A Group of Noble Dames...................................................................................................................................1

Thomas Hardy ..........................................................................................................................................1

PREFACE ................................................................................................................................................1

DAME THE FIRSTTHE FIRST COUNTESS OF WESSEX............................................................1

DAME THE SECOND: BARBARA OF THE HOUSE OF GREBE..................................................26

DAME THE THIRD: THE MARCHIONESS OF STONEHENGE ....................................................45

DAME THE FOURTH: LADY MOTTISFONT.................................................................................53

DAME THE FIFTHTHE LADY ICENWAY ...................................................................................62

DAME THE SIXTH: SQUIRE PETRICK'S LADY ............................................................................69

DAME THE SEVENTH: ANNA, LADY BAXBY .............................................................................74

DAME THE EIGHTH: THE LADY PENELOPE...............................................................................78

DAME THE NINTH: THE DUCHESS OF HAMPTONSHIRE .........................................................83

DAME THE TENTH: THE HONOURABLE LAURA .......................................................................91

The pedigrees of our county families, arranged in diagrams on the pages of county histories, mostly appear at

first sight to be as barren of any touch of nature as a table of logarithms. But given a cluethe faintest

tradition of what went on behind the scenes, and this dryness as of dust may be transformed into a palpitating

drama. More, the careful comparison of dates alonethat of birth with marriage, of marriage with death, of

one marriage, birth, or death with a kindred marriage, birth, or deathwill often effect the same

transformation, and anybody practised in raising images from such genealogies finds himself unconsciously

filling into the framework the motives, passions, and personal qualities which would appear to be the single

explanation possible of some extraordinary conjunction in times, events, and personages that occasionally

Out of such pedigrees and supplementary material most of the following stories have arisen and taken shape.

I would make this preface an opportunity of expressing my sense of the courtesy and kindness of several

brighteyed Noble Dames yet in the flesh, who, since the first publication of these tales in periodicals, six or

seven years ago, have given me interesting comments and conjectures on such of the narratives as they have

recognized to be connected with their own families, residences, or traditions; in which they have shown a

truly philosophic absence of prejudice in their regard of those incidents whose relation has tended more

distinctly to dramatize than to eulogize their ancestors. The outlines they have also given of other singular

events in their family histories for use in a second "Group of Noble Dames," will, I fear, never reach the

printingpress through me; but I shall store them up in memory of my informants' good nature.

King'sHintock Court (said the narrator, turning over his memoranda for reference)King'sHintock Court

is, as we know, one of the most imposing of the mansions that overlook our beautiful Blackmoor or

Blakemore Vale. On the particular occasion of which I have to speak this building stood, as it had often stood

before, in the perfect silence of a calm clear night, lighted only by the cold shine of the stars. The season was

winter, in days long ago, the last century having run but little more than a third of its length. North, south, and

west, not a casement was unfastened, not a curtain undrawn; eastward, one window on the upper floor was

open, and a girl of twelve or thirteen was leaning over the sill. That she had not taken up the position for

purposes of observation was apparent at a glance, for she kept her eyes covered with her hands.

The room occupied by the girl was an inner one of a suite, to be reached only by passing through a large

bedchamber adjoining. From this apartment voices in altercation were audible, everything else in the building

being so still. It was to avoid listening to these voices that the girl had left her little cot, thrown a cloak round

But she could not escape the conversation, try as she would. The words reached her in all their painfulness,

one sentence in masculine tones, those of her father, being repeated many times.

'I tell 'ee there shall be no such betrothal! I tell 'ee there sha'n't! A child like her!'

She knew the subject of dispute to be herself. A cool feminine voice, her mother's, replied:

'Have done with you, and be wise. He is willing to wait a good five or six years before the marriage takes

'But his father and elder brothers are made much of at Courtnone so constantly at the palace as they; and

'How can you insult me so, Thomas! And is it not monstrous for you to talk of my wickedness when you have

a like scheme in your own head? You know you have. Some bumpkin of your own choosingsome petty

gentleman who lives down at that outlandish place of yours, FallsParkone of your potcompanions'

There was an outburst of imprecation on the part of her husband in lieu of further argument. As soon as he

could utter a connected sentence he said: 'You crow and you domineer, mistress, because you are

heiressgeneral here. You are in your own house; you are on your own land. But let me tell 'ee that if I did

come here to you instead of taking you to me, it was done at the dictates of convenience merely. H! I'm no

beggar! Ha'n't I a place of my own? Ha'n't I an avenue as long as thine? Ha'n't I beeches that will more than

match thy oaks? I should have lived in my own quiet house and land, contented, if you had not called me off

with your airs and graces. Faith, I'll go back there; I'll not stay with thee longer! If it had not been for our

After this there were no more words; but presently, hearing the sound of a door opening and shutting below,

the girl again looked from the window. Footsteps crunched on the gravelwalk, and a shape in a drab

greatcoat, easily distinguishable as her father, withdrew from the house. He moved to the left, and she

watched him diminish down the long east front till he had turned the corner and vanished. He must have gone

She closed the window and shrank into bed, where she cried herself to sleep. This child, their only one, Betty,

beloved ambitiously by her mother, and with uncalculating passionateness by her father, was frequently made

wretched by such episodes as this; though she was too young to care very deeply, for her own sake, whether

The Squire had often gone out of the house in this manner, declaring that he would never return, but he had

always reappeared in the morning. The present occasion, however, was different in the issue: next day she

was told that her father had ridden to his estate at FallsPark early in the morning on business with his agent,

FallsPark was over twenty miles from King'sHintock Court, and was altogether a more modest

centrepiece to a more modest possession than the latter. But as Squire Dornell came in view of it that

February morning, he thought that he had been a fool ever to leave it, though it was for the sake of the

greatest heiress in Wessex. Its classic front, of the period of the second Charles, derived from its regular

features a dignity which the great, battlemented, heterogeneous mansion of his wife could not eclipse.

Altogether he was sick at heart, and the gloom which the denselytimbered park threw over the scene did not

tend to remove the depression of this rubicund man of eightandforty, who sat so heavily upon his gelding.

The child, his darling Betty: there lay the root of his trouble. He was unhappy when near his wife, he was

unhappy when away from his little girl; and from this dilemma there was no practicable escape. As a

consequence he indulged rather freely in the pleasures of the table, became what was called a three bottle

man, and, in his wife's estimation, less and less presentable to her polite friends from town.

He was received by the two or three old servants who were in charge of the lonely place, where a few rooms

only were kept habitable for his use or that of his friends when hunting; and during the morning he was made

more comfortable by the arrival of his faithful servant Tupcombe from King'sHintock. But after a day or

two spent here in solitude he began to feel that he had made a mistake in coming. By leaving King'sHintock

in his anger he had thrown away his best opportunity of counteracting his wife's preposterous notion of

promising his poor little Betty's hand to a man she had hardly seen. To protect her from such a repugnant

bargain he should have remained on the spot. He felt it almost as a misfortune that the child would inherit so

much wealth. She would be a mark for all the adventurers in the kingdom. Had she been only the heiress to

his own unassuming little place at Falls, how much better would have been her chances of happiness!

His wife had divined truly when she insinuated that he himself had a lover in view for this pet child. The son

of a dear deceased friend of his, who lived not two miles from where the Squire now was, a lad a couple of

years his daughter's senior, seemed in her father's opinion the one person in the world likely to make her

happy. But as to breathing such a scheme to either of the young people with the indecent haste that his wife

had shown, he would not dream of it; years hence would be soon enough for that. They had already seen each

other, and the Squire fancied that he noticed a tenderness on the youth's part which promised well. He was

strongly tempted to profit by his wife's example, and forestall her matchmaking by throwing the two young

people together there at Falls. The girl, though marriageable in the views of those days, was too young to be

Still better than keeping watch over her at King's Hintock, where she was necessarily much under her

mother's influence, would it be to get the child to stay with him at Falls for a time, under his exclusive

control. But how accomplish this without using main force? The only possible chance was that his wife

might, for appearance' sake, as she had done before, consent to Betty paying him a day's visit, when he might

find means of detaining her till Reynard, the suitor whom his wife favoured, had gone abroad, which he was

expected to do the following week. Squire Dornell determined to return to King'sHintock and attempt the

enterprise. If he were refused, it was almost in him to pick up Betty bodily and carry her off.

The journey back, vague and Quixotic as were his intentions, was performed with a far lighter heart than his

setting forth. He would see Betty, and talk to her, come what might of his plan.

So he rode along the dead level which stretches between the hills skirting FallsPark and those bounding the

town of Ivell, trotted through that borough, and out by the King'sHintock highway, till, passing the villages

he entered the milelong drive through the park to the Court. The drive being open, without an avenue, the

Squire could discern the north front and door of the Court a long way off, and was himself visible from the

windows on that side; for which reason he hoped that Betty might perceive him coming, as she sometimes

But there was no sign. He inquired for his wife as soon as he set foot to earth.

The note explained nothing, merely stating that she had posted to London on her own affairs, and had taken

the child to give her a holiday. On the flyleaf were some words from Betty herself to the same effect,

evidently written in a state of high jubilation at the idea of her jaunt. Squire Dornell murmured a few

expletives, and submitted to his disappointment. How long his wife meant to stay in town she did not say; but

on investigation he found that the carriage had been packed with sufficient luggage for a sojourn of two or

King'sHintock Court was in consequence as gloomy as FallsPark had been. He had lost all zest for hunting

of late, and had hardly attended a meet that season. Dornell read and reread Betty's scrawl, and hunted up

some other such notes of hers to look over, this seeming to be the only pleasure there was left for him. That

they were really in London he learnt in a few days by another letter from Mrs. Dornell, in which she

explained that they hoped to be home in about a week, and that she had had no idea he was coming back to

Squire Dornell wondered if, in going or returning, it had been her plan to call at the Reynards' place near

Melchester, through which city their journey lay. It was possible that she might do this in furtherance of her

He did not know how to dispose of himself, till it occurred to him that, to get rid of his intolerable heaviness,

he would invite some friends to dinner and drown his cares in grog and wine. No sooner was the carouse

decided upon than he put it in hand; those invited being mostly neighbouring landholders, all smaller men

than himself, members of the hunt; also the doctor from Evershead, and the like some of them rollicking

blades whose presence his wife would not have countenanced had she been at home. 'When the cat's

They arrived, and there were indications in their manner that they meant to make a night of it. Baxby of

Sherton Castle was late, and they waited a quarter of an hour for him, he being one of the liveliest of

Dornell's friends; without whose presence no such dinner as this would be considered complete, and, it may

be added, with whose presence no dinner which included both sexes could be conducted with strict propriety.

He had just returned from London, and the Squire was anxious to talk to himfor no definite reason; but he

At length they heard Baxby driving up to the door, whereupon the host and the rest of his guests crossed over

to the diningroom. In a moment Baxby came hastily in at their heels, apologizing for his lateness.

'I only came back last night, you know,' he said; 'and the truth o't is, I had as much as I could carry.' He turned

to the Squire. 'Well, Dornellso cunning Reynard has stolen your little ewe lamb? Ha, ha!'

'What?' said Squire Dornell vacantly, across the diningtable, round which they were all standing, the cold

'Surely th'st know what all the town knows?you've had a letter by this time?that Stephen Reynard has

married your Betty? Yes, as I'm a living man. It was a carefullyarranged thing: they parted at once, and are

A thud on the floor was the only reply of the Squire. They quickly turned. He had fallen down like a log

Those at hand hastily bent over him, and the whole group were in confusion. They found him to be quite

unconscious, though puffing and panting like a blacksmith's bellows. His face was livid, his veins swollen,

He was only called in at the Court for small ailments, as a rule, and felt the importance of the situation. He

lifted the Squire's head, loosened his cravat and clothing, and rang for the servants, who took the Squire

There he lay as if in a drugged sleep. The surgeon drew a basin full of blood from him, but it was nearly six

o'clock before he came to himself. The dinner was completely disorganized, and some had gone home long

'Bless my soul,' Baxby kept repeating, 'I didn't know things had come to this pass between Dornell and his

lady! I thought the feast he was spreading today was in honour of the event, though privately kept for the

As soon as the Squire recovered consciousness he gasped: ''Tis abduction! 'Tis a capital felony! He can be

The bearer of the untoward news was extremely unwilling to agitate Dornell further, and would say little

more at first. But an hour after, when the Squire had partially recovered and was sitting up, Baxby told as

much as he knew, the most important particular being that Betty's mother was present at the marriage, and

showed every mark of approval. 'Everything appeared to have been done so regularly that I, of course,

'I knew no more than the underground dead that such a step was in the wind! A child not yet thirteen! How

'I can't say. All I know is that your lady and daughter were walking along the street, with the footman behind

'em; that they entered a jeweller's shop, where Reynard was standing; and that there, in the presence o' the

shopkeeper and your man, who was called in on purpose, your Betty said to Reynardso the story goes: 'pon

my soul I don't vouch for the truth of itshe said, "Will you marry me?" or, "I want to marry you: will you

'What she said means nothing,' murmured the Squire, with wet eyes. 'Her mother put the words into her

mouth to avoid the serious consequences that would attach to any suspicion of force. The words be not the

'Well, be that as it will, they were all agreed apparently. They bought the ring on the spot, and the marriage

A day or two later there came a letter from Mrs. Dornell to her husband, written before she knew of his

stroke. She related the circumstances of the marriage in the gentlest manner, and gave cogent reasons and

excuses for consenting to the premature union, which was now an accomplished fact indeed. She had no idea,

till sudden pressure was put upon her, that the contract was expected to be carried out so soon, but being

taken half unawares, she had consented, having learned that Stephen Reynard, now their sonin law, was

becoming a great favourite at Court, and that he would in all likelihood have a title granted him before long.

No harm could come to their dear daughter by this early marriagecontract, seeing that her life would be

continued under their own eyes, exactly as before, for some years. In fine, she had felt that no other such fair

opportunity for a good marriage with a shrewd courtier and wise man of the world, who was at the same time

noted for his excellent personal qualities, was within the range of probability, owing to the rusticated lives

they led at King'sHintock. Hence she had yielded to Stephen's solicitation, and hoped her husband would

forgive her. She wrote, in short, like a woman who, having had her way as to the deed, is prepared to make

All this Dornell took at its true value, or rather, perhaps, at less than its true value. As his life depended upon

his not getting into a passion, he controlled his perturbed emotions as well as he was able, going about the

house sadly and utterly unlike his former self. He took every precaution to prevent his wife knowing of the

incidents of his sudden illness, from a sense of shame at having a heart so tender; a ridiculous quality, no

doubt, in her eyes, now that she had become so imbued with town ideas. But rumours of his seizure somehow

reached her, and she let him know that she was about to return to nurse him. He thereupon packed up and

Here he lived the life of a recluse for some time. He was still too unwell to entertain company, or to ride to

hounds or elsewhither; but more than this, his aversion to the faces of strangers and acquaintances, who knew

Nothing could influence him to censure Betty for her share in the exploit. He never once believed that she

had acted voluntarily. Anxious to know how she was getting on, he despatched the trusty servant Tupcombe

to Evershead village, close to King'sHintock, timing his journey so that he should reach the place under

cover of dark. The emissary arrived without notice, being out of livery, and took a seat in the chimneycorner

The conversation of the droppersin was always of the nine days' wonderthe recent marriage. The

smoking listener learnt that Mrs. Dornell and the girl had returned to King'sHintock for a day or two, that

Reynard had set out for the Continent, and that Betty had since been packed off to school. She did not realize

her position as Reynard's childwifeso the story wentand though somewhat awe stricken at first by the

ceremony, she had soon recovered her spirits on finding that her freedom was in no way to be interfered with.

After that, formal messages began to pass between Dornell and his wife, the latter being now as persistently

conciliating as she was formerly masterful. But her rustic, simple, blustering husband still held personally

aloof. Her wish to be reconciledto win his forgiveness for her stratagemmoreover, a genuine tenderness

and desire to soothe his sorrow, which welled up in her at times, brought her at last to his door at FallsPark

They had not met since that night of altercation, before her departure for London and his subsequent illness.

She was shocked at the change in him. His face had become expressionless, as blank as that of a puppet, and

what troubled her still more was that she found him living in one room, and indulging freely in stimulants, in

absolute disobedience to the physician's order. The fact was obvious that he could no longer be allowed to

So she sympathized, and begged his pardon, and coaxed. But though after this date there was no longer such

a complete estrangement as before, they only occasionally saw each other, Dornell for the most part making

Three or four years passed thus. Then she came one day, with more animation in her manner, and at once

moved him by the simple statement that Betty's schooling had ended; she had returned, and was grieved

because he was away. She had sent a message to him in these words: 'Ask father to come home to his dear

Still his wife would not dispute with him. 'She is outside in the carriage,' said Mrs. Dornell gently.

'Why didn't you tell me?' Dornell rushed out, and there was the girl awaiting his forgiveness, for she

Yes, Betty had left school, and had returned to King'sHintock. She was nearly seventeen, and had developed

to quite a young woman. She looked not less a member of the household for her early marriage contract,

which she seemed, indeed, to have almost forgotten. It was like a dream to her; that clear cold March day, the

London church, with its gorgeous pews, and greenbaize linings, and the great organ in the west galleryso

different from their own little church in the shrubbery of King'sHintock Courtthe man of thirty, to whose

face she had looked up with so much awe, and with a sense that he was rather ugly and formidable; the man

whom, though they corresponded politely, she had never seen since; one to whose existence she was now so

indifferent that if informed of his death, and that she would never see him more, she would merely have

'Hast heard from thy husband lately?' said Squire Dornell, when they were indoors, with an ironical laugh of

The girl winced, and he noticed that his wife looked appealingly at him. As the conversation went on, and

there were signs that Dornell would express sentiments that might do harm to a position which they could not

alter, Mrs. Dornell suggested that Betty should leave the room till her father and herself had finished their

Dornell renewed his animadversions freely. 'Did you see how the sound of his name frightened her?' he

presently added. 'If you didn't, I did. Zounds! what a future is in store for that poor little unfortunate wench o'

mine! I tell 'ee, Sue, 'twas not a marriage at all, in morality, and if I were a woman in such a position, I

shouldn't feel it as one. She might, without a sign of sin, love a man of her choice as well now as if she were

chained up to no other at all. There, that's my mind, and I can't help it. Ah, Sue, my man was best! He'd ha'

'You should see him; then you would. He's growing up a fine fellow, I can tell 'ee.'

'Hush! not so loud!' she answered, rising from her seat and going to the door of the next room, whither her

daughter had betaken herself. To Mrs. Dornell's alarm, there sat Betty in a reverie, her round eyes fixed on

vacancy, musing so deeply that she did not perceive her mother's entrance. She had heard every word, and

Her mother felt that FallsPark was dangerous ground for a young girl of the susceptible age, and in Betty's

peculiar position, while Dornell talked and reasoned thus. She called Betty to her, and they took leave. The

Squire would not clearly promise to return and make King'sHintock Court his permanent abode; but Betty's

presence there, as at former times, was sufficient to make him agree to pay them a visit soon.

All the way home Betty remained preoccupied and silent. It was too plain to her anxious mother that Squire

The interval before Dornell redeemed his pledge to come and see them was unexpectedly short. He arrived

one morning about twelve o'clock, driving his own pair of blackbays in the curriclephaeton with yellow

panels and red wheels, just as he had used to do, and his faithful old Tupcombe on horseback behind. A

young man sat beside the Squire in the carriage, and Mrs. Dornell's consternation could scarcely be concealed

when, abruptly entering with his companion, the Squire announced him as his friend Phelipson of Elm

Dornell passed on to Betty in the background and tenderly kissed her. 'Sting your mother's conscience, my

maid!' he whispered. 'Sting her conscience by pretending you are struck with Phelipson, and would ha' loved

The simplesouled speaker fondly imagined that it as entirely in obedience to this direction that Betty's eyes

stole interested glances at the frank and impulsive Phelipson that day at dinner, and he laughed grimly within

himself to see how this joke of his, as he imagined it to be, was disturbing the peace of mind of the lady of

Mrs. Dornell was verily greatly alarmed, and as soon as she could speak a word with him alone she upbraided

him. 'You ought not to have brought him here. Oh Thomas, how could you be so thoughtless! Lord, don't you

see, dear, that what is done cannot be undone, and how all this foolery jeopardizes her happiness with her

husband? Until you interfered, and spoke in her hearing about this Phelipson, she was as patient and as

willing as a lamb, and looked forward to Mr. Reynard's return with real pleasure. Since her visit to Falls

Park she has been monstrous closemouthed and busy with her own thoughts. What mischief will you do?

'Own, then, that my man was best suited to her. I only brought him to convince you.'

'Yes, yes; I do admit it. But oh! do take him back again at once! Don't keep him here! I fear she is even

Nevertheless her motherly eye was not so likely to be deceived as his, and if Betty were really only playing at

being lovestruck that day, she played at it with the perfection of a Rosalind, and would have deceived the

best professors into a belief that it was no counterfeit. The Squire, having obtained his victory, was quite

ready to take back the too attractive youth, and early in the afternoon they set out on their return journey.

A silent figure who rode behind them was as interested as Dornell in that day's experiment. It was the staunch

Tupcombe, who, with his eyes on the Squire's and young Phelipson's backs, thought how well the latter

would have suited Betty, and how greatly the former had changed for the worse during these last two or three

After this memorable visit to prove his point, the lives of the Dornell couple flowed on quietly enough for the

space of a twelvemonth, the Squire for the most part remaining at Falls, and Betty passing and repassing

between them now and then, once or twice alarming her mother by not driving home from her father's house

The repose of King'sHintock was broken by the arrival of a special messenger. Squire Dornell had had an

access of gout so violent as to be serious. He wished to see Betty again: why had she not come for so long?

Mrs. Dornell was extremely reluctant to take Betty in that direction too frequently; but the girl was so

anxious to go, her interests latterly seeming to be so entirely bound up in FallsPark and its neighbourhood,

Squire Dornell had been impatiently awaiting her arrival. They found him very ill and irritable. It had been

his habit to take powerful medicines to drive away his enemy, and they had failed in their effect on this

The presence of his daughter, as usual, calmed him much, even while, as usual too, it saddened him; for he

could never forget that she had disposed of herself for life in opposition to his wishes, though she had secretly

assured him that she would never have consented had she been as old as she was now.

As on a former occasion, his wife wished to speak to him alone about the girl's future, the time now drawing

nigh at which Reynard was expected to come and claim her. He would have done so already, but he had been

put off by the earnest request of the young woman herself, which accorded with that of her parents, on the

score of her youth. Reynard had deferentially submitted to their wishes in this respect, the understanding

between them having been that he would not visit her before she was eighteen, except by the mutual consent

of all parties. But this could not go on much longer, and there was no doubt, from the tenor of his last letter,

To be out of the sound of this delicate discussion Betty was accordingly sent downstairs, and they soon saw

her walking away into the shrubberies, looking very pretty in her sweeping green gown, and flapping

On returning to the subject, Mrs. Dornell found her husband's reluctance to reply in the affirmative to

'She is three months short of eighteen!' he exclaimed. ''Tis too soon. I won't hear of it! If I have to keep him

'But, my dear Thomas,' she expostulated, 'consider if anything should happen to you or to me, how much

'I say it is too soon!' he argued, the veins of his forehead beginning to swell. 'If he gets her this side o'

Candlemas I'll challenge enI'll take my oath on't! I'll be back to King's Hintock in two or three days, and

She feared to agitate him further, and gave way, assuring him, in obedience to his demand, that if Reynard

should write again before he got back, to fix a time for joining Betty, she would put the letter in her husband's

hands, and he should do as he chose. This was all that required discussion privately, and Mrs. Dornell went to

She had certainly not done so this time. Mrs. Dornell followed the path along which she had seen Betty

wandering, but went a considerable distance without perceiving anything of her. The Squire's wife then

turned round to proceed to the other side of the house by a short cut across the grass, when, to her surprise

and consternation, she beheld the object of her search sitting on the horizontal bough of a cedar, beside her

being a young man, whose arm was round her waist. He moved a little, and she recognized him as young

Alas, then, she was right. The socalled counterfeit love was real. What Mrs. Dornell called her husband at

that moment, for his folly in originally throwing the young people together, it is not necessary to mention.

She decided in a moment not to let the lovers know that she had seen them. She accordingly retreated,

reached the front of the house by another route, and called at the top of her voice from a window, 'Betty!'

For the first time since her strategic marriage of the child, Susan Dornell doubted the wisdom of that step.

Her husband had, as it were, been assisted by destiny to make his objection, originally trivial, a valid one. She

saw the outlines of trouble in the future. Why had Dornell interfered? Why had he insisted upon producing

his man? This, then, accounted for Betty's pleading for postponement whenever the subject of her husband's

return was broached; this accounted for her attachment to Falls Park. Possibly this very meeting that she had

Perhaps the girl's thoughts would never have strayed for a moment if her father had not filled her head with

ideas of repugnance to her early union, on the ground that she had been coerced into it before she knew her

own mind; and she might have rushed to meet her husband with open arms on the appointed day.

Betty at length appeared in the distance in answer to the call, and came up pale, but looking innocent of

having seen a living soul. Mrs. Dornell groaned in spirit at such duplicity in the child of her bosom. This was

the simple creature for whose development into womanhood they had all been so tenderly waitinga

forward minx, old enough not only to have a lover, but to conceal his existence as adroitly as any woman of

the world! Bitterly did the Squire's lady regret that Stephen Reynard had not been allowed to come to claim

The two sat beside each other almost in silence on their journey back to King'sHintock. Such words as were

spoken came mainly from Betty, and their formality indicated how much her mind and heart were occupied

Mrs. Dornell was far too astute a mother to openly attack Betty on the matter. That would be only fanning

flame. The indispensable course seemed to her to be that of keeping the treacherous girl under lock and key

till her husband came to take her off her mother's hands. That he would disregard Dornell's opposition, and

It seemed, therefore, a fortunate coincidence that on her arrival at King'sHintock a letter from Reynard was

put into Mrs. Dornell's hands. It was addressed to both her and her husband, and courteously informed them

that the writer had landed at Bristol, and proposed to come on to King'sHintock in a few days, at last to meet

Betty had also received a letter of the same tenor. Her mother had only to look at her face to see how the girl

'You must do your best to welcome him this time, my dear Betty,' her mother said gently.

'You are a woman now,' added her mother severely, 'and these postponements must come to an end.'

'But my fatheroh, I am sure he will not allow this! I am not ready. If he could only wait a year longerif

he could only wait a few months longer! Oh, I wishI wish my dear father were here! I will send to him

instantly.' She broke off abruptly, and falling upon her mother's neck, burst into tears, saying, 'O my mother,

The agonized appeal went too straight to Mrs. Dornell's heart for her to hear it unmoved. Yet, things having

come to this pass, what could she do? She was distracted, and for a moment was on Betty's side. Her original

thought had been to write an affirmative reply to Reynard, allow him to come on to King'sHintock, and keep

her husband in ignorance of the whole proceeding till he should arrive from Falls on some fine day after his

recovery, and find everything settled, and Reynard and Betty living together in harmony. But the events of

the day, and her daughter's sudden outburst of feeling, had overthrown this intention. Betty was sure to do as

she had threatened, and communicate instantly with her father, possibly attempt to fly to him. Moreover,

Reynard's letter was addressed to Mr. Dornell and herself conjointly, and she could not in conscience keep it

'I will send the letter on to your father instantly,' she replied soothingly. 'He shall act entirely as he chooses,

and you know that will not be in opposition to your wishes. He would ruin you rather than thwart you. I only

hope he may be well enough to bear the agitation of this news. Do you agree to this?'

Poor Betty agreed, on condition that she should actually witness the despatch of the letter. Her mother had no

objection to offer to this; but as soon as the horseman had cantered down the drive toward the highway, Mrs.

Dornell's sympathy with Betty's recalcitration began to die out. The girl's secret affection for young Phelipson

could not possibly be condoned. Betty might communicate with him, might even try to reach him. Ruin lay

that way. Stephen Reynard must be speedily installed in his proper place by Betty's side.

She sat down and penned a private letter to Reynard, which threw light upon her plan.

'It is Necessary that I should now tell you,' she said, 'what I have never Mentioned beforeindeed I may

have signified the Contrary that her Father's Objection to your joining her has not as yet been overcome.

As I personally Wish to delay you no longeram indeed as anxious for your Arrival as you can be yourself,

having the good of my Daughter at Heartno course is left open to me but to assist your Cause without my

Husband's Knowledge. He, I am sorry to say, is at present ill at FallsPark, but I felt it my Duty to forward

him your Letter. He will therefore be like to reply with a peremptory Command to you to go back again, for

some Months, whence you came, till the Time he originally stipulated has expir'd. My Advice is, if you get

such a Letter, to take no Notice of it, but to come on hither as you had proposed, letting me know the Day and

Hour (after dark, if possible) at which we may expect you. Dear Betty is with me, and I warrant ye that she

Mrs. Dornell, having sent away this epistle unsuspected of anybody, next took steps to prevent her daughter

leaving the Court, avoiding if possible to excite the girl's suspicions that she was under restraint. But, as if by

divination, Betty had seemed to read the husband's approach in the aspect of her mother's face.

To lock her up, and hand over the key to Reynard when he should appear in the hall, was a plan charming in

its simplicity, till her mother found, on trying the door of the girl's chamber softly, that Betty had already

locked and bolted it on the inside, and had given directions to have her meals served where she was, by

Thereupon Mrs. Dornell noiselessly sat down in her boudoir, which, as well as her bedchamber, was a

passageroom to the girl's apartment, and she resolved not to vacate her post night or day till her daughter's

husband should appear, to which end she too arranged to breakfast, dine, and sup on the spot. It was

impossible now that Betty should escape without her knowledge, even if she had wished, there being no other

door to the chamber, except one admitting to a small inner dressingroom inaccessible by any second way.

But it was plain that the young girl had no thought of escape. Her ideas ran rather in the direction of

intrenchment: she was prepared to stand a siege, but scorned flight. This, at any rate, rendered her secure. As

to how Reynard would contrive a meeting with her coy daughter while in such a defensive humour, that,

Betty had looked so wild and pale at the announcement of her husband's approaching visit, that Mrs. Dornell,

somewhat uneasy, could not leave her to herself. She peeped through the keyhole an hour later. Betty lay on

'You are looking ill, child,' cried her mother. 'You've not taken the air lately. Come with me for a drive.'

Betty made no objection. Soon they drove through the park towards the village, the daughter still in the

strained, strungup silence that had fallen upon her. They left the park to return by another route, and on the

Betty's eye fell upon the cottagewindow. Within it she saw a young girl about her own age, whom she knew

by sight, sitting in a chair and propped by a pillow. The girl's face was covered with scales, which glistened

in the sun. She was a convalescent from smallpoxa disease whose prevalence at that period was a terror of

An idea suddenly energized Betty's apathetic features. She glanced at her mother; Mrs. Dornell had been

looking in the opposite direction. Betty said that she wished to go back to the cottage for a moment to speak

to a girl in whom she took an interest. Mrs. Dornell appeared suspicious, but observing that the cottage had

no backdoor, and that Betty could not escape without being seen, she allowed the carriage to be stopped.

Betty ran back and entered the cottage, emerging again in about a minute, and resuming her seat in the

carriage. As they drove on she fixed her eyes upon her mother and said, 'There, I have done it now!' Her pale

'Nanny Priddle is sick of the smallpox, and I saw her at the window, and I went in and kissed her, so that I

'Wicked girl!' cries her mother. 'Oh, what am I to do! Whatbring a distemper on yourself, and usurp the

The alarmed woman gave orders to drive home as rapidly as possible, and on arriving, Betty, who was by this

time also somewhat frightened at her own enormity, was put into a bath, and fumigated, and treated in every

way that could be thought of to ward off the dreadful malady that in a rash moment she had tried to acquire.

There was now a double reason for isolating the rebellious daughter and wife in her own chamber, and there

she accordingly remained for the rest of the day and the days that followed; till no ill results seemed likely to

Meanwhile the first letter from Reynard, announcing to Mrs. Dornell and her husband jointly that he was

coming in a few days, had sped on its way to FallsPark. It was directed under cover to Tupcombe, the

confidential servant, with instructions not to put it into his master's hands till he had been refreshed by a good

long sleep. Tupcombe much regretted his commission, letters sent in this way always disturbing the Squire;

but guessing that it would be infinitely worse in the end to withhold the news than to reveal it, he chose his

The utmost effect that Mrs. Dornell had anticipated from the message was a peremptory order from her

husband to Reynard to hold aloof a few months longer. What the Squire really did was to declare that he

would go himself and confront Reynard at Bristol, and have it out with him there by word of mouth.

'You leave the room, Tupcombe, and don't say "can't" before me! Have Jerry saddled in an hour.'

The longtried Tupcombe thought his employer demented, so utterly helpless was his appearance just then,

and he went out reluctantly. No sooner was he gone than the Squire, with great difficulty, stretched himself

over to a cabinet by the bedside, unlocked it, and took out a small bottle. It contained a gout specific, against

whose use he had been repeatedly warned by his regular physician, but whose warning he now cast to the

He took a double dose, and waited half an hour. It seemed to produce no effect. He then poured out a treble

dose, swallowed it, leant back upon his pillow, and waited. The miracle he anticipated had been worked at

last. It seemed as though the second draught had not only operated with its own strength, but had kindled into

power the latent forces of the first. He put away the bottle, and rang up Tupcombe.

Less than an hour later one of the housemaids, who of course was quite aware that the Squire's illness was

serious, was surprised to hear a bold and decided step descending the stairs from the direction of Mr.

Dornell's room, accompanied by the humming of a tune. She knew that the doctor had not paid a visit that

morning, and that it was too heavy to be the valet or any other manservant. Looking up, she saw Squire

Dornell fully dressed, descending toward her in his drab caped ridingcoat and boots, with the swinging easy

'What the devil beest looking at?' said the Squire. 'Did you never see a man walk out of his house before,

Resuming his hummingwhich was of a defiant sorthe proceeded to the library, rang the bell, asked if the

horses were ready, and directed them to be brought round. Ten minutes later he rode away in the direction of

They rode on through the pleasant woodlands and the monotonous straight lanes at an equal pace. The

distance traversed might have been about fifteen miles when Tupcombe could perceive that the Squire was

getting tiredas weary as he would have been after riding three times the distance ten years before.

However, they reached Bristol without any mishap, and put up at the Squire's accustomed inn. Dornell almost

immediately proceeded on foot to the inn which Reynard had given as his address, it being now about four

Reynard had already dinedfor people dined early thenand he was staying indoors. He had already

received Mrs. Dornell's reply to his letter; but before acting upon her advice and starting for King'sHintock

he made up his mind to wait another day, that Betty's father might at least have time to write to him if so

minded. The returned traveller much desired to obtain the Squire's assent, as well as his wife's, to the

proposed visit to his bride, that nothing might seem harsh or forced in his method of taking his position as

one of the family. But though he anticipated some sort of objection from his fatherinlaw, in consequence

of Mrs. Dornell's warning, he was surprised at the announcement of the Squire in person.

Stephen Reynard formed the completest of possible contrasts to Dornell as they stood confronting each other

in the best parlour of the Bristol tavern. The Squire, hottempered, gouty, impulsive, generous, reckless; the

younger man, pale, tall, sedate, self possesseda man of the world, fully bearing out at least one couplet in

his epitaph, still extant in King'sHintock church, which places in the inventory of his good qualities

He was at this time about fiveandthirty, though careful living and an even, unemotional temperament

'I am your humble servant, sir,' he said. 'I have read your letter writ to my wife and myself, and considered

'Well, what's done can't be undone,' said Dornell, 'though it was mighty early, and was no doing of mine.

She's your wife; and there's an end on't. But in brief, sir, she's too young for you to claim yet; we mustn't

reckon by years; we must reckon by nature. She's still a girl; 'tis onpolite of 'ee to come yet; next year will be

Now, courteous as Reynard could be, he was a little obstinate when his resolution had once been formed. She

had been promised him by her eighteenth birthday at latestsooner if she were in robust health. Her mother

had fixed the time on her own judgment, without a word of interference on his part. He had been hanging

about foreign courts till he was weary. Betty was now as woman, if she would ever be one, and there was not,

in his mind, the shadow of an excuse for putting him off longer. Therefore, fortified as he was by the support

of her mother, he blandly but firmly told the Squire that he had been willing to waive his rights, out of

deference to her parents, to any reasonable extent, but must now, in justice to himself and her insist on

maintaining them. He therefore, since she had not come to meet him, should proceed to King'sHintock in a

This announcement, in spite of the urbanity with which it was delivered, set Dornell in a passion.

'Oh dammy, sir; you talk about rights, you do, after stealing her away, a mere child, against my will and

'Upon my honour, your charge is quite baseless, sir,' said his son inlaw. 'You must know by this timeor

if you do not, it has been a monstrous cruel injustice to me that I should have been allowed to remain in your

mind with such a stain upon my characteryou must know that I used no seductiveness or temptation of any

kind. Her mother assented; she assented. I took them at their word. That you was really opposed to the

Dornell professed to believe not a word of it. 'You sha'n't have her till she's dree sixes fullno maid ought to

be married till she's dree sixes!and my daughter sha'n't be treated out of nater!' So he stormed on till

Tupcombe, who had been alarmedly listening in the next room, entered suddenly, declaring to Reynard that

his master's life was in danger if the interview were prolonged, he being subject to apoplectic strokes at these

crises. Reynard immediately said that he would be the last to wish to injure Squire Dornell, and left the room,

and as soon as the Squire had recovered breath and equanimity, he went out of the inn, leaning on the arm of

Tupcombe was for sleeping in Bristol that night, but Dornell, whose energy seemed as invincible as it was

sudden, insisted upon mounting and getting back as far as FallsPark, to continue the journey to

King'sHintock on the following day. At five they started, and took the southern road toward the Mendip

Hills. The evening was dry and windy, and, excepting that the sun did not shine, strongly reminded

Tupcombe of the evening of that March month, nearly five years earlier, when news had been brought to

King'sHintock Court of the child Betty's marriage in Londonnews which had produced upon Dornell

such a marked effect for the worse ever since, and indirectly upon the household of which he was the head.

Before that time the winters were lively at FallsPark, as well as at King's Hintock, although the Squire had

ceased to make it his regular residence. Huntingguests and shootingguests came and went, and open house

was kept. Tupcombe disliked the clever courtier who had put a stop to this by taking away from the Squire

It grew darker with their progress along the lanes, and Tupcombe discovered from Mr. Dornell's manner of

riding that his strength was giving way; and spurring his own horse close alongside, he asked him how he

'Oh, bad; damn bad, Tupcombe! I can hardly keep my seat. I shall never be any better, I fear! Have we passed

'I wish we had. I can hardly hold on.' The Squire could not repress a groan now and then, and Tupcombe

knew he was in great pain. 'I wish I was undergroundthat's the place for such fools as I! I'd gladly be there

if it were not for Mistress Betty. He's coming on to King'sHintock tomorrowhe won't put it off any

longer; he'll set out and reach there tomorrow night, without stopping at Falls; and he'll take her unawares,

'I MUST, Tupcombe! You don't know what my trouble is; it is not so much that she is married to this man

without my agreeingfor, after all, there's nothing to say against him, so far as I know; but that she don't

take to him at all, seems to fear himin fact, cares nothing about him; and if he comes forcing himself into

the house upon her, why, 'twill be rank cruelty. Would to the Lord something would happen to prevent him!'

How they reached home that night Tupcombe hardly knew. The Squire was in such pain that he was obliged

to recline upon his horse, and Tupcombe was afraid every moment lest he would fall into the road. But they

Next morning it was obvious that he could not possibly go to King's Hintock for several days at least, and

there on the bed he lay, cursing his inability to proceed on an errand so personal and so delicate that no

emissary could perform it. What he wished to do was to ascertain from Betty's own lips if her aversion to

Reynard was so strong that his presence would be positively distasteful to her. Were that the case, he would

But all that was hindered now, and he repeated a hundred times in Tupcombe's hearing, and in that of the

This sentiment, reiterated by the Squire as he tossed in the agony induced by the powerful drugs of the day

before, entered sharply into the soul of Tupcombe and of all who were attached to the house of Dornell, as

distinct from the house of his wife at King's Hintock. Tupcombe, who was an excitable man, was hardly less

disquieted by the thought of Reynard's return than the Squire himself was. As the week drew on, and the

afternoon advanced at which Reynard would in all probability be passing near Falls on his way to the Court,

the Squire's feelings became acuter, and the responsive Tupcombe could hardly bear to come near him.

Having left him in the hands of the doctor, the former went out upon the lawn, for he could hardly breathe in

the contagion of excitement caught from the employer who had virtually made him his confidant. He had

lived with the Dornells from his boyhood, had been born under the shadow of their walls; his whole life was

annexed and welded to the life of the family in a degree which has no counterpart in these latter days.

He was summoned indoors, and learnt that it had been decided to send for Mrs. Dornell: her husband was in

great danger. There were two or three who could have acted as messenger, but Dornell wished Tupcombe to

go, the reason showing itself when, Tupcombe being ready to start, Squire Dornell summoned him to his

'Put Peggy along smart, Tupcombe, and get there before him, you knowbefore him. This is the day he

fixed. He has not passed Falls crossroads yet. If you can do that you will be able to get Betty to comed'ye

see?after her mother has started; she'll have a reason for not waiting for him. Bring her by the lower

road he'll go by the upper. Your business is to make 'em miss each otherd'ye see?but that's a thing I

Five minutes after, Tupcombe was astride the horse and on his way the way he had followed so many

times since his master, a florid young countryman, had first gone wooing to King'sHintock Court. As soon

as he had crossed the hills in the immediate neighbourhood of the manor, the road lay over a plain, where it

ran in long straight stretches for several miles. In the best of times, when all had been gay in the united

houses, that part of the road had seemed tedious. It was gloomy in the extreme now that he pursued it, at

He rode and brooded. If the Squire were to die, he, Tupcombe, would be alone in the world and friendless, for

he was no favourite with Mrs. Dornell; and to find himself baffled, after all, in what he had set his mind on,

would probably kill the Squire. Thinking thus, Tupcombe stopped his horse every now and then, and listened

for the coming husband. The time was drawing on to the moment when Reynard might be expected to pass

along this very route. He had watched the road well during the afternoon, and had inquired of the tavern

keepers as he came up to each, and he was convinced that the premature descent of the strangerhusband

Besides the girl's mother, Tupcombe was the only member of the household who suspected Betty's tender

feelings towards young Phelipson, so unhappily generated on her return from school; and he could therefore

imagine, even better than her fond father, what would be her emotions on the sudden announcement of

So he rode and rode, desponding and hopeful by turns. He felt assured that, unless in the unfortunate event of

the almost immediate arrival of her sonin law at his own heels, Mrs. Dornell would not be able to hinder

It was about nine o'clock that, having put twenty miles of country behind him, he turned in at the lodgegate

nearest to Ivell and King'sHintock village, and pursued the long north driveitself much like a turnpike

roadwhich led thence through the park to the Court. Though there were so many trees in King'sHintock

park, few bordered the carriage roadway; he could see it stretching ahead in the pale night light like an

unrolled deal shaving. Presently the irregular frontage of the house came in view, of great extent, but low,

As Tupcombe approached he rode aside upon the grass, to make sure, if possible, that he was the first comer,

before letting his presence be known. The Court was dark and sleepy, in no respect as if a bridegroom were

While pausing he distinctly heard the tread of a horse upon the track behind him, and for a moment despaired

of arriving in time: here, surely, was Reynard! Pulling up closer to the densest tree at hand he waited, and

found he had retreated nothing too soon, for the second rider avoided the gravel also, and passed quite close

Before Tupcombe could think what to do, Phelipson had gone on; but not to the door of the house. Swerving

to the left, he passed round to the east angle, where, as Tupcombe knew, were situated Betty's apartments.

Dismounting, he left the horse tethered to a hanging bough, and walked on to the house.

Suddenly his eye caught sight of an object which explained the position immediately. It was a ladder

stretching from beneath the trees, which there came pretty close to the house, up to a first floor

windowone which lighted Miss Betty's rooms. Yes, it was Betty's chamber; he knew every room in the

The young horseman who had passed him, having evidently left his steed somewhere under the trees also,

was perceptible at the top of the ladder, immediately outside Betty's window. While Tupcombe watched, a

cloaked female figure stepped timidly over the sill, and the two cautiously descended, one before the other,

the young man's arms enclosing the young woman between his grasp of the ladder, so that she could not fall.

As soon as they reached the bottom, young Phelipson quickly removed the ladder and hid it under the bushes.

The pair disappeared; till, in a few minutes, Tupcombe could discern a horse emerging from a remoter part of

the umbrage. The horse carried double, the girl being on a pillion behind her lover.

Tupcombe hardly knew what to do or think; yet, though this was not exactly the kind of flight that had been

intended, she had certainly escaped. He went back to his own animal, and rode round to the servants' door,

where he delivered the letter for Mrs. Dornell. To leave a verbal message for Betty was now impossible.

The Court servants desired him to stay over the night, but he would not do so, desiring to get back to the

Squire as soon as possible and tell what he had seen. Whether he ought not to have intercepted the young

people, and carried off Betty himself to her father, he did not know. However, it was too late to think of that

now, and without wetting his lips or swallowing a crumb, Tupcombe turned his back upon King'sHintock

It was not till he had advanced a considerable distance on his way homeward that, halting under the lantern of

a roadsideinn while the horse was watered, there came a traveller from the opposite direction in a hired

coach; the lantern lit the stranger's face as he passed along and dropped into the shade. Tupcombe exulted for

the moment, though he could hardly have justified his exultation. The belated traveller was Reynard; and

You may now be willing to know of the fortunes of Miss Betty. Left much to herself through the intervening

days, she had ample time to brood over her desperate attempt at the stratagem of infection thwarted,

apparently, by her mother's promptitude. In what other way to gain time she could not think. Thus drew on

the day and the hour of the evening on which her husband was expected to announce himself.

At some period after dark, when she could not tell, a tap at the window, twice and thrice repeated, became

audible. It caused her to start up, for the only visitant in her mind was the one whose advances she had so

feared as to risk health and life to repel them. She crept to the window, and heard a whisper without.

Betty's face fired with excitement. She had latterly begun to doubt her admirer's staunchness, fancying his

love to be going off in mere attentions which neither committed him nor herself very deeply. She opened the

window, saying in a joyous whisper, 'Oh Charley; I thought you had deserted me quite!'

He assured her he had not done that, and that he had a horse in waiting, if she would ride off with him. 'You

To throw a cloak round herself was the work of a moment, and assuring herself that her door was locked

against a surprise, she climbed over the windowsill and descended with him as we have seen.

Her mother meanwhile, having received Tupcombe's note, found the news of her husband's illness so serious,

as to displace her thoughts of the coming soninlaw, and she hastened to tell her daughter of the Squire's

dangerous condition, thinking it might be desirable to take her to her father's bedside. On trying the door of

the girl's room, she found it still locked. Mrs. Dornell called, but there was no answer. Full of misgivings, she

privately fetched the old housesteward and bade him burst open the dooran order by no means easy to

execute, the joinery of the Court being massively constructed. However, the lock sprang open at last, and she

For a moment Mrs. Dornell was staggered. Then it occurred to her that Betty might have privately obtained

from Tupcombe the news of her father's serious illness, and, fearing she might be kept back to meet her

husband, have gone off with that obstinate and biassed servitor to FallsPark. The more she thought it over

the more probable did the supposition appear; and binding her own headman to secrecy as to Betty's

movements, whether as she conjectured, or otherwise, Mrs. Dornell herself prepared to set out.

She had no suspicion how seriously her husband's malady had been aggravated by his ride to Bristol, and

thought more of Betty's affairs than of her own. That Betty's husband should arrive by some other road

tonight, and find neither wife nor motherinlaw to receive him, and no explanation of their absence, was

possible; but never forgetting chances, Mrs. Dornell as she journeyed kept her eyes fixed upon the highway

on the offside, where, before she had reached the town of Ivell, the hired coach containing Stephen Reynard

Mrs. Dornell's coachman pulled up, in obedience to a direction she had given him at starting; the other coach

was hailed, a few words passed, and Reynard alighted and came to Mrs. Dornell's carriage window.

'Come inside,' says she. 'I want to speak privately to you. Why are you so late?'

'One hindrance and another,' says he. 'I meant to be at the Court by eight at latest. My gratitude for your

'You must not try to see Betty yet,' said she. 'There be far other and newer reasons against your seeing her

The circumstances were such that Mrs. Dornell could not possibly conceal them entirely; nothing short of

knowing some of the facts would prevent his blindly acting in a manner which might be fatal to the future.

Moreover, there are times when deeper intriguers than Mrs. Dornell feel that they must let out a few truths, if

only in selfindulgence. So she told so much of recent surprises as that Betty's heart had been attracted by

another image than his, and that his insisting on visiting her now might drive the girl to desperation. 'Betty

has, in fact, rushed off to her father to avoid you,' she said. 'But if you wait she will soon forget this young

As a woman and a mother she could go no further, and Betty's desperate attempt to infect herself the week

before as a means of repelling him, together with the alarming possibility that, after all, she had not gone to

'Well,' sighed the diplomatist, in a tone unexpectedly quiet, 'such things have been known before. After all,

she may prefer me to him some day, when she reflects how very differently I might have acted than I am

going to act towards her. But I'll say no more about that now. I can have a bed at your house for tonight?'

'Tonight, certainly. And you leave tomorrow morning early?' She spoke anxiously, for on no account did

she wish him to make further discoveries. 'My husband is so seriously ill,' she continued, 'that my absence

He promised to leave early, and to write to her soon. 'And when I think the time is ripe,' he said, 'I'll write to

It was about one o'clock in the morning when Mrs. Dornell reached FallsPark. A double blow awaited her

there. Betty had not arrived; her flight had been elsewhither; and her stricken mother divined with whom. She

ascended to the bedside of her husband, where to her concern she found that the physician had given up all

hope. The Squire was sinking, and his extreme weakness had almost changed his character, except in the

particular that his old obstinacy sustained him in a refusal to see a clergyman. He shed tears at the least word,

and sobbed at the sight of his wife. He asked for Betty, and it was with a heavy heart that Mrs. Dornell told

Somehow the solemnity of these last moments of his gave him inquisitorial power, and the too cold wife

could not conceal from him the flight which had taken place from King'sHintock that night.

'WhatBettya trump after all? Hurrah! She's her father's own maid! She's game! She knew he was her

father's own choice! She vowed that my man should win! Well done, Bet!haw! haw! Hurrah!'

He had raised himself in bed by starts as he spoke, and now fell back exhausted. He never uttered another

word, and died before the dawn. People said there had not been such an ungenteel death in a good county

Now I will go back to the time of Betty's riding off on the pillion behind her lover. They left the park by an

obscure gate to the east, and presently found themselves in the lonely and solitary length of the old Roman

By this time they were rather alarmed at their own performance, for they were both young and inexperienced.

Hence they proceeded almost in silence till they came to a mean roadside inn which was not yet closed; when

Betty, who had held on to him with much misgiving all this while, felt dreadfully unwell, and said she

They accordingly dismounted from the jaded animal that had brought them, and were shown into a small dark

parlour, where they stood side by side awkwardly, like the fugitives they were. A light was brought, and

when they were left alone Betty threw off the cloak which had enveloped her. No sooner did young Phelipson

'OhI forgot!' faltered Betty. And then she informed him that, on hearing of her husband's approach the

week before, in a desperate attempt to keep him from her side, she had tried to imbibe the infectionan act

which till this moment she had supposed to have been ineffectual, imagining her feverishness to be the result

The effect of this discovery upon young Phelipson was overwhelming. Betterseasoned men than he would

not have been proof against it, and he was only a little over her own age. 'And you've been holding on to me!'

he said. 'And suppose you get worse, and we both have it, what shall we do? Won't you be a fright in a month

In his horror he attempted to laugh, but the laugh ended in a weakly giggle. She was more woman than girl by

'Whatin trying to keep off him, I keep off you?' she said miserably. 'Do you hate me because I am going to

'Ohno, no!' he said soothingly. 'But II am thinking if it is quite right for us to do this. You see, dear

Betty, if you was not married it would be different. You are not in honour married to him we've often said;

still you are his by law, and you can't be mine whilst he's alive. And with this terrible sickness coming on,

'Is THIS your love?' said Betty reproachfully. 'Oh, if you was sickening for the plague itself, and going to be

But Betty with a swollen heart had rewrapped herself and gone out of the door. The horse was still standing

there. She mounted by the help of the uppingstock, and when he had followed her she said, 'Do not come

near me, Charley; but please lead the horse, so that if you've not caught anything already you'll not catch it

He did not resist her command, and back they went by the way they had come, Betty shedding bitter tears at

the retribution she had already brought upon herself; for though she had reproached Phelipson, she was

staunch enough not to blame him in her secret heart for showing that his love was only skindeep. The horse

was stopped in the plantation, and they walked silently to the lawn, reaching the bushes wherein the ladder

He reerected the ladder without a word; but when she approached to ascend he said, 'Goodbye, Betty!'

'Goodbye!' said she; and involuntarily turned her face towards his. He hung back from imprinting the

expected kiss: at which Betty started as if she had received a poignant wound. She moved away so suddenly

She stepped in without looking behind; he descended, withdrew the ladder, and went away.

Alone in her chamber, Betty flung herself upon her face on the bed, and burst into shaking sobs. Yet she

would not admit to herself that her lover's conduct was unreasonable; only that her rash act of the previous

week had been wrong. No one had heard her enter, and she was too worn out, in body and mind, to think or

care about medical aid. In an hour or so she felt yet more unwell, positively ill; and nobody coming to her at

the usual bedtime, she looked towards the door. Marks of the lock having been forced were visible, and this

made her chary of summoning a servant. She opened the door cautiously and sallied forth downstairs.

In the diningparlour, as it was called, the now sick and sorry Betty was startled to see at that late hour not

her mother, but a man sitting, calmly finishing his supper. There was no servant in the room. He turned, and

'Yes, sir. This spotted object is your wife! I've done it because I don't want you to come near me!'

He was sixteen years her senior; old enough to be compassionate. 'My poor child, you must get to bed

directly! Don't be afraid of meI'll carry you upstairs, and send for a doctor instantly.'

'Ah, you don't know what I am!' she cried. 'I had a lover once; but now he's gone! 'Twasn't I who deserted

him. He has deserted me; because I am ill he wouldn't kiss me, though I wanted him to!'

'Wouldn't he? Then he was a very poor slacktwisted sort of fellow. Betty, I'VE never kissed you since you

stood beside me as my little wife, twelve years and a half old! May I kiss you now?'

Though Betty by no means desired his kisses, she had enough of the spirit of Cunigonde in Schiller's ballad to

test his daring. 'If you have courage to venture, yes sir!' said she. 'But you may die for it, mind!'

He came up to her and imprinted a deliberate kiss full upon her mouth, saying, 'May many others follow!'

She shook her head, and hastily withdrew, though secretly pleased at his hardihood. The excitement had

supported her for the few minutes she had passed in his presence, and she could hardly drag herself back to

her room. Her husband summoned the servants, and, sending them to her assistance, went off himself for a

The next morning Reynard waited at the Court till he had learnt from the medical man that Betty's attack

promised to be a very light one or, as it was expressed, 'very fine'; and in taking his leave sent up a note to

'Now I must be Gone. I promised your Mother I would not see You yet, and she may be anger'd if she finds

He was of all men then living one of the best able to cope with such an untimely situation as this. A

contriving, sagacious, gentle mannered man, a philosopher who saw that the only constant attribute of life is

change, he held that, as long as she lives, there is nothing finite in the most impassioned attitude a woman

may take up. In twelve months his girlwife's recent infatuation might be as distasteful to her mind as it was

now to his own. In a few years her very flesh would changeso said the scientific;her spirit, so much

more ephemeral, was capable of changing in one. Betty was his, and it became a mere question of means how

During the day Mrs. Dornell, having closed her husband's eyes, returned to the Court. She was truly relieved

to find Betty there, even though on a bed of sickness. The disease ran its course, and in due time Betty

became convalescent, without having suffered deeply for her rashness, one little speck beneath her ear, and

The Squire's body was not brought back to King'sHintock. Where he was born, and where he had lived

before wedding his Sue, there he had wished to be buried. No sooner had she lost him than Mrs. Dornell, like

certain other wives, though she had never shown any great affection for him while he lived, awoke suddenly

to his many virtues, and zealously embraced his opinion about delaying Betty's union with her husband,

which she had formerly combated strenuously. 'Poor man! how right he was, and how wrong was I!' Eighteen

was certainly the lowest age at which Mr. Reynard should claim her childnay, it was too low! Far too low!

So desirous was she of honouring her lamented husband's sentiments in this respect, that she wrote to her

soninlaw suggesting that, partly on account of Betty's sorrow for her father's loss, and out of consideration

for his known wishes for delay, Betty should not be taken from her till her nineteenth birthday.

However much or little Stephen Reynard might have been to blame in his marriage, the patient man now

almost deserved to be pitied. First Betty's skittishness; now her mother's remorseful volteface: it was enough

to exasperate anybody; and he wrote to the widow in a tone which led to a little coolness between those

hitherto firm friends. However, knowing that he had a wife not to claim but to win, and that young Phelipson

had been packed off to sea by his parents, Stephen was complaisant to a degree, returning to London, and

holding quite aloof from Betty and her mother, who remained for the present in the country. In town he had a

mild visitation of the distemper he had taken from Betty, and in writing to her he took care not to dwell upon

its mildness. It was now that Betty began to pity him for what she had inflicted upon him by the kiss, and her

Owing to his rebuffs, Reynard had grown to be truly in love with Betty in his mild, placid, durable wayin

that way which perhaps, upon the whole, tends most generally to the woman's comfort under the institution of

marriage, if not particularly to her ecstasy. Mrs. Dornell's exaggeration of her husband's wish for delay in

their living together was inconvenient, but he would not openly infringe it. He wrote tenderly to Betty, and

soon announced that he had a little surprise in store for her. The secret was that the King had been graciously

pleased to inform him privately, through a relation, that His Majesty was about to offer him a Barony. Would

she like the title to be Ivell? Moreover, he had reason for knowing that in a few years the dignity would be

raised to that of an Earl, for which creation he thought the title of Wessex would be eminently suitable,

considering the position of much of their property. As Lady Ivell, therefore, and future Countess of Wessex,

He did not add, as he might have added, how greatly the consideration of the enormous estates at

King'sHintock and elsewhere which Betty would inherit, and her children after her, had conduced to this

Whether the impending titles had really any effect upon Betty's regard for him I cannot state, for she was one

of those close characters who never let their minds be known upon anything. That such honour was

absolutely unexpected by her from such a quarter is, however, certain; and she could not deny that Stephen

had shown her kindness, forbearance, even magnanimity; had forgiven her for an errant passion which he

might with some reason have denounced, notwithstanding her cruel position as a child entrapped into

Her mother, in her grief and remorse for the loveless life she had led with her rough, though openhearted,

husband, made now a creed of his merest whim; and continued to insist that, out of respect to his known

desire, her soninlaw should not reside with Betty till the girl's father had been dead a year at least, at which

time the girl would still be under nineteen. Letters must suffice for Stephen till then.

'Of course it is quite proper,' said Betty hastily. 'I don't gainsay it. I was but thinking thatthat'

In the long slow months of the stipulated interval her mother tended and trained Betty carefully for her duties.

Fully awake now to the many virtues of her dear departed one, she, among other acts of pious devotion to his

memory, rebuilt the church of King'sHintock village, and established valuable charities in all the villages of

In superintending these works, particularly that of the church building, her daughter Betty was her constant

companion, and the incidents of their execution were doubtless not without a soothing effect upon the young

creature's heart. She had sprung from girl to woman by a sudden bound, and few would have recognized in

the thoughtful face of Betty now the same person who, the year before, had seemed to have absolutely no

idea whatever of responsibility, moral or other. Time passed thus till the Squire had been nearly a year in his

vault; and Mrs. Dornell was duly asked by letter by the patient Reynard if she were willing for him to come

soon. He did not wish to take Betty away if her mother's sense of loneliness would be too great, but would

Before the widow had replied to this communication, she one day happened to observe Betty walking on the

south terrace in the full sunlight, without hat or mantle, and was struck by her child's figure. Mrs. Dornell

called her in, and said suddenly: 'Have you seen your husband since the time of your poor father's death?'

'Whatagainst my wishes and those of your dear father! I am shocked at your disobedience!'

'Well,' stammered Betty, 'in the course of his letters to me he said that I belonged to him, and if nobody knew

that we met it would make no difference. And that I need not hurt your feelings by telling you.'

'Dear mamma, it grew very late, and he said it was safer not to go back till next day, as the roads were bad;

'I don't want to hear any more! This is your respect for your father's memory,' groaned the widow. 'When did

'Twice we met by accident,' pleaded Betty. 'Once at Abbot'sCernel, and another time at the Red Lion,

'O thou deceitful girl!' cried Mrs. Dornell. 'An accident took you to the Red Lion whilst I was staying at the

White Hart! I remember you came in at twelve o'clock at night and said you'd been to see the cathedral by

'My everhonoured mamma, so I had! I only went to the Red Lion with him afterwards.'

'Oh Betty, Betty! That my child should have deceived me even in my widowed days!'

'But, my dearest mamma, you made me marry him!' says Betty with spirit, 'and of course I've to obey him

Mrs. Dornell sighed. 'All I have to say is, that you'd better get your husband to join you as soon as possible,'

She wrote instantly to Stephen Reynard: 'I wash my hands of the whole matter as between you two; though I

should advise you to OPENLY join each other as soon as you canif you wish to avoid scandal.'

He came, though not till the promised title had been granted, and he could call Betty archly 'My Lady.'

People said in after years that she and her husband were very happy. However that may be, they had a

numerous family; and she became in due course first Countess of Wessex, as he had foretold.

The little white frock in which she had been married to him at the tender age of twelve was carefully

preserved among the relics at King'sHintock Court, where it may still be seen by the curiousa yellowing,

pathetic testimony to the small count taken of the happiness of an innocent child in the social strategy of

those days, which might have led, but providentially did not lead, to great unhappiness.

When the Earl died Betty wrote him an epitaph, in which she described him as the best of husbands, fathers,

Such is woman; or rather (not to give offence by so sweeping an assertion), such was Betty Dornell.

It was at a meeting of one of the Wessex Field and Antiquarian Clubs that the foregoing story, partly told,

partly read from a manuscript, was made to do duty for the regulation papers on deformed butterflies, fossil

oxhorns, prehistoric dungmixens, and such like, that usually occupied the more serious attention of the

This Club was of an inclusive and intersocial character; to a degree, indeed, remarkable for the part of

England in which it had its beingdear, delightful Wessex, whose statuesque dynasties are even now only

just beginning to feel the shaking of the new and strange spirit without, like that which entered the lonely

valley of Ezekiel's vision and made the dry bones move: where the honest squires, tradesmen, parsons, clerks,

and people still praise the Lord with one voice for His best of all possible worlds.

The present meeting, which was to extend over two days, had opened its proceedings at the museum of the

town whose buildings and environs were to be visited by the members. Lunch had ended, and the afternoon

excursion had been about to be undertaken, when the rain came down in an obstinate spatter, which revealed

no sign of cessation. As the members waited they grew chilly, although it was only autumn, and a fire was

lighted, which threw a cheerful shine upon the varnished skulls, urns, penates, tesserae, costumes, coats of

mail, weapons, and missals, animated the fossilized ichthyosaurus and iguanodon; while the dead eyes of the

stuffed birdsthose neverabsent familiars in such collections, though murdered to extinction out of

doorsflashed as they had flashed to the rising sun above the neighbouring moors on the fatal morning

when the trigger was pulled which ended their little flight. It was then that the historian produced his

manuscript, which he had prepared, he said, with a view to publication. His delivery of the story having

concluded as aforesaid, the speaker expressed his hope that the constraint of the weather, and the paucity of

Several members observed that a stormbound club could not presume to be selective, and they were all very

much obliged to him for such a curious chapter from the domestic histories of the county.

The President looked gloomily from the window at the descending rain, and broke a short silence by saying

that though the Club had met, there seemed little probability of its being able to visit the objects of interest set

The Treasurer observed that they had at least a roof over their heads; and they had also a second day before

A sentimental member, leaning back in his chair, declared that he was in no hurry to go out, and that nothing

The Colonel added that the subject should be a lady, like the former, to which a gentleman known as the

Though these had spoken in jest, a rural dean who was present observed blandly that there was no lack of

materials. Many, indeed, were the legends and traditions of gentle and noble dames, renowned in times past

in that part of England, whose actions and passions were now, but for men's memories, buried under the brief

Another member, an old surgeon, a somewhat grim though sociable personage, was quite of the speaker's

opinion, and felt quite sure that the memory of the reverend gentleman must abound with such curious tales

of fair dames, of their loves and hates, their joys and their misfortunes, their beauty and their fate.

The parson, a trifle confused, retorted that their friend the surgeon, the son of a surgeon, seemed to him, as a

man who had seen much and heard more during the long course of his own and his father's practice, the

The bookworm, the Colonel, the historian, the Vicepresident, the churchwarden, the two curates, the

gentlemantradesman, the sentimental member, the crimson maltster, the quiet gentleman, the man of family,

the Spark, and several others, quite agreed, and begged that he would recall something of the kind. The old

surgeon said that, though a meeting of the MidWessex Field and Antiquarian Club was the last place at

which he should have expected to be called upon in this way, he had no objection; and the parson said he

would come next. The surgeon then reflected, and decided to relate the history of a lady named Barbara, who

lived towards the end of the last century, apologizing for his tale as being perhaps a little too professional.

The crimson maltster winked to the Spark at hearing the nature of the apology, and the surgeon began.

It was apparently an idea, rather than a passion, that inspired Lord Uplandtowers' resolve to win her. Nobody

ever knew when he formed it, or whence he got his assurance of success in the face of her manifest dislike of

him. Possibly not until after that first important act of her life which I shall presently mention. His matured

and cynical doggedness at the age of nineteen, when impulse mostly rules calculation, was remarkable, and

might have owed its existence as much to his succession to the earldom and its accompanying local honours

in childhood, as to the family character; an elevation which jerked him into maturity, so to speak, without his

having known adolescence. He had only reached his twelfth year when his father, the fourth Earl, died, after a

Nevertheless, the family character had a great deal to do with it. Determination was hereditary in the bearers

The seats of the two families were about ten miles apart, the way between them lying along the now old, then

new, turnpikeroad connecting Havenpool and Warborne with the city of Melchester: a road which, though

only a branch from what was known as the Great Western Highway, is probably, even at present, as it has

been for the last hundred years, one of the finest examples of a macadamized turnpiketrack that can be

The mansion of the Earl, as well as that of his neighbour, Barbara's father, stood back about a mile from the

highway, with which each was connected by an ordinary drive and lodge. It was along this particular highway

that the young Earl drove on a certain evening at Christmastide some twenty years before the end of the last

century, to attend a ball at Chene Manor, the home of Barbara, and her parents Sir John and Lady Grebe. Sir

John's was a baronetcy created a few years before the breaking out of the Civil War, and his lands were even

more extensive than those of Lord Uplandtowers himself; comprising this Manor of Chene, another on the

coast near, half the Hundred of Cockdene, and wellenclosed lands in several other parishes, notably

Warborne and those contiguous. At this time Barbara was barely seventeen, and the ball is the first occasion

on which we have any tradition of Lord Uplandtowers attempting tender relations with her; it was early

An intimate friendone of the Drenkhardsis said to have dined with him that day, and Lord Uplandtowers

'You'll never get hersure; you'll never get her!' this friend had said at parting. 'She's not drawn to your

lordship by love: and as for thought of a good match, why, there's no more calculation in her than in a bird.'

He no doubt thought of his friend's forecast as he travelled along the highway in his chariot; but the sculptural

repose of his profile against the vanishing daylight on his right hand would have shown his friend that the

Earl's equanimity was undisturbed. He reached the solitary wayside tavern called Lornton Innthe

rendezvous of many a daring poacher for operations in the adjoining forest; and he might have observed, if he

had taken the trouble, a strange post chaise standing in the haltingspace before the inn. He duly sped past

it, and halfanhour after through the little town of Warborne. Onward, a mile farther, was the house of his

At this date it was an imposing edificeor, rather, congeries of edificesas extensive as the residence of

the Earl himself; though far less regular. One wing showed extreme antiquity, having huge chimneys, whose

substructures projected from the external walls like towers; and a kitchen of vast dimensions, in which (it was

said) breakfasts had been cooked for John of Gaunt. Whilst he was yet in the forecourt he could hear the

rhythm of French horns and clarionets, the favourite instruments of those days at such entertainments.

Entering the long parlour, in which the dance had just been opened by Lady Grebe with a minuetit being

now seven o'clock, according to the traditionhe was received with a welcome befitting his rank, and looked

round for Barbara. She was not dancing, and seemed to be preoccupiedalmost, indeed, as though she had

been waiting for him. Barbara at this time was a good and pretty girl, who never spoke ill of any one, and

hated other pretty women the very least possible. She did not refuse him for the countrydance which

The evening wore on, and the horns and clarionets tootled merrily. Barbara evinced towards her lover neither

distinct preference nor aversion; but old eyes would have seen that she pondered something. However, after

supper she pleaded a headache, and disappeared. To pass the time of her absence, Lord Uplandtowers went

into a little room adjoining the long gallery, where some elderly ones were sitting by the firefor he had a

phlegmatic dislike of dancing for its own sake,and, lifting the windowcurtains, he looked out of the

window into the park and wood, dark now as a cavern. Some of the guests appeared to be leaving even so

soon as this, two lights showing themselves as turning away from the door and sinking to nothing in the

His hostess put her head into the room to look for partners for the ladies, and Lord Uplandtowers came out.

Lady Grebe informed him that Barbara had not returned to the ballroom: she had gone to bed in sheer

'She has been so excited over the ball all day,' her mother continued, 'that I feared she would be worn out

To humour her he stayed till midnight, and then set out. He had made no progress in his suit; but he had

assured himself that Barbara gave no other guest the preference, and nearly everybody in the neighbourhood

The next morning he lay till near ten o'clock, and he had only just come out upon the head of the staircase

when he heard hoofs upon the gravel without; in a few moments the door had been opened, and Sir John

Even the Earl of Uplandtowers could not repress amazement. 'What's the matter, my dear Sir John,' says he.

The news was startling, indeed. From the Baronet's disjointed explanation Lord Uplandtowers gathered that

after his own and the other guests' departure Sir John and Lady Grebe had gone to rest without seeing any

more of Barbara; it being understood by them that she had retired to bed when she sent word to say that she

could not join the dancers again. Before then she had told her maid that she would dispense with her services

for this night; and there was evidence to show that the young lady had never lain down at all, the bed

remaining unpressed. Circumstances seemed to prove that the deceitful girl had feigned indisposition to get

an excuse for leaving the ballroom, and that she had left the house within ten minutes, presumably during

'Yes.' And he mentioned the retreating carriagelights, and how he was assured by Lady Grebe that no guest

'I can on'y guess. My worst fear is my most likely guess. I'll say no more. I thoughtyet I would not

believeit possible that you was the sinner. Would that you had been! But 'tis t'other, 'tis t'other, by G! I

Sir John would not give a name, and, stultified rather than agitated, Lord Uplandtowers accompanied him

back to Chene. He again asked upon whom were the Baronet's suspicions directed; and the impulsive Sir

'A young fellow of ShottsfordForuma widowwoman's son,' the other told him, and explained that

Willowes's father, or grandfather, was the last of the old glasspainters in that place, where (as you may

'By G that's badmighty bad!' said Lord Uplandtowers, throwing himself back in the chaise in frigid

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

But the lovers had a tenhours' start; and it was apparent that sound judgment had been exercised in choosing

as their time of flight the particular night when the movements of a strange carriage would not be noticed,

either in the park or on the neighbouring highway, owing to the general press of vehicles. The chaise which

had been seen waiting at Lornton Inn was, no doubt, the one they had escaped in; and the pair of heads which

The fears of her parents were realized. A letter sent by special messenger from Barbara, on the evening of

that day, briefly informed them that her lover and herself were on the way to London, and before this

communication reached her home they would be united as husband and wife. She had taken this extreme step

because she loved her dear Edmond as she could love no other man, and because she had seen closing round

her the doom of marriage with Lord Uplandtowers, unless she put that threatened fate out of possibility by

doing as she had done. She had well considered the step beforehand, and was prepared to live like any other

'D her!' said Lord Uplandtowers, as he drove homeward that night. 'D her for a fool!'which shows the

Well; Sir John had already started in pursuit of them as a matter of duty, driving like a wild man to

Melchester, and thence by the direct highway to the capital. But he soon saw that he was acting to no

purpose; and by and by, discovering that the marriage had actually taken place, he forebore all attempts to

unearth them in the City, and returned and sat down with his lady to digest the event as best they could.

To proceed against this Willowes for the abduction of our heiress was, possibly, in their power; yet, when

they considered the now unalterable facts, they refrained from violent retribution. Some six weeks passed,

during which time Barbara's parents, though they keenly felt her loss, held no communication with the truant,

either for reproach or condonation. They continued to think of the disgrace she had brought upon herself; for,

though the young man was an honest fellow, and the son of an honest father, the latter had died so early, and

his widow had had such struggles to maintain herself; that the son was very imperfectly educated. Moreover,

his blood was, as far as they knew, of no distinction whatever, whilst hers, through her mother, was

compounded of the best juices of ancient baronial distillation, containing tinctures of Maundeville, and

Mohun, and Syward, and Peverell, and Culliford, and Talbot, and Plantagenet, and York, and Lancaster, and

The father and mother sat by the fireplace that was spanned by the fourcentred arch bearing the family

'Speak for yourself!' she snapped through her sobs. 'I am only one andforty! . . . Why didn't ye ride faster

In the meantime the young married lovers, caring no more about their blood than about ditchwater, were

intensely happyhappy, that is, in the descending scale which, as we all know, Heaven in its wisdom has

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

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

comparable to the earth in its geologic stages, as described to us sometimes by our worthy President; first a

hot coal, then a warm one, then a cooling cinder, then chillythe simile shall be pursued no further. The

long and the short of it was that one day a letter, sealed with their daughter's own little seal, came into Sir

John and Lady Grebe's hands; and, on opening it, they found it to contain an appeal from the young couple to

Sir John to forgive them for what they had done, and they would fall on their naked knees and be most dutiful

Then Sir John and his lady sat down again by the fireplace with the fourcentred arch, and consulted, and

reread the letter. Sir John Grebe, if the truth must be told, loved his daughter's happiness far more, poor

man, than he loved his name and lineage; he recalled to his mind all her little ways, gave vent to a sigh; and,

by this time acclimatized to the idea of the marriage, said that what was done could not be undone, and that

he supposed they must not be too harsh with her. Perhaps Barbara and her husband were in actual need; and

A slight consolation had come to them in an unexpected manner. They had been credibly informed that an

ancestor of plebeian Willowes was once honoured with intermarriage with a scion of the aristocracy who had

gone to the dogs. In short, such is the foolishness of distinguished parents, and sometimes of others also, that

they wrote that very day to the address Barbara had given them, informing her that she might return home

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

endeavour to welcome both, and to discuss with them what could best be arranged for their future.

In three or four days a rather shabby postchaise drew up at the door of Chene Manorhouse, at sound of

which the tenderhearted baronet and his wife ran out as if to welcome a prince and princess of the blood.

They were overjoyed to see their spoilt child return safe and soundthough she was only Mrs. Willowes,

wife of Edmond Willowes of nowhere. Barbara burst into penitential tears, and both husband and wife were

contrite enough, as well they might be, considering that they had not a guinea to call their own.

When the four had calmed themselves, and not a word of chiding had been uttered to the pair, they discussed

the position soberly, young Willowes sitting in the background with great modesty till invited forward by

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

He was, indeed, one of the handsomest men who ever set his lips on a maid's. A blue coat, murrey waistcoat,

and breeches of drab set off a figure that could scarcely be surpassed. He had large dark eyes, anxious now,

as they glanced from Barbara to her parents and tenderly back again to her; observing whom, even now in her

trepidation, one could see why the sang froid of Lord Uplandtowers had been raised to more than

lukewarmness. Her fair young face (according to the tale handed down by old women) looked out from under

a gray conical hat, trimmed with white ostrichfeathers, and her little toes peeped from a buff petticoat worn

under a puce gown. Her features were not regular: they were almost infantine, as you may see from

miniatures in possession of the family, her mouth showing much sensitiveness, and one could be sure that her

Well, they discussed their state as became them, and the desire of the young couple to gain the goodwill of

those upon whom they were literally dependent for everything induced them to agree to any temporizing

measure that was not too irksome. Therefore, having been nearly two months united, they did not oppose Sir

John's proposal that he should furnish Edmond Willowes with funds sufficient for him to travel a year on the

Continent in the company of a tutor, the young man undertaking to lend himself with the utmost diligence to

the tutor's instructions, till he became polished outwardly and inwardly to the degree required in the husband

of such a lady as Barbara. He was to apply himself to the study of languages, manners, history, society, ruins,

and everything else that came under his eyes, till he should return to take his place without blushing by

'And by that time,' said worthy Sir John, 'I'll get my little place out at Yewsholt ready for you and Barbara to

occupy on your return. The house is small and out of the way; but it will do for a young couple for a while.'

'If 'twere no bigger than a sedanchair!' says Willowes. 'And the more lonely the better.'

'We can put up with the loneliness,' said Barbara, with less zest. 'Some friends will come, no doubt.'

All this being laid down, a travelled tutor was called ina man of many gifts and great experience,and on

a fine morning away tutor and pupil went. A great reason urged against Barbara accompanying her youthful

husband was that his attentions to her would naturally be such as to prevent his zealously applying every hour

of his time to learning and seeingan argument of wise prescience, and unanswerable. Regular days for

letterwriting were fixed, Barbara and her Edmond exchanged their last kisses at the door, and the chaise

He wrote to her from Le Havre, as soon as he reached that port, which was not for seven days, on account of

adverse winds; he wrote from Rouen, and from Paris; described to her his sight of the King and Court at

Versailles, and the wonderful marblework and mirrors in that palace; wrote next from Lyons; then, after a

comparatively long interval, from Turin, narrating his fearful adventures in crossing Mont Cenis on mules,

and how he was overtaken with a terrific snowstorm, which had wellnigh been the end of him, and his tutor,

and his guides. Then he wrote glowingly of Italy; and Barbara could see the development of her husband's

mind reflected in his letters month by month; and she much admired the forethought of her father in

suggesting this education for Edmond. Yet she sighed sometimesher husband being no longer in evidence

to fortify her in her choice of himand timidly dreaded what mortifications might be in store for her by

reason of this mesalliance. She went out very little; for on the one or two occasions on which she had shown

herself to former friends she noticed a distinct difference in their manner, as though they should say, 'Ah, my

Edmond's letters were as affectionate as ever; even more affectionate, after a while, than hers were to him.

Barbara observed this growing coolness in herself; and like a good and honest lady was horrified and grieved,

since her only wish was to act faithfully and uprightly. It troubled her so much that she prayed for a warmer

heart, and at last wrote to her husband to beg him, now that he was in the land of Art, to send her his portrait,

ever so small, that she might look at it all day and every day, and never for a moment forget his features.

Willowes was nothing loth, and replied that he would do more than she wished: he had made friends with a

sculptor in Pisa, who was much interested in him and his history; and he had commissioned this artist to

make a bust of himself in marble, which when finished he would send her. What Barbara had wanted was

something immediate; but she expressed no objection to the delay; and in his next communication Edmund

told her that the sculptor, of his own choice, had decided to increase the bust to a fulllength statue, so

anxious was he to get a specimen of his skill introduced to the notice of the English aristocracy. It was

Meanwhile, Barbara's attention began to be occupied at home with Yewsholt Lodge, the house that her

kindhearted father was preparing for her residence when her husband returned. It was a small place on the

plan of a large onea cottage built in the form of a mansion, having a central hall with a wooden gallery

running round it, and rooms no bigger than closets to follow this introduction. It stood on a slope so solitary,

and surrounded by trees so dense, that the birds who inhabited the boughs sang at strange hours, as if they

During the progress of repairs at this bower Barbara frequently visited it. Though so secluded by the dense

growth, it was near the high road, and one day while looking over the fence she saw Lord Uplandtowers

riding past. He saluted her courteously, yet with mechanical stiffness, and did not halt. Barbara went home,

and continued to pray that she might never cease to love her husband. After that she sickened, and did not

The year of education had extended to fourteen months, and the house was in order for Edmond's return to

take up his abode there with Barbara, when, instead of the accustomed letter for her, came one to Sir John

Grebe in the handwriting of the said tutor, informing him of a terrible catastrophe that had occurred to them

at Venice. Mr Willowes and himself had attended the theatre one night during the Carnival of the preceding

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

theatre had caught fire, and been burnt to the ground. Few persons had lost their lives, owing to the

superhuman exertions of some of the audience in getting out the senseless sufferers; and, among them all, he

who had risked his own life the most heroically was Mr. Willowes. In reentering for the fifth time to save

his fellow creatures some fiery beams had fallen upon him, and he had been given up for lost. He was,

however, by the blessing of Providence, recovered, with the life still in him, though he was fearfully burnt;

and by almost a miracle he seemed likely to survive, his constitution being wondrously sound. He was, of

course, unable to write, but he was receiving the attention of several skilful surgeons. Further report would be

The tutor said nothing in detail of poor Willowes's sufferings, but as soon as the news was broken to Barbara

she realized how intense they must have been, and her immediate instinct was to rush to his side, though, on

consideration, the journey seemed impossible to her. Her health was by no means what it had been, and to

post across Europe at that season of the year, or to traverse the Bay of Biscay in a sailingcraft, was an

undertaking that would hardly be justified by the result. But she was anxious to go till, on reading to the end

of the letter, her husband's tutor was found to hint very strongly against such a step if it should be

contemplated, this being also the opinion of the surgeons. And though Willowes's comrade refrained from

The truth was that the worst of the wounds resulting from the fire had occurred to his head and facethat

handsome face which had won her heart from her,and both the tutor and the surgeons knew that for a

sensitive young woman to see him before his wounds had healed would cause more misery to her by the

Lady Grebe blurted out what Sir John and Barbara had thought, but had had too much delicacy to express.

'Sure, 'tis mighty hard for you, poor Barbara, that the one little gift he had to justify your rash choice of

himhis wonderful good looksshould be taken away like this, to leave 'ee no excuse at all for your

conduct in the world's eyes . . . Well, I wish you'd married t'otherthat do I!' And the lady sighed.

Such remarks as the above were not often made; but they were frequent enough to cause Barbara an uneasy

sense of self stultification. She determined to hear them no longer; and the house at Yewsholt being ready

and furnished, she withdrew thither with her maids, where for the first time she could feel mistress of a home

After long weeks Willowes had recovered sufficiently to be able to write himself; and slowly and tenderly he

enlightened her upon the full extent of his injuries. It was a mercy, he said, that he had not lost his sight

entirely; but he was thankful to say that he still retained full vision in one eye, though the other was dark for

ever. The sparing manner in which he meted out particulars of his condition told Barbara how appalling had

been his experience. He was grateful for her assurance that nothing could change her; but feared she did not

fully realize that he was so sadly disfigured as to make it doubtful if she would recognize him. However, in

Barbara saw from his anxiety how much lay behind. She replied that she submitted to the decrees of Fate, and

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

had taken up her abode, pending their joint occupation of it, and did not reveal how much she had sighed over

the information that all his good looks were gone. Still less did she say that she felt a certain strangeness in

awaiting him, the weeks they had lived together having been so short by comparison with the length of his

Slowly drew on the time when Willowes found himself well enough to come home. He landed at

Southampton, and posted thence towards Yewsholt. Barbara arranged to go out to meet him as far as Lornton

Innthe spot between the Forest and the Chase at which he had waited for night on the evening of their

elopement. Thither she drove at the appointed hour in a little ponychaise, presented her by her father on her

birthday for her especial use in her new house; which vehicle she sent back on arriving at the inn, the plan

agreed upon being that she should perform the return journey with her husband in his hired coach.

There was not much accommodation for a lady at this wayside tavern; but, as it was a fine evening in early

summer, she did not mind walking about outside, and straining her eyes along the highway for the

expected one. But each cloud of dust that enlarged in the distance and drew near was found to disclose a

conveyance other than his postchaise. Barbara remained till the appointment was two hours passed, and then

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

While waiting she was conscious of a curious trepidation that was not entirely solicitude, and did not amount

to dread; her tense state of incertitude bordered both on disappointment and on relief. She had lived six or

seven weeks with an imperfectly educated yet handsome husband whom now she had not seen for seventeen

months, and who was so changed physically by an accident that she was assured she would hardly know him.

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

embarrassing. Like too many of Barbara's actions, this drive had been undertaken without much reflection.

Expecting to wait no more than a few minutes for her husband in his postchaise, and to enter it with him,

she had not hesitated to isolate herself by sending back her own little vehicle. She now found that, being so

well known in this neighbourhood, her excursion to meet her longabsent husband was exciting great

interest. She was conscious that more eyes were watching her from the innwindows than met her own gaze.

Barbara had decided to get home by hiring whatever kind of conveyance the tavern afforded, when, straining

her eyes for the last time over the now darkening highway, she perceived yet another dustcloud drawing

near. She paused; a chariot ascended to the inn, and would have passed had not its occupant caught sight of

'You hereand alone, my dear Mrs. Willowes?' said Lord Uplandtowers, whose carriage it was.

She explained what had brought her into this lonely situation; and, as he was going in the direction of her

own home, she accepted his offer of a seat beside him. Their conversation was embarrassed and fragmentary

at first; but when they had driven a mile or two she was surprised to find herself talking earnestly and warmly

to him: her impulsiveness was in truth but the natural consequence of her late existencea somewhat

desolate one by reason of the strange marriage she had made; and there is no more indiscreet mood than that

of a woman surprised into talk who has long been imposing upon herself a policy of reserve. Therefore her

ingenuous heart rose with a bound into her throat when, in response to his leading questions, or rather hints,

she allowed her troubles to leak out of her. Lord Uplandtowers took her quite to her own door, although he

had driven three miles out of his way to do so; and in handing her down she heard from him a whisper of

She made no reply, and went indoors. There, as the evening wore away, she regretted more and more that she

had been so friendly with Lord Uplandtowers. But he had launched himself upon her so unexpectedly: if she

had only foreseen the meeting with him, what a careful line of conduct she would have marked out! Barbara

broke into a perspiration of disquiet when she thought of her unreserve, and, in selfchastisement, resolved to

sit up till midnight on the bare chance of Edmond's return; directing that supper should be laid for him,

The hours went past, and there was dead silence in and round about Yewsholt Lodge, except for the soughing

of the trees; till, when it was near upon midnight, she heard the noise of hoofs and wheels approaching the

door. Knowing that it could only be her husband, Barbara instantly went into the hall to meet him. Yet she

stood there not without a sensation of faintness, so many were the changes since their parting! And, owing to

her casual encounter with Lord Uplandtowers, his voice and image still remained with her, excluding

But she went to the door, and the next moment a figure stepped inside, of which she knew the outline, but

little besides. Her husband was attired in a flapping black cloak and slouched hat, appearing altogether as a

foreigner, and not as the young English burgess who had left her side. When he came forward into the light of

the lamp, she perceived with surprise, and almost with fright, that he wore a mask. At first she had not

noticed thisthere being nothing in its colour which would lead a casual observer to think he was looking on

He must have seen her start of dismay at the unexpectedness of his appearance, for he said hastily: 'I did not

mean to come in to you like thisI thought you would have been in bed. How good you are, dear Barbara!'

'O Edmondit IS you?it must be?' she said, with clasped hands, for though his figure and movement were

almost enough to prove it, and the tones were not unlike the old tones, the enunciation was so altered as to

'I am covered like this to hide myself from the curious eyes of the innservants and others,' he said, in a low

The wheels of the postchaise rolled away as she entered the dining room, where the supper was spread;

and presently he rejoined her there. He had removed his cloak and hat, but the mask was still retained; and

she could now see that it was of special make, of some flexible material like silk, coloured so as to represent

flesh; it joined naturally to the front hair, and was otherwise cleverly executed.

'Oyes.' She was hardly conscious of her words, for the hand he had ungloved in order to take hers was

contorted, and had one or two of its fingers missing; while through the mask she discerned the twinkle of one

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

He said he would have some, but that it was not necessary to call anybody at that hour. Thereupon they

Despite Barbara's scared state of mind, it was forced upon her notice that her husband trembled, as if he

feared the impression he was producing, or was about to produce, as much as, or more than, she. He drew

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

wifedo you think youwill mind when I take it off? You will not dislike mewill you?'

'O Edmond, of course I shall not mind,' said she. 'What has happened to you is our misfortune; but I am

'You really feel quite confident that nothing external can affect you?' he said again, in a voice rendered

In the pause which followed, the ticking of the clock in the hall seemed to grow loud; and he turned a little

aside to remove the mask. She breathlessly awaited the operation, which was one of some tediousness,

watching him one moment, averting her face the next; and when it was done she shut her eyes at the hideous

spectacle that was revealed. A quick spasm of horror had passed through her; but though she quailed she

forced herself to regard him anew, repressing the cry that would naturally have escaped from her ashy lips.

Unable to look at him longer, Barbara sank down on the floor beside her chair, covering her eyes.

'You cannot look at me!' he groaned in a hopeless way. 'I am too terrible an object even for you to bear! I

knew it; yet I hoped against it. Oh, this is a bitter fatecurse the skill of those Venetian surgeons who saved

me alive! . . . Look up, Barbara,' he continued beseechingly; 'view me completely; say you loathe me, if you

His unhappy wife pulled herself together for a desperate strain. He was her Edmond; he had done her no

wrong; he had suffered. A momentary devotion to him helped her, and lifting her eyes as bidden she regarded

this human remnant, this ecorche, a second time. But the sight was too much. She again involuntarily looked

'Do you think you can get used to this?' he said. 'Yes or no! Can you bear such a thing of the charnelhouse

near you? Judge for yourself; Barbara. Your Adonis, your matchless man, has come to this!'

The poor lady stood beside him motionless, save for the restlessness of her eyes. All her natural sentiments of

affection and pity were driven clean out of her by a sort of panic; she had just the same sense of dismay and

fearfulness that she would have had in the presence of an apparition. She could nohow fancy this to be her

chosen onethe man she had loved; he was metamorphosed to a specimen of another species. 'I do not

loathe you,' she said with trembling. 'But I am so horrifiedso overcome! Let me recover myself. Will you

sup now? And while you do so may I go to my room toregain my old feeling for you? I will try, if I may

Without waiting for an answer from him, and keeping her gaze carefully averted, the frightened woman crept

to the door and out of the room. She heard him sit down to the table, as if to begin supper though, Heaven

knows, his appetite was slight enough after a reception which had confirmed his worst surmises. When

Barbara had ascended the stairs and arrived in her chamber she sank down, and buried her face in the coverlet

Thus she remained for some time. The bedchamber was over the diningroom, and presently as she knelt

Barbara heard Willowes thrust back his chair, and rise to go into the hall. In five minutes that figure would

probably come up the stairs and confront her again; it,this new and terrible form, that was not her

husband's. In the loneliness of this night, with neither maid nor friend beside her, she lost all selfcontrol, and

at the first sound of his footstep on the stairs, without so much as flinging a cloak round her, she flew from

the room, ran along the gallery to the back staircase, which she descended, and, unlocking the back door, let

herself out. She scarcely was aware what she had done till she found herself in the greenhouse, crouching on

Here she remained, her great timid eyes strained through the glass upon the garden without, and her skirts

gathered up, in fear of the fieldmice which sometimes came there. Every moment she dreaded to hear

footsteps which she ought by law to have longed for, and a voice that should have been as music to her soul.

But Edmond Willowes came not that way. The nights were getting short at this season, and soon the dawn

appeared, and the first rays of the sun. By daylight she had less fear than in the dark. She thought she could

So the muchtried young woman unfastened the door of the hothouse, and went back by the way she had

emerged a few hours ago. Her poor husband was probably in bed and asleep, his journey having been long;

and she made as little noise as possible in her entry. The house was just as she had left it, and she looked

about in the hall for his cloak and hat, but she could not see them; nor did she perceive the small trunk which

had been all that he brought with him, his heavier baggage having been left at Southampton for the

roadwaggon. She summoned courage to mount the stairs; the bedroom door was open as she had left it.

She fearfully peeped round; the bed had not been pressed. Perhaps he had lain down on the dining room

sofa. She descended and entered; he was not there. On the table beside his unsoiled plate lay a note, hastily

'MY EVERBELOVED WIFEThe effect that my forbidding appearance has produced upon you was one

which I foresaw as quite possible. I hoped against it, but foolishly so. I was aware that no HUMAN love

could survive such a catastrophe. I confess I thought yours DIVINE; but, after so long an absence, there could

not be left sufficient warmth to overcome the too natural first aversion. It was an experiment, and it has

failed. I do not blame you; perhaps, even, it is better so. Goodbye. I leave England for one year. You will

see me again at the expiration of that time, if I live. Then I will ascertain your true feeling; and, if it be

On recovering from her surprise, Barbara's remorse was such that she felt herself absolutely unforgiveable.

She should have regarded him as an afflicted being, and not have been this slave to mere eyesight, like a

child. To follow him and entreat him to return was her first thought. But on making inquiries she found that

More than this, to undo the scene of last night was impossible. Her terror had been too plain, and he was a

man unlikely to be coaxed back by her efforts to do her duty. She went and confessed to her parents all that

had occurred; which, indeed, soon became known to more persons than those of her own family.

The year passed, and he did not return; and it was doubted if he were alive. Barbara's contrition for her

unconquerable repugnance was now such that she longed to build a churchaisle, or erect a monument, and

devote herself to deeds of charity for the remainder of her days. To that end she made inquiry of the excellent

parson under whom she sat on Sundays, at a vertical distance of twenty feet. But he could only adjust his wig

and tap his snuffbox; for such was the lukewarm state of religion in those days, that not an aisle, steeple,

porch, east window, TenCommandment board, lionand unicorn, or brass candlestick, was required

anywhere at all in the neighbourhood as a votive offering from a distracted soulthe last century contrasting

greatly in this respect with the happy times in which we live, when urgent appeals for contributions to such

objects pour in by every morning's post, and nearly all churches have been made to look like new pennies. As

the poor lady could not ease her conscience this way, she determined at least to be charitable, and soon had

the satisfaction of finding her porch thronged every morning by the raggedest, idlest, most drunken,

But human hearts are as prone to change as the leaves of the creeper on the wall, and in the course of time,

hearing nothing of her husband, Barbara could sit unmoved whilst her mother and friends said in her hearing,

'Well, what has happened is for the best.' She began to think so herself; for even now she could not summon

up that lopped and mutilated form without a shiver, though whenever her mind flew back to her early wedded

days, and the man who had stood beside her then, a thrill of tenderness moved her, which if quickened by his

living presence might have become strong. She was young and inexperienced, and had hardly on his late

But he did not come again, and when she thought of his word that he would return once more, if living, and

how unlikely he was to break his word, she gave him up for dead. So did her parents; so also did another

personthat man of silence, of irresistible incisiveness, of still countenance, who was as awake as seven

sentinels when he seemed to be as sound asleep as the figures on his family monument. Lord Uplandtowers,

though not yet thirty, had chuckled like a caustic fogey of threescore when he heard of Barbara's terror and

flight at her husband's return, and of the latter's prompt departure. He felt pretty sure, however, that Willowes,

despite his hurt feelings, would have reappeared to claim his brighteyed property if he had been alive at the

As there was no husband to live with her, Barbara had relinquished the house prepared for them by her father,

and taken up her abode anew at Chene Manor, as in the days of her girlhood. By degrees the episode with

Edmond Willowes seemed but a fevered dream, and as the months grew to years Lord Uplandtowers'

friendship with the people at Chenewhich had somewhat cooled after Barbara's elopement revived

considerably, and he again became a frequent visitor there. He could not make the most trivial alteration or

improvement at Knollingwood Hall, where he lived, without riding off to consult with his friend Sir John at

Chene; and thus putting himself frequently under her eyes, Barbara grew accustomed to him, and talked to

him as freely as to a brother. She even began to look up to him as a person of authority, judgment, and

prudence; and though his severity on the bench towards poachers, smugglers, and turnip stealers was matter

of common notoriety, she trusted that much of what was said might be misrepresentation.

Thus they lived on till her husband's absence had stretched to years, and there could be no longer any doubt

of his death. A passionless manner of renewing his addresses seemed no longer out of place in Lord

Uplandtowers. Barbara did not love him, but hers was essentially one of those sweetpea or withwind

natures which require a twig of stouter fibre than its own to hang upon and bloom. Now, too, she was older,

and admitted to herself that a man whose ancestor had run scores of Saracens through and through in fighting

for the site of the Holy Sepulchre was a more desirable husband, socially considered, than one who could

only claim with certainty to know that his father and grandfather were respectable burgesses.

Sir John took occasion to inform her that she might legally consider herself a widow; and, in brief; Lord

Uplandtowers carried his point with her, and she married him, though he could never get her to own that she

loved him as she had loved Willowes. In my childhood I knew an old lady whose mother saw the wedding,

and she said that when Lord and Lady Uplandtowers drove away from her father's house in the evening it was

in a coachandfour, and that my lady was dressed in green and silver, and wore the gayest hat and feather

that ever were seen; though whether it was that the green did not suit her complexion, or otherwise, the

Countess looked pale, and the reverse of blooming. After their marriage her husband took her to London, and

she saw the gaieties of a season there; then they returned to Knollingwood Hall, and thus a year passed away.

Before their marriage her husband had seemed to care but little about her inability to love him passionately.

'Only let me win you,' he had said, 'and I will submit to all that.' But now her lack of warmth seemed to

irritate him, and he conducted himself towards her with a resentfulness which led to her passing many hours

with him in painful silence. The heirpresumptive to the title was a remote relative, whom Lord

Uplandtowers did not exclude from the dislike he entertained towards many persons and things besides, and

he had set his mind upon a lineal successor. He blamed her much that there was no promise of this, and asked

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

Uplandtowers from an unexpected quarter. A sculptor in Pisa, knowing nothing of her second marriage,

informed her that the longdelayed lifesize statue of Mr. Willowes, which, when her husband left that city,

he had been directed to retain till it was sent for, was still in his studio. As his commission had not wholly

been paid, and the statue was taking up room he could ill spare, he should be glad to have the debt cleared

off, and directions where to forward the figure. Arriving at a time when the Countess was beginning to have

little secrets (of a harmless kind, it is true) from her husband, by reason of their growing estrangement, she

replied to this letter without saying a word to Lord Uplandtowers, sending off the balance that was owing to

It was some weeks before it arrived at Knollingwood Hall, and, by a singular coincidence, during the interval

she received the first absolutely conclusive tidings of her Edmond's death. It had taken place years before, in

a foreign land, about six months after their parting, and had been induced by the sufferings he had already

undergone, coupled with much depression of spirit, which had caused him to succumb to a slight ailment.

The news was sent her in a brief and formal letter from some relative of Willowes's in another part of

Her grief took the form of passionate pity for his misfortunes, and of reproach to herself for never having

been able to conquer her aversion to his latter image by recollection of what Nature had originally made him.

The sad spectacle that had gone from earth had never been her Edmond at all to her. O that she could have

met him as he was at first! Thus Barbara thought. It was only a few days later that a waggon with two horses,

containing an immense packing case, was seen at breakfasttime both by Barbara and her husband to drive

round to the back of the house, and byandby they were informed that a case labelled 'Sculpture' had arrived

'It is the statue of poor Edmond, which belongs to me, but has never been sent till now,' she answered.

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

When it had been unpacked in a back room of the house, they went to examine it. The statue was a

fulllength figure, in the purest Carrara marble, representing Edmond Willowes in all his original beauty, as

he had stood at parting from her when about to set out on his travels; a specimen of manhood almost perfect

in every line and contour. The work had been carried out with absolute fidelity.

'PhoebusApollo, sure,' said the Earl of Uplandtowers, who had never seen Willowes, real or represented, till

Barbara did not hear him. She was standing in a sort of trance before the first husband, as if she had no

consciousness of the other husband at her side. The mutilated features of Willowes had disappeared from her

mind's eye; this perfect being was really the man she had loved, and not that later pitiable figure; in whom

It was not till Lord Uplandtowers said roughly, 'Are you going to stay here all the morning worshipping him?'

Her husband had not till now the least suspicion that Edmond Willowes originally looked thus, and he

thought how deep would have been his jealousy years ago if Willowes had been known to him. Returning to

the Hall in the afternoon he found his wife in the gallery, whither the statue had been brought.

She started and turned. 'I am looking at my husb my statue, to see if it is well done,' she stammered. 'Why

'There's no reason why,' he said. 'What are you going to do with the monstrous thing? It can't stand here for

In her boudoir there was a deep recess, and while the Earl was absent from home for a few days in the

following week, she hired joiners from the village, who under her directions enclosed the recess with a

panelled door. Into the tabernacle thus formed she had the statue placed, fastening the door with a lock, the

When her husband returned he missed the statue from the gallery, and, concluding that it had been put away

out of deference to his feelings, made no remark. Yet at moments he noticed something on his lady's face

which he had never noticed there before. He could not construe it; it was a sort of silent ecstasy, a reserved

beatification. What had become of the statue he could not divine, and growing more and more curious,

looked about here and there for it till, thinking of her private room, he went towards that spot. After knocking

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

what was in those days called knotting. Lord Uplandtowers' eye fell upon the newlypainted door where the

'Why did you go putting up such a tasteless enclosure as that spoiling the handsome arch of the alcove?'

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

One night, or rather in the smallest hours of the morning, he missed the Countess from his side. Not being a

man of nervous imaginings he fell asleep again before he had much considered the matter, and the next

morning had forgotten the incident. But a few nights later the same circumstances occurred. This time he

fully roused himself; but before he had moved to search for her, she entered the chamber in her

dressinggown, carrying a candle, which she extinguished as she approached, deeming him asleep. He could

discover from her breathing that she was strangely moved; but not on this occasion either did he reveal that

he had seen her. Presently, when she had lain down, affecting to wake, he asked her some trivial questions.

Lord Uplandtowers became convinced that she was in the habit of leaving the chamber in this queer way

more frequently than he had observed, and he determined to watch. The next midnight he feigned deep sleep,

and shortly after perceived her stealthily rise and let herself out of the room in the dark. He slipped on some

clothing and followed. At the farther end of the corridor, where the clash of flint and steel would be out of the

hearing of one in the bed chamber, she struck a light. He stepped aside into an empty room till she had lit a

taper and had passed on to her boudoir. In a minute or two he followed. Arrived at the door of the boudoir, he

beheld the door of the private recess open, and Barbara within it, standing with her arms clasped tightly round

the neck of her Edmond, and her mouth on his. The shawl which she had thrown round her nightclothes had

slipped from her shoulders, and her long white robe and pale face lent her the blanched appearance of a

second statue embracing the first. Between her kisses, she apostrophized it in a low murmur of infantine

'My only lovehow could I be so cruel to you, my perfect oneso good and trueI am ever faithful to

you, despite my seeming infidelity! I always think of youdream of youduring the long hours of the day,

and in the nightwatches! O Edmond, I am always yours!' Such words as these, intermingled with sobs, and

streaming tears, and dishevelled hair, testified to an intensity of feeling in his wife which Lord Uplandtowers

'Ha, ha!' says he to himself. 'This is where we evaporatethis is where my hopes of a successor in the title

Lord Uplandtowers was a subtle man when once he set himself to strategy; though in the present instance he

never thought of the simple stratagem of constant tenderness. Nor did he enter the room and surprise his wife

as a blunderer would have done, but went back to his chamber as silently as he had left it. When the Countess

returned thither, shaken by spent sobs and sighs, he appeared to be soundly sleeping as usual. The next day he

began his countermoves by making inquiries as to the whereabouts of the tutor who had travelled with his

wife's first husband; this gentleman, he found, was now master of a grammarschool at no great distance

from Knollingwood. At the first convenient moment Lord Uplandtowers went thither and obtained an

interview with the said gentleman. The schoolmaster was much gratified by a visit from such an influential

neighbour, and was ready to communicate anything that his lordship desired to know.

After some general conversation on the school and its progress, the visitor observed that he believed the

schoolmaster had once travelled a good deal with the unfortunate Mr. Willowes, and had been with him on

the occasion of his accident. He, Lord Uplandtowers, was interested in knowing what had really happened at

that time, and had often thought of inquiring. And then the Earl not only heard by word of mouth as much as

he wished to know, but, their chat becoming more intimate, the schoolmaster drew upon paper a sketch of the

disfigured head, explaining with bated breath various details in the representation.

'It was very strange and terrible!' said Lord Uplandtowers, taking the sketch in his hand. 'Neither nose nor

A poor man in the town nearest to Knollingwood Hall, who combined the art of signpainting with ingenious

mechanical occupations, was sent for by Lord Uplandtowers to come to the Hall on a day in that week when

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

business in which his assistance was demanded was to be considered private, and money insured the

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

assisted by the schoolmaster's sketch, which Lord Uplandtowers had put in his pocket, set to work upon the

godlike countenance of the statue under my lord's direction. What the fire had maimed in the original the

chisel maimed in the copy. It was a fiendish disfigurement, ruthlessly carried out, and was rendered still more

Six hours after, when the workman was gone, Lord Uplandtowers looked upon the result, and smiled grimly,

'A statue should represent a man as he appeared in life, and that's as he appeared. Ha! ha! But 'tis done to

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

That night she slept, but he kept awake. According to the tale, she murmured soft words in her dream; and he

knew that the tender converse of her imaginings was held with one whom he had supplanted but in name. At

the end of her dream the Countess of Uplandtowers awoke and arose, and then the enactment of former nights

was repeated. Her husband remained still and listened. Two strokes sounded from the clock in the pediment

without, when, leaving the chamberdoor ajar, she passed along the corridor to the other end, where, as

usual, she obtained a light. So deep was the silence that he could even from his bed hear her softly blowing

the tinder to a glow after striking the steel. She moved on into the boudoir, and he heard, or fancied he heard,

the turning of the key in the closet door. The next moment there came from that direction a loud and

prolonged shriek, which resounded to the farthest corners of the house. It was repeated, and there was the

Lord Uplandtowers sprang out of bed. He hastened along the dark corridor to the door of the boudoir, which

stood ajar, and, by the light of the candle within, saw his poor young Countess lying in a heap in her

nightdress on the floor of the closet. When he reached her side he found that she had fainted, much to the

relief of his fears that matters were worse. He quickly shut up and locked in the hated image which had done

the mischief; and lifted his wife in his arms, where in a few instants she opened her eyes. Pressing her face to

his without saying a word, he carried her back to her room, endeavouring as he went to disperse her terrors by

a laugh in her ear, oddly compounded of causticity, predilection, and brutality.

'Hohoho!' says he. 'Frightened, dear one, hey? What a baby 'tis! Only a joke, sure, Barbaraa splendid

joke! But a baby should not go to closets at midnight to look for the ghost of the dear departed! If it do it

When she was in her bedchamber, and had quite come to herself; though her nerves were still much shaken,

'Nono!' she faltered, shuddering, with her expanded eyes fixed on her husband. 'He is too terribleno,

'Quite sure!' replied the poor brokenspirited Countess. But her natural elasticity asserted itself. Next

'It means that I will not tell an untruth, and do not wish to incense my lord,' she answered, with dignity.

'Then suppose we go and have another look at him?' As he spoke, he suddenly took her by the wrist, and

'Nono! Ohno!' she cried, and her desperate wriggle out of his hand revealed that the fright of the night

It was now so generally known that the Earl and Countess were not in accord, that he took no great trouble to

disguise his deeds in relation to this matter. During the day he ordered four men with ropes and rollers to

attend him in the boudoir. When they arrived, the closet was open, and the upper part of the statue tied up in

canvas. He had it taken to the sleepingchamber. What followed is more or less matter of conjecture. The

story, as told to me, goes on to say that, when Lady Uplandtowers retired with him that night, she saw near

the foot of the heavy oak fourposter, a tall dark wardrobe, which had not stood there before; but she did not

He pulled a cord which hung covered by the bedcurtains, and the doors of the wardrobe slowly opened,

disclosing that the shelves within had been removed throughout, and the interior adapted to receive the

ghastly figure, which stood there as it had stood in the boudoir, but with a waxcandle burning on each side

of it to throw the cropped and distorted features into relief. She clutched him, uttered a low scream, and

buried her head in the bedclothes. 'Oh, take it awayplease take it away!' she implored.

'All in good time namely, when you love me best,' he returned calmly. 'You don't quite yeteh?'

'I don't knowI thinkO Uplandtowers, have mercyI cannot bear itO, in pity, take it away!'

In short, he allowed the doors to remain unclosed at the foot of the bed, and the waxtapers burning; and such

was the strange fascination of the grisly exhibition that a morbid curiosity took possession of the Countess as

she lay, and, at his repeated request, she did again look out from the coverlet, shuddered, hid her eyes, and

looked again, all the while begging him to take it away, or it would drive her out of her senses. But he would

The scene was repeated the next night. Firm in enforcing his ferocious correctives, he continued the treatment

till the nerves of the poor lady were quivering in agony under the virtuous tortures inflicted by her lord, to

The third night, when the scene had opened as usual, and she lay staring with immense wild eyes at the horrid

fascination, on a sudden she gave an unnatural laugh; she laughed more and more, staring at the image, till

she literally shrieked with laughter: then there was silence, and he found her to have become insensible. He

thought she had fainted, but soon saw that the event was worse: she was in an epileptic fit. He started up,

dismayed by the sense that, like many other subtle personages, he had been too exacting for his own interests.

Such love as he was capable of, though rather a selfish gloating than a cherishing solicitude, was fanned into

life on the instant. He closed the wardrobe with the pulley, clasped her in his arms, took her gently to the

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

have taken place in her emotions. She flung her arms around him, and with gasps of fear abjectly kissed him

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

'I cannot endure recollection of him!' cried the poor Countess slavishly. 'It fills me with shamehow could I

ever be so depraved! I'll never behave badly again, Uplandtowers; and you will never put the hated statue

'And then I'll love you,' she returned eagerly, as if dreading lest the scourge should be applied anew. 'And I'll

never, never dream of thinking a single thought that seems like faithlessness to my marriage vow.'

The strange thing now was that this fictitious love wrung from her by terror took on, through mere habit of

enactment, a certain quality of reality. A servile mood of attachment to the Earl became distinctly visible in

her contemporaneously with an actual dislike for her late husband's memory. The mood of attachment grew

and continued when the statue was removed. A permanent revulsion was operant in her, which intensified as

time wore on. How fright could have effected such a change of idiosyncrasy learned physicians alone can

The upshot was that the cure became so permanent as to be itself a new disease. She clung to him so tightly,

that she would not willingly be out of his sight for a moment. She would have no sittingroom apart from his,

though she could not help starting when he entered suddenly to her. Her eyes were wellnigh always fixed

upon him. If he drove out, she wished to go with him; his slightest civilities to other women made her

frantically jealous; till at length her very fidelity became a burden to him, absorbing his time, and curtailing

his liberty, and causing him to curse and swear. If he ever spoke sharply to her now, she did not revenge

herself by flying off to a mental world of her own; all that affection for another, which had provided her with

From that time the life of this scared and enervated ladywhose existence might have been developed to so

much higher purpose but for the ignoble ambition of her parents and the conventions of the timewas one of

obsequious amativeness towards a perverse and cruel man. Little personal events came to her in quick

successionhalf a dozen, eight, nine, ten such events,in brief; she bore him no less than eleven children in

the eight following years, but half of them came prematurely into the world, or died a few days old; only one,

a girl, attained to maturity; she in after years became the wife of the Honourable Mr. Beltonleigh, who was

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

taken abroad by her husband, to try the effect of a more genial climate upon her wasted frame. But nothing

availed to strengthen her, and she died at Florence, a few months after her arrival in Italy.

Contrary to expectation, the Earl of Uplandtowers did not marry again. Such affection as existed in

himstrange, hard, brutal as it wasseemed untransferable, and the title, as is known, passed at his death to

his nephew. Perhaps it may not be so generally known that, during the enlargement of the Hall for the sixth

Earl, while digging in the grounds for the new foundations, the broken fragments of a marble statue were

unearthed. They were submitted to various antiquaries, who said that, so far as the damaged pieces would

allow them to form an opinion, the statue seemed to be that of a mutilated Roman satyr; or if not, an

allegorical figure of Death. Only one or two old inhabitants guessed whose statue those fragments had

I should have added that, shortly after the death of the Countess, an excellent sermon was preached by the

Dean of Melchester, the subject of which, though names were not mentioned, was unquestionably suggested

by the aforesaid events. He dwelt upon the folly of indulgence in sensuous love for a handsome form merely;

and showed that the only rational and virtuous growths of that affection were those based upon intrinsic

worth. In the case of the tender but somewhat shallow lady whose life I have related, there is no doubt that an

infatuation for the person of young Willowes was the chief feeling that induced her to marry him; which was

the more deplorable in that his beauty, by all tradition, was the least of his recommendations, every report

bearing out the inference that he must have been a man of steadfast nature, bright intelligence, and promising

The company thanked the old surgeon for his story, which the rural dean declared to be a far more striking

one than anything he could hope to tell. An elderly member of the Club, who was mostly called the

Bookworm, said that a woman's natural instinct of fidelity would, indeed, send back her heart to a man after

his death in a truly wonderful manner sometimesif anything occurred to put before her forcibly the original

affection between them, and his original aspect in her eyes,whatever his inferiority may have been, social

or otherwise; and then a general conversation ensued upon the power that a woman has of seeing the actual in

the representation, the reality in the dreama power which (according to the sentimental member) men have

The rural dean thought that such cases as that related by the surgeon were rather an illustration of passion

electrified back to life than of a latent, true affection. The story had suggested that he should try to recount to

them one which he had used to hear in his youth, and which afforded an instance of the latter and better kind

of feeling, his heroine being also a lady who had married beneath her, though he feared his narrative would

be of a much slighter kind than the surgeon's. The Club begged him to proceed, and the parson began.

I would have you know, then, that a great many years ago there lived in a classical mansion with which I used

to be familiar, standing not a hundred miles from the city of Melchester, a lady whose personal charms were

so rare and unparalleled that she was courted, flattered, and spoilt by almost all the young noblemen and

gentlemen in that part of Wessex. For a time these attentions pleased her well. But as, in the words of good

Robert South (whose sermons might be read much more than they are), the most passionate lover of sport, if

tied to follow his hawks and hounds every day of his life, would find the pursuit the greatest torment and

calamity, and would fly to the mines and galleys for his recreation, so did this lofty and beautiful lady after a

while become satiated with the constant iteration of what she had in its novelty enjoyed; and by an almost

natural revulsion turned her regards absolutely netherward, socially speaking. She perversely and

passionately centred her affection on quite a plainlooking young man of humble birth and no position at all;

though it is true that he was gentle and delicate in nature, of good address, and guileless heart. In short, he

was the parish clerk's son, acting as assistant to the landsteward of her father, the Earl of Avon, with the

hope of becoming some day a landsteward himself. It should be said that perhaps the Lady Caroline (as she

was called) was a little stimulated in this passion by the discovery that a young girl of the village already

loved the young man fondly, and that he had paid some attentions to her, though merely of a casual and

Since his occupation brought him frequently to the manorhouse and its environs, Lady Caroline could make

ample opportunities of seeing and speaking to him. She had, in Chaucer's phrase, 'all the craft of fine loving'

at her fingers' ends, and the young man, being of a readilykindling heart, was quick to notice the tenderness

in her eyes and voice. He could not at first believe in his good fortune, having no understanding of her

weariness of more artificial men; but a time comes when the stupidest sees in an eye the glance of his other

half; and it came to him, who was quite the reverse of dull. As he gained confidence accidental encounters led

to encounters by design; till at length when they were alone together there was no reserve on the matter. They

whispered tender words as other lovers do, and were as devoted a pair as ever was seen. But not a ray or

Now, as she became less and less scrupulous towards him under the influence of her affection, and he became

more and more reverential under the influence of his, and they looked the situation in the face together, their

condition seemed intolerable in its hopelessness. That she could ever ask to be allowed to marry him, or

could hold her tongue and quietly renounce him, was equally beyond conception. They resolved upon a third

course, possessing neither of the disadvantages of these two: to wed secretly, and live on in outward

appearance the same as before. In this they differed from the lovers of my friend's story.

Not a soul in the parental mansion guessed, when Lady Caroline came coolly into the hall one day after a

visit to her aunt, that, during that visit, her lover and herself had found an opportunity of uniting themselves

till death should part them. Yet such was the fact; the young woman who rode fine horses, and drove in

pony chaises, and was saluted deferentially by every one, and the young man who trudged about, and

directed the treefelling, and the laying out of fishponds in the park, were husband and wife.

As they had planned, so they acted to the letter for the space of a month and more, clandestinely meeting

when and where they best could do so; both being supremely happy and content. To be sure, towards the

latter part of that month, when the first wild warmth of her love had gone off, the Lady Caroline sometimes

wondered within herself how she, who might have chosen a peer of the realm, baronet, knight; or, if

seriousminded, a bishop or judge of the more gallant sort who prefer young wives, could have brought

herself to do a thing so rash as to make this marriage; particularly when, in their private meetings, she

perceived that though her young husband was full of ideas, and fairly well read, they had not a single social

experience in common. It was his custom to visit her after nightfall, in her own house, when he could find no

opportunity for an interview elsewhere; and to further this course she would contrive to leave unfastened a

window on the groundfloor overlooking the lawn, by entering which a back staircase was accessible; so

that he could climb up to her apartments, and gain audience of his lady when the house was still.

One dark midnight, when he had not been able to see her during the day, he made use of this secret method,

as he had done many times before; and when they had remained in company about an hour he declared that it

He would have stayed longer, but that the interview had been a somewhat painful one. What she had said to

him that night had much excited and angered him, for it had revealed a change in her; cold reason had come

to his lofty wife; she was beginning to have more anxiety about her own position and prospects than ardour

for him. Whether from the agitation of this perception or not, he was seized with a spasm; he gasped, rose,

and in moving towards the window for air he uttered in a short thick whisper, 'Oh, my heart!'

With his hand upon his chest he sank down to the floor before he had gone another step. By the time that she

had relighted the candle, which had been extinguished in case any eye in the opposite grounds should witness

his egress, she found that his poor heart had ceased to beat; and there rushed upon her mind what his

cottagefriends had once told her, that he was liable to attacks of heartdisease, one of which, the doctor had

Accustomed as she was to doctoring the other parishioners, nothing that she could effect upon him in that

kind made any difference whatever; and his stillness, and the increasing coldness of his feet and hands,

disclosed too surely to the affrighted young woman that her husband was dead indeed. For more than an hour,

however, she did not abandon her efforts to restore him; when she fully realized the fact that he was a corpse

she bent over his body, distracted and bewildered as to what step she next should take.

Her first feelings had undoubtedly been those of passionate grief at the loss of him; her second thoughts were

concern at her own position as the daughter of an earl. 'Oh, why, why, my unfortunate husband, did you die

in my chamber at this hour!' she said piteously to the corpse. 'Why not have died in your own cottage if you

would die! Then nobody would ever have known of our imprudent union, and no syllable would have been

The clock in the courtyard striking the hour of one aroused Lady Caroline from the stupor into which she had

fallen, and she stood up, and went towards the door. To awaken and tell her mother seemed her only way out

of this terrible situation; yet when she put her hand on the key to unlock it she withdrew herself again. It

would be impossible to call even her mother's assistance without risking a revelation to all the world through

the servants; while if she could remove the body unassisted to a distance she might avert suspicion of their

union even now. This thought of immunity from the social consequences of her rash act, of renewed freedom,

was indubitably a relief to her, for, as has been said, the constraint and riskiness of her position had begun to

She braced herself for the effort, and hastily dressed herself; and then dressed him. Tying his dead hands

together with a handkerchief; she laid his arms round her shoulders, and bore him to the landing and down

the narrow stairs. Reaching the bottom by the window, she let his body slide slowly over the sill till it lay on

the ground without. She then climbed over the windowsill herself, and, leaving the sash open, dragged him

on to the lawn with a rustle not louder than the rustle of a broom. There she took a securer hold, and plunged

Away from the precincts of the house she could apply herself more vigorously to her task, which was a heavy

one enough for her, robust as she was; and the exertion and fright she had already undergone began to tell

upon her by the time she reached the corner of a beechplantation which intervened between the

manorhouse and the village. Here she was so nearly exhausted that she feared she might have to leave him

on the spot. But she plodded on after a while, and keeping upon the grass at every opportunity she stood at

last opposite the poor young man's gardengate, where he lived with his father, the parishclerk. How she

accomplished the end of her task Lady Caroline never quite knew; but, to avoid leaving traces in the road, she

carried him bodily across the gravel, and laid him down at the door. Perfectly aware of his ways of coming

and going, she searched behind the shutter for the cottage doorkey, which she placed in his cold hand. Then

she kissed his face for the last time, and with silent little sobs bade him farewell.

Lady Caroline retraced her steps, and reached the mansion without hindrance; and to her great relief found

the window open just as she had left it. When she had climbed in she listened attentively, fastened the

window behind her, and ascending the stairs noiselessly to her room, set everything in order, and returned to

The next morning it was speedily echoed around that the amiable and gentle young villager had been found

dead outside his father's door, which he had apparently been in the act of unlocking when he fell. The

circumstances were sufficiently exceptional to justify an inquest, at which syncope from heartdisease was

ascertained to be beyond doubt the explanation of his death, and no more was said about the matter then. But,

after the funeral, it was rumoured that some man who had been returning late from a distant horsefair had

seen in the gloom of night a person, apparently a woman, dragging a heavy body of some sort towards the

cottagegate, which, by the light of after events, would seem to have been the corpse of the young fellow.

His clothes were thereupon examined more particularly than at first, with the result that marks of friction

were visible upon them here and there, precisely resembling such as would be left by dragging on the ground.

Our beautiful and ingenious Lady Caroline was now in great consternation; and began to think that, after all,

it might have been better to honestly confess the truth. But having reached this stage without discovery or

suspicion, she determined to make another effort towards concealment; and a bright idea struck her as a

means of securing it. I think I mentioned that, before she cast eyes on the unfortunate steward's clerk, he had

been the beloved of a certain village damsel, the woodman's daughter, his neighbour, to whom he had paid

some attentions; and possibly he was beloved of her still. At any rate, the Lady Caroline's influence on the

estates of her father being considerable, she resolved to seek an interview with the young girl in furtherance

of her plan to save her reputation, about which she was now exceedingly anxious; for by this time, the fit

being over, she began to be ashamed of her mad passion for her late husband, and almost wished she had

In the course of her parishvisiting she lighted on the young girl without much difficulty, and found her

looking pale and sad, and wearing a simple black gown, which she had put on out of respect for the young

The young woman could not repress her tears. 'My lady, he was not quite my lover,' she said. 'But I was

'Can you keep a secret about him?' asks the lady; 'one in which his honour is involvedwhich is known to

The girl readily promised, and, indeed, could be safely trusted on such a subject, so deep was her affection for

'Then meet me at his grave tonight, halfanhour after sunset, and I will tell it to you,' says the other.

In the dusk of that spring evening the two shadowy figures of the young women converged upon the

assistantsteward's newlyturfed mound; and at that solemn place and hour, the one of birth and beauty

unfolded her tale: how she had loved him and married him secretly; how he had died in her chamber; and

'I have said so,' replied Lady Caroline. 'But it was a mad thing, and a mistaken course. He ought to have

'Yes,' said the poor girl; 'and for that they laughed at me. "Ha ha, you mid love him, Milly," they said; "but

'Victory over such unkind jeerers would be sweet,' said Lady Caroline. 'You lost him in life; but you may

have him in death AS IF you had had him in life; and so turn the tables upon them.'

The young lady then unfolded her plan, which was that Milly should go forward and declare that the young

man had contracted a secret marriage (as he truly had done); that it was with her, Milly, his sweetheart; that

he had been visiting her in her cottage on the evening of his death; when, on finding he was a corpse, she had

carried him to his house to prevent discovery by her parents, and that she had meant to keep the whole matter

'And how shall I prove this?' said the woodman's daughter, amazed at the boldness of the proposal.

'Quite sufficiently. You can say, if necessary, that you were married to him at the church of St. Michael, in

Bath City, in my name, as the first that occurred to you, to escape detection. That was where he married me. I

'If you will do so,' said the lady peremptorily, 'I will always be your father's friend and yours; if not, it will be

There was not much choice in the matter, and Milly consented. Then this noble lady took from her bosom the

ring she had never been able openly to exhibit, and, grasping the young girl's hand, slipped it upon her finger

Milly shivered, and bowed her head, saying, 'I feel as if I had become a corpse's bride!'

But from that moment the maiden was heart and soul in the substitution. A blissful repose came over her

spirit. It seemed to her that she had secured in death him whom in life she had vainly idolized; and she was

almost content. After that the lady handed over to the young man's new wife all the little mementoes and

The next day the girl made her socalled confession, which the simple mourning she had already worn,

without stating for whom, seemed to bear out; and soon the story of the little romance spread through the

village and countryside, almost as far as Melchester. It was a curious psychological fact that, having once

made the avowal, Milly seemed possessed with a spirit of ecstasy at her position. With the liberal sum of

money supplied to her by Lady Caroline she now purchased the garb of a widow, and duly appeared at

church in her weeds, her simple face looking so sweet against its margin of crape that she was almost envied

her state by the other villagegirls of her age. And when a woman's sorrow for her beloved can maim her

young life so obviously as it had done Milly's there was, in truth, little subterfuge in the case. Her explanation

tallied so well with the details of her lover's latter movements those strange absences and sudden

returnings, which had occasionally puzzled his friendsthat nobody supposed for a moment that the second

actor in these secret nuptials was other than she. The actual and whole truth would indeed have seemed a

preposterous assertion beside this plausible one, by reason of the lofty demeanour of the Lady Caroline and

the unassuming habits of the late villager. There being no inheritance in question, not a soul took the trouble

to go to the city church, forty miles off, and search the registers for marriage signatures bearing out so

In a short time Milly caused a decent tombstone to be erected over her nominal husband's grave, whereon

appeared the statement that it was placed there by his heartbroken widow, which, considering that the

payment for it came from Lady Caroline and the grief from Milly, was as truthful as such inscriptions usually

The impressionable and complaisant Milly, in her character of widow, took delight in going to his grave

every day, and indulging in sorrow which was a positive luxury to her. She placed fresh flowers on his grave,

and so keen was her emotional imaginativeness that she almost believed herself to have been his wife indeed

as she walked to and fro in her garb of woe. One afternoon, Milly being busily engaged in this labour of love

at the grave, Lady Caroline passed outside the churchyard wall with some of her visiting friends, who, seeing

Milly there, watched her actions with interest, remarked upon the pathos of the scene, and upon the intense

affection the young man must have felt for such a tender creature as Milly. A strange light, as of pain, shot

from the Lady Caroline's eye, as if for the first time she begrudged to the young girl the position she had been

at such pains to transfer to her; it showed that a slumbering affection for her husband still had life in Lady

An end was put to this smooth arrangement by the sudden appearance in the churchyard one day of the Lady

Caroline, when Milly had come there on her usual errand of laying flowers. Lady Caroline had been

anxiously awaiting her behind the chancel, and her countenance was pale and agitated.

'Milly!' she said, 'come here! I don't know how to say to you what I am going to say. I am half dead!'

'I tell you give it to me!' repeated Caroline, almost fiercely. 'Ohbut you don't know why? I am in a grief

and a trouble I did not expect!' And Lady Caroline whispered a few words to the girl.

'You must say that your statement was a wicked lie, an invention, a scandal, a deadly sinthat I told you to

make it to screen me! That it was I whom he married at Bath. In short, we must tell the truth, or I am

But there is a limit to the flexibility of gentlesouled women. Milly by this time had so grown to the idea of

being one flesh with this young man, of having the right to bear his name as she bore it; had so thoroughly

come to regard him as her husband, to dream of him as her husband, to speak of him as her husband, that she

'No, no,' she said desperately, 'I cannot, I will not give him up! Your ladyship took him away from me alive,

and gave him back to me only when he was dead. Now I will keep him! I am truly his widow. More truly

than you, my lady! for I love him and mourn for him, and call myself by his dear name, and your ladyship

'I DO love him!' cries Lady Caroline with flashing eyes, 'and I cling to him, and won't let him go to such as

you! How can I, when he is the father of this poor babe that's coming to me? I must have him back again!

Milly, Milly, can't you pity and understand me, perverse girl that you are, and the miserable plight that I am

in? Oh, this precipitancyit is the ruin of women! Why did I not consider, and wait! Come, give me back all

that I have given you, and assure me you will support me in confessing the truth!'

'Never, never!' persisted Milly, with woebegone passionateness. 'Look at this headstone! Look at my gown

and bonnet of crapethis ring: listen to the name they call me by! My character is worth as much to me as

yours is to you! After declaring my Love mine, myself his, taking his name, making his death my own

particular sorrow, how can I say it was not so? No such dishonour for me! I will outswear you, my lady; and I

shall be believed. My story is so much the more likely that yours will be thought false. But, O please, my

The poor nominal widow exhibited such anguish at a proposal which would have been truly a bitter

humiliation to her, that Lady Caroline was warmed to pity in spite of her own condition.

'Yes, I see your position,' she answered. 'But think of mine! What can I do? Without your support it would

seem an invention to save me from disgrace; even if I produced the register, the love of scandal in the world

is such that the multitude would slur over the fact, say it was a fabrication, and believe your story. I do not

In a few minutes these two poor young women felt, as so many in a strait have felt before, that union was

their greatest strength, even now; and they consulted calmly together. The result of their deliberations was

that Milly went home as usual, and Lady Caroline also, the latter confessing that very night to the Countess

her mother of the marriage, and to nobody else in the world. And, some time after, Lady Caroline and her

mother went away to London, where a little while later still they were joined by Milly, who was supposed to

have left the village to proceed to a wateringplace in the North for the benefit of her health, at the expense

of the ladies of the Manor, who had been much interested in her state of lonely and defenceless widowhood.

Early the next year the widow Milly came home with an infant in her arms, the family at the Manor House

having meanwhile gone abroad. They did not return from their tour till the autumn ensuing, by which time

Milly and the child had again departed from the cottage of her father the woodman, Milly having attained to

the dignity of dwelling in a cottage of her own, many miles to the eastward of her native village; a

comfortable little allowance had moreover been settled on her and the child for life, through the

Two or three years passed away, and the Lady Caroline married a noblemanthe Marquis of

Stonehengeconsiderably her senior, who had wooed her long and phlegmatically. He was not rich, but she

led a placid life with him for many years, though there was no child of the marriage. Meanwhile Milly's boy,

as the youngster was called, and as Milly herself considered him, grew up, and throve wonderfully, and loved

her as she deserved to be loved for her devotion to him, in whom she every day traced more distinctly the

lineaments of the man who had won her girlish heart, and kept it even in the tomb.

She educated him as well as she could with the limited means at her disposal, for the allowance had never

been increased, Lady Caroline, or the Marchioness of Stonehenge as she now was, seeming by degrees to

care little what had become of them. Milly became extremely ambitious on the boy's account; she pinched

herself almost of necessaries to send him to the Grammar School in the town to which they retired, and at

twenty he enlisted in a cavalry regiment, joining it with a deliberate intent of making the Army his

profession, and not in a freak of idleness. His exceptional attainments, his manly bearing, his steady conduct,

speedily won him promotion, which was furthered by the serious war in which this country was at that time

engaged. On his return to England after the peace he had risen to the rank of ridingmaster, and was soon

His motherhis corporeal mother, that is, the Marchioness of Stonehengeheard tidings of this unaided

progress; it reawakened her maternal instincts, and filled her with pride. She became keenly interested in her

successful soldierson; and as she grew older much wished to see him again, particularly when, the Marquis

dying, she was left a solitary and childless widow. Whether or not she would have gone to him of her own

impulse I cannot say; but one day, when she was driving in an open carriage in the outskirts of a

neighbouring town, the troops lying at the barracks hard by passed her in marching order. She eyed them

narrowly, and in the finest of the horsemen recognized her son from his likeness to her first husband.

This sight of him doubly intensified the motherly emotions which had lain dormant in her for so many years,

and she wildly asked herself how she could so have neglected him? Had she possessed the true courage of

affection she would have owned to her first marriage, and have reared him as her son! What would it have

mattered if she had never obtained this precious coronet of pearls and gold leaves, by comparison with the

gain of having the love and protection of such a noble and worthy son? These and other sad reflections cut

the gloomy and solitary lady to the heart; and she repented of her pride in disclaiming her first husband more

Her yearning was so strong, that at length it seemed to her that she could not live without announcing herself

to him as his mother. Come what might, she would do it: late as it was, she would have him away from that

woman whom she began to hate with the fierceness of a deserted heart, for having taken her place as the

mother of her only child. She felt confidently enough that her son would only too gladly exchange a

cottagemother for one who was a peeress of the realm. Being now, in her widowhood, free to come and go

as she chose, without question from anybody, Lady Stonehenge started next day for the little town where

'He is MY son,' said the Marchioness, as soon as she was alone in the cottage with Milly. 'You must give him

back to me, now that I am in a position in which I can defy the world's opinion. I suppose he comes to see

'Every month since he returned from the war, my lady. And sometimes he stays two or three days, and takes

'Well, you will have to give him up,' said the Marchioness calmly. 'It shall not be the worse for youyou

may see him when you choose. I am going to avow my first marriage, and have him with me.'

'You forget that there are two to be reckoned with, my lady. Not only me, but himself.'

'That can be arranged. You don't suppose that he wouldn't' But not wishing to insult Milly by comparing

'Flesh and blood's nothing!' said Milly, flashing with as much scorn as a cottager could show to a peeress,

which, in this case, was not so little as may be supposed. 'But I will agree to put it to him, and let him settle it

'That's all I require,' said Lady Stonehenge. 'You must ask him to come, and I will meet him here.'

The soldier was written to, and the meeting took place. He was not so much astonished at the disclosure of

his parentage as Lady Stonehenge had been led to expect, having known for years that there was a little

mystery about his birth. His manner towards the Marchioness, though respectful, was less warm than she

could have hoped. The alternatives as to his choice of a mother were put before him. His answer amazed and

'No, my lady,' he said. 'Thank you much, but I prefer to let things be as they have been. My father's name is

mine in any case. You see, my lady, you cared little for me when I was weak and helpless; why should I

come to you now I am strong? She, dear devoted soul [pointing to Milly], tended me from my birth, watched

over me, nursed me when I was ill, and deprived herself of many a little comfort to push me on. I cannot love

another mother as I love her. She IS my mother, and I will always be her son!' As he spoke he put his manly

The agony of the poor Marchioness was pitiable. 'You kill me!' she said, between her shaking sobs. 'Cannot

'No, my lady. If I must say it, you were ashamed of my poor father, who was a sincere and honest man;

Nothing would move him; and the suffering woman at last gasped, 'Cannotoh, cannot you give one kiss to

He kissed her coldly, and the painful scene came to an end. That day was the beginning of death to the

unfortunate Marchioness of Stonehenge. It was in the perverseness of her human heart that his denial of her

should add fuel to the fire of her craving for his love. How long afterwards she lived I do not know with any

exactness, but it was no great length of time. That anguish that is sharper than a serpent's tooth wore her out

soon. Utterly reckless of the world, its ways, and its opinions, she allowed her story to become known; and

when the welcome end supervened (which, I grieve to say, she refused to lighten by the consolations of

The rural dean having concluded, some observations upon his tale were made in due course. The sentimental

member said that Lady Caroline's history afforded a sad instance of how an honest human affection will

become shamefaced and mean under the frost of class division and social prejudices. She probably deserved

some pity; though her offspring, before he grew up to man's estate, had deserved more. There was no pathos

like the pathos of childhood, when a child found itself in a world where it was not wanted, and could not

understand the reason why. A tale by the speaker, further illustrating the same subject, though with different

Of all the romantic towns in Wessex, Wintoncester is probably the most convenient for meditative people to

live in; since there you have a cathedral with a nave so long that it affords space in which to walk and

summon your remoter moods without continually turning on your heel, or seeming to do more than take an

afternoon stroll under cover from the rain or sun. In an uninterrupted course of nearly three hundred steps

eastward, and again nearly three hundred steps westward amid those magnificent tombs, you can, for

instance, compare in the most leisurely way the dry dustiness which ultimately pervades the persons of kings

and bishops with the damper dustiness that is usually the final shape of commoners, curates, and others who

take their last rest out of doors. Then, if you are in love, you can, by sauntering in the chapels and behind the

episcopal chantries with the brighteyed one, so steep and mellow your ecstasy in the solemnities around,

that it will assume a rarer and finer tincture, even more grateful to the understanding, if not to the senses, than

that form of the emotion which arises from such companionship in spots where all is life, and growth, and

It was in this solemn place, whither they had withdrawn from the sight of relatives on one cold day in March,

that Sir Ashley Mottisfont asked in marriage, as his second wife, Philippa, the gentle daughter of plain Squire

Okehall. Her life had been an obscure one thus far; while Sir Ashley, though not a rich man, had a certain

distinction about him; so that everybody thought what a convenient, elevating, and, in a word, blessed match

it would be for such a supernumerary as she. Nobody thought so more than the amiable girl herself. She had

been smitten with such affection for him that, when she walked the cathedral aisles at his side on the

beforementioned day, she did not know that her feet touched hard pavement; it seemed to her rather that she

was floating in space. Philippa was an ecstatic, heartthumping maiden, and could not understand how she

had deserved to have sent to her such an illustrious lover, such a travelled personage, such a handsome man.

When he put the question, it was in no clumsy language, such as the ordinary bucolic county landlords were

wont to use on like quivering occasions, but as elegantly as if he had been taught it in Enfield's Speaker. Yet

'My pretty Philippa,' he said (she was not very pretty by the way), 'I have, you must know, a little girl

dependent upon me: a little waif I found one day in a patch of wild oats [such was this worthy baronet's

humour] when I was riding home: a little nameless creature, whom I wish to take care of till she is old

enough to take care of herself; and to educate in a plain way. She is only fifteen months old, and is at present

in the hands of a kind villager's wife in my parish. Will you object to give some attention to the little thing in

It need hardly be said that our innocent young lady, loving him so deeply and joyfully as she did, replied that

she would do all she could for the nameless child; and, shortly afterwards, the pair were married in the same

cathedral that had echoed the whispers of his declaration, the officiating minister being the Bishop himself; a

venerable and experienced man, so well accomplished in uniting people who had a mind for that sort of

experiment, that the couple, with some sense of surprise, found themselves one while they were still vaguely

After this operation they went home to Deansleigh Park, and made a beginning of living happily ever after.

Lady Mottisfont, true to her promise, was always running down to the village during the following weeks to

see the baby whom her husband had so mysteriously lighted on during his ride homeconcerning which

interesting discovery she had her own opinion; but being so extremely amiable and affectionate that she could

have loved stocks and stones if there had been no living creatures to love, she uttered none of her thoughts.

The little thing, who had been christened Dorothy, took to Lady Mottisfont as if the baronet's young wife had

been her mother; and at length Philippa grew so fond of the child that she ventured to ask her husband if she

might have Dorothy in her own home, and bring her up carefully, just as if she were her own. To this he

answered that, though remarks might be made thereon, he had no objection; a fact which was obvious, Sir

After this they lived quietly and uneventfully for two or three years at Sir Ashley Mottisfont's residence in

that part of England, with as near an approach to bliss as the climate of this country allows. The child had

been a godsend to Philippa, for there seemed no great probability of her having one of her own: and she

wisely regarded the possession of Dorothy as a special kindness of Providence, and did not worry her mind at

all as to Dorothy's possible origin. Being a tender and impulsive creature, she loved her husband without

criticism, exhaustively and religiously, and the child not much otherwise. She watched the little foundling as

if she had been her own by nature, and Dorothy became a great solace to her when her husband was absent on

pleasure or business; and when he came home he looked pleased to see how the two had won each other's

hearts. Sir Ashley would kiss his wife, and his wife would kiss little Dorothy, and little Dorothy would kiss

Sir Ashley, and after this triangular burst of affection Lady Mottisfont would say, 'Dear meI forget she is

'What does it matter?' her husband would reply. 'Providence is foreknowing. He has sent us this one because

Their life was of the simplest. Since his travels the baronet had taken to sporting and farming; while Philippa

was a pattern of domesticity. Their pleasures were all local. They retired early to rest, and rose with the

carthorses and whistling waggoners. They knew the names of every bird and tree not exceptionally

uncommon, and could foretell the weather almost as well as anxious farmers and old people with corns.

One day Sir Ashley Mottisfont received a letter, which he read, and musingly laid down on the table without

'Oh, it is from an old lawyer at Bath whom I used to know. He reminds me of something I said to him four or

'It was a casual remark I made to him, when I thought you might not take kindly to her, that if he knew a lady

who was anxious to adopt a child, and could insure a good home to Dorothy, he was to let me know.'

'But that was when you had nobody to take care of her,' she said quickly. 'How absurd of him to write now!

He handed her the letter. The solicitor stated that a widowlady of position, who did not at present wish her

name to be disclosed, had lately become a client of his while taking the waters, and had mentioned to him

that she would like a little girl to bring up as her own, if she could be certain of finding one of good and

pleasing disposition; and, the better to insure this, she would not wish the child to be too young for judging

her qualities. He had remembered Sir Ashley's observation to him a long while ago, and therefore brought the

matter before him. It would be an excellent home for the little girlof that he was positiveif she had not

'But it is absurd of the man to write so long after!' said Lady Mottisfont, with a lumpiness about the back of

her throat as she thought how much Dorothy had become to her. 'I suppose it was when you firstfound

He fell into thought, and neither Sir Ashley nor Lady Mottisfont took the trouble to answer the lawyer's letter;

One day at dinner, on their return from a short absence in town, whither they had gone to see what the world

was doing, hear what it was saying, and to make themselves generally fashionable after rusticating for so

longon this occasion, I say, they learnt from some friend who had joined them at dinner that Fernell

Hallthe manorial house of the estate next their own, which had been offered on lease by reason of the

impecuniosity of its ownerhad been taken for a term by a widow lady, an Italian Contessa, whose name I

will not mention for certain reasons which may by and by appear. Lady Mottisfont expressed her surprise and

interest at the probability of having such a neighbour. 'Though, if I had been born in Italy, I think I should

'Yes; they were talking of her at Grey's the other evening. She is English.' And then, as her husband said no

more about the lady, the friend who was dining with them told Lady Mottisfont that the Countess's father had

speculated largely in EastIndia Stock, in which immense fortunes were being made at that time; through this

his daughter had found herself enormously wealthy at his death, which had occurred only a few weeks after

the death of her husband. It was supposed that the marriage of an enterprising English speculator's daughter

to a poor foreign nobleman had been matter of arrangement merely. As soon as the Countess's widowhood

was a little further advanced she would, no doubt, be the mark of all the schemers who came near her, for she

was still quite young. But at present she seemed to desire quiet, and avoided society and town.

Some weeks after this time Sir Ashley Mottisfont sat looking fixedly at his lady for many moments. He said:

'It might have been better for Dorothy if the Countess had taken her. She is so wealthy in comparison with

ourselves, and could have ushered the girl into the great world more effectually than we ever shall be able to

'The Contessa take Dorothy?' said Lady Mottisfont with a start. 'Whatwas she the lady who wished to

He showed a little hesitation. 'Oh, I've seen her,' he says. 'You know, she drives to the meet sometimes,

though she does not ride; and she has informed me that she was the lady who inquired of Gayton.'

'Why didn't you tell me?' says his lady. 'I had quite forgotten to call upon her. I'll go tomorrow, or soon . . .

But I can't think, Ashley, how you can say that it might have been better for Dorothy to have gone to her; she

is so much our own now that I cannot admit any such conjectures as those, even in jest.' Her eyes reproached

Lady Mottisfont did not hunt any more than the AngloItalian Countess did; indeed, she had become so

absorbed in household matters and in Dorothy's wellbeing that she had no mind to waste a minute on mere

enjoyments. As she had said, to talk coolly of what might have been the best destination in days past for a

child to whom they had become so attached seemed quite barbarous, and she could not understand how her

husband should consider the point so abstractedly; for, as will probably have been guessed, Lady Mottisfont

long before this time, if she had not done so at the very beginning, divined Sir Ashley's true relation to

Dorothy. But the baronet's wife was so discreetly meek and mild that she never told him of her surmise, and

took what Heaven had sent her without cavil, her generosity in this respect having been bountifully rewarded

Her husband recurred to the same uncomfortable subject when, a few days later, they were speaking of

travelling abroad. He said that it was almost a pity, if they thought of going, that they had not fallen in with

the Countess's wish. That lady had told him that she had met Dorothy walking with her nurse, and that she

'She seems to do so . . . You see, dearest Philippa, the advantage to Dorothy would have been that the

Countess would have adopted her legally, and have made her as her own daughter; while we have not done

'But I'll adopt her fullymake her mine legally!' cried his wife in an anxious voice. 'How is it to be done?'

'H'm.' He did not inform her, but fell into thought; and, for reasons of her own, his lady was restless and

The very next day Lady Mottisfont drove to Fernell Hall to pay the neglected call upon her neighbour. The

Countess was at home, and received her graciously. But poor Lady Mottisfont's heart died within her as soon

as she set eyes on her new acquaintance. Such wonderful beauty, of the fullydeveloped kind, had never

confronted her before inside the lines of a human face. She seemed to shine with every light and grace that

woman can possess. Her finished Continental manners, her expanded mind, her ready wit, composed a study

that made the other poor lady sick; for she, and latterly Sir Ashley himself, were rather rural in manners, and

she felt abashed by new sounds and ideas from without. She hardly knew three words in any language but her

own, while this divine creature, though truly English, had, apparently, whatever she wanted in the Italian and

French tongues to suit every impression; which was considered a great improvement to speech in those days,

'How very strange it was about the little girl!' the Contessa said to Lady Mottisfont, in her gay tones. 'I mean,

that the child the lawyer recommended should, just before then, have been adopted by you, who are now my

Lady Mottisfont, too, was in a wretched mood all the way home that day. The Countess was so charming in

every way that she had charmed her gentle ladyship; how should it be possible that she had failed to charm

Sir Ashley? Moreover, she had awakened a strange thought in Philippa's mind. As soon as she reached home

she rushed to the nursery, and there, seizing Dorothy, frantically kissed her; then, holding her at arm's length,

she gazed with a piercing inquisitiveness into the girl's lineaments. She sighed deeply, abandoned the

She had seen there not only her husband's traits, which she had often beheld before, but others, of the shade,

Then this poor lady perceived the whole perturbing sequence of things, and asked herself how she could have

been such a walking piece of simplicity as not to have thought of this before. But she did not stay long

upbraiding herself for her shortsightedness, so overwhelmed was she with misery at the spectacle of herself

as an intruder between these. To be sure she could not have foreseen such a conjuncture; but that did not

lessen her grief. The woman who had been both her husband's bliss and his backsliding had reappeared free

when he was no longer so, and she evidently was dying to claim her own in the person of Dorothy, who had

meanwhile grown to be, to Lady Mottisfont, almost the only source of each day's happiness, supplying her

with something to watch over, inspiring her with the sense of maternity, and so largely reflecting her

husband's nature as almost to deceive her into the pleasant belief that she reflected her own also.

If there was a single direction in which this devoted and virtuous lady erred, it was in the direction of

oversubmissiveness. When all is said and done, and the truth told, men seldom show much self sacrifice in

their conduct as lords and masters to helpless women bound to them for life, and perhaps (though I say it with

all uncertainty) if she had blazed up in his face like a furzefaggot, directly he came home, she might have

helped herself a little. But God knows whether this is a true supposition; at any rate she did no such thing;

and waited and prayed that she might never do despite to him who, she was bound to admit, had always been

tender and courteous towards her; and hoped that little Dorothy might never be taken away.

By degrees the two households became friendly, and very seldom did a week pass without their seeing

something of each other. Try as she might, and dangerous as she assumed the acquaintanceship to be, Lady

Mottisfont could detect no fault or flaw in her new friend. It was obvious that Dorothy had been the magnet

Such beauty, united with such understanding and brightness, Philippa had never before known in one of her

own sex, and she tried to think (whether she succeeded I do not know) that she did not mind the propinquity;

since a woman so rich, so fair, and with such a command of suitors, could not desire to wreck the happiness

The season drew on when it was the custom for families of distinction to go off to The Bath, and Sir Ashley

Mottisfont persuaded his wife to accompany him thither with Dorothy. Everybody of any note was there this

year. From their own part of England came many that they knew; among the rest, Lord and Lady Purbeck, the

Earl and Countess of Wessex, Sir John Grebe, the Drenkhards, Lady Stourvale, the old Duke of

Hamptonshire, the Bishop of Melchester, the Dean of Exonbury, and other lesser lights of Court, pulpit, and

field. Thither also came the fair Contessa, whom, as soon as Philippa saw how much she was sought after by

younger men, she could not conscientiously suspect of renewed designs upon Sir Ashley.

But the Countess had finer opportunities than ever with Dorothy; for Lady Mottisfont was often indisposed,

and even at other times could not honestly hinder an intercourse which gave bright ideas to the child. Dorothy

welcomed her new acquaintance with a strange and instinctive readiness that intimated the wonderful subtlety

At last the crisis came: it was precipitated by an accident. Dorothy and her nurse had gone out one day for an

airing, leaving Lady Mottisfont alone indoors. While she sat gloomily thinking that in all likelihood the

Countess would contrive to meet the child somewhere, and exchange a few tender words with her, Sir Ashley

Mottisfont rushed in and informed her that Dorothy had just had the narrowest possible escape from death.

Some workmen were undermining a house to pull it down for rebuilding, when, without warning, the front

wall inclined slowly outwards for its fall, the nurse and child passing beneath it at the same moment. The fall

was temporarily arrested by the scaffolding, while in the meantime the Countess had witnessed their

imminent danger from the other side of the street. Springing across, she snatched Dorothy from under the

wall, and pulled the nurse after her, the middle of the way being barely reached before they were enveloped

Then her quick and tender eyes perceived that her husband had almost forgotten her intrusive existence in

contemplating the oneness of Dorothy's, the Countess's, and his own: he was in a dream of exaltation which

recognized nothing necessary to his wellbeing outside that welded circle of three lives.

Dorothy was at length brought home; she was much fascinated by the Countess, and saw nothing tragic, but

rather all that was truly delightful, in what had happened. In the evening, when the excitement was over, and

Dorothy was put to bed, Sir Ashley said, 'She has saved Dorothy; and I have been asking myself what I can

do for her as a slight acknowledgment of her heroism. Surely we ought to let her have Dorothy to bring up,

since she still desires to do it? It would be so much to Dorothy's advantage. We ought to look at it in that

Philippa seized his hand. 'Ashley, Ashley! You don't mean itthat I must lose my pretty darlingthe only

one I have?' She met his gaze with her piteous mouth and wet eyes so painfully strained, that he turned away

The next morning, before Dorothy was awake, Lady Mottisfont stole to the girl's bedside, and sat regarding

her. When Dorothy opened her eyes, she fixed them for a long time upon Philippa's features.

The little girl looked troubled. 'I am sorry, mamma; I don't mean to be unkind; but I would rather live with

her; I mean, if I might without trouble, and you did not mind, and it could be just the same to us all, you

There lay the sting of it: the Countess seemed the soul of honour and fairness in this matter, test her as she

might. That afternoon Lady Mottisfont went to her husband with singular firmness upon her gentle face.

'Ashley, we have been married nearly five years, and I have never challenged you with what I know perfectly

'Never have you, Philippa dear. Though I have seen that you knew from the first.'

'From the first as to her father, not as to her mother. Her I did not know for some time; but I know now.'

'Could I help it? Very well, that being so, I have thought it over; and I have spoken to Dorothy. I agree to her

going. I can do no less than grant to the Countess her wish, after her kindness to my yourherchild.'

Then this selfsacrificing woman went hastily away that he might not see that her heart was bursting; and

thereupon, before they left the city, Dorothy changed her mother and her home. After this, the Countess went

away to London for a while, taking Dorothy with her; and the baronet and his wife returned to their lonely

To renounce Dorothy in the bustle of Bath was a different thing from living without her in this quiet home.

One evening Sir Ashley missed his wife from the suppertable; her manner had been so pensive and woeful

of late that he immediately became alarmed. He said nothing, but looked about outside the house narrowly,

and discerned her form in the park, where recently she had been accustomed to walk alone. In its lower levels

there was a pool fed by a trickling brook, and he reached this spot in time to hear a splash. Running forward,

he dimly perceived her light gown floating in the water. To pull her out was the work of a few instants, and

bearing her indoors to her room, he undressed her, nobody in the house knowing of the incident but himself.

She had not been immersed long enough to lose her senses, and soon recovered. She owned that she had done

it because the Contessa had taken away her child, as she persisted in calling Dorothy. Her husband spoke

sternly to her, and impressed upon her the weakness of giving way thus, when all that had happened was for

After that she became more resigned, but he often caught her in tears over some doll, shoe, or ribbon of

Dorothy's, and decided to take her to the North of England for change of air and scene. This was not without

its beneficial effect, corporeally no less than mentally, as later events showed, but she still evinced a

preternatural sharpness of ear at the most casual mention of the child. When they reached home, the Countess

and Dorothy were still absent from the neighbouring Fernell Hall, but in a month or two they returned, and a

'Wellwould you think it, Philippa! After being so desperate, too, about getting Dorothy to be with her!'

'Our neighbour, the Countess, is going to be married again! It is to somebody she has met in London.'

Lady Mottisfont was much surprised; she had never dreamt of such an event. The conflict for the possession

of Dorothy's person had obscured the possibility of it; yet what more likely, the Countess being still under

'What is of still more interest to us, or to you,' continued her husband, 'is a kind offer she has made. She is

willing that you should have Dorothy back again. Seeing what a grief the loss of her has been to you, she will

'It is not for that; it is not to oblige me,' said Lady Mottisfont quickly. 'One can see well enough what it is

'Well, never mind; beggars mustn't be choosers. The reason or motive is nothing to us, so that you obtain

Lady Mottisfont hesitated. However, it was only too plain that she did not now jump at a restitution of one for

The explanation of this change of mood became apparent some little time farther on. Lady Mottisfont, after

five years of wedded life, was expecting to become a mother, and the aspect of many things was greatly

altered in her view. Among the more important changes was that of no longer feeling Dorothy to be

Meanwhile, in view of her coming marriage, the Countess decided to abandon the remainder of her term at

Fernell Hall, and return to her pretty little house in town. But she could not do this quite so quickly as she had

expected, and half a year or more elapsed before she finally quitted the neighbourhood, the interval being

passed in alternations between the country and London. Prior to her last departure she had an interview with

Sir Ashley Mottisfont, and it occurred three days after his wife had presented him with a son and heir.

'I wanted to speak to you,' said the Countess, looking him luminously in the face, 'about the dear foundling I

have adopted temporarily, and thought to have adopted permanently. But my marriage makes it too risky!'

'I thought it might be that,' he answered, regarding her steadfastly back again, and observing two tears come

slowly into her eyes as she heard her own voice describe Dorothy in those words.

'Don't criticize me,' she said hastily; and recovering herself, went on. 'If Lady Mottisfont could take her back

again, as I suggested, it would be better for me, and certainly no worse for Dorothy. To every one but

ourselves she is but a child I have taken a fancy to, and Lady Mottisfont coveted her so much, and was very

reluctant to let her go . . . I am sure she will adopt her again?' she added anxiously.

'I will sound her afresh,' said the baronet. 'You leave Dorothy behind for the present?'

He did not speak to his wife about the proposal till some few days after, when Lady Mottisfont had nearly

recovered, and news of the Countess's marriage in London had just reached them. He had no sooner

'I have not acquired any dislike of Dorothy,' she said, 'but I feel that there is one nearer to me now. Dorothy

chose the alternative of going to the Countess, you must remember, when I put it to her as between the

'But, my dear Philippa, how can you argue thus about a child, and that child our Dorothy?'

'What, then, Philippa,' he said, surprised, 'you won't have her back, after nearly dying of grief at the loss of

'I cannot argue, dear Ashley. I should prefer not to have the responsibility of Dorothy again. Her place is

Her husband sighed, and went out of the chamber. There had been a previous arrangement that Dorothy

should be brought to the house on a visit that day, but instead of taking her up to his wife, he did not inform

Lady Mottisfont of the child's presence. He entertained her himself as well as he could, and accompanied her

into the park, where they had a ramble together. Presently he sat down on the root of an elm and took her

'Between this husband and this baby, little Dorothy, you who had two homes are left out in the cold,' he said.

'Can't I go to London with my pretty mamma?' said Dorothy, perceiving from his manner that there was a

'I am afraid not, my child. She only took you to live with her because she was lonely, you know.'

'I am afraid that cannot be done either,' said he sadly. 'We have a baby in the house now.' He closed the reply

'Oh yes, somebody wants you,' he assured her. 'Where would you like to live besides?'

Dorothy's experiences being rather limited, she mentioned the only other place in the world that she was

acquainted with, the cottage of the villager who had taken care of her before Lady Mottisfont had removed

'Yes; that's where you'll be best off and most independent,' he answered. 'And I'll come to see you, my dear

Nevertheless, when the change came, and Dorothy was handed over to the kind cottagewoman, the poor

child missed the luxurious roominess of Fernell Hall and Deansleigh; and for a long time her little feet, which

had been accustomed to carpets and oak floors, suffered from the cold of the stone flags on which it was now

her lot to live and to play; while chilblains came upon her fingers with washing at the pump. But thicker

shoes with nails in them somewhat remedied the cold feet, and her complaints and tears on this and other

scores diminished to silence as she became inured anew to the hardships of the farmcottage, and she grew

up robust if not handsome. She was never altogether lost sight of by Sir Ashley, though she was deprived of

the systematic education which had been devised and begun for her by Lady Mottisfont, as well as by her

other mamma, the enthusiastic Countess. The latter soon had other Dorothys to think of, who occupied her

time and affection as fully as Lady Mottisfont's were occupied by her precious boy. In the course of time the

doublydesired and doublyrejected Dorothy married, I believe, a respectable roadcontractorthe same, if

I mistake not, who repaired and improved the old highway running from Wintoncester southwesterly

through the New Forestand in the heart of this worthy man of business the poor girl found the nest which

Several of the listeners wished to hear another story from the sentimental member after this, but he said that

he could recall nothing else at the moment, and that it seemed to him as if his friend on the other side of the

The member alluded to was a respectable churchwarden, with a sly chink to one eyelidpossibly the result

of an accidentand a regular attendant at the Club meetings. He replied that his looks had been mainly

caused by his interest in the two ladies of the last story, apparently women of strong motherly instincts, even

though they were not genuinely staunch in their tenderness. The tale had brought to his mind an instance of a

firmer affection of that sort on the paternal side, in a nature otherwise culpable. As for telling the story, his

manner was much against him, he feared; but he would do his best, if they wished.

Here the President interposed with a suggestion that as it was getting late in the afternoon it would be as well

to adjourn to their respective inns and lodgings for dinner, after which those who cared to do so could return

and resume these curious domestic traditions for the remainder of the evening, which might otherwise prove

irksome enough. The curator had told him that the room was at their service. The churchwarden, who was

beginning to feel hungry himself, readily acquiesced, and the Club separated for an hour and a half. Then the

faithful ones began to drop in againamong whom were not the President; neither came the rural dean, nor

the two curates, though the Colonel, and the man of family, cigars in mouth, were good enough to return,

having found their hotel dreary. The museum had no regular means of illumination, and a solitary candle, less

powerful than the rays of the fire, was placed on the table; also bottles and glasses, provided by some

thoughtful member. The chinkeyed churchwarden, now thoroughly primed, proceeded to relate in his own

In the reign of His Most Excellent Majesty King George the Third, Defender of the Faith and of the

American Colonies, there lived in 'a faire manerplace' (so Leland called it in his day, as I have been told), in

one o' the greenest bits of woodland between Bristol and the city of Exonbury, a young lady who resembled

some aforesaid ones in having many talents and exceeding great beauty. With these gifts she combined a

somewhat imperious temper and arbitrary mind, though her experience of the world was not actually so large

as her conclusive manner would have led the stranger to suppose. Being an orphan, she resided with her

uncle, who, though he was fairly considerate as to her welfare, left her pretty much to herself.

Now it chanced that when this lovely young lady was about nineteen, she (being a fearless horsewoman) was

riding, with only a young lad as an attendant, in one o' the woods near her uncle's house, and, in trotting

along, her horse stumbled over the root of a felled tree. She slipped to the ground, not seriously hurt, and was

assisted home by a gentleman who came in view at the moment of her mishap. It turned out that this

gentleman, a total stranger to her, was on a visit at the house of a neighbouring landowner. He was of Dutch

extraction, and occasionally came to England on business or pleasure from his plantations in Guiana, on the

On this account he was naturally but little known in Wessex, and was but a slight acquaintance of the

gentleman at whose mansion he was a guest. However, the friendship between him and the Heymeresas

the uncle and niece were namedwarmed and warmed by degrees, there being but few folk o' note in the

vicinity at that time, which made a newcomer, if he were at all sociable and of good credit, always sure of a

welcome. A tender feeling (as it is called by the romantic) sprang up between the two young people, which

ripened into intimacy. Anderling, the foreign gentleman, was of an amorous temperament; and, though he

endeavoured to conceal his feeling, it could be seen that Miss Maria Heymere had impressed him rather more

deeply than would be represented by a scratch upon a stone. He seemed absolutely unable to free himself

from her fascination; and his inability to do so, much as he triedevidently thinking he had not the ghost of

a chance with hergave her the pleasure of power; though she more than sympathized when she overheard

After prolonging his visit by every conceivable excuse in his power, he summoned courage, and offered her

his hand and his heart. Being in no way disinclined to him, though not so fervid as he, and her uncle making

no objection to the match, she consented to share his fate, for better or otherwise, in the distant colony where,

as he assured her, his rice, and coffee, and maize, and timber, produced him ample meansa statement

which was borne out by his friend, her uncle's neighbour. In short, a day for their marriage was fixed, earlier

in the engagement than is usual or desirable between comparative strangers, by reason of the necessity he was

The wedding took place, and Maria left her uncle's mansion with her husband, going in the first place to

London, and about a fortnight after sailing with him across the great ocean for their distant homewhich,

however, he assured her, should not be her home for long, it being his intention to dispose of his interests in

this part of the world as soon as the war was over, and he could do so advantageously; when they could come

As they advanced on the voyage she observed that he grew more and more constrained; and, by the time they

had crossed the Line, he was quite depressed, just as he had been before proposing to her. A day or two

before landing at Paramaribo, he embraced her in a very tearful and passionate manner, and said he wished to

make a confession. It had been his misfortune, he said, to marry at Quebec in early life a woman whose

reputation proved to be in every way bad and scandalous. The discovery had nearly killed him; but he had

ultimately separated from her, and had never seen her since. He had hoped and prayed she might be dead; but

recently in London, when they were starting on this journey, he had discovered that she was still alive. At

first he had decided to keep this dark intelligence from her beloved ears; but he had felt that he could not do

it. All he hoped was that such a condition of things would make no difference in her feelings for him, as it

Thereupon the spirit of this proud and masterful lady showed itself in violent turmoil, like the raging of a

nor'west thunderstormas well it might, God knows. But she was of too stout a nature to be broken down

by his revelation, as many ladies of my acquaintance would have beenso far from home, and right under

the Line in the blaze o' the sun. Of the two, indeed, he was the more wretched and shattered in spirit, for he

loved her deeply, and (there being a foreign twist in his make) had been tempted to this crime by her

exceeding beauty, against which he had struggled day and night, till he had no further resistance left in him. It

was she who came first to a decision as to what should be donewhether a wise one I do not attempt to

'I put it to you,' says she, when many useless selfreproaches and protestations on his part had been

uttered'I put it to you whether, if any manliness is left in you, you ought not to do exactly what I consider

He promised to do anything in the whole world. She then requested him to allow her to return, and announce

him as having died of malignant ague immediately on their arrival at Paramaribo; that she should

consequently appear in weeds as his widow in her native place; and that he would never molest her, or come

again to that part of the world during the whole course of his lifea good reason for which would be that the

He readily acquiesced in this, as he would have acquiesced in anything for the restitution of one he adored so

deeplyeven to the yielding of life itself. To put her in an immediate state of independence he gave her, in

bonds and jewels, a considerable sum (for his worldly means had been in no way exaggerated); and by the

next ship she sailed again for England, having travelled no farther than to Paramaribo. At parting he declared

it to be his intention to turn all his landed possessions into personal property, and to be a wanderer on the face

Maria duly arrived in England, and immediately on landing apprised her uncle of her return, duly appearing

at his house in the garb of a widow. She was commiserated by all the neighbours as soon as her story was

told; but only to her uncle did she reveal the real state of affairs, and her reason for concealing it. For, though

she had been innocent of wrong, Maria's pride was of that grain which could not brook the least appearance

For some time she led a quiet life with her relative, and in due course a son was born to her. She was much

respected for her dignity and reserve, and the portable wealth which her temporary husband had made over to

her enabled her to live in comfort in a wing of the mansion, without assistance from her uncle at all. But,

knowing that she was not what she seemed to be, her life was an uneasy one, and she often said to herself:

'Suppose his continued existence should become known here, and people should discern the pride of my

motive in hiding my humiliation? It would be worse than if I had been frank at first, which I should have

Such grave reflections as these occupied her with increasing force; and during their continuance she

encountered a worthy man of noble birth and titleLord Icenway his namewhose seat was beyond

Wintoncester, quite at t'other end of Wessex. He being anxious to pay his addresses to her, Maria willingly

accepted them, though he was a plain man, older than herself; for she discerned in a re marriage a method of

fortifying her position against mortifying discoveries. In a few months their union took place, and Maria

lifted her head as Lady Icenway, and left with her husband and child for his home as aforesaid, where she

A justification, or a condemnation, of her step (according as you view it) was seen when, not long after, she

received a note from her former husband Anderling. It was a hasty and tender epistle, and perhaps it was

fortunate that it arrived during the temporary absence of Lord Icenway. His worthless wife, said Anderling,

had just died in Quebec; he had gone there to ascertain particulars, and had seen the unfortunate woman

buried. He now was hastening to England to repair the wrong he had done his Maria. He asked her to meet

him at Southampton, his port of arrival; which she need be in no fear of doing, as he had changed his name,

and was almost absolutely unknown in Europe. He would remarry her immediately, and live with her in any

part of the Continent, as they had originally intended, where, for the great love he still bore her, he would

Lady Icenway, selfpossessed as it was her nature to be, was yet much disturbed at this news, and set off to

meet him, unattended, as soon as she heard that the ship was in sight. As soon as they stood face to face she

found that she still possessed all her old influence over him, though his power to fascinate her had quite

departed. In his sorrow for his offence against her, he had become a man of strict religious habits,

selfdenying as a lenten saint, though formerly he had been a free and joyous liver. Having first got him to

swear to make her any amends she should choose (which he was imagining must be by a true marriage), she

informed him that she had already wedded another husband, an excellent man of ancient family and

At this the countenance of the poor foreign gentleman became cold as clay, and his heart withered within

him; for as it had been her beauty and bearing which had led him to sin to obtain her, so, now that her beauty

was in fuller bloom, and her manner more haughty by her success, did he feel her fascination to be almost

more than he could bear. Nevertheless, having sworn his word, he undertook to obey her commands, which

were simply a renewal of her old request that he would depart for some foreign country, and never reveal

his existence to her friends, or husband, or any person in England; never trouble her more, seeing how great a

With this the unhappy gentleman departed, much sadder in his heart than on his voyage to England; for it had

never occurred to him that a woman who rated her honour so highly as Maria had done, and who was the

mother of a child of his, would have adopted such means as this for the restoration of that honour, and at so

surprisingly early a date. He had fully calculated on making her his wife in law and truth, and of living in

cheerful unity with her and his offspring, for whom he felt a deep and growing tenderness, though he had

The lady returned to her mansion beyond Wintoncester, and told nothing of the interview to her noble

husband, who had fortunately gone that day to do a little cocking and ratting out by Weydon Priors, and knew

nothing of her movements. She had dismissed her poor Anderling peremptorily enough; yet she would often

after this look in the face of the child of her socalled widowhood, to discover what and how many traits of

his father were to be seen in his lineaments. For this she had ample opportunity during the following autumn

and winter months, her husband being a matterof fact nobleman, who spent the greater part of his time in

One winter day, when he had started for a meet of the hounds a long way from the houseit being his

custom to hunt three or four times a week at this season of the yearshe had walked into the sunshine upon

the terrace before the windows, where there fell at her feet some little white object that had come over a

boundary wall hard by. It proved to be a tiny note wrapped round a stone. Lady Icenway opened it and read

it, and immediately (no doubt, with a stern fixture of her queenly countenance) walked hastily along the

terrace, and through the door into the shrubbery, whence the note had come. The man who had first married

her stood under the bushes before her. It was plain from his appearance that something had gone wrong with

'You notice a change in me, my bestbeloved,' he said. 'Yes, Maria I have lost all the wealth I once

possessedmainly by reckless gambling in the Continental hells to which you banished me. But one thing in

the world remains to methe childand it is for him that I have intruded here. Don't fear me, darling! I

shall not inconvenience you long; I love you too well! But I think of the boy day and nightI cannot help

itI cannot keep my feeling for him down; and I long to see him, and speak a word to him once in my

'I will reveal nothing. Only let me see the child. I know what I have sworn to you, cruel mistress, and I

respect my oath. Otherwise I might have seen him by some subterfuge. But I preferred the frank course of

She demurred, with the haughty severity which had grown part of her character, and which her elevation to

the rank of a peeress had rather intensified than diminished. She said that she would consider, and would give

him an answer the day after the next, at the same hour and place, when her husband would again be absent

The gentleman waited patiently. Lady Icenway, who had now no conscious love left for him, well considered

the matter, and felt that it would be advisable not to push to extremes a man of so passionate a heart. On the

'You shall see him,' she said, 'of course on the strict condition that you do not reveal yourself, and hence,

though you see him, he must not see you, or your manner might betray you and me. I will lull him into a nap

in the afternoon, and then I will come to you here, and fetch you indoors by a private way.'

The unfortunate father, whose misdemeanour had recoiled upon his own head in a way he could not have

foreseen, promised to adhere to her instructions, and waited in the shrubberies till the moment when she

should call him. This she duly did about three o'clock that day, leading him in by a garden door, and upstairs

to the nursery where the child lay. He was in his little cot, breathing calmly, his arm thrown over his head,

and his silken curls crushed into the pillow. His father, now almost to be pitied, bent over him, and a tear

He kissed the child without waking him, turned, gave him a last look, and followed her out of the chamber,

But this remedy for his sadness of heart at being a stranger to his own son, had the effect of intensifying the

malady; for while originally, not knowing or having ever seen the boy, he had loved him vaguely and

imaginatively only, he now became attached to him in flesh and bone, as any parent might; and the feeling

that he could at best only see his child at the rarest and most cursory moments, if at all, drove him into a state

of distraction which threatened to overthrow his promise to the boy's mother to keep out of his sight.

But such was his chivalrous respect for Lady Icenway, and his regret at having ever deceived her, that he

schooled his poor heart into submission. Owing to his loneliness, all the fervour of which he was

capableand that was muchflowed now in the channel of parental and marital lovefor a child who did

At length this singular punishment became such a torture to the poor foreigner that he resolved to lessen it at

all hazards, compatible with punctilious care for the name of the lady his former wife, to whom his

attachment seemed to increase in proportion to her punitive treatment of him. At one time of his life he had

taken great interest in tulipculture, as well as gardening in general; and since the ruin of his fortunes, and his

arrival in England, he had made of his knowledge a precarious income in the hothouses of nurserymen and

others. With the new idea in his head he applied himself zealously to the business, till he acquired in a few

months great skill in horticulture. Waiting till the noble lord, his lady's husband, had room for an

undergardener of a general sort, he offered himself for the place, and was engaged immediately by reason of

his civility and intelligence, before Lady Icenway knew anything of the matter. Much therefore did he

surprise her when she found him in the conservatories of her mansion a week or two after his arrival. The

punishment of instant dismissal, with which at first she haughtily threatened him, my lady thought fit, on

reflection, not to enforce. While he served her thus she knew he would not harm her by a word, while, if he

were expelled, chagrin might induce him to reveal in a moment of exasperation what kind treatment would

So he was allowed to remain on the premises, and had for his residence a little cottage by the gardenwall

which had been the domicile of some of his predecessors in the same occupation. Here he lived absolutely

alone, and spent much of his leisure in reading, but the greater part in watching the windows and lawns of his

lady's house for glimpses of the form of the child. It was for that child's sake that he abandoned the tenets of

the Roman Catholic Church in which he had been reared, and became the most regular attendant at the

services in the parish place of worship hard by, where, sitting behind the pew of my lady, my lord, and his

stepson, the gardener could pensively study the traits and movements of the youngster at only a few feet

He filled his post for more than two years with a pleasure to himself which, though mournful, was soothing,

his lady never forgiving him, or allowing him to be anything more than 'the gardener' to her child, though

once or twice the boy said, 'That gardener's eyes are so sad! Why does he look so sadly at me?' He sunned

himself in her scornfulness as if it were love, and his ears drank in her curt monosyllables as though they

were rhapsodies of endearment. Strangely enough, the coldness with which she treated her foreigner began to

be the conduct of Lord Icenway towards herself. It was a matter of great anxiety to him that there should be a

lineal successor to the title, yet no sign of that successor appeared. One day he complained to her quite

roughly of his fate. 'All will go to that dolt of a cousin!' he cried. 'I'd sooner see my name and place at the

The lady soothed him and fell into thought, and did not recriminate. But one day, soon after, she went down

to the cottage of the gardener to inquire how he was getting on, for he had been ailing of late, though, as was

supposed, not seriously. Though she often visited the poor, she had never entered her undergardener's home

before, and was much surprisedeven grieved and dismayedto find that he was too ill to rise from his

bed. She went back to her mansion and returned with some delicate soup, that she might have a reason for

His condition was so feeble and alarming, and his face so thin, that it quite shocked her softening heart, and

gazing upon him she said, 'You must get wellyou must! I have been hard with youI know it. I will not

The sick and dying manfor he was dying indeedtook her hand and pressed it to his lips. 'Too late, my

'But you MUST NOT die! Oh, you must not!' she said. And on an impulse she bent down and whispered

He replied by a faint wan smile. 'Time was! . . . but that's past!' he said, 'I must die!'

And die he did, a few days later, as the sun was going down behind the gardenwall. Her harshness seemed

to come trebly home to her then, and she remorsefully exclaimed against herself in secret and alone. Her one

desire now was to erect some tribute to his memory, without its being recognized as her handiwork. In the

completion of this scheme there arrived a few months later a handsome stained glass window for the

church; and when it was unpacked and in course of erection Lord Icenway strolled into the building with his

'"Erected to his memory by his grieving widow,"' he said, reading the legend on the glass. 'I didn't know that

'Oh yes, you must have, Icenway; only you forget,' replied his lady blandly. 'But she didn't live with him, and

was seldom seen visiting him, because there were differences between them; which, as is usually the case,

As Lord Icenway grew older he became crustier and crustier, and whenever he set eyes on his wife's boy by

''Tis a very odd thing, my lady, that you could oblige your first husband, and couldn't oblige me.'

The Colonel was the first to comment upon the Churchwarden's tale, by saying that the fate of the poor fellow

The gentlemantradesman could not see that his fate was at all too hard for him. He was legally nothing to

her, and he had served her shamefully. If he had been really her husband it would have stood differently.

The Bookworm remarked that Lord Icenway seemed to have been a very unsuspicious man, with which view

a fat member with a crimson face agreed. It was true his wife was a very closemouthed personage, which

made a difference. If she had spoken out recklessly her lord might have been suspicious enough, as in the

case of that lady who lived at Stapleford Park in their greatgrandfathers' time. Though there, to be sure,

The crimson man, who was a retired maltster of comfortable means, ventru, and short in stature, cleared his

throat, blew off his superfluous breath, and proceeded to give the instance before alluded to of such

possibility, first apologizing for his heroine's lack of a title, it never having been his good fortune to know

many of the nobility. To his style of narrative the following is only an approximation.

Folk who are at all acquainted with the traditions of Stapleford Park will not need to be told that in the middle

of the last century it was owned by that trump of mortgagees, Timothy Petrick, whose skill in gaining

possession of fair estates by granting sums of money on their titledeeds has seldom if ever been equalled in

our part of England. Timothy was a lawyer by profession, and agent to several noblemen, by which means his

special line of business became opened to him by a sort of revelation. It is said that a relative of his, a very

deep thinker, who afterwards had the misfortune to be transported for life for mistaken notions on the signing

of a will, taught him considerable legal lore, which he creditably resolved never to throw away for the benefit

However, I have nothing in particular to say about his early and active days, but rather of the time when, an

old man, he had become the owner of vast estates by the means I have signifiedamong them the great

manor of Stapleford, on which he lived, in the splendid old mansion now pulled down; likewise estates at

Marlott, estates near Sherton Abbas, nearly all the borough of Millpool, and many properties near Ivell.

Indeed, I can't call to mind half his landed possessions, and I don't know that it matters much at this time of

day, seeing that he's been dead and gone many years. It is said that when he bought an estate he would not

decide to pay the price till he had walked over every single acre with his own two feet, and prodded the soil at

every point with his own spud, to test its quality, which, if we regard the extent of his properties, must have

At the time I am speaking of he was a man over eighty, and his son was dead; but he had two grandsons, the

eldest of whom, his namesake, was married, and was shortly expecting issue. Just then the grandfather was

taken ill, for death, as it seemed, considering his age. By his will the old man had created an entail (as I

believe the lawyers call it), devising the whole of the estates to his elder grandson and his issue male, failing

which, to his younger grandson and his issue male, failing which, to remoter relatives, who need not be

While old Timothy Petrick was lying ill, his elder grandson's wife, Annetta, gave birth to her expected child,

who, as fortune would have it, was a son. Timothy, her husband, through sprung of a scheming family, was

no great schemer himself; he was the single one of the Petricks then living whose heart had ever been greatly

moved by sentiments which did not run in the groove of ambition; and on this account he had not married

well, as the saying is; his wife having been the daughter of a family of no better beginnings than his own; that

is to say, her father was a country townsman of the professional class. But she was a very pretty woman, by

all accounts, and her husband had seen, courted, and married her in a high tide of infatuation, after a very

short acquaintance, and with very little knowledge of her heart's history. He had never found reason to regret

She was supposed to be out of danger, and herself and the child progressing well, when there was a change

for the worse, and she sank so rapidly that she was soon given over. When she felt that she was about to leave

him, Annetta sent for her husband, and, on his speedy entry and assurance that they were alone, she made him

solemnly vow to give the child every care in any circumstances that might arise, if it should please Heaven to

take her. This, of course, he readily promised. Then, after some hesitation, she told him that she could not die

with a falsehood upon her soul, and dire deceit in her life; she must make a terrible confession to him before

her lips were sealed for ever. She thereupon related an incident concerning the baby's parentage, which was

Timothy Petrick, though a quickfeeling man, was not of a sort to show nerves outwardly; and he bore

himself as heroically as he possibly could do in this trying moment of his life. That same night his wife died;

and while she lay dead, and before her funeral, he hastened to the bedside of his sick grandfather, and

revealed to him all that had happened: the baby's birth, his wife's confession, and her death, beseeching the

aged man, as he loved him, to bestir himself now, at the eleventh hour, and alter his will so as to dish the

intruder. Old Timothy, seeing matters in the same light as his grandson, required no urging against allowing

anything to stand in the way of legitimate inheritance; he executed another will, limiting the entail to Timothy

his grandson, for life, and his male heirs thereafter to be born; after them to his other grandson Edward, and

Edward's heirs. Thus the newlyborn infant, who had been the centre of so many hopes, was cut off and

The old mortgagee lived but a short time after this, the excitement of the discovery having told upon him

considerably, and he was gathered to his fathers like the most charitable man in his neighbourhood. Both wife

and grandparent being buried, Timothy settled down to his usual life as well as he was able, mentally

satisfied that he had by prompt action defeated the consequences of such dire domestic treachery as had been

shown towards him, and resolving to marry a second time as soon as he could satisfy himself in the choice of

But men do not always know themselves. The embittered state of Timothy Petrick's mind bred in him by

degrees such a hatred and mistrust of womankind that, though several specimens of high attractiveness came

under his eyes, he could not bring himself to the point of proposing marriage. He dreaded to take up the

position of husband a second time, discerning a trap in every petticoat, and a Slough of Despond in possible

heirs. 'What has happened once, when all seemed so fair, may happen again,' he said to himself. 'I'll risk my

name no more.' So he abstained from marriage, and overcame his wish for a lineal descendant to follow him

Timothy had scarcely noticed the unfortunate child that his wife had borne, after arranging for a meagre

fulfilment of his promise to her to take care of the boy, by having him brought up in his house. Occasionally,

remembering this promise, he went and glanced at the child, saw that he was doing well, gave a few special

directions, and again went his solitary way. Thus he and the child lived on in the Stapleford mansionhouse

till two or three years had passed by. One day he was walking in the garden, and by some accident left his

snuffbox on a bench. When he came back to find it he saw the little boy standing there; he had escaped his

nurse, and was making a plaything of the box, in spite of the convulsive sneezings which the game brought in

its train. Then the man with the encrusted heart became interested in the little fellow's persistence in his play

under such discomforts; he looked in the child's face, saw there his wife's countenance, though he did not see

his own, and fell into thought on the piteousness of childhoodparticularly of despised and rejected

From that hour, try as he would to counteract the feeling, the human necessity to love something or other got

the better of what he had called his wisdom, and shaped itself in a tender anxiety for the youngster Rupert.

This name had been given him by his dying mother when, at her request, the child was baptized in her

chamber, lest he should not survive for public baptism; and her husband had never thought of it as a name of

any significance till, about this time, he learnt by accident that it was the name of the young Marquis of

Christminster, son of the Duke of Southwesterland, for whom Annetta had cherished warm feelings before

her marriage. Recollecting some wandering phrases in his wife's last words, which he had not understood at

the time, he perceived at last that this was the person to whom she had alluded when affording him a clue to

He would sit in silence for hours with the child, being no great speaker at the best of times; but the boy, on

his part, was too ready with his tongue for any break in discourse to arise because Timothy Petrick had

nothing to say. After idling away his mornings in this manner, Petrick would go to his own room and swear

in long loud whispers, and walk up and down, calling himself the most ridiculous dolt that ever lived, and

declaring that he would never go near the little fellow again; to which resolve he would adhere for the space

perhaps of a day. Such cases are happily not new to human nature, but there never was a case in which a man

As the child grew up, Timothy's attachment to him grew deeper, till Rupert became almost the sole object for

which he lived. There had been enough of the family ambition latent in him for Timothy Petrick to feel a

little envy when, some time before this date, his brother Edward had been accepted by the Honourable Harriet

Mountclere, daughter of the second Viscount of that name and title; but having discovered, as I have before

stated, the paternity of his boy Rupert to lurk in even a higher stratum of society, those envious feelings

speedily dispersed. Indeed, the more he reflected thereon, after his brother's aristocratic marriage, the more

content did he become. His late wife took softer outline in his memory, as he thought of the lofty taste she

had displayed, though only a plain burgher's daughter, and the justification for his weakness in loving the

childthe justification that he had longed forwas afforded now in the knowledge that the boy was by

nature, if not by name, a representative of one of the noblest houses in England.

'She was a woman of grand instincts, after all,' he said to himself proudly. 'To fix her choice upon the

immediate successor in that ducal lineit was finely conceived! Had he been of low blood like myself or my

relations she would scarce have deserved the harsh measure that I have dealt out to her and her offspring.

How much less, then, when such grovelling tastes were farthest from her soul! The man Annetta loved was

The afterclap was inevitable, and it soon came. 'So far,' he reasoned, 'from cutting off this child from

inheritance of my estates, as I have done, I should have rejoiced in the possession of him! He is of pure stock

on one side at least, whilst in the ordinary run of affairs he would have been a commoner to the bone.'

Being a man, whatever his faults, of good old beliefs in the divinity of kings and those about 'em, the more he

overhauled the case in this light, the more strongly did his poor wife's conduct in improving the blood and

breed of the Petrick family win his heart. He considered what ugly, idle, harddrinking scamps many of his

own relations had been; the miserable scriveners, usurers, and pawnbrokers that he had numbered among his

forefathers, and the probability that some of their bad qualities would have come out in a merely corporeal

child, to give him sorrow in his old age, turn his black hairs gray, his gray hairs white, cut down every stick

of timber, and Heaven knows what all, had he not, like a skilful gardener, minded his grafting and changed

the sort; till at length this rightminded man fell down on his knees every night and morning and thanked

It was in the peculiar disposition of the Petrick family that the satisfaction which ultimately settled in

Timothy's breast found nourishment. The Petricks had adored the nobility, and plucked them at the same

time. That excellent man Izaak Walton's feelings about fish were much akin to those of old Timothy Petrick,

and of his descendants in a lesser degree, concerning the landed aristocracy. To torture and to love

simultaneously is a proceeding strange to reason, but possible to practice, as these instances show.

Hence, when Timothy's brother Edward said slightingly one day that Timothy's son was well enough, but that

he had nothing but shops and offices in his backward perspective, while his own children, should he have

any, would be far different, in possessing such a mother as the Honourable Harriet, Timothy felt a bound of

triumph within him at the power he possessed of contradicting that statement if he chose.

So much was he interested in his boy in this new aspect that he now began to read up chronicles of the

illustrious house ennobled as the Dukes of Southwesterland, from their very beginning in the glories of the

Restoration of the blessed Charles till the year of his own time. He mentally noted their gifts from royalty,

grants of lands, purchases, intermarriages, plantings and buildings; more particularly their political and

military achievements, which had been great, and their performances in art and letters, which had been by no

means contemptible. He studied prints of the portraits of that family, and then, like a chemist watching a

crystallization, began to examine young Rupert's face for the unfolding of those historic curves and shades

When the boy reached the most fascinating age of childhood, and his shouts of laughter ran through

Stapleford House from end to end, the remorse that oppressed Timothy Petrick knew no bounds. Of all

people in the world this Rupert was the one on whom he could have wished the estates to devolve; yet

Rupert, by Timothy's own desperate strategy at the time of his birth, had been ousted from all inheritance of

them; and, since he did not mean to remarry, the manors would pass to his brother and his brother's children,

who would be nothing to him, whose boasted pedigree on one side would be nothing to his Rupert's.

His mind ran on the wills continually, both of which were in existence, and the first, the cancelled one, in his

own possession. Night after night, when the servants were all abed, and the click of safety locks sounded as

loud as a crash, he looked at that first will, and wished it had been the second and not the first.

The crisis came at last. One night, after having enjoyed the boy's company for hours, he could no longer bear

that his beloved Rupert should be dispossessed, and he committed the felonious deed of altering the date of

the earlier will to a fortnight later, which made its execution appear subsequent to the date of the second will

His brother Edward submitted to what appeared to be not only incontestible fact, but a far more likely

disposition of old Timothy's property; for, like many others, he had been much surprised at the limitations

defined in the other will, having no clue to their cause. He joined his brother Timothy in setting aside the

hitherto accepted document, and matters went on in their usual course, there being no dispositions in the

substituted will differing from those in the other, except such as related to a future which had not yet arrived.

The years moved on. Rupert had not yet revealed the anxiously expected historic lineaments which should

foreshadow the political abilities of the ducal family aforesaid when it happened on a certain day that

Timothy Petrick made the acquaintance of a well known physician of Budmouth, who had been the medical

adviser and friend of the late Mrs. Petrick's family for many years; though after Annetta's marriage, and

consequent removal to Stapleford, he had seen no more of her, the neighbouring practitioner who attended

the Petricks having then become her doctor as a matter of course. Timothy was impressed by the insight and

knowledge disclosed in the conversation of the Budmouth physician, and the acquaintance ripening to

intimacy, the physician alluded to a form of hallucination to which Annetta's mother and grandmother had

been subjectthat of believing in certain dreams as realities. He delicately inquired if Timothy had ever

noticed anything of the sort in his wife during her lifetime; he, the physician, had fancied that he discerned

germs of the same peculiarity in Annetta when he attended her in her girlhood. One explanation begat

another, till the dumbfoundered Timothy Petrick was persuaded in his own mind that Annetta's confession to

But he could hardly believe it possible; and, thinking it best to be frank with the doctor, told him the whole

story which, till now, he had never related to living man, save his dying grandfather. To his surprise, the

physician informed him that such a form of delusion was precisely what he would have expected from

Petrick prosecuted his inquiries elsewhere; and the upshot of his labours was, briefly, that a comparison of

dates and places showed irrefutably that his poor wife's assertion could not possibly have foundation in fact.

The young Marquis of her tender passiona highly moral and brightminded noblemanhad gone abroad

the year before Annetta's marriage, and had not returned till after her death. The young girl's love for him had

Timothy went home, and the boy ran out to meet him; whereupon a strangely dismal feeling of discontent

took possession of his soul. After all, then, there was nothing but plebeian blood in the veins of the heir to his

name and estates; he was not to be succeeded by a noblenatured line. To be sure, Rupert was his son; but

that glory and halo he believed him to have inherited from the ages, outshining that of his brother's children,

had departed from Rupert's brow for ever; he could no longer read history in the boy's face, and centuries of

His manner towards his son grew colder and colder from that day forward; and it was with bitterness of heart

that he discerned the characteristic features of the Petricks unfolding themselves by degrees. Instead of the

elegant knifeedged nose, so typical of the Dukes of Southwesterland, there began to appear on his face the

broad nostril and hollow bridge of his grandfather Timothy. No illustrious line of politicians was promised a

continuator in that graying blue eye, for it was acquiring the expression of the orb of a particularly

objectionable cousin of his own; and, instead of the mouthcurves which had thrilled Parliamentary

audiences in speeches now bound in calf in every wellordered library, there was the bull lip of that very

uncle of his who had had the misfortune with the signature of a gentleman's will, and had been transported for

To think how he himself, too, had sinned in this same matter of a will for this mere fleshly reproduction of a

wretched old uncle whose very name he wished to forget! The boy's Christian name, even, was an imposture

and an irony, for it implied hereditary force and brilliancy to which he plainly would never attain. The

consolation of real sonship was always left him certainly; but he could not help groaning to himself, 'Why

The Marquis was shortly afterwards in the neighbourhood of Stapleford, and Timothy Petrick met him, and

eyed his noble countenance admiringly. The next day, when Petrick was in his study, somebody knocked at

'I'll Rupert thee, you young impostor! Say, only a poor commonplace Petrick!' his father grunted. 'Why didn't

you have a voice like the Marquis's I saw yesterday?' he continued, as the lad came in. 'Why haven't you his

As the narrator paused, the surgeon, the Colonel, the historian, the Spark, and others exclaimed that such

subtle and instructive psychological studies as this (now that psychology was so much in demand) were

precisely the tales they desired, as members of a scientific club, and begged the mastermaltster to tell

The maltster shook his head, and feared he was not genteel enough to tell another story with a sufficiently

moral tone in it to suit the club; he would prefer to leave the next to a better man.

The Colonel had fallen into reflection. True it was, he observed, that the more dreamy and impulsive nature

of woman engendered within her erratic fancies, which often started her on strange tracks, only to abandon

them in sharp revulsion at the dictates of her common sensesometimes with ludicrous effect. Events which

had caused a lady's action to set in a particular direction might continue to enforce the same line of conduct,

while she, like a mangle, would start on a sudden in a contrary course, and end where she began.

The VicePresident laughed, and applauded the Colonel, adding that there surely lurked a story somewhere

The Colonel fixed his face to a good narrative pose, and went on without further preamble.

It was in the time of the great Civil Warif I should not rather, as a loyal subject, call it, with Clarendon, the

Great Rebellion. It was, I say, at that unhappy period of our history, that towards the autumn of a particular

year, the Parliament forces sat down before Sherton Castle with over seven thousand foot and four pieces of

cannon. The Castle, as we all know, was in that century owned and occupied by one of the Earls of Severn,

and garrisoned for his assistance by a certain noble Marquis who commanded the King's troops in these parts.

The said Earl, as well as the young Lord Baxby, his eldest son, were away from home just now, raising forces

for the King elsewhere. But there were present in the Castle, when the besiegers arrived before it, the son's

fair wife Lady Baxby, and her servants, together with some friends and near relatives of her husband; and the

The Parliamentary forces were also commanded by a noble lordfor the nobility were by no means, at this

stage of the war, all on the King's sideand it had been observed during his approach in the nighttime, and

in the morning when the reconnoitring took place, that he appeared sad and much depressed. The truth was

that, by a strange freak of destiny, it had come to pass that the stronghold he was set to reduce was the home

of his own sister, whom he had tenderly loved during her maidenhood, and whom he loved now, in spite of

the estrangement which had resulted from hostilities with her husband's family. He believed, too, that,

His hesitation to point his ordnance at the walls was inexplicable to those who were strangers to his family

history. He remained in the field on the north side of the Castle (called by his name to this day because of his

encampment there) till it occurred to him to send a messenger to his sister Anna with a letter, in which he

earnestly requested her, as she valued her life, to steal out of the place by the little gate to the south, and make

Shortly after he saw, to his great surprise, coming from the front of the Castle walls a lady on horseback, with

a single attendant. She rode straight forward into the field, and up the slope to where his army and tents were

spread. It was not till she got quite near that he discerned her to be his sister Anna; and much was he alarmed

that she should have run such risk as to sally out in the face of his forces without knowledge of their

proceedings, when at any moment their first discharge might have burst forth, to her own destruction in such

exposure. She dismounted before she was quite close to him, and he saw that her familiar face, though pale,

was not at all tearful, as it would have been in their younger days. Indeed, if the particulars as handed down

are to be believed, he was in a more tearful state than she, in his anxiety about her. He called her into his tent,

out of the gaze of those around; for though many of the soldiers were honest and seriousminded men, he

could not bear that she who had been his dear companion in childhood should be exposed to curious

When they were alone in the tent he clasped her in his arms, for he had not seen her since those happier days

when, at the commencement of the war, her husband and himself had been of the same mind about the

arbitrary conduct of the King, and had little dreamt that they would not go to extremes together. She was the

'William, I have come to you,' said she, 'but not to save myself as you suppose. Why, oh, why do you persist

'Say not that,' he replied hastily. 'If truth hides at the bottom of a well, why should you suppose justice to be

in high places? I am for the right at any price. Anna, leave the Castle; you are my sister; come away, my dear,

'Never!' says she. 'Do you plan to carry out this attack, and level the Castle indeed?'

'Then you will find the bones of your sister buried in the ruins you cause!' said she. And without another

'Annaabide with me!' he entreated. 'Blood is thicker than water, and what is there in common between you

But she shook her head and would not hear him and hastening out, mounted her horse, and returned towards

the Castle as she had come. Ay, many's the time when I have been riding to hounds across that field that I

When she had quite gone down the field, and over the intervening ground, and round the bastion, so that he

could no longer even see the tip of her mare's white tail, he was much more deeply moved by emotions

concerning her and her welfare than he had been while she was before him. He wildly reproached himself

that he had not detained her by force for her own good, so that, come what might, she would be under his

protection and not under that of her husband, whose impulsive nature rendered him too open to instantaneous

impressions and sudden changes of plan; he was now acting in this cause and now in that, and lacked the cool

judgment necessary for the protection of a woman in these troubled times. Her brother thought of her words

again and again, and sighed, and even considered if a sister were not of more value than a principle, and if he

The delay of the besiegers in attacking the Castle was said to be entirely owing to this distraction on the part

of their leader, who remained on the spot attempting some indecisive operations, and parleying with the

Marquis, then in command, with far inferior forces, within the Castle. It never occurred to him that in the

meantime the young Lady Baxby, his sister, was in much the same mood as himself. Her brother's familiar

voice and eyes, much worn and fatigued by keeping the field, and by family distractions on account of this

unhappy feud, rose upon her vision all the afternoon, and as day waned she grew more and more

Parliamentarian in her principles, though the only arguments which had addressed themselves to her were

Her husband, General Lord Baxby, had been expected to return all the day from his excursion into the east of

the county, a message having been sent to him informing him of what had happened at home; and in the

evening he arrived with reinforcements in unexpected numbers. Her brother retreated before these to a hill

near Ivell, four or five miles off, to afford the men and himself some repose. Lord Baxby duly placed his

forces, and there was no longer any immediate danger. By this time Lady Baxby's feelings were more

Parliamentarian than ever, and in her fancy the fagged countenance of her brother, beaten back by her

husband, seemed to reproach her for heartlessness. When her husband entered her apartment, ruddy and

boisterous, and full of hope, she received him but sadly; and upon his casually uttering some slighting words

about her brother's withdrawal, which seemed to convey an imputation upon his courage, she resented them,

and retorted that he, Lord Baxby himself, had been against the Courtparty at first, where it would be much

more to his credit if he were at present, and showing her brother's consistency of opinion, instead of

supporting the lying policy of the King (as she called it) for the sake of a barren principle of loyalty, which

was but an empty expression when a King was not at one with his people. The dissension grew bitter between

them, reaching to little less than a hot quarrel, both being quick tempered souls.

Lord Baxby was weary with his long day's march and other excitements, and soon retired to bed. His lady

followed some time after. Her husband slept profoundly, but not so she; she sat brooding by the windowslit,

In the silence between the footfalls of the sentinels she could hear faint sounds of her brother's camp on the

distant hills, where the soldiery had hardly settled as yet into their bivouac since their evening's retreat. The

first frosts of autumn had touched the grass, and shrivelled the more delicate leaves of the creepers; and she

thought of William sleeping on the chilly ground, under the strain of these hardships. Tears flooded her eyes

as she returned to her husband's imputations upon his courage, as if there could be any doubt of Lord

Lord Baxby's long and reposeful breathings in his comfortable bed vexed her now, and she came to a

determination on an impulse. Hastily lighting a taper, she wrote on a scrap of paper:

'Blood is thicker than water, dear WilliamI will come;' and with this in her hand, she went to the door of

the room, and out upon the stairs; on second thoughts turning back for a moment, to put on her husband's hat

and cloaknot the one he was daily wearingthat if seen in the twilight she might at a casual glance appear

as some lad or hangeron of one of the household women; thus accoutred she descended a flight of circular

stairs, at the bottom of which was a door opening upon the terrace towards the west, in the direction of her

brother's position. Her object was to slip out without the sentry seeing her, get to the stables, arouse one of

the varlets, and send him ahead of her along the highway with the note to warn her brother of her approach, to

She was still in the shadow of the wall on the west terrace, waiting for the sentinel to be quite out of the way,

The tones were the tones of a woman. Lady Baxby made no reply, and stood close to the wall.

'My Lord Baxby,' the voice continued; and she could recognize in it the local accent of some girl from the

little town of Sherton, close at hand. 'I be tired of waiting, my dear Lord Baxby! I was afeard you would

'How the wench loves him!' she said to herself, reasoning from the tones of the voice, which were plaintive

and sweet and tender as a bird's. She changed from the homehating truant to the strategic wife in one

'My lord, you told me ten o'clock, and 'tis near twelve now,' continues the other. 'How could ye keep me

waiting so if you love me as you said? I should have stuck to my lover in the Parliament troops if it had not

There was not the least doubt that Lady Baxby had been mistaken for her husband by this intriguing damsel.

Here was a pretty underhand business! Here were sly manoeuvrings! Here was faithlessness! Here was a

precious assignation surprised in the midst! Her wicked husband, whom till this very moment she had ever

Lady Baxby precipitately retreated to the door in the turret, closed it, locked it, and ascended one round of the

staircase, where there was a loophole. 'I am not coming! I, Lord Baxby, despise ye and all your wanton tribe!'

she hissed through the opening; and then crept upstairs, as firmly rooted in Royalist principles as any man in

Her husband still slept the sleep of the weary, wellfed, and well drunken, if not of the just; and Lady

Baxby quickly disrobed herself without assistancebeing, indeed, supposed by her woman to have retired to

rest long ago. Before lying down, she noiselessly locked the door and placed the key under her pillow. More

than that, she got a staylace, and, creeping up to her lord, in great stealth tied the lace in a tight knot to one of

his long locks of hair, attaching the other end of the lace to the bedpost; for, being tired herself now, she

feared she might sleep heavily; and, if her husband should wake, this would be a delicate hint that she had

It is added that, to make assurance trebly sure, her gentle ladyship, when she had lain down to rest, held her

lord's hand in her own during the whole of the night. But this is oldwives' gossip, and not corroborated.

What Lord Baxby thought and said when he awoke the next morning, and found himself so strangely

tethered, is likewise only matter of conjecture; though there is no reason to suppose that his rage was great.

The extent of his culpability as regards the intrigue was this much; that, while halting at a cross road near

Sherton that day, he had flirted with a pretty young woman, who seemed nothing loth, and had invited her to

the Castle terrace after darkan invitation which he quite forgot on his arrival home.

The subsequent relations of Lord and Lady Baxby were not again greatly embittered by quarrels, so far as is

known; though the husband's conduct in later life was occasionally eccentric, and the vicissitudes of his

public career culminated in long exile. The siege of the Castle was not regularly undertaken till two or three

years later than the time I have been describing, when Lady Baxby and all the women therein, except the wife

of the then Governor, had been removed to safe distance. That memorable siege of fifteen days by Fairfax,

and the surrender of the old place on an August evening, is matter of history, and need not be told by me.

The Man of Family spoke approvingly across to the Colonel when the Club had done smiling, declaring that

the story was an absolutely faithful page of history, as he had good reason to know, his own people having

been engaged in that wellknown scrimmage. He asked if the Colonel had ever heard the equally

wellauthenticated, though less martial tale of a certain Lady Penelope, who lived in the same century, and

The Colonel had not heard it, nor had anybody except the local historian; and the inquirer was induced to

In going out of Casterbridge by the lowlying road which eventually conducts to the town of Ivell, you see

on the right hand an ivied manorhouse, flanked by battlemented towers, and more than usually distinguished

by the size of its many mullioned windows. Though still of good capacity, the building is much reduced from

its original grand proportions; it has, moreover, been shorn of the fair estate which once appertained to its

lord, with the exception of a few acres of parkland immediately around the mansion. This was formerly the

seat of the ancient and knightly family of the Drenghards, or Drenkhards, now extinct in the male line, whose

name, according to the local chronicles, was interpreted to mean Strenuus Miles, vel Potator, though certain

members of the family were averse to the latter signification, and a duel was fought by one of them on that

In the early part of the reign of the first King James, there was visiting near this place of the Drenghards a

lady of noble family and extraordinary beauty. She was of the purest descent; ah, there's seldom such blood

nowadays as hers! She possessed no great wealth, it was said, but was sufficiently endowed. Her beauty was

so perfect, and her manner so entrancing, that suitors seemed to spring out of the ground wherever she went,

a sufficient cause of anxiety to the Countess her mother, her only living parent. Of these there were three in

particular, whom neither her mother's complaints of prematurity, nor the ready raillery of the maiden herself,

could effectually put off. The said gallants were a certain Sir John Gale, a Sir William Hervy, and the

wellknown Sir George Drenghard, one of the Drenghard family beforementioned. They had, curiously

enough, all been equally honoured with the distinction of knighthood, and their schemes for seeing her were

manifold, each fearing that one of the others would steal a march over himself. Not content with calling, on

every imaginable excuse, at the house of the relative with whom she sojourned, they intercepted her in rides

and in walks; and if any one of them chanced to surprise another in the act of paying her marked attentions,

the encounter often ended in an altercation of great violence. So heated and impassioned, indeed, would they

become, that the lady hardly felt herself safe in their company at such times, notwithstanding that she was a

brave and buxom damsel, not easily put out, and with a daring spirit of humour in her composition, if not of

At one of these altercations, which had place in her relative's grounds, and was unusually bitter, threatening

to result in a duel, she found it necessary to assert herself. Turning haughtily upon the pair of disputants, she

declared that whichever should be the first to break the peace between them, no matter what the provocation,

that man should never be admitted to her presence again; and thus would she effectually stultify the aggressor

While the two knights were wearing rather a crestfallen appearance at her reprimand, the third, never far off,

came upon the scene, and she repeated her caveat to him also. Seeing, then, how great was the concern of all

at her peremptory mood, the lady's manner softened, and she said with a roguish smile

'Have patience, have patience, you foolish men! Only bide your time quietly, and, in faith, I will marry you

They laughed heartily at this sally, all three together, as though they were the best of friends; at which she

blushed, and showed some embarrassment, not having realized that her arch jest would have sounded so

strange when uttered. The meeting which resulted thus, however, had its good effect in checking the

bitterness of their rivalry; and they repeated her speech to their relatives and acquaintance with a hilarious

frequency and publicity that the lady little divined, or she might have blushed and felt more embarrassment

In the course of time the position resolved itself, and the beauteous Lady Penelope (as she was called) made

up her mind; her choice being the eldest of the three knights, Sir George Drenghard, owner of the mansion

aforesaid, which thereupon became her home; and her husband being a pleasant man, and his family, though

not so noble, of as good repute as her own, all things seemed to show that she had reckoned wisely in

But what may lie behind the still and silent veil of the future none can foretell. In the course of a few months

the husband of her choice died of his convivialities (as if, indeed, to bear out his name), and the Lady

Penelope was left alone as mistress of his house. By this time she had apparently quite forgotten her careless

declaration to her lovers collectively; but the lovers themselves had not forgotten it; and, as she would now be

free to take a second one of them, Sir John Gale appeared at her door as early in her widowhood as it was

She gave him little encouragement; for, of the two remaining, her best beloved was Sir William, of whom, if

the truth must be told, she had often thought during her short married life. But he had not yet reappeared. Her

heart began to be so much with him now that she contrived to convey to him, by indirect hints through his

friends, that she would not be displeased by a renewal of his former attentions. Sir William, however,

misapprehended her gentle signalling, and from excellent, though mistaken motives of delicacy, delayed to

intrude himself upon her for a long time. Meanwhile Sir John, now created a baronet, was unremitting, and

she began to grow somewhat piqued at the backwardness of him she secretly desired to be forward.

'Never mind,' her friends said jestingly to her (knowing of her humorous remark, as everybody did, that she

would marry them all three if they would have patience)'never mind; why hesitate upon the order of them?

This vexed her still more, and regretting deeply, as she had often done, that such a careless speech should

ever have passed her lips, she fairly broke down under Sir John's importunity, and accepted his hand. They

were married on a fine spring morning, about the very time at which the unfortunate Sir William discovered

her preference for him, and was beginning to hasten home from a foreign court to declare his unaltered

If Sir William suffered at her precipitancy under what she had deemed his neglect, the Lady Penelope herself

suffered more. She had not long been the wife of Sir John Gale before he showed a disposition to retaliate

upon her for the trouble and delay she had put him to in winning her. With increasing frequency he would tell

her that, as far as he could perceive, she was an article not worth such labour as he had bestowed in obtaining

it, and such snubbings as he had taken from his rivals on the same account. These and other cruel things he

repeated till he made the lady weep sorely, and wellnigh broke her spirit, though she had formerly been such

a mettlesome dame. By degrees it became perceptible to all her friends that her life was a very unhappy one;

and the fate of the fair woman seemed yet the harder in that it was her own stately mansion, left to her sole

use by her first husband, which her second had entered into and was enjoying, his being but a mean and

But such is the flippancy of friends that when she met them, and secretly confided her grief to their ears, they

would say cheerily, 'Lord, never mind, my dear; there's a third to come yet!'at which maladroit remark she

would show much indignation, and tell them they should know better than to trifle on so solemn a theme. Yet

that the poor lady would have been only too happy to be the wife of the third, instead of Sir John whom she

had taken, was painfully obvious, and much she was blamed for her foolish choice by some people. Sir

William, however, had returned to foreign cities on learning the news of her marriage, and had never been

Two or three years of suffering were passed by Lady Penelope as the despised and chidden wife of this man

Sir John, amid regrets that she had so greatly mistaken him, and sighs for one whom she thought never to see

again, till it chanced that her husband fell sick of some slight ailment. One day after this, when she was

sitting in his room, looking from the window upon the expanse in front, she beheld, approaching the house on

foot, a form she seemed to know well. Lady Penelope withdrew silently from the sickroom, and descended to

the hall, whence, through the doorway, she saw entering between the two round towers, which at that time

flanked the gateway, Sir William Hervy, as she had surmised, but looking thin and travelworn. She

'I was passing through Casterbridge,' he said, with faltering deference, 'and I walked out to ask after your

ladyship's health. I felt that I could do no less; and, of course, to pay my respects to your good husband, my

They could see in each other an emotion which neither wished to express, and they stood thus a long time

'He does not treat 'ee well, I hear,' said Sir William in a low voice. 'May God in Heaven forgive him; but it is

'Nay, but I will speak what I may honestly say,' he answered. 'I am not under your roof, and my tongue is

free. Why didst not wait for me, Penelope, or send to me a more overt letter? I would have travelled night and

'Too late, William; you must not ask it,' said she, endeavouring to quiet him as in old times. 'My husband just

now is unwell. He will grow better in a day or two, maybe. You must call again and see him before you leave

As she said this their eyes met. Each was thinking of her lightsome words about taking the three men in turn;

each thought that two thirds of that promise had been fulfilled. But, as if it were unpleasant to her that this

recollection should have arisen, she spoke again quickly: 'Come again in a day or two, when my husband will

Sir William departed without entering the house, and she returned to Sir John's chamber. He, rising from his

pillow, said, 'To whom hast been talking, wife, in the courtyard? I heard voices there.'

'By G I thought as much!' cried Sir John, drops of perspiration standing on his white face. 'A skulking

villain! A sick man's ears are keen, my lady. I heard that they were loverlike tones, and he called 'ee by your

Christian name. These be your intrigues, my lady, when I am off my legs awhile!'

'On my honour,' cried she, 'you do me a wrong. I swear I did not know of his coming!'

'Swear as you will,' said Sir John, 'I don't believe 'ee.' And with this he taunted her, and worked himself into a

greater passion, which much increased his illness. His lady sat still, brooding. There was that upon her face

which had seldom been there since her marriage; and she seemed to think anew of what she had so lightly

said in the days of her freedom, when her three lovers were one and all coveting her hand. 'I began at the

It was somewhat strange that after this day, while she went about the house with even a sadder face than

usual, her churlish husband grew worse; and what was more, to the surprise of all, though to the regret of

few, he died a fortnight later. Sir William had not called upon him as he had promised, having received a

private communication from Lady Penelope, frankly informing him that to do so would be inadvisable, by

Now when Sir John was gone, and his remains carried to his family buryingplace in another part of

England, the lady began in due time to wonder whither Sir William had betaken himself. But she had been

cured of precipitancy (if ever woman were), and was prepared to wait her whole lifetime a widow if the said

Sir William should not reappear. Her life was now passed mostly within the walls, or in promenading

between the pleasaunce and the bowlinggreen; and she very seldom went even so far as the high road which

then skirted the grounds on the north, though it has now, and for many years, been diverted to the south side.

Her patience was rewarded (if love be in any case a reward); for one day, many months after her second

husband's death, a messenger arrived at her gate with the intelligence that Sir William Hervy was again in

Casterbridge, and would be glad to know if it were her pleasure that he should wait upon her.

It need hardly be said that permission was joyfully granted, and within two hours her lover stood before her, a

more thoughtful man than formerly, but in all essential respects the same man, generous, modest to

diffidence, and sincere. The reserve which womanly decorum threw over her manner was but too obviously

artificial, and when he said 'the ways of Providence are strange,' and added after a moment, 'and merciful

likewise,' she could not conceal her agitation, and burst into tears upon his neck.

'But no,' said he. 'You are eleven months gone in widowhood, and it is not as if Sir John had been a good

His visits grew pretty frequent now, as may well be guessed, and in a month or two he began to urge her to an

'Why?' said he. 'Surely I have waited long! Life is short; we are getting older every day, and I am the last of

'Yes,' said the lady frankly. 'And that is why I would not have you hasten. Our marriage may seem so strange

to everybody, after my unlucky remark on that occasion we know so well, and which so many others know

On this representation he conceded a little space, for the sake of her good name. But the destined day of their

marriage at last arrived, and it was a gay time for the villagers and all concerned, and the bells in the parish

church rang from noon till night. Thus at last she was united to the man who had loved her the most tenderly

of them all, who but for his reticence might perhaps have been the first to win her. Often did he say to

himself; 'How wondrous that her words should have been fulfilled! Many a truth hath been spoken in jest, but

never a more remarkable one!' The noble lady herself preferred not to dwell on the coincidence, a certain

But people will have their say, sensitive souls or none, and their sayings on this third occasion took a singular

shape. 'Surely,' they whispered, 'there is something more than chance in this . . . The death of the first was

possibly natural; but what of the death of the second, who illused her, and whom, loving the third so

Then they pieced together sundry trivial incidents of Sir John's illness, and dwelt upon the indubitable truth

that he had grown worse after her lover's unexpected visit; till a very sinister theory was built up as to the

hand she may have had in Sir John's premature demise. But nothing of this suspicion was said openly, for she

was a lady of noble birthnobler, indeed, than either of her husbandsand what people suspected they

The mansion that she occupied had been left to her for so long a time as she should choose to reside in it, and,

having a regard for the spot, she had coaxed Sir William to remain there. But in the end it was unfortunate;

for one day, when in the full tide of his happiness, he was walking among the willows near the gardens,

where he overheard a conversation between some basketmakers who were cutting the osiers for their use. In

this fatal dialogue the suspicions of the neighbouring townsfolk were revealed to him for the first time.

On his return home Sir William seemed to have aged years. But he said nothing; indeed, it was a thing

impossible. And from that hour a ghastly estrangement began. She could not understand it, and simply

She could coax little more out of him, and in itself there was nothing unnatural in his departure, for he had

been a wanderer from his youth. In a few days he started off, apparently quite another man than he who had

It is not known when, or how, the rumours, which were so thick in the atmosphere around her, actually

reached the Lady Penelope's ears, but that they did reach her there is no doubt. It was impossible that they

should not; the district teemed with them; they rustled in the air like nightbirds of evil omen. Then a reason

for her husband's departure occurred to her appalled mind, and a loss of health became quickly apparent. She

dwindled thin in the face, and the veins in her temples could all be distinctly traced. An inner fire seemed to

be withering her away. Her rings fell off her fingers, and her arms hung like the flails of the threshers, though

they had till lately been so round and so elastic. She wrote to her husband repeatedly, begging him to return

to her; but he, being in extreme and wretched doubt, moreover, knowing nothing of her ill health, and never

suspecting that the rumours had reached her also, deemed absence best, and postponed his return awhile,

At length, however, when the Lady Penelope had given birth to a stillborn child, her mother, the Countess,

addressed a letter to Sir William, requesting him to come back to her if he wished to see her alive; since she

was wasting away of some mysterious disease, which seemed to be rather mental than physical. It was

evident that his motherinlaw knew nothing of the secret, for she lived at a distance; but Sir William

'But you do accuse mesilently!' she gasped. 'I could not write thereonand ask you to hear me. It was too

much, too degrading. But would that I had been less proud! They suspect me of poisoning him, William! But,

oh my dear husband, I am innocent of that wicked crime! He died naturally. I loved youtoo soon; but that

Nothing availed to save her. The worm had gnawed too far into her heart before Sir William's return for

anything to be remedial now; and in a few weeks she breathed her last. After her death the people spoke

louder, and her conduct became a subject of public discussion. A little later on, the physician, who had

attended the late Sir John, heard the rumour, and came down from the place near London to which he latterly

had retired, with the express purpose of calling upon Sir William Hervy, now staying in Casterbridge.

He stated that, at the request of a relative of Sir John's, who wished to be assured on the matter by reason of

its suddenness, he had, with the assistance of a surgeon, made a private examination of Sir John's body

immediately after his decease, and found that it had resulted from purely natural causes. Nobody at this time

had breathed a suspicion of foul play, and therefore nothing was said which might afterwards have

It being thus placed beyond doubt that this beautiful and noble lady had been done to death by a vile scandal

that was wholly unfounded, her husband was stung with a dreadful remorse at the share he had taken in her

misfortunes, and left the country anew, this time never to return alive. He survived her but a few years, and

his body was brought home and buried beside his wife's under the tomb which is still visible in the parish

church. Until lately there was a good portrait of her, in weeds for her first husband, with a cross in her hand,

at the ancestral seat of her family, where she was much pitied, as she deserved to be. Yet there were some

severe enough to sayand these not unjust persons in other respectsthat though unquestionably innocent

of the crime imputed to her, she had shown an unseemly wantonness in contracting three marriages in such

rapid succession; that the untrue suspicion might have been ordered by Providence (who often works

indirectly) as a punishment for her selfindulgence. Upon that point I have no opinion to offer.

The reverend the VicePresident, however, the tale being ended, offered as his opinion that her fate ought to

be quite clearly recognized as a punishment. So thought the Churchwarden, and also the quiet gentleman

sitting near. The latter knew many other instances in point, one of which could be narrated in a few words.

Some fifty years ago, the then Duke of Hamptonshire, fifth of that title, was incontestibly the head man in his

county, and particularly in the neighbourhood of Batton. He came of the ancient and loyal family of

Saxelbye, which, before its ennoblement, had numbered many knightly and ecclesiastical celebrities in its

male line. It would have occupied a painstaking county historian a whole afternoon to take rubbings of the

numerous effigies and heraldic devices graven to their memory on the brasses, tablets, and altar tombs in the

aisle of the parishchurch. The Duke himself, however, was a man little attracted by ancient chronicles in

stone and metal, even when they concerned his own beginnings. He allowed his mind to linger by preference

on the many graceless and unedifying pleasures which his position placed at his command. He could on

occasion close the mouths of his dependents by a good bomblike oath, and he argued doggedly with the

This nobleman's personal appearance was somewhat impressive. His complexion was that of the

copperbeech tree. His frame was stalwart, though slightly stooping. His mouth was large, and he carried an

unpolished sapling as his walkingstick, except when he carried a spud for cutting up any thistle he

encountered on his walks. His castle stood in the midst of a park, surrounded by dusky elms, except to the

southward; and when the moon shone out, the gleaming stone facade, backed by heavy boughs, was visible

from the distant high road as a white spot on the surface of darkness. Though called a castle, the building was

little fortified, and had been erected with greater eye to internal convenience than those crannied places of

defence to which the name strictly appertains. It was a castellated mansion as regular as a chessboard on its

groundplan, ornamented with makebelieve bastions and machicolations, behind which were stacks of

battlemented chimneys. On still mornings, at the firelighting hour, when ghostly house maids stalk the

corridors, and thin streaks of light through the shutterchinks lend startling winks and smiles to ancestors on

canvas, twelve or fifteen thin stems of blue smoke sprouted upwards from these chimneytops, and spread

into a flat canopy on high. Around the site stretched ten thousand acres of good, fat, unimpeachable soil,

plentiful in glades and lawns wherever visible from the castlewindows, and merging in homely arable where

Some way behind the owner of all this came the second man in the parish, the rector, the Honourable and

Reverend Mr. Oldbourne, a widower, over stiff and stern for a clergyman, whose severe white neckcloth,

wellkept gray hair, and rightlined face betokened none of those sympathetic traits whereon depends so

much of a parson's power to do good among his fellowcreatures. The last, farremoved man of the

seriesaltogether the Neptune of these local primaries was the curate, Mr. Alwyn Hill. He was a

handsome young deacon with curly hair, dreamy eyesso dreamy that to look long into them was like

ascending and floating among summer cloudsa complexion as fresh as a flower, and a chin absolutely

beardless. Though his age was about twentyfive, he looked not much over nineteen.

The rector had a daughter called Emmeline, of so sweet and simple a nature that her beauty was discovered,

measured, and inventoried by almost everybody in that part of the country before it was suspected by herself

to exist. She had been bred in comparative solitude; a rencounter with men troubled and confused her.

Whenever a strange visitor came to her father's house she slipped into the orchard and remained till he was

gone, ridiculing her weakness in apostrophes, but unable to overcome it. Her virtues lay in no resistant force

of character, but in a natural inappetency for evil things, which to her were as unmeaning as joints of flesh to

a herbivorous creature. Her charms of person, manner, and mind, had been clear for some time to the

Antinous in orders, and no less so to the Duke, who, though scandalously ignorant of dainty phrases, ever

showing a clumsy manner towards the gentler sex, and, in short, not at all a lady's man, took fire to a degree

that was wellnigh terrible at sudden sight of Emmeline, a short time after she was turned seventeen.

It occurred one afternoon at the corner of a shrubbery between the castle and the rectory, where the Duke was

standing to watch the heaving of a mole, when the fair girl brushed past at a distance of a few yards, in the

full light of the sun, and without hat or bonnet. The Duke went home like a man who had seen a spirit. He

ascended to the picturegallery of his castle, and there passed some time in staring at the bygone beauties of

his line as if he had never before considered what an important part those specimens of womankind had

played in the evolution of the Saxelbye race. He dined alone, drank rather freely, and declared to himself that

Meanwhile there had unfortunately arisen between the curate and this girl some sweet and secret

understanding. Particulars of the attachment remained unknown then and always, but it was plainly not

approved of by her father. His procedure was cold, hard, and inexorable. Soon the curate disappeared from

the parish, almost suddenly, after bitter and hard words had been heard to pass between him and the rector

one evening in the garden, intermingled with which, like the cries of the dying in the din of battle, were the

beseeching sobs of a woman. Not long after this it was announced that a marriage between the Duke and

The weddingday came and passed; and she was a Duchess. Nobody seemed to think of the ousted man

during the day, or else those who thought of him concealed their meditations. Some of the less subservient

ones were disposed to speak in a jocular manner of the august husband and wife, others to make correct and

pretty speeches about them, according as their sex and nature dictated. But in the evening, the ringers in the

belfry, with whom Alwyn had been a favourite, eased their minds a little concerning the gentle young man,

'Don't you see something wrong in it all?' said the third bell as he wiped his face. 'I know well enough where

she would have liked to stable her horses tonight, when they have done their journey.'

'That is, you would know if you could tell where young Mr. Hill is living, which is known to none in the

Yet these friendly cottagers were at this time far from suspecting the real dimensions of Emmeline's misery,

nor was it clear even to those who came into much closer communion with her than they, so well had she

concealed her heartsickness. But bride and bridegroom had not long been home at the castle when the young

wife's unhappiness became plainly enough perceptible. Her maids and men said that she was in the habit of

turning to the wainscot and shedding stupid scalding tears at a time when a rightminded lady would have

been overhauling her wardrobe. She prayed earnestly in the great churchpew, where she sat lonely and

insignificant as a mouse in a cell, instead of counting her rings, falling asleep, or amusing herself in silent

laughter at the queer old people in the congregation, as previous beauties of the family had done in their time.

She seemed to care no more for eating and drinking out of crystal and silver than from a service of earthen

vessels. Her head was, in truth, full of something else; and that such was the case was only too obvious to the

Duke, her husband. At first he would only taunt her for her folly in thinking of that milkandwater parson;

but as time went on his charges took a more positive shape. He would not believe her assurance that she had

in no way communicated with her former lover, nor he with her, since their parting in the presence of her

father. This led to some strange scenes between them which need not be detailed; their result was soon to take

One dark quiet evening, about two months after the marriage, a man entered the gate admitting from the

highway to the park and avenue which ran up to the house. He arrived within two hundred yards of the walls,

when he left the gravelled drive and drew near to the castle by a roundabout path leading into a shrubbery.

Here he stood still. In a few minutes the strokes of the castleclock resounded, and then a female figure

entered the same secluded nook from an opposite direction. There the two indistinct persons leapt together

like a pair of dewdrops on a leaf; and then they stood apart, facing each other, the woman looking down.

'Emmeline, you begged me to come, and here I am, Heaven forgive me!' said the man hoarsely.

'You are going to emigrate, Alwyn,' she said in broken accents. 'I have heard of it; you sail from Plymouth in

'My life is even worseworse than death. Death would not have driven me to this extremity. Listen,

AlwynI have sent for you to beg to go with you, or at least to be near youto do anything so that it be not

'Yes, yesor under your direction, or by your help in some way! Don't be horrified at meyou must bear

with me whilst I implore it. Nothing short of cruelty would have driven me to this. I could have borne my

doom in silence had I been left unmolested; but he tortures me, and I shall soon be in the grave if I cannot

To his shocked inquiry how her husband tortured her, the Duchess said that it was by jealousy. 'He tries to

wring admissions from me concerning you,' she said, 'and will not believe that I have not communicated with

you since my engagement to him was settled by my father, and I was forced to agree to it.'

The poor curate said that this was the heaviest news of all. 'He has not personally illused you?' he asked.

She looked fearfully around, and said, sobbing: 'In trying to make me confess to what I have never done, he

adopts plans I dare not describe for terrifying me into a weak state, so that I may own to anything! I resolved

to write to you, as I had no other friend.' She added, with dreary irony, 'I thought I would give him some

'Do you really mean, Emmeline,' he tremblingly inquired, 'that you that you want to fly with me?'

'Can you think that I would act otherwise than in earnest at such a time as this?'

'It CANNOT be sin, for I have never wanted to commit sin in my life; and it isn't likely I would begin now,

'Alwyn, Alwyn, take me, I beseech you!' she burst out. 'It is not right in general, I know, but it is such an

exceptional instance, this. Why has such a severe strain been put upon me? I was doing no harm, injuring no

one, helping many people, and expecting happiness; yet trouble came. Can it be that God holds me in

derision? I had no supporterI gave way; and now my life is a burden and a shame to me . . . Oh, if you only

knew how much to me this request to you ishow my life is wrapped up in it, you could not deny me!'

'This is almost beyond enduranceHeaven support us,' he groaned. 'Emmy, you are the Duchess of

'And am I then refused?Oh, am I refused?' she cried frantically. 'Alwyn, Alwyn, do you say it indeed to

'Yes, I do, dear, tender heart! I do most sadly say it. You must not go. Forgive me, for there is no alternative

but refusal. Though I die, though you die, we must not fly together. It is forbidden in God's law. Goodbye,

He tore himself away, hastened from the shrubbery, and vanished among the trees.

Three days after this meeting and farewell, Alwyn, his soft, handsome features stamped with a haggard

hardness that ten years of ordinary wear and tear in the world could scarcely have produced, sailed from

Plymouth on a drizzling morning, in the passengership Western Glory. When the land had faded behind him

he mechanically endeavoured to school himself into a stoical frame of mind. His attempt, backed up by the

strong moral staying power that had enabled him to resist the passionate temptation to which Emmeline, in

her reckless trustfulness, had exposed him, was rewarded by a certain kind of success, though the murmuring

stretch of waters whereon he gazed day after day too often seemed to be articulating to him in tones of her

He framed on his journey rules of conduct for reducing to mild proportions the feverish regrets which would

occasionally arise and agitate him, when he indulged in visions of what might have been had he not

hearkened to the whispers of conscience. He fixed his thoughts for so many hours a day on philosophical

passages in the volumes he had brought with him, allowing himself now and then a few minutes' thought of

Emmeline, with the strict yet reluctant niggardliness of an ailing epicure proportioning the rank drinks that

cause his malady. The voyage was marked by the usual incidents of a sailingpassage in those daysa

storm, a calm, a man overboard, a birth, and a funeralthe latter sad event being one in which he, as the only

clergyman on board, officiated, reading the service ordained for the purpose. The ship duly arrived at Boston

early in the month following, and thence he proceeded to Providence to seek out a distant relative.

After a short stay at Providence he returned again to Boston, and by applying himself to a serious occupation

made good progress in shaking off the dreary melancholy which enveloped him even now. Distracted and

weakened in his beliefs by his recent experiences, he decided that he could not for a time worthily fill the

office of a minister of religion, and applied for the mastership of a school. Some introductions, given him

before starting, were useful now, and he soon became known as a respectable scholar and gentleman to the

trustees of one of the colleges. This ultimately led to his retirement from the school and installation in the

Here and thus he lived on, exerting himself solely because of a conscientious determination to do his duty. He

passed his winter evenings in turning sonnets and elegies, often giving his thoughts voice in 'Lines to an

Unfortunate Lady,' while his summer leisure at the same hour would be spent in watching the lengthening

shadows from his window, and fancifully comparing them with the shades of his own life. If he walked, he

mentally inquired which was the eastern quarter of the landscape, and thought of two thousand miles of water

that way, and of what was beyond it. In a word he was at all spare times dreaming of her who was only a

Nine years passed by, and under their wear and tear Alwyn Hill's face lost a great many of the attractive

characteristics which had formerly distinguished it. He was kind to his pupils and affable to all who came in

contact with him; but the kernel of his life, his secret, was kept as snugly shut up as though he had been

dumb. In talking to his acquaintances of England and his life there, he omitted the episode of Batton Castle

and Emmeline as if it had no existence in his calendar at all. Though of towering importance to himself, it

had filled but a short and small fragment of time, an ephemeral season which would have been wellnigh

imperceptible, even to him, at this distance, but for the incident it enshrined.

One day, at this date, when cursorily glancing over an old English newspaper, he observed a paragraph

which, short as it was, contained for him whole tomes of thrilling informationrung with more

passionstirring rhythm than the collected cantos of all the poets. It was an announcement of the death of the

The current of Alwyn's thoughts now completely changed. On looking again at the newspaper he found it to

be one that was sent him long ago, and had been carelessly thrown aside. But for an accidental overhauling of

the waste journals in his study he might not have known of the event for years. At this moment of reading the

Duke had already been dead seven months. Alwyn could now no longer bind himself down to machinemade

synecdoche, antithesis, and climax, being full of spontaneous specimens of all these rhetorical forms, which

he dared not utter. Who shall wonder that his mind luxuriated in dreams of a sweet possibility now laid open

for the first time these many years? for Emmeline was to him now as ever the one dear thing in all the world.

The issue of his silent romancing was that he resolved to return to her at the very earliest moment.

But he could not abandon his professional work on the instant. He did not get really quite free from

engagements till four months later; but, though suffering throes of impatience continually, he said to himself

every day: 'If she has continued to love me nine years she will love me ten; she will think the more tenderly

of me when her present hours of solitude shall have done their proper work; old times will revive with the

The enforced interval soon passed, and he duly arrived in England, reaching the village of Batton on a certain

winter day between twelve and thirteen months subsequent to the time of the Duke's death.

It was evening; yet such was Alwyn's impatience that he could not forbear taking, this very night, one look at

the castle which Emmeline had entered as unhappy mistress ten years before. He threaded the park trees,

gazed in passing at wellknown outlines which rose against the dim sky, and was soon interested in

observing that lively countrypeople, in parties of two and three, were walking before and behind him up the

interlaced avenue to the castle gateway. Knowing himself to be safe from recognition, Alwyn inquired of one

'Her Grace gives her tenantry a ball tonight, to keep up the old custom of the Duke and his father before

'Quite alone. But though she doesn't receive company herself, she likes the village people to enjoy

On reaching the castle he found that the great gates at the tradesmen's entrance were thrown back against the

wall as if they were never to be closed again; that the passages and rooms in that wing were brilliantly lighted

up, some of the numerous candles guttering down over the green leaves which decorated them, and upon the

silk dresses of the happy farmers' wives as they passed beneath, each on her husband's arm. Alwyn found no

difficulty in marching in along with the rest, the castle being Liberty Hall tonight. He stood unobserved in a

'Her Grace, though hardly out of mourning, will be sure to come down and lead off the dance with neighbour

'An old man she respects muchthe oldest of her tenantfarmers. He was seventyeight his last birthday.'

The dancers formed in line, and waited. A door opened at the farther end of the hall, and a lady in black silk

'Who is that lady?' said Alwyn, in a puzzled tone. 'I thought you told me that the Duchess of

'But she is not the Duchess of Hamptonshirewho used to' Alwyn's tongue stuck to his mouth, he could

'What's the matter?' said his acquaintance. Alwyn had retired, and was supporting himself against the wall.

The wretched Alwyn murmured something about a stitch in his side from walking. Then the music struck up,

the dance went on, and his neighbour became so interested in watching the movements of this strange

It gave him an opportunity to brace himself up. He was a man who had suffered, and he could suffer again.

'How came that person to be your Duchess?' he asked in a firm, distinct voice, when he had attained complete

selfcommand. 'Where is her other Grace of Hamptonshire? There certainly was another. I know it.'

'Oh, the previous one! Yes, yes. She ran away years and years ago with the young curate. Mr. Hill was the

'Yes, she certainly ran away. She met the curate in the shrubbery about a couple of months after her marriage

with the Duke. There were folks who saw the meeting and heard some words of their talk. They arranged to

'Then 'tis the queerest lie ever told by man. Her father believed and knew to his dying day that she went with

him; and so did the Duke, and everybody about here. Ay, there was a fine upset about it at the time. The

'He traced her to Plymouth, and set on his spies; and they found that she went to the shippingoffice, and

inquired if Mr. Alwyn Hill had entered his name as passenger by the Western Glory; and when she found that

he had, she booked herself for the same ship, but not in her real name. When the vessel had sailed a letter

reached the Duke from her, telling him what she had done. She never came back here again. His Grace lived

by himself a number of years, and married this lady only twelve months before he died.'

Alwyn was in a state of indescribable bewilderment. But, unmanned as he was, he called the next day on the,

to him, spurious Duchess of Hamptonshire. At first she was alarmed at his statement, then cold, then she was

won over by his condition to give confidence for confidence. She showed him a letter which had been found

among the papers of the late Duke, corroborating what Alwyn's informant had detailed. It was from

Emmeline, bearing the postmarked date at which the Western Glory sailed, and briefly stated that she had

Alwyn applied himself body and mind to unravel the remainder of the mystery. The story repeated to him

was always the same: 'She ran away with the curate.' A strangely circumstantial piece of intelligence was

added to this when he had pushed his inquiries a little further. There was given him the name of a waterman

at Plymouth, who had come forward at the time that she was missed and sought for by her husband, and had

stated that he put her on board the Western Glory at dusk one evening before that vessel sailed.

After several days of search about the alleys and quays of Plymouth Barbican, during which these impossible

words, 'She ran off with the curate,' became branded on his brain, Alwyn found this important waterman. He

was positive as to the truth of his story, still remembering the incident well, and he described in detail the

lady's dress, as he had long ago described it to her husband, which description corresponded in every

Before proceeding to the other side of the Atlantic to continue his inquiries there, the puzzled and distracted

Alwyn set himself to ascertain the address of Captain Wheeler, who had commanded the Western Glory in

the year of Alwyn's voyage out, and immediately wrote a letter to him on the subject.

The only circumstances which the sailor could recollect or discover from his papers in connection with such a

story were, that a woman bearing the name which Alwyn had mentioned as fictitious certainly did come

aboard for a voyage he made about that time; that she took a common berth among the poorest emigrants;

that she died on the voyage out, at about five days' sail from Plymouth; that she seemed a lady in manners

and education. Why she had not applied for a firstclass passage, why she had no trunks, they could not

guess, for though she had little money in her pocket she had that about her which would have fetched it. 'We

buried her at sea,' continued the captain. 'A young parson, one of the cabinpassengers, read the

The whole scene and proceedings darted upon Alwyn's recollection in a moment. It was a fine breezy

morning on that longpast voyage out, and he had been told that they were running at the rate of a hundred

and odd miles a day. The news went round that one of the poor young women in the other part of the vessel

was ill of fever, and delirious. The tidings caused no little alarm among all the passengers, for the sanitary

conditions of the ship were anything but satisfactory. Shortly after this the doctor announced that she had

died. Then Alwyn had learnt that she was laid out for burial in great haste, because of the danger that would

have been incurred by delay. And next the funeral scene rose before him, and the prominent part that he had

taken in that solemn ceremony. The captain had come to him, requesting him to officiate, as there was no

chaplain on board. This he had agreed to do; and as the sun went down with a blaze in his face he read amidst

them all assembled: 'We therefore commit her body to the deep, to be turned into corruption, looking for the

The captain also forwarded the addresses of the ship's matron and of other persons who had been engaged on

board at the date. To these Alwyn went in the course of time. A categorical description of the clothes of the

dead truant, the colour of her hair, and other things, extinguished for ever all hope of a mistake in identity.

At last, then, the course of events had become clear. On that unhappy evening when he left Emmeline in the

shrubbery, forbidding her to follow him because it would be a sin, she must have disobeyed. She must have

followed at his heels silently through the darkness, like a poor pet animal that will not be driven back. She

could have accumulated nothing for the journey more than she might have carried in her hand; and thus

poorly provided she must have embarked. Her intention had doubtless been to make her presence on board

Thus the ten years' chapter of Alwyn Hill's romance wound itself up under his eyes. That the poor young

woman in the steerage had been the young Duchess of Hamptonshire was never publicly disclosed. Hill had

no longer any reason for remaining in England, and soon after left its shores with no intention to return.

Previous to his departure he confided his story to an old friend from his native towngrandfather of the

A few members, including the Bookworm, seemed to be impressed by the quiet gentleman's tale; but the

member we have called the Spark who, by the way, was getting somewhat tinged with the light of other

days, and owned to eightandthirtywalked daintily about the room instead of sitting down by the fire

with the majority and said that for his part he preferred something more lively than the last story

something in which such longseparated lovers were ultimately united. He also liked stories that were more

Members immediately requested him to give them a specimen, to which the Spark replied that he didn't mind,

as far as that went. And though the VicePresident, the Man of Family, the Colonel, and others, looked at

their watches, and said they must soon retire to their respective quarters in the hotel adjoining, they all

It was a cold and gloomy Christmas Eve. The mass of cloud overhead was almost impervious to such

daylight as still lingered on; the snow lay several inches deep upon the ground, and the slanting downfall

which still went on threatened to considerably increase its thickness before the morning. The Prospect Hotel,

a building standing near the wild north coast of Lower Wessex, looked so lonely and so useless at such a time

as this that a passing wayfarer would have been led to forget summer possibilities, and to wonder at the

commercial courage which could invest capital, on the basis of the popular taste for the picturesque, in a

country subject to such dreary phases. That the district was alive with visitors in August seemed but a dim

tradition in weather so totally opposed to all that tempts mankind from home. However, there the hotel stood

immovable; and the cliffs, creeks, and headlands which were the primary attractions of the spot, rising in full

view on the opposite side of the valley, were now but stern angular outlines, while the townlet in front was

tinged over with a grimy dirtiness rather than the pearly gray that in summer lent such beauty to its

Within the hotel commanding this outlook the landlord walked idly about with his hands in his pockets, not

in the least expectant of a visitor, and yet unable to settle down to any occupation which should compensate

in some degree for the losses that winter idleness entailed on his regular profession. So little, indeed, was

anybody expected, that the coffeeroom waitera genteel boy, whose plated buttons in summer were as

close together upon the front of his short jacket as peas in a podnow appeared in the back yard,

metamorphosed into the unrecognizable shape of a rough country lad in corduroys and hobnailed boots,

sweeping the snow away, and talking the local dialect in all its purity, quite oblivious of the new polite accent

he had learned in the hot weather from the well behaved visitors. The front door was closed, and, as if to

express still more fully the sealed and chrysalis state of the establishment, a sandbag was placed at the

bottom to keep out the insidious snowdrift, the wind setting in directly from that quarter.

The landlord, entering his own parlour, walked to the large fire which it was absolutely necessary to keep up

for his comfort, no such blaze burning in the coffeeroom or elsewhere, and after giving it a stir returned to a

table in the lobby, whereon lay the visitors' booknow closed and pushed back against the wall. He

carelessly opened it; not a name had been entered there since the 19th of the previous November, and that

was only the name of a man who had arrived on a tricycle, who, indeed, had not been asked to enter at all.

While he was engaged thus the evening grew darker; but before it was as yet too dark to distinguish objects

upon the road winding round the back of the cliffs, the landlord perceived a black spot on the distant white,

which speedily enlarged itself and drew near. The probabilities were that this vehiclefor a vehicle of some

sort it seemed to bewould pass by and pursue its way to the nearest railwaytown as others had done. But,

contrary to the landlord's expectation, as he stood conning it through the yet unshuttered windows, the

solitary object, on reaching the corner, turned into the hotelfront, and drove up to the door.

It was a conveyance particularly unsuited to such a season and weather, being nothing more substantial than

an open basketcarriage drawn by a single horse. Within sat two persons, of different sexes, as could soon be

discerned, in spite of their muffled attire. The man held the reins, and the lady had got some shelter from the

storm by clinging close to his side. The landlord rang the hostler's bell to attract the attention of the

stableman, for the approach of the visitors had been deadened to noiselessness by the snow, and when the

hostler had come to the horse's head the gentleman and lady alighted, the landlord meeting them in the hall.

The male stranger was a foreignlooking individual of about eight andtwenty. He was closeshaven,

excepting a moustache, his features being good, and even handsome. The lady, who stood timidly behind

him, seemed to be much youngerpossibly not more than eighteen, though it was difficult to judge either of

The gentleman expressed his wish to stay till the morning, explaining somewhat unnecessarily, considering

that the house was an inn, that they had been unexpectedly benighted on their drive. Such a welcome being

given them as landlords can give in dull times, the latter ordered fires in the drawing and coffeerooms, and

went to the boy in the yard, who soon scrubbed himself up, dragged his disused jacket from its box, polished

the buttons with his sleeve, and appeared civilized in the hall. The lady was shown into a room where she

could take off her snowdamped garments, which she sent down to be dried, her companion, meanwhile,

putting a couple of sovereigns on the table, as if anxious to make everything smooth and comfortable at

starting, and requesting that a private sittingroom might be got ready. The landlord assured him that the best

upstairs parlourusually publicshould be kept private this evening, and sent the maid to light the candles.

Dinner was prepared for them, and, at the gentleman's desire, served in the same apartment; where, the young

lady having joined him, they were left to the rest and refreshment they seemed to need.

That something was peculiar in the relations of the pair had more than once struck the landlord, though

wherein that peculiarity lay it was hard to decide. But that his guest was one who paid his way readily had

been proved by his conduct, and dismissing conjectures, he turned to practical affairs.

About nine o'clock he reentered the hall, and, everything being done for the day, again walked up and down,

occasionally gazing through the glass door at the prospect without, to ascertain how the weather was

progressing. Contrary to prognostication, snow had ceased falling, and, with the rising of the moon, the sky

had partially cleared, light fleeces of cloud drifting across the silvery disk. There was every sign that a frost

was going to set in later on. For these reasons the distant rising road was even more distinct now between its

high banks than it had been in the declining daylight. Not a track or rut broke the virgin surface of the white

mantle that lay along it, all marks left by the lately arrived travellers having been speedily obliterated by the

And now the landlord beheld by the light of the moon a sight very similar to that he had seen by the light of

day. Again a black spot was advancing down the road that margined the coast. He was in a moment or two

enabled to perceive that the present vehicle moved onward at a more headlong pace than the little carriage

which had preceded it; next, that it was a brougham drawn by two powerful horses; next, that this carriage,

like the former one, was bound for the hoteldoor. This desirable feature of resemblance caused the landlord

An old gentleman was the first to alight. He was followed by a young one, and both unhesitatingly came

'Has a young lady, less than nineteen years of age, recently arrived here in the company of a man some years

her senior?' asked the old gentleman, in haste. 'A man cleanly shaven for the most part, having the appearance

'We have had arrivals lately,' said the landlord, in the tone of having had twenty at leastnot caring to

acknowledge the attenuated state of business that afflicted Prospect Hotel in winter.

'And among them can your memory recall two persons such as those I describe?the man a sort of

'There certainly is or was a young couple staying in the hotel; but I could not pronounce on the compass of

'No, no; of course not. I am quite bewildered. They arrived in a basketcarriage, altogether badly provided?'

'Yes, yes. I must see them at once. Pardon my want of ceremony, and show us in to where they are.'

'But, sir, you forget. Suppose the lady and gentleman I mean are not the lady and gentleman you mean? It

would be awkward to allow you to rush in upon them just now while they are at dinner, and might cause me

'True, true. They may not be the same persons. My anxiety, I perceive, makes me rash in my assumptions!'

'Upon the whole, I think they must be the same, Uncle Quantock,' said the young man, who had not till now

spoken. And turning to the landlord: 'You possibly have not such a large assemblage of visitors here, on this

somewhat forbidding evening, that you quite forget how this couple arrived, and what the lady wore?' His

tone of addressing the landlord had in it a quiet frigidity that was not without irony.

'I don't usually take stock of my guests' clothing,' replied the landlord drily, for the ready money of the first

arrival had decidedly biassed him in favour of that gentleman's cause. 'You can certainly see some of it if you

Before the words were half out of his mouth the old gentleman had exclaimed, 'Ah!' and precipitated himself

along what seemed to be the passage to the kitchen; but as this turned out to be only the entrance to a dark

chinacloset, he hastily emerged again, after a collision with the inncrockery had told him of his mistake.

'I beg your pardon, I'm sure; but if you only knew my feelings (which I cannot at present explain), you would

'Don't mention it, sir,' said the landlord. And showing the way, they adjourned to the kitchen without further

parley. The eldest of the party instantly seized the lady's cloak, that hung upon a clotheshorse, exclaiming:

'Yes, it is hers,' answered the nephew quietly, for he was much less excited than his companion.

'William, have the lady and gentleman in the front sittingroom finished dining?'

'Then show up these gentlemen to them at once. You stay here to night, gentlemen, I presume? Shall the

'Feed the horses and wash their mouths. Whether we stay or not depends upon circumstances,' said the placid

'I think, Nephew James,' said the former, as he paused with his foot on the first step'I think we had better

not be announced, but take them by surprise. She may go throwing herself out of the window, or do some

'Yes, certainly, we'll enter unannounced.' And he called back the lad who preceded them.

'I cannot sufficiently thank you, James, for so effectually aiding me in this pursuit!' exclaimed the old

gentleman, taking the other by the hand. 'My increasing infirmities would have hindered my overtaking her

'I am only too happy, uncle, to have been of service to you in this or any other matter. I only wish I could

have accompanied you on a pleasanter journey. However, it is advisable to go up to them at once, or they

On the door being opened, a room too large to be comfortable, lit by the best branchcandlesticks of the

hotel, was disclosed, before the fire of which apartment the truant couple were sitting, very innocently

looking over the hotel scrapbook and the album containing views of the neighbourhood. No sooner had the

old man entered than the young ladywho now showed herself to be quite as young as described, and

remarkably prepossessing as to features perceptibly turned pale. When the nephew entered, she turned still

paler, as if she were going to faint. The young man described as an operasinger rose with grim civility, and

'Yes, worse luck, my lord!' murmured Signor Smithozzi, in native LondonEnglish, that distinguished alien

having, in fact, first seen the light in the vicinity of the City Road. 'She would have been mine tomorrow.

And I think that under the peculiar circumstances it would be wiserconsidering how soon the breath of

'Never!' said the old man. 'Here is a lady under age, without experiencechildlike in her maiden innocence

'Till this morning at dawn you tempted her away from her father's roof. What blame can attach to her conduct

that will not, on a full explanation of the matter, be readily passed over in her and thrown entirely on you?

Laura, you return at once with me. I should not have arrived, after all, early enough to deliver you, if it had

not been for the disinterestedness of your cousin, Captain Northbrook, who, on my discovering your flight

this morning, offered with a promptitude for which I can never sufficiently thank him, to accompany me on

my journey, as the only male relative I have near me. Come, do you hear? Put on your things; we are off at

'I daresay you don't,' replied her father drily. 'But children never know what's best for them. So come along,

Laura was silent, and did not move, the opera gentleman looking helplessly into the fire, and the lady's cousin

sitting meditatively calm, as the single one of the four whose position enabled him to survey the whole

'I say to you, Laura, as the father of a daughter under age, that you instantly come with me. What? Would you

'Now, dear Laura, this is what I say: return with me and your cousin James quietly, like a good and repentant

girl, and nothing will be said. Nobody knows what has happened as yet, and if we start at once, we shall be

Now James, the cousin, during this dialogue might have been observed to grow somewhat restless, and even

impatient. More than once he had parted his lips to speak, but second thoughts each time held him back. The

'Come, madam!' he spoke out, 'this farce with your father has, in my opinion, gone on long enough. Just make

'By the Lord Harry, Laura, I won't stand this!' he said angrily. 'Come, get on your things before I come and

compel you. There is a kind of compulsion to which this talk is child's play. Come, madam instantly, I

The old nobleman turned to his nephew and said mildly: 'Leave me to insist, James. It doesn't become you. I

James, however, did not heed his uncle, and went on to the troublesome young woman: 'You say you don't

want to come, indeed! A pretty story to tell me, that! Come, march out of the room at once, and leave that

hulking fellow for me to deal with afterward. Get on quicklycome!' and he advanced toward her as if to

'Nay, nay,' expostulated Laura's father, much surprised at his nephew's sudden demeanour. 'You take too

'You have no right, James, to address either me or her in this way; so just hold your tongue. Come, my dear.'

'Well, to cut a long story short, I may say that she secretly married me, in spite of your lordship's prohibition,

about three months ago. And I must add that, though she cooled down rather quickly, everything went on

smoothly enough between us for some time; in spite of the awkwardness of meeting only by stealth. We were

only waiting for a convenient moment to break the news to you when this idle Adonis turned up, and after

Here the operatic luminary, who had sat in rather an abstracted and nerveless attitude till the cousin made his

declaration, fired up and cried: 'I declare before Heaven that till this moment I never knew she was a wife! I

found her in her father's house an unhappy girlunhappy, as I believe, because of the loneliness and

dreariness of that establishment, and the want of society, and for nothing else whatever. What this statement

about her being your wife means I am quite at a loss to understand. Are you indeed married to him, Laura?'

Laura nodded from within her tearful handkerchief. 'It was because of my anomalous position in being

privately married to him,' she sobbed, 'that I was unhappy at homeandand I didn't like him so well as I

did at firstand I wished I could get out of the mess I was in! And then I saw you a few times, and when you

said, "We'll run off," I thought I saw a way out of it all, and then I agreed to come with youoooo!'

'Well! well! well! And is this true?' murmured the bewildered old nobleman, staring from James to Laura,

and from Laura to James, as if he fancied they might be figments of the imagination. 'Is this, then, James, the

secret of your kindness to your old uncle in helping him to find his daughter? Good Heavens! What further

'I have married her, Uncle Quantock, as I said,' answered James coolly. 'The deed is done, and can't be

'I don't know. One of the curateswe were quite strangers to the place. So, instead of my assisting you to

'Never! never!' said Lord Quantock. 'Madam, and sir, I beg to tell you that I wash my hands of the whole

affair! If you are man and wife, as it seems you are, get reconciled as best you may. I have no more to say or

do with either of you. I leave you, Laura, in the hands of your husband, and much joy may you bring him;

Saying this, the indignant speaker pushed back his chair against the table with such force that the candlesticks

Laura's wet eyes roved from one of the young men to the other, who now stood glaring face to face, and,

being much frightened at their aspect, slipped out of the room after her father. Him, however, she could hear

going out of the front door, and, not knowing where to take shelter, she crept into the darkness of an

Meanwhile the two men remaining in the sittingroom drew nearer to each other, and the operasinger broke

the silence by saying, 'How could you insult me in the way you did, calling me a fellow, and accusing me of

poisoning her mind toward you, when you knew very well I was as ignorant of your relation to her as an

'Oh yes, you were quite ignorant; I can believe that readily,' sneered Laura's husband.

'Recitativothe rhythm excellent, and the tone well sustained. Is it likely that any man could win the

confidence of a young fool her age, and not get that out of her? Preposterous! Tell it to the most improved

'Captain Northbrook, your insinuations are as despicable as your wretched person!' cried the baritone, losing

all patience. And springing forward he slapped the captain in the face with the palm of his hand.

Northbrook flinched but slightly, and calmly using his handkerchief to learn if his nose was bleeding, said, 'I

quite expected this insult, so I came prepared.' And he drew forth from a black valise which he carried in his

The baritone started at the unexpected sight, but recovering from his surprise said, 'Very well, as you will,'

'Now,' continued the husband, quite confidingly, 'we want no parade, no nonsense, you know. Therefore we'll

'Do you know this part of the country well?' Cousin James went on, in the same cool and still manner. 'If you

don't, I do. Quite at the bottom of the rocks out there, just beyond the stream which falls over them to the

shore, is a smooth sandy space, not so much shut in as to be out of the moonlight; and the way down to it

from this side is over steps cut in the cliff; and we can find our way down without trouble. Wewe

twowill find our way down; but only one of us will find his way up, you understand?'

'Then suppose we start; the sooner it is over the better. We can order supper before we go outsupper for

'We shall be only two by and by; so that, as I say, we will order supper for two; for the lady and a

gentleman. Whichever comes back alive will tap at her door, and call her in to share the repast with

himshe's not off the premises. But we must not alarm her now; and above all things we must not let the

innpeople see us go out; it would look so odd for two to go out, and only one come in. Ha! ha!'

He went softly to the door and downstairs, ordering supper to be ready in an hour, as he had said; then

making a feint of returning to the room again, he beckoned to the singer, and together they slipped out of the

The sky was now quite clear, and the wheelmarks of the brougham which had borne away Laura's father,

Lord Quantock, remained distinctly visible. Soon the verge of the down was reached, the captain leading the

way, and the baritone following silently, casting furtive glances at his companion, and beyond him at the

scene ahead. In due course they arrived at the chasm in the cliff which formed the waterfall. The outlook here

was wild and picturesque in the extreme, and fully justified the many praises, paintings, and photographic

views to which the spot had given birth. What in summer was charmingly green and gray, was now rendered

From their feet the cascade plunged downward almost vertically to a depth of eighty or a hundred feet before

finally losing itself in the sand, and though the stream was but small, its impact upon jutting rocks in its

descent divided it into a hundred spirts and splashes that sent up a mist into the upper air. A few marginal

The operatic artist looked down as he halted, but his thoughts were plainly not of the beauty of the scene. His

companion with the pistols was immediately in front of him, and there was no handrail on the side of the path

toward the chasm. Obeying a quick impulse, he stretched out his arm, and with a superhuman thrust sent

Laura's husband reeling over. A whirling human shape, diminishing downward in the moon's rays farther and

farther toward invisibility, a smack smack upon the projecting ledges of rockat first louder and heavier

than that of the brook, and then scarcely to be distinguished from itthen a cessation, then the splashing of

the stream as before, and the accompanying murmur of the sea, were all the incidents that disturbed the

The singer waited in a fixed attitude for a few minutes, then turning, he rapidly retraced his steps over the

intervening upland toward the road, and in less than a quarter of an hour was at the door of the hotel. Slipping

quietly in as the clock struck ten, he said to the landlord, over the bar hatchway

'The bill as soon as you can let me have it, including charges for the supper that was ordered, though we

cannot stay to eat it, I am sorry to say.' He added with forced gaiety, 'The lady's father and cousin have

thought better of intercepting the marriage, and after quarrelling with each other have gone home

'Well done, sir!' said the landlord, who still sided with this customer in preference to those who had given

trouble and barely paid for baiting the horses. '"Love will find out the way!" as the saying is. Wish you joy,

Signor Smithozzi went upstairs, and on entering the sittingroom found that Laura had crept out from the

dark adjoining chamber in his absence. She looked up at him with eyes red from weeping, and with

'Captain Northbrook has gone back. He says he will have no more to do with you.'

'And I am quite abandoned by them!and they'll forget me, and nobody care about me any more!' She began

'But it is the luckiest thing that could have happened. All is just as it was before they came disturbing us. But,

Laura, you ought to have told me about that private marriage, though it is all the same now; it will be

'We go at once to CliffMartin. The horse has rested thoroughly these last three hours, and he will have no

difficulty in doing an additional halfdozen miles. We shall be there before twelve, and there are late taverns

in the place, no doubt. There we'll sell both horse and carriage tomorrow morning; and go by the coach to

In about ten minutes the horse was put in, the bill paid, the lady's dried wraps put round her, and the journey

When about a mile on their way, they saw a glimmering light in advance of them. 'I wonder what that is?'

said the baritone, whose manner had latterly become nervous, every sound and sight causing him to turn his

'It is only a turnpike,' said she. 'That light is the lamp kept burning over the door.'

On reaching the gate they perceived that a man on foot had approached it, apparently by some more direct

path than the roadway they pursued, and was, at the moment they drew up, standing in conversation with the

'It is quite impossible that he could fall over the cliff by accident or the will of God on such a light night as

this,' the pedestrian was saying. 'These two children I tell you of saw two men go along the path toward the

waterfall, and ten minutes later only one of 'em came back, walking fast, like a man who wanted to get out of

the way because he had done something queer. There is no manner of doubt that he pushed the other man

The candle shone in the face of the Signor and showed that there had arisen upon it a film of ghastliness.

Laura, glancing toward him for a few moments observed it, till, the gatekeeper having mechanically swung

open the gate, her companion drove through, and they were soon again enveloped in the white silence.

Her conductor had said to Laura, just before, that he meant to inquire the way at this turnpike; but he had

As soon as they had gone a little farther the omission, intentional or not, began to cause them some trouble.

Beyond the secluded district which they now traversed ran the more frequented road, where progress would

be easy, the snow being probably already beaten there to some extent by traffic; but they had not yet reached

it, and having no one to guide them their journey began to appear less feasible than it had done before

starting. When the little lane which they had entered ascended another hill, and seemed to wind round in a

direction contrary to the expected route to CliffMartin, the question grew serious. Ever since overhearing

the conversation at the turnpike, Laura had maintained a perfect silence, and had even shrunk somewhat away

'Why don't you talk, Laura,' he said with forced buoyancy, 'and suggest the way we should go?'

'Oh yes, I will,' she responded, a curious fearfulness being audible in her voice.

After this she uttered a few occasional sentences which seemed to persuade him that she suspected nothing.

She answered eagerly: 'I'll hold the reins while you run forward to the top of the ridge, and see if the road

takes a favourable turn beyond. It would give the horse a few minutes' rest, and if you find out no change in

The expedient seemed a good one in the circumstances, especially when recommended by the singular

eagerness of her voice; and placing the reins in her handsa quite unnecessary precaution, considering the

state of their hackhe stepped out and went forward through the snow till she could see no more of him.

No sooner was he gone than Laura, with a rapidity which contrasted strangely with her previous stillness,

made fast the reins to the corner of the phaeton, and slipping out on the opposite side, ran back with all her

might down the hill, till, coming to an opening in the fence, she scrambled through it, and plunged into the

copse which bordered this portion of the lane. Here she stood in hiding under one of the large bushes,

clinging so closely to its umbrage as to seem but a portion of its mass, and listening intently for the faintest

sound of pursuit. But nothing disturbed the stillness save the occasional slipping of gathered snow from the

boughs, or the rustle of some wild animal over the crisp flakebespattered herbage. At length, apparently

convinced that her former companion was either unable to find her, or not anxious to do so, in the present

strange state of affairs, she crept out from the bushes, and in less than an hour found herself again

As she drew near, Laura could see that, far from being wrapped in darkness, as she might have expected,

there were ample signs that all the tenants were on the alert, lights moving about the open space in front.

Satisfaction was expressed in her face when she discerned that no reappearance of her baritone and his

ponycarriage was causing this sensation; but it speedily gave way to grief and dismay when she saw by the

lights the form of a man borne on a stretcher by two others into the porch of the hotel.

'I have caused all this,' she murmured between her quivering lips. 'He has murdered him!' Running forward to

the door, she hastily asked of the first person she met if the man on the stretcher was dead.

'No, miss,' said the labourer addressed, eyeing her up and down as an unexpected apparition. 'He is still alive,

they say, but not sensible. He either fell or was pushed over the waterfall; 'tis thoughted he was pushed. He is

the gentleman who came here just now with the old lord, and went out afterward (as is thoughted) with a

Laura entered the house, and acknowledging without the least reserve that she was the injured man's wife,

had soon installed herself as head nurse by the bed on which he lay. When the two surgeons who had been

sent for arrived, she learned from them that his wounds were so severe as to leave but a slender hope of

recovery, it being little short of miraculous that he was not killed on the spot, which his enemy had evidently

Laura watched all night, but her husband knew nothing of her presence. During the next day he slightly

recognized her, and in the evening was able to speak. He informed the surgeons that, as was surmised, he had

been pushed over the cascade by Signor Smithozzi; but he communicated nothing to her who nursed him, not

even replying to her remarks; he nodded courteously at any act of attention she rendered, and that was all.

In a day or two it was declared that everything favoured his recovery, notwithstanding the severity of his

injuries. Full search was made for Smithozzi, but as yet there was no intelligence of his whereabouts, though

the repentant Laura communicated all she knew. As far as could be judged, he had come back to the carriage

after searching out the way, and finding the young lady missing, had looked about for her till he was tired;

then had driven on to Cliff Martin, sold the horse and carriage next morning, and disappeared, probably by

one of the departing coaches which ran thence to the nearest station, the only difference from his original

During the days and weeks of that long and tedious recovery, Laura watched by her husband's bedside with a

zeal and assiduity which would have considerably extenuated any fault save one of such magnitude as hers.

That her husband did not forgive her was soon obvious. Nothing that she could do in the way of smoothing

pillows, easing his position, shifting bandages, or administering draughts, could win from him more than a

few measured words of thankfulness, such as he would probably have uttered to any other woman on earth

'Dear, dear James,' she said one day, bending her face upon the bed in an excess of emotion. 'How you have

suffered! It has been too cruel. I am more glad you are getting better than I can say. I have prayed for itand

I am sorry for what I have done; I am innocent of the worst, andI hope you will not think me so very bad,

'Oh no. On the contrary, I shall think you very goodas a nurse,' he answered, the caustic severity of his

Somehow or other Signor Smithozzi seemed to be making good his escape. It transpired that he had not taken

a passage in either of the suspected coaches, though he had certainly got out of the county; altogether, the

Not only did Captain Northbrook survive his injuries, but it soon appeared that in the course of a few weeks

he would find himself little if any the worse for the catastrophe. It could also be seen that Laura, while

secretly hoping for her husband's forgiveness for a piece of folly of which she saw the enormity more clearly

every day, was in great doubt as to what her future relations with him would be. Moreover, to add to the

complication, whilst she, as a runaway wife, was unforgiven by her husband, she and her husband, as a

runaway couple, were unforgiven by her father, who had never once communicated with either of them since

his departure from the inn. But her immediate anxiety was to win the pardon of her husband, who possibly

might be bearing in mind, as he lay upon his couch, the familiar words of Brabantio, 'She has deceived her

Matters went on thus till Captain Northbrook was able to walk about. He then removed with his wife to quiet

apartments on the south coast, and here his recovery was rapid. Walking up the cliffs one day, supporting him

by her arm as usual, she said to him, simply, 'James, if I go on as I am going now, and always attend to your

smallest want, and never think of anything but devotion to you, will youtry to like me a little?'

'It is a thing I must carefully consider,' he said, with the same gloomy dryness which characterized all his

He did not tell her that evening, though she lingered long at her routine work of making his bedroom

comfortable, putting the light so that it would not shine into his eyes, seeing him fall asleep, and then retiring

noiselessly to her own chamber. When they met in the morning at breakfast, and she had asked him as usual

how he had passed the night, she added timidly, in the silence which followed his reply, 'Have you

Laura sighed, but to no purpose; and the day wore on with intense heaviness to her, and the customary

The next morning she put the same question, and looked up despairingly in his face, as though her whole life

'I cannot forgive you; no man would. Enough is settled upon you to keep you in comfort, whatever your

'You have absolutely decided?' she asked miserably. 'I have nobody now to cccare for'

'I have absolutely decided,' he shortly returned. 'We had better part here. You will go back to your father.

There is no reason why I should accompany you, since my presence would only stand in the way of the

forgiveness he will probably grant you if you appear before him alone. We will say farewell to each other in

Bowed down with trouble, she withdrew to her room, and the three days were passed by her husband in

writing letters and attending to other businessmatters, saying hardly a word to her the while. The morning of

departure came; but before the horses had been put in to take the severed twain in different directions, out of

sight of each other, possibly for ever, the postman arrived with the morning letters.

There was one for the captain; none for herthere were never any for her. However, on this occasion

something was enclosed for her in his, which he handed her. She read it and looked up helpless.

'My dear fatheris dead!' she said. In a few moments she added, in a whisper, 'I must go to the Manor to

He musingly looked out of the window. 'I suppose it is an awkward and melancholy undertaking for a woman

alone,' he said coldly. 'Well, wellmy poor uncle!Yes, I'll go with you, and see you through the business.'

So they went off together instead of asunder, as planned. It is unnecessary to record the details of the journey,

or of the sad week which followed it at her father's house. Lord Quantock's seat was a fine old mansion

standing in its own park, and there were plenty of opportunities for husband and wife either to avoid each

other, or to get reconciled if they were so minded, which one of them was at least. Captain Northbrook was

not present at the reading of the will. She came to him afterward, and found him packing up his papers,

intending to start next morning, now that he had seen her through the turmoil occasioned by her father's

'He has left me everything that he could!' she said to her husband. 'James, will you forgive me now, and stay?'

He acted up to his word. When she came downstairs the next morning she was told that he had gone.

Laura bore her double bereavement as best she could. The vast mansion in which she had hitherto lived, with

all its historic contents, had gone to her father's successor in the title; but her own was no unhandsome one.

Around lay the undulating park, studded with trees a dozen times her own age; beyond it, the wood; beyond

the wood, the farms. All this fair and quiet scene was hers. She nevertheless remained a lonely, repentant,

depressed being, who would have given the greater part of everything she possessed to ensure the presence

and affection of that husband whose very austerity and phlegmqualities that had formerly led to the

She hoped and hoped again, but all to no purpose. Captain Northbrook did not alter his mind and return. He

was quite a different sort of man from one who altered his mind; that she was at last despairingly forced to

admit. And then she left off hoping, and settled down to a mechanical routine of existence which in some

measure dulled her grief; but at the expense of all her natural animation and the sprightly wilfulness which

had once charmed those who knew her, though it was perhaps all the while a factor in the production of her

To say that her beauty quite departed as the years rolled on would be to overstate the truth. Time is not a

merciful master, as we all know, and he was not likely to act exceptionally in the case of a woman who had

mental troubles to bear in addition to the ordinary weight of years. Be this as it may, eleven other winters

came and went, and Laura Northbrook remained the lonely mistress of house and lands without once hearing

of her husband. Every probability seemed to favour the assumption that he had died in some foreign land; and

offers for her hand were not few as the probability verged on certainty with the long lapse of time. But the

idea of remarriage seemed never to have entered her head for a moment. Whether she continued to hope even

now for his return could not be distinctly ascertained; at all events she lived a life unmodified in the slightest

This twelfth year of Laura's loneliness, and the thirtieth of her life drew on apace, and the season approached

that had seen the unhappy adventure for which she so long had suffered. Christmas promised to be rather wet

than cold, and the trees on the outskirts of Laura's estate dripped monotonously from day to day upon the

turnpikeroad which bordered them. On an afternoon in this week between three and four o'clock a hired fly

might have been seen driving along the highway at this point, and on reaching the top of the hill it stopped. A

'You need drive no farther,' he said to the coachman. 'The rain seems to have nearly ceased. I'll stroll a little

The flyman touched his hat, turned the horse, and drove back as directed. When he was out of sight, the

gentleman walked on, but he had not gone far before the rain again came down pitilessly, though of this the

pedestrian took little heed, going leisurely onward till he reached Laura's park gate, which he passed through.

The clouds were thick and the days were short, so that by the time he stood in front of the mansion it was

dark. In addition to this his appearance, which on alighting from the carriage had been untarnished, partook

now of the character of a drenched wayfarer not too well blessed with this world's goods. He halted for no

more than a moment at the front entrance, and going round to the servants' quarter, as if he had a

preconceived purpose in so doing, there rang the bell. When a page came to him he inquired if they would

The page retired, and after a murmured colloquy returned with the cook, who informed the wet and muddy

man that though it was not her custom to admit strangers, she should have no particular objection to his

drying himself; the night being so damp and gloomy. Therefore the wayfarer entered and sat down by the

'The owner of this house is a very rich gentleman, no doubt?' he asked, as he watched the meat turning on the

'A sort of widow. Poor soul, her husband is gone abroad, and has never been heard of for many years.'

In short, the wayfarer, who had at first been so coldly received, contrived by his frank and engaging manner

to draw the ladies of the kitchen into a most confidential conversation, in which Laura's history was minutely

detailed, from the day of her husband's departure to the present. The salient feature in all their discourse was

Having apparently learned all that he wanted to knowamong other things that she was at this moment, as

always, alonethe traveller said he was quite dry; and thanking the servants for their kindness, departed as

he had come. On emerging into the darkness he did not, however, go down the avenue by which he had

arrived. He simply walked round to the front door. There he rang, and the door was opened to him by a

manservant whom he had not seen during his sojourn at the other end of the house.

In answer to the servant's inquiry for his name, he said ceremoniously, 'Will you tell The Honourable Mrs.

Northbrook that the man she nursed many years ago, after a frightful accident, has called to thank her?'

The footman retreated, and it was rather a long time before any further signs of attention were apparent. Then

On the couch was Laura, trembling and pale. She parted her lips and held out her hands to him, but could not

speak. But he did not require speech, and in a moment they were in each other's arms.

Strange news circulated through that mansion and the neighbouring town on the next and following days. But

the world has a way of getting used to things, and the intelligence of the return of The Honourable Mrs.

A few days more brought Christmas, and the forlorn home of Laura Northbrook blazed from basement to

attic with light and cheerfulness. Not that the house was overcrowded with visitors, but many were present,

and the apathy of a dozen years came at length to an end. The animation which set in thus at the close of the

old year did not diminish on the arrival of the new; and by the time its twelve months had likewise run the

course of its predecessors, a son had been added to the dwindled line of the Northbrook family.

At the conclusion of this narrative the Spark was thanked, with a manner of some surprise, for nobody had

credited him with a taste for taletelling. Though it had been resolved that this story should be the last, a few

of the weatherbound listeners were for sitting on into the small hours over their pipes and glasses, and

raking up yet more episodes of family history. But the majority murmured reasons for soon getting to their

It was quite dark without, except in the immediate neighbourhood of the feeble streetlamps, and before a

few shopwindows which had been hardily kept open in spite of the obvious unlikelihood of any chance

By one, by two, and by three the benighted members of the FieldClub rose from their seats, shook hands,

made appointments, and dropped away to their respective quarters, free or hired, hoping for a fair morrow. It

would probably be not until the next summer meeting, months away in the future, that the easy intercourse

which now existed between them all would repeat itself. The crimson maltster, for instance, knew that on the

following marketday his friends the President, the Rural Dean, and the bookworm would pass him in the

street, if they met him, with the barest nod of civility, the President and the Colonel for social reasons, the

bookworm for intellectual reasons, and the Rural Dean for moral ones, the latter being a staunch teetotaller,

dead against John Barleycorn. The sentimental member knew that when, on his rambles, he met his friend the

bookworm with a pocketcopy of something or other under his nose, the latter would not love his

companionship as he had done to day; and the President, the aristocrat, and the farmer knew that affairs

political, sporting, domestic, or agricultural would exclude for a long time all rumination on the characters of

dames gone to dust for scores of years, however beautiful and noble they may have been in their day.

The last member at length departed, the attendant at the museum lowered the fire, the curator locked up the

rooms, and soon there was only a single pirouetting flame on the top of a single coal to make the bones of the

ichthyosaurus seem to leap, the stuffed birds to wink, and to draw a smile from the varnished skulls of