The Egoist ...........................................................................................................................................................1

CHAPTER I. A Minor Incident Showing an Hereditary Aptitude in the Use of the Knife

CHAPTER XXIX. In Which the Sensitiveness of Sir Willoughby Is Explained: and He Receives Much

CHAPTER XXXII. Laetitia Dale Discovers a Spiritual Change and Dr Middleton a Physical

CHAPTER XL. Midnight: Sir Willoughby and Laetitia: with Young Crossjay under a Coverlet

CHAPTER XLIII. In Which Sir Willoughby Is Led to Think That the Elements Have Conspired Against Him

CHAPTER XLV. The Patterne Ladies: Mr. Dale: Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer: with Mrs. Mountstuart

Comedy is a game played to throw reflections upon social life, and it deals with human nature in the

drawingroom of civilized men and women, where we have no dust of the struggling outer world, no mire,

no violent crashes, to make the correctness of the representation convincing. Credulity is not wooed through

the impressionable senses; nor have we recourse to the small circular glow of the watchmaker's eye to raise in

bright relief minutest grains of evidence for the routing of incredulity. The Comic Spirit conceives a definite

situation for a number of characters, and rejects all accessories in the exclusive pursuit of them and their

speech. For being a spirit, he hunts the spirit in men; vision and ardour constitute his merit; he has not a

thought of persuading you to believe in him. Follow and you will see. But there is a question of the value of a

Now the world is possessed of a certain big book, the biggest book on earth; that might indeed be called the

Book of Earth; whose title is the Book of Egoism, and it is a book full of the world's wisdom. So full of it,

and of such dimensions is this book, in which the generations have written ever since they took to writing,

Who, says the notable humourist, in allusion to this Book, who can studiously travel through sheets of leaves

now capable of a stretch from the Lizard to the last few poor pulmonary snips and shreds of leagues dancing

on their toes for cold, explorers tell us, and catching breath by good luck, like dogs at bones about a table, on

the edge of the Pole? Inordinate unvaried length, sheer longinquity, staggers the heart, ages the very heart of

us at a view. And how if we manage finally to print one of our pages on the crowscalp of that solitary

majestic outsider? We may get him into the Book; yet the knowledge we want will not be more present with

us than it was when the chapters hung their end over the cliff you ken of at Dover, where sits our great lord

In other words, as I venture to translate him (humourists are difficult: it is a piece of their humour to puzzle

our wits), the inward mirror, the embracing and condensing spirit, is required to give us those interminable

milepost piles of matter (extending wellnigh to the very Pole) in essence, in chosen samples, digestibly. I

conceive him to indicate that the realistic method of a conscientious transcription of all the visible, and a

repetition of all the audible, is mainly accountable for our present branfulness, and that prolongation of the

vasty and the noisy, out of which, as from an undrained fen, steams the malady of sameness, our modern

malady. We have the malady, whatever may be the cure or the cause. We drove in a body to Science the other

day for an antidote; which was as if tired pedestrians should mount the enginebox of headlong trains; and

Science introduced us to our o'erhoary ancestrythem in the Oriental posture; whereupon we set up a

primaeval chattering to rival the Amazon forest nigh nightfall, cured, we fancied. And before daybreak our

disease was hanging on to us again, with the extension of a tail. We had it fore and aft. We were the same,

Art is the specific. We have little to learn of apes, and they may be left. The chief consideration for us is,

what particular practice of Art in letters is the best for the perusal of the Book of our common wisdom; so

that with clearer minds and livelier manners we may escape, as it were, into daylight and song from a land of

foghorns. Shall we read it by the watchmaker's eye in luminous rings eruptive of the infinitesimal, or

pointed with examples and types under the broad Alpine survey of the spirit born of our united social

intelligence, which is the Comic Spirit? Wise men say the latter. They tell us that there is a constant tendency

in the Book to accumulate excess of substance, and such repleteness, obscuring the glass it holds to mankind,

renders us inexact in the recognition of our individual countenances: a perilous thing for civilization. And

these wise men are strong in their opinion that we should encourage the Comic Spirit, who is after all our

own offspring, to relieve the Book. Comedy, they say, is the true diversion, as it is likewise the key of the

great Book, the music of the Book. They tell us how it condenses whole sections of the book in a sentence,

volumes in a character; so that a fair pan of a book outstripping thousands of leagues when unrolled may he

For verily, say they, we must read what we can of it, at least the page before us, if we would be men. One,

with an index on the Book, cries out, in a style pardonable to his fervency: The remedy of your frightful

affliction is here, through the stillatory of Comedy, and not in Science, nor yet in Speed, whose name is but

another for voracity. Why, to be alive, to be quick in the soul, there should be diversity in the companion

throbs of your pulses. Interrogate them. They lump along like the old loblegs of Dobbin the horse; or do their

business like cudgels of carpetthwackers expelling dust or the cottageclock pendulum teaching the infant

hour over midnight simple arithmetic. This too in spite of Bacchus. And let them gallop; let them gallop with

the God bestriding them; gallop to Hymen, gallop to Hades, they strike the same note. Monstrous

monotonousness has enfolded us as with the arms of Amphitrite! We hear a shout of war for a diversion.

Comedy he pronounces to be our means of reading swiftly and comprehensively. She it is who proposes the

correcting of pretentiousness, of inflation, of dulness, and of the vestiges of rawness and grossness to be

found among us. She is the ultimate civilizer, the polisher, a sweet cook. If, he says, she watches over

sentimentalism with a birchrod, she is not opposed to romance. You may love, and warmly love, so long as

you are honest. Do not offend reason. A lover pretending too much by one foot's length of pretence, will have

that foot caught in her trap. In Comedy is the singular scene of charity issuing of disdain under the stroke of

honourable laughter: an Ariel released by Prospero's wand from the fetters of the damned witch Sycorax. And

this laughter of reason refreshed is floriferous, like the magical great gale of the shifty Spring deciding for

Summer. You hear it giving the delicate spirit his liberty. Listen, for comparison, to an unleavened society: a

low as of the udderful cow past milking hour! O for a titled ecclesiastic to curse to excommunication that

Concerning pathos, no ship can now set sail without pathos; and we are not totally deficient of pathos; which

is, I do not accurately know what, if not the ballast, reducible to moisture by patent process, on board our

modern vessel; for it can hardly be the cargo, and the general water supply has other uses; and ships well

charged with it seem to sail the stiffest:there is a touch of pathos. The Egoist surely inspires pity. He who

would desire to clothe himself at everybody's expense, and is of that desire condemned to strip himself stark

naked, he, if pathos ever had a form, might be taken for the actual person. Only he is not allowed to rush at

you, roll you over and squeeze your body for the briny drops. There is the innovation.

You may as well know him out of hand, as a gentleman of our time and country, of wealth and station; a not

flexile figure, do what we may with him; the humour of whom scarcely dimples the surface and is

distinguishable but by very penetrative, very wicked imps, whose fits of roaring below at some generally

imperceptible stroke of his quality, have first made the mild literary angels aware of something comic in him,

when they were one and all about to describe the gentleman on the heading of the records baldly (where

brevity is most complimentary) as a gentleman of family and property, an idol of a decorous island that

admires the concrete. Imps have their freakish wickedness in them to kindle detective vision: malignly do

they love to uncover ridiculousness in imposing figures. Wherever they catch sight of Egoism they pitch their

camps, they circle and squat, and forthwith they trim their lanterns, confident of the ludicrous to come. So

confident that their grip of an English gentleman, in whom they have spied their game, never relaxes until he

begins insensibly to frolic and antic, unknown to himself, and comes out in the native steam which is their

scent of the chase. Instantly off they scour, Egoist and imps. They will, it is known of them, dog a great

House for centuries, and be at the birth of all the new heirs in succession, diligently taking confirmatory

notes, to join hands and chime their chorus in one of their merry rings round the tottering pillar of the House,

when his turn arrives; as if they had (possibly they had) smelt of old date a doomed colossus of Egoism in

that unborn, unconceived inheritor of the stuff of the family. They dare not be chuckling while Egoism is

valiant, while sober, while socially valuable, nationally serviceable. They wait.

Aforetime a grand old Egoism built the House. It would appear that ever finer essences of it are demanded to

sustain the structure; but especially would it appear that a reversion to the gross original, beneath a mask and

in a vein of fineness, is an earthquake at the foundations of the House. Better that it should not have

consented to motion, and have held stubbornly to all ancestral ways, than have bred that anachronic spectre.

The sight, however, is one to make our squatting imps in circle grow restless on their haunches, as they bend

eyes instantly, ears at full cock, for the commencement of the comic drama of the suicide. If this line of verse

There was an ominously anxious watch of eyes visible and invisible over the infancy of Willoughby, fifth in

descent from Simon Patterne, of Patterne Hall, premier of this family, a lawyer, a man of solid acquirements

and stout ambition, who well understood the foundationwork of a House, and was endowed with the power

of saying No to those first agents of destruction, besieging relatives. He said it with the resonant emphasis of

death to younger sons. For if the oak is to become a stately tree, we must provide against the crowding of

timber. Also the tree beset with parasites prospers not. A great House in its beginning lives, we may truly say,

by the knife. Soil is easily got, and so are bricks, and a wife, and children come of wishing for them, but the

vigorous use of the knife is a natural gift and points to growth. Pauper Patternes were numerous when the

fifth head of the race was the hope of his county. A Patterne was in the Marines.

The country and the chief of this family were simultaneously informed of the existence of one Lieutenant

Crossjay Patterne, of the corps of the famous hard fighters, through an act of heroism of the unpretending

cool sort which kindles British blood, on the part of the modest young officer, in the storming of some

eastern riverain stronghold, somewhere about the coast of China. The officer's youth was assumed on the

strength of his rank, perhaps likewise from the tale of his modesty: "he had only done his duty". Our

Willoughby was then at College, emulous of the generous enthusiasm of his years, and strangely impressed

by the report, and the printing of his name in the newspapers. He thought over it for several months, when,

coming to his title and heritage, he sent Lieutenant Crossjay Patterne a cheque for a sum of money amounting

to the gallant fellow's pay per annum, at the same time showing his acquaintance with the first, or chemical,

principles of generosity, in the remark to friends at home, that "blood is thicker than water". The man is a

Marine, but he is a Patterne. How any Patterne should have drifted into the Marines, is of the order of

questions which are senselessly asked of the great dispensary. In the complimentary letter accompanying his

cheque, the lieutenant was invited to present himself at the ancestral Hall, when convenient to him, and he

was assured that he had given his relative and friend a taste for a soldier's life. Young Sir Willoughby was

fond of talking of his "military namesake and distant cousin, young Patternethe Marine". It was funny; and

not less laughable was the description of his namesake's deed of valour: with the rescued British sailor

inebriate, and the hauling off to captivity of the three braves of the black dragon on a yellow ground, and the

tying of them together back to back by their pigtails, and driving of them into our lines upon a newly devised

dyingtop style of march that inclined to the oblique, like the astonished six eyes of the celestial prisoners,

for straight they could not go. The humour of gentlemen at home is always highly excited by such cool feats.

We are a small island, but you see what we do. The ladies at the Hall, Sir Willoughby's mother, and his aunts

Eleanor and Isabel, were more affected than he by the circumstance of their having a Patterne in the Marines.

But how then! We English have ducal blood in business: we have, genealogists tell us, royal blood in

common trades. For all our pride we are a queer people; and you may be ordering butcher's meat of a Tudor,

sitting on the canebottom chairs of a Plantagenet. By and by you may . . . but cherish your reverence. Young

Willoughby made a kind of shockhead or football hero of his gallant distant cousin, and wondered

occasionally that the fellow had been content to dispatch a letter of effusive thanks without availing himself

He was one afternoon parading between showers on the stately garden terrace of the Hall, in company with

his affianced, the beautiful and dashing Constantia Durham, followed by knots of ladies and gentlemen

vowed to fresh air before dinner, while it was to be had. Chancing with his usual happy fortune (we call these

things dealt to us out of the great hidden dispensary, chance) to glance up the avenue of limes, as he was in

the act of turning on his heel at the end of the terrace, and it should be added, discoursing with passion's

privilege of the passion of love to Miss Durham, Sir Willoughby, who was anything but obtuse, experienced

a presentiment upon espying a thickset stumpy man crossing the gravel space from the avenue to the front

steps of the Hall, decidedly not bearing the stamp of the gentleman "on his hat, his coat, his feet, or anything

that was his," Willoughby subsequently observed to the ladies of his family in the Scriptural style of

gentlemen who do bear the stamp. His brief sketch of the creature was repulsive. The visitor carried a bag,

and his coatcollar was up, his hat was melancholy; he had the appearance of a bankrupt tradesman

As to the incident we have to note, it was very slight. The card of Lieutenant Patterne was handed to Sir

He had been disappointed in the age, grossly deceived in the appearance of the man claiming to be his

relative in this unseasonable fashion; and his acute instinct advised him swiftly of the absurdity of

introducing to his friends a heavy unpresentable senior as the celebrated gallant Lieutenant of Marines, and

the same as a member of his family! He had talked of the man too much, too enthusiastically, to be able to do

so. A young subaltern, even if passably vulgar in figure, can be shuffled through by the aid of the heroical

story humourously exaggerated in apology for his aspect. Nothing can be done with a mature and stumpy

Marine of that rank. Considerateness dismisses him on the spot, without parley. It was performed by a

Young Sir Willoughby spoke a word of the rejected visitor to Miss Durham, in response to her startled look:

"I shall drop him a cheque," he said, for she seemed personally wounded, and had a face of crimson.

Dating from the humble departure of Lieutenant Crossjay Patterne up the limesavenue under a gathering

raincloud, the ring of imps in attendance on Sir Willoughby maintained their station with strict observation

of his movements at all hours; and were comparisons in quest, the sympathetic eagerness of the eyes of caged

monkeys for the hand about to feed them, would supply one. They perceived in him a fresh development and

These little scoundrel imps, who have attained to some respectability as the dogs and pets of the Comic

Spirit, had been curiously attentive three years earlier, long before the public announcement of his

engagement to the beautiful Miss Durham, on the day of Sir Willoughby's majority, when Mrs. Mountstuart

Jenkinson said her word of him. Mrs. Mountstuart was a lady certain to say the remembered, if not the right,

thing. Again and again was it confirmed on days of high celebration, days of birth or bridal, how sure she was

to hit the mark that rang the bell; and away her word went over the county: and had she been an uncharitable

woman she could have ruled the county with an iron rod of caricature, so sharp was her touch. A grain of

malice would have sent county faces and characters awry into the currency. She was wealthy and kindly, and

resembled our mother Nature in her reasonable antipathies to one or two things which none can defend, and

her decided preference of persons that shone in the sun. Her word sprang out of her. She looked at you, and

forth it came: and it stuck to you, as nothing laboured or literary could have adhered. Her saying of Laetitia

Dale: "Here she comes with a romantic tale on her eyelashes," was a portrait of Laetitia. And that of Vernon

Whitford: "He is a Phoebus Apollo turned fasting friar," painted the sunken brilliancy of the lean

Of the young Sir Willoughby, her word was brief; and there was the merit of it on a day when he was hearing

from sunrise to the setting of the moon salutes in his honour, songs of praise and Ciceronian eulogy. Rich,

handsome, courteous, generous, lord of the Hall, the feast and the dance, he excited his guests of both sexes

to a holiday of flattery. And, says Mrs. Mountstuart, while grand phrases were mouthing round about him,

That you saw, of course. But after she had spoken you saw much more. Mrs. Mountstuart said it just as others

utter empty nothings, with never a hint of a stress. Her word was taken up, and very soon, from the extreme

end of the long drawingroom, the circulation of something of Mrs. Mountstuart's was distinctly perceptible.

Lady Patterne sent a little Hebe down, skirting the dancers, for an accurate report of it; and even the

inappreciative lips of a very young lady transmitting the word could not damp the impression of its weighty

truthfulness. It was perfect! Adulation of the young Sir Willoughby's beauty and wit, and aristocratic bearing

and mien, and of his moral virtues, was common; welcome if you like, as a form of homage; but common,

almost vulgar, beside Mrs. Mountstuart's quiet little touch of nature. In seeming to say infinitely less than

others, as Miss Isabel Patterne pointed out to Lady Busshe, Mrs. Mountstuart comprised all that the others

had said, by showing the needlessness of allusions to the saliently evident. She was the aristocrat reproving

the provincial. "He is everything you have had the goodness to remark, ladies and dear sirs, he talks

charmingly, dances divinely, rides with the air of a commanderinchief, has the most natural grand pose

possible without ceasing for a moment to be the young English gentleman he is. Alcibiades, fresh from a

Louis IV perruquier, could not surpass him: whatever you please; I could outdo you in sublime comparisons,

So might it be amplified. A simpleseeming word of this import is the triumph of the spiritual, and where it

passes for coin of value, the society has reached a high refinement: Arcadian by the aesthetic route.

Observation of Willoughby was not, as Miss Eleanor Patterne pointed out to Lady Culmer, drawn down to

the leg, but directed to estimate him from the leg upward. That, however, is prosaic. Dwell a short space on

Mrs. Mountstuart's word; and whither, into what fair region, and with how decorously voluptuous a

sensation, do not we fly, who have, through mournful veneration of the Martyr Charles, a coy attachment to

the Court of his Merrie Son, where the leg was ribanded with loveknots and reigned. Oh! it was a naughty

Court. Yet have we dreamed of it as the period when an English cavalier was grace incarnate; far from the

boor now hustling us in another sphere; beautifully mannered, every gesture dulcet. And if the ladies were ...

we will hope they have been traduced. But if they were, if they were too tender, ah! gentlemen were

gentlemen thenworth perishing for! There is this dream in the English country; and it must be an aspiration

after some form of melodious gentlemanliness which is imagined to have inhabited the island at one time; as

among our poets the dream of the period of a circle of chivalry here is encouraged for the pleasure of the

Mrs. Mountstuart touched a thrilling chord. "In spite of men's hateful modern costume, you see he has a leg."

That is, the leg of the born cavalier is before you: and obscure it as you will, dress degenerately, there it is for

ladies who have eyes. You see it: or, you see he has it. Miss Isabel and Miss Eleanor disputed the incidence

of the emphasis, but surely, though a slight difference of meaning may be heard, either will do: many, with a

good show of reason, throw the accent upon leg. And the ladies knew for a fact that Willoughby's leg was

exquisite; he had a cavalier courtsuit in his wardrobe. Mrs. Mountstuart signified that the leg was to be seen

because it was a burning leg. There it is, and it will shine through! He has the leg of Rochester, Buckingham,

Dorset, Suckling; the leg that smiles, that winks, is obsequious to you, yet perforce of beauty selfsatisfied;

that twinkles to a tender midway between imperiousness and seductiveness, audacity and discretion; between

"You shall worship me", and "I am devoted to you;" is your lord, your slave, alternately and in one. It is a leg

of ebb and flow and hightide ripples. Such a leg, when it has done with pretending to retire, will walk

Selfsatisfied it must be. Humbleness does not win multitudes or the sex. It must be vain to have a sheen.

Captivating melodies (to prove to you the unavoidableness of selfsatisfaction when you know that you have

hit perfection), listen to them closely, have an inner pipe of that conceit almost ludicrous when you detect the

And you need not be reminded that he has the leg without the naughtiness. You see eminent in him what we

would fain have brought about in a nation that has lost its leg in gaining a possibly cleaner morality. And that

Well, footmen and courtiers and Scottish Highlanders, and the corps de ballet, draymen too, have legs, and

staring legs, shapely enough. But what are they? not the modulated instrument we mean simply legs for

legwork, dumb as the brutes. Our cavalier's is the poetic leg, a portent, a valiance. He has it as Cicero had a

tongue. It is a lute to scatter songs to his mistress; a rapier, is she obdurate. In sooth a leg with brains in it,

And its shadows are an ambush, its lights a surprise. It blushes, it pales, can whisper, exclaim. It is a peep, a

For the young Sir Willoughby's family and his thoughtful admirers, it is not too much to say that Mrs.

Mountstuart's little word fetched an epoch of our history to colour the evening of his arrival at man's estate.

He was all that Merrie Charles's court should have been, subtracting not a sparkle from what it was. Under

He had received the domestic education of a prince. Little princes abound in a land of heaped riches. Where

they have not to yield military service to an Imperial master, they are necessarily here and there dainty during

youth, sometimes unmanageable, and as they are bound in no personal duty to the State, each is for himself,

with full present, and what is more, luxurious, prospective leisure for the practice of that allegiance. They are

sometimes enervated by it: that must be in continental countries. Happily our climate and our brave blood

precipitate the greater number upon the huntingfield, to do the public service of heading the chase of the

fox, with benefit to their constitutions. Hence a manly as well as useful race of little princes, and Willoughby

was as manly as any. He cultivated himself, he would not be outdone in popular accomplishments. Had the

standard of the public taste been set in philosophy, and the national enthusiasm centred in philosophers, he

would at least have worked at books. He did work at science, and had a laboratory. His admirable passion to

excel, however, was chiefly directed in his youth upon sport; and so great was the passion in him, that it was

He knew himself, nevertheless, to be the most constant of men in his attachment to the sex. He had never

discouraged Laetitia Dale's devotion to him, and even when he followed in the sweeping tide of the beautiful

Constantia Durham (whom Mrs. Mountstuart called "The Racing Cutter"), he thought of Laetitia, and looked

Willoughby's comportment while the showers of adulation drenched him might be likened to the composure

of Indian Gods undergoing worship, but unlike them he reposed upon no seat of amplitude to preserve him

from a betrayal of intoxication; he had to continue tripping, dancing, exactly balancing himself, head to right,

head to left, addressing his idolaters in phrases of perfect choiceness. This is only to say that it is easier to be

a wooden idol than one in the flesh; yet Willoughby was equal to his task. The little prince's education

teaches him that he is other than you, and by virtue of the instruction he receives, and also something, we

know not what, within, he is enabled to maintain his posture where you would be tottering.

Urchins upon whose curly pates grave seniors lay their hands with conventional encomium and speculation,

look older than they are immediately, and Willoughby looked older than his years, not for want of freshness,

Hearing of Mrs. Mountstuart's word on him, he smiled and said, "It is at her service."

The speech was communicated to her, and she proposed to attach a dedicatory strip of silk. And then they

came together, and there was wit and repartee suitable to the electrical atmosphere of the dancingroom, on

the march to a magical hall of supper. Willoughby conducted Mrs. Mountstuart to the suppertable.

"Were I," said she, "twenty years younger, I think I would marry you, to cure my infatuation."

"Then let me tell you in advance, madam," said he, "that I will do everything to obtain a new lease of it,

"It makes the business of choosing a wife for him superhumanly difficult!" Mrs. Mountstuart observed, after

listening to the praises she had set going again when the ladies were weeded of us, in Lady Patterne's Indian

The great question for the county was debated in many households, daughterthronged and daughterless,

long subsequent to the memorable day of Willoughby's coming of age. Lady Busshe was for Constantia

Durham. She laughed at Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson's notion of Laetitia Dale. She was a little older than Mrs.

Mountstuart, and had known Willoughby's father, whose marriage into the wealthiest branch of the Whitford

family had been strictly sagacious. "Patternes marry money; they are not romantic people," she said. Miss

Durham had money, and she had health and beauty: three mighty qualifications for a Patterne bride. Her

father, Sir John Durham, was a large landowner in the western division of the county; a pompous gentleman,

the picture of a fatherinlaw for Willoughby. The father of Miss Dale was a battered army surgeon from

India, tenant of one of Sir Willoughby's cottages bordering Patterne Park. His girl was portionless and a

poetess. Her writing of the song in celebration of the young baronet's birthday was thought a clever venture,

bold as only your timid creatures can be bold. She let the cat out of her bag of verse before the multitude; she

almost proposed to her hero in her rhymes. She was pretty; her eyelashes were long and dark, her eyes

darkblue, and her soul was ready to shoot like a rocket out of them at a look from Willoughby. And he

looked, he certainly looked, though he did not dance with her once that night, and danced repeatedly with

Miss Durham. He gave Laetitia to Vernon Whitford for the final dance of the night, and he may have looked

at her so much in pity of an elegant girl allied to such a partner. The "Phoebus Apollo turned fasting friar"

had entirely forgotten his musical gifts in motion. He crossed himself and crossed his bewildered lady, and

crossed everybody in the figure, extorting shouts of cordial laughter from his cousin Willoughby. Be it said

that the hour was four in the morning, when dancers must laugh at somebody, if only to refresh their feet, and

the wit of the hour administers to the wildest laughter. Vernon was likened to Theseus in the maze, entirely

dependent upon his Ariadne; to a fly released from a jampot; to a "salvage", or green, man caught in a web

of nymphs and made to go the paces. Willoughby was inexhaustible in the happy similes he poured out to

Miss Durham across the lines of Sir Roger de Coverley, and they were not forgotten, they procured him a

reputation as a convivial sparkler. Rumour went the round that he intended to give Laetitia to Vernon for

good, when he could decide to take Miss Durham to himself; his generosity was famous; but that decision,

though the rope was in the form of a knot, seemed reluctant for the conclusive close haul; it preferred the

state of slackness; and if he courted Laetitia on behalf of his cousin, his cousinly love must have been greater

than his passion, one had to suppose. He was generous enough for it, or for marrying the portionless girl

There was a story of a brilliant young widow of our aristocracy who had very nearly snared him. Why should

he object to marry into our aristocracy? Mrs. Mountstuart asked him, and he replied that the girls of that class

have no money, and he doubted the quality of their blood. He had his eyes awake. His duty to his House was

a foremost thought with him, and for such a reason he may have been more anxious to give the slim and not

robust Laetitia to Vernon than accede to his personal inclination. The mention of the widow singularly

offended him, notwithstanding the high rank of the lady named. "A widow?" he said. "I!" He spoke to a

widow; an oldish one truly; but his wrath at the suggestion of his union with a widow led him to be for the

moment oblivious of the minor shades of good taste. He desired Mrs. Mountstuart to contradict the story in

positive terms. He repeated his desire; he was urgent to have it contradicted, and said again, "A widow!"

straightening his whole figure to the erectness of the letter I. She was a widow unmarried a second time, and

it has been known of the stedfast women who retain the name of their first husband, or do not hamper his title

with a little new squire at their skirts, that they can partially approve the objections indicated by Sir

Willoughby. They are thinking of themselves when they do so, and they will rarely say, "I might have

married;" rarely within them will they avow that, with their permission, it might have been. They can catch

an idea of a gentleman's view of the widow's cap. But a niceness that could feel sharply wounded by the

simple rumour of his alliance with the young relict of an earl was mystifying. Sir Willoughby unbent. His

military letter I took a careless glance at itself lounging idly and proudly at ease in the glass of his mind,

decked with a wanton wreath, as he dropped a hint, generously vague, just to show the origin of the rumour,

and the excellent basis it had for not being credited. He was chidden. Mrs. Mountstuart read him a lecture.

She was however able to contradict the tale of the young countess. "There is no fear of his marrying her, my

Meanwhile there was a fear that he would lose his chance of marrying the beautiful Miss Durham.

The dilemmas of little princes are often grave. They should be dwelt on now and then for an example to poor

struggling commoners, of the slings and arrows assailing fortune's most favoured men, that we may preach

contentment to the wretch who cannot muster wherewithal to marry a wife, or has done it and trots the streets,

packladen, to maintain the dame and troops of children painfully reared to fill subordinate stations.

According to our reading, a moral is always welcome in a moral country, and especially so when silly envy is

to be chastised by it, the restless craving for change rebuked. Young Sir Willoughby, then, stood in this

dilemma: a lady was at either hand of him; the only two that had ever, apart from metropolitan conquests,

not to be recited, touched his emotions. Susceptible to beauty, he had never seen so beautiful a girl as

Constantia Durham. Equally susceptible to admiration of himself, he considered Laetitia Dale a paragon of

cleverness. He stood between the queenly rose and the modest violet. One he bowed to; the other bowed to

him. He could not have both; it is the law governing princes and pedestrians alike. But which could he

forfeit? His growing acquaintance with the world taught him to put an increasing price on the sentimcnts of

Miss Dale. Still Constantia's beauty was of a kind to send away beholders aching. She had the glory of the

racing cutter full sail on a whining breeze; and she did not court to win him, she flew. In his more reflective

hour the attractiveness of that lady which held the mirror to his features was paramount. But he had

passionate snatches when the magnetism of the flyer drew him in her wake. Further to add to the complexity,

he loved his liberty; he was princelier free; he had more subjects, more slaves; he ruled arrogantly in the

world of women; he was more himself. His metropolitan experiences did not answer to his liking the

particular question, Do we bind the woman down to us idolatrously by making a wife of her?

In the midst of his deliberations, a report of the hot pursuit of Miss Durham, casually mentioned to him by

Lady Busshe, drew an immediate proposal from Sir Willoughby. She accepted him, and they were engaged.

She had been nibbled at, all but eaten up, while he hung dubitative; and though that was the cause of his

winning her, it offended his niceness. She had not come to him out of cloistral purity, out of perfect radiancy.

Spiritually, likewise, was he a little prince, a despotic prince. He wished for her to have come to him out of an

eggshell, somewhat more astonished at things than a chicken, but as completely enclosed before he tapped

the shell, and seeing him with her sex's eyes first of all men. She talked frankly of her cousins and friends,

young males. She could have replied to his bitter wish: "Had you asked me on the night of your twentyfirst

birthday, Willoughby!" Since then she had been in the dust of the world, and he conceived his peculiar

antipathy, destined to be so fatal to him, from the earlier hours of his engagement. He was quaintly incapable

of a jealousy of individuals. A young Captain Oxford had been foremost in the swarm pursuing Constantia.

Willoughby thought as little of Captain Oxford as he did of Vernon Whitford. His enemy was the world, the

mass, which confounds us in a lump, which has breathed on her whom we have selected, whom we cannot,

can never, rub quite clear of her contact with the abominated crowd. The pleasure of the world is to bowl

down our soldierly letter I; to encroach on our identity, soil our niceness. To begin to think is the beginning

As soon the engagement was published all the county said that there had not been a chance for Laetitia, and

Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson humbly remarked, in an attitude of penitence, "I'm not a witch." Lady Busshe

could claim to be one; she had foretold the event. Laetitia was of the same opinion as the county. She had

looked up, but not hopefully. She had only looked up to the brightest, and, as he was the highest, how could

she have hoped? She was the solitary companion of a sick father, whose inveterate prognostic of her, that she

would live to rule at Patterne Hall, tortured the poor girl in proportion as he seemed to derive comfort from it.

The noise of the engagement merely silenced him; recluse invalids cling obstinately to their ideas. He had

observed Sir Willoughby in the society of his daughter, when the young baronet revived to a sprightly

boyishness immediately. Indeed, as big boy and little girl, they had played together of old. Willoughby had

been a handsome, fair boy. The portrait of him at the Hall, in a hat, leaning on his pony, with crossed legs,

and long flaxen curls over his shoulders, was the image of her soul's most present angel; and, as a man, he

hadshe did not suppose intentionallysubjected her nature to bow to him; so submissive was she, that it

was fuller happiness for her to think him right in all his actions than to imagine the circumstances different.

This may appear to resemble the ecstasy of the devotee of Juggernaut, It is a form of the passion inspired by

little princes, and we need not marvel that a conservative sex should assist to keep them in their lofty places.

What were there otherwise to look up to? We should have no dazzling beaconlights if they were levelled

and treated as clod earth; and it is worth while for here and there a woman to be burned, so long as women's

general adoration of an ideal young man shall be preserved. Purity is our demand of them. They may justly

cry for attraction. They cannot have it brighter than in the universal bearing of the eyes of their sisters upon a

little prince, one who has the ostensible virtues in his pay, and can practise them without injuring himself to

make himself unsightly. Let the races of men be byandby astonished at their Gods, if they please.

Laetitia did continue. She saw Miss Durham at Patterne on several occasions. She admired the pair. She had a

wish to witness the bridal ceremony. She was looking forward to the day with that mixture of eagerness and

withholding which we have as we draw nigh the disenchanting termination of an enchanting romance, when

Sir Willoughby met her on a Sunday morning, as she crossed his park solitarily to church. They were within

ten days of the appointed ceremony. He should have been away at Miss Durham's end of the county. He had,

Laetitia knew, ridden over to her the day before; but there he was; and very unwontedly, quite surprisingly,

he presented his arm to conduct Laetitia to the churchdoor, and talked and laughed in a way that reminded

her of a hunting gentleman she had seen once rising to his feet, staggering from an ugly fall across hedge and

fence into one of the lanes of her short winter walks. "All's well, all sound, never better, only a scratch!" the

gentleman had said, as he reeled and pressed a bleeding head. Sir Willoughby chattered of his felicity in

meeting her. "I am really wonderfully lucky," he said, and he said that and other things over and over,

incessantly talking, and telling an anecdote of county occurrences, and laughing at it with a mouth that would

not widen. He went on talking in the church porch, and murmuring softly some steps up the aisle, passing the

pews of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson and Lady Busshe. Of course he was entertaining, but what a strangeness

it was to Laetitia! His face would have been half under an antique bonnet. It came very close to hers, and the

After the service, he avoided the great ladies by sauntering up to within a yard or two of where she sat; he

craved her hand on his arm to lead her forth by the park entrance to the church, all the while bending to her,

discoursing rapidly, appearing radiantly interested in her quiet replies, with fits of intentness that stared itself

out into dim abstraction. She hazarded the briefest replies for fear of not having understood him.

The impression he left with her was, that he might yesterday during his ride have had an accident and fallen

She would have asked that, if she had not known him for so thorough an Englishman, in his dislike to have it

He called the next day to claim her for a walk. He assured her she had promised it, and he appealed to her

father, who could not testify to a promise he had not heard, but begged her to leave him to have her walk. So

once more she was in the park with Sir Willoughby, listening to his raptures over old days. A word of assent

from her sufficed him. "I am now myself," was one of the remarks he repeated this day. She dilated on the

He did not speak of Miss Durham, and Laetitia became afraid to mention her name.

At their parting, Willoughby promised Laetitia that he would call on the morrow. He did not come; and she

It was a lamentable tale. He had ridden to Sir John Durham's mansion, a distance of thirty miles, to hear, on

his arrival, that Constantia had quitted her father's house two days previously on a visit to an aunt in London,

and had just sent word that she was the wife of Captain Oxford, hussar, and messmate of one of her brothers.

A letter from the bride awaited Willoughby at the Hall. He had ridden back at night, not caring how he used

his horse in order to get swiftly home, so forgetful of himself was he under the terrible blow. That was the

night of Saturday. On the day following, being Sunday, he met Laetitia in his park, led her to church, led her

out of it, and the day after that, previous to his disappearance for some weeks, was walking with her in full

He had, indeed, you see, been very fortunately, if not considerately, liberated by Miss Durham. He, as a man

of honour, could not have taken the initiative, but the frenzy of a jealous girl might urge her to such a course;

and how little he suffered from it had been shown to the world. Miss Durham, the story went, was his

mother's choice for him against his heart's inclinations; which had finally subdued Lady Patterne.

Consequently, there was no longer an obstacle between Sir Willoughby and Miss Dale. It was a pleasant and

romantic story, and it put most people in good humour with the county's favourite, as his choice of a

portionless girl of no position would not have done without the shock of astonishment at the conduct of Miss

Durham, and the desire to feel that so prevailing a gentleman was not in any degree pitiable. Constantia was

called "that mad thing". Laetitia broke forth in novel and abundant merits; and one of the chief points of

requisition in relation to Patternea Lady Willoughby who would entertain well and animate the deadness

of the Hall, became a certainty when her gentleness and liveliness and exceeding cleverness were considered.

She was often a visitor at the Hall by Lady Patterne's express invitation, and sometimes on these occasions

Willoughby was there too, superintending the filling up of his laboratory, though he was not at home to the

county; it was not expected that he should be yet. He had taken heartily to the pursuit of science, and spoke of

little else. Science, he said, was in our days the sole object worth a devoted pursuit. But the sweeping remark

could hardly apply to Laetitia, of whom he was the courteous, quiet wooer you behold when a man has

broken loose from an unhappy tangle to return to the lady of his first and strongest affections.

Some months of homely courtship ensued, and then, the decent interval prescribed by the situation having

Let us not inquire into the feelings of patiently starving women; they must obtain some sustenance of their

own, since, as you perceive, they live; evidently they are not in need of a great amount of nourishment; and

we may set them down for creatures with a rushlight of animal fire to warm them. They cannot have much

vitality who are so little exclamatory. A corresponding sentiment of patient compassion, akin to scorn, is

provoked by persons having the opportunity for pathos, and declining to use it. The public bosom was open

to Laetitia for several weeks, and had she run to it to bewail herself she would have been cherished in

thankfulness for a country drama. There would have been a party against her, cold people, critical of her

pretensions to rise from an unrecognized sphere to be mistress of Patterne Hall, but there would also have

been a party against Sir Willoughby, composed of the two or three revolutionists, tired of the yoke, which are

to be found in England when there is a stir; a larger number of born sympathetics, ever ready to yield the tear

for the tear; and here and there a Samaritan soul prompt to succour poor humanity in distress. The

opportunity passed undramatized. Laetitia presented herself at church with a face mildly devout, according to

her custom, and she accepted invitations to the Hall, she assisted at the reading of Willoughby's letters to his

family, and fed on dry husks of him wherein her name was not mentioned; never one note of the summoning

So, very soon the public bosom closed. She had, under the fresh interpretation of affairs, too small a spirit to

be Lady Willoughby of Patterne; she could not have entertained becomingly; he must have seen that the girl

was not the match for him in station, and off he went to conquer the remainder of a troublesome first

attachment, no longer extremely disturbing, to judge from the tenour of his letters; really incomparable

letters! Lady Busshe and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson enjoyed a perusal of them. Sir Willoughby appeared as

a splendid young representative island lord in these letters to his family, despatched from the principal cities

of the United States of America. He would give them a sketch of "our democratic cousins", he said. Such

cousins! They might all have been in the Marines. He carried his English standard over that continent, and by

simply jotting down facts, he left an idea of the results of the measurement to his family and friends at home.

He was an adept in the irony of incongruously grouping. The nature of the Equality under the stars and stripes

was presented in this manner. Equality! Reflections came occasionally: "These cousins of ours are highly

amusing. I am among the descendants of the Roundheads. Now and then an allusion to old domestic

differences, in perfect good temper. We go on in our way; they theirs, in the apparent belief that

Republicanism operates remarkable changes in human nature. Vernon tries hard to think it does. The upper

ten of our cousins are the Infernal of Paris. The rest of them is Radical England, as far as I am acquainted

with that section of my country."Where we compared, they were absurd; where we contrasted, they were

monstrous. The contrast of Vernon's letters with Willoughby's was just as extreme. You could hardly have

taken them for relatives travelling together, or Vernon Whitford for a born and bred Englishman. The same

scenes furnished by these two pens might have been sketched in different hemispheres. Vernon had no irony.

He had nothing of Willoughby's epistolary creative power, which, causing his family and friends to exclaim:

"How like him that is!" conjured them across the broad Atlantic to behold and clap hands at his lordliness.

They saw him distinctly, as with the naked eye; a word, a turn of the pen, or a word unsaid, offered the

picture of him in America, Japan, China, Australia, nay, the continent of Europe, holding an English review

of his Maker's grotesques. Vernon seemed a sheepish fellow, without stature abroad, glad of a compliment,

grateful for a dinner, endeavouring sadly to digest all he saw and heard. But one was a Patterne; the other a

Whitford. One had genius; the other pottered after him with the title of student. One was the English

gentleman wherever he went; the other was a new kind of thing, nondescript, produced in England of late,

Vernon's dancing in America was capitally described by Willoughby. "Adieu to our cousins!" the latter wrote

on his voyage to Japan. "I may possibly have had some vogue in their ballrooms, and in showing them an

English seat on horseback: I must resign myself if I have not been popular among them. I could not sing their

national songif a congery of states be a nationand I must confess I listened with frigid politeness to their

singing of it. A great people, no doubt. Adieu to them. I have had to tear old Vernon away. He had serious

thoughts of settling, means to correspond with some of them." On the whole, forgetting two or more "traits of

insolence" on the part of his hosts, which he cited, Willoughby escaped pretty comfortably. The President had

been, consciously or not, uncivil, but one knew his origin! Upon these interjections, placable flicks of the

lionly tail addressed to Britannia the Ruler, who expected him in some mildish way to lash terga cauda in

retiring, Sir Willoughby Patterne passed from a land of alien manners; and ever after he spoke of America

respectfully and pensively, with a tail tucked in, as it were. His travels were profitable to himself. The fact is,

that there are cousins who come to greatness and must be pacified, or they will prove annoying. Heaven

Willoughby returned to his England after an absence of three years. On a fair April morning, the last of the

month, he drove along his park palings, and, by the luck of things, Laetitia was the first of his friends whom

he met. She was crossing from field to field with a band of schoolchildren, gathering wild flowers for the

morrow Mayday. He sprang to the ground and seized her hand. "Laetitia Dale!" he said. He panted. "Your

name is sweet English music! And you are well?" The anxious question permitted him to read deeply in her

eyes. He found the man he sought there, squeezed him passionately, and let her go, saying: "I could not have

prayed for a lovelier homescene to welcome me than you and these children flowergathering. I don't

He begged her to distribute a gold coin among the little ones; asked for the names of some of them, and

repeated: "Mary, Susan, Charlotteonly the Christian names, pray! Well, my dears, you will bring your

garlands to the Hall tomorrow morning; and mind, early! no slugabeds tomorrow; I suppose I am browned,

Laetitia?" He smiled in apology for the foreign sun, and murmured with rapture: "The green of this English

country is unsurpassed. It is wonderful. Leave England and be baked, if you would appreciate it. You can't,

"Thirty!" said he. "It seems to me that length. At least, I am immensely older. But looking at you, I could

think it less than three. You have not changed. You are absolutely unchanged. I am bound to hope so. I shall

see you soon. I have much to talk of, much to tell you. I shall hasten to call on your father. I have specially to

speak with him. Iwhat happiness this is, Laetitia! But I must not forget I have a mother. Adieu; for some

She dismissed the children to their homes. Plucking primroses was hard labour nowa dusty business. She

could have wished that her planet had not descended to earth, his presence agitated her so; but his enthusiastic

patriotism was like a shower that, in the Spring season of the year, sweeps against the hardbinding East and

melts the air and brings out new colours, makes life flow; and her thoughts recurred in wonderment to the

behaviour of Constantia Durham. That was Laetitia's manner of taking up her weakness once more. She could

almost have reviled the woman who had given this beneficent magician, this pathetic exile, of the aristocratic

sunburned visage and deeply scrutinizing eyes, cause for grief. How deeply his eyes could read! The

starveling of patience awoke to the idea of a feast. The sense of hunger came with it, and hope came, and

patience fled. She would have rejected hope to keep patience nigh her; but surely it can not always be Winter!

said her reasoning blood, and we must excuse her as best we can if she was assured, by her restored warmth

that Willoughby came in the order of the revolving seasons, marking a long Winter past. He had specially to

speak with her father, he had said. What could that mean? What, butShe dared not phrase it or view it.

Mr. Dale, in the evening of that pregnant day, eulogized Sir Willoughby as a landlord. A new lease of the

cottage was to be granted him on the old terms, he said. Except that Sir Willoughby had congratulated him in

the possession of an excellent daughter, their interview was one of landlord and tenant, it appeared; and

Laetitia said, "So we shall not have to leave the cottage?" in a tone of satisfaction, while she quietly gave a

wrench to the neck of the young hope in her breast. At night her diary received the line: "This day I was a

Patience travelled back to her sullenly. As we must have some kind of food, and she had nothing else, she

took to that and found it dryer than of yore. It is a composing but a lean dietary. The dead are patient, and we

get a certain likeness to them in feeding on it unintermittingly overlong. Her hollowed cheeks with the fallen

leaf in them pleaded against herself to justify her idol for not looking down on one like her. She saw him

when he was at the Hall. He did not notice any change. He was exceedingly gentle and courteous. More than

once she discovered his eyes dwelling on her, and then he looked hurriedly at his mother, and Laetitia had to

shut her mind from thinking, lest thinking should be a sin and hope a guilty spectre. But had his mother

objected to her? She could not avoid asking herself. His tour of the globe had been undertaken at his mother's

desire; she was an ambitious lady, in failing health; and she wished to have him living with her at Patterne,

One day Sir Willoughby, in the quiet manner which was his humour, informed her that he had become a

country gentleman; he had abandoned London, he loathed it as the burialplace of the individual man. He

intended to sit down on his estates and have his cousin Vernon Whitford to assist him in managing them, he

said; and very amusing was his description of his cousin's shifts to live by literature, and add enough to a

beggarly income to get his usual two months of the year in the Alps. Previous to his great tour, Willoughby

had spoken of Vernon's judgement with derision; nor was it entirely unknown that Vernon had offended his

family pride by some extravagant act. But after their return he acknowledged Vernon's talents, and seemed

The new arrangement gave Laetitia a companion for her walks. Pedestrianism was a sour business to

Willoughby, whose exclamation of the word indicated a willingness for any amount of exercise on

horseback; but she had no horse, and so, while he hunted, Laetitia and Vernon walked, and the

neighbourhood speculated on the circumstances, until the ladies Eleanor and Isabel Patterne engaged her

more frequently for carriage exercise, and Sir Willoughby was observed riding beside them.

A real and sunny pleasure befell Laetitia in the establishment of young Crossjay Patterne under her roof; the

son of the lieutenant, now captain, of Marines; a boy of twelve with the sprights of twelve boys in him, for

whose board and lodgement Vernon provided by arrangement with her father. Vernon was one of your men

that have no occupation for their money, no bills to pay for repair of their property, and are insane to spend.

He had heard of Captain Patterne's large family, and proposed to have his eldest boy at the Hall, to teach him;

but Willoughby declined to house the son of such a father, predicting that the boy's hair would be red, his

skin eruptive, and his practices detestable. So Vernon, having obtained Mr. Dale's consent to accommodate

this youth, stalked off to Devonport, and brought back a rosycheeked, roundbodied rogue of a boy, who

fell upon meats and puddings, and defeated them, with a captivating simplicity in his confession that he had

never had enough to eat in his life. He had gone through a training for a plentiful table. At first, after a

number of helps, young Crossjay would sit and sigh heavily, in contemplation of the unfinished dish.

Subsequently, he told his host and hostess that he had two sisters above his own age, and three brothers and

His pathos was most comical. It was a good month before he could see pudding taken away from table

without a sigh of regret that he could not finish it as deputy for the Devonport household. The pranks of the

little fellow, and his revel in a country life, and muddy wildness in it, amused Laetitia from morning to night.

She. when she had caught him, taught him in the morning; Vernon, favoured by the chase, in the afternoon.

Young Crossjay would have enlivened any household. He was not only indolent, he was opposed to the

acquisition of knowledge through the medium of books, and would say: "But I don't want to!" in a tone to

make a logician thoughtful. Nature was very strong in him. He had, on each return of the hour for instruction,

to be plucked out of the earth, rank of the soil, like a root, for the exercise of his big round headpiece on those

tyrannous puzzles. But the habits of birds, and the place for their eggs, and the management of rabbits, and

the tickling of fish, and poaching joys with combative boys of the district, and how to wheedle a cook for a

luncheon for a whole day in the rain, he soon knew of his great nature. His passion for our naval service was

a means of screwing his attention to lessons after he had begun to understand that the desert had to be

traversed to attain midshipman's rank. He boasted ardently of his fighting father, and, chancing to be near the

Hall as he was talking to Vernon and Laetitia of his father, he propounded a question close to his heart, and

he put it in these words, following: "My father's the one to lead an army!" when he paused. "I say, Mr.

Whitford, Sir Willoughby's kind to me, and gives me crownpieces, why wouldn't he see my father, and my

father came here ten miles in the rain to see him, and had to walk ten miles back, and sleep at an inn?"

The only answer to be given was, that Sir Willoughby could not have been at home. "Oh! my father saw him,

and Sir Willoughby said he was not at home," the boy replied, producing an odd ring in the ear by his

repetition of "not at home" in the same voice as the apology, plainly innocent of malice. Vernon told Laetitia,

Unlike the horse of the adage. it was easier to compel young Crossjay to drink of the waters of instruction

than to get him to the brink. His heart was not so antagonistic as his nature, and by degrees, owing to a proper

mixture of discipline and cajolery, he imbibed. He was whistling at the cook's windows after a day of wicked

truancy, on an April night, and reported adventures over the supper supplied to him. Laetitia entered the

kitchen with a reproving forefinger. He jumped to kiss her, and went on chattering of a place fifteen miles

distant, where he had seen Sir Willoughby riding with a young lady. The impossibility that the boy should

have got so far on foot made Laetitia doubtful of his veracity, until she heard that a gentleman had taken him

up on the road in a gig, and had driven him to a farm to show him strings of birds" eggs and stuffed birds of

every English kind, kingfishers, yaffles, black woodpeckers, goatsucker owls, more mouth than head, with

dusty, darkspotted wings, like moths; all very circumstantial. Still, in spite of his tea at the farm, and ride

back by rail at the gentleman's expense, the tale seemed fictitious to Laetitia until Crossjay related how that

he had stood to salute on the road to the railway, and taken off his cap to Sir Willoughby, and Sir Willoughby

had passed him, not noticing him, though the young lady did, and looked back and nodded. The hue of truth

Strange eclipse, when the hue of truth comes shadowing over our bright ideal planet. It will not seem the

planet's fault, but truth's. Reality is the offender; delusion our treasure that we are robbed of. Then begins

with us the term of wilful delusion, and its necessary accompaniment of the disgust of reality; exhausting the

Hints were dropping about the neighbourhood; the hedgeways twittered, the treetops cawed. Mrs.

Mountstuart Jenkinson was loud on the subject: "Patterne is to have a mistress at last, you say? But there

never was a doubt of his marryinghe must marry; and, so long as he does not marry a foreign woman, we

have no cause to complain. He met her at Cherriton. Both were struck at the same moment. Her father is, I

hear, some sort of learned man; money; no land. No house either, I believe. People who spend half their time

on the Continent. They are now for a year at Upton Park. The very girl to settle down and entertain when she

does think of settling. Eighteen, perfect manners; you need not ask if a beauty. Sir Willoughby will have his

dues. We must teach her to make amends to himbut don't listen to Lady Busshe! He was too young at

twentythree or twentyfour. No young man is ever jilted; he is allowed to escape. A young man married is a

fireeater bound over to keep the peace; if he keeps it he worries it. At thirtyone or thirtytwo he is ripe for

his command, because he knows how to bend. And Sir Willoughby is a splendid creature, only wanting a

wife to complete him. For a man like that to go on running about would never do. Soberlyno! It would

soon be getting ridiculous. He has been no worse than other men, probably betterinfinitely more

excusable; but now we have him, and it was time we should. I shall see her and study her, sharply, you may

In confirmation of the swelling buzz, the Rev. Dr. Middleton and his daughter paid a flying visit to the Hall,

where they were seen only by the members of the Patterne family. Young Crossjay had a short conversation

with Miss Middleton, and ran to the cottage full of hershe loved the navy and had a merry face. She had a

smile of very pleasant humour according to Vernon. The young lady was outlined to Laetitia as tall, elegant,

lively; and painted as carrying youth like a flag. With her smile of "very pleasant humour", she could not but

Vernon spoke more of her father, a scholar of high repute; happily, a scholar of an independent fortune. His

maturer recollection of Miss Middleton grew poetic, or he described her in an image to suit a poetic end: "She

gives you an idea of the Mountain Echo. Doctor Middleton has one of the grandest heads in England."

Laetitia went to bed and walked through the day conceiving the Mountain Echo the swift, wild spirit, Clara

by name, sent fleeting on a far half circle by the voice it is roused to subserve; sweeter than beautiful, high

above drawingroom beauties as the colours of the sky; and if, at the same time, elegant and of loveable

smiling, could a man resist her? To inspire the title of Mountain Echo in any mind, a young lady must be

singularly spiritualized. Her father doated on her, Vernon said. Who would not? It seemed an additional

cruelty that the grace of a poetical attractiveness should be round her, for this was robbing Laetitia of some of

her own little fortune, mystical though that might be. But a man like Sir Willoughby had claims on poetry,

possessing as he did every manly grace; and to think that Miss Middleton had won him by virtue of

something native to her likewise, though mystically, touched Laetitia with a faint sense of relationship to the

chosen girl. "What is in me, he sees on her." It decked her pride to think so, as a wreath on the gravestone.

She encouraged her imagination to brood over Clara, and invested her designedly with romantic charms, in

spite of pain; the ascetic zealot hugs his share of Heavenmost bitter, most blessedin his hairshirt and

scourge, and Laetitia's happiness was to glorify Clara. Through that chosen rival, through her comprehension

of the spirit of Sir Willoughby's choice of one such as Clara, she was linked to him yet.

Her mood of ecstatic fidelity was a dangerous exaltation; one that in a desert will distort the brain, and in the

world where the idol dwells will put him, should he come nigh, to its own furnacetest, and get a clear brain

out of a burnt heart. She was frequently at the Hall, helping to nurse Lady Patterne. Sir Willoughby had

hitherto treated her as a dear insignificant friend, to whom it was unnecessary that he should mention the

He had, however, in the contemplation of what he was gaining, fallen into anxiety about what he might be

losing. She belonged to his brilliant youth; her devotion was the bride of his youth; he was a man who lived

backward almost as intensely as in the present; and, notwithstanding Laetitia's praiseworthy zeal in attending

on his mother, he suspected some unfaithfulness: hardly without cause: she had not looked paler of late; her

eyes had not reproached him; the secret of the old days between them had been as little concealed as it was

exposed. She might have buried it, after the way of woman, whose bosoms can be tombs, if we and the world

allow them to be; absolutely sepulchres, where you lie dead, ghastly. Even if not dead and horrible to think

of, you may be lying cold, somewhere in a corner. Even if embalmed, you may not be much visited. And how

is the world to know you are embalmed? You are no better than a rotting wretch to the world that does not

have peeps of you in the woman's breast, and see lights burning and an occasional exhibition of the services

of worship. There are womentell us not of her of Ephesus!that have embalmed you, and have quitted the

world to keep the tapers alight, and a stranger comes, and they, who have your image before them, will

suddenly blow out the vestal flames and treat you as dust to fatten the garden of their bosoms for a fresh

flower of love. Sir Willoughby knew it; he had experience of it in the form of the stranger; and he knew the

He waylaid Laetitia, to talk of himself and his plans: the project of a run to Italy. Enviable? Yes, but in

England you live the higher moral life. Italy boasts of sensual beauty; the spiritual is yours. "I know Italy

well; I have often wished to act as a cicerone to you there. As it is, I suppose I shall be with those who know

the land as well as I do, and will not be particularly enthusiastic:if you are what you were?" He was guilty

of this perplexing twist from one person to another in a sentence more than once. While he talked exclusively

of himself it seemed to her a condescension. In time he talked principally of her, beginning with her

admirable care of his mother; and he wished to introduce "a Miss Middleton" to her; he wanted her opinion of

Miss Middleton; he relied on her intuition of character, had never known it err.

"If I supposed it could err, Miss Dale, I should not be so certain of myself. I am bound up in my good opinion

of you, you see; and you must continue the same, or where shall I be?" Thus he was led to dwell upon

friendship, and the charm of the friendship of men and women, "Platonism", as it was called. "I have laughed

at it in the world, but not in the depth of my heart. The world's platonic attachments are laughable enough.

You have taught me that the ideal of friendship is possiblewhen we find two who are capable of a

disinterested esteem. The rest of life is duty; duty to parents, duty to country. But friendship is the holiday of

those who can be friends. Wives are plentiful, friends are rare. I know how rare!"

Laetitia swallowed her thoughts as they sprang up. Why was he torturing her?to give himself a holiday?

She could bear to lose himshe was used to itand bear his indifference, but not that he should disfigure

himself; it made her poor. It was as if he required an oath of her when he said: "Italy! But I shall never see a

day in Italy to compare with the day of my return to England, or know a pleasure so exquisite as your

welcome of me. Will you be true to that? May I look forward to just another such meeting?"

He pressed her for an answer. She gave the best she could. He was dissatisfied, and to her hearing it was

hardly in the tone of manliness that he entreated her to reassure him; he womanized his language. She had to

say: "I am afraid I can not undertake to make it an appointment, Sir Willoughby," before he recovered his

alertness, which he did, for he was anything but obtuse, with the reply, "You would keep it if you promised,

and freeze at your post. So, as accidents happen, we must leave it to fate. The will's the thing. You know my

detestation of changes. At least I have you for my tenant, and wherever I am, I see your light at the end of my

"So far, then," he murmured. "You will give me a long notice, and it must be with my consent if you think of

"That is the dream of the palace. But to be one, and not to wish to be other, is quiet sleep in comparison."

"You paint a cottage in colours that tempt one to run from big houses and households."

"You may know me," said he, bowing and passing on contentedly. He stopped. "But I am not ambitious."

He passed on regretfully. Clara Middleton did not study and know him like Laetitia Dale.

Laetitia was left to think it pleased him to play at cat and mouse. She had not "hit him to the life", or she

At her next sitting by the bedside of Lady Patterne she received a certain measure of insight that might have

The old lady was affectionately confidential in talking of her one subject, her son. "And here is another

dashing girl, my dear; she has money and health and beauty; and so has he; and it appears a fortunate union; I

hope and pray it may be; but we begin to read the world when our eyes grow dim, because we read the plain

lines, and I ask myself whether money and health and beauty on both sides have not been the mutual

attraction. We tried it before; and that girl Durham was honest, whatever we may call her. I should have

desired an appreciative thoughtful partner for him, a woman of mind, with another sort of wealth and beauty.

She was honest, she ran away in time; there was a worse thing possible than that. And now we have the same

chapter, and the same kind of person, who may not be quite as honest; and I shall not see the end of it.

Promise me you will always be good to him; be my son's friend; his Egeria, he names you. Be what you were

to him when that girl broke his heart, and no one, not even his mother, was allowed to see that he suffered

anything. Comfort him in his sensitiveness. Willoughby has the most entire faith in you. Were that

destroyed I shudder! You are, he says, and he has often said, his image of the constant woman.

Laetitia's hearing took in no more. She repeated to herself for days: "His image of the constant woman!"

Now, when he was a second time forsaking her, his praise of her constancy wore the painful ludicrousness of

The great meeting of Sir Willoughby Patterne and Miss Middleton had taken place at Cherriton Grange, the

seat of a county grandee, where this young lady of eighteen was first seen rising above the horizon. She had

money and health and beauty, the triune of perfect starriness, which makes all men astronomers. He looked

on her, expecting her to look at him. But as soon as he looked he found that he must be in motion to win a

look in return. He was one of a pack; many were ahead of him, the whole of them were eager. He had to

debate within himself how best to communicate to her that he was Willoughby Patterne, before her gloves

were too much soiled to flatter his niceness, for here and there, all around, she was yielding her hand to

partnersobscurant males whose touch leaves a stain. Far too generally gracious was Her Starriness to

please him. The effect of it, nevertheless, was to hurry him with all his might into the heat of the chase, while

yet he knew no more of her than that he was competing for a prize, and Willoughby Patterne was only one of

A deeper student of Science than his rivals, he appreciated Nature's compliment in the fair ones choice of

you. We now scientifically know that in this department of the universal struggle, success is awarded to the

bettermost. You spread a handsomer tail than your fellows, you dress a finer topknot, you pipe a newer note,

have a longer stride; she reviews you in competition, and selects you. The superlative is magnetic to her. She

may be looking elsewhere, and you will seethe superlative will simply have to beckon, away she glides.

She cannot help herself; it is her nature, and her nature is the guarantee for the noblest races of men to come

of her. In complimenting you, she is a promise of superior offspring. Science thusor it is better to sayan

acquaintance with science facilitates the cultivation of aristocracy. Consequently a successful pursuit and a

wresting of her from a body of competitors, tells you that you are the best man. What is more, it tells the

Willoughby aired his amiable superlatives in the eye of Miss Middleton; he had a leg. He was the heir of

successful competitors. He had a style, a tone, an artist tailor, an authority of manner; he had in the hopeful

ardour of the chase among a multitude a freshness that gave him advantage; and together with his undeviating

energy when there was a prize to be won and possessed, these were scarce resistible. He spared no pains, for

he was adust and athirst for the winningpost. He courted her father, aware that men likewise, and parents

preeminently, have their preference for the larger offer, the deeper pocket, the broader lands, the

respectfuller consideration. Men, after their fashion, as well as women, distinguish the bettermost, and aid

him to succeed, as Dr. Middleton certainly did in the crisis of the memorable question proposed to his

daughter within a month of Willoughby's reception at Upton Park. The young lady was astonished at his

whirlwind wooing of her, and bent to it like a sapling. She begged for time; Willoughby could barely wait.

She unhesitatingly owned that she liked no one better, and he consented. A calm examination of his position

told him that it was unfair so long as he stood engaged, and she did not. She pleaded a desire to see a little of

the world before she plighted herself. She alarmed him; he assumed the amazing god of love under the

subtlest guise of the divinity. Willingly would he obey her behests, resignedly languish, were it not for his

mother's desire to see the future lady of Patterne established there before she died. Love shone cunningly

through the mask of filial duty, but the plea of urgency was reasonable. Dr. Middleton thought it reasonable,

supposing his daughter to have an inclination. She had no disinclination, though she had a maidenly desire to

see a little of the worldgrace for one year, she said. Willoughby reduced the year to six months, and

granted that term, for which, in gratitude, she submitted to stand engaged; and that was no light whispering of

a word. She was implored to enter the state of captivity by the pronunciation of vowsa private but a

binding ceremonial. She had health and beauty, and money to gild these gifts; not that he stipulated for

money with his bride, but it adds a lustre to dazzle the world; and, moreover, the pack of rival pursuers hung

close behind, yelping and raising their dolorous throats to the moon. Captive she must be.

He made her engagement no light whispering matter. It was a solemn plighting of a troth. Why not? Having

said, I am yours, she could say, I am wholly yours, I am yours forever, I swear it, I will never swerve from it,

I am your wife in heart, yours utterly; our engagement is written above. To this she considerately appended,

"as far as I am concerned"; a piece of somewhat chilling generosity, and he forced her to pass him through

love's catechism in turn, and came out with fervent answers that bound him to her too indissolubly to let her

doubt of her being loved. And I am loved! she exclaimed to her heart's echoes, in simple faith and

wonderment. Hardly had she begun to think of love ere the apparition arose in her path. She had not thought

of love with any warmth, and here it was. She had only dreamed of love as one of the distant blessings of the

mighty world, lying somewhere in the world's forests, across wild seas, veiled, encompassed with beautiful

perils, a throbbing secrecy, but too remote to quicken her bosom's throbs. Her chief idea of it was, the

He looked the fittest; he justified the dictum of Science. The survival of the Patternes was assured. "I would,"

he said to his admirer, Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, "have bargained for health above everything, but she has

everything besideslineage, beauty, breeding: is what they call an heiress, and is the most accomplished of

her sex." With a delicate art he conveyed to the lady's understanding that Miss Middleton had been snatched

from a crowd, without a breath of the crowd having offended his niceness. He did it through sarcasm at your

modern young women, who run about the world nibbling and nibbled at, until they know one sex as well as

the other, and are not a whit less cognizant of the market than men; pure, possibly; it is not so easy to say

innocent; decidedly not our feminine ideal. Miss Middleton was different: she was the true ideal,

Women do not defend their younger sisters for doing what they perhaps have donelifting a veil to be seen,

and peeping at a world where innocence is as poor a guarantee as a babe's caul against shipwreck. Women of

the world never think of attacking the sensual stipulation for perfect bloom, silver purity, which is redolent of

the Oriental origin of the lovepassion of their lords. Mrs. Mountstuart congratulated Sir Willoughby on the

"Let me see her," she said; and Miss Middleton was introduced and critically observed.

She had the mouth that smiles in repose. The lips met full on the centre of the bow and thinned along to a

lifting dimple; the eyelids also lifted slightly at the outer corners, and seemed, like the lip into the limpid

cheek, quickening up the temples, as with a run of light, or the ascension indicated off a shoot of colour. Her

features were playfellows of one another, none of them pretending to rigid correctness, nor the nose to the

ordinary dignity of governess among merry girls, despite which the nose was of a fair design, not acutely

interrogative or inviting to gambols. Aspens imaged in water, waiting for the breeze, would offer a

susceptible lover some suggestion of her face: a pure, smoothwhite face, tenderly flushed in the cheeks,

where the gentle dints, were faintly intermelting even during quietness. Her eyes were brown, set well

between mild lids, often shadowed, not unwakeful. Her hair of lighter brown, swelling above her temples on

the sweep to the knot, imposed the triangle of the fabulous wild woodland visage from brow to mouth and

chin, evidently in agreement with her taste; and the triangle suited her; but her face was not significant of a

tameless wildness or of weakness; her equable shut mouth threw its long curve to guard the small round chin

from that effect; her eyes wavered only in humour, they were steady when thoughtfulness was awakened; and

at such seasons the build of her winterbeechwood hair lost the touch of nymphlike and whimsical, and

strangely, by mere outline, added to her appearance of studious concentration. Observe the hawk on stretched

wings over the prey he spies, for an idea of this change in the look of a young lady whom Vernon Whitford

could liken to the Mountain Echo, and Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson pronounced to be "a dainty rogue in

Vernon's fancy of her must have sprung from her prompt and most musical responsiveness. He preferred the

society of her learned father to that of a girl under twenty engaged to his cousin, but the charm of her ready

tongue and her voice was to his intelligent understanding wit, natural wit, crystal wit, as opposed to the

pastesparkle of the wit of the town. In his encomiums he did not quote Miss Middleton's wit; nevertheless,

he ventured to speak of it to Mrs. Mountstuart, causing that lady to say: "Ah, well, I have not noticed the wit.

No one had noticed the wit. The corrupted hearing of people required a collision of sounds, Vernon supposed.

For his part, to prove their excellence, he recollected a great many of Miss Middleton's remarks; they came

flying to him; and so long as he forbore to speak them aloud, they had a curious wealth of meaning. It could

not be all her manner, however much his own manner might spoil them. It might be, to a certain degree, her

quickness at catching the hue and shade of evanescent conversation. Possibly by remembering the whole of a

conversation wherein she had her place, the wit was to be tested; only how could any one retain the heavy

portion? As there was no use in being argumentative on a subject affording him personally, and apparently

solitarily, refreshment and enjoyment, Vernon resolved to keep it to himself. The eulogies of her beauty, a

possession in which he did not consider her so very conspicuous, irritated him in consequence. To flatter Sir

Willoughby, it was the fashion to exalt her as one of the types of beauty; the one providentially selected to set

off his masculine type. She was compared to those delicate flowers, the ladies of the Court of China, on

ricepaper. A little French dressing would make her at home on the sward by the fountain among the lutes

and whispers of the bewitching silken shepherdesses who live though they never were. Lady Busshe was

reminded of the favourite lineaments of the women of Leonardo, the angels of Luini. Lady Culmer had seen

crayon sketches of demoiselles of the French aristocracy resembling her. Some one mentioned an antique

statue of a figure breathing into a flute: and the mouth at the flutestop might have a distant semblance of the

Her "dainty rogue in porcelain" displeased Sir Willoughby. "Why rogue?" he said. The lady's fame for hitting

the mark fretted him, and the grace of his bride's fine bearing stood to support him in his objection. Clara was

young, healthy, handsome; she was therefore fitted to be his wife, the mother of his children, his companion

picture. Certainly they looked well side by side. In walking with her, in drooping to her, the whole man was

made conscious of the female image of himself by her exquisite unlikeness. She completed him, added the

softer lines wanting to his portrait before the world. He had wooed her rageingly; he courted her becomingly;

with the manly selfpossession enlivened by watchful tact which is pleasing to girls. He never seemed to

undervalue himself in valuing her: a secret priceless in the courtship of young women that have heads; the

lover doubles their sense of personal worth through not forfeiting his own. Those were proud and happy days

when he rode Black Norman over to Upton Park, and his lady looked forth for him and knew him coming by

Her mind, too, was receptive. She took impressions of his characteristics, and supplied him a feast. She

remembered his chance phrases; noted his ways, his peculiarities, as no one of her sex had done. He thanked

his cousin Vernon for saying she had wit. She had it, and of so high a flavour that the more he thought of the

epigram launched at her the more he grew displeased. With the wit to understand him, and the heart to

"Why not? She will be a novelty to our neighbourhood and an animation of the Hall."

"In love with her! I can imagine lifelong amusement in her company. Attend to my advice: prize the

Sir Willoughby nodded, unilluminated. There was nothing of rogue in himself, so there could be nothing of it

in his bride. Elfishness, tricksiness, freakishness, were antipathetic to his nature; and he argued that it was

impossible he should have chosen for his complement a person deserving the title. It would not have been

sanctioned by his guardian genius. His closer acquaintance with Miss Middleton squared with his first

impressions; you know that this is convincing; the common jury justifies the presentation of the case to them

by the grand jury; and his original conclusion that she was essentially feminine, in other words, a parasite and

a chalice, Clara's conduct confirmed from day to day. He began to instruct her in the knowledge of himself

without reserve, and she, as she grew less timid with him, became more reflective.

"Not a bit. She has no character yet. You are forming it, and pray be advised and be merry; the solid is your

safest guide; physiognomy and manners will give you more of a girl's character than all the divings you can

"Nothing could be better. And sometimes she will lead, and generally you will lead, and everything will go

Like all rapid phrasers, Mrs. Mountstuart detested the analysis of her sentence. It had an outline in vagueness,

and was flung out to be apprehended, not dissected. Her directions for the reading of Miss Middleton's

character were the same that she practised in reading Sir Willoughby's, whose physiognomy and manners

bespoke him what she presumed him to be, a splendidly proud gentleman, with good reason.

Mrs. Mountstuart's advice was wiser than her procedure, for she stopped short where he declined to begin. He

dived below the surface without studying that indexpage. He had won Miss Middleton's hand; he believed

he had captured her heart; but he was not so certain of his possession of her soul, and he went after it. Our

enamoured gentleman had therefore no tally of Nature's writing above to set beside his discoveries in the

deeps. Now it is a dangerous accompaniment of this habit of driving, that where we do not light on the

discoveries we anticipate, we fall to work sowing and planting; which becomes a disturbance of the gentle

bosom. Miss Middleton's features were legible as to the mainspring of her character. He could have seen that

she had a spirit with a natural love of liberty, and required the next thing to liberty, spaciousness, if she was

to own allegiance. Those features, unhappily, instead of serving for an introduction to the within, were treated

as the mirror of himself. They were indeed of an amiable sweetness to tempt an accepted lover to angle for

the first person in the second. But he had made the discovery that their minds differed on one or two points,

and a difference of view in his bride was obnoxious to his repose. He struck at it recurringly to show her error

under various aspects. He desired to shape her character to the feminine of his own, and betrayed the surprise

of a slight disappointment at her advocacy of her ideas. She said immediately: "It is not too late,

Willoughby," and wounded him, for he wanted her simply to be material in his hands for him to mould her;

he had no other thought. He lectured her on the theme of the infinity of love. How was it not too late? They

were plighted; they were one eternally; they could not be parted. She listened gravely, conceiving the infinity

as a narrow dwelling where a voice droned and ceased not. However, she listened. She became an attentive

The world was the principal topic of dissension between these lovers. His opinion of the world affected her

like a creature threatened with a deprivation of air. He explained to his darling that lovers of necessity do

loathe the world. They live in the world, they accept its benefits, and assist it as well as they can. In their

hearts they must despise it, shut it out, that their love for one another may pour in a clear channel, and with all

the force they have. They cannot enjoy the sense of security for their love unless they fence away the world.

It is, you will allow, gross; it is a beast. Formally we thank it for the good we get of it; only we two have an

inner temple where the worship we conduct is actually, if you would but see it, an excommunication of the

world. We abhor that beast to adore that divinity. This gives us our oneness, our isolation, our happiness.

She shook her head; she could not see it. She would admit none of the notorious errors, of the world; its

backbiting, selfishness, coarseness, intrusiveness, infectiousness. She was young. She might, Willoughby

thought, have let herself be led; she was not docile. She must be up in arms as a champion of the world; and

one saw she was hugging her dream of a romantic world, nothing else. She spoilt the secret bowersong he

delighted to tell over to her. And how, Powers of Love! is lovemaking to be pursued if we may not kick the

world out of our bower and wash our hands of it? Love that does not spurn the world when lovers curtain

themselves is a loveis it not so?that seems to the unwhipped, scoffing world to go slinking into

basiation's obscurity, instead of on a glorious march behind the screen. Our hero had a strong sentiment as to

the policy of scorning the world for the sake of defending his personal pride and (to his honour, be it said) his

The act of seeming put them both above the world, said retro Sathanas! So much, as a piece of tactics: he was

highly civilized: in the second instance, he knew it to be the world which must furnish the dry sticks for the

bonfire of a woman's worship. He knew, too, that he was prescribing poetry to his betrothed, practicable

poetry. She had a liking for poetry, and sometimes quoted the stuff in defiance of his pursed mouth and

pained murmur: "I am no poet;" but his poetry of the enclosed and fortified bower, without nonsensical

rhymes to catch the ears of women, appeared incomprehensible to her, if not adverse. She would not burn the

world for him; she would not, though a purer poetry is little imaginable, reduce herself to ashes, or incense, or

essence, in honour of him, and so, by love's transmutation, literally be the man she was to marry. She

preferred to be herself, with the egoism of women. She said it: she said: I must be myself to be of any value

to you, Willoughby." He was indefatigable in his lectures on the aesthetics of love. Frequently, for an

indemnification to her (he had no desire that she should be a loser by ceasing to admire the world), he dwelt

on his own youthful ideas; and his original fancies about the world were presented to her as a substitute for

Miss Middleton bore it well, for she was sure that he meant well. Bearing so well what was distasteful to her,

she became less well able to bear what she had merely noted in observation before; his view of scholarship;

his manner toward Mr. Vernon Whitford, of whom her father spoke warmly; the rumour concerning his

treatment of a Miss Dale. And the country tale of Constantia Durham sang itself to her in a new key. He had

no contempt for the world's praises. Mr. Whitford wrote the letters to the county paper which gained him

applause at various great houses, and he accepted it, and betrayed a tingling fright lest he should be the victim

of a sneer of the world he contemned. Recollecting his remarks, her mind was afflicted by the "something

illogical" in him that we readily discover when our natures are no longer running free, and then at once we

yearn for a disputation. She resolved that she would one day, one distant day, provoke itupon what? The

special point eluded her. The world is too huge a client, and too pervious, too spotty, for a girl to defend

against a man. That "something illogical" had stirred her feelings more than her intellect to revolt. She could

not constitute herself the advocate of Mr. Whitford. Still she marked the disputation for an event to come.

Meditating on it, she fell to picturing Sir Willoughby's face at the first accents of his bride's decided

disagreement with him. The picture once conjured up would not be laid. He was handsome; so correctly

handsome, that a slight unfriendly touch precipitated him into caricature. His habitual air of happy pride, of

indignant contentment rather, could easily be overdone. Surprise, when he threw emphasis on it, stretched

him with the tall eyebrows of a masklimitless under the spell of caricature; and in time, whenever she was

not pleased by her thoughts, she had that, and not his likeness, for the vision of him. And it was unjust,

contrary to her deeper feelings; she rebuked herself, and as much as her naughty spirit permitted, she tried to

look on him as the world did; an effort inducing reflections upon the blessings of ignorance. She seemed to

He outshone Mr. Whitford in his behaviour to young Crossjay. She had seen him with the boy, and he was

amused, indulgent, almost frolicsome, in contradistinction to Mr. Whitford's tutorly sharpness. He had the

English father's tone of a liberal allowance for boys" tastes and pranks, and he ministered to the partiality of

the genus for pocketmoney. He did not play the schoolmaster, like bookworms who get poor little lads in

Mr. Whitford avoided her very much. He came to Upton Park on a visit to her father, and she was not

particularly sorry that she saw him only at table. He treated her by fits to a level scrutiny of deepset eyes

unpleasantly penetrating. She had liked his eyes. They became unbearable; they dwelt in the memory as if

they had left a phosphorescent line. She had been taken by playmate boys in her infancy to peep into

hedgeleaves, where the motherbird brooded on the nest; and the eyes of the bird in that marvellous dark

thickset home, had sent her away with worlds of fancy. Mr. Whitford's gaze revived her susceptibility, but

not the old happy wondering. She was glad of his absence, after a certain hour that she passed with

Willoughby, a wretched hour to remember. Mr. Whitford had left, and Willoughby came, bringing bad news

of his mother's health. Lady Patterne was fast failing. Her son spoke of the loss she would be to him; he

spoke of the dreadfulness of death. He alluded to his own death to come carelessly, with a philosophical air.

"Dear Willoughby, you are distressed; your mother may recover; let us hope she will; I will help to nurse her;

I have offered, you know; I am ready, most anxious. I believe I am a good nurse."

"Wedded ... to another. You! my bride; whom I call mine; and you are! You would be stillin that horror!

But all things are possible; women are women; they swim in infidelity, from wave to wave! I know them."

He meditated profoundly, and asked her: "Could you be such a saint among women?"

"Clara! to dedicate your life to our love! Never one touch; not one whisper! not a thought, not a dream! Could

youit agonizes me to imagine ... be inviolate? mine above?mine before all men, though I am

gone:true to my dust? Tell me. Give me that assurance. True to my name!Oh, I hear them. 'His relict!'

Buzzings about Lady Patterne. 'The widow.' If you knew their talk of widows! Shut your ears, my angel! But

if she holds them off and keeps her path, they are forced to respect her. The dead husband is not the

dishonoured wretch they fancied him, because he was out of their way. He lives in the heart of his wife.

Clara! my Clara! as I live in yours, whether here or away; whether you are a wife or widow, there is no

distinction for loveI am your husbandsay iteternally. I must have peace; I cannot endure the pain.

Depressed, yes; I have cause to be. But it has haunted me ever since we joined hands. To have youto lose

"And lose you, with the thought that you, lovely as you are, and the dogs of the world barking round you,

might ... Is it any wonder that I have my feeling for the world? This hand!the thought is horrible. You

would be surrounded; men are brutes; the scent of unfaithfulness excites them, overjoys them. And I helpless!

The thought is maddening. I see a ring of monkeys grinning. There is your beauty, and man's delight in

desecrating. You would be worried night and day to quit my name, to. . . I feel the blow now. You would

"It is no delusion, my love, when I tell you that with this thought upon me I see a ring of monkey faces

grinning at me; they haunt me. But you do swear it! Once, and I will never trouble you on the subject again.

My weakness! if you like. You will learn that it is love, a man's love, stronger than death."

"An oath?" she said, and moved her lips to recall what she might have said and forgotten. "To what? what

"To my soul. No heaven can be for meI see none, only torture, unless I have your word, Clara. I trust it. I

"It is for you, my love; that you may be armed and strong when I am not by to protect you."

"Consent; gratify me; swear it. Say: 'Beyond death.' Whisper it. I ask for nothing more. Women think the

husband's grave breaks the bond, cuts the tie, sets them loose. They wed the fleshpah! What I call on you

for is nobility; the transcendent nobility of faithfulness beyond death. 'His widow!' let them say; a saint in

"Kneel to Heaven, not to me, Willoughby. I amI wish I were able to tell what I am. I may be inconstant; I

do not know myself. Think; question yourself whether I am really the person you should marry. Your wife

should have great qualities of mind and soul. I will consent to hear that I do not possess them, and abide by

"You do; you do possess them!" Willoughby cried. "When you know better what the world is, you will

understand my anxiety. Alive, I am strong to shield you from it; dead, helplessthat is all. You would be

clad in mail, steelproof, inviolable, if you would ... But try to enter into my mind; think with me, feel with

me. When you have once comprehended the intensity of the love of a man like me, you will not require

asking. It is the difference of the elect and the vulgar; of the ideal of love from the coupling of the herds. We

will let it drop. At least, I have your hand. As long as I live I have your hand. Ought I not to be satisfied? I

am; only I see further than most men, and feel more deeply. And now I must ride to my mother's bedside. She

dies Lady Patterne! It might have been that she . . . But she is a woman of women! With a fatherinlaw!

Just heaven! Could I have stood by her then with the same feelings of reverence? A very little, my love, and

everything gained for us by civilization crumbles; we fall back to the first mortarbowl we were bruised and

stirred in. My thoughts, when I take my stand to watch by her, come to this conclusion, that, especially in

women, distinction is the thing to be aimed at. Otherwise we are a weltering human mass. Women must teach

us to venerate them, or we may as well be bleating and barking and bellowing. So, now enough. You have

but to think a little. I must be off. It may have happened during my absence. I will write. I shall hear from

you? Come and see me mount Black Norman. My respects to your father. I have no time to pay them in

He took the onelove's mystical numberfrom which commonly spring multitudes; but, on the present

occasion, it was a single one, and cold. She watched him riding away on his gallant horse, as handsome a

cavalier as the world could show, and the contrast of his recent language and his fine figure was a riddle that

froze her blood. Speech so foreign to her ears, unnatural in tone, unmanlike even for a lover (who is allowed

a softer dialect), set her vainly sounding for the source and drift of it. She was glad of not having to encounter

On behalf of Sir Willoughby, it is to be said that his mother, without infringing on the degree of respect for

his decisions and sentiments exacted by him, had talked to him of Miss Middleton, suggesting a volatility of

temperament in the young lady that struck him as consentaneous with Mrs Mountstuart's "rogue in

porcelain", and alarmed him as the independent observations of two worldwise women. Nor was it

incumbent upon him personally to credit the volatility in order, as far as he could, to effect the soulinsurance

of his bride, that he might hold the security of the policy. The desire for it was in him; his mother had merely

tolled a warning bell that he had put in motion before. Clara was not a Constantia. But she was a woman, and

he had been deceived by women, as a man fostering his high ideal of them will surely be. The strain he

adopted was quite natural to his passion and his theme. The language of the primitive sentiments of men is of

the same expression at all times, minus the primitive colours when a modern gentleman addresses his lady.

Lady Patterne died in the winter season of the new year. In April Dr Middleton had to quit Upton Park, and

he had not found a place of residence, nor did he quite know what to do with himself in the prospect of his

daughter's marriage and desertion of him. Sir Willoughby proposed to find him a house within a circuit of the

neighbourhood of Patterne. Moreover, he invited the Rev. Doctor and his daughter to come to Patterne from

Upton for a month, and make acquaintance with his aunts, the ladies Eleanor and Isabel Patterne, so that it

might not be so strange to Clara to have them as her housemates after her marriage. Dr. Middleton omitted to

consult his daughter before accepting the invitation, and it appeared, when he did speak to her, that it should

Sir Willoughby had to visit the metropolis and an estate in another county, whence he wrote to his betrothed

daily. He returned to Patterne in time to arrange for the welcome of his guests; too late, however, to ride over

to them; and, meanwhile, during his absence, Miss Middleton had bethought herself that she ought to have

given her last days of freedom to her friends. After the weeks to be passed at Patterne, very few weeks were

left to her, and she had a wish to run to Switzerland or Tyrol and see the Alps; a quaint idea, her father

thought. She repeated it seriously, and Dr. Middleton perceived a feminine shuttle of indecision at work in

her head, frightful to him, considering that they signified hesitation between the excellent library and capital

winecellar of Patterne Hall, together with the society of that promising young scholar, Mr. Vernon

Whitford, on the one side, and a career of hotelsequivalent to being rammed into monster artillery with a

crowd every night, and shot off on a day's journey through space every morningon the other.

"We have accepted Willoughby's invitation. And he helps me to a house near you."

"What does that mean?" he asked, fussily. He was in a gentle stew already, apprehensive of a disturbance of

the serenity precious to scholars by postponements of the ceremony and a prolongation of a father's worries.

"Ah!" said he, nodding and blinking gradually back to a state of composure, glad to be appeased on any

terms; for mutability is but another name for the sex, and it is the enemy of the scholar.

She suggested that two weeks of Patterne would offer plenty of time to inspect the empty houses of the

district, and should be sufficient, considering the claims of friends, and the necessity of going the round of

"Two or three weeks," he agreed, hurriedly, by way of compromise with that fearful prospect.

During the drive from Upton to Patterne, Miss Middleton hoped, she partly believed, that there was to be a

change in Sir Willoughby's manner of courtship. He had been so different a wooer. She remembered with

some halfconscious desperation of fervour what she had thought of him at his first approaches, and in

accepting him. Had she seen him with the eyes of the world, thinking they were her own? That look of his,

the look of "indignant contentment", had then been a most noble conquering look, splendid as a general's

plume at the gallop. It could not have altered. Was it that her eyes had altered?

The spirit of those days rose up within her to reproach, her and whisper of their renewal: she remembered her

rosy dreams and the image she had of him, her throbbing pride in him, her choking richness of happiness: and

also her vain attempting to be very humble, usually ending in a carol, quaint to think of, not without charm,

Now men whose incomes have been restricted to the extent that they must live on their capital, soon grow

relieved of the forethoughtful anguish wasting them by the hilarious comforts of the lap upon which they

have sunk back, insomuch that they are apt to solace themselves for their intolerable anticipations of famine

in the household by giving loose to one fit or more of reckless lavishness. Lovers in like manner live on their

capital from failure of income: they, too, for the sake of stifling apprehension and piping to the present hour,

are lavish of their stock, so as rapidly to attenuate it: they have their fits of intoxication in view of coming

famine: they force memory into play, love retrospectively, enter the old house of the past and ravage the

larder, and would gladly, even resolutely, continue in illusion if it were possible for the broadest honeystore

of reminiscences to hold out for a length of time against a mortal appetite: which in good sooth stands on the

alternative of a consumption of the hive or of the creature it is for nourishing. Here do lovers show that they

are perishable. More than the poor clay world they need fresh supplies, right wholesome juices; as it were,

life in the burst of the bud, fruits yet on the tree, rather than potted provender. The latter is excellent for

byandby, when there will be a vast deal more to remember, and appetite shall have but one tooth

remaining. Should their minds perchance have been saturated by their first impressions and have retained

them, loving by the accountable light of reason, they may have fair harvests, as in the early time; but that case

is rare. In other words, love is an affair of two, and is only for two that can be as quick, as constant in

intercommunication as are sun and earth, through the cloud or face to face. They take their breath of life from

one another in signs of affection, proofs of faithfulness, incentives to admiration. Thus it is with men and

women in love's good season. But a solitary soul dragging a log must make the log a God to rejoice in the

Clara was the least fitted of all women to drag a log. Few girls would be so rapid in exhausting capital. She

was feminine indeed, but she wanted comradeship, a living and frank exchange of the best in both, with the

deeper feelings untroubled. To be fixed at the mouth of a mine, and to have to descend it daily, and not to

discover great opulence below; on the contrary, to be chilled in subterranean sunlessness, without any

substantial quality that she could grasp, only the mystery of the inefficient tallowlight in those caverns of

the complacenttalking man: this appeared to her too extreme a probation for two or three weeks. How of a

She was compelled by her nature to hope, expect and believe that Sir Willoughby would again be the man she

had known when she accepted him. Very singularly, to show her simple spirit at the time, she was unaware of

any physical coldness to him; she knew of nothing but her mind at work, objecting to this and that, desiring

changes. She did not dream of being on the giddy ridge of the passive or negative sentiment of love, where

Her eyes were lively at their meetingso were his. She liked to see him on the steps, with young Crossjay

under his arm. Sir Willoughby told her in his pleasantest humour of the boy's having got into the laboratory

that morning to escape his taskmaster, and blown out the windows. She administered a chiding to the

delinquent in the same spirit, while Sir Willoughby led her on his arm across the threshold, whispering:

"Soon for good!" In reply to the whisper, she begged for more of the story of young Crossjay. "Come into the

laboratory: said he, a little less laughingly than softly; and Clara begged her father to come and see young

Crossjay's latest pranks. Sir Willoughby whispered to her of the length of their separation, and his joy to

welcome her to the house where she would reign as mistress very won. He numbered the weeks. He

whispered: "Come." In the hurry of the moment she did not examine a lightning terror that shot through her.

It passed, and was no more than the shadow which bends the summer grasses, leaving a ruffle of her ideas, in

wonder of her having feared herself for something. Her father was with them. She and Willoughby were not

Young Crossjay had not accomplished so fine a piece of destruction as Sir Willoughby's humour proclaimed

of him. He had connected a battery with a train of gunpowder, shattering a windowframe and unsettling

some bricks. Dr. Middleton asked if the youth was excluded from the library, and rejoiced to hear that it was

a sealed door to him. Thither they went. Vernon Whitford was away on one of his long walks.

Dr Middleton stood frowning over MS notes on the table, in Vernon's handwriting. He flung up the hair from

his forehead and dropped into a seat to inspect them closely. He was now immoveable. Clara was obliged to

leave him there. She was led to think that Willoughby had drawn them to the library with the design to be rid

of her protector, and she began to fear him. She proposed to pay her respects to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.

They were not seen, and a footman reported in the drawingroom that they were out driving. She grasped

young Crossjay's hand. Sir Willoughby dispatched him to Mrs. Montague, the housekeeper, for a tea of cakes

"And the garden!" she cried. "I love the garden; I must go and see what flowers are up with you. In spring I

care most for wild flowers, and if you will show me daffodils and crocuses and anemones . . ."

"Because they are vulgar flowers?" she asked him, artlessly, to account for his detaining her.

Why would he not wait to deserve her!no, not deserveto reconcile her with her real position; not

reconcile, but to repair the image of him in her mind, before he claimed his apparent right!

"You are mine, my Clarautterly mine; every thought, every feeling. We are one: the world may do its

worst. I have been longing for you, looking forward. You save me from a thousand vexations. One is

perpetually crossed. That is all outside us. We two! With you I am secure! Soon! I could not tell you whether

She came out of it with the sensations of the frightened child that has had its dip in seawater, sharpened to

think that after all it was not so severe a trial. Such was her idea; and she said to herself immediately: What

am I that I should complain? Two minutes earlier she would not have thought it; but humiliated pride falls

She did not blame him; she fell in her own esteem; less because she was the betrothed Clara Middleton,

which was now palpable as a shot in the breast of a bird, than that she was a captured woman, of whom it is

absolutely expected that she must submit, and when she would rather be gazing at flowers. Clara had shame

of her sex. They cannot take a step without becoming bondwomen: into what a slavery! For herself, her trial

was over, she thought. As for herself, she merely complained of a prematureness and crudity best unanalyzed.

In truth, she could hardly be said to complain. She did but criticize him and wonder that a man was unable to

perceive, or was not arrested by perceiving, unwillingness, discordance, dull compliance; the bondwoman's

due instead of the bride's consent. Oh, sharp distinction, as between two spheres!

She meted him justice; she admitted that he had spoken in a loverlike tone. Had it not been for the iteration

of "the world", she would not have objected critically to his words, though they were words of downright

appropriation. He had the right to use them, since she was to be married to him. But if he had only waited

Sir Willoughby was enraptured with her. Even so purely coldly, statuelike, Dianlike, would he have

prescribed his bride's reception of his caress. The suffusion of crimson coming over her subsequently,

showing her divinely feminine in reflective bashfulness, agreed with his highest definitions of female

She assured him sparklingly that she was well. She was ready to accompany him to the garden and stroll over

But she had to pay the fee for inviting a solicitous accepted gentleman's proximity.

This time she blamed herself and him, and the world he abused, and destiny into the bargain. And she cared

less about the probation; but she craved for liberty. With a frigidity that astonished her, she marvelled at the

act of kissing, and at the obligation it forced upon an inanimate person to be an accomplice. Why was she not

She was horrified to think how far she had drawn away from him, and now placed her hand on his arm to

appease her selfaccusations and propitiate duty. He spoke as she had wished, his manner was what she had

wished; she was his bride, almost his wife; her conduct was a kind of madness; she could not understand it.

He fondled her hand, and to that she grew accustomed; her hand was at a distance. And what is a hand?

Leaving it where it was, she treated it as a link between herself and dutiful goodness. Two months hence she

was a bondwoman for life! She regretted that she had not gone to her room to strengthen herself with a

review of her situation, and meet him thoroughly resigned to her fate. She fancied she would have come

down to him amicably. It was his present respectfulness and easy conversation that tricked her burning nerves

with the fancy. Five weeks of perfect liberty in the mountains, she thought, would have prepared her for the

days of bells. All that she required was a separation offering new scenes, where she might reflect undisturbed,

He led her about the flowerbeds; too much as if he were giving a convalescent an airing. She chafed at it,

and pricked herself with remorse. In contrition she expatiated on the beauty of the garden.

An oppressive load it seemed to her! She passively yielded to the man in his form of attentive courtier; his

mansion, estate, and wealth overwhelmed her. They suggested the price to be paid. Yet she recollected that

on her last departure through the park she had been proud of the rolling green and spreading trees. Poison of

some sort must be operating in her. She had not come to him today with this feeling of sullen antagonism;

"My bride must have her health if all the doctors in the kingdom die for it! My darling!"

"I am glad. Do you know, I love those ancient French chateaux and farms in one, where salon windows look

"And I like the farm," said he. "But I think our drawingrooms have a better atmosphere off the garden. As to

our peasantry, we cannot, I apprehend, modify our class demarcations without risk of disintegrating the social

"My love, I would entreat you to propose if I were convinced that I could obey."

Although she was not thirsting for dulcet sayings, the peacefulness of other than invitations to the exposition

of his mysteries and of their isolation in oneness, inspired her with such calm that she beat about in her brain,

as if it were in the brain, for the specific injury he had committed. Sweeping from sensation to sensation, the

young, whom sensations impel and distract, can rarely date their disturbance from a particular one; unless it

be some great villain injury that has been done; and Clara had not felt an individual shame in his caress; the

shame of her sex was but a passing protest, that left no stamp. So she conceived she had been behaving

cruelly, and said, "Willoughby"; because she was aware of the omission of his name in her previous remarks.

She had to invent the sequel. "I was going to beg you, Willoughby, do not seek to spoil me. You compliment

me. Compliments are not suited to me. You think too highly of me. It is nearly as bad as to be slighted. I am .

. . I am a . . ." But she could not follow his example; even as far as she had gone, her prim little sketch of

herself, set beside her real, ugly, earnest feelings, rang of a mincing simplicity, and was a step in falseness.

The melodious bass notes, expressive of conviction on that point, signified as well as the words that no

answer was the right answer. She could not dissent without turning his music to discord, his complacency to

amazement. She held her tongue, knowing that he did not know her, and speculating on the division made

He alluded to friends in her neighbourhood and his own. The bridesmaids were mentioned.

"Miss Dale, you will hear from my aunt Eleanor, declines, on the plea of indifferent health. She is rather a

morbid person, with all her really estimable qualities. It will do no harm to have none but young ladies of

your own age; a bouquet of young buds: though one blowing flower among them ... However, she has

decided. My principal annoyance has been Vernon's refusal to act as my best man."

"He half refuses. I do not take no from him. His pretext is a dislike to the ceremony."

"I sympathize with you. If we might say the words and pass from sight! There is a way of cutting off the

world: I have it at times completely: I lose it again, as if it were a cabalistic phrase one had to utter. But with

you! You give it me for good. It will he for ever, eternally, my Clara. Nothing can harm, nothing touch us; we

"So entirely one, that there never can be question of external influences. I am, we will say, riding home from

the hunt: I see you awaiting me: I read your heart as though you were beside me. And I know that I am

coming to the one who reads mine! You have me, you have me like an open book, you, and only you!"

"I am to be always at home?" Clara said, unheeded, and relieved by his not hearing.

"Have you realized it?that we are invulnerable! The world cannot hurt us: it cannot touch us. Felicity is

ours, and we are impervious in the enjoyment of it. Something divine! surely something divine on earth?

Clara!being to one another that between which the world can never interpose! What I do is right: what you

do is right. Perfect to one another! Each new day we rise to study and delight in new secrets. Away with the

crowd! We have not even to say it; we are in an atmosphere where the world cannot breathe."

Hearing him talk as one exulting on the mountaintop, when she knew him to be in the abyss, was very

"Circumstances have imposed a long courtship on us, my Clara; and I, perhaps lamenting the laws of

decorumI have done so!still felt the benefit of the gradual initiation. It is not good for women to be

surprised by a sudden revelation of man's character. We also have things to learnthere is matter for

learning everywhere. Some day you will tell me the difference of what you think of me now, from what you

He smiled at her youthfulness. "I have passed through that stage. It leads to my sentiment. Pity it, by all

"No," said she, "but pity it, side with it, not consider it so bad. The world has faults; glaciers have crevices,

mountains have chasms; but is not the effect of the whole sublime? Not to admire the mountain and the

"I am thinking of the world that contains real and great generosity, true heroism. We see it round us."

"No: the living world. I am sure it is our duty to love it. I am sure we weaken ourselves if we do not. If I did

not, I should be looking on mist, hearing a perpetual boom instead of music. I remember hearing Mr.

Whitford say that cynicism is intellectual dandyism without the coxcomb's feathers; and it seems to me that

cynics are only happy in making the world as barren to others as they have made it for themselves."

"Old Vernon!" ejaculated Sir Willoughby, with a countenance rather uneasy, as if it had been flicked with a

"As to cynics, my dear Clara, oh, certainly, certainly: you are right. They are laughable, contemptible. But

understand me. I mean, we cannot feel, or if we feel we cannot so intensely feel, our oneness, except by

"If you like. It is our poetry! But does not love shun the world? Two that love must have their sustenance in

"Put it in this way," Willoughby condescended. "Has experience the same opinion of the world as

He poured a little runlet of half laughter over her head, of the sound assumed by genial compassion.

"You will, however, have observed that I am not completely myself in my letters . . ."

The remark threw a pause across his thoughts. He was of a sensitiveness terribly tender. A single stroke on it

reverberated swellingly within the man, and most, and infuriately searching, at the spots where he had been

wounded, especially where he feared the world might have guessed the wound. Did she imply that he had no

hand for loveletters? Was it her meaning that women would not have much taste for his epistolary

correspondence? She had spoken in the plural, with an accent on "men". Had she heard of Constantia? Had

she formed her own judgement about the creature? The supernatural sensitiveness of Sir Willoughby shrieked

a peal of affirmatives. He had often meditated on the moral obligation of his unfolding to Clara the whole

truth of his conduct to Constantia; for whom, as for other suicides, there were excuses. He at least was bound

to supply them. She had behaved badly; but had he not given her some cause? If so, manliness was bound to

Supposing Clara heard the world's version first! Men whose pride is their backbone suffer convulsions where

other men are barely aware of a shock, and Sir Willoughby was taken with galvanic jumpings of the spirit

within him, at the idea of the world whispering to Clara that he had been jilted.

She relaxed the tension of his figure by remarking: "You are able to express yourself to men as your meaning

"True, my love. I will not exactly say difficult. I can acknowledge no difficulty. Language, I should say, is

"My feelings, dearest, are too strong for transcription. I feel, pen in hand, like the mythological Titan at war

with Jove, strong enough to hurl mountains, and finding nothing but pebbles. The simile is a good one. You

She blushed, eyed him hurriedly, and seeing him complacent, resumed, "I prefer the pebble to the mountain;

"No poet, and with no wish to be a poet. Were I one, my life would supply material, I can assure you, my

love. My conscience is not entirely at rest. Perhaps the heaviest matter troubling it is that in which I was least

"She may be happy. I trust she is. If she is not, I cannot escape some blame. An instance of the difference

between myself and the world, now. The world charges it upon her. I have interceded to exonerate her."

"Stay. I fear I was the primary offender. But I, Clara, I, under a sense of honour, acting under a sense of

"The story is long, dating from an early day, in the 'downy antiquity of my youth', as Vernon says."

"Family considerationsthe lady's health among other things; her position in the calculations of

relativesintervened. Still there was the fascination. I have to own it. Grounds for feminine jealousy."

"Now? with you? my darling Clara! indeed at an end, or could I have opened my inmost heart to you! Could I

have spoken of myself so unreservedly that in part you know me as I know myself! Oh, but would it have

been possible to enclose you with myself in that intimate union? so secret, unassailable!"

Sir Willoughby's expoundings on his latest of texts would have poured forth, had not a footman stepped

across the lawn to inform him that his builder was in the laboratory and requested permission to consult with

Clara's plea of a horror of the talk of bricks and joists excused her from accompanying him. He had hardly

been satisfied by her manner, he knew not why. He left her, convinced that he must do and say more to reach

She saw young Crossjay, springing with pots of jam in him, join his patron at a bound, and taking a lift of

arms, fly aloft, clapping heels. Her reflections were confused. Sir Willoughby was admirable with the lad. "Is

he two men?" she thought; and the thought ensued, "Am I unjust?" She headed a run with young Crossjay to

The sight of Miss Middleton running inflamed young Crossjay with the passion of the game of hare and

hounds. He shouted a viewhalloo, and flung up his legs. She was fleet; she ran as though a hundred little

feet were bearing her onward smooth as water over the lawn and the sweeps of grass of the park, so swifily

did the hidden pair multiply one another to speed her. So sweet was she in her flowing pace, that the boy, as

became his age, translated admiration into a dogged frenzy of pursuit, and continued pounding along, when

far outstripped, determined to run her down or die. Suddenly her flight wound to an end in a dozen twittering

steps, and she sank. Young Crossjay attained her, with just breath enough to say: "You are a runner!"

"And that is untrue. Have you never read of Mary Ambree? and Mistress Hannah Snell of Pondicherry? And

there was the bride of the celebrated William Taylor. And what do you say to Joan of Arc? What do you say

Young Crossjay betrayed anxiety about his false position, and begged for the stories of Mary Ambree and the

"See, you will not read for yourself, you hide and play truant with Mr. Whitford, and the consequence is you

Miss Middleton rebuked him, enjoying his wriggle between a perception of her fun and an acknowledgment

of his peccancy. She commanded him to tell her which was the glorious Valentine's day of our naval annals;

the name of the hero of the day, and the name of his ship. To these questions his answers were as ready as the

"He bought me the books," young Crossjay growled, and plucked at grass blades and bit thern, foreseeing

Miss Middleton lay back on the grass and said: "Are you going to be fond of me, Crossjay?"

The boy sat blinking. His desire was to prove to her that lie was immoderately fond of her already; and he

might have flown at her neck had she been sitting up, but her recumbency and eyelids half closed excited

"Because, my dear boy," she said, leaning on her elbow, "you are a very nice boy, but an ungrateful boy, and

there is no telling whether you will not punish any one who cares for you. Come along with me; pluck me

some of these cowslips, and the speedwells near them; I think we both love wildflowers." She rose and took

It was she, however, who took the sculls at the boathouse, for she had been a playfellow with boys, and

knew that one of them engaged in a manly exercise is not likely to listen to a woman.

"Now, Crossjay," she said. Dense gloom overcame him like a cowl. She bent across her hands to laugh. "As

if I were going to lecture you, you silly boy!" He began to brighten dubiously. "I used to be as fond of

birdsnesting as you are. I like brave boys, and I like you for wanting to enter the Royal Navy. Only, how can

you if you do not learn? You must get the captains to pass you, you know. Somebody spoils you: Miss Dale

"I am sure he is very kind to you. I dare say you think Mr. Whitford rather severe. You should remember he

has to teach you, so that you may pass for the navy. You must not dislike him because he makes you work.

Supposing you had blown yourself up today! You would have thought it better to have been working with

"Ah! It is wrong to pet a big boy like you. Does not he what you call tip you, Crossjay?"

"And for that you do as he bids you? And he indulges you because you ... Well, but though Mr. Whitford

does not give you money, he gives you his time, he tries to get you into the navy."

"My keep. And, as for liking him, if he were at the bottom of the water here, I'd go down after him. I mean to

learn. We're both of us here at six o'clock in the morning, when it's light, and have a swim. He taught me.

"My father told me he did, and I must obey him. He heard my father was poor, with a family. He went down

to see my father. My father came here once, and Sir Willoughby wouldn't see him. I know Mr. Whitford

does. And Miss Dale told me he did. My mother says she thinks he does it to make up to us for my father's

"So you see you should not vex him, Crossjay. He is a good friend to your father and to you. You ought to

"It's not like those faces! Miss Dale and I talk about him. She thinks that Sir Willoughby is the bestlooking

"Yes; old Vernon. That's what Sir Willoughby calls him," young Crossjay excused himself to her look of

surprise. "Do you know what he makes me think of?his eyes, I mean. He makes me think of Robinson

Crusoe's old goat in the cavern. I like him because he's always the same, and you're not positive about some

people. Miss Middleton, if you look on at cricket, in comes a safe man for ten runs. He may get more, and he

never gets less; and you should hear the old farmers talk of him in the booth. That's just my feeling."

Miss Middleton understood that some illustration from the cricketingfield was intended to throw light on the

boy's feeling for Mr. Whitford. Young Crossjay was evidently warming to speak from his heart. But the sun

was low, she had to dress for the dinnertable, and she landed him with regret, as at a holiday over. Before

they parted, he offered to swim across the lake in his clothes, or dive to the bed for anything she pleased to

She walked back at a slow pace, and sung to herself above her darkerflowing thoughts, like the

reedwarbler on the branch beside the nightstream; a simple song of a lighthearted sound, independent of

"Mr. Whitford! Yes; not petting, I hope. I tried to give him a lecture. He's a dear lad, but, I fancy, trying."

She was in fine sunset colour, unable to arrest the mounting tide. She had been rowing, she said; and, as he

directed his eyes, according to his wont, penetratingly, she defended herself by fixing her mind on Robinson

"I must have him away from here very soon," said Vernon. "Here he's quite spoiled. Speak of him to

Willoughby. I can't guess at his ideas of the boy's future, but the chance of passing for the navy won't bear

"And Willoughby laughed?" he said. "There are seaport crammers who stuff young fellows for examination,

and we shall have to pack off the boy at once to the best one of the lot we can find. I would rather have had

him under me up to the last three months, and have made sure of some roots to what is knocked into his head.

But he's ruined here. And I am going. So I shall not trouble him for many weeks longer. Dr. Middleton is

"My father is well, yes. He pounced like a falcon on your notes in the library."

"Nine and a half hours. My Flibbertigibbet 8 is too much for me at times, and I had to walk off my temper."

She cast her eyes on him, thinking of the pleasure of dealing with a temper honestly coltish, and manfully

"It's doubtful whether I shall get to the Alps this year. I leave the Hall, and shall probably be in London with

"As much as Mont Blanc knows that he is going to be climbed by a party below. He sees a speck or two in

She became breathless, without emotion, but checked by the barrier confronting an impulse to ask, what

"I saw daffodils lower down the park," she said. "One or two; they're nearly over."

"Then it is the changes you imagine you foresee ... If any occur, why should they drive you away?"

"Well, I'm two and thirty, and have never been in the fray: a kind of nondescript, half scholar, and by nature

half billman or bowman or musketeer; if I'm worth anything, London's the field for me. But that's what I have

"Papa will not like your serving with your pen in London: he will say you are worth too much for that."

"Error! If they have their private ambition, they may suppose they are wasted. But the value to the world of a

"You have not an evil opinion of the world?" said Miss Middleton, sick at heart as she spoke, with the

He replied: "One might as well have an evil opinion of a river: here it's muddy, there it's clear; one day

"Except that 'fish' is too good for the black extremity. 'Woman' is excellent for the upper."

"How do you say that?not cynically, I believe. Your view commends itself to my reason."

She was grateful to him for not stating it in ideal contrast with Sir Willoughby's view. If he had, so intensely

did her youthful blood desire to be enamoured of the world, that she felt he would have lifted her off her feet.

For a moment a gulf beneath had been threatening. When she said, "Love it?" a little enthusiasm would have

wafted her into space fierily as wine; but the sober, "In the sense of serving it", entered her brain, and was

She could think of him in pleasant liberty, uncorrected by her woman's instinct of peril. He had neither arts

nor graces; nothing of his cousin's easy social frontface. She had once witnessed the military precision of his

dancing, and had to learn to like him before she ceased to pray that she might never be the victim of it as his

partner. He walked heroically, his pedestrian vigour being famous, but that means one who walks away from

the sex, not excelling in the recreations where men and women join hands. He was not much of a horseman

either. Sir Willoughby enjoyed seeing him on horseback. And he could scarcely be said to shine in a

drawingroom, unless when seated beside a person ready for real talk. Even more than his merits, his demerits

pointed him out as a man to be a friend to a young woman who wanted one. His way of life pictured to her

troubled spirit an enviable smoothness; and his having achieved that smooth way she considered a sign of

strength; and she wished to lean in idea upon some friendly strength. His reputation for indifference to the

frivolous charms of girls clothed him with a noble coldness, and gave him the distinction of a farseen

solitary iceberg in Southern waters. The popular notion of hereditary titled aristocracy resembles her

sentiment for a man that would not flatter and could not be flattered by her sex: he appeared superior almost

to awfulness. She was young, but she had received much flattery in her ears, and by it she had been snared;

and he, disdaining to practise the fowler's arts or to cast a thought on small fowls, appeared to her to have a

They had not spoken for awhile, when Vernon said abruptly, "The boy's future rather depends on you, Miss

Middleton. I mean to leave as soon as possible, and I do not like his being here without me, though you will

look after him, I have no doubt. But you may not at first see where the spoiling hurts him. He should be

packed off at once to the crammer, before you are Lady Patterne. Use your influence. Willoughby will

support the lad at your request. The cost cannot be great. There are strong grounds against my having him in

"I will mention it: I will do my best," said Miss Middleton, strangely dejected.

They were now on the lawn, where Sir Willoughby was walking with the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, his

"You seem to have coursed the hare and captured the hart." he said to his bride.

"Ay, you won't listen to me about the management of that boy," Sir Willoughby retorted.

The ladies embraced Miss Middleton. One offered up an ejaculation in eulogy of her looks, the other of her

healthfulness: then both remarked that with indulgence young Crossjay could be induced to do anything.

Clara wondered whether inclination or Sir Willoughby had disciplined their individuality out of them and

made them his shadows, his echoes. She gazed from them to him, and feared him. But as yet she had not

experienced the power in him which could threaten and wrestle to subject the members of his household to

the state of satellites. Though she had in fact been giving battle to it for several months, she had held her own

She said to the ladies, "Ah, no! Mr. Whitford has chosen the only method for teaching a boy like Crossjay."

"If he pleases me, he will be provided for. I have never abandoned a dependent."

The effect was discomforting to him. He was very sensitive to the intentions of eyes and tones; which was

one secret of his rigid grasp of the dwellers in his household. They were taught that they had to render

agreement under sharp scrutiny. Studious eyes, devoid of warmth, devoid of the shyness of sex, that suddenly

closed on their look, signified a want of comprehension of some kind, it might be hostility of understanding.

Clara saw the lift of his brows, and thought, "My mind is my own, married or not."

An hour before the time for lessons next morning young Crossjay was on the lawn with a big bunch of wild

flowers. He left them at the hall door for Miss Middleton, and vanished into bushes.

These vulgar weeds were about to be dismissed to the dustheap by the great officials of the household; but as

it happened that Miss Middleton had seen them from the window in Crossjay's hands, the discovery was

made that they were indeed his presentationbouquet, and a footman received orders to place them before

her. She was very pleased. The arrangement of the flowers bore witness to fairer fingers than the boy's own in

the disposition of the rings of colour, red campion and anemone, cowslip and speedwell, primroses and

woodhyacinths; and rising out of the blue was a branch bearing thick white blossom, so thick, and of so

pure a whiteness, that Miss Middleton, while praising Crossjay for soliciting the aid of Miss Dale, was at a

"It is a gardener's improvement on the Vestal of the forest, the wild cherry," said Dr. Middleton, "and in this

case we may admit the gardener's claim to be valid, though I believe that, with his gift of double blossom, he

has improved away the fruit. Call this the Vestal of civilization, then; he has at least done something to

"It is Vernon's Holy Tree the young rascal has been despoiling," said Sir Willoughby merrily.

Miss Middleton was informed that this doubleblossom wild cherrytree was worshipped by Mr. Whitford.

"You," he said to her, "can bear the trial; few complexions can; it is to most ladies a crueller test than snow.

Miss Dale, for example, becomes old lace within a dozen yards of it. I should like to place her under the tree

"Dear me, though; but that is investing the hamadryad with novel and terrible functions," exclaimed Dr.

Clara said: "Miss Dale could drag me into a superior Court to show me fading beside her in gifts more

All the world knew, so Clara knew of Miss Dales romantic admiration of Sir Willoughby; she was curious to

see Miss Dale and study the nature of a devotion that might be, within reason, imitablefor a man who

could speak with such steely coldness of the poor lady he had fascinated? Well, perhaps it was good for the

hearts of women to be beneath a frost; to be schooled, restrained, turned inward on their dreams. Yes, then,

his coldness was desireable; it encouraged an ideal of him. It suggested and seemed to propose to Clara's

mind the divineness of separation instead of the deadly accuracy of an intimate perusal. She tried to look on

him as Miss Dale might look, and while partly despising her for the dupery she envied, and more than

criticizing him for the inhuman numbness of sentiment which offered up his worshipper to point a

complimentary comparison, she was able to imagine a distance whence it would be possible to observe him

In the midst of her thoughts, she surprised herself by saying: "I certainly was difficult to instruct. I might see

things clearer if I had a fine ability. I never remember to have been perfectly pleased with my immediate

She stopped, wondering whither her tongue was leading her; then added, to save herself, "And that may be

Mr. Whitford apparently did not think it remarkable that she should have been set off gabbling of "a fine

ability", though the eulogistic phrase had been pronounced by him with an impressiveness to make his ear

Sir Willoughby dispersed her vapourish confusion. "Exactly," he said. "I have insisted with Vernon, I don't

know how often, that you must have the lad by his affections. He won't bear driving. It had no effect on me.

He found himself addressing eyes that regarded him as though he were a small speck, a pin's head, in the

Even then, when knowingly wounding him, or because of it, she was trying to climb back to that altitude of

the thin division of neutral ground, from which we see a lover's faults and are above them, pure surveyors.

She climbed unsuccessfully, it is true; soon despairing and using the effort as a pretext to fall back lower.

Dr. Middleton withdrew Sir Willoughby's attention from the imperceptible annoyance. "No, sir, no: the birch!

the birch! Boys of spirit commonly turn into solid men, and the solider the men the more surely do they vote

for Busby. For me, I pray he may be immortal in Great Britain. Seaair nor mountainair is half so bracing. I

venture to say that the power to take a licking is better worth having than the power to administer one. Horse

"It is your opinion, sir?" his host bowed to him affably, shocked on behalf of the ladies.

"So positively so, sir, that I will undertake, without knowledge of their antecedents, to lay my finger on the

men in public life who have not had early Busby. They are illbalanced men. Their seat of reason is not a

concrete. They won't take rough and smooth as they come. They make bad blood, can't forgive, sniff right

and left for approbation, and are excited to anger if an East wind does not flatter them. Why, sir, when they

have grown to be seniors, you find these men mixed up with the nonsense of their youth; you see they are

unthrashed. We English beat the world because we take a licking well. I hold it for a surety of a proper

The smile of Sir Willoughby waxed ever softer as the shakes of his head increased in contradictoriness. "And

yet," said he, with the air of conceding a little after having answered the Rev. Doctor and convicted him of

error, "Jack requires it to keep him in order. On board ship your argument may apply. Not, I suspect, among

She sighed and put a tooth on her underlip. The gift of humourous fancy is in women fenced round with

forbidding placards; they have to choke it; if they perceive a piece of humour, for instance, the young

Willoughby grasped by his master,and his horrified relatives rigid at the sight of preparations for the seed

of sacrilege, they have to blindfold the mind's eye. They are society's harddrilled soldiery. Prussians that

must both march and think in step. It is for the advantage of the civilized world, if you like, since men have

decreed it, or matrons have so read the decree; but here and there a younger woman, haply an uncorrected

insurgent of the sex matured here and there, feels that her lot was cast with her head in a narrower pit than her

Clara speculated as to whether Miss Dale might be perchance a person of a certain liberty of mind. She asked

for some little, only some little, free play of mind in a house that seemed to wear, as it were, a cap of iron. Sir

Willoughby not merely ruled, he throned, he inspired: and how? She had noticed an irascible sensitiveness in

him alert against a shadow of disagreement; and as he was kind when perfectly appeased, the sop was offered

by him for submission. She noticed that even Mr. Whitford forbore to alarm the sentiment of authority in his

cousin. If he did not breathe Sir Willoughby, like the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, he would either acquiesce in a

syllable or he silent. He never strongly dissented. The habit of the house, with its iron cap, was on him, as it

was on the servants. and would be, oh, shudders of the shipwrecked that see their end in drowning! on the

She indulged her morbid fit, and shut up her senses that she might live in the anticipation of meeting Miss

Dale; and, long before the approach of the hour, her hope of encountering any other than another dull

adherent of Sir Willoughby had fled. So she was languid for two of the three minutes when she sat alone with

"It is Miss Middleton?" Laetitia said, advancing to her. "My jealousy tells me; for you have won my boy

Crossjay's heart, and done more to bring him to obedience in a few minutes than we have been able to do in

"He was very modest over them. And I mention it because boys of his age usually thrust their gifts in our

"She resigns her office; but I pray you not to love him too well in return; for he ought to be away reading

with one of those men who get boys through their examinations. He is, we all think, a born sailor, and his

"But, Miss Dale, I love him so well that I shall consult his interests and not my own selfishness. And, if I

have influence, he will not be a week with you longer. It should have been spoke of today; I must have been

in some dream; I thought of it, I know. I will not forget to do what may be in my power."

Clara's heart sank at the renewed engagement and plighting of herself involved in her asking a favour, urging

"He is fond of exciting fondness in the boy," said Miss Dale. "He has not dealt much with children. I am sure

he likes Crossjay; he could not otherwise be so forbearing; it is wonderful what he endures and laughs at."

Sir Willoughby entered. The presence of Miss Dale illuminated him as the burning taper lights up

consecrated plate. Deeply respecting her for her constancy, esteeming her for a model of taste, he was never

in her society without that happy consciousness of shining which calls forth the treasures of the man; and

these it is no exaggeration to term unbounded, when all that comes from him is taken for gold.

The effect of the evening on Clara was to render her distrustful of her later antagonism. She had unknowingly

passed into the spirit of Miss Dale, Sir Willoughby aiding; for she could sympathize with the view of his

constant admirer on seeing him so cordially and smoothly gay; as one may say, domestically witty, the most

agreeable form of wit. Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson discerned that he had a leg of physical perfection; Miss

Dale distinguished it in him in the vital essence; and before either of these ladies he was not simply a radiant,

he was a productive creature, so true it is that praise is our fructifying sun. He had even a touch of the

romantic air which Clara remembered as her first impression of the favourite of the county; and strange she

found it to observe this resuscitated idea confronting her experience. What if she had been captious,

inconsiderate? Oh, blissful revival of the sense of peace! The happiness of pain departing was all that she

looked for, and her conception of liberty was to learn to love her chains, provided that he would spare her the

caress. In this mood she sternly condemned Constantia. "We must try to do good; we must not be thinking of

ourselves; we must make the best of our path in life." She revolved these infantile precepts with humble

earnestness; and not to be tardy in her striving to do good, with a remote but pleasurable glimpse of Mr.

Whitford hearing of it, she took the opportunity to speak to Sir Willoughby on the subject of young Crossjay,

at a moment when, alighting from horseback, he had shown himself to advantage among a gallant cantering

company. He showed to great advantage on horseback among men, being invariably the best mounted, and he

had a cavalierly style, possibly cultivated, but effective. On foot his raised head and halfdropped eyelids too

palpably assumed superiority. "Willoughby, I want to speak," she said, and shrank as she spoke, lest he

should immediately grant everything in the mood of courtship, and invade her respite; "I want to speak of that

dear boy Crossjay. You are fond of him. He is rather an idle boy here, and wasting time . . ."

"Now you are here, and when you are here for good, my love for good . . ." he fluttered away in loverliness,

forgetful of Crossjay, whom he presently took up. "The boy recognizes his most sovereign lady, and will do

your bidding, though you should order him to learn his lessons! Who would not obey? Your beauty alone

commands. But what is there beyond?a grace, a hue divine, that sets you not so much above as apart,

Clara produced an active smile in duty, and pursued: "If Crossjay were sent at once to some house where men

prepare boys to pass for the navy, he would have his chance, and the navy is distinctly his profession. His

father is a brave man, and he inherits bravery, and he has a passion for a sailor's life; only he must be able to

"My dear Clara, you adore the world; and I suppose you have to learn that there is not a question in this

wrangling world about which we have not disputes and contests ad nauseam. I have my notions concerning

Crossjay, Vernon has his. I should wish to make a gentleman of him. Vernon marks him for a sailor. But

Vernon is the lad's protector, I am not. Vernon took him from his father to instruct him, and he has a right to

say what shall be done with him. I do not interfere. Only I can't prevent the lad from liking me. Old Vernon

seems to feel it. I assure you I hold entirely aloof. If I am asked, in spite of my disapproval of Vernon's plans

for the boy, to subscribe to his departure, I can but shrug, because, as you see, I have never opposed. Old

Vernon pays for him, he is the master, he decides, and if Crossjay is blown from the masthead in a gale, the

"I would not venture to intrude on them," said Clara, "if I had not suspected that money ...

"Yes," cried Willoughby; "and it is a part. And let old Vernon surrender the boy to me, I will immediately

relieve him of the burden on his purse. Can I do that, my dear, for the furtherance of a scheme I condemn?

The point is thus: latterly I have invited Captain Patterne to visit me: just previous to his departure for the

African Coast, where Government despatches Marines when there is no other way of killing them, I sent him

a special invitation. He thanked me and curtly declined. The man, I may almost say, is my pensioner. Well,

he calls himself a Patterne, he is undoubtedly a man of courage, he has elements of our blood, and the name. I

think I am to be approved for desiring to make a better gentleman of the son than I behold in the father: and

seeing that life from an early age on board ship has anything but made a gentleman of the father, I hold that I

"Some," said Willoughby. "But they must be men of birth, coming out of homes of good breeding. Strip them

of the halo of the title of naval officers, and I fear you would not often say gentlemen when they step into a

drawingroom. I went so far as to fancy I had some claim to make young Crossjay something different. It can

be done: the Patterne comes out in his behaviour to you, my love; it can be done. But if I take him, I claim

undisputed sway over him. I cannot make a gentleman of the fellow if I am to compete with this person and

"Would you secure to him a settled income? For an idle gentleman is bad enough; a penniless gentleman . . ."

He resumed: "But let old Vernon have his trial with the lad. He has his own ideas. Let him carry them out. I

"Is not the question one of money?" she said, shyly, knowing Mr. Whitford to be poor.

"Old Vernon chooses to spend his money that way." replied Sir Willoughby. "If it saves him from breaking

She seized her languor as it were a curling snake and cast it off. "But I understand that Mr. Whitford wants

your assistance. Is he notnot rich? When he leaves the Hall to try his fortune in literature in London, he

may not be so well able to support Crossjay and obtain the instruction necessary for the boy: and it would be

"Leaves the Hall!" exclaimed Willoughby. "I have not heard a word of it. He made a bad start at the

beginning, and I should have thought that would have tamed him: had to throw over his Fellowship; ahem.

Then he received a small legacy some time back, and wanted to be off to push his luck in Literature: rank

gambling, as I told him. Londonizing can do him no good. I thought that nonsense of his was over years ago.

What is it he has from me?about a hundred and fifty a year: and it might be doubled for the asking: and all

the books he requires: and these writers and scholars no sooner think of a book than they must have it. And

do not suppose me to complain. I am a man who will not have a single shilling expended by those who serve

immediately about my person. I confess to exacting that kind of dependency. Feudalism is not an

objectionable thing if you can be sure of the lord. You know, Clara, and you should know me in my weakness

too, I do not claim servitude, I stipulate for affection. I claim to be surrounded by persons loving me. And

with one? ... dearest! So that we two can shut out the world; we live what is the dream of others. Nothing

imaginable can be sweeter. It is a veritable heaven on earth. To be the possessor of the whole of you! Your

Sir Willoughby intensified his imagination to conceive more: he could not, or could not express it, and

pursued: "But what is this talk of Vernon's leaving me? He cannot leave. He has barely a hundred a year of

his own. You see, I consider him. I do not speak of the ingratitude of the wish to leave. You know, my dear, I

have a deadly abhorrence of partings and such like. As far as I can, I surround myself with healthy people

specially to guard myself from having my feelings wrung; and excepting Miss Dale, whom you like my

darling does like her?"the answer satisfied him; "with that one exception, I am not aware of a case that

threatens to torment me. And here is a man, under no compulsion, talking of leaving the Hall! In the name of

goodness, why? But why? Am I to imagine that the sight of perfect felicity distresses him? We are told that

the world is 'desperately wicked'. I do not like to think it of my friends; yet otherwise their conduct is often

"I should certainly take Crossjay and make a man of him after my own model, my dear. But who spoke to

"Mr. Whitford himself. And let me give you my opinion, Willoughby, that he will take Crossjay with him

rather than leave him, if there is a fear of the boy's missing his chance of the navy."

"Marines appear to be in the ascendant," said Sir Willoughby, astonished at the locution and pleading in the

interests of a son of one. "Then Crossjay he must take. I cannot accept half the boy. I am," he laughed, "the

legitimate claimant in the application for judgement before the wise king. Besides, the boy has a dose of my

"I put forth no pretensions to perfection," Sir Willoughby continued. "I can bear a considerable amount of

provocation; still I can be offended, and I am unforgiving when I have been offended. Speak to Vernon, if a

natural occasion should spring up. I shall, of course, have to speak to him. You may, Clara, have observed a

man who passed me on the road as we were cantering home, without a hint of a touch to his hat. That man is

a tenant of mine, farming six hundred acres, Hoppner by name: a man bound to remember that I have,

independently of my position, obliged him frequently. His lease of my ground has five years to run. I must

say I detest the churlishness of our country population, and where it comes across me I chastise it. Vernon is

a different matter: he will only require to be spoken to. One would fancy the old fellow laboured now and

then under a magnetic attraction to beggary. My love," he bent to her and checked their pacing up and down,

His arm was offered. She laid two fingers on it, and they dropped when he attempted to press them to his rib.

He did not insist. To walk beside her was to share in the stateliness of her walking.

He placed himself at a corner of the doorway for her to pass him into the house, and doated on her cheek,

her ear, and the softly dusky nape of her neck, where this way and that the little lightercoloured

irreclaimable curls running truant from the comb and the knotcurls, halfcurls, rootcurls, vineringlets,

weddingrings, fledgling feathers, tufts of down, blown wispswaved or fell, waved over or up or

involutedly, or strayed, loose and downward, in the form of small silken paws, hardly any of them much

thicker than a crayon shading, cunninger than long round locks of gold to trick the heart.

Now Vernon was useful to his cousin; he was the accomplished secretary of a man who governed his estate

shrewdly and diligently, but had been once or twice unlucky in his judgements pronounced from the

magisterial bench as a justice of the Peace, on which occasions a half column of trenchant English supported

by an apposite classical quotation impressed Sir Willoughby with the value of such a secretary in a

controversy. He had no fear of that fiery dragon of scorching breaththe newspaper presswhile Vernon

was his right hand man; and as he intended to enter Parliament, he foresaw the greater need of him.

Furthermore, he liked his cousin to date his own controversial writings, on classical subjects, from Patterne

Hall. It caused his house to shine in a foreign field; proved the service of scholarship by giving it a flavour of

a bookish aristocracy that, though not so well worth having, and indeed in itself contemptible, is above the

material and titular; one cannot quite say how. There, however, is the flavour. Dainty sauces are the life, the

nobility, of famous dishes; taken alone, the former would be nauseating, the latter plebeian. It is thus, or

somewhat so, when you have a poet, still better a scholar, attached to your household. Sir Willoughby

deserved to have him, for he was above his county friends in his apprehension of the flavour bestowed by the

man; and having him, he had made them conscious of their deficiency. His cook, M. Dehors, pupil of the

great Godefroy, was not the only French cook in the county; but his cousin and secretary, the rising scholar,

the elegant essayist, was an unparalleled decoration; of his kind, of course. Personally. we laugh at him; you

had better not, unless you are fain to show that the higher world of polite literature is unknown to you. Sir

Willoughby could create an abject silence at a county dinnertable by an allusion to Vernon "at work at home

upon his Etruscans or his Dorians"; and he paused a moment to let the allusion sink, laughed audibly to

In addition, Sir Willoughby abhorred the loss of a familiar face in his domestic circle. He thought ill of

servants who could accept their dismissal without petitioning to stay with him. A servant that gave warning

partook of a certain fiendishness. Vernon's project of leaving the Hall offended and alarmed the sensitive

gentleman. "I shall have to hand Letty Dale to him at last!" he thought, yielding in bitter generosity to the

conditions imposed on him by the ungenerousness of another. For, since his engagement to Miss Middleton,

his electrically forethoughtful mind had seen in Miss Dale, if she stayed in the neighbourhood, and remained

unmarried, the governess of his infant children, often consulting with him. But here was a prospect dashed

out. The two, then, may marry, and live in a cottage on the borders of his park; and Vernon can retain his

post, and Laetitia her devotion. The risk of her casting it of had to be faced. Marriage has been known to have

such an effect on the most faithful of women that a great passion fades to naught in their volatile bosoms

when they have taken a husband. We see in women especially the triumph.of the animal over the spiritual.

Having no taste for a discussion with Vernon, whom it was his habit to confound by breaking away from him

abruptly when he had delivered his opinion, he left it to both the persons interesting themselves in young

Crossjay to imagine that he was meditating on the question of the lad, and to imagine that it would be wise to

leave him to meditate; for he could be preternaturally acute in reading any of his fellowcreatures if they

crossed the current of his feelings. And, meanwhile, he instructed the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to bring

Laetitia Dale on a visit to the Hall, where dinnerparties were soon to be given and a pleasing talker would

be wanted, where also a woman of intellect, steeped in a splendid sentiment, hitherto a miracle of female

constancy, might stir a younger woman to some emulation. Definitely to resolve to bestow Laetitia upon

Regarding Clara, his genius for perusing the heart which was not in perfect harmony with him through the

series of responsive movements to his own, informed him of a something in her character that might have

suggested to Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson her indefensible, absurd "rogue in porcelain". Idea there was none in

that phrase; yet, if you looked on Clara as a delicately inimitable porcelain beauty, the suspicion of a

delicately inimitable ripple over her features touched a thought of innocent roguery, wildwood roguery; the

likeness to the costly and lovely substance appeared to admit a fitness in the dubious epithet. He detested but

She certainly had at times the look of the nymph that has gazed too long on the faun, and has unwittingly

copied his lurking lip and long sliding eye. Her play with young Crossjay resembled a return of the lady to

the cat; she flung herself into it as if her real vitality had been in suspense till she saw the boy. Sir

Willoughby by no means disapproved of a physical liveliness that promised him health in his mate; but he

began to feel in their conversations that she did not sufficiently think of making herself a nest for him. Steely

points were opposed to him when he, figuratively, bared his bosom to be taken to the softest and fairest. She

reasoned: in other words, armed her ignorance. She reasoned against him publicly, and lured Vernon to

support her. Influence is to be counted for power, and her influence over Vernon was displayed in her

persuading him to dance one evening at Lady Culmer's, after his melancholy exhibitions of himself in the art;

and not only did she persuade him to stand up fronting her, she manoeuvred him through the dance like a

clever boy cajoling a top to come to him without reeling, both to Vernon's contentment and to Sir

Willoughby's; for he was the last man to object to a manifestation of power in his bride. Considering her

influence with Vernon, he renewed the discourse upon young Crossjay; and, as he was addicted to system, he

took her into his confidence, that she might be taught to look to him and act for him.

"You see, my love, if he puts Crossjay on me, he will be off. He has this craze for 'enlisting' his pen in

London, as he calls it; and I am accustomed to him; I don't like to think of him as a hack scribe, writing

nonsense from dictation to earn a pitiful subsistence; I want him here; and, supposing he goes, he offends me;

he loses a friend; and it will not he the first time that a friend has tried me too far; but if he offends me, he is

"On account of it, I might say. Our nature is mysterious, and mine as much so as any. Whatever my regrets,

he goes out. This is not a language I talk to the world. I do the man no harm; I am not to be named

"But do, do talk to me as you talk to the world, Willoughby; give me some relief!"

"My own Clara, we are one. You should know me at my worst, we will say, if you like, as well as at my

She hung silent; the wave of an insane resolution swelled in her bosom and subsided before she said,

We do not expect so much of women; the heroic virtues as little as the vices. They have not to unfold the

He resumed, and by his tone she understood that she was now in the inner temple of him: "I tell you these

things; I quite acknowledge they do not elevate me. They help to constitute my character. I tell you most

"It must be pride," he said, in a reverie superinduced by her thoughtfulness over the revelation, and glorying

He replied, profoundly vexed by disappointment: "I am what I am. It might be demonstrated to you

mathematically that it is corrected by equivalents or substitutions in my character. If it be a

"It seems one to me: so cruelly to punish Mr. Whitford for seeking to improve his fortunes."

"He reflects on my share in his fortunes. He has had but to apply to me for his honorarium to be doubled."

"Ay, but this is the world, and I know it, my love; and beautiful as your incredulity may be, you will find it

more comforting to confide in my knowledge of the selfishness of the world. My sweetest, you will?you

do! For a breath of difference between us is intolerable. Do you not feel how it breaks our magic ring? One

small fissure, and we have the world with its muddy deluge! But my subject was old Vernon. Yes, I pay

for Crossjay, if Vernon consents to stay. I waive my own scheme for the lad, though I think it the better one.

Now, then, to induce Vernon to stay. He has his ideas about staying under a mistress of the household; and

therefore, not to contest ithe is a man of no argument; a sort of lunatic determination takes the place of it

with old Vernon! let him settle close by me, in one of my cottages; very well, and to settle him we must

"Women," said Willoughby, "are born matchmakers, and the most persuasive is a young bride. With a

manand a man like old Vernon! she is irresistible. It is my wish, and that arms you. It is your wish, that

subjugates him. If he goes, he goes for good. If he stays, he is my friend. I deal simply with him, as with

every one. It is the secret of authority. Now Miss Dale will soon lose her father. He exists on a pension; she

has the prospect of having to leave the neighbourhood of the Hall, unless she is established near us. Her

whole heart is in this region; it is the poor soul's passion. Count on her agreeing. But she will require a little

wooing: and old Vernon wooing! Picture the scene to yourself, my love. His notion of wooing. I suspect, will

be to treat the lady like a lexicon, and turn over the leaves for the word, and fly through the leaves for another

word, and so get a sentence. Don't frown at the poor old fellow, my Clara; some have the language on their

tongues, and some have not. Some are very dry sticks; manly men, honest fellows, but so cut away, so

polished away from the sex, that they are in absolute want of outsiders to supply the silken filaments to attach

them. Actually!" Sir Willoughby laughed in Clara's face to relax the dreamy stoniness of her look. "But I can

assure you, my dearest, I have seen it. Vernon does not know how to speakas we speak. He has, or he had,

what is called a sneaking affection for Miss Dale. It was the most amusing thing possible; his courtship!the

air of a dog with an uneasy conscience, trying to reconcile himself with his master! We were all in fits of

"We bring them together, as we best can. You see, Clara, I desire, and I will make some sacrifices to detain

"An ideal, perhaps. I lay no stress on sacrifice. I strongly object to separations. And therefore, you will say, I

prepare the ground for unions? Put your influence to good service, my love. I believe you could persuade him

"Trust me. I have my ideas. I am not idle. That boy bids fair for a capital horseman. Eventualities might . . ."

Sir Willoughby murmured to himself, and addressing his bride, "The cavalry? If we put him into the cavalry,

we might make a gentleman of himnot be ashamed of him. Or, under certain eventualities, the Guards.

Think it over, my love. De Craye, who will, I suppose, act best man for me, supposing old Vernon to pull at

the collar, is a LieutenantColonel in the Guards, a thorough gentlemanof the brainless class, if you like,

but an elegant fellow; an Irishman; you will see him, and I should like to set a naval lieutenant beside him in

a drawingroom, for you to compare them and consider the model you would choose for a boy you are

interested in. Horace is grace and gallantry incarnate; fatuous, probably: I have always been too friendly with

him to examine closely. He made himself one of my dogs, though my elder, and seemed to like to be at my

heels. One of the few men's faces I can call admirably handsome; with nothing behind it, perhaps. As

Vernon says, 'a nothing picked by the vultures and bleached by the desert'. Not a bad talker, if you are

satisfied with keeping up the ball. He will amuse you. Old Horace does not know how amusing he is!"

"I forget the person of whom he said it. So you have noticed old Vernon's foible? Quote him one of his

epigrams, and he is in motion head and heels! It is an infallible receipt for tuning him. If I want to have him

in good temper, I have only to remark, 'as you said'. I straighten his back instantly."

"I," said Clara, "have noticed chiefly his anxiety concerning the boy; for which I admire him."

"Creditable, if not particularly farsighted and sagacious. well, then, my dear, attack him at once; lead him to

the subject of our fair neighbour. She is to be our guest for a week or so, and the whole affair might be

concluded far enough to fix him before she leaves. She is at present awaiting the arrival of a cousin to attend

on her father. A little gentle pushing will precipitate old Vernon on his knees as far as he ever can unbend

them; but when a lady is made ready to expect a declaration, you know, why, she does notdoes

He enfolded her. Clara was growing hardened to it. To this she was fated; and not seeing any way to escape,

she invoked a friendly frost to strike her blood, and passed through the minute unfeelingly. Having passed it,

she reproached herself for making so much of it, thinking it a lesser endurance than to listen to him. What

could she do?she was caged; by her word of honour, as she at one time thought; by her cowardice, at

another; and dimly sensible that the latter was a stronger lock than the former, she mused on the abstract

question whether a woman's cowardice can be so absolute as to cast her into the jaws of her aversion. Is it to

be conceived? Is there not a moment when it stands at bay? But haggardvisaged Honour then starts up

claiming to be dealt with in turn; for having courage restored to her, she must have the courage to break with

honour, she must dare to be faithless, and not merely say, I will be brave, but be brave enough to be

dishonourable. The cage of a plighted woman hungering for her disengagement has two keepers, a noble and

a vile; where on earth is creature so dreadfully enclosed? It lies with her to overcome what degrades her, that

Contemplating her situation, this idea (or vapour of youth taking the godlike semblance of an idea) sprang,

born of her present sickness, in Clara's mind; that it must be an illconstructed tumbling world where the

hour of ignorance is made the creator of our destiny by being forced to the decisive elections upon which

life's main issues hang. Her teacher had brought her to contemplate his view of the world.

She thought likewise: how must a man despise women, who can expose himself as he does to me!

Miss Middleton owed it to Sir Willoughby Patterne that she ceased to think like a girl. When had the great

change begun? Glancing back, she could imagine that it was near the period we call in love the firstalmost

from the first. And she was led to imagine it through having become barred from imagining her own

emotions of that season. They were so dead as not to arise even under the form of shadows in fancy. Without

imputing blame to him, for she was reasonable so far, she deemed herself a person entrapped. In a dream

somehow she had committed herself to a lifelong imprisonment; and, oh terror! not in a quiet dungeon; the

She was unable to say why she could not give it; why she retreated more and more inwardly; why she

invoked the frost to kill her tenderest feelings. She was in revolt, until a whisper of the day of bells reduced

her to blank submission; out of which a breath of peace drew her to revolt again in gradual rapid stages, and

once more the aspect of that singular day of merry blackness felled her to earth. It was alive, it advanced, it

had a mouth, it had a song. She received letters of bridesmaids writing of it, and felt them as waves that hurl a

log of wreck to shore. Following which afflicting sense of antagonism to the whole circle sweeping on with

her, she considered the possibility of her being in a commencement of madness. Otherwise might she not be

accused of a capriciousness quite as deplorable to consider? She had written to certain of these young ladies

not very long since of this gentlemanhow?in what tone? And was it her madness then? her recovery

now? It seemed to her that to have written of him enthusiastically resembled madness more than to shudder

away from the union; but standing alone, opposing all she has consented to set in motion, is too strange to a

Sir Willoughby was destined himself to supply her with that key of special insight which revealed and

The popular physician of the county and famous anecdotal wit, Dr. Corney, had been a guest at dinner

overnight, and the next day there was talk of him, and of the resources of his art displayed by Armand Dehors

on his hearing that he was to minister to the tastes of a gathering of hommes d'esprit. Sir Willoughby glanced

at Dehors with his customary benevolent irony in speaking of the persons, great in their way, who served

him. "Why he cannot give us daily so good a dinner, one must, I suppose, go to French nature to learn. The

French are in the habit of making up for all their deficiencies with enthusiasm. They have no reverence; if I

had said to him, 'I want something particularly excellent, Dehors', I should have had a commonplace dinner.

But they have enthusiasm on draught, and that is what we must pull at. Know one Frenchman and you know

France. I have had Dehors under my eye two years, and I can mount his enthusiasm at a word. He took

hommes d'esprit to denote men of letters. Frenchmen have destroyed their nobility, so, for the sake of

excitement, they put up the literary mannot to worship him; that they can't do; it's to put themselves in a

state of effervescence. They will not have real greatness above them, so they have sham. That they may justly

call it equality, perhaps! Ay, for all your shake of the head, my good Vernon! You see, human nature comes

round again, try as we may to upset it, and the French only differ from us in wading through blood to

discover that they are at their old trick once more; "I am your equal, sir, your born equal. Oh! you are a man

of letters? Allow me to be in a bubble about you!" Yes, Vernon, and I believe the fellow looks up to you as

the head of the establishment. I am not jealous. Provided he attends to his functions! There's a French

philosopher who's for naming the days of the year after the birthdays of French men of letters. Voltaireday,

Rousseauday, Racineday, so on. Perhaps Vernon will inform us who takes April 1st."

"A few trifling errors are of no consequence when you are in the vein of satire," said Vernon. "Be satisfied

"They may be reading us English off in a jockey!" said Dr. Middleton. "I believe that jockeys are the

exchange we make for cooks; and our neighbours do not get the best of the bargain."

"No; but, my dear good Vernon, it's nonsensical," said Sir Willoughby; "why be bawling every day the name

"Bene!" Sir Willoughby's derisive laugh broke the word. "There's a pretension in all that, irreconcilable

"We might," said Vernon, "if you like, give alternative titles to the days, or have alternating days, devoted to

The rebel Clara, delighting in his banter, was heard: "Can we furnish sufficient?"

"For blowy days," observed Dr. Middleton, and hastily in penitence picked up the conversation he had

unintentionally prostrated, with a general remark on newfangled notions, and a word aside to Vernon; which

created the blissful suspicion in Clara that her father was indisposed to second Sir Willoughby's opinions

Sir Willoughby had led the conversation. Displeased that the lead should be withdrawn from him, he turned

to Clara and related one of the afterdinner anecdotes of Dr. Corney; and another, with a vast deal of human

nature in it, concerning a valetudinarian gentleman, whose wife chanced to be desperately ill, and he went to

the physicians assembled in consultation outside the sickroom, imploring them by all he valued, and in

tears, to save the poor patient for him, saying: "She is everything to me, everything; and if she dies I am

compelled to run the risks of marrying again; I must marry again; for she has accustomed me so to the little

attentions of a wife, that in truth I can't. I can't lose her! She must be saved!" And the loving husband of any

"Now, there, Clara, there you have the Egoist," added Sir Willoughby. "That is the perfect Egoist. You see

what he comes to and his wife! The man was utterly unconscious of giving vent to the grossest

"Beware of marrying an Egoist, my dear!" He bowed gallantly; and so blindly fatuous did he appear to her,

that she could hardly believe him guilty of uttering the words she had heard from him, and kept her eyes on

him vacantly till she came to a sudden full stop in the thoughts directing her gaze. She looked at Vernon, she

looked at her father, and at the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. None of them saw the man in the word, none

noticed the word; yet this word was her medical herb, her illuminating lamp, the key of him (and, alas, but

she thought it by feeling her need of one), the advocate pleading in apology for her. Egoist! She beheld

him unfortunate, selfdesignated man that he was!in his good qualities as well as bad under the

implacable lamp, and his good were drenched in his first person singular. His generosity roared of I louder

than the rest. Conceive him at the age of Dr. Corney's hero: "Pray, save my wife for me. I shall positively

have to get another if I lose her, and one who may not love me half so well, or understand the peculiarities of

my character and appreciate my attitudes." He was in his thirtysecond year, therefore a young man, strong

and healthy, yet his garrulous return to his principal theme, his emphasis on I and me, lent him the seeming of

Would he help her to escape? The idea of the scene ensuing upon her petition for release, and the being

dragged round the walls of his egoism, and having her head knocked against the corners, alarmed her with

There was the example of Constantia. But that desperate young lady had been assisted by a gallant, loving

Clara brooded on those two until they seemed heroic. She questioned herself. Could she . . .? were one to

come? She shut her eyes in languor, leaning the wrong way of her wishes, yet unable to say No.

Sir Willoughby had positively said beware! Marrying him would be a deed committed in spite of his express

warning. She went so far as to conceive him subsequently saying: "I warned you." She conceived the state of

marriage with him as that of a woman tied not to a man of heart, but to an obelisk lettered all over with

hieroglyphics, and everlastingly hearing him expound them, relishing renewing his lectures on them.

Full surely this immovable stoneman would not release her. This petrifaction of egoism would from

amazedly to austerely refuse the petition. His pride would debar him from understanding her desire to be

released. And if she resolved on it, without doing it straightway in Constantia's manner, the miserable

bewilderment of her father, for whom such a complication would be a tragic dilemma, had to be thought of.

Her father, with all his tenderness for his child, would make a stand on the point of honour; though certain to

yield to her, he would be distressed in a tempest of worry; and Dr. Middleton thus afflicted threw up his arms,

he shunned books, shunned speech, and resembled a castaway on the ocean, with nothing between himself

and his calamity. As for the world, it would be barking at her heels. She might call the man she wrenched her

hand from, Egoist; jilt, the world would call her. She dwelt bitterly on her agreement with Sir Willoughby

regarding the world, laying it to his charge that her garden had become a place of nettles, her horizon an

Clara passed from person to person visiting the Hall. There was universal, and as she was compelled to see,

honest admiration of the host. Not a soul had a suspicion of his cloaked nature. Her agony of hypocrisy in

accepting their compliments as the bride of Sir Willoughby Patterne was poorly moderated by contempt of

them for their infatuation. She tried to cheat herself with the thought that they were right and that she was the

foolish and wicked inconstant. In her anxiety to strangle the rebelliousness which had been communicated

from her mind to her blood, and was present with her whether her mind was in action or not, she encouraged

the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to magnify the fictitious man of their idolatry, hoping that she might enter into

them imaginatively, that she might to some degree subdue herself to the necessity of her position. If she

partly succeeded in stupefying her antagonism, five minutes of him undid the work.

He requested her to wear the Patterne pearls for a dinnerparty of grand ladies, telling her that he would

commission Miss Isabel to take them to her. Clara begged leave to decline them, on the plea of having no

right to wear them. He laughed at her modish modesty. "But really it might almost be classed with

"I would rather not. I cannot wear borrowed jewels. These I cannot wear. Forgive me, I cannot. And,

Willoughby," she said, scorning herself for want of fortitude in not keeping to the simply blunt provocative

refusal, "does one not look like a victim decked for the sacrifice?the garlanded heifer you see on Greek

"My dear Clara!" exclaimed the astonished lover, "how can you term them borrowed, when they are the

Patterne jewels, our family heirloom pearls, unmatched, I venture to affirm, decidedly in my county and

many others, and passing to the use of the mistress of the house in the natural course of things?"

Her scruple was perhaps an honourable one, he said. Perhaps the jewels were safer in their iron box. He had

Courage was coming to enable her to speak more plainly, when his discontinuing to insist on her wearing the

jewels, under an appearance of deference of her wishes, disarmed her by touching her sympathies.

"But I know," she pursued, "I have learned that the ideal of conduct for women is to subject their minds to the

"Ah!" She compressed her lips. The yawn would come. "I am sleepier here than anywhere."

"Ours, my Clara, is the finest air of the kingdom. It has the effect of seaair."

She left him, feeling the contempt of the brain feverishly quickened and finepointed, for the brain chewing

the cud in the happy pastures of unawakedness. So violent was the fever, so keen her introspection, that she

spared few, and Vernon was not among them. Young Crossjay, whom she considered the least able of all to

act as an ally, was the only one she courted with a real desire to please him, he was the one she affectionately

envied; he was the youngest, the freest, he had the world before him, and he did not know how horrible the

world was, or could be made to look. She loved the boy from expecting nothing of him. Others, Vernon

Whitford, for instance, could help, and moved no hand. He read her case. A scrutiny so penetrating under its

air of abstract thoughtfulness, though his eyes did but rest on her a second or two, signified that he read her

line by line, and to the end excepting what she thought of him for probing her with that sharp steel of

She knew her mind's injustice. It was her case, her lamentable casethe impatient panicstricken nerves of a

captured wild creature which cried for help. She exaggerated her sufferings to get strength to throw them off,

and lost it in the recognition that they were exaggerated: and out of the conflict issued recklessness, with a

cry as wild as any coming of madness; for she did not blush in saying to herself. "If some one loved me!"

Before hearing of Constantia, she had mused upon liberty as a virgin Goddessmen were out of her

thoughts; even the figure of a rescuer, if one dawned in her mind, was more angel than hero. That fair

childish maidenliness had ceased. With her body straining in her dragon's grasp, with the savour of loathing,

unable to contend, unable to speak aloud, she began to speak to herself, and all the health of her nature made

her outcry womanly: "If I were loved!"not for the sake of love, but for free breathing; and her utterance of

it was to insure life and enduringness to the wish, as the yearning of a mother on a drowning ship is to get her

infant to shore. "If some noble gentleman could see me as I am and not disdain to aid me! Oh! to be caught

up out of this prison of thorns and brambles. I cannot tear my own way out. I am a coward. My cry for help

confesses that. A beckoning of a finger would change me, I believe. I could fly bleeding and through hootings

to a comrade. Oh! a comrade! I do not want a lover. I should find another Egoist, not so bad, but enough to

make me take a breath like death. I could follow a soldier, like poor Sally or Molly. He stakes his life for his

country, and a woman may be proud of the worst of men who do that. Constantia met a soldier. Perhaps she

prayed and her prayer was answered. She did ill. But, oh, how I love her for it! His name was Harry Oxford.

Papa would call him her Perseus. She must have felt that there was no explaining what she suffered. She had

only to act, to plunge. First she fixed her mind on Harry Oxford. To be able to speak his name and see him

awaiting her, must have been relief, a reprieve. She did not waver, she cut the links, she signed herself over.

Oh, brave girl! what do you think of me? But I have no Harry Whitford, I am alone. Let anything be said

against women; we must be very bad to have such bad things written of us: only, say this, that to ask them to

sign themselves over by oath and ceremony, because of an ignorant promise, to the man they have been

mistaken in, is . . . it is" the sudden consciousness that she had put another name for Oxford, struck her a

Sir Willoughby chose a moment when Clara was with him and he had a good retreat through

foldingwindows to the lawn, in case of cogency on the enemy's part, to attack his cousin regarding the

preposterous plot to upset the family by a scamper to London: "By the way, Vernon, what is this you've been

mumbling to everybody save me, about leaving us to pitch yourself into the stewpot and be made broth of?

London is no better, and you are fit for considerably better. Don't, I beg you, continue to annoy me. Take a

run abroad, if you are restless. Take two or three months, and join us as we are travelling home; and then

think of settling, pray. Follow my example, if you like. You can have one of my cottages, or a place built for

you. Anything to keep a man from destroying the sense of stability about one. In London, my dear old fellow,

you lose your identity. What are you there? I ask you, what? One has the feeling of the house crumbling

when a man is perpetually for shifting and cannot fix himself. Here you are known, you can study at your

ease; up in London you are nobody; I tell you honestly, I feel it myself., a week of London literally drives me

home to discover the individual where I left him. Be advised. You don't mean to go."

"You have not mentioned it to me, to my knowledge. As to the reason, I might hear a dozen of your reasons,

and I should not understand one. It's against your interests and against my wishes. Come, friend, I am not the

only one you distress. Why, Vernon, you yourself have said that the English would be very perfect Jews if

they could manage to live on the patriarchal system. You said it, yes, you said it!but I recollect it clearly.

Oh, as for your doublemeanings, you said the thing, and you jeered at the incapacity of English families to

live together, on account of bad temper; and now you are the first to break up our union! I decidedly do not

Sir Willoughby caught signs of a probably smiling commerce between his bride and his cousin. He raised his

face, appeared to be consulting his eyelids, and resolved to laugh: "Well, I own it. I do like the idea of living

Clara thanked Sir Willoughby for the kindness of thinking of her father, mentally analysing the kindness, in

which at least she found no unkindness, scarcely egoism, though she knew it to be there.

"If he would condescend to accept it as a compliment. These great scholars! ... And if Vernon goes, our

inducement for Dr. Middleton to stay ... But it is too absurd for discussion.. Oh, Vernon, about Master

He was about to give Vernon his shoulder and step into the garden, when Clara said, "You will have Crossjay

"Yes, yes; I will see to it. Depend on me for holding the young rascal in view."

He presented his hand to her to lead her over the step to the gravel, surprised to behold how flushed she was.

She responded to the invitation by putting her hand forth from a bent elbow, with hesitating fingers. "It

"It's an affair of money, as you know, Willoughby," said Vernon. "If I'm in London, I can't well provide for

"In which case the circumstances are changed. I am responsible for him, and I have a right to bring him up

"They're the national apology for indolence. Training a penniless boy to be one of them is nearly as bad as an

education in a thieves" den; he will be just as much at war with society, if not game for the police."

"Vernon, have you seen Crossjay's father, the now Captain of Marines? I think you have."

"And in spite of his qualities he's a cub, and an old cub. He is a captain now, but he takes that rank very late,

you will own. There you have what you call a good man, undoubtedly a gallant officer, neutralized by the

fact that he is not a gentleman. Holding intercourse with him is out of the question. No wonder Government

declines to advance him rapidly. Young Crossjay does not bear your name. He bears mine, and on that point

alone I should have a voice in the settlement of his career. And I say emphatically that a drawingroom

approval of a young man is the best certificate for his general chances in life. I know of a City of London

merchant of some sort, and I know a firm of lawyers, who will have none but University men at their office;

"Crossjay has a bullet head, fit neither for the University nor the drawingroom," said Vernon; "equal to

Sir Willoughby contented himself with replying, "The lad is a favourite of mine."

His anxiety to escape a rejoinder caused him to step into the garden, leaving Clara behind him. "My love!"

said he, in apology, as he turned to her. She could not look stern, but she had a look without a dimple to

soften it, and her eyes shone. For she had wagered in her heart that the dialogue she provoked upon Crossjay

would expose the Egoist. And there were other motives, wrapped up and intertwisted, unrecognizable,

sufficient to strike her with worse than the flush of her selfknowledge of wickedness when she detained him

At last it had been seen that she was conscious of suffering in her association with this Egoist! Vernon stood

for the world taken into her confidence. The world, then, would not think so ill of her, she thought hopefully,

at the same time that she thought most evilly of herself. But selfaccusations were for the day of reckoning;

she would and must have the world with her, or the belief that it was coming to her, in the terrible struggle

she foresaw within her horizon of self, now her utter boundary. She needed it for the inevitable conflict. Little

sacrifices of her honesty might be made. Considering how weak she was, how solitary, how dismally

entangled, daily disgraced beyond the power of any veiling to conceal from her fiery sensations, a little

hypocrisy was a poor girl's natural weapon. She crushed her conscientious mind with the assurance that it was

magnifying trifles: not entirely unaware that she was thereby preparing it for a convenient blindness in the

presence of dread alternatives; but the pride of laying such stress on small sins gave her purity a blush of

pleasure and overcame the inner warning. In truth she dared not think evilly of herself for long, sailing into

battle as she was. Nuns and anchorites may; they have leisure. She regretted the forfeits she had to pay for

selfassistance, and, if it might be won, the world's; regretted, felt the peril of the loss, and took them up and

He drew her hand more securely on his arm to make her sensible that she leaned on a pillar of strength.

"Whenever the little brain is in doubt, perplexed, undecided which course to adopt, she will come to me, will

she not? I shall always listen," he resumed, soothingly. "My own! and I to you when the world vexes me. So

we round our completeness. You will know me; you will know me in good time. I am not a mystery to those

to whom I unfold myself. I do not pretend to mystery: yet, I will confess, your homeyour

heart'sWilloughby is not exactly identical with the Willoughby before the world. One must be armed

Certain is the vengeance of the young upon monotony; nothing more certain. They do not scheme it, but

sameness is a poison to their systems; and vengeance is their heartier breathing, their stretch of the limbs, run

"Horace? In two or three days. You wish him to be on the spot to learn his part, my love?"

She had not flown forward to the thought of Colonel De Craye's arrival; she knew not why she had

mentioned him; but now she flew back, shocked, first into shadowy subterfuge, and then into the criminal's

"I do not wish him to be here. I do not know that he has a part to learn. I have no wish. Willoughby, did you

not say I should come to you and you would listen?will you listen? I am so commonplace that I shall not

be understood by you unless you take my words for the very meaning of the words. I am unworthy. I am

"Pardon me, my love," he said. "The man you see yonder violates my express injunction that he is not to

Sir Willoughby waved his hand to the abject figure of a man standing to intercept him.

"Volatile, unworthy, libertymy dearest!" he bent to her when the man had appeased him by departing, "you

are at liberty within the law, like all good women; I shall control and direct your volatility; and your sense of

worthiness must be reestablished when we are more intimate; it is timidity. The sense of unworthiness is a

guarantee of worthiness ensuing. I believe I am in the vein of a sermon! Whose the fault? The sight of that

man was annoying. Flitch was a stableboy, groom, and coachman, like his father before him, at the Hall

thirty years; his father died in our service. Mr. Flitch had not a single grievance here; only one day the demon

seizes him with the notion of bettering himself he wants his independence, and he presents himself to me

with a story of a shop in our county town.Flitch! remember, if you go you go for good.Oh, he quite

comprehended.Very well; goodbye, Flitch;the man was respectful: he looked the fool he was very

soon to turn out to be. Since then, within a period of several years, I have had him, against my express

injunctions, ten times on my grounds. It's curious to calculate. Of course the shop failed, and Flitch's

independence consists in walking about with his hands in his empty pockets, and looking at the Hall from

"Here he was happy. He decided to go elsewhere, to be freeof course, of my yoke. He quitted my service

against my warning. Flitch, we will say, emigrated with his wife and children, and the ship foundered. He

"It will be the same with old Vernon, my dear. If he goes, he goes for good. It is the vital principle of my

authority to insist on that. A dead leaf might as reasonably demand to return to the tree. Once off, off for all

eternity! I am sorry. but such was your decision, my friend. I have, you see, Clara, elements in me"

"Exert your persuasive powers with Vernon. You can do wellnigh what you will with the old fellow. We

have Miss Dale this evening for a week or two. Lead him to some ideas of her.Elements in me, I was

remarking, which will no more bear to be handled carelessly than gunpowder. At the same time, there is no

reason why they should not be respected, managed with some degree of regard for me and attention to

His ingratiating droop and familiar smile rendered "All myself" so affectionately meaningful in its happy

reliance upon her excess of love, that at last she understood she was expected to worship him and uphold him

for whatsoever he might be, without any estimation of qualities: as indeed love does, or young love does: as

she perhaps did once, before he chilled her senses. That was before her "little brain" had become active and

It was on the full river of love that Sir Willoughby supposed the whole floating bulk of his personality to be

securely sustained; and therefore it was that, believing himself swimming at his ease, he discoursed of

She went straight away from that idea with her mental exclamation: "Why does he not paint himself in

brighter colours to me!" and the question: "Has he no ideal of generosity and chivalry?"

But the unfortunate gentleman imagined himself to be loved, on Love's very bosom. He fancied that

everything relating to himself excited maidenly curiosity, womanly reverence, ardours to know more of him,

which he was ever willing to satisfy by repeating the same things. His notion of women was the primitive

black and white: there are good women, bad women; and he possessed a good one. His high opinion of

himself fortified the belief that Providence, as a matter of justice and fitness, must necessarily select a good

one for himor what are we to think of Providence? And this female, shaped by that informing hand, would

naturally be in harmony with him, from the centre of his profound identity to the raying circle of his

variations. Know the centre, you know the circle, and you discover that the variations are simply

characteristics, but you must travel on the rays from the circle to get to the centre. Consequently Sir

Willoughby put Miss Middleton on one or other of these converging lines from time to time. Us, too, he

drags into the deeps, but when we have harpooned a whale and are attached to the rope, down we must go;

Women of mixed essences shading off the divine to the considerably lower were outside his vision of

woman. His mind could as little admit an angel in pottery as a rogue in porcelain. For him they were what

they were when fashioned at the beginning; many cracked, many stained, here and there a perfect specimen

designed for the elect of men. At a whisper of the world he shut the prude's door on them with a slam;

himself would have branded them with the letters in the hue of fire. Privately he did so; and he was

constituted by his extreme sensitiveness and taste for ultrafeminine refinement to be a severe critic of them

during the carnival of egoism, the loveseason. Constantia ... can it he told? She had been, be it said, a fair

and frank young merchant with him in that season; she was of a nature to be a mother of heroes; she met the

salute, almost halfway, ingenuously unlike the coming mothers of the regiments of marionettes, who retire

in vapours, downcast, as by convention; ladies most flattering to the egoistical gentleman, for they proclaim

him the "first". Constantia's offence had been no greater, but it was not that dramatic performance of purity

The loveseason is the carnival of egoism, and it brings the touchstone to our natures. I speak of love, not the

mask, and not of the flutings upon the theme of love, but of the passion; a flame having, like our mortality,

death in it as well as life, that may or may not be lasting. Applied to Sir Willoughby, as to thousands of

civilized males, the touchstone found him requiring to be dealt with by his betrothed as an original savage.

She was required to play incessantly on the first reclaiming chord which led our ancestral satyr to the

measures of the dance, the threading of the maze, and the setting conformably to his partner before it was

accorded to him to spin her with both hands and a chirrup of his frisky heels. To keep him in awe and hold

him enchained, there are things she must never do, dare never say, must not think. She must be cloistral.

Now, strange and awful though it be to hear, women perceive this requirement of them in the spirit of the

man; they perceive, too, and it may be gratefully, that they address their performances less to the taming of

the green and prankish monsieur of the forest than to the pacification of a voracious aesthetic gluttony,

craving them insatiably, through all the tenses, with shrieks of the lamentable letter "I" for their purity.

Whether they see that it has its foundation in the sensual, and distinguish the ultrarefined but lineally

greatgrandson of the Hoof in this vast and dainty exacting appetite is uncertain. They probably do not; the

more the damage; for in the appeasement of the glutton they have to practise much simulation; they are in

their way losers like their ancient mothers. It is the palpable and material of them still which they are tempted

to flourish, wherewith to invite and allay pursuit: a condition under which the spiritual, wherein their hope

lies, languishes. The capaciously strong in soul among women will ultimately detect an infinite grossness in

the demand for purity infinite, spotless bloom. Earlier or later they see they have been victims of the singular

Egoist, have worn a mask of ignorance to be named innocent, have turned themselves into market produce for

his delight, and have really abandoned the commodity in ministering to the lust for it, suffered themselves to

be dragged ages back in playing upon the fleshly innocence of happy accident to gratify his jealous greed of

possession, when it should have been their task to set the soul above the fairest fortune and the gift of strength

in women beyond ornamental whiteness. Are they not of nature warriors, like men?men's mates to bear

them heroes instead of puppets? But the devouring male Egoist prefers them as inanimate overwrought

polished pure metal precious vessels, fresh from the hands of the artificer, for him to walk away with

hugging, call all his own, drink of, and fill and drink of, and forget that he stole them.

This running off on a byroad is no deviation from Sir Willoughby Patterne and Miss Clara Middleton. He, a

fairly intelligent man, and very sensitive, was blinded to what was going on within her visibly enough, by her

production of the article he demanded of her sex. He had to leave the fair young lady to ride to his

countytown, and his design was to conduct her through the covert of a group of laurels, there to revel in her

soft confusion. She resisted; nay, resolutely returned to the lawnsward. He contrasted her with Constantia in

the amorous time, and rejoiced in his disappointment. He saw the goddess Modesty guarding Purity; and one

would be bold to say that he did not hear the Precepts, Purity's aged grannams maternal and paternal, cawing

approval of her over their munching gums. And if you ask whether a man, sensitive and a lover, can be so

Miss Middleton was not sufficiently instructed in the position of her sex to know that she had plunged herself

in the thick of the strife of one of their great battles. Her personal position, however, was instilling knowledge

rapidly, as a disease in the frame teaches us what we are and have to contend with. Could she marry this

man? He was evidently manageable. Could she condescend to the use of arts in managing him to obtain a

placable life?a horror of swampy flatness! So vividly did the sight of that dead heaven over an unvarying

level earth swim on her fancy, that she shut her eyes in angry exclusion of it as if it were outside, assailing

The boy took her hand, and she resumed her thoughts; and, pressing his fingers and feeling warm to him both

for his presence and silence, so does the blood in youth lead the mind, even cool and innocent blood, even

with a touch, that she said to herself, "And if I marry, and then ... Where will honour be then? I marry him to

be true to my word of honour, and if then ... !" An intolerable languor caused her to sigh profoundly. It is

written as she thought it; she thought in blanks, as girls do, and some women. A shadow of the male Egoist is

"Were I to marry, and to run!" There is the thought; she is offered up to your mercy. We are dealing with a

"I'm only red in the middle of the cheeks, except when I've been running. And then you talk to yourself, just

"They say: 'I know I could have kept up longer', or, 'my buckle broke', all to themselves, when they break

"And, Miss Middleton, I don't wish you were a boy, but I should like to live near you all my life and be a

gentleman. I'm coming with Miss Dale this evening to stay at the Hall and be looked after, instead of

stopping with her cousin who takes care of her father. Perhaps you and I'll play chess at night."

"Not if I have Sir Willoughby to catch hold of. He says I'm an authority on birds" eggs. I can manage rabbits

and poultry. Isn't a farmer a happy man? But he doesn't marry ladies. A cavalry officer has the best chance."

"I don't know. It's not positive. I shall bring my two dormice, and make them perform gymnastics on the

dinnertable. They're such dear little things. Naval officers are not like Sir Willoughby."

She asked the boy where Mr. Whitford was. Crossjay pointed very secretly in the direction of the

doubleblossom wildcherry. Coming within gaze of the stem, she beheld Vernon stretched at length,

reading, she supposed; asleep, she discovered: his finger in the leaves of a book; and what book? She had a

curiosity to know the title of the book he would read beneath these boughs, and grasping Crossjay's hand fast

she craned her neck, as one timorous of a fall in peeping over chasms, for a glimpse of the page; but

immediately, and still with a bent head, she turned her face to where the load of virginal blossom, whiter than

summercloud on the sky, showered and drooped and clustered so thick as to claim colour and seem, like

higher Alpine snows in noonsunlight, a flush of white. From deep to deeper heavens of white, her eyes

perched and soared. Wonder lived in her. Happiness in the beauty of the tree pressed to supplant it, and was

more mortal and narrower. Reflection came, contracting her vision and weighing her to earth. Her reflection

was: "He must be good who loves to be and sleep beneath the branches of this tree!" She would rather have

clung to her first impression: wonder so divine, so unbounded, was like soaring into homes of angelcrowded

space, sweeping through folded and on to folded white fountainbow of wings, in innumerable columns; but

the thought of it was no recovery of it; she might as well have striven to be a child. The sensation of

happiness promised to be less shortlived in memory, and would have been had not her present disease of the

longing for happiness ravaged every corner of it for the secret of its existence. The reflection took root. "He

must be good ... !" That reflection vowed to endure. Poor by comparison with what it displaced, it presented

itself to her as conferring something on him, and she would not have had it absent though it robbed her.

She plucked Crossjay hurriedly away, whispering that he had better not wake Mr. Whitford, and then she

proposed to reverse their previous chase, and she be the hound and he the hare. Crossjay fetched a

magnificent start. On his glancing behind he saw Miss Middleton walking listlessly, with a hand at her side.

"There's a regular girl!" said he in some disgust; for his theory was, that girls always have something the

Looking upward, not quite awakened out of a transient doze, at a fair head circled in dazzling blossom, one

may temporize awhile with common sense, and take it for a vision after the eyes have regained direction of

the mind. Vernon did so until the plastic vision interwound with reality alarmingly. This is the embrace of a

Melusine who will soon have the brain if she is encouraged. Slight dalliance with her makes the very

diminutive seem as big as life. He jumped to his feet, rattled his throat, planted firmness on his brows and

mouth, and attacked the dreamgiving earth with tremendous long strides, that his blood might be lively at

the throne of understanding. Miss Middleton and young Crossjay were within hail: it was her face he had

seen, and still the idea of a vision, chased from his reasonable wits, knocked hard and again for readmission.

There was little for a man of humble mind toward the sex to think of in the fact of a young lady's bending

rather low to peep at him asleep, except that the poise of her slender figure, between an air of spying and of

listening, vividly recalled his likening of her to the Mountain Echo. Man or maid sleeping in the open air

provokes your tiptoe curiosity. Men, it is known, have in that state cruelly been kissed; and no rights are

bestowed on them, they are teased by a vapourish rapture; what has happened to them the poor fellows barely

divine: they have a crazy step from that day. But a vision is not so distracting; it is our own, we can put it

aside and return to it, play at rich and poor with it, and are not to be summoned before your laws and rules for

secreting it in our treasury. Besides, it is the golden key of all the possible; new worlds expand beneath the

dawn it brings us. Just outside reality, it illumines, enriches and softens real things;and to desire it in

Such was Vernon's winding up of his brief drama of fantasy. He was aware of the fantastical element in him

and soon had it under. Which of us who is of any worth is without it? He had not much vanity to trouble him,

and passion was quiet, so his task was not gigantic. Especially be it remarked, that he was a man of quick

pace, the sovereign remedy for the dispersing of the mental fenmist. He had tried it and knew that nonsense

Near the end of the park young Crossjay overtook him, and after acting the pumped one a trifle more than

needful, cried: "I say, Mr. Whitford, there's Miss Middleton with her handkerchief out."

"I'm sure I don't know. All of a sudden she bumped down. And, look what fellows girls are!here she comes

Clara was shaking her head to express a denial. "I am not at all unwell," she said. when she came near. "I

guessed Crossjay's business in running up to you; he's a goodfornothing, officious boy. I was tired, and

Crossjay peered at her eyelids. Vernon looked away and said: "Are you too tired for a stroll?"

He led at a swing of the legs that accelerated young Crossjay's to the double, but she with her short, swift,

equal steps glided along easily on a fine by his shoulder, and he groaned to think that of all the girls of earth

"They cover a quantity of ground in a day, if the ground's flat. You want another sort of step for the

"The mountains tame luxurious dreams, you mean. I see how they are conquered. I can plod. Anything to be

"Well, there you have the secret of good work: to plod on and still keep the passion fresh."

Ignorant man! What of wives miserably wedded? What aim in view have these most woeful captives? Horror

"Take me back to the mountains, if you please, Mr. Whitford," Miss Middleton said, fallen out of sympathy

"The prisongates are unlocked and out comes a skeleton. But why will you talk of skeletons! The very name

"I assure you," said Vernon, with the fervour of a man lighting on an actual truth in his conversation with a

young lady, "it's not the first time I have thought you would be at home in the Alps. You would walk and

She liked to hear Clara Middleton talked of, and of her having been thought of, and giving him friendly eyes,

barely noticing that he was in a glow. she said: "If you speak so encouragingly I shall fancy we are near an

Miss Middleton suggested a lady's mountain first, for a trial. "And then, if you think well enough of meif I

have not stumbled more than twice, or asked more than ten times how far it is from the top, I should like to

They went up to some of the lesser heights of Switzerland and Styria, and settled in South Tyrol, the young

lady preferring this district for the strenuous exercise of her climbing powers because she loved Italian

colour; and it seemed an exceedingly good reason to the genial imagination she had awakened in Mr.

"Of course you are English; . . . yes." He moderated his ascent with the halting affirmative.

"Well, you have French feet, for example: French wits, French impatience," he lowered his voice, "and

"It is not a piece of drawingroom sculpture: that is the most one can say for it!" she dropped a dramatic sigh.

Had he been willing she would have continued the theme, for the pleasure a poor creature long gnawing her

sensations finds in seeing herself from the outside. It fell away. After a silence, she could not renew it; and he

was evidently indifferent, having to his own satisfaction dissected and stamped her a foreigner. With it passed

her holiday. She had forgotten Sir Willoughby: she remembered him and said. "You knew Miss Durham, Mr.

"I won't say no. She discovered a man more of a match with herself; luckily not too late. We're at the mercy .

"I suppose I do. She made a mistake and she corrected it. if she had not, she would have made a greater

"That was badas far as we know. The world has not much right to judge. A false start must now and then

"Currents of feeling, our natures. I am the last man to preach on the subject: young ladies are enigmas to me;

I fancy they must have a natural perception of the husband suitable to them, and the reverse; and if they have

"I really think that if a young lady came to me to inform me she must break our engagementI have never

"And I should not think so for this reason, that it is impossible for a girl to come to such a resolution without

previously showing signs of it to her. . . the man she is engaged to. I think it unfair to engage a girl for longer

"If he is always intent on himself, signs are likely to be unheeded by him," said Miss Middleton.

"It must always be a cruelty. The world will think so. It is an act of inconstancy."

"In some cases it is right to judge by results; we'll leave severity to the historian, who is bound to be a

professional moralist and put pleas of human nature out of the scales. The lady in question may have been to

blame, but no hearts were broken, and here we have four happy instead of two miserable."

His persecuting geniality of countenance appealed to her to confirm this judgement by results, and she

From that moment until young Crossjay fell into the greenrutted lane from a tree, and was got on his legs

half stunned, with a hanging lip and a face like the inside of a flayed eelskin, she might have been walking

They led the fated lad home between them, singularly drawn together by their joint ministrations to him, in

which her delicacy had to stand fire, and sweet goodnature made naught of any trial. They were hand in

Crossjay's accident was only another proof, as Vernon told Miss Dale, that the boy was but half monkey.

"Something fresh?" she exclaimed on seeing him brought into the Hall, where she had just arrived.

"Simply a continuation," said Vernon. "He is not so prehensile as he should be. He probably in extremity

"I should think I was!" Crossjay replied, with an old man's voice, and a ghastly twitch for a smile

Miss Dale took possession of him. "You err in the other direction," she remarked to Vernon.

"But a little bracing roughness is better than spoiling him." said Miss Middleton.

She did not receive an answer, and she thought: "Whatever Willoughby does is right, to this lady!"

Clara's impression was renewed when Sir Willoughby sat beside Miss Dale in the evening; and certainly she

had never seen him shine so picturesquely as in his bearing with Miss Dale. The sprightly sallies of the two,

their rallyings, their laughter, and her fine eyes, and his handsome gestures, won attention like a fencing

match of a couple keen with the foils to display the mutual skill. And it was his design that she should admire

the display; he was anything but obtuse; enjoying the match as he did and necessarily did to act so excellent a

part in it, he meant the observer to see the man he was with a lady not of raw understanding. So it went on

She fancied once that she detected the agreeable stirring of the brood of jealousy, and found it neither in her

heart nor in her mind, but in the book of wishes, well known to the young where they write matter which may

sometimes be independent of both those volcanic albums. Jealousy would have been a relief to her, a dear

devil's aid. She studied the complexion of jealousy to delude herself with the sense of the spirit being in her,

and all the while she laughed, as at a vile theatre whereof the imperfection of the stage machinery rather than

Vernon had deeply depressed her. She was hunted by the figure 4. Four happy instead of two miserable. He

had said it, involving her among the four; and so it must be, she considered. and she must be as happy as she

could; for not only was he incapable of perceiving her state, he was unable to imagine other circumstances to

Her horrible isolation of secrecy in a world amiable in unsuspectingness frightened her. To fling away her

secret, to conform, to be unrebellious, uncritical, submissive, became an impatient desire; and the task did not

appear so difficult since Miss Dale's arrival. Endearments had been rare, more formal; living bodily

untroubled and unashamed, and, as she phrased it, having no one to care for her, she turned insensibly in the

direction where she was due; she slightly imitated Miss Dale's colloquial responsiveness. To tell truth, she

felt vivacious in a moderate way with Willoughby after seeing him with Miss Dale. Liberty wore the aspect

of a towering prisonwall; the desperate undertaking of climbing one side and dropping to the other was

more than she, unaided, could resolve on; consequently, as no one cared for her, a worthless creature might as

well cease dreaming and stipulating for the fulfilment of her dreams; she might as well yield to her fate; nay,

Sir Willoughby was flattered and satisfied. Clara's adopted vivacity proved his thorough knowledge of

feminine nature; nor did her feebleness in sustaining it displease him. A steady look of hers had of late

perplexed the man, and he was comforted by signs of her inefficiency where he excelled. The effort and the

But she could not continue the effort. He had overweighted her too much for the mimicry of a sentiment to

harden and have an apparently natural place among her impulses; and now an idea came to her that he might,

it might be hoped, possibly see in Miss Dale, by present contrast, the mate he sought; by contrast with an

unanswering creature like herself, he might perhaps realize in Miss Dale's greater accomplishments and her

devotion to him the merit of suitability; he might be induced to do her justice. Dim as the loophole was,

Clara fixed her mind on it till it gathered light. And as a prelude to action, she plunged herself into a state of

such profound humility, that to accuse it of being simulated would he venturesome, though it was not

positive. The tempers of the young are liquid fires in isles of quicksand; the precious metals not yet cooled in

a solid earth. Her compassion for Laetitia was less forced, but really she was almost as earnest in her

selfabasement, for she had not latterly been brilliant, not even adequate to the ordinary requirements of

conversation. She had no courage, no wit, no diligence, nothing that she could distinguish save

discontentment like a corroding acid, and she went so far in sincerity as with a curious shift of feeling to pity

the man plighted to her. If it suited her purpose to pity Sir Willoughby, she was not moved by policy, be

assured; her needs were her nature, her moods her mind; she had the capacity to make anything serve her by

passing into it with the glance which discerned its usefulness; and this is how it is that the young, when they

are in trouble, without approaching the elevation of scientific hypocrites, can teach that able class lessons in

"Why should not Willoughby be happy?" she said; and the exclamation was pushed forth by the second

The desire for the happiness of Willoughby was fervent on his behalf and wafted her far from friends and

letters to a narrow Tyrolean valley, where a shallow river ran, with the indentations of a remotely seen army

of winding ranks in column, topaz over the pebbles to hollows of ravishing emerald. There sat Liberty, after

her fearful leap over the prisonwall, at peace to watch the water and the falls of sunshine on the mountain

above, between descending pinestem shadows. Clara's wish for his happiness, as soon as she had housed

herself in the imagination of her freedom, was of a purity that made it seem exceedingly easy for her to speak

The opportunity was offered by Sir Willoughby. Every morning after breakfast Miss Dale walked across the

park to see her father, and on this occasion Sir Willoughby and Miss Middleton went with her as far as the

lake, all three discoursing of the beauty of various trees, birches, aspens, poplars, beeches, then in their new

green. Miss Dale loved the aspen, Miss Middleton the beech, Sir Willoughby the birch, and pretty things

were said by each in praise of the favoured object, particularly by Miss Dale. So much so that when she had

gone on he recalled one of her remarks, and said: "I believe, if the whole place were swept away tomorrow,

Laetitia Dale could reconstruct it and put those aspens on the north of the lake in number and situation

correctly where you have them now. I would guarantee her description of it in absence correct."

"Well, why!" returned Sir Willoughby. "As you say, there is no reason why. The art of life, and mine will be

principally a country lifetown is not life, but a tornado whirling atoms the art is to associate a group of

sympathetic friends in our neighbourhood; and it is a fact worth noting that if ever I feel tired of the place, a

short talk with Laetitia Dale refreshes it more than a month or two on the Continent. She has the well of

enthusiasm. And there is a great advantage in having a cultivated person at command, with whom one can

chat of any topic under the sun. I repeat, you have no need of town if you have friends like Laetitia Dale

"I hope not. And, my love, I rejoice that you have taken to her. Her father's health is poor. She would be a

"Outshone. you say? I do not know of any shiningsave to one, who lights me, path and person!"

"Not only has he not the lady's tongue, which I hold to be a man's proper accomplishment," continued Sir

Willoughby, "he cannot turn his advantages to account. Here has Miss Dale been with him now four days in

the house. They are exactly on the same footing as when she entered it. You ask? I will tell you. It is this: it is

want of warmth. Old Vernon is a scholarand a fish. Well, perhaps he has cause to be shy of matrimony;

"False alarm! The resolution to do anything unaccustomed is quite beyond old Vernon."

"But if Mr. OxfordWhitford ... your swans coming sailing up the lake, how beautiful they look when they

are indignant! I was going to ask you, surely men witnessing a marked admiration for some one else will

Though the word jealousy had not been spoken, the drift of her observations was clear. Smiling inwardly, he

said, and the sentences were not enigmas to her: "Surely, too, young ladies ... a little?Too far? But an old

friendship! About the same as the fitting of an old glove to a hand. Hand and glove have only to meet. Where

there is natural harmony you would not have discord. Ay, but you have it if you check the harmony. My dear

He had actually, in this parabolic, and commendable, obscureness, for which she thanked him in her soul,

struck the very point she had not named and did not wish to hear named, but wished him to strike; he was

anything but obtuse. His exultation, of the compressed sort, was extreme, on hearing her cry out:

"Young ladies may be. Oh! not I, not I. I can convince you. Not that. Believe me, Willoughby. I do not know

what it is to feel that, or anything like it. I cannot conceive a claim on any one's lifeas a claim: or the

continuation of an engagement not founded on perfect, perfect sympathy. How should I feel it, then? It is, as

Bursting with laughter in his joyful pride, he called it a portrait of old Vernon in society. For she thought a

trifle too highly of Vernon, as here and there a raw young lady does think of the friends of her plighted man.

which is waste of substance properly belonging to him, as it were, in the loftier sense, an expenditure in

genuflexions to wayside idols of the reverence she should bring intact to the temple. Derision instructs her.

Of the other subjecther jealousyhe had no desire to hear more. She had winced: the woman had been

touched to smarting in the girl: enough. She attempted the subject once, but faintly, and his careless parrying

threw her out. Clara could have bitten her tongue for that reiterated stupid slip on the name of Whitford; and

because she was innocent at heart she persisted in asking herself how she could be guilty of it.

"During our annual two months in London. I drive a barouche there, and venture to prophesy that my

equipage will create the greatest excitement of any in London. I see old Horace De Craye gazing!"

She sighed. She could not drag him to the word, or a hint of it necessary to her subject.

But there it was; she saw it. She had nearly let it go, and blushed at being obliged to name it.

"Jealousy, do you mean. Willoughby? the people in London would be jealous?Colonel De Craye? How

Sir Willoughby gesticulated the "Of course not" of an established assurance to the contrary.

He was now in her trap. And he was imagining himself to he anatomizing her feminine nature.

"Can I give you a proof, Willoughby? I am so utterly incapable of it thatlisten to mewere you to come to

me to tell me, as you might, how much better suited to you Miss Dale has appeared than I amand I fear I

am not; it should be spoken plainly; unsuited altogether, perhapsI would, I beseech you to believeyou

must believe megive you ... give you your freedom instantly; most truly; and engage to speak of you as I

should think of you. Willoughby, you would have no one to praise you in public and in private as I should,

for you would be to me the most honest, truthful, chivalrous gentleman alive. And in that case I would

undertake to declare that she would not admire you more than I; Miss Dale would not; she would not admire

This, her first direct leap for liberty, set Clara panting, and so much had she to say that the nervous and the

intellectual halves of her dashed like cymbals, dazing and stunning her with the appositeness of things to be

said, and dividing her in indecision as to the cunningest to move him of the many pressing.

"Come, let me allay these . . ." he soothed her with hand and voice, while seeking for his phrase; "these

magnified pinpoints. Now, my Clara! on my honour! and when I put it forward in attestation, my honour has

the most serious meaning speech can have; ordinarily my word has to suffice for bonds, promises, or

asseverations; on my honour! not merely is there, my poor child! no ground of suspicion, I assure you, I

declare to you, the fact of the case is the very reverse. Now, mark me; of her sentiments I cannot pretend to

speak; I did not, to my knowledge, originate, I am not responsible for them, and I am, before the law, as we

will say, ignorant of them; that is, I have never heard a declaration of them, and I, am, therefore, under pain

of the stigma of excessive fatuity, bound to be noncognizant. But as to myself I can speak for myself and,

on my honour! Clarato be as direct as possible. even to baldness, and you know I loathe itI could not, I

repeat, I could not marry Laetitia Dale! Let me impress it on you. No flatterieswe are all susceptible more

or lessno conceivable condition could bring it about; no amount of admiration. She and I are excellent

friends; we cannot be more. When you see us together, the natural concord of our minds is of course

misleading. She is a woman of genius. I do not conceal, I profess my admiration of her. There are times

when, I confess, I require a Laetitia Dale to bring me out, give and take. I am indebted to her for the

enjoyment of the duet few know, few can accord with, fewer still are allowed the privilege of playing with a

human being. I am indebted, I own. and I feel deep gratitude; I own to a lively friendship for Miss Dale, but if

she is displeasing in the sight of my bride by ... by the breadth of an eyelash, then . . ."

Sir Willoughby's arm waved Miss Dale off away into outer darkness in the wilderness.

Clara shut her eyes and rolled her eyeballs in a frenzy of unuttered revolt from the Egoist.

But she was not engaged in the colloquy to be an advocate of Miss Dale or of common humanity.

"And, ah!" he mocked her tenderly. "True, though! And who knows better than my Clara that I require youth,

health, beauty, and the other undefinable attributes fitting with mine and beseeming the station of the lady

called to preside over my household and represent me? What says my other self? my fairer? But you are! my

"I do! I do!" interposed Clara; "if I did not by this time I should be idiotic. Let me assure you, I understand it.

Oh! listen to me: one moment. Miss Dale regards me as the happiest woman on earth. Willoughby, if I

possessed her good qualities, her heart and mind, no doubt I should be. It is my wishyou must hear me,

hear me outmy wish, my earnest wish, my burning prayer, my wish to make way for her. She appreciates

you: I do notto my shame, I do not. She worships you: I do not, I cannot. You are the rising sun to her. It

has been so for years. No one can account for love; I daresay not for the impossibility of loving ... loving

where we should; all love bewilders me. I was not created to understand it. But she loves you, she has pined. I

believe it has destroyed the health you demand as one item in your list. But you, Willoughby, can restore that.

Travelling, and ... and your society, the pleasure of your society would certainly restore it. You look so

handsome together! She has unbounded devotion! as for me, I cannot idolize. I see faults: I see them daily.

They astonish and wound me. Your pride would not bear to hear them spoken of, least of all by your wife.

Sir Willoughby struck in: "And when I say that the entire concatenation is based on an erroneous observation

of facts, and an erroneous deduction from that erroneous observation!? No, no. Have confidence in me. I

propose it to you in this instance, purely to save you from deception. You are cold, my love? you shivered."

The gulf of a caress hove in view like an enormous billow hollowing under the curled ridge.

"Is not the orchid naturally a stranger in ground so far away from the chalk, Willoughby?"

"I am incompetent to pronounce an opinion on such important matters. My mother had a passion for every

description of flower. I fancy I have some recollection of her scattering the flower you mention over the

"Indeed, Clarapoor soul!" he murmured to himself, aloud; "indeed you are absolutely in error. If I have

seemedbut I repeat, you are deceived. The idea of 'fitness' is a total hallucination. Supposing youI do it

"Nonexistent for me," he selected a preferable term. "Suppose it; I should still, in spite of an admiration I

have never thought it incumbent on me to conceal, still beI speak emphatically utterly incapable of the

offer of my hand to Miss Dale. It may be that she is embedded in my mind as a friend, and nothing but a

friend. I received the stamp in early youth. People have noticed itwe do, it seems, bring one another out,

She glanced up at him with a shrewd satisfaction to see that her wicked shaft had stuck.

"You do; it is a common remark," she said. "The instantaneous difference when she comes near, any one

"My love," he opened the iron gate into the garden, "you encourage the naughty little suspicion."

"But it is a beautiful sight, Willoughby. I like to see you together. I like it as I like to see colours match."

"Very well. There is no harm then. We shall often be together. I like my fair friend. But the instant!you

"I dismiss her. That is, as to the word, I constitute myself your echo, to clear any vestige of suspicion. She

"Not without: for whoever offends my bride, my wife, my sovereign lady, offends me: very deeply offends

"Then the caprices of your wife . . ." Clara stamped her foot imperceptibly on the lawnsward, which was

irresponsively soft to her fretfulness. She broke from the inconsequent meaningless mild tone of irony, and

said: "Willoughby, women have their honour to swear by equally with men:girls have: they have to swear

an oath at the altar; may I to you now? Take it for uttered when I tell you that nothing would make me

happier than your union with Miss Dale. I have spoken as much as I can. Tell me you release me."

With the wellknown screwsmile of duty upholding weariness worn to inanition, he rejoined: "Allow me

once more to reiterate, that it is repulsive, inconceivable, that I should ever, under any mortal conditions,

bring myself to the point of taking Miss Dale for my wife. You reduce me to this perfectly childish

protestation pitiably childish! But, my love, have I to remind you that you and I are plighted, and that I am

Sir Willoughby severely reprehended his shortsightedness for seeing but the one proximate object in the

particular attention he had bestowed on Miss Dale. He could not disavow that they had been marked, and

with an object, and he was distressed by the unwonted want of wisdom through which he had been drawn to

overshoot his object. His design to excite a touch of the insane emotion in Clara's bosom was too successful,

To consent to touch him while petitioning for a detachment, appeared discordant to Clara, but, if she expected

him to accede, it was right that she should do as much as she could, and she surrendered her hand at arm's

length, disdaining the imprisoned fingers. He pressed them and said: "Dr Middleton is in the library. I see

Vernon is at work with Crossjay in the Westroom the boy has had sufficient for the day. Now, is it not

He signalled to young Crossjay, who was up and out through the folding windows in a twinkling.

"And you will go in, and talk to Vernon of the lady in question," Sir Willoughby whispered to Clara. "Use

your best persuasions in our joint names. You have my warrant for saying that money is no consideration;

house and income are assured. You can hardly have taken me seriously when I requested you to undertake

Vernon before. I was quite in earnest then as now. I prepare Miss Dale. I will not have a wedding on our

weddingday; but either before or after it, I gladly speed their alliance. I think now I give you the best proof

possible, and though I know that with women a delusion may be seen to be groundless and still be cherished,

Vernon was at the window and stood aside for her to enter. Sir Willoughby used a gentle insistence with her.

She bent her head as if she were stepping into a cave. So frigid was she, that a ridiculous dread of calling Mr.

Whitford Mr. Oxford was her only present anxiety when Sir Willoughby had closed the window on them.

Sir Willoughby thought of his promise to Clara. He trifled awhile with young Crossjay, and then sent the boy

flying, and wrapped himself in meditation. So shall you see standing many a statue of statesmen who have

In the hundred and fourth chapter of the thirteenth volume of the Book of Egoism it is written: Possession

It is the rarest condition of ownership. For example: the possession of land is not without obligation both to

the soil and the taxcollector; the possession of fine clothing is oppressed by obligation; gold, jewelry, works

of art, enviable household furniture, are positive fetters; the possession of a wife we find surcharged with

obligation. In all these cases possession is a gentle term for enslavement, bestowing the sort of felicity

attained to by the helot drunk. You can have the joy, the pride, the intoxication of possession; you can have

But there is one instance of possession, and that the most perfect, which leaves us free, under not a shadow of

obligation, receiving ever, never giving. or if giving, giving only of our waste; as it were (sauf votre respect),

by form of perspiration, radiation, if you like; unconscious poral bountifulness; and it is a beneficent process

The soft cherishable Parsee is hardly at any season other than prostrate. She craves nothing save that you

continue in being her sun: which is your firm constitutional endeavour: and thus you have a most exact

alliance; she supplying spirit to your matter, while at the same time presenting matter to your spirit, verily a

That they do so indeed is evident in the men they select for such a felicitous crown and aureole. Weak men

would be rendered nervous by the flattery of a woman's worship; or they would be for returning it, at least

partially, as though it could be bandied to and fro without emulgence of the poetry; or they would be pitiful,

and quite spoil the thing. Some would be for transforming the beautiful solitary vestal flame by the first effort

of the multiplicationtable into your hearthfire of slippered affection. So these men are not they whom the

Gods have ever selected, but rather men of a pattern with themselves, very high and very solid men, who

maintain the crown by holding divinely independent of the great emotion they have sown.

Even for them a pass of danger is ahead, as we shall see in our sample of one among the highest of them.

A clear approach to felicity had long been the portion of Sir Willoughby Patterne in his relations with Laetitia

Dale. She belonged to him; he was quite unshackled by her. She was everything that is good in a parasite,

nothing that is bad. His dedicated critic she was, reviewing him with a favour equal to perfect efficiency in

her office; and whatever the world might say of him, to her the happy gentleman could constantly turn for his

refreshing balsamic bath. She flew to the soul in him, pleasingly arousing sensations of that inhabitant; and

he allowed her the right to fly, in the manner of kings, as we have heard, consenting to the privileges acted on

by cats. These may not address their Majesties, but they may stare; nor will it be contested that the attentive

circular eyes of the humble domestic creatures are an embellishment to Royal pomp and grandeur, such truly

as should one day gain for them an inweaving and figurementin the place of bees, ermine tufts, and their

various present decorationsupon the august great robes backflowing and foaming over the gaspy

Further to quote from the same volume of The Book: There is pain in the surrendering of that we are fain to

The idea is too exquisitely attenuate, as are those of the whole bodyguard of the heart of Egoism, and will

slip through you unless you shall have made a study of the gross of volumes of the first and second sections

of The Book, and that will take you up to senility; or you must make a personal entry into the pages,

perchance; or an escape out of them. There was once a venerable gentleman for whom a white hair grew on

the cop of his nose, laughing at removals. He resigned himself to it in the end, and lastingly contemplated the

apparition. It does not concern us what effect was produced on his countenance and his mind; enough that he

saw a fine thing, but not so fine as the idea cited above; which has been between the two eyes of humanity

ever since women were sought in marriage. With yonder old gentleman it may have been a ghostly hair or a

disease of the optic nerves; but for us it is a real growth, and humanity might profitably imitate him in his

Sir Willoughby Patterne, though ready in the pursuit of duty and policy (an oftunited couple) to cast Miss

Dale away, had to consider that he was not simply, so to speak, casting her over a hedge, he was casting her

for a man to catch her; and this was a much greater trial than it had been on the previous occasion, when she

went over bump to the ground. In the arms of a husband, there was no knowing how soon she might forget

her soul's fidelity. It had not hurt him to sketch the project of the conjunction; benevolence assisted him; but

Still, if, in spite of so great a change in her fortune, her spirit could be guaranteed changeless, he, for the sake

of pacifying his bride, and to keep two serviceable persons near him. at command, might resolve to join them.

The vision of his resolution brought with it a certain pallid contempt of the physically faithless woman; no

wonder he betook himself to The Book, and opened it on the scorching chapters treating of the sex, and the

execrable wiles of that foremost creature of the chase, who runs for life. She is not spared in the Biggest of

The writing in it having been done chiefly by men, men naturally receive their fortification from its wisdom,

and half a dozen of the popular sentences for the confusion of women (cut in brass worn to a polish like

He could have desired the transfusion of a quality or two from Laetitia to his bride; but you cannot, as in

cookery, obtain a mixture of the essences of these creatures; and if, as it is possible to do, and as he had been

doing recently with the pair of them at the Hall, you stew them in one pot, you are far likelier to intensify

their little birthmarks of individuality. Had they a tendency to excellence it might be otherwise; they might

then make the exchanges we wish for; or scientifically concocted in a harem for a sufficient length of time by

a sultan anything but obtuse, they might. It is, however, fruitless to dwell on what was only a glimpse of a

wild regret, like the crossing of two express trains along the rails in Sir Willoughby's head.

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel were sitting with Miss Dale, all three at work on embroideries. He had merely

to look at Miss Eleanor. She rose. She looked at Miss Isabel, and rattled her chatelaine to account for her

departure. After a decent interval Miss Isabel glided out. Such was the perfect discipline of the household.

Laetitia grew conscious of a meaning in the silence. She said, "You have not been vexed by affairs today?"

"Affairs," he replied, "must be peculiarly vexatious to trouble me. Concerning the country or my personal

"I trust I am as good a patriot as any man living," said he; "but I am used to the follies of my countrymen, and

we are on board a stout ship. At the worst it's no worse than a rise in rates and taxes; soup at the Hall gates,

perhaps; license to fell timber in one of the outer copses, or some dozen loads of coal. You hit my feudalism."

"The knight in armour has gone," said Laetitia, "and the castle with the drawbridge. Immunity for our island

"We bartered independence for commerce. You hit our old controversy. Ay, but we do not want this

overgrown population! However, we will put politics and sociology and the pack of their modern barbarous

words aside. You read me intuitively. I have been, I will not say annoyed, but ruffled. I have much to do, and

going into Parliament would make me almost helpless if I lose Vernon. You know of some absurd notion he

has?literary fame, and bachelor's chambers, and a chophouse, and the rest of it."

She knew, and thinking differently in the matter of literary fame, she flushed, and, ashamed of the flush,

He bent over to her with the perusing earnestness of a gentleman about to trifle.

A gloom overcame him. With no woman on earth did he shine so as to recall to himself seigneur and dame of

the old French Court as he did with Laetitia Dale. He did not wish the period revived, but reserved it as a

garden to stray into when he was in the mood for displaying elegance and brightness in the society of a lady;

and in speech Laetitia helped him to the nice delusion. She was not devoid of grace of bearing either.

Would she preserve her beautiful responsiveness to his ascendency? Hitherto she had, and for years, and

quite fresh. But how of her as a married woman? Our souls are hideously subject to the conditions of our

animal nature! A wife, possibly mother, it was within sober calculation that there would be great changes in

her. And the hint of any change appeared a total change to one of the lofty order who, when they are called

Well, but if there was danger of the marriagetie effecting the slightest alteration of her character or habit of

Besides, though he did once put her hand in Vernon's for the dance, he remembered acutely that the injury

then done by his generosity to his tender sensitiveness had sickened and tarnished the effulgence of two or

three successive anniversaries of his coming of age. Nor had he altogether yet got over the passion of greed

for the whole group of the wellfavoured of the fair sex, which in his early youth had made it bitter for him

to submit to the fickleness, not to say the modest fickleness, of any handsome one of them in yielding her

hand to a man and suffering herself to be led away. Ladies whom he had only heard of as ladies of some

beauty incurred his wrath for having lovers or taking husbands. He was of a vast embrace; and do not

exclaim, in covetousness;for well he knew that even under Moslem law he could not have them all but

as the enamoured custodian of the sex's purity, that blushes at such big spots as lovers and husbands; and it

was unbearable to see it sacrificed for others. Without their purity what are they! what are fruiterer's

"As I said, I lose my right hand in Vernon," he resumed, "and I am, it seems, inevitably to lose him, unless

we contrive to fasten him down here. I think, my dear Miss Dale, you have my character. At least, I should

recommend my future biographer to youwith a caution, of course. You would have to write selfishness

with a dash under it. I cannot endure to lose a member of my household not under any circumstances; and

a change of feeling toward me on the part of any of my friends because of marriage, I think hard. I would ask

you, how can it be for Vernon's good to quit an easy pleasant home for the wretched profession of

Literature? wretchedly paying, I mean," he bowed to the authoress. "Let him leave the house, if he

imagines he will not harmonize with its young mistress. He is queer, though a good fellow. But he ought, in

that event, to have an establishment. And my scheme for Vernon men, Miss Dale, do not change to their

old friends when they marrymy scheme, which would cause the alteration in his system of life to be barely

perceptible, is to build him a poetical little cottage, large enough for a couple, on the borders of my park. I

have the spot in my eye. The point is, can he live alone there? Men, I say, do not change. How is it that we

Laetitia remarked: "The generic woman appears to have an extraordinary faculty for swallowing the

"As to the individual, as to a particular person, I may be wrong. Precisely because it is her case I think of, my

strong friendship inspires the fear: unworthy of both, no doubt, but trace it to the source. Even pure

friendship, such is the taint in us, knows a kind of jealousy; though I would gladly see her established, and

near me, happy and contributing to my happiness with her incomparable social charm. Her I do not estimate

If you do me the honour to allude to me, Sir Willoughby," said Laetitia, "I am my father's housemate."

"What wooer would take that for a refusal? He would beg to be a third in the house and sharer of your

affectionate burden. Honestly, why not? And I may be arguing against my own happiness; it may be the end

"Old friends are captious, exacting. No, not the end. Yet if my friend is not the same to me, it is the end to

that form of friendship: not to the degree possibly. But when one is used to the form! And do you, in its

application to friendship, scorn the word 'use'? We are creatures of custom. I am, I confess, a poltroon in my

affections; I dread changes. The shadow of the tenth of an inch in the customary elevation of an eyelid!to

give you an idea of my susceptibility. And, my dear Miss Dale, I throw myself on your charity, with all my

weakness bare, let me add, as I could do to none but you. Consider, then, if I lose you! The fear is due to my

pusillanimity entirely. Highsouled women may be wives, mothers, and still reserve that home for their

friend. They can and will conquer the viler conditions of human life. Our states, I have always contended, our

various phases have to be passed through, and there is no disgrace in it so long as they do not levy toll on the

quintessential, the spiritual element. You understand me? I am no adept in these abstract elucidations."

"I have never pretended that psychology was my forte," said he, feeling overshadowed by her cold

commendation: he was not less acutely sensitive to the fractional divisions of tones than of eyelids, being, as

it were, a melody with which everything was out of tune that did not modestly or mutely accord; and to bear

about a melody in your person is incomparably more searching than the best of touchstones and talismans

"He did not complain of his health when I saw him this morning. My cousin Amelia is with him, and she is

"For a foundation, that is the surest. I would have the friends dearest to me begin on that. The headlong match

ishow can we describe it? By its finale I am afraid. Vernon's abilities are really to be respected. His

shyness is his malady. I suppose he reflected that he was not a capitalist. He might, one would think, have

"No, Sir Willoughby!" Laetitia said, warmly, for his donations in charity were famous.

"Vernon's income would at once have been regulated commensurately with a new position requiring an

increase. This money, money, money! But the world will have it so. Happily I have inherited habits of

business and personal economy. Vernon is a man who would do fifty times more with a companion

appreciating his abilities and making light of his little deficiencies. They are palpable, small enough. He has

always been aware of my wishes: when perhaps the fulfilment might have sent me off on another tour of

the world, homebird though I am. When was it that our friendship commenced? In my boyhood, I know.

Surprised and pained by a baldness resembling the deeds of ladies (they have been known, either through

absence of mind, or mania, to displace a wig) in the deadly intimacy which slaughters poetic admiration, Sir

"Genius," he observed, "is unacquainted with wrinkles"; hardly one of his prettiest speeches; but he had been

wounded, and he never could recover immediately. Coming on him in a mood of sentiment, the wound was

sharp. He could very well have calculated the lady's age. It was the jarring clash of her brazen declaration of

He glanced at the gold cathedralclock on the mantelpiece, and proposed a stroll on the lawn before dinner.

"I shall resign the needle or the pen if it stamps me an exception," she replied.

He attempted a compliment on her truly exceptional character. As when the player's finger rests in distraction

on the organ, it was without measure and disgusted his own hearing. Nevertheless, she had been so good as to

diminish his apprehension that the marriage of a lady in her thirtieth year with his cousin Vernon would be so

much of a loss to him; hence, while parading the lawn, now and then casting an eye at the window of the

room where his Clara and Vernon were in council, the schemes he indulged for his prospective comfort and

his feelings of the moment were in such striving harmony as that to which we hear orchestral musicians

bringing their instruments under the process called tuning. It is not perfect, but it promises to be so soon. We

are not angels, which have their dulcimers ever on the choral pitch. We are mortals attaining the celestial

accord with effort, through a stage of pain. Some degree of pain was necessary to Sir Willoughby, otherwise

he would not have seen his generosity confronting him. He grew, therefore, tenderly inclined to Laetitia once

more, so far as to say within himself. "For conversation she would be a valuable wife". And this valuable

Apparently, considering the duration of the conference of his Clara and Vernon, his cousin required strong

Neither Clara nor Vernon appeared at the midday table. Dr. Middleton talked with Miss Dale on classical

matters, like a goodnatured giant giving a child the jump from stone to stone across a brawling mountain

ford, so that an unedified audience might really suppose, upon seeing her over the difficulty, she had done

something for herself. Sir Willoughby was proud of her, and therefore anxious to settle her business while he

was in the humour to lose her. He hoped to finish it by shooting a word or two at Vernon before dinner.

Clara's petition to be set free, released from him, had vaguely frightened even more than it offended his pride.

The two elderly ladies went away together. Miss Dale, pursuing her theme with the Rev. Doctor, was invited

by him to a course in the library. Sir Willoughby walked up and down the lawn, taking a glance at the

Westroom as he swung round on the turn of his leg. Growing impatient, he looked in at the window and

Nothing was to be seen of Clara and Vernon during the afternoon. Near the dinnerhour the ladies were

informed by Miss Middleton's maid that her mistress was lying down on her bed, too unwell with headache to

be present. Young Crossjay brought a message from Vernon (delayed by birds" eggs in the delivery), to say

Sir Willoughby despatched condolences to his bride. He was not well able to employ his mind on its

customary topic, being, like the dome of a bell, a man of so pervading a ring within himself concerning

himself, that the recollection of a doubtful speech or unpleasant circumstance touching him closely deranged

his inward peace; and as dubious and unpleasant things will often occur, be had great need of a worshipper,

and was often compelled to appeal to her for signs of antidotal idolatry. In this instance, when the need of a

worshipper was sharply felt, he obtained no signs at all. The Rev. Doctor had fascinated Miss Dale; so that,

both within and without, Sir Willoughby was uncomforted. His themes in public were those of an English

gentleman; horses, dogs, game, sport, intrigue, scandal, politics, wines, the manly themes; with a

condescension to ladies" tattle, and approbation of a racy anecdote. What interest could he possibly take in

the Athenian Theatre and the girl whose fluteplaying behind the scenes, imitating the nightingale,

enraptured a Greek audience! He would have suspected a motive in Miss Dale's eager attentiveness, if the

motive could have been conceived. Besides, the ancients were not decorous; they did not, as we make our

moderns do, write for ladies. He ventured at the dinnertable to interrupt Dr. Middleton once:

"Miss Dale will do wisely, I think, sir, by confining herself to your present edition of the classics."

"That," replied Dr. Middleton, "is the observation of a student of the dictionary of classical mythology in the

"With us it seems a matter of painful fostering, or the need of it," said Miss Dale, with a question to Dr.

Middleton, excluding Sir Willoughby, as though he had been a temporary disturbance of the flow of their

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel, previously excellent listeners to the learned talk, saw the necessity of coming

to his rescue; but you cannot converse with your aunts, inmates of your house, on general subjects at table;

the attempt increased his discomposure; he considered that he had illchosen his fatherinlaw; that scholars

are an impolite race; that young or youngish women are devotees of power in any form, and will be absorbed

by a scholar for a variation of a man; concluding that he must have a round of dinnerparties to friends,

especially ladies, appreciating him, during the Doctor's visit. Clara's headache above, and Dr. Middleton's

unmannerliness below, affected his instincts in a way to make him apprehend that a stroke of misfortune was

impending; thunder was in the air. Still he learned something, by which he was to profit subsequently. The

topic of wine withdrew the doctor from his classics; it was magical on him. A strong fraternity of taste was

discovered in the sentiments of host and guest upon particular wines and vintages; they kindled one another

by naming great years of the grape, and if Sir Willoughby had to sacrifice the ladies to the topic, he much

regretted a condition of things that compelled him to sin against his habit, for the sake of being in the

Late at night he heard the housebell, and meeting Vernon in the hall, invited him to enter the laboratory and

tell him Dr. Corney's last. Vernon was brief, Corney had not let fly a single anecdote, he said, and lighted his

Sir Willoughby determined that his perplexity should be seen; but Vernon said goodnight to him, and was

shooting up the stairs before the dramatic exhibition of surprise had yielded to speech.

Thunder was in the air and a blow coming. Sir Willoughby's instincts were awake to the many signs, nor,

though silenced, were they hushed by his harping on the frantic excesses to which women are driven by the

passion of jealousy. He believed in Clara's jealousy because he really had intended to rouse it; under the form

of emulation, feebly. He could not suppose she had spoken of it to Vernon. And as for the seriousness of her

desire to be released from her engagement, that was little credible. Still the fixing of an hour for her to speak

to him after an interval of fourandtwenty hours, left an opening for the incredible to add its weight to the

suspicious mass; and who would have fancied Clara Middleton so wild a victim of the intemperate passion!

He muttered to himself several assuaging observations to excuse a young lady half demented, and rejected

them in a lump for their nonsensical inapplicability to Clara. In order to obtain some sleep, he consented to

blame himself slightly, in the style of the enamoured historian of erring beauties alluding to their

peccadilloes. He had done it to edify her. Sleep, however, failed him. That an inordinate jealousy argued an

overpowering love, solved his problem until he tried to fit the proposition to Clara's character. He had

discerned nothing southern in her. Latterly, with the blushing Day in prospect, she had contracted and frozen.

In the morning, at the breakfasttable, a confession of sleeplessness was general. Excepting Miss Dale and

Dr. Middleton, none had slept a wink. "I, sir," the Doctor replied to Sir Willoughby, "slept like a lexicon in

"You fellows kill yourselves," Sir Willoughby reproved him. "For my part, I make it a principle to get

Clara watched her father for a symptom of ridicule. He gazed mildly on the systematic worker. She was

unable to guess whether she would have in him an ally or a judge. The latter, she feared. Now that she had

embraced the strife, she saw the division of the line where she stood from that one where the world places

girls who are affianced wives; her father could hardly be with her; it had gone too far. He loved her, but he

would certainly take her to be moved by a maddish whim; he would not try to understand her case. The

scholar's detestation of a disarrangement of human affairs that had been by miracle contrived to run

smoothly, would of itself rank him against her; and with the world to back his view of her, he might behave

like a despotic father. How could she defend herself before him? At one thought of Sir Willoughby, her

tongue made ready, and feminine craft was alert to prompt it; but to her father she could imagine herself

Dr Middleton rewarded her with a bushy eyebrow's beam of his revolting humour at the baronet's notion of

So little was needed to quicken her that she sunned herself in the beam, coaxing her father's eyes to stay with

hers as long as she could, and beginning to hope he might be won to her side, if she confessed she had been

more in the wrong than she felt; owned to him, that is, her error in not earlier disturbing his peace.

"I do not say it is the same," observed Sir Willoughby, bowing to their alliance of opinion. "My poor work is

for the day, and Vernon's, no doubt, for the day to come. I contend, nevertheless, for the preservation of

Accuse her of an overweening antagonism to her betrothed; yet remember that though the words had not been

uttered to give her good reason for it, nature reads nature; captives may be stript of everything save that

power to read their tyrant; remember also that she was not, as she well knew, blameless; her rage at him was

The rising from table left her to Sir Willoughby. She swam away after Miss Dale, exclaiming: "The

laboratory! Will you have me for a companion on your walk to see your father? One breathes earth and

heaven today out of doors. Isn't it Summer with a Spring Breeze? I will wander about your garden and not

"I shall be very happy indeed. But I am going immediately," said Laetitia, seeing Sir Willoughby hovering to

"Five minutes at the most," Sir Willoughby said to Laetitia, and she passed out, leaving them alone together.

"Well, and my love!" he addressed his bride almost huggingly; "and what is the story? and how did you

succeed with old Vernon yesterday? He will and he won't? He's a very woman in these affairs. I can't forgive

"And now tell me about it. You know, my dear girl, whether he does or doesn't, our keeping him somewhere

in the neighbourhood perhaps not in the housethat is the material point. It can hardly be necessary in

these days to urge marriages on. I'm sure the country is over ... Most marriages ought to be celebrated with

"It will come to this, that marriages of consequence, and none but those, will be hailed with joyful peals."

"Only to you, to you! Don't think me likely to expose myself to the world. Well, and I sounded Miss Dale,

"I will speak to you, Willoughby, when I return from my walk with Miss Dale, soon after twelve."

"I name an hour. It seems childish. I can explain it. But it is named, I cannot deny, because I am a rather

childish person perhaps, and have it prescribed to me to delay my speaking for a certain length of time. I may

tell you at once that Mr. Whitford is not to be persuaded by me, and the breaking of our engagement would

"Time shall stop rather than interfere with our conversation! 'The breaking ...'! But it's a sort of sacrilege to

"Sometimes? Why? I can't conceive the occasion. You know, to me, Clara, plighted faith, the affiancing of

two lovers, is a piece of religion. I rank it as holy as marriage; nay, to me it is holier; I really cannot tell you

how; I can only appeal to you in your bosom to understand me. We read of divorces with comparative

She could have asked him in her fit of ironic iciness, on hearing him thus blindly challenge her to speak out,

He propitiated the more unwarlike sentiments in her by ejaculating, "Poor souls! let them go their several

ways. Married people no longer lovers are in the category of the unnameable. But the hint of the breaking of

"Oh!" Clara came out with a swan's note swelling over mechanical imitation of him to dolorousness

illimitable. "Oh!" she breathed short, "let it be now. Do not speak till you have heard me. My head may not

be clear byandby. And two scenestwice will be beyond my endurance. I am penitent for the wrong I

have done you. I grieve for you. All the blame is mine. Willoughby, you must release me. Do not let me hear

a word of that word; jealousy is unknown to me ... Happy if I could call you friend and see you with a

worthier than I, who might byandby call me friend! You have my plighted troth ... given in ignorance of

my feelings. Reprobate a weak and foolish girl's ignorance. I have thought of it, and I cannot see wickedness,

though the blame is great, shameful. You have none. You are without any blame. You will not suffer as I do.

You will be generous to me? I have no respect for myself when I beg you to be generous and release me."

"But was this the . . ." Willoughby preserved his calmness, "this, then, the subject of your interview with

"Of myself. I see how I hurt you; I could not avoid it. Yes, of you, as far as we are related. I said I believed

you would release me. I said I could he true to my plighted word, but that you would not insist. Could a

gentleman insist? But not a step beyond; not love; I have none. And, Willoughby, treat me as one perfectly

worthless; I am. I should have known it a year back. I was deceived in myself. There should be love."

"Love, then, I find I have not. I think I am antagonistic to it. What people say of it I have not experienced. I

find I was mistaken. It is lightly said, but very painful. You understand me, that my prayer is for liberty, that I

may not be tied. If you can release and pardon me, or promise ultimately to pardon me, or say some kind

word, I shall know it is because I am beneath you utterly that I have been unable to give you the love you

should have with a wife. Only say to me, go! It is you who break the match, discovering my want of a heart.

What people think of me matters little. My anxiety will be to save you annoyance."

He perceived her expectation; he had nothing but clownish tumult within, and his dignity counselled him to

Swaying his head, like the oriental palm whose shade is a blessing to the perfervid wanderer below, smiling

gravely, he was indirectly asking his dignity what he could say to maintain it and deal this mad young woman

a bitterly compassionate rebuke. What to think, hung remoter. The thing to do struck him first.

He squeezed both her hands, threw the door wide open, and said, with countless blinkings: "In the laboratory

we are uninterrupted. I was at a loss to guess where that most unpleasant effect on the senses came from.

They are always 'guessing' through the nose. I mean, the remainder of breakfast here. Perhaps I satirized them

too smartlyif you know the letters. When they are not 'calculating'. More offensive than debris of a

midnight banquet! An American tour is instructive, though not so romantic. Not so romantic as Italy, I mean.

She held back from his arm. She had scattered his brains; it was pitiable: but she was in the torrent and could

"It must be here; one minute moreI cannot go elsewhere to begin again. Speak to me here; answer my

request. Once; one word. If you forgive me, it will be superhuman. But, release me."

"Seriously," he rejoined, "teacups and coffeecups, breadcrumbs. eggshells, caviare, butter, beef, bacon!

"Then I will go for my walk with Miss Dale. And you will speak to me when I return?"

"At all seasons. You shall go with Miss Dale. But, my dear! my love! Seriously, where are we? One hears of

lover's quarrels. Now I never quarrel. It is a characteristic of mine. And you speak of me to my cousin

Vernon! Seriously, plighted faith signifies plighted faith, as much as an ironcable is iron to hold by. Some

little twist of the mind? To Vernon, of all men! Tush! she has been dreaming of a hero of perfection, and the

comparison is unfavourable to her Willoughby. But, my Clara, when I say to you, that bride is bride, and you

"Willoughby, you mentioned them,those separations of two married. You said, if they do not love . . . Oh!

He took advantage of her modesty in speaking to exclaim. "Where are we now? Bride is bride, and wife is

wife, and affianced is, in honour, wedded. You cannot be released. We are united. Recognize it; united. There

This was too direct to be histrionically misunderstood. He had driven her to the extremity of more distinctly

imagining the circumstance she had cited, and with that cleared view the desperate creature gloried in

launching such a bolt at the man's real or assumed insensibility as must, by shivering it, waken him.

But in a moment she stood in burning rose, with dimmed eyesight. She saw his horror, and, seeing, shared it;

shared just then only by seeing it; which led her to rejoice with the deepest of sighs that some shame was left

"Ran? ran? ran?" he said as rapidly as he blinked. "How? where? what idea ... ?"

Close was he upon an explosion that would have sullied his conception of the purity of the younger members

That she, a young lady, maiden, of strictest education, should, and without his teaching, know that wives

ran!know that by running they compelled their husbands to abandon pursuit, surrender possession!and

that she should suggest it of herself as a wife! that she should speak of running!

His ideal, the common male Egoist ideal of a waxwork sex, would have been shocked to fragments had she

She was tempted: for during the last few minutes the fire of her situation had enlightened her understanding

upon a subject far from her as the icefields of the North a short while before; and the prospect offered to her

courage if she would only outstare shame and seem at home in the doings of wickedness, was his loathing

and dreading so vile a young woman. She restrained herself; chiefly, after the first bridling of maidenly

timidity, because she could not bear to lower the idea of her sex even in his esteem.

The door was open. She had thoughts of flying out to breathe in an interval of truce.

"If one must go through this, to be disentangled from an engagement, what must it be to poor women seeking

Had she spoken it, Sir Willoughby might have learned that she was not so iniquitously wise of the things of

this world as her mere sex's instinct, roused to the intemperateness of a creature struggling with fetters, had

Clara took up the old broken vow of women to vow it afresh: "Never to any man will I give my hand."

She replied to Sir Willoughby, "I have said all. I cannot explain what I have said."

Perceiving them, he stated his mission in apology: "Doctor Middleton left a book in this room. I see it; it's a

"Ha! by the way, a book; books would not be left here if they were not brought here, with my compliments to

Doctor Middleton, who may do as he pleases, though, seriously, order is order," said Sir Willoughby. "Come

away to the laboratory, Clara. It's a comment on human beings that wherever they have been there's a mess,

and you admirers of them," he divided a sickly nod between Vernon and the stale breakfasttable, "must

"Walk with Miss Dale; walk with Miss Dale," Sir Willoughby remarked, pressingly. "I will beg her to wait

"Take Miss Dale into your confidence; she is quite trustworthy," Vernon said to Clara.

"Recollect that you are in a position of your own choosing; and if, after thinking over it, you mean to escape,

you must make up your mind to pitched battles, and not be dejected if you are beaten in all of them; there is

"Not my choosing; do not say choosing, Mr. Whitford. I did not choose. I was incapable of really choosing. I

"Yes," she assented, taking it for her just punishment that she should be supposed not quite to know her

"But you will not leave the Hall yet? You will not leave me without a friend? If papa and I were to leave

tomorrow, I foresee endless correspondence. I have to stay at least some days, and wear through it, and

"Miss Dale awaits you, my dear. You have bonnet, hat?No? Have you forgotten your appointment to walk

She had read of the reproach upon women, that they divide the friendships of men. She reproached herself

but she was in action, driven by necessity, between sea and rock. Dreadful to think of! she was one of the

In spite of his honourable caution, Vernon had said things to render Miss Middleton more angrily determined

than she had been in the scene with Sir Willoughby. His counting on pitched battles and a defeat for her in all

of them, made her previous feelings appear slack in comparison with the energy of combat now animating

her. And she could vehemently declare that she had not chosen; she was too young, too ignorant to choose.

He had wrongly used that word; it sounded malicious; and to call consenting the same in fact as choosing was

wilfully unjust. Mr. Whitford meant well; he was conscientious, very conscientious. But he was not the hero

descending from heaven brightsworded to smite a woman's fetters of her limbs and deliver her from the

His logical coolness of expostulation with her when she cast aside the silly mission entrusted to her by Sir

Willoughby and wept for herself, was unheroic in proportion to its praiseworthiness. He had left it to her to

do everything she wished done, stipulating simply that there should be a pause of fourandtwenty hours for

her to consider of it before she proceeded in the attempt to extricate herself. Of consolation there had not

been a word. Said he, "I am the last man to give advice in such a case". Yet she had by no means astonished

him when her confession came out. It came out, she knew not how. It was led up to by his declining the idea

of marriage, and her congratulating him on his exemption from the prospect of the yoke, but memory was too

dull to revive the one or two fiery minutes of broken language when she had been guilty of her dire

This gentleman was no flatterer, scarcely a friend. He could look on her grief without soothing her.

Supposing he had soothed her warmly? All her sentiments collected in her bosom to dash in reprobation of

him at the thought. She nevertheless condemned him for his excessive coolness; his transparent anxiety not to

be compromised by a syllable; his air of saying, "I guessed as much, but why plead your case to me?" And

his recommendation to her to be quite sure she did know what she meant, was a little insulting. She

exonerated him from the intention; he treated her as a girl. By what he said of Miss Dale, he proposed that

"I must be myself or I shall be playing hypocrite to dig my own pitfall," she said to herself, while taking

counsel with Laetitia as to the route for their walk, and admiring a becoming curve in her companion's hat.

Sir Willoughby, with many protestations of regret that letters of business debarred him from the pleasure of

accompanying them, remarked upon the path proposed by Miss Dale, "In that case you must have a

"Sir Willoughby," Miss Dale said to her, "is always in alarm about our unprotectedness."

Clara glanced up at the clouds and closed her parasol. She replied, "It inspires timidity."

There was that in the accent and character of the answer which warned Laetitia to expect the reverse of a

"Walking or riding; yes, of walking," said Clara. "The difficulty is to find companions."

"He will be a great loss to me, for I do not ride," Laetitia replied to the offhand inquiry.

"England, or Patterne Park? I am so devoted to mountains that I have no enthusiasm for flat land."

"Do you call our country flat, Miss Middleton? We have undulations, hills, and we have sufficient diversity,

"The prettiness is overwhelming. It is very pretty to see; but to live with, I think I prefer ugliness. I can

imagine learning to love ugliness. It's honest. However young you are, you cannot he deceived by it. These

parks of rich people are a part of the prettiness. I would rather have fields, commons."

"There should be," said Miss Dale, wondering; and Clara cried: "I chafe at restraint: hedges and palings

everywhere! I should have to travel ten years to sit down contented among these fortifications. Of course I

can read of this rich kind of English country with pleasure in poetry. But it seems to me to require poetry.

"That they are not so companionable but that the haze of distance improves the view."

Laetitia raised her dark eyelashes; she sought to understand. She could only fancy she did; and if she did, it

Clara was full of a sombre preconception that her "jealousy" had been hinted to Miss Dale.

The thrill of the voice caused Laetitia to steal a look. Clara's eyes were bright, and she had the readiness to

run to volubility of the feverstricken; otherwise she did not betray excitement.

"My influence, Miss Dale? I have begged a favour this morning and can not obtain the grant."

It was lightly said, but Clara's face was more significant, and "What?" leaped from Laetitia's lips.

In another and higher tone Laetitia said, "What?" and she looked round on her companion; she looked in the

doubt that is open to conviction by a narrow aperture, and slowly and painfully yields access. Clara saw the

"You do not suspect me of trifling? You know I would not. I am as much in earnest as a mouse in a trap."

"No, you will not misunderstand me! Miss Middleton, such a blow to Sir Willoughby would be shocking,

"Was he not very much courted at that time? He is now; not so much: he is not so young. But my reason for

speaking of Miss Durham was to exclaim at the strangeness of a girl winning her freedom to plunge into

wedlock. Is it comprehensible to you? She flies from one dungeon into another. These are the acts which

astonish men at our conduct, and cause them to ridicule and, I dare say, despise us."

"But, Miss Middleton, for Sir Willoughby to grant such a request, if it was made . . ."

"It was made, and by me, and will be made again. I throw it all on my unworthiness, Miss Dale. So the

county will think of me, and quite justly. I would rather defend him than myself. He requires a different wife

from anything I can be. That is my discovery; unhappily a late one. The blame is all mine. The world cannot

be too hard on me. But I must be free if I am to be kind in my judgements even of the gentleman I have

"I will subscribe to any eulogy of him," said Clara, with a penetrating thought as to the possibility of a lady

experienced in him like Laetitia taking him for noble. "He has a noble air. I say it sincerely, that your

appreciation of him proves his nobility." Her feeling of opposition to Sir Willoughby pushed her to this

extravagance, gravely perplexing Laetitia. "And it is," added Clara, as if to support what she had said, "a

withering rebuke to me; I know him less, at least have not had so long an experience of him."

Laetitia pondered on an obscurity in these words which would have accused her thick intelligence but for a

glimmer it threw on another most obscure communication. She feared it might be, strange though it seemed,

jealousy, a shade of jealousy affecting Miss Middleton, as had been vaguely intimated by Sir Willoughby

when they were waiting in the hall. "A little feminine ailment, a want of comprehension of a perfect

friendship;" those were his words to her: and he suggested vaguely that care must be taken in the eulogy of

"He has faults. When we have known a person for years the faults come out, but custom makes light of them;

and I suppose we feel flattered by seeing what it would be difficult to be blind to! A very little flatters us!

Clara gazed over rolling richness of foliage, wood and water, and a churchspire, a town and horizon hills.

"Not even the bird that does not fly away!" she said; meaning, she had no heart for the bird satisfied to rise

Laetitia travelled to some notion, dim and immense, of Miss Middleton's fever of distaste. She shrunk from it

in a kind of dread lest it might be contagious and rob her of her one everfresh possession of the homely

picturesque; but Clara melted her by saying, "For your sake I could love it ... in time; or some dear old

English scene. Since ... since this ... this change in me, I find I cannot separate landscape from associations.

Now I learn how youth goes. I have grown years older in a week.Miss Dale, if he were to give me my

Laetitia's attempt to shift with Miss Middleton's shiftiness was vain; for now she seemed really listening to

the language of Jealousy:jealous of the ancient Letty Daleand immediately before the tone was quite

"Yes," she said, "but you make me feel myself in the dark, and when I do I have the habit of throwing myself

for guidance upon such light as I have within. You shall know me, if you will, as well as I know myself. And

do not think me far from the point when I say I have a feeble health. I am what the doctors call anaemic; a

rather bloodless creature. The blood is life, so I have not much life. Ten years backeleven, if I must be

precise, I thought of conquering the world with a pen! The result is that I am glad of a fireside, and not sure

of always having one: and that is my achievement. My days are monotonous, but if I have a dread, it is that

there will be an alteration in them. My father has very little money. We subsist on what private income he

has, and his pension: he was an army doctor. I may byandby have to live in a town for pupils. I could be

grateful to any one who would save me from that. I should be astonished at his choosing to have me burden

his household as well.Have I now explained the nature of my pity? It would be the pity of common

sympathy, pure lymph of pity, as nearly disembodied as can be. Last year's sheddings from the tree do not

form an attractive garland. Their merit is, that they have not the ambition. I am like them. Now, Miss

With the second heaving of her heart, she cried: "See it, and envy you that humility! proud if I could ape it!

Oh, how proud if I could speak so truthfully true!You would not have spoken so to me without some good

feeling out of which friends are made. That I am sure of. To be very truthful to a person, one must have a

"But now," said Clara, swimming on the wave in her bosom, "I tax you with the silliest suspicion ever

entertained by one of your rank. Lady, you have deemed me capable of the meanest of our vices!Hold this

When they had fallen, she remarked upon her first long breath quite coolly: "An encouraging picture of a

"I like this country better now," the shaken girl resumed. "I could lie down in it and ask only for sleep. I

should like to think of you here. How nobly selfrespecting you must be, to speak as you did! Our dreams of

heroes and heroines are cold glitter beside the reality. I have been lately thinking of myself as an outcast of

my sex, and to have a good woman liking me a little ... loving? Oh, Laetitia, my friend, I should have kissed

you, and not made this exhibition of myselfand if you call it hysterics, woe to you! for I bit my tongue to

keep it off when I had hardly strength to bring my teeth togetherif that idea of jealousy had not been in

"He can imagine no other cause for my wish to be released. I have noticed, it is his instinct to reckon on

women as constant by their nature. They are the needles, and he the magnet. Jealousy of you, Miss Dale!

"At last! I could wish ... that is, if it were your wish. Yes, I could wish that. Next to independence, my wish

would be that. I risk offending you. Do not let your delicacy take arms against me. I wish him happy in the

"I was going to sayand I believe the rack would not make me truthful like you, Laetitiawell, has it ever

struck you: remember, I do see his merits; I speak to his faithfullest friend, and I acknowledge he is attractive,

he has manly tastes and habits; but has it never struck you ... I have no right to ask; I know that men must

"That very few women are able to be straightforwardly sincere in their speech, however much they may

"I am sure your answer is correct. Have you ever known a woman who was entirely an Egoist?"

"I do not pretend that we are. I have latterly become an Egoist, thinking of no one but myself, scheming to

make use of every soul I meet. But then, women are in the position of inferiors. They are hardly out of the

nursery when a lasso is round their necks; and if they have beauty, no wonder they turn it to a weapon and

make as many captives as they can. I do not wonder! My sense of shame at my natural weakness and the

arrogance of men would urge me to make hundreds captive, if that is being a coquette. I should not have

compassion for those lofty birds, the hawks. To see them with their wings clipped would amuse me. Is there

Laetitia supposed she was listening to discursive observations upon the inequality in the relations of the

sexes. A suspicion of a drift to a closer meaning had been lulled, and the colour flooded her swiftly when

Clara said: "Here is the difference I see; I see it; I am certain of it: women who are called coquettes make

their conquests not of the best of men; but men who are Egoists have good women for their victims; women

on whose devoted constancy they feed; they drink it like blood. I am sure I am not taking the merely feminine

view. They punish themselves too by passing over the one suitable to them, who could really give them what

they crave to have, and they go where they . . ." Clara stopped. "I have not your power to express ideas," she

Clara took note of ivied windows and roses in the porch. She thanked Laetitia and said: "I will call for you in

"Are you walking on the road alone?" said Laetitia, incredulously, with an eye to Sir Willoughby's dismay.

"I put my trust in the highroad," Clara replied, and turned away, but turned back to Laetitia and offered her

The "dreadful power" of this young lady had fervently impressed Laetitia, and in kissing her she marvelled at

During the term of Clara's walk with Laetitia, Sir Willoughby's shrunken selfesteem, like a garment hung to

the fire after exposure to tempestuous weather, recovered some of the sleekness of its velvet pile in the

society of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, who represented to him the world he feared and tried to keep sunny

for himself by all the arts he could exercise. She expected him to be the gay Sir Willoughby, and her look

being as good as an incantation summons, he produced the accustomed sprite, giving her sally for sally.

Queens govern the polite. Popularity with men, serviceable as it is for winning favouritism with women, is of

poor value to a sensitive gentleman, anxious even to prognostic apprehension on behalf of his pride, his

comfort and his prevalence. And men are grossly purchasable; good wines have them, good cigars, a

goodfellow air: they are never quite worth their salt even then; you can make head against their ill looks. But

the looks of women will at one blow work on you the downright difference which is between the cock of

lordly plume and the moulting. Happily they may be gained: a clever tongue will gain them, a leg. They are

with you to a certainty if Nature is with you; if you are elegant and discreet: if the sun is on you, and they see

you shining in it; or if they have seen you wellstationed and handsome in the sun. And once gained they are

your mirrors for life, and far more constant than the glass. That tale of their caprice is absurd. Hit their

imaginations once, they are your slaves, only demanding common courtier service of you. They will deny

that you are ageing, they will cover you from scandal, they will refuse to see you ridiculous. Sir Willoughby's

instinct, or skin, or outfloating feelers, told him of these mysteries of the influence of the sex; he had as little

He had some need to know them in fact; and with him the need of a protection for himself called it forth; he

was intuitively a conjurer in selfdefence, longsighted, wanting no directions to the herb he was to suck at

when fighting a serpent. His dulness of vision into the heart of his enemy was compensated by the agile

sensitiveness obscuring but rendering him miraculously active, and, without supposing his need immediate,

he deemed it politic to fascinate Mrs. Mountstuart and anticipate ghastly possibilities in the future by

dropping a hint; not of Clara's fickleness, you may he sure; of his own, rather; or, more justly, of an altered

"Not one will satisfy me of being sufficiently so. and so I leave it to the character to fill out the epigram."

"Do. what hurry is there? And don't be misled by your objection to rogue; which would be reasonable if you

The door of a hollow chamber of horrible reverberation was opened within him by this remark.

He tried to say in jest, that it was not always a passionate admiration that held the rogue fast; but he muddled

it in the thick of his conscious thunder, and Mrs. Mountstuart smiled to see him shot from the

smoothflowing dialogue into the cataracts by one simple reminder to the lover of his luck. Necessarily, after

He looked extremely abstracted. "Yes, it is time. Where is the man you could recommend for her

complement? She has now what was missing before, a ripe intelligence in addition to her happy

"Poor Johnny Busshe! You forget that his wife doles him out his money. You're a hard bargainer, Sir

"Very well; and 'leafage' is good for hideandseek; especially when there is no rogue in ambush. And that's

the worst I can say of Laetitia Dale. An exaggerated devotion is the scandal of our sex. They say you're the

hardest man of business in the county too, and I can believe it; for at home and abroad your aim is to get the

"Nevertheless, my dear Mrs. Mountstuart, I can assure you that conversing with you has much the same

"But, leafage! leafage! You hard bargainers have no compassion for devoted spinsters."

She recollected the purpose of her morning's visit, which was to engage Dr. Middleton to dine with her, and

Awaiting her reappearance, the refreshment of the talk he had sustained, not without point, assisted him to

distinguish in its complete abhorrent orb the offence committed against him by his bride. And this he did

through projecting it more and more away from him, so that in the outer distance it involved his personal

emotions less, while observation was enabled to compass its vastness, and, as it were, perceive the whole

Thus to detach an injury done to us, and plant it in space, for mathematical measurement of its weight and

bulk, is an art; it may also be an instinct of selfpreservation; otherwise, as when mountains crumble adjacent

villages are crushed, men of feeling may at any moment be killed outright by the iniquitous and the callous.

But, as an art, it should be known to those who are for practising an art so beneficent, that circumstances must

lend their aid. Sir Willoughby's instinct even had sat dull and crushed before his conversation with Mrs.

Mountstuart. She lifted him to one of his ideals of himself. Among gentlemen he was the English gentleman;

with ladies his aim was the Gallican courtier of any period from Louis Treize to Louis Quinze. He could doat

on those who led him to talk in that characterbacked by English solidity, you understand. Roast beef stood

eminent behind the souffle and champagne. An English squire excelling his fellows at hazardous leaps in

public, he was additionally a polished whisperer, a lively dialoguer, one for witty bouts, with something in

himcapacity for a drive and dig or twobeyond mere wit, as they soon learned who called up his

reserves, and had a bosom for pinking. So much for his ideal of himself. Now, Clara not only never evoked,

never responded to it, she repelled it; there was no flourishing of it near her. He considerately overlooked

these facts in his ordinary calculations; he was a man of honour and she was a girl of beauty; but the

accidental blooming of his ideal, with Mrs. Mountstuart, on the very heels of Clara's offence, restored him to

full command of his art of detachment, and he thrust her out, quite apart from himself, to contemplate her

Deeply read in the Book of Egoism that he was, he knew the wisdom of the sentence: An injured pride that

strikes not out will strike home. What was he to strike with? Ten years younger, Laetitia might have been the

instrument. To think of her now was preposterous. Beside Clara she had the hue of Winter under the

springing bough. He tossed her away, vexed to the very soul by an ostentatious decay that shrank from

comparison with the blooming creature he had to scourge in selfdefence, by some agency or other.

Mrs. Mountstuart was on the step of her carriage when the silken parasols of the young ladies were descried

on a slope of the park, where the yellow green of Mayclothed beeches flowed over the brown ground of last

Vernon and Crossjay came out for the boy's halfhour's run before his dinner. Crossjay spied Miss Middleton

"Cousin!" he exclaimed, as if wealth had been imputed to Miss Dale; adding: "No male cousin."

A railway station fly drove out of the avenue on the circle to the hallentrance. Flitch was driver. He had no

right to be there, he was doing wrong, but he was doing it under cover of an office, to support his wife and

young ones, and his deprecating touches of the hat spoke of these apologies to his former master with

Flitch jumped from the box and read one of the labels aloud: "LieutenantColonel H. De Craye."

He began upon the abstract origin of it: he had lost his place in Sir Willoughby's establishment, and was

obliged to look about for work where it was to be got, and though he knew he had no right to be where he

was, he hoped to be forgiven because of the mouths he had to feed as a flyman attached to the railway station,

where this gentleman, the colonel, hired him, and he believed Sir Willoughby would excuse him for driving a

friend, which the colonel was, he recollected well, and the colonel recollected him, and he said, not noticing

how he was rigged: "What! Flitch! back in your old place? Am I expected?" and he told the colonel his

unfortunate situation. "Not back, colonel; no such luck for me" and Colonel De Craye was a very

kindhearted gentleman, as he always had been, and asked kindly after his family. And it might be that such

poor work as he was doing now he might be deprived of, such is misfortune when it once harpoons a man;

you may dive, and you may fly, but it sticks in you, once do a foolish thing. "May I humbly beg of you, if

you'll be so good, Sir Willoughby," said Flitch, passing to evidence of the sad mishap. He opened the door of

Flitch bestirred his misfortunesodden features and members for a continuation of the doleful narrative.

Flitch appealed to his former master for testimony that he was a good and a careful driver.

"Not a drop, my lady! not since my supper last night, if there's any truth in me!" Flitch implored succour of

Near Piper's mill, where the Wicker brook crossed the Rebdon road, one of Hoppner's wagons, overloaded as

usual, was forcing the horses uphill, when Flitch drove down at an easy pace, and saw himself between

Hoppner's cart come to a stand and a young lady advancing: and just then the carter smacks his whip, the

horses pull half mad. The young lady starts behind the cart, and up jumps the colonel, and, to save the young

lady, Flitch dashed ahead and did save her, he thanked Heaven for it, and more when he came to see who the

"Bardett, our old headkeeper, was a witness, my lady, had to drive half up the bank, and it's trueover the

fly did go; and the vaws it shoots out against the twelfth milestone, just as though there was the chance for

it! for nobody else was injured, and knocked against anything else, it never would have flown all to pieces, so

that it took Bardett and me ten minutes to collect every one, down to the smallest piece there was; and he

said, and I can't help thinking myself, there was a Providence in it, for we all come together so as you might

"So then Horace adopted the prudent course of walking on with the ladies instead of trusting his limbs again

to this capsizing fly," Sir Willoughby said to Mrs. Mountstuart; and she rejoined: "Lucky that no one was

Both of them eyed the nose of poor Flitch, and simultaneously they delivered a verdict in "Humph!"

Mrs. Mountstuart handed the wretch a halfcrown from her purse. Sir Willoughby directed the footman in

attendance to unload the fly and gather up the fragments of porcelain carefully, bidding Flitch be quick in his

"The colonel's weddingpresent! I shall call tomorrow." Mrs. Mountstuart waved her adieu.

"Come every day!Yes, I suppose we may guess the destination of the vase." He bowed her off, and she

"Well, now, the gift can he shared, if you're either of you for a division." In the crash of the carriagewheels

As for the vase, it was Horace De Craye's loss. Weddingpresent he would have to produce, and decidedly

not in chips. It had the look of a costly vase, but that was no question for the moment:What was meant by

Clara being seen walking on the highroad alone? What snare, traceable ad inferas, had ever induced

Clara came along chatting and laughing with Colonel De Craye, young Crossjay's hand under one of her

arms, and her parasol flashing; a dazzling offender; as if she wished to compel the spectator to recognize the

dainty rogue in porcelain; really insufferably fair: perfect in height and grace of movement; exquisitely

tressed; redlipped, the colour striking out to a distance from her ivory skin; a sight to set the woodland

dancing, and turn the heads of the town; though beautiful, a jury of art critics might pronounce her not to be.

Irregular features are condemned in beauty. Beautiful figure, they could say. A description of her figure and

her walking would have won her any praises: and she wore a dress cunning to embrace the shape and flutter

loose about it, in the spirit of a Summer's day. Calypsoclad, Dr. Middleton would have called her. See the

silver birch in a breeze: here it swells, there it scatters, and it is puffed to a round and it streams like a pennon,

and now gives the glimpse and shine of the white stem's line within, now hurries over it, denying that it was

visible, with a chatter along the sweeping folds, while still the white peeps through. She had the wonderful art

of dressing to suit the season and the sky. Today the art was ravishingly companionable with her

sweetlighted face: too sweet, too vividly meaningful for pretty, if not of the strict severity for beautiful.

Millinery would tell us that she wore a fichu of thin white muslin crossed in front on a dress of the same light

stuff, trimmed with deep rose. She carried a greysilk parasol, traced at the borders with green creepers, and

across the arm devoted to Crossjay a length of trailing ivy, and in that hand a bunch of the first long grasses.

These hues of red rose and pale green ruffled and pouted in the billowy white of the dress ballooning and

valleying softly, like a yacht before the sail bends low; but she walked not like one blown against; resembling

rather the day of the Southwest driving the clouds, gallantly firm in commotion; interfusing colour and

varying in her features from laugh to smile and look of settled pleasure, like the heavens above the breeze.

Sir Willoughby, as he frequently had occasion to protest to Clara, was no poet: he was a more than commonly

candid English gentleman in his avowed dislike of the poet's nonsense, verbiage, verse; not one of those

latterly terrorized by the noise made about the fellow into silent contempt; a sentiment that may sleep, and

has not to be defended. He loathed the fellow, fought the fellow. But he was one with the poet upon that

prevailing theme of verse, the charms of women. He was, to his illluck, intensely susceptible, and where he

led men after him to admire, his admiration became a fury. He could see at a glance that Horace De Craye

admired Miss Middleton. Horace was a man of taste, could hardly, could not, do other than admire; but how

curious that in the setting forth of Clara and Miss Dale, to his own contemplation and comparison of them,

Sir Willoughby had given but a nodding approbation of his bride's appearance! He had not attached weight to

Her conduct, and foremost, if not chiefly, her having been discovered, positively met by his friend Horace,

walking on the highroad without companion or attendant, increased a sense of pain so very unusual with

him that he had cause to be indignant. Coming on this condition, his admiration of the girl who wounded him

was as bitter a thing as a man could feel. Resentment, fed from the main springs of his nature, turned it to

wormwood, and not a whit the less was it admiration when he resolved to chastise her with a formal

indication of his disdain. Her present gaiety sounded to him like laughter heard in the shadow of the pulpit.

"You have escaped!" he said to her, while shaking the hand of his friend Horace and cordially welcoming

him. "My dear fellow! and, by the way, you had a squeak for it, I hear from Flitch."

"I, Willoughby? not a bit," said the colonel; "we get into a fly to get, out of it; and Flitch helped me out as

well as in, good fellow; just dusting my coat as he did it. The only bit of bad management was that Miss

"Flitch did me the favour to introduce me. He first precipitated me at Miss Middleton's feet, and then he

Sir Willoughby's countenance was enough for his friend Horace. Quarterwheeling to Clara, he said: " 'Tis

the place I'm to occupy for life, Miss Middleton, though one is not always fortunate to have a bright excuse

"I was in the hands of the Loves. Not the Graces, I'm afraid; I've an image of myself. Dear, no! My dear

Willoughby, you never made such a headlong declaration as that. It would have looked like a magnificent

impulse, if the posture had only been choicer. And Miss Middleton didn't laugh. At least I saw nothing but

"Because it was a tossup of a run to Ireland or here, and I came here not to go there; and, by the way,

fetched a jug with me to offer up to the gods of illluck; and they accepted the propitiation."

"No, it was wrapped in paper, to show its elegant form. I caught sight of it in the shop yesterday and carried it

off this morning, and presented it to Miss Middleton at noon, without any form at all."

Willoughby knew his friend Horace's mood when the Irish tongue in him threatened to wag.

"Flitch says the accident occurred through his driving up the bank to save you from the wheels."

"Flitch may go and whisper that down the neck of his empty whiskyflask," said Horace De Craye. "And

"The consequence is that we have a porcelain vase broken. You should not walk on the road alone, Clara.

"I'm afraid not, Miss Middleton. One must go to the witches for protection to vases; and they're all in the air

now, having their own way with us. which accounts for the confusion in politics and society, and the rise in

the price of broomsticks, to prove it true, as they tell us, that every nook and corner wants a mighty sweeping.

Miss Dale looks beaming," said De Craye, wishing to divert Willoughby from his anger with sense as well as

"No, nor making acquaintance with an actor in an Irish part in a drama cast in the Green Island. "'Tis Flitch,

my dear Willoughby, has been and stirred the native in me, and we'll present him to you for the like good

office when we hear after a number of years that you've not wrinkled your forehead once at your liege lady.

Take the poor old dog back home, will you? He's crazed to be at the Hall. I say, Willoughby, it would be a

good bit of work to take him back. Think of it; you'll do the popular thing, I'm sure. I've a superstition that

Flitch ought to drive you from the churchdoor. If I were in luck, I'd have him drive me."

"He fuddles his poor nose. "'Tis merely unction to the exile. Sober struggles below. He drinks to rock his

"To try his fortune in the world, as the best of us do, though livery runs after us to tell us there's no being an

independent gentleman, and comes a cold day we haul on the metalbutton coat again, with a good ha! of

satisfaction. You'll do the popular thing. Miss Middleton joins in the pleading."

"When I've vowed upon my eloquence, Willoughby, I'd bring you to pardon the poor dog?"

Sir Willoughby battled with himself to repress a state of temper that put him to marked disadvantage beside

his friend Horace in high spirits. Ordinarily he enjoyed these fits of Irish of him, which were Horace's fun and

play, at times involuntary, and then they indicated a recklessness that might embrace mischief. De Craye, as

Willoughby had often reminded him, was properly Norman. The blood of two or three Irish mothers in his

line, however, was enough to dance him, and if his fine profile spoke of the stiffer race, his eyes and the

quick run of the lip in the cheek, and a number of his qualities, were evidence of the maternal legacy.

"But I've wagered on your heart against your word, and cant afford to lose; and there's a double reason for

"If he drives a wheelbarrow at the Hall he'll be happier than on board a chariot at large. He's

"Oh, the vase! the bit of porcelain!" sung De Craye. "Well, we'll talk him over by and by."

"Inalterable, are they?like those of an ancient people, who might as well have worn a jacket of lead for the

comfort they had of their boast. The beauty of laws for human creatures is their adaptability to new

Colonel De Craye walked at the heels of his leader to make his bow to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.

Sir Willoughby had guessed the person who inspired his friend Horace to plead so pertinaciously and

inopportunely for the man Flitch: and it had not improved his temper or the pose of his rejoinders; he had

winced under the contrast of his friend Horace's easy, laughing, sparkling, musical air and manner with his

own stiffness; and he had seen Clara's face, too, scanning the contrasthe was fatally driven to exaggerate

his discontentment, which did not restore him to serenity. He would have learned more from what his abrupt

swing round of the shoulder precluded his beholding. There was an interchange between Colonel De Craye

and Miss Middleton; spontaneous on both sides. His was a look that said: "You were right"; hers: "I knew it".

Her look was calmer, and after the first instant clouded as by wearifulness of sameness; his was brilliant,

astonished, speculative, and admiring, pitiful: a look that poised over a revelation, called up the hosts of

It had passed unseen by Sir Willoughby. The observer was the one who could also supply the key of the

secret. Miss Dale had found Colonel De Craye in company with Miss Middleton at her gateway. They were

laughing and talking together like friends of old standing, De Craye as Irish as he could be: and the Irish

tongue and gentlemanly manner are an irresistible challenge to the opening steps of familiarity when accident

has broken the ice. Flitch was their theme; and: "Oh, but if we go tip to Willoughby hand in hand; and bob a

courtesy to "m and beg his pardon for Mister Flitch, won't he melt to such a pair of suppliants? of course he

will!" Miss Middleton said he would not. Colonel De Craye wagered he would; he knew Willoughby best.

Miss Middleton looked simply grave; a way of asserting the contrary opinion that tells of rueful experience.

"We'll see," said the colonel. They chatted like a couple unexpectedly discovering in one another a common

dialect among strangers. Can there be an end to it when those two meet? They prattle, they fill the minutes, as

though they were violently to be torn asunder at a coming signal, and must have it out while they can; it is a

meeting of mountain brooks; not a colloquy, but a chasing, impossible to say which flies, which follows, or

what the topic, so interlinguistic are they and rapidly counterchanging. After their conversation of an hour

before, Laetitia watched Miss Middleton in surprise at her lightness of mind. Clara bathed in mirth. A boy in

a summer stream shows not heartier refreshment of his whole being. Laetitia could now understand Vernon's

idea of her wit. And it seemed that she also had Irish blood. Speaking of Ireland, Miss Middleton said she had

Laetitia and Vernon paced up and down the lawn. Colonel De Craye was talking with English sedateness to

"If I might advise, I would say, do not leave the Hall immediately, not yet," Laetitia said to Vernon.

"Surely she has only to ask to be released?to ask earnestly: if it is her wish."

She thought of sparing him the annoyance. "Now there's to be a tussle, he must share in it."

"You think so? It may be true. But she seems one born devoid of patience, easily made reckless. There is a

wildness ... I judge by her way of speaking; that at least appeared sincere. She does not practise concealment.

He will naturally find it almost incredible. The change in her, so sudden, so wayward, is unintelligible to me.

To me it is the conduct of a creature untamed. He may hold her to her word and be justified."

"I'm not appointed to praise her. I fancy I read the case; and it's a case of opposition of temperaments. We

"Yes, but the accumulation of evidence, or sentience, if you like, is combustible; we don't command the

spark; it may be late in falling. And you argue in her favour. Consider her as a generous and impulsive girl,

By anything; by his loftiness, if you like. He flies too high for her, we will say."

The sound of the word in Vernon's mouth smote on a consciousness she had of his full grasp of Sir

Willoughby and her own timid knowledge, though he was not a man who played on words.

If he had eased his heart in stressing the first syllable, it was only temporary relief. He was heavybrowed

"But I cannot conceive what she expects me to do by confiding her sense of her position to me," said Laetitia.

"We none of us know what will be done. We hang on Willoughby, who hangs on whatever it is that supports

"I should be sorry to stake my authority on her obedience. We must decide something about Crossjay, and get

the money for his crammer, if it is to be got. If not, I may get a man to trust me. I mean to drag the boy away.

Willoughby has been at him with the tune of gentleman, and has laid hold of him by one ear. When I say 'her

obedience,' she is not in a situation, nor in a condition to be led blindly by anybody. She must rely on herself,

do everything herself. It's a knot that won't bear touching by any hand save hers."

MISS MIDDLETON finished her stroll with Crossjay by winding her trailer of ivy in a wreath round his hat

and sticking her bunch of grasses in the wreath. She then commanded him to sit on the ground beside a big

rhododendron, there to await her return. Crossjay had informed her of a design he entertained to be off with a

horde of boys nesting in high trees, and marking spots where wasps and hornets were to be attacked in

Autumn: she thought it a dangerous business, and as the boy's dinnerbell had very little restraint over him

when he was in the flush of a scheme of this description, she wished to make tolerably sure of him through

the charm she not unreadily believed she could fling on lads of his age. "Promise me you will not move from

here until I come back, and when I come I will give you a kiss." Crossjay promised. She left him and forgot

Seeing by her watch fifteen minutes to the ringing of the bell, a sudden resolve that she would speak to her

father without another minute's delay had prompted her like a superstitious impulse to abandon her aimless

course and be direct. She knew what was good for her; she knew it now more clearly than in the morning. To

be taken away instantly! was her cry. There could be no further doubt. Had there been any before? But she

would not in the morning have suspected herself of a capacity for evil, and of a pressing need to be saved

from herself. She was not pure of nature: it may be that we breed saintly souls which are: she was pure of

will: fire rather than ice. And in beginning to see the elements she was made of she did not shuffle them to a

heap with her sweet looks to front her. She put to her account some strength, much weakness; she almost

dared to gaze unblinking at a perilous evil tendency. The glimpse of it drove her to her father.

She wished to spare her father. So unsparing of herself was she, that, in her hesitation to speak to him of her

change of feeling for Sir Willoughby, she would not suffer it to be attributed in her own mind to a daughter's

anxious consideration about her father's loneliness; an idea she had indulged formerly. Acknowledging that it

was imperative she should speak, she understood that she had refrained, even to the inflicting upon herself of

such humiliation as to run dilating on her woes to others. because of the silliest of human desires to preserve

her reputation for consistency. She had heard women abused for shallowness and flightiness: she had heard

her father denounce them as veering weathervanes, and his oftrepeated quid femina possit: for her sex's

sake, and also to appear an exception to her sex, this reasoning creature desired to be thought consistent.

Just on the instant of her addressing him, saying: "Father," a note of seriousness in his ear. it struck her that

the occasion for saying all had not yet arrived, and she quickly interposed: "Papa"; and helped him to look

"Weeks! I am under an engagement to dine with Mrs Mountstuart Jenkinson five days hence: that is, on

"We'll call in that man we met at dinner here: Corney: a capital doctor; an oldfashioned anecdotal doctor.

How is it you are not well, my love? You look well. I cannot conceive your not being well."

"There we area change! semper eadem! Women will be wanting a change of air in Paradise; a change of

angels too, I might surmise. A change from quarters like these to a French hotel would be a descent!'this

the seat, this mournful gloom for that celestial light.?' I am perfectly at home in the library here. That

excellent fellow Whitford and I have real days: and I like him for showing fight to his elder and better."

"I know nothing of it, and I shall append no credit to the tale until I do know. He is headstrong, but he

A Southwest shower lashed the windowpanes and suggested to Dr. Middleton shuddering visions of the

"Corney shall see you: he is a sparkling draught in person; probably illiterate, if I may judge from one

interruption of my discourse when he sat opposite me, but lettered enough to respect Learning and write out

his prescription: I do not ask more of men or of physicians." Dr. Middleton said this rising, glancing at the

clock and at the back of his hands. "'Quod autem secundum litteras difficillimum esse artificium?' But what

after letters is the more difficult practice? 'Ego puto medicum.' The medicus next to the scholar: though I

have not to my recollection required him next me, nor ever expected child of mine to be crying for that milk.

Daughter she isof the unexplained sex: we will send a messenger for Corney. Change, my dear, you will

speedily have, to satisfy the most craving of women, if Willoughby, as I suppose, is in the neoteric fashion of

spending a honeymoon on a railway: apt image, exposition and perpetuation of the state of mania conducting

to the institution! In my time we lay by to brood on happiness; we had no thought of chasing it over a

continent, mistaking hurlyburly clothed in dust for the divinity we sought. A smaller generation sacrifices to

excitement. Dust and hurlyburly must perforce be the issue. And that is your modern world. Now, my dear,

let us go and wash our hands. Middaybells expect immediate attention. They know of no anteroom of

Clara stood gathered up, despairing at opportunity lost. He had noticed her contracted shape and her eyes, and

had talked magisterially to smother and overbear the something disagreeable prefigured in her appearance.

I do not; I could not; I love her; I love my girl. But you need not sing to me like a gnat to propound that

"Then, father, tell Willoughby today we have to leave tomorrow. You shall return in time for Mrs.

Mountstuart's dinner. Friends will take us in, the Darletons, the Erpinghams. We can go to Oxford, where you

are sure of welcome. A little will recover me. Do not mention doctors. But you see I am nervous. I am quite

ashamed of it; I am well enough to laugh at it, only I cannot overcome it; and I feel that a day or two will

restore me. Say you will. Say it in FirstLessonBook language; anything above a primer splits my foolish

"The office of ambassador from you to Willoughby, Clara? You decree me to the part of ball between two

bats. The Play being assured, the prologue is a bladder of wind. I seem to be instructed in one of the

mysteries of erotic esotery, yet on my word I am no wiser. If Willoughby is to hear anything from you, he

"Yes, father, yes. We have differences. I am not fit for contests at present; my head is giddy. I wish to avoid

"There is the bell!" ejaculated Dr. Middleton. "I'll debate on it with Willoughby."

"Somewhen, before the dinnerbell. I cannot tie myself to the minutehand of the clock, my dear child. And

let me direct you, for the next occasion when you shall bring the vowels I and A, in verbally detached letters,

into collision, that you do not fill the hiatus with so pronounced a Y. It is the vulgarization of our tongue of

She declared her inability to sit and eat; she went to her room, after begging him very earnestly to send her

the assurance that he had spoken. She had not shed a tear, and she rejoiced in her selfcontrol; it whispered to

Shower and sunshine alternated through the halfhours of the afternoon, like a procession of dark and fair

holding hands and passing. The shadow came, and she was chill; the light yellow in moisture, and she buried

her face not to be caught up by cheerfulness. Believing that her head ached, she afflicted herself with all the

heavy symptoms, and oppressed her mind so thoroughly that its occupation was to speculate on Laetitia

Dale's modest enthusiasm for rural pleasures, for this place especially, with its rich foliage and peeps of

scenic peace. The prospect of an escape from it inspired thoughts of a loveable round of life where the sun

was not a naked ball of fire, but a friend clothed in woodland; where park and meadow swept to wellknown

features East and West; and distantly circling hills, and the hearts of poor cottagers toosympathy with

whom assured her of goodnesswere familiar, homely to the dweller in the place, morning and night. And

she had the love of wild flowers, the watchful happiness in the seasons; poets thrilled her, books absorbed.

She dwelt strongly on that sincerity of feeling; it gave her root in our earth; she needed it as she pressed a

hand on her eyeballs, conscious of acting the invalid, though the reasons she had for languishing under

headache were so convincing that her brain refused to disbelieve in it and went some way to produce positive

throbs. Otherwise she had no excuse for shutting herself in her room. Vernon Whitford would be sceptical.

Headache or none, Colonel De Craye must be thinking strangely of her; she had not shown him any sign of

illness. His laughter and his talk sung about her and dispersed the fiction; he was the very seawind for

bracing unstrung nerves. Her ideas reverted to Sir Willoughby, and at once they had no more cohesion than

But soon she was undergoing a variation of sentiment. Her maid Barclay brought her this pencilled line from

That it was done, that Willoughby had put on an air of glad acquiescence, and that her father assumed the

existence of a lovers" quarrel, was wonderful to her at first sight, simple the succeeding minute. Willoughby

indeed must be tired of her, glad of her going. He would know that it was not to return. She was grateful to

him for perhaps hinting at the amantium irae, though she rejected the folly of the verse. And she gazed over

dear homely country through her windows now. Happy the lady of the place, if happy she can be in her

choice! Clara Middleton envied her the doubleblossom wild cherrytree, nothing else. One sprig of it, if it

had not faded and gone to dustcolour like crusty Alpine snow in the lower hollows, and then she could

depart, bearing away a memory of the best here! Her fiction of the headache pained her no longer. She

changed her muslin dress for silk; she was contented with the first bonnet Barclay presented. Amicable

toward every one in the house, Willoughby included, she threw up her window, breathed. blessed mankind;

and she thought: "If Willoughby would open his heart to nature, he would be relieved of his wretched opinion

of the world." Nature was then sparkling refreshed in the last drops of a sweeping raincurtain, favourably

disposed for a background to her joyful optimism. A little nibble of hunger within, real hunger, unknown to

her of late, added to this healthy view, without precipitating her to appease it; she was more inclined to foster

it, for the sake of the sinewy activity of mind and limb it gave her; and in the style of young ladies very light

of heart, she went downstairs like a cascade, and like the meteor observed in its vanishing trace she alighted

Now you have only to be reminded that it is the habit of the sportive gentleman of easy life, bewildered as he

would otherwise be by the tricks, twists, and windings of the hunted sex, to parcel out fair women into

classes; and some are flyers and some are runners; these birds are wild on the wing, those exposed their

bosoms to the shot. For him there is no individual woman. He grants her a characteristic only to enroll her in

a class. He is our immortal dunce at learning to distinguish her as a personal variety, of a separate growth.

Colonel De Craye's cock of the eye at the door said that he had seen a rageing coquette go behind it. He had

his excuse for forming the judgement. She had spoken strangely of the fall of his weddingpresent, strangely

of Willoughby; or there was a sound of strangeness in an allusion to her appointed husband: and she had

treated Willoughby strangely when they met. Above all, her word about Flitch was curious. And then that

look of hers! And subsequently she transferred her polite attentions to Willoughby's friend. After a charming

colloquy, the sweetest give and take rattle he had ever enjoyed with a girl, she developed headache to avoid

Miss Middleton came out of another door. She had seen him when she had passed him and when it was too

late to convey her recognition; and now she addressed him with an air of having bowed as she went by.

"There is a figure naught," said he, "but it's as good as annihilated, and no figure at all, if you put yourself on

"Achmet is the horse, and pray don't let him be sold, Miss Middleton. I am deputed to attend on you."

"It was the answer of the ghost of the wicked old man's wife when she came to persuade him he had one

chance remaining. Then, says he, I'll believe in heaven if ye'll stop that bottle, and hurls it; and the bottle

broke and he committed suicide, not without suspicion of her laying a trap for him. These showers curling

away and leaving sweet scents are divine, Miss Middleton. I have the privilege of the Christian name on the

nuptialday. This park of Willoughby's is one of the best things in England. There's a glimpse over the lake

that smokes of a corner of Killarney; tempts the eye to dream, I mean." De Craye wound his finger spirally

"All's one so long as it's beautiful: yes, you speak for me. Cosmopolitanism of races is a different affair. I beg

leave to doubt the true union of some; Irish and Saxon, for example, let Cupid be master of the ceremonies

and the dwellingplace of the happy couple at the mouth of a Cornucopia. Yet I have seen a flower of Erin

worn by a Saxon gentleman proudly; and the Hibernian courting a Rowena! So we'll undo what I said, and

"He named no particular time. Doctor Middleton and Mr. Whitford are in the library upon a battle of the

"You are accustomed to scholars. They are rather intolerant of us poor fellows."

"He gave me as much Latin as I could take. The fault is mine that it is little."

"Miss Middleton, I could sit down to be instructed, old as I am. When women beat us, I verily believe we are

"Let me see; there is Miss Dale and Mr. Whitford; you and I; sufficient for a twoact piece. THE

IRISHMAN IN SPAIN would do." He bent to touch the grass as she stepped on it. "The lawn is wet."

She signified that she had no dread of wet, and said: "English women afraid of the weather might as well be

De Craye proceeded: "Patrick O'Neill passes over from Hibernia to Iberia, a disinherited son of a father in the

claws of the lawyers, with a letter of introduction to Don Beltran d'Arragon, a Grandee of the First Class, who

has a daughter Dona Seraphina (Miss Middleton), the proudest beauty of her day, in the custody of a duenna

(Miss Dale), and plighted to Don Fernan, of the Guzman family (Mr. Whitford). There you have our dramatis

"Patrick himself. And I lose my letter, and I stand on the Prado of Madrid with the last portrait of Britannia in

the palm of my hand, and crying in the purest brogue of my native land: 'It's all through dropping a letter I'm

"That is clever criticism, upon my word, Miss Middleton! So he would. And there we have two letters

dropped. But he'd do it in a groan, so that it wouldn't count for more than a ghost of one; and everything goes

on the stage, since it's only the laugh we want on the brink of the action. Besides you are to suppose the

performance before a London audience, who have a native opposite to the aspirate and wouldn't bear to hear

him spoil a joke, as if he were a lord or a constable. It's an instinct of the English democracy. So with my bit

of coin turning over and over in an undecided way, whether it shall commit suicide to supply me a supper, I

behold a pair of Spanish eyes like violet lightning in the black heavens of that favoured clime. Won't you

Colonel De Craye permitted himself to take a flitting gaze at Miss Middleton's eyes. "Chestnut," he said.

Miss Middleton's exclamation was louder than the matter of the dialogue seemed to require. She caught her

In the line of the outer extremity of the rhododendron, screened from the house windows, young Crossjay lay

at his length, with his head resting on a doubled arm, and his ivywreathed hat on his cheek, just where she

had left him, commanding him to stay. Halfway toward him up the lawn, she saw the poor boy, and the spur

of that pitiful sight set her gliding swiftly. Colonel De Craye followed, pulling an end of his moustache.

"My dear, dear Crossjay!" she addressed him and reproached him. "And how hungry you must be! And you

"I did, and you should not have done it, foolish boy! I told him to wait for me here before luncheon, Colonel

De Craye, and the foolish, foolish boy!he has had nothing to eat, and he must have been wet through two

"Quite right. And the lava might overflow him and take the mould of him. like the sentinel at Pompeii, if he's

"I know. and I cannot forgive myself. Run in, Crossjay, and change your clothes. Oh, run, run to Mrs.

Montague, and get her to give you a warm bath, and tell her from me to prepare some dinner for you. And

change every garment you have. This is unpardonable of me. I said'not for politics!'I begin to think I

have not a head for anything. But could it be imagined that Crossjay would not move for the dinnerbell!

through all that rain! I forgot you, Crossjay. I am so sorry; so sorry! You shall make me pay any forfeit you

like. Remember, I am deep, deep in your debt. And now let me see you run fast. You shall come in to dessert

The affectionately remorseful impulse was too quick for a conventional note of admonition to arrest her from

paying that portion of her debt. When she had sped him off to Mrs Montague, she was in a blush.

"Yes, he's a good lad," remarked the colonel. "The fellow may well be a faithful soldier and stick to his post,

"He is. You will do him a service by persuading Willoughby to send him to one of those men who get boys

through their naval examination. And, Colonel De Craye, will you be kind enough to ask at the dinnertable

"And will you look after him while you are here? See that no one spoils him. If you could get him away

before you leave, it would he much to his advantage. He is born for the navy and should be preparing to enter

Colonel De Craye controlled his astonishment; he smothered a sensation of veritable pain, and amiably said:

"I feel a blow, but I am sure you would not willingly strike. We are all involved in the regrets."

Miss Middleton spoke of having to see Mrs. Montague, the housekeeper, with reference to the bath for

Crossjay, and stepped off the grass. He bowed, watched her a moment, and for parallel reasons, running close

enough to hit one mark, he commiserated his friend Willoughby. The winning or the losing of that young

THE leisurely promenade up and down the lawn with ladies and deferential gentlemen, in anticipation of the

dinnerbell, was Dr. Middleton's evening pleasure. He walked as one who had formerly danced (in Apollo's

time and the young god Cupid's), elastic on the muscles of the calf and foot, bearing his broad irongrey head

in grand elevation. The hard labour of the day approved the cooling exercise and the crowning refreshments

of French cookery and wines of known vintages. He was happy at that hour in dispensing wisdom or nugae to

his hearers, like the Western sun whose habit it is, when he is fairly treated, to break out in quiet splendours,

which by no means exhaust his treasury. Blessed indeed above his fellows, by the height of the bowwinged

bird in a fair weather sunset sky above the pecking sparrow, is he that ever in the recurrent evening of his day

sees the best of it ahead and soon to come. He has the rich reward of a youth and manhood of virtuous living.

Dr. Middleton misdoubted the future as well as the past of the man who did not, in becoming gravity, exult to

An example of the good fruit of temperance, he had a comfortable pride in his digestion, and his political

sentiments were attuned by his veneration of the Powers rewarding virtue. We must have a stable world

The Rev. Doctor was a fine old picture; a specimen of art peculiarly English; combining in himself piety and

epicurism, learning and gentlemanliness, with good room for each and a seat at one another's table: for the

rest, a strong man, an athlete in his youth, a keen reader of facts and no reader of persons, genial, a giant at a

task, a steady worker besides, but easily discomposed. He loved his daughter and he feared her. However

much he liked her character, the dread of her sex and age was constantly present to warn him that he was not

tied to perfect sanity while the damsel Clara remained unmarried. Her mother had been an amiable woman, of

the poetical temperament nevertheless, too enthusiastic, imaginative, impulsive, for the repose of a sober

scholar; an admirable woman, still, as you see, a woman, a firework. The girl resembled her. Why should

she wish to run away from Patterne Hall for a single hour? Simply because she was of the sex born mutable

and explosive. A husband was her proper custodian, justly relieving a father. With demagogues abroad and

daughters at home, philosophy is needed for us to keep erect. Let the girl be Cicero's Tullia: well, she dies!

"I was telling Miss Dale that the signal for your subjection is my enfranchisement," he said to her, sighing

and smiling. "We know the date. The date of an event to come certifies to it as a fact to be counted on."

"My dear, you have planted me on a field where I am to expect the trumpet, and when it blows I shall be quit

Clara found nothing to seize on for a reply in these words. She thought upon the silence of Laetitia.

"I need not ask you whether you are better," he said to Clara, sparkled to Laetitia, and raised a key to the level

"Sacred from the butler. It is interdicted to Stoneman. Shall I offer myself as guide to you? My cellars are

"Cellars are not catacombs. They are, if rightly constructed, rightly considered, cloisters, where the bottle

"Is it associated with your pedigree that you pronounce the age with such assurance?"

"Your grandfather, Sir Willoughby, had meritorious offspring, not to speak of generous progenitors. What

would have happened had it fallen into the female line! I shall be glad to accompany you. Port? Hermitage?"

"There will just be time," said Sir Willoughby, inducing Dr. Middleton to step out.

A chirrup was in the reverend doctor's tone: "Hocks, too, have compassed age. I have tasted senior Hocks.

Their flavours are as a brook of many voices; they have depth also. Senatorial Port! we say. We cannot say

that of any other wine. Port is deepsea deep. It is in its flavour deep; mark the difference. It is like a classic

tragedy, organic in conception. An ancient Hermitage has the light of the antique; the merit that it can grow to

an extreme old age; a merit. Neither of Hermitage nor of Hock can you say that it is the blood of those long

years, retaining the strength of youth with the wisdom of age. To Port for that! Port is our noblest legacy!

Observe, I do not compare the wines; I distinguish the qualities. Let them live together for our enrichment;

they are not rivals like the Idaean Three. Were they rivals, a fourth would challenge them. Burgundy has

great genius. It does wonders within its period; it does all except to keep up in the race; it is shortlived. An

aged Burgundy runs with a beardless Port. I cherish the fancy that Port speaks the sentences of wisdom,

Burgundy sings the inspired Ode. Or put it, that Port is the Homeric hexameter, Burgundy the pindaric

"The distinction, you would remark. Pindar astounds. But his elder brings us the more sustaining cup. One is

a fountain of prodigious ascent. One is the unsounded purple sea of marching billows."

"I conceive you to be now commending the similes. They pertain to the time of the first critics of those poets.

Touch the Greeks, and you can nothing new; all has been said: 'Graiis ... praeter, laudem nullius avaris.'

Genius dedicated to Fame is immortal. We, sir, dedicate genius to the cloacaline floods. We do not address

Sir Willoughby was patient. He was about as accordantly coupled with Dr. Middleton in discourse as a drum

duetting with a bassviol; and when he struck in he received correction from the paedagogueinstrument. If

he thumped affirmative or negative, he was wrong. However, he knew scholars to be an unmannered species;

In the cellar, it was the turn for the drum. Dr. Middleton was tonguetied there. Sir Willoughby gave the

history of his wine in heads of chapters; whence it came to the family originally, and how it had come down

to him in the quantity to be seen. "Curiously, my grandfather, who inherited it, was a waterdrinker. My

"Indeed! Dear me!" the doctor ejaculated in astonishment and condolence. The former glanced at the

He was impressed with respect for the family. This cool vaulted cellar, and the central square block, or

enceinte, where the thick darkness was not penetrated by the intruding lamp, but rather took it as an eye, bore

witness to forethoughtful practical solidity in the man who had built the house on such foundations. A house

having a great wine stored below lives in our imaginations as a joyful house, fast and splendidly rooted in the

soil. And imagination has a place for the heir of the house. His grandfather a waterdrinker, his father dying

early, present circumstances to us arguing predestination to an illustrious heirship and career. Dr Middleton's

musings were coloured by the friendly vision of glasses of the great wine; his mind was festive; it pleased

him, and he chose to indulge in his whimsical, robustious, grandioseairy style of thinking: from which the

festive mind will sometimes take a certain print that we cannot obliterate immediately. Expectation is

grateful, you know; in the mood of gratitude we are waxen. And he was a selfhumouring gentleman.

He liked Sir Willoughby's tone in ordering the servant at his heels to take up "those two bottles": it

prescribed, without overdoing it, a proper amount of caution, and it named an agreeable number.

"But here is the misfortune of a thing superexcellent:not more than one in twenty will do it justice."

Sir Willoughby replied: "Very true, sir; and I think we may pass over the nineteen."

"Vernon is a claret man; and so is Horace De Craye. They are both below the mark of this wine. They will

"You shall have it, sir, and not out of harmony with the chorus preceding me, I can predict. Cool, not frigid."

Dr. Middleton summed the attributes of the cellar on quitting it. "North side and South. No musty damp. A

pure air. Everything requisite. One might lie down one's self and keep sweet here."

Of all our venerable British of the two Isles professing a suckling attachment to an ancient portwine, lawyer,

doctor, squire, rosy admiral, city merchant, the classic scholar is he whose blood is most nuptial to the

webbed bottle. The reason must be, that he is full of the old poets. He has their spirit to sing with, and the

best that Time has done on earth to feed it. He may also perceive a resemblance in the wine to the studious

mind, which is the obverse of our mortality, and throws off acids and crusty particles in the piling of the

years, until it is fulgent by clarity. Port hymns to his conservatism. It is magical: at one sip he is off

By comparison, then, the enjoyment of others is brutish; they have not the soul for it; but he is worthy of the

wine, as are poets of Beauty. In truth, these should be severally apportioned to them, scholar and poet, as his

After the departure of the ladies, Sir Willoughby had practised a studied curtness upon Vernon and Horace.

"You drink claret," he remarked to them, passing it round. "Port, I think, Doctor Middleton? The wine before

The claret jug empty, Sir Willoughby offered to send for more. De Craye was languid over the question.

"We have a bottle of Doctor Middleton's port coming in," Willoughby said to him.

Vernon and De Craye retired upon the arrival of the wine; and Dr. Middleton sipped. He sipped and looked at

"I shall remember, sir," his host addressed him. "whenever I have the honour of entertaining you, I am

The Rev. Doctor set down his glass. "You have, sir, in some sense. an enviable post. It is a responsible one, if

"I will say this:shallow souls run to rhapsody:I will say, that I am consoled for not having lived ninety

years back, or at any period but the present, by this one glass of your ancestral wine."

"I am careful of it," Sir Willoughby said, modestly; "still its natural destination is to those who can appreciate

"Still my good friend, still! It is a charge; it is a possession, but part in trusteeship. Though we cannot declare

it an entailed estate, our consciences are in some sort pledged that it shall be a succession not too

"You will not object to drink it, sir, to the health of your grandchildren. And may you live to toast them in it

"You colour the idea of a prolonged existence in seductive hues. Ha! It is a wine for Tithonus. This wine

"I will undertake to sit you through it up to morning," said Sir Willoughby, innocent of the Bacchic nuptiality

Dr Middleton eyed the decanter. There is a grief in gladness, for a premonition of our mortal state. The

amount of wine in the decanter did not promise to sustain the starry roof of night and greet the dawn. "Old

"I submit. But, mark, it must be honest partnership. You are my worthy host, sir, on that stipulation. Note the

superiority of wine over Venus!I may say, the magnanimity of wine; our jealousy turns on him that will

"The corking is examined at regular intervals. I remember the occurrence in my father's time. I have seen to it

"It must be perilous as an operation for tracheotomy; which I should assume it to resemble in surgical skill

"I have beaten some small stock of Latin into her head, and a note of Greek. She contains a savour of the

classics. I hoped once ... But she is a girl. The nymph of the woods is in her. Still she will bring you her

flowercup of Hippocrene. She has that aristocracythe noblest. She is fair; a Beauty, some have said, who

judge not by lines. Fair to me, Willoughby! She is my sky. There were applicants. In Italy she was besought

of me. She has no history. You are the first heading of the chapter. With you she will have her one tale, as it

should be. 'Mulier tum bene olet', you know. Most fragrant she that smells of naught. She goes to you from

me, from me alone, from her father to her husband. 'Ut flos in septis secretus nascitur hortis.'" He murmured

on the lines to, "'Sic virgo, dum . . .' I shall feel the parting. She goes to one who will have my pride in her,

and more. I will add, who will be envied. Mr. Whitford must write you a Carmen Nuptiale."

The heart of the unfortunate gentleman listening to Dr. Middleton set in for irregular leaps. His offended

temper broke away from the image of Clara, revealing her as he had seen her in the morning beside Horace

De Craye, distressingly sweet; sweet with the breezy radiance of an English softbreathing day; sweet with

sharpness of young sap. Her eyes, her lips, her fluttering dress that played happy mother across her bosom,

giving peeps of the veiled twins; and her laughter, her slim figure, peerless carriage, all her terrible sweetness

Her wish to be free of him was his anguish. In his pain he thought sincerely. When the pain was easier he

muffled himself in the idea of her jealousy of Laetitia Dale, and deemed the wish a fiction. But she had

expressed it. That was the wound he sought to comfort; for the double reason, that he could love her better

after punishing her, and that to meditate on doing so masked the fear of losing herthe dread abyss she had

succeeded in forcing his nature to shudder at as a giddy edge possibly near, in spite of his arts of

"What I shall do tomorrow evening!" he exclaimed. "I do not care to fling a bottle to Colonel De Craye and

Vernon. I cannot open one for myself. To sit with the ladies will be sitting in the cold for me. When do you

"My dear Willoughby!" The Rev. Doctor puffed, composed himself, and sipped. "The expedition is an

absurdity. I am unable to see the aim of it. She had a headache, vapours. They are over, and she will show a

return of good sense. I have ever maintained that nonsense is not to be encouraged in girls. I can put my foot

on it. My arrangements are for staying here a further ten days, in the terms of your hospitable invitation. And

"Certainly not. The weakness is in the yielding, either to persuasion or to pressure. The latter brings weight to

"I cordially dislike a breach in good habits, Willoughby. But I do rememberwas I wrong?informing

Clara that you appeared lighthearted in regard to a departure, or gap in a visit, that was not, I must confess,

"Simply, my dear doctor, your pleasure was my pleasure; but make my pleasure yours, and you remain to

"Excellently said. You have a courtly speech, Willoughby. I can imagine you to conduct a lovers" quarrel

"I rejoice," the Rev. Doctor responded; taught thus to understand that the lovers" quarrel between his

He left the table a little after eleven o'clock. A short dialogue ensued upon the subject of the ladies. They

must have gone to bed? Why, yes; of course they must. It is good that they should go to bed early to preserve

their complexions for us. Ladies are creation's glory, but they are anticlimax, following a wine of a century

old. They are anticlimax, recoil, crosscurrent; morally, they are repentance, penance; imagerially, the

frozen North on the young brown buds bursting to green. What know they of a critic in the palate, and a

frame all revelry! And mark you, revelry in sobriety, containment in exultation; classic revelry. Can they,

dear though they be to us, light up candelabras in the brain, to illuminate all history and solve the secret of the

destiny of man? They cannot; they cannot sympathize with them that can. So therefore this division is

between us; yet are we not turbaned Orientals, nor are they inmates of the harem. We are not Moslem. Be

The piano was heard. Dr. Middleton laid his hand on the banisters, and remarked: "The ladies must have gone

He waved a goodnight to the Doctor, and said to Willoughby: "The ladies are in the drawingroom."

"Solitude and sleep, after such a wine as that; and forefend us human society!" the Doctor shouted. "But,

"I am fitter to drive the horses of the sun. I would rigidly counsel, one, and no more. We have made a breach

in the fiftieth dozen. Daily one will preserve us from having to name the fortieth quite so unseasonably. The

couple of bottles per diem prognosticates disintegration, with its accompanying recklessness.

During Dr. Middleton's allocution the ladies issued from the drawingroom, Clara foremost, for she had

heard her father's voice, and desired to ask him this in reference to their departure: "Papa, will you tell me the

She ran up the stairs to kiss him, saying again: "When will you be ready tomorrow morning?"

Dr Middleton announced a stoutly deliberative mind in the buglenotes of a repeated ahem. He bethought

him of replying in his doctorial tongue. Clara's eager face admonished him to brevity: it began to look

starved. Intruding on his vision of the houris couched in the inner cellar to be the reward of valiant men, it

annoyed him. His brows joined. He said: "I shall not be ready tomorrow morning."

"My dear, I am ready for bed at this moment, and know of no other readiness. Ladies," he bowed to the group

Sir Willoughby had hastily descended and shaken the hands of the ladies, directed Horace De Craye to the

laboratory for a smokingroom, and returned to Dr. Middleton. Vexed by the scene, uncertain of his temper

if he stayed with Clara, for whom he had arranged that her disappointment should take place on the morrow,

in his absence, he said: "Goodnight, goodnight," to her, with due fervour, bending over her flaccid

"Ay, son Willoughby, in friendliness, if you will, though I am a man to bear my load," the father of the

stupefied girl addressed him. "Candles, I believe, are on the first landing. Goodnight, my love. Clara!"

"Oh!" she lifted her breast with the interjection, standing in shame of the curtained conspiracy and herself,

"There was an understanding that papa and I should go to London tomorrow early," she said,

unconcernedly, to the ladies, and her voice was clear, but her face too legible. De Craye was heartily unhappy

She was in a fever, lying like stone, with her brain burning. Quick natures run out to calamity in any little

shadow of it flung before. Terrors of apprehension drive them. They stop not short of the uttermost when they

are on the wings of dread. A frown means tempest, a wind wreck; to see fire is to be seized by it. When it is

the approach of their loathing that they fear, they are in the tragedy of the embrace at a breath; and then is the

wrestle between themselves and horror, between themselves and evil, which promises aid; themselves and

weakness, which calls on evil; themselves and the better part of them, which whispers no beguilement.

The false course she had taken through sophistical cowardice appalled the girl; she was lost. The advantage

taken of it by Willoughby put on the form of strength, and made her feel abject, reptilious; she was lost,

carried away on the flood of the cataract. He had won her father for an ally. Strangely, she knew not how, he

had succeeded in swaying her father, who had previously not more than tolerated him. "Son Willoughby" on

her father's lips meant something that scenes and scenes would have to struggle with, to the outwearying of

her father and herself. She revolved the "Son Willoughby" through moods of stupefaction, contempt, revolt,

subjection. It meant that she was vanquished. It meant that her father's esteem for her was forfeited. She saw

Her recognition of her cowardly feebleness brought the brood of fatalism. What was the right of so miserable

a creature as she to excite disturbance, let her fortunes be good or ill? It would be quieter to float, kinder to

everybody. Thank heaven for the chances of a short life! Once in a net, desperation is graceless. We may be

brutes in our earthly destinies: in our endurance of them we need not be brutish.

She was now in the luxury of passivity, when we throw our burden on the Powers above, and do not love

them. The need to love them drew her out of it, that she might strive with the unbearable, and by sheer

striving, even though she were graceless, come to love them humbly. It is here that the seed of good teaching

supports a soul, for the condition might be mapped, and where kismet whispers us to shut eyes, and

Quick of sensation, but not courageously resolved, she perceived how blunderingly she had acted. For a

punishment, it seemed to her that she who had not known her mind must learn to conquer her nature, and

submit. She had accepted Willoughby; therefore she accepted him. The fact became a matter of the past, past

In the abstract this contemplation of circumstances went well. A plain duty lay in her way. And then a

disembodied thought flew round her, comparing her with Vernon to her discredit. He had for years borne

much that was distasteful to him, for the purpose of studying, and with his poor income helping the poorer

than himself. She dwelt on him in pity and envy; he had lived in this place, and so must she; and he had not

been dishonoured by his modesty: he had not failed of selfcontrol, because he had a life within. She was

almost imagining she might imitate him when the clash of a sharp physical thought, "The difference! the

difference!" told her she was woman and never could submit. Can a woman have an inner life apart from him

she is yoked to? She tried to nestle deep away in herself: in some corner where the abstract view had

comforted her, to flee from thinking as her feminine blood directed. It was a vain effort. The difference, the

cruel fate, the defencelessness of women, pursued her, strung her to wild horses" backs, tossed her on savage

wastes. In her case duty was shame: hence, it could not be broadly duty. That intolerable difference

But the fire of a brain burning high and kindling everything lighted up herself against herself.Was one so

volatile as she a person with a will?Were they not a multitude of flitting wishes that she took for a will?

Was she, featherheaded that she was, a person to make a stand on physical pride?If she could yield her

hand without reflection (as she conceived she had done, from incapacity to conceive herself doing it

reflectively) was she much better than purchaseable stuff that has nothing to say to the bargain?

Furthermore, said her incandescent reason, she had not suspected such art of cunning in Willoughby. Then

might she not be deceived altogethermight she not have misread him? Stronger than she had fancied,

might he not be likewise more estimable? The world was favourable to him; he was prized by his friends.

She reviewed him. It was all in one flash. It was not much less intentionally favourable than the world's

review and that of his friends, but, beginning with the idea of them, she recollected heard Willoughby's

voice pronouncing his opinion of his friends and the world; of Vernon Whitford and Colonel De Craye for

example, and of men and women. An undefined agreement to have the same regard for him as his friends and

the world had, provided that he kept at the same distance from her, was the termination of this phase,

occupying about a minute in time, and reached through a series of intensely vivid pictures:his face, at her

"I cannot! I cannot!" she cried, aloud; and it struck her that her repulsion was a holy warning. Better be

graceless than a loathing wife: better appear inconsistent. Why should she not appear such as she was?

Why? We answer that question usually in angry reliance on certain superb qualities, injured fine qualities of

ours undiscovered by the world, not much more than suspected by ourselves, which are still our fortress,

where pride sits at home, solitary and impervious as an octogenarian conservative. But it is not possible to

answer it so when the brain is rageing like a pinetorch and the devouring illumination leaves not a spot of

our nature covert. The aspect of her weakness was unrelieved, and frightened her back to her loathing. From

her loathing, as soon as her sensations had quickened to realize it, she was hurled on her weakness. She was

graceless, she was inconsistent, she was volatile, she was unprincipled, she was worse than a prey to

wickednesscapable of it; she was only waiting to be misled. Nay, the idea of being misled suffused her

with languor; for then the battle would be over and she a happy weed of the sea no longer suffering those tugs

at the roots, but leaving it to the sea to heave and contend. She would he like Constantia then: like her in her

Poor troubled bodies waking up in the night to behold visually the spectre cast forth from the perplexed

machinery inside them, stare at it for a space, till touching consciousness they dive down under the sheets

with fishlike alacrity. Clara looked at her thought, and suddenly headed downward in a crimson gulf.

She must have obtained absolution, or else it was oblivion, below. Soon after the plunge her first object of

meditation was Colonel De Craye. She thought of him calmly: he seemed a refuge. He was very nice, he was

a holiday character. His lithe figure, neat firm footing of the stag, swift intelligent expression, and his ready

frolicsomeness, pleasant humour, cordial temper, and his Irishry, whereon he was at liberty to play, as on the

emblem harp of the Isle, were soothing to think of. The suspicion that she tricked herself with this calm

observation of him was dismissed. Issuing out of torture, her young nature eluded the irradiating brain in

search of refreshment, and she luxuriated at a feast in considering himshower on a parched land that he

was! He spread new air abroad. She had no reason to suppose he was not a good man: she could securely

think of him. Besides he was bound by his prospective office in support of his friend Willoughby to be quite

harmless. And besides (you are not to expect logical sequences) the showery refreshment in thinking of him

lay in the sort of assurance it conveyed, that the more she thought, the less would he be likely to figure as an

obnoxious officialthat is, as the man to do by Willoughby at the altar what her father would, under the

His name was Horace. Her father had worked with her at Horace. She knew most of the Odes and some of the

Satires and Epistles of the poet. They reflected benevolent beams on the gentleman of the poet's name. He too

was vivacious, had fun, common sense, elegance; loved rusticity, he said, sighed for a country life, fancied

retiring to Canada to cultivate his own domain; "modus agri non ita magnus:" a delight. And he, too, when in

the country, sighed for town. There were strong features of resemblance. He had hinted in fun at not being

rich. "Quae virtus et quanta sit vivere parvo." But that quotation applied to and belonged to Vernon Whitford.

She would have thought of Vernon, as her instinct of safety prompted, had not his exactions been excessive.

He proposed to help her with advice only. She was to do everything for herself, do and dare everything,

decide upon everything. He told her flatly that so would she learn to know her own mind; and flatly, that it

was her penance. She had gained nothing by breaking down and pouring herself out to him. He would have

her bring Willoughby and her father face to face, and be witness of their interview herself the theme. What

alternative was there?obedience to the word she had pledged. He talked of patience, of selfexamination

and patience. But all of hershe was all marked urgent. This house was a cage, and the worldher brain

She went to her window to gaze at the first colour along the grey. Small satisfaction came of gazing at that or

at herself. She shunned glass and sky. One and the other stamped her as a slave in a frame. It seemed to her

she had been so long in this place that she was fixed here: it was her world, and to imagine an Alp was like

seeking to get back to childhood. Unless a miracle intervened here she would have to pass her days. Men are

so little chivalrous now that no miracle ever intervenes. Consequently she was doomed.

She took a pen and began a letter to a dear friend, Lucy Darleton, a promised bridesmaid, bidding her

countermand orders for her bridal dress, and purposing a tour in Switzerland. She wrote of the mountain

country with real abandonment to imagination. It became a visioned loophole of escape. She rose and clasped

a shawl over her nightdress to ward off chillness, and sitting to the table again, could not produce a word.

The lines she had written were condemned: they were ludicrously inefficient. The letter was torn to pieces.

After a fall of tears, upon looking at the scraps, she dressed herself, and sat by the window and watched the

blackbird on the lawn as he hopped from shafts of dewy sunlight to the longstretched dewy treeshadows,

considering in her mind that dark dews are more meaningful than bright, the beauty of the dews of woods

more sweet than meadowdews. It signified only that she was quieter. She had gone through her crisis in the

anticipation of it. That is how quick natures will often be cold and hard, or not much moved, when the

positive crisis arrives, and why it is that they are prepared for astonishing leaps over the gradations which

should render their conduct comprehensible to us, if not excuseable. She watched the blackbird throw up his

head stiffly, and peck to right and left, dangling the worm on each side his orange beak. Specklebreasted

thrushes were at work. and a wagtail that ran as with Clara's own rapid little steps. Thrush and blackbird flew

to the nest. They had wings. The lovely morning breathed of sweet earth into her open window, and made it

painful, in the dense twitter, chirp, cheep, and song of the air, to resist the innocent intoxication. O to love!

was not said by her, but if she had sung, as her nature prompted, it would have been. Her war with

Willoughby sprang of a desire to love repelled by distaste. Her cry for freedom was a cry to be free to love:

she discovered it, half shuddering: to love, oh! nono shape of man, nor impalpable nature either: but to

love unselfishness, and helpfulness, and planted strength in something. Then, loving and being loved a little,

what strength would be hers! She could utter all the words needed to Willoughby and to her father, locked in

Previously she had cried, despairing: If I were loved! Jealousy of Constantia's happiness, envy of her escape,

ruled her then: and she remembered the cry, though not perfectly her plainspeaking to herself: she chose to

think she had meant: If Willoughby were capable of truly loving! For now the fire of her brain had sunk, and

refuges and subterfuges were round about it. The thought of personal love was encouraged, she chose to

think, for the sake of the strength it lent her to carve her way to freedom. She had just before felt rather the

reverse, but she could not exist with that feeling; and it was true that freedom was not so indistinct in her

She put it away. Wherever she turned it stood observing her. She knew so much of one man, nothing of the

rest: naturally she was curious. Vernon might be sworn to be unlike. But he was exceptional. What of the

Maidens are commonly reduced to read the masters of their destinies by their instincts; and when these have

been edged by overactivity they must hoodwink their maidenliness to suffer themselves to read; and then

they must dupe their minds, else men would soon see they were gifted to discern. Total ignorance being their

pledge of purity to men, they have to expunge the writing of their perceptives on the tablets of the brain: they

have to know not when they do know. The instinct of seeking to know, crossed by the task of blotting

knowledge out, creates that conflict of the natural with the artificial creature to which their ultimately

revealed doubleface, complained of by everdissatisfied men, is owing. Wonder in no degree that they

indulge a craving to be fools, or that many of them act the character. Jeer at them as little for not showing

growth. You have reared them to this pitch, and at this pitch they have partly civilized you. Supposing you to

want it done wholly, you must yield just as many points in your requisitions as are needed to let the wits of

young women reap their due harvest and be of good use to their souls. You will then have a fair battle, a

She had immediately to blot out the vision of Captain Oxford in him, the revelation of his laughing contempt

for Willoughby, the view of mercurial principles, the scribbled histories of light lovepassages.

She blotted it out, kept it from her mind: so she knew him, knew him to be a sweeter and a variable

Willoughby, a generous kind of Willoughby, a Willoughbybutterfly, without having the free mind to

summarize him and picture him for a warning. Scattered features of him, such as the instincts call up, were

not sufficiently impressive. Besides, the clouded mind was opposed to her receiving impressions.

Young Crossjay's voice in the still morning air came to her cars. The dear guileless chatter of the boy's voice.

Why, assuredly it was young Crossjay who was the man she loved. And he loved her. And he was going to be

an unselfish, sustaining, true, strong man, the man she longed for, for anchorage. Oh, the dear voice!

woodpecker and thrush in one. He never ceased to chatter to Vernon Whitford walking beside him with a

swinging stride off to the lake for their morning swim. Happy couple! The morning gave them both a

freshness and innocence above human. They seemed to Clara made of morning air and clear lake water.

Crossjay's voice ran up and down a diatonic scale with here and there a query in semitone and a laugh on a

ringing note. She wondered what he could have to talk of so incessantly, and imagined all the dialogue. He

prattled of his yesterday, today, and tomorrow, which did not imply past and future, but his vivid present.

She felt like one vainly trying to fly in hearing him; she felt old. The consolation she arrived at was to feel

Trot and stride, Crossjay and Vernon entered the park, careless about wet grass, not once looking at the

house. Crossjay ranged ahead and picked flowers, bounding back to show them. Clara's heart beat at a fancy

that her name was mentioned. If those flowers were for her she would prize them.

Deeply dwelling on their troubles has the effect upon the young of helping to forgetfulness; for they cannot

think without imagining, their imaginations are saturated with their Pleasures, and the collision, though they

She glanced at her bed, where she had passed the night of ineffectual moaning, and out on the high wave of

Little by little her intelligence of her actual position crept up to submerge her heart.

"I am in his house!" she said. It resembled a discovery, so strangely had her opiate and power of dreaming

wrought through her tortures. She said it gasping. She was in his house, his guest, his betrothed, sworn to

Her station was among the beeches on the flank of the boy's return; and while waiting there the novelty of her

waiting to waylay anyoneshe who had played the contrary part!told her more than it pleased her to

think. Yet she could admit that she did desire to speak with Vernon, as with a counsellor, harsh and curt, but

Some one hailed them. A sound of the galloping hoof drew her attention to the avenue. She saw Willoughby

dash across the park level, and dropping a word to Vernon, ride away. Then she allowed herself to be seen.

Crossjay shouted. Willoughby turned his head, but not his horse's head. The boy sprang up to Clara. He had

swum across the lake and back; he had raced Mr. Whitfordand beaten him! How he wished Miss

Clara listened to him enviously. Her thought was: We women are nailed to our sex!

Crossjay drew himself up to give an imitation of the baronet's handmoving in adieu.

She declined to smile. Crossjay repeated it, and laughed. He made a broader exhibition of it to Vernon

Vernon doubled to catch him. Crossjay fled and resumed his magnificent air in the distance.

"Goodmorning, Miss Middleton; you are out early," said Vernon, rather pale and stringy from his cold

She had expected some of the kindness she wanted to reject, for he could speak very kindly, and she regarded

"Possibly. But other heads are at work as well as yours. If you had been in earnest about it you would have

taken your father into your confidence at once. That was the course I ventured to propose, on the

"If I had been bound to any other! I did not know then who held me a prisoner. I thought I had only to speak

"Not many men would give up their prize for a word, Willoughby the last of any."

"Prize" rang through her thrillingly from Vernon's mouth, and soothed her degradation.

She would have liked to protest that she was very little of a prize; a poor prize; not one at all in general

estimation; only one to a man reckoning his property; no prize in the true sense.

"Does he think I can change again? Am I treated as something won in a lottery? To stay here is indeed more

than I can bear. And if he is calculatingMr. Whitford, if he calculates on another change, his plotting to

"The right you admit when you ask him to release you. He has the right to think you deluded; and to think

you may come to a better mood if you remaina mood more agreeable to him, I mean. He has that right

absolutely. You are bound to remember also that you stand in the wrong. You confess it when you appeal to

his generosity. And every man has the right to retain a treasure in his hand if he can. Look straight at these

"Try honestly. What is wisest now is, in my opinion, for you to resolve to stay. I speak in the character of the

person you sketched for yourself as requiring. Well, then, a friend repeats the same advice. You might have

gone with your father: now you will only disturb him and annoy him. The chances are he will refuse to go."

"Are women ever so changeable as men, then? Papa consented; he agreed; he had some of my feeling; I saw

it. That was yesterday. And at night! He spoke to each of us at night in a different tone from usual. With me

he was hardly affectionate. But when you advise me to stay, Mr. Whitford, you do not perhaps reflect that it

He shuddered slightly. "You have intellect," he said, nodded. and crossed the lawn, leaving her. He had to

She was not permitted to feel lonely, for she was immediately joined by Colonel De Craye.

"I say, Miss Middleton, we're to have the whole day to ourselves, after morning lessons. Will you come and

"Not for the satisfaction of beholding another cracked crown, my son," the colonel interposed: and bowing to

Clara: "Miss Middleton is handed over to my exclusive charge for the day, with her consent?"

"I scarcely know," said she, consulting a sensation of languor that seemed to contain some reminiscence. "If I

am here. My father's plans are uncertain. I will speak to him. If I am here, perhaps Crossjay would like a ride

"Oh, yes," cried the boy; "out over Bournden, through Mewsey up to Closharn Beacon, and down on

At this remark of the colonel's young Crossjay conceived the appearance of his matted locks in the eyes of his

"After all, Miss Middleton, Willoughby's notions about him are not so bad, if we consider that you will be in

"You are disinclined to calculate the good fortune of the boy in having more of you on land than he would

"He dines here, I know; for he holds the key of the inner cellar, and Doctor Middleton does him the honour to

applaud his wine. Willoughby was good enough to tell me that he thought I might contribute to amuse you."

She was brooding in stupefaction on her father and the wine as she requested Colonel De Craye to persuade

"Not at all. But is he notmen are queer fish!make allowance for usa trifle tyrannical, pleasantly, with

It was meant for an interrogation; it was not with the sound of one that the words dropped. "My dear

Crossjay!" she sighed. "I would willingly pay for him out of my own purse, and I will do so rather than have

"We are having a spell of weather perfectly superb. And the odd thing is, that whenever we have splendid

weather at home we're all for rushing abroad. I'm booked for a Mediterranean cruise postponed to give

De Craye saved it from an awkward length. "I have written half an essay on Honeymoons, Miss Middleton."

"Just the same, with the difference that it's a whole essay written all on one side."

"There we touch the key of the subject. For what is to rescue the pair from a monotony multiplied by two?

And so a bachelor's recommendation, when each has discovered the right sort of person to be dull with,

pushes them from the churchdoor on a round of adventures containing a spice of peril, if 'tis to be had. Let

them be in danger of their lives the first or second day. A bachelor's loneliness is a private affair of his own;

he hasn't to look into a face to be ashamed of feeling it and inflicting it at the same time; 'tis his pillow; he

can punch it an he pleases, and turn it over t'other side, if he's for a mighty variation; there's a dream in it. But

our poor couple are staring wide awake. All their dreaming's done. They've emptied their bottle of elixir, or

broken it; and she has a thirst for the use of the tongue, and he to yawn with a crony; and they may converse,

they're not aware of it, more than the desert that has drunk a shower. So as soon as possible she's away to the

ladies, and he puts on his Club. That's what your bachelor sees and would like to spare them; and if he didn't

see something of the sort he'd be off with a noose round his neck, on his knees in the dew to the morning

"The bachelor is happily warned and on his guard," said Clara, diverted, as he wished her to be. "Sketch me a

"I have a friend who rowed his bride from the Houses of Parliament up the Thames to the Severn on into

"They had an infinity of adventures, and the best proof of the benefit they derived is, that they forgot

"They returned, and shone like a wrecker's beacon to the mariner. You see, Miss Middleton, there was the

landscape, and the exercise, and the occasional bit of danger. I think it's to be recommended. The scene is

always changing, and not too fast; and 'tis not too sublime, like big mountains, to tire them of their

everlasting big Ohs. There's the difference between going into a howling wind and launching among zephyrs.

They have fresh air and movement, and not in a railway carriage; they can take in what they look on. And she

has the steering ropes, and that's a wise commencement. And my lord is all day making an exhibition of his

manly strength, bowing before her some sixty to the minute; and she, to help him, just inclines when she's in

the mood. And they're face to face in the nature of things, and are not under the obligation of looking the

unutterable, because, you see, there's business in hand; and the boat's just the right sort of third party, who

never interferes, but must be attended to. And they feel they re labouring together to get along, all in the

proper proportion; and whether he has to labour in life or not, he proves his ability. What do you think of it,

"The stain on the metal for a constant reminder of his prowess in saving it! Well, and there's an alternative to

that scheme, and a finer:This, then: they read dramatic pieces during courtship, to stop the saying of things

over again till the drum of the car becomes nothing but a drum to the poor head, and a little before they affix

their signatures to the fatal Registrybook of the vestry, they enter into an engagement with a body of

provincial actors to join the troop on the day of their nuptials, and away they go in their coach and four, and

she is Lady Kitty Caper for a month, and he Sir Harry Highflyer. See the honeymoon spinning! The marvel to

me is that none of the young couples do it. They could enjoy the world, see life, amuse the company, and

come back fresh to their own characters, instead of giving themselves a dose of Africa without a savage to

diversify it: an impression they never get over, I'm told. Many a character of the happiest auspices has

irreparable mischief done it by the ordinary honeymoon. For my part, I rather lean to the second plan of

Clara was expected to reply, and she said: "Probably because you are fond of acting. It would require

"Miss Middleton, I would undertake to breathe the enthusiasm for the stage and the adventure."

"Let my gentleman only have a fund of enthusiasm. The lady will kindle. She always does at a spark."

She allowed her silence to speak; she knew that it did so too eloquently, and could not control the personal

adumbration she gave to the one point of light revealed in, "if he has not any". Her figure seemed

She was full of revolt and anger, she was burning with her situation; if sensible of shame now at anything that

she did, it turned to wrath and threw the burden on the author of her desperate distress. The hour for blaming

herself had gone by, to be renewed ultimately perhaps in a season of freedom. She was bereft of her insight

within at present, so blind to herself that, while conscious of an accurate reading of Willoughby's friend, she

thanked him in her heart for seeking simply to amuse her and slightly succeeding. The afternoon's ride with

Laetitia came to divide her from Colonel De Craye. Dr. Middleton was not seen before his appearance at the

breakfasttable, where a certain air of anxiety in his daughter's presence produced the semblance of a raised

map at intervals on his forehead. Few sights on earth are more deserving of our sympathy than a good man

The Rev. Doctor's perturbation was observed. The ladies Eleanor and Isabel, seeing his daughter to be the

cause of it, blamed her, and would have assisted him to escape, but Miss Dale, whom he courted with that

object, was of the opposite faction. She made way for Clara to lead her father out. He called to Vernon, who

Half an eye on Dr. Middleton's pathetic exit in captivity sufficed to tell Colonel De Craye that parties divided

the house. At first he thought how deplorable it would be to lose Miss Middleton for two days or three: and it

struck him that Vernon Whitford and Laetitia Dale were acting oddly in seconding her, their aim not being

discernible. For he was of the order of gentlemen of the obscurelyclear in mind who have a predetermined

acuteness in their watch upon the human play, and mark men and women as pieces of a bad game of chess,

each pursuing an interested course. His experience of a section of the world had educated himas gallant,

frank, and manly a comrade as one could wish forup to this point. But he soon abandoned speculations,

which may be compared to a shaking anemometer that will not let the troubled indicator take station.

Reposing on his perceptions and his instincts, he fixed his attention on the chief persons, only glancing at the

others to establish a postulate, that where there are parties in a house the most bewitching person present is

the origin of them. It is ever Helen's achievement. Miss Middleton appeared to him bewitching beyond

mortal; sunny in her laughter, shadowy in her smiling; a young lady shaped for perfect music with a lover.

She was that, and no less, to every man's eye on earth. High breeding did not freeze her lovely

girlishness.But Willoughby did. This reflection intervened to blot luxurious picturings of her, and made

itself acceptable by leading him back to several instances of an evident want of harmony of the pair.

And now (for purely undirected impulse all within us is not, though we may be eyebandaged agents under

direction) it became necessary for an honourable gentleman to cast vehement rebukes at the fellow who did

not comprehend the jewel he had won. How could Willoughby behave like so complete a donkey! De Craye

knew him to be in his interior stiff, strange, exacting: women had talked of him; he had been too much for

one womanthe dashing Constantia: he had worn one woman, sacrificing far more for him than Constantia,

to death. Still, with such a prize as Clara Middleton, Willoughby's behaviour was past calculating in its

contemptible absurdity. And during courtship! And courtship of that girl! It was the way of a man ten years

The idea drew him to picture her doatingly in her young matronly bloom ten years after marriage: without a

touch of age, matronly wise, womanly sweet: perhaps with a couple of little ones to love, never having

To think of a girl like Clara Middleton never having at nineandtwenty, and with two fair children! known

the love of a man or the loving of a man, possibly, became torture to the Colonel.

For a pacification he had to reconsider that she was as yet only nineteen and unmarried.

But she was engaged, and she was unloved. One might swear to it, that she was unloved. And she was not a

There was a rapid alteration of the sad history of Clara the unloved matron solaced by two little ones. A

childless Clara tragically loving and beloved flashed across the dark glass of the future.

Some astonishment moved De Craye in the contemplation of the distance he had stepped in this morass of

fancy. He distinguished the choice open to him of forward or back, and he selected forward. But fancy was

dead: the poetry hovering about her grew invisible to him: he stood in the morass; that was all he knew; and

momently he plunged deeper; and he was aware of an intense desire to see her face, that he might study her

It was the clouding of the brain by the man's heart, which had come to the knowledge that it was caught.

A certain measure of astonishment moved him still. It had hitherto been his portion to do mischief to women

and avoid the vengeance of the sex. What was there in Miss Middleton's face and air to ensnare a veteran

handsome man of society numbering sixandthirty years, nearly as many conquests? "Each bullet has got its

commission." He was hit at last. That accident effected by Mr. Flitch had fired the shot. Clean through the

heart. does not tell us of our misfortune, till the heart is asked to renew its natural beating. It fell into the

condition of the porcelain vase over a thought of Miss Middleton standing above his prostrate form on the

road, and walking beside him to the Hall. Her words? What have they been? She had not uttered words, she

had shed meanings. He did not for an instant conceive that he had charmed her: the charm she had cast on

him was too thrilling for coxcombry to lift a head; still she had enjoyed his prattle. In return for her touch

upon the Irish fountain in him, he had manifestly given her relief And could not one see that so sprightly a

girl would soon be deadened by a man like Willoughby? Deadened she was: she had not responded to a

compliment on her approaching marriage. An allusion to it killed her smiling. The case of Mr. Flitch, with the

half wager about his reinstation in the service of the Hall, was conclusive evidence of her opinion of

It became again necessary that he should abuse Willoughby for his folly. Why was the man worrying her? In

What if Willoughby as well as Miss Middleton wished to be quit of the engagement? ...

For just a second, the handsome, womanflattered officer proved his man's heart more whole than he

supposed it. That great organ, instead of leaping at the thought, suffered a check.

Bear in mind that his heart was not merely man's, it was a conqueror's. He was of the race of amorous heroes

who glory in pursuing, overtaking, subduing: wresting the prize from a rival, having her ripe from exquisitely

feminine inward conflicts, plucking her out of resistance in good old primitive fashion. You win the creature

in her delicious flutterings. He liked her thus, in cooler blood, because of society's admiration of the capturer,

and somewhat because of the strife, which always enhances the value of a prize, and refreshes our vanity in

Moreover, he had been matched against Willoughby: the circumstance had occurred two or three times. He

could name a lady he had won, a lady he had lost. Willoughby's large fortune and grandeur of style had given

him advantages at the start. But the start often means the racewith women, and a bit of luck.

The gentle check upon the galloping heart of Colonel De Craye endured no longer than a seconda simple

sideglance in a headlong pace. Clara's enchantingness for a temperament like his, which is to say, for him

specially, in part through the testimony her conquest of himself presented as to her power of sway over the

universal heart known as man's, assured him she was worth winning even from a hand that dropped her.

He had now a double reason for exclaiming at the folly of Willoughby. Willoughby's treatment of her showed

either temper or weariness. Vanity and judgement led De Craye to guess the former. Regarding her

sentiments for Willoughby, he had come to his own conclusion. The certainty of it caused him to assume that

he possessed an absolute knowledge of her character: she was an angel, born supple; she was a heavenly soul,

with half a dozen of the tricks of earth. Skittish filly was among his phrases; but she had a bearing and a gaze

that forbade the dip in the common gutter for wherewithal to paint the creature she was.

Now, then, to see whether he was wrong for the first time in his life! If not wrong, he had a chance.

There could be nothing dishonourable in rescuing a girl from an engagement she detested. An attempt to

think it a service to Willoughby faded midway. De Craye dismissed that chicanery. It would be a service to

Willoughby in the end, without question. There was that to soothe his manly honour. Meanwhile he had to

face the thought of Willoughby as an antagonist, and the world looking heavy on his honour as a friend.

Such considerations drew him tenderly close to Miss Middleton. It must, however, be confessed that the

mental ardour of Colonel De Craye had been a little sobered by his glance at the possibility of both of the

couple being of one mind on the subject of their betrothal. Desirable as it was that they should be united in

disagreeing, it reduced the romance to platitude, and the third person in the drama to the appearance of a

stick. No man likes to play that part. Memoirs of the favourites of Goddesses, if we had them, would confirm

it of men's tastes in this respect, though the divinest be the prize. We behold what part they played.

De Craye chanced to be crossing the hall from the laboratory to the stables when Clara shut the librarydoor

behind her. He said something whimsical, and did not stop, nor did he look twice at the face he had been

What he had seen made him fear there would be no ride out with her that day. Their next meeting reassured

him; she was dressed in her ridinghabit, and wore a countenance resolutely cheerful. He gave himself the

He was of a nature as quick as Clara's. Experience pushed him farther than she could go in fancy; but

experience laid a sobering finger on his practical steps, and bade them hang upon her initiative. She talked

little. Young Crossjay cantering ahead was her favourite subject. She was very much changed since the early

morning: his liveliness, essayed by him at a hazard, was unsuccessful; grave English pleased her best. The

descent from that was naturally to melancholy. She mentioned a regret she had that the Veil was interdicted

to women in Protestant countries. De Craye was fortunately silent; he could think of no other veil than the

Moslem, and when her meaning struck his witless head, he admitted to himself that devout attendance on a

young lady's mind stupefies man's intelligence. Half an hour later, he was as foolish in supposing it a

In Aspenwell village she drew a letter from her bosom and called to Crossjay to post it. The boy sang out,

She said to De Craye. "It proves he should not be here thinking of nice names. "

Her companion replied, "You may be right." He added, to avoid feeling too subservient: "Boys will."

"Not if they have stern masters to teach them their daily lessons, and some of the lessons of existence."

He understood her. She touched the delicate indication firmly. The man's, heart respected her for it; not many

girls could be so thoughtful or dare to be so direct; he saw that she had become deeply serious, and he felt her

By this light of her seriousness, the posting of her letter in a distant village, not entrusting it to the Hall

postbox, might have import; not that she would apprehend the violation of her private correspondence, but

we like to see our letter of weighty meaning pass into the mouth of the public box.

Consequently this letter was important. It was to suppose a sequency in the conduct of a variable damsel.

Coupled with her remark about the Veil, and with other things, not words, breathing from her (which were

the breath of her condition), it was not unreasonably to be supposed. She might even be a very consistent

She spoke once of an immediate visit to London, supposing that she could induce her father to go. De Craye

They raced along Aspenwell Common to the ford; shallow, to the chagrin of young Crossjay, between whom

and themselves they left a fitting space for his rapture in leading his pony to splash up and down, lord of the

Swiftness of motion so strikes the blood on the brain that our thoughts are lightnings, the heart is master of

De Craye was heated by his gallop to venture on the angling question: "Am I to hear the names of the

"Miss Lucy Darleton, for instance; whose name I am almost as much in love with as Crossjay."

"Marriage!" exclaimed Clara. dashing into the ford, fearful of her ungovernable wildness and of what it might

have kindled.You, father! you have driven me to unmaidenliness!She forgot Willoughby, in her father,

who would not quit a comfortable house for her all but prostrate beseeching; would not bend his mind to her

explanations, answered her with the horrid iteration of such deaf misunderstanding as may be associated with

Dc Craye allowed her to catch Crossjay by herself They entered a narrow lane, mysterious with possible

birds" eggs in the Maygreen hedges. As there was not room for three abreast, the colonel made up the

rearguard, and was consoled by having Miss Middleton's figure to contemplate; but the readiness of her

joining in Crossjay's pastime of the nesthunt was not so pleasing to a man that she had wound to a pitch of

excitement. Her scornful accent on "Marriage" rang through him. Apparently she was beginning to do with

She kept Crossjay beside her till she dismounted, and the colonel was left to the procession of elephantine

ideas in his head, whose ponderousness he took for natural weight. We do not with impunity abandon the

initiative. Men who have yielded it are like cavalry put on the defensive; a very small force with an ictus will

Anxiety to recover lost ground reduced the dimensions of his ideas to a practical standard.

Two ideas were opposed like duellists bent on the slaughter of one another. Either she amazed him by

confirming the suspicions he had gathered of her sentiments for Willoughby in the moments of his

introduction to her; or she amazed him as a model for coquettes the married and the widow might apply to

These combatants exchanged shots, but remained standing; the encounter was undecided. Whatever the

result, no person so seductive as Clara Middleton had he ever met. Her cry of loathing, "Marriage!" coming

from a girl, rang faintly clear of an ancient virginal aspiration of the sex to escape from their coil, and

bespoke a pure, cold, savage pride that transplanted his thirst for her to higher fields.

Sir Willoughby meanwhile was on a line of conduct suiting his appreciation of his duty to himself. He had

deluded himself with the simple notion that good fruit would come of the union of temper and policy.

No delusion is older, none apparently so promising, both parties being eager for the alliance. Yet, the theorist

upon human nature will say, they are obviously of adverse disposition. And this is true, inasmuch as neither

of them win submit to the yoke of an established union; as soon as they have done their mischief, they set to

work tugging for a divorce. But they have attractions, the one for the other, which precipitate them to

embrace whenever they meet in a breast; each is earnest with the owner of it to get him to officiate forthwith

as weddingpriest. And here is the reason: temper, to warrant its appearance, desires to be thought as

deliberative as policy, and policy, the sooner to prove its shrewdness, is impatient for the quick blood of

It will be well for men to resolve at the first approaches of the amorous but fickle pair upon interdicting even

an accidental temporary junction: for the astonishing sweetness of the couple when no more than the ghosts

of them have come together in a projecting mind is an intoxication beyond fermented grapejuice or a witch's

brewage; and under the guise of active wits they will lead us to the parental meditation of antics compared

with which a Pagan Saturnalia were less impious in the sight of sanity. This is fullmouthed language; but on

our studious way through any human career we are subject to fits of moral elevation; the theme inspires it,

Decide at the outset, that temper is fatal to policy: hold them with both hands in division. One might add, be

doubtful of your policy and repress your temper: it would be to suppose you wise. You can, however, by

incorporating two or three captains of the great army of truisms bequeathed to us by ancient wisdom, fix in

your service those veteran old standfasts to check you. They will not be serviceless in their admonitions to

your understanding, and they will so contrive to reconcile with it the natural caperings of the wayward young

sprig Conduct, that the latter, who commonly learns to walk upright and straight from nothing softer than

raps of a bludgeon on his crown, shall foot soberly, appearing at least wary of dangerous corners.

Now Willoughby had not to be taught that temper is fatal to policy; he was beginning to see in addition that

the temper he encouraged was particularly obnoxious to the policy he adopted; and although his purpose in

mounting horse after yesterday frowning on his bride was definite, and might be deemed sagacious, he

bemoaned already the fatality pushing him ever farther from her in chase of a satisfaction impossible to

But the bare fact that her behaviour demanded a line of policy crossed the grain of his temper: it was very

Considering that she wounded him severely, her reversal of their proper parts, by taking the part belonging to

him, and requiring his watchfulness, and the careful dealings he was accustomed to expect from others, and

had a right to exact of her, was injuriously unjust. The feelings of a man hereditarily sensitive to property

accused her of a trespassing imprudence, and knowing himself, by testimony of his household, his tenants,

and the neighbourhood, and the world as well, amiable when he received his dues, he contemplated her with

an air of stiffbacked illtreatment, not devoid of a certain sanctification of martyrdom.

Clara herself had never been audacious enough to say that. Distaste of his person was inconceivable to the

favourite of society. The capricious creature probably wanted a whipping to bring her to the understanding of

But was he administering it? If he retained a hold on her, he could undoubtedly apply the scourge at leisure;

any kind of scourge; he could shun her, look on her frigidly, unbend to her to find a warmer place for

sarcasm, pityingly smile, ridicule, pay court elsewhere. He could do these things if he retained a hold on her;

and he could do them well because of the faith he had in his renowned amiability; for in doing them, he could

feel that he was other than he seemed, and his own cordial nature was there to comfort him while he

bestowed punishment. Cordial indeed, the chills he endured were flung from the world. His heart was in that

fiction: half the hearts now beating have a mild form of it to keep them merry: and the chastisement he

desired to inflict was really no more than righteous vengeance for an offended goodness of heart. Clara

figuratively, absolutely perhaps, on her knees, he would raise her and forgive her. He yearned for the

situation. To let her understand how little she had known him! It would be worth the pain she had dealt, to

pour forth the stream of reestablished confidences, to paint himself to her as he was; as he was in the spirit,

In such a case, every blow he struck would set her flying farther, till the breach between them would be past

Determination not to let her go was the best finish to this perpetually revolving round which went like the

same old wheelplanks of a water mill in his head at a review of the injury he sustained. He had come to it

before. and he came to it again. There was his vengeance. It melted him, she was so sweet! She shone for him

The dreadful young woman had a keener edge for the senses of men than sovereign beauty.

She affected him like an outlook on the great Patterne estate after an absence, when his welcoming flag wept

He was bound to reflect that she was of tender age, and the foolishness of the wretch was excusable to

We toss away a flower that we are tired of smelling and do not wish to carry. But the roseyoung

womanis not cast off with impunity. A fiend in shape of man is always behind us to appropriate her. He

that touches that rejected thing is larcenous. Willoughby had been sensible of it in the person of Laetitia: and

by all the more that Clara's charms exceeded the faded creature's, he felt it now. Ten thousand Furies

thickened about him at a thought of her lying by the roadside without his having crushed all bloom and

On the other hand, supposing her to be there untouched, universally declined by the sniffling, sagacious

dogfiend, a miserable spinster for years, he could conceive notions of his remorse. A soft remorse may be

adopted as an agreeable sensation within view of the wasted penitent whom we have struck a trifle too hard.

Seeing her penitent, he certainly would be willing to surround her with little offices of compromising

kindness. It would depend on her age. Supposing her still youngish, there might be captivating passages

"And was it my fault, my poor girl? Am I to blame, that you have passed a lonely, unloved youth?"

"No, Willoughby! The irreparable error was mine, the blame is mine, mine only. I live to repent it. I do not

seek, for I have not deserved, your pardon. Had I it, I should need my own selfesteem to presume to clasp it

"Never be it mine to accuse one on whom I laid so heavy a weight of forbearance!"

"Still, my old love!for I am merely quoting history in naming you soI cannot have been perfectly

"Must I recognize the bitter truth that we two, once nearly one! so nearly one! are eternally separated?"

"I have envisaged it. My friendI may call you friend; you have ever been my friend, my best friend! oh,

that eyes had been mine to know the friend I had!Willoughby, in the darkness of night, and during days

that were as night to my soul, I have seen the inexorable finger pointing my solitary way through the

wilderness from a Paradise forfeited by my most wilful, my wanton, sin. We have met. It is more than I have

merited. We part. In mercy let it be for ever. Oh, terrible word! Coined by the passions of our youth, it comes

to us for our sole riches when we are bankrupt of earthly treasures, and is the passport given by Abnegation

unto Woe that prays to quit this probationary sphere. Willoughby, we part. It is better so."

The kiss, to continue the language of the imaginative composition of his time, favourite readings in which

Ay, she had the kiss, and no mean one. It was intended to swallow every vestige of dwindling attractiveness

out of her, and there was a bit of scandal springing of it in the background that satisfactorily settled her

business, and left her 'enshrined in memory, a divine recollection to him,' as his popular romances would say,

Unhappily, the fancied salute of her lips encircled him with the breathing Clara. She rushed up from vacancy

His reverie had thrown him into severe commotion. The slave of a passion thinks in a ring, as hares run: he

will cease where he began. Her sweetness had set him off, and he whirled back to her sweetness: and that

being incalculable and he insatiable, you have the picture of his torments when you consider that her

Riding slack, horse and man, in the likeness of those two ajog homeward from the miry hunt, the horse

pricked his cars, and Willoughby looked down from his road along the bills on the race headed by young

Crossjay with a short start over Aspenwell Common to the ford. There was no mistaking who they were,

though they were wellnigh a mile distant below. He noticed that they did not overtake the boy. They drew

rein at the ford, talking not simply face to face, but face in face. Willoughby's novel feeling of he knew not

what drew them up to him, enabling him to fancy them bathing in one another's eyes. Then she sprang

through the ford, De Craye following, but not close afterand why not close? She had flicked him with one

of her peremptorily saucy speeches when she was bold with the gallop. They were not unknown to

Last night he had proposed to De Craye to take Miss Middleton for a ride the next afternoon. It never came to

his mind then that he and his friend had formerly been rivals. He wished Clara to be amused. Policy dictated

that every thread should be used to attach her to her residence at the Hall until he could command his temper

to talk to her calmly and overwhelm her, as any man in earnest, with command of temper and a point of

vantage, may be sure to whelm a young woman. Policy, adulterated by temper, yet policy it was that had sent

him on his errand in the early morning to beat about for a house and garden suitable to Dr. Middleton within

a circuit of five, six, or seven miles of Patterne Hall. If the Rev. Doctor liked the house and took it (and

Willoughby had seen the place to suit him), the neighbourhood would be a chain upon Clara: and if the house

did not please a gentleman rather hard to please (except in a venerable wine), an excuse would have been

started for his visiting other houses, and he had that response to his importunate daughter, that he believed an

excellent house was on view. Dr. Middleton had been prepared by numerous hints to meet Clara's black

misreading of a lovers" quarrel, so that everything looked full of promise as far as Willoughby's exercise of

But the strange pang traversing him now convicted him of a large adulteration of profitless temper with it.

The loyalty of De Craye to a friend, where a woman walked in the drama, was notorious. It was there, and a

most flexible thing it was: and it soon resembled reason manipulated by the sophists. Not to have reckoned

And De Craye had an Irish tongue; and he had it under control, so that he could talk good sense and airy

nonsense at discretion. The strongest overboiling of English Puritan contempt of a gabbler, would not stop

women from liking it. Evidently Clara did like it, and Willoughby thundered on her sex. Unto such brainless

For he was no gabbler. He remembered having rattled in earlier days; he had rattled with an object to gain,

desiring to be taken for an easy, careless, vivacious, charming fellow, as any young gentleman may be who

gaily wears the golden dish of Fifty thousand pounds per annum, nailed to the back of his very saintly young

pate. The growth of the critical spirit in him, however, had informed him that slang had been a principal

component of his rattling; and as he justly supposed it a betraying art for his race and for him, he passed

through the prim and the yawning phases of affected indifference, to the pine Puritanism of a leaden

They snare women, you seegirls! How despicable the host of girls!at least, that girl below there!

Married women understood him: widows did. He placed an exceedingly handsome and flattering young

widow of his acquaintance, Lady Mary Lewison, beside Clara for a comparison, involuntarily; and at once, in

a flash, in despite of him (he would rather it had been otherwise), and in despite of Lady Mary's high birth

The effect of the luckless comparison was to produce an image of surpassingness in the features of Clara that

He had hitherto been free of it, regarding jealousy as a foreign devil, the accursed familiar of the vulgar.

Luckless fellows might be victims of the disease; he was not; and neither Captain Oxford, nor Vernon, nor

De Craye, nor any of his compeers, had given him one shrewd pinch: the woman had, not the man; and she in

quite a different fashion from his present wallowing anguish: she had never pulled him to earth's level, where

jealousy gnaws the grasses. He had boasted himself above the humiliating visitation.

If that had been the case, we should not have needed to trouble ourselves much about him. A run or two with

the pack of imps would have satisfied us. But he desired Clara Middleton manfully enough at an intimation

of rivalry to be jealous; in a minute the foreign devil had him, he was flame: flaming verdigris, one might

almost dare to say, for an exact illustration; such was actually the colour; but accept it as unsaid.

Remember the poets upon jealousy. It is to be haunted in the heaven of two by a Third; preceded or

succeeded, therefore surrounded, embraced, bugged by this infernal Third: it is Love's bed of burning marl; to

see and taste the withering Third in the bosom of sweetness; to be dragged through the past and find the fair

Eden of it sulphurous; to be dragged to the gates of the future and glory to behold them blood: to adore the

bitter creature trebly and with treble power to clutch her by the windpipe: it is to be cheated, derided, shamed,

and abject and supplicating, and consciously demoniacal in treacherousness, and victoriously selfjustified in

And still there is no change in what men feel, though in what they do the modern may be judicious.

You know the many paintings of man transformed to rageing beast by the curse: and this, the fieriest trial of

our egoism, worked in the Egoist to produce division of himself from himself, a concentration of his thoughts

upon another object, still himself, but in another breast, which had to be looked at and into for the discovery

of him. By the gaping jawchasm of his greed we may gather comprehension of his insatiate force of

jealousy. Let her go? Not though he were to become a mark of public scorn in strangling her with the yoke!

His concentration was marvellous. Unused to the exercise of imaginative powers, he nevertheless conjured

her before him visually till his eyeballs ached. He saw none but Clara, hated none, loved none, save the

intolerable woman. What logic was in him deduced her to be individual and most distinctive from the

circumstance that only she had ever wrought these pangs. She had made him ready for them, as we know. An

idea of De Craye being no stranger to her when he arrived at the Hall, dashed him at De Craye for a second: it

might be or might not be that they had a secret;Clara was the spell. So prodigiously did he love and hate,

that he had no permanent sense except for her. The soul of him writhed under her eyes at one moment, and

the next it closed on her without mercy. She was his possession escaping; his own gliding away to the Third.

There would be pangs for him too, that Third! Standing at the altar to see her fastbound, soul and body, to

It would be good roasting fire for her too, should she be averse. To conceive her aversion was to burn her and

devour her. She would then be his!what say you? Burned and devoured! Rivals would vanish then. Her

reluctance to espouse the man she was plighted to would cease to be uttered, cease to be felt.

At last he believed in her reluctance. All that had been wanted to bring him to the belief was the scene on the

common; such a mere spark, or an imagined spark! But the presence of the Third was necessary; otherwise he

Women have us back to the conditions of primitive man, or they shoot us higher than the topmost star. But it

is as we please. Let them tell us what we are to them: for us, they are our back and front of life: the poet's

Lesbia, the poet's Beatrice; ours is the choice. And were it proved that some of the bright things are in the pay

of Darkness, with the stamp of his coin on their palms, and that some are the very angels we hear sung of, not

the less might we say that they find us out; they have us by our leanings. They are to us what we hold of best

or worst within. By their state is our civilization judged: and if it is hugely animal still, that is because

primitive men abound and will have their pasture. Since the lead is ours, the leaders must bow their heads to

the sentence. Jealousy of a woman is the primitive egoism seeking to refine in a blood gone to savagery under

apprehension of an invasion of rights; it is in action the tiger threatened by a rifle when his paw is rigid on

quick flesh; he tears the flesh for rage at the intruder. The Egoist, who is our original male in giant form, had

no bleeding victim beneath his paw, but there was the sex to mangle. Much as he prefers the wellbehaved

among women, who can worship and fawn, and in whom terror can be inspired, in his wrath he would make

Let women tell us of their side of the battle. We are not so much the test of the Egoist in them as they to us.

Movements of similarity shown in crowned and undiademed ladies of intrepid independence, suggest their

occasional capacity to be like men when it is given to them to hunt. At present they fly, and there is the

Dimly as young women are informed, they have a youthful ardour of detestation that renders them less

tolerant of the Egoist than their perceptive elder sisters. What they do perceive, however, they have a

redoubtable grasp of, and Clara's behaviour would be indefensible if her detective feminine vision might not

sanction her acting on its direction. Seeing him as she did, she turned from him and shunned his house as the

antre of an ogre. She had posted her letter to Lucy Darleton. Otherwise. if it had been open to her to dismiss

Colonel De Craye, she might, with a warm kiss to Vernon's pupil, have seriously thought of the next shrill

steamwhistle across yonder hills for a travelling companion on the way to her friend Lucy; so abhorrent was

to her the putting of her horse's head toward the Hall. Oh, the breaking of bread there! It had to be gone

through for another day and more; that is to say, forty hours, it might be sixandforty hours; and no

Such were Clara's inward interjections while poor Willoughby burned himself out with verdigris flame

having the savour of bad metal, till the hollow of his breast was not unlike to a corroded old cuirass, found,

we will assume, by criminal lanternbeams in a digging beside greenmantled pools of the sullen soil,

lumped with a strange adhesive concrete. How else picture the sad man?the cavity felt empty to him, and

very sore; important for aught save sluggish agony; a specimen and the issue of strife.

Measurelessly to loathe was not sufficient to save him from pain: he tried it: nor to despise; he went to a

depth there also. The fact that she was a healthy young woman returned to the surface of his thoughts like the

murdered body pitched into the river, which will not drown, and calls upon the elements of dissolution to

float it. His grand hereditary desire to transmit his estates, wealth and name to a solid posterity, while it

prompted him in his loathing and contempt of a nature mean and ephemeral compared with his, attached him

desperately to her splendid healthiness. The council of elders, whose descendant he was, pointed to this

young woman for his mate. He had wooed her with the idea that they consented. O she was healthy! And he

likewise: but, as if it had been a duel between two clearly designated by quality of blood to bid a House

endure, she was the first who taught him what it was to have sensations of his mortality.

He could not forgive her. It seemed to him consequently politic to continue frigid and let her have a further

taste of his shadow, when it was his burning wish to strain her in his arms to a flatness provoking his

"You have had your ride?" he addressed her politely in the general assembly on the lawn.

The next instant he was in conversation with Laetitia, questioning her upon a dejected droop of her eyelashes.

He murmured to her: "I believe in the existence of specifics, and not far to seek, for all our ailments except

De Craye, whose humour for being convinced that Willoughby cared about as little for Miss Middleton as she

for him was nourished by his immediate observation of them, dilated on the beauty of the ride and his fair

"You should start a travelling circus," Willoughby rejoined. "But the idea's a worthy one!There's another

alternative to the expedition I proposed, Miss Middleton," said De Craye. "And I be clown? I haven't a

"I'd spoil my part! But a natural clown won't keep up an artificial performance for an entire month, you see;

which is the length of time we propose. He'll exhaust his nature in a day and be bowled over by the dullest

De Craye was advised in his heart to spare Miss Middleton any allusion to honeymoons.

"Ah! You are driving one of Mr. Merriman's witticisms at me, Horace; I am dense."

Willoughby bowed to Dr. Middleton, and drew him from Vernon, filially taking his turn to talk with him

It lifted him over anxieties and casuistries concerning loyalty. Powder was in the look to make a warhorse

Observers of a gathering complication and a character in action commonly resemble gleaners who are intent

only on picking up the cars of grain and huddling their store. Disinterestedly or interestedly they wax

overeager for the little trifles, and make too much of them. Observers should begin upon the precept, that

not all we see is worth hoarding, and that the things we see are to be weighed in the scale with what we know

of the situation, before we commit ourselves to a measurement. And they may be accurate observers without

being good judges. They do not think so, and their bent is to glean hurriedly and form conclusions as hasty,

Miss Dale seconded Vernon Whitford in the occupation of counting looks and tones, and noting scraps of

dialogue. She was quite disinterested; he quite believed that he was; to this degree they were competent for

their post; and neither of them imagined they could be personally involved in the dubious result of the scenes

they witnessed. They were but anxious observers, diligently collecting. She fancied Clara susceptible to his

advice: he had fancied it, and was considering it one of his vanities. Each mentally compared Clara's

abruptness in taking them into her confidence with her abstention from any secret word since the arrival of

Colonel De Craye. Sir Willoughby requested Laetitia to give Miss Middleton as much of her company as she

could; showing that he was on the alert. Another Constantia Durham seemed beating her wings for flight. The

suddenness of the evident intimacy between Clara and Colonel De Craye shocked Laetitia; their acquaintance

could be computed by hours. Yet at their first interview she had suspected the possibility of worse than she

now supposed to be; and she had begged Vernon not immediately to quit the Hall, in consequence of that

faint suspicion. She had been led to it by meeting Clara and De Craye at her cottagegate, and finding them

as fluent and laughterbreathing in conversation as friends. Unable to realize the rapid advance to a

familiarity, more ostensible than actual, of two lively natures, after such an introduction as they had

undergone: and one of the two pining in a drought of liveliness: Laetitia listened to their wager of nothing at

alla no against a yesin the case of poor Flitch; and Clara's, "Willoughby will not forgive"; and De

Craye's "Oh, he's human": and the silence of Clara and De Craye's hearty cry, "Flitch shall be a genteman's

coachman in his old seat or I haven't a tongue!" to which there was a negative of Clara's head: and it then

struck Laetitia that this young betrothed lady, whose alienated heart acknowledged no lord an hour earlier,

had met her match, and, as the observer would have said, her destiny. She judged of the alarming possibility

by the recent revelation to herself of Miss Middleton's character, and by Clara's having spoken to a man as

well (to Vernon), and previously. That a young lady should speak on the subject of the inner holies to a man,

though he were Vernon Whitford, was incredible to Laetitia; but it had to be accepted as one of the dread

facts of our inexplicable life, which drag our bodies at their wheels and leave our minds exclaiming. Then, if

Clara could speak to Vernon, which Laetitia would not have done for a mighty bribe, she could speak to De

Craye, Laetitia thought deductively: this being the logic of untrained heads opposed to the proceeding

Laetitia remembered how winning and prevailing Miss Middleton could be in her confidences. A gentleman

hearing her might forget his duty to his friend, she thought, for she had been strangely swayed by Clara: ideas

of Sir Willoughby that she had never before imagined herself to entertain had been sown in her, she thought;

not asking herself whether the searchingness of the young lady had struck them and bidden them rise from

where they lay imbedded. Very gentle women take in that manner impressions of persons, especially of the

worshipped person, wounding them; like the new fortifications with embankments of soft earth, where

explosive missiles bury themselves harmlessly until they are plucked out; and it may be a reason why those

Vernon less than Laetitia took into account that Clara was in a state of fever, scarcely reasonable. Her

confidences to him he had excused, as a piece of conduct, in sympathy with her position. He had not been

greatly astonished by the circumstances confided; and, on the whole, as she was excited and unhappy, he

excused her thoroughly; he could have extolled her: it was natural that she should come to him, brave in her

to speak so frankly, a compliment that she should condescend to treat him as a friend. Her position excused

her widely. But she was not excused for making a confidential friend of De Craye. There was a difference.

Well, the difference was, that De Craye had not the smarting sense of honour with women which our

meditator had: an impartial judiciary, it will be seen: and he discriminated between himself and the other

justly: but sensation surging to his brain at the same instant, he reproached Miss Middleton for not perceiving

that difference as clearly, before she betrayed her position to De Craye, which Vernon assumed that she had

done. Of course he did. She had been guilty of it once: why, then, in the mind of an offended friend, she

would be guilty of it twice. There was evidence. Ladies, fatally predestined to appeal to that from which they

have to be guarded, must expect severity when they run off their railed highroad: justice is out of the

question: man's brains might, his blood cannot administer it to them. By chilling him to the bone they may

I the evening, Miss Middleton and the colonel sang a duet. She had of late declined to sing. Her voice was

noticeably firm. Sir Willoughby said to her, "You have recovered your richness of tone, Clara." She smiled

and appeared happy in pleasing him. He named a French ballad. She went to the musicrack and gave the

song unasked. He should have been satisfied, for she said to him at the finish, "Is that as you like it?" He

broke from a murmur to Miss Dale, "Admirable." Some one mentioned a Tuscan popular canzone. She

He had read of this characteristic of caressing obedience of the women about to deceive. He had in his time

"Is it intuitively or by their experience that our neighbours across Channel surpass us in the knowledge of

your sex?" he said to Miss Dale, and talked through Clara's apostrophe to the 'Santissinia Virgine Maria,' still

treating temper as a part of policy, without any effect on Clara; and that was matter for sickly green

reflections. The lover who cannot wound has indeed lost anchorage; he is woefully adrift: he stabs air, which

is to stab himself. Her complacent proofarmour bids him know himself supplanted.

During the short conversational period before the ladies retired for the night, Miss Eleanor alluded to the

wedding by chance. Miss Isabel replied to her, and addressed an interrogation to Clara. De Craye foiled it

adroitly. Clara did not utter a syllable. Her bosom lifted to a wavering height and sank. Subsequently she

looked at De Craye vacantly, like a person awakened, but she looked. She was astonished by his readiness,

and thankful for the succour. Her look was cold, wide, unfixed, with nothing of gratitude or of personal in it.

Ejaculating "Porcelain!" he uncrossed his legs; a signal for the ladies Eleanor and Isabel to retire. Vernon

bowed to Clara as she was rising. He had not been once in her eyes, and he expected a partial recognition at

the goodnight. She said it, turning her head to Miss Isabel, who was condoling once more with Colonel De

Craye over the ruins of his weddingpresent, the porcelain vase, which she supposed to have been in

Willoughby's mind when he displayed the signal. Vernon walked off to his room, dark as one smitten blind:

bile tumet jecur: her stroke of neglect hit him there where a blow sends thick obscuration upon eyeballs and

Clara saw that she was paining him and regretted it when they were separated. That was her real friend! But

he prescribed too hard a task. Besides, she had done everything he demanded of her, except the consenting to

stay where she was and wear out Willoughby, whose dexterity wearied her small stock of patience. She had

vainly tried remonstrance and supplication with her father hoodwinked by his host, she refused to consider

Nevertheless, she was drawn to the edge of it by the contemplation of her scheme of release. If Lucy Darleton

was at home; if Lucy invited her to come: if she flew to Lucy: oh! then her father would have cause for anger.

What was there in this wine of great age which expelled reasonableness, fatherliness? He was her dear father:

she was his beloved child: yet something divided them; something closed her father's ears to her: and could it

be that incomprehensible seduction of the wine? Her dutifulness cried violently no. She bowed, stupefied, to

his arguments for remaining awhile, and rose clearheaded and rebellious with the reminiscence of the many

The strangeness of men, young and old, the little things (she regarded a grand wine as a little thing) twisting

and changing them, amazed her. And these are they by whom women are abused for variability! Only the

most imperious reasons, never mean trifles, move women, thought she. Would women do an injury to one

And women must respect men. They necessarily respect a father. "My dear, dear father!" Clara said in the

solitude of her chamber, musing on all his goodness, and she endeavoured to reconcile the desperate

sentiments of the position he forced her to sustain, with those of a venerating daughter. The blow which was

to fall on him beat on her heavily in advance. "I have not one excuse!" she said, glancing at numbers and a

mighty one. But the idea of her father suffering at her hands cast her down lower than selfjustification. She

The sanctuary of her chamber, the pure white room so homely to her maidenly feelings, whispered peace,

only to follow the whisper with another that went through her swelling to a roar, and leaving her as a suing of

music unkindly smitten. If she stayed in this house her chamber would no longer be a sanctuary. Dolorous

bondage! Insolent death is not worse. Death's worm we cannot keep away, but when he has us we are numb

Youth weighed her eyelids to sleep, though she was quivering, and quivering she awoke to the sound of her

name beneath her window. "I can love still, for I love him," she said, as she luxuriated in young Crossjay's

boy's voice, again envying him his bath in the lake waters, which seemed to her to have the power to wash

away grief and chains. Then it was that she resolved to let Crossjay see the last of her in this place. He should

be made gleeful by doing her a piece of service; he should escort her on her walk to the railway station next

morning, thence be sent flying for a long day's truancy, with a little note of apology on his behalf that she

Crossjay came running to her after his breakfast with Mrs Montague, the housekeeper, to tell her he had

"You won't tomorrow: I shall be up far ahead of you," said she; and musing on her father, while Crossjay

vowed to be up the first, she thought it her duty to plunge into another expostulation.

Willoughby had need of Vernon on private affairs. Dr. Middleton betook himself as usual to the library, after

answering "I will ruin you yet," to Willoughby's liberal offer to despatch an order to London for any books he

His fine unruffled air, as of a mountain in still morning beams, made Clara not indisposed to a preliminary

scene with Willoughby that might save her from distressing him, but she could not stop Willoughby; as little

could she look an invitation. He stood in the Hall, holding Vernon by the arm. She passed him; he did not

"What now, my dear? what is it?" said Dr. Middleton, seeing that the door was shut on them.

"You've not locked the door, my child? You turned something there: try the handle."

"Mr. Whitford will be here instantly. We are engaged on tough matter. Women have not, and opinion is

"No, no, not you, Clara. But I suspect you to require to learn by having work in progress how important is ...

is a quiet commencement of the day's task. There is not a scholar who will not tell you so. We must have a

retreat. These invasions!So you intend to have another ride today? They do you good. Tomorrow we

dine with Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, an estimable person indeed, though I do not perfectly understand our

accepting.You have not to accuse me of sitting over wine last night, my Clara! I never do it, unless I am

In the midst of the storm aroused by this renewal of perplexity, Dr Middleton replaced a book his elbow had

knocked over in his haste to dash the hair off his forehead, crying: "Whither? To what spot? That reading of

guidebooks, and idle people's notes of Travel, and picturesque correspondence in the newspapers, unsettles

man and maid. My objection to the living in hotels is known. I do not hesitate to say that I do cordially abhor

it. I have had penitentially to submit to it in your dear mother's time, [Greek], up to the full ten thousand

times. But will you not comprehend that to the older man his miseries are multiplied by his years? But is it

"His table is detestable. I say nothing of that; but his wine is poison. Let that passI should rather say, let it

not pass! but our political views are not in accord. True, we are not under the obligation to propound them

in presence, but we are destitute of an opinion in common. We have no discourse. Military men have

produced, or diverged in, noteworthy epicures; they are often devout; they have blossomed in lettered men:

they are gentlemen; the country rightly holds them in honour; but, in fine, I reject the proposal to go to

"I do hope not. Here we have everything man can desire; without contest, an excellent host. You have your

transitory teacup tempests, which you magnify to hurricanes, in the approved historic manner of the book of

Cupid. And all the better; I repeat, it is the better that you should have them over in the infancy of the

alliance. Come in!" Dr. Middleton shouted cheerily in response to a knock at the door.

He feared the door was locked: he had a fear that his daughter intended to keep it locked.

She reluctantly turned the handle, and the ladies Eleanor and Isabel came in, apologizing with as much

coherence as Dr. Middleton ever expected from their sex. They wished to speak to Clara, but they declined to

take her away. In vain the Rev. Doctor assured them she was at their service; they protested that they had

very few words to say, and would not intrude one moment further than to speak them.

Like a shy deputation of young scholars before the master, these very words to come were preceded by none

at all; a dismal and trying cause; refreshing however to Dr. Middleton, who joyfully anticipated that the ladies

"We may appear to you a little formal," Miss Isabel began, and turned to her sister.

"We have no intention to lay undue weight on our mission, if mission it can be called," said Miss Eleanor.

"Dear child, that you may know it all the more earnest with us, and our personal desire to contribute to your

Hereupon the sisters alternated in addressing Clara, and she gazed from one to the other, piecing fragments of

"And in saying your happiness, dear Clara, we have our Willoughby's in view, which is dependent on

"And we never could sanction that our own inclinations should stand in the way."

"No. We love the old place; and if it were only our punishment for loving it too idolatrously, we should

"Young wives naturally prefer to be undisputed queens of their own establishment."

"You have, dear child, a lover who in his solicitude for your happiness both sees what you desire and what

"We have not to learn that we are a couple of old maids, incongruous associates for a young wife in the

"With our antiquated notions, questions of domestic management might arise, and with the best will in the

"And you think me such an Egoist!dear ladies! The suggestion of so cruel a piece of selfishness wounds

me. I would not have had you leave the Hall. I like your society; I respect you. My complaint, if I had one,

would be, that you do not sufficiently assert yourselves. I could have wished you to be here for an example to

me. I would not have allowed you to go. What can he think of me! Did Willoughby speak of it this morning?"

It was hard to distinguish which was the completer dupe of these two echoes of one another in worship of a

"Willoughby," Miss Eleanor presented herself to be stamped with the title hanging ready for the first that

should open her lips, "our Willoughby is observanthe is ever generousand he is not less forethoughtful.

"You will not have to leave, dear ladies. Were I mistress here I should oppose it."

"Did he speak of it first this morning?" said Clara; but she could draw no reply to that from them. They

resumed the duet, and she resigned herself to have her cars boxed with nonsense.

Clara could have wrung her hands at the impediment which prohibited her delicacy from telling them why

she could not name them so as she had done in the earlier days of Willoughby's courtship. She kissed them

They retired with a flow of excuses to Dr. Middleton for disturbing him. He stood at the door to bow them

out, and holding the door for Clara, to wind up the procession, discovered her at a far corner of the room.

He was debating upon the advisability of leaving her there, when Vernon Whitford crossed the hall from the

That was not important, so long as Vernon was a check on Clara; but the moment Clara, thus baffled, moved

to quit the library, Dr. Middleton felt the horror of having an uncomfortable face opposite.

"No botheration, I hope? It's the worst thing possible to work on. Where have you been? I suspect your weak

point is not to arm yourself in triple brass against bother and worry, and no good work can you do unless you

"Now you are at the section of Italian literature, my love," said Dr Middleton. "Well, Mr. Whitford, the

laboratoryah!where the amount of labour done within the space of a year would not stretch an electric

current between this Hall and the railway station: say, four miles, which I presume the distance to be. Well,

sir, and a dilettantism costly in time and machinery is as ornamental as foxes' tails and deers' horns to an

independent gentleman whose fellows are contented with the latter decorations for their civic wreath.

Willoughby, let me remark, has recently shown himself most considerate for my girl. As far as I could

gatherI have been listening to a dialogue of ladieshe is as generous as he is discreet. There are certain

combats in which to be the one to succumb is to claim the honours;and that is what women will not learn. I

"I have heard of it; I have been with Willoughby," Vernon said, hastily, to shield Clara from her father's

allusive attacks. He wished to convey to her that his interview with Willoughby had not been profitable in her

interests, and that she had better at once, having him present to support her, pour out her whole heart to her

father. But how was it to be conveyed? She would not meet his eyes, and he was too poor an intriguer to be

ready on the instant to deal out the verbal obscurities which are transparencies to one.

"I shall regret it, if Willoughby has annoyed you, for he stands high in my favour," said Dr. Middleton.

Clara dropped a book. Her father started higher than the nervous impulse warranted in his chair. Vernon tried

to win a glance, and she was conscious of his effort, but her angry and guilty feelings, prompting her

"I don't say he annoys me, sir. I am here to give him my advice, and if he does not accept it I have no right to

be annoyed. Willoughby seems annoyed that Colonel De Craye should talk of going tomorrow or next day."

"He likes his friends about him. Upon my word, a man of a more genial heart you might march a day without

Vernon felt along his own, and coined an excuse for their blackness; not aware that the direction of his mind

toward Clara pushed him to a kind of clumsy double meaning, while he satisfied an inward and craving

wrath, as he said: "By the way, I have been racking my head; I must apply to you, sir. I have a line, and I am

After a decent interval for the genius of criticism to seem to have been sitting under his frown, Dr. Middleton

rejoined with sober jocularity: "No, sir, it will not pass; and your uncertainty in regard to the run of the line

would only be extended were the line centipedal. Our recommendation is, that you erase it before the arrival

signifying that he preeminently flourishes hypothetical promises, to pay by appointment. That might pass.

"Or this . . ." Dr. Middleton was offering a second suggestion, but Clara fled, astonished at men as she never

yet had been. Why, in a burning world they would be exercising their minds in absurdities! And those two

were scholars, learned men! And both knew they were in the presence of a soul in a tragic fever!

A minute after she had closed the door they were deep in their work. Dr. Middleton forgot his alternative line.

"Nothing serious?" he said in reproof of the want of honourable clearness on Vernon's brows.

"I take Hermann's praise of the versus dochmiachus to be not only serious but unexaggerated," said Vernon.

Dr. Middleton assented and entered on the voiceful ground of Greek metres, shoving your dry dusty world

The morning of Lucy Darleton's letter of reply to her friend Clara was fair before sunrise, with luminous

colours that are an omen to the husbandman. Clara had no weathereye for the rich Eastern crimson, nor a

quiet space within her for the beauty. She looked on it as her gate of promise, and it set her throbbing with a

revived belief in radiant things which she had once dreamed of to surround her life, but her accelerated pulses

narrowed her thoughts upon the machinery of her project. She herself was metal, pointing all to her one aim

when in motion. Nothing came amiss to it, everything was fuel; fibs, evasions, the serene battalions of white

lies parallel on the march with dainty rogue falsehoods. She had delivered herself of many yesterday in her

engagements for today. Pressure was put on her to engage herself, and she did so liberally, throwing the

burden of deceitfulness on the extraordinary pressure. "I want the early part of the morning; the rest of the

day I shall be at liberty." She said it to Willoughby, Miss Dale, Colonel De Craye, and only the third time

was she aware of the delicious double meaning. Hence she associated it with the colonel.

Your loudest outcry against the wretch who breaks your rules is in asking how a tolerably conscientious

person could have done this and the other besides the main offence, which you vow you could overlook but

for the minor objections pertaining to conscience, the incomprehensible and abominable lies, for example, or

the brazen coolness of the lying. Yet you know that we live in an undisciplined world, where in our seasons

of activity we are servants of our design, and that this comes of our passions, and those of our position. Our

design shapes us for the work in hand, the passions man the ship, the position is their apology: and now

should conscience be a passenger on board, a merely seeming swiftness of our vessel will keep him dumb as

the unwilling guest of a pirate captain scudding from the cruiser half in cloven brine through rocks and shoals

That is easy to say: sometimes the tangle descends on us like a net of blight on a rosebush. There is then an

instant choice for us between courage to cut loose, and desperation if we do not. But not many men are

trained to courage; young women are trained to cowardice. For them to front an evil with plain speech is to be

guilty of effrontery and forfeit the waxen polish of purity, and therewith their commanding place in the

market. They are trained to please man's taste, for which purpose they soon learn to live out of themselves,

and look on themselves as he looks, almost as little disturbed as he by the undiscovered. Without courage,

conscience is a sorry guest; and if all goes well with the pirate captain, conscience will be made to walk the

Clara's fibs and evasions disturbed her not in the least that morning. She had chosen desperation, and she

thought herself very brave because she was just brave enough to fly from her abhorrence. She was

lighthearted, or, more truly, drunkenhearted. Her quick nature realized the out of prison as vividly and

suddenly as it had sunk suddenly and leadenly under the sense of imprisonment. Vernon crossed her mind:

that was a friend! Yes, and there was a guide; but he would disapprove, and even he, thwarting her way to

What would he think? They might never meet, for her to know. Or one day in the Alps they might meet, a

middleaged couple, he famous, she regretful only to have fallen below his lofty standard. "For, Mr.

Whitford," says she, very earnestly, "I did wish at that time, believe me or not, to merit your approbation."

The brows of the phantom Vernon whom she conjured up were stern, as she had seen them yesterday in the

She gave herself a chiding for thinking of him when her mind should be intent on that which he was opposed

It was a livelier relaxation to think of young Crossjay's shamefaced confession presently, that he had been a

laggard in bed while she swept the dews. She laughed at him, and immediately Crossjay popped out on her

from behind a tree, causing her to clap hand to heart and stand fast. A conspirator is not of the stuff to bear

surprises. He feared he had hurt her, and was manly in his efforts to soothe: he had been up "hours", he said,

and had watched her coming along the avenue, and did not mean to startle her: it was the kind of fun he

played with fellows, and if he had hurt her, she might do anything to him she liked, and she would see if he

could not stand to be punished. He was urgent with her to inflict corporal punishment on him.

"I shall leave it to the boatswain to do that when you're in the navy," said Clara.

"The boatswain daren't strike an officer! so now you see what you know of the navy," said Crossjay.

"But you could not have been out before me, you naughty boy, for I found all the locks and bolts when I went

"But you didn't go to the back door, and Sir Willoughby's private door: you came out by the hall door; and I

"Nothing of the sort. But, dear boy, I don't love you less for not kissing you. All that is nonsense: you have to

think only of learning, and to be truthful. Never tell a story: suffer anything rather than be dishonest." She

was particularly impressive upon the silliness and wickedness of falsehood, and added: "Do you hear?"

"I am sure, Crossjayno, I will not say I am sure: but can you say you are sure you were out first this

morning? Well, will you say you are sure that when you left the house you did not see me in the avenue? You

"Always be truthful, my dear boy, and then you may feel that Clara Middleton will always love you."

She considered, and said: "You have warned me, Crossjay, and I shall not marry. I shall wait," she was going

to say, "for you," but turned the hesitation to a period. "Is the village where I posted my letter the day before

"I thought Clara came next to Nelson," said she; "and a long way off too, if you're not going to be a

"I'm not going to be a landlubber. Miss Middleton, you may be absolutely positive on your solemn word."

Clara hoped that on this morning of a doubtful though imperative venture she had done some good.

They walked fast to cover the distance to the village postoffice, and back before the breakfast hour: and they

had plenty of time, arriving too early for the opening of the door, so that Crossjay began to dance with an

appetite, and was despatched to besiege a bakery. Clara felt lonely without him: apprehensively timid in the

shuttered, unmoving village street. She was glad of his return. When at last her letter was handed to her, on

the testimony of the postman that she was the lawful applicant, Crossjay and she put out on a sharp trot to be

back at the Hall in good time. She took a swallowing glance of the first page of Lucy's writing:

"Telegraph, and I will meet you. I will supply you with everything you can want for the two nights, if you

That was the gist of the letter. A second. less voracious, glance at it along the road brought sweetness:Lucy

"Do I love you as I did? my best friend, you must fall into unhappiness to have the answer to that."

"Yes, dear Crossjay, and if you like you shall have another walk with me after breakfast. But, remember, you

must not say where you have gone with me. I shall give you twenty shillings to go and buy those bird's eggs

and the butterflies you want for your collection; and mind, promise me, today is your last day of truancy.

Tell Mr. Whitford how ungrateful you know you have been, that he may have some hope of you. You know

"You save a mile; you drop on the road by Combline's mill, and then there's another fiveminutes" cut, and

"Then, Crossjay, immediately after breakfast run round behind the pheasantry, and there I'll find you. And if

any one comes to you before I come, say you are admiring the plumage of the Himalaya the beautiful

Indian bird; and if we're found together, we run a race, and of course you can catch me, but you mustn't until

we're out of sight. Tell Mr. Vernon at nighttell Mr. Whitford at night you had the money from me as part

of my allowance to you for pocketmoney. I used to like to have pocketmoney, Crossjay. And you may tell

him I gave you the holiday, and I may write to him for his excuse, if he is not too harsh to grant it. He can be

"You look right into his eyes next time, Miss Middleton. I used to think him awful till he made me look at

him. He says men ought to look straight at one another, just as we do when he gives me my boxinglesson,

and then we won't have quarrelling half so much. I can't recollect everything he says."

"No, but, Miss Middleton, you do. And he's fond of your singing and playing on the piano, and watches you."

"We shall be late if we don't mind," said Clara, starting to a pace close on a run.

"They were in time for a circuit in the park to the wild double cherryblossom, no longer all white. Clara

gazed up from under it, where she had imagined a fairer visible heavenliness than any other sight of earth had

ever given her. That was when Vernon lay beneath. But she had certainly looked above, not at him. The tree

"I forget the words: but he said they wouldn't be taught by him, like me, ever since you came; and since you

The boy raised a shout and scampered away to Sir Willoughby, at the appearance of whom Clara felt herself

nipped and curling inward. Crossjay ran up to him with every sign of pleasure. Yet he had not mentioned him

during the walk; and Clara took it for a sign that the boy understood the entire satisfaction Willoughby had in

mere shows of affection, and acted up to it. Hardly blaming Crossjay, she was a critic of the scene, for the

reason that youthful creatures who have ceased to love a person, hunger for evidence against him to confirm

their hard animus, which will seem to them sometimes, when he is not immediately irritating them, brutish,

because they can not analyze it and reduce it to the multitude of just antagonisms whereof it came. It has

passed by large accumulation into a sombre and speechless load upon the senses, and fresh evidence, the

smallest item, is a champion to speak for it. Being about to do wrong, she grasped at this eagerly, and

brooded on the little of vital and truthful that there was in the man and how he corrupted the boy.

Nevertheless, she instinctively imitated Crossjay in an almost sparkling salute to him.

"Goodmorning, Willoughby; it was not a morning to lose: have you been out long?"

He retained her hand. "My dear Clara! and you, have you not overfatigued yourself? Where have you been?"

"The household . . ." said Clara, but would not insist to convict him of what he could not have perceived.

"If you outstrip me another morning, Clara, promise me to take the dogs; will you?"

"From the first to the last hour of it!So you fall in with Horace's humour pleasantly?"

She noticed the bitterness of Willoughby's tone. He sang out a goodmorning to De Craye, and remarked that

"Darleton? Darleton, Miss Middleton?" said the colonel, rising from his bow to her: "a daughter of General

Darleton? If so, I have had the honour to dance with her. And have not you? practised with her, I mean; or

gone off in a triumph to dance it out as young ladies do? So you know what a delightful partner she is."

"She is!" cried Clara, enthusiastic for her succouring friend, whose letter was the treasure in her bosom.

"Oddly, the name did not strike me yesterday, Miss Middleton. In the middle of the night it rang a little silver

bell in my ear, and I remembered the lady I was half in love with, if only for her dancing. She is dark, of your

height, as light on her feet; a sister in another colour. Now that I know her to be your friend ... !"

"It'll be to offer her a castaway. And one only meets a charming girl to hear that she's engaged! "'Tis not a

"Lucy Darleton . . . You were leading me to talk seriously to you, Colonel De Craye."

"Will you one day?and not think me a perpetual tumbler! You have heard of melancholy clowns. You will

find the face not so laughable behind my paint. When I was thirteen years younger I was loved, and my

dearest sank to the grave. Since then I have not been quite at home in life; probably because of finding no one

so charitable as she. "'Tis easy to win smiles and hands, but not so easy to win a woman whose faith you

would trust as your own heart before the enemy. I was poor then. She said. 'The day after my twentyfirst

birthday'; and that day I went for her, and I wondered they did not refuse me at the door. I was shown

upstairs, and I saw her, and saw death. She wished to marry me, to leave me her fortune!"

He had discarded his foolishness of the previous days, and the thought in him could have replied: "I am a dolt

Vernon appeared, formal as usual of late. Clara begged his excuse for withdrawing Crossjay from his

"There's a card in the smokingroom; eleven, one, and four are the hours, if you must go," said Willoughby.

She did not request him to stay: his announcement produced no effect on her. Consequently, thought

hewell, what? nothing: well, then, that she might not be minded to stay herself. Otherwise she would have

regretted the loss of an amusing companion: that is the modest way of putting it. There is a modest and a vain

for the same sentiment; and both may be simultaneously in the same breast; and each one as honest as the

other; so shy is man's vanity in the presence of here and there a lady. She liked him: she did not care a pin for

himhow could she? yet she liked him: O, to be able to do her some kindling bit of service! These were his

consecutive fancies, resolving naturally to the exclamation, and built on the conviction that she did not love

Willoughby, and waited for a spirited lift from circumstances. His call for a book of the trains had been a

sheer piece of impromptu, in the mind as well as on the mouth. It sprang, unknown to him, of conjectures he

had indulged yesterday and the day before. This morning she would have an answer to her letter to her friend,

Miss Lucy Darleton, the pretty dark girl, whom De Craye was astonished not to have noticed more when he

danced with her. She, pretty as she was, had come to his recollection through the name and rank of her father,

a famous general of cavalry, and tactician in that arm. The colonel despised himself for not having been

The morning's letters were on the bronze plate in the hall. Clara passed on her way to her room without

inspecting them. De Craye opened an envelope and went upstairs to scribble a line. Sir Willoughby observed

their absence at the solemn reading to the domestic servants in advance of breakfast. Three chairs were

unoccupied. Vernon had his own notions of a mechanical service and a precious profit he derived from

them! but the other two seats returned the stare Willoughby cast at their backs with an impudence that

reminded him of his friend Horace's calling for a book of the trains, when a minute afterward he admitted he

was going to stay at the Hall another two days, or three. The man possessed by jealousy is never in need of

matter for it: he magnifies; grass is jungle, hillocks are mountains. Willoughby's legs crossing and uncrossing

audibly, and his tightfolded arms and clearing of the throat, were faint indications of his condition.

"Are you in fair health this morning, Willoughby?" Dr. Middleton said to him after he had closed his

"Willoughby unwell!" and, "He is health incarnate!" exclaimed the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.

Laetitia grieved for him. Sunrays on a peststricken city, she thought, were like the smile of his face. She

He went into the ball to look into the well for the pair of malefactors; on fire with what he could not reveal to

De Craye was in the housekeeper's room, talking to young Crossjay, and Mrs. Montague just come up to

breakfast. He had heard the boy chattering, and as the door was ajar he peeped in, and was invited to enter.

Mrs. Montague was very fond of hearing him talk: he paid her the familiar respect which a lady of fallen

fortunes, at a certain period after the fall, enjoys as a befittingly sad souvenir, and the respectfulness of the

She bewailed the boy's trying his constitution with long walks before he had anything in him to walk on.

"Ah, you know the ground, colonel," said Crossjay. "I am hungry! I shall eat three eggs and some bacon, and

"It's not braggadocio," remarked Mrs. Montague. "He waits empty from five in the morning till nine, and then

"Oh! Mrs. Montague, that is what the country people call roemancing. For, Colonel De Craye, I had a bun at

"And where did you leave Miss Middleton when you went to buy the bun? You should never leave a lady;

and the street of a country town is lonely at that early hour. Crossjay, you surprise me."

"She forced me to go, colonel. Indeed she did. What do I care for a bun! And she was quite safe. We could

hear the people stirring in the postoffice, and I met our postman going for his letterbag. I didn't want to go:

bother the bun!but you can't disobey Miss Middleton. I never want to, and wouldn't."

"There we're of the same mind," said the colonel, and Crossjay shouted, for the lady whom they exalted was

"You will be too tired for a ride this morning," De Craye said to her, descending the stairs.

Sir Willoughby met her at the foot of the stairs, but refrained from giving her a hand that shook.

De Craye took out his watch. "You are five and a half minutes too slow by that clock, Willoughby."

"The man omitted to come from Rendon to set it last week, Horace. He will find the hour too late here for

One of the ladies compared the time of her watch with De Craye's, and Clara looked at hers and gratefully

She left the breakfastroom at a quarter to ten, after kissing her father. Willoughby was behind her. He had

been soothed by thinking of his personal advantages over De Craye, and he felt assured that if he could be

solitary with his eccentric bride and fold her in himself, he would, cutting temper adrift, be the man he had

been to her not so many days back. Considering how few days back, his temper was roused, but he controlled

"A present worth examining," Willoughby said to her: "and I do not dwell on the costliness. Come presently,

then. I am at your disposal all day. I will drive you in the afternoon to call on Lady Busshe to offer your

"Not in fragments? Let me have a look at it. I'm haunted by an idea that porcelain always goes to pieces. I'll

He put his arm under Willoughby's. The resistance to him was momentary: Willoughby had the satisfaction

of the thought that De Craye being with him was not with Clara; and seeing her giving orders to her maid

De Craye detained him in the laboratory, first over the China cups and saucers, and then with the latest of

Londontales of youngest Cupid upon subterranean adventures, having high titles to light him. Willoughby

liked the tale thus illuminated, for without the title there was no special savour in such affairs, and it pulled

down his betters in rank. He was of a morality to reprobate the erring dame while he enjoyed the incidents.

He could not help interrupting De Craye to point at Vernon through the window, striding this way and that,

evidently on the hunt for young Crossjay. "No one here knows how to manage the boy except myself But go

on, Horace," he said, checking his contemptuous laugh; and Vernon did look ridiculous, out there

halfdrenched already in a white rain, again shuffled off by the little rascal. It seemed that he was determined

"A man looks a fool cutting after a cricketball; but, putting on steam in a storm of rain to catch a young

villain out of sight, beats anything I've witnessed," Willoughby resumed, in his amusement.

"Aiha!" said De Craye, waving a hand to accompany the melodious accent, "there are things to beat that for

He had smoked in the laboratory, so Willoughby directed a servant to transfer the porcelain service to one of

"You're a bold man," De Craye remarked. "The luck may be with you, though. I wouldn't handle the fragile

Clara was now sought for. The lord of the house desired her presence impatiently, and had to wait. She was in

none of the lower rooms. Barclay, her maid, upon interrogation, declared she was in none of the upper.

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel and Miss Dale were consulted. They had nothing to say about Clara's

movements, more than that they could not understand her exceeding restlessness. The idea of her being out of

doors grew serious; heaven was black, hard thunder rolled, and lightning flushed the battering rain. Men

bearing umbrellas, shawls, and cloaks were dispatched on a circuit of the park. De Craye said: "I'll be one."

He stepped to the umbrellastand. There was then a general question whether Clara had taken her umbrella.

Barclay said she had. The fact indicated a wider stroll than round inside the park: Crossjay was likewise

"Where's Pollington?" he called, and sent word for his man Pollington to bring big fishingboots and

Should he go forth alone on his chance of discovering Clara and forgiving her under his umbrella and cloak?

or should he prevent De Craye from going forth alone on the chance he vaunted so impudently?

"But that's an addition of one that cancels the other by conjunction, and's worse than simple division: for I

"Upon my word, you talk at times most unintelligible stuff, to be frank with you, Horace. Give it in English."

"'Tis not suited, perhaps, to the genius of the language, for I thought I talked English."

"And a deal foolisher when they do go at it; for it won't bear squeezing, we think, like Irish."

No one reflected on the absurdity that Clara should think of taking Crossjay for a swim in the lake, and

immediately after his breakfast: it was accepted as a suggestion at least that she and Crossjay had gone to the

In the hopefulness of the idea, Willoughby suffered De Craye to go on his chance unaccompanied. He was

near chuckling. He projected a plan for dismissing Crossjay and remaining in the boathouse with Clara,

luxuriating in the prestige which would attach to him for seeking and finding her. Deadly sentiments

intervened. Still he might expect to be alone with her where she could not slip from him.

The throwing open of the halldoors for the gentlemen presented a framed picture of a deluge. All the

youngleaved trees were steely black, without a gradation of green, drooping and pouring, and the song of

The ladies beholding it exclaimed against Clara, even apostrophized her, so dark are trivial errors when

circumstances frown. She must be mad to tempt such weather: she was very giddy; she was never at rest.

"Which way do you take?" said Willoughby, rather fearful that his companion was not to be got rid of now.

"Any way," said De Craye. "I chuck up my head like a halfpenny, and go by the toss."

This enraging nonsense drove off Willoughby. De Craye saw him cast a furtive eye at his heels to make sure

he was not followed, and thought, "Jove! he may be fond of her. But he's not on the track. She's a determined

girl, if I'm correct. She's a girl of a hundred thousand. Girls like that make the right sort of wives for the right

men. They're the girls to make men think of marrying. Tomorrow! only give me a chance. They stick to you

Then a thought of her flowerlike drapery and face caused him fervently to hope she had escaped the storm.

Calling at the West parklodge he heard that Miss Middleton had been seen passing through the gate with

Master Crossjay; but she had not been seen coming back. Mr. Vernon Whitford had passed through half an

The lodgekeeper's wife and daughter knew of Master Crossjay's pranks; Mr. Whitford, they said, had made

inquiries about him and must have caught him and sent him home to change his dripping things; for Master

Crossjay had come back, and had declined shelter in the lodge; he seemed to be crying; he went away

soaking over the wet grass, hanging his head. The opinion at the lodge was that Master Crossjay was

"He very properly received a wigging from Mr. Whitford, I have no doubt," said Colonel Do Craye.

Mother and daughter supposed it to be the case, and considered Crossjay very wilful for not going straight

Do Craye drew out his watch. The time was ten minutes past eleven. If the surmise he had distantly spied was

correct, Miss Middleton would have been caught in the storm midway to her destination. By his guess at her

character (knowledge of it, he would have said), he judged that no storm would daunt her on a predetermined

expedition. He deduced in consequence that she was at the present moment flying to her friend, the charming

Still, as there was a possibility of the rain having been too much for her, and as he had no other speculation

concerning the route she had taken, he decided upon keeping along the road to Rendon, with a keen eye at

The lodgekeeper had a son, who was a chum of Master Crossjay's, and errantfellow with him upon many

adventures; for this boy's passion was to become a gamekeeper, and accompanied by one of the

headgamekeeper's youngsters, he and Crossjay were in the habit of rangeing over the country, preparing for

a profession delightful to the tastes of all three. Crossjay's prospective connection with the mysterious ocean

bestowed the title of captain on him by common consent; he led them, and when missing for lessons he was

generally in the society of Jacob Croom or Jonathan Fernaway. Vernon made sure of Crossjay when he

perceived Jacob Croom sitting on a stool in the little lodgeparlour. Jacob's appearance of a diligent perusal

of a book he had presented to the lad, he took for a decent piece of trickery. It was with amazement that he

heard from the mother and daughter, as well as Jacob, of Miss Middleton's going through the gate before ten

o'clock with Crossjay beside her, the latter too hurried to spare a nod to Jacob. That she, of all on earth,

should be encouraging Crossjay to truancy was incredible. Vernon had to fall back upon Greek and Latin

Rain was universal; a thick robe of it swept from hill to hill; thunder rumbled remote, and between the ruffled

roars the downpour pressed on the land with a great noise of eager gobbling, much like that of the swine's

trough fresh filled, as though a vast assembly of the hungered had seated themselves clamorously and fallen

to on meats and drinks in a silence, save of the chaps. A rapid walker poetically and humourously minded

gathers multitudes of images on his way. And rain, the heaviest you can meet, is a lively companion when the

resolute pacer scorns discomfort of wet clothes and squealing boots. Southwestern rainclouds, too, are

never long sullen: they enfold and will have the earth in a good strong glut of the kissing overflow; then, as a

hawk with feathers on his beak of the bird in his claw lifts head, they rise and take veiled feature in long

climbing watery lines: at any moment they may break the veil and show soft upper cloud, show sun on it,

show sky, green near the verge they spring from, of the green of grass in early dew; or, along a travelling

sweep that rolls asunder overhead, heaven's laughter of purest blue among titanic white shoulders: it may

mean fair smiling for awhile, or be the lightest interlude; but the watery lines, and the drifting, the chasing,

the upsoaring, all in a shadowy fingering of form, and the animation of the leaves of the trees pointing them

on, the bending of the treetops, the snapping of branches, and the hurrahings of the stubborn hedge at

wrestle with the flaws, yielding but a leaf at most, and that on a fling, make a glory of contest and wildness

without aid of colour to inflame the man who is at home in them from old association on road, heath, and

mountain. Let him be drenched, his heart will sing. And thou, trim cockney, that jeerest, consider thyself, to

whom it may occur to be out in such a scene, and with what steps of a nervous dancingmaster it would be

thine to play the hunted rat of the elements, for the preservation of the one imagined dryspot about thee,

somewhere on thy luckless person! The taking of rain and sun alike befits men of our climate, and he who

would have the secret of a strengthening intoxication must court the clouds of the Southwest with a lover's

Vernon's happy recklessness was dashed by fears for Miss Middleton. Apart from those fears, he had the

pleasure of a gull wheeling among foamstreaks of the wave. He supposed the Swiss and Tyrol Alps to have

hidden their heads from him for many a day to come, and the springing and chiming Southwest was the next

best thing. A milder rain descended; the country expanded darkly defined underneath the moving curtain; the

clouds were as he liked to see them, scaling; but their skirts dragged. Torrents were in store, for they coursed

streamingly still and had not the higher lift, or eagle ascent, which he knew for one of the signs of fairness,

On a step of the stile leading to the shortcut to Rendon young Crossjay was espied. A mantramp sat on the

"There you are; what are you doing there? Where's Miss Middleton?" said Vernon. "Now, take care before

"You give me that sum, young gentleman, to stop here and take care of you, and here I stopped."

"Mr. Whitford!" Crossjay appealed to his master, and broke of in disgust. "Take care of me! As if anybody

who knows me would think I wanted taking care of! Why, what a beast you must be. you fellow!"

"Just as you like, young gentleman. I chaunted you all I know, to keep up your downcast spirits. You did

"And why did I swear. young gentleman? because I've got an itchy coat in the wet, and no shirt for a lining.

And no breakfast to give me a stomach for this kind of weather. That's what I've come to in this world! I'm a

"But why are you sitting here wet through, Crossjay! Be off home at once, and change, and get ready for me."

"Mr. Whitford, I promised, and I tossed this fellow a shilling not to go bothering Miss Middleton."

"The lady wouldn't have none o" the young gentleman, sir, and I offered to go pioneer for her to the station,

"As if!you treacherous cur!" Crossjay ground his teeth at the betrayer. "Well, Mr. Whitford, and I didn't

trust him, and I stuck to him, or he'd have been after her whining about his coat and stomach, and talking of

The latter became seized with shivers as he supplied the information that it might be a quarter of an hour or

twenty minutes. "But what's time to me, sir? If I had reglar meals, I should carry a clock in my inside. I got

"That's what gentlemen can do, who sleeps in their beds warm," moaned the tramp. "They've no joints."

"Mr. Whitford, let me come. If you tell me to come I may. Do let me come," Crossjay begged with great

The tramp and Crossjay were audible to him; Crossjay spurning the consolations of the professional sad man.

Vernon spun across the fields, timing himself by his watch to reach Rendon station ten minutes before eleven,

though without clearly questioning the nature of the resolution which precipitated him. Dropping to the road,

he had better foothold than on the slippery fieldpath, and he ran. His principal hope was that Clara would

have missed her way. Another pelting of rain agitated him on her behalf. Might she not as well be suffered to

He clasped the visionary little feet to warm them on his breast. But Willoughby's obstinate fatuity deserved

the blow!But neither she nor her father deserved the scandal. But she was desperate. Could reasoning

touch her? if not, what would? He knew of nothing. Yesterday he had spoken strongly to Willoughby, to

plead with him to favour her departure and give her leisure to sound her mind, and he had left his cousin,

convinced that Clara's best measure was flight: a man so cunning in a pretended obtuseness backed by

senseless pride, and in petty tricks that sprang of a grovelling tyranny, could only be taught by facts.

Her recent treatment of him, however, was very strange; so strange that he might have known himself better

if he had reflected on the bound with which it shot him to a hard suspicion. De Craye had prepared the world

to hear that he was leaving the Hall. Were they in concert? The idea struck at his heart colder than if her

Vernon's full exoneration of her for making a confidant of himself, did not extend its leniency to the young

lady's character when there was question of her doing the same with a second gentleman. He could suspect

That idea drew him up in his run, to meditate on the part he should play; and by drove little Dr. Corney on the

way to Rendon and hailed him, and gave his cheerless figure the nearest approach to an Irish bug in the form

"Though it is the worst I can do for you, if you decline to supplement it with a dose of hot brandy and water

at the Dolphin," said he: "and I'll see you take it, if you please. I'm bound to ease a Rendon patient out of the

world. Medicine's one of their superstitions, which they cling to the harder the more useless it gets. Pill and

priest launch him happy between them.'And what's on your conscience, Pat?It's whether your blessing,

your Riverence, would disagree with another drop. Then put the horse before the cart, my son, and you shall

have the two in harmony, and God speed ye!'Rendon station, did you say, Vernon? You shall have my

prescription at the Railway Arms, if you're hurried. You have the look. What is it? Can I help?"

"You're like the Irish Grenadier who had a bullet in a humiliating situation. Here's Rendon, and through it we

go with a spanking clatter. Here's Doctor Corney's dogcart posthaste again. For there's no dying without

him now, and Repentance is on the deathbed for not calling him in before. Half a charge of humbug hurts no

son of a gun, friend Vernon, if he'd have his firing take effect. Be tender to't in man or woman, particularly

woman. So, by goes the meteoric doctor, and I'll bring noses to windowpanes, you'll see, which reminds me

of the sweetest young lady I ever saw, and the luckiest man. When is she off for her bridal trousseau? And

when are they spliced? I'll not call her perfection, for that's a post, afraid to move. But she's a dancing sprig of

the tree next it. Poetry's wanted to speak of her. I'm Irish and inflammable, I suppose, but I never looked on a

girl to make a man comprehend the entire holy meaning of the word rapturous, like that one. And away she

goes! We'll not say another word. But you're a Grecian, friend Vernon. Now, couldn't you think her just a

"Deuce take you, Corney, drop me here; I shall be late for the train," said Vernon, laying hand on the doctor's

Dr Corney had a Celtic intelligence for a meaning behind an illogical tongue. He drew up, observing. "Two

He slightly fancied he might have given offence, though he was well acquainted with Vernon and had a

The truth must be told that Vernon could not at the moment bear any more talk from an Irishman. Dr. Corney

had succeeded in persuading him not to wonder at Clara Middleton's liking for Colonel de Craye.

Clara stood in the waitingroom contemplating the white rails of the rainswept line. Her lips parted at the

"I must beg you to come to the inn hard byhalf a dozen steps. We shall see your train signalled. Come."

She thought him startlingly authoritative, but he had good sense to back him; and depressed as she was by the

dampness, she was disposed to yield to reason if he continued to respect her independence. So she submitted

outwardly, resisted inwardly, on the watch to stop him from taking any decisive lead.

"You must take off boots and stockings at once, and have them dried. I'll put you in the hands of the

He seemed reasonable, the reverse of hostile, in spite of his commanding air, and that was not unpleasant in

one friendly to her adventure. She controlled her alert distrustfulness, and passed from him to the landlady,

for her feet were wet and cold, the skirts of her dress were soiled; generally inspecting herself, she was an

object to be shuddered at, and she was grateful to Vernon for his inattention to her appearance.

Vernon ordered Dr. Corney's dose, and was ushered upstairs to a room of portraits, where the publican's

ancestors and family sat against the walls, flat on their canvas as weeds of the botanist's portfolio, although

corpulency was pretty generally insisted on, and there were formidable battalions of bust among the females.

All of them had the aspect of the national energy which has vanquished obstacles to subside on its ideal. They

all gazed straight at the guest. "Drink, and come to this!" they might have been labelled to say to him. He was

in the private Walhalla of a large class of his countrymen. The existing host had taken forethought to be of

the party in his prime, and in the central place, looking freshfattened there and sanguine from the

performance. By and by a son would shove him aside; meanwhile he shelved his parent, according to the

One should not be a critic of our works of Art in uncomfortable garments. Vernon turned from the portraits to

a stuffed pike in a glass case, and plunged into sympathy with the fish for a refuge.

Clara soon rejoined him, saying: "But you, you must be very wet. You were without an umbrella. You must

"We're all wet through, today," said Vernon. "Crossjay's wet through, and a tramp he met."

"The horrid man! But Crossjay should have turned back when I told him. Cannot the landlord assist you?

You are not tied to time. I begged Crossjay to turn back when it began to rain: when it became heavy I

"You have not to blame him for betraying you. The tramp did that. I was thrown on your track quite by

accident. Now pardon me for using authority, and don't be alarmed, Miss Middleton; you are perfectly free

for me; but you must not run a risk to your health. I met Doctor Corney coming along, and he prescribed hot

brandy and water for a wet skin, especially for sitting in it. There's the stuff on the table; I see you have been

aware of a singular odour; you must consent to sip some, as medicine; merely to give you warmth."

"Impossible, Mr. Whitford: I could not taste it. But pray, obey Dr. Corney, if he ordered it for you."

"Now that you find me here, Mr. Whitford! Anything for myself it would seem, and nothing to save a friend.

They were to drink out of the same glass; and she was to drink some of this infamous mixture: and she was in

a kind of hotel alone with him: and he was drenched in running after her:all this came of breaking loose for

"And the worst of it is, that Willoughby will come upon Crossjay wet to the bone, and pump him and get

nothing but shufflings, blank lies, and then find him out and chase him from the house."

Clara drank immediately, and more than she intended. She held the glass as an enemy to be delivered from,

She panted still with the fiery liquid she had gulped: and she wondered that it should belie its reputation in

"Am I right in supposing you a little afraid of me? You should not be. I have deceived no one. I have opened

He was touched, and for that reason, in his dissatisfaction with himself, not unwilling to hurt. "We take our

turn, Miss Middleton. I'm no hero, and a bad conspirator, so I am not of much avail."

"You have been reservedbut I am going, and I leave my character behind. You condemned me to the

She reproached herself. He laughed to quiet her. "My dies solemnes are sure to give me duckings; I'm used to

She raised the glass to him. She was happier and hoped for some little harshness and kindness mixed that she

He turned the glass as she had given it, turned it round in putting it to his lips: a scarce perceptible

It may be hoped that it was not done by design. Done even accidentally, without a taint of contrivance, it was

Fugitives are subject to strange incidents; they are not vessels lying safe in harbour. She shut her lips tight, as

if they had stung. The realizing sensitiveness of her quick nature accused them of a loss of bloom. And the

man who made her smart like this was formal as a railway official on a platform.

"Now we are both pledged in the poisonbowl," said he. "And it has the taste of rank poison, I confess. But

the doctor prescribed it, and at sea we must be sailors. Now, Miss Middleton, time presses: will you return

"He is probably at this instant undergoing an interrogation. You may guess at his replies. The letter will

"I regret it. I cannot avoid it. Poor boy! My dear Crossjay! I did not think of how Willoughby might punish

him. I was very thoughtless. Mr. Whitford, my pinmoney shall go for his education. Later, when I am a little

"That's an encumbrance; you should not tie yourself to drag it about. You are unalterable, of course, but

circumstances are not, and as it happens, women are more subject to them than we are."

"No: because you do the contrary; you don't determine: you run away from the difficulty, and leave it to your

father and friends to bear. As for Crossjay, you see you destroy one of his chances. I should have carried him

off before this, if I had not thought it prudent to keep him on terms with Willoughby. We'll let Crossjay stand

aside. He'll behave like a man of honour, imitating others who have had to do the same for ladies."

"Have spoken falsely to shelter cowards, you mean, Mr. Whitford. Oh, I know.I have but two minutes. The

die is cast. I cannot go back. I must get ready. Will you see me to the station? I would rather you should hurry

"I will see the last of you. I will wait for you here. An express runs ahead of your train, and I have arranged

"Well, though you do not perfectly understand what torments have driven me to this."

"Well, then, I don't understand. But decide at once. I wish you to have your free will."

Dry stockings and boots are better for travelling in than wet ones, but in spite of her direct resolve, she felt

when drawing them on like one that has been tripped. The goal was desirable, the ardour was damped.

Vernon's wish that she should have her free will compelled her to sound it: and it was of course to go, to be

liberated, to cast off incubus and hurt her father? injure Crossjay? distress her friends? No, and ten times no!

I ventured to enclose my letter to papa in yours, trusting you would attend to my request to you to break the

"First you spoke to me, and then you spoke to Miss Dale; and at least you have a clear conscience."

Vernon's shoulders jerked. Our patience with an innocent duplicity in women is measured by the place it

assigns to us and another. If he had liked he could have thought: "You have not done but meditated

something to trouble conscience." That was evident, and her speaking of it was proof too of the willingness to

be dear. He would not help her. Man's blood, which is the link with women and responsive to them on the

instant for or against, obscured him. He shrugged anew when she said: "My character would have been

"Certainly not the degradation of your character," he said, black on the subject of De Craye, and not lightened

by feelings which made him sharply sensible of the beggarly dependant that he was, or poor adventuring

"Why did you pursue me and wish to stop me, Mr. Whitford?" said Clara, on the spur of a wound from his

"You are my friend. Only you speak in irony so much. That was irony, about my clear conscience. I spoke to

you and to Miss Dale: and then I rested and drifted. Can you not feel for me, that to mention it is like a

scorching furnace? Willoughby has entangled papa. He schemes incessantly to keep me entangled. I fly from

his cunning as much as from anything. I dread it. I have told you that I am more to blame than he, but I must

"You have a masculine good sense that tells you you won't be respected if you run. Three more days there

"And go back? Oh, no! To London! Besides, there is the dining with Mrs. Mountstuart this evening; and I

like her very well, but I must avoid her. She has a kind of idolatry ... And what answers can I give? I

supplicate her with looks. She observes them, my efforts to divert them from being painful produce a comic

expression to her, and I am a charming 'rogue', and I am entertained on the topic she assumes to be

principally interesting me. I must avoid her. The thought of her leaves me no choice. She is clever. She could

"She has told me you give me credit for a spice of wit. I have not discovered my possession. We have spoken

"There's no delusion in one case or the other, Miss Middleton. You have beauty and wit; public opinion will

say, wildness: indifference to your reputation will be charged on you, and your friends will have to admit it.

"Impossible to judge until we see how you escape the first. And I have no more to say. I love your father. His

humour of sententiousness and doctorial stilts is a mask he delights in, but you ought to know him and not be

frightened by it. If you sat with him an hour at a Latin task, and if you took his hand and told him you could

not leave him, and no tears!he would answer you at once. It would involve a day or two further;

disagreeable to you, no doubt: preferable to the present mode of escape, as I think. But I have no power

whatever to persuade. I have not the 'lady's tongue'. My appeal is always to reason."

"It's a distinctly good gift, and I wish I had it. I might have succeeded instead of failing, and appearing to pay

"You would rather not be seen by Mrs. Mountstuart. That is her carriage drawn up at the station, and she is in

"I suppose she has driven to meet one of the guests for her dinnerparty. Professor Crooklyn was promised to

"Go back to the Hall!" exclaimed Clara. "How can I? I have no more endurance left in me. If I had some

support!if it were the sense of secretly doing wrong, it might help me through. I am in a web. I cannot do

right, whatever I do. There is only the thought of saving Crossjay. Yes, and sparing papa.Goodbye, Mr.

"But if you are seen by Mrs. Mountstuart, you must go back. I'll do my best to take her away. Should she see

you, you must patch up a story and apply to her for a lift. That, I think, is imperative."

He bowed hurriedly, and withdrew. After her confession, peculiar to her, of possibly finding sustainment in

secretly doing wrong, her flying or remaining seemed to him a choice of evils: and whilst she stood in

bewildered speculation on his reason for pursuing herwhich was not evidenthe remembered the special

fear inciting him, and so far did her justice as to have at himself on that subject. He had done something

perhaps to save her from a cold: such was his only consolatory thought. He had also behaved like a man of

honour, taking no personal advantage of her situation; but to reflect on it recalled his astonishing dryness. The

strict man of honour plays a part that he should not reflect on till about the fall of the curtain, otherwise he

Posted in observation at a corner of the window Clara saw Vernon cross the road to Mrs. Mountstuart

Jenkinson's carriage, transformed to the leanest pattern of himself by narrowed shoulders and raised

coatcollar. He had such an air of saying, "Tom's acold", that her skin crept in sympathy.

Presently he left the carriage and went into the station: a bell had rung. Was it her train? He approved her

going, for he was employed in assisting her to go: a proceeding at variance with many things he had said, but

he was as full of contradiction today as women are accused of being. The train came up. She trembled: no

He returned; he entered the carriage, and the wheels were soon in motion. Immediately thereupon, Flitch's fly

But what was it that had brought the colonel to this place? The pressure of Vernon's mind was on her and

foiled her efforts to assert her perfect innocence, though she knew she had done nothing to allure the colonel

hither. Excepting Willoughby, Colonel De Craye was the last person she would have wished to encounter.

She had now a dread of hearing the bell which would tell her that Vernon had not deceived her, and that she

She bit at her glove; she glanced at the concentrated eyes of the publican's family portraits, all looking as one;

she noticed the empty tumbler, and went round to it and touched it, and the silly spoon in it.

Vernon had asked her whether she was alone. Connecting that inquiry, singular in itself, and singular in his

manner of putting it, with the glass of burning liquid, she repeated: "He must have seen Colonel De Craye!"

and she stared at the empty glass, as at something that witnessed to something: for Vernon was not your

supple cavalier assiduously on the smirk to pin a gallantry to commonplaces. But all the doors are not open in

a young lady's consciousness, quick of nature though she may be: some are locked and keyless, some will not

open to the key, some are defended by ghosts inside. She could not have said what the something witnessed

to. If we by chance know more, we have still no right to make it more prominent than it was with her. And

the smell of the glass was odious; it disgraced her. She had an impulse to pocket the spoon for a memento, to

show it to grandchildren for a warning. Even the prelude to the morality to be uttered on the occasion sprang

to her lips: "Here, my dears, is a spoon you would he ashamed to use in your teacups, yet it was of more

value to me at one period of my life than silver and gold in pointing out, etc.": the conclusion was hazy, like

And in this mood she ran downstairs and met Colonel De Craye on the station steps.

The bright illumination of his face was that of the confident man confirmed in a risky guess in the crisis of

"Miss Middleton!" his joyful surprise predominated; the pride of an accurate forecast, adding: "I am not too

"I have just been getting change to pay Mr. Flitch. He passed me on the road. He is interwound with our fates

to a certainty. I had only to jump in; I knew it, and rolled along like a magician commanding a genie."

"Not seriously, nobody doubts you being under shelter. You will allow me to protect you? My time is yours."

"May I venture? I had the fancy that you wished to see Miss Darleton today. You cannot make the journey

"He is in jackboots. But may I not, Miss Middleton? I shall never be forgiven if you refuse me."

"Some hallooing. But why am I rejected? Besides, I don't require the fly; I shall walk if I am banished. Flitch

is a wonderful conjurer, but the virtue is out of him for the next fourandtwenty hours. And it will be an

"I'll appear before her as an ignoramus or a rebel, whichever she likes best to take in leadingstrings. I

"Memory didn't happen to be handy at the first mention of the lady's name. As the general said of his

ammunition and transport, there's the army!but it was leagues in the rear. Like the footman who went to

sleep after smelling fire in the house, I was thinking of other things. It will serve me right to be forgotten if

I am. I've a curiosity to know: a remainder of my coxcombry. Not that exactly: a wish to see the impression I

"That is hardly an impression," said Clara, pacifying her irresoluteness with this light talk.

"The utmost to be hoped for by men like me! I have your permission?one minuteI will get my ticket."

She signified a decided negative with the head, but her eyes were dreamy. She breathed deep: this thing done

De Craye took a stride. He was accosted by one of the railwayporters. Flitch's fly was in request for a

gentleman. A portly old gentleman bothered about luggage appeared on the landing.

"Then mount the box and I'll jump up beside you," De Craye called out, after the passion of regretful

Clara directed him to the seat fronting her; he protested indifference to the wet; she kept the door unshut. His

temper would have preferred to buffet the angry weather. The invitation was too sweet.

She heard now the bell of her own train. Driving beside the railway embankment she met the train: it was

eighteen minutes late, by her watch. And why, when it flung up its whalespouts of steam, she was not

journeying in it, she could not tell. She had acted of her free will: that she could say. Vernon had not induced

her to remain; assuredly her present companion had not; and her whole heart was for flight: yet she was

driving back to the Hall, not devoid of calmness. She speculated on the circumstance enough to think herself

incomprehensible, and there left it, intent on the scene to come with Willoughby.

"Whatever you have to say. Let me stipulate, be not very grave. I want cheering in wet weather."

"Miss Middleton, Flitch is charioteer once more. Think of it. There's a tide that carries him perpetually to the

place where he was cast forth, and a thread that ties us to him in continuity. I have not the honour to be a

friend of long standing: one ventures on one's devotion: it dates from the first moment of my seeing you.

Flitch is to blame, if any one. Perhaps the spell would be broken, were he reinstated in his ancient office."

"Perhaps it would," said Clara, not with her best of smiles. Willoughby's pride of relentlessness appeared to

"I am afraid you were right; the poor fellow has no chance," De Craye pursued. He paused, as for decorum in

the presence of misfortune, and laughed sparklingly: "Unless I engage him, or pretend to! I verily believe that

Flitch's melancholy person on the skirts of the Hall completes the picture of the Eden within. Why will you

"Miss Middleton, just now you were going. My arrival changed your mind. You distrust me: and ought I to

wonder? The wonder would be all the other way. You have not had the sort of report of me which would

persuade you to confide, even in a case of extremity. I guessed you were going. Do you ask me how? I cannot

say. Through what they call sympathy, and that's inexplicable. There's natural sympathy, natural antipathy.

"Flitch, my dear man!" the colonel gave a murmuring remonstrance; "for," said he to Clara, whom his

apostrophe to Flitch had set smiling, "we're not safe with him, however we make believe, and he'll be jerking

the heart out of me before he has done.But if two of us have not the misfortune to be united when they

come to the discovery, there's hope. That is, if one has courage and the other has wisdom. Otherwise they

may go to the yoke in spite of themselves. The great enemy is Pride, who has them both in a coach and drives

them to the fatal door, and the only thing to do is to knock him off his box while there's a minute to spare.

And as there's no pride like the pride of possession, the deadliest wound to him is to make that doubtful. Pride

won't be taught wisdom in any other fashion. But one must have the courage to do it!"

De Craye trifled with the windowsash, to give his words time to sink in solution.

Who but Willoughby stood for Pride? And who, swayed by languor, had dreamed of a method that would be

"You may count on my discretion in the fullest degree. I throw myself on your generosity when I assure you

that it was not my design to surprise a secret. I guessed the station, and went there, to put myself at your

"Did you," said Clara, reddening slightly, "chance to see Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson's carriage pass you

"Yes. And therefore it is better to put discretion on one side: we may be certain she saw you."

"I prefer to think that I am seen. I have a description of courage, Colonel De Craye, when it is forced on me."

"I have not suspected the reverse. Courage wants training, as well as other fine capacities. Mine is often rusty

"Perfectly guaranteed today!" he said of Flitch's look of solidity. "The convulsion of the elements appears to

sober our friend; he is only dangerous in calms. Five minutes will bring us to the parkgates."

Clara leaned forward to gaze at the hedgeways in the neighbourhood of the Hall strangely renewing their

familiarity with her. Both in thought and sensation she was like a flower beaten to earth, and she thanked her

feminine mask for not showing how nerveless and languid she was. She could have accused Vernon of a

"Yes, and one at five. We dine with Mrs. Mountstuart tonight. And I have a passion for solitude! I think I was

never intended for obligations. The moment I am bound I begin to brood on freedom."

She could not combat the remark: by her selfassurance that she had the principle of faithfulness, she

acknowledged to herself the truth of it:there is no freedom for the weak. Vernon had said that once. She

tried to resist the weight of it, and her sheer inability precipitated her into a sense of pitiful dependence.

Half an hour earlier it would have been a perilous condition to be traversing in the society of a closely

scanning reader of fair faces. Circumstances had changed. They were at the gates of the park.

The mild subservience flattered Clara's languor. He had not compelled her to be watchful on her guard, and

she was unaware that he passed it when she acquiesced to his observation, "An anticipatory story is a trap to

"No, you are right, Miss Middleton, inventing beforehand never prospers; "t is a way to trip our own

cleverness. Truth and motherwit are the best counsellors: and as you are the former, I'll try to act up to the

Some tangle, more prospective than present, seemed to be about her as she reflected. But her intention being

to speak to Willoughby without subterfuge, she was grateful to her companion for not tempting her to swerve.

No one could doubt his talent for elegant fibbing, and she was in the humour both to admire and adopt the art,

so she was glad to be rescued from herself. How motherwit was to second truth she did not inquire, and as

she did not happen to be thinking of Crossjay, she was not troubled by having to consider how truth and his

Driving down the park, she had full occupation in questioning whether her return would be pleasing to

Vernon, who was the virtual cause of it, though he had done so little to promote it: so little that she really

THE Halldock over the stables was then striking twelve. It was the hour for her flight to be made known,

and Clara sat in a turmoil of dim apprehension that prepared her nervous frame for a painful blush on her

being asked by Colonel De Craye whether she had set her watch correctly. He must, she understood, have

seen through her at the breakfast table: and was she not cruelly indebted to him for her evasion of

Willoughby? Such perspicacity of vision distressed and frightened her; at the same time she was obliged to

acknowledge that he had not presumed on it. Her dignity was in no way the worse for him. But it had been at

She jumped from the fly as if she were leaving danger behind. She could at the moment have greeted

Willoughby with a conventionally friendly smile. The doors were thrown open and young Crossjay flew out

to her. He hung and danced on her hand, pressed the hand to his mouth, hardly believing that he saw and

touched her, and in a lingo of dashes and asterisks related how Sir Willoughby had found him under the

boathouse eaves and pumped him, and had been sent off to Hoppner's farm, where there was a sick child, and

on along the road to a labourer's cottage: "For I said you're so kind to poor people, Miss Middleton; that's

true, now that is true. And I said you wouldn't have me with you for fear of contagion!" This was what she

"Every crack and bang in a boys vocabulary," remarked the colonel, listening to him after he had paid Flitch.

The latter touched his hat till he had drawn attention to himself, when he exclaimed, with rosy melancholy:

"Ah! my lady, ah! colonel, if ever I lives to drink some of the old port wine in the old Hall at Christmastide!"

Their healths would on that occasion be drunk, it was implied. He threw up his eyes at the windows, humped

"No, Miss Middleton. Sir Willoughby has, and he's upstairs in his room dressing."

"She has just gone into the laboratory. I told her Sir Willoughby wasn't there."

"One has to catch the fellow like a football," exclaimed the injured gentleman, doubled across the boy and

holding him fast, that he might have an object to trifle with, to give himself countenance: he needed it.

"Not in a cottage; but I was perfectly sheltered. Colonel De Craye passed a fly before he met me . .

"Yes, you have luck, you have luck," Willoughby addressed him, still clutching Crossjay and treating his tugs

to get loose as an invitation to caresses. But the foil barely concealed his livid perturbation.

"Stay by me, sir," he said at last sharply to Crossjay, and Clara touched the boy's shoulder in admonishment

She turned to the colonel as they stepped into the hall: "I have not thanked you, Colonel De Craye." She

dropped her voice to its lowest: "A letter in my handwriting in the laboratory."

"I have you!" Willoughby rallied him with a laugh not unlike the squeak of his victim.

Colonel De Craye, sauntering by the laboratory door, sung out: "I'll fetch you your book. What is it? EARLY

"Barclay speaks of a letter for me," Willoughby said to Clara, "marked to be delivered to me at noon!"

"In case of my not being back earlier; it was written to avert anxiety," she replied.

"Oh, good! Call me anything but good. Here are the ladies. Dear ladies!" Clara swam to meet them as they

issued from a morningroom into the hall, and interjections reigned for a couple of minutes.

Willoughby relinquished his grasp of Crossjay, who darted instantaneously at an angle to the laboratory,

whither he followed, and he encountered De Craye coming out, but passed him in silence.

Crossjay was rangeing and peering all over the room. Willoughby went to his desk and the batterytable and

the mantelpiece. He found no letter. Barclay had undoubtedly informed him that she had left a letter for him

He hurried out and ran upstairs in time to see De Craye and Barclay breaking a conference.

He beckoned to her. The maid lengthened her upper lip and beat her dress down smooth: signs of the

"You said when I met you at the foot of the stairs that you had left a letter for me in the laboratory."

Barclay swept round with another of her demure grimaces. It was apparently necessary with her that she

Struck by the ridicule of his posture of expectation, and of his whole behaviour, he went to his bedroom suite,

shut himself in, and paced the chambers, amazed at the creature he had become. Agitated like the commonest

of wretches, destitute of selfcontrol, not able to preserve a decent mask, be, accustomed to inflict these

emotions and tremours upon others, was at once the puppet and dupe of an intriguing girl. His very stature

seemed lessened. The glass did not say so, but the shrunken heart within him did, and wailfully too. Her

compunction'Call me anything but good'coming after her return to the Hall beside De Craye, and after

the visible passage of a secret between them in his presence, was a confession: it blew at him with the fury of

a furnaceblast in his face. Egoist agony wrung the outcry from him that dupery is a more blessed condition.

He could desire such a thing only in a temporary transport; for above all he desired that no one should know

of his being deceived; and were he a dupe the deceiver would know it, and her accomplice would know it,

and the world would soon know of it: that world against whose tongue he stood defenceless. Within the

shadow of his presence he compressed opinion, as a strong frost binds the springs of earth, but beyond it his

shivering sensitiveness ran about in dread of a stripping in a wintry atmosphere. This was the ground of his

hatred of the world: it was an appalling fear on behalf of his naked eidolon, the tender infant Self swaddled in

his name before the world, for which he felt as the most highly civilized of men alone can feel, and which it

was impossible for him to stretch out hands to protect. There the poor little loveable creature ran for any

mouth to blow on; and frostnipped and bruised, it cried to him, and he was of no avail! Must we not detest a

world that so treats us? We loathe it the more, by the measure of our contempt for them, when we have made

And he had been once a young prince in popularity: the world had been his possession. Clara's treatment of

him was a robbery of land and subjects. His grander dream had been a marriage with a lady of so glowing a

fame for beauty and attachment to her lord that the world perforce must take her for witness to merits which

would silence detraction and almost, not quite (it was undesireable), extinguish envy. But for the nature of

women his dream would have been realized. He could not bring himself to denounce Fortune. It had cost him

a grievous pang to tell Horace De Craye he was lucky; he had been educated in the belief that Fortune

specially prized and cherished little Willoughby: hence of necessity his maledictions fell upon women, or he

But if Clara deceived him, he inspired her with timidity. There was matter in that to make him wish to be

deceived. She had not looked him much in the face: she had not crossed his eyes: she had looked deliberately

downward, keeping her head up, to preserve an exterior pride. The attitude had its bewitchingness: the girl's

physical pride of stature scorning to bend under a load of conscious guilt, had a certain blackangel beauty

for which he felt a hugging hatred: and according to his policy when these fits of amorous meditation seized

him, he burst from the present one in the mood of his more favourable conception of Clara, and sought her

The quality of the mood of hugging hatred is, that if you are disallowed the hug, you do not hate the fiercer.

Contrariwise the prescription of a decorous distance of two feet ten inches, which is by measurement the

delimitation exacted of a rightly respectful deportment, has this miraculous effect on the great creature man,

or often it has: that his peculiar hatred returns to the reluctant admiration begetting it, and his passion for the

hug falls prostrate as one of the Faithful before the shrine; he is reduced to worship by fasting.

(For these mysteries, consult the sublime chapter in the GREAT BOOK, tile Seventyfirst on LOVE,

wherein nothing is written, but the Reader receives a Lanthorn, a Powdercask and a Pickaxe, and therewith

pursues his yellowdusking path across the rubble of preceding excavators in the solitary quarry: a yet more

instructive passage than the overscrawled Seventieth, or French Section, whence the chapter opens, and

The hurry of the hero is on us, we have no time to spare for mining works: he hurried to catch her alone, to

wreak his tortures on her in a bitter semblance of bodily worship, and satiated, then comfortably to spurn. He

"I think I told you, Willoughby, there was a letter I left with Barclay to reassure you in case of my not

"Indeed? But any letter, any writing of yours, and from you to me! You have it still?"

Barclay stood sucking her lips. A maid in the secrets of her mistress is a purchaseable maid, for if she will

take a bribe with her right hand she will with her left; all that has to be calculated is the nature and amount of

the bribe: such was the speculation indulged by Sir Willoughby, and he shrank from the thought and declined

to know more than that he was on a volcanic hillside where a thin crust quaked over lava. This was a new

condition with him, representing Clara's gain in their combat. Clara did not fear his questioning so much as

Mutually timid, they were of course formally polite, and no plain speaking could have told one another more

distinctly that each was defensive. Clara stood pledged to the fib; packed, scaled and posted; and he had only

She said in her heart, "It is your fault: you are relentless and you would ruin Crossjay to punish him for

devoting himself to me, like the poor thoughtless boy he is! and so I am bound in honour to do my utmost for

The reciprocal devotedness, moreover, served two purposes: it preserved her from brooding on the

humiliation of her lame flight, and flutter back, and it quieted her mind in regard to the precipitate intimacy of

her relations with Colonel De Craye. Willoughby's boast of his implacable character was to blame. She was

at war with him, and she was compelled to put the case in that light. Crossjay must be shielded from one who

could not spare an offender, so Colonel De Craye quite naturally was called on for his help, and the colonel's

Nevertheless, she would not have answered a direct question falsely. She was for the fib, but not the lie; at a

word she could be disdainful of subterfuges. Her look said that. Willoughby perceived it. She had written him

a letter of three lines: "There were but three": and she had destroyed the letter. Something perchance was

repented by her? Then she had done him an injury! Between his wrath at the suspicion of an injury, and the

prudence enjoined by his abject coveting of her, he consented to be fooled for the sake of vengeance, and

"Well! here you are, safe; I have you!" said he, with courtly exultation: "and that is better than your

"Crossjay talks of your visiting a sick child, my love:you have changed your dress?"

"The boy declared you were going to that farm of Hoppner's, and some cottage. I met at my gates a tramping

"The people have been indemnified for their pains. To pay them more would be to spoil them. You disperse

money too liberally. There was no fever in the place. Who could have anticipated such a downpour! I want to

consult Miss Dale on the important theme of a dress I think of wearing at Mrs Mountstuart's tonight."

"But it becomes her. She is one of the few women whom I feel I could not improve with a touch."

The shadow of a dimple in Clara's cheek awakened him to the idea that she had struck him somewhere: and

certainly he would never again be able to put up the fiction of her jealousy of Laetitia. What, then, could be

this girl's motive for praying to be released? The interrogation humbled him: he fled from the answer.

Willoughby went in search of De Craye. That sprightly intriguer had no intention to let himself be caught

solus. He was undiscoverable until the assembly sounded, when Clara dropped a public word or two, and he

spoke in perfect harmony with her. After that, he gave his company to Willoughby for an hour at billiards,

The announcement of a visit of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson took the gentlemen to the drawingroom, rather

suspecting that something stood in the way of her dinnerparty. As it happened, she was lamenting only the

loss of one of the jewels of the party: to wit, the great Professor Crooklyn, invited to meet Dr. Middleton at

her table; and she related how she had driven to the station by appointment, the professor being notoriously a

botherheaded traveller: as was shown by the fact that he had missed his train in town, for he had not arrived;

nothing had been seen of him. She cited Vernon Whitford for her authority that the train had been inspected,

"And so," said she, "I drove home your Green Man to dry him; he was wet through and chattering; the man

was exactly like a skeleton wrapped in a sponge, and if he escapes a cold he must be as invulnerable as he

"They climb their Alps to crow," said Clara, excited by her apprehension that Mrs. Mountstuart would speak

There was a laugh, and Colonel De Craye laughed loudly as it flashed through him that a quickwitted

impressionable girl like Miss Middleton must, before his arrival at the Hall, have speculated on such obdurate

clay as Vernon Whitford was, with humourous despair at his uselessness to her. Glancing round, he saw

"You heard that, Whitford?" he said, and Clara's face betokening an extremer contrition than he thought was

demanded, the colonel rallied the Alpine climber for striving to be the tallest of them Signor

Excelsior!and described these conquerors of mountains pancaked on the rocks in desperate embraces,

bleached here, burned there, barked all over, all to be able to say they had been up "so high"had conquered

another mountain! He was extravagantly funny and selfsatisfied: a conqueror of the sex having such

His allusion to the incessant pursuit of young Crossjay to pin him to lessons was appreciated.

Clara felt the thread of the look he cast from herself to Colonel De Craye. She was helpless, if he chose to

Crossjay had the misfortune to enter the drawingroom while Mrs. Mountstuart was compassionating Vernon

for his ducking in pursuit of the wriggler; which De Craye likened to "going through the river after his eel:"

and immediately there was a crossquestioning of the boy between De Craye and Willoughby on the subject

of his latest truancy, each gentleman trying to run him down in a palpable fib. They were succeeding

brilliantly when Vernon put a stop to it by marching him off to hard labour. Mrs. Mountstuart was led away

to inspect the beautiful porcelain service, the present of Lady Busshe. "Porcelain again!" she said to

Willoughby, and would have signalled to the "dainty rogue" to come with them, had not Clara been leaning

over to Laetitia, talking to her in an attitude too graceful to be disturbed. She called his attention to it, slightly

wondering at his impatience. She departed to meet an afternoon train on the chance that it would land the

professor. "But tell Dr. Middleton," said she, "I fear I shall have no one worthy of him! And," she added to

Willoughby, as she walked out to her carriage, "I shall expect you to do the greatgunnery talk at table."

"She does everything best! But my dinnertable is involved, and I cannot count on a young woman to talk

across it. I would hire a lion of a menagerie, if one were handy, rather than have a famous scholar at my table,

unsupported by another famous scholar. Doctor Middleton would ride down a duke when the wine is in him.

He will terrify my poor flock. The truth is, we can't leaven him: I foresee undigested lumps of conversation,

"I can calculate on Colonel De Craye and our porcelain beauty for any quantity of sparkles, if you promise

that. They play well together. You are not to be one of the gods tonight, but a kind of Jupiter's

cupbearer;Juno's, if you like; and Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer, and all your admirers shall know

subsequently what you have done. You see my alarm. I certainly did not rank Professor Crooklyn among the

possibly faithless, or I never would have ventured on Doctor Middleton at my table. My dinnerparties have

hitherto been all successes. Naturally I feel the greater anxiety about this one. For a single failure is all the

more conspicuous. The exception is everlastingly cited! It is not so much what people say, but my own

"Something of that sort," said the dame, smiling, and leaving him to reflect on the egoism of women. For the

sake of her dinnerparty he was to be a cipher in attendance on Dr. Middleton, and Clara and De Craye were

to be encouraged in sparkling together! And it happened that he particularly wished to shine. The admiration

of his county made him believe he had a flavour in general society that was not yet distinguished by his bride,

and he was to relinquish his opportunity in order to please Mrs. Mountstuart! Had she been in the pay of his

He remembered young Crossjay's instant quietude, after struggling in his grasp, when Clara laid her hand on

the boy: and from that infinitesimal circumstance he deduced the boy's perception of a differing between

himself and his bride, and a transfer of Crossjay's allegiance from him to her. She shone; she had the gift of

female beauty; the boy was attracted to it. That boy must be made to feel his treason. But the point of the

cogitation was, that similarly were Clara to see her affianced shining, as shine he could when lighted up by

admirers, there was the probability that the sensation of her littleness would animate her to take aim at him

A visit to Dr. Middleton in the library satisfied him that she had not been renewing her entreaties to leave

Patterne. No, the miserable coquette had now her pastime, and was content to stay. Deceit was in the air: he

heard the sound of the shuttle of deceit without seeing it; but, on the whole, mindful of what he had dreaded

during the hours of her absence, he was rather flattered, witheringly flattered. What was it that he had

dreaded? Nothing less than news of her running away. Indeed a silly fancy, a lover's fancy! yet it had led him

so far as to suspect, after parting with De Craye in the rain, that his friend and his bride were in collusion, and

that he should not see them again. He had actually shouted on the rainy road the theatric call "Fooled!" one of

the stagecries which are cries of nature! particularly the cry of nature with men who have driven other men

Constantia Durham had taught him to believe women capable of explosions of treason at half a minute's

notice. And strangely, to prove that women are all of a pack, she had worn exactly the same placidity of

countenance just before she fled, as Clara yesterday and today; no nervousness, no flushes, no twitches of

the brows, but smoothness, ease of manneran elegant sisterliness, one might almost say: as if the creature

had found a midway and borderline to walk on between cruelty and kindness, and between repulsion and

attraction; so that up to the verge of her breath she did forcefully attract, repelling at one foot's length with

her armour of chill serenity. Not with any disdain, with no passion: such a line as she herself pursued she

indicated to him on a neighbouring parallel. The passion in her was like a place of waves evaporated to a

crust of salt. Clara's resemblance to Constantia in this instance was ominous. For him whose tragic privilege

it had been to fold each of them in his arms, and weigh on their eyelids, and see the dissolving mistdeeps in

their eyes, it was horrible. Once more the comparison overcame him. Constantia he could condemn for

revealing too much to his manly sight: she had met him almost halfway: well, that was complimentary and

sanguine: but her frankness was a baldness often rendering it doubtful which of the two, lady or gentleman,

was the object of the chasean extreme perplexity to his manly soul. Now Clara's inner spirit was shyer, shy

as a doe down those rosetinged abysses; she allured both the lover and the hunter; forests of heavenliness

were in her flitting eyes. Here the difference of these fair women made his present fate an intolerable anguish.

For if Constantia was like certain of the ladies whom he had rendered unhappy, triumphed over, as it is

queerly called, Clara was not. Her individuality as a woman was a thing he had to bow to. It was impossible

to roll her up in the sex and bestow a kick on the travelling bundle. Hence he loved her, though she hurt him.

Hence his wretchedness, and but for the hearty sincerity of his faith in the Self he loved likewise and more,

As for De Craye, Willoughby recollected his own exploits too proudly to put his trust in a man. That fatal

conjunction of temper and policy had utterly thrown him off his guard, or he would not have trusted the

fellow even in the first hour of his acquaintance with Clara. But he had wished her to be amused while he

wove his plans to retain her at the Hall:partly imagining that she would weary of his neglect: vile delusion!

In truth he should have given festivities, he should have been the sun of a circle, and have revealed himself to

her in his more dazzling form. He went near to calling himself foolish after the tremendous reverberation of

How behave? It slapped the poor gentleman's pride in the face to ask. A private talk with her would rouse her

to renew her supplications. He saw them flickering behind the girl's transparent calmness. That calmness

really drew its dead ivory hue from the suppression of them: something as much he guessed; and he was not

sure either of his temper or his policy if he should hear her repeat her profane request.

An impulse to address himself to Vernon and discourse with him jocularly on the childish whim of a young

lady, moved perhaps by some whiff of jealousy, to shun the yoke, was checked. He had always taken so

superior a pose with Vernon that he could not abandon it for a moment: on such a subject too! Besides,

Vernon was one of your men who entertain the ideas about women of fellows that have never conquered one:

or only one, we will say in his case, knowing his secret history; and that one no flag to boast of. Densely

ignorant of the sex, his nincompoopish idealizations, at other times preposterous, would now be annoying. He

would probably presume on Clara's inconceivable lapse of dignity to read his master a lecture: he was quite

equal to a philippic upon woman's rights. This man had not been afraid to say that he talked common sense to

Another result was that Vernon did not talk sense to men. Willoughby's wrath at Clara's exposure of him to

his cousin dismissed the proposal of a colloquy so likely to sting his temper, and so certain to diminish his

loftiness. Unwilling to speak to anybody, he was isolated, yet consciously begirt by the mysterious action

going on all over the house. from Clara and De Craye to Laetitia and young Crossjay, down to Barclay the

maid. His blind sensitiveness felt as we may suppose a spider to feel when plucked from his own web and set

in the centre of another's. Laetitia looked her share in the mystery. A burden was on her eyelashes. How she

could have come to any suspicion of the circumstances, he was unable to imagine. Her intense personal

sympathy, it might be; he thought so with some gentle pity for her of the paternal patback order of pity.

She adored him, by decree of Venus; and the Goddess had not decreed that he should find consolation in

adoring her. Nor could the temptings of prudent counsel in his head induce him to run the risk of such a total

turnover as the incurring of Laetitia's pity of himself by confiding in her. He checked that impulse also, and

more sovereignly. For him to be pitied by Laetitia seemed an upsetting of the scheme of Providence.

Providence, otherwise the discriminating dispensation of the good things of life, had made him the beacon,

her the bird: she was really the last person to whom he could unbosom. The idea of his being in a position

that suggested his doing so, thrilled him with fits of rage; and it appalled him. There appeared to be another

Power. The same which had humiliated him once was menacing him anew. For it could not be Providence,

whose favourite he had ever been. We must have a couple of Powers to account for discomfort when Egoism

is the kernel of our religion. Benevolence had singled him for uncommon benefits: malignancy was at work

Of necessity he associated Clara with the darker Power pointing the knife at the quick of his pride. Still, he

would have raised her weeping: he would have stanched her wounds bleeding: he had an infinite thirst for her

misery, that he might ease his heart of its charitable love. Or let her commit herself, and be cast off Only she

must commit herself glaringly, and be cast off by the world as well. Contemplating her in the form of a

discarded weed. he had a catch of the breath: she was fair. He implored his Power that Horace De Craye

might not be the man! Why any man? An illness, fever, fire, runaway horses, personal disfigurement, a

laming, were sufficient. And then a formal and noble offer on his part to keep to the engagement with the

unhappy wreck: yes, and to lead the limping thing to the altar, if she insisted. His imagination conceived it,

Nausea, together with a sense of duty to his line, extinguished that loathsome prospect of a mate, though

without obscuring his chivalrous devotion to his gentleman's word of honour, which remained in his mind to

On the whole, he could reasonably hope to subdue her to admiration. He drank a glass of champagne at his

dressing; an unaccustomed act, but, as he remarked casually to his man Pollington, for whom the rest of the

Having to speak to Vernon on business, he went to the schoolroom, where he discovered Clara, beautiful in

full evening attire, with her arm on young Crossjay's shoulder, and heard that the hard taskmaster had

abjured Mrs. Mountstuart's party, and had already excused himself, intending to keep Crossjay to the

grindstone. Willoughby was for the boy, as usual, and more sparklingly than usual. Clara looked at him in

some surprise. He rallied Vernon with great zest, quite silencing him when he said: "I bear witness that the

fellow was here at his regular hour for lessons, and were you?" He laid his hand on Crossjay, touching

"You will remember what I told you, Crossjay," said she, rising from the seat gracefully to escape the touch.

"Then I question the rascal," said Willoughby, causing a start. "What, sir, is your opinion of Miss Middleton

"Now, the truth, Crossjay!" Clara held up a finger; and the boy could see she was playing at archness, but for

Willoughby it was earnest. "The truth is not likely to offend you or me either," he murmured to her.

"I always did think her a Beauty," Crossjay growled. He hated the having to say it.

"There!" exclaimed Sir Willoughby, and bent, extending an arm to her. "You have not suffered from the

Her answer was: "I was thinking how he might suffer if he were taught to tell the reverse."

"We'll leave it to the fellow's instinct; he has our blood in him. I could convince you, though, if I might cite

circumstances. Yes! But yes! And yes again! The entire truth cannot invariably be told. I venture to say it

She was arrayed in a voluminous robe of pale blue silk vapourous with trimmings of light gauze of the same

hue, gaze de Chambery, matching her fair hair and dear skin for the complete overthrow of less inflammable

He turned his head to Vernon, issuing brief succinct instructions for letters to be written, and drew her into

the hall, saying: "Know? There are people who do not know themselves and as they are the majority they

manufacture the axioms. And it is assumed that we have to swallow them. I may observe that I think I know.

I decline to be engulphed in those majorities. 'Among them, but not of them.' I know this, that my aim in life

"So much I know," pursued Willoughby, refusing to be tripped. But she rang discordantly in his ear. His

"fancy that he could be generous" and his "aim at being generous" had met with no response. "I have given

proofs," he said, briefly, to drop a subject upon which he was not permitted to dilate; and he murmured,

"People acquainted with me ... !" She was asked if she expected him to boast of generous deeds. "From

childhood!" she heard him mutter; and she said to herself, "Release me, and you shall be everything!"

The unhappy gentleman ached as he talked: for with men and with hosts of women to whom he was

indifferent, never did he converse in this shambling, thirdrate, sheepish manner, devoid of all highness of

tone and the proper precision of an authority. He was unable to fathom the cause of it, but Clara imposed it on

him, and only in anger could he throw it off. The temptation to an outburst that would flatter him with the

sound of his authoritative voice had to be resisted on a night when he must be composed if he intended to

shine, so he merely mentioned Lady Busshe's present, to gratify spleen by preparing the ground for

dissension, and prudently acquiesced in her anticipated slipperiness. She would rather not look at it now, she

Dr Middleton, Laetitia, and the ladies Eleanor and Isabel joining them in the hall, found two figures linked

together in a shadowy indication of halves that have fallen apart and hang on the last thread of junction.

Willoughby retained her hand on his arm; he held to it as the symbol of their alliance, and oppressed the girl's

nerves by contact, with a frame labouring for breath. De Craye looked on them from overhead. The carriages

were at the door, and Willoughby said, "Where's Horace? I suppose he's taking a final shot at his Book of

"No," replied the colonel, descending. "That's a spring works of itself and has discovered the secret of

continuous motion, more's the pity!unless you'll be pleased to make it of use to Science."

"Oh, if you have a musical quack, score it a point in his favour, Willoughby, though you don't swallow his

"Am I late?" said De Craye to the ladies, proving himself an adept in the art of being gracefully vanquished,

Willoughby had refreshed himself. At the back of his mind there was a suspicion that his adversary would not

have yielded so flatly without an assurance of practically triumphing, secretly getting the better of him; and it

filled him with venom for a further bout at the next opportunity: but as he had been sarcastic and mordant, he

had shown Clara what he could do in a way of speaking different from the lamentable cooing stuff, gasps and

feeble protestations to which, he knew not how, she reduced him. Sharing the opinion of his race, that blunt

personalities, or the pugilistic form, administered directly on the salient features, are exhibitions of mastery in

such encounters, he felt strong and solid, eager for the successes of the evening. De Craye was in the first

carriage as escort to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. Willoughby, with Clara, Laetitia, and Dr. Middleton,

followed, all silent, for the Rev. Doctor was ostensibly pondering; and Willoughby was damped a little when

"And yet I have not observed that Colonel de Craye is anything of a Celtiberian Egnatius meriting fustigation

for an untimely display of wellwhitened teeth, sir: 'quicquid est, ubicunque est, quodcunque agit,

renidet:':ha? a morbus neither charming nor urbane to the general eye, however consolatory to the actor.

But this gentleman does not offend so, or I am so strangely prepossessed in his favour as to be an

Dr Middleton's persistent ha? eh? upon an honest frown of inquiry plucked an answer out of Willoughby that

was meant to be humourously scornful, and soon became apologetic under the Doctor's interrogatively

"These Irishmen," Willoughby said, "will play the professional jester as if it were an office they were born to.

We must play critic now and then, otherwise we should have them deluging us with their Joe Millerisms."

Willoughby did his duty to the joke, but the Rev. Doctor, though he wore the paternal smile of a man that has

begotten hilarity, was not perfectly propitiated, and pursued: "Nor to my apprehension is 'the man's laugh the

comment on his wit' unchallengeably new: instances of cousinship germane to the phrase will recur to you.

But it has to be noted that it was a phrase of assault; it was ostentatiously battery; and I would venture to

remind you, friend, that among the elect, considering that it is as fatally facile to spring the laugh upon a man

as to deprive him of his life, considering that we have only to condescend to the weapon, and that the more

popular necessarily the more murderous that weapon is,among the elect, to which it is your distinction to

aspire to belong, the rule holds to abstain from any employment of the obvious, the percoct, and likewise, for

your own sake, from the epitonic, the overstrained; for if the former, by readily assimilating with the

understandings of your audience, are empowered to commit assassination on your victim, the latter come

under the charge of unseemliness, inasmuch as they are a description of public suicide. Assuming, then,

manslaughter to be your pastime, and harikari not to be your bent, the phrase, to escape criminality, must

"I am in the habit of thinking it impossible, sir, that you can be in error," said Willoughby.

Both his daughter and Miss Dale, who had disapproved the waspish snap at Colonel De Craye, were in

wonderment of the art of speech which could so soothingly inform a gentleman that his behaviour had not

Willoughby was damped by what he comprehended of it for a few minutes. In proportion as he realized an

evening with his ancient admirers he was restored, and he began to marvel greatly at his folly in not giving

banquets and Balls, instead of making a solitude about himself and his bride. For solitude, thought he, is good

for the man, the man being a creature consumed by passion; woman's love, on the contrary, will only be

nourished by the reflex light she catches of you in the eyes of others, she having no passion of her own, but

simply an instinct driving her to attach herself to whatsoever is most largely admired, most shining. So

thinking, he determined to change his course of conduct, and he was happier. In the first gush of our wisdom

drawn directly from experience there is a mental intoxication that cancels the old world and establishes a new

Vernon and young Crossjay had tolerably steady work together for a couple of hours, varied by the arrival of

a plate of meat on a tray for the master, and some interrogations put to him from time to time by the boy in

reference to Miss Middleton. Crossjay made the discovery that if he abstained from alluding to Miss

Middleton's beauty he might water his dusty path with her name nearly as much as he liked. Mention of her

beauty incurred a reprimand. On the first occasion his master was wistful. "Isn't she glorious!" Crossjay

fancied he had started a sovereign receipt for blessed deviations. He tried it again, but paedagoguethunder

"Yes, only I can't understand what she means, Mr. Whitford," he excused himself "First I was not to tell; I

know I wasn't, because she said so; she quite as good as said so. Her last words were: 'Mind, Crossjay, you

know nothing about me', when I stuck to that beast of a tramp, who's a 'walking moral,' and gets money out of

"Yes, but, Mr. Whitford, now I am to tell. I'm to answer straight out to every question."

"She was in a hurry. She has it on her conscience that you may have misunderstood her, and she wishes you

Crossjay committed an unspoken resolution to the air in a violent sigh: "Ah!" and said: "If I were sure!"

Crossjay buckled to his book, invigorated by an imagination of his liege lady on the page.

After a studious interval, until the impression of his lady had subsided. he resumed: "She's so funny. She's

just like a girl, and then she's a lady, too. She's my idea of a princess. And Colonel De Craye! Wasn't he

taught dancing! When he says something funny he ducks and seems to be setting to his partner. I should like

to be as clever as her father. That is a clever man. I dare say Colonel De Craye will dance with her tonight. I

"It's a dinnerparty, not a dance," Vernon forced himself to say, to dispel that ugly vision.

"Isn't it, sir? I thought they danced after dinnerparties, Mr. Whitford, have you ever seen her run?"

"But does Miss Middleton mean me to speak out if Sir Willoughby asks me?" said Crossjay.

"But I'm positive, Mr. Whitford, he wasn't to hear of her going to the postoffice with me before breakfast.

And how did Colonel De Craye find her and bring her back, with that old Flitch? He's a man and can go

where he pleases, and I'd have found her, too. give me the chance. You know. I'm fond of Miss Dale, but

sheI'm very fond of herbut you can't think she's a girl as well. And about Miss Dale, when she says a

thing, there it is, clear. But Miss Middleton has a lot of meanings. Never mind; I go by what's inside, and I'm

"Take your chin off your hand and your elbow off the book, and fix yourself," said Vernon, wrestling with

the seduction of Crossjay's idolatry, for Miss Middleton's appearance had been preternaturally sweet on her

departure, and the next pleasure to seeing her was hearing of her from the lips of this passionate young poet.

"Remember that you please her by speaking truth," Vernon added, and laid himself open to questions upon

the truth, by which he learnt, with a perplexed sense of envy and sympathy, that the boy's idea of truth

strongly approximated to his conception of what should be agreeable to Miss Middleton.

He was lonely, bereft of the bard, when he had tucked Crossjay up in his bed and left him. Books he could

not read; thoughts were disturbing. A seat in the library and a stupid stare helped to pass the hours, and but

for the spot of sadness moving meditation in spite of his effort to stun himself, he would have borne a happy

resemblance to an idiot in the sun. He had verily no command of his reason. She was too beautiful! Whatever

she did was best. That was the refrain of the fountainsong in him; the burden being her whims, variations,

inconsistencies, wiles; her tremblings between good and naughty, that might be stamped to noble or to

terrible; her sincereness, her duplicity, her courage, cowardice, possibilities for heroism and for treachery. By

dint of dwelling on the theme, he magnified the young lady to extraordinary stature. And he had sense

enough to own that her character was yet liquid in the mould, and that she was a creature of only naturally

youthful wildness provoked to freakishness by the ordeal of a situation shrewd as any that can happen to her

sex in civilized life. But he was compelled to think of her extravagantly, and he leaned a little to the

discrediting of her, because her actual image ummanned him and was unbearable; and to say at the end of it:

"She is too beautiful! whatever she does is best," smoothed away the wrong he did her. Had it been in his

power he would have thought of her in the abstractthe stage contiguous to that which he adopted: but the

attempt was luckless; the Stagyrite would have faded in it. What philosopher could have set down that face of

The library door was opened at midnight by Miss Dale. She dosed it quietly. "You are not working, Mr.

Whitford? I fancied you would wish to hear of the evening. Professor Crooklyn arrived after all! Mrs.

Mountstuart is bewildered: she says she expected you, and that you did not excuse yourself to her, and she

cannot comprehend, et caetera. That is to say, she chooses bewilderment to indulge in the exclamatory. She

must be very much annoyed. The professor did come by the train she drove to meet!"

"He had to remain a couple of hours at the Railway Inn; no conveyance was to be found for him. He thinks he

has caught a cold, and cannot stifle his fretfulness about it. He may be as learned as Doctor Middleton; he has

not the same happy constitution. Nothing more unfortunate could have occurred; he spoilt the party. Mrs.

Mountstuart tried petting him, which drew attention to him, and put us all in his key for several awkward

minutes, more than once. She lost her head; she was unlike herself I may be presumptuous in criticizing her,

but should not the president of a dinnertable treat it like a battlefield, and let the guest that sinks descend,

and not allow the voice of a discordant, however illustrious, to rule it? Of course, it is when I see failures that

I fancy I could manage so well: comparison is prudently reserved in the other cases. I am a daring critic, no

doubt, because I know I shall never be tried by experiment. I have no ambition to be tried."

She did not notice a smile of Vernon's, and continued: "Mrs Mountstuart gave him the lead upon any subject

he chose. I thought the professor never would have ceased talking of a young lady who had been at the inn

"From the landlady, trying to comfort him. And a story of her lending shoes and stockings while those of the

young lady were drying. He has the dreadful snappish humourous way of recounting which impresses it; the

table took up the subject of this remarkable young lady, and whether she was a lady of the neighbourhood,

and who she could be that went abroad on foot in heavy rain. It was painful to me; I knew enough to be sure

"Colonel De Craye was diverting us, and he was very amusing. Mrs. Mountstuart told him afterward that he

ought to be paid salvage for saving the wreck of her party. Sir Willoughby was a little too cynical; he talked

well; what he said was good, but it was not goodhumoured; he has not the reckless indifference of Colonel

De Craye to uttering nonsense that amusement may come of it. And in the drawingroom he lost such gaiety

as he had. I was close to Mrs. Mountstuart when Professor Crooklyn approached her and spoke in my hearing

of that gentleman and that young lady. They were, you could see by his nods, Colonel De Craye and Miss

"Colonel De Craye gave her no chance, if she sought it. He courted her profusely. Behind his rattle he must

"I cannot judge. He stood with Mrs. Mountstuart a minute as we were taking leave. She looked strange. I

heard her say: 'The rogue!' He laughed. She lifted her shoulders. He scarcely opened his mouth on the way

"The thing must run its course," Vernon said, with the philosophical air which is desperation rendered

decorous. "Willoughby deserves it. A man of full growth ought to know that nothing on earth tempts

Providence so much as the binding of a young woman against her will. Those two are mutually attracted:

they're both ... They meet, and the mischief's done: both are bright. He can persuade with a word. Another

might discourse like an angel and it would be useless. I said everything I could think of, to no purpose. And

so it is: there are those attractions! just as, with her, Willoughby is the reverse, he repels. I'm in about the

same predicamentor should be if she were plighted to me. That is, for the length of five minutes; about the

space of time I should require for the formality of handing her back her freedom. How a sane man can

imagine a girl like that ... ! But if she has changed, she has changed! You can't conciliate a withered affection.

This detaining her, and tricking, and not listening, only increases her aversion; she learns the art in turn. Here

she is, detained by fresh plots to keep Dr. Middleton at the Hall. That's true, is it not?" He saw that it was.

"No, she's not to blame! She has told him her mind; he won't listen. The question then is, whether she keeps

to her word, or breaks it. It's a dispute between a conventional idea of obligation and an injury to her nature.

Which is the more dishonourable thing to do? Why, you and I see in a moment that her feelings guide her

best. It's one of the few cases in which nature may be consulted like an oracle."

"You may doubt it; I do not. I am surprised at her coming back. De Craye is a man of the world, and advised

it, I suppose. Hewell, I never had the persuasive tongue, and my failing doesn't count for much."

"The disaster is rather famous 'at first sight'. He came in a fortunate hour... for him. A pigmy's a giant if he

can manage to arrive in season. Did you not notice that there was danger, at their second or third glance? You

counselled me to hang on here, where the amount of good I do in proportion to what I have to endure is

"It was against your wishes, I know," said Laetitia, and when the words were out she feared that they were

tentative. Her delicacy shrank from even seeming to sound him in relation to a situation so delicate as Miss

The same sentiment guarded him from betraying himself, and he said: "Partly against. We both foresaw the

possiblebecause, like most prophets, we knew a little more of circumstances enabling us to see the fatal. A

pigmy would have served, but De Craye is a handsome, intelligent, pleasant fellow."

"Our modern word for it is Nature. Science condescends to speak of natural selection. Look at these! They

are both graceful and winning and witty, bright to mind and eye, made for one another, as country people say.

I can't blame him. Besides, we don't know that he's guilty. We're quite in the dark, except that we're certain

how it must end. If the chance should occur to you of giving Willoughby a word of counselit mayyou

might, without irritating him as my knowledge of his plight does, hint at your eyes being open. His insane

dread of a detective world makes him artificially blind. As soon as he fancies himself seen, he sets to work

spinning a web, and he discerns nothing else. It's generally a clever kind of web; but if it's a tangle to others

it's the same to him, and a veil as well. He is preparing the catastrophe, he forces the issue. Tell him of her

extreme desire to depart. Treat her as mad, to soothe him. Otherwise one morning he will wake a second time

... ! It is perfectly certain. And the second time it will be entirely his own fault. Inspire him with some

"I if I thought so, I would say you have better. There are two kinds of philosophy, mine and yours. Mine

Vernon meditated. "One can never quite guess what he will do, from never knowing the heat of the centre in

him which precipitates his actions: he has a great art of concealment. As to me, as you perceive, my views are

too philosophical to let me be of use to any of them. I blame only the one who holds to the bond. The sooner I

am gone!in fact, I cannot stay on. So Dr. Middleton and the Professor did not strike fire together?"

"Doctor Middleton was ready, and pursued him, but Professor Crooklyn insisted on shivering. His line of

blank verse, 'A Railway platform and a Railway inn!' became pathetic in repetition. He must have suffered."

"He arrives a propos. But remember that Fridolin sometimes contrives to escape and have the guilty scorched.

The Professor would not have suffered if he had missed his train, as he appears to be in the habit of doing.

"I am unacquainted with the professor. I had to get Mrs Mountstuart out of the way."

"She says she described him to you. 'Complexion of a sweetbread, consistency of a quenelle, grey, and like a

"Her descriptions are strikingly accurate, but she forgot to sketch his back, and all that I saw was a narrow

sloping back and a broad hat resting the brim on it. My report to her spoke of an old gentleman of dark

complexion, as the only traveller on the platform. She has faith in the efficiency of her descriptive powers,

and so she was willing to drive off immediately. The intention was a start to London. Colonel De Craye came

"My work was done; I should have been an intruder. Besides I was acting wet jacket with Mrs. Mountstuart

to get her to drive off fast, or she might have jumped out in search of her Professor herself."

"You see how easy it is to deceive one who is an artist in phrases. Avoid them, Miss Dale; they dazzle the

penetration of the composer. That is why people of ability like Mrs Mountstuart see so little; they are so bent

on describing brilliantly. However, she is kind and charitable at heart. I have been considering tonight that,

to cut this knot as it is now, Miss Middleton might do worse than speak straight out to Mrs. Mountstuart. No

one else would have such influence with Willoughby. The simple fact of Mrs. Mountstuart's knowing of it

would be almost enough. But courage would he required for that. Goodnight, Miss Dale."

Vernon pressed her hand reassuringly. He had but to look at her and review her history to think his cousin

Willoughby punished by just retribution. Indeed, for any maltreatment of the dear boy Love by man or by

woman, coming under your cognizance, you, if you be of common soundness, shall behold the retributive

Miss Dale retired thinking how like she and Vernon were to one another in the toneless condition they had

achieved through sorrow. He succeeded in masking himself from her, owing to her awe of the circumstances.

She reproached herself for not having the same devotion to the cold idea of duty as he had; and though it

provoked inquiry, she would not stop to ask why he had left Miss Middleton a prey to the sparkling colonel.

As she was passing by young Crossjay's bedroom door a face appeared. Sir Willoughby slowly emerged and

He begged to have the hour dedicated to him. "I shall be relieved by conversing with a friend."

No subterfuge crossed her mind; she thought his midnight visit to the boy's bedside a pretty feature in him;

she was full of pity, too; she yielded to the strange request, feeling that it did not become "an old woman" to

attach importance even to the public discovery of midnight interviews involving herself as one, and feeling

also that she was being treated as an old friend in the form of a very old woman. Her mind was bent on

arresting any recurrence to the project she had so frequently outlined in the tongue of innuendo, of which,

He conducted her along the corridor to the private sittingroom of the ladies Eleanor and Isabel.

She was earnestly compassionate, and a word that could not relate to her personal destinies refreshed her by

Both were seated. Apparently he would have preferred to watch her dark downcast eyelashes in silence under

sanction of his air of abstract meditation and the melancholy superinducing it. Bloodcolour was in her

cheeks; the party had inspirited her features. Might it be that lively company, an absence of economical

solicitudes, and a flourishing home were all she required to make her bloom again? The supposition was not

"It would be to boast of more charity than I know myself to possess, were I to say that I can, Sir Willoughby.

"No. I could have given that answer for you. No semblance of union should be maintained between the

"I speak as my thoughts run, and they did not know a Miss Dale so well as a dear Laetitia: my truest friend!

"Reverting to that question of deceivers: is it not your opinion that to pardon, to condone, is to corrupt society

by passing off as pure what is false? Do we not," he wore the smile of haggard playfulness of a convalescent

child the first day back to its toys, "Laetitia, do we not impose a counterfeit on the currency?"

"Apart from my loathing of deception, of falseness in any shape, upon any grounds, I hold it an imperious

duty to expose, punish, off with it. I take it to be one of the forms of noxiousness which a good citizen is

bound to extirpate. I am not myself good citizen enough, I confess, for much more than passive abhorrence. I

do not forgive: I am at heart serious and I cannot forgive:there is no possible reconciliation, there can be

He spelt the puckers of her forehead to mean that she feared he might be speaking unchristianly.

"You will find it so in all religions, my dear Laetitia: the Hindoo, the Persian, ours. It is universal; an

experience of our humanity. Deceit and sincerity cannot live together. Truth must kill the lie, or the lie will

"But that is right! that is generous!" exclaimed Laetitia, glad to approve him for the sake of escaping her

She wounded him by not supplying the expected enthusiastic asseveration of her belief in his general

He said, after a pause: "But the world is not likely to be impressed by anything not immediately gratifying it.

People change, I find: as we increase in years we cease to be the heroes we were. I myself am insensible to

change: I do not admit the charge. Except in this we will say: personal ambition. I have it no more. And what

is it when we have it? Decidedly a confession of inferiority! That is, the desire to be distinguished is an

acknowledgement of insufficiency. But I have still the craving for my dearest friends to think well of me. A

Laetitia racked her brain for the connection of his present speech with the preceding dialogue. She was

baffled, from not knowing "the heat of the centre in him", as Vernon opaquely phrased it in charity to the

"Well," said he, unappeased, "and besides the passion to excel, I have changed somewhat in the heartiness of

my thirst for the amusements incident to my station. I do not care to keep a stud I was once tempted: nor

hounds. And I can remember the day when I determined to have the best kennels and the best breed of horses

in the kingdom. Puerile! What is distinction of that sort, or of any acquisition and accomplishment? We ask!

one's self is not the greater. To seek it, owns to our smallness, in real fact; and when it is attained, what then?

My horses are good, they are admired, I challenge the county to surpass them: well? These are but my horses;

the praise is of the animals, not of me. I decline to share in it. Yet I know men content to swallow the praise

of their beasts and be semiequine. The littleness of one's fellows in the mob of life is a very strange

experience! One may regret to have lost the simplicity of one's forefathers, which could accept those and

other distinctions with a cordial pleasure, not to say pride. As, for instance, I am, as it is called, a dead shot.

'Give your acclamations, gentlemen, to my ancestors, from whom I inherited a steady hand and quick sight.'

They do not touch me. Where I do not find myselfthat I am essentially Ino applause can move me. To

speak to you as I would speak to none, admirationyou know that in my early youth I swam in flatteryI

had to swim to avoid drowning!admiration of my personal gifts has grown tasteless. Changed, therefore,

inasmuch as there has been a growth of spirituality. We are all in submission to mortal laws, and so far I have

indeed changed. I may add that it is unusual for country gentlemen to apply themselves to scientific

researches. These are, however, in the spirit of the time. I apprehended that instinctively when at College. I

forsook the classics for science. And thereby escaped the vice of domineering selfsufficiency peculiar to

classical men, of which you had an amusing example in the carriage, on the way to Mrs. Mountstuart's this

evening. Science is modest; slow, if you like; it deals with facts, and having mastered them, it masters men;

of necessity, not with a stupid, loudmouthed arrogance: words big and oddly garbed as the Pope's

bodyguard. Of course, one bows to the Infallible; we must, when his giantmercenaries level bayonets."

Sir Willoughby offered Miss Dale half a minute that she might in gentle feminine fashion acquiesce in the

implied reproof of Dr. Middleton's behaviour to him during the drive to Mrs. Mountstuart's. She did not.

Her heart was accusing Clara of having done it a wrong and a hurt. For while he talked he seemed to her to

justify Clara's feelings and her conduct: and her own reawakened sensations of injury came to the surface a

moment to look at him, affirming that they pardoned him, and pitied, but hardly wondered.

The heat of the centre in him had administered the comfort he wanted, though the conclusive accordant notes

he loved on woman's lips, that subservient harmony of another instrument desired of musicians when they

have done their soloplaying, came not to wind up the performance: not a single bar. She did not speak.

Probably his Laetitia was overcome, as he had long known her to be when they conversed; nervesubdued,

unable to deploy her mental resources or her musical. Yet ordinarily she had command of the latter.Was

she too condoling? Did a reason exist for it? Had the impulsive and desperate girl spoken out to Laetitia to

the fullest?shameless daughter of a domineering sire that she was! Ghastlier inquiry (it struck the centre of

him with a sounding ring), was Laetitia pitying him overmuch for worse than the pain of a little difference

between loversfor treason on the part of his bride? Did she know of a rival? know more than he?

When the centre of him was violently struck he was a genius in penetration. He guessed that she did know:

"So my election was for Science," he continued; "and if it makes me, as I fear, a rara avis among country

gentlemen, it unites me, puts me in the main, I may say, in the only current of progress a word sufficiently

despicable in their political jargon.You enjoyed your evening at Mrs. Mountstuart's?"

"She brings her Professor to dine here the day after tomorrow. Does it astonish you? You started."

"It was arranged at the table: you and I were separatedcruelly, I told her: she declared that we see enough

of one another, and that it was good for me that we should be separated; neither of which is true. I may not

have known what is the best for me: I do know what is good. If in my younger days I egregiously erred, that,

taken of itself alone, is, assuming me to have sense and feeling, the surer proof of present wisdom. I can

testify in person that wisdom is pain. If pain is to add to wisdom, let me suffer! Do you approve of that,

"It is felt. Those who themselves have suffered should know the benefit of the resolution."

Sir Willoughby dropped a smile on her. "I mentioned the Pope's particoloured bodyguard just now. In my

youth their singular attire impressed me. People tell me they have been reuniformed: I am sorry. They

remain one of my liveliest recollections of the Eternal City. They affected my sense of humour, always alert

in me, as you are aware. We English have humour. It is the first thing struck in us when we land on the

Continent: our risible faculties are generally active all through the tour. Humour, or the clash of sense with

novel examples of the absurd, is our characteristic. I do not condescend to boisterous displays of it. I observe,

and note the people's comicalities for my correspondence. But you have read my lettersmost of them, if not

I was with you then!I was about to saythat Swissguard reminded meyou have not been in Italy. I

have constantly regretted it. You are the very woman, you have the soul for Italy. I know no other of whom I

could say it, with whom I should not feel that she was out of place, discordant with me. Italy and Laetitia!

often have I joined you together. We shall see. I begin to have hopes. Here you have literally stagnated. Why,

a dinnerparty refreshes you! What would not travel do, and that heavenly climate! You are a reader of

history and poetry. Well, poetry! I never yet saw the poetry that expressed the tenth part of what I feel in the

presence of beauty and magnificence, and when I really meditateprofoundly. Call me a positive mind. I

feel: only I feel too intensely for poetry. By the nature of it, poetry cannot be sincere. I will have sincerity.

Whatever touches our emotions should be spontaneous, not a craft. I know you are in favour of poetry. You

would win me, if any one could. But history! there I am with you. Walking over ruins: at night: the arches of

"You would not laugh there, Sir Willoughby?" said Laetitia, rousing herself from a stupor of apprehensive

"Besides, you, I think, or I am mistaken in you"he deviated from his projected speech"you are not a

"I can understand the influence of it: I have at least a conception of the humourous, but ridicule would not

She appeared to be taking him in very strong earnest, by thus petitioning him not to laugh in the Coliseum,

and now he said: "Besides, you are one who could accommodate yourself to the society of the ladies, my

aunts. Good women, Laetitia! I cannot imagine them de trop in Italy, or in a household. I have of course

"They are excellent and most amiable ladies; I love them," said Laetitia, fervently; the more strongly excited

She read it that he designed to take her to Italy with the ladies: after giving Miss Middleton her liberty; that

was necessarily implied. And that was truly generous. In his boyhood he had been famous for his

bountifulness in scattering silver and gold. Might he not have caused himself to be misperused in later life?

Clara had spoken to her of the visit and mission of the ladies to the library: and Laetitia daringly conceived

herself to be on the certain track of his meaning, she being able to enjoy their society as she supposed him to

"Whether I be of the party or not! To Italy, Laetitia! It would give me pleasure to be with you, and it will, if I

His hand was out. She had to feign inattention or yield her own. She had not the effrontery to pretend not to

see, and she yielded it. He pressed it, and whenever it shrunk a quarter inch to withdraw, he shook it up and

down, as an instrument that had been lent him for due emphasis to his remarks. And very emphatic an

"I am unable to speak decisively on that or any subject. I am, I think you once quoted, 'tossed like a weed on

the ocean.' Of myself I can speak: I cannot speak for a second person. I am infinitely harassed. If I could cry,

'To Italy tomorrow!' Ah! ... Do not set me down for complaining. I know the lot of man. But, Laetitia, deceit!

deceit! It is a bad taste in the mouth. It sickens us of humanity. I compare it to an earthquake: we lose all our

reliance on the solidity of the world. It is a betrayal not simply of the person; it is a betrayal of humankind.

My friend! Constant friend! No, I will not despair. Yes, I have faults; I will remember them. Only,

forgiveness is another question. Yes, the injury I can forgive; the falseness never. In the interests of humanity,

Laetitia's bosom rose: her hand was detained: a lady who has yielded it cannot wrestle to have it back; those

outworks which protect her treacherously shelter the enemy aiming at the citadel when he has taken them. In

return for the silken armour bestowed on her by our civilization, it is exacted that she be soft and civil nigh up

to perishingpoint. She breathed tremulously high, saying on her topbreath: "If itit may not be so; it can

"For when I love I love," said Sir Willoughby; "my friends and my servants know that. There can be no

medium: not with me. I give all, I claim all. As I am absorbed, so must I absorb. We both cancel and create,

we extinguish and we illumine one another. The error may be in the choice of an object: it is not in the

passion. Perfect confidence, perfect abandonment. I repeat, I claim it because I give it. The selfishness of love

may be denounced: it is a part of us. My answer would be, it is an element only of the noblest of us! Love,

Laetitia! I speak of love. But one who breaks faith to drag us through the mire, who betrays, betrays and

hands us over to the world, whose prey we become identically because of virtues we were educated to think it

a blessing to possess: tell me the name for that!Again, it has ever been a principle with me to respect the

sex. But if we see women false, treacherous ... Why indulge in these abstract views, you would ask! The

world presses them on us, full as it is of the vilest specimens. They seek to pluck up every rooted principle:

they sneer at our worship: they rob us of our religion. This bitter experience of the world drives us back to the

antidote of what we knew before we plunged into it: of one ... of something we esteemed and still esteem. Is

that antidote strong enough to expel the poison? I hope so! I believe so! To lose faith in womankind is

She was thinking that, with the exception of a strain of haughtiness, he talked excellently to men, at least in

the tone of the things he meant to say; but that his manner of talking to women went to an excess in the

artificial tonguethe tutored tongue of sentimental deference of the towering male: he fluted exceedingly;

His intuitive sagacity counselled him to strive for pathos to move her. It was a task; for while he perceived

her to be not ignorant of his plight, he doubted her knowing the extent of it, and as his desire was merely to

move her without an exposure of himself, he had to compass being pathetic as it were under the impediments

of a mailed and gauntletted knight, who cannot easily heave the bosom, or show it heaving.

Moreover, pathos is a tide: often it carries the awakener of it off his feet, and whirls him over and over

armour and all in ignominious attitudes of helpless prostration, whereof he may well be ashamed in the

retrospect. We cannot quite preserve our dignity when we stoop to the work of calling forth tears. Moses had

probably to take a nimble jump away from the rock after that venerable Lawgiver had knocked the water out

However, it was imperative in his mind that he should be sure he had the power to move her.

He began; clumsily at first, as yonder gauntletted knight attempting the briny handkerchief.

"What are we! We last but a very short time. Why not live to gratify our appetites? I might really ask myself

why. All the means of satiating them are at my disposal. But no: I must aim at the highest:at that which in

my blindness I took for the highest. You know the sportsman's instinct, Laetitia; he is not tempted by the

stationary object. Such are we in youth, toying with happiness, leaving it, to aim at the dazzling and

"By paying half our lives for it and all our hopes! Yes, we gain knowledge, we are the wiser; very probably

my value surpasses now what it was when I was happier. But the loss! That youthful bloom of the soul is like

health to the body; once gone, it leaves cripples behind. Nay, my friend and precious friend, these four

fingers I must retain. They seem to me the residue of a wreck: you shall be released shortly: absolutely,

Laetitia, I have nothing else remainingWe have spoken of deception; what of being undeceived?when

one whom we adored is laid bare, and the wretched consolation of a worthy object is denied to us. No

misfortune can be like that. Were it death, we could worship still. Death would be preferable. But may you be

spared to know a situation in which the comparison with your inferior is forced on you to your disadvantage

and your loss because of your generously giving up your whole heart to the custody of some shallow,

lightminded, self! ... We will not deal in epithets. If I were to find as many bad names for the serpent as

there are spots on his body, it would be serpent still, neither better nor worse. The loneliness! And the

darkness! Our luminary is extinguished. Selfrespect refuses to continue worshipping, but the affection will

not be turned aside. We are literally in the dust, we grovel, we would fling away selfrespect if we could; we

would adopt for a model the creature preferred to us; we would humiliate, degrade ourselves; we cry for

"For pardon! when we are straining to grant it!" Laetitia murmured, and it was as much as she could do. She

remembered how in her old misery her efforts after charity had twisted her round to feel herself the sinner,

and beg forgiveness in prayer: a noble sentiment, that filled her with pity of the bosom in which it had

sprung. There was no similarity between his idea and hers, but her idea had certainly been roused by his word

"pardon", and he had the benefit of it in the moisture of her eyes. Her lips trembled, tears fell.

He had heard something; he had not caught the words, but they were manifestly favourable; her sign of

emotion assured him of it and of the success he had sought. There was one woman who bowed to him to all

eternity! He had inspired one woman with the mysterious, mandesired passion of selfabandonment,

selfimmolation! The evidence was before him. At any instant he could, if he pleased, fly to her and

He had, in fact, perhaps by sympathetic action, succeeded in striking the same springs of pathos in her which

He kissed her hand; then released it, quitting his chair to bend above her soothingly.

"Do not weep, Laetitia, you see that I do not; I can smile. Help me to bear it; you must not unman me."

She tried to stop her crying, but selfpity threatened to rain all her long years of grief on her head, and she

Fearing seriously that he had sunk his pride too low in her consideration, and had been carried farther than he

intended on the tide of pathos, he remarked: "We will speak about Crossjay tomorrow. His deceitfulness has

been gross. As I said, I am grievously offended by deception. But you are tired. Goodnight, my dear friend."

Colonel De Craye coming up from the smokingroom, met her and noticed the state of her eyelids, as he

wished her goodnight. He saw Willoughby in the room she had quitted, but considerately passed without

Our hero's review of the scene made him, on the whole, satisfied with his part in it. Of his power upon one

woman he was now perfectly sure:Clara had agonized him with a doubt of his personal mastery of any.

One was a poor feast, but the pangs of his flesh during the last few days and the latest hours caused him to

snatch at it, hungrily if contemptuously. A poor feast, she was yet a fortress, a point of succour, both shield

and lance; a cover and an impetus. He could now encounter Clara boldly. Should she resist and defy him, he

would not be naked and alone; he foresaw that he might win honour in the world's eye from his positiona

matter to be thought of only in most urgent need. The effect on him of his recent exercise in pathos was to

His attendant imps were well satisfied likewise, and danced around about his bed after the vigilant gentleman

had ceased to debate on the question of his unveiling of himself past forgiveness of her to Laetitia, and had

Clara tripped over the lawn in the early morning to Laetitia to greet her. She broke away from a colloquy with

Colonel De Craye under Sir Willoughby's windows. The colonel had been one of the bathers, and he stood

"Tell me. But the poor boy is to be expelled! He burst into Crossjay's bedroom last night and dragged the

sleeping boy out of bed to question him, and he had the truth. That is one comfort: only Crossjay is to be

driven from the Hall, because he was untruthful previouslyfor me; to serve me; really, I feel it was at my

command. Crossjay will be out of the way today, and has promised to come back at night to try to be

Clara made as if to lift her eyes in apostrophe. "Professor Crooklyn! Professor Crooklyn! I see. I did not

"By and by: I will be more than just by and by. I will practise on the trumpet: I will lecture on the greatness

of the souls of men when we know them thoroughly. At present we do but half know them, and we are unjust.

You are not deceived, Laetitia? There is to be no speaking to papa? no delusions? You have agitated me. I

feel myself a very small person indeed. I feel I can understand those who admire him. He gives me back my

word simply? clearly? without Oh, that long wrangle in scenes and letters? And it will be arranged for

papa and me to go not later than tomorrow? Never shall I be able to explain to any one how I fell into this! I

am frightened at myself when I think of it. I take the whole blame: I have been scandalous. And, dear

"I mean no unkindness; but is not the heart you allude to an alarmingly searching one?"

"Selfish it is, for I have been forgetting Crossjay. If we are going to be generous, is not Crossjay to be

forgiven? If it were only that the boy's father is away fighting for his country, endangering his life day by

day, and for a stipend not enough to support his family, we are bound to think of the boy! Poor dear silly lad!

with his 'I say, Miss Middleton, why wouldn't (some one) see my father when he came here to call on him,

and had to walk back ten miles in the rain?'I could almost fancy that did me mischief... But we have a

splendid morning after yesterday's rain. And we will be generous. Own, Laetitia, that it is possible to gild the

"You to me, I to you, he to us. Well, then, if he does, it shall be one of my heavenly days. Which is for the

"I had a governess, a learned lady, who taught me in person the picturesqueness of grumpiness. Her temper

was ever perfect, because she was never in the wrong, but I being so, she was grumpy. She carried my

iniquity under her brows, and looked out on me through it. I was a trying child."

"Yet I liked her and she liked me: we were a kind of foreground and background: she threw me into relief and

"She says of me now that I am the only creature she has loved. Who knows that I may not come to say the

"As to the sentence he pronounces, I am unable to speak, but his forehead is Rhadamanthine condemnation."

Clara looked round. "Who? I? Did you hear an echo of papa? He would never have put Rhadamanthus over

European souls, because it appears that Rhadamanthus judged only the Asiatic; so you are wrong, Miss Dale.

My father is infatuated with Mr. Whitford. What can it be? We women cannot sound the depths of scholars,

probably because their pearls have no value in our market; except when they deign to chasten an impertinent;

and Mr. Whitford stands aloof from any notice of small fry. He is deep, studious, excellent; and does it not

Laetitia's habit of wholly subservient sweetness, which was her ideal of the feminine, not yet conciliated with

her acuter character, owing to the absence of full pleasure from her life the unhealed wound she had

sustained and the cramp of a bondage of such old date as to seem ironinduced her to say, as if consenting:

"You think he is not quite at home in society?" But she wished to defend him strenuously, and as a

consequence she had to quit the selfimposed ideal of her daily acting, wherebythe case being unwonted,

very novel to herthe lady's intelligence became confused through the process that quickened it; so

sovereign a method of hoodwinking our bright selves is the acting of a part, however naturally it may come to

us! and to this will each honest autobiographical member of the animated world bear witness.

She added: "You have not found him sympathetic? He is. You fancy him brooding, gloomy? He is the

reverse, he is cheerful, he is indifferent to personal misfortune. Dr. Corney says there is no laugh like Vernon

Whitford's, and no humour like his. Latterly he certainly ... But it has not been your cruel word grumpiness.

The truth is, he is anxious about Crossjay: and about other things; and he wants to leave. He is at a

disadvantage beside very lively and careless gentlemen at present, but your 'Triton ashore' is unfair, it is ugly.

"Crossjay ought to know him, if anybody should. Mr. Whitford has defended you against me, Clara, even

since I took to calling you Clara. Perhaps when you supposed him so like your ancient governess, he was

meditating how he could aid you. Last night he gave me reasons for thinking you would do wisely to confide

in Mrs. Mountstuart. It is no longer necessary. I merely mention it. He is a devoted friend."

Colonel De Craye, after hovering near the ladies in the hope of seeing them divide, now adopted the system

As he joined them with his glittering chatter, Laetitia looked at Clara to consult her, and saw the face rosy as

The suspicion she had nursed sprung out of her arms a muscular fact on the spot.

"Advise Mr. Whitford not to waste his time in searching for Crossjay, Laetitia. Crossjay is better out of the

way today. At least, I thought so just now. Has he pocketmoney, Colonel De Craye?"

Laetitia's bosom swelled upon a mute exclamation, equivalent to: "Woman! woman! snared ever by the

sparkling and frivolous! undiscerning of the faithful, the modest and beneficent!"

The comparison was all of her own making, and she was indignant at the contrast, though to what end she

was indignant she could not have said, for she had no idea of Vernon as a rival of De Craye in the favour of a

plighted lady. But she was jealous on behalf of her sex: her sex's reputation seemed at stake, and the purity of

it was menaced by Clara's idle preference of the shallower man. When the young lady spoke so carelessly of

being like Crossjay, she did not perhaps know that a likeness, based on a similarity of their enthusiasms,

loves, and appetites, had been established between women and boys. Laetitia had formerly chafed at it,

rejecting it utterly, save when now and then in a season of bitterness she handed here and there a volatile

young lady (none but the young) to be stamped with the degrading brand. Vernon might be as philosophical

as he pleased. To her the gaiety of these two, Colonel De Craye and Clara Middleton, was distressingly

musical: they harmonized painfully. The representative of her sex was hurt by it.

She had to stay beside them: Clara held her arm. The colonel's voice dropped at times to something very like

a whisper. He was answered audibly and smoothly. The quickwitted gentleman accepted the correction: but

in immediately paying assiduous attentions to Miss Dale, in the approved intriguer's fashion, he showed

himself in need of another amounting to a reproof. Clara said: "We have been consulting, Laetitia, what is to

be done to cure Professor Crooklyn of his cold." De Craye perceived that he had taken a wrong step, and he

was mightily surprised that a lesson in intrigue should be read to him of all men. Miss Middleton's audacity

was not so astonishing: he recognized grand capabilities in the young lady. Fearing lest she should proceed

further and cut away from him his vantageground of secrecy with her, he turned the subject and was adroitly

Clara's manner of meeting Sir Willoughby expressed a timid disposition to friendliness upon a veiled inquiry,

understood by none save Laetitia, whose brain was racked to convey assurances to herself of her not having

misinterpreted him. Could there be any doubt? She resolved that there could not be; and it was upon this basis

of reason that she fancied she had led him to it. Legitimate or not, the fancy sprang from a solid foundation.

Yesterday morning she could not have conceived it. Now she was endowed to feel that she had power to

influence him, because now, since the midnight, she felt some emancipation from the spell of his physical

mastery. He did not appear to her as a different man, but she had grown sensible of being a stronger woman.

He was no more the cloud over her, nor the magnet; the cloud once heavensuffused, the magnet fatally

compelling her to sway round to him. She admired him still: his handsome air, his fine proportions, the

courtesy of his bending to Clara and touching of her hand, excused a fanatical excess of admiration on the

part of a woman in her youth, who is never the anatomist of the hero's lordly graces. But now she admired

him piecemeal. When it came to the putting of him together, she did it coldly. To compassionate him was her

utmost warmth. Without conceiving in him anything of the strange old monster of earth which had struck the

awakened girl's mind of Miss Middleton, Laetitia classed him with other men; he was "one of them". And she

did not bring her disenchantment as a charge against him. She accused herself, acknowledged the secret of

the change to be, and her youthfulness was dead:otherwise could she have given him compassion, and not

herself have been carried on the flood of it? The compassion was fervent, and pure too. She supposed he

would supplicate; she saw that Clara Middleton was pleasant with him only for what she expected of his

generosity. She grieved. Sir Willoughby was fortified by her sorrowful gaze as he and Clara passed out

Laetitia had to tell Vernon of the uselessness of his beating the house and grounds for Crossjay. Dr.

Middleton held him fast in discussion upon an overnight's classical wrangle with Professor Crooklyn, which

was to be renewed that day. The Professor had appointed to call expressly to renew it. "A fine scholar," said

As when the foreman of a sentimental jury is commissioned to inform an awful Bench exact in perspicuous

English, of a verdict that must of necessity be pronounced in favour of the hanging of the culprit, yet would

fain attenuate the crime of a palpable villain by a recommendation to mercy, such foreman, standing in the

attentive eye of a master of grammatical construction, and feeling the weight of at least three sentences on his

brain, together with a prospect of Judicial interrogation for the discovery of his precise meaning, is oppressed,

himself is put on trial, in turn, and he hesitates, he recapitulates, the fear of involution leads him to be

involved; as far as a man so posted may, he on his own behalf appeals for mercy; entreats that his indistinct

statement of preposterous reasons may be taken for understood, and would gladly, were permission to do it

credible, throw in an imploring word that he may sink back among the crowd without for the one

imperishable moment publicly swinging in his lordship's estimation:much so, moved by chivalry toward a

lady, courtesy to the recollection of a hostess, and particularly by the knowledge that his hearer would expect

with a certain frigid rigour charity of him, Dr. Middleton paused, spoke and paused: he stammered. Ladies,

he said, were famous poisoners in the Middle Ages. His opinion was, that we had a class of manufacturing

wine merchants on the watch for widows in this country. But he was bound to state the fact of his waking at

his usual hour to the minute unassailed by headache. On the other hand, this was a condition of blessedness

unanticipated when he went to bed. Mr. Whitford, however, was not to think that he entertained rancour

toward the wine. It was no doubt dispensed with the honourable intention of cheering. In point of flavour

"The test of it shall be the effect of it upon Professor Crooklyn, and his appearance in the forenoon according

to promise," Dr. Middleton came to an end with his perturbed balancings. "If I hear more of the eight or

twelve winds discharged at once upon a railway platform, and the young lady who dries herself of a

drenching by drinking brandy and water with a gentleman at a railway inn, I shall solicit your sanction to my

condemnation of the wine as antiBacchic and a counterfeit presentment. Do not misjudge me. Our hostess is

"You must contrive to stop the Professor, sir, if he should attack his hostess in that manner," said Vernon.

He murmured of objecting to be at the discretion of a butler; unless, he was careful to add, the aforesaid

functionary could boast of an University education; and even then, said he, it requires a line of ancestry to

The Rev. Doctor smothered a yawn. The repression of it caused a second one, a real monster, to come, big as

Disconcerted by this damning evidence of indigestion, his countenance showed that he considered himself to

have been too lenient to the wine of an unhusbanded hostess. He frowned terribly.

In the interval Laetitia told Vernon of Crossjay's flight for the day, hastily bidding the master to excuse him:

Dr Middleton took his arm and discharged a volley at the crotchetty scholarship of Professor Crooklyn,

whom to confute by book, he directed his march to the library. Having persuaded himself that he was

dyspeptic, he had grown irascible. He denounced all dining out, eulogized Patterne Hall as if it were his

home, and remembered he had dreamed in the nighta most humiliating sign of physical disturbance. "But

let me find a house in proximity to Patterne, as I am induced to suppose I shall," he said, "and here only am I

Laetitia went to her room. She was complacently anxious enough to prefer solitude and be willing to read.

She was more seriously anxious about Crossjay than about any of the others. For Clara would be certain to

speak very definitely, and how then could a gentleman oppose her? He would supplicate, and could she be

brought to yield? It was not to be expected of a young lady who had turned from Sir Willoughby. His

inferiors would have had a better chance. Whatever his faults, he had that element of greatness which

excludes the intercession of pity. Supplication would be with him a form of condescension. It would be seen

to be such. His was a monumental pride that could not stoop. She had preserved this image of the gentleman

for a relic in the shipwreck of her idolatry. So she mused between the lines of her book, and finishing her

reading and marking the page, she glanced down on the lawn. Dr. Middleton was there, and alone; his hands

behind his back, his head bent. His meditative pace and unwonted perusal of the turf proclaimed that a

nonsentimental jury within had delivered an unmitigated verdict upon the widow's wine.

"I want to know whether I ought to take to my heels like Crossjay, and shun the Professor," he said.

"I wish what she wishes, I am sure; but it will go badly with the boy," said Laetitia.

"Oh, well, then I'll take him," said Vernon, "I would rather. I think I can manage it."

Again the laboratory door opened. This time it shut behind Miss Middleton. She was highly flushed. Seeing

them, she shook the storm from her brows, with a dead smile; the best piece of serenity she could put on for

She walked swiftly to the portico steps and turned to the right, to avoid the laboratory windows.

Clara met Vernon on the bowlinggreen among the laurels. She asked him where her father was.

She choked. There are times when there is no medicine for us in sages, we want slaves; we scorn to

temporize, we must overbear. On she sped, as if she had made the mistake of exchanging words with a post.

The scene between herself and Willoughby was a thick mist in her head, except the burden and result of it,

Oh, men! men! They astounded the girl; she could not define them to her understanding. Their motives, their

tastes, their vanity, their tyranny, and the domino on their vanity, the baldness of their tyranny, clinched her

in feminine antagonism to brute power. She was not the less disposed to rebellion by a very present sense of

the justice of what could be said to reprove her. She had but one answer: "Anything but marry him!" It threw

her on her nature, our last and headlong advocate, who is quick as the flood to hurry us from the heights to

our level, and lower, if there be accidental gaps in the channel. For say we have been guilty of misconduct:

can we redeem it by violating that which we are and live by? The question sinks us back to the luxuriousness

of a sunny relinquishment of effort in the direction against tide. Our nature becomes ingenious in devices,

penetrative of the enemy, confidently citing its cause for being frankly elvish or worse. Clara saw a particular

way of forcing herself to be surrendered. She shut her eyes from it: the sight carried her too violently to her

escape; but her heart caught it up and huzzaed. To press the points of her fingers at her bosom, looking up to

the sky as she did, and cry: "I am not my own; I am his!" was instigation sufficient to make her heart leap up

with all her body's blush to urge it to recklessness. A despairing creature then may say she has addressed the

Happily for Miss Middleton, she had walked some minutes in her chafing fit before the falcon eye of Colonel

Vernon stood irresolute. It was decidedly not a moment for disturbing Dr. Middleton's composure. He

meditated upon a conversation, as friendly as possible, with Willoughby. Round on the frontlawn, he beheld

Willoughby and Dr. Middleton together, the latter having halted to lend attentive ear to his excellent host.

Unnoticed by them or disregarded, Vernon turned back to Laetitia, and sauntered, talking with her of things

current for as long as he could endure to listen to praise of his pure selfabnegation; proof of how well he had

disguised himself, but it smacked unpleasantly to him. His humourous intimacy with men's minds likened the

source of this distaste to the gallant allornothing of the gambler, who hates the little when he cannot have

the much, and would rather stalk from the tables cleanpicked than suffer ruin to be tickled by driblets of the

glorious fortune he has played for and lost. If we are not to be beloved, spare us the small coin of

compliments on character; especially when they compliment only our acting. It is partly endurable to win

eulogy for our stately fortitude in losing, but Laetitia was unaware that he flung away a stake; so she could

"Willoughby makes the pardoning of Crossjay conditional," he said, "and the person pleading for him has to

grant the terms. How could you imagine Willoughby would give her up! How could he! Who! ... He should,

is easily said. I was no witness of the scene between them just now, but I could have foretold the end of it; I

could almost recount the passages. The consequence is, that everything depends upon the amount of courage

she possesses. Dr. Middleton won't leave Patterne yet. And it is of no use to speak to him today. And she is

"He drank wine yesterday that did not agree with him; he can't work. Today he is looking forward to

"Not a bit of it; I am in with the rest. Say that men are to be exclaimed at. Men have a right to expect you to

know your own minds when you close on a bargain. You don't know the world or yourselves very well, it's

true; still the original error is on your side, and upon that you should fix your attention. She brought her father

here, and no sooner was he very comfortably established than she wished to dislocate him."

"No." She coloured. "I am 'in with rest'. I do not say I should have done the same. But I have the knowledge

She coloured again. She was anxious that he should know her to be not that stupid statue of Constancy in a

corner doating on the antic Deception. Reminiscences of the interview overnight made it oppressive to her to

hear herself praised for always pointing like the needle. Her newly enfranchised individuality pressed to

assert its existence. Vernon, however, not seeing this novelty, continued, to her excessive discomfort, to baste

her old abandoned image with his praises. They checked hers; and, moreover, he had suddenly conceived an

envy of her lifelong, uncomplaining, almost unaspiring, constancy of sentiment. If you know lovers when

they have not reason to be blissful, you will remember that in this mood of admiring envy they are given to

fits of uncontrollable maundering. Praise of constancy, moreover, smote shadowily a certain inconstant,

enough to seem to ruffle her smoothness and do no hurt. He found his consolation in it, and poor Laetitia

writhed. Without designing to retort, she instinctively grasped at a weapon of defence in further exalting his

devotedness; which reduced him to cast his head to the heavens and implore them to partially enlighten her.

Nevertheless, maunder he must; and he recurred to it in a way so utterly unlike himself that Laetitia stared in

his face. She wondered whether there could be anything secreted behind this everlasting theme of constancy.

He took her awakened gaze for a summons to asseverations of sincerity, and out they came. She would have

fled from him, but to think of flying was to think how little it was that urged her to fly, and yet the thought of

remaining and listening to praises undeserved and no longer flattering, was a torture.

"From some simulacrum of me, then. And that will show you how little you require support."

"Oh!pardon me. But you inflict the sensations of a boy, with a dose of honesty in him, called up to receive

"And how do you suppose she feels who has a crown of Queen o" the May forced on her head when she is

He rejected her analogy, and she his. They could neither of them bring to light the circumstances which made

one another's admiration so unbearable. The more he exalted her for constancy, the more did her mind

become bent upon critically examining the object of that imagined virtue; and the more she praised him for

possessing the spirit of perfect friendliness, the fiercer grew the passion in him which disdained the

imputation, hissing like a heated ironbar that flings the waterdrops to steam. He would none of it; would

Amiable though they were, and mutually affectionate, they came to a stop in their walk, longing to separate,

and not seeing how it was to be done, they had so knit themselves together with the pelting of their

"I think it is time for me to run home to my father for an hour," said Laetitia.

Good progress was made to the disgarlanding of themselves thus far; yet, an acutely civilized pair, the

abruptness of the transition from floweriness to commonplace affected them both, Laetitia chiefly, as she had

"Another title is customary where stiff opinions are concerned. Perhaps by and by you will learn your

"You? And it would not be egoism," added Laetitia, revealing to him at the same instant as to herself that she

He heard the intruding voice, but he was bent on rubbing out the cloudy letters Laetitia had begun to spell,

and he stammered, in a tone of matteroffact: "Just that and no better"; then turned to Mrs. Mountstuart

"Or are you resolved you will never see Professor Crooklyn when you look on him?" said the great lady.

Vernon bowed to the Professor and apologized to him shufflingly and rapidly, incoherently, and with a red

After lecturing Vernon for his abandonment of her yesterday evening, and flouting his protestations, she

returned to the business of the day. "We walked from the lodgegates to see the park and prepare ourselves

for Dr. Middleton. We parted last night in the middle of a controversy and are rageing to resume it. Where is

"We," she said, "are for modern English scholarship, opposed to the champion of German."

"Oh! We," she corrected the error serenely, "are for German scholarship opposed to English."

"My dear Professor, you have in Dr. Middleton a match for you in conscientious pugnacity, and you will not

waste it upon me. There, there they are; there he is. Mr. Whitford will conduct you. I stand away from the

Mrs. Mountstuart fell back to Laetitia, saying: "He pores over a little inexactitude in phrases, and pecks at it

Professor Crooklyn's attitude and air were so well described that Laetitia could have laughed.

"These mighty scholars have their flavour," the great lady hastened to add, lest her younger companion

should be misled to suppose that they were not valuable to a governing hostess: "their shadowfights are

ridiculous, but they have their flavour at a table. Last night, no: I discard all mention of last night. We failed:

as none else in this neighbourhood could fail, but we failed. If we have among us a cormorant devouring

young lady who drinks up all theha!brandy and waterof our inns and occupies all our flys, why, our

condition is abnormal, and we must expect to fail: we are deprived of accommodation for accidental

circumstances. How Mr. Whitford could have missed seeing Professor Crooklyn! And what was he doing at

"Your portrait of Professor Crooklyn was too striking, Mrs Mountstuart, and deceived him by its excellence.

"As for Dr. Middleton," Mrs. Mountstuart diverged from her inquiry, "he will swell the letters of my

"I caught it of him yesterday at my dinnertable in my distress, and must pass it off as a form of mine, while

it lasts. I talked Dr. Middleton half the dreary night through to my pillow. Your candid opinion, my dear,

come! As for me, I don't hesitate. We seemed to have sat down to a solitary performance on the bassviol.

We were positively an assembly of insects during thunder. My very soul thanked Colonel De Craye for his

diversions, but I heard nothing but Dr. Middleton. It struck me that my table was petrified, and every one sat

"Really? You delight me. Who knows but that my guests were sincere in their congratulations on a

thoroughly successful evening? I have fallen to this, you see! And I know, wretched people! that as often as

not it is their way of condoling with one. I do it myself: but only where there have been amiable efforts. But

imagine my being congratulated for that!Goodmorning, Sir Willoughby.The worst offender! and I am

in no pleasant mood with him," Mrs. Mountstuart said aside to Laetitia, who drew back, retiring.

Sir Willoughby came on a step or two. He stopped to watch Laetitia's figure swimming to the house.

So, as, for instance, beside a stream, when a flower on the surface extends its petals drowning to subside in

the clear still water, we exercise our privilege to be absent in the charmed contemplation of a beautiful natural

"Good morning, my dear Mrs. Mountstuart," Sir Willoughby wakened himself to address the great lady.

"Letty Dale? Oh, if you call that flying. Possibly to renew a close conversation with Vernon Whitford, that I

cut short. You frightened me with your 'Shepherdstellme' air and tone. Lead me to one of your

gardenseats: out of hearing to Dr. Middleton, I beg. He mesmerizes me, he makes me talk Latin. I was

curiously susceptible last night. I know I shall everlastingly associate him with an abortive entertainment and

"She talked with you, and no doubt she talked well. We did not mix. The yeast was bad. You shot darts at

Colonel De Craye: you tried to sting. You brought Dr. Middleton down on you. Dear me, that man is a

"A very pretty summer bower," said Mrs. Mountstuart, seating herself "Well, my dear Sir Willoughby,

preferences, preferences are not to be accounted for, and one never knows whether to pity or congratulate,

"Your 'dainty rogue in porcelain' will be at your beckyou lunch with us?before you leave."

Like one resuming his instrument to take up the melody in a concerted piece, he said: "I thought Laetitia Dale

"I want a new description of her. You know, I collect your mottoes and sentences."

"It seems to me she is coming three parts out of her shell, and wearing it as a hood for convenience."

"Ay, my good Sir Willoughby, but are we so very admirable and exact? Are we never to know our own

He produced a polysyllabic sigh, like those manyjointed compounds of poets in happy languages, which are

copious in a single expression: "Mine is known to me. It always has been. Cleverness in women is not

uncommon. Intellect is the pearl. A woman of intellect is as good as a Greek statue; she is divinely wrought,

"The rarity of it: and it is not mere intellect, it is a sympathetic intellect; or else it is an intellect in perfect

accord with an intensely sympathetic disposition;the rarity of it makes it too precious to be parted with

He shrugged. "For the rest, psychological affinities may exist coincident with and entirely independent of

"Well, that is not the raving of passion, certainly," said Mrs Mountstuart, "and it sounds as if it were a

comfortable doctrine for men. On that plea, you might all of you be having Aspasia and a wife. We saw your

fair Middleton and Colonel de Craye at a distance as we entered the park. Professor Crooklyn is under some

The readiness and the doublebearing of the reply struck her comic sense with awe.

"The Professor must hear that. He insists on the fly, and the inn, and the wet boots, and the warming mixture,

"'What more likely?' It's extremely philosophical. Coincident with a pursuit of the psychological affinities."

"Professor Crooklyn will hardly descend, I suppose, from his classical altitudes to lay his hallucinations

By harping on Laetitia, he had emboldened Mrs. Mountstuart to lift the curtain upon Clara. It was offensive

to him, but the injury done to his pride had to be endured for the sake of his general plan of selfprotection.

"Simply desirous to save my guests from annoyance of any kind", he said. "Dr Middleton can look 'Olympus

"Don't. I see him. That look! It is Dictionarybitten! Angry, homed Dictionary!an apparition of Dictionary

"What the man must be in a storm! Speak as you please of yourself: you are a true and chivalrous knight to

dread it for her. But now, candidly, how is it you cannot condescend to a little management? Listen to an old

friend. You are too lordly. No lover can afford to be incomprehensible for half an hour. Stoop a little.

Sermonizings are not to be thought of. You can govern unseen. You are to know that I am one who

disbelieves in philosophy in love. I admire the look of it, I give no credit to the assumption. I rather like

lovers to be out at times: it makes them picturesque, and it enlivens their monotony. I perceived she had a

"Clara? The wildness of an infant!" said Willoughby, paternally, musing over an inward shiver. "You saw her

at a distance just now, or you might have heard her laughing. Horace diverts her excessively."

"I owe him my eternal gratitude for his behaviour last night. She was one of my bright faces. Her laughter

was delicious; rain in the desert! It will tell you what the load on me was, when I assure you those two were

merely a spectacle to mepoints I scored in a lost game. And I know they were witty."

"Not the highest description of instrument. However, they amuse me. I like to hear them when I am in the

"That vein should be more at command with you, my friend. You can be perfect, if you like."

Willoughby leaned to her, bowing languidly. He was easier in his pain for having hoodwinked the lady. She

was the outer world to him; she could tune the world's voice; prescribe which of the two was to be pitied,

himself or Clara; and he did not intend it to be himself, if it came to the worst. They were far away from that

"Probably a man's power of putting on a face is not equal to a girl's. I detest petty dissensions. Probably I

show it when all is not quite smooth. Little fits of suspicion vex me. It is a weakness, not to play them off, I

know. Men have to learn the arts which come to women by nature. I don't sympathize with suspicion, from

His eyebrows shot up. That illomened man Flitch had sidled round by the bushes to within a few feet of

him. Flitch primarily defended himself against the accusation of drunkenness, which was hurled at him to

account for his audacity in trespassing against the interdict; but he admitted that he had taken "something

short" for a fortification in visiting scenes where he had once been happyat Christmastide, when all the

servants, and the butler at head, grey old Mr. Chessington, sat in rows, toasting the young heir of the old Hall

in the old port wine! Happy had he been then, before ambition for a shop, to be his own master and an

independent gentleman, had led him into his quagmire:to look back envying a dog on the old estate, and

sigh for the smell of Patterne stables: sweeter than Arabia, his drooping nose appeared to say.

He held up close against it something that imposed silence on Sir Willoughby as effectively as a cunning

exordium in oratory will enchain mobs to swallow what is not complimenting them; and this he displayed

secure in its being his licence to drivel his abominable pathos. Sir Willoughby recognized Clara's purse. He

understood at once how the must have come by it: he was not so quick in devising a means of stopping the

tale. Flitch foiled him. "Intact," he replied to the question: "What have you there?" He repeated this grand

word. And then he turned to Mrs. Mountstuart to speak of Paradise and Adam, in whom he saw the prototype

of himself: also the Hebrew people in the bondage of Egypt, discoursed of by the clergymen, not without a

"Sorrows have done me one good, to send me attentive to church, my lady," said Flitch, "when I might have

gone to London, the coachman's home, and been driving some honourable family, with no great advantage to

my morals, according to what I hear of. And a purse found under the seat of a fly in London would have a

"Put it down on that chair; inquiries will be made, and you will see Sir Willoughby," said Mrs. Mountstuart.

Flitch halted; he was very regretful of the termination of his feast of pathos, and he wished to relate the

finding of the purse, but he could not encounter Mrs. Mountstuart's look; he slouched away in very close

"It's my belief that naturalness among the common people has died out of the kingdom," she said.

Her vigilant considerateness had dealt the sensitive gentleman a shock, plainly telling him she had her ideas

of his actual posture. Nor was he unhurt by her superior acuteness and her display of authority on his

He said, boldly, as he weighed the purse, half tossing it: "It's not unlike Clara's."

He feared that his lips and cheeks were twitching, and as he grew aware of a glassiness of aspect that would

"If it were better filled, Sir Willoughby, your old scheme might be arranged. The parties do not appear so

unwilling. Professor Crooklyn and I came on them just now rather by surprise, and I assure you their heads

"Now," said Willoughby, very animatedly, "question Clara. Now, do, my dear Mrs. Mountstuart, do speak to

Clara on that head; she will convince you I have striven quite recently against myself, if you like. I have

instructed her to aid me, given her the fullest instructions, carte blanche. She cannot possibly have a doubt. I

may look to her to remove any you may entertain from your mind on the subject. I have proposed, seconded,

and chorussed it, and it will not be arranged. If you expect me to deplore that fact, I can only answer that my

actions are under my control, my feelings are not. I will do everything consistent with the duties of a man of

honour perpetually running into fatal errors because he did not properly consult the dictates of those feelings

at the right season. I can violate them: but I can no more command them than I can my destiny. They were

crushed of old, and so let them be now. Sentiments we won't discuss; though you know that sentiments have

a bearing on social life: are factors, as they say in their later jargon. I never speak of mine. To you I could. It

is not necessary. If old Vernon, instead of flattening his chest at a desk, had any manly ambition to take part

in public affairs, she would be the woman for him. I have called her my Egeria. She would be his Cornelia.

One could swear of her that she would have noble offspring!But old Vernon has had his disappointment,

and will moan over it up to the end. And she? So it appears. I have tried; yes, personally: without effect. In

other matters I may have influence with her: not in that one. She declines. She will live and die Laetitia Dale.

We are alone: I confess to you, I love the name. It's an old song in my ears. Do not be too ready with a name

for me. Believe meI speak from my experience hithertothere is a fatality in these things. I cannot

"Which is the poor girl at present?" said Mrs. Mountstuart, cool in a mystification.

"And though she will tell you that I have authorized and Clara Middletondone as much as man can to

institute the union you suggest, she will own that she is conscious of the presence of thisfatality, I call it

for want of a better title between us. It drives her in one direction, me in anotheror would, if I submitted to

"Are we laying hold of a third poor girl?" said Mrs. Mountstuart. "Ah! I remember. And I remember we used

to call it playing fast and loose in those days, not fatality. It is very strange. It may be that you were

unblushingly courted in those days, and excusable; and we all supposed ... but away you went for your tour."

"My mother's medical receipt for me. Partially it succeeded. She was for grand marriages: not I. I could

make, I could not be, a sacrifice. And then I went in due time to Dr. Cupid on my own account. She has the

kind of attraction. . . But one changes! On revient toujours. First we begin with a liking; then we give

ourselves up to the passion of beauty: then comes the serious question of suitableness of the mate to match

us; and perhaps we discover that we were wiser in early youth than somewhat later. However, she has beauty.

Now, Mrs Mountstuart, you do admire her. Chase the idea of the 'dainty rogue' out of your view of her: you

admire her: she is captivating; she has a particular charm of her own, nay, she has real beauty."

Mrs. Mountstuart fronted him to say: "Upon my word, my dear Sir Willoughby, I think she has it to such a

degree that I don't know the man who could hold out against her if she took the field. She is one of the

women who are dead shots with men. Whether it's in their tongues or their eyes, or it's an effusion and an

"Dear me!" she exclaimed. "I noticed a change in Letty Dale last night; and today. She looked fresher and

younger; extremely well: which is not what I can say for you, my friend. Fatalizing is not good for the

"Be careful," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "You have got a sentimental tone. You talk of 'feelings crushed of old'.

It is to a woman, not to a man that you speak, but that sort of talk is a way of making the ground slippery. I

listen in vain for a natural tongue; and when I don't hear it, I suspect plotting in men. You show your

underteeth too at times when you draw in a breath, like a condemned highcaste Hindoo my husband took

me to see in a jail in Calcutta, to give me some excitement when I was pining for England. The creature did it

regularly as he breathed; you did it last night, and you have been doing it today, as if the air cut you to the

quick. You have been spoilt. You have been too much anointed. What I've just mentioned is a sign with me

"Yes, you laugh sourly, to look at," said she. "Mountstuart told me that the muscles of the mouth betray men

"But, ma'am, I shall not break my word; I shall not, not; I intend, I have resolved to keep it. I do not fatalize,

let my complexion be black or white. Despite my resemblance to a highcaste malefactor of the Calcutta

He saluted her fingerends. "Despite the extraordinary display of teeth, you will find me go to execution with

"You have told me that you wept to read of one: like him, then. My principles have not changed, if I have.

When I was younger, I had an idea of a wife who would be with me in my thoughts as well as aims: a woman

with a spirit of romance, and a brain of solid sense. I shall sooner or later dedicate myself to a public life; and

shall, I suppose, want the counsellor or comforter who ought always to be found at home. It may be

unfortunate that I have the ideal in my head. But I would never make rigorous demands for specific qualities.

The cruellest thing in the world is to set up a living model before a wife, and compel her to copy it. In any

case, here we are upon the road: the die is cast. I shall not reprieve myself. I cannot release her. Marriage

represents facts, courtship fancies. She will be cured byandby of that coveting of everything that I do, feel,

think, dream, imagine . . . tatatata ad infinitum. Laetitia was invited here to show her the example of a

fixed charactersolid as any concrete substance you would choose to build on, and not a whit the less

"Tatatata ad infinitum. You need not tell me you have a design in all that you do, Willoughby Patterne."

"You smell the autocrat? Yes, he can mould and govern the creatures about him. His toughest rebel is

"If you will. She makes a mouth at porcelain. Toujours la porcelaine! For me, her pettishness is one of her

"Sir Willoughby, in any case, to quote you, here we are all upon the road, and we must act as if events were

going to happen; and I must ask her to help me on the subject of my weddingpresent, for I don't want to

"Then porcelain it shall not be. I mean to consult her; I have come determined upon a chat with her. I think I

understand. But she produces false impressions on those who don't know you both. 'I shall have that porcelain

back,' says Lady Busshe to me, when we were shaking hands last night: 'I think,' says she, 'it should have

been the Willow Pattern.' And she really said: 'He's in for being jilted a second time!'"

Sir Willoughby restrained a bound of his body that would have sent him up some feet into the air. He felt his

"Rather than that it should fan upon her!" ejaculated he, correcting his resemblance to the highcaste culprit

"But you know Lady Busshe," said Mrs. Mountstuart, genuinely solicitous to ease the proud man of his pain.

She could see through him to the depth of the skin, which his fencing sensitiveness vainly attempted to cover

as it did the heart of him. "Lady Busshe is nothing without her flights, fads, and fancies. She has always

insisted that you have an unfortunate nose. I remember her saying on the day of your majority, it was the nose

"She trumpets you. She carries Lady Culmer with her too, and you may expect a visit of nods and hints and

pots of alabaster. They worship you: you are the hope of England in their eyes, and no woman is worthy of

you: but they are a pair of fatalists, and if you begin upon Letty Dale with them, you might as well forbid

your banns. They will be all over the country exclaiming on predestination and marriages made in heaven."

"Bring her to me, and save me from the polyglot," said Mrs Mountstuart, in afright at Dr. Middleton's manner

The leisure he loved that he might debate with his genius upon any next step was denied to Willoughby: he

had to place his trust in the skill with which he had sown and prepared Mrs Mountstuart's understanding to

meet the girlbeautiful abhorred that she was! detested darling! thing to squeeze to death and throw to the

He had to risk it; and at an hour when Lady Busshe's prognostic grievously impressed his intense

As it happened that Dr. Middleton's notion of a disagreeable duty in colloquy was to deliver all that he

contained, and escape the listening to a syllable of reply, Willoughby withdrew his daughter from him

"I shall be very happy," Clara replied, and put on a new face. An imperceptible nervous shrinking was met by

another force in her bosom, that pushed her to advance without a sign of reluctance. She seemed to glitter.

Dr Middleton laid his hand over Willoughby's shoulder, retiring on a bow before the great lady of the district.

He blew and said: "An opposition of female instincts to masculine intellect necessarily creates a

"The cat," said Dr. Middleton, taking breath for a sentence, "that humps her back in the figure of the letter H,

or a Chinese bridge has given the dog her answer and her reasons, we may presume: but he that undertakes to

translate them into human speech might likewise venture to propose an addition to the alphabet and a

continuation of Homer. The one performance would be not more wonderful than the other. Daughters,

Willoughby, daughters! Above most human peccancies, I do abhor a breach of faith. She will not be guilty of

that. I demand a cheerful fulfilment of a pledge: and I sigh to think that I cannot count on it without

"She shall be. Why, she is as good as married. She is at the altar. She is in her house. She iswhy, where is

she not? She has entered the sanctuary. She is out of the market. This maenad shriek for freedom would

happily entitle her to the Republican cap the Phrygianin a revolutionary Parisian procession. To me it

has no meaning; and but that I cannot credit child of mine with mania, I should be in trepidation of her wits."

Sir Willoughby's livelier fears were pacified by the information that Clara had simply emitted a cry. Clara

had once or twice given him cause for starting and considering whether to think of her sex differently or

condemningly of her, yet he could not deem her capable of fully unbosoming herself even to him, and under

excitement. His idea of the cowardice of girls combined with his ideal of a waxwork sex to persuade him that

though they are often (he had experienced it) wantonly desperate in their acts, their tongues are curbed by

rosy prudency. And this was in his favour. For if she proved speechless and stupid with Mrs. Mountstuart, the

lady would turn her over, and beat her flat, beat her angular, in fine, turn her to any shape, despising her, and

cordially believe him to be the model gentleman of Christendom. She would fill in the outlines he had

sketched to her of a picture that he had small pride in by comparison with his early vision of a

fortunefavoured, triumphing squire, whose career is like the sun's, intelligibly lordly to all comprehensions.

Not like your model gentleman, that has to be expoundeda thing for abstract esteem! However, it was the

choice left to him. And an alternative was enfolded in that. Mrs. Mountstuart's model gentleman could marry

either one of two women, throwing the other overboard. He was bound to marry: he was bound to take to

himself one of them: and whichever one he selected would cast a lustre on his reputation. At least she would

rescue him from the claws of Lady Busshe, and her owl's hoot of "Willow Pattern", and her hag's shriek of

"twice jilted". That flying infant Willoughbyhis unprotected little incorporeal omnipresent Self (not

thought of so much as passionately felt for) would not be scoffed at as the luckless with women. A fall

indeed from his original conception of his name of fame abroad! But Willoughby had the high consolation of

knowing that others have fallen lower. There is the fate of the devils to comfort us, if we are driven hard. "For

one of your pangs another bosom is racked by ten", we read in the solacing Book.

With all these nice calculations at work, Willoughby stood above himself, contemplating his active

machinery, which he could partly criticize but could not stop, in a singular wonderment at the aims and

schemes and tremours of one who was handsome, manly, acceptable in the world's eyes: and had he not loved

himself most heartily he would have been divided to the extent of repudiating that urgent and excited half of

his being, whose motions appeared as those of a body of insects perpetually erecting and repairing a structure

of extraordinary pettiness. He loved himself too seriously to dwell on the division for more than a minute or

so. But having seen it, and for the first time, as he believed, his passion for the woman causing it became

A glance behind him, as he walked away with Dr. Middleton, showed Clara, cunning creature that she was,

airily executing her malicious graces in the preliminary courtesies with Mrs. Mountstuart.

Clara presented an open countenance with a dim interrogation on the forehead. "Yes?" she said,

"You were one of my bright faces last night. I was in love with you. Delicate vessels ring sweetly to a

fingernail, and if the wit is true, you answer to it; that I can see, and that is what I like. Most of the people

one has at a table are drums. A rubadubdub on them is the only way to get a sound. When they can be

"These Irish or half Irishmen are my taste. If they're not politicians, mind; I mean Irish gentlemen. I will

never have another dinnerparty without one. Our men's tempers are uncertain. You can't get them to forget

themselves. And when the wine is in them the nature comes out, and they must be buffetting, and up start

politics, and goodbye to harmony! My husband, I am sorry to say, was one of those who have a long

account of ruined dinners against them. I have seen him and his friends red as the roast and white as the

boiled with wrath on a popular topic they had excited themselves over, intrinsically not worth a snap of the

fingers. In London!" exclaimed Mrs. Mountstuart, to aggravate the charge against her lord in the Shades.

"But town or country, the table should be sacred. I have heard women say it is a plot on the side of the men to

teach us our littleness. I don't believe they have a plot. It would be to compliment them on a talent. I believe

they fall upon one another blindly, simply because they are full; which is, we are told, the preparation for the

fighting Englishman. They cannot eat and keep a truce. Did you notice that dreadful Mr. Capes?"

"The gentleman who frequently contradicted papa? But Colonel De Craye was good enough to relieve us."

"You did not hear him? He took advantage of an interval when Mr. Capes was breathing after a paean to his

friend, the GovernorI thinkof one of the presidencies, to say to the lady beside him: 'He was a

wonderful administrator and great logician; he married an AngloIndian widow, and soon after published a

"Mr. Capes granted the widow, but declared he had never seen the pamphlet in favour of Suttee, and

"Now I do remember:which must have delighted the colonel. And Mr. Capes retired from the front upon a

repetition of 'in toto, in toto'. As if 'in toto' were the language of a dinnertable! But what will ever teach

these men? Must we import Frenchmen to give them an example in the art of conversation, as their

grandfathers brought over marquises to instruct them in salads? And our young men too! Women have to take

to the huntingfield to be able to talk with them, and be on a par with their grooms. Now, there was

Willoughby Patterne, a prince among them formerly. Now, did you observe him last night? did you notice

how, instead of conversing, instead of assisting meas he was bound to do doubly owing to the defection of

Vernon Whitford: a thing I don't yet comprehend there he sat sharpening his lower lip for cutting remarks.

And at my best man! at Colonel De Craye! If he had attacked Mr. Capes, with his Governor of Bomby, as the

man pronounces it, or Colonel Wildjohn and his Protestant Church in Danger, or Sir Wilson Pettifer harping

on his Monarchical Republic, or any other! No, he preferred to be sarcastic upon friend Horace, and he had

the worst of it. Sarcasm is so silly! What is the gain if he has been smart? People forget the epigram and

remember the other's good temper. On that field, my dear, you must make up your mind to be beaten by

'friend Horace'. I have my prejudices and I have my prepossessions, but I love good temper, and I love wit,

and when I see a man possessed of both, I set my cap at him, and there's my flat confession, and highly

Clara put up a mouth empty of words: she was quite one with her. Mrs. Mountstuart pressed her hand. "When

one does get intimate with a dainty rogue!" she said. "You forgive me all that, for I could vow that

Clara looked soft, kind, bright, in turns, and clouded instantly when the lady resumed: "A friend of my own

sex, and young, and a close neighbour, is just what I would have prayed for. And I'll excuse you, my dear, for

not being so anxious about the friendship of an old woman. But I shall be of use to you, you will find. In the

first place, I never tap for secrets. In the second, I keep them. Thirdly, I have some power. And fourth, every

young married woman has need of a friend like me. Yes, and Lady Patterne heading all the county will be the

stronger for my backing. You don't look so mighty well pleased, my dear. Speak out."

"I tell you, I am very fond of Willoughby, but I saw the faults of the boy and see the man's. He has the pride

of a king, and it's a pity if you offend it. He is prodigal in generosity, but he can't forgive. As to his own

errors, you must be blind to them as a Saint. The secret of him is, that he is one of those excessively civilized

creatures who aim at perfection: and I think he ought to be supported in his conceit of having attained it; for

the more men of that class, the greater our influence. He excels in manly sports, because he won't be excelled

in anything, but as men don't comprehend his fineness, he comes to us; and his wife must manage him by that

key. You look down at the idea of managing. It has to be done. One thing you may be assured of, he will be

proud of you. His wife won't be very much enamoured of herself if she is not the happiest woman in the

world. You will have the best horses, the best dresses, the finest jewels in England; and an incomparable

cook. The house will be changed the moment you enter it as Lady Patterne. And, my dear, just where he is,

with all his graces, deficient of attraction, yours will tell. The sort of Othello he would make, or Leontes, I

don't know, and none of us ever needs to know. My impression is, that if even a shadow of a suspicion flitted

across him, he is a sort of man to doubledye himself in guilt by way of vengeance in anticipation of an

imagined offence. Not uncommon with men. I have heard strange stories of them: and so will you in your

time to come, but not from me. No young woman shall ever be the sourer for having been my friend. One

word of advice now we are on the topic: never play at counterstrokes with him. He will be certain to

outstroke you, and you will be driven further than you meant to go. They say we beat men at that game; and

so we do, at the cost of beating ourselves. And if once we are started, it is a racecourse ending on a

precipiceover goes the winner. We must be moderately slavish to keep our place; which is given us in

appearance; but appearances make up a remarkably large part of life, and far the most comfortable, so long as

we are discreet at the right moment. He is a man whose pride, when hurt, would run his wife to perdition to

solace it. If he married a troublesome widow, his pamphlet on Suttee would be out within the year. Vernon

Whitford would receive instructions about it the first frosty moon. You like Miss Dale?"

"I have tried it. She is not one bit to blame. I can see how it is that she misunderstands me: or justly

"The hero of two women must die and be wept over in common before they can appreciate one another. You

"I do sometimes. Feet will be walking over ones grave, wherever it lies. Be sure of this: Willoughby Patterne

"He means to be devoted to you. He has been accustomed to have women hanging around him like votive

"You cannot: of course not: any one could see that at a glance. You are all the sweeter to me for not being

"Presently. Don't threaten me with confidences. Eloquence is a terrible thing in woman. I suspect, my dear,

"Let me tell you one thing about jealous menwhen they are not blackamoors married to disobedient

daughters. I speak of our civil creature of the drawingrooms: and lovers, mind, not husbands: two distinct

species, married or not:they're rarely given to jealousy unless they are flighty themselves. The jealousy

fixes them. They have only to imagine that we are for some fun likewise and they grow as deferential as my

footman, as harmless as the sportsman whose gun has burst. Ah! my fair Middleton, am I pretending to teach

you? You have read him his lesson, and my table suffered for it last night, but I bear no rancour."

"Not if I tell you that you have driven the poor man to try whether it would be possible for him to give you

"When men love stale instead of fresh, withered better than blooming, excellence in the abstract rather than

the palpable. With their idle prate of feminine intellect, and a grotto nymph, and a mother of Gracchi! Why,

he must think me dazed with admiration of him to talk to me! One listens, you know. And he is one of the

men who cast a kind of physical spell on you while he has you by the ear, until you begin to think of it by

talking to somebody else. I suppose there are clever people who do see deep into the breast while dialogue is

in progress. One reads of them. No, my dear, you have very cleverly managed to show him that it isn't at all

possible: he can't. And the real cause for alarm, in my humble opinion, is lest your amiable foil should have

been a trifle, as he would say, deceived, too much in earnest, led too far. One may reprove him for not being

wiser, but men won't learn without groaning that they are simply weapons taken up to be put down when

done with. Leave it to me to compose him.Willoughby can't give you up. I'm certain he has tried; his pride

has been horridly wounded. You were shrewd, and he has had his lesson. If these little rufflings don't come

before marriage they come after; so it's not time lost; and it's good to be able to look back on them. You are

"Can you, Mrs. Mountstuart, can you think I would be so heartlessly treacherous?"

"Be honest, fair Middleton, and answer me: Can you say you had not a corner of an idea of producing an

Clara checked the instinct of her tongue to defend her reddening cheeks, with a sense that she was

disintegrating and crumbling, but she wanted this lady for a friend, and she had to submit to the conditions,

"That will do. Conscience blushes. One knows it by the conflagration. Don't be hard on yourself.. there you

are in the other extreme. That blush of yours would count with me against any quantity of evidenceall the

"Flitch has been here with it. Willoughby has it. You will ask him for it; he will demand payment: you will be

a couple of yards" length or so of cramoisy: and there ends the episode, nobody killed, only a poor man

melancholywounded, and I must offer him my hand to mend him, vowing to prove to him that Suttee was

properly abolished. Well, and now to business. I said I wanted to sound you. You have been overdone with

porcelain. Poor Lady Busshe is in despair at your disappointment. Now, I mean my weddingpresent to be to

"I shall fall in your esteem. Perhaps you will help me. No one else can. I am a prisoner: I am compelled to

continue this imposture. Oh, I shun speaking much: you object to it and I dislike it: but I must endeavour to

"Tuttut; we are all unworthy, cross our arms, bow our heads; and accept the honours. Are you playing

"The church door is as binding as the altar to an honourable girl. What have you been about? Since I am in

for confidences, half ones won't do. We must have honourable young women as well as men of honour. You

can't imagine he is to be thrown over now, at this hour? What have you against him? come!"

Mrs. Mountstuart grimaced transiently. "That is no answer. The cause!" she said. "What has he done?

"Suddenly and by degrees? I suppose it's useless to ask for a head. But if all this is true, you ought not to be

"To me too! I can understand little differences, little whims, caprices: we don't settle into harness for a tap on

the shoulder as a man becomes a knight: but to break and bounce away from an unhappy gentleman at the

church door is either madness or it's one of the things without a name. You think you are quite sure of

"Dear me!Yes, yes, but that tone of sorrowful conviction is often a trick, it's not new: and I know that

assumption of plain sense to pass off a monstrosity." Mrs. Mountstuart struck her lap. "Soh! but I've had to

rack my brain for it: feminine disgust? You have been hearing imputations of his past life? moral character?

No? Circumstances might make him behave unkindly, not unhandsomely: and we have no claim over a man's

"Many a very good agreement is founded on disagreeing. It's to be regretted that you are not portionless. If

you had been, you would have made very little of disagreeing. You are just as much bound in honour as if

Mrs. Mountstuart rocked herself "My poor Sir Willoughby! What a fate!And I took you for a clever girl!

Why, I have been admiring your management of him! And here am I bound to take a lesson from Lady

Busshe. My dear good Middleton, don't let it be said that Lady Busshe saw deeper than I! I put some little

vanity in it, I own: I won't conceal it. She declares that when she sent her presentI don't believe hershe

had a premonition that it would come back. Surely you won't justify the extravagances of a woman without

common reverence:for anatomize him as we please to ourselves, he is a splendid man (and I did it chiefly

to encourage and come at you). We don't often behold such a lordlylooking man: so conversable too when

he feels at home; a picture of an English gentleman! The very man we want married for our neighbourhood!

A woman who can openly talk of expecting him to be twice jilted! You shrink. It is repulsive. It would be

incomprehensible: except, of course, to Lady Busshe, who rushed to one of her violent conclusions, and

became a prophetess. Conceive a woman's imagining it could happen twice to the same man! I am not sure

she did not send the identical present that arrived and returned once before: you know, the Durham

engagement. She told me last night she had it back. I watched her listening very suspiciously to Professor

Crooklyn. My dear, it is her passion to foretell disastersher passion! And when they are confirmed, she

triumphs, of course. We shall have her domineering over us with sapient nods at every trifle occurring. The

county will be unendurable. Unsay it, my Middleton! And don't answer like an oracle because I do all the

talking. Pour out to me. You'll soon come to a stop and find the want of reason in the want of words. I assure

you that's true. Let me have a good gaze at you. No," said Mrs. Mountstuart, after posturing herself to peruse

Clara's features, "brains you have; one can see it by the nose and the mouth. I could vow you are the girl I

The sigh was partly voluntary, though unforced; as one may with ready sincerity act a character that is our

Mrs. Mountstuart felt the extra weight in the young lady's falling breath. There was no necessity for a deep

sigh over an absence of heart or confession of it. If Clara did not love the man to whom she was betrothed,

sighing about it signified what? some pretence; and a pretence is the cloak of a secret. Girls do not sigh in

that way with compassion for the man they have no heart for, unless at the same time they should be

oppressed by the knowledge or dread of having a heart for some one else. As a rule, they have no compassion

to bestow on him: you might as reasonably expect a soldier to bewail the enemy he strikes in action: they

must be very disengaged to have it. And supposing a show of the thing to be exhibited, when it has not been

worried out of them, there is a reserve in the background: they are pitying themselves under a mask of decent

So ran Mrs. Mountstuart's calculations, which were like her suspicion, coarse and broad, not absolutely

incorrect, but not of an exact measure with the truth. That pin's head of the truth is rarely hit by design. The

search after it of the professionally penetrative in the dark of a bosom may bring it forth by the heavy

knocking all about the neighbourhood that we call good guessing, but it does not come out clean; other matter

adheres to it; and being more it is less than truth. The unadulterate is to be had only by faith in it or by

A lover! thought the sagacious dame. There was no lover: some love there was: or, rather, there was a

"Do you positively tell me you have no heart for the position of first lady of the county?" said Mrs.

"My dear, I will believe you on one condition. Look at me. You have eyes. If you are for mischief, you are

armed for it. But how much better, when you have won a prize, to settle down and wear it! Lady Patterne will

have entire occupation for her flights and whimsies in leading the county. And the man, surely the manhe

behaved badly last night: but a beauty like this," she pushed a finger at Clara's cheek, and doated a half

instant, "you have the very beauty to break in an ogre's temper. And the man is as governable as he is

presentable. You have the beauty the French callno, it's the beauty of a queen of elves: one sees them

lurking about you, one here, one there. Smilethey dance: be dolefulthey hang themselves. No, there's

not a trace of satanic; at least, not yet. And come, come, my Middleton, the man is a man to be proud of. You

can send him into Parliament to wear off his humours. To my thinking, he has a fine style: conscious? I never

thought so before last night. I can't guess what has happened to him recently. He was once a young Grand

Monarque. He was really a superb young English gentleman. Have you been wounding him?"

Clara's bosom rose: her shoulders rose too, narrowing, and her head fell slight back.

Mrs. Mountstuart exclaimed: "But the scandal! You would never, never think of following the example of

that Durham girl?whether she was provoked to it by jealousy or not. It seems to have gone so

astonishingly far with you in a very short time, that one is alarmed as to where you will stop. Your look just

"I fear it is. It is. I am past my own control. Dear madam, you have my assurance that I will not behave

scandalously or dishonourably. What I would entreat of you is to help me. I know this of myself.. I am not

the best of women. I am impatient, wickedly. I should be no good wife. Feelings like mine teach me unhappy

"Rich, handsome, lordly, influential, brilliant health, fine estates," Mrs. Mountstuart enumerated in petulant

accents as there started across her mind some of Sir Willoughby's attributes for the attraction of the soul of

"I will believe you, my dear Middleton, on one condition: your talk of no heart is nonsense. A change like

this, if one is to believe in the change, occurs through the heart, not because there is none. Don't you see that?

But if you want me for a friend, you must not sham stupid. It's bad enough in itself: the imitation's horrid.

You have to be honest with me, and answer me right out. You came here on this visit intending to marry

"And gradually you suddenly discovered, since you came here, that you did not intend it, if you could find a

"Now comes the test. And, my lovely Middleton, your flaming cheeks won't suffice for me this time. The old

serpent can blush like an innocent maid on occasion. You are to speak, and you are to tell me in six words

why that was: and don't waste one on 'madam', or 'Oh! Mrs. Mountstuart" Why did you change?"

"I cameWhen I came I was in some doubt. Indeed I speak the truth. I found I could not give him the

admiration he has, I dare say, a right to expect. I turnedit surprised me; it surprises me now. But so

"Defer the simile," Mrs. Mountstuart interposed. "If you hit on a clever one, you will never get the better of

it. Now, by just as much as you have outstripped my limitation of words to you, you show me you are

"Well, yes; though I don't like stipulations between friends. There is no man living to whom you could

willingly give your hand? That is my question. I cannot possibly take a step unless I know. Reply briefly:

there is or there is not." Clara sat back with bated breath, mentally taking the leap into the abyss, realizing it,

and the cold prudence of abstention, and the delirium of the confession. Was there such a man? It resembled

"For shame! And with wits like yours, can't you perceive where hesitation in answering such a question lands

"There is one ... compared with him I feel my insignificance. If I could aid him."

"Ah, madam, it is different: not as you imagine. You bid me be scrupulously truthful: I am: I wish you to

know the different kind of feeling it is from what might be suspected from ... a confession. To give my hand,

is beyond any thought I have ever encouraged. If you had asked me whether there is one whom I admire

yes, I do. I cannot help admiring a beautiful and brave selfdenying nature. It is one whom you must pity,

and to pity casts you beneath him: for you pity him because it is his nobleness that has been the enemy of his

Her voice was musically thrilling in that low muted tone of the very heart, impossible to deride or disbelieve.

Mrs. Mountstuart preserved a lengthened silence, but nipped Clara's fingers once or twice to reassure her

without approving. "Of course he's poor," she said at last; "directly the reverse of what you could have, it

must be. Well, my fair Middleton, I can't say you have been dishonest. I'll help you as far as I'm able. How, it

is quite impossible to tell. We're in the mire. The best way seems to me to get this pitiable angel to cut some

ridiculous capers and present you another view of him. I don't believe in his innocence. He knew you to be a

"You would break your engagement purely because the admirable creature is in existence?"

Clara shook her head: she could not say she was dizzy. She had spoken out more than she had ever spoken to

herself. and in doing so she had cast herself a step beyond the line she dared to contemplate.

"I won't detain you any longer," said Mrs. Mountstuart. "The more we learn, the more we are taught that we

are not so wise as we thought we were. I have to go to school to Lady Busshe! I really took you for a very

clever girl. If you change again, you will notify the important circumstance to me, I trust."

"I will," said Clara, and no violent declaration of the impossibility of her changeing again would have had

Mrs. Mountstuart scanned her face for a new reading of it to match with her later impressions.

"I am rather too shattered, and kissing won't put me together. I laughed at Lady Busshe! No wonder you went

off like a rocket with a disappointing bouquet when I told you you had been successful with poor Sir

Willoughby and he could not give you up. I noticed that. A woman like Lady Busshe, always prying for the

"There's an end to Sir Willoughby, then! Though I don't say he will give you up even when he hears the

worst, if he must hear it, as for his own sake he should. And I won't say he ought to give you up. He'll be the

pitiable angel if he does. For youbut you don't deserve compliments; they would be immoral. You have

behaved badly, badly, badly. I have never had such a rightaboutface in my life. You will deserve the

stigma: you will he notorious: you will be called Number Two. Think of that! Not even original! We will

break the conference, or I shall twaddle to extinction. I think I heard the luncheon bell."

"Whether you're in my hands or I'm in yours, we're a couple of archconspirators against the peace of the

family whose table we're sitting at, and the more we rattle the viler we are, but we must do it to ease our

Mrs. Mountstuart spread the skirts of her voluminous dress, remarking further: "At a certain age our teachers

are young people: we learn by looking backward. It speaks highly for me that I have not called you

mad.Full of faults, goodishlooking, not a bad talker, cheerful, poorish;and she prefers that to this!" the

great lady exclaimed in her reverie while emerging from the circle of shrubs upon a view of the Hall. Colonel

De Craye advanced to her; certainly goodlooking, certainly cheerful, by no means a bad talker, nothing of a

His laughing smile attacked the irresolute hostility of her mien, confident as the sparkle of sunlight in a

breeze. The effect of it on herself angered her on behalf of Sir Willoughby's bride.

"I kissed earth when I arrived, like the Norman William, and consequently I've an attachment to the soil,

"You play the Conqueror pretty much, I have heard. But property is held more sacred than in the times of the

"I know it is," she replied as unaffectedly as Mrs. Mountstuart could have desired, though the ingenuous air

Her stress on the word and her look thrilled De Craye; for there had been a long conversation between the

"I think I could have felt to it like poor Flitch, the flyman, who was the finder."

"If you are conscious of these temptations to appropriate what is not your own, you should quit the

"And I dared for a moment to hope that you were, ma'am," he said, ruefully drooping.

They were close to the diningroom window, and Mrs Mountstuart preferred the terminating of a dialogue

that did not promise to leave her features the austerely iron cast with which she had commenced it. She was

under the spell of gratitude for his behaviour yesterday evening at her dinnertable; she could not be very

Vernon was crossing the hall to the diningroom as Mrs Mountstuart stepped in. She called to him: "Are the

He replied: "Hardly that, but they have consented to meet at an altar to offer up a victim to the gods in the

"That seems innocent enough. The Professor has not been anxious about his chest?"

"Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer are here," said Vernon, not supposing it to be a grave announcement until the

She dropped her voice: "Engage my fair friend for one of your walks the moment we rise from table. You

"There's no necessity for any of your pedestrian feats," Mrs Mountstuart said, and let him go, turning to

Colonel De Craye to pronounce an encomium on him: "The most openminded man I know! Warranted to do

perpetual service, and no mischief. If you were all ... instead of catching at every prize you covet! Yes, you

would have your reward for unselfishness, I assure you. Yes, and where you seek it! That is what none of you

"Do I?" said she, dallying with a halfformed design to he confidential. "How is it one is always tempted to

"Except that as a dog doesn't comprehend good English we naturally talk bad to him."

The great lady was tickled. Who could help being amused by this man? And after all, if her fair Middleton

chose to be a fool there could be no gainsaying her, sorry though poor Sir Willoughby's friends must feel for

"I'll tell you what, Colonel De Craye, I shall end by falling in love with you; and without esteeming you, I

"The second follows as surely as the flavour upon a draught of Bacchus, if you'll but toss off the glass,

"'Tis to transpose the seasons, and give October the blossom and April the apple, and no sweet one! Esteem's

a mellow thing that comes after bloom and fire, like an evening at home; because if it went before it would

have no father and couldn't hope for progeny; for there'd be no nature in the business. So please, ma'am, keep

to the original order, and you'll be nature's child, and I the most blessed of mankind."

"Really, were I fifteen years younger. I am not so certain ... I might try and make you harmless."

"I challenged you, colonel, and I won't complain of your pitch. But now lay your wit down beside your

"This is a whisper. Be alert, as you were last night. Shuffle the table well. A little liveliness will do it. I don't

imagine malice, but there's curiosity, which is often as bad, and not so lightly foiled. We have Lady Busshe

"Constant. You are an angel of intelligence, and if I have the judgeing of you, I'm afraid you'll be allowed to

Lady Busshe was at that moment saying, "And are we indeed to have you for a neighbour, Dr. Middleton?"

"And run away with Colonel De Craye? I'm too weighty, my dear friend. Besides, I have not looked at the

"I have to confess I am in dire alarm about mine," Lady Busshe nodded across the table at Clara. "Oh! you

may shake your head, but I would rather hear a rough truth than the most complimentary evasion."

Like the trained warrior who is ready at all hours for the trumpet to arms, Dr. Middleton waked up for

"A rough truth, madam, I should define to be that description of truth which is not imparted to mankind

"It is a rough truth, ma'am, that the world is composed of fools, and that the exceptions are knaves," Professor

"Not to precipitate myself into the jaws of the foregone definition, which strikes me as being as happy as

Jonah's whale, that could carry probably the most learned man of his time inside without the necessity of

digesting him," said De Craye, "a rough truth is a rather strong charge of universal nature for the firing off of

"It is a rough truth that Plato is Moses atticizing," said Vernon to Dr. Middleton, to keep the diversion alive.

"And that not one in ten thousand can refer to the particular treasury he filches."

"And the literature has laboriously mastered the adjective, wherever it may be in relation to the noun, Dr.

"Orson's first appearance at court was in the figure of a rough truth, causing the Maids of Honour,

accustomed to Tapestry Adams, astonishment and terror," said De Craye. That he might not be left out of the

sprightly play, Sir Willoughby levelled a lance at the quintain, smiling on Laetitia: "In fine, caricature is

Mrs. Mountstuart admired herself as each one trotted forth in turn characteristically, with one exception

unaware of the aid which was being rendered to a distressed damsel wretchedly incapable of decent

hypocrisy. Her intrepid lead had shown her hand to the colonel and drawn the enemy at a blow.

Sir Willoughby's "in fine", however, did not please her: still less did his lackadaisical Lothariolike bowing

and smiling to Miss Dale: and he perceived it and was hurt. For how, carrying his tremendous load, was he to

compete with these unhandicapped men in the game of nonsense she had such a fondness for starting at a

table? He was further annoyed to hear Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel Patterne agree together that "caricature"

was the final word of the definition. Relatives should know better than to deliver these awards to us in public.

"Well?" quoth Lady Busshe, expressive of stupefaction at the strange dust she had raised.

"There's a regiment of us on view and ready for inspection." Colonel De Craye bowed to her, but she would

"Otherwise, my dear, we are in danger of duplicating and triplicating and quadruplicating, not at all to the

"But there's a worse danger to encounter in the 'on view', my lady," said De Craye; "and that's the magnetic

attraction a display of weddingpresents is sure to have for the ineffable burglar, who must have a nuptial

soul in him, for wherever there's that collection on view, he's never a league off. And 'tis said he knows a

lady's dressingcase presented to her on the occasion fifteen years after the event."

"By computation of the police. And if the presents are on view, dogs are of no use, nor bolts, nor bars:he's

worse than Cupid. The only protection to be found, singular as it may be thought, is in a couple of bottles of

"The liquor of the Royal Navy, my lady. And with your permission, I'll relate the tale in proof of it. I had a

friend engaged to a young lady, niece of an old seacaptain of the old school, the Benbow school, the

wooden leg and pigtail school; a perfectly salt old gentleman with a pickled tongue, and a dash of brine in

every deed he committed. He looked rolled over to you by the last wave on the shore, sparkling: he was

Neptune's own for humour. And when his present to the bride was opened, sure enough there lay a couple of

bottles of the oldest Jamaica rum in the British Isles, born before himself, and his father to boot. 'Tis a

fabulous spirit I beg you to believe in, my lady, the sole merit of the story being its portentous veracity. The

bottles were tied to make them appear twins, as they both had the same claim to seniority. And there was a

label on them, telling their great age, to maintain their identity. They were in truth a pair of patriarchal bottles

rivalling many of the biggest houses in the kingdom for antiquity. They would have made the donkey that

stood between the two bundles of hay look at them with obliquity: supposing him to have, for an animal, a

rum taste, and a turn for hilarity. Wonderful old bottles! So, on the label, just over the date, was written large:

disappointment and indignation enough to float the old gentleman on his native element, ship and all. She

vowed it was done curmudgeonly to vex her, because her uncle hated weddingpresents and had grunted at

the exhibition of cups and saucers, and this and that beautiful service, and epergnes and inkstands, mirrors,

knives and forks, dressingcases, and the whole mighty category. She protested, she flung herself about, she

declared those two ugly bottles should not join the exhibition in the diningroom, where it was laid out for

days, and the family ate their meals where they could, on the walls, like flies. But there was also Uncle

Benjamin's legacy on view, in the distance, so it was ruled against her that the bottles should have their place.

And one fine morning down came the family after a fearful row of the domestics; shouting, screaming, cries

for the police, and murder topping all. What did they see? They saw two prodigious burglars extended along

the floor, each with one of the twin bottles in his hand, and a remainder of the horror of the midnight hanging

about his person like a blown fog, sufficient to frighten them whilst they kicked the rascals entirely

intoxicated. Never was wilder disorder of weddingpresents, and not one lost! owing, you'll own, to Uncle

"A most provident, farsighted old seacaptain!" exclaimed Mrs. Mountstuart, laughing at Lady Busshe and

"Ah! my lady, when the tree begins to count its gold 'tis nigh upon bankruptcy."

"Poetic!" ejaculated Lady Culmer, spying at Miss Middleton's rippled countenance, and noting that she and

"But that in the case of your Patterne Port a bottle of it would outvalue the catalogue of nuptial presents,

Willoughby, I would recommend your stationing some such constabulary to keep watch and ward." said Dr.

Middleton, as he filled his glass, taking Bordeaux in the middle of the day, under a consciousness of virtue

"Then it is not to be thought of. Indeed one!" Dr. Middleton negatived the idea.

"You," said Lady Culmer, "have the advantage of us in a closer acquaintance with Miss Middleton. You

know her tastes, and how far they have been consulted in the little souvenirs already grouped somewhere,

although not yet for inspection. I am at sea. And here is Lady Busshe in deadly alarm. There is plenty of time

to effect a changethough we are drawing on rapidly to the fatal day, Miss Middleton. We are, we are very

near it. Oh! yes. I am one who thinks that these little affairs should be spoken of openly, without that

ridiculous bourgeois affectation, so that we may be sure of giving satisfaction. It is a transaction like

everything else in life. I, for my part, wish to be remembered favourably. I put it as a test of breeding to speak

of these things as plain matteroffact. You marry; I wish you to have something by you to remind you of

me. What shall it be?useful or ornamental. For an ordinary household the choice is not difficult. But where

Sir Willoughby dropped Laetitia; Clara's look of a sedate resolution to preserve silence on the topic of the

"Your porcelain was exquisitely chosen, and I profess to be a connoisseur," he said. "I am poor in Old

Saxony, as you know; I can match the country in Savres, and my inheritance of China will not easily be

"You may consider your Dragon vases a present from young Crossjay," said De Craye.

"Hasn't he abstained from breaking them? the capital boy! Porcelain and a boy in the house together is a case

"You should understand that my friend Horacewhose wit is in this instance founded on another tale of a

boybrought us a magnificent piece of porcelain, destroyed by the capsizing of his conveyance from the

She and Lady Culmer gave out lamentable Ohs, while Miss Eleanor and Miss Isabel Patterne sketched the

incident. Then the lady visitors fixed their eyes in united sympathy upon Clara: recovering from which, after

a contemplation of marble, Lady Busshe emphasized, "No, you do not love porcelain, it is evident, Miss

"Oh, I know that face: I know that look," Lady Busshe affected to remark rallyingly: "it is not the first time I

Sir Willoughby smarted to his marrow. "We will rout these fancies of an overscrupulous generosity, my dear

Her unwonted breach of delicacy in speaking publicly of her present, and the vulgar persistency of her

sticking to the theme, very much perplexed him. And if he mistook her not, she had just alluded to the

It might be that he had mistaken her: he was on guard against his terrible sensitiveness. Nevertheless it was

hard to account for this behaviour of a lady greatly his friend and admirer, a lady of birth. And Lady Culmer

as well!likewise a lady of birth. Were they in collusion? had they a suspicion? He turned to Laetitia's face

"Oh, but you are not one yet, and I shall require two voices to convince me," Lady Busshe rejoined, after

"Fiddle!gratitude! it is to please your taste, to satisfy you. I care for gratitude as little as for flattery."

"But do care a bit for flattery, my lady," said De Craye. "'Tis the finest of the Arts; we might call it moral

sculpture. Adepts in it can cut their friends to any shape they like by practising it with the requisite skill. I

myself, poor hand as I am, have made a man act Solomon by constantly praising his wisdom. He took a

sagacious turn at an early period of the dose. He weighed the smallest question of his daily occasions with a

deliberation truly oriental. Had I pushed it, he'd have hired a baby and a couple of mothers to squabble over

"With her appearance, the game has to be resigned to her entirely," he rejoined.

"That is," Lady Culmer continued, "if you do not despise an old woman for your comrade on a shopping

"Despise whom we fleece!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "Oh, no, Lady Culmer, the sheep is sacred."

"This is to assume that makers of gifts are a fleeced people: I demur," said Mrs. Mountstuart.

"Madam, we are expected to give; we are incited to give; you have dubbed it the fashion to give; and the

person refusing to give, or incapable of giving, may anticipate that he will be regarded as benignly as a sheep

of a drooping and flaccid wool by the farmer, who is reminded by the poor beast's appearance of a strange

dog that worried the flock. Even Captain Benjamin, as you have seen, was unable to withstand the demand on

him. The hymeneal pair are licensed freebooters levying blackmail on us; survivors of an uncivilized period.

But in taking without mercy, I venture to trust that the manners of a happier era instruct them not to scorn us.

"Permit me to say, sir, that you have not considered the ignoble aspect of the fleeced," said Vernon. "I appeal

to the ladies: would they not, if they beheld an ostrich walking down a Queen's Drawing Room,

"An extreme supposition, indeed," said Dr. Middleton, frowning over it; "scarcely legitimately to be

"I have not the slightest idea," he replied. "But put on your bonnet, if you would escape that pair of

"I suspect you do not feel it the most, and the end of it can't be remote, said he.

Thus it happened that when Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer quitted the diningroom, Miss Middleton had

Sir Willoughby apologized for her absence. "If I could be jealous, it would be of that boy Crossjay."

"You are an excellent man, and the best of cousins," was Lady Busshe's enigmatical answer.

"Though," said she, "what it all meant, and what was the drift of it, I couldn't tell to save my life. Is it every

"If you said simplicity and not talking for effect! I generally cast anchor by Laetitia Dale."

"Ah!" Lady Busshe coughed. "But the fact is, Mrs. Mountstuart is made for cleverness!"

"I think, my lady, Laetitia Dale is to the full as clever as any of the stars Mrs. Mountstuart assembles, or I."

The ladies took seat in their carriage and fell at once into a closebonnet colloquy. Not a single allusion had

they made to the weddingpresents after leaving the luncheontable. The cause of their visit was obvious.

That woman, Lady Busshe, had predicted, after the event, Constantia Durham's defection. She had also,

subsequent to Willoughby's departure on his travels, uttered sceptical things concerning his rooted attachment

to Laetitia Dale. In her bitter vulgarity, that beaten rival of Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson for the leadership of

the county had taken his nose for a melancholy prognostic of his fortunes; she had recently played on his

name: she had spoken the hideous English of his fate. Little as she knew, she was alive to the worst

interpretation of appearances. No other eulogy occurred to her now than to call him the best of cousins,

because Vernon Whitford was housed and clothed and fed by him. She had nothing else to say for a man she

thought luckless! She was a woman barren of wit, stripped of style, but she was wealthy and a gossipa

forge of showering sparksand she carried Lady Culmer with her. The two had driven from his house to

spread the malignant rumour abroad; already they blew the biting world on his raw wound. Neither of them

was like Mrs. Mountstuart, a witty woman, who could be hoodwinked; they were dull women, who steadily

kept on their own scent of the fact, and the only way to confound such inveterate forces was to be ahead of

them, and seize and transform the expected fact, and astonish them, when they came up to him, with a totally

"And so we were, Sir Willoughby, and we acknowledge it. We never could have guessed that!"

Thus the phantom couple in the future delivered themselves, as well they might at the revelation. He could

Ay, but to combat these dolts, facts had to be encountered, deeds done, in groaning earnest. These

representatives of the pigsconces of the population judged by circumstances: airy shows and seems had no

A flying peep at the remorseless might of dulness in compelling us to a concrete performance counter to our

inclinations, if we would deceive its terrible instinct, gave Willoughby for a moment the survey of a sage. His

intensity of personal feeling struck so vivid an illumination of mankind at intervals that he would have been

individually wise, had he not been moved by the source of his accurate perceptions to a personal feeling of

opposition to his own sagacity. He loathed and he despised the vision, so his mind had no benefit of it,

though he himself was whipped along. He chose rather (and the choice is open to us all) to be flattered by the

But if he was not as others were, why was he discomfited, solicitous, miserable? To think that it should be so,

ran dead against his conqueror's theories wherein he had been trained, which, so long as he gained success

awarded success to native merit, grandeur to the grand in soul, as light kindles light: nature presents the

example. His early training, his bright beginning of life, had taught him to look to earth's principal fruits as

his natural portion, and it was owing to a girl that he stood a mark for tongues, naked, wincing at the possible

Why, then he would he free to enjoy, careless, younger than his youth in the rebound to happiness!

And then would his nostrils begin to lift and sniff at the creeping up of a thick pestiferous vapour. Then in

that volume of stench would he discern the sullen yellow eye of malice. A malarious earth would hunt him all

over it. The breath of the world, the world's view of him, was partly his vital breath, his view of himself. The

ancestry of the tortured man had bequeathed him this condition of high civilization among their other

bequests. Your withered contracted Egoists of the hut and the grot reck not of public opinion; they crave but

for liberty and leisure to scratch themselves and soothe an excessive scratch. Willoughby was expansive, a

blooming one, born to look down upon a tributary world, and to exult in being looked to. Do we wonder at

his consternation in the prospect of that world's blowing foul on him? Princes have their obligations to teach

them they are mortal, and the brilliant heir of a tributary world is equally enchained by the homage it brings

him;more, inasmuch as it is immaterial, elusive, not gathered by the tax, and he cannot capitally punish the

treasonable recusants. Still must he be brilliant; he must court his people. He must ever, both in his reputation

The wounded gentleman shut himself up in his laboratory, where he could stride to and fro, and stretch out

his arms for physical relief, secure from observation of his fantastical shapes, under the idea that he was

meditating. There was perhaps enough to make him fancy it in the heavy fire of shots exchanged between his

nerves and the situation; there were notable flashes. He would not avow that he was in an agony: it was

Quintessence of worldliness, Mrs. Mountstuart appeared through his farthest window, swinging her skirts on

a turn at the end of the lawn, with Horace De Craye smirking beside her. And the woman's vaunted

penetration was unable to detect the histrionic Irishism of the fellow. Or she liked him for his acting and

nonsense; nor she only. The voluble beast was created to snare women. Willoughby became smitten with an

adoration of stedfastness in women. The incarnation of that divine quality crossed his eyes. She was clad in

beauty. A horrible nondescript convulsion composed of yawn and groan drove him to his instruments, to

avert a renewal of the shock; and while arranging and fixing them for their unwonted task, he compared

himself advantageously with men like Vernon and De Craye, and others of the county, his fellows in the

huntingfield and on the Magistrate's bench, who neither understood nor cared for solid work, beneficial

"Experiments will not advance much at this rate," he said, casting the noxious retardation on his enemies.

It was not to be contested that he must speak with Mrs Mountstuart, however he might shrink from the trial of

his facial muscles. Her not coming to him seemed ominous: nor was her behaviour at the luncheontable

quite obscure. She had evidently instigated the gentlemen to cross and counterchatter Lady Busshe and Lady

In the solitude of his room he cried right out: "I swear it, I will never yield her to Horace De Craye! She shall

feel some of my torments, and try to get the better of them by knowing she deserves them." He had spoken it,

Desire to do her intolerable hurt became an ecstasy in his veins, and produced another stretching fit that

terminated in a violent shake of the body and limbs; during which he was a spectacle for Mrs. Mountstuart at

one of the windows. He laughed as he went to her, saying: "No, no work today; it won't be done, positively

"I am taking the Professor away," said she; "he is fidgety about the cold he caught."

Sir Willoughby stepped out to her. "I was trying at a bit of work for an hour, not to be idle all day."

The remark set him throbbing and thinking that a prolongation of his crisis exposed him to the approaches of

"I promise none: I like to be abreast of the real knowledge of my day, that is all."

"In your gracious consideration, my dear lady. Generally speaking, it would be more advisable to become a

chatterer and keep an anecdotal notebook. I could not do it, simply because I could not live with my own

emptiness for the sake of making an occasional display of fireworks. I aim at solidity. It is a narrow aim, no

A smile of enforced ruefulness, like a leaf curling in heat, wrinkled his mouth.

This hateful encomium of commiseration transfixed him. Then she knew of his calamity!

"The earlier the better. He is too captivating; he is delightful. He won me in five minutes. I don't accuse him.

"I pretend to it. Probably I suppose myself to succeed because I have no great requirement of it; I cannot say.

Mrs. Mountstuart pricked the turf with the point of her parasol. She looked down and she looked up.

"Playing tatatata ad infinitum, then. Things have gone far. All parties would be happier for an excursion.

Mrs. Mountstuart put a tooth on her under lip as her head renewed its brushing negative.

"In what way can it be hurtful that she should be here, ma'am?" he ventured to persist.

The word was big artillery. He tried the affectation of a staring stupidity. She might have seen his heart

"She is inaccessible. She is my friend. I guarantee her, on my honour. Have no fear for her. I beg you to have

confidence in me. I would perish rather. No soul on earth is to be compared with her."

The low monosyllable, musically spoken in the same tone of warning of a gentle ghost, rolled a thunder that

"My dear Mrs. Mountstuart, you have been listening to tales. I am not a tyrant. I am one of the most

easygoing of men. Let us preserve the forms due to society: I say no more. As for poor old Vernon, people

call me a good sort of cousin; I should like to see him comfortably married; decently married this time. I have

proposed to contribute to his establishment. I mention it to show that the case has been practically considered.

He has had a tolerably souring experience of the state; he might be inclined if, say, you took him in hand, for

another venture. It's a demoralizing lottery. However, Government sanctions it."

"But, Sir Willoughby, what is the use of my taking him in hand when, as you tell me, Laetitia Dale holds

Sharpened by her tone, he said, "I have such a love of stedfastness of character, that I should be a poor

advocate in the endeavour to break it. And frankly, I know the danger. I saved my honour when I made the

"Upon my word," Mrs. Mountstuart threw back her head to let her eyes behold him summarily over their fine

"As I said, ma'am, I am an easygoing man. I really have not a spice of the tyrant in me. An intemperate

creature held by the collar may have that notion of me, while pulling to be released as promptly as it entered

the noose. But I do strictly and sternly object to the scandal of violent separations, open breaches of solemn

engagements, a public rupture. Put it that I am the cause, I will not consent to a violation of decorum. Is that

clear? It is just possible for things to be arranged so that all parties may be happy in their way without much

hubbub. Mind, it is not I who have willed it so. I am, and I am forced to be, passive. But I will not be

He paused, waving his hand to signify the vanity of the more that might be said.

"Well!" she exclaimed, "you have planted me in the land of conjecture. As my husband used to say, I don't

see light, but I think I see the lynx that does. We won't discuss it at present. I certainly must be a younger

woman than I supposed, for I am learning hard.Here comes the Professor, buttoned up to the ears, and Dr.

Middleton flapping in the breeze. There will be a cough, and a footnote referring to the young lady at the

"I will call tomorrow. You have simplified my task, Sir Willoughby, very much; that is, assuming that I

have not entirely mistaken you. I am so far in the dark that I have to help myself by recollecting how Lady

Busshe opposed my view of a certain matter formerly. Scepticism is her forte. It will be the very oddest thing

if after all ...! No, I shall own, romance has not departed. Are you fond of dupes?"

"An excellent answer. I could pardon you for it." She refrained from adding, "If you are making one of me."

"The earlier Colonel De Craye leaves Patterne Hall the better:" she had said that: and, "all parties would be

happier for an excursion." She knew the position of things and she guessed the remainder. But what she did

not know, and could not divine, was the man who fenced her. He speculated further on the witty and the dull.

These latter are the redoubtable body. They will have facts to convince them: they had, he confessed it to

himself, precipitated him into the novel sphere of his dark hints to Mrs. Mountstuart; from which the utter

darkness might allow him to escape, yet it embraced him singularly, and even pleasantly, with the sense of a

It embraced him even very pleasantly. There was an end to his tortures. He sailed on a tranquil sea, the

husband of a stedfast womanno rogue. The exceeding beauty of stedfastness in women clothed Laetitia in

graces Clara could not match. A tried stedfast woman is the one jewel of the sex. She points to her husband

like the sunflower; her love illuminates him; she lives in him, for him; she testifies to his worth; she drags the

world to his feet; she leads the chorus of his praises; she justifies him in his own esteem. Surely there is not

If we have to pass through anguish to discover it and cherish the peace it gives to clasp it, calling it ours, is a

full reward. Deep in his reverie, he said his adieus to Mrs. Mountstuart, and strolled up the avenue behind the

carriagewheels, unwilling to meet Laetitia till he had exhausted the fresh savour of the cud of fancy.

His home would be a fortress, impregnable to tongues. He would have divine security in his home.

One who read and knew and worshipped him would be sitting there starlike: sitting there, awaiting him, his

It would be marriage with a mirror, with an echo; marriage with a shining mirror, a choric echo.

It would be marriage with an intellect, with a fine understanding; to make his home a fountain of repeatable

He revolved it as a chant: with anon and anon involuntarily a discordant animadversion on Lady Busshe. Its

Forthwith he set about painting Laetitia in delectable human colours, like a miniature of the past century,

reserving her ideal figure for his private satisfaction. The world was to bow to her visible beauty, and he gave

her enamel and glow, a taller stature, a swimming air, a transcendency that exorcized the image of the old

The result in him was, that Laetitia became humanly and avowedly beautiful. Her dark eyelashes on the

pallor of her cheeks lent their aid to the transformation, which was a necessity to him, so it was performed.

His retinue of imps had a revel. We hear wonders of men, and we see a lifting up of hands in the world. The

wonders would be explained, and never a hand need to interject, if the mystifying man were but accompanied

The heart is the magical gentleman. None of them would follow where there was no heart. The twists of the

By that secret the mystery of the organ is legible: and a comparison of the heart to the mountain rillet is taken

up to show us the unbaffled force of the little channel in seeking to swell its volume, strenuously, sinuously,

ever in pursuit of self; the busiest as it is the most singleaiming of forces on our earth. And we are directed

Few maintain a stand there. People see, and they rush away to interchange liftings of hands at the sight,

Consequently a man in love with one woman, and in all but absolute consciousness, behind the thinnest of

veils, preparing his mind to love another, will be barely credible. The particular hunger of the forceful but

adaptable heart is the key of him. Behold the mountain rillet, become a brook, become a torrent, how it

inarms a handsome boulder: yet if the stone will not go with it, on it hurries, pursuing self in extension, down

to where perchance a dam has been raised of a sufficient depth to enfold and keep it from inordinate

But she was a faded young woman. He was aware of it; and systematically looking at himself with her

upturned orbs, he accepted her benevolently as a God grateful for worship, and used the divinity she imparted

to paint and renovate her. His heart required her so. The heart works the springs of imagination; imagination

Cunning to such a degree of seductive genius that the masterpiece it offered to his contemplation enabled him

simultareously to gaze on Clara and think of Laetitia. Clara came through the parkgates with Vernon, a

brilliant girl indeed, and a shallow one: a healthy creature, and an animal; attractive, but capricious,

impatient, treacherous, foul; a woman to drag men through the mud. She approached.

"No," said Clara. "Once more I beg you to pardon him. He spoke falsely, owing to his poor boy's idea of

"The chivalry to the sex which commences in lies ends by creating the woman's hero, whom we see about the

"Professor Crooklyn has managed to make your father acquainted with your project. That, I suppose, is the

railway ticket in the fold of the purse. He was assured at the station that you had taken a ticket to London, and

"He's an honest fellow, in his oldfashioned way. He's a secret old fellow. Does he ever talk about his wife to

"I know nothing of Mr. Whitford's affairs," she said, and she opened the purse and tore to pieces the railway

"The story's a proof that romantic spirits do not furnish the most romantic history. You have the word

'chivalry' frequently on your lips. He chivalrously married the daughter of the lodginghouse where he

resided before I took him. We obtained information of the auspicious union in a newspaper report of Mrs.

Whitford's drunkenness and rioting at a London railway terminus probably the one whither your ticket

would have taken you yesterday, for I heard the lady was on her way to us for supplies, the connubial larder

"You are disgusted. But half the students and authors you hear of marry in that way. And very few have

"Literary men, it is notorious, even with the entry to society, have no taste in women. The housewife is their

object. Ladies frighten and would, no doubt, be an annoyance and hindrance to them at home."

"He is a friendly old fellow in his awkward fashion; honourable, and so forth. But a disreputable alliance of

that sort sticks to a man. The world will talk. Yes, he was fortunate so far; he fell into the mire and got out of

"Died. Do not be startled; it was a natural death. She responded to the sole wishes left to his family. He

buried the woman, and I received him. I took him on my tour. A second marriage might cover the first: there

would be a buzz about the old business: the woman's relatives write to him still, try to bleed him, I dare say.

However, now you understand his gloominess. I don't imagine he regrets his loss. He probably

sentimentalizes, like most men when they are well rid of a burden. You must not think the worse of him."

They were at the Halldoors. She waited for any personal communications he might be pleased to make, and

He had tossed her to Vernon in his mind, not only painlessly, but with a keen acid of satisfaction. The heart is

She was working at an embroidery by an open window. Colonel De Craye leaned outside, and Willoughby

pardoned her air of demure amusement, on hearing him say: "No, I have had one of the pleasantest

halfhours of my life, and would rather idle here, if idle you will have it, than employ my faculties on

Laetitia did not immediately answer, and Willoughby remarked: "Miss Dale has been reproving Horace for

idleness and I recommend you to enlist him to do duty, while I relieve him here."

The ladies had but to look at the colonel. He was at their disposal, if they would have him. He was marched

"Colonel De Craye spoke of Crossjay," she said. "May I hope you have forgiven the poor boy, Sir

"If he offends, it is never from meanness. At school, among comrades, he would shine. He is in too strong a

"My system of managing a boy would be after that model: except in this: he should always feet that he could

"Ah! young creatures are not to be arraigned before the higher Courts. It seems to me perilous to terrify their

imaginations. If we do so, are we not likely to produce the very evil we are combating? The alternations for

the young should be school and home: and it should be in their hearts to have confidence that forgiveness

alternates with discipline. They are of too tender an age for the rigours of the world; we are in danger of

hardening them. I prove to you that I am not possessed of eloquence. You encouraged me to speak, Sir

"I think it true. Will not you reflect on it? You have only to do so to forgive him. I am growing bold indeed,

"I do not like you to squander yourself, waste yourself, on the public. You are too precious to feed the beast.

Giving out incessantly must end by attenuating. Reserve yourself for your friends. Why should they be

robbed of so much of you? Is it not reasonable to assume that by lying fallow you would be more enriched for

domestic life? Candidly, had I authority I would confiscate your pen: I would 'away with that bauble'. You

will not often find me quoting Cromwell, but his words apply in this instance. I would say rather, that lancet.

Perhaps it is the more correct term. It bleeds you, it wastes you. For what? For a breath of fame!"

"And thereI would say of anotheryou subject yourself to the risk of mental degradation. Who

knows?moral! Trafficking the brains for money must bring them to the level of the purchasers in time. I

He rested an elbow on his knee, and covered his eyes, murmuring in that profound hollow which is haunted

The deed could be done. He had come to the conclusion that it could be done, though the effort to harmonize

the figure sitting near him, with the artistic figure of his purest pigments, had cost him labour and a blinking

of the eyelids. That also could be done. Her pleasant tone, sensible talk, and the light favouring her

complexion, helped him in his effort. She was a sober cup; sober and wholesome. Deliriousness is for

Curiously, yet as positively as things can be affirmed, the husband of this woman would be able to boast of

her virtues and treasures abroad, as he could notimpossible to say why not boast of a beautiful wife or a

bluestocking wife. One of her merits as a wife would be this extraordinary neutral merit of a character that

Laetitia had not to learn that he had much to distress him. Her wonder at his exposure of his grief

counteracted a fluttering of vague alarm. She was nervous; she sat in expectation of some burst of regrets or

"My friend," said he, uncovering his face, "I am governed by principles. Convince me of an error, I shall not

obstinately pursue a premeditated course. But you know me. Men who have not principles to rule their

conduct arewell, they are unworthy of a half hour of companionship with you. I will speak to you tonight.

I have letters to dispatch. Tonight: at twelve: in the room where we spoke last. Or await me in the

But already he had begun to regard the deed as his executioner. He dreaded meeting Clara. The folly of

having retained her stood before him. How now to look on her and keep a sane resolution unwavering? She

tempted to the insane. Had she been away, he could have walked through the performance composed by the

sense of doing a duty to himself; perhaps faintly hating the poor wretch he made happy at last, kind to her in a

manner, polite. Clara's presence in the house previous to the deed, and, oh, heaven! after it, threatened his

wits. Pride? He had none; he cast it down for her to trample it; he caught it back ere it was trodden on. Yes;

he had pride: he had it as a dagger in his breast: his pride was his misery. But he was too proud to submit to

misery. "What I do is right." He said the words, and rectitude smoothed his path, till the question clamoured

for answer: Would the world countenance and endorse his pride in Laetitia? At one time, yes. And now?

Clara's beauty ascended, laid a beam on him. We are on board the labouring vessel of humanity in a storm,

when cries and countercries ring out, disorderliness mixes the crew, and the fury of selfpreservation divides:

this one is for the ship, that one for his life. Clara was the former to him, Laetitia the latter. But what if there

might not be greater safety in holding tenaciously to Clara than in casting her off for Laetitia? No, she had

done things to set his pride throbbing in the quick. She had gone bleeding about first to one, then to another;

she had betrayed him to Vernon, and to Mrs. Mountstuart; a look in the eyes of Horace De Craye said, to him

as well: to whom not? He might hold to her for vengeance; but that appetite was shortlived in him if it

ministered nothing to his purposes. "I discard all idea of vengeance," he said, and thrilled burningly to a smart

in his admiration of the man who could be so magnanimous under mortal injury; for the more admirable he,

the more pitiable. He drank a drop or two of selfpity like a poison, repelling the assaults of public pity.

Clara must be given up. It must be seen by the world that, as he felt, the thing he did was right. Laocoon of

his own serpents, he struggled to a certain magnificence of attitude in the muscular net of constrictions he

flung around himself. Clara must be given up. Oh, bright Abominable! She must be given up: but not to one

whose touch of her would be darts in the blood of the yielder, snakes in his bed: she must be given up to an

extinguisher; to be the second wife of an oldfashioned semirecluse, disgraced in his first. And were it

publicly known that she had been cast off, and had fallen on old Vernon for a refuge, and part in spite, part in

shame, part in desperation, part in a fit of good sense under the circumstances, espoused him, her beauty

would not influence the world in its judgement. The world would know what to think. As the instinct of

selfpreservation whispered to Willoughby, the world, were it requisite, might be taught to think what it

assuredly would not think if she should be seen tripping to the altar with Horace De Craye. Selfpreservation,

not vengeance, breathed that whisper. He glanced at her iniquity for a justification of it, without any desire to

do her a permanent hurt: he was highly civilized: but with a strong intention to give her all the benefit of a

"And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, who opened his mouth and shut his

You hear the world? How are we to stop it from chattering? Enough that he had no desire to harm her. Some

gentle anticipations of her being tarnished were imperative; they came spontaneously to him; otherwise the

radiance of that bright Abominable in loss would have been insufferable; he could not have borne it; he could

never have surrendered her. Moreover, a happy present effect was the result. He conjured up the anticipated

chatter and shrug of the world so vividly that her beauty grew hectic with the stain, bereft of its formidable

magnetism. He could meet her calmly; he had steeled himself. Purity in women was his principal stipulation.

Consider him indulgently: the Egoist is the Son of Himself. He is likewise the Father. And the son loves the

father, the father the son; they reciprocate affection through the closest of ties; and shall they view behaviour

unkindly wounding either of them, not for each other's dear sake abhorring the criminal? They would not

injure you, but they cannot consent to see one another suffer or crave in vain. The two rub together in

sympathy besides relationship to an intenser one. Are you, without much offending, sacrificed by them, it is

on the altar of their mutual love, to filial piety or paternal tenderness: the younger has offered a dainty morsel

to the elder, or the elder to the younger. Absorbed in their great example of devotion do they not think of you.

Yet is it most true that the younger has the passions of youth: whereof will come division between them; and

this is a tragic state. They are then pathetic. This was the state of Sir Willoughby lending ear to his elder, until

he submitted to bite at the fruit proposed to himwith how wry a mouth the venerable senior chose not to

mark. At least, as we perceive, a half of him was ripe of wisdom in his own interests. The cruder half had but

to be obedient to the leadership of sagacity for his interests to be secured, and a filial disposition assisted him;

painfully indeed; but the same rare quality directed the good gentleman to swallow his pain. That the son

should bewail his fate were a dishonour to the sire. He reverenced, and submitted. Thus, to say, consider him

indulgently, is too much an appeal for charity on behalf of one requiring but initial anatomya slicing in

halves to exonerate, perchance exalt him. The Egoist is our fountainhead, primeval man: the primitive is

born again, the elemental reconstituted. Born again, into new conditions, the primitive may be highly

polished of men, and forfeit nothing save the roughness of his original nature. He is not only his own father,

he is ours; and he is also our son. We have produced him. he us. Such were we, to such are we returning: not

other, sings the poet, than one who toilfully works his shallop against the tide, "si brachia forte remisit":let

him haply relax the labour of his arms, however high up the stream, and back he goes, "in pejus", to the early

principle of our being, with seeds and plants, that are as carelessly weighed in the hand and as

Poets on the other side may be cited for an assurance that the primitive is not the degenerate: rather is he a

sign of the indestructibility of the race, of the ancient energy in removing obstacles to individual growth; a

sample of what we would be, had we his concentrated power. He is the original innocent, the pure simple. It

is we who have fallen; we have melted into Society, diluted our essence, dissolved. He stands in the midst

monumentally, a landmark of the tough and honest old Ages, with the symbolic alphabet of striking arms

and running legs, our early language, scrawled over his person, and the glorious first flint and arrowhead for

But Society is about him. The occasional spectacle of the primitive dangling on a rope has impressed his

mind with the strength of his natural enemy: from which uncongenial sight he has turned shuddering hardly

less to behold the blast that is blown upon a reputation where one has been disrespectful of the many. By

these means, through meditation on the contrast of circumstances in life, a pulse of imagination has begun to

stir, and he has entered the upper sphere or circle of spiritual Egoism: he has become the civilized Egoist;

primitive still, as sure as man has teeth, but developed in his manner of using them.

Degenerate or not (and there is no just reason to suppose it) Sir Willoughby was a social Egoist, fiercely

imaginative in whatsoever concerned him. He had discovered a greater realm than that of the sensual

appetites, and he rushed across and around it in his conquering period with an Alexander's pride. On these

windlike journeys he had carried Constantia, subsequently Clara; and however it may have been in the case

of Miss Durham, in that of Miss Middleton it is almost certain she caught a glimpse of his interior from sheer

fatigue in hearing him discourse of it. What he revealed was not the cause of her sickness: women can bear

revelationsthey are exciting: but the monotonousness. He slew imagination. There is no direr disaster in

love than the death of imagination. He dragged her through the labyrinths of his penetralia, in his hungry

coveting to be loved more and still more, more still, until imagination gave up the ghost, and he talked to her

plain hearing like a monster. It must have been that; for the spell of the primitive upon women is masterful up

"And so he handed her to his cousin and secretary, Vernon Whitford, who opened his mouth and shut his

The urgent question was, how it was to be accomplished. Willoughby worked at the subject with all his

power of concentration: a power that had often led him to feel and say, that as a barrister, a diplomatist, or a

general, he would have won his grades: and granting him a personal interest in the business, he might have

He projected a scene, following expressions of anxiety on account of old Vernon and his future settlement:

and then Clara maintaining her doggedness, to which he was now so accustomed that he could not conceive a

change in itsays he: "If you determine on breaking I give you back your word on one condition."

Whereupon she starts: he insists on her promise: she declines: affairs resume their former footing; she frets:

she begs for the disclosure: he flatters her by telling her his desire to keep her in the family: she is

unilluminated, but strongly moved by curiosity: he philosophizes on marriage "What are we? poor creatures!

we must get through life as we can, doing as much good as we can to those we love; and think as you please,

I love old Vernon. Am I not giving you the greatest possible proof of it?" She will not see. Then flatly out

comes the one condition. That and no other. "Take Vernon and I release you." She refuses. Now ensues the

debate, all the oratory being with him. "Is it because of his unfortunate first marriage? You assured me you

thought no worse of him," etc. She declares the proposal revolting. He can distinguish nothing that should

offend her in a proposal to make his cousin happy if she will not him. Irony and sarcasm relieve his emotions,

but he convinces her he is dealing plainly and intends generosity. She is confused; she speaks in maiden

fashion. He touches again on Vernon's early escapade. She does not enjoy it. The scene closes with his

bidding her reflect on it, and remember the one condition of her release. Mrs. Mountstuart Jenkinson, now

reduced to believe that he burns to be free, is then called in for an interview with Clara. His aunts Eleanor and

Isabel besiege her. Laetitia in passionate earnest besieges her. Her father is wrought on to besiege her. Finally

Vernon is attacked by Willoughby and Mrs. Mountstuart:and here, Willoughby chose to think, was the

main difficulty. But the girl has money; she is agreeable; Vernon likes her; she is fond of his "Alps", they

have tastes in common, he likes her father, and in the end he besieges her. Will she yield? De Craye is absent.

There is no other way of shunning a marriage she is incomprehensibly but frantically averse to. She is in the

toils. Her father will stay at Patterne Hall as long as his host desires it. She hesitates, she is overcome; in spite

Willoughby revolved the entire drama in Clara's presence. It helped him to look on her coolly. Conducting

her to the dinnertable, he spoke of Crossjay, not unkindly; and at table, he revolved the set of scenes with a

heated animation that took fire from the wine and the face of his friend Horace, while he encouraged Horace

to be flowingly Irish. He nipped the fellow goodhumouredly once or twice, having never felt so friendly to

him since the day of his arrival; but the position of critic is instinctively taken by men who do not flow: and

Patterne Port kept Dr Middleton in a benevolent reserve when Willoughby decided that something said by De

Craye was not new, and laughingly accused him of failing to consult his anecdotal notebook for the

doublecross to his last sprightly sally. "Your sallies are excellent, Horace, but spare us your Aunt Sallies!"

De Craye had no repartee, nor did Dr. Middleton challenge a pun. We have only to sharpen our wits to trip

your seductive rattler whenever we may choose to think proper; and evidently, if we condescended to it, we

could do better than he. The critic who has hatched a witticism is impelled to this opinion. Judging by the

Shortly before eleven o'clock Dr. Middleton made a Spartan stand against the offer of another bottle of Port.

The regulation couple of bottles had been consumed in equal partnership, and the Rev. Doctor and his host

were free to pay a ceremonial visit to the drawingroom, where they were not expected. A piece of work of

the elder ladies, a silken boudoir sofarug, was being examined, with high approval of the two younger.

Vernon and Colonel De Craye had gone out in search of Crossjay, one to Mr. Dale's cottage, the other to call

at the head and undergamekeeper's. They were said to be strolling and smoking, for the night was fine.

Willoughby left the room and came back with the key of Crossjay's door in his pocket. He foresaw that the

Laetitia and Clara sang together. Laetitia was flushed, Clara pale. At eleven they saluted the ladies Eleanor

and Isabel. Willoughby said "Goodnight" to each of them, contrasting as he did so the downcast look of

Laetitia with Clara's frigid directness. He divined that they were off to talk over their one object of common

interest, Crossjay. Saluting his aunts, he took up the rug, to celebrate their diligence and taste; and that he

might make Dr. Middleton impatient for bed, he provoked him to admire it, held it out and laid it out, and

caused the courteous old gentleman some confusion in hitting on fresh terms of commendation.

Before midnight the room was empty. Ten minutes later Willoughby paid it a visit, and found it untenanted

by the person he had engaged to be there. Vexed by his disappointment, he paced up and down, and chanced

abstractedly to catch the rug in his hand; for what purpose, he might well ask himself; admiration of ladies"

work, in their absence, was unlikely to occur to him. Nevertheless. the touch of the warm, soft silk was

meltingly feminine. A glance at the mantelpiece clock told him Laetitia was twenty minutes behind the

hour. Her remissness might endanger all his plans, alter the whole course of his life. The colours in which he

painted her were too lively to last; the madness in his head threatened to subside. Certain it was that he could

The clock was at the half hour after twelve. He flung the silken thing on the central ottoman, extinguished the

lamps, and walked out of the room, charging the absent Laetitia to bear her misfortune with a consciousness

Young Crossjay was a glutton at holidays and never thought of home till it was dark. The close of the day

saw him several miles away from the Hall, dubious whether he would not round his numerous adventures by

sleeping at an inn; for he had lots of money, and the idea of jumping up in the morning in a strange place was

thrilling. Besides, when he was shaken out of sleep by Sir Willoughby, he had been told that he was to go,

and not to show his face at Patterne again. On the other hand, Miss Middleton had bidden him come back.

There was little question with him which person he should obey: he followed his heart.

Supper at an inn, where he found a company to listen to his adventures, delayed him, and a short cut,

intended to make up for it, lost him his road. He reached the Hall very late, ready to be in love with the

horrible pleasure of a night's rest under the stars, if necessary. But a candle burned at one of the back

windows. He knocked, and a kitchenmaid let him in. She had a bowl of hot soup prepared for him. Crossjay

tried a mouthful to please her. His head dropped over it. She roused him to his feet, and he pitched against her

shoulder. The dry air of the kitchen department had proved too much for the tired youngster. Mary, the maid,

got him to step as firmly as he was able, and led him by the backway to the hall, bidding him creep

noiselessly to bed. He understood his position in the house, and though he could have gone fast to sleep on

the stairs, he took a steady aim at his room and gained the door catlike. The door resisted. He was appalled

and unstrung in a minute. The door was locked. Crossjay felt as if he were in the presence of Sir Willoughby.

He fled on ricketty legs, and had a fall and bumps down half a dozen stairs. A door opened above. He rushed

across the hall to the drawingroom, invitingly open, and there staggered in darkness to the ottoman and

rolled himself in something sleek and warm, soft as hands of ladies, and redolent of them; so delicious that he

hugged the folds about his head and heels. While he was endeavouring to think where he was, his legs curled,

his eyelids shut, and he was in the thick of the day's adventures, doing yet more wonderful things.

He heard his own name: that was quite certain. He knew that he heard it with his ears, as he pursued the

fleetest dreams ever accorded to mortal. It did not mix: it was outside him, and like the dangerpole in the

ice, which the skater shooting hither and yonder comes on again, it recurred; and now it marked a point in his

career, how it caused him to relax his pace; he began to circle, and whirled closer round it, until, as at a blow,

his heart knocked, he tightened himself, thought of bolting, and lay deadstill to throb and hearken.

"No, I cannot wait. I hoped I had heard Crossjay return. I would rather not sit down. May I entreat you to

"You do not give it. You are in doubt? Still? What language must I use to convince you? And yet you know

me. Who knows me but you? You have always known me. You are my home and my temple. Have you

"I have repeated them to myself a thousand times: in India, America, Japan: they were like our English

"Oh, I beg you will not force me to listen to nonsense that I wrote when I was a child. No more of those most

foolish lines! If you knew what it is to write and despise one's writing, you would not distress me. And since

"You know me, and therefore you know my contempt for verses, as a rule, Laetitia. But not for yours to me.

Why should you call them foolish? They expressed your feelingshold them sacred. They are something

religious to me, not mere poetry. Perhaps the third verse is my favourite . . ."

"We are all older, I trust wiser. I am, I will own; much wiser. Wise at last! I offer you my hand."

"I am free. Thank Heaven! I am free to choose my matethe woman I have always loved! Freely and

unreservedly, as I ask you to give your hand, I offer mine. You are the mistress of Patterne Hall; my wife."

"My dearest! do you not rightly understand? The hand I am offering you is disengaged. It is offered to the

lady I respect above all others. I have made the discovery that I cannot love without respecting; and as I will

not marry without loving, it ensues that I am freeI am yours. At last?your lips move: tell me the words.

Have always loved, I said. You carry in your bosom the magnet of constancy, and I, in spite of apparent

deviations, declare to you that I have never ceased to be sensible of the attraction. And now there is not an

impediment. We two against the world! we are one. Let me confess to an old foibleperfectly youthful, and

you will ascribe it to youth: once I desired to absorb. I mistrusted; that was the reason: I perceive it. You

teach me the difference of an alliance with a lady of intellect. The pride I have in you, Laetitia, definitely

cures me of that insane passioncall it an insatiable hunger. I recognize it as a folly of youth. I have, as it

were, gone the tour, to come home to youat last?and live our manly life of comparative equals. At last,

then! But remember that in the younger man you would have had a despotperhaps a jealous despot. Young

men, I assure you, are orientally inclined in their ideas of love. Love gets a bad name from them. We, my

Laetitia, do not regard love as a selfishness. If it is, it is the essence of life. At least it is our selfishness

rendered beautiful. I talk to you like a man who has found a compatriot in a foreign land. It seems to me that I

have not opened my mouth for an age. I certainly have not unlocked my heart. Those who sing for joy are not

unintelligible to me. If I had not something in me worth saying I think I should sing. In every sense you

reconcile me to men and the world, Laetitia. Why press you to speak? I will be the speaker. As surely as you

"Colour will come back: have no fear; I promise it. If you imagine you want renewing, I have the specific, I,

"Forgive mewill you tell me, Sir Willoughby, whether you have broken with Miss Middleton?"

"Rest satisfied, my dear Laetitia. She is as free as I am. I can do no more than a man of honour should do. She

releases me. Tomorrow or next day she departs. We, Laetitia, you and I, my love, are home birds. It does

not do for the home bird to couple with the migratory. The little imperceptible change you allude to, is

nothing. Italy will restore you. I am ready to stake my own healthnever yet shaken by a doctor of

medicine:I say medicine advisedly, for there are doctors of divinity who would shake giants:that an

Italian trip will send you backthat I shall bring you home from Italy a blooming bride. You shake your

headdespondently? My love, I guarantee it. Cannot I give you colour? Behold! Come to the light, look in

"I may redden," said Laetitia. "I suppose that is due to the action of the heart. I am changed. Heart, for any

other purpose, I have not. I am like you, Sir Willoughby, in this: I could not marry without loving, and I do

"I will cure you, my Laetitia. Look to me, I am the tonic. It is not common confidence, but conviction. I, my

"Spare me the formal prefix, I beg. You place your hand in mine, relying on me. I am pledge for the

remainder. We end as we began: my request is for your handyour hand in marriage."

"Are you quite well, Laetitia? I propose in the plainest terms I can employ, to make you Lady

"There's a madness comes over women at times, I know. Answer me, Laetitia:by all the evidence a man

"You evade my question: I am serious. Oh!" he walked away from her booming a sound of utter repudiation

of her present imbecility, and hurrying to her side, said: "But it was manifest to the whole world! It was a

legend. To love like Laetitia Dale, was a current phrase. You were an example, a light to women: no one was

your match for devotion. You were a precious cameo, still gazing! And I was the object. You loved me. You

loved me, you belonged to me, you were mine, my possession, my jewel; I was prouder of your constancy

than of anything else that I had on earth. It was a part of the order of the universe to me. A doubt of it would

have disturbed my creed. Why, good heaven! where are we? Is nothing solid on earth? You loved me!"

"Do you insist on shaming me through and through, Sir Willoughby? I have been exposed enough."

"You cannot blot out the past: it is written, it is recorded. You loved me devotedly, silence is no escape. You

"You never loved me, you shallow woman! 'I did!' As if there could be a cessation of a love! What are we to

reckon on as ours? We prize a woman's love; we guard it jealously, we trust to it, dream of it; there is our

wealth; there is our talisman! And when we open the casket it has flown!barren vacuity!we are poorer

than dogs. As well think of keeping a costly wine in potter's clay as love in the heart of a woman! There are

womenwomen! Oh, they are all of a stamp coin! Coin for any hand! It's a fiction, an imposturethey

cannot love. They are the shadows of men. Compared with men, they have as much heart in them as the

"You have changed? ... you have set your heart? ... you could marry? ... there is a man? ... you could marry

one! I will have an answer, I am sick of evasions. What was in the mind of Heaven when women were

created, will be the riddle to the end of the world! Every good man in turn has made the inquiry. I have a right

to know who robs meWe may try as we like to solve it.Satan is painted laughing!I say I have a right

"You loved me.You are silent?but you confessed it. Then you confess it was a love that could die! Are

you unable to perceive how that redounds to my discredit? You loved me, you have ceased to love me. In

other words you charge me with incapacity to sustain a woman's love. You accuse me of inspiring a

miserable passion that cannot last a lifetime! You let the world see that I am a man to be aimed at for a

temporary mark! And simply because I happen to be in your neighbourhood at an age when a young woman

is impressionable! You make a public example of me as a for whom women may have a caprice, but that is

all; he cannot enchain them; he fascinates passingly; they fall off. Is it just, for me to be taken up and cast

down at your will? Reflect on that scandal! Shadows? Why, a man's shadow is faithful to him at least. What

are women? There is not a comparison in nature that does not tower above them! not one that does not hoot at

them! I, throughout my life, guided by absolute deference to their weaknesspaying them politeness,

courtesywhatever I touch I am happy in, except when I touch women! How is it? What is the mystery?

Some monstrous explanation must exist. What can it be? I am favoured by fortune from my birth until I enter

into relations with women. But will you be so good as to account for it in your defence of them? Oh! were the

relations dishonourable, it would be quite another matter. Then they ... I could recount ... I disdain to

chronicle such victories. Quite another matter. But they are flies, and I am something more stable. They are

flies. I look beyond the day; I owe a duty to my line. They are flies. I foresee it, I shall be crossed in my fate

so long as I fail to shun themflies! Not merely born for the day, I maintain that they are spiritually

ephemeralWell, my opinion of your sex is directly traceable to you. You may alter it, or fling another of us

men out on the world with the old bitter experience. Consider this, that it is on your head if my ideal of

women is wrecked. It rests with you to restore it. I love you. I discover that you are the one woman I have

always loved. I come to you, I sue you, and suddenlyyou have changed! 'I have changed: I am not the

same.' What can it mean? 'I cannot marry: I love no one.' And you say you do not know what love

isavowing in the same breath that you did love me! Am I the empty dream? My hand, heart, fortune, name,

are yours, at your feet; you kick them hence. I am hereyou reject me. But why, for what mortal reason am I

here other than my faith in your love? You drew me to you, to repel me, and have a wretched revenge."

"Have you any possible suspicion that I am still entangled, not, as I assure you I am, perfectly free in fact and

"You feel grief? Then you believe in my affection, and you hurl it away. I have no doubt that as a poetess you

would say, love is eternal. And you have loved me. And you tell me you love me no more. You are not very

"Poetesses rarely are: if I am one, which I little pretend to be for writing silly verses. I have passed out of that

"You shall not wrong those dear old days, Laetitia. I see them now; when I rode by your cottage and you

were at your window, pen in hand, your hair straying over your forehead. Romantic, yes; not foolish. Why

were you foolish in thinking of me? Some day I will commission an artist to paint me that portrait of you

from my description. And I remember when we first whispered ... I remember your trembling. You have

forgottenI remember. I remember our meeting in the park on the path to church. I remember the heavenly

morning of my return from my travels, and the same Laetitia meeting me, stedfast and unchangeable. Could I

ever forget? Those are ineradicable scenes; pictures of my youth, interwound with me. I may say, that as I

recede from them, I dwell on them the more. Tell me, Laetitia, was there not a certain prophecy of your

"Ask yourself Laetitia, who is the obstacle to the fulfilment of his prediction?truth, if ever a truth was

foreseen on earth. You have not changed so far that you would feel no pleasure in gratifying him? I go to him

"Proof of love, then! For no one but you should it be done, and no one but you dare accuse me of a baseness."

"I am tired," she said. "It is late, I would rather not hear more. I am sorry if I have caused you pain. I suppose

you to have spoken with candour. I defend neither my sex nor myself. I can only say I am a woman as good

as dead: happy to be made happy in my way, but so little alive that I cannot realize any other way. As for

love, I am thankful to have broken a spell. You have a younger woman in your mind; I am an old one: I have

no ambition and no warmth. My utmost prayer is to float on the streama purely physical desire of life: I

have no strength to swim. Such a woman is not the wife for you, Sir Willoughby. Good night."

"One final word. Weigh it. Express no conventional regrets. Resolutely you refuse?"

"I am in your power," he said, in a voice between supplication and menace that laid a claw on her, and she

Young Crossjay listened to the drumming of his head. Somewhere in or over the cavity a drummer rattled

Crossjay tumbled himself off the ottoman. He stole up to the unclosed drawingroom door, and peeped.

Never was a boy more thoroughly awakened. His object was to get out of the house and go through the night

avoiding everything human, for he was big with information of a character that he knew to be of the nature of

gunpowder, and he feared to explode. He crossed the hall. In the passage to the scullery he ran against

Crossjay related that his bedroom door was locked and the key gone, and Sir Willoughby sitting up in the

Colonel De Craye took the boy to his own room, where Crossjay lay on a sofa, comfortably covered over and

snug in a swelling pillow; but he was restless; he wanted to speak, to bellow, to cry; and he bounced round to

his left side, and bounced to his right, not knowing what to think, except that there was treason to his adored

"Why, my lad, you're not half a campaigner," the colonel called out to him; attributing his uneasiness to the

material discomfort of the sofa: and Crossjay had to swallow the taunt, bitter though it was. A dim sentiment

of impropriety in unburdening his overcharged mind on the subject of Miss Middleton to Colonel De Craye

restrained him from defending himself; and so he heaved and tossed about till daybreak. At an early hour,

while his hospitable friend, who looked very handsome in profile half breast and head above the sheets,

continued to slumber, Crossjay was on his legs and away. "He says I'm not half a campaigner, and a couple of

hours of bed are enough for me," the boy thought proudly, and snuffed the springing air of the young sun on

the fields. A glance back at Patterne Hall dismayed him, for he knew not how to act, and he was

immoderately combustible, too full of knowledge for selfcontainment; much too zealously excited on behalf

When Master Crossjay tumbled down the stairs, Laetitia was in Clara's room, speculating on the various

mishaps which might have befallen that battered youngster; and Clara listened anxiously after Laetitia had

run out, until she heard Sir Willoughby's voice; which in some way satisfied her that the boy was not in the

She waited, expecting Miss Dale to return; then undressed, went to bed, tried to sleep. She was tired of strife.

Strange thoughts for a young head shot through her: as, that it is possible for the sense of duty to counteract

distaste; and that one may live a life apart from one's admirations and dislikes: she owned the singular

strength of Sir Willoughby in outwearying: she asked herself how much she had gained by

struggling:every effort seemed to expend her spirit's force, and rendered her less able to get the clear vision

of her prospects, as though it had sunk her deeper: the contrary of her intention to make each further step

confirm her liberty. Looking back, she marvelled at the things she had done. Looking round, how ineffectual

they appeared! She had still the great scene of positive rebellion to go through with her father.

The anticipation of that was the cause of her extreme discouragement. He had not spoken to her since he

became aware of her attempted flight: but the scene was coming; and besides the wish not to inflict it on him,

as well as to escape it herself, the girl's peculiar unhappiness lay in her knowledge that they were alienated

and stood opposed, owing to one among the more perplexing masculine weaknesses, which she could not hint

at, dared barely think of, and would not name in her meditations. Diverting to other subjects, she allowed

herself to exclaim, "Wine, wine!" in renewed wonder of what there could be in wine to entrap venerable men

and obscure their judgements. She was too young to consider that her being very much in the wrong gave all

the importance to the cordial glass in a venerable gentleman's appreciation of his dues. Why should he fly

from a priceless wine to gratify the caprices of a fantastical child guilty of seeking to commit a breach of

faith? He harped on those words. Her fault was grave. No doubt the wine coloured it to him, as a drop or two

She was too young for such considerations. She was ready to expatiate on the gravity of her fault, so long as

the humiliation assisted to her disentanglement: her snared nature in the toils would not permit her to reflect

on it further. She had never accurately perceived it: for the reason perhaps that Willoughby had not been

moving in his appeals: but, admitting the charge of waywardness, she had come to terms with conscience,

upon the understanding that she was to perceive it and regret it and do penance for it byandby:by

She was informed at the breakfasttable of Miss Dale's departure. The ladies Eleanor and Isabel feared it to

be a case of urgency at the cottage. No one had seen Vernon, and Clara requested Colonel De Craye to walk

over to the cottage for news of Crossjay. He accepted the commission, simply to obey and be in her service:

assuring her, however, that there was no need to be disturbed about the boy. He would have told her more.

Sir Willoughby marked a lapse of ten minutes by his watch. His excellent aunts had ventured a comment on

his appearance that frightened him lest he himself should be the person to betray his astounding discomfiture.

He regarded his conduct as an act of madness, and Laetitia's as no less that of a madwomanhappily mad!

Very happily mad indeed! Her rejection of his ridiculously generous proposal seemed to show an intervening

hand in his favour, that sent her distraught at the right moment. He entirely trusted her to be discreet; but she

was a miserable creature, who had lost the one last chance offered her by Providence, and furnished him with

Time was flying. In a little while Mrs. Mountstuart would arrive. He could not fence her without a design in

his head; he was destitute of an armoury if he had no scheme: he racked the brain only to succeed in rousing

phantasmal vapours. Her infernal "Twice!" would cease now to apply to Laetitia; it would be an echo of Lady

Busshe. Nay, were all in the secret, Thrice jilted! might become the universal roar. And this, he reflected

bitterly, of a man whom nothing but duty to his line had arrested from being the most mischievous of his

At the expiration of fifteen minutes by his watch, he struck a knuckle on the library door. Dr. Middleton held

"The sermon is upon the paragraph which is toned to awaken the clerk," replied the Rev. Doctor.

Dr Middleton's mane of silvery hair was in a state bearing witness to the vehemence of the sermon, and

"I believe, sir, that I have produced an effect, and that was the point in contemplation."

"My love!" Willoughby whispered. "We have had a misunderstanding. I am at a loss to discover where I have

been guilty, but I take the blame, all the blame. I implore you not to weep. Do me the favour to look at me. I

"Undoubtedly Willoughby is not to blame. It was not he who was bound on a runaway errand in flagrant

breach of duty and decorum, nor he who inflicted a catarrh on a brother of my craft and cloth," said her

"And no man is happier to hear an ejaculation that he has laboured for with so much sweat of his brow than

the parson, I can assure you," Dr. Middleton mildly groaned. "I have notions of the trouble of Abraham. A

sermon of that description is an immolation of the parent, however it may go with the child."

"I wish I had been here to share it. I might have saved you some tears. I may have been hasty in our little

dissensions. I will acknowledge that I have been. My temper is often irascible."

"And so is mine!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton. "And yet I am not aware that I made the worse husband for it.

Nor do I rightly comprehend how a probably justly excitable temper can stand for a plea in mitigation of an

"Reverberations!" the Rev. Doctor waved his arm placably. "Take it for thunder heard remote."

Dr. Middleton remarked the fact. He walked to the window. and perceiving the pair in the same position

"Is a scene that is hardly conceivable as a parent's obligation once in a lustrum, to be repeated within the half

Dr. Middleton marched up and down the room with his arms locked behind him. The silence between the

He said, cordially: "Old Hiems has but to withdraw for buds to burst. 'Jam ver egelidos refert tepores." The

Clara and Willoughby simultaneously raised their faces with opposing expressions.

"Yes, papa, I will come out to you," she replied to his apology for the rather heavy weight of his vocabulary,

Then which of them was the more loverlike? Dr. Middleton would for the moment have supposed his

"That you have." Dr. Middleton hastily motioned the paternal ceremony in outline.

"The day is important on its arrival," said her father; "but I apprehend the decision to be of the chief

Clara checked herself on an impetuous exclamation. It was done that her father might not be detained.

Her astute selfcompression sharpened Willoughby as much as it mortified and terrified him. He understood

how he would stand in an instant were Dr. Middleton absent. Her father was the tribunal she dreaded, and

affairs must be settled and made irrevocable while he was with them. To sting the blood of the girl, he called

She strung her body to submit, seeing her father take it as a signal for his immediate retirement.

"Hear us out, sir. Do not go. Stay, at my entreaty. I fear we have not come to a perfect reconcilement."

"If that is your opinion," said Clara, "it is good reason for not distressing my father."

"Dr Middleton, I love your daughter. I wooed her and won her; I had your consent to our union, and I was the

happiest of mankind. In some way, since her coming to my house, I know not howshe will not tell me, or

cannotI offended. One may be innocent and offend. I have never pretended to impeccability, which is an

admission that I may very naturally offend. My appeal to her is for an explanation or for pardon. I obtain

neither. Had our positions been reversed, oh, not for any real offencenot for the worst that can be

imaginedI think notI hope notcould I have been tempted to propose the dissolution of our

engagement. To love is to love, with me; an engagement a solemn bond. With all my errors I have that merit

of utter fidelityto the world laughable! I confess to a multitude of errors; I have that single merit, and am

not the more estimable in your daughter's eyes on account of it, I fear. In plain words, I am, I do not doubt,

one of the fools among men; of the description of human dog commonly known as faithfulwhose destiny

is that of a tribe. A man who cries out when he is hurt is absurd, and I am not asking for sympathy. Call me

luckless. But I abhor a breach of faith. A broken pledge is hateful to me. I should regard it myself as a form

of suicide. There are principles which civilized men must contend for. Our social fabric is based on them. As

my word stands for me, I hold others to theirs. If that is not done, the world is more or less a carnival of

counterfeits. In this instanceAh! Clara, my love! and you have principles: you have inherited, you have

been indoctrinated with them: have I, then, in my ignorance, offended past penitence, that you, of all women?

... And without being able to name my sin!Not only for what I lose by it, but in the abstract,

judiciallyapart from the sentiment of personal interest, grief, pain, and the possibility of my having to

endure that which no temptation would induce me to commit:judicially; I fear, sir, I am a poor forensic

"The situation, sir, does not demand a Cicero: proceed," said Dr. Middleton, balked in his approving nods at

"Judicially, I am bold to say, though it may appear a presumption in one suffering acutely, I abhor a breach of

Dr. Middleton brought his nod down low upon the phrase he had anticipated. "And I," said he, "personally,

and presently, abhor a breach of faith. Judicially? Judicially to examine, judicially to condemn: but does the

judicial mind detest? I think, sir, we are not on the bench when we say that we abhor: we have unseated

ourselves. Yet our abhorrence of bad conduct is very certain. You would signify, impersonally: which

"She has had it, Willoughby; she has had it in plain Saxon and in uncompromising Olympian. There is, I

"You must babble out the rest between you. I am about as much at home as a turkey with a pair of pigeons."

"Reach the good man your hand, my girl; forthright, from the shoulder, like a brave boxer. Humour a lover.

"We have spoken, Clara, how often!" Willoughby resumed, "with what result?that you loved me, that you

have ceased to love me: that your heart was mine, that you have withdrawn it, plucked it from me: that you

request me to consent to a sacrifice involving my reputation, my life. And what have I done? I am the same,

unchangeable. I loved and love you: my heart was yours, and is, and will be yours forever. You are my

"Not useless, my girl, that you should inform this gentleman, your affianced husband, of the ground of the

"I verily believe we are directing the girl to dissect a caprice. Such things are seen large by these young

people, but as they have neither organs, nor arteries, nor brains, nor membranes, dissection and inspection

will he alike profitlessly practised. Your inquiry is natural for a lover, whose passion to enter into relations

with the sex is ordinarily in proportion to his ignorance of the stuff composing them. At a particular age they

traffic in whims: which are, I presume, the spiritual of hysterics; and are indubitably preferable, so long as

they are not pushed too far. Examples are not wanting to prove that a flighty initiative on the part of the male

is a handsome corrective. In that case, we should probably have had the roof off the house, and the girl now

"Despise me, father. I am punished for ever thinking myself the superior of any woman," said Clara.

"Your hand out to him, my dear, since he is for a formal reconciliation; and I can't wonder."

"Do not frown on me, father. I wish him happiness. I cannot marry him. I do not love him."

"You hear him. He rejects your prediction, Clara Middleton." She caught her clasped hands up to her throat.

"And I, when you speak so generously, am to yield you? give you up?" cried Willoughby. "Ah! my love, my

Clara, impose what you will on me; not that. It is too much for man. It is, I swear it, beyond my strength."

"Pursue, continue the strain; 'tis in the right key," said Dr. Middleton, departing.

"Plead for me, sir; you are allpowerful. Let her be mine, she shall be happy, or I will perish for it. I will call

it on my head.Impossible! I cannot lose her. Lose you, my love? it would be to strip myself of every

blessing of body and soul. It would be to deny myself possession of grace, beauty, wit, all the incomparable

charms of loveliness of mind and person in woman, and plant myself in a desert. You are my mate, the sum

of everything I call mine. Clara, I should be less than man to submit to such a loss. Consent to it? But I love

He saw the eyes of the desperately wily young woman slink sideways. Dr. Middleton was pacing at ever

"Hatred?" he cried aloud, and Dr. Middleton stopped in his walk and flung up his head: "Hatred of your

husband? of the man you have vowed to love and honour? Oh, no! Once mine, it is not to he feared. I trust to

my knowledge of your nature; I trust in your blood, I trust in your education. Had I nothing else to inspire

confidence, I could trust in your eyes. And, Clara, take the confession: I would rather be hated than lose you.

For if I lose you, you are in another world, out of this one holding me in its deathlike cold; but if you hate

me we are together, we are still together. Any alliance, any, in preference to separation!"

Clara listened with critical ear. His language and tone were new; and comprehending that they were in part

addressed to her father, whose phrase: "A breach of faith": he had so cunningly used, disdain of the actor

"Finally," remarked her father, summing up the situation to settle it from that little speech, "he talks to you in

this way now; and you are under my injunction to stretch your hand out to him for a symbol of union, or to

state your objection to that course. He, by your admission, is at the terminus, and there, failing the why not,

Her head whirled. She had been severely flagellated and weakened previous to Willoughby's entrance.

Language to express her peculiar repulsion eluded her. She formed the words, and perceived that they would

not stand to bear a breath from her father. She perceived too that Willoughby was as ready with his agony of

supplication as she with hers. If she had tears for a resource, he had gestures quite as eloquent; and a cry of

her loathing of the union would fetch a countervailing torrent of the man's love. What could she say? he is

an Egoist? The epithet has no meaning in such a scene. Invent! shrieked the hundredvoiced instinct of

dislike within her, and alone with her father, alone with Willoughby, she could have invented some

equivalent, to do her heart justice for the injury it sustained in her being unable to name the true and immense

objection: but the pair in presence paralyzed her. She dramatized them each springing forward by turns, with

crushing rejoinders. The activity of her mind revelled in giving them a tongue, but would not do it for herself.

Then ensued the inevitable consequence of an incapacity to speak at the heart's urgent dictate: heart and mind

became divided. One throbbed hotly, the other hung aloof, and mentally, while the sick inarticulate heart kept

clamouring, she answered it with all that she imagined for those two men to say. And she dropped poison on

it to still its reproaches: bidding herself remember her fatal postponements in order to preserve the seeming of

consistency before her father; calling it hypocrite; asking herself, what was she! who loved her! And thus

beating down her heart, she completed the mischief with a piercing view of the foundation of her father's

advocacy of Willoughby, and more lamentably asked herself what her value was, if she stood bereft of

Reason, on the other hand, was animated by her better nature to plead his case against her: she clung to her

respect for him, and felt herself drowning with it: and she echoed Willoughby consciously, doubling her

horror with the consciousness, in crying out on a world where the most sacred feelings are subject to such

lapses. It doubled her horror, that she should echo the man: but it proved that she was no better than be: only

some years younger. Those years would soon be outlived: after which, he and she would be of a pattern. She

was unloved: she did no harm to any one by keeping her word to this man; she had pledged it, and it would

be a breach of faith not to keep it. No one loved her. Behold the quality of her father's love! To give him

happiness was now the principal aim for her, her own happiness being decently buried; and here he was

happy: why should she be the cause of his going and losing the poor pleasure he so much enjoyed?

The idea of her devotedness flattered her feebleness. She betrayed signs of hesitation; and in hesitating, she

looked away from a look at Willoughby, thinking (so much against her nature was it to resign herself to him)

that it would not have been so difficult with an illfavoured man. With one horribly ugly, it would have been

Unfortunately for Sir Willoughby, he had his reasons for pressing impatience; and seeing her deliberate,

seeing her hasty look at his fine figure, his opinion of himself combined with his recollection of a particular

maxim of the Great Book to assure him that her resistance was over: chiefly owing, as he supposed, to his

Frequently indeed, in the contest between gentlemen and ladies, have the maxims of the Book stimulated the

assailant to victory. They are rosy with blood of victims. To bear them is to hear a horn that blows the mort:

has blown it a thousand times. It is good to remember how often they have succeeded, when, for the benefit

of some future Lady Vauban, who may bestir her wits to gather maxims for the inspiriting of the Defence, the

Willoughby could not wait for the melting of the snows. He saw full surely the dissolving process; and

sincerely admiring and coveting her as he did, rashly this illfated gentleman attempted to precipitate it, and

Whence might we draw a note upon yonder maxim, in words akin to these: Make certain ere a breath come

"Mine! She is mine!" he cried: "mine once more! mine utterly! mine eternally!" and he followed up his

devouring exclamations in person as she, less decidedly, retreated. She retreated as young ladies should ever

do, two or three steps, and he would not notice that she had become an angry Dian, all arrows: her

maidenliness in surrendering pleased him. Grasping one fair hand, he just allowed her to edge on the outer

circle of his embrace, crying: "Not a syllable of what I have gone through! You shall not have to explain it,

my Clara. I will study you more diligently, to be guided by you, my darling. If I offend again, my wife will

not find it hard to speak what my bride withheldI do not ask why: perhaps not able to weigh the effect of

her reticence: not at that time, when she was younger and less experienced, estimating the sacredness of a

plighted engagement. It is past, we are one, my dear sir and father. You may leave us now."

"I profoundly rejoice to hear that I may," said Dr. Middleton. Clara writhed her captured hand.

"No, papa, stay. It is an error, an error. You must not leave me. Do not think me utterly, eternally, belonging

"Are you quicksands, Clara Middleton, that nothing can be built on you? Whither is a flighty head and a

"Why, you, you, you, it was you who craved to be alone with Willoughby!" her father shouted; "and here we

are rounded to our startingpoint, with the solitary difference that now you do not want to be alone with

Willoughby. First I am bidden go; next I am pulled back; and judging by collar and coattag, I suspect you to

be a young woman to wear an angel's temper threadbare before you determine upon which one of the tides

"The implication is, that she is prepared for the important one, friend Willoughby."

"Her hand, sir; the reassurance of her hand in mine under your eyes:after all that I have suffered, I claim it,

"Quite reasonably; which is not to say, necessarily; but, I will add, justifiably; and it may be, sagaciously,

He stepped on. Her father frowned. She lifted both her hands from the shrinking elbows, darted a look of

repulsion at her pursuer, and ran to her father, crying: "Call it my mood! I am volatile, capricious, flighty,

very foolish. But you see that I attach a real meaning to it, and feel it to be binding: I cannot think it an empty

ceremony, if it is before you. Yes, only be a little considerate to your moody girl. She will be in a fitter state

in a few hours. Spare me this moment; I must collect myself. I thought I was free; I thought he would not

press me. If I give my hand hurriedly now, I shall, I know, immediately repent it. There is the picture of me!

But, papa, I mean to try to be above that, and if I go and walk by myself, I shall grow calm to perceive where

Clara coloured to deep crimson: but she was beyond anger, and was rather gratified by an offence coming

"Why not make it a vow to me this moment, for this gentleman's contentment, that he shall be your husband

"How so?" said Dr. Middleton. "I have her, sir, if you will favour me by continuing in abeyance.You will

come within an hour voluntarily, Clara; and you will either at once yield your hand to him or you will furnish

"If you have none that are to my satisfaction, you implicitly and instantly, and cordially obey my command."

"What more would you require?" Dr. Middleton bowed to Sir Willoughby in triumph.

"She has perchance wrestled with her engagement, as the aboriginals of a land newly discovered by a crew of

adventurous colonists do battle with the garments imposed on them by our considerate

civilization;ultimately to rejoice with excessive dignity in the wearing of a battered cockedhat and

trowsers not extending to the shanks: but she did not break her engagement, sir; and we will anticipate that,

moderating a young woman's native wildness, she may, after the manner of my comparison, take a similar

Willoughby had not leisure to sound the depth of Dr. Middleton's compliment. He had seen Clara gliding out

of the room during the delivery; and his fear returned on him that, not being won, she was lost.

"She has gone." Her father noticed her absence. "She does not waste time in her mission to procure that

astonishing product of a shallow soil, her reasons; if such be the object of her search. But no: it signifies that

she deems herself to have need of composurenothing more. No one likes to be turned about; we like to turn

ourselves about; and in the question of an act to be committed, we stipulate that it shall be our actgirls and

others. After the lapse of an hour, it will appear to her as her act. Happily, Willoughby, we do not dine away

"It may be attributable to a sense of deserving, but I could plead guilty to a weakness for old Port today."

"All going favourably with you, as I have no cause to doubt," said Dr Middleton, with the motion of wafting

Starting from the Hall a few minutes before Dr. Middleton and Sir Willoughby had entered the

drawingroom overnight, Vernon parted company with Colonel De Craye at the parkgates, and betook

himself to the cottage of the Dales, where nothing had been heard of his wanderer; and he received the same

disappointing reply from Dr. Corney, out of the bedroom window of the genial physician, whose

astonishment at his covering so long a stretch of road at night for news of a boy like Crossjaygifted with

the lives of a cat became violent and rapped Punchlike blows on the windowsill at Vernon's refusal to

take shelter and rest. Vernon's excuse was that he had "no one but that fellow to care for", and he strode off,

naming a farm five miles distant. Dr. Corney howled an invitation to early breakfast to him, in the event of

his passing on his way back, and retired to bed to think of him. The result of a variety of conjectures caused

him to set Vernon down as Miss Middleton's knight, and he felt a strong compassion for his poor friend.

"Though," thought he, "a hopeless attachment is as pretty an accompaniment to the tune of life as a

gentleman might wish to have, for it's one of those big doses of discord which make all the minor ones fit in

like an agreeable harmony, and so he shuffles along as pleasantly as the fortunefavoured, when they come

Sir Willoughby was the fortunefavoured in the little doctor's mind; that highstepping gentleman having

wealth, and public consideration, and the most ravishing young lady in the world for a bride. Still, though he

reckoned all these advantages enjoyed by Sir Willoughby at their full value, he could imagine the ultimate

balance of good fortune to be in favour of Vernon. But to do so, he had to reduce the whole calculation to the

extreme abstract, and feed his lean friend, as it were, on dew and roots; and the happy effect for Vernon lay in

a distant future, on the borders of old age, where he was to be blessed with his lady's regretful preference, and

rejoice in the fruits of good constitutional habits. The reviewing mind was Irish. Sir Willoughby was a

character of man profoundly opposed to Dr. Corney's nature; the latter's instincts bristled with

antagonismnot to his race, for Vernon was of the same race, partly of the same blood, and Corney loved

him: the type of person was the annoyance. And the circumstance of its prevailing successfulness in the

country where he was placed, while it held him silent as if under a law, heaped stores of insurgency in the

Celtic bosom. Corney contemplating Sir Willoughby, and a trotting kern governed by Strongbow, have a

point of likeness between them; with the point of difference, that Corney was enlightened to know of a friend

better adapted for eminent station, and especially better adapted to please a lovely ladycould these

highbred Englishwomen but be taught to conceive another idea of manliness than the formal

Dr Corney breakfasted very early, without seeing Vernon. He was off to a patient while the first lark of the

morning carolled above, and the business of the day, not yet fallen upon men in the shape of cloud, was

happily intermixed with nature's hues and pipings. Turning off the highroad tip a green lane, an hour later,

he beheld a youngster prying into a hedge head and arms, by the peculiar strenuous twist of whose hinder

parts, indicative of a frame plunged on the pursuit in hand, he clearly distinguished young Crossjay. Out

"Don't order me," Crossjay was retorting. "Oh, it's you, Doctor Corney. Good morning. I said that, because I

always do drop a couple back. I promised Mr. Whitford I would, and Miss Middleton too."

"And you'll just do what Doctor Corney tells you; and set your mind on rashers of curly fat bacon and

sweetly smoking coffee, toast, hot cakes, marmalade, and damsonjam. Wide go the fellow's nostrils, and

Crossjay jumped up beside the doctor, who remarked, as he touched his horse: "I don't want a man this

morning, though I'll enlist you in my service if I do. You're fond of Miss Middleton?"

"And so am I," pursued the doctor: "You'll have to put up with a rival. It's worse than fond: I'm in love with

"You're worthy of a gratuitous breakfast in the front parlour of the best hotel of the place they call Arcadia.

To his great surprise, Dr. Corney beheld two big round tears force their way out of this tough youngster's

"Then, my boy, you have the right name addressed in the wrong direction: for I found you turning your

shoulders on Mr. Whitford. And he has been out of his bed hunting you all the unholy night you've made it

"And I found you running away from him. You're a curiosity, Mr. Crossjay Patterne."

"Ah! so'd anybody be who knew as much as I do," said Crossjay. with a sober sadness that caused the doctor

"The fact is," he said, "Mr. Whitford is beating the country for you. My best plan will be to drive you to the

"Now, tell me," said Dr. Corney, "would there be a chance for me, supposing Miss Middleton were

There was no saying; but the doctor pressed for it, and at last Crossjay gave his opinion that she would take

The doctor asked why; and Crossjay said it was because Mr. Whitford was the best man in the world. To

which, with a lusty "Amen to that," Dr. Corney remarked: "I should have fancied Colonel De Craye would

The boy added: "I don't want to talk, except about birds and things. What a jolly morning it is! I saw the sun

The kindly little man swung his whip. Crossjay informed him of his disgrace at the Hall, and of every

incident connected with it, from the tramp to the baronet, save Miss Middleton's adventure and the night

scene in the drawingroom. A strong smell of something left out struck Dr. Corney, and he said: "You'll not

let Miss Middleton know of my affection. After all, it's only a little bit of love. But, as Patrick said to

Kathleen, when she owned to such a little bit, 'that's the best bit of all!' and he was as right as I am about

Crossjay scorned to talk of loving, he declared. "I never tell Miss Middleton what I feel. Why, there's Miss

"It's nearer to your empty inside than my mansion," said the doctor, "and we'll stop just to inquire whether a

bed's to be had for you there tonight, and if not, I'll have you with me, and bottle you, and exhibit you, for

you're a rare specimen. Breakfast you may count on from Mr. Dale. I spy a gentleman."

Crossjay turned his full face to the doctor. "I haven't seen her for such a long time! But he saw me last night,

and he might have told her that, if she's anxious.Goodmorning, colonel. I've had a good walk, and a

A maid came to the gate, and upon her steps appeared Miss Dale, who flung herself at Crossjay, mingling

kisses and reproaches. She scarcely raised her face to the colonel more than to reply to his greeting, and

"I'll wait," said De Craye. He had seen that she was paler than usual. So had Dr. Corney; and the doctor called

to her concerning her father's health. She reported that he had not yet risen, and took Crossjay to herself.

"That's well," said the doctor, "if the invalid sleeps long. The lady is not looking so well, though. But ladies

vary; they show the mind on the countenance, for want of the punching we meet with to conceal it; they're

like military flags for a funeral or a gala; one day furled, and next day streaming. Men are ships"

figureheads, about the same for a storm or a calm, and not too handsome, thanks to the ocean. It's an age

since we encountered last, colonel: on board the Dublin boat, I recollect, and a night it was."

"Ah! and you'll please to notify that Corney's no quack at sea, by favour of the monks of the Chartreuse,

whose elixir has power to still the waves. And we hear that miracles are done with!"

"True: it'll be a miracle if they combine. Though the cure of the soul is often the entire and total cure of the

body: and it's maliciously said that the body given over to our treatment is a signal to set the soul flying. By

"Try him. You'll find him tight. He's got Miss Middleton on the brain. There's a bit of a secret; and he's not so

Dr Corney nodded. "I have to visit my patient here presently. I'm too early for him: so I'll make a call or two

De Craye strolled through the garden. He was a gentleman of those actively perceptive wits which, if ever

they reflect, do so by hops and jumps: upon some dancing mirror within, we may fancy. He penetrated a plot

in a flash; and in a flash he formed one; but in both cases, it was after long hovering and not overeager

deliberation, by the patient exercise of his quick perceptives. The fact that Crossjay was considered to have

Miss Middleton on the brain, threw a series of images of everything relating to Crossjay for the last forty

hours into relief before him: and as he did not in the slightest degree speculate on any one of them, but

merely shifted and surveyed them, the falcon that he was in spirit as well as in his handsome face leisurely

allowed his instinct to direct him where to strike. A reflective disposition has this danger in action, that it

commonly precipitates conjecture for the purpose of working upon probabilities with the methods and in the

tracks to which it is accustomed: and to conjecture rashly is to play into the puzzles of the maze. He who can

watch circling above it awhile, quietly viewing, and collecting in his eye, gathers matter that makes the secret

thing discourse to the brain by weight and balance; he will get either the right clue or none; more frequently

none; but he will escape the entanglement of his own cleverness, he will always be nearer to the enigma than

the guesser or the calculator, and he will retain a breadth of vision forfeited by them. He must, however, to

have his chance of success, be acutely besides calmly perceptive, a reader of features, audacious at the proper

De Craye wished to look at Miss Dale. She had returned home very suddenly, not, as it appeared, owing to

her father's illness; and he remembered a redness of her eyelids when he passed her on the corridor one night.

She sent Crossjay out to him as soon as the boy was well filled. He sent Crossjay back with a request. She did

not yield to it immediately. She stepped to the front door reluctantly, and seemed disconcerted. De Craye

begged for a message to Miss Middleton. There was none to give. He persisted. But there was really none at

"You won't entrust me with the smallest word?" said he, and set her visibly thinking whether she could

"I fear he has been doing mischief," she said. "I cannot get him to look at me."

"And now," said the colonel, "we'll see if we can't arrange a meeting between you and Miss Middleton.

There was no reply: Crossjay's dreadful secret jumped to his throat. He certainly was a weaker lock for being

"I don't know what to do: I don't understand it!" The secret wriggled to his mouth. He swallowed it down.

"We're all her friends, Crossjay. I flatter myself I'm a Toledo when I'm wanted. How long had you been in the

"Come, Crossjay, you're not a fellow to be scared by ghosts? You looked it when you made a dash at my

"There's no saying. We'll hope not; for it wouldn't be fair fighting. A man with a ghost to back him'd beat any

ten. We couldn't box him or play cards, or stand a chance with him as a rival in love. Did you, now, catch a

"They weren't ghosts!" Crossjay said what he was sure of, and his voice pronounced his conviction.

"I doubt whether Miss Middleton is particularly happy," remarked the colonel. "Why? Why, you upset her,

The boy swelled. "I'd do ... I'd go ... I wouldn't have her unhappy ... It's that! that's it! And I don't know what I

"So you made yourself up a comfortable bed in the drawingroom? Luckily Sir Willoughby didn't see you."

The secret threatened Crossjay to be out or suffocate him. De Craye gave him a respite.

"He's kind to you," said the colonel; "he'll set you up and look after your interests."

"Yes, I like him," said Crossjay, with his customary rapidity in touching the subject; "I like him; he's kind and

all that, and tips and plays with you, and all that; but I never can make out why he wouldn't see my father

when my father came here to see him ten miles, and had to walk back ten miles in the rain, to go by rail a

long way, down home, as far as Devonport, because Sir Willoughby wouldn't see him, though he was at

home, my father saw. We all thought it so odd: and my father wouldn't let us talk much about it. My father's a

"Because, what they say at home is, a little bread and cheese, and a glass of ale, and a rest, to a poor

manlots of great houses will give you that, and we wouldn't have asked for more than that. My sisters say

they think Sir Willoughby must be selfish. He's awfully proud; and perhaps it was because my father wasn't

dressed well enough. But what can we do? We're very poor at home, and lots of us, and all hungry. My father

says he isn't paid very well for his services to the Government. He's only a marine."

"He came home very tired, with a cold, and had a doctor. But Sir Willoughby did send him money, and

mother wished to send it back, and my father said she was not like a womanwith our big family. He said

"Not at all; very common; indigenous," said De Craye. "The art of cutting is one of the branches of a polite

education in this country, and you'll have to learn it, if you expect to be looked on as a gentleman and a

Patterne, my boy. I begin to see how it is Miss Middleton takes to you so. Follow her directions. But I hope

you did not listen to a private conversation. Miss Middleton would not approve of that."

"Colonel De Craye, how could I help myself? I heard a lot before I knew what it was. There was poetry!"

The boy swelled again, and the colonel asked him, "Does Miss Dale know of your having played listener?"

He breathed thick; then came a threat of tears. "She wouldn't do anything to hurt Miss Middleton. I'm sure of

The colonel had no inclination to wait for his return. He walked fast up the road, not perspicuously conscious

that his motive was to be well in advance of Vernon Whitford: to whom, after all, the knowledge imparted by

Crossjay would be of small advantage. That fellow would probably trot of to Willoughby to row him for

breaking his word to Miss Middleton! There are men, thought De Craye, who see nothing, feel nothing.

He crossed a stile into the wood above the lake, where, as he was in the humour to think himself signally

lucky, espying her, he took it as a matter of course that the lady who taught his heart to leap should be posted

by the Fates. And he wondered little at her power, for rarely had the world seen such union of princess and

sylph as in that lady's figure. She stood holding by a beechbranch, gazing down on the water.

She had not heard him. When she looked she flushed at the spectacle of one of her thousand thoughts, but she

"And 'tis not quite the first time that Willoughby has played this trick!" De Craye said to her, keenly smiling

Clara moved her lips to recall remarks introductory to so abrupt and strange a plunge.

He smiled in that peculiar manner of an illuminated comic perception: for the moment he was all falcon; and

he surprised himself more than Clara, who was not in the mood to take surprises. It was the sight of her which

Another instinct at work (they spring up in twenties oftener than in twos when the heart is the hunter)

prompted him to directness and quickness, to carry her on the flood of the discovery.

She regained something of her mental selfpossession as soon as she was on a level with a meaning she had

not yet inspected; but she had to submit to his lead, distinctly perceiving where its drift divided to the forked

"Miss Middleton, I bear a bit of a likeness to the messenger to the glorious despotmy head is off if I speak

not true! Everything I have is on the die. Did I guess wrong your wish?I read it in the dark, by the heart.

"You have come from him?" she could imagine nothing else, and she was unable to preserve a disguise; she

"Darkly: clear enough: not unlike the hand of destinythrough a veil. He offered himself to Miss Dale last

"Would she other? Could she? The poor lady has languished beyond a decade. She's love in the feminine

"If I have a head, it is a fresh and blooming truth. And moreI stake my vanity on it!"

"Miss Dale and I are excellent friends. It would not seem indelicate to her. She has a kind of regard for me,

through Crossjay.Oh, can it be? There must be some delusion. You have seenyou wish to be of service

to me; you may too easily be deceived. Last night?he last night ... ? And this morning!"

"But this is incredible, that last night ... and this morning, in my father's presence, he presses! ... You have

seen Miss Dale? Everything is possible of him: they were together, I know. Colonel De Craye, I have not the

slightest chance of concealment with you. I think I felt that when I first saw you. Will you let me hear why

"Miss Middleton, when I first had the honour of looking on you, it was in a posture that necessitated my

looking up, and morally so it has been since. I conceived that Willoughby had won the greatest prize of earth.

And next I was led to the conclusion that he had won it to lose it. Whether he much cares, is the mystery I

haven't leisure to fathom. Himself is the principal consideration with himself, and ever was."

"He uncovered it," said De Craye. "The miracle was, that the world wouldn't see. But the world is a

piggywiggy world for the wealthy fellow who fills a trough for it, and that he has always very sagaciously

done. Only women besides myself have detected him. I have never exposed him; I have been an observer

pure and simple; and because I apprehended another catastrophemaking something like the fourth, to my

"And Harry Oxford too. And they're a pair as happy as blackbirds in a cherrytree, in a summer sunrise, with

the owner of the garden asleep. Because of that apprehension of mine, I refused the office of best man till

Willoughby had sent me a third letter. He insisted on my coming. I came, saw, and was conquered. I trust

with all my soul I did not betray myself, I owed that duty to my position of concealing it. As for entirely

The colonel was using his eyes with an increasing suavity that threatened more than sweetness.

"I believe you have been sincerely kind," said Clara. "We will descend to the path round the lake."

She did not refuse her hand on the descent, and he let it escape the moment the service was done. As he was

performing the admirable character of the man of honour, he had to attend to the observance of details; and

sure of her though he was beginning to feel, there was a touch of the unknown in Clara Middleton which

made him fear to stamp assurance; despite a barely resistible impulse, coming of his emotions and approved

by his maxims. He looked at the hand, now a free lady's hand. Willoughby settled, his chance was great. Who

else was in the way? No one. He counselled himself to wait for her; she might have ideas of delicacy. Her

"Last night they were together: this morning she fled. I saw her this morning distressed. She is unwilling to

send you a message: she talks vaguely of meeting you some days hence. And it is not the first time he has

"That is not a proposal," Clara reflected. "He is too prudent. He did not propose to her at the time you

Shadows crossed her forehead. She glanced in the direction of the house and stopped her walk.

"Crossjay was under that pretty silk coverlet worked by the Miss Patternes. He came home late, found his

door locked, and dashed downstairs into the drawingroom, where he snuggled up and dropped asleep. The

two speakers woke him; they frightened the poor dear lad in his love for you, and after they had gone, he

wanted to run out of the house, and I met him just after I had come back from my search, bursting, and took

him to my room, and laid him on the sofa, and abused him for not lying quiet. He was restless as a fish on a

bank. When I woke in the morning he was off. Doctor Corney came across him somewhere on the road and

drove him to the cottage. I was ringing the bell. Corney told me the boy had you on his brain, and was

"But you'll pardon me, Miss Middletonand I'm for him as much as you areif I was guilty of a little

"The poor fellow had a secret that hurt him. It rose to the surface crying to be hooked, and I spared him twice

or thrice, because he had a sort of holy sentiment I respected, that none but Mr. Whitford ought to be his

"As good as the very words. She informed me, too, that she couldn't induce him to face her straight."

"He was just where tears are on the brim, and would have been over, if he were not such a manly youngster."

"It looks..." She reverted in thought to Willoughby, and doubted, and blindly stretched hands to her

recollection of the strange old monster she had discovered in him. Such a man could do anything.

That conclusion fortified her to pursue her walk to the house and give battle for freedom. Willoughby

appeared to her scarce human, unreadable, save by the key that she could supply. She determined to put faith

in Colonel De Craye's marvellous divination of circumstances in the dark. Marvels are solid weapons when

we are attacked by real prodigies of nature. Her countenance cleared. She conversed with De Craye of the

polite and the political world, throwing off her personal burden completely, and charming him.

At the edge of the garden, on the bridge that crossed the haha from the park, he had a second impulse, almost

a warning within, to seize his heavenly opportunity to ask for thanks and move her tender lowered eyelids to

Something like "heaven forgive me" was in Clara's mind, though she would have declared herself innocent

Clara had not taken many steps in the garden before she learned how great was her debt of gratitude to

Colonel De Craye. Willoughby and her father were awaiting her. De Craye, with his ready comprehension of

"One word, and these discussions are over, we dislike them equally," said Willoughby.

"No scenes," Dr. Middleton added. "Speak your decision, my girl, pro forma, seeing that he who has the right

Dr Middleton regained his natural elevation from the bend of body habitual with men of an established

sanity, paedagogues and others, who are called on at odd intervals to inspect the magnitude of the

infinitesimally absurd in human nature: small, that is, under the light of reason, immense in the realms of

His daughter profoundly confused him. He swelled out his chest, remarking to Willoughby: "I do not wonder

at your scared expression of countenance, my friend. To discover yourself engaged to a girl mad as

Cassandra, without a boast of the distinction of her being sunstruck, can be no specially comfortable

enlightenment. I am opposed to delays, and I will not have a breach of faith committed by daughter of mine."

"Do not repeat those words," Clara said to Willoughby. He started. She had evidently come armed. But how,

within so short a space? What could have instructed her? And in his bewilderment he gazed hurriedly above,

gulped air, and cried: "Scared, sir? I am not aware that my countenance can show a scare. I am not

accustomed to sue for long: I am unable to sustain the part of humble supplicant. She puts me out of harmony

with creationWe are plighted, Clara. It is pure waste of time to speak of soliciting advice on the subject."

"Tricks! shufflings! jabber of a barbarian woman upon the evolutions of a serpent!" exclaimed Dr. Middleton.

"You were to capitulate, or to furnish reasons for your refusal. You have none. Give him your hand, girl,

according to the compact. I praised you to him for returning within the allotted term, and now forbear to

"Perfectly free! as on the day when I offered it first." Willoughby frankly waved his honourable hand.

His face was blanched: enemies in the air seemed to have whispered things to her: he doubted the fidelity of

"'Sir Willoughby!'" her father ejaculated in wrath. "But will you explain what you mean, epitome that you are

of all the contradictions and mutabilities ascribed to women from the beginning! 'Certainly', he says, and

knows no more than I. She begs grace for an hour, and returns with a fresh store of evasions, to insult the man

she has injured. It is my humiliation to confess that our share in this contract is rescued from public ignominy

by his generosity. Nor can I congratulate him on his fortune, should he condescend to bear with you to the

utmost; for instead of the young woman I supposed myself to be bestowing on him, I see a fantastical

planguncula enlivened by the wanton tempers of a nursery chit. If one may conceive a meaning in her, in

miserable apology for such behaviour, some spirit of jealousy informs the girl."

"I can only remark that there is no foundation for it," said Willoughby. "I am willing to satisfy you, Clara.

Name the person who discomposes you. I can scarcely imagine one to exist: but who can tell?"

She could name no person. The detestable imputation of jealousy would be confirmed if she mentioned a

He pursued his advantage: "Jealousy is one of the fits I am a stranger to,I fancy, sir, that gentlemen have

dismissed it. I speak for myself.But I can make allowances. In some cases, it is considered a compliment;

and often a word will soothe it. The whole affair is so senseless! However, I will enter the witnessbox, or

"It is not jealousy; I could not be jealous!" Clara cried, stung by the very passion; and she ran through her

brain for a suggestion to win a sign of meltingness if not esteem from her father. She was not an iron maiden,

but one among the nervous natures which live largely in the moment, though she was then sacrificing it to her

"Optume; but deliver yourself ad rem," he rejoined, alarmingly pacified. "Firmavit fidem. Do you likewise,

"Is it untrue that last night, between twelve o'clock and one, in the drawingroom, you proposed marriage to

Miss Dale?" He became convinced that she must have stolen downstairs during his colloquy with Laetitia,

"On behalf of old Vernon?" he said, lightly laughing. "The idea is not novel, as you know. They are suited, if

"Fairly schemed, my friend, and I will say for you, you have the patience, Willoughby, of a husband!"

Willoughby bowed to the encomium, and allowed some fatigue to be visible. He half yawned: "I claim no

Clara was shaken: she feared that Crossjay had heard incorrectly, or that Colonel De Craye had guessed

erroneously. It was too likely that Willoughby should have proposed Vernon to Laetitia.

There was nothing to reassure her save the vision of the panic amazement of his face at her persistency in

speaking of Miss Dale. She could have declared on oath that she was right, while admitting all the

suppositions to be against her. And unhappily all the Delicacies (a doughty battalion for the defence of ladies

until they enter into difficulties and are shorn of them at a blow, bare as dairymaids), all the bodyguard of a

young gentlewoman, the drawingroom sylphides, which bear her train, which wreathe her hair, which

modulate her voice and tone her complexion, which are arrows and shield to awe the creature man, forbade

her utterance of what she felt, on pain of instant fulfilment of their oftrepeated threat of late to leave her to

the last remnant of a protecting sprite. She could not, as in a dear melodrama, from the aim of a pointed

finger denounce him, on the testimony of her instincts, false of speech, false in deed. She could not even

declare that she doubted his truthfulness. The refuge of a sullen fit, the refuge of tears, the pretext of a mood,

were denied her now by the rigour of those laws of decency which are a garment to ladies of pure breeding.

"One more respite, papa," she implored him, bitterly conscious of the closer tangle her petition involved, and,

if it must be betrayed of her, perceiving in an illumination how the knot might become so woefully Gordian

that haply in a cloud of wild events the intervention of a gallant gentleman out of heaven, albeit in the

likeness of one of earth, would have to cut it: her cry within, as she succumbed to weakness, being fervider,

"Anything but marry this one!" She was faint with strife and dejected, a condition in the young when their

"And I say, no respite!" observed her father. "You have assumed a position that has not been granted you,

"Him! Your duty is not to offend him. Address your excuses to him. I refuse to be dragged over the same

"And join the right hand to the right," said Dr. Middleton; no, it would not be possible. What insane root she

has been nibbling, I know not, but she must consign herself to the guidance of those whom the gods have not

abandoned, until her intellect is liberated. She was once ... there: I look not backif she it was, and no

simulacrum of a reasonable daughter. I welcome the appearance of my friend Mr. Whitford. He is my

Vernon walked straight up to them: an act unusual with him, for he was shy of committing an intrusion.

Clara guessed by that, and more by the dancing frown of speculative humour he turned on Willoughby, that

he had come charged in support of her. His forehead was curiously lively, as of one who has got a surprise

Willoughby thought it just to himself that he should defend his measure of severity.

"For which he should have been reasoned with at the Grecian portico of a boy," said the Rev. Doctor.

"My system is different, sir. I could not inflict what I would not endure myself"

"So is Greek excluded from the later generations; and you leave a field, the most fertile in the moralities in

youth, unplowed and unsown. Ah! well. This growing too fine is our way of relapsing upon barbarism.

Beware of oversensitiveness, where nature has plainly indicated her alternative gateway of knowledge. And

"We will leave them, Mr. Whitford. They are at the timehonoured dissension upon a particular day, that, for

Vernon sent one of his vivid eyeshots from one to the other. His eyes fixed on Willoughby's with a quivering

glow, beyond amazement, as if his humour stood at furnaceheat, and absorbed all that came.

"Ah!" Vernon said to Willoughby, "your pocketing of the key of Crossjay's bedroom door was a

The celestial irony suffused her, and she bathed and swam in it, on hearing its dupe reply: "My methods of

"But I may hope that Miss Dale will see me," said Clara. "We are in sympathy about the boy."

"Mr. Dale might be seen. He seems to be of a divided mind with his daughter," Vernon rejoined. "She has

"Why to me?" Willoughby chastened his irritation: "He will be welcome, of course. It would be better that

"If there is a chance of your forgiving him," said Clara. "Let the Dales know I am prepared to listen to the

"How are Mr. Dale and his daughter of a divided mind, Mr. Whitford?" said Clara.

Vernon simulated an uneasiness. With a vacant gaze that enlarged around Willoughby and was more

discomforting than intentness, he replied: "Perhaps she is unwilling to give him her entire confidence, Miss

"In which respect, then, our situations present their solitary point of unlikeness in resemblance, for I have it in

Clara dropped her eyelids for the wave to pass over. "It struck me that Miss Dale was a person of the

"Why should we be prying into the domestic affairs of the Dales?" Willoughby interjected, and drew out his

watch, merely for a diversion; he was on tiptoe to learn whether Vernon was as well instructed as Clara, and

hung to the view that he could not be, while drenching in the sensation that he was:and if so, what were the

Powers above but a body of conspirators? He paid Laetitia that compliment. He could not conceive the

human betrayal of the secret. Clara's discovery of it had set his common sense adrift.

"And yet, my friend," Dr. Middleton balanced himself, and with an air of benevolent slyness the import of

which did not awaken Willoughby, until too late, remarked: "They might concern you. I will even add, that

there is a probability of your being not less than the fount and origin of this division of father and daughter,

"Favour me, sir, with an explanation," said Vernon, seeking to gather it from Clara.

Clara, communicated as much as she was able in one of those looks of still depth which say, Think! and

Vernon was enlightened before Willoughby had spoken. His mouth shut rigidly, and there was a springing

increase of the luminous wavering of his eyes. Some star that Clara had watched at night was like them in the

vivid wink and overflow of its light. Yet, as he was perfectly sedate, none could have suspected his blood to

be chasing wild with laughter, and his frame strung to the utmost to keep it from volleying. So happy was she

in his aspect, that her chief anxiety was to recover the name of the star whose shining beckons and speaks,

and is in the quick of spiritfire. It is the sole star which on a night of frost and strong moonlight preserves an

indomitable fervency: that she remembered, and the picture of a hoar earth and a lean Orion in flooded

heavens, and the star beneath Eastward of him: but the name! the name!She heard Willoughby indistinctly.

"Oh, the old story; another effort; you know my wish; a failure, of course, and no thanks on either side, I

suppose I must ask your excuse.They neither of them see what's good for them, sir."

"Manifestly, however," said Dr. Middleton, "if one may opine from the division we have heard of, the father

"I can't say; as far as I am concerned, I made a mess of it." Vernon withstood the incitement to acquiesce, but

"Mr. Whitford," said Dr. Middleton, "You have a tower of strength in the lady's father."

"Ay, my friend, a lusty lover would have her gladly on those terms, well knowing it to be for the lady's good.

"Sir! Say? What can I say? Miss Dale has not plighted her faith. Had she done so, she is a lady who would

"She is an ideal of constancy, who would keep to it though it had been broken on the other side," said

"I take that, sir, to be a statue of constancy, modelled upon which a lady of our flesh may be proclaimed as

"But the broken is the broken, sir, whether in porcelain or in human engagements; and all that one of the two

continuing faithful, I should rather say, regretful, can do, is to devote the remainder of life to the picking up

of the fragments; an occupation properly to be pursued, for the comfort of mankind, within the enclosure of

"Then you maintain, sir, that when faith is broken by one, the engagement ceases, and the other is absolutely

"I do; I am the champion of that platitude, and sound that knell to the sentimental world; and since you have

chosen to defend it, I will appeal to Willoughby, and ask him if he would not side with the world of good

sense in applauding the nuptials of man or maid married within a month of a jilting?" Clara slipped her arm

"Poetry, sir," said Willoughby, "I never have been hypocrite enough to pretend to understand or care for."

Dr. Middleton laughed. Vernon too seemed to admire his cousin for a reply that rung in Clara's ears as the

dullest ever spoken. Her arm grew cold on her father's. She began to fear Willoughby again.

He depended entirely on his agility to elude the thrusts that assailed him. Had he been able to believe in the

treachery of the Powers above, he would at once have seen design in these deadly strokes, for his feelings had

rarely been more acute than at the present crisis; and he would then have led away Clara, to wrangle it out

with her, relying on Vernon's friendliness not to betray him to her father: but a wrangle with Clara promised

no immediate fruits, nothing agreeable; and the lifelong trust he had reposed in his protecting genii obscured

his intelligence to evidence he would otherwise have accepted on the spot, on the faith of his delicate

susceptibility to the mildest impressions which wounded him. Clara might have stooped to listen at the door:

she might have heard sufficient to create a suspicion. But Vernon was not in the house last night; she could

not have communicated it to him, and he had not seen Laetitia, who was, besides trustworthy, an admirable if

Preferring to consider Vernon a pragmatical moralist played upon by a sententious drone, he thought it politic

to detach them, and vanquish Clara while she was in the beaten mood, as she had appeared before Vernon's

"I'm afraid, my dear fellow, you are rather too dainty and fussy for a very successful wooer," he said. "It's

beautiful on paper, and absurd in life. We have a bit of private business to discuss. We will go inside, sir, I

"Five minutes. There's a slight delusion to clear, sir. My dear Clara, you will see with different eyes."

Her heart sunk to hear her father say: "No, 'tis a lost morning. I must consent to pay tax of it for giving

another young woman to the world. I have a daughter! You will, I hope, compensate me, Mr. Whitford, in the

afternoon. Be not downcast. I have observed you meditative of late. You will have no clear brain so long as

that stuff is on the mind. I could venture to propose to do some pleading for you, should it be needed for the

"Willoughby has exerted all his eloquence, and you see the result: you have lost Miss Dale and I have not

won her. He did everything that one man can do for another in so delicate a case: even to the repeating of her

famous birthday verses to him, to flatter the poetess. His best efforts were foiled by the lady's indisposition

"Behold," said Dr. Middleton, as Willoughby, electrified by the mention of the verses, took a sharp stride or

two, "you have in him an advocate who will not be rebuffed by one refusal, and I can affirm that he is

tenacious, pertinacious as are few. Justly so. Not to believe in a lady's No is the approved method of carrying

that fortress built to yield. Although unquestionably to have a young man pleading in our interests with a

lady, counts its objections. Yet Willoughby being notoriously engaged, may be held to enjoy the privileges of

"As an engaged man, sir, he was on a level with his elders in pleading on my behalf with Miss Dale," said

Vernon. Willoughby strode and muttered. Providence had grown mythical in his thoughts, if not malicious:

and it is the peril of this worship that the object will wear such an alternative aspect when it appears no longer

"Are we coming, sir?" he said, and was unheeded. The Rev. Doctor would not be defrauded of rolling his

"As an honourable gentleman faithful to his own engagement and desirous of establishing his relatives, he

deserves, in my judgement, the lady's esteem as well as your cordial thanks; nor should a temporary failure

dishearten either of you, notwithstanding the precipitate retreat of the lady from Patterne, and her seclusion in

"Supposing he had succeeded," said Vernon, driving Willoughby to frenzy, "should I have been bound to

"How long are we to stand and hear this insufferable nonsense you talk?" cried Willoughby.

"But if Mr. Whitford was not consulted. . ." Dr. Middleton said, and was overborne by Willoughby's hurried,

"Oblige me, sir. Oblige me, my good fellow!" He swept his arm to Vernon, and gestured a conducting

Willoughby stared. Was it an irruption of a friend or a foe? He doubted, and stood petrified between the

double question. Clara had seen Mrs. Mountstuart and Colonel De Craye separating: and now the great lady

She looked friendly, but friendly to everybody, which was always a frost on Willoughby, and terribly friendly

Coming up to her she whispered: "News, indeed! Wonderful! I could not credit his hint of it yesterday. Are

"Pray, Mrs. Mountstuart, take an opportunity to speak to papa," Clara whispered in return.

Mrs. Mountstuart bowed to Dr. Middleton, nodded to Vernon, and swam upon Willoughby, with, "Is it? But

is it? Am I really to believe? You have? My dear Sir Willoughby? Really? The confounded gentleman heaved

His intuitive discretion taught him to fall back a step while she said, "So!" the plummet word of our

mysterious deep fathoms; and he fell back further saying, "Madam?" in a tone advising her to speak low.

She recovered her volubility, followed his partial retreat, and dropped her voice,

"Impossible to have imagined it as an actual fact! You were always full of surprises, but this! this! Nothing

manlier, nothing more gentlemanly has ever been done: nothing: nothing that so completely changes an

untenable situation into a comfortable and proper footing for everybody. It is what I like: it is what I

love:sound sense! Men are so selfish: one cannot persuade them to be reasonable in such positions. But

you, Sir Willoughby, have shown wisdom and sentiment: the rarest of all combinations in men."

"Heard? The hedges, the housetops, everywhere. All the neighbourhood will have it before nightfall. Lady

Busshe and Lady Culmer will soon be rushing here, and declaring they never expected anything else, I do not

doubt. I am not so pretentious. I beg your excuse for that 'twice' of mine yesterday. Even if it hurt my vanity,

I should be happy to confess my error: I was utterly out. But then I did not reckon on a fatal attachment, I

thought men were incapable of it. I thought we women were the only poor creatures persecuted by a fatality.

It is a fatality! You tried hard to escape, indeed you did. And she will do honour to your final surrender, my

dear friend. She is gentle, and very clever, very: she is devoted to you: she will entertain excellently. I see her

like a flower in sunshine. She will expand to a perfect hostess. Patterne will shine under her reign; you have

my warrant for that. And so will you. Yes, you flourish best when adored. It must be adoration. You have

been under a cloud of late. Years ago I said it was a match, when no one supposed you could stoop. Lady

Busshe would have it was a screen, and she was deemed high wisdom. The world will be with you. All the

women will be: excepting, of course, Lady Busshe, whose pride is in prophecy; and she will soon be too glad

to swell the host. There, my friend, your sincerest and oldest admirer congratulates you. I could not contain

myself; I was compelled to pour forth. And now I must go and be talked to by Dr. Middleton. How does he

She acknowledged his just correction of her for running on to an extreme in lowtoned converse, though they

stood sufficiently isolated from the others. These had by this time been joined by Colonel De Craye, and were

Clara was gone from him! Gone! but he remembered his oath and vowed it again: not to Horace de Craye!

She was gone, lost, sunk into the world of waters of rival men, and he determined that his whole force should

be used to keep her from that man, the false friend who had supplanted him in her shallow heart, and might, if

Willoughby intercepted Mrs. Mountstuart as she was passing over to Dr Middleton. "My dear lady! spare me

"Never was man like you, Willoughby, for shaking new patterns in a kaleidoscope."

"Have you turned punster, Horace?" Willoughby replied, smarting to find yet another in the demon secret,

and he draw Dr. Middleton two or three steps aside, and hurriedly begged him to abstain from prosecuting the

"We must try to make her happy as we best can, sir. She may have her reasonsa young lady's reasons!" He

laughed, and left the Rev. Doctor considering within himself under the arch of his lofty frown of stupefaction.

De Craye smiled slyly and winningly as he shadowed a deep droop on the bend of his head before Clara,

signifying his absolute devotion to her service, and this present good fruit for witness of his merits.

"The battle is over," Vernon said quietly, when Willoughby had walked some paces beside Mrs. Mountstuart,

Vernon and Clara exchanged one look, hard on his part, in contrast with her softness, and he proceeded to the

house. De Craye waited for a word or a promising look. He was patient, being selfassured, and passed on.

Clara linked her arm with her father's once more, and said, on a sudden brightness: "Sirius, papa!" " He

repeated it in the profoundest manner: "Sirius! And is there," he asked, "a feminine scintilla of sense in that?"

"It was the star observed by King Agamemnon before the sacrifice in Aulis. You were thinking of that? But,

my love, my Iphigenia, you have not a father who will insist on sacrificing you."

Clara looked up at the flying clouds. She travelled with them now, and tasted freedom, but she prudently

Few were speakers at the meal, few were eaters. Clara was impelled to join it by her desire to study Mrs.

Mountstuart's face. Willoughby was obliged to preside. It was a meal of an assembly of mutes and plates, that

struck the ear like the wellknown sound of a collection of offerings in church after an impressive

exhortation from the pulpit. A sally of Colonel De Craye's met the reception given to a charityboy's muffled

burst of animal spirits in the silence of the sacred edifice. Willoughby tried politics with Dr. Middleton,

whose regular appetite preserved him from uncongenial speculations when the hour for appeasing it had

"Times are bad, you say, and we have a Ministry doing with us what they will. Well, sir, and that being so,

and opposition a manner of kicking them into greater stability, it is the time for wise men to retire within

themselves, with the steady determination of the seed in the earth to grow. Repose upon nature, sleep in firm

Dr. Middleton's appetite was watched for the signal to rise and breathe freely; and such is the grace accorded

to a good man of an untroubled conscience engaged in doing his duty to himself, that he perceived nothing of

the general restlessness; he went through the dishes calmly, and as calmly he quoted Milton to the ladies

Eleanor and Isabel, when the company sprung up all at once upon his closing his repast. Vernon was taken

away from him by Willoughby. Mrs Mountstuart beckoned covertly to Clara. Willoughby should have had

something to say to him, Dr. Middleton thought: the position was not clear. But the situation was not

disagreeable; and he was in no serious hurry, though he wished to be enlightened.

"This," Dr. Middleton said to the spinster aunts, as he accompanied them to the drawingroom, "shall be no

"Duty: duty first. The happiness of his family. The wellbeing of his dependants."

"If proud of his name it was not an overweening pride; it was founded in the conscious possession of

Dr Middleton bowed to the litany, feeling that occasion called for humbleness from him.

"Let us hope ... !" he said, with unassumed penitence on behalf of his inscrutable daughter.

"One would not deem it too much for the dispenser of goodness to expect to be a little looked up to!"

"When he was a child he one day mounted a chair, and there he stood in danger, would not let us touch

him because he was taller than we, and we were to gaze. Do you remember him, Eleanor? 'I am the sun of the

"Your feelings; he would have your feelings! He was fourteen when his cousin Grace Whitford married,

and we lost him. They had been the greatest friends; and it was long before he appeared among us. He has

"But he has befriended her husband. Never has he failed in generosity. His only fault is"

"You are not to discover! It is the same with him in manhood. No one will accuse Willoughby Patterne of

a deficiency of manlinesss: but what is it?he suffers, as none suffer, if he is not loved. He himself is

"What it is no one can say. We have lived with him all his life, and we know him ready to make any

sacrifice; only, he does demand the whole heart in return. And if he doubts, he looks as we have seen him

"We will hope," said Dr. Middleton, this time hastily. He tingled to say, "what it was": he had it in him to

solve perplexity in their inquiry. He did say, adopting familiar speech to suit the theme, "You know, ladies,

we English come of a rough stock. A dose of rough dealing in our youth does us no harm, braces us.

Otherwise we are likely to feel chilly: we grow too fine where tenuity of stature is necessarily buffetted by

gales, namely, in our selfesteem. We are barbarians, on a forcing soil of wealth, in a conservatory of

comfortable security; but still barbarians. So, you see, we shine at our best when we are plucked out of that,

to where hard blows are given, in a state of war. In a state of war we are at home, our men are highminded

fellows, Scipios and good legionaries. In the state of peace we do not live in peace: our native roughness

breaks out in unexpected places, under extraordinary aspectstyrannies, extravagances, domestic exactions:

and if we have not had sharp early training ... within and without ... the oldfashioned islandinstrument to

drill into us the civilization of our masters, the ancients, we show it by running here and there to some excess.

Ahem. Yet," added the Rev. Doctor, abandoning his effort to deliver a weighty truth obscurely for the

comprehension of dainty spinster ladies, the superabundance of whom in England was in his opinion largely

the cause of our decay as a people, "Yet I have not observed this ultrasensitiveness in Willoughby. He has

borne to hear more than I, certainly no example of the frailty, could have endured."

"Self!" they ejaculated. "But is not Self indifferent to others? Is it Self that craves for sympathy, love, and

"Admirable must he be who can impress discerning women, his lifelong housemates, so favourably. He is, I

"It is a certainty. Let him be loved and obeyed, he will be guided. That is the secret for her whom he so

fatally loves. That, if we had dared, we would have hinted to her. She will rule him through her love of him,

and through him all about her. And it will not be a rule he submits to, but a love he accepts. If she could see

The three stood drooping: the ladies with an attempt to digest his remark; the Rev. Doctor in dejection lest his

"So rare is the pleasure of welcoming you here, Mr. Dale, that we are in some alarm, when, as we trust, it

"I am indebted to him for the drive to your house, ladies," said Mr. Dale, a spare, closebuttoned gentleman,

with an Indian complexion deadened in the sickchamber. "It is unusual for me to stir from my precincts."

"I can profit little by it, sir," replied Mr. Dale. He asked the ladies: "Will Sir Willoughby be disengaged?"

"I have had the gratification of making the acquaintance of your daughter, Mr. Dale, a most estimable lady,"

Mr. Dale bowed. "She is honoured by your praises, sir. To the best of my beliefI speak as a fathershe

"Of Laetitia?" exclaimed the ladies; and spoke of her as gentleness and goodness incarnate.

The footman appeared. He announced that Sir Willoughby was in the laboratory with Mr. Whitford, and the

"Domestic business," the ladies remarked. "You know Willoughby's diligent attention to affairs, Mr. Dale."

"Sound? The question alarms me for myself," said Dr. Middleton. "Sound as our Constitution, the Credit of

the country, the reputation of our Prince of poets. I pray you to have no fears for him."

He said: "Mr. Whitford works his head; he is a hard student; he may not be always, if I may so put it, at home

"Dismiss that defamatory legend of the student, Mr. Dale; and take my word for it, that he who persistently

"My daughter is here, sir, and will be most happy to present her respects to the father of her friend, Miss

"Laetitia!" he sighed, in apostrophe, and swept his forehead with a hand seen to shake.

The ladies asked him anxiously whether he felt the heat of the room; and one offered him a smellingbottle.

"We fear to disturb him when his door is locked, Mr. Dale; but, if you wish it, we will venture on a message.

You have really no bad news of our Laetitia? She left us hurriedly this morning, without any leavetaking,

except a word to one of the maids, that your condition required her immediate presence."

"My condition! And now her door is locked to me! We have spoken through the door, and that is all. I stand

sick and stupefied between two locked doors, neither of which will open, it appears, to give me the

"Dear me!" cried Dr. Middleton, "I am struck by your description of your position, Mr. Dale. It would aptly

apply to our humanity of the present generation; and were these the days when I sermonized, I could propose

that it should afford me an illustration for the pulpit. For my part, when doors are closed I try not their locks;

and I attribute my perfect equanimity, health even, to an uninquiring acceptation of the fact that they are

closed to me. I read my page by the light I have. On the contrary, the world of this day, if I may presume to

quote you for my purpose, is heard knocking at those two locked doors of the secret of things on each side of

us, and is beheld standing sick and stupefied because it has got no response to its knocking. Why, sir, let the

world compare the diverse fortunes of the beggar and the postman: knock to give, and it is opened unto you:

knock to crave, and it continues shut. I say, carry a letter to your locked door, and you shall have a good

Mr. Dale swept a perspiring forehead, and extended his hand in supplication. "I am an invalid, Dr.

Middleton," he said. "I am unable to cope with analogies. I have but strength for the slow digestion of facts."

"For facts, we are bradypeptics to a man, sir. We know not yet if nature be a fact or an effort to master one.

The world has not yet assimilated the first fact it stepped on. We are still in the endeavour to make good

blood of the fact of our being." Pressing his hands at his temples, Mr. Dale moaned: "My head twirls; I did

unwisely to come out. I came on an impulse; I trust, honourable. I am unfitI cannot follow you, Dr.

"Nay, sir, let me say, from my experience of my countrymen, that if you do not follow me and can abstain

from abusing me in consequence, you are magnanimous," the Rev. Doctor replied, hardly consenting to let go

the man he had found to indemnify him for his gallant service of acquiescing as a mute to the ladies, though

he knew his breathing robustfulness to be as an East wind to weak nerves, and himself an engine of

Miss Eleanor said: "The enlightenment you need, Mr. Dale? Can we enlighten you?"

"I think not," he answered, faintly. "I think I will wait for Sir Willoughby ... or Mr. Whitford. If I can keep

my strength. Or could I exchangeI fear to break downtwo words with the young lady who is, was . . . "

"Miss Middleton, my daughter, sir? She shall be at your disposition; I will bring her to you." Dr. Middleton

stopped at the window. "She, it is true, may better know the mind of Miss Dale than I. But I flatter myself I

know the gentleman better. I think, Mr. Dale, addressing you as the lady's father, you will find me a

Mr. Dale was confounded; the weakly sapling caught in a gust falls back as he did.

"His impassioned advocate, I repeat; for I have the highest opinion of him. You see, sir, I am acquainted with

the circumstances. I believe," Dr. Middleton half turned to the ladies, "we must, until your potent

inducements, Mr. Dale, have been joined to my instances, and we overcome what feminine scruples there

may be, treat the circumstances as not generally public. Our Strephon may be chargeable with shyness. But if

for the present it is incumbent on us, in proper consideration for the parties, not to be nominally precise, it is

hardly requisite in this household that we should be. He is now for protesting indifference to the state. I fancy

we understand that phase of amatory frigidity. Frankly, Mr. Dale, I was once in my life myself refused by a

"I know it; I hear so; I am informed of that: I have heard of the proposal, and that he could honourably make

it. Still, I am helpless, I cannot move, until I am assured that my daughter's reasons are such as a father need

"I have not seen her this morning; I rise late. I hear an astounding account of the cause for her departure from

"We guess the secret, we guess it!" they exclaimed in reply; and they looked smilingly. as Dr. Middleton

"She had no reasons to give?" Mr. Dale spelled these words to his understanding. "Then, sir, she knew you

"Undoubtedly, by my high esteem for the gentleman, she must have known me not adverse. But she would

not consider me a principal. She could hardly have conceived me an obstacle. I am simply the gentleman's

"We will not measure it too closely, but I may say, my daughter the same, sir. And likewisemay I not

Mr. Dale made sign that he was overfilled. "Where am I! And Laetitia refused him?"

"But what strange things have been happening during my daughter's absence from the cottage!" cried Mr.

Dale, betraying an elixir in his veins. "I feel that I could laugh if I did not dread to be thought insane. She

refused his hand, and he was at liberty to offer it? My girl! We are all on our heads. The fairytales were

right and the lessonbooks were wrong. But it is really, it is really very demoralizing. An invalidand I am

one, and no momentary exhilaration will be taken for the contraryclings to the idea of stability, order. The

slightest disturbance of the wonted course of things unsettles him. Why, for years I have been prophesying it!

and for years I have had everything against me, and now when it is confirmed, I am wondering that I must not

"And for years, dear Mr. Dale, this union, in spite of countercurrents and human arrangements, has been our

"But it is out, and perhaps better out, if we would avoid the chance of mystifications. I do not suppose we are

seriously committing a breach of confidence, though he might have wished to mention it to you first himself.

I have it from Willoughby that last night he appealed to your daughter, Mr. Dalenot for the first time, if I

apprehend him correctly; and unsuccessfully. He despairs. I do not: supposing, that is, your assistance

vouchsafed to us. And I do not despair, because the gentleman is a gentleman of worth, of acknowledged

worth. You know him well enough to grant me that. I will bring you my daughter to help me in sounding his

Dr Middleton stepped through the window to the lawn on an elastic foot, beaming with the happiness he felt

Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer entered spying to right and left. At the sight of Mr. Dale in the room Lady

The amiability of the Patterne ladies combined with their total eclipse behind their illustrious nephew invited

Lady Busshe said: "Well? the news! we have the outlines. Don't be astonished: we know the points: we have

heard the gun. I could have told you as much yesterday. I saw it. And I guessed it the day before. Oh, I do

believe in fatalities now. Lady Culmer and I agree to take that view: it is the simplest. Well, and are you

"Can it be possible that they require a dose of Corney?" Lady Busshe remarked to Lady Culmer.

"They play discretion to perfection," said Lady Culmer. "But, my dears, we are in the secret."

"How did she behave?" whispered Lady Busshe. "No high flights and flutters, I do hope. She was

wellconnected, they say; though I don't comprehend what they mean by a line of scholarsone thinks of a

"That is well enough at the start. It never will stand against brains. He had the two in the house to contrast

them, and ... the result! A young woman with brainsin a housebeats all your beauties. Lady Culmer and

I have determined on that view. He thought her a delightful partner for a dance, and found her rather tiresome

at the end of the gallopade. I saw it yesterday, clear as daylight. She did not understand him, and he did

"She is young: she will learn," said the ladies uneasily, but in total ignorance of her meaning.

"And you are charitable, and always were. I remember you had a good word for that girl Durham."

Lady Busshe crossed the room to Mr. Dale, who was turning over leaves of a grand book of the heraldic

"Study it," she said, "study it, my dear Mr. Dale; you are in it, by right of possessing a clever and

accomplished daughter. At page 300 you will find the Patterne crest. And mark me, she will drag you into the

peerage before she has donerelatively, you know. Sir Willoughby and wife will not be contented to sit

down and manage the estates. Has not Laetitia immense ambition? And very creditable, I say."

Mr. Dale tried to protest something. He shut the book, examining the binding, flapped the cover with a finger,

hoped her ladyship was in good health, alluded to his own and the strangeness of the bird out of the cage.

"You will probably take up your residence here, in a larger and handsomer cage. Mr. Dale."

Mr. Dale gazed upward, with the feelings of one awakened late to see a world alive in broad daylight.

Lady Busshe dropped her voice. She took the liberty permitted to her with an inferior in station, while

treating him to a tone of familiarity in acknowledgment of his expected rise; which is high breeding, or the

"Laetitia will be happy, you may be sure. I love to see a long and faithful attachment rewardedlove it! Her

tale is the triumph of patience. Far above Grizzel! No woman will be ashamed of pointing to Lady Patterne.

You are uncertain? You are in doubt? Let me hearas low as you like. But there is no doubt of the new

shifting of the scene?no doubt of the proposal? Dear Mr. Dale! a very little louder. You are here

because? of course you wish to see Sir Willoughby. She? I did not catch you quite. She? ... it seems, you

"You must have had a distressing time. These affairs always mount up to a climax, unless people are very

well bred. We saw it coming. Naturally we did not expect such a transformation of brides: who could? If I

had laid myself down on my back to think, I should have had it. I am unerring when I set to speculating on

my back. One is cooler: ideas come; they have not to be forced. That is why I am brighter on a dull winter

afternoon, on the sofa, beside my teaservice, than at any other season. However, your trouble is over. When

"Oh, never! No, that carries the incredible beyond romance. But is he perfectly at . . ."

"Indeed, Lady Culmer," said Mr. Dale, not unpleasantly agitated by the interest he excited, in spite of his

astonishment at a public discussion of the matter in this house, "I am in the dark. Her father should know, but

I do not. Her door is locked to me; I have not seen her. I am absolutely in the dark. I am a recluse. I have

forgotten the ways of the world. I should have supposed her father would first have been addressed."

"Tuttut. Modern gentlemen are not so formal; they are creatures of impulse and take a pride in it. He spoke.

"What whirl are we in?" Lady Busshe got up, ran two or three steps and seated herself in another chair. "Oh!

do let us proceed upon system. If not we shall presently be rageing; we shall be dangerous. The Middletons

are here, and Dr. Middleton himself communicates to Mr. Dale that Laetitia Dale has refused the hand of Sir

Willoughby, who is ostensibly engaged to his own daughter! And pray, Mr. Dale, how did Dr. Middleton

speak of it? Compose yourself; there is no violent hurry, though our sympathy with you and our interest in all

"Madam ... Lady Busshe." Mr. Dale gulped a ball in his throat. "I see no reason why I should not speak. I do

not see how I can have been deluded. The Miss Patternes heard him. Dr. Middleton began upon it, not I. I

was unaware, when I came, that it was a refusal. I had been informed that there was a proposal. My authority

for the tale was positive. The object of my visit was to assure myself of the integrity of my daughter's

conduct. She had always the highest sense of honour. But passion is known to mislead, and there was this

most strange report. I feared that our humblest apologies were due to Dr. Middleton and his daughter. I know

the charm Laetitia can exercise. Madam, in the plainest language, without a possibility of my

misapprehending him, Dr. Middleton spoke of himself as the advocate of the suitor for my daughter's hand. I

have a poor head. I supposed at once an amicable rupture between Sir Willoughby and Miss Middleton, or

that the version which had reached me of their engagement was not strictly accurate. My head is weak. Dr.

Middleton's language is trying to a head like mine; but I can speak positively on the essential points: he spoke

of himself as ready to be the impassioned advocate of the suitor for my daughter's hand. Those were his

words. I understood him to entreat me to intercede with her. Nay, the name was mentioned. There was no

concealment. I am certain there could not be a misapprehension. And my feelings were touched by his

anxiety for Sir Willoughby's happiness. I attributed it to a sentiment upon which I need not dwell.

A light broke over the faces of the Patterne ladies. They exchanged it with one another.

They had been so shocked as to be almost offended by Lady Busshe, but their natural gentleness and habitual

"Is it not," said Miss Eleanor, "a misunderstanding that a change of names will rectify?"

"This is by no means the first occasion," said Miss Isabel, "that Willoughby has pleaded for his cousin

"And the Middletons here!" said Lady Busshe. "Oh! if we leave unilluminated we shall be the laughingstock

of the county. Mr. Dale, please, wake up. Do you see? You may have been mistaken."

"Lady Busshe," he woke up; "I may have mistaken Dr. Middleton; he has a language that I can compare only

to a reviewday of the field forces. But I have the story on authority that I cannot question: it is confirmed by

my daughter's unexampled behaviour. And if I live through this day I shall look about me as a ghost

"Dear Mr. Dale!" said the Patterne ladies, compassionately. Lady Busshe murmured to them: "You know the

"Never. And my belief is, they have parted by consent, and Letty Dale wins the day at last. Yes, now I do

The ladies maintained a decided negative, but they knew too much not to feel perplexed, and they betrayed it,

"Dear Mrs. Mountstuart!" Lady Busshe invoked her great rival appearing among them: "You come most

opportunely; we are in a state of inextricable confusion: we are bordering on frenzy. You, and none but you,

can help us. You know, you always know; we hang on you. Is there any truth in it? a particle?"

Mrs. Mountstuart seated herself regally "Ah, Mr. Dale!" she said, inclining to him. "Yes, dear Lady Busshe,

"Now, do not roast us. You can; you have the art. I have the whole story. That is, I have a part. I mean, I have

the outlines, I cannot be deceived, but you can fill thern in, I know you can. I saw it yesterday. Now, tell us,

"His fatality! you called her. Yes, I was sceptical. But here we have it all come round again, and if the tale is

"And the Middletons here? They have not gone; they keep the field. And more astounding, she refuses him.

"Who," said Mrs. Mountstuart, with a sovereign lift and turn of her head, "speaks of a refusal?"

"That Willoughby proposed to Laetitia for his cousin Vernon, Doctor Middleton meant," said Miss Eleanor.

Her sister followed: "Hence this really ridiculous misconception! sad, indeed," she added, for balm to Mr.

"Willoughby was Vernon's proxy. His cousin, if not his first, is ever the second thought with him."

Mrs. Mountstuart gave them a judicial hearing. They were regarded in the county as the most indulgent of

nonentities, and she as little as Lady Busshe was restrained from the burning topic in their presence. She

"Mixed, you are all wrong. Disentangled, you are each of you right. Sir Willoughby does think of his cousin

Vernon; he is anxious to establish him; he is the author of a proposal to that effect."

"We know it!" the Patterne ladies exclaimed. "And Laetitia rejected poor Vernon once more!"

"Oh! do he seated, Mr. Dale," Lady Busshe implored him, rising to thrust him back to his chair if necessary.

"Any dislocation, and we are thrown out again! We must hold together if this riddle is ever to be read. Then,

"And all the world's ahead of me! Now, Mrs. Mountstuart, you are oracle. Riddles, if you like, only speak. If

"Yes, I believe that you are. I bow to you. I do sincerely. So it's another person for Mr. Whitford? You nod.

And it is our Laetitia for Sir Willoughby? You smile. You would not deceive me? A very little, and I run

about crazed and howl at your doors. And Dr. Middleton is made to play blind man in the midst? And the

other person isnow I see day! An amicable rupture, and a smooth new arrangement. She has money; she

was never the match for our hero; never; I saw it yesterday, and before, often; and so he hands her

overtutherumtumtum, tutherumtumtum," Lady Busshe struck a quick march on her knee. "Now

isn't that clever guessing? The shadow of a clue for me. And because I know human nature. One peep, and I

see the combination in a minute. So he keeps the money in the family, becomes a benefactor to his cousin by

getting rid of the girl, and succumbs to his fatality. Rather a pity he let it ebb and flow so long. Time counts

the tides, you know. But it improves the story. I defy any other county in the kingdom to produce one fresh

and living to equal it. Let me tell you I suspected Mr. Whitford, and I hinted it yesterday."

"I really did. There is that dear good man on his feet again. And looks agitated again."

Mr. Dale had been compelled both by the lady's voice and his interest in the subject to listen. He had listened

more than enough; he was exceedingly nervous. He held on by his chair, afraid to quit his moorings, and

"Manners!" he said to himself unconsciously aloud, as he cogitated on the libertine way with which these

chartered great ladies of the district discussed his daughter. He was heard and unnoticed. The supposition, if

any, would have been that he was admonishing himself. At this juncture Sir Willoughby entered the

History, we may fear, will never know the qualities of leadership inherent in Sir Willoughby Patterne to fit

him for the post of Commander of an army, seeing that he avoided the fatigues of the service and preferred

the honours bestowed in his country upon the quiet administrators of their own estates: but his possession of

particular gifts, which are military, and especially of the proleptic mind, which is the stamp and signwarrant

of the heavensent General, was displayed on every urgent occasion when, in the midst of difficulties likely

to have extinguished one less alert than he to the threatening aspect of disaster, he had to manoeuvre himself.

He had received no intimation of Mr. Dale's presence in his house, nor of the arrival of the dreaded women

Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer: his locked door was too great a terror to his domestics. Having finished with

Vernon, after a tedious endeavour to bring the fellow to a sense of the policy of the step urged on him, he

walked out on the lawn with the desire to behold the opening of an interview not promising to lead to much,

and possibly to profit by its failure. Clara had been prepared, according to his directions, by Mrs. Mountstuart

Jenkinson, as Vernon had been prepared by him. His wishes, candidly and kindly expressed both to Vernon

and Mrs Mountstuart, were, that since the girl appeared disinclined to make him a happy man, she would

make one of his cousin. Intimating to Mrs. Mountstuart that he would be happier without her, he alluded to

the benefit of the girl's money to poor old Vernon, the general escape from a scandal if old Vernon could

manage to catch her as she dropped, the harmonious arrangement it would be for all parties. And only on the

condition of her taking Vernon would he consent to give her up. This he said imperatively, adding that such

was the meaning of the news she had received relating to Laetitia Dale. From what quarter had she received

it? he asked. She shuffled in her reply, made a gesture to signify that it was in the air, universal, and fell upon

the proposed arrangement. He would listen to none of Mrs. Mountstuart's womanoftheworld instances of

the folly of pressing it upon a girl who had shown herself a girl of spirit. She foretold the failure. He would

not be advised; he said: "It is my scheme"; and perhaps the look of mad benevolence about it induced the

lady to try whether there was a chance that it would hit the madness in our nature, and somehow succeed or

lead to a pacification. Sir Willoughby condescended to arrange things thus for Clara's good; he would then

proceed to realize his own. Such was the face he put upon it. We can wear what appearance we please before

the world until we are found out, nor is the world's praise knocking upon hollowness always hollow music;

but Mrs Mountstuart's laudation of his kindness and simplicity disturbed him; for though he had recovered

from his rebuff enough to imagine that Laetitia could not refuse him under reiterated pressure, he had let it be

supposed that she was a submissive handmaiden throbbing for her elevation; and Mrs Mountstuart's belief in

it afflicted his recent bitter experience; his footing was not perfectly secure. Besides, assuming it to be so, he

considered the sort of prize he had won; and a spasm of downright hatred of a world for which we make

mighty sacrifices to be repaid in a worn, thin, comparatively valueless coin, troubled his counting of his

gains. Laetitia, it was true, had not passed through other hands in coming to him, as Vernon would know it to

be Clara's case: time only had worn her: but the comfort of the reflection was annoyed by the physical

contrast of the two. Hence an unusual melancholy in his tone that Mrs. Mountstuart thought touching. It had

the scenic effect on her which greatly contributes to delude the wits. She talked of him to Clara as being a

Vernon took the communication curiously. He seemed readier to be in love with his benevolent relative than

with the lady. He was confused, undisguisedly moved, said the plan was impossible, out of the question, but

thanked Willoughby for the best of intentions, thanked him warmly. After saying that the plan was

impossible, the comical fellow allowed himself to be pushed forth on the lawn to see how Miss Middleton

might have come out of her interview with Mrs. Mountstuart. Willoughby observed Mrs. Mountstuart meet

him, usher him to the place she had quitted among the shrubs, and return to the open turfspaces. He sprang

"She will listen." Mrs. Mountstuart said: "She likes him, respects him, thinks he is a very sincere friend,

clever, a scholar, and a good mountaineer; and thinks you mean very kindly. So much I have impressed on

"She consents to listen," said Willoughby, snatching at that as the deathblow to his friend Horace.

"She consents to listen, because you have arranged it so that if she declined she would be rather a savage."

"'Anything for peace', she says: and I don't say that a gentleman with a tongue would not have a chance. She

"Old Vernon has no tongue for women, poor fellow! You will have us be spider or fly, and if a man can't spin

a web all he can hope is not to be caught in one. She knows his history, too, and that won't be in his favour.

"Not so bright: like a bit of china that wants dusting. She looked a trifle gauche, it struck me; more like a

country girl with the hoyden taming in her than the wellbred creature she is. I did not suspect her to have

feeling. You must remember, Sir Willoughby, that she has obeyed your wishes, done her utmost: I do think

we may say she has made some amends; and if she is to blame she repents, and you will not insist too far."

They perceived Dr. Middleton wandering over the lawn, and Willoughby went to him to put him on the

wrong track: Mrs. Mountstuart swept into the drawingroom. Willoughby quitted the Rev. Doctor, and hung

about the bower where he supposed his pair of dupes had by this time ceased to stutter mutually:or what if

they had found the word of harmony? He could bear that, just bear it. He rounded the shrubs, and, behold,

both had vanished. The trellis decorated emptiness. His idea was, that they had soon discovered their inability

to be turtles: and desiring not to lose a moment while Clara was fretted by the scene, he rushed to the

drawingroom with the hope of lighting on her there, getting her to himself, and finally, urgently,

passionately offering her the sole alternative of what she had immediately rejected. Why had he not used

passion before, instead of limping crippled between temper and policy? He was capable of it: as soon as

imagination in him conceived his personal feelings unwounded and unimperiled, the might of it inspired him

with heroical confidence, and Clara grateful, Clara softly moved, led him to think of Clara melted. Thus

One step there warned him that he was in the jaws of the world. We have the phrase, that a man is himself

under certain trying circumstances. There is no need to say it of Sir Willoughby: he was thrice himself when

danger menaced, himself inspired him. He could read at a single glance the Polyphemus eye in the general

head of a company. Lady Busshe, Lady Culmer, Mrs. Mountstuart, Mr. Dale, had a similarity in the variety of

their expressions that made up one giant eye for him perfectly, if awfully, legible. He discerned the fact that

his demon secret was abroad, universal. He ascribed it to fate. He was in the jaws of the world, on the world's

teeth. This time he thought Laetitia must have betrayed him, and bowing to Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer,

gallantly pressing their fingers and responding to their becks and archnesses, he ruminated on his defences

before he should accost her father. He did not want to be alone with the man, and he considered how his

"I am glad to see you, Mr. Dale. Pray, be seated. Is it nature asserting her strength? or the efficacy of

"No, Sir Willoughby, no. I have not; I have not seen her since she came home this morning from Patterne."

This was an advantage against the world, but an exposure of himself to the abominable woman.

Dr. Middleton came up to Mr. Dale to apologize for not presenting his daughter Clara, whom he could find

"Your visits are too rare for me to allow of your numbering the minutes," Willoughby replied. "We cannot let

Mr. Dale shook his head. "My strength, Sir Willoughby, will not sustain me long."

"Not far from home, in truth, but too far for an invalid beginning to grow sensible of weakness."

"You will regard Patterne as your home, Mr. Dale," Willoughby repeated for the world to hear.

Willoughby gave him a look that was coldly courteous, and then he looked at Lady Busshe. She nodded

"Pestered by the Rev. gentleman:I see you are. Is the story I have heard correct?Possibly it may err in

But Lady Busshe would not be satisfied with the compliment of the intimate looks and nods. She thought she

might still be behind Mrs. Mountstuart; and she was a bold woman, and anxious about him, halfcrazed by

the riddle of the pot she was boiling in, and having very few minutes to spare. Not extremely reticent by

nature, privileged by station, and made intimate with him by his covert looks, she stood up to him. "One word

to an old friend. Which is the father of the fortunate creature? I don't know how to behave to them." No time

"I see. A decent withdrawal, and very well cloaked. We had a tale here of her running off to decline the

How was it that the woman was ready to accept the altered posture of affairs in his houseif she had

"Her father. And the lady aunts declare it was the cousin she refused!" Willoughby's brain turned over. He

righted it for action, and crossed the room to the ladies Eleanor and Isabel. His ears tingled. He and his whole

story discussed in public! Himself unroofed! And the marvel that he of all men should be in such a tangle,

naked and blown on, condemned to use his cunningest arts to unwind and cover himself, struck him as

though the lord of his kind were running the gauntlet of a legion of imps. He felt their lashes.

The ladies were talking to Mrs. Mountstuart and Lady Culmer of Vernon and the suitableness of Laetitia to a

"It is the hour for your drive. To the cottage! Mr. Dale is in. She must come. Her sick father! No delay, going

"Poor man!" they sighed; and "Willoughby," said one, and the other said: "There is a strange misconception

They were about to murmur what it was. He swept his hand round, and excusing themselves to their guests,

Lady Busshe at his entreaty remained, and took a seat beside Lady Culmer and Mrs. Mountstuart.

Lady Busshe consoled her. "At any rate, the loss of a scholar is no loss to the county."

The voice of Dr. Middleton in colloquy with Mr. Dale swelled on a melodious thunder: "For whom else

should I plead as the passionate advocate I proclaimed myself to you, sir? There is but one man known to me

who would move me to back him upon such an adventure. Willoughby, join me. I am informing Mr. Dale . .

Willoughby stretched his hands out to Mr. Dale to support him on his legs, though he had shown no sign of a

"It will pass. Laetitia will be with us in twenty minutes." Mr. Dale struck his hands in a clasp. He looked

alarmingly ill, and satisfactorily revealed to his host how he could be made to look so.

"I was informing Mr. Dale that the petitioner enjoys our concurrent good wishes: and mine in no degree less

than yours, Willoughby," observed Dr. Middleton, whose billows grew the bigger for a check. He supposed

himself speaking confidentially. "Ladies have the trick, they have, I may say, the natural disposition for

playing enigma now and again. Pressure is often a sovereign specific. Let it be tried upon her all round from

every radiating line of the circle. You she refuses. Then I venture to propose myself to appeal to her. My

daughter has assuredly an esteem for the applicant that will animate a woman's tongue in such a case. The

ladies of the house will not be backward. Lastly, if necessary, we trust the lady's father to add his instances.

My prescription is, to fatigue her negatives; and where no rooted objection exists, I maintain it to be the

unfailing receipt for the conduct of the siege. No woman can say No forever. The defence has not such

resources against even a single assailant, and we shall have solved the problem of continuous motion before

"To a loyal gentleman, ma'am: assuming the field of the recurring request to be not unholy ground;

Dr Middleton was attacked by three angry bees. They made him say yes and no alternately so many times

that he had to admit in men a shiftier yieldingness than women were charged with.

Willoughby gesticulated as mute chorus on the side of the ladies; and a little show of party spirit like that,

coming upon their excitement under the topic, inclined them to him genially. He drew Mr. Dale away while

the conflict subsided in sharp snaps of rifles and an interval rejoinder of a cannon. Mr. Dale had shown by

"Sir Willoughby, I have a question. I beg you to lead me where I may ask it. I know my head is weak."

"Mr. Dale, it is answered when I say that my house is your home, and that Laetitia will soon be with us."

"For I should go to my grave bankrupt if that could be said of her; and I have never yet felt poor, though you

"There are situations, Mr. Dale, too delicate to be clothed in positive definitions."

"Ah, Sir Willoughby, but it becomes a father to see that his daughter is not forced into delicate situations. I

hope all is well. I am confused. It may be my head. She puzzles me. You are not ... Can I ask it here? You are

Sir Willoughby conveyed by a shake of the head and a pressure of Mr. Dale's hand, that he was not, and that

"Really!" The invalid wore a look as if wine had been poured into him. He routed his host's calculations by

Willoughby attempted an interposition, but Dr. Middleton crashed through it like the lordly organ swallowing

"Not before I score my victory, Mr. Dale, and establish my friend upon his rightful throne."

"Ah!" Dr. Middleton towered on the swelling exclamation, but with no dark light. He radiated splendidly.

He advanced to Willoughby, seized his hand, squeezed it, thanked him, praised him. He spoke under his

breath, for a wonder; but: "We are in your debt lastingly, my friend", was heard, and he was impressive, he

seemed subdued, and saying aloud: "Though I should wish to aid in the reduction of that fortress", he let it be

Dr. Middleton partly stupefied Willoughby by his way of taking it, but his conduct was too serviceable to

allow of speculation on his readiness to break the match. It was the turningpoint of the engagement.

"I cannot keep my horses waiting any longer," she said, and beckoned. Sir Willoughby was beside her

"You are admirable! perfect! Don't ask me to hold my tongue. I retract, I recant. It is a fatality. I have

resolved upon that view. You could stand the shot of beauty, not of brains. That is our report. There! And it's

delicious to feel that the county wins you. No tea. I cannot possibly wait. And, oh! here she is. I must have a

"You are not to be excited, sir: compose yourself. You will recover and be strong tomorrow: you are at

home; you are in your own house; you are in Laetitia's drawingroom. All will be clear tomorrow. Till

He met Laetitia and rescued her from Lady Busshe, murmuring, with the air of a lover who says, "my love!

my sweet!" that she had done rightly to come and come at once. Her father had been thrown into the proper

condition of clammy nervousness to create the impression. Laetitia's anxiety sat prettily on her long eyelashes

Hereupon Dr. Corney appeared; and his name had a bracing effect on Mr. Dale. "Corney has come to drive

me to the cottage," he said. "I am ashamed of this public exhibition of myself, my dear. Let us go. My head is

Dr. Corney had been intercepted. He broke from Sir Willoughby with a dozen little nods of accurate

understanding of him, even to beyond the mark of the communications. He touched his patient's pulse lightly,

briefly sighed with professional composure, and pronounced: "Rest. Must not be moved. No, no, nothing

serious," he quieted Laetitia's fears, "but rest, rest. A change of residence for a night will tone him. I will

bring him a draught in the course of the evening. Yes, yes, I'll fetch everything wanted from the cottage for

"You are sure, Dr. Corney?" said Laetitia, frightened on her father's account and on her own.

"Which aspect will be the best for Mr. Dale's bedroom?" the hospitable ladies Eleanor and Isabel inquired.

"Southeast, decidedly: let him have the morning sun: a warm air, a vigorous air, and a bright air, and the

Still doubtful whether she was in a trap, Laetitia whispered to her father of the privacy and comforts of his

The ladies Eleanor and Isabel took the word from Willoughby, and said: "But you are at home, my dear. This

is your home. Your father will be at least as well attended here as at the cottage."

She raised her eyelids on them mournfully, and by chance diverted her look to Dr. Middleton, quite by

It spoke eloquently to the assembly of all that Willoughby desired to be imagined.

"But there is Crossjay," she cried. "My cousin has gone, and the boy is left alone. I cannot have him left

alone. If we, if, Dr. Corney, you are sure it is unsafe for papa to be moved today, Crossjay must ... he cannot

"Bring him with you, Corney," said Sir Willoughby; and the little doctor heartily promised that he would, in

the event of his finding Crossjay at the cottage, which he thought a distant probability.

"And if Crossjay gave you his word," the accents of a new voice vibrated close by, "be certain that he will not

Clara Middleton stepped gently to Laetitia, and with a manner that was an embrace, as much as kissed her for

what she was doing on behalf of Crossjay. She put her lips in a pouting form to simulate saying: "Press it."

There was a chatter about Crossjay and the sentinel true to his post that he could be, during which Laetitia

distressfully scribbled a line for Dr. Corney to deliver to him. Clara stood near. She had rebuked herself for

want of reserve in the presence of Lady Busshe and Lady Culmer, and she was guilty of a slightly excessive

containment when she next addressed Laetitia. It was, like Laetitia's look at Dr. Middleton, opportune:

enough to make a man who watched as Willoughby did a fatalist for life: the shadow of a difference in her

bearing toward Laetitia sufficed to impute acting either to her present coolness or her previous warmth. Better

still, when Dr. Middleton said: "So we leave tomorrow, my dear, and I hope you have written to the

Darletons," Clara flushed and beamed, and repressed her animation on a sudden, with one grave look, that

Willoughby's pride was high, though he knew himself to be keeping it up like a fearfully dexterous juggler,

"We are expected, but I will write," she replied: and her not having yet written counted in his favour.

She went to write the letter. Dr. Corney had departed on his mission to fetch Crossjay and medicine. Lady

Busshe was impatient to be gone. "Corney," she said to Lady Culmer, "is a deadly gossip."

Sir Willoughby was leading out Mr. Dale to a quiet room, contiguous to the invalid gentleman's bedchamber.

He resigned him to Laetitia in the hall, that he might have the pleasure of conducting the ladies to their

"As little agitation as possible. Corney will soon be back," he said, bitterly admiring the graceful

What had the world given him in return for his efforts to gain it? Just a shirt, it might be said: simple scanty

clothing, no warmth. Lady Busshe was unbearable; she gabbled; she was illbred, permitted herself to speak

of Dr. Middleton as ineligible, no loss to the county. And Mrs. Mountstuart was hardly much above her, with

her inevitable stroke of caricature:"You see Doctor Middleton's pulpit scampering after him with legs!"

Perhaps the Rev. Doctor did punish the world for his having forsaken his pulpit, and might be conceived as

haunted by it at his heels, but Willoughby was in the mood to abhor comic images; he hated the perpetrators

of them and the grinners. Contempt of this laughing empty world, for which he had performed a monstrous

immolation, led him to associate Dr. Middleton in his mind, and Clara too, with the desireable things he had

sacrificeda shape of youth and health; a sparkling companion; a face of innumerable charms; and his own

veracity; his inner sense of his dignity; and his temper, and the limpid frankness of his air of scorn, that was

to him a visage of candid happiness in the dim retrospect. Haply also he had sacrificed more: he looked

scientifically into the future: he might have sacrificed a nameless more. And for what? he asked again. For

the favourable looks and tongues of these women whose looks and tongues he detested!

"It is we who are in your debt for a lovely romance, my dear Sir Willoughby," said Lady Busshe, incapable of

taking a correction, so thoroughly had he imbued her with his fiction, or with the belief that she had a good

"A hat and horn, and she would be in the old figure of a postboy on a hueandcry sheet," said Mrs.

Willoughby thanked the great lady for her services, and she complimented the polished gentleman on his

noble selfpossession. But she complained at the same time of being defrauded of her "charmer" Colonel De

Craye, since luncheon. An absence of warmth in her compliment caused Willoughby to shrink and think the

wretched shirt he had got from the world no covering after all: a breath flapped it.

"He comes to me tomorrow, I believe," she said, reflecting on her superior knowledge of facts in

comparison with Lady Busshe, who would presently be hearing of something novel, and exclaiming: "So,

that is why you patronized the colonel!" And it was nothing of the sort, for Mrs. Mountstuart could honestly

"Horace is an enviable fellow," said Willoughby, wise in The Book, which bids us ever, for an assuagement

to fancy our friend's condition worse than our own, and recommends the deglutition of irony as the most

"I'll come for him in the morning," she said, and her carriage whirled her off. Either she had guessed it, or

Willoughby shut himself up in his laboratory to brood awhile after the conflict. Sounding through himself, as

it was habitual with him to do, for the plan most agreeable to his taste, he came on a strange discovery among

the lower circles of that microcosm. He was no longer guided in his choice by liking and appetite: he had to

put it on the edge of a sharp discrimination, and try it by his acutest judgement before it was acceptable to his

heart: and knowing well the direction of his desire, he was nevertheless unable to run two strides on a wish.

He had learned to read the world: his partial capacity for reading persons had fled. The mysteries of his own

bosom were bare to him; but he could comprehend them only in their immediate relation to the world outside.

This hateful world had caught him and transformed him to a machine. The discovery he made was, that in the

gratification of the egoistic instinct we may so beset ourselves as to deal a slaughtering wound upon Self to

Surely there is nothing stranger in mortal experience. The man was confounded. At the game of Chess it is

the dishonour of our adversary when we are stalemated: but in life, cornbatting the world, such a winning of

Willoughby's interpretation of his discovery was directed by pity: he had no other strong emotion left in him.

He pitied himself, and he reached the conclusion that he suffered because he was active; he could not be

quiescent. Had it not been for his devotion to his house and name, never would he have stood twice the

victim of womankind. Had he been selfish, he would have been the happiest of men! He said it aloud. He

schemed benevolently for his unborn young, and for the persons about him: hence he was in a position

forbidding a step under pain of injury to his feelings. He was generous: otherwise would he not in scorn of

soul, at the outset, straight off have pitched Clara Middleton to the wanton winds? He was faithful in his

affection: Laetitia Dale was beneath his roof to prove it. Both these women were examples of his power of

forgiveness, and now a tender word to Clara might fasten shame on himsuch was her gratitude! And if he

did not marry Laetitia, laughter would be devilish all around himsuch was the world's! Probably Vernon

would not long be thankful for the chance which varied the monotony of his days. What of Horace?

Willoughby stripped to enter the ring with Horace: he cast away disguise. That man had been the first to

divide him in the all but equal slices of his egoistic from his amatory self: murder of his individuality was the

crime of Horace De Craye. And further, suspicion fixed on Horace (he knew not how, except that The Book

bids us be suspicious of those we hate) as the man who had betrayed his recent dealings with Laetitia.

Willoughby walked the thoroughfares of the house to meet Clara and make certain of her either for himself,

or, if it must be, for Vernon, before he took another step with Laetitia Dale. Clara could reunite him, turn him

once more into a whole and an animated man; and she might be willing. Her willingness to listen to Vernon

promised it. "A gentleman with a tongue would have a chance", Mrs. Mountstuart had said. How much

greater the chance of a lover! For he had not yet supplicated her: he had shown pride and temper. He could

woo, he was a torrential wooer. And it would be glorious to swing round on Lady Busshe and the world, with

Clara nestling under an arm, and protest astonishment at the erroneous and utterly unfounded anticipations of

"They expect us any day, but it will be more comfortable for papa," was her answer. She looked kindly in her

She did not seem to think he had treated her contemptuously in flinging her to his cousin, which was odd.

Willoughby thought this encomium, and her consent to speak on the subject, and her scarcely embarrassed air

and richness of tone in speaking, very strange: and strange was her taking him quite in earnest. Apparently

she had no feminine sensation of the unwontedness and the absurdity of the matter!

"Ah! the poor old fellow was taught to see it was hopeless chilled. May I plead? Will you step into the

He drew up to relieve himself of a critical and condemnatory expiration of a certain length. This young lady

"Could you, Clara, could you promise meI hold to it. I must have it, I know his shy trickspromise me to

"I feel bound to listen to you, Willoughby. Whatever I can do to please you, I will. It is my lifelong duty."

"Could you, Clara, could you conceive it, could you simply conceive itgive him your hand?"

She paused. She, so penetrative of him when he opposed her, was hoodwinked when he softened her feelings:

for the heart, though the clearest, is not the most constant instructor of the head; the heart, unlike the often

She said these words: "I could engage to marry no one else." His amazement breathed without a syllable.

He flapped his arms, resembling for the moment those birds of enormous body which attempt a rise upon

"Would you engage it?" he said, content to see himself stepped on as an insect if he could but feel the agony

of his false friend Horacetheir common pretensions to win her were now of that comparative size.

"Oh! there can be no necessity. And an oathno!" said Clara, inwardly shivering at a recollection.

It has been known to the patriotic mountaineer of a hoary pile of winters, with little life remaining in him, but

that little on fire for his country, that by the brink of the precipice he has flung himself on a young and lusty

invader, dedicating himself exultingly to death if only he may score a point for his country by extinguishing

in his country's enemy the stronger man. So likewise did Willoughby, in the blow that deprived him of hope,

exult in the toppling over of Horace De Craye. They perished together, but which one sublimely relished the

headlong descent? And Vernon taken by Clara would be Vernon simply tolerated. And Clara taken by

Vernon would be Clara previously touched, smirched. Altogether he could enjoy his fall.

It was at least upon a comfortable bed, where his pride would be dressed daily and would never be

He was henceforth Laetitia's own. The bell telling of Dr. Corney's return was a welcome sound to

Willoughby, and he said goodhumouredly: "Wait, Clara, you will see your hero Crossjay."

Crossjay and Dr. Corney tumbled into the hall. Willoughby caught Crossjay under the arms to give him a lift

"I had work to hook him and worse to net him," said Dr. Corney. "I had to make him believe he was to nurse

Crossjay came back to Clara heavier in looks than his limbs had been. She dropped her letter in the hallbox,

and took his hand to have a private hug of him. When they were alone, she said: "Crossjay, my dear, my

"Yes, and who wouldn't be, and you're not to marry Sir Willoughby!" his voice threatened a cry. "I know

"I should have seen a lot of you, and I sha'n't see you at all, and I'm sure if I'd known I wouldn't haveAnd

"Why, that I"Crossjay got close to her"why, that I, that I you know what you used to say. I wouldn't

tell a lie, but oughtn't I, without his asking ... and this money! I don't mind being turned out again."

Crossjay held the gold pieces out as things that had not yet mingled with his ideas of possession.

"I listened, and I told of him," he said. "I couldn't help listening, but I went and told; and I don't like being

here, and his money, and he not knowing what I did. Haven't you heard? I'm certain I know what you think,

and so do I, and I must take my luck. I'm always in mischief, getting into a mess or getting out of it. I don't

mind, I really don't, Miss Middleton, I can sleep in a tree quite comfortably. If you're not going to be here, I'd

just as soon be anywhere. I must try to earn my living some day. And why not a cabinboy? Sir Cloudesley

Shovel was no better. And I don't mind his being wrecked at last, if you're drowned an admiral. So I shall go

and ask him to take his money back, and if he asks me I shall tell him, and there. You know what it is: I

guessed that from what Dr. Corney said. I'm sure I know you're thinking what's manly. Fancy me keeping his

money, and you not marrying him! I wouldn't mind driving a plough. I shouldn't make a bad gamekeeper. Of

"Speak to Mr. Whitford first," said Clara, too proud of the boy for growing as she had trained him, to advise a

course of conduct opposed to his notions of manliness, though now that her battle was over she would gladly

have acquiesced in little casuistic compromises for the sake of the general peace.

Some time later Vernon and Dr. Corney were arguing upon the question. Corney was dead against the

sentimental view of the morality of the case propounded by Vernon as coming from Miss Middleton and

partly shared by him. "If it's on the boy's mind," Vernon said, "I can't prohibit his going to Willoughby and

making a clean breast of it, especially as it involves me, and sooner or later I should have to tell him myself."

Dr. Corney said no at all points. "Now hear me," he said, finally. "This is between ourselves, and no breach

of confidence, which I'd not be guilty of for forty friends, though I'd give my hand from the wristjoint for

onemy left, that's to say. Sir Willoughby puts me one or two searching interrogations on a point of interest

to him, his house and name. Very well, and good night to that, and I wish Miss Dale had been ten years

younger, or had passed the ten with no heartrisings and sinkings wearing to the tissues of the frame and the

moral fibre to boot. She'll have a fairish health, with a little occasional doctoring; taking her rank and wealth

in right earnest, and shying her pen back to Mother Goose. She'll do. And, by the way, I think it's to the credit

of my sagacity that I fetched Mr. Dale here fully primed, and roused the neighbourhood, which I did, and so

fixed our gentleman, neat as a prodded eel on a pair of prongsnamely, the positive fact and the general

knowledge of it. But, mark me, my friend. We understand one another at a nod. This boy, young Squire

Crossjay, is a good stiff hearty kind of a Saxon boy, out of whom you may cut as gallant a fellow as ever

wore epaulettes. I like him, you like him, Miss Dale and Miss Middleton like him; and Sir Willoughby

Patterne, of Patterne Hall and other places, won't be indisposed to like him mightily in the event of the sun

being seen to shine upon him with a particular determination to make him appear a prominent object, because

a solitary, and a Patterne." Dr. Corney lifted his chest and his finger: "Now mark me, and verbum sap:

Crossjay must not offend Sir Willoughby. I say no more. Look ahead. Miracles happen, but it's best to reckon

"It appears as if she would," said Vernon, meditating on the cloudy sketch Dr. Corney had drawn.

"She can't, my friend. Her position's precarious; her father has little besides a pension. And her writing

damages her health. She can't. And she likes the baronet. Oh, it's only a little fit of proud blood. She's the

woman for him. She'll manage himgive him an idea he's got a lot of ideas. It'd kill her father if she were

obstinate. He talked to me, when I told him of the business, about his dream fulfilled, and if the dream turns

to vapour, he'll be another example that we hang more upon dreams than realities for nourishment, and

medicine too. Last week I couldn't have got him out of his house with all my art and science. Oh, she'll come

"Without quite doing justice to him now," said Vernon. "He can be generousin his way."

Meanwhile Colonel De Craye, after hovering over the park and about the cottage for the opportunity of

pouncing on Miss Middleton alone, had returned crestfallen for once, and plumped into Willoughby's hands.

"My dear Horace," Willoughby said, "I've been looking for you all the afternoon. The fact isI fancy you'll

think yourself lured down here on false pretences: but the truth is, I am not so much to blame as the world

will suppose. In point of fact, to be brief, Miss Dale and I ... I never consult other men how they would have

acted. The fact of the matter is, Miss Middleton ... I fancy you have partly guessed it."

"Well, she has a liking that way, and if it should turn out strong enough, it's the best arrangement I can think

"One can back a good friend for making a good husband," said Willoughby. "I could not break with her in the

present stage of affairs without seeing to that. And I can speak of her highly, though she and I have seen in

"I have always thought it," said Colonel De Craye, glistening, and looking hungry as a wolf through his

"There will not be a word against her, you understand. You know my dislike of tattle and gossip. However,

let it fall on me; my shoulders are broad. I have done my utmost to persuade her, and there seems a likelihood

of her consenting. She tells me her wish is to please me, and this will please me."

"My best friend, I tell you. I could hardly have proposed another. Allow this business to go on smoothly just

now." There was an uproar within the colonel to blind his wits, and Willoughby looked so friendly that it was

possible to suppose the man of projects had mentioned his best friend to Miss Middleton.

"That would be unfair to him at present, Horaceask yourself and to her. Things are in a ticklish posture

"You have a remarkable aptitude for guessing, Horace, and this case offers you no tough problemif ever

you acknowledged toughness. I have a regard for her and for himfor both pretty equally; you know I have,

"Novel, I should say, and not the worse for that. We want plain practical dealings between men and women.

Willoughby's fish gave a perceptible little leap now that he had been taught to exercise his aptitude for

"Without any of the customary preliminaries on the side of the gentleman?" he said.

"We must put him through his paces, friend Horace. He's a notorious blunderer with women; hasn't a word

De Craye crested his plumes under the agreeable banter. He presented a face humourously sceptical.

"I have cause to think she is not," said Willoughby, glad of acting the indifference to her which could talk of

The colonel sprang up, crying: "Clara Middleton said it?" He curbed himself "That's a bit of wonderful

"She wishes to please me. We separate on those terms. And I wish her happiness. I've developed a heart

"And if he requires persuasion, you and I, Horace, might bring him to his senses."

"I like to see everybody happy about me," said Willoughby, naming the hour as time to dress for dinner.

The sentiment he had delivered was De Craye's excuse for grasping his hand and complimenting him; but the

Who are not fools to beset spinning if we choose to whip them with their vanity! it is the consolation of the

great to watch them spin. But the pleasure is loftier, and may comfort our unmerited misfortune for a while,

Willoughby, among his many preoccupations, had the satisfaction of seeing the effect of drunkenness on

Horace De Craye when the latter was in Clara's presence. He could have laughed. Cut in keen epigram were

the marginal notes added by him to that chapter of The Book which treats of friends and a woman; and had he

not been profoundly preoccupied, troubled by recent intelligence communicated by the ladies, his aunts, he

would have played the two together for the royal amusement afforded him by his friend Horace.

The hour was close upon eleven at night. Laetitia sat in the room adjoining her father's bedchamber. Her

elbow was on the table beside her chair, and two fingers pressed her temples. The state between thinking and

feeling, when both are molten and flow by us, is one of our natures coming after thought has quieted the fiery

nerves, and can do no more. She seemed to be meditating. She was conscious only of a struggle past.

She answered a tap at the door, and raised her eyes on Clara. Clara stepped softly. "Mr. Dale is asleep?"

"Yeswith a voice! I thought of you upstairs, but could not ask him to sing piano."

"Dear, I will tell you. Last nightYou will forgive him, for it was by accident: his own bedroom door was

locked and he ran down to the drawingroom and curled himself up on the ottoman, and fell asleep, under

Laetitia profited by this absurd allusion, thanking Clara in her heart for the refuge.

"He slept there, and woke up. Dear, he meant no harm. Next day he repeated what he had heard. You will

blame him. He meant well in his poor boy's head. And now it is over the county. Ah! do not frown."

"Dear, dear friend," said Clara. "WhyI presume on your tenderness for me; but let me: tomorrow I

gowhy will you reject your happiness? Those kind good ladies are deeply troubled. They say your

resolution is inflexible; you resist their entreaties and your father's. Can it be that you have any doubt of the

strength of this attachment? I have none. I have never had a doubt that it was the strongest of his feelings. If

before I go I could see you ... both happy, I should be relieved, I should rejoice."

Laetitia said, quietly: "Do you remember a walk we had one day together to the cottage?"

"Before I go!" said she. "If I might know this was to be, which all desire, before I leave, I should not feel as I

do now. I long to see you happy ... him, yes, him too. Is it like asking you to pay my debt? Then, please! But,

no; I am not more than partly selfish on this occasion. He has won my gratitude. He can be really generous."

"Help me to forget itthat day, and those days, and all those days! I should be glad to think I passed a time

beneath the earth, and have risen again. I was the Egoist. I am sure, if I had been buried, I should not have

stood up seeing myself more vilely stained, soiled, disfiguredoh! Help me to forget my conduct, Laetitia.

He and I were unsuitedand I remember I blamed myself then. You and he are not: and now I can perceive

the pride that can be felt in him. The worst that can be said is that he schemes too much."

"You have not heard? It was impossible, but it was kindly intended. Judging by my own feeling at this

"Dear friend, tomorrow we shall be parted. I trust to be thought of by you as a little better in grain than I

have appeared, and my reason for trusting it is that I know I have been always honest a boorish young

woman in my stupid mad impatience: but not insincere. It is no lofty ambition to desire to be remembered in

that character, but such is your Clara, she discovers. I will tell you. It is his wish ... his wish that I should

"What an impression I must have made on you during that walk to the cottage, Laetitia! I do not wonder; I

With a laugh, Laetitia replied: "You have still the 'dreadful power' you made me feel that day."

"No, Political Economy. Our situation, you will own, was unexampled: or mine was. Are you interested in

"Because the task unposed on him of showing me politely that he did not enter into his cousin's ideas was

"He felt for me. I saw that in his avoidance of... And he was, as he always is, pleasant. We rambled over the

"Not ever neighbouring it, dear. A gentleman should esteem the girl he would ask ... certain questions. I fancy

"You can be childish, Clara. Probably you delight to tease. He had his time of it, and it is now my turn."

"Dearest, if I may convey to you what I was, in a simile for comparison: I think I was like a fisherman's float

on the water, perfectly still, and ready to go down at any instant, or up. So much for my behaviour."

"Similes have the merit of satisfying the finder of them, and cheating the hearer," said Laetitia. "You admit

"I was a fisherman's float: please admire my simile; any way you like, this way or that, or so quiet as to tempt

the eyes to go to sleep. And suddenly I might have disappeared in the depths, or flown in the air. But no fish

"Well, then, to follow you, supposing the fish or the fisherman, for I don't know which is which . . . Oh! no,

no: this is too serious for imagery. I am to understand that you thanked him at least for his reserve."

Baffled and sighing, Laetitia kept silence for a space. The simile chafed her wits with a suspicion of a

"And the railings of men at pussy women who wind about and will not be brought to a mark, become

"Then Laetitia, if he had spoken, if, and one could have imagined him sincere . . "

"I am looking at myself If!why, then, I should have burnt to death with shame. Where have I read?some

"I could imagine a certain shame, in such a position, where there was no feeling but pride."

Laetitia mused. "And you dwell on the kindness of a proposition so extraordinary!" Gaining some light,

"Feared to wound youand himself as well, possibly. Men may be pardoned for thinking of themselves in

"What cause had I given ... Ah I see! He could fear that; suspect it! See his opinion of me! Can he care for

such a girl? Abuse me, Laetitia. I should like a good round of abuse. I need purification by fire. What have I

been in this house? I have a sense of whirling through it like a madwoman. And to be loved, after it

all!No! we must be hearing a tale of an antiquary prizing a battered relic of the battlefield that no one else

would look at. To be loved, I see, is to feel our littleness, hollownessfeel shame. We come out in all our

spots. Never to have given me one sign, when a lover would have been so tempted! Let me be incredulous,

my own dear Laetitia. Because he is a man of honour, you would say! But are you unconscious of the torture

you inflict? For if I amyou say itloved by this gentleman, what an object it is he lovesthat has gone

clamouring about more immodestly than women will bear to hear of, and she herself to think of! Oh, I have

seen my own heart. It is a frightful spectre. I have seen a weakness in me that would have carried me

anywhere. And truly I shall be charitable to womenI have gained that. But loved! by Vernon Whitford!

The miserable little me to be taken up and loved after tearing myself to pieces! Have you been simply

Clara looked at her as clearly as she could. She bowed her head. "It makes my conduct worse!"

She received a tenderer kiss for that. It was her avowal, and it was understood: to know that she had loved or

"Ah! you read me through and through," said Clara, sliding to her for a whole embrace.

Clara slid her head more out of sight. "Not that my heart ... But I said I have seen it; and it is unworthy of

him. And if, as I think now, I could have been so rash, so weak, wicked, unpardonable such thoughts were

in me!then to hear him speak would make it necessary for me to uncover myself and tell himincredible

to you, yes!that while ... yes, Laetitia, all this is true: and thinking of him as the noblest of men, I could

have welcomed any help to cut my knot. So there," said Clara, issuing from her nest with winking eyelids,

"Yes; in Purgatorywith an angel by me. My report of the place will be favourable. Good angel, I have yet

"I think I did fancy once or twice, very dimly, and especially today ... properly I ought not to have had any

idea: but his coming to me, and his not doing as another would have done, seemed ... A gentleman of real

nobleness does not carry the common light for us to read him by. I wanted his voice; but silence, I think, did

tell me more: if a nature like mine could only have had faith without bearing the rattle of a tongue.

A knock at the door caused the ladies to exchange looks. Laetitia rose as Vernon entered.

"And I have just come from yours." Vernon said to Clara. She observed a very threatening expression in him.

The sprite of contrariety mounted to her brain to indemnify her for her recent selfabasement. Seeing the

bedroom door shut on Laetitia, she said: "And of course papa has gone to bed"; implying, "otherwise . . ."

"Of course," she flew from him, "big mountains must be satisfied with my admiration at their feet."

That supplication coupled with his name confessed the end to which her quick vision perceived she was being

She revived the same shrinking in him from a breath of their great word yet: not here; somewhere in the

But he was sure of her. And their hands might join. The two hands thought so, or did not think, behaved like

The spirit of Dr. Middleton, as Clara felt, had been blown into Vernon, rewarding him for forthright

outspeaking. Over their books, Vernon had abruptly shut up a volume and related the tale of the house. "Has

this man a spice of religion in him?" the Rev. Doctor asked midway. Vernon made out a fair general case for

his cousin in that respect. "The complemental dot on his i of a commonly civilized human creature!" said Dr.

Middleton, looking at his watch and finding it too late to leave the house before morning. The risky

communication was to come. Vernon was proceeding with the narrative of Willoughby's generous plan when

Dr. Middleton electrified him by calling out: "He whom of all men living I should desire my daughter to

espouse!" and Willoughby rose in the Rev. Doctor's esteem: he praised that sensibly minded gentleman, who

could acquiesce in the turn of mood of a little maid, albeit Fortune had withheld from him a taste of the

switch at school. The father of the little maid's appreciation of her volatility was exhibited in his exhortation

to Vernon to be off to her at once with his authority to finish her moods and assure him of peace in the

morning. Vernon hesitated. Dr. Middleton remarked upon being not so sure that it was not he who had done

the mischief. Thereupon Vernon, to prove his honesty, made his own story bare. "Go to her," said Dr.

Middleton. Vernon proposed a meeting in Switzerland, to which Dr. Middleton assented, adding: "Go to her":

and as he appeared a total stranger to the decorum of the situation, Vernon put his delicacy aside, and taking

his heart up, obeyed. He too had pondered on Clara's consent to meet him after she knew of Willoughby's

terms, and her grave sweet manner during the ramble over the park. Her father's breath had been blown into

him; so now, with nothing but the faith lying in sensation to convince him of his happy fortune (and how

unconvincing that may be until the mind has grasped and stamped it, we experience even then when we

acknowledge that we are most blessed), he held her hand. And if it was hard for him, for both, but harder for

the man, to restrain their particular word from a flight to heaven when the cage stood open and nature

They promised to visit her very early in the morning, neither of them conceiving that they left her to a night

She sat meditating on Clara's present appreciation of Sir Willoughby's generosity.

We cannot be abettors of the tribes of imps whose revelry is in the frailties of our poor human constitution.

They have their place and their service, and so long as we continue to be what we are now, they will hang on

to us, restlessly plucking at the garments which cover our nakedness, nor ever ceasing to twitch them and

strain at them until they have stripped us for one of their horrible Walpurgis nights: when the laughter heard

is of a character to render laughter frightful to the ears of men throughout the remainder of their days. But if

in these festival hours under the beam of Hecate they are uncontrollable by the Comic Muse, she will not

flatter them with her presence during the course of their insane and impious hilarities, whereof a description

would outBrocken Brockens and make Graymalkin and Paddock too intimately our familiars.

It shall suffice to say that from hour to hour of the midnight to the greyeyed morn, assisted at intervals by

the ladies Eleanor and Isabel, and by Mr. Dale awakened and reawakenedhearing the vehemence of his

petitioning outcry to soften her obduracySir Willoughby pursued Laetitia with solicitations to espouse him,

until the inveteracy of his wooing wore the aspect of the lifelong love he raved of aroused to a state of

mania. He appeared, he departed, he returned; and all the while his imps were about him and upon him, riding

him, prompting, driving, inspiring him with outrageous pathos, an eloquence to move any one but the dead,

which its object seemed to be in her torpid attention. He heard them, he talked to them, caressed them; he

flung them off, and ran from them, and stood vanquished for them to mount him again and swarm on him.

There are men thus imphaunted. Men who, setting their minds upon an object, must have it, breed imps.

They are noted for their singularities, as their converse with the invisible and amazing distractions are called.

Willoughby became aware of them that night. He said to himself, upon one of his dashes into solitude: I

believe I am possessed! And if he did not actually believe it, but only suspected it, or framed speech to

account for the transformation he had undergone into a desperately beseeching creature, having lost

acquaintance with his habitual personality, the operations of an impish host had undoubtedly smitten his

He had them in his brain: for while burning with an ardour for Laetitia, that incited him to frantic excesses of

language and comportment, he was aware of shouts of the names of Lady Busshe and Mrs. Mountstuart

Jenkinson, the which, freezing him as they did, were directly the cause of his hurrying to a wilder

extravagance and more headlong determination to subdue before break of day the woman he almost dreaded

to behold by daylight, though he had now passionately persuaded himself of his love of her. He could not, he

felt, stand in the daylight without her. She was his morning. She was, he raved, his predestinated wife. He

cried, "Darling!" both to her and to solitude. Every prescription of his ideal of demeanour as an example to

his class and country, was abandoned by the enamoured gentleman. He had lost command of his

countenance. He stooped so far as to kneel, and not gracefully. Nay, it is in the chronicles of the invisible host

around him, that in a fit of supplication, upon a cry of "Laetitia!" twice repeated, he whimpered.

Let so much suffice. And indeed not without reason do the multitudes of the servants of the Muse in this land

of social policy avoid scenes of an inordinate wantonness, which detract from the dignity of our leaders and

menace human nature with confusion. Sagacious are they who conduct the individual on broad lines, over

familiar tracks, under wellknown characteristics. What men will do, and amorously minded men will do, is

The night wore through. Laetitia was bent, but had not yielded. She had been obliged to sayand how many

times she could not bear to recollect: "I do not love you; I have no love to give"; and issuing from such a

The contest was renewed by her father with the singing of the birds. Mr. Dale then produced the first serious

impression she had received. He spoke of their circumstances, of his being taken from her and leaving her to

poverty, in weak health; of the injury done to her health by writing for bread; and of the oppressive weight he

The practical statement, and this adjuration incongruously to conclude it, harmonized with her disordered

understanding, her loss of all sentiment and her desire to be kind. She sighed to herself. "Happily, it is over!"

Her father was too weak to rise. He fell asleep. She was bound down to the house for hours; and she walked

through her suite, here at the doors, there at the windows, thinking of Clara's remark "of a century passing".

She had not wished it, but a light had come on her to show her what she would have supposed a century could

not have effected: she saw the impossible of overnight a possible thing: not desireable, yet possible, wearing

the features of the possible. Happily, she had resisted too firmly to be again besought.

Those features of the possible once beheld allured the mind to reconsider them. Wealth gives us the power to

do good on earth. Wealth enables us to see the world, the beautiful scenes of the earth. Laetitia had long

thirsted both for a dowering moneybag at her girdle, and the wings to fly abroad over lands which had

begun to seem fabulous in her starved imagination. Then, moreover, if her sentiment for this gentleman was

gone, it was only a delusion gone; accurate sight and knowledge of him would not make a woman the less

helpful mate. That was the mate he required: and he could be led. A sentimental attachment would have been

serviceless to him. Not so the woman allied by a purely rational bond: and he wanted guiding. Happily, she

had told him too much of her feeble health and her lovelessness to be reduced to submit to another attack.

She busied herself in her room, arranging for her departure, so that no minutes might be lost after her father

Clara was her earliest visitor, and each asked the other whether she had slept, and took the answer from the

face presented to her. The rings of Laetitia's eyes were very dark. Clara was her mirror, and she said: "A

singular object to be persecuted through a night for her hand! I know these two damp dead leaves I wear on

"I have slept well, and yet I could say I have not slept at all, Laetitia. I was with you, dear, part in dream and

Laetitia briefly sketched the history of the night; and Clara said, with a manifest sincerity that testified of her

gratitude to Sir Willoughby: "Could you resist him, so earnest as he is?" Laetitia saw the human nature,

without sourness: and replied, "I hope, Clara, you will not begin with a large stock of sentiment, for there is

The next visitor was Vernon, exceedingly anxious for news of Mr. Dale. Laetitia went into her father's room

to obtain it for him. Returning, she found them both with sad visages, and she ventured, in alarm for them, to

"It's this," Vernon said: "Willoughby will everlastingly tease that boy to be loved by him. Perhaps. poor

fellow, he had an excuse last night. Anyhow, he went into Crossjay's room this morning, woke him up and

talked to him, and set the lad crying, and what with one thing and another Crossjay got a berry in his throat,

as he calls it, and poured out everything he knew and all he had done. I needn't tell you the consequence. He

Vernon glanced at Clara. "You must indeed," said she. "He is my boy as well as yours. No chance of

She would not descend to the family breakfasttable. Clara would fain have stayed to drink tea with her in

her own room, but a last act of conformity was demanded of the liberated young lady. She promised to run up

the moment breakfast was over. Not unnaturally, therefore, Laetitia supposed it to be she to whom she gave

"You cannot withdraw that. You call me dear. I am, I must be dear to you. The word is out, by accident or

not, but, by heaven, I have it and I give it up to no one. And love me or notmarry me, and my love will

bring it back to you. You have taught me I am not so strong. I must have you by my side. You have powers I

"You are mistaken in me, Sir Willoughby." Laetitia said feebly, outworn as she was.

"A woman who can resist me by declining to be my wife, through a whole night of entreaty, has the quality I

need for my house, and I will batter at her ears for months, with as little rest as I had last night, before I

surrender my chance of her. But I told you last night I want you within the twelve hours. I have staked my

pride on it. By noon you are mine: you are introduced to Mrs. Mountstuart as mine, as the lady of my life and

"I do not. I pay you the higher compliment of asking for you, love or no love. My love shall be enough.

"But do you know what you ask for? Do you remember what I told you of myself? I am hard, materialistic; I

have lost faith in romance, the skeleton is present with me all over life. And my health is not good. I crave for

money. I should marry to be rich. I should not worship you. I should be a burden, barely a living one,

She tried to recall how this would have sung in her cars long back. Her bosom rose and fell in absolute

He was about to say other words: he checked them. "I believe I do not know myself. Anything you will, only

give me your hand; give it; trust to me; you shall direct me. If I have faults, help me to obliterate them."

Laetitia broke from him, crying: "Your wife, your critic! Oh, I cannot think it possible. Send for the ladies.

"Dear ladies," Laetitia said to them, as they entered. "I am going to wound you, and I grieve to do it: but

rather now than later, if I am to be your housemate. He asks me for a hand that cannot carry a heart, because

mine is dead. I repeat it. I used to think the heart a woman's marriage portion for her husband. I see now that

she may consent, and he accept her, without one. But it is right that you should know what I am when I

consent. I was once a foolish, romantic girl; now I am a sickly woman, all illusions vanished. Privation has

made me what an abounding fortune usually makes of othersI am an Egoist. I am not deceiving you. That

is my real character. My girl's view of him has entirely changed; and I am almost indifferent to the change. I

"If we are to live together, and I could very happily live with you," Laetitia continued to address them, "you

must not be ignorant of me. And if you, as I imagine, worship him blindly, I do not know how we are to live

together. And never shall you quit this house to make way for me. I have a hard detective eye. I see many

"Not such as he has; though the excuses of a gentleman nurtured in idolatry may be pleaded. But he should

know that they are seen, and seen by her he asks to be his wife, that no misunderstanding may exist, and

"That is not your opinion, ladies. It is firmly mine. Time has taught it me. So, if you and I are at such

"We have never affirmed that our dear nephew is devoid of faults. if he is offended ... And supposing he

claims to be foremost, is it not his rightful claim, made good by much generosity? Reflect, dear Laetitia. We

"He has turned Crossjay out of his house, interdicting the poor boy ever to enter it again."

"No young fellow behaving so basely can come to good," said Willoughby, stained about the face with flecks

"Honestly," she retorted. "He told of himself: and he must have anticipated the punishment he would meet.

He should have been studying with a master for his profession. He has been kept here in comparative idleness

to be alternately petted and discarded: no one but Vernon Whitford, a poor gentleman doomed to struggle for

a livelihood by literatureI know something of that struggletoo much for me!no one but Mr. Whitford

"He is, dear child!" the ladies cried. "He is. Forget his errors, in his generosity, as we do."

"That sot has gone about the county for years to get me a bad character," said Willoughby.

"It would have been generous in you to have offered him another chance. He has children."

She raised hers with the fingers catching back before she ceased to speak and dropped it:

"Ladies. You are witnesses that there is no concealment, there has been no reserve, on my part. May Heaven

grant me kinder eyes than I have now. I would not have you change your opinion of him; only that you

should see how I read him. For the rest, I vow to do my duty by him. Whatever is of worth in me is at his

service. I am very tired. I feel I must yield or break. This is his wish, and I submit."

"And I salute my wife," said Willoughby, making her hand his own, and warming to his possession as he

Mrs. Mountstuart's indecent hurry to be at the Hall before the departure of Dr. Middleton and his daughter,

afflicted him with visions of the physical contrast which would be sharply perceptible to her this morning of

But he had the lady with brains! He had: and he was to learn the nature of that possession in the woman who

"Plain sense upon the marriage question is my demand upon man and woman, for the stopping of many a

He did not say that he had shown it parentally while the tragedy was threatening, or at least there was danger

of a precipitate descent from the levels of comedy. The parents of hymeneal men and women he was

indisposed to consider as dramatis personae. Nor did he mention certain sympathetic regrets he entertained in

contemplation of the health of Mr. Dale, for whom, poor gentleman, the proffer of a bottle of the Patterne

Port would be an egregious mockery. He paced about, anxious for his departure, and seeming better pleased

with the society of Colonel De Craye than with that of any of the others. Colonel De Craye assiduously

courted him, was anecdotal, deferential, charmingly vivacious, the very man the Rev. Doctor liked for

"You would be a cheerful travelling comrade. sir," he remarked, and spoke of his doom to lead his daughter

Strange to tell, the Alps, for the Summer months, was a settled project of the colonel's.

And thence Dr. Middleton was to be hauled along to the habitable quarters of North Italy in high

"I would gladly reckon it in my catalogue of pleasures," the Rev. Doctor responded; "for in good sooth it is

"The Lake of Constance, I am told," said Dr. Middleton. Colonel De Craye spied eagerly for an opportunity

of exchanging a pair of syllables with the third and fairest party of this glorious expedition to come.

Willoughby met him, and rewarded the colonel's frankness in stating that he was on the lookout for Miss

Middleton to take his leave of her, by furnishing him the occasion. He conducted his friend Horace to the

Blue Room, where Clara and Laetitia were seated circling a half embrace with a brook of chatter, and

contrived an excuse for leading Laetitia forth. Some minutes later Mrs. Mountstuart called aloud for the

colonel, to drive him away. Willoughby, whose good offices were unabated by the services he performed to

each in rotation, ushered her into the Blue Room, hearing her say, as she stood at the entrance: "Is the man

"I was thinking," said the colonel, "of developing a heart, like you, and taking to think of others."

"Why, it would be delightful, Willoughby, but it happens I've got a lot of powder I want to let off, and so I've

an idea of shouldering my gun along the seacoast and shooting gulls: which'll be a harmless form of

committing patricide and matricide and fratricidefor there's my family, and I come of it!the gull! And

I've to talk lively to Mrs. Mountstuart for something like a matter of twelve hours, calculating that she goes to

bed at midnight: and I wouldn't bet on it; such is the energy of ladies of that age!"

Willoughby scorned the man who could not conceal a blow, even though be joked over his discomfiture.

"A bird that's easy to be had, and better for stuffing than for eating," said De Craye. "You'll miss your

There was confusion in the hall for a time, and an assembly of the household to witness the departure of Dr.

Middleton and his daughter. Vernon had been driven off by Dr. Corney, who further recommended rest for

"I think you will find him at the station, and if you do, command him to come straight back here," Laetitia

said to Clara. The answer was an affectionate squeeze, and Clara's hand was extended to Willoughby, who

So the knot was cut. And the next carriage to Dr. Middleton's was Mrs. Mountstuart's, conveying the great

"I have had to dissemble, which I hate, and I have quite enough to endure, and I must be amused, or I shall

run away from you and enlist that little countryman of yours, and him I can count on to be professionally

restorative. Who can fathom the heart of a girl! Here is Lady Busshe right once more! And I was wrong. She

must be a gambler by nature. I never should have risked such a guess as that. Colonel De Craye, you lengthen

"Ma'am," returned De Craye, "the boast of our army is never to know when we are beaten, and that tells of a

greathearted soldiery. But there's a field where the Briton must own his defeat, whether smiling or crying,

"She was, I am certain, in love with Vernon Whitford all along. Colonel De Craye!"

"Ah!" the colonel drank it in. "I have learnt that it was not the gentleman in whom I am chiefly interested. So

it was not so hard for the lady to vow to friend Willoughby she would marry no one else?"

"Girls are unfathomable! And Lady BussheI know she did not go by charactershot one of her random

guesses, and she triumphs. We shall never hear the last of it. And I had all the opportunities. I'm bound to

"Did you by chance, ma'am," De Craye said, with a twinkle, "drop a hint to Willoughby of her turn for

"No," said Mrs. Mountstuart, "I'm not a mischiefmaker; and the policy of the county is to keep him in love

with himself, or Patterne will be likely to be as dull as it was without a lady enthroned. When his pride is at

"I should have been livelier, I'm afraid, if you had dropped a bit of a hint to Willoughby. But you're the

magnanimous person, ma'am, and revenge for a stroke in the game of love shows us unworthy to win."

Mrs. Mountstuart menaced him with her parasol. "I forbid sentiments, Colonel De Craye. They are always

"Grant me five minutes of inward retirement, and I'll come out formed for your commands, ma'am," said he.

Before the termination of that space De Craye was enchanting Mrs. Mountstuart, and she in consequence was

So, and much so universally, the world of his dread and his unconscious worship wagged over Sir

Willoughby Patterne and his change of brides, until the preparations for the festivities of the marriage flushed

him in his county's eyes to something of the splendid glow he had worn on the great day of his majority. That

was upon the season when two lovers met between the Swiss and Tyrol Alps over the Lake of Constance.

Sitting beside them the Comic Muse is grave and sisterly. But taking a glance at the others of her late