CHAPTER XVII. The Musician at Home 7

-- XVIII. Young Purcell 26

-- XIX. Business, or Love? 44

-- XX. An unconscious Trial 60

-- XXI. Searchings of Heart 77

-- XXII. A Chance for Law 97

-- XXIII. Good Advice 115

-- XXIV. A Crisis 134

-- XXV. What Followed 150

-- XXVI. The Fool’s Paradise 167

-- XXVII. A Terrible Interruption 184

-- XXVIII. The Captain’s Wife 202

-- XXIX. The Heavings of the Earthquake 223

-- XXX. Lottie’s Fate 244

-- XXXI. What other People thought 261

-- XXXII. What Rollo had to Marry on 277

WITHIN THE PRECINCTS.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE MUSICIAN AT HOME.

The Signor’s house was one of those which, when general peacefulness had

made the battlements round St. Michael’s unnecessary, had grown within

the outer wall. It was more like a growth than a building. Windows which

looked, as we have said, as if cut in the side of a precipice, gave

light to the small panelled chambers which were connected by bits of

quaint passages, here and there by a little flight of stairs, with tiny

vestibules and landing-places, wasting the little space there was. Room

after room had no doubt been added as necessity arose, and each new room

had to be connected somehow with the others. The house occupied more

space than a comfortable ugly modern house with tolerably sized rooms

would have done, and when the Signor came into possession it had been a

miracle of picturesque awkwardness, not a room in it capable of holding

more than three or four people at a time, yet as many rooms as would

have lodged a dozen--the least possible use for the greatest possible

expenditure of space. The Signor, however, had built on the inner side a

dining-room in red brick, which made existence possible, though it

failed in the point of beauty. To tell the truth, the musician’s

dining-room was an eyesore to all the antiquaries and all the critics.

Nobody knew by what neglect of the architect, by what partiality of the

Board of Works, it had been permitted to be built. It was of no style at

all, neither Gothic, like the original building, nor Queen Anne, like

the fashion. He had failed in his duty in every respect. It was a square

box with a large window filling up one side. It was lighted with gas. It

had red curtains in bold and uncompromising rep, and a large mahogany

sideboard of the worst period. How he had been allowed to build this

monstrosity nobody knew. It had been made the subject of a painful

discussion in the Chapter itself, where Canon Skeffington (the Honble.

and Revd.) complained so bitterly of the injury done to his best

principles and highest feelings, that the Dean was irritated, and took

up the cudgels on his side on behalf of his favourite musician. “He has

a right, I suppose, to make himself comfortable like the rest of us,”

the head of the community said. “No right to make my life a burden to

me,” said the Honourable Canon; and, he added, almost weeping, “I cannot

look out of my window without seeing the thing. You talk at your ease,

you others----” But what was to be done? The Chapter could not take so

bold a step as to invade the rights of private property, tear down the

Signor’s red curtains, burn his sideboard, destroy his walls. He had to

be left to the enjoyment of his villainous erection. The Signor laughed

in his sleeve, but in public was remorseful, bemoaning his own ignorance

of art, and declaring that if he could afford it, rather than give pain

to Canon Skeffington--but then he could not afford it--and what was to

be done? He kept his dining-room, which was big enough to accommodate

his friends, but for himself the Signor had better taste than he

professed to have. His favourite sitting-room was in the same position

and had the same view as that of his housekeeper, but its window was

between two buttresses of the wall, which held in their gigantic arms a

little square shelf of green turf, a small projection of the hill, which

above and below was covered with masonry, leaving this little ledge of

grass, like one of the hanging gardens of Scripture, hung high in the

air above the town and the landscape. The Signor’s window opened upon

this little terrace. His room within was low and dark, but in summer at

least this mattered little, for its dim light and shadowy walls made a

pleasant shelter, like a bower in a wood, from the lightness and

brightness outside. There was a heavy beam across the roof, from which

hung a little chandelier of old Venice glass, reflected in a tall old

mirror among the oak panels over the mantelpiece, and not much more

bright than they were. On one side were the carved doors of a cupboard

in the wall, which was full of old music, the Signor’s chief treasures,

and on the other was a range of low bookshelves, also filled with music

books of every size and kind. The piano stood in the corner near the

window, with the keyboard close to the light. There were a few chairs

about the room, and a writing-table piled with papers. This was all the

furniture of the dim little chamber, and it was impossible to imagine a

greater contrast than existed between it and the new building which had

so shocked Canon Skeffington. And the Signor was not in this particular

much unlike his house. A touch of sentiment, which some people were

disposed to call high-flown, mingled in him with a curious undercurrent

of cynicism, which few people suspected at all. He liked to jar upon the

Canon Skeffingtons of existence and ruffle their tempers and their

finest feelings. But in his heart he had feelings equally fine, and was

as easily _froissé_ as they. He mocked at them on the very points in

which he himself was weak, affecting an insensibility which he did not

feel, building the vile modern room with profound enjoyment of their

delicate distress, but retiring out of it himself to the shelter of this

dim romantic chamber. The combination was very like the Signor.

On this particular evening, when young Purcell went to call for lights,

the Signor was seated out on his little terrace enjoying the twilight

and a cigarette together. There were two chairs on the scrap of grass,

and a little table with an inkstand upon it, and the cup in which the

Signor had taken his black coffee after dinner. He was leaning back in

his chair puffing out the fragrant smoke from his cigarette, lazily

watching it as it floated upwards, and now and then noting down a bar or

two of music upon a piece of paper in his hand. Sometimes he took the

cigarette from his mouth and hummed a scrap of an air, keeping time with

his head and hand. There was no one who was more popular in the country

as a composer of graceful drawing-room songs than Signor Rossinetti. It

was something refined, something elegant that was expected from him,

delicate soprano melodies, fine combinations for tenors and altos. It

was very seldom that he took any trouble about the bass, but his tenor

songs were justly considered exquisite. He liked to have a pretty set of

verses on hand, and “set” them in the intervals of more serious

business. The summer evening, when he sat out after dinner upon his

scrap of terrace, was the time when he had most inspiration. His pupil

and _protégé_, young Purcell, thought there was no intellectual pleasure

higher and more elevating, than to sit out here in the shadow of the

great grey buttresses, with the cheerful distant noises of the High

Street floating upward from the foot of the wall, and to watch the

Signor composing his song. The young fellow would run in to the piano

and “try over” every line of the symphony as it came welling out from

that fount of music. He said often that, except one thing, there was no

such delight in the world. To see genius working under his very eyes,

what a privilege it was! To Purcell it seemed that his master read his

heart, and uttered his deepest sentiments for him in those compositions.

To-night his mind had been lulled out of great commotion and disturbance

by the rosy vision of love and happiness that had breathed through the

notes. It was glad, it was sad, it was full of suggestion, it wrung the

very heart of Purcell--“’Twas in the time of roses, they plucked them as

they passed.” Would that time ever come for him? He thought the Signor

had read the depths of his heart, the wistful longing which was

sometimes hope and sometimes despair, the pictures he made to himself of

one day wandering by _her_ side, one day gathering roses for her. He

murmured over and over the tune of the refrain in a kind of ecstasy as

he went to his mother’s room, his fancy excited, his head all on fire,

half with the delicious sense of being friend to such a genius, and

sharing, as it were, the very inspiration that produced such beautiful

things--and half with the pride and delight of being so deeply in love

and hanging on so exquisite an edge of anguish. The Signor himself did

not know how much those pretty compositions of his went to his pupil’s

heart; but he was flattered--as who would not be?--by this never-failing

appreciation of his work, and youthful enthusiasm. It pleased him

vaguely, just as the floating sounds from below, the voices and noises,

all softened by the warm air of the summer evening, and even by the

dimness of the twilight, pleased him. How harmonious they became as they

soared upwards, all that was harsh taken out of them, filling the

solitude with a genial sense of human fellowship! Perhaps the Signor

was, like many others, not too fond of his fellow-creatures close at

hand; but as they went and came, far down at his feet, talking, calling

to each other, shouting their wares, singing now and then, making a

sound of their steps upon the pavement, and a movement of their

breathing in the air, he was transported with the hum, and felt that he

loved them. This always gave him inspiration, this and the glimmer of

the river and of the distant villages scattered over the plain, throwing

up here and there a dim point of a spire among the trees. When Purcell

left him, he put aside the bit of music-paper on which he had been

jotting down his chords. He raised his eyes to the profound unfathomable

blue above, and swung back upon his chair. He was half giddy with the

sense of circling depths of infinity above him, though himself raised so

high. The Signor was not without a feeling that he was raised very high,

not only in locality, but in soul; yet there was a heaven above which

made his head giddy when he looked up--a heaven full of stars, from

Palestrina to Mendelssohn, all shining over him, serene, unapproachable,

not even holding out any encouragement to him, passive and splendid as

the other stars which hid themselves in that still-luminous blue. Would

any one ever look up at that sky and recall his name as also among the

ranks of the unapproachable? The Signor turned his eyes from it with a

sigh as he heard some one enter the room, and came down to earth,

letting his chair drop upon its four legs, and his mind return to the

present. He watched through the open window the advent of old Pickering

carrying the lamp. The old man put it down on the table, and lighted

some candles on the mantelpiece in front of the dim mirror, which gave

them back with a blurred, enlarged reflection. His master sat outside

and watched him pottering about the room, setting the chairs against the

wall, and vainly attempting to make everything “straight.” It was a

standing grievance to old Pick that he was not allowed to close the

window and draw the curtains as it was right to do. The Signor outside

sat and watched him with a gentle amusement. He liked to feel the

oddness and superiority of his own tastes, thrown into evidence by the

mighty anxiety of old Pick to shut the window. A smile came over his

face. To ordinary mortals, in ordinary houses, it was not necessary to

seek inspiration from the skies and the wide world of evening air. As

Pick approached the window, with his usual look of wistful anxiety to be

allowed to do what was right, and tacit disapproval of lawless habits,

the Signor stepped through, smiling. “I think you will shut me out some

night, Pick,” he said, “and then you will have my blood on your

soul--for what could I do upon the terrace? I should fall asleep and

tumble over, and be picked up in little pieces at the foot of the hill.”

“Ah! I don’t feel no fear of that, sir,” said Pickering, shaking his

head; “you’ve got too good a voice for that, sir. I don’t make no doubt

that you could hold an A sharp till you frighted the whole Abbey. And

besides I always looks out; I’ve got the habit in this house. Even the

girl, she’ll go and stand at the window, as if the view was any matter

to her; it’s a thing as carries one away. But I don’t hold with leaving

all open when the lights are lighted. Bless you, the top windows in the

street with a spyglass, or even with good eyes like what I had when I

was young, they could see in.”

“Much good it would do them,” said the Signor, sitting down before his

piano. And indeed it is quite true that as he sat close to the window,

relieved against the light of the lamp within, there were eyes at the

top windows opposite which could catch with difficulty the outline of

the Signor’s pale profile and black moustache. Some of the young ladies

in the shops would climb up occasionally and show that exciting

prospect to a friend. But it was an amusement which palled after the

first moment, and certainly did no harm to the Signor.

“Maybe not much good, sir,” said old Pick, who always would have the

last word; “but it might do harm. You never can tell what folks will

say. The less they know the more they’ll talk; and that’s true all the

world over; though I will say for the Abbey as it’s as bad or worse than

most other places.”

“Why should it be worse, Pick?”

“I don’t know, sir--unless it’s the clergy and the chevaliers. You see,

when gentlemen has little or nothing to do, they’re brought down to the

level of the women, so far as that goes--and as gentlemen always does

things more thorough than the women when they’re once started, the

consequence nat’rally is--Leastways that’s my notion of it,” said

Pick;--“the women haven’t the strength to start a real talking as does

harm. They tries hard--as hard as they knows how--but bless you, in that

as in most things, they wants a man to show ’em the way.”

“That is a new view, Pick. I thought if there was one thing in which the

ladies had the advantage of us----”

“There ain’t one thing, sir, not one. For my part, I can tell in a

minute a story as will hang together, a real crusher, one as will drive

folks distracted and ruin a family. You’ll never get that out of a

woman’s tongue. Nay, nay, they hasn’t the force for it; they’re poor

creatures at the best; they can make a person uncomfortable, but they

can’t do no more. And when I say the Abbey’s as bad or maybe worse, I

mean that the gentlemen has little to do, and they has to amuse

themselves the same as the women. That’s what I mean to say.”

The Signor gave a half attention to Pick’s long speech while he sat at

his piano. All the time he was running over his new composition with one

hand, correcting a note here and there, changing a harmony. “’Twas in

the time of roses--the time of roses,” he hummed softly under his

breath. But the smile on his lip was for Pick, and he gave him a

negligent half attention, amused by his chatter, and by the peculiar

views he held forth. He looked up at him as Pick stopped, singing with a

little flourish in the accompaniment, which meant satisfaction in having

at last got the phrase to his mind--“’Twas in the time of roses--the

time of roses----” Old Pick was not surprised by the utterance of a

sentiment so foreign to his subject. He knew his master’s ways, and he

took a certain interest in his master’s productions, such as old

servants often benevolently accord to the doings of their “family.” He

could not tell what folks saw in them--still, as the Signor’s

productions, he looked upon them with kindly toleration all the same.

“You may say, sir,” he cried, “‘the time o’ roses’--that’s just the

very thing; for, I daresay, but for that rose in his button-hole, and

the jaunty looks of him, a young girl wouldn’t have seen nothing in him.

But I don’t know neither--women is the queerest things on the face of

this whole earth. Flatter them, or make them think they’re bettering

themselves, and there’s nothing they won’t do.”

“Who is it that wears flowers in his button-hole?” said the Signor. He

wore them himself, and he was curious and slightly excited, wondering if

any gossip could by any chance have got up about himself. The idea of

such a thing kindled him into interest; his right hand dropped off from

the piano, though with the other hand he kept softly sounding notes in

the bass, and he turned towards his old servant with a look of animation

altogether new. What interest is there like that with which one

anticipates hearing something about oneself?

But at this moment Purcell’s steps were heard coming quickly along the

passage, and he came in with his head erect, and his eyes gleaming, and

pushed old Pick out of his way. “That will do, Pick,” he said, with a

glimmer of impatience, “that will do! I will set things right for the

master, myself.”

“What is the matter, boy?”

“Matter or no matter, if you think I’ll leave it to the first that comes

to look after my master--” said old Pick, standing his ground. He would

not yield; he was very friendly in general to Mr. John, and ready to do

what he ordered, but there are limits to everything. He stood his ground

steadily, arranging and re-arranging the papers on the table, while

young Purcell went forward to the Signor. The young fellow put himself

behind the musician, between him and the window, and stooped to whisper

in his ear. His glowing eyes, his eager aspect, made a great impression

on the Signor, who was very impressionable. He was possessed by some new

thought. “Master,” he said, breathless, “I have a hundred things to say

to you. I have heard something new. I want your advice, I want your

help.” He was breathless, as if he had been running a race, though all

he had really done had been to come along a few yards of passage. The

Signor was easily moved by the sight of emotion, and he was fond of his

_protégé_. “Go, Pick,” he said immediately, “and bring us some tea.”

“Tea, sir!” said the old man in consternation. “You never takes it. If

it’s nothing but to get rid of old Pick, I’ll go. I’ll go; never fear

but I’ll go.”

“I want some tea,” said the Signor authoritatively; “foolish old man,

would you spoil my new song for want of a cup of tea? Go to Mrs.

Purcell, and tell her, with my compliments, I want some of her special

brew--the very best, as she used to make it for me when I had headaches.

Quick, my head threatens to ache now. Well! what is it, boy? Has the

Queen sent for you to be the head of her orchestra, or is the Dean

coming to pay us a visit? It must be something very important to judge

by your face.”

“Oh, sir,” cried young Purcell, “what a heart you have! making up a

headache and a whole story to save old Pick’s feelings--and me that am

really no better than he is, pushing him out of the way!”

“Nobody is any better than any other,” said the Signor in his measured

tones. “I have tried to teach you so all your life. But I will allow

that some are worse than others,” he added, with a smile. His disciple

was too much occupied, however, with the urgency of his own case to

notice what he said.

“Master,” said the young man, “I have hurried back to tell you I have

changed my mind; I will take the organ at Sturminster after all.”

An almost imperceptible change came over the Signor’s face--that slight

stiffening of the muscles of the mouth--continuance of the easy and

genial smile of real satisfaction into the forced and uncomfortable one

of pretended equanimity--which is the sign above all others of

disappointment and displeasure, became visible in his face. “Well----”

he said slowly; “why not--if you think it will be more to your

advantage? After all, that is the grand test.”

“It is not that,” said young Purcell, shrinking a little; “you can’t

think that I would leave you only for my advantage. No, master, it is

not that. You must hear it all before you judge.”

“Certainly,” said the Signor. He kept the same smile rigid upon his

face. “And in the meantime here is old Pick with the tea,” he added,

“and we must drink it for the sake of his feelings. What, Pick, is it

made already? I don’t think your mother can be so careful as usual, boy,

about her brew.”

“I don’t put no faith in tea that stands long to draw, sir,” said Pick.

“I like it myself with all the scent in it. Water as boils hard, and not

a minute lost. That’s my maxim. It’s fresh made with plenty of tea in,

and I’ll warrant it good. Smell that,” he said, taking off the lid of

the teapot. The Signor listened to him quietly, taking no notice of

Purcell’s impatience. He smiled on the old man and let him talk. He was

wounded and offended by his pupil’s sudden change after the decision of

an hour ago; and though he had a great desire to hear what reason could

be given for this difference of feeling, his annoyance and disgust at

the change found expression in this apparent carelessness of it. He kept

Pick talking with secret malice, while Purcell fretted. The young fellow

did not know how to contain himself. He collected the music-books that

were on the piano, and put them back on the shelves. Then he took them

down again; he shifted the candles; he roamed from corner to corner,

moving the chairs about, throwing into disorder the things on the

table; now and then he cast a piteous look at his master; but the Signor

sat, in serene malice sounding the bass notes in his accompaniment,

putting artful questions to old Pickering, and leading him on to talk.

It was the old man himself at length who brought the suspense to an end

by recollecting something it was necessary for him to do. “They’d have

kep’ me there all night,” he said to Mrs. Purcell, with pretended

impatience, as he got back to the housekeeper’s room. “Dear!” said Mrs.

Purcell, astonished; she could not understand how the Signor could waste

time talking to old Pick at a moment so momentous for her John.

When old Pickering was gone, the Signor still said nothing. He turned to

the piano and began to play; he was like a woman offended, who will not

approach the subject on which she is dying to be informed. At last

Purcell, approaching humbly with wistful eyes, ventured to put one hand

lightly upon his arm.

“Master,” said the young man, “let me speak to you. I cannot do anything

till I have spoken to you.”

“To me, boy? Speak then, as much as you please,” said the Signor,

nodding at him with an air of ingenuous wonder while he rang out the end

of the melody. “’Twas in the time of roses,” he sang; then swinging

himself round on his stool, “You want to speak to me? Why didn’t you say

so sooner? Speak then, I am all attention,” he said.

Then Purcell began, once more breathless with agitation and excitement:

“I think there seems a chance for me, sir,” he said; “my mother has just

been telling me. It is such a chance as never may happen again. You know

I love St. Michael’s better than anything in the world--except one

thing. Master, _she_ is in trouble; her home is about to be made

impossible to her; now or never; if I had a home to offer her, she might

accept it. This is why I said I would take Sturminster. St. Ermengilde

is more to my mind, a thousand times more to my mind; and to be near

you, to have the benefit of your advice, that would be everything for

me. But, dear master,” said the young man, “must I not think of her

first? and here is a chance for me, perhaps the only chance I may have

in my life.”

“Has anything happened to Miss Despard?” said the Signor in great

surprise. He recognised the justice of the plea, and he listened with

great interest and sympathy, and a curious feeling which was neither

sympathy nor interest. Lottie was to the Signor a mysterious creature,

exciting an altogether different kind of feeling from that which he felt

for his pupil. He was almost sentimentally attached to his pupil, and

entered into the history and prospects of his love with an enthusiasm

quite unlike that with which a mature Englishman generally interests

himself in anybody’s love-affairs. But along with this sentiment there

existed another almost directly opposite to it, an interest in Lottie

as a being of a totally different class from Purcell, of whom it would

be profoundly curious to know the history, and the means by which she

might perhaps be brought to look favourably on--nay, to marry--Purcell;

which seemed to the Signor quite “on the cards.” How she might be

brought to this, in what way she would reconcile herself to be Purcell’s

wife; how she would bow a spirit, evidently so proud, to the young

musician’s origin and to his ways of talking, which, though refined

enough, were still at the bottom those of a man whose mother was “in

service:” all this was captivating as a matter of study to the Signor;

he got, or expected to get, a great deal of amusement out of it,

expecting that Lottie’s struggles in fitting herself for the position

would be wonderful enough: so that his interest cannot be called

entirely benevolent. But between this keen and half-malign interest and

the sentimental interest he took in Purcell’s “happiness,” it may be

imagined that the crisis was nearly as exciting to him as it was to

Purcell himself. He listened to the story with the warmest interest, and

agreed that there was nothing for it but to accept Sturminster. “But you

must not lose a day,” he said; “you must secure the lady at once, there

is not a moment to lose.”

“Secure?” Purcell said, growing red and growing white; “then you think

there is a hope, a--likelihood----”

“Think? I think there is an almost certainty!” cried the Signor. He

became quite excited himself for the sake of his pupil and for his own

sake, for the keen intellectual interest he felt in this curious problem

as to what Lottie would do. “You must go to-morrow,” he cried, with all

the eagerness of a personal interest; “you must not lose a single day.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

YOUNG PURCELL.

Next morning found young Purcell in a state of excitement and nervous

agitation still greater than that of the previous night. He had not

slept during the natural time for sleep, and in consequence, according

to the fashion of youth unaccustomed to watching, had fallen very fast

and heavily asleep, out of sheer fatigue in the morning, waking only

with an indescribable sense of guilt to hear the bells ringing for the

morning service in the Abbey. Such a thing had never happened to him

before, and his shame and sense of wrong-doing were more than reason. He

jumped up in dismay, but even the most hurried toilet could not get him

in time; and his mother appeared at his door as he prepared to rush out

half-dressed, preventing his exit. “You wouldn’t go out without your

breakfast?” she cried with horror. The virtuous and carefully regulated

life of the chorister and musical student trained under the Signor’s eye

and his mother’s constant care, had made a late morning and an omitted

breakfast seem like something criminal. Besides, a sense of the crisis

had got into the air. The Signor had left an anxious message, begging

his _protégé_ not to hurry himself, to take his time, and to keep up his

courage. His mother kissed him wistfully, and served him with a noble

breakfast, as if he wanted strengthening in the most material way, for

the important piece of work before him. Even old Pick looked at him with

respectful curiosity as at a man on the edge of a very serious step

indeed, a curiosity mingled with awe and a little grim humour and

admiration. The boy was going to do what Pick had never had the courage

to do; and though the old man thought the young one a fool, and hugged

himself on his superior wisdom, yet it cannot be denied that he looked

with a certain respect on the bold youth who was about to make such a

venture. He put his breakfast on the table, not grudging the trouble,

though the Signor’s breakfast had long been over, and he shook his head

behind Mr. John’s chair. “Take a good breakfast, it will do you a deal

of good,” he said, as he left the hero of the occasion. Purcell, though

his mother was only the housekeeper, was the son of the house; he took

his meals with the master, though it was his mother who prepared their

dishes in the kitchen. It was a false position, perhaps, but he had not

yet found any trouble in it. He had been a little curly-headed boy in

the choir when Mrs. Purcell came first to take charge of the Signor’s

house; she had been the sole servant then, and had scrubbed and brushed

and cooked, diligently keeping everything in order. Old Pickering had

gone through the same sort of training which had made John Purcell a

gentleman. He, too, had been a chorister, and had progressed into a

lay-clerk, with possibilities of rising to something better. But Pick

was one of the unsuccessful ones; his voice failed him, his science

never had been great, and a little after Mrs. Purcell’s advent he had

come to the Signor also to be provided for. The organist had a large

heart and a somewhat indolent temper; the easiest way to provide for the

old singing-man was to take him into his own household, and this was

what had been done. As for Pick, he had settled very easily into his new

place, having been the son of the master of a little tavern; and though

it cost him an effort to acknowledge the little soprano, whose surplice

he had put on so often, in the light of a young master, yet the effort

was made. Pick was conscientious, he did not do anything by halves; and

the first time that the Signor’s pupil was permitted to play the

voluntary in the Abbey, the old man made his fellow-servants jump, and

gave the youth a shock of mingled alarm and pleasure, by suddenly

addressing him as Mr. John. Nobody had expected such an heroic act of

submission, but Pick knew his place and all that was suitable in the

circumstances. “Him as the Signor puts in his own place has a right to

be respected,” he said; and he never wavered in that noble

self-abnegation, nor let any one suppose that it was painful to him.

All this had happened long before the period of which we are writing;

but what sensation, what emotion, it had caused at the time! Pick stood

now, pausing behind the young musician’s chair, and lifted up his hands

and shook his head. To think this boy, whom he had, so to speak, brought

up, should show so much courage! Pick himself had never made such a

venture, nor even the Signor, who was the master of both; and yet this

boy was going to do it. The old man shook his head, not knowing what

might come of it; but in his heart he felt a respect reaching to

admiration, for the courage which was so much beyond anything he had

ever known.

Courage, however, was the last quality in which, on this particular

morning, young Purcell could be said to excel. To devote your life in

secret to a beloved object; to dream of her night and day; to make

impassioned resolutions, and determine to win glory and wealth for her,

is not so hard for a fanciful youth; but to go into her presence, look

into the face that dazzles you--confront the goddess of your distant

worship, and without any preliminaries to lead up to this great step,

and prepare her for it, quite off-hand and impromptu ask her to marry

you! This is a very different matter. The young man sat alone and tried

to eat his breakfast, trembling to think of what was before him. The

circumstances were such as to add tenfold to the natural tremors of

such a crisis. She was a lady, and far above him--not rich indeed, nor

occupying any very exalted position in reality--but her dignity was very

imposing to the young man, who had always recognised this grace of what

seemed to him rank, as one of her particular charms. Purcell was

painfully aware that he himself had no right to the name of gentleman.

Many a less worthy claimant has borne it, with no thought that it was

inappropriate, and Purcell had anxiously and painfully endeavoured to

acquire all its outside appearances. He knew, as well as any, how to

behave himself in society, and passed muster very well among other young

men. He was a little over-anxious, perhaps, a little too fine in his

language, too deferential and polite, not sufficiently at his ease, to

get much enjoyment out of his social experiences; but this was a fault

on the right side. Notwithstanding his modest sense of his own “merits,”

Purcell could not persuade himself that he was Lottie’s equal. He knew

he was not her equal. She had been as a star to him, far away and out of

reach--and though in the fervour of imaginative passion the hope of

winning her had seemed like heaven, yet the actual enterprise of wooing

her, when brought thus close, seemed very appalling indeed--a quest more

dangerous and alarming than ever knight errant set forth upon. His knees

knocked together, great beads of moisture came upon his forehead--how

was he to do it? how was he to present himself, to explain the hopes

which, looked at thus in cold blood, appeared even to himself

impossible, not to say presumptuous in the highest degree? How was he

ever, he asked himself, to make her aware what he meant? She would not

understand him. She would think he meant something else, anything

else--rather than that he, a poor musician, the son of the Signor’s

house-keeper, wanted to MARRY her, the daughter of a gentleman. It would

be impossible to make her understand him. This seemed the first

difficulty of all, and it was an appalling one. She would not even know

what he meant. In this respect indeed Purcell was mistaken, for Lottie

already knew well enough what were the hopes in his heart--resenting

them highly as one of the wrongs of fate against her; but this he had no

way of knowing. If he could but have got anyone to smooth the way for

him, to tell what it was he wanted to say, to set him a-going, he

thought he could find eloquence enough to carry him on--but how could he

make that _premier pas_? Thus, while the household was all expectant,

excited by what was coming, Purcell sat over his breakfast and trembled,

too frightened to move or think, though with a consciousness that this

desperate step must be taken. The Signor in the Abbey, rolling forth

melodious thunders out of the organ, kept thinking of him with a smile,

and a half sigh. Like Pick, he had a certain admiration for the valour

of the boy thus pushing forward before himself into the mysteries of

life; but the Signor’s thoughts were more tender and less cynical than

those of his servant. He could not help wondering how it was that in his

own person he had let all such chances slip. How was it? As he followed

his pupil in imagination to the feet of his love, that young creature

seemed very fair, very much to be desired. No doubt, to have such a one

by your side, sharing your life with you, would make existence bear a

very different appearance. Why was it he had never done what Purcell was

going to do? This question seemed to flow into the music he was playing,

and to go circling round and round the Abbey in the morning sunshine.

Why? Life was endurable enough, a calm sort of routine, with now and

then a pleasurable sensation in it, but nothing more; and no doubt it

might have been made more of. The Signor could not answer his own

question. He did not want to make himself the rival of his pupil, or to

do anything similar to what young Purcell was doing. He had no wish to

make any violent change in life, which was well enough as it was. But

only it was odd that a simple fellow like John Purcell should thus

boldly have pushed before him into a completer existence--very odd; the

boy was bold. Whether he succeeded or not, his very agitation and ardour

had in them a higher touch of emotion than any that had been in the life

of his master. He laughed within himself at the boy’s temerity--but the

laugh was mingled with a sigh.

And Mrs. Purcell, for her part, was in high excitement, longing for her

boy to be gone on his errand, longing for him to be back again. That her

John should marry a lady was the climax of grandeur and happiness. To be

sure, it ought to have been a rich lady or great lady. He deserved a

princess, his mother felt. Still, as things were, it was a kind of

intoxication to think even of the daughter of a Chevalier. Why did he

linger, as if breakfast was worth thinking of? She listened for every

sound, for the door shutting, for his step in the hall, and was very

cross when Maryanne made a noise, so that she could not hear what was

going on upstairs. As for old Pick, he brushed Mr. John’s hat with a

grim smile on his face, and hung about the hall to watch him go out.

“The young un’s off at last,” he said with a chuckle, marching into the

kitchen: when just before the end of the service in the Abbey, when all

the air about was ringing with the echo of the Amens, Purcell at last

screwed his courage to the sticking-point, and went out, to meet his

fate.

Poor young fellow, he could not have been more alarmed had he gone to

face a lion instead of a lady. The lion would have been nothing. He

would have called out for succour, and used whatever weapons he could

lay hold of; but nobody could help him with Lottie--no shield would

cover him from the lightnings of her eyes. It was all embarrassing, all

terrible; even if by any chance things should turn out in his favour, he

did not know what he should do. What could he call her? Not Lottie, that

was too familiar. Not Miss Despard. All these different and disjointed

thoughts seemed to float about his head in the maze of excitement he was

in--he was past thinking, but such questions kept floating in and out of

his mind. It was the most extraordinary relief when, going to the door

of Captain Despard’s house, he found that Lottie was out. If she had

been there, it seemed to Purcell that he would have run away--but she

was not there. He asked when she was expected back and went on,

recovering his breath. He could not go home again, where presently the

Signor would come from the Abbey and question him. The service, however,

was not so nearly over as he thought. It was a saint’s day, and there

was a sermon. The precincts were very still and deserted, for most

people were at church. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, sitting at her window, saw

the young musician walk across the broad silent sunshine, but he did not

see her. He went up the Dean’s walk, hearing his own step echo through

the silence, and past the Deanery, and out upon the slopes beyond. It

was shady and sweet under the trees, which rose up close against the old

wall--and all was very quiet during the time of matins, though the town

went on with its usual hum down below at the foot of the hill. Purcell

began to recover himself a little and take breath as he came to this

shelter and refuge. Many a time had he strayed under these trees,

thinking of _her_, wondering if he ever might be able to approach her.

It was strange to be here, however, in the morning, the hour of work and

engagements, which he never had to himself, and to hear the far-off

sound of the organ pealing out after the sermon was over. All the common

occupations of life seemed to be suspended for Purcell. He felt as

ordinary men feel on an occasional stolen Sunday, when work is

suspended, and the duty of church-going put aside. All was so sweet, and

serene, and still--no one to disturb his thoughts: the sound of the

organ in the distance keeping him aware of the fact that he was

singularly, unprecedentedly liberated from his usual occupations: and

the tremor of agitation dying away into an excitement which was more

bearable, which left room for all the sweeter musings, of which _she_

was the centre. He sat down on the root of a tree, and let himself

breathe. Then came the first notes of the voluntary, and a distant hum

as of the congregation dispersing. Few people were likely to come here

at this hour in the morning, but still Purcell felt that he had but a

moment in which to indulge himself, and that soon he must turn back.

As he sat thus trying to collect himself, a sudden sound close by, the

rustle of a dress among the bushes, the soft sound of a footstep caught

his ear. He looked up--and his heart jumped into his throat. There She

stood before him, a little basket in her hand. There was a by-way into

the town by the slopes, and Lottie had been about her marketing. She was

in her usual simple morning frock, clean print and nothing more, and

though her head was sufficiently full of dreams and her mind of

anxieties, she was at present lingering upon neither, but going straight

from one place to another, as became the active morning hour and the

consciousness of various things to do. When she saw Purcell spring to

his feet suddenly in the midst of the path, for the moment Lottie was

startled. She made him a little gracious but indifferent sign of

recognition, as courtesy required--for ridiculous as were the notions in

his head, she could not be rude to him--and was passing on, not wanting

any further parley, when she was struck by the agitation in his face. He

was staring at her as if she had been a ghost--his mouth was open, his

breath coming quick, his colour changing. Excitement did not improve his

appearance. She had almost laughed, then checked herself remorsefully,

and became so much the more sympathetic for her temporary movement of

mirth.

“Is there anything the matter?” she said kindly. “I am afraid you are

ill. Has anything--gone wrong?” She did not know what to say, he looked

at her with such solemn eyes.

“Oh, nothing--nothing has gone wrong. I am not ill. Miss Despard--I did

not expect to see you here.”

“No--but I hope it is not I who have frightened you,” said Lottie. “I

sometimes go to the Bridge road this way.”

“You have not frightened me,” said Purcell, who found it easier to

repeat her words than to say anything original; “but I--did not know you

went this way.”

It was all that Lottie could do, once more, to keep herself from

laughing. She gave him a little nod, and was about to pass, saying,

“What a lovely morning it is!” the stereotyped English remark; when he

made a hurried step after her, and, holding up his hands, entreated her,

in a piteous voice, to stay a moment. “Miss Despard--what startled me

was that I was looking for you. Oh, stay a moment, and let me speak to

you!” he said.

Lottie stood still, arrested in her progress, throwing a wondering look

upon him. What could he want with her? Her first glance was simple

surprise--her second--Was it possible he could mean _that_?--could he be

bold enough, rash enough? Next moment she blushed for her own folly. To

be afraid of young Purcell! That was foolishness indeed. She stood

still there, one foot put out to go on, her basket in her hand.

“Please say what it is, Mr. Purcell. I have got something to do. I ought

to be at home.”

The morning is not the moment for a love tale. How much more congenial

would have been the evening, the twilight, the subdued poetic hour,

after the sun had disappeared, that great busybody who shows every

imperfection, and is himself so perpetually moving on! Something to do

was in every line of Lottie’s energetic figure. She had no time for

lingering, nor wish to linger. “Please say what it is.” Only business

should be treated in this summary way, not love.

“Miss Despard,” said the young musician, whose limbs were trembling

under him, “I wanted to say a great deal to you; it is very

important--for me. Things are going well with me,” he added, with

desperation, after a momentary pause. “I have been appointed to a

church--a fine church--with a good instrument. They are to give me a

good salary, and they say I can have as much teaching as I like. I shall

be very well off.”

“I am glad to hear you are so fortunate,” said Lottie. Her eyes were

full of surprise, and for a moment there was a gleam of amusement in

them. That he should waylay her to tell her this, seemed a curious piece

of ostentation or folly. “I am very glad,” she repeated; “but you must

forgive me if I have to hasten home, for I have a great many things to

do.”

“One moment,” he said, putting out his hand to stop her. “That was not

all. The Signor thinks--you know the Signor, Miss Despard, there is not

a better musician in the country--he thinks I will make progress. He

thinks I may rise--as high as any one can rise in our profession. He

tells me I may be a rich man yet before I die.”

“Indeed, I hope all he says will come true,” said Lottie; “but why you

should take the trouble to tell me----”

Then suddenly she caught his eye, and stopped short, and blushed an

angry red. She saw what was coming in a moment, which did not, however,

prevent her from drawing herself up with a great deal of dignity, and

adding, “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Miss Despard,” he said with a gasp, “there is no comparison between me

and you. But you are not so well off--not happy. They say--you know how

people will talk--that there is something going to happen that will make

you very uncomfortable.”

“Stop!” she said, with an involuntary cry, half of anger, half of

amazement. Then she laughed. “Do you want me to acknowledge that you are

much better off than I am?” she said; “but there is no need to compare

you with me.”

“It could not be done, Miss Lottie. I know it could not be done. You

are a lady, and far above me. I know I am not your equal--in some

things.”

Lottie began to be too angry to laugh, but yet she was provoked to

ridicule, which is the keenest of weapons. She made him a little mocking

curtsey. “It is very kind of you to say so, I am sure, for we are quite

poor people, Mr. Purcell; not fortunate, and getting on in the world

like you.”

“No, Miss Despard,” he said, simply, “that was just what I wanted to

say. If you had been as well off as I could wish, I should not have

ventured to say anything. I have always loved you, and thought of you

above all the world. Since you first came to St. Michael’s, I have never

thought of any one but you. It has been my hope that some time or other

I might be able to--but it was only just yesterday that I heard

something that made me settle--two things----”

She did not speak, being, indeed, too angry and annoyed for speech; but

she felt a kind of contemptuous, wrathful interest in what he was

saying, and curiosity to know what it was that had induced him to make

this venture; and, accordingly, gave him a glance, in which there was an

impatient question. Purcell was not too discriminating. He felt

encouraged by being listened to, from whatsoever motive.

“Two things,” he said, with stolid steadiness. “One, to take

Sturminster. I had settled before I would not take it, but St.

Ermengilde’s. But when I heard _that_, I changed my mind, though it did

not please the Signor. Sturminster will make me independent; it will

give me a home. And then I settled to tell you, Miss Lottie: if you are

uncomfortable at home, if you don’t like things that may be going to

happen: to tell you that there’s another home ready for you, if you will

have it; a home that may be made very comfortable; a place of your own,

to do what you like with, that will be waiting for you, whenever you

please, at a moment’s notice, the sooner the better. If you would say

yes, I would go directly, I would go to-morrow, and prepare; and nobody

would be able to give you trouble or make you uncomfortable any longer.

Only say the word, and there is nothing, nothing I would not do----”

Lottie stood and gazed at him, wondering, bitterly ashamed and

humiliated, and yet not without a sense that so much simple devotion was

worth more than to be crushed, or scorned, or flung from her, as she

wished to fling it. She restrained herself with an effort. “What do you

mean?” she said. “Is it possible that you are asking me to _marry_ you,

Mr. Purcell? That cannot be what you mean.”

“What else could it be?” he said, turning on her a look of genuine

surprise. “You don’t suppose, Miss Despard, that I could be thinking of

anything else?”

His cheeks grew crimson, and so did hers. A cry of anger and shame and

confusion came from her breast. She stamped her foot impatiently on the

ground. “You would never, never have ventured to ask me, never, if I had

not been helpless and friendless and poor!”

“No,” he said again, with a simplicity in which she could not help

feeling a certain nobleness. “I would not have ventured, for I am not

what you call a gentleman; but when I heard you were in trouble, I could

not keep silent. I thought to myself, Miss Lottie shall not be unhappy

because of having no home to go to----”

“Oh!” said Lottie, putting out her hand to stop him. She could not bear

any more. Her heart was sick with the mortification of such a suit. She

could have crushed and trampled upon her humble lover, in rage and

shame, and yet she could not but see the generosity and truth in his

heart. If he had been less worthy, it would have been less hard upon

her. “It is not a thing that can be,” she cried hastily. “Oh, don’t say

another word. I know you are kind, but it is not a thing that can be.”

“Not now?” he said, looking at her wistfully; “well: but perhaps another

time? perhaps when you need it more--I am not in any hurry. Perhaps I am

young to marry; the Signor thinks so. But another time, Miss Lottie?

Whenever you want me, you have but to say the word.”

“Oh, don’t think of it. I will never, never say the word. Forget it

altogether, Mr. Purcell. I am very, very much obliged to you, but indeed

it can never be.”

The young man’s countenance fell. Then he recovered himself. “I can’t

think you are taking everything into consideration. We should have a

nice home, plenty of everything, and I should never spare trouble to

give you everything you were used to----”

“Oh, go away, go away!” she cried.

And as they stood there, some one else, his shadow slowly moving before

him, came round the corner of the pathway, among the chestnut-trees; and

Purcell felt that his opportunity was over. He was not sorry for it. He

had done what was set before him, and if he had not succeeded, he was

not discouraged. There was still hope for another time.

CHAPTER XIX.

BUSINESS, OR LOVE?

It was not only in the mind of young Purcell that Lottie’s circumstances

and prospects were the subject of thought. Rollo Ridsdale had not

watched and worshipped as the young musician had done. Nor had he, even

on his first introduction to her, looked upon Lottie as anything but the

possessor of a beautiful voice, of which use might be made, for her

benefit no doubt in the long run, but primarily for his own. She was not

a divinity; she was not even a woman; she was a valuable stock-in-trade,

a most important implement with which to work. Rollo had gone through a

very effectual training in this kind. He had run through the little

money he possessed so soon, and had learned the use of his wits so

early, that the most energetic of tradesmen was not more alive to all

the charms of gain than he. The means, perhaps, may be of a different

kind, but it does not very much matter in principle whether a man is

trained to sharp bargains in bric-à-brac or in cotton bales; and it is

not essentially a loftier trade to speculate in pictures and china than

in shares and stocks. This young aristocrat had kept his eyes very wide

open to anything that might come in his way. He was not a director of

companies chiefly because his poor little Honourable was not a

sufficiently valuable possession to be traded upon, though it had some

small value pecuniarily. Lord Courtland himself might indeed have made a

few hundreds a year out of his title, but to his second son the name was

not worth so much. It secured him some advantages. It gave him the

_entrée_ to places where things were to be “picked up,” and it helped

him to puff and even to dispose of the wares which he might have in

hand. It kept him afloat; it ameliorated poverty; it took away all

objections to the sale and barter in which, profitably or unprofitably,

he spent so much of his life. Had he gone upon the Stock Exchange,

society might have made comments upon the strange necessity; but when

Rollo’s collection of _objets d’art_ was sold, nobody found anything to

object to in the transaction, which put a comfortable sum in his pocket,

and enabled him to go forth to fresh fields and pastures new; neither

was there anything unbecoming his nobility in the enterprise which he

had now in hand. Theatres are not generally a very flourishing branch of

commerce; yet it cannot be denied that those who ruin themselves by them

embark in the enterprise with as warm an inclination towards gain as any

shopkeeper could boast of. Rollo had thought of Lottie’s voice as

something quite distinct from any personality. It was a commodity he

would like to buy, as he would have liked to buy a picture, or anything

rare and beautiful, of which he could be sure that he would get more

than his own money for it. In that, as in other things, he would have

bought in the cheapest market and sold in the dearest. He would have

thought it only right and natural to secure at a low rate the early

services of a prima donna. A certain amount of enthusiasm no doubt

mingled with the business; just as, had Rollo bought a picture and sold

it again, he would have derived a considerable amount of enjoyment from

it over and above the profit which went into his pocket; but still he

would not have bought the picture, or sought out the future prima donna,

on any less urgent and straightforward stimulus than that of gain.

Probably, too, the artistic temperament--those characteristics which

have to answer for so many things--influenced him more in the pursuit of

the talent which was to make his fortune, than any man is ever

influenced by bales of cotton or railway shares. To hear that “shirtings

are firm” does not thrill the heart as it does to hear the melody of a

lovely new voice, which you feel will pay you nobly by transporting the

rest of the world as it does yourself. Neither could any amount of

coupons fill you with delight like that small scrap of a Bellini by

which you hope to _faire fortune_. But, nevertheless, to make his

fortune was what Rollo thought of just as much as the man who sells

dusters over his counter. If a new kind of duster could be found more

efficacious than any previously known, a something that would dust by

itself, that would sell by the million, no doubt the shopkeeper, too,

would feel a moment’s enthusiasm; yet in this he would be quite inferior

to the inventor of a new prima donna, who, added to his enjoyment of all

that the public gave to hear her, would have the same enjoyment as had

the public, without giving anything for it at all.

This had been the simple enthusiasm in Rollo’s mind up to his last

meeting with Lottie Despard. He had pursued her closely that he might

fully understand and know all the qualities of her voice--of the slave

he wanted to buy: to know exactly what training it would want, and how

much would have to be done to it before it could appear before the

public, and begin to pay back what he had given for it. And point by

point, as he pursued this quest of his, he had noted in her the

qualities of beauty, the grace, the expression, the perfection of form

and feature, which were so many additional advantages. The rush of

colour to her cheek, of spirit or softness to her eyes, had delighted

him, as proving in her the power to be an actress as well as a singer.

He studied all her looks, interpreted her character to himself, and

watched her movements with this end, with a frank indifference to every

other, not even thinking what interpretation might be put, what

interpretation she might herself put, upon this close and anxious

attention. It was not till the evening when, overcome by the feelings

which music and excitement had roused in her, Lottie had fled alone to

her home, avoiding his escort, that he had suddenly awoke to the

consciousness that it was no mere voice, but a young and beautiful

woman, with whom he was dealing. The awakening gave him a shock--yet

there was pleasure in it, and a flattering consciousness that his prima

donna had all along been regarding him in no abstract, but an entirely

individual, way. Rollo had been brought up among artificial sentiments.

He had been used to hear people talk of the effect of music upon their

imagination--of the sensations it gave them, and the manner in which

they were dominated by it. But he had never seen any one honestly moved

like Lottie--abandoning the sphere of her social success, silent in the

height of her triumph. When he saw that she could not and would not sing

again after that wonderful sacred song, he was himself more vividly

impressed than he had ever been by music. It took her voice from her,

and her breath--transported her out of herself. How strange it was, yet

how real, how natural! just (when you came to think of it) as a pure and

elevated mind ought to be touched: though he had never yet seen the

fumes of art get so completely into any head before. The reality of

Lottie’s emotion had awakened Rollo. He was not touched himself by

Handel, but he was touched by Lottie. He suddenly saw _her_ through the

mist of his own preconceived ideas, and through the cloud of

conventionalities, those of art and those of society alike. Never in his

life before had he so suddenly and distinctly come in contact with a

genuine human creature, as God had made her--feeling, moving, living

according to the dictates of nature, not as she had been trained to live

and feel. This is not to say that he had met with no genuine people in

his life. His father and mother were real enough, and so was his aunt,

Lady Caroline--very real, each in his or her little setting of

conveniences and necessities. He knew them, and was quite indifferent to

knowing them. But Lottie was altogether detached from the atmosphere in

which these good people lived. And he had discovered her suddenly,

making acquaintance with her in a moment--finding her out as an

astronomer, all alone with the crowds of heaven, finds out a new star.

This was how it made so great an impression on him. He had discovered

her, standing quite alone among all the women who knew how to express

and to control their emotions. She was not trained either to one or the

other. The emotion, the enthusiasm in her got the upper hand of her, not

she of them. A man who is only used to men and women in the secondary

stages of well-sustained emotion is apt to be doubly impressed by the

sight of genuine and artless passion, of whatever kind it may be. He

went to town thinking not of the prima donna he had found, but of the

woman who had suddenly made heaven and earth real to him, as they were

to her. He posted up to London--that is, he flew thither in the express

train, according to the dictates of his first impulse; but he was so

entirely carried away by this second one, that he had almost forgotten

his primary purpose altogether. “Ah! that is it,” he said to himself

when the prima donna idea once more flashed across his mind. He did not

want to lose sight of this, or to be negligent of anything that would

help to make his fortune.

Rollo was in the greatest need of having his fortune made. He had

nothing except very expensive habits. He was obliged to spend a great

deal of money in order to live, and he was obliged to live (or so, at

least, he thought); and he had no money at all. Therefore a prima donna

or something else was absolutely necessary. Accordingly he wound himself

up with great energy, and tried to think no more of that other world

which Lottie’s touch had plunged him into. In the meantime, in this

world of theatres, drawing-rooms, and fashionable coteries, where people

are compelled to live, whether they will or not, at an enormous cost in

money, and where accordingly money must be hunted wherever scent of it

can be found, it was necessary that some one, or something, should make

Rollo Ridsdale’s fortune. He rushed to his impresario, and roused a

faint enthusiasm momentarily in the mind of that man of great

undertakings. An English prima donna, a native article, about whom the

English would go wild! Yes! But would they go wild over an English prima

donna? Would not the first step be, ere she was presented to the public

at all, to fit her with an Italian name? Signorina Carlotta

Desparda--that was what she would have to be called. The impresario

shook his head. “And besides, these native articles never turn out what

we are led to expect,” he said. He shook his head; he was sorry, very

sorry, to disappoint his _confrère_, but----”

“But--I tell you, you never heard such a voice; the compass of it--the

sweetness of it! _simpatica_ beyond what words can say--fresh as a

lark’s--up to anything you can put before her--and with such power of

expression. We shall be fools, utter fools, if we neglect such a

chance.”

“You are very warm,” said the manager, rubbing his hands. “She is

pretty, I suppose?”

“No,” said Rollo; “she is beautiful--and with the carriage of a queen.”

(Poor Lottie, in her white frock; how little she knew that there was

anything queenlike about her!) “Come down and see her. That is all I ask

of you. Come and hear her----”

“Where may that be?” said the Manager. “I am leaving town on Monday.

Can’t we have her up to your rooms, or somewhere at hand?”

“My rooms!” said Rollo, thunderstruck. He knew very little about Lottie,

except that she was a poor Chevalier’s daughter; but he felt that he

could have as easily invited one of the Princesses to come and sing in

his rooms, that the representatives of the new opera company might judge

of her gifts. His face grew so long that his colleague laughed.

“Is she a personage then, Ridsdale? Is she one of your great friends?”

he said.

“She is one of my--friends; but she is not a great personage,” said

Rollo, gloomily, pulling the little peaked beard which he cultivated,

and thinking that it would be as difficult to get his manager invited to

the Deanery as it would be to bring Lottie to Jermyn Street. These were

difficulties which he had not foreseen. He went over the circumstances

hurriedly, trying to think what he could do. Could he venture to go in

suddenly to the Chevalier’s lodge, as he had done with Lady Caroline’s

credentials in his pocket, but this time without any credentials, and

without further ceremony proceed to test the powers of the girl, who he

knew was not always compliant nor to be reckoned on? What if she should

decline to be tried? What if she had no intention of becoming a singer

at all? What if the Manager should condemn her voice as untrained (which

it was), or even mistake it altogether, mixing it up with the cracked

tones of the old piano, and the jingle of the Abbey bells? He had not

thought of all these difficulties before. He had not taken time to ask

if Lottie would be docile, if Lady Caroline would be complaisant. He

pulled his beard, his face growing longer and longer. At last he said,--

“I’ll tell you what we can do. We can go to Mrs. O’Shaughnessy----”

“Who on earth is Mrs. O’Shaughnessy?” said the Manager.

“But very likely there is no piano there! You see, this is a difficulty

I did not think of. I have heard this lady only in the house of--one of

my relations, a very rigid old person, who hates theatres, and thinks

opera an invention of the devil.” How Rollo dared slander poor Lady

Caroline so, who liked an opera-box as well as any one else, it is

impossible to say.

“Well--it doesn’t seem to matter much what are the qualities of the

voice if we can’t hear it,” the Manager said carelessly; and he told his

fashionable partner of the singer he had heard of in Milan, who was to

distance all the singers then on the operatic stage. “They are all like

that,” he said--“like this private nightingale of yours, Ridsdale--till

you hear them; and then they turn out to be very much like the rest. To

tell the truth, I am not so very sorry this particular _protégée_ of

yours has broken down; for I don’t believe the time has come for an

English prima donna, if it ever comes. We’ve got no confidence in

ourselves, so far as art goes--especially musical art. English opera,

sir; there’s many fine pieces, but you’ll never keep it up in England.

It might make a hit, perhaps, in Germany, or even France, but not here.

Your English prima donna would be considered fit for the music halls.

We’d have to dress her up in vowels, and turn her into an Italian.

Contemptible? Oh, yes, it’s contemptible; but, if we’re to make our own

money out of it, we mustn’t trouble ourselves about what’s contemptible.

What we’ve got to do is to please the public. I’m just as glad that this

idea of yours has broken down.”

“Broken down! I will never allow it has broken down. It is much easier

and pleasanter, of course, to go to Milan than to go to St. Michael’s,”

said Rollo disdainfully. “But never mind; if you don’t start till

Monday, trust me to arrange it somehow. Your new Milanese, of course,

will be like all the rest. She will have been brought up to it. She will

know how to do one thing, and no more; but this is genius--owing nothing

to education and everything to nature. Capable of--I could not say what

such a voice and such a woman is not capable of----”

“Bravo, Ridsdale!” said his partner. “She is capable of stirring you up

thoroughly, that is clear--and I hope she will be kind to you,” he

said, with a big laugh, full of insinuations. The man was vulgar and

fat, but a mountain of energy, and Rollo though disgusted, could not

afford to quarrel with him.

“You are entirely out in your notion,” he said, with that air of dignity

which is apt to look fictitious in such circumstances. He was not

himself easily shocked, nor would this interpretation of his motives

have appeared to him at all unlikely in the case of another man;

therefore, as was natural, his gravity and look of disgust only

confirmed the suspicions of the other, and amused him the more.

“Bravo, my boy; go in and win!” he said, chuckling; “promise whatever

you like, if you find it necessary, and trust to me to back you up.”

To say “I am unable to understand what you mean,” as Rollo did, with

cold displeasure, yet consciousness, did but increase the ecstasy of the

fat Manager over the evident fact that his fastidious friend was “caught

at last.”

Rollo went away with a great deal of offended dignity, holding himself

stiffly erect, body and soul. He had never been so entirely disgusted,

revolted, by the coarse character of the ideas and insinuations, which

in themselves were not particularly novel, he was aware. It was because

everything grew coarse under the touch of such a fellow as this, he said

to himself; and it must be allowed that vice, stripped of all sentiment

and adornment, was a disgusting spectacle. Rollo had never been a

vicious man. He had taken it calmly in others, acknowledging that, if

they liked it, he had no right to interfere; but he had not cared for it

much himself--he was not a man of passions. A dilettante generally does

avoid these coarser snares of humanity; and there had always been a

sense of nausea in his mind when he was brought in contact with the

vicious. But this nausea had been more physical than spiritual. It was

not virtue but temperament which produced it; his own temptations were

not in this kind. Nevertheless, he knew that to show any exaggerated

feeling on the subject would only expose him to laughter, and he was not

courageous enough either to blame warmly in others, or to decry

strenuously in himself, the existence of unlawful bonds. What did it

matter to anybody if he were virtuous? his neighbours were not on that

account to be baulked of their cakes and ale; his disinclination towards

sins of the grosser kind was not a thing he was proud of--it was a

constitutional peculiarity, like inability to ascend heights or to go to

sea without suffering. He was not at all sure that it was not a sign of

weakness--a thing to be kept out of sight. Accordingly he took his part

in the social gossip, which has no warmer interest than this, like

everybody else, never pretended to any superiority, and took it for

granted that now and then everybody “went wrong.” He would have been a

monster if he had done anything else. Why, even his good aunt

Caroline--the best and stupidest of women, to whom, if she had desired

it, no opportunity of going wrong had ever presented itself--liked to

hear these stories and believed them implicitly, and was convinced that

not to go wrong was quite exceptional. Rollo was not the man to

emancipate himself from such a complete and universal understanding. He

allowed it calmly, and did not pretend either to disapprove or to doubt.

Probably he had himself coldly, and as a matter of course, “gone wrong”

too in his day, and certainly he had never given himself out as at all

better than his neighbours. Was it only the coarseness of his vulgar

associate which made the suggestion so deeply disgusting to him now?

He asked himself this question as, disappointed and annoyed, he left the

Manager’s ostentatious rooms; and a new sense of unkindness,

ungenerosity, unmanliness in having exposed a harmless person, a woman

whose reputation should be sacred, to such animadversions, suddenly came

into his mind, he could not tell how. This view of the matter had never

occurred to Rollo before. The women he had heard discussed--and he had

heard almost everybody discussed, from the highest to the lowest--had

nothing sacred about them to the laughing gossips who discussed all they

had done, or might have done, or might be going to do. This, too, was a

new idea to him. Who was there whom he had not heard spoken of? ladies a

thousand times more important than Miss Despard, the poor Chevalier’s

daughter at St. Michael’s--and nobody had seemed to think there was any

harm in it. A man’s duty not to let a woman be lightly spoken of? Pooh!

What an exaggerated sentimental piece of nonsense! Why should not women

take their chance, like any one else? Rollo was like most other persons

when in a mental difficulty of this kind. He was not so much discussing

with himself as he was the arena of a discussion which unseen arguers

were holding within him. While one of these uttered this Pooh! another

replied, with a heat and fervour altogether unknown to the clubs, What

had Lottie Despard done to subject herself to these suggestions? she who

knew nothing about society and its evil thoughts--she who had it in her

to be uplifted and transported by the music at which these other people,

at the best, would clap their hands and applaud. The argument in Rollo’s

mind went all against himself and his class. He hated not only his

manager-partner, whom it was perfectly right and natural to hate, but

himself and all the rest of his kind. He was so much disgusted, that he

almost made up his mind to let fortune and the English prima donna go

together, and to take no further step to make the girl known to those

who were so incapable of appreciating her. But when he came that

length, Rollo had reached the end of his tether, struck against the

uttermost limits of his horizon--and thus was brought back suddenly to

the question how he was best to make his prize known?

CHAPTER XX.

AN UNCONSCIOUS TRIAL.

It turned out, however, that Rollo could not accomplish the object,

which he had aimed at with so much eagerness and hope, in the only

legitimate way. He could not get his Manager invited to the Deanery. “I

don’t think your aunt would like it; I don’t think I could sanction it,”

the Dean said, whom he met at his club. Unfortunately the Dean had

somewhere encountered the partner by whose aid Rollo expected to make

his fortune, and he made it the subject of a little discourse, which

Rollo received with impatience. “I would have nothing to do with him if

I were you,” his Reverence said; “he is not a kind of man to be any

credit to his associates. You can’t touch pitch without being defiled. I

would not have anything to say to him if I were you.”

“Nor should I, uncle, if I were you,” said Rollo, with a rueful smile.

He was not aware that this was not original; he was not thinking,

indeed, of originality, but of the emergency, which he felt was very

difficult to deal with.

“Nonsense!” said the Dean; “don’t tell me there are not a great many

better occupations going than that of managing a theatre----”

“Opera--opera. Give us our due at least----”

“What difference is there?” said the Dean sternly. “The opera has ruined

just as many men as the theatre. Talk of making your fortune? Did you

ever hear of the lessee of a theatre making a fortune? Plenty have been

ruined by it, and never one made rich that I ever heard of. Why can’t

you go into diplomacy or to a public office, or get your Uncle Urban to

give you something? You ought not to have anything to do with such a

venture as this.”

“My dear uncle,” said Rollo, “you know well enough how many things I

have tried. Uncles are very kind (as in your case), but they can’t take

all their relations upon their shoulders; and you knew this was what I

was doing, and Aunt Caroline knew----”

“Ah! yes; I recollect that was what all the singing was about; but she

could not stand that Manager fellow. I could not stand him myself; as

for your aunt, you could not expect it. She is very good-natured, but

you could not ask her to go so far as that.”

“He is a man who goes everywhere,” said Rollo; “he is a man who can

behave himself perfectly well wherever he is.”

“Oh, bless you, she would see through him at a glance!” cried the Dean.

“I don’t mean to say your aunt is clever, Rollo, but instinct goes a

long way. She would see through him. Miss Despard was quite different;

she was perfectly _comme il faut_. Girls are wonderful sometimes in that

way. Though they may have no advantages, they seem to pick up and look

just as good as any one: whereas a man like that---- By the way, I am

very sorry for the poor thing. They say her father, a disreputable sort

of gay man who never should have got the appointment, is going to marry

some low woman. It will be hard upon the girl.”

What an opportunity was this of seizing hold upon her--of overcoming any

objection that might arise! Rollo felt himself Lottie’s best friend as

he heard of this complication. While she might help to make his fortune

he could make her independent, above the power of any disreputable

father or undesirable home. He could not bear to think that such a girl

should be lost in conditions so wretched, and, though the Dean was

obdurate, he did not lose hope. But between Thursday and Monday is not a

very long time for such negotiations, and the Manager was entirely

preoccupied by his Milanese, whom another impresario was said to be on

the track of, and in whom various connoisseurs were interested. It is

impossible to describe the scorn and incredulity with which Rollo

himself heard his partner’s account of this new singer. He put not the

slightest faith in her.

“I know how she will turn out,” he said. “She will shriek like a

peacock; she will have to be taught her own language; she will be

coached up for one _rôle_ and good for nothing else; and she will smell

of garlic enough to kill you.”

“Oh, garlic will never kill me!” said the vulgar partner who gave Rollo

so much trouble.

In the meantime he wrote to the Signor to see what could be done, and

begged with the utmost urgency that he would arrange something. “Perhaps

the old Irishwoman next door would receive us,” Rollo said, “even if she

has got no piano. Try, my dear Rossinetti, I implore you; try your

best.” The Signor was very willing to serve the Dean’s nephew; but he

was at the moment very much put out by Lottie’s reception of young

Purcell, as much as if it had been himself that had been refused.

“Who is Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, and how am I to communicate with her?” he

cried; and he did not throw himself into the work with any zeal. All

that he would do at last, moved by Rollo’s repeated letters, was to bid

him bring his friend down to the service on Sunday afternoon, when he

would see Lottie at least, and hear something of her voice. The Manager

grinned at this invitation. He was not an enthusiast for Handel, and

shrugged his shoulders at sacred music generally as much out of his

line; but he ended, having no better engagement on hand, by consenting

to go. It was the end of the season; the opera was over, and all its

fashionable patrons dispersed; and St. Michael’s was something to talk

of at least. So the two connoisseurs arrived on a warm afternoon of

early August, when the grey pinnacles of the Abbey blazed white in

excessive sunshine, and the river showed like glowing metal here and

there through the broad valley, too brilliant to give much refreshment

to the eyes.

As it happened, it was a chance whether Lottie would attend the service

that afternoon at all. She was sorry for poor Purcell, and embarrassed

to face the congregation in the Abbey, some of whom at least must know

the story. She was certain the Signor knew it, from the glance he had

thrown at her; and Mrs. Purcell, she felt sure, would gloom at her from

the free seats, and the hero himself look wistful and reproachful from

the organ-loft. She had very nearly made up her mind not to go. Would it

not be better to go out on the slopes, and sit down under a tree, and

hear the music softly pealing at a distance, and get a little rest out

of her many troubles? Lottie had almost decided upon this, when

suddenly, by a caprice, she changed her mind and went. Everything came

true as she had divined. Mrs. Purcell fixed her eyes upon her from the

moment she sat down in her place, with a gloomy interest which sadly

disconcerted Lottie; and so did old Pick, who sat by his fellow servant

and chuckled over the conclusion of Mr. John’s romance; while once at

least Lottie caught the pale dulness of the Signor’s face looking

disapproval, and at every spare moment the silent appeal of Purcell’s

eyes looking down from over the railing of the organ-loft. Lottie’s

heart revolted a little in resistance to all these pitiful and

disapproving looks. Why should they insist upon it? If she could not

accept young Purcell, what was it to the Signor and old Pick?--though

his mother might be forgiven if she felt the disappointment of her boy.

The girl shrank a little from all those glances, and gave herself up

altogether to her devotions. Was it to her devotions? There was the

Captain chanting all the responses within hearing, cheerful and

self-confident, as if the Abbey belonged to him; and there, too, was

Law, exchanging glances of a totally different description with the

people in the free seats. It was to two fair-haired girls whom Lottie

had seen before--who were, indeed, constant in their attendance on the

Sunday afternoon--that Law was signalling; and they, on their part,

tittered and whispered, and looked at the Captain in his stall, and at

another woman in a veil whom Lottie did not make out. This was enough to

distract her from the prayers, to which, however, if only to escape from

the confusion of her own thoughts, she did her very best to give full

attention. But---- She put up her prayer-book in front of her face, and

hid herself at least from all the crowd, so full each of his and her own

concerns. She was silent during the responses, hearing nothing but her

father’s voice with its tone of proprietorship, and only allowed herself

to sing when the Captain’s baritone was necessarily silent. Lottie’s

voice had become known to the people who sat near her. They looked for

her as much as they looked for little Rowley himself, who was the first

soprano; but to-day they did not get much from Lottie. Now and then she

forgot herself, as in the “Magnificat,” when she burst forth suddenly

unawares, almost taking it out of the hands of the boys; but while she

was singing Lottie came to herself almost as suddenly, and stopped

short, with a quaver and shake in her voice as if the thread of sound

had been suddenly broken. Raising her eyes in the midst of the canticle,

she had seen Rollo Ridsdale within a few places of her, holding his book

before him very decorously, yet looking from her to a large man by his

side with unmistakable meaning. The surprise of seeing him whom she

believed to be far away, the agitation it gave her to perceive that she

herself was still the chief point of interest to him, and the sudden

recalling thus of her consciousness, gave her a shock which extinguished

her voice altogether. There was a thrill in the music as if a string had

broken; and then the hymn went on more feebly, diminished in sweetness

and volume, while she stood trembling, holding herself up with an

effort. He had come back again, and again his thoughts were full of

her, his whole attention turned to her. An instantaneous change took

place in Lottie’s mind. Instead of the jumble of annoyances and

vexations that had been around her--the reproachful looks on one side,

the family discordance on the other--her father and Law both jarring

with all that Lottie wished and thought right--a flood of celestial calm

poured into her soul. She was no longer angry with the two fair-haired

girls who tittered and whispered through the service, looking up to Law

with a hundred telegraphic communications. She was scarcely annoyed when

her father’s voice pealed forth again in pretentious incorrectness. She

did not mind what was happening around her. The sunshine that came in

among the pinnacles and fretwork above in a golden mist, lighting up

every detail, yet confusing them in a dazzle and glory which common eyes

could not bear, made just such an effect on the canopies of the stalls

as Rollo’s appearance made on Lottie’s mind. She was all in a dazzle and

mist of sudden calm and happiness which seemed to make everything

bright, yet blurred everything in its soft, delicious glow.

“Don’t think much of her,” said the Manager, as they came out. The two

were going back again at once to town, but Rollo’s partner had supposed

that at least they would first pay a visit to the Deanery. He was a man

who counted duchesses on his roll of acquaintances, but he liked to add

a Lady Caroline whenever the opportunity occurred, and deans, too, had

their charm. He was offended when he saw that Rollo had no such

intention, and at once divined that he was not considered a proper

person to be introduced to the heads of such a community. This increased

his determination not to yield to his partner in this fancy of his,

which, indeed, he had always considered presumptuous, finding voices

being his own share of the work--a thing much too important to be

trusted to an amateur. “The boy has a sweet little pipe of his own; but

as for your _prima donna_, Ridsdale, if you think that sort of thing

would pay with us---- No, no! my good fellow; she’s a deuced handsome

girl, and I wish you joy; I don’t wonder that she should have turned

your head; but for our new house, not if I know it, my boy. A very nice

voice for an amateur, but that sort of thing does not do with the

public.”

“You scarcely heard her at all; and the few notes she did sing were so

mixed up with those scrubby little boys----”

“Oh! I heard her, and I don’t care to hear her again--unless it were in

a drawing-room. Why, there’s Rossinetti,” said the _impresario_; “he’ll

tell you just the same as I do. Do you know what we’re down here for,

Rossinetti, eh? Deluded by Ridsdale to come and hear some miraculous

voice; and it turns out to be only a charming young lady who has

bewitched him, as happens to the best of us. Pretty voice for a

drawing-room, nice amateur quality; but for the profession---- I tell him

you must know that as well as I.”

“Come into my place and rest a little; there is no train just yet,”

said the Signor. He had left Purcell to play the voluntary, and led

the strangers through the nave, which was still crowded with people

listening to the great strains of the organ. “Come out this way” he

said; “I don’t want to be seen. Purcell plays quite as well as I do;

but if they see me they will stream off, and hurt his feelings. Poor

boy! he has had enough to vex him already.”

These words were on his lips when, coming out by a private door, the

three connoisseurs suddenly came upon Lottie, who was walking home with

Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. The Signor, who was noted for a womanish heat of

partisanship and had not forgiven her for the disappointment of his

pupil, darted a violent glance at her as he took off his hat. It might

have been himself that she had rejected, so full of offence was his

look; and this fixed the attention of the big Manager, who took off his

hat too, with a smile of secret amusement, and watched the scene, making

a private memorandum to the effect that Rossinetti evidently had been

hit also; and no wonder! a handsome girl as you could see in a summer

day, with a voice that was a very nice voice, a really superior voice

for an amateur.

As for Rollo, he hastened up to Mrs. O’Shaughnessy with fervour, and

held out his hand; and how happy and how proud was that kind woman! She

curtseyed as she took his hand as if he had been the Prince of Wales,

nearly pulling him down, too, ere she recovered herself; and her

countenance shone, partly with the heat, partly with the delight.

“And I hope I see _you_ well, sir,” she said; “and glad to see you back

in St. Michael’s. There’s nothing like young people for keeping a place

cheerful. Though we don’t go into society, me and me Major, yet it’s a

pleasure to see the likes of you about.”

Rollo had time to turn to Lottie with very eloquent looks while this

speech was being addressed to him. “I am only here for half an hour,” he

said; “I could not resist the temptation of coming for the service.”

“Oh! me dear sir, you wouldn’t care so much for the sarvice if ye had as

much of it as we have,” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, going on well pleased.

She liked to hear herself talking, and she had likewise a quick

perception of the fact that, while she talked, communications of a

different kind might go on between “the young folks.” “Between

ourselves, it’s not me that they’ll get to stop for their playing,” she

said, all the more distinctly that the Signor was within hearing. “I’d

go five miles to hear a good band. The music was beautiful in the

regiment when O’Shaughnessy was adjutant. And for me own part, Mr.

Ridsdale, I’d not give the drums and the fifes for the most elegant

music you could play. I don’t say that I’m a judge, but I know what I

like.”

“Why did you stop so soon?” Rollo said, aside. “Ah! Miss Despard, was it

not cruel?--A good band is an excellent thing, Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. I

shall try to get my uncle to have the band from the depôt to play once a

week, next time I come here.--Thanks all the same for those few notes; I

shall live upon them,” he added fervently, “till I have the chance of

hearing you again.”

Lottie made no reply. It was unnecessary with Mrs. O’Shaughnessy there,

and talking all the time. And, indeed, what had she to say? The words

spread themselves like a balm into every corner of her heart. He would

not have gone so far, nor spoken so warmly, if it had not been for the

brutal indifference of the big Manager, who stood looking on at a

distance, with an air of understanding a great deal more than there was

to understand. The malicious knowingness in this man’s eyes made Rollo

doubly anxious in his civilities; and then he felt it necessary to make

up to Lottie for the other’s blasphemy in respect to her voice, though

of this Lottie knew nothing at all.

“I shall not even have time to see my aunt,” he said; “how fortunate

that I have had this opportunity of a word with you! I did not know

whether I might take the liberty to call.”

“And welcome, Mr. Ridsdale,” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. “Lottie’s but a

child, so to speak; but I and the Major would be proud to see you. And

of an afternoon we’re always at home, and, though I say it as shouldn’t,

as good a cup of tea to offer ye as ye’d get from me Lady Caroline

herself. It’s ready now, if you’ll accept the refreshment, you and--your

friend.”

“A thousand thanks, but we must not stay. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, if you see

my aunt will you explain how it was I could not come to see her? And be

sure you tell her you met me at the Abbey door, or she will not like it.

Miss Despard, Augusta is coming home, and I hope to be at the Deanery

next month. _Then_ I trust you will be more generous, and not stop

singing as soon as you see me. What had I done?” he cried in his

appealing voice. “Yes, Rossinetti, I’m coming.--Not Good-bye, Mrs.

O’Shaughnessy; only, as the French say, Till we meet again.”

“And I hope that will not be long,” said the good woman, delighted. She

swept along the Dean’s Walk, letting her dress trail after her and

holding her head high; she was too much excited to think of holding up

her skirts. “Did ye hear him, Lottie, me honey? ‘If you see my aunt,’

says he. Lord bless the man! as if me Lady Caroline was in the way of

looking in and taking a cup of tea! Sure, I’d make her welcome, and

more sense than shutting herself up in that old house, and never

stirring, no, not to save her life. ‘If ye see my aunt,’ says he. Oh,

yes! me darlint, I’ll see her, shut up in her state, and looking as

if---- He’ll find the difference when he comes to the Deanery, as he

says. Not for you, Lottie, me dear; you’re one of themselves, so to

speak. But it’s not much thanks me Lady Caroline will give him for

sending her a message by Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. I thought I’d burst out in

his face, ‘Tell her ye met me by the Abbey door.’ That’s to save me

lady’s feelings, Lottie. But I’ll do his bidding next time I see her;

I’ll make no bones of it, I’ll up and give her my message. Lord! just to

see how me lady would take it. See if I don’t now. For him, he’s a

jewel, take me word for it, Lottie; and ye’ll be a silly girl, me honey,

if you let a gentleman like Mr. Ridsdale slip through your fingers. A

real gentleman--ye can see as much by his manners. If I’d been a

duchess, Lottie, me dear, what more could he say?”

Lottie made no reply to this speech, any more than to the words Rollo

himself had addressed to her. Her mind was all in a confused maze of

happy thoughts and anticipations. His looks, his words, were all turned

to the same delicious meaning; and he was coming back to the Deanery,

when she was to be “more generous” to him. No compliment could have been

so penetrating as that soft reproach. Lottie had no words to spend upon

her old friend, who, for her part, was sufficiently exhilarated to

require no answer. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy rang the changes upon this subject

all the way to the Lodges. “‘When you see my aunt,’ says he.” The idea

that she was in the habit of visiting Lady Caroline familiarly not only

amused but flattered her, though it was difficult enough to understand

how this latter effect could come about.

Rollo was himself moved more than he could have imagined possible by

this encounter. He said nothing as he followed his companions to the

Signor’s house, and did not even remark what they were saying, so

occupied was he in going over again the trivial events of the last few

minutes. As he did so, it occurred to him for the first time that Lottie

had not so much as spoken to him all the time; not a word had she said,

though he had found no deficiency in her. It was evident, then, that

there might be a meeting which should fill a man’s mind with much

pleasant excitement and commotion, and leave on his thoughts a very

delightful impression, without one word said by the lady. This idea

amused him in the pleasant agitation of his being to which the encounter

at the church door had given rise. He forgot what he had come for, and

the rudeness of his partner, and the refusal of that personage to think

at all of Lottie. He did not want any further discussion of this

question; he had forgotten, even, that it could require to be

discussed. Somehow all at once, yet completely, Lottie had changed

character to him; he did not want to talk her over with anyone, and he

forgot altogether the subject upon which the conversation must

necessarily turn when he followed the Signor and his big companion

through the groups of people who began to emerge from the Abbey. There

were a great many who stared at Rollo, knowing who he was, but none who

roused him from his preoccupation. Fortunately the Dean had a cold and

was not visible, and Lady Caroline did not profess to go to church in

the afternoon--“It was too soon after lunch, and there were so many

people, and one never felt that one had the Abbey to one’s self,” her

ladyship said.

The Manager went off to Italy the next day, after his Milanese, without

being at all restrained by Rollo, who was glad to get rid of him, and to

have no more said about the English _prima donna_. He did not quite like

it even, so perverse was he, when the Signor, sitting out upon his

terrace, defended her against the _impresario’s_ hasty verdict: “She has

a beautiful voice, so far as that goes,” the Signor said, with the

gravity of a judge; “you are mistaken if you do not admire her voice; we

have had occasion to hear it, and we know what it is, so far as that

goes.”

“You dog!” said the jovial Manager, with a large fat laugh. “I see

something else if I don’t see that. Ah, Rossinetti! hit too?”

“Do you happen to know what he means?” said the Signor with profound

gravity, turning his fine eyes upon Ridsdale. “Ah! it is a pleasantry, I

suppose. I have not the same appreciation of humour that I might have

had, had I been born an Englishman,” he said, with a seriousness that

was portentous, without relaxing a muscle.

Rollo, who was not aware of the vehement interest with which the Signor

espoused Purcell’s cause, felt the Manager’s suspicions echo through his

own mind. He knew how entirely disinclined he felt to enter upon this

question. Was his companion right, and had the Signor been hit too? It

seemed to Rollo that the wonder was how anyone could avoid that

catastrophe. The Manager made very merry, as they went back to town,

upon Lottie’s voice and the character of the admiration which it had

excited; but all this Rollo received with as much solemnity of aspect as

characterised the Signor.

CHAPTER XXI.

SEARCHINGS OF HEART.

It was not to be supposed that the visit of Rollo and his companion

should pass unnoticed in so small a community as that of St. Michael’s,

where everybody knew him, and in which he had all the importance

naturally belonging to a member, so to speak, of the reigning family.

Everybody noticed his appearance in the Abbey, and it soon became a

matter of general talk that he was not at the Deanery, but had come down

from town expressly for the service, returning by as early a train

afterwards as the Sunday regulations of the railway allowed. What did he

come for? Not to see his relations, which would have been a

comprehensible reason for so brief a visit. He had been seen talking to

somebody at the north door, and he had been seen following the Signor,

in company with a large and brilliant person who wore more rings and

studs and _breloques_ than had ever been seen at St. Michael’s. Finally,

this remarkable stranger, who was evidently a friend of the Signor as

well as of Rollo, had been visible on the little green terrace outside

Rossinetti’s sitting-room, smoking cigarettes and drinking claret-cup,

and tilting up his chair upon two legs in a manner which suggested a

tea-garden, critics said, more than a studious nook sheltered among the

buttresses of the Abbey. Public opinion was instinctively unfavourable

to Rollo’s companion; but what was the young prince, Lady Caroline’s

nephew, doing there? Then the question arose, who was it to whom Rollo

had been talking at the north door? All the Canons and their wives, and

the ladies in the Lodges, and even the townspeople, when the story

reached them, cried out “Impossible!” when they were told that it was

Mrs. O’Shaughnessy. But that lady had no intention of concealing the

honour done her. She published it, so to speak, on the housetops. She

neglected no occasion of making her friends acquainted with all the

particulars of the interview. “And who should it have been but me?” she

said. “Is there e’er another one at St. Michael’s that knows as much of

his family? Who was it but an uncle of his, or maybe it might be a

cousin, that was in the regiment with us and O’Shaughnessy’s greatest

friend? Many’s the good turn the Major’s done him; and, say the worst

you can o’ the Ridsdales, it’s not ungrateful they are. It’s women that

are little in their ways. What does a real gentleman care for our little

quarrels and the visiting list at the Deanery? ‘When ye see me aunt,’

says he, ‘Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, ye’ll tell her----’ Sure he took it for

certain that me Lady Caroline was a good neighbour, and would step in

of an afternoon for her bit of talk and her cup o’ tea. ‘You’ll tell

her,’ says he, ‘that I hadn’t time to go and see her.’ And, please God,

I will do it when I’ve got the chance. If her ladyship forgets her

manners, it shall ne’er be said that O’Shaughnessy’s wife was wanting in

good breeding to a family the Major had such close connections with.”

“But do you really know--Mr. Ridsdale’s family?” said Lottie, after one

of these brilliant addresses, somewhat bewildered by her recollection of

what had passed. “And, sure, didn’t you hear me say so? Is it doubting

me word you are?” said Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, with a twinkle in her eye.

Lottie was bewildered--but it did not matter much. At this moment

nothing seemed to matter very much. She had been dull, and she had been

troubled by many things before the wonderful moment in which she had

discovered Rollo close to her in the Abbey--much troubled, foreseeing

with dismay the closing in around her of a network of new associations

in which there could be nothing but pain and shame, and dull with a

heavy depression of dulness which no ray of light in the present, no

expectation in the future, seemed to brighten. Purcell’s hand held out

to her, tenderly, yet half in pity, had been the only personal

encouragement she had; and that had humbled her to the dust, even though

she struggled with herself to do him justice. Her heart had been as

heavy as lead. There had seemed to her nothing that was hopeful,

nothing that was happy before her. Now all the heaviness had flown away.

Why? Why, for no reason at all, because this young man, whom she

supposed (without any warrant for the foolish idea) to love her, had

come back for an hour or two; because he was coming back on a visit. The

visit was not to her, nor had she probable share in the enjoyments to be

provided for Lady Caroline’s nephew; and Lottie did not love him to make

his very presence a delight to her. She did not love him--yet. This was

the unexpressed feeling in her mind; but when a girl has got so far as

this it may be supposed that the visit of the lover whom she does not

love--yet, must fill her with a thousand delightful tremors. How could

she doubt his sentiments? What was it that brought him back and back

again to St. Michael’s? And to be led along that flowery way to the

bower of bliss at the end of it, to be persuaded into love by all the

flatteries and worship of a lover so delicately impassioned--could a

girl’s imagination conceive anything more exquisite?--No, she was not in

love--yet---- But there was no reason why she should not be, except the

soft maidenly reluctance, the shy retreat before one who kept advancing,

the instinct of coy resistance to an inevitable delight.

Into this delicate world of happiness, in which there was nothing real,

but all imagination, Lottie was delivered over that bright Sunday. She

had no defence against it, and she did not wish to have any. She gave

herself up to the dream. After that interval of heaviness, of darkness,

when there was no pleasant delusion to support her, and life, with all

its difficulties and dangers, became so real, confronting her at every

point, what an escape it was for Lottie to find herself again under the

dreamy skies of that fool’s paradise! It was the Garden of Eden to her.

She thought it was the true world, and the other the false one. The

vague terror and disgust with which her father’s new plans filled her

mind floated away like a mist; and, as for Law, what so easy as to carry

him with her into the better world where she was going? Her mind in a

moment was lightened of its load. She had left home heavily; she went

back scarcely able to keep from singing in the excess of her

light-heartedness, more lifted above earth than if any positive good had

come to her. So long as the good is coming, and exists in the

imagination only, how much more entrancing is it than anything real that

ever can be ours!

The same event, however, which had so much effect upon Lottie acted upon

her family too in a manner for which she was far from being prepared.

Captain Despard came in as much elated visibly as she was in her heart.

There had been but little intercourse among them since the evening when

the Captain had made those inquiries about Rollo, which Lottie resented

so deeply. The storm had blown over, and she had nominally forgiven Law

for going over to the enemy’s side; but Lottie’s heart had been shut

even against her brother since that night. He had forsaken her, and she

had not been able to pass over his desertion of her cause. However, her

heart had softened with her happiness, and she made his tea for him now

more genially than she had done for weeks before. They seated themselves

round the table with, perhaps, less constraint than usual--a result due

to the smiling aspect of the Captain as well as to the softened

sentiment in Lottie’s heart. Once upon a time a family tea was a

favourite feature in English literature, from Cowper down to Dickens,

not to speak of the more exclusively domestic fiction of which it is the

chosen banquet. A great deal has been said of this nondescript (and

indigestible) meal. But perhaps there must be a drawing of the curtains,

a wheeling-in of the sofa, a suggestion of warmth and comfort in

contradistinction to storms and chills outside, as in the Opium-eater’s

picture of his cottage, to carry out the ideal--circumstances altogether

wanting to the tea of the Despards, which was _eaten_ (_passez-moi le

mot_, for is it not the bread-and-butter that makes the meal?) in the

warmest hour of an August afternoon. The window, indeed, was open, and

the Dean’s Walk, by which the townspeople were coming and going in

considerable numbers, as they always did on Sunday, was visible with

its gay groups, and the prospect outside was more agreeable than the

meal within. Mrs. O’Shaughnessy, next door, had loosed her cap-strings,

and fanned herself at intervals as she sipped her tea. “It’s hot, but

sure it cools you after,” she was saying to her Major. The Despards,

however, were not fat, and did not show the heat like their neighbours.

Law sat at the table and pegged away resolutely at his bread-and-butter,

having nothing to take his mind off his food, and no very exciting

prospect of supper to sustain him. But the Captain took his tea

daintily, as one who had heard of a roast fowl and sausages to be ready

by nine o’clock, and was, therefore, more or less indifferent to the

bread-and-butter. He patted Lottie on the shoulder as she gave him his

tea.

“My child,” he said, “I was wrong the other day. It is not every man

that would own it so frankly; but I have always been a candid man,

though it has damaged me often. When I am in the wrong I am bound to

confess it. Take my hand, Lottie, my love. I made a mistake.”

Lottie looked at him surprised. He had taken her hand and held it,

shaking it, half-playfully, in his own.

“My love,” he said, “you are not so candid as your poor father. You will

get on all the better in the world. I withdraw everything I said,

Lottie. All is going well; all is for the best. I make no doubt you can

manage your own affairs a great deal better than I.”

“What is it you mean, papa?”

“We will say no more, my child. I give you free command over yourself.

That was a fine anthem this afternoon, and I have no doubt those were

well repaid who came from a distance to hear it. Don’t you think so,

Lottie? Many people come from a great distance to hear the service in

the Abbey, and no doubt the Signor made it known that there was to be

such a good anthem to-day.”

Lottie did not make any reply. She looked at him with mingled wonder and

impatience. What did he mean? It had not occurred to her to connect

Rollo with the anthem, but she perceived by the look on her father’s

face that something which would be displeasing to her was in his mind.

“What’s the row?” said Law. “Who was there? I thought it was always the

same old lot.”

“And so it is generally the same old lot. _We_ don’t vary; but when

pretty girls like Lottie say their prayers regularly heaven sends

somebody to hear them. Oh, yes; there is always somebody sent to hear

them. But you are quite right to allow nothing to be said about it, my

child,” said the Captain. “Not a word, on the honour of a gentleman.

Your feelings shall be respected. But it may be a comfort to you, my

love, to feel that whatever happens your father is behind you,

Lottie--knows and approves. My dear, I say no more.”

“By Jove! What is it?” cried Law.

“It is nothing to you,” said his father. “But look here, Law. See that

you don’t go out all over the place and leave your sister by herself,

without anyone to take care of her. My engagements I can’t always give

up, but don’t let me hear that there’s nobody to walk across the road

with Lottie when she’s asked out.”

“Oh, that’s it, is it?” said Law. “I thought they’d had enough of you at

the Deanery, Lottie. That’s going to begin again, then, I suppose?”

“I am not invited to the Deanery,” said Lottie, with as much state and

solemnity as she could summon up, though she trembled; “neither is it

going to begin again. There is no occasion for troubling Law or you

either. I always have taken care of myself hitherto, and I suppose I

shall do it till the end.”

“You need not get on your high horse, my child,” said Captain Despard,

blandly. “Don’t suppose that I will interfere; but it will be a

consolation to you to remember that your father is watching over you,

and that his heart goes with you,” he added, with an unctuous roll in

his voice. He laid his hand for a moment on her head, and said, “Bless

you, my love,” before he turned away. The Captain’s emotion was great;

it almost brought the tears to his manly eyes.

“What _is_ the row?” said Law, when his father had gone. Law’s attention

had been fully occupied during the service with his own affairs, and he

did not know of the reappearance of Rollo. “One would think he was going

to cry over you, Lottie. What have you done? Engagements! he has always

got some engagement or other. I never knew a fellow with such a lot of

friends--I shouldn’t wonder if he was going to sup somewhere to-night. I

wonder what they can see in him,” said Law, with a sigh.

“Law, are you going out too?”

“Oh, I suppose so; there is nothing to do in the house. What do you

suppose a fellow can do? Reading is slow work; and, besides, it’s

Sunday, and it’s wrong to work on Sunday. I shall go out and look round

a bit, and see if I can see anyone I know.”

“Do you ever think, I wonder,” said Lottie--“papa and you--that if it is

so dull for you in the house, it must sometimes be a little dull for

me?”

She was not in the habit of making such appeals, but to-night there was

courage and a sense of emancipation in her which made her strong.

“You? Oh, well, I don’t know--you are a girl,” said Law, “and girls are

used to it. I don’t know what you would do if you wanted to have a

little fun, eh? I dare say you don’t know yourself. Yes, I shouldn’t

wonder if it was dull; but what can anyone do? It’s nature, I suppose,”

said Law. “There isn’t any fun for girls, as there is for us. Well, is

there? How should I know?”

But there was “fun” for Emma and her sisters of the workroom, Law

reminded himself with a compunction. “I’ll tell you what, Lottie,” he

said hastily; “you must just do as other girls do. You must get some one

to walk with you, and talk, and all that, you know. There’s nothing else

to be done; and you might have plenty. There’s that singing fellow, that

young Purcell; they say he’s in love with you. Well, he’s better than

nobody; and you could give him the sack as soon as you saw somebody you

liked better. I thought at one time that Ridsdale----”

“I think, Law,” said Lottie, “you had better go out for your walk.”

He laughed. He was half-pleased to have roused and vexed her, yet

half-sorry too. Poor Lottie! Now that she was abandoned by her grand

admirer and all her fine friends, it must be dull for her, staying in

the house by herself; but then what could he do, or anyone? It was

nature. Nature, perhaps, might be to blame for not providing “fun” for

girls, but it was not for Law to set nature right. When he had got his

hat, however, and brushed his hair before going out, he came back and

looked at Lottie with a compunction. He could not give up meeting Emma

in order to take his sister for a walk, though, indeed, this idea

actually did glance across his mind as a rueful possibility. No, he

could not go; he had promised Emma to meet her in the woods, and he must

keep his word. But he was very sorry for Lottie. What a pity she had

not some one of her own--Purcell, if nobody better! and then, when the

right one came, she might throw him off. But Law did not dare to repeat

his advice to this effect. He went and looked at her remorsefully.

Lottie had seated herself upstairs in the little drawing-room; she was

leaning her elbow on the ledge of the little deep window, and her head

upon her hand. The attitude was pensive; and Law could not help thinking

that to be a girl, and sit there all alone looking out of a window

instead of roaming about as he did, would be something very terrible.

The contrast chilled him and made him momentarily ashamed of himself.

But then he reflected that there were a great many people passing up and

down, and that he had often heard people say it was amusing to sit at a

window. Very likely Lottie thought so; probably, on the whole, she liked

that better than going out. This must be the case, he persuaded himself,

or else she would have been sure to manage to get some companion;

therefore he said nothing to her, but went downstairs very quietly and

let himself out softly, not making any noise with the door. Law had a

very pleasant walk with Emma under the trees, and enjoyed himself, but

occasionally there would pass a shadow over him as he thought of Lottie

sitting at the window in the little still house all alone.

But indeed, for that evening at least, Lottie was not much to be

pitied. She had her dreams to fall back upon. She had what is absolutely

necessary to happiness--not only something to look back to, but

something to look forward to. That is the true secret of

bliss--something that is coming. With that to support us can we not bear

anything? After a while, no doubt, Lottie felt, as she had often felt

before, that it was dull. There was not a sound in the little house;

everybody was out except herself; and it was Sunday, and she could not

get her needlework to occupy her hands and help on her thoughts. As the

brightness waned slowly away, and the softness of the evening lights and

then the dimness of the approaching dark stole on, Lottie had a great

longing to get out of doors; but she could not go and leave the house,

for even the maid was out, having her Sunday walk with her young man. It

was astonishing how many girls had gone wandering past the window, each

with her young man. Not much wonder, perhaps, that Law had suggested

this sole way of a little “fun” for a girl. Poor Law! he did not know

any better; he did not mean any harm. She laughed now at the suggestion

which had made her angry at the time, for to-night Lottie could afford

to laugh. But when she heard the maid-servant come in, Lottie, wearied

with her long vigil, and longing for a breath of cool air after the

confinement of the house, agreed with herself that there would be no

harm in taking one little turn upon the slopes. The townspeople had

mostly gone. Now and then a couple of the old Chevaliers would come

strolling homeward, having taken a longer walk in the calm of the Sunday

evening than their usual turn on the Slopes. Captain Temple and his wife

had gone by arm-in-arm. Perhaps they had been down to the evening

service in the town, perhaps only out for a walk, like everybody else.

Gradually the strangers were disappearing; the people that belonged to

the Precincts were now almost the only people about, and there was no

harm in taking a little walk alone; but it was not a thing Lottie cared

much to do. With a legitimate errand she would go anywhere; but for a

walk! The girl was shy, and full of all those natural conventional

reluctances which cannot be got out of women; but she could not stay in

any longer. She went out with a little blue shawl folded like a

scarf--as was the fashion of the time--over her shoulders, and flitted

quickly along the Dean’s Walk to the slopes. All was sweet in the soft

darkness and in the evening dews, the grass moist, the trees or the sky

sometimes distilling a palpable dewdrop, the air coming softly over all

those miles of country to touch with the tenderest salutation Lottie’s

cheek. She looked out upon the little town nestling at the foot of the

hill with all its twinkling lights, and upon the stars that shone over

the long glimmer of the river, which showed here and there, through all

the valley, pale openings of light in the dark country. How sweet and

still it was! The openness of the horizon, the distance, was the thing

that did Lottie good. She cast her eyes to the very farthest limit of

the world that lay within her sight and drew a long breath. Perhaps it

was this that caught the attention of some one who was passing. Lottie

had seated herself in a corner under a tree, and she did not see this

wayfarer, who was behind her; and the reader knows that she did not sigh

for sorrow, but only to relieve a bosom which was very full of fanciful

anticipations, hopes, and dreams. It was not likely, however, that Mr.

Ashford would know that. He too was taking his evening walk; and when he

heard the sigh in which so many tender and delicious fancies exhaled

into the air, he thought--who could wonder?--that it was somebody in

trouble; and, drawing a little nearer to see if he could help, as was

the nature of the man, found to his great surprise--as she, too,

startled, turned round her face upon him--that it was Lottie Despard who

was occupying the seat which was his favourite seat also. They both said

“I beg your pardon” simultaneously, though it would be hard to tell why.

“I think I have seen you here before,” he said. “You like this time of

the evening, Miss Despard, like myself--and this view?”

“Yes,” said Lottie; “but I have been sitting indoors all the afternoon,

and got tired of it at last. I did not like to come out all by myself;

but I thought no one would see me now.”

“Surely you may come here in all safety by yourself.” The Minor Canon

had too much good breeding to suggest any need of a companion or any

pity for the girl left alone. Then he said suddenly, “This is an

admirable chance for me. The first time we met, Miss Despard, you

mentioned something about which you wished to consult me----”

“Ah!” cried Lottie, coming back out of her dreams. Yes, she had wanted

to consult him, and the opportunity must not be neglected. “It was about

Law, Mr. Ashford. Law--his name is Lawrence, you know, my brother; he is

a great boy, almost a man--more than eighteen. But I am afraid he is

very backward. I want him so very much to stand his examination. It

seems that nothing--nothing can be done without that now.”

“His examination--for what?”

“Oh, Mr. Ashford,” said Lottie, “for anything! I don’t mind what it is.

I thought, perhaps, if you would take him it would make him see the good

of working. We are--poor; I need not make any fuss about saying that;

here we are all poor; and if I could but see Law in an office earning

his living, I think,” cried Lottie, with the solemnity of a martyr, “I

think I should not care what happened. That was all. I wanted him to

come to you, that you might tell us what he would be fit for.”

“He would make a good soldier,” said Mr. Ashford, smiling; “though there

is an examination for that too.”

“There are examinations for everything, I think,” said Lottie, shaking

her head mournfully; “that is the dreadful thing; and you see, Mr.

Ashford, we are poor. He has not a penny; he must work for his living;

and how is he to get started? That is what I am always saying. But what

is the use of speaking? You know what boys are. Perhaps if I had been

able to insist upon it years ago--but then I was very young too. I had

no sense, any more than Law.”

The Minor Canon was greatly touched. The evening dew got into his

eyes--he stood by her in the soft summer darkness, wondering. He was a

great deal older than Lottie--old enough to be her father, he said to

himself; but he had no one to give him this keen, impatient anxiety,

this insight into what boys are. “Was there no one but you to insist

upon it?” he said, in spite of himself.

“Well,” said Lottie meditatively, “do gentlemen--generally--take much

trouble about what boys are doing? I suppose they have got other things

to think of.”

“You have not much opinion of men, Miss Despard,” said the Minor Canon,

with a half-laugh.

“Oh, indeed I have!” cried Lottie. “Why do you say that? I was not

thinking about men--but only---- And then boys themselves, Mr. Ashford;

you know what they are. Oh! I think sometimes if I could put some of me

into him. But you can’t do that. You may talk, and you may coax, and you

may scold, and try every way--but what does it matter? If a boy won’t do

anything, what is to be done with him? That is why I wanted so much, so

very much, to bring him to you.”

“Miss Despard,” said the Minor Canon, “you may trust me that if there is

anything I can do for him I will do it. As it happens, I am precisely in

want of some one to--to do the same work as another pupil I have. That

would be no additional trouble to me, and would not cost anything. Don’t

you see? Let him come to me to-morrow and begin.”

“Oh, Mr. Ashford,” said Lottie, “I knew by your face you were kind--but

how very, very good you are! But then,” she added sorrowfully, “most

likely he could not do the same work as your other pupil. I am afraid he

is very backward. If I were to tell you what he is doing you might know.

He is reading Virgil--a book about as big as himself,” she said, with a

little laugh, that was very near crying. “Won’t you sit down here?”

“Virgil is precisely the book my other pupil is doing,” said Mr.

Ashford, laughing too, very tenderly, at her small joke, poor child!

while she made room for him anxiously on the bench. There they sat

together for a minute in silence--all alone, as it might be, in the

world, nothing but darkness round them, faint streaks of light upon the

horizon, distant twinkles of stars above and homely lamps below. The

man’s heart softened strangely within him over this creature, who, for

all the pleasure she had, came out here, and apologised to him for

coming alone. She who, neglected by everybody, had it in her to push

forward the big lout of a brother into worthy life, putting all her

delicate strength to that labour of Hercules--he felt himself getting

quite foolish, moved beyond all his experiences of emotion, as, at her

eager invitation, he sat down there by her side.

And as he did so other voices and steps became audible among the trees

of somebody coming that way. Lottie had turned to him, and was about to

say something, when the sound of the approaching voices reached them. He

could see her start--then draw herself erect, close into the corner of

the bench. The voices were loudly pitched, and attempted no concealment.

“La, Captain, how dark it is! Let’s go home; mother will be looking for

us,” said one.

“My dear Polly,” said the other--and though Mr. Ashford did not know

Captain Despard, he divined the whole story in a moment as the pair

brushed past arm-in-arm--“my dear Polly, your home will be very close

at hand next time I bring you here.”

Lottie said nothing--her heart jumped up into her throat, beating so

violently that she could not speak. And to the Minor Canon the whole

family story seemed to roll out like the veiled landscape before him as

he looked compassionately at the girl sitting speechless by his side,

while her father and his companion, all unconscious in the darkness,

brushed against her, sitting there unseen under the shadowy trees.

CHAPTER XXII.

A CHANCE FOR LAW.