BOOK VI.

NAME and FAME

A NOVEL

BY ADELINE SERGEANT

_Author of "The Great Mill Street Mystery," "A True Friend," "A Life

Sentence," etc., etc._

Montreal:

JOHN LOVELL & SON,

23 St. Nicholas Street.

[Handwritten: This is the only edition of "Name and Fame" published in

the United States and Canada with my authority, and the only one by the

sale, which I shall profit. Adeline Sergeant.]

Entered according to Act of Parliament in the year 1890, by John Lovell

& Son, in the office of the Minister of Agriculture and Statistics at

Ottawa.

NAME AND FAME

CHAPTER I.

HUSBAND AND WIFE.

It was a brilliant day in June. The sky was cloudless and dazzlingly

blue, but the heat of the sun's rays was tempered by a deliciously cool

breeze, and the foliage of the trees that clothe the pleasant slopes

round the vivacious little town of Aix-les-Bains afforded plenty of

shade to the pedestrian. Aix was, as usual, very crowded and very gay.

German potentates abounded: French notabilities were not wanting: it was

rumored that English royalty was coming. A very motley crowd of divers

nationalities drank the waters every morning and discussed the latest

society scandal. Festivity seemed to haunt the very air of the place,

beaming from the trim white villas with their smart green jalousies, the

tall hotels with crudely tinted flags flying from their roofs, the

cheery little shops with their cheerier _dames de comptoir_ smiling

complacently on the tourists who unwarily bought their goods. Ladies in

gay toilets, with scarlet parasols or floating feathers, made vivid

patches of color against the green background of the gardens, and the

streets were now and then touched into picturesqueness by the passing of

some half-dozen peasants who had come from the neighboring villages to

sell their butter or their eggs. The men in their blue blouses were

mostly lean, dark, and taciturn; the women, small, black-eyed, and

vivacious, with bright-colored petticoats, long earrings, and the

quaintest of round white caps. The silvery whiteness of the lake,

flashing back an answer to the sunlight, gave a peculiarly joyous

radiance to the scene. For water is to a landscape what the eye is to

the human countenance: it gives life and expression; without it, the

most beautiful features may be blank and uninteresting.

But the brightness of the scene did not find an echo in every heart.

"Dame!" said a French waiter, who stood, napkin in hand, at a window of

the Hôtel Venat, watching the passers-by, "there they go, that cold,

sullen English pair, looking as if nothing on earth would make them

smile again!"

A bullet-headed little man in a white apron stepped up to the window and

stared in the direction that Auguste's eyes had taken.

"Tiens, donc! Quelle tournure! But she is superb!" he exclaimed, as if

in remonstrance.

"She is handsome--oui, sans doute; but see how she frowns! I like a

woman who smiles, who coquettes, who knows how to divert herself--like

Mademoiselle Lisette here, queen of my heart and life."

And Auguste bowed sentimentally to a pretty little chambermaid who came

tripping up the stairs at that moment, and laid his hand upon his heart.

"You are too polite, Monsieur Auguste," Lisette responded amicably. "And

at whom are you gazing so earnestly?"

"At the belle Anglaise--you can still see her, if you look--she is

charmingly dressed, but----"

"She is magnificent! simply magnificent," murmured the bullet-headed

Jean, who was not, like his friend, enamored of the pert Lisette. "I

have never seen so splendid an Englishwoman, never! nor one who had so

much the true Parisian air!"

Lisette uttered a shrill little scream of laughter. "Do you know the

reason, mon ami? She is not English at all: she is a compatriot. He--the

husband--_he_ is English; but she is French, I tell you, French to the

finger-tips."

"Voyons; what rooms have they?"

"They are au quatrième--they are poor--poor," said Lisette, with

infinite scorn. "I wait on them a little--not much; they have been here

three days, and one can see----But the gentleman, he is generous. When

madame scolds, he gives me money to buy my forbearance; she has the

temper of a demon, the tongue of a veritable fiend!"

"Ah! He loves her, then!" said Auguste, putting his head on one side.

Lisette snapped her fingers. "Ah, oui! He loves her so well that he will

strangle her one of these days when she says a word too much and he is

in his sombre mood! Quiet as he is, I would not go too far with him, ce

beau monsieur! He will not be patient always--you will see!"

She went on her way, and the waiters remained at the window in the

corridor. The lady and gentlemen of whom they spoke had turned into the

hotel garden, and were walking up and down its gravelled paths,

apparently in silence. Auguste and Jean watched them, as if fascinated

by the sight of the taciturn pair, who now and then were lost to sight

behind a clump of trees or in some shady walk, presently reappearing in

the full sunshine, with the air of those who wish for some reason or

other to show themselves as much as possible.

This, at least, was the impression produced by the air and gait of the

woman; not by those of the man. He walked beside her gravely, somewhat

dejectedly, indeed. There was a look of resignation in his face, which

contrasted forcibly with the flaunting audacity visible in every gesture

of the woman who was his wife.

He was the less noticeable of the two, but still a handsome man in his

way, of a refined and almost scholarly type. He was tall, and although

rather of slender than powerful build, his movements were characterized

by the mingled grace and alertness which may be seen when

well-proportioned limbs are trained to every kind of athletic exercise.

His face, however, was that of the dreamer, not of the athlete. He had a

fine brow, thoughtful brown eyes, a somewhat long nose with sensitive

nostrils, a stern-set mouth, and resolute chin. The spare outlines of

his face, well defined yet delicate withal, sometimes reminded strangers

of Giotto's frescoed head of Dante in his youth. But the mouth was

partly hidden beneath a dark brown moustache; a pity from the artistic

point of view. Refinement was the first and predominating characteristic

of his face; thoughtful melancholy, the second. It was evident, even to

the most casual observer, that this man was eminently unfitted to be the

husband of the woman at his side.

For a woman she was unusually tall. She was also unusually handsome. She

had a magnificent figure, a commanding presence, good features, hair,

and eyes; yet the impression that she produced was anything but

pleasant. The flashing dark eyes were too bold and too defiant; the

carmine on her cheeks was artificially laid on, and her face had been

dabbed with a powder puff in very reckless fashion. Her black hair was

frizzed and tortured in the latest mode, and her dress made in so novel

a style that it looked _outré_, even at a fashionable watering-place.

Dress, bonnet and parasol were scarlet of hue; and the vivid tint was

softened but slightly by the black lace which fell in cascades from her

closely-swathed neck to the hem of her dress, fastened here and there by

diamond pins. If it were possible that, as Lisette had said, Mr. and

Mrs. Alan Walcott were poor, their poverty was not apparent in Mrs.

Walcott's dress. Black and scarlet were certainly becoming to her, but

the effect in broad daylight was too startling for good taste. To a

critical observer, moreover, there was something unpleasantly suggestive

in her movements: the way in which she walked and held her parasol, and

turned her head from side to side, spoke of a desire to attract

attention, and a delight in admiration even of the coarsest and least

complimentary kind.

There was certainly something in the bearing of husband and wife that

attracted notice. Her vivacity and her boldness, a certain weariness and

reluctance in his air, as if he were paraded up and down these garden

walks against his will, led others beside inquisitive French waiters to

watch the movements of the pair. And they were in full view of several

gazers when an unexpected and dramatic incident occurred.

A man who had sauntered out of the hotel into the gardens directed his

steps towards them, and met them face to face as they issued from one of

the side-paths. He was not tall, but he was dapper and agile: his

moustache curled fiercely, and his eyeglass was worn with something of

an aggressive air. He was perfectly dressed, except that--for English

taste--he wore too much jewellery; and from the crown of his shining hat

to the tip of his polished pointed boot he was essentially Parisian--a

dandy of the Boulevards, or rather, perhaps, of the Palais Royal--an

exquisite who prided himself upon the fit of his trousers and the swing

of his Malacca cane.

He paused as he met the Walcotts, and raised his hat with a true French

flourish. The lady laughed, showing a row of very white, even teeth, and

held out her hand. Her husband sprang forward, uttering an angry word of

remonstrance or command. The Frenchman grinned insolently, and answered

with a sneer.

The Englishman seemed to gain in dignity as he replied. His wife laughed

loudly and unpleasantly, however, and then, with a quick movement which

proved him agile as a cat, the Frenchman struck him with his cane across

the face. In another moment, Alan Walcott had taken him by the collar

and wrested the cane from his hand. Whether or no he would have

administered the thrashing that the man deserved must remain an

unsettled question, for hotel servants and functionaries came rushing to

the rescue, guests flocked to the scene in hopes of further excitement,

and all was bustle and confusion. Mrs. Walcott began to scream

violently, as soon as she saw signs of an impending conflict, and was

finally carried into the house in a fit of hysterics.

A very pretty little altercation between the two combatants--who were

separated with difficulty--and the landlord and his myrmidons then

followed. The police arrived rather late on the scene, but were speedily

quieted by assurances that peace was restored, and by the transfer of a

few coins from Alan Walcott's pockets to their own. The aggressor, who

gave his name as Henri de Hauteville, was politely requested to leave

the Hôtel Venat; and Mr. Walcott declared his own intention of

proceeding to Paris next morning. Accordingly the Frenchman speedily

disappeared, but it was noticed that he dropped a word to his enemy,

which Walcott answered by a bend of his head, and that he was seen

shortly afterwards arm-in-arm with a young officer who was known to be

an enthusiast in the matter of duelling.

An hour later Alan Walcott was crossing the hall with a hurried step and

a face expressive of deep anxiety and vexation, when he encountered a

stout, fair Englishman, who greeted him with effusion.

"You here, Walcott? Never thought of meeting you."

"I'm glad to see you, Dalton. I was longing at that very moment for some

one to act as my friend."

"Not in the conventional meaning, I hope," laughed Dalton. "Your way of

putting it suggests a duel--which no Englishman of any sense would

embark in, I should hope!"

Dalton was a fresh-colored, blue-eyed man, of nearly thirty years of

age. His frankness of manner and shrewdness of expression contrasted

forcibly with the subtle dreaminess characteristic of Alan Walcott's

face. Alan eyed him curiously, as if doubtful whether he should proceed.

"I am not altogether an Englishman," he said presently, "which may

account in your eyes for some lack of sense. I want you, as a friend, in

the most conventional manner possible. Come out with me and let us talk

it over."

The two men went out and talked together for upwards of an hour. When

they separated the expression of their faces afforded a curious

contrast. Alan looked defiant, resolved, almost triumphant; but Brooke

Dalton went on his way wagging his head in a depressed and melancholy

manner, as if his soul were afflicted by misgivings of many kinds.

* * * * *

Mr. Alan Walcott had said that he should leave Aix-les-Bains next day,

but the state of his wife's health rendered it impossible for her to

quit the hotel, and he could not very well separate himself from her.

She continued for some time in shrieking hysterics, varied by fainting

fits; and when she became quieter, under the influence of a soporific

administered by the doctor, she declared herself quite too ill and

exhausted to rise from her bed. Her husband remained with her night and

day, until the second morning, when he escaped from her sight and ken

for a couple of hours, and absolutely refused to tell her where he had

been. His refusal seemed to produce a quieting effect upon her. She

became very still, and lay watching him, with a sullen, puzzled look in

her great dark eyes. He took up a paper and began to read, with an

assumption of complete calmness and unconcern; but she saw that he was

paler than usual, and that his hand shook a little as he turned the

pages of his _Galignani_. Presently she asked, in a subdued voice, for

something to drink. He brought her a glass of claret and water, and she

raised herself a little on one arm to take it from him. Suddenly she

uttered a loud cry, and fell back gasping upon her pillows.

"Mon Dieu!" she cried, "there is blood upon your cuff."

Alan looked down hastily. It was true enough: his white cuff was stained

with red.

"You have killed him!" she said. "You have murdered him, you wretch, you

murderer----"

"Not at all," said Walcott with the greatest composure. "Upon my word, I

rather wish I had. I think he deserved it. He has got off very easily."

"You had a meeting?" his wife shrieked, her eyes beginning to flash with

rage.

"We had a meeting. It was for that purpose that I left for two hours

this morning. You don't suppose that I should let myself be struck in

the face without demanding satisfaction? I have enough French blood in

my veins to think it a very natural way of settling such a quarrel----"

"Was he hurt?" she asked, without waiting for him to finish.

"Very slightly. A sword-cut on the shoulder. The seconds interposed, or

we should have gone on----"

"I have no doubt you wanted to kill him! I shall denounce you to the

police!"

"As you please" said her husband indifferently, taking up his paper.

"But M. de Hauteville has retired from the scene: he had a carriage

waiting, and has crossed the frontier by this time. I assure you he is

perfectly safe Switzerland."

There was a taunt in his voice which exasperated his wife's temper

almost to madness.

"Scélérat!" she said, in a hissing, unnatural voice. "You would have

killed him if you could? Beware of my vengeance then, for I swear that

you shall suffer as he has suffered--and worse things too!"

Alan shrugged his shoulders. He had heard threats of this kind too often

to be greatly moved by them. And Mrs. Walcott, after a few ineffectual

remarks of the same sort, began to sob violently, and finally to work

herself into another hysterical fit, during which her husband coolly

rang the bell, and left her to Lisette's not very tender care.

When he returned she was once more quiet and subdued. He noticed that

she was reading a letter, which, at his entrance, she thrust--somewhat

ostentatiously--beneath her pillow. He took no notice. He was tired of

taking notice. As a rule, he let her go her own way. He had been married

for three years, and he had learned that, save in exceptional

circumstances, it was better not to interfere. He was relieved, and

somewhat surprised, when she suddenly declared herself better, and

wishful to leave her bed. Before long she was sitting at an open window,

with a cup of black coffee and a flask of cognac on a table before her,

while Alan fanned her with a great red fan and occasionally bathed her

temples with eau-de-cologne. He paid her these attentions with an air of

gentle gravity which became him well, but the slight fold between his

brows betokened irritation and weariness.

Cora Walcott seemed to delight in keeping him at her beck and call. She

did not let him stir from her side for the whole of that sultry summer

day. She put on a soft and languid manner: she shed tears and tried to

say coaxing things, which were very coldly received; for there was a

hard and evil look in her fine dark eyes that went far to neutralize the

effect of her _câlineries_. Once, indeed, when Alan had gone into an

adjoining room to fetch a vinaigrette, her true feeling found its vent

in a few expressive words.

"Sacré," she muttered, drawing back the red lips from her white teeth,

with the snarl of a vicious dog, "how I hate you, cochon! How I wish

that you were dead!"

And then she smoothed her brows, and smiled at him as he re-entered the

room.

In the course of the evening she made the suggestion that they should

leave Aix-les-Bains next day.

"Certainly," Alan answered, more warmly than usual. "And where shall we

go?"

"Oh, to Paris, I suppose. To Dijon first, of course--if I am strong

enough to travel so far."

Alan was eager to make his preparations for departure, and pleased to

find that his wife was as ready as he to hasten them. Only in one point

did her behavior strike him as peculiar. She announced that she meant to

leave Aix-les-Bains at an early hour, lunch and rest at Culoz, and go on

to Dijon by the afternoon train.

"But why Culoz? Nobody stops at Culoz," he remonstrated.

"Why not Culoz? There is an inn. I suppose we can get some lunch," she

answered. "Besides, I have always meant to go there, to look at the

château on the hill! You English like 'views,' do you not? The 'view'

must be magnificent."

She had never formerly shown any interest in scenery, and Alan stared at

her for a moment with a puzzled look. If Henry de Hauteville had been

likely to join her at Culoz he could have understood this whim of hers;

but de Hauteville was safely lodged by this time in the nearest Swiss

canton, and not at all likely to intercept their journey. He did her

bidding, however, without comprehension of her reasons, as he had done

many a time before. Again, he was discomfited by her behavior in the

train, shortly after their departure from the station at Aix-les-Bains.

She suddenly flung herself back in the corner of the _coupé_ and burst

into a prolonged fit of noisy laughter, which seemed as if it would

choke her by its violence. Alan questioned and remonstrated in vain.

Fortunately, they had the _coupé_ to themselves; but the laughter

continued so long that he began to doubt his wife's sanity, as well as

her self-control. At last she sat up and wiped her eyes.

"You will know why I laugh some day, mon ami," she remarked. "Till then,

ask no questions."

Alan was not disposed to ask them. He remained silent, and his silence

continued until the little station of Culoz was reached.

"We change here, of course," he said. "But why should we leave the

station?"

"Do you want to starve me?" his wife inquired angrily. "We will go to

the inn. There is an inn on the road to the village; I asked about it

yesterday."

Very few English tourists think it worth their while to spend any time

at Culoz, pretty little place although it be; and the landlady of the

quaint auberge, with its wooden, vine-grown piazza, was somewhat amazed

and distracted by the appearance of foreign visitors. The dining-room

seemed to be full of peasants in blue blouses, who had been attending a

fair; but lunch was served to Mr. and Mrs. Walcott in the open air, on

the verandah. Cora grumbled openly at the simple fare provided; and Alan

thought how charming would be the scene and the rustic meal if only his

companion were more congenial. For himself, he was quite satisfied with

the long French loaf, the skinny chicken, the well-salted cream cheese,

and the rough red _vin du pays_. The blue sky, the lovely view of

mountain and valley, lake and grove, the soft wind stirring the vine

leaves on the trellis-work of the verandah, would have given him unmixed

delight if he had been alone. But all was spoiled by the presence of an

unloved and unloving wife.

* * * * *

The road to the château leads upwards from Culoz, and is a trifle hot

and dusty. Alan wondered dumbly whether Cora had an object in dragging

him so far away from the inn, and what that object was. But he took

small annoyances patiently. It was something gained, at least, that his

wife should seem content. Anything was better than tearing rage or

violent hysterical weeping, which were the phases of temper most

frequently presented to his view. On this occasion she appeared pleased

and happy. He surprised a touch of malignity in her tones, a glance of

evil meaning now and then; but he did not greatly care. Cora could not

keep a secret. If she had any ill-will or ill intention towards him he

was sure to know it before long.

"I am tired," she said at last, abruptly. "Let us sit down and rest.

Look, here is an entrance into the park of the château. Shall we go in?"

"Is it open to the public?" said Alan, with an Englishman's instinctive

fear of trespassing. For, although he had had a French grandmother, and

sometimes boasted himself of French descent, he was essentially English

in his ideas. Cora laughed him to scorn.

"I go where I will," she said, "and nobody finds it in his heart to turn

me out. Courage, mon ami, I will protect you, if necessary. Follow me!"

Piqued by her tone, he opened the gate for her, and they passed from the

hot, white road into the green demesnes of the Count who owned the

château above Culoz. It struck Alan that his wife knew the way

wonderfully well. She turned without hesitation into a path which led

them to a wooden seat shaded by two great trees, and so situated that it

could not be seen by anyone passing on the high road. Here she seated

herself and looked up at her husband with a defiant smile.

"You have been here before?" he said suddenly.

She nodded. "Precisely, mon ami, I have been here before. And with whom?

With M. de Hauteville, when you imagined me suffering from a migraine a

few days ago. Surely you did not think that it was his first appearance

when he arrived at the hotel, the day before yesterday?"

"I do not wish to discuss M. de Hauteville," said Alan turning away.

"But perhaps I wish to discuss him. We discussed _you_ at full

length--that day last week. We chronicled your vices, your weaknesses,

your meannesses in detail. One thing I might have told him, which I left

out--the fact that you are no gentleman, not even bourgeois--a mere

peasant clown. He would not have let you measure swords with him if he

had known the baseness of your origin, my friend!"

Alan's lips moved as if he would have spoken, but he restrained himself.

He saw that she wanted him to respond, to lose his temper, to give her

some cause of complaint, some opening for recrimination; and he resolved

that he would not yield to her desire. She might abuse him as she would

and he would not reply. She would cease when she was tired--and not till

then.

"You are a mean-spirited creature!" she said, her eyes flashing hatred

at him as she spoke. "You have chained me to you all these years,

although you know that I loathe the very sight of you, that I have

worshiped Henri, my lover, all the while. Who but a base, vile wretch

would not have given me my freedom? You have known all the time that he

loved me, and you have pretended ignorance because you did not want to

let me go. From the moment I found this out, I have hated and despised

you. You have no courage, no spirit; there is nothing even to be afraid

of in you. You would be brutal if you dared, but you do not dare. You

can be spiteful and treacherous and villainous, that is all. And I hate

you for all that you are and all that you do not dare to be!"

Alan ground his teeth, in a moment's raging desire to bring the woman to

her senses by some actual exertion of his physical strength. But the

impulse of anger lasted only for a moment. He knew that half her rage

was simulated--that she was lashing herself up in preparation for some

tremendous crisis, and all that he could do was to wait for it in

silence. She had risen to her feet as she spoke. He rose too and leaned

against the trunk of a tree, while she stormed and raved like a madwoman

for some minutes in front of him.

"Now," she said at last, "you know what I think of you, how I hate you,

how I despise you. But it is not enough. My father shot down twenty of

his enemies in the siege of Paris. Do you think that his daughter is a

coward, to be trampled on by a brutal, cold-blooded Englishman? No!

Because I hate you, and because you have tried to kill the man I love,

and because you are too mean and vile to live--I will kill _you_!"

Her hand darted to the bosom of her dress. Before Alan could stop

her--almost before he realized what she was doing--she had drawn out a

little pistol, cocked it, and pulled the trigger. But her hurry at the

last moment spoiled her aim. Alan felt a sting in the left arm, and knew

that she had so far succeeded in her intentions; but with his right hand

he was able to snatch the pistol from her, and to fling it far into the

brushwood.

Then came the reaction. She burst into loud, screaming sobs and tears,

and flung herself on the ground, where she writhed for a time like one

in convulsions. Alan seated himself, feeling somewhat sick and faint,

and waited for the storm to spend itself. Some time elapsed before she

became calm; but at last she raised herself panting from the ground and

looked half timorously at her husband. His coolness and quietness often

enraged, but now and then it frightened her.

"If you have not another pistol with you," said Alan, "you cannot kill

me just now. Perhaps you have done enough to satisfy yourself for the

moment. What do you propose to do next?"

"What do _you_ mean to do?" she asked sullenly. "Of course, you can

follow me and give me up to the police."

"I shall not do that."

"I will not return with you," she said in a furious tone.

"That is natural," Alan agreed politely. "What then?"

"I told you I knew this place," she answered. "I am to meet a friend

upon the road, half a mile further on. I am going there now. He will

take me to the next station on the line."

"Admirably planned!" said Alan. "Every detail fits in to perfection."

"And I shall never come back," she said, looking at him spitefully.

For answer, he raised his hat. She turned on her heel, went down the

slope towards the road, and disappeared. It was a strange parting

between husband and wife. Not a single feeling of reluctance existed in

the mind of either; only a fixed resolve to have done with each other

henceforth and for ever.

Alan bound up his wounds as well as he could, and retraced his steps to

Culoz. He would have done better, possibly, to avoid the place. People

stared at him curiously as he passed them by. Why had he come back

alone? What had he done with the beautiful lady who had accompanied him

when he set forth?

"Hé, monsieur," tried the black-eyed dame of the auberge, leaning over

the rail of the verandah, as he passed: "ou donc est madame? Est-ce

qu'elle ne revient pas?"

"Madame est partie," said Alan continuing his walk without turning

round. The aubergiste looked after him in amaze. Where could madame have

gone? There was no other road to the station, and she had been watching

for the English milord and his lady for the last hour and a half! What

had he done with madame?

It was a matter of speculation which lasted her for many a day, and was

often recounted to new comers. It became the general opinion at Culoz

that the Englishman had in some unaccountable manner killed his wife and

disposed mysteriously of her body. But although search was made for it

high and low, the murdered body was never found. Nevertheless, the

stranger's guilt remained a tradition of the neighborhood, and the story

of that marvelous disappearance is related by the villagers unto this

day.

Alan went on his way rejoicing, although in somewhat grim and

shame-faced wise. For three years he had been a miserable slave. Now he

was free! And he determined that he would never submit to bonds again.

CHAPTER II.

AT THE RECTORY.

About the very time when Alan Walcott, at the age of three-and-twenty,

was making a hasty match with the daughter of a French refugee--a match

bitterly deplored before the first few weeks of married life were

over--events, which afterwards very greatly affected his career, were

quickly shaping themselves in a sleepy little English village not far

from the place where he was born.

Angleford, a mere handful of red-brick cottages, five miles from a

railway station, was little known to the outer world. Its nearest

market-town was Dorminster, and the village of Thorley lay between

Angleford and the county town. Birchmead, a hamlet which had some repute

of its own as a particularly healthy place, stood further down the river

on which Angleford was built, and its merits generally threw those of

neighboring villages into the shade.

But Angleford was in itself a pretty little nook, and its inhabitants

somewhat prided themselves on its seclusion from the world. These

inhabitants, it must be confessed, were few. It had once been a larger

and more important place, but had gradually dwindled away until the

village contained less than three hundred persons, chiefly laborers and

small shop-keepers. Beside these, there were the doctor, and his wife,

the rector and his family, and the squire--a childless widower, who was

of rather less account than anybody else in the parish.

The Rectory was a rambling, long, low, red-brick house standing in

prettily-wooded grounds, bordered by the river, on the other side of

which lay the park belonging to the squire. The park ran for some

distance on both sides of the stream, and the Rectory grounds were, so

to speak, taken out of the very midst of the squire's, demesne. The

continuation of wooded ground on either side the narrow winding river

made the place particularly picturesque; and it was a favorite amusement

for the rector's son and daughter to push a rather crazy boat out of the

little boat-house at the foot of the garden, and row up and down those

reaches of the stream "between the bridges," which were navigable. One

of the bridges warned them of the weir, which it was not very safe to

approach; and beyond the other, three miles further down and close to

Birchmead, the stream was shallow and clogged with reeds. But within

these limits there was a peaceful tranquil beauty which made the boat a

favorite resting place for the Rectory people during the long summer

evenings and afternoons.

It was two o'clock on a late autumn afternoon, when a girl of sixteen

came out of the Rectory door, which always stood hospitably open in fine

weather, and walked to the boat-house, as if intending to launch out

upon the water. The day was sunny on the whole, but not cloudless: the

sun shone out brightly every now and then, and was again obscured by a

filmy haze, such as rises so easily from the low-lying land in Essex.

But the golden haze softened the distant outlines of wood and meadow,

and the sun's beams rested tenderly upon the rapidly stripping branches,

where a few rustling leaves still told of their departed glories. The

long undefined shadows of the trees stretched far across the wide lawn,

scarcely moving in the profound stillness of the air; and a whole

assembly of birds kept up a low-toned conversation in the bushes, as if

the day were hardly bright enough to warrant a full chorus of concerted

song. It was a tender, wistful kind of day, such as comes sometimes in

the fall of the year, before the advent of frost. And a certain affinity

with the day was visible in the face of the girl who had walked down to

the riverside. There was no melancholy in her expression: indeed, a very

sweet and happy smile played about the corners of her sensitive mouth;

but a slightly wistful look in the long-lashed grey eyes lent an

unconscious pathos to the delicate face. But, although delicate, the

face was anything but weak. The features were clearly cut; the mouth and

chin expressed decision as well as sensibility; and beneath the thick,

fine waves of shining brown hair, the forehead was broad and

well-developed. Without pretension to actual beauty or any kind of

perfection, the face was one likely to attract and then to charm;

gentleness, thoughtfulness, intellectual power, might be read in those

fair features, as well as an almost infantine candor and innocence, and

the subtle and all too-transient bloom of extreme youth. Her hair, which

constituted one of her best "points," was simply parted in the middle,

fastened with a clasp at the nape of her neck, and then allowed to fall

in a smooth, shining shower down to her waist. Mrs. Campion, who had

been something of a beauty in her young days, was given to lamenting

that Lettice's hair was not golden, as hers had been; but the clear soft

brown of the girl's abundant tresses had a beauty of it's own; and, as

it waved over her light woollen frock of grey-green hue, it gave her an

air of peculiar appropriateness to the scene--as of a wood-nymph, who

bore the colors of the forest-trees from which she sprang.

Such, at any rate, was the fancy of a man whose canoe came shooting down

the river at this moment, like an arrow from a bow. He slackened pace as

he came near the Rectory garden, and peered through the tangled branches

which surrounded the old black boat-house, to catch another glimpse of

Lettice. He wondered that she did not notice him: his red and white

blazer and jaunty cap made him a somewhat conspicuous object in this

quiet country place; and she must have heard the long strokes of his

oars. But she remained silent, apparently examining the fastenings of

the boat; absorbed and tranquil, with a happy smile upon her lips.

"Good afternoon, Miss Campion: can I help you there in any way?" he

shouted at last, letting his boat slide past the boat-house entrance,

and then bringing it round to the little flight of grassy steps cut in

the bank from the lawn to the river.

"Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Dalton. Thank you, no; I don't want any help,"

said Lettice; but the young man had already set foot upon the lawn and

was advancing towards her. He was the nephew and heir of the childless

Squire at Angleford Manor, and he occasionally spent a few weeks with

his uncle in the country. Old Mr. Dalton was not fond of Angleford,

however, and the Campions did not see much of him and his nephew.

Brooke Dalton was six-and-twenty, a manly, well-looking young fellow,

with fair hair and bright blue eyes. He was not very tall, and had

already begun to develop a tendency towards stoutness, which gave him

considerable trouble in after years. At present he kept it down by heavy

doses of physical exercise, so that it amounted only to a little unusual

fullness of body and the suspicion of a double chin. His enemies called

him fat. His friends declared that his sunshiny look of prosperity and

good-humor was worth any amount of beauty, and that it would be a

positive loss to the world if he were even a trifle thinner. And Brooke

Dalton was a man of many friends.

Lettice greeted him with a smile. "So you are here again," she said.

"Yes, I've been here a day or two. Have you heard from Sydney yet?"

"No, and we are dreadfully anxious. But papa says we shall hear very

soon now."

"I don't suppose you need have the slightest anxiety. Sydney is sure to

do well: he was always a clever fellow."

"Yes, but he has had no teaching except from papa: and papa torments

himself with the idea that there may be better teachers than himself at

Cambridge--which I am sure there couldn't be. And I am sure he will be

disappointed if Sydney does not get at least an exhibition, although he

tries to pretend that he will not mind."

"If he does not get it this year, he will be the surer of it next time."

"Yes," said Lettice rather doubtfully. "But I wish papa were not quite

so anxious."

"Did he go to Cambridge with Sydney?"

"Yes, and stayed for a day or two; but he said he was rather glad to get

home again--there had been so many changes since he was there."

"Here he comes," said Brooke, turning round.

The rector was a dignified-looking man, with a tall figure, handsome

features, and hair and beard which had of late been growing very grey.

He greeted Dalton cordially, and at once began to speak of his hopes and

expectations for his son. To all of these Dalton responded

good-humoredly. "Sydney has plenty of brains: he is is sure to do well,"

he said.

"Oh, I don't know--I don't know. I've been his only tutor, and I may not

have laid the foundations with sufficient care. I shall not be at all

surprised if he fails. Indeed"--with a transparent affectation of

indifference--"I shall not be sorry to have him back for another year.

He is not quite eighteen, you know. And Lettice will be glad to have him

again."

"But I want him to succeed!" said Lettice eagerly.

"Of course you do. And he _will_ succeed," said Brooke; an assurance

which caused her to flash a glad look of gratitude to him in reply.

"Lettice has been Sydney's companion in his studies," said Mr. Campion,

patting her hand gently with his long white fingers. "She has been very

industrious and has got on very well, but I daresay she will be pleased

to have a holiday when he is gone."

"Yes, I daresay," said Brooke; and then, looking at Lettice, he saw the

manifestation of some strong feeling which he did not understand. The

girl flushed hotly and withdrew her hand from her father's arm. The

tears suddenly came into her eyes.

"I never wanted a holiday," she said, in a hurt tone.

"No, no, you were always a good girl," returned her father absently--his

eyes had wandered away from her to the high-road beyond the glebe. "But

of course there is a limit to a girl's powers; she can't compete with a

boy beyond a certain point. Is not that a cab, Lettice? Surely it must

be Sydney, and he has came at last. Well, now we shall know the result!"

"I'll go to the fence and look," said Lettice, running away. The tears

of mortification and distress were still smarting in her eyes. Why

should her father depreciate her to their neighbor because she was a

girl? She did not mind Mr. Dalton's opinion of her, but it was hard that

her father should give her no credit for the work that she had done in

the study at his side. Step by step she had kept pace with her brother:

sometimes he had excelled her, sometimes she thought that she was

outstripping him. Now in the hour of his possible success (of which she

would be proud and glad), why should her father seem to undervalue her

powers and her industry? They would never bring her the guerdon that

might fall to Sydney's lot; but she felt that she, too, had a right to

her father's praise.

She had been vaguely hurt during Sydney's absence to find that Mr.

Campion did not seem disposed to allow her to go on working alone with

him. "Wait, my dear, wait," he had said to her, when she came to him as

usual, "let us see how Sydney's examination turns out. If he comes back

to us for another year you can go on with him. If not--well, you are a

girl, it does not matter so much for _you_; and your mother complains

that you do not sit with her sufficiently. Take a holiday just now, we

will go on when Sydney comes back."

But in this, Lettice's first separation from her beloved brother, she

had no heart for a holiday. She would have been glad of hard work to

take her out of herself. She was anxious, sad, _dés[oe]uvrée_, and if

she had not been taught all her life to look on failure in an

examination as something disgraceful, she would have earnestly hoped

that Sydney might lose the scholarship for which he was competing.

Brooke Dalton saw that his presence was scarcely desired just then, and

took his leave, meditating as he pulled up the river on Lettice's

reddened cheeks and pretty tear-filled eyes. "I suppose she thinks

she'll miss her brother when he goes away," he decided at length, "and

no doubt she will, for a time; but it is just as well--what does a girl

want with all that Latin and Greek? It will only serve to make her

forget to brush her hair and wear a frock becomingly. Of course she's

clever, but I should not care for that sort of cleverness in a

sister--or a wife." He thought again of the girl's soft grey eyes. But

he had a hundred other preoccupations, and her image very soon faded

from his brain.

Lettice ran to the fence to look at the cab, but Mr. Campion turned at

once to the gateway and walked out into the road. He had not been

mistaken, it was Sydney, indeed; and as soon as the young fellow saw his

father he stopped the vehicle, told the driver to go on to the Rectory

with his portmanteau, and turned to his father with a triumphant smile.

Lettice did not meet the pair for a minute or two, so the son's

communication was made first to Mr. Campion alone.

"Here I am, sir!" was the young man's greeting, "turned up again like a

bad half-penny."

"Welcome anyhow, my boy," said the rector, "and sterling coin, I'll

warrant, however much you may malign yourself." He was too nervous to

ask a direct question about his son's success. "We have been very dull

without you. Lettice is counting on your help to break in her pony to

the saddle."

"You mustn't be dull after a week's absence. What would you do if I had

to be more than half the year at Cambridge?"

"Ah, that would be a different thing. Have they given you an exhibition

then?"

"Well, not exactly that." The rector's face fell, but it brightened as

Sydney proceeded with a touch of youthful pomposity. "Your old pupil is

a Scholar of Trinity."

The rector was carrying his cane as he walked along, and when Sydney had

told his good news he stopped short, his face aglow, and for lack of any

more eloquent mode of expressing his satisfaction, raised it in the air

and brought it down with sounding emphasis on his companion's back.

Sydney laughed.

"Laudatur et alget," he said. "How many stripes would it have been if I

had come home disgraced?"

"The stripes would have been my portion in that case," the rector

answered, with a hearty laugh. He had not been so jovial for many

months.

Then Lettice came running up, and had to be told the news, and clung to

Sydney's neck with kisses, which he graciously permitted rather than

returned. But he was gratified by her affection, as well as by the pride

and pleasure which his father took in his success, and the less

discriminating, but equally warm congratulations and caresses showered

upon him by his mother.

Indeed for the rest of the day, Sydney was caressed and complimented to

his heart's content. He preferred the compliments to the caresses, and

he was not unloving to his parents, although he repulsed Lettice when

she attempted to kiss him more than once. He had come back from

Cambridge with an added sense of manliness and importance, which did not

sit ill upon his handsome face and the frank confidence of his manner.

It was Sydney who had inherited the golden hair and regular features

which, as his mother said, ought to have belonged to Lettice and not to

him; but she loved him all the more dearly for his resemblance to her

family and to herself. It escaped her observation that Sydney's

blue-grey eyes were keener, his mouth more firmly closed and his jaw

squarer than those of most boys or men, and betokened, if physiognomy

goes for anything, a new departure in character and intellect from the

ways in which Mrs. Campion and her family had always walked. A fair,

roseate complexion, and a winning manner, served to disguise these

points of difference; and Mrs. Campion had not quick sight for anything

which did not lie upon the surface, in the character of those with whom

she had to do.

She was usually to be found in the drawing-room--a faded, pretty woman,

little over fifty years of age, but with the delicate and enfeebled air

of the semi-invalid--a white shawl round her shoulders, a bit of

knitting or embroidery between her incapable, uncertain fingers. Her

hair was very grey, but the curliness had never gone out of it, and it

sprang so crisply and picturesquely from her white, unwrinkled forehead

that it seemed a pity to hide any of the pretty waves even by the crown

of fine old lace which Mrs. Campion loved. She was a woman at whom no

one could look without a sense of artistic satisfaction, for her face

was still charming, and her dress delicately neat and becoming. As for

her mental and moral qualities, she was perfectly well satisfied with

them, and her husband was as satisfied as she--although from a somewhat

different point of view. And as she very properly remarked, if her

husband were satisfied with her, she did not know why she should be

called upon to regard any adverse opinion of the outer world. At the

same time she was an ardent disciple of Mrs. Grundy.

How this woman came to be the mother of a child like Lettice, it were,

indeed, hard to say. Sydney was fashioned more or less after Mrs.

Campion's own heart: he was brisk, practical, unimaginative--of a type

that she to some extent understood; but Lettice with her large heart,

her warm and passionate nature, her keen sensibilities and tender

conscience, was a continual puzzle to her mother. Especially at this

period of the girl's life, when new powers were developing and new

instincts coming into existence--the very time when a girl most needs

the help and comfort of a mother's tender comprehension--Mrs. Campion

and Lettice fell hopelessly apart. Lettice's absorption in her studies

did not seem right in Mrs. Campion's eyes: she longed with all her soul

to set her daughter down to crewel-work and fancy knitting, and her one

comfort in view of Sydney's approaching separation from his home was her

hope that, when he was gone, Lettice would give up Latin and Greek and

become like other girls. She was ignorantly proud of Sydney's successes:

she was quite as ignorantly ashamed of Lettice's achievements in the

same lines of study.

"I can never forget," she said to Lettice that evening, when the

rector and his son were discussing Cambridge and examination papers

in the study, while the mother and her daughter occupied the

drawing-room--Lettice, indeed, wild to join her father and brother in

the study and glean every possible fragment of information concerning

the place which she had been taught to reverence, but far too dutiful to

her mother to leave her alone when Mrs. Campion seemed inclined to

talk--"I can never forget that Sydney learned his alphabet at my knee. I

taught him to spell, at any rate; and if your father had not insisted on

taking the teaching out of my hands when he was seven years old, I am

convinced that I should have done great things with him."

"Surely he has done great things already, mamma!" Lettice said with

enthusiasm.

"Oh, yes!" said Mrs. Campion with a sigh. "But I don't think your father

has given quite the bias to his mind that I should have liked best. I

have always hoped that he would spend his strength in the service of the

Church; but----You have not heard him say much about his future career,

have you, Lettice?"

"I don't think he has considered it particularly," Lettice answered.

"But he never speaks of taking Orders; he talked of the Bar the other

day. There's no reason why he should make up his mind so soon, is there,

mamma?"

"No, dear, no. But I am quite sure that if he went into the Church he

would be a Bishop," said Mrs. Campion, with conviction. "And I should

like him to be a Bishop."

"Well, perhaps he will be Lord Chancellor instead," said Lettice,

merrily.

"There can be no doubt, my dear," said her mother, "that a Bishop of the

Anglican Church is able to carry himself with more dignity and

distinction in everyday life than a Lord Chancellor, who is only

dignified when he is on the Bench. I think that Sydney would make an

excellent Bishop--quite the most distinguished Bishop of the day."

It was not until next morning that Lettice had time to ply her brother

with questions as to his examination and his Cambridge experiences

generally. She did not ask about the visit to London which he had also

paid. She had been to London herself, and could go there any day. But

Cambridge!--the goal of Sydney's aspirations--the place where (the girl

believed) intellectual success or failure was of such paramount

importance--what was that like?

Sydney was ready to hold forth. He liked the position of instructor and

was not insensible to the flattery of Lettice's intentness on his

answers. But he was a little dismayed by one of her questions, which

showed the direction of her thoughts.

"Did you hear anything about the women's college, Sydney?" For Girton

and Newnham were less well known then than they are now.

"Women's colleges! No, indeed. At least, I heard them laughed at several

times. They're no good."

"Why not?" said Lettice, wistfully.

"Now, Lettice," said the youthful mentor, severe in boyish wisdom, "I

hope you are not going to take fancies into your head about going to

Cambridge yourself. I should not like it at all. I'm not going to have

_my_ sister laughed at and sneered at every time she walks out. I don't

want to be made a laughing-stock. Nice girls stay at home with their

mothers; they don't go to colleges and make themselves peculiar."

"I am not going to be peculiar; but I don't want to forget all I have

learned with you," said Lettice, quickly.

"You have learned too much already," said the autocrat, whose views

concerning women's education had developed since his short stay in

Cambridge. "Girls don't want Latin and Greek; they want music and

needlework, and all that sort of thing. I don't want my sister to be a

blue-stocking."

Lettice felt that her lot in life ought not to be settled for her simply

as Sydney's sister--that she had an individuality of her own. But the

feeling was too vague to put into words; and after Syndey had left her,

in obedience to a call from his father, she sat on in the long, low room

with its cushioned window-seats and book-covered walls--the dear old

room in which she had spent so many happy hours with her teacher and her

fellow-pupil--and wondered what would become of her when Sydney was

really gone; whether all those happy days were over, and she must

henceforth content herself with a life at Mrs. Campion's side, where it

was high treason to glance at any book that was neither a devotional

work nor a novel. Lettice loved her mother, but the prospect did not

strike her as either brilliant or cheering.

It was the beginning, although at first she knew it not, of a new

era in her life. Her happy childhood was over; she was bound henceforth

to take up the heavy burden which custom lays on the shoulders of so

many women: the burden of trivial care, unchanging routine, petty

conventionalities--

"Heavy as frost and deep almost as life."

Sydney went out into the world to fight; Lettice sat in idleness at

home; and society, as well as the rector and his wife, judged this

division of labor to be fair and right. But to Lettice, whose courage

was high and whose will and intellect were strong, it seemed a terrible

injustice that she might not fight and labor too. She longed for

expansion: for a wider field and sharper weapons wherewith to contest

the battle; and she longed in vain. During her father's lifetime it

became more and more impossible for her to leave home. She was

five-and-twenty before she breathed a larger air than that of Angleford.

CHAPTER III.

PROGRESS.

In due time, Sydney proceeded to Cambridge, and Lettice was left alone.

The further development of brother and sister can scarcely be understood

without a retrospective glance at their own and their parents' history.

The Reverend Lawrence Campion, Rector of Angleford, was at this time a

prosperous and contented man. Before he reached his fortieth year, he

had been presented by an old college friend to a comfortable living.

Married to the woman of his early choice, he had become the father of

two straight-limbed, healthy, and intelligent children; and then, for

another twenty years, he felt that he would not care to change his lot

with that of the most enviable of his fellow-creatures.

Being himself a scholar and a student, he determined that his boy and

girl, so far as he could shape their lives, should be scholars also. To

teach them all he knew was henceforth his chief occupation; for he would

not hand over to another a task which for him was a simple labor of

love. Day by day he sat between them in his comfortable study, where

roses tapped at the lozenge-shaped window panes all through the summer,

and in winter the glow of the great logs upon the hearth was reflected

from the polished binding and gilt lettering of his books in a thousand

autumnal hues, as pleasing to his eyes as the tints of the summer

flowers. Day by day he sat between his children, patiently laying the

foundation of all they could thereafter learn or know. He made no

distinction for age or sex; and in their case, at any rate, nature had

set no stigma of inferiority on the intelligence of the girl. Sydney was

the older of the two by eighteen months, and at first it seemed as

though his mind was readier to grasp a new idea; but there awoke in

Lettice a spirit of generous rivalry and resolution, which saved her

from being far out-stripped by her brother. Together they studied Greek

and Latin; they talked French and read German; they picked up as much of

mathematics as their father could explain to them--which was little

enough; and, best of all, they developed a literary faculty such as does

not always accompany a knowledge of half-a-dozen dead and living

languages.

The day came when Mr. Campion, not without misgiving, resolved to test

the value of the education which he had given to his children. He had

held a fellowship at Peterhouse up to the time of his marriage, and had

intended that Sydney should try for a scholarship at the same college.

But the boy aimed at a higher mark; he was bent on being a Scholar of

Trinity. Perhaps it might have done him good to fail once or twice on

the threshold of his life, had his father assured himself beforehand

that he would not be disappointed if his pupil was sent back to him for

another year of preparation. But, as we have already seen, Sidney

succeeded, and, if the truth must be told, Mr. Campion was in no way

surprised at his success.

From that time forward none of the Campions ever dreamed of failure in

connection with Sydney's efforts. He certainly did not dream of failure

for himself. He had that sublime confidence which swells the heart of

every young man in the flush of his first victory. We laugh in the

middle age at the ambitions which we nursed at twenty; but we did not

laugh when the divine breath was in us, and when our faith removed

mountains of difficulty from our path.

Sydney's career at Cambridge was one long triumph. He gained the Craven

and Porson scholarships; his epigrams were quoted by college tutors as

models of vigor and elegance; he was President of the Union; he took an

excellent degree, and was elected to a fellowship in due course. He had,

in fact, done brilliant things; and at the age of twenty-four he was--to

those who knew him best, and especially to those who liked him

least--that shining, glorified, inspired, and yet sophisticated product

of modern university culture, an academic prig. The word is not of

necessity a term of reproach. Perhaps we are all prigs at some season in

our lives, if we happen to have any inherent power of doing great

things. There are lovable prigs, who grow into admirable men and women;

but, alas! for the prig whose self-love coils round him like a snake,

until it crushes out the ingenuous fervor of youth, and perverts the

noblest aspirations of manhood!

From Cambridge Sydney went to London, and was called to the bar. Here,

of course, his progress was not so rapid. Briefs do not come for

wishing, nor even for merit alone. Nevertheless he was advancing year by

year in the estimation of good judges; and it was known to his father,

and to his intimate friends, that he only waited a favorable opportunity

to stand for a seat in parliament.

At Angleford, in the meantime, they watched his career with proud hearts

and loving sympathy. Mrs. Campion, in particular, doted on her son. She

even scanned the paper every morning, never by any chance missing an

item of law intelligence, where occasionally she would be rewarded by

coming across Sydney's name. She would not have considered any

distinction, however great, to be more than his due.

Lettice never thought of disagreeing with her mother when she sang the

praises of Sydney; but it must be confessed that both the rector and his

wife displayed less than their ordinary balance of judgment in

discussing the merits of their son. They unconsciously did much

injustice to the girl, by their excessive adulation of her brother, and

her interests were constantly sacrificed to his. She would have been the

last to admit that it was so; but the fact was clear enough to the few

persons who used to visit them at Angleford. Her friend, Clara Graham,

for instance, the wife of a London journalist, who came down now and

then to spend a holiday in her native village, would attempt to

commiserate Lettice on the hardness of her lot; but Lettice would not

listen to anything of the kind. She was too loyal to permit a word to be

spoken in her presence which might seem to reflect upon her parents or

her brother.

Yet it would have been impossible that she should not be in some way

affected by the change which had come over her life since Sydney went to

Cambridge. From that day her regular reading with her father had ceased,

and she was left to direct her studies as she thought best. Mr. Campion

was almost entirely absorbed in the prospects of his son, and if Lettice

needed his assistance she had to ask for it, often more than once. The

consequence was that she soon gave up asking, and her mind, left to its

own devices, gradually found its true bent. She did not read much more

Latin or Greek, but devoured all the Modern literature that came in her

way. After that she began to write--not fiction in the first instance,

but more or less solid essays on criticism and social philosophy,

following the pattern of certain writers in the half-crown monthly

magazines, which her father was wont to take in. If she had known that

the time would come when she would have to earn her living by her pen,

she could scarcely have adopted a better plan to prepare herself for the

task.

In the first instance, whatever she did in this way had been for her own

pleasure and distraction, without any clear idea of turning her

abilities to practical account. She had no inclination for an idle life,

but there was a limited period during which it rested with her father to

say what her occupation as a woman should be. When Sidney went to

Cambridge, Lettice had entreated that she might be sent to Girton or

Newnham; but the young Scholar of Trinity had fought shy of the notion,

and it was dropped at once. That, indeed, was the beginning of Lettice's

isolation--the beginning of a kind of mental estrangement from her

brother, which the lapse of time was to widen and perpetuate.

Mr. Campion and his wife were by no means unkind to their daughter; they

simply put Sydney first in all their plans and anticipations of the

future. Her education was supposed to be complete; her lot was to be

cast at home, and not in the rough outer world, where men compete and

struggle for the mastery. If she had complained, they might not have

been shocked, but they would have been immeasurably astonished. The

rector had given her an excellent training, and though his strongest

motive was the desire to stimulate and encourage his son, no doubt he

had her interests in view at the same time. But when he finished with

Sydney he finished with Lettice, and it never occurred to him that there

was any injustice in suddenly withdrawing from her the arm on which he

had taught her to lean.

She did not complain. Yet as time went on she could not shut her eyes to

Sydney's habit of referring every question to the test of personal

expediency. It was her first great disillusion, but the pain which it

caused her was on her parents' behalf rather than on her own. They were

the chief sufferers; they gave him so much and received so little in

return. To be sure, Sydney was only what they had made him. They bade

him "take," in language which he could easily understand, but their

craving for love, for tenderness, for a share in his hopes, ambitions,

resolutions, and triumphs, found no entrance to his understanding.

Sydney had spent a large sum of money at Cambridge, and had left heavy

debts behind him, although his father had paid without remonstrance all

the accounts which he suffered to reach the old man's hands. He had what

are called expensive tastes; in other words, he bought what he coveted,

and did not count the cost. The same thing went on in London, and Mr.

Campion soon found that his income, good as it was, fell short of the

demands which were made upon it.

The rector himself had always been a free spender. His books, his

pictures, his garden, his mania for curiosities, had run away with

thousands of pounds, and now, when he surreptitiously tried to convert

these things into cash again there was a woeful falling off in their

value. He knew nothing of the art of driving a bargain; and, where

others would have made a profit with the same opportunities, he

invariably lost money. He had bought badly to begin with, and he sold

disastrously. Being hard pressed on one occasion for a hundred pounds to

send to Sydney, he borrowed it of a perfect stranger, who took for his

security what would have sufficed to cover ten times the amount.

This was in the third year after Sydney was called to the bar. Lettice

was in London that autumn, on a visit to the Grahams; and perhaps

something which she contrived to say to her brother induced him to write

and tell his father that briefs were coming in at last, and that he

hoped to be able to dispense with further remittances from home. Mr.

Campion rejoiced in this assurance as though it implied that Sydney had

made his fortune. But things had gone too far with him to admit of

recovery, even if the young man had kept to his good resolutions--which

he did not.

The fact is that Sydney's college debts hung like a weight round his

neck, and he had made no effort to be rid of them. The income of his

fellowship and his professional earnings ought to have been ample for

all his needs, and no excuse can be urged for the selfishness which made

him a burden to his father after he had left Cambridge. But chambers in

Piccadilly, as well as at the Inner Temple, a couple of West End clubs,

a nightly rubber at whist, and certain regular drains upon his pocket

which never found their way into any book of accounts, made up a

formidable total of expenditure by the year's end. He was too clever a

man of the world to let his reputation--or even his conscience--suffer

by his self-indulgence, and, if he lived hard in the pursuit of

pleasure, he also worked hard in his profession. In short, he was a

well-reputed lawyer, against whom no one had a word to say; and he was

supposed to have a very good chance of the prizes which are wont to fall

to the lot of successful lawyers.

At the beginning of 1880, when Sydney Campion was in his twenty-seventh

year, there came to him the opportunity for which he had waited. Mr.

Disraeli had dissolved Parliament somewhat suddenly, and appealed to the

country for a renewal of the support accorded to him six years before.

He had carried out in Eastern Europe a policy worthy of an Imperial

race. He had brought peace with honor from Berlin, filled the bazaars of

three continents with rumors of his fame, and annexed the Suez Canal. He

had made his Queen an Empress, and had lavished garters and dukedoms on

the greatest of Her Majesty's subjects. But the integrity of the empire,

safe from foes without, was threatened on either shore of St. George's

Channel--by malignant treason on one side, and on the other by exuberant

verbosity. It was a moment big with the fate of humanity--and he

strongly advised the constituencies to make him Prime Minister again.

Then the country was plunged into the turmoil of a General Election.

Every borough and shire which had not already secured candidates

hastened to do so. Zealous Liberals and enthusiastic Tories ran up to

town from the places where local spirit failed, or local funds were not

forthcoming, convinced that they would find no lack of either in the

clubs and associations of the metropolis. Young and ambitious

politicians had their chance at last, and amongst others the chance came

for Sydney Campion.

There is no difficulty about getting into Parliament for a young man who

has friends. He can borrow the money, the spirit, the eloquence, the

political knowledge, and he will never be asked to repay any of them out

of his own resources. Now Sydney had a friend who would have seen him

through the whole business on these terms, who would at any rate have

found him money, the only qualification in which he was deficient. But

he fell into a trap prepared for him by his own vanity, and, as it

happened, the mistake cost him very dear.

"You see, Campion," his friend had said to him, after suggesting that he

should go down as Conservative candidate for Dormer, "our people know

very well what they would get for their money if you were elected. You

would make your mark in the first session, and be immensely useful to us

in ever so many ways."

"Would it cost much?" asked Sydney, rather nettled by the mention of

money. He had known Sir John Pynsent at Cambridge, and had never allowed

himself to be outdressed or outshone by him in any way. But Pynsent had

beaten him in the race for political honors; and Sydney, like a showy

player at billiards who prefers to put side on when he might make a

straightforward stroke, resolved to take a high tone with his would-be

patronizing friend.

"Much?" said Sir John. "Well, no, not much, as things go. But these

worthies at Dormer have their own traditional ways of working the

oracle. The Rads have got hold of a stockjobber who is good for a

thousand, and Maltman says they cannot fight him with less than that.

The long and short of it is that they want a strong candidate with five

hundred pounds, and we are prepared to send you down, my boy, and to be

good for that amount."

Sydney took out his cigar case, and offered the beaming baronet a choice

Villar.

"It's uncommonly good of you, Pynsent, to give me a look in at Dormer,

and to suggest the other thing in such a friendly way. Now, look

here--can you let me have two days to say yes or no to Maltman?"

"I am afraid I can't. He must have his answer in twenty-four hours."

"Well, say twenty-four hours. He shall have it by this time to-morrow.

And as for the five hundred, you may be wanting that by and by. Keep it

for some fellow who is not in a position to fight for his own hand."

Sir John Pynsent left his friend with a greatly increased opinion of his

spirit and professional standing--a result of the interview with which

Sydney was perfectly satisfied.

Then came the serious question, how he was to deal with the emergency

which had arisen--perhaps the most critical emergency of his life.

Within twenty-four hours he must know when and how he could put his hand

upon five hundred pounds.

He might easily have saved twice the sum before now; but he had never

learned the art of saving. He thought of his father, whom he had not

seen or written to for more than a month, and determined that he would

at all events go down and consult the rector. He had not realized the

fact that his father's resources were already exhausted, and that mere

humanity, to say nothing of filial duty, required him to come to the old

man's assistance, instead of asking him for fresh sacrifices.

"If he has not the money," Sydney said, "no doubt he can help me to

raise it. It will be an excellent investment of our joint credit, and a

very good thing for us both."

So he telegraphed to Angleford--

"I am going to contest a borough. Must make provision. Shall be with you

by next train."

CHAPTER IV.

FATHER AND SON.

Sydney's telegram reached Angleford at an awkward time. Things had been

going from bad to worse with Mr. Campion, who had never had as much

money as he needed since he paid the last accounts of the Cambridge

tradesmen. In the vain hope that matters would mend by and by--though he

did not form any precise idea as to how the improvement would take

place--he had been meeting each engagement as it came to maturity by

entering on another still more onerous. After stripping himself of all

his household treasures that could be converted into money, he had

pledged his insurance policy, his professional and private income, and

at last even his furniture; and he was now in very deep waters.

A great change had come over him. At sixty, when Sydney took his degree,

he was still handsome and upright, buoyant with hope and energy. At

sixty-six he was broken, weak, and disheartened. To his wife and

daughter, indeed, he was always the same cheerful, gentle, sanguine man,

full of courtesy and consideration. In the village he was more beloved

than ever, because there was scarcely a man or woman who was not

familiar with the nature and extent of his troubles. In a country parish

the affairs of the parson, especially when they do not prosper, are apt

to become the affairs of the congregation as well. Who should know

better than a man's butcher and baker when the supply of ready money

runs short, when one month would be more convenient than another for the

settlement of a bill, or when the half-year's stipend has been

forestalled and appropriated long before it fell due?

However great his trouble, the rector had generally contrived to put a

good face on things. He considered his difficulties as entirely the

result of his own improvidence, and rejoiced to think that Sydney's

position was assured, no matter what might happen to himself. Yet often

in the silence of the night he would toss upon his restless bed, or vex

his soul with complicated accounts in the privacy of his study, and none

but the two faithful women who lived with him suspected what he suffered

in his weakest moments.

He had come to lean more and more constantly on the companionship of

Lettice. Mrs. Campion had never been the kind of woman to whom a man

looks for strength or consolation, and when she condoled with her

husband he usually felt himself twice as miserable as before. Some wives

have a way of making their condolences sound like reproaches; and they

may be none the less loving wives for that. Mrs. Campion sincerely loved

her husband, but she never thoroughly understood him.

When the boy arrived with Sydney's telegram, Lettice intercepted him at

the door. She was accustomed to keep watch over everything that entered

the house, and saved her father a great deal of trouble by reading his

letters, and, if need be, by answering them. What he would have done

without her, he was wont to aver, nobody could tell.

Time had dealt gently with Lettice, in spite of her anxieties, in spite

of that passionate revolt against fate which from time to time had

shaken her very soul. She was nearly five-and-twenty, and she certainly

looked no more then twenty-one. The sweet country air had preserved the

delicate freshness of her complexion: her dark grey eyes were clear, her

white brow unlined by trouble, her rippling brown hair shining and

abundant. Her slender hands were a little tanned--the only sign that

country life had laid upon her--because she was never very careful about

wearing gloves when she worked in the garden; but neither tan nor

freckle ever appeared upon her face, the bloom of which was tender and

refined as that of a briar-rose. The old wistful look of her sweet eyes

remained unchanged, but the mouth was sadder in repose than it had been

when she was a child. When she smiled, however, there could not have

been a brighter face.

Notwithstanding this touch of sadness on her lips, and a faint shadow of

thought on the clear fine brows, the face of Lettice was noticeable for

its tranquillity. No storm of passion had ever troubled those

translucent eyes: patience sat there, patience and reflection; emotion

waited its turn. One could not doubt her capabilities of feeling; but,

in spite of her four-and-twenty years, the depths of her heart had never

yet been stirred. She had lived a somewhat restricted life, and there

was yet very much for her to experience and to learn. Who would be her

teacher? For Lettice was not the woman to go ignorant of life's fullest

bliss and deepest sorrow to the grave.

She looked particularly slender and youthful as she stood that day at

the hall window when Sydney's telegram arrived. She had a double reason

for keeping guard in the hall and glancing nervously down the

carriage-drive that led from the main road to the rectory front.

Half-an-hour before, a hard-featured man had swaggered up the avenue,

fired off a volley of defiance on the knocker, and demanded to see Mr.

Campion.

"What do you want?" said Lettice, who had opened the door and stood

boldly facing him.

"I want to see the parson. At once, miss, if you please."

"Perhaps I can do what is necessary, if you will tell me what your

business is. You cannot see my father."

"Oh," said the man, with a little more respect. "You are his daughter,

are you? Well, if you can do the needful I am sure I have no objection.

Three hundred and twenty pound seventeen-and-six"--here he took out a

stamped paper and showed it to Lettice. "That's the figure, miss, and if

you'll oblige with coin--cheques and promises being equally

inconvenient--I don't mind waiting five minutes to accommodate a lady."

"We have not the money in the house," answered Lettice, who had been

reading the formidable document, without quite understanding what it

meant.

"Ah, that's a pity," said the man. "But I didn't expect it, so I ain't

disappointed."

"It shall be sent to you. I will see that you have it--within a week

from this date--only go away now, for my father is unwell."

"Very sorry, miss, but I can't go without the money. This business won't

wait any longer. The coin or the sticks--those are my orders, and that's

my notion of what is fair and right."

"The sticks?" said Lettice faintly.

"The goods--the furniture. This paper is a bill of sale, and as the

reverend gentleman doesn't find it convenient to pay, why, of course, my

principal is bound to realize the security. Now, miss, am I to see the

gentleman, or am I not?"

"Oh no," said Lettice, "it is useless."

"Then what I am going to do," said the man, "is this. I am going to get

the vans, and fetch the goods right away. I may be back this afternoon,

or I may be back to-morrow morning; but you take my advice, miss. Talk

it over with the old gentleman, and raise the money somehow, for it

really would go against me to have to sell you up. I'm to be heard of at

the 'Chequers,' miss--William Joskins, at your service."

Then he had gone away, and left her alone, and she stood looking through

the window at the dreary prospect--thinking, and thinking, and unable to

see any light in the darkness.

One thing, at all events, she must do; a message must be sent to Sydney.

It would not be just, either to him or to his father, that the extent of

the disaster should be any longer concealed. She had just arrived at

this determination, and was turning away to write the telegram, when the

messenger from the post-office made his appearance.

In five minutes all the house was astir. A visit from Sydney was a rare

occurrence, and he must be treated royally, as though he were a king

condescending to quarter himself on his loyal subjects--which indeed, he

was. When Lettice went to tell her father the news she found him seated

by the fire, pondering gloomily on what the immediate future might have

in store for him; but as soon as she showed him Sydney's telegram he

sprang to his feet, with straightened body and brightly shining eyes. In

one moment he had passed from despondency to the height of exultation.

"Two o'clock," he said, looking at his watch, "and he will be here at

five! Dinner must be ready for him by six; and you will take care,

Lettice, that everything is prepared as you know he would like to have

it. Going into Parliament, is he? Yes, I have always told you that he

would. He is a born orator, child; he will serve his country

brilliantly--not for place, nor for corrupt motives of any kind, but as

a patriot and a Christian, to whom duty is the law of his nature."

"Yes, papa. And you will be satisfied when he is a member of

Parliament?"

"So long as Sydney lives, my dear, I know that he will grow in favor

with God and man; and so long as I live, I shall watch his course with

undiminished joy and satisfaction. What else have we left to live for?

Wife!" said the rector, as Mrs. Campion entered the room, "do you know

that our boy is to dine with us to-night?"

"Yes, Lawrence, I have seen his telegram; and Mollie is doing all she

can at short notice. It will not be the kind of dinner I should like to

put before him; but times are changed with us--sadly changed! I hope he

will not miss the plate, Lawrence; and as for wine and dessert----"

"Oh, mother dear," said Lettice, interrupting, "I quite forgot to tell

you about my letter this morning. Look here! It contained a cheque for

ten pounds, for that article of mine in the _Decade_. I mean to go into

Dorminster, and get one or two things we shall be wanting, and I shall

probably drive back in Sydney's cab. So you can leave the wine and

dessert to me. And, mother dear, be sure you put on your silver-grey

poplin, with the Mechlin cap. Nothing suits you half as well!"

Lettice's earnings had sufficed for some years past for her dress and

personal expenses; but latterly she had contrived to have a fair margin

left for such emergencies as that which had now arisen. She was more

than thanked by the gleam of love which lightened the eyes of her

parents as she spoke. Even though Sydney was coming, she thought, that

smile at any rate was all for her.

So she went into the town and made her purchases, and waited at the

station, shivering in the cold March wind, for Sydney's train.

How much should she tell him to begin with? Or should she say nothing

till after dinner? How would he take it? How would it affect him? And

suppose for a moment that he had to choose between getting into

Parliament and rescuing his father from ruin?

Clearly as she saw the worst sides of Sydney's character, yet she loved

him well, and was proud of him. How often she had yearned for tenderness

in the days gone by! What excuses she had framed for him in her own

heart, when he seemed to forget their existence at Angleford for months

together! And now, when she had this terrible news to tell him, was it

not possible that his heart would be softened by the blow, and that good

would come for all of them out of this menaced evil? What a happy place

the old Rectory might be if her father's mind were set at rest again,

and Sydney would come down and stay with them from time to time!

The train was at the platform before Lettice had decided what to do.

Sydney looked rather surprised to see her, but gave her his cheek to

kiss, and hurried her off to the cab stand.

"What brought you here?" he said. "How cold you are! All well at home?"

"Yes, they are well. But, oh, Sydney, they are growing old?"

"Growing old, child? Why, of course they are. We must expect it. Do you

mean they look older than they are?"

"Yes--older, and--and more----"

"Well?"

He looked at her sharply, for she could not quite command her voice, and

left the sentence unfinished. Then Sydney had an uncomfortable feeling.

He saw that there was something amiss, but did not care at the moment to

insist on further confidences. No doubt he would hear all that there was

to be said by and by. Meanwhile he turned the conversation, and soon

contrived to interest her, so that they reached the Rectory in excellent

spirits. All that day poor Lettice alternated between despair and giddy

lightness of heart.

So the hero came home and was feasted, and his father and mother did

obeisance to him, and even he for an hour or two thought it good that he

should now and then renew his contract with the earth from which he

sprang, and remember the chains of duty and affection which bound him to

the past, instead of dwelling constantly in the present and the future.

Throughout dinner, and at dessert, and as they drank the wine which

Lettice had provided, Sydney spoke of his position and prospects,

dazzling those who listened to him with his pictures of victory at

Dormer, of Conservative triumphs all along the line, of Ministerial

favor for himself, of "Office--why not?--within a twelvemonth." It would

have been treason for any of his audience to doubt that all these good

things would come to pass. If Lettice felt that there was a skeleton at

the feast, her father at any rate had forgotten its existence. Or,

rather, he saw deliverance at hand. The crisis of his boy's fortune had

arrived; and, if Sydney triumphed, nothing that could happen to Sydney's

father could rob Mr. Campion of his joy.

At last the women left the room, and Sydney proceeded to tell his father

what he wanted. He must return to town by the first train in the

morning, having made an appointment with Mr. Maltman for two o'clock. Of

course he meant to contest Dormer; but it was desirable that he should

know for certain that he could raise five hundred pounds within a week,

to supplement his own narrow means.

His face fell a little when his father confessed--as though it were

clearly a matter for shame and remorse--that he could not so much as

draw a cheque for twenty pounds. But, in fact, he was not surprised.

Recklessly as he had abstained from inquiring into the old man's affairs

since Lettice spoke to him in London two years ago, he had taken it for

granted that there were difficulties of some kind; and men in

difficulties do not keep large balances at their bankers'.

"Well, father," he said, "I am sorry for that. Yes--it certainly makes

the thing rather hard for me. I hoped you might have seen me fairly

launched on my career; and then, you know, if the worst came to the

worst, I could soon have repaid you what you advanced. Well, what I

suggest is this. I can probably borrow the money with your assistance,

and I want to know what security we could offer between us for the

loan."

Mr. Campion looked mournfully at his son, but he was not ready with a

reply.

"You see," said Sydney, "it would never do for me to miss this chance.

Everything depends upon it, and I was bound to refuse Pynsent's offer of

the money. But if you have something that we can lodge as security----"

Mr. Campion shook his head. The look of distress that came upon his face

might have softened Sydney's heart, if he had been less intent on his

object.

"There will be an insurance policy I suppose?"

"No, my boy! The fact is, I was obliged to assign it a few years ago, to

cover a former engagement."

"Dear me!" said Sydney, in a tone of vexation, "what a nuisance! I am

afraid our signatures alone would hardly suffice. A bill of sale is out

of the question, for that would have to be registered."

Something in the old man's appearance, as he sank back in his chair and

wrung his hands, struck Sydney with a sudden conviction. He sprang to

his feet, and came close to his father's side, standing over him in what

looked almost like an attitude of menace.

"Good heaven!" he cried. "Don't tell me that it has gone so far as

that!"

The door opened, and Lettice stood before them, with pale cheeks and

glistening eyes. She had guessed what would come of their conversation,

and had held herself in readiness to intervene.

Sydney turned upon her at once.

"You," he said, as deliberate now as he had been excited a minute

before, "you, with your fine head for business, will doubtless know as

much about this as anybody. Has my father given a bill of sale on his

furniture?"

"He has," said Lettice.

"When?"

"Months ago. I must have known it, for I read all his correspondence;

but I hardly knew what a bill of sale meant. And Sydney," she continued,

laying her hand on his arm, and whispering so that her father should not

hear, "it may be only a threat, but a man was here this morning, who

said he should come to-morrow and take the things away."

When he heard this, Sydney lost his self-command, and spoke certain

words for which he never quite forgave himself. No doubt the blow was a

heavy one, and he realized immediately all that it implied. But he did

not foresee the effect of the harsh and bitter words which he flung at

his father and sister, charging them with reckless extravagance, and

declaring that their selfishness had ruined his whole career.

Lettice was stung to the quick, not so much by her brother's unjust

accusations as by the suffering which they inflicted on her father. His

childishness had increased upon him so much of late that he was in

truth, at this moment, more like a boy under correction than a father in

presence of his children. He buried his face in his hands, and Lettice

heard a piteous groan.

Then she stood beside him, laid her arm upon his neck, and faced Sydney

with indignant eyes.

"Look!" she said. "This is your work. Can you not see and understand?

You accuse him of selfishness--him, whose life has been one long

sacrifice for you! I tell you, Sydney, that your cruel neglect, your

ingrained love of self, have dragged our father down to this. He gave

you all that you have, and made you all that you are, and when you

should have come to his succor, and secured for him a happy old age, you

have left him all these years to struggle with the poverty to which you

reduced him. He never murmured--he will never blame you as long as he

lives--he is as proud of you to-day as he was ten years ago--and you

dare, you _dare_ to reproach him!"

Lettice ended in magnificent wrath; and, then, being a woman after all,

she knelt by her father's side and burst into tears.

If Sydney's pride had not got the better of him he would have owned the

justice of her words, and all might have been well. Instead of that, he

went to his room, brooding upon his misfortune, and soothing his wounded

feelings in an intense self-pity.

And next morning, when he came remorsefully to his father's bedside,

intending to assure him that he would make it the first business of his

life to rescue him from his difficulties, he found him rescued indeed,

with placid face and silent heart, over which the cares of earth had no

further dominion.

CHAPTER V.

SEVERANCE.

The rector's death was a terrible shock to Sydney. For a time his

remorse for his own conduct was very great, and it bore good fruit in a

perceptible softening of his over-confident manner and a more distinct

show of consideration for his mother and sister. Little by little he

drew from Lettice the story of her past anxieties, of his father's

efforts and privations, of his mother's suffering at the loss of

luxuries to which she had always been accustomed--suffering silently

borne because it was borne for Sydney. Lettice spared him as far as she

could; but there was much that she was obliged to tell, as she had been

for so long the depositary of her father's secrets and his cares.

Man-like, Sydney showed his sorrow by exceeding sharpness of tone.

"Why did you not write to me? Why was I never told?"

"I told you as much as I dared, when I was in London."

"As much as you _dared_?"

"Dear father would not let me tell very much. He laid his commands on me

to say nothing."

"You should have disobeyed him," said Sydney marching up and down the

darkened study, in which this conference took place. "It was your duty

to have disobeyed him, for his own good----"

"Oh, Sydney, how can you talk to me of duty?" said Lettice, with a sob.

"Why did you not come and see for yourself? Why did you stay away so

long?"

The reproach cut deeper than she knew. "I thought I was acting for the

best," said the young man, half defiantly, half apologetically. "I did

what it was the desire of his heart that I should do--But you, you were

at home; you saw it all, and you should have told me, Lettice."

"I did try," she answered meekly, "but it was not very easy to make you

listen."

In other circumstances he would, perhaps, have retorted angrily; and

Lettice felt that it said much for the depth of his sorrow for the past

that he did not carry his self-defence any further. By and by he paused

in his agitated walk up and down the room, with head bent and hands

plunged deep into his pockets. After two or three moments' silence,

Lettice crept up to him and put her hand within his arm.

"Forgive me, Sydney, I spoke too bitterly; but it has been very hard

sometimes."

"I would have helped if I had known," said Sydney gloomily.

"I know you would, dear. And he always knew it, too. That was the reason

why he told me to keep silence--for fear of hampering you in your

career. He has often said to me that he wished to keep the knowledge of

his difficulties from you, because he knew you would be generous and

kind----"

Tears choked her voice. Her brother, who had hitherto been quite

unresponsive to her caresses, put out his right hand and stroked the

trembling fingers that rested on his left arm. He was leaning against

the old oak table, where his father's books and papers had stood for so

many years; and some remembrances of bygone days when he and Lettice, as

boy and girl, sat together with their grammars and lexicons at that very

place, occurred a little dimly to his mind. But what was a dim memory to

him was very clear and distinct to Lettice.

"Oh, Sydney, do you remember how we used to work here with father?" she

broke out. "How many hours we spent here together--reading the same

books, thinking the same thoughts--and now we seem so divided, so very

far apart! You have not quite forgotten those old days, have you?"

"No, I have not forgotten them," said Sydney, in a rather unsteady

voice. Poor Lettice! She had counted for very little in his life for the

last few years, and yet, as she reminded him, what companions they had

been before he went to Cambridge! A suddenly roused instinct of

compassion and protection caused him to put his arm round her and to

speak with unusual tenderness.

"I won't forget those old times, Lettice. Perhaps we shall be able to

see more of each other by and bye than we have done lately. You have

been a good girl, never wanting any change or amusement all these years;

but I'll do my best to look after you now."

"I began to think you did not care for any of us, Sydney."

"Nonsense," said Sydney, and he kissed her forehead affectionately

before he left the study, where, indeed, he felt that he had stayed a

little too long, and given Lettice an unusual advantage over him. He was

not destitute of natural affections, but they had so long been obscured

by the mists of selfishness that he found it difficult to let them

appear--and more difficult with his sister than with his mother. Lettice

seemed to him to exact too much, to be too intense in feeling, too

critical in observation. He was fond of her, but she was not at all his

ideal woman--if he had one. Sydney's preference was for what he called

"a womanly woman": not one who knew Greek.

He made a brave and manly effort to wind up his father's affairs and pay

his outstanding debts. He was so far stirred out of himself that it

hardly occurred to his mind that a slur would be left on him if these

debts were left unpaid: his strongest motive just now was the sense of

right and wrong, and he knew, too late, that it was right for him to

take up the load which his own acts had made so heavy.

The rector had died absolutely penniless. His insurance policy, his

furniture, the whole of his personal effects, barely sufficed to cover

the money he had borrowed. What Sydney did was to procure the means of

discharging at once all the household bills, and the expenses connected

with the funeral.

"And now," he said to Lettice, when the last of these dues had been paid

off and they took their last stroll together through the already half

dismantled rooms of the desolate old Rectory, "I feel more of a man than

I have felt since that terrible night, and I want to get back to my

work."

"I am afraid you will have to work very hard, dear!" said Lettice,

laying her hand on his arm, rather timidly. How she still yearned for

the full measure of mutual confidence and sympathy!

"Hard work will be good for me," he said, his keen blue eyes lighting up

as if with ardor for the fray. "I shall soon wipe off old scores, and

there's nothing like knowing you have only yourself to look to. My

practice, you know, is pretty good already, and it will be very good by

and bye."

"I am so glad!"

"Yes. And, of course, you must never have any anxiety about mother and

yourself. I shall see to all that. You are going to stay with the

Grahams for a while, so I can come over one day and discuss it. I don't

suppose I shall ever marry, but whether I do or not, I shall always set

apart a certain sum for mother and you."

"I have been thinking about the future," said Lettice, quietly. She

always spoke in a low, musical voice, without gesture, but not without

animation, producing on those who heard her the impression that she had

formed her opinions beforehand, and was deliberate in stating them. "Do

you know, Sydney, that I can earn a very respectable income?"

"Earn an income! You!" he said, with a wrinkle in his forehead, and a

curl in his nostrils. "I will not hear of such a thing. I cannot have my

sister a dependent in other people's houses--a humble governess or

companion. How could you dream of it!"

"I have not dreamed of that," said Lettice. "I do not think I should

like it myself. I simply stay at home and write. I earned seventy pounds

last year, and Mr. Graham says I could almost certainly earn twice as

much if I were living in London."

"Why was I not told of this?" said Sydney, with an air of vexation.

"What do you write?"

"Essays, and now and then a review, and little stories."

"Little stories--ouf!" he muttered, in evident disgust. "You don't put

your name to these things!"

"I did to one article, last March, in _The Decade_."

"That is Graham's magazine, and I daresay Graham asked you to sign your

name. When I see him I shall tell him it was done without sufficient

consideration."

"All articles are signed in _The Decade_," said Lettice. She did not

think it worth while to mention that Graham had written her a very

flattering letter about her article, telling her that it had attracted

notice--that the critics said she had a style of her own, and was likely

to make her mark. The letter had reached her on the morning before her

father's death, and she had found but a brief satisfaction in it at the

time.

"I think you had better not say anything to Mr. Graham," she continued.

"They have both been very kind, and we shall not have too many friends

in London."

"Why do you want to live in London?"

"I think I should like it, and mother would like it too. You know she

has fifty pounds a year of her own, and if what Mr. Graham says is right

we shall be able to live very comfortably."

"I can't say I like this writing for a living," he said.

"I suppose we cannot have everything as we like it. And, besides, I do

like it. It is congenial work, and it makes me feel independent."

"It is not always good for women to be independent. It is dangerous."

She laughed--a pleasant little rallying laugh.

"I hope you will not be shocked," she said. "I have set my heart on

being perfectly independent of you and everybody else."

He saw that she would have her way, and let the subject drop.

A few weeks afterwards, Lettice and her mother had packed up their

belongings and went to London. The Grahams were delighted to have them,

for Lettice was a great favorite with both. James Graham was a literary

man of good standing, who, in addition to editing _The Decade_, wrote

for one of the weekly papers, and reviewed books in his special lines

for one of the dailies. By dint of hard work, and carefully nursing his

connection, he contrived to make a living; and that was all. Literary

work is not well paid as a rule. There is fair pay to be had on the

staff of the best daily papers, but that kind of work requires a special

aptitude. It requires, in particular, a supple and indifferent mind,

ready to take its cue from other people, with the art of representing

things from day to day not exactly as they are, but as an editor or

paymaster wants them to appear. If we suffered our journalists to sign

their articles, they would probably write better, with more self-respect

and a higher sense of responsibility; they would become stronger in

themselves, and would be more influential with their readers. As it is,

few men with vigorous and original minds can endure beyond a year or two

of political leader-writing.

Graham had tried it, and the ordeal was too difficult for him. Now he

had a greater scope for his abilities, and less money for his pains.

Clara Graham was the daughter of a solicitor in Angleford, and had known

Lettice Campion from childhood. She was a pretty woman, thoroughly

good-hearted, with tastes and powers somewhat in advance of her

education. Perhaps she stood a little in awe of Lettice, and wondered

occasionally whether her husband considered a woman who knew Latin and

Greek, and wrote clever articles in _The Decade_, superior to one who

had no such accomplishments, though she might be prettier, and the

mother of his children, and even the darner of his stockings. But Clara

was not without wits, so she did not propound questions of that sort to

her husband; she reserved them for her own torment, and then expiated

her jealousy by being kinder to Lettice than ever.

Lettice's plans were far more fixed and decided than Sydney knew. She

had corresponded very fully and frankly with the Grahams on the subject,

and Mr. Graham was already looking about for a place where she could set

up her household gods. It was no use to consult Mrs. Campion on the

subject. Her husband's death had thrown her into a state of mental

torpor which seemed at first to border upon imbecility; and although she

recovered to some extent from the shock, her health had been too much

shaken to admit of complete recovery. Thenceforward she was an invalid

and an old woman, who had abnegated her will in favor of her daughter's,

and asked for nothing better than to be governed as well as cared for.

The change was a painful one to Lettice, but practically it left her

freer than ever, for her mother wanted little companionship, and was

quite as happy with the maid that Lettice had brought from Angleford as

with Lettice herself. The visit to the Grahams was an excellent thing

both for Mrs. Campion and for her daughter. Clara managed to win the old

lady's heart, and so relieved her friend of much of her anxiety. The

relief came not a moment too soon, for the long strain to which Lettice

had been subjected began to tell upon her and she was sorely in need of

rest. The last three or four years had been a time of almost incessant

worry to her. She had literally had the care of the household on her

shoulders, and it had needed both courage and endurance of no ordinary

kind to enable her to discharge her task without abandoning that inner

and intellectual life which had become so indispensable to her

well-being. The sudden death of her father was a paralyzing blow, but

the care exacted from her by her mother had saved her from the physical

collapse which it might have brought about. Now, when the necessity for

immediate exertion had passed away, the reaction was very great, and it

was fortunate that she had at this crisis the bracing companionship of

James Graham, and Clara's friendly and stimulating acerbities.

Lettice had reached the age of five and twenty without experiencing

either love, or intimate friendship, or intellectual sympathy. She had

had neither of those two things which a woman, and especially an

intellectual woman, constantly craves, and in the absence of which she

cannot be happy. Either of the two may suffice for happiness, both

together would satisfy her completely, but the woman who has not one or

the other is a stranger to content. The nature of a woman requires

either equality of friendship, a free exchange of confidence, trust and

respect--having which, she can put up with a good deal of apparent

coldness and dryness of heart in her friend; or else she wants the

contrasted savor of life, caressing words, demonstrations of tenderness,

amenities and attentions, which keep her heart at rest even if they do

not satisfy her whole nature. If she gets neither of these things the

love or friendship never wakes, or, having been aroused, it dies of

inanition.

So it was with Lettice. The one oasis in the wilderness of her existence

had been the aftermath of love which sprang up between her and her

father in the last few years, when she felt him depending upon her,

confiding and trusting in her, and when she had a voice in the shaping

of his life. But even this love, unsurpassable in its tenderness, was

only as a faint shadow in a thirsty land. Such as it was, she had lost

it, and the place which it had occupied was an aching void.

The one desire left to her at present was to become an absolutely

independent woman. This meant that she should work hard for her living

in her own way, and that she should do what seemed good and pleasant to

her, because it seemed good and pleasant, not because it was the way of

the world, or the way of a house, or the routine of a relative or an

employer. It meant that she should keep her mother under her own eye, in

comfort and decency, not lodged with strangers to mope out her life in

dreary solitude. It meant also that she should not be a burden on

Sydney--or, in plain terms, that she should not take Sydney's money,

either for herself or her mother.

Indeed, the consciousness that she had to work for another, and to be

her protection and support, was not only bracing but cheering in its

effects, and Lettice now turned towards her writing-table with an energy

which had been wanting when her efforts were for herself alone.

The Rectory household had been reduced as much as possible during the

last few months, and only two servants remained at the time of the

rector's death: one, an elderly cook, who was content for the love of

"Miss Lettice" to do the work of a general servant; and a young girl of

eighteen, who had lived at the Rectory and been trained for domestic

service under Mrs. Campion's eye ever since her parents' death, which

had occurred when she was fifteen years of age. Emily, or Milly

Harrington, as she was generally called, was a quick, clever girl, very

neat-handed and fairly industrious; and it seemed to Lettice, when she

decided upon going to London, that she could not do better than ask

Milly to go too. The girl's great blue eyes opened with a flash of

positive rapture. "Go with you to London? Oh, Miss Lettice!"

"You would like it, Milly?" said Lettice, wondering at her excitement,

and thinking that she had never before noticed how pretty Millie

Harrington had grown of late.

"Oh, of all things in the world, miss, I've wanted to go to London!"

said Milly, flushing all over her face through the clear white skin

which was one of her especial beauties. There was very little trace of

commonness in Milly's good looks. Three years of life at the Rectory had

refined her appearance, as also her manners and ways of speech; and

Lettice thought that it would be far pleasanter to keep Milly about her

than to go through the agonies of a succession of pert London girls. Yet

something in Milly's eagerness to go, as well as the girl's fresh,

innocent, country air, troubled her with a vague sense of anxiety. Was

not London said to be a place of temptation for inexperienced country

girls? Could she keep Milly safe and innocent if she took her away from

Angleford?

"You would have all the work of the house to do, and to look after Mrs.

Campion a little as well," she said seeking to put her vague anxiety

into the form of a warning or an objection. But Milly only smiled.

"I'm very strong, Miss Lettice. I am sure I can do all that you want.

And I should like to go to London with you. One hears such fine tales of

London--and I don't want to leave mistress and you." Though this was

evidently an afterthought.

"You will see very little of London, Milly; I shall live in a very quiet

part," said Lettice. "And I shall want you to be very good and steady,

and take care of my mother when I am busy. I shall have to work hard

now, you know; quite as hard as you."

Milly looked up quickly; there was inquiry in her eyes. But she answered

only by protestations of good behavior and repeated desires to go with

her young mistress; and Lettice gave her a promise, subject to the

consent of Milly's grandmother, who lived at Birchmead, that she would

take the girl with her when she went away.

Old Mrs. Harrington had no objection at all to Milly's going to London.

"Indeed, Miss Lettice," she said, "I'm only too glad to think of your

looking after her, for Milly's not got much sense, I'm afraid, although

she's a woman grown."

"I always thought her unusually clever and sensible," said Lettice, in

some surprise.

"Clever, miss, she always was, but sensible's a different affair. Her

head's filled with foolishness, all along of her reading story books, I

tell her; and she's got an idea that her pretty face will bring her a

rich husband, and I don't know what beside. I shall be obliged to you,

miss, if you'll kindly keep a sharp eye and a tight hand over Milly. Not

but what she's a good kind-hearted girl," said the old woman, relenting

a little, as she saw a rather startled expression on Miss Campion's

face, "and I don't think there's any harm in her, but girls are always

better for being looked after, that is all."

"I'll try to take care of Milly," said Lettice, as she rose to go. "But

my care will be of very little use if she does not take care of

herself."

She was fated on the same day to hear a remonstrance from the doctor's

wife, Mrs. Budworth, on the subject of her choice of a servant. Mrs.

Budworth was a noted busybody, who knew everybody's business better than

the rest of the world.

"Oh, Lettice, dear," she said, "I do hope it's not true that you are

going to take that silly girl, Milly Harrington, up to London with you."

"Why not? You cannot know anything against her," said Lettice, who was

becoming a little angry.

"Well, perhaps not--only she is so very pretty, and London is so full of

temptations for a pretty girl of that class!"

"We shall live so quietly that she will have no more temptations there

than here, Mrs. Budworth."

"You can't tell that, my dear--once you get a girl away from her friends

and relations. However, she has only her old grandmother to fall back

on, and she seems a well-meaning girl enough, and perhaps she won't be

considered so pretty in London as she has the name of being here. I hope

she will keep straight, I'm sure; it would be such a worry to you,

Lettice, if anything went wrong."

"Poor Milly!" said Lettice to herself, as she walked home in a state of

blazing indignation; "how easily that woman would undermine your

reputation--or that of anybody else! Milly is a dear, good little girl;

and as for her being so pretty--well, it is not her fault, and I don't

see why it should be her misfortune! I will look well after her when we

are in London, and it will be for her good, I believe, to stay with us.

What an absurd fuss to make about such a trifle!"

So she dismissed the matter from her mind, remembering it only from time

to time when she was making her new household arrangements, and

carefully planning to keep Milly out of every possible danger.

But dangers are oftener from within than from without. While Lettice

walked homeward after her talk with Mrs. Budworth, Milly Harrington had

locked herself into her own room, and was experimenting with her pretty

curling hair before the looking-glass. She wanted to see herself with a

"fringe"--a thing that was strictly forbidden at the Rectory, and she

had brushed the soft little curls that were generally hidden beneath her

cap well over her forehead. Then she stood and gazed at the reflection

of the fair locks, the large blue eyes, the graceful neck and shoulders.

"I suppose I look pretty," she was saying to herself. "I've been told so

often enough. Mr. Sydney thought so when he was here at Christmas, I'm

sure of that. This time, of course, he was so taken up with his father's

death, and other things, that he never noticed me. But I shall see him

again."

A faint color mantled in her cheeks, and her eyes began to sparkle.

"Beauty's a great power, I've heard," she said to herself, still looking

at that fair image in the glass. "There's no knowing what I mayn't do if

I meet the right person. And one meets nobody in Angleford. In

London--things may be different."

Different, indeed, but not as poor Milly fancied the difference.

And then she brushed back her curls, and fastened up her black dress,

and tied a clean muslin apron round her trim little figure before going

downstairs; and when she brought in the tea-tray that afternoon, Lettice

looked at her with pleasure and admiration, and thought how sweet and

good a girl she was, and how she had won the Prayer-Book prize at the

Diocesan Inspector's examination, and of the praise that the rector had

given her for her well-written papers at the Confirmation Class, and of

her own kindly and earnest teaching of all things that were good in

Lettice's eyes; and she decided that Mrs. Harrington and Mrs. Budworth

were mere croakers, and that poor Milly would never come to harm.

BOOK II.

CHANGE.

"Yet the twin habit of that early time

Lingered for long about the heart and tongue;

We had been natives of one happy clime,

And its dear accent to our utterance clung.

"Till the dire years whose awful name is Change

Had grasped our souls, still yearning in divorce,

And pitiless shaped them in two forms that range--

Two elements which sever their life's course."

George Eliot.

CHAPTER VI.

NEW BEGINNINGS.

"Poor dear Lettice! how she must have suffered!" said Clara Graham.

"Less than you suppose," rejoined her husband.

"Jim, what do you mean? You are very hard-hearted."

"No, I'm not! I'm only practical. Your friend, Miss Campion, has been a

source of lamentation and woe to you ever since I made your

acquaintance. According to you, she was always being sacrificed to that

intolerable prig of a brother of hers. _Then_ she was immolated on the

altar of her father's money difficulties and her mother's ill-health.

Now she has got a fair field, and can live where she likes and exercise

her talents as she pleases; and as I can be as unfeeling as I like in

the bosom of my family, I will at once acknowledge that I am very glad

the old man's gone."

"I do hope and trust, Jim----"

"That I am not a born fool, my dear?"

"--That you won't say these things to Lettice herself."

"Exactly. That is what I knew you were going to say."

"If it weren't that I am certain you do not mean half you say----"

"I mean all that I say: every word of it. But I'll tell you what, Clara:

I believe that Lettice Campion is a woman of great talent--possibly even

of genius--and that she has never yet been able to give her talents full

play. She has the chance now, and I hope she'll use it."

"Oh, Jim, dear, do you think she is so sure to succeed?"

"If she doesn't, it will be pure cussedness on her part, and nothing

else," said Jim.

Clara reflected that she would tell Lettice what her husband said. She

moved to the window and looked out. She was waiting for her guests,

Lettice and Mrs. Campion, in the soft dusk of a sweet May evening, and

she was a little impatient for their arrival. She had had a comfortable,

nondescript meal, which she called dinner-tea, set ready for them in the

dining-room, and as this room was near the hall-door, she had installed

herself therein, so that she could the more easily watch for her

visitors. Mr. Graham, a tall, thin man, with coal-black beard, deep-set

dark eyes, and marked features, had thrown himself into a great

arm-chair, where he sat buried in the current number of a monthly

magazine. His wife was universally declared to be a very pretty woman,

and she was even more "stylish," as women say, than pretty; for she had

one of those light, graceful figures that give an air of beauty to

everything they wear. For the rest, she had well-cut features, bright

dark eyes, and a very winning smile. A brightly impulsive and

affectionate nature had especially endeared her to Lettice, and this had

never been soured or darkened by her experiences of the outer world,

although, like most people, she had known reverses of fortune and was

not altogether free from care. But her husband loved her, and her three

babies were the most charming children ever seen, and everybody admired

the decorations of her bright little house in Edwardes Square; and what

more could the heart of womankind desire?

"I wonder," she said presently, "whether Sydney will come with them. He

was to meet them at Liverpool Street; and of course I asked him to come

on."

"I would have gone out if you had told me that before," said Mr. Graham,

tersely.

"Why do you dislike Sydney Campion so much, Jim?"

"Dislike? I admire him. I think he is the coming man. He's one of the

most successful persons of my acquaintance. It is just because I feel so

small beside him that I can't stand his company."

"I must repeat, Jim, that if you talk like that to Lettice----"

"Oh, Lettice doesn't adore her precious brother," said Graham,

irreverently. "She knows as well as you and I do that he's a selfish

sort of brute, in spite of his good looks and his gift of the gab. I

say, Clara, when are these folks coming? I'm confoundedly hungry."

"Who's the selfish brute now?" asked Clara, with triumph. "But you won't

be kept waiting long: the cab's stopping at the door, and Sydney hasn't

come."

She flew to the door, to be the first to meet and greet her visitors.

There was not much to be got from Mrs. Campion that evening except

tears--this was evident as soon as she entered the house, leaning on

Lettice's arm; and the best thing was to put her at once to bed, and

delay the evening meal until Lettice was able to leave her. Graham was

quite too good-natured to grumble at a delay for which there was so

valid a reason; for, as he informed his wife, he preferred Miss

Campion's conversation without an accompaniment of groans. He talked

lightly, but his grasp of the hand was so warm, his manner so

sympathetic, when Lettice at last came down, that Clara felt herself

rebuked at having for one moment doubted the real kindliness of his

feeling.

Lettice in her deep mourning looked painfully white and slender in

Clara's eyes; but she spoke cheerfully of her prospects for the future,

as they sat at their evening meal. Sad topics were not broached, and Mr.

Graham set himself to give her all the encouragement in his power.

"And as to where you are to set up your tent," he said, "Clara and I

have seen a cottage on Brook Green that we think would suit you

admirably."

"Where is Brook Green?" asked Lettice, who was almost ignorant of any

save the main thoroughfares of London.

"In the wilds of Hammersmith----"

"West Kensington," put in Clara, rather indignantly.

"Well, West Kensington is only Hammersmith writ fine. It is about ten

minutes' walk from us----"

"Oh, I am glad of that," said Lettice.

"--And it is not, I think, too large or too dear. You must go and look

at it to-morrow, if you can."

"Is there any garden?"

"There is a garden, with trees under which your mother can sit when it

is warm. Clara told me you would like that; and there is a grass-plot--I

won't call it a lawn--where you can let your dog and cat disport

themselves in safety. I am sure you must have brought a dog or a cat

with you, Miss Campion. I never yet knew a young woman from the country

who did not bring a pet animal to town with her."

"Jim, you are very rude," said his wife.

"I shall have to plead guilty," Lettice answered, smiling a little. "I

have left my fair Persian, Fluff, in the care of my maid, Milly, who is

to bring her to London as soon as I can get into my new home."

"Fluff," said Clara, meditatively, "is the creature with a tail as big

as your arm, and a ruff round her neck, and Milly is the pretty little

housemaid; I remember and approve of them both."

The subject of the new house served them until they went upstairs into

Clara's bright little drawing-room, which Graham used to speak of

disrespectfully as his wife's doll's house. It was crowded with pretty

but inexpensive knick-knacks, the profusion of which was rather

bewildering to Lettice, with her more simple tastes. Of one thing she

was quite sure, that she would not, when she furnished her own rooms,

expend much money in droves of delicately-colored china pigs and

elephants, which happened to be in fashion at the time. She also doubted

the expediency of tying up two peacocks' feathers with a yellow ribbon,

and hanging them in solitary glory on the wall flanked by plates of Kaga

ware, at tenpence-halfpenny a-piece. Lettice's taste had been formed by

her father, and was somewhat masculine in its simplicity, and she cared

only for the finer kinds of art, whether in porcelain or painting. But

she was fain to confess that the effect of Clara's decorations was very

pretty, and she wondered at the care and pains which had evidently been

spent on the arrangement of Mrs. Graham's "Liberty rags" and Oriental

ware. When the soft yellow silk curtains were drawn, and a subdued light

fell through the jewelled facets of an Eastern lamp upon the peacock

fans and richly-toned Syrian rugs, and all the other hackneyed

ornamentation by which "artistic" taste is supposed to be shown, Lettice

could not but acknowledge that the room was charming. But her thoughts

flew back instantly to the old study at home, with its solid oak

furniture, its cushioned window-seats, its unfashionable curtains of red

moreen; and in the faint sickness of that memory, it seemed to her that

she could be more comfortable at a deal table, with a kitchen chair set

upon unpolished boards, than in the midst of Clara's pretty novelties.

"You are tired," Mr. Graham said to her, watching her keenly as she sat

down in the chair that he offered her, and let her hands sink languidly

upon her lap. "We won't let you talk too much. Clara is going to see

after her bairns, and I'm going to read the _Pall Mall_. Here's the May

number of _The Decade_: have you seen it?"

She took it with a grateful smile; but she did not intend to read, and

Mr. Graham knew it. He perused his paper diligently, but he was

sufficiently interested in her to know exactly at what point she ceased

to brood and began to glance at the magazine. After a little while, she

became absorbed in its pages; and only when she laid it down at last,

with a half suppressed sigh, did he openly look up to find that her eyes

were full of tears.

"I hope that you discovered something to interest you," he said.

"I was reading a poem," Lettice answered, rather guiltily.

"Oh--Alan Walcott's 'Sorrow'? Very well done, isn't it? but a trifle

morbid, all the same."

"It is very sad. Is he--has he had much trouble?"

"I'm sure I couldn't tell you. Probably not, as he writes about it,"

said Graham, grimly. "He's a pessimist and a bit of a dilletante. If he

would work and believe in himself a little more, I think he might do

great things."

"He is young?"

"Over thirty. He comes to the house sometimes. I daresay you will meet

him before long."

Lettice said nothing. She was not in a mood to enjoy the prospect of

making new acquaintances; but the poem had touched her, and she felt a

slight thrill of interest in its writer.

"Yes," she said, "I shall be pleased to make his acquaintance--some

day." And then the conversation dropped, and Graham understood from her

tone that she was not disposed as yet to meet new faces.

The house on Brook Green proved eminently satisfactory. She agreed to

take it as soon as possible, and for the next few weeks her mind was

occupied with the purchase and arrangement of furniture, and the many

details which belong to the first start in a new career. Although her

tastes differed widely from those of Clara Graham, she found her

friend's advice and assistance infinitely valuable to her; and many were

the expeditions taken together to the Kensington shops to supply

Lettice's requirements. She had not Clara's love for shopping, or

Clara's eagerness for a bargain; but she took pleasure in her visits to

the great London store-houses of beautiful things, and made her

purchases with care and deliberation.

So at the end of June she settled down with her mother in the pleasant

cottage which was thenceforth to be their home. In addition to the new

plenishing, there were in the house a few favorite pieces of furniture

which had been saved from the wreck at Angleford; and Sydney--perhaps as

a sign that he recognized some redeeming features in her desire to be

independent--had made one room look quite imposing with an old-fashioned

bookcase, and a library table and chair. There was a well-established

garden behind the house, with tall box and bay-trees of more than a

generation's growth, and plenty of those old English border plants

without which a garden is scarcely worthy of its name. On the whole,

Lettice felt that she had not made a bad selection out of the million or

so of human habitations which overflow the province of London; and even

Mrs. Campion would occasionally end her lamentations over the past by

admitting that Maple Cottage was "not a workhouse, my dear, where I

might have expected to finish my life."

The widow had a fixed idea about the troubles which had fallen upon her.

She would talk now and then of the "shameful robberies" which had broken

her husband's heart, and declare that sooner or later the miscreants

would be discovered, and restitution would be made, and they would "all

end their days in peace." As for Sydney, he was still her hero of

heroes, who had come to their rescue when their natural protector was

done to death, and whose elevation to the woolsack might be expected at

any moment.

Lettice's friends, the Grahams, had naturally left her almost

undisturbed during her visit to them, so far as invited guests were

concerned. Nevertheless, she casually met several of Mr. Graham's

literary acquaintances, and he took care to introduce her to one or two

editors and publishers whom he thought likely to be useful to her. James

Graham had plenty of tact; he knew just what to say about Miss Campion,

without saying too much, and he contrived to leave an impression in the

minds of those to whom he spoke that it might be rather difficult to

make this young woman sit down and write, but decidedly worth their

while to do it if they could.

"Now I have thrown in the seeds," Graham said to her before she left

Edwardes Square, "and by the time you want to see them the blades will

be springing up. From what you have told me I should say that you have

quite enough to do in the next three months. There is that article for

me, and the translation of Feuerbach, and the Ouf stories."

This reminiscence of Sydney's criticism made Lettice laugh--she was

beginning to laugh again--and Graham's forecast of her future as a woman

of letters put her into a cheerful and hopeful mood.

The summer passed away, and the autumn, and when Lettice lighted her

first study fire, one cold day at the end of October, she could look

forward to the coming winter without misgiving. In four months she had

done fifty pounds' worth of work, and she had commissions which would

keep her busy for six months more, and would yield at least twice as

much money. Mr. Graham's seeds were beginning to send up their blades;

and, in short, Lettice was in a very fair way of earning not only a

living, but also a good literary repute.

One call, indeed, was made upon her resources in a very unexpected

manner. She had put by four five-pound notes of clear saving--it is at

such moments that our unexpected liabilities are wont to find us

out--and she was just congratulating herself on that first achievement

in the art of domestic thrift when her maid Milly knocked at her door,

and announced a visitor.

"Please, miss, here is Mrs. Bundlecombe of Thorley!"

Mrs. Bundlecombe was a bookseller in her own right, in a village some

three miles from Angleford. Her husband had died four years before Mr.

Campion, and his widow made an effort to carry on the business. The

rector in his palmy days had had many dealings with Mr. Bundlecombe, who

was of some note in the world as a collector of second-hand books; but,

as Lettice had no reason to think that he had bought anything of Mrs.

Bundlecombe personally, she could not imagine what the object of this

visit might be.

"Did she say what her business was, Milly?"

"No, miss. Only she said she had heard you were living here, and she

would like to see you, please."

Milly's relations had lived in Thorley. Thus she knew Mrs. Bundlecombe

by sight, and, being somewhat inquisitive by nature, she had already

tried to draw the visitor into conversation, but without success.

"Show her in," said Lettice, after a moment's pause. It was pleasant,

after all, to meet a "kent face" in London solitudes, and she felt quite

kindly towards Mrs. Bundlecombe, whom she had sometimes seen over the

counter in her shop at Thorley. So she received her with gentle

cordiality.

Mrs. Bundlecombe showed symptoms of embarrassment at the quiet

friendliness of Lettice's manners. She was not a person of aristocratic

appearance, for she was short and very stout, and florid into the

bargain; but her broad face was both shrewd and kindly, and her grey

eyes were observant and good-humored. Her grey hair was arranged in

three flat curls, fastened with small black combs on each side of her

face, which was rosy and wrinkled like a russet apple, and her full

purple skirt, her big bonnet, adorned with bows of scarlet ribbon, and

her much be-furbelowed and be-spangled dolman, attested the fact that

she had donned her best clothes for the occasion of her visit, and that

Thorley fashions differed from those of the metropolis. She wore gloves

with one button, moreover, and boots with elastic sides.

Mrs. Bundlecombe seemed to have some difficulty in coming to the point.

She told Lettice much Angleford news, including a piece of information

that interested her a good deal: namely, that the old squire, after many

years of suffering, was dead, and that his nephew, Mr. Brooke Dalton,

had at last succeeded to the property. "He's not there very much,

however: he leaves the house pretty much to his sister, Miss Edith

Dalton; but it's to be hoped that he'll marry soon and bring a lady to

the place."

Lettice wondered again why Mrs. Bundlecombe had called upon her. There

seemed very little point in her remarks. But the good woman had a very

sufficient reason for her call. She was a practical-minded person, and

she was moreover a literary woman in her way, as behoved the widow of a

bookseller who had herself taken to selling books. It is true that her

acquaintance with the works of British authors did not extend far beyond

their titles, but it was to her credit that she contrived to make so

much as she did out of her materials. She might have known as many

insides of books as she knew outsides, and have put them to less

practical service.

"Well," she said, after a quarter of an hour's incessant talk, "you will

be wondering what brought me here, and to be sure, miss, I hardly like

to say it now I've come; but, as I argued with myself, the rights of man

are the rights of man, and to do your best by them who depend on you is

the whole duty of man, which applies, I take it, to woman also. And when

my poor dear husband died, I thought the path of duty was marked out for

me, and I went through my daily exercises, so to speak, just as he had

done for forty years. But times were bad, and I could make nothing of

it. He had ways of selling books that I could never understand, and I

soon saw that the decline and fall was setting in. So I have sold the

business for what it would fetch, and paid all that was owing, and I can

assure you that there is very little left. I have a nephew in London who

is something in the writing way himself. He used to live with us at

Thorley, and he is a dear dutiful boy, but he has had great troubles; so

I am going to keep his rooms for him, and take care of his linen, and

look after things a bit. I came up to-day to talk to him about it.

"Well, Miss Campion, the long and short of it is that as I was looking

over my husband's state documents, so to speak, which he had kept in a

private drawer, and which I had never found until I was packing up to

go, I found a paper signed by your respected father, less than three

months before my good man went to his saint's everlasting rest. You see,

miss, it is an undertaking to pay Samuel Bundlecombe the sum of twenty

pounds in six months from date, for value received, but owing to my

husband dying that sudden, and not telling me of his private drawer,

this paper was never presented."

Lettice took the paper and read it, feeling rather sick at heart, for

two or three reasons. If her father had made this promise she felt sure

that he would either have kept it or have put down the twenty pounds in

his list of debts. The list, indeed, which had been handed to Sydney was

in her own writing, and certainly the name of Bundlecombe was not

included in it. Was the omission her fault? If the money had never been

paid, that was what she would prefer to believe.

"I thought, miss," her visitor continued, "that there might be some

mention of this in Mr. Campion's papers, and, having heard that all the

accounts were properly settled, I made bold to bring it to your notice.

It is a kind of social contract, you see, and a solemn league and

covenant, as between man and man, which I am sure you would like to

settle if the means exist. Not but what it seems a shame to come to a

lady on such an errand; and I may tell you miss, fair and candid, that I

have been to Mr. Sydney Campion in the Temple, who does not admit that

he is liable. That may be law, or it may not, but I do consider that

this signature ought to be worth the money."

Lettice took the paper again. There could be no doubt as to its

genuineness, and the fact that Sydney had denied his liability

influenced her in some subtle manner to do what she had already half

resolved to do without that additional argument.

She looked at the box in which she had put her twenty pounds, and she

looked at her father's signature. Then she opened the box and took out

the notes.

"You did quite right in coming, Mrs. Bundlecombe. This is certainly my

father's handwriting, and I suppose that if the debt had been settled

the paper would not have remained in your husband's possession. Here is

the money."

The old woman could scarcely believe her eyes; but she pocketed the

notes with great satisfaction, and began to express her admiration for

such honorable conduct in a very voluble manner. Lettice cut her short

and got rid of her, and then, if the truth must be confessed, she sat

down and had a comfortable cry over the speedy dissipation of her

savings.

CHAPTER VII.

MRS. HARTLEY AT HOME.

After her first Christmas in London, Lettice began to accept invitations

to the houses of her acquaintance.

She dined several times at the Grahams', where there were never more

than eight at table, and, being a bright talker and an appreciative

listener--two qualities which do not often go together--she was always

an impressive personality without exactly knowing it. Clara was

accustomed to be outshone by her in conversation, and had become used to

it, but some of the women whom Lettice was invited to meet looked at her

rather hard, as though they would have liked to draw her serious

attention to the fact that they were better looking, or better dressed,

or older or younger than herself, as the case might be, and that it was

consequently a little improper in her to be talked to so much by the

men.

Undoubtedly Lettice got on well with men, and was more at her ease with

them than with her own sex. It was not the effect of forwardness on her

part, and indeed she was scarcely conscious of the fact. She conversed

readily, because her mind was full of reading and of thought, and her

moral courage was never at a loss. The keenness of her perception led

her to understand and respond to the opinions of the cleverest men whom

she met, and it was not unnatural that they should be flattered.

It does not take long for a man or woman to earn a reputation in the

literary circles of London, provided he or she has real ability, and is

well introduced. The ability will not, as a rule, suffice without the

introductions, though introductions have been known to create a

reputation, lasting at any rate for a few months, without any real

ability. Lettice advanced rapidly in the estimation of those whose good

opinion was worth having. She soon began to discriminate between the

people who were worth cultivating and the people who were not. If a

person were sincere and straightforward, could say what he meant and say

it with point and vivacity, or if he possessed for her those vaguely

attractive and stimulating qualities which draw people together without

their exactly knowing why (probably through some correlation of

temperament), Lettice would feel this person was good to know, whether

the world approved her choice of friends or not. And when she wanted to

know man or woman, she exerted herself to please--mainly by showing that

she herself was pleased. She did not exactly flatter--she was never

insincere--but it amounted to much the same thing as flattery. She

listened eagerly; her interest was manifested in her face, her attitude,

her answers. In fact she was her absolute self, without reserve and

without fence. No wonder that she incurred the jealousy of half the

women in her set.

But this is how an intellectual woman can best please a man who has

passed the childish age, when he only cared for human dolls and dolls'

houses. She must carry her intellect about with her, like a brave

costume--dressing, of course, with taste and harmony--she must not be

slow to admire the intellectual costume of others, if she wants her own

to be admired; she must be subtle enough at the same time to forget that

she is dressed at all, and yet never for a moment forget that her

companion may have no soul or heart except in his dress. If he has, it

is for him to prove it, not for her to assume it.

It was because Lettice had this art of intellectual intercourse, and

because she exercised it in a perfectly natural and artless manner, that

she charmed so many of those who made her acquaintance, and that they

rarely paused to consider whether she was prettier or plainer, taller or

shorter, more or less prepossessing, than the women who surrounded her.

In due time she found herself welcomed at the houses of those dear and

estimable ladies, who--generally old and childless themselves--love to

gather round them the young and clever acolytes of literature and art,

the enthusiastic devotees of science, the generous apprentices of

constructive politics, for politicians who do not dabble in the

reformation of society find other and more congenial haunts. This

many-minded crowd of acolytes, and devotees, and apprentices, owe much

to the hospitable women who bring them together in a sort of indulgent

dame's school, where their angles are rubbed down, and whence they

merge, perhaps, as Arthur Hallam said, the picturesque of man and man,

but certainly also more fitted for their work in the social mill than if

they had never known that kindly feminine influence.

Lettice became especially fond of one of these minor queens of literary

society, who received her friends on Sunday afternoon, and whose

drawing-room was frequently attended by a dozen or a score of

well-reputed men and women. Mrs. Hartley was an excellent hostess. She

was not only careful, to begin with, about her own acquaintance,

cultivating none but those whom she had heard well spoken of by

competent judges, but she knew how to make a second choice amongst the

chosen, bringing kindred spirits together with a happy, instinctive

sense of their mutual suitabilities. In spite of her many amiable and

agreeable qualities, however, it took Lettice a little time to believe

that she should ever make a friend of Mrs. Hartley, whose habit of

assorting and labelling her acquaintances in groups struck her at first

as artificial and conventional. Lettice objected, for her own part, to

be classified.

She had been entreated so often by Clara to go to one of Mrs. Hartley's

afternoons that it was with some compunction of heart that she prepared

at last to fulfil her long-delayed promise. She walked from Brook Green

to Edwardes Square, about three o'clock one bright Sunday afternoon, in

February, and found Clara waiting for her. Clara was looking very trim

and smart in a new gown of inexpensive material, but the latest, and she

surveyed Lettice in a comprehensive manner from top to toe, as if to

ascertain whether a proper value had been attached to Mrs. Hartley's

invitation.

"You look very nice," was her verdict. "I am so glad that you have

relieved your black at last, Lettice. There is no reason why you should

not wear a little white or lavender."

And indeed this mitigation of her mourning weeds was becoming to

Lettice, whose delicate bloom showed fresh and fair against the black

and white of her new costume. She had pinned a little bunch of sweet

violets into her jacket, and they harmonized excellently well with the

grave tranquillity of her face and the soberness of her dress.

"I don't know why it is, but you remind me of a nun," Clara said,

glancing at her in some perplexity. "The effect is quite charming, but

it is nun-like too----"

"I am sure I don't know why; I never felt more worldly in my life," said

Lettice, laughing. "Am I not fit for Mrs. Hartley's drawing-room?"

"Fit? You are lovely; but not quite like anybody else. That is the best

of it; Mrs. Hartley will rave of you," said Clara, as they set forth.

And the words jarred a little on Lettice's sensitive mind; she thought

that she should object to be raved about.

They took an omnibus to Kensington High Street, and then they made their

way to Campden Hill, where Mrs. Hartley's house was situated. And as

they went, Clara took the opportunity of explaining Mrs. Hartley's

position and claims to distinction. Mrs. Hartley was a widow, childless,

rich, perfectly independent: she was very critical and very clever (said

Mrs. Graham), but, oh, _so_ kind-hearted! And she was sure that Lettice

would like her.

Lettice meekly hoped that she should, although she had a guilty sense of

wayward dislike to the woman in whose house, it appeared, she was to be

exhibited. For some words of Graham's lingered in her mind. "Mrs.

Hartley? The lion-hunter? Oh! so _you_ are to be on view this afternoon,

I understand." Accordingly, it was with no very pleasant anticipation

that Lettice entered the lion-hunter's house on Campden Hill.

A stout, little grey-haired lady in black, with a very observant eye,

came forward to greet the visitors. "This is Miss Campion, I feel sure,"

she said, putting out a podgy hand, laden with diamond rings. "Dear Mrs.

Graham, how kind of you to bring her. Come and sit by me, Miss Campion,

and tell me all about yourself. I want to know how you first came to

think of literature as a profession?"

This was not the way in which people talked at Angleford. Lettice felt

posed for a moment, and then a sense of humor came happily to her

relief.

"I drifted into it, I am afraid," she answered, composedly.

"Drifted? No, I am sure you would never drift. You don't know how

interested I am, Miss Campion, in the development of the human mind, or

you would not try to evade the question. Now, which interests you most,

poetry or prose?"

"That depends upon my mood; I am not sure that I am permanently

interested in either," Lettice said, quietly.

Her hostess' observant eye was upon her for a moment; then Mrs.

Hartley's face expanded in a benignant smile.

"Ah, I see you are very clever," she said. "I ask the question--not from

idle curiosity, because I have representatives of both in the room at

the present moment. There is a poet, whom I mean to introduce you to by

and by, if you will allow me; and there is the very embodiment of prose

close beside you, although I don't believe that he writes any, and, like

M. Jourdain, talks it without knowing that it is prose."

Lettice glanced involuntarily at the man beside her, and glanced again.

Where had she seen his face before? He was a rather stout, blonde man,

with an honest open countenance that she liked, although it expressed

good nature rather than intellectual force.

"Don't you remember him?" said Mrs. Hartley, in her ear. "He's a cousin

of mine: Brooke Dalton, whose uncle used to live at Angleford. He has

been wanting to meet you very much; he remembers you quite well, he

tells me."

The color rose in Lettice's face. She was feminine enough to feel that a

connecting link between Mrs. Hartley and her dear old home changed her

views of her hostess at once. She looked up and smiled. "I remember Mr.

Dalton too," she said.

"What a sweet face!" Mrs. Hartley said to herself. "Now if Brooke would

only take it into his head to settle down----"

And aloud she added: "Brooke, come and be introduced to Miss Campion.

You used to know her at Angleford."

"It seems a long time since I saw you," Mr. Dalton said, rather

clumsily, as he took Lettice's hand into a very cordial clasp. "It was

that day in December when your brother had just got his scholarship at

Trinity."

"Oh, yes; that day! I remember it very well," said Lettice, drawing a

long breath, which was not exactly a sigh, although it sounded like one.

"I gave up being a child on that day, I believe!"

"There have been many changes since then." Brooke Dalton was not

brilliant in conversation.

"You have heard of them all, I suppose? Yes, my mother and I are in

London now."

"You will allow me to call, I hope?"

Lettice had but time to signify her consent, when Mrs. Hartley seized on

her again, but this time Lettice did not so much object to be

cross-examined. She recognized the fact that Mrs. Hartley's aim was

kindly, and she submitted to be asked questions about her work and her

prospects, and to answer them with a frankness that amazed herself. But

in the very midst of the conversation she was conscious of being much

observed by two or three people in the room; notably by Brooke Dalton,

who had planted himself in a position from which he could look at her

without attracting the other visitors' remark; and also by a tall man

with a dark, melancholy face, deep-set eyes, and a peaked Vandyke beard,

whose glances were more furtive than those of Dalton, but equally

interested and intent. He was a handsome man, and Lettice found herself

wondering whether he were not "somebody," and somebody worth talking to,

moreover; for he was receiving, in a languid, half-indifferent manner, a

great deal of homage from the women in the room. He seemed bored by it,

and was turning away in relief from a lady who had just quoted

half-a-dozen lines of Shelley for his especial behoof, when Mrs.

Hartley, who had been discussing Feuerbach and the German materialists

with Lettice, caught his eye, and beckoned him to her side.

"Mr. Walcott," she said, "I never heard that you were a materialist, and

I don't think it is very likely; so you can condole with Miss Campion on

having been condemned to translate five hundred pages of Feuerbach. Now,

isn't that terrible?"

"I don't know Feuerbach," said the poet, after he had bowed to Lettice,

"but it sounds warm and comfortable on a wintry day. Nevertheless, I do

condole with her."

"I am not sure that I need condolence," said Lettice. "The work was

really very interesting, and one likes to know what any philosopher has

to say for himself, whether one believes in his theories or not. I must

say I have enjoyed reading Feuerbach,--though he _is_ a German with a

translatable name."

This was a flippant speech, as Lettice acknowledged to herself; but,

then, Mr. Walcott's speech had been flippant to begin with, and she

wanted to give as good as she got.

"You read German, then?" said Walcott, sitting down in the chair that

Mrs. Hartley had vacated, and looking at Lettice with interest, although

he did not abandon the slight affectation of tone and manner that she

had noted from the beginning of her talk with him. "How nice that must

be! I often wish I knew something more than my schoolboy's smattering of

Greek, Latin, and French."

Lettice had read Mr. Walcott's last volume of poems, which were just

then exciting considerable interest in the literary world, and she could

not help recalling one or two lyrics and sonnets from Uhland, Filicaja,

and other Continentals. As though divining her thoughts, Walcott went on

quickly, with much more sincerity of tone:

"I do try now and then to put an idea that strikes me from German or

Italian into English; but think of my painful groping with a dictionary,

before the cramped and crippled idea can reach my mind! I am the

translator most in need of condolence, Miss Campion!"

"Yet, even without going to other languages," said Lettice, "there is an

unlimited field in our own, both for ideas and for expression--as well

as a practically unlimited audience."

"The artists and musicians say that their domains are absolutely

unlimited--that the poet sings to those who happen to speak his

language, whilst they discourse to the whole world and to all time. I

suppose, in a sense, they are right."

He spoke listlessly, as if he did not care whether they were right or

wrong.

But Lettice's eyes began to glow.

"Surely in a narrow sense! They would hardly say that Handel or

Beethoven speaks to a wider audience than Homer or Shakspeare, and

certainly no musician or painter or sculptor can hope to delight mankind

for as many centuries as a poet. And, then, to think what an idea can

accomplish--what Greek ideas have done in England, for instance, or

Roman ideas in France, or French ideas in nearly every country of

Europe! Could a tune make a revolution, or a picture destroy a

religion?"

"Perhaps, yes," said Walcott, wishing to draw her out, "if the tunes or

the pictures could be repeated often enough, and brought before the eyes

and ears of the multitude."

"I do not think so. And, at any rate, that could not be done by way of

systematic and comprehensive teaching, so that your comparison only

suggests another superiority in literary expression. A poet can teach a

whole art, or establish a definite creed; he can move the heart and

mould the mind at the same time; but one can hardly imagine such an

effect from the work of those who speak to us only through the eye or

ear."

By this time Alan Walcott was fairly interested. What Lettice said might

be commonplace enough, but it did not strike him so. It was her manner

that pleased him, her quiet fervor and gentle insistance, which showed

that she was accustomed to think for herself, and suggested that she

would have the honesty to say what she thought. And, of course, he

applied to himself all that she said about poets in general, and was

delighted by her warm championship of his special vocation. As they went

on talking for another quarter of an hour he recognized, without framing

the admission in words, that Miss Campion was an exceedingly well-read

person, and that she knew many authors--even poets--with whom he had the

slightest acquaintance. Most of the people whom he met talked idle

nonsense to him, as though their main object was to pass the time, or

else they aired a superficial knowledge of the uppermost thoughts and

theories of the day, gleaned as a rule from the cheap primers and

magazine articles in which a bustled age is content to study its

science, art, economy, politics, and religion. But here was a woman who

had been a voracious reader, who had gone to the fountain-head for her

facts, and who yet spoke with the air of one who wanted to learn, rather

than to display.

"We have had a very pleasant talk," he said to her at last. "I mean that

I have found it very pleasant. I am going now to dine at my club, and

shall spend my evening over a monologue which has suggested itself since

I entered this room. As you know the Grahams I may hope to meet you

again, there if not here. A talk with you, Miss Campion, is what the

critics in the _Acropolis_ might call very suggestive!"

Again Lettice thought the manner and the speech affected, but there was

an air of sincerity about the man which seemed to be fighting down the

affectation. She hardly knew whether she liked him or not, but she knew

that he had interested her and made her talk--for which two things she

half forgave him the affectation.

"I knew you two would get on together," said Mrs. Hartley, who came up

at the moment and dropped into Alan Walcott's chair. "I am not easily

deceived in my friends, and I was sure you would have plenty to say to

each, other. I have been watching you, and I declare it was quite a case

of conversation at first sight. Now, mind you come to me often, Miss

Campion. I feel that I shall like you."

And the fat good-natured little woman nodded her grey head to emphasize

the compliment.

"It is kind of you to say that," said Lettice, warmly. "I will certainly

take you at your word."

"My dear," said Mrs. Hartley, when Alan Walcott had left them, "he is a

very nice and clever man--but, oh, so melancholy! He makes me feel quite

unhappy. I never saw him so animated as he was just now, and it must be

thoroughly good for him to be drawn out in that way."

"I suppose it is the natural mood of poets," Lettice answered with a

smile. "It is an old joke against them."

"Ah, but I think the race is changing its characteristics in these days,

and going in for cheerfulness and comfort. There is Mr. Pemberton, for

instance--how aggravatingly prosperous he looks! Do you see how he beams

with good nature on all the world? I should say that he is a jovial

man--and yet, you know, he has been down there, as they said of Dante."

"Perhaps it goes by opposites. What I have read of Mr. Walcott's poetry

is rather light than sad--except one or two pieces in _The Decade_."

"Poor man! I think there is another cause for his melancholy. He lost

his wife two or three years ago, and I have been told that she was a

charming creature, and that her death upset him terribly. He has only

just begun to go about again."

"How very unfortunate!" said Lettice. "And that makes it still more

strange that his poems should be so slightly tinged with melancholy. He

must live quite a double life. Most men would give expression to their

personal griefs, and publish them for everybody to read; but he keeps

them sacred. That is much more interesting."

"I should think it is more difficult. It seems natural that a poet,

being in grief, should write the poetry of grief."

"Yes--no doubt it is more difficult."

And Lettice, on her way home and afterwards, found herself pondering on

the problem of a man who, recently robbed of a well-beloved wife, wrote

a thousand verses without a single reference to her.

She took down his "Measures and Monologues," and read it through, to see

what he had to say about women.

There were a few cynical verses from Heine, and three bitter stanzas on

the text from Balzac:--"Vous nous promettiez le bonheur, et finissiez

par nous jeter dans une précipice;" but not one tender word applied to a

woman throughout the book. It was certainly strange; and Lettice felt

that her curiosity was natural and legitimate.

Alan Walcott, in fact, became quite an interesting study. During the

next few months Lettice had many opportunities of arriving at a better

knowledge of his character, and she amused herself by quietly pushing

her inquiries into what was for her a comparatively new field of

speculation. The outcome of the research was not very profitable. The

more she saw of him the more he puzzled her. Qualities which appeared

one day seemed to be entirely wanting when they next met. In some subtle

manner she was aware that even his feelings and inclinations constantly

varied; at one time he did not conceal his craving for sympathy, at

another he was frigid and almost repellent. Lettice still did not know

whether she liked or disliked him. But she was now piqued as well as

interested, and so it happened that Mr. Walcott began to occupy more of

her thoughts than she was altogether willing to devote to him.

So far, all their meetings were in public. They had never exchanged a

word that the world might not hear. They saw each other at the Grahams'

dinner-parties, at Mrs. Hartley's Sunday afternoon "at homes," and at

one or two other houses. To meet a dozen times in a London season

constitutes intimacy. Although they talked chiefly of books, sometimes

of men and women, and never of themselves, Lettice began to feel that a

confidential tone was creeping into their intercourse--that she

criticized his poems with extraordinary freedom, and argued her opinions

with him in a way that would certainly have staggered her brother Sydney

if he had heard her. But in all this friendly talk, the personal note

had never once been struck. He told her nothing of his inner self, of

his past life, or his dreams for the future. All that they said might

have been said to each other on their first meeting in Mrs. Hartley's

drawing-room. It seemed as if some vague impalpable barrier had been

erected between them, and Lettice puzzled herself from time to time to

know how this barrier had been set up.

Sometimes--she did not know why--she was disposed to associate it with

the presence of Brooke Dalton. That gentleman continued to display his

usual lack of brilliance in conversation, together with much

good-heartedness, soundness of judgment, and thoughtfulness for others;

and in spite of his slowness of speech Lettice liked him very much. But

why would he persist in establishing himself within earshot when Alan

was talking to her? If they absolutely eluded him, he betrayed

uneasiness, like that of a faithful dog who sees his beloved mistress in

some danger. He did not often interrupt the conversation. He sat silent

for the most part, unconsciously throwing a wet blanket over both

speakers, and sometimes sending Walcott away in a state of almost

irrepressible irritation. And yet he seemed to be on good terms with

Alan. They spoke to each other as men who had been acquaintances, if not

friends, for a good number of years; and he never made an allusion to

Alan, in his absence, which could in the least be deemed disparaging.

And yet Lettice felt that she was watched, and that there was some

mysterious anxiety in Dalton's mind.

Having no companions (for Clara was too busy with her house and her

children to be considered a companion for the day-time), Lettice

sometimes went for solitary expeditions to various "sights" of London,

and, as usual in such expeditions, had never once met anybody she knew.

She had gone rather early one summer morning to Westminster Abbey, and

was walking slowly through the dim cloistered shades, enjoying the

coolness and the quietness, when she came full upon Alan Walcott, who

seemed to be doing likewise.

They both started: indeed, they both changed color. For the first time

they met outside a drawing-room; and the change in their environment

seemed to warrant some change in their relation to one another. After

the first greeting, and a short significant pause--for what can be more

significant than silence between two people who have reached that stage

of sensitiveness to each other's moods when every word or movement seems

like self-revelation?--Alan spoke.

"You love this place--as I do; I know you love it."

"I have never been here before," said Lettice, letting her eyes stray

dreamily over the grey stones at her feet.

"No, or I should have seen you. I am often here. And I see you so

seldom----"

"So seldom?" said Lettice in some natural surprise. "Why, I thought we

met rather often?"

"Under the world's eye," said Alan, but in so low a voice that she was

not sure whether he meant her to hear or not. However, they both smiled;

and he went on rather hurriedly, "It is the place of all others where I

should expect to meet you. We think so much alike----"

"Do we?" said Lettice doubtfully. "But we differ very much."

"Not in essentials. Don't say that you think so," he said, in a tone

that was almost passionately earnest? "I can't tell you how much it is

to me to feel that I have a friend who understands--who sympathizes--who

_would_ sympathize, I am sure, if she knew all----"

He broke off suddenly, and the emotion in his voice so far touched

Lettice that she remained silent, with drooping head and lowered eyes.

"Yes," he went on, "you owe me your sympathy now. You have given me so

much that you must give me more. I have a right to it."

"Mr. Walcott!" said Lettice, raising her head quickly, "you can have no

_right_----"

"No right to sympathy from a friend? Well, perhaps not," he answered

bitterly. "I thought that, although you were a woman, you could allow me

the claim I make. It is small enough, God knows! Miss Campion, forgive

me for speaking so roughly. I ask most earnestly for your friendship and

your sympathy; will you not give me these?"

Lettice moved onward towards the door. "Do you think that we ought to

discuss our personal concerns in such a place as this?" she asked,

evading the question in a thoroughly feminine manner.

"Why not? But if not here, then in another place. By the bye"--with a

sudden change of manner, as they stepped into the light of day--"I have

a rare book that I want to show you. Will you let me bring it to your

house to-morrow morning? I think that you will be interested. May I

bring it?"

"Yes," said Lettice mechanically. The change from fierce earnestness to

this subdued conventionality of tone bewildered her a little.

"I will come at twelve, if that hour will suit you?"

"It will suit me very well."

And then he raised his hat and left her. Lettice, her pulses throbbing

strangely, took her way back to Hammersmith. As she grew calmer, she

wondered what had agitated her so much; it must have been something in

his look or in his tone, for every effort to assure herself by a

repetition of his words that they were mere commonplaces of conversation

set her heart beating more tumultuously than ever. She walked all the

way from Westminster to Brook Green without once reflecting that she

might save herself that fatigue by hailing a passing omnibus.

CHAPTER VIII.

AT THE OLIGARCHY CLUB.

Sydney Campion had done a year's hard and remunerative work since he

paid his last visit to Angleford, and the result more than answered his

expectations.

When the courts were sitting he was fully absorbed in his briefs; but

now and again he took life easily enough--at any rate, so far as the law

was concerned. In the autumn it had been his custom to live abroad for a

month or two; at Christmas and Easter he invariably found his way to his

club in the afternoon, and finished the evening over a rubber of whist.

It was a rare occasion when Sydney was able, in the middle of term, to

leave his chambers between three and four o'clock, and stroll in a

leisurely way along the Embankment, peacefully smoking a cigar. The

chance came to him one sultry day in June. There was no case for him to

master, nothing proceeding in which he was specially interested, and he

did not feel disposed to sit down and improvise a case for himself, as

he used to do in his earlier days. He was minded to be idle; and we may

accompany him in his westward walk along the river side to Hungerford

Bridge, and up the Avenue to Pall Mall.

On the steps of the Oligarchy Club he found his old friend, Pynsent,

just starting for the House. The time was one of great excitement for

those who had not lost their interest in the politics of the day. The

Irish Land Bill was in Committee, and the Conservatives had strenuously

opposed it, fighting, as they knew, a losing battle, yet not without

consolations. This very week they had run the Government so close that

the transfer of three votes would have put them in a minority; and Sir

John Pynsent, who was always a sanguine man, had convinced himself that

the Liberal party was on the point of breaking up.

"They are sure to go to pieces," he said to Campion; "and it would be a

strange thing if they did not. What Heneage has done already some other

Whig with a conscience will do again, and more effectually. You will see

we shall be back in office before the year is out. No Ministry and no

majority could bear the strain which the Old Man is putting on his

followers--it is simply impossible. The worth and birth of the country

are sick of this veiled communism that they call justice to

Ireland--sick of democratic sycophancy--deadly sick of the Old Man. You

mark my words, dear boy: there will be a great revolt against him before

many months have passed. I see it working. I find it in the House, in

the clubs, in the drawing-rooms; and I don't speak merely as my wishes

lead me."

"No doubt you are right as to London; but how about the country?"

"The provinces waver more than the metropolis, I admit; but I don't

despair of seeing a majority even in the English boroughs. Ah, Campion I

never see you without saying to myself, 'There goes the man who lost us

Dormer.' You would have won that election, I am certain."

"Well," said Sydney, "you know why I could not fight. The will, the

money, everything was ready: but----"

"True, I forgot. I beg your pardon!"

"Not at all! But I will fight for you some day--as soon as you like.

Bear that in mind, Pynsent!"

"To be sure I will, my dear fellow. We must have you in the House. I

have often said so."

And the energetic baronet hurried away, whilst Sydney entered the Club,

and made straight for the smoking-room. Here he found others just as

eager to predict the downfall of the Government as Sir John Pynsent had

been; but he was not in the mood to listen to a number of young men all

of the same mind, all of-doubtful intellectual calibre, and all sure to

say what he had heard a dozen times already. So he passed on to the

billiard-room, and finding that a pool was just beginning, took a ball

and played.

That served to pass the time until six o'clock, when he went upstairs

and read the evening papers for an hour; and at seven he had his dinner

and a bottle of wine. Meanwhile he had met two or three friends, with

whom he kept up a lively conversation on the events of the day, seasoned

by many a pungent joke, and fatal (for the moment) to many a reputation.

It is a habit fostered by club life--as, no doubt, it is fostered in the

life of the drawing-room, for neither sex is exempt--to sacrifice the

repute of one's absent acquaintance with a light heart, not in malice,

but more as a parrot bites the finger that feeds it, in sport, or even

in affection. If we backbite our friends, we give them free permission

to backbite us, or we know that they do it, which amounts to pretty much

the same thing. The biting may not be very severe, and, as a rule, it

leaves no scars; but, of course, there are exceptions to the rule.

The secret history of almost every man or woman who has mixed at all in

polite society is sure to be known by some one or other in the clubs and

drawing-rooms. If there is anything to your discredit in your past life,

anything which you would blot out if you could with rivers of repentance

or expiation, you may be pretty sure that at some time, when you might

least expect it, this thing has been, or will be, the subject of

discourse and dissection amongst your friends. It may not be told in an

injurious or exaggerated manner, and it may not travel far; but none the

less do you walk on treacherous shale, which may give way at any moment

under your feet. The art of living, if you are afraid of the passing of

your secret from the few who know to the many who welcome a new scandal,

is to go on walking with the light and confident step of youth, never so

much as quailing in your own mind at the thought that the ground may

crumble beneath you--that you may go home some fine day, or to your

club, or to Lady Jane's five o'clock tea, and be confronted by the

grinning skeleton on whom you had so carefully turned your keys and shot

your bolts.

No doubt there are men and women so refined and kindly in their nature

that they have absolutely no appetite for scandal--never speak it, or

listen to it, or remember what they have overheard. Sydney and his

friends were troubled by no such qualms, and, if either of them had

been, he would not have been so ill-mannered as to spoil sport for the

rest.

After dinner they had gone upstairs to the members' smoking room, in a

comfortable corner of which they were lazily continuing their

conversation. It turned by chance on a certain barrister of Sydney's

inn, a Mr. Barrington Baynes, whom one of the party not incorrectly

described as "that beautiful, bumptious, and briefless barrister, B. B."

"He gives himself great airs," said Captain Williams, a swaggering,

supercilious man, for whom Sydney had no affection, and who was not one

of Sydney's admirers. "To hear him talk one would imagine he was a high

authority on every subject under the sun, but I suspect he has very

little to go upon. Has he ever held a brief, Campion?"

"I never heard of it, if he did. One of those poor devils who take to

journalism, and usually end by going to the dogs. You will find his name

on the covers of magazines, and I fancy he does something, in the

reviewing way."

It was an unfortunate speech for Sydney to make, and Captain Williams

did not fail to seize his opportunity of giving the sharp-tongued

lawyer--who perhaps knew better how to thrust than to parry in such

encounters--a wholesome snub.

Fortune favored him. The current number of _The Decade_ was lying on the

table beside him. He took it up in a casual sort of way, and glanced at

the list of contents.

"By the bye, Campion," he said, "you are not a married man, are you? I

see magazine articles now and then signed Lettice Campion; no relation,

I suppose."

"That is my sister," Sydney answered, quietly enough. But it was plain

that the hit had told; and he was vexed with himself for being so

snobbish as to deserve a sneer from a man like Williams.

"I have had the pleasure of meeting Miss Campion two or three times

lately at Mrs. Hartley's, in Kensington," said another of the quartette.

This was none other than Brooke Dalton, whom Sydney always liked. He

spoke in a confidential undertone, with the kindly intention of covering

Sydney's embarrassment. "Mrs. Hartley is a cousin of mine; and, though I

say it, she brings some very nice people together sometimes. By the way,

have you ever seen a man of the name of Walcott--Alan Walcott: a man who

writes poetry, and so forth?"

"I know him by name, that is all. I have heard people say he is one of

the best poets we have; but I don't pretend to understand our latter-day

bards."

"You never met him?"

"No."

"Well, then," said Mr. Dalton, who, though a justice of the peace, and

the oldest of the four, could give them all points and beat them as a

retailer of gossip; "well, then, that leaves me free to tell you as

curious a little history as any I know. But mind, you fellows," he

continued, as the others pricked up their ears and prepared to listen,

"this is not a story for repetition, and I pledge you to silence before

I say another word."

"Honor bright!" said Charles Milton; and the captain nodded his head.

"The facts are these: Five or six years ago, I knew a little of Alan

Walcott. I had made his acquaintance in a fortuitous way, and he once

did me a good turn by coming forward as a witness in the police court."

"Confession is good for the soul," Milton interjected.

"Well, I was summoned for thrashing a cabman, and I should certainly

have been fined if Walcott had not contrived to put the matter in its

proper light. For a month or two we saw a good deal of each other, and I

rather liked him. He was frank and open in his ways, and though not a

well-to-do man, I never observed anything about him that was mean or

unhandsome. I did not know that he was married at first, but gradually I

put two and two together, and found that he came out now and again to

enjoy a snatch of personal freedom, which he could not always make sure

of at home.

"Once I saw his wife, and only once. She was a strikingly handsome

Frenchwoman, of that bold and flaunting type which generally puts an

Englishman on his guard--all paint and powder and cosmetics; you know

the style!"

"Not exactly a poetic ideal," said Sydney.

"That is just what I thought at the time; and she seems to have been

still less so in character. When I saw her she was terribly excited

about some trifle or other--treated Walcott like a dog, without the

slightest consideration for his feelings or mine, stood over him with a

knife, and ended with a fit of shrieking hysterics."

"Drink or jealousy?" Captain Williams asked.

"Perhaps a little of both. Walcott told me afterwards that that was his

daily and nightly experience, and that he was making up his mind to end

it. I never knew what he meant by that, but it was impressed upon my

memory by the cool sort of way in which he said it, and a quiet look in

his eyes which evidently meant mischief. About a fortnight later they

went abroad, rather in a hurry; and for some time I heard nothing more

of them. Then I went to Aix-les-Bains, and came on the scene just after

a frightful row. It seems that a French admirer of hers had followed her

to Aix, and attacked Walcott, and even struck him in the hotel gardens.

The proprietor and the police had to interfere, and I came across

Walcott just as he was looking for some one to act as second. There had

been a challenge, and all that sort of thing; and, un-English as it

seems, I thought Walcott perfectly right, and acted as his friend

throughout the affair. It was in no way a remarkable duel: the French

fellow was shot in the arm and got away to Switzerland, and we managed

to keep it dark. Walcott was not hurt, and went back to his hotel."

"What did the woman do?" asked Williams, curiously.

"That's the odd part of it. Husband and wife seem to have made it up,

for in a day or two they went on to Culoz, had luncheon there, and went

out for a walk together. From that walk, Mrs. Alan Walcott did not

return. Now comes the mystery: what happened in the course of that walk

near Culoz? All that is known is that the landlady saw Walcott returning

by himself two or three hours later, and that when she questioned him he

replied that madame had taken her departure. What do you think of that

for a bit of suggested melodrama?"

"It lacks finish," said Milton.

"I can't see where the poetry comes in," observed the captain.

"It certainly looked black for Walcott," Sydney remarked. "I suppose

there was a regular hue and cry--a search for the body, and all that

kind of thing?"

"So far as I know, there was nothing of the sort. Nobody seems to have

had any suspicion at the time. The peasants at Culoz seemed to have

talked about it a little, and some weeks afterwards the English people

at Aix-les-Bains got hold of it, and a friend of mine tried to extract

information from the landlady. But he was unsuccessful: the landlady

could not positively affirm that there was anything wrong. And--perhaps

there was not," Mr. Dalton concluded, with a burst of Christian charity

which was creditable to him, considering how strong were his objections

to Walcott's friendship with Miss Campion.

The captain leaned his head back, sent a pillar of smoke up to the

ceiling, and laughed aloud.

"There is no question about it," said Milton, "that Walcott got out of

it cheaply. I would not be in his shoes for any money, even now."

"Is this business widely known?" Sydney asked. "It is strange that I

never heard anything about it."

He was thinking that the acquaintance of Mr. Alan Walcott could not in

any case be a desirable thing for Miss Lettice Campion. From the manner

in which Dalton had introduced the subject he felt pretty sure that the

attention paid by this man to his sister had been noticed, and that his

friend was actuated by a sense, of duty in giving him warning as to the

facts within his knowledge.

"I don't wonder you never heard of it," said Dalton. "I am not aware of

anyone in England who ever did, except myself. I have not mentioned it

before, because I am not sure that it is fair to Walcott to do so. But I

know you men will not repeat what I have been telling you."

"Not a word," said Captain Williams and Charles Milton, in a breath.

Yet in less than a week from that time the whole story made its

appearance in one of the baser personal journals, and people were

discussing who the "well-known poet" was, and whether "the buried

secret" would presently come to light again.

And Alan Walcott saw the paragraph, and felt that he had not yet quite

done with his past, and wondered at the dispensation of Providence which

permitted the writers of such paragraphs to live and thrive.

But a good deal was to happen before that paragraph was printed; and in

the meantime Dalton and Campion went off to look for partners in a

rubber, without supposing for a moment that they had delivered a stab in

the back to one who had never done an injury to either of them.

CHAPTER IX.

LETTICE RECEIVES A VISITOR.

The day following that on which Sydney Campion paid his afternoon visit

to his club in Pall Mall was one of considerable importance to his

sister Lettice.

She was an early riser, and generally contrived to write half-a-dozen

pages of easy translation or straightforward fiction before ten o'clock.

That was the hour when she was due in her mother's room, to help her in

dressing, and to settle her comfortably in her arm-chair, with her Bible

and spectacles at her side, and a newspaper or magazine waiting its turn

after the lessons for the day had been read. Mrs. Campion was growing

very feeble, both in mind and in body, but she got through her waking

hours with a fair amount of satisfaction, thanks to the attention which

was paid to all her wants and wishes. Lettice did not suffer anything to

interfere with the regular routine which she had marked out for her

mother's comfort. She and her maid Milly between them kept the old lady

in peace of mind and constant good humor; and if Mrs. Campion still

believed that Sydney was their great benefactor, and that it behoved her

to comport herself with dignity and grace as the mother of a Lord

Chancellor, Lettice did not attempt the hopeless task of undeceiving

her.

On this particular day there had been a poor pretence of morning work.

She had arranged her papers, the ink and pen were ready to her hand, and

a few lines were actually written. But her ideas were all in confusion,

and eluded her when she tried to fix them. She could not settle to

anything, and instead of writing she found herself drawing figures on

the blotting-pad. She knew that of old as a bad symptom, and gave up

trying to be industrious. The French window stood open, and the balmy

June morning tempted her out into the garden. She picked some flowers

for her vases, and pinned a rosebud on the collar of her soft grey

dress. It was a simple, straight-flowing dress, of the make which suits

every woman best, tall or short, handsome or plain, depending for its

beauty on shape and material alone, without any superfluous trimmings;

for Lettice had a man's knack of getting her dressmaker to obey orders,

and would have scorned to wear and pay for, as a matter of course,

whatever trappings might be sent home to her in lieu of what she wanted.

Clearly there were special reasons for her perturbation of mind, and if

any other woman had been at her side, and watched her in and out of the

house for ten minutes at a time, she would have had no difficulty in

divining that Lettice expected a visitor. She would probably go further

than this, and draw some confident conclusion as to the kind of welcome

likely to be accorded to the visitor; but here, at any rate, the

criticism would have been premature. Lettice did expect a visitor--Mr.

Alan Walcott to wit; but she had not the slightest notion as to how she

should receive him, or whether she would prefer that he should come or

stay away.

Her friendship with the poet had grown steadily since their first

meeting, and they were now on tolerably familiar terms. His manner had

made it impossible for her to doubt that he liked to talk and listen to

her, that he sought her company, and even considered himself entitled to

her sympathy. But when on the previous day he had gone so far as to

assert his title in words, he had done so with what seemed to her

remarkable audacity. And, although she had given him permission to come

to her house this morning, she was thinking now whether it would not

have been better if she had suggested the transfer of the volume of

which he spoke at Mrs. Hartley's on the following Sunday, or if she had

made her hint still broader by praising the cheapness and despatch of

the Parcels Delivery Company.

She had done nothing of this kind. She had been neither rude nor

effusive, for it was not in her nature to be either. He was coming "some

time after twelve," and in fact, punctually as the clock struck twelve,

Mr. Alan Walcott was at the door.

Milly announced him demurely. She observed him carefully, however, as

she admitted him into Lettice's room, and studied his card with interest

while carrying it to Miss Campion. No man so young and handsome had ever

called at Maple Cottage in her time before.

Lettice had been sitting with her mother, and she came down to her study

and received her visitor with a frank smile.

"It is really, very kind of you," she said, taking the innocent book

which he held out as a sort of warrant for his intrusion, "to be at all

this trouble. And this is a splendid copy, it reminds me of the volumes

my father used to be so fond of. I will take great care of it. How long

did you say I might keep it?"

"Till you have read it, at any rate. Or till I ask you for it

again--which I don't think I shall. You say that you used to see volumes

like this on your father's bookshelves. I should not wonder if you had

seen this very book there. It is a strange coincidence that I should

have had it in my possession for some time, and yet never noticed until

this morning, when I took it down to bring to you, that it had your name

on the fly-leaf. Look!"

He opened the book and held the fly-leaf against the window. The name

had been rubbed out with a wet finger, after the manner of second-hand

booksellers, but the "Lawrence Campion" was still easily legible.

Lettice could not restrain a little cry of delight.

"Yes, that is his dear handwriting, I know it so well! And this is his

book-plate, too, and his motto--'Vive ut vivas in vitam æternam.' Oh,

where did you get the book? But I suppose my father's library was

scattered all over the country."

"No doubt it was. I have a few--perhaps twenty--with the same plate. My

uncle gave me them. I--a--Miss Campion--I came this morning--"

Apparently he did not quite know why he came, or at any rate he did not

find it easy to say. Lettice spoke again in order to relieve his

embarrassment, which she did not understand.

"It is so strange that I should have one of his books in my hand again.

You can imagine what a grief it was to him when he had to let them go."

"I am so glad to have restored to you something that was your father's.

I want you to give me a great pleasure, Miss Campion. These books--there

are not more than forty outside--I want you to have them. They are

yours, you know, because they were his, and he ought never to have been

deprived of them."

"I could not take them, indeed, Mr. Walcott. You are most kind to think

of it, but I could not!"

"Why?"

"That is hardly a reasonable question," she said, with a quiet little

laugh. "How could I?"

"I see very well how you could, but why should you not? It will be a

good deed, and there is no good deed without a sacrifice."

"And you want to sacrifice these books, which are so valuable!"

"No, it is no sacrifice to me, as I could easily prove to you. Believe

that it pleases me, and sacrifice your own feelings by taking them."

"I don't see why you should ask me. It is too great a present to make,

and--oh, dear me, I am afraid I do not know how to say what I mean! But

if you will give me this one book, with my father's name in it, I will

take it from you, and thank you very much for it."

"I shall not be satisfied if I may not send the rest. Miss Campion, I

came to say----"

Again he stammered and broke down. Lettice, who thought that he had

already delivered himself of his mental burden, was a little startled

now, especially as he got up and stood by her chair at the window.

"What a lovely little garden!" he said. "Why, you are quite in the

country here. What delightful roses! I--I want to say something else,

Miss Campion!"

"Yes," said Lettice, faintly, and doing her best to feel indifferent.

"We have not known each other long, but it seems to me that we know each

other well--at any rate that I know you well. Before I met you I had

never made the acquaintance of a woman who at the same time commanded my

respect, called my mind into full play, and aroused my sympathy. These

last few months have been the happiest of my life, because I have been

lifted above my old level, and have known for the first time what the

world might yet be to me. There is something more I want to say to you.

I think you know that I have been married--that my wife is--is no more.

You may or may not have heard that miserable story, of my folly,

and----"

"Oh, no!" cried Lettice, impulsively. "It is true that Mrs. Hartley told

me of the great trouble which fell upon you in the loss of which you

speak."

"The great trouble--yes! That is how Mrs. Hartley would put it. And the

Grahams, have they told you nothing?"

"Nothing more."

A look as of relief passed across his face, followed by a spasm of pain;

and he stood gazing wearily through the window.

"Perhaps they do not know, for I have never spoken of it to anyone. But

I want to speak; I want to get rid of some of the wretched burden, and

an irresistible impulse has brought me here to you. I am utterly

selfish; it is like taking your money, or your manuscripts, or your

flowers, or anything that you value, to come in this way and almost

insist on telling you my sordid story. It is altogether

unjustifiable--it is a mad presumption which I cannot account for,

except by saying that a blind instinct made me think that you alone, of

all the people in this world, could help me if you would!"

Lettice was deeply moved by various conflicting emotions; but there was

no hesitation in the sympathy which went out to meet this strange

appeal. Even her reason would probably have justified him in his

unconventional behavior; but it was sympathy, and not reason, which

prompted her to welcome and encourage his confidence.

"If I can help you--if it helps you to tell me anything, please speak."

"I knew I was not mistaken!" he said, with kindling eyes, as he sat down

in a low chair opposite to her. "I will not be long--I will not tell you

all; that would be useless, and needlessly painful. I married in haste,

after a week's acquaintance, the daughter of a French refugee, who came

to London in 1870, and earned a living by teaching his language to the

poorest class of pupils. Don't ask me why I married her. No doubt I

thought it was for love. She was handsome, and even charming in her way,

and for some months I tried to think I was happy. Then, gradually, she

let me wake from my fool's paradise. I found--you will despise me for a

dupe!--that I was not the first man she had pretended to love. Nay, it

was to me that she pretended--the other feeling was probably far more of

a reality. Before the year was out she had renewed her intimacy with my

rival--a compatriot of her own. You will suppose that we parted at once

when things came to this pass; but for some time I had only suspicion to

go upon. I knew that she was often away from home, and that she had even

been to places of amusement in this man's company; but when I spoke to

her she either lulled my uneasiness or pretended to be outraged by my

jealousy. Soon there was no bond of respect left between us; but as a

last chance, I resolved to break up our little home in England, and go

abroad. I could no longer endure my life with her. She had ceased to be

a wife in any worthy sense of the word, and was now my worst enemy, an

object of loathing rather than of love. Still, I remember that I had a

gleam of hope when I took her on the Continent, thinking it just

possible that by removing her from her old associations, I might win her

back to a sense of duty. I would have borne her frivolity; I would have

endured to be bound for life to a doll or a log, if only she could have

been outwardly faithful.

"Well, to make a long story short, we had not been abroad more than six

weeks when this man I have told you about made his appearance on the

scene. She must have written to him and asked him to come, at the very

moment when she was cheating me with a show of reviving affection; and I

own that the meeting of these two one day in the hotel gardens at

Aix-les-Bains drove me into a fit of temporary madness. We quarrelled; I

sent him a challenge, and we fought. He was not much hurt, and I escaped

untouched. The man disappeared, and I have never seen him from that day

to this, but I have some reason to think that he is dead."

He paused for a moment or two; and Lettice could not refrain from

uttering the words, "Your wife?" in a tone of painful interest.

"My wife?" he repeated slowly. "Ah yes, my wife. Well, after a stormy

scene with her, she became quiet and civil. She even seemed anxious to

please me, and to set my mind at rest. But she was merely hatching her

last plot against me, and I was as great a fool and dupe at this moment

as I had ever been before."

And then, with averted face, he told the story of his last interview

with her on the hills beyond Culoz. "I will not repeat anything she

said," he went on--it was his sole reservation--"although some of her

sentences are burned into my brain for ever. I suppose because they were

so true."

"Oh, no!" Lettice murmured involuntarily, and looking at him with

tear-dimmed eyes. She was intensely interested in his story, and Alan

Walcott felt assured by her face that the sympathy he longed for was not

withheld.

"My wound was soon healed," he said when the details of that terrible

scene were told; "but I was not in a hurry to come back to England. When

I did come back, I avoided as much as possible the few people who knew

me; and I have never to this moment spoken of my deliverance, which I

suppose they talk of as my loss."

"They think," said Lettice, slowly, for she was puzzled in her mind, and

did not know what to say, "that you are a widower?"

"And what am I?" he cried, walking up and down the room in a restless

way. "Am I not a widower? Has she not died completely out of my life? I

shall never see her again--she is dead and buried, and I am free? Ah, do

not look at me so doubtfully, do not take back the sympathy which you

promised me! Are you going to turn me away, hungry and thirsty for

kindness, because you imagine that my need is greater than you thought

it five minutes ago? I will not believe you are so cruel!"

"We need not analyze my feelings, Mr. Walcott. I could not do that

myself, until I have had time to think. But--is it right to leave other

people under the conviction that your wife is actually dead, when you

know that in all probability she is not?"

"I never said she was dead! I never suggested or acted a lie. May not a

man keep silence about his own most sacred affairs?"

"Perhaps he may," said Lettice. "It is not for me to judge you--and at

any rate, you have told me!"

She stood up and looked at him with her fearless grey eyes, whilst his

own anxiously scanned her face.

"I am very, very sorry for you. If I can do anything to help you, I

will. You must not doubt my sympathy, and I shall never withdraw my

promise. But just now I cannot think what it would be best to do or say.

Let me have time to think."

She held out her hand, and he took it, seeing that she wanted him to go.

"Good-bye!" he said. "God bless you for being what you are. It has done

me good to talk. When we meet again--unless you write and give me your

commands--I promise to do whatever you may tell me."

And with that, he went away.

CHAPTER X.

THE POET SPEAKS.

As soon as her visitor was gone, Lettice fell into a deep study. She had

two things especially to think about, and she began by wondering what

Mrs. Hartley would say if she knew that Alan Walcott's wife was alive,

and by repeating what he had said to her that morning: that a man was

not bound to tell his private affairs to the world. No! she told

herself, it was impossible for any man of self-respect to wear his heart

on his sleeve, to assume beforehand that people would mistake his

position, and to ticket himself as a deserted husband, lest forward

girls should waste their wiles upon him.

The thought was odious; and yet she had suggested it to him! Had she not

done more than that? Had she not implied that he had done a dishonorable

thing in concealing what he was in no way bound to reveal? What would he

think of her, or impute to her, for raising such a point at the very

moment when he was displaying his confidence in her, and appealing for

her sympathy? She blushed with shame at the idea.

He was already completely justified in her mind, for she did not go so

far as to put the case which a third person might have put in her own

interest. If Alan had been unfair or inconsiderate to anyone, it was

surely to Lettice herself. He had spoken familiarly to her, sought her

company, confessed his admiration in a more eloquent language than that

of words, and asked for a return of sentiment by those subtle appeals

which seem to enter the heart through none of the ordinary and ticketed

senses. It is true that he had not produced in her mind the distinct

impression that she was anything more to him than an agreeable talker

and listener in his conversational moods; but that was due to her

natural modesty rather than to his self-restraint. He had been

impatient, at times, of her slowness to respond, and it was only when he

saw whither this impatience was leading him that he resolved to tell her

all that she ought to know. It was not his delay, however, that

constituted the injustice of his conduct, but the fact of his appealing

to her in any way for the response which he had no right to ask.

Lettice was just as incapable of thinking that she had been unjustly

treated as she was of believing that Alan Walcott loved her. Thus she

was spared the humiliation that might have fallen on her if she had

understood that his visit was partly intended to guard her against the

danger of giving her love before it had been asked.

Having tried and acquitted her friend, and having further made up her

mind that she would write him a letter to assure him of his acquittal,

she summoned herself before the court of her conscience; and this was a

very different case from the one which had been so easily decided. Then

the presumption was all in favor of the accused; now it was all against

her. The guilt was as good as admitted beforehand, for as soon as

Lettice began to examine and cross-examine herself, she became painfully

aware of her transgressions.

What was this weight which oppressed her, and stifled her, and covered

her with shame? It was not merely sorrow for the misfortunes of her

friend. That would not have made her ashamed, for she knew well that

compassion was a woman's privilege, for which she has no reason to

blush. Something had befallen her this very morning which had caused her

to blush, and it was the first time in all her life that Lettice's cheek

had grown red for anything she had done, or thought, or said, or

listened to, in respect of any man whatever. Putting her father and

brother on one side, no man had had the power, for very few had had the

opportunity, to quicken the pulses in her veins as they were quickened

now. She had not lived to be six and twenty years old without knowing

what love between a man and woman really meant, but she had never

appropriated to herself the good things which she saw others enjoying.

It was not for want of being invited to the feast, for several of her

father's curates had been ready to grace their frugal boards by her

presence, and to crown her with the fillets of their dignity and

self-esteem. The prospect held up to her by these worthy men had not

allured her in any way; she had not loved their wine and oil, and thus

she had remained rich, according to the promise of the seer, with the

bread and salt of her own imaginings.

It would be wrong to suppose that Lettice had no strong passions,

because she had never loved, or even thought that she loved. The woman

of cultivated mind is often the woman of deepest feeling; her mental

strength implies her calmness, and the calm surface indicates the

greatest depth. It is in the restless hearts which beat themselves

against the shores of the vast ocean of womanhood that passion is so

quick to display itself, so vehement in its shallow force, so broken in

its rapid ebb. The real strength of humanity lies deep below the

surface; but a weak woman often mistakes for strength her irresistible

craving for happiness and satisfaction. It is precisely for this reason

that a liberal education and a full mind are even more essential to the

welfare of a woman than they are to the welfare of a man. The world has

left its women, with this irresistible craving in their hearts,

dependent, solitary, exposed to attack, and unarmed for defence; and as

a punishment it has been stung almost to death by the scorpions which

its cruelty generates. But a woman who has been thoroughly educated, a

woman of strong mind and gentle heart, is not dependent for happiness on

the caprice of others, or on the abandonment of half the privileges of

her sex, but draws from an inexhaustible well to which she has constant

access.

So Lettice, with the passions of her kind, and the cravings of her sex,

had been as happy as the chequered circumstances of her outer life would

permit; but now for the first time her peace of mind was disturbed, and

she felt the heaving of the awakened sea beneath.

Why had her heart grown cold when she heard that Alan Walcott's wife was

still alive? Why had her thought been so bitter when she told herself

that she had no right to give the man her sympathy? Why had the light

and warmth and color of life departed as soon as she knew that the woman

whom he had married, however unworthy she might be, was the only one who

could claim his fidelity? Alas, the answer to her questions was only too

apparent. The pain which it cost her to awake from her brief summer's

dream was her first admonition that she had dreamed at all. Not until

she had lost the right to rejoice in his admiration and respond to his

love, did she comprehend how much these things meant to her, and how far

they had been allowed to go.

The anguish of a first love which cannot be cherished or requited is

infinitely more grievous when a woman is approaching the age of thirty

than it is at seventeen or twenty. The recoil is greater and the

elasticity is less. But if Lettice suffered severely from the sudden

blow which had fallen upon her, she still had the consolation of knowing

that she could suffer in private, and that she had not betrayed the

weakness of her heart--least of all to him who had tried to make her

weak.

In the course of the evening she sat down and wrote to him--partly

because he had asked her to write, and partly in order that she might

say without delay what seemed necessary to be said.

"DEAR MR. WALCOTT,--After you were gone this morning I thought a

great deal about all that you said to me, and as you asked me for

my opinion, and I promised to give it, perhaps I had better tell

you what I think at once. I cannot see that you are, or have been,

under any moral compulsion to repeat the painful events of your

past life, and I am sorry if I implied that I thought you were. Of

course, you may yourself hold that these facts impose a certain

duty upon you, or you may desire that your position should be

known. In that case you will do what you think right, and no one

else can properly decide for you.

"I was indeed grieved by your story. I wish it was in my power to

lessen your pain; but, as it is not, I can only ask you to believe

that if I could do so, I would.

"You will be hard at work, like myself (as you told me), during the

next few months. Is not hard work, after all, the very best of

anodynes? I have found it so in the past, and I trust you have done

so too, and will continue to do so.

"Believe me, dear Mr. Walcott, yours very sincerely,

"LETTICE CAMPION."

She hesitated for some time as to whether she had said too much, or too

little, or whether what she had said was expressed in the right way. But

in the end she sent it as it was written.

Then, if she had been a thoroughly sensible and philosophical young

woman, she would have forced herself to do some hard work, by way of

applying the anodyne of which she had spoken. But that was too much to

expect from her in the circumstances. What she actually did was to go to

bed early and cry herself to sleep.

She had not considered whether her letter required, or was likely to

receive an answer, and she was therefore a little surprised when the

postman brought her one on the afternoon of the following day. Not

without trepidation, she took it to her room and read it.

"DEAR MISS CAMPION"--so the letter began--"I thank you very much for

your kindness. I have learned to find so much meaning in your words that

I think I can tell better than anyone else how to interpret the spirit

from the letter of what you say. So, when you tell me that no one can

decide for me what it is my duty to do, I understand that, if you were

in my position at this moment, you would rather desire that it should be

known. Henceforth I desire it, and I shall tell Mrs. Hartley and Mrs.

Graham as much as is necessary the next time I see them. This will be

equivalent to telling the world--will it not?

"Two other things I understand from your letter. First, that you do not

wish to meet me so often in future; and, second, that though you know my

pain would be diminished by the frank expression of your sympathy, and

though you might find it in your heart to be frankly sympathetic, yet

you do not think it would be right, and you do not mean to be actively

beneficent. Am I wrong? If I am, you must forgive me; but, if I am not,

I cannot accept your decision without entering my protest.

"Think, my dear friend--you will allow me that word!--to what you

condemn me if you take your stand upon the extreme dictates of

conventionality. You cannot know what it would mean to me if you were to

say, 'He is a married man, and we had better not meet so frequently in

future.' To you, that would be no loss whatever. To me, it would be the

loss of happiness, of consolation, of intellectual life. Listen and have

pity upon me! I could not say it to your face, but I will say it now,

though you may think it an unpardonable crime. You have become so

necessary to me that I cannot contemplate existence without you. Have

you not seen it already--or, if you have not, can you doubt when you

look back on the past six months--that respect has grown into affection,

and affection into love? Yes, I love you, Lettice!--in my own heart I

call you Lettice every hour of the day--and I cannot live any longer

without telling you of my love.

"When I began this letter I did not mean to tell you--at any rate not

to-day. Think of the condition of my mind when I am driven by such a

sudden impulse--think, and make allowance for me!

"I am not sure what I expected when I resolved to make my sad story

known to you. Perhaps, in my madness, I thought, 'There is a right and a

wrong above the right and wrong of society's judgments; and she is on

the higher levels of humanity, and will take pity on my misfortunes.' I

only say, perhaps I thought this. I don't know what I thought. But I

knew I could not ask you to be my wife, and I determined that you should

know why I could not.

"Oh, how I hate that woman! I believe that she is dead. I tell myself

every day that she is dead, and that there is nothing to prevent me from

throwing myself at your feet, and praying you to redeem me from misery.

Is not my belief enough to produce conviction in you? No--you will not

believe it; and, perhaps, if you did, you would not consent to redeem

me. No! I must drag my lengthening chain until I die! I must live in

pain and disgust, bound to a corpse, covered with a leprosy, because the

angel whose mission it is to save me will not come down from her heaven

and touch me with her finger.

"You shall not see these words, Lettice--my dear Lettice! They are the

offspring of a disordered brain. I meant to write you such a calm and

humble message, telling you that your counsel was wise--that I would

follow it--that I knew I had your sympathy, and that I reverenced you as

a saint. If I go on writing what I do not mean to send, it is only

because the freedom of my words has brought me peace and comfort, and

because it is good that I should allow myself to write the truth, though

I am not allowed to write it to _you_!

"Not allowed to write the truth to you, Lettice? That, surely, is a

blasphemy! If I may not write the truth to you, then I may not know

you--I may not worship you--I may not give my soul into your keeping.

"I will test it. My letter shall go. You will not answer it--you will

only sit still, and either hate or love me; and one day I shall know

which it has been. ALAN."

Whilst Lettice read this wild and incoherent letter, she sank on her

knees by her bedside, unable in any other attitude to bear the strain

which it put upon her feelings.

"How dare he?" she murmured, at the first outbreak of his passionate

complaint; but, as she went on reading, the glow of pity melted her

woman's heart, and only once more she protested, in words, against the

audacious candor of her lover.

"How could he?"

And as she finished, and her head was bowed upon her hands, and upon the

letter which lay between them, her lips sought out the words which he

had written last of all, as though they would carry a message of

forgiveness--and consolation to the spirit which hovered beneath it.

CHAPTER XI.

SYDNEY GIVES ADVICE.

The day after Sydney Campion had heard Brooke Dalton's story of the

disappearance of Alan Walcott's wife had been a very busy one for him.

He had tried to get away from his work at an early hour, in order that

he might pay one of his rare visits to Maple Cottage, and combine with

his inquiries into the welfare of his mother certain necessary cautions

to his sister Lettice. It was indispensable that she should be made to

understand what sort of man this precious poet was known to be, and how

impossible it had become that a sister of his should continue to treat

him as a friend.

Why, the fellow might be--probably was--a murderer! And, if not that, at

all events there was such a mystery surrounding him, and such an

indelible stain upon his character, that he, Sydney Campion, could not

suffer her to continue that most objectionable acquaintance.

But his duties conspired with his dinner to prevent the visit from being

made before the evening, and it was nearly eight o'clock when he arrived

at Hammersmith. He had dined with a friend in Holborn, and had taken a

Metropolitan train at Farringdon Street, though, as a rule, he held

himself aloof from the poison-traps of London, as he was pleased to call

the underground railway, and travelled mostly in the two-wheeled

gondolas which so lightly float on the surface of the stream above.

As he was about to leave the station, his eye encountered a face and

figure which attracted him, and made him almost involuntarily come to a

standstill. It was Milly Harrington, Lettice's maid, who, having posted

her mistress' letter to Alan Walcott, had turned her listless steps in

this direction.

Milly's life in London had proved something of a disappointment to her.

The cottage on Brook Green was even quieter than the Rectory at

Angleford, where she had at least the companionship of other servants,

and a large acquaintance in the village. Lettice was a kind and

considerate mistress, but a careful one: she did not let the young

country-bred girl go out after dark, and exercised an unusual amount of

supervision over her doings. Of late, these restrictions had begun to

gall Milly, for she contrasted her lot with that of servants in

neighboring houses, and felt that Miss Lettice was a tyrant compared

with the easy-going mistresses of whom she heard. Certainly Miss Lettice

gave good wages, and was always gentle in manner and ready to sympathize

when the girl had bad news of her old grandmother's health; but she did

not allow Milly as much liberty as London servants are accustomed to

enjoy, and Milly, growing learned in her rights by continued comparison,

fretted against the restraints imposed upon her.

She might have "kept company" with the milkman, with the policeman, with

one of the porters at the station: for these, one and all, laid their

hearts and fortunes at her feet; but Milly rejected their overtures with

scorn. Her own prettiness of form and feature had been more than ever

impressed upon her by the offers which she refused; and she was

determined, as she phrased it, "not to throw herself away."

Her fancy that "Mr. Sydney" admired her had not been a mistaken one.

Sydney had always been susceptible to the charms of a pretty face; and

Nature had preordained a certain measure of excuse for any man who felt

impelled to look twice at Milly, or even to speak to her on a flimsy

pretext. And Milly was on Nature's side, for she did not resent being

looked at or spoken to, although there was more innocence and ignorance

of evil on her side than men were likely to give her credit for.

Therefore Sydney had for some time been on speaking terms with her, over

and above what might have been natural in an occasional visitor to the

Rectory and Maple Cottage. He saw and meant no harm to her in his

admiration, and had no idea at present that his occasional smile or idle

jesting compliment made the girl's cheeks burn, her heart beat fast,

made her nights restless and her days long. He took it for granted that

gratified vanity alone made her receive his attentions with pleasure.

His gifts--for he could be lavish when he liked--were all, he thought,

that attracted her. She was a woman, and could, no doubt, play her own

game and take care of herself. She had her weapons, as other women had.

Sydney's opinion of women was, on the whole, a low one; and he had a

supreme contempt for all women of the lower class--a contempt which

causes a man to look on them only as toys--instruments for his

pleasure--to be used and cast aside. He believed that they

systematically preyed on men, and made profit out of their weakness.

That Milly was at a disadvantage with him, because she was weak and

young and unprotected, scarcely entered his head. He would have said

that she had the best of it. She was pretty and young, and could make

him pay for it if he did her any harm. She was one of a class--a class

of harpies, in his opinion--and he did not attribute any particular

individuality to her at all.

But Milly was a very real and individual woman, with a nature in which

the wild spark of passion might some day be roused with disastrous

results. It is unsafe to play with the emotions of a person who is

simply labelled, often mistakenly and insufficiently, in your mind as

belonging to a class, and possessing the characteristics of that class.

There is always the chance that some old strain of tendency, some freak

of heredity, may develop in the way which is most of all dangerous to

you and to your career. For you cannot play with a woman's physical

nature without touching, how remotely soever, her spiritual constitution

as well; and, as Browning assures us, it is indeed "an awkward thing to

play with souls, and matter enough to save one's own."

Sydney Campion, however, concerned himself very little with his own

soul, or the soul of anybody else. He went up to Milly and greeted her

with a smile that brought the color to her face.

"Well, Milly," he said, "are you taking your walks abroad to-night? Is

your mistress pretty well? I was just going to Maple Cottage."

"Yes, sir, mistress is pretty well; but I don't think Miss Lettice is,"

said Milly, falling back into her old way of speaking of the rector's

daughter. "She mentioned that she was going to bed early. You had better

let me go back first and open the door for you."

"Perhaps it would be best. Not well, eh? What is the matter?"

"I don't know, but I think Miss Campion has a bad headache. I am sure

she has been crying a great deal." Milly said this with some hesitation.

"I am sorry to hear that."

"I am afraid Mr. Walcott brought her bad news in the morning, for she

has not been herself at all since he left."

"Do you say that Mr. Walcott was there this morning?"

Sydney spoke in a low tone, but with considerable eagerness, so that the

girl knew she had not thrown her shaft in vain.

"Milly, this concerns me very much. I must have a little talk with you,

but we cannot well manage it here. See! there is no one in the

waiting-room; will you kindly come with me for a minute or two? It is

for your mistress' good that I should know all about this. Come!"

So they went into the dreary room together, and they sat down in a

corner behind the door, which by this time was almost dark. There Sydney

questioned her about Alan Walcott, with a view to learning all that she

might happen to know about him. Milly required little prompting, for she

was quite ready to do all that he bade her, and she told him at least

one piece of news which he was not prepared to hear.

Five minutes would have sufficed for all that Milly had to say; but the

same story may be very long or very short according to the circumstances

in which it is told. Half-an-hour was not sufficient to-night: at any

rate, it took these two more than half-an-hour to finish what they had

to say. And even then it was found that further elucidations would be

necessary in the future, and an appointment was made for another

meeting. But the talk had turned on Milly herself, and Milly's hopes and

prospects, before that short half-hour had sped.

"Good-night, Milly," said Sydney, as they left the station. "You are a

dear little girl to tell me so much. Perhaps you had better not say to

your mistress that you saw me to-night. I shall call to-morrow

afternoon. Good-night, dear."

He kissed her lightly, in a shadowy corner of the platform, before he

turned away; and thought rather admiringly for a minute or two of the

half-frightened, half-adoring eyes that were riveted upon his face.

"Poor little fool!" he said to himself, as he signalled a cab. For even

in that one short interview he had mastered the fact that Milly was

rather fool than knave.

The girl went home with a light heart, believing that she had done a

service to the mistress whom she really loved, and shyly, timorously

joyous at the thought that she had met at last with an admirer--a lover,

perhaps!--such as her heart desired. Of course, Miss Lettice would be

angry if she knew; but there was nothing wrong in Mr. Sydney's

admiration, said Milly, lifting high her little round white chin; and if

he told her to keep silence she was bound to hold her tongue.

This was a mean thing that Sydney had done, and he was not so hardened

as to have done it without a blush. Yet so admirably does our veneer of

civilization conceal the knots and flaws beneath it that he went to

sleep in the genuine belief that he had saved his sister from a terrible

danger, and the name of Campion from the degradation which threatened

it.

On the next day he reached Maple Cottage between four and five o'clock.

"How is your mistress?" he said to Milly.

She had opened the door and let him in with a vivid blush and smile,

which made him for a moment, and in the broad light of day, feel

somewhat ashamed of himself.

"Oh, sir, she is no better. She has locked herself in, and I heard her

sobbing, fit to break her heart," said Milly, in real concern for her

mistress' untold grief.

"Let her know that I am here. I will go to Mrs. Campion's room."

"Well, mother!" he said, in the hearty, jovial voice in which he knew

that she liked best to be accosted, "here is your absentee boy again.

How are you by this time?"

"Not very bright to-day, Sydney," said his mother. "I never am very

bright now-a-days. But what are you doing, my dear? Are you getting on

well? Have they----"

"No, mother, they have not made me Lord Chancellor yet. We must wait a

while for that. But I must not complain; I have plenty of work, and my

name is in the papers every day, and I have applied for silk, and--have

you found your spectacles yet, mother?"

Details of his life and work were, as he knew, absolutely unmeaning to

Mrs. Campion.

"Oh, the rogue! He always teased me about my spectacles," said Mrs.

Campion, vaguely appealing to an unseen audience. "It is a remarkable

thing, Sydney, but I put them down half an hour ago, and now I cannot

find them anywhere."

"Well, now, that is strange, Mrs. Campion; but not very unusual. If I

remember right, you had lost your spectacles when I was here last; and

as I happened to pass a good shop this morning, it occurred to me that

you would not object to another pair of pebbles. So here they are; and I

have bought you something to test them with."

He produced a cabinet portrait of himself, such as the stationers were

beginning to hang on the line in their shop windows. The fact marked a

distinct advance in his conquest of popularity; and Sydney was not

mistaken in supposing that the old lady would appreciate this portrait

of her handsome and distinguished son. So, with her spectacles and her

picture, Mrs. Campion was happy.

When Sydney's knock came to the door, Lettice was still crouching by her

bedside over the letter which had reached her an hour before. She sprang

up in nervous agitation, not having recognized the knock, and began to

bathe her face and brush her hair. She was relieved when Milly came and

told her who the caller was; but even Sydney's visit at that moment was

a misfortune. She was inclined to send him an excuse, and not come down;

but in the end she made up her mind to see him.

"My dear child," Sydney said, kissing her on the cheek, "how ill you

look! Is anything the matter?"

"No, nothing. Don't take any notice of me," Lettice said, with a

significant look at her mother.

They conversed for a time on indifferent matters, and then Sydney asked

her to show him the garden. It was evident that he wanted to speak to

her privately, so she took him into her study; and there, without any

beating about the bush, he began to discharge his mind of its burden.

"I want to talk to you seriously, Lettice, and on what I'm afraid will

be a painful subject; but it is my manifest duty to do so, as I think

you will admit before I go. You are, I believe, on friendly

terms--tolerably familiar terms--with Mr. Walcott?"

This was in true forensic style; but of course Sydney could not have

made a greater mistake than by entering solemnly, yet abruptly, on so

delicate a matter. Lettice was in arms at once.

"Stay a moment, Sydney. You said this was to be a painful subject to me,

and then you mention the name of Mr. Walcott. I do not understand."

"Well!" said Sydney, somewhat disconcerted; "I don't know what made me

conclude that it would be painful. I did not mean to say that. I am very

glad it is not so."

He stopped to cough, then looked out of the window, and softly whistled

to himself. Lettice, meanwhile, cast about hastily in her mind for the

possible bearing of what her brother might have to say. She was about to

take advantage of his blunder, and decline to hear anything further; but

for more than one reason which immediately occurred to her, she thought

that it would be better to let him speak.

"I do not think you could have any ground for supposing that such a

subject would be specially painful to me; but never mind that. What were

you going to say?"

Now it was Sydney's turn to be up in arms, for he felt sure that Lettice

was acting a part.

"What I know for a fact," he said, "is that you have seen a good deal of

Mr. Walcott during the past six months, and that people have gone so far

as to remark on your--on his manifest preference for your company. I

want to say that there are grave reasons why this should not be

permitted to go on."

Lettice bit her lip sharply, but said nothing.

"Do you know," Sydney continued, becoming solemn again as he prepared to

hurl his thunderbolts, "that Mr. Walcott is a married man?"

"Whether I know it or not, I do not acknowledge your right to ask me the

question."

"I ask it by the right of a brother. Do you know that if he is not a

married man, he is something infinitely worse? That the last time his

wife was seen in his company, they went on a lonely walk together, and

he came back again without her?"

"How do you know this?" Lettice asked him faintly. He set down her

agitation to the wrong cause, and thought that his design was

succeeding.

"I know it from the man who was most intimately connected with Walcott

at the time. And I heard it at my club--in the course of the same

conversation in which your name was mentioned. Think what that means to

me! However, it may not have gone too far if we are careful to avoid

this man in future. He does not visit here, of course?"

"He has been here."

"You surely don't correspond?"

"We have corresponded."

"Good heavens! it is worse than I thought. But you will promise me not

to continue the acquaintance?"

"No, I cannot promise that!"

"Not after all I have told you of him?"

"You have told me nothing to Mr. Walcott's discredit. I have answered

your questions because you are, as you reminded me, my brother. Does it

not strike you that you have rather exceeded your privilege?"

Sydney was amazed at her quiet indifference.

"I really cannot understand you, Lettice. Do you mean to say that you

will maintain your friendship with this man, although you know him to be

a----"

"Well?"

"At any rate, a _possible_ murderer?"

"The important point," said Lettice coldly, "seems to be what Mr.

Walcott is actually, not what he is possibly. Your 'possible' is a

matter of opinion, and I am very distinctly of opinion that Mr. Walcott

is an innocent and honorable man."

"If you believe him innocent, then you believe that his wife is living?"

"I know nothing about his wife. That is a question which does not

concern me."

"Your obstinacy passes my comprehension." When Sydney said this, he rose

from the chair in which he had been sitting and stood on the hearth-rug

before the grate, with his hands behind him and his handsome brows

knitted in a very unmistakable frown. It was in a lower and more

regretful voice that he continued, after a few minutes' silence: "I must

say that the independent line you have been taking for some time past is

not very pleasing to me. You seem to have a perfect indifference to our

name and standing in the world. You like to fly in the face of

convention, to----"

"Oh, Sydney, why should we quarrel?" said Lettice, sadly. Hitherto she

had been standing by the window, but she now came up to him and looked

entreatingly into his face. "Indeed, I will do all that I can to satisfy

you. I am not careless about your prospects and standing in the world;

indeed, I am not. But they could not be injured by the fact that I am

earning my own living as an author. I am sure they could not!"

"You say that you will do all you can to satisfy me," said Sydney, who

was not much mollified by her tenderness. "Will you give up the

acquaintance of that man?"

"I am not certain that I shall ever see Mr. Walcott again; but if you

ask me whether I will promise to insult him if I do see him, or to cut

him because he has been accused of dishonorable acts, then I certainly

say, No!"

"How you harp upon his honor! The honor of a married man who has

introduced himself to you under a false name!"

"What do you mean?" said Lettice, starting and coloring. "Are there any

more charges against him?"

"You seem to be so well prepared to defend him that perhaps you will not

be surprised to hear that his name is not Walcott at all, but

Bundlecombe, and that his mother kept a small sweet-stuff shop, or

something of that kind, at Thorley. Bundlecombe! No wonder he was

ashamed of it!"

This shaft took better than either of the others. Lettice was fairly

taken aback. The last story did not sound as if it had been invented,

and Sydney had evidently been making inquiries. Moreover, there flashed

across her mind the remembrance of the book which Alan Walcott had given

her--only yesterday morning. How long ago it seemed already! Alan

Bundlecombe! What did the name signify, and why should any man care to

change the name that he was born with? She recollected Mrs. Bundlecombe

very well--the old woman who came and took her first twenty pounds of

savings; the widow of the bookseller who had bought part of her father's

library. If he was her son, he might not have much to be proud of, but

why need he have changed his name?

Decidedly this was a blow to her. She had no defence ready, and Sydney

saw that she was uncomfortable.

"Well," he said, "I must not keep you any longer. I suppose, even

now"--with a smile--"you will not give me your promise; but you will

think over what I have told you, and I dare say it will all come right."

Her eyes were full of wistful yearning as she put her hand on his

shoulder and kissed him.

"You believe that I _mean_ to do right, don't you, Sydney?" she asked.

He laughed a little. "We all mean to do right, my dear. But we don't all

go the same way to work, I suppose. Yes, yes; I believe you mean well;

but do, for heaven's sake, try to act with common-sense. Then, as I

said, everything will come right in the end."

He went back to his mother's room, and Lettice stood for some minutes

looking out of the window, and sighing for the weariness and disillusion

which hung like a cloud upon her life.

"All will come right?" she murmured, re-echoing Sydney's words with

another meaning. "No. Trouble and sorrow, and pain may be lived down and

forgotten; but without sincerity _nothing_ can come right!"

BOOK III.

AMBITION.

"I count life just a stuff

To try the soul's strength on, educe the man,

Who keeps one end in view makes all things serve."

ROBERT BROWNING.

CHAPTER XII.

ALAN WALCOTT.

Alan Walcott knew perfectly well that he had done a mad, if not an

unaccountable thing in writing his letter to Miss Campion. He knew it,

that is to say, after the letter was gone, for when he was writing it,

and his heart was breaking through the bonds of common-sense which

generally restrained him, he did not feel the difficulty of accounting

either for his emotions or for his action. The wild words, as he wrote

them, had for him not only the impress of paramount truth, but also the

sanction of his convictions and impulse at the moment. No stronger

excuse has been forthcoming for heroic deeds which have shaken the world

and lived in history.

Who amongst us all, when young and ardent, with the fire of generosity

and imagination in the soul, has not written at least one such letter,

casting reserve and prudence to the winds, and placing the writer

absolutely at the mercy of the man or woman who received it?

This man was a poet by nature and by cultivation; but what is the

culture of a poet save the fostering of a distempered imagination? I do

not mean the culture of a prize poet, or a poet on a newspaper staff, or

a gentleman who writes verses for society, or a professor of poetry, or

an authority who knows the history and laws of prosody in every tongue,

and can play the bard or the critic with equal facility. Alan Walcott

had never ceased to work in distemper, because his nature was

distempered to begin with, and his taste had not been modified to suit

the conventional canons of his critics. Therefore it was not much to be

wondered at if his prose poem to the woman he loved was a distempered

composition.

The exaltation of the mood in which he had betrayed himself to Lettice

was followed by a mood of terrible depression, and almost before it

would have been possible for an answer to reach him, even if she had sat

down and written to him without an hour's delay, he began to assure

himself that she intended to treat him with silent contempt--that his

folly had cost him not only her sympathy but her consideration, and that

there was no hope left for him.

He had indeed told her that he did not expect a reply; but now he

tortured himself with the belief that silence on her part could have

only one explanation. Either she pitied him, and would write to prevent

his despair, or she was indignant, and would tell him so, or else she

held him in such contempt that she would not trouble herself to take the

slightest notice of his effusion. He craved for her indignation now as

he had craved for her sympathy before; but he could not endure her

indifference.

A man of five-and-thirty whose youth has been spent amongst the prodigal

sons and daughters of the world's great family, who has wasted his moral

patrimony, and served masters and mistresses whom he despised, is not

easily brought to believe that he can be happy again in the love of a

pure woman. He has lost confidence in his own romantic feelings, and in

his power to satisfy the higher needs of a woman's delicate and exacting

heart. Usually, as was once the case with Walcott, he is a cynic and a

professed despiser of women, affecting to judge them all by the few whom

he has met, in spite of the fact that he has put himself in the way of

knowing only the weakest and giddiest of the sex. But when such a man,

gradually and with difficulty, has found a pearl among women, gentle and

true, intellectual yet tenderly human, with whom his instinct tells him

he might spend the rest of his life in honor and peace, he is ready in

the truest sense to go and sell all that he has in order to secure the

prize. Nothing has any further value for him in comparison with her, and

all the roots of his nature lay firm hold upon her. Alas for this man if

his mature love is given in vain, or if, like Alan Walcott, he is

debarred from happiness by self-imposed fetters which no effort can

shake off!

For four-and-twenty hours he struggled with his misery. Then, to his

indescribable joy, there came a message from Lettice.

It was very short, and it brought him bad news; but at any rate it

proved that she took an interest in his welfare, and made him

comparatively happy.

"I think you should hear"--so it began, without any introductory

phrase--'that the story you told me of what happened at

Aix-les-Bains is known to men in this country who cannot be your

friends, since they relate it in their own fashion at their clubs,

and add their own ill-natured comments. Perhaps if you are

forewarned you will be fore-armed.

"Lettice Campion."

Not a word as to his letter; but he was not much troubled on this score.

That she had written to him at all, and written evidently because she

felt some concern for his safety, was enough to console him at the

moment.

When he began to consider the contents of her note it disturbed him more

than a little. He had not imagined that his secret, such as it was, had

passed into the keeping of any other man, still less that it had become

club-talk in London. He saw at once what evil construction might be put

upon it by malicious gossip-mongers, and he knew that henceforth he was

face to face with a danger which he could do little or nothing to avert.

What should he attempt in his defence? How should he use the weapon

which Lettice had put into his hand by forewarning him? One reasonable

idea suggested itself, and this was that he should tell the true story

to those who knew him best, in order that they might at any rate have

the power to meet inventions and exaggerations by his own version of the

facts. He busied himself during the next few days in this melancholy

task, calling at the house of his friends, and making the best pretext

he could for introducing his chapter of autobiography.

He called on the Grahams, amongst others, and was astonished to find

that they knew the story already.

"I have told the facts to one or two," he said, "for the reason that I

have just mentioned to you, but I think they understood that it would do

me no good to talk about it, except in contradiction of unfriendly

versions. How did you hear it?"

Graham took out of his pocket a copy of _The Gadabout_ and said,

"I'm afraid you have made enemies, Walcott, and if you have not seen

this precious concoction it would be no kindness to you to conceal it.

Here--you will see at a glance how much they have embellished it."

Walcott took the paper, and read as follows:--

"It is probable that before long the public may be startled by a

judicial inquiry into the truth of a story which has been told with much

circumstantiality concerning the remarkable disappearance of the wife of

a well-known poet some three or four years ago."

Then came the details, without any mention of persons or places, and the

paragraph concluded in this fashion. "It is not certain how the matter

will come into court, but rumor states that there is another lady in the

case, that the buried secret came to light in a most dramatic way, and

that evidence is forthcoming from very unexpected quarters."

The victim of this sorry piece of scandal gazed at the paper in a state

of stupefaction.

"Of course," said Graham, "it is not worth while to notice that rag.

Half of what it says is clearly a downright invention. If only you could

get hold of the writer and thrash him, it might do some good; but these

liars are very hard to catch. As to the 'other lady,' there is nothing

in that, is there?"

Both Graham and his wife looked anxiously at Walcott. They knew of his

attentions to Lettice, and were jealous of him on that account; and they

had been discussing with each other the possibility of their friend's

name being dragged into a scandal.

Walcott was livid with rage.

"The cur!" he cried; "the lying hound! He has entirely fabricated the

beginning and the end of this paragraph. There is no ground whatever for

saying that a case may come into court. There is no 'lady in the case'

at all. He has simply put on that tag to make his scrap of gossip worth

another half-crown. Is it not abominable, Graham?"

"It is something more than abominable. To my mind this sort of thing is

one of the worst scandals of the present day. But I felt sure there was

nothing in it, and the few who guess that it refers to you will draw the

same conclusion. Don't think any more about it!"

"A lie sticks when it is well told," said Walcott, gloomily. "There are

plenty of men who would rather believe it than the uninteresting truth."

But the Grahams, relieved on the point that mainly concerned them, could

not see much gravity in the rest of the concoction, and Walcott had

scant pity from them. He went home disconsolate, little dreaming of the

reception which awaited him there.

He occupied a floor in Montagu Place, Bloomsbury, consisting of three

rooms: a drawing-room, a bed-room, and a small study; and, latterly,

Mrs. Bundlecombe, whose acquaintance the reader has already made, had

used a bed-room at the top of the house.

Alan's mother and Mrs. Bundlecombe had been sisters. They were the

daughters of a well-to-do farmer in Essex, and, as will often happen

with sisters of the same family, brought up and cared for in a precisely

similar way, they had exhibited a marked contrast in intellect, habits

of thought, and outward bearing. The one had absorbed the natural

refinement of her mother, who had come of an old Huguenot family long

ago settled on English soil; the other was moulded in the robust and

coarse type of her father. Bessy was by preference the household

factotum not to say the drudge of the family, with a turn for puddings,

poultry, and the management of servants. Lucy clung to her mother, and

books (though both were constant students of _The Family Herald_), and

was nothing if not romantic. Both found some one to love them, and both,

as it happened, were married on the same day. Their parents had died

within a year of each other, and then the orphaned girls had come to

terms with their lovers, and accepted a yoke of which they had

previously fought shy. Bessy's husband was a middle-aged bookseller in

the neighboring town of Thorley, who had admired her thrifty and homely

ways, and had not been deterred by her want of intelligence. Lucy,

though her dreams had soared higher, was fairly happy with a

schoolmaster from Southampton, whose acquaintance she had made on a

holiday at the seaside.

Alan, who was the only offspring of this latter union, had been well

brought up, for his father's careful teaching and his mother's

gentleness and imagination supplied the complementary touches which are

necessary to form the basis of culture. The sisters had not drifted

apart after their marriage so much as might have been expected. They had

visited each other, and Alan, as he grew up, conceived a strong

affection for his uncle at Thorley, who--a childless man himself--gave

him delightful books, and showed him others still more delightful, who

talked to him on the subjects which chiefly attracted him, and was the

first to fire his brain with an ambition to write and be famous. Aunt

Bessy was tolerated for her husband's sake, but it was Uncle Samuel who

drew the lad to Thorley. In due time Alan began to teach in his father's

school, and before he was twenty-one had taken his degree at London

University. Then his mother died, and shortly afterwards he was left

comparatively alone in the world.

Now, school-keeping had never been a congenial occupation to Alan, whose

poetic temperament was chafed by the strict and ungrateful routine of

the business. His father had been to the manner born, and things had

prospered with him, but Alan by himself would not have been able to

achieve a like success. He knew this, and was proud of his incapacity;

and he took the first opportunity of handing over the establishment to a

successor. The money which he received for the transfer, added to that

which his father had left, secured him an income on which it was

possible to live, and to travel, and to print a volume of poems. For a

short time, at least, he lived as seemed best in his own eyes, and was

happy.

When he was in England he still occasionally visited Thorley; and it was

thus that Milly Harrington came to know him by sight. Her grandmother

did not know the Bundlecombes, but Milly came to the conclusion that

Alan was their son, and this was the tale which she had told to Sydney

Campion, and which Sydney had repeated to his sister.

The last visit paid by Alan to Thorley was some time after his uncle's

death, and he had then confided to his aunt the story of his marriage,

and of its unfortunate sequel. He happened to have learned that the man

with whom he had fought at Aix-les-Bains was back in London, and it

seemed not improbable at that moment that he would soon hear news of his

fugitive wife. When he mentioned this to the widow--who was already

taking steps to sell her stock-in-trade--she immediately conceived the

idea that her boy, as she called Alan, was in imminent danger, that the

wife would undoubtedly turn up again, and that it was absolutely

necessary for his personal safety that he should have an intrepid and

watchful woman living in the same house with him. So she proposed the

arrangement which now existed, and Alan had equably fallen in with her

plan. He did not see much of her when she came to London, and there was

very little in their tastes which was congenial or compatible; but she

kept him straight in the matter of his weekly bills and his laundress,

and he had no desire to quarrel with the way in which she managed these

affairs for him.

When Alan came home after his call at the Grahams', weary and

disconsolate, with a weight on his mind of which he could not rid

himself, the door was opened by his aunt. Her white face startled him,

and still more the gesture with which she pointed upstairs, in the

direction of their rooms. His heart sank at once, for he knew that the

worst had befallen him.

"Hush!" said his aunt in a hoarse whisper, "do not go up. She is there.

She came in the morning and would not go away."

"How is she? I mean what does she look like?"

He was very quiet; but he had leaned both hands upon the hall table, and

was gazing at his aunt with despairing eyes.

"Bad, my boy, bad! The worst that a woman can look, Oh, Alan, go away,

and do not come near her. Fly, immediately, anywhere out of her reach!

Let me tell her that you have gone to the other end of the world rather

than touch her again. Oh, Alan, my sister's child!--go, go, and grace

abounding be with you."

"No, Aunt Bessy, that will never do. I cannot run away. Why, don't you

see for one thing that this will prove what lies they have been telling

about me? They said I was a murderer--" he laughed somewhat wildly as he

spoke--"and here is the murdered woman. And they said there was evidence

coming to prove it. Perhaps she will tell them how it happened, and how

she came to life again. There, you see, there is good in

everything--even in ghosts that come to life again!"

Then his voice dropped, and the color went out of his face.

"What is she doing?" he asked, in a sombre tone.

"She went to sleep on the sofa in the drawing-room. She made me send out

for brandy, and began to rave at me in such a way that I was bound to do

it, just to keep her quiet. And now she is in her drunken sleep!"

Alan shuddered. He knew what that meant.

"Come," he said: "let us go up. We cannot stand here any longer."

They went into his study, which was on the same floor as the

drawing-room, and here Alan sank upon a chair, looking doggedly at the

closed door which separated him from the curse of his existence. After a

while he got up, walked across the landing, and quietly opened the door.

There she lay, a repulsive looking woman, with the beauty of her youth

corrupted into a hateful mask of vice. She had thrown her arms above her

head and seemed to be fast asleep.

He returned to the study, shut the door again, and sat down at the

table, leaning his head upon his hands. Aunt Bessy came and sat beside

him--not to speak, but only that he might know he was not alone.

"That," he muttered to himself at last, "is my wife!"

The old woman at his side trembled, and laid her hand upon his arm.

"I am beginning to know her," he said, after another long pause. "Some

men discover the charms of their wives before marriage; others--the

fools--find them out after. In the first year she was unfaithful to me.

Then she shot me like a dog. What will the end be?"

"It can be nothing worse, my boy. She has ruined you already; she cannot

do it twice. Oh, why did you ever meet her! Why did not Heaven grant

that a good woman, like Lettice Campion----"

"Do not name her here!" he cried sharply. "Let there be something sacred

in the world!"

He looked at his aunt as he spoke; but she did not return his gaze. She

was sitting rigid in her chair, staring over his shoulder with

affrighted eyes. Alan turned round quickly, and started to his feet.

The woman in the other room had stealthily opened the door, and stood

there, disheveled and half-dressed, with a cunning smile on her face.

"Alan, my husband!" she said, in French, holding out both hands to him,

and reeling a step nearer, "here we are at last. I have longed for this

day, my friend--let us be happy. After so many misfortunes, to be

reunited once again! Is it not charming?"

She spoke incoherently, running her words into one another, and yet

doing her best to be understood.

Alan looked at her steadily. "What do you want?" he asked. "Why have you

sought me out?"

"My faith, what should I want? Money, to begin with."

"And then?"

"And then--justice! Bah! Am I not the daughter of Testard, who dispensed

with his own hand the justice of Heaven against his persecutors?"

"I have heard that before," Alan said. "It was at Aix-les-Bains. And you

_still_ want justice!"

"Justice, my child. Was it not at Aix-les-Bains that you tried to kill

Henri de Hauteville? Was it not in the park hard by that you shot at me,

and almost assassinated me? But, have no fear! All I ask is money--the

half of your income will satisfy me. Pay me that, and you are

safe--unless my rage should transport me one of these fine days! Refuse,

and I denounce you through the town, and play the game of scandal--as I

know how to play it! Which shall it be?"

"You are my wife. Perhaps there is a remedy for that--now that you are

here, we shall see! But, meanwhile, you have a claim. To-morrow morning

I Will settle it as you wish. You shall not be left to want."

"It is reasonable. Good-night, my friend! I am going to sleep again."

She went back into the drawing-room, laughing aloud, whilst Alan, after

doing his best to console Mrs. Bundlecombe, departed in search of a

night's lodging under another roof.

CHAPTER XIII.

SIR JOHN PYNSENT PROPHESIES.

On a sultry evening in the middle of August, a few choice spirits were

gathered together in one of the smoking-rooms of the Oligarchy.

All but one were members of the Upper or Lower House, and they were

lazily enjoying the unusual chance (for such busy men, and at such a

critical period of the session) which enabled them to smoke their cigars

in Pall Mall before midnight on a Tuesday. Either there had been a

count-out, or there was obstruction in the House, which was no immediate

concern of theirs, or they had made an arrangement with their Whip, and

were awaiting a telegram which did not come; but, whatever the reason,

here they were, lazy and contented.

There was our old friend, Sir John Pynsent; and Charles Milton, Q.C.,

certain to be a law officer or a judge, as soon as the Conservatives had

their chance; and Lord Ambermere; and the Honorable Tom Willoughby, who

had been trained at Harrow, Oxford, and Lord's Cricket Ground, and who

was once assured by his Balliol tutor that his wit would never make him

a friend, nor his face an enemy. The last of the circle was Brooke

Dalton, of whom this narrative has already had something to record.

"So Tourmaline has thrown up the sponge, Pynsent?" Charles Milton began,

after a short pause in the conversation. "Had enough of the Radical crew

by this time!"

"Yes. Of course, he has been out of sympathy with them for a long while.

So have twenty or thirty more, if the truth were known."

"As you know it!" Dalton interjected.

"Well, I know some things. The line of cleavage in the Liberal party is

tolerably well marked, if you have eyes to see."

"Why does Tourmaline leave the House? I hear he would stand an excellent

chance if he went to Vanebury and started as an Independent."

"No doubt he would; but in a weak moment he pledged himself down there

not to do it."

"What hard lines!" said Tom Willoughby. "Just one pledge too many!"

"And so," continued Pynsent, without noticing the interruption, "we have

had to look out for another candidate. I settled the matter this

afternoon, and I am glad to say that Campion has promised to go down."

"Just the man for the job," said Milton, who looked upon Sydney as sure

to be a formidable rival in Parliament, and more likely than any other

young Conservative to cut him out of the Solicitorship. "He has tongue,

and he has tact--and he has something else, Sir John, which is worth the

two put together--good friends!"

"We think very highly of Campion," said Sir John Pynsent, "and I am very

glad you confirm our opinion."

"I certainly think he will make his mark," said Dalton. "He comes of a

very able family."

Dalton found himself recalling the appearance and words of Miss Lettice

Campion, whom he had met so often of late at the house of his cousin,

Mrs. Hartley, and who had made a deeper impression than ever on his

mind. Impressions were somewhat fugitive, as a rule, on Brooke Dalton's

mind; but he had come to admire Lettice with a fervor unusual with him.

"From all I can learn," said the baronet, "we ought to win the seat; and

every two new votes won in that way are worth half-a-dozen such as Tom

Willoughby's, for instance, whose loyalty is a stale and discounted

fact."

"Oh, yes, I know that is how you regard us buttresses from the counties!

I declare I will be a fifth party, and play for my own hand."

"It isn't in you, my boy," said Lord Ambermere; "I never knew you play

for your own hand yet."

"Then what am I in Parliament for, I should like to know?"

"For that very thing, of course; to learn how to do it." Willoughby

laughed good-naturedly. He did not object to be made a butt of by his

intimate friends.

"Seriously, Tom, there is plenty of work for a fellow like you to do."

It was Pynsent who spoke, and the others were always ready to lend him

their ears when he evidently wanted to be listened to.

"The main thing is to get hold of the Whigs, and work at them quietly

and steadily until the time comes to strike our blow. The great Houses

are safe, almost to a man. When it comes to choosing between Democracy

rampant, with Gladstone at its head, assailing the most sacred elements

of the Constitution, and a great National Party, or Union of Parties,

guarding Property and the Empire against attack, there is no question as

to how they will make their choice. But if every Whig by birth or family

ties came over to us at once, that would not suffice for our purpose.

What we have to do is get at the--the Decent Men of the Liberal

Party, such as the aldermen, the shipowners, the great contractors and

directors of companies, and, of course, the men with a stake in the

land. No use mentioning names--we all know pretty well who they are."

"And when you have got at them?" asked Willoughby.

"Why, lay yourself out to please them. Flatter them--show them all the

attention in your power; take care that they see and hear what is

thought in the highest quarters about the present tendency of

things--about Ireland, about the Empire, about the G. O. M. Let them

understand how they are counted on to decide the issue, and what they

would have to look for if we were once in power. Above all, ride them

easy! It is impossible that they should become Tories--don't dream of

such a thing. They are to be Liberals to the end of their days, but

Liberals with an Epithet."

"Imperi----"

"No, no, no, no, my dear boy! Any number of noes. You must not live so

much in the past. The great idea to harp upon is Union. Union against a

common enemy. Union against Irish rebels. Union against Gladstone and

the Democracy; but draw this very mild until you feel that you are on

safe ground. Union is the word, and Unionist is the Epithet. Liberal

Unionists. That is the inevitable phrase, and it will fit any crisis

that may arise."

"But suppose they dish us with the County franchise?"

"We must make a fight over that; but for my part I am not afraid of

franchises. There is a Tory majority to be picked out of manhood

suffrage, as England will surely discover some day. Possibly the County

franchise must be cleared out of the way before we get our chance. What

will that mean? Why, simply that Gladstone will think it necessary to

use his first majority in order to carry some great Act of Confiscation;

to make Hodge your master; or to filch a bit of your land for him; or to

join hands with Parnell and cut Ireland adrift. Then we shall have our

opportunity; and that is what we have to prepare for."

Lord Ambermere, and Dalton, and Milton, Q.C., nodded their heads. They

had heard all this before; but to Willoughby it was new, for he had only

just begun to put himself into the harness of political life.

"How can we help ourselves," he said, "if the laborers have returned a

lot of new men, and there is a big Liberal majority?"

"That is the point, of course. Well, put it at the worst. Say that

Gladstone has a majority of eighty, without Parnell, and say that

Parnell can dispose of eighty. Say, again, that the Irishmen are ready

to support Gladstone, in the expectation of favors to come. Now let the

Old Man adopt either a Nationalist policy or an out-and-out Democratic

policy, and assume that the Union for which we have been working takes

effect. In order to destroy Gladstone's majority of one hundred and

sixty, at least eighty of his nominal followers must come over. Of

these, the pure Whigs will count for upwards of forty, and another forty

must be forthcoming from the men I have just described. That is putting

it at the worst--and it is safer to do so. Now the question is, Tom

Willoughby, what can you do, and whom can you tackle? I don't want you

to give me an answer, but only to think it over."

"Oh, if you only want thinking, I'm the beggar to think. But--suppose

you land your alderman, and he don't get re-elected in 1885 or

thereabouts? That would be a frightful sell, don't you know!"

"Why, that is just where the beauty of the plan comes in! A seat in the

House of Commons will always be more or less of a vested interest,

however low the franchise may descend; and the men we are speaking of

are precisely those most likely to continue in the House. It is

especially so in the case of very wealthy men, who have made their own

money; for they look out for comfortable seats to begin with, and then

nurse their constituencies by large charitable donations, so that the

chances are all in their favor. At any rate this is the best way of

setting to work--and who can tell whether the struggle may not come to a

crisis in the present Parliament?"

"And you feel as confident as ever, Sir John, that this Union will be

effected?"

"My dear Lord Ambermere, I assure you I am more confident than ever, and

if I were at liberty to say all I know, and to show my private

memoranda, you would be astonished at the progress which has been made

in this Confederation of Society against the Destructive Elements."

It was a great comfort in listening to Sir John Pynsent, that one could

always tell where he wanted to bring in his capital letters. And there

was no doubt at all about the uncial emphasis with which he spoke of the

Confederation of Society against the Destructive Elements.

At this moment Sydney Campion came in and the conclave was broken up.

Sydney was full of excitement about his contest at Vanebury, and he

received the congratulations and good wishes of his friends with much

complacency. He was already the accepted Conservative candidate, being

nominated from the Oligarchy Club in response to an appeal from the

local leaders. He had even been recommended by name in a letter from Mr.

Tourmaline, the retiring member, whose secession to the Conservative

party had demoralized his former friends in the constituency, and filled

his old opponents with joy. He was going down the next day to begin his

canvass, and to make his first speech; and he had come to the Club

to-night for a final consultation with Sir John Pynsent.

This Vanebury election would not, there was reason to think, be so much

affected by money-bags as the election at Dormer was supposed to be,

sixteen or eighteen months before. Yet money was necessary, and Sydney

did not on this occasion refuse the aid which was pressed upon him. He

was responding to the call of his party, at a moment which might be

(though it was not) very inconvenient for him; and, having put down the

foot of dignity last year, he could now hold out the hand of expediency

with a very good grace.

So he took his money, and went down, and before he had been in Vanebury

six hours the Conservatives there understood that they had a very strong

candidate, who would give a good account of himself, and who deserved to

be worked for.

His personal presence was imposing, Sydney was above the middle height,

erect and broad-shouldered, with a keen and handsome, rather florid,

face, a firm mouth, and penetrating steel-blue eyes. He was careful of

his appearance, too, and from his well-cut clothes and his well-trimmed

brown hair, beard, and whiskers, it was easy to see that there was

nothing of the slipshod about this ambitious young emissary from the

Oligarchy Club.

In manner he was very persuasive. He had a frank and easy way of

addressing an audience, which he had picked up from a popular

tribune--leaning one shoulder towards them at an angle of about eighty

degrees, and rounding his periods with a confidential smile, which

seemed to assure his hearers that they were as far above the average

audience as he was above the average candidate. He did not feel the

slightest difficulty in talking for an hour at a stretch, and two or

three times on the same day; and, indeed, it would have been strange if

he had, considering his Union experience at Cambridge and his practice

at the Bar.

Sydney won upon all classes at Vanebury, and the sporting gentlemen in

that thriving borough were soon giving odds upon his chance of success.

The Liberals were for the most part careless and over-confident. Their

man had won every election for twenty years past, and they could not

believe that this Tory lawyer was destined to accomplish what all the

local magnates had failed in attempting. But a few of the wisest amongst

them shook their heads, for they knew too well that "Tourmaline the

Traitor and Turncoat" (as the posters described him) was by no means

alone in his discontent with the tendencies of the party.

The attention of the country was fixed upon the Vanebury election, and

Sydney Campion had become at once the observed of all observers. He knew

it, and made the most of the situation, insisting in his speeches that

this was a test-election, which would show what the country thought of

the government, of its bribes to ignorance and its capitulation to

rebellion, of its sacrifice of our honor abroad and our interests at

home. He well knew what the effect of this would be on his friends in

London, and how he would have earned their gratitude if he could carry

the seat on these lines.

On the day before the poll, Sir John Pynsent came to Vanebury, to attend

the last of the public meetings.

"Admirably done, so far!" he said, as he grasped Sydney's hand at the

station. "How are things looking?"

"It is a certain win!" said Sydney. "No question about it."

And a win it was, such as any old campaigner might have been proud of.

The numbers as declared by the returning officer were:

Campion (C.) 4765

Hawkins (L.) 4564

----

Majority 201

At the last election Tourmaline had had a majority of six hundred over

his Conservative opponent, so that there had been a turnover of about

four hundred voters. And no one doubted that a large number of these had

made up their minds to turn since Campion had begun his canvass.

This was a complete success for Sydney. He was now Mr. Campion, M.P.,

with both feet on the ladder of ambition. Congratulations poured in upon

him from all sides, and from that moment he was recognized by everybody

as one of the coming men of the Conservative party.

CHAPTER XIV.

SYDNEY MAKES A MISTAKE.

There was a social side to Sydney's success which he was not slow to

appreciate. A poor and ambitious man, bent on climbing the ladder of

promotion, he was willing to avail himself of every help which came in

his way. And Sir John Pynsent was good-naturedly ready to give him a

helping hand.

During the past season he had found himself welcome in houses where the

best society of the day was wont to congregate. He had several

invitations for the autumn to places where it was considered a

distinction to be invited; and, being a man of much worldly wisdom, he

was disposed to be sorry that he had made arrangements to go abroad for

two or three months. He was vague in detailing his plans to his friends;

but in his own mind he was never vague, and he knew what he meant to do

and where he was going to spend the vacation well enough, although he

did not choose to take club acquaintances into his confidence.

But one invitation, given by Sir John Pynsent, for the Sunday subsequent

to his election--or rather, from Saturday to Monday--he thought it

expedient as well as pleasant to accept. Vanebury was a very few miles

distant from St. John's country-house, and when the baronet, in capital

spirits over his friend's success, urged him to run over to Culverley

for a day or two, he could not well refuse.

"I am going for the Sunday," Sir John said confidentially, "but my wife

doesn't expect me to stay longer until the session is over. I run down

every week, you know, except when she's in town; but she always leaves

London in June. My sister is under her wing, and she declares that late

hours and the heat of London in July are very bad for girls. Of course,

I'm glad that she looks after my sister so well."

Sydney recognized the fact that he had never before been taken into Sir

John's confidence with respect to his domestic affairs.

"Lady Pynsent asked me the other day whether I could not get you to come

down to us," Sir John continued. "I am always forgetting her messages;

but if you can spare a couple of days now, we shall be very glad to have

you. Indeed, you must not refuse," he said, hospitably. "And you ought

to see something of the county."

Sydney had met Lady Pynsent in town. She was a large, showy-looking

woman, with fair hair and a very aquiline nose; a woman who liked to

entertain, and who did it well. He had dined at the Wentworths' house

more than once, and he began to search in his memory for any face or

figure which should recall Sir John's sister to his mind. But he could

not remember her, and concluded, therefore, that she was in no way

remarkable.

"I think I have not met Miss Pynsent," he took an opportunity of saying,

by way of an attempt to refresh his memory.

"No? I think you must have seen her somewhere. But she did not go out

much this spring: she is rather delicate, and not very fond of society.

She's my half-sister, you know, considerably younger than I am--came out

the season before last."

Another acquaintance of Sydney's privately volunteered the information

later in the day that Miss Pynsent had sixty thousand pounds of her own,

and was reputed to be clever.

"I hate clever women," Sydney said, with an inward growl at his sister

Lettice, whose conduct had lately given him much uneasiness. "A clever

woman and an heiress! Ye gods, how very ugly she must be."

His friend laughed in a meaning manner, and wagged his head

mysteriously. But what he would have said remained unspoken, because at

that moment Sir John rejoined them.

Sydney flattered himself that he was not impressible, or at least that

the outward trappings of wealth and rank did not impress him. But he was

distinctly pleased to find that Sir John's carriage and pair, which met

them at the station, was irreproachable, and that Culverley was a very

fine old house, situated in the midst of a lovely park and approached by

an avenue of lime-trees, which, Sir John informed him, was one of the

oldest in the country. Sydney had an almost unduly keen sense of the

advantage which riches can bestow, and he coveted social almost as much

as professional standing for himself. It was, perhaps, natural that the

son of a poor man, who had been poor all his life, and owed his success

to his own brains and his power of continued work, should look a little

enviously on the position so readily attained by men of inferior mental

calibre, but of inherited and ever-increasing influence, like Sir John

Pynsent and his friends. Sydney never truckled: he was perfectly

independent in manner and in thought; but the good things of the world

were so desirable to him that for some of them--as he confessed to

himself with a half-laugh at his own weakness--he would almost have sold

his soul.

They arrived at Culverley shortly before dinner, and Sydney had time for

very few introductions before going to the dining-room. He was surprised

to find a rather large party present. There were several London men and

women whom he knew already, and who were staying in the house, and there

was a contingent of county people, who had only come to dinner. The new

member for Vanebury was made much of, especially by the county folk; and

as Sydney was young, handsome, and a good talker, he soon made himself

popular amongst them. For himself, he did not find the occasion

interesting, save as a means of social success. Most of the men were

dull, and the women prim and proper: there were not more than two pretty

girls in the whole party.

"That's the heiress, I suppose," thought Sydney, hearing a spectacled,

sandy-haired young woman who looked about five-and-twenty addressed as

Miss Pynsent. "Plain, as I thought. There's not a woman here worth

looking at, except Mrs. George Murray. I'll talk to her after dinner.

Not one of them is a patch on little Milly. I wonder how she would look,

dressed up in silks and satins. Pynsent knows how to choose his wine and

his cook better than his company, I fancy."

But his supercilious contempt for the county was well veiled, and the

people who entered into conversation with Sydney Campion, the new M.P.

for Vanebury, put him down as a very agreeable man, as well as a rising

politician.

His own position was pleasant enough. He was treated with manifest

distinction--flattered, complimented, well-nigh caressed. In the

drawing-room after dinner, Sydney, surrounded by complacent and

adulating friends, really experienced some of the most agreeable

sensations of his life. He was almost sorry when the group gradually

melted away, and conversation was succeeded by music. He had never

cultivated his taste for music; but he had a naturally fine ear, upon

which ordinary drawing-room performances jarred sadly. But, standing

with his arms folded and his back against the wall, in the neighborhood

of Mrs. George Murray, the prettiest woman in the room, he became

gradually aware that Lady Pynsent's musicians were as admirable in their

way as her cook. She would no more put up with bad singing than bad

songs; and she probably put both on the same level. She did not ask

amateurs to sing or play; but she had one or two professionals staying

in the house, who were "charmed" to perform for her; and she had secured

a well-known "local man" to play accompaniments. In the case of one at

least of the professionals, Lady Pynsent paid a very handsome fee for

his services; but this fact was not supposed to transpire to the general

public.

When the professionals had done their work there was a little pause,

succeeded by the slight buzz that spoke of expectation. "Miss Pynsent is

going to play," Mrs. Murray said to Sydney, putting up her long-handled

eyeglass and looking expectantly towards the grand piano. "Oh, now, we

shall have a treat."

"Sixty thousand pounds," Sydney said to himself with a smile; but he

would not for the world have said it aloud. "We must put up with bad

playing from its fortunate possessor, I suppose." And he turned his head

with resignation in the direction of the little inner drawing-room, in

which the piano stood. This room should, perhaps, be described as an

alcove, rather than a separate apartment: it was divided from the great

drawing-room by a couple of shallow steps that ran across its whole

width, so that a sort of natural stage was formed, framed above and on

either side by artistically festooned curtains of yellow brocade.

"Isn't it effective?" Mrs. Murray murmured to him, with a wave of her

eyeglass to the alcove. "So useful for tableaux and plays, you know.

Awfully clever of Lady Pynsent to use the room in that way. There used

once to be folding doors, you know--barbarous, wasn't it? Who _would_

use doors when curtains could be had?"

"Doors are useful sometimes," said Sydney. But he was not in the least

attentive either to her words or to his own: he was looking towards the

alcove.

Miss Pynsent--the young woman with sandy locks and freckled face, on

which a broad, good-humored smile was beaming--was already seated at the

piano and turning over her music. Presently she began to play, and

Sydney, little as was his technical knowledge of the art, acknowledged

at once that he had been mistaken, and that Miss Pynsent, in spite of

being an heiress, played remarkably well. But the notes were apparently

those of an accompaniment only--was she going to sing? Evidently not,

for at that moment another figure slipped forward from the shadows of

the inner drawing-room, and faced the audience.

This was a girl who did not look more than eighteen or nineteen: a

slight fragile creature in white, with masses of dusky hair piled high

above a delicate, pallid, yet unmistakably beautiful, face. The large

dark eyes, the curved, sensitive mouth, the exquisite modelling of the

features, the graceful lines of the slightly undeveloped figure, the

charming pose of head and neck, the slender wrist bent round the violin

which she held, formed a picture of almost ideal loveliness. Sydney

could hardly refrain from an exclamation of surprise and admiration. He

piqued himself on knowing a little about everything that was worth

knowing, and he had a considerable acquaintance with art, so that the

first thing which occurred to him was to seek for a parallel to the

figure before him in the pictures with which he was acquainted. She was

not unlike a Sir Joshua, he decided; and yet--in the refinement of every

feature, and a certain sweetness and tranquillity of expression--she

reminded him of a Donatello that he had seen in one of his later visits

to Florence or Sienna. He had always thought that if he were ever rich

he would buy pictures; and he wondered idly whether money would buy the

Donatello of which the white-robed violin-player reminded him.

One or two preliminary tuning notes were sounded, and then the violinist

began to play. Her skill was undoubted, but the feeling and pathos which

she threw into the long-drawn sighing notes were more remarkable even

than her skill. There was a touch of genius in her performance which

held the listeners enthralled. When she had finished, she disappeared

behind the curtains as rapidly as she had emerged from the shadows of

the dimly-lighted inner room; and in the pause that followed, the

opening and shutting of a door was heard.

"Who is she?" said Sydney to his neighbor.

"Oh, Miss Pynsent, of course," said Mrs. Murray. "Delightful, isn't

she?"

"I don't mean Miss Pynsent," said Sydney, in some confusion of mind; "I

mean----"

But Mrs. Murray had turned to somebody else, and scraps of conversation

floated up to Sydney's ears, and gave him, as he thought, the

information that he was seeking.

"So devoted to Lady Pynsent's children! Now that little Frankie has a

cold, they say she won't leave him night or day. They had the greatest

trouble to get her down to play to-night. Awfully lucky for Lady

Pynsent," and then the voices were lowered, but Sydney heard something

about "the last governess," and "a perfect treasure," which seemed to

reveal the truth.

"The governess! A violin-playing governess," he thought, with a mixture

of scorn and relief, which he did not altogether understand in himself.

"Ah! that's the reason she did not come down to dinner. She is a very

pretty girl, and no doubt Lady Pynsent keeps her in the nursery or

schoolroom as much as possible. I should like to see her again. Perhaps,

as to-morrow is Sunday, she may come down with the children."

It will be evident to the meanest capacity that Sydney was making an

absurd mistake as to the identity of the violinist. The most

unsophisticated novel-reader in the world would cast contempt and

ridicule on the present writers if they, in their joint capacity,

introduced the young lady in white as actually Lady Pynsent's governess.

To avoid misunderstanding on the point, therefore, it may as well be

premised that she was in fact Miss Anna Pynsent, Sir John's half sister,

and that Mr. Campion's conclusions respecting her position were

altogether without foundation.

Having, however, made up his mind about her, Sydney took little further

interest in the matter. One or two complimentary remarks were made in

his hearing about Miss Pynsent's playing; but he took them to apply to

the sandy-haired Miss Pynsent whom he had seen at dinner, and only made

a silent cynical note of the difference with which the violinist and the

accompanist were treated. He never flew in the face of the world

himself, and therefore he did not try to readjust the balance of

compliment: he simply acquiesced in the judgment of the critics, and

thought of the Donatello.

A long conference in the smoking-room on political matters put music and

musicians out of his head; and when he went to sleep, about two o'clock

in the morning, it was to dream, if he dreamt at all, of his maiden

speech in Parliament, and that elevation to the woolsack which his

mother was so fond of prophesying.

Sydney was an early riser, and breakfast on Sundays at Culverley was

always late. He was tempted by the beauty of the morning to go for a

stroll in the gardens; and thence he wandered into the park, where he

breathed the fresh cool air with pleasure, and abandoned himself, as

usual, to a contemplation of the future. The park was quickly crossed,

for Sydney scarcely knew how to loiter in his walking, more than in any

other of his actions; and he then plunged into a fir plantation which

fringed a stretch of meadow-land, now grey and drenched with dew and

shining in the morning sun. Even to Sydney's unimaginative mind the

scene had its charm, after the smoke of London and the turmoil of the

last few days: he came to the edge of the plantation, leaned his elbows

on the topmost rail of a light fence, and looked away to the blue

distance, where the sheen of water and mixture of light and shade were,

even in his eyes, worth looking at. A cock crowed in a neighboring

farmyard, and a far-away clock struck seven. It was earlier than he had

thought.

Two or three figures crossing the meadow attracted his attention. First

came a laboring man with a pail. Sydney watched him aimlessly until he

was out of sight. Then a child--a gentleman's child, judging from his

dress and general appearance--a boy of six or seven, who seemed to be

flying tumultuously down the sloping meadow to escape from his governess

or nurse. The field ran down to a wide stream, which was crossed at one

point by a plank, at another by stepping-stones; and it was towards

these stepping-stones that the boy directed his career. Behind him, but

at considerable distance, came the slender figure of a young woman, who

seemed to be pursuing him. The child reached the stream, and there stood

laughing, his fair curls floating in the wind, his feet firmly planted

on one of the stones that had been thrown into the water.

Sydney was by no means inclined to play knight-errant to children and

attendant damsels, and he would probably have continued to watch the

little scene without advancing, had not the girl, halting distressfully

to call the truant, chanced to turn her face so that the strong morning

light fell full upon it. Why, it was the violinist! Or was he deceived

by some chance resemblance? Sydney did not think so, but it behoved him

instantly to go and see.

Indeed, before he reached the stream, his help seemed to be needed. The

boy, shouting and dancing, had missed his footing and fallen headlong in

the stream, which, fortunately, was very shallow and not very swift.

Sydney quickened his pace to a run, and the girl did the same; but

before either of them reached its bank the boy had scrambled out again,

and was sitting on the further side with a sobered countenance and in a

very drenched condition.

"Oh, Jack!" said the girl reproachfully, "how _could_ you?"

"I want some mushrooms. I said I would get them," Jack answered,

sturdily.

"You must come back at once. But--how are you to get over?" she said,

contemplating the slippery stones with some dismay. For Jack's fall had

displaced more than one of them, and there was now a great gap between

the stones in the deepest part of the little stream.

"Can I be of any assistance?" said Sydney, availing himself of his

opportunity to come forward.

She turned and looked at him inquiringly, the color deepening a little

in her pale face.

"I am staying at Culverley," he said, in an explanatory tone. "I had the

pleasure of hearing you play last night."

"You are Mr. Campion, I think?" she said. "Yes, I shall be very glad of

your help. I need not introduce myself, I see. Jack has been very

naughty: he ran away from his nurse this morning, and I said that I

would bring him back. And now he has fallen into the brook."

"We must get him back," said Sydney, rather amused at her matter-of-fact

tone. "I will go over for him."

"No, I am afraid you must not do that," she answered. "There is a plank

a little further down the stream; we will go there."

But Sydney was across the water by this time. He lifted the child

lightly in his arms and strode back across the stones, scarcely wetting

himself at all. Then he set the boy down at her side.

"There!" he said, "that is better than going down to the plank. Now,

young man, you must run home again as fast as you can, or you will catch

cold."

"I am very much obliged to you," said the young lady, looking at him, as

he thought, rather earnestly, but without a smile. "Jack, you know, is

Sir John Pynsent's eldest son."

"So I divined. I think he would get home more quickly if I took one of

his hands and you took the other, and we hurried him up the hill; don't

you think so?"

He had no interest at all in Jack, but he wanted to talk with this

dark-eyed violin-playing damsel. Sydney had indulged in a good deal of

flirtation in his time, and he had no objection to whiling away an hour

in the company of any pretty girl; and yet there was some sort of

dignity about this girl's manner which warned him to be a little upon

his guard.

"You are member for Vanebury," she said, rather abruptly, when they had

dragged little Jack some distance up the grassy slope.

"I have that honor."

"I hope," she said, with a mixture of gentleness and decision which took

him by surprise, "that you mean to pay some attention to the condition

of the working-classes in Vanebury?"

"Well, I don't know; is there any special reason?"

"They are badly paid, badly housed, over-worked and under-educated," she

said, succinctly; "and if the member for Vanebury would bestir himself

in their cause, I think that something might be done."

"Even a member is not omnipotent, I'm afraid."

"No, but he has influence. You are bound to use it for good," she

returned.

Sydney raised his eyebrows. He was not used to being lectured on his

duties, and this young lady's remarks struck him as slightly

impertinent. He glanced at her almost as if he would have told her so;

but she looked so very pretty and so very young that he could no more

check her than he could have checked a child.

"You have very pretty scenery about here," he said, by way of changing

the conversation.

The girl's face drooped at once; she did not answer.

"What an odd young woman she is," said Sydney to himself. "What an odd

governess for the children!"

Suddenly she looked up, with a very sweet bright look. "I am afraid I

offended you," she said, deprecatingly. "I did not mean to say anything

wrong. I am so much interested in the Vanebury working people, although

we are here some miles distant from them, that when I heard you were

coming I made up my mind at once that I would speak to you."

"You have--friends, perhaps, in that district?" said Sydney.

"N--no--not exactly," she said, hesitating. "But I know a good deal

about Vanebury."

"Nan goes there very often, don't you, Nan?" said little Jack, suddenly

interposing. "And papa says you do more harm than good."

"Nan" colored high. "You should not repeat what papa says," she

answered, severely. "You have often been told that it is naughty."

"But it's true," Jack murmured, doggedly. And Sydney could not help

smiling at the discomfited expression on "Nan's" face.

However, he was--or thought he was--quite equal to the occasion. He

changed the subject, and began talking adroitly about her tastes and

occupations. Nan soon became at ease with him and answered his questions

cheerfully, although she seemed puzzled now and then by the strain of

compliment into which he had a tendency to fall. The house was reached

at last; and Jack snatched his hands from those of his companions, and

ran indoors. Nan halted at a side-door, and now spoke with the sweet

earnestness that impressed Sydney even more than her lovely face.

"You have been very kind to us, Mr. Campion. I don't know how to thank

you."

It was on the tip of Sydney's tongue to use some badinage such as he

would have done, in his light and easy fashion, to a servant-maid or

shop-girl. But something in her look caused him, luckily, to refrain. He

went as near as he dared to the confines of love-making.

"Give me the flower you wear," he said, leaning a little towards her.

"Then I shall at least have a remembrance of you."

His tone and his look were warmer than he knew. She shrank back, visibly

surprised, and rather offended. Before he could add a word she had

quietly taken the rosebud from her dress, handed it to him, and

disappeared into the house, closing the door behind her in a somewhat

uncompromising way. Sydney was left alone on the gravelled path, with a

half-withered rosebud in his hand, and a consciousness of having made

himself ridiculous.

"She seems to be rather a little vixen," he said to himself, as he

strolled up to his rooms to make some change in his clothes, which were

damper than he liked. "What business has a pretty little governess to

take that tone? Deuced out of place, I call it. I wonder if she'll be

down to breakfast. She has very fetching eyes."

But she was not down to breakfast, and nothing was said about her, so

Sydney concluded that her meals were taken in the schoolroom with the

children.

"Such a pity--poor dear Nan has a headache," he heard Lady Pynsent

saying by and by. "I hoped that she would come down and give us some

music this evening, but she says she won't be able for it."

Sydney consoled himself with pretty Mrs. Murray.

"The fair violinist is out of tune, it seems," he said, in the course of

an afternoon stroll with the new charmer.

"Who? Oh, Nan Pynsent."

"Pynsent? No. At least, I don't mean the pianiste: I mean the young lady

who played the violin last night."

"Yes, Nan Pynsent, Sir John's half-sister. The heiress--and some people

say the beauty of the county. Why do you look so stupefied, Mr.

Campion?"

"I did not know her, that was all. I thought--who, then, is the lady who

played the piano?"

"Mary Pynsent, a cousin. You surely did not think that _she_ was the

heiress?"

"Why did not Sir John's sister come down to dinner?" said Sydney, waxing

angry.

"She has a craze about the children. Their governess is away, and she

insists on looking after them. She is rather quixotic, you know; full of

grand schemes for the future, and what she will do when she comes of

age. Her property is all in Vanebury, by the bye: you must let her talk

to you about the miners if you want to win her favor. She will be of age

in a few months."

"I shall not try to win her favor."

"Dear me, how black you look, Mr. Campion. Are you vexed that you have

not made her acquaintance?"

"Not at all," said Sydney, clearing his brow. "How could I have looked

at her when you were there?"

The banal compliment pleased Mrs. Murray, and she began to talk of

trivial matters in her usual trivial strain. Sydney scarcely listened:

for once he was disconcerted, and angry with himself. He knew that he

would have talked in a very different strain if he had imagined for one

moment that Jack's companion was Miss Pynsent. He had not, perhaps,

definitely _said_ anything that he could regret; but he was sorry for

the whole tone of his conversation. Would Miss Pynsent repeat his

observations, he wondered, to her sister-in-law? Sydney did not often

put himself in a false position, but he felt that his tact had failed

him now. He returned to the house in an unusually disturbed state of

mind; and a sentence which he overheard in the afternoon did not add to

his tranquillity.

He was passing along a corridor that led, as he thought, to his own

room; but the multiplicity of turnings had bewildered him, and he was

obliged to retrace his steps. While doing so, he passed Lady Pynsent's

boudoir. Although he was unconscious of this fact, his attention was

attracted by the sound of a voice from within. Nan Pynsent's voice was

not loud, but it had a peculiarly penetrating quality; and her words

followed Sydney down the corridor with disagreeable distinctness.

"Selina," she was saying--Selina was Lady Pynsent's name--"I thought you

said that Mr. Campion was a _gentleman_!"

"Well, dear----" Lady Pynsent was beginning; but Sydney, quickening his

steps, heard no more. He was now in a rage, and disposed to vote Miss

Pynsent the most unpleasant, conceited young person of his acquaintance.

That anybody should doubt his "gentilhood" was an offence not to be

lightly borne. He was glad to remember that he was leaving Culverley

next day, and he determined that he would rather avoid the female

Pynsents than otherwise when they came to town. He could not yet do

without Sir John, and he was vexed to think that these women should have

any handle--however trifling--against him. He thanked his stars that he

had not actually made love to Miss Anna Pynsent; and he hurried back to

town next morning by the earliest train, without setting eyes on her

again. In town, amidst the bustle of political and social duties, he

soon forgot the unpleasant impression that this little episode of his

visit to Culverly had left upon his mind.

He went to Maple Cottage on the very day of his return to London, to

hear what his mother and sister had to say about his success. And he

took an opportunity also of telling Milly Harrington something of the

glories which he had achieved, and the privilege which he enjoyed in

being able to absent himself from his native country for two or three

months at a stretch.

About the end of August, Lettice had to look out for a new maid. Milly

went away, saying that she had heard of a better place. She had obtained

it without applying to her mistress for a character. She had not been so

attentive to her duties of late as to make Lettice greatly regret her

departure; but remembering old Mrs. Harrington's fears for her

grand-daughter, Lettice made many inquiries of Milly as to her new

place. She received, as she thought, very satisfactory replies, although

she noticed that the girl changed color strangely, and looked confused

and anxious when she was questioned. And when the time came for her to

go, Milly wept bitterly, and was heard to express a wish that she had

resolved to stay with Miss Lettice after all.

CHAPTER XV.

SOME UNEXPECTED MEETINGS.

Two or three months had passed since Alan's wife came back to him.

He had arranged, with the aid of a lawyer, to allow her a certain

regular income--with the consequence to himself that he had been obliged

to give up his floor in Montagu Place and settle down in the humbler and

dingier refuge of Alfred Place. Meanwhile, he had taken steps to collect

sufficient evidence for a divorce. He had not yet entered his suit, and

he felt pretty certain that when he did so, and Cora was made aware of

it in the usual manner, she would find some way of turning round and

biting him.

But the desire to be free from his trammels had taken possession of him

with irresistible force, and he was prepared to risk the worst that she

could do to him in order to accomplish it. Even as it was, he had reason

to think that she was not true to her undertaking not to slander or

molest him so long as she received her allowance. He had twice received

offensive post-cards, and though there was nothing to prove from whom

they came, he could have very little doubt that they had been posted by

her in moments when jealous rage or intoxication had got the better of

her prudence.

The scandal which began to fasten upon his name after Sydney Campion had

heard Brooke Dalton's story in the smoking-room of the Oligarchy was

almost forgotten again, though it lurked in the memory of many a

thoughtless retailer of gossip, ready to revive on the slightest

provocation.

More for Lettice's sake than his own, he lived in complete retirement,

and scarcely ever left his lodgings except to spend a few hours in the

Museum Reading Room. In this way he avoided the chance of meeting her,

as well as the chance of encountering his wretched wife, concerning

whose mode of life he had only too trustworthy evidence from the lawyer

to whom he had committed his interests.

Then there came a day when he could not deny himself the pleasure of

attending a conversazione for which tickets had been sent him by an old

friend. The subject to be discussed in the course of the evening was one

in which he was specially interested, and his main object in going was

that he might be made to forget for a few hours the misery of his

present existence, which the last of Cora's post-cards had painfully

impressed upon him.

He had not been there more than half-an-hour, when, moving with the

crowd from one room to another, he suddenly came face to face with

Lettice and the Grahams. All of them were taken by surprise, and there

was a little constraint in their greeting. Perhaps Lettice was the least

disturbed of the four--for the rest of them thought chiefly of her,

whilst she thought of Alan's possible embarrassment, which she did her

best to overcome, with the ready tact of an unselfish woman.

Alan had grown doubly sensitive of late, and his one idea had been that

Lettice must be preserved from all danger of annoyance, whether by the

abandoned woman who had so amply proved the shrewdness of her malice, or

by himself--who had no less amply proved his weakness. In pure

generosity of mind he would have contented himself with a few grave

words, and passed on. But it seemed to her as if he had not the courage

to remain, taking for granted her resentment at his unfortunate letter.

To her pure mind there was not enough, even in that letter, to cause

complete estrangement between them. At any rate, it was not in her to

impose the estrangement by any display of anger or unkindness. The

sublime courage of innocence was upon her as she spoke.

"See," she said, "the professor is going to begin. The people are taking

their seats, and if we do not follow their example all the chairs will

be filled, and we shall have to stand for an hour. Let us sit down."

She just glanced at Alan, so that he could regard himself as included in

the invitation; and, nothing loth, he sat down beside her. The lecturer

did not start for another ten minutes, and Lettice occupied the interval

by comparing notes with Clara Graham: for these two dearly loved a

gossip in which they could dissect the characters of the men they knew,

and the appearance of the women they did not know. It was a perfectly

harmless practice as indulged in by them, for their criticism was not

malicious. The men, after one or two commonplaces, relapsed into

silence, and Alan was able to collect his thoughts, and at the same time

to realize how much happiness the world might yet have in store for him,

since this one woman, who knew the worst of him, did not think it

necessary to keep him at a distance.

Then the professor began to speak. He was a small and feeble man, wheezy

in his delivery, and, it must be confessed, rather confused in his

ideas. He had been invited to make plain to an audience, presumably well

read and instructed, the historical bearings of certain recent

discoveries in Egypt; and the task was somewhat difficult for him. There

were seven theories, all more or less plausible, which had been started

by as many learned Egyptologists; and this worthy old gentleman, though

quite as competent to give an opinion, and stick to it, as any of the

rest, was so modest and self-depreciatory that he would not go further

than to state and advocate each theory in turn, praising its author, and

defending him against the other six. After doing this, he was bold to

confess that he did not altogether agree with any of the seven. He was

on the point of launching his own hypothesis, which would have been

incompatible with all the rest, when his heart failed him. He therefore

ended by inviting discussion, and sat down, blushing unseen beneath his

yellow skin, exactly as he used to blush half a century ago when he was

called up to construe a piece of Homer. Three of the seven Egyptologists

were present, and they now rose, one after another, beginning with the

oldest. Each of them stated his own theory, showing much deference to

the lecturer as "the greatest living authority" on this particular

subject; and then, after politely referring to the opinions of the two

rival savants whom he saw in the audience, became humorous and sarcastic

at the expense of the absent four.

But, as the absent are always wrong in comparison with the present, so

youth is always wrong in comparison with age. The youngest

Egyptologist--being in truth a somewhat bumptious man, fresh from Oxford

by way of Cairo and Alexandria--had presumed to make a little feint of

sword-play with one of the lecturer's diffident remarks. This brought up

the other two who had already spoken; and they withered that young man

with infinite satisfaction to themselves and the male part of the

audience.

The victim, however, was not young and Oxford-bred for nothing. He rose

to deprecate their wrath. He was not, he said, contesting the opinion of

the lecturer, whose decision on any detail of the matter under

consideration he would take as absolutely final. But he pointed out that

the opinion he had ventured to examine was expressed by his friend, Dr.

A., in a paper read before the Diatribical Society, six weeks before,

and it was manifestly at variance with the canon laid down by his

friend, Dr. B., as a fundamental test of knowledge and common-sense in

the domain of Egyptology.

Thus discord was sown between Dr. A. and Dr. B., and the seed instantly

sprang up, and put an end to all that was useful or amicable in that

evening's discussion.

Yet everyone agreed that it had been a most interesting conference, and

the audience dispersed in high good humor.

It took nearly a quarter of an hour to clear the crowded rooms, and as

Alan had offered his arm to Lettice, in order to guide her through the

crush, he had an opportunity of speaking to her, which he turned to good

account.

"I am glad to see that your brother is in Parliament," he said.

"Yes; of course we were pleased."

"He will make his mark--has made it already, indeed. He is very

eloquent; I have heard him speak more than once. He is a most skillful

advocate; if I were ever in trouble I would rather have him on my side

than against me."

He was speaking lightly, thinking it must please her to hear her brother

praised. But she did not answer his last remark.

"I hope Mrs. Campion is well?"

"Not very well, unfortunately. I am afraid she grows much weaker, and

her sight is beginning to fail."

"That must be very trying. I know what that means to an old lady who has

not many ways of occupying herself. I was making the same observation at

home this morning."

"With regard to your mother?"

"Oh, no. My mother died when I was little more than a boy. But I have an

aunt living with me, who must be nearly seventy years old, and she was

telling me to-day that she could scarcely see to read."

"Oh," said Lettice, with a rush of blood to her face, "is Mrs.

Bundlecombe your aunt?"

"Yes," he said, looking rather surprised, "you spoke as if you knew her.

Did you ever see Mrs. Bundlecombe?"

"I--I had heard her name."

"At Angleford? Or Thorley?"

"Of course, I heard of Mr. Bundlecombe there."

"Is it not strange," Alan said, after a short pause, "that I never knew

you came from Angleford until that morning when I brought you one of

your father's books? Then I asked my aunt all about you. I was never at

Angleford in my life, and if I had heard the rector's name as a boy I

did not recollect it."

"Yes, it is strange. One is too quick at coming to conclusions. I have

to beg your pardon, Mr. Walcott, for I really did think that--that Mrs.

Bundlecombe was your mother, and that----"

"That I was not going under my own name? That I was the son of a

bookseller, and ashamed of it?"

He could not help showing a trace of bitterness in his tone. At any

rate, she thought there was bitterness. She looked at him humbly--for

Lettice was destitute of the pride which smaller natures use in

self-defence when they are proved to be in the wrong--and said,

"Yes, I am afraid I thought so at the moment."

"At what moment?"

"Do not ask me! I am very sorry."

"And glad to find that you were mistaken?"

"I am very glad."

He tried to meet her eyes, but she did not look at him again.

"It was my own fault," he said. "I was going to mention my connection

with your father's bookseller that morning; but--you know--my feelings

ran away with me. I told you things more to my discredit, did I not?"

"I remember nothing to your discredit. Certainly what you have told me

now is not to your discredit."

"If you had met my aunt in London, of course you would have known. But

she does not visit or entertain anyone. You knew she was in London?"

"Yes."

"But you never saw her?"

"Yes, once."

"Oh, I did not know that. When?"

"A long time ago. It was quite a casual and unimportant meeting. Oh, Mr.

Walcott, who is that terrible woman?"

They were out of the building by this time, standing on the pavement.

Graham had called a cab, and whilst they were waiting for it to draw up

Lettice had become aware of a strikingly-dressed woman, with painted

face and bold eyes, who was planting herself in front of them, and

staring at her with a mocking laugh.

Alan was horrified to see that it was his wife who stood before them,

with the mad demoniac look in her eyes which he knew too well.

"Alan, my dear Alan," she cried in a shrill voice, causing everyone to

look round at the group, "tell her this terrible woman's name! Tell her

that I am your wife, the wife that you have plunged into misery and

starvation----"

"For heaven's sake!" said Alan, turning to Graham, "where is your cab?

Take them away quickly!"

"Tell her," the virago screamed, "that I am the woman whom you tried to

murder, in order that you might be free----"

Here the harangue was cut short by a policeman, who knew the orator very

well by sight, and who deftly interposed his arm at the moment when Cora

was reaching the climax of her rage. At the same instant the cab drew

up, and Lettice was driven away with her friends, not, however, before

she had forced Alan to take her hand, and had wished him good-night.

"That must have been his wife," said Clara, whose face was white, and

who was trembling violently.

"Yes, confound her!" said her husband, much annoyed by what had

happened.

"Could you not stay to see what happens? You might be of some use to Mr.

Walcott."

"What good can I do? I wish we had not met him. I have a horror of these

scenes; some people, apparently, take them more coolly."

He was out of temper with Lettice, first for sitting by Alan at the

conversazione, and then for ostentatiously shaking hands with him on the

pavement. Her instinct told her what he was thinking.

"I am sorry it happened," she said; "but when a man is unfortunate one

need not take the opportunity of punishing him. It was far worse for him

than for us."

"I don't see that," said Graham. "And everyone has to bear his own

troubles. Besides, why should a man with such a frightful infliction

attach himself to ladies in a public place, and subject them to insult,

without so much as warning them what they might expect to meet with?"

"Were you unwarned?"

"I was not thinking of myself. You were not warned."

"I beg your pardon, I was."

"You knew his wife was alive--and--what she is?"

"Yes."

"I must say I cannot understand it."

"You would not have me kind to a man who, as you say, is frightfully

afflicted? It was for that very reason I thought we ought to be kind to

him to-night."

"My sense of duty does not lead me quite so far; and I do not wish that

Clara's should, either!"

"I am sorry," said Lettice, again.

Then there was silence in the cab; but the undutiful Clara was squeezing

her friend's hand in the dark, whilst her lord and master fumed for five

minutes in his corner. After that, he pulled the check-string.

"What are you going to do?" said Clara.

"Going back again," he said. "You women understand some things better

than we do. All the same, I don't know what would happen if you always

let your hearts lead you, and if you had no men to look after you. I

shall take a hansom and follow on."

He was too late, however, to do any good. The stream of life had swept

over the place where Alan and his wife had met, as it sweeps over all

the great city's joys and sorrows, glories and disgrace, leaving not a

vestige behind.

CHAPTER XVI.

CONCEIVED IN SORROW.

Two days later, as Lettice was hard at work in her study on a romance

which she had begun in June, at the suggestion of a friendly publisher,

she was interrupted by a knock at the door. It was a feeble knock, as of

one who was half afraid, and the voice, which she heard inquiring for

her immediately afterwards was a feeble voice, which she did not

recognize.

Nor did she at first remember the face of Mrs. Bundlecombe, when that

lady was brought into her room, so much had she changed since her last

visit to Maple Cottage. She looked ten years older than when she

transferred to her pocket the twenty pounds which Lettice had paid her,

though that was barely twelve months ago.

Lettice was better pleased to see her this time; but there was a sinking

at her heart as she thought from whom the old lady had come, and

wondered what her coming might mean.

Mrs. Bundlecombe produced from her bag a little roll of paper, and laid

it on the table with trembling hands.

"There, Miss Campion," she said, taking the chair which Lettice had put

for her, "now I feel better already, and I can answer your kind

inquiries. I cannot say that I am very well, but there is nothing you

can do for me, except take the money back that I came and asked you for

a year ago. Don't say anything against it, my dear, for my Alan says it

must be done, and there is no use in trying to turn him. It is the right

method for peace of conscience, as the good Mr. Baxter said, and that

must be my apology, though I am sure you will not think it was nothing

but sinful self-seeking that made me come to you before."

"I don't understand, Mrs. Bundlecombe! I simply paid you a debt, did I

not? If it was right for my father to pay (as he would have done if he

had lived), it was right for me to pay; and as it was right for me to

pay, it was right for you to ask. And it gave me pleasure, as I told you

at the time, so that I object to taking the money back again."

"That is what I said to Alan, but he would not listen to me. 'Miss

Campion was not bound to pay her father's debt,' he said, 'any more than

Mr. Campion, and therefore it was wrong for you to ask either of them.

But to go to a woman,' he said, 'was more than wrong, it was mean; and I

can never look in her face again if you do not take it back and beg her

pardon.' He can be very stern, my dear, when he is not pleased, and just

now I could not disobey him if he was to tell me to go on my knees

through London town."

"How did he know that I had paid you?"

"Well, it was yesterday; we had been in great trouble"--and here Mrs.

Bundlecombe broke down, having been very near doing it from the moment

when she entered the room. Lettice comforted her as well as she could,

and made her drink a glass of wine; and so she gradually recovered her

voice.

"Well, as I was saying, my dear, in the evening, when we were quiet by

ourselves, he said to me, 'Aunt Bessy, I met Miss Campion last night,

and I gather from what she told me that you had seen one another in

London. You never mentioned that to me. When was it?' I did not want to

make a clean breast of it, but he has such a way of cross-questioning

one that I could not keep it back; and that is how it all came out. So

you must put up with it, for my sake. I dare not touch the money again,

was it ever so."

"Then I must speak to Mr. Walcott about it myself, the next time I see

him, for I think he has not been just to you."

"Oh yes, my dear, he has! He is always so just, poor boy!" There was an

ominous quaver here. "And it is not as if we wanted money. I had three

or four hundred from selling the business, and Alan has nearly that

every year--but now he gives two pounds a week----"

Then there was another collapse, and Lettice thought it best to let the

old woman have her cry out. Only she went over and sat by her side, and

took one of the thin hands between her own, and cried just a little to

keep her company.

"Oh, my dear," said Mrs. Bundlecombe at last, "it is such a comfort to

have a woman to talk to. I have not had a good talk to one of my own sex

since I came up to London, unless it is the landlady in Montagu Place,

and she is a poor old antiquity like myself, with none of your soft and

gentle ways. It would do me good to tell you all we have gone through

since that bad creature found us out, but I have no right to make you

miserable with other people's sorrows. No--I will go away before I begin

to be foolish again; and my boy will be waiting for me."

"If you think Mr. Walcott would not object to your telling me, and if it

will be any relief to you, do! Indeed, I think I would rather hear it."

So Mrs. Bundlecombe poured out her tale to sympathetic ears, and gave

Lettice an account of Alan's married life so far as she knew it, and of

the return of the runaway, and of the compact which Alan had made with

her, and of the post-cards, and the slandering and the threats.

"And the night before last he came home in a terrible rage--that would

be after seeing you, my dearie--and he walked about the room for ever so

long before he would tell me a word. And then he said,

"'I have seen her again, Aunt Bessy, and she has molested me horribly

out in the street, when I was with----'

"And there he stopped short, and fell on the sofa, and cried--yes, dear,

he cried like a woman, as if his heart would break; and I guessed why it

was, though he did not mention your name. For you know," said Mrs.

Bundlecombe, looking at Lettice with mournful eyes, "or leastways you

don't know, how he worships the ground----"

"Don't," said Lettice, "don't tell me more than he would like. I--I

cannot bear to hear it all!"

"Maybe I have said too much; but you must forgive me if I have. And so,

when he was a bit better he said that he should go next morning and tell

the lawyer that she had broken her compact, and he would not pay her any

more money, but give her notice of the divorce.

"'All the heart and all the mercy is crushed out of me,' he said; 'she

has turned her venom on _her_, and she shall suffer for it.'

"So in the morning he went to his lawyer. And it was the day when she

used to call for her money, and she must have called for it and been

refused, for early in the afternoon she came round to our lodgings, and

went on like a mad woman in the street, shrieking and howling, and

saying the most horrible things you can imagine. I could not tell you

half she said, about--about us all. Oh dear, oh dear! I had heard what

one of those Frenchwomen could be, but I never saw anything like it

before, and I hope I never may again!"

"Was he there?"

"Yes, he was there. And he said to me, 'If I give her in charge, it will

have to go into the police court, and anything is better than that!' But

then she mentioned--she began to say other things, and he said, 'My God,

if this is not stopped, I shall do her an injury!' So I went out, and

fetched a policeman, and that put an end to it for the time.

"You can fancy that my poor Alan is nearly out of his mind, not knowing

what she may be up to next. One thing he is afraid of more than

anything: and to be sure I don't think he cares for anything else. Ever

since I let out your name on that first night he has been dreading what

might happen to you through her spite and malice!"

Lettice was deeply moved by Mrs. Bundlecombe's story, and as the old

woman finished she kissed her on the cheek.

"Tell him," she said, "that I have heard what he has suffered--that I

asked you, and you told me. Tell him not to think of me because I am

forewarned, and am not afraid of anything she can do. And tell him that

he should not think of punishing her, for the punishment she has brought

upon herself is enough."

"I will repeat it word for word, my dearie, and it will comfort him to

have a message from you. But I doubt he will not spare her now, for she

is more than flesh and blood can bear."

Then Lettice took her visitor to her mother's room, and made tea for

her, and left the two to compare notes with each other for half an hour.

Thus Mrs. Bundlecombe went away comforted, and took some comfort back

with her to the dingy room in Alfred Place.

It was hard for Lettice to turn to her work again, as though nothing had

happened since she last laid down her pen. The story to which she had

listened, and the picture which it brought so vividly before her mind of

the lonely, persecuted man who pined for her love when she had no right

to give it, nor he to ask for it, compelled her to realize what she had

hitherto fought away and kept in the background. She could no longer

cheat herself with the assurance that her heart was in her own keeping,

and that her feeling for Alan was one of mere womanly pity.

She loved him; and she would not go on lying to her own heart by saying

that she did not.

Her character was not by any means perfect; but, as with all of us, a

mixture of good and ill--the evil and the good often springing out of

the same inborn qualities of her nature. She had a keen sense of

enjoyment in hearing and seeing new things, in broaching new ideas and

entering upon fresh fields of thought; and her appetite in these

respects was all the stronger for the gloom and seclusion in which the

earlier years of her womanhood had been spent. She was lavish in

generosity to her friends, and did not count the cost when she wanted to

be kind. But as the desire for enjoyment may be carried to the length of

self-indulgence, so there is often a selfishness in giving and a

recklessness in being over kind. Lettice, moreover, was extravagant in

the further sense that she did not look much beyond the present month or

present year of existence. She thought her sun would always shine.

Her blemishes were quite compatible with her virtues, with the general

right-mindedness and brave performance of duty which had hitherto marked

her life. She was neither bad nor perhaps very good, but just such a

woman as Nature selects to be the instrument of her most mysterious

workings.

If Lettice admitted to herself the defeat which she had sustained in one

quarter, she was all the less disposed to accept a check elsewhere. Her

will to resist a hopeless love was broken down, but that only increased

the strength of her determination to conceal the weakness from every

eye, to continue the struggle of life as though there were no flaw in

her armor, and to work indefatigably for the independence of thought and

feeling and action which she valued above all other possessions.

So she chained herself to her desk, and finished her romance, which in

its later chapters gained intensity of pathos and dramatic insight from

the constant immolation of her own heart as she imagined the martyrdoms

and sacrifices of others.

The story which was to make her famous had been conceived in sorrow, and

it became associated with the greatest sufferings of her life. She had

scarcely sent it off to the publisher, in the month of October, when her

mother, who had been gradually failing both in body and in mind, quietly

passed away in her sleep. No death could have been easier. The heart had

done its work, and ceased to beat; but though Lettice was spared the

grief which she would have felt if her mother had lingered long on a

painful death-bed, the shock was still very severe. For a time she was

entirely prostrated by it. The manifold strain upon her mind had tried

her too much, and for several weeks after the funeral Clara Graham was

nursing her through a dangerous illness.

CHAPTER XVII.

"TO THY CHAMBER WINDOW, SWEET!"

The message which had been sent by Lettice to Alan, by the mouth of Mrs.

Bundlecombe, had not lost much in its transit.

"Tell him," she had said, "that I have heard what he has suffered. Tell

him not to trouble for me because I am forewarned, and am not afraid of

anything she can do. And tell him that he should not think of punishing

her, for the punishment she has brought on herself is enough."

It had consoled him greatly to have this assurance of her sympathy. He

did not presume too far on the mere fact of her having sent him a

message, and the words themselves did not amount to very much. But if

she had cared nothing at all, she would have said nothing at all; and

perhaps the description which his aunt gave him of Lettice's kindness to

her, and of her interest in the story which she had heard, did more to

appease his heart than anything else.

It was his full intention to do all that was possible to deliver himself

from the bondage of his unhappy marriage, and in the meantime he would

take every precaution to prevent Lettice from being annoyed by this

termagant of a woman. But he rejoiced to think that Lettice herself was

in some manner prepared for what might happen to her, and was on her

guard against the danger.

There was a certain sweetness in the thought that they shared this

danger between them, that his enemy was hers also, and that she had

voluntarily ranged herself by his side. A feeling of satisfaction

flashed through his mind at this community of interests with the woman

whom he loved, but it was merged at once in the conviction that he could

not be content for one single moment to leave her exposed to the

possibility of insult from Cora.

She had commanded him not to punish his wife. It was very difficult for

him to obey. This bitterness against the degraded wretch was roused to

its highest pitch by her last outbreak. If she would only die out of his

life--die in any sense, so that he might hear and see her no more--he

would not ask for her punishment. If she would cease to be his wife, and

enable him to stand beside the pure and steadfast woman whose gentle

influence had transformed his soul, he would forgive her. There was no

way in which this could be done except by exposing her before the world,

and depriving her of all right to look to him for support, and in the

doing of this he knew full well there would be no room for weak pity and

misgiving.

He could not forgive her if that was to mean that he should keep her as

his wife, and go on trying to buy her silence. He did not want to

inflict pain upon her out of mere resentment, and if he could have his

way in the matter of the divorce he was quite willing that she should

have some of his money. He would be so rich without her that he would

gladly go out into the street then and there, stripped of everything

that he possessed, if in that way he could shake off the galling fetters

that weighed upon him.

To-morrow he would tell his lawyer that she was to have her weekly money

again, on condition of her solemnly renewing her engagement not to

molest him in any way, and not to interfere with any of his friends. She

would probably regard the offer as a sign of weakness, but at any rate

it would put her on her good behavior for a time. He would do this for

Lettice's sake, if not for his own.

He knew with whom he had to deal, and of what this raving woman was

capable. If she had been English, or German, and had gone utterly to the

bad, she might by this time have been lethargically besotted, and would

have given him very little trouble so long as she received her two

pounds a week. But Cora was Latin, and belonged to the same race as the

poet who drew the harpies, and the Gorgons, and mad Dido, and frenzied

Camilla, who had painted in a hundred forms the unrestrained fury of his

countrywomen, when the grace and tenderness of their sex had deserted

them. She also was besotted at times, but whenever she was not besotted

her mind was full of vivacity, and her anger was as a whirlwind, and

neither fear nor prudence could hold her in check. Alan knew her only

too well, even before she had tried to kill him in France, and he had no

doubt that the outbreak of the last few days was only the beginning of a

persecution which she would maintain so long as she had the power to

injure him.

For himself he had already resolved what to do. Even his aunt must not

be subject to these annoyances, and he bade her pack up her things and

go to an old friend of hers in the country. He would leave his present

lodging and get housed somewhere out of her reach. Why should he remain

at her mercy, when it did not matter to any one where he lived, and when

certainly no householder would endure a lodger who was liable to be

visited by a madwoman?

But Lettice? How could she be defended from attack? It was clear that

Cora was jealous of her, or at all events maliciously set against her.

It had required very little to produce that effect. Heaven knew that

Lettice had done nothing to excite jealousy even in the mind of a

blameless wife, entitled to the most punctilious respect and

consideration of her husband. If only Lettice could be placed in safety,

carried away from London to some happy haven where no enemy could follow

and torment her, and where he might guard her goings and comings, he

would be content to play the part of a watch-dog, if by that means he

could be near her and serve her!

Something impelled him to get up and leave the house. It was dark by

this time, and he wandered aimlessly through the streets; but by and by,

without any conscious intention, he found himself walking rapidly in the

direction of Hammersmith.

Eight o'clock had struck when he left his lodgings in Alfred Place, and

it was after nine when he stood at the corner where the main-road passes

by the entrance to Brook Green. He had never once looked behind him;

and, even if he had, he would scarcely have detected in the darkness the

figure which dogged his steps with obstinate persistence.

He hesitated for a minute or more at the corner, and then walked slowly

round the Green. Opposite to Maple Cottage there was a large tree, and

underneath it, barely visible from the pavement, a low wooden seat. Here

he sat down, and watched the dimly-lighted windows.

Why had he come there? What was in his mind when he turned his face to

Lettice's cottage, and sat patiently looking out of the darkness? He

could not have answered the questions if they had been put to him. But

he felt a sense of comfort in knowing that she was so near, and pleased

himself with the thought that even for these few minutes he was guarding

her from unseen dangers.

He may have been sitting there for half-an-hour--a hundred images

chasing each other through his disordered brain--when suddenly a blind

in the cottage was drawn up. For a moment he saw the form of Lettice as

she stood at the window, with a lamp in her hand, framed like a picture

by the ivy which covered the wall. Then the shutters closed, and he was

left alone in the darkness. Alone, as he thought: but he was not alone.

He had started to his feet when her face appeared at the window, and

stood with his arms extended, as though he would reach through space to

touch her. Then, as she disappeared, he softly murmured her name.

"Lettice! My Lettice!"

A harsh laugh grated on his ears. It came from the other side of the

tree, and Alan sprang in the direction of the sound. He need not have

hastened, for his wife had no desire to conceal her presence. She was

coming forward to meet him; and there, in the middle of the Green,

shrouded in almost complete darkness, the two stood face to face.

"Tiens, mon ami; te voilà!"

She was in her mocking mood--certain to be quiet for a few minutes, as

Alan told himself the moment he recognized her. What was she doing here?

He had thought that she did not know where Lettice lived; how had she

discovered the place? It did not occur to him that his own folly had

betrayed the secret; on the contrary, he blessed the instinct which had

brought him to the spot just when he was wanted. "A spirit in my feet

hath led me to thy chamber window, sweet!" All this passed through his

mind in a couple of seconds.

"Yes, I am here. And you! How came you here?"

"Nothing more simple. I came on my feet. But you walked quick, my dear;

I could hardly keep up with you at times."

"You followed me!"

"Yes, I followed you--all the way from Alfred Place. I wanted so much to

know where she lived, and I said, 'He shall show me. He, who would not

for worlds that I should know--he will be my sign-post.' Pouf! you men

are stupid creatures. I must be cunning with you, my good husband who

would leave me to starve--who would divorce me, and marry this woman,

and cut the hated Cora out of your life. But no, my poor child, it shall

not be. So long as we live, we two, Cora will never desert you. It is my

only consolation, that I shall be able to follow every step of your

existence as I followed you to-night, without your knowing where I am,

or at what moment I may stand before you."

"Let us walk," said Alan, "and talk things over. Why stand here?"

"You are afraid that I shall make another scandal, and rouse the

virtuous Lettice from her pillow, with the sound of her name screamed

out in the night? Ha, ha! How the poor coward trembles! Have no fear!

Twice in a week your brutal police have seized me, and I do not love

their kind attentions. Now and then I may defy them, when I need an

excitement of that kind; but not to-night. To-night I mean to be clever,

and show you how I can twist a cold-blooded Englishman round my finger.

If you go, then I will scream--it is a woman's bludgeon, my child, as

her tongue is her dagger. Bah! be quiet and listen to me. You shall not

divorce me, for if you try I will accuse you of all sorts of

things--basenesses that will blast your name for ever."

"I am not afraid of you," said Alan. "For anything I know, you have a

pistol under your cloak--shoot me. I took you to love and cherish, and

you have made my life a hell. What good is it? Shoot!"

"No; that makes a noise. In Paris I would shoot you, for it is you who

have destroyed my life. But in London you do not understand these

things, so that I must act differently. Listen! If you try to divorce

me, and do not pay me my money, I have one or two little pistol-shots à

l'anglaise which will suit you perfectly. Shall I tell you what I would

say, to anyone who would listen to me--in court, in the street,

anywhere?"

"As you please."

"First, that you fired at me at Culoz, and that I can bring forward

witnesses of the attempted assassination."

"That is pure nonsense; I am not to be frightened by such child's play."

"Second, so far as the divorce is concerned, that whatever my offence

may have been, you have condoned it. Do you not understand, my friend?

Did I not find shelter in your rooms in Montagu Place? I would have a

good lawyer, who would know how to make the most of that."

"Have you nothing stronger to rely on?"

"Listen; you shall tell me. My third pistol-shot is this--that you were

wont to make private assignations with Miss Lettice Campion, and that

you had been seen dropping from her window, here in Brook Green, at

midnight. What do you think of that, for example?"

"Vile wretch!" said Alan. "Your malice has robbed you of your senses.

Who would believe you?"

"Do not be a child. Are you English, and do you ask who would believe a

woman telling these tales of a man? Do you not know that men are ruined

every day in England by the lies of women? The better the man, the more

abandoned the woman, the more incredible her lies, so much the more

certain is his condemnation. Bah, you know it! I should not hesitate

about the lies, and, if I made them sufficiently repulsive, your noble

countrymen would not hesitate to believe them. Do you doubt it? What

think you of my plan?"

He made no answer; he was trying to command himself.

"Now, tell me! Shall I have my money as usual?"

"Before I left the house," he said, "I had resolved that the money ought

to be paid to you. So long as you are my wife, you ought not to starve."

"Good! It is an annuity for life!"

"No. I would give a hand or an eye to be free from you."

"They would be useless to me, my dear. Would you give the fair fame of

Lettice? It will cost no less."

"Let that pass!"

"Yes, we will let that pass. Then, I receive my money as usual?"

"Go to Mr. Larmer to-morrow; he will pay it."

"I hate this Mr. Larmer--he is an animal without manners. But no matter.

I am glad you are reasonable, my friend. You buy a respite for a few

weeks. I shall forget you with all my heart--until I have a migraine,

and suddenly remember you again. But it is too cheap; I cannot live

decently on this paltry sum. Good-bye, my child--and gare

aux-migraines!"

She was gone, and Alan was left alone. He had dug his nails into the

palms of his hands, in the effort to restrain himself, until the blood

came; and long after the mocking fiend had departed he sat silent on the

bench, half-stupefied with rage and despair.

Was he really the coward that he felt himself, to listen to her

shameless threats, and tremble at the thought of her machinations?

Lettice had told him that she was not afraid; but ought he not to be

afraid for her, and do all that was possible to avert a danger from her

which he would not fear on his own account?

Ah, if he could only take counsel with her, how wise and brave she would

be; how he would be encouraged by her advice and strengthened by her

sympathy! But he knew that it was impossible to call to his aid the

woman whom it was his first duty to protect from annoyance. She should

never know the torture he was enduring until it had came to an end, and

he could tell it with his own lips as an indifferent story of the past.

CHAPTER XVIII.

A SLEEPY NOOK.

Three miles from Angleford, on the other side of the river, and hidden

away by trees on every side, sleeps the lazy little village of

Birchmead. So lazy is the place--so undisturbed have been its slumbers,

from generation to generation, that it might puzzle the most curious to

think why a village should be built there at all. There is no ford

through the river, and, though a leaky ferryboat makes occasional

journeys from one side to the other, the path which leads to the bank is

too precipitous for any horse to tread. The only route by which a cart

can enter Birchmead branches off from the Dorminster Road, across a

quarter of a mile of meadows: and when the gate of the first meadow is

closed, the village is completely shut in on every side. The world

scarcely knows it, and it does not know the world--its life is "but a

sleep and a forgetting."

The place has a history of its own, which can be told in a couple of

sentences. Two hundred years ago an eccentric member of the family to

which the country-side belonged had chosen to set up here a little

community on his own account, shaped on a model which, universally

applied would doubtless regenerate the world. He built, out of stone, a

farmhouse and barns, and a score of cottages for his working-men, and

there he spent his life and his money, nursing for some thirty years his

dream of hard work and perfect satisfaction. Then he died, and a farmer

without his faith and wealth succeeded him, and the hamlet lost its

originality, and became as much like other hamlets as its love of sleep

and pride of birth would allow.

One thing saves it from desertion and extinction. It has a reputation,

over half a county, for being one of the most healthy and

life-prolonging spots in England. It certainly contains a remarkable

number of old men and women, some of whom have come from the neighboring

towns to end their lives in the weather-proof stone cottages and fertile

allotments which remain at this day precisely as they were built and

measured out by the philanthropic squire in the seventeenth century.

Other cottages have been run up in the meantime, and a few villas of a

more pretentious character; but there is always a brisk competition for

the substantial domiciles, as snug and sound as any almshouse, which

encircle the village green of Birchmead.

In one of these cottages Mrs. Bundlecombe found a refuge when Alan sent

her away from London. It was in the occupation of an old friend with

whom she had been on intimate terms at Thorley--a widow like herself,

blessed by Heaven with a perennial love of flowers and vegetables, and

recognized by all her neighbors as the best gardener and neatest

housewife in the community. With Mrs. Chigwin, Alan's aunt was happier

than she had ever hoped to be again, and the only drawback to her

felicity was the thought of her nephew's troubles and solitude.

The next cottage to Mrs. Chigwin's was inhabited by old Mrs. Harrington,

the grandmother of Lettice's first maid. There had been no love lost

between Mrs. Bundlecombe and Mrs. Harrington, when they once lived in

the same town. The grudge had arisen out of a very small matter. The

bookseller's' wife had sold a Bible to Mrs. Harrington, in the absence

of her husband, for twopence more than Mr. Bundlecombe had demanded for

the same book, from some common acquaintance of both parties to the

bargain, on the previous day; and this common acquaintance having seen

the book and depreciated it a few weeks later, the purchaser had an

abiding sense of having been outrageously duped and cheated. She had

come to the shop and expressed herself to this effect, in no moderate

terms; and Mrs. Bundlecombe, whilst returning the twopence, had made

some disparaging remarks on the other lady's manners, meanness, dress,

age, and general inferiority. The affront had never been quite forgotten

on either side, and it was not without much ruffling of their mental

plumage that the two old bodies found themselves established within a

few yards of each other.

The squire's cottages at Birchmead were detached, but their ample

gardens had only a low wall between them, so that the neighboring

occupiers could not well avoid an occasional display of their mutual

disposition, whether good or bad. It was close upon winter when Mrs.

Bundlecombe arrived in the village, and very wet weather, so that there

was no immediate clashing of souls across the garden wall; but in

November there came a series of fine warm days, when no one who had a

garden could find any excuse for staying indoors. Accordingly, one

morning Mrs. Chigwin, who knew what was amiss between her friends,

seeing Mrs. Harrington pacing the walk on the other side of the wall,

determined to bring about a meeting, and, if possible, a reconciliation.

"Elizabeth, my dear, that gravel looks perfectly dry. You must come out

in the sun, and see the last of my poor flowers."

"Martha Chigwin," said her visitor, with a solemn face; "do you see that

woman?"

"Yes, I see her. What then?"

"I do not nurse wrath, my love, but I cannot abide her."

"Are not six years long enough to remember a little thing of that sort?

Come along, Elizabeth; you will find that she has grown quite civil and

pleasant-spoken since you used to know her."

So they went out into the garden, and the two ancient foes sniffed and

bridled at each other as they approached through the transparent screen

of tall yellow chrysanthemums which lined Mrs. Chigwin's side of the

wall.

"Mrs. Harrington," said the peacemaker, "there is no need for me to

introduce you to my old friend, Elizabeth Bundlecombe, who has come to

pay me a nice long visit. We shall be her neighbors and close friends, I

hope, and if you will do me the favor to come in this afternoon and

drink a cup of tea with us, we shall be very glad to see you."

"Thank you kindly, Mrs. Chigwin. Good-morning to you, Mrs. Bundlecombe.

I hear you have been living in London, ma'am, quite grand, as the saying

is!"

"No, Mrs. Harrington, not grand at all, ma'am. Don't say so. I have

known what trouble is since my poor dear husband died, and I shall never

feel like being grand again."

"Never again, ma'am? Well, I am sure that Mrs. Bundlecombe knows how to

bear her fortune, whether good or bad. Did you say never again, ma'am?"

The old lady seemed to take this phrase as a kind of comprehensive and

dignified apology for the past, which ought to be met in a conciliatory

manner.

"Well, well, Mrs. Bundlecombe, bygones is bygones, and there's no more

to be said about it. Not but what principle is principle, be it twopence

or twenty pounds."

"Allowance must be made, Mrs. Harrington, for the feelings of the

moment."

"On both sides, ma'am," said Mrs. Harrington.

"Like reasonable parties," said Mrs. Bundlecombe.

Then they nodded at each other with much vigor, and shook hands across

the top of the wall through the branches of the chrysanthemums. Thus

vaguely, but with a clear understanding on the part of both combatants,

peace was made, and good relations were established. Mrs. Chigwin was

delighted at the easy way in which the difficulty had been overcome, and

in the afternoon she treated her friends in such a genuinely hospitable

and considerate fashion that they were soon perfectly at their ease.

Indeed, the three old people became very intimate, and spent their

Christmas together in peace and charity.

Alan came over one day early in February to see his aunt, and make sure

that she was as comfortable as she professed to be. It was a

characteristic proceeding on his part. Mrs. Bundlecombe, as the reader

may have observed, was not very poetic in her taste, and not so refined

in manners as most of the women with whom Alan now associated. But he

always thought of her as the sister of his mother, to whom he had been

romantically attached; and he had good reason, moreover, to appreciate

her devotion to himself during the last year or so. He found her fairly

happy, and said nothing which might disturb her peace of mind. Lettice

Campion, he told her, had recovered from a serious illness, and had gone

on the Continent for a few weeks with Mrs. Hartley. He was bent on

obtaining a divorce, and expected the case to come on shortly. This he

treated as a matter for unmixed rejoicing; and he casually declared that

he had not seen "the Frenchwoman" for eight or ten weeks; which was true

enough, but only because he was carefully keeping out of her way. And it

was a poor equivocation, as the reader will presently see.

So Mrs. Bundlecome flattered herself that things were going fairly well

with her nephew, and she possessed her soul in patience.

Now as Alan sat talking to his aunt in Mrs. Chigwin's best room, looking

out upon the garden on Mrs. Harrington's side, he suddenly started, and

stopped short in what he was saying.

"Why, Aunt Bessy, who on earth is living next door to you?"

Mrs. Bundlecombe looked where he pointed, and was almost as much

surprised as himself to see Lettice's former maid, Milly, walking in the

garden with all the airs and graces of a grand lady. She had on a fur

cloak, and a little cap to match, and she looked so handsome and

well-dressed that it would not have been surprising if Alan had not

recognized her. But Milly's pretty face, once seen, was not easily

forgotten; and, as she was associated with Lettice in Alan's mind, he

had all the more reason for recalling her features.

"That is the first I have seen of her in these parts," said Mrs.

Bundlecombe. "You remember that Miss Campion had a Thorley girl at Maple

Cottage, who left her five or six months ago?"

"I remember your telling me so--Milly, she used to be called?"

"Yes, Emily Harrington. That is the girl, without a doubt. Her

grandmother lives over yonder; but I never knew that she was expecting a

visit from this fine lady. Only last week she was telling me that she

had not heard from Milly for several months. There was a letter from her

before Christmas, to say that she was married and traveling abroad."

Mrs. Bundlecombe shook her head dubiously from side to side, and

continued the motion for some time. She was thinking how much money it

would have taken to buy that sealskin cloak; but, however far her doubts

may have carried her, she did not give utterance to them in words.

"She is certainly very nice-looking," said Alan. "And she seems to be

getting on in the world. Perhaps she has made a good marriage; I should

not at all wonder."

"Well, it is charitable to hope so," said Aunt Bessy, with an expression

in her face that was anything but hopeful. "I can't forgive her for

leaving Miss Campion in such a hurry. I suppose she wanted to better

herself, as those minxes always say. As if anyone could be better off

than living with _her_!"

Alan turned round to the window again, and looked out. His aunt's words

touched a chord in his heart, which vibrated strongly. To live with her,

in any capacity whatever--assuredly that would be the highest attainable

good. To draw from her gentle presence that bliss of absolute rest and

ease which he had never known until he came to know her--to talk and

listen without a shadow of reserve, forgetting self, unashamed of any

inferiority which his mind might show in comparison with hers, unafraid

of giving offense to that sweet and well-poised nature--to look upon her

face, almost infantile in its ingenuous expression, yet with indomitable

strength in the clear grey eyes which revealed the soul within--to live

with her would indeed be perfect happiness!

And the more he felt this, the less hopeful he was of realizing his

aspiration. She had been ill, at the point of death, and he could not be

near her. He had inquired of her progress at the Grahams' house, but

always in fear lest he should bring sorrow to her, or annoyance to them.

The creature whom he had made his wife was never absent from his

thoughts. In his most despondent moments he ceased to believe that he

would ever be able to shake her off. She haunted him, asleep or awake,

at his meals and at his books, in his quiet lodging or when he stole out

for a solitary walk. He tried to persuade himself that he exaggerated

his trouble, and that there were plenty of men under similar

circumstances who would not allow their peace of mind to be disturbed.

But if he was weaker than others, that did not make his pain less

bitter. He feared her, and dreaded the fulfilment of her threats; yet

not so much on his own account as because they were directed against

Lettice.

It was no consolation to him to think that the law would punish

her--that the police would remove her as a drunken brawler--that the

courts could give him his divorce, or perhaps shut her up as a madwoman.

What good would even a divorce be to him if she had slandered Lettice,

blackened his character, alienated all whom he loved, and remained alive

to be the curse and poison of his existence?

As he pondered these things in his heart, the trouble which he had

fought off when he came down into the country that morning returned upon

him with renewed force. He had fled from town to escape from the agony

of shame and disgust which she had once more inflicted on him, and he

groaned aloud as he thought of what had happened in the last few days.

"I think I must have a touch of the gout," he said, turning round to

where his aunt was sitting, with a pleasant smile on his face. "It

catches me sometimes with such a sudden twinge that I cannot help crying

out like that."

Aunt Bessy looked hard at him, and shook her head; but she said nothing.

Soon after that, Alan went away; and he had not been gone half-an-hour,

when there came a gentle rap at the cottage door.

Mrs. Bundlecombe opened it at once, and found, as she had expected, that

the visitor was none other than our old friend Milly. Aunt Bessy had had

a few minutes to prepare herself for this scene, and was therefore able

to comport herself, as she imagined, with proper dignity. Affecting not

to see the pretty hand which was held out to her, she started back,

looked inquisitively into the other's face, and then cried out, as she

turned her head round upon her shoulders, "Well, Martha! Martha Chigwin!

Here is an old acquaintance come to see us. Emily Harrington, love, Mrs.

Harrington's grand-daughter, who went to live with Miss Campion in

London. Well, you did surprise me!" she said in a more quiet voice.

"Come in and sit down, Emily Harrington!"

"Granny told me you were here," said Milly, a little taken aback by this

reception, "so I thought I must come in and see how you were."

"We are very well, thank you kindly, Milly. And how are you? But there

is no need to ask you, for you look a picture of health, and spirits,

and--and good luck, Milly Harrington!"

"Oh yes, I am very well. You don't know that I have been married since

you saw me last. My name is Mrs. Beadon now."

She drew off her glove as she spoke, and let her long hand fall upon her

lap, so that the old ladies might see her wedding-ring and keeper.

"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Bundlecombe, in a mollified voice, "if you

are married to a good man, I am very glad, indeed. And I hope he is well

to-do, and makes you happy. You are nicely dressed, Milly, but nice

clothes are not everything, are they?"

"No, indeed, they are not. Oh, yes, Mr. Beadon is good to me in every

way, so you need not trouble yourself on my account."

After that preliminary sparring, they became friendly enough. Milly was

quite at her ease when her position as a wife was established, and she

amused her hearers by a lively account of her recent fortunes and

adventures--some of them, perhaps, slightly fictitious in character,

others exaggerated and glorified. Her husband, she told them, was a

great traveler, and was sometimes out of England for six months or a

year at a time. He had just gone abroad again, and she had taken the

opportunity of coming to see her grandmother--and even of living with

her for awhile, if she found Birchmead supportable. They were not rich,

but Mr. Beadon allowed her quite enough to live comfortably upon.

So she played the grand lady in the hamlet, to her own infinite

satisfaction. But now and again she had business to transact in London,

and then she would send to Thorley for a cab, and take the afternoon

train to Liverpool Street, and return in about twenty-four hours,

generally with some little present in her bag for her grandmother, or

grandmother's friends.

None the less did poor Milly find that time hung heavy on her hands. She

had not yet clipped the wings of her ambition, and she still pined for a

wider sphere in which to satisfy her vague and restless longings.

However she might brave it out to others, she was very far from being

happy; and now and then she took herself to task, and admitted that all

she had, and all she hoped for, would be but a small price to give if

she could purchase once more the freedom of her girlhood.

CHAPTER XIX.

SIR JOHN'S GLOXINIAS.

Whatever may have been the intention of Nature when she produced Sir

John Pynsent, there was no doubt as to his own conception of the part

which he was fitted to play in the world.

He considered himself, and indeed he was, above all things, a

manipulator of men. His talents in this direction had been displayed at

school and at college, and when he settled down to political life in

London, and impulsively began to suggest, to persuade, to contrive, and

to organize, everyone with whom he came in contact acknowledged a

superior mind, or, at any rate, a more ingenious and fertile mind. He

had refused to bind himself down to an office, as his friends wanted him

to do, or to take part in the direction of a "Central Association" for

dealing with men in the lump. It was absurd to think of tying Sir John

to a place, or a routine, or a pledge of any kind. His art was to be

ubiquitous; he aspired to be the great permeator of the Conservative

party; and by sheer force of activity he soon became the best known and

most popular of the younger generation of Tories.

His triumphs as a manager of men were not confined to public life. He

was one of a numerous family, and he managed them all. Every Pynsent

deferred to Sir John's opinion, not merely because he was the head of

the house, but because he had assumed the command, and justified the

assumption by his shrewdness and common-sense.

The one person in the family who gave most anxiety was his half-sister,

Anna. Sir John's father had married a second time, when his son was a

youth at Eton, and Anna, the fruit of this union, inherited, not only

her mother's jointure of twenty thousand pounds, but a considerable

fortune from her mother's elder brother, who had been a manufacturer in

Vanebury. This fortune had been allowed to accumulate for the last

eighteen years, as her father, and after him, her brother, had provided

her with a home, and disdained to touch "Nan's money." Sir John was a

very good brother to her, and it was even rumored that he had married

early chiefly for the purpose of providing Nan with an efficient

chaperon. Whether this was true or not, he had certainly married a woman

who suited him admirably; Lady Pynsent sympathized in all his tastes and

ambitions, gave excellent dinner parties, and periodically brought a

handsome boy into the world to inherit the family name and embarrass the

family resources. At present there were five of these boys, but as the

family resources were exceedingly large, and Sir John was a most

affectionate parent, the advent of each had been hailed with increasing

satisfaction.

It was a great relief to Sir John's mind to find that his wife and his

sister were such good friends. He might be a manipulator of man, but he

was not--he acknowledged to himself--always successful in his

manipulation of women. If Selina had found Nan in the way, or if Nan had

been jealous of Selina and Selina's babies, Sir John felt that he would

have been placed on the horns of a dilemma. But this had not been the

case. Nan was in the schoolroom when Lady Pynsent first arrived at

Culverley, and the child had been treated with kindness and discretion.

Nan repaid the kindness by an extravagant fondness for her little

nephews, who treated her abominably, and the discretion by an absolute

surrender of her will to Lady Pynsent's as far as her intercourse with

the outer world was concerned. With her inner life, she considered that

Lady Pynsent had not much to do, and it was in its manifestation that

Sir John observed the signs which made him anxious.

Nan, he said to himself, was a handsome girl, and one whom many men were

sure to admire. Also, she had sixty thousand pounds of her own, of which

she would be absolute mistress when she was twenty-one. It was a sum

which was sure to attract fortune-hunters; and how could he tell whether

Nan would not accept her first offer, and then stick to an unsuitable

engagement with all the obstinacy which she was capable of displaying?

Nan sometimes made odd friends, and would not give them up at anybody's

bidding. How about the man she married? She would have her own way in

that matter--Sir John was sure of it--and, after refusing all the

eligible young men within reach, would (he told his wife repeatedly) end

by taking up with a crooked stick at last.

"I don't think she'll do that," said Lady Pynsent when her husband

appealed in this way to her. "Nan is very _difficile_. She is more

likely to remain unmarried than marry an unsuitable man."

"Unmarried!" Sir John threw up his hands. "She _must_ marry! Why, if she

doesn't marry, she is just the girl to take up a thousand fads--to make

herself the laughing-stock of the county!"

"She will not do that; she has too much good taste."

"Good taste won't avail her! You know what her plans are already, to

live in Vanebury as soon as she is twenty-one, and devote herself to the

welfare of the working-people! Don't you call that a fad? Won't she make

a laughing stock of herself and of us too? Why, it's worse than

Radicalism--it's pure Socialism and Quixotry," said poor Sir John, who

was proud of his Toryism.

His wife only shook her head, and said, drily, that she would not

undertake to prophesy.

"Prophesy? My dear Selina, I merely want you to exert common caution and

foresight. There is but one thing to do with Anna. We must get her

married as soon as ever we can, before she is twenty-one, if possible.

She must marry a man on our own side, some years older than herself--a

man of the world, who will look after her property and teach her

common-sense--a man who can restrain her, and guide her, and make her

happy. I would give a thousand pounds to find such a man."

But in his own heart the baronet believed that he had found him, for he

thought of his friend, Sydney Campion.

Campion had small private means, if any; he knew that; but then he

seemed likely to be one of the foremost men of the day, and if he could

achieve his present position at his age, what would he not be in ten

years' time? Quite a match for Anna Pynsent, in spite of her beauty and

her sixty thousand pounds. If Nan had been a little more commonplace,

Sir John would have aspired higher for her. But there was a strain of

"quixotry," as he called it, in her nature, which made him always

uncertain as to her next action. And he felt that it would be a relief

to him to have her safely married to a friend of his own, and one whom

he could influence, if necessary, in the right direction, like Sydney

Campion.

Campion was a handsome fellow, too, and popular, Sir John believed, with

the ladies. It was all the more odd and unaccountable that Nan seemed to

have taken a dislike to him. She would not talk about his doings; she

would go out if she thought that he was likely to call. Sir John could

not understand it. And Campion seemed shy of coming to the house in

Eaton Square when the Pynsents returned to town; he was pleasant enough

with Sir John at the Club, but he did not appear to wish for much social

intercourse with Sir John's wife and sister. The worthy baronet would

have been a little huffed, but for the preoccupation of his mind with

other matters, chiefly political.

But this was in November and December; and he knew that Campion's mother

had lately died, and that he was anxious about that clever sister of

his, who had lately written a good novel, and then been ill, and had

gone to Italy. There was that Walcott affair, too, which had lately come

to Sir John's ears, a very awkward affair for Campion to have his

sister's name mixed up in. Probably that was the reason why he was

holding back. Very nice of Campion, very nice. And Sir John became

doubly cordial in his manner, and pressed Sydney to dine with him next

week.

With some reluctance, Sydney accepted the invitation. He had been

perilously near making a fool of himself with Miss Pynsent, and he knew

that she had found it out. It was quite enough to make him feel angry

and resentful, and to wish to avoid her. At the same time, he was

conscious of a feeling of regret that he had muddled matters so

completely--for Miss Pynsent was a lovely girl, her violin-playing was

delicious, she had sixty thousand pounds, and Sir John was his friend.

Sydney lost himself for a moment in a reverie.

"Not very likely," he said, waking up with a rather uneasy laugh. "At

the best of times, I should never have had much chance. There are a good

many reasons against it now." And it was with a slight shade upon his

brow that he dismissed the matter from his mind and applied himself to

business.

He need not have troubled himself. When he went to dine in Eaton Square,

Miss Pynsent was absent. She had gone to spend the evening with a

friend. Evidently, thought Sydney, with an odd feeling of discomfiture,

because she wanted to avoid him. How ridiculous it was! What a

self-conscious little fool she must be to take offense at a compliment,

even if it were rather obvious, and not in the best possible taste! He

began to feel angry with Miss Pynsent. It did not occur to him for some

time that he was expending a great deal of unusual warmth and irritation

on a very trifling matter. What were Miss Pynsent and her opinions to

him? Other women admired him, if she did not; other women were ready

enough to accept his flattery. But just because there was one thing out

of his reach, one woman who showed a positive distaste for his society,

Sydney, like the spoiled child of the world that he was, was possessed

by a secret hankering for that one thing, for the good opinion of the

woman who would have none of him. Vanity was chiefly to blame for this

condition of things; but Sydney's vanity was a plant of very long and

steady growth.

He saw nothing more of the Pynsents, however, until February, when, on

the day of the first drawing-room, he ran up against Sir John in

Piccadilly.

"Come along," said Sir John instantly, "I want you to come to my wife's.

I'm late, and she won't scold me if you are with me. I shall use you as

a buffer."

Sydney laughed and shook his head. "Very sorry, too busy, I'm afraid,"

he began.

But Sir John would not be baffled. He had put his hand within Sydney's

arm and was walking him rapidly down ---- Street.

"My dear fellow, we've not seen you for an age. You may just as well

look in this afternoon. Nan's been presented to-day, and there's a

drawing-room tea going on--a function of adoration to the dresses, I

believe. The women will take it as a personal compliment if you come and

admire them."

Mentally, Sydney shrugged his shoulders. He had had enough of paying

compliments to Miss Pynsent. But he saw that there was no help for it.

Sir John would be offended if he did not go, and really he had no

engagement. And he rather wondered how Miss Pynsent would look in Court

attire. She had worn a plain cotton and a flapping straw hat when he saw

her last.

Lady Pynsent's drawing-room was crowded, but she greeted her husband and

Mr. Campion with great cordiality. She was wearing an elaborate costume

of blue velvet and blush-rose satin, and bore an indescribable

resemblance to a cockatoo. A dowager in black satin and two _débutantes_

in white, who belonged to some country place and were resting at Lady

Pynsent's house before going home in the evening, were also present; but

at first Sydney did not see Nan Pynsent. She had entered a little

morning-room, with two or three friends of her own age, who wanted to

inspect her dress more narrowly; and it was not until Sydney had been in

the room for five or ten minutes that she reappeared.

Was this stately and beautiful woman Nan Pynsent indeed? Sydney was not

learned in the art of dress, or he might have appraised more exactly the

effect produced by the exquisite lace, the soft white ostrich feathers,

the milk-white pearls, that Nan was wearing on this memorable occasion.

He was well accustomed by this time to the sight of pretty girls and

pretty dresses; but there was something in Miss Pynsent's face and

figure which struck him with a new and almost reluctant sort of

admiration.

He was looking at her, without knowing how intent his gaze had become,

when she glanced round and caught his eye. She bowed and colored

slightly; then, after saying a word to Lady Pynsent, she came towards

him. Sydney was uncomfortably conscious that her evident intention to

speak to him made her a little nervous.

She held out her long, slim hand, and favored him with the pleasantest

of smiles.

"How do you do, Mr. Campion? I have not met you for a long time, I

think. How good of you to come to-day! Lady Pynsent is so pleased."

There was nothing for Sydney to do but to respond in the same gracious

strain; but he was certainly more reserved than usual in his speech, and

behaved with an almost exaggerated amount of respect and formality.

After the first two or three sentences he noticed that her eyes began to

look abstractedly away from him, and that she answered one of his

remarks at random. And while he was wondering, with some irritation,

what this change might mean, she drew back into a bow window, and

motioned to him almost imperceptibly to follow her. A heavy window

curtain half hid them from curious eyes, and a bank of flowers in the

window gave them an ostensible pretext for their withdrawal.

"Look at John's gloxinias," said Nan. "They came from Culverley, you

know. Oh, Mr. Campion, I want to tell you--I'm sorry that I was so rude

to you at Culverley last summer."

This proceeding was so undignified and so unexpected that Sydney was

stricken dumb with amaze.

"Perhaps you have forgotten it," said Nan, coloring hotly; "but I have

not. It all came from you not knowing who I was, I suppose--Mrs. Murray

told me that she believes you thought I was the governess; and if I had

been, how odd it must have seemed to you that I should talk about your

duties to the Vanebury laborers! You know I have some property there,

and so----"

"Oh, it was perfectly natural, and I never thought of it again," said

Sydney lamely. But she went on unheeding--

"And then I felt vexed, and when you asked me for a flower"--how

innocently it was said!--"I know I banged the door in your face. Selina

said I must have been very rude to you. And so I was."

But Selina had not meant that she should acknowledge her "rudeness" to

Mr. Campion, nor had Nan told her of the bold admiration that she had

read in Sydney's eyes.

"Will you forgive me, Mr. Campion? You are such a friend of John's that

I should not like to think I had offended you."

"You never offended me, Miss Pynsent. In fact, I'm afraid--I--was very

dense." He really did not know what to say; Miss Pynsent's _naïveté_

almost alarmed him.

"Then you are not angry with me?"

How lovely were the eyes that looked so pleadingly into his face! Was

she a coquette? But he could only answer as in duty bound--

"Not angry in the very least, Miss Pynsent."

"I am so glad. Because I want to talk to you about Vanebury one day. But

I must not stop now, for there are all these people to talk to, you

know."

"I may ask you to forgive the stupidity of my mistake, then?" said

Sydney quickly.

"It was not stupid: how could you know who I was?----There, John, I have

been showing Mr. Campion your gloxinias. Don't you think them lovely,

Mr. Campion?"

And she glided away with the sweetest smile, and Sydney, after a few

words with Sir John, took his departure, with a feeling of mingled

gratification and amusement which he found rather pleasant. So she had

not thought him impertinent, after all? She did not seem to have noticed

the compliment that he had tried to pay her, and which he now

acknowledged to himself would have suited for Milly Harrington better

than Sir John Pynsent's sister. Was she really as childlike as she

seemed, or was she a designing coquette?

The question was not a very important one, but it led Sydney to make a

good many visits to Sir John's house during the next few weeks, in order

to determine the answer. Miss Pynsent's character interested him, he

said to himself; and then she wanted to discuss the state of the

working-classes in Vanebury. He did not care very much for the state of

the working-classes, but he liked to hear her talk to him about them. It

was a pity that he sometimes forgot to listen to what she was saying;

but the play of expression on her lovely face was so varied, the lights

and shadows in her beautiful eyes succeeded each other so rapidly, that

he was a little apt to look at her instead of attending to the subject

that she had in hand.

This was quite a new experience to Sydney, and for some time his mind

was so much occupied by it that the season was half over before he

actually faced the facts of the situation, and discovered that if he

wanted to pluck this fair flower, and wear it as his own, Sir John

Pynsent was not the man to say him nay.

BOOK IV.

SORROW.

"Wer nie sein Brod mit Thränen ass,

Wer nie die kummervollen Nächte

Auf seinen Bette weinend sass,

Er kennt Euch nicht, ihr himmlische Mächte!"

GOETHE.

CHAPTER XX.

"I WAS THE MORE DECEIVED."

Milly Harrington had passed two months at Birchmead, and her

grandmother's neighbors were beginning to speculate on the probabilities

of her staying over the summer.

"Poor soul; it's lonely for her," Mrs. Chigwin said to her friend,

Elizabeth. "I do hope that Mr. Beadon, or whatever her husband's name

is, will come back before very long. She must be fretting for him, and

fretting's so bad for her."

"You think there is a husband to come, do you?" asked Mrs. Bundlecombe,

mysteriously.

"Why not, Bessy? She says she's married, and she wears a wedding-ring;

and her clothes is beautiful."

"I'd like to see her marriage lines," said Mrs. Bundlecombe. "But,

there! maybe I'm hard on her, poor thing, which I ought not to be,

seeing that I know what trouble is, and how strangely marriages do turn

out sometimes. But if there is a husband in the case, it's shameful the

way he neglects her, never coming to see her, and going abroad on

business, as she says, while she stays with her grandmother!"

"She pays Mrs. Harrington," remarked Mrs. Chigwin, reflectively, "and

she always seems to have plenty of money; but she do look sad and

mournful now and then, and money's not everything to those that want a

little love."

As she concluded her moral observation, she started up, for a shadow

darkened the open doorway: and on looking up, she saw that Milly herself

was standing just outside. The girl's beautiful face was pale and

agitated; and there were tears in her eyes. The old woman noticed that

she was growing haggard, and that there were black lines beneath her

eyes; they exchanged significant looks, and then asked her to step in

and sit down.

"You run about too much and fatigue yourself," said Mrs. Chigwin. "Now

you sit there and look at my flowers, how still they keep; they wouldn't

be half so fine if I was always transplanting them. You want a good,

quiet home for yourself: not to be moving about and staying with

friends, however fond of you they may be."

Milly had sunk into the chair offered to her, with a look of extreme

exhaustion and fatigue, but at Mrs. Chigwin's words she sat up, and her

eyes began to grow bright again.

"I think so myself, Mrs. Chigwin. I shall be glad to get back to my own

nice quiet home again. As for looking tired, it is only because I have

been packing up my things and getting ready to go. Mr. Beadon has

written to me to join him in London, and I am going to start this very

afternoon."

The rosy color came back into her face: she smiled triumphantly, but her

lips quivered as she smiled.

"That's right, my dear. I don't approve of young husbands and wives

living separate, unless there's some very good cause for it," said Mrs.

Bundlecombe, thinking of her beloved Alan. "It always gives occasion to

the enemy, and I think you're very wise to go back. Perhaps you had some

little bit of a tiff or misunderstanding with Mr. Beadon----"

"Oh no," said Milly. The color in her face was painfully hot now. "Mr.

Beadon is always very good and kind. But," she continued, looking down

and pushing her wedding-ring to and fro, "he is very busy indeed, and he

is obliged to go abroad sometimes on business. He travels--I think he

calls it--for a great London house. He is getting on very well, he says,

in his own particular line."

"Ah, that is nice!" said Mrs. Chigwin, comfortably. "And how glad you

will be to see each other."

"Oh, yes," faltered Milly. There was a curiously pathetic look in her

great blue eyes such as we sometimes see in those of a timid child.

"Yes--very glad."

"And you'll bring him down here to see your grandmother, I suppose?

She's not set eyes on him yet, has she? And how nice it will be for you

to come down now and then--especially when you have a family, my dear,

Birchmead being so healthy for children, and Mrs. Harrington such a good

hand with babies----"

Suddenly, and to Mrs. Chigwin's infinite surprise, Milly burst into

tears. The loud, uncontrolled sobs frightened the two old women for a

moment; then Mrs. Chigwin got up and fetched a glass of water, clicking

her tongue against the roof of her mouth, and audibly expressing her

fear that Milly's exertions had been "too much for her." But Mrs.

Bundlecombe sat erect, with a look of something like disapproval upon

her comely old face. She had her own views concerning Milly and her good

fortune; and soft and kind-hearted by nature as she was, there were some

things that Aunt Bessy never forgave. The wickedness of Alan's wife had

hardened her a little to youthful womankind.

"I'm better, thank you," said Milly, checking her sobs at last, and

beginning to laugh hysterically. "I don't know what made me give way so,

I'm sure."

"You're tired, love," said Mrs. Chigwin, sympathetically, "and you're

not well, that's easy to see. You must just take care of yourself, or

you'll be laid up. You tell your good husband _that_ from me, who have

had experience, though without a family myself."

Milly wiped the tears away, and rose from her chair.

"I'll tell him," she said. "But--oh, there's no need: he takes an awful

lot of care of me, you've no idea! Why, it was he that said I had better

come to my grandmother while he was away: he knew that granny would take

care of me; and now, you see"--with hasty triumph--"he wants me home

again!"

She pocketed her handkerchief, and raised her head.

"I thought you said he had been abroad?" said Mrs. Bundlecombe.

"Of course I did, because he _has_ been abroad," the girl said, laughing

nervously. "But he's in London now. Well, good-bye, Mrs. Chigwin;

good-bye, Mrs. Bundlecombe; you'll go in and comfort granny a bit when

I'm gone, won't you? She's been fretting this morning about my going

away."

"Bless you, love," said Mrs. Chigwin. "I'll go in every day if you think

it will do her any good. And if you write to her, Milly, she'll be

pleased, I'm sure."

"I _will_ write," said Milly, in rather a shame-faced way. "I was so

busy--or I'd have written oftener. Good-bye."

She looked at them wistfully, as if reluctant to take her leave; and her

expression so wrought upon Mrs. Chigwin's feelings that she kissed the

girl's cheek affectionately.

"Good-bye, love," she said; "you know where to find us when you want us,

you know."

Milly departed, and the two friends remained silent until her light

figure had passed the window, and the click of the garden gate told them

that she was well out of hearing. Then Mrs. Chigwin began, in rather a

puzzled tone:

"You weren't very hearty with her, Elizabeth. You looked as if you had

something against her."

"I've this against her," said Mrs. Bundlecombe, smoothing down her black

apron with dignity, "that I believe there's something wrong about that

marriage, and that if I were Mrs. Harrington I wouldn't be satisfied

until I'd seen her marriage lines."

"Perhaps she has seen them," said Mrs. Chigwin, the pacific. "And we've

nothing to go upon, Bessy, and I'm sure the idea would never have

entered my head but for you."

"Why did she burst out crying when you talked of her husband and

children coming down here?" asked Mrs. Bundlecombe, acutely. "It may be

that she isn't to blame; but there's something wrong somewhere. She's

hurried and flurried and worried."

And this was true. The summons which Milly had received was of the

briefest and least intelligible character. It was in a handwriting that

she knew well, and although it was unsigned she was tremulously ready

and eager to obey it at once. "Come back to your old lodgings at

Hampstead," the writer said. "Do not stay any longer at Birchmead: I

want you in London." And that was almost all.

Milly hovered all day long between alternations of wild hope and wild

despair. If she had been accustomed to self-analysis, she herself might

have been surprised to see how widely her present moods differed from

those which had dominated her when she lived at Maple Cottage. She was

then a vain, self-seeking little damsel, affectionate and uncorrupted,

with an empty head, indeed, but an innocent heart. Now both self-seeking

and vanity were being scourged out of her by force of the love which she

had learnt to feel. She was little changed in manner, and an observer

might have said that she was as childishly pleased as ever with a new

gaud or a pretty toy; but behind the self-sufficiency of her demeanor,

and the frivolity of her tastes, there was something new--something more

real and living than mere self-indulgence and conceit. The faculty of

giving and spending herself for others had sprung into being with the

first love she had known. For the man with whom she had gone away from

Lettice's house she was willing to lay down her life if he would but

accept the gift. And when he seemed loath to accept it, Milly became

conscious of a heart-sick shame and pain which had already often brought

tears that were not unworthy to her pretty childish eyes. The strength

of her own feelings frightened her sometimes: she did not know how to

resist the surging tide of passion and longing and regret that rose and

fell within her breast, as uncontrollable by her weak will as the waves

by the Danish king of history. Poor Milly's soul had been born within

her, as a woman's soul is often born through love, and the acquisition

cost her nothing but pain as yet, although it might ultimately lead her

to a higher life.

She arrived at the lodgings in Hampstead which had formerly been hers,

about five o'clock in the afternoon. The landlady received her

cordially, saying that "the gentleman had bespoke the rooms," and Milly

was taken at once into the sitting-room, which looked west, and was

lighted by a flood of radiance from the setting sun. Milly sank down on

a sofa, in hopeless fatigue.

"Did he say that he would be home to-night?" she asked of the landlady.

"No, Mrs. Beadon, he didn't; but he said that he was very busy in the

city and would write or send if he couldn't come himself."

"How was he looking?"

"Oh, very well, but a bit worried, I thought," said Mrs. Capper. "Now

let me take your things, ma'am, and then I'll bring up the tea: you

don't look as if your stay in the country had done you much good after

all."

"Oh, I'm very well," said Milly, unfastening her mantle and coloring

with nervousness under the woman's sharp eye. "I daresay Mr. Beadon will

come to-morrow, if he doesn't come to-night."

But nobody came, although she sat up watching and waiting for many hours

after Mrs. Capper had betaken herself to her bed. What did this silence

and absence mean? Her heart contracted with a curious dread. She loved,

but she had never believed herself capable of retaining love.

About eleven o'clock next day, she was informed that a gentleman wanted

to speak to her. "A young-looking, fair gentleman, like a clerk," said

Mrs. Capper. "Shall I show him up? It's from your good 'usband, most

likely, I should think."

Milly started from the chair by the window, where she had been sitting.

"Oh, show him up, at once, please."

With one hand on the table, and her delicate face flushed, she presented

a picture of loveliness such as the man who entered did not often see.

He even paused for a moment on the threshold as if too much amazed to

enter, and his manner was somewhat uneasy as he bowed to her, with his

eyes fixed in a rather furtive manner on her face.

He was a man of thirty-five, although his smooth-shaven face and fair

hair made him look younger than his years. It was a commonplace

countenance, shrewd and intelligent enough, but not very attractive.

There was a certain honesty in his eyes, however, which redeemed the

plainness of his insignificant and irregular features.

"Mrs. Beadon, I think?" he said. "My name's Johnson. I come from

Mr.--Mr. Beadon with a message."

"Yes?" said Milly, her hand upon her side. "What is it, please? Tell me

quickly--is he coming to-day?"

The man looked at her oddly. There was something like pity in his eyes.

"Not to-day, madam," he replied.

Milly sank down on her chair again and sighed deeply. The color left her

cheeks.

"I have a communication to make, madam," said the clerk, rather

hesitatingly, "which I am afraid may be a little painful, though not,

Mr. Beadon tells me, unexpected by you. I hope that you will be

prepared----"

"Go on," said Milly, sharply. "What is it? Why have you come?"

"Mr. Beadon wishes you to understand, madam, that he is going abroad

again very shortly. He advises you to inform the landlady of this fact,

which will explain his absence. But he also commissions me to put into

your hands a sum for your present expenses, and to inform you that he

will be quite willing to assist you at any time if you make application

to him through me--at the address which I am to give you. Any personal

application to himself will be disregarded."

"But, do you mean," said Milly, her cheeks growing very white, "that he

is not coming--to say good-bye--before he goes abroad?"

"He thinks it better to spare you and himself an interview that might be

unpleasant," said Mr. Johnson. "You understand, I suppose--a--that Mr.

Beadon--my principal, that is--wishes to close his relations with you

finally."

Milly started to her feet and drew herself to her full height. Her

cheeks were blazing now, her eyes on fire. "But I am _his wife_!" she

cried.

Johnson looked at her for a moment in silent admiration. He had not

liked the errand on which he was sent, and he liked it now less than

ever.

"Pardon me, madam," he said, in some embarrassment; "but Mr. Beadon is

under the impression that you understand--that you have understood all

along--that you were not legally in that position----"

"You mean," she said, her whole form quivering in her excitement, "that

what he told me was false?--that when he said that our declaration

before witnesses that we were man and wife was a true marriage--you mean

that that was a lie?"

Johnson looked at the walls and the ceiling--anywhere but at poor

Milly's agonized face.

"It was not a marriage, madam," he said, in a regretful tone.

"Then he--he--deceived me--purposely? Oh, he is wicked! he is base! And

I thought myself--I thought myself----"

Her fingers clutched at the neck of her dress, as if to tear it open,

and so relieve the swelling of her throat.

"Does he think that he can make it up to me with money? Oh, I'll take

nothing from him any more. Let him go if he will, and his money too--I

shall die and be forgotten--I won't live to bear the shame of it--the

pain--the----"

She did not finish her sentence. Her slight form was swaying to and fro,

like a reed shaken by the wind; her face had grown whiter and whiter as

she went on: finally she flung up her arms and fell senseless to the

floor. The end of all her hopes and fears--of all her joys and longing

and desire, was worse to her than death.

Johnson lifted her to the sofa, with a sort of awkward tenderness, which

perhaps he would not have liked to acknowledge to his master; and then,

before summoning Mrs. Capper, he thrust into Milly's pocket the envelope

containing the banknotes and the address which he had brought with him.

He knew that his master was "doing the thing handsomely," as far as

money was concerned, and he had no doubt but that the forsaken woman

would see, when she had got over her first mad frenzy of despair, that

she had better accept and use his gifts. So he stowed the envelope away

in her pocket, so that it might not attract the curious eyes of prying

servant or landlady.

Then he called to Mrs. Capper, and gave her a brief explanation of

Milly's swoon. "The lady's a little overcome," he said. "Mr. Beadon has

got to go abroad, and couldn't find time to see her before he went."

"Hard-heated brute!" said the landlady, as she chafed Milly's hands, and

held a smelling-bottle to her nose.

"Oh, dear, no!" said Mr. Johnson, briskly. "Family ties must not stand

in the way of business. I wish you good-day, and hope the lady will soon

be better."

And he left the house rather hurriedly, for he had no desire to

encounter the despairing appeal of Milly's eyes when she recovered from

her swoon.

"It is a little too bad to make me his messenger," he said to himself.

"He may do his dirty work himself another time. I thought she was quite

a different sort of person. Poor thing! I wonder how he feels about her,

or whether he feels anything at all."

He had an opportunity of putting his master's equanimity to the test

when he made his report of the interview--a report which was made that

very afternoon, in spite of his representations that Mr. Beadon had

already gone abroad.

"Well, you saw her?" he was asked.

"Yes, sir. I said what you desired, and gave her the money."

"Any fuss?"

"She fainted--that was all," said Johnson, grimly.

"But she kept the money?"

"She had no choice. I put it into her pocket while she was unconscious,

and then summoned the landlady."

"Ah, yes, that was right. And she understands----"

"Everything that you wish her to understand," said the clerk, with a

touch of disrespect in his manner, which his employer noticed, and

silently resented.

"Well, it had to be done, and the sooner the better," he said, turning

away.

"So I suppose," said Johnson.

CHAPTER XXI.

THE TONGUE OF SCANDAL.

Alan returned to town with the full knowledge that he had something

formidable to face and overcome.

He had gone to Birchmead partly in redemption of an old promise to his

aunt, not knowing when he might be able to keep it if he did not do so

now, and partly because his mind had been distracted by a fresh outbreak

of violence in his wife, and he found it absolutely impossible to sit

still and endure in patience.

The country journey refreshed him, and he came back stronger and braver

than before. He was resolved to press for his divorce, and as Lettice

was in Italy, no time could be better than the present for proving to

the desperate woman, who was trying to terrify him, that there were laws

in England to which she must yield obedience. He assured himself that he

was now prepared for any fate; and yet that which had happened before he

left town was an earnest of what he had to expect.

What had happened was this.

A few days before Cora had been served with a notice to appear and

defend the suit for divorce which her husband was bringing against her;

and this had set her inflammable soul on fire. She had tried hard to

discover his whereabouts, without success. She had gone to Maple Cottage

and banged at the door in such furious style, that a policeman, who

happened to be passing, came up to see what was wrong, just as the new

occupants made their appearance, in mingled alarm and indignation.

"I want Miss Campion," said Cora, who was half-intoxicated, but still

more excited by rage and jealousy.

"She no longer lives here," said the man at the door.

"Where is she?"

"I don't know. And I should not tell you if I did. Policeman, take this

woman in charge for annoying me! You must have seen her knocking like a

fury--and now she is evidently tipsy."

Her rage increased rather than diminished when she found that her

intended prey had escaped her, she began to declaim at the top of her

voice, and to shriek hysterically; and the policeman, regarding it as a

simple case of "drunk and disorderly," took her off to the station,

where she was locked up.

The first that Alan heard of it was from the papers next morning. In one

of these, which he was accustomed to read after breakfast, he found the

following report:--

"At Hammersmith, a dissipated-looking woman, who gave the name of Cora

Walcott, was charged with being drunk and disorderly on the previous

day, and annoying Mr. Peter Humphreys, of Maple Cottage, Brook Green.

Sergeant T 14 stated that he had observed the prisoner behaving in an

extraordinary manner outside Mr. Humphreys' house, and knocking at the

door in a most violent manner. As she would not go away, and her conduct

was a serious annoyance to the neighbors, he was compelled to take her

into custody. In reply to the prisoner, the witness said that she was

undoubtedly drunk. She had asked for Miss Campion, and he had

ascertained that that lady did previously live at Maple Cottage. She had

told him that she was the wife of Mr. Alan Walcott, who had deserted

her, after making an attempt on her life. The magistrate here

interposed, and said that the prisoner's questions were totally

irrelevant. What she had stated, even if true, was no excuse whatever

for the conduct of which she had been guilty. Prisoner (excitedly):

'This woman had taken my husband from me.' Magistrate: 'Be silent.'

Prisoner: 'Am I to starve in the streets, whilst they are living in

luxury?' Magistrate: 'You are fined five shillings and costs. If you

have grievances you must find another way of remedying them. If you say

any more now, I shall have to send you to prison without the option of a

fine.' The money was paid by a gentleman in court."

As soon as Alan had read this he went to the solicitor who knew all his

affairs, and got him to go to the Hammersmith Police Court. The

magistrate permitted him to make a statement contradicting the lies told

by Cora, and the newspapers printed what he said. But how many persons

read the first report who never saw the second? And how many of those

who read both preferred to believe the scandal, taking the contradiction

as a matter of course?

The "gentleman in court" who paid Cora's fine was an enterprising

reporter, who thought it might be worth his while to hear what this

deserted wife had to say. He knew two or three papers which would

welcome a bit of copy dealing with the marital troubles of a well-known

literary man. The story of this French wife might be a tissue of

lies--in which case it would be a real advantage to Mr. Walcott and Miss

Campion to have it printed and refuted. Or it might be partly or wholly

true--in which case it was decidedly in the interest of the public to

make it known. The argument is familiar to everyone connected with a

popular newspaper, and it proves that sensational journalists have their

distinct place in the cosmogony of nature, being bound to print what is

scandalous, either for the sake of those who are libelled or out of

simple justice to those who start and spread the libel. This desire to

give fair play all round, even to slanderers and malefactors, and the

common father of these, is the crown and apex of civilization.

The consequence of this gentleman's activity was that Cora found plenty

of assistance in her malicious design, to take away the characters of

Alan and Lettice. The charges which she brought against her husband were

printed and commented on in some very respectable newspapers, and were

repeated with all kinds of enlargement and embellishment wherever the

retailers of gossip were gathered together. If Alan had been under a

cloud before, he was now held up to scorn as a mean-spirited creature

without heart or conscience, who had allowed his lawful wife to sink

into an abyss of degradation. However bad she might be, the blame

certainly rested with him as the stronger. If it was impossible to live

with her now, he might, at any rate, have stretched out his hand long

ago, and rescued her from the slough of despond into which she had

fallen.

This was not, of course, the universal judgment; but it was the popular

one. It might not even have been the popular judgment a year before, or

a year after, but it was the judgment of the day. The multitude is

without responsibility in such cases, it decides without deliberation,

and it often mistakes its instincts for the dictates of equity. Alan was

judged without being heard, or what he did say in his defence was

received as though it were the mere hard-swearing of a desperate man.

The storm had begun to rage when he went to Birchmead, and it reached

its height soon after he returned. His lawyer advised him to bring an

action for libel against one paper which had committed itself more

deeply than the rest, and the threat of this had the effect of checking

public references to his case; but the mischief was already done.

Nothing could make him more disgusted and wretched than he had been for

some time past, so far as his own interests were concerned. It was only

the dragging of Lettice's name into the miserable business which now

pained and tormented him.

But there was one who had more right than himself to come forward as the

champion of Lettice's fair fame, and was able to do it with better

effect. When a man is a Member of Parliament and a Queen's Counsel, he

occupies a position which his fellow-countrymen are inclined to regard

as one of very considerable dignity. Editors and sub-editors think twice

before they print unsubstantiated rumors about the near relatives of

such distinguished individuals as Mr. Sydney Campion, Q.C., M.P. Thus,

after the first report of the proceedings at the police court, Lettice's

name scarcely appeared again. She was, indeed, referred to as "the lady

who seems, reasonably or unreasonably, to have excited the jealousy of

the unfortunate wife," or "the third party in this lamentable case, also

well-reputed in the world of letters, with whom the tongue of scandal

has been busy;" but she was not mentioned by name. And therein the

scandal-mongers exercised a wise discretion, for Sydney had secured the

assistance of Mr. Isaacs, one of the smartest solicitors in London, who

found means to impress upon everyone whom it might concern that it would

be a very serious matter indeed to utter anything approaching to a libel

on Miss Lettice Campion.

Moreover, the worthy Mr. Isaacs had an interview with Cora, whom he

found in a sober mood, and so terrified her by his warnings and menaces,

but most of all by the impressive manner and magnetic eye wherewith he

was wont to overawe malefactors of every kind and degree, that she

ceased for a time to speak evil of Lettice.

Yet in Lettice's case also the mischief had been done already. All who

made a point of hearing and remembering the ill that is spoken of their

fellow-creatures, knew what had been said of her, and retailed it in

private for the amusement of their friends. The taint had spread from

Alan to her, and her character suffered before the world for absolutely

no fault of hers, but solely because she had the misfortune to know him.

That was Sydney's way of putting it--and, indeed, it was Alan's way

also, for there was no other conclusion at which it was possible to

arrive.

It was a great consolation for both these men that Lettice was out of

the country at this time. Sydney wrote to her, hinting as delicately as

he could that it was essential to her interests and to his own that she

should remain abroad for at least two or three months longer. Alan wrote

about the same time to Mrs. Hartley, telling her in detail what had

happened, and entreating her to put off her return to London as late as

she could. It was not a time, he thought, to hesitate as to whether

anything could justify him in making such a request.

Mrs. Hartley was treating Lettice very well at Florence, and had no

intention of letting her come back in a hurry. She did not see fit to

tell her of Alan's letter, for her recovery had been very slow, and

fresh mental worry appeared to be the last thing to which she ought to

be subjected. Nor was Lettice made aware of anything connected with Alan

and his troubles, although her companion heard yet more startling news

within the next few weeks. Mrs. Hartley had come to be very fond of

Lettice, and she guarded her jealously, with all the tyranny of an old

woman's love for a young one. The first thing, in her mind, was to get

rid of the nervous prostration from which Lettice had been suffering,

and to restore her to health and strength.

"We shall not go back to London," she said, in answer to a mild

expostulation from her friend, "until you are as well as ever you were.

Why should we? You have no ties there, no house, no friends who cannot

spare you for a month or two. By and by you can begin to write, if you

must write; but we shall quarrel if you insist on going back. What makes

you so restless?"

"I am idle; and I hate to have nothing to do. Besides, how can one tell

what is going on, so far away from all one's friends and connections? If

one of your friends were in difficulties or danger, would you not wish

to be near him (or her), and do what you could to help?"

"Of whom are you thinking, dear?" Mrs. Hartley turned round on her

quickly as she asked this question.

"I put it generally," Lettice said, looking frankly at her friend, but

feeling hot and troubled at the same time.

"Oh, it was a mere hypothesis?"

"Well, no; it was not."

"I am not questioning you, my darling. At least, I don't want to. But

you can do no good to anybody just now--believe me! You must get quite

well and strong, and then perhaps you can fight for yourself or for

other people. I don't dispute your title to fight, when and where and

how you like; and if ever I am in trouble, the Lord send me such a

champion! But get strong first. If you went out with your shield this

morning, you would come back upon it to-night."

So Lettice had to be patient yet awhile.

CHAPTER XXII.

LETTICE TRIUMPHS.

But there was news of another kind which Mrs. Hartley did not conceal

from Lettice. Her novel had been published, and it was a great success.

The critics, who already knew something of her literary powers, had with

one consent written long and special articles about "Laurels and

Thorns," hailing it as a veritable triumph. It was original, and

philosophic, and irresistibly pathetic; the style sufficed to mark its

author as one of the few novelists whose literary form was

irreproachable. Perhaps the praise was here and there extravagant, but

it was practically universal. And it was not confined to the critics.

The reading world more than endorsed it. Second and third editions of

the book were called for within a month. Writers of leading articles and

speakers on public platforms began to quote and commend her.

Most remarkable of all, her novel made a conquest of her brother Sydney.

He did not care for novels as a rule, but he read "Laurels and Thorns,"

and was desperately interested in it. Perhaps the phenomenal success

which had crowned it had some effect upon him; and Lady Pynsent wrote

him a nice letter of congratulation, expressing a great desire to know

his "_distinguished_ sister." At all events, the thing was done, and

Lettice must now be definitely accepted as a writer of books. What

chiefly puzzled him was to think where she had learned her wisdom, how

she came to be witty without his knowing it, and whence proceeded that

intimate acquaintance with the human heart of which the critics were

talking. He had not been accustomed to take much account of his sister,

in spite of her knack with the pen; and even now he thought that she

must have been exceedingly lucky.

It will readily be supposed that the breath of scandal which had passed

over Lettice was in no way a drawback to the triumph of her book. The

more she was talked about in connection with that sorry business, the

more her novel came to be in demand at the libraries, and thus she had

some sort of compensation for the gross injustice which had been done to

her. One small-minded critic, sitting down to his task with the

preconceived idea that she was all that Cora Walcott had declared her to

be, and finding in "Laurels and Thorns" the history of a woman who

regarded the essence of virtue as somewhat more important than the

outward semblance, attacked her vehemently for a moral obliquity which

existed in his own vision alone. This review also stimulated the run

upon her book, and carried it into a fourth edition.

Lettice's fortune was made. She had nothing to do for the remainder of

her life but to choose where she would live, to take a house, to fill it

with furniture, to gratify every reasonable want, on the one condition

that she should devote herself to honest hard work, and give to her

fellow-creatures the best that she was capable of producing.

It was all that her ambition had ever led her to desire, and it came to

her at a time of life when her enjoyment was likely to be most keen and

complete. Unless her own hand put aside the cup, it was hers to drink

and to be satisfied.

And what did Alan think of it? She wondered dimly now and then if he had

read it, and what he thought of the words that she had spoken out of a

full heart to him and to him alone. Did he guess it? And would he ever

know? She would have been answered if she could have seen him on a

certain day in April, when she was in Florence and he in London town.

Alan Walcott sat in his room, on the first floor of a house between the

Strand and the River Thames, reading Lettice Campion's book. He had read

it once, from beginning to end, and now he was turning back to the

passages which had moved him most deeply, anxious not to lose the light

from a single facet of the gem that sparkled in his hands. It would have

been a gem to Alan even if the world had not seen its beauty, and he was

jealous of those who could lavish their praise on this woman whom he

knew and worshipped, when his own hard fate compelled him to be silent.

How well he recognized her thoughts and moods in every page of the

story! How familiar were many of the reflections, and even the very

words which she employed! Here and there the dialogue recalled to his

mind conversations which he had held with her in the happy days gone by.

In one case, at least, he found that she had adopted a view of his own

which he had maintained in argument against her, and which at the time

she had not been willing to accept. It rejoiced him to see the mark of

his influence, however slight, upon one who had so deeply impressed her

image on his mind.

The novel was a revelation to him in more ways than one. It was as if

she had spoken to him, for himself alone, words of wisdom and comfort

and encouragement. That, indeed, was precisely what she had

done--consciously and of set purpose--though he did not know it. The

plot went home to his heart. When the heroine spoke to the hero he

seemed to catch the very tones of her voice, to see the lips in motion,

and to read in her eyes the spirit and confirmation of the words. There

was nothing in the incidents of "Laurels and Thorns" which resembled his

own troubles or the relations which had existed between them--except the

simple fact of the mutual intellectual and moral sympathy of the two

central characters. The hero had won his crown of laurels and wore his

crown of thorns; the heroine, who could not love him in his triumph, had

loved him in his humiliation.

Both descended in the scale of material prosperity to rise in the scale

of honor and mutual respect; the glory of life was extinguished, but it

gave place to the glory of love. Alan read again and again the borrowed

words with which Lettice's heroine concluded her written confession of

love for the man whom she had once rejected, and who thought himself

precluded by his disgrace from coming to her again.

"He fixed thee mid this dance

Of plastic circumstance,

This Present, thou, forsooth, wouldst fain arrest:

Machinery just meant

To give thy soul its bent,

Try thee, and turn thee forth, sufficiently impressed.

"What though the earlier grooves

That ran the laughing loves

Around thy base no longer pause and press?

What though, about thy rim,

Scull things in order grim

Grow out, in graver mood, obey the sterner stress?

"Look not thou down but up!

To uses of a cup,

The festal board, lamp's flash and trumpet's peal,

The new wine's foaming flow,

The Master's lips a-glow!

Thou, heaven's consummate cup, what needst thou with earth's wheel?"

These were words of comfort to Alan, if only he dare take them to

himself, if he dare imagine that Lettice had had him in her mind as she

wrote, and had sent him that message to restore his self-respect and

save him from despair.

He sat for some time with the book before him, and then another thought

came into his head. Why should he not write to her, just a few words to

let her know that what she had written had gone home to his heart, and

that amongst all her critics there was not one who understood her better

than he? He was entitled to do this; it was almost due to himself to do

it. He would take care not to make a fool of himself this time, as he

had done in his first letter to her.

So he took a pen and wrote:

"I have read your book. You would not expect to find me amongst the

critics: I only write to thank you for the pleasure and the courage it

has given me. Some parts have fitted my case so exactly that I have

applied them and made use of them, as any chance comer is permitted to

do with any work of art.

"This is a great work you have produced, and I always knew that you

would do great things. Count me not last of those who praise you, and

who look to see your future triumphs. ALAN WALCOTT."

He put the letter in an envelope, sealed and addressed it. Then he

leaned back in his chair, and began to muse again.

What a failure his life had been! He had told himself so a hundred times

of late, but the truth of the verdict was more and more vivid every day.

Surely he had set out from the beginning with good intentions, with high

motives, with an honorable ambition. No man ever had a more just father,

a more devoted mother, a happier home, a more careful and conscientious

training. He had never seen a flaw in either of his parents, and it had

been his single purpose to imitate their devotion to duty, their piety,

their gentle consideration for all with whom they had to deal. It had

struck him sometimes as almost strange (he had suspected once that it

was a trifle unpoetical) that he had rather sought out than shunned his

humbler relatives in the little shop at Thorley, taking the utmost care

that their feelings should never be hurt by his more refined education

and tastes. Of these three friends of his youth who were dead he could

honestly say (but he did not say all this), that he had been dutiful to

them, and that he had not wilfully brought sorrow upon any one of them.

Where had he gone so far astray as to merit, or even to bring about, the

anguish which had fallen upon him? True, he had given himself to

pleasure for the few years which succeeded his father's death. He had

traveled, he had enjoyed the society of men and women, he had lived an

idle life--except inasmuch as he aspired to be a poet, and wrote two or

three volumes which the world had accepted and thanked him for, but the

standard of his boyhood had never been rejected--he had been considerate

of the feelings of every man and woman (Lettice alone, perhaps, having

the right to deny it), and had not permitted himself one pleasure, or

action, or relaxation, which might give pain to another. That had been

his rule of life. Was it not enough?

He had teased himself, as thoughtful men and women often have done, and

more often will do, about the problem of human morals. It had not

occurred to him that the morals which have no conscious basis are likely

to be more sound and permanent than those which are consciously built

up; and, as a matter of fact, his own were of that kind, though he had

his rule and considered himself to be guided by it. "That which gives no

pain to another, and does not deteriorate another, or oneself, or any

sentient being, cannot be immoral, though circumstances may make it

inexpedient." He had written that sentence in his diary before he was

twenty, at an age when the expanding soul craves for talismans and

golden maxims, and he had clung to it ever since. For what violation of

the law did he suffer now?

This was not Lettice's way of looking at it. The hero of her story was

an urn in the hands of a divine artist, and a sterner stress was

necessary for the consummate work. But he, Alan, was no hero. Horace'

verse was nearer the mark with him.

Amphoræ coepit

Institui; currente rota cur urceus exit?

As water to wine were all the uses of his life henceforth, compared with

that which might have been.

But, sad as he was, if Lettice could have read within his heart she

would have been satisfied with her work.

CHAPTER XXIII.

"AM I A MURDERER?"

Footsteps outside his door roused Alan from his train of thoughts. Only

his landlady came along that passage, for there were no lodgers on the

same floor, nor on the one above it. A louder knock than Mrs. Gorman was

wont to give made him start from his seat.

"Come in!" he cried; but before the words were spoken the door was

thrown open and Cora made her appearance. Alan turned sick at heart, and

stood leaning on the end of the mantelpiece, gazing at her without a

word.

"Ah, my dear," she said, with a little laugh of amusement as she saw the

disconcerted look on his face, "they have not deceived me! They did not

offer to conduct me, but they said I should find you here--first floor

front--and here you are! It is long since we met, is it not? You have

sent huissiers, and gendarmes, and police to bring me your messages, as

a king to his subject, or a judge to a criminal. You should have come

yourself, my friend, for I have longed to see you. Are you not glad that

we meet thus, alone, face to face, without fear of intrusion?"

She had shut the door behind her, and sat down in his easy chair by the

table, inviting him with a gesture to take a seat by her side.

"Approach!" she said, in a soft but mocking voice. "Be amiable! Let us

talk. I come for peace, not for war. Let us make terms with each other.

I am sick of this farce of hostility between husband and wife--let us

arrange our little disagreements. Come!"

Her familiar tone was odious to him. The sudden perversion of his

thoughts from Lettice to this creature, from his dream of purity and

elevation to this degrading reality, filled him with disgust. Nay,

something more than disgust entered his mind as he saw the smile on her

besotted face. A demon of revenge seized upon him, and all but gained

the mastery. For one instant he was perilously near to springing on her

where she sat, and strangling the life out of her. All passions and all

possibilities are in the soul of every one of us, at every moment; only

the motive power, the circumstance, the incitement, are needed to make

us cross the boundary of restraint. If Alan was not a murderer, it was

not because the thing was impossible to him, but because at the crisis

of temptation his heart had been penetrated by the influence of the

woman whom he revered, and filled with higher thoughts--even through the

channel of humiliation and self-contempt.

He answered her calmly.

"There is no arranging what has happened between us two--nor do you wish

it any more than I. Say what you want to say, and go."

"Good! I will say what I want to say--but I will not go. I mean to stay

with my husband; it is my right. Till death do us part--are not those

the pretty words of the farce we played together?"

"Who made it a farce--did I?"

"Listen, my friend. This is one thing I want to say. Assuredly it was

you, and no other, who made our marriage a miserable failure. You took

me from a life I loved, from friends who loved me, from a freedom which

I valued, and you made no effort to study my tastes and accommodate

yourself to my habits."

"God knows I made the effort. But what were those tastes and habits?

Think of them--think of them all! Could I have accommodated myself to

all--even to those you concealed from me?"

"Bah! you should have known whom you had married. You were so blind and

foolish, that I had a right to think you would never interfere with my

liberty. I was the child of liberty--and liberty is a sacred possession,

which it is an outrage to take away from any woman. You expected me to

change, to become all at once another being, cold and impassive like

yourself--while, as for you, you were to change in nothing! It was your

duty to come to my level--at least to approach it. I would have met you

halfway; we could have made our contract, and I would have kept my part

of the bargain. You demanded too much, and that is why you lost

everything. I condemn you--humanity condemns you. The ruin was your

work!"

"There is something novel in the theory, but I don't think many people

would accept it." He was prepared to talk seriously with her, if she

wished it, but no man could be serious in view of such a preposterous

claim. So he fell back upon the cold, ironical calmness which

exasperated Cora far more than a storm of rage would have done. "At any

rate," he said, "I did not deprive you of your liberty. You retained

that!"

"I kept it for myself. You would have taken it away, and you hated me

for keeping it. I keep it still. I have been free to go where I would,

free to wander over this terrible and desolate city, free now to come

back to you, and stay with you, until you swear to cease your

persecutions, and swear to make a new compact on more equitable terms."

"It is impossible to make terms with you, for you do not observe them.

The law will bind you down more strictly. Meanwhile you cannot remain

here, as you propose."

"Do you mean to throw me into the street?" she asked, passionately.

"Alive or dead, I stay here until the compact is made."

"You need have no fear of me; I am not going to kill you."

"Fear! Of you! Do not flatter yourself, my friend!"

With an insulting laugh she plucked a thin stiletto from under her

cloak, and brandished it before him. Alan recognized it as one which he

had missed after her visit to Montagu Place.

"Look there! Would you like to feel if it is sharp, or will you take my

word for it? We may want that before we part. I do not much care whether

you use it or I; but I will not leave this room unless you concede all

that I ask. Do not stand so far from me, coward. You smile, but you are

afraid!"

"Why should I fear your play-acting? You will not touch me, for so long

as I live you hope to get money from me, and if I were dead you would

starve."

"Miserable hound! Do you not think that hate is stronger even than love

of gold?"

"Not your hate. Throw that useless toy away. Love of gold and love of

self make us both perfectly safe."

"Listen to my terms."

"No; they are refused before you ask them. The law is in motion--nothing

shall prevent me from getting my divorce."

"That you may marry this woman!" she blazed forth, jumping from her

seat, with Lettice's book in her hand. It had been lying before her, and

the name had caught her eye. "You shall never marry her--I swear it by

my father's grave. You shall never divorce me!"

She flung the book in his face.

"Let me pass!" he said, moving quietly to the door.

"Never!"

She seized the dagger, and stood before him, swaying with her violent

emotion.

"Let me pass," he said again, still pressing forward.

She raised the weapon in her hand. Not a moment too soon he grasped her

wrist, and tried to take it from her with his other hand.

There was a struggle--a loud scream--a heavy fall--and silence.

A minute later Mrs. Gorman, attracted by the noise, burst into the room.

Cora was lying on the floor, and Alan, with white face and bloody hand,

was drawing the fatal weapon from her breast.

Mrs. Gorman's first act was to rush to the open window, and call for the

police. Then she knelt by Cora's body, and tried to staunch the flowing

blood.

A lodger from the floor beneath, who had come in behind the landlady,

was looking at the prostrate body. He was a medical student, and perhaps

thought it necessary to give his opinion in a case of this sort.

"She cannot live ten minutes," he said; but that did not prevent him

from assisting Mrs. Gorman in her work.

Alan had staggered back against the wall, still holding the dagger in

his hand. He scarcely knew what had happened, but the words of the last

speaker forced themselves upon him with terrible distinctness.

"My God," he cried, "am I a murderer?"

And he fell upon the chair, and buried his face in his hands.

CHAPTER XXIV.

HOPELESS.

"If she dies," Graham said to his wife, in answer to Clara's anxious

questioning, on the morning after Alan Walcott's arrest, "it will be a

case of murder or manslaughter. If she gets over it he will be charged

with an attempt to murder, or to do grievous bodily harm, and as there

would be her evidence to be considered in that case the jury would be

sure to take the worst view of it. That might mean five or ten years,

perhaps more. The best thing that could happen for him would be her

death, then they might incline to believe his statement, and a clever

counsel might get him off with a few months' imprisonment."

"Poor man," said Clara, "how very shocking it is!" She was thinking not

of Alan alone, but of Alan's friends. "Is there no hope of his being

acquitted altogether?"

"How could there be? The evidence is only too clear. The landlady heard

them quarrelling and struggling together, then there was a loud scream,

and just as she entered the room the poor wretch was falling to the

ground. Walcott had his hand on the dagger, which was still in his

wife's breast. Then the other lodger came in, and he declares that he

heard Walcott say he was a murderer. It seems as plain as it could

possibly be."

"But think of the two, as we know them to have been, and the relations

which have existed between them for years past. Surely that must tell in

his favor?"

"We are not the jury, remember. And, as for that, it would only go to

show a motive for the crime, and make a conviction all the more certain.

No doubt it might induce them to call it manslaughter instead of murder,

and the judge might pass a lighter sentence."

"I do hope she will not die. It would be terrible to have her death on

his conscience."

"Well, of course, death is an ugly word, and no one has a right to wish

that another might die. At the same time, I should say it would be a

happy release for such a creature, who can have nothing but misery

before her. But it will make little difference to him. He is entirely

ruined, so far as his reputation is concerned. He could never hold his

ground in England again, though he might have a second chance at the

other side of the world. What Britain can't forget, Australia forgives.

Heaven created the Antipodes to restore the moral balance of Europe."

"That is a poor satisfaction," said Clara, "to a man who does not want

to live out of his own country."

"Unfortunately, my dear, we cannot always choose our lot, especially

when we have had the misfortune to kill or maim somebody in a fit of

passion."

"I cannot believe that it is even so bad as that. It must have been an

accident."

"I wish I could think so; but if it is, no doubt the man may have the

courage of his conscience, and then there will be nothing to prevent him

from trying to live it down in London. I should not care for that sort

of thing myself. I confess I depend too much on other people's

opinions."

"It would be a terrible fight to live it down in London--terrible, both

for him and his friends."

"Ah," said Graham, quickly, "it is a good thing that he has nobody in

particular depending on him, no specially intimate friends that we are

aware of."

Clara looked steadily at the wall for two or three minutes, whilst her

husband finished his breakfast.

"I wrote to Lettice last night," she said at last, "but, of course, I

knew nothing of this business then."

"I am very glad you did not. What on earth put Lettice into your head?

She has no conceivable interest in this miserable affair."

"I think it is rather too much to say that she has no interest at all.

We know that she was interested in him."

"We know that he is a married man."

Graham's tone was growing a little savage, as it did sometimes,

especially with his wife, whom he very sincerely loved. But Clara did

not heed the warning note.

"Facts are facts, and we should not ignore them. I am sure they like

each other, and his misfortune will be a great grief to her."

"It was just what was wanted, then, to bring her to her senses. She may

recognize now that Walcott is a man of ungovernable passions. In all

probability he will be a convicted felon before she comes back to

England, and she will see that it is impossible to know any more of

him."

"Oh, James, how hard you are! She will never think of him as a felon. No

more shall I!"

"He will be one, whatever you may think. As you said yourself, facts are

facts, and they will have their proper influence upon you sooner or

later."

"But do you think that Lettice is the woman to change her opinion of a

man just because he is unfortunate, or to despise him as soon as he gets

into trouble? I am perfectly sure she is not."

"We shall see," said Graham. "I give her credit for more sense. I don't

think you recognize yet the sort of offence which Walcott has committed,

so we may as well drop the subject for a time. I hope, however, that you

will not do anything which might bring her home just now. Clearly she

could not do any good, and even on your own showing it would be a

needless vexation to her."

He went off to his study, and Clara set about her household tasks with a

heavy heart.

The fact was that she could hardly doubt that Alan Walcott had injured

his wife in a moment of desperation, when he was not fully responsible

for his actions; but she certainly doubted the justice of any law which

could condemn him as a murderer; or doom him to be an outcast amongst

his fellowmen. Her sense of equity might have suited the Saturnian reign

better than our matter-of-fact nineteenth century, in which the precise

more or less of criminality in the soul of an accused man is not the

only thing which has to be taken into consideration.

Was there ever a malefactor condemned to imprisonment or torment for

whom the heart of some woman or other did not plead in mitigation of his

sentence? Yet the man-made laws against which untutored hearts will now

and again protest are often essentially merciful in comparison with the

wild and hasty judgments that outrun the law--whether in mercy or in

severity.

It was so in Alan's case. The popular opinion was evidently against him.

The great majority thought this case of attempted wife-murder too clear

for argument, and too cold-blooded to warrant anything like sympathy for

the accused. Alan's private affairs had been made public property for

some time past, and he now suffered from a storm of hostility and

prejudice against which it was impossible to contend. His story, or the

world's story about him, had been current gossip for the last few

months, as the reader has already seen; and a large number of people

appeared to have fixed upon him as a type of the respectable and

hypocritical sinner, prosperous, refined, moving in good society and

enjoying a fair reputation, yet secretly hardened and corrupt. It was

not often that the underhand crimes of such men were plainly exposed to

view, and, when they were, an example ought to be made of the offender

as a warning to his class. Ever since Cora had gained a hearing in the

police-court at Hammersmith, Alan was set down as a heartless libertine,

who had grown tired of his wife, or, at any rate, as one who wanted to

wash his hands of her, and throw the burden of maintaining her upon the

rates. Thus it became quite a popular pastime to hound down "Poet

Walcott."

This is how the outcry originally began. One or two newspapers with an

ethical turn, which had borrowed from the pulpit a trick of improving

the sensational events of the day for the edification of their readers,

and which possessed a happy knack of writing about anything and anybody

without perpetrating a libel or incurring a charge of contempt of court,

had printed articles on "The Poet and the Pauper," "Divorce Superseded,"

and the like. Stirred up by these interesting homilies, a few shallow

men and women, with too much time on their hands, began to write inept

letters, some of which were printed; and then the editors, being accused

of running after sensations, pointed to their correspondents as evidence

of a public opinion which they could not control, and to which they were

compelled to give utterance. They were, in fact, not dishonest but only

self-deceived. They really persuaded themselves that they were

responding to a general sentiment, though, such as it was, their own

reports and articles had called it into existence. The "gentleman in

court" who paid Cora's fine at Hammersmith began the outcry in its last

and worst form, the editorials nursed and encouraged it, and the

correspondents gave it its malignant character. All concerned in the

business were equally convinced that they were actuated by the best

possible motives.

The news that Walcott had stabbed his wife with a dagger did not take

these charitable people by surprise, though it added fuel to the fire of

their indignation. What else could be expected from a man who had first

deserted and then starved the unfortunate woman whom he had taken to

wife? It was only natural that he should try to get rid of her; but what

a cruel wretch he was! Hanging would be too good for him if his poor

victim should die.

It is unnecessary to say that a great deal of interest was displayed by

the public, when the case came on for hearing at Bow Street; but no real

facts were elicited beyond those which had already been in print. Two

remands were taken, in the hope that Cora might recover sufficiently to

give her evidence, but though she was at last declared to be out of

danger, the house-surgeon at the hospital would not take the

responsibility of saying that she could safely attend at the

police-court. Ultimately, the magistrate having heard all the evidence

that was forthcoming, and Alan's solicitor reserving his defence, the

accused was committed to take his trial at the Central Criminal Court on

a charge of wounding with intent to inflict grievous bodily harm.

Nevertheless, Alan was allowed to go out on bail. He had not cared to

claim this privilege, and would almost have preferred to stay in prison.

His solicitor had made much of the necessity of preparing his defence,

and of the indispensable conferences between himself and his client; but

Alan had not the slightest hope of being acquitted. He told Mr. Larmer

precisely how the whole thing had happened--how his wife had brought the

dagger with her, how she had raised it in her hand, how he seized her

wrist, and how he had never touched the weapon himself until he drew it

from the wound as she lay on the floor.

"They won't believe me," he said. "You know what a prejudice there is

against me, and you will never persuade a jury to take my word against

hers. She will certainly say that I stabbed her with my own dagger; and

it was my dagger once: it has my name upon it."

"That is an awkward fact. If only we could prove that she brought it

with her, it would go a long way towards acquitting you."

"But we can't prove it. Then, you see, Mrs. Gorman says I had my hand on

the weapon as she was falling."

"We can easily shake her in that."

"And Hipkins says that I admitted the crime--called myself a murderer."

"We can shake that too. You said, 'Am I a murderer?' It was an odd thing

to say, but your nerves were unstrung. Men in such predicaments have

been known to say a great deal more than that."

"I assure you Larmer, my mind is so confused about it that I cannot

remember whether I said 'Am I' or 'I am.' I rather incline to think that

I said 'I am a murderer;' for I believed her to be as good as dead at

the time, and I certainly thought I had killed her."

"How could you think that? You are clear in your mind that you never

touched the dagger."

"Yes, but I touched the hand that held the dagger."

Larmer looked at his friend and client in a dubious way, as though he

could not feel quite sure of his sanity.

"My dear Walcott," he said, "you are out of tune--upset by all this

miserable business; and no wonder. You say you touched the hand that

held the dagger that stabbed the woman. We know you did; what then? What

moved the fingers that touched the hand that held the dagger, etcetera?

Was it a good motive or a bad motive, tell me!"

"That is just what I can't tell you, for I don't know. Perhaps it was an

instinct of self-defence; but I have no recollection of being afraid

that she would stab me. I had a confused notion that she was going to

stab herself; perhaps, I only got as far as thinking that the bodkin

would be better out of her hand."

"This is a touch of your old subtlety. I do believe you could work

yourself up to thinking that you actually wanted to hurt her!"

"Subtlety or no subtlety, these impressions are very acute in my own

mind. I can see the whole of that scene as plainly as I see you at this

moment. It comes before my eyes in a series of pictures, vivid and

complete in every twist and turn; only the motives that guided me are

blurred and confused. I grasped her wrist, and she struggled frantically

to shake me off. Our faces were close together, and there was a horrible

fascination in her eyes--the eyes of a madwoman at that moment, beyond

all question."

"I am convinced that she is mad, and has been so for years," said Mr.

Larmer, positively.

"She was mad then, foaming at the mouth, and trying to bite me in her

impotent fury. I could not hold her wrist firmly--she plunged here and

there so violently that one or other of us was pretty sure to be hurt,

unless I could force her to drop the murderous weapon. I was ashamed

that I could not do it; but she had the strength of a demon, and I

really wonder that she did not master me. Then the end came. Suddenly

her resistance ceased. The desperate force with which I had been holding

her hand must have been fully exerted at the very instant when her

muscles relaxed--when the light went out of her eyes and the body

staggered to the ground. It all happened at once. Did she faint? At any

rate, my fingers never touched the dagger until after she was stabbed."

"It was a pure accident--as clear as can be; and the whole blame of it

is on her own shoulders. She brought the weapon, she held it, she

resisted you when you tried to prevent mischief. She, not you, had the

disposition to injure, and you have not an atom of responsibility."

"That is your view, as a friend. It is not the view of the

scandal-mongers outside. It will not be the view of the jury. And it is

not my view."

"What do you mean?"

"I really do not know where my responsibility began or where it ended. I

don't know if her strength failed her at the critical moment, or if it

was simply overcome by mine--if, in fact, she was injured whilst

resisting my violence. One thing I am sure of, and that is that my heart

was full of hatred towards her. There was vengeance in my soul if not in

my intention. Who is to discriminate between motives so near allied?

Your friendship may acquit me, Larmer, but your instincts as a lawyer

cannot; and at any rate, I cannot acquit myself of having entertained

the feeling out of which crimes of violence naturally spring. To all

intents and purposes I am on exactly the same footing as many a man who

has ended his life on the gallows."

"I suppose you think that tribulation is good for your soul. I cannot

see any other ground on which you torment yourself in this way about

things you have not done and acts you have never contemplated. I

understand that you entrusted me with your defence!" Mr. Larmer was

waxing impatient--almost indignant--at his client's tone.

"So I do, entirely. Assuredly I have no desire to go to prison."

"Then for goodness' sake don't talk to anyone else the nonsense you have

been talking to me!"

"I am not likely. I have known you since we were boys together, and I

wanted to relieve my mind. It seemed right that you should know

precisely what is on my conscience in the matter."

"Well, you have told me, and the effect of it has been to convince me

more than ever of your innocence. But that sort of thing would scarcely

convince anybody else. Now take my advice, and think as little about the

case as possible. You cannot do any good--you will only demoralize

yourself still more. Everything depends on how the judge and jury may be

disposed to regard our story. I shall give a brief to the best man that

can be had, and then we shall have done all that lies in our power."

"I know I could not be in better hands. If anyone could get me off

scot-free you are the man to do it, Larmer. But I don't expect it, and I

am not sure that I care for it."

Then they parted, and Alan went to Surrey Street and cleared out his

goods and chattels, very much to the relief of Mrs. Gorman, who assured

Mr. Hipkins that she could not have slept comfortably at night with that

outrageous man under the same roof.

He found in his desk the message which he had written to Lettice on the

day of his crowning misfortune.

"Thank heaven I did not send it," he muttered to himself, as he tore it

in pieces. "One week has made all the difference. Nothing could ever

justify me in speaking to her again."

CHAPTER XXV.

MR. LARMER GIVES A BRIEF.

Mr. Larmer was not insensible to the notoriety which attached to him as

solicitor for the defence in a case which was the talk of the town, and

a topic of the sensational press. Not that it gave him any satisfaction

to make capital out of the misfortunes of a friend; but he would have

been something more than man and less than lawyer if he had despised the

professional chance which had come in his way.

And in fact he did not despise it. There were one or two inexact

statements in the reports of the proceedings at Bow Street--he had

written to the papers and corrected them. Several caterers for the

curiosity of the public hashed up as many scandals as they could find,

and served them hot for the entertainment of their readers. It happened

that these tales were all more or less to the discredit of Alan Walcott,

and to print them before his trial was grossly unfair. Mr. Larmer wrote

a few indignant words on this subject also, and, made about two in a

thousand of the scandal-mongers ashamed of themselves. Not content with

this he supplied a friend with one or two paragraphs relating to the

case, which had the effect of stimulating the interest already aroused

in it. By this plan he secured the insertion of a statement in the best

of the society journals, which put the matter at issue in a fair and

unprejudiced way, dwelling on such facts as the pending divorce-suit,

the fining of Mrs. Walcott at Hammersmith, her molestation of her

husband on various recent occasions, and her intrusion upon him in

Alfred Place. This article, written with manifest knowledge of the

circumstances, yet with much reserve and moderation, was a very

serviceable diversion in Alan's favor, and did something to diminish the

odium into which he had fallen.

Mr. Larmer would not have selected trial by ordeal in the columns of the

newspapers as the best preparation for a trial before an English judge

and jury; but the process was begun by others before he had a word to

say in the matter, and his efforts were simply directed to making the

most of the situation which had been created. A mass of prejudice had

been introduced into the case by the worthy gentlemen who maintain that

in these evil days the press is the one thing needful for moral and

political salvation, and who never lose an opportunity of showing how

easy it would be to govern a nation by leading articles, or to redeem

humanity by a series of reports and interviews. Alan had given himself

up for lost when he found himself in the toils of this prejudice; but

Mr. Larmer saw a chance of turning it to good account both for his

client and for himself, and not unnaturally took advantage of the

awakened curiosity to put his friend's case clearly and vividly before

the popular tribunal.

Alan nearly upset the calculation of the lawyer by his impatience of the

interviewing tribe. Half-a-dozen of them found him out at different

times, and would not take his no for an answer. At last worried by the

pertinacity of one bolder and clumsier than all the rest, he took him by

the shoulders and bundled him out of his room, and the insulted

ambassador, as he called himself, wrote to his employer a particularly

spiteful account of his reception, with sundry embellishments perhaps

more picturesque than strictly accurate.

The next thing that Mr. Larmer had to do was to retain counsel, and he

determined to secure as big a man as possible to conduct the defence.

The case had assumed greater importance than would attach to an ordinary

assault upon a wife by her husband. It was magnified by the surrounding

circumstances, so that the interest felt in it was legitimate enough,

apart from the spurious notoriety which had been added to it. Alan's

literary fame had grown considerably within the last year, and his

friends had been terribly shocked by the first bald statement that he

had stabbed his unfortunate wife in a fit of rage.

They had begun by refusing to believe it, then they trusted that he

would be able to prove his innocence, but by this time many of his

warmest admirers were assuring each other that, "after all, the artistic

merit of a poem never did and never would depend upon the moral

character of the poet." They hoped for the best, but were quite prepared

for the worst, and thus they looked forward to the trial with an anxiety

not unmingled with curious anticipation.

The indirect connection of Lettice Campion with a case of this kind was

another intelligible reason for the concern of the respectable public.

Lettice's name was in everybody's mouth, as that of the young novelist

who had made such a brilliant success at the outset of her career, and

all who happened to know how she had been mixed up at an earlier stage

in the quarrel between Walcott and his wife, were wondering if she would

put in an appearance, willingly or unwillingly, at the Central Criminal

Court.

Mr. Larmer clearly saw that the business was sufficiently important to

justify the intervention of the most eminent counsel. As he was running

over the list and balancing the virtues of different men for an occasion

of this sort, his eye fell on the name of Sydney Campion. He started,

and sank back in his chair to meditate.

The idea of having Mr. Campion to defend a man with whom his sister's

name had been unjustly associated was a bold one, and it had not

occurred to him before. Was there any reason against it? What more

natural than that this rising pleader should come into court for the

special purpose of safeguarding the interests of Miss Campion? The

prosecution would not hesitate to introduce her name if they thought it

would do them any good--especially as they would have the contingency of

the divorce case in their minds; and Campion was just the man to nip any

attempt of that kind in the bud. At all events, the judge was more

likely to listen to him on such a point than to anyone else. But would

not the practice and etiquette of the bar put it absolutely out of the

question.

The thing was worth considering--worth talking over with Campion

himself. So Mr. Larmer put on his hat at once, and went over to the

Temple.

"I have come to see you on a rather delicate matter," he said, by way of

introduction, "as you will understand if you happen to have seen my name

in connection with the Walcott assault case. There are sundry matters

involved which make it difficult to keep the case within its proper

limits, and I thought that an informal consultation on the subject,

before I proceed to retain counsel, might facilitate matters."

"Perhaps it might; but I hardly see how I can help you."

"Well, it occurred to me that if you were in court during the trial, you

would have the opportunity of checking anything that might arise of an

irrelevant character--any references----"

"And what do you propose?" said Sydney, interrupting.

"It would be hard that we should be prevented from putting our case in

the hands of such counsel as we consider best calculated to bring it to

a successful issue. If there is no strong personal reason against it,

but on the other hand (as it seems to me) an adequate reason in its

favor, I trust that you will allow me to send you a brief."

"Let me ask you--did you come to me in any sense at the instance of your

client?" said Sydney, suspiciously.

"By no means. Mr. Walcott does not know I have thought of you in

connection with his defence."

"Nor at the instance of another?"

"Certainly not. It is entirely my own idea."

Sydney looked relieved. He could not ask outright if there had been any

communication with his sister, but that was what he was thinking about.

"I hope we may rely upon you," said Mr. Larmer.

"I don't know. I am not sure that you can. This is, as you said, a

perfectly informal conversation, and I may frankly tell you that what

you ask is out of the question. I hope you will think no more about it."

Mr. Larmer was troubled.

"It seemed to me, Mr. Campion, that the idea would commend itself at

once. I fear you did not quite take my meaning when I spoke of possible

side issues and irrelevant questions which might arise during the

trial?"

"Surely I did. You meant that counsel for the prosecution might think to

advance his cause by referring to other proceedings, past or future, and

might even go so far as to name a lady who has been most wantonly and

cruelly maligned by one of the parties to this case?"

"Exactly. You use the very words in regard to it which I would have used

myself. That is a contingency, I imagine, which you would strongly

desire to avoid."

"So strongly do I desire it, that you would not be surprised if I had

already taken measures with that end in view."

"Decidedly not. But it will be only natural that the prosecution should

try and damage Walcott as much as possible--showing the motive he would

have for getting rid of his wife, and, going into the details of their

former quarrels. The question is whether any man can be expected, in

doing this, to abstain from mentioning the names of third parties."

"Has it never occurred to you, Mr. Larmer, that there is one way, and

only one way, in which I could certainly guarantees that the name of the

lady in question should not be mentioned? Your plan, if you will excuse

my saying so, is clumsy and liable to fail. Mine is perfectly secure

against failure, and perhaps a little more congenial."

Larmer's face fell.

"You do not mean," he said, "that you have taken a brief from the

prosecution!"

"If I had, I should have stopped you as soon as you began to speak, and

told you so. But I may say as much as this--if I am retained by them I

shall go into court; and, if they retain anyone else, I shall have good

reason to know that the case will be conducted precisely as I should

conduct it myself. I imagine that this matters very little to you, Mr.

Larmer. I have not done much with this class of cases, and there will be

no difficulty in finding a stronger man."

Mr. Larmer was silent for a minute or two. Sydney Campion's manner took

him aback.

"I am sorry to hear what you have said," he remarked at last. "I fear it

must inevitably prejudice my client if it is known that you are on the

other side."

"I don't see why it should," Sydney said, with manifest indifference.

"At any rate, with respect to the point you were mentioning, it is clear

that the lady's name will not be introduced by the prosecution."

"Let it be equally clear," said Larmer, "that it will not be introduced

by the defence. This was the first instruction which I received from my

client--who, I may say, was a schoolfellow of mine, and in whose honor,

and not only honor, but technical innocence, I have the utmost

confidence."

"You have undertaken his defence, and I am sure he is in very good

hands," said Sydney with a rather cynical smile. "But, perhaps, the less

said the better as to the honor of a married man who, under false

pretenses, dares to pay attentions to an unmarried lady."

"Believe me you are mistaken! Alan Walcott has done nothing of the

kind."

"He has done enough to create a scandal. You are not denying that his

attitude has been such as to bring the name of the lady forward in a

most objectionable manner, without the slightest contribution on her

part to such a misfortune?"

"I do deny it, most emphatically, and I beg you to disabuse your mind of

the idea. What possible ground can you have for such a charge? The mere

tipsy ravings of this unfaithful wife--whom I should probably have no

difficulty in proving insane, as well as unfaithful and intemperate.

What is actually known is that she has been heard by the police, on one

or two occasions, referring by name to this lady. How far would you as a

lawyer, Mr. Campion, allow that fact to have weight as evidence in

support of the charge? And can you mention, beyond that, one tittle of

evidence of any kind?"

Sydney shrugged his shoulders.

"We are not considering evidence as you know very well. We are talking

as two men of the world, quite competent to draw the right deduction

from admitted facts. I say that when a lady has been so grievously

insulted as Miss Campion has been, under circumstances of such great

aggravation, the man who has brought that indignity upon her, however

indirectly, must be held directly responsible for his conduct."

"It is useless to argue the point--the more so as I fancy that Mr.

Walcott himself would be very much inclined to agree with you--which I

am not. He most bitterly regrets the annoyance to which Miss Campion has

been subjected, and regards it as the greatest of all the injuries

inflicted upon him by his degraded wife. Having said this on his behalf,

let me add that any charge brought against him on this score, by that

woman or by anyone else, is absolutely without foundation, and that we

shall know how to defend his reputation, in or out of court, whenever

and by whomsoever it may be attacked."

"Your warmth does you credit, Mr. Larmer. I will be equally frank with

you. You speak as a friend, I speak as a brother. After all that has

happened I do not hold myself bound, nor do I intend, to consider anyone

or anything in comparison with the credit of the name which has been so

foully aspersed. It is for me to protect that name from discredit, and I

shall adopt every expedient within my reach to carry out my purpose."

"No doubt you are perfectly justified in doing so. I will merely remark

that hostility to my client cannot assist you in your object."

"Well," said Sydney, rising from his seat, "there can be no use in

continuing the conversation." And he added, in a lighter tone, "I am

sorry, Mr. Larmer, that I should be compelled to decline the first brief

you have offered me."

Larmer went back to his office a little crestfallen, but not at all

sorry that he had had this interview with Campion. He was better

prepared now for the course which the trial was likely to follow. He had

no doubt that Campion would be bold enough to undertake the prosecution,

and that he would do his best to get a conviction against Walcott, whom

he manifestly disliked. He was less sanguine from that moment as to the

result of his efforts; but, of course, he did not relax them. He

retained Mr. Charles Milton, a man with an excellent reputation in

criminal business, and one who, as he thought, would do his utmost to

avoid losing a case to Campion.

Milton, in effect, took the matter up with much zeal. He had (so far as

his professional instinct allowed him) accepted the theory of Walcott's

guilt, rather respecting him, if the truth were known, for refusing to

put up any longer with the persecutions of a revolted wife. But he had

no sooner received his brief in the case than he was perfectly convinced

of Walcott's innocence. The story told him by Mr. Larmer seemed not only

natural but transparently true, and when he heard that his club-mate of

the Oligarchy was actively interested for the other side, he determined

that no effort on his part should be wanting to secure a verdict.

Not that he had any grudge against Sydney; but they belonged to the same

profession, the same party, and the same club--three conceivable reasons

for Mr. Milton's zeal.

Thus Alan's defence was well provided for, and Mr. Larmer began to feel

more easy in his mind.

When Alan heard that the prosecution was likely to be conducted by

Sydney Campion, he took the news quietly, though it was a very serious

matter for him. He did not doubt its seriousness, but his heart had

already fallen so low that it could scarcely sink lower. He saw at once

that the motive of Lettice's brother in angling for this brief (as Alan

concluded that he must have done) was to protect the interests of

Lettice; and so far, the fact was a matter of congratulation. It was his

own great desire, as Larmer knew, to prevent her name from being

mentioned, and to avoid reference to anything in which she had been

indirectly concerned, even though the reference might have been made

without using her name. When Larmer pointed out that this quixotism, as

he called it, would make it almost impossible for his counsel to show

the extreme malignity of his wife and the intolerable persecution to

which he had been subjected, he had answered shortly and decisively,

"Let it be impossible. The first object is not my defence, but hers."

"Your vision is distorted," Larmer had said angrily. "This may seem to

you right and generous, but I tell you it is foolish and unnecessary."

"I will not be guided in this particular thing," Alan rejoined, "by your

reason, but by my feeling. An acquittal at her cost would mean a

lifelong sorrow."

"If I know anything of women, Miss Campion, who does not quite hate you,

would insist on having the whole story told in open court. Perhaps she

may return to England in time for the trial, and then she can decide the

point herself."

"Heaven forbid!" Alan had said. And he meant it. Worse than that, he

tortured himself with the idea, which he called a firm belief, that

Lettice had heard, or would hear, of his disgraceful position, that she

would be unable to doubt that he had struck the fatal blow, and that he

would be dropped out of her heart and out of her life as a matter of

course. How could it be otherwise? What was he to her, that she should

believe him innocent in spite of appearances; or that, believing him

merely unfortunate and degraded, she should not think less well of him

than when he held his name high in the world of letters and in society?

"That dream is gone," he said. "Let me forget it, and wake to the new

life that opens before me. A new life--born in a police cell, baptized

in a criminal court, suckled in a prison, and trained in solitary

adversity. That is the fate for which I have been reserved. I may be

nearly fifty when I come out--a broken-down man, without reputation and

without a hope. Truly, the dream is at an end; and oh, God of Heaven,

make her forget me as though we had never met!"

So, when Mr. Larmer frankly told him all that Sydney Campion had said,

Alan could not find it in his heart to blame Lattice's brother for his

hostility.

CHAPTER XXVI.

IN COURT.

No doubt it was from some points of view an unprofessional act of Sydney

Campion to appear in court as counsel for the prosecution of Alan

Walcott. Sydney knew that he was straining a rule of etiquette, to say

the least of it; but, under the circumstances, he held himself justified

in fishing for the brief.

The matter had been taken up by the Treasury, and Sydney had asked an

intimate friend, who was also a friend of the Attorney-General, to give

the latter a hint. Now Sir James was, above all things, a suave and

politic man of the world, who thought that persons of position and

influence got on best in the intricate game of life by deftly playing

into each other's hands. When one gentleman could do something for

another gentleman, to oblige and accommodate him, it was evidently the

proper course to do it gracefully and without fuss. Campion's motives

were clearly excellent. As he understood the business (although the

ambassador put it very delicately indeed), a lady's reputation was at

stake; and if Sir James prided himself on one thing more than another,

it was his gallantry and discretion in matters of this kind. So he told

his friend to go back and set Mr. Campion's mind at rest; and in the

course of a day or two Sydney received his brief.

"Who is going to defend?" he asked his clerk, when he had glanced at his

instructions.

"I heard just now that Larmer had retained Mr. Charles Milton."

"Charles Milton! The deuce! It will be a pretty little fight, Johnson!"

"They don't seem to have a leg to stand on; the evidence is all one way,

even without the wife. I don't know what his story is, but it cannot

have any corroboration--and hers is well supported."

"I am told she will be able to appear. She seems to be a terrible

talker--that is the worst of her. I must keep her strictly within the

ropes."

"The other side will not have the same motives," said Johnson, who knew

all about the scandal which had preceded the assault, and who wanted to

get his employer to speak.

"You think Mr. Milton will draw her on?"

"Sure to, I should say. If I were defending (since you ask me), I would

not loose my grip until I had got her into a rage; and from all I hear

that would make the jury believe her capable of anything, even of

stabbing herself and swearing it on her husband."

"But, my good fellow, you are not defending him! And I'll take care she

is not worked up in that fashion. Thanks for the suggestion, all the

same. They will contend that it was done in a struggle."

"Against that, you have her evidence that the blow was deliberate; and I

think the jury will believe her."

"They can't help themselves: motive, incitements, favoring

circumstances, are all too manifest. And that just makes the difficulty

and delicacy of the case for me. I want the jury to see the whole thing

impartially, that they may do justice, without bias and without foolish

weakness; and yet there are certain matters connected with it which need

not be dwelt upon--which must, in fact, be kept in the background

altogether. Do you see?"

"I think I do." Johnson was a good deal in Sydney's confidence, being a

man of much discretion, and with considerable knowledge of the law. He

felt that his advice was being asked, or at any rate his opinion, and he

met Mr. Campion's searching gaze with one equally cool and serious.

"I have no doubt you know as much about it as I could tell you. You seem

to hear everything from one source or another. Do you understand why it

is that I am going into court? It is not altogether a regular thing to

do, is it?"

"I suppose you wish to keep the evidence well in hand," Johnson replied,

readily. "A lady's name has been used in a very unwarrantable manner,

and--since you ask me--you have undertaken to see that there is no

unnecessary repetition of the matter in court."

"Precisely so--no repetition at all."

"You will examine your own witness, and, of course, you need not go

behind the scene in Surrey Street, at which the crime was actually

committed--except in opening your case. What the jury will say is this:

husband and wife on bad terms, separated, and divorce pending; wife

comes to husband's rooms, reproaches him; recriminations; dagger handy

on the table (very bad for him that); a sudden temptation, a sudden

blow, and there's an end of it. No need to prove they were on bad terms,

with all those facts before you."

"But then comes the defence."

"Well, sir, what is their line going to be? If they want to persuade the

jury that she did it herself, or that it was an accident, they will not

dwell upon all the reasons which might have tempted him to take her

life. That would be weakening their own case."

"And Milton is capable of doing it!" said Sydney, talking to himself.

"But if they think the jury will be bound to believe that he stabbed

her, no doubt they would go in for blackening her, and then they might

cross-examine her about those other things."

"That is where the danger comes in."

Sydney's words were equivalent to another question, but Johnson

preserved a perfectly stolid face. It was all very well for him to

advise his employer, and work up his cases for him if necessary. He was

accustomed to do both these things, and his help had been invaluable to

Sydney for several years past. But it was out of his line to display

more confidence than was displayed in him, or to venture on delicate

ground before he had received a lead.

"Yes, that's were the danger comes in," Sydney repeated. "I have reason

to believe that there is a disposition on their part to keep the lady's

name out of the case; but they are not pledged to it; and if they find

things looking very bad for Walcott, they may show fight in that

direction. Then there is Mr. Milton--no instructions can altogether gag

counsel. I don't know that I have ever given him cause of offence, but I

have an instinctive feeling that he would rather enjoy putting me in a

hole."

"I think you would have the judge with you in any objection which you

might take."

"But it would be a misfortune, as things stand, even to have to take

objection. Not only do I want to avoid the introduction of these

extraneous matters, but I should strongly object to figure in any way as

watching Miss Campion's interests. It would be very bad indeed for me to

have to do that. What I desire is that her interests should at no moment

of the trial appear, even to those who know the circumstances, to be

involved."

"I quite see," said Johnson. "And since you ask me, I don't think you

have much to fear. It is a delicate position, but both sides are of the

same mind on the particular point, and it is most improbable that any

indiscretion will occur. Prosecution and defence both want to avoid a

certain pitfall--when they won't struggle on the edge of it. What do you

say, Mr. Campion, to setting forth in your opening statement all that is

known about their previous quarrels, not concealing that the woman has

been rather outrageous, in her foreign fashion, but quietly ignoring the

fact of her jealousy?"

"That would be too bold--it would excite her, and possibly move the

defence to needless retorts."

"As for exciting her, if she is thoroughly convinced that his conviction

will spoil his chance of a divorce, she will take the whole thing coolly

enough. My idea was that by opening fully, and touching on every point,

you would escape the appearance of shirking anything. And at the same

time you would be suggesting these motives for violence on Walcott's

part which, as you said, it would be their business to avoid."

"There is a good deal in that," said Sydney, reflectively. "It is worth

considering. Yes, two heads are certainly better than one. I see that I

am instructed to ask about the attempt on her life at Aix-les-Bains.

Why, what a rascal the man has been to her! No wonder she is venemous

now."

When the trial took place, the court was crowded with men and women who

were anxious to see the principal actors in what was popularly known as

the Surrey Street Mystery. They were both there--Alan pale and haggard

from his long suspense, and Cora, much pulled down by what she had gone

through. Of the two, she was, perhaps, the more interesting. Illness and

loss of blood had done something to efface the dissipated look which had

become habitual with her; she was languid and soberly dressed; and,

moreover, she understood, as Mr. Johnson had said she would, that the

conviction of her husband would put his divorce out of the question, at

any rate for some time to come. So it was her business to look

interesting, and injured, and quiet; and she was cunning enough to play

this part successfully.

Alan, on the other hand, was completely indifferent as to the opinion

which might be formed of him, and almost indifferent as to the verdict.

When he came into court he looked carefully round at the women who were

present among the spectators, but, not seeing the one face which he had

both dreaded and hoped to see, he fell back into his former lethargy,

and took very little interest in the proceedings.

Sydney Campion opened the case for the prosecution in a business-like

way, just glancing at the unhappy relations which had existed between

the prisoner and his wife for several years past, and freely admitting

that there appeared to have been faults on both sides. He took the

common-sense view of a man of the world speaking to men of the world,

and did not ask the sympathies of the jury for the injured woman who had

come straight from the hospital to that court, but only their impartial

attention to the evidence which would be brought before them, and the

expression of their deliberate opinion on the innocence or guilt of the

accused.

Nothing could be more fair than his observations--or so it appeared to

the majority of Campion's hearers. No doubt he had referred to the

affair at Aix-les-Bains as though it were a matter of evidence, instead

of mere allegation, and to the recent quarrels in England as though the

"faults on both sides" had been clearly established. But he was supposed

to be speaking in strict accordance with his instructions, and, of

course, it was open to the defence to question anything which he had

said.

Then came the evidence for the prosecution, the substance of which is

already known to the reader; but Cora's account of the quarrel in Surrey

Street was so ingeniously colored and distorted that Alan found himself

listening with something like genuine amusement to the questions of

counsel and the replies of his lying wife.

"And so," said Mr. Campion, after she had spoken of her earnest appeal

for the renewal of friendship, and of her husband's insulting refusal,

"you came to high words. Did you both keep the same positions whilst you

were talking?"

"For a long time, until I lost patience, and then--yes, let me speak the

whole truth--I threw a certain book at him."

Cora was on the point of saying why she threw the book, and whose name

was on the title-page, but she checked herself in time. It had been very

difficult to persuade her that her interests were safe in the hands of

Lettice's brother, and even now she had occasional misgivings on that

point. Sydney went on quickly.

"A book lying close to your hand, you mean?"

"She said a certain book," Mr. Milton interjected.

"You must make allowance for her," said the judge. "You know she is

French, and you should follow her in two languages at once. No doubt she

meant 'some book or other.' The point has no importance."

"And then," said Sydney, "you altered your positions?"

"We stood facing each other."

"What happened next?"

"Suddenly--I had not moved--an evil look came in his face. He sprang to

the table, and took from the drawer a long, sharp poignard. I remembered

it well, for he had it when we were married."

"What did he do then?"

"He raised it in his hand; but I had leaped upon him, and then began a

terrible struggle."

The court was excited. Alan and his counsel were almost the only persons

who remained perfectly cool.

"It was an unequal struggle?"

"Ah, yes! I became exhausted, and sank to the ground."

"Before or after you were stabbed?"

"He stabbed me as I fell."

"Could it have been an accident?"

"Impossible, for I fell backward, and the wound was in front."

After Sydney had done with his witness, Mr. Milton took her in hand; and

this was felt by every one to be the most critical stage of the trial.

Milton did his best to shake Cora's evidence, not without a certain kind

of success. He turned her past life inside out, made her confess her

infidelity, her intemperance, her brawling in the streets, her

conviction and fine at the Hammersmith Police Court. It was all he could

do to restrain himself from getting her to acknowledge the reason of her

visit to Maple Cottage; but his instructions were too definite to be

ignored. He felt that the introduction of Miss Campion's name would have

told in favor of his client--at any rate, with the jury; and he would

not have been a zealous pleader if he had not wished to take advantage

of the point.

By this time Cora was in a rage, and she damaged herself with the jury

by giving them a specimen of her ungovernable temper. The trial had to

be suspended for a quarter of an hour, whilst she recovered from a fit

of hysterics; but it said much for her crafty shrewdness that she was

able to adhere, in the main, to the story which she had told. She was

severely cross-examined about the scene in Surrey Street, and especially

about the dagger. She feigned intense surprise at being asked and

pressed as to her having brought the weapon with her; but Mr. Milton

could not succeed in making her contradict herself.

Then the other witnesses were heard and counsel had an opportunity of

enforcing the evidence on both sides. Mr. Milton was very severe on his

learned friend for introducing matter in his opening speech, on which he

did not intend to call witnesses; but in his own mind he had recognized

the fact that there must be a verdict of guilty, and he brought out as

strongly as he could the circumstances which he thought would weigh with

the court in his client's favor. Sydney was well content with the result

of the trial as far as it had gone. There had been no reference of any

kind to his sister Lettice; and, as he knew that this was due in some

measure to the reticence of the defence, it would have argued a want of

generosity on his part to talk of the cruelty of the prisoner in

stopping his wife's allowance because she had molested him in the

street.

The judge summed up with great fairness. He picked out the facts which

had been sworn to in regard to the actual receiving of the wound, which,

he said, were compatible with the theory of self-infliction, with that

of wilful infliction by the husband, and with that of accident. As for

the first theory, it would imply that the dagger had passed from the

prisoner's hands to those of his wife, and back again, and it seemed to

be contradicted by the evidence of the landlady and the other lodger.

Moreover, it was not even suggested by the defence, which relied upon

the theory of accident. An accident of this kind would certainly be

possible during a violent struggle for the possession of the dagger. Now

the husband and wife virtually accused each other of producing this

weapon and threatening to use it. It was for the jury to decide which of

the two they would believe. There was a direct conflict of evidence, or

allegation, and in such a case they must look at all the surrounding

circumstances. It was not denied that the dagger belonged to the

prisoner, but it was suggested in his behalf that the wife had purloined

it some time before, and had suddenly produced it when she came to her

husband's apartments in Surrey Street. If that could be proved, then the

woman had been guilty of perjury, and her evidence would collapse

altogether. Now there were some portions of her evidence which were most

unsatisfactory. She had led a dissolute life, and was cursed with an

ungovernable temper. But, on the other hand, she had told a consistent

tale as to the occurrences of that fatal afternoon, and he could not go

so far as to advise the jury to reject her testimony as worthless.

His lordship then went over the remaining evidence, and concluded as

follows:--

"Gentlemen, I may now leave you to your difficult task. It is for you to

say whether, in your judgment, the wound which this woman received was

inflicted by herself or by her husband. If you find that it was

inflicted by her husband, you must further decide, to the best of your

ability, whether the prisoner wounded his wife in the course of a

struggle, without intending it, or whether he did at the moment

wittingly and purposely injure her. The rest you will leave to me. You

have the evidence before you, and the constitution of your country

imposes upon you the high responsibility of saying whether this man is

innocent or guilty of the charge preferred against him."

The jury retired to consider their verdict, and after about

three-quarters of an hour they returned into court.

"Gentlemen of the jury," said the clerk, "are you agreed upon your

verdict?"

"We are," said the foreman.

"Do you find the prisoner guilty or not guilty?"

"We find him guilty of wounding, with intent to inflict grievous bodily

harm."

Alan turned his face to the judge. The whole thing had been so precisely

rehearsed in his mind that no mere detail would take him by surprise. He

had expected the verdict, and it had come. Now he expected the sentence;

let it come, too. It would hardly be worse than he was prepared for.

To say that Mr. Justice Perkins was dissatisfied with the verdict would

be going a little too far; but he almost wished, when he heard it, that

he had dwelt at greater length upon the untrustworthy character of Mrs.

Walcott's evidence. However, he had told the jury that this was a matter

for their careful consideration; and he had always been wont, even more

than some of his brother judges, to leave full responsibility to his

juries in matters of opinion and belief.

"Alan Walcott," he said to the convicted man, "you have had a fair trial

before twelve of your peers, who have heard all the evidence brought

before them, whether favorable to you or the reverse. In the exercise of

their discretion, and actuated as they doubtless have been by the purest

motives, they have found you guilty of the crime laid to your charge. No

words of mine are necessary to make you appreciate this verdict.

Whatever the provocation which you may have received from this miserable

woman, however she may have forgotten her duty and tried you beyond

endurance--and I think that the evidence was clear enough on these

points--she was still your wife, and had a double claim upon your

forbearance. You might well have been in a worse position. From the

moment when you took that deadly weapon in your hands, everything was

possible. You might have been charged with wilful murder, if she had

died, or with intent to murder. You have been defended with great

ability; and if the jury believed, as they manifestly did, that your

defence, so fat as concerns the introduction of the dagger, could not be

maintained then they had no alternative but to find as they actually did

find. It only remains for me to pass upon you such a sentence, within

the discretion left me by the law, as seems to be appropriate to your

offence, and that is that you be imprisoned and kept to hard labor for

the term of six calendar months."

Then the prisoner was removed; the court and the spectators dispersed to

dine and amuse themselves; the reporters rushed off to carry their last

copy to the evening newspapers; and the great tide of life swept by on

its appointed course. No foundering, ship on its iron-bound coast, no

broken heart that sinks beneath its waves, disturbs the law-abiding ebb

and flow of the vast ocean of humanity.

BOOK V.

LOVE.

"Let us be unashamed of soul,

As earth lies bare to heaven above!

How is it under our control

To love or not to love?"

ROBERT BROWNING.

CHAPTER XXVII.

COURTSHIP.

Busy as Sydney Campion was, at this juncture of his career, public

affairs were, on the whole, less engrossing to him than usual; for a new

element had entered into his private life, and bade fair to change many

of its currents.

The rector's education of his son and daughter had produced effects

which would have astonished him mightily could he have traced their

secret workings, but which would have been matter of no surprise to a

psychologist.

He himself had been in the main an unsuccessful man, for, although he

had enjoyed many years of peace and quiet in his country parish, he had

never attained the objects with which he set out in life. Like many

another man who has failed, his failure led him to value nothing on

earth so highly as success. It is your fortunate man who can afford to

slight life's prizes. The rector of Angleford was never heard to utter

soothing sentiments to the effect that "life may succeed in that it

seems to fail," or that heaven was the place for those who had failed on

earth. He did not believe it. Failure was terrible misfortune in his

eyes: intellectual failure, greatest of all. Of course he wanted his

children to be moral and religious; it was indeed important that they

should be orthodox and respectable, if they wanted to get on in the

world; but he had no such passion of longing for their spiritual as he

had for their mental development. Neither was it money that he wished

them to acquire, save as an adjunct; no man had more aristocratic

prejudices against trade and pride of purse than Mr. Campion; but he

wanted them--and especially he wanted Sydney--to show intellectual

superiority to the rest of the world, and by that superiority to gain

the good things of life. And of all these good things, the best was

fame--the fame that means success.

Thus, from the very beginning of Sydney's life, his father sedulously

cultivated ambition in his soul, and taught him that failure meant

disgrace. The spur that he applied to the boy acted with equal force on

the girl, but with different results. For with ambition the rector sowed

the seeds of a deadly egotism, and it found a favorable soil--at least

in Sydney's heart. That the boy should strive for himself and his own

glory--that was the lesson the rector taught him; and he ought not to

have been surprised when, in later years, his son's absorption in self

gave him such bitter pain.

Lettice, with her ambition curbed by love and pity, accepted the

discipline of patience and self-sacrifice, set before her by the

selfishness of other people; but Sydney gave free rein to his ambition

and his pride. He could not make shift to content himself, as his father

had done, with academic distinction alone. He wanted to be a leader of

men, to take a foremost place in the world of men. He sometimes told

himself that his father had equipped him to the very best of his power

for the battle of life, and he was grateful to him for his care; but he

did not think very much about the sacrifices made for him by others. As

a matter of fact, he thought himself worth them all. And for the prize

he desired, he bartered away much that makes the completer man: for he

extinguished many generous instincts and noble possibilities, and

thought himself the gainer by their loss.

In Lettice, the love of fame was also strong, but in a modified form.

Her tastes were more literary than those of Sydney, but success was as

sweet to her as to him. The zest with which she worked was also in part

due to the rector's teaching; but, by the strange workings-out of

influence and tendency, it had chanced that the rector's carelessness

and neglect had been the factors that disciplined a nature both strong

and sweet into forgetfulness of self and absorption in work rather than

its rewards.

But already Nature had begun with Sydney Campion her grand process of

amelioration, which she applies (when we let her have her way) to all

men and women, most systematically to those who need it most, securing

an entrance to their souls by their very vices and weaknesses, and

invariably supplying the human instrument or the effective circumstances

which are best calculated to work her purpose. Such beneficent work of

Nature may be called, as it was called by the older writers, the Hand of

God.

Sydney's great and overweening fault was that form of "moral stupidity"

which we term selfishness. Something of it may have come with the

faculties which he had inherited--in tendencies and inclinations

mysteriously associated with his physical conformation; much had been

added thereto by the indulgence of his parents, by the pride of his

university triumphs, and by the misfortune of his association in London

with men who aggravated instead of modifying the faults of his natural

disposition. The death of his father had produced a good effect for the

time, and made him permanently more considerate of his mother's and

sister's welfare. But a greater and still more permanent effect seemed

likely to be produced on him now, for he had opened his heart to the

influences of a pure and elevating affection; and for almost the first

time there entered into his mind a gradually increasing feeling of

contrition and remorse for certain past phases of his life which he knew

to be both unworthy in themselves and disloyal (if persisted in) to the

woman whom he hoped to make his wife. By a determined effort of will, he

cut one knot which he could not untie, but, his thoughts being still

centred upon himself, he considered his own rights and needs almost

entirely in the matter, and did not trouble himself much about the

rights or needs of the other person concerned. He had broken free, and

was disposed to congratulate himself upon his freedom; vowing,

meanwhile, that he would never put himself into any bonds again except

the safe and honorable bonds of marriage.

Thus freed, he went down with Dalton to Angleford for the Easter recess,

which fell late that year. He seemed particularly cheery and confident,

although Dalton noticed a slight shade of gloom or anxiety upon his brow

from time to time, and put it down to his uncertainty as to the

Pynsents' acceptance of his attentions to Miss Anna Pynsent, which were

already noticed and talked about in society. Sydney was a rising man,

but it was thought that Sir John might look higher for his beautiful

young sister.

The Parliamentary success of the new member for Vanebury had been as

great as his most reasonable friends anticipated for him, if not quite

as meteoric as one or two flatterers had predicted. Meteoric success in

the House of Commons is not, indeed, so rare as it was twenty years ago,

for the studied rhetoric which served our great-grandfathers in their

ambitious pursuit of notoriety has given place to the arts of audacity,

innovation, and the sublime courage of youthful insolence, which have

occasionally worked wonders in our own day.

Sydney had long been a close observer of the methods by which men gained

the ear of the House, and he had learned one or two things that were

very useful to him now that he was able to turn them to account.

"We have put the golden age behind us," he said one day to Dalton, with

the assured and confident air which gave him so much of his power

amongst men, "and also the silver age, and the age of brass. We are

living in the great newspaper age, and, if a public man wants to get

into a foremost place before he has begun to lose his teeth, he must

play steadily to the readers of the daily journals. In my small way I

have done this already, and now I am in the House, I shall make it my

business to study and humor, to some extent, the many-faced monster who

reads and reflects himself in the press. In other times a man had to

work himself up in _Hansard_ and the Standing Orders, to watch and

imitate the old Parliamentary hands, to listen for the whip and follow

close at heel; but, as I have often heard you say, we have changed all

that. Whatever else a man may do or leave undone, he must keep himself

in evidence; it is more important to be talked and written about

constantly than to be highly praised once in six months. I don't know

any other way of working the oracle than by doing or saying something

every day, clever or foolish, which will have a chance of getting into

print."

He spoke half in jest, yet he evidently more than half meant what he

said.

"At any rate, you have some recent instances to support your theory,"

Dalton said, with a smile. They were lighting their cigars, preparatory

to playing a fresh game of billiards, but Sydney was so much interested

in the conversation, that, instead of taking up his cue, he stood with

his back to the fire and continued it.

"Precisely so--there can be no doubt about it. Look at Flumley, and

Warrington, and Middlemist--three of our own fellows, without going any

further. What is there in them to command success, except not deserving

it, and knowing that they don't? The modest merit and perseverance

business is quite played out for any man of spirit. The only line to

take in these days is that of cheek, pluck, and devil-may-care."

"Do you know, Campion, you have grown very cynical of late?" said Brooke

Dalton, rather more gravely than usual. "I have been rather disposed to

take some blame to myself for my share in the heartless kind of talk

that used to go on at the Oligarchy. I and Pynsent were your sponsors

there, I remember. You may think this an odd thing to say, but the fact

is I am becoming something of a fogy, I suppose, in my ideas, and I

daresay you'll tell me that the change is not for the better."

"I don't know about that," said Sydney, lightly. "Perhaps it is for the

better, after all. You see, _you_ are now laying yourself out to

persuade your fellowmen that you can cure them of all the ills that

flesh is heir to! But I'll tell you what I have noticed, old man, and

what others beside me have noticed. We miss you up in town. You never

come to the Club now. The men say you must be ill, or married, or

breaking up, or under petticoat government--all stuff and nonsense, you

know; but that is what they say."

"They can't be all right," said Brooke, with a rather embarrassed laugh,

"but some of them may be." He made a perfectly needless excursion across

the room to fetch a cue from the rack that he did not want, while Sydney

smoked on and watched him with amused and rather curious eyes. "I

suppose I am a little under petticoat government," said Dalton,

examining his cue with interest, and then laying it down on the table,

"as you may see for yourself. But my sister manages everything so

cleverly that I don't mind answering to the reins and letting her get me

well in hand."

"No one ever had a better excuse for submitting to petticoat government.

But you know what is always thought of a man when he begins to give up

his club."

"I am afraid it can't be helped. Then again--perhaps there is another

reason. Edith, you know, has a little place of her own, about a mile

from here, and she tells me that she will not keep house for me much

longer--even to rescue me from club life. The fact is, she wants me to

marry."

"Oh, now I see it all; you have let the cat out the bag! And you are

going to humor her in that, too?"

"Well, I hardly think I should marry just to humor my sister. But--who

knows? She is always at me, and a continual dropping----"

"Wears away the stony heart of Brooke Dalton. Why, what a converted

clubbist you will be!"

"There was always a corner of my heart, Campion, in which I rebelled

against our bachelor's paradise at the Oligarchy--and you would have

opened your eyes if you could have seen into that corner through the

smoke and gossip of the old days in Pall Mall."

"The old days of six months ago!" said Sydney, good-humoredly.

"Do you know that Edith and I are going abroad next week?"

The question sounded abrupt, but Dalton had not the air of a man who

wants to turn the conversation.

"No," said Sydney, in some surprise. "Where are you going?"

"Well, Edith wants to go to Italy, and I should not wonder if we were to

come across a cousin of mine, Mrs. Hartley, who is now at Florence. You

know her, I believe?"

"I hardly know her, but I have heard a good deal about her. She has been

very kind to my sister--nursed her through a long illness, and looked

after her in the most generous manner possible. I am under great

obligations to Mrs. Hartley. I hope you will say so to her if you meet."

"All right. Anything else I can do for you? No doubt we shall see your

sister. We are old friends, you know. And I have met her several times

at my cousin's this winter."

"At those wonderful Sunday gatherings of hers?"

"I dropped in casually one day, and found Miss Campion there--and I

admit that I went pretty regularly afterwards, in the hope of improving

the acquaintance. If I were to tell you that I am going to Florence now

for precisely the same reason, would you, as her brother, wish me good

speed, or advise me to keep away?"

"Wish you good speed?"

"Why, yes! Is not my meaning clear?"

"My dear Dalton, you have taken me absolutely by surprise," said Sydney,

laying down his cigar. "But, if I understand you aright, I do wish you

good speed, and with all my heart."

"Mind," said Dalton hurriedly, "I have not the least idea what my

reception is likely to be. I'm afraid I have not the ghost of a chance."

"I hope you will be treated as you deserve," said Sydney, rather

resenting this constructive imputation on his sister's taste. Privately,

he thought there was no doubt about the matter, and was delighted with

the prospect of so effectually crushing the gossip that still hung about

Lettice's name. The memory of Alan Walcott's affairs was strong in the

minds of both men as they paused in their conversation, but neither

chose to allude to him in words.

"I could settle down here with the greatest pleasure imaginable, under

some circumstances," said Brooke Dalton, with a faint smile irradiating

his fair, placid, well-featured countenance. "Do you think your sister

would like to be so near her old home?"

"I think she would consider it an advantage. She was always fond of

Angleford. Your wife will be a happy woman, Dalton, whoever she may

be--sua si bona norit!"

"Well, I'm glad I spoke to you," said Brooke, with an air of visible

relief. "Edith knows all about it, and is delighted. How the time flies!

We can't have a game before dinner, I'm afraid. Must you go to-morrow,

Campion?"

"It is necessary. The House meets at four; and besides, I have arranged

to meet Sir John Pynsent earlier in the day. I want to have a little

talk with him."

"To put his fate to the touch, I suppose," meditated Brooke, glancing at

Sydney's face, which had suddenly grown a little grave. "I suppose it

would be premature to say anything--I think," he said aloud, "that we

almost ought to be dressing now."

"Yes, we've only left ourselves ten minutes. I say, Dalton, now I think

of it, I'll give you a letter to my sister, if you'll be kind enough to

deliver it."

"All right."

"There will be no hurry about it. Give it to her whenever you like. I

think it would be serviceable, and I suppose you can trust my

discretion; but, understand me--you can deliver the letter or not, as

seems good to you when you are with her. I'll write it to-night, and let

you have it to-morrow morning before I go."

It would not have occurred to Brooke Dalton to ask for a letter of

recommendation when he went a-courting, but Sydney's words did not

strike him as incongruous at the time, and he was simple enough to

believe that a brother's influence would weigh with a woman of Lettice's

calibre in the choice of a partner for life.

Sydney delivered the letter into his keeping next day, and then went up

to town, where he was to meet Sir John Pynsent at the Club.

Dalton had been mistaken when he conjectured that Sydney's intentions

were to consult Sir John about his pretension to Miss Pynsent's hand.

Sydney had not yet got so far. He had made up his mind that he wanted

Anna Pynsent for a wife more than he had ever wanted any woman in the

world; and the encouragement that he had received from Sir John and Lady

Pynsent made him conscious that they were not very likely to deny his

suit. And yet he paused. It seemed to him that he would like a longer

interval to pass before he asked Nan Pynsent to marry him--a longer

space in which to put away certain memories and fears which became more

bitter to him every time that they recurred.

It was simply a few words on political matters that he wanted with Sir

John; but they had the room to themselves, and Sydney was hardly

surprised to find that the conversation had speedily drifted round to

personal topics, and that the baronet was detailing his plans for the

autumn, and asking Sydney to form one of his house-party in September.

Sydney hesitated in replying. He thought to himself that he should not

care to go unless he was sure that Miss Pynsent meant to accept him.

Perhaps Sir John attributed his hesitation to its real cause, for he

said, more heartily than ever.

"We all want you, you know. Nan is dying to talk over your constituents

with you. She has got some Workmen's Club on hand that she wants the

member to open, with an appropriate speech, so you had better prepare

yourself."

"Miss Pynsent is interested in the Vanebury workmen. I shall be

delighted to help at any time."

"Too much interested," said Sir John, bluntly. "I'll tell her she'll be

an out and out Radical by and by. You know she has a nice little place

of her own just outside Vanebury, and she vows she'll go and live there

when she is twenty-one, and work for the good of the people. My

authority over her will cease entirely when she is of age."

"But not your influence," said Sydney.

"Well--I don't know that I have very much. The proper person to

influence Nan will be her husband, when she has one."

"If I were not a poor man----" Sydney began impulsively, and then

stopped short. But a good-humored curl of Sir John's mouth, an inquiring

twinkle in his eye, told him that he must proceed. So, in five minutes,

his proposal was made, and a good deal earlier than he had expected it

to be. It must be confessed that Sir John had led him on. And Sir John

was unfeignedly delighted, though he tried to pretend doubt and

indifference.

"Of course I can't answer for my sister, and she is full young to make

her choice. But I can assure you, Campion, there's no man living to whom

I would sooner see her married than to yourself," he said at the

conclusion of the interview. And then he asked Sydney to dinner, and

went home to pour the story into the ears of his wife.

Lady Pynsent was not so much pleased as was he. She had had visions of a

title for her sister-in-law, and thought that Nan would be throwing

herself away if she married Sydney Campion, although he was a rising

man, and would certainly be solicitor-general before long.

"Well, Nan will have to decide for herself," said Sir John, evading his

wife's remonstrances. "After all, I couldn't refuse the man for her,

could I?" He did not say that he had tried to lead the backward lover

on.

"Yes, you could," said Lady Pynsent. "You could have told him it was out

of the question. But the fact is, you want it. You have literally thrown

Nan at his head ever since he stayed with us last summer. You are so

devoted to your friend, Mr. Campion!"

"You will see that he is a friend to be proud of," said Sir John, with

conviction. "He is one of the cleverest men of the day, he will be one

of the most distinguished. Any woman may envy Nan----"

"If she accepts him," said Lady Pynsent.

"Don't you think she will?"

"I have no idea. In some ways, Nan is so childish; in others, she is a

woman grown. I can never answer for Nan. She takes such idealistic views

of things."

"She's a dear, good girl," said Sir John, rather objecting to this view

of Nan's character.

"My dear John, of course she is! She's a darling. But she is quite

impracticable sometimes, as you know."

Yes, Sir John knew. And for that very reason, he wanted Nan to marry

Sydney Campion.

He warned his wife against speaking to the girl on the subject: he had

promised Campion a fair field, and he was to speak as soon as he got the

opportunity. "He's coming to dinner next Wednesday; he may get his

chance then."

But Sydney got it before Wednesday. He found that the Pynsents were

invited to a garden party--a social function which he usually avoided

with care--for which he also had received a card. The hostess lived at

Fulham, and he knew that her garden was large and shady, sloping to the

river, and full of artfully contrived sequestered nooks, where many a

flirtation was carried on.

"She won't like it so well as Culverley," said Sydney to himself, with a

half smile, "but it will be better than a drawing-room."

He did not like to confess to himself how nervous he felt. His theory

had always been that a man should not propose to a woman unless he is

sure that he will be accepted. He was not at all sure about Nan's

feelings towards him, and yet he was going to propose. He told himself

again that he had not meant to speak so soon--that if he saw any signs

of distaste he should cut short his declaration altogether and defer it

to a more convenient season; but all the same, he knew in his own heart

that he would be horribly disappointed if fate deprived him of the

chance of a decisive interview with Anna Pynsent.

Those who saw him at Lady Maliphant's party that afternoon, smiling,

handsome, debonnair, as usual faultlessly attired, with a pleasant word

for everyone he met and an eye that was perfectly cool and careless,

would have been amazed could they have known the leap that his heart

gave when he caught sight of Lady Pynsent's great scarlet parasol and

trailing black laces, side by side with Nan's dainty white costume. The

girl wore an embroidered muslin, with a yellow sash tied loosely round

her slender waist; the graceful curve of her broad-brimmed hat, fastened

high over one ear like a cavalier's, was softened by drooping white

ostrich feathers; her lace parasol had a knot of yellow ribbon at one

side, to match the tint of her sash. Her long tan gloves and the

Maréchál Niel roses at her neck were finishing touches of the picture

which Sydney was incompetent to grasp in detail, although he felt its

charm on a whole. The sweet, delicate face, with its refined features

and great dark eyes, was one which might well cause a man to barter all

the world for love; and, in Sydney's case, it happened that to gain its

owner meant to gain the world as well. It spoke well for Sydney's

genuine affection that he had ceased of late to think of the worldly

fortune that Nan might bring him, and remembered only that he wanted Nan

Pynsent for herself.

She greeted him with a smile. She had grown a little quieter, a little

more conventional in manner of late: he did not like her any the worse

for that. But, although she did not utter any word of welcome, he

fancied from her face that she was glad to see him; and it was not long

before he found some pretext for strolling off with her to a shadowy and

secluded portion of the grounds. Even then he was not sure whether he

would ask her to be his wife that day, or whether he would postpone the

decisive moment a little longer. Nan's bright, unconscious face was very

charming, undisturbed by fear or doubt: what if he brought a shadow to

it, a cloud that he could not dispel? For one of the very few times in

his life, Sydney did not feel sure of himself.

"Where are you going this summer?" she asked him, as they stood beside

the shining water, and watched the eddies and ripples of the stream.

"I usually go abroad. But Sir John has been asking me to Culverley

again."

"You do not mean to go to Switzerland, then? You spoke of it the other

day."

"No, I think not. I do not want to be so far away from--from London."

"You are so fond of your work: you do not like to be parted from it,"

she said smiling.

"I am fond of it, certainly. I have a good deal to do."

"Oh!" said Nan, innocently, "I thought people who were in Parliament did

nothing but Parliamentary business-like John."

"I have other things to do as well, Miss Pynsent. And in Parliament even

there is a good deal to study and prepare for, if one means to take up a

strong position from the beginning."

"Which, I am sure, you mean to do," she said quickly.

"Thank you. You understand me perfectly--you understand my ambitions, my

hopes and fears----"

She did not look as if she understood him at all.

"Are you ambitious, Mr. Campion? But what do you wish for more than you

have already?"

"Many things. Everything."

"Power, I suppose," said Nan doubtfully; then, with a slightly

interrogative intonation--"and riches?"

"Well--yes."

"But one's happiness does not depend on either."

"It rarely exists without one or the other."

"I don't know. I should like to live in a cottage and be quite poor and

bake the bread, and work hard all day, and sleep soundly all night----"

"Yes, if it were for the sake of those you loved," said Sydney,

venturing to look at her significantly.

Nan nodded, and a faint smile curved her lips: her eyes grew tender and

soft.

"Can you not imagine another kind of life? where you spent yourself

equally for those whom you loved and who loved you, but in happier

circumstances? a life where two congenial souls met and worked together?

Could you not be happy almost anywhere with the one--the man--you

loved?"

Sydney's voice had sunk low, but his eyes expressed more passion than

his voice, which was kept sedulously steady. Nan was more aware of the

look in his eyes than of the words he actually used. She cast a

half-frightened look at him, and then turned rosy-red.

"Could you be happy with me?" he asked her, still speaking very gently.

"Nan, I love you--I love you with all my heart. Will you be my wife?"

And as she surrendered her hands to his close clasp, and looked half

smilingly, half timidly into his face, he knew that his cause was won.

But, alas, for Sydney, that at the height of his love-triumph, a bitter

drop of memory should suddenly poison his pleasure at the fount!

CHAPTER XXVIII.

A SLUMBERING HEART.

Time had hung heavily on Lettice's hands during the first month or two

of her stay on the Continent. No one could have been kinder to her than

Mrs. Hartley, more considerate of her needs and tastes, more anxious to

please and distract her. But the recovery of her nerves from the shock

and strain to which they had been subjected was a slow process, and her

mind began to chafe against the restraint which the weakness of the body

imposed upon it.

The early spring brought relief. Nature repairs her own losses as she

punishes her own excess. Lettice had suffered by the abuse of her energy

and power of endurance, but three months of idleness restored the

balance. The two women lived in a small villa on the outskirts of

Florence, and when they were not away from home, in quest of art or

music, scenery or society, they read and talked to each other, or

recorded their impressions on paper. Mrs. Hartley had many friends in

England, with whom she was wont to exchange many thousand words; and

these had the benefit of the ideas which a winter in Florence had

excited in her mind. Lettice's confidant was her diary, and she sighed

now and then to think that there was no one in the world to whom she

could write the inmost thoughts of her heart, and from whom she could

expect an intelligent and sympathetic response.

No doubt she wrote to Clara, and gave her long accounts of what she saw

and did in Italy; but Clara was absorbed in the cares of matrimony and

motherhood. She had nothing but actualities to offer in return for the

idealities which were Lettice's mental food and drink. This had always

been the basis of their friendship; and it is a basis on which many a

firm friendship has been built.

Lettice had already felt the elasticity of returning health in every

limb and vein when the news reached her of the success of her novel; and

that instantly completed the cure. Her publisher wrote to her in high

spirits, at each demand for a new edition, and he forwarded to her a

handsome cheque "on account," which gave more eloquent testimony of his

satisfaction than anything else. Graham sent her, through Clara, a

bundle of reviews which he had been at the pains of cutting out of the

papers, and Clara added many criticisms, mostly favorable, which she had

heard from her husband and his friends. Lettice had a keen appetite for

praise, as for pleasure of every kind, and she was intoxicated by the

good things which were spoken of her.

"There, dear," she said to Mrs. Hartley one morning, spreading out

before her friend the cheque which she had just received from Mr.

MacAlpine, "you told me that my stupid book had given me nothing more

than a nervous fever, but this has come also to pay the doctor's bill.

Is it not a great deal of money? What a lucky thing that I went in for

half profits, and did not take the paltry fifty pounds which they

offered me?"

"Ah, you need not twit me with what I said before I knew what your book

was made of," said Mrs. Hartley affectionately. "How was I to know that

you could write a novel, when you had only told me that you could

translate a German philosopher? The two things do not sound particularly

harmonious, do they?"

"I suppose I must have made a happy hit with my subject, though I never

thought I had whilst I was writing. I only went straight on, and had not

the least idea that people would find much to like in it. Nor had Mr.

MacAlpine either, for he did not seem at all anxious to publish it."

"It was in you, my darling, and would come out. You have discovered a

mine, and I daresay you can dig as much gold out of it as will suffice

to make you happy."

"Now, what shall we do with this money? We must have a big treat; and I

am going to manage and pay for everything myself starting from to-day.

Shall it be Rome, or the Riviera, or the Engadine; or what do you say to

returning by way of Germany? I do so long to see the Germans at home."

Mrs. Hartley was downcast at once.

"The first thing you want to do with your wealth," she said, "is to make

me feel uncomfortable! Have we not been happy together these six months,

and can you not leave well alone? You know that I am a rich woman,

through no credit of my own--for everything I have came from my husband.

If you talk of spending your money on anyone but yourself, I shall think

that you are pining for independence again, and we may as well pack up

our things and get home."

"Oh dear, what have I said? I did not mean it, my dearest friend--my

best friend in the world! I won't say anything like it again: but I must

go out and spend some money, or I shall not believe in my good fortune.

Can you lend me ten pounds?"

"Yes, that I can!"

"Then let us put our things on, and go into paradise."

"What very dissolute idea, to be sure! But come along. If you will be so

impulsive, I may as well go to take care of you."

So they went out together--the woman of twenty-six and the woman of

sixty, and roamed about the streets of Florence like a couple of

school-girls. And Lettice bought her friend a brooch, and herself a ring

in memory of the day; and as the ten pounds would not cover it she

borrowed fifteen; and then they had a delightful drive through the noble

squares, past many a venerable palace and lofty church, through richly

storied streets, and across a bridge of marble to the other side of the

Arno; so onward till they came to the wood-enshrouded valley, where the

trees were breaking into tender leafage, every shade of green

commingling with the blue screen of the Apennines beyond. Back again

they came into the city of palaces, which they had learned to love, and

alighting near the Duomo sought out a _pasticceria_ in a street hard by,

and ate a genuine school-girl's meal.

"It has been the pleasantest day of my life here!" said Lettice as they

reached home in the evening. "I have not had a cloud upon my

conscience."

"And it has made the old woman young," said Mrs. Hartley, kissing her

friend upon the cheek. "Oh, why are you not my daughter!"

"You would soon have too much of me if I were your daughter. But tell me

what a daughter would have done for you, and let me do it while I can."

"It is not to do, but to be. Be just what you are and never desert me,

and then I will forget that I was once a childless woman."

So the spring advanced, and drew towards summer. And on the first of May

Mrs. Hartley, writing to her cousin, Edith Dalton, the most intimate of

all her confidants, gave a glowing account of Lettice.

"My sweetheart here (she wrote) is cured at last. Three months have gone

since she spoke about returning to England, and I believe she is

thoroughly contented. She has taken to writing again, and seems to be

fairly absorbed in her work, but you may be sure that I shall not let

her overdo it. The death of her mother, and the break-up of their home,

probably severed all the ties that bound her to London; and, so far as I

can see, _not one of them_ remains. I laughed to read that you were

jealous of her. When you and Brooke come here I am certain you will like

her every bit as much as I do. What you tell me of Brooke is rather a

surprise, but I know you must be very happy about it. To have had him

with you for six months at a time, during which he has never once been

up to his club, is a great triumph, and speaks volumes for your clever

management, as well as for your care and tenderness. We shall see him

married and domesticated before a year has passed! I am impatient for

you both to come. Do not let anything prevent you."

It was quite true that Lettice had set to work again, and that she

appeared to have overcome the home-sickness which at one time made her

long to get back to London. Restored health made her feel more satisfied

with her surroundings, and a commission for a new story had found her

just in the humor to sit down and begin. She was penetrated by the

beauty of the Tuscan city which had been her kindly nurse, which was now

her fount of inspiration and inexhaustible source of new ideas. A plot,

characters, scenery, stage, impressed themselves on her imagination as

she wandered amongst the stones and canvasses of Florence; and they grew

upon her more and more distinctly every day, as she steeped herself in

the spirit of the place and time. She would not go back to the

picturesque records of other centuries but took her portraits from men

and women of the time, and tried to recognize in them the descendants of

the artists, scholars, philosophers, and patriots, who have shed undying

fame on the queen-city of northern Italy.

Entirely buried in her work, and putting away from her all that might

interfere with its performance, she forgot for a time both herself and

others. If she was selfish in her isolation it was with the selfishness

of one who for art's sake is prepared to abandon her ease and pleasure

in the laborious pursuit of an ideal. Mrs. Hartley was content to leave

her for a quarter of the day in the solitude of her own room on

condition of sharing her idleness or recreation during the rest of their

waking hours.

Had Lettice forgotten Alan Walcott at this crisis in the lives of both?

When Mrs. Hartley was assuring her cousin that all the ties which had

bound the girl to London were severed, Alan was expiating in prison the

crime of which he had been convicted, which, in his morbid abasement and

despair he was almost ready to confess that he had committed. Was he,

indeed, as he had not very sincerely prayed to be, forgotten by the

woman he loved?

It is no simple question for her biographer to answer off-hand. Lettice,

as we know, had admitted into her heart a feeling of sympathetic

tenderness for Alan, which, under other circumstances, she would have

accepted as worthy to dominate her life and dictate its moods and

duties. But the man for whom this sympathy had been aroused was so

situated that he could not ask her for her love, whilst she could not in

any case have given it if she had been asked. Instinctively she had shut

her eyes to that which she might have read in her own soul, or in his,

if she had cared or dared to look. She had the book before her, but it

was closed and sealed. Where another woman might, have said, "I must

forget him--there is a barrier between us which neither can cross," she

said nothing; but all her training, her instinct, her delicate feeling,

even her timidity and self-distrust, led her insensibly to shun the

paths of memory which would have brought her back to the prospect that

had allured and alarmed her.

Be it remembered that she knew nothing of his later troubles. She had

heard nothing about him since she left England; and Mrs. Hartley, who

honestly believed that Alan had practically effaced himself from their

lives by his own rash act, was sufficiently unscrupulous to keep her

friend in ignorance of what had happened.

So Lettice did not mention Alan, did not keep him in her mind or try to

recall him by any active exercise of her memory; and in this sense she

had forgotten him. Time would show if the impression, so deep and vivid

in its origin, was gradually wearing away, or merely hidden out of

sight. No wonder if Mrs. Hartley thought that she was cured.

Lettice heard of the arrival of the Daltons without any other feeling

than half-selfish misgiving that her work was to be interrupted at a

critical moment, when her mind was full of the ideas on which her story

depended for its success. She had created by her imagination a little

world of human beings, instinct with life and endowed with vivid

character; she had dwelt among her creatures, guided their steps and

inspired their souls, loved them and walked with them from day to day,

until they were no mere puppets dancing to the pull of a string, but

real and veritable men and women. She could not have deserted them by

any spontaneous act of her own, and if she was to be torn away from the

world, which hung upon her fiat, she could not submit to the banishment

without at least an inward lamentation. Art spoils her votaries for the

service of society, and society, as a rule, takes its revenge by

despising or patronizing the artist whilst competing for the possession

of his works.

Brooke Dalton and his sister were lodged in an old palace not far from

Mrs. Hartley's smaller and newer residence; and frequent visits between

the two couples soon put them all on terms of friendly intimacy. Lettice

had always thought well of Mr. Dalton. He reminded her of Angleford, and

the happy days of her early youth. In London he had been genial with

her, and attentive, and considerate in every sense, so that she had been

quite at her ease with him. They met again without constraint, and under

circumstances which enabled Dalton to put forth his best efforts to

please her, without exciting any alarm in her mind, to begin with.

Edith Dalton captivated Lettice at once. She was a handsome woman of

aristocratic type and breeding, tall, slender, and endowed with the

graceful manners of one who has received all the polish of refined

society without losing the simplicity of nature. A year or two younger

than her brother, she had reached an age when most women have given up

the thought of marriage; and in her case there was a sad and sufficient

reason for turning her back upon such joys and consolations as a woman

may reasonably expect to find in wedded life. She had been won in her

girlhood by a man thoroughly fitted to make her happy--a man of wealth

and talent, and honorable service in the State; who, within a week of

their marriage day, had been thrown from his horse and killed. Edith had

not in so many words devoted herself to perpetual maidenhood; but that

was the outcome of the great sorrow of her youth. She had remained

single without growing morose, and her sweet and gentle moods endeared

her to all who came to know her.

With such a companion Lettice was sure to become intimate; or at any

rate, she was sure to respond with warmth to the kindly feeling

displayed for her. Yet there were many points of unlikeness between her

and Edith Dalton. She too was refined, but it was the refinement of

mental culture rather than the moulding of social influences. She too

retained the simplicity of nature, but it was combined with an outspoken

candor which Edith had been taught to shun. Where Lettice would be ready

to assert herself, and claim the rights of independence, Edith would

shrink back with fastidious alarm; where the one was fitted to wage the

warfare of life, and, if need be, to stand out as a champion or pioneer

of her sex, the other would have suffered acutely if she had been forced

into any kind of aggressive combat.

When Brooke told his sister that he had met a woman whom he could love,

she was unfeignedly glad, and never thought of inquiring whether the

woman in question was rich, or well-connected, or moving in good

society. Perhaps she took the last two points for granted, and no doubt

she would have been greatly disappointed if she had found that Brooke's

choice had been otherwise than gentle and refined. But when she saw

Lettice she was satisfied, and set herself by every means in her power

to please and charm her new friend.

As Mrs. Hartley knew and backed the designs of the Daltons, Lettice was

not very fairly matched against the wiles and blandishments of the