

son of my said son Philip during the term of his natural life without

impeachment of waste and after the decease of my said grandson Philip

to the use of the first and every other son of my said grandson

severally and successively according to their respective seniority in

tail and for default of such issue to the use of all and every the

daughters and daughter of my said grandson Philip as tenants in common

in tail with cross remainders between or amongst them in tail and if

all the daughters of my said grandson Philip except one shall die

without issue or if there shall be but one such daughter then to the

use of such one or only daughter in tail and in default of such issue

then to the use of the second and every other son of my said eldest son

severally and successively according to his respective seniority in

tail and in default of such issue to the use of all and every the

daughters and daughter of my said eldest son Philip as tenants in

common in tail with cross remainders between or amongst them in tail

and in default of such issue to the use of my second son Marmaduke and

his assigns during the term of his natural life without impeachment of

waste and after his decease to the use of the first and every son of my

said son Marmaduke severally and successively according to their

respective seniorities in tail and for default of such issue to the use

of all and every the daughters and daughter of my said son Marmaduke as

tenants in common in tail with cross remainders between or amongst them

in tail and if all the daughters of my said son Marmaduke except one

shall die without issue or if there shall be but one such daughter then

to the use of such one or only daughter in tail and in default of such

issue then to the use of my third son John during the term of his

natural life without impeachment of waste and from and after his

decease then to the use of my grandson John the first son of my said

son John during the term of his natural life without impeachment of

waste and after the decease of my said grandson John to the use of the

first and every other son of my said grandson John severally and

successively according to their respective seniority in tail and for

default of such issue to the use of all and every the daughters and

daughter of my said grandson John as tenants in common in tail with

cross remainders between or among them in tail and if all the daughters

of my said grandson John except one shall die without issue or if there

shall be but one such daughter' [_This, you will see, is my little

Mary_] 'then to the use of such one or only daughter in tail and in

default of such issue then to the use of the second and every other son

of my said third son John severally and successively according to his

respective seniority in tail and in default of such issue to the use of

all and every the daughters and daughter of my said third son John as

tenants in common in tail with cross remainders between or amongst them

in tail and in default of such issue to the use of my fourth son Paul

during the term of his natural life without impeachment of waste and

from and after his decease then to the use of my grandson Paul the son

of my said son Paul during his natural life without impeachment of

waste and after the decease of my said grandson Paul to the use of the

first and every other son of my said grandson severally and

successively according to their respective seniority in tail and for

default of such issue to the use of all and every the daughters and

daughter of my said grandson Paul as tenants in common in tail with

cross remainders between or amongst them in tail and if all the

daughters of my said grandson Paul except one shall die without issue

or if there shall be but one such daughter then to the use of such one

or only daughter in tail and in default of such issue then to the use

of the second and every other son of my said fourth son Paul severally

and successively according to his respective seniority in tail and in

default of such issue to the use of all and every the daughters and

daughter of my said fourth son Paul as tenants in common in tail with

cross remainders between or amongst them in tail,' &c. &c.

"P.S.--Then comes what the lawyers call a general devise to trustees,

to preserve the contingent remainders before devised from being

destroyed; but what that means, perhaps you can get somebody to tell

you. I hope it may be some legal jargon to preserve my _very_

contingent remainder."

* * * * *

The tone of Edward Arundel's answer to this letter was more

characteristic of the writer than in harmony with poor John's solemn

appeal.

"You dear, foolish old Marchmont," the lad wrote, "of course I shall

take care of Miss Mary; and my mother shall adopt her, and she shall

live at Dangerfield, and be educated with my sister Letitia, who has

the jolliest French governess, and a German maid for conversation; and

don't let Paul Marchmont try on any of his games with me, that's all!

But what do you mean, you ridiculous old boy, by talking about dying,

and drowning, and shipwrecked mariners, and catching at straws, and all

that sort of humbug, when you know very well that you'll live to

inherit the Lincolnshire property, and that I'm coming to you every

year to shoot, and that you're going to build a tennis-court,--of

course there _is_ a billiard-room,--and that you're going to have a

stud of hunters, and be master of the hounds, and no end of bricks to

"Your ever devoted Roman countryman and lover,

"EDWARD"

"42, MONTAGUE SQUARE,

"_December_ 3l_st_, 1838.

"P.S.--By-the-bye, don't you think a situation in a lawyer's office

would suit you better than the T. R. D. L.? If you do, I think I could

manage it. A happy new year to Miss Mary!"

* * * * *

It was thus that Mr. Edward Arundel accepted the solemn trust which his

friend confided to him in all simplicity and good faith. Mary Marchmont

herself was not more innocent in the ways of the world outside Oakley

Street, the Waterloo Road, and the New Cut, than was the little girl's

father; nothing seemed more natural to him than to intrust the doubtful

future of his only child to the bright-faced handsome boy, whose early

boyhood had been unblemished by a mean sentiment or a dishonourable

action. John Marchmont had spent three years in the Berkshire Academy

at which Edward and his cousin, Martin Mostyn, had been educated; and

young Arundel, who was far behind his kinsman in the comprehension of a

problem in algebra, had been wise enough to recognise that paradox

which Martin Mostyn could not understand--a gentleman in a shabby coat.

It was thus that a friendship had arisen between the teacher of

mathematics and his handsome pupil; and it was thus that an unreasoning

belief in Edward Arundel had sprung up in John's simple mind.

"If my little girl were certain of inheriting the fortune," Mr.

Marchmont thought, "I might find many who would be glad to accept my

trust, and to serve her well and faithfully. But the chance is such a

remote one. I cannot forget how the Jews laughed at me two years ago,

when I tried to borrow money upon my reversionary interest. No! I must

trust this brave-hearted boy, for I have no one else to confide in; and

who else is there who would not ridicule my fear of my cousin Paul?"

Indeed, Mr. Marchmont had some reason to be considerably ashamed of his

antipathy to the young artist working for his bread, and for the bread

of his invalid mother and unmarried sister, in that bitter winter of

'38; working patiently and hopefully, in despite of all discouragement,

and content to live a joyless and monotonous life in a dingy lodging

near Fitzroy Square. I can find no excuse for John Marchmont's

prejudice against an industrious and indefatigable young man, who was

the sole support of two helpless women. Heaven knows, if to be adored

by two women is any evidence of a man's virtue, Paul must have been the

best of men; for Stephanie Marchmont, and her daughter Clarisse,

regarded the artist with a reverential idolatry that was not without a

tinge of romance. I can assign no reason, then, for John's dislike of

his cousin. They had been schoolfellows at a wretched suburban school,

where the children of poor people were boarded, lodged, and educated

all the year round for a pitiful stipend of something under twenty

pounds. One of the special points of the prospectus was the

announcement that there were no holidays; for the jovial Christmas

gatherings of merry faces, which are so delightful to the wealthy

citizens of Bloomsbury or Tyburnia, take another complexion in

poverty-stricken households, whose scantily-stocked larders can ill

support the raids of rawboned lads clamorous for provender. The two

boys had met at a school of this calibre, and had never met since. They

may not have been the best friends, perhaps, at the classical academy;

but their quarrels were by no means desperate. They may have rather

freely discussed their several chances of the Lincolnshire property;

but I have no romantic story to tell of a stirring scene in the humble

schoolroom--no exciting record of deadly insult and deep vows of

vengeance. No inkstand was ever flung by one boy into the face of the

other; no savage blow from a horsewhip ever cut a fatal scar across the

brow of either of the cousins. John Marchmont would have been almost as

puzzled to account for his objection to his kinsman, as was the

nameless gentleman who so naively confessed his dislike of Dr. Fell. I

fear that a great many of our likings and dislikings are too apt to be

upon the Dr. Fell principle. Mr. Wilkie Collins's Basil could not tell

_why_ he fell madly in love with the lady whom it was his evil fortune

to meet in an omnibus; nor why he entertained an uncomfortable feeling

about the gentleman who was to be her destroyer. David Copperfield

disliked Uriah Heep even before he had any substantial reason for

objecting to the evil genius of Agnes Wickfield's father. The boy

disliked the snake-like schemer of Canterbury because his eyes were

round and red, and his hands clammy and unpleasant to the touch.

Perhaps John Marchmont's reasons for his aversion to his cousin were

about as substantial as those of Master Copperfield. It may be that the

schoolboy disliked his comrade because Paul Marchmont's handsome grey

eyes were a little too near together; because his thin and delicately

chiselled lips were a thought too tightly compressed; because his

cheeks would fade to an awful corpse-like whiteness under circumstances

which would have brought the rushing life-blood, hot and red, into

another boy's face; because he was silent and suppressed when it would

have been more natural to be loud and clamorous; because he could smile

under provocations that would have made another frown; because, in

short, there was that about him which, let it be found where it will,

always gives birth to suspicion,--MYSTERY!

So the cousins had parted, neither friends nor foes, to tread their

separate roads in the unknown country, which is apt to seem barren and

desolate enough to travellers who foot it in hobnailed boots

considerably the worse for wear; and as the iron hand of poverty held

John Marchmont even further back than Paul upon the hard road which

each had to tread, the quiet pride of the teacher of mathematics most

effectually kept him out of his kinsman's way. He had only heard enough

of Paul to know that he was living in London, and working hard for a

living; working as hard as John himself, perhaps; but at least able to

keep afloat in a higher social position than the law-stationer's hack

and the banner-holder of Drury Lane.

But Edward Arundel did not forget his friends in Oakley Street. The boy

made a morning call upon his father's solicitors, Messrs. Paulette,

Paulette, and Mathewson, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and was so extremely

eloquent in his needy friend's cause, as to provoke the good-natured

laughter of one of the junior partners, who declared that Mr. Edward

Arundel ought to wear a silk gown before he was thirty. The result of

this interview was, that before the first month of the new year was

out, John Marchmont had abandoned the classic banner and the demoniac

mask to a fortunate successor, and had taken possession of a

hard-seated, slim-legged stool in one of the offices of Messrs.

Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson, as copying and out-door clerk, at a

salary of thirty shillings a week.

So little Mary entered now upon a golden age, in which her evenings

were no longer desolate and lonely, but spent pleasantly with her

father in the study of such learning as was suited to her years, or

perhaps rather to her capacity, which was far beyond her years; and on

certain delicious nights, to be remembered ever afterwards, John

Marchmont took his little girl to the gallery of one or other of the

transpontine theatres; and I am sorry to say that my heroine--for she

is to be my heroine by-and-by--sucked oranges, ate Abernethy biscuits,

and cooled her delicate nose against the iron railing of the gallery,

after the manner of the masses when they enjoy the British Drama.

But all this time John Marchmont was utterly ignorant of one rather

important fact in the history of those three lives which he was apt to

speak of as standing between him and Marchmont Towers. Young Arthur

Marchmont, the immediate heir of the estate, had been shot to death

upon the 1st of September, 1838, without blame to anyone or anything

but his own boyish carelessness, which had induced him to scramble

through a hedge with his fowling-piece, the costly present of a doating

father, loaded and on full-cock. This melancholy event, which had been

briefly recorded in all the newspapers, had never reached the knowledge

of poor John Marchmont, who had no friends to busy themselves about his

interests, or to rush eagerly to carry him any intelligence affecting

his prosperity. Nor had he read the obituary notice respecting

Marmaduke Marchmont, the bachelor, who had breathed his last stertorous

breath in a fit of apoplexy exactly one twelvemonth before the day upon

which Edward Arundel breakfasted in Oakley Street.

CHAPTER IV.

GOING AWAY.

Edward Arundel went from Montague Square straight into the household of

the private tutor of whom he had spoken, there to complete his

education, and to be prepared for the onerous duties of a military

life. From the household of this private tutor he went at once into a

cavalry regiment; after sundry examinations, which were not nearly so

stringent in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty, as they

have since become. Indeed, I think the unfortunate young cadets who are

educated upon the high-pressure system, and who are expected to give a

synopsis of Portuguese political intrigue during the eighteenth

century, a scientific account of the currents of the Red Sea, and a

critical disquisition upon the comedies of Aristophanes as compared

with those of Pedro Calderon de la Barca, not forgetting to glance at

the effect of different ages and nationalities upon the respective

minds of the two playwrights, within a given period of, say

half-an-hour,--would have envied Mr. Arundel for the easy manner in

which he obtained his commission in a distinguished cavalry regiment.

Mr. Edward Arundel therefore inaugurated the commencement of the year

1840 by plunging very deeply into the books of a crack military-tailor

in New Burlington Street, and by a visit to Dangerfield Park; where he

went to make his adieux before sailing for India, whither his regiment

had just been ordered.

I do not doubt that Mrs Arundel was very sorrowful at this sudden

parting with her yellow-haired younger son. The boy and his mother

walked together in the wintry sunset under the leafless beeches at

Dangerfield, and talked of the dreary voyage that lay before the lad;

the arid plains and cruel jungles far away; perils by sea and perils by

land; but across them all, Fame waving her white beckoning arms to the

young soldier, and crying, "Come, conqueror that shall be! come,

through trial and danger, through fever and famine,--come to your rest

upon my bloodstained lap!" Surely this boy, being only just eighteen

years of age, may be forgiven if he is a little romantic, a little over

eager and impressionable, a little too confident that the next thing to

going out to India as a sea-sick subaltern in a great transport-ship is

coming home with the reputation of a Clive. Perhaps he may be forgiven,

too, if, in his fresh enthusiasm, he sometimes forgot the shabby friend

whom he had helped little better than a twelvemonth before, and the

earnest hazel eyes that had shone upon him in the pitiful Oakley Street

chamber. I do not say that he was utterly unmindful of his old teacher

of mathematics. It was not in his nature to forget anyone who had need

of his services; for this boy, so eager to be a soldier, was of the

chivalrous temperament, and would have gone out to die for his

mistress, or his friend, if need had been. He had received two or three

grateful letters from John Marchmont; and in these letters the lawyer's

clerk had spoken pleasantly of his new life, and hopefully of his

health, which had improved considerably, he said, since his resignation

of the tragic banner and the pantomimic mask. Neither had Edward quite

forgotten his promise of enlisting Mrs. Arundel's sympathies in aid of

the motherless little girl. In one of these wintry walks beneath the

black branches at Dangerfield, the lad had told the sorrowful story of

his well-born tutor's poverty and humiliation.

"Only think, mother!" he cried at the end of the little history. "I saw

the poor fellow carrying a great calico flag, and marching about at the

heel of a procession, to be laughed at by the costermongers in the

gallery; and I know that he belongs to a capital Lincolnshire family,

and will come in for no end of money if he only lives long enough. But

if he should die, mother, and leave his little girl destitute, you'll

look after her, won't you?"

I don't know whether Mrs. Arundel quite entered into her son's ideas

upon the subject of adopting Mary Marchmont, or whether she had any

definite notion of bringing the little girl home to Dangerfield for the

natural term of her life, in the event of the child being left an

orphan. But she was a kind and charitable lady, and she scarcely cared

to damp her boy's spirits by holding forth upon the doubtful wisdom of

his adopting, or promising to adopt, any stray orphans who might cross

his pathway.

"I hope the little girl may not lose her father, Edward," she said

gently. "Besides, dear, you say that Mr. Marchmont tells you he has

humble friends, who would take the child if anything happened to him.

He does not wish us to adopt the little girl; he only asks us to

interest ourselves in her fate."

"And you will do that, mother darling?" cried the boy. "You will take

an interest in her, won't you? You couldn't help doing so, if you were

to see her. She's not like a child, you know,--not a bit like Letitia.

She's as grave and quiet as you are, mother,--or graver, I think; and

she looks like a lady, in spite of her poor, shabby pinafore and

frock."

"Does she wear shabby frocks?" said the mother. "I could help her in

that matter, at all events, Ned. I might send her a great trunk-full of

Letitia's things: she outgrows them before they have been worn long

enough to be shabby."

The boy coloured, and shook his head.

"It's very kind of you to think of it, mother dear; but I don't think

that would quite answer," he said.

"Why not?"

"Because, you see, John Marchmont is a gentleman; and, you know, though

he's so dreadfully poor now, he _is_ heir to Marchmont Towers. And

though he didn't mind doing any thing in the world to earn a few

shillings a week, he mightn't like to take cast-off clothes."

So nothing more was to be said or done upon the subject.

Edward Arundel wrote his humble friend a pleasant letter, in which he

told John that he had enlisted his mother's sympathy in Mary's cause,

and in which he spoke in very glowing terms of the Indian expedition

that lay before him.

"I wish I could come to say good-bye to you and Miss Mary before I go,"

he wrote; "but that's impossible. I go straight from here to

Southampton by coach at the end of this month, and the _Auckland_ sails

on the 2nd of February. Tell Miss Mary I shall bring her home all kinds

of pretty presents from Affghanistan,--ivory fans, and Cashmere shawls,

and Chinese puzzles, and embroidered slippers with turned-up toes, and

diamonds, and attar-of-roses, and suchlike; and remember that I expect

you to write to me, and to give me the earliest news of your coming

into the Lincolnshire property."

John Marchmont received this letter in the middle of January. He gave a

despondent sigh as he refolded the boyish epistle, after reading it to

his little girl.

"We haven't so many friends, Polly," he said, "that we should be

indifferent to the loss of this one."

Mary Marchmont's cheek grew paler at her father's sorrowful speech.

That imaginative temperament, which was, as I have said, almost morbid

in its intensity, presented every object to the little girl in a light

in which things are looked at by very few children. Only these few

words, and her fancy roamed far away to that cruel land whose perils

her father had described to her. Only these few words, and she was away

in the rocky Bolan Pass, under hurricanes of drifting snow; she saw the

hungry soldiers fighting with savage dogs for the possession of foul

carrion. She had heard all the perils and difficulties which had

befallen the Army of the Indus in the year '39, and the womanly heart

ached with the pain of those cruel memories.

"He will go to India and be killed, papa dear," she said. "Oh! why, why

do they let him go? His mother can't love him, can she? She would never

let him go, if she did."

John Marchmont was obliged to explain to his daughter that motherly

love must not go so far as to deprive a nation of its defenders; and

that the richest jewels which Cornelia can give to her country are

those ruby life-drops which flow from the hearts of her bravest and

brightest sons. Mary was no political economist; she could not reason

upon the necessity of chastising Persian insolence, or checking Russian

encroachments upon the far-away shores of the Indus. Was Edward

Arundel's bright head, with its aureola of yellow hair, to be cloven

asunder by an Affghan renegade's sabre, because the young Shah of

Persia had been contumacious?

Mary Marchmont wept silently that day over a three-volume novel, while

her father was away serving writs upon wretched insolvents, in his

capacity of out-door clerk to Messrs. Paulette, Paulette, and

Mathewson.

The young lady no longer spent her quiet days in the two-pair back. Mr.

Marchmont and his daughter had remained faithful to Oakley Street and

the proprietress of the ladies' wardrobe, who was a good, motherly

creature; but they had descended to the grandeur of the first floor,

whose gorgeous decorations Mary had glanced at furtively in the days

gone by, when the splendid chambers were occupied by an elderly and

reprobate commission-agent, who seemed utterly indifferent to the

delights of a convex mirror, surmounted by a maimed eagle, whose

dignity was somewhat impaired by the loss of a wing; but which bijou

appeared, to Mary, to be a fitting adornment for the young Queen's

palace in St. James's Park.

But neither the eagle nor the third volume of a thrilling romance could

comfort Mary upon this bleak January day. She shut her book, and stood

by the window, looking out into the dreary street, that seemed so

blotted and dim under the falling snow.

"It snowed in the Pass of Bolan," she thought; "and the treacherous

Indians harassed the brave soldiers, and killed their camels. What will

become of him in that dreadful country? Shall we ever see him again?"

Yes, Mary, to your sorrow! Indian scimitars will let him go scatheless;

famine and fever will pass him by; but the hand which points to that

far-away day on which you and he are to meet, will never fail or falter

in its purpose until the hour of your meeting comes.

* * * * *

We have no need to dwell upon the preparations which were made for the

young soldier's departure from home, nor on the tender farewells

between the mother and her son.

Mr. Arundel was a country gentleman _pur et simple_; a hearty,

broad-shouldered squire, who had no thought above his farm and his

dog-kennel, or the hunting of the red deer with which his neighbourhood

abounded. He sent his younger son to India as coolly as he had sent the

elder to Oxford. The boy had little to inherit, and must be provided

for in a gentlemanly manner. Other younger sons of the House of Arundel

had fought and conquered in the Honourable East India Company's

service; and was Edward any better than they, that there should be

sentimental whining because the lad was going away to fight his way to

fortune, if he could? Mr. Arundel went even further than this, and

declared that Master Edward was a lucky dog to be going out at such a

time, when there was plenty of fighting, and a very fair chance of

speedy promotion for a good soldier.

He gave the young cadet his blessing, reminded him of the limit of such

supplies as he was to expect from home, bade him keep clear of the

brandy-bottle and the dice-box; and having done this, believed that he

had performed his duty as an Englishman and a father.

If Mrs. Arundel wept, she wept in secret, loth to discourage her son by

the sight of those natural, womanly tears. If Miss Letitia Arundel was

sorry to lose her brother, she mourned with most praiseworthy

discretion, and did not forget to remind the young traveller that she

expected to receive a muslin frock, embroidered with beetle-wings, by

an early mail. And as Algernon Fairfax Dangerfield Arundel, the heir,

was away at college, there was no one else to mourn. So Edward left the

home of his forefathers by a branch-coach, which started from the

"Arundel Arms" in time to meet the "Telegraph" at Exeter; and no noisy

lamentations shook the sky above Dangerfield Park--no mourning voices

echoed through the spacious rooms. The old servants were sorry to lose

the younger-born, whose easy, genial temperament had made him an

especial favourite; but there was a certain admixture of joviality with

their sorrow, as there generally is with all mourning in the basement;

and the strong ale, the famous Dangerfield October, went faster upon

that 31st of January than on any day since Christmas.

I doubt if any one at Dangerfield Park sorrowed as bitterly for the

departure of the boyish soldier as a romantic young lady, of nine years

old, in Oakley Street, Lambeth; whose one sentimental

day-dream--half-childish, half-womanly--owned Edward Arundel as its

centre figure.

So the curtain falls on the picture of a brave ship sailing eastward,

her white canvas strained against the cold grey February sky, and a

little girl weeping over the tattered pages of a stupid novel in a

shabby London lodging.

CHAPTER V.

MARCHMONT TOWERS.

There is a lapse of three years and a half between the acts; and the

curtain rises to reveal a widely-different picture:--the picture of a

noble mansion in the flat Lincolnshire country; a stately pile of

building, standing proudly forth against a background of black

woodland; a noble building, supported upon either side by an octagon

tower, whose solid masonry is half-hidden by the ivy which clings about

the stonework, trailing here and there, and flapping restlessly with

every breath of wind against the narrow casements.

A broad stone terrace stretches the entire length of the grim facade,

from tower to tower; and three flights of steps lead from the terrace

to the broad lawn, which loses itself in a vast grassy flat, only

broken by a few clumps of trees and a dismal pool of black water, but

called by courtesy a park. Grim stone griffins surmount the

terrace-steps, and griffins' heads and other architectural

monstrosities, worn and moss-grown, keep watch and ward over every door

and window, every archway and abutment--frowning threat and defiance

upon the daring visitor who approaches the great house by this, the

formidable chief entrance.

The mansion looks westward: but there is another approach, a low

archway on the southern side, which leads into a quadrangle, where

there is a quaint little door under a stone portico, ivy-covered like

the rest; a comfortable little door of massive oak, studded with knobs

of rusty iron,--a door generally affected by visitors familiar with the

house.

This is Marchmont Towers,--a grand and stately mansion, which had been

a monastery in the days when England and the Pope were friends and

allies; and which had been bestowed upon Hugh Marchmont, gentleman, by

his Sovereign Lord and Most Christian Majesty the King Henry VIII, of

blessed memory, and by that gentleman-commoner extended and improved at

considerable outlay. This is Marchmont Towers,--a splendid and a

princely habitation truly, but perhaps scarcely the kind of dwelling

one would choose for the holy resting-place we call home. The great

mansion is a little too dismal in its lonely grandeur: it lacks shelter

when the dreary winds come sweeping across the grassy flats in the

bleak winter weather; it lacks shade when the western sun blazes on

every window-pane in the stifling summer evening. It is at all times

rather too stony in its aspect; and is apt to remind one almost

painfully of every weird and sorrowful story treasured in the

storehouse of memory. Ancient tales of enchantment, dark German

legends, wild Scottish fancies, grim fragments of half-forgotten

demonology, strange stories of murder, violence, mystery, and wrong,

vaguely intermingle in the stranger's mind as he looks, for the first

time, at Marchmont Towers.

But of course these feelings wear off in time. So invincible is the

power of custom, that we might make ourselves comfortable in the Castle

of Otranto, after a reasonable sojourn within its mysterious walls:

familiarity would breed contempt for the giant helmet, and all the

other grim apparitions of the haunted dwelling. The commonplace and

ignoble wants of every-day life must surely bring disenchantment with

them. The ghost and the butcher's boy cannot well exist

contemporaneously; and the avenging shade can scarcely continue to lurk

beneath the portal which is visited by the matutinal milkman. Indeed,

this is doubtless the reason that the most restless and impatient

spirit, bent on early vengeance and immediate retribution, will yet

wait until the shades of night have fallen before he reveals himself,

rather than run the risk of an ignominious encounter with the postman

or the parlour-maid. Be it how it might, the phantoms of Marchmont

Towers were not intrusive. They may have perambulated the long

tapestried corridors, the tenantless chambers, the broad black

staircase of shining oak; but, happily, no dweller in the mansion was

ever scared by the sight of their pale faces. All the dead-and-gone

beauties, and soldiers, and lawyers, and parsons, and simple

country-squires of the Marchmont race may have descended from their

picture-frames to hold a witches' sabbath in the old mansion; but as

the Lincolnshire servants were hearty eaters and heavy sleepers, the

ghosts had it all to themselves. I believe there was one dismal story

attached to the house,--the story of a Marchmont of the time of Charles

I, who had murdered his coachman in a fit of insensate rage; and it was

even asserted, upon the authority of an old housekeeper, that John

Marchmont's grandmother, when a young woman and lately come as a bride

to the Towers, had beheld the murdered coachman stalk into her chamber,

ghastly and blood-bedabbled, in the dim summer twilight. But as this

story was not particularly romantic, and possessed none of the elements

likely to insure popularity,--such as love, jealousy, revenge, mystery,

youth, and beauty,--it had never been very widely disseminated.

I should think that the new owner of Marchmont Towers--new within the

last six months--was about the last person in Christendom to be

hypercritical, or to raise fanciful objections to his dwelling; for

inasmuch as he had come straight from a wretched transpontine lodging

to this splendid Lincolnshire mansion, and had at the same time

exchanged a stipend of thirty shillings a week for an income of eleven

thousand a year (derivable from lands that spread far away, over fenny

flats and low-lying farms, to the solitary seashore), he had ample

reason to be grateful to Providence, and well pleased with his new

abode.

Yes; Philip Marchmont, the childless widower, had died six months

before, at the close of the year '43, of a broken heart,--his old

servants said, broken by the loss of his only and idolised son; after

which loss he had never been known to smile. He was one of those

undemonstrative men who can take a great sorrow quietly, and only--die

of it. Philip Marchmont lay in a velvet-covered coffin, above his

son's, in the stone recess set apart for them in the Marchmont vault

beneath Kemberling Church, three miles from the Towers; and John

reigned in his stead. John Marchmont, the supernumerary, the

banner-holder of Drury Lane, the patient, conscientious copying and

outdoor clerk of Lincoln's Inn, was now sole owner of the Lincolnshire

estate, sole master of a household of well-trained old servants, sole

proprietor of a very decent country-gentleman's stud, and of chariots,

barouches, chaises, phaetons, and other vehicles--a little shabby and

out of date it may be, but very comfortable to a man for whom an

omnibus ride had long been a treat and a rarity. Nothing had been

touched or disturbed since Philip Marchmont's death. The rooms he had

used were still the occupied apartments; the chambers he had chosen to

shut up were still kept with locked doors; the servants who had served

him waited upon his successor, whom they declared to be a quiet, easy

gentleman, far too wise to interfere with old servants, every one of

whom knew the ways of the house a great deal better than he did, though

he was the master of it.

There was, therefore, no shadow of change in the stately mansion. The

dinner-bell still rang at the same hour; the same tradespeople left the

same species of wares at the low oaken door; the old housekeeper,

arranging her simple _menu_, planned her narrow round of soups and

roasts, sweets and made-dishes, exactly as she had been wont to do, and

had no new tastes to consult. A grey-haired bachelor, who had been

own-man to Philip, was now own-man to John. The carriage which had

conveyed the late lord every Sunday to morning and afternoon service at

Kemberling conveyed the new lord, who sat in the same seat that his

predecessor had occupied in the great family-pew, and read his prayers

out of the same book,--a noble crimson, morocco-covered volume, in

which George, our most gracious King and Governor, and all manner of

dead-and-gone princes and princesses were prayed for.

The presence of Mary Marchmont made the only change in the old house;

and even that change was a very trifling one. Mary and her father were

as closely united at Marchmont Towers as they had been in Oakley

Street. The little girl clung to her father as tenderly as ever--more

tenderly than ever perhaps; for she knew something of that which the

physicians had said, and she knew that John Marchmont's lease of life

was not a long one. Perhaps it would be better to say that he had no

lease at all. His soul was a tenant on sufferance in its frail earthly

habitation, receiving a respite now and again, when the flicker of the

lamp was very low--every chance breath of wind threatening to

extinguish it for ever. It was only those who knew John Marchmont very

intimately who were fully acquainted with the extent of his danger. He

no longer bore any of those fatal outward signs of consumption, which

fatigue and deprivation had once made painfully conspicuous. The hectic

flush and the unnatural brightness of the eyes had subsided; indeed,

John seemed much stronger and heartier than of old; and it is only

great medical practitioners who can tell to a nicety what is going on

_inside_ a man, when he presents a very fair exterior to the

unprofessional eye. But John was decidedly better than he had been. He

might live three years, five, seven, possibly even ten years; but he

must live the life of a man who holds himself perpetually upon his

defence against death; and he must recognise in every bleak current of

wind, in every chilling damp, or perilous heat, or over-exertion, or

ill-chosen morsel of food, or hasty emotion, or sudden passion, an

insidious ally of his dismal enemy.

Mary Marchmont knew all this,--or divined it, perhaps, rather than knew

it, with the child-woman's subtle power of divination, which is even

stronger than the actual woman's; for her father had done his best to

keep all sorrowful knowledge from her. She knew that he was in danger;

and she loved him all the more dearly, as the one precious thing which

was in constant peril of being snatched away. The child's love for her

father has not grown any less morbid in its intensity since Edward

Arundel's departure for India; nor has Mary become more childlike since

her coming to Marchmont Towers, and her abandonment of all those sordid

cares, those pitiful every-day duties, which had made her womanly.

It may be that the last lingering glamour of childhood had for ever

faded away with the realisation of the day-dream which she had carried

about with her so often in the dingy transpontine thoroughfares around

Oakley Street. Marchmont Towers, that fairy palace, whose lighted

windows had shone upon her far away across a cruel forest of poverty

and trouble, like the enchanted castle which appears to the lost

wanderer of the child's story, was now the home of the father she

loved. The grim enchanter Death, the only magician of our modern

histories, had waved his skeleton hand, more powerful than the

star-gemmed wand of any fairy godmother, and the obstacles which had

stood between John Marchmont and his inheritance had one by one been

swept away.

But was Marchmont Towers quite as beautiful as that fairy palace of

Mary's day-dream? No, not quite--not quite. The rooms were

handsome,--handsomer and larger, even, than the rooms she had dreamed

of; but perhaps none the better for that. They were grand and gloomy

and magnificent; but they were not the sunlit chambers which her fancy

had built up, and decorated with such shreds and patches of splendour

as her narrow experience enabled her to devise. Perhaps it was rather a

disappointment to Miss Marchmont to discover that the mansion was

completely furnished, and that there was no room in it for any of those

splendours which she had so often contemplated in the New Cut. The

parrot at the greengrocer's was a vulgar bird, and not by any means

admissible in Lincolnshire. The carrying away and providing for Mary's

favourite tradespeople was not practicable; and John Marchmont had

demurred to her proposal of adopting the butcher's daughter.

There is always something to be given up even when our brightest

visions are realised; there is always some one figure (a low one

perhaps) missing in the fullest sum of earthly happiness. I dare say if

Alnaschar had married the Vizier's daughter, he would have found her a

shrew, and would have looked back yearningly to the humble days in

which he had been an itinerant vendor of crockery-ware.

If, therefore, Mary Marchmont found her sunlit fancies not quite

realised by the great stony mansion that frowned upon the fenny

countryside, the wide grassy flat, the black pool, with its dismal

shelter of weird pollard-willows, whose ugly reflections, distorted on

the bosom of the quiet water, looked like the shadows of hump-backed

men;--if these things did not compose as beautiful a picture as that

which the little girl had carried so long in her mind, she had no more

reason to be sorry than the rest of us, and had been no more foolish

than other dreamers. I think she had built her airy castle too much

after the model of a last scene in a pantomime, and that she expected

to find spangled waters twinkling in perpetual sunshine, revolving

fountains, ever-expanding sunflowers, and gilded clouds of

rose-coloured gauze,--every thing except the fairies, in short,--at

Marchmont Towers. Well, the dream was over: and she was quite a woman

now, and very grateful to Providence when she remembered that her

father had no longer need to toil for his daily bread, and that he was

luxuriously lodged, and could have the first physicians in the land at

his beck and call.

"Oh, papa, it is so nice to be rich!" the young lady would exclaim now

and then, in a fleeting transport of enthusiasm. "How good we ought to

be to the poor people, when we remember how poor we once were!"

And the little girl did not forget to be good to the poor about

Kemberling and Marchmont Towers. There were plenty of poor, of

course--free-and-easy pensioners, who came to the Towers for brandy,

and wine, and milk, and woollen stuffs, and grocery, precisely as they

would have gone to a shop, except that there was to be no bill. The

housekeeper doled out her bounties with many short homilies upon the

depravity and ingratitude of the recipients, and gave tracts of an

awful and denunciatory nature to the pitiful petitioners--tracts

interrogatory, and tracts fiercely imperative; tracts that asked,

"Where are you going?" "Why are you wicked?" "What will become of you?"

and other tracts which cried, "Stop, and think!" "Pause, while there is

time!" "Sinner, consider!" "Evil-doer, beware!" Perhaps it may not be

the wisest possible plan to begin the work of reformation by

frightening, threatening, and otherwise disheartening the wretched

sinner to be reformed. There is a certain sermon in the New Testament,

containing sacred and comforting words which were spoken upon a

mountain near at hand to Jerusalem, and spoken to an auditory amongst

which there must have been many sinful creatures; but there is more of

blessing than cursing in that sublime discourse, and it might be rather

a tender father pleading gently with his wayward children than an

offended Deity dealing out denunciation upon a stubborn and refractory

race. But the authors of the tracts may have never read this sermon,

perhaps; and they may take their ideas of composition from that

comforting service which we read on Ash-Wednesday, cowering in fear and

trembling in our pews, and calling down curses upon ourselves and our

neighbours. Be it as it might, the tracts were not popular amongst the

pensioners of Marchmont Towers. They infinitely preferred to hear Mary

read a chapter in the New Testament, or some pretty patriarchal story

of primitive obedience and faith. The little girl would discourse upon

the Scripture histories in her simple, old-fashioned manner; and many a

stout Lincolnshire farm-labourer was content to sit over his hearth,

with a pipe of shag-tobacco and a mug of fettled beer, while Miss

Marchmont read and expounded the history of Abraham and Isaac, or

Joseph and his brethren.

"It's joost loike a story-book to hear her," the man would say to his

wife; "and yet she brings it all hoame, too, loike. If she reads about

Abraham, she'll say, maybe, 'That's joost how you gave your only son to

be a soldier, you know, Muster Moggins;'--she allus says Muster

Moggins;--'you gave un into God's hands, and you troosted God would

take care of un; and whatever cam' to un would be the best, even if it

was death.' That's what she'll say, bless her little heart! so gentle

and tender loike. The wust o' chaps couldn't but listen to her."

Mary Marchmont's morbidly sensitive nature adapted her to all

charitable offices. No chance word in her simple talk ever inflicted a

wound upon the listener. She had a subtle and intuitive comprehension

of other people's feelings, derived from the extreme susceptibility of

her own. She had never been vulgarised by the associations of poverty;

for her self-contained nature took no colour from the things that

surrounded her, and she was only at Marchmont Towers that which she had

been from the age of six--a little lady, grave and gentle, dignified,

discreet, and wise.

There was one bright figure missing out of the picture which Mary had

been wont of late years to make of the Lincolnshire mansion, and that

was the figure of the yellow-haired boy who had breakfasted upon

haddocks and hot rolls in Oakley Street. She had imagined Edward

Arundel an inhabitant of that fair Utopia. He would live with them; or,

if he could not live with them, he would be with them as a

visitor,--often--almost always. He would leave off being a soldier, for

of course her papa could give him more money than he could get by being

a soldier--(you see that Mary's experience of poverty had taught her to

take a mercantile and sordid view of military life)--and he would come

to Marchmont Towers, and ride, and drive, and play tennis (what was

tennis? she wondered), and read three-volume novels all day long. But

that part of the dream was at least broken. Marchmont Towers was Mary's

home, but the young soldier was far away; in the Pass of Bolan,

perhaps,--Mary had a picture of that cruel rocky pass almost always in

her mind,--or cutting his way through a black jungle, with the yellow

eyes of hungry tigers glaring out at him through the rank tropical

foliage; or dying of thirst and fever under a scorching sun, with no

better pillow than the neck of a dead camel, with no more tender

watcher than the impatient vulture flapping her wings above his head,

and waiting till he, too, should be carrion. What was the good of

wealth, if it could not bring this young soldier home to a safe shelter

in his native land? John Marchmont smiled when his daughter asked this

question, and implored her father to write to Edward Arundel, recalling

him to England.

"God knows how glad I should be to have the boy here, Polly!" John

said, as he drew his little girl closer to his breast,--she sat on his

knee still, though she was thirteen years of age. "But Edward has a

career before him, my dear, and could not give it up for an inglorious

life in this rambling old house. It isn't as if I could hold out any

inducement to him: you know, Polly, I can't; for I mustn't leave any

money away from my little girl."

"But he might have half my money, papa, or all of it," Mary added

piteously. "What could I do with money, if----?"

She didn't finish the sentence; she never could complete any such

sentence as this; but her father knew what she meant.

So six months had passed since a dreary January day upon which John

Marchmont had read, in the second column of the "Times," that he could

hear of something greatly to his advantage by applying to a certain

solicitor, whose offices were next door but one to those of Messrs.

Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson's. His heart began to beat very

violently when he read that advertisement in the supplement, which it

was one of his duties to air before the fire in the clerks' office; but

he showed no other sign of emotion. He waited until he took the papers

to his employer; and as he laid them at Mr. Mathewson's elbow, murmured

a respectful request to be allowed to go out for half-an-hour, upon his

own business.

"Good gracious me, Marchmont!" cried the lawyer; "what can you want to

go out for at this time in the morning? You've only just come; and

there's that agreement between Higgs and Sandyman must be copied

before----"

"Yes, I know, sir. I'll be back in time to attend to it; but I--I think

I've come into a fortune, sir; and I should like to go and see about

it."

The solicitor turned in his revolving library-chair, and looked aghast

at his clerk. Had this Marchmont--always rather unnaturally reserved

and eccentric--gone suddenly mad? No; the copying-clerk stood by his

employer's side, grave, self-possessed as ever, with his forefinger

upon the advertisement.

"Marchmont--John--call--Messrs. Tindal and Trollam--" gasped Mr.

Mathewson. "Do you mean to tell me it's _you_?"

"Yes, sir."

"Egad, I'll go with you!" cried the solicitor, hooking his arm through

that of his clerk, snatching his hat from an adjacent stand, and

dashing through the outer office, down the great staircase, and into

the next door but one before John Marchmont knew where he was.

John had not deceived his employer. Marchmont Towers was his, with all

its appurtenances. Messrs. Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson took him

in hand, much to the chagrin of Messrs. Tindal and Trollam, and proved

his identity in less than a week. On a shelf above the high wooden desk

at which John had sat, copying law-papers, with a weary hand and an

aching spine, appeared two bran-new deed-boxes, inscribed, in white

letters, with the name and address of JOHN MARCHMONT, ESQ., MARCHMONT

TOWERS. The copying-clerk's sudden accession to fortune was the talk of

all the _employes_ in "The Fields." Marchmont Towers was exaggerated

into half Lincolnshire, and a tidy slice of Yorkshire; eleven thousand

a year was expanded into an annual million. Everybody expected largesse

from the legatee. How fond people had been of the quiet clerk, and how

magnanimously they had concealed their sentiments during his poverty,

lest they should wound him, as they urged, "which" they knew he was

sensitive; and how expansively they now dilated on their

long-suppressed emotions! Of course, under these circumstances, it is

hardly likely that everybody could be satisfied; so it is a small thing

to say that the dinner which John gave--by his late employers'

suggestion (he was about the last man to think of giving a dinner)--at

the "Albion Tavern," to the legal staff of Messrs. Paulette, Paulette,

and Mathewson, and such acquaintance of the legal profession as they

should choose to invite, was a failure; and that gentlemen who were

pretty well used to dine upon liver and bacon, or beefsteak and onions,

or the joint, vegetables, bread, cheese, and celery for a shilling,

turned up their noses at the turbot, murmured at the paucity of green

fat in the soup, made light of red mullet and ortolans, objected to the

flavour of the truffles, and were contemptuous about the wines.

John knew nothing of this. He had lived a separate and secluded

existence; and his only thought now was of getting away to Marchmont

Towers, which had been familiar to him in his boyhood, when he had been

wont to go there on occasional visits to his grandfather. He wanted to

get away from the turmoil and confusion of the big, heartless city, in

which he had endured so much; he wanted to carry away his little girl

to a quiet country home, and live and die there in peace. He liberally

rewarded all the good people about Oakley Street who had been kind to

little Mary; and there was weeping in the regions of the Ladies'

Wardrobe when Mr. Marchmont and his daughter went away one bitter

winter's morning in a cab, which was to carry them to the hostelry

whence the coach started for Lincoln.

It is strange to think how far those Oakley-street days of privation

and endurance seem to have receded in the memories of both father and

daughter. The impalpable past fades away, and it is difficult for John

and his little girl to believe that they were once so poor and

desolate. It is Oakley Street now that is visionary and unreal. The

stately county families bear down upon Marchmont Towers in great

lumbering chariots, with brazen crests upon the hammer-cloths, and

sulky coachmen in Brown-George wigs. The county mammas patronise and

caress Miss Marchmont--what a match she will be for one of the county

sons by-and-by!--the county daughters discourse with Mary about her

poor, and her fancy-work, and her piano. She is getting on slowly

enough with her piano, poor little girl! under the tuition of the

organist of Swampington, who gives lessons to that part of the county.

And there are solemn dinners now and then at Marchmont Towers--dinners

at which Miss Mary appears when the cloth has been removed, and

reflects in silent wonder upon the change that has come to her father

and herself. Can it be true that she has ever lived in Oakley Street,

whither came no more aristocratic visitors than her Aunt Sophia, who

was the wife of a Berkshire farmer, and always brought hogs' puddings,

and butter, and home-made bread, and other rustic delicacies to her

brother-in-law; or Mrs. Brigsome, the washer-woman, who made a

morning-call every Monday, to fetch John Marchmont's shabby shirts? The

shirts were not shabby now; and it was no longer Mary's duty to watch

them day by day, and manipulate them tenderly when the linen grew

frayed at the sharp edges of the folds, or the buttonholes gave signs

of weakness. Corson, Mr. Marchmont's own-man, had care of the shirts

now: and John wore diamond-studs and a black-satin waistcoat, when he

gave a dinner-party. They were not very lively, those Lincolnshire

dinner-parties; though the dessert was a sight to look upon, in Mary's

eyes. The long shining table, the red and gold and purple Indian china,

the fluffy woollen d'oyleys, the sparkling cut-glass, the sticky

preserved ginger and guava-jelly, and dried orange rings and chips, and

all the stereotyped sweetmeats, were very grand and beautiful, no

doubt; but Mary had seen livelier desserts in Oakley Street, though

there had been nothing better than a brown-paper bag of oranges from

the Westminster Road, and a bottle of two-and-twopenny Marsala from a

licensed victualler's in the Borough, to promote conviviality.

CHAPTER VI.

THE YOUNG SOLDIER'S RETURN.

The rain beats down upon the battlemented roof of Marchmont Towers this

July day, as if it had a mind to flood the old mansion. The flat waste

of grass, and the lonely clumps of trees, are almost blotted out by the

falling rain. The low grey sky shuts out the distance. This part of

Lincolnshire--fenny, misty, and flat always--seems flatter and mistier

than usual to-day. The rain beats hopelessly upon the leaves in the

wood behind Marchmont Towers, and splashes into great pools beneath the

trees, until the ground is almost hidden by the fallen water, and the

trees seem to be growing out of a black lake. The land is lower behind

Marchmont Towers, and slopes down gradually to the bank of a dismal

river, which straggles through the Marchmont property at a snail's

pace, to gain an impetus farther on, until it hurries into the sea

somewhere northward of Grimsby. The wood is not held in any great

favour by the household at the Towers; and it has been a pet project of

several Marchmonts to level and drain it, but a project not very easily

to be carried out. Marchmont Towers is said to be unhealthy, as a

dwelling-house, by reason of this wood, from which miasmas rise in

certain states of the weather; and it is on this account that the back

of the house--the eastern front, at least, as it is called--looking to

the wood is very little used.

Mary Marchmont sits at a window in the western drawing-room, watching

the ceaseless falling of the rain upon this dreary summer afternoon.

She is little changed since the day upon which Edward Arundel saw her

in Oakley Street. She is taller, of course, but her figure is as

slender and childish as ever: it is only her face in which the

earnestness of premature womanhood reveals itself in a grave and sweet

serenity very beautiful to contemplate. Her soft brown eyes have a

pensive shadow in their gentle light; her mouth is even more pensive.

It has been said of Jane Grey, of Mary Stuart, of Marie Antoinette,

Charlotte Corday, and other fated women, that in the gayest hours of

their youth they bore upon some feature, or in some expression, the

shadow of the End--an impalpable, indescribable presage of an awful

future, vaguely felt by those who looked upon them.

Is it thus with Mary Marchmont? Has the solemn hand of Destiny set that

shadowy brand upon the face of this child, that even in her prosperity,

as in her adversity, she should be so utterly different from all other

children? Is she already marked out for some womanly martyrdom--already

set apart for more than common suffering?

She sits alone this afternoon, for her father is busy with his agent.

Wealth does not mean immunity from all care and trouble; and Mr.

Marchmont has plenty of work to get through, in conjunction with his

land-steward, a hard-headed Yorkshireman, who lives at Kemberling, and

insists on doing his duty with pertinacious honesty.

The large brown eyes looked wistfully out at the dismal waste and the

falling rain. There was a wretched equestrian making his way along the

carriage-drive.

"Who can come to see us on such a day?" Mary thought. "It must be Mr.

Gormby, I suppose;"--the agent's name was Gormby. "Mr. Gormby never

cares about the wet; but then I thought he was with papa. Oh, I hope it

isn't anybody coming to call."

But Mary forgot all about the struggling equestrian the next moment.

She had some morsel of fancy-work upon her lap, and picked it up and

went on with it, setting slow stitches, and letting her thoughts wander

far away from Marchmont Towers--to India, I am afraid; or to that

imaginary India which she had created for herself out of such images as

were to be picked up in the "Arabian Nights." She was roused suddenly

by the opening of a door at the farther end of the room, and by the

voice of a servant, who mumbled a name which sounded something like Mr.

Armenger.

She rose, blushing a little, to do honour to one of her father's county

acquaintance, as she thought; when a fair-haired gentleman dashed in,

very much excited and very wet, and made his way towards her.

"I _would_ come, Miss Marchmont," he said,--"I would come, though the

day was so wet. Everybody vowed I was mad to think of it, and it was as

much as my poor brute of a horse could do to get over the ten miles of

swamp between this and my uncle's house; but I would come! Where's

John? I want to see John. Didn't I always tell him he'd come into the

Lincolnshire property? Didn't I always say so, now? You should have

seen Martin Mostyn's face--he's got a capital berth in the War Office,

and he's such a snob!--when I told him the news: it was as long as my

arm! But I must see John, dear old fellow! I long to congratulate him."

Mary stood with her hands clasped, and her breath coming quickly. The

blush had quite faded out, and left her unusually pale. But Edward

Arundel did not see this: young gentlemen of four-and-twenty are not

very attentive to every change of expression in little girls of

thirteen.

"Oh, is it you, Mr. Arundel? Is it really you?"

She spoke in a low voice, and it was almost difficult to keep the

rushing tears back while she did so. She had pictured him so often in

peril, in famine, in sickness, in death, that to see him here, well,

happy, light-hearted, cordial, handsome, and brave, as she had seen him

four-and-a-half years before in the two-pair back in Oakley Street, was

almost too much for her to bear without the relief of tears. But she

controlled her emotion as bravely as if she had been a woman of twenty.

"I am so glad to see you," she said quietly; "and papa will be so glad

too! It is the only thing we want, now we are rich; to have you with

us. We have talked of you so often; and I--we--have been so unhappy

sometimes, thinking that----"

"That I should be killed, I suppose?"

"Yes; or wounded very, very badly. The battles in India have been

dreadful, have they not?"

Mr. Arundel smiled at her earnestness.

"They have not been exactly child's play," he said, shaking back his

chesnut hair and smoothing his thick moustache. He was a man now, and a

very handsome one; something of that type which is known in this year

of grace as "swell"; but brave and chivalrous withal, and not afflicted

with any impediment in his speech. "The men who talk of the Affghans as

a chicken-hearted set of fellows are rather out of their reckoning. The

Indians can fight, Miss Mary, and fight like the devil; but we can lick

'em!"

He walked over to the fireplace, where--upon this chilly wet day, there

was a fire burning--and began to shake himself dry. Mary, following him

with her eyes, wondered if there was such another soldier in all Her

Majesty's dominions, and how soon he would be made General-in-Chief of

the Army of the Indus.

"Then you've not been wounded at all, Mr. Arundel?" she said, after a

pause.

"Oh, yes, I've been wounded; I got a bullet in my shoulder from an

Affghan musket, and I'm home on sick-leave."

This time he saw the expression of her face, and interpreted her look

of alarm.

"But I'm not ill, you know, Miss Marchmont," he said, laughing. "Our

fellows are very glad of a wound when they feel home-sick. The 8th come

home before long, all of 'em; and I've a twelvemonth's leave of

absence; and we're pretty sure to be ordered out again by the end of

that time, as I don't believe there's much chance of quiet over there."

"You will go out again!----"

Edward Arundel smiled at her mournful tone.

"To be sure, Miss Mary. I have my captaincy to win, you know; I'm only

a lieutenant, as yet."

It was only a twelvemonth's reprieve, after all, then, Mary thought. He

would go back again--to suffer, and to be wounded, and to die, perhaps.

But then, on the other hand, there was a twelvemonth's respite; and her

father might in that time prevail upon the young soldier to stay at

Marchmont Towers. It was such inexpressible happiness to see him once

more, to know that he was safe and well, that Mary could scarcely do

otherwise than see all things in a sunny light just now.

She ran to John Marchmont's study to tell him of the coming of this

welcome visitor; but she wept upon her father's shoulder before she

could explain who it was whose coming had made her so glad. Very few

friendships had broken the monotony of her solitary existence; and

Edward Arundel was the only chivalrous image she had ever known, out of

her books.

John Marchmont was scarcely less pleased than his child to see the man

who had befriended him in his poverty. Never has more heartfelt welcome

been given than that which greeted Edward Arundel at Marchmont Towers.

"You will stay with us, of course, my dear Arundel," John said; "you

will stop for September and the shooting. You know you promised you'd

make this your shooting-box; and we'll build the tennis-court. Heaven

knows, there's room enough for it in the great quadrangle; and there's

a billiard-room over this, though I'm afraid the table is out of order.

But we can soon set that right, can't we, Polly?"

"Yes, yes, papa; out of my pocket-money, if you like."

Mary Marchmont said this in all good faith. It was sometimes difficult

for her to remember that her father was really rich, and had no need of

help out of her pocket-money. The slender savings in her little purse

had often given him some luxury that he would not otherwise have had,

in the time gone by.

"You got my letter, then?" John said; "the letter in which I told

you----"

"That Marchmont Towers was yours. Yes, my dear old boy. That letter was

amongst a packet my agent brought me half-an-hour before I left

Calcutta. God bless you, dear old fellow; how glad I was to hear of it!

I've only been in England a fortnight. I went straight from Southampton

to Dangerfield to see my father and mother, stayed there little over

ten days, and then offended them all by running away. I reached

Swampington yesterday, slept at my uncle Hubert's, paid my respects to

my cousin Olivia, who is,--well, I've told you what she is,--and rode

over here this morning, much to the annoyance of the inhabitants of the

Rectory. So, you see, I've been doing nothing but offending people for

your sake, John; and for yours, Miss Mary. By-the-by, I've brought you

such a doll!"

A doll! Mary's pale face flushed a faint crimson. Did he think her

still a child, then, this soldier; did he think her only a silly child,

with no thought above a doll, when she would have gone out to India,

and braved every peril of that cruel country, to be his nurse and

comfort in fever and sickness, like the brave Sisters of Mercy she had

read of in some of her novels?

Edward Arundel saw that faint crimson glow lighting up in her face.

"I beg your pardon, Miss Marchmont," he said. "I was only joking; of

course you are a young lady now, almost grown up, you know. Can you

play chess?"

"No, Mr. Arundel."

"I am sorry for that; for I have brought you a set of chessmen that

once belonged to Dost Mahommed Khan. But I'll teach you the game, if

you like?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Arundel; I should like it very, very much."

The young soldier could not help being amused by the little girl's

earnestness. She was about the same age as his sister Letitia; but, oh,

how widely different to that bouncing and rather wayward young lady,

who tore the pillow-lace upon her muslin frocks, rumpled her long

ringlets, rasped the skin off the sharp points of her elbows, by

repeated falls upon the gravel-paths at Dangerfield, and tormented a

long-suffering Swiss attendant, half-lady's-maid, half-governess, from

morning till night. No fold was awry in Mary Marchmont's simple

black-silk frock; no plait disarranged in the neat cambric tucker that

encircled the slender white throat. Intellect here reigned supreme.

Instead of the animal spirits of a thoughtless child, there was a

woman's loving carefulness for others, a woman's unselfishness and

devotion.

Edward Arundel did not understand all this, but I think he had a dim

comprehension of the greater part of it.

"She is a dear little thing," he thought, as he watched her clinging to

her father's arm; and then he began to talk about Marchmont Towers, and

insisted upon being shown over the house; and, perhaps for the first

time since the young heir had shot himself to death upon a bright

September morning in a stubble-field within earshot of the park, the

sound of merry laughter echoed through the long corridors, and

resounded in the unoccupied rooms.

Edward Arundel was in raptures with everything. "There never was such a

dear old place," he said. "'Gloomy?' 'dreary?' 'draughty?' pshaw! Cut a

few logs out of that wood at the back there, pile 'em up in the wide

chimneys, and set a light to 'em, and Marchmont Towers would be like a

baronial mansion at Christmas-time." He declared that every dingy

portrait he looked at was a Rubens or a Velasquez, or a Vandyke, a

Holbein, or a Lely.

"Look at that fur border to the old woman's black-velvet gown, John;

look at the colouring of the hands! Do you think anybody but Peter Paul

could have painted that? Do you see that girl with the blue-satin

stomacher and the flaxen ringlets?--one of your ancestresses, Miss

Mary, and very like you. If that isn't in Sir Peter Lely's best

style,--his earlier style, you know, before he was spoiled by royal

patronage, and got lazy,--I know nothing of painting."

The young soldier ran on in this manner, as he hurried his host from

room to room; now throwing open windows to look out at the wet

prospect; now rapping against the wainscot to find secret hiding-places

behind sliding panels; now stamping on the oak-flooring in the hope of

discovering a trap-door. He pointed out at least ten eligible sites for

the building of the tennis-court; he suggested more alterations and

improvements than a builder could have completed in a lifetime. The

place brightened under the influence of his presence, as a landscape

lights up under a burst of sudden sunshine breaking through a dull grey

sky.

Mary Marchmont did not wait for the removal of the table-cloth that

evening, but dined with her father and his friend in a snug

oak-panelled chamber, half-breakfast-room, half-library, which opened

out of the western drawing-room. How different Edward Arundel was to

all the rest of the world, Miss Marchmont thought; how gay, how bright,

how genial, how happy! The county families, mustered in their fullest

force, couldn't make such mirth amongst them as this young soldier

created in his single person.

The evening was an evening in fairy-land. Life was sometimes like the

last scene in a pantomime, after all, with rose-coloured cloud and

golden sunlight.

One of the Marchmont servants went over to Swampington early the next

day to fetch Mr. Arundel's portmanteaus from the Rectory; and after

dinner upon that second evening, Mary Marchmont took her seat opposite

Edward, and listened reverently while he explained to her the moves

upon the chessboard.

"So you don't know my cousin Olivia?" the young soldier said by-and-by.

"That's odd! I should have thought she would have called upon you long

before this."

Mary Marchmont shook her head.

"No," she said; "Miss Arundel has never been to see us; and I should so

like to have seen her, because she would have told me about you. Mr.

Arundel has called one or twice upon papa; but I have never seen him.

He is not our clergyman, you know; Marchmont Towers belongs to

Kemberling parish."

"To be sure; and Swampington is ten miles off. But, for all that, I

should have thought Olivia would have called upon you. I'll drive you

over to-morrow, if John thinks me whip enough to trust you with me, and

you shall see Livy. The Rectory's such a queer old place!"

Perhaps Mr. Marchmont was rather doubtful as to the propriety of

committing his little girl to Edward Arundel's charioteership for a

ten-mile drive upon a wretched road. Be it as it might, a lumbering

barouche, with a pair of over-fed horses, was ordered next morning,

instead of the high, old-fashioned gig which the soldier had proposed

driving; and the safety of the two young people was confided to a sober

old coachman, rather sulky at the prospect of a drive to Swampington so

soon after the rainy weather.

It does not rain always, even in this part of Lincolnshire; and the

July morning was bright and pleasant, the low hedges fragrant with

starry opal-tinted wild roses and waxen honeysuckle, the yellowing corn

waving in the light summer breeze. Mary assured her companion that she

had no objection whatever to the odour of cigar-smoke; so Mr. Arundel

lolled upon the comfortable cushions of the barouche, with his back to

the horses, smoking cheroots, and talking gaily, while Miss Marchmont

sat in the place of state opposite to him. A happy drive; a drive in a

fairy chariot through regions of fairyland, for ever and for ever to be

remembered by Mary Marchmont.

They left the straggling hedges and the yellowing corn behind them

by-and-by, as they drew near the outskirts of Swampington. The town

lies lower even than the surrounding country, flat and low as that

country is. A narrow river crawls at the base of a half-ruined wall,

which once formed part of the defences of the place. Black barges lie

at anchor here; and a stone bridge, guarded by a toll-house, spans the

river. Mr. Marchmont's carriage lumbered across this bridge, and under

an archway, low, dark, stony, and grim, into a narrow street of solid,

well-built houses, low, dark, stony, and grim, like the archway, but

bearing the stamp of reputable occupation. I believe the grass grew,

and still grows, in this street, as it does in all the other streets

and in the market-place of Swampington. They are all pretty much in the

same style, these streets,--all stony, narrow, dark, and grim; and they

wind and twist hither and thither, and in and out, in a manner utterly

bewildering to the luckless stranger, who, seeing that they are all

alike, has no landmarks for his guidance.

There are two handsome churches, both bearing an early date in the

history of Norman supremacy: one crowded into an inconvenient corner of

a back street, and choked by the houses built up round about it; the

other lying a little out of the town, upon a swampy waste looking

towards the sea, which flows within a mile of Swampington. Indeed,

there is no lack of water in that Lincolnshire borough. The river winds

about the outskirts of the town; unexpected creeks and inlets meet you

at every angle; shallow pools lie here and there about the marshy

suburbs; and in the dim distance the low line of the grey sea meets the

horizon.

But perhaps the positive ugliness of the town is something redeemed by

a vague air of romance and old-world mystery which pervades it. It is

an exceptional place, and somewhat interesting thereby. The great

Norman church upon the swampy waste, the scattered tombstones, bordered

by the low and moss-grown walls, make a picture which is apt to dwell

in the minds of those who look upon it, although it is by no means a

pretty picture. The Rectory lies close to the churchyard; and a

wicket-gate opens from Mr. Arundel's garden into a narrow pathway,

leading across a patch of tangled grass and through a lane of sunken

and lopsided tombstones, to the low vestry door. The Rectory itself is

a long irregular building, to which one incumbent after another has

built the additional chamber, or chimney, or porch, or bow-window,

necessary for his accommodation. There is very little garden in front

of the house, but a patch of lawn and shrubbery and a clump of old

trees at the back.

"It's not a pretty house, is it, Miss Marchmont?" asked Edward, as he

lifted his companion out of the carriage.

"No, not very pretty," Mary answered; "but I don't think any thing is

pretty in Lincolnshire. Oh, there's the sea!" she cried, looking

suddenly across the marshes to the low grey line in the distance. "How

I wish we were as near the sea at Marchmont Towers!"

The young lady had something of a romantic passion for the

wide-spreading ocean. It was an unknown region, that stretched far

away, and was wonderful and beautiful by reason of its solemn mystery.

All her Corsair stories were allied to that far, fathomless deep. The

white sail in the distance was Conrad's, perhaps; and he was speeding

homeward to find Medora dead in her lonely watch-tower, with fading

flowers upon her breast. The black hull yonder, with dirty canvas

spread to the faint breeze, was the bark of some terrible pirate bound

on rapine and ravage. (She was a coal-barge, I have no doubt, sailing

Londonward with her black burden.) Nymphs and Lurleis, Mermaids and

Mermen, and tiny water-babies with silvery tails, for ever splashing in

the sunshine, were all more or less associated with the long grey line

towards which Mary Marchmont looked with solemn, yearning eyes.

"We'll drive down to the seashore some morning, Polly," said Mr.

Arundel. He was beginning to call her Polly, now and then, in the easy

familiarity of their intercourse. "We'll spend a long day on the sands,

and I'll smoke cheroots while you pick up shells and seaweed."

Miss Marchmont clasped her hands in silent rapture. Her face was

irradiated by the new light of happiness. How good he was to her, this

brave soldier, who must undoubtedly be made Commander-in-Chief of the

Army of the Indus in a year or so!

Edward Arundel led his companion across the flagged way between the

iron gate of the Rectory garden and a half-glass door leading into the

hall. Out of this simple hall, only furnished with a couple of chairs,

a barometer, and an umbrella-stand, they went, without announcement,

into a low, old-fashioned room, half-study, half-parlour, where a young

lady was sitting at a table writing.

She rose as Edward opened the door, and came to meet him.

"At last!" she said; "I thought your rich friends engrossed all your

attention."

She paused, seeing Mary.

"This is Miss Marchmont, Olivia," said Edward; "the only daughter of my

old friend. You must be very fond of her, please; for she is a dear

little girl, and I know she means to love you."

Mary lifted her soft brown eyes to the face of the young lady, and then

dropped her eyelids suddenly, as if half-frightened by what she had

seen there.

What was it? What was it in Olivia Arundel's handsome face from which

those who looked at her so often shrank, repelled and disappointed?

Every line in those perfectly-modelled features was beautiful to look

at; but, as a whole, the face was not beautiful. Perhaps it was too

much like a marble mask, exquisitely chiselled, but wanting in variety

of expression. The handsome mouth was rigid; the dark grey eyes had a

cold light in them. The thick bands of raven-black hair were drawn

tightly off a square forehead, which was the brow of an intellectual

and determined man rather than of a woman. Yes; womanhood was the

something wanted in Olivia Arundel's face. Intellect, resolution,

courage, are rare gifts; but they are not the gifts whose tokens we

look for most anxiously in a woman's face. If Miss Arundel had been a

queen, her diadem would have become her nobly; and she might have been

a very great queen: but Heaven help the wretched creature who had

appealed from minor tribunals to _her_ mercy! Heaven help delinquents

of every kind whose last lingering hope had been in her compassion!

Perhaps Mary Marchmont vaguely felt something of all this. At any rate,

the enthusiasm with which she had been ready to regard Edward Arundel's

cousin cooled suddenly beneath the winter in that pale, quiet face.

Miss Arundel said a few words to her guest; kindly enough; but rather

too much as if she had been addressing a child of six. Mary, who was

accustomed to be treated as a woman, was wounded by her manner.

"How different she is from Edward!" thought Miss Marchmont. "I shall

never like her as I like him."

"So this is the pale-faced child who is to have Marchmont Towers

by-and-by," thought Miss Arundel; "and these rich friends are the

people for whom Edward stays away from us."

The lines about the rigid mouth grew harder, the cold light in the grey

eyes grew colder, as the young lady thought this.

It was thus that these two women met: while one was but a child in

years; while the other was yet in the early bloom of womanhood: these

two, who were predestined to hate each other, and inflict suffering

upon each other in the days that were to come. It was thus that they

thought of one another; each with an unreasonable dread, an undefined

aversion gathering in her breast.

* * * * *

Six weeks passed, and Edward Arundel kept his promise of shooting the

partridges on the Marchmont preserves. The wood behind the Towers, and

the stubbled corn-fields on the home-farm, bristled with game. The

young soldier heartily enjoyed himself through that delicious first

week in September; and came home every afternoon, with a heavy game-bag

and a light heart, to boast of his prowess before Mary and her father.

The young man was by this time familiar with every nook and corner of

Marchmont Towers; and the builders were already at work at the

tennis-court which John had promised to erect for his friend's

pleasure. The site ultimately chosen was a bleak corner of the eastern

front, looking to the wood; but as Edward declared the spot in every

way eligible, John had no inclination to find fault with his friend's

choice. There was other work for the builders; for Mr. Arundel had

taken a wonderful fancy to a ruined boat-house upon the brink of the

river; and this boat-house was to be rebuilt and restored, and made

into a delightful pavilion, in the upper chambers of which Mary might

sit with her father in the hot summer weather, while Mr. Arundel kept a

couple of trim wherries in the recesses below.

So, you see, the young man made himself very much at home, in his own

innocent, boyish fashion, at Marchmont Towers. But as he had brought

life and light to the old Lincolnshire mansion, nobody was inclined to

quarrel with him for any liberties which he might choose to take: and

every one looked forward sorrowfully to the dark days before Christmas,

at which time he was under a promise to return to Dangerfield Park;

there to spend the remainder of his leave of absence.

CHAPTER VII.

OLIVIA.

While busy workmen were employed at Marchmont Towers, hammering at the

fragile wooden walls of the tennis-court,--while Mary Marchmont and

Edward Arundel wandered, with the dogs at their heels, amongst the

rustle of the fallen leaves in the wood behind the great gaunt

Lincolnshire mansion,--Olivia, the Rector's daughter, sat in her

father's quiet study, or walked to and fro in the gloomy streets of

Swampington, doing her duty day by day.

Yes, the life of this woman is told in these few words: she did her

duty. From the earliest age at which responsibility can begin, she had

done her duty, uncomplainingly, unswervingly, as it seemed to those who

watched her.

She was a good woman. The bishop of the diocese had specially

complimented her for her active devotion to that holy work which falls

somewhat heavily upon the only daughter of a widowed rector. All the

stately dowagers about Swampington were loud in their praises of Olivia

Arundel. Such devotion, such untiring zeal in a young person of

three-and-twenty years of age, were really most laudable, these solemn

elders said, in tones of supreme patronage; for the young saint of whom

they spoke wore shabby gowns, and was the portionless daughter of a

poor man who had let the world slip by him, and who sat now amid the

dreary ruins of a wasted life, looking yearningly backward, with hollow

regretful eyes, and bewailing the chances he had lost. Hubert Arundel

loved his daughter; loved her with that sorrowful affection we feel for

those who suffer for our sins, whose lives have been blighted by our

follies.

Every shabby garment which Olivia wore was a separate reproach to her

father; every deprivation she endured stung him as cruelly as if she

had turned upon him and loudly upbraided him for his wasted life and

his squandered patrimony. He loved her; and he watched her day after

day, doing her duty to him as to all others; doing her duty for ever

and for ever; but when he most yearned to take her to his heart, her

own cold perfections arose, and separated him from the child he loved.

What was he but a poor, vacillating, erring creature; weak, supine,

idle, epicurean; unworthy to approach this girl, who never seemed to

sicken of the hardness of her life, who never grew weary of well-doing?

But how was it that, for all her goodness, Olivia Arundel won so small

a share of earthly reward? I do not allude to the gold and jewels and

other worldly benefits with which the fairies in our children's

story-books reward the benevolent mortals who take compassion upon them

when they experimentalise with human nature in the guise of old women;

but I speak rather of the love and gratitude, the tenderness and

blessings, which usually wait upon the footsteps of those who do good

deeds. Olivia Arundel's charities were never ceasing; her life was one

perpetual sacrifice to her father's parishioners. There was no natural

womanly vanity, no simple girlish fancy, which this woman had not

trodden under foot, and trampled out in the hard pathway she had chosen

for herself.

The poor people knew this. Rheumatic men and women, crippled and

bed-ridden, knew that the blankets which covered them had been bought

out of money that would have purchased silk dresses for the Rector's

handsome daughter, or luxuries for the frugal table at the Rectory.

They knew this. They knew that, through frost and snow, through storm

and rain, Olivia Arundel would come to sit beside their dreary hearths,

their desolate sick-beds, and read holy books to them; sublimely

indifferent to the foul weather without, to the stifling atmosphere

within, to dirt, discomfort, poverty, inconvenience; heedless of all,

except the performance of the task she had set herself.

People knew this; and they were grateful to Miss Arundel, and

submissive and attentive in her presence; they gave her such return as

they were able to give for the benefits, spiritual and temporal, which

she bestowed upon them: but they did not love her.

They spoke of her in reverential accents, and praised her whenever her

name was mentioned; but they spoke with tearless eyes and unfaltering

voices. Her virtues were beautiful, of course, as virtue in the

abstract must always be; but I think there was a want of individuality

in her goodness, a lack of personal tenderness in her kindness, which

separated her from the people she benefited.

Perhaps there was something almost chilling in the dull monotony of

Miss Arundel's benevolence. There was no blemish of mortal weakness

upon the good deeds she performed; and the recipients of her bounties,

seeing her so far off, grew afraid of her, even by reason of her

goodness, and _could_ not love her.

She made no favourites amongst her father's parishioners. Of all the

school-children she had taught, she had never chosen one curly-headed

urchin for a pet. She had no good days and bad days; she was never

foolishly indulgent or extravagantly cordial. She was always the

same,--Church-of-England charity personified; meting out all mercies by

line and rule; doing good with a note-book and a pencil in her hand;

looking on every side with calm, scrutinising eyes; rigidly just,

terribly perfect.

It was a fearfully monotonous, narrow, and uneventful life which Olivia

Arundel led at Swampington Rectory. At three-and-twenty years of age

she could have written her history upon a few pages. The world outside

that dull Lincolnshire town might be shaken by convulsions, and made

irrecognisable by repeated change; but all those outer changes and

revolutions made themselves but little felt in the quiet grass-grown

streets, and the flat surrounding swamps, within whose narrow boundary

Olivia Arundel had lived from infancy to womanhood; performing and

repeating the same duties from day to day, with no other progress to

mark the lapse of her existence than the slow alternation of the

seasons, and the dark hollow circles which had lately deepened beneath

her grey eyes, and the depressed lines about the corners of her firm

lower-lip.

These outward tokens, beyond her own control, alone betrayed this

woman's secret. She was weary of her life. She sickened under the dull

burden which she had borne so long, and carried so patiently. The slow

round of duty was loathsome to her. The horrible, narrow, unchanging

existence, shut in by cruel walls, which bounded her on every side and

kept her prisoner to herself, was odious to her. The powerful intellect

revolted against the fetters that bound and galled it. The proud heart

beat with murderous violence against the bonds that kept it captive.

"Is my life always to be this--always, always, always?" The passionate

nature burst forth sometimes, and the voice that had so long been

stifled cried aloud in the black stillness of the night, "Is it to go

on for ever and for ever; like the slow river that creeps under the

broken wall? O my God! is the lot of other women never to be mine? Am I

never to be loved and admired; never to be sought and chosen? Is my

life to be all of one dull, grey, colourless monotony; without one

sudden gleam of sunshine, without one burst of rainbow-light?"

How shall I anatomise this woman, who, gifted with no womanly

tenderness of nature, unendowed with that pitiful and unreasoning

affection which makes womanhood beautiful, yet tried, and tried

unceasingly, to do her duty, and to be good; clinging, in the very

blindness of her soul, to the rigid formulas of her faith, but unable

to seize upon its spirit? Some latent comprehension of the want in her

nature made her only the more scrupulous in the performance of those

duties which she had meted out for herself. The holy sentences she had

heard, Sunday after Sunday, feebly read by her father, haunted her

perpetually, and would not be put away from her. The tenderness in

every word of those familiar gospels was a reproach to the want of

tenderness in her own heart. She could be good to her father's

parishioners, and she could make sacrifices for them; but she could not

love them, any more than they could love her.

That divine and universal pity, that spontaneous and boundless

affection, which is the chief loveliness of womanhood and Christianity,

had no part in her nature. She could understand Judith with the

Assyrian general's gory head held aloft in her uplifted hand; but she

could not comprehend that diviner mystery of sinful Magdalene sitting

at her Master's feet, with the shame and love in her face half hidden

by a veil of drooping hair.

No; Olivia Arundel was not a good woman, in the commoner sense we

attach to the phrase. It was not natural to her to be gentle and

tender, to be beneficent, compassionate, and kind, as it is to the

women we are accustomed to call "good." She was a woman who was for

ever fighting against her nature; who was for ever striving to do

right; for ever walking painfully upon the difficult road mapped out

for her; for ever measuring herself by the standard she had set up for

her self-abasement. And who shall say that such a woman as this, if she

persevere unto the end, shall not wear a brighter crown than her more

gentle sisters,--the starry circlet of a martyr?

If she persevere unto the end! But was Olivia Arundel the woman to do

this? The deepening circles about her eyes, the hollowing cheeks, and

the feverish restlessness of manner which she could not always control,

told how terrible the long struggle had become to her. If she could

have died then,--if she had fallen beneath the weight of her

burden,--what a record of sin and anguish might have remained unwritten

in the history of woman's life! But this woman was one of those who can

suffer, and yet not die. She bore her burden a little longer; only to

fling it down by-and-by, and to abandon herself to the eager devils who

had been watching for her so untiringly.

Hubert Arundel was afraid of his daughter. The knowledge that he had

wronged her,--wronged her even before her birth by the foolish waste of

his patrimony, and wronged her through life by his lack of energy in

seeking such advancement as a more ambitious man might have won,--the

knowledge of this, and of his daughter's superior virtues, combined to

render the father ashamed and humiliated by the presence of his only

child. The struggle between this fear and his remorseful love of her

was a very painful one; but fear had the mastery, and the Rector of

Swampington was content to stand aloof, mutely watchful of his

daughter, wondering feebly whether she was happy, striving vainly to

discover that one secret, that keystone of the soul, which must exist

in every nature, however outwardly commonplace.

Mr. Arundel had hoped that his daughter would marry, and marry well,

even at Swampington; for there were rich young landowners who visited

at the Rectory. But Olivia's handsome face won her few admirers, and at

three-and-twenty Miss Arundel had received no offer of marriage. The

father reproached himself for this. It was he who had blighted the life

of his penniless girl; it was his fault that no suitors came to woo his

motherless child. Yet many dowerless maidens have been sought and

loved; and I do not think it was Olivia's lack of fortune which kept

admirers at bay. I believe it was rather that inherent want of

tenderness which chilled and dispirited the timid young Lincolnshire

squires.

Had Olivia ever been in love? Hubert Arundel constantly asked himself

this question. He did so because he saw that some blighting influence,

even beyond the poverty and dulness of her home, had fallen upon the

life of his only child. What was it? What was it? Was it some hopeless

attachment, some secret tenderness, which had never won the sweet

return of love for love?

He would no more have ventured to question his daughter upon this

subject than he would have dared to ask his fair young Queen, newly

married in those days, whether she was happy with her handsome husband.

Miss Arundel stood by the Rectory gate in the early September evening,

watching the western sunlight on the low sea-line beyond the marshes.

She was wearied and worn out by a long day devoted to visiting amongst

her parishioners; and she stood with her elbow leaning on the gate, and

her head resting on her hand, in an attitude peculiarly expressive of

fatigue. She had thrown off her bonnet, and her black hair was pushed

carelessly from her forehead. Those masses of hair had not that purple

lustre, nor yet that wandering glimmer of red gold, which gives

peculiar beauty to some raven tresses. Olivia's hair was long and

luxuriant; but it was of that dead, inky blackness, which is all

shadow. It was dark, fathomless, inscrutable, like herself. The cold

grey eyes looked thoughtfully seaward. Another day's duty had been

done. Long chapters of Holy Writ had been read to troublesome old women

afflicted with perpetual coughs; stifling, airless cottages had been

visited; the dull, unvarying track had been beaten by the patient feet,

and the yellow sun was going down upon another joyless day. But did the

still evening hour bring peace to that restless spirit? No; by the

rigid compression of the lips, by the feverish lustre in the eyes, by

the faint hectic flush in the oval cheeks, by every outward sign of

inward unrest, Olivia Arundel was not at peace! The listlessness of her

attitude was merely the listlessness of physical fatigue. The mental

struggle was not finished with the close of the day's work.

The young lady looked up suddenly as the tramp of a horse's hoofs, slow

and lazy-sounding on the smooth road, met her ear. Her eyes dilated,

and her breath went and came more rapidly; but she did not stir from

her weary attitude.

The horse was from the stables at Marchmont Towers, and the rider was

Mr. Arundel. He came smiling to the Rectory gate, with the low sunshine

glittering in his chesnut hair, and the light of careless, indifferent

happiness irradiating his handsome face.

"You must have thought I'd forgotten you and my uncle, my dear Livy,"

he said, as he sprang lightly from his horse. "We've been so busy with

the tennis-court, and the boat-house, and the partridges, and goodness

knows what besides at the Towers, that I couldn't get the time to ride

over till this evening. But to-day we dined early, on purpose that I

might have the chance of getting here. I come upon an important

mission, Livy, I assure you."

"What do you mean?"

There was no change in Miss Arundel's voice when she spoke to her

cousin; but there was a change, not easily to be defined, in her face

when she looked at him. It seemed as if that weary hopelessness of

expression which had settled on her countenance lately grew more weary,

more hopeless, as she turned towards this bright young soldier,

glorious in the beauty of his own light-heartedness. It may have been

merely the sharpness of contrast which produced this effect. It may

have been an actual change arising out of some secret hidden in

Olivia's breast.

"What do you mean by an important mission, Edward?" she said.

She had need to repeat the question; for the young man's attention had

wandered from her, and he was watching his horse as the animal cropped

the tangled herbage about the Rectory gate.

"Why, I've come with an invitation to a dinner at Marchmont Towers.

There's to be a dinner-party; and, in point of fact, it's to be given

on purpose for you and my uncle. John and Polly are full of it. You'll

come, won't you, Livy?"

Miss Arundel shrugged her shoulders, with an impatient sigh.

"I hate dinner-parties," she said; "but, of course, if papa accepts Mr.

Marchmont's invitation, I cannot refuse to go. Papa must choose for

himself."

There had been some interchange of civilities between Marchmont Towers

and Swampington Rectory during the six weeks which had passed since

Mary's introduction to Olivia Arundel; and this dinner-party was the

result of John's simple desire to do honour to his friend's kindred.

"Oh, you must come, Livy," Mr. Arundel exclaimed. "The tennis-court is

going on capitally. I want you to give us your opinion again. Shall I

take my horse round to the stables? I am going to stop an hour or two,

and ride back by moonlight."

Edward Arundel took the bridle in his hand, and the cousins walked

slowly round by the low garden-wall to a dismal and rather dilapidated

stable-yard at the back of the Rectory, where Hubert Arundel kept a

wall-eyed white horse, long-legged, shallow-chested, and large-headed,

and a fearfully and wonderfully made phaeton, with high wheels and a

mouldy leathern hood.

Olivia walked by the young soldier's side with that air of hopeless

indifference that had so grown upon her very lately. Her eyelids

drooped with a look of sullen disdain; but the grey eyes glanced

furtively now and again at her companion's handsome face. He was very

handsome. The glitter of reddish gold in his hair, and the light in his

fearless blue eyes; the careless grace peculiar to the kind of man we

call "a swell;" the gay _insouciance_ of an easy, candid, generous

nature,--all combined to make Edward Arundel singularly attractive.

These spoiled children of nature demand our admiration, in very spite

of ourselves. These beautiful, useless creatures call upon us to

rejoice in their valueless beauty, like the flaunting poppies in the

cornfield, and the gaudy wild-flowers in the grass.

The darkness of Olivia's face deepened after each furtive glance she

cast at her cousin. Could it be that this girl, to whom nature had

given strength but denied grace, envied the superficial attractions of

the young man at her side? She did envy him; she envied him that sunny

temperament which was so unlike her own; she envied him that wondrous

power of taking life lightly. Why should existence be so bright and

careless to him; while to her it was a terrible fever-dream, a long

sickness, a never-ceasing battle?

"Is my uncle in the house?" Mr. Arundel asked, as he strolled from the

stable into the garden with his cousin by his side.

"No; he has been out since dinner," Olivia answered; "but I expect him

back every minute. I came out into the garden,--the house seemed so hot

and stifling to-night, and I have been sitting in close cottages all

day."

"Sitting in close cottages!" repeated Edward. "Ah, to be sure; visiting

your rheumatic old pensioners, I suppose. How good you are, Olivia!"

"Good!"

She echoed the word in the very bitterness of a scorn that could not be

repressed.

"Yes; everybody says so. The Millwards were at Marchmont Towers the

other day, and they were talking of you, and praising your goodness,

and speaking of your schools, and your blanket-associations, and your

invalid-societies, and your mutual-help clubs, and all your plans for

the parish. Why, you must work as hard as a prime-minister, Livy, by

their account; you, who are only a few years older than I."

Only a few years! She started at the phrase, and bit her lip.

"I was three-and-twenty last month," she said.

"Ah, yes; to be sure. And I'm one-and-twenty. Then you're only two

years older than I, Livy. But, then, you see, you're so clever, that

you seem much older than you are. You'd make a fellow feel rather

afraid of you, you know. Upon my word you do, Livy."

Miss Arundel did not reply to this speech of her cousin's. She was

walking by his side up and down a narrow gravelled pathway, bordered by

a hazel-hedge; she had gathered one of the slender twigs, and was idly

stripping away the fluffy buds.

"What do you think, Livy?" cried Edward suddenly, bursting out laughing

at the end of the question. "What do you think? It's my belief you've

made a conquest."

"What do you mean?"

"There you go; turning upon a fellow as if you could eat him. Yes,

Livy; it's no use your looking savage. You've made a conquest; and of

one of the best fellows in the world, too. John Marchmont's in love

with you."

Olivia Arundel's face flushed a vivid crimson to the roots of her black

hair.

"How dare you come here to insult me, Edward Arundel?" she cried

passionately.

"Insult you? Now, Livy dear, that's too bad, upon my word,"

remonstrated the young man. "I come and tell you that as good a man as

ever breathed is over head and ears in love with you, and that you may

be mistress of one of the finest estates in Lincolnshire if you please,

and you turn round upon me like no end of furies."

"Because I hate to hear you talk nonsense," answered Olivia, her bosom

still heaving with that first outburst of emotion, but her voice

suppressed and cold. "Am I so beautiful, or so admired or beloved, that

a man who has not seen me half a dozen times should fall in love with

me? Do those who know me estimate me so much, or prize me so highly,

that a stranger should think of me? You _do_ insult me, Edward Arundel,

when you talk as you have talked to-night."

She looked out towards the low yellow light in the sky with a black

gloom upon her face, which no reflected glimmer of the sinking sun

could illumine; a settled darkness, near akin to the utter blackness of

despair.

"But, good heavens, Olivia, what do you mean?" cried the young man. "I

tell you something that I think a good joke, and you go and make a

tragedy out of it. If I'd told Letitia that a rich widower had fallen

in love with her, she'd think it the finest fun in the world."

"I'm not your sister Letitia."

"No; but I wish you'd half as good a temper as she has, Livy. However,

never mind; I'll say no more. If poor old Marchmont has fallen in love

with you, that's his look-out. Poor dear old boy, he's let out the

secret of his weakness half a dozen ways within these last few days.

It's Miss Arundel this, and Miss Arundel the other; so unselfish, so

accomplished, so ladylike, so good! That's the way he goes on, poor

simple old dear; without having the remotest notion that he's making a

confounded fool of himself."

Olivia tossed the rumpled hair from her forehead with an impatient

gesture of her hand.

"Why should this Mr. Marchmont think all this of me?" she said,

"when--" she stopped abruptly.

"When--what, Livy?"

"When other people don't think it."

"How do you know what other people think? You haven't asked them, I

suppose?"

The young soldier treated his cousin in very much the same

free-and-easy manner which he displayed towards his sister Letitia. It

would have been almost difficult for him to recognise any degree in his

relationship to the two girls. He loved Letitia better than Olivia; but

his affection for both was of exactly the same character.

Hubert Arundel came into the garden, wearied out, like his daughter,

while the two cousins were walking under the shadow of the neglected

hazels. He declared his willingness to accept the invitation to

Marchmont Towers, and promised to answer John's ceremonious note the

next day.

"Cookson, from Kemberling, will be there, I suppose," he said, alluding

to a brother parson, "and the usual set? Well, I'll come, Ned, if you

wish it. You'd like to go, Olivia?"

"If you like, papa."

There was a duty to be performed now--the duty of placid obedience to

her father; and Miss Arundel's manner changed from angry impatience to

grave respect. She owed no special duty, be it remembered, to her

cousin. She had no line or rule by which to measure her conduct to him.

She stood at the gate nearly an hour later, and watched the young man

ride away in the dim moonlight. If every separate tramp of his horse's

hoofs had struck upon her heart, it could scarcely have given her more

pain than she felt as the sound of those slow footfalls died away in

the distance.

"O my God," she cried, "is this madness to undo all that I have done?

Is this folly to be the climax of my dismal life? Am I to die for the

love of a frivolous, fair-haired boy, who laughs in my face when he

tells me that his friend has pleased to 'take a fancy to me'?"

She walked away towards the house; then stopping, with a sudden shiver,

she turned, and went back to the hazel-alley she had paced with Edward

Arundel.

"Oh, my narrow life!" she muttered between her set teeth; "my narrow

life! It is that which has made me the slave of this madness. I love

him because he is the brightest and fairest thing I have ever seen. I

love him because he brings me all I have ever known of a more beautiful

world than that I live in. Bah! why do I reason with myself?" she

cried, with a sudden change of manner. "I love him because I am mad."

She paced up and down the hazel-shaded pathway till the moonlight grew

broad and full, and every ivy-grown gable of the Rectory stood sharply

out against the vivid purple of the sky. She paced up and down, trying

to trample the folly within her under her feet as she went; a fierce,

passionate, impulsive woman, fighting against her mad love for a

bright-faced boy.

"Two years older--only two years!" she said; "but he spoke of the

difference between us as if it had been half a century. And then I am

so clever, that I seem older than I am; and he is afraid of me! Is it

for this that I have sat night after night in my father's study, poring

over the books that were too difficult for him? What have I made of

myself in my pride of intellect? What reward have I won for my

patience?"

Olivia Arundel looked back at her long life of duty--a dull, dead

level, unbroken by one of those monuments which mark the desert of the

past; a desolate flat, unlovely as the marshes between the low Rectory

wall and the shimmering grey sea.

CHAPTER VIII.

"MY LIFE IS COLD, AND DARK, AND DREARY."

Mr. Richard Paulette, of that eminent legal firm, Paulette, Paulette,

and Mathewson, coming to Marchmont Towers on business, was surprised to

behold the quiet ease with which the sometime copying-clerk received

the punctilious country gentry who came to sit at his board and do him

honour.

Of all the legal fairy-tales, of all the parchment-recorded romances,

of all the poetry run into affidavits, in which the solicitor had ever

been concerned, this story seemed the strangest. Not so very strange in

itself, for such romances are not uncommon in the history of a lawyer's

experience; but strange by reason of the tranquil manner in which John

Marchmont accepted his new position, and did the honours of his house

to his late employer.

"Ah, Paulette," Edward Arundel said, clapping the solicitor on the

back, "I don't suppose you believed me when I told you that my friend

here was heir-presumptive to a handsome fortune."

The dinner-party at the Towers was conducted with that stately grandeur

peculiar to such solemnities. There was the usual round of country-talk

and parish-talk; the hunting squires leading the former section of the

discourse, the rectors and rectors' wives supporting the latter part of

the conversation. You heard on one side that Martha Harris' husband had

left off drinking, and attended church morning and evening; and on the

other that the old grey fox that had been hunted nine seasons between

Crackbin Bottom and Hollowcraft Gorse had perished ignobly in the

poultry-yard of a recusant farmer. While your left ear became conscious

of the fact that little Billy Smithers had fallen into a copper of

scalding water, your right received the dismal tidings that all the

young partridges had been drowned by the rains after St. Swithin, and

that there were hardly any of this year's birds, sir, and it would be a

very blue look-out for next season.

Mary Marchmont had listened to gayer talk in Oakley Street than any

that was to be heard that night in her father's drawing-rooms, except

indeed when Edward Arundel left off flirting with some pretty girls in

blue, and hovered near her side for a little while, quizzing the

company. Heaven knows the young soldier's jokes were commonplace

enough; but Mary admired him as the most brilliant and accomplished of

wits.

"How do you like my cousin, Polly?" he asked at last.

"Your cousin, Miss Arundel?"

"Yes."

"She is very handsome."

"Yes, I suppose so," the young man answered carelessly. "Everybody says

that Livy's handsome; but it's rather a cold style of beauty, isn't it?

A little too much of the Pallas Athene about it for my taste. I like

those girls in blue, with the crinkly auburn hair,--there's a touch of

red in it in the light,--and the dimples. You've a dimple, Polly, when

you smile."

Miss Marchmont blushed as she received this information, and her brown

eyes wandered away, looking very earnestly at the pretty girls in blue.

She looked at them with a strange interest, eager to discover what it

was that Edward admired.

"But you haven't answered my question, Polly," said Mr. Arundel. "I am

afraid you have been drinking too much wine, Miss Marchmont, and

muddling that sober little head of yours with the fumes of your papa's

tawny port. I asked you how you liked Olivia."

Mary blushed again.

"I don't know Miss Arundel well enough to like her--yet," she answered

timidly.

"But shall you like her when you've known her longer? Don't be

jesuitical, Polly. Likings and dislikings are instantaneous and

instinctive. I liked you before I'd eaten half a dozen mouthfuls of the

roll you buttered for me at that breakfast in Oakley Street, Polly. You

don't like my cousin Olivia, miss; I can see that very plainly. You're

jealous of her."

"Jealous of her!"

The bright colour faded out of Mary Marchmont's face, and left her ashy

pale.

"Do _you_ like her, then?" she asked.

But Mr. Arundel was not such a coxcomb as to catch at the secret so

naively betrayed in that breathless question.

"No, Polly," he said, laughing; "she's my cousin, you know, and I've

known her all my life; and cousins are like sisters. One likes to tease

and aggravate them, and all that; but one doesn't fall in love with

them. But I think I could mention somebody who thinks a great deal of

Olivia."

"Who?"

"Your papa."

Mary looked at the young soldier in utter bewilderment.

"Papa!" she echoed.

"Yes, Polly. How would you like a stepmamma? How would you like your

papa to marry again?"

Mary Marchmont started to her feet, as if she would have gone to her

father in the midst of all those spectators. John was standing near

Olivia and her father, talking to them, and playing nervously with his

slender watch-chain when he addressed the young lady.

"My papa--marry again!" gasped Mary. "How dare you say such a thing,

Mr. Arundel?"

Her childish devotion to her father arose in all its force; a flood of

passionate emotion that overwhelmed her sensitive nature. Marry again!

marry a woman who would separate him from his only child! Could he ever

dream for one brief moment of such a horrible cruelty?

She looked at Olivia's sternly handsome face, and trembled. She could

almost picture that very woman standing between her and her father, and

putting her away from him. Her indignation quickly melted into grief.

Indignation, however intense, was always short-lived in that gentle

nature.

"Oh, Mr Arundel!" she said, piteously appealing to the young man, "papa

would never, never, never marry again,--would he?"

"Not if it was to grieve you, Polly, I dare say," Edward answered

soothingly.

He had been dumbfounded by Mary's passionate sorrow. He had expected

that she would have been rather pleased, than otherwise, at the idea of

a young stepmother,--a companion in those vast lonely rooms, an

instructress and a friend as she grew to womanhood.

"I was only talking nonsense, Polly darling," he said. "You mustn't

make yourself unhappy about any absurd fancies of mine. I think your

papa admires my cousin Olivia: and I thought, perhaps, you'd be glad to

have a stepmother."

"Glad to have any one who'd take papa's love away from me?" Mary said

plaintively. "Oh, Mr. Arundel, how could you think so?"

In all their familiarity the little girl had never learned to call her

father's friend by his Christian name, though he had often told her to

do so. She trembled to pronounce that simple Saxon name, which was so

beautiful and wonderful because it was his: but when she read a very

stupid novel, in which the hero was a namesake of Mr. Arundel's, the

vapid pages seemed to be phosphorescent with light wherever the name

appeared upon them.

I scarcely know why John Marchmont lingered by Miss Arundel's chair. He

had heard her praises from every one. She was a paragon of goodness, an

uncanonised saint, for ever sacrificing herself for the benefit of

others. Perhaps he was thinking that such a woman as this would be the

best friend he could win for his little girl. He turned from the county

matrons, the tender, kindly, motherly creatures, who would have been

ready to take little Mary to the loving shelter of their arms, and

looked to Olivia Arundel--this cold, perfect benefactress of the

poor--for help in his difficulty.

"She, who is so good to all her father's parishioners, could not refuse

to be kind to my poor Mary?" he thought.

But how was he to win this woman's friendship for his darling? He asked

himself this question even in the midst of the frivolous people about

him, and with the buzz of their conversation in his ears. He was

perpetually tormenting himself about his little girl's future, which

seemed more dimly perplexing now than it had ever appeared in Oakley

Street, when the Lincolnshire property was a far-away dream, perhaps

never to be realised. He felt that his brief lease of life was running

out; he felt as if he and Mary had been standing upon a narrow tract of

yellow sand; very bright, very pleasant under the sunshine; but with

the slow-coming tide rising like a wall about them, and creeping

stealthily onward to overwhelm them.

Mary might gather bright-coloured shells and wet seaweed in her

childish ignorance; but he, who knew that the flood was coming, could

but grow sick at heart with the dull horror of that hastening doom. If

the black waters had been doomed to close over them both, the father

might have been content to go down under the sullen waves, with his

daughter clasped to his breast. But it was not to be so. He was to sink

in that unknown stream while she was left upon the tempest-tossed

surface, to be beaten hither and thither, feebly battling with the

stormy billows.

Could John Marchmont be a Christian, and yet feel this horrible dread

of the death which must separate him from his daughter? I fear this

frail, consumptive widower loved his child with an intensity of

affection that is scarcely reconcilable with Christianity. Such great

passions as these must be put away before the cross can be taken up,

and the troublesome path followed. In all love and kindness towards his

fellow-creatures, in all patient endurance of the pains and troubles

that befel himself, it would have been difficult to find a more

single-hearted follower of Gospel-teaching than John Marchmont; but in

this affection for his motherless child he was a very Pagan. He set up

an idol for himself, and bowed down before it. Doubtful and fearful of

the future, he looked hopelessly forward. He _could_ not trust his

orphan child into the hands of God; and drop away himself into the

fathomless darkness, serene in the belief that she would be cared for

and protected. No; he could not trust. He could be faithful for

himself; simple and confiding as a child; but not for her. He saw the

gloomy rocks louring black in the distance; the pitiless waves beating

far away yonder, impatient to devour the frail boat that was so soon to

be left alone upon the waters. In the thick darkness of the future he

could see no ray of light, except one,--a new hope that had lately

risen in his mind; the hope of winning some noble and perfect woman to

be the future friend of his daughter.

The days were past in which, in his simplicity, he had looked to Edward

Arundel as the future shelter of his child. The generous boy had grown

into a stylish young man, a soldier, whose duty lay far away from

Marchmont Towers. No; it was to a good woman's guardianship the father

must leave his child.

Thus the very intensity of his love was the one motive which led John

Marchmont to contemplate the step that Mary thought such a cruel and

bitter wrong to her.

* * * * *

It was not till long after the dinner-party at Marchmont Towers that

these ideas resolved themselves into any positive form, and that John

began to think that for his daughter's sake he might be led to

contemplate a second marriage. Edward Arundel had spoken the truth when

he told his cousin that John Marchmont had repeatedly mentioned her

name; but the careless and impulsive young man had been utterly unable

to fathom the feeling lurking in his friend's mind. It was not Olivia

Arundel's handsome face which had won John's admiration; it was the

constant reiteration of her praises upon every side which had led him

to believe that this woman, of all others, was the one whom he would do

well to win for his child's friend and guardian in the dark days that

were to come.

The knowledge that Olivia's intellect was of no common order, together

with the somewhat imperious dignity of her manner, strengthened this

belief in John Marchmont's mind. It was not a good woman only whom he

must seek in the friend he needed for his child; it was a woman

powerful enough to shield her in the lonely path she would have to

tread; a woman strong enough to help her, perhaps, by-and-by to do

battle with Paul Marchmont.

So, in the blind paganism of his love, John refused to trust his child

into the hands of Providence, and chose for himself a friend and

guardian who should shelter his darling. He made his choice with so

much deliberation, and after such long nights and days of earnest

thought, that he may be forgiven if he believed he had chosen wisely.

Thus it was that in the dark November days, while Edward and Mary

played chess by the wide fireplace in the western drawing-room, or ball

in the newly-erected tennis-court, John Marchmont sat in his study

examining his papers, and calculating the amount of money at his own

disposal, in serious contemplation of a second marriage.

Did he love Olivia Arundel? No. He admired her and respected her, and

he firmly believed her to be the most perfect of women. No impulse of

affection had prompted the step he contemplated taking. He had loved

his first wife truly and tenderly; but he had never suffered very

acutely from any of those torturing emotions which form the several

stages of the great tragedy called Love.

But had he ever thought of the likelihood of his deliberate offer being

rejected by the young lady who had been the object of such careful

consideration? Yes; he had thought of this, and was prepared to abide

the issue. He should, at least, have tried his uttermost to secure a

friend for his darling.

With such unloverlike feelings as these the owner of Marchmont Towers

drove into Swampington one morning, deliberately bent upon offering

Olivia Arundel his hand. He had consulted with his land-steward, and

with Messrs. Paulette, and had ascertained how far he could endow his

bride with the goods of this world. It was not much that he could give

her, for the estate was strictly entailed; but there would be his own

savings for the brief term of his life, and if he lived only a few

years these savings might accumulate to a considerable amount, so

limited were the expenses of the quiet Lincolnshire household; and

there was a sum of money, something over nine thousand pounds, left him

by Philip Marchmont, senior. He had something, then, to offer to the

woman he sought to make his wife; and, above all, he had a supreme

belief in Olivia Arundel's utter disinterestedness. He had seen her

frequently since the dinner-party, and had always seen her the

same,--grave, reserved, dignified; patiently employed in the strict

performance of her duty.

He found Miss Arundel sitting in her father's study, busily cutting out

coarse garments for her poor. A newly-written sermon lay open on the

table. Had Mr. Marchmont looked closely at the manuscript, he would

have seen that the ink was wet, and that the writing was Olivia's. It

was a relief to this strange woman to write sermons sometimes--fierce

denunciatory protests against the inherent wickedness of the human

heart. Can you imagine a woman with a wicked heart steadfastly trying

to do good, and to be good? It is a dark and horrible picture; but it

is the only true picture of the woman whom John Marchmont sought to win

for his wife.

The interview between Mary's father and Olivia Arundel was not a very

sentimental one; but it was certainly the very reverse of commonplace.

John was too simple-hearted to disguise the purpose of his wooing. He

pleaded, not for a wife for himself, but a mother for his orphan child.

He talked of Mary's helplessness in the future, not of his own love in

the present. Carried away by the egotism of his one affection, he let

his motives appear in all their nakedness. He spoke long and earnestly;

he spoke until the blinding tears in his eyes made the face of her he

looked at seem blotted and dim.

Miss Arundel watched him as he pleaded; sternly, unflinchingly. But she

uttered no word until he had finished; and then, rising suddenly, with

a dusky flush upon her face, she began to pace up and down the narrow

room. She had forgotten John Marchmont. In the strength and vigour of

her intellect, this weak-minded widower, whose one passion was a

pitiful love for his child, appeared to her so utterly insignificant,

that for a few moments she had forgotten his presence in that room--his

very existence, perhaps. She turned to him presently, and looked him

full in the face.

"You do not love me, Mr. Marchmont?" she said.

"Pardon me," John stammered; "believe me, Miss Arundel, I respect, I

esteem you so much, that--"

"That you choose me as a fitting friend for your child. I understand. I

am not the sort of woman to be loved. I have long comprehended that. My

cousin Edward Arundel has often taken the trouble to tell me as much.

And you wish me to be your wife in order that you may have a guardian

for your child? It is very much the same thing as engaging a governess;

only the engagement is to be more binding."

"Miss Arundel," exclaimed John Marchmont, "forgive me! You

misunderstand me; indeed you do. Had I thought that I could have

offended you--"

"I am not offended. You have spoken the truth where another man would

have told a lie. I ought to be flattered by your confidence in me. It

pleases me that people should think me good, and worthy of their

trust."

She broke into a sigh as she finished speaking.

"And you will not reject my appeal?"

"I scarcely know what to do," answered Olivia, pressing her hand to her

forehead.

She leaned against the angle of the deep casement window, looking out

at the garden, desolate and neglected in the bleak winter weather. She

was silent for some minutes. John Marchmont did not interrupt her; he

was content to wait patiently until she should choose to speak.

"Mr. Marchmont," she said at last, turning upon poor John with an

abrupt vehemence that almost startled him, "I am three-and-twenty; and

in the long, dull memory of the three-and-twenty years that have made

my life, I cannot look back upon one joy--no, so help me Heaven, not

one!" she cried passionately. "No prisoner in the Bastille, shut in a

cell below the level of the Seine, and making companions of rats and

spiders in his misery, ever led a life more hopelessly narrow, more

pitifully circumscribed, than mine has been. These grass-grown streets

have made the boundary of my existence. The flat fenny country round me

is not flatter or more dismal than my life. You will say that I should

take an interest in the duties which I do; and that they should be

enough for me. Heaven knows I have tried to do so; but my life is hard.

Do you think there has been nothing in all this to warp my nature? Do

you think after hearing this, that I am the woman to be a second mother

to your child?"

She sat down as she finished speaking, and her hands dropped listlessly

in her lap. The unquiet spirit raging in her breast had been stronger

than herself, and had spoken. She had lifted the dull veil through

which the outer world beheld her, and had showed John Marchmont her

natural face.

"I think you are a good woman, Miss Arundel," he said earnestly. "If I

had thought otherwise, I should not have come here to-day. I want a

good woman to be kind to my child; kind to her when I am dead and

gone," he added, in a lower voice.

Olivia Arundel sat silent and motionless, looking straight before her

out into the black dulness of the garden. She was trying to think out

the dark problem of her life.

Strange as it may seem, there was a certain fascination for her in John

Marchmont's offer. He offered her something, no matter what; it would

be a change. She had compared herself to a prisoner in the Bastille;

and I think she felt very much as such a prisoner might have felt upon

his gaoler's offering to remove him to Vincennes. The new prison might

be worse than the old one, perhaps; but it would be different. Life at

Marchmont Towers might be more monotonous, more desolate, than at

Swampington; but it would be a new monotony, another desolation. Have

you never felt, when suffering the hideous throes of toothache, that it

would be a relief to have the earache or the rheumatism; that variety

even in torture would be agreeable?

Then, again, Olivia Arundel, though unblest with many of the charms of

womanhood, was not entirely without its weaknesses. To marry John

Marchmont would be to avenge herself upon Edward Arundel. Alas! she

forgot how impossible it is to inflict a dagger-thrust upon him who is

guarded by the impenetrable armour of indifference. She saw herself the

mistress of Marchmont Towers, waited upon by liveried servants,

courted, not patronised by the country gentry; avenged upon the

mercenary aunt who had slighted her, who had bade her go out and get

her living as a nursery governess. She saw this; and all that was

ignoble in her nature arose, and urged her to snatch the chance offered

her--the one chance of lifting herself out of the horrible obscurity of

her life. The ambition which might have made her an empress lowered its

crest, and cried, "Take this; at least it is something." But, through

all, the better voices which she had enlisted to do battle with the

natural voice of her soul cried, "This is a temptation of the devil;

put it away from thee."

But this temptation came to her at the very moment when her life had

become most intolerable; too intolerable to be borne, she thought. She

knew now, fatally, certainly, that Edward Arundel did not love her;

that the one only day-dream she had ever made for herself had been a

snare and a delusion. The radiance of that foolish dream had been the

single light of her life. That taken away from her, the darkness was

blacker than the blackness of death; more horrible than the obscurity

of the grave.

In all the future she had not one hope: no, not one. She had loved

Edward Arundel with all the strength of her soul; she had wasted a

world of intellect and passion upon this bright-haired boy. This

foolish, grovelling madness had been the blight of her life. But for

this, she might have grown out of her natural self by force of her

conscientious desire to do right; and might have become, indeed, a good

and perfect woman. If her life had been a wider one, this wasted love

would, perhaps, have shrunk into its proper insignificance; she would

have loved, and suffered, and recovered; as so many of us recover from

this common epidemic. But all the volcanic forces of an impetuous

nature, concentrated into one narrow focus, wasted themselves upon this

one feeling, until that which should have been a sentiment became a

madness.

To think that in some far-away future time she might cease to love

Edward Arundel, and learn to love somebody else, would have seemed

about as reasonable to Olivia as to hope that she could have new legs

and arms in that distant period. She could cut away this fatal passion

with a desperate stroke, it may be, just as she could cut off her arm;

but to believe that a new love would grow in its place was quite as

absurd as to believe in the growing of a new arm. Some cork monstrosity

might replace the amputated limb; some sham and simulated affection

might succeed the old love.

Olivia Arundel thought of all these things, in about ten minutes by the

little skeleton clock upon the mantel-piece, and while John Marchmont

fidgeted rather nervously, with a pair of gloves in the crown of his

hat, and waited for some definite answer to his appeal. Her mind came

back at last, after all its passionate wanderings, to the rigid channel

she had so laboriously worn for it,--the narrow groove of duty. Her

first words testified this.

"If I accept this responsibility, I will perform it faithfully," she

said, rather to herself than to Mr. Marchmont.

"I am sure you will, Miss Arundel," John answered eagerly; "I am sure

you will. You mean to undertake it, then? you mean to consider my

offer? May I speak to your father? may I tell him that I have spoken to

you? may I say that you have given me a hope of your ultimate consent?"

"Yes, yes," Olivia said, rather impatiently; "speak to my father; tell

him anything you please. Let him decide for me; it is my duty to obey

him."

There was a terrible cowardice in this. Olivia Arundel shrank from

marrying a man she did not love, prompted by no better desire than the

mad wish to wrench herself away from her hated life. She wanted to

fling the burden of responsibility in this matter away from her. Let

another decide, let another urge her to do this wrong; and let the

wrong be called a sacrifice.

So for the first time she set to work deliberately to cheat her own

conscience. For the first time she put a false mark upon the standard

she had made for the measurement of her moral progress.

She sank into a crouching attitude on a low stool by the fire-place, in

utter prostration of body and mind, when John Marchmont had left her.

She let her weary head fall heavily against the carved oaken shaft that

supported the old-fashioned mantel-piece, heedless that her brow struck

sharply against the corner of the wood-work.

If she could have died then, with no more sinful secret than a woman's

natural weakness hidden in her breast; if she could have died then,

while yet the first step upon the dark pathway of her life was

untrodden,--how happy for herself, how happy for others! How miserable

a record of sin and suffering might have remained unwritten in the

history of woman's life!

* * * * *

She sat long in the same attitude. Once, and once only, two solitary

tears gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly down her pale cheeks.

"Will you be sorry when I am married, Edward Arundel?" she murmured;

"will you be sorry?"

CHAPTER IX.

"WHEN SHALL I CEASE TO BE ALL ALONE?"

Hubert Arundel was not so much surprised as might have been anticipated

at the proposal made him by his wealthy neighbour. Edward had prepared

his uncle for the possibility of such a proposal by sundry jocose

allusions and arch hints upon the subject of John Marchmont's

admiration for Olivia. The frank and rather frivolous young man thought

it was his cousin's handsome face that had captivated the master of

Marchmont Towers, and was quite unable to fathom the hidden motive

underlying all John's talk about Miss Arundel.

The Rector of Swampington, being a simple-hearted and not very

far-seeing man, thanked God heartily for the chance that had befallen

his daughter. She would be well off and well cared for, then, by the

mercy of Providence, in spite of his own shortcomings, which had left

her with no better provision for the future than a pitiful Policy of

Assurance upon her father's life. She would be well provided for

henceforward, and would live in a handsome house; and all those noble

qualities which had been dwarfed and crippled in a narrow sphere would

now expand, and display themselves in unlooked-for grandeur.

"People have called her a good girl," he thought; "but how could they

ever know her goodness, unless they had seen, as I have, the

deprivations she has borne so uncomplainingly?"

John Marchmont, being newly instructed by his lawyer, was able to give

Mr. Arundel a very clear statement of the provision he could make for

his wife's future. He could settle upon her the nine thousand pounds

left him by Philip Marchmont. He would allow her five hundred a year

pin-money during his lifetime; he would leave her his savings at his

death; and he would effect an insurance upon his life for her benefit.

The amount of these savings would, of course, depend upon the length of

John's life; but the money would accumulate very quickly, as his income

was eleven thousand a year, and his expenditure was not likely to

exceed three.

The Swampington living was worth little more than three hundred and

fifty pounds a year; and out of that sum Hubert Arundel and his

daughter had done treble as much good for the numerous poor of the

parish as ever had been achieved by any previous Rector or his family.

Hubert and his daughter had patiently endured the most grinding

poverty, the burden ever falling heavier on Olivia, who had the heroic

faculty of endurance as regards all physical discomfort. Can it be

wondered, then, that the Rector of Swampington thought the prospect

offered to his child a very brilliant one? Can it be wondered that he

urged his daughter to accept this altered lot?

He did urge her, pleading John Marchmont's cause a great deal more

warmly than the widower had himself pleaded.

"My darling," he said, "my darling girl! if I can live to see you

mistress of Marchmont Towers, I shall go to my grave contented and

happy. Think, my dear, of the misery from which this marriage will save

you. Oh, my dear girl, I can tell you now what I never dared tell you

before; I can tell you of the long, sleepless nights I have passed

thinking of you, and of the wicked wrongs I have done you. Not wilful

wrongs, my love," the Rector added, with the tears gathering in his

eyes; "for you know how dearly I have always loved you. But a father's

responsibility towards his children is a very heavy burden. I have only

looked at it in this light lately, my dear,--now that I've let the time

slip by, and it is too late to redeem the past. I've suffered very

much, Olivia; and all this has seemed to separate us, somehow. But

that's past now, isn't it, my dear? and you'll marry this Mr.

Marchmont. He appears to be a very good, conscientious man, and I think

he'll make you happy."

The father and daughter were sitting together after dinner in the dusky

November twilight, the room only lighted by the fire, which was low and

dim. Hubert Arundel could not see his daughter's face as he talked to

her; he could only see the black outline of her figure sharply defined

against the grey window behind her, as she sat opposite to him. He

could see by her attitude that she was listening to him, with her head

drooping and her hands lying idle in her lap.

She was silent for some little time after he had finished speaking; so

silent that he feared his words might have touched her too painfully,

and that she was crying.

Heaven help this simple-hearted father! She had scarcely heard three

consecutive words that he had spoken, but had only gathered dimly from

his speech that he wanted her to accept John Marchmont's offer.

Every great passion is a supreme egotism. It is not the object which we

hug so determinedly; it is not the object which coils itself about our

weak hearts: it is our own madness we worship and cleave to, our own

pitiable folly which we refuse to put away from us. What is Bill Sykes'

broken nose or bull-dog visage to Nancy? The creature she loves and

will not part from is not Bill, but her own love for Bill,--the one

delusion of a barren life; the one grand selfishness of a feeble

nature.

Olivia Arundel's thoughts had wandered far away while her father had

spoken so piteously to her. She had been thinking of her cousin Edward,

and had been asking herself the same question over and over again.

Would he be sorry? would he be sorry if she married John Marchmont?

But she understood presently that her father was waiting for her to

speak; and, rising from her chair, she went towards him, and laid her

hand upon his shoulder.

"I am afraid I have not done my duty to you, papa," she said.

Latterly she had been for ever harping upon this one theme,--her duty!

That word was the keynote of her life; and her existence had latterly

seemed to her so inharmonious, that it was scarcely strange she should

repeatedly strike that leading note in the scale.

"My darling," cried Mr. Arundel, "you have been all that is good!"

"No, no, papa; I have been cold, reserved, silent."

"A little silent, my dear," the Rector answered meekly; "but you have

not been happy. I have watched you, my love, and I know you have not

been happy. But that is not strange. This place is so dull, and your

life has been so fatiguing. How different that would all be at

Marchmont Towers!"

"You wish me to many Mr. Marchmont, then, papa?"

"I do, indeed, my love. For your own sake, of course," the Rector added

deprecatingly.

"You really wish it?"

"Very, very much, my dear."

"Then I will marry him, papa."

She took her hand from the Rector's shoulder, and walked away from him

to the uncurtained window, against which she stood with her back to her

father, looking out into the grey obscurity.

I have said that Hubert Arundel was not a very clever or far-seeing

person; but he vaguely felt that this was not exactly the way in which

a brilliant offer of marriage should be accepted by a young lady who

was entirely fancy-free, and he had an uncomfortable apprehension that

there was something hidden under his daughter's quiet manner.

"But, my dear Olivia," he said nervously, "you must not for a moment

suppose that I would force you into this marriage, if it is in any way

repugnant to yourself. You--you may have formed some prior

attachment--or, there may be somebody who loves you, and has loved you

longer than Mr. Marchmont, who--"

His daughter turned upon him sharply as he rambled on.

"Somebody who loves me!" she echoed. "What have you ever seen that

should make you think any one loved me?"

The harshness of her tone jarred upon Mr. Arundel, and made him still

more nervous.

"My love, I beg your pardon, I have seen nothing. I--"

"Nobody loves me, or has ever loved me,--but you," resumed Olivia,

taking no heed of her father's feeble interruption. "I am not the sort

of woman to be loved; I feel and know that. I have an aquiline nose,

and a clear skin, and dark eyes, and people call me handsome; but

nobody loves me, or ever will, so long as I live."

"But Mr. Marchmont, my dear,--surely he loves and admires you?"

remonstrated the Rector.

"Mr. Marchmont wants a governess and _chaperone_ for his daughter, and

thinks me a suitable person to fill such a post; that is all the _love_

Mr. Marchmont has for me. No, papa; there is no reason I should shrink

from this marriage. There is no one who will be sorry for it; no one! I

am asked to perform a duty towards this little girl, and I am prepared

to perform it faithfully. That is my part of the bargain. Do I commit a

sin in marrying John Marchmont in this spirit, papa?"

She asked the question eagerly, almost breathlessly; as if her decision

depended upon her father's answer.

"A sin, my dear! How can you ask such a question?"

"Very well, then; if I commit no sin in accepting this offer, I will

accept it."

It was thus Olivia paltered with her conscience, holding back half the

truth. The question she should have asked was this, "Do I commit a sin

in marrying one man, while my heart is racked by a mad passion for

another?"

Miss Arundel could not visit her poor upon the day after this interview

with her father. Her monotonous round of duty seemed more than ever

abhorrent to her. She wandered across the dreary marshes, down by the

lonely seashore, in the grey November fog.

She stood for a long time, shivering with the cold dampness of the

atmosphere, but not even conscious that she was cold, looking at a

dilapidated boat that lay upon the rugged beach. The waters before her

and the land behind her were hidden by a dense veil of mist. It seemed

as if she stood alone in the world,--utterly isolated, utterly

forgotten.

"O my God!" she murmured, "if this boat at my feet could drift me away

to some desert island, I could never be more desolate than I am,

amongst the people who do not love me."

Dim lights in distant windows were gleaming across the flats when she

returned to Swampington, to find her father sitting alone and

dispirited at his frugal dinner. Miss Arundel took her place quietly at

the bottom of the table, no trace of emotion upon her face.

"I am sorry I stayed out so long, papa" she said; "I had no idea it was

so late."

"Never mind, my dear, I know you have always enough to occupy you. Mr.

Marchmont called while you were out. He seemed very anxious to hear

your decision, and was delighted when he found that it was favourable

to himself."

Olivia dropped her knife and fork, and rose from her chair suddenly,

with a strange look, which was almost terror, in her face.

"It is quite decided, then?" she said.

"Yes, my love. But you are not sorry, are you?"

"Sorry! No; I am glad."

She sank back into her chair with a sigh of relief. She _was_ glad. The

prospect of this strange marriage offered a relief from the horrible

oppression of her life.

"Henceforward to think of Edward Arundel will be a sin," she thought.

"I have not won another man's love; but I shall be another man's wife."

CHAPTER X.

MARY'S STEPMOTHER.

Perhaps there was never a quieter courtship than that which followed

Olivia's acceptance of John Marchmont's offer. There had been no

pretence of sentiment on either side; yet I doubt if John had been much

more sentimental during his early love-making days, though he had very

tenderly and truly loved his first wife. There were few sparks of the

romantic or emotional fire in his placid nature. His love for his

daughter, though it absorbed his whole being, was a silent and

undemonstrative affection; a thoughtful and almost fearful devotion,

which took the form of intense but hidden anxiety for his child's

future, rather than any outward show of tenderness.

Had his love been of a more impulsive and demonstrative character, he

would scarcely have thought of taking such a step as that he now

contemplated, without first ascertaining whether it would be agreeable

to his daughter.

But he never for a moment dreamt of consulting Mary's will upon this

important matter. He looked with fearful glances towards the dim

future, and saw his darling, a lonely figure upon a barren landscape,

beset by enemies eager to devour her; and he snatched at this one

chance of securing her a protectress, who would be bound to her by a

legal as well as a moral tie; for John Marchmont meant to appoint his

second wife the guardian of his child. He thought only of this; and he

hurried on his suit at the Rectory, fearful lest death should come

between him and his loveless bride, and thus deprive his darling of a

second mother.

This was the history of John Marchmont's marriage. It was not till a

week before the day appointed for the wedding that he told his daughter

what he was about to do. Edward Arundel knew the secret, but he had

been warned not to reveal it to Mary.

The father and daughter sat together late one evening in the first week

of December, in the great western drawing-room. Edward had gone to a

party at Swampington, and was to sleep at the Rectory; so Mary and her

father were alone.

It was nearly eleven o'clock; but Miss Marchmont had insisted upon

sitting up until her father should retire to rest. She had always sat

up in Oakley Street, she had remonstrated, though she was much younger

then. She sat on a velvet-covered hassock at her father's feet, with

her loose hair falling over his knee, as her head lay there in loving

abandonment. She was not talking to him; for neither John nor Mary were

great talkers; but she was with him--that was quite enough.

Mr. Marchmont's thin fingers twined themselves listlessly in and out of

the fair curls upon his knee. Mary was thinking of Edward and the party

at Swampington. Would he enjoy himself very, very much? Would he be

sorry that she was not there? It was a grown-up party, and she wasn't

old enough for grown-up parties yet. Would the pretty girls in blue be

there? and would he dance with them?

Her father's face was clouded by a troubled expression, as he looked

absently at the red embers in the low fireplace. He spoke presently,

but his observation was a very commonplace one. The opening speeches of

a tragedy are seldom remarkable for any ominous or solemn meaning. Two

gentlemen meet each other in a street very near the footlights, and

converse rather flippantly about the aspect of affairs in general;

there is no hint of bloodshed and agony till we get deeper into the

play.

So Mr. Marchmont, bent upon making rather an important communication to

his daughter, and for the first time feeling very fearful as to how she

would take it, began thus:

"You really ought to go to bed earlier, Polly dear; you've been looking

very pale lately, and I know such hours as these must be bad for you."

"Oh, no, papa dear," cried the young lady; "I'm always pale; that's

natural to me. Sitting up late doesn't hurt me, papa. It never did in

Oakley Street, you know."

John Marchmont shook his head sadly.

"I don't know that," he said. "My darling had to suffer many evils

through her father's poverty. If you had some one who loved you, dear,

a lady, you know,--for a man does not understand these sort of

things,--your health would be looked after more carefully,

and--and--your education--and--in short, you would be altogether

happier; wouldn't you, Polly darling?"

He asked the question in an almost piteously appealing tone. A terrible

fear was beginning to take possession of him. His daughter might be

grieved at this second marriage. The very step which he had taken for

her happiness might cause her loving nature pain and sorrow. In the

utter cowardice of his affection he trembled at the thought of causing

his darling any distress in the present, even for her own

welfare,--even for her future good; and he _knew_ that the step he was

about to take would secure that. Mary started from her reclining

position, and looked up into her father's face.

"You're not going to engage a governess for me, papa?" she cried

eagerly. "Oh, please don't. We are so much better as it is. A governess

would keep me away from you, papa; I know she would. The Miss Llandels,

at Impley Grange, have a governess; and they only come down to dessert

for half an hour, or go out for a drive sometimes, so that they very

seldom see their papa. Lucy told me so; and they said they'd give the

world to be always with their papa, as I am with you. Oh, pray, pray,

papa darling, don't let me have a governess."

The tears were in her eyes as she pleaded to him. The sight of those

tears made him terribly nervous.

"My own dear Polly," he said, "I'm not going to engage a governess.

I--; Polly, Polly dear, you must be reasonable. You mustn't grieve your

poor father. You are old enough to understand these things now, dear.

You know what the doctors have said. I may die, Polly, and leave you

alone in the world."

She clung closely to her father, and looked up, pale and trembling, as

she answered him.

"When you die, papa, I shall die too. I could never, never live without

you."

"Yes, yes, my darling, you would. You will live to lead a happy life,

please God, and a safe one; but if I die, and leave you very young,

very inexperienced, and innocent, as I may do, my dear, you must not be

without a friend to watch over you, to advise, to protect you. I have

thought of this long and earnestly, Polly; and I believe that what I am

going to do is right."

"What you are going to do!" Mary cried, repeating her father's words,

and looking at him in sudden terror. "What do you mean, papa? What are

you going to do? Nothing that will part us! O papa, papa, you will

never do anything to part us!"

"No, Polly darling," answered Mr. Marchmont. "Whatever I do, I do for

your sake, and for that alone. I'm going to be married, my dear."

Mary burst into a low wail, more pitiful than any ordinary weeping.

"O papa, papa," she cried, "you never will, you never will!"

The sound of that piteous voice for a few moments quite unmanned John

Marchmont; but he armed himself with a desperate courage. He determined

not to be influenced by this child to relinquish the purpose which he

believed was to achieve her future welfare.

"Mary, Mary dear," he said reproachfully, "this is very cruel of you.

Do you think I haven't consulted your happiness before my own? Do you

think I shall love you less because I take this step for your sake? You

are very cruel to me, Mary."

The little girl rose from her kneeling attitude, and stood before her

father, with the tears streaming down her white cheeks, but with a

certain air of resolution about her. She had been a child for a few

moments; a child, with no power to look beyond the sudden pang of that

new sorrow which had come to her. She was a woman now, able to rise

superior to her sorrow in the strength of her womanhood.

"I won't be cruel, papa," she said; "I was selfish and wicked to talk

like that. If it will make you happy to have another wife, papa, I'll

not be sorry. No, I won't be sorry, even if your new wife separates

us--a little."

"But, my darling," John remonstrated, "I don't mean that she should

separate us at all. I wish you to have a second friend, Polly; some one

who can understand you better than I do, who may love you perhaps

almost as well." Mary Marchmont shook her head; she could not realise

this possibility. "Do you understand me, my dear?" her father continued

earnestly. "I want you to have some one who will be a mother to you;

and I hope--I am sure that Olivia--"

Mary interrupted him by a sudden exclamation, that was almost like a

cry of pain.

"Not Miss Arundel!" she said. "O papa, it is not Miss Arundel you're

going to marry!"

Her father bent his head in assent.

"What is the matter with you, Mary?" he said, almost fretfully, as he

saw the look of mingled grief and terror in his daughter's face. "You

are really quite unreasonable to-night. If I am to marry at all, who

should I choose for a wife? Who could be better than Olivia Arundel?

Everybody knows how good she is. Everybody talks of her goodness."

In these two sentences Mr. Marchmont made confession of a fact he had

never himself considered. It was not his own impulse, it was no

instinctive belief in her goodness, that had led him to choose Olivia

Arundel for his wife. He had been influenced solely by the reiterated

opinions of other people.

"I know she is very good, papa," Mary cried; "but, oh, why, why do you

marry her? Do you love her so very, very much?"

"Love her!" exclaimed Mr. Marchmont naively; "no, Polly dear; you know

I never loved any one but you."

"Why do you marry her then?"

"For your sake, Polly; for your sake."

"But don't then, papa; oh, pray, pray don't. I don't want her. I don't

like her. I could never be happy with her."

"Mary! Mary!"

"Yes, I know it's very wicked to say so, but it's true, papa; I never,

never, never could be happy with her. I know she is good, but I don't

like her. If I did anything wrong, I should never expect her to forgive

me for it; I should never expect her to have mercy upon me. Don't marry

her, papa; pray, pray don't marry her."

"Mary," said Mr. Marchmont resolutely, "this is very wrong of you. I

have given my word, my dear, and I cannot recall it. I believe that I

am acting for the best. You must not be childish now, Mary. You have

been my comfort ever since you were a baby; you mustn't make me unhappy

now."

Her father's appeal went straight to her heart. Yes, she had been his

help and comfort since her earliest infancy, and she was not unused to

self-sacrifice: why should she fail him now? She had read of martyrs,

patient and holy creatures, to whom suffering was glory; she would be a

martyr, if need were, for his sake. She would stand steadfast amid the

blazing fagots, or walk unflinchingly across the white-hot ploughshare,

for his sake, for his sake.

"Papa, papa," she cried, flinging herself upon her father's neck, "I

will not make you sorry. I will be good and obedient to Miss Arundel,

if you wish it."

Mr. Marchmont carried his little girl up to her comfortable bedchamber,

close at hand to his own. She was very calm when she bade him good

night, and she kissed him with a smile upon her face; but all through

the long hours before the late winter morning Mary Marchmont lay awake,

weeping silently and incessantly in her new sorrow; and all through the

same weary hours the master of that noble Lincolnshire mansion slept a

fitful and troubled slumber, rendered hideous by confused and horrible

dreams, in which the black shadow that came between him and his child,

and the cruel hand that thrust him for ever from his darling, were

Olivia Arundel's.

But the morning light brought relief to John Marchmont and his child.

Mary arose with the determination to submit patiently to her father's

choice, and to conceal from him all traces of her foolish and

unreasoning sorrow. John awoke from troubled dreams to believe in the

wisdom of the step he had taken, and to take comfort from the thought

that in the far-away future his daughter would have reason to thank and

bless him for the choice he had made.

So the few days before the marriage passed away--miserably short days,

that flitted by with terrible speed; and the last day of all was made

still more dismal by the departure of Edward Arundel, who left

Marchmont Towers to go to Dangerfield Park, whence he was most likely

to start once more for India.

Mary felt that her narrow world of love was indeed crumbling away from

her. Edward was lost, and to-morrow her father would belong to another.

Mr. Marchmont dined at the Rectory upon that last evening; for there

were settlements to be signed, and other matters to be arranged; and

Mary was alone--quite alone--weeping over her lost happiness.

"This would never have happened," she thought, "if we hadn't come to

Marchmont Towers. I wish papa had never had the fortune; we were so

happy in Oakley Street,--so very happy. I wouldn't mind a bit being

poor again, if I could be always with papa."

Mr. Marchmont had not been able to make himself quite comfortable in

his mind, after that unpleasant interview with his daughter in which he

had broken to her the news of his approaching marriage. Argue with

himself as he might upon the advisability of the step he was about to

take, he could not argue away the fact that he had grieved the child he

loved so intensely. He could not blot away from his memory the pitiful

aspect of her terror-stricken face as she had turned it towards him

when he uttered the name of Olivia Arundel.

No; he had grieved and distressed her. The future might reconcile her

to that grief, perhaps, as a bygone sorrow which she had been allowed

to suffer for her own ultimate advantage. But the future was a long way

off: and in the meantime there was Mary's altered face, calm and

resigned, but bearing upon it a settled look of sorrow, very close at

hand; and John Marchmont could not be otherwise than unhappy in the

knowledge of his darling's grief.

I do not believe that any man or woman is ever suffered to take a fatal

step upon the roadway of life without receiving ample warning by the

way. The stumbling-blocks are placed in the fatal path by a merciful

hand; but we insist upon clambering over them, and surmounting them in

our blind obstinacy, to reach that shadowy something beyond, which we

have in our ignorance appointed to be our goal. A thousand ominous

whispers in his own breast warned John Marchmont that the step he

considered so wise was not a wise one: and yet, in spite of all these

subtle warnings, in spite of the ever-present reproach of his

daughter's altered face, this man, who was too weak to trust blindly in

his God, went on persistently upon his way, trusting, with a thousand

times more fatal blindness, in his own wisdom.

He could not be content to confide his darling and her altered fortunes

to the Providence which had watched over her in her poverty, and

sheltered her from every harm. He could not trust his child to the

mercy of God; but he cast her upon the love of Olivia Arundel.

A new life began for Mary Marchmont after the quiet wedding at

Swampington Church. The bride and bridegroom went upon a brief

honeymoon excursion far away amongst snow-clad Scottish mountains and

frozen streams, upon whose bloomless margins poor John shivered

dismally. I fear that Mr. Marchmont, having been, by the hard pressure

of poverty, compelled to lead a Cockney life for the better half of his

existence, had but slight relish for the grand and sublime in nature. I

do not think he looked at the ruined walls which had once sheltered

Macbeth and his strong-minded partner with all the enthusiasm which

might have been expected of him. He had but one idea about Macbeth, and

he was rather glad to get out of the neighbourhood associated with the

warlike Thane; for his memories of the past presented King Duncan's

murderer as a very stern and uncompromising gentleman, who was utterly

intolerant of banners held awry, or turned with the blank and ignoble

side towards the audience, and who objected vehemently to a violent fit

of coughing on the part of any one of his guests during the blank

barmecide feast of pasteboard and Dutch metal with which he was wont to

entertain them. No; John Marchmont had had quite enough of Macbeth, and

rather wondered at the hot enthusiasm of other red-nosed tourists,

apparently indifferent to the frosty weather.

I fear that the master of Marchmont Towers would have preferred Oakley

Street, Lambeth, to Princes Street, Edinburgh; for the nipping and

eager airs of the Modern Athens nearly blew him across the gulf between

the new town and the old. A visit to the Calton Hill produced an attack

of that chronic cough which had so severely tormented the weak-kneed

supernumerary in the draughty corridors of Drury Lane. Melrose and

Abbotsford fatigued this poor feeble tourist; he tried to be interested

in the stereotyped round of associations beloved by other travellers,

but he had a weary craving for rest, which was stronger than any

hero-worship; and he discovered, before long, that he had done a very

foolish thing in coming to Scotland in December and January, without

having consulted his physician as to the propriety of such a step.

But above all personal inconvenience, above all personal suffering,

there was one feeling ever present in his heart--a sick yearning for

the little girl he had left behind him; a mournful longing to be back

with his child. Already Mary's sad forebodings had been in some way

realised; already his new wife had separated him, unintentionally of

course, from his daughter. The aches and pains he endured in the bleak

Scottish atmosphere reminded him only too forcibly of the warnings he

had received from his physicians. He was seized with a panic, almost,

when he remembered his own imprudence. What if he had needlessly

curtailed the short span of his life? What if he were to die

soon--before Olivia had learned to love her stepdaughter; before Mary

had grown affectionately familiar with her new guardian? Again and

again he appealed to his wife, imploring her to be tender to the orphan

child, if he should be snatched away suddenly.

"I know you will love her by-and-by, Olivia," he said; "as much as I

do, perhaps; for you will discover how good she is, how patient and

unselfish. But just at first, and before you know her very well, you

will be kind to her, won't you, Olivia? She has been used to great

indulgence; she has been spoiled, perhaps; but you'll remember all

that, and be very kind to her?"

"I will try and do my duty," Mrs. Marchmont answered. "I pray that I

never may do less."

There was no tender yearning in Olivia Marchmont's heart towards the

motherless girl. She herself felt that such a sentiment was wanting,

and comprehended that it should have been there. She would have loved

her stepdaughter in those early days, if she could have done so; but

_she could not_--she could not. All that was tender or womanly in her

nature had been wasted upon her hopeless love for Edward Arundel. The

utter wreck of that small freight of affection had left her nature

warped and stunted, soured, disappointed, unwomanly.

How was she to love this child, this hazel-haired, dove-eyed girl,

before whom woman's life, with all its natural wealth of affection,

stretched far away, a bright and fairy vista? How was _she_ to love

her,--she, whose black future was unchequered by one ray of light; who

stood, dissevered from the past, alone in the dismal, dreamless

monotony of the present?

"No" she thought; "beggars and princes can never love one another. When

this girl and I are equals,--when she, like me, stands alone upon a

barren rock, far out amid the waste of waters, with not one memory to

hold her to the past, with not one hope to lure her onward to the

future, with nothing but the black sky above and the black waters

around,--_then_ we may grow fond of each other."

But always more or less steadfast to the standard she had set up for

herself, Olivia Marchmont intended to do her duty to her stepdaughter.

She had not failed in other duties, though no glimmer of love had

brightened them, no natural affection had made them pleasant. Why

should she fail in this?

If this belief in her own power should appear to be somewhat arrogant,

let it be remembered that she had set herself hard tasks before now,

and had performed them. Would the new furnace through which she was to

pass be more terrible than the old fires? She had gone to God's altar

with a man for whom she had no more love than she felt for the lowest

or most insignificant of the miserable sinners in her father's flock.

She had sworn to honour and obey him, meaning at least faithfully to

perform that portion of her vow; and on the night before her loveless

bridal she had grovelled, white, writhing, mad, and desperate, upon the

ground, and had plucked out of her lacerated heart her hopeless love

for another man.

Yes; she had done this. Another woman might have spent that bridal eve

in vain tears and lamentations, in feeble prayers, and such weak

struggles as might have been evidenced by the destruction of a few

letters, a tress of hair, some fragile foolish tokens of a wasted love.

She would have burnt five out of six letters, perhaps, that helpless,

ordinary sinner, and would have kept the sixth, to hoard away hidden

among her matrimonial trousseau; she would have thrown away

fifteen-sixteenths of that tress of hair, and would have kept the

sixteenth portion,--one delicate curl of gold, slender as the thread by

which her shattered hopes had hung,--to be wept over and kissed in the

days that were to come. An ordinary woman would have played fast and

loose with love and duty; and so would have been true to neither.

But Olivia Arundel did none of these things. She battled with her

weakness as St George battled with the fiery dragon. She plucked the

rooted serpent from her heart, reckless as to how much of that

desperate heart was to be wrenched away with its roots. A cowardly

woman would have killed herself, perhaps, rather than endure this

mortal agony. Olivia Arundel killed more than herself; she killed the

passion that had become stronger than herself.

"Alone she did it;" unaided by any human sympathy or compassion,

unsupported by any human counsel, not upheld by her God; for the

religion she had made for herself was a hard creed, and the many words

of tender comfort which must have been familiar to her were

unremembered in that long night of anguish.

It was the Roman's stern endurance, rather than the meek faithfulness

of the Christian, which upheld this unhappy girl under her torture. She

did not do this thing because it pleased her to be obedient to her God.

She did not do it because she believed in the mercy of Him who

inflicted the suffering, and looked forward hopefully, even amid her

passionate grief, to the day when she should better comprehend that

which she now saw so darkly. No; she fought the terrible fight, and she

came forth out of it a conqueror, by reason of her own indomitable

power of suffering, by reason of her own extraordinary strength of

will.

But she did conquer. If her weapon was the classic sword and not the

Christian cross, she was nevertheless a conqueror. When she stood

before the altar and gave her hand to John Marchmont, Edward Arundel

was dead to her. The fatal habit of looking at him as the one centre of

her narrow life was cured. In all her Scottish wanderings, her thoughts

never once went back to him; though a hundred chance words and

associations tempted her, though a thousand memories assailed her,

though some trick of his face in the faces of other people, though some

tone of his voice in the voices of strangers, perpetually offered to

entrap her. No; she was steadfast.

Dutiful as a wife as she had been dutiful as a daughter, she bore with

her husband when his feeble health made him a wearisome companion. She

waited upon him when pain made him fretful, and her duties became

little less arduous than those of a hospital nurse. When, at the

bidding of the Scotch physician who had been called in at Edinburgh,

John Marchmont turned homewards, travelling slowly and resting often on

the way, his wife was more devoted to him than his experienced servant,

more watchful than the best-trained sick-nurse. She recoiled from

nothing, she neglected nothing; she gave him full measure of the honour

and obedience which she had promised upon her wedding-day. And when she

reached Marchmont Towers upon a dreary evening in January, she passed

beneath the solemn portal of the western front, carrying in her heart

the full determination to hold as steadfastly to the other half of her

bargain, and to do her duty to her stepchild.

Mary ran out of the western drawing-room to welcome her father and his

wife. She had cast off her black dresses in honour of Mr. Marchmont's

marriage, and she wore some soft, silken fabric, of a pale shimmering

blue, which contrasted exquisitely with her soft, brown hair, and her

fair, tender face. She uttered a cry of mingled alarm and sorrow when

she saw her father, and perceived the change that had been made in his

looks by the northern journey; but she checked herself at a warning

glance from her stepmother, and bade that dear father welcome, clinging

about him with an almost desperate fondness. She greeted Olivia gently

and respectfully.

"I will try to be very good, mamma," she said, as she took the passive

hand of the lady who had come to rule at Marchmont Towers.

"I believe you will, my dear," Olivia answered, kindly.

She had been startled a little as Mary addressed her by that endearing

corruption of the holy word mother. The child had been so long

motherless, that she felt little of that acute anguish which some

orphans suffer when they have to look up in a strange face and say

"mamma." She had taught herself the lesson of resignation, and she was

prepared to accept this stranger as her new mother, and to look up to

her and obey her henceforward. No thought of her own future position,

as sole owner of that great house and all appertaining to it, ever

crossed Mary Marchmont's mind, womanly as that mind had become in the

sharp experiences of poverty. If her father had told her that he had

cut off the entail, and settled Marchmont Towers upon his new wife, I

think she would have submitted meekly to his will, and would have seen

no injustice in the act. She loved him blindly and confidingly. Indeed,

she could only love after one fashion. The organ of veneration must

have been abnormally developed in Mary Marchmont's head. To believe

that any one she loved was otherwise than perfect, would have been, in

her creed, an infidelity against love. Had any one told her that Edward

Arundel was not eminently qualified for the post of General-in-Chief of

the Army of the Indus; or that her father could by any possible chance

be guilty of a fault or folly: she would have recoiled in horror from

the treasonous slanderer.

A dangerous quality, perhaps, this quality of guilelessness which

thinketh no evil, which cannot be induced to see the evil under its

very nose. But surely, of all the beautiful and pure things upon this

earth, such blind confidence is the purest and most beautiful. I knew a

lady, dead and gone,--alas for this world, which could ill afford to

lose so good a Christian!--who carried this trustfulness of spirit,

this utter incapacity to believe in wrong, through all the strife and

turmoil of a troubled life, unsullied and unlessened, to her grave. She

was cheated and imposed upon, robbed and lied to, by people who loved

her, perhaps, while they wronged her,--for to know her was to love her.

She was robbed systematically by a confidential servant for years, and

for years refused to believe those who told her of his delinquencies.

She _could_ not believe that people were wicked. To the day of her

death she had faith in the scoundrels and scamps who had profited by

her sweet compassion and untiring benevolence; and indignantly defended

them against those who dared to say that they were anything more than

"unfortunate." To go to her was to go to a never-failing fountain of

love and tenderness. To know her goodness was to understand the

goodness of God; for her love approached the Infinite, and might have

taught a sceptic the possibility of Divinity. Three-score years and ten

of worldly experience left her an accomplished lady, a delightful

companion; but in guilelessness a child.

So Mary Marchmont, trusting implicitly in those she loved, submitted to

her father's will, and prepared to obey her stepmother. The new life at

the Towers began very peacefully; a perfect harmony reigned in the

quiet household. Olivia took the reins of management with so little

parade, that the old housekeeper, who had long been paramount in the

Lincolnshire mansion, found herself superseded before she knew where

she was. It was Olivia's nature to govern. Her strength of will

asserted itself almost unconsciously. She took possession of Mary

Marchmont as she had taken possession of her school-children at

Swampington, making her own laws for the government of their narrow

intellects. She planned a routine of study that was actually terrible

to the little girl, whose education had hitherto been conducted in a

somewhat slip-slop manner by a weakly-indulgent father. She came

between Mary and her one amusement,--the reading of novels. The

half-bound romances were snatched ruthlessly from this young devourer

of light literature, and sent back to the shabby circulating library at

Swampington. Even the gloomy old oak book-cases in the library at the

Towers, and the Abbotsford edition of the Waverley Novels, were

forbidden to poor Mary; for, though Sir Walter Scott's morality is

irreproachable, it will not do for a young lady to be weeping over Lucy

Ashton or Amy Robsart when she should be consulting her terrestrial

globe, and informing herself as to the latitude and longitude of the

Fiji Islands.

So a round of dry and dreary lessons began for poor Miss Marchmont, and

her brain grew almost dazed under that continuous and pelting shower of

hard facts which many worthy people consider the one sovereign method

of education. I have said that her mind was far in advance of her

years; Olivia perceived this, and set her tasks in advance of her mind:

in order that the perfection attained by a sort of steeple-chase of

instruction might not be lost to her. If Mary learned difficult lessons

with surprising rapidity, Mrs. Marchmont plied her with even yet more

difficult lessons, thus keeping the spur perpetually in the side of

this heavily-weighted racer on the road to learning. But it must not be

thought that Olivia wilfully tormented or oppressed her stepdaughter.

It was not so. In all this, John Marchmont's second wife implicitly

believed that she was doing her duty to the child committed to her

care. She fully believed that this dreary routine of education was wise

and right, and would be for Mary's ultimate advantage. If she caused

Miss Marchmont to get up at abnormal hours on bleak wintry mornings,

for the purpose of wrestling with a difficult variation by Hertz or

Schubert, she herself rose also, and sat shivering by the piano,

counting the time of the music which her stepdaughter played.

Whatever pains and trouble she inflicted on Mary, she most

unshrinkingly endured herself. She waded through the dismal slough of

learning side by side with the younger sufferer: Roman emperors,

medieval schisms, early British manufactures, Philippa of Hainault,

Flemish woollen stuffs, Magna Charta, the sidereal heavens, Luther,

Newton, Huss, Galileo, Calvin, Loyola, Sir Robert Walpole, Cardinal

Wolsey, conchology, Arianism in the Early Church, trial by jury, Habeas

Corpus, zoology, Mr. Pitt, the American war, Copernicus, Confucius,

Mahomet, Harvey, Jenner, Lycurgus, and Catherine of Arragon; through a

very diabolical dance of history, science, theology, philosophy, and

instruction of all kinds, did this devoted priestess lead her hapless

victim, struggling onward towards that distant altar at which Pallas

Athene waited, pale and inscrutable, to receive a new disciple.

But Olivia Marchmont did not mean to be unmerciful; she meant to be

good to her stepdaughter. She did not love her; but, on the other hand,

she did not dislike her. Her feelings were simply negative. Mary

understood this, and the submissive obedience she rendered to her

stepmother was untempered by affection. So for nearly two years these

two people led a monotonous life, unbroken by any more important event

than a dinner party at Marchmont Towers, or a brief visit to Harrowgate

or Scarborough.

This monotonous existence was not to go on for ever. The fatal day, so

horribly feared by John Marchmont, was creeping closer and closer. The

sorrow which had been shadowed in every childish dream, in every

childish prayer, came at last; and Mary Marchmont was left an orphan.

Poor John had never quite recovered the effects of his winter excursion

to Scotland; neither his wife's devoted nursing, nor his physician's

care, could avail for ever; and, late in the autumn of the second year

of his marriage, he sank, slowly and peacefully enough as regards

physical suffering, but not without bitter grief of mind.

In vain Hubert Arundel talked to him; in vain did he himself pray for

faith and comfort in this dark hour of trial. He _could_ not bear to

leave his child alone in the world. In the foolishness of his love, he

would have trusted in the strength of his own arm to shield her in the

battle; yet he could not trust her hopefully to the arm of God. He

prayed for her night and day during the last week of his illness; while

she was praying passionately, almost madly, that he might be spared to

her, or that she might die with him. Better for her, according to all

mortal reasoning, if she had. Happier for her, a thousand times, if she

could have died as she wished to die, clinging to her father's breast.

The blow fell at last upon those two loving hearts. These were the

awful shadows of death that shut his child's face from John Marchmont's

fading sight. His feeble arms groped here and there for her in that dim

and awful obscurity.

Yes, this was death. The narrow tract of yellow sand had little by

little grown narrower and narrower. The dark and cruel waters were

closing in; the feeble boat went down into the darkness: and Mary stood

alone, with her dead father's hand clasped in hers,--the last feeble

link which bound her to the Past,--looking blankly forward to an

unknown Future.

CHAPTER XI.

THE DAY OF DESOLATION.

Yes; the terrible day had come. Mary Marchmont roamed hither and

thither in the big gaunt rooms, up and down the long dreary corridors,

white and ghostlike in her mute anguish, while the undertaker's men

were busy in her father's chamber, and while John's widow sat in the

study below, writing business letters, and making all necessary

arrangements for the funeral.

In those early days no one attempted to comfort the orphan. There was

something more terrible than the loudest grief in the awful quiet of

the girl's anguish. The wan eyes, looking wearily out of a white

haggard face, that seemed drawn and contracted as if by some hideous

physical torture, were tearless. Except the one long wail of despair

which had burst from her lips in the awful moment of her father's death

agony, no cry of sorrow, no utterance of pain, had given relief to Mary

Marchmont's suffering.

She suffered, and was still. She shrank away from all human

companionship; she seemed specially to avoid the society of her

stepmother. She locked the door of her room upon all who would have

intruded on her, and flung herself upon the bed, to lie there in a dull

stupor for hour after hour. But when the twilight was grey in the

desolate corridors, the wretched girl wandered out into the gallery on

which her father's room opened, and hovered near that solemn

death-chamber; fearful to go in, fearful to encounter the watchers of

the dead, lest they should torture her by their hackneyed expressions

of sympathy, lest they should agonise her by their commonplace talk of

the lost.

Once during that brief interval, while the coffin still held terrible

tenancy of the death-chamber, the girl wandered in the dead of the

night, when all but the hired watchers were asleep, to the broad

landing of the oaken staircase, and into a deep recess formed by an

embayed window that opened over the great stone porch which sheltered

the principal entrance to Marchmont Towers.

The window had been left open; for even in the bleak autumn weather the

atmosphere of the great house seemed hot and oppressive to its living

inmates, whose spirits were weighed down by a vague sense of the Awful

Presence in that Lincolnshire mansion. Mary had wandered to this open

window, scarcely knowing whither she went, after remaining for a long

time on her knees by the threshold of her father's room, with her head

resting against the oaken panel of the door,--not praying; why should

she pray now, unless her prayers could have restored the dead? She had

come out upon the wide staircase, and past the ghostly pictured faces,

that looked grimly down upon her from the oaken wainscot against which

they hung; she had wandered here in the dim grey light--there was light

somewhere in the sky, but only a shadowy and uncertain glimmer of

fading starlight or coming dawn--and she stood now with her head

resting against one of the angles of the massive stonework, looking out

of the open window.

The morning which was already glimmering dimly in the eastern sky

behind Marchmont Towers was to witness poor John's funeral. For nearly

six days Mary Marchmont had avoided all human companionship: for nearly

six days she had shunned all human sympathy and comfort. During all

that time she had never eaten, except when forced to do so by her

stepmother; who had visited her from time to time, and had insisted

upon sitting by her bedside while she took the food that had been

brought to her. Heaven knows how often the girl had slept during those

six dreary days; but her feverish slumbers had brought her very little

rest or refreshment. They had brought her nothing but cruel dreams, in

which her father was still alive; in which she felt his thin arms

clasped round her neck, his faint and fitful breath warm upon her

cheek.

A great clock in the stables struck five while Mary Marchmont stood

looking out of the Tudor window. The broad grey flat before the house

stretched far away, melting into the shadowy horizon. The pale stars

grew paler as Mary looked at them; the black-water pools began to

glimmer faintly under the widening patch of light in the eastern sky.

The girl's senses were bewildered by her suffering, and her head was

light and dizzy.

Her father's death had made so sudden and terrible a break in her

existence, that she could scarcely believe the world had not come to an

end, with all the joys and sorrows of its inhabitants. Would there be

anything more after to-morrow? she thought; would the blank days and

nights go monotonously on when the story that had given them a meaning

and a purpose had come to its dismal end? Surely not; surely, after

those gaunt iron gates, far away across the swampy waste that was

called a park, had closed upon her father's funeral train, the world

would come to an end, and there would be no more time or space. I think

she really believed this in the semi-delirium into which she had fallen

within the last hour. She believed that all would be over; and that she

and her despair would melt away into the emptiness that was to engulf

the universe after her father's funeral.

Then suddenly the full reality of her grief flashed upon her with

horrible force. She clasped her hands upon her forehead, and a low

faint cry broke from her white lips.

It was _not_ all over. Time and space would _not_ be annihilated. The

weary, monotonous, workaday world would still go on upon its course.

_Nothing_ would be changed. The great gaunt stone mansion would still

stand, and the dull machinery of its interior would still go on: the

same hours; the same customs; the same inflexible routine. John

Marchmont would be carried out of the house that had owned him master,

to lie in the dismal vault under Kemberling Church; and the world in

which he had made so little stir would go on without him. The

easy-chair in which he had been wont to sit would be wheeled away from

its corner by the fireplace in the western drawing-room. The papers in

his study would be sorted and put away, or taken possession of by

strange hands. Cromwells and Napoleons die, and the earth reels for a

moment, only to be "alive and bold" again in the next instant, to the

astonishment of poets, and the calm satisfaction of philosophers; and

ordinary people eat their breakfasts while the telegram lies beside

them upon the table, and while the ink in which Mr. Reuter's message is

recorded is still wet from the machine in Printing-house Square.

Anguish and despair more terrible than any of the tortures she had felt

yet took possession of Mary Marchmont's breast. For the first time she

looked out at her own future. Until now she had thought only of her

father's death. She had despaired because he was gone; but she had

never contemplated the horror of her future life,--a life in which she

was to exist without him. A sudden agony, that was near akin to

madness, seized upon this girl, in whose sensitive nature affection had

always had a morbid intensity. She shuddered with a wild dread at the

prospect of that blank future; and as she looked out at the wide stone

steps below the window from which she was leaning, for the first time

in her young life the idea of self-destruction flashed across her mind.

She uttered a cry, a shrill, almost unearthly cry, that was

notwithstanding low and feeble, and clambered suddenly upon the broad

stone sill of the Tudor casement. She wanted to fling herself down and

dash her brains out upon the stone steps below; but in the utter

prostration of her state she was too feeble to do this, and she fell

backwards and dropped in a heap upon the polished oaken flooring of the

recess, striking her forehead as she fell. She lay there unconscious

until nearly seven o'clock, when one of the women-servants found her,

and carried her off to her own room, where she suffered herself to be

undressed and put to bed.

Mary Marchmont did not speak until the good-hearted Lincolnshire

housemaid had laid her in her bed, and was going away to tell Olivia of

the state in which she had found the orphan girl.

"Don't tell my stepmother anything about me, Susan," she said; "I think

I was mad last night."

This speech frightened the housemaid, and she went straight to the

widow's room. Mrs. Marchmont, always an early riser, had been up and

dressed for some time, and went at once to look at her stepdaughter.

She found Mary very calm and reasonable. There was no trace of

bewilderment or delirium now in her manner; and when the principal

doctor of Swampington came a couple of hours afterwards to look at the

young heiress, he declared that there was no cause for any alarm. The

young lady was sensitive, morbidly sensitive, he said, and must be kept

very quiet for a few days, and watched by some one whose presence would

not annoy her. If there was any girl of her own age whom she had ever

shown a predilection for, that girl would be the fittest companion for

her just now. After a few days, it would be advisable that she should

have change of air and change of scene. She must not be allowed to

brood continuously on her father's death. The doctor repeated this last

injunction more than once. It was most important that she should not

give way too perpetually to her grief.

So Mary Marchmont lay in her darkened room while her father's funeral

train was moving slowly away from the western entrance. It happened

that the orphan girl's apartments looked out into the quadrangle; so

she heard none of the subdued sounds which attended the departure of

that solemn procession. In her weakness she had grown submissive to the

will of others. She thought this feebleness and exhaustion gave warning

of approaching death. Her prayers would be granted, after all. This

anguish and despair would be but of brief duration, and she would ere

long be carried to the vault under Kemberling Church, to lie beside her

father in the black stillness of that solemn place.

Mrs. Marchmont strictly obeyed the doctor's injunctions. A girl of

seventeen, the daughter of a small tenant farmer near the Towers, had

been a special favourite with Mary, who was not apt to make friends

amongst strangers. This girl, Hester Pollard, was sent for, and came

willingly and gladly to watch her young patroness. She brought her

needlework with her, and sat near the window busily employed, while

Mary lay shrouded by the curtains of the bed. All active services

necessary for the comfort of the invalid were performed by Olivia or

her own special attendant--an old servant who had lived with the Rector

ever since his daughter's birth, and had only left him to follow that

daughter to Marchmont Towers after her marriage. So Hester Pollard had

nothing to do but to keep very quiet, and patiently await the time when

Mary might be disposed to talk to her. The farmer's daughter was a

gentle, unobtrusive creature, very well fitted for the duty imposed

upon her.

CHAPTER XII.

PAUL.

Olivia Marchmont sat in her late husband's study while John's funeral

train was moving slowly along under the misty October sky. A long

stream of carriages followed the stately hearse, with its four black

horses, and its voluminous draperies of rich velvet, and nodding plumes

that were damp and heavy with the autumn atmosphere. The unassuming

master of Marchmont Towers had won for himself a quiet popularity

amongst the simple country gentry, and the best families in

Lincolnshire had sent their chiefs to do honour to his burial, or at

the least their empty carriages to represent them at that mournful

ceremonial. Olivia sat in her dead husband's favourite chamber. Her

head lay back upon the cushion of the roomy morocco-covered arm-chair

in which he had so often sat. She had been working hard that morning,

and indeed every morning since John Marchmont's death, sorting and

arranging papers, with the aid of Richard Paulette, the Lincoln's Inn

solicitor, and James Gormby, the land-steward. She knew that she had

been left sole guardian of her stepdaughter, and executrix to her

husband's will; and she had lost no time in making herself acquainted

with the business details of the estate, and the full nature of the

responsibilities intrusted to her.

She was resting now. She had done all that could be done until after

the reading of the will. She had attended to her stepdaughter. She had

stood in one of the windows of the western drawing-room, watching the

departure of the funeral _cortege_; and now she abandoned herself for a

brief space to that idleness which was so unusual to her.

A fire burned in the low grate at her feet, and a rough cur--half

shepherd's dog, half Scotch deer-hound, who had been fond of John, but

was not fond of Olivia--lay at the further extremity of the hearth-rug,

watching her suspiciously.

Mrs. Marchmont's personal appearance had not altered during the two

years of her married life. Her face was thin and haggard; but it had

been thin and haggard before her marriage. And yet no one could deny

that the face was handsome, and the features beautifully chiselled. But

the grey eyes were hard and cold, the line of the faultless eyebrows

gave a stern expression to the countenance; the thin lips were rigid

and compressed. The face wanted both light and colour. A sculptor

copying it line by line would have produced a beautiful head. A painter

must have lent his own glowing tints if he wished to represent Olivia

Marchmont as a lovely woman.

Her pale face looked paler, and her dead black hair blacker, against

the blank whiteness of her widow's cap. Her mourning dress clung

closely to her tall, slender figure. She was little more than

twenty-five, but she looked a woman of thirty. It had been her

misfortune to look older than she was from a very early period in her

life.

She had not loved her husband when she married him, nor had she ever

felt for him that love which in most womanly natures grows out of

custom and duty. It was not in her nature to love. Her passionate

idolatry of her boyish cousin had been the one solitary affection that

had ever held a place in her cold heart. All the fire of her nature had

been concentrated in this one folly, this one passion, against which

only heroic endurance had been able to prevail.

Mrs. Marchmont felt no grief, therefore, at her husband's loss. She had

felt the shock of his death, and the painful oppression of his dead

presence in the house. She had faithfully nursed him through many

illnesses; she had patiently tended him until the very last; she had

done her duty. And now, for the first time, she had leisure to

contemplate the past, and look forward to the future.

So far this woman had fulfilled the task which she had taken upon

herself; she had been true and loyal to the vow she had made before

God's altar, in the church of Swampington. And now she was free. No,

not quite free; for she had a heavy burden yet upon her hands; the

solemn charge of her stepdaughter during the girl's minority. But as

regarded marriage-vows and marriage-ties she was free.

She was free to love Edward Arundel again.

The thought came upon her with a rush and an impetus, wild and strong

as the sudden uprising of a whirlwind, or the loosing of a

mountain-torrent that had long been bound. She was a wife no longer. It

was no longer a sin to think of the bright-haired soldier, fighting far

away. She was free. When Edward returned to England by-and-by, he would

find her free once more; a young widow,--young, handsome, and rich

enough to be no bad prize for a younger son. He would come back and

find her thus; and then--and then--!

She flung one of her clenched hands up into the air, and struck it on

her forehead in a sudden paroxysm of rage. What then? Would he love her

any better then than he had loved her two years ago? No; he would treat

her with the same cruel indifference, the same commonplace cousinly

friendliness, with which he had mocked and tortured her before. Oh,

shame! Oh, misery! Was there no pride in women, that there could be one

among them fallen so low as her; ready to grovel at the feet of a

fair-haired boy, and to cry aloud, "Love me, love me! or be pitiful,

and strike me dead!"

Better that John Marchmont should have lived for ever, better that

Edward Arundel should die far away upon some Eastern battle-field,

before some Affghan fortress, than that he should return to inflict

upon her the same tortures she had writhed under two years before.

"God grant that he may never come back!" she thought. "God grant that

he may marry out yonder, and live and die there! God keep him from me

for ever and for ever in this weary world!"

And yet in the next moment, with the inconsistency which is the chief

attribute of that madness we call love, her thoughts wandered away

dreamily into visions of the future; and she pictured Edward Arundel

back again at Swampington, at Marchmont Towers. Her soul burst its

bonds and expanded, and drank in the sunlight of gladness: and she

dared to think that it _might_ be so--there _might_ be happiness yet

for her. He had been a boy when he went back to India--careless,

indifferent. He would return a man,--graver, wiser, altogether changed:

changed so much as to love her perhaps.

She knew that, at least, no rival had shut her cousin's heart against

her, when she and he had been together two years before. He had been

indifferent to her; but he had been indifferent to others also. There

was comfort in that recollection. She had questioned him very sharply

as to his life in India and at Dangerfield, and she had discovered no

trace of any tender memory of the past, no hint of a cherished dream of

the future. His heart had been empty: a boyish, unawakened heart: a

temple in which the niches were untenanted, the shrine unhallowed by

the presence of a goddess.

Olivia Marchmont thought of these things. For a few moments, if only

for a few moments, she abandoned herself to such thoughts as these. She

let herself go. She released the stern hold which it was her habit to

keep upon her own mind; and in those bright moments of delicious

abandonment the glorious sunshine streamed in upon her narrow life, and

visions of a possible future expanded before her like a fairy panorama,

stretching away into realms of vague light and splendour. It was

_possible_; it was at least possible.

But, again, in the next moment the magical panorama collapsed and

shrivelled away, like a burning scroll; the fairy picture, whose

gorgeous colouring she had looked upon with dazzled eyes, almost

blinded by its overpowering glory, shrank into a handful of black

ashes, and was gone. The woman's strong nature reasserted itself; the

iron will rose up, ready to do battle with the foolish heart.

"I _will_ not be fooled a second time," she cried. "Did I suffer so

little when I blotted that image out of my heart? Did the destruction

of my cruel Juggernaut cost me so small an agony that I must needs be

ready to elevate the false god again, and crush out my heart once more

under the brazen wheels of his chariot? _He will never love me!_"

She writhed; this self-sustained and resolute woman writhed in her

anguish as she uttered those five words, "He will never love me!" She

knew that they were true; that of all the changes that Time could bring

to pass, it would never bring such a change as that. There was not one

element of sympathy between herself and the young soldier; they had not

one thought in common. Nay, more; there was an absolute antagonism

between them, which, in spite of her love, Olivia fully recognised.

Over the gulf that separated them no coincidence of thought or fancy,

no sympathetic emotion, ever stretched its electric chain to draw them

together in mysterious union. They stood aloof, divided by the width of

an intellectual universe. The woman knew this, and hated herself for

her folly, scorning alike her love and its object; but her love was not

the less because of her scorn. It was a madness, an isolated madness,

which stood alone in her soul, and fought for mastery over her better

aspirations, her wiser thoughts. We are all familiar with strange

stories of wise and great minds which have been ridden by some

hobgoblin fancy, some one horrible monomania; a bleeding head upon a

dish, a grinning skeleton playing hide-and-seek in the folds of the

bed-curtains; some devilry or other before which the master-spirit

shrank and dwindled until the body withered and the victim died.

Had Olivia Marchmont lived a couple of centuries before, she would have

gone straight to the nearest old crone, and would have boldly accused

the wretched woman of being the author of her misery.

"You harbour a black cat and other noisome vermin, and you prowl about

muttering to yourself o' nights" she might have said. "You have been

seen to gather herbs, and you make strange and uncanny signs with your

palsied old fingers. The black cat is the devil, your colleague; and

the rats under your tumble-down roof are his imps, your associates. It

is _you_ who have instilled this horrible madness into my soul; for it

_could_ not come of itself."

And Olivia Marchmont, being resolute and strong-minded, would not have

rested until her tormentor had paid the penalty of her foul work at a

stake in the nearest market-place.

And indeed some of our madnesses are so mad, some of our follies are so

foolish, that we might almost be forgiven if we believed that there was

a company of horrible crones meeting somewhere on an invisible Brocken,

and making incantations for our destruction. Take up a newspaper and

read its hideous revelations of crime and folly; and it will be

scarcely strange if you involuntarily wonder whether witchcraft is a

dark fable of the middle ages, or a dreadful truth of the nineteenth

century. Must not some of these miserable creatures whose stories we

read be _possessed_; possessed by eager, relentless demons, who lash

and goad them onward, until no black abyss of vice, no hideous gulf of

crime, is black or hideous enough to content them?

Olivia Marchmont might have been a good and great woman. She had all

the elements of greatness. She had genius, resolution, an indomitable

courage, an iron will, perseverance, self-denial, temperance, chastity.

But against all these qualities was set a fatal and foolish love for a

boy's handsome face and frank and genial manner. If Edward Arundel had

never crossed her path, her unfettered soul might have taken the

highest and grandest flight; but, chained down, bound, trammelled by

her love for him, she grovelled on the earth like some maimed and

wounded eagle, who sees his fellows afar off, high in the purple

empyrean, and loathes himself for his impotence.

"What do I love him for?" she thought. "Is it because he has blue eyes

and chestnut hair, with wandering gleams of golden light in it? Is it

because he has gentlemanly manners, and is easy and pleasant, genial

and light-hearted? Is it because he has a dashing walk, and the air of

a man of fashion? It must be for some of these attributes, surely; for

I know nothing more in him. Of all the things he has ever said, I can

remember nothing--and I remember his smallest words, Heaven help

me!--that any sensible person could think worth repeating. He is brave,

I dare say, and generous; but what of that? He is neither braver nor

more generous than other men of his rank and position."

She sat lost in such a reverie as this while her dead husband was being

carried to the roomy vault set apart for the owners of Marchmont Towers

and their kindred; she was absorbed in some such thoughts as these,

when one of the grave, grey-headed old servants brought her a card upon

a heavy salver emblazoned with the Marchmont arms.

Olivia took the card almost mechanically. There are some thoughts which

carry us a long way from the ordinary occupations of every-day life,

and it is not always easy to return to the dull jog-trot routine. The

widow passed her left hand across her brow before she looked at the

name inscribed upon the card in her right.

"Mr. Paul Marchmont."

She started as she read the name. Paul Marchmont! She remembered what

her husband had told her of this man. It was not much; for John's

feelings on the subject of his cousin had been of so vague a nature

that he had shrunk from expounding them to his stern, practical wife.

He had told her, therefore, that he did not very much care for Paul,

and that he wished no intimacy ever to arise between the artist and

Mary; but he had said nothing more than this.

"The gentleman is waiting to see me, I suppose?" Mrs. Marchmont said.

"Yes, ma'am. The gentleman came to Kemberling by the 11.5 train from

London, and has driven over here in one of Harris's flys."

"Tell him I will come to him immediately. Is he in the drawing-room?"

"Yes, ma'am."

The man bowed and left the room. Olivia rose from her chair and

lingered by the fireplace with her foot on the fender, her elbow

resting on the carved oak chimneypiece.

"Paul Marchmont! He has come to the funeral, I suppose. And he expects

to find himself mentioned in the will, I dare say. I think, from what

my husband told me, he will be disappointed in that. Paul Marchmont! If

Mary were to die unmarried, this man or his sisters would inherit

Marchmont Towers."

There was a looking-glass over the mantelpiece; a narrow, oblong glass,

in an old-fashioned carved ebony frame, which was inclined forward.

Olivia looked musingly in this glass, and smoothed the heavy bands of

dead-black hair under her cap.

"There are people who would call me handsome," she thought, as she

looked with a moody frown at her image in the glass; "and yet I have

seen Edward Arundel's eyes wander away from my face, even while I have

been talking to him, to watch the swallows skimming by in the sun, or

the ivy-leaves flapping against the wall."

She turned from the glass with a sigh, and went out into a dusky

corridor. The shutters of all the principal rooms and the windows upon

the grand staircase were still closed; the wide hall was dark and

gloomy, and drops of rain spattered every now and then upon the logs

that smouldered on the wide old-fashioned hearth. The misty October

morning had heralded a wet day.

Paul Marchmont was sitting in a low easy-chair before a blazing fire in

the western drawing-room, the red light full upon his face. It was a

handsome face, or perhaps, to speak more exactly, it was one of those

faces that are generally called "interesting." The features were very

delicate and refined, the pale greyish-blue eyes were shaded by long

brown lashes, and the small and rather feminine mouth was overshadowed

by a slender auburn moustache, under which the rosy tint of the lips

was very visible. But it was Paul Marchmont's hair which gave a

peculiarity to a personal appearance that might otherwise have been in

no way out of the common. This hair, fine, silky, and luxuriant, was

_white_, although its owner could not have been more than thirty-seven

years of age.

The uninvited guest rose as Olivia Marchmont entered the room.

"I have the honour of speaking to my cousin's widow?" he said, with a

courteous smile.

"Yes, I am Mrs. Marchmont."

Olivia seated herself near the fire. The wet day was cold and

cheerless. Mrs. Marchmont shivered as she extended her long thin hand

to the blaze.

"And you are doubtless surprised to see me here, Mrs. Marchmont?" the

artist said, leaning upon the back of his chair in the easy attitude of

a man who means to make himself at home. "But believe me, that although

I never took advantage of a very friendly letter written to me by poor

John----"

Paul Marchmont paused for a moment, keeping sharp watch upon the

widow's face; but no sorrowful expression, no evidence of emotion, was

visible in that inflexible countenance.

"Although, I repeat, I never availed myself of a sort of general

invitation to come and shoot his partridges, or borrow money of him, or

take advantage of any of those other little privileges generally

claimed by a man's poor relations, it is not to be supposed, my dear

Mrs. Marchmont, that I was altogether forgetful of either Marchmont

Towers or its owner, my cousin. I did not come here, because I am a

hard-working man, and the idleness of a country house would have been

ruin to me. But I heard sometimes of my cousin from neighbours of his."

"Neighbours!" repeated Olivia, in a tone of surprise.

"Yes; people near enough to be called neighbours in the country. My

sister lives at Stanfield. She is married to a surgeon who practises in

that delightful town. You know Stanfield, of course?"

"No, I have never been there. It is five-and-twenty miles from here."

"Indeed! too far for a drive, then. Yes, my sister lives at Stanfield.

John never knew much of her in his adversity; and therefore may be

forgiven if he forgot her in his prosperity. But she did not forget

him. We poor relations have excellent memories. The Stanfield people

have so little to talk about, that it is scarcely any wonder if they

are inquisitive about the affairs of the grand country gentry round

about them. I heard of John through my sister; I heard of his marriage

through her,"--he bowed to Olivia as he said this,--"and I wrote

immediately to congratulate him upon that happy event,"--he bowed again

here;--"and it was through Lavinia Weston, my sister, that I heard of

poor John's death; one day before the announcement appeared in the

columns of the 'Times.' I am sorry to find that I am too late for the

funeral. I could have wished to have paid my cousin the last tribute of

esteem that one man can pay another."

"You would wish to hear the reading of the will?" Olivia said,

interrogatively.

Paul Marchmont shrugged his shoulders, with a low, careless laugh; not

an indecorous laugh,--nothing that this man did or said ever appeared

ill-advised or out of place. The people who disliked him were compelled

to acknowledge that they disliked him unreasonably, and very much on

the Doctor-Fell principle; for it was impossible to take objection to

either his manners or his actions.

"That important legal document can have very little interest for me, my

dear Mrs. Marchmont," he said gaily. "John can have had nothing to

leave me. I am too well acquainted with the terms of my grandfather's

will to have any mercenary hopes in coming to Marchmont Towers."

He stopped, and looked at Olivia's impassible face.

"What on earth could have induced this woman to marry my cousin?" he

thought. "John could have had very little to leave his widow."

He played with the ornaments at his watch-chain, looking reflectively

at the fire for some moments.

"Miss Marchmont,--my cousin, Mary Marchmont, I should say,--bears her

loss pretty well, I hope?"

Olivia shrugged her shoulders.

"I am sorry to say that my stepdaughter displays very little Christian

resignation," she said.

And then a spirit within her arose and whispered, with a mocking voice,

"What resignation do _you_ show beneath _your_ affliction,--you, who

should be so good a Christian? How have _you_ learned to school your

rebellious heart?"

"My cousin is very young," Paul Marchmont said, presently.

"She was fifteen last July."

"Fifteen! Very young to be the owner of Marchmont Towers and an income

of eleven thousand a year," returned the artist. He walked to one of

the long windows, and drawing aside the edge of the blind, looked out

upon the terrace and the wide flats before the mansion. The rain

dripped and splashed upon the stone steps; the rain-drops hung upon the

grim adornments of the carved balustrade, soaking into moss-grown

escutcheons and half-obliterated coats-of-arms. The weird willows by

the pools far away, and a group of poplars near the house, looked gaunt

and black against the dismal grey sky.

Paul Marchmont dropped the blind, and turned away from the gloomy

landscape with a half-contemptuous gesture. "I don't know that I envy

my cousin, after all," he said: "the place is as dreary as Tennyson's

Moated Grange."

There was the sound of wheels on the carriage-drive before the terrace,

and presently a subdued murmur of hushed voices in the hall. Mr.

Richard Paulette, and the two medical men who had attended John

Marchmont, had returned to the Towers, for the reading of the will.

Hubert Arundel had returned with them; but the other followers in the

funeral train had departed to their several homes. The undertaker and

his men had come back to the house by the side-entrance, and were

making themselves very comfortable in the servants'-hall after the

fulfilment of their mournful duties.

The will was to be read in the dining-room; and Mr. Paulette and the

clerk who had accompanied him to Marchmont Towers were already seated

at one end of the long carved-oak table, busy with their papers and

pens and ink, assuming an importance the occasion did not require.

Olivia went out into the hall to speak to her father.

"You will find Mr. Marchmont's solicitor in the dining-room," she said

to Paul, who was looking at some of the old pictures on the

drawing-room walls.

A large fire was blazing in the wide grate at the end of the

dining-room. The blinds had been drawn up. There was no longer need

that the house should be wrapped in darkness. The Awful Presence had

departed; and such light as there was in the gloomy October sky was

free to enter the rooms, which the death of one quiet, unobtrusive

creature had made for a time desolate.

There was no sound in the room but the low voice of the two doctors

talking of their late patient in undertones near the fireplace, and the

occasional fluttering of the papers under the lawyer's hand. The clerk,

who sat respectfully a little way behind his master, and upon the very

edge of his ponderous morocco-covered chair, had been wont to give John

Marchmont his orders, and to lecture him for being tardy with his work

a few years before, in the Lincoln's Inn office. He was wondering now

whether he should find himself remembered in the dead man's will, to

the extent of a mourning ring or an old-fashioned silver snuff-box.

Richard Paulette looked up as Olivia and her father entered the room,

followed at a little distance by Paul Marchmont, who walked at a

leisurely pace, looking at the carved doorways and the pictures against

the wainscot, and appearing, as he had declared himself, very little

concerned in the important business about to be transacted.

"We shall want Miss Marchmont here, if you please," Mr. Paulette said,

as he looked up from his papers.

"Is it necessary that she should be present?" Olivia asked.

"Very necessary."

"But she is ill; she is in bed."

"It is most important that she should be here when the will is read.

Perhaps Mr. Bolton"--the lawyer looked towards one of the medical

men--"will see. He will be able to tell us whether Miss Marchmont can

safely come downstairs."

Mr. Bolton, the Swampington surgeon who had attended Mary that morning,

left the room with Olivia. The lawyer rose and warmed his hands at the

blaze, talking to Hubert Arundel and the London physician as he did so.

Paul Marchmont, who had not been introduced to any one, occupied

himself entirely with the pictures for a little time; and then,

strolling over to the fireplace, fell into conversation with the three

gentlemen, contriving, adroitly enough, to let them know who he was.

The lawyer looked at him with some interest,--a professional interest,

no doubt; for Mr. Paulette had a copy of old Philip Marchmont's will in

one of the japanned deed-boxes inscribed with poor John's name. He knew

that this easy-going, pleasant-mannered, white-haired gentleman was the

Paul Marchmont named in that document, and stood next in succession to

Mary. Mary might die unmarried, and it was as well to be friendly and

civil to a man who was at least a possible client.

The four gentlemen stood upon the broad Turkey hearth-rug for some

time, talking of the dead man, the wet weather, the cold autumn, the

dearth of partridges, and other very safe topics of conversation.

Olivia and the Swampington doctor were a long time absent; and Richard

Paulette, who stood with his back to the fire, glanced every now and

then towards the door.

It opened at last, and Mary Marchmont came into the room, followed by

her stepmother.

Paul Marchmont turned at the sound of the opening of that ponderous

oaken door, and for the first time saw his second cousin, the young

mistress of Marchmont Towers. He started as he looked at her, though

with a scarcely perceptible movement, and a change came over his face.

The feminine pinky hue in his cheeks faded suddenly, and left them

white. It had been a peculiarity of Paul Marchmont's, from his boyhood,

always to turn pale with every acute emotion.

What was the emotion which had now blanched his cheeks? Was he

thinking, "Is _this_ fragile creature the mistress of Marchmont Towers?

Is _this_ frail life all that stands between me and eleven thousand a

year?"

The light which shone out of that feeble earthly tabernacle did indeed

seem a frail and fitful flame, likely to be extinguished by any rude

breath from the coarse outer world. Mary Marchmont was deadly pale;

black shadows encircled her wistful hazel eyes. Her new mourning-dress,

with its heavy trimmings of lustreless crape, seemed to hang loose upon

her slender figure; her soft brown hair, damp with the water with which

her burning forehead had been bathed, fell in straight lank tresses

about her shoulders. Her eyes were tearless, her mouth terribly

compressed. The rigidity of her face betokened the struggle by which

her sorrow was repressed. She sat in an easy-chair which Olivia

indicated to her, and with her hands lying on the white handkerchief in

her lap, and her swollen eyelids drooping over her eyes, waited for the

reading of her father's will. It would be the last, the very last, she

would ever hear of that dear father's words. She remembered this, and

was ready to listen attentively; but she remembered nothing else. What

was it to her that she was sole heiress of that great mansion, and of

eleven thousand a year? She had never in her life thought of the

Lincolnshire fortune with any reference to herself or her own

pleasures; and she thought of it less than ever now.

The will was dated February 4th, 1844, exactly two months after John's

marriage. It had been made by the master of Marchmont Towers without

the aid of a lawyer, and was only witnessed by John's housekeeper, and

by Corson the old valet, a confidential servant who had attended upon

Mr. Marchmont's predecessor.

Richard Paulette began to read; and Mary, for the first time since she

had taken her seat near the fire, lifted her eyes, and listened

breathlessly, with faintly tremulous lips. Olivia sat near her

stepdaughter; and Paul Marchmont stood in a careless attitude at one

corner of the fireplace, with his shoulders resting against the massive

oaken chimneypiece. The dead man's will ran thus:

"I John Marchmont of Marchmont Towers declare this to be my last will

and testament Being persuaded that my end is approaching I feel my dear

little daughter Mary will be left unprotected by any natural guardian

My young friend Edward Arundel I had hoped when in my poverty would

have been a friend and adviser to her if not a protector but her tender

years and his position in life must place this now out of the question

and I may die before a fond hope which I have long cherished can be

realised and which may now never be realised I now desire to make my

will more particularly to provide as well as I am permitted for the

guardianship and care of my dear little Mary during her minority Now I

will and desire that my wife Olivia shall act as guardian adviser and

mother to my dear little Mary and that she place herself under the

charge and guardianship of my wife And as she will be an heiress of

very considerable property I would wish her to be guided by the advice

of my said wife in the management of her property and particularly in

the choice of a husband As my dear little Mary will be amply provided

for on my death I make no provision for her by this my will but I

direct my executrix to present to her a diamond-ring which I wish her

to wear in memory of her loving father so that she may always have me

in her thoughts and particularly of these my wishes as to her future

life until she shall be of age and capable of acting on her own

judgment. I also request my executrix to present my young friend Edward

Arundel also with a diamond-ring of the value of at least one hundred

guineas as a slight tribute of the regard and esteem which I have ever

entertained for him. . . . As to all the property as well real as

personal over which I may at the time of my death have any control and

capable of claiming or bequeathing I give devise and bequeath to my

wife Olivia absolutely And I appoint my said wife sole executrix of

this my will and guardian of my dear little Mary."

There were a few very small legacies, including a mourning-ring to the

expectant clerk; and this was all. Paul Marchmont had been quite right;

nobody could be less interested than himself in this will.

But he was apparently very much interested in John's widow and

daughter. He tried to enter into conversation with Mary, but the girl's

piteous manner seemed to implore him to leave her unmolested; and Mr.

Bolton approached his patient almost immediately after the reading of

the will, and in a manner took possession of her. Mary was very glad to

leave the room once more, and to return to the dim chamber where Hester

Pollard sat at needlework. Olivia left her stepdaughter to the care of

this humble companion, and went back to the long dining-room, where the

gentlemen still hung listlessly over the fire, not knowing very well

what to do with themselves.

Mrs. Marchmont could not do less than invite Paul to stay a few days at

the Towers. She was virtually mistress of the house during Mary's

minority, and on her devolved all the troubles, duties, and

responsibilities attendant on such a position. Her father was going to

stay with her till the end of the week; and he therefore would be able

to entertain Mr. Marchmont. Paul unhesitatingly accepted the widow's

hospitality. The old place was picturesque and interesting, he said;

there were some genuine Holbeins in the hall and dining-room, and one

good Lely in the drawing-room. He would give himself a couple of days'

holiday, and go to Stanfield by an early train on Saturday.

"I have not seen my sister for a long time," he said; "her life is dull

enough and hard enough, Heaven knows, and she will be glad to see me

upon my way back to London."

Olivia bowed. She did not persuade Mr. Marchmont to extend his visit.

The common courtesy she offered him was kept within the narrowest

limits. She spent the best part of the time in the dead man's study

during Paul's two-days' stay, and left the artist almost entirely to

her father's companionship.

But she was compelled to appear at dinner, and she took her accustomed

place at the head of the table. Paul therefore had some opportunity of

sounding the depths of the strangest nature he had ever tried to

fathom. He talked to her very much, listening with unvarying attention

to every word she uttered. He watched her--but with no obtrusive

gaze--almost incessantly; and when he went away from Marchmont Towers,

without having seen Mary since the reading of the will, it was of

Olivia he thought; it was the recollection of Olivia which interested

as much as it perplexed him.

The few people waiting for the London train looked at the artist as he

strolled up and down the quiet platform at Kemberling Station, with his

head bent and his eyebrows slightly contracted. He had a certain easy,

careless grace of dress and carriage, which harmonised well with his

delicate face, his silken silvery hair, his carefully-trained auburn

moustache, and rosy, womanish mouth. He was a romantic-looking man. He

was the beau-ideal of the hero in a young lady's novel. He was a man

whom schoolgirls would have called "a dear." But it had been better, I

think, for any helpless wretch to be in the bull-dog hold of the

sturdiest Bill Sykes ever loosed upon society by right of his

ticket-of-leave, than in the power of Paul Marchmont, artist and

teacher of drawing, of Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square.

He was thinking of Olivia as he walked slowly up and down the bare

platform, only separated by a rough wooden paling from the flat open

fields on the outskirts of Kemberling.

"The little girl is as feeble as a pale February butterfly." he

thought; "a puff of frosty wind might wither her away. But that woman,

that woman--how handsome she is, with her accurate profile and iron

mouth; but what a raging fire there is hidden somewhere in her breast,

and devouring her beauty by day and night! If I wanted to paint the

sleeping scene in _Macbeth_, I'd ask her to sit for the Thane's wicked

wife. Perhaps she has some bloody secret as deadly as the murder of a

grey-headed Duncan upon her conscience, and leaves her bedchamber in

the stillness of the night to walk up and down those long oaken

corridors at the Towers, and wring her hands and wail aloud in her

sleep. Why did she marry John Marchmont? His life gave her little more

than a fine house to live in; his death leaves her with nothing but ten

or twelve thousand pounds in the Three per Cents. What is her

mystery--what is her secret, I wonder? for she must surely have one."

Such thoughts as these filled his mind as the train carried him away

from the lonely little station, and away from the neighbourhood of

Marchmont Towers, within whose stony walls Mary lay in her quiet

chamber, weeping for her dead father, and wishing--God knows in what

utter singleness of heart!--that she had been buried in the vault by

his side.

CHAPTER XIII.

OLIVIA'S DESPAIR.

The life which Mary and her stepmother led at Marchmont Towers after

poor John's death was one of those tranquil and monotonous existences

that leave very little to be recorded, except the slow progress of the

weeks and months, the gradual changes of the seasons. Mary bore her

sorrows quietly, as it was her nature to bear all things. The doctor's

advice was taken, and Olivia removed her stepdaughter to Scarborough

soon after the funeral. But the change of scene was slow to effect any

change in the state of dull despairing sorrow into which the girl had

fallen. The sea-breezes brought no colour into her pale cheeks. She

obeyed her stepmother's behests unmurmuringly, and wandered wearily by

the dreary seashore in the dismal November weather, in search of health

and strength. But wherever she went, she carried with her the awful

burden of her grief; and in every changing cadence of the low winter

winds, in every varying murmur of the moaning waves, she seemed to hear

her dead father's funeral dirge.

I think that, young as Mary Marchmont was, this mournful period was the

grand crisis of her life. The past, with its one great affection, had

been swept away from her, and as yet there was no friendly figure to

fill the dismal blank of the future. Had any kindly matron, any gentle

Christian creature been ready to stretch out her arms to the desolate

orphan, Mary's heart would have melted, and she would have crept to the

shelter of that womanly embrace, to nestle there for ever. But there

was no one. Olivia Marchmont obeyed the letter of her husband's solemn

appeal, as she had obeyed the letter of those Gospel sentences that had

been familiar to her from her childhood, but was utterly unable to

comprehend its spirit. She accepted the charge intrusted to her. She

was unflinching in the performance of her duty; but no one glimmer of

the holy light of motherly love and tenderness, the semi-divine

compassion of womanhood, ever illumined the dark chambers of her heart.

Every night she questioned herself upon her knees as to her rigid

performance of the level round of duty she had allotted to herself;

every night--scrupulous and relentless as the hardest judge who ever

pronounced sentence upon a criminal--she took note of her own

shortcomings, and acknowledged her deficiencies.

But, unhappily, this self-devotion of Olivia's pressed no less heavily

upon Mary than on the widow herself. The more rigidly Mrs. Marchmont

performed the duties which she understood to be laid upon her by her

dead husband's last will and testament, the harder became the orphan's

life. The weary treadmill of education worked on, when the young

student was well-nigh fainting upon every step in that hopeless

revolving ladder of knowledge. If Olivia, on communing with herself at

night, found that the day just done had been too easy for both mistress

and pupil, the morrow's allowance of Roman emperors and French grammar

was made to do penance for yesterday's shortcomings.

"This girl has been intrusted to my care, and one of my first duties is

to give her a good education," Olivia Marchmont thought. "She is

inclined to be idle; but I must fight against her inclination, whatever

trouble the struggle entails upon myself. The harder the battle, the

better for me if I am conqueror."

It was only thus that Olivia Marchmont could hope to be a good woman.

It was only by the rigid performance of hard duties, the patient

practice of tedious rites, that she could hope to attain that eternal

crown which simpler Christians seem to win so easily.

Morning and night the widow and her stepdaughter read the Bible

together; morning and night they knelt side by side to join in the same

familiar prayers; yet all these readings and all these prayers failed

to bring them any nearer together. No tender sentence of inspiration,

not the words of Christ himself, ever struck the same chord in these

two women's hearts, bringing both into sudden unison. They went to

church three times upon every dreary Sunday,--dreary from the terrible

uniformity which made one day a mechanical repetition of another,--and

sat together in the same pew; and there were times when some solemn

word, some sublime injunction, seemed to fall with a new meaning upon

the orphan girl's heart; but if she looked at her stepmother's face,

thinking to see some ray of that sudden light which had newly shone

into her own mind reflected _there_, the blank gloom of Olivia's

countenance seemed like a dead wall, across which no glimmer of

radiance ever shone.

They went back to Marchmont Towers in the early spring. People imagined

that the young widow would cultivate the society of her husband's old

friends, and that morning callers would be welcome at the Towers, and

the stately dinner-parties would begin again, when Mrs. Marchmont's

year of mourning was over. But it was not so; Olivia closed her doors

upon almost all society, and devoted herself entirely to the education

of her stepdaughter. The gossips of Swampington and Kemberling, the

county gentry who had talked of her piety and patience, her unflinching

devotion to the poor of her father's parish, talked now of her

self-abnegation, the sacrifices she made for her stepdaughter's sake,

the noble manner in which she justified John Marchmont's confidence in

her goodness. Other women would have intrusted the heiress's education

to some hired governess, people said; other women would have been upon

the look-out for a second husband; other women would have grown weary

of the dulness of that lonely Lincolnshire mansion, the monotonous

society of a girl of sixteen. They were never tired of lauding Mrs.

Marchmont as a model for all stepmothers in time to come.

Did she sacrifice much, this woman, whose spirit was a raging fire, who

had the ambition of a Semiramis, the courage of a Boadicea, the

resolution of a Lady Macbeth? Did she sacrifice much in resigning such

provincial gaieties as might have adorned her life,--a few

dinner-parties, an occasional county ball, a flirtation with some

ponderous landed gentleman or hunting squire?

No; these things would very soon have grown odious to her--more odious

than the monotony of her empty life, more wearisome even than the

perpetual weariness of her own spirit. I said, that when she accepted a

new life by becoming the wife of John Marchmont, she acted in the

spirit of a prisoner, who is glad to exchange his old dungeon for a new

one. But, alas! the novelty of the prison-house had very speedily worn

off, and that which Olivia Arundel had been at Swampington Rectory,

Olivia Marchmont was now in the gaunt country mansion,--a wretched

woman, weary of herself and all the world, devoured by a slow-consuming

and perpetual fire.

This woman was, for two long melancholy years, Mary Marchmont's sole

companion and instructress. I say sole companion advisedly; for the

girl was not allowed to become intimate with the younger members of

such few county families as still called occasionally at the Towers,

lest she should become empty-headed and frivolous by their

companionship. Alas, there was little fear of Mary becoming

empty-headed! As she grew taller, and more slender, she seemed to get

weaker and paler; and her heavy head drooped wearily under the load of

knowledge which it had been made to carry, like some poor sickly flower

oppressed by the weight of the dew-drops, which would have revivified a

hardier blossom.

Heaven knows to what end Mrs. Marchmont educated her stepdaughter! Poor

Mary could have told the precise date of any event in universal

history, ancient or modern; she could have named the exact latitude and

longitude of the remotest island in the least navigable ocean, and

might have given an accurate account of the manners and customs of its

inhabitants, had she been called upon to do so. She was alarmingly

learned upon the subject of tertiary and old red sandstone, and could

have told you almost as much as Mr. Charles Kingsley himself about the

history of a gravel-pit,--though I doubt if she could have conveyed her

information in quite such a pleasant manner; she could have pointed out

every star in the broad heavens above Lincolnshire, and could have told

the history of its discovery; she knew the hardest names that science

had given to the familiar field-flowers she met in her daily

walks;--yet I cannot say that her conversation was any the more

brilliant because of this, or that her spirits grew lighter under the

influence of this general mental illumination.

But Mrs. Marchmont did most earnestly believe that this laborious

educationary process was one of the duties she owed her stepdaughter;

and when, at seventeen years of age, Mary emerged from the struggle,

laden with such intellectual spoils as I have described above, the

widow felt a quiet satisfaction as she contemplated her work, and said

to herself, "In this, at least, I have done my duty."

Amongst all the dreary mass of instruction beneath which her health had

very nearly succumbed, the girl had learned one thing that was a source

of pleasure to herself; she had learned to become a very brilliant

musician. She was not a musical genius, remember; for no such vivid

flame as the fire of genius had ever burned in her gentle breast; but

all the tenderness of her nature, all the poetry of a hyper-poetical

mind, centred in this one accomplishment, and, condemned to perpetual

silence in every other tongue, found a new and glorious language here.

The girl had been forbidden to read Byron and Scott; but she was not

forbidden to sit at her piano, when the day's toils were over, and the

twilight was dusky in her quiet room, playing dreamy melodies by

Beethoven and Mozart, and making her own poetry to Mendelssohn's

wordless songs. I think her soul must have shrunk and withered away

altogether had it not been for this one resource, this one refuge, in

which her mind regained its elasticity, springing up, like a trampled

flower, into new life and beauty.

Olivia was well pleased to see the girl sit hour after hour at her

piano. She had learned to play well and brilliantly herself, mastering

all difficulties with the proud determination which was a part of her

strong nature; but she had no special love for music. All things that

compose the poetry and beauty of life had been denied to this woman, in

common with the tenderness which makes the chief loveliness of

womankind. She sat by the piano and listened while Mary's slight hands

wandered over the keys, carrying the player's soul away into trackless

regions of dream-land and beauty; but she heard nothing in the music

except so many chords, so many tones and semitones, played in such or

such a time.

It would have been scarcely natural for Mary Marchmont, reserved and

self-contained though she had been ever since her father's death, to

have had no yearning for more genial companionship than that of her

stepmother. The girl who had kept watch in her room, by the doctor's

suggestion, was the one friend and confidante whom the young mistress

of Marchmont Towers fain would have chosen. But here Olivia interposed,

sternly forbidding any intimacy between the two girls. Hester Pollard

was the daughter of a small tenant-farmer, and no fit associate for

Mrs. Marchmont's stepdaughter. Olivia thought that this taste for

obscure company was the fruit of Mary's early training--the taint left

by those bitter, debasing days of poverty, in which John Marchmont and

his daughter had lived in some wretched Lambeth lodging.

"But Hester Pollard is fond of me, mamma," the girl pleaded; "and I

feel so happy at the old farm house! They are all so kind to me when I

go there,--Hester's father and mother, and little brothers and sisters,

you know; and the poultry-yard, and the pigs and horses, and the green

pond, with the geese cackling round it, remind me of my aunt's, in

Berkshire. I went there once with poor papa for a day or two; it was

_such_ a change after Oakley Street."

But Mrs. Marchmont was inflexible upon this point. She would allow her

stepdaughter to pay a ceremonial visit now and then to Farmer

Pollard's, and to be entertained with cowslip-wine and pound-cake in

the low, old-fashioned parlour, where all the polished mahogany chairs

were so shining and slippery that it was a marvel how anybody ever

contrived to sit down upon them. Olivia allowed such solemn visits as

these now and then, and she permitted Mary to renew the farmer's lease

upon sufficiently advantageous terms, and to make occasional presents

to her favourite, Hester. But all stolen visits to the farmyard, all

evening rambles with the farmer's daughter in the apple orchard at the

back of the low white farmhouse, were sternly interdicted; and though

Mary and Hester were friends still, they were fain to be content with a

chance meeting once in the course of a dreary interval of months, and a

silent pressure of the hand.

"You mustn't think that I am proud of my money, Hester," Mary said to

her friend, "or that I forget you now that we see each other so seldom.

Papa used to let me come to the farm whenever I liked; but papa had

seen a great deal of poverty. Mamma keeps me almost always at home at

my studies; but she is very good to me, and of course I am bound to

obey her; papa wished me to obey her."

The orphan girl never for a moment forgot the terms of her father's

will. _He_ had wished her to obey; what should she do, then, but be

obedient? Her submission to Olivia's lightest wish was only a part of

the homage which she paid to that beloved father's memory.

It was thus she grew to early womanhood; a child in gentle obedience

and docility; a woman by reason of that grave and thoughtful character

which had been peculiar to her from her very infancy. It was in a life

such as this, narrow, monotonous, joyless, that her seventeenth

birthday came and went, scarcely noticed, scarcely remembered, in the

dull uniformity of the days which left no track behind them; and Mary

Marchmont was a woman,--a woman with all the tragedy of life before

her; infantine in her innocence and inexperience of the world outside

Marchmont Towers.

The passage of time had been so long unmarked by any break in its

tranquil course, the dull routine of life had been so long undisturbed

by change, that I believe the two women thought their lives would go on

for ever and ever. Mary, at least, had never looked beyond the dull

horizon of the present. Her habit of castle-building had died out with

her father's death. What need had she to build castles, now that he

could no longer inhabit them? Edward Arundel, the bright boy she

remembered in Oakley Street, the dashing young officer who had come to

Marchmont Towers, had dropped back into the chaos of the past. Her

father had been the keystone in the arch of Mary's existence: he was

gone, and a mass of chaotic ruins alone remained of the familiar

visions which had once beguiled her. The world had ended with John

Marchmont's death, and his daughter's life since that great sorrow had

been at best only a passive endurance of existence. They had heard very

little of the young soldier at Marchmont Towers. Now and then a letter

from some member of the family at Dangerfield had come to the Rector of

Swampington. The warfare was still raging far away in the East, cruel

and desperate battles were being fought, and brave Englishmen were

winning loot and laurels, or perishing under the scimitars of Sikhs and

Affghans, as the case might be. Squire Arundel's youngest son was not

doing less than his duty, the letters said. He had gained his

captaincy, and was well spoken of by great soldiers, whose very names

were like the sound of the war-trumpet to English ears.

Olivia heard all this. She sat by her father, sometimes looking over

his shoulder at the crumpled letter, as he read aloud to her of her

cousin's exploits. The familiar name seemed to be all ablaze with lurid

light as the widow's greedy eyes devoured it. How commonplace the

letters were! What frivolous nonsense Letitia Arundel intermingled with

the news of her brother!--"You'll be glad to hear that my grey pony has

got the better of his lameness. Papa gave a hunting-breakfast on

Tuesday week. Lord Mountlitchcombe was present; but the hunting-men are

very much aggravated about the frost, and I fear we shall have no

crocuses. Edward has got his captaincy, papa told me to tell you. Sir

Charles Napier and Major Outram have spoken very highly of him; but

he--Edward, I mean--got a sabre-cut on his left arm, besides a wound on

his forehead, and was laid up for nearly a month. I daresay you

remember old Colonel Tollesly, at Halburton Lodge? He died last

November; and has left all his money to----" and the young lady ran on

thus, with such gossip as she thought might be pleasing to her uncle;

and there were no more tidings of the young soldier, whose life-blood

had so nearly been spilt for his country's glory.

Olivia thought of him as she rode back to Marchmont Towers. She thought

of the sabre-cut upon his arm, and pictured him wounded and bleeding,

lying beneath the canvass-shelter of a tent, comfortless, lonely,

forsaken.

"Better for me if he had died," she thought; "better for me if I were

to hear of his death to-morrow!"

And with the idea the picture of such a calamity arose before her so

vividly and hideously distinct, that she thought for one brief moment

of agony, "This is not a fancy, it is a presentiment; it is second

sight; the thing will occur."

She imagined herself going to see her father as she had gone that

morning. All would be the same: the low grey garden-wall of the

Rectory; the ceaseless surging of the sea; the prim servant-maid; the

familiar study, with its litter of books and papers; the smell of stale

cigar-smoke; the chintz curtains flapping in the open window; the dry

leaves fluttering in the garden without. There would be nothing changed

except her father's face, which would be a little graver than usual.

And then, after a little hesitation--after a brief preamble about the

uncertainty of life, the necessity for looking always beyond this

world, the horrors of war,--the dreadful words would be upon his lips,

when she would read all the hideous truth in his face, and fall prone

to the ground, before he could say, "Edward Arundel is dead!"

Yes; she felt all the anguish. It would be this--this sudden paralysis

of black despair. She tested the strength of her endurance by this

imaginary torture,--scarcely imaginary, surely, when it seemed so

real,--and asked herself a strange question: "Am I strong enough to

bear this, or would it be less terrible to go on, suffering for

ever--for ever abased and humiliated by the degradation of my love for

a man who does not care for me?"

So long as John Marchmont had lived, this woman would have been true to

the terrible victory she had won upon the eve of her bridal. She would

have been true to herself and to her marriage-vow; but her husband's

death, in setting her free, had cast her back upon the madness of her

youth. It was no longer a sin to think of Edward Arundel. Having once

suffered this idea to arise in her mind, her idol grew too strong for

her, and she thought of him by night and day.

Yes; she thought of him for ever and ever. The narrow life to which she

doomed herself, the self-immolation which she called duty, left her a

prey to this one thought. Her work was not enough for her. Her powerful

mind wasted and shrivelled for want of worthy employment. It was like

one vast roll of parchment whereon half the wisdom of the world might

have been inscribed, but on which was only written over and over again,

in maddening repetition, the name of Edward Arundel. If Olivia

Marchmont could have gone to America, and entered herself amongst the

feminine professors of law or medicine,--if she could have turned

field-preacher, like simple Dinah Morris, or set up a printing-press in

Bloomsbury, or even written a novel,--I think she might have been

saved. The superabundant energy of her mind would have found a new

object. As it was, she did none of these things. She had only dreamt

one dream, and by force of perpetual repetition the dream had become a

madness.

But the monotonous life was not to go on for ever. The dull, grey,

leaden sky was to be illumined by sudden bursts of sunshine, and swept

by black thunder-clouds, whose stormy violence was to shake the very

universe for these two solitary women.

John Marchmont had been dead nearly three years. Mary's humble friend,

the farmer's daughter, had married a young tradesman in the village of

Kemberling, a mile and a half from the Towers. Mary was a woman now,

and had seen the last of the Roman emperors and all the dry-as-dust

studies of her early girlhood. She had nothing to do but accompany her

stepmother hither and thither amongst the poor cottagers about

Kemberling and two or three other small parishes within a drive of the

Towers, "doing good," after Olivia's fashion, by line and rule. At home

the young lady did what she pleased, sitting for hours together at her

piano, or wading through gigantic achievements in the way of

embroidery-work. She was even allowed to read novels now, but only such

novels as were especially recommended to Olivia, who was one of the

patronesses of a book-club at Swampington: novels in which young ladies

fell in love with curates, and didn't marry them: novels in which

everybody suffered all manner of misery, and rather liked it: novels in

which, if the heroine did marry the man she loved--and this happy

conclusion was the exception, and not the rule--the smallpox swept away

her beauty, or a fatal accident deprived him of his legs, or eyes, or

arms before the wedding-day.

The two women went to Kemberling Church together three times every

Sunday. It was rather monotonous--the same church, the same rector and

curate, the same clerk, the same congregation, the same old organ-tunes

and droning voices of Lincolnshire charity-children, the same sermons

very often. But Mary had grown accustomed to monotony. She had ceased

to hope or care for anything since her father's death, and was very

well contented to be let alone, and allowed to dawdle through a dreary

life which was utterly without aim or purpose. She sat opposite her

stepmother on one particular afternoon in the state-pew at Kemberling,

which was lined with faded red baize, and raised a little above the

pews of meaner worshippers; she was sitting with her listless hands

lying in her lap, looking thoughtfully at her stepmother's stony face,

and listening to the dull droning of the rector's voice above her head.

It was a sunny afternoon in early June, and the church was bright with

a warm yellow radiance; one of the old diamond-paned windows was open,

and the tinkling of a sheep-bell far away in the distance, and the hum

of bees in the churchyard, sounded pleasantly in the quiet of the hot

atmosphere.

The young mistress of Marchmont Towers felt the drowsy influence of

that tranquil summer weather creeping stealthily upon her. The heavy

eyelids drooped over her soft brown eyes, those wistful eyes which had

so long looked wearily out upon a world in which there seemed so little

joy. The rector's sermon was a very long one this warm afternoon, and

there was a low sound of snoring somewhere in one of the shadowy and

sheltered pews beneath the galleries. Mary tried very hard to keep

herself awake. Mrs. Marchmont had frowned darkly at her once or twice

already, for to fall asleep in church was a dire iniquity in Olivia's

rigid creed; but the drowsiness was not easily to be conquered, and the

girl was sinking into a peaceful slumber in spite of her stepmother's

menacing frowns, when the sound of a sharp footfall on one of the

gravel pathways in the churchyard aroused her attention.

Heaven knows why she should have been awoke out of her sleep by the

sound of that step. It was different, perhaps, to the footsteps of the

Kemberling congregation. The brisk, sharp sound of the tread striking

lightly but firmly on the gravel was not compatible with the shuffling

gait of the tradespeople and farmers' men who formed the greater part

of the worshippers at that quiet Lincolnshire church. Again, it would

have been a monstrous sin in that tranquil place for any one member of

the congregation to disturb the devotions of the rest by entering at

such a time as this. It was a stranger, then, evidently. What did it

matter? Miss Marchmont scarcely cared to lift her eyelids to see who or

what the stranger was; but the intruder let in such a flood of June

sunshine when he pushed open the ponderous oaken door under the

church-porch, that she was dazzled by that sudden burst of light, and

involuntarily opened her eyes.

The stranger let the door swing softly to behind him, and stood beneath

the shadow of the porch, not caring to advance any further, or to

disturb the congregation by his presence.

Mary could not see him very plainly at first. She could only dimly

define the outline of his tall figure, the waving masses of chestnut

hair tinged with gleams of gold; but little by little his face seemed

to grow out of the shadow, until she saw it all,--the handsome

patrician features, the luminous blue eyes, the amber moustache,--the

face which, in Oakley Street eight years ago, she had elected as her

type of all manly perfection, her ideal of heroic grace.

Yes; it was Edward Arundel. Her eyes lighted up with an unwonted

rapture as she looked at him; her lips parted; and her breath came in

faint gasps. All the monotonous years, the terrible agonies of sorrow,

dropped away into the past; and Mary Marchmont was conscious of nothing

except the unutterable happiness of the present.

The one friend of her childhood had come back. The one link, the almost

forgotten link, that bound her to every day-dream of those foolish

early days, was united once more by the presence of the young soldier.

All that happy time, nearly five years ago,--that happy time in which

the tennis-court had been built, and the boat-house by the river

restored,--those sunny autumn days before her father's second

marriage,--returned to her. There was pleasure and joy in the world,

after all; and then the memory of her father came back to her mind, and

her eyes filled with tears. How sorry Edward would be to see his old

friend's empty place in the western drawing-room; how sorry for her,

and for her loss! Olivia Marchmont saw the change in her stepdaughter's

face, and looked at her with stern amazement. But, after the first

shock of that delicious surprise, Mary's training asserted itself. She

folded her hands,--they trembled a little, but Olivia did not see

that,--and waited patiently, with her eyes cast down and a faint flush

lighting up her pale cheeks, until the sermon was finished, and the

congregation began to disperse. She was not impatient. She felt as if

she could have waited thus peacefully and contentedly for ever, knowing

that the only friend she had on earth was near her.

Olivia was slow to leave her pew; but at last she opened the door and

went out into the quiet aisle, followed by Mary, out under the shadowy

porch and into the gravel-walk in the churchyard, where Edward Arundel

was waiting for the two ladies.

John Marchmont's widow uttered no cry of surprise when she saw her

cousin standing a little way apart from the slowly-dispersing

Kemberling congregation. Her dark face faded a little, and her heart

seemed to stop its pulsation suddenly, as if she had been turned into

stone; but this was only for a moment. She held out her hand to Mr.

Arundel in the next instant, and bade him welcome to Lincolnshire.

"I did not know you were in England," she said.

"Scarcely any one knows it yet," the young man answered; "and I have

not even been home. I came to Marchmont Towers at once."

He turned from his cousin to Mary, who was standing a little behind her

stepmother.

"Dear Polly," he said, taking both her hands in his, "I was so sorry

for you, when I heard----"

He stopped, for he saw the tears welling up to her eyes. It was not his

allusion to her father's death that had distressed her. He had called

her Polly, the old familiar name, which she had never heard since that

dead father's lips had last spoken it.

The carriage was waiting at the gate of the churchyard, and Edward

Arundel went back to Marchmont Towers with the two ladies. He had

reached the house a quarter of an hour after they had left it for

afternoon church, and had walked over to Kemberling.

"I was so anxious to see you, Polly," he said, "after all this long

time, that I had no patience to wait until you and Livy came back from

church."

Olivia started as the young man said this. It was Mary Marchmont whom

he had come to see, then--not herself. Was _she_ never to be anything?

Was she to be for ever insulted by this humiliating indifference? A

dark flush came over her face, as she drew her head up with the air of

an offended empress, and looked angrily at her cousin. Alas! he did not

even see that indignant glance. He was bending over Mary, telling her,

in a low tender voice, of the grief he had felt at learning the news of

her father's death.

Olivia Marchmont looked with an eager, scrutinising gaze at her

stepdaughter. Could it be possible that Edward Arundel might ever come

to love this girl? _Could_ such a thing be possible? A hideous depth of

horror and confusion seemed to open before her with the thought. In all

the past, amongst all things she had imagined, amongst all the

calamities she had pictured to herself, she had never thought of

anything like this. Would such a thing ever come to pass? Would she

ever grow to hate this girl--this girl, who had been intrusted to her

by her dead husband--with the most terrible hatred that one woman can

feel towards another?

In the next moment she was angry with herself for the abject folly of

this new terror. She had never yet learned to think of Mary as a woman.

She had never thought of her otherwise than as the pale childlike girl

who had come to her meekly, day after day, to recite difficult lessons,

standing in a submissive attitude before her, and rendering obedience

to her in all things. Was it likely, was it possible, that this

pale-faced girl would enter into the lists against her in the great

battle of her life? Was it likely that she was to find her adversary

and her conqueror here, in the meek child who had been committed to her

charge?

She watched her stepdaughter's face with a jealous, hungry gaze. Was it

beautiful? No! The features were delicate; the brown eyes soft and

dovelike, almost lovely, now that they were irradiated by a new light,

as they looked shyly up at Edward Arundel. But the girl's face was wan

and colourless. It lacked the splendour of beauty. It was only after

you had looked at Mary for a very long time that you began to think her

rather pretty.

The five years during which Edward Arundel had been away had made

little alteration in him. He was rather taller, perhaps; his amber

moustache thicker; his manner more dashing than of old. The mark of a

sabre-cut under the clustering chestnut curls upon the temple gave him

a certain soldierly dignity. He seemed a man of the world now, and Mary

Marchmont was rather afraid of him. He was so different to the

Lincolnshire squires, the bashful younger sons who were to be educated

for the Church: he was so dashing, so elegant, so splendid! From the

waving grace of his hair to the tip of the polished boot peeping out of

his well-cut trouser (there were no pegtops in 1847, and it was _le

genre_ to show very little of the boot), he was a creature to be

wondered at, to be almost reverenced, Mary thought. She could not help

admiring the cut of his coat, the easy _nonchalance_ of his manner, the

waxed ends of his curved moustache, the dangling toys of gold and

enamel that jingled at his watch-chain, the waves of perfume that

floated away from his cambric handkerchief. She was childish enough to

worship all these external attributes in her hero.

"Shall I invite him to Marchmont Towers?" Olivia thought; and while she

was deliberating upon this question, Mary Marchmont cried out, "You

will stop at the Towers, won't you, Mr. Arundel, as you did when poor

papa was alive?"

"Most decidedly, Miss Marchmont," the young man answered. "I mean to

throw myself upon your hospitality as confidingly as I did a long time

ago in Oakley Street, when you gave me hot rolls for my breakfast."

Mary laughed aloud--perhaps for the first time since her father's

death. Olivia bit her lip. She was of so little account, then, she

thought, that they did not care to consult her. A gloomy shadow spread

itself over her face. Already, already she began to hate this

pale-faced, childish orphan girl, who seemed to be transformed into a

new being under the spell of Edward Arundel's presence.

But she made no attempt to prevent his stopping at the Towers, though a

word from her would have effectually hindered his coming. A dull torpor

of despair took possession of her; a black apprehension paralysed her

mind. She felt that a pit of horror was opening before her ignorant

feet. All that she had suffered was as nothing to what she was about to

suffer. Let it be, then! What could she do to keep this torture away

from her? Let it come, since it seemed that it must come in some shape

or other.

She thought all this, while she sat back in a corner of the carriage

watching the two faces opposite to her, as Edward and Mary, seated with

their backs to the horses, talked together in low confidential tones,

which scarcely reached her ear. She thought all this during the short

drive between Kemberling and Marchmont Towers; and when the carriage

drew up before the low Tudor portico, the dark shadow had settled on

her face. Her mind was made up. Let Edward Arundel come; let the worst

come. She had struggled; she had tried to do her duty; she had striven

to be good. But her destiny was stronger than herself, and had brought

this young soldier over land and sea, safe out of every danger, rescued

from every peril, to be her destruction. I think that in this crisis of

her life the last faint ray of Christian light faded out of this lost

woman's soul, leaving utter darkness and desolation. The old landmarks,

dimly descried in the weary desert, sank for ever down into the

quicksands, and she was left alone,--alone with her despair. Her

jealous soul prophesied the evil which she dreaded. This man, whose

indifference to her was almost an insult, would fall in love with Mary

Marchmont,--with Mary Marchmont, whose eyes lit up into new beauty

under the glances of his, whose pale face blushed into faint bloom as

he talked to her. The girl's undisguised admiration would flatter the

young man's vanity, and he would fall in love with her out of very

frivolity and weakness of purpose.

"He is weak and vain, and foolish and frivolous, I daresay," Olivia

thought; "and if I were to fling myself upon my knees at his feet, and

tell him that I loved him, he would be flattered and grateful, and

would be ready to return my affection. If I could tell him what this

girl tells him in every look and word, he would be as pleased with me

as he is with her."

Her lip curled with unutterable scorn as she thought this. She was so

despicable to herself by the deep humiliation of her wasted love, that

the object of that foolish passion seemed despicable also. She was for

ever weighing Edward Arundel against all the tortures she had endured

for his sake, and for ever finding him wanting. He must have been a

demigod if his perfections could have outweighed so much misery; and

for this reason she was unjust to her cousin, and could not accept him

for that which he really was,--a generous-hearted, candid, honourable

young man (not a great man or a wonderful man),--a brave and

honest-minded soldier, very well worthy of a good woman's love.

* * * * *

Mr. Arundel stayed at the Towers, occupying the room which had been his

in John Marchmont's lifetime; and a new existence began for Mary. The

young man was delighted with his old friend's daughter. Among all the

Calcutta belles whom he had danced with at Government-House balls and

flirted with upon the Indian racecourse, he could remember no one as

fascinating as this girl, who seemed as childlike now, in her early

womanhood, as she had been womanly while she was a child. Her naive

tenderness for himself bewitched and enraptured him. Who could have

avoided being charmed by that pure and innocent affection, which was as

freely given by the girl of eighteen as it had been by the child, and

was unchanged in character by the lapse of years? The young officer had

been so much admired and caressed in Calcutta, that perhaps, by reason

of his successes, he had returned to England heart-whole; and he

abandoned himself, without any _arriere-pensee_, to the quiet happiness

which he felt in Mary Marchmont's society. I do not say that he was

intoxicated by her beauty, which was by no means of the intoxicating

order, or that he was madly in love with her. The gentle fascination of

her society crept upon him before he was aware of its influence. He had

never taken the trouble to examine his own feelings; they were

disengaged,--as free as butterflies to settle upon which flower might

seem the fairest; and he had therefore no need to put himself under a

course of rigorous self-examination. As yet he believed that the

pleasure he now felt in Mary's society was the same order of enjoyment

he had experienced five years before, when he had taught her chess, and

promised her long rambles by the seashore.

They had no long rambles now in solitary lanes and under flowering

hedgerows beside the waving green corn. Olivia watched them with

untiring eyes. The tortures to which a jealous woman may condemn

herself are not much greater than those she can inflict upon others.

Mrs. Marchmont took good care that her ward and her cousin were not

_too_ happy. Wherever they went, she went also; whenever they spoke,

she listened; whatever arrangement was most likely to please them was

opposed by her. Edward was not coxcomb enough to have any suspicion of

the reason of this conduct on his cousin's part. He only smiled and

shrugged his shoulders; and attributed her watchfulness to an

overstrained sense of her responsibility, and the necessity of

_surveillance_.

"Does she think me such a villain and a traitor," he thought, "that she

fears to leave me alone with my dead friend's orphan daughter, lest I

should whisper corruption into her innocent ear? How little these good

women know of us, after all! What vulgar suspicions and narrow-minded

fears influence them against us! Are they honourable and honest towards

one another, I wonder, that they can entertain such pitiful doubts of

our honour and honesty?"

So, hour after hour, and day after day, Olivia Marchmont kept watch and

ward over Edward and Mary. It seems strange that love could blossom in

such an atmosphere; it seems strange that the cruel gaze of those hard

grey eyes did not chill the two innocent hearts, and prevent their free

expansion. But it was not so; the egotism of love was all-omnipotent.

Neither Edward nor Mary was conscious of the evil light in the glance

that so often rested upon them. The universe narrowed itself to the one

spot of earth upon which these two stood side by side.

Edward Arundel had been more than a month at Marchmont Towers when

Olivia went, upon a hot July evening, to Swampington, on a brief visit

to the Rector,--a visit of duty. She would doubtless have taken Mary

Marchmont with her; but the girl had been suffering from a violent

headache throughout the burning summer day, and had kept her room.

Edward Arundel had gone out early in the morning upon a fishing

excursion to a famous trout-stream seven or eight miles from the

Towers, and was not likely to return until after nightfall. There was

no chance, therefore, of a meeting between Mary and the young officer,

Olivia thought--no chance of any confidential talk which she would not

be by to hear.

Did Edward Arundel love the pale-faced girl, who revealed her devotion

to him with such childlike unconsciousness? Olivia Marchmont had not

been able to answer that question. She had sounded the young man

several times upon his feelings towards her stepdaughter; but he had

met her hints and insinuations with perfect frankness, declaring that

Mary seemed as much a child to him now as she had appeared nearly nine

years before in Oakley Street, and that the pleasure he took in her

society was only such as he might have felt in that of any innocent and

confiding child.

"Her simplicity is so bewitching, you know, Livy," he said; "she looks

up in my face, and trusts me with all her little secrets, and tells me

her dreams about her dead father, and all her foolish, innocent

fancies, as confidingly as if I were some playfellow of her own age and

sex. She's so refreshing after the artificial belles of a Calcutta

ballroom, with their stereotyped fascinations and their complete manual

of flirtation, the same for ever and ever. She is such a pretty little

spontaneous darling, with her soft, shy, brown eyes, and her low voice,

which always sounds to me like the cooing of the doves in the

poultry-yard."

I think that Olivia, in the depth of her gloomy despair, took some

comfort from such speeches as these. Was this frank expression of

regard for Mary Marchmont a token of _love_? No; not as the widow

understood the stormy madness. Love to her had been a dark and terrible

passion, a thing to be concealed, as monomaniacs have sometimes

contrived to keep the secret of their mania, until it burst forth at

last, fatal and irrepressible, in some direful work of wreck and ruin.

So Olivia Marchmont took an early dinner alone, and drove away from the

Towers at four o'clock on a blazing summer afternoon, more at peace

perhaps than she had been since Edward Arundel's coming. She paid her

dutiful visit to her father, sat with him for some time, talked to the

two old servants who waited upon him, walked two or three times up and

down the neglected garden, and then drove back to the Towers.

The first object upon which her eyes fell as she entered the hall was

Edward Arundel's fishing-tackle lying in disorder upon an oaken bench

near the broad arched door that opened out into the quadrangle. An

angry flush mounted to her face as she turned upon the servant near

her.

"Mr. Arundel has come home?" she said.

"Yes, ma'am, he came in half an hour ago; but he went out again almost

directly with Miss Marchmont."

"Indeed! I thought Miss Marchmont was in her room?"

"No, ma'am; she came down to the drawing-room about an hour after you

left. Her head was better, ma'am, she said."

"And she went out with Mr. Arundel? Do you know which way they went?"

"Yes, ma'am; I heard Mr. Arundel say he wanted to look at the old

boat-house by the river."

"And they have gone there?"

"I think so, ma'am."

"Very good; I will go down to them. Miss Marchmont must not stop out in

the night-air. The dew is falling already."

The door leading into the quadrangle was open; and Olivia swept across

the broad threshold, haughty and self-possessed, very stately-looking

in her long black garments. She still wore mourning for her dead

husband. What inducement had she ever had to cast off that sombre

attire; what need had she to trick herself out in gay colours? What

loving eyes would be charmed by her splendour? She went out of the

door, across the quadrangle, under a stone archway, and into the low

stunted wood, which was gloomy even in the summer-time. The setting sun

was shining upon the western front of the Towers; but here all seemed

cold and desolate. The damp mists were rising from the sodden ground

beneath the tree; the frogs were croaking down by the river-side. With

her small white teeth set, and her breath coming in fitful gasps,

Olivia Marchmont hurried to the water's edge, winding in and out

between the trees, tearing her black dress amongst the brambles,

scorning all beaten paths, heedless where she trod, so long as she made

her way speedily to the spot she wanted to reach.

At last the black sluggish river and the old boat-house came in sight,

between a long vista of ugly distorted trunks and gnarled branches of

pollard oak and willow. The building was dreary and

dilapidated-looking, for the improvements commenced by Edward Arundel

five years ago had never been fully carried out; but it was

sufficiently substantial, and bore no traces of positive decay. Down by

the water's edge there was a great cavernous recess for the shelter of

the boats, and above this there was a pavilion, built of brick and

stone, containing two decent-sized chambers, with latticed windows

overlooking the river. A flight of stone steps with an iron balustrade

led up to the door of this pavilion, which was supported upon the solid

side-walls of the boat-house below.

In the stillness of the summer twilight Olivia heard the voices of

those whom she came to seek. They were standing down by the edge of the

water, upon a narrow pathway that ran along by the sedgy brink of the

river, and only a few paces from the pavilion. The door of the

boat-house was open; a long-disused wherry lay rotting upon the damp

and mossy flags. Olivia crept into the shadowy recess. The door that

faced the river had fallen from its rusty hinges, and the slimy

woodwork lay in ruins upon the shore. Sheltered by the stone archway

that had once been closed by this door, Olivia listened to the voices

beside the still water.

Mary Marchmont was standing close to the river's edge; Edward stood

beside her, leaning against the trunk of a willow that hung over the

water.

"My childish darling," the young man murmured, as if in reply to

something his companion had said, "and so you think, because you are

simple-minded and innocent, I am not to love you. It is your innocence

I love, Polly dear,--let me call you Polly, as I used five years

ago,--and I wouldn't have you otherwise for all the world. Do you know

that sometimes I am almost sorry I ever came back to Marchmont Towers?"

"Sorry you came back?" cried Mary, in a tone of alarm. "Oh, why do you

say that, Mr. Arundel?"

"Because you are heiress to eleven thousand a year, Mary, and the

Moated Grange behind us; and this dreary wood, and the river,--the

river is yours, I daresay, Miss Marchmont;--and I wish you joy of the

possession of so much sluggish water and so many square miles of swamp

and fen."

"But what then?" Mary asked wonderingly.

"What then? Do you know, Polly darling, that if I ask you to marry me

people will call me a fortune-hunter, and declare that I came to

Marchmont Towers bent upon stealing its heiress's innocent heart,

before she had learned the value of the estate that must go along with

it? God knows they'd wrong me, Polly, as cruelly as ever an honest man

was wronged; for, so long as I have money to pay my tailor and

tobacconist,--and I've more than enough for both of them,--I want

nothing further of the world's wealth. What should I do with all this

swamp and fen, Miss Marchmont--with all that horrible complication of

expired leases to be renewed, and income-taxes to be appealed against,

that rich people have to endure? If you were not rich, Polly, I----"

He stopped and laughed, striking the toe of his boot amongst the weeds,

and knocking the pebbles into the water. The woman crouching in the

shadow of the archway listened with whitened cheeks and glaring eyes;

listened as she might have listened to the sentence of her death,

drinking in every syllable, in her ravenous desire to lose no breath

that told her of her anguish.

"If I were not rich!" murmured Mary; "what if I were not rich?"

"I should tell you how dearly I love you, Polly, and ask you to be my

wife by-and-by."

The girl looked up at him for a few moments in silence, shyly at first,

and then more boldly, with a beautiful light kindling in her eyes.

"I love you dearly too, Mr. Arundel," she said at last; "and I would

rather you had my money than any one else in the world; and there was

something in papa's will that made me think--"

"There was something that made you think he would wish this, Polly,"

cried the young man, clasping the trembling little figure to his

breast. "Mr. Paulette sent me a copy of the will, Polly, when he sent

my diamond-ring; and I think there were some words in it that hinted at

such a wish. Your father said he left me this legacy, darling,--I have

his letter still,--the legacy of a helpless girl. God knows I will try

to be worthy of such a trust, Mary dearest; God knows I will be

faithful to my promise, made nine years ago."

The woman listening in the dark archway sank down upon the damp flags

at her feet, amongst the slimy rotten wood and rusty iron nails and

broken bolts and hinges. She sat there for a long time, not

unconscious, but quite motionless, her white face leaning against the

moss-grown arch, staring blankly out of the black shadows. She sat

there and listened, while the lovers talked in low tender murmurs of

the sorrowful past and of the unknown future; that beautiful untrodden

region, in which they were to go hand in hand through all the long

years of quiet happiness between the present moment and the grave. She

sat and listened till the moonlight faintly shimmered upon the water,

and the footsteps of the lovers died away upon the narrow pathway by

which they went back to the house.

Olivia Marchmont did not move until an hour after they had gone. Then

she raised herself with an effort, and walked with stiffened limbs

slowly and painfully to the house, and to her own room, where she

locked her door, and flung herself upon the ground in the darkness.

Mary came to her to ask why she did not come to the drawing-room, and

Mrs. Marchmont answered, with a hoarse voice, that she was ill, and

wished to be alone. Neither Mary, nor the old woman-servant who had

been Olivia's nurse long ago, and who had some little influence over

her, could get any other answer than this.

CHAPTER XIV.

DRIVEN AWAY.

Mary Marchmont and Edward Arundel were happy. They were happy; and how

should they guess the tortures of that desperate woman, whose benighted

soul was plunged in a black gulf of horror by reason of their innocent

love? How should these two--very children in their ignorance of all

stormy passions, all direful emotions--know that in the darkened

chamber where Olivia Marchmont lay, suffering under some vague illness,

for which the Swampington doctor was fain to prescribe quinine, in

utter unconsciousness as to the real nature of the disease which he was

called upon to cure,--how should they know that in that gloomy chamber

a wicked heart was abandoning itself to all the devils that had so long

held patient watch for this day?

Yes; the struggle was over. Olivia Marchmont flung aside the cross she

had borne in dull, mechanical obedience, rather than in Christian love

and truth. Better to have been sorrowful Magdalene, forgiven for her

love and tears, than this cold, haughty, stainless woman, who had never

been able to learn the sublime lessons which so many sinners have taken

meekly to heart. The religion which was wanting in the vital principle

of Christianity, the faith which showed itself only in dogged

obedience, failed this woman in the hour of her agony. Her pride arose;

the defiant spirit of the fallen angel asserted its gloomy grandeur.

"What have I done that I should suffer like this?" she thought. "What

am I that an empty-headed soldier should despise me, and that I should

go mad because of his indifference? Is this the recompense for my long

years of obedience? Is this the reward Heaven bestows upon me for my

life of duty!"

She remembered the histories of other women,--women who had gone their

own way and had been happy; and a darker question arose in her mind;

almost the question which Job asked in his agony.

"Is there neither truth nor justice in the dealings of God?" she

thought. "Is it useless to be obedient and submissive, patient and

untiring? Has all my life been a great mistake, which is to end in

confusion and despair?"

And then she pictured to herself the life that might have been hers if

Edward Arundel had loved her. How good she would have been! The

hardness of her iron nature would have been melted and subdued. By

force of her love and tenderness for him, she would have learned to be

loving and tender to others. Her wealth of affection for him would have

overflowed in gentleness and consideration for every creature in the

universe. The lurking bitterness which had lain hidden in her heart

ever since she had first loved Edward Arundel, and first discovered his

indifference to her; and the poisonous envy of happier women, who had

loved and were beloved,--would have been blotted away. Her whole nature

would have undergone a wondrous transfiguration, purified and exalted

by the strength of her affection. All this might have come to pass if

he had loved her,--if he had only loved her. But a pale-faced child had

come between her and this redemption; and there was nothing left for

her but despair.

Nothing but despair? Yes; perhaps something further,--revenge.

But this last idea took no tangible shape. She only knew that, in the

black darkness of the gulf into which her soul had gone down, there

was, far away somewhere, one ray of lurid light. She only knew this as

yet, and that she hated Mary Marchmont with a mad and wicked hatred. If

she could have thought meanly of Edward Arundel,--if she could have

believed him to be actuated by mercenary motives in his choice of the

orphan girl,--she might have taken some comfort from the thought of his

unworthiness, and of Mary's probable sorrow in the days to come. But

she _could_ not think this. Little as the young soldier had said in the

summer twilight beside the river, there had been that in his tones and

looks which had convinced the wretched watcher of his truth. Mary might

have been deceived by the shallowest pretender; but Olivia's eyes

devoured every glance; Olivia's greedy ears drank in every tone; and

she _knew_ that Edward Arundel loved her stepdaughter.

She knew this, and she hated Mary Marchmont. What had she done, this

girl, who had never known what it was to fight a battle with her own

rebellious heart? what had she done, that all this wealth of love and

happiness should drop into her lap unsought,--comparatively unvalued,

perhaps?

John Marchmont's widow lay in her darkened chamber thinking over these

things; no longer fighting the battle with her own heart, but utterly

abandoning herself to her desperation,--reckless, hardened, impenitent.

Edward Arundel could not very well remain at the Towers while the

reputed illness of his hostess kept her to her room. He went over to

Swampington, therefore, upon a dutiful visit to his uncle; but rode to

the Towers every day to inquire very particularly after his cousin's

progress, and to dawdle on the sunny western terrace with Mary

Marchmont.

Their innocent happiness needs little description. Edward Arundel

retained a good deal of that boyish chivalry which had made him so

eager to become the little girl's champion in the days gone by. Contact

with the world had not much sullied the freshness of the young man's

spirit. He loved his innocent, childish companion with the purest and

truest devotion; and he was proud of the recollection that in the day

of his poverty John Marchmont had chosen _him_ as the future shelterer

of this tender blossom.

"You must never grow any older or more womanly, Polly," he said

sometimes to the young mistress of Marchmont Towers. "Remember that I

always love you best when I think of you as the little girl in the

shabby pinafore, who poured out my tea for me one bleak December

morning in Oakley Street."

They talked a great deal of John Marchmont. It was such a happiness to

Mary to be able to talk unreservedly of her father to some one who had

loved and comprehended him.

"My stepmamma was very good to poor papa, you know, Edward," she said,

"and of course he was very grateful to her; but I don't think he ever

loved her quite as he loved you. You were the friend of his poverty,

Edward; he never forgot that."

Once, as they strolled side by side together upon the terrace in the

warm summer noontide, Mary Marchmont put her little hand through her

lover's arm, and looked up shyly in his face.

"Did papa say that, Edward?" she whispered; "did he really say that?"

"Did he really say what, darling?"

"That he left me to you as a legacy?"

"He did indeed, Polly," answered the young man. "I'll bring you the

letter to-morrow."

And the next day he showed Mary Marchmont the yellow sheet of

letter-paper and the faded writing, which had once been black and wet

under her dead father's hand. Mary looked through her tears at the old

familiar Oakley-street address, and the date of the very day upon which

Edward Arundel had breakfasted in the shabby lodging. Yes--there were

the words: "The legacy of a child's helplessness is the only bequest I

can leave to the only friend I have."

"And you shall never know what it is to be helpless while I am near

you, Polly darling," the soldier said, as he refolded his dead friend's

epistle. "You may defy your enemies henceforward, Mary--if you have any

enemies. O, by-the-bye, you have never heard any thing of that Paul

Marchmont, I suppose?"

"Papa's cousin--Mr Marchmont the artist?"

"Yes."

"He came to the reading of papa's will."

"Indeed! and did you see much of him?"

"Oh, no, very little. I was ill, you know," the girl added, the tears

rising to her eyes at the recollection of that bitter time,--"I was

ill, and I didn't notice any thing. I know that Mr. Marchmont talked to

me a little; but I can't remember what he said."

"And he has never been here since?"

"Never."

Edward Arundel shrugged his shoulders. This Paul Marchmont could not be

such a designing villain, after all, or surely he would have tried to

push his acquaintance with his rich cousin!

"I dare say John's suspicion of him was only one of the poor fellow's

morbid fancies," he thought. "He was always full of morbid fancies."

Mrs. Marchmont's rooms were in the western front of the house; and

through her open windows she heard the fresh young voices of the lovers

as they strolled up and down the terrace. The cavalry officer was

content to carry a watering-pot full of water, for the refreshment of

his young mistress's geraniums in the stone vases on the balustrade,

and to do other under-gardener's work for her pleasure. He talked to

her of the Indian campaign; and she asked a hundred questions about

midnight marches and solitary encampments, fainting camels, lurking

tigers in the darkness of the jungle, intercepted supplies of

provisions, stolen ammunition, and all the other details of the war.

Olivia arose at last, before the Swampington surgeon's saline draughts

and quinine mixtures had subdued the fiery light in her eyes, or cooled

the raging fever that devoured her. She arose because she could no

longer lie still in her desolation knowing that, for two hours in each

long summer's day, Edward Arundel and Mary Marchmont could be happy

together in spite of her. She came down stairs, therefore, and renewed

her watch--chaining her stepdaughter to her side, and interposing

herself for ever between the lovers.

The widow arose from her sick-bed an altered woman, as it appeared to

all who knew her. A mad excitement seemed to have taken sudden

possession of her. She flung off her mourning garments, and ordered

silks and laces, velvets and satins, from a London milliner; she

complained of the absence of society, the monotonous dulness of her

Lincolnshire life; and, to the surprise of every one, sent out cards of

invitation for a ball at the Towers in honour of Edward Arundel's

return to England. She seemed to be seized with a desire to do

something, she scarcely cared what, to disturb the even current of her

days.

During the brief interval between Mrs. Marchmont's leaving her room and

the evening appointed for the ball, Edward Arundel found no very

convenient opportunity of informing his cousin of the engagement

entered into between himself and Mary. He had no wish to hurry this

disclosure; for there was something in the orphan girl's childishness

and innocence that kept all definite ideas of an early marriage very

far away from her lover's mind. He wanted to go back to India, and win

more laurels, to lay at the feet of the mistress of Marchmont Towers.

He wanted to make a name for himself, which should cause the world to

forget that he was a younger son,--a name that the vilest tongue would

never dare to blacken with the epithet of fortune-hunter.

The young man was silent therefore, waiting for a fitting opportunity

in which to speak to Mary's stepmother. Perhaps he rather dreaded the

idea of discussing his attachment with Olivia; for she had looked at

him with cold angry eyes, and a brow as black as thunder, upon those

occasions on which she had sounded him as to his feelings for Mary.

"She wants poor Polly to marry some grandee, I dare say," he thought,

"and will do all she can to oppose my suit. But her trust will cease

with Mary's majority; and I don't want my confiding little darling to

marry me until she is old enough to choose for herself, and to choose

wisely. She will be one-and-twenty in three years; and what are three

years? I would wait as long as Jacob for my pet, and serve my fourteen

years' apprenticeship under Sir Charles Napier, and be true to her all

the time."

Olivia Marchmont hated her stepdaughter. Mary was not slow to perceive

the change in the widow's manner towards her. It had always been cold,

and sometimes severe; but it was now almost abhorrent. The girl shrank

appalled from the sinister light in her stepmother's gray eyes, as they

followed her unceasingly, dogging her footsteps with a hungry and evil

gaze. The gentle girl wondered what she had done to offend her

guardian, and then, being unable to think of any possible delinquency

by which she might have incurred Mrs. Marchmont's displeasure, was fain

to attribute the change in Olivia's manner to the irritation consequent

upon her illness, and was thus more gentle and more submissive than of

old; enduring cruel looks, returning no answer to bitter speeches, but

striving to conciliate the supposed invalid by her sweetness and

obedience.

But the girl's amiability only irritated the despairing woman. Her

jealousy fed upon every charm of the rival who had supplanted her. That

fatal passion fed upon Edward Arundel's every look and tone, upon the

quiet smile which rested on Mary's face as the girl sat over her

embroidery, in meek silence, thinking of her lover. The self-tortures

which Olivia Marchmont inflicted upon herself were so horrible to bear,

that she turned, with a mad desire for relief, upon those she had the

power to torture. Day by day, and hour by hour, she contrived to

distress the gentle girl, who had so long obeyed her, now by a word,

now by a look, but always with that subtle power of aggravation which

some women possess in such an eminent degree--until Mary Marchmont's

life became a burden to her, or would have so become, but for that

inexpressible happiness, of which her tormentor could not deprive

her,--the joy she felt in her knowledge of Edward Arundel's love.

She was very careful to keep the secret of her stepmother's altered

manner from the young soldier. Olivia was his cousin, and he had said

long ago that she was to love her. Heaven knows she had tried to do so,

and had failed most miserably; but her belief in Olivia's goodness was

still unshaken. If Mrs. Marchmont was now irritable, capricious, and

even cruel, there was doubtless some good reason for the alteration in

her conduct; and it was Mary's duty to be patient. The orphan girl had

learned to suffer quietly when the great affliction of her father's

death had fallen upon her; and she suffered so quietly now, that even

her lover failed to perceive any symptoms of her distress. How could

she grieve him by telling him of her sorrows, when his very presence

brought such unutterable joy to her?

So, on the morning of the ball at Marchmont Towers,--the first

entertainment of the kind that had been given in that grim Lincolnshire

mansion since young Arthur Marchmont's untimely death,--Mary sat in her

room, with her old friend Farmer Pollard's daughter, who was now Mrs.

Jobson, the wife of the most prosperous carpenter in Kemberling. Hester

had come up to the Towers to pay a dutiful visit to her young

patroness; and upon this particular occasion Olivia had not cared to

prevent Mary and her humble friend spending half an hour together. Mrs.

Marchmont roamed from room to room upon this day, with a perpetual

restlessness. Edward Arundel was to dine at the Towers, and was to

sleep there after the ball. He was to drive his uncle over from

Swampington, as the Rector had promised to show himself for an hour or

two at his daughter's entertainment. Mary had met her stepmother

several times that morning, in the corridors and on the staircase; but

the widow had passed her in silence, with a dark face, and a shivering,

almost abhorrent gesture.

The bright July day dragged itself out at last, with hideous slowness

for the desperate woman, who could not find peace or rest in all those

splendid rooms, on all that grassy flat, dry and burning under the

blazing summer sun. She had wandered out upon the waste of barren turf,

with her head bared to the hot sky, and had loitered here and there by

the still pools, looking gloomily at the black tideless water, and

wondering what the agony of drowning was like. Not that she had any

thought of killing herself. No: the idea of death was horrible to her;

for after her death Edward and Mary would be happy. Could she ever find

rest in the grave, knowing this? Could there be any possible extinction

that would blot out her jealous fury? Surely the fire of her hate--it

was no longer love, but hate, that raged in her heart--would defy

annihilation, eternal by reason of its intensity. When the dinner-hour

came, and Edward and his uncle arrived at the Towers, Olivia

Marchmont's pale face was lit up with eyes that flamed like fire; but

she took her accustomed place very quietly, with her father opposite to

her, and Mary and Edward upon either side.

"I'm sure you're ill, Livy," the young man said; "you're as pale as

death, and your hand is dry and burning. I'm afraid you've not been

obedient to the Swampington doctor."

Mrs. Marchmont shrugged her shoulders with a short contemptuous laugh.

"I am well enough," she said. "Who cares whether I am well or ill?"

Her father looked up at her in mute surprise. The bitterness of her

tone startled and alarmed him; but Mary never lifted her eyes. It was

in such a tone as this that her stepmother had spoken constantly of

late.

But two or three hours afterwards, when the flats before the house were

silvered by the moonlight, and the long ranges of windows glittered

with the lamps within, Mrs. Marchmont emerged from her dressing-room

another creature, as it seemed.

Edward and his uncle were walking up and down the great oaken

banqueting-hall, which had been decorated and fitted up as a ballroom

for the occasion, when Olivia crossed the wide threshold of the

chamber. The young officer looked up with an involuntary expression of

surprise. In all his acquaintance with his cousin, he had never seen

her thus. The gloomy black-robed woman was transformed into a

Semiramis. She wore a voluminous dress of a deep claret-coloured

velvet, that glowed with the warm hues of rich wine in the lamplight.

Her massive hair was coiled in a knot at the back of her head, and

diamonds glittered amidst the thick bands that framed her broad white

brow. Her stern classical beauty was lit up by the unwonted splendour

of her dress, and asserted itself as obviously as if she had said, "Am

I a woman to be despised for the love of a pale-faced child?"

Mary Marchmont came into the room a few minutes after her stepmother.

Her lover ran to welcome her, and looked fondly at her simple dress of

shadowy white crape, and the pearl circlet that crowned her soft brown

hair. The pearls she wore upon this night had been given to her by her

father on her fourteenth birthday.

Olivia watched the young man as he bent over Mary Marchmont.

He wore his uniform to-night for the special gratification of his young

mistress, and he was looking down with a tender smile at her childish

admiration of the bullion ornaments upon his coat, and the decoration

he had won in India.

The widow looked from the two lovers to an antique glass upon an ebony

bureau in a niche opposite to her, which reflected her own face,--her

own face, more beautiful than she had ever seen it before, with a

feverish glow of vivid crimson lighting up her hollow cheeks.

"I might have been beautiful if he had loved me," she thought; and then

she turned to her father, and began to talk to him of his parishioners,

the old pensioners upon her bounty, whose little histories were so

hatefully familiar to her. Once more she made a feeble effort to tread

the old hackneyed pathway, which she had toiled upon with such weary

feet; but she could not,--she could not. After a few minutes she turned

abruptly from the Rector, and seated herself in a recess of the window,

from which she could see Edward and Mary.

But Mrs. Marchmont's duties as hostess soon demanded her attention. The

county families began to arrive; the sound of carriage-wheels seemed

perpetual upon the crisp gravel-drive before the western front; the

names of half the great people in Lincolnshire were shouted by the old

servants in the hall. The band in the music-gallery struck up a

quadrille, and Edward Arundel led the youthful mistress of the mansion

to her place in the dance.

To Olivia that long night seemed all glare and noise and confusion. She

did the honours of the ballroom, she received her guests, she meted out

due attention to all; for she had been accustomed from her earliest

girlhood to the stereotyped round of country society. She neglected no

duty; but she did all mechanically, scarcely knowing what she said or

did in the feverish tumult of her soul.

Yet, amidst all the bewilderment of her senses, in all the confusion of

her thoughts, two figures were always before her. Wherever Edward

Arundel and Mary Marchmont went, her eyes followed them--her fevered

imagination pursued them. Once, and once only, in the course of that

long night she spoke to her stepdaughter.

"How often do you mean to dance with Captain Arundel, Miss Marchmont?"

she said.

But before Mary could answer, her stepmother had moved away upon the

arm of a portly country squire, and the girl was left in sorrowful

wonderment as to the reason of Mrs. Marchmont's angry tone.

Edward and Mary were standing in one of the deep embayed windows of the

banqueting-hall, when the dancers began to disperse, long after supper.

The girl had been very happy that evening, in spite of her stepmother's

bitter words and disdainful glances. For almost the first time in her

life, the young mistress of Marchmont Towers had felt the contagious

influence of other people's happiness. The brilliantly-lighted

ballroom, the fluttering dresses of the dancers, the joyous music, the

low sound of suppressed laughter, the bright faces which smiled at each

other upon every side, were as new as any thing in fairyland to this

girl, whose narrow life had been overshadowed by the gloomy figure of

her stepmother, for ever interposed between her and the outer world.

The young spirit arose and shook off its fetters, fresh and radiant as

the butterfly that escapes from its chrysalis. The new light of

happiness illumined the orphan's delicate face, until Edward Arundel

began to wonder at her loveliness, as he had wondered once before that

night at the fiery splendour of his cousin Olivia.

"I had no idea that Olivia was so handsome, or you so pretty, my

darling," he said, as he stood with Mary in the embrasure of the

window. "You look like Titania, the queen of the fairies, Polly, with

your cloudy draperies and crown of pearls."

The window was open, and Captain Arundel looked wistfully at the broad

flagged quadrangle beautified by the light of the full summer moon. He

glanced back into the room; it was nearly empty now; and Mrs. Marchmont

was standing near the principal doorway, bidding the last of her guests

goodnight.

"Come into the quadrangle, Polly," he said, "and take a turn with me

under the colonnade. It was a cloister once, I dare say, in the good

old days before Harry the Eighth was king; and cowled monks have paced

up and down under its shadow, muttering mechanical aves and

paternosters, as the beads of their rosaries dropped slowly through

their shrivelled old fingers. Come out into the quadrangle, Polly; all

the people we know or care about are gone; and we'll go out and walk in

the moonlight as true lovers ought."

The soldier led his young companion across the threshold of the window,

and out into a cloister-like colonnade that ran along one side of the

house. The shadows of the Gothic pillars were black upon the moonlit

flags of the quadrangle, which was as light now as in the day; but a

pleasant obscurity reigned in the sheltered colonnade.

"I think this little bit of pre-Lutheran masonry is the best of all

your possessions, Polly," the young man said, laughing. "By-and-by,

when I come home from India a general,--as I mean to do, Miss

Marchmont, before I ask you to become Mrs. Arundel,--I shall stroll up

and down here in the still summer evenings, smoking my cheroots. You

will let me smoke out of doors, won't you, Polly? But suppose I should

leave some of my limbs on the banks of the Sutlej, and come limping

home to you with a wooden leg, would you have me then, Mary; or would

you dismiss me with ignominy from your sweet presence, and shut the

doors of your stony mansion upon myself and my calamities? I'm afraid,

from your admiration of my gold epaulettes and silk sash, that glory in

the abstract would have very little attraction for you."

Mary Marchmont looked up at her lover with widely-opened and wondering

eyes, and the clasp of her hand tightened a little upon his arm.

"There is nothing that could ever happen to you that would make me love

you less _now_," she said naively. "I dare say at first I liked you a

little because you were handsome, and different to every one else I had

ever seen. You were so very handsome, you know," she added

apologetically; "but it was not because of that _only_ that I loved

you. I loved you because papa told me you were good and generous, and

his true friend when he was in cruel need of a friend. Yes; you were

his friend at school, when your cousin, Martin Mostyn, and the other

pupils sneered at him and ridiculed him. How can I ever forget that,

Edward? How can I ever love you enough to repay you for that?" In the

enthusiasm of her innocent devotion, she lifted her pure young brow,

and the soldier bent down and kissed that white throne of all virginal

thoughts, as the lovers stood side by side; half in the moonlight, half

in the shadow.

Olivia Marchmont came into the embrasure of the open window, and took

her place there to watch them.

She came again to the torture. From the remotest end of the long

banqueting-room she had seen the two figures glide out into the

moonlight. She had seen them, and had gone on with her courteous

speeches, and had repeated her formula of hospitality, with the fire in

her heart devouring and consuming her. She came again, to watch and to

listen, and to endure her self-imposed agonies--as mad and foolish in

her fatal passion as some besotted wretch who should come willingly to

the wheel upon which his limbs had been well-nigh broken, and

supplicate for a renewal of the torture. She stood rigid and motionless

in the shadow of the arched window, hiding herself, as she had hidden

in the dark cavernous recess by the river; she stood and listened to

all the childish babble of the lovers as they loitered up and down the

vaulted cloister. How she despised them, in the haughty superiority of

an intellect which might have planned a revolution, or saved a sinking

state! What bitter scorn curled her lip, as their foolish talk fell

upon her ear! They talked like Florizel and Perdita, like Romeo and

Juliet, like Paul and Virginia; and they talked a great deal of

nonsense, no doubt--soft harmonious foolishness, with little more

meaning in it than there is in the cooing of doves, but tender and

musical, and more than beautiful, to each other's ears. A tigress,

famished and desolate, and but lately robbed of her whelps, would not

be likely to listen very patiently to the communing of a pair of

prosperous ringdoves. Olivia Marchmont listened with her brain on fire,

and the spirit of a murderess raging in her breast. What was she that

she should be patient? All the world was lost to her. She was thirty

years of age, and she had never yet won the love of any human being.

She was thirty years of age, and all the sublime world of affection was

a dismal blank for her. From the outer darkness in which she stood, she

looked with wild and ignorant yearning into that bright region which

her accursed foot had never trodden, and saw Mary Marchmont wandering

hand-in-hand with the only man _she_ could have loved--the only

creature who had ever had the power to awake the instinct of womanhood

in her soul.

She stood and waited until the clock in the quadrangle struck the first

quarter after three: the moon was fading out, and the colder light of

early morning glimmered in the eastern sky.

"I mustn't keep you out here any longer, Polly," Captain Arundel said,

pausing near the window. "It's getting cold, my dear, and it's high

time the mistress of Marchmont should retire to her stony bower.

Good-night, and God bless you, my darling! I'll stop in the quadrangle

and smoke a cheroot before I go to my room. Your stepmamma will be

wondering what has become of you, Mary, and we shall have a lecture

upon the proprieties to-morrow; so, once more, good-night."

He kissed the fair young brow under the coronal of pearls, stopped to

watch Mary while she crossed the threshold of the open window, and then

strolled away into the flagged court, with his cigar-case in his hand.

Olivia Marchmont stood a few paces from the window when her

stepdaughter entered the room, and Mary paused involuntarily, terrified

by the cruel aspect of the face that frowned upon her: terrified by

something that she had never seen before,--the horrible darkness that

overshadows the souls of the lost.

"Mamma!" the girl cried, clasping her hands in sudden affright--"mamma!

why do you look at me like that? Why have you been so changed to me

lately? I cannot tell you how unhappy I have been. Mamma, mamma! what

have I done to offend you?"

Olivia Marchmont grasped the trembling hands uplifted entreatingly to

her, and held them in her own,--held them as if in a vice. She stood

thus, with her stepdaughter pinioned in her grasp, and her eyes fixed

upon the girl's face. Two streams of lurid light seemed to emanate from

those dilated gray eyes; two spots of crimson blazed in the widow's

hollow cheeks.

"_What_ have you done?" she cried. "Do you think I have toiled for

nothing to do the duty which I promised my dead husband to perform for

your sake? Has all my care of you been so little, that I am to stand by

now and be silent, when I see what you are? Do you think that I am

blind, or deaf, or besotted; that you defy me and outrage me, day by

day, and hour by hour, by your conduct?"

"Mamma, mamma! what do you mean?"

"Heaven knows how rigidly you have been educated; how carefully you

have been secluded from all society, and sheltered from every

influence, lest harm or danger should come to you. I have done my duty,

and I wash my hands of you. The debasing taint of your mother's low

breeding reveals itself in your every action. You run after my cousin

Edward Arundel, and advertise your admiration of him, to himself, and

every creature who knows you. You fling yourself into his arms, and

offer him yourself and your fortune: and in your low cunning you try to

keep the secret from me, your protectress and guardian, appointed by

the dead father whom you pretend to have loved so dearly."

Olivia Marchmont still held her stepdaughter's wrists in her iron

grasp. The girl stared wildly at her with her trembling lips apart. She

began to think that the widow had gone mad.

"I blush for you--I am ashamed of you!" cried Olivia. It seemed as if

the torrent of her words burst forth almost in spite of herself. "There

is not a village girl in Kemberling, there is not a scullerymaid in

this house, who would have behaved as you have done. I have watched

you, Mary Marchmont, remember, and I know all. I know your wanderings

down by the river-side. I heard you--yes, by the Heaven above me!--I

heard you offer yourself to my cousin."

Mary drew herself up with an indignant gesture, and over the whiteness

of her face there swept a sudden glow of vivid crimson that faded as

quickly as it came. Her submissive nature revolted against her

stepmother's horrible tyranny. The dignity of innocence arose and

asserted itself against Olivia's shameful upbraiding.

"If I offered myself to Edward Arundel, mamma," she said, "it was

because we love each other very truly, and because I think and believe

papa wished me to marry his old friend."

"Because _we_ love each other very truly!" Olivia echoed in a tone of

unmitigated scorn. "You can answer for Captain Arundel's heart, I

suppose, then, as well as for your own? You must have a tolerably good

opinion of yourself, Miss Marchmont, to be able to venture so much.

Bah!" she cried suddenly, with a disdainful gesture of her head; "do

you think your pitiful face has won Edward Arundel? Do you think he has

not had women fifty times your superior, in every quality of mind and

body, at his feet out yonder in India? Are you idiotic and besotted

enough to believe that it is anything but your fortune this man cares

for? Do you know the vile things people will do, the lies they will

tell, the base comedies of guilt and falsehood they will act, for the

love of eleven thousand a year? And you think that he loves you! Child,

dupe, fool! are you weak enough to be deluded by a fortune-hunter's

pretty pastoral flatteries? Are you weak enough to be duped by a man of

the world, worn out and jaded, no doubt, as to the world's

pleasures--in debt perhaps, and in pressing need of money, who comes

here to try and redeem his fortunes by a marriage with a semi-imbecile

heiress?"

Olivia Marchmont released her hold of the shrinking girl, who seemed to

have become transfixed to the spot upon which she stood, a pale statue

of horror and despair.

The iron will of the strong and resolute woman rode roughshod over the

simple confidence of the ignorant girl. Until this moment, Mary

Marchmont had believed in Edward Arundel as implicitly as she had

trusted in her dead father. But now, for the first time, a dreadful

region of doubt opened before her; the foundations of her world reeled

beneath her feet. Edward Arundel a fortune-hunter! This woman, whom she

had obeyed for five weary years, and who had acquired that ascendancy

over her which a determined and vigorous nature must always exercise

over a morbidly sensitive disposition, told her that she had been

deluded. This woman laughed aloud in bitter scorn of her credulity.

This woman, who could have no possible motive for torturing her, and

who was known to be scrupulously conscientious in all her dealings,

told her, as plainly as the most cruel words could tell a cruel truth,

that her own charms could not have won Edward Arundel's affection.

All the beautiful day-dreams of her life melted away from her. She had

never questioned herself as to her worthiness of her lover's devotion.

She had accepted it as she accepted the sunshine and the starlight--as

something beautiful and incomprehensible, that came to her by the

beneficence of God, and not through any merits of her own. But as the

fabric of her happiness dwindled away, the fatal spell exercised over

the girl's weak nature by Olivia's violent words evoked a hundred

doubts. How should he love her? why should he love her in preference to

every other woman in the world? Set any woman to ask herself this

question, and you fill her mind with a thousand suspicions, a thousand

jealous doubts of her lover, though he were the truest and noblest in

the universe.

Olivia Marchmont stood a few paces from her stepdaughter, watching her

while the black shadow of doubt blotted every joy from her heart, and

utter despair crept slowly into her innocent breast. The widow expected

that the girl's self-esteem would assert itself--that she would

contradict and defy the traducer of her lover's truth; but it was not

so. When Mary spoke again, her voice was low and subdued, her manner as

submissive as it had been two or three years before, when she had stood

before her stepmother, waiting to repeat some difficult lesson.

"I dare say you are right, mamma," she said in a low dreamy tone,

looking not at her stepmother, but straight before her into vacancy, as

if her tearless eyes ware transfixed by the vision of all her shattered

hopes, filling with wreck and ruin the desolate foreground of a blank

future. "I dare say you are right, mamma; it was very foolish of me to

think that Edward--that Captain Arundel could care for me, for--for--my

own sake; but if--if he wants my fortune, I should wish him to have it.

The money will never be any good to me, you know, mamma; and he was so

kind to papa in his poverty--so kind! I will never, never believe

anything against him;--but I couldn't expect him to love me. I

shouldn't have offered to be his wife; I ought only to have offered him

my fortune."

She heard her lover's footstep in the quadrangle without, in the

stillness of the summer morning, and shivered at the sound. It was less

than a quarter of an hour since she had been walking with him up and

down that cloistered way, in which his footsteps were echoing with a

hollow sound; and now----. Even in the confusion of her anguish, Mary

Marchmont could not help wondering, as she thought in how short a time

the happiness of a future might be swept away into chaos.

"Good-night, mamma," she said presently, with an accent of weariness.

She did not look at her stepmother (who had turned away from her now,

and had walked towards the open window), but stole quietly from the

room, crossed the hall, and went up the broad staircase to her own

lonely chamber. Heiress though she was, she had no special attendant of

her own: she had the privilege of summoning Olivia's maid whenever she

had need of assistance; but she retained the simple habits of her early

life, and very rarely troubled Mrs. Marchmont's grim and elderly

Abigail.

Olivia stood looking out into the stony quadrangle. It was broad

daylight now; the cocks were crowing in the distance, and a skylark

singing somewhere in the blue heaven, high up above Marchmont Towers.

The faded garlands in the banqueting-room looked wan in the morning

sunshine; the lamps were burning still, for the servants waited until

Mrs. Marchmont should have retired, before they entered the room.

Edward Arundel was walking up and down the cloister, smoking his second

cigar.

He stopped presently, seeing his cousin at the window.

"What, Livy!" he cried, "not gone to bed yet?"

"No; I am going directly."

"Mary has gone, I hope?"

"Yes; she has gone. Good-night."

"Good _morning_, my dear Mrs. Marchmont," the young man answered,

laughing. "If the partridges were in, I should be going out shooting,

this lovely morning, instead of crawling ignominiously to bed, like a

worn-out reveller who has drunk too much sparkling hock. I like the

still best, by-the-bye,--the Johannisberger, that poor John's

predecessor imported from the Rhine. But I suppose there is no help for

it, and I must go to bed in the face of all that eastern glory. I

should be mounting for a gallop on the race-course, if I were in

Calcutta. But I'll go to bed, Mrs Marchmont, and humbly await your

breakfast-hour. They're stacking the new hay in the meadows beyond the

park. Don't you smell it?"

Olivia shrugged her shoulders with an impatient frown. Good heavens!

how frivolous and senseless this man's talk seemed to her! She was

plunging her soul into an abyss of sin and ruin for his sake; and she

hated him, and rebelled against him, because he was so little worthy of

the sacrifice.

"Good morning," she said abruptly; "I'm tired to death."

She moved away, and left him.

Five minutes afterwards, he went up the great oak-staircase after her,

whistling a serenade from _Fra Diavolo_ as he went. He was one of those

people to whom life seems all holiday. Younger son though he was, he

had never known any of the pitfalls of debt and difficulty into which

the junior members of rich families are so apt to plunge headlong in

early youth, and from which they emerge enfeebled and crippled, to

endure an after-life embittered by all the shabby miseries which wait

upon aristocratic pauperism. Brave, honourable, and simple-minded,

Edward Arundel had fought the battle of life like a good soldier, and

had carried a stainless shield when the fight was thickest, and victory

hard to win. His sunshiny nature won him friends, and his better

qualities kept them. Young men trusted and respected him; and old men,

gray in the service of their country, spoke well of him. His handsome

face was a pleasant decoration at any festival; his kindly voice and

hearty laugh at a dinner-table were as good as music in the gallery at

the end of the banqueting-chamber.

He had that freshness of spirit which is the peculiar gift of some

natures; and he had as yet never known sorrow, except, indeed, such

tender and compassionate sympathy as he had often felt for the

calamities of others.

Olivia Marchmont heard her cousin's cheery tenor voice as he passed her

chamber. "How happy he is!" she thought. "His very happiness is one

insult the more to me."

The widow paced up and down her room in the morning sunshine, thinking

of the things she had said in the banqueting-hall below, and of her

stepdaughter's white despairing face. What had she done? What was the

extent of the sin she had committed? Olivia Marchmont asked herself

these two questions. The old habit of self-examination was not quite

abandoned yet. She sinned, and then set herself to work to try and

justify her sin.

"How should he love her?" she thought. "What is there in her pale

unmeaning face that should win the love of a man who despises me?"

She stopped before a cheval-glass, and surveyed herself from head to

foot, frowning angrily at her handsome image, hating herself for her

despised beauty. Her white shoulders looked like stainless marble

against the rich ruby darkness of her velvet dress. She had snatched

the diamond ornaments from her head, and her long black hair fell about

her bosom in thick waveless tresses.

"I am handsomer than she is, and cleverer; and I love him better, ten

thousand times, than she loves him," Olivia Marchmont thought, as she

turned contemptuously from the glass. "Is it likely, then, that he

cares for anything but her fortune? Any other woman in the world would

have argued as I argued to-night. Any woman would have believed that

she did her duty in warning this besotted girl against her folly. What

do I know of Edward Arundel that should lead me to think him better or

nobler than other men? and how many men sell themselves for the love of

a woman's wealth! Perhaps good may come of my mad folly, after all; and

I may have saved this girl from a life of misery by the words I have

spoken to-night."

The devils--for ever lying in wait for this woman, whose gloomy pride

rendered her in some manner akin to themselves--may have laughed at her

as she argued thus with herself.

She lay down at last to sleep, worn out by the excitement of the long

night, and to dream horrible dreams. The servants, with the exception

of one who rose betimes to open the great house, slept long after the

unwonted festival. Edward Arundel slumbered as heavily as any member of

that wearied household; and thus it was that there was no one in the

way to see a shrinking, trembling figure creep down the

sunlit-staircase, and steal across the threshold of the wide hall door.

There was no one to see Mary Marchmont's silent flight from the gaunt

Lincolnshire mansion in which she had known so little real happiness.

There was no one to comfort the sorrow-stricken girl in her despair and

desolation of spirit. She crept away, like some escaped prisoner, in

the early morning, from the house which the law called her own.

And the hand of the woman whom John Marchmont had chosen to be his

daughter's friend and counsellor was the hand which drove that daughter

from the shelter of her home. The voice of her whom the weak father had

trusted in, fearful to confide his child into the hand of God, but

blindly confident in his own judgment--was the voice which had uttered

the lying words, whose every syllable had been as a separate dagger

thrust in the orphan girl's lacerated heart. It was her father,--her

father, who had placed this woman over her, and had entailed upon her

the awful agony that drove her out into an unknown world, careless

whither she went in her despair.

VOLUME II.

CHAPTER I.

MARY'S LETTER.

It was past twelve o'clock when Edward Arundel strolled into the

dining-room. The windows were open, and the scent of the mignionette

upon the terrace was blown in upon the warm summer breeze.

Mrs. Marchmont was sitting at one end of the long table, reading a

newspaper. She looked up as Edward entered the room. She was pale, but

not much paler than usual. The feverish light had faded out of her

eyes, and they looked dim and heavy.

"Good morning, Livy," the young man said. "Mary is not up yet, I

suppose?"

"I believe not."

"Poor little girl! A long rest will do her good after her first ball.

How pretty and fairy-like she looked in her white gauze dress, and with

that circlet of pearls round her hair! Your taste, I suppose, Olivia?

She looked like a snow-drop among all the other gaudy flowers,--the

roses and tiger-lilies, and peonies and dahlias. That eldest Miss

Hickman is handsome, but she's so terribly conscious of her

attractions. That little girl from Swampington with the black ringlets

is rather pretty; and Laura Filmer is a jolly, dashing girl; she looks

you full in the face, and talks to you about hunting with as much gusto

as an old whipper-in. I don't think much of Major Hawley's three tall

sandy-haired daughters; but Fred Hawley's a capital fellow: it's a pity

he's a civilian. In short, my dear Olivia, take it altogether, I think

your ball was a success, and I hope you'll give us another in the

hunting-season."

Mrs. Marchmont did not condescend to reply to her cousin's meaningless

rattle. She sighed wearily, and began to fill the tea-pot from the

old-fashioned silver urn. Edward loitered in one of the windows,

whistling to a peacock that was stalking solemnly backwards and

forwards upon the stone balustrade.

"I should like to drive you and Mary down to the seashore, Livy, after

breakfast. Will you go?"

Mrs. Marchmont shook her head.

"I am a great deal too tired to think of going out to-day," she said

ungraciously.

"And I never felt fresher in my life," the young man responded,

laughing; "last night's festivities seem to have revivified me. I wish

Mary would come down," he added, with a yawn; "I could give her another

lesson in billiards, at any rate. Poor little girl, I am afraid she'll

never make a cannon."

Captain Arundel sat down to his breakfast, and drank the cup of tea

poured out for him by Olivia. Had she been a sinful woman of another

type, she would have put arsenic into the cup perhaps, and so have made

an end of the young officer and of her own folly. As it was, she only

sat by, with her own untasted breakfast before her, and watched him

while he ate a plateful of raised pie, and drank his cup of tea, with

the healthy appetite which generally accompanies youth and a good

conscience. He sprang up from the table directly he had finished his

meal, and cried out impatiently, "What can make Mary so lazy this

morning? she is usually such an early riser."

Mrs. Marchmont rose as her cousin said this, and a vague feeling of

uneasiness took possession of her mind. She remembered the white face

which had blanched beneath the angry glare of her eyes, the blank look

of despair that had come over Mary's countenance a few hours before.

"I will go and call her myself," she said. "N--no; I'll send Barbara."

She did not wait to ring the bell, but went into the hall, and called

sharply, "Barbara! Barbara!"

A woman came out of a passage leading to the housekeeper's room, in

answer to Mrs. Marchmont's call; a woman of about fifty years of age,

dressed in gray stuff, and with a grave inscrutable face, a wooden

countenance that gave no token of its owner's character. Barbara

Simmons might have been the best or the worst of women, a Mrs. Fry or a

Mrs. Brownrigg, for any evidence her face afforded against either

hypothesis.

"I want you to go up-stairs, Barbara, and call Miss Marchmont," Olivia

said. "Captain Arundel and I have finished breakfast."

The woman obeyed, and Mrs. Marchmont returned to the dining-room, where

Edward was trying to amuse himself with the "Times" of the previous

day.

Ten minutes afterwards Barbara Simmons came into the room carrying a

letter on a silver waiter. Had the document been a death-warrant, or a

telegraphic announcement of the landing of the French at Dover, the

well-trained servant would have placed it upon a salver before

presenting it to her mistress.

"Miss Marchmont is not in her room, ma'am," she said; "the bed has not

been slept on; and I found this letter, addressed to Captain Arundel,

upon the table."

Olivia's face grew livid; a horrible dread rushed into her mind. Edward

snatched the letter which the servant held towards him.

"Mary not in her room! What, in Heaven's name, can it mean?" he cried.

He tore open the letter. The writing was not easily decipherable for

the tears which the orphan girl had shed over it.

"MY OWN DEAR EDWARD,--I have loved you so dearly and so foolishly, and

you have been so kind to me, that I have quite forgotten how unworthy I

am of your affection. But I am forgetful no longer. Something has

happened which has opened my eyes to my own folly,--I know now that you

did not love me; that I had no claim to your love; no charms or

attractions such as so many other women possess, and for which you

might have loved me. I know this now, dear Edward, and that all my

happiness has been a foolish dream; but do not think that I blame any

one but myself for what has happened. Take my fortune: long ago, when I

was a little girl, I asked my father to let me share it with you. I ask

you now to take it all, dear friend; and I go away for ever from a

house in which I have learnt how little happiness riches can give. Do

not be unhappy about me. I shall pray for you always,--always

remembering your goodness to my dead father; always looking back to the

day upon which you came to see us in our poor lodging. I am very

ignorant of all worldly business, but I hope the law will let me give

you Marchmont Towers, and all my fortune, whatever it may be. Let Mr.

Paulette see this latter part of my letter, and let him fully

understand that I abandon all my rights to you from this day. Good-bye,

dear friend; think of me sometimes, but never think of me sorrowfully.

"MARY MARCHMONT."

This was all. This was the letter which the heart-broken girl had

written to her lover. It was in no manner different from the letter she

might have written to him nine years before in Oakley Street. It was as

childish in its ignorance and inexperience; as womanly in its tender

self-abnegation.

Edward Arundel stared at the simple lines like a man in a dream,

doubtful of his own identity, doubtful of the reality of the world

about him, in his hopeless wonderment. He read the letter line by line

again and again, first in dull stupefaction, and muttering the words

mechanically as he read them, then with the full light of their meaning

dawning gradually upon him.

Her fortune! He had never loved her! She had discovered her own folly!

What did it all mean? What was the clue to the mystery of this letter,

which had stunned and bewildered him, until the very power of

reflection seemed lost? The dawning of that day had seen their parting,

and the innocent face had been lifted to his, beaming with love and

trust. And now--? The letter dropped from his hand, and fluttered

slowly to the ground. Olivia Marchmont stooped to pick it up. Her

movement aroused the young man from his stupor, and in that moment he

caught the sight of his cousin's livid face.

He started as if a thunderbolt had burst at his feet. An idea, sudden

as some inspired revelation, rushed into his mind.

"Read that letter, Olivia Marchmont!" he said.

The woman obeyed. Slowly and deliberately she read the childish epistle

which Mary had written to her lover. In every line, in every word, the

widow saw the effect of her own deadly work; she saw how deeply the

poison, dropped from her own envenomed tongue, had sunk into the

innocent heart of the girl.

Edward Arundel watched her with flaming eyes. His tall soldierly frame

trembled in the intensity of his passion. He followed his cousin's eyes

along the lines in Mary Marchmont's letter, waiting till she should

come to the end. Then the tumultuous storm of indignation burst forth,

until Olivia cowered beneath the lightning of her cousin's glance.

Was this the man she had called frivolous? Was this the boyish

red-coated dandy she had despised? Was this the curled and perfumed

representative of swelldom, whose talk never soared to higher flights

than the description of a day's snipe-shooting, or a run with the

Burleigh fox-hounds? The wicked woman's eyelids drooped over her

averted eyes; she turned away, shrinking from this fearless accuser.

"This mischief is some of _your_ work, Olivia Marchmont!" Edward

Arundel cried. "It is you who have slandered and traduced me to my dead

friend's daughter! Who else would dare accuse a Dangerfield Arundel of

baseness? who else would be vile enough to call my father's son a liar

and a traitor? It is you who have whispered shameful insinuations into

this poor child's innocent ear! I scarcely need the confirmation of

your ghastly face to tell me this. It is you who have driven Mary

Marchmont from the home in which you should have sheltered and

protected her! You envied her, I suppose,--envied her the thousands

which might have ministered to your wicked pride and ambition;--the

pride which has always held you aloof from those who might have loved

you; the ambition that has made you a soured and discontented woman,

whose gloomy face repels all natural affection. You envied the gentle

girl whom your dead husband committed to your care, and who should have

been most sacred to you. You envied her, and seized the first occasion

upon which you might stab her to the very core of her tender heart.

What other motive could you have had for doing this deadly wrong? None,

so help me Heaven!"

No other motive! Olivia Marchmont dropped down in a heap on the ground

near her cousin's feet; not kneeling, but grovelling upon the carpeted

floor, writhing convulsively, with her hands twisted one in the other,

and her head falling forward on her breast. She uttered no syllable of

self-justification or denial. The pitiless words rained down upon her

provoked no reply. But in the depths of her heart sounded the echo of

Edward Arundel's words: "The pride which has always held you aloof from

those who might have loved you; . . . a discontented woman, whose

gloomy face repels all natural affection."

"O God!" she thought, "he might have loved me, then! He _might_ have

loved me, if I could have locked my anguish in my own heart, and smiled

at him and flattered him."

And then an icy indifference took possession of her. What did it matter

that Edward Arundel repudiated and hated her? He had never loved her.

His careless friendliness had made as wide a gulf between them as his

bitterest hate could ever make. Perhaps, indeed, his new-born hate

would be nearer to love than his indifference had been, for at least he

would think of her now, if he thought ever so bitterly.

"Listen to me, Olivia Marchmont," the young man said, while the woman

still crouched upon the ground near his feet, self-confessed in the

abandonment of her despair. "Wherever this girl may have gone, driven

hence by your wickedness, I will follow her. My answer to the lie you

have insinuated against me shall be my immediate marriage with my old

friend's orphan child. _He_ knew me well enough to know how far I was

above the baseness of a fortune-hunter, and he wished that I should be

his daughter's husband. I should be a coward and a fool were I to be

for one moment influenced by such a slander as that which you have

whispered in Mary Marchmont's ear. It is not the individual only whom

you traduce. You slander the cloth I wear, the family to which I

belong; and my best justification will be the contempt in which I hold

your infamous insinuations. When you hear that I have squandered Mary

Marchmont's fortune, or cheated the children I pray God she may live to

bear me, it will be time enough for you to tell the world that your

kinsman Edward Dangerfield Arundel is a swindler and a traitor."

He strode out into the hall, leaving his cousin on the ground; and she

heard his voice outside the dining-room door making inquiries of the

servants.

They could tell him nothing of Mary's flight. Her bed had not been

slept in; nobody had seen her leave the house; it was most likely,

therefore, that she had stolen away very early, before the servants

were astir.

Where had she gone? Edward Arundel's heart beat wildly as he asked

himself that question. He remembered how often he had heard of women,

as young and innocent as Mary Marchmont, who had rushed to destroy

themselves in a tumult of agony and despair. How easily this poor

child, who believed that her dream of happiness was for ever broken,

might have crept down through the gloomy wood to the edge of the

sluggish river, to drop into the weedy stream, and hide her sorrow

under the quiet water. He could fancy her, a new Ophelia, pale and pure

as the Danish prince's slighted love, floating past the weird branches

of the willows, borne up for a while by the current, to sink in silence

amongst the shadows farther down the stream.

He thought of these things in one moment, and in the next dismissed the

thought. Mary's letter breathed the spirit of gentle resignation rather

than of wild despair. "I shall always pray for you; I shall always

remember you," she had written. Her lover remembered how much sorrow

the orphan girl had endured in her brief life. He looked back to her

childish days of poverty and self-denial; her early loss of her mother;

her grief at her father's second marriage; the shock of that beloved

father's death. Her sorrows had followed each other in gloomy

succession, with only narrow intervals of peace between them. She was

accustomed, therefore, to grief. It is the soul untutored by

affliction, the rebellious heart that has never known calamity, which

becomes mad and desperate, and breaks under the first blow. Mary

Marchmont had learned the habit of endurance in the hard school of

sorrow.

Edward Arundel walked out upon the terrace, and re-read the missing

girl's letter. He was calmer now, and able to face the situation with

all its difficulties and perplexities. He was losing time perhaps in

stopping to deliberate; but it was no use to rush off in reckless

haste, undetermined in which direction he should seek for the lost

mistress of Marchmont Towers. One of the grooms was busy in the stables

saddling Captain Arundel's horse, and in the mean time the young man

went out alone upon the sunny terrace to deliberate upon Mary's letter.

Complete resignation was expressed in every line of that childish

epistle. The heiress spoke most decisively as to her abandonment of her

fortune and her home. It was clear, then, that she meant to leave

Lincolnshire; for she would know that immediate steps would be taken to

discover her hiding-place, and bring her back to Marchmont Towers.

Where was she likely to go in her inexperience of the outer world?

where but to those humble relations of her dead mother's, of whom her

father had spoken in his letter to Edward Arundel, and with whom the

young man knew she had kept up an occasional correspondence, sending

them many little gifts out of her pocket-money. These people were small

tenant-farmers, at a place called Marlingford, in Berkshire. Edward

knew their name and the name of the farm.

"I'll make inquiries at the Kemberling station to begin with," he

thought. "There's a through train from the north that stops at

Kemberling at a little before six. My poor darling may have easily

caught that, if she left the house at five."

Captain Arundel went back into the hall, and summoned Barbara Simmons.

The woman replied with rather a sulky air to his numerous questions;

but she told him that Miss Marchmont had left her ball-dress upon the

bed, and had put on a gray cashmere dress trimmed with black ribbon,

which she had worn as half-mourning for her father; a black straw

bonnet, with a crape veil, and a silk mantle trimmed with crape. She

had taken with her a small carpet-bag, some linen,--for the

linen-drawer of her wardrobe was open, and the things scattered

confusedly about,--and the little morocco case in which she kept her

pearl ornaments, and the diamond ring left her by her father.

"Had she any money?" Edward asked.

"Yes, sir; she was never without money. She spent a good deal amongst

the poor people she visited with my mistress; but I dare say she may

have had between ten and twenty pounds in her purse."

"She will go to Berkshire," Edward Arundel thought: "the idea of going

to her humble friends would be the first to present itself to her mind.

She will go to her dead mother's sister, and give her all her jewels,

and ask for shelter in the quiet farmhouse. She will act like one of

the heroines in the old-fashioned novels she used to read in Oakley

Street, the simple-minded damsels of those innocent story-books, who

think nothing of resigning a castle and a coronet, and going out into

the world to work for their daily bread in a white satin gown, and with

a string of pearls to bind their dishevelled locks."

Captain Arundel's horse was brought round to the terrace-steps, as he

stood with Mary's letter in his hand, waiting to hurry away to the

rescue of his sorrowful love.

"Tell Mrs. Marchmont that I shall not return to the Towers till I bring

her stepdaughter with me," he said to the groom; and then, without

stopping to utter another word, he shook the rein on his horse's neck,

and galloped away along the gravelled drive leading to the great iron

gates of Marchmont Towers.

Olivia heard his message, which had been spoken in a clear loud voice,

like some knightly defiance, sounding trumpet-like at a castle-gate.

She stood in one of the windows of the dining-room, hidden by the faded

velvet curtain, and watched her cousin ride away, brave and handsome as

any knight-errant of the chivalrous past, and as true as Bayard

himself.