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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10892 ***
+
+Dawn
+
+by H. Rider Haggard
+
+1884
+
+
+Contents
+
+ CHAPTER I.
+ CHAPTER II.
+ CHAPTER III.
+ CHAPTER IV.
+ CHAPTER V.
+ CHAPTER VI.
+ CHAPTER VII.
+ CHAPTER VIII.
+ CHAPTER IX.
+ CHAPTER X.
+ CHAPTER XI.
+ CHAPTER XII.
+ CHAPTER XIII.
+ CHAPTER XIV.
+ CHAPTER XV.
+ CHAPTER XVI.
+ CHAPTER XVII.
+ CHAPTER XVIII.
+ CHAPTER XIX.
+ CHAPTER XX.
+ CHAPTER XXI.
+ CHAPTER XXII.
+ CHAPTER XXIII.
+ CHAPTER XXIV.
+ CHAPTER XXV.
+ CHAPTER XXVI.
+ CHAPTER XXVII.
+ CHAPTER XXVIII.
+ CHAPTER XXIX.
+ CHAPTER XXX.
+ CHAPTER XXXI.
+ CHAPTER XXXII.
+ CHAPTER XXXIII.
+ CHAPTER XXXIV.
+ CHAPTER XXXV.
+ CHAPTER XXXVI.
+ CHAPTER XXXVII.
+ CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+ CHAPTER XXXIX.
+ CHAPTER XL.
+ CHAPTER XLI.
+ CHAPTER XLII.
+ CHAPTER XLIII.
+ CHAPTER XLIV.
+ CHAPTER XLV.
+ CHAPTER XLVI.
+ CHAPTER XLVII.
+ CHAPTER XLVIII.
+ CHAPTER XLIX.
+ CHAPTER L.
+ CHAPTER LI.
+ CHAPTER LII.
+ CHAPTER LIII.
+ CHAPTER LIV.
+ CHAPTER LV.
+ CHAPTER LVI.
+ CHAPTER LVII.
+ CHAPTER LVIII.
+ CHAPTER LIX.
+ CHAPTER LX.
+ CHAPTER LXI.
+ CHAPTER LXII.
+ CHAPTER LXIII.
+ CHAPTER LXIV.
+ CHAPTER LXV.
+ CHAPTER LXVI.
+ CHAPTER LXVII.
+ CHAPTER LXVIII.
+ CHAPTER LXIX.
+ CHAPTER LXX.
+ CHAPTER LXXI.
+ CHAPTER LXXII.
+ CHAPTER LXXIII.
+ CHAPTER LXXIV.
+ CHAPTER LXXV.
+ CHAPTER LXXVI.
+
+
+
+
+“Our natures languish incomplete;
+Something obtuse in this our star
+Shackles the spirit’s winged feet;
+But a glory moves us from afar,
+And we know that we are strong and fleet.”
+Edmund Ollier.
+
+
+
+
+“Once more I behold the face of her
+Whose actions all had the character
+Of an inexpressible charm, expressed;
+Whose movements flowed from a centre of rest,
+And whose rest was that of a swallow, rife
+With the instinct of reposing life;
+Whose mirth had a sadness all the while
+It sparkled and laughed, and whose sadness lay
+In the heaven of such a crystal smile
+That you longed to travel the self-same way
+To the brightness of sorrow. For round her breathed
+A grace like that of the general air,
+Which softens the sharp extremes of things,
+And connects by its subtle, invisible stair
+The lowest and the highest. She interwreathed
+Her mortal obscureness with so much light
+Of the world unrisen, that angel’s wings
+Could hardly have given her greater right
+To float in the winds of the Infinite.”
+Edmund Ollier.
+
+
+
+
+DAWN
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+“You lie; you always were a liar, and you always will be a liar. You
+told my father how I spent the money.”
+
+“Well, and what if I did? I had to look after myself, I suppose. You
+forget that I am only here on sufferance, whilst you are the son of the
+house. It does not matter to you, but he would have turned me out of
+doors,” whined George.
+
+“Oh! curse your fine words; it’s you who forget, you swab. Ay, it’s you
+who forget that you asked me to take the money to the gambling- tent,
+and made me promise that you should have half of what we won, but that
+I should play for both. What, are you beginning to remember now—is it
+coming back to you after a whole month? I am going to quicken your
+memory up presently, I can tell you; I have got a good deal to pay off,
+I’m thinking. I know what you are at; you want to play cuckoo, to turn
+‘Cousin Philip’ out that ‘Cousin George’ may fill the nest. You know
+the old man’s soft points, and you keep working him up against me. You
+think that you would like the old place when he’s gone—ay, and I
+daresay that you will get it before you have done, but I mean to have
+my penn’orth out of you now, at any rate,” and, brushing the tears of
+anger that stood in his brown eyes away with the back of his hand, the
+speaker proceeded to square up to George in a most determined way.
+
+Now Philip, with his broad shoulders and his firm-knit frame, would,
+even at eighteen, have been no mean antagonist for a full-grown man;
+much more then did he look formidable to the lankly, overgrown
+stripling crouching against the corner of the wall that prevented his
+further retreat.
+
+“Philip, you’re not going to strike me, are you, when you know you are
+so much stronger?”
+
+“Yes, I am, though; if I can’t match you with my tongue, at any rate I
+will use my fists. Look out.”
+
+“Oh, Philip, don’t! I’ll tell your father.”
+
+“Tell him! why, of course you will, I know that; but you shall have
+something to lie about this time,” and he advanced to the attack with a
+grim determination not pleasant for his cousin to behold.
+
+Finding that there was no escape, George turned upon him with so shrill
+a curse that it even frightened from his leafy perch in the oak above
+the tame turtle-dove, intensely preoccupied as he was in cooing to a
+new-found mate. He did more than curse; he fought like a cornered rat,
+and with as much chance as the rat with a trained fox-terrier. In a few
+seconds his head was as snugly tucked away in the chancery of his
+cousin’s arm as ever any property was in the court of that name, and,
+to speak truth, it seemed quite possible that, when it emerged from its
+retreat, it would, like the property, be much dilapidated and
+extensively bled.
+
+Let us not dwell upon the scene; for George it was a very painful one,
+so painful that he never quite forgot it. His nose, too, was never so
+straight again. It was soon over, though to one of the parties time
+went with unnatural slowness.
+
+“Well, I think you’ve had about enough for once,” soliloquized Philip,
+as he critically surveyed the writhing mass on the ground before him;
+and he looked a very handsome lad as he said it.
+
+His curly black hair hung in waving confusion over his forehead, and
+flung changing lights and shadows into the depths of his brown eyes,
+whilst his massive and somewhat heavy features were touched into a more
+active life by the light of that pleasing excitement which animates
+nine men out of every ten of the Anglo-Saxon race when they are engaged
+on killing or hurting some other living creature. The face, too, had a
+certain dignity about it, a little of the dignity of justice; it was
+the face of one who feels that if his action has been precipitate and
+severe, it has at any rate been virtuous. The full but clear-cut lips
+also had their own expression on them, half serious, half comical;
+humour, contempt, and even pity were blended in it. Altogether Philip
+Caresfoot’s appearance in the moment of boyish vengeance was pleasing
+and not uninteresting.
+
+Presently, however, something of the same change passed over his face
+that we see in the sky when a cloud passes over the sun; the light
+faded out of it. It was astonishing to note how dull and heavy—ay,
+more, how bad it made him look all in a breath.
+
+“There will be a pretty business about this,” he murmured, and then,
+administering a sharp kick to the prostrate and groaning form on the
+ground before him, he said, “Now, then, get up; I’m not going to touch
+you again. Perhaps, though, you won’t be in quite such a hurry to tell
+lies about me another time, though I suppose that one must always
+expect a certain amount of lying from a half-bred beggar like you. Like
+mother, like son, you know.”
+
+This last sentence was accompanied by a bitter laugh, and produced a
+decided effect on the grovelling George, who slowly raised himself upon
+his hands, and, lifting his head, looked his cousin full in the face.
+
+It was not the ghastly appearance of his mangled and blood-soaked
+countenance that made Philip recoil so sharply from the sight of his
+own handiwork—he had fought too often at school to be chicken-hearted
+about a little bloodshed; and, besides, he knew that his cousin was
+only knocked about, not really injured—but rather the intense and
+almost devilish malignity of the expression that hovered on the blurred
+features and in the half-closed eyes. But no attempt was made by George
+to translate the look into words, and indeed Philip felt that it was
+untranslatable. He also felt dimly that the hate and malice with which
+he was regarded by the individual at his feet was of a more
+concentrated and enduring character than most men have the power to
+originate. In the lurid light of that one glance he was able, though he
+was not very clever, to pierce the darkest recesses of his cousin’s
+heart, and to see his inmost thought, no longer through a veil, but
+face to face. And what he saw was sufficient to make the blood leave
+his ruddy cheek, and to fix his eyes into an expression of fear.
+
+Next second George dropped his head on to the ground again, and began
+to moan in an ostentatious manner, possibly in order to attract some
+one whose footsteps could be plainly heard proceeding slowly down a
+shrubbery-path on the other side of the yard wall. At any rate, that
+was the effect produced; for next moment, before Philip could think of
+escape, had he wished to escape, a door in the wall was opened, and a
+gentleman, pausing on the threshold, surveyed the whole scene, with the
+assistance of a gold-mounted eye-glass, with some evident surprise and
+little apparent satisfaction.
+
+The old gentleman, for he was old, made so pretty a picture, framed as
+he was in the arched doorway, and set off by a natural background of
+varying shades of green, that his general appearance is worth sketching
+as he stood. To begin with, he was dressed in the fashion of the
+commencement of this century, and, as has been said, old, though it was
+difficult to say how old. Indeed, so vigorous and comparatively
+youthful was his bearing that he was generally taken to be considerably
+under seventy, but, as a matter of fact, he was but a few years short
+of eighty. He was extremely tall, over six feet, and stood upright as a
+lifeguardsman; indeed, his height and stately carriage would alone have
+made him a remarkable-looking man, had there been nothing else unusual
+about him; but, as it happened, his features were as uncommon as his
+person. They were clear-cut and cast in a noble mould. The nose was
+large and aquiline, the chin, like his son Philip’s, square and
+determined; but it was his eyes that gave a painful fascination to his
+countenance. They were steely blue, and glittered under the pent-house
+of his thick eyebrows, that, in striking contrast to the snow-white of
+his hair, were black in hue, as tempered steel glitters in a curtained
+room. It was those eyes, in conjunction with sundry little
+peculiarities of temper, that had earned for the old man the title of
+“Devil Caresfoot,” a sobriquet in which he took peculiar pride. So
+pleased was he with it, indeed, that he caused it to be engraved in
+solid oak letters an inch long upon the form of a life-sized and
+life-like portrait of himself that hung over the staircase in the
+house.
+
+“I am determined,” he would say to his son, “to be known to my
+posterity as I was known to my contemporaries. The picture represents
+my person not inaccurately; from the nickname my descendants will be
+able to gather what the knaves and fools with whom I lived thought of
+my character. Ah! boy, I am wearing out; people will soon be staring at
+that portrait and wondering if it was like me. In a very few years I
+shall no longer be ‘devil,’ but ‘devilled,’” and he would chuckle at
+his grim and ill-omened joke.
+
+Philip felt his father’s eyes playing upon him, and shrunk from them.
+His face had, at the mere thought of the consequences of his
+chastisement of his cousin, lost the beauty and animation that had
+clothed it a minute before; now it grew leaden and hard, the good died
+away from it altogether, and, instead of a young god bright with
+vengeance, there was nothing but a sullen youth with dull and
+frightened eyes. To his son, as to most people who came under his
+influence, “Devil” Caresfoot was a grave reality.
+
+Presently the picture in the doorway opened its mouth and spoke in a
+singularly measured, gentle voice.
+
+“You will forgive me, Philip, for interrupting your _tête-à-tête_, but
+may I ask what is the meaning of this?”
+
+Philip returned no answer.
+
+“Since your cousin is not in a communicative mood, George, perhaps you
+will inform me why you are lying on your face and groaning in that
+unpleasant and aggressive manner?”
+
+George lifted his blood-stained face from the stones, and, looking at
+his uncle, groaned louder than ever.
+
+“May I ask you, Philip, if George has fallen down and hurt himself, or
+if there has been an—an—altercation between you?”
+
+Here George himself got up and, before Philip could make any reply,
+addressed himself to his uncle.
+
+“Sir,” he said, “I will answer for Philip; there _has_ been an
+altercation, and he in the scuffle knocked me down, and I confess,”
+here he put his hand up to his battered face, “that I am suffering a
+good deal, but what I want to say is, that I beg you will not blame
+Philip. He thought that I had wronged him, and, though I am quite
+innocent, and could easily have cleared myself had he given me a
+chance, I must admit that appearances are to a certain extent against
+me——”
+
+“He lies!” broke in Philip, sullenly.
+
+“You will wonder, sir,” went on the blood-stained George, “how I
+allowed myself to be drawn into such a brutal affair, and one so
+discreditable to your house. I can only say that I am very sorry,”—
+which indeed he was—“and that I should never have taken any notice of
+his words—knowing that he would regret them on reflection—had he not in
+an unguarded moment allowed himself to taunt me with my birth. Uncle,
+you know the misfortune of my father’s marriage, and that she was not
+his equal in birth, but you know too that she was my mother and I love
+her memory though I never saw her, and I could not bear to hear her
+spoken of like that, and I struck him. I hope that both you and he will
+forgive me; I cannot say any more.”
+
+“He lies again, he cannot speak the truth.”
+
+“Philip, will you allow me to point out,” remarked his father in his
+blandest voice, “that the continued repetition of the very ugly word
+‘lie’ is neither narrative nor argument. Perhaps you will be so kind as
+to tell me your side of the story; you know I always wish to be
+perfectly impartial.”
+
+“He lied to you this morning about the money. It’s true enough that I
+gambled away the ten pounds at Roxham fair, instead of paying it into
+the bank as you told me, but he persuaded me to it, and he was to have
+shared the profits if we won. I was a blackguard, but he was a bigger
+blackguard; why should I have all the blame and have that fellow
+continually shoved down my throat as a saint? And so I thrashed him,
+and that is all about it.”
+
+“Sir, I am sorry to contradict Philip, but indeed he is in error; the
+recollection of what took place has escaped him. I could, if necessary,
+bring forward evidence—Mr. Bellamy——”
+
+“There is no need, George, for you to continue,” and then, fixing his
+glittering eye on Philip: “it is very melancholy for me, having only
+one son, to know him to be such a brute, such a bearer of false
+witness, such an impostor as you are. Do you know that I have just seen
+Mr. Bellamy, the head clerk at the bank, and inquired if he knew
+anything of what happened about that ten pounds, and do you know what
+he told me?”
+
+“No, I don’t, and I don’t want to.”
+
+“But I really must beg your attention: he told me that the day
+following the fair your cousin George came to the bank with ten pounds,
+and told him how you had spent the ten pounds I gave you to pay in, and
+that he brought the money, his own savings, to replace what you had
+gambled away; and Bellamy added that, under all the circumstances, he
+did not feel justified in placing it to my credit. What have you to say
+to that?”
+
+“What have I to say? I have to say that I don’t believe a word of it.
+If George had meant to do me a good turn he would have paid the money
+in and said nothing to Bellamy about it. Why won’t you trust me a
+little more, father? I tell you that you are turning me into a
+scoundrel. I am being twisted up into a net of lies till I am obliged
+to lie myself to keep clear of ruin. I know what this sneak is at; he
+wants to work you into cutting me out of the property which should be
+mine by right. He knows your weaknesses——”
+
+“My weaknesses, sir—my weaknesses!” thundered his father, striking his
+gold-headed cane on to the stones; “what do you mean by that?”
+
+“Hush, uncle, he meant nothing,” broke in George.
+
+“Meant nothing! Then for an idle speech it is one that may cost him
+dear. Look you here, Philip Caresfoot, I know very well that our family
+has been quite as remarkable for its vices as its virtues, but for the
+last two hundred and fifty years we have been gentlemen, and you are
+not a gentleman; we have not been thieves, and you have proved yourself
+a thief; we have spoken the truth, and you are, what you are so fond of
+calling your cousin, who is worth two of you, a liar. Now listen.
+However imperious I may have grown in my old age, I can still respect
+the man who thwarts me even though I hate him; but I despise the man
+who deceives me, as I despise you, my dear son Philip—and I tell you
+this, and I beg you to lay it to heart, that if ever again I find that
+you have deceived me, by Heaven I will disinherit you in favour of—_oh,
+oh!_” and the old man fell back against the grey wall, pressing his
+hands to his breast and with the cold perspiration starting on to his
+pallid countenance.
+
+Both the lads sprang forward, but before they reached him he had
+recovered himself.
+
+“It is nothing,” he said, in his ordinary gentle voice, “a trifling
+indisposition. I wish you both good morning, and beg you to bear my
+words in mind.”
+
+When he was fairly gone, George came up to his cousin and laid his hand
+upon his arm.
+
+“Why do you insist upon quarrelling with me, Philip? it always ends
+like this, you always get the worst of it.”
+
+But Philip’s only reply was to shake him roughly off, and to vanish
+through the door towards the lake. George regarded his departing form
+with a peculiar smile, which was rendered even more peculiar by the
+distortion of his swollen features.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+It is difficult to imagine any study that would prove more fascinating
+in itself or more instructive in its issues, than the examination of
+the leading characteristics of individual families as displayed through
+a series of generations. But it is a subject that from its very nature
+is more or less unapproachable, since it is but little that we know
+even of our immediate ancestors. Occasionally in glancing at the
+cracking squares of canvas, many of which cannot even boast a name, but
+which alone remain to speak of the real and active life, the joys and
+griefs, the sins and virtues that centred in the originals of those
+hard daubs and of ourselves, we may light upon a face that about six
+generations since was the counterpart of the little boy upon our
+shoulder, or the daughter standing at our side. In the same way, too,
+partly through tradition and partly by other means, we are sometimes
+able to trace in ourselves and in our children the strong development
+of characteristics that distinguished the race centuries ago.
+
+If local tradition and such records of their individual lives as
+remained are worthy of any faith, it is beyond a doubt that the
+Caresfoots of Bratham Abbey had handed down their own hard and peculiar
+cast of character from father to son unaffected in the main by the
+continual introduction of alien blood on the side of the mother.
+
+The history of the Caresfoot family had nothing remarkable about it.
+They had been yeomen at Bratham from time immemorial, perhaps ever
+since the village had become a geographical fact; but it was on the
+dissolution of the monasteries that they first became of any importance
+in the county. Bratham Abbey, which had shared the common fate, was
+granted by Henry VIII. to a certain courtier, Sir Charles Varry by
+name. For two years the owner never came near his new possession, but
+one day he appeared in the village, and riding to the house of Farmer
+Caresfoot, which was its most respectable tenement, he begged him to
+show him the Abbey house and the lands attached. It was a dark November
+afternoon, and by the time the farmer and his wearied guest had crossed
+the soaked lands and reached the great grey house, the damps and
+shadows of the night had begun to curtain it and to render its
+appearance, forsaken as it was, inexpressibly dreary and lonesome.
+
+“Damp here, my friend, is it not?” said Sir Charles with a shudder,
+looking towards the lake, into which the rain was splashing.
+
+“You are right, it be.”
+
+“And lonely too, now that the old monks have gone.”
+
+“Ay, but they do say that the house be mostly full of the spirits of
+the dead,” and the yeoman sank his voice to an awed whisper.
+
+Sir Charles crossed himself and muttered, “I can well believe it,” and
+then, addressing his companion—
+
+“You do not know of any man who would buy an abbey with all its rights
+and franchises, do you, friend?”
+
+“Not rightly, sir; the land be so poor it hath no heart in it; it doth
+scarce repay the tillage, and what the house is you may see. The curse
+of the monks is on it. But still, sir, if you have a mind to be rid of
+the place, I have a little laid by and a natural love for the land,
+having been bred on it, and taken the colour of my mind and my stubby
+growth therefrom, and I will give you—” and this astutest of all the
+Caresfoots whispered a very small sum into Sir Charles’ ear.
+
+“Your price is very small, good friend, it doth almost vanish into
+nothing; and methinks the land that reared you cannot be so unkind as
+you would have me think. The monks did not love bad land, but yet, if
+thou hast it in the gold, I will take it; it will pay off a debt or
+two, and I care not for the burden of the land.”
+
+And so Farmer Caresfoot became the lawful owner of Bratham Abbey with
+its two advowsons, its royal franchises of treasure-trove and deodand,
+and more than a thousand acres of the best land in Marlshire.
+
+The same astuteness that had enabled this wise progenitor to acquire
+the estate enabled his descendants to stick tightly to it, and though,
+like other families, they had at times met with reverses, they never
+lost their grip of the Abbey property. During the course of the first
+half of the nineteenth century the land increased largely in value, and
+its acreage was considerably added to by the father of the present
+owner, a man of frugal mind, but with the family mania for the
+collection of all sorts of plate strongly developed. But it was
+Philip’s father, “Devil Caresfoot,” who had, during his fifty years’
+tenure of the property, raised the family to its present opulent
+condition, firstly, by a strict attention to business and the large
+accumulations resulting from his practice of always living upon half
+his income, and secondly, by his marriage late in middle life with Miss
+Bland, the heiress of the neighbouring Isleworth estates, that
+stretched over some two thousand acres of land.
+
+This lady, who was Philip’s mother, did not live long to enjoy her
+wealth and station. Her husband never spoke a rough word to her, and
+yet it is no exaggeration to say that she died of fear of him. The
+marriage had been one of convenience, not of affection; indeed poor
+Anna Bland had secretly admired the curate at Isleworth, and hated Mr.
+Caresfoot and his glittering eye. But she married him for all that, to
+feel that till she died that glance was always playing round her like a
+rapier in the hands of a skilled fencer. And very soon she did die, Mr.
+Caresfoot receiving her last words and wishes with the same exquisite
+and unmoved politeness that he had extended to every remark she had
+made to him in the course of their married life. Having satisfactorily
+eyed Mrs. Caresfoot off into a better world, her husband gave up all
+idea of further matrimonial ventures, and set himself to heap up
+riches. But a little before his wife’s death, and just after his son’s
+birth, an event had occurred in the family that had disturbed him not a
+little.
+
+His father had left two sons, himself and a brother, many years his
+junior. Now this brother was very dear to Mr. Caresfoot; his affection
+for him was the one weak point in his armour; nor was it rendered any
+the less sincere, but rather the more touching, by the fact that its
+object was little better than half-witted. It is therefore easy to
+imagine his distress and anger when he heard that a woman who had till
+shortly before been kitchen-maid at the Abbey House, and was now living
+in the village, had been confined of a son which she fixed upon his
+brother, whose wife she declared herself to be. Investigation only
+brought out the truth of the story; his weak-minded brother had been
+entrapped into a glaring _mésalliance_.
+
+But Mr. Caresfoot proved himself equal to the occasion. So soon as his
+“sister-in-law,” as it pleased him to call her sardonically, had
+sufficiently recovered, he called upon her. What took place at the
+visit never transpired, but next day Mrs. E. Caresfoot left her native
+place never to return, the child remaining with the father, or rather
+with the uncle. That boy was George. At the time when this story opens
+both his parents were dead: his father from illness resulting from
+entire failure of brain power, the mother from drink.
+
+Whether it was that he considered the circumstance of the lad’s birth
+entitled him to peculiar consideration, or that he transferred to him
+the affection he bore his father, the result was that his nephew was
+quite as dear if not even dearer to Mr. Caresfoot than his own son.
+Not, however, that he allowed his preference to be apparent, save in
+the negative way that he was blind to faults in George that he was
+sufficiently quick to note in Philip. To observers this partiality
+seemed the more strange when they thought upon Philip’s bonny face and
+form, and then noted how the weak-brained father and coarse-blooded
+mother had left their mark in George’s thick lips, small, restless
+eyes, pallid complexion, and loose-jointed form.
+
+When Philip shook off his cousin’s grasp and vanished towards the lake,
+he did so with bitter wrath and hatred in his heart, for he saw but too
+clearly that he had deeply injured himself in his father’s estimation,
+and, what was more, he felt that so much as he had sunk his side of the
+balance, by so much he had raised up that of George. He was inculpated;
+a Bellamy came upon the scene to save George, and, what was worse, an
+untruthful Bellamy; he was the aggressor, and George the meek in spirit
+with the soft answer that turneth away wrath. It was intolerable; he
+hated his father, he hated George. There was no justice in the world,
+and he had not wit to play rogue with such a one as his cousin.
+Appearances were always against him; he hated everybody.
+
+And then he began to think that there was in the very next parish
+somebody whom he did not hate, but who, on the contrary, interested
+him, and was always ready to listen to his troubles, and he also became
+aware of the fact that whilst his mind had been thinking his legs had
+been walking, and that he was very near the abode of that person—almost
+at its gates, in short. He paused and looked at his watch; it had
+stopped at half-past eleven, the one blow that George had succeeded in
+planting upon him having landed on it, to the great detriment of both
+the watch and the striker’s knuckles; but the sun told him that it was
+about half-past twelve, not too early to call. So he opened the gate,
+and, advancing up an avenue of old beeches to a square, red-brick house
+of the time of Queen Anne, boldly rang the bell.
+
+Was Miss Lee at home? Yes, Miss Lee was in the greenhouse; perhaps Mr.
+Philip would step into the garden, which Mr. Philip did accordingly.
+
+“How do you do, Philip? I’m delighted to see you; you’ve just come in
+time to help in the slaughter.”
+
+“Slaughter, slaughter of what—a pig?”
+
+“No, green fly. I’m going to kill thousands.”
+
+“You cruel girl.”
+
+“I daresay it is cruel, but I don’t care. Grumps always said that I had
+no heart, and, so far as green fly are concerned, Grumps was certainly
+right. Now, just look at this lily. It is an auratum. I gave
+three-and-six (out of my own money) for that bulb last autumn, and now
+the bloom is not worth twopence, all through green fly. If I were a man
+I declare I should swear. Please swear for me, Philip. Go outside and
+do it, so that I mayn’t have it on my conscience. But now for
+vengeance. Oh, I say, I forgot, you know, I suppose. I ought to be
+looking very sorry——”
+
+“Why, what’s the matter? Any one dead?”
+
+“Oh, no, so much better than that. _It’s got Grumps._”
+
+“Got her, what has got her? What is ‘it’?”
+
+“Why, Chancery, of course. I always call Chancery ‘it.’ I wouldn’t take
+its name in vain for worlds. I am too much afraid. I might be made to
+‘show a cause why,’ and then be locked up for contempt, which
+frequently happens after you have tried to ‘show a cause.’ That is what
+has happened to Grumps. She is now showing a cause; shortly she will be
+locked up. When she comes out, if she ever does come out, I think that
+she will avoid wards in Chancery in future; she will have too much
+sympathy with them, and too much practical experience of their
+position.”
+
+“But what on earth do you mean, Maria? What has happened to Miss
+Gregson?” (_anglice_ Grumps).
+
+“Well, you remember one of my guardians, or rather his wife, got ‘it’
+to appoint her my chaperon, but my other guardian wanted to appoint
+somebody else, and after taking eighteen months to do it, he has moved
+the court to show that Grumps is not a ‘fit and proper person.’ The
+idea of calling Grumps improper. She nearly fainted at it, and swore
+that, whether she lived through it or whether she didn’t, she would
+never come within a mile of me or any other ward if she could help it,
+not even the ward of an hospital. I told her to be careful, or she
+would be ‘committing contempt,’ which frightened her so that she hardly
+spoke again till she left yesterday. Poor Grumps! I expect she is on
+bread and water now; but if she makes herself half as disagreeable to
+the Vice-Chancellor as she did to me, I don’t believe that they will
+keep her long. She’ll wear the gaolers out; she will wear the walls
+out; she will wear ‘it’ down to the bone; and then they will let her
+loose upon the world again. Why, there is the bell for lunch, and not a
+single green fly the less! Never mind, I will do for them to-morrow.
+How it would add to her sufferings in her lonely cell if she could see
+us going to a _tête-à-tête_ lunch. Come on, Philip, come quick, or the
+cutlets will get cold, and I hate cold cutlets.” And off she tripped,
+followed by the laughing Philip, who, by the way, was now looking quite
+handsome again.
+
+Maria Lee was not very pretty at her then age—just eighteen—but she was
+a perfect specimen of a young English country girl; fresh as a rose,
+and sound as a bell, and endowed besides with a quick wit and a ready
+sympathy. She was essentially one of that class of Englishwomen who
+make the English upper middle class what it is—one of the finest and
+soundest in the world. Philip, following her into the house, thought
+that she was charming; nor, being a Caresfoot, and therefore having a
+considerable eye to the main chance, did the fact of her being the
+heiress to fifteen hundred a year in land detract from her charms.
+
+The cutlets were excellent, and Maria ate three, and was very comical
+about the departed Grumps; indeed, anybody not acquainted with the
+circumstances would have gathered that that excellent lady was to be
+shortly put to the question. Philip was not quite so merry; he was
+oppressed both by recollections of what had happened and apprehensions
+of what might happen.
+
+“What is the matter, Philip?” she asked, when they had left the table
+to sit under the trees on the lawn. “I can see that something is the
+matter. Tell me all about it, Philip.”
+
+And Philip told her what had happened that morning, laying bare all his
+heart-aches, and not even concealing his evil deeds. When he had done,
+she pondered awhile, tapping her little foot upon the turf.
+
+“Philip,” she said at last, in quite a changed voice, “I do not think
+that you are being well treated. I do not think that your cousin means
+kindly by you, but—but I do not think that you have behaved rightly
+either. I don’t like that about the ten pounds; and I think that you
+should not have touched George; he is not so strong as you. Please try
+to do as your father—dear me, I am sure I don’t wonder that you are
+afraid of him; I am—tells you, and regain his affection, and make it up
+with George; and, if you get into any more troubles, come and tell me
+about them before you do anything foolish; for though, according to
+Grumps, I am silly enough, two heads are better than one.”
+
+The tears stood in the lad’s brown eyes as he listened to her. He
+gulped them down, however, and said—
+
+“You are awfully kind to me; you are the only friend I have. Sometimes
+I think that you are an angel.”
+
+“Nonsense, Philip. If ‘it’ heard you talk like that, you would join
+Grumps. Don’t let me hear any more such stuff,” but, though she spoke
+sharply, somehow she did not look displeased.
+
+“I must be off,” he said at length. “I promised to go with my father to
+see a new building on Reynold’s farm. I have only twenty minutes to get
+home;” and rising they went into the house through a French window
+opening on to the lawn.
+
+In the dining-room he turned, and, after a moment’s hesitation,
+stuttered out—
+
+“Maria, don’t be angry with me, but may I give you a kiss?”
+
+She blushed vividly.
+
+“How dare you suggest such a thing?—but—but as Grumps has gone, and
+there is no new Grumps to refer to, and therefore I can only consult my
+own wishes, perhaps if you really wish to, Philip, why, Philip, you
+may.”
+
+And he did.
+
+When he was gone she leant her head against the cold marble
+mantelpiece.
+
+“I do love him,” she murmured, “yes, that I do.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Philip was not very fond of taking walks with his father, since he
+found that in nine cases out of ten they afforded opportunities for
+inculcation of facts of the driest description with reference to estate
+management, or to the narration by his parent of little histories of
+which his conduct upon some recent occasion would adorn the moral. On
+this particular occasion the prospect was particularly unpleasant, for
+his father would, he was well aware, overflow with awful politeness,
+indeed, after the scene of the morning, it could not be otherwise. Oh,
+how much rather would he have spent that lovely afternoon with Maria
+Lee! Dear Maria, he would go and see her again the very next day.
+
+When he arrived, some ten minutes after time in the antler-hung hall of
+the Abbey House, he found his father standing, watch in hand, exactly
+under the big clock, as though he was determined to make a note by
+double entry of every passing second.
+
+“When I asked you to walk with me this afternoon, Philip, I, if my
+memory does not deceive me, was careful to say that I had no wish to
+interfere with any prior engagement. I was aware how little interest,
+compared to your cousin George, you take in the estate, and I had no
+wish to impose an uncongenial task. But, as you kindly volunteered to
+accompany me, I regret that you did not find it convenient to be
+punctual to the time you fixed. I have now waited for you for seventeen
+minutes, and let me tell you that at my time of life I cannot afford to
+lose seventeen minutes. May I ask what has delayed you?”
+
+This long speech had given Philip the opportunity of recovering the
+breath that he had lost in running home. He replied promptly—
+
+“I have been lunching with Miss Lee.”
+
+“Oh, indeed, then I no longer wonder that you kept me waiting, and I
+must say that in this particular I commend your taste. Miss Lee is a
+young lady of good family, good manners, and good means. If her estate
+went with this property it would complete as pretty a five thousand
+acres of mixed soil as there is in the county. Those are beautiful old
+meadows of hers, beautiful. Perhaps——” but here the old man checked
+himself.
+
+On leaving the house they had passed together down a walk called the
+tunnel walk, on account of the arching boughs of the lime-trees that
+interlaced themselves overhead. At the end of this avenue, and on the
+borders of the lake, there stood an enormous but still growing oak,
+known as Caresfoot’s Staff. It was the old squire’s favourite tree, and
+the best topped piece of timber for many miles round.
+
+“I wonder,” said Philip, by way of making a little pleasant
+conversation, “why that tree was called Caresfoot’s Staff.”
+
+“Your ignorance astonishes me, Philip, but I suppose that there are
+some people who can live for years in a place and yet imbibe nothing of
+its traditions. Perhaps you know that the monks were driven out of
+these ruins by Henry VIII. Well, on the spot where that tree now stands
+there grew a still greater oak, a giant tree, its trunk measured
+sixteen loads of timber; which had, as tradition said, been planted by
+the first prior of the Abbey when England was still Saxon. The night
+the monks left a great gale raged over England. It was in October, when
+the trees were full of leaf, and its fiercest gust tore the great oak
+from its roothold, and flung it into the lake. Look! do you see that
+rise in the sand, there, by the edge of the deep pool, in the eight
+foot water? That is there it is supposed to lie. Well, the whole
+country-side said that it was a sign that the monks had gone for ever
+from Bratham Abbey, and the country-side was right. But when your
+ancestor, old yeoman Caresfoot, bought this place and came to live
+here, in a year when there was a great black frost that set the waters
+of the lake like one of the new-fangled roads, he asked his neighbours,
+ay, and his labouring folk, to come and dine with him and drink to the
+success of his purchase. It was a proud day for him, and when dinner
+was done and they were all mellow with strong ale, he bade them step
+down to the borders of the lake, as he would have them be witness to a
+ceremony. When they reached the spot they saw a curious sight, for
+there on a strong dray, and dragged by Farmer Caresfoot’s six best
+horses, was an oak of fifty years’ growth coming across the ice, earth,
+roots and all.
+
+“On that spot where it now stands there had been a great hole, ten feet
+deep by fourteen feet square, dug to receive it, and into that hole
+Caresfoot Staff was tilted and levered off the dray. And when it had
+been planted, and the frozen earth well trodden in, your grandfather in
+the ninth degree brought his guests back to the old banqueting-hall,
+and made a speech which, as it was the first and last he ever made, was
+long remembered in the country-side. It was, put into modern English,
+something like this:
+
+“‘Neighbours,—Prior’s Oak has gone into the water, and folks said that
+it was for a sign that the monks would never come back to Bratham, and
+that it was the Lord’s wind that put it there. And, neighbours, as ye
+know, the broad Bratham lands and the fat marshes down by the brook
+passed by king’s grant to a man that knew not clay from loam, or layer
+from pasturage, and from him they passed by the Lord’s will to me, as I
+have asked you here to-day to celebrate. And now, neighbours, I have a
+mind, and though it seem to you but a childish thing, yet I have a
+mind, and have set myself to fulfil it. When I was yet a little lad,
+and drove the swine out to feed on the hill yonder, when the acorns had
+fallen, afore Farmer Gyrton’s father had gracious leave from the
+feoffees to put up the fence that doth now so sorely vex us, I found
+one day a great acorn, as big as a dow’s egg, and of a rich and
+wondrous brown, and this acorn I bore home and planted in kind earth in
+the corner of my dad’s garden, thinking that it would grow, and that
+one day I would hew its growth and use it for a staff. Now that was
+fifty long years ago, lads, and there where grew Prior’s Oak, there,
+neighbours, I have set my Staff to-day. The monks have told us how in
+Israel every man planted his fig and his vine. For the fig I know not
+rightly what that is; but for the vine, I will plant no creeping,
+clinging vine, but a hearty English oak, that, if they do but give it
+good room to breathe in, and save their heirloom from the axe, shall
+cast shade and grow acorns, and burst into leaf in the spring and grow
+naked in the winter, when ten generations of our children, and our
+children’s children, shall have mixed their dust with ours yonder in
+the graveyard. And now, neighbours, I have talked too long, though I am
+better at doing than talking; but ye will even forgive me, for I will
+not talk to you again, though on this the great day of my life I was
+minded to speak. But I will bid you every man pledge a health to the
+Caresfoot’s Staff, and ask a prayer that, so long as it shall push its
+leaves, so long may the race of my loins be here to sit beneath its
+shade, and even mayhap when the corn is ripe and the moon is up, and
+their hearts grow soft towards the past, to talk with kinsman or with
+sweetheart of the old man who struck it in this kindly soil.’”
+
+The old squire’s face grew tender as he told this legend of the
+forgotten dead, and Philip’s young imagination summoned up the strange
+old-world scene of the crowd of rustics gathered in the snow and frost
+round this very tree.
+
+“Philip,” said his father, suddenly, “you will hold the yeoman’s Staff
+one day; be like it of an oaken English heart, and you will defy wind
+and weather as it has done, and as your forbears have done. Come, we
+must go on.”
+
+“By the way, Philip,” he continued, after a while, “you will remember
+what I said to you this morning—I hope that you will remember it,
+though I spoke in anger—never try to deceive me again, or you will
+regret it. And now I have something to say to you. I wish you to go to
+college and receive an education that will fit you to hold the position
+you must in the course of Nature one day fill in the county. The Oxford
+term begins in a few days, and you have for some years been entered at
+Magdalen College. I do not expect you to be a scholar, but I do expect
+you to brush off your rough ways and your local ideas, and to learn to
+become such a person both in your conduct and your mind as a gentleman
+of your station should be.”
+
+“Is George to go to college too?”
+
+“No; I have spoken to him on the subject, and he does not wish it. He
+says very wisely that, with his small prospects, he would rather spend
+the time in learning how to earn his living. So he is going to be
+articled to the Roxham lawyers, Foster and Son, or rather Foster and
+Bellamy, for young Bellamy, who is a lawyer by profession, came here
+this morning, not to speak about you, but on a message from the firm to
+say that he is now a junior partner, and that they will be very happy
+to take George as an articled clerk. He is a hard-working, shrewd young
+man, and it will be a great advantage to George to have his advice and
+example before him.”
+
+Philip assented, and went on in silence, reflecting on the curious
+change in his immediate prospects that this walk had brought to light.
+He was much rejoiced at the prospect of losing sight of George for a
+while, and was sufficiently intelligent to appreciate the advantages,
+social and mental, that the University would offer him; but it struck
+him that there were two things which he did not like about the scheme.
+The first of these was, that whilst he was pursuing his academical
+studies, George would practically be left on the spot—for Roxham was
+only six miles off—to put in motion any schemes he might have devised;
+and Philip was sure that he had devised schemes. And the second, that
+Oxford was a long way from Maria Lee. However, he kept his objections
+to himself. In due course they reached the buildings they had set out
+to examine, and the old squire, having settled what was to be done, and
+what was to be left undone, with characteristic promptitude and
+shrewdness, they turned homewards.
+
+In passing through the shrubberies, on their way back to the house,
+they suddenly came upon a stolid-looking lad of about fifteen, emerging
+from a side-walk with a nest full of young blackbirds in his hand. Now,
+if there was one thing in this world more calculated than another to
+rouse the most objectionable traits of the old squire’s character into
+rapid action, it was the discovery of boys, and more especially
+bird-nesting boys, in his plantations. In the first place, he hated
+trespassers; and in the second, it was one of his simple pleasures to
+walk in the early morning and listen to the singing of the birds that
+swarmed around. Accordingly, at the obnoxious sight he stopped
+suddenly, and, drawing himself up to his full height, addressed the
+trembling youth in his sweetest voice.
+
+“Your name is, I believe—Brady—Jim Brady—correct me if I am wrong— and
+you have come here, you—you—young—villain—to steal my birds.”
+
+The frightened boy walked slowly backwards, followed by the old man
+with his fiery eyes fixed upon his face, till at last concussion
+against the trunk of a great tree prevented further retreat. Here he
+stood for about thirty seconds, writhing under the glance that seemed
+to pierce him through and through, till at last he could stand it no
+longer, but flung himself on the ground, roaring:
+
+“Oh! don’t ee, squire; don’t ee now look at me with that ‘ere eye. Take
+and thrash me, squire, but don’t ee fix me so! I hayn’t had no more nor
+twenty this year, and a nest of spinxes, and Tom Smith he’s had
+fifty-two and a young owl. Oh! oh!”
+
+Enraged beyond measure at this last piece of information, Mr. Caresfoot
+took his victim at his word, and, ceasing his ocular experiments, laid
+into the less honourable portion of his form with the gold-headed
+malacca cane in a way that astonished the prostrate Jim, though he was
+afterwards heard to declare that the squire’s cane “warn’t not nothing
+compared with the squire’s eye, which wore a hot coal, it wore, and
+frizzled your innards as sich.”
+
+When Jim Brady had departed, never to return again, and the old man had
+recovered his usual suavity of manner, he remarked to his son:
+
+“There is some curious property in the human eye; a property that is, I
+believe, very much developed in my own. Did you observe the effect of
+my glance upon that boy? I was trying an experiment on him. I remember
+it was always the same with your poor mother. She could never bear me
+to look at her.”
+
+Philip made no reply, but he thought that, if she had been the object
+of experiments of that nature, it was not very wonderful.
+
+Shortly after their return home he received a note from Miss Lee. It
+ran thus:
+
+“My dear Philip,
+“What _do_ you think? Just after you had gone away, I got by the
+mid-day post, which Jones (the butcher) brought from Roxham, several
+letters, amongst them one from Grumps and one from Uncle Tom. Grumps
+has shown a cause. Why? ‘It’ said she was not an improper person; but,
+for all that, she is so angry with Uncle Tom that she will not come
+back, but has accepted an offer to go to Canada as companion to a lady;
+so farewell Grumps.
+
+“Now for Uncle Tom. ‘It’ suggested that I should live with some of my
+relations till I came of age, and pay them four hundred a year, which I
+think a good deal. I am sure it can’t cost four hundred a year to feed
+me, though I have such an appetite. I had no idea they were all so fond
+of me before; they all want me to come and live with them, except Aunt
+Chambers, who, you know, lives in Jersey. Uncle Tom says in his letter
+that he shall be glad if his daughters can have the advantage of my
+example, and of studying my polished manners (just fancy _my_ polished
+manners; and I know, because little Tom, who is a brick, told me, that
+only last year he heard his father tell Emily—that’s the eldest—that I
+was a dowdy, snub-nosed, ill-mannered miss, but that she must keep in
+with me and flatter me up). No, I will not live with Uncle Tom, and I
+will tell ‘it’ so. If I must leave my home, I will go to Aunt Chambers
+at Jersey. Jersey is a beautiful place for flowers, and one learns
+French there without the trouble of learning it; and I like Aunt
+Chambers, and she has no children, and nothing but the memory of a dear
+departed. But I don’t like leaving home, and feel very much inclined to
+cry. _Hang_ the Court of Chancery, and Uncle Tom and his interference
+too!—_there_. I suppose you can’t find time to come over to-morrow
+morning to see me off? Good-bye, dear Philip,
+    “Your affectionate friend, “Maria Lee.”
+
+
+Philip did manage to find time next morning, and came back looking very
+disconsolate.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Philip went to college in due course, and George departed to learn his
+business as a lawyer in Roxham, but it will not be necessary for us to
+enter into the details of their respective careers during this period
+of their lives.
+
+At college Philip did fairly well, and, being a Caresfoot, did not run
+into debt. He was, as his great bodily strength gave promise of, a
+first-class athlete, and for two years stroked the Magdalen boat. Nor
+did he altogether neglect his books, but his reading was of a desultory
+and out-of-the-way order, and much directed towards the investigation
+of mystical subjects. Fairly well liked amongst the men with whom he
+mixed, he could hardly be called popular; his temperament was too
+uncertain for that. At times he was the gayest of the gay, and then
+when the fit took him he would be plunged into a state of gloomy
+depression that might last for days. His companions, to whom his
+mystical studies were a favourite jest, were wont to assert that on
+these occasions he was preparing for a visit from his familiar, but the
+joke was one that he never could be prevailed upon to appreciate. The
+fact of the matter was that these fits of gloom were constitutional
+with him, and very possibly had their origin in the state of his
+mother’s mind before his birth, when her whole thoughts were coloured
+by her morbid and fanciful terror of her husband, and her frantic
+anxiety to conciliate him.
+
+During the three years that he spent at college, Philip saw but little
+of George, since, when he happened to be down at Bratham, which was not
+often, for he spent most of his vacations abroad, George avoided coming
+there as much as possible. Indeed, there was a tacit agreement between
+the two young men that they would see as little of each other as might
+be convenient. But, though he did not see much of him himself, Philip
+was none the less aware that George’s influence over his father was, if
+anything, on the increase. The old squire’s letters were full of him
+and of the admirable way in which he managed the estate, for it was now
+practically in his hands. Indeed, to his surprise and somewhat to his
+disgust, he found that George began to be spoken of indifferently with
+himself as the “young squire.” Long before his college days had come to
+an end Philip had determined that he would do his best, as soon as
+opportunity offered, to reduce his cousin to his proper place, not by
+the violent means to which he had resorted in other days, but rather by
+showing himself to be equally capable, equally assiduous, and equally
+respectful and affectionate.
+
+At last the day came when he was to bid farewell to Oxford for good,
+and in due course he found himself in a second-class railway carriage
+—thinking it useless to waste money, he always went second—and bound
+for Roxham.
+
+Just before the train left the platform at Paddington, Philip was
+agreeably surprised out of his meditations by the entry into his
+carriage of an extremely elegant and stately young lady, a foreigner as
+he judged from her strong accent when she addressed the porter. With
+the innate gallantry of twenty-one, he immediately laid himself out to
+make the acquaintance of one possessed of such proud, yet melting blue
+eyes, such lovely hair, and a figure that would not have disgraced
+Diana; and, with this view, set himself to render her such little
+services as one fellow-traveller can offer to another. They were
+accepted reservedly at first, then gratefully, and before long the
+reserve broke down entirely, and this very handsome pair dropped into a
+conversation as animated as the lady’s broken English would allow. The
+lady told him that her name was Hilda von Holtzhausen, that she was of
+a German family, and had come to England to enter a family as
+companion, in order to obtain a perfect knowledge of the English
+language. She had already been to France and acquired French; when she
+knew English, then she had been promised a place as school-mistress
+under government in her own country. Her father and mother were dead,
+and she had no brothers or sisters, and very few friends.
+
+Where was she going to? She was going to a place called Roxham; here it
+was written on the ticket. She was going to be companion to a dear
+young lady, very rich, like all the English, whom she had met when she
+had travelled with her French family to Jersey, a Miss Lee.
+
+“You don’t say so!” said Philip. “Has she come back to Rewtham?”
+
+“What, do you, then, know her?”
+
+“Yes—that is, I used to three years ago. I live in the next parish.”
+
+“Ah! then perhaps you are the gentleman of whom I have heard her to
+speak, Mr. Car-es-foot, whom she did seem to appear to love; is not
+that the word?—to be very fond, you know.”
+
+Philip laughed, blushed, and acknowledged his identity with the
+gentleman whom Miss Lee “did seem to appear to love.”
+
+“Oh! I am glad; then we shall be friends, and see each other often—
+shall we not?”
+
+He declared unreservedly that she should see him very often.
+
+From Fräulein von Holtzhausen Philip gathered in the course of their
+journey a good many particulars about Miss Lee. It appeared that,
+having attained her majority, she was coming back to live at her old
+home at Rewtham, whither she had tried to persuade her Aunt Chambers to
+accompany her, but without success, that lady being too much attached
+to Jersey to leave it. During the course of a long stay on the island,
+the two girls had become fast friends, and the friendship had
+culminated in an offer being made by Maria Lee to Fräulein von
+Holtzhausen to come and live with her as a companion, a proposal that
+exactly suited the latter.
+
+The mention of Miss Lee’s name had awakened pleasant recollections in
+Philip’s mind, recollections that, at any other time, might have tended
+towards the sentimental; but, when under fire from the blue eyes of
+this stately foreigner, it was impossible for him to feel sentimental
+about anybody save herself. “The journey is over all too soon,” was the
+secret thought of each as they stepped on to the Roxham platform.
+Before they had finally said good-bye, however, a young lady with a
+dainty figure, in a shady hat and pink and white dress, came running
+along the platform.
+
+“Hilda, Hilda, here I am! How do you do, dear? Welcome home,” and she
+was about to seal her welcome with a kiss, when her eye fell upon
+Philip standing by.
+
+“Oh, Philip!” she cried with a blush, “don’t you know me? Have I
+changed much? I should have known you anywhere; and I am glad to see
+you, awfully glad (excuse the slang, but it is such a relief to be able
+to say ‘awful’ without being pulled up by Aunt Chambers). Just think,
+it is three years since we met. Do you remember Grumps? How do I look?
+Do you think you will like me as much as you used to?”
+
+“I think that you are looking the same dear girl that you always used
+to look, only you have grown very pretty, and it is not possible that I
+shall like you more than I used to.”
+
+“I think they must teach you to pay compliments at Oxford, Philip,” she
+answered, flushing with pleasure, “but it is all rubbish for you to say
+that I am pretty, because I know I am not”—and then, confidentially,
+glancing round to see that there was nobody within hearing (Hilda was
+engaged with a porter in looking after her things): “Just look at my
+nose, and you will soon change your mind. It’s broader, and flatter,
+and snubbier than ever. I consider that I have got a bone to pick with
+Providence about that nose. Ah! here comes Hilda. Isn’t she lovely!
+There’s beauty for you if you like. She hasn’t got a nose. Come and
+show us to the carriage. You will come and lunch with us to-morrow,
+won’t you? I am so glad to get back to the old house again; and I mean
+to have such a garden! ‘Life is short, and joys are fleeting,’ as Aunt
+Chambers always says, so I mean to make the best of it whilst it lasts.
+I saw your father yesterday. He is a dear old man, though he has such
+awful eyes. I never felt so happy in my life as I do now. Good-bye. One
+o’clock.” And she was gone, leaving Philip with something to think
+about.
+
+Philip’s reception at home was cordial and reassuring. He found his
+father considerably aged in appearance, but as handsome and upright as
+ever, and to all appearance heartily glad to see him.
+
+“I am glad to see you back, my boy,” he said. “You come to take your
+proper place. If you look at me, you will see that you won’t have long
+to wait before you take mine. I can’t last much longer, Philip, I feel
+that. Eighty-two is a good age to have reached. I have had my time, and
+put the property in order, and now I suppose I must make room. I went
+with the clerk, old Jakes, and marked out my grave yesterday. There’s a
+nice little spot the other side of the stone that they say marks where
+old yeoman Caresfoot, who planted Caresfoot’s Staff, laid his bones,
+and that’s where I wish to be put, in his good company. Don’t forget
+that when the time comes, Philip. There’s room for another if you care
+to keep it for yourself, but perhaps you will prefer the vault.”
+
+“You must not talk of dying yet, father. You will live many years yet.”
+
+“No, Philip; perhaps one, perhaps two, not more than two, perhaps a
+month, perhaps not a day. My life hangs on a thread now.” And he
+pointed to his heart. “It may snap any day, if it gets a strain. By the
+way, Philip, you see that cupboard? Open it! Now, you see that
+stoppered bottle with the red label? Good. Well now, if ever you see me
+taken with an attack of the heart (I have had one since you were away,
+you know, and it nearly carried me off), you run for that as hard as
+you can go, and give it me to drink, half at a time. It is a tremendous
+restorative of some sort, and old Caley says that, if I do not take it
+when the next attack comes, there’ll be an end of ‘Devil Caresfoot’;”
+and he rapped his cane energetically on the oak floor.
+
+“And so, Philip, I want you to go about and make yourself thoroughly
+acquainted with the property, so that you may be able to take things
+over when I die without any hitch. I hope that you will be careful and
+do well by the land. Remember that a big property like this is a sacred
+trust.
+
+“And now there are two more things that I will take this opportunity to
+say a word to you about. First, I see that you and your cousin George
+don’t get on well, and it grieves me. You have always had a false idea
+of George, always, and thought that he was underhand. Nothing could be
+more mistaken than such a notion. George is a most estimable young man,
+and my dear brother’s only son. I wish you would try to remember that,
+Philip—blood is thicker than water, you know— and you will be the only
+two Caresfoots left when I am gone. Now, perhaps you may think that I
+intend enriching George at your expense, but that is not so. Take this
+key and open the top drawer of that secretaire, and give me that
+bundle. This is my will. If you care to look over it, and can
+understand it—which is more than I can—you will see that everything is
+left to you, with the exception of that outlying farm at Holston, those
+three Essex farms that I bought two years ago, and twelve thousand
+pounds in cash. Of course, as you know, the Abbey House, and the lands
+immediately round, are entailed—it has always been the custom to entail
+them for many generations. There, put it back. And now the last thing
+is, I want you to get married, Philip. I should like to see a
+grandchild in the house before I die. I want you to marry Maria Lee. I
+like the girl. She comes of a good old Marlshire stock—our family
+married into hers in the year 1703. Besides, her property would put
+yours into a ring-fence. She is a sharp girl too, and quite pretty
+enough for a wife. I hope you will think it over, Philip.”
+
+“Yes, father; but perhaps she will not have me. I am going to lunch
+there to-morrow.”
+
+“I don’t think you need be afraid, Philip; but I won’t keep you any
+longer. Shake hands, my boy. You’ll perhaps think of your old father
+kindly when you come to stand in his shoes. I hope you will, Philip. We
+have had many a quarrel, and sometimes I have been wrong, but I have
+always wished to do my duty by you, my boy. Don’t forget to make the
+best of your time at lunch to-morrow.”
+
+Philip went out of his father’s study considerably touched by the
+kindness and consideration with which he had been treated, and not a
+little relieved to find his position with reference to his succession
+to the estate so much better than he had anticipated, and his cousin
+George’s so much worse.
+
+“That red-haired fox has plotted in vain,” he thought, with secret
+exultation. And then he set himself to consider the desirability of
+falling in with his father’s wishes as regards marriage. Of Maria he
+was, as the reader is aware, very fond; indeed, a few years before he
+had been in love with her, or something very like it; he knew too that
+she would make him a very good wife, and the match was one that in
+every way commended itself to his common sense and his interests. Yes,
+he would certainly take his father’s advice. But every time he said
+this to himself—and he said it pretty often that evening—there would
+arise before his mind’s eye a vision of the sweet blue eyes of Miss
+Lee’s stately companion. What eyes they were, to be sure! It made
+Philip’s blood run warm and quick merely to think of them; indeed, he
+could almost find it in his heart to wish that Hilda was Maria and
+Maria was in Hilda’s shoes.
+
+What between thoughts of the young lady he had set himself to marry,
+and of the young lady he did not mean to marry, but whose eyes he
+admired, Philip did not sleep so well as usual that night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+Philip did not neglect to go to luncheon at Rewtham house, and a very
+pleasant luncheon it was; indeed, it would have been difficult for him
+to have said which he found the pleasantest: Maria’s cheerful chatter
+and flattering preference, or Hilda’s sweet and gracious presence.
+
+After luncheon, at Maria’s invitation he gave Fräulein von Holtzhausen
+her first lesson in writing in English character; and to speak truth he
+found the task of guiding her fair hand through the mysteries of the
+English alphabet a by no means uncongenial occupation. When he came
+away his admiration of Hilda’s blue eyes was more pronounced than ever;
+but, on the other hand, so was his conviction that he would be very
+foolish if he allowed it to interfere with his intention of making
+Maria Lee his wife.
+
+He who would drive two women thus in double harness must needs have a
+light hand and a ready lash, and it is certainly to the credit of
+Philip’s cleverness that he managed so well as he did. For as time went
+on he discovered his position to be this. Both Hilda and Maria were in
+love with him, the former deeply and silently, the latter openly and
+ostensibly. Now, however gratifying this fact might be to his pride, it
+was in some ways a thorny discovery, since he dared not visibly pay his
+attentions to either. For his part he returned Hilda von Holtzhausen’s
+devotion to a degree that surprised himself; his passion for her burnt
+him like a fire, utterly searing away the traces of his former
+affection for Maria Lee. Under these circumstances, most young men of
+twenty-one would have thrown prudence to the winds and acknowledged,
+either by acts or words, the object of their love; but not so Philip,
+who even at that age was by no means deficient in the characteristic
+caution of the Caresfoot family. He saw clearly that his father would
+never consent to his marriage with Hilda, nor, to speak truth, did he
+himself at all like the idea of losing Miss Lee and her estates.
+
+On the other hand, he knew Hilda’s proud and jealous mind. She was no
+melting beauty who would sigh and submit to an affront, but, for all
+her gracious ways, at heart a haughty woman, who, if she reigned at
+all, would reign like Alexander, unrivalled and alone. That she was
+well aware of her friend’s tendresse for Philip the latter very shortly
+guessed; indeed, as he suspected, Maria was in the habit of confiding
+to her all her hopes and fears connected with himself, a suspicion that
+made him very careful in his remarks to that young lady.
+
+The early summer passed away whilst Philip was still thinking over his
+position, and the face of the country was blushing with all the glory
+of July, when one afternoon he found himself, as he did pretty
+frequently, in the shady drawing-room at Miss Lee’s. As he entered, the
+sound of voices told him that there were other visitors beside himself,
+and, as soon as his eyes had grown accustomed to the light, he saw his
+cousin George, together with his partner Mr. Bellamy, and a lady with
+whom he was not acquainted.
+
+George had improved in appearance somewhat since we last saw him
+meeting with severe treatment at his cousin’s hands. The face had
+filled up a little, with the result that the nose did not look so
+hooked, nor the thick lips so coarse and sensual. The hair, however,
+was as red as ever, and as for the small, light-blue eyes, they
+twinkled with the added sharpness and lustre that four years of such
+experience of the shady side of humanity as can be gathered in a
+lawyer’s office, is able to give to the student of men and manners.
+
+So soon as Philip had said how-do-you-do to Maria and Hilda, giving to
+each a gentle pressure of the hand, George greeted him with warmth.
+
+“How are you, Philip? delighted to see you; how is my uncle? Bellamy
+saw him this morning, and thought that he did not look well.”
+
+“I certainly did think, Mr. Philip,” said the gentleman alluded to, a
+very young-looking, apple-faced little man, with a timid manner, who
+stood in the background nervously rubbing his dry hands together—“I
+certainly did think that the squire looked aged when I saw him this
+morning.”
+
+“Well, you see, Mr. Bellamy, eighty-two is a good age, is it not?” said
+Philip, cheerfully.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Philip, a good age, a very good age, for the _next heir_,”
+and Mr. Bellamy chuckled softly somewhere down in his throat, and
+retreated a little.
+
+“He is getting facetious,” broke in George, “that marriage has done
+that for him. By the way, Philip, do you know Mrs. Bellamy? she has
+only been down here a fortnight, you know. What, no! Then you have a
+pleasure to come” (raising his voice so that it might be heard at the
+other end of the room), “a very clever woman, and as handsome as she is
+clever.”
+
+“Indeed! I must ask you to introduce me presently, Mr. Bellamy. I only
+recently heard that you were married.”
+
+Mr. Bellamy blushed and twisted and was about to speak, when George cut
+in again.
+
+“No, I dare say you didn’t; sly dog, Bellamy; do you know what he did?
+I introduced him to the lady when we were up in town together last
+Christmas. I was dreadfully hard hit myself, I can assure you, and as
+soon as my back was turned he went and cut me out of the water—and
+turned my adored into Mrs. Bellamy.”
+
+“What are you taking my name in vain about, Mr. Caresfoot?” said a
+rich, low voice behind them.
+
+“Bless me, Anne, how softly you move, you quite startled me,” said
+little Mr. Bellamy, putting on his spectacles in an agitated manner.
+
+“My dear, a wife, like an embodied conscience, should always be at her
+husband’s shoulder, especially when he does not know it.”
+
+Bellamy made no reply, but looked as though the sentiment was one of
+which he did not approve; meantime the lady repeated her question to
+George, and the two fell into a bantering conversation. Philip, having
+dropped back a little, had an opportunity of carefully observing Mrs.
+Bellamy, an occupation not without interest, for she was certainly
+worthy of notice.
+
+About twenty years of age, and of medium height, her figure was so
+finely proportioned and so roomily made that it gave her the appearance
+of being taller than she really was. The head was set squarely on the
+shoulders, the hair was cut short, and clustered in ringlets over the
+low, broad brow; whilst the clearly carved Egyptian features and square
+chin gave the whole face a curious expression of resoluteness and
+power. The eyes were heavily-lidded and greyish-green in hue, with
+enormously large dark pupils that had a strange habit of expanding and
+contracting without apparent reason.
+
+Gazing at her, Philip was at a loss to know whether this woman so
+bizarrely beautiful fascinated or repelled him; indeed, neither then
+nor at any future time did he succeed in deciding the question. Whilst
+he was still contemplating, and wondering how Bellamy of all people in
+the world had managed to marry such a woman, and what previous
+acquaintance George had had with her, he saw the lady whisper something
+to his cousin, who at once turned and introduced him.
+
+“Philip,” he said, “let me introduce you to the most charming lady of
+my acquaintance, Mrs. Bellamy.”
+
+Philip bowed and expressed himself delighted, whilst the lady curtsied
+with a mixture of grace and dignity that became her infinitely well.
+
+“Your cousin has often spoken to me of you, Mr. Caresfoot, but he never
+told me——” here she hesitated, and broke off.
+
+“What did he never tell you, Mrs. Bellamy? Nothing to my disadvantage,
+I hope.”
+
+“On the contrary, if you wish to know,” she said, in that tone of
+flattering frankness which is sometimes so charming in a woman’s mouth,
+“he never told me that you were young and handsome. I fancied you forty
+at least.”
+
+“I should dearly like to tell you, Mrs. Bellamy, what my cousin George
+never told _me_; but I won’t, for fear I should make Bellamy jealous.”
+
+“Jealousy, Mr. Caresfoot, is a luxury that _my_ husband is not allowed
+to indulge in; it is very well for lovers, but what is a compliment in
+a lover becomes an impertinence in a husband. But if I keep you here
+much longer, I shall be drawing the enmity of Miss Lee, and—yes, of
+Fräulein von Holtzhausen, too, on to my devoted head, and, as that is
+the only sort of jealousy I have any fear of, or indeed any respect
+for, being as it is the expression of the natural abhorrence of one
+woman for another, I had rather avoid it.”
+
+Philip followed the direction of her sleepy eyes, and saw that both
+Miss Lee and Hilda appeared to be put out. The former was talking
+absently to Mr. Bellamy, and glancing continually in the direction of
+that gentleman’s wife. The latter, too, whilst appearing to listen to
+some compliment from George, was gazing at Mrs. Bellamy with a curious
+look of dislike and apprehension in her face.
+
+“You see what I mean; Fräulein von Holtzhausen actually looks as though
+she were afraid of me. Can you fancy any one being afraid of me, except
+my husband, of course?—for as you know, when a woman is talking of men,
+her husband is _always_ excepted. Come, we must be going; but, Mr.
+Caresfoot, bend a little nearer; if you will accept it from such a
+stranger, I want to give you a bit of advice—make your choice pretty
+soon, or you will lose them both.”
+
+“What do you mean—how do you know——”
+
+“I mean nothing at all, or just as much as you like, and for the rest I
+use my eyes. Come, let us join the others.”
+
+A few minutes later Hilda put down her work, and, declaring that she
+felt hot, threw open the French window and went out into the garden,
+whither, on some pretext or other, Philip followed her.
+
+“What a lovely woman that is,” said Mrs. Bellamy, with enthusiasm, to
+Miss Lee, as soon as Philip was out of earshot. “Her _tout ensemble_
+positively kills one. I feel plain and dowdy as a milkmaid alongside of
+a Court-beauty when I am in the room with her. Don’t you, Miss Lee?”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know, I never thought about it, but of course she is
+lovely and I’m plain, so there is no possibility of comparison between
+us.”
+
+“Well, I think you rate yourself rather low, if you will allow me to
+say so; but most women would but ‘poorly satisfy the sight’ of a man
+when she was present. I know that I should not care to trust my admirer
+(if I had one), however devoted he might be, for a single day in her
+company; would you?”
+
+“I really don’t know; what _do_ you mean?”
+
+“Mean, Miss Lee, why I mean nothing at all; what should I mean, except
+that beauty is a magnet which attracts all men; it serves them for a
+standard of morality and a test of right and wrong. Men are different
+from women. If a man is faithful to one of us, it is only because no
+other woman of sufficient charm has become between him and us. You can
+never trust a man.”
+
+“What dreadful ideas you have.”
+
+“Do you think so? I hope not. I only speak what I have observed. Take
+the case of Fräulein von Holtzhausen, for instance. Did you not notice
+that whilst she was in the room the eyes of the three gentlemen were
+all fixed upon her, and as soon as she leaves it one of them follows
+her, as the others would have done had they not been forestalled? One
+cannot blame them; they are simply following a natural law. Any other
+man would do the same where such a charming person is concerned.”
+
+“I certainly did not notice it; indeed, to speak the truth, I thought
+that they were more occupied with you——”
+
+“With me! why, my dear Miss Lee, _I_ don’t set up for being good-
+looking. What a strange idea. But I dare say you are right, it is only
+one of my theories based upon my own casual observations, and, after
+all, men are not a very interesting subject, are they? Let’s talk of
+something more exciting—dresses, for instance.”
+
+But poor Maria was too uncomfortable and disturbed to talk of anything
+else, so she collapsed into silence, and shortly after Mr. and Mrs.
+Bellamy and George made their adieux.
+
+Meanwhile Philip and Hilda had been walking leisurely down the
+shrubberies adjoining the house.
+
+“Why have you come out?” she asked in German, a language he understood
+well.
+
+“To walk with you. Why do you speak to me in German?”
+
+“Because it is my pleasure to do so, and I never asked you to walk with
+me. You are wanted in the drawing-room, you had better go back.”
+
+“No, I won’t go, Hilda; that is, not until you have promised me
+something.”
+
+“Do not call me Hilda, if you please. I am the Fräulein von
+Holtzhausen. What is it you want me to promise?”
+
+“I want you to meet me this evening at nine o’clock in the summer-
+house.”
+
+“I think, Mr. Caresfoot, that you are forgetting a little what is due
+to me, to yourself, and—to Miss Lee?”
+
+“What do you mean by due to Miss Lee?”
+
+“Simply that she is in love with you, and that you have encouraged her
+in her affection; you need not contradict me, she tells me all about
+it.”
+
+“Nonsense, Hilda; if you will meet me to-night, I will explain
+everything; there is no need for you to be jealous.”
+
+She swept round upon him, tossing her head, and stamping her dainty
+foot upon the gravel.
+
+“Mr. Caresfoot,” she said, “once and for all I am not jealous, and I
+will not meet you; I have too much respect for myself, and too little
+for you,” and she was gone.
+
+Philip’s face, as he stood looking after her, was not pleasant to see;
+it was very hard and angry.
+
+“Jealous, is she? I will give her something to be jealous for, the
+proud minx;” and in his vexation he knocked off the head of a carnation
+with his stick.
+
+“Philip, what _are_ you doing? Those are my pet Australian carnations;
+at least, I think they are Australian. How can you destroy them like
+that?”
+
+“All right, Maria; I was only plucking one for you. Won’t you put it in
+your dress? Where are the others?”
+
+“They have all gone. Come in, it is so hot out there; and tell me what
+you think of Mrs. Bellamy.”
+
+“I think that she is very handsome and very clever. I wonder where
+Bellamy picked her up.”
+
+“I don’t know; I wish he hadn’t picked her up at all. I don’t like her,
+she says unpleasant things; and, though I have only seen her three
+times, she seems to know all about me and everybody else. I am not very
+quick; but do you know just now I thought that she was insinuating that
+you were in love with Hilda; that’s not true, is it, Philip? Don’t
+think me forward if I ask you if that is true, and if I say that, if it
+is, it is better that I should know it. I sha’n’t be angry, Philip;”
+and the girl stood before him to await his answer, one hand pressed
+against her bosom to still the beating of her heart, whilst with the
+other she screened her blushing brow.
+
+And Philip too stood face to face with her sweet self, with conscience,
+and with opportunity. “Now,” whispered conscience, “is the time, before
+very much harm is done; now is the acceptable time to tell her all
+about it, and, whilst forbidding her love, to enlist her sympathy and
+friendship. It will be wrong to encourage her affection; when you
+ardently love another woman, you cannot palter any more.” “Now,”
+whispered opportunity, shouldering conscience aside, “is the time to
+secure her, her love, and her possessions, and to reward Hilda for her
+pride. Do not sacrifice yourself to an infatuation; do not tell her
+about Hilda—it would only breed jealousies; you can settle with her
+afterwards. Take the goods the gods provide you.”
+
+All this and more passed through his mind; and he had made his choice
+long before the rich blood that mantled in the lady’s cheek had sunk
+back to the true breast from whence it came.
+
+Oh, instant of time born to colour all eternity to thine own hue, for
+this man thou hast come and gone! Oh, fleeting moment, bearing
+desolation or healing on thy wings, how the angels, in whose charge lie
+the souls of men, must tremble and turn pale, as they mark thy flight
+through the circumstances of a man’s existence, and thence taking thy
+secrets with thee away to add thy fateful store to the records of his
+past!
+
+He took her hand, the hand that was pressed upon her bosom.
+
+“Maria,” he said, “you should not get such ideas into your head. I
+admire Hilda very much, and that is all. Why, dear, I have always
+looked upon myself as half engaged to you—that is, so far as I am
+concerned; and I have only been waiting till circumstances would allow
+me to do so, to ask you if you think me worth marrying.”
+
+For a while she made no reply, but only blushed the more; at last she
+looked up a little.
+
+“You have made me very happy, Philip.” That was all she said.
+
+“I am very glad, dear, that you can find anything in me to like; but if
+you do care for me, and think me worth waiting for, I am going to ask
+something of your affection: I am going to ask you to trust me as well
+as to love me. I do not, for reasons that I will not enter into, but
+which I beg you to believe are perfectly straightforward, wish anything
+to be said of our engagement at present, not even to your friend Hilda.
+Do you trust me sufficiently to agree to that?”
+
+“Philip, I trust you as much as I love you, and for years I have loved
+you with all my heart. And now, dear, please go; I want to think.”
+
+In the hall a servant gave him a note; it was from Hilda, and ran thus—
+
+“I have changed my mind. I will meet you in the summer-house this
+evening. I have something to say to you.”
+
+Philip whistled as he read it.
+
+“Devilish awkward,” he thought to himself; “if I am going to marry
+Maria, she must leave this. But I cannot bear to part with her. I love
+her! I love her!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+It was some time before Philip could make up his mind whether or no he
+would attend his tryst with Hilda. In the first place, he felt that it
+was an unsafe proceeding generally, inasmuch as moonlight meetings with
+so lovely a person might, should they come to the knowledge of Miss
+Lee, be open to misconstruction; and particularly because, should she
+show the least tenderness towards him, he knew in his heart that he
+could not trust himself, however much he might be engaged in another
+direction. At twenty-one the affections cannot be outraged with
+impunity, but have an awkward way of asserting themselves, ties of
+honour notwithstanding.
+
+But as a rule, when in our hearts we wish to do anything, that thing
+must be bad indeed if we cannot find a satisfactory excuse for doing
+it; and so it was with Philip. Now, thought he to himself, would be his
+opportunity to inform Hilda of his relations with Maria Lee, and to put
+an end to his flirtation with her; for, ostensibly at any rate, it was
+nothing more than a very serious flirtation—that is to say, though
+there had been words of love, and even on her part a passionate avowal
+of affection, wrung in an unguarded moment from the depths of her proud
+heart, there had been no formal engagement. It was a thing that must be
+done, and now was the time to do it. And so he made up his mind to go.
+
+But when, that night, he found himself sitting in the appointed place,
+and waiting for the coming of the woman he was about to discard, but
+whom he loved with all the intensity of his fierce nature, he began to
+view the matter in other lights, and to feel his resolution oozing from
+him. Whether it was the silence of the place that told upon his nerves,
+strained as they were with expectation—for silence, and more especially
+silence by night, is a great unveiler of realities,—or the dread of
+bitter words, or the prescience of the sharp pang of parting —for he
+knew enough of Hilda to know that, what he had to say once said, she
+would trouble him no more—whether it was these things, or whatever it
+was that affected him, he grew most unaccountably anxious and
+depressed. Moreover, in this congenial condition of the atmosphere of
+his mind, all its darker and hidden characteristics sprang into a
+vigorous growth. Superstitions and presentiments crowded in upon him.
+He peopled his surroundings with the shades of intangible deeds that
+yet awaited doing, and grew afraid of his own thoughts. He would have
+fled from the spot, but he could not fly; he could only watch the
+flicker of the moonlight upon the peaceful pool beside him, and—wait.
+
+At last she came with quick and anxious steps, and, though but a few
+minutes before he had dreaded her coming, he now welcomed it eagerly.
+For our feelings, of whatever sort, when directed towards each other,
+are so superficial as compared with the intensity of our fears when we
+are terrified by calamity, or the presence, real or fancied, of the
+unknown, that in any moment of emergency, more especially if it be of a
+mental kind, we are apt to welcome our worst enemy as a drowning man
+welcomes a spar.
+
+“At last,” he said, with a sigh of relief. “How late you are!”
+
+“I could not get away. There were some people to dinner;” and then, in
+a softened voice, “How pale you look! Are you ill?”
+
+“No, only a little tired.”
+
+After this there was silence, and the pair stood facing one another,
+each occupied with their own thoughts, and each dreading to put them
+into words. Once Philip made a beginning of speech, but his voice
+failed him; the beating of his heart seemed to choke his utterance.
+
+At length she leaned, as though for support, against the trunk of a
+pine-tree, in the boughs of which the night breeze was whispering, and
+spoke in a cold clear voice.
+
+“You asked me to meet you here to-night. Have you anything to say to
+me? No, do not speak; perhaps I had better speak first. I have
+something to say to you, and what I have to say may influence whatever
+is in your mind. Listen; you remember what passed between us nearly a
+month ago, when I was so weak as to let you see how much I loved you?”
+
+Philip bowed his head in assent.
+
+“Very good. I have come here to-night, not to give you any lover’s
+meeting, but to tell you that no such words must be spoken again, and
+that I am about to make it impossible that they should be spoken either
+by you or by me. I am going away from here, _never_, I hope, to
+return.”
+
+“Going away!” he gasped. “When?”
+
+Here was the very thing he hoped for coming to pass, and yet the words
+that should have been so full of comfort fell upon him cold as ice, and
+struck him into misery.
+
+“When! why, to-morrow morning. A relation of mine is ill in Germany,
+the only one I have. I never saw him, and care nothing for him, but it
+will give me a pretext; and, once gone, I shall not return. I have told
+Maria that I must go. She cried about it, poor girl.”
+
+At these words, all recollection of his purpose passed out of Philip’s
+mind; all he realized was that, unless he could alter her
+determination, he was about to lose the woman he so passionately
+adored, and whose haughty pride was to him in itself more charming than
+all poor Maria’s gentle love.
+
+“Hilda, do not go,” he said, seizing her hand, which she immediately
+withdrew; “do not leave me. You know how I love you.”
+
+“And why should I not leave you, even supposing it to be true that you
+do love me? To my cost I love you, and am I any longer to endure the
+daily humiliation of seeing myself, the poor German companion, who has
+nothing but her beauty, put aside in favour of another whom I also
+love. You say you love me, and bid me stay; now, tell me what is your
+purpose towards me? Do you intend to try to take advantage of my
+infatuation to make me your mistress? It is, I am told, a common thing
+for such proposals to be made to women in my position, whom it would be
+folly for wealthy gentlemen to marry. If so, abandon that idea; for I
+tell you, Philip, that I would rather die than so disgrace my ancient
+name to gratify myself. I know you money-loving English do not think
+very much of race unless the bearers of the name are rich; but we do;
+and, although you would think it a _mésalliance_ to marry me, I, on the
+other hand, should not be proud of an alliance with you. Why, Philip,
+my ancestors were princes of royal blood when yours still herded the
+swine in these woods. I can show more than thirty quarterings upon my
+shield, each the mark of a noble house, and I will not be the first to
+put a bar sinister across them. Now, I have spoken plainly,
+indelicately perhaps, and there is only one more word to be said
+between us, and that word is _good-bye_,” and she held out her hand.
+
+He did not seem to see it; indeed, he had scarcely heard the latter
+part of what she said. Presently he lifted his face, and it bore traces
+of a dreadful inward struggle. It was deadly pale, and great black
+rings had painted themselves beneath the troubled eyes.
+
+“Hilda,” he said, hoarsely, “don’t go; I cannot bear to let you go. I
+will marry you.”
+
+“Think of what you are saying, Philip, and do not be rash. I do not
+wish to entrap you into marriage. You love money. Remember that Maria,
+with all her possessions, asks nothing better than to become your wife,
+and that I have absolutely nothing but my name and my good looks. Look
+at me,” and she stepped out into a patch of moonlight that found its
+way between the trees, and, drawing the filmy shawl she wore from her
+head and bare neck and bosom, stood before him in all the brightness of
+her beauty, shaded as it was, and made more lovely by the shadows of
+the night.
+
+“Examine me very carefully,” she went on, with bitter sarcasm, “look
+into my features and study my form and carriage, or you may be
+disappointed with your bargain, and complain that you have not got your
+money’s worth. Remember, too, that an accident, an illness, and at the
+best the passage of a few years, may quite spoil my value as a
+beautiful woman, and reflect, before I take you at your word.”
+
+Philip had sat or rather crouched himself down upon the log of a tree
+that lay outside the summer-house, and covered his face with his hand,
+as though her loveliness was more than he could bear to look upon. Now,
+however, he raised his eyes and let them dwell upon her scornful
+features.
+
+“I had rather,” he said slowly—“I had rather lose my life than lose
+you; I love you so that I would buy you at the price even of my honour.
+When will you marry me?”
+
+“What, have you made up your mind so quickly? Are you sure? Then,”— and
+here she changed her whole tone and bearing, and passionately stretched
+out her arms towards him,—“my dearest Philip, my life, my love, I will
+marry you when you will.”
+
+“To-morrow?”
+
+“To-morrow, if you like!”
+
+“You must promise me something first.”
+
+“What is it?”
+
+“That you will keep the marriage a complete secret, and bear another
+name until my father’s death. If you do not, he will most probably
+disinherit me.”
+
+“I do not like your terms, Philip. I do not like secret marriages; but
+you are giving up much to marry me, so I suppose I must give up
+something to marry you.”
+
+“You solemnly promise that nothing shall induce you to reveal that you
+are my wife until I give you permission to do so?”
+
+“I promise—that is, provided you do not force me to in self-defence.”
+
+Philip laughed.
+
+“You need not fear that,” he said. “But how shall we arrange about
+getting married?”
+
+“I can meet you in London.”
+
+“Very well. I will go up early to-morrow, and get a licence, and then
+on Wednesday I can meet you, and we can be married.”
+
+“As you will, Philip; where shall I meet you?”
+
+He gave her an address which she carefully noted down.
+
+“Now,” she said, “you must go, it is late. Yes, you may kiss me now.
+There, that will do, now go.” In another minute he was gone.
+
+“I have won the game,” she mused; “poor Maria. I am sorry for her, but
+perhaps hers is the better part. She will get over it, but mine is a
+sad fate; I love passionately, madly, but I do not trust the man I
+love. Why should our marriage be so secret? He cannot be entangled with
+Maria, or she would have told me.” And she stretched out her arms
+towards the path by which he had left her, and cried aloud, in the
+native tongue that sounded so soft upon her lips, “Oh, my heart’s
+darling! if I could only trust you as well as I love you, it is a happy
+woman that I should be to-night.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+Nothing occurred to interfere with the plan of action decided on by
+Hilda and Philip; no misadventure came to mock them, dashing the
+Tantalus cup of joy to earth before their eyes. On the contrary, within
+forty-eight hours of the conversation recorded in the last chapter,
+they were as completely and irrevocably man and wife, as a special
+licence and the curate of a city church, assisted by the clerk and the
+pew-opener, could make them.
+
+Then followed a brief period of such delirium as turned the London
+lodgings, dingy and stuffy as they were in the height of the hot
+summer, into an earthly paradise, a garden of Eden, into which, alas!
+the serpent had no need to seek an entrance. But, as was natural, when
+the first glory of realized happiness was beginning to grow faint on
+their horizon, the young couple turned themselves to consider their
+position, and found in it, mutually and severally, many things that did
+not please them. For Philip, indeed, it was full of anxieties, for he
+had many complications to deal with. First there was his secret
+engagement to Maria Lee, of which, be it remembered, his wife was
+totally ignorant, and which was in itself a sufficiently awkward affair
+for a married man to have on his hands. Then there was the paramount
+need of keeping his marriage with Hilda as secret as the dead, to say
+nothing of the necessity of his living, for the most part, away from
+his wife. Indeed, his only consolation was that he had plenty of money
+on which to support her, inasmuch as his father had, from the date of
+his leaving Oxford, made him an allowance of one thousand a year.
+
+Hilda had begun to discover that she was not without her troubles. For
+one thing, her husband’s fits of moodiness and fretful anxiety troubled
+her, and led her, possessed as she was with a more than ordinary share
+of womanly shrewdness, to suspect that he was hiding something from
+her. But what chiefly vexed her proud nature was the necessity of
+concealment, and all its attendant petty falsehoods and subterfuges. It
+was not pleasant for Hilda Caresfoot to have to pass as Mrs. Roberts,
+and to be careful not to show herself in public places in the daytime,
+where there was a possibility of her being seen by any one who might
+recognize in her striking figure the lady who had lived with Miss Lee
+in Marlshire. It was not pleasant to her to be obliged to reply to
+Maria Lee’s affectionate letters, full as they were of entreaty for her
+return, by epistles that had to be forwarded to a country town in a
+remote district of Germany to be posted, and which were in themselves
+full of lies that, however white they might have seemed under all the
+circumstances, she felt in her conscience to be very black indeed. In
+short, there was in their union none of that sense of finality and of
+security that is, under ordinary circumstances, the distinguishing mark
+of marriage in this country; it partook rather of the nature of an
+illicit connection.
+
+At the end of a fortnight of wedded bliss all these little things had
+begun to make themselves felt, and in truth they were but the
+commencement of evils. For, one afternoon, Philip, for the first time
+since his wedding, tore himself away from his wife’s side, and paid a
+visit to a club to which he had been recently elected. Here he found no
+less than three letters from his father, the first requesting his
+return, the second commanding it in exceptionally polite language, and
+the third—which, written in mingled anxiety and anger, had just
+arrived—coolly announcing his parent’s intention, should he not hear of
+him by return, of setting detective officers to work to discover his
+whereabouts. From this letter it appeared, indeed, that his cousin
+George had already been despatched to London to look for him, and on
+reference to the hall porter he discovered that a gentleman answering
+to his description had already inquired for him several times.
+
+Cursing his own folly in not having kept up some communication with his
+father, he made the best of his way back to his lodgings, to find Hilda
+waiting for him somewhat disconsolately.
+
+“I am glad you have come back, love,” she said, drawing him towards her
+till his dark curls mingled with her own fair locks, and kissing him
+upon the forehead. “I have missed you dreadfully. I don’t understand
+how I can have lived all these years without you.”
+
+“I am afraid, dear, you will have to live without me for a while now;
+listen,” and he read her the letters he had just received.
+
+She listened attentively till he had finished.
+
+“What are you going to do?” she asked, with some anxiety in her voice.
+
+“Do? why of course I must go home at once.”
+
+“And what am I to do?”
+
+“Well, I don’t know; I suppose that you must stop here.”
+
+“That will be pleasant for me, will it not?”
+
+“No, dear, it will be pleasant neither for you nor me; but what can I
+do? You know the man my father is to deal with; if I stop here in
+defiance to his wishes, especially as he has been anxious about me,
+there is no knowing what might not happen. Remember, Hilda, that we
+have to deal with George, whose whole life is devoted to secret
+endeavours to supplant me. If I were to give him such an opportunity as
+I should by stopping away now, I should deserve all I got, or rather
+all I did not get.”
+
+Hilda sighed and acquiesced; had she been a softer-minded woman she
+would have wept and relieved her feelings, but she was not soft-
+minded. And so, before the post went out, he wrote an affectionate
+letter to his father, expressing his sorrow at the latter’s anxiety at
+his own negligence in not having written to him, the fact of the matter
+being, he said, that he had been taken up with visiting some of his
+Oxford friends, and had not till that afternoon been near his club to
+look for letters. He would, however, he added, return on the morrow,
+and make his apologies in person.
+
+This letter he handed to his wife to read.
+
+“Do you think that will do?” he asked, when she had finished.
+
+“Oh, yes!” she replied, with a touch of her old sarcasm, “it is a
+masterpiece of falsehood.”
+
+Philip looked very angry, and fumed and fretted; but he made no reply,
+and on the following morning he departed to Bratham Abbey.
+
+“Ah, Philip, Philip!” said his father, under the mellow influence of
+his fourth glass of port, on the night of his arrival. “I know well
+enough what kept you up in town. Well, well, I don’t complain, young
+men will be young men; but don’t let these affairs interfere with the
+business of life. Remember Maria Lee, my boy; you have serious
+interests in that direction, interests that must not be trifled with,
+interests that I have a right to expect you will _not_ trifle with.”
+
+His son made no reply, but sipped his wine in silence, aching at his
+heart for his absent bride, and wondering what his father would say did
+he really know what had “kept him in town.”
+
+After this, matters went on smoothly enough for a month or more; since,
+fortunately for Philip, the great Maria Lee question, a question that
+the more he considered it the more thorny did it appear, was for the
+moment shelved by the absence of that young lady on a visit to her aunt
+in the Isle of Wight. Twice during that month he managed, on different
+pretexts, to get up to London and visit his wife, whom he found as
+patient as was possible under the circumstances, but anything but
+happy. Indeed, on the second occasion, she urged on him strongly the
+ignominy of her position, and even begged him to make a clean breast of
+it to his father, offering to undertake the task herself. He refused
+equally warmly, and some sharp words ensued to be, however, quickly
+followed by a reconciliation.
+
+On his return from this second visit, Philip found a note signed
+“affectionately yours, Maria Lee,” waiting for him, which announced
+that young lady’s return, and begged him to come over to lunch on the
+following day.
+
+He went—indeed, he had no alternative but to go; and again fortune
+favoured him in the person of a diffident young lady who was stopping
+with Maria, and who never left her side all that afternoon, much to the
+disgust of the latter and the relief of Philip. One thing, however, he
+was not spared, and that was the perusal of Hilda’s last letter to her
+friend, written apparently from Germany, and giving a lively
+description of the writer’s daily life and the state of her uncle’s
+health, which, she said, precluded all possibility of her return. Alas!
+he already knew its every line too well; for, as Hilda refused to
+undertake the task, he had but a week before drafted it himself. But
+Philip was growing hardened to deception, and found it possible to read
+it from end to end, and speculate upon its contents with Maria without
+blush or hesitation.
+
+But he could not always expect to find Miss Lee in the custody of such
+an obtuse friend; and, needless to say, it became a matter of very
+serious importance to him to know how he should treat her. It occurred
+to him that his safest course might be to throw himself upon her
+generosity and make a clean breast of it; but when it came to the point
+he was too weak to thus expose his shameful conduct to the woman whose
+heart he had won, and to whom he was bound by every tie of honour that
+a gentleman holds sacred.
+
+He thought of the scornful wonder with which she would listen to his
+tale, and preferred to take the risk of greater disaster in the future
+to the certainty of present shame. In the end, he contrived to
+establish a species of confidential intimacy with Maria, which, whilst
+it somewhat mystified the poor girl, was not without its charm,
+inasmuch as it tended to transform the every-day Philip into a hero of
+romance.
+
+But in the main Maria was ill-suited to play heroine to her wooer’s
+hero. Herself as open as the daylight, it was quite incomprehensible to
+her why their relationship should be kept such a dark and mysterious
+secret, or why, if her lover gave her a kiss, it should be done with as
+many precautions as though he were about to commit a murder.
+
+She was a very modest maiden, and in her heart believed it a wonderful
+thing that Philip should have fallen in love with her—a thing to be
+very proud of; and she felt it hard that she should be denied the
+gratification of openly acknowledging her lover, and showing him off to
+her friends, after the fashion that is so delightful to the female
+mind.
+
+But, though this consciousness of the deprivation of a lawful joy set
+up a certain feeling of irritation in her mind, she did not allow it to
+override her entire trust in and love for Philip. Whatever he did was
+no doubt wise and right; but, for all that, on several occasions she
+took an opportunity to make him acquainted with her views of the
+matter, and to ask him questions that he found it increasingly
+difficult to answer.
+
+In this way, by the exercise of ceaseless diplomacy, and with the
+assistance of a great deal of falsehood of the most artistic nature,
+Philip managed to tide over the next six months; but at the end of that
+time the position was very far from improved. Hilda was chafing more
+and more at the ignominy of her position; Maria was daily growing more
+and more impatient to have their engagement made public; and last, but
+by no means least, his father was almost daily at him on the subject of
+Miss Lee, till at length he succeeded in wringing from him the
+confession that there existed some sort of understanding between Maria
+and himself.
+
+Now, the old squire was a shrewd man of the world, and was not
+therefore slow to guess that what prevented this understanding from
+being openly acknowledged as an engagement was some entanglement on his
+son’s part. Indeed, it had recently become clear to him that London had
+developed strange attractions for Philip. That this entanglement could
+be marriage was, however, an idea that never entered into his head; he
+had too good an opinion of his son’s common- sense to believe it
+possible that he would deliberately jeopardize his inheritance by
+marrying without his permission. But Philip’s reluctance and obstinacy
+annoyed him excessively. “Devil” Caresfoot was not a man accustomed to
+be thwarted; indeed, he had never been thwarted in his life, and he did
+not mean to be now. He had set his heart upon this marriage, and it
+would have to be a good reason that could turn him from his purpose.
+
+Accordingly, having extracted the above information, he said no more to
+Philip, but proceeded to lay his own plans.
+
+That very afternoon he commenced to put them into action. At three
+o’clock he ordered the carriage and pair, a vehicle that was rarely
+used, giving special directions that the coachman should see that his
+wig was properly curled. An ill-curled wig had before now been known to
+produce a very bad effect upon Mr. Caresfoot’s nerves, and also upon
+its wearer’s future prospects in life.
+
+At three precisely the heavy open carriage, swung upon C-springs and
+drawn by two huge greys, drew up in front of the hall-door, and the
+squire, who was as usual dressed in the old-fashioned knee-breeches,
+and carried in his hand his gold-headed cane, stepped solemnly into it,
+and seated himself exactly in the middle of the back seat, not leaning
+back, as is the fashion of our degenerate days, but holding himself
+bolt upright. Any more imposing sight than this old gentleman presented
+thus seated, and moving at a stately pace through the village street,
+it is impossible to conceive; but it so oppressed the very children
+that fear at the spectacle (which was an unwonted one, for the squire
+had not thus driven abroad in state for some years) overcame their
+curiosity, and at his approach they incontinently fled.
+
+So soon as the carriage had passed through the drive-gates of the
+Abbey, the squire ordered the coachman to drive to Rewtham House,
+whither in due course he safely arrived.
+
+He was ushered into the drawing-room, whilst a servant went in search
+of Miss Lee, whom she found walking in the garden.
+
+“A gentleman to see you, miss.”
+
+“I am not at home. Who is it?”
+
+“Mr. Caresfoot, miss!”
+
+“Oh, why didn’t you say so before?” and taking it for granted that
+Philip had paid her an unexpected visit, she started off for the house
+at a run.
+
+“Why, Philip,” she exclaimed, as she swung open the door, “this _is_
+good of you, o—oh!” for at that moment Mr. Caresfoot senior appeared
+from behind the back of the door where he had been standing by the
+fireplace, and made his most imposing bow.
+
+“That, my dear Maria, was the first time that I have heard myself
+called Philip for many a long year, and I fear that that was by
+accident; neither the name nor the blush were meant for me; now, were
+they?”
+
+“I thought,” replied Maria, who was still overwhelmed with confusion,
+“I thought that it was Philip, your son, you know; he has not been here
+for so long.”
+
+“With such a welcome waiting him, it is indeed wonderful that he can
+keep away;” and the old squire bowing again with such courtly grace as
+to drive what little self-possession remained to poor Maria after her
+flying entry entirely out of her head.
+
+“And now, my dear,” went on her visitor, fixing his piercing eyes upon
+her face, “with your permission, we will sit down and have a little
+talk together. Won’t you take off your hat?”
+
+Maria took off her hat as suggested, and sat down meekly, full under
+fire of the glowing eyes that had produced such curious effects upon
+subjects so dissimilar as the late Mrs. Caresfoot and Jim Brady. She
+could, however, think of nothing appropriate to say.
+
+“My dear,” the old gentleman continued presently, “the subject upon
+which I have taken upon myself to speak to you is one very nearly
+affecting your happiness and also of a delicate nature. My excuse for
+alluding to it must be that you are the child of my old friend—ah! we
+were great friends fifty years ago, my dear—and that I have myself a
+near interest in the matter. Do you understand me?”
+
+“No, not quite.”
+
+“Well then, forgive an old man, who has no time to waste, if he comes
+to the point. I mean I have come to ask you, Maria, if any
+understanding or engagement exists between Philip and yourself?”
+
+The eyes were full upon her now, and she felt that they were drawing
+her secret from her as a corkscrew does a cork. At last it came out
+with a pop.
+
+“Yes, we are engaged.”
+
+“Thank you, my dear. How long have you been engaged?”
+
+“About eight months.”
+
+“And why has the affair been kept so secret?”
+
+“I don’t know; Philip wished it. He told me not to tell any one. I
+suppose that I should not by rights have told you.”
+
+“Make yourself easy, my dear. Philip has already told me that there was
+an understanding between you; I only wanted to hear the confirmation of
+such good news from your own lips. Young men are great coxcombs, my
+dear, and apt to fancy things where ladies are concerned. I am rejoiced
+to hear that there is no mistake on his part.”
+
+“I am so glad that you are pleased,” she said shyly.
+
+“Pleased, my dear!” said the old gentleman, rising and walking up and
+down the room in his excitement, “pleased is not the word for it. I am
+more rejoiced than if some one had left me another estate. Look here,
+Maria, I had set my heart upon this thing coming to pass; I have
+thought of it for years. I loved your father, and you are like your
+father, girl; ay, I love you too, because you are a generous, honest
+woman, and will bring a good strain of blood into a family that wants
+generosity—ay, and I sometimes think wants honesty too. And then your
+land runs into ours, and, as I can’t buy it, I am glad that it should
+come in by marriage. I have always wanted to see the Abbey, Isleworth,
+and Rewtham estates in a ring fence before I died. Come and give me a
+kiss, my dear.”
+
+Maria did as she was bid.
+
+“I will try to be a good daughter to you,” she said, “if I marry
+Philip; but,” and here her voice trembled a little, “I want to make you
+understand that, though this engagement exists, I have sometimes
+thought of late that perhaps he wanted to break it off, and——”
+
+“Break it off?” almost shouted the old man, his eyes flashing. “Break
+it off; by God, the day he plays fast and loose with you, that day I
+leave the property to his cousin, George;—there, there, I frightened
+you, I beg your pardon, but in his own interest, Maria, I advise you to
+hold him fast to his word. To change the subject, your news has
+freshened me up so much that I mean to have a little company; will you
+come and dine with me next Thursday?”
+
+“I shall be very glad, Mr. Caresfoot.”
+
+“Thank you; and perhaps till then you will not, unless he happens to
+ask you, mention the subject of our conversation to Philip. I want to
+have a talk with him first.”
+
+Maria assented, and the squire took his leave with the same
+magnificence of mien that had marked his arrival.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+That evening his father astonished Philip by telling him that he
+intended to give a dinner-party on that day week.
+
+“You see, Philip,” he said, with a grim smile, “I have only got a year
+or so at the most before me, and I wish to see a little of my
+neighbours before I go. I have not had much society of late years. I
+mean to do the thing well while I am about it, and ask everybody in the
+neighbourhood. How many can dine with comfort in the old
+banqueting-hall, do you suppose?”
+
+“About five-and-forty, I should think.”
+
+“Five-and-forty! I remember that we sat down sixty to dinner when I
+came of age, but then we were a little crowded; so we will limit the
+number to fifty.”
+
+“Are you going to have fifty people to dinner?” asked Philip aghast.
+
+“Certainly; I shall ask you to come and help me to write the
+invitations presently. I have prepared a list; and will you kindly send
+over to Bell at Roxham. I wish to speak to him, he must bring his men
+over to do up the old hall a bit; and, by the way, write to Gunter’s
+and order a man-cook to be here on Tuesday, and to bring with him
+materials for the best dinner for fifty people that he can supply. I
+will see after the wine myself; we will finish off that wonderful port
+my grandfather laid down. Now, bustle about, my lad, we have no time to
+lose; we must get all the notes out to-day.”
+
+Philip started to execute his orders, pretty well convinced in his own
+mind that his father was taking leave of his senses. Who ever heard of
+a dinner being given to fifty people before, especially in a house
+where such rare entertainments had always been of a traditionally
+select and solemn nature? The expense, too, reflected Philip, would be
+large; a man of his father’s age had, in his opinion, no right to make
+such ducks-and-drakes of money that was so near to belonging to
+somebody else. But one thing was clear: his father had set his mind
+upon it, and when once that was the case to try to thwart him was more
+than Philip dared.
+
+When the notes of invitation arrived at their respective destinations,
+great was the excitement in the neighbourhood of Bratham Abbey.
+Curiosity was rampant on the point, and the refusals were few and far
+between.
+
+At length the eventful evening arrived, and with it the expected
+guests, among whom the old squire, in his dress of a past generation—
+resplendent in diamond buckles, frilled shirt-front, and silk
+stockings—was, with his snow-white hair and stately bearing, himself by
+far the most striking figure.
+
+Standing near the door of the large drawing-room, he received his
+guests as they arrived with an air that would have done credit to an
+ambassador; but when Miss Lee entered, Philip noticed with a prophetic
+shudder that, in lieu of the accustomed bow, he gave her a kiss. He
+also noticed, for he was an observant man, that the gathered company
+was pervaded by a curious air of expectation. They were nearly all of
+them people who had been neighbours of the Caresfoot family for years
+—in many instances for generations—and as intimate with its members as
+the high-stomached stiffness of English country-life will allow. They
+therefore were well acquainted with the family history and
+peculiarities; but it was clear from their faces that their knowledge
+was of no help to them now, and that they were totally in the dark as
+to why they were all gathered together in this unwonted fashion.
+
+At length, to the relief of all, the last of the chosen fifty guests
+put in an appearance, and dinner was announced. Everybody made his way
+to his allotted partner, and awaited the signal to move forward, when a
+fresh piquancy was added to the proceedings by an unexpected
+incident—in which Maria Lee played a principal part. Maria was sitting
+in a corner of the drawing-room, wondering if Philip was going to take
+her in to dinner, and why he had not been to see her lately, when
+suddenly she became aware that all the room was looking at her, and on
+raising her eyes she perceived the cause. For there, close upon her,
+and advancing with majestic step and outstretched arm, was old Mr.
+Caresfoot, possessed by the evident intention of taking her down in the
+full face of all the married ladies and people of title present. She
+prayed that the floor might open and swallow her; indeed, of the two,
+she would have preferred that way of going down to dinner. But it did
+not, so there was no alternative left to her but to accept the
+proffered arm, and to pass, with as much dignity as she could muster in
+such a trying moment, in front of the intensely interested company—from
+which she could hear an involuntary murmur of surprise— through the
+wide-flung doors, down the great oak staircase loaded with exotics,
+thence along a passage carpeted with crimson cloth, and through double
+doors of oak that were flung open at their approach, into the
+banqueting-hall. On its threshold not only she, but almost every member
+of the company who passed in behind them, uttered an exclamation of
+surprise; and indeed the sight before them amply justified it.
+
+The hall was a chamber of noble proportions, sixty feet in length by
+thirty wide. It was very lofty, and the dark chestnut beams of the
+beautiful arched roof were thrown into strong relief by the light of
+many candles. The walls were panelled to the roof with oak that had
+become almost black in the course of centuries, here and there relieved
+by portraits and shining suits of armour.
+
+Down the centre of the room ran a long wide table, whereon, and on a
+huge sideboard, was spread the whole of the Caresfoot plate, which,
+catching the light of the suspended candles, threw it back in dazzling
+gleams till the beholder was positively bewildered with the brilliancy
+of the sight.
+
+“Oh, how beautiful!” said Maria, in astonishment.
+
+“Yes,” answered the old gentleman as he took his seat at the head of
+the table, placing Maria on his right, “the plate is very fine, it has
+taken two hundred years to get together; but my father did more in that
+way than all of us put together, he spent ten thousand pounds on plate
+during his lifetime; that gold service on the sideboard belonged to
+him. I have only spent two. Mind, my love,” he added in a low voice,
+“when it comes into your keeping that it is preserved intact; but I
+don’t recommend you to add to it, there is too much already for a
+simple country gentleman’s family.”
+
+Maria blushed and was silent.
+
+The dinner, which was served on a most magnificent scale, wore itself
+away, as all big county-dinners do, in bursts of sedate but not
+profoundly interesting conversation. Indeed, had it not been for the
+novelty of the sight, Maria would have been rather bored, the squire’s
+stately compliments notwithstanding. As it was, she felt inclined to
+envy the party at the other end, amongst whom, looking down the long
+vista of sparkling glass and silver, she could now and again catch
+sight of Philip’s face beaming with animation, and even in the pauses
+of conversation hear the echo of his distant laughter.
+
+“What good spirits he is in!” she thought to herself.
+
+And, indeed, Philip was, or appeared to be, in excellent spirits. His
+handsome face, that of late had been so gloomy, was lit up with
+laughter, and he contrived by his witty talk to keep those round him in
+continual merriment.
+
+“Philip seems very happy, doesn’t he,” said George, _sotto voce_ to
+Mrs. Bellamy, who was sitting next to him.
+
+“You must be a very bad judge of the face as an index to the mind if
+you think that he is happy. I have been watching him all dinner, and I
+draw a very different conclusion.”
+
+“Why, look how he is laughing.”
+
+“Have you never seen a man laugh to hide his misery; never mind his
+lips, watch his eyes: they are dilated with fear, see how he keeps
+glancing towards his father and Miss Lee. There, did you see him start?
+Believe me he is not happy, and unless I am mistaken he will be even
+less so before the night is over. We are not all asked here for
+nothing.”
+
+“I hope not, I hope not; if so we shall have to act upon our
+information, eh! But, to change the subject, you look lovely to-night.”
+
+“Of course I do, I _am_ lovely; I wish I could return the compliment,
+but conscientiously I can’t. Did you ever see such plate? look at that
+centre-piece.”
+
+“It is wonderful,” said George. “I never saw it at all out before. I
+wonder,” he added, with a sigh, “if I shall ever have the fingering of
+it.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, with a strange look of her large eyes, “if you
+continue to be guided by me, you shall. I tell you so, and I _never_
+make mistakes. Hush, something is going to happen. What is it?”
+
+The dinner had come to an end, and in accordance with the old-
+fashioned custom the cloth had been removed, leaving bare an ancient
+table of polished oak nearly forty feet in length, and composed of
+slabs of timber a good two inches thick.
+
+When the wine had been handed round, the old squire motioned to the
+servants to leave the room, and then, having first whispered something
+in the ear of Miss Lee that caused her to turn very red, he slowly rose
+to his feet in the midst of a dead silence.
+
+“Look at your cousin’s face,” whispered Mrs. Bellamy. George looked; it
+was ghastly pale, and the black eyes were gleaming like polished jet
+against white paper.
+
+“Friends and neighbours, amongst whom or amongst whose fathers I have
+lived for so many years,” began the speaker, whose voice, soft as it
+was, filled the great hall with ease, “it was, if tradition does not
+lie, in this very room and at this very table that the only Caresfoot
+who ever made an after-dinner speech of his own accord, delivered
+himself of his burden. That man was my ancestor in the eighth degree,
+old yeoman Caresfoot, and the occasion of his speech was to him a very
+important one, being the day on which he planted Caresfoot’s Staff, the
+great oak by the water yonder, to mark the founding of a house of
+country gentry. Some centuries have elapsed since my forefather stood
+where I stand, most like with his hand upon this board as mine is now,
+and addressed a company not so fine or so well dressed, but perhaps—I
+mean no disrespect—on the whole, as good at heart as that before me
+now. Yes, the sapling oak has grown into the biggest tree in the
+country-side ‘twixt then and now. It seems, therefore, to be fit that
+on what is to me as great a day as the planting of that oak was to my
+yeoman forefather, that I, like him, should gather my ancient friends
+and neighbours round me under the same ancient roof that I may, like
+him, make them the partakers of my joy.
+
+“None of you sitting at this board to-day can look upon the old man who
+now asks your attention, without realizing what he himself has already
+learned: namely, that his day is over. Now, life is hard to quit. When
+a man grows old, the terrors of the unknown land loom just as large and
+terrible as they did to his youthful imagination, larger perhaps. But
+it is a fact that must be faced, a hard, inevitable fact. And age,
+realizing this, looks round it for consolations, and finds only two:
+first, that as its interests and affections _here_ fade and fall away,
+in just that same proportion do they grow and gather _there_ upon the
+further shore; and secondly that, after Nature’s eternal fashion, the
+youth and vigour of a new generation is waiting to replace the worn-out
+decrepitude of that which sinks into oblivion. My life is done, it
+cannot be long before the churchyard claims its own, but I live again
+in my son; and take such cold comfort as I may from that idea of
+family, and of long-continued and assured succession, that has so
+largely helped to make this country what she is.
+
+“But you will wonder what can be the particular purpose for which I
+have bidden you here to-night. Be assured that it was not to ask you to
+listen to gloomy sermons on the, to others, not very interesting fact
+of my approaching end, but rather for a joyful and a definite reason.
+One wish I have long had, it is—that before I go, I may see my son’s
+child, the little Caresfoot that is to fill my place in future years,
+prattling about my knees. But this I shall never see. What I have to
+announce to you, however, is the first step towards it, my son’s
+engagement to Miss Lee, the young lady on my right.”
+
+“Look at his face,” whispered Mrs. Bellamy to her neighbour, during the
+murmur of applause that followed this announcement. “Look quick.”
+
+Philip had put his hands down upon his chair as though to raise himself
+up, and an expression of such mingled rage and terror swept across his
+features as, once seen, could not easily be forgotten. But so quickly
+did it pass that perhaps Mrs. Bellamy, who was watching, was the only
+one in all that company to observe it. In another moment he was smiling
+and bowing his acknowledgements to whispered and telegraphed
+congratulations.
+
+“You all know Miss Lee,” went on the old squire, “as you knew her
+father and mother before her; she is a sound shoot from an honest
+stock, a girl after my own heart, a girl that I love, and that all who
+come under her influence will love, and this engagement is to me the
+most joyful news that I have heard for many a year. May God, ay, and
+man too, so deal with my son as he deals with Maria Lee!
+
+“And now I have done; I have already kept you too long. With your
+consent, we will have no more speeches, no returning of thanks; we will
+spare Philip his blushes. But before I sit down I will bid you all
+farewell, for I am in my eighty-third year, and I feel that I shall
+never see very many of your faces again. I wish that I had been a
+better neighbour to you all, as there are many other things I wish, now
+that it is too late to fulfil them; but I still hope that some of you
+will now and again find a kind thought for the old man whom among
+yourselves you talk of as ‘Devil Caresfoot.’ Believe me, my friends,
+there is truth in the old proverb: the devil is not always as black as
+he is painted. I give you my toast, my son Philip and his affianced
+wife, Maria Lee.”
+
+The whole company rose, actuated by a common impulse, and drank the
+health standing; and such was the pathos of the old squire’s speech,
+that there were eyes among those present that were not free from tears.
+Then the ladies retired, amongst them poor Maria, who was naturally
+upset at the unexpected, and, in some ways, unwelcome notoriety thus
+given to herself.
+
+In the drawing-room, she was so overwhelmed with congratulations, that
+at last, feeling that she could not face a fresh edition from the male
+portion of the gathering, she ordered her carriage, and quietly slipped
+away home, to think over matters at her leisure.
+
+Philip, too, came in for his share of honours down below, and
+acknowledged them as best he might, for he had not the moral courage to
+repudiate the position. He felt that his father had forced his hand
+completely, and that there was nothing to be done, and sank into the
+outward calmness of despair. But if his companions could have seen the
+whirlpool of hatred, terror, and fury that raged within his breast as
+he sat and chatted, and sipped his great-grandfather’s port, they would
+have been justifiably astonished.
+
+At length the banquet, for it was nothing less, came to an end, and,
+having bowed their farewell to the last departing guest, the old man
+and his son were left alone together in the deserted drawing-room.
+Philip was seated by a table, his face buried in his hand, whilst his
+father was standing by the dying fire, tapping his eye-glass nervously
+on the mantelpiece. It was he who broke the somewhat ominous silence.
+
+“Well, Philip, how did you like my speech?”
+
+Thus addressed, the son lifted his face from his hand; it was white as
+a sheet.
+
+“By what authority,” he asked in a harsh whisper, “did you announce me
+as engaged to Miss Lee?”
+
+“By my own, Philip. I had it from both your lips that you were engaged.
+I did not choose that it should remain a secret any longer.”
+
+“You had no right to make that speech. I will not marry Miss Lee;
+understand once and for all, I will _not_ marry her.”
+
+In speaking thus, Philip had nerved himself to bear one of those
+dreadful outbursts of fury that had earned his father his title; but,
+to his astonishment, none such came. The steely eyes glinted a little
+as he answered in his most polite manner, and that was all.
+
+“Your position, Philip, then is that you are engaged, very publicly
+engaged, to a girl whom you have no intention of marrying—a very
+disgraceful position; mine is that I have, with every possible
+solemnity, announced a marriage that will not come off—a very
+ridiculous position. Very good, my dear Philip; please yourself. I
+cannot force you into a disgraceful marriage. But you must not suppose
+that you can thus thwart me with impunity. Allow me to show you the
+alternative. I see you are tired, but I shall not detain you long. Take
+that easy-chair. This house and the land round it, also the plate,
+which is very valuable, but cannot be sold—by the way, see that it is
+safely locked up before you go to bed—are strictly entailed, and must,
+of course belong to you. The value of the entailed land is about 1000
+pounds a year, or a little less in bad times; of the unentailed, a
+clear 4000 pounds; of my personal property about 900 pounds. Should you
+persist in your refusal to marry Miss Lee, or should the marriage in
+any way fall through, except from circumstances entirely beyond your
+control, I must, to use your own admirably emphatic language, ask you
+to ‘understand, once and for all,’ that, where your name appears in my
+will with reference to the unentailed and personal property, it will be
+erased, and that of your cousin George substituted. Please yourself,
+Philip, please yourself; it is a matter of entire indifference to me. I
+am very fond of George, and shall be glad to do him a good turn if you
+force me to it, though it is a pity to split up the property. But
+probably you will like to take a week to consider whether you prefer to
+stick to the girl you have got hold of up in town there—oh, yes! I know
+there is some one—and abandon the property, or marry Miss Lee and
+retain the property—a very pretty problem for an amorous young man to
+consider. There, I won’t keep you up any longer. Good night, Philip,
+good night. Just see to the plate, will you? Remember, you have a
+personal interest in that; I can’t leave it away.”
+
+Philip rose without a word and left the room, but when he was gone it
+was his father’s turn to hide his face in his hands.
+
+“Oh, God!” he groaned aloud, “to think that all my plans should come to
+such an end as this; to think that I am as powerless to prevent their
+collapse as a child is to support a falling tree; that the only power
+left me is the power of vengeance—vengeance on my own son. I have lived
+too long, and the dregs of life are bitter.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+Poor Hilda found life in her London lodging anything but cheerful, and
+frequently begged Philip to allow her to settle somewhere in the
+country. This, however, he refused to do on two grounds: in the first
+place, because few country villages would be so convenient for him to
+get at as London; and in the second, because he declared that the great
+city was the safest hiding-place in the world.
+
+And so Hilda continued perforce to live her lonesome existence, that
+was only cheered by her husband’s short and uncertain visits. Friends
+she had none, nor did she dare to make any. The only person whose
+conversation she could rely on to relieve the tedium of the long weeks
+was her landlady, Mrs. Jacobs, the widow of a cheesemonger, who had
+ruined a fine business by his drinking and other vicious propensities,
+and out of a good property had only left his wife the leasehold of a
+house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, which, fortunately for her, had been
+settled upon her at her marriage. Like most people who have seen better
+days—not but what she was now very comfortably off—she delighted in
+talking of her misfortunes, and of the perfidiousness of man; and in
+Hilda, who had, poor girl, nothing else to listen to, she found a most
+attentive audience. As was only natural where such a charming person
+and such a good listener were concerned, honest Mrs. Jacobs soon grew
+fond of her interesting lodger, about whose husband’s circumstances and
+history she soon wove many an imaginary tale; for, needless to say, her
+most pertinent inquiries failed to extract much information from Hilda.
+One of her favourite fictions was that her lodger was the victim of her
+handsome husband, who had in some way beguiled her from her home beyond
+the seas, in order to keep her in solitary confinement and out of the
+reach of a hated rival. Another, that he kept her thus that he might
+have greater liberty for his own actions.
+
+In course of time these ideas took such possession of her mind that she
+grew to believe in them, and, when speaking of Hilda to any of her
+other lodgers, would shake her head and talk of her mysteriously as a
+“lamb” and a “victim.”
+
+As for that lady herself, whilst far from suspecting her good
+landlady’s gloomy surmises, she certainly fell more and more a prey to
+depression and anxieties, and occasionally even to suspicion, to all of
+which evils she grew increasingly liable as she drew nearer to an event
+that was no longer very distant. She could not but notice a change in
+Philip’s manner on the rare occasions when he was able to visit her, of
+which the most marked developments were fits of silence and
+irritability. A certain reticence also, that became more and more
+noticeable as time went on, led her to feel that there was an invisible
+something growing up between them—a something that the pride she
+possessed in such a striking degree forbade her to attempt to pierce,
+but which was none the less galling to her on that account. Very
+shortly before the events narrated in the last chapter she had taken
+the occasion of a visit from Philip to complain somewhat bitterly of
+her position, begging him to tell her when there was any prospect of
+her being allowed to take her rightful place—a question her husband was
+quite unable to answer satisfactorily. Seeing that there was nothing to
+be got out of him, with womanly tact she changed the subject, and asked
+after Maria Lee (for whom she entertained a genuine affection)—when he
+last saw her, how she was looking, if there was any prospect of her
+getting married, and other questions of the same sort—the result of
+which was to evoke a most violent, and to her inexplicable, fit of
+irritability on the part of her husband. Something of a scene ensued,
+which was finally terminated about five o’clock in the afternoon by
+Philip’s abrupt departure to catch his train.
+
+Shortly afterwards Mrs. Jacobs, coming up to bring some tea, found
+Hilda indulging in tears that she had been too proud to shed before her
+husband; and, having had an extended personal experience of such
+matters, rightly guessed that there had been a conjugal tiff, the blame
+of which, needless to say, she fixed upon the departed Philip.
+
+“Lor, Mrs. Roberts” (as Hilda was called), she said, “don’t take on
+like that; they’re all brutes, that’s what they are; if only you could
+have seen my Samuel, who’s dead and gone these ten years and buried in
+a private grave at Kensal Cemetery—though he didn’t leave anything to
+pay for it except three dozen and five of brandy—he was a beauty, poor
+dear, he was; your husband ain’t nothing to him.”
+
+“My husband, let me tell you, Mrs. Jacobs, is not a brute at all,”
+sobbed Hilda, with dignity.
+
+“Ah, Mrs. Roberts, that is just what I used to say of Samuel, but he
+was the biggest brute in the three kingdoms, for all that; but if you
+ask me, meaning no offence, I call a man a brute as only comes to see
+his lawful wife about twice a month, let alone making an angel cry.”
+
+“Mr. Roberts has his reasons, Mrs. Jacobs; you must not talk of him
+like that.”
+
+“Ah, so my Samuel used to say when he stopped away from home for three
+nights at a time, till I followed him and found out his ‘Reason,’ and a
+mighty pretty ‘Reason’ she was too, all paint and feathers, the hussy,
+and eyes as big as a teacup. They all have their reasons, but they
+never tell ‘em. But come and put on your things and go out a bit,
+there’s a dear; it is a beautiful warm evening. You feel tired—oh,
+never mind that; it is necessary for people as is in an interested way
+to take exercise. I well remembers——”
+
+Here Hilda, however, cut the subject short, and deprived herself of
+Mrs. Jacobs’ reminiscences by going to put on her things.
+
+It was a bright warm evening, and she found the air so pleasant that,
+after strolling round Lincoln’s Inn Fields, she thought she would
+extend her walk a little, and struck past Lincoln’s Inn Hall into New
+Square, and then made her way to the archway opposite to where the New
+Law Courts now stand. Under this archway a legal bookseller has built
+his nest, and behind windows of broad plate-glass were ranged specimens
+of his seductive wares, baits on which to catch students avaricious of
+legal knowledge as they pass on their way to chambers or Hall. Now, at
+this window a young man was standing at the moment that Hilda entered
+the archway, his eyes fixed upon a pamphlet on the laws of succession.
+That young man was George Caresfoot, who was considering whether it
+would be worth his while to buy the pamphlet in order to see if he
+would be entitled to anything if his uncle should happen to die
+intestate, as he sometimes feared might be the case. He had come up to
+town on business connected with his firm, and was now waiting till it
+was time to begin an evening of what he understood as pleasure; for
+George was a very gay young man.
+
+He was, however, also a very sharp one, so sharp that he even noticed
+shadows, especially when, as in this case, the shadow was clearly
+defined and flung, life-sized, on the dark background of the books
+before him. He watched it for a moment, and as its owner, with an
+absent air, slowly passed from the bright sunlight into the shade of
+the arch, it struck the astute George that there was something familiar
+about this particular and by no means unpleasing shadow. Waiting till
+it had vanished and the footsteps gone past him, he turned round and at
+a glance recognized Hilda von Holtzhausen, Miss Lee’s beautiful
+companion, who was supposed to have departed into the more distant
+parts of Germany. George’s eyes twinkled, and a whole host of ideas
+rushed into his really able mind.
+
+“Caught at last, for a sovereign,” he muttered.
+
+Meanwhile Hilda walked slowly on into Chancery Lane, then turned to the
+left till she came into Holborn, and thence made her way round by
+another route back to Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Needless to say, George
+followed at a respectful distance. His first impulse had been to go up
+and speak to her, but he resisted the inclination.
+
+On the doorstep of the house where Hilda lodged, stood her landlady
+giving a piece of her mind to a butcher-boy both as regarded his
+master’s meat and his personal qualities. She paused for breath just as
+Hilda passed up the steps, and, turning, said something that made the
+latter laugh. The butcher-boy took the opportunity of beating a rapid
+retreat, leaving Mrs. Jacobs crowing after him from her own doorstep.
+As soon as Hilda had gone into the house, George saw his opportunity.
+Advancing politely towards Mrs. Jacobs, he asked her if she was the
+landlady of the house, and, when she had answered in the affirmative,
+he made inquiries about apartments.
+
+“Thank you, sir,” said Mrs. Jacobs, “but I do not let rooms to single
+gentlemen.”
+
+“You take too much for granted, ma’am. I am married.”
+
+She looked at him doubtfully. “I suppose, sir, you would have no
+objection to giving a reference.”
+
+“A dozen, if you like, ma’am; but shall we look at the rooms?”
+
+Mrs. Jacobs assented, and they made their way upstairs, George keeping
+in front. On the first-floor he saw a pair of lady’s shoes on a mat
+outside the door, and guessed to whom they belonged.
+
+“Are these the rooms?” he said, laying his hand upon the door-handle.
+
+“No, sir, no, they are Mrs. Roberts’; next floor, please, sir.”
+
+“Mrs. Roberts?—I suppose the very handsome young lady I saw come into
+the house. No offence, ma’am; but a man’s bound to be careful where he
+brings his wife. I suppose she’s all right.”
+
+“Lord, yes, poor dear!” answered Mrs. Jacobs, in indignation; “why,
+they came here straight from St. Jude’s, Battersea, the day they were
+married; a runaway match, I fancy.”
+
+“That’s all right; she looked charming. I hope her husband is worthy of
+her,” remarked George, as he gazed round Mrs. Jacobs’ rooms.
+
+“Well, as to that, he’s handsome enough, for them as likes those black
+men; but I don’t like people as only comes to visit their lawful wives
+about twice a month. But,” suddenly checking herself, “it isn’t any
+affair of mine.”
+
+“No, indeed, very reprehensible: I am, as a married man, entirely of
+your mind. These are charming rooms, ma’am, charming. I shall certainly
+take them if my wife approves; I will let you know by to-morrow’s
+post—Jacobs, yes, I have it down. Good evening, ma’am,” and he was
+gone.
+
+Instead of going out that evening as he had intended, George sat in the
+smoking-room of his hotel and thought. He also wrote a letter which he
+addressed to Mrs. Bellamy.
+
+Next morning, taking a cab, he drove to St. Jude’s, Battersea, and
+inspected the register.
+
+Presently he asked for a certified copy of the following entry: “August
+1, 1856. Philip Caresfoot, bachelor, gentleman, to Hilda von
+Holtzhausen, spinster (by license). Signed J. Few, curate; as witness,
+Fred. Natt, Eliza Chambers.”
+
+That evening Hilda received an anonymous letter, written in a round
+clerk’s hand, that had been posted in the City. It was addressed to
+Mrs. Roberts, and its contents ran thus:
+
+“A sincere friend warns Mrs. Philip Caresfoot that her husband is
+deceiving her, and has become entangled with a young lady of her
+acquaintance. _Burn this; wait and watch!_”
+
+The letter fell from her hands as though it had stung her.
+
+“Mrs. Jacobs was right,” she said aloud, with a bitter laugh, “men
+always have a ‘reason.’ Oh, let him beware!” And she threw back her
+beautiful head and the great blue eyes sparkled like those of a snake
+about to strike. The sword of jealousy, that she had hitherto repelled
+with the shield of a woman’s trust in the man she loves, had entered
+into her soul, and, could Philip have seen her under these new
+circumstances, he would have realized that he had indeed good reason to
+“beware.” “No wonder,” she went on, “no wonder that he finds her name
+irritating upon my lips; no doubt to him it is a desecration. Oh, oh!”
+And she flung herself on her face, and wept tears of jealous rage.
+
+“Well,” said George to Mrs. Bellamy, as they drove home together after
+the great dinner party (do not be shocked, my reader, Bellamy was _on
+the bow_), “well, how shall we strike? Shall I go to the old man
+to-morrow, and show him my certified copy? There is no time to lose. He
+might die any day.”
+
+“No; we must act through Mrs. Philip.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“It is more scientific, and it will be more amusing.”
+
+“Poor thing! it will be a blow to her. Don’t you like her?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because she did not trust me, and because she eclipses me. Therefore I
+am glad of an opportunity of destroying her.”
+
+“You are a very ruthless woman.”
+
+“When I have an end in view, I march straight to it; I do not
+vacillate—that is all. But never mind me; here we are near home. Go to
+town by the first train to-morrow morning and post another letter
+announcing what has happened here. Then come back and wait.”
+
+“Ay,” reflected George, “that is a wonderful woman—a woman it is good
+to have some hold over.”
+
+We left Hilda stretched on her face sobbing. But the fit did not last
+long. She rose, and flung open the window; she seemed stifled for want
+of air. Then she sat down to think what she should do. Vanish and leave
+no trace? No; not yet. Appear and claim her place? No; not yet. The
+time was not ripe for choice between these two extremes. Upbraid Philip
+with his faithlessness? No; not without proofs. What did that hateful
+letter say? “Wait and watch;” yes, that was what she would do. But she
+could not wait here; she felt as though she must go somewhere, get some
+change of scene, or she should break down. She had heard Mrs. Jacobs
+speak of a village not more than two hours from London that a
+convalescent lodger of hers had visited and found charming. She would
+go there for a week, and watch the spring cast her mantle over the
+earth, and listen to the laughter of the brooks, and try to forget her
+burning love and jealousy, and just for that one week be happy as she
+was when, as a little girl, she roamed all day through the woods of her
+native Germany. Alas! she forgot that it is the heart and not the scene
+that makes happiness.
+
+That evening she wrote a note to her husband, saying that she felt that
+change of air was necessary for her, and that she was going out of
+London for a few days, to some quiet place, from whence she would write
+to him. He must not, however, expect many letters, as she wanted
+complete rest.
+
+On the following morning she went; and, if the sweet spring air did not
+bring peace to her mind, at any rate, it to a very great extent set her
+up in strength. She wrote but one letter during her absence, and that
+was to say that she should be back in London by midday on the first of
+May. This letter reached Philip on the morning of the great
+dinner-party, and was either accidentally or on purpose sent without
+the writer’s address. On the morning of the first of May—that is, two
+days after the dinner-party, which was given on the twenty-ninth of
+April—Hilda rose early, and commenced to pack her things with the
+assistance of a stout servant girl, who did all the odd jobs and a
+great deal of the work in the old-fashioned farmhouse in which she was
+staying. Presently the cowboy came whistling up the little garden,
+bright with crocuses and tulips, that lay in front of the house, and
+knocked at the front door.
+
+“Lawks!” said the stout girl, in accents of deep surprise, as she drew
+her head in from the open lattice; “Jim’s got a letter.”
+
+“Perhaps it is for me,” suggested Hilda, a little nervously; she had
+grown nervous about the post of late. “Will you go and see?”
+
+The letter was for her, in the handwriting of Mrs. Jacobs. She opened
+it; it contained another addressed in the character the sight of which
+made her feel sick and faint. She could not trust herself to read it in
+the presence of the girl.
+
+“Sally,” she said, “I feel rather faint; I shall lie down a little. I
+will ring for you presently.”
+
+Sally retired, and she opened her letter.
+
+Fifteen minutes after the girl received her summons. She found Hilda
+very pale, and with a curious look upon her face.
+
+“I hope you’re better, mum,” she said, for she was a kind-hearted girl.
+
+“Better—ah, yes! thank you, Sally; I am cured, quite cured; but please
+be quick with the things, for I shall leave by the nine o’clock train.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+The night of the dinner-party was a nearly sleepless one for Philip,
+although his father had so considerately regretted his wearied
+appearance, he could do nothing but walk, walk, walk, like some unquiet
+ghost, up and down his great, oak-panelled bedroom, till, about dawn,
+his legs gave way beneath him; and think, think, think, till his mind
+recoiled, confused and helpless, from the dead wall of its objects.
+And, out of all this walking and thinking, there emerged, after an hour
+of stupor, that it would be a misnomer to call sleep, two fixed
+results. The first of these was that he hated his father as a lost soul
+must hate its torturing demon, blindly, madly, impotently hated him;
+and the second, that he could no longer delay taking his wife into his
+confidence. Then he remembered the letter he had received from her on
+the previous morning. He got it, and saw that it bore no address,
+merely stating that she would be in London by midday on the first of
+May, that was on the morrow. Till then it was clear he must wait, and
+he was not sorry for the reprieve. His was not a pleasant story for a
+husband to have to tell.
+
+Fortunately for Philip, there was an engagement of long standing for
+this day, the thirtieth of April, to go, in conjunction with other
+persons, to effect a valuation of the fallows, &c., of a large tenant
+who was going out at Michaelmas. This prevented any call being made
+upon him to go and see Maria Lee, as, after the events of the previous
+evening, it might have been expected he would. He started early on this
+business, and did not return till late, so he saw nothing of his father
+that day.
+
+On the morning of the first of May he breakfasted about half-past
+eight, and then, without seeing his father, drove to Roxham to catch a
+train that got him up to London about twenty minutes to twelve. As he
+steamed slowly into Paddington Station, another train steamed out, and
+had he been careful to examine the occupants of the first-class
+carriages as they passed him in a slow procession, he might have seen
+something that would have interested him; but he was, not unnaturally,
+too much occupied with his own thoughts to allow of the indulgence of
+an idle curiosity. On the arrival of his train, he took a cab and drove
+without delay to the house in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, and asked for Mrs.
+Roberts.
+
+“She isn’t back yet, sir,” was Mrs. Jacobs’ reply. “I got this note
+from her this morning to say that she would be here by twelve, but it’s
+twenty past now, so I suppose that she has missed the train or changed
+her mind; but there will be another in at three, so perhaps you had
+best wait for that, sir.”
+
+Philip was put out by this contretemps, but at the same time he was
+relieved to find that he had a space to breathe in before the
+inevitable and dreadful moment of exposure and infamy, for he had grown
+afraid of his wife.
+
+Three o’clock came in due course, but no Hilda. Philip was seriously
+disturbed; but there was now no train by which she could arrive that
+day, so he was forced to the conclusion that she had postponed her
+departure. There were now two things to be done, one to follow her down
+to where she was staying—for he had ascertained her address from Mrs.
+Jacobs; the other, to return home and come back on the morrow. For
+reasons which appeared to him imperative, but which need not be entered
+into here, he decided on the latter course; so leaving a note for his
+wife, he drove, in a very bad temper, back to Paddington in time to
+catch the five o’clock train to Roxham.
+
+Let us now return to the Abbey House, where, whilst Philip was cooling
+his heels in Lincoln’s Inn Fields, a rather curious scene was in
+progress.
+
+At one o’clock, old Mr. Caresfoot, as was his rule, sat down to lunch,
+which, frugal as it was, so far as he was concerned, was yet served
+with some old-fashioned ceremony by a butler and a footman. Just as the
+meal was coming to an end, a fly, with some luggage on it, drove up to
+the hall-door. The footman went to open it.
+
+“Simmons,” said the squire, to the old butler, “look out and tell me
+who that is.”
+
+Simmons did as he was bid, and replied:
+
+“I don’t rightly know, squire; but it’s a lady, and she be wonderful
+tall.”
+
+Just then the footman returned, and said that a lady, who would not
+give her name, wished to speak to him in private.
+
+“Are you sure the lady did not mean Mr. Philip?”
+
+“No, sir; she asked for Mr. Philip first, and when I told her that he
+was out, she asked for you, sir. I have shown her into the study.”
+
+“Humph! at any rate, she has come off a journey, and must be hungry.
+Set another place and ask her in here.”
+
+In another moment there was a rustle of a silk dress, and a lady,
+arrayed in a long cloak and with a thick veil on, was shown into the
+room. Mr. Caresfoot, rising with that courteous air for which he was
+remarkable, bowed and begged her to be seated, and then motioned to the
+servants to leave the room.
+
+“Madam, I am told that you wish to speak to me; might I ask whom I have
+the honour of addressing?”
+
+She, with a rapid motion, removed her hat and veil, and exposed her
+sternly beautiful face to his inquiring gaze.
+
+“Do you not know me, Mr. Caresfoot?” she said, in her foreign accent.
+
+“Surely, yes, you are the young lady who lived with Maria, Miss von
+Holtzhausen.”
+
+“That _was_ my name; it is now Hilda Caresfoot. I am your son Philip’s
+wife.”
+
+As this astounding news broke upon his ears, her hearer’s face became a
+shifting study. Incredulity, wonder, fury, all swept across it, and
+then in a single second it seemed to freeze. Next moment he spoke with
+overpowering politeness.
+
+“So, madam; then I have to congratulate myself on the possession of a
+very lovely daughter-in-law.”
+
+A silence ensued that they were both too moved to break; at last, the
+old man said, in an altered tone:
+
+“We have much to talk of, and you must be tired. Take off your cloak,
+and eat whilst I think.”
+
+She obeyed him, and he saw that not only was she his son’s wife, but
+that she must before long present the world with an heir to the name of
+Caresfoot. This made him think the more; but meanwhile he continued to
+attend to her wants. She ate little, but calmly.
+
+“That woman has nerve,” said he to himself.
+
+Then he rang the bell, and bade Simmons wait till he had written a
+note.
+
+“Send James to Roxham at once with this. Take this lady’s things off
+the fly, and put them in the red bedroom. By the way, I am at home to
+nobody except Mr. Bellamy;” and then, turning to Hilda, “Now, if you
+will come into my study, we will continue our chat,” and he offered her
+his arm. “Here we are secure from interruption,” he said, with a ghost
+of a smile. “Take this chair. Now, forgive my impertinence, but I must
+ask you if I am to understand that you are my son’s _legal_ wife?”
+
+She flushed a little as she answered:
+
+“Sir, I am. I have been careful to bring the proof; here it is;” and
+she took from a little hand-bag a certified copy of the register of her
+marriage, and gave it to him. He examined it carefully through his gold
+eye-glass, and handed it back.
+
+“Perfectly in order. Hum! some eight months since, I see. May I ask why
+I am now for the first time favoured with a sight of this interesting
+document—in short, why you come down, like an angel from the clouds,
+and reveal yourself at the present moment?”
+
+“I have come,” she answered, “because of these.” And she handed him two
+letters. “I have come to ascertain if they are true; if my husband is a
+doubly perjured or a basely slandered man.”
+
+He read the two anonymous letters. With the contents of the first we
+are acquainted; the second merely told of the public announcement of
+Philip’s engagement.
+
+“Speak,” she said, with desperate energy, the calm of her face breaking
+up like ice before a rush of waters. “You must know everything; tell me
+my fate!”
+
+“Girl, these villanous letters are in every particular true. You have
+married in my son the biggest scoundrel in the county. I can only say
+that I grieve for you.”
+
+She listened in silence; then rising from her chair, said, with a
+gesture infinitely tragic in its simplicity:
+
+“Then it is finished; before God and man I renounce him. Listen,” she
+went on, turning to her father-in-law, “I loved your son, he won my
+heart; but, though he said he loved me, I suspected him of playing fast
+and loose with me, on the one hand, and with my friend, Maria Lee, on
+the other. So I determined to go away, and told him so. Then it was
+that he offered to marry me at once, if I would change my purpose. I
+loved him, and I consented—yes, because I loved him so, I consented to
+even more. I agreed to keep the marriage secret from you. You see what
+it has led to. I, a Von Holtzhausen, and the last of my name, stand
+here a byword and a scorn; my story will be found amusing at every
+dinner-table in the country-side, and my shame will even cling to my
+unborn child. This is the return he has made me for my sacrifice of
+self-respect, and for consenting to marry him at all; to outrage my
+love and make me a public mockery.”
+
+“We have been accustomed,” broke in the old squire, his pride somewhat
+nettled, “to consider our own a good family to marry into. You do not
+seem to share that view.”
+
+“Good; yes, there is plenty of your money for those who care for it;
+but, sir, as I told your son, it is not a _family_. He did me no honour
+in marrying me, though I was nothing but a German companion, with no
+dower but her beauty. I,”—and here she flung her head back with an air
+of ineffable pride—“did him the honour. My ancestors, sir, were
+princes, when his were plough-boys.”
+
+“Well, well,” answered the old man, testily, “ten generations of
+country gentry, and the Lord only knows how many more of stout yeomen
+before them, is a good enough descent for us; but I like your pride,
+and I am glad that you spring from an ancient race. You have been
+shamefully treated, Hilda—is not your name Hilda?—but there are others,
+more free from blame than you are, who have been treated worse.”
+
+“Ah, Maria! then she knows nothing?”
+
+“Yes, there is Maria and myself. But never mind that. Philip will, I
+suppose, be back in a few hours—oh, yes! he will be back,” and his eyes
+glinted unpleasantly, “and what shall you do then? what course do you
+intend to take?”
+
+“I intend to claim my rights, to force him to acknowledge me here where
+he suffered his engagement to another woman to be proclaimed, and then
+I intend to leave him. He has killed my respect; I will not live with
+him again. I can earn my living in Germany. I have done with him; but,
+sir, do not you be hard upon him. It is a matter between me and him.
+Let him not suffer on my account.”
+
+“My dear, pray confine yourself to your own affairs, and leave me to
+settle mine. There shall be no harshness; nobody shall suffer more than
+they deserve. There, don’t break down, go and rest, for there are
+painful scenes before you.”
+
+He rang the bell, and sent for the housekeeper. She came presently, a
+pleasant-looking woman of about thirty years of age, with a comely face
+and honest eyes.
+
+“This lady, Pigott,” said the old squire, addressing her, “is Mrs.
+Philip Caresfoot, and you will be so kind as to treat her with all
+respect. Don’t open your eyes, but attend to me. For the present, you
+had best put her in the red room, and attend to her yourself. Do you
+understand?”
+
+“Oh, yes, sir! I understand,” Pigott replied, curtseying. “Will you be
+pleased to come along with me, ma’am?”
+
+Hilda rose and took Pigott’s arm. Excitement and fatigue had worn her
+out. Before she went, however, she turned, and with tears in her eyes
+thanked the old man for his kindness to a friendless woman.
+
+The hard eyes grew kindly as he stooped and kissed the broad, white
+brow, and said in his stately way—
+
+“My dear, as yet I have shown you nothing but the courtesy due to a
+lady. Should I live, I hope to bestow on you the affection I owe to a
+much-wronged daughter. Good-by.”
+
+And thus they parted, little knowing where they should meet again.
+
+“A woman I respect—well, English or German, the blood will tell”—he
+said as soon as the door had closed. “Poor thing—poor Maria too. The
+scoundrel!—ah! there it is again;” and he pressed his hand to his
+heart. “This business has upset me, and no wonder.”
+
+The pang passed, and sitting down he wrote a letter that evidently
+embarrassed him considerably, and addressed it to Miss Lee. This he put
+in the post-box, and then, going to a secretaire, he unlocked it, and
+taking out a document he began to puzzle over it attentively.
+
+Presently Simmons announced that Mr. Bellamy was waiting.
+
+“Show him in at once,” said the old man briskly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+It was some minutes past seven that evening when the lawyer left, and
+he had not been gone a quarter of an hour before a hired gig drove up
+to the door containing Philip, who had got back from town in the worst
+of bad tempers, and, as no conveyance was waiting for him, had been
+forced to post over from Roxham. Apparently his father had been
+expecting his arrival, for the moment the servant opened the door he
+appeared from his study, and addressed him in a tone that was as near
+to being jovial as he ever went.
+
+“Hallo, Philip, back again, are you? Been up to town, I suppose, and
+driven over in the ‘George’ gig? That’s lucky; I wanted to speak to
+you. Come in here, there’s a good fellow, I want to speak to you.”
+
+“Why is he so infernally genial?” reflected Philip. “Timeo Danaos et
+dona ferentes;” then aloud, “All right, father; but if it is all the
+same to you, I should like to get some dinner first.”
+
+“Dinner! why, I have had none yet; I have been too busy. I shall not
+keep you long; we will dine together presently.”
+
+Philip was surprised, and glanced at him suspiciously. His habits were
+extremely regular; why had he had no dinner?
+
+Meanwhile his father led the way into the study, muttering below his
+breath—
+
+“One more chance—his last chance.”
+
+A wood fire was burning brightly on the hearth, for the evening was
+chilly, and some sherry and glasses stood upon the table.
+
+“Take a glass of wine, Philip; I am going to have one; it is a good
+thing to begin a conversation on. What says the Psalmist: ‘Wine that
+maketh glad the heart of man, and oil to make him a cheerful
+countenance’—a cheerful countenance! Ho, ho! my old limbs are tired; I
+am going to sit down—going to sit down.”
+
+He seated himself in a well-worn leather arm-chair by the side of the
+fire so that his back was towards the dying daylight. But the
+brightness of the flames threw the clear-cut features into strong
+relief against the gloom, and by it Philip could see that the withered
+cheeks were flushed. Somehow the whole strongly defined scene made him
+feel uncanny and restless.
+
+“Cold for the first of May, isn’t it, lad? The world is very cold at
+eighty-two. Eighty-two, a great age, yet it seems but the other day
+that I used to sit in this very chair and dandle you upon my knee, and
+make this repeater strike for you. And yet that is twenty years since,
+and I have lived through four twenties and two years. A great age, a
+cold world!”
+
+“Ain’t you well?” asked his son, brusquely, but not unkindly.
+
+“Well; ah, yes! thank you, Philip, I never felt better, my memory is so
+good, I can see things I have forgotten seventy years or more. Dear,
+dear, it was behind that bookcase in a hole in the board that I used to
+hide my flint and steel which I used for making little fires at the
+foot of Caresfoot’s Staff. There is a mark on the bark now. I was
+mischievous as a little lad, and thought that the old tree would make a
+fine blaze. I was audacious, too, and delighted to hide the things in
+my father’s study under the very nose of authority. Ay, and other
+memories come upon me as I think. It was here upon this very table that
+they stood my mother’s coffin. I was standing where you are now when I
+wrenched open the half-fastened shell to kiss her once more before they
+screwed her down for ever. I wonder would you do as much for me? I
+loved my mother, and that was fifty years ago. I wonder shall we meet
+again? That was on the first of May, a long-gone first of May. They
+threw branches of blackthorn bloom upon her coffin. Odd, very odd! But
+business, lad, business—what was it? Ah! I know,” and his manner
+changed in a second and became hard and stern. “About Maria, have you
+come to a decision?”
+
+Philip moved restlessly on his chair, poked the logs to a brighter
+blaze, and threw on a handful of pine chips from a basket by his side
+before he answered. Then he said—
+
+“No, I have not.”
+
+“Your reluctance is very strange, Philip, I cannot understand it. I
+suppose that you are not already married, are you, Philip?”
+
+There was a lurid calm about the old man’s face as he asked this
+question that was very dreadful in its intensity. Under the shadow of
+his thick black eyebrows, gleams of light glinted and flickered in the
+expanded pupils, as before the outburst of a tempest the forked
+lightning flickers in the belly of the cloud. His voice too was
+constrained and harsh.
+
+Owing to the position of his father’s head, Philip could not see this
+play of feature, but he heard the voice and thought that it meant
+mischief. He had but a second to decide between confession and the lie
+that leaped to his lips. An inward conviction told him that his father
+was not long for this world, was it worth while to face his anger when
+matters might yet be kept dark till the end? The tone of the voice— ah!
+how he mistook its meaning—deceived him. It was not, he thought,
+possible that his father could know anything. Had he possessed a little
+more knowledge of the world, he might have judged differently.
+
+“Married, no, indeed; what put that idea into your head?” And he
+laughed outright.
+
+Presently he became aware that his father had risen and was approaching
+towards him. Another moment and a hand of iron was laid upon his
+shoulder, the awful eyes blazed into his face and seemed to pierce him
+through and through, and a voice that he could not have recognized
+hissed into his ear—
+
+“You unutterable liar, you everlasting hound, your wife is at this
+moment in this house.”
+
+Philip sprang up with an exclamation of rage and cursed Hilda aloud.
+
+“No,” went on his father, standing before him, his tall frame swaying
+backwards and forwards with excitement; “no, do not curse her, she,
+like your other poor dupe, is an honest woman; on yourself be the
+damnation, you living fraud, you outcast from all honour, who have
+brought shame and reproach upon our honest name, on you be it; may
+every curse attend _you_, and may remorse torture _you_. Listen: you
+lied to me, you lied to your wife, trebly did you lie to the
+unfortunate girl you have deceived; but, if you will not speak it, for
+once hear the truth, and remember that you have to deal with one so
+relentless, that fools, mistaking justice for oppression, call him
+‘devil.’ I, ‘Devil Caresfoot,’ tell you that I will disinherit you of
+every stick, stone, and stiver that the law allows me, and start you in
+the enjoyment of the rest with my bitterest curse. This I will do now
+whilst I am alive; when I am dead, by Heaven, I will haunt you if I
+can.”
+
+Here he stopped for want of breath, and stood for a moment in the full
+light of the cheery blaze, one hand raised above his head as though to
+strike, and, presenting with his glittering eyes and working features,
+so terrible a spectacle of rage that his son recoiled involuntarily
+before him.
+
+But fury begets fury as love begets love, and in another second Philip
+felt his own wicked temper boil up within him. He clenched his teeth
+and stood firm.
+
+“Do your worst,” he said; “I hate you; I wish to God that you were
+dead.”
+
+Hardly had these dreadful words left his lips when a change came over
+the old man’s face; it seemed to stiffen, and putting one hand to his
+heart he staggered back into his chair, pointing and making signs as he
+fell towards a little cupboard in the angle of the wall. His son at
+once guessed what had happened; his father had got one of the attacks
+of the heart to which he was subject, and was motioning to him to bring
+the medicine which he had before shown him, and which alone could save
+him in these seizures. Actuated by a common impulse of humanity, Philip
+for the moment forgot their quarrel, and stepped with all speed to
+fetch it. As it happened, there stood beneath this cupboard a table,
+and on this table lay the document which his father had been reading
+that afternoon before the arrival of Mr. Bellamy. It was his will, and,
+as is usual in the case of such deeds, the date was endorsed upon the
+back. All this Philip saw at a single glance, and he also saw that the
+will was dated some years back, and therefore one under which he would
+inherit, doubtless the same that his father had some months before
+offered to show him.
+
+It flashed through his mind that his father had got it out in order to
+burn it; and this idea was followed by another that for a moment
+stilled his heart.
+
+“_If he should die now he cannot destroy it!_ If he does not take the
+medicine he _will_ die.”
+
+Thought flies fast in moments of emergency. Philip, too, was a man of
+determined mind where his own interests were concerned, and his blood
+was heated and his reason blinded by fury and terror. He was not long
+in settling on his course of action. Taking the bottle from the
+cupboard, he poured out its contents into one of the wine-glasses that
+stood upon the table, and coming up to his father with it addressed
+him. He knew that these attacks, although they were of a nature to
+cause intense pain, did not rob the sufferer of his senses. The old
+man, though he lay before him gasping with agony, was quite in a
+condition to understand him.
+
+“Listen to me,” he said, in a slow, distinct voice. “Just now you said
+that you would disinherit me. This medicine will save your life, and if
+I let it fall you will die, and there is no more in the house. Swear
+before God that you will not carry out your threat, and I will give it
+to you. Lift up your hand to show me that you swear.”
+
+Silence followed, only broken by the gasps of the dying man.
+
+“If you will not swear, I will pour it out before your eyes.”
+
+Again there was silence; but this time the old man made an effort to
+rise and ring the bell.
+
+His son threw him roughly back.
+
+“For the last time,” he said, in a hoarse whisper, “will you swear?”
+
+A struggle passed over his father’s face, now nearly black with pain;
+and presently from the distended lips, that did not seem to move, there
+burst a single word—destined to echo for ever in his son’s ears—
+
+“_Murderer!_”
+
+It was his last. He sank back, groaned, and died; and at the same
+moment the flame from the pine-chips flickered itself away, and of a
+sudden the room grew nearly dark. Philip stood for awhile aghast at his
+own handiwork, and watched the dull light glance on the dead white of
+his father’s brow. He was benumbed by terror at what he had done, and
+in that awful second of realization would have given his own life to
+have it undone.
+
+Presently, however, the instinct of self-preservation came to his aid.
+He lit a candle, and taking some of the medicine in the glass, smeared
+it over the dead man’s chin and coat, and then broke the glass on the
+floor by his side—thus making it appear that he had died whilst
+attempting to swallow the medicine.
+
+Next he raised a loud outcry, and violently rang the bell. In a minute
+the room was full of startled servants, one of whom was instantly
+despatched for Mr. Caley, the doctor. Meanwhile, after a vain attempt
+to restore animation, the study-table was cleared and the corpse laid
+on it, as its mother’s had been on that day fifty years before.
+
+Then came a dreadful hush, and the shadow of death came down upon the
+house and brooded over it. The men-servants moved to and fro with
+muffled feet, and the women wept, for in a way they had all loved the
+imperious old man, and the last change had come very suddenly. Philip’s
+brain burned; he was consumed by the desire of action. Suddenly he
+bethought him of his wife upstairs: after what he had just passed
+through, no scene with her could disturb him—it would, he even felt, be
+welcome. He went up to the room where she was, and entered. It was
+evident that she had been told of what had happened, as both she and
+Pigott, who was undressing her—for she was wearied out—were weeping.
+She did not appear surprised at his appearance; the shock of the old
+man’s death extinguished all surprise. It was he who broke the silence.
+
+“He is dead,” he said.
+
+“Yes, I have heard.”
+
+“If you are at liberty for a few minutes, I wish to talk to you,” he
+said savagely.
+
+“I, too,” she answered, “have something to say, but I am too weary and
+upset to say it now. I will see you to-morrow.”
+
+He turned and went without answering, and Pigott noticed that no kiss
+or word of endearment passed between them, and that the tone of their
+words was cold.
+
+Soon after Philip got downstairs the doctor came. Philip met him in the
+hall and accompanied him into the study, where the body was. He made a
+rapid examination, more as a matter of form than anything else, for his
+first glance had told him that life was extinct.
+
+“Quite dead,” he said sorrowfully; “my old friend gone at last. One of
+a fine sort too; a just man for all his temper. They called him
+‘devil,’ and he was fierce when he was younger, but if I never meet a
+worse devil than he was I shall do well. He was very kind to me once—
+very. How did he go?—in pain, I fear.”
+
+“We were talking together, when suddenly he was seized with the attack.
+I got the medicine as quick as I could and tried to get it down his
+throat, but he could not swallow, and in the hurry the glass was
+knocked by a jerk of his head right out of my hands. Next second he was
+dead.”
+
+“Very quick—quicker than I should have expected. Did he say anything?”
+
+“No.”
+
+Now, just as Philip delivered himself of this last lie, a curious
+incident happened, or rather an incident that is apt to seem curious to
+a person who has just told a lie. The corpse distinctly moved its right
+hand—the same that had been clasped over the old man’s head as he
+denounced his son.
+
+“Good God!” said Philip, turning pale as death, “what’s that?” and even
+the doctor started a little, and cast a keen look at the dead face.
+
+“Nothing,” he said. “I have seen that happen before where there has
+been considerable tension of the muscles before death; it is only their
+final slackening, that is all. Come, will you ring the bell? They had
+better come and take it upstairs.”
+
+This sad task had just been performed, and Mr. Caley was about to take
+his leave, when Pigott came down and whispered something into his ear
+that evidently caused him the most lively astonishment. Drawing Philip
+aside, he said—
+
+“The housekeeper asks me to come up and see ‘Mrs. Philip Caresfoot,’
+whom she thinks is going to be confined. Does she mean your wife?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Philip sullenly, “she does. It is a long story, and I
+am too upset to tell it you now. It will soon be all over the country I
+suppose.”
+
+The old doctor whistled, but judged it advisable not to put any more
+questions, when suddenly an idea seemed to strike him.
+
+“You said you were talking to your father when the fit took him; was it
+about your marriage?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“When did he first know of it?”
+
+“To-day, I believe.”
+
+“Ah, thank you;” and he followed Pigott upstairs.
+
+That night, exactly at twelve o’clock, another little lamp floated out
+on the waters of life: Angela was born.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+When the doctor had gone upstairs, Philip went into the dining-room to
+eat something, only to find that food was repugnant to him; he could
+scarcely swallow a mouthful. To some extent, however, he supplied its
+place by wine, of which he drank several glasses. Then, drawn by a
+strange fascination, he went back into the little study, and,
+remembering the will, bethought himself that it might be as well to
+secure it. In taking it off the table, however, a folded and much
+erased sheet of manuscript was disclosed. Recognizing Bellamy’s
+writing, he took it up and commenced to read the draft, for it was
+nothing else. Its substance was as follows.
+
+The document began by stating that the testator’s former will was
+declared null and void on account of the “treacherous and dishonourable
+conduct of his son Philip.” It then, in brief but sweeping terms,
+bequeathed and devised to trustees, of whom Philip was not one, the
+unentailed property and personalty to be held by them: firstly, for the
+benefit of any _son_ that might be born to the said disinherited Philip
+by _his wife Hilda_—the question of daughters being, probably by
+accident, passed over in silence—and failing such issue, then to the
+testator’s nephew, George Caresfoot, absolutely, subject, however, to
+the following curious condition: Should the said George Caresfoot,
+_either by deed of gift or will_, attempt to convey the estate to his
+cousin Philip, or to descendants of the said Philip, then the gift over
+to the said George was to be of none effect, and the whole was to pass
+to some distant cousins of the testator’s who lived in Scotland. Then
+followed several legacies and one charge on the estate to the extent of
+1000 pounds a year payable to the _separate_ use of the aforesaid Hilda
+Caresfoot for life, and reverting at death to the holder of the estate.
+
+In plain English, Philip was, under this draft, totally disinherited,
+first in favour of his own male issue, by his wife Hilda, all mention
+of daughters being omitted, and failing such issue, in favour of his
+hated cousin George, who, as though to add insult to injury, was
+prohibited from willing the property back either to himself or his
+descendants, by whom the testator had probably understood the children
+of a second marriage.
+
+Philip read the document over twice carefully.
+
+“Phew!” he said, “that was touch and go. Thank heavens he had no time
+to carry out his kind intentions.”
+
+But presently a terrible thought struck him. He rang the bell hastily.
+It was answered by the footman, who, since he had an hour before helped
+to carry his poor master upstairs, had become quite demoralized. It was
+some time before Philip could get an answer to his question as to
+whether or no any one had been with his father that day whilst he was
+out. At last he succeeded in extracting a reply from the man that
+nobody had been except the young lady—“leastways, he begged pardon,
+Mrs. Caresfoot, as he was told she was.”
+
+“Never mind her,” said Philip, feeling as though a load had been taken
+from his breast, “you are sure nobody else has been?”
+
+“No, sir, nobody, leastways he begged pardon, nobody except lawyer
+Bellamy and his clerk, who had been there all the afternoon writing,
+with a black bag, and had sent for Simmons to be witnessed.”
+
+“You can go,” said Philip, in a quiet voice. He saw it all now, he had
+let the old man die _after_ he had executed the fresh will
+disinheriting him. He had let him die; he had effectually and beyond
+redemption cut his own throat. Doubtless, too, Bellamy had taken the
+new will with him; there was no chance of his being able to destroy it.
+
+By degrees, however, his fit of brooding gave way to one of sullen fury
+against his wife, himself, but most of all against his dead father.
+Drunk with excitement, rage, and baffled avarice, he seized a candle
+and staggered up to the room where the corpse had been laid, launching
+imprecations as he went at his dead father’s head. But when he came
+face to face with that dread Presence his passion died, and a cold
+sense of the awful quiet and omnipotence of death came upon him and
+chilled him into fear. In some indistinct way he realized how impotent
+is the chafing of the waters of Mortality against the iron- bound
+coasts of Death. To what purpose did he rail against that solemn quiet
+thing, that husk and mask of life which lay in unmoved mockery of his
+reviling?
+
+His father was dead, and he, even he, had killed his father. He was his
+father’s murderer. And then a terror of the reckoning that must one day
+be struck between that dead man’s spirit and his own took possession of
+him, and a foreknowledge of the awful shadow under which he must
+henceforth live crept into his mind and froze the very marrow in his
+bones. He looked again at the face, and, to his excited imagination, it
+appeared to have assumed a sardonic smile. The curse of Cain fell upon
+him as he looked, and weighed him down; his hair rose, and the cold
+sweat poured from his forehead. At length he could bear it no longer,
+but, turning, fled out of the room and out of the house, far into the
+night.
+
+When, haggard with mental and bodily exhaustion, he at length returned,
+it was after midnight. He found Dr. Caley waiting for him; he had just
+come from the sick-room and wore an anxious look upon his face.
+
+“Your wife has been delivered of a fine girl,” he said; “but I am bound
+to tell you that her condition is far from satisfactory. The case is a
+most complicated and dangerous one.”
+
+“A girl!” groaned Philip, mindful of the will. “Are you sure that it is
+a girl?”
+
+“Of course I am sure,” answered the doctor, testily.
+
+“And Hilda ill—I don’t understand.”
+
+“Look here, my good fellow, you are upset; take a glass of brandy and
+go to bed. Your wife does not wish to see you now, but, if necessary, I
+will send for you. Now, do as I tell you, or you will be down next.
+Your nerves are seriously shaken.”
+
+Philip did as he was bid, and, as soon as he had seen him off to his
+room, the doctor returned upstairs.
+
+In the early morning he sent for two of his brother-practitioners, and
+they held a consultation, the upshot of which was that they had come to
+the conclusion nothing short of a miracle could save Hilda’s life— a
+conclusion that she herself had arrived at some hours before.
+
+“Doctor,” she said, “I trust to you to let me know when the end is
+near. I wish my husband to be present when I die, but not before.”
+
+“Hush, my child—never talk of dying yet. Please God, you have many
+years of life before you.”
+
+She shook her golden head a little sadly.
+
+“No, doctor, my sand has run out, and perhaps it as as well. Give me
+the child—why do you keep the child away from me? It is the messenger
+sent to call me to a happier world. Yes, she is an angel messenger.
+When I am gone, see that you call her ‘Angela,’ so that I may know by
+what name to greet her when the time comes.”
+
+During the course of the morning, she expressed a strong desire to see
+Maria Lee, who was accordingly sent for.
+
+It will be remembered that old Mr. Caresfoot had on the previous day,
+immediately after Hilda had left him, sat down and written to Maria
+Lee. In this note he told her the whole shameful truth, ending it with
+a few words of bitter humiliation and self-reproach that such a thing
+should have befallen her at the hands of one bearing his name. Over the
+agony of shame and grief thus let loose upon this unfortunate girl we
+will draw a veil. It is fortunate for the endurance of human reason
+that life does not hold many such hours as that through which she
+passed after the receipt of this letter. As was but natural,
+notwithstanding old Mr. Caresfoot’s brief vindication of Hilda’s
+conduct in his letter, Maria was filled with indignation at what to
+herself she called her treachery and deceit.
+
+While she was yet full of these thoughts, a messenger came galloping
+over from Bratham Abbey, bringing a note from Dr. Caley that told her
+of her old friend’s sudden death, and of Hilda’s dangerous condition,
+and her desire to see her. The receipt of this news plunged her into a
+fresh access of grief, for she had grown fond of the old man; nor had
+the warm affection for Hilda that had found a place in her gentle heart
+been altogether wrenched away; and, now that she heard that her rival
+was face to face with that King of Terrors before whom all earthly
+love, hate, hope, and ambition must fall down and cease their
+troubling, it revived in all its force; nor did any thought of her own
+wrongs come to chill it.
+
+Within half an hour she was at the door of the Abbey House, where the
+doctor met her, and, in answer to her eager question, told her that,
+humanly speaking, it was impossible her friend could live through
+another twenty-four hours, adding an injunction that she must not stay
+with her long.
+
+She entered the sick-room with a heavy heart, and there from Hilda’s
+dying lips she heard the story of her marriage and of Philip’s perfidy.
+Their reconciliation was as complete as her friend’s failing voice and
+strength would allow. At length she tore herself away, and, turning at
+the door, took her last look at Hilda, who had raised herself upon her
+elbow, and was gazing at her retreating form with an earnestness that
+was very touching. The eyes, Maria felt, were taking their fill of what
+they looked upon for the last time in this world. Catching her tearful
+gaze, the dying woman smiled, and, lifting her hand, pointed upwards.
+Thus they parted.
+
+But Maria could control herself no longer: her own blasted prospects,
+the loss of the man she loved, and the affecting scene through which
+she had just passed, all helped to break her down. Running downstairs
+into the dining-room, she threw herself on a sofa, and gave full
+passage to her grief. Presently she became aware that she was not
+alone. Philip stood before her, or, rather, the wreck of him whom she
+knew as Philip. Indeed, it was hard to recognize in this scared man,
+with dishevelled hair, white and trembling lips, and eyes ringed round
+with black, the bold, handsome youth whom she had loved. The sight of
+him stayed her sorrow, and a sense of her bitter injuries rushed in
+upon her.
+
+“What do you want with me?” she asked.
+
+“Want! I want forgiveness. I am crushed, Maria, crushed—quite crushed,”
+and he put his hands to his face and sobbed.
+
+She answered him with the quiet dignity that good women can command in
+moments of emergency—dignity of a very different stamp from Hilda’s
+haughty pride, but perhaps as impressive in its way.
+
+“You ask forgiveness of me, and say that you are crushed. Has it
+occurred to you that, without fault of my own, except the fault of
+trusting you as entirely as I loved you, I too am crushed? Do you know
+that you have wantonly, or to gain selfish ends, broken my heart,
+blighted my name, and driven me from my home, for I can live here no
+more? Do you understand that you have done me one of the greatest
+injuries one person can do to another? I say, do you know all this,
+Philip Caresfoot, and, knowing it, do you still ask me to forgive you?
+Do you think it possible that I _can_ forgive?”
+
+He had never heard her speak like this before, and did not remember
+that intense feeling is the mother of eloquence. He gazed at her for a
+moment in astonishment; then he dropped his face into his hands again
+and groaned, making no other answer. After waiting awhile, she went on—
+
+“I am an insignificant creature, I know, and perhaps the mite of my
+happiness or misery makes little difference in the scale of things; but
+to me the gift of all my love was everything. I gave it to you,
+Philip—gave it without a doubt or murmur, gave it with both hands. I
+can never have it back to give again! How you have treated it you best
+know.” Here she broke down a little, and then continued: “It may seem
+curious, but though my love has been so mistakenly given; though you to
+whom it was given have dealt so ill with it; yet I am anxious that on
+my side there should be no bitter memory, that, in looking back at all
+this in after years, you should never be able to dwell upon any harsh
+or unkind word of mine. It is on that account, and also because I feel
+that it is not for me to judge you, and that you have already much to
+bear, that I do as you ask me, and say, ‘Philip, from my heart I
+forgive you, as I trust that the Almighty may forgive me.’”
+
+He flung himself upon his knees before her, and tried to take her hand.
+“You do not know how you have humbled me,” he groaned.
+
+She gazed at him with pity.
+
+“I am sorry,” she said; “I did not wish to humble you. I have one word
+more to say, and then I must go. I have just bid my last earthly
+farewell to—your wife. My farewell to you must be as complete as that,
+as complete as though the grave had already swallowed one of us. We
+have done with each other for ever. I do not think that I shall come
+back here. In my waking moments your name shall never willingly pass my
+lips again. I will say it for the last time now. _Philip, Philip,
+Philip_, whom I chose to love out of all the world, I pray God that He
+will take me, or deaden the edge of what I suffer, and that He may
+never let my feet cross your path or my eyes fall upon your face
+again.”
+
+In another second she had passed out of the room and out of his life.
+
+That night, or rather just before dawn on the following morning, Hilda,
+knowing that her end was very near, sent for her husband.
+
+“Go quickly, doctor,” she said. “I shall die at dawn.”
+
+The doctor found him seated in the same spot where Maria Lee had left
+him.
+
+“What, more misery!” he said, when he had told his errand. “I cannot
+bear it. There is a curse upon me—death and wickedness, misery and
+death!”
+
+“You must come if you wish to see your wife alive.”
+
+“I will come;” and he rose and followed him.
+
+A sad sight awaited him. The moment of the grey dawn was drawing near,
+and, by his wife’s request, a window had been unshuttered, that her
+dimmed eyes might once more look upon the light. On the great bed in
+the centre of the room lay Hilda, whose life was now quickly draining
+from her, and by her side was placed the sleeping infant. She was
+raised and supported on either side by pillows, and her unbound golden
+hair fell around her shoulders, enclosing her face as in a frame. Her
+pallid countenance seemed touched with an awful beauty that had not
+belonged to it in life, whilst in her eyes was that dread and prescient
+gaze which sometimes come to those who are about to solve death’s
+mystery.
+
+By the side of the bed knelt Mr. Fraser, the clergyman of the parish,
+repeating in an earnest tone the prayers for the dying, whilst the
+sad-faced attendants moved with muffled tread backwards and forwards
+from the ring of light around the bed into the dark shadows that lay
+beyond.
+
+When Philip came, the clergyman ceased praying, and drew back into the
+further part of the room, as did Pigott and the nurse, the former
+taking the baby with her.
+
+Hilda motioned to him to come close to her. He came, and bent over and
+kissed her, and she, with an effort, threw one ivory arm around his
+neck, and smiled sweetly. After about a minute, during which she was
+apparently collecting her thoughts, she spoke in a low voice, and in
+her native tongue.
+
+“I have not sent for you before, Philip, for two reasons—first, because
+I wished to spare you pain; and next, in order that I might have time
+to rid my mind of angry thoughts against you. They are all gone
+now—gone with every other earthly interest; but I _was_ angry with you,
+Philip. And now listen to me—for I have not much time—and do not forget
+my words in future years, when the story of my life will seem but as a
+shadow that once fell upon your path. Change your ways, Philip dear,
+abandon deceit, atone for the past; if you can, make your peace with
+Maria Lee, and marry her—ah! it is a pity that you did not do that at
+first, and leave me to go my ways—and, above all, humble your heart
+before the Power that I am about to face. I love you, dear, and,
+notwithstanding all, I am thankful to have been your wife. Please God,
+we shall meet again.”
+
+She paused awhile, and then spoke in English. To the astonishment of
+all, her voice was strong and clear, and she uttered her words with an
+energy that, under the circumstances, seemed almost awful.
+
+“Tell her to bring the child.”
+
+There was no need for Philip to repeat what she said, for Pigott heard
+her, and at once came forward with the baby, which she laid beside her.
+
+The dying woman placed her hand upon its tiny head, and, turning her
+eyes upwards with the rapt expression of one who sees a vision, said—
+
+“May the power of God be about you to protect you, my motherless babe,
+may angels guard you, and make you as they are; and may the heavy curse
+and everlasting doom of the Almighty fall upon those who would bring
+evil upon you.”
+
+She paused, and then addressed her husband.
+
+“Philip, you have heard my words; in your charge I leave the child, see
+that you never betray my trust.”
+
+Then, turning to Pigott, she said, in a fainter voice—
+
+“Thank you for your kindness to me. You have a good face; if you can,
+stop with my child, and give her your love and care. And now, may God
+have mercy on my soul!”
+
+Then came a minute’s silence, broken only by the stifled sobs of those
+who stood around, till a ray of light from the rising sun struggled
+through the grey mist of the morning, and, touching the heads of mother
+and child, illumined them as with a glory. It passed as quickly as it
+came, drawing away with it the mother’s life. Suddenly, as it faded,
+she spread out her arms, sighed, and smiled. When the doctor reached
+the bed, her story was told: she had fallen asleep.
+
+Death had been very gentle with her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+Go, my reader, if the day is dull, and you feel inclined to moralize—
+for whatever may be said to the contrary, there are less useful
+occupations—and look at your village churchyard. What do you see before
+you? A plot of enclosed ground backed by a grey old church, a number of
+tombstones more or less decrepit, and a great quantity of little oblong
+mounds covered with rank grass. If you have any imagination, any power
+of thought, you will see more than that. First, with the instinctive
+selfishness of human nature, you will recognize your own future
+habitation; perhaps your eye will mark the identical spot where the
+body you love must lie through all seasons and weathers, through the
+slow centuries that will flit so fast for you, till the crash of doom.
+It is good that you should think of that, although it makes you
+shudder. The English churchyard takes the place of the Egyptian mummy
+at the feast, or the slave in the Roman conqueror’s car—it mocks your
+vigour, and whispers of the end of beauty and strength.
+
+Probably you need some such reminder. But if, giving to the inevitable
+the sigh that is its due, you pursue the vein of thought, it may
+further occur to you that the plot before you is in a sense a summary
+of the aspirations of humanity. It marks the realization of human
+hopes, it is the crown of human ambitions, the grave of human failures.
+Here, too, is the end of the man, and here the birthplace of the angel
+or the demon. It is his sure inheritance, one that he never solicits
+and never squanders; and, last, it is the only certain resting-place of
+sleepless, tired mortality.
+
+Here it was that they brought Hilda, and the old squire, and laid them
+side by side against the coffin of yeoman Caresfoot, whose fancy it had
+been to be buried in stone, and then, piling primroses and blackthorn
+blooms upon their graves, left them to their chilly sleep. Farewell to
+them, they have passed to where as yet we may not follow. Violent old
+man and proud and lovely woman, rest in peace, if peace be the portion
+of you both!
+
+To return to the living. The news of the sudden decease of old Mr.
+Caresfoot; of the discovery of Philip’s secret marriage and the death
+of his wife; of the terms of the old man’s will, under which, Hilda
+being dead, and having only left a daughter behind her, George
+inherited all the unentailed portion of the property, with the curious
+provision that he was never to leave it back to Philip or his children;
+of the sudden departure of Miss Lee, and of many other things, that
+were some of them true and some of them false, following as they did
+upon the heels of the great dinner-party, and the announcement made
+thereat, threw the country-side into a state of indescribable ferment.
+When this settled down, it left a strong and permanent residuum of
+public indignation and contempt directed against Philip, the more
+cordially, perhaps, because he was no longer a rich man. People very
+rarely express contempt or indignation against a rich man who happens
+to be their neighbour in the country, whatever he may have done. They
+keep their virtue for those who are impoverished, or for their
+unfortunate relations. But for Philip it was felt that there was no
+excuse and no forgiveness; he had lost both his character and his
+money, and must therefore be cut, and from that day forward he was cut
+accordingly.
+
+As for Philip himself, he was fortunately, as yet, ignorant of the kind
+intentions of his friends and neighbours, who had been so fond of him a
+week ago. He had enough upon his shoulders without that—for he had
+spoken no lie when he told Maria Lee that he was crushed by the
+dreadful and repeated blows that had fallen upon him, blows that had
+robbed him of everything that made life worth living, and given him in
+return nothing but an infant who could not inherit, and who was
+therefore only an incumbrance.
+
+Who is it that says, “After all, let a bad man take what pains he may
+to push it down, a human soul is an awful, ghostly, unique possession
+for a bad man to have?” During the time that had elapsed between the
+death and burial of his father and wife, Philip had become thoroughly
+acquainted with the truth of this remark.
+
+Do what he would, he could never for a single hour shake himself free
+from the recollection of his father’s death; whenever he shut his eyes,
+his uneasy mind continually conjured up the whole scene with uncanny
+distinctness; the gloomy room, the contorted face of the dying man, the
+red flicker of the firelight on the wall—all these things were burnt
+deep into the tablets of his memory. More and more did he recognize the
+fact that, even should he live long enough to bury the events of that
+hour beneath the debris of many years, the lapse of time would be
+insufficient to bring forgetfulness, and the recognition brought with
+it moral helplessness. He had, too, sufficient religious feeling to
+make him uneasy as to his future fate, and possessed a certain amount
+of imagination, which was at this time all directed towards that awful
+day when he and his dead father must settle their final accounts.
+Already, in the quiet nights, he would wake with a start, thinking that
+the inevitable time had come. Superstitious fears also would seize him
+with their clammy fingers, and he would shake and tremble at the
+fancied step of ghostly feet, and his blood would curdle in his veins
+as his mind hearkened to voices that were for ever still.
+
+And, worst of all, what had been done, and could never be undone, had
+been done in vain. These deadly torments must be endured, whilst the
+object for which they had been incurred had utterly escaped him. He had
+sold himself to the powers of evil for a price, and that price had not
+been paid. But the bond was good for all that.
+
+And so he would brood, hour after hour, till he felt himself drawing
+near to madness. Sometimes by a strong effort he would succeed in
+tearing his mind away from the subject, but then its place was
+instantly filled by a proud form with reproachful eyes, and he would
+feel that there, too, death had put it out of his power to make
+atonement. Of those whom he had wronged Maria Lee alone survived, and
+she had left him in sorrow, more bitter than any anger. Truly, Philip
+Caresfoot was in melancholy case. Somewhere he had read that the wages
+of sin is death, but surely what he felt surpassed the bitterness of
+death. His evil-doing had not prospered with him. The snare he had set
+for his father had fallen back upon himself, and he was a crushed and
+ruined man.
+
+It affords a curious insight into his character to reflect that all
+these piled-up calamities, all this wreck and sudden death, did not
+bring him penitent on his knees before the Maker he had outraged. The
+crimes he had committed, especially if unsuccessful, or the sorrows
+that had fallen upon him, would have sufficed to reduce nine-tenths of
+ordinary men to a condition of humble supplication. For, generally
+speaking, irreligion, or rather forgetfulness of God, is a plant of no
+deep growth in the human heart, since its roots are turned by the rock
+of that innate knowledge of a higher Power that forms the foundation of
+every soul, and on which we are glad enough to set our feet when the
+storms of trouble and emergency threaten to destroy us. But with Philip
+this was not so. He never thought of repentance. His was not the nature
+to fall down and say, “Lord, I have sinned, take Thou my burden from
+me.” Indeed, he was not so much sorry for the past as fearful for the
+future. It was not grief for wrong-doing that wrung his heart and broke
+his spirit, but rather his natural sorrow at losing the only creature
+he had ever deeply loved, chagrin at the shame of his position and the
+failure of his hopes, and the icy fingers of superstitious fears.
+
+The crisis had come and passed: he had sinned against his Father in
+heaven and his father on earth, and he did not sorrow for his sin; his
+wife had left him, murmuring with her dying lips exhortations to
+repentance, and he did not soften; shame and loss had fallen upon him,
+and he did not turn to God. But his pride was broken, all that remained
+to him of strength was his wickedness; the flood that had swept over
+him had purged away not the evil but the good, from the evil it only
+took its courage. Henceforth, if he sins at all, his will be no bold
+and hazardous villany which, whilst it excites horror, can almost
+compel respect, but rather the low and sordid crime, the safe and
+treacherous iniquity.
+
+Ajax no longer defies the lightning—he mutters curses on it beneath his
+breath.
+
+On the evening of the double funeral—which Philip did not feel equal to
+attending, and at which George, in a most egregious hatband and with
+many sobs and tears, officiated as chief mourner—Mr. Fraser thought it
+would be a kind act on his part to go and offer such consolation to the
+bereaved man as lay within his power, if indeed he would accept it.
+Somewhat contrary to his expectation, he was, on arrival at the Abbey
+House, asked in without delay.
+
+“I am glad to see a human face,” said Philip to the clergyman, as he
+entered the room; “this loneliness is intolerable. I am as much alone
+as though I lay stark in the churchyard like my poor wife.”
+
+Mr. Fraser did not answer him immediately, so taken up was he in
+noticing the wonderful changes a week had wrought in his appearance.
+Not only did his countenance bear traces of the illness and exhaustion
+that might not unnaturally be expected in such a case of bereavement,
+but it faithfully reflected the change that had taken place in his
+mental attitude. His eyes had lost the frank boldness that had made
+them very pleasing to some people, they looked scared; the mouth too
+was rendered conspicuous by the absence of the firm lines that once
+gave it character; indeed the man’s whole appearance was pitiful and
+almost abject.
+
+“I am afraid,” he said at length, in a tone of gentle compassion, “that
+you must have suffered a great deal, Caresfoot.”
+
+“Suffered! I have suffered the tortures of the damned! I still suffer
+them, I shall always suffer them.”
+
+“I do not wish,” said the clergyman, with a little hesitation, “to
+appear officious or to make a mockery of your grief by telling you that
+it is for your good; but I should fail in my duty if I did not point
+out to you that He who strikes the blow has the power to heal the
+wound, and that very often such things are for our ultimate benefit,
+either in this world or the next. Carry your troubles to Him, my dear
+fellow, acknowledge His hand, and, if you know in your heart of any way
+in which you have sinned, offer Him your hearty repentance; do this,
+and you will not be deserted. Your life, that now seems to you nothing
+but ashes, may yet be both a happy and a useful one.”
+
+Philip smiled bitterly as he answered—
+
+“You talk to me of repentance—how can I repent when Providence has
+treated me so cruelly, robbing me at a single blow of my wife and my
+fortune? I know that I did wrong in concealing my marriage, but I was
+driven to it by fear of my father. Ah! if you had seen him as I saw
+him, you would have known that they were right to call him ‘Devil
+Caresfoot.’” He checked himself, and then went on—“He forced me into
+the engagement with Miss Lee, and announced it without my consent. Now
+I am ruined—everything is taken from me.”
+
+“You have your little daughter, and all the entailed estate—at least,
+so I am told.”
+
+“My little daughter!—I never want to see her face; she killed her
+mother. If it had been a boy, it would have been different, for then,
+at any rate, that accursed George would not have got my birthright. My
+little daughter, indeed! don’t enumerate her among my earthly
+blessings.”
+
+“It is rather sad to hear you talk like that of your child; but, at any
+rate, you are not left in want. You have one of the finest old places
+in the county, and a thousand a year, which to most men would be
+riches.”
+
+“And which to me,” answered Philip, “is beggary. I should have had six,
+and I have got one. But look you here, Fraser, I swear before God——”
+
+“Hush! I cannot listen to such talk.”
+
+“Well, then, before anything you like, that, while I live, I will never
+rest one single moment until I get my own back again. It may seem
+impossible, but I will find a way. For instance,” he added, as a
+thought struck him, “strangely enough, the will does not forbid me to
+buy the lands back. If I can get them no other way, I will buy them— do
+you hear?—I will buy them. I _must_ have them again before I die.”
+
+“How will you get the money?”
+
+“The money—I will save it, make it, steal it, get it somehow. Oh! do
+not be afraid; I will get the money. It will take a few years, but I
+will get it somehow. It is not the want of a few thousands that will
+stop a determined man.”
+
+“And suppose your cousin won’t sell?”
+
+“I will find a way to make him sell—some bribe, something. There,
+there,” and his enthusiasm and eagerness vanished in a moment, and the
+broken look came back upon his face. “It’s all nonsense; I am talking
+impossibilities—a little weak in my mind, I suppose. Forget it, there’s
+a good fellow; say nothing about it. And so you buried them? Ah, me!
+ah, me! And George did chief mourner. I suppose he blubbered freely; he
+always could blubber freely when he liked. I remember how he used to
+take folks in as a lad, and then laugh at them; that’s why they called
+him ‘Crocodile’ at school. Well, he’s my master now, and I’m his very
+humble servant; perhaps one day it will be the other way up again.
+What, must you go? If you knew how fearfully lonely I am, you would not
+go. My nerves have quite gone, and I fancy all sorts of things. I can
+think of nothing but those two graves out there in the dark. Have they
+sodded them over? Tell them to sod them over. It was kind of you to
+come and see me. You mustn’t pay any attention to my talk; I am not
+quite myself. Good night.”
+
+Mr. Fraser was an extremely unsuspicious man, but somehow, as he picked
+his way to the vicarage to eat his solitary chop, he felt a doubt
+rising in his mind as to whether, his disclaimer notwithstanding,
+Philip had not sincerely meant all he said.
+
+“He is shockingly changed,” he mused, “and I am not sure that it is a
+change for the better. Poor fellow, he has a great deal to bear, and
+should be kindly judged. It is all so painful that I must try to divert
+my mind. Mrs. Brown, will you bring me a little chocolate- coloured
+book, that you will see on the table in my study, when you come back
+with the potatoes? It has Plato—P-l-a-t-o—printed on the back.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+The jubilation of George at the turn events had taken may perhaps be
+more easily imagined than described. There is generally one weak point
+about all artful schemes to keep other people out of their rights; they
+break down over some unforeseen detail, or through the neglect of some
+trivial and obvious precaution. But this was one of the glorious
+instances to the contrary that prove the rule. Nothing had broken down,
+everything had prospered as a holy cause always should, and does —in
+theory. The stars in their courses had fought for Sisera, everything
+had succeeded beyond expectation, nothing had failed. In the gratitude
+of his heart, George would willingly have given a thousand pounds
+towards the establishment of a training-school for anonymous
+letter-writers, or the erection of a statue to Hilda Caresfoot, whose
+outraged pride and womanly jealousy had done him such yeoman service.
+
+Speaking seriously, he had great cause for rejoicing. Instead of a
+comparatively slender younger son’s portion, he had stepped into a fine
+and unencumbered property of over five thousand a year, and that in the
+heyday of his youth, when in the full possession of all his capacities
+for enjoyment, which were large indeed. Henceforth everything that
+money could buy would be his, including the respect and flattery of his
+poorer neighbours. An added flavour too was given to the overflowing
+cup of his good fortune by the fact that it had been wrenched from the
+hands of the cousin whom he hated, and on whom he had from a boy sworn
+to be avenged. Poor Philip! bankrupt in honour and broken in fortune,
+he could afford to pity him now, to pity him ostentatiously and in
+public. He was open-handed with his pity was George. Nor did he lack a
+sympathizer in these delicious moments of unexpected triumph.
+
+“Did I not tell you,” said Mrs. Bellamy, in her full, rich tones, on
+the afternoon of the reading of the will—“did I not tell you that, if
+you would consent to be guided by me, I would pull you through, and
+have I not pulled you through? Never misdoubt my judgment again, my
+dear George; it is infinitely sounder than your own.”
+
+“You did, Anne, you certainly did; you are a charming woman, and as
+clever as you are charming.”
+
+“Compliments are all very well, and I am sure I appreciate yours”—and
+she gave a little curtsey—“at their proper value; but I must remind
+you, George, that I have done my part of the bargain, and that now you
+must do yours.”
+
+“Oh! that’s all right; Bellamy shall have the agency and two hundred a
+year with it, and, to show you that I have not forgotten you, perhaps
+you will accept this in memorial of our joint achievement;” and he drew
+from his pocket and opened a case containing a superb set of sapphires.
+
+Mrs. Bellamy had all a beautiful woman’s love for jewels, and
+especially adored sapphires.
+
+“Oh!” she said, clasping her hands, “thank you, George; they are
+perfectly lovely!”
+
+“Perhaps,” he replied, politely; “but not half so lovely as their
+wearer. I wonder,” he added, with a little laugh, “what the old boy
+would say, if he could know that a thousand pounds of his personalty
+had gone by anticipation to buy a necklace for Anne Bellamy.”
+
+To this remark she made no reply, being apparently absorbed in her own
+thoughts. At last she spoke.
+
+“I don’t want to seem ungracious, George, but these”—and she touched
+the jewels—“were not the reward I expected: I want the letters you
+promised me back.”
+
+“My dear Anne, you are under a mistake, I never promised you the
+letters; I said that, under the circumstances, I might possibly restore
+them—a very different thing from promising.”
+
+Mrs. Bellamy flushed a little, and the great pupils of her sleepy eyes
+contracted till she looked quite dangerous.
+
+“Then I must have strangely misunderstood you,” she said.
+
+“What do you want the letters for? Can’t you trust me with them?”
+
+“Don’t you think, George, that if you had passed through something very
+terrible, you would like to have all the mementoes of that dark time
+destroyed? Those letters are the record of my terrible time; nothing
+remains of it but those written lines. I want to burn them, to stamp
+them into powder, to obliterate them as I have obliterated all the
+past. Whilst they exist I can never feel safe. Supposing you were to
+turn traitor to me and let those letters fall into the hands of others,
+supposing that you lost them, I should be a ruined woman. I speak
+frankly, you see; I fully appreciate my danger, principally because I
+know that, the more intimate a man and woman have been, the more chance
+there is of their becoming bitter enemies. George, give me those
+letters; do not overcloud my future with the shadows of the past.”
+
+“You talk as well as you do everything else, Anne; you are really a
+very remarkable woman. But, curiously enough, those letters, the
+existence of which is so obnoxious to you, are to me a source of great
+interest. You know that I love to study character—curious occupation
+for a young man, isn’t it?—but I do. Well, in my small experience, I
+have never yet, either in fiction or in real life, come across such a
+fascinating display as is reflected in those letters. There I can, and
+often do, trace in minutest detail the agony of a strong mind, can see
+the barriers of what people call religion, early training, self-
+respect, and other curiosities which we name virtues, bursting away one
+by one under pressure, like the water-tight bulkheads they put in
+passenger steamers, till at length the work is done; the moral ship
+sinks, and the writer stands revealed what you are, my dear Anne, the
+loveliest, the cleverest, and the most utterly unscrupulous woman in
+the three kingdoms.”
+
+She rose very quietly, but quite white with passion, and answered in
+her low voice—
+
+“Whatever I am you made me, and _you_ are a devil, George Caresfoot, or
+you could not take pleasure in the tortures you inflicted before you
+destroyed. But, don’t go too far, or you may regret it. Am I a woman to
+be played with? I think that you have trained me too well.”
+
+He laughed a little uneasily.
+
+“There, you see; _grattez le Russe_, &c., and out comes the true
+character. Look at your face in the glass; it is magnificent, but not
+pleasant; rather dangerous, indeed. Why, Anne, do be reasonable; if I
+gave you those letters, I should never be able to sleep in peace. For
+the sake of my own safety I dare not abandon the whip-hand I have of
+you. Remember you could, if you chose, say some unpleasant things about
+me, and I don’t want that any more than you do just now. But, you see,
+whilst I hold in my power what would, if necessary, effectually ruin
+you, and probably Bellamy too—for this country society is absurdly
+prejudiced—I have little cause for fear. Perhaps in the future you may
+be able to render me some service for which you shall have the
+letters—who knows? You see I am perfectly frank with you, for the
+simple reason that I know that it is useless to try to conceal my
+thoughts from a person of your perception.”
+
+“Well, well, perhaps you are right: it is difficult to trust oneself,
+much less any one else. At any rate,” she said, with a bitter smile,
+“you have given me Bellamy, a start in society, and a sapphire
+necklace. In twenty years, I hope, if the fates are kind, to have lost
+Bellamy on the road—he is really unendurable—to rule society, and to
+have as many sapphire necklaces and other fine things as I care for. In
+enumerating my qualities, you omitted one, ambition.”
+
+“With your looks, your determination, and your brains, there is nothing
+that you will not be able to do if you set your mind to it, and don’t
+make an enemy of your devoted friend.”
+
+And thus the conversation ended.
+
+Now little Bellamy had, after much anxious thought, just about this
+time come to a bold determination—namely, to asset his marital
+authority over Mrs. Bellamy. Indeed, his self-pride was much injured by
+the treatment he received at his wife’s hands, for it seemed to him
+that he was utterly ignored in his own house. In fact, it would not be
+too much to say that he _was_ an entire nonentity. He had married Mrs.
+Bellamy for love, or rather from fascination, though she had nothing in
+the world—married her in a fortnight from the time that George had
+first introduced him. When he had walked out of church with his
+beautiful bride, he had thought himself the luckiest man in London,
+whereas now he could not but feel that matrimony had not fulfilled his
+expectations. In the first place, Love’s young dream—he was barely
+thirty—came to a rude awakening, for, once married, it was impossible
+—though he had, in common with the majority of little men, a tolerably
+good opinion of himself—but that he should perceive that his wife did
+not care one brass farthing about him. To his soft advances she was as
+cold as a marble statue, the lovely eyes never grew tender for him.
+Indeed, he found that she was worse than a statue, for statues cannot
+indulge in bitter mockery and contemptuous comments, and Mrs. Bellamy
+could, and, what is more, frequently did.
+
+“It is very well,” reflected her husband, “to marry the loveliest woman
+in the county, but I don’t see the use of it if she treats one like a
+dog.”
+
+At last this state of affairs had grown intolerable, and, meditating in
+the solitude of his office, Mr. Bellamy resolved to assert himself once
+and for all, and set matters on a proper footing, and Mrs. Bellamy in
+her place. But it is one thing for husbands of the Bellamy stamp to
+form high-stomached resolutions, and another for them to put those
+resolutions into active and visible operation on wives of the Mrs.
+Bellamy stamp. Indeed, had it not been for a little incident about to
+be detailed, it is doubtful if Mr. Bellamy would have ever come to the
+scratch at all.
+
+When George had gone, Mrs. Bellamy sat down in by no means the sweetest
+of tempers to think. But thinking in this instance proved an
+unprofitable occupation, and she gave it up, in order to admire the
+sapphire necklace that lay upon her knee. At that moment her husband
+entered the room, but she took no notice, merely going on examining the
+stones. After moving about a little, as though to attract attention,
+the gentleman spoke.
+
+“I have managed to get home to lunch, my dear.”
+
+“Indeed.”
+
+“Well, you might take a little notice of me.”
+
+“Why? Is there anything remarkable about you this morning?”
+
+“No, there is not; but, remarkable or not, a man who has been fool
+enough”—Mr. Bellamy laid great emphasis on the word “fool”—“to get
+married has a right to expect when he comes into his own house that he
+will have a little notice taken of him, and not be as completely
+overlooked as—as though he were a tub of butter in a grocer’s shop;”
+and he pugged out his chest, rubbed his hands, and looked defiant.
+
+The lady laid her head back on the chair, and laughed with exquisite
+enjoyment.
+
+“Really, my dear John, you will kill me,” she said at length.
+
+“May I ask,” he replied, looking as though there was nothing in the
+world that he would like better, “what you are laughing at?”
+
+“Your slightly vulgar but happy simile; it is easy to see where you
+draw your inspiration from. If you had only said butterine, inferior
+butter, you know, the counterfeit article, it would have been perfect.”
+
+Her husband gave a glance at his tubby little figure in the glass.
+
+“Am I to understand that you refer to me as ‘butterine,’ Mrs. Bellamy?”
+
+“Oh! certainly yes, if you like; but, butter or not, you will melt if
+you lose your temper so.”
+
+“I have not lost my temper, madam; I am perfectly cool,” he replied,
+positively gasping with fury. Here his eye fell upon the necklace.
+“What necklace is that? who gave you that necklace? I demand to know.”
+
+“You _demand_ to know! Be careful what you say, please. Mr. George
+Caresfoot gave me the necklace. It cost a thousand pounds. Are you
+satisfied?”
+
+“No, I am not satisfied; I will not have that cursed George Caresfoot
+continually here. I will send him back his necklace. I will assert my
+rights as an Englishman and a spouse, I will——”
+
+“You will sit down and listen to me.”
+
+The tone of the voice checked his absurd linguistic and physical
+capers, and caused him to look at his wife. She was standing and
+pointing to a chair. Her face was calm and immovable, only her eyes
+appeared to expand and contract with startling rapidity. One glance was
+enough for Bellamy. He felt frightened, and sat down in the indicated
+chair.
+
+“That’s right,” she said, pleasantly; “now we can have a cosy chat.
+John, you are a lawyer, and therefore, I suppose, more or less a man of
+the world. Now, _as_ a lawyer and a man of the world, I ask you to look
+at me and then at yourself, and say if you think it likely or even
+possible that I married you for love. To be frank, I did nothing of the
+sort; I married you because you were the person most suited to my
+purpose. If you will only understand that it will save us both a great
+deal of trouble. As for your talk about asserting yourself and
+exercising your authority, it is simple nonsense. You are very well in
+your way, my dear John, and a fair attorney, but do you suppose for one
+moment that you are capable of matching yourself against me? If so, you
+make a shocking mistake. Be advised, and do not try the experiment. But
+don’t think that the bargain is all my side—it is not. If you will
+behave yourself properly and be guided by my advice, I will make you
+one of the richest and most powerful men in the county. If you will
+not, I shall shake myself free of you as soon as I am strong enough.
+Rise I must and will, and if you will not rise with me, I will rise
+alone. As regards your complaints of my not caring about you, the world
+is wide, my dear John; console yourself elsewhere. I shall not be
+jealous. And now I think I have explained everything. It is so much
+more satisfactory to have a clear understanding. Come, shall we go to
+lunch?”
+
+But Bellamy wanted no lunch that day.
+
+“After all,” he soliloquized to himself, between the pangs of a racking
+headache brought on by his outburst of temper, “time sometimes brings
+its revenges, and, if it does, you may look out, Mrs. Bellamy.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+It is perhaps time that the reader should know a little of the ancient
+house and loyalty where many of the personages of whose history these
+pages treat, lived and moved and had their being.
+
+The Abbey House, so called, was in reality that part of the monastery
+which had been devoted to the use of successive generations of priors.
+It was, like the ruins that lay to its rear, entirely built of grey
+masonry, rendered greyer still by the lichens that fed upon its walls,
+which were of exceeding strength and thickness. It was a long,
+irregular building, and roofed with old and narrow tiles, which from
+red had, in the course of ages, faded to sober russet. The banqueting-
+hall was a separate building at its northern end, and connected with
+the main dwelling by a covered way. The aspect of the house was
+westerly, and the front windows looked on to an expanse of park-like
+land, heavily timbered with oaks of large size, some of them pollards
+that might have pushed their first leaves in the time of William the
+Conqueror. In spring their vivid green was diversified by the reddish
+brown of a double line of noble walnut-trees, a full half mile in
+length, marking the track of the carriage-drive that led to the Roxham
+high-road.
+
+Behind the house lay the walled garden, celebrated in the time of the
+monks as being a fortnight earlier than any other in the neighbourhood.
+Skirting the southern wall of this garden, which was a little less than
+a hundred paces long, the visitor reached the scattered ruins of the
+old monastery that had for generations served as a stone quarry to the
+surrounding villages, but of which enough was left, including a
+magnificent gateway, to show how great had been its former extent.
+Passing on through these, he would come to an enclosure that marked the
+boundaries of the old graveyard, now turned to agricultural uses, and
+then to the church itself, a building with a very fine tower, but
+possessing no particular interest, if we except some exceedingly good
+brasses and a colossal figure of a monk cut out of the solid heart of
+an oak, and supposed to be the effigy of a prior of the abbey who died
+in the time of Edward I. Below the church again, and about one hundred
+and fifty paces from it, was the vicarage, a comparatively modern
+building, possessing no architectural attraction, and evidently reared
+out of the remains of the monastery.
+
+At the south end of the Abbey House itself lay a small grass plot and
+pleasure-garden fringed with shrubberies, and adorned with two fine
+cedar-trees. One of these trees was at its further extremity, and under
+it there ran a path cut through the dense shrubbery. This path, which
+was edged with limes and called the “Tunnel Walk,” led to the lake, and
+debouched in the little glade where stood Caresfoot’s Staff. The lake
+itself was a fine piece of water, partly natural and partly constructed
+by the monks, measuring a full mile round, and from fifty to two
+hundred yards in width. It was in the shape of a man’s shoe, the heel
+facing west like the house, but projecting beyond it, the narrow part
+representing the hollow of the instep, being exactly opposite to it,
+and the sole swelling out in an easterly direction.
+
+Bratham Abbey was altogether a fine old place, but the most remarkable
+thing about it was its air of antiquity and the solemnity of its peace.
+It did not, indeed, strike the spirit with that religious awe which is
+apt to fall upon us as we gaze along the vaulted aisles of great
+cathedrals, but it appealed perhaps with equal strength to the softer
+and more reflective side of our nature. For generation after generation
+that house had been the home of men like ourselves; they had passed and
+were forgotten, but it remained, the sole witness of the stories of
+their lives. Hands of which the very bones had long since crumbled into
+dust had planted those old oaks and walnuts, that still donned their
+green robes in summer, and shed them in the autumn, to stand great
+skeletons through the winter months, awaiting the resurrection of the
+spring.
+
+There lay upon the place and its surroundings a burden of dead lives,
+intangible, but none the less real. The air was thick with memories, as
+suggestive as the grey dust in a vault. Even in the summer, in the full
+burst of nature revelling in her strength, the place was sad. But in
+the winter, when the wind came howling through the groaning trees, and
+drove the grey scud across an ashy sky, when the birds were dumb, and
+there were no cattle on the sodden lawn, its isolated melancholy was a
+palpable thing.
+
+That hoary house might have been a gateway of the dim land we call the
+Past, looking down in stony sorrow on the follies of those who so soon
+must cross its portals, and, to the wise who could hear the lesson,
+pregnant with echoes of the warning voices of many generations.
+
+Here it was that Angela grew up to womanhood.
+
+Some nine and a half years had passed from the date of the events
+described in the foregoing pages, when one evening Mr. Fraser bethought
+him that he had been indoors all day, and proposed reading till late
+that night, and that therefore he had better take some exercise.
+
+A tall and somewhat nervous-looking man, with dark eyes, a sensitive
+mouth, and that peculiar stoop and pallor of complexion which those
+devoted to much study almost invariably acquire, he had “student”
+written on his face. His history was a sufficiently common one. He
+possessed academical abilities of a very high order, and had in his
+youth distinguished himself greatly at college, both as a classical and
+a mathematical scholar. When quite young, he was appointed, through the
+influence of a relation, to his present living, where the income was
+good and the population very small indeed. Freed from all necessity for
+exertion, he shut himself up with his books, having his little round of
+parish work for relaxation, and never sought to emerge from the quiet
+of his aimless studies to struggle for fame and place in the laborious
+world. Mr. Fraser was what people call an able man thrown away. If they
+had known his shy, sensitive nature a little better, they would have
+understood that he was infinitely more suited for the solitary and
+peaceful lot in life which he had chosen, than to become a unit in the
+turbulent and greedy crowd that is struggling through all the ages up
+the slippery slopes of the temple of that greatest of our gods—Success.
+
+There are many such men, probably you, my reader, know one or two. With
+infinite labour they store up honey from the fields of knowledge,
+collect endless data from the statistics of science, pile up their
+calculations against the very stars; and all to no end. As a rule, they
+do not write books; they gather the learning for the learning’s sake,
+and for the very love of it rejoice to count their labour lost. And
+thus they go on from year to year, until the golden bowl is broken and
+the pitcher broken at the fountain, and the gathered knowledge sinks,
+or appears to sink, back to whence it came. Alas, that one generation
+cannot hand on its wisdom and experience—more especially its
+experience—to another in its perfect form! If it could, we men should
+soon become as gods.
+
+It was a mild evening in the latter end of October when Mr. Fraser
+started on his walk. The moon was up in the heavens as he, an hour
+later, made his way from the side of the lake, where he had been
+wandering, back to the churchyard through which he had to pass to reach
+the vicarage. Just before he came to the gate, however, he was
+surprised, in such a solitary spot, to see a slight figure leaning
+against the wall opposite the place where lay the mortal remains of the
+old squire and his daughter-in-law, Hilda. He stood still and watched;
+the figure appeared to be gazing steadily at the graves. Presently it
+turned and saw him, and he recognized the great grey eyes and golden
+hair of little Angela Caresfoot.
+
+“Angela, my dear, what are you doing here at this time of night?” he
+asked, in some surprise.
+
+She blushed a little as she shook hands rather awkwardly with him.
+
+“Don’t be angry with me,” she said in a deprecatory voice; “but I was
+so lonely this evening that I came here for company.”
+
+“Came here for company! What do you mean?”
+
+She hung her head.
+
+“Come,” he said, “tell me what you mean.”
+
+“I don’t quite know myself. How can I tell you?”
+
+He looked more puzzled than ever, and she observed it and went on:
+
+“I will try to tell you, but you must not be cross like Pigott when she
+cannot understand me. Sometimes I feel ever so much alone, as though I
+was looking for something and could not find it, and then I come and
+stand here and look at my mother’s grave, and I get company and am not
+lonely any more. That is all I know; I cannot tell you any more. Do you
+think me silly? Pigott does.”
+
+“I think you are a very strange child. Are you not afraid to come here
+alone at night?”
+
+“Afraid—oh, no! Nobody comes here; the people in the village dare not
+come here after dark, because they say that the ruins are full of
+spirits. Jakes told me that. But I must be stupid; I cannot see them,
+and I want so very much to see them. I hope it is not wrong, but I told
+my father so the other day, and he turned white and was angry with
+Pigott for giving me such ideas; but you know Pigott did not give them
+to me at all. I am not afraid to come; I like it, it is so quiet, and,
+if one listens enough in the quiet, I always think one may hear
+something that other people do not hear.”
+
+“Do you hear anything, then?”
+
+“Yes, I hear things, but I cannot understand them. Listen to the wind
+in the branches of that tree, the chestnut, off which the leaf is
+falling now. It says something, if only I could catch it.”
+
+“Yes, child, yes, you are right in a way; all Nature tells the same
+eternal tale, if our ears were not stopped to its voices,” he answered,
+with a sigh; indeed, the child’s talk had struck a vein of thought
+familiar to his own mind, and, what is more, it deeply interested him;
+there was a quaint, far-off wisdom in it.
+
+“It is pleasant to-night, is it not, Mr. Fraser?” said the little maid,
+“though everything is dying. The things die softly without any pain
+this year; last year they were all killed in the rain and wind. Look at
+that cloud floating across the moon, is it not beautiful? I wonder what
+it is the shadow of; I think all the clouds are shadows of something up
+in heaven.”
+
+“And when there are no clouds?”
+
+“Oh! then heaven is quite still and happy.”
+
+“But heaven is always happy.”
+
+“Is it? I don’t understand how it can be always happy if _we_ go there.
+There must be so many to be sorry for.”
+
+Mr. Fraser mused a little; that last remark was difficult to answer. He
+looked at the fleecy cloud, and, falling into her humour, said—
+
+“I think your cloud is the shadow of an eagle carrying a lamb to its
+little ones.”
+
+“And I think,” she answered confidently, “that it is the shadow of an
+angel carrying a baby home.”
+
+Again he was silenced; the idea was infinitely more poetical than his
+own.
+
+“This,” he reflected, “is a child of a curious mental calibre.”
+
+Before he could pursue the thought further, she broke in upon it in
+quite a different strain.
+
+“Have you seen Jack and Jill? They _are_ jolly.”
+
+“Who are Jack and Jill?”
+
+“Why, my ravens, of course. I got them out of the old tree with a hole
+in it at the end of the lake.”
+
+“The tree at the end of the lake! Why, the hole where the ravens nest
+is fifty feet up. Who got them for you?”
+
+“I got them myself. Sam—you know Sam—was afraid to go up. He said he
+should fall, and that the old birds would peck his eyes. So I went by
+myself one morning quite early, with a bag tied round my neck, and got
+up. It was hard work, and I nearly tumbled once; but I got on the bough
+beneath the hole at last. It shook very much; it is so rotten, you have
+no idea. There were three little ones in the nest, all with great
+mouths. I took two, and left one for the old birds. When I was nearly
+down again, the old birds found me out, and flew at me, and beat my
+head with their wings, and pecked—oh, they did peck! Look here,” and
+she showed him a scar on her hand; “that’s where they pecked. But I
+stuck to my bag, and got down at last, and I’m glad I did, for we are
+great friends now; and I am sure the cross old birds would be quite
+pleased if they knew how nicely I am educating their young ones, and
+how their manners have improved. But I say, Mr. Fraser, don’t tell
+Pigott; she cannot climb trees, and does not like to see me do it. She
+does not know I went after them myself.”
+
+Mr. Fraser laughed.
+
+“I won’t tell her, Angela, my dear; but you must be careful—you might
+tumble and kill yourself.”
+
+“I don’t think I shall, Mr. Fraser, unless I am meant to. God looks
+after me as much when I am up a tree as when I am upon the ground.”
+
+Once more he had nothing to say; he could not venture to disturb her
+faith.
+
+“I will walk home with you, my dear. Tell me. Angela, would you like to
+learn?”
+
+“Learn!—learn what?”
+
+“Books, and the languages that other nations, nations that have passed
+away, used to talk, and how to calculate numbers and distances.”
+
+“Yes, I should like to learn very much; but who will teach me? I have
+learnt all Pigott knows two years ago, and since then I have been
+trying to learn about the trees and flowers and stars; but I look and
+watch, and can’t understand.”
+
+“Ah! my dear, contact with Nature is the highest education; but the
+mind that would appreciate her wonders must have a foundation of
+knowledge to work upon. The uneducated man is rarely sensitive to the
+thousand beauties and marvels of the fields around him, and the skies
+above him. But, if you like, I will teach you, Angela. I am practically
+an idle man, and it will give me great pleasure; but you must promise
+to work and do what I tell you.”
+
+“Oh, how good you are! Of course I will work. When am I to begin?”
+
+“I don’t know—to-morrow, if you like; but I must speak to your father
+first.”
+
+Her face fell a little at the mention of her father’s name, but
+presently she said, quietly—
+
+“My father, he will not care if I learn or not. I hardly ever see my
+father; he does not like me. I see nobody but Pigott and you and old
+Jakes, and Sam sometimes. You need not ask my father; he will never
+miss me whilst I am learning. Ask Pigott.”
+
+At that moment Pigott herself hove into view, in a great flurry.
+
+“Oh, here you are, Miss Angela! Where have you been to, you naughty
+girl? At some of your star-gazing tricks again, I’ll be bound,
+frightening the life out of a body. It’s just too bad of you, Miss
+Angela.”
+
+The little girl looked at her with a peculiarly winning smile, and took
+her very solid hand between her own tiny palms.
+
+“Don’t be cross, Pigott, dear,” she said. “I didn’t mean to frighten
+you. I couldn’t help going—I couldn’t indeed; and then I stopped
+talking to Mr. Fraser.”
+
+“There, there, I should just like to know who can be cross with you
+when you put on those ways. Are your feet wet? Ah! I thought so. Run on
+in and take them off.”
+
+“Won’t that be just a little difficult?” and she was gone with a merry
+laugh.
+
+“There, sir, that’s just like her, catching a body up like and twisting
+what she says, till you don’t know which is head and which is heels.
+I’ll be bound you found her down yonder;” and she nodded towards the
+churchyard.
+
+“Yes.”
+
+Pigott drew a little nearer, and spoke in a low voice.
+
+“‘Tis my belief, sir, that that child sees _things_; she is just the
+oddest child I ever saw. There’s nothing she likes better than to slip
+out of a night, and to go to that there beastly churchyard, saving your
+presence, for ‘company,’ as she calls it—nice sort of company, indeed.
+And it is just the same way with storms. You remember that dreadful
+gale a month ago, the one that took down the North Grove and blew the
+spire off Rewtham Church. Well, just when it was at its worst, and I
+was a-sitting and praying that the roof might keep over our heads, I
+look round for Angela, and can’t see her. ‘Some of your tricks again,’
+thinks I to myself; and just then up comes Mrs. Jakes to say that Sam
+had seen little missy creeping down the tunnel walk. I was that scared
+that I ran down, got hold of Sam, for Jakes said he wouldn’t go out
+with all them trees a-flying about in the air like straws—no, not for a
+thousand pounds, and off we set after her.” Here Pigott paused to groan
+at the recollection of that walk.
+
+“Well,” said Mr. Fraser, who was rather interested—everything about
+this queer child interested him; “where did you find her?”
+
+“Well, sir, you know where the old wall runs out into the water, before
+Caresfoot’s Staff there? Well, at the end of it there’s a post sunk in,
+with a ring in it to tie boats to. Now, would you believe it? out there
+at the end of the wall, and tied to the ring by a scarf passed round
+her middle, was that dreadful child. She was standing there, her back
+against the post, right in the teeth of the gale, with the spray
+dashing over her, her arms stretched out before her, her hat gone, her
+long hair standing out behind straight as an iron bar, and her eyes
+flashing as though they were on fire, and all the while there were the
+great trees crashing down all round in a way enough to make a body sick
+with fright. We got her back safe, thank God; but how long we shall
+keep her, I’m sure I don’t know. Now she is drowning herself in the
+lake, for she takes to the water like a duck, and now breaking her neck
+off trees, and now going to ghosts in the churchyard for company. It’s
+wearing me to the bone—that’s what it is.”
+
+Mr. Fraser smiled, for, to tell the truth, Pigott’s bones were pretty
+comfortably covered.
+
+“Come,” he said, “you would not part with her for all her wicked deeds,
+would you?”
+
+“Part with her,” answered Pigott, in hot indignation, “part with my
+little beauty? I would rather part with my head. The love, there never
+was another like her, nor never will be, with her sweet ways; and, if I
+know anything about girls, she’ll be the beauty of England, she will.
+She’s made for a beautiful woman; and look at them eyes and forehead
+and hair—where did you ever see the like? And, as for her queer ways,
+what can you expect from a child as has got a great empty mind and
+nothing to put in it, and no one to talk to but a common woman like me,
+and a father”—here she dropped her voice—“as is a miser, and hates the
+sight of his own flesh and blood?”
+
+“Hush! you should not say such things, Pigott! Now I will tell you
+something; I am going on to ask your master to allow me to educate
+Angela.”
+
+“I’m right glad to hear it, sir. She’s sharp enough to learn anything,
+and it’s kind of you to teach her. If you can make her mind like what
+her body will be if she lives, somebody will be a lucky man one of
+these days. Good-night, sir, and many thanks for bringing missy home.”
+
+Next day Angela began her education.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Reader, we are about to see Angela again, and to see a good deal of
+her; but you must be prepared for a change in her personal appearance,
+for the curtain has been down for ten years since last you met the
+child whose odd propensities excited Pigott’s wonder and indignation
+and Mr. Fraser’s interest; and ten years, as we all know, can work many
+changes in the history of the world and individuals. In ten years some
+have been swept clean off the board, and their places taken by others;
+a few have grown richer, many poorer, some of us sadder, some wiser,
+and all of us ten years older. Now, this was exactly what had happened
+to little Angela—that is, the Angela we knew as little, and ten years
+make curious differences between the slim child of nine and a half and
+the woman of nearly twenty.
+
+When we last saw her, Angela was about to commence her education. Let
+us re-introduce ourselves on the memorable evening when, after ten
+years of study, Mr. Fraser, a master by no means easily pleased,
+expressed himself unable to teach her any more.
+
+It is Christmas Eve. Drip, drop, drip, falls the rain from the leafless
+boughs on to the sodden earth. The apology for daylight that has been
+doing its dull duty for the last few hours is slowly effacing itself,
+and the gale is celebrating the fact, and showing its joy at the
+closing-in of the melancholy night by howling its loudest through the
+trees, and flogging the flying scud it has brought with it from the
+sea, till it whirls across the sky like a succession of ghostly
+racehorses.
+
+This is outside the vicarage; let us look within. In a well-worn arm-
+chair in the comfortable study, near to a table covered with books and
+holding some loose sheets of foolscap in his hand, sits Mr. Fraser. His
+hair is a little greyer than when he began Angela’s education, about as
+grey as rather accommodating hair will get at the age of fifty-three;
+otherwise his general appearance is much the same, and his face as
+refined and gentlemanlike as ever. Presently he lays down the sheets of
+paper which he has been studying attentively, and says:
+
+“Your solution is perfectly sound, Angela; but you have arrived at it
+in a characteristic fashion, and by your own road. Not but what your
+method has some merits—for one thing, it is more concise than my own;
+but, on the other hand, it shows a feminine weakness. It is not
+possible to follow every step from your premises to your conclusion,
+correct as it is.”
+
+“Ah!” says a low voice, with a happy ripple in it, the owner of which
+is busy with some tea-things out of range of the ring of light thrown
+by the double reading-lamp, “you often blame me for jumping to
+conclusions; but what does it matter, provided they are right? The
+whole secret is that I used the equivalent algebraic formula, but
+suppressed the working in order to puzzle you,” and the voice laughed
+sweetly.
+
+“That is not worthy of a mathematician,” said Mr. Fraser, with some
+irritation; “it is nothing but a trick, a _tour de force_.”
+
+“The solution is correct, you say?”
+
+“Quite.”
+
+“Then I maintain that it is perfectly mathematical; the object of
+mathematics is to arrive at the truth.”
+
+“_Vox et preterea nihil._ Come out of that corner, my dear. I hate
+arguing with a person I cannot see. But there, there, what is the use
+of arguing at all? The fact is, Angela, you are a first-class
+mathematician, and I am only second-class. I am obliged to stick to the
+old tracks; you cut a Roman road of your own. Great masters are
+entitled to do that. The algebraic formula never occurred to me when I
+worked the problem out, and it took me two days to do.”
+
+“You are trying to make me vain. You forget that whatever I know, which
+is just enough to show me how much I have to learn, I have learnt from
+you. As for being your superior in mathematics, I don’t think that, as
+a clergyman, you should make such a statement. Here is your tea.” And
+the owner of the voice came forward into the ring of light.
+
+She was tall beyond the ordinary height of woman, and possessed unusual
+beauty of form, that the tight-fitting grey dress she wore was well
+calculated to display. Her complexion, which was of a dazzling
+fairness, was set off by the darkness of the lashes that curled over
+the deep grey eyes. The face itself was rounded and very lovely, and
+surmounted by an ample forehead, whilst her hair, which was twisted
+into a massive knot, was of a tinge of chestnut gold, and marked with
+deep-set ripples. The charm of her face, however, did not, as is so
+often the case, begin and end with its physical attractions. There was
+more, much more, in it than that. But how is it possible to describe on
+paper a presence at once so full of grace and dignity, of the soft
+loveliness of woman, and of a higher and more spiritual beauty? There
+hangs in the Louvre a picture by Raphael, which represents a saint
+passing with light steps over the prostrate form of a dragon. There is
+in that heaven-inspired face, the equal of which has been rarely, if
+ever, put on canvas, a blending of earthly beauty and of the calm,
+awe-compelling spirit-gaze—that gaze, that holy dignity which can only
+come to such as are in truth and in deed “pure in heart”—that will give
+to those who know it a better idea of what Angela was like than any
+written description.
+
+At times, but, ah, how rarely! we may have seen some such look as that
+she wore on the faces of those around us. It may be brought by a great
+sorrow, or be the companion of an overwhelming joy. It may announce the
+consummation of some sublime self-sacrifice, or convey the swift
+assurance of an everlasting love. It is to be found alike on the
+features of the happy mother as she kisses her new-born babe, and on
+the pallid countenance of the saint sinking to his rest. The sharp
+moment that brings us nearer God, and goes nigh to piercing the veil
+that hides His presence, is the occasion that calls it into being. It
+is a beauty born of the murmuring sound of the harps of heaven; it is
+the light of the eternal lamp gleaming faintly through its earthly
+casket.
+
+This spirit-look, before which all wickedness must feel ashamed, had
+found a home in Angela’s grey eyes. There was a strange nobility about
+her. Whether it dwelt in the stately form, or on the broad brow, or in
+the large glance of the deep eyes, it is not possible to say; but it
+was certainly a part of herself as self-evident as her face or
+features. She might well have been the inspiration of the lines that
+run:
+
+“Truth in her might, beloved,
+Grand in her sway;
+Truth with her eyes, beloved,
+Clearer than day;
+Holy and pure, beloved,
+Spotless and free;
+Is there one thing, beloved,
+Fairer than thee?”
+
+
+Mr. Fraser absently set down the tea that Angela was giving him when we
+took the liberty to describe her personal appearance.
+
+“Now, Angela, read a little.”
+
+“What shall I read?”
+
+“Oh! anything you like; please yourself.”
+
+Thus enjoined, she went to a bookshelf, and, taking down two volumes,
+handed one to Mr. Fraser, and then, opening her copy at haphazard,
+announced the page to her companion, and, sitting down, began to read.
+
+What sound is this, now soft and melodious as the sweep of a summer
+gale over a southern sea, and now again like to the distant stamp and
+rush and break of the wave of battle? What can it be but the roll of
+those magnificent hexameters with which Homer charms a listening world.
+And rarely have English lips given them with a juster cadence.
+
+“Stop, my dear, shut up your book; you are as good a Greek scholar as I
+can make you. Shut up your book for the last time. Your education, my
+dear Angela, is satisfactorily completed. I have succeeded with you——”
+
+“Completed, Mr. Fraser!” said Angela, open-eyed. “Do you mean to say
+that I am to stop now just as I have begun to learn?”
+
+“My dear, you have learnt everything that I can teach you, and,
+besides, I am going away the day after to-morrow.”
+
+“Going away!” and then and there, without the slightest warning,
+Angela—who, for all her beauty and learning, very much resembled the
+rest of her sex—burst into tears.
+
+“Come, come, Angela,” said Mr. Fraser, in a voice meant to be gruff,
+but only succeeding in being husky, for, oddly enough, it is trying
+even to a clergyman on the wrong side of middle-age to be wept over by
+a lovely woman; “don’t be nonsensical; I am only going for a few
+months.”
+
+At this intelligence she pulled up a little.
+
+“Oh,” she said, between her sobs, “how you frightened me! How could you
+be so cruel! Where are you going to?”
+
+“I am going for a long trip in southern Europe. Do you know that I have
+scarcely been away from this place for twenty years, so I mean to
+celebrate the conclusion of our studies by taking a holiday.”
+
+“I wish you would take me with you.”
+
+Mr. Fraser coloured slightly, and his eye brightened. He sighed as he
+answered—
+
+“I am afraid, my dear, that it would be impossible.”
+
+Something warned Angela not to pursue the subject.
+
+“Now, Angela, I believe that it is usual, on the occasion of the
+severance of a scholastic connection, to deliver something in the
+nature of a farewell oration. Well, I am not going to do that, but I
+want you to listen to a few words.”
+
+She did not answer, but, drawing a stool to a corner of the fireplace,
+she wiped her eyes and sat down almost at his feet, clasping her knees
+with her hands, and gazing rather sadly into the fire.
+
+“You have, dear Angela,” he began, “been educated in a somewhat unusual
+way, with the result that, after ten years of steady work that has been
+always interesting, though sometimes arduous, you have acquired
+information denied to the vast majority of your sex, whilst at the same
+time you could be put to the blush in many things by a school-girl of
+fifteen. For instance, though I firmly believe that you could at the
+present moment take a double first at the University, your knowledge of
+English literature is almost nil, and your history of the weakest. All
+a woman’s ordinary accomplishments, such as drawing, playing, singing,
+have of necessity been to a great extent neglected, since I was not
+able to teach them to you myself, and you have had to be guided solely
+by books and by the light of Nature in giving to them such time as you
+could spare.
+
+“Your mind, on the other hand, has been daily saturated with the
+noblest thoughts of the intellectual giants of two thousand years ago,
+and would in that respect be as much in place in a well-educated
+Grecian maiden living before the time of Christ as in an English girl
+of the nineteenth century.
+
+“I have educated you thus, Angela, partly by accident and partly by
+design. You will remember when you began to come here some ten years
+since—you were a little thing then—and I had offered to give you some
+teaching, because you interested me, and I saw that you were running
+wild in mind and body. But, when I had undertaken the task I was
+somewhat puzzled how to carry it out. It is one thing to offer to
+educate a little girl, and another to do it. Not knowing where to
+begin, I fell back upon the Latin grammar, where I had begun myself,
+and so by degrees you slid into the curriculum of a classical and
+mathematical education. Then, after a year or two, I perceived your
+power of work and your great natural ability, and I formed a design. I
+said to myself, ‘I will see how far a woman cultivated under favourable
+conditions can go. I will patiently teach this girl till the literature
+of Greece and Rome become as familiar to her as her mother-tongue, till
+figures and symbols hide no mysteries from her, till she can read the
+heavens like a book. I will teach her mind to follow the secret ways of
+knowledge, I will train it till it can soar above its fellows like a
+falcon above sparrows.’ Angela, my proud design, pursued steadily
+through many years, has been at length accomplished; your bright
+intellect has risen to the strain I have put upon it, and you are at
+this moment one of the best all-round scholars of my acquaintance.”
+
+She flushed to the eyes at this high praise, and was about to speak,
+but he stopped her with a motion of the hand, and went on:
+
+“I have recognized in teaching you a fact but too little known, that a
+classical education, properly understood, is the foundation of all
+learning. There is little that is worth saying which has not already
+been beautifully said by the ancients, little that is worthy of
+meditation on which they have not already profoundly reflected, save,
+indeed, the one great subject of Christian meditation. This foundation,
+my dear Angela, you possess to an eminent degree. Henceforth you will
+need no assistance from me or any other man, for, to your trained mind,
+all ordinary knowledge will be easy to assimilate. You will receive in
+the course of a few days a parting present from myself in the shape of
+a box of carefully chosen books on European literature and history.
+Devote yourself to the study of these, and of the German language,
+which was your mother’s native tongue, for the next year, and then I
+shall consider that you are fairly finished, and then, too, my dear
+Angela, I shall expect to reap a full reward for my labours.”
+
+“What is it that you will expect of me?”
+
+“I shall expect, Angela,” and he rose from his chair and walked up and
+down the room in his excitement—“I shall expect to see you take your
+proper place in your generation. I shall say: ‘Choose your own line,
+become a critical scholar, a practical mathematician, or—and perhaps
+that is what you are most suited for with your imaginative powers—a
+writer of fiction. For remember that fiction, properly understood and
+directed to worthy aims, is the noblest and most far-reaching, as it is
+also the most difficult of the arts.’ In watching the success that will
+assuredly attend you in this or any other line, I shall be amply
+rewarded for my trouble.”
+
+Angela shook her head with a gesture of doubt, but he did not wait for
+her to answer.
+
+“Well, my dear, I must not keep you any longer—it is quite dark and
+blowing a gale of wind—except to say one more word. Remember that all
+this is—indirectly perhaps, but still none the less truly—a means to an
+end. There are two educations, the education of the mind and the
+education of the soul; unless you minister to the latter, all the time
+and toil spent upon the former will prove to little purpose. The
+learning will, it is true, remain; but it will be as the quartz out of
+which the gold has been already crushed, or the dry husks of corn. It
+will be valueless and turn to no good use, will serve only to feed the
+swine of intellectual voluptuousness and infidelity. It is, believe me,
+the higher learning of the soul that gilds our earthly lore. The
+loftier object of all education is so to train the intellect that it
+may become competent to understand something, however little, of the
+nature of our God, and to the true Christian the real end of learning
+is the appreciation of His attributes as exemplified in His mysteries
+and earthly wonders. But perhaps that is a subject on which you are as
+well fitted to discourse as I am, so I will not enter into it. ‘Finis,’
+my dear, ‘finis.’”
+
+Angela’s answer to this long oration was a simple one. She rose slowly
+from her low seat, and, putting her hands upon Mr. Fraser’s shoulders,
+kissed him on the forehead and said—
+
+“How shall I ever learn to be grateful enough for all I owe you? What
+should I have been now but for you? How good and patient you have been
+to me!”
+
+This embrace affected the clergyman strangely; he put his hand to his
+heart, and a troubled look came into his eyes. Thrusting her gently
+away from him, he sat down.
+
+“Angela,” he said presently, “go away now, dear, I am tired to-night; I
+shall see you at church to-morrow to say good-by.”
+
+And so she went homewards, through the wind and storm, little knowing
+that she left her master to struggle with a tempest far more tremendous
+than that which raged around her.
+
+As for him, as the door closed, he gave a sigh of relief.
+
+“Pray God I have not put it off too long,” he said to himself. “And now
+for to-morrow’s sermon. Sleep for the young! laughter for the happy!
+work for old fools—work, work, work!”
+
+And thus it was that Angela became a scholar.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+The winter months passed away slowly for Angela, but not by any means
+unhappily. Though she was quite alone and missed Mr. Fraser sadly, she
+found considerable consolation in his present of books, and in the
+thought that she was getting a good hold of her new subjects of study.
+And then came the wonder of the spring with its rush of budding life,
+and who, least of all Angela, could be sad in springtime? But
+nevertheless that spring marked an important change in our heroine, for
+it was during its sweet hours, when, having put her books aside, she
+would roam alone, or in company with her ravens, through the
+flower-starred woods around the lake, that a feeling of restlessness,
+amounting at times almost to dissatisfaction, took possession of her.
+Indeed, as the weeks crept on and she drew near the completion of her
+twentieth year, she realized with a sigh that she could no longer call
+herself a girl, and began to feel that her life was incomplete, that
+something was wanting in it. And this was what was wanting in Angela’s
+life: she had, if we except her nurse, no one to love, and she had so
+much love to give!
+
+Did she but guess it, the still recesses of her heart already tremble
+to the footfall of one now drawing near: out of the multitude of the
+lives around her, a life is marked to mingle with her own. She does not
+know it, but as the first reflection of the dawn strikes the
+unconscious sky and shadows the coming of its king, so the red flush
+that now so often springs unbidden to her brow, tells of girlhood’s
+twilight ended, and proclaims the advent of woman’s life and love.
+
+“Angela,” called her father one day, as he heard her footsteps passing
+his study, “come in here; I want to speak to you.”
+
+His daughter stopped, and a look of blank astonishment spread itself
+over her face. She had not been called into that study for years. She
+entered, however, as bidden. Her father, who was seated at his
+writing-table, which was piled up with account-books, did not greatly
+differ in appearance from what he was when we last saw him twenty years
+ago. His frame had grown more massive, and acquired a slight stoop, but
+he was still a young, powerful-looking man, and certainly did not
+appear a day more than his age of forty-two. The eyes, however, so long
+as no one was looking at them, had contracted a concentrated stare, as
+though they were eternally gazing at some object in space, and this
+appearance was rendered the more marked by an apparently permanent
+puckering of the skin of the forehead. The moment, however, that they
+came under the fire of anybody else’s optics, and, oddly enough, more
+particularly those of his own daughter, the stare vanished, and they
+grew shifty and uncertain to a curious degree.
+
+Philip was employed in adding up something when his daughter entered,
+and motioned to her to sit down. She did so, and fixed her great grey
+eyes on him with some curiosity. The effect was remarkable; her father
+fidgeted, made a mistake in his calculations, glanced all round the
+room with his shifty eyes (ah, how changed from those bold black eyes
+with which Maria Lee fell in love four-and-twenty years ago!) and
+finally threw down his pen with an exclamation that would have shocked
+Angela had she understood it.
+
+“How often, Angela, have I asked you not to stare me out of
+countenance! It is a most unladylike trick of yours.”
+
+She blushed painfully.
+
+“I beg your pardon; I forgot. I will look out of the window.”
+
+“Don’t be a fool; look like other people. But now I want to speak to
+you. In the first place, I find that the household expenditure for the
+last year was three hundred and fifty pounds. That is more than I can
+afford; it must not exceed three hundred this year.”
+
+“I will do my best to keep the expenses down, father; but I can assure
+you that there is no money wasted now.”
+
+Then came a pause, which, after humming and hawing a little, Philip was
+the first to break.
+
+“Do you know that I saw your cousin George yesterday? He is back at
+last at Isleworth.”
+
+“Yes, Pigott told me that he had come. He has been away a long while.”
+
+“When did you last see him?”
+
+“When I was about thirteen, I believe; before he lost the election, and
+went away.”
+
+“He has been down here several times since then. I wonder that you did
+not see him.”
+
+“I always disliked him, and kept out of his way.”
+
+“Gad, you can’t dislike him more than I do; but I keep good friends
+with him for all that, and you must do the same. Now, look here,
+Angela, will you promise to keep a secret?”
+
+“Yes, father, if you wish it.”
+
+“Well, then, I appear to be a poor man, don’t I? And remember,” he
+added, hastily, “that, with reference to household expenses, I am poor;
+but, as a matter of fact”—and here he sunk his voice, and glanced
+suspiciously round—“I am worth at this moment nearly one hundred and
+fifty thousand pounds in hard cash.”
+
+“That is six thousand pounds a year at four per cent.,” commented
+Angela, without a moment’s hesitation. “Then I really think you might
+put a flue into the old greenhouse, and allow a shilling a week to Mrs.
+Jakes’ mother.”
+
+“Curse Mrs. Jakes’ mother! Nobody but a woman would have interrupted
+with such nonsense. Listen. You must have heard how I was disinherited
+on account of my marriage with your mother, and the Isleworth estates
+left to your cousin George, and how, with a refined ingenuity, he was
+forbidden to bequeath them back to me or to my children. But mark this,
+he is not forbidden to sell them to me; no doubt the old man never
+dreamt that I should have the money to buy them; but, you see, I have
+almost enough.”
+
+“How did you get so much money?”
+
+“Get it! First, I took the gold plate my grandfather bought, and sold
+it. I had no right to do it, but I could not afford to have so much
+capital lying idle. It fetched nearly five thousand pounds. With this I
+speculated successfully. In two years I had eighteen thousand. The
+eighteen thousand I invested in a fourth share in a coal-mine, when
+money was scarce and coals cheap. Coals rose enormously just then, and
+in five years’ time I sold my share to the co-holders for eighty-two
+thousand, in addition to twenty-one thousand received by way of
+interest. Since then I have not speculated, for fear my luck should
+desert me. I have simply allowed the money to accumulate on mortgage
+and other investments, and bided my time, for I have sworn to have
+those estates back before I die. It is for this cause that I have
+toiled, and thought, and screwed, and been cut by the whole
+neighbourhood for twenty years; but now I think that, with your help,
+my time is coming.”
+
+“With _my_ help. What is it that you wish me to do?”
+
+“Listen,” answered her father, nervously tapping his pencil on the
+account-book before him. “George is not very fond of Isleworth—in fact,
+he rather dislikes it; but, like all the Caresfoots, he does not care
+about parting with landed property, and, though we appear to be good
+friends, he hates me too much ever to consent, under ordinary
+circumstances, to sell it to me. It is to you I look to overcome that
+objection.”
+
+“I! How?”
+
+“You are a woman and you ask me how you should get the blind side of a
+man!”
+
+“I do not in the least understand you.”
+
+Philip smiled incredulously.
+
+“Then I suppose I must explain. If ever you take the trouble to look at
+yourself in the glass, you will probably see that Nature has been very
+kind to you in the matter of good looks; nor are you by any means
+deficient in brains. Your cousin George is very fond of a pretty woman,
+and, to be plain, what I want you to do is to make use of your
+advantages to get him under your thumb and persuade him into selling
+the property.”
+
+“Oh! father, how can you?” ejaculated Angela, in an agony of shame.
+
+“You idiot, I won’t want you to marry him; I only want you to make a
+fool of him. Surely, being of the sex you are, you won’t find _that_ an
+uncongenial occupation.”
+
+Angela’s blushes had given away to pallor now, and she answered with
+cold contempt:
+
+“I don’t think you quite understand what a girl feels—at least, what I
+feel, for I know no other girls. Perhaps it would be useless for me to
+try to explain. I had rather go blind than use my eyes for such a
+shameful purpose.”
+
+“Angela,” said her father, with as much temper as he ever showed now,
+“let me tell you that you are a silly fool; you are more, you are an
+encumbrance. Your birth,” he added, bitterly, “robbed me of your
+mother, and the fact of your being a girl deprived our branch of the
+family of their rights. Now that you have grown up, you prefer to
+gratify your whims rather than help me to realize the object of my life
+by a simple course of action that could do no one any harm. I never
+asked you to commit yourself in any way. Well, well, it is what I must
+expect. We have not seen much of each other heretofore, and perhaps the
+less we meet in the future the better.”
+
+“You have no right to talk to me so,” she answered, with flashing eyes,
+“though I am your daughter, and it is cowardly to reproach me with my
+birth, my sex, and my dependence. Am I responsible for any of these
+things? But I will not burden you long. And as to what you wanted me to
+do, and think such a little of, I ask you, is it what my poor mother
+would have wished her daughter——”
+
+Here Philip abruptly rose, and left the room and the house.
+
+“She is as like her mother as possible,” he mused, as soon as he was
+clear of the house. “It might have been Hilda herself, only she is
+twice as beautiful as Hilda was. I shall have another bad night after
+this, I know I shall. I must get rid of that girl somehow, I cannot
+bear her about me; she is a daily reminder of things I dare not
+remember, and whenever she stares at me with those great eyes of hers,
+I feel as though she were looking through me. I wonder if she knows the
+story of Maria Lee!”
+
+And then dismissing, or trying to dismiss, the matter from his mind, he
+took his way across the fields to Isleworth Hall, a large white brick
+mansion in the Queen Anne style, about two miles distant from the
+Abbey, and, on arrival, asked for his cousin George, and was at once
+shown into that gentleman’s presence.
+
+Years had told upon George more than they had upon Philip, and, though
+there were no touches of grey in the flaming red of his hair, the
+bloodshot eyes, and the puckered crowsfeet beneath them, to say nothing
+of the slight but constant trembling of the hand, all showed that he
+was a man well on in middle-life, and who had lived every day of it.
+Time, too, had made the face more intensely unpleasant and
+vulgar-looking than ever. Such Caresfoot characteristics as it
+possessed were, year by year, giving place, in an increasingly greater
+degree, to the kitchen-maid strain introduced by the mother. In short,
+George Caresfoot did not even look a gentleman, whereas Philip
+certainly did.
+
+“You don’t seem very well, George. I am afraid that your travels have
+not agreed with you.”
+
+“My dear Philip,” answered his cousin, in a languid and affected voice,
+“if you had lived the life that I have for the last twenty years, you
+would look a little knocked up. I have had some very good times; but
+the fact is, that I have been too prodigal of my strength, not thought
+enough about the future. It is a great mistake, and one of the worst
+results is that I am utterly _blase_ of everything; even _la belle
+passion_ is played out for me. I haven’t seen a woman I care twopence
+about for ten years.”
+
+“Ah! you should sell this place, and take a house in town; it would
+suit you much better.”
+
+“I can do that without selling the place. I don’t intend to sell the
+place—in fact, nothing would induce me to do so. Some day I may marry,
+and want to transmit it to some future Caresfoot; but I confess I don’t
+mean to do that just yet. Marry when you want a nurse, but never
+before; that’s my maxim. Marriage is an excellent institution for
+parsons and fools, the two classes that Providence has created to
+populate the world; but a wise man should as soon think of walking into
+a spring-trap. Take your own case, for instance, my dear Philip; look
+what marriage led to.”
+
+“At any rate,” answered his cousin, bitterly, “it led to your
+advantage.”
+
+“Exactly; and that is one of the reasons why I have such a respect for
+the institution in the abstract. It has been my personal benefactor,
+and I worship it accordingly—at a distance. By the way, talking of
+marriage reminds me of its legitimate fruits. Bellamy tells me that
+your daughter Angela (if I had a daughter, I should call her Diabola,
+it is more appropriate for a woman) has grown uncommonly handsome.
+Bring her to see me; I adore beauty in all its forms, especially its
+female form. Is she really so handsome?”
+
+“I am no judge, but you will soon have an opportunity of forming an
+opinion—that is, I hope so. I propose coming with Angela to make a
+formal call on you to-morrow.”
+
+“Good. Tell my fair cousin that I shall be certain to be in, and be
+prepared, metaphorically, to fall at the feet of so much loveliness. By
+the way, that reminds me; you have heard of Bellamy’s, or rather Mrs.
+Bellamy’s, good fortune, I suppose?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“What—not? Why, he is now Sir John Bellamy, knight.”
+
+“Indeed! How is that?”
+
+“You remember the bye-election six months back?”
+
+“Oh, yes! I was actually badgered by Mrs. Bellamy into promising to
+vote, much against my personal convenience.”
+
+“Exactly. Well, just at the time old Prescott died, you may remember
+that Mr. Showers, the member of the Government, was unseated on
+petition from some borough or other, and came down here post-haste to
+get re-elected. But he had Sir Percy Vivyan against him, and, as I know
+to my cost, this benighted country is not fond of those who preach the
+gospel of progress. Bellamy, who is a stout Radical, as you
+know—chiefly, I fancy, because there is more to be got out of that side
+of politics—got the job as Showers’ agent. But, three days before, it
+became quite clear that his cause, cabinet minister or not, was
+hopeless. Then it was that Mrs.—I beg her pardon, Lady—Bellamy came to
+the fore. Just as Showers was thinking of withdrawing, she demanded a
+private interview with him. Next day she posted off to old Sir Percy,
+who is a perfect fool of the chivalrous school, and was desperately
+fond of her, and, _mirabile dictu_, that evening Sir Percy withdraws on
+the plea of ill-health or some such rubbish, and Showers walks over.
+Within three months, Mr. Bellamy becomes Sir John Bellamy, nominally
+for his services as town-clerk of Roxham, and I hear that old Sir Percy
+is now perfectly rampant, and goes about cursing her ladyship up hill
+and down dale, and declaring that he has been shockingly taken-in. How
+our mutual friend worked the ropes is more than I can tell you, but she
+did work them, and to some purpose.”
+
+“She is an uncommonly handsome woman.”
+
+“Ah! yes, you’re right there, she is A1; but let us stroll out a
+little; it is a fine evening for the 30th of April. To-morrow will be
+the 1st of May, so it will, a day neither of us are likely to forget.”
+
+Philip winced at the allusion, but said nothing.
+
+“By the way,” George went on, “I am expecting a visitor, my ward, young
+Arthur Heigham, who is just back from India. He will be twenty- five in
+a few days, when he comes of age, and is coming down to settle up. The
+fact is, that ten thousand of his money is on the Jotley property, and
+both Bellamy and myself are anxious that it should stop there for the
+present, as if the mortgage were called in it might be awkward.”
+
+“Is he well off?”
+
+“Comfortably; about a thousand a year; comes of an old family too.
+Bellamy and I knew his father, Captain Heigham, slightly, when we were
+in business. His wife, by the way, was a distant cousin of ours. They
+are both dead now; the captain was wiped out at Inkerman, and, for some
+unknown reason, left me the young gentleman’s sole guardian and joint
+trustee with a London lawyer, a certain Mr. Borley. I have never seen
+him yet—my ward, I mean—he has always been at Eton, or Cambridge, or in
+India, or somewhere.”
+
+Here Philip began to manifest signs of considerable uneasiness, the
+cause of which was sufficiently apparent; for, whilst they were
+talking, a very large and savage-looking animal of the sheep-dog order
+had emerged from the house, and was following him up and down, growling
+in a low and ominous undertone, its nose being the while glued to his
+calves as they alternately presented themselves in his line of vision.
+
+“Would you mind calling off this animal, George?” he said at length.
+“He does not look amiable.”
+
+“Oh! that’s Snarleyow; don’t mind him, he never bites unless you stop.”
+Philip instinctively quickened his pace. “Isn’t he a beauty? He’s a
+pure bred Thibet sheep-dog, and I will back him to fight against any
+animal of his own weight. He killed two dogs in one morning the other
+day, and pulled down a beggar-woman in the evening. You should have
+heard her holler.”
+
+At that moment, fortunately for Philip’s calves, which were beginning
+to tingle with an unwholesome excitement, Mr. Snarleyow’s attention was
+diverted by the approach of a dog-cart, and he left to enjoy the
+amusement of snapping and barking at the horse. The cart pulled up at
+the door, and out of it emerged a tall and extremely gentlemanly-
+looking young fellow, followed by a very large red bull-dog.
+
+“Mr. Caresfoot, I believe,” said the young gentleman to George, taking
+off his hat.
+
+“Yes, Mr. Heigham, at your service. I am very glad to see you. My
+cousin, Mr. Philip Caresfoot.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+“I must apologise for having brought Aleck, my dog, you know, with me,”
+began Arthur Heigham; “but the fact was, that at the very last moment
+the man I was going to leave him with had to go away, and I had no time
+to find another place before the train left. I thought that, if you
+objected to dogs, he could easily be sent somewhere into the village.
+He is very good-tempered, though appearances are against him.”
+
+“Oh! he will be all right, I daresay,” said George, rather sulkily;
+for, with the exception of Snarleyow, in whose fiendish temper he found
+something refreshing and congenial, he liked no dogs. “But you must be
+careful, or Snarleyow, _my_ dog, will give him a hammering. Here, good
+dog, good dog,” and he attempted to pat Aleck on the head, but the
+animal growled savagely, and avoided him.
+
+“I never knew him do that before,” ejaculated Arthur, in confusion, and
+heartily wishing Aleck somewhere else. “I suppose he has taken a
+dislike to you. Dogs do sometimes, you know.”
+
+Next second it struck him that this was one of those things that had
+better have been left unsaid, and he grew more uncomfortable than ever.
+But at this very moment the situation was rendered intensely lively by
+the approach of the redoubtable Snarleyow himself, who, having snapped
+at the horse’s heels all the way to the stables, had on his return to
+the front of the house spotted Aleck from afar. He was now advancing on
+tiptoe in full order of battle, his wicked-looking teeth gleaming, and
+his coat and tail standing out like an angry bear’s.
+
+Arthur, already sufficiently put out about the dog question, thought it
+best to take no notice; and even when he distinctly heard George
+quietly “sah” on his dog as he passed him, he contented himself with
+giving Aleck a kick by way of a warning to behave himself, and entered
+into some desultory conversation with Philip. But presently a series of
+growls behind him announced that an encounter was imminent. Looking
+round, he perceived that Snarleyow was standing over the bull-dog, of
+which he was more than twice the size, and holding on to the skin of
+his neck with his long teeth; whilst George was looking on with
+scarcely suppressed amusement.
+
+“I think, Mr. Caresfoot, that you had better call your dog off,” said
+Arthur, good-temperedly. “Mine is a peaceable animal, but he is an
+awkward customer when he does fight.”
+
+“Oh! better let them settle it; they will be much better friends
+afterwards. Hold him, Snarleyow.”
+
+Thus encouraged, the big dog seized the other, and fairly lifted him
+off the ground, shaking him violently—a proceeding that had the effect
+of thoroughly rousing Aleck’s temper. And then began a most Homeric
+combat. At first the bull-dog was dreadfully mauled; his antagonist’s
+size, weight, and length of leg and jaw, to say nothing of the thick
+coat by which he was protected, all telling against him. But he took
+his punishment very quietly, never so much as uttering a growl, in
+strange contrast to the big dog’s vociferous style of doing business.
+And at last patience was rewarded by his enemy’s fore-paw finding its
+way into Aleck’s powerful jaw, and remaining there till Snarleyow’s
+attentions to the back of his neck forced him to shift his hold. From
+that time forward the sheep-dog had to fight on three legs, which he
+found demoralizing. But still he had the advantage, and it was not
+until any other dog of Aleck’s size would have retreated half killed
+that the bull-dog’s superior courage and stamina began to tell. Quite
+heedless of his injuries, and the blood that poured into his eyes, he
+slowly but surely drove the great sheep-dog, who by this time would
+have been glad to stop, back into an angle of the wall, and then
+suddenly pinned him by the throat. Down went Snarleyow on the top of
+the bull-dog, and rolled right over him, but when he staggered to his
+legs again, his throat was still in its cruel grip.
+
+“Take your dog off!” shouted George, seeing that affairs had taken a
+turn he very little expected.
+
+“I fear that is impossible,” replied Arthur, politely, but looking
+anything but polite.
+
+“If you don’t get it off, I will shoot it.”
+
+“You will do nothing of the sort, Mr. Caresfoot; you set the dog on,
+and you must take the consequences. Ah! the affair is finished.”
+
+As he spoke, the choking Snarleyow, whose black tongue was protruding
+from his jaws, gave one last convulsive struggle, and ceased to
+breathe. Satisfied with this result, Aleck let go, and having sniffed
+contemptuously at his dead antagonist, returned to his master’s side,
+and, sitting quietly down, began to lick such of his numerous wounds as
+he could reach.
+
+George, when he realized that his favourite was dead, turned upon his
+guest in a perfect fury. His face looked like a devil’s. But Arthur,
+acting with wonderful self-possession for so young a man, stopped him.
+
+“Remember, Mr. Caresfoot, before you say anything that you may regret,
+that neither I nor my dog is to blame for what has happened. I am
+exceedingly sorry that your dog should have been killed, but it is your
+own fault. I am afraid, however, that, after what has happened, I shall
+be as unwelcome here as Aleck; so, if you will kindly order the cart
+for me again, I will move on. Our business can no doubt be finished off
+by letter.”
+
+George made no reply: it was evident that he could not trust himself to
+speak, but, turning sullenly on his heel, walked towards the house.
+
+“Wait a bit, Mr. Heigham,” said Philip, who had been watching the whole
+scene with secret delight. “You are perfectly in the right. I will go
+and try to bring my cousin to his senses. I am very thankful to your
+dog for killing that accursed brute.”
+
+He was away for about ten minutes, during which Arthur took Aleck to a
+fountain there was in the centre of a grass plot in front of the house,
+and washed his many wounds, none of which, however, were, thanks to the
+looseness of his hide, very serious. Just as he had finished that
+operation, a gardener arrived with a wheelbarrow to fetch away the
+deceased Snarleyow.
+
+“Lord, sir,” he said to Arthur, “I am glad to have the job of tucking
+up this here brute. He bit my missus last week, and killed a whole
+clutch of early ducks. I seed the row through the bushes. That ‘ere dog
+of yours, sir, he did fight in proper style; I should like to have a
+dog like he.”
+
+Just then the re-arrival of Philip put a stop to the conversation.
+Drawing Arthur aside, he told him that George begged to apologise for
+what had occurred, and hoped that he would not think of going away.
+
+“But,” added Philip, with a little laugh, “I don’t pretend that he has
+taken a fancy to you, and, if I were you, I should cut my visit short.”
+
+“That is exactly my view of the case. I will leave to-morrow evening.”
+
+Philip made no further remarks for a few moments. He was evidently
+thinking. Presently he said,
+
+“I see you have a fishing-rod amongst your things; if you find the time
+hang heavy on your hands to-morrow, or wish to keep out of the way, you
+had better come over to Bratham Lake and fish. There are some very
+large carp and perch there, and pike too, for the matter of that, but
+they are out of season.”
+
+Arthur thanked him, and said that he should probably come, and, having
+received instructions as to the road, they parted, Arthur to go and
+shut up Aleck in an outhouse pointed out to him by his friend the
+gardener, and thence to dress for a dinner that he looked forward to
+with dread, and Philip to make his way home. As he passed up through
+the little flower-garden at the Abbey House, he came across his
+daughter, picking the blight from her shooting rose-trees.
+
+“Angela,” he said, “I am sorry if I offended your prejudices this
+afternoon. Don’t let us say anything more about it; but I want you to
+come and pay a formal call with me at Isleworth to-morrow. It will only
+be civil that you should do so.”
+
+“I never paid a call in my life,” she answered, doubtfully, “and I
+don’t want to call on my cousin George.”
+
+“Oh! very well,” and he began to move on. She stopped him.
+
+“I will go, if you like.”
+
+“At three o’clock, then. Oh! by the way, don’t be surprised if you see
+a young gentleman fishing here to-morrow.”
+
+Angela reflected to herself that she had never yet seen a young
+gentleman to speak to in her life, and then asked, with undisguised
+interest, who he was.
+
+“Well, he is a sort of connection of your own, through the Prestons,
+who are cousins of ours, if any of them are left. His mother was a
+Preston, and his name is Arthur Preston Heigham. George told me
+something about him just now, and, on thinking it over, I remember the
+whole story. He is an orphan, and George’s ward.”
+
+“What is he like?” asked Angela, ingenuously.
+
+“Really I don’t know; rather tall, I think—a gentlemanly fellow. It
+really is a relief to speak to a gentleman again. There has been a nice
+disturbance at Isleworth,” and then he told his daughter the history of
+the great dog fight.
+
+“I should think Mr. Heigham was perfectly in the right, and I should
+like to see his dog,” was her comment on the occurrence.
+
+As Arthur dressed himself for dinner that evening he came to the
+conclusion that he disliked his host more than any man he ever saw,
+and, to say the truth, he descended into the dining-room with
+considerable misgivings. Just as he entered, the opposite door opened,
+and Sir John Bellamy was announced. On seeing him, George emerged from
+the sulky silence into which he was plunged, and advanced to meet him.
+
+“Hullo, Bellamy! I must congratulate you upon your accession to rank.”
+
+“Thank you, Caresfoot, thank you,” replied Mr. Bellamy, who, with the
+exception that he had grown a size larger, and boasted a bald patch on
+the top of his head that gave him something of the appearance of a
+jolly little monk, looked very much the same as when we last saw him as
+a newly married man.
+
+“A kind Providence,” he went on, rubbing his dry hands, and glancing
+nervously under the chairs, “has put this honour into my hands.”
+
+“A Providence in petticoats, you mean,” broke in George.
+
+“Possibly, my dear Caresfoot; but I do not see him. Is it possible that
+he is lurking yonder, behind the sofa?”
+
+“Who on earth do you mean?”
+
+“I mean that exceedingly fine dog of yours, Snarleyow. Snarleyow, where
+are you? Excuse me for taking precautions, but last time he put his
+head under my chair and bit me severely, as I dare say you remember.”
+
+Arthur groaned at hearing the subject thus brought forward.
+
+“Mr. Heigham’s dog killed Snarleyow this afternoon,” said George, in a
+savage voice.
+
+At this intelligence, Sir John’s face became wreathed in smiles.
+
+“I am deeply delighted—I mean grieved—to hear it. Poor Snarleyow! he
+was a charming dog; and to think that such a fate should have overtaken
+him, when it was only last week that he did the same kind office for
+Anne’s spaniel. Poor Snarleyow! you should really have him stuffed.
+But, my dear Caresfoot, you have not yet introduced me to the hero of
+the evening, Mr. Heigham. Mr. Heigham, I am delighted to make your
+acquaintance,” and he shook hands with Arthur with gentle enthusiasm,
+as though he were the last scion of a race that he had known and loved
+for generations.
+
+Presently dinner was announced, and the three sat down at a small round
+table in the centre of the big dining-room, on which was placed a
+shaded lamp. It was not a cheerful dinner. George, having said grace,
+relapsed into moody silence, eating and drinking with gusto but in
+moderation, and savouring every sup of wine and morsel of food as
+though he regretted its departure. He was not free from gluttony, but
+he was a judicious glutton. For his part, Arthur found a certain
+fascination in watching his guardian’s red head as he bobbed up and
+down opposite to him, and speculating on the thickness of each
+individual hair that contributed to give it such a spiky effect. What
+had his mother been like, he wondered, that she had started him in life
+with such an entirely detestable countenance? Meanwhile he was replying
+in monosyllables to Sir John’s gentle babblings, till at last even that
+gentleman’s flow of conversation ran dry, and Arthur was left free to
+contemplate the head in solemn silence. As soon as the cloth had been
+cleared away, George suggested that they had better get to work. Arthur
+assented, and Sir John, smiling with much sweetness, remarked
+profoundly that business was one of the ills of life, and must be
+attended to.
+
+“At any rate, it is an ill that has agreed uncommonly well with you,”
+growled George, as, rising from the table, he went to a solid iron safe
+that stood in the corner of the room, and, unlocking it with a small
+key that he took from his pocket, extracted a bundle of documents.
+
+“That is an excellent deed-box of yours, Caresfoot,” said Sir John
+carelessly.
+
+“Yes; that lock would not be very easy to pick. It is made on my own
+design.”
+
+“But don’t you find that small parcels such as private letters are apt
+to get lost in it? It is so big.”
+
+“Oh! no; there is a separate compartment for them. Now, Mr. Heigham.”
+And then, with the able and benign assistance of Sir John, he proceeded
+to utterly confuse and mystify Arthur, till stocks, preference-shares,
+consols, and mortgages were all whirling in his bewildered brain.
+Having satisfactorily reduced him to this condition, he suddenly sprang
+upon him the proposal he had in view with reference to the Jotley
+mortgage, pointing out to him that it was an excellent investment, and
+strongly advising him, “as a friend,” to leave the money upon the land.
+Arthur hesitated a little, more from natural caution than anything he
+could urge to the contrary, and George, noticing it, said,
+
+“It is only right that, before you come to any decision, you should see
+the map of the estate, and a copy of the deed. I have both in the next
+room, if you care to come and look at them.”
+
+Arthur assented, and they went off together; Sir John, whose eyes
+appeared to be a little heavy under the influence of the port,
+presuming that he was not wanted. But, no sooner had the door closed,
+than the worthy knight proved himself very wide-awake. Indeed, he
+commenced a singular course of action. Advancing on tiptoe to the safe
+in the corner of the room, he closely inspected it through his
+eyeglass. Then he cautiously tried the lid of an artfully contrived
+subdivision.
+
+“Um!” he muttered, half aloud, “that’s where they are; I wish I had ten
+minutes.”
+
+Next he returned swiftly to the table, and, taking a piece of the soft
+bread which he was eating instead of biscuit with his wine, he rapidly
+kneaded it into dough, and, going to the safe, divided the material
+into two portions. One portion he carefully pressed upon the keyhole of
+the subdivision, and then, extracting the key of the safe itself, took
+a very fair impress of its wards on the other. This done, he carefully
+put the pieces of dough in his breast-pocket in such a way that they
+were not likely to be crushed, and, with a smile of satisfaction,
+returned to his chair, helped himself to a glass of port, and dozed
+off.
+
+“Hullo, Bellamy, gone to sleep! Wake up, man. We have settled this
+business about the mortgage. Will you write to Mr. Borley, and convey
+Mr. Heigham’s decision? And perhaps”—addressing Arthur—“you will do the
+same on your own account.”
+
+“Certainly I will write, Caresfoot; and now I think that I must be off.
+Her ladyship does not like having to sit up for me.”
+
+George laughed in a peculiarly insulting way.
+
+“I don’t think she would care much, Bellamy, if you stayed away all
+night. But look here, tell her I want to see her to-morrow; don’t
+forget.”
+
+Sir John bit his knightly lip, but answered, smiling, that he would
+remember, and begging George not to ring, as his trap was at the hall-
+door, and the servant waiting, he bade an affectionate good-night to
+Arthur, to whom he expressed a hope that they would soon meet again,
+and let himself out of the room. But, as soon as the door was closed,
+he went through another performance exceedingly inappropriate in a
+knight. Turning round, his smug face red with anger, he pirouetted on
+his toes, and shook his fist violently in the direction of the door.
+
+“You scoundrel!” he said between his teeth, “you have made a fool of me
+for twenty years, and I have been obliged to grin and bear it; but I
+will be even with you yet, and her too, more especially her.”
+
+So soon as Sir John had left, Arthur told his host that, if the morning
+was fine, he proposed to go and fish in Bratham Lake, and that he also
+proposed to take his departure by the last train on the following
+evening. To these propositions George offered no objection— indeed,
+they were distinctly agreeable to him, as lessening the time he would
+be forced to spend in the society of a guest he cordially detested, for
+such was the feeling that he had conceived towards Arthur.
+
+Then they parted for the night; but, before he left the room, George
+went to lock up the safe that was still open in the corner. Struck by
+some thought, he unlocked the separate compartment with a key that hung
+on his watch-chain, and extracted therefrom a thick and neatly folded
+packet of letters. Drawing out one or two, he glanced through them and
+replaced them.
+
+“Oh! Lady Anne, Lady Anne,” he said to himself as he closed the case,
+“you are up in the world now, and you aspire to rule the county
+society, and have both the wealth and the wit to do it; but you must
+not kick over the traces, or I shall be forced to suppress you, Lady
+Anne, though you are the wife of a Brummagem knight, and I think that
+it is time you had a little reminder. You are growing a touch too
+independent.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+Arthur’s sleep was oppressed that night by horrible nightmares of
+fighting dogs, whereof the largest and most ferocious was fitted with
+George’s red head, the effect of which, screwed, without any eye to the
+fitness of things, to the body of the deceased Snarleyow, struck him as
+peculiarly disagreeable. He himself was armed with a gun, and whilst he
+was still arguing with Sir John Bellamy the nice point whether, should
+he execute that particular animal, as he felt a carnal longing to do,
+it would be manslaughter or dogslaughter, he found himself wide awake.
+
+It was very early in the morning of the 1st of May, and, contrary to
+the usual experience of the inhabitants of these islands, the sky gave
+promise of a particularly fine day, just the day for fishing. He did
+not feel sleepy, and, had he done so, he had had enough of his doggy
+dreams; so he got up, dressed, and taking his fishing-rod, let himself
+out of the house as he had been instructed to do on the previous
+evening, and, releasing Aleck from his outhouse, proceeded towards
+Bratham Lake.
+
+And about this time Angela woke up too, for she always rose early, and
+ran to the window to see what sort of a day she had got for her
+birthday. Seeing it to be so fine, she threw open the old lattice, at
+which her pet raven Jack was already tapping to be admitted, and let
+the sweet air play upon her face and neck, and thought what a wonderful
+thing it was to be twenty years old. And then, kneeling by the window,
+she said her prayers after her own fashion, thanking God who had spared
+her to see this day, and praying Him to show her what to do with her
+life, and, if it was His will, to make it a little less lonely. Then
+she rose and dressed herself, feeling that now that she had done with
+her teens, she was in every respect a woman grown— indeed, quite old.
+And, in honour of the event, she chose out of her scanty store of
+dresses, all of them made by Pigott and herself, her very prettiest,
+the one she had had for Sunday wear last summer, a tight-fitting robe
+of white stuff, with soft little frills round the neck and wrists. Next
+she put on a pair of stout boots calculated to keep out the morning
+dew, and started off.
+
+Now all this had taken a good time, nearly an hour perhaps; for, being
+her birthday, and there having been some mention of a young gentleman
+who might possibly come to fish, she had plaited up her shining hair
+with extra care, a very laborious business when your hair hangs down to
+your knees.
+
+Meanwhile our other early riser, Arthur, had made his way first to the
+foot of the lake and then along the little path that skirted its area
+till he came to Caresfoot Staff. Having sufficiently admired that
+majestic oak, for he was a great lover of timber, he proceeded to
+investigate the surrounding water with the eye of a true fisherman. A
+few yards further up there jutted into the water that fragment of wall
+on which stood the post, now quite rotten, to which Angela had bound
+herself on the day of the great storm. At his feet, too, the
+foundations of another wall ran out for some distance into the lake,
+being, doubtless, the underpinning of an ancient boathouse, but this
+did not rise out of the water, but stopped within six inches of the
+surface. Between these two walls lay a very deep pool.
+
+“Just the place for a heavy fish,” reflected Arthur, and, even as he
+thought it, he saw a five-pound carp rise nearly to the surface, in
+order to clear the obstruction of the wall, and sink silently into the
+depths.
+
+Retiring carefully to one of two quaintly carven stone blocks placed at
+the foot of the oak-tree, on which, doubtless, many a monk had sat in
+meditation, he set himself to get his fishing-gear together. Presently,
+however, struck by the beauty of the spot and its quiet, only broken by
+the songs of many nesting birds, he stopped a while to look around him.
+Above his head the branches of a great oak, now clothing themselves
+with the most vivid green, formed a dome-like roof, beneath the shade
+of which grew the softest moss, starred here and there with primroses
+and violets. Outside the circle of its shadow the brushwood of mingled
+hazel and ash-stubs rose thick and high, ringing-in the little spot as
+with a wall, except where its depths were pierced by the passage of a
+long green lane of limes that, unlike the shrubberies, appeared to be
+kept in careful order, and of which the arching boughs formed a perfect
+leafy tunnel. Before him lay the lake where the long morning lights
+quivered and danced, as its calm was now and again ruffled by a gentle
+breeze. The whole scene had a lovely and peaceful look, and, gazing on
+it, Arthur fell into a reverie.
+
+Sitting thus dreamily, his face looked at its best, its expression of
+gentle thoughtfulness giving it an attraction beyond what it was
+entitled to, judged purely from a sculptor’s point of view. It was an
+intellectual face, a face that gave signs of great mental
+possibilities, but for all that a little weak about the mouth. The brow
+indicated some degree of power, and the mouth and eyes no small
+capacities for affection and all sorts of human sympathy and kindness.
+These last, in varying lights, could change as often as the English
+climate; their groundwork, however, was blue, and they were honest and
+bonny. In short, a man in looking at Arthur Heigham at the age of
+twenty-four would have reflected that, even among English gentlemen, he
+was remarkable for his gentleman-like appearance, and a “fellow one
+would like to know;” a girl would have dubbed him “nice-looking;” and a
+middle-aged woman—and most women do not really understand the immense
+difference between men until they are getting on that way— would have
+recognized in him a young man by no means uninteresting, and one who
+might, according to the circumstances of his life, develop into
+anything or—nothing in particular.
+
+Presently, drawn by some unguessed attraction, Arthur took his eyes off
+an industrious water-hen, who was building a nest in a hurried way, as
+though she were not quite sure of his intentions, and perceived a large
+raven standing on one leg on the grass, about three yards from him, and
+peering at him comically out of one eye. This was odd. But his glance
+did not stop at the raven, for a yard or two beyond it he caught sight
+of a white skirt, and his eyes, travelling upwards, saw first a rounded
+waist, and then a bust and pair of shoulders such as few women can
+boast, and at last, another pair of eyes; and he then and there fell
+utterly and irretrievably in love.
+
+“Good heavens!” he said, aloud—poor fellow, he did not mean to say it,
+it was wrung from the depths of his heart—“good heavens, how lovely she
+is!”
+
+Let the reader imagine the dreadful confusion produced in that other
+pair of eyes at the open expression of such a sentiment, and the vivid
+blush that stained the fair face in which they were set, if he can. But
+somehow they did not grow angry—perhaps it was not in the nature of the
+most sternly repressive young lady to grow angry at a compliment which,
+however marked, was so evidently genuine and unpremeditated. In another
+moment Arthur bethought him of what he had said, and it was his turn to
+blush. He recovered himself pretty well, however. Rising from his stone
+seat, he took off his hat, and said, humbly,
+
+“I beg your pardon, but you startled me so, and really for a moment I
+thought that you were the spirit of the place, or,” he added,
+gracefully, pointing to a branch of half-opened hawthorn bloom she held
+in her hand, “the original Queen of the May.”
+
+Angela blushed again. The compliment was only implied this time; she
+had therefore no possible pretext for getting angry.
+
+For a moment she dropped the sweet eyes that looked as though they were
+fresh from reading the truths of heaven before his gaze of unmistakable
+admiration, and stood confused; and, as she stood, it struck Arthur
+that there was something more than mere beauty of form and feature
+about her—an indescribable something, a glory of innocence, a
+reflection of God’s own light that tinged the worship her loveliness
+commanded with a touch of reverential awe.
+
+“The angels must look like that,” he thought. But he had no time to
+think any more, for next moment she had gathered up her courage in both
+her hands, and was speaking to him in a soft voice, of which the tones
+went ringing on through all the changes of his life.
+
+“My father told me that he had asked you to come and fish, but I did
+not expect to meet you so early. I—I fear that I am disturbing you,”
+and she made as though she would be going.
+
+Arthur felt that this was a contingency to be prevented at all hazards.
+
+“You are Miss Caresfoot,” he said, hurriedly, “are you not?”
+
+“Yes—I am Angela; I need not ask your name, my father told it me. You
+are Mr. Arthur Heigham.”
+
+“Yes. And do you know that we are cousins?” This was a slight
+exaggeration, but he was glad to advance any plea to her confidence
+that occurred to him.
+
+“Yes; my father said something about our being related. I have no
+relations except my cousin George, and I am very glad to make the
+acquaintance of one,” and she held out her hand to him in a winning
+way.
+
+He took it almost reverently.
+
+“You cannot,” he said with much sincerity, “be more glad than I am. I,
+too, am without relations. Till lately I had my mother, but she died
+last year.”
+
+“Were you very fond of her?” she asked, softly.
+
+He nodded in reply, and, feeling instinctively that she was on delicate
+ground, Angela pursued the conversation no further.
+
+Meanwhile Aleck had awoke from a comfortable sleep in which he was
+indulging on the other stone seat, and, coming forward, sniffed at
+Angela and wagged his tail in approval—a liberty that was instantly
+resented by the big raven, who had now been joined by another not quite
+so large. Advancing boldly, it pecked him sharply on the tail—a
+proceeding that caused Master Aleck to jump round as quickly as his
+maimed condition would allow him, only to receive a still harder peck
+from its companion bird; indeed, it was not until Angela intervened
+with the bough of hawthorn that they would cease from their attack.
+
+“They are such jealous creatures,” she explained; “they always follow
+me about, and fly at every dog that comes near me. Poor dog! that is
+the one, I suppose, who killed Snarleyow. My father told me all about
+it.”
+
+“Yes, it is easy to see that,” said Arthur, laughing, and pointing to
+Aleck, who, indeed, was in lamentable case, having one eye entirely
+closed, a large strip of plaster on his head, and all the rest of his
+body more or less marked with bites. “It is an uncommonly awkward
+business for me, and your cousin will not forgive it in a hurry, I
+fancy; but it really was not poor Aleck’s fault—he is gentle as a lamb,
+if only he is let alone.”
+
+“He has a very honest face, though his nose does look as though it were
+broken,” she said, and, stooping down, she patted the dog.
+
+“But I must be going in to breakfast,” she went on, presently. “It is
+eight o’clock; the sun always strikes that bough at eight in spring,”
+and she pointed to a dead limb, half hidden by the budding foliage of
+the oak.
+
+“You must observe closely to have noticed that, but I do not think that
+the sun is quite on it yet. I do not like to lose my new-found
+relations in such a hurry,” he added, with a somewhat forced smile,
+“and I am to go away from here this evening.”
+
+The intelligence was evidently very little satisfactory to Angela, nor
+did she attempt to conceal her concern.
+
+“I am very sorry to hear that,” she said. “I hoped you were going to
+stay for some time.”
+
+“And so I might have, had it not been for that brute Aleck, but he has
+put a long sojourn with your cousin and the ghost of Snarleyow out of
+the question; so I suppose I must go by the 6.20 train. At any rate,”
+he added, more brightly, as a thought struck him, “I must go from
+Isleworth.”
+
+She did not appear to see the drift of the last part of his remark, but
+answered,
+
+“I am going with my father to call at Isleworth at three this
+afternoon, so perhaps we shall meet again there; but now, before I go
+in, I will show you a better place than this to fish, a little higher
+up, where Jakes, our gardener, always sets his night-lines.”
+
+Arthur assented, as he would have been glad to assent to anything
+likely to prolong the interview, and they walked off slowly together,
+talking as cheerfully as a sense that the conversation must soon come
+to an end would allow. The spot was reached all too soon, and Angela
+with evident reluctance, for she was not accustomed to conceal her
+feelings, said that she must now go.
+
+“Why must you go so soon?”
+
+“Well, to tell you the truth, to-day is my birthday—I am twenty
+to-day—and I know that Pigott, my old nurse, means to give me a little
+present at breakfast, and she will be dreadfully disappointed if I am
+late. She has been thinking a great deal about it, you see.”
+
+“May I wish you many, very many, happy returns of the day? and”—with a
+little hesitation—“may I also offer you a present, a very worthless one
+I fear?”
+
+“How can I——” stammered Angela, when he cut her short.
+
+“Don’t be afraid; it is nothing tangible, though it is something that
+you may not think worth accepting.”
+
+“What do you mean?” she said bluntly, for her interest was aroused.
+
+“Don’t be angry. My present is only the offer of myself as your sincere
+friend.”
+
+She blushed vividly as she answered,
+
+“You are very kind. I have never had but one friend—Mr. Fraser; but, if
+you think you can like me enough, it will make me very happy to be your
+friend too.” And in another second she was gone, with her ravens flying
+after her, to receive her present and a jobation from Pigott for being
+late, and to eat her breakfast with such appetite as an entirely new
+set of sensations can give.
+
+In the garden she met her father, walking up and down before the house,
+and informed him that she had been talking to Mr. Heigham. He looked up
+with a curious expression of interest.
+
+“Why did you not ask him in to breakfast?” he said.
+
+“Because there is nothing to eat except bread and milk.”
+
+“Ah!—well, perhaps you were right. I will go down and speak to him. No;
+I forgot I shall see him this afternoon.”
+
+And Arthur, let those who disbelieve in love at first sight laugh if
+they will, sat down to think, trembling in every limb, utterly shaken
+by the inrush of a new and strong emotion. He had not come to the age
+of twenty-four without some experience of the other sex, but never
+before had he known any such sensation as that which now overpowered
+him, never before had he fully realized what solitude meant as he did
+now that she had left him. In youth, when love does come, he comes as a
+strong man armed.
+
+And so, steady and overwhelming all resistance, the full tide of a pure
+passion poured itself into his heart. There was no pretence or
+make-believe about it; the bolt that sped from Angela’s grey eyes had
+gone straight home, and would remain an “ever-fixed mark,” so long as
+life itself should last.
+
+For only once in a lifetime does a man succumb after this fashion. To
+many, indeed, no such fortune—call it good or ill—will ever come, since
+the majority of men flirt or marry, indulge in “platonic friendships,”
+or in a consistent course of admiration of their neighbours’ wives, as
+fate or fancy leads them, and wear their time away without ever having
+known the meaning of such love as this. There is no fixed rule about
+it; the most unlikely, even the more sordid and contemptible of
+mankind, are liable to become the subjects of an enduring passion; only
+then it raises them; for though strong affection, especially, if
+unrequited, sometimes wears and enervates the mind, its influence is,
+in the main, undoubtedly ennobling. But, though such affection is
+bounded by no rule, it is curious to observe how generally true are the
+old sayings which declare that a man’s thoughts return to his first
+real love, as naturally and unconsciously as the needle, that has for a
+while been drawn aside by some overmastering influence, returns to its
+magnetic pole. The needle has wavered, but it has never shaken off its
+allegiance; that would be against nature, and is therefore impossible;
+and so it is with the heart. It is the eyes that he loved as a lad
+which he sees through the gathering darkness of his death-bed; it is a
+chance but that he will always adore the star which first came to share
+his loneliness in this shadowed world above all the shining multitudes
+in heaven.
+
+And, though it is not every watcher who will find it, early or late,
+that star may rise for him, as it did for Arthur now. A man may meet a
+face which it is quite beyond his power to forget, and be touched of
+lips that print their kiss upon his very heart. Yes, the star may rise,
+to pursue its course, perhaps beyond the ken of his horizon, or only to
+set again before he has learnt to understand its beauty— rarely, very
+rarely, to shed its perfect light upon him for all his time of
+watching. The star may rise and set; the sweet lips whose touch still
+thrills him after so many years may lie to-day
+
+“Beyond the graveyard’s barren wall,”
+
+
+or, worse still, have since been sold to some richer owner. But if once
+it has risen, if once those lips have met, the memory _must_ remain;
+the Soul knows no forgetfulness, and, the little thread of life spun
+out, will it not claim its own? For the compact that it has sealed is
+holy among holy things; that love which it has given is of its own
+nature, and not of the body alone—it is inscrutable as death, and
+everlasting as the heavens.
+
+Yes, the fiat has gone forth; for good or for evil, for comfort or for
+scorn, for the world and for eternity, he loves her! Henceforth that
+love, so lightly and yet so irredeemably given, will become the guiding
+spirit of his inner life, rough-hewing his destinies, directing his
+ends, and shooting its memories and hopes through the whole fabric of
+his being like an interwoven thread of gold. He may sin against it, but
+he can never forget it; other interests and ties may overlay it, but
+they cannot extinguish it; he may drown its fragrance in voluptuous
+scents, but, when these have satiated and become hateful, it will
+re-arise, pure and sweet as ever. Time or separation cannot destroy
+it—for it is immortal; use cannot stale it, pain can only sanctify it.
+It will be to him as a beacon-light to the sea-worn mariner that tells
+of home and peace upon the shore, as a rainbow-promise set upon the
+sky. It alone of all things pertaining to him will defy the attacks of
+the consuming years, and when, old and withered, he lays him down to
+die, it will at last present itself before his glazing eyes, an
+embodied joy, clad in shining robes, and breathing the airs of
+Paradise!
+
+For such is love to those to whom it has been given to see him face to
+face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+Arthur did not do much fishing that morning; indeed, he never so much
+as got his line into the water—he simply sat there lost in dreams, and
+hoping in a vague way that Angela would come back again. But she did
+not come back, though it would be difficult to say what prevented her;
+for, had he but known it, she was for the space of a full hour sitting
+within a hundred yards of him, and occasionally peeping out to watch
+his mode of fishing with some curiosity. It was, she reflected,
+exceedingly unlike that practised by Jakes. She, too, was wishing that
+he would detect her, and come to talk to her; but, amongst other new
+sensations, she was now the victim of a most unaccountable shyness, and
+could not make up her mind to reveal her whereabouts.
+
+At last Arthur awoke from his long reverie, and remembered with a
+sudden pang that he had had nothing to eat since the previous evening,
+and that he was consequently exceedingly hungry. He also discovered, on
+consulting his watch, that it was twelve o’clock, and, moreover, that
+he was quite stiff from sitting so long in the same position. So,
+sighing to think that such a vulgar necessity as that of obtaining food
+should force him to depart, he put up his unused fishing-rod and
+started for Isleworth, where he arrived just as the bell was ringing
+for lunch.
+
+George received him with cold civility, and asked him what sport he
+had, to which he was forced to reply—none.
+
+“Did you see anybody there?”
+
+“Yes, I met Miss Caresfoot.”
+
+“Ah! trust a girl to trail out a man. What is she like? I remember her
+a raw-boned girl of fourteen with fine eyes.”
+
+“I think that she is the handsomest woman I ever saw,” Arthur replied,
+coldly.
+
+“Ah!” said George, with a rude little laugh, “youth is always
+enthusiastic, especially when the object is of the dairymaid cut.”
+
+There was something so intensely insolent in his host’s way of talking
+that Arthur longed to throw a dish at him, but he restrained his
+feelings, and dropped the subject.
+
+“Let me see, you are only just home from India, are you?” asked George,
+presently.
+
+“I got back at the beginning of last month.”
+
+“And what were you doing there?”
+
+“Travelling about and shooting.”
+
+“Did you get much sport?”
+
+“No, I was rather unfortunate, but I and another fellow killed two
+tigers, and went after a rogue elephant; but he nearly killed us. I got
+some very good ibix-shooting in Cashmere, however.”
+
+“What do you intend to do with yourself now? Your education has been
+extravagantly expensive, especially the Cambridge part of it. Are you
+going to turn it to any account?”
+
+“Yes. I am going to travel for another year, and then read for the Bar.
+There is no particular object in being called too young, and I wish to
+see something more of the world first.”
+
+“Ah! I see, idleness called by a fine name.”
+
+“Really I cannot agree with you,” said Arthur, who was rapidly losing
+his temper.
+
+“Of course you can’t, but every man has a right to choose his own road
+to the dogs. Come,” he added, with a smile of malice, as he noticed
+Arthur’s rising colour, “no need to get angry; you see I stand _in loco
+parentis_, and feel bound to express my opinion.”
+
+“I must congratulate you on the success with which you assume the
+character,” answered Arthur, now thoroughly put-out; “but, as
+everything I have done or mean to do is so distasteful to you, I think
+it is a pity that you did not give me the benefit of your advice a
+little sooner.”
+
+George’s only answer was a laugh, and presently the two parted,
+detesting each other more cordially than ever.
+
+At half-past three, when George was still away, for he had gone out
+with his bailiff immediately after lunch, Philip and his daughter were
+shown into the drawing-room, where we may be sure Arthur was awaiting
+them.
+
+“Mr. Caresfoot is not back yet,” said Arthur, “but I do not suppose
+that he will be long.”
+
+“Oh! he will be here soon,” said Philip, “because I told him we were
+coming to call. What sort of sport did you have? What, none! I am very
+sorry. You must come and try again—ah! I forgot you are going away. By
+the way, Mr. Heigham, why should you go just yet? If you are fond of
+fishing, and have nothing better to do, come and put up at the Abbey
+House for a while; we are plain people, but there is plenty of room,
+and you shall have a hearty welcome. Would you care to come?”
+
+It would have been amusing to any outsider to watch Angela’s face as
+she heard this astounding proposition, for nobody had been invited
+inside her father’s doors within her recollection. It assumed first of
+all a look of blank amazement, which was presently changed into one of
+absolute horror.
+
+“Would he come, indeed?” reflected Arthur. “Would he step into
+Paradise? would he accept the humble offer of free quarters in the
+Garden of Eden?” Rapture beamed so visibly from every feature of his
+face that Philip saw it and smiled. Just as he was about to accept with
+enthusiasm, he caught sight of Angela’s look of distress. It chilled
+him like the sudden shock of cold water; she did not wish him to come,
+he thought, she did not care for him. Obliged, however, to give an
+answer, he said,
+
+“I shall be delighted if”—and here he bowed towards her—“Miss Caresfoot
+does not object.”
+
+“If father,” broke in Angela, with hesitation, “you could arrange that
+Mr. Heigham came to-morrow, not to-day, it would be more convenient. I
+must get a room ready.”
+
+“Ah! domestic details; I had overlooked them. I daresay you can manage
+that—eh, Heigham?”
+
+“Oh! yes, easily, thank you.”
+
+As he said the words, the door was flung open, and “Lady Bellamy” was
+announced with the energy that a footman always devotes to the
+enunciation of a title, and next second a splendid creature,
+magnificently dressed, sailed into the room.
+
+“Ah! how do you do, Mr. Caresfoot?” she said, in that low, rich voice
+that he remembered so well. “It is some time since we met; indeed, it
+quite brings back old times to see you, when we were all young people
+together.”
+
+“At any rate, Lady Bellamy, you show no signs of age; indeed, if you
+will permit me to say so, you look more beautiful than ever.”
+
+“Ah! Mr. Caresfoot, you have not forgotten how to be gallant, but let
+me tell you that it entirely depends upon what light I am in. If you
+saw me in the midst of one of those newfangled electric illuminations,
+you would see that I do look old; but what can one expect at forty?”
+Here her glance fell upon Angela’s face for the first time, and she
+absolutely started; the great pupils of her eyes expanded, and a dark
+frown spread itself for a moment over her countenance. Next second it
+was gone. “Is it possible that that beautiful girl is your daughter?
+But, remembering her mother, I need not ask. Look at her, Mr.
+Caresfoot, and then look at me, and say whether or not I look old. And
+who is the young man? Her lover, I suppose—at any rate, he looks like
+it; but please introduce me.”
+
+“Angela,” said Philip, crossing to the window where they were talking,
+“let me introduce you to Lady Bellamy. Mr. Heigham—Lady Bellamy.”
+
+“I am delighted to make your acquaintance, Miss Caresfoot, though I
+think it is very generous of me to say so.”
+
+Angela looked puzzled.
+
+“Indeed!” she said.
+
+“What! do you not guess why it is generous? Then look at yourself in
+the glass, and you will see. I used to have some pretension to good
+looks, but I could never have stood beside you at the best of times,
+and now—— Your mother, even when I was at my best, always _killed_ me
+if I was in the same room with her, and you are even handsomer than
+your mother.”
+
+Angela blushed very much at this unqualified praise, and, putting it
+and the exclamation her appearance had that morning wrung from Arthur
+together, she suddenly came to the conclusion—for, odd as it may seem,
+she had never before taken the matter into serious consideration —that
+she must be very good-looking, a conclusion that made her feel
+extremely happy, she could not quite tell why.
+
+It was whilst she was thus blushing and looking her happiest and
+loveliest that George, returning from his walk, chanced to look in at
+the window and see her, and, gradually drawn by the attraction of her
+beauty, his eyes fixed themselves intently upon her, and his coarse
+features grew instinct with a mixture of hungry wickedness and
+delighted astonishment. It was thus that Arthur and Lady Bellamy saw
+him. Philip, who was looking at a picture in the corner of the room,
+did not see him; nor, indeed, did Angela. The look was unmistakable,
+and once more the dark frown settled upon Lady Bellamy’s brow, and the
+expanding pupils filled the heavy-lidded eyes. As for Arthur, it made
+him feel sick with unreasonable alarm.
+
+Next minute George entered the room with a stupid smile upon his face,
+and looking as dazed as a bat that has suddenly been shown the sun.
+Angela’s heaven-lit beauty had come upon his gross mind as a
+revelation; it fascinated him, he had lost his command over himself.
+
+“Oh! here you are at last, George,” said Lady Bellamy—it was always her
+habit to call him George. “We have all been like sheep without a
+shepherd, though I saw you keeping an eye on the flock through the
+window.”
+
+George started. He did not know that he had been observed.
+
+“I did not know that you were all here, or I would have been back
+sooner,” he said, and then began to shake hands.
+
+When he came to Angela, he favoured her with a tender pressure of the
+fingers and an elaborate and high-flown speech of welcome, both of
+which were inexpressibly disagreeable to her. But here Lady Bellamy
+intervened, and skilfully forced him into a conversation with her, in
+which Philip joined.
+
+“What does Lady Bellamy remind you of?” Angela asked Arthur, as soon as
+the hum of talk made it improbable that they would be overheard.
+
+“Of an Egyptian sorceress, I think. Look at the low, broad forehead,
+the curling hair, the full lips, and the inscrutable look of the face.”
+
+“To my mind she is an ideal of the Spirit of Power. I am very much
+afraid of her, and, as for him”—nodding towards George—“I dislike him
+even more than I was prepared to,” and she gave a little shudder. “By
+the way, Mr. Heigham, you really must not be so rash as to accept my
+father’s invitation.”
+
+“If you do not wish to see me, of course I will not,” he answered, in a
+hurt and disappointed tone.
+
+“Oh! it is not that, indeed; how could you think so, when only this
+morning we agreed to be friends?”
+
+“Well, what is it, then?” he asked, blankly.
+
+“Why, Mr. Heigham, the fact is that we—that is, my old nurse and I, for
+my father is irregular in his meals, and always takes them by
+himself—live so very plainly, and I am ashamed to ask you to share our
+mode of life. For instance, we have nothing but bread and milk for
+breakfast;” and the golden head sunk in some confusion before his
+amused gaze.
+
+“Oh! is that all?” he said, cheerily. “I am very fond of bread and
+milk.”
+
+“And then,” went on Angela with her confession, “we never drink wine,
+and I know that gentlemen do.”
+
+“I am a teetotaller, so that does not matter.”
+
+“Really?”
+
+“Yes—really.”
+
+“But then, you know, my father shuts himself up all day, so that you
+will have nobody but myself to talk to.”
+
+“Oh! never mind”—encouragingly. “I am sure that we shall get on.”
+
+“Well, if, in spite of all this and a great deal more—ah! a very great
+deal that I have not time to tell you—you still care to come, I will do
+my best to amuse you. At any rate, we can read together; that will be
+something, if you don’t find me too stupid. You must remember that I
+have only had a private education, and have never been to college like
+you. I shall be glad of the opportunity of rubbing up my classics a
+little; I have been neglecting them rather lately, and actually got
+into a mess over a passage in Aristophanes that I shall ask you to
+clear up.”
+
+This was enough for Arthur, whose knowledge of the classics was that of
+the ordinary University graduate; he turned the subject with remarkable
+promptitude.
+
+“Tell me,” he said, looking her straight in the face, “are you glad
+that I am coming?”
+
+The grey eyes dropped a little before the boldness of his gaze, but she
+answered, unhesitatingly,
+
+“Yes, for my own sake I am glad; but I fear that you will find it very
+dull.”
+
+“Come, Angela, we must be off; I want to be home by a quarter to six,”
+said Philip just then.
+
+She rose at once and shook hands with Arthur, murmuring, “Good-by till
+to-morrow morning,” and then with Lady Bellamy.
+
+George, meanwhile, with the most unwonted hospitality, was pressing her
+father to stay to dinner, and, when he declined, announcing his
+intention of coming over to see him on the morrow. At last he got away,
+but not before Lady Bellamy had bid him a seemingly cordial adieu.
+
+“You and your charming daughter must come and see me at Rewtham House,
+when we get in. What, have you not heard that Sir John has bought it
+from poor Maria Lee’s executors?”
+
+Philip turned pale as death, and hurried from the room.
+
+“It is good,” reflected Lady Bellamy, as she watched the effect of her
+shaft, “to let him know that I never forget.”
+
+But, even when her father had gone, the path was still blocked to
+Angela.
+
+“What!” said George, who was, when in an amiable mood, that worst of
+all cads, a jocose cad, “are you going to play truant, too, my pretty
+cousin? Then first you must pay the penalty, not a very heavy one,
+however.” And he threw his long arm round her waist, and prepared to
+give her a cousinly embrace.
+
+At first Angela, not being accustomed to little jokes of the sort, did
+not understand what his intentions were, but as soon as she did, being
+an extremely powerful young woman, she soon put a stop to them, shaking
+George away from her so sharply by a little swing of her lithe body,
+that, stumbling over a footstool in his rapid backward passage, he in a
+trice measured his length upon the floor. Seeing what she had done,
+Angela turned and fled after her father.
+
+As for Arthur, the scene was too much for his risible nerves, and he
+fairly roared with laughter, whilst even Lady Bellamy went as near to
+it as she ever did.
+
+George rose white with wrath.
+
+“Mr. Heigham,” he said, “I see nothing to laugh at in an accident.”
+
+“Don’t you?” replied Arthur. “I do; it is just the most ludicrous
+accident that I ever saw.”
+
+George turned away muttering something that it was perhaps as well his
+guest did not hear, and at once began to attack Lady Bellamy.
+
+“My dear George,” was her rejoinder, “let this little adventure teach
+you that it is not wise for middle-aged men to indulge in gallantries
+towards young ladies, and especially young ladies of thews and sinews.
+Good-night.”
+
+At the same moment the footman announced that the dog-cart which Arthur
+had ordered was waiting for him.
+
+“Good-by, Mr. Heigham, good-by,” said George, with angry sarcasm.
+“Within twenty-four hours you have killed my favourite dog, taken
+offence at my well-meant advice, and ridiculed my misfortune. If we
+should ever meet again, doubtless you will have further surprises in
+store for me;” and, without giving Arthur time to make any reply, he
+left the room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Early on the day following Arthur’s departure from Isleworth, Lady
+Bellamy received a note from George requesting her, if convenient, to
+come and see him that morning, as he had something rather important to
+talk to her about.
+
+“John,” she said to her husband at breakfast, “do you want the brougham
+this morning?”
+
+“No. Why?”
+
+“Because I am going over to Isleworth.”
+
+“Hadn’t you better take the luggage-cart too, and your luggage in it,
+and live there altogether? It would save trouble, sending backwards and
+forwards,” suggested her husband, with severe sarcasm.
+
+Lady Bellamy cut the top off an egg with a single clean stroke—all her
+movements were decisive—before she answered.
+
+“I thought,” she said, “that we had done with that sort of nonsense
+some years ago; are you going to begin it again?”
+
+“Yes, Lady Bellamy, I am. I am not going to stand being bullied and
+jeered at by that damned scoundrel Caresfoot any more. I am not going
+to stand your eternal visits to him.”
+
+“You have stood them for twenty years; rather late in the day to object
+now, isn’t it?” she remarked, coolly, beginning her egg.
+
+“It is never too late to mend; it is not too late for you to stop
+quietly at home and do your duty by your husband.”
+
+“Most men would think that I had done my duty by him pretty well.
+Twenty years ago you were nobody, and had, comparatively speaking,
+nothing. Now you have a title and between three and four thousand a
+year. Who have you to thank for that? Certainly not yourself.”
+
+“Curse the title and the money! I had rather be a poor devil of an
+attorney with a large family, and five hundred a year to keep them on,
+than live the life I do between you and that vulgar beast Caresfoot.
+It’s a dog’s life, not a man’s;” and poor Bellamy was so overcome at
+his real or imaginary wrongs that the tears actually rolled down his
+puffy little face.
+
+His wife surveyed him with some amusement.
+
+“I think,” she said, “that you are a miserable creature.”
+
+“Perhaps I am, Anne; but I tell you what it is, even a miserable
+creature can be driven too far. It may perhaps be worth your while to
+be a little careful.”
+
+She cast one swift look at him, a look not without apprehension in it,
+for there was a ring about his voice that she did not like, but his
+appearance was so ludicrously wretched that it reassured her. She
+finished her egg, and then, slowly driving the spoon through the shell,
+she said,
+
+“Don’t threaten, John; it is a bad habit, and shows an un-Christian
+state of mind; besides, it might force me to cr-r-rush you, in self-
+defence, you know;” and John and the egg-shell having finally collapsed
+together, Lady Bellamy ordered the brougham.
+
+Having thus sufficiently scourged her husband, she departed in due
+course to visit her own taskmaster, little guessing what awaited her at
+his hands. After all, there is a deal of poetic justice in the world.
+Little Smith, fresh from his mother’s apron-strings, is savagely beaten
+by the cock of the school, Jones, and to him Jones is an all-powerful,
+cruel devil, placed above all possibility of retribution. If, however,
+little Smith could see the omnipotent Jones being mentally ploughed and
+harrowed by his papa the clergyman, in celebration of the double event
+of his having missed a scholarship and taken too much sherry, it is
+probable that his wounded feelings would be greatly soothed. Nor does
+it stop there. Robinson, the squire of the parish, takes it out of the
+Reverend Jones, and speaks ill of him to the bishop, a Low Churchman,
+on the matter of vestments, and very shortly afterwards Sir Buster
+Brown, the Chairman of the Quarter Sessions, expresses his opinion
+pretty freely of Robinson in his magisterial capacity, only in his turn
+to receive a most unexampled wigging from Her Majesty’s judge, Baron
+Muddlebone, for not showing him that respect he was accustomed to
+receive from the High Sheriff of the county. And even over the august
+person of the judge himself there hangs the fear of the only thing that
+he cannot commit for contempt, public opinion. Justice! why, the world
+is full of it, only it is mostly built upon a foundation of wrong.
+
+Lady Bellamy found George sitting in the dining-room beside the safe
+that had so greatly interested her husband. It was open, and he was
+reading a selection from the bundle of letters which the reader may
+remember having seen in his hands before.
+
+“How do, Anne?” he said, without rising. “You look very handsome this
+morning. I never saw a woman wear better.”
+
+She vouchsafed no reply to his greeting, but turned as pale as death.
+
+“What!” she said, huskily, pointing with her finger to the letters in
+his hand, “what are you doing with those letters?”
+
+“Bravo, Anne; quite tragic. What a Lady Macbeth you would make! Come
+quote, ‘All the perfumes of Araby will not sweeten this little hand.
+Oh, oh, oh!’ Go on.”
+
+“What are you doing with those letters?”
+
+“Have you never broken a dog by showing him the whip, Anne? I have got
+something to ask of you, and I wish to get you into a generous frame of
+mind first. Listen now, I am going to read you a few extracts from a
+past that is so vividly recorded here.”
+
+She sank into a chair, hid her face in her hands, and groaned. George,
+whose own features betrayed a certain nervousness, took a yellow sheet
+of paper, and began to read.
+
+“‘Do you know how old I am to-day? Nineteen, and I have been married a
+year and a half. Ah! what a happy lass I was before I married; how they
+worshipped me in my old home! “Queen Anne,” they always called me.
+Well, they are dead now, and pray God they sleep so sound that they can
+neither hear nor see. Yes, a year and a half—a year of happiness, half
+a year of hell; happiness whilst I did not know you, hell since I saw
+your face. What secret spring of wickedness did you touch in my heart?
+I never had a thought of wrong before you came. But when I first set
+eyes upon your face, I felt some strange change come over me: I
+recognized my evil destiny. How you discovered my fascination, how you
+led me on to evil, you best know. I am no coward, I do not wish to
+excuse myself, but sometimes I think that you have much to answer for,
+George. Hark, I hear my baby crying, my beautiful boy with his father’s
+eyes. Do you know, I believe that the child has grown afraid of me: it
+beats at me with its tiny hands. I think that my very dog dislikes me
+now. They know me as I am; Nature tells them; everybody knows me except
+_him_. He will come in presently from visiting his sick and poor, and
+kiss me and call me his sweet wife, and I shall act the living lie. Oh!
+God, I cannot bear it much longer——’
+
+“There is more of the same sort,” remarked George, coolly. “It affords
+a most interesting study of mental anatomy, but I have no time to read
+more of it. We will pass on to another.”
+
+Lady Bellamy did not move; she sat trembling a little, her face buried
+in her hands.
+
+He took up a second letter and began to read a marked passage.
+
+“‘The die is cast, I will come; I can no longer resist your influence;
+it grows stronger every day, and now it makes me a murderess, for the
+shock will kill him. And yet I am tired of the sameness and smallness
+of my life; my mind is too big to be cramped in such narrow fetters.’
+
+“That extract is really very funny,” said George, critically. “But
+don’t look depressed, Anne, I am only going to trouble you with one
+more dated a year or so later. Listen.
+
+“‘I have several times seen the man you sent me; he is a fool and
+contemptible in appearance, and, worst of all, shows signs of falling
+in love with me; but, if you wish it, I will go through the marriage
+ceremony with him, poor little dupe! You will not marry me yourself,
+and I would do more than that to keep near you; indeed, I have no
+choice, I _must_ keep near you. I went to the Zoological Gardens the
+other day and saw a rattlesnake fed upon a live rabbit; the poor thing
+had ample room to run away in, but could not, it was fascinated, and
+sat still and screamed. At last the snake struck it, and I thought that
+its eyes looked like yours. I am as helpless as that poor animal, and
+you are much more cruel than the snake. And yet my mind is infinitely
+stronger than your own in every way. I cannot understand it. What is
+the source of your power over me? But I am quite reckless now, so what
+does it matter? I will do anything that does not put me within reach of
+the law. You know that my husband is dead. I _knew_ that he would die;
+he expired with my name upon his lips. The child, too, I hear, died in
+a fit of croup; the nurse had gone out, and there was no one to look
+after it. Upon my word, I may well be reckless, for there is no
+forgiveness for such as you and I. As for little B——, as I think I told
+you, I will lead him on and marry him: at any rate, I will make his
+fortune for him: I _must_ devote myself to something, and ambition is
+more absorbing than anything else—at least, I shall rise to something
+great. Good-night; I don’t know which aches most, my head or my heart.’
+
+“Now that extract would be interesting reading to Bellamy, would it
+not?”
+
+Here she suddenly sprang forward and snatched at the letter. But George
+was too quick for her; he flung it into the safe by his side, and swung
+the heavy lid to.
+
+“No, no, my dear Anne, that property is too valuable to be parted with
+except for a consideration.”
+
+Her attempt frustrated, she dropped back into her chair.
+
+“What are you torturing me for?” she asked, hoarsely. “Have you any
+object in dragging up the ghost of that dead past, or is it merely for
+amusement?”
+
+“Did I not tell you that I had a favour to ask of you, and wished to
+get you into a proper frame of mind first?”
+
+“A favour. You mean that you have some wickedness in hand that you are
+too great a coward to execute yourself. Out with it; I know you too
+well to be shocked.”
+
+“Oh, very well. You saw Angela Caresfoot, Philip’s daughter, here
+yesterday.”
+
+“Yes, I saw her.”
+
+“Very good. I mean to marry her, and you must manage it for me.”
+
+Lady Bellamy sat quite still, and made no answer.
+
+“You will now,” continued George, relieved to find that he had not
+provoked the outburst he had expected, “understand why I read you those
+extracts. I am thoroughly determined upon marrying that girl at
+whatever cost, and I see very clearly that I shall not be able to do so
+without your help. With your help, the matter will be easy; for no
+obstacle, except the death of the girl herself, can prevail against
+your iron determination and unbounded fertility of resource.”
+
+“And if I refuse?”
+
+“I must have read those extracts to very little purpose for you to talk
+about refusing. If you refuse, the pangs of conscience will overcome
+me, and I shall feel obliged to place these letters, and more
+especially those referring to himself, in the hands of your husband. Of
+course it will, for my own sake, be unpleasant to me to have to do so,
+but I can easily travel for a year or two till the talk has blown over.
+For you it will be different. Bellamy has no cause to love you now;
+judge what he will feel when he knows all the truth. He will scarcely
+keep the story to himself, and, even were he to do so, it could easily
+be set about in other ways, and, in either case, you will be a ruined
+woman, and all that you have toiled and schemed for for twenty years
+will be snatched from you in an instant. If, on the other hand, you do
+not refuse, and I cannot believe that you will, I will on my
+wedding-day burn these uncomfortable records before your eyes, or, if
+you prefer it, you shall burn them yourself.”
+
+“You have only seen this girl once; is it possible that you are in
+earnest in wishing to marry her?”
+
+“Do you think that I should go through this scene by way of a joke? I
+never was so much in earnest in my life before. I am in love with her,
+I tell you, as much in love as though I had known her for years. What
+happened to you with reference to me has happened to me with reference
+to her, or something very like it, and marry her I must and will.”
+
+Lady Bellamy, as she heard these words, rose from her chair and flung
+herself on the ground before him, clasping his knees with her hands.
+
+“Oh, George, George!” she cried, in a broken voice, “have some little
+pity; do not force me to do this unnatural thing. Is your heart a
+stone, or are you altogether a devil, that by such cruel threats you
+can drive me into becoming the instrument of my own shame? I know what
+I am, none better: but for whose sake did I become so? Surely, George,
+I have some claim on your compassion, if I have none on your love.
+Think again, George; and, if you will not give her up, choose some
+other means to compass this poor girl’s ruin.”
+
+“Get up, Anne, and don’t talk sentimental rubbish. Not but what,” he
+added, with a sneer, “it is rather amusing to hear you pitying your
+successful rival.”
+
+She sprang to her feet, all the softness and entreaty gone from her
+face, which was instead now spread with her darkest and most vindictive
+look.
+
+“_I_ pity her!” she said. “I hate her. Look you, if I have to do this,
+my only consolation will be in knowing that what I do will drag my
+successor down below my own level. I suffer; she shall suffer more; I
+know you a fiend, she shall find a whole hell with you; she is purer
+and better than I have ever been; soon you shall make her worse than I
+have dreamt of being. Her purity shall be dishonoured, her love
+betrayed, her life reduced to such chaos that she shall cease to
+believe even in her God, and in return for these things I will give
+her—_you_. Your new plaything shall pass through my mill, George
+Caresfoot, before ever she comes to yours; and on her I will repay with
+interest all that I have suffered at your hands;” and, exhausted with
+the fierceness of her own invective and the violence of conflicting
+passions, she sank back into her chair.
+
+“Bravo, Anne! quite in your old style. I daresay that the young lady
+will require a little moulding, and she could not be in better hands;
+but mind, no tricks—I am not going to be cheated out of my bride.”
+
+“You need not fear, George; I shall not murder her. I do not believe in
+violence; it is the last resort of fools. If I did, you would not be
+alive now.”
+
+George laughed a little uneasily.
+
+“Well, we are good friends again, so there is no need to talk of such
+things,” he said. “The campaign will not be by any means an easy one—
+there are many obstacles in the way, and I don’t think that my intended
+has taken a particular fancy to me. You will have to work for your
+letters, Anne; but first of all take a day or two to think it over, and
+make a plan of the campaign. And now good-by; I have got a bad
+headache, and am going to lie down.”
+
+She rose, and went without another word; but all necessity for setting
+about her shameful task was soon postponed by news that reached her the
+next morning, to the effect that George Caresfoot was seriously ill.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+The dog-cart that Arthur had hired to take him away belonged to an
+old-fashioned inn in the parish of Rewtham, situated about a mile from
+Rewtham House (which had just passed into the hands of the Bellamys),
+and two from Bratham Abbey, and thither Arthur had himself driven. His
+Jehu, known through all the country round as “Old Sam,” was an ancient
+ostler, who had been in the service of the Rewtham “King’s Head,” man
+and boy, for over fifty years, and from him Arthur collected a good
+deal of inaccurate information about the Caresfoot family, including a
+garbled version of all the death of Angela’s mother and Philip’s
+disinheritance.
+
+After all, there are few more comfortable places than an inn; not a
+huge London hotel, where you are known as No. 48, and have to lock the
+door of your cell when you come out of it, and deliver up your key to
+the warder in the hall; but an old-fashioned country establishment
+where they cook your breakfast exactly as you like it, and give you
+sound ale and a four-poster. At least, so thought Arthur, as he sat in
+the private parlour smoking his pipe and reflecting on the curious
+vicissitudes of existence. Now, here he was, with all the hopes and
+interests of his life utterly changed in a single space of six-and-
+twenty hours. Why, six-and-twenty hours ago, he had never met his
+respected guardian, nor Sir John and Lady Bellamy, nor Philip and his
+daughter. He could hardly believe that it was only that morning that he
+had first seen Angela. It seemed weeks ago, and, if time could have
+been measured on a new principle, by events and not by minutes, it
+would have been weeks. The wheel of life, he thought, revolves with a
+strange irregularity. For months and years it turns slowly and steadily
+under the even pressure of monotonous events. But, on some unexpected
+day, a tide comes rushing down the stream of being, and spins it round
+at speed; and then tears onward to the ocean called the Past, leaving
+its plaything to creak and turn, to turn and creak, or wrecked perhaps
+and useless.
+
+Thinking thus, Arthur made his way to bed. The excitement of the day
+had wearied him, and for a while he slept soundly, but, as the fatigue
+of the body wore off, the activity of his mind asserted itself, and he
+began to dream vague, happy dreams of Angela, that by degrees took
+shape and form, till they stood out clear before the vision of his
+mind. He dreamt that he and Angela were journeying, two such happy
+travellers, through the green fields in summer, till by-and-by they
+came to the dark entrance of a wood, into which they plunged, fearing
+nothing. Thicker grew the overshadowing branches, and darker grew the
+path, and now they journeyed lover-wise, with their arms around each
+other. But, as they passed along, they came to a place where the paths
+forked, and here he stooped to kiss her. Already he could feel the
+thrill of her embrace, when she was swept from him by an unseen force,
+and carried down the path before them, leaving him rooted where he was.
+But still he could trace her progress as she went, wringing her hands
+in sorrow; and presently he saw the form of Lady Bellamy, robed as an
+Egyptian sorceress, and holding a letter in her hand, which she offered
+to Angela, whispering in her ear. She took it, and then in a second the
+letter turned to a great snake, with George’s head, that threw its
+coils around her and struck at her with its fangs. Next, the darkness
+of night rushed down upon the scene, and out of the darkness came wild
+cries and mocking laughter, and the choking sounds of death. And his
+senses left him.
+
+When sight and sense came back, he dreamt that he was still walking
+down a wooded lane, but the foliage of the overhanging trees was of a
+richer green. The air was sweet with the scent of unknown flowers,
+beautiful birds flitted around him, and from far-off came the murmur of
+the sea. And as he travelled, broken-hearted, a fair woman with a
+gentle voice stood by his side, and kissed and comforted him, till at
+length he grew weary of her kisses, and she left him, weeping, and he
+went on his way alone, seeking his lost Angela. And then at length the
+path took a sudden turn, and he stood on the shore of an illimitable
+ocean, over which brooded a strange light, as where
+
+“The quiet end of evening smiles
+Miles on miles.”
+
+
+And there, with the soft light lingering on her hair, and tears of
+gladness in her eyes, stood Angela, more lovely than before, her arms
+outstretched to greet him. And then the night closed in, and he awoke.
+
+His eyes opened upon the solemn and beautiful hour of the first
+quickening of the dawn, and the thrill and softness that comes from
+contact with the things we meet in sleep was still upon him. He got up
+and flung open his lattice window. From the garden beneath rose the
+sweet scent of May flowers, very different from that of his dream which
+yet lingered in his nostrils, whilst from a neighbouring lilac- bush
+streamed the rich melody of the nightingale. Presently it ceased before
+the broadening daylight, but in its stead, pure and clear and cold,
+arose the notes of the mavis, giving tuneful thanks and glory to its
+Maker. And, as he listened, a great calm stole upon his spirit, and
+kneeling down there by the open window, with the breath of spring upon
+his brow, and the voice of the happy birds within his ears, he prayed
+to the Almighty with all his heart that it might please Him in His wise
+mercy to verify his dream, inasmuch as he would be well content to
+suffer, if by suffering he might at last attain to such an unutterable
+joy. And rising from his knees, feeling better and stronger, he knew in
+some dim way that that undertaking must be blest which, in such a
+solemn hour of the heart, he did not fear to pray God to guide, to
+guard, and to consummate.
+
+And on many an after-day, and in many another place, the book of his
+life would reopen at this well-conned page, and he would see the dim
+light in the faint, flushed sky, and hear the song of the thrush
+swelling upwards strong and sweet, and remember his prayer and the
+peace that fell upon his soul.
+
+By ten o’clock that morning, Arthur, his dog, and his portmanteau, had
+all arrived together in front of the Abbey House. Before his feet had
+touched the moss-grown gravel, the hall-door was flung open, and Angela
+appeared to welcome him, looking, as old Sam the ostler forcibly put it
+afterwards to his helper, “just like a hangel with the wings off.”
+Jakes, too, emerged from the recesses of the garden, and asked Angela,
+in a tone of aggrieved sarcasm, as he edged his way suspiciously past
+Aleck, why the gentleman had not brought the “rampingest lion from the
+Zoologic Gardens” with him at once? Having thus expressed his feelings
+on the subject of bull-dogs, he shouldered the portmanteau, and made
+his way with it upstairs. Arthur followed him up the wide oak stairs,
+every one of which was squared out of a single log, stopping for a
+while on the landing, where the staircase turned, to gaze at the
+stern-faced picture that hung so that it looked through the large
+window facing it, right across the park and over the whole stretch of
+the Abbey lands, and to wonder at the deep-graved inscription of “Devil
+Caresfoot” set so conspicuously beneath.
+
+His room was the largest upon the first landing, and the same in which
+Angela’s mother had died. It had never been used from that hour to
+this, and, indeed, in a little recess or open space between a cupboard
+and the wall, there still stood two trestles, draped with rotten black
+cloth, that had originally been brought there to rest her coffin on,
+and which Angela had overlooked in getting the room ready.
+
+This spacious but somewhat gloomy apartment was hung round with
+portraits of the Caresfoots of past ages, many of which bore a marked
+resemblance to Philip, but amongst whom he looked in vain for one in
+the slightest degree like Angela, whose handiwork he recognized in two
+large bowls of flowers placed upon the dark oak dressing-table.
+
+Just as Jakes had finished unbuckling his portmanteau, a task that he
+had undertaken with some groaning, and was departing in haste, lest he
+should be asked to do something else, Arthur caught sight of the
+trestles.
+
+“What are those?” he asked, cheerfully.
+
+“Coffin-stools,” was the abrupt reply.
+
+“Coffin-stools!” ejaculated Arthur, feeling that it was unpleasant to
+have little details connected with one’s latter end brought thus
+abruptly into notice. “What the deuce are they doing here?”
+
+“Brought to put the last as slept in that ‘ere bed on, and stood ever
+since.”
+
+“Don’t you think,” insinuated Arthur, gently, “that you had better take
+them away?”
+
+“Can’t do so; they be part of the furniture, they be—stand there all
+handy for the next one, too, maybe you;” and he vanished with a
+sardonic grin.
+
+Jakes did not submit to the indignities of unbuckling portmanteaus and
+having his legs sniffed at by bull-dogs for nothing. Not by any means
+pleased by suggestions so unpleasant, Arthur took his way downstairs,
+determined to renew the coffin-stool question with his host. He found
+Angela waiting for him in the hall, and making friends with Aleck.
+
+“Will you come in and see my father for a minute before we go out?” she
+said.
+
+Arthur assented, and she led the way into the study, where Philip
+always sat, the same room in which his father had died. He was sitting
+at a writing-table as usual, at work on farm accounts. Rising, he
+greeted Arthur civilly, taking, however, no notice of his daughter,
+although he had not seen her since the previous day.
+
+“Well, Heigham, so you have made up your mind to brave these barbarous
+wilds, have you? I am delighted to see you, but I must warn you that,
+beyond a pipe and a glass of grog in the evening, I have not much time
+to put at your disposal. We are rather a curious household. I don’t
+know whether Angela has told you, but for one thing we do not take our
+meals together, so you will have to make your choice between the
+dining-room and the nursery, for my daughter is not out of the nursery
+yet;” and he gave a little laugh. “On the whole, perhaps you had better
+be relegated to the nursery; it will, at any rate, be more amusing to
+you that the society of a morose old fellow like myself. And, besides,
+I am very irregular in my habits. Angela, you are staring at me again;
+I should be so very much obliged if you would look the other way. I
+only hope, Heigham, that old Pigott won’t talk your head off; she has
+got a dreadful tongue. Well, don’t let me keep you any longer; it is a
+lovely day for the time of year. Try to amuse yourself somehow, and I
+hope for your sake that Angela will not occupy herself with you as she
+does with me, by staring as though she wished to examine your brains
+and backbone. Good-by for the present.”
+
+“What does he mean?” asked Arthur, as soon as they were fairly outside
+the door, “about your staring at him?”
+
+“Mean!” answered poor Angela, who looked as though she were going to
+cry. “I wish I could tell you; all I know is that he cannot bear me to
+look at him—he is always complaining of it. That is why we do not take
+our meals together—at least, I believe it is. He detests my being near
+him. I am sure I don’t know why; it makes me very unhappy. I cannot see
+anything different in my eyes from anybody else’s, can you?” and she
+turned them, swimming as they were with tears of mortification, full
+upon Arthur.
+
+He scrutinized their depths very closely, so closely indeed, that
+presently she turned them away again with a blush.
+
+“Well,” she said, “I am sure you have looked long enough. Are they
+different?”
+
+“Very different,” replied the oracle, with enthusiasm.
+
+“How?”
+
+“Well, they—they are larger.”
+
+“Is that all?”
+
+“And they are deeper.”
+
+“Deeper—that is nothing. I want to know if they produce any unpleasant
+effect upon you—different from other people’s eyes, I mean?”
+
+“Well, if you ask me, I am afraid that your eyes do produce a strange
+effect upon me, but I cannot say that it is an unpleasant one. But you
+did not look long enough for me to form a really sound opinion. Let us
+try again.”
+
+“No, I will not; and I do believe that you are laughing at me. I think
+that is very unkind;” and she marched on in silence.
+
+“Don’t be angry with me, or I shall be miserable. I really was not
+laughing at you; only, if you knew what wonderful eyes you have got,
+you would not ask such ridiculous questions about them. Your father
+must be a strange man to get such ideas. I am sure I should be
+delighted if you would look at me all day long. But tell me something
+more about your father: he interests me very much.”
+
+Angela felt the tell-tale blood rise to her face as he praised her
+eyes, and bit her lips with vexation; it seemed to her that she had
+suddenly caught an epidemic of blushing.
+
+“I cannot tell you very much about my father, because I do not know
+much; his life is, to a great extent, a sealed book to me. But they say
+that once he was a very different man, when he was quite young, I mean.
+But all of a sudden his father—my grand-father, you know—whose picture
+is on the stairs, died, and within a day or two my mother died too;
+that was when I was born. After that he broke down, and became what he
+is now. For twenty years he has lived as he does now, poring all day
+over books of accounts, and very rarely seeing anybody, for he does all
+his business by letter, or nearly all of it, and he has no friends.
+There was some story about his being engaged to a lady who lived at
+Rewtham when he married my mother, which I daresay you have heard; but
+I don’t know much about it. But, Mr. Heigham”—and here she dropped her
+voice—“there is one thing that I must warn you of: my father has
+strange fancies at times. He is dreadfully superstitious, and thinks
+that he has communications with beings from another world. I believe
+that it is all nonsense, but I tell you so that you may not be
+surprised at anything he says or does. He is not a happy man, Mr.
+Heigham.”
+
+“Apparently not. I cannot imagine any one being happy who is
+superstitious; it is the most dreadful bondage in the world.”
+
+“Where are your ravens to-day?” asked Arthur, presently.
+
+“I don’t know; I have not seen very much of them for the last week or
+two. They have made a nest in one of the big trees at the back of the
+house, and I daresay that they are there, or perhaps they are hunting
+for their food—they always feed themselves. But I will soon tell you,”
+and she whistled in a soft but penetrating note.
+
+Next minute there was a swoop of wings, and the largest raven, after
+hovering over her for a minute, lit upon her shoulder, and rubbed his
+black head against her face.
+
+“This is Jack, you see; I expect that Jill is busy sitting on her eggs.
+Fly away, Jack, and look after your wife.” She clapped her hands, and
+the great bird, giving a reproachful croak, spread his wings, and was
+gone.
+
+“You have a strange power over animals to make those birds so fond of
+you.”
+
+“Do you think so? It is only because I have, living as I do quite
+alone, had time to study all their ways, and make friends of them. Do
+you see that thrush there? I know him well; I fed him during the frost
+last winter. If you will stand back with the dog, you shall see.”
+
+Arthur hid himself behind a thick bush and watched. Angela whistled
+again, but in another note, with a curious result. Not only the thrush
+in question, but quite a dozen other birds of different sorts and
+sizes, came flying round her, some settling at her feet, and one, a
+little robin, actually perching itself upon her hat. Presently she
+dismissed them as she had done the raven, by clapping her hands, and
+came back to Arthur.
+
+“In the winter time,” she said, “I could show you more curious things
+than that.”
+
+“I think that you are a witch,” said Arthur, who was astounded at the
+sight.
+
+She laughed as she answered,
+
+“The only witchery that I use is kindness.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+Pigott, Angela’s old nurse, was by no means sorry to hear of Arthur’s
+visit to the Abbey House, though, having in her youth been a servant in
+good houses, she was distressed at the nature of his reception. But,
+putting this aside, she thought it high time that her darling should
+see a young man or two, that she might “learn what the world was like.”
+Pigott was no believer in female celibacy, and Angela’s future was a
+frequent subject of meditation with her, for she knew very well that
+her present mode of life was scarcely suited either to her birth, her
+beauty, or her capabilities. Not that she ever, in her highest flights,
+imagined Angela as a great lady, or one of society’s shining stars; she
+loved to picture her in some quiet, happy home, beloved by her husband,
+and surrounded by children as beautiful as herself. It was but a
+moderate ambition for one so peerlessly endowed, but she would have
+been glad to see it fulfilled. For of late years there had sprung up in
+nurse Pigott’s mind an increasing dislike of her surroundings, which
+sometimes almost amounted to a feeling of horror. Philip she had always
+detested, with his preoccupied air and uncanny ways.
+
+“There must,” she would say, “be something wicked about a man as is
+afraid to have his own bonny daughter look him in the face, to say
+nothing of his being that mean as to grudge her the clothes on her
+back, and make her live worse nor a servant-girl.”
+
+Having, therefore, by a quiet peep through the curtains, ascertained
+that he was nice-looking and about the right age, Pigott confessed to
+herself that she was heartily glad of Arthur’s arrival, and determined
+that, should she take to him on further acquaintance, he should find a
+warm ally in her in any advances he might choose to make on the
+fortress of Angela’s affections.
+
+“I do so hope that you don’t mind dining at half-past twelve, and with
+my old nurse,” Angela said, as they went together up the stairs to the
+room they used as a dining-room.
+
+“Of course I don’t—I like it, really I do.”
+
+Angela shook her head, and, looking but partially convinced, led the
+way down the passage, and into the room, where, to her astonishment,
+she perceived that the dinner-table was furnished with a more sumptuous
+meal than she had seen upon it for years, the fact being that Pigott
+had received orders from Philip which she did not know of, not to spare
+expense whilst Arthur was his guest.
+
+“What waste,” reflected Angela, in whom the pressure of circumstances
+had developed an economical turn of mind, as she glanced at the
+unaccustomed jug of beer. “He said he was a teetotaller.”
+
+A loud “hem!” from Pigott, arresting her attention, stopped all further
+consideration of the matter. That good lady, who, in honour of the
+occasion, was dressed in a black gown of a formidable character and a
+many-ribboned cap, was standing up behind her chair waiting to be
+introduced to the visitor. Angela proceeded to go through the ceremony
+which Pigott’s straight-up-and-down attitude rendered rather trying.
+
+“Nurse, this is the gentleman that my father has asked to stay with us.
+Mr. Heigham, let me introduce you to my old nurse Pigott.”
+
+Arthur bowed politely, whilst Pigott made two obligatory curtsies,
+requiring a step backwards after each, as though to make room for
+another. Her speech, too, carefully prepared for the occasion, is
+worthy of transcription.
+
+“Hem!” she said, “this, sir, is a pleasure as I little expected, and I
+well knows that it is not what you or the likes is accustomed to,
+a-eating of dinners and teas with old women; which I hopes, sir, how as
+you will put up with it, seeing how as the habits of this house is what
+might, without mistake, be called peculiar, which I says without any
+offence to Miss Angela, ‘cause though her bringing-up has been what I
+call odd, she knows it as well as I do, which, indeed, is the only
+consolation I has to offer, being right sure, as indeed I am, how as
+any young gentleman as ever breathed would sit in a pool of water to
+dine along with Miss Angela, let alone an old nurse. I ain’t such a
+fool as I may look; no need for you to go a-blushing of, Miss Angela.
+And now, sir, if you please, we will sit down, for fear lest the gravy
+should begin to grease;” and, utterly exhausted by the exuberance of
+her own verbosity, she plunged into her chair—an example which Arthur,
+bowing his acknowledgements of her opening address, was not slow to
+follow.
+
+One of his first acts was, at Pigott’s invitation, to help himself to a
+glass of beer, of which, to speak truth, he drank a good deal.
+
+Angela watched the proceeding with interest.
+
+“What,” she asked presently, “is a teetotaller?”
+
+The recollection of his statement of the previous day flashed into his
+mind. He was, however, equal to the occasion.
+
+“A teetotaller,” he replied, with gravity, “is a person who only drinks
+beer,” and Angela, the apparent discrepancy explained, retired
+satisfied.
+
+That was a very pleasant dinner. What a thing it is to be young and in
+love! How it gilds the dull gingerbread of life; what new capacities of
+enjoyment it opens up to us, and, for the matter of that, of pain also;
+and oh! what stupendous fools it makes of us in everybody else’s eyes
+except our own, and, if we are lucky, those of our adored!
+
+The afternoon and evening passed much as the morning had done. Angela
+took Arthur round the place, and showed him all the spots connected
+with her strange and lonely childhood, of which she told him many a
+curious story. In fact, before the day was over, he knew all the
+history of her innocent life, and was struck with amazement at the
+variety and depth of her scholastic acquirements and the extraordinary
+power of her mind, which, combined with her simplicity and total
+ignorance of the ways of the world, produced an effect as charming as
+it was unusual. Needless to say that every hour he knew her he fell
+more deeply in love with her.
+
+At length, about eight o’clock, just as it was beginning to get dark,
+she suggested that he should go and sit a while with her father.
+
+“And what are you going to do?” asked Arthur.
+
+“Oh! I am going to read a little, and then go to bed; I always go to
+bed about nine;” and she held out her hand to say good-night. He took
+it and said,
+
+“Good-night, then; I wish it were to-morrow.”
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because then I should be saying, ‘Good-morning, Angela,’ instead of
+‘Good-night, Angela,’ May I call you Angela? We seem to know each other
+so well, you see.”
+
+“Yes, of course,” she laughed back; “everybody I know calls me Angela,
+so why shouldn’t you?”
+
+“And will you call me Arthur? Everybody I know calls me Arthur.”
+
+Angela hesitated, and Angela blushed, though why she hesitated and why
+she blushed was perhaps more than she could have exactly said.
+
+“Y-e-s, I suppose so—that is, if you like it. It is a pretty name,
+Arthur. Good-night, Arthur,” and she was gone.
+
+His companion gone, Arthur turned and entered the house. The study-
+door was open, so he went straight in. Philip, who was sitting and
+staring in an abstracted way at the empty fireplace with a light behind
+him, turned quickly round as he heard the footstep.
+
+“Oh! it’s you, is it, Heigham? I suppose Angela has gone upstairs; she
+goes to roost very early. I hope that she has not bored you, and that
+old Pigott hasn’t talked your head off. I told you that we were an odd
+lot, you know; but, if you find us odder than you bargained for, I
+should advise you to clear out.”
+
+“Thank you, I have spent a very happy day.”
+
+“Indeed, I am glad to hear it. You must be easily satisfied, have an
+Arcadian mind, and that sort of thing. Take some whisky, and light your
+pipe.”
+
+Arthur did so, and presently Philip, in that tone of gentlemanly ease
+which above everything distinguished him from his cousin, led the
+conversation round to his guest’s prospects and affairs, more
+especially his money affairs. Arthur answered him frankly enough, but
+this money talk had not the same charms for him that it had for his
+host. Indeed, a marked repugnance to everything that had to do with
+money was one of his characteristics; and, wearied out at length with
+pecuniary details and endless researches into the mysteries of
+investment, he took advantage of a pause to attempt to change the
+subject.
+
+“Well,” he said, “I am much obliged to you for your advice, for I am
+very ignorant myself, and hate anything to do with money. I go back to
+first principles, and believe that we should all be better without it.”
+
+“I always thought,” answered Philip, with a semi-contemptuous smile,
+“that the desire of money, or, amongst savage races, its equivalent,
+shells or what not, was _the_ first principle of human nature.”
+
+“Perhaps it is—I really don’t know; but I heartily wish that it could
+be eliminated off the face of the earth.”
+
+“Forgive me,” laughed Philip, “but that is the speech of a very young
+man. Why, eliminate money, and you take away the principal interest of
+life, and destroy the social fabric of the world. What is power but
+money, comfort?—money, social consideration?—money, ay, and love, and
+health, and happiness itself? Money, money, money. Tell me,” he went
+on, rising, and addressing him with a curious earnestness, “what god is
+there more worthy of our adoration than Plutus, seeing that, if we
+worship him enough, he alone of the idols we set in high places, will
+never fail us at need?”
+
+“It is a worship that rarely brings lasting happiness with it. In our
+greed to collect the means of enjoyment, surely we lose the power to
+enjoy?”
+
+“Pshaw! that is the cant of fools, of those who do not know, of those
+who cannot feel. But I know and I feel, and I tell you that it is not
+so. The collection of those means is in itself a pleasure, because it
+gives a consciousness of power. Don’t talk to me of Fate; that
+sovereign” (throwing the coin on to the table) “is Fate’s own seal. You
+see me, for instance, apparently poor and helpless, a social pariah,
+one to be avoided, and even insulted. Good; before long these will
+right all that for me. I shall by their help be powerful and courted
+yet. Ay, believe me, Heigham, money is a living moving force; leave it
+still, and it accumulates; expend it, and it gratifies every wish; save
+it, and that is best of all, and you hold in your hand a lever that
+will lift the world. I tell you that there is no height to which it
+cannot bring you, no gulf it will not bridge you.”
+
+“Except,” soliloquized Arthur, “the cliffs of the Hereafter, and—the
+grave.”
+
+His words produced a curious effect. Philip’s eloquence broke off
+short, and for a moment a great fear crept into his eyes.
+
+Silence ensued which neither of them seemed to care to break. Meanwhile
+the wind suddenly sprang up, and began to moan and sigh amongst the
+half-clad boughs of the trees outside—making, Arthur thought to
+himself, a very melancholy music. Presently Philip laid his hand upon
+his guest’s arm, and he felt that it shook like an aspen- leaf.
+
+“Tell me,” he said, in a hoarse whisper, “what do you see there?”
+
+Arthur started, and followed the direction of his eyes to the bare wall
+opposite the window, at that end of the room through which the door was
+made.
+
+“I see,” he said, “some moving shadows.”
+
+“What do they resemble?”
+
+“I don’t know; nothing in particular. What are they?”
+
+“What are they?” hissed Philip, whose face was livid with terror, “they
+are the shades of the dead sent here to torture me. Look, she goes to
+meet him; the old man is telling her. Now she will wring her hands.”
+
+“Nonsense, Mr. Caresfoot, nonsense,” said Arthur, shaking himself
+together; “I see nothing of the sort. Why, it is only the shadows flung
+by the moonlight through the swinging boughs of that tree. Cut it down,
+and you will have no more writing upon your wall.”
+
+“Ah! of course you are right, Heigham, quite right,” ejaculated his
+host, faintly, wiping the cold sweat from his brow; “it is nothing but
+the moonlight. How ridiculous of me! I suppose I am a little out of
+sorts—liver wrong. Give me some whisky, there’s a good fellow, and I’ll
+drink damnation to all the shadows and _the trees that throw them_. Ha,
+ha, ha!”
+
+There was something so uncanny about his host’s manner, and his evident
+conviction of the origin of the wavering figures on the wall (which had
+now disappeared), that Arthur felt, had it not been for Angela, he
+would not be sorry to get clear of him and his shadows as soon as
+possible, for superstition, he knew, is as contagious as small-pox.
+When at length he reached his great bare bed-chamber, not, by the way,
+a comfortable sort of place to sleep in after such an experience, it
+was only after some hours, in the excited state of his imagination,
+that, tired though he was, he could get the rest he needed.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+Next morning, when they met at their eight o’clock breakfast, Arthur
+noticed that Angela was distressed about something.
+
+“There is bad news,” she said, almost before he greeted her; “my cousin
+George is very ill with typhus fever.”
+
+“Indeed!” remarked Arthur, rather coolly.
+
+“Well, I must say it does not appear to distress you very much.”
+
+“No, I can’t say it does. To be honest, I detest your cousin, and I
+don’t care if he is ill or not; there.”
+
+As she appeared to have no reply ready, the subject then dropped.
+
+After breakfast Angela proposed that they should walk—for the day was
+again fine—to the top of a hill about a mile away, whence a view of the
+surrounding country could be obtained. He consented, and on the way
+told her of his curious experiences with her father on the previous
+night. She listened attentively, and, when he had finished, shook her
+head.
+
+“There is,” she said, “something about my father that separates him
+from everybody else. His life never comes out into the sunlight of the
+passing day, it always gropes along in the shadow of some gloomy past.
+What the mystery is that envelops him I neither know nor care to
+inquire; but I am sure that there is one.”
+
+“How do you explain the shadows?”
+
+“I believe your explanation is right; they are, under certain
+conditions of light, thrown by a tree that grows some distance off. I
+have seen something that looks like figures on that wall myself in full
+daylight. That he should interpret such a simple thing as he does shows
+a curious state of mind.”
+
+“You do not think, then,” said Arthur, in order to draw her out, “that
+it is possible, after all, he was right, and that they were something
+from another place? The reality of his terror was almost enough to make
+one believe in them, I can tell you.”
+
+“No, I do not,” answered Angela, after a minute’s thought. “I have no
+doubt that the veil between ourselves and the unseen world is thinner
+than we think. I believe, too, that communication, and even warnings
+sometimes, under favourable conditions, or when the veil is worn thin
+by trouble or prayer, can pass from the other world to ourselves. But
+the very fact of my father’s terror proves to me that his shadows are
+nothing of the sort, for it is hardly possible that spirits can be
+permitted to come to terrify us poor mortals; if they come at all, it
+is in love and gentleness, to comfort or to warn, and not to work upon
+our superstitions.”
+
+“You speak as though you knew all about it; you should join the new
+Ghost Society,” he answered, irreverently, sitting himself down on a
+fallen tree, an example that she followed.
+
+“I have thought about it sometimes, that is all, and, so far as I have
+read, I think that my belief is a common one, and what the Bible
+teaches us; but, if you will not think me foolish, I will tell you
+something that confirms me in it. You know that my mother died when I
+was born; well, it may seem strange to you, but I am convinced that she
+is sometimes very near me.”
+
+“Do you mean that you see or hear her?”
+
+“No, I only feel her presence; more rarely now, I am sorry to say, as I
+grow older.”
+
+“How do you mean?”
+
+“I can hardly explain what I mean, but sometimes—it may be at night, or
+when I am sitting alone in the daytime—a great calm comes upon me, and
+I am a changed woman. All my thoughts rise into a higher, purer air,
+and are, as it were, tinged with a reflected light; everything earthly
+seems to pass away from me, and I feel as though fetters had fallen
+from my soul, and I _know_ that I am near my mother. Then everything
+passes, and I am left myself again.”
+
+“And what are the thoughts you have at these times?”
+
+“Ah! I wish I could tell you; they pass away with her who brought them,
+leaving nothing but a vague after-glow in my mind like that in the sky
+after the sun has set. But now look at the view; is it not beautiful in
+the sunlight? All the world seems to be rejoicing.”
+
+Angela was right; the view was charming. Below lay the thatched roofs
+of the little village of Bratham, and to the right the waters of the
+lake shone like silver in the glancing sunlight, whilst the gables of
+the old house, peeping out from amongst the budding foliage, looked
+very picturesque. The spring had cast her green garment over the land;
+from every copse rang out the melody of birds, and the gentle breeze
+was heavy with the scent of the unnumbered violets that starred the
+mossy carpet at their feet. In the fields where grew the wheat and
+clover, now springing into lusty life, the busy weeders were at work,
+and on the warm brown fallows the sower went forth to sow. From the
+early pastures beneath, where purled a little brook, there came a
+pleasant lowing of kine, well-contented with the new grass, and a
+cheerful bleating of lambs, to whom as yet life was nothing but one
+long skip. It was a charming scene, and its influence sank deep into
+the gazers’ hearts.
+
+“It is depressing to think,” said Arthur, rather sententiously, but
+really chiefly with the object of getting at his companion’s views,
+“that all this cannot last, but is, as it were, like ourselves, under
+sentence of death.”
+
+“It rose and fell and fleeted
+Upon earth’s troubled sea,
+A wave that swells to vanish
+Into eternity.
+Oh! mystery and wonder
+Of wings that cannot fly,
+Of ears that cannot hearken, Of life that lives—to di e!”
+
+
+quoth Angela, by way of comment.
+
+“Whose lines are those?” asked Arthur. “I don’t know them.”
+
+“My own,” she said, shyly; “that is, they are a translation of a verse
+of a Greek ode I wrote for Mr. Fraser. I will say you the original, if
+you like; I think it better than the translation, and I believe that it
+is fair Greek.”
+
+“Thank you, thank you, Miss Blue-stocking; I am quite satisfied with
+your English version. You positively alarm me, Angela. Most people are
+quite content if they can put a poem written in English into Greek; you
+reverse the process, and, having coolly given expression to your
+thoughts in Greek, condescend to translate them into your native
+tongue. I only wish you had been at Cambridge, or—what do they call the
+place?—Girton. It would have been a joke to see you come out
+double-first.”
+
+“Ah!” she broke in, blushing, “you are like Mr. Fraser, you overrate my
+acquirements. I am sorry to say I am not the perfect scholar you think
+me, and about most things I am shockingly ignorant. I should indeed be
+silly if, after ten years’ patient work under such a scholar as Mr.
+Fraser, I did not know some classics and mathematics. Why, do you know,
+for the last three years that we worked together, we used as a rule to
+carry on our ordinary conversations during work in Latin and Greek,
+month and month about, sometimes with the funniest results. One never
+knows how little one does know of a dead language till one tries to
+talk it. Just try to speak in Latin for the next five minutes, and you
+will see.”
+
+“Thank you, I am not going to expose my ignorance for your amusement,
+Angela.”
+
+She laughed.
+
+“No,” she said, “it is you who wish to amuse yourself at my expense by
+trying to make me believe that I am a great scholar. But what I was
+going to say, before you attacked me about my fancied acquirements, was
+that, in my opinion, your remark about the whole world being under
+sentence of death, was rather a morbid one.”
+
+“Why? It is obviously true.”
+
+“Yes, in a sense; but to my mind this scene speaks more of resurrection
+than of death. Look at the earth pushing up her flowers, and the dead
+trees breaking into beauty. There is no sign of death there, but rather
+of a renewed and glorified life.”
+
+“Yes, but there is still the awful _fact_ of death to face; Nature
+herself has been temporarily dead before she blooms into beauty; she
+dies every autumn, to rise again in the same form every spring. But how
+do we know in what form _we_ shall emerge from the chrysalis? As soon
+as a man begins to think at all, he stands face to face with this
+hideous problem, to the solution of which he knows himself to be
+drawing daily nearer. His position, I often think, is worse than that
+of a criminal under sentence, because the criminal is only being
+deprived of the employment of a term, indefinite, indeed, but
+absolutely limited; but man at large does not know of what he is
+deprived, and what he must inherit in the aeons that await him. It is
+the uncertainty of death that is its most dreadful part, and, with that
+hanging over our race, the wonder to me is not only that we, for the
+most part, put the subject entirely out of mind, but that we can ever
+think seriously of anything else.”
+
+“I remember,” answered Angela, “once thinking very much in the same
+way, and I went to Mr. Fraser for advice. ‘The Bible,’ he said, ‘will
+satisfy your doubts and fears, if only you will read it in a right
+spirit.’ And indeed, more or less, it did. I cannot, of course, venture
+to advise you, but I pass his advice on; it is that of a very good
+man.”
+
+“Have you, then, no dread of death, or, rather, of what lies beyond
+it?”
+
+She turned her eyes upon him with something of wonder in them.
+
+“And why,” she said, “should I, who am immortal, fear a change that I
+know has no power to harm me, that can, on the contrary, only bring me
+nearer to the purpose of my being? Certainly I shrink from death
+itself, as we all must, but of the dangers beyond I have no fear.
+Pleasant as this world is at times, there is something in us all that
+strives to rise above it, and, if I knew that I must die within this
+hour, I _believe_ that I could meet my fate without a qualm. I am sure
+that when our trembling hands have drawn the veil from Death, we shall
+find His features, passionless indeed, but very beautiful.”
+
+Arthur looked at her with astonishment, wondering what manner of woman
+this could be, who, in the first flush of youth and beauty, could face
+the great unknown without a tremor. When he spoke again, it was with
+something of envious bitterness.
+
+“Ah! it is very well for you, whose life has been so pure and free from
+evil, but it is different for me, with all my consciousness of sins and
+imperfections. For me, and thousands like me, strive as we will,
+immortality has terrors as well as hopes. It is, and always will be,
+human to fear the future, for human nature never changes. You know the
+lines in ‘Hamlet.’ It is
+
+“‘that the dread of something after death,—
+The undiscovered country from whose bourn
+No traveller returns,—puzzles the will
+And makes us rather bear those ills we have
+Than fly to others that we know not of.
+Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.’
+
+
+“They are true, and, while men last, they always will be true.”
+
+“Oh! Arthur,” she answered, earnestly, and for the first time
+addressing him in conversation by his Christian name, “how limited your
+trust must be in the mercy of a Creator, whose mercy is as wide as the
+ocean, that you can talk like that! You speak of me, too, as better
+than yourself—how am I better? I have my bad thoughts and do bad things
+as much as you, and, though they may not be the same, I am sure they
+are quite as black as yours, since everybody must be responsible
+according to their characters and temptations. I try, however, to trust
+in God to cover my sins, and believe that, if I do my best, He will
+forgive me, that is all. But I have no business to preach to you, who
+are older and wiser than I am.”
+
+“If,” he broke in, laying his hand involuntarily upon her own, “you
+knew—although I have never spoken of them to any one before, and could
+not speak of them to anybody but yourself—how these things weigh upon
+my mind, you would not say that, but would try to teach me your faith.”
+
+“How can I teach you, Arthur, when I have so much to learn myself?” she
+answered, simply, and from that moment, though she did not know it as
+yet, she loved him.
+
+This conversation—a very curious one, Arthur thought to himself
+afterwards, for two young people on a spring morning—having come to an
+end, nothing more was said for some while, and they took their way down
+the hill, varying the route in order to pass through the little hamlet
+of Bratham. Under a chestnut-tree that stood upon the village green,
+Arthur noticed, _not_ a village blacksmith, but a small crowd, mostly
+composed of children, gathered round somebody. On going to see who it
+was, he discovered a battered-looking old man with an intellectual
+face, and the remnants of a gentlemanlike appearance, playing on the
+violin. A very few touches of his bow told Arthur, who knew something
+of music, that he was in the presence of a performer of no mean merit.
+Seeing the quality of his two auditors, and that they appreciated his
+performance, the player changed his music, and from a village jig
+passed to one of the more difficult opera airs, which he executed in
+brilliant fashion.
+
+“Bravo!” cried Arthur, as the last notes thrilled and died away; “I see
+you understand how to play the fiddle.”
+
+“Yes, sir, and so I should, for I have played first violin at Her
+Majesty’s Opera before now. Name what you like, and I will play it you.
+Or, if you like it better, you shall hear the water running in a brook,
+the wind passing through the trees, or the waves falling on the beach.
+Only say the word.”
+
+Arthur thought for a moment.
+
+“It is a beautiful day, let us have a contrast—give us the music of a
+storm.”
+
+The old man considered a while.
+
+“I understand, but you set a difficult subject even for me,” and taking
+up his bow he made several attempts at beginning. “I can’t do it,” he
+said, “set something else.”
+
+“No, no, try again, that or nothing.”
+
+Again he started, and this time his genius took possession of him. The
+notes fell very softly at first, but with an ominous sound, then rose
+and wailed like the rising of the wind. Next the music came in gusts,
+the rain pattered, and the thunder roared, till at length the tempest
+seemed to spend its force and pass slowly away into the distance.
+
+“There, sir, what do you say to that—have I fulfilled your
+expectations?”
+
+“Write it down and it will be one of the finest pieces of violin music
+in the country.”
+
+“Write it down. The divine ‘afflatus’ is not to be caged, sir, it comes
+and goes. I could never write that music down.”
+
+Arthur felt in his pocket without answering, and found five shillings.
+
+“If you will accept this?” he said.
+
+“Thank you, sir, very much. I am gladder of five shillings now than I
+once was of as many pounds;” and he rose to go.
+
+“A man of your talent should not be wandering about like this.”
+
+“I must earn a living somehow, for all Talleyrand’s witticism to the
+contrary,” was the curious answer.
+
+“Have you no friends?”
+
+“No, sir, this is my only friend; all the rest have deserted me,” and
+he tapped his violin and was gone.
+
+“Lord, sir,” said a farmer, who was standing by, “he’s gone to get
+drunk; he is the biggest old drunkard in the countryside, and yet they
+do say he was gentleman once, and the best fiddler in London; but he
+can’t be depended on, so no one will hire him now.”
+
+“How sad,” said Angela, as they moved homewards.
+
+“Yes, and what music that was; I never heard any with such imagination
+before. You have a turn that way, Angela; you should try to put it into
+words, it would make a poem.”
+
+“I complain like the old man, that you set a difficult subject,” she
+said; “but I will try, if you will promise not to laugh at the result.”
+
+“If you succeed on paper only half so well as he did on the violin,
+your verses will be worth listening to, and I certainly shall not
+laugh.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+On the following day the somewhat curious religious conversation
+between Arthur and Angela—a conversation which, begun on Arthur’s part
+out of curiosity, had ended on both sides very much in earnest— the
+weather broke up and the grand old English climate reasserted its
+treacherous supremacy. From summer weather the inhabitants of the
+county of Marlshire suddenly found themselves plunged into a spell of
+cold that was by contrast almost Arctic. Storms of sleet drove against
+the window-panes, and there was even a very damaging night-frost, while
+that dreadful scourge, which nobody in his senses except Kingsley _can_
+ever have liked, the east wind, literally pervaded the whole place, and
+went whistling through the surrounding trees and ruins in a way
+calculated to make even a Laplander shiver.
+
+Under these cheerless circumstances our pair of companions—for as yet
+they were, ostensibly at any rate, nothing more—gave up their outdoor
+excursions and took to rambling over the disused rooms in the old
+house, and hunting up many a record, some of them valuable and curious
+enough, of long-forgotten Caresfoots, and even of the old priors before
+them; a splendidly illuminated missal being amongst the latter prizes.
+When this amusement was exhausted, they sat together over the fire in
+the nursery, and Angela translated to him from her favourite classical
+authors, especially Homer, with an ease and fluency of expression that,
+to Arthur, was little short of miraculous. Or, when they got tired of
+that, he read to her from standard writers, which, elaborate as her
+education had been, in certain respects, she had scarcely yet even
+opened, notably Shakespeare and Milton. Needless to say, herself imbued
+with a strong poetic feeling, these immortal writers were a source of
+intense delight to her.
+
+“How is it that Mr. Fraser never gave you Shakespeare to read?” asked
+Arthur one day, as he shut up the volume, having come to the end of
+“Hamlet.”
+
+“He said that I should be better able to appreciate it when my mind had
+been prepared to do so by the help of a classical and mathematical
+education, and that it would be ‘a mistake to cloy my mental palate
+with sweets before I had learnt to appreciate their flavours.’”
+
+“There is some sense in that,” remarked Arthur. “By the way, how are
+the verses you promised to write me getting on? Have you done them
+yet?”
+
+“I have done something,” she answered, modestly, “but I really do not
+think that they are worth producing. It is very tiresome of you to have
+remembered about them.”
+
+Arthur, however, by this time knew enough of Angela’s abilities to be
+sure that her “something” would be something more or less worth
+hearing, and mildly insisted on their production, and then, to her
+confusion, on her reading them aloud. They ran as follows, and whatever
+Angela’s opinion of them may have been, the reader shall judge of them
+for himself:
+
+A STORM ON THE STRINGS
+
+“The minstrel sat in his lonely room,
+Its walls were bare, and the twilight grey
+Fell and crept and gathered to gloom;
+It came like the ghost of the dying day,
+And the chords fell hushed and low.
+Pianissimo!
+
+“His arm was raised, and the violin
+Quivered and shook with the strain it bore,
+While the swelling forth of the sounds within
+Rose with a sweetness unknown before,
+And the chords fell soft and low.
+Piano!
+
+“The first cold flap of the tempest’s wings
+Clashed with the silence before the storm,
+The raindrops pattered across the strings
+As the gathering thunder-clouds took form—
+Drip, drop, high and low.
+Staccato!
+
+“Heavily rolling the thunder roared,
+Sudden and jagged the lightning played,
+Faster and faster the raindrops poured,
+Sobbing and surging the tree-crests swayed,
+Cracking and crashing above, below.
+Crescendo!
+
+“The wind tore howling across the wold,
+And tangled his train in the groaning trees,
+Wrapped the dense clouds in his mantle cold,
+Then shivered and died in a wailing breeze,
+Whistling and weeping high and low,
+Sostenuto!
+
+“A pale sun broke from the driving cloud,
+And flashed in the raindrops serenely cool:
+At the touch of his finger the forest bowed,
+As it shimmered and glanced in the ruffled pool,
+While the rustling leaves soughed soft and low.
+Gracioso!
+
+“It was only a dream on the throbbing strings,
+An echo of Nature in phantasy wrought,
+A breath of her breath and a touch of her wings
+From a kingdom outspread in the regions of thought.
+Below rolled the sound of the city’s din,
+And the fading day, as the night drew in,
+Showed the quaint old face and the pointed chin,
+And the arm that was raised o’er the violin,
+As the old man whispered his hope’s dead tale,
+To the friend who could comfort, though others might fail,
+And the chords stole hushed and low.
+Pianissimo!”
+
+
+He stopped, and the sheet of paper fell from his hands.
+
+“Well,” she said, with all the eagerness of a new-born writer, “tell
+me, do you think them _very_ bad?”
+
+“Well, Angela, you know——”
+
+“Ah! go on now; I am ready to be crushed. Pray don’t spare my
+feelings.”
+
+“I was about to say that, thanks be to Providence, I am not a critic;
+but I think——”
+
+“Oh! yes, let me hear what you think. You are speaking so slowly, in
+order to get time to invent something extra cutting. Well, I deserve
+it.”
+
+“Don’t interrupt; I was going to say that I think the piece above the
+average of second-class poetry, and that a few of the lines touch the
+first-class standard. You have caught something of the ‘divine
+afflatus’ that the drunken old fellow said he could not cage. But I do
+not think that you will ever be popular as a writer of verses if you
+keep to that style; I doubt if there is a magazine in the kingdom that
+would take those lines unless they were by a known writer. They would
+return them marked, ‘Good, but too vague for the general public.’
+Magazine editors don’t like lines from ‘a kingdom outspread in the
+regions of thought,’ for, as they say, such poems are apt to excite
+vagueness in the brains of that dim entity, the ‘general public.’ What
+they do like are commonplace ideas, put in pretty language, and
+sweetened with sentimentality or emotional religious feelings, such as
+the thinking powers of their subscribers are competent to absorb
+without mental strain, and without leaving their accustomed channels.
+To be popular it is necessary to be commonplace, or at the least to
+describe the commonplace, to work in a well-worn groove, and not to
+startle—requirements which, unfortunately, simple as they seem, very
+few persons possess the art of acting up to. See what happens to the
+unfortunate novelist, for instance, who dares to break the unwritten
+law, and defraud his readers of the orthodox transformation scene of
+the reward of virtue and the discomfiture of vice; or to make his
+creation finish up in a way that, however well it may be suited to its
+tenor, or illustrate its more subtle meaning, is contrary to the
+‘general reader’s’ idea as to how it should end—badly, as it is called.
+He simply collapses, to rise no more, if he is new at the trade, and,
+if he is a known man, that book won’t sell.”
+
+“You talk quite feelingly,” said Angela, who was getting rather bored,
+and wanted, not unnaturally, to hear more about her own lines.
+
+“Yes,” replied Arthur, grimly; “I do. Once I was fool enough to write a
+book, but I must tell you that it is a painful subject with me. It
+never came out. Nobody would have it.”
+
+“Oh! Arthur, I am so sorry; I should like to read your book. But, as
+regards the verses, I am glad that you like them, and I really don’t
+care what a hypothetical general public would say; I wrote them to
+please you, not the general public.”
+
+“Well, my dear, I am sure I am much obliged to you; I shall value them
+doubly, once for the giver’s sake, and once for their own.”
+
+Angela blushed, but did not reprove the term of endearment which had
+slipped unawares from his lips. Poetry is a dangerous subject between
+two young people who at heart adore one another; it is apt to excite
+the brain, and bring about startling revelations.
+
+The following day the reading of Angela’s piece of poetry was rendered
+remarkable by two events, of which the first was that the weather
+suddenly turned a somersault, and became beautifully warm; and the
+second that news reached the Abbey House that, thanks chiefly to Lady
+Bellamy’s devoted nursing—who, fearless of infection, had, to the great
+admiration of all her neighbours, volunteered her services when no
+nurse could be found to undertake the case—George was pronounced out of
+danger. This piece of news was peculiarly grateful to Philip, for, had
+his cousin died, the estates must have passed away for ever under the
+terms of his uncle’s will, for he knew that George had made none.
+Angela, too, tried, like a good girl as she was, to lash herself into
+enthusiasm about it, though in her heart she went as near hating her
+cousin, since his attempted indignity towards herself, as her gentle
+nature would allow. Arthur alone was cynically indifferent; he hated
+George without any reservation whatsoever.
+
+And after this there came for our pair of embryo lovers some ten or
+twelve such happy days (for there was no talk of Arthur’s departure,
+Philip having on several occasions pointedly told him that the house
+was at his disposal for as long as he chose to remain in it). The sky
+was blue in those days, or only flecked with summer clouds, just as
+Arthur and Angela’s perfect companionship was flecked and shaded with
+the deeper hues of dawning passion. Alas, the sky in this terrestrial
+clime is never _quite_ blue!
+
+But as yet nothing of love had passed between them, no kiss or word of
+endearment; only when hand touched hand a strange thrill had moved them
+both, and sent the warm blood to stain Angela’s clear brow, like a
+wavering tint of sunlight thrown upon the marble features of some white
+Venus; only in each other’s eyes they found a holy mystery. The spell
+was not yet fully at work, but the wand of earth’s great enchanter had
+touched them, and they were changed. Angela is hardly the same girl she
+was when we met her a little more than a fortnight back. A nameless
+change has come over her face and manner; the merry smile, once so
+bright, has grown softer and more sweet, and the laughing light of her
+grey eyes has given place to a look of some such gratitude and wonder,
+as that with which the traveller in lonely deserts gazes on the oasis
+of his perfect rest.
+
+Many times Arthur had almost blurted out the truth to the woman he
+passionately adored, and every day so added to the suppressed fire of
+his love that at length he felt that he could not keep his secret to
+himself much longer. And yet he feared to tell it; better, he thought,
+to live happy, if in doubt, than to risk all his fortune on a single
+throw, for before his eyes there lay the black dread of failure; and
+then, what would life be worth? Here with Angela he lived in a Garden
+of Eden that no forebodings, no anxieties, no fear of that partially
+scotched serpent George, could render wretched, so long as it was
+gladdened by the presence of her whom he hoped to make his Eve. But
+without, and around where she could not be, there was nothing but clods
+and thistles and a black desolation that, even in imagination, he dared
+not face.
+
+And Angela, gazing on veiled mysteries with wondering eyes, was she
+happy during those spring-tide days? Almost; but still there was in her
+heart a consciousness of effort, a sense of transformation and
+knowledge of the growth of hidden things. The bud bursting into the
+glory of the rose, must, if there be feeling in a rose, undergo some
+such effort before it can make its beauty known; the butterfly but
+newly freed from the dull husk that hid its splendours, at first must
+feel the imperfect wings it stretches in the sun to be irksome to its
+unaccustomed sense. And so it was with Angela; she spread her half-
+grown wings in the sun of her new existence, and found them strange,
+not knowing as yet that they were shaped to bear her to the flower-
+crowned heights of love.
+
+Hers was one of those rare natures in which the passion that we know by
+the generic term of love, approached as near perfection as is possible
+in our human hearts. For there are many sorts and divisions of love,
+ranging from the affection, pure, steady, and divine, that is showered
+upon us from above, to the degrading madness of such a one as George
+Caresfoot. It is surely one of the saddest evidences of our poor
+humanity that, even among the purest of us, there are none who can
+altogether rid the whiteness of the love they have to offer of its
+earthly stain. Indeed, if we could so far conquer the promptings of our
+nature as to love with perfect purity, we should become like angels.
+But, just as white flowers are sometimes to be found on the blackest
+peak, so there do bloom in the world spirits as pure as they are
+rare—so free from evil, so closely shadowed by the Almighty wing, that
+they can almost reach to this perfection. Then the love they have to
+give is too refined, too holy and strong, to be understood of the mass
+of men: often it is squandered on some unequal and unanswering nature;
+sometimes it is wisely offered up to Him from whom it came.
+
+We gaze upon an ice-bound river, and there is nothing to tell us that
+beneath that white cloak its current rushes to the ocean. But presently
+the spring comes, the prisoned waters burst their fetters, and we see a
+glad torrent sparkling in the sunlight. And so it was with our
+heroine’s heart; the breath of Arthur’s passion and the light of
+Arthur’s eyes had beat upon it, and almost freed the river of its love.
+Already the listener might hear the ice-sheets crack and start; soon
+they will be gone, and her deep devotion will set as strong towards him
+as the tide of the torrent towards its receiving sea.
+
+“Fine writing!” perhaps the reader will say; but surely none too fine
+to describe the most beautiful thing in this strange world, the
+irrevocable gift of a good woman’s love!
+
+However that may be, it will have served its purpose if it makes it
+clear that a crisis is at hand in the affairs of the heart of two of
+the central actors on this mimic stage.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+One Saturday morning, when May was three-parts gone, Philip announced
+his intention of going up to London till the Monday on business. He was
+a man who had long since become callous to appearances, and though
+Arthur, fearful lest spiteful things should be said of Angela, almost
+hinted that it would look odd, his host merely laughed, and said that
+he had little doubt but that his daughter was quite able to look after
+herself, even when such a fascinating young gentleman as himself was
+concerned. As a matter of fact, his object was to get rid of Angela by
+marrying her to this young Heigham, who had so opportunely tumbled down
+from the skies, and whom he rather liked than otherwise. This being the
+case, he rightly concluded that, the more the two were left together,
+the greater probability there was of his object being attained.
+Accordingly he left them together as much as possible.
+
+It was on the evening of this Saturday that Arthur gathered up his
+courage and asked Angela to come and walk through the ruins with him.
+Angela hesitated a little; the shadow of something about to happen had
+fallen on her mind; but the extraordinary beauty of the evening, to say
+nothing of the prospect of his company, turned the scale in Arthur’s
+favour.
+
+It was one of those nights of which, if we are lucky, we get some five
+or six in the course of an English summer. The moon was at her full,
+and, the twilight ended, she filled the heavens with her light. Every
+twig and blade of grass showed out as clearly as in the day, but looked
+like frosted silver. The silence was intense, and so still was the air
+that the sharp shadows of the trees were motionless upon the grass,
+only growing with the growing hours. It was one of those nights that
+fill us with an indescribable emotion, bringing us into closer
+companionship with the unseen than ever does the garish, busy day. In
+such an hour, we can sometimes feel, or think that we can feel, other
+presences around us, and involuntarily we listen for the whisper of the
+wings and the half-forgotten voices of our beloved.
+
+On this particular evening some such feeling was stirring in Angela’s
+heart as with slow steps she led the way into the little village
+churchyard, a similar spot to that which is to be found in many a
+country parish, except that, the population being very small, there
+were but few recent graves. Most of the mounds had no head-stones to
+recall the names of the neglected dead, but here and there were dotted
+discoloured slabs, some sunk a foot or two into the soil, a few lying
+prone upon it, and the remainder thrown by the gradual subsidence of
+their supports into every variety of angle, as though they had been
+suddenly halted in the maddest whirl of a grotesque dance of death.
+
+Picking her way through these, Angela stopped under an ancient yew,
+and, pointing to one of the two shadowed mounds to which the moonlight
+scarcely struggled, said, in a low voice,
+
+“That is my mother’s grave.”
+
+It was a modest tenement enough, a little heap of close green turf,
+surrounded by a railing, and planted with sweet-williams and forget-
+me-nots. At its head was placed a white marble cross, on which Arthur
+could just distinguish the words “Hilda Caresfoot,” and the date of
+death.
+
+He was about to speak, but she stopped him with a gentle movement, and
+then, stepping forward to the head of the railing, she buried her face
+in her hands, and remained motionless. Arthur watched her with
+curiosity. What, he wondered, was passing in the mind of this strange
+and beautiful woman, who had grown up so sweet and pure amidst moral
+desolation, like a white lily blooming alone on the black African
+plains in winter? Suddenly she raised her head, and saw the inquiring
+look he bent upon her. She came towards him, and, in that sweet, half-
+pleading voice which was one of her greatest charms, she said,
+
+“I fear you think me very foolish?”
+
+“Why should I think you foolish?”
+
+“Because I have come here at night to stand before a half-forgotten
+grave.”
+
+“I do not think you foolish, indeed. I was only wondering what was
+passing in your mind.”
+
+Angela hung her head and made no answer, and the clock above them
+boomed out the hour, raising its sullen note in insolent defiance of
+the silence. What is it that is so solemn about the striking of the
+belfry-clock when one stands in a churchyard at night? Is it that the
+hour softens our natures, and makes them more amenable to semi-
+superstitious influences? Or is it that the thousand evidences of
+departed mortality which surround us, appealing with dumb force to
+natural fears, throw open for a space the gates of our world-sealed
+imagination, to tenant its vast halls with prophetic echoes of our end?
+Perhaps it is useless to inquire. The result remains the same: few of
+us can hear those tones at night without a qualm, and, did we put our
+thoughts into words, they would run something thus:
+
+“That sound once broke upon the living ears of those who sleep around
+us. We hear it now. In a little while, hour after hour, it will echo
+against the tombstones of _our_ graves, and new generations, coming out
+of the silent future, will stand where we stand, and hearken; and muse,
+as we mused, over the old problems that we have gone to solve; whilst
+we—shall we not be deaf to hear and dumb to utter?”
+
+Such, at any rate, were the unspoken thoughts that crept into the
+hearts of Arthur and Angela as the full sound from the belfry thinned
+itself away into silence. She grew a little pale, and glanced at him,
+and he gave an involuntary shiver, while even the dog Aleck sniffed and
+whined uncomfortably.
+
+“It feels cold,” he said. “Shall we go?”
+
+They turned and walked towards the gate, and, by the time they reached
+it, all superstitious thoughts had vanished—at any rate, from Arthur’s
+mind, for he recollected that he had set himself a task to do, and that
+now would be the time to do it. Absorbed in this reflection, he forgot
+his politeness, and passed first through the turnstile. On the further
+side he paused, and looked earnestly into his beloved’s face. Their
+eyes met, and there was that in his that caused her to swiftly drop her
+own. A silence ensued as they stood by the gate. He broke it.
+
+“It is a lovely night. Let us walk through the ruins.”
+
+“I shall wet my feet: the dew must be falling.”
+
+“There is no dew falling to-night. Won’t you come?”
+
+“Let us go to-morrow; it is later than I generally go in. Pigott will
+wonder what has become of me.”
+
+“Never mind Pigott. The night is too fine to waste asleep; besides, you
+know, one should always look at ruins by moonlight. Please come.”
+
+She looked at him doubtfully, hesitated, and came.
+
+“What do you want to see?” she said presently, with as near an approach
+to irritation as he had ever heard her indulge in. “That is the famous
+window that Mr. Fraser always goes into raptures about.”
+
+“It is beautiful. Shall we sit down here and look at it?”
+
+They sat down on a low mass of fallen masonry some fifteen paces from
+the window. Around them lay a delicate tracery of shadows, whilst they
+themselves were seated in the eye of the moonlight, and remained for a
+while as silent and as still as though they had been the shades of the
+painted figures that had once filled the stony frame above them.
+
+“Angela,” he said at length—“Angela, listen, and I will tell you
+something. My mother, a woman to whom sorrow had become almost an
+inspiration, when she was dying, spoke to me something thus: ‘There
+is,’ she said, ‘but one thing that I know of that has the power to make
+life happy as God meant it to be, and as the folly and weakness of men
+and women render it nearly impossible for it to be, and that is —love.
+Love has been the consolation of my own existence in the midst of many
+troubles; first, the great devotion I bore your father, and then that
+which I entertain for yourself. Without these two ties, life would
+indeed have been a desert. And yet, though it is a grief to me to leave
+you, and though I shrink from the dark passage that lies before me, so
+far does that first great love outweigh the love I bear you, that in my
+calmer moments I am glad to go, because I know I am awaited by your
+father. And from this I wish you to learn a lesson: look for your
+happiness in life from the love of your life, for there only will you
+find it. Do not fritter away your heart, but seek out some woman, some
+one good and pure and true, and in giving her your devotion, you will
+reap a full reward, for her happiness will reflect your own, and, if
+your choice is right, you will, however stormy your life may be, lay up
+for yourself, as I feel that I have done, an everlasting joy.’”
+
+She listened to him in silence.
+
+“Angela,” he went on, boldly enough, now that the ice was broken, “I
+have often thought about what my mother said, but until now I have
+never _quite_ understood her meaning. I do understand it now. Angela,
+do _you_ understand me?”
+
+There was no answer; she sat there upon the fallen masonry, gazing at
+the ruins round her, motionless and white as a marble goddess,
+forgotten in her desecrated fane.
+
+“Oh, Angela, listen to me—listen to me! I have found the woman of whom
+my mother spoke, who must be so ‘good and pure and true.’ You are she.
+I love you, Angela, I love you with my whole life and soul; I love you
+for this world and the next. Oh! do not reject me; though I am so
+little worthy of you, I will try to grow so. Dearest, can you love me?”
+
+Still there was silence, but he thought that he saw her breast heave
+gently. Then he placed his hand, all trembling with the fierce emotion
+that throbbed along his veins, upon the palm that hung listless by her
+side, and gazed into her eyes. Still she neither spoke nor shrank, and,
+in the imperfect light, her face looked very pale, while her lovely
+eyes were dark and meaningless as those of one entranced.
+
+Then slowly he gathered up his courage for an effort, and, raising his
+face to the level of her own, he kissed her full upon her lips. She
+stirred, she sighed. He had broken the spell; the sweet face that had
+withdrawn itself drew nearer to him; for a second the awakened eyes
+looked into his own, and filled them with reflected splendour, and then
+he became aware of a warm arm thrown about his neck, and next— the
+stars grew dim, and sense and life itself seemed to shake upon their
+thrones, for a joy almost too great for mortal man to bear took
+possession of his heart as she laid her willing lips upon his own. And
+then, before he knew her purpose, she slid down upon her knees beside
+him, and placed her head upon his breast.
+
+“Dearest,” he said, “don’t kneel so; look at me.”
+
+Slowly she raised her face, wreathed and lovely with many blushes, and
+looked upon him with tearful eyes. He tried to raise her.
+
+“Let me be,” she said, speaking very low. “I am best so; it is the
+attitude of adoration, and I have found—my divinity.”
+
+“But I cannot bear to see you kneel to me.”
+
+“Oh! Arthur, you do not understand; a minute since _I_ did not
+understand that a woman is very humble when she really loves.”
+
+“Do you—really love me, Angela?”
+
+“I do.”
+
+“Have you known that long?”
+
+“I only _knew_ it when—when you kissed me. Before then there was
+something in my heart, but I did not know what it was. Listen, dear,”
+she went on, “for one minute to me first, and I will get up” (for he
+was again attempting to raise her). “What I have to say is best said
+upon my knees, for I want to thank God who sent you to me, and to thank
+you too for your goodness. It is so wonderful that you should love a
+simple girl like me, and I am so thankful to you. Oh! I have never
+lived till now, and” (rising to her full stature) “I feel as though I
+had been crowned a queen of happy things. Dethrone me, desert me, and I
+will still be grateful to you for this hour of imperial happiness. But
+if you, after a while, when you know all my faults and imperfections
+better, can still care for me, I know that there is something in me
+that will enable me to repay you for what you have given me, by making
+your whole life happy. Dear, I do not know if I speak as other women
+do, but, believe me, it is out of the fulness of my heart. Take care,
+Arthur, oh! take care, lest your fate should be that of the magician
+you spoke of the other day, who evoked the spirit, and then fell down
+before it in terror. You have also called up a spirit, and I pray that
+it was not done in sport, lest it should trouble you hereafter.”
+
+“Angela, do not speak so to me; it is I who should have knelt to you.
+Yes, you were right when you called yourself ‘a queen of happy things.’
+You are a queen——”
+
+“Hush! Don’t overrate me; your disillusion will be the more painful.
+Come, Arthur, let us go home.”
+
+He rose and went with her, in a dream of joy that for a moment
+precluded speech. At the door she bade him good-night, and, oh!
+happiness, gave him her lips to kiss. Then they parted, their hearts
+too full for words. One thing he asked her, however.
+
+“What was it that took you to your mother’s grave to-night?”
+
+She looked at him with a curiously mixed expression of shy love and
+conviction on her face, and answered,
+
+“Her spirit, who led me to your heart.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+George’s recovery, when the doctors had given up all hope, was
+sufficiently marvellous to suggest the idea that a certain power had
+determined—on the hangman’s principle, perhaps—to give him the longest
+of ropes; but it could in reality be traced to a more terrestrial
+influence—namely, Lady Bellamy’s nursing. Had it not been for this
+nursing, it is very certain that her patient would have joined his
+forefathers in the Bratham churchyard. For whole days and nights she
+watched and tended him, scarcely closing her own eyes, and quite
+heedless of the danger of infection; till in the end she conquered the
+fever, and snatched him from the jaws of the grave. How often has not a
+woman’s devotion been successful in such a struggle!
+
+On the Monday following the events narrated in the last chapter,
+George, now in an advanced stage of convalescence, though forbidden to
+go abroad for another fortnight, was sitting downstairs enjoying the
+warm sunshine, and the sensation of returning life and vigour that was
+creeping into his veins, when Lady Bellamy came into the room, bringing
+with her some medicine.
+
+“Here is your tonic, George; it is the last dose that I can give you,
+as I am going back to my disconsolate husband at luncheon-time.”
+
+“I can’t have you go away yet; I am not well enough.”
+
+“I must go, George; people will begin to talk if I stop here any
+longer.”
+
+“Well, if you must, I suppose you must,” he answered, sulkily. “But I
+must say I think that you show a great want of consideration for my
+comfort. Who is to look after me, I should like to know? I am far from
+well yet—far from well.”
+
+“Believe me,” she said, softly, “I am very sorry to leave you, and am
+glad to have been of help to you, though you have never thought much
+about it.”
+
+“Oh, I am sure I am much obliged, but it is not likely that you would
+leave me to rot of fever without coming to look after me.”
+
+She sighed as she answered,
+
+“You would not do as much for me.”
+
+“Oh, bother, Anne, don’t get sentimental. Before you go, I must speak
+to you about that girl Angela. Have you taken any steps?”
+
+Lady Bellamy started.
+
+“What, are you still bent upon that project?”
+
+“Of course I am. It seemed to me that all my illness was one long dream
+of her. I am more bent upon it than ever.”
+
+“And do you still insist upon my playing the part you had marked out
+for me? Do you know, George, that there were times in your illness
+when, if I had relaxed my care for a single five minutes, it would have
+turned the scale against you, and that once I did not close my eyes for
+five nights? Look at me, how thin and worn I am: it is from nursing
+you. I have saved your life. Surely you will not now force me to do
+this unnatural thing.”
+
+“If, my dear Anne, you had saved my life fifty times, I would still
+force you to do it. Ah! it is no use your looking at that safe. I have
+no doubt that you got my keys and searched it whilst I was ill, but I
+was too sharp for you. I had the letters moved when I heard that you
+were coming to nurse me. They are back there now, though. How
+disappointed you must have been!” And he chuckled.
+
+“I should have done better to let you die, monster of wickedness and
+ingratitude that you are!” she said, stamping her foot upon the floor,
+and the tears of vexation standing in her eyes.
+
+“The letters, my dear Anne; remember that you have got to earn your
+letters. I am very much obliged to you for your nursing, but business
+is business.”
+
+She was silent for a moment, and then spoke in her ordinary tone.
+
+“By the way, talking of letters, there was one came for you this
+morning in your cousin Philip’s handwriting, and with a London
+postmark. Will you read it?”
+
+“Read it—yes; anything from the father of my inamorata will be
+welcome.”
+
+She fetched the letter and gave it him. He read it aloud. After a page
+of congratulations on his convalescence, it ended,
+
+“And now I want to make a proposal to you—viz., to buy back the
+Isleworth lands from you. I know that the place is distasteful to you,
+and will probably be doubly so after your severe illness; but, if you
+care to keep the house and grounds, I am not particularly anxious to
+acquire them. I am prepared to offer a good price,” &c. &c.
+
+“I’ll see him hanged first,” was George’s comment. “How did he get the
+money?”
+
+“Saved it and made it, I suppose.”
+
+“Well, at any rate, he shall not buy me out with it. No, no, Master
+Philip; I am not fond enough of you to do you that turn.”
+
+“It does not strike you,” she said, coldly, “that you hold in your
+hands a lever that may roll all your difficulties about this girl out
+of the way.”
+
+“By Jove, you are right, Anne. Trust a woman’s brain. But I don’t want
+to sell the estates unless I am forced to.”
+
+“Would you rather part with the land, or give up your project of
+marrying Angela Caresfoot?”
+
+“Why do you ask?”
+
+“Because you will have to choose between the two.”
+
+“Then I had rather sell.”
+
+“You had better give it up, George. I am not superstitious, but I have
+knowledge in things that you do not understand, and I foresee nothing
+but disaster in this plan.”
+
+“Once and for all, Anne, I will not give it up whilst I have any breath
+left in my body, and I take my oath that unless you help me, and help
+me honestly, I will expose you.”
+
+“Oh! I am your very humble servant; you may count on me. The galley-
+slave pulls well when the lash hangs over his shoulders,” and she
+laughed coldly.
+
+Just then a servant announced that Mr. Caresfoot was at the door, and
+anxious to speak to his cousin. He was ordered to show him into the
+drawing-room. As soon as he had gone on his errand, George said,
+
+“I will not see him; say I am too unwell. But do you go, and see that
+you make the most of your chance.”
+
+Lady Bellamy nodded, and left the room. She found Philip in the
+drawing-room.
+
+“Ah! how do you do, Mr. Caresfoot? I come from your cousin to say that
+he cannot see you to-day; he has scarcely recovered sufficiently from
+the illness through which I have been nursing him; but of course you
+know all about that.”
+
+“Oh! yes, Lady Bellamy, I have heard all about it, including your own
+brave behaviour, to which, the doctor tells me, George owes his life. I
+am sorry that he cannot see me, though. I have just come down from
+town, and called in on my way from Roxham. I had some rather important
+business that I wanted to speak about.”
+
+“About your offer to repurchase the Isleworth lands?” she asked.
+
+“Ah! you know of the affair. Yes, that was it.”
+
+“Then I am commissioned to give you a reply.”
+
+Philip listened anxiously.
+
+“Your cousin absolutely refuses to sell any part of the lands.”
+
+“Will nothing change his determination? I am ready to give a good
+price, and pay a separate valuation for the timber.”
+
+“Nothing; he does not intend to sell.”
+
+A deep depression spread itself over her hearer’s face.
+
+“Then there go the hopes of twenty years,” he said. “For twenty long
+years, ever since my misfortune, I have toiled and schemed to get these
+lands back, and now it is all for nothing. Well, there is nothing more
+to be said,” and he turned to go.
+
+“Stop a minute, Mr. Caresfoot. Do you know, you interest me very much.”
+
+“I am proud to interest so charming a lady,” he answered, a touch of
+depressed gallantry.
+
+“That is as it should be; but you interest me because you are an
+instance of the truth of the saying that every man has some ruling
+passion, if only one could discover it. Why do you want these
+particular lands? Your money will buy others just as good.”
+
+“Why does a Swiss get home-sick? Why does a man defrauded of his own
+wish to recover it?”
+
+Lady Bellamy mused a little.
+
+“What would you say if I showed you an easy way to get them?”
+
+Philip turned sharply round with a new look of hope upon his face.
+
+“You would earn my eternal gratitude—a gratitude that I should be glad
+to put into a practical shape.”
+
+She laughed.
+
+“Oh! you must speak to Sir John about that. Now listen; I am going to
+surprise you. Your cousin wants to get married.”
+
+“Get married! George wants to get married!”
+
+“Exactly so; and now I have a further surprise in store for you—he
+wants to marry your daughter Angela.”
+
+This time Philip said nothing, but he started in evident and
+uncomfortable astonishment. If Lady Bellamy wished to surprise him, she
+had certainly succeeded.
+
+“Surely you are joking!” he said.
+
+“I never was further from joking in my life; he is desperately in love
+with her, and wild to marry her.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Well, don’t you now see a way to force your cousin to sell the lands?”
+
+“At the price of Angela’s hand?”
+
+“Precisely.”
+
+Philip walked up and down the room in thought. Though, as the reader
+may remember, he had himself, but a month before, been base enough to
+suggest that his daughter should use her eyes to forward his projects,
+he had never, in justice to him be it said, dreamt of forcing her into
+a marriage in every way little less than unnatural. His idea of
+responsibility towards his daughter was, as regards sins of omission,
+extremely lax, but there were some of commission that he did not care
+to face. Certain fears and memories oppressed him too much to allow of
+it.
+
+“Lady Bellamy,” he said, presently, “you have known my cousin George
+intimately for many years, and are probably sufficiently acquainted
+with his habits of life to know that such a marriage would be an
+infamy.”
+
+“Many a man who has been wild in his youth makes a good husband,” she
+answered, quietly.
+
+“The more I think of it,” went on Philip, excitedly, after the fashion
+of one who would lash himself into a passion, “the more I see the utter
+impossibility of any such thing, and I must say that I wonder at your
+having undertaken such an errand. On the one hand, there is a young
+girl who, though I do not, from force of circumstances, see much of
+myself, is, I believe, as good as she is handsome——”
+
+“And on the other,” broke in Lady Bellamy, ironically, “are the
+Isleworth estates.”
+
+“And on the other,” went on Philip, without paying heed to her remark
+—“I am going to speak plainly, Lady Bellamy—is a man utterly devoid of
+the foundations of moral character, whose appearance is certainly
+against him, who I have got reason to know is not to be trusted, and
+who is old enough to be her father, and her cousin to boot—and you ask
+me to forward such a marriage as this! I will have nothing to do with
+it; my responsibilities as a father forbid it. It would be the
+wickedest thing I have ever done to put the girl into the power of such
+a man.”
+
+Lady Bellamy burst into a low peal of laughter; she never laughed
+aloud. She thought that it was now time to throw him a little off his
+balance.
+
+“Forgive me,” she said, with her sweetest smile, “but you must admit
+that there is something rather ludicrous in hearing the hero of the
+great Maria Lee scandal talking about moral character, and the father
+who detests his daughter so much that he fears to look her in the face,
+and whose sole object is to rid himself of an encumbrance, prating of
+his paternal responsibilities.”
+
+Philip started visibly at her words.
+
+“Ah! Mr. Caresfoot,” she went on, “I surprise you by my knowledge, but
+we women are sad spies, and it is my little amusement to find out other
+people’s secrets, a very useful little amusement. I could tell you many
+things——”
+
+“I was about to say,” broke in Philip, who had naturally no desire to
+see more of the secrets of his life unveiled by Lady Bellamy, “that,
+even if I did wish to get rid of Angela, I should have little
+difficulty in doing so, as young Heigham, who has been stopping at the
+Abbey House for a fortnight or so, is head over ears in love with her;
+indeed, I should think it highly probable that they are at this moment
+engaged.”
+
+It was Lady Bellamy’s turn to start now.
+
+“Ah!” she said, “I did not know that; that complicates matters.” And
+then, with a sudden change of tone—“Mr. Caresfoot, as a friend, let me
+beg of you not to throw away such a chance in a hurry for the sake of a
+few nonsensical ideas abut a girl. What is she, after all, that she
+should stand in the way of such grave interests as you have in hand? I
+tell you that he is perfectly mad about her. You can make your own
+terms and fix your own price.”
+
+“Price! ay, that is what it would be—a price for her body and soul.”
+
+“Well, and what of it? The thing is done every day, only one does not
+talk of it in that way.”
+
+“Who taught you, who were once a young girl yourself, to plead such a
+cause as this?”
+
+“Nonsense, it is a very good cause—a cause that will benefit everybody,
+especially your daughter. George will get what he wants; you, with the
+recovery of the estates, will also recover your lost position and
+reputation, both to a great extent an affair of landed property. Mr.
+Heigham will gain a little experience, whilst she will bloom into a
+great lady, and, like any other girl in the same circumstances, learn
+to adore her husband in a few months.”
+
+“And what will _you_ get, Lady Bellamy?”
+
+“I!” she replied, with a gay laugh. “Oh! you know, virtue is its own
+reward. I shall be quite satisfied in seeing everybody else made happy.
+Come, I do not want to press you about the matter at present. Think it
+over at your leisure. I only beg you not to give a decided answer to
+young Heigham, should he ask you for Angela, till I have seen you
+again—say, in a week’s time. Then, if you don’t like it, you can leave
+it alone, and nobody will be a penny the worse.”
+
+“As you like; but I tell you that I can never consent;” and Philip took
+his leave.
+
+“Your cousin entirely refuses his consent, and Angela is by this time
+probably engaged to your ex-ward, Arthur Heigham,” was Lady Bellamy’s
+not very promising report to the interesting invalid in the dining-
+room.
+
+After relieving his feelings at this intelligence in language more
+forcible than polite, George remarked that, under these circumstances,
+matters looked very bad.
+
+“Not at all; they look very well. I shall see your cousin again in a
+week’s time, when I shall have a different tale to tell.”
+
+“Why wait a week with that young blackguard making the running on the
+spot?”
+
+“Because I have put poison into Philip’s mind, and the surest poison
+always works slow. Besides, the mischief has been done. Good-by. I will
+come and see you in a day or two, when I have made my plans. You see I
+mean to earn my letters.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+With what degree of soundness our pair of lovers slumbered on that
+memorable Saturday night, let those who have been so fortunate or
+unfortunate as to have been placed in analogous circumstances, form
+their own opinion.
+
+It is, however, certain that Arthur gazed upon the moon and sundry of
+the larger planets for some hours, until they unkindly set, and left
+him, for his candle had burnt out, to find his way to bed in the dark.
+With his reflections we will not trouble ourselves; or, rather, we will
+not intrude upon their privacy. But there was another person in the
+house who sat at an open window and looked upon the heavens— Angela to
+wit. Let us avail ourselves of our rightful privilege, and look into
+her thoughts.
+
+Arthur’s love had come upon her as a surprise, but it had found a
+perfect home. All the days and hours that she had spent in his company,
+had, unknown to herself, been mysteriously employed in preparing a
+habitation to receive it. We all know the beautiful Bible story of the
+Creation, how first there was an empty void, and the Spirit brooding on
+the waters, then light, and then life, and last, man coming to turn all
+things to his uses. Surely that story, which is the type and symbol of
+many things, is of none more so than of the growth and birth of a
+perfected love in the human heart.
+
+The soil is made ready in the dead winter, and receives the seed into
+its bosom. Then comes the spring, and it is clothed with verdure. Space
+is void till the sun shoots its sudden rays athwart it, and makes it
+splendid; the heart is cold and unwitting of its ends, till the spirit
+broods upon it, as upon the waters, and it grows quick with the
+purposes of life. And then what a change is there! What has the flower
+in common with the seed from whence it sprang, or the noonday sky with
+the darkness before the dawn?
+
+Thinking in her chamber, with the night air playing on her hot brow,
+and her hand pressed upon her heart, as though to still the tumult of
+its joy, Angela grew vaguely conscious of these things.
+
+“Was she the same in heart and mind that she had been a month ago? No,
+a thousand times, no. Then what was this mysterious change that seemed
+to shake her inmost life to its foundations? What angel had troubled
+the waters into which she had so newly plunged? And whence came the
+healing virtue that she found in them, bringing rest after the vague
+trouble of the last two weeks, with sight to see the only good—her
+love, with speed to follow, and strength to hold? Oh, happy, happy
+world! oh, merciful Creator, who gave her to drink of such a living
+spring! oh, Arthur, beloved Arthur!”
+
+On Sunday mornings it was Pigott’s habit to relax the Draconian
+severity of her laws in the matter of breakfast, which, generally
+speaking, was not till about half-past eight o’clock. At that hour
+precisely, on the Sabbath in question, she appeared as usual—no, not as
+usual, for, it being Sunday, she had on her stiff, black gown—and, with
+all due solemnity, made the tea.
+
+A few minutes elapsed, and Angela entered, dressed in white, and very
+lovely in her simple, tight-fitting robe, but a trifle pale, and with a
+shy look upon her face.
+
+She greeted her nurse with a kiss.
+
+“Why, what is the matter with you, dearie?” ejaculated Pigott, whose
+watchful eye detected a change she could not define; “you look
+different somehow.”
+
+“Hush! I will tell you by-and-by.”
+
+At that moment Arthur’s quick step was heard advancing down the
+passage, together with a pattering noise that announced the presence of
+Aleck. And, as they came, Angela, poor Angela, grew red and redder, and
+yet more painfully red, till Pigott, watching her face, was enabled to
+form a shrewd guess as to what was the cause of her unaccustomed looks.
+
+On came the steps, and open flew the door, more and more ready to sink
+into the earth looked Angela, and so interested grew nurse Pigott, that
+she actually poured some hot tea on to her dress, a thing she could
+never remember having done before.
+
+The first to enter was Aleck, who, following his custom, sprang upon
+Angela and licked her hand, and behind Aleck, looking somewhat
+confused, but handsome and happy—for his was one of those faces that
+become handsome when their owners are happy—came Aleck’s master. And
+then there ensued an infinitesimal but most awkward pause.
+
+On such occasions as the present, namely, the first meeting after an
+engagement, there is always—especially when it occurs in the presence
+of a third person—a very considerable difficulty in the minds of the
+parties to know what demeanour they are to adopt towards one another.
+Are they to treat the little affair of the previous evening as a kind
+of confidential communication, not to be alluded to except in private
+conversation, and to drop into the Mr. and Miss of yesterday? That
+would certainly be the easiest, but then it would also be a decided act
+of mutual retreat. Or are they to rush into each other’s arms as
+becomes betrothed lovers? This process is so new that they feel that it
+still requires private rehearsal. And, meanwhile, time presses, and
+everybody is beginning to stare, and something _must_ be done.
+
+These were very much the feelings of Arthur and Angela. He hesitated
+before her, confused, and she kept her head down over the dog. But
+presently Aleck, getting bored, moved on, and, as it would have been
+inane to continue to stare at the floor, she had to raise herself as
+slowly as she might. Soon their eyes arrived in the same plane, and
+whether a mutual glance of intelligence was exchanged, or whether their
+power of attraction overcame his power of resistance, it is not easy to
+determine, but certain it is that, following a primary natural law,
+Arthur gravitated towards her, and kissed her on the face.
+
+“My!” exclaimed Pigott, and the milk-jug rolled unheeded on the floor.
+
+“Hum! I suppose I had better explain,” began he.
+
+“I think you have spilt the milk,” added she.
+
+“That we have become engaged and are——”
+
+“All to pieces, I declare,” broke in Angela, with her head somewhere
+near the carpet.
+
+And then they both laughed.
+
+“Well, I never, no, not in all my born days! Sir and Miss Angela, all I
+have got to say about this extraordinary proceeding”—they glanced at
+each other in alarm—“is that I am very glad to hear on it, and I hope
+and pray how as you may be happy, and, if you treat my Angela right,
+you’ll be just the happiest and luckiest man in the three kingdoms,
+including Ireland the Royal Family, and, if you treat her wrong, worse
+will come to you; and her poor mother’s last words, as I heard with my
+own ears, will come true to you, and serve you right— and there’s all
+the milk upon the floor. And God bless you both, my dears, is the
+prayer of an old woman.”
+
+And here the worthy soul broke down, and began to cry, nor were
+Angela’s eyes free from tears.
+
+After this little episode, breakfast proceeded in something like the
+usual way. Church was at 10.30, and, a while before the hour, Arthur
+and Angela strolled down to the spot that had already become as holy
+ground to them, and looked into each other’s eyes, and said again the
+same sweet words. Then they went on, and mingling with the little
+congregation—that did not number more than thirty souls—they passed
+into the cool quiet of the church.
+
+“Lawks!” said a woman, as they went by, “ain’t she just a beauty. What
+a pretty wedding they’d make!”
+
+Arthur overheard it, and noted the woman, and afterwards found a
+pretext to give her five shillings, because he said it was a lucky
+omen.
+
+On the communion-table of the pretty little church there was spread the
+“fair white cloth” of the rubric. It was the day for the monthly
+celebration of the Sacrament, that met the religious requirements of
+the village.
+
+“Will you stay to the Sacrament with me?” whispered Angela to her
+lover, in the interval between their seating themselves and the entry
+of the clergyman, Mr. Fraser’s _locum tenens_.
+
+Arthur nodded assent.
+
+And so, when the time came, those two went up together to the altar-
+rails, and, kneeling side by side, ate of the bread and drank of the
+cup, and, rising, departed thence with a new link between them. For, be
+sure, part of the prayers which they offered up at that high moment
+were in humble petition to the Almighty to set His solemn seal and
+blessing on their love. Indeed, so far as Angela was concerned, there
+were few acts of her simple life that she did not consecrate by prayer,
+how much more, then, was she bent on bringing this, the greatest of all
+her acts, before her Maker’s throne.
+
+Strange indeed, and full of a holy promise, is the yearning with which
+we turn to Heaven to seek sanctification of our deeds, feeling our
+weakness and craving strength from the source of strength; a yearning
+of which the church, with that subtle knowledge of human nature, which
+is one of the mainsprings of its power, has not been slow to avail
+itself. And this need is more especially felt in matters connected with
+the noblest of all passions, perhaps because all true love and all true
+religion come from a common home.
+
+Thus pledged to one another with a new and awful pledge, and knit
+together in the bonds of an universal love, embracing their poor
+affection as the wide skies embrace the earth, they rose, and went
+their ways, purer to worship, and stronger to endure.
+
+That afternoon, Arthur had a conversation with his betrothed that,
+partaking of a business nature in the beginning, ended rather oddly.
+
+“I must speak to your father when he comes back to-morrow, dear,” he
+began.
+
+“My father! Oh yes, I had forgotten about that;” and she looked a
+little anxious.
+
+“Fortunately, I am fairly well off, so I see no cause why he should
+object.”
+
+“Well, I think that he will be rather glad to get rid of Pigott and
+myself. You know that he is not very fond of me.”
+
+“That is strange want of taste on his part.”
+
+“Oh, I don’t know. Everybody does not see me with your eyes, Arthur.”
+
+“Because they have not the chance. All the world would love you, if it
+knew you. But, seriously, I think that he can hardly object, or he
+would not have allowed us to be thrown so much together; for, in nine
+cases out of ten, that sort of thing has only one result.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean that to import a young fellow into the house, and throw him
+solely into a daughter’s company, is very apt to bring about—well, what
+has been brought about.”
+
+“Then you mean that you think that I should have fallen in love with
+any gentleman who had come here?”
+
+Arthur, not seeing the slight flash of indignation in her eyes,
+replied,
+
+“Well, you know, there is always a risk, but I should imagine that it
+would very much depend upon the gentleman.”
+
+“Arthur”—with a little stamp—“I am ashamed of you. How can you think
+such things of me? You must have a very poor opinion of me.”
+
+“My dear, why should I suppose myself superior to anybody else, that
+you should only fall in love with me? You set too high a value on me.”
+
+“And you set too low a value on me; you do not understand me. You are
+my fate, my other self; how would it have been possible for me to love
+any one but you? I feel as though I had been travelling to meet you
+since the beginning of the world, to stand by your side till it
+crumbles away, yes, for eternity itself. Oh! Arthur, do not laugh at
+what I say. I am, indeed, only a simple girl, but, as I told you last
+night, there is something stirring in me now, my real life, my eternal
+part, something that you have awakened, and with which you have to
+deal, something apart from the _me_ you see before you. As I speak, I
+feel and know that when we are dead and gone, I shall love you still;
+when more ages have passed than there are leaves upon that tree, I
+shall love you still. Arthur, I am yours for ever, for the time that
+is, and is to be.”
+
+She spoke with the grand freedom of one inspired, nay, he felt that she
+was inspired, and the same feeling of awe that had come upon him when
+he first saw her face, again took possession of him. Taking her hand,
+he kissed it.
+
+“Dearest,” he said, “dearest Angela, who am I that you should love me
+so? What have I done that such a treasure should be given to me? I hope
+that it may be as you say!”
+
+“It will be as I say,” she answered, as she bent to kiss him. And they
+went on in silence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+Philip arrived home about one o’clock on the Monday, and, after their
+nursery dinner, Arthur made his way to the study, and soon found
+himself in the dread presence—for what presence is more dread (most
+people would rather face a chief-justice with the gout)—of the man
+whose daughter he was about to ask in marriage.
+
+Philip, whom he found seated by a tray, the contents of which he seemed
+in no humour to touch, received him with his customary politeness,
+saying, with a smile, that he hoped he had not come to tell him that he
+was sick of the place and its inhabitants, and was going away.
+
+“Far from it, Mr. Caresfoot, I come to speak to you on a very different
+subject.”
+
+Philip glanced up with a quick look of expectant curiosity, but said
+nothing.
+
+“In short,” said Arthur, desperately, “I come to ask you to sanction my
+engagement to Angela.”
+
+A pause—a very awkward pause—ensued.
+
+“You are, then, engaged to my daughter?”
+
+“Subject to your consent, I am.”
+
+Then came another pause.
+
+“You will understand me, Heigham, when I say that you take me rather by
+surprise in this business. Your acquaintance with her has been short.”
+
+“That is true, but I have seen a great deal of her.”
+
+“Perhaps; but she knows absolutely nothing of the world, and her
+preference for you—for, as you say you are engaged to her, I presume
+she has shown a preference—may be a mistake, merely a young girl’s
+romantic idea.”
+
+Arthur thought of his conversation of the previous day with Angela, and
+could not help smiling as he answered,
+
+“I think if you ask her that, she will tell you that is not the case.”
+
+“Heigham, I will be frank with you. I like you, and you have, I
+believe, sufficient means. Of course, you know that my daughter will
+have nothing—at any rate, till I am dead,” he added, quickly.
+
+“I never thought about the matter, but I shall be only too glad to
+marry her with nothing but herself.”
+
+“Very good. I was going to say that, notwithstanding this, marriage is
+an important matter; and I must have time to think over it before I
+give you a decided answer, say a week. I shall not, however, expect you
+to leave here unless you wish to do so, nor shall I seek to place any
+restrictions on your intercourse with Angela, since it would appear
+that the mischief is already done. I am flattered by your proposal; but
+I must have time, and you must understand that in this instance
+hesitation does not necessarily mean consent.”
+
+In affairs of this nature a man is satisfied with small mercies, and
+willing to put up with inconveniences that appear trifling in
+comparison with the disasters that might have overtaken him. Arthur was
+no exception to the general rule. Indeed, he was profuse in his thanks,
+and, buoyed up with all the confidence of youth, felt sure in his heart
+that he would soon find a way to extinguish any objections that might
+still linger in Philip’s mind.
+
+His would-be father-in-law contented himself with acknowledging his
+remarks with courtesy, and the interview came to an end.
+
+Arthur gone, however, his host lost all his calmness of demeanour, and,
+rising from his untasted meal, paced up and down the room in thought.
+Everything had, he reflected, fallen out as he wished. Young Heigham
+wished to marry his daughter, and he could not wish for a better
+husband. Save for the fatality which had sent that woman to him on her
+fiend’s errand, he would have given his consent at once, and been glad
+to give it. Not that he meant to refuse it—he had no such idea. And
+then he began to think what, supposing that Lady Bellamy’s embassy had
+been of a nature that he could entertain, which it was not, it would
+mean to him. It would mean the realization of the work and aspirations
+of twenty years; it would mean his re-entry into the property and
+position from which he had, according to his own view, been unjustly
+ousted; it would mean, last but not least, triumph over George. And now
+chance, mighty chance (as fools call Providence), had at last thrown
+into his hands a lever with which it would be easy to topple over every
+stumbling-block that lay in his path to triumph; more, he might even be
+able to spoil that Egyptian George, giving him less than his due.
+
+Oh, how he hungered for the broad acres of his birthright! longing for
+them as a lover longs for his lost bride. The opportunity would never
+come again; why should he throw it away? To do so would be to turn his
+cousin into an open and implacable foe. Why should he allow this girl,
+whose birth had bereft him of the only creature he had ever loved,
+whose sex had alienated the family estates, and for whose company he
+cared nothing, to come as a destruction on his plans? She would be
+well-off; the man loved her. As for her being engaged to this young
+Heigham, women soon got over those things. After all, now that he came
+to think of the matter calmly, what valid cause was there why the thing
+should not be?
+
+And as he paced to and fro, and thought thus, an answer came into his
+mind. For there rose up before him a vision of his dying wife, and
+there sounded in his ears the murmur of her half-forgotten voice, that,
+for all its broken softness, had, with its last accents, called down
+God’s winged vengeance and His everlasting doom on him who would harm
+her unprotected child. And, feeling that if he did this thing, on him
+would be the vengeance and the doom, he thought of the shadows of the
+night, and grew afraid.
+
+When Arthur and his host met, according to their custom, that evening,
+no allusion was made on either side to their conversation of the
+afternoon, nor did her father even speak a word to Angela on the
+subject. Life, to all appearance, went on in the old house precisely as
+though nothing had happened. Philip did not attempt to put the smallest
+restraint on Arthur and his daughter, and studiously shut his eyes to
+the pretty obvious signs of their mutual affection. For them, the long
+June days were golden, but all too short. Every morning found their
+mutual love more perfect, but when the flakes of crimson light faded
+from the skies, and night dropped her veil over the tall trees and
+peaceful lake, by some miracle it had grown deeper and more perfect
+still. Day by day, Arthur discovered new charms in Angela; here some
+hidden knowledge, there an unsuspected grace, and everywhere an
+all-embracing charity and love. Day by day he gazed deeper into the
+depths of her mind, and still there were more to plumb. For it was a
+storehouse of noble thoughts and high ambitions—ambitions, many of
+which could only find fulfilment in another world than this. And, the
+more he saw of her, the prouder he was to think that such a perfect
+creature should so dearly love himself; and with the greater joy did he
+look forward to that supreme and happy hour when he should call her
+his. And so day added itself to day, and found them happy.
+
+Indeed, the aspect of their fortunes seemed as smooth and smiling as
+the summer surface of the lake. About Philip’s final consent to their
+engagement they did not trouble themselves, judging, not unnaturally,
+that his conduct was in itself a guarantee of approval. If he meant to
+raise any serious objections, he would surely have done so before,
+Arthur would urge, and Angela would quite agree with him, and wonder
+what parent could find it in his heart to object to her bonnie-eyed
+lover.
+
+What a merciful provision of Providence it is that throws a veil over
+the future, only to be pierced by the keenest-eyed of Scotchmen! Where
+should we find a flavour in those unfrequent cups that the shyest of
+the gods, Joy, holds to our yearning lips, could we know of the bitter
+that lurks in the tinselled bowl? Surely we have much to be thankful
+for, but for nothing should we be so grateful as for this blessed
+impotence of foresight!
+
+But, as it is often on the bluest days that the mercury begins to sink
+beneath the breath of far-off hurricane, so there is a warning spirit
+implanted in sensitive minds that makes them mistrustful of too great
+happiness. We feel that, for most of us, the wheel of our fortunes
+revolves too quickly to allow of a long continuance of unbroken joy.
+
+“Arthur,” said Angela, one morning, when eight days had passed since
+her father’s return from town, “we are too happy. We should throw
+something into the lake.”
+
+“I have not got a ring, except the one you gave me,” he answered; for
+his signet was on her finger. “So, unless we sacrifice Aleck or the
+ravens, I don’t know what it is to be.”
+
+“Don’t joke, Arthur. I tell you we are too happy.”
+
+Could Arthur have seen through an acre or so of undergrowth as Angela
+uttered these words, he would have perceived a very smart page-boy with
+the Bellamy crest on his buttons delivering a letter to Philip. It is
+true that there was nothing particularly alarming about that, but its
+contents might have given a point to Angela’s forebodings. It ran thus:
+
+“Rewtham House, Monday.
+
+“My dear Mr. Caresfoot,
+
+“With reference to our conversation last week about your daughter and
+G., can you come over and have a quiet chat with me this afternoon?
+
+“Sincerely yours, “Anne Bellamy.”
+
+
+Philip read this note, and then re-read it, knowing in his heart that
+now was his opportunity to act up to his convictions, and put an end to
+the whole transaction in a few decisive words. But a man who has for so
+many years given place to the devil of avarice, even though it be
+avarice with a legitimate object, cannot shake himself free from his
+clothes in a moment; even when, as in Philip’s case, honour and right,
+to say nothing of a still more powerful factor, superstition, speak so
+loudly in his ears. Surely, he thought, there would be no harm in
+hearing what she had to say. He could explain his reasons for having
+nothing to do with the matter so much better in person. Such mental
+struggles have only one end. Presently the smart page-boy bore back
+this note:
+
+“Dear Lady Bellamy,
+
+“I will be with you at half-past three.
+
+“P.C.”
+
+
+It was with very curious sensations that Philip was that afternoon
+shown into a richly furnished boudoir in Rewtham House. He had not been
+in that room since he had talked to Maria Lee, sitting on that very
+sofa now occupied by Lady Bellamy’s still beautiful form, and he could
+not but feel that it was a place of evil omen for him.
+
+Lady Bellamy rose to greet him with her most fascinating smile.
+
+“This is very kind,” she said, as she motioned him to a seat, which
+Philip afterwards discovered had been carefully arranged so as to put
+his features in the full light, whilst, sitting on the sofa, her own
+were concealed. “Well, Mr. Caresfoot,” she began, after a little pause,
+“I suppose I had better come to the point at once. First of all, I
+presume that, as you anticipated would be the case, there exists some
+sort of understanding between Mr. Heigham and your daughter.”
+
+Philip nodded.
+
+“Well, your cousin is as determined as ever about the matter. Indeed,
+he is simply infatuated or bewitched, I really don’t know which.”
+
+“I am sorry for it, Lady Bellamy, as I cannot——”
+
+“One moment, Mr. Caresfoot; first let me tell you his offer, then we
+can talk it over. He offers, conditionally on his marriage with your
+daughter, to sell you the Isleworth estates at a fair valuation
+hereafter to be agreed upon, and to make a large settlement.”
+
+“And what part does he wish me to play in the matter?”
+
+“This. First, you must get rid of young Heigham, and prevent him from
+holding _any_ communication, either with Angela herself, or with any
+other person connected with this place, for one year from the date of
+his departure. Secondly, you must throw no obstacle in George’s path.
+Thirdly, if required, you must dismiss her old nurse, Pigott.”
+
+“It cannot be, Lady Bellamy. I came here to tell you so. I dare not
+force my daughter into such a marriage for all the estates in England.”
+
+Lady Bellamy laughed.
+
+“It is amusing,” she said, “to see a father afraid of his own daughter;
+but you are over-hasty, Mr. Caresfoot. Who asked you to force her? All
+you are asked to do is not to interfere, and leave the rest to myself
+and George. You will have nothing to do with it one way or the other,
+nor will any responsibility rest with you. Besides, it is very probable
+that your cousin will live down his fancy, or some other obstacle will
+arise to put an end to the thing, in which case Mr. Heigham will come
+back at the end of his year’s probation, and events will take their
+natural course. It is only wise and right that you should try the
+constancy of these young lovers, instead of letting them marry out of
+hand. If, on the other hand, Angela should in the course of the year
+declare a preference for her cousin, surely that will be no affair of
+yours.”
+
+“I don’t understand what your interest is in this matter, Lady
+Bellamy.”
+
+“My dear Mr. Caresfoot, what does my interest matter to you? Perhaps I
+have one, perhaps I have not; all women love match-making, you know;
+what really is important is your decision,” and she shot a glance at
+him from the heavy-lidded eyes, only to recognize that he was not
+convinced by her arguments, or, if convinced, obstinate. “By the way,”
+she went on, slowly, “George asked me to make a payment to you on his
+account, money that has, he says, been long owing, but which it has not
+hitherto been convenient to repay.”
+
+“What is the sum?” asked Philip, abstractedly.
+
+“A large one; a thousand pounds.”
+
+It did not require the peculiar intonation she threw into her voice to
+make the matter clear to him. He was well aware that no such sum was
+owing.
+
+“Here is the cheque,” she went on; and, taking from her purse a signed
+and crossed cheque upon a London banker, she unfolded it and threw it
+upon the table, watching him the while.
+
+Philip gazed at the money with the eyes of a hungry wolf. A thousand
+pounds! That might be his for the asking, nay, for the taking. It would
+bind him to nothing. The miser’s greed took possession of him as he
+looked. Slowly he raised his hand, twitching with excitement, and
+stretched it out towards the cheque, but, before his fingers touched
+it, Lady Bellamy, as though by accident, dropped her white palm upon
+the precious paper.
+
+“I suppose that Mr. Heigham will leave to-morrow on the understanding
+we mentioned?” she said carelessly, but in a significant tone.
+
+Philip nodded.
+
+The hand was withdrawn as carelessly as it had come, leaving the
+cheque, blushing in all its naked beauty, upon the table. Philip took
+it as deliberately as he could, and put it in his pocket. Then, rising,
+he said good-bye, adding, as he passed through the door:
+
+“Remember, I have no responsibility in the matter. I wash my hands of
+it, and wish to hear nothing about it.”
+
+“The thousand pounds has done it,” reflected Lady Bellamy. “I told
+George that he would rise greedily at money. I have not watched him for
+twenty years for nothing. Fancy selling an only daughter’s happiness in
+life for a thousand pounds, and such a daughter too! I wonder how much
+he would take to murder her, if he were certain that he would not be
+found out. Upon my word, my work grows quite interesting. That cur,
+Philip, is as good as a play,” and she laughed her own peculiar laugh.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+Into Philip’s guilty thoughts, as he wended his homeward way, we will
+not inquire, and indeed, for all the warm glow that the thousand pound
+cheque in his pocket diffused through his system, they were not to be
+envied. Perhaps no scoundrel presents at heart such a miserable object
+to himself and all who know him, as the scoundrel who attempts to
+deceive himself and, whilst reaping its profits, tries to shoulder the
+responsibility of his iniquity on to the backs of others!
+
+Unfortunately, in this prosaic world of bargains, one cannot receive
+cheques for one thousand pounds without, in some shape or form, giving
+a _quid pro quo_. Now Philip’s _quid_ was to rid his house and the
+neighbourhood of Arthur Heigham, his guest and his daughter’s lover. It
+was not a task he liked, but the unearned cheque in his breeches-
+pocket continually reminded him of the obligation it entailed.
+
+When Arthur came to smoke his pipe with his host that evening, the
+latter looked so gloomy and depressed, that he wondered to himself if
+he was going to be treated to a repetition of the shadow scene, little
+guessing that there was something much more personally unpleasant
+before him.
+
+“Heigham,” Philip said, suddenly, and looking studiously in the other
+direction, “I want to speak to you. I have been thinking over our
+conversation of about a week ago on the subject of your engagement to
+Angela, and have now come to a final determination. I may say at once
+that I approve of you in every way” (here his hearer’s heart bounded
+with delight), “but, under all the circumstances, I don’t think that I
+should be right in sanctioning an immediate engagement. You are not
+sufficiently sure of each other for that. I may seem old-fashioned, but
+I am a great believer in the virtue of constancy, and I’m anxious, in
+your own interests, to put yours and Angela’s to the test. The terms
+that I can offer you are these. You must leave here to-morrow, and must
+give me your word of honour as a gentleman—which I know will be the
+most effectual guarantee that I can take from you—that you will not for
+the space of a year either attempt to see Angela again, or to hold any
+written communication with her, or anybody in any way connected with
+her. The year ended, you can return, and, should you both still be of
+the same mind, you can then marry her as soon as you like. If you
+decline to accede to these terms—which I believe to be to your mutual
+ultimate advantage—I must refuse my consent to the engagement
+altogether.”
+
+A silence followed this speech. The match that Arthur had lit before
+Philip began, burnt itself out between his fingers without his
+appearing to suffer any particular inconvenience, and now his pipe fell
+with a crash into the grate, and broke into fragments—a fit symbol of
+the blow dealt to his hopes. For some moments he was so completely
+overwhelmed at the idea of losing Angela for a whole long year, losing
+her as completely as though she were dead, that he could not answer. At
+length he found his voice, and said, hoarsely:
+
+“Yours are hard terms.”
+
+“I cannot argue the point with you, Heigham; such as they are, they are
+my terms, founded on what I consider I owe to my daughter. Do you
+accept them?”
+
+“I cannot answer you off-hand. My happiness and Angela’s are too
+vitally concerned to allow me to do so. I must consult her first.”
+
+“Very good, I have no objection; but you must let me have your answer
+by ten to-morrow.”
+
+Had Arthur only known his own strength and Philip’s weakness—the
+strength that honesty and honour ever have in the face of dishonour and
+dishonesty—had he known the hesitating feebleness of Philip’s
+avarice-tossed mind, how easy it would have been for him to tear his
+bald arguments to shreds, and, by the bare exhibition of unshaken
+purpose, to confound and disallow his determinations—had he then and
+there refused to agree to his ultimatum, so divided was Philip in his
+mind and so shaken by superstitious fears, that he would have accepted
+it as an omen, and have yielded to a decision of character that had no
+real existence in himself. But he did not know; indeed, how could he
+know? and he was, besides, too thorough a gentleman to allow himself to
+suspect foul play. And so, too sad for talk, and oppressed by the dread
+sense of coming separation from her whom he loved more dearly than his
+life, he sought his room, there to think and pace, to pace and think,
+until the stars had set.
+
+When, wearied out at length, he threw himself into bed, it was only to
+exchange bad for worse; for on such occasions sleep is worse than
+wakefulness, it is so full of dreams, big with coming pain. Shortly
+after dawn he got up again, and went into the garden and listened to
+the birds singing their matin hymn. But he was in no mood for the songs
+of birds, however sweet, and it was a positive relief to him when old
+Jakes emerged, his cross face set in the gladness of the morning, like
+a sullen cloud in the blue sky, and began to do something to his
+favourite bed of cabbages. Not that Arthur was fond of old Jakes; on
+the contrary, ever since the coffin-stand conversation, which betrayed,
+he considered, a malevolent mind, he detested him personally; but still
+he set a fancy value on him because he was connected with the daily
+life of his betrothed.
+
+And then at last out came Angela, having spied him from behind the
+curtains of her window, clothed in the same white gown in which he had
+first beheld her, and which he consequently considered the prettiest of
+frocks. Never did she look more lovely than when she came walking
+towards him that morning, with her light, proud step, which was so full
+of grace and womanly dignity. Never had he thought her more sweet and
+heart-compelling, than when, having first made sure that Jakes had
+retreated to feed his pigs, she shyly lifted her bright face to be
+greeted with his kiss. But she was quick of sympathy, and had learned
+to read him like an open page, and before his lips had fairly fallen on
+her own she knew that things had gone amiss.
+
+“Oh, what is it, Arthur?” she said, with a little pant of fear.
+
+“Be brave, dear, and I will tell you.” And in somewhat choky tones, he
+recounted word for word what had passed between her father and himself.
+
+She listened in perfect silence, and bore the blow as a brave woman
+should. When he had finished, she said, with a little tremor in her
+voice:
+
+“You will not forget me in a year, will you, Arthur?”
+
+He kissed her by way of answer, and then they agreed to go together to
+Philip, and try to turn him from his purpose.
+
+Breakfast was not a cheerful meal that day, and Pigott, noticing the
+prevailing depression, remarked, with sarcasm, that they might, for all
+appearance to the contrary, have been married for twenty years; but
+even this spirited sally did not provoke a laugh. Ten o’clock, the hour
+that was to decide their fate, came all too soon, and it was with very
+anxious hearts that they took their way to the study. Philip, who was
+seated in residence, appeared to view Angela’s arrival with some
+uneasiness.
+
+“Of course, Angela,” he said, “I am always glad to see you, but I
+hardly expected——”
+
+“I beg your pardon for intruding, father,” she answered; “but, as this
+is very important to me, I thought that I had better come too, and hear
+what is settled.”
+
+As it was evident that she meant to stay, Philip did not attempt to
+gainsay her.
+
+“Oh, very well, very well—I suppose you have heard the terms upon which
+I am prepared to consent to your engagement.”
+
+“Yes, Arthur has told me; and it is to implore you to modify them that
+we have come. Father, they are cruel terms—to be dead to each other for
+a whole long year.”
+
+“I cannot help it, Angela. I am sorry to inflict pain upon either of
+you; but I have arrived at them entirely in your own interests, and
+after a great deal of anxious thought. Believe me, a year’s probation
+will be very good for both of you; it is not probable that, where my
+only child is concerned, I should wish to do anything except what is
+for her happiness!”
+
+Arthur looked rebellion at Angela. Philip saw it, and added:
+
+“Of course you can defy me—it is, I believe, rather the fashion for
+girls, nowadays, to do so—but, if you do, you must both clearly
+understand, first, that you cannot marry without my consent till the
+first of May next, or very nearly a year hence, when Angela comes of
+age, and that I shall equally forbid all intercourse in the interval;
+and secondly, that when you do so, it will be against my wish, and that
+I shall cut her name out of my will, for this property is only entailed
+in the male line. It now only remains for me to ask you if you agree to
+my conditions.”
+
+Angela answered him, speaking very slowly and clearly:
+
+“I accept them on my own behalf, not because I understand them, or
+think them right, or because of your threats, but because, though you
+do not care for me, I am your daughter, and should obey you—and believe
+that you wish to do what is best for me. That is why I accept, although
+it will make my life wretched for a year.”
+
+“Do you hear what she says?” said Philip, turning to Arthur. “Do you
+also agree?”
+
+He answered boldly, and with some temper (how would he have answered
+could he have seen the thousand pound cheque that was reposing upon the
+table in Philip’s rusty pocket-book, and known for what purpose it came
+there?).
+
+“If it had not been Angela’s wish, I would never have agreed. I think
+your terms preposterous, and I only hope that you have some
+satisfactory reason for them; for you have not shown us any. But since
+she takes this view of the matter, and because, so far as I can see,
+you have completely cornered us, I suppose I must. You are her father,
+and cannot in nature wish to thwart her happiness; and if you have any
+plan of causing her to forget me—I don’t want to be conceited, but I
+believe that it will fail.” Here Angela smiled somewhat sadly. “So,
+unless one of us dies before the year is up, I shall come back to be
+married on the 9th of June next year.”
+
+“Really, my dear Heigham, your way of talking is so aggressive, that
+some fathers might be tempted to ask you not to come back at all; but
+perhaps it is, under the circumstances, excusable.”
+
+“You would probably think so, if you were in my place,” blurted out
+Arthur.
+
+“You give me, then, your word of honour as a gentleman that you will
+attempt, either in person or by letter, no communication with Angela or
+with anybody about this place for one year from to-day?”
+
+“On the condition that, at the end of the year, I may return and marry
+her as soon as I like.”
+
+“Certainly; your marriage can take place on the 9th of June next, if
+you like, and care to bring a license and a proper settlement—say, of
+half your income—with you,” answered Philip, with a half smile.
+
+“I take you at your word,” said Arthur, eagerly, “that is, if Angela
+agrees.” Angela made no signs of disagreement. “Then, on those terms, I
+give you my promise.”
+
+“Very good. Then that is settled, and I will send for a dog-cart to
+take you to the four o’clock train. I fear you will hardly be ready for
+the 12.25. I shall, however, hope,” he added, “to have the pleasure of
+presenting this young lady to you for good and all on this day next
+year. Good-bye for the present. I shall see you before you go.”
+
+It is painful to have to record that when Arthur got outside the door,
+and out of Angela’s hearing, he cursed Philip, in his grief and anger,
+for the space of some minutes.
+
+To linger over those last hours could only be distressing to the
+sympathetic reader of this history, more especially if he, or she, has
+ever had the misfortune to pass through such a time in their own proper
+persons. The day of any one’s departure is always wretched, but much
+more is it wretched, when the person departing is a lover, whose face
+will not be seen and of whom no postman will bear tidings for a whole
+long year.
+
+Some comfort, however, these two took in looking forward to that joyous
+day when the year of probation should have been gathered to its
+predecessors, and in making the most minute arrangements for their
+wedding: how Angela was to warn Mr. Fraser that his services would be
+required; where they should go to for their honeymoon, and even of what
+flowers the wedding bouquet, which Arthur was to bring down from town
+with him, should be composed.
+
+And thus the hours passed away, all too quickly, and each of them
+strove to be merry, in order to keep up the spirits of the other. But
+it is not in human nature to feel cheerful with a lump of ice upon the
+heart! Dinner was even more dismal than breakfast, and Pigott, who had
+been informed of the impending misfortune, and who was distrustful of
+Philip’s motives, though she did not like to add to the general gloom
+by saying so, made, after the manner of half-educated people, a painful
+and infectious exhibition of her grief.
+
+“Poor Aleck,” said Angela, when the time drew near, bending down over
+the dog to hide a tear, as she had once before bent down to hide a
+blush; “poor Aleck, I shall miss you almost as much as your master.”
+
+“You will not miss him, Angela, because I am going to make you a
+present of him if you will keep him.”
+
+“That is very good of you, dear. I shall be glad to have him for your
+sake.”
+
+“Well, keep him, love, he is a good dog; he will quite have transferred
+his allegiance by the time I come back. I hope you won’t have done the
+same, Angela.”
+
+“Oh, Arthur, why will you so often make me angry by saying such things?
+The sun will forget to shine before I forget you.”
+
+“Hush, love, I did not mean it,” and he took her in his arms. And so
+they sat there together under the oak where first they had met, hand in
+hand and heart to heart, and it was at this moment that the self-
+reliant strength, and more beautiful serenity of Angela’s character as
+compared with her lover’s came into visible play. For whilst, as the
+moment of separation drew nigh, he could scarcely contain his grief,
+she on the other hand grew more and more calm, strengthening his
+weakness with her quiet power; and bidding him seek consolation in his
+trouble at the hands of Him who for His own purposes decreed it.
+
+“Dearest,” she said, in answer to his complainings, “there are so many
+things in the world that we cannot understand, and yet they must be
+right and lead to a good end. What may happen to us before this year is
+out, of course we cannot say, but I feel that all love is immortal, and
+that there is a perfect life awaiting us, if not in this world, then in
+the next. Remember, dear, that these few years are, after all, but as a
+breath to the general air, or as that dew-drop to the waters of the
+lake, when compared with the future that awaits us there, and that
+until we attain that future we cannot really know each other, or the
+true meaning and purpose of our love. So look forward to it without
+fear, dear heart, and if it should chance that I should pass out of
+your life, or that other ties should spring up round you that shall
+forbid the outward expression of our love——” Here Arthur started and
+was about to interrupt, but she stopped him. “Do not start, Arthur. Who
+can read the future? Stranger things have happened, and if, I say, such
+a thing should come about in our case, then remember, I implore you,
+that in that future lies the answer to the puzzles of the world, and
+turn your eyes to it, as to the horizon beyond which you will find me
+waiting for you, and not only me, but all that you have ever loved.
+Only, dear, try to be a good man and love me always.”
+
+He looked at her in wonder.
+
+“Angela,” he said, “what has made you so different from other women?
+With all whom I have known, love is an affair of passion or amusement,
+of the world and the day, but yours gazes towards Heaven, and looks to
+find its real utterance in the stillness of Eternity! To be loved by
+you, my dear, would be worth a century of sorrows.”
+
+At last the moment came, as all moments good and bad must come. To
+Pigott, who was crying, he gave a hug and a five-pound note, to Aleck,
+a pat on the head, to Philip, who could not look him in the face, a
+shake of the hand, and to Angela, who bravely smiled into his eyes—a
+long last kiss.
+
+But, when the cruel wheels began to crunch upon the gravel, the great
+tears welling to her eyes blotted him from sight. Blindly she made her
+way up to her room, and throwing herself upon the bed let her
+unrestrained sorrow loose, feeling that she was indeed desolate and
+alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+When Angela was still quite a child, the permanent inhabitants of
+Sherborne Lane, King William Street, in the city of London, used to
+note a very pretty girl, of small stature and modest ways, passing out
+—every evening after the city gentlemen had locked up their offices and
+gone home—from the quiet of the lane into the roar and rush of the
+city. This young girl was Mildred James, the only daughter of a
+struggling, a very struggling, city doctor, and her daily mission was
+to go to the cheap markets, and buy the provisions that were to last
+the Sherborne Lane household (for her father lived in the same rooms
+that he practised in) for the ensuing twenty-four hours. The world was
+a hard place for poor Mildred in those days of provision hunting, when
+so little money had to pay for so many necessaries, and to provide also
+for the luxuries that were necessaries to her invalid mother. Some
+years later, when she was a sweet maiden of eighteen, her mother died,
+but medical competition was keen in Sherborne Lane, and her removal did
+not greatly alleviate the pressure of poverty. At last, one evening,
+when she was about twenty years of age, a certain Mr. Carr, an old
+gentleman with whom her father had some acquaintance, sent up a card
+with a pencilled message on it to the effect that he would be glad to
+see Dr. James.
+
+“Run, Mildred,” said her father, “and tell Mr. Carr that I will be with
+him in a minute. It will never do to see a new patient in this coat.”
+
+Mildred departed, and, gliding into the gloomy consulting-room like a
+sunbeam, delivered her message to the old gentleman, who appeared to be
+in some pain, and prepared to return.
+
+“Don’t go away,” almost shouted the aged patient; “I have crushed my
+finger in a door, and it hurts most confoundedly. You are something to
+look at in this hole, and distract my attention.”
+
+Mildred thought to herself that this was an odd way of paying a
+compliment, if it was meant for one; but then, old gentlemen with
+crushed fingers are not given to weighing their words.
+
+“Are you Dr. James’ daughter?” he asked, presently.
+
+“Yes, sir.”
+
+“Ugh, I have lived most of my life in Sherborne Lane, and never saw
+anything half so pretty in it before. Confound this finger!”
+
+At this moment the doctor himself arrived, and wanted to dismiss
+Mildred, but Mr. Carr, who was a headstrong old gentleman, vowed that
+no one else should hold his injured hand whilst it was dressed, and so
+she stayed just long enough for him to fall as completely in love with
+her shell-like face, as though he had been twenty instead of nearly
+seventy.
+
+Now, Mr. Carr was not remarkable for good looks, and in addition to
+having seen out so many summers, had also buried two wives. It will,
+therefore, be clear that he was scarcely the suitor that a lovely girl,
+conscious of capacities for deep affection, would have selected of her
+own free will; but, on the other hand, he was honest and kind- hearted,
+and, what was more to the point, perhaps the wealthiest wine- merchant
+in the city. Mildred resisted as long as she could, but want is a hard
+master, and a father’s arguments are difficult to answer, and in the
+end she married him, and, what is more, made him a good and faithful
+wife.
+
+She never had any cause to regret it, for he was kindness itself
+towards her, and when he died, some five years afterwards, having no
+children of his own, he left her sole legatee of all his enormous
+fortune, bound up by no restrictions as to re-marriage. About this time
+also her father died, and she was left as much alone in the world as it
+is possible for a young and pretty woman, possessing in her own right
+between twenty and thirty thousand a year, to be.
+
+Needless to say, Mrs. Carr was thenceforth one of the catches of her
+generation; but nobody could catch her, though she alone knew how many
+had tried. Once she made a list of all the people who had proposed to
+her; it included amongst others a bishop, two peers, three members of
+parliament, no less than five army officers, an American, and a
+dissenting clergyman.
+
+“It is perfectly marvellous, my dear,” she said to her companion,
+Agatha Terry, “how fond people are of twenty thousand a year, and yet
+they all said that they loved me for myself, that is, all except the
+dissenter, who wanted me to help to ‘feed his flock,’ and I liked him
+the best of the lot, because he was the honestest.”
+
+Mrs. Carr had a beautiful house in Grosvenor Square, a place in
+Leicestershire, where she hunted a little, a place in the Isle of Wight
+that she rarely visited, and, lastly, a place at Madeira where she
+lived for nearly half the year. There never had been a breath of
+scandal against her name, nor had she given cause for any. “As for
+loving,” she would say, “the only things she loved were beetles and
+mummies,” for she was a clever naturalist, and a faithful student of
+the lore of the ancient Egyptians. The beetles, she would explain, had
+been the connecting link between the two sciences, since beetles had
+led her to scarabaei, and scarabaei to the human husks with which they
+are to be found; but this statement, though amusing, was not strictly
+accurate, as she had in reality contracted the taste from her late
+husband, who had left her a large collection of Egyptian antiquities.
+
+“I do adore a mummy,” she would say, “I am small enough in mind and
+body already, but it makes me feel inches smaller, and I like to
+measure my own diminutiveness.”
+
+She was not much of a reader; life was, she declared, too short to
+waste in study; but, when she did take up a book, it was generally of a
+nature that most women of her class would have called stiff, and then
+she could read it without going to sleep.
+
+In addition to these occupations, Mrs. Carr had had various crazes at
+different stages of her widowhood, which had now endured for some five
+years. She had travelled, she had “gone-in for art;” once she had
+speculated a little, but finding that, for a woman, it was a losing
+game, she was too shrewd to continue this last pastime. But she always
+came back to her beetles and her mummies.
+
+Still, with all her money, her places, her offers of marriage, and her
+self-made occupations, Mildred Carr was essentially “a weary woman,
+sunk deep in ease, and sated with her life.” Within that little frame
+of hers, there beat a great active heart, ever urging her onwards
+towards an unknown end. She would describe herself as an “ill-
+regulated woman,” and the description was not without justice, for she
+did not possess that placid, even mind which is so necessary to the
+comfort of English ladies, and which enables many of them to bury a
+husband or a lover as composedly as they take him. She would have given
+worlds to be able to fall in love with some one, to fill up the daily
+emptiness of her existence with another’s joys and griefs, but she
+_could_ not. Men passed before her in endless procession, all sorts and
+conditions of them, and for the most part were anxious to marry her,
+but they might as well have been a string of wax dolls for aught she
+could care about them. To her eyes, they were nothing more than a
+succession of frock-coats and tall hats, full of shine and emptiness,
+signifying nothing. For their opinion, too, and that of the society
+which they helped to form, she had a most complete and wrong- headed
+contempt. She cared nothing for the ordinary laws of social life, and
+was prepared to break through them on emergency, as a wasp breaks
+through a spider’s web. Perhaps she guessed that a good deal of
+breaking would be forgiven to the owner of such a lovely face, and more
+than twenty thousand a year. With all this, she was extremely
+observant, and possessed, unknown to herself, great powers of mind, and
+great, though dormant, capacities for passion. In short, this little
+woman, with the baby face, smiling and serene as the blue sky that
+hides the gathering hurricane, was rather odder than the majority of
+her sex, which is perhaps saying a great deal.
+
+One day, about a week before Arthur departed from the Abbey House,
+Agatha Terry was sitting in the blue drawing-room in the house in
+Grosvenor Square, when Mrs. Carr came in, almost at a run, slammed the
+door behind her, and plumped herself down in a chair with a sigh of
+relief.
+
+“Agatha, give orders to pack up. We will go to Madeira by the next
+boat.”
+
+“Goodness gracious, Mildred! across that dreadful bay again; and just
+think how hot it will be, and the beginning of the season too.”
+
+“Now, Agatha, I’m going, and there’s an end of it, so it is no use
+arguing. You can stay here, and give a series of balls and dinners, if
+you like.”
+
+“Nonsense, dear; me give parties indeed, and you at Madeira! Why, it’s
+just as though you asked Ruth to entertain the reapers without Naomi.
+I’ll go and give the orders; but I do hope that it will be calm. Why do
+you want to go now?”
+
+“I’ll tell you. Lord Minster has been proposing to me again, and
+announces his intention of going on doing so till I accept him. You
+know, he has just got into the Cabinet, so he has celebrated the event
+by asking me to marry him, for the third time.”
+
+“Poor fellow! Perhaps he is very fond of you.”
+
+“Not a bit of it. He is fond of my good looks and my money. I will tell
+you the substance of his speech this morning. He stood like this, with
+his hands in his pockets, and said, ‘I am now a cabinet minister. It is
+a good thing that a cabinet minister should have somebody presentable
+to sit at the head of his table. You are presentable. I appreciate
+beauty, when I have time to think about it. I observe that you are
+beautiful. I am not very well-off for my position. You, on the other
+hand, are immensely rich. With your money, I can, in time, become Prime
+Minister. It is, consequently, evidently to my advantage that you
+should marry me, and I have sacrificed a very important appointment in
+order to come and settle it.’”
+
+Agatha laughed.
+
+“And how did you answer him?”
+
+“In his own style. ‘Lord Minster,’ I said, ‘I am, for the third time,
+honoured by your flattering proposal, but I have no wish to ornament
+your table, no desire to expose my beauty to your perpetual admiration,
+and no ambition to advance your political career. I do not love you,
+and I had rather become the wife of a crossing-sweeper that I loved,
+than that of a member of the government for whom I have _every_
+respect, but no affection.’
+
+“‘As the wife of a crossing-sweeper, it is probable,’ he answered,
+‘that you would be miserable. As my wife, you would certainly be
+admired and powerful, and consequently happy.’
+
+“‘Lord Minster,’ I said, ‘you have studied human nature but very
+superficially, if you have not learnt that it is better for a woman to
+be miserable with the man she loves, than “admired, powerful, and
+consequently happy,” with one who has no attraction for her.’
+
+“‘Your remark is interesting,’ he replied; ‘but I think that there is
+something paradoxical about it. I must be going now, as I have only
+five minutes to get to Westminster; but I will think it over, and
+answer it when we renew our conversation, which I propose to do very
+shortly,’ and he was gone before I could get in another word.”
+
+“But why should that make you go to Madeira?”
+
+“Because, my dear, if I don’t, so sure as I am a living woman, that man
+will tire me out and marry me, and I dislike him, and don’t want to
+marry him. I have a strong will, but his is of iron.”
+
+And so it came to pass that the names of Mrs. Carr, Miss Terry, and
+three servants, appeared upon the passenger list of Messrs. Donald
+Currie & Co.‘s royal mail steamship _Warwick Castle_, due to sail for
+Madeira and the Cape ports on the 14th of June.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+Arthur arrived in town in a melancholy condition. His was a temperament
+peculiarly liable to suffer from attacks of depression, and he had,
+with some excuse, a sufficiently severe one on him now. Do what he
+would he could not for a single hour free his mind from the sick
+longing to see or hear from Angela, that, in addition to the mental
+distress it occasioned him, amounted almost to a physical pain. After
+two or three days of lounging about his club—for he was in no mood for
+going out—he began to feel that this sort of thing was intolerable, and
+that it was absolutely necessary for him to go somewhere or do
+something.
+
+It so happened that, just after he had come to this decision, he
+overheard two men, who were sitting at the next table to him in the
+club dining-room, talking of the island of Madeira, and speaking of it
+as a charming place. He accepted this as an omen, and determined that
+to Madeira he would go. And, indeed, the place would suit him as well
+as any other to get through a portion of his year of probation in, and,
+whilst affording a complete change of scene, would not be too far from
+England.
+
+And so it came to pass that on the morrow Arthur found himself in the
+office of Messrs. Donald Currie, for the purpose of booking his berth
+in the vessel that was due to sail on the 14th. There he was informed
+by the very affable clerk, who assisted him to choose his cabin, that
+the vessel was unusually empty, and that, up to the present time,
+berths had been taken for only five ladies, and two of them Jewesses.
+
+“However,” the clerk added, by way of consolation, “this one,” pointing
+to Mrs. Carr’s name on the list, “is as good as a cargo,” and he
+whistled expressively.
+
+“What do you mean?” asked Arthur, his curiosity slightly excited.
+
+“I mean—my word, here she comes.”
+
+At that moment the swing doors of the office were pushed open, and
+there came through them one of the sweetest, daintiest little women
+Arthur had ever seen. She was no longer quite young, she might be eight
+and twenty or thirty, but, on the other hand, maturity had but added to
+the charms of youth. She had big, brown eyes that Arthur thought could
+probably look languishing, if they chose, and that even in repose were
+full of expression, a face soft and blooming as a peach, and round as a
+baby’s, surmounted by a quantity of nut-brown hair, the very sweetest
+mouth, the lips rather full, and just showing a line of pearl, and
+lastly, what looked rather odd on such an infantile countenance, a
+firm, square, and very determined, if very diminutive chin. For the
+rest, it was difficult to say which was the most perfect, her figure or
+her dress.
+
+All of which, of course, had little interest for Arthur, but what did
+rather startle him was her voice, when she spoke. From such a woman one
+would naturally have expected a voice of a corresponding nature,
+namely, one of the soft and murmuring order. But hers, on the contrary,
+though sweet, was decided, and clear as a bell, and with a peculiar
+ring in it that he would have recognized amongst a thousand others.
+
+On her entrance, Arthur stepped on one side.
+
+“I have come to say,” she said, with a slight bow of recognition to the
+clerk; “that I have changed my mind about my berth, instead of the
+starboard deck cabin, I should like to have the port. I think that it
+will be cooler at this time of year, and also will you please make
+arrangements for three horses.”
+
+“I am excessively sorry, Mrs. Carr,” the clerk answered; “but the port
+cabin is engaged—in fact, this gentleman has just taken it.”
+
+“Oh, in that case”—with a little blush—“there is an end of the
+question.”
+
+“By no means,” interrupted Arthur. “It is a matter of perfect
+indifference to me where I go. I beg that you will take it.”
+
+“Oh, thank you. You are very good, but I could not think of robbing you
+of your cabin.”
+
+“I must implore you to do so. Rather than there should be any
+difficulty, I will go below.” And then, addressing the clerk, “Be so
+kind as to change the cabin.”
+
+“I owe you many thanks for your courtesy,” said Mrs. Carr, with a
+little curtsey.
+
+Arthur took off his hat.
+
+“Then we will consider that settled. Good morning, or perhaps I should
+say _au revoir_;” and, bowing again, he left the office.
+
+“What is that gentleman’s name?” Mrs. Carr asked, when he was gone.
+
+“Here it is, madam, on the list. ‘Arthur Preston Heigham, passenger to
+Madeira.’”
+
+“Arthur Preston Heigham!” Mrs. Carr said to herself, as she made her
+way down to her carriage in Fenchurch Street. “Arthur is pretty, and
+Preston is pretty, but I don’t much like Heigham. At any rate, there is
+no doubt about his being a gentleman. I wonder what he is going to
+Madeira for? He has an interesting face. I think I am glad we are going
+to be fellow-passengers.”
+
+The two days that remained to him in town, Arthur spent in making his
+preparations for departure; getting money, buying, after the manner of
+young Englishmen starting on a voyage to foreign parts, a large and
+fearfully sharp hunting-knife, as though Madeira were the home of wild
+beasts, and laying in a stock of various other articles of a useless
+description, such as impenetrable sun-helmets and leather coats.
+
+The boat was to sail at noon on Friday, and on the Thursday evening he
+left Paddington by the mail that reaches Dartmouth about midnight. On
+the pier, he and one or two other fellow-passengers found a boat
+waiting to take them to the great vessel, that, painted a dull grey,
+lay still and solemn in the harbour as they were rowed up to her, very
+different from the active, living thing that she was destined to become
+within the next twenty-four hours. The tide ebbing past her iron sides,
+the fresh, strong smell of the sea, the tall masts pointing skywards
+like gigantic fingers, the chime of the bell upon the bridge, the
+sleepy steward, and the stuffy cabin, were all a pleasant variation
+from the every-day monotony of existence, and contributed towards the
+conclusion that life was still partially worth living, even when it
+could not be lived with Angela. Indeed, so much are we the creatures of
+circumstance, and so liable to be influenced by surroundings, that
+Arthur, who, a few hours before, had been plunged into the depths of
+depression, turned into his narrow berth, after a tremendous struggle
+with the sheets—which stewards arrange on a principle incomprehensible
+to landlubbers, and probably only partially understood by
+themselves—with considerable satisfaction and a pleasurable sense of
+excitement.
+
+The next morning, or rather the earlier part of it, he devoted, when he
+was not thinking about Angela, to arranging his goods and chattels in
+his small domain, to examining the lovely scenery of Dartmouth
+harbour—the sight of which is enough to make any outward-bound
+individual bitterly regret his determination to quit his native land—
+and to inspecting the outward man of his fellow-passengers with that
+icy stolidity which characterizes the true-born Briton. But the great
+event of the morning was the arrival of the mail-train, bringing the
+bags destined for various African ports, loose letters for the
+passengers, and a motley contingent of the passengers themselves.
+Amongst these latter, he had no difficulty in recognizing the two
+Jewesses, of whom the clerk in the office had spoken, who were
+accompanied by individuals, presumably their husbands, and very
+remarkable for the splendour of their diamond studs and the dirtiness
+of their nails. The only other specimen of saloon-passenger womankind
+that he could see was a pretty, black-eyed girl of about eighteen, who
+was, as he afterwards discovered, going out under the captain’s care to
+be a governess at the Cape, and who, to judge from the intense
+melancholy of her countenance, did not particularly enjoy the prospect.
+But, with the exception of some heavy baggage that was being worked up
+from a cargo-boat by the donkey-engine, and a luxurious cane-chair on
+the deck that bore her name, no signs were there of Mrs. Carr.
+
+Presently the purser sent round the head-steward, a gentleman whom
+Arthur mistook for the first mate, so smart was his uniform, to collect
+the letters, and it wrung him not a little to think that he alone could
+send none. The bell sounded to warn all not sailing to hurry to their
+boats, but still there was nothing to be seen of his acquaintance of
+the office; and, to speak the truth, he was just a little disappointed,
+for what he had seen of her had piqued his curiosity, and made him
+anxious to see more.
+
+“I can’t wait any longer,” he heard the captain say; “she must come on
+by the _Kinfauns_.”
+
+It was full twelve o’clock, and the last rope was being loosed from the
+moorings. “Ting-ting,” went the engine-room bell. “Thud-thud,” started
+the great screw that would not stop again for so many restless hours.
+The huge vessel shuddered throughout her frame like an awakening
+sleeper, and growing quick with life, forged an inch or two a-head.
+Next, a quartermaster came with two men to hoist up the gangway, when
+suddenly a boat shot alongside and hooked on, amongst the occupants of
+which Arthur had no difficulty in recognizing Mrs. Carr, who sat
+laughing, like Pleasure, at the helm. The other occupants of the boat,
+who were not laughing, he guessed to be her servants and the lady who
+figured on the passenger-list as Miss Terry, a stout, solemn-looking
+person in spectacles.
+
+“Now, then, Agatha,” called out Mrs. Carr from the stern-sheets, “be
+quick and jump up.”
+
+“My dear Mildred, I can’t go up there; I can’t, indeed. Why, the
+thing’s moving.”
+
+“But you must go up, or else be pulled up with a rope. Here, I will
+show the way,” and, moving down the boat, she sprang boldly, as it rose
+with the swell, into the stalwart arms of the sailor who was waiting on
+the gangway landing-stage, and thence ran up the steps to the deck.
+
+“Very well, I am going to Madeira. I don’t know what you are going to
+do; but you must make up your mind quick.”
+
+“Can’t hold on much longer, mum,” said the boatman, “she’s getting way
+on now.”
+
+“Come on, mum; I won’t let you in,” said the man of the ladder,
+seductively.
+
+“Oh, dear, oh, dear, what shall I do?” groaned Miss Terry, wringing the
+hand that was not employed in holding on.
+
+“John,” called Mrs. Carr to a servant who was behind Miss Terry, and
+looking considerably alarmed, “don’t stand there like a fool; put Miss
+Terry on to that ladder.”
+
+Mrs. Carr was evidently accustomed to be obeyed, for, thus admonished,
+John seized the struggling and shrieking Miss Terry, and bore her to
+the edge of the boat, where she was caught by two sailors, and, amidst
+the cheers of excited passengers, fairly dragged on to the deck.
+
+“Oh! Mrs. Carr,” said the chief officer, reproachfully, when Miss Terry
+had been satisfactorily deposited on a bench, “you are late again; you
+were late last voyage.”
+
+“Not at all, Mr. Thompson. I hate spending longer than is necessary
+aboard ship, so, when the train got in, I took a boat and went for a
+row in the harbour. I knew that you would not go without me.”
+
+“Oh, yes, we should have, Mrs. Carr; the skipper heard about it because
+he waited for you before.”
+
+“Well, here I am, and I promise that I won’t do it again.”
+
+Mr. Thompson laughed, and passed on. At this moment Mrs. Carr perceived
+Arthur, and, bowing to him, they fell into conversation about the
+scenery through which the boat was passing on her way to the open sea.
+Before very long, indeed, as soon as the vessel began to rise and fall
+upon the swell, this talk was interrupted by a voice from the seat
+where Miss Terry had been placed.
+
+“Mildred,” it said, “I do wish you would not come to sea; I am
+beginning to feel ill.”
+
+“And no wonder, if you will insist upon coming up ladders head
+downwards. Where’s John? He will help you to your cabin; the deck one,
+next to mine.”
+
+But John had vanished with a parcel.
+
+“Mildred, send some one quick, I beg of you,” remarked Miss Terry, in
+the solemn tones of one who feels that a crisis is approaching.
+
+“I can’t see anybody except a very dirty sailor.”
+
+“Permit me,” said Arthur, stepping to the rescue.
+
+“You are very kind; but she can’t walk. I know her ways; she has got to
+the stage when she must be carried. Can you manage her?”
+
+“I think so,” replied Arthur, “if you don’t mind holding her legs, and
+provided that the vessel does not roll,” and, with an effort, he
+hoisted Miss Terry baby-fashion into his arms, and staggered off with
+her towards the indicated cabin, Mrs. Carr, as suggested, holding the
+lower limbs of the prostrate lady. Presently she began to laugh.
+
+“If you only knew how absurd we look,” she said.
+
+“Don’t make me laugh,” answered Arthur, puffing; for Miss Terry was by
+no means light, “or I shall drop her.”
+
+“If you do, young man,” ejaculated his apparently unconscious burden
+with wonderful energy, “I will never forgive you.”
+
+A remark, the suddenness of which so startled him, that he very nearly
+did.
+
+“Thank you. Now lay her quite flat, please. She won’t get up again till
+we drop anchor at Madeira.”
+
+“If I live so long,” murmured the invalid.
+
+Arthur now made his bow and departed, wondering how two women so
+dissimilar as Mrs. Carr and Miss Terry came to be living together. As
+it is a piece of curiosity that the reader may share, perhaps it had
+better be explained.
+
+Miss Terry was a middle-aged relative of Mrs. Carr’s late husband, who
+had by a series of misfortunes been left quite destitute. Her distress
+having come to the knowledge of Mildred Carr, she, with the kind-
+hearted promptitude that distinguished her, at once came to her aid,
+paid her debts, and brought her to her own house to stay, where she had
+remained ever since under the title of companion. These two women,
+living thus together, had nothing whatsoever in common, save that Miss
+Terry took some reflected interest in beetles. As for travelling,
+having been brought up and lived in the same house of the same county
+town until she reached the age of forty-five, it was, as may be
+imagined, altogether obnoxious to her. Indeed, it is more than doubtful
+if she retained any clear impression whatsoever of the places she
+visited. “A set of foreign holes!” as she would call them,
+contemptuously. Miss Terry was, in short, neither clever nor strong
+minded, but so long as she could be in the company of her beloved
+Mildred, whom she regarded with mingled reverence and affection, she
+was perfectly happy. Oddly enough, this affection was reciprocated, and
+there probably was nobody in the world for whom Mrs. Carr cared so much
+as her cousin by marriage, Agatha Terry. And yet it would be impossible
+to imagine two women more dissimilar.
+
+Not long after they had left Dartmouth, the afternoon set in dull, and
+towards evening the sea freshened sufficiently to send most of the
+passengers below, leaving those who remained to be finally dispersed by
+the penetrating drizzle that is generally to be met with off the
+English coast. Arthur, left alone on the heaving deck, surveyed the
+scene, and thought it very desolate. Around was a grey waste of tossing
+waters, illumined here and there by the setting rays of an angry sun,
+above, a wild and windy sky, with not even a sea-gull in all its space,
+and in the far distance a white and fading line, which was the shore of
+England.
+
+Faint it grew, and fainter yet, and, as it disappeared, he thought of
+Angela, and a yearning sorrow fell upon him. When, he wondered sadly,
+should he again look into her eyes, and hold that proud beauty in his
+arms; what fate awaited them in the future that stretched before them,
+dim as the darkening ocean, and more uncertain. Alas! he could not
+tell, he only felt that it was very bitter to be parted thus from her
+to whom had been given his whole heart’s love, to know that every
+fleeting moment widened a breach already far too wide, and not to know
+if it would again be narrowed, or if this farewell would be the last.
+Then he thought, if it should be the last, if she should die or desert
+him, what would his life be worth to him? A consciousness within him
+answered, “nothing.” And, in a degree, his conclusion was right; for,
+although it is, fortunately, not often in the power of any single
+passion to render life altogether worthless; it is certain that, when
+it strikes in youth, there is no sickness so sore as that of the heart;
+no sorrow more keen, and no evil more lasting than those connected with
+its disappointments and its griefs. For other sorrows, life has salves
+and consolations, but a noble and enduring passion is not all of this
+world, and to cure its sting we must look to something beyond this
+world’s quackeries. Other griefs can find sympathy and expression, and
+become absorbed little by little in the variety of love’s issues. But
+love, as it is, and should be understood—not the faint ghost that
+arrays itself in stolen robes, and says, “I am love,” but love the
+strong and the immortal, the passkey to the happy skies, the angel
+cipher we read, but cannot understand—such love as this, and there is
+none other true, can find no full solace here, not even in its earthly
+satisfaction.
+
+For still it beats against its mortal bars and rends the heart that
+holds it; still strives like a meteor flaming to its central star, or a
+new loosed spirit seeking the presence of its God, to pass hence with
+that kindred soul to the inner heaven whence it came, there to be
+wholly mingled with its other life and clothed with a divine identity:
+—there to satisfy the aspirations that now vaguely throb within their
+fleshly walls, with the splendour and the peace and the full measure of
+the eternal joys it knows await its coming.
+
+And is it not a first-fruit of this knowledge, that the thoughts of
+those who are plunged into the fires of a pure devotion fly upwards as
+surely as the sparks? Nothing but the dross, the grosser earthly part
+is purged away by their ever-chastening sorrow, which is, in truth, a
+discipline for finer souls. For did there ever yet live the man or
+woman who, loving truly, has suffered, and the fires burnt out, has not
+risen Phoenix-like from their ashes, purer and better, and holding in
+the heart a bright, undying hope? Never; for these have walked
+bare-footed upon the holy ground, it is the flames from the Altar that
+have purged them and left their own light within! And surely this holds
+also good of those who have loved and lost, of those who have been
+scorned or betrayed; of the suffering army that cry aloud of the empty
+bitterness of life and dare not hope beyond. They do not understand
+that having once loved truly it is not possible that they should
+altogether lose: that there is to their pain and the dry-rot of their
+hopes, as to everything else in Nature, an end object. Shall the soul
+be immortal, and its best essence but a thing of air? Shall the one
+thought by day and the one dream by night, the ethereal star which
+guides us across life’s mirage, and which will still shine serene at
+the moment of our fall from the precipice of Time: shall this alone,
+amidst all that makes us what we are, be chosen out to see corruption,
+to be cast off and forgotten in the grave? Never! There, by the
+workings of a Providence we cannot understand, that mighty germ awaits
+fruition. There, too, shall we know the wherefore of our sorrow at
+which, sad-eyed, we now so often wonder: there shall we kiss the rod
+that smote us, and learn the glorious uses and pluck the glowing fruits
+of an affliction, that on earth filled us with such sick longing, and
+such an aching pain.
+
+Let the long-suffering reader forgive these pages of speculative
+writing, for the subject is a tempting one, and full of interest for us
+mortals. Indeed, it may chance that, if he or she is more than
+five-and-twenty, these lines may even have been read without
+impatience, for there are many who have the memory of a lost Angela
+hidden away somewhere in the records of their past, and who are fain,
+in the breathing spaces of their lives, to dream that they will find
+her wandering in that wide Eternity where “all human barriers fall, all
+human relations end, and love ceases to be a crime.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+The morning after the vessel left Dartmouth brought with it lovely
+weather, brisk and clear, with a fresh breeze that just topped the
+glittering swell with white. There was, however, a considerable roll on
+the ship, and those poor wretches, who for their sins are given to
+sea-sickness, were not yet happy. Presently Arthur observed the pretty
+black-eyed girl—poor thing, she did not look very pretty now—creep on
+to the deck and attempt to walk about, an effort which promptly
+resulted in a fall into the scuppers. He picked her up, and asked if
+she would not like to sit down, but she faintly declined, saying that
+she did not mind falling so long as she could walk a little—she did not
+feel so sick when she walked. Under these circumstances he could hardly
+do less than help her, which he did in the only way at all practicable
+with one so weak, namely, by walking her about on his arm.
+
+In the midst of his interesting peregrinations he observed Mrs. Carr
+gazing out of her deck cabin window, looking, he thought, pale, but
+sweetly pretty, and rather cross. When that lady saw that she was
+observed, she pulled the curtain with a jerk and vanished. Shortly
+after this Arthur’s companion vanished too, circumstances over which
+she had no control compelling her, and Arthur himself sat down rather
+relieved.
+
+But he was destined that day to play knight-errant to ladies in
+distress. Presently Mrs. Carr’s cabin-door opened, and that lady
+herself emerged therefrom, holding on to the side-rail. He had just
+begun to observe how charmingly she was dressed, when some qualm seized
+her, and she returned to re-enter the cabin. But the door had swung-to
+with the roll of the vessel, and she could not open it. Impelled by an
+agony of doubt, she flew to the side, and, to his horror, sprang with a
+single bound on to the broad rail that surmounted the bulwark netting,
+and remained seated there, holding only to a little rope that hung down
+from the awning-chain. The ship, which was at the moment rolling pretty
+heavily, had just reached the full angle of her windward roll, and was
+preparing for a heavy swing to leeward. Arthur, seeing that Mrs. Carr
+would in a few seconds certainly be flung out to sea, rushed promptly
+forward and lifted her from the rail. It was none too soon, for next
+moment down the great ship went with a lurch into a trough of the sea,
+hurling him, with her in his arms, up against the bulwarks, and, to say
+truth, hurting him considerably. But, if he expected any thanks for
+this exploit, he was destined to be disappointed, for no sooner had he
+set his lovely burden down, than she made use of her freedom to stamp
+upon the deck.
+
+“How could you be so foolish?” said he. “In another moment you would
+have been flung out to sea!”
+
+“And pray, Mr. Heigham,” she answered, in a cutting and sarcastic
+voice, “is that my business or your own? Surely it would have been time
+enough for you to take a liberty when I asked you to jump over after
+me.”
+
+Arthur drew himself up to his full height and looked dignified—he could
+look dignified when he liked.
+
+“I do not quite understand you, Mrs. Carr,” he said, with a little bow.
+“What I did, I did to save you from going overboard. Next time that
+such a little adventure comes in my way, I hope, for my own sake, that
+it may concern a lady possessed of less rudeness and more gratitude.”
+
+And then, glaring defiance at each other, they separated; she marching
+off with all the dignity of an offended queen to the “sweet seclusion
+that a cabin grants,” whilst he withdrew moodily to a bench, comforted,
+however, not a little by the thought that he had given Mrs. Carr a
+Roland for her Oliver.
+
+Mrs. Carr’s bound on to the bulwarks had been the last effort of that
+prince of demons, sea-sickness, rending her ere he left. When the
+occasion for remaining there had thus passed away, she soon tired of
+her cabin and of listening to the inarticulate moans of her beloved
+Agatha, who was a most faithful subject of the fiend, one who would
+never desert his manner so long as he could roll the tiniest wave, and,
+sallying forth, took up her position in the little society of the ship.
+
+But between Arthur and herself there was no attempt at reconciliation.
+Each felt their wrongs to be as eternal as the rocks. At luncheon they
+looked unutterable things from different sides of the table; going in
+to dinner, she cut him with the sweetest grace, and on the following
+morning they naturally removed to situations as remote from each other
+as the cubic area of a mail steamer would allow.
+
+“Pretty, very much so, but ill-mannered; not quite a lady, I should
+say,” reflected Arthur to himself, with a superior smile.
+
+“I detest him,” said Mrs. Carr to herself, “at least, I think I do; but
+how neatly he put me down! There is no doubt about his being a
+gentleman, though insufferably conceited.”
+
+These uncharitable thoughts rankled in their respective minds about 12
+A.M. What then was Arthur’s disgust, on descending a little late to
+luncheon that day, to be informed by the resplendent chief-steward—
+who, for some undiscovered reason, always reminded him of Pharaoh’s
+butler—that the captain had altered the places at table, and that this
+alteration involved his being placed next to none other than Mrs. Carr.
+Everybody was already seated, and it was too late to protest, at any
+rate for that meal; so he had to choose between submission and going
+without his luncheon. Being extremely hungry, he decided for the first
+alternative, and reluctantly brought himself to a halt next his avowed
+enemy.
+
+But surprises, like sorrows, come in battalions, a fact that he very
+distinctly realized when, having helped himself to some chicken, he
+heard a clear voice at his side address him by name.
+
+“Mr. Heigham,” said the voice, “I have not yet thanked you for your
+kindness to Miss Terry. I am commissioned to assure you that she is
+very grateful, since she is prevented by circumstances from doing so
+herself.”
+
+“I am much gratified,” he replied, stiffly; “but really I did nothing
+to deserve thanks, and if I had,” he added, with a touch of sarcasm, “I
+should not have expected any.”
+
+“Oh! what a cynic you must be,” she answered with a rippling laugh, “as
+though women, helpless as they are, were not always thankful for the
+tiniest attention. Did not the pretty girl with the black eyes thank
+you for your attentions yesterday, for instance?”
+
+“Did the lady with the brown eyes thank me for my attentions—my very
+necessary attentions—yesterday, for instance?” he answered, somewhat
+mollified, for the laugh and the voice would have thawed a human
+icicle, and, with all his faults, Arthur was not an icicle.
+
+“No, she did not; she deferred doing so in order that she might do it
+better. It was very kind of you to help me, and I daresay that you
+saved my life, and I—I beg your pardon for being so cross, but being
+sea-sick always makes me cross, even to those who are kindest to me. Do
+you forgive me? Please forgive me; I really am quite unhappy when I
+think of my behaviour.” And Mrs. Carr shot a glance at him that would
+have cleared the North-West Passage for a man-of-war.
+
+“Please don’t apologise,” he said, humbly. “I really have nothing to
+forgive. I am aware that I took a liberty, as you put it, but I thought
+that I was justified by the circumstances.”
+
+“It is not generous of you, Mr. Heigham, to throw my words into my
+teeth. I had forgotten all about them. But I will set your want of
+feeling against my want of gratitude, and we kiss and be friends.”
+
+“I can assure you, Mrs. Carr, that there is nothing in the world I
+should like better. When shall the ceremony come off?”
+
+“Now you are laughing at me, and actually interpreting what I say
+literally, as though the English language were not full of figures of
+speech. By that phrase,” and she blushed a little—that is, her cheek
+took a deeper shade of coral—“I meant that we would not cut each other
+after lunch.”
+
+“You bring me from the seventh heaven of expectation into a very
+prosaic world; but I accept your terms, whatever they are. I am
+conquered.”
+
+“For exactly half an hour. But let us talk sense. Are you going to stop
+at Madeira?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“For how long?”
+
+“I don’t know; till I get tired of it, I suppose. Is it nice, Madeira?”
+
+“Charming. I live there half the year.”
+
+“Ah, then I can well believe that it is charming.”
+
+“Mr. Heigham, you are paying compliments. I thought that you looked
+above that sort of thing.”
+
+“In the presence of misfortune and of beauty”—here he bowed—“all men
+are reduced to the same level. Talk to me from behind a curtain, or let
+me turn my back upon you, and you may expect to hear work-a-day
+prose—but face to face, I fear that you must put up with compliment.”
+
+“A neat way of saying that you have had enough of me. Your compliments
+are two-edged. Good-bye for the present.” And she rose, leaving Arthur
+—well, rather amused.
+
+After this they saw a good deal of each other—that is to say, they
+conversed together for at least thirty minutes out of every sixty
+during an average day of fourteen hours, and in the course of these
+conversations she learned nearly everything about him, except his
+engagement to Angela, and she shrewdly guessed at that, or, rather, at
+some kindred circumstance in his career. Arthur, on the other hand,
+learned quite everything about her, for her life was open as the day,
+and would have borne repeating in the _Times_ newspaper. But
+nevertheless he found it extremely interesting.
+
+“You must be a busy woman,” he said one morning, when he had been
+listening to one of her rattling accounts of her travels and gaieties,
+sprinkled over, as it was, with the shrewd remarks, and illumined by
+the keen insight into character that made her talk so charming.
+
+“Busy, no; one of the idlest in the world, and a very worthless one to
+boot,” she answered, with a little sigh.
+
+“Then, why don’t you change your life? it is in your own hands, if ever
+anybody’s was.”
+
+“Do you think so? I doubt if anybody’s life is in their own hands. We
+follow an appointed course; if we did not, it would be impossible to
+understand why so many sensible, clever people make such a complete
+mess of their existence. They can’t do it from choice.”
+
+“At any rate, you have not made a mess of yours, and your appointed
+course seems a very pleasant one.”
+
+“Yes; and the sea beneath us is very smooth, but it has been rough
+before, and will be rough again—there is no stability in the sea. As to
+making a mess of my life, who knows what I may not accomplish in that
+way? Prosperity cannot shine down fear of the future, it only throws it
+into darker relief. Myself I am afraid of the future—it is unknown, and
+to me what is unknown is not magnificent, but terrible. The present is
+enough for me. I do not like speculation, and I never loved the dark.”
+
+And, as they talked, Madeira, in all its summer glory, loomed up out of
+the ocean, for they had passed the “Desertas” and “Porto Santo” by
+night, and for a while they were lost in the contemplation of one of
+the most lovely and verdant scenes that the world can show. Before they
+had well examined it, however, the vessel had dropped her anchor, and
+was surrounded by boats full of custom-house officials, boats full of
+diving boys, of vegetables, of wicker chairs and tables, of parrots,
+fruit, and “other articles too numerous to mention,” as they say in the
+auctioneer’s catalogues, and they knew that it was time to go ashore.
+
+“Well, it has been a pleasant voyage,” said Mrs. Carr. “I am glad you
+are not going on.”
+
+“So am I.”
+
+“You will come and see me to-morrow, will you not? Look, there is my
+house,” and she pointed to a large, white house opposite Leeuw Rock,
+that had a background of glossy foliage, and commanded a view of the
+sea. “If you come, I will show you my beetles. And, if you care to come
+next day, I will show you my mummies.”
+
+“And, if I come the next, what will you show me?”
+
+“So often as you may come,” she said, with a little tremor in her
+voice, “I shall find something to show you.”
+
+Then they shook hands and took their respective ways, she—together with
+the unfortunate Miss Terry, who looked like a resuscitated corpse —on
+to the steam-launch that was waiting for her, and he in the boat
+belonging to Miles’ Hotel.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+
+A minute or two after the boat in which Arthur was being piloted to the
+shore, under the guidance of the manager of Miles’ Hotel, had left the
+side of the vessel, Mrs. Carr’s steam-launch shot up alongside of them,
+its brass-work gleaming in the sunlight like polished gold. On the
+deck, near the little wheel, stood Mrs. Carr herself, and by her side,
+her martial cloak around her, lay Miss Terry, still as any log.
+
+“Mr. Heigham,” said Mrs. Carr, in a voice that sounded across the water
+like a silver bell, “I forgot that you will not be able to find your
+way to my place by yourself to-morrow, so I will send down a
+bullock-car to fetch you; you have to travel about with bullocks here,
+you know. Good-bye,” and, before he could answer, the launch’s head was
+round, and she was tearing through the swell at the rate of fourteen
+knots.
+
+“That’s her private launch,” said the manager of the hotel to Arthur,
+“it is the quickest in the island, and she always goes at full steam.
+She must have come some way round to tell you that, too. There’s her
+place, over there.”
+
+“Mrs. Carr comes here every year, does she not?”
+
+“Oh, yes, every year; but she is very early this year; our season does
+not begin yet, you know. She is a great blessing to the place, she
+gives so much away to the poor peasants. At first she used to come with
+old Mr. Carr, and a wonderful nurse they say she made to the old
+gentleman till he died.”
+
+“Does she entertain much?”
+
+“Not as a rule, but sometimes she gives great balls, splendid affairs,
+and a series of dinner-parties that are the talk of the island. She
+hardly ever goes out anywhere, which makes the ladies in the place
+angry, but, I believe, that they all go to her balls and dinners.
+Mostly, she spends her time up in the hills, collecting butterflies and
+beetles. She has got the most wonderful collection of Egyptian
+curiosities up at the house there, too, though why she keeps them here
+instead of in England, I am sure I don’t know. Her husband began the
+collection when he was a young man, and collected all his life, and she
+has gone on with it since.”
+
+“I wonder that she has not married again.”
+
+“Well, it can’t be for want of asking, if half of what they say is
+true; for, according to that, every single gentleman under fifty who
+has been at Madeira during the last five years has had a try at her,
+but she wouldn’t look at one of them. But of course that is gossip— and
+here we are at the landing-place. Sit steady, sir; those fellows will
+pull the boat up.”
+
+Had it not been for the pre-occupied and uncomfortable state of his
+mind, that took the flavour out of all that he did, and persistently
+thrust a skeleton amidst the flowers of every landscape, Arthur should
+by rights have enjoyed himself very much at Madeira.
+
+To live in one of the lofty rooms of “Miles’ Hotel,” protected by thick
+walls and cool, green shutters, to feel that you are enjoying all the
+advantages of a warm climate without its drawbacks, and that, too,
+however much people in England may be shivering—which they mostly do
+all the year round—is in itself a luxury. And so it is, if the day is
+hot, to dine chiefly off fish and fruit, and such fruit! and then to
+exchange the dining-room for the cool portico, with the sea-breeze
+sweeping through it, and, pipe in hand, to sink into a slumber that
+even the diabolical shrieks of the parrots, tied by the leg in a line
+below, are powerless to disturb. Or, if you be energetic —I speak of
+Madeira energy—you may stroll down the little terraced walk, under the
+shade of your landlord’s vines, and contemplate the growing mass of
+greenery that in this heavenly island makes a garden. You can do more
+than this even; for, having penetrated through the brilliant
+flower-beds, and recruited exhausted nature under a fig-tree, you can
+engage, in true English fashion, in a game of lawn- tennis, which done,
+you will again seek the shade of the creeping vines or spreading
+bananas, and in a springy hammock take your well- earned repose.
+
+All these things are the quintessence of luxury, so much so that he who
+has once enjoyed them will long to turn lotos-eater, forget the painful
+and laborious past, and live and die at “Miles’ Hotel.” Oh, Madeira!
+gem of the ocean, land of pine-clad mountains that foolish men love to
+climb, valleys where wise ones much prefer to rest, and of smells that
+both alike abhor; Madeira of the sunny sky and azure sea, land flowing
+with milk and honey, and overflowing with population, if only you
+belonged to the country on which you depend for a livelihood, what a
+perfect place you would be, and how poetical one could grow about you!
+a consummation which, fortunately for my readers, the recollection of
+the open drains, the ill-favoured priests, and Portuguese officials
+effectually prevents.
+
+On the following morning, at twelve punctually, Arthur was informed
+that the conveyance had arrived to fetch him. He went down, and was
+quite appalled at its magnificence. It was sledge-like in form, built
+to hold four, and mounted on wooden runners that glided over the round
+pebbles with which the Madeira streets are paved, with scarcely a
+sound, and as smoothly as though they ran on ice. The chariot, as
+Arthur always called it afterwards, was built of beautiful woods, and
+lined and curtained throughout with satin, whilst the motive power was
+supplied by two splendidly harnessed white oxen. Two native servants,
+handsome young fellows, dressed in a kind of white uniform, accompanied
+the sledge, and saluted Arthur on his appearance with much reverence.
+
+It took him, however, some time before he could make up his mind to
+embark in a conveyance that reminded him of the description of
+Cleopatra’s galley, and smelt more sweet; but finally he got in, and
+off he started, feeling that he was the observed of all observers, and
+followed by at least a score of beggars, each afflicted with some
+peculiar and dreadful deformity or disease. And thus, in triumphal
+guise, they slid down the quaint and narrow streets, squeezed in for
+the sake of shade between a double line of tall, green-shuttered
+houses; over the bridges that span the vast open drains; past the
+ochre-coloured cathedral; down the promenade edged with great
+magnolia-trees, that made the air heavy with their perfume, and where
+twice a week the band plays, and the Portuguese officials march up and
+down in all the pomp and panoply of office; onward through the dip,
+where the town slopes downwards to the sea; then up again through more
+streets, and past a stretch of dead wall, after which the chariot
+wheels through some iron gates, and he is in fairyland. On each side of
+the carriage-way there spreads a garden calculated to make English
+horticulturists gnash their teeth with envy, through the bowers of
+which he could catch peeps of green turf and of the blue sea beyond.
+
+Here the cabbage palm shot its smooth and lofty trunk high into the
+air, there the bamboo waved its leafy ostrich plumes, and all about and
+around the soil was spread like an Indian shawl, with many a gorgeous
+flower and many a splendid fruit. Arthur thought of the garden of Eden
+and the Isles of the Blest, and whilst his eyes, accustomed to nothing
+better than our poor English roses, were still fixed upon the blazing
+masses of pomegranate flower, and his senses were filled with the sweet
+scent of orange and magnolia blooms, the oxen halted before the portico
+of a stately building, white-walled and green-shuttered like all
+Madeira houses.
+
+Then the slaves of the chariot assisted him to descend, whilst other
+slaves of the door bowed him up the steps, and he stood in a great cool
+hall, dazzling dark after the brilliancy of the sunlight. And here no
+slave awaited him, but the princess of this fair domain, none other
+than Mildred Carr herself, clad all in summer white, and with a smile
+of welcome in her eyes.
+
+“I am so glad that you have come. How do you like Madeira? Do you find
+it very hot?”
+
+“I have not seen much of it yet; but this place is lovely, it is like
+fairyland, and, I believe, that you,” he added, with a bow, “are the
+fairy queen.”
+
+“Compliments again, Mr. Heigham. Well, I was the sleeping beauty last
+time, so one may as well be a queen for a change. I wonder what you
+will call me next?”
+
+“Let me see: shall we say—an angel?”
+
+“Mr. Heigham, stop talking nonsense, and come into the drawing-room.”
+
+He followed her, laughing, into an apartment that, from its noble
+proportions and beauty, might fairly be called magnificent. Its ceiling
+was panelled with worked timber, and its floor beautifully inlaid with
+woods of various hue, whilst the walls were thickly covered with
+pictures, chiefly sea-pieces, and all by good masters. He had, however,
+but little time to look about him, for a door opened at the further end
+of the room, and admitted the portly person of Miss Terry, arrayed in a
+gigantic sun hat and a pair of green spectacles. She seemed very hot,
+and held in her hand a piece of brown paper, inside of which something
+was violently scratching.
+
+“I’ve caught him at last,” she said, “though he did avoid me all last
+year. I’ve caught him.”
+
+“Good gracious! caught what?” asked Arthur, with great interest.
+
+“What! why him that Mildred wanted,” she replied, regardless of grammar
+in her excitement. “Just look at him, he’s beautiful.”
+
+Thus admonished, Arthur carefully undid the brown paper, and next
+moment started back with an exclamation, and began to dance about with
+an enormous red beetle grinding its jaws into his finger.
+
+“Oh, keep still, do, pray,” called Miss Terry, in alarm, “don’t shake
+him off on any account, or we shall lose him for the want of a little
+patience, as I did when he bit my finger last year. If you’ll keep him
+quite still, he won’t leave go, and I’ll ring for John to bring the
+chloroform bottle.”
+
+Arthur, feeling that the interests of science were matters of a higher
+importance than the well-being of his finger, obeyed her injunction to
+the letter, hanging his arm (and the beetle) over the back of a chair
+and looking the picture of silent misery.
+
+“Quite still, if you please, Mr. Heigham, quite still; is not the
+animal’s tenacity interesting?”
+
+“No doubt to you, but I hope your pet beetle is not poisonous, for he
+is gnashing his pincers together inside my finger.”
+
+“Never mind, we will treat you with caustic presently. Mildred, don’t
+laugh so much, but come and look at him; he’s lovely. John, please be
+quick with that chloroform bottle.”
+
+“If this sort of thing happens often, I don’t think that I should
+collect beetles from choice, at least not large ones,” groaned Arthur.
+
+“Oh, dear,” laughed Mrs. Carr, “I never saw anything so absurd. I don’t
+know which looks most savage, you or the beetle.”
+
+“Don’t make all that noise, Mildred, you will frighten him, and if once
+he flies we shall never catch him in this big room.”
+
+Here, fortunately for Arthur, the servant arrived with the required
+bottle, into which the ferocious insect was triumphantly stoppered by
+Miss Terry.
+
+“I am so much obliged to you, Mr. Heigham, you are a true collector.”
+
+“For the first and last time,” mumbled Arthur, who was sucking his
+finger.
+
+“I am infinitely obliged to you, too, Mr. Heigham,” said Mrs. Carr, as
+soon as she had recovered from her fit of laughing; “the beetle is
+really very rare; it is not even in the British Museum. But come, let
+us go in to luncheon.”
+
+After that meal was over, Mrs. Carr asked her guest which he would like
+to see, her collection of beetles or of mummies.
+
+“Thank you, Mrs. Carr, I have had enough of beetles for one day, so I
+vote for the mummies.”
+
+“Very well. Will you come, Agatha?”
+
+“Now, Mildred, you know very well that I won’t come. Just think, Mr.
+Heigham: I only saw the nasty things once, and then they gave me the
+creeps every night for a fortnight. As though those horrid Egyptian
+‘fellahs’ weren’t ugly enough when they were alive without going and
+making great skin and bone dolls of them—pah!”
+
+“Agatha persists in believing that my mummies are the bodies of people
+like she saw in Egypt last year.”
+
+“And so they are, Mildred. That last one you got is just like the boy
+who used to drive my donkey at Cairo—the one that died, you know—I
+believe they just stuffed him, and said that he was an ancient king.
+Ancient king, indeed!” And Miss Terry departed, in search for more
+beetles.
+
+“Now, Mr. Heigham, you must follow me. The museum is not in the house.
+Wait, I will get a hat.”
+
+In a minute she returned, and led the way across a strip of garden to a
+detached building, with a broad verandah, facing the sea. Scarcely ten
+feet from this verandah, and on the edge of the sheer precipice, was
+built a low wall, leaning over which Arthur could hear the wavelets
+lapping against the hollow rock two hundred feet beneath him. Here they
+stopped for a moment to look at the vast expanse of ocean, glittering
+in the sunlight like a sea of molten sapphires and heaving as gently as
+an infant’s bosom.
+
+“It is very lovely; the sea moves just enough to show that it is only
+asleep.”
+
+“Yes; but I like it best when it is awake, when it blows a hurricane—
+it is magnificent. The whole cliff shakes with the shock of the waves,
+and sometimes the spray drives over in sheets. That is when I like to
+sit here; it exhilarates me, and makes me feel as though I belonged to
+the storm, and was strong with its strength. Come, let us go in.”
+
+The entrance to the verandah was from the end that faced the house, and
+to gain it they passed under the boughs of a large magnolia-tree. Going
+through glass doors that opened outwards into the verandah, Mrs. Carr
+entered a room luxuriously furnished as a boudoir. This had apparently
+no other exit, and Arthur was beginning to wonder where the museum
+could be, when she took a tiny bramah key from her watch-chain, and
+with it opened a door that was papered and painted to match the wall
+exactly. He followed her, and found himself in a stone passage, dimly
+lighted from above, and sloping downwards, that led to a doorway graven
+in the rock, on the model of those to be seen at the entrance of
+Egyptian temples.
+
+“Now, Mr. Heigham,” she said, flinging open another door, and stepping
+forward, “you are about to enter ‘The Hall of the Dead.’”
+
+He went in, and a strange sight met his gaze. They were standing in the
+centre of one side of a vast cave, that ran right and left at right
+angles to the passage. The light poured into it in great rays from
+skylights in the roof, and by it he could see that it was hollowed out
+of the virgin rock, and measured some sixty feet or more in length, by
+about forty wide, and thirty high. Down the length of each side of the
+great chamber ran a line of six polished sphinxes, which had been hewn
+out of the surrounding granite, on the model of those at Carnac, whilst
+the walls were elaborately painted after the fashion of an Egyptian
+sepulchre. Here Osiris held his dread tribunal on the spirit of the
+departed; here the warrior sped onward in his charging chariot; here
+the harper swept his sounding chords; and here, again, crowned with
+lotus flowers, those whose corpses lay around held their joyous
+festivals.
+
+In the respective centres of each end of the stone chamber a colossus
+towered in its silent and unearthly grandeur. That to the right was a
+statue of Osiris, judge of the souls of the dead, seated on his
+judgment-seat, and holding in his hand the source and the bent-headed
+sceptre. Facing him at the other end of the hall was the effigy of the
+mighty Ramses, his broad brow encircled by that kingly symbol which few
+in the world’s history have worn so proudly, and his noble features
+impressing those who gaze upon them from age to age with a sense of
+scornful power and melancholy calm, such as does not belong to the
+countenance of the men of their own time. And all around, under this
+solemn guardianship, each upon a polished slab of marble, and enclosed
+in a case of thick glass, lay the corpses of the Egyptian dead, swathed
+in numberless wrappings, as in their day the true religion that they
+held was swathed in symbols and in mummeries.
+
+Here were to be found the high-priest of the mysteries of Isis, the
+astronomer whose lore could read the prophecies that are written in the
+stars, the dark magician, the renowned warrior, the noble, the musician
+with his cymbals by his side, the fair maiden who had—so said her cedar
+coffin-boards—died of love and sorrow, and the royal babe, all sleeping
+the same sleep, and waiting the same awakening. This princess must have
+been well known to Joseph, that may have been her who rescued Moses
+from the waters, whilst the babe belongs to a dynasty of which the
+history was already merging into tradition when the great pyramid
+reared its head on Egypt’s fertile plains.
+
+Arthur stood, awed at the wonderful sight.
+
+“Never before,” said he, in that whisper which we involuntarily use in
+the presence of the dead, “did I realize my own insignificance.”
+
+The thought was abruptly put, but the words represented well what was
+passing in his mind, what must pass in the mind of any man of culture
+and sensibility when he gazes on such a sight. For in such presences
+the human mite of to-day, fluttering in the sun and walking on the
+earth that these have known and walked four thousand years ago, must
+indeed learn how infinitely small is the place that he occupies in the
+tale of things created; and yet, if to his culture and sensibility he
+adds religion, a word of living hope hovers on those dumb lips. For
+where are the spirits of those that lie before him in their eternal
+silence! Answer, withered lips, and tell us what judgment has Osiris
+given, and what has Thoth written in his awful book? Four thousand
+years! Old human husk, if thy dead carcass can last so long, what limit
+is there to the life of the soul it held?
+
+“Did you collect all these?” asked Arthur, when he had made a
+superficial examination of the almost countless treasures of the
+museum.
+
+“Oh, no; Mr. Carr spent half his long life, and more money than I can
+tell you, in getting this collection together. It was the passion of
+his life, and he had this cave hollowed at enormous cost, because he
+thought that the air here would be less likely to injure them than the
+English fogs. I have added to it, however. I got those papyri and that
+beautiful bust of Berenice, the one in black marble. Did you ever see
+such hair?”
+
+Arthur thought to himself that he had at that moment some not far from
+his heart that must be quite as beautiful, but he did not say so.
+
+“Look, there are some curious things;” and she opened an air-tight case
+that contained some discoloured grains and a few lumps of shrivelled
+substance.
+
+“What are they?”
+
+“This is wheat taken from the inside of a mummy, and those are supposed
+to be hyacinth bulbs. They came from the mummy-case of that baby
+prince, and I have been told that they would still grow if planted.”
+
+“I can scarcely believe that: the principle of life must be extinct.”
+
+“Wise people say, you know, that the principle of life can never become
+extinct in anything that has once lived, though it may change its form;
+but I do not pretend to understand these things. However, we will
+settle the question, for we will plant one, and, if it grows, I will
+give the flower to you. Choose one.”
+
+Arthur took the biggest lump from the case, and examined it curiously.
+
+“I have not much faith in your hyacinth; I am sure that it is dead.”
+
+“Ah! but many things that seem more dead than that have the strangest
+way of suddenly breaking into life,” she said, with a little sigh.
+“Give it to me; I will have it planted;” and then, with a quick glance
+upward, “I wonder if you will be here to see it bloom.”
+
+“I don’t think that either of us will see it bloom in this world,” he
+answered, laughing, and took his leave.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+
+Had Arthur been a little less wrapped up in thoughts of Angela, and a
+little more alive to the fact that, being engaged or even married to
+one woman, does not necessarily prevent complications arising with
+another, it might have occurred to him to doubt the prudence of the
+course of life that he was pursuing at Madeira. And, as it is, it is
+impossible to acquit him of showing a want of knowledge of the world
+amounting almost to folly, for he should have known upon general
+principles that, for a man in his position, a grizzly bear would have
+been a safer daily companion than a young and lovely widow, and the
+North Pole a more suitable place of residence than Madeira. But he
+simply did not think about the matter, and, as thin ice has a
+treacherous way of not cracking till it suddenly breaks, so outward
+appearances gave him no indication of his danger.
+
+And yet the facts were full of evil promise, for, as time went on,
+Mildred Carr fell headlong in love with him. There was no particular
+reason why she should have done so. She might have had scores of men,
+handsomer, cleverer, more distinguished, for the asking, or, rather,
+for the waiting to be asked. Beyond a certain ability of mind, a taking
+manner, and a sympathetic, thoughtful face, with that tinge of
+melancholy upon it which women sometimes find dangerously interesting,
+there was nothing so remarkable about Arthur that a woman possessing
+her manifold attractions and opportunities, should, unsought and
+without inquiry, lavish her affection upon him. There is only one
+satisfactory explanation of the phenomenon, which, indeed, is a very
+common one, and that is, that he was her fate, the one man whom she was
+to love in the world, for no woman worth the name ever _loves_ two,
+however many she may happen to marry. For this curious difference would
+appear to exist between the sexes. The man can attach himself, though
+in varying degree, to several women in the course of a lifetime, whilst
+the woman, the true, pure-hearted woman, cannot so adapt her best
+affection. Once given, like the law of the Medes and Persians, it
+altereth not.
+
+Mildred felt, when her eyes first met Arthur’s in Donald Currie’s
+office, that this man was for her different from all other men, though
+she did not put the thought in words even to herself. And from that
+hour till she embarked on board the boat he was continually in her
+mind, a fact which so irritated her that she nearly missed the steamer
+on purpose, only changing her mind at the last moment. And then, when
+she had helped him to carry Miss Terry to her cabin, their hands had
+accidentally met, and the contact had sent a thrill through her frame
+such as she had never felt before. The next development that she could
+trace was her jealousy of the black-eyed girl whom she saw him helping
+about the deck, and her consequent rudeness.
+
+Up to her present age, Mildred Carr had never known a single touch of
+love: she had not even felt particularly interested in her numerous
+admirers, but now this marble Galatea had by some freak of fate found a
+woman’s heart, awkwardly enough, without the semblance of a
+supplication on the part of him whom she destined to play Pygmalion.
+And, when she examined herself by the light of the flame thus newly
+kindled, she shrank back dismayed, like one who peeps over the crater
+of a volcano commencing its fiery work. She had believed her heart to
+be callous to all affection of this nature, it had seemed as dead as
+the mummied hyacinth; and now it was a living, suffering thing, and all
+alight with love. She had tasted of a new wine, and it burnt her, and
+was bitter sweet, and yet she longed for more. And thus, by slow and
+sad degrees, she learnt that her life, which had for thirty years
+flowed on its quiet way unshadowed by love’s wing, must henceforth own
+his dominion, and be a slave to his sorrows and caprices. No wonder
+that she grew afraid!
+
+But Mildred was a woman of keen insight into character, and it did not
+require that her powers of observation should be sharpened by the
+condition of her affections, to show her that, however deeply she might
+be in love with Arthur Heigham, he was not one little bit in love with
+her. Knowing the almost irresistible strength of her own beauty and
+attractions, she quickly came to the conclusion—and it was one that
+sent a cold chill through her—that there must be some other woman
+blocking the path to his heart. For some reason or other, Arthur had
+never spoken to her of Angela, either because a man very rarely
+volunteers information to a woman concerning his existing relationship
+with another of her sex, knowing that to do so would be to depreciate
+his value in her eyes, or from an instinctive knowledge that the
+subject would not be an agreeable one, or perhaps because the whole
+matter was too sacred to him. But she, on her part, was determined to
+probe his secret to the bottom. So one sleepy afternoon, when they were
+sitting on the museum verandah, about six weeks after the date of their
+arrival in the island, she took her opportunity.
+
+Mildred was sitting, or rather half lying, in a cane-work chair, gazing
+out over the peaceful sea, and Arthur, looking at her, thought what a
+lovely woman she was, and wondered what it was that had made her face
+and eyes so much softer and more attractive of late. Miss Terry was
+also there, complaining of the heat, but presently she moved off after
+an imaginary beetle, and they were alone.
+
+“Oh, by-the-by, Mr. Heigham,” Mildred said, presently, “I was going to
+ask you a question, if only I can remember what it is.”
+
+“Try to remember what it is about. ‘Shoes, sealing-wax, cabbages, or
+kings.’ Does it come under any of those heads?”
+
+“Ah, I remember now. If you had added ‘queens,’ you would not have been
+far out. What I wanted to ask you——” and she turned her large, brown
+eyes full upon him, and yawned slightly. “Dear me, Agatha is right; it
+_is_ hot!”
+
+“Well, I am waiting to give you any information in my power.”
+
+“Oh! to be sure, the question. Well, it is a very simple one. Who are
+you engaged to?”
+
+Arthur nearly sprang off his chair with astonishment.
+
+“What makes you think that I am engaged?” he asked.
+
+She broke into a merry peal of laughter. Ah! if he could have known
+what that laugh cost her.
+
+“What makes me think that you are engaged!” she answered, in a tone of
+raillery. “Why, of course you would have been at my feet long ago, if
+it had not been so. Come, don’t be reticent. I shall not laugh at you.
+What is she like?” (Generally a woman’s first question about a rival.)
+“Is she as good-looking—well, as I am, say—for, though you may not
+think it, I have been thought good-looking.”
+
+“She is quite different from you; she is very tall and fair, like an
+angel in a picture, you know.”
+
+“Oh! then there is a ‘she,’ and a ‘she like an angel.’ Very different
+_indeed_ from me, I should think. How nicely I caught you out;” and she
+laughed again.
+
+“Why did you want to catch me out?” said Arthur, on whose ear Mrs.
+Carr’s tone jarred; he could not tell why.
+
+“Feminine curiosity, and a natural anxiety to fathom the reasons of
+your sighs, that is all. But never mind, Mr. Heigham, you and I shall
+not quarrel because you are engaged to be married. You shall tell me
+the story when you like, for I am sure there is a story—no, not this
+afternoon; the sun has given me a headache, and I am going to sleep it
+off. Other people’s love-stories are very interesting to me, the more
+so because I have reached the respectable age of thirty without being
+the subject of one myself;” and again she laughed, this time at her own
+falsehood. But, when he had gone, there was no laughter in her eyes,
+nothing but tears, bitter, burning tears.
+
+“Agatha,” said Mildred that evening, “I am sick of this place. I want
+to go to the Isle of Wight. It must be quite nice there now. We will go
+by the next Currie boat.”
+
+“My dear Mildred,” replied Miss Terry, aghast, “if you were going back
+so soon, why did you not leave me behind you? And just as we were
+getting so nicely settled here too, and I shall be so sorry to say
+good-bye to that young Heigham, he is such a nice young man! Why don’t
+you marry him? I really thought you liked him. But, perhaps he is
+coming to the Isle of Wight too. Oh, that dreadful bay!”
+
+Mildred winced at Miss Terry’s allusions to Arthur, of whom that lady
+had grown extremely fond.
+
+“I am very sorry, dear,” she said, hastily; “but I am bored to death,
+and it is such a bad insect year: so really you must begin to pack up.”
+
+Miss Terry began to pack accordingly, but, when next she alluded to the
+subject of their departure, Mildred affected surprise, and asked her
+what she meant. The astonished Agatha referred her to her own words,
+and was met by a laughing disclaimer.
+
+“Why, you surely did not think that I was in earnest, did you? I was
+only a little cross.”
+
+“Well, really, Mildred, you’ve got so strange lately that I never know
+when you are in earnest and when you are not, though, for my part, I am
+very glad to stay in peace and quiet.”
+
+“Strange, grown strange, have I!” said Mrs. Carr, looking dreamily out
+of a window that commanded the carriage-drive, with her hands crossed
+behind her. “Yes, I think that you are right. I think that I have lost
+the old Mildred somewhere or other, and picked up a new one whom I
+don’t understand.”
+
+“Ah, indeed,” remarked Miss Terry, in the most matter-of-fact way,
+without having the faintest idea of what her friend was driving at.
+
+“How it rains! I suppose that he won’t come to-day.”
+
+“He! Who’s he?”
+
+“Why, how stupid you are! Mr. Heigham, of course!”
+
+“So you always mean him, when you say ‘he!’”
+
+“Yes, of course I do, if it isn’t ungrammatical. It is miserable this
+afternoon. I feel wretched. Why, actually, here he comes!” and she tore
+off like a school-girl into the hall, to meet him.
+
+“Ah, indeed,” again remarked Miss Terry, solemnly, to the empty walls.
+“I am not such a fool as I look. I suppose that Mr. Heigham wouldn’t
+come to the Isle of Wight.”
+
+It is perhaps needless to say that Mrs. Carr had never been more in
+earnest in her life than when she announced her intention of departing
+to the Isle of Wight. The discovery that her suspicions about Arthur
+had but too sure a foundation had been a crushing blow to her hopes,
+and she had formed a wise resolution to see no more of him. Happy would
+it have been for her, if she could have found the moral courage to act
+up to it, and go away, a wiser, if a sadder, woman. But this was not to
+be. The more she contemplated it, the more did her passion —which was
+now both wild and deep—take hold upon her heart, eating into it like
+acid into steel, and graving one name there in ineffaceable letters.
+She could not bear the thought of parting from him, and felt, or
+thought she felt, that her happiness was already too deeply pledged to
+allow her to throw up the cards without an effort.
+
+Fortune favours the brave. Perhaps, after all, it would declare itself
+for her. She was modest in her aspirations. She did not expect that he
+would ever give her the love he bore this other woman; she only asked
+to live in the sunlight of his presence, and would be glad to take him
+at his own price, or indeed at any price. Man, she knew, is by nature
+as unstable as water, and will mostly melt beneath the eyes of more
+women than one, as readily as ice before a fire when the sun has hid
+his face. Yes, she would play the game out: she would not throw away
+her life’s happiness without an effort. After all, matters might have
+been worse: he might have been actually married.
+
+But she knew that her hand was a difficult one to lead from, though she
+also knew that she held the great trumps—unusual beauty, practically
+unlimited wealth, and considerable fascination of manner. Her part must
+be to attract without repelling, charm without alarming, fascinate by
+slow degrees, till at length he was involved in a net from which there
+was no escape, and, above all, never to allow him to suspect her
+motives till the ripe moment came. It was a hard task for a proud woman
+to set herself, and, in a manner, she was proud; but, alas, with the
+best of us, when love comes in at the door, pride, reason, and
+sometimes honour, fly out the window.
+
+And so Miss Terry heard no more talk of the Isle of Wight.
+
+Thenceforward, under the frank and open guise of friendship, Mildred
+contrived to keep Arthur continually at her side. She did more. She
+drew from him all the history of his engagement to Angela, and
+listened, with words of sympathy on her lips, and wrath and bitter
+jealousy in her heart, to his enraptured descriptions of her rival’s
+beauty and perfections. So benighted was he, indeed, that once he went
+so far as to suggest that he should, when he and Angela were married,
+come to Madeira to spend their honeymoon, and dilated on the pleasant
+trips which they three might take together.
+
+“Truly,” thought Mildred to herself, “that would be delightful.” Once,
+too, he even showed her a tress of Angela’s hair, and, strange to say,
+she found that there still lingered in her bosom a sufficient measure
+of vulgar first principles to cause her to long to snatch it from him
+and throw it into the sea. But, as it was, she smiled faintly, and
+admired openly, and then went to the glass to look at her own nut-
+brown tresses. Never had she been so dissatisfied with them, and yet
+her hair was considered lovely, and an aesthetic hair-dresser had once
+called it a “poem.”
+
+“Blind fool,” she muttered, stamping her little foot upon the floor,
+“why does he torture me so?”
+
+Mildred forgot that all love is blind, and that none was ever blinder
+or more headstrong than her own.
+
+And so this second Calypso of a lovely isle set herself almost as
+unblushingly as her prototype to get our very unheroic Ulysses into her
+toils. And Penelope, poor Penelope, she sat at home and span, and
+defied her would-be lovers.
+
+But as yet Ulysses—I mean Arthur—was conscious of none of those things.
+He was by nature an easy-going young gentleman, who took matters as he
+found them, and asked no questions. And he found them very pleasant at
+Madeira, or, rather, at the Quinta Carr, for he did everything except
+sleep there. Within its precincts he was everywhere surrounded with
+that atmosphere of subtle and refined flattery, flattery addressed
+chiefly to the intellect, that is one of the most effective weapons of
+a clever woman. Soon the drawing-room tables were loaded with his
+favourite books, and no songs but such as he approved were ordered from
+London.
+
+He discovered one evening, for instance, that Mildred looked best at
+night in black and silver, and next morning Mr. Worth received a
+telegram requesting him to forward without delay a large consignment of
+dresses in which those colours predominated.
+
+On another occasion he casually threw out a suggestion about the
+erection of a terrace in the garden, and shortly afterwards was
+surprised to find a small army of Portuguese labourers engaged upon the
+work. He had made this suggestion in total ignorance of the science of
+garden engineering, and its execution necessitated the removal of vast
+quantities of soil and the blasting of many tons of rock. The
+contractor employed by Mrs. Carr pointed out how the terrace could be
+made equally well at a fifth of the expense, but it did not happen to
+take exactly the direction that Arthur had indicated, so she would have
+none of it. His word was law, and, because he had spoken, the whole
+place was for a month overrun with dirty labourers, whilst, to the
+great detriment of Miss Terry’s remaining nerves, and even to the
+slight discomfort of His Royal Highness himself, the air resounded all
+day long with the terrific bangs of the blasting powder.
+
+But, so long as he was pleased with the progress of the improvement,
+Mildred felt no discomfort, nor would she allow any one else to express
+any. It even aggravated her to see Miss Terry put her hands to her head
+and jump, whenever a particularly large piece of ordnance was
+discharged, and she would vow that it must be affectation, because she
+never even noticed it.
+
+In short, Mildred Carr possessed to an extraordinary degree that
+faculty for blind, unreasoning adoration which is so characteristic of
+the sex, an adoration that is at once magnificent in the entirety of
+its own self-sacrifice, and extremely selfish. When she thought that
+she could please Arthur, the state of Agatha’s nerves became a matter
+of supreme indifference to her, and in the same way, had she been an
+absolute monarch, she would have spent the lives of thousands, and
+shaken empires till thrones came tumbling down like apples in the wind,
+if she had believed that she could thereby advance herself in his
+affections.
+
+But, as it never occurred to Arthur that Mrs. Carr might be in love
+with him, he saw nothing abnormal about all this. Not that he was
+conceited, for nobody was ever less so, but it is wonderful what an
+amount of flattery and attention men will accept from women as their
+simple right. If the other sex possesses the faculty of admiration, we
+in compensation are perfectly endowed with that of receiving it with
+careless ease, and when we fall in with some goddess who is foolish
+enough to worship _us_, and to whom _we_ should be on our knees, we
+merely label her “sympathetic,” and say that she “understands us.”
+
+From all of which wise reflections the reader will gather that our
+friend Arthur was not a hundred miles off an awkward situation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+
+One day, some three weeks after Arthur had gone, Angela strolled down
+the tunnel walk, now, in the height of summer, almost dark with the
+shade of the lime-trees, and settled herself on one of the stone seats
+under Caresfoot’s staff.
+
+She had a book in hand, but it soon became clear that she had come to
+this secluded spot to think rather than read, for it fell unopened from
+her hand, and her grey eyes were full of a far-off look as they gazed
+across the lake glittering in the sunlight, away towards the hazy
+purple outline of the distant hills. Her face was quite calm, but it
+was not that of a happy person; indeed, it gave a distinct idea of
+mental suffering. All grief, however acute, is subject to fixed
+gradations, and Angela was yet in the second stage. First there is the
+acute stage, when the heart aches with a physical pain, and the mind,
+filled with a wild yearning or tortured by an unceasing anxiety, well-
+nigh gives beneath the abnormal strain. This does not last long, or it
+would kill or drive us to the mad-house. Then comes that long epoch of
+dull misery, enduring till at last kindly nature in pity rubs off the
+rough extremes of our calamity, and by slow but sure degrees softens
+agony into sorrow.
+
+This was what she was now passing through, and—as all highly organized
+natures like her own are, especially in youth, very sensitive to those
+more exquisite vibrations of pain and happiness that leave minds of a
+coarser fibre comparatively unmoved—it may be taken for granted that
+she was suffering sufficiently acutely.
+
+Perhaps she had never quite realized how necessary Arthur had become to
+her, how deep his love had sent its fibres into her heart and inner
+self, until he was violently wrenched away from her and she lost all
+sight and knowledge of him in the darkness of the outside world. Still
+she had made no show of her sorrow; but once, when Pigott told her some
+pathetic story of the death of a little child in the village, she burst
+into a paroxysm of weeping. The pity for another’s pain had loosed the
+flood-gates of her own, but it was a performance that she did not
+repeat.
+
+But Angela had her anxieties as well as her griefs, and it was over
+these former that she was thinking as she sat on the great stone under
+the oak. Love is a wonderful quickener of the perceptions, and,
+ignorant as she was of all the world’s ways, the more she thought over
+the terms imposed by her father upon her engagement, the more
+distrustful did she grow. Lady Bellamy, too, had been to see her twice,
+and on each occasion had inspired her with a lively sense of fear and
+repugnance. During the first of these visits she had shown a perfect
+acquaintance with the circumstances of her engagement, her “flirtation
+with Mr. Heigham,” as she was pleased to call it. During the second
+call, too, she had been full of strange remarks about her cousin
+George, talking mysteriously of “a change” that had come over him since
+his illness, and of his being under a “new influence.” Nor was this
+all; for, on the very next day when she was out walking with Pigott in
+the village, she had met George himself, and he had insisted upon
+entering into a long rambling conversation with her, and on looking at
+her in a way that made her feel perfectly sick.
+
+“Oh, Aleck,” she said, aloud, to the dog that was sitting by her side
+with his head upon her knee, for he was now her constant companion, “I
+wonder where your master is, your master and mine, Aleck. Would to God
+that he were back here to protect me, for I am growing afraid, I don’t
+know of what, Aleck, and there are eleven long silent months to wait.”
+At this moment the dog raised his head, listened, and sprang round with
+an angry “woof.” Angela rose up with a flash of hope in her eyes,
+turned, and faced George Caresfoot.
+
+He was still pale and shrivelled from the effects of his illness, but
+otherwise little changed, except that the light-blue eyes glittered
+with a fierce determination, and that the features had attained that
+fixity and strength which sometimes come to those who are bent heart
+and soul upon an enterprise, be it good or evil.
+
+“So I have found you out at last, Cousin Angela. What, are you not
+going to shake hands with me?”
+
+Angela touched his fingers with her own.
+
+“My father is not here,” she said.
+
+“Thank you, my dear cousin, but I did not come to see your father, of
+whom I have seen plenty in the course of my life, and shall doubtless
+see more; I came to see you, of whom I can never see enough.”
+
+“I don’t understand you,” said Angela, defiantly, folding her arms
+across her bosom and looking him full in the face with fearless eyes,
+for her instinct warned her that she was in danger, and also that,
+whatever she might feel, she must not show that she was afraid.
+
+“I shall hope to make you do so before long,” he replied, with a
+meaning glance; “but you are not very polite, you know, you do not
+offer me a seat.”
+
+“I beg your pardon, I did not know that you wanted to sit down. I can
+only offer you a choice of those stones.”
+
+“Then call that brute away, and I will sit down.”
+
+“The dog is not a brute, as you mean it. But I should not speak of him
+like that, if I were you. He is sensible as a human being, and might
+resent it.”
+
+Angela knew that George was a coward about dogs; and at that moment, as
+though to confirm her words, Aleck growled slightly.
+
+“Ah, indeed; well, he is certainly a handsome dog;” and he sat down
+suspiciously. “Won’t you come and sit down?”
+
+“Thank you. I prefer to stand.”
+
+“Do you know what you look like, standing there with your arms crossed?
+You look like an angry goddess.”
+
+“If you mean that seriously, I don’t understand you. If it is a
+compliment, I don’t like compliments.”
+
+“You are not very friendly,” said George, whose temper was fast getting
+the better of him.
+
+“I am sorry. I do not wish to be unfriendly.”
+
+“So I hear that my ward has been staying here whilst I was ill.”
+
+“Yes, he was staying here.”
+
+“And I am also told that there was some boy-and-girl love affair
+between you. I suppose that he indulged in a flirtation to wile away
+the time.”
+
+Angela turned upon him, too angry to speak.
+
+“Well, you need not look at me like that. You surely never expect to
+see him again, do you?”
+
+“If we both live, I shall certainly see him again; indeed, I shall, in
+any case.”
+
+“You will never see him again.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because he was only flirting and playing the fool with you. He is a
+notorious flirt, and, to my certain knowledge, has been engaged to two
+women before.”
+
+“I do not believe that that is true, or, if it is true, it is not all
+the truth; but, true or untrue, I am not going to discuss Mr. Heigham
+with you, or allow myself to be influenced by stories told behind his
+back.”
+
+“Angela,” said George, rising, and seizing her hand.
+
+She turned quite pale, and a shudder passed over her frame.
+
+“Leave my hand alone, and never dare to touch me again. This is the
+second time that you have tried to insult me.”
+
+“So!” answered George, furious with outraged pride and baffled passion,
+“you set up your will against mine, do you? Very well, you shall see. I
+will crush you to powder. Insult you, indeed! How often did that young
+blackguard insult you? I warrant he did more than take your hand.”
+
+“If,” answered Angela, “you mean Mr. Heigham, I shall leave you to
+consider whether that term is not more applicable to the person who
+does his best to outrage an unprotected woman, and take advantage of
+the absent, than to the gentleman against whom you have used it;” and,
+darting on him one glance of supreme contempt, she swept away like an
+angry queen.
+
+Left to his meditations, George shook his fist towards where she had
+vanished.
+
+“Very well, my fine lady, very well,” he said, aloud. “You treat me as
+so much dirt, do you? You shall smart for this, so sure as my name is
+George Caresfoot. Only wait till you are in my power, and you shall
+learn that I was never yet defied with impunity. Oh, and you shall
+learn many other things also.”
+
+From that time forward, Angela was, for a period of two months or more,
+subjected to an organized persecution as harassing as it was cruel.
+George waylaid her everywhere, and twice actually succeeded in entering
+into conversation with her, but on both occasions she managed to escape
+from him before he could proceed any further. So persistently did he
+hunt her, that at last the wretched girl was driven to hide herself
+away in odd corners of the house and woods, in order to keep out of his
+way. Then he took to writing her letters, and sending handsome
+presents, all of which she returned.
+
+Poor Angela! It was hard both to lose her lover, and to suffer daily
+from the persecutions of her hateful cousin, which were now pushed
+forward so openly and with such pertinacity as to fill her with vague
+alarm. What made her position worse was, that she had no one in whom to
+confide, for Mr. Fraser had not yet returned. Pigott indeed knew more
+or less what was going on, but she could do nothing, except bewail
+Arthur’s absence, and tell her “not to mind.” There remained her
+father, but with him she had never been on sufficiently intimate terms
+for confidence. Indeed, as time went on, the suspicion gathered
+strength in her mind that he was privy to George’s advances, and that
+those advances had something to do with the harsh terms imposed upon
+Arthur and herself. But at last matters grew so bad that, having no
+other refuge, she determined to appeal to him for protection.
+
+“Father,” she said, boldly, one day to Philip, as he was sitting
+writing in his study, “my cousin George is persecuting me every day. I
+have borne it as long as I can, but I can bear it no longer. I have
+come to ask you to protect me from him.”
+
+“Why, Angela, I should have thought that you were perfectly capable of
+protecting yourself. What is he persecuting you about? What does he
+want?”
+
+“To marry me, I suppose,” answered Angela, blushing to her eyes.
+
+“Well, that is a very complimentary wish on his part, and I can tell
+you what it is, Angela, if only you could get that young Heigham out of
+your head, you might do a deal worse.”
+
+“It is quite useless to talk to me like that,” she answered, coldly.
+
+“Well, that is your affair; but it is very ridiculous of you to come
+and ask me to protect you. The woman must, indeed, be a fool who cannot
+protect herself.”
+
+And so the interview ended.
+
+Next day Lady Bellamy called again.
+
+“My dear child,” she said to Angela, “you are not looking well; this
+business worries you, no doubt; it is the old struggle between duty and
+inclination, that we have most of us gone through. Well, there is one
+consolation, nobody who ever did his or her duty, regardless of
+inclination, ever regretted it in the end.”
+
+“What do you mean, Lady Bellamy, when you talk about my duty?”
+
+“I mean the plain duty that lies before you of marrying your cousin
+George, and of throwing up this young Heigham.”
+
+“I recognize no such duty.”
+
+“My dear Angela, do look at the matter from a sensible point of view,
+think what a good thing it would be for your father, and remember, too,
+that it would re-unite all the property. If ever a girl had a clear
+duty to perform, you have.”
+
+“Since you insist so much upon my ‘duty,’ I must say that it seems to
+me that an honest girl in my position has three duties to consider, and
+not one, as you say, Lady Bellamy. First, there is her duty to the man
+she loves, for her the greatest duty of any in the world; next her duty
+to herself, for her happiness and self-respect are involved in her
+decision; and, lastly, her duty to her family. I put the family last,
+because, after all, it is she who gets married, not her family.”
+
+Lady Bellamy smiled a little.
+
+“You argue well; but there is one thing that you overlook, though I am
+sorry to have to pain you by saying it; young Mr. Heigham is no better
+than he should be. I have made inquiries about him, and think that I
+ought to tell you that.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean that his life, young as he is, has not been so creditable as it
+might have been. He has been the hero of one or two little affairs. I
+can tell you about them if you like.”
+
+“Lady Bellamy, your stories are either true or untrue. If true, I
+should take no notice of them, because they must have happened before
+he loved me; if untrue, they would be a mere waste of breath, so I
+think that we may dispense with the stories—they would influence me no
+more than the hum of next summer’s gnats.”
+
+Lady Bellamy smiled again.
+
+“You are a curious woman,” she said; “but, supposing that there were to
+be a repetition of these little stories _after_ he loved you, what
+would you say then?”
+
+Angela looked troubled, and thought awhile.
+
+“He could never go far from me,” she answered.
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean that I hold the strings of his heart in my hands, and I have
+only to lift them to draw him back to me—so. No other woman, no living
+force, can keep him from me, if I choose to bid him come.”
+
+“Supposing that to be so, how about the self-respect you spoke of just
+now? Could you bear to take your lover back from the hands of another
+woman?”
+
+“That would entirely depend upon the circumstances, and upon what was
+just to the other woman.”
+
+“You would not then throw him up without question?”
+
+“Lady Bellamy, I may be very ignorant and simple, but I am neither mad
+nor a fool. What do you suppose that my life would be worth to me if I
+threw Arthur up? If I remained single it would be an aching void, as it
+is now, and if I married any other man whilst he still lived, it would
+become a daily and shameful humiliation such as I had rather die than
+endure.”
+
+Lady Bellamy glanced up from under her heavy-lidded eyes; a thought had
+evidently struck her, but she did not express it.
+
+“Then I am to tell your cousin George that you will have absolutely
+nothing to do with him?”
+
+“Yes, and beg him to cease persecuting me; it is quite useless; if
+there were no Arthur and no other man in the world, I would not marry
+him. I detest him—I cannot tell you how I detest him.”
+
+“It is amusing to hear you talk so, and to think that you will
+certainly be Mrs. George Caresfoot within nine months.”
+
+“Never,” answered Angela, passionately stamping her foot upon the
+floor. “What makes you say such horrible things?”
+
+“I reflect,” answered Lady Bellamy, with an ominous smile, “that George
+Caresfoot has made up his mind to marry you, and that I have made up
+mine to help him to do so, and that your will, strong as it certainly
+is, is, as compared with our united wills, what a straw is to a gale.
+The straw cannot travel against the wind, it _must_ go with it, and you
+_must_ marry George Caresfoot. You will as certainly come to the
+altar-rails with him as you will to your death-bed. It is written in
+your face. Good-bye.”
+
+For the first time Angela’s courage really gave way as she heard these
+dreadful words. She remembered how she herself had called Lady Bellamy
+an embodiment of the “Spirit of Power,” and now she felt that the
+comparison was just. The woman was power incarnate, and her words,
+which from anybody else she would have laughed at, sent a cold chill
+through her.
+
+“She is a fine creature both in mind and body,” reflected Lady Bellamy,
+as she stepped into her carriage. “Really, though I try to hate her, I
+can find it in my heart to be sorry for her. Indeed, I am not sure that
+I do not like her; certainly I respect her. But she has come in my path
+and must be crushed—my own safety demands it. At least, she is worth
+crushing, and the game is fair, for perhaps she will crush me. I should
+not be surprised; there is a judgment in those grey eyes of hers—Qui
+vivra verra. Home, William.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+
+Angela’s appeal for protection set Philip thinking.
+
+As the reader is aware, his sole motive in consenting to become, as it
+were, a sleeping partner in the shameful plot, of which his innocent
+daughter was the object, was to obtain possession of his lost
+inheritance, and it now occurred to him that even should that plot
+succeed, which he very greatly doubted, nothing had as yet been settled
+as to the terms upon which it was to be reconveyed to him. The whole
+affair was excessively repugnant to him: indeed, he regarded the
+prospect of its success with little less than terror, only his greed
+over-mastered his fear.
+
+But on one point he was very clear: it should not succeed except upon
+the very best of terms for himself, his daughter should not be
+sacrificed unless the price paid for the victim was positively
+princely, such guilt was not to be incurred for a bagatelle. If George
+married Angela, the Isleworth estates must pass back into his hands for
+a very low sum indeed. But would his cousin be willing to accept such a
+sum? That was the rub, and that, too, was what must be made clear
+without any further delay. He had no wish to see Angela put to needless
+suffering, suffering which would not bring an equivalent with it, and
+which might, on the contrary, entail consequences upon himself that he
+shuddered to think of.
+
+Curiously enough, however, he had of late been signally free from his
+superstitious fears; indeed, since the night when he had so astonished
+Arthur by his outbreak about the shadows on the wall, no fit had come
+to trouble him, and he was beginning to look upon the whole thing as an
+evil dream, a nightmare that he had at last lived down. But still the
+nightmare might return, and he was not going to run the risk unless he
+was very well paid for it. And so he determined to offer a price so low
+for the property that no man in his senses would accept it, and then
+wrote a note to George asking him to come over on the following evening
+after dinner, as he wished to speak to him on a matter of business.
+
+“There,” he said to himself, “that will make an end of the affair, and
+I will get young Heigham back and they can be married. George can never
+take what I mean to offer; if he should, the Egyptian will be spoiled
+indeed, and the game will be worth the candle. Not that I have any
+responsibility about it, however; I shall put no pressure on Angela,
+she must choose for herself.” And Philip went to bed, quite feeling as
+though he had done a virtuous action.
+
+George came punctually enough on the following evening, which was that
+of the day of Lady Bellamy’s conversation with Angela, a conversation
+which had so upset the latter that she had already gone to her room,
+not knowing anything of her cousin’s proposed visit.
+
+The night was one of those dreadfully oppressive ones that sometimes
+visit us in the course of an English summer. The day had been hot and
+sultry, and with the fall of the evening the little breeze that stirred
+in the thunder-laden air had died away, leaving the temperature at much
+the same point that is to be expected in a tropical valley, and
+rendering the heat of the house almost unbearable.
+
+“How do you do, George?” said Philip. “Hot, isn’t it?”
+
+“Yes, there will be a tempest soon.”
+
+“Not before midnight, I think. Shall we go and walk down by the lake,
+it will be cooler there, and we shall be quite undisturbed? Walls have
+ears sometimes, you know.”
+
+“Very well; but where is Angela?”
+
+“I met her on the stairs just now, and she said that she was going to
+bed—got a headache, I believe. Shall we start?”
+
+So soon as they were well away from the house, Philip broke the ice.
+
+“Some months back, I had a conversation with Lady Bellamy on the
+subject of a proposal that you made to me through her for Angela’s
+hand. It is about that I wish to speak to you now. First, I must ask if
+you still wish to go on with the business?”
+
+“Certainly, I wish it more than ever.”
+
+“Well, as I intimated to Lady Bellamy, I do not at all approve of your
+suit. Angela is already, subject to my consent, very suitably engaged
+to your late ward, a young fellow whom, whatever you may think about
+him, I like very much; and I can assure you that it will require the
+very strongest inducements to make me even allow such a thing. In any
+case, I will have nothing to do with influencing Angela; she is a
+perfectly free agent.”
+
+“Which means, I suppose, that you intend to screw down the price?”
+
+“In wanting to marry Angela,” went on Philip, “you must remember that
+you fly high. She is a very lovely woman, and, what is more, will some
+day or other be exceedingly well off, whilst you—you must excuse me for
+being candid, but this is a mere matter of business, and I am only
+talking of you in the light of a possible son-in-law—you are a
+middle-aged man, not prepossessing in appearance, broken in health,
+and, however well you may have kept up your reputation in these parts,
+as you and I well know, without a single shred of character left;
+altogether not a man to whom a father would marry his daughter of his
+own free will, or one with whom a young girl is likely to find
+happiness.”
+
+“You draw a flattering picture of me, I must say.”
+
+“Not at all, only a true one.”
+
+“Well, if I am all you say, how is it that you are prepared to allow
+your daughter to marry me at all?”
+
+“I will tell you; because the rights of property should take precedence
+of the interests of a single individual. Because my father and you
+between you cozened me out of my lawful own, and this is the only way
+that I see of coming by it again.”
+
+“What does it matter? in any case after your death the land will come
+back to Angela and her children.”
+
+“No, George, it will not; if ever the Isleworth estates come into my
+hands, they shall not pass again to any child of yours.”
+
+“What would you do with them, then?”
+
+“Marry, and get children of my own.”
+
+George whistled.
+
+“Well, I must say that your intentions are amiable, but you have not
+got the estates yet, my dear cousin.”
+
+“No, and never shall have, most likely; but let us come to the point.
+Although I do not approve of your advances, I am willing to waive my
+objections and accept you as a son-in-law, if you can win Angela’s
+consent, provided that before the marriage you consent to give me clear
+transfer, at a price, of all the Isleworth estates, with the exception
+of the mansion and the pleasure-grounds.”
+
+“Very good; but now about the price. That is the real point.”
+
+They had taken a path that ran down through the shrubberies to the side
+of the lake, and then turned up towards Caresfoot’s Staff. Before
+answering George’s remark, Philip proposed that they should sit down,
+and, suiting the action to the word, placed himself upon the trunk of a
+fallen tree that lay by the water’s edge, just outside the spread of
+the branches of the great oak, and commanding a view of the area
+beneath them.
+
+“The moon will come out again presently,” he said, when George had
+followed his example. “She has got behind that thunder-cloud. Ah!” as a
+bright flash of lightning passed from heaven to earth, “I thought that
+we should get a storm; it will be here in half an hour.”
+
+All this Philip said to gain time; he had not quite made up his mind
+what price to offer.
+
+“Never mind the lightning. What do you offer for the property,
+inclusive of timber, and with all improvements—just as it stands, in
+short.”
+
+“One hundred thousand pounds cash,” said Philip, deliberately.
+
+George sprang from his seat, and sat down again before he answered.
+
+“Do you think that I am drunk, or a fool, that you come to me with such
+a ridiculous offer? Why, the probate valuation was two hundred
+thousand, and that was very low.”
+
+“I offer one hundred thousand, and am willing to settle thirty thousand
+absolutely on the girl should she marry you, and twenty thousand more
+on my death. That is my offer—take it, or leave it.”
+
+“Talk sense, man; your terms are preposterous.”
+
+“I tell you that, preposterous or not, I will not go beyond them. If
+you don’t like them, well and good, leave them alone, and I’ll put
+myself in communication with young Heigham to-morrow, and tell him that
+he can come and marry the girl as soon as he likes. For my part, I am
+very glad to have the business settled.”
+
+“You ask me to sacrifice half my property,” groaned George.
+
+“My property, you mean, that you stole. But I don’t ask you to do
+anything one way or the other. I am to understand that you refuse my
+offer?”
+
+“Give me a minute to think,” and George hid his face in his hand, and
+Philip, looking at him with hatred gleaming in his dark eyes, muttered
+between his teeth,
+
+“I believe that my turn has come at last.”
+
+When some thirty seconds had passed in silence, the attention of the
+pair was attracted by the cracking of dead leaves that sounded quite
+startling in the intense stillness of the night, and next second a tall
+figure in white glided up to the water’s edge, and stood still within
+half a dozen paces of them.
+
+Involuntarily Philip gripped his cousin’s arm, but neither of them
+moved. The sky had rapidly clouded up, and the faint light that
+struggled from the moon only served to show that the figure appeared to
+be lifting its arms. In another second that was gone too, and the place
+was totally dark.
+
+“Wait till the moon comes out, and we shall see what it is,” whispered
+George, and, as he spoke, there came from the direction of the figure a
+rustling sound as of falling garments.
+
+“What can it be?” whispered Philip.
+
+They were not left long in doubt, for at that instant a vivid flash
+from the thunder-cloud turned the darkness into the most brilliant day,
+and revealed a woman standing up to her knees in the water, with her
+arms lifted, knotting her long hair. It was Angela. For one moment the
+fierce light shone upon the stately form that gleamed whiter than
+ivory—white as snow against the dense background of the brushwood, and,
+as it passed, they heard her sink into the water softly as a swan, and
+strike out with steady strokes towards the centre of the lake.
+
+“It is only Angela,” said Philip, when the sound of the strokes grew
+faint. “Phew! what a state she gave me.”
+
+“Is she safe?” asked George, in a husky voice. “Hadn’t I better get a
+boat?”
+
+“She needs no help from you, she is quite capable of looking after
+herself, especially in the water, I can tell you,” Philip answered,
+sharply.
+
+Nothing more was said till they reached the house, when, on entering
+the lighted study, Philip noticed that his cousin’s face was flushed,
+and his hands shaking like aspen leaves.
+
+“Why, what is the matter with you, man?” he asked.
+
+“Nothing—nothing. I am only rather cold. Give me some brandy.”
+
+“Cold on such a night as this? That’s curious,” said Philip, as he got
+the spirit from a cupboard.
+
+George drank about a wine-glassful neat, and seemed to recover himself.
+
+“I accept your offer for the land, Philip,” he said, presently.
+
+His cousin looked at him curiously, and a brilliant idea struck him.
+
+“You agree, then, to take _fifty_ thousand pounds for the Isleworth
+estates in the event of your marrying my daughter, the sale to be
+completed before the marriage takes place?”
+
+“Fifty thousand! No, a hundred thousand—you said a hundred thousand
+just now.”
+
+“You must have misunderstood me, or I must have made a mistake; what I
+meant is _fifty thousand_, and you to put a thousand down as earnest
+money—to be forfeited whether the affair comes off or not.”
+
+George ground his teeth and clutched at his red hair, proceedings that
+his cousin watched with a great deal of quiet enjoyment. When at length
+he spoke, it was in a low, hoarse voice; quite unlike his usual hard
+tones:
+
+“Damn you!” he said, “you have me at your mercy. Take the land for the
+money, if you like, though it will nearly ruin me. That woman has
+turned my head; I _must_ marry her, or I shall go mad.”
+
+“Very good; that is your affair. Remember that I have no responsibility
+in the matter, and that I am not going to put any pressure on Angela.
+If you want to marry her, you must win her within the next eight
+months. Then that is settled. I suppose that you will pay in the
+thousand to-morrow. The storm is coming up fast, so I won’t keep you.
+Good night,” and they separated, George to drive home—with fever in his
+heart, and the thunderstorm, of which he heard nothing, rattling round
+him—and Philip to make his way to bed, with the dream of his life
+advanced a step nearer realization.
+
+“That was a lucky swim of Angela’s to-night,” he thought. “Fifty
+thousand pounds for the estate. He is right; he must be going mad. But
+will he get her to marry him, I wonder. If he does, I shall cry quits
+with him, indeed.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+
+George had spoken no falsehood when he said that he felt as though he
+must marry Angela or go mad. Indeed, it is a striking proof of how
+necessary he thought that step to be to his happiness, that he had been
+willing to consent to his cousin’s Shylock-like terms about the sale of
+the property, although they would in their result degrade him from his
+position as a large landed proprietor, and make a comparatively poor
+man of him. The danger or suffering that could induce a Caresfoot to
+half ruin himself with his eyes open had need to be of an
+extraordinarily pressing nature.
+
+Love’s empire is this globe and all mankind; the most refined and the
+most degraded, the cleverest and the most stupid, are all liable to
+become his faithful subjects. He can alike command the devotion of an
+archbishop and a South-Sea Islander, of the most immaculate maiden lady
+(whatever her age) and of the savage Zulu girl. From the pole to the
+equator, and from the equator to the further pole, there is no monarch
+like Love. Where he sets his foot, the rocks bloom with flowers, or the
+garden becomes a wilderness, according to his good- will and pleasure,
+and at his whisper all other allegiances melt away like ropes of mud.
+He is the real arbiter of the destinies of the world.
+
+But to each nature of all the millions beneath his sway, Love comes in
+a fitting guise, to some as an angel messenger, telling of sympathy and
+peace, and a strange new hope; to others draped in sad robes indeed,
+but still divine. Thus when he visits such a one as George Caresfoot,
+it is as a potent fiend, whose mission is to enter through man’s lower
+nature, to torture and destroy; to scorch the heart with fearful heats,
+and then to crush it, and leave its owner’s bosom choked with bitter
+dust.
+
+And, so far as George is concerned, there is no doubt but what the work
+was done right well, for under the influence of what is, with doubtful
+propriety, known as the “tender passion,” that estimable character was
+rapidly drifting within a measurable distance of a lunatic asylum. The
+checks and repulses that he had met with, instead of cooling his
+ardour, had only the effect of inflaming it to an extraordinary degree.
+Angela’s scornful dislike, as water thrown upon burning oil, did but
+diffuse the flames of his passion throughout the whole system of his
+mind, till he grew wild with its heat and violence. Her glorious beauty
+daily took a still stronger hold upon his imagination, till it scorched
+into his very soul. For whole nights he could not sleep, for whole days
+he would scarcely eat or do anything but walk, walk, walk, and try to
+devise means to win her to his side. The irritation of the mind
+produced its natural effects upon his conduct, and he would burst into
+fits of the most causeless fury. In one of these he dismissed every
+servant in the house, and so evil was his reputation among that class,
+that he had great difficulty in obtaining others to take their place.
+In another he hurled a heavy pot containing an azalea-bush at the head
+of one of the gardeners, and had to compromise an action for assault.
+In short, the lunatic asylum loomed very near indeed.
+
+For a week or so after the memorable night of his interview with
+Philip, an interview that he, at least, would never forget, George was
+quite unable, try as he would, to get a single word with Angela.
+
+At last, one day, when he was driving, by a seldom-used road, past the
+fields near the Abbey House on his way from Roxham, chance gave him the
+opportunity that he had for so long sought without success. For, far up
+a by-lane that led to a turnip-field, his eye caught sight of the
+flutter of a grey dress vanishing round a corner, something in the make
+of which suggested to him that Angela was its wearer. Giving the reins
+to the servant, and bidding him drive on home, he got out of the
+dog-cart and hurried up the grassy track, and on turning the corner
+came suddenly upon the object of his search. She was standing on the
+bank of the hedge-row, and struggling with a bough of honeysuckle from
+which she wished to pluck its last remaining autumn bloom. So engaged
+was she that she did not hear his step, and it was not until his hard
+voice grated on her ear, that she knew that she was trapped.
+
+“Caught at last. You have given me a pretty hunt, Angela.”
+
+The violent start she gave effectually carried out her purpose as
+regards the honeysuckle, which snapped in two under the strain of her
+backward jerk, and she turned round upon him panting with fear and
+exertion, the flowery bough grasped within her hand.
+
+“Am I, then, a wild creature, that you should hunt me so?”
+
+“Yes, you are the loveliest and the wildest of creatures, and, now I
+have caught you, you must listen to me.”
+
+“I will not listen to you; you have nothing to say to me that can
+interest me. I will not listen to you.”
+
+George laughed a little—a threatening, nervous laugh.
+
+“I am accustomed to have my own way, Angela, and I am not going to give
+it up now. You must and you shall listen. I have got my opportunity at
+last, and I mean to use it. I am sorry to have to speak so roughly, but
+you have only yourself to thank; you have driven me to it.”
+
+His determination frightened her, and she took refuge in an armour of
+calm and freezing contempt.
+
+“I don’t understand you,” she said.
+
+“On the contrary, you understand me very well. You always avoid me; I
+can never see you, try how I will. Perhaps,” he went on, still talking
+quite quietly, “if you knew what a hell there is in my heart and brain
+you would not treat me so. I tell you that I am in torture,” and the
+muscles of the pallid face twitched in a way that went far to confirm
+his words.
+
+“I do not understand your meaning, unless, indeed, you are trying to
+frighten and insult me, as you have done before,” answered Angela.
+
+Poor girl, she did not know what else to say; she was not of a nervous
+disposition, but there was something about George’s manner that alarmed
+her very much, and she glanced anxiously around to see if any one was
+within call, but the place was lonely as the grave.
+
+“There is no need for you to look for help, I wish neither to frighten
+nor insult you; my suit is an honourable one enough. I wish you to
+promise to marry me, that is all; you must and shall promise it, I will
+take no refusal. You were made for me and I for you; it is quite
+useless for you to resist me, for you must marry me at last. I love
+you, and by that right you belong to me. I love you—I love you.”
+
+“You—love—me—you——”
+
+“Yes, I do, and why should you look at me like that? I cannot help it,
+you are so beautiful; if you knew your loveliness, you would understand
+me. I love those grey eyes of yours, even when they flash and burn as
+they do now. Ah! they shall look softly at me yet, and those sweet lips
+that curl so scornfully shall shape themselves to kiss me. Listen, I
+loved you when I first saw you there in the drawing-room at Isleworth,
+I loved you more and more all the time that I was ill, and now I love
+you to madness. So you see, Angela, you _must_ marry me soon.”
+
+“_I_ marry you!”
+
+“Oh! don’t say you won’t, for God’s sake, don’t say you won’t,” said
+George, with a sudden change of manner from the confident to the
+supplicatory. “Look, I beg you not to, on my knees,” and he actually
+flung himself down on the grass roadway and grovelled before her in an
+abandonment of passion hideous to behold.
+
+She turned very pale, and answered him in a cold, quiet voice, every
+syllable of which fell upon him like the stroke of a knife.
+
+“Such a thing would be quite impossible for many reasons, but I need
+only repeat you one that you are already aware of. I am engaged to Mr.
+Heigham.”
+
+“Bah, that is nothing. I know that; but you will not throw away such a
+love as I have to offer for the wavering affection of a boy. We can
+soon get rid of him. Write and tell him that you have changed your
+mind. Listen, Angela,” he went on, catching her by the skirt of her
+dress; “he is not rich, he has only got enough for a bare living. I
+have five times the money, and you shall help to spend it. Don’t marry
+a young beggar like that; you won’t get value for yourself. It will pay
+you ever so much better to marry me.”
+
+George was convinced from his experience of the sex that every woman
+could be bought if only you bid high enough; but, as the sequel showed,
+he could not well have used a worse argument to a person like Angela,
+or one more likely to excite the indignation that fear of him, together
+with a certain respect for the evident genuineness of his suffering,
+had hitherto kept in suppression. She wrenched her dress free from him,
+leaving a portion of its fabric in his hand.
+
+“Are you not ashamed?” she said, her voice trembling with indignation
+and her eyes filled with angry tears; “are you not ashamed to talk to
+me like this, _you_, my own father’s cousin, and yourself old enough to
+be my father? I tell you that my love is already given, which would
+have been a sufficient answer to any _gentleman_, and you reply by
+saying that you are richer than the man I love. Do you believe that a
+woman thinks of nothing but money? or do you suppose that I am to be
+bought like a beast at the market? Get up from the ground, for, since
+your brutality forces me to speak so plainly in my own defence, I must
+tell you once and for all that you will get nothing by kneeling to me.
+Listen: I would rather die than be your wife; rather than always see
+your face about me, I would pass my life in prison; I had sooner be
+touched by a snake than by you. You are quite hateful to me. Now you
+have your answer, and I beg that you will get up and let me pass!”
+
+Drawn up the full height of her majestic stature, her face flushed with
+emotion, and her clear eyes flashing scornful fire, whilst in her hand
+she still held the bough of sweet honeysuckle; Angela formed a strange
+contrast to the miserable man crouched at her feet, swaying himself to
+and fro and moaning, his hat off and his face hidden in his trembling
+hands.
+
+As he would not, or could not move, she left him there, and slipping
+through a neighbouring gap vanished from sight. When she was fairly
+gone, he stirred, and having risen and recovered his hat, which had
+fallen off in his excitement, his first action was to shake his fist in
+the direction in which she had vanished, his next to frantically kiss
+the fragment of her dress that he still held in his hand.
+
+“You _shall_ marry me yet, my fine lady,” he hissed between his teeth;
+“and, if I do not repay your gentle words with interest, my name is not
+George Caresfoot;” and then, staggering like a drunken man, he made his
+way home.
+
+“Oh, Arthur,” thought Angela, as she crept quite broken in spirit to
+the solitude of her room, “if I only knew where you were, I think that
+I would follow you, promise or no promise. There is no one to help me,
+no one; they are all in league against me—even my own father.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+
+Notwithstanding his brave threats made behind Angela’s back, about
+forcing her to marry him in the teeth of any opposition that she could
+offer, George reached home that night very much disheartened about the
+whole business. How was he to bow the neck of this proud woman to his
+yoke, and break the strong cord of her allegiance to her absent lover.
+With many girls it might have been possible to find a way, but Angela
+was not an ordinary girl. He had tried, and Lady Bellamy had tried, and
+they had both failed, and as for Philip he would take no active part in
+the matter. What more could be done? Only one thing that he could think
+of, he could force Lady Bellamy to search her finer brains for a fresh
+expedient. Acting upon this idea, he at once despatched a note to her,
+requesting her to come and see him at Isleworth on the following
+morning.
+
+That night passed very ill for the love-lorn George. Angela’s vigorous
+and imaginative expression of her entire loathing of him had pierced
+even the thick hide of his self-conceit, and left him sore as a whipped
+hound, altogether too sore to sleep. When Lady Bellamy arrived on the
+following morning, she found him marching up and down the dining-room,
+in the worst of his bad tempers, and that was a very shocking temper
+indeed. His light blue eyes were angry and bloodshot, his general
+appearance slovenly to the last degree, and a red spot burned upon each
+sallow cheek.
+
+“Well, George, what is the matter? You don’t look quite so happy as a
+lover should.”
+
+He grunted by way of answer.
+
+“Has the lady been unkind, failed to appreciate your advances, eh?”
+
+“Now look here, Anne,” he answered, savagely, “if I have to put up with
+things from that confounded girl, I am not going to stand your jeers,
+so stop them once and for all.”
+
+“It is very evident that she has been unkind. Supposing that instead of
+abusing me you tell me the details. No doubt they are interesting,” and
+she settled herself in a low chair, and glanced at him keenly from
+under her heavy eyelids.
+
+Thus admonished, George proceeded to giver her such a version of his
+melancholy tale as best suited him, needless to say not a full one, but
+his hearer’s imagination easily supplied the gaps, and, as he
+proceeded, a slow smile crept over her face as she conjured up the
+suppressed details of the scene in the lane.
+
+“Curse you! what are you laughing at? You came here to listen, not
+laugh,” broke out George furiously, when he saw it.
+
+She made no answer, and he continued his thrilling tale without comment
+on her part.
+
+“Now,” he said, when it was finished, “what is to be done?”
+
+“There is nothing to be done; you have failed to win her affections,
+and there is an end of the matter.”
+
+“Then you mean I must give it up?”
+
+“Yes, and a very good thing too, for the ridiculous arrangement that
+you have entered into with Philip would have half-ruined you, and you
+would be tired of the girl in a month.”
+
+“Now, look you here, Anne,” said George, in a sort of hiss, and
+standing over her in a threatening attitude, “I have suspected for some
+time that you were playing me false in this business, and now I am sure
+of it. You have put the girl up to treating me like this, you
+treacherous snake; you have struck me from behind, you Red Indian in
+petticoats. But, look here, I will be square with you; you shall not
+have all the laugh on your side.”
+
+“George, you must be mad.”
+
+“You shall see whether I am mad or not. Did you see what the brigands
+did to a fellow they caught in Greece the other day for whom they
+wanted ransom? First, they sent his ear to his friends, then his nose,
+then his foot, and, last of all, his head—all by post, mark you. Well,
+dear Anne, that is just how I am going to pay you out. You shall have a
+week to find a fresh plan to trap the bird you have frightened, and, if
+you find none, first, I shall post one of those interesting letters
+that I have yonder to your husband—anonymously, you know—not a very
+compromising one, but one that will pique his curiosity and set him
+making inquiries; then I shall wait another week.”
+
+Lady Bellamy could bear it no longer. She sprang up from her chair,
+pale with anger.
+
+“You fiend in human form, what is it, I wonder, that has kept me so
+long from destroying you and myself too? Oh! you need not laugh; I have
+the means to do it, if I choose: I have had them for twenty years.”
+
+George laughed again, hoarsely.
+
+“Quite penny-dreadful, I declare. But I don’t think you will come to
+that; you would be afraid, and, if you do, I don’t much care—I am
+pretty reckless, I can tell you.”
+
+“For your threats,” she went on, without heeding him, “I care nothing,
+for, as I tell you, I have their antidote at hand. You have known me
+for many years, tell me, did you ever see my nerve desert me? Do you
+suppose that I am a woman who would bear failure when I could choose
+death? No, George, I had rather pass into eternity on the crest of the
+wave of my success, such as it has been, and let it break and grind me
+to powder there, or else bear me to greater heights. All that should
+have been a woman’s better part in the world you have destroyed in me.
+I do not say that it was altogether your fault, for an evil destiny
+bound me to you, and it must seem odd to you when I say that, knowing
+you for what you are, I still love you. And to fill up this void, to
+trample down those surging memories, I have made myself a slave to my
+ambition, and the acquisition of another power that you cannot
+understand. The man you married me to is rich and a knight to-day. I
+made him so. If I live another twenty years, his wealth shall be
+colossal and his influence unbounded, and I will be one of the most
+powerful women in the kingdom. Why do you suppose that I so fear your
+treachery? Do you think that I should mind its being known that I had
+thrown aside that poor fig-leaf, virtue—the green garment that marks a
+coward or a fool; for, mark you, all women, or nearly all, would be
+vicious if they dared. Fear and poverty of spirit restrain them, not
+virtue. Why, it is by their vices, properly managed, that women have
+always risen, and always will rise. To be really great, I think that a
+woman must be vicious with discrimination, and I respect vice
+accordingly. No, it is not that I fear. I am afraid because I have a
+husband whose bitter resentment is justly piling up against me from
+year to year, who only lies in wait for an opportunity to destroy me.
+Nor is he my only enemy. In his skilful hands, the letters you possess
+can, as society is in this country, be used so as to make me powerless.
+Yes, George, all the good in me is dead; the mad love I have given you
+is hourly outraged, and yet I cannot shake it off. _There_ alone my
+strength fails me, and I am weak as a child. Only the power to exercise
+my will, my sense of command over the dullards round me, and a yet
+keener pleasure you do not know of, are left to me. If these are taken
+away, what will my life be? A void, a waste, a howling wilderness, a
+place where I will not stay! I had rather tempt the unknown. Even in
+Hell there must be scope for abilities such as mine!”
+
+She paused awhile, as if for an answer, and then went on—
+
+“And as for you, poor creature that you are, words cannot tell how I
+despise you. You discard me and my devotion, to follow a nature, in its
+way, it is true, greater even than my own, representing the principle
+of good, as I represent the principle of evil, but one to which yours
+is utterly abhorrent. Can you mix light with darkness, or filthy oil
+with water? As well hope to merge your life, black as it is with every
+wickedness, with that of the splendid creature you would defile. Do you
+suppose that a woman such as she will ever be really faithless to her
+love, even though you trap her into marriage? Fool, her heart is as far
+above you as the stars; and without a heart a woman is a husk that none
+but such miserables as yourself would own. But go on—dash yourself
+against a white purity that will, in the end, blind and destroy you.
+Dree your own doom! I will find you expedients; it is my business to
+obey you. You shall marry her, if you will, and taste of the judgment
+that will follow. Be still, I will bear no more of your insolence
+to-day.” And she swept out of the room, leaving George looking somewhat
+scared.
+
+When Lady Bellamy reached Rewtham House, she went straight to her
+husband’s study. He received her with much politeness, and asked her to
+sit down.
+
+“I have come to consult you on a matter of some importance,” she said.
+
+“That is, indeed, an unusual occurrence,” answered Sir John, rubbing
+his dry hands and smiling.
+
+“It is not my own affair: listen,” and she gave him a full, accurate,
+and clear account of all that had taken place with reference to
+George’s determination to marry Angela, not omitting the most trivial
+detail. Sir John expressed no surprise; he was a very old bird was Sir
+John, one for whom every net was spread in vain, whether in or out of
+his sight. Nothing in this world, provided that it did not affect his
+own comfort or safety, could affect his bland and appreciative smile.
+He was never surprised. Once or twice he put a shrewd question to
+elucidate some point in the narrative, and that was all. When his wife
+was finished, he said,
+
+“Well, Anne, you have told a very interesting and amusing little
+history, doubly so, if you will permit me to say it, seeing that it is
+told of George Caresfoot by Lady Bellamy; but it seems that your joint
+efforts have failed. What is it that you wish me to do?”
+
+“I wish to ask you if you can suggest any plan that will not fail. You
+are very cunning in your way, and your advice may be good.”
+
+“Let me see, young Heigham is in Madeira, is he not?”
+
+“I am sure I do not know.”
+
+“But I do,” and he extracted a note-book from a drawer. “Let me see, I
+think I have an entry somewhere here. Ah! here we are. ‘Arthur P.
+Heigham, Esq., passenger, per _Warwick Castle_, to Madeira, June 16.’
+(Copied from passenger-list, _Western Daily News_.) His second name is
+Preston, is it not? Lucky I kept that. Now, the thing will be to
+communicate with Madeira, and see if he is still there. I can easily do
+that; I know a man there.”
+
+“Have you formed any plan, then?”
+
+“Yes,” answered Sir John, with great deliberation, “I think I see my
+way; but I must have time to think of it. I will speak to you about it
+to-morrow.”
+
+When Lady Bellamy had gone, the little man rose, peeped round to see
+that nobody was within hearing, and then, rubbing his dry hands with
+infinite zest, said aloud, in a voice that was quite solemn in the
+intensity of its satisfaction,
+
+“The Lord hath delivered mine enemies into mine hand.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL.
+
+
+Two days after Sir John had been taken into confidence, Philip received
+a visit from Lady Bellamy that caused him a good deal of discomfort.
+After talking to him on general subjects for awhile, she rose to go.
+
+“By the way, Mr. Caresfoot,” she said, “I really had almost forgotten
+the object of my visit. You may remember a conversation we had together
+some time ago, when I was the means of paying a debt owing to you?”
+
+Philip nodded.
+
+“Then you will not have forgotten that one of the articles of our
+little verbal convention was, that if it should be considered to the
+interest of all the parties concerned, your daughter’s old nurse was
+not to remain in your house?”
+
+“I remember.”
+
+“Well, do you know, I cannot help thinking that it must be a bad thing
+for Angela to have so much of the society of an ill-educated and not
+very refined person like Pigott. I really advise you to get rid of
+her.”
+
+“She has been with me for twenty years, and my daughter is devoted to
+her. I can’t turn her off.”
+
+“It is always painful to dismiss an old servant—almost as bad as
+discarding an old dress; but when a dress is worn out it must be thrown
+away. Surely the same applies to servants.”
+
+“I don’t see how I am to send her away.”
+
+“I can quite understand your feelings; but then, you see, an agreement
+implies obligations on both sides, doesn’t it? especially an agreement
+‘for value received,’ as the lawyers say.”
+
+Philip winced perceptibly.
+
+“I wish I had never had anything to do with your agreements.”
+
+“Oh! if you think it over, I don’t think that you will say so. Well,
+that is settled. I suppose she will go pretty soon. I am glad to see
+you looking so well—very different from your cousin, I assure you. I
+don’t think much of his state of health. Good-bye; remember me to
+Angela. By the way, I don’t know if you have heard that George has met
+with a repulse in that direction; he does not intend to press matters
+any more at present; but, of course, the agreement holds all the same.
+Nobody knows what the morrow may bring forth.”
+
+“Where you and my amiable cousin are concerned, I shall be much
+surprised if it does not bring forth villany,” thought Philip, as soon
+as he heard the front door close. “I suppose that it must be done about
+Pigott. Curse that woman, with her sorceress face. I wish I had never
+put myself into her power; the iron hand can be felt pretty plainly
+through her velvet glove.”
+
+Life is never altogether clouded over, and that morning Angela’s
+horizon had been brightened by two big rays of sunshine that came to
+shed their cheering light on the grey monotony of her surroundings. For
+of late, notwithstanding its occasional spasms of fierce excitement,
+her life had been as monotonous as it was miserable. Always the same
+anxious grief, the same fears, the same longing pressing hourly round
+her like phantoms in the mist—no, not like phantoms, like real living
+things peeping at her from the dark. Sometimes, indeed, the
+presentiments and intangible terrors that were gradually strengthening
+their hold upon her would get beyond her control, and arouse in her a
+restless desire for action—any action, it did not matter what—that
+would take her away out of these dull hours of unwholesome mental
+growth. It was this longing to be doing something that drove her,
+fevered physically with the stifling air of the summer night, and
+mentally by thoughts of her absent lover and recollections of Lady
+Bellamy’s ominous words, down to the borders of the lake on the evening
+of George’s visit to her father, and once there, prompted her to try to
+forget her troubles for awhile in the exercise of an art of which she
+had from childhood been a mistress.
+
+The same feeling it was too, that led her to spend long hours of the
+day and even of the night, when by rights she should have been asleep,
+immersed in endless mathematical studies, and in solving, or attempting
+to solve, almost impossible problems. She found that the strenuous
+effort of the brain acted as a counter-irritant to the fretting of her
+troubles, and though it may seem an odd thing to say, mathematics
+alone, owing to the intense application they required, exercised a
+soothing effect upon her. But, as one cannot constantly sleep induced
+by chloral without paying for it in some shape or form, Angela’s relief
+from her cares was obtained at no small cost to her health. When the
+same brain, however well developed it may be, has both to study hard
+and suffer much, there must be a waste of tissue somewhere. In Angela’s
+case the outward and visible result of this state of things was to make
+her grow thinner, and the alternate mental effect to increasingly
+rarefy an intellect already too ethereal for this work-a-day world, and
+to plunge its owner into fits of depression which were rendered
+dreadful by sudden forebodings of evil that would leap to life in the
+recesses of her mind, and for a moment cast a lurid glare upon its
+gloom, such as at night the lightning gives to the blackness which
+surrounds it.
+
+It was in one of the worst of these fits, her “cloudy days” as she
+would call them to Pigott, that good news found her. As she was
+dressing, Pigott brought her a letter, which, recognizing Lady
+Bellamy’s bold handwriting, she opened in fear and trembling. It
+contained a short note and another letter. The note ran as follows:
+
+“Dear Angela,
+
+“I enclose you a letter from your cousin George, which contains what I
+suppose you will consider good news. _For your own sake_ I beg you not
+to send it back unopened as you did the last.
+
+“A. B.”
+
+
+For a moment Angela was tempted to mistrust this enclosure, and almost
+come to the determination to throw it into the fire, feeling sure that
+a serpent lurked in the grass and that it was a cunningly disguised
+love-letter. But curiosity overcame her, and she opened it as gingerly
+as though it were infected, unfolding the sheet with the handle of her
+hair-brush. Its contents were destined to give her a surprise. They ran
+thus:
+
+“Isleworth Hall, September 20.
+
+“My dear Cousin,
+
+“After what passed between us a few days ago you will perhaps be
+surprised at hearing from me, but, if you have the patience to read
+this short letter, its contents will not, I fear, be altogether
+displeasing to you. They are very simple. I write to say that I accept
+your verdict, and that you need fear no further advances from me.
+Whether I quite deserved all the bitter words you poured out upon me I
+leave you to judge at leisure, seeing that my only crime was that I
+loved you. To most women that offence would not have seemed so
+unpardonable. But that is as it may be. After what you said there is
+only one course left for a man who has any pride—and that is to
+withdraw. So let the past be dead between us. I shall never allude to
+it again. Wishing you happiness in the path of life which you have
+chosen,
+
+“I remain, “Your affectionate cousin, “George Caresfoot.”
+
+
+It would have been difficult for any one to have received a more
+perfectly satisfactory letter than this was to Angela.
+
+“Pigott,” she called out, feeling the absolute necessity of a confidant
+in her joy, and forgetting that that worthy soul had nothing but the
+most general knowledge of George’s advances, “he has given me up; just
+think, he is going to let me alone. I declare that I feel quite fond of
+him.”
+
+“And who might you be talking of, miss?”
+
+“Why, my cousin George, of course; he is going to let me alone, I tell
+you.”
+
+“Which, seeing how as he isn’t fit to touch you with a pair of tongs,
+is about the least as he can do, miss, and, as for letting you alone, I
+didn’t know as he ever proposed doing anything else. But that reminds
+me, miss, though I am sure I don’t know why it should, how as Mrs.
+Hawkins, as was put in to look after the vicarage while the Reverend
+Fraser was away, told me last night how as she had got a telegraft the
+sight of which, she said, knocked her all faint like, till she turned
+just as yellow as the cover, to say nothing of four- and-six porterage,
+the which, however, she intends to recover from the Reverend—Lord,
+where was I?”
+
+“I am sure I don’t know, Pigott, but I suppose you were going to tell
+me what was in the telegram.”
+
+“Yes, miss, that’s right; but my head does seem to wool up somehow so
+at times that I fare to lose my way.”
+
+“Well, Pigott, what was in the telegram?”
+
+“Lord, miss, how you do hurry one, begging your pardon; only that the
+Reverend Fraser—not but what Mrs. Hawkins do say that it can’t be true,
+because the words warn’t in his writing nor nothing like, as she has
+good reason to know, seeing that——”
+
+“Yes, but what about Mr. Fraser, Pigott? Isn’t he well?”
+
+“The telegraft didn’t say, as I remembers, miss; bless me, I forget if
+it was to-day or to-morrow.”
+
+“Oh, Pigott,” groaned Angela, “do tell me what was in the telegram.”
+
+“Why, miss, surely I told you that the thing said, though I fancy
+likely to be in error——”
+
+“What?” almost shouted Angela.
+
+“Why, that the Reverend Fraser would be home by the midday train, and
+would like a beefsteak for lunch, not mentioning, however, anything
+about the onions, which is very puzzling to Mrs.——”
+
+“Oh, I am glad; why could you not tell me before? Cousin George
+disposed of and Mr. Fraser coming back. Why, things are looking quite
+bright again; at least they would be if only Arthur were here,” and her
+rejoicing ended in a sigh.
+
+As soon as she thought that he would have finished his beefsteak, with
+or without the onions, Angela walked down to the vicarage and broke in
+upon Mr. Fraser with something of her old gladsome warmth. Running up
+to him without waiting to be announced, she seized him by both hands.
+
+“And so you are back at last? what a long time you have been away. Oh,
+I am so glad to see you.”
+
+Mr. Fraser, who, it struck her, looked older since his absence, turned
+first a little red and then a little pale, and said,
+
+“Yes, Angela, here I am back again in the old shop; it is very good of
+you to come so soon to see me. Now, sit down and tell me all about
+yourself whilst I go on with my unpacking. But, bless me, my dear, what
+is the matter with you, you look thin, and as though you were not
+happy, and—where has your smile gone to, Angela?”
+
+“Never mind me, you must tell me all about yourself first. Where have
+you been and what have you been doing all these long months?”
+
+“Oh, I have been enjoying myself over half the civilized globe,” he
+answered, with a somewhat forced laugh. “Switzerland, Italy, and Spain
+have all been benefited by my presence, but I got tired of it, so here
+I am back in my proper sphere, and delighted to again behold these dear
+familiar faces,” and he pointed to his ample collection of classics.
+“But let me hear about yourself, Angela. I am tired of No. 1, I can
+assure you.”
+
+“Oh, mine is a long story, you will scarcely find patience to listen to
+it.”
+
+“Ah, I thought that there was a story from your face; then I think that
+I can guess what it is about. Young ladies’ stories generally turn upon
+the same pivot,” and he laughed a little softly, and sat down in a
+corner well out of the light. “Now, my dear, I am ready to give you my
+best attention.”
+
+Angela blushed very deeply, and, looking studiously out of the window,
+began, with many hesitations, to tell her story.
+
+“Well, Mr. Fraser, you must understand first of all—I mean, you know,
+that I must tell you that—” desperately, “that I am engaged.”
+
+“Ah!”
+
+There was a something so sharp and sudden about this exclamation that
+Angela turned round quickly.
+
+“What’s the matter, have you hurt yourself?”
+
+“Yes; but go on, Angela.”
+
+It was an awkward story to tell, especially the George complication
+part of it, and to any one else she felt that she would have found it
+almost impossible to tell it, but in Mr. Fraser she was, she knew, sure
+of a sympathetic listener. Had she known, too, that the mere mention of
+her lover’s name was a stab to her listener’s heart, and that every
+expression of her own deep and enduring love and each tone of
+endearment were new and ingenious tortures, she might well have been
+confused.
+
+For so it was. Although he was fifty years of age, Mr. Fraser had not
+educated Angela with impunity. He had paid the penalty that must have
+resulted to any heart-whole man not absolutely a fossil, who had been
+brought into close contact with such a woman as Angela. Her loveliness
+appealed to his sense of beauty, her goodness to his heart, and her
+learning to his intellectual sympathies. What wonder that he learnt by
+imperceptible degrees to love her; the wonder would have been if he had
+not.
+
+The reader need not fear, however; he shall not be troubled with any
+long account of Mr. Fraser’s misfortune, for it never came to light or
+obtruded itself upon the world or even upon its object. His was one of
+those earnest, secret, and self-sacrificing passions of which, if we
+only knew it, there exist a good many round about us, passions which to
+all appearance tend to nothing and are entirely without object, unless
+it to be make the individuals on whom they are inflicted a little less
+happy, or a little more miserable, as the case may be, than he or she
+would otherwise have been. It was to strive to conquer this passion,
+which in his heart he called dishonourable, that Mr. Fraser had gone
+abroad, right away from Angela, where he had wrestled with it, and
+prayed against it, and at last, as he thought, subdued it. But now, on
+his first sight of her, it rose again in all its former strength, and
+rushed through his being like a storm, and he realized that such love
+is of those things that cannot die. And perhaps it is a question if he
+really wished to lose it. It was a poor thing indeed, a very poor
+thing, but his own. There is something so divine about all true love
+that there lurks a conviction at the bottom of the hearts of most of us
+that it is better to love, however much we suffer, than not to love at
+all. Perhaps, after all, those really to be pitied are the people who
+are not capable of any such sensation.
+
+But what Mr. Fraser suffered listening that autumn afternoon to
+Angela’s tale of another’s love and of her own deep return of that
+love, no man but himself ever knew. Yet still he heard and was not
+shaken in his loyal-heartedness, and comforted and consoled her, giving
+her the best advice in his power, like the noble Christian gentleman
+that he was; showing her too that there was little need of anxiety and
+every ground for hope that things would come to a happy and successful
+issue. The martyr’s abnegation of self is not yet dead in the world.
+
+At last Angela came to the letter that she had that very morning
+received from George. Mr. Fraser read it carefully.
+
+“At any rate,” he said, “he is behaving like a gentleman now. On the
+whole, that is a nice letter. You will be troubled with him no more.”
+
+“Yes,” answered Angela, and then flushing up at the memory of George’s
+arguments in the lane, “but it is certainly time that he did, for he
+had no business, oh, he had no business to speak to me as he spoke, and
+he a man old enough to be my father.”
+
+Mr. Fraser’s pale cheeks coloured a little.
+
+“Don’t be hard upon him because he is old, Angela—which by the way he
+is not, he is nearly ten years my junior—for I fear that old men are
+just as liable to be made fools of by a pretty face as young ones.”
+
+From that moment, not knowing the man’s real character, Mr. Fraser
+secretly entertained a certain sympathy for George’s sufferings,
+arising no doubt from a fellow-feeling. It seemed to him that he could
+understand a man going very far indeed when his object was to win
+Angela: not that he would have done it himself, but he knew the
+temptation and what it cost to struggle against it.
+
+It was nearly dark when at length Angela, rising to go, warmly pressed
+his hand, and thanked him in her own sweet way for his goodness and
+kind counsel. And then, declining his offer of escort, and saying that
+she would come and see him again on the morrow, she departed on her
+homeward path.
+
+The first thing that met her gaze on the hall-table at the Abbey House
+was a note addressed to herself in a handwriting that she had seen in
+many washing bills, but never before on an envelope. She opened it in
+vague alarm. It ran as follows:
+
+“Miss,—Yore father has just dismissed me, saying that he is too pore to
+keep me any longer, which is a matter as I holds my own opinion on, and
+that I am too uneddicated to be in yore company, which is a perfect
+truth. But, miss, not feeling any how ekal to bid you good-bye in
+person after bringing you up by hand and doing for you these many
+years, I takes the liberty to write to you, miss, to say good-bye and
+God bless you, my beautiful angel, and I shall be to be found down at
+the old housen at the end of the drift as my pore husband left me,
+which is fortinately just empty, and p’raps you will come and see me at
+times, miss.
+
+“Yore obedient servant, “Pigott.
+
+“I opens this again to say how as I have tied up your things a bit
+afore I left leaving mine till to-morrow, when, if living, I shall send
+for them. If you please, miss, you will find yore clean night-shift in
+the left hand drawyer, and sorry am I that I can’t be there to lay it
+out for you. I shall take the liberty to send up for your washing, as
+it can’t be trusted to any one.”
+
+
+Angela read the letter through, and then sank back upon a chair and
+burst into a storm of tears. Partially recovering herself, however, she
+rose and entered her father’s study.
+
+“Is this true?” she asked, still sobbing.
+
+“Is what true?” asked Philip, indifferently, and affecting not to see
+her distress.
+
+“That you have sent Pigott away?”
+
+“Yes, yes, you see, Angela——”
+
+“Do you mean that she is really to stop away?”
+
+“Of course I do, I really must be allowed, Angela——”
+
+“Forgive me, father, but I do not want to listen to your reasons and
+excuses.” Her eyes were quite dry now. “That woman nursed my dying
+mother, and played a mother’s part to me. She is, as you know, my only
+woman friend, and yet you throw her away like a worn-out shoe. No doubt
+you have your reasons, and I hope that they are satisfactory to you,
+but I tell you, reasons or no reasons, you have acted in a way that is
+cowardly and cruel;” and casting one indignant glance at him she left
+the room.
+
+Philip quailed before his daughter’s anger.
+
+“Thank goodness she’s gone, and that job is done with. I am downright
+afraid of her, and the worst of it is she speaks the truth,” said
+Philip to himself, as the door closed.
+
+Ten days after this incident, Angela heard casually from Mr. Fraser
+that Sir John and Lady Bellamy were going on a short trip abroad for
+the benefit of the former’s health. If she thought about the matter at
+all, it was to feel rather glad. Angela did not like Lady Bellamy,
+indeed she feared her. Of George she neither heard nor saw anything. He
+had also gone away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI.
+
+
+Meanwhile at Madeira matters were going on much as we left them; there
+had indeed been little appreciable change in the situation.
+
+For his part, our friend Arthur continued to dance or rather stroll
+along the edge of his flowery precipice, and found the view pleasant
+and the air bracing.
+
+And no doubt things were very nicely arranged for his satisfaction, and
+had it not been for the ever-present thought of Angela—for he did think
+of her a great deal and with deep longing—he should have enjoyed
+himself thoroughly, for every day was beautiful, and every day brought
+its amusements with it. Perhaps on arriving at the Quinta Carr about
+eleven o’clock, he would find that the steam launch was waiting for
+them in a little bay where the cliff on which the house stood curved
+inwards. Then, a merry party of young English folks all collected
+together by Mrs. Carr that morning by the dint of superhuman efforts,
+they would scramble down the steps cut in the rock and steam off to
+some neighbouring islet to eat luncheon and wander about collecting
+shells and flowers and beetles till sunset, and then steam back again
+through the spicy evening air, laughing and flirting and making the
+night melodious with their songs. Or else the horses would be ordered
+out and they would wander over the lonely mountains in the interior of
+the island, talking of mummies and all things human, of Angela and all
+things divine. And sometimes, in the course of these conversations,
+Arthur would in a brotherly way call Mrs. Carr “Mildred,” while
+occasionally, in the tone of a spinster aunt, she would address him as
+“Arthur,” a practice that, once acquired, she soon found was, like all
+other bad habits, not easy to get rid of. For somehow in all these
+expeditions she was continually at his side, striving, and not without
+success, to weave herself into the substance of his life, and to make
+herself indispensable to him, till at last he grew to look upon her
+almost as a sister.
+
+But beyond this he never went, and to her advances he was as cold as
+ice, simply because he never noticed them, and she was afraid of making
+them more obvious for fear that she would frighten him away. He thought
+it the most natural thing in the world that he and Mildred should live
+together like brother and sister, and be very fond of each other as
+“sich,” whilst she thought him—just what he was—the blindest of fools,
+and then loved him the more for his folly. The sisterly relationship
+did not possess the same charms for Mildred that it did for Arthur;
+they looked at matters from different points of view.
+
+One morning, peeping through a big telescope that was fixed in the
+window of the little boudoir which formed an entrance lobby to the
+museum, Mrs. Carr saw a cloud of smoke upon the horizon. Presently the
+point of a mast poked up through the vapour as though the vessel were
+rising out of the ocean, then two more mastheads and a red and black
+funnel, and last of all a great grey hull.
+
+“Hurrah!” called out Mrs. Carr, with one eye still fixed to the
+telescope and the remainder of her little face all screwed up in her
+efforts to keep the other closed, “it’s the mail; I can see the Donald
+Currie flag, a white C on a blue ground.”
+
+“Well, I am sure, Mildred, there’s no need for you to make your face
+look like a monkey, if it is; you look just as though the corner of
+your mouth were changing places with your eyebrow.”
+
+“Agatha, you are dreadfully rude; when the fairies took your endowments
+in hand, they certainly did not forget the gift of plain speech. I
+shall appeal to Mr. Heigham; do I look like a monkey, Mr. Heigham? No,
+on second thoughts, I won’t wait for the inevitable compliment. Arthur,
+hold your tongue and I will tell you something. That must be the new
+boat, the _Garth Castle_, and I want to see over her. Captain Smithson,
+who is bringing her out, has got a box of things for me. What do you
+say if we kill two birds with one stone, go and see the vessel and get
+our luncheon on board.”
+
+“I am at your ladyship’s service,” answered Arthur, lazily, “but would
+you like to have the compliment apropos of the monkey? I have thought
+of something extremely neat now.”
+
+“Not on any account; I hate compliments that are not meant,” and her
+eyes gave a little flash which put a point to her words. “Agatha, I
+suppose that you will come?”
+
+“Well, yes, dear, the bay looks pretty smooth.”
+
+“Smooth, yes, you might sail across it in a paper ship,” yawned Arthur.
+
+“For goodness’ sake don’t look so lazy, Mr. Heigham, but ring the bell
+—not that one, the electric one—and let us order the launch at once.
+The mail will be at anchor in about an hour.”
+
+Arthur did as he was bid, and within that time they were steaming
+through the throng of boats already surrounding the steamer.
+
+“My gracious, Mildred,” suddenly exclaimed Agatha, “do you see who that
+is there leaning over the bulwarks? oh, he’s gone, but so sure as I am
+a living woman, it was Lord Minster and Lady Florence Thingumebob, his
+sister, you know, the pretty one.”
+
+Mildred looked vexed, and glanced involuntarily at Arthur who was
+steering the launch. For a moment she hesitated about going on, and
+glanced again at Arthur. The look seemed to inspire her, for she said
+nothing, and presently he brought the boat deftly alongside the gangway
+ladder.
+
+The captain of the ship had already come to the side to meet her,
+having recognized her from the bridge; indeed there was scarcely a man
+in Donald Currie’s service who did not know Mrs. Carr, at any rate, by
+sight.
+
+“How do you do, Mrs. Carr; are you coming on to South Africa with us?”
+
+“No, Captain Smithson; I, or rather we, are coming to lunch, and to see
+your new boat, and last, but not least, to claim my box.”
+
+“Mrs. Carr, will you ever forgive me? I have lost it!”
+
+“Produce my box, Captain Smithson, or I will never speak to you again.
+I’ll do more. I’ll go over to the Union line.”
+
+“In which case, I am afraid Donald Currie would never speak to me
+again. I must certainly try to find that box,” and he whispered an
+order to a quartermaster. “Well, it is very kind of you to come and
+lunch, and I hope that you and your friends will do so with me. Till
+then, good-by, I must be off.”
+
+As soon as they got on the quarter-deck, Arthur perceived a tall,
+well-preserved man with an eyeglass, whom he seemed to know, bearing
+down upon them, followed by a charming-looking girl, about three-and-
+twenty years of age, remarkable for her pleasant eyes and the humorous
+expression of her mouth.
+
+“How do you do, Mrs. Carr?” said the tall man. “I suppose that you
+heard that we were coming; it is very good of you to come and meet us.”
+
+“I had not the slightest idea that you were coming, and I did not come
+to meet you, Lord Minster; I came to lunch,” answered Mrs. Carr, rather
+coldly.
+
+“Nasty one for James that, very,” murmured Lady Florence; “hope it will
+do him good.”
+
+“I was determined to come and look you up as soon as I got time, but
+the House sat very late. However, I have got a fortnight here now, and
+shall see plenty of you.”
+
+“A good deal too much I daresay, Lord Minster; but let me introduce you
+to Mr. Heigham.”
+
+Lord Minster glanced casually at Arthur, and, lifting his hat about an
+eighth of an inch, was about to resume his conversation, when Arthur,
+who was rather nettled by this treatment, said,
+
+“I think I have had the pleasure of meeting you before, Lord Minster;
+we were stopping together at the Stanley Foxes last autumn.”
+
+“Stanley Foxes, ah, quite so, forgive my forgetfulness, but one meets
+so many people, you see,” and he turned round to where Mrs. Carr had
+been, but that lady had taken the opportunity to retreat. Lord Minster
+at once followed her.
+
+“Well, if my brother has forgotten you, Mr. Heigham, I have not,” said
+Lady Florence, now coming forward for the first time. “Don’t you
+remember when we went nutting together and I tumbled into the pond?”
+
+“Indeed I do, Lady Florence, and I can’t tell you how pleased I am to
+see you again. Are you here for long?”
+
+“An indefinite time: an old aunt of mine, Mrs. Velley, is coming out by
+next mail, and I am going to stop with her when my brother goes back.
+Are you staying with Mrs. Carr?”
+
+“Oh no, only I know her very well.”
+
+“Do you admire her?”
+
+“Immensely.”
+
+“Then you won’t like James—I mean my brother.”
+
+“Why not?”
+
+“Because he also admires her immensely.”
+
+“We both admire the view from here very much indeed, but that is no
+reason why you and I should not like each other.”
+
+“No, but then you see there is a difference between lovely scenery and
+lovely widows.”
+
+“Perhaps there is,” said Arthur.
+
+At this moment Lord Minster returned with Mrs. Carr.
+
+“How do you do, Lady Florence?” said the latter; “let me introduce you
+to Mr. Heigham. What, do you already know each other?”
+
+“Oh, yes, Mrs. Carr, we are old friends.”
+
+“Oh, indeed, that is very charming for you.”
+
+“Yes, it is,” said Lady Florence, frankly.
+
+“Well, we must be off now, Florence.”
+
+“All right, James, I’m ready.”
+
+“Will you both come and dine with me to-night sans façon, there will be
+nobody else except Agatha and Mr. Heigham?” asked Mrs. Carr.
+
+“We shall be delighted,” said Lord Minster.
+
+“_Au revoir_, then,” nodded Lady Florence to Arthur, and they
+separated.
+
+When, after lunching and seeing round the ship, Miss Terry and Arthur
+found themselves in the steam launch waiting for Mrs. Carr, who was
+saying good-by to the captain and looking after her precious box,
+Arthur took the opportunity to ask his companion what she knew of Lord
+Minster.
+
+“Oh, not much, that is, nothing in particular, except that he is the
+son of a sugar-broker or something, who was made a peer for some reason
+or other, and I suppose that is why he is so stuck up, because all the
+other peers I ever met are just like other people. He is very clever,
+too, is in the government now, and always hanging about after Mildred.
+He wants to marry her, you know, and I expect that he will at last, but
+I hope he won’t. I don’t like him; he always looks at one as though one
+were dirt.”
+
+“The deuce he does!” ejaculated Arthur, his heart filling on the
+instant with envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness towards
+Lord Minster. He had not the slightest wish to marry Mildred himself,
+but he boiled at the mere thought of anybody else doing so. Lady
+Florence was right, there is a difference between ladies and
+landscapes.
+
+At that moment Mildred herself arrived, but so disgusted was he that he
+would scarcely speak to her, and on arriving at the landing stage he at
+once departed to the hotel, and even tried to get out of coming to
+dinner that night, but this was overruled.
+
+“Good,” said Mildred to herself, with a smile; “I have found out how to
+vex him.”
+
+At dinner that evening Lord Minster, who had of course taken his
+hostess in, opened the conversation by asking her how she had been
+employing herself at Madeira.
+
+“Better than you have at St. Stephen’s, Lord Minster; at any rate, I
+have not been forwarding schemes for highway robbery and the national
+disgrace,” she answered, laughing.
+
+“I suppose that you mean the Irish Land Act and the Transvaal
+Convention. I have heard several ladies speak of them like that, and I
+am really coming to the conclusion that your sex is entirely devoid of
+political instinct.”
+
+“What do you mean by political instinct, Lord Minster?” asked Arthur.
+
+“By political instinct,” he replied, “I understand a proper
+appreciation of the science and object of government.”
+
+“Goodness me, what are they?” asked Mrs. Carr.
+
+“Well, the science of government consists, roughly speaking, in knowing
+how to get into office, and remain there when once in; its objects are
+to guess and give expression to the prevailing popular feeling or whim
+with the loss of as few votes as possible.”
+
+“According to that definition,” said Arthur, “all national questions
+are, or should be, treated by those who understand the ‘science and
+objects of government’ on a semi-financial basis. I mean, they should
+be dealt with as an investor deals with his funds, in order to make as
+much out of them as possible, not to bring real benefit to the
+country.”
+
+“You put the matter rather awkwardly, but I think I follow you. I will
+try to explain. In the first place, all the old-fashioned Jingo
+nonsense about patriotism and the ‘honour of the country’ has, if
+people only knew it, quite exploded; it only lingers in a certain
+section of the landed gentry and a proportion of the upper middle
+class, and has no serious weight with leading politicians.”
+
+“How about Lord Beaconsfield?”
+
+“Well, he was perhaps an exception; but then he was a man with so large
+a mind—I say it, though I detested him—that he could actually, by a
+sort of political prescience, see into the far future, and shape his
+course accordingly. But even in his case I do not believe that he was
+actuated by patriotism, but rather by a keener insight into human
+affairs than most men possess.”
+
+“And yet he came terribly to grief.”
+
+“Because he outflew his age. The will of the country—which means the
+will of between five hundred thousand and a million hungry fluctuating
+electors—could not wait for the development of his imperial schemes.
+They wanted plunder in the present, not honour and prosperity for the
+Empire in the future. The instinct of robbery is perhaps the strongest
+in human nature, and those who would rule humanity on its present basis
+must pander to it or fail. The party of progress means the party that
+can give most spoil, taken from those that have, to those that have
+not. That is why Mr. Gladstone is such a truly great man; he
+understands better than any one of his age how to excite the greed of
+hungry voters and to guide it for his own ends. What was the Midlothian
+campaign but a crusade of plunder? First he excited the desire, then he
+promised to satisfy it. Of course that is impossible, but at the time
+he was believed, and his promises floated us triumphantly into power.
+The same arguments apply to that body of electors whose motive power is
+sentiment—their folly must be pandered to. For instance, the Transvaal
+Convention that Mrs. Carr mentioned is an admirable example of how such
+pandering is done. No man of experience can have believed that such an
+agreement could be wise, or that it can result in anything but trouble
+and humiliation; but the trouble and humiliation will not come just
+yet, and in the meanwhile a sop is thrown to Cerberus. Political
+memories are short, and when exposure comes it will be easy to fix the
+blame upon the other side. It is because we appreciate these facts that
+in the end we must prevail. The Liberal party, or rather the Radical
+section, which is to the great Liberal party what the helm is to the
+ship, appeals to the baser instincts and more pressing appetites of the
+people; the Conservative only to their traditions and higher
+aspirations, in the same way that religion appeals to the spirit, and
+the worship of Mammon to the senses. The shibboleth of the one is
+‘self-interest;’ of the other, ‘national honour.’ The first appeals to
+the many, the second to the finer few, and I must leave you to judge
+which will carry the day.”
+
+“And if ever you become Prime Minister, shall you rule England upon
+these principles?” asked Mrs. Carr.
+
+“Certainly; it is because I have mastered them that I am what I am. I
+owe everything to them, consequently in my view they are the finest of
+all principles.”
+
+“Then Heaven help England!” soliloquized Arthur, rudely.
+
+“And so say we all,” added Lady Florence, who was a strong
+Conservative.
+
+“My dear young people,” answered Lord Minster, with a superior smile,
+“England is quite capable of looking after herself. I have to look
+after myself. She will, at any rate, last my time, and my motto is that
+one should get something out of one’s country, not attempt to do her
+services that would in all probability never be recognized, or, if
+recognized, left unrewarded.”
+
+Arthur was about to answer, with more sharpness than discretion, but
+Mrs. Carr interposed.
+
+“Well, Lord Minster, we have to thank you for a very cynical and lucid
+explanation of the objects of your party, if they really are its
+objects. Will you give me some wine?”
+
+After dinner Mrs. Carr devoted herself almost exclusively to Lord
+Minster, leaving Arthur to talk to Lady Florence. Lord Minster was not
+slow to avail himself of the opportunity.
+
+“I have been thinking of your remark to me in London about the
+crossing-sweeper,” he began.
+
+“Oh, for Heaven’s sake don’t drag that wretched man out of his grave,
+Lord Minster. I really have forgotten what I said about him.”
+
+“I hope, Mrs. Carr, that you have forgotten a good deal you said that
+day. I may as well take this opportunity——”
+
+“No, please don’t, Lord Minster,” she answered, knowing very well what
+was coming; “I am so tired to-night.”
+
+“Oh, in that case I can easily postpone my statement. I have a whole
+fortnight before me.”
+
+Mrs. Carr secretly determined that it should remain as much as possible
+at his own exclusive disposal, but she did not say so.
+
+Shortly after this, Arthur took his leave, after shaking hands very
+coldly with her. Nor did he come to the Quinta next day, as he had
+conceived too great a detestation of Lord Minster to risk meeting him,
+a detestation which he attributed solely to that rising member of the
+Government’s political principles, which jarred very much with his own.
+
+“Better and better,” said Mrs. Carr to herself, as she took off her
+dress, “but Lord Minster is really odious, I cannot stand him for
+long.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII.
+
+
+“Why, Arthur, I had almost forgotten what you are like,” said Mildred,
+when that young gentleman at last put in an appearance at the Quinta.
+“Where have you been to all this time?”
+
+“I—oh, I have been writing letters,” said Arthur.
+
+“Then they must have been very long ones. Don’t tell fibs, Arthur; you
+have not stopped away from here for a day and a half in order to write
+letters. What is the matter with you?”
+
+“Well, if you must know, Mildred, I detest your friend Lord Minster,
+the mere sight of him sets my teeth on edge, and I did not want to meet
+him. I only came here to-day because Lady Florence told me that they
+were going up to the Convent this afternoon.”
+
+“So you have been to see Lady Florence?”
+
+“No, I met her buying fruit yesterday, and went for a walk with her.”
+
+“In the intervals of the letter-writing?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, do you know I detest Lady Florence?”
+
+“That is very unkind of you. She is charming.”
+
+“From your point of view, perhaps, as her brother is from mine.”
+
+“Do you mean to tell me that you think that horrid fellow charming?”
+asked Arthur in disgust.
+
+“Why should I not?”
+
+“Oh, for the matter of that there is no reason why you should not, but
+I can’t congratulate you either on your friend or your taste.”
+
+“Leaving my taste out of the question, why do you call Lord Minster my
+friend?”
+
+“Because Miss Terry told me that he was; she said that he was always
+proposing to you, and that you would probably marry him in the end.”
+
+Mildred blushed faintly.
+
+“She has no business to tell you; but, for the matter of that, so have
+many other men. It does not follow that, because they choose to propose
+to me, they are my friends.”
+
+“No, but then they have not married you.”
+
+“No more has he; but, while we are talking of it, why should I not
+marry Lord Minster? He can give me position, influence, everything that
+is dear to a woman, except the rarest of all gifts—love.”
+
+“But is love so rare, Mildred?”
+
+“Yes, the love that it can satisfy a woman either to receive or to
+give, especially the latter, for in this we are more blessed in giving
+than in receiving. It is but very rarely that the most fortunate of us
+get a chance of accepting such love as I mean, and we can only give it
+once in our lives. But you have not told me your reasons against my
+marrying Lord Minster.”
+
+“Because he is a mean-spirited, selfish man. If he were not, he could
+not have talked as he did last night. Because you do not love him,
+Mildred, you cannot love such a man as that, if he were fifty times a
+member of the Government.”
+
+“What does it matter to you, Arthur,” she said, in a voice of
+indescribable softness, bending her sunny head low over her work,
+“whether I love him or not; my doing so would not make your heart beat
+the faster.”
+
+“I don’t wish you to marry him,” he said, confusedly.
+
+She raised her head and looked full at him with eyes which shone like
+stars through a summer mist.
+
+“That is enough, Arthur,” she answered, in a tone of gentle submission,
+“if you do not wish it, I will not,” and, rising, she left the room.
+
+Arthur blushed furiously at her words, and a new sensation crept over
+him.
+
+“Surely,” he said to himself, “she cannot—— No, of course she only
+means that she will take my advice.”
+
+But, though he dismissed the suspicion thus readily, it left something
+that he could not quite define behind it. He had, after the manner of
+young men where women are concerned, thought that he understood Mildred
+thoroughly; now he came to the modest conclusion that he knew very
+little about her.
+
+On the following afternoon, when he was at the Quinta talking as usual
+to Mrs. Carr, he saw Lord Minster coming up the steps of the portico,
+dressed in much the same way and with exactly the same air as he was
+accustomed to assume when he mounted those of the “Reform,” or
+occasionally, if he thought that the “hungry electors” wanted
+“pandering” to, those of the new “National Club.”
+
+“Hullo,” said Arthur, “here comes Lord Minster in his war paint, frock
+coat, tall hat, eye-glass and all. Good-bye.”
+
+“Why do you go away, Arthur? Stop and protect me,” said Mildred,
+laughing.
+
+“Oh, no, indeed, I don’t want to spoil sport. I would not interfere
+with your amusement on any account.”
+
+Mildred looked a little vexed.
+
+“Well, you will come back to dinner?”
+
+“That depends upon what happens.”
+
+“I told you what would happen, Arthur. Good-bye.”
+
+“Perhaps it is as well to get it over at once,” thought Mildred.
+
+In the hall Arthur met Lord Minster, and they passed with a gesture of
+recognition so infinitesimally small that it almost faded into the
+nothingness of a “cut.” So far as he could condescend to notice so low
+a thing at all, his lordship had conceived a great dislike for Arthur.
+
+“How do you do, Lord Minster?” said Mildred, cordially. “I hear that
+you went to the Convent yesterday; what did you think of the view?”
+
+“The view, Mrs. Carr—was there a view? I did not notice it; indeed, I
+only went up there at all to please Florence. I don’t like that sort of
+thing.”
+
+“If you don’t like roughing it, I am afraid that you did not enjoy your
+voyage out.”
+
+“Well, no, I don’t think I did, and there was a low fellow on board who
+had been ruined by the retrocession of the Transvaal, and who, hearing
+that I was in the Government, took every possible opportunity to tell
+me publicly that his wife and children were almost in a state of
+starvation, as though I cared about his confounded wife and children.
+He was positively brutal. No, certainly I did not enjoy it. However, I
+am rewarded by finding you here.”
+
+“I am very much flattered.”
+
+Lord Minster fixed his eye-glass firmly in his eye, planted his hands
+at the bottom of his trousers pockets, and, clearing his throat, placed
+himself in the attitude that was so familiar to the House, and began.
+
+“Mrs. Carr, I told you, when last I had the pleasure of seeing you,
+that I should take the first opportunity of renewing a conversation
+that I was forced to suspend in order to attend, if my memory serves
+me, a very important committee meeting. I was therefore surprised,
+indeed I may almost say hurt, when I found that you had suddenly
+flitted from London.”
+
+“Indeed, Lord Minster?”
+
+“I will not, however, take up the time of this—I mean your time, by
+recapitulating all that I told you on that occasion; the facts are, so
+to speak, all upon the table, and I will merely touch upon the main
+heads of my case. My prospects are these: I am now a member of the
+Cabinet, and enjoy, owing to the unusual but calculated recklessness of
+my non-official public utterances, an extraordinary popularity with a
+large section of the country, the hungry section to which I alluded
+last night. It is probable that the course of the present Government is
+pretty nearly run, the country is sick of it, and those who put it into
+power have not got enough out of it. A dissolution is therefore an
+event of the near future; the Conservatives will come in, but they have
+no power of organization, and very little political talent at their
+backs, above all, they are deficient in energy, probably because there
+is nothing that they can destroy and therefore no pickings to struggle
+for. In short, they are not ‘capaces imperii.’ The want of these
+qualities and of leaders will very soon undermine their hold upon the
+country, always a slight one, and, assisted by a few other pushing men,
+I anticipate, by carefully playing into the hands of the Irish party
+which will really rule England in the future, being able, as one of the
+leaders of the Opposition, to consummate their downfall. Then will come
+my opportunity, and, if luck goes with me, I shall be first Lord of the
+Treasury within half a dozen years. But now comes the difficulty.
+Though I am so popular with the country, I am, for some reason quite
+inexplicable to myself, rather at a—hum—a discount amongst my
+colleagues and that influential section of society to which they
+belong. Now, in order to succeed to the full extent that I have
+planned, it is absolutely essential that I should win the countenance
+of this class, and the only way that I can see of doing it is by
+marrying some woman charming enough to disarm dislike, beautiful enough
+to command admiration, rich enough to entertain profusely, and clever
+enough to rule England. Those desiderata are all to a striking degree
+united in your person, Mrs. Carr, and I have therefore much pleasure in
+asking you to become my wife.”
+
+“You have, as I understand you, Lord Minster, made a very admirable
+statement of how desirable it is for yourself that you should marry me,
+but it is not so clear what advantage I should reap by marrying you.”
+
+“Why, the advantages are obvious: if by your help I can become Prime
+Minister, you would become the wife of the Prime Minister.”
+
+“The prospect fails to dazzle me. I have everything that I want; why
+should I strive to reach a grandeur to which I was not born, and which,
+to speak the truth, I regard with a very complete indifference? But
+there is another point. In all your speech you have said nothing of any
+affection that you have to offer, not a single word of love— you have
+been content to expatiate on the profits that a matrimonial investment
+would bring to yourself, and by reflection, to the other contracting
+party.”
+
+“Love,” asked Lord Minster, with an expression of genuine surprise;
+“why, you talk like a character in a novel; now tell me, Mrs. Carr,
+_what_ is love?”
+
+“It is difficult to define, Lord Minster; but as you ask me to do so, I
+will try. Love to a woman is what the sun is to the world, it is her
+life, her animating principle, without which she must droop, and, if
+the plant be very tender, die. Except under its influence, a woman can
+never attain her full growth, never touch the height of her
+possibilities, or bloom into the plenitude of her moral beauty. A
+loveless marriage dwarfs our natures, a marriage where love is develops
+them to their utmost.”
+
+“And what is love to a man?”
+
+“Well, I should say that nine of a man’s passions are merely episodes
+in his career, the mile-stones that mark his path; the tenth, or the
+first, is his philosopher’s stone that turns all things to gold, or, if
+the charm does not work, leaves his heart, broken and bankrupt, a cold
+monument of failure.”
+
+“I don’t quite follow you, and I must say that, speaking for myself, I
+never felt anything of all this,” said Lord Minster, blankly.
+
+“I know you do not, Lord Minster; your only passions tend towards
+political triumphs and personal aggrandisement; we are at the two
+poles, you see, and I fear that we can never, never meet upon a common
+matrimonial line. But don’t be down-hearted about it, you will find
+plenty more women who fulfil all your requirements and will be very
+happy to take you at your own valuation. If only a woman is necessary
+to success, you need not look far, and forgive me if I say that I
+believe it will not make much difference to you who she is. But all the
+same, Lord Minster, I will venture to give you a piece of advice: next
+time you propose, address yourself a little more to the lady’s
+affections and a little less to her interests,” and Mrs. Carr rose as
+though to show that the interview was at an end.
+
+“Am I then to understand that my offer is definitely refused?” asked
+Lord Minster, stiffly.
+
+“I am afraid so, and I am sure that you will, on reflection, see how
+utterly unsuited we are to each other.”
+
+“Possibly, Mrs. Carr, possibly; at present all that I see is that you
+have had a great opportunity, and have failed to avail yourself of it.
+My only consolation is that the loss will be yours, and my only regret
+is that I have had the trouble of coming to this place for nothing.
+However, there is a ship due to-morrow, and I shall sail in her.”
+
+“I am sorry to have been the cause of bringing you here, Lord Minster,
+and still more sorry that you should feel obliged to cut short your
+stay. Good-bye, Lord Minster; we part friends, I hope?”
+
+“Oh, certainly, Mrs. Carr. I wish you a very good morning, Mrs. Carr,”
+and his lordship marched out of Mildred’s life.
+
+“There goes my chance of becoming the wife of a prime minister, and
+making a figure in history,” said that lady, as she watched his tall
+figure stalking stiffly down the avenue. “Well, I am glad of it. I
+would just as soon have married a speech-making figure-head stuffed
+full of the purest Radical principles.”
+
+On the following day Arthur met Lady Florence again in the town.
+
+“Where have you been to, Lady Florence?” he said.
+
+“To see my brother off,” she answered, without any signs of deep grief.
+
+“What, has he gone already?”
+
+“Yes; your friend Mrs. Carr has been too many for poor James.”
+
+“What! do you mean that he has been proposing?”
+
+“Yes, and got more than he bargained for.”
+
+“Is he cut up?”
+
+“He, no, but his vanity is. You see, Mr. Heigham, it is this way. My
+brother may be a very great man and a pillar of the State, and all that
+sort of thing. I don’t say he isn’t; but from personal experience I
+_know_ that he is an awful prig, and thinks that all women are machines
+constructed to advance the comfort of your noble sex. Well, he has come
+down a peg or two, that’s all, and he don’t like it. Good- bye; I’m in
+a hurry.”
+
+Lady Florence was nothing if not outspoken.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+
+A week or so after the departure of Lord Minster, Mildred suggested
+that they should, on the following day, vary their amusements by going
+up to the Convent, a building perched on the hills some thousand feet
+above the town of Funchal, in palanquins, or rather hammocks swung upon
+long poles. Arthur, who had never yet travelled in these luxurious
+conveyances, jumped at the idea, and even Miss Terry, when she
+discovered that she was to be carried, made no objection. The party was
+completed by the addition of a newly-married couple of whom Mrs. Carr
+had known something at home, and who had come to Madeira to spend the
+honeymoon. Lady Florence also had been asked, but, rather to Arthur’s
+disappointment, she could not come.
+
+When the long line of swinging hammocks, each with its two sturdy
+bearers, were marshalled, and the adventurous voyagers had settled
+themselves in them, they really formed quite an imposing procession,
+headed as it was by the extra-sized one that carried Miss Terry, who
+complained bitterly that “the thing wobbled and made her feel sick.”
+
+But to Arthur’s mind there was something effeminate in allowing
+himself, a strong, active man, to be carted up hills as steep as the
+side of a house by two perspiring wretches; so, hot as it was, he, to
+the intense amusement of his bearers, elected to get out and walk. The
+newly-married man followed his example, and for a while they went on
+together, till presently the latter gravitated towards his wife’s
+palanquin, and, overcome at so long a separation, squeezed her hand
+between the curtains. Not wishing to intrude himself on their conjugal
+felicity, Arthur in his turn gravitated to the side of Mrs. Carr, who
+was being lightly swung along in the second palanquin some twenty yards
+behind Miss Terry’s. Shortly afterwards they observed a signal of
+distress being flown by that lady, whose arm was to be seen violently
+agitating her green veil from between the curtains of her hammock,
+which immediately came to a dead stop.
+
+“What is it?” cried Arthur and Mildred, in a breath, as they arrived on
+the scene of the supposed disaster.
+
+“My dear Mildred, will you be so kind as to tell that man” (pointing to
+her front bearer, a stout, flabby individual) “that he must not go on
+carrying me. I must have a cooler man. It makes me positively ill to
+see him puffing and blowing and dripping under my nose like a fresh
+basted joint.”
+
+Miss Terry’s realistic description of her bearer’s appearance, which
+was, to say the least of it, limp and moist, was no exaggeration. But
+then she herself, as Arthur well remembered, was no feather-weight,
+especially when, as in the present case, she had to be carted up the
+side of a nearly perpendicular hill some miles long, a fact very well
+exemplified by the condition of the bearer.
+
+“My dear Agatha,” replied Mildred, laughing, “what is to be done? Of
+course the man is hot, you are not a feather-weight; but what is to be
+done?”
+
+“I don’t know, but I won’t go on with him, it’s simply disgusting; he
+might let himself out as a watering-cart.”
+
+“But we can’t get another here.”
+
+“Then he must cool himself, the others might come and fan him. I won’t
+go on till he is cool, and that’s flat.”
+
+“He will take hours to cool, and meanwhile we are broiling on this hot
+road. You really must come on, Agatha.”
+
+“I have it,” said Arthur. “Miss Terry must turn herself round with her
+head towards the back of the hammock, and then she won’t see him.”
+
+To this arrangement the aggrieved lady was after some difficulty
+persuaded to accede, and the procession started again.
+
+Their destination reached, they picnicked as they had arranged, and
+then separated, the bride and bridegroom strolling off in one
+direction, and Mildred and Arthur in another, whilst Miss Terry mounted
+guard over the plates and dishes.
+
+Presently Arthur and Mildred came to a little English-looking grove of
+pine and oak, that extended down a gentle slope and was bordered by a
+steep bank, at the foot of which great ferns and beautiful Madeira
+flowers twined themselves into a shelter from the heat. Here they sat
+down and gazed at the splendid and many-tinted view set in its
+background of emerald ocean.
+
+“What a view it is,” said Arthur. “Look, Mildred, how dark the clumps
+of sugar-cane look against the green of the vines, and how pretty the
+red roofs of the town are peeping out of the groves of fruit-trees. Do
+you see the great shadow thrown upon the sea by that cliff? how deep
+and cool the water looks within it, and how it sparkles where the sun
+strikes.”
+
+“Yes, it is beautiful, and the pines smell sweet.”
+
+“I wish Angela could see it,” he said, half to himself. Mildred, who
+was lying back lazily among the ferns, her hat off, her eyes closed, so
+that the long dark lashes lay upon her cheek, and her head resting on
+her arm, suddenly started up.
+
+“What is the matter?”
+
+“Nothing, you woke me from a sort of dream, that’s all.”
+
+“This spring I remember going with her to look at a view near the Abbey
+House, and saying—what I often think when I look at anything beautiful
+and full of life—that it depressed one to know that all this was so
+much food for death, and its beauty a thing that to-day is and
+to-morrow is not.”
+
+“And what did she say?”
+
+“She said that to her it spoke of immortality, and that in everything
+around her she saw evidence of eternal life.”
+
+“She must be very fortunate. Shall I tell you of what it reminds me?”
+
+“What?”
+
+“Of neither death nor immortality, but of the full, happy, pulsing
+existence of the hour, and of the beautiful world that pessimists like
+yourself and mystics like your Angela think so poorly of, but which is
+really so glorious and so rich in joy. Why, this sunlight and those
+flowers, and the wide sparkle of that sea, are each and all a
+happiness, and the health in our veins and the beauty in our eyes, deep
+pleasures that we never realize till we lose them. Death, indeed, comes
+to us all, but why add to its terrors by thinking of them whilst it is
+far off? And, as for life after death, it is a faint, vague thing, more
+likely to be horrible than happy. This world is our only reality, the
+only thing that we can grasp; here alone we _know_ that we can enjoy,
+and yet how we waste our short opportunities for enjoyment! Soon youth
+will have slipped away, and we shall be too old for love. Roses fade
+fastest, Arthur, when the sun is bright; in the evening when they have
+fallen, and the ground is red with withering petals, do you not think
+we shall wish that we had gathered more?”
+
+“Yours is a pleasant philosophy, Mildred,” he said, struggling faintly
+in his own mind against her conclusions.
+
+But at this moment, somehow, his fingers touched her own and were
+presently locked fast within her little palm, and for the first time in
+his life they sat hand in hand. But, happily for him, he did not
+venture to look into her eyes, and, before many minutes had passed,
+Miss Terry’s voice was heard calling him loudly.
+
+“I suppose that you must go,” said Mildred, with a shade of vexation in
+her voice and a good many shades upon her face, “or she will be
+blundering down here. I will come, too; it is time for tea.”
+
+On arriving at the spot whence the sounds proceeded, they found Miss
+Terry surrounded by a crowd of laughing and excited bearers, and
+pouring out a flood of the most vigorous English upon an unfortunate
+islander, who stood, a silver mug in each hand, bowing and shrugging
+his shoulders, and enunciating with every variety of movement
+indicative of humiliation, these mystic words:
+
+“Mee washeeuppee, signora, washeeuppee—e.”
+
+“What _is_ the matter now, Agatha?”
+
+“Matter, why I woke up and found this man stealing the cups; I charged
+him at once with my umbrella, but he dodged and I fell down, and the
+umbrella has gone over the rock there. Take him up at once, Arthur—
+there’s the stolen property on his person. Hand him over to justice.”
+
+“Good gracious, Agatha, what are you thinking about? The poor man only
+wants to wash the things out.”
+
+“Then I should like to know why he could not tell me so in plain
+English,” said Miss Terry, retiring discomfited amidst shouts of
+laughter from the whole party, including the supposed thief.
+
+After tea they all set out on a grand beetle-hunting expedition, and so
+intent were they upon this fascinating pursuit that they did not note
+the flight of time, till suddenly Mildred, pulling out her watch, gave
+a pretty cry of alarm.
+
+“Do you know what time it is, good people? Half-past six, and the
+Custances are to dine with us at a quarter-past-seven. It will take us
+a good hour to get down; what _shall_ we do?”
+
+“I know,” said Arthur, “there are two sledges just below; I saw them as
+we came up. They will take us down to Funchal in a quarter of an hour,
+and we can get to the Quinta by about seven.”
+
+“Arthur, you are invaluable; the very thing. Come on, all of you,
+quick.”
+
+Now these sledges are peculiar to Madeira, being made on the principle
+of the bullock car, with the difference that they travel down the
+smooth, stone-paved roadways by their own momentum, guided by two
+skilled conductors, each with one foot naked to prevent his slipping,
+who hold the ropes, and when the sledge begins to travel more swiftly
+than they can follow, mount upon the projecting ends of the runners and
+are carried with it. By means of the swift and exhilarating rush of
+these sledges, the traveller traverses the distance, that it takes some
+hours to climb, in a very few minutes. Indeed, his journey up and down
+may be very well compared with that of the well-known British sailor
+who took five hours to get up Majuba mountain, but, according to his
+own forcibly told story, came down again with an almost incredible
+rapidity. It may therefore be imagined that sledge- travelling in
+Madeira is not very well suited to nervous voyagers.
+
+Miss Terry had at times seen these wheelless vehicles shoot from the
+top of a mountain to the bottom like a balloon with the gas out, and
+had also heard of occasional accidents in connection with them. Stoutly
+she vowed that nothing should induce her to trust her neck to one of
+them.
+
+“But you must, Agatha, or else be left behind. They are as safe as a
+church, and I can’t leave the Custances to wait till half-past eight
+for dinner. Come, get in. Arthur can go in front and hold you; I will
+sit behind.”
+
+Thus admonished—Miss Terry entered groaning, Arthur taking his seat
+beside her, and Mrs. Carr hers in a sort of dickey behind. The newly-
+married pair, who did not half like it, possessed themselves of the
+smaller sledge, determined to brave extinction in each other’s arms.
+Then the conductors seized the ropes, and, planting their one naked
+foot firmly before them, awaited the signal to depart.
+
+“Stop,” said Miss Terry, lifting the recovered umbrella, “that man has
+forgotten to put on his shoe and stocking on his right leg. He will cut
+his foot, and, besides, it doesn’t look respectable to be seen flying
+through a place with a one-legged ragamuffin——”
+
+“Let her go,” shouted Arthur, and they did, to some purpose, for in a
+minute they were passing down that hill like a flash of light. Woods
+and houses appeared and vanished like the visions of a dream, and the
+soft air went singing away on either side of them as they clove it,
+flying downwards at an angle of thirty degrees, and leaving nothing
+behind them but the sound of Miss Terry’s lamentations. Soon they
+neared the bottom, but there was yet a dip—the deepest of them all,
+with a sharp turn at the end of it—to be traversed.
+
+Away went the little connubial sled in front like a pigeon down the
+wind; away they sped after it like an eagle in pursuit; _crack_ went
+the little sledge into the corner, and out shot the happy pair; _crash_
+went the big sledge into it, and Arthur became conscious of a wild
+yell, of a green veil fluttering through the air, and of a fall as on
+to a feather-bed. Miss Terry’s superior weight had brought her to her
+mother earth the first, and he, after a higher heavenward flight, had
+lit upon the top of her. He picked her up and sat her down against a
+wall to recover her breath, and then fished Mildred, dirty and bruised,
+but as usual laughing, out of a gutter; the loving pair had already
+risen and in an agony of mutual anxiety were rubbing each other’s
+shins. And then he started back with a cry, for there before him,
+surveying the disaster with an air of mingled amusement and
+benevolence, stood—Sir John and Lady Bellamy.
+
+Had it been the Prince and Princess of Evil—if, as is probable, there
+is a Princess—Arthur could scarcely have been more astounded. Somehow
+he had always in his thoughts regarded Sir John and Lady Bellamy, when
+he thought about them at all, as possessing indeed individual
+characters and tendencies, but as completely “adscripti glebae” of the
+neighbourhood of the Abbey House as that house itself. He would as soon
+have expected to see Caresfoot’s Staff re-rooted in the soil of
+Madeira, as to find them strolling about Funchal. He rubbed his eyes;
+perhaps, he thought, he had been knocked silly and was labouring under
+a hallucination. No, there was no doubt about it; there they were, just
+the same as he had seen them at Isleworth, except that if possible Sir
+John looked even more like a ripe apple than usual, while the sun had
+browned his wife’s Egyptian face and given her a last finish as a
+perfect type of Cleopatra. Nor was the recognition on his side only,
+for next second his hand was grasped first by Sir John and then by Lady
+Bellamy.
+
+“When we last met, Mr. Heigham,” said the gentleman, with a benevolent
+beam, “I think I expressed a wish that we might soon renew our
+acquaintance, but I little thought under what circumstances our next
+meeting would take place,” and he pointed to the overturned sledges and
+the prostrate sledgers.
+
+“You have had a very merciful escape,” chimed in Lady Bellamy,
+cordially; “with so many hard stones about, affairs might have ended
+differently.”
+
+“Now then, Mr. Heigham, we had better set to and run, that is, if
+Agatha has got a run left in her, or we shall be late after all. Thank
+goodness nobody is hurt; but we must find a hammock for Agatha, for to
+judge from her groans she thinks she is. Is my nose—— Oh, I beg your
+pardon,” and Mrs. Carr stopped short, observing for the first time that
+he was talking to strangers.
+
+“Do not let me detain you, if you are in a hurry. I am so thankful that
+nobody is hurt,” said Lady Bellamy. “I believe that we are stopping at
+the same hotel, Mr. Heigham, I saw your name in the book, so we shall
+have plenty of opportunities of meeting.”
+
+But Arthur felt that there was one question which he must ask before he
+went on, whether or no it exceeded the strict letter of his agreement
+with Philip; so, calling to Mrs. Carr that he was coming, he said, with
+a blush,
+
+“How was Miss Caresfoot when—when you last saw her, Lady Bellamy?”
+
+“Perfectly well,” she answered, smiling.
+
+“And more lovely than ever,” added her husband.
+
+“Thank you for that news, it is the best I have heard for some time.
+Good-bye for the present, we shall meet to-morrow at breakfast,” and he
+ran on after the others, happier than he had been for months, feeling
+that he had come again within call of Angela, and as though he had
+never sat hand in hand with Mildred Carr.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+
+At breakfast on the following morning Arthur, as he had anticipated,
+met the Bellamys. Sir John came down first, arrayed in true English
+fashion, in a tourist suit of grey, and presently Lady Bellamy
+followed. As she entered, dressed in trailing white, and walked slowly
+up the long table, every eye was turned upon her, for she was one of
+those women who attract attention as surely and unconsciously as a
+magnet attracts iron. Arthur, looking with the rest, thought that he
+had never seen a stranger, or at the same time a more imposing-
+looking, woman. Time had not yet touched her beauty or impaired her
+vigorous constitution, and at forty she was still at the zenith of her
+charms. The dark hair, that threw out glinting lights of copper when
+the sun struck it, still curled in its clustering ringlets and showed
+no line of grey, while the mysterious, heavy-lidded eyes and the coral
+lips were as full of rich life and beauty as they had been when she and
+Hilda von Holtzhausen first met at Rewtham House.
+
+On her face, too, was the same expression of quiet power, of conscious
+superiority and calm command, that had always distinguished it. Arthur
+tried to think what it reminded him of, and remembered that the same
+look was to be seen upon the stone features of some of the Egyptian
+statues in Mildred’s museum.
+
+“How splendid Lady Bellamy looks!” he said, almost unconsciously, to
+his neighbour.
+
+Sir John did not answer; and Arthur, glancing up to learn the reason,
+saw that he also was watching the approach of his wife, and that his
+face was contorted with a sudden spasm of intense malice and hatred,
+whilst his little, pig-like eyes glittered threateningly. He had not
+even heard the remark. Arthur would have liked to whistle; he had
+surprised a secret.
+
+“How do you do, Mr. Heigham? I hope that you are not bruised after your
+tumble yesterday. Good morning, John.”
+
+Arthur rose and shook hands.
+
+“I never was more surprised in my life,” he said, “than when I saw you
+and Sir John at the top of the street there. May I ask what brought you
+to Madeira?”
+
+“Health, sir, health,” answered the little man. “Cough, catarrh,
+influenza, and all that’s damn——ah! infernal!”
+
+“My husband, Mr. Heigham,” struck in Lady Bellamy, in her full, rich
+tones, “had a severe threatening of chest disease, and the doctor
+recommended a trip to some warmer climate. Unfortunately, however, his
+business arrangements will not permit of a long stay. We only stop here
+three weeks at most.”
+
+“I am sorry to hear that you are not well, Sir John.”
+
+“Oh! it is nothing very much,” answered Lady Bellamy for him; “only he
+requires care. What a lovely garden this is—is it not? By the way, I
+forgot to inquire after the ladies who shared your tumble. I hope that
+they were none the worse. I was much struck with one of them, the very
+pretty person with the brown hair, whom you pulled out of the gutter.”
+
+“Oh, Mrs. Carr. Yes, she is pretty.”
+
+After breakfast, Arthur volunteered to take Lady Bellamy round the
+garden, with the ulterior object of extracting some more information
+about Angela. It must be remembered that he had no cause to mistrust
+that lady, nor had he any knowledge of the events which had recently
+happened in the neighbourhood of the Abbey House. He was therefore
+perfectly frank with her.
+
+“I suppose that you have heard of my engagement, Lady Bellamy?”
+
+“Oh, yes, Mr. Heigham; it is quite a subject of conversation in the
+Roxham neighbourhood. Angela Caresfoot is a sweet and very beautiful
+girl, and I congratulate you much.”
+
+“You know, then, of its conditions?”
+
+“Yes, I heard of them, and thought them ridiculous. Indeed I tried, at
+Angela’s suggestion, to do you a good turn with Philip Caresfoot, and
+get him to modify them; but he would not. He is a curious man, Philip,
+and, when he once gets a thing into his head, it is beyond the power of
+most people to drive it out again. I suppose that you are spending your
+year of probation here?”
+
+“Well, yes—I am trying to get through the time in that way; but it is
+slow work.”
+
+“I thought you seemed pretty happy yesterday,” she answered, smiling.
+
+Arthur blushed.
+
+“Oh! yes, I may appear to be. But tell me all about Angela.”
+
+“I have really very little to tell. She seems to be living as usual,
+and looks well. Her friend Mr. Fraser has come back. But I must be
+going in; I have promised to go out walking with Sir John. _Au revoir_,
+Mr. Heigham.”
+
+Left to himself, Arthur remembered that he also had an appointment to
+keep—namely, to meet Mildred by the Cathedral steps, and go with her to
+choose some Madeira jewellery, an undertaking which she did not feel
+competent to carry out without his assistance.
+
+When he reached the Cathedral, he found her rather cross at having been
+kept waiting for ten minutes.
+
+“It is very rude of you,” she said; “but I suppose that you were so
+taken up with the conversation of your friends that you forgot the
+time. By the way, who are they? anybody you have told me about?”
+
+In the pauses of selecting the jewellery, Arthur told her all he knew
+about the Bellamys, and of their connection with the neighbourhood of
+the Abbey House. The story caused Mildred to open her brown eyes and
+look thoughtful. Just as they came out of the shop, who should they run
+into but the Bellamys themselves, chaffering for Madeira work with a
+woman in the street. Arthur stopped and spoke to them, and then
+introduced Mrs. Carr, who, after a little conversation, asked them up
+to lunch.
+
+After this Mildred and Lady Bellamy met a good deal. The two women
+interested each other.
+
+One night, when the Bellamys had been about ten days in Madeira, the
+conversation took a personal turn. Sir John and Arthur were sitting
+over their wine (they were dining with Mrs. Carr), Agatha Terry was
+fast asleep on a sofa, so that Lady Bellamy and Mildred, seated upon
+lounging-chairs, by a table with a light on it, placed by an open
+window, were practically alone.
+
+“Oh, by the way, Lady Bellamy,” said Mildred, after a pause, “I believe
+that you are acquainted with the young lady to whom Mr. Heigham is
+engaged?” She had meant to say, “to be married,” but the words stuck in
+her throat.
+
+“Oh, yes, I know her well.”
+
+“I am so glad. I am quite curious to hear what she is like; one can
+never put much faith in lovers’ raptures, you know.”
+
+“Do you mean in person or in character?”
+
+“Both.”
+
+“Well, Angela Caresfoot is as lovely a woman as ever I saw, with a
+noble figure, well-set head, and magnificent eyes and hair.”
+
+Mildred turned a little pale and bit her lips.
+
+“As to her character, I can hardly describe it. She lives in an
+atmosphere of her own, an atmosphere that I cannot reach, or, at any
+rate, cannot breathe. But if you can imagine a woman whose mind is
+enriched with learning as profound as that of the first classical
+scholars of the day, and tinged with an originality all her own; a
+woman whose faith is as steady as that star, and whose love is deep as
+the sea and as definite as its tides; who lives to higher ends than
+those we strive for; whose whole life, indeed, gives one the idea that
+it is the shadow—imperfect, perhaps, but still the shadow—of an
+immortal light: then you will get some idea of Angela Caresfoot. She is
+a woman intellectually, physically, and spiritually immeasurably above
+the man on whom she has set her affections.”
+
+“That cannot be,” said Mildred, softly, “like draws to like; she must
+have found something in him, some better part, some affinity of which
+you know nothing.”
+
+After this she fell into silence. Presently Lady Bellamy raised her
+eyes, just now filled up with the great pupils, and fixed them on
+Mildred.
+
+“You are thinking,” she said, slowly, “that Angela Caresfoot is a
+formidable rival.”
+
+Mildred started.
+
+“How can you pretend to read my thoughts?”
+
+She laughed a little.
+
+“I am an adept at the art. Don’t be down-hearted. I should not be
+surprised if, after all, the engagement between Mr. Heigham and Angela
+Caresfoot should come to nothing. Of course, I speak in perfect
+confidence.”
+
+“Of course.”
+
+“Well, the marriage is not altogether agreeable to the father, who
+would prefer another and more suitable match. But, unfortunately, there
+is no way of shaking the young lady’s determination.”
+
+“Indeed.”
+
+“But I think that, with assistance, a way might be found.”
+
+Their eyes met, and this time Mildred took up the parable.
+
+“Should I be wrong, Lady Bellamy, if I supposed that you have not come
+to Madeira solely for pleasure?”
+
+“A wise person always tries to combine business and pleasure.”
+
+“And in this case the business combined is in connection with Mr.
+Heigham’s engagement?”
+
+“Exactly.”
+
+“And supposing that I were to tell him this?”
+
+“Had I not known that you would on no account tell Mr. Heigham, I
+should not have told you.”
+
+“And how do you know that?”
+
+“I will answer your question by another. Did you ever yet know a woman,
+who loved a man, willingly help him to the arms of a rival, unless
+indeed she was forced to it?” she added, with something like a sigh.
+
+Mildred Carr’s snowy bosom heaved tumultuously, and the rose-leaf hue
+faded from her cheeks.
+
+“You mean that I am in love with Arthur Heigham. On what do you base
+that belief?”
+
+“On a base as broad as the pyramids of which you were talking at
+dinner. Public report, not nearly so misleading a guide as people
+think, your face, your voice, your eyes, all betray you. Why do you
+always try to get near him to touch him?—answer me that. I have seen
+you do it three times this evening. Once you handed him a book in order
+to touch his hand beneath it; but there is no need to enumerate what
+you doubtless very well remember. No nice woman, Mrs. Carr, ever likes
+to continually touch a man unless she loves him. You are always
+listening for his voice and step, you are listening for them now. Your
+eyes follow his face as a dog does his master’s—when you speak to him,
+your voice is a caress in itself. Shall I go on?”
+
+“I think that it is unnecessary. Whether you be right or not, I will
+give you the credit of being a close observer.”
+
+“To observe with me is at once a task and an amusement, and the habit
+is one that leads me to accurate conclusions, as I think you will
+admit. The conclusion I have come to in your case is that you do not
+wish to see Arthur Heigham married to another woman. I spoke just now
+of assistance——”
+
+“I have none to give, I will give none. How could I look him in the
+face?”
+
+“You are strangely scrupulous for a woman in your position.”
+
+“I have always tried to behave like an honourable woman, Lady Bellamy,
+and I do not feel inclined to do otherwise now.”
+
+“Perhaps you will think differently when it comes to the point. But in
+the meanwhile remember, that people who will not help themselves,
+cannot expect to be helped.”
+
+“Once and for all, Lady Bellamy, understand me. I fight for my own hand
+with the weapons which Nature and fortune have given me, and by myself
+I will stand or fall. I will join in no schemes to separate Arthur from
+this woman. If I cannot win him for myself by myself, I will at any
+rate lose him fairly. I will respect what you have told me, but I will
+do no more.”
+
+Lady Bellamy smiled as she answered—
+
+“I really admire your courage. It is quite quixotic. Hush, here come
+the gentlemen.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV.
+
+
+A few days after the dinner at the Quinta Carr, the Bellamys’ visit to
+Madeira drew to a close. On the evening before their departure, Arthur
+volunteered to take Lady Bellamy down to the parade to hear the band
+play. After they had walked about a while under the shade of the
+magnolia-trees, which were starred all over with creamy cups of bloom,
+and sufficiently inspected the gay throng of Portuguese inhabitants and
+English visitors, made gayer still by the amazingly gorgeous uniforms
+of the officials, Arthur spied two chairs in a comparatively quiet
+corner, and suggested that they should sit down.
+
+“Lady Bellamy,” he said, after hesitating a while, “you are a woman of
+the world, and I believe a friend of my own. I want to ask your advice
+about something.”
+
+“It is entirely at your service, Mr. Heigham.”
+
+“Well, really it is very awkward——”
+
+“Shall I turn my head so as not to see your blushes?”
+
+“Don’t laugh at me, Lady Bellamy. Of course you will say nothing of
+this.”
+
+“If you doubt my discretion, Mr. Heigham, do not choose me as a
+confidante. You are going, unless I am mistaken, to speak to me about
+Mrs. Carr.”
+
+“Yes, it is about her. But how did you know that? You always seem to be
+able to read one’s thoughts before one speaks. Do you know, sometimes I
+think that she has taken a fancy to me, do you see, and I wanted to ask
+you what you thought about it.”
+
+“Well, supposing that she had, most young men, Mr. Heigham, would not
+talk of such a thing in a tone befitting a great catastrophe. But, if I
+am not entering too deeply into particulars, what makes you think so?”
+
+“Well, really, I don’t exactly know. She sometimes gives me a general
+idea.”
+
+“Oh, then, there has been nothing tangible.”
+
+“Well, yes, once she took my hand, or I took hers, I don’t know which;
+but I don’t think much of that, because it’s the sort of thing that’s
+always happening, don’t you know, and nine times out of ten means
+nothing at all. But why I ask you about it is that, if there is
+anything of the sort, I had better cut and run out of this, because it
+would not be fair to stop, either to her, or to Angela, or myself. It
+would be dangerous, you see, playing with such a woman as Mildred.”
+
+“So you would go away if you thought that she took any warmer interest
+in you than ladies generally do in men engaged to be married.”
+
+“Certainly I should.”
+
+“Well, then, I think that I can set your mind at ease. I have observed
+Mrs. Carr pretty closely, and in the way you suppose she cares for you
+no more than she does for your coat. She is, no doubt, a bit of a
+flirt, and very likely wishes to get you to fall in love with her—a
+natural ambition on the part of a woman; but, as for being in love with
+you herself, the idea is absurd. Women of the world do not fall in love
+so readily; they are too much taken up with thinking about themselves
+to have time to think about anybody else. With them it is all self,
+self, self, from morning till night. Besides, look at the common-sense
+side of the thing. Do you suppose it likely that a person of Mrs.
+Carr’s wealth and beauty, who has only to lift her hand to have all
+London at her feet, is likely to fix her affections upon a young man
+whom she knows is already engaged to be married, and who— forgive me if
+I say so—has not got the same recommendations to her favour that many
+of her suitors have? It is, of course, quite possible that Mrs. Carr’s
+society may be dangerous to you, in which case it might be wise for you
+to go; but I really do not think that you need feel any anxiety on her
+account. She finds you a charming companion, and in some ways a useful
+one, and that is all. When you go, somebody else will soon fill the
+vacant space.”
+
+“Then that’s all right,” said Arthur, though somehow he did not feel as
+wildly delighted as he should have done at hearing it so clearly
+demonstrated that Mildred did not care a brass button about him; but
+then that is human nature. Between eighteen and thirty-five, ninety per
+cent. of the men in the world would like to centre in themselves the
+affections of every young and pretty woman they know, even if there was
+not the ghost of a chance of their marrying one of them. The same
+tendency is to be observed conversely in the other sex, only in their
+case with a still smaller proportion of exceptions.
+
+“By the way,” asked Arthur, presently, “how is my late guardian, Mr.
+George Caresfoot?”
+
+“Not at all well, I am sorry to say. I am very anxious about his
+health. He is in the south of England now for a change.”
+
+“I am sorry he is ill. Do you know, I daresay you will think me absurd;
+but you have taken a weight off my mind. I always had an idea that he
+wanted to marry Angela, and sometimes I am afraid that I have suspected
+that Philip Caresfoot carted me off in order to give him a chance. You
+see, Philip is uncommonly fond of money, and George is rich.”
+
+“What an absurd idea, Mr. Heigham! Why, George looks upon matrimony as
+an institution of the evil one. He admires Angela, I know—he always
+does admire a pretty face; but as for dreaming of marrying a girl half
+his age and his own cousin into the bargain, it is about the last thing
+that he would do.”
+
+“I am glad to hear it. I am sure I have been uncomfortable enough
+thinking about him sometimes. Lady Bellamy, will you do something for
+me?”
+
+“What is that, Mr. Heigham?”
+
+“Tell Angela all about me.”
+
+“But would that be quite honourable, Mr. Heigham—under the conditions
+of your engagement, I mean?”
+
+“You never promised not to talk about me; I only promised not to
+attempt verbal or written communication with Angela.”
+
+“Well, I will tell her that I met you, and that you are well, and, if
+Philip will allow me, I will tell her more; but of course I don’t know
+if he will or not. What ring is that you wear?”
+
+“It is one that Angela gave me when we became engaged. It was her
+mother’s.”
+
+“Will you let me look at it?”
+
+Arthur held out his hand. The ring was an antique, a large emerald, cut
+like a seal and heavily set in a band of dull gold. On the face of the
+stone were engraved some mysterious characters.
+
+“What is that engraved on the stone?”
+
+“I am not sure; but Angela told me that Mr. Fraser had taken an
+impression of it, and forwarded it to a great Oriental scholar. His
+friend said that the stone must be extremely ancient, as the character
+is a form of Sanscrit, and that he believed the word to mean ‘For ever’
+or ‘Eternity.’ Angela said that it had been in her mother’s family for
+generations, and was supposed to have been brought from the East about
+the year 1700. That is all I know about it.”
+
+“The motto is better suited to a wedding-ring than to an engagement
+stone,” said Lady Bellamy, with one of her dark smiles.
+
+“Why?”
+
+“Because engagements are like promises and pie-crust, made to be
+broken.”
+
+“I hope that will not be the case with ours, however,” said Arthur,
+attempting a laugh.
+
+“I hope not, I am sure; but never pin your faith absolutely to any
+woman, or you will regret it. Always accept her oaths and protestations
+as you would a political statement, politely, and with an appearance of
+perfect faith, but with a certain grain of mistrust. Woman’s fidelity
+is in the main a fiction. We are faithful just as men are, so long as
+it suits us to be so; with this difference however, men play false from
+passion or impulse, women from calculation.”
+
+“You do not draw a pleasing picture of your own sex.”
+
+“When is the truth pleasing? It is only when we clothe its nakedness
+with the rags of imagination, or sweeten it with fiction, that it can
+please. Of itself, it is so ugly a thing that society in its refinement
+will not even hear it, but prefers to employ a corresponding formula.
+Thus all passion, however vile, is called by the name of ‘love,’ all
+superstitious terror and grovelling attempts to conciliate the unseen
+are known as ‘religion,’ while selfish greed and the hungry lust for
+power masquerade as laudable ‘ambition.’ Men and women, especially
+women, hate the truth, because, like the electric light, it shows them
+as they are, and that is vile. It has grown so strange to them from
+disuse that, like Pilate, they do not even know what it is! I was going
+to say, however, that if you care to trust me with it, I think I see
+how I can take a message to Angela for you—without either causing you
+to break your promise or doing anything dishonourable myself.”
+
+“How?”
+
+“Well, if you like, I will take her that ring. I think that is a very
+generous offer on my part, for I do not like the responsibility.”
+
+“But what is the use of taking her the ring?”
+
+“It is something that there can be no mistake about, that is all, a
+speaking message from yourself. But don’t give it me if you do not
+like; perhaps you had rather not!”
+
+“I don’t like parting with it at all, I confess, but I should dearly
+like to send her something. I suppose that you would not take a
+letter?”
+
+“You would not write one, Mr. Heigham!”
+
+“No, of course, I forget that accursed promise. Here, take the ring,
+and say all you can to Angela with it. You promise that you will?”
+
+“Certainly, I promise that I will say all I can.”
+
+“You are very good and kind. I wish to Heaven that I were going to
+Marlshire with you. If you only knew how I long to see her again. I
+think that it would break my heart if anything happened to separate
+us,” and his lips quivered at the thought.
+
+Lady Bellamy turned her sombre face upon him—there was compassion in
+her eyes.
+
+“If you bear Angela Caresfoot so great a love, be guided by me and
+shake it off, strangle it—be rid of it anyhow; for fulfilled affection
+of that nature would carry a larger happiness with it than is allowed
+in a world planned expressly to secure the greatest misery of the
+greatest number. There is a fate which fights against it; its ministers
+are human folly and passion. You have seen many marriages, tell me, how
+many have you known, out of a novel, where the people married their
+true loves? In novels they always do, it is another of society’s
+pleasant fictions, but real life is like a novel without the third
+volume. I do not want to alarm you, Mr. Heigham; but, because I like
+you, I ask you to steel your mind to disappointment, so that, if a blow
+comes, it may not crush you.”
+
+“What do you mean, Lady Bellamy, do you know of any impending trouble?”
+
+“I? Certainly not. I only talk on general principles. Do not be over-
+confident, and _never_ trust a woman. Come, let us get home.”
+
+Next morning, when Arthur came down to breakfast, the Bellamys had
+sailed. The mail had come in from the Cape at midnight, and left again
+at dawn, taking them with it.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+
+The departure of the Bellamys left Arthur in very low spirits. His
+sensations were similar to those which one can well imagine an ancient
+Greek might have experienced who, having sent to consult the Delphic
+oracle, had got for his pains a very unsatisfactory reply,
+foreshadowing evils but not actually defining them. Lady Bellamy was in
+some way connected with the idea of an oracle in his mind. She looked
+oracular. Her dark face and inscrutable eyes, the stamp of power upon
+her brow, all suggested that she was a mistress of the black arts. Her
+words, too, were mysterious, and fraught with bitter wisdom and a deep
+knowledge distilled from the poisonous weeds of life.
+
+Arthur felt with something like a shudder that, if Lady Bellamy
+prophesied evil, evil was following hard upon her words. And in warning
+him not to place his whole heart’s happiness upon one venture, lest it
+should meet with shipwreck, he was sure that she was prophesying with a
+knowledge of the future denied to ordinary mortals. How earnestly, too,
+she had cautioned him against putting absolute faith in Angela—so
+earnestly, indeed, that her talk had left a flavour of distrust in his
+mind. Yet how could he mistrust Angela?
+
+Nor was he comforted by a remark that fell from Mildred Carr the
+afternoon following the departure of the mail. Raising her eyes, she
+glanced at his hand.
+
+“What are you looking at?” he said.
+
+“Was not that queer emerald you wore your engagement ring?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“What have you done with it?”
+
+“I gave it to Lady Bellamy to give to Angela.”
+
+“What for?”
+
+“To show her that I am alive and well. I may not write, you know.”
+
+“You are very confiding.”
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“Nothing. At least, I mean that I don’t think that I should care to
+hand over my engagement ring so easily. It might be misapplied, you
+know.”
+
+This view of the matter helped to fill up the cup of Arthur’s nervous
+anxiety, and he vainly plied Mildred with questions to get her to
+elucidate her meaning, and state her causes of suspicion, if she had
+any; but she would say nothing more on the subject, which then dropped,
+and was not alluded to again between them.
+
+After the Bellamys’ departure, the time wore on at Madeira without
+bringing about any appreciable change in the situation. But Mildred saw
+that their visit had robbed her of any advantages she had gained over
+Arthur, for they had, as it were, brought Angela’s atmosphere with
+them, and, faint though it was, it sufficed to overpower her influence.
+He made no move forward, and seemed to have entirely forgotten the
+episode on the hills when he had gone so very near disaster. On the
+contrary, he appeared to her to grow increasingly preoccupied as time
+went on, and to look upon her more and more in the light of a sister,
+till at length her patience wore thin.
+
+As for her passion, it grew almost unrestrainable in its confinement.
+Now she drifted like a rudderless vessel on a sea which raged
+continuously and knew no space of calm. And so little oil was poured
+upon the troubled waters, there were so few breaks in the storm-walls
+that rose black between her and the desired haven of her rest. Indeed,
+she began to doubt if even her poor power of charming him, as at first
+she had been able to do, with the sparkle of her wit and the half-
+unconscious display of her natural grace, was not on the wane, and if
+she was not near to losing her precarious foothold in his esteem and
+affection. The thought that he might be tiring of her struck her like a
+freezing wind, and for a moment turned her heart to ice.
+
+Poor Mildred! higher than ever above her head bloomed that “blue rose”
+she longed to pluck. Would she ever reach it after all her striving,
+even to gather one poor leaf, one withered petal? The path which led to
+it was very hard to climb, and below the breakers boiled. Would it,
+after all, be her fate to fall, down into that gulf of which the
+sorrowful waters could bring neither death nor forgetfulness?
+
+And so Christmas came and went.
+
+One day, when they were all sitting in the drawing-room, some eight
+weeks after the Bellamys had left, and Mildred was letting her mind run
+on such thoughts as these, Arthur, who had been reading a novel, got up
+and opened the folding-doors at the end of the room which separated it
+from the second drawing-room, and also the further doors between that
+room and the dining-room. Then he returned, and, standing at the top of
+the big drawing-room, took a bird’s-eye view of the whole suite.
+
+“What _are_ you doing, Arthur?”
+
+“I am reflecting, Mildred, that, with such a suite of apartments at
+your command, it is a sin and a shame not to give a ball.”
+
+“I will give a ball, if you like, Arthur. Will you dance with me if I
+do?”
+
+“How many times?” he said, laughing.
+
+“Well, I will be moderate—three times. Let me see—the first waltz, the
+waltz before supper, and the last galop.”
+
+“You will dance me off my head. It is dangerous to waltz with any one
+so pretty,” he said, in that bantering tone he often took with her, and
+which aggravated her intensely.
+
+“It is more likely that my own head will suffer, as I dance so rarely.
+Then, that is a bargain?”
+
+“Certainly.”
+
+“Dear me, Mildred, how silly you are; you are like a schoolgirl!” said
+Miss Terry.
+
+“Agatha is put out because you do not offer to dance three times with
+her.”
+
+“Oh! but I will, though, if she likes; three quadrilles.”
+
+And so the matter passed off in mutual badinage; but Mildred did not
+forget her intention. On the contrary, “society” at Madeira was soon
+profoundly agitated by the intelligence that the lady Croesus, Mrs.
+Carr, was about to give a magnificent ball, and so ill-natured—or,
+rather, so given to jumping to conclusions—is society, that it was
+freely said it was in order to celebrate her engagement to Arthur
+Heigham. Arthur heard nothing of this; one is always the last to hear
+things about oneself. Mildred knew of it, however, but, whether from
+indifference or from some hidden motive, she neither took any steps to
+contradict it herself, nor would she allow Miss Terry to do so.
+
+“Nonsense,” she said; “let them talk. To contradict such things only
+makes people believe them the more. Mind now, Agatha, not a word of
+this to Mr. Heigham; it would put him out.”
+
+“Well, Mildred, I should have thought that you would be put out too.”
+
+“I!—oh, no! Worse things might happen,” and she shrugged her shoulders.
+
+At length the much-expected evening came, and the arriving guests found
+that the ball had been planned on a scale such as Madeira had never
+before beheld. The night was lovely and sufficiently still to admit of
+the illumination of the gardens by means of Chinese lanterns that
+glowed all around in hundreds, and were even hung like golden fruit
+amongst the topmost leaves of the lofty cabbage palms, and from the
+tallest sprays of the bamboos. Within, the scene was equally beautiful.
+The suite of three reception-rooms had been thrown into one, two for
+dancing, and one for use as a sitting-room. They were quite full, for
+the Madeira season was at its height, and all the English visitors who
+were “anybody” were there. There happened, too, to be a man-of-war in
+the harbour, every man-jack, or, rather, every officer-jack of which,
+with the exception of those on watch—and they were to be relieved later
+on—was there, and prepared to enjoy himself with a gusto characteristic
+of the British sailor-man.
+
+The rooms, too, were by no means devoid of beauty, but by far the
+loveliest woman in them was Mrs. Carr herself. She was simply dressed
+in a perfectly-fitting black satin gown, looped up with diamond stars
+that showed off the exquisite fairness of her skin to great perfection.
+Her ornaments were also diamonds, but such diamonds—not little flowers
+and birds constructed of tiny stones, but large single gems, each the
+size of a hazel-nut. On her head she wore a tiara of these, eleven
+stones in all, five on each side, and surmounted over the centre of the
+forehead by an enormous gem as large as a small walnut, which, standing
+by itself above the level of the others, flashed and blazed like a
+fairy star. Around her neck, wrists, and waist were similar points of
+concentrated light, that, shining against the black satin as she moved,
+gave her a truly magnificent appearance. Never before had Mildred Carr
+looked so perfectly lovely, for her face and form were well worthy of
+the gems and dress; indeed, most of the men there that night thought
+her eyes as beautiful as her diamonds.
+
+The ball opened with a quadrille, but in this Mrs. Carr did not dance,
+being employed in the reception of her guests. Then followed a waltz,
+and, as its first strains struck up, several applicants came to compete
+for the honour of her hand; but she declined them all, saying that she
+was already engaged; and presently Arthur, looking very tall and quite
+the typical young Englishman in his dress-clothes, came hurrying up.
+
+“You are late, Mr. Heigham,” she said; “the music has begun.”
+
+“Yes; I am awfully sorry. I was dancing with Lady Florence, and could
+not find her old aunt.”
+
+“Indeed, to me Mrs. Velley is pretty conspicuous, with that green thing
+on her head; but come along, we are wasting time.”
+
+Putting his arm round her waist, they sailed away together amidst of
+the murmurs of the disappointed applicants.
+
+“Lucky dog,” said one.
+
+“Infernal puppy,” muttered another.
+
+Arthur enjoyed his waltz very much, for the rooms, though full, were
+not crowded, and Mildred waltzed well. Still he was a little uneasy,
+for he felt that, in being chosen to dance the first waltz with the
+giver of this splendid entertainment over the heads of so many of his
+superiors in rank and position, he was being put rather out of his
+place. He did not as a rule take any great degree of notice of
+Mildred’s appearance, but to-night it struck him as unusually charming.
+
+“You look very beautiful to-night, Mildred,” he said, when they halted
+for breath; “and what splendid diamonds you have on!”
+
+She flushed with pleasure at his compliment.
+
+“You must not laugh at my diamonds. I know that I am too insignificant
+to wear such jewels. I had two minds about putting them on.”
+
+“Laugh at them, indeed. I should as soon think of laughing at the Bank
+of England. They are splendid.”
+
+“Yes,” she said, bitterly; “they would be splendid on your Angela. They
+want a splendid woman to carry them off.”
+
+Oddly enough, he was thinking the same thing: so, having nothing to
+say, he went on dancing. Presently the waltz came to an end, and
+Mildred was obliged to hurry off to receive the Portuguese Governor,
+who had just put in an appearance. Arthur looked at his card, and found
+that he was down for the next galop with Lady Florence Claverley.
+
+“Our dance again, Lady Florence.”
+
+“Really, Mr. Heigham, this is quite shocking. If everybody did not know
+that you belonged body and soul to the lovely widow, I should be
+accused of flirting with you.”
+
+“Who was it made me promise to dance five times?”
+
+“I did. I want to make Mrs. Carr angry.”
+
+“Why should my dancing five or fifty dances with you make Mrs. Carr
+angry?”
+
+Lady Florence shrugged her pretty shoulders.
+
+“Are you blind?” she said.
+
+Arthur felt uncomfortable.
+
+In due course, however, the last waltz before supper came round, and
+he, as agreed upon, danced it with his hostess. As the strains of the
+music died away, the doors of the supper-room and tent were thrown
+open.
+
+“Now, Arthur,” said Mildred, “take me in to supper.”
+
+He hesitated.
+
+“The Portuguese Governor——” he began.
+
+She stamped her little foot, and her eyes gave an ominous flash.
+
+“Must I ask you twice?” she said.
+
+Then he yielded, though the fact of being for the second time that
+night placed in an unnecessarily prominent position made him feel more
+uncomfortable than ever, for they were seated at the head of the top
+table. Mildred Carr was in the exact centre, with himself on her right
+and the Portuguese Governor on the left. To Arthur’s left was Lady
+Florence, who took an opportunity to assure him solemnly that he really
+“bore his blushing honours, very nicely,” and to ask him “how he liked
+the high places at feasts?”
+
+The supper passed off as brilliantly as most successful suppers do.
+Mrs. Carr looked charming, and her conversation sparkled like her own
+champagne; but it seemed to him that, as in the case of the wine, there
+was too much sting in it. The wine was a little too dry, and her talk a
+little too full of suppressed sarcasm, though he could not quite tell
+what it was aimed at, any more than he could trace the source of the
+champagne bubbles.
+
+Supper done, he led her back to the ball-room. The second extra was
+just beginning, and she stood as though she were expecting him to ask
+her to dance it.
+
+“I am sorry, Mildred, but I must go now. I am engaged this dance.”
+
+“Indeed—who to?” This was very coldly said.
+
+“Lady Florence,” he answered, confusedly, though there really was no
+reason why he should be ashamed.
+
+She looked at him steadily.
+
+“Oh! I forgot, for to-night you are her monopoly. Good-bye.”
+
+A little while after this, Arthur thought that he had had about enough
+dancing for awhile, and went and sat by himself in a secluded spot
+under the shadow of a tree-fern in a temporary conservatory put up
+outside a bow-window. The Chinese lantern that hung upon the fern had
+gone out, leaving his chair in total darkness. Presently a couple, whom
+he did not recognize, for he only saw their backs, strayed in, and
+placed themselves on a bench before him in such a way as to entirely
+cut off his retreat. He was making up his mind to disturb them, when
+they began a conversation, in which the squeezing of hands and mild
+terms of endearment played a part. Fearing to interrupt, lest he should
+disturb their equanimity, he judged it best to stop where he was.
+Presently, however, their talk took a turn that proved intensely
+interesting to him. It was something as follows:—
+
+_She_. “Have you seen the hero of the evening?”
+
+_He_. “Who? Do you mean the Portuguese Governor in his war-paint?”
+
+_She_. “No, of course not. You don’t call him a hero, do you? I mean
+our hostess’s _fiance_, the nice-looking young fellow who took her in
+to supper.”
+
+_He_. “Oh, yes. I did not think much of him. Lucky dog! but he must be
+rather mean. They say that he is engaged to a girl in England, and has
+thrown her over for the widow.”
+
+_She_. “Ah, you’re jealous! I know that you would like to be in his
+shoes. Come, confess.”
+
+_He_. “You are very unkind. Why should I be jealous when——”
+
+_She_. “Well, you need not hurt my hand, and will you _never_ remember
+that black shows against white!”
+
+_He_. “It’s awfully hot here; let’s go into the garden.” [_Exeunt_.]
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+
+Arthur emerged from his hiding-place, horror-struck at hearing what was
+being said about him, and wondering, so far as he was at the moment
+capable of accurate thought, how long this report had been going about,
+and whether by any chance it had reached the ears of the Bellamys. If
+it had, the mischief might be very serious. In the confusion of his
+mind, only two things were clear to him—one was, that both for
+Mildred’s and his own sake, he must leave Madeira at once; and,
+secondly, that he would dance no more with her that night.
+
+Meanwhile the ball was drawing to a close, and presently he heard the
+strains of the last galop strike up. After the band had been playing
+for a minute or two, a natural curiosity drew him to the door of the
+ball-room, to see if Mildred was dancing with anybody else. Here he
+found Lady Florence, looking rather disconsolate.
+
+“How is it that you are not dancing?” she asked.
+
+He murmured something inaudible about “partner.”
+
+“Well, we are in the same box. What do you think? I promised this galop
+to Captain Clemence, and now there he is, vainly trying to persuade
+Mrs. Carr, who won’t look at him, and appears to be waiting for
+somebody else—you, I should think—to give him the dance. I will be even
+with him, though.”
+
+Just then the music reached a peculiarly seductive passage.
+
+“Oh, come along!” said Lady Florence, quite regardless of the
+proprieties; and, before Arthur well knew where he was, he was whirling
+round the room.
+
+Mrs. Carr was standing at the top corner, where the crush obliged him
+to slacken his pace, and, as he did so, he caught her eye. She was
+talking to Lady Florence’s faithless partner, with a smile upon her
+lips; but one glance at her face sufficed to tell him that she was in a
+royal rage, and, what was more, with himself. His partner noticed it,
+too, and was amused.
+
+“Unless I am mistaken, Mr. Heigham, you have come into trouble. Look at
+Mrs. Carr.” And she laughed.
+
+But that was not all. Either from sheer mischief, or from curiosity to
+see what would happen, she insisted upon stopping, as the dance drew to
+a close, by Mildred’s corner. That lady, however, proved herself equal
+to the occasion.
+
+“Mr. Heigham,” she said sweetly, “do you know that that was our dance?”
+
+“Oh, was it?” he replied, feeling very much a fool.
+
+“Yes, certainly it was; but with such a temptation to error”—and she
+smiled towards Lady Florence—“it is not wonderful that you made a
+mistake, and, as you look so contrite, you shall be forgiven. Agatha,
+there’s a dear, just ask that man to go up to the band, and tell them
+to play another waltz, ‘La Berceuse,’ before ‘God save the Queen.’”
+
+Arthur felt all the while, though she was talking so suavely, that she
+was in a state of suppressed rage; once he glanced at her, and saw that
+her eyes seemed to flash. But her anger only made her look more lovely,
+supplying as it did an added dignity and charm to her sweet features.
+Nor did she allow it to have full play.
+
+Mildred felt that the crisis in her fortunes was far too serious to
+admit of being trifled with. She knew how unlikely it was that she
+would ever have a better chance with Arthur than she had now, for the
+mirrors told her that she was looking her loveliest, which was very
+lovely indeed. In addition, she was surrounded by every seductive
+circumstance that could assist to compel a young man, however much
+engaged, to commit himself by some act or words of folly. The sound and
+sights of beauty, the rich odour of flowers, the music’s voluptuous
+swell, and last, but not least, the pressure of her gracious form and
+the glances from her eyes, which alone were enough to make fools of
+ninety-nine out of every hundred young men in Europe —all these things
+combined to help her. And to them must be added her determination, that
+concentrated strength of will employed to a single end, which, if there
+be any truth in the theories of the action of mind on mind, cannot fail
+to influence the individual on whom it is directed.
+
+“Now, Arthur.”
+
+The room was very nearly clear, for it was drawing towards daylight
+when they floated away together. Oh! what a waltz that was! The
+incarnate spirit of the dance took possession of them. She waltzed
+divinely, and there was scarcely anything to check their progress. On,
+on they sped with flying feet as the music rose and fell above them.
+And soon things began to change for Arthur. All sense of embarrassment
+and regret vanished from his mind, which now appeared to be capable of
+holding but one idea of the simplest and yet the most soaring nature.
+He thought that he was in heaven with Mildred Carr. On, still on; now
+he saw nothing but her shell-like face and the large flash of the
+circling diamonds, felt nothing but the pressure of her form and her
+odorous breath upon his cheek, heard nothing but the soft sound of her
+breathing. Closer he clasped her; there was no sense of weariness in
+his feet or oppression in his lungs; he could have danced for ever. But
+all too soon the music ceased with a crash, and they were standing with
+quick breath and sparkling eyes by the spot that they had started from.
+Close by Miss Terry was sitting yawning.
+
+“Agatha, say good-bye to those people for me. I must get a breath of
+fresh air. Give me a glass of water, please, Arthur.”
+
+He did so, and, by way of composing his own nerves, took a tumbler of
+champagne. He had no longer any thought of anxiety or danger, and he,
+too, longed for air. They passed out into the garden, and, by a common
+consent, made their way to the museum verandah, which was, as it
+proved, quite deserted.
+
+The night, which was drawing to its close, was perfect. Far over the
+west the setting moon was sinking into the silver ocean, whilst the
+first primrose hue of dawn was creeping up the eastern sky. It was
+essentially a dangerous night, especially after dancing and champagne
+—a night to make people do and say regrettable things; for, as one of
+the poets—is it not Byron?—has profoundly remarked, there is the very
+devil in the moon at times.
+
+They stood and gazed awhile at the softness of its setting splendours,
+and listened to the sounds of the last departing guests fading into
+silence, and to the murmurs of the quiet sea. At last she spoke, very
+low and musically.
+
+“I was angry with you. I brought you here to scold you; but on such a
+night I cannot find the heart.”
+
+“What did you want to scold me about?”
+
+“Never mind; it is all forgotten. Look at that setting moon and the
+silver clouds above her,” and she dropped her hand, from which she had
+slipped the glove, upon his own.
+
+“And now look at me and tell me how I look, and how you liked the ball.
+I gave it to please you.”
+
+“You look very lovely, dangerously lovely, and the ball was splendid.
+Let us go.”
+
+“Do you think me lovely, Arthur?”
+
+“Yes; who could help it? But let us go in.”
+
+“Stay awhile, Arthur; do not leave me yet. Tell me, is not this
+necklace undone? Fasten it for me, Arthur.”
+
+He turned to obey, but his hand shook too much to allow him to do so.
+Her eyes shone into his own, her fragrant breath played upon his brow,
+and her bosom heaved beneath his shaking hand. She too was moved; light
+tremors ran along her limbs, the colour came and went upon her neck and
+brow, and a dreamy look had gathered in her tender eyes. Beneath them
+the sea made its gentle music, and above the wind was whispering to the
+trees. Presently his hand dropped, and he stood fascinated.
+
+“I cannot. What makes you look like that? You are bewitching me.”
+
+Next moment he heard a sigh, the next Mildred’s sweet lips were upon
+his own, and she was in his arms. She lay there still, quite still, but
+even as she lay there rose, as it were, in the midst of the glamour and
+confusion of his mind, that made him see all things distraught, and
+seemed to blot out every principle of right and honour, another and far
+different scene. For, as in a vision, he saw a dim English landscape
+and a grey ruin, and himself within its shadows with a nobler woman in
+his arms, “Dethrone me,” said a remembered voice, “desert me, and I
+will still thank you for this hour of imperial happiness.” The glamour
+was gone, the confusion made straight, and clear above him shone the
+light of duty.
+
+“Mildred, dear Mildred, this cannot be. Sit down. I want to speak to
+you.”
+
+She turned quite white, and sank from his arms without a word.
+
+“Mildred, you know that I am engaged.”
+
+The lips moved, but no sound issued from them. Again she tried.
+
+“I know.”
+
+“Then why do you tempt me? I am only a man, and weak as water in your
+presence. Do not make me dishonourable to myself and her.”
+
+“I love you as well as she. There—take the shameful truth.”
+
+“Yes, but—forgive me if I pain you, for I must, I must. I love _her_.”
+
+The beautiful face hid itself in the ungloved hands. No answer came,
+only the great diamond sparkled and blazed in the soft light like a
+hard and cruel eye.
+
+“Do not, Mildred, for pity’s sake, involve us all in shame and ruin,
+but let us part now. If I could have foreseen how this would end! But I
+have been a blind and selfish fool. I have been to blame.”
+
+She was quite calm now, and spoke in her usual singularly clear voice.
+
+“Arthur dear, I do not blame you. Loving _her_, how was it likely that
+you should think of love from _me_? I only blame myself. I have loved
+you, God help me, ever since we met—loved you with a despairing,
+desperate love such as I hope that you may never know. Was I to allow
+your phantom Angela to snatch the cup from my lips without a struggle,
+the only happy cup I ever knew? For, Arthur, at the best of times, I
+have not been a happy woman; I have always wanted love, and it has not
+come to me. Perhaps I should be, but I am not—a high ideal being. I am
+as Nature made me, Arthur, a poor creature, unable to stand alone
+against such a current as has lately swept me with it. But you are
+quite right, you must leave me, we _must_ separate, you _must_ go; but
+oh God! when I think of the future, the hard, loveless future——”
+
+She paused awhile, and then went on—
+
+“I did not think to harm you or involve you in trouble, though I hoped
+to win some small portion of your love, and I had something to give you
+in exchange, if beauty and great wealth are really worth anything. But
+you must go, dear, now, whilst I am brave. I hope that you will be
+happy with your Angela. When I see your marriage in the paper, I shall
+send her this tiara as a wedding present. I shall never wear it again.
+Go, dear; go quick.”
+
+He turned to leave, not trusting himself to speak, for the big tears
+stood in his eyes, and his throat was choked. When he had reached the
+steps, she called him back.
+
+“Kiss me once before you go, and I see your dear face no more. I used
+to be a proud woman, and to think that I can stoop to rob a kiss from
+Angela. Thank you; you are very kind. And now one word; you know a
+woman always loves a last word. Sometimes it happens that we put up
+idols, and a stronger hand than ours shatters them to dust before our
+eyes. I trust this may not be your lot. I love you so well that I can
+say that honestly; but, Arthur, if it should be, remember that in all
+the changes of this cold world there is one heart which will never
+forget you, and never set up a rival to your memory, one place where
+you will always find a home. If anything should ever happen to break
+your life, come back to me for comfort, Arthur. I can talk no more; I
+have played for high stakes—and lost. Good-bye.”
+
+He went without a word.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+
+Reader, have you ever, in the winter or early spring, come from a hot-
+house where you have admired some rich tropical bloom, and then, in
+walking by the hedgerows, suddenly seen a pure primrose opening its
+sweet eye, and looking bravely into bitter weather’s face? If so, you
+will, if it is your habit to notice flowers, have experienced some such
+sensation as takes possession of my mind when I pass from the story of
+Mildred as she was then, storm-tossed and loving, to Angela, as loving
+indeed, and yet more anxious, but simple-minded as a child, and not
+doubtful for the end. They were both flowers indeed, and both
+beautiful, but between them there was a wide difference. The one, in
+the richness of her splendour, gazed upon the close place where she
+queened it, and was satisfied with the beauty round her, or, if not
+satisfied, she could imagine none different. The limits of that little
+spot formed the horizon of her mind—she knew no world beyond. The
+other, full of possibilities, shed sweetness even on the blast which
+cut her, and looked up for shelter towards the blue sky she knew
+endured eternally above the driving clouds.
+
+Whilst Sir John Bellamy’s health was being recruited at Madeira,
+Angela’s daily life pursued an even and, comparatively speaking, a
+happy course. She missed Pigott much, but then she often went to see
+her, and by way of compensation, if she had gone, so had George
+Caresfoot and Lady Bellamy. Mr. Fraser, too, had come back to fill a
+space in the void of her loneliness, and for his presence she was very
+grateful. Indeed none but herself could know the comfort and strength
+she gathered from his friendship, none but himself could know what it
+cost him to comfort her. But he did not shrink from the duty; indeed,
+it gave him a melancholy satisfaction. He loved her quite as dearly,
+and with as deep a longing as Mildred Carr did Arthur; but how
+different were his ends! Of ultimately supplanting his rival he never
+dreamt; his aim was to assist him, to bring the full cup of joy,
+untainted, to his lips. And so he read with her and talked with her,
+and was sick at heart; and she thanked him, and consecrating all her
+most sacred thoughts to the memory of her absent lover, and all her
+quick energies to self-preparation for his coming, possessed her soul
+in patience.
+
+And thus her young life began to bloom again with a fresh promise. The
+close of each departing day was the signal for the lifting of a portion
+of her load, for it brought her a day nearer to her lover’s arms,
+subtracting something from the long tale of barren hours; since to her
+all hours seemed most barren that were not quickened by his presence.
+Indeed, no Arctic winter could be colder and more devoid of light and
+life than this time of absence was to her, and, had it not been for the
+warm splendour of her hopes, shooting its beautiful promise in unreal
+gleams across the blackness of her horizon, she felt as though she must
+have frozen and died. For hope, elusive as she is, often bears a fairer
+outward mien than the realization to which she points, and, like a fond
+deceiver, serves to keep the heart alive till the first bitterness is
+overpast, and, schooled in trouble, it can know her false, and yet
+remain unbroken.
+
+But sometimes Angela’s mood would change, and then, to her strained and
+sensitive mind, this dead calm and cessation of events would seem to
+resemble that ominous moment when, in tropic seas, the fierce outrider
+of the tempest has passed howling away clothed in flying foam. Then
+comes a calm, and for a space there is blue sky, and the sails flap
+drearily against the mast, and the vessel only rocks from the violence
+of her past plunging, while the scream of the sea-bird is heard with
+unnatural clearness, for there is no sound nor motion in the air.
+Intenser still grows the silence, and the waters almost cease from
+tossing; but the seaman knows that presently, with a sudden roar, the
+armies of the winds and waves will leap upon him, and that a struggle
+for life is at hand.
+
+Such fears, however, did not often take her, for, unlike Arthur, she
+was naturally of a hopeful mind, and, when they did, Mr. Fraser would
+find means to comfort her. But this was soon to change.
+
+One afternoon—it was Christmas Eve—Angela went down the village to see
+Pigott, now comfortably established in the house her long departed
+husband had left her. It was a miserable December day, a damp,
+unpleasant ghost of a day, and all the sky was packed with clouds,
+while the surface of the earth was wrapped in mist. Rain and snow fell
+noiselessly by turns; indeed, the only sound in the air was the loud
+dripping of water from the trees on the dead leaves beneath. The whole
+outlook was melancholy in the extreme. While Angela was in her old
+nurse’s cottage, the snow fell in earnest for an hour or so, and then
+held up again, and when she came out the mist had recovered its
+supremacy, and now the snow was melting.
+
+“Come, miss, you must be getting home, or it will be dark. Shall I come
+with you a bit?”
+
+“No, thank you, Pigott. I am not afraid of the dark, and I ought to
+know my way about these parts. Good-night, dear.”
+
+The prevailing dismalness of the scene oppressed her, and she made up
+her mind to go and see Mr. Fraser, instead of returning at present to
+her lonely home. With this view, leaving the main road that ran through
+Rewtham, Bratham, and Isleworth to Roxham, she turned up a little
+bye-lane which led to the foot of the lake. Just as she did so, she
+heard the deadened footfall of a fast-trotting horse, accompanied by
+the faint roll of carriage-wheels over the snow. As she turned half
+involuntarily to see who it was that travelled so fast, the creeping
+mist was driven aside by a puff of wind, and she saw a splendid blood-
+horse drawing an open victoria trotting past her at, at least, twelve
+miles an hour. But, quickly as it passed, it was not too quick for her
+to recognize Lady Bellamy wrapped up in furs, her dark, stern face
+looking on straight before her, as though the mist had no power to dim
+_her_ sight. Next second the dark closed in, and the carriage had
+vanished like a dream in the direction of Isleworth.
+
+Angela shivered; the dark afternoon seemed to have grown darker to her.
+
+“So she _is_ back,” she said to herself. “I felt that she was back. She
+makes me feel afraid.”
+
+Going on her way, she came to a spot where the path forked, one track
+leading to a plank with a hand-rail spanning the stream that fed the
+lake, and the other to some stepping-stones, by crossing which and
+following the path on the other side a short cut could be made to the
+rectory. The bridge and the stepping-stones were not more than twenty
+yards apart, but so intent was Angela upon her own thoughts and upon
+placing her feet accurately on the stones that she did not notice a
+little man with a red comforter, who was leaning on the hand-rail,
+engaged apparently in meditation. The little man, however, noticed her,
+for he gave a violent start, and apparently was about to call out to
+her, when he changed his mind. He was Sir John Bellamy.
+
+“Better let her go perhaps, John,” he said, addressing his own effigy
+in the water. “After all, it will be best for you to let things take
+their course, and not to burn your own fingers or commit yourself in
+any way, John. You will trap them more securely so. If you were to warn
+the girl now, you would only expose them; if you wait till he has
+married her, you will altogether destroy them with the help of that
+young Heigham. And perhaps by that time you will have touched those
+compromising letters, John, and made a few other little arrangements,
+and then you will be able to enjoy the sweets of revenge meted out with
+a quart measure, not in beggarly ones or twos. But you are thinking of
+the girl—eh, John? Ah! you always were a pitiful beggar; but tread down
+the inclination, decline to gratify it. If you do, you will spoil your
+own hand. The girl must take her chance—oh! clearly the girl must take
+her chance. But all the same, John, you are very sorry for her—very.
+Come, come, you must be off, or her ladyship and the gentle George will
+be kept waiting,” and away he went at a brisk pace, cheerfully singing
+a verse of a comic song. Sir John was a merry little man.
+
+In due course Angela reached the rectory, and found Mr. Fraser seated
+in his study reading.
+
+“Well, my dear, what brings you here? What a dreary night!”
+
+“Yes, it is dreadfully damp and lonesome; the people look like ghosts
+in the mist, and their voices sound hollow. A proper day for evil
+things to creep home,” and she laughed drearily.
+
+“What do you mean,” he answered, with a quick glance at her face, which
+wore an expression of nervous anxiety.
+
+“I mean that Lady Bellamy has come home; is she not an evil thing?”
+
+“Hush, Angela; you should not talk so. You are excited, dear. Why
+should you call her evil?”
+
+“I don’t know; but have you ever noticed her? Have you never seen her
+creep, creep, like a tiger on its prey? Watch her dark face, and see
+the bad thoughts come and peep out of her eyes as the great black
+pupils swell and then shrivel, till they are no larger than the head of
+this black pin, and you will know that she is evil, and does evil
+work.”
+
+“My dear, my dear, you are upset to talk so.”
+
+“Oh! no, I am not upset; but did you ever have a presentiment?”
+
+“Plenty; but never one that came true.”
+
+“Well, I have a presentiment now—yes, a presentiment—it caught me in
+the mist.”
+
+“What is it? I am anxious to hear.”
+
+“I don’t know—I cannot say; it is not clear in my mind. I cannot see
+it, but it is evil, and it has to do with that evil woman.”
+
+“Come, Angela, you must not give way to this sort of thing; you will
+make yourself ill. Sit down, there is a good girl, and have some tea.”
+
+She was standing by the window staring out into the mist, her fingers
+alternately intertwining and unlacing themselves, whilst an unusual—
+almost an unearthly expression, played upon her face. Turning, she
+obeyed him.
+
+“You need not fear for me. I am tough, and growing used to troubles.
+What was it you said? Oh! tea. Thank you; that reminds me. Will you
+come and have dinner with me to-morrow after church? It is Christmas
+Day, you know. Pigott has given me a turkey she has been fatting, and I
+made the mincemeat myself, so there will be plenty to eat if we can
+find the heart to eat it.”
+
+“But your father, my dear?”
+
+“Oh! you need not be afraid. I have got permission to ask you. What do
+you think? I actually talked to my father for ten whole minutes
+yesterday; he wanted to avoid me when he saw me, but I caught him in a
+corner. He took advantage of the opportunity to try to prevent me from
+going to see Pigott, but I would not listen to him, so he gave it up.
+What did he mean by that? Why did he send her away? What does it all
+mean? Oh! Arthur, when will you come back, Arthur?” and, to Mr.
+Fraser’s infinite distress, she burst into tears.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+
+Presentiments are no doubt foolish things, and yet, at the time that
+Angela was speaking of hers to Mr. Fraser, a consultation was going on
+in a back study at Isleworth that might almost have justified it. The
+fire was the only light in the room, and gathered round it, talking
+very low, their features thrown alternately into strong light and dark
+shadow, were George Caresfoot and Sir John and Lady Bellamy. It was
+evident from the strong expression of interest, almost of excitement,
+on their faces that they were talking of some matter of great
+importance.
+
+Sir John was, as usual, perched on the edge of his chair, rubbing his
+dry hands and eliciting occasional sparks in the shape of remarks, but
+he was no longer merry; indeed, he looked ill at ease. George, his red
+hair all rumpled up, and his long limbs thrust out towards the fire,
+spoke scarcely at all, but glued his little bloodshot eyes alternately
+on the faces of his companions, and only contributed an occasional
+chuckle. But the soul of this witches’ gathering was evidently Lady
+Bellamy. She was standing up, and energetically detailing some scheme,
+the great pupils of her eyes expanding and contracting as the unholy
+flame within them rose and fell.
+
+“Then that is settled,” she said, at last.
+
+George nodded, Bellamy said nothing.
+
+“I suppose that silence gives consent. Very well, I will take the first
+step to-morrow. I do not like Angela Caresfoot, but, upon my word, I
+shall be sorry for her before she is twenty-four hours older. She is
+made of too fine a material to be sold into such hands as yours, George
+Caresfoot.”
+
+George looked up menacingly, but said nothing.
+
+“I have often urged you to give this up; now I urge no more—the thing
+is done in spirit, it may as well be done in reality. I told you long
+ago that it was a most dreadfully wicked thing, and that nothing but
+evil can come of it. Do not say that I have not warned you.”
+
+“Come, stop that devil’s talk,” growled George.
+
+“Devil’s talk!—that is a good word, George, for it is of the devil’s
+wages that I am telling you. Now listen, I am going to prophesy. A
+curse will fall upon this house and all within it. Would you like to
+have a sign that I speak the truth? Then wait.” She was standing up,
+her hand stretched out, and in the dim light she looked like some
+heathen princess urging a bloody sacrifice to her gods. Her forebodings
+terrified her hearers, and, by a common impulse, they rose and moved
+away from her.
+
+At that moment a strange thing happened. A gust of wind, making its way
+from some entrance in the back of the house, burst open the door of the
+room in which they were, and entered with a cold flap as of wings. Next
+second a terrible crash resounded from the other end of the room.
+George turned white as a sheet, and sank into a chair, cursing feebly.
+Bellamy gave a sort of howl of terror, and shrank up to his wife,
+almost falling into the fire in his efforts to get behind her. Lady
+Bellamy alone, remaining erect and undaunted, laughed aloud.
+
+“Come, one of you brave conspirators against a defenceless girl, strike
+a light, for the place is as dark as a vault, and let us see what has
+happened. I told you that you should have a sign.”
+
+After several efforts, George succeeded in doing as she bade him, and
+held a candle forward in his trembling hand.
+
+“Come, don’t be foolish,” she said; “a picture has fallen, that is
+all.”
+
+He advanced to look at it, and then benefited his companions with a
+further assortment of curses. The picture, on examination, proved to be
+a large one that he had, some years previously, had painted of
+Isleworth, with the Bellamys and himself in the foreground. The frame
+was shattered, and all the centre of the canvass torn out by the weight
+of its fall on to a life-sized and beautiful statue of Andromeda
+chained to a rock, awaiting her fate with a staring look of agonized
+terror in her eyes.
+
+“An omen, a very palpable omen,” said Lady Bellamy, with one of her
+dark smiles. “Isleworth and ourselves destroyed by being smashed
+against a marble girl, who rises uninjured from the wreck. Eh, John?”
+
+“Don’t touch me, you sorceress,” replied Sir John, who was shaking with
+fear. “I believe that you are Satan in person.”
+
+“You are strangely complimentary, even for a husband.”
+
+“Perhaps I am, but I know your dark ways, and your dealings with your
+master, and I tell you both what it is; I have done with the job. I
+will have nothing more to do with it. I will know nothing more about
+it.”
+
+“You hear what he says,” said Lady Bellamy to George. “John does not
+like omens. For the last time, will you give it up, or will you go on?”
+
+“I can’t give her up—I can’t indeed; it would kill me,” answered
+George, wringing his hands. “There is a fiend driving me along this
+path.”
+
+“Not a doubt of it,” said Sir John, who was staring at the broken
+picture with chattering teeth, and his eyes almost starting out of his
+head; “but if I were you, I should get him to drive me a little
+straighter, that’s all.”
+
+“You are poor creatures, both of you,” said Lady Bellamy; “but we will,
+then, decide to go on.”
+
+“Fiat ‘injuria’ ruat coelum,” said Sir John, who knew a little Latin;
+and, frightened as he was, could not resist the temptation to air it.
+
+And then they went and left George still contemplating the horror-
+stricken face of the nude marble virgin whose eyes appeared to gaze
+upon the ruins of his picture.
+
+Next morning, being Christmas Day, Lady Bellamy went to church, as
+behoves a good Christian, and listened to the Divine message of peace
+on earth and good-will towards men. So, for the matter of that, did
+George, and so did Angela. After church, Lady Bellamy went home to
+lunch, but she was in no mood for eating, so she left the table, and
+ordered the victoria to be round in half an hour.
+
+After church, too, Angela and Mr. Fraser ate their Christmas dinner.
+Angela’s melancholy had to some extent melted beneath the genial
+influence of the Christmas-tide, and her mind had taken comfort from
+the words of peace and everlasting love that she had heard that
+morning, and for awhile, at any rate, she had forgotten her
+forebodings. The unaccustomed splendour of the dinner, too, had
+diverted her attention, for she was easily pleased with such things,
+and altogether she was in a more comfortable frame of mind than she had
+been on the previous evening, and was inclined to indulge in a pleasant
+talk with Mr. Fraser upon various subjects, mostly classical and
+Arthurian. She had already cracked some filberts for him, plucked by
+herself in the autumn, and specially saved in a damp jar, and was about
+to settle herself in a chair by the fire, when suddenly she turned
+white and stood quite still.
+
+“Hark!” she said, “do you hear it?”
+
+“Hear what?”
+
+“Lady Bellamy’s horse—the big black horse that trots so fast.”
+
+“I can hear nothing, Angela.”
+
+“But I can. She is on the high-road yet; she will be here very soon;
+that horse trots fast.”
+
+“Nonsense, Angela; it is some other horse.”
+
+But, as he spoke, the sound of a powerful animal trotting very rapidly
+became distinctly audible.
+
+“It has come—the evil news—and she has brought it.”
+
+“Rubbish, dear; somebody to see your father, no doubt.”
+
+A minute elapsed, and then Mrs. Jakes, now the only servant in the
+house, was heard shuffling along the passage, followed by a firm, light
+step.
+
+“Don’t leave me,” said Angela to Mr. Fraser. “God give me strength to
+bear it,” she went on, beneath her breath. She was still standing
+staring vacantly towards the door, pale, and her bosom heaving. The
+intensity of her anxiety had to some extent communicated itself to Mr.
+Fraser, for there are few things so catching as anxiety, except
+enthusiasm; he, too, had risen, and was standing in an attitude of
+expectancy.
+
+“Lady Bellamy to see yer,” said Mrs. Jakes, pushing her head through
+the half-opened door.
+
+Next second she had entered.
+
+“I must apologise for disturbing you at dinner, Angela,” she began
+hurriedly, and then stopped and also stood still. There was something
+very curious about her reception, she thought; both Mr. Fraser and
+Angela might have been cut out of stone, for neither moved.
+
+Standing thus in the silence of expectancy, the three made a strange
+picture. On Lady Bellamy’s face there was a look of stern determination
+and suppressed excitement such as became one about to commit a crime.
+
+At last she broke the silence.
+
+“I come to bring you bad news, Angela,” she said.
+
+“What have you to say? tell me, quick! No, stop, hear me before you
+speak. If you have come here with any evil in your heart, or with the
+intention to deceive or betray, pause before you answer. I am a lonely
+and almost friendless woman, and have no claim except upon your
+compassion; but it is not always well to deal ill with such as I, since
+we have at last a friend whose vengeance you too must fear. So, by the
+love of Christ and by the presence of the God who made you, speak to me
+only such truth as you will utter at his judgment. Now, answer, I am
+ready.”
+
+At her words, spoken with an earnestness and in a voice which made them
+almost awful, a momentary expression of fear swept across Lady
+Bellamy’s face, but it went as quickly as it came, and the hard,
+determined look returned. The mysterious eyes grew cold and glittered,
+the head erected itself. At that moment Lady Bellamy distinctly
+reminded Mr. Fraser of a hooded cobra about to strike.
+
+“Am I to speak before Mr. Fraser?”
+
+“Speak!”
+
+“What is the good of this high-flown talk, Angela? You seem to know my
+news before I give it, and believe me it pains me very much to have to
+give it. _He is dead, Angela._”
+
+The cobra had struck, but as yet the poison had scarcely begun to work.
+There was only numbness. Mr. Fraser gave a gasp and half dropped, half
+fell, into his chair. The noise attracted Angela’s attention, and
+pressing her hand to her forehead she turned towards him with a ghost
+of a laugh.
+
+“Did I not tell you that this evil woman would bring evil news.” Then
+addressing Lady Bellamy, “But stop, you forget what I said to you, you
+do not speak the truth. Arthur dead! How can Arthur be dead and I
+alive? How is it that I do not know he is dead? Oh, for shame, it is
+not true, he is not dead.”
+
+“This seems to me to be a thankless as well as a painful task,” said
+Lady Bellamy, hoarsely, “but, if you will not believe me, look here,
+you know this, I suppose? I took it, as he asked me to do, from his
+dead hand that it might be given back to you.”
+
+“If Mr. Heigham is dead,” said Mr. Fraser, “how do you know it, where
+did he die, and what of?”
+
+“I know it, Mr. Fraser, because it was my sad duty to nurse him through
+his last illness at Madeira. He died of enteric fever. I have got a
+copy of his burial certificate here which I had taken from the
+Portuguese books. He seems to have had no relations living, poor young
+man, but Sir John communicated with the family lawyer. Here is the
+certificate,” and she handed Mr. Fraser a paper written in Portuguese
+and officially stamped.
+
+“You say,” broke in Angela, “that you took this ring from his dead
+hand, the hand on which I placed it. I do not believe you. You beguiled
+it from his living hand. It cannot be that he is dead; for, if he were,
+I should have felt it. Oh, Arthur!” and in her misery she stretched out
+her arms and turned her agonized eyes upwards, “if you are dead, come
+to me, and let me see your spirit face, and hear the whisper of your
+wings. Have you no voice in the silence? You see he does not come, he
+is not dead; if he were dead, Heaven could not hold him from my side,
+or, if it could, it would have drawn me up to his.”
+
+“My love, my love,” said Mr. Fraser, in a scared voice, “it is not
+God’s will that the dead should come back to us thus——”
+
+“My poor Angela, why will you not believe me? This is so very painful,
+do you suppose that I want to torture you by saying what is not true
+about your love? The idea is absurd. I had meant to keep it till you
+were calmer; but I have a letter for you. Read it and convince
+yourself.”
+
+Angela almost snatched the paper from her outstretched hand. It ran
+thus, in characters almost illegible from weakness:—
+
+“Dearest,—Good-bye. I am dying of fever. Lady Bellamy will take back
+your ring when it is over. Try to forget me, and be happy. Too weak to
+write more. Good-bye. God——”
+
+
+At the foot of this broken and almost illegible letter was scrawled the
+word, “ARTHUR.”
+
+Angela read it slowly, and then at length the poison did its work. She
+did not speak wildly any more, or call upon Arthur; she was stung back
+to sense, but all the light went out of her eyes.
+
+“It is his writing,” she said, slowly. “I beg your pardon. It was good
+of you to nurse him.”
+
+Then, pressing the paper to her bosom with one hand, with the other she
+groped her way towards the door.
+
+“It is very dark,” she said.
+
+Lady Bellamy’s eyes gave a flash of triumph, and then she stood
+watching the pitiable exhibition of human misery as curiously as ever a
+Roman matron did an expiring gladiator. When Angela was near the door,
+the letter still pressed against her heart, she spoke again.
+
+“The blow comes from God, Angela, and the religion and spiritual
+theories which you believe in will bring you consolation. Most likely
+it is a blessing in disguise—a thing that you will in time even learn
+to be thankful for.”
+
+Lady Bellamy had overacted her part. The words did not ring true, they
+jarred upon Mr. Fraser; much more did they jar upon Angela’s torn
+nerves. Her pale cheek flushed, and she turned and spoke, but there was
+no anger in her face, nothing but sorrow that dignified, and
+unfathomable love lost in its own depths. Only the eyes seemed as
+sightless as those of one walking in her sleep.
+
+“When your hour of dreadful trouble comes, as it will come, pray God
+that there may be none to mock you as you mock me.” And she turned like
+a stricken thing, and went slowly out, blindly groping her way along.
+
+Her last words had hit the victor hard. Who can say what hidden string
+they touched, or what prescience of evil they awakened? But they went
+nigh to felling her. Clutching the mantel-piece, Lady Bellamy gasped
+for air; then, recovering a little, she said:
+
+“Thank God, that is over.”
+
+Mr. Fraser scarcely saw this last incident. So overwhelmed was he at
+the sight of Angela’s agony that he had covered his face with his hand.
+When he lifted it again, Lady Bellamy was gone, and he was alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L.
+
+
+Three months had passed since that awful Christmas Day. Angela was
+heart-broken, and, after the first burst of her despair, turned herself
+to the only consolation which was left her. It was not of this world.
+
+She did not question the truth of the dreadful news that Lady Bellamy
+had brought her, and, if ever a doubt did arise in her breast, a glance
+at the ring and the letter effectually quelled it. Nor did she get
+brain-fever or any other illness; her young and healthy frame was too
+strong a citadel to be taken out of hand by sorrow. And this to her was
+one of the most wonderful things in her affliction. It had come and
+crushed her, and life still went on much as before. The sun of her
+system had fallen, and yet the system was not appreciably deranged. It
+was dreadful to her to think that Arthur was dead, but an added sting
+lay in the fact that she was not dead too. Oh! how glad she would have
+been to die, since death had become the gate through which she needs
+must pass to reach her lover’s side.
+
+For it had been given to Angela, living so much alone, and thinking so
+long and deeply upon these great mysteries of our being, to soar to the
+heights of a noble faith. To the intense purity of her mind, a living
+heaven presented itself, a comfortable place, very different from the
+vague and formularised abstractions with which we are for the most part
+satisfied; where Arthur and her mother were waiting to greet her, and
+where the great light of the Godhead would shine around them all. She
+grew to hate her life, the dull barrier of the flesh that stood between
+her and her ends. Still she ate and drank enough to support it, still
+dressed with the same perfect neatness as before, still lived, in
+short, as though Arthur had not died, and the light and colour had not
+gone out of her world.
+
+One day—it was in March—she was sitting in Mr. Fraser’s study reading
+the “Shakespeare” which Arthur had given to her, and in the woes of
+others striving to forget her own. But the attempt proved a failure;
+she could not concentrate her thoughts, they would continually wander
+away into space in search of Arthur.
+
+She was dressed in black; from the day that she heard her lover was
+dead, she would wear no other colour, and as she gazed, with her hands
+idly clasped before her, out at the driving sleet and snow, Mr. Fraser
+thought that he had never seen statue, picture, or woman of such sweet,
+yet majestic beauty. But it had been filched from the features of an
+immortal. The spirit-look which at times had visited her from a child
+now continually shone upon her face, and to the sight of sinful men her
+eyes seemed almost awful in their solemn calm and purity. She smiled
+but seldom now, and, when she did, it was in those grey eyes that the
+radiance began: her features scarcely seemed to move.
+
+“What are you thinking of, Angela?”
+
+“I am thinking, Mr. Fraser, that it is only fourteen weeks to-day since
+Arthur died, and that it is very likely that I shall live another forty
+or fifty years before I see him. I am only twenty-one, and I am so
+strong. Even this shock has not hurt me.”
+
+“Why should you want to die?”
+
+“Because all the beauty and light has gone out of my life; because I
+prefer to trust myself into the hands of God rather than to the tender
+mercies of the world; because he is there, and I am here, and I am
+tired of waiting.”
+
+“Have you no fear of death?”
+
+“I have never feared death, and least of all do I fear it now. Why, the
+veriest coward would not shrink back when the man she loved was waiting
+for her. And I am not a coward, and if I were told that I must die
+within an hour, I could say, ‘How beautiful upon the mountains are the
+feet of Him that bringeth good tidings, that publisheth peace!’ Cannot
+you understand me? If all your life and soul were wrapped up in one
+person, and she died, would you not long to go to her?”
+
+Mr. Fraser made no reply for a while, but in his turn gazed out at the
+drifting snow, surely not more immaculately pure than this woman who
+could love with so divine a love. At length he spoke.
+
+“Angela, do you know that it is wrong to talk so? You have no right to
+set yourself up against the decrees of the Almighty. In His wisdom He
+is working out ends of which you are one of the instruments. Who are
+you that you should rebel?”
+
+“No one—a grain, an atom, a wind-tossed feather; but what am I to do
+with my life, how am I to occupy all the coming years?”
+
+“With your abilities, that is a question easy to answer. Work, write,
+take the place in scholastic or social literature which I have trained
+you to fill. For you, fame and fortune lie in an inkstand; your mind is
+a golden key that will open to your sight all that is worth seeing in
+the world, and pass you into its most pleasant places. You can become a
+famous woman, Angela.”
+
+She turned upon him sadly.
+
+“I had such ideas; for Arthur’s sake I wished to do something great;
+indeed I had already formed a plan. But, Mr. Fraser, like many another,
+when I lost my love I lost my ambition too; both lie buried in his
+grave. I have nothing left to work for; I do not care for fame or money
+for myself, they would only have been valuable to give to him. At
+twenty-one I seem to have done with the world’s rewards and
+punishments, its blanks and prizes, its satisfactions and desires, even
+before I have learnt what they are. My hopes are as dull and leaden as
+that sky, and yet the sun is behind it. Yes, that is my only hope, the
+sun is behind it though we cannot see it. Do not talk to me of
+ambition, Mr. Fraser. I am broken-spirited, and my only ambition is for
+rest, the rest He gives to His beloved——”
+
+“Rest, Angela! that is the cry of us all, we strive for rest, and here
+we never find it. You suffer, but do not think that you are alone,
+everybody suffers in their degree, though perhaps such as you, with the
+nerves of your mind bared to the roughness of the world’s weather, feel
+mental pain the more acutely. But, my dear, there are few really
+refined men and women of sensitive organization, who have not at times
+sent up that prayer for rest, any rest, even eternal sleep. It is the
+price they pay for their refinement. But they are not alone. If the
+heart’s cry of every being who endures in this great universe could be
+collected into a single prayer, that prayer would be, ‘Thou who made
+us, in pity give us rest.’”
+
+“Yes, we suffer, no doubt, all of us, and implore a peace that does not
+come. We must learn
+
+“‘How black is night when golden day is done,
+How drear the blindness that hath seen the sun!’
+
+
+“You can tell me that; but tell me, you who are a clergyman, and
+stronger to stand against sorrow than I, how can we win even a partial
+peace and draw the sting from suffering? If you know a way, however
+hard, tell it me, for do you know,” and she put her hand to her head
+and a vacant look came into her eyes, “I think that if I have to endure
+much more of the anguish which I sometimes suffer, or get any more
+shocks, I shall go mad? I try to look to the future only and to rise
+superior to my sorrows, and to a certain extent I succeed, but my mind
+will not always carry the strain put upon it, but falls heavily to
+earth like a winged bird. Then it is that, deprived of its higher food,
+and left to feed upon its own sadness and to brood upon the bare fact
+of the death of the man I loved—I sometimes think, as men are not often
+loved—that my spirit almost breaks down. If you can tell me any cure,
+anything which will bring me comfort, I shall indeed be grateful to
+you.”
+
+“I think I can, Angela. If you will no longer devote yourself to study,
+you have only to look round to find another answer to your question as
+to what you are to do? Are there no poor in these parts for you to
+visit? Cannot your hands make clothes to cover those who have none? Is
+there no sickness that you can nurse, no sorrow that you can comfort? I
+know that even in this parish there are many homes where your presence
+would be as welcome as a sunbeam in winter. Remember, Angela, that
+grief can be selfish as well as pleasure.”
+
+“You are right, Mr. Fraser, you always are right; I think I am selfish
+in my trouble, but it is a fault that I will try to mend. Indeed, to
+look at it in that light only, my time is of no benefit to myself, I
+may as well devote it to others.”
+
+“If you do, your labour will bring its own reward, for in helping
+others to bear their load you will wonderfully lighten your own. Nor
+need you go far to begin. Why do you not see more of your own father?
+You are naturally bound to love him. Yet it is but rarely that you
+speak to him.”
+
+“My father! you know he does not like me, my presence is always a
+source of irritation to him, he cannot even bear me to look at him.”
+
+“Oh, surely that must be your fancy; probably he thinks you do not care
+about him. He has always been a strange and wayward man, I know, but
+you should remember that he has had bitter disappointments in life, and
+try to soften him and win him to other thoughts. Do this and you will
+soon find that he will be glad enough of your company.”
+
+“I will try to do as you say, Mr. Fraser, but I confess I have only
+small hopes of any success in that direction. Have you any parish work
+I can do?”
+
+Nor did the matter end there, as is so often the case where parish work
+and young ladies are concerned. Angela set to her charitable duties
+with a steady determination that made her services very valuable. She
+undertook the sole management of a clothing club, in itself a maddening
+thing to ordinary mortals, and had an eye to the distribution of the
+parish coals. Of mothers’ meetings and other cheerful parochial
+entertainments, she became the life and soul. Giving up her mathematics
+and classical reading, she took to knitting babies’ vests and socks
+instead; indeed, the number of articles which her nimble fingers turned
+out in a fortnight was a pleasant surprise for the cold toes of the
+babies. And, as Mr. Fraser had prophesied, she found that her labour
+was of a sort which brought a certain reward.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI.
+
+
+On one point, however, Angela’s efforts failed completely; she could
+make no headway with her father. He shrank more than ever from her
+society, and at last asked her to oblige him by allowing him to follow
+his own path in peace. Of Arthur’s death he had never spoken to her, or
+she to him, but she knew that he had heard of it.
+
+Philip had heard of it thus. On that Christmas afternoon he had been
+taking his daily exercise when he met Lady Bellamy returning from the
+Abbey House. The carriage stopped, and she got out to speak to him.
+
+“Have you been to the Abbey House to pay a Christmas visit?” he asked.
+“It is very kind of you to come and see us so soon after your return.”
+
+“I am the bearer of bad news, so I did not loiter.”
+
+“Bad news! what was it?”
+
+“Mr. Heigham is dead,” she answered, watching his face narrowly.
+
+“Dead, impossible!”
+
+“He died of enteric fever at Madeira. I have just been to break the
+news to Angela.”
+
+“Oh, indeed, she will be pained; she was very fond of him, you know.”
+
+Lady Bellamy smiled contemptuously.
+
+“Did you ever see any one put to the extremest torture? If you have,
+you can guess how your daughter was ‘pained.’”
+
+Philip winced.
+
+“Well, I can’t help it, it is no affair of mine. Good-bye,” and then,
+as soon as she was out of hearing; “I wonder if she lies, or if she has
+murdered him. George must have been putting on the screw.”
+
+Into the particulars of Arthur Heigham’s death, or supposed death, he
+never inquired. Why should he? It was no affair of his; he had long ago
+washed his hands of the whole matter, and left things take their
+chance. If he was dead, well and good, he was very sorry for him; if he
+was alive, well and good also. In that case, he would no doubt arrive
+on the appointed date to marry Angela.
+
+But, notwithstanding all this unanswerable reasoning, he still found it
+quite impossible to look his daughter in the face. Her eyes still burnt
+him, ay, even more than ever did they burn, for her widowed dress and
+brow were agony to him, and rent his heart, not with remorse but fear.
+But still his greed kept the upper hand, though death by mental torture
+must result, yet he would glut himself with his desire. More than ever
+he hungered for those wide lands which, if only things fell out right,
+would become his at so ridiculous a price. Decidedly Arthur Heigham’s
+death was “no affair of his.”
+
+About six weeks before Angela’s conversation with Mr. Fraser which
+ended in her undertaking parish work, a rumour had got about that
+George Caresfoot had been taken ill, very seriously ill. It was said
+that a chill had settled on his lungs, which had never been very strong
+since his fever, and that he had, in short, gone into a consumption.
+
+Of George, Angela had neither seen nor heard anything for some time—
+not since she received the welcome letter in which he relinquished his
+suit. She had, indeed, with that natural readiness of the human mind to
+forget unpleasant occurrences, thought but little about him of late,
+since her mind had been more fully occupied with other and more
+pressing things. Still she vaguely wondered at times if he was really
+so ill as her father thought.
+
+One day she was walking home by the path round the lake, after paying a
+visit to a sick child in the village, when she suddenly came face to
+face with her father. She expected that he would as usual pass on
+without addressing her, and drew to one side of the path to allow him
+to do so, but to her surprise he stopped.
+
+“Where have you been, Angela?”
+
+“To see Ellen Mim; she is very ill, poor child.”
+
+“You had better be careful; you will be catching scarlet fever or
+something—there is a great deal about.”
+
+“I am not at all afraid.”
+
+“Yes; but you never think that you may bring it home to me.”
+
+“I never thought that there was any likelihood of my bringing anything
+to you. We see so little of each other.”
+
+“Well, well, I have been to Isleworth to see your cousin George; he is
+very ill.”
+
+“You told me that he was ill some time back. What is it that is really
+the matter with him?”
+
+“Galloping consumption. He cannot last long.”
+
+“Poor man, why does he not go to a warmer climate?”
+
+“I don’t know—that is his affair. But it is a serious matter for me. If
+he dies under present circumstances, all the Isleworth estates, which
+are mine by right, must pass away from the family forever.”
+
+“Why must they pass away?”
+
+“Because your grandfather, with a refined ingenuity, made a provision
+in his will that George was not to leave them back to me, as he was
+telling me this afternoon he is anxious to do. If he were to die now
+with a will in my favour, or without any will at all, they would all go
+to some far away cousins in Scotland.”
+
+“He died of heart-disease, did he not?—my grandfather, I mean?”
+
+Philip’s face grew black as night, and he shot a quick glance of
+suspicion at his daughter.
+
+“I was saying,” he went on, without answering her question, “that
+George may sell the land or settle it, but must not leave it to me or
+you, nor can I take under an intestacy.”
+
+Angela did not understand these legal intricacies, and knew about as
+much about the law of intestacy as she did of Egyptian inscriptions.
+
+“Well,” she said, consolingly, “I am very sorry, but it can’t be
+helped, can it?”
+
+“The girl is a born fool,” muttered Philip beneath his breath, and
+passed on.
+
+A week or so afterwards, just when the primroses and Lent-lilies were
+at the meridian of their beauty and all the air was full of song,
+Angela heard more about her cousin George. Mr. Fraser was one day sent
+for to Isleworth; Lady Bellamy brought him the message, saying that
+George was in such a state of health that he wished to see a clergyman.
+
+“I never saw a worse case,” he said to Angela on his return. “He does
+not leave the house, but lies in a darkened room coughing and spitting
+blood. He is, I should say, going off fast; but he refuses to see a
+doctor. His frame of mind, however, is most Christian, and he seems to
+have reconciled himself to the prospect of a speedy release.”
+
+“Poor man!” said Angela sympathetically; “he sent and asked to see you,
+did he not?”
+
+“Well—yes; but when I got there he talked more about the things of this
+world than of the next. He is greatly distressed about your father. I
+daresay you have heard how your cousin George supplanted your father in
+the succession to the Isleworth estates. Your grandfather disinherited
+him, you know, because of his marriage with your mother. Now that he is
+dying, he sees the injustice of this, but is prevented by the terms of
+your grandfather’s will from restoring the land to your branch of the
+family, so it must pass to some distant cousins—at least, so I
+understand the matter.”
+
+“You always told me that it is easy to drive a coach and four through
+wills and settlements and legal things. If he is so anxious to do so,
+can he not find a way out of the difficulty—I mean, some honourable
+way?”
+
+“No, I believe not, except an impossible one,” and Mr. Fraser smiled a
+rather forced smile.
+
+“What is that?” asked Angela carelessly.
+
+“Well, that he should—should marry _you_ before he dies. At least, you
+know, he says that that is the only way in which he could legally
+transfer the estates.”
+
+Angela started and turned pale.
+
+“Then I am afraid the estates will never be transferred. How would that
+help him?”
+
+“Well, he says he could then enter into a nominal sale of the estates
+to your father and settle the money on you.”
+
+“And why could he not do this without marrying me?”
+
+“I don’t know, I don’t understand much about these things, I am not a
+business man; but it is impossible for some reason or another. But of
+course it is absurd. Good night, my dear. Don’t overdo it in the
+parish.”
+
+Another week passed without any particular news of George’s illness,
+except that he was getting weaker, when one day Lady Bellamy appeared
+at the Abbey House, where she had not been since that dreadful
+Christmas Day. Angela felt quite cold when she saw her enter, and her
+greeting was as cold as herself.
+
+“I hope that you bring me no more bad news,” she said.
+
+“No, Angela, except that your cousin George is dying, but that is
+scarcely likely to distress you.”
+
+“I am sorry.”
+
+“Are you? There is no particular reason why you should be. You do not
+like him.”
+
+“No, I do not like him.”
+
+“It is a pity though, because I have come to ask you to marry him.”
+
+“Upon my word, Lady Bellamy, you seem to be the chosen messenger of
+everything that is wretched. Last time you came to this house it was to
+tell me of dear Arthur’s death, and now it is to ask me to marry a man
+whom I detest. I thought that I had told both you and him that I will
+not marry him. I have gone as near marrying as I ever mean to in this
+world.”
+
+“Really, Angela, you are most unjust to me. Do you suppose that it was
+any pleasure to me to have such a sad duty to perform? However, it is
+refreshing to hear you talk so vigorously. Clearly the loss of your
+lover has not affected your spirits.”
+
+Angela winced beneath the taunt, but made no reply.
+
+“But, if you will condescend to look at the matter with a single grain
+of common-sense, you will see that circumstances have utterly changed
+since you refused to marry George. Then, Mr. Heigham was alive, poor
+fellow, and then, too, George wanted to marry you as a wife, now he is
+merely anxious to marry you that he may be enabled to make reparation
+to your father. He is a fast-dying man. You would never be his wife
+except in name. The grave would be his only marriage-bed. Do you not
+understand the difference?”
+
+“Perfectly, but do _you_ not understand that whether in deed or in name
+I cannot outrage my dead Arthur’s memory by being for an hour the wife
+of that man? Do _you_ not know that the marriage service requires a
+woman to swear to ‘Love, honour, and obey,’ till death parts, whether
+it be a day or a lifetime away? Can I, even as a mere form, swear to
+love when I loathe, honour when I despise, obey when my whole life
+would rise in rebellion against obedience! What are these estates to me
+that I should do such violence to my conscience and my memories?
+Estates, of what use are they to one whose future lies in the wards of
+a hospital or a sisterhood? I will have nothing to do with this
+marriage, Lady Bellamy.”
+
+“Well, I must say, Angela, you do not make much ado about ruining your
+father to gratify your own sentimental whims. It must be a comfortable
+thing to have children to help one in one’s old age.”
+
+Angela reflected on Mr. Fraser’s words about her duty to her father,
+and for the second time that day she winced beneath Lady Bellamy’s
+taunt; but, as she returned no answer, her visitor had no alternative
+but to drop the subject and depart.
+
+Before she went, however, she had a few words with Philip, urging the
+serious state of George’s health and the terms of his grandfather’s
+will, which prevented him from leaving the estates to himself, as a
+reason why he should put pressure on Angela. Somewhat, but not
+altogether to her surprise, he refused in these terms:
+
+“I don’t know to what depths you have gone in this business, and it is
+no affair of mine to inquire, but I have kept to my share of the
+bargain and I expect you to keep to yours. If you can bring about the
+marriage with George, well or ill, on the terms I have agreed upon with
+him, I shall throw no obstacle in the way; but as for my trying to
+force Angela into it, I should never take the responsibility of doing
+so, nor would she listen to me. If she speaks to me on the subject I
+shall point out how the family will be advantaged, and leave the matter
+to her. Further I will not go.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII.
+
+
+Three days after her conversation with Lady Bellamy, Angela received
+the following letter:—
+
+“Isleworth Hall, Roxham, May 2.
+
+“Dear Cousin Angela,
+
+“My kind and devoted friend, Lady Bellamy, has told me that she has
+spoken to you on a subject which is very near to my heart, and that you
+have distinctly declined to have anything to do with it. Of course I
+know that the matter lies entirely within your own discretion, but I
+still venture to lay the following points before you. There have, I am
+aware, been some painful passages between us —passages which, under
+present circumstances, had much better be forgotten. So, first, I ask
+you to put them quite out of your mind, and to judge of what I have to
+propose from a very different point of view.
+
+“I write, Angela, to ask you to marry me it is true (since,
+unfortunately, my health will not allow me to ask you in person), but
+it is a very different offer from that which I made you in the lane
+when you so bitterly refused me. Now I am solely anxious that the
+marriage should take place in order that I may be enabled to avoid the
+stringent provisions of your grandfather’s will, which, whilst
+forbidding me to leave these estates back to your father or his issue,
+fortunately does not forbid a fictitious sale and the settlement of the
+sum, or otherwise. But I will not trouble you with these legal details.
+
+“In short, I supplanted your father in youth, and I am now anxious to
+make every reparation in my power, and at present I am quite unable to
+make any. Independently of this, it pains me to think of the estate
+passing away from the old stock, and I should like to know that you,
+who have been the only woman whom I have felt true affection for, will
+one day come into possession of it. Of course, as you understand, the
+marriage would be _nothing but a form_, and if, as I am told, you
+object to its being gone through with the ceremonies of the Church, it
+could be made equally legal at a registry office.
+
+“But please understand, Angela, that I do not wish to press you: it is
+for you to judge. Only you must judge quickly, for I am a fast- dying
+man, and am anxious to get this matter off my mind one way or other, in
+order that I may be able to give it fully to the consideration of
+subjects of more vital importance to one in my condition, than marrying
+and giving in marriage.
+
+“Ever, dear cousin Angela, “Affectionately yours, “George Caresfoot.”
+
+“P.S.—Remember you have your father to consider in this matter as well
+as yourself.”
+
+
+The receipt of this letter plunged Angela into the greatest distress of
+mind. It was couched in a tone so courteous and so moderate that it
+carried with it conviction of its sincerity and truth. If she only had
+been concerned, she would not long have hesitated, but the idea of her
+duty to her father rose up before her like a cloud. What was her true
+duty under the circumstances? there was the rub!
+
+She took the letter to Mr. Fraser and asked his advice. He read it
+carefully, and thought a long while before he answered. The idea of
+Angela being united to anybody in marriage, even as a matter of form,
+was naturally abominable to him, but he was far too honourable and
+conscientious a man to allow his personal likes or dislikes to
+interfere with whatever he considered to be his duty. But in the end he
+found it impossible to give any fixed opinion.
+
+“My dear,” he said, “all that I can suggest is that you should take it
+to your father and hear what he has got to say. After all, it is he who
+must have your true welfare most at heart. It was into his hands that I
+heard your mother, in peculiarly solemn words, consign you and your
+interests. Take it to your father, dear, there is no counsel like that
+of a father.”
+
+Had Mr. Fraser been the father, this would, doubtless, have been true
+enough. But though he had known him for so many years, and was privy to
+much of his history, he did not yet understand Philip Caresfoot. His
+own open and guileless nature did not easily suspect evil in another,
+more especially when that other was the father of her whom he looked
+upon as the earthly incarnation of all that was holy and pure.
+
+Angela sighed and obeyed—sighed from doubt, obeyed from duty. She
+handed the letter to Philip without a word—without a word he read it.
+
+“I want your opinion, father,” she said. “I wish to do what is right.
+You know how painful what has happened has been for me. You know—or, if
+you do not know, you must have guessed—how completely shattered my life
+is. As for this marriage, the whole thing is repugnant to me;
+personally, I had rather sacrifice fifty properties than go through it,
+but I know that I ought to think of others. Mr. Fraser tells me that it
+is my duty to consult you, that you will naturally have my interest
+most at heart, that it was into your hands and to your care that my
+mother consigned me on her deathbed. Father”—and she clasped her hands
+and looked him full in the face with her earnest eyes—“Mr. Fraser is
+right, it must be for you to decide. I will trust you entirely, and
+leave the burden of decision to your honour and generosity; only I say,
+spare me if you can.”
+
+Philip rose and went to look out of the window, that he might hide the
+evident agitation of his face and the tremor of his limbs. He felt that
+the crucial moment had come. All his poor sophistry, all his miserable
+shuffling and attempts to fix the responsibility of his acts on others,
+had recoiled upon his own head. She had come to him and laid the burden
+on his heart. What should he answer? For a moment the shades—for with
+him they were only shades—of good angels gained the upper hand, and he
+was about to turn and look her in the face—for then he felt he could
+have looked her in the face—and bid her have nothing to do with George
+and his proposals. But, even in the act of turning to obey the impulse,
+his eyes fell upon the roof of Isleworth Hall, which, standing on an
+eminence, could easily be seen from the Abbey House, and his mind,
+quicker than the eye, flew to the outlook place upon that roof where he
+had so often climbed as a boy, and surveyed the fair champaign country
+beyond it; meadow and wood, fallow and cornland, all of which were for
+him involved in that answer. He did not stop turning, but—so quick is
+the working of the mind—he changed the nature of his answer. The real
+presence of the demon of greed chased away the poor angelic shadows.
+
+“It would not be much of a sacrifice for you, Angela, to go through
+this form; he is a dying man, and you need not even change your name.
+The lands are mine by right, and will be yours. It will break my heart
+to lose them, after all these years of toiling to save enough to buy
+them. But I do not wish to force you. In short, I leave the matter to
+your generosity, as you would have left it to mine.”
+
+“And suppose that I were to marry my cousin George, and he were not to
+die after all, what would be my position then? You must clearly
+understand that, to save us all from starvation, I would never be his
+wife.”
+
+“You need not trouble yourself with the question. He is a dead man; in
+two months’ time he will be in the family vault.”
+
+She bowed her head and left him—left him with his hot and glowing
+greed, behind which crept a terror.
+
+Next morning, George Caresfoot received the following letter:
+
+“Bratham Abbey, May 5.
+
+“Dear Cousin George,
+
+“In reply to your letter, I must tell you that I am willing to go
+through the form of marriage with you—at a registry-office, not in
+church—in order to enable you to carry out the property arrangements
+you wish to make. You must, however, clearly understand that I do not
+do this on my own account, but simply and solely to benefit my father,
+who has left the matter to my ‘generosity.’ I must ask you as a
+preliminary step to make a copy of and sign the enclosed letter
+addressed to me. Our lives are in the hand of God, and it is possible
+that you might be restored to health. In such an event, however
+improbable it may seem, it cannot be made too plain that I am not, and
+have never in any sense undertaken to be, your wife.
+
+“Truly yours, “Angela Caresfoot.”
+
+
+The enclosure ran as follows:
+
+“I, George Caresfoot, hereby solemnly promise before God that under no
+possible circumstance will I attempt to avail myself of any rights over
+my cousin, Angela Caresfoot, and that I will leave her as soon as the
+formal ceremony is concluded, and never again attempt to see her except
+by her own wish; the so-called marriage being only contemplated in
+order to enable me to carry out certain business arrangements which, in
+view of the failing state of my health, I am anxious to enter into.”
+
+
+This letter and its curious enclosure, surely the oddest marriage
+contract which was ever penned, George, trembling with excitement,
+thrust into the hands of Lady Bellamy. She read them with a dark smile.
+
+“The bird is springed,” she said, quietly. “It has been a close thing,
+but I told you that I should not fail, as I have warned you of what
+will follow your success. Sign this paper—this waste-paper—and return
+it.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII.
+
+
+By return of post Angela received her strange agreement, duly copied
+and signed, and after this the preparations for the marriage went on
+rapidly. But where such a large transaction is concerned as the sale of
+between three and four thousand acres of land, copyhold and freehold,
+together with sundry rent-charges and the lordship of six manors,
+things cannot be done in a minute.
+
+Both George and Philip and their respective lawyers—Sir John would have
+nothing to do with the matter—did their best to expedite matters, but
+unfortunately some legal difficulty arose in connection with the
+transfer, and who can hurry the ponderous and capricious machinery of
+the law?
+
+At length it became clear to all concerned, except Angela, that it
+would be impossible for the marriage to take place before the eighth of
+June, and it also became clear that that was the last possible day on
+which it could take place. George begged Philip (by letter, being too
+ill to come and see him) to allow the marriage to be gone through with
+at once, and have the business transactions finished afterwards. But to
+this Philip would not consent; the title-deeds, he said, must be in his
+possession before it took place, otherwise he would have no marriage.
+George had therefore no option but to accept his terms.
+
+When Angela was told of the date fixed for the ceremony—she would not
+allow the word marriage to be mentioned in connection with it—she at
+first created considerable consternation by quietly announcing that she
+would not have it performed until the tenth of June. At last, however,
+when matters were growing serious, and when she had treated all the
+pressure that it was possible to put upon her with quiet
+indifference—for, as usual, her father declined to interfere, but
+contented himself with playing a strictly passive part—she suddenly of
+her own mere motion, abolished the difficulty by consenting to appear
+before the registrar on the eighth of June, as George wished.
+
+Her reasons for having objected to this date in the first instance will
+be easily guessed. It was the day before the anniversary of Arthur’s
+departure, an anniversary which it was her fancy to dedicate solely to
+his memory. But as the delay appeared—though she could not altogether
+understand why—to put others to great inconvenience, and as George’s
+state of health had become such as to render postponement, even for a
+couple of days of doubtful expediency, and as, moreover, she decided on
+reflection that she could better give her thoughts to her dead lover
+when she had gone through with the grim farce that hung over her, she
+suddenly changed her mind.
+
+Occasionally they brought her documents to sign, and she signed them
+without a question, but on the whole she treated the affair with
+considerable apathy, the truth being that it was repugnant to her mind,
+which she preferred to occupy with other and very different thoughts.
+So she let it go. She knew that she was going to do a thing which was
+dreadful to her, because she believed it to be her duty, but she
+comforted herself with the reflection that she was amply secured
+against all possible contingencies by her previous agreement with
+George. Angela’s knowledge of the marriage-law of her country and of
+what constituted a legal document was not extensive.
+
+For this same reason, because it was distasteful, she had never said
+anything of her contemplated marriage to Pigott, and it was quite
+unknown in the neighbourhood. Since the Miss Lee scandal and his
+consequent disinheritance, nobody had visited Philip Caresfoot, and
+those who took interest in him or his affairs were few. Indeed the
+matter had been kept a dead secret. But on the seventh of June, being
+the day previous to the ceremony, Angela went down to her nurse’s
+cottage and told her what was about to be done, suppressing, however,
+from various motives, all mention of her agreement with George. It
+added to her depression to find that Pigott was unaccountably disturbed
+at the news.
+
+“Well, miss,” she said,—“Lord, to think that I sha’n’t be able to call
+you that no longer—I haven’t got nothing in particular to say agin it,
+seeing that sure enough the man’s a-dying, as I has on good authority
+from my own aunt’s cousin, her that does the servants’ washing up at
+the Hall, and mighty bad she does it, begging of her pardon for the
+disparagement, and so he won’t trouble you for long, and somehow it do
+seem as though you hadn’t got no choice left in the matter, just as
+though everybody and everything was a-quietly pushing you into it. But,
+miss, somehow I don’t like it, to be plain; a marriage as ain’t no
+marriage ain’t altogether natural like, and in an office, too, along
+with a man as you would not touch with a pair of tongs, and that man on
+his last leg. I’m right down sorry if I makes you feel uncomfortable,
+dearie; but, bless me, I don’t know how it is, but, when a thing sticks
+in my mind, I’m as bound to hawk it up as though it were a bone in my
+throat.”
+
+“I don’t like it any more than you do, nurse, but perhaps you don’t
+understand all about the property being concerned, and about its having
+to pass away from my father, if I don’t do this. I care nothing about
+the property, but he left it to ‘my generosity!’ Arthur is dead; and he
+left it to ‘my generosity,’ nurse. What could I do?”
+
+“Well, miss, you’re acting according to what you thinks right and due
+to your father, which is more nor I does; and poor, dead Mr. Arthur up
+in Heaven there will make a note of that, there ain’t no manner of
+doubt. And somehow it do seem that things can’t be allowed to go wrong
+with you, my dear, seeing how you’re a-sacrificing of yourself and of
+your wishes to benefit others.”
+
+This conversation did not tend to put Angela into better spirits, but
+she felt that it was now too late to recede.
+
+Whilst Angela was talking to Pigott, Sir John and Lady Bellamy were
+paying a call at Isleworth. They found George lying on the sofa in the
+dining-room, in which, though it was the first week in June, a fire was
+burning on the hearth. He bore all the signs of a man in the last stage
+of consumption. The hollow cough, the emaciation, and the hectic hue
+upon his face, all spoke with no uncertain voice.
+
+“Well, Caresfoot, you scarcely look like a bridegroom, I must say,”
+said little Sir John, looking as pleased as though he had made an
+eminently cheerful remark.
+
+“No, but I am stronger than I look; marriage will cure me.”
+
+“Humph! will it? Then you will be signally fortunate.”
+
+“Don’t croak, Bellamy. I am happy to-day—there is fire dancing along my
+veins. Just think, this time to-morrow Angela will be my legal wife!”
+
+“Well, you appear to have given a good price for the privilege, if what
+Anne tells me is correct. To sell the Isleworth estates for fifty
+thousand, is to sell them for a hundred and fifty thousand less than
+they are worth. Consequently, the girl costs you a hundred and fifty
+thousand pounds—a long figure that for one girl.”
+
+“Bah! you are a cold-blooded fellow, Bellamy. Can’t you understand that
+there is a positive delight in ruining oneself for the woman one loves?
+And then, think how she will love me, when she comes to understand what
+she has cost me. I can see her now. She will come and kiss me—mind you,
+kiss me of her own free will—and say, ‘George, you are a noble fellow;
+George, you are a lover that any woman may be proud of; no price was
+too heavy for you.’ Yes, that is what she will say, that sort of thing,
+you know.”
+
+Sir John’s merry little eye twinkled with inexpressible amusement, and
+his wife’s full lips curled with unutterable contempt.
+
+“You are counting your kisses before they are paid for,” she said.
+“Does Philip come here this afternoon to sign the deeds?”
+
+“Yes; they are in the next room. Will you come and see them?”
+
+“Yes, I will. Will you come, John?”
+
+“No, thank you. I don’t wish to be treated to any more of your
+ladyship’s omens. I have long ago washed my hands of the whole
+business. I will stop here and read the _Times_.”
+
+They went out, George leaning on Lady Bellamy’s arm.
+
+No sooner had they gone than Sir John put down the _Times_, and
+listened intently. Then he rose, and slipped the bolt of that door
+which opened into the hall, thereby halving his chances of
+interruption. Next, listening at every step, his round face, which was
+solemn enough now, stretched forward, and looking for all the world
+like that of some whiskered puss advancing on a cream-jug, he crept on
+tiptoe to the iron safe in the corner of the room. Arrived there, he
+listened again, and then drew a little key from his pocket, and
+inserted it in the lock; it turned without difficulty.
+
+“Beau-ti-ful,” murmured Sir John; “but now comes the rub.” Taking
+another key, he inserted it in the lock of the subdivision. It would
+not turn. “One more chance,” he said, as he tried a second. “Ah!” and
+open came the lid. Rapidly he extracted two thick bundles of letters.
+They were in Lady Bellamy’s handwriting. Then he relocked the
+subdivision, and the safe itself, and put the keys away in his trousers
+and the packets in his coat-tail pockets, one in each, that they might
+not bulge suspiciously. Next he unbolted the door, and, returning, gave
+way to paroxysms of exultation too deep for words.
+
+“At last,” he said, stretching his fat little fist towards the room
+where George was with Lady Bellamy, “at last, after twenty years of
+waiting, you are in my power, my lady. Time _has_ brought its revenge,
+and if before you are forty-eight hours older you do not make
+acquaintance with a bitterness worse than death, then my name is not
+John Bellamy. I will repay you every jot, and with interest, too, my
+lady!”
+
+Then he calmed himself, and, ringing a bell, told the servant to tell
+Lady Bellamy that he had walked on home. When, an hour and a half
+later, she reached Rewtham House, she found that her husband had been
+suddenly summoned to London on a matter of business.
+
+That night in her desolation Angela cast herself upon the floor with
+outstretched arms and wept for her dead lover, and for the shame which
+overshadowed her. And the moon travelling up the sky, struck her,
+shining coldly on her snowy robe and rounded form—glinting on the
+stormy gold of her loosed hair—flooding all the room with light: till
+the white floor gleamed like a silver shrine, and she lay there a
+weeping saint. Then she rose and crept to such rest as utter weariness
+of body and mind can give.
+
+All that night, too, George Caresfoot paced, hungry-eyed, up and down,
+up and down the length of his great room, his gaze fixed on the windows
+which commanded Bratham, like that of some caged tiger on a desired
+prey.
+
+“To-morrow,” he kept muttering; till the first ray of the rising sun
+fell blood-red upon his wasted form, and then, bathing his thin hands
+in its beams, he sank down exhausted, crying exultingly, “not
+to-morrow, but _to-day_.”
+
+That night Lady Bellamy sat at an open window, rising continually to
+turn her dark eyes upon the starry heavens above her.
+
+“It is of no use,” she said at last, “my knowledge fails me, my
+calculations are baffled by a quantity I cannot trace. I am face to
+face with a combination that I cannot solve. Let me try once more! Ah,
+supposing that the unknown quantity is a directing will which at the
+crisis shatters laws, and overrides even the immutability of the
+unchanging stars! I have heard of such a thing. Let me change the
+positions of our opposing planets, and then, see, it would all be clear
+as day. George vanishes, that I knew before. She sails triumphant
+through overshadowing influences towards a silver sky. And I, is it
+death that awaits me? No, but some great change; there the pale light
+of my fading star would fall into her bright track. Bah, my science
+fails, I can no longer prophesy. My knowledge only tells me of great
+events, of what use is such knowledge as that? Well, come what may,
+fate will find one spirit that does not fear him. As for this,” and she
+pointed towards the symbols and calculations, “I have done with it.
+Henceforth I will devote myself to the only real powers which can
+enlighten us. Yet there is humiliation in failure after so many years
+of study. It is folly to follow a partial truth of which we miss the
+keynote, though we sometimes blunder on its harmonies.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV.
+
+
+The arrangement for the morrow was that Angela and her father were to
+take a fly to Roxham, where the registry office was, and whither George
+was also to be conveyed in a close carriage; that the ceremony was then
+to be gone through, after which the parties were to separate and return
+to their respective homes. Mr. Fraser had been asked to attend, but had
+excused himself from doing so.
+
+In pursuance of this programme, Angela and her father left the Abbey
+House about ten o’clock and drove in silence to the town. Strange as it
+may seem, Angela had never been in a town before, and, in the curious
+condition of her mind, the new sight of busy streets interested her
+greatly, and served to divert her attention till they reached the door
+of the office. She alighted and was shown with Philip into a
+waiting-room. And here, for some unexplained reason, a great fear took
+hold of her, a terror of this ceremony which now loomed large and
+life-like before her.
+
+“Father,” she said, suddenly, after a moment of irresolution, “I am
+going home. I will not go on with this business.”
+
+“What can you mean, Angela?”
+
+“I mean what I say. I never realized how dreadful it all was till now;
+it has come upon me like a revelation. Come, I am going.”
+
+“Angela, don’t be a fool. You forget that George will be here in a
+minute, and that the settlements are all signed.”
+
+“Then he can go back again and the settlements can be torn up. I will
+not go on with it.”
+
+Philip was by this time almost beside himself with anxiety. After
+having thus with thought and toil, and by the aid of a blessed chance,
+lifted this delicious cup to his lips, was it to be dashed from him?
+Were the sweet dreams so near approaching to realization, in which he
+had been wrapped for so many days, all to be dissipated into thin air?
+Was he to lose the land after all, after he had fingered—oh! how
+lovingly—the yellow title-deeds? For, alas! the sale depended on the
+marriage. It could not be, neither fate nor Angela could be so cruel.
+He turned upon her with the boldness of despair.
+
+“Angela, you must not go on like this, after having agreed to the thing
+of your own free will. Think of what it involves for me. If you refuse
+to marry him now at the last moment, I shall lose the Isleworth
+estates. Heavens, to think that so much property should be dependent
+upon the mere whim of a girl! Cannot you have a little consideration
+for others beside yourself? Do you really mean to sacrifice the hopes
+of my whole life, to throw away the only opportunity I can ever have of
+righting my wrongs, in order to gratify a sentimental whim? For God’s
+sake, think a little first before you sacrifice me. You promised to do
+it.”
+
+Never before had Angela seen her father so strongly excited; he was
+positively shaking with agitation. She looked at him steadily, and with
+such contempt that, even in his excitement, he quailed before her.
+
+“Very well, then, I will carry out my promise, dreadful as it is to me;
+but remember that it is only because you beg it, and that the
+responsibility of its consequences must always remain with you. Now,
+are you satisfied?—you will get your land.”
+
+Philip’s dark face assumed a look of fervent gratitude, but before he
+had time to reply, a messenger came to say that “the gentleman” was
+waiting.
+
+Her resolve once taken, Angela followed him with an untroubled face
+into the room where the registrar, a gentleman neatly dressed in black,
+was sitting at a sort of desk. Here the first thing her glance fell
+upon was the person of George Caresfoot. Although it was now the second
+week in June, he wore a respirator over his mouth and a scarf round his
+neck, and coughed very much. These were the first things she noticed.
+The next was that he was much thinner, so thin that the cheek-bones
+stood out from the level of his face, whilst the little blood-shot eyes
+seemed to protrude, giving to his general appearance, even with the
+mouth (his worst feature) hidden by the respirator, an unusually
+repulsive look. He was leaning on the arm of Lady Bellamy, who greeted
+Angela with a smile which the latter fancied had something of triumph
+in it.
+
+With the exception of the messenger, who played the part of clerk in
+this civil ceremony, there was nobody else in the room. No greetings
+were interchanged, and in another moment Angela was standing, dressed
+in her funeral black, by George’s side before the registrar, and the
+ceremony had begun.
+
+But from that moment, although her beautiful face preserved its
+composure, she scarcely saw or heard anything of what was going on. It
+was as though all the streams of thought in her brain had burst their
+banks and mingled in a great and turbulent current. She was filled with
+thought, but could seize upon no one idea, whilst within her mind she
+heard a sound as of the continuous whirring of broken machinery.
+
+Objects and individuals, real and imagined, presented themselves before
+her mental vision, expanded till they filled the heavens with their
+bulk, and then shrank and shrank, and vanished into nothing. The word
+“wife” struck upon her ears, and seemed to go wailing away, “wife,
+wife, wife,” through all the illimitable halls of sound, till they were
+filled with echoes, and sound itself fell dead against the silence of
+the stars.
+
+It was done. She awoke to find herself a married woman. Lady Bellamy
+stepped forward with the same half-triumphant smile with which she had
+greeted Angela hovering about her lips.
+
+“Let me congratulate you, _Mrs._ Caresfoot,” she said; “indeed, I think
+I am privileged to do so, for, if I remember right, I was the first to
+prophesy this happy event;” and then, dropping her voice so that Angela
+alone could hear her, “Do you not remember that I told you that you
+would as certainly come to the altar rails within nine months with
+George Caresfoot as you would to your death-bed? I said that nine
+months ago to-day.”
+
+Angela started as though she had been stung.
+
+“Events have been too strong for me,” she murmured; “but all this is
+nothing but a form, a form that can now be forgotten.”
+
+Again Lady Bellamy smiled as she answered,
+
+“Oh, of course, Mrs. Caresfoot, nothing but a form.”
+
+Angela’s eye fell upon the ring on her finger. She tore it off.
+
+“Take this back,” she said, “I have done with it.”
+
+“A married woman must wear a ring, Mrs. Caresfoot.”
+
+She hurled it upon the floor.
+
+Just then George and Philip returned from a little back-room where they
+had been with the registrar, who still remained behind, to sign the
+certificate. George advanced upon his wife with a dreadful smile on his
+features, removing the respirator as he came. His object was to kiss
+her, but she divined it and caught her father by the arm.
+
+“Father,” she said, “protect me from this man.”
+
+“Protect you, Angela; why, he is your husband!”
+
+“My husband! Have you all agreed to drive me mad?”
+
+Lady Bellamy saw that if something were not done quickly, there would
+be a shocking scene, which was the last thing she wanted, so she seized
+George and whispered in his ear, after which he followed her sulkily,
+turning round from time to time to look at Angela.
+
+On her way from Roxham, Lady Bellamy stopped her carriage at the
+telegraph office and went in and wrote a telegram.
+
+“I respect that woman, and she shall have her chance,” she said, as she
+re-read it previous to handing it to the clerk.
+
+Three hours later Mildred Carr received the following message at
+Madeira:
+
+“From A. B. to Mrs. Carr, Quinta Carr, Madeira:
+
+“Angela C. married her cousin G. C. this morning.”
+
+
+That night Lady Bellamy dined at Isleworth with George Caresfoot. The
+dinner passed over in almost complete silence; George was evidently
+plunged in thought, and could not eat, though he drank a good deal.
+Lady Bellamy ate and thought too. After the servants had gone, she
+began to speak.
+
+“I want my price, George,” she said.
+
+“What do you mean?”
+
+“I mean what I say. You are now Angela Caresfoot’s husband; give me
+back those letters as you promised, I am impatient to break my chains.”
+He hesitated. “George,” she said, in a warning voice, “do not dare to
+play with me; I warn you that your power over me is not what it used to
+be. Give me back those letters. I have done your wicked work for you
+and will have my pay.”
+
+“All right, Anne, and so you shall; when will you have them?”
+
+“Now, this instant.”
+
+“But I have not got my keys.”
+
+“You forget your keys are on your watch-chain.”
+
+“Ah, to be sure, so they are. You won’t turn round on me when you get
+them, will you, Anne?”
+
+“Why should I turn on you? I wish to get the letters, and, if I can, to
+have done with you.”
+
+He went with a somewhat hesitating step to the iron safe in the corner
+of the room and opened it. The he opened the subdivision and rummaged
+about there for a while. At last he looked up.
+
+“It is very curious, Anne,” he said, in a half-frightened voice, “but I
+can’t find them.”
+
+“George, give me those letters.”
+
+“I can’t find them, Anne, I can’t find them. If you don’t believe me,
+come and look for yourself. Somebody must have taken them.”
+
+She advanced and did as he said. It was evident that the letters were
+not there.
+
+“Once before when you were ill you hid them. Where have you hidden them
+now?”
+
+“I haven’t hidden them, Anne; I haven’t, indeed.”
+
+She turned slowly and looked him full in the eyes. Her own face was
+ashy pale with fury, but she said never a word. Her silence was more
+terrible than words. Then she raised her hands and covered her eyes for
+a while. Presently she dropped them, and said, in a singularly soft
+voice,
+
+“It is over now.”
+
+“What do you mean?” he asked, fearfully, for she terrified him.
+
+“I mean a great deal, George Caresfoot. I mean that something has
+snapped the bond which bound me to you. I mean that I no longer fear
+you, that I have done with you. Use your letters, if you will, you can
+harm me no more; I have passed out of the region of your influence, out
+of the reach of your revenge. I look on you now and wonder what the
+link was between us, for there was a mysterious link. That I cannot
+tell. But this I can tell you. I have let go your hand, and you are
+going to fall down a great precipice, George, a precipice of which I
+cannot see the foot. Yes, it is right that you should cower before me
+now; I have cowered before you for more than twenty years. You made me
+what I am. I am going into the next room now till my carriage comes, I
+did not order it till half-past ten. Do not follow me. But before I go
+I will tell you something, and you know I do not make mistakes. You
+will never sleep under this roof again, George Caresfoot, and we shall
+not meet again alive. You have had a long day, but your hour has
+struck.”
+
+“Who told you that, woman?” he asked, furiously.
+
+“Last night I read it in the stars, to-night I read it in your face.”
+
+And again she looked at him, long and steadily, as he crouched in the
+chair before her, and then slowly left the room.
+
+After awhile he roused himself, and began to drink wine furiously.
+
+“Curse her,” he said, as the fumes mounted into his brain, “curse her,
+she is trying to frighten me with her infernal magic, but she sha’n’t.
+I know what she is at; but I will be beforehand with her.” And,
+staggering under the mingled influence of drink and excitement, he rose
+and left the house.
+
+Lady Bellamy sat in the drawing-room, and waited for her carriage; at
+last she heard the wheels upon the gravel. Then she rose, and rapidly
+did something to the great lamp upon the paper-strewn table. As she
+shut the door she turned.
+
+“That will do,” she said.
+
+In the hall she met the servant coming to announce the carriage.
+
+“Is your master still in the dining-room?” she asked.
+
+“No, my lady.”
+
+She laughed a little, and civilly bade the man good-night.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV.
+
+
+Outside the door of the registry-office, Angela and her father had to
+make their way through a crowd of small boys, who had by some means or
+other found out that a wedding was going on inside, and stood waiting
+there, animated by the intention of cheering the bride and the certain
+hope of sixpences. But when they saw Angela, her stately form robed in
+black, and her sweet face betraying the anguish of her mind, the sight
+shocked their sense of the fitness of things, and they slipped off
+without a word. Indeed, a butcher’s boy, with a turn for expressive
+language, remarked in indignation to another of his craft so soon as
+they had recovered their spirits.
+
+“Call that a weddin’, Bill; why, it’s more like a—funeral with the
+plumes off; and as for the gal, though she’s a ‘clipper,’ her face was
+as pale as a ‘long ‘un’s.’”
+
+Angela never quite knew how she got back to the Abbey House. She only
+remembered that she was by herself in the fly, her father preferring to
+travel on the box alone with the coachman. Nor could she ever quite
+remember how she got through the remainder of that day. She was quite
+mazed. But at length it passed, and the night came, and she was
+thankful for the night.
+
+About nine o’clock she went up to her bedroom at the top of the house.
+It had served as a nursery for many generations of Caresfoots; indeed,
+during the last three centuries, hundreds of little feet had pattered
+over the old worm-eaten boards. But the little feet had long since gone
+to dust, and the only signs of children’s play and merriment left about
+the place were the numberless scratches, nicks, and letters cut in the
+old panelling, and even on the beams which supported the low ceiling.
+
+It was a lonesome room for a young girl, or, indeed, for anybody whose
+nerves were not of the strongest. Nobody slept upon that floor or in
+the rooms beneath it, Philip occupying a little closet which joined his
+study on the ground floor. All the other rooms were closed, and
+tenanted only by rats that made unearthly noises in their emptiness. As
+for Jakes and his wife, the only servants on the place, they occupied a
+room over the washhouse, which was separate from the main building.
+Angela was therefore practically alone in a great house, and might have
+been murdered a dozen times over without the fact being discovered for
+hours. This did not, however, trouble her much, simply because she paid
+no heed to the noises in the house, and was singularly free from fear
+of any kind.
+
+On reaching her room, she sat down and began to think of Arthur, and,
+as she thought, her mind grew clearer and more at peace. Indeed, it
+seemed to her that her dead lover was near, and as though she could
+distinguish pulsations of thought which came from him, impinging on her
+system, and bringing his presence with them. It is a common sensation,
+and occurs to many people of sensitive organization when asleep or
+thinking on some one with whom they are in a high state of sympathy,
+and doubtless indicates some occult communication. But, as it chanced,
+it had never before visited Angela in this form, and she abandoned
+herself to its influence with delight. It thrilled her through and
+through.
+
+How long she sat thus she could not tell, but presently the
+communication, whatever it was, stopped as suddenly as though the
+connecting link had been severed. The currents directed by her will
+would no longer do her bidding; they could not find their object, or,
+frighted by some adverse influence, recoiled in confusion on her brain.
+Several times she tried to renew this subtle intercourse that was so
+palpable and real, and yet so different from anything else in the
+world, but failed. Then she rose, feeling very tired, for those who
+thus draw upon the vital energies must pay the penalty of exhaustion.
+She took her Bible and read her nightly chapter, and then undressed and
+said her prayers, praying with unusual earnestness that it might please
+the Almighty in His wisdom to take her to where her lover was. Her
+prayers done, she rose, put on a white dressing wrapper, and, seating
+herself before the glass, unloosed her hair. Then she began to brush
+it, pausing presently to think how Arthur had admired its colour and
+the ripples on it. She had been much more careful of her hair since
+then, and smiled sadly to herself at her folly for being so.
+
+Thinking thus, she fell into a reverie, and sat so still that a great
+grey rat came noiselessly out of his hole in a corner of the room, and,
+advancing into the circle of light round the dressing-table, sat up on
+his hind legs to see if he was alone. Suddenly he turned and scuttled
+back to his hole in evident alarm, and at the same second Angela
+thought that she heard a sound of a different character from those she
+was accustomed to in the old house—a sound like the creaking of a boot.
+It passed, however, but left an indefinable dread creeping over her,
+and chilling the blood in her veins. She began to expect something, she
+knew not what, and was fascinated by the expectation. She would have
+risen to lock the door, but all strength seemed to have left her; she
+was paralysed by the near sense of evil. Then came a silence as intense
+as it was lonely.
+
+It was a ghastly moment.
+
+Her back was towards the doorway, for her dressing-table was
+immediately opposite the door, which was raised some four feet above
+the level of the landing, and approached by as many steps.
+
+Gradually her eyes became riveted on the glass before her, for in it
+she thought that she saw the door move. Next second, she was sure that
+it _was_ moving, very slowly; the hinges took an age to turn. What
+could be behind it? At last it was open, and in the glass Angela saw
+framed in darkness _the head and shoulders of George Caresfoot_. At
+first she believed that her mind deceived her, that it was an
+apparition. No, there was no mistake. But the respirator, the hollow
+cough and decrepitude of the morning—where were they?
+
+With horror in her heart, she turned and faced him. Seeing that he was
+observed, he staggered into the room with a step which was half drunken
+and half jaunty, but which belied the conflict of passions written on
+his brow. He spoke—his voice sounded hoarse and hollow, and was
+ill-tuned to his words.
+
+“You did not expect me perhaps—wonder how I got here! Jakes let me in;
+he has got a proper respect for marital rights, has Jakes. You looked
+so pretty, I could not make up my mind to disturb you. Quite a romantic
+meeting, is it not?”
+
+“You are a dying man. How did you come here?”
+
+“Dying! my dear wife; not a bit of it. I am no more dying than you are.
+I have been ill, it is true, but that is only because you have fretted
+me so. The dying was only a little ruse to get your consent. All is
+fair in love and war, you know; and of course you never really believed
+in that precious agreement. That was nothing but a bit of maidenly
+shyness, eh?”
+
+Angela stood still as a stone, a look of horror on her face.
+
+“Then you don’t know what you have cost me. Your father’s price was a
+hundred and fifty thousand, at least that is what it came to, the old
+shark! It isn’t every man who would come down like that for a girl, now
+is it? It shows a generous mind, doesn’t it?”
+
+Still she uttered not a syllable.
+
+“Angela,” he said, changing his tone to one of hoarse earnestness,
+“don’t look at me like that, because, even if you are a bit put out at
+the trick I have played you, just think it was because I loved you so
+much, Angela. I couldn’t help it, I couldn’t really. It is not every
+man who would go through all that I have gone through for you; it is no
+joke to sham consumption for three months, I can tell you; but we will
+have many a laugh over that. Why don’t you answer me, instead of
+standing there just like the Andromeda in my study?”
+
+The simile was an apt one, the statue of the girl awaiting her awful
+fate wore the same hopeless, helpless look of vacant terror which was
+upon Angela’s face now. But its mention recalled Lady Bellamy and the
+ominous incident in which that statue had figured, and he hastened to
+drown recollection in action.
+
+“Come,” he said, “you will forgive me, won’t you? It was all done for
+love of you.” And he moved towards her.
+
+As he came she seemed to collect her energies; the fear left her face,
+and in its stead there shone a great and awful blaze of indignation.
+
+Her brush was still in her hand, and as he drew near she dashed it full
+into his face. It was but a light thing, and only staggered him, but it
+gave her time to pass him, and reach the still open door. Bare- footed,
+she fled like the wind down the passages, and down the stairs. Uttering
+an oath, he followed her. But, as she went, she remembered that she
+could not run upon the gravel with her naked feet, and, with this in
+her mind, she turned to bay by a large window that gave light to the
+first-floor landing, immediately opposite which was the portrait of
+“Devil” Caresfoot. It was unbolted, and with a single movement of the
+hand she flung it open, and stood panting by it in the full light of
+the moon. In another moment he was upon her, furious at the blow, and
+his face contorted with passion.
+
+“Stop,” she cried, “and listen to me. Before I will allow you to touch
+me with a single finger, I will spring from here. I would rather thrust
+myself into the hands of Providence than into yours, monster and
+perjured liar that you are!”
+
+He stopped as she bade him, and commenced to pace round and round her
+in a semicircle, glaring at her with wild eyes.
+
+“If you jump from there,” he said, “you will only break your limbs; it
+is not high enough to kill you. You are my wife, don’t you understand?
+You are my legal wife, the law is on my side. No one can help you, no
+one; you are mine in the sight of the whole world.”
+
+“But not yours in the sight of God. It is to Him that I now appeal. Get
+back!”
+
+She stretched out her arm, and with her golden hair glimmering in the
+moonlight, her white robes, and the anger on her face, looked like some
+avenging angel driving a fiend to hell. He shrank away from her, and
+there came a pause, and, save for their heavy breathing, stillness
+again fell upon the house, whilst the picture that hung above them
+seemed, in the half light, to follow them with its fierce eyes, as
+though it were a living thing.
+
+The landing where they stood looked upon the hall below, at the end of
+which was Philip’s study. Suddenly its door burst open, and Philip
+himself passed through it, grasping a candlestick in one hand and some
+parchments in the other. His features were dreadful to see, resembling
+those of a dumb thing in torture; his eyes protruded, his livid lips
+moved, but no sound came from them. He staggered across the hall with
+terror staring from his face.
+
+“Father, father,” called Angela; but he took no notice—he did not even
+seem to hear.
+
+Presently they heard the candlestick thrown with a clash upon the hall
+pavement, then the front door slammed, and he was gone, and at that
+moment a great ruddy glow shot up the western sky, then a tongue of
+flame, then another and another.
+
+“See,” said Angela, with a solemn laugh, “I did not appeal for help in
+vain.”
+
+Isleworth Hall was in flames.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI.
+
+
+Arthur did not delay his departure from Madeira. The morning following
+Mildred’s ball he embarked on board a Portuguese boat, a very dirty
+craft which smelt of garlic and rancid oil, and sailed for Lisbon. He
+arrived there safely, and mooned about that city for a while, himself a
+monument of serious reflections, and then struck across into Spain,
+where he spent a month or so inspecting the historical beauties of that
+fallen country. Thence he penetrated across the Pyrenees into Southern
+France, which was pleasant in the spring months. Here he remained
+another month, meeting with no adventures worthy of any note, and
+improving his knowledge of the French language. Tiring at last of this,
+he travelled to Paris, and went to the theatres, but found his own
+thoughts too absorbing to allow of his taking any keen interest in
+their sensationalisms; so, after a brief stay, he made his way up to
+Brittany and Normandy, and went in for inspecting old castles and
+cathedrals, and finally ended up his continental travels by spending a
+week on the island rock of Saint Michel.
+
+This place pleased him more than any he had visited. He liked to wander
+about among the massive granite pillars of that noble ecclesiastical
+fortress, and at night to watch the phosphoric tide come rushing in
+with all the speed of a race-horse, over the wide sands, which separate
+it from the mainland. There the thirty-first day of May found him, and
+he bethought him that it was time to return to London and see about
+getting the settlements drawn and ordering the wedding bouquet. To
+speak the truth, he thought more about the bouquet than the
+settlements.
+
+He arrived in London on the first of June, and went to see his family
+lawyer, a certain Mr. Borley, who had been solicitor to the trust
+during his minority.
+
+“Bless me, Heigham, how like your father you have grown!” said that
+legal gentleman, as soon as Arthur was ensconced in the client’s chair
+—a chair that, had it been endowed with the gift of speech, could have
+told some surprising stories. “It seems only the other day that he was
+sitting there dictating the terms of his will, and yet that was before
+the Crimean war, more than twenty years ago. Well, my boy, what is it?”
+
+Arthur, thus encouraged, entered into a rather blundering recital of
+the circumstances of his engagement.
+
+Mr. Borley did not say much, but, from his manner and occasional
+comments, it was evident that he considered the whole story very odd—
+regarding it, indeed, with some suspicion.
+
+“I must tell you frankly, Mr. Heigham,” he said, at last, “I don’t
+quite understand this business. The young lady, no doubt, is charming
+—young ladies, looking at them from my clients’ point of view, always
+are—but I can’t say I like your story about her father. Why did you not
+tell me all this before? I might then have been able to give you some
+advice worth having, or, at any rate, to make a few confidential” —he
+laid great emphasis on the word “confidential”—“inquiries.”
+
+Arthur replied that it had not occurred to him to do so.
+
+“Umph, pity—great pity; but there is no time for that sort of thing
+now, if you think you are going to get married on the tenth; so I
+suppose the only thing to do is to go through with it and await the
+upshot. What do you wish done?”
+
+Arthur explained his views, which apparently included settling all his
+property on his bride in the most absolute fashion possible. To this
+Mr. Borley forcibly objected, and in the end Arthur had to give way and
+make such arrangements as the old gentleman thought proper—
+arrangements differing considerably from those proposed by himself.
+
+This interview over, he had other and pleasanter duties to perform,
+such as ordering his wedding clothes, making arrangements with a
+florist for the bridal bouquet, and last, but not least, having his
+mother’s diamonds re-set as a present for his bride.
+
+But still the days went very slowly, there seemed to be no end to them.
+He had no relations to go and see, and in his present anxious excited
+state he preferred to avoid his friends and club acquaintances. Fifth,
+sixth, seventh; never did a schoolboy await the coming of the day that
+marked the advent of his holidays with such intense anxiety.
+
+At length the eighth of June arrived. Months before, he had settled
+what his programme should be on that day. His promise, as the reader
+may remember, forbade him to see Angela till the ninth, that is, at any
+hour after twelve on the night of the eighth, or, practically, as early
+as possible on the following morning. Now the earliest train would not
+get him down to Roxham till eleven o’clock, which would involve a
+wicked waste of four or five hours of daylight that might be spent with
+Angela, so he wisely resolved to start on the evening of the eighth, by
+a train leaving Paddington at six o’clock, and reaching Roxham at nine.
+
+The day he spent in signing the settlements, finally interviewing the
+florist, and giving him directions as to forwarding the wedding-
+bouquet, which was to be composed of orange-blossoms, lilies of the
+valley, and stephanotis, and in getting the marriage-license. But,
+notwithstanding these manifold employments, he managed to be three-
+quarters of an hour before his train, the longest forty-five minutes he
+ever spent.
+
+He had written to the proprietor of the inn at Rewtham, where he had
+slept a year ago the night after he had left Isleworth, to send a gig
+to meet him at the station, and, on arriving at Roxham, a porter told
+him that a trap was waiting for him. On emerging from the station, even
+in the darkness, he was able to recognize the outlines of the identical
+vehicle which had conveyed him to the Abbey House some thirteen months
+ago, whilst the sound of an ancient, quavering voice informed him that
+the Jehu was likewise the same. His luggage was soon bundled up behind,
+and the steady-going old nag departed into the darkness.
+
+“Well, Sam, do you remember me?”
+
+“Well, no, sir, I can’t rightly say how I do: wait a bit; bean’t you
+the gemman as travels in the dry line, and as I seed a-kissing the
+chambermaid?”
+
+“No, I don’t travel at present, and I have not kissed a chambermaid for
+some time. Do you remember driving a gentleman over to the Abbey House
+a year or so ago?”
+
+“Why, yes, in course I does. Lord, now, and be you he? and we seed old
+Devil’s Caresfoot’s granddaughter. Ah! many’s the time that he has
+damned me, and all so soft and pleasant like; but it was his eyes that
+did the trick. They was awful, just awful; and you gave me half-a-
+crown, you did. But somehow I thought I heard summat about you, sir,
+but I can’t rightly remember what it be, my head not being so good as
+it used to.”
+
+“Perhaps you heard what I was going to be married?”
+
+“No. I don’t think how as it was that neither.”
+
+“Well, never mind me; have you seen Miss Caresfoot—the young lady you
+saw the day you drove me to the Abbey House—anywhere about lately?”
+
+Arthur waited for the old man’s lingering answer with all his heart
+upon his lips.
+
+“Lor’, yes, sir, that I have; I saw her this morning driving through
+the Roxham market-place.”
+
+“And how did she look?”
+
+“A bit pale, I thought, sir; but well enough, and wonnerful handsome.”
+
+Arthur gave a sigh of relief. He felt like a man who has just come
+scatheless through some horrible crisis, and once more knows the sweet
+sensation of safety. What a load the old man’s words had lifted from
+his mind! In his active imagination he had pictured all sorts of evils
+which might have happened to Angela during his year of absence. Lovers
+are always prone to such imaginings, and not altogether without reason,
+for there would seem to be a special power of evil that devotes itself
+to the derangement of their affairs, and the ingenious disappointment
+of their hopes. But now the vague dread was gone, Angela was not
+spirited away or dead, and to know her alive was to know her faithful.
+
+As they drove along, the old ostler continued to volunteer various
+scraps of information which fell upon his ears unheeded, till presently
+his attention was caught by the name Caresfoot.
+
+“What about him?” he asked, quickly.
+
+“He be a-dying, they do say.”
+
+“Which of them?”
+
+“Why, the red-haired one, him as lives up at the Hall yonder.”
+
+“Poor fellow,” said Arthur, feeling quite fond of George in his
+happiness.
+
+They had by this time reached the inn, where he had some supper, for
+old Sam’s good news had brought back his appetite, which of late had
+not been quite up to par, and then went straight to his room that faced
+towards the Abbey House. It was, he noticed, the same in which he had
+slept the year before, and looking at the bed he remembered his dream,
+and smiled as he thought that the wood was passed, and before him lay
+nothing but the flowery meadows. Mildred Carr, too, crossed his mind,
+but of her he did not think much, not that he was by any means
+heartless—indeed, what had happened had pained him acutely, the more so
+because his own conscience told him he had been a fool. He was very
+sorry, but, love being here below one of the most selfish of the
+passions, he had not time to be sorry just then.
+
+For just on the horizon he could distinguish a dense mass which was the
+trees surrounding the Abbey House, and between the trees there
+glimmered a faint light which might proceed from some rising star, or
+from Angela’s window. He preferred to believe it was the latter. The
+propinquity made him very happy. What was she doing? he wondered—
+sitting by her window and thinking of him! He would ask her on the
+morrow. It was worth while going through that year of separation in
+order to taste the joy of meeting. It seemed like a dream to think that
+within six-and-thirty hours he would probably be Angela’s husband, and
+how nobody in the world would be able to take her away from him. He
+stretched out his arms towards her.
+
+“My darling, my darling,” he cried aloud into the still night. “My
+darling, my darling,” the echo answered sadly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII.
+
+
+That night Arthur dreamed no evil dreams, but he thought he heard a
+sound outside his door, and some one speak of fire. Hearing nothing
+more, he turned and went to sleep again. Waking in the early dawn he
+felt, ere yet his senses fully came, a happy sense of something, he
+knew not what, a rosy shadow of coming joy, such as will, only with
+more intensity, fall upon our quickened faculties when, death ended,
+our souls begin to stir as we awaken to Eternity.
+
+He sprang from his bed, and his eye fell on a morocco case upon the
+dressing-table. It contained the diamonds which he had had re-set as a
+wedding present to Angela. They were nothing compared with Mildred
+Carr’s, but still extremely handsome, their beauty being enhanced by
+the elegance of the setting, which was in the shape of a snake with
+emerald head and ruby eyes, so constructed as to clasp tightly round
+Angela’s shapely throat.
+
+The sight of the jewellery at once recalled his present circumstances,
+and he knew that the long hour of trial was passed—he was about to meet
+Angela. Having dressed himself as quickly as he could, he took up the
+jewel-case, but, finding it too large to stow away, he opened it, and,
+taking out the necklace, crammed it into his pocket. Thus armed he
+slipped down the stairs, past the open common room where the light
+shone through the cracks in the shutters on a dismal array of sticky
+beer-mugs and spirit glasses, down the sanded passage into the village
+street.
+
+It was full daylight now, and the sun never looked upon a lovelier
+morning. The air was warm, but there was that sharp freshness in it
+which is needful to make summer weather perfect, and which we always
+miss by breakfasting at nine o’clock. The sky was blue, just flecked
+with little clouds; the dewdrops sparkled upon every leaf and blade of
+grass; touches of mist clung about the hollows, and the sweet breath of
+the awakened earth was full of the perfect scent of an English June,
+which is in its way even more delicious than the spicy odours of the
+tropics. It was a morning to make sick men well, and men happy, and
+atheists believers in a creative hand. How much more then did it fire
+Arthur’s pulses, already bounding with youth and health, with an untold
+joy.
+
+He felt like a child again, so free from care, so happy, except that
+his heart swelled with a love beyond the knowledge of children. His
+quick temperament had rebounded from the depths of unequal depression,
+into which it so often fell, to the heights of a happy assurance. The
+Tantalus cup was at his lips at last, and he would drink his full, be
+sure! His eyes flashed and sparkled, his foot fell light and quick as
+an antelope’s, his brown cheek glowed—never had he looked so handsome.
+Angela would not forget her promise; she would be waiting for him by
+the lake, he was sure of that, and thither he made his way through the
+morning sunshine. They were happy moments.
+
+Presently he passed into the parish of Bratham, and his eye fell upon a
+neat red brick cottage, a garden planted with sunflowers, and a bright
+gravel path running to the rustic gate. He thought the garden
+charmingly old-fashioned, and had just entered a mental note to ask
+Angela who lived there, when the door opened, and a figure he knew
+emerged, bearing a mat in one hand and a mopstick in the other. He was
+some way off, and at first could not quite distinguish who it was; but
+before she had come to the gate he recognized Pigott. By this time she
+had stepped into the road, and was making elaborate preparations to
+dust her mat so that she did not see him, till he spoke to her.
+
+“How are you, Pigott? What may you be doing down here? Why are you not
+up at the Abbey?”
+
+She gave a cry, and the mat and mopstick fell from her hands.
+
+“Mr. Heigham!” she said, in an awed voice that chilled his blood, “what
+has brought you back, and why do you come to me? I never wronged you.”
+
+“What are you talking about? I have come to marry Angela, of course. We
+are going to be married to-morrow.”
+
+“Oh, then it’s really _you_, sir! _And she married yesterday—oh, good
+God!_”
+
+“Don’t laugh at me, nurse—please don’t laugh. It—it upsets me. Why do
+you shake so? What do you mean?”
+
+“Mean!—I mean that my Angela _married her cousin, George Caresfoot, at
+Roxham, yesterday._ Heaven forgive me for having to tell it you!”
+
+Reader, have you ever mortally wounded a head of large game? You hear
+your bullet thud upon the living flesh, and see the creature throw up
+its head and stagger for a moment, and then plunge forward with
+desperate speed, crashing through bush and reeds as though they were
+meadow-grass. Follow him awhile, and you will find him standing quite
+still, breathing in great sighs, his back humped and his eye dim, the
+gore trickling from his nostrils. He is dying—but be careful, he means
+mischief before he dies.
+
+Any great shock, mental or physical, is apt to reduce man to the level
+of his brother beasts. Arthur, for instance, behaved very much like a
+wounded buffalo as soon as the stun of the blow passed away, and the
+rending pain began to make itself felt. For a few seconds he gazed
+before him stupid and helpless, then his face turned quite grey, the
+eyes and nostrils gaped wide, and a curious rigidity took possession of
+his muscles.
+
+The road he was following led to a branching lane, the same that Angela
+was turning up that misty Christmas Eve when she saw Lady Bellamy glide
+past in her carriage. This lane had in former ages, no doubt, to judge
+from its numerous curves, been an ancient forest-path, and it ran to
+the little bridge over the stream that fed the lake—a point that, by
+travelling as the crow flies from Pigott’s cottage, might be reached in
+half the time. This fact Arthur seemed at that dreadful moment to
+suddenly realize, more probably from natural instinct than from any
+particular knowledge of the lay of the land. He did not speak again to
+Pigott, and she was too frightened at his face to speak to him. He only
+looked at her, but she never forgot that look so long as she lived.
+Then he turned like a mad thing, and went _crash_ through the thick
+fence that hedged the road, and ran at full speed towards the lake,
+diverging neither to the right nor to the left, but breaking his way
+without the slightest apparent difficulty through everything that
+opposed him.
+
+Very soon he came to the little bridge, and here, struck by some new
+instinct, he halted. He did not appear to be out of breath, but he
+leaned on the rail of the bridge and groaned like a dying man. His
+ghastly face made a blot in the mimic scenery of the place, which was
+really very pretty. The bridge commanded no view, for the little creek
+it spanned, and into which the stream ran, gave a turn before it grew
+into the neck of the lake; but it was hedged in by greenery, and the
+still pool beneath it was starred with water-lilies, turning their
+innocent eyes up to the blue sky, and looking as peaceful as though
+there were no stormy winds or waters in the world to toss them. Amongst
+these water-lilies a moorhen had built her nest, and presently she came
+clucking out right under Arthur’s feet, followed by ten or a dozen
+little hurrying black balls, each tipped with sealing-wax red. She
+looked very happy with her brood—as happy as the lilies and the blue
+sky—and the sight made him savage. He took up a large stone that lay by
+him and threw it at her. It hit her on the back and killed her, and
+Arthur laughed loud as he watched her struggle, and then lie still,
+while the motherless chicks hurried, frightened, away. And yet since he
+was a boy he had never till now wantonly injured any living creature.
+
+Presently, the dead water-hen floated out of sight, and he roused
+himself, straightened his clothes, which had been somewhat torn and
+deranged, and, with a steady step and a fixed smile upon his lips, went
+forward, no longer at a run, but walking quietly up the path that led
+to the big oak and shaded glen. In five minutes he was there.
+
+Again he paused and looked. There was something to see. On one of the
+stone seats, dressed in black, her face deathly pale, her head resting
+on her hand, and trouble in her eyes, sat Angela. On the other was her
+constant companion, the dog which he had given her. He remembered how,
+a little more than a year before, she had surprised him in the same
+way, and he had looked upon her and loved her. He could even smile at
+the strange irony of fate that had, under such curiously reversed
+circumstances, brought him back to surprise her, to look upon her, and
+hate her.
+
+She moved uneasily, and glanced round, but he was hidden by a bush.
+Then she half rose, paused irresolutely, and, as though struggling
+against something foolish, sat determinedly down again. When Arthur had
+done smiling, he came forward a few steps into the open, feeling that
+his face was all drawn and changed, as indeed it was. It was the face
+of a man of fifty. His eyes were fire, and his heart was ice.
+
+She turned her head, and looked up with a shrinking in her eyes, as
+though she feared to see something hateful—a shrinking which turned
+first to wonder, then to dread, then to a lively joy, and then again to
+awe. She rose mechanically, with a great gasp; her lips parted, as
+though to speak, but no words came. The dog, too, saw him, and growled,
+then ran up and sniffed, and leaped upon him with a yelp of joy. He
+waved it down, and there was something in the gesture that frightened
+the beast. It shrank behind him. Then he spoke in a clear, hard
+tone—not his own voice, she thought.
+
+“Angela, is this true? Are you _married?_”
+
+“Oh, no;” and her voice came stealing to his senses like half-
+forgotten music; “that is, yes, alas! But is it really you? Oh, Arthur,
+my darling, have you come back to me?” and she moved towards him with
+outstretched arms.
+
+Already they were closing round him, and he could feel her breath upon
+his cheek, when the charm broke, and he wrenched himself free.
+
+“Get back; do not dare to touch me. Do you know what you are? The poor
+lost girl is not fallen so low as you. She must get her bread; but, at
+any rate, I could have given you bread. What! fresh from your husband’s
+arms, and ready to throw yourself into mine! Shame upon you! Were you
+not married yesterday?”
+
+“Oh, Arthur, have pity! You do not understand. Oh, merciful God——”
+
+“Have pity! What need for pity? Were you not married yesterday?” and he
+laughed bitterly. “I come—I come from far to congratulate the new- made
+wife. It is a little odd, though, I thought to marry you myself. See,
+here was my wedding present;” and he tore the diamond necklace from his
+pocket. “A snake, you see; a good emblem! Away with it, its use is
+gone!”
+
+The diamonds went flashing through the sunlight, and fell with a little
+splash into the lake.
+
+“What! are you not sorry to see so much valuable property wasted? You
+have a keen appreciation of property!”
+
+Angela sank down on her knees before him, like a broken lily. Her looks
+grew faint and despairing. The stately head bowed itself to his feet,
+and all the golden weight of hair broke loose. But he did not pause or
+spare her. He ground his teeth. No one could have recognized in this
+maddened, passion-inspired man the pleasant, easy-tempered Arthur of an
+hour before. His nature was stirred to its depths, and they were deep.
+
+“You miserable woman! do not kneel to me. If it were not unmanly, I
+could spurn you with my foot. Do you know, girl, you who swore to love
+me till time had passed—yes, and for all eternity, you who do love me
+at this moment—and therein lies your shame—that you have killed me? You
+have murdered my heart. I trusted you, Angela, I trusted you, I gave
+you all my life, all that was best in me; and now in reward— degraded
+as you are—I must always love you as much as I despise you. Even now I
+feel that I _cannot_ hate you and forget you. I _must_ love you, and I
+_must_ despise you.”
+
+She gazed up at him like a dumb beast at its butcher; she could not
+speak, her voice had gone.
+
+“And yet, when I think of it, I have something to thank you for. You
+have cleared my mind of illusions. You have taught me what a woman’s
+purity is worth. You did the thing well, too! You did not crush me by
+inches with platitudes, bidding me forget you and not think of you any
+more, as though forgetfulness were possible, and thought a tangible
+thing that one could kill. You struck home in silence, once and for
+all. Thank you for _that_, Angela. What, are you crying? Go back to the
+brute whom you have chosen, the brute whose passion or whose money you
+could prefer to me, tell him that they are tears of happiness, and let
+him kiss them quite away.”
+
+“Oh, Arthur—cruel—Arthur!” and nature gave way. She fell fainting on
+the grass.
+
+Then, when he saw that she could not understand or feel any more, his
+rage died, and he too broke down and sobbed, great, gasping sobs. And
+the frightened dog crept up and licked first her face and then his
+hand.
+
+Kneeling down, Arthur raised her in his arms and strained her to his
+heart, kissing her thrice upon the forehead—the lips he could not
+touch. Then he placed her on the seat, leaning her weight against the
+tree, and, motioning back the dog, he went his way.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII.
+
+
+Arthur took the same path by which he had come—all paths were alike to
+him now—but before he had gone ten yards he saw the figure of George
+Caresfoot, who appeared to have been watching him. In George’s hand was
+a riding-whip, for he had ridden from the scene of the fire, and was
+all begrimed with smoke and dirt. But this Arthur did not notice.
+
+“Hullo,” he began; “what——” and then he hesitated; there was a look in
+Arthur’s eyes which he did not like.
+
+But, if George hesitated, Arthur did not. He sprang at him like a wild
+cat, and in a second had him by the throat and shoulder. For a moment
+he held him there, for in his state of compressed fury George was like
+a child in his hands. And as he held him a fierce and almost
+uncontrollable desire took possession of him to kill this man, to throw
+him down and stamp the life out of him. He conquered it, however, and
+loosed the grip on his throat.
+
+“Let me go,” shrieked George, as soon as he could get breath.
+
+Arthur cut short his clamours by again compressing his wind-pipe.
+
+“Listen,” he said; “a second ago I was very near killing you, but I
+remember now that, after all, it is she, not you, who are chiefly to
+blame. You only followed your brutal nature, and nothing else can be
+expected of a brute. Very likely you put pressure on her, like the cad
+that you are, but that does not excuse her, for, if she could not
+resist pressure, she is a fool in addition to being what she is. I look
+at you and think that soon _she_ will come down to _your_ level, the
+level of my successful rival. To be mated to a man like you would drag
+an angel down. That will be punishment enough. Now go, you cur!”
+
+He swung him violently from him. His fall was broken by a bramble-
+bush. It was not exactly a bed of roses, but George thought it safer to
+lie there till his assailant’s footsteps had grown faint—he did not
+wish to bring him back again. Then he crept out of the bush smarting
+all over. Indeed, his frame of mind was altogether not of the most
+amiable. To begin with, he had just seen his house—which, as luck would
+have it, was the only thing he had not sold to Philip, and which was
+also at the moment uninsured, owing to the confusion arising from the
+transfer of the property—entirely burnt down. All its valuable contents
+too, including a fine collection of pictures and private papers he by
+no means wished to lose, were irretrievably destroyed.
+
+Nor was his mood improved by the recollection of the events of the
+previous night, or by the episode of the bramble-bush, illuminated as
+it was by Arthur’s vigorous language; or by what he had just witnessed,
+for he had arrived in time to see, though from a distance, the last act
+of the interview between Arthur and Angela.
+
+He had seen him lift her in his arms, kiss her, and place her on the
+stone seat, but he did not know that she had fainted. The sight had
+roused his evil passions until they raged like the fire he had left.
+Then Arthur came out upon him and he made acquaintance with the
+bramble-bush as already described. But he was not going to be cheated
+out of his revenge; the woman was still left for him to wreak it on.
+
+By the time he reached Angela, her faculties were reawakening; but,
+though insensibility had yielded, sense had not returned. She sat upon
+the stone seat, upright indeed, but rigid and grasping its angles with
+her hands. The dog had gone. In the undecided way common to dogs, when
+two people to whom they are equally attached separate, it had at that
+moment taken it into its head to run a little way after Arthur.
+
+George marched straight up to her, livid with fury.
+
+“So this is how you go on when your husband is away, is it? I saw you
+kissing that young blackguard, though I am not good enough for you.
+What, won’t you answer? Then it is time that I taught you obedience.”
+
+“Swish!” went the heavy whip through the air, and fell across her fair
+cheek.
+
+“Will that wake you, eh, or must I repeat the dose?”
+
+The pain of the blow seemed to rouse her. She rose, her loosed hair
+falling round her like a golden fleece, and a broad blue stripe across
+her ghastly face. She stretched out her hands; she opened her great
+eyes, and in them blazed the awful light of madness.
+
+He was standing, whip in hand, with his back to the lake; she faced
+him, a breathing, beautiful vengeance, and in a whisper so intense that
+the air was full of it, commenced a rambling prayer.
+
+“Oh, God,” she said, “bless my dear Arthur! Oh, Almighty Father, avenge
+our wrongs!”
+
+She paused and fixed her eyes upon him, and they held him so that he
+could not stir. Then, in strange contrast to the hissing whisper, there
+broke from her lips a ringing and unearthly laugh that chilled him to
+the marrow. So they stood for some seconds.
+
+The sound of angry voices had brought the bulldog back at full speed,
+and, at the sight of George’s threatening attitude, it halted. It had
+always hated him, and now it straightway grew more like a devil than a
+dog. The innate fierceness of the great brute awoke; it bristled with
+fury till each separate hair stood out in knots against the skin, and
+saliva ran from its twitching jaws.
+
+George did not know that it was near him, but Angela’s wild eye fell
+upon it. Slowly raising her hand, she pointed at it.
+
+“Look behind you,” she cried.
+
+The sound of her voice broke the spell that was upon him.
+
+“Come, give me no more of your nonsense,” he said, and then, as much
+from vague fear and rampant brutality as from any other reason, again
+struck her with the whip.
+
+Next second he was aware of a tremendous shock. The dog had seen the
+blow, and had instantly launched itself, with all the blind courage of
+its race, straight at the striker’s throat. It missed its aim, however,
+only carrying away a portion of George’s under-lip. He yelled with
+pain, and struck at it with the whip, and then began a scene which, in
+its grotesque horror, beggars all description. Again and again the dog
+flew at him, its perfect silence contrasting strangely with George’s
+shrieks of terror, and the shrill peals of horrible laughter that came
+hurrying from Angela’s lips as she watched the struggle.
+
+At last the dog gripped the man by the forearm, and, sinking its great
+teeth into the flesh, hung its weight upon it. In vain did George,
+maddened by the exquisite pain, dash himself and the dog against the
+ground: in vain did he stagger round and round the glen, tearing at its
+throat with his uninjured hand. The brute hung grimly on. Presently
+there came an end. As he reeled along, howling for help and dragging
+his fierce burden with him, George stumbled over a dead bough which lay
+upon the bank of the lake, and fell backwards into the water, exactly
+at the spot where the foundations of the old boat-house wall rose to
+within a few inches of the surface. His head struck heavily against the
+stonework, and he and the dog, who would not loose his grip, lay on it
+for a moment, then they rolled off together into the deep pool, the man
+dragging the dog with him. There were a few ripples, stained with
+little red filaments, a few air-bubbles that marked the exhalation of
+his last breath, and George’s spirit had left its enclosing body, and
+gone—whither? Ay, reader, whither had it gone?
+
+The outcry brought Philip and old Jakes running down to the lake. They
+found Angela standing alone on the brink and laughing her wildest.
+
+“See,” she cried, as they came panting up, “the bridegroom cometh from
+his chamber,” and at that moment some unreleased air within the body
+brought it up for an instant to the surface, so that the torn and
+ghastly face and head emerged for a second as though to look at them.
+Then it sank again.
+
+“The brave dog holds him well—ha, ha, ha! He cannot catch me now—ha,
+ha, ha! Nor you, Judas, who sold me. Judas! Judas! Judas!” and,
+turning, she fled with the speed of the wind.
+
+Mr. Fraser had but just come down, and was walking in his garden, when
+he saw this dreadful figure come flying towards him with streaming
+hair.
+
+“_Betrayed_,” she cried, in a voice which rang like the wail of a lost
+soul, and fell on her face at his feet.
+
+When she came back to life they found that she was mad.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX.
+
+
+The news of George Caresfoot’s tragic death was soon common property,
+and following as it did so hard upon his marriage, which now was
+becoming known, and within a few hours of the destruction of his house
+by fire, it caused no little excitement. It cannot be said that the
+general feeling was one of very great regret; it was not. George
+Caresfoot had commanded deference as a rich man, but he certainly had
+not won affection. Still his fate excited general interest and
+sympathy, though some people were louder in their regrets over the
+death of such a plucky dog as Aleck, than over that of the man he
+killed, but then these had a personal dislike of George. When, however,
+it came to be rumoured that the dog had attacked George because George
+had struck the dog’s mistress, general sympathy veered decidedly
+towards the dog. By-and-by, as some of the true facts of the case came
+out, namely, that Angela Caresfoot had gone mad, that her lover, who
+was supposed to be dead, had been seen in Rewtham on the evening of the
+wedding, that the news of Mr. Heigham’s death had been concocted to
+bring about the marriage, and last, but not least, that the Isleworth
+estates had passed into the possession of Philip Caresfoot, public
+opinion grew very excited, and the dog Aleck was well spoken of.
+
+When Sir John Bellamy stepped out on the platform at Roxham on his
+return from London that day, his practised eye saw at once that
+something unusual had occurred. A group of county magistrates returning
+from quarter sessions were talking excitedly together whilst waiting
+for their train. He knew them all well, but at first they seemed
+inclined to let him pass without speaking to him. Presently, however,
+one of them turned, and spoke to him.
+
+“Have you heard about this, Bellamy?”
+
+“No; what?”
+
+“George Caresfoot is dead; killed by a bulldog, or something. They say
+he was thrashing the girl he married yesterday, his cousin’s daughter,
+with a whip, and the dog made for him, and they both fell into the
+water together and were drowned. The girl has gone mad.”
+
+“Good heavens, you don’t say so!”
+
+“Yes, I do, though; and I’ll tell you what it is, Bellamy, they say
+that you and your wife went to Madeira and trumped up a story about her
+lover’s death in order to take the girl in. I tell you this as an old
+friend.”
+
+“What? I certainly went to Madeira, and I saw young Heigham there, but
+I never trumped up any story about his death. I never mentioned him to
+Angela Caresfoot for two reasons, first, because I have not come across
+her, and secondly, because I understood that Philip Caresfoot did not
+wish it.”
+
+“Well, I am glad to hear it, for your sake; but I have just seen
+Fraser, and he tells me that Lady Bellamy told the girl of this young
+Heigham’s death in his own presence, and, what is more, he showed me a
+letter they found in her dress purporting to have been written by him
+on his death-bed which your wife gave her.”
+
+“Of what Lady Bellamy has or has not said or done, I know nothing. I
+have no control over her actions.”
+
+“Well, I should advise you to look into the business, because it will
+all come out at the inquest,” and they separated.
+
+Sir John drove homewards, thoughtful, but by no means unhappy. The news
+of George’s agonizing death was balm to him, he only regretted that he
+had not been there—somewhere well out of the way of the dog, up a tree,
+for instance—to see it.
+
+As soon as he got home, he sent a message to Lady Bellamy to say he
+wished to speak to her. Then he seated himself at his writing-desk, and
+waited. Presently he heard his wife’s firm step upon the stairs. He
+rubbed his dry hands, and smiled a half frightened, wicked little
+smile.
+
+“At last,” he said. “And now for revenge.”
+
+She entered the room, looking rather pale, but calm and commanding as
+ever.
+
+“So you have come back,” she said.
+
+“Yes. Have you heard the news? _Your flame_, George Caresfoot, is
+dead.”
+
+“I knew that he was dead. How did he die?”
+
+“Who told you he was dead?”
+
+“No one, I knew it; I told him he would die last night, and I felt him
+die this morning. Did she kill him or did Arthur Heigham?”
+
+“Neither, that bulldog flew at him and he fell into the lake.”
+
+“Oh, I suppose Angela set it on. I told him that she would win. You
+remember the picture falling in the study at Isleworth. It has been a
+true omen, you see.”
+
+“Angela is mad. The story is all over the country and travelling like
+wild-fire. The letter you forged has been found. Heigham was down here
+this morning and has gone again, and you, Lady Bellamy, are a disgraced
+and ruined woman.”
+
+She did not flinch a muscle.
+
+“I know it, it is the result of pitting myself against that girl; but
+pray, Sir John, what are you? Was it not you who devised the scheme?”
+
+“You are right, I did, to trap two fools. Anne, I have waited twenty
+years, but you have met your master at last.”
+
+Lady Bellamy made a slight exclamation and relapsed into silence.
+
+“My plot has worked well. Already one of you is dead, and for you a
+fate is reserved that is worse than death. You are henceforth a
+penniless outcast, left at forty-two to the tender mercies of the wide
+world.”
+
+“Explain yourself a little.”
+
+“With pleasure. For years I have submitted to your contumely, longing
+to be revenged, waiting to be revenged. You thought me a fool, I know,
+and compared with you I am; but you do not understand what an amount of
+hatred even a fool is capable of. For twenty years, Lady Bellamy, I
+have hated you, you will never know how much, though perhaps what I am
+going to say may give you some idea. I very well knew what terms you
+were on with George Caresfoot, you never took any pains to hide them
+from me, you only hid the proofs. I soon discovered indeed that your
+marriage to me was nothing but a blind, that I was being used as a
+screen forsooth. But your past I could never fathom. I don’t look like
+a revengeful man, but for all that I have for years sought many ways to
+ruin you both, yet from one thing and another they all failed, till a
+blessed chance made that brute’s blind passion the instrument of his
+own destruction, and put you into my hands. You little thought when you
+told me all that story, and begged my advice, how I was revelling in
+the sense that, proud woman as you are, it must have been an agony of
+humiliation for you to have to tell it. It was an instructive scene
+that, it assured me of what I suspected before that George Caresfoot
+must have you bound to him by some stronger ties than those of
+affection, that he must hold you in a grip of iron. It made me think,
+too, that if by any means I could acquire the same power, I too should
+be able to torture you.”
+
+For the first time Lady Bellamy looked up.
+
+“Am I tiring you,” he said, politely, “or shall I go on?”
+
+“Go on.”
+
+“With your permission, I will ring for a glass of sherry—no, claret,
+the day is too hot for sherry,” and he rang.
+
+The claret was brought and he drank a glass, remarking with an
+affectation of coolness that it was a sound wine for a pound a dozen;
+then he proceeded.
+
+“The first thing I have to call your attention to is this Arthur
+Heigham plot. At first it may appear that I am involved with you; I am
+not. There is not, now that George Caresfoot is dead, one tittle of
+evidence against me except your own, and who will believe _you?_ You
+are inculpated up to the eyes; you delivered the forged letter, I can
+prove that you cozened the ring out of Heigham, and you told Philip:
+there is no escape for you, and I have already taken an opportunity to
+renounce any responsibility for your acts. At the inquest I shall
+appear to give evidence against you, and then I shall abandon you to
+your fate.”
+
+“Is that all?”
+
+“No, woman. _I have your letters!_”
+
+She sprang up with a little scream and stood over him with dilated
+eyes. Sir John leaned back in his chair, rubbed his hands, and watched
+her tortured face with evident satisfaction.
+
+“Yes, you may well scream,” he said, “for I not only possess them, but
+I have read and re-read them. I know all your story, the name of the
+husband you deserted and of the child who died of your neglect. I have
+even sent an agent to identify the localities. Yes, you may well
+scream, for I have read them all, and really they are most instructive
+documents, and romantic enough for a novel; such fire, such passionate
+invective, such wild despair. But, since I learnt how and why you
+married me, I will tell you what I have made up my mind to do. I am
+going after the inquest to turn you out of this house, and give you a
+pittance to live on so long as you remain here. I wish you to become a
+visible moral, a walking monument of disgrace in the neighbourhood you
+ruled. Should you attempt to escape me, the payment will be stopped;
+should you obtain employment, your character shall be exposed. At every
+turn you shall be struck down till you learn to kiss the hand that
+strikes you and beg for pity on your knees. My revenge, Anne, shall be
+to break your spirit.”
+
+“And are you not perhaps afraid that I may turn upon you? You know me
+to be a woman of strong will and many resources, some of which you do
+not even understand.”
+
+“No, I am not afraid, because I still have a reserve force; I still
+hold the letters that I stole two days ago; and, even should you murder
+me, I have left directions that will ensure your exposure.”
+
+A pause ensued.
+
+“Have you nothing more to say?” he said, at last.
+
+“Nothing.”
+
+“Supposing, Anne, that I were to tell you that I have been trying to
+frighten you, and that if you were to go down on your knees before me
+now, and beg my forgiveness, I would forgive you—no, not forgive you,
+but let you off with easier terms—would you do it?”
+
+“No, John, I would not. Once I went on my knees to a man, and I have
+not forgotten the lesson he taught me. Do your worst.”
+
+“Then you understand my terms, and accept them?”
+
+“Understand them! yes. I understand that you are a little-minded man,
+and, like all little-minded men, cruel, and desirous of exacting the
+uttermost farthing in the way of revenge, forgetting that you owe
+everything to me. I do not wish to exculpate myself, mind you. Looking
+at the case from your point of view, and in your own petty way, I can
+almost sympathize with you. But as for accepting your terms—do you know
+me so little as to think that I could do so? Have you not learnt that I
+may break, but shall never bend? And, if I chose now to face the matter
+out, I should beat you, even now when you hold all the cards in your
+hand; but I am weary of it all, especially weary of you and your little
+ways, and I do not choose. You will injure me enough to make the great
+success I planned for us both impossible, and I am tired of everything
+except the success which crowns a struggle. Well, I have ways of escape
+you know nothing of. Do your worst; I am not afraid of you;” and she
+leaned back easily in her chair, and looked at him with wearied and
+indifferent eyes.
+
+Little Sir John ground his teeth, and twisted his pippen-like face into
+a scowl that looked absurdly out of place on anything so jovial.
+
+“Curse you,” he said, “even now you dare to defy me. Do you know, you
+woman fiend, that at this moment I almost think I love you?”
+
+“Of course I know it. If you did not love me, you would not take all
+this trouble to try to crush me. But this conversation is very long;
+shall we put an end to it?”
+
+Sir John sat still a moment, thinking, and gazing at the splendid
+Sphinx-browed creature before him with a mixture of hatred and respect.
+Then he rose, and spoke.
+
+“Anne, you are a wonderful woman! I cannot do it, I cannot utterly ruin
+you. You must be exposed—I could not help that, if I would—and we must
+separate, but I will be generous to you; I will allow you five hundred
+a year, and you shall live where you like. You shall not starve.”
+
+She laughed a little as she answered.
+
+“I am starving now: it is long past luncheon time. As for your five
+hundred a year that you will give me out of the three or four thousand
+I have given you, I care nothing for it. I tell you I am tired of it
+all, and I never felt more superior to you than I do now in the moment
+of your triumph. It wants a stronger hand than yours to humble me. I
+may be a bad woman, I daresay I am, but you will find, too late, that
+there are few in the world like me. For years you have shone with a
+reflected light; when the light goes out, you will go out too. Get back
+into your native mud, the mental slime out of which I picked you,
+contemptible creature that you are! and, when you have lost me, learn
+to measure the loss by the depths to which you will sink. I reject your
+offers. I mock at your threats, for they will recoil on your own head.
+I despise you, and I have done with you. John Bellamy, good- bye;” and,
+with a proud curtsey, she swept from the room.
+
+That evening it was rumoured that Sir John Bellamy had separated from
+his wife, owing to circumstances which had come to his knowledge in
+connection with George Caresfoot’s death.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX.
+
+
+That same afternoon, Lady Bellamy ordered out the victoria with the
+fast trotting horse, and drove to the Abbey House. She found Philip
+pacing up and down the gravel in front of the grey old place, which had
+that morning added one more to the long list of human tragedies its
+walls had witnessed. His face was pale, and contorted by mental
+suffering, and, as soon as he recognized Lady Bellamy, he made an
+effort to escape. She stopped him.
+
+“I suppose it is here, Mr. Caresfoot?”
+
+“It! What?”
+
+“The body.”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“I wish to see it.”
+
+Philip hesitated a minute, and then led the way to his study. The
+corpse had been laid upon the table just as it had been taken from the
+water; indeed, the wet still fell in heavy drops from the clothes on to
+the ground. It was to be removed to Roxham that evening, to await the
+inquest on the morrow. The shutters of the room had been closed, lest
+the light should strike too fiercely on the ghastly sight; but even in
+the twilight Lady Bellamy could discern every detail of its outline
+clearly marked by the wet patches on the sheet which was thrown loosely
+over it. On a chair, by the side of the table, above the level of which
+its head rose, giving it the appearance of being in the act of climbing
+on to it, lay the carcass of the dog, its teeth still firmly set in the
+dead man’s arm. They had been unable to unlock the savage grip without
+hacking its jaws asunder, and this it was not thought advisable to do
+till after the inquest.
+
+At the door Philip paused, as though he did not mean to enter.
+
+“Come in,” said Lady Bellamy; “surely you are not afraid of a dead
+man.”
+
+“I fear the dead a great deal more than I do the living,” he muttered,
+but came in and shut the door.
+
+As soon as her eyes had grown accustomed to the light, Lady Bellamy
+went up to the body, and, drawing off the sheet, gazed long and
+steadily at the mutilated face, on the lips of which the bloody froth
+still stood.
+
+“I told him last night,” she said presently to Philip, “that we should
+never meet again alive, but I did not think to see him so soon like
+this. Do you know that I once loved that thing, that shattered brain
+directed the only will to which I ever bowed? But the love went out for
+ever last night, the chain snapped, and now I can look upon this sight
+without a single sigh or a regret, with nothing but loathing and
+disgust. There lies the man who ruined me—did you know it? I do not
+care who knows it now—ruined me with his eyes open, not caring anything
+about me; there lies the hard task-master whom I served through so many
+years, the villain who drove me against my will into this last crime
+which has thus brought its reward. The dog gave him his just due; look,
+its teeth still hold him, as fast, perhaps, as the memories of his
+crimes will hold him where he has gone. Regret him! sorrow for him! no,
+oh no! I can curse him as he lies, villain, monster, devil that he
+was!”
+
+She paused, and even in the dim light Philip could see her bosom heave
+and her great eyes flash with the fierceness of her excitement.
+
+“You should not talk so of the dead,” he said.
+
+“You are right,” she answered; “he has gone beyond the reach of my
+words, but the thought of all the misery I have suffered at his hands
+made me for a moment mad. Cover it up again, the vile frame which held
+a viler soul; to the earth with the one, to undreamed of sorrow with
+the other, each to its appointed place. How does it run?—‘The wages of
+sin is death.’ Yes, that is right. He is dead; the blow fell first on
+him, that was right, and I am about to die; and you—what will happen to
+you, the Judas of the plot, eh? You do not think that you will enjoy
+your blood-money in peace, do you?”
+
+“What do you mean?” asked Philip, nervously; her wild way frightened
+him.
+
+“Mean! why, that you are the sorriest knave of all. This man was at
+least led on to crime by passion; Bellamy entered into it to work out a
+secret revenge, poor fool; I acted because I couldn’t help myself at
+first, and then for the sake of the game itself, for when I take a
+thing in my hand, I _will_ succeed. But you, Philip Caresfoot, you sold
+your own flesh and blood for money or money’s worth, and you are the
+worst of all—worse than George, for even a brutal love is a nobler
+thing than avarice like yours. Well, as the sin is, so will the
+punishment be.”
+
+“It is a lie! I thought that he was dead.”
+
+“You thought that Arthur Heigham was dead!—then I read your thoughts
+very wrongly when we met upon the road on Christmas Day. You wished to
+think that he was dead, but you did not think it. Even now your
+conscience is making a coward of you, and, as you said just now, for
+you the silence of the dead is more terrible than the accusations of
+the living. I know a little about you, Philip. Do you not see shadows
+on your walls, and do not departed voices come to haunt you in your
+sleep? I know you do, and I will tell you this—the _Things_ which you
+have suffered from at times shall henceforth be your continual
+companions. If you can pray, pray with all your strength that your
+daughter may not die; for, if she does, her shadow will always be there
+to haunt you with the rest. Why do you tremble so at the mere mention
+of a spirit? Stand still, and I will show you one. I can if I like.”
+
+Philip could stand it no longer. With a curse he burst out of the room.
+Presently she followed him, and found him standing in front of the
+house, wiping the cold perspiration from his forehead.
+
+“You accursed woman,” he said, “go, and never come near this house
+again!”
+
+“I never shall come to this house again,” she answered. “Ah, here is my
+carriage. Good-bye, Philip Caresfoot. You are a very wealthy man
+now—worth I do not know how many thousands a year. You have been
+singularly fortunate—you have accomplished your ends. Few people can do
+that. May the accomplishment bring happiness with it! If you wish it to
+do so, stifle your conscience, and do not let your superstitions affect
+you. But, by the way, you know French, do you not? Then here is a maxim
+that, in parting, I recommend to your attention—it has some truth in
+it: Il y a une page effrayante dans le livre des destinees humaines: on
+y lit en tête ces mots ‘les desirs accomplis.’” And she was gone.
+
+“I owed him a debt for tempting George on in that business,” thought
+Lady Bellamy to herself, as she rolled swiftly down the avenue of giant
+walnuts; “but I think that I have repaid it. The thorn I have planted
+will fester in his flesh till he dies of the sore. Superstition run
+wild in his weak mind will make the world a hell for him, and that is
+what I wish.”
+
+Presently she stopped the carriage, and walked to the top of a little
+knoll commanding what had been Isleworth Hall, but was now a black
+smoking blot on the landscape. The white front of the house was still
+standing, though riven from top to bottom, and through its empty
+window-places the westering sun poured great streams of fire which
+looked like flame shining through the eye-sockets of a gigantic skull.
+
+“I did that well,” she said; “and yet how blind I was! I should have
+known that he spoke the truth when he said the letters were not there.
+My skill failed me—it always does fail at need. I thought the fire
+would reach them somehow.”
+
+When she arrived at Rewtham House, she found that Sir John had left,
+taking luggage with him, and stating that he was going to put up at an
+inn at Roxham. On the hall-table, too, lay a summons to attend the
+inquest on the body of George Caresfoot, which was to take place on the
+morrow. She tore it across. Then she went up and dressed herself for
+dinner with such splendour that her maid thought it necessary to remind
+her that there was no company coming.
+
+“No,” she said, with a strange smile; “but I am going out to-night.
+Give me my sapphire necklace.”
+
+She sat through dinner, and afterwards went into the drawing-room, and
+opening a despatch-box, read and burnt a great number of papers.
+
+“There go the keys to my knowledge,” she said aloud, as they flickered
+and fell into ashes. “No one shall reap the fruits of my labours; and
+yet it is a pity—I was on the right track, and, though I could never
+have succeeded, another might. I had the key, though I could not find
+the lock. I must go through with it now. I cannot live deprived both of
+success and of my secret power, and I could never begin and climb that
+stair again.”
+
+Then, from a secret drawer in the despatch-box, she extracted a little
+phial, tightly stoppered and sealing-waxed. She examined it closely,
+and looked at the liquid in it against the light.
+
+“My medicine has taken no harm during this twenty years,” she thought.
+“It still looks what it is—strong enough to kill a giant, and subtle
+enough to leave little trace upon a child.” Then she shut up the
+despatch-box and put it away, and, going to the open window, looked up
+at the stars, and then down at the shadows flung by the clouds as they
+swept across the moon.
+
+“Shadows,” she mused, “below, and gleams of light between the shadows
+—that is like our life. Light above—pure, clear, eternal—that is like
+the wider life. And between the two—the night, and above them both—the
+stars.
+
+“In the immensity, where shall I find my place? Oh, that I might sleep
+eternally! Yes, that would be best of all—to sink into sleep never
+ending, unbroken, and unbreakable, to be absorbed into the cool
+vastness of the night, and lie in her great arms for ever. Oh, Night!
+whom I have ever loved, you bring your sleep to wearied millions— bring
+_me_ sleep eternal. But no, the stars are above the night, and above
+the stars is—what? Yes; the hour I dread like every other mortal with
+my body, and yet dare to long for with my spirit, has come. I am about
+to cast off Time, and pass into Eternity, to spring from the giddy
+heights of Space into the uncertain arms of the Infinite. Yet a few
+minutes, and my essence, my vital part, will start upon its endless
+course, and passing far above those stars, will find the fount of that
+knowledge of which it has already sipped, and drink and drink till it
+grows like a God, and can look upon the truth and not be blinded. Such
+are my high hopes. And yet—if there be a hell! My life has been evil,
+my sins many. What if there be an avenging Power waiting, as some
+think, to grind me into powder, and then endow each crushed particle
+with individual sense of endless misery? What if there be a hell! In a
+few minutes, or what will seem but a few minutes —for surely, to the
+disembodied spirit, time cannot exist; though it sleep a billion years,
+it will be as a breath—I shall have solved the problem. I shall know
+what all the panic-stricken millions madly ask, and ask in vain! Yes, I
+shall know if _there is a hell!_ Well, if there be, then I shall rule
+there, for power is native to my soul. Let me hesitate no longer, but
+go and solve the problem before I grow afraid. Afraid—I am not afraid.
+‘I have immortal longings in me.’ Who was it said that? Oh, Cleopatra!
+Was Cleopatra more beautiful than I am, I wonder? I am sure that she
+was not so great; for, had I been her, Antony should have driven Caesar
+out of Egypt. Oh! if I could have loved with a pure and perfect love as
+other women may, and intertwined my destiny with that of some _great_
+man—some being of a nature kindred to my own—I should have been good
+and happy, and he should have ruled this country. But Fate and Fortune,
+grown afraid of what I should do, linked my life to a soulless brute!
+and, alas! like him I have fallen—fallen irretrievably!”
+
+She closed the window, and, coming into the room, rang the bell.
+
+“Bring me some wine,” she said to the servant. “I do not feel well.”
+
+“What wine, my lady?”
+
+“Champagne.”
+
+The wine was brought, and stood, uncorked, upon the table.
+
+“That will do,” she said. “Tell my maid not to sit up for me: it will
+be late before I go to bed to-night.”
+
+The man bowed and went, and she poured out some of the sparkling wine,
+and then, taking the little phial, opened it with difficulty, and
+emptied its contents into the glass. The wine boiled up furiously,
+turned milk-white, and then cleared again; but the poison had destroyed
+its sparkle—it was dead as ditch-water.
+
+“That is strange,” she said, “I never saw that effect before.” Next she
+took the phial and powdered it into a pinch of tiny dust with a whale’s
+tooth that lay upon the table. The dust she took to the window and
+threw out, a little at a time. Lady Bellamy wished to die as she had
+lived, a mystery. Then she came and stood over the deadly draught she
+had compounded, and thought sometimes aloud and sometimes to herself.
+
+“I have heard it said that suicides are cowards; let those who say it,
+stand as I stand to-night, with death lying in the little circle of a
+glass before them, and they will know whether they are cowards, or if
+they are spirits of a braver sort than those who can bear to drudge to
+the bitter end of life. It is not yet too late. I can throw that stuff
+away. I can leave this place and begin life anew in some other country,
+my jewels will give me the means, and, for the matter of that, I can
+always win as much money as I want. But, no; then I must begin again,
+and for that I have not the patience or the time. Besides, I long to
+_know_, to solve the mystery. Come, let me make an end, I will chance
+it. Spirits like my own wear their life only while it does not gall
+them; if it begins to fret, they cast it from them like a half-worn
+dress, scorning to wrap it round them till it drops away in rags.”
+
+She raised the glass.
+
+“How lonely this place is, and how still, and yet it may well be that
+there are millions round me watching what I do. Why does he come into
+my mind now, that good man, and the child I bore him? Shall I see them
+presently? Will they crush me with their reproaches? And—have my nerves
+broken down?—Is it fancy, or does that girl’s pale face, with warning
+in her eyes, float between me and the wall? Well, I will drink to her,
+for her mind could even overtop my own. She was, at least, my equal,
+and I have driven her mad! Let me taste this stuff.”
+
+Lifting the glass to her lips, she drank a little, and set it down. The
+effect was almost magical. Her eyes blazed, a new beauty bloomed upon
+her cheek, her whole grand presence seemed to gain in majesty. The
+quick drug for a moment burnt away the curtain between the seen and the
+unseen, and yet left her living.
+
+“Ah,” she cried, in the silence of the room, “how it runs along my
+veins; I hear the rushing of the stars, I see strange worlds, my soul
+leaps through infinite spaces, the white light of immortality strikes
+upon my eyes and blinds me. Come, life unending, I have conquered
+death.”
+
+Seizing the poison, she swallowed what remained of it, and dashed the
+glass down beside her. Then she fell heavily on her face, once she
+struggled to her knees, then fell again, and lay still.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXI.
+
+
+After throwing George Caresfoot into the bramble-bush, Arthur walked
+steadily back to the inn, where he arrived, quite composed in manner,
+at about half-past seven. Old Sam, the ostler, was in the yard, washing
+a trap. He went up to him, and asked when the next train started for
+London.
+
+“There is one as leaves Roxham at nine o’clock, sir, and an uncommon
+fast one, I’m told. But you bean’t a-going yet, be you, sir?”
+
+“Yes, have the gig ready in time to catch the train.”
+
+“Very good, sir. Been to the fire, I suppose sir?” he went on, dimly
+perceiving that Arthur’s clothes were torn. “It wore a fine place, it
+wore, and it did blaze right beautiful.”
+
+“No; what fire?”
+
+“Bless me, sir, didn’t you see it last night?—why, Isleworth Hall, to
+be sure. It wore burnt right out, and all as was in it.”
+
+“Oh! How did it come to get burnt?”
+
+“Can’t say, sir, but I did hear say how as Lady Bellamy was a-dining
+there last night along with the squire; the squire he went out
+somewhere, my lady she goes home, and the footman he goes to put out
+the lamp and finds the drawing-room a roaring fiery furnace, like as
+parson tells us on. But I don’t know how that can be, for I heard how
+as the squire was a-dying, so ‘taint likely that he was a-going out.
+But, lord, sir, folk in these parts do lie that uncommon, ‘taint as it
+be when I was a boy. As like as no, he’s no more dying than you are.
+Anyhow, sir, it all burned like tinder, and the only thing, so I’m
+told, as was saved was a naked stone statty of a girl with a chain
+round her wrists, as Jim Blakes, our constable, being in liquor,
+brought out in his arms, thinking how as it was alive, and tried to
+rewive it with cold water.”
+
+At that moment Sam’s story was interrupted by the arrival of a farmer’s
+cart.
+
+“How be you, Sam?”
+
+“Well, I thank yer, for seventy-two, that is, not particular ill.”
+
+“Have you a gentleman of the name of Heigham staying here?”
+
+“I am he,” said Arthur, “do you want me?”
+
+“No, sir, only the station-master at Roxham asked me to drop this here
+as it was marked immediate,” and he handed Arthur a box.
+
+Arthur thanked him, and, taking it, went up to his room, leaving old
+Sam delighted to find a new listener to his story of the fire.
+
+It was from the florist, and contained the bouquet he had meant to give
+Angela on her wedding-day. It had cost him a good deal of thought that
+bouquet, to say nothing of five guineas of the coin of the realm, and
+he felt a certain curiosity to look at it, though to do so gave him
+something of the same sensation that we experience in reading a letter
+written by some loved hand which we know grew cold before the lines it
+traced could reach us. He took the box to his room and opened it. The
+bouquet was a lovely thing, and did credit even to Covent Garden, and
+the masses of stephanotis and orange-bloom, relieved here and there by
+rising sprays of lilies-of-the-valley, filled the whole room with
+fragrance.
+
+He drew it from the zinc-well in which it was packed in moss and
+cotton-wool, and wondered what he should do with it. He could not leave
+such a thing about, nor would he take it away. Suddenly an idea struck
+him, and he repacked it in its case as carefully as he could in the
+original moss and cotton-wool, and then looked about for the sheet of
+tissue-paper that should complete the covering. He had destroyed it,
+and had to search for a substitute. In so doing his eye fell upon a
+long envelope on his dressing-table and he smiled. It contained his
+marriage licence, and he bethought him that it was a very fair
+substitute for tissue-paper, and quite as worthless. He extracted it,
+and, placing it over the flowers, closed up the box. Then he carefully
+directed it to “Mrs. George Caresfoot, Abbey House,” and, ringing the
+bell, desired the boots to find a messenger to take it over.
+
+When he had done all this, he sat down and wondered what could have
+come to him that he could take pleasure in doing a cruel action only
+worthy of a jealous woman.
+
+Perhaps of all the bitter cups which are held to our lips in this sad
+world there is none more bitter than that which it was his lot to drink
+of now. To begin with, the blow fell in youth, when we love or hate, or
+act, with an ardour and an entire devotion that we give to nothing in
+after-life. It is then that the heart puts forth its most tender and
+yet its most lusty shoots, and if they are crushed the whole plant
+suffers, and sometimes bleeds to death. Arthur had, to an extent quite
+unrealized by himself until he lost her, centred all his life in this
+woman, and it was no exaggeration to say, as he had said to her, that
+she had murdered his heart, and withered up all that was best in it.
+She had done more, she had inflicted the most cruel injury upon him
+that a woman can inflict upon a man. She had shaken his belief in her
+sex at large.
+
+He felt, sitting there in his desolation, that now he had lost Angela
+he could never be the same man he would otherwise have been. Her cruel
+desertion had shattered the tinted glass through which youth looks at
+the world, and he now, before his day, saw it as it is, grim and hard,
+and full of coarse realities, and did not yet know that time would
+again soften down the sharpest of the rough outlines, and throw a
+garment of its own over the nakedness of life. He was a generous-
+hearted man and not a vain one, and had he thought that Angela had
+ceased to care for him and loved this other man, he could have found it
+in his heart to forgive her, and even to sympathize with her; but he
+could not think this. Something told him that it was not so. She had
+contracted herself into a shameful, loveless marriage, and, to gain
+ends quite foreign to all love, had raised a barrier between them which
+had no right to exist, and yet one that in this world could, he
+thought, never be removed.
+
+Misfortunes rain upon us from every quarter of the sky, but so long as
+they come from the sky we can bear them, for they are beyond the
+control of our own volition, and must be accepted, as we accept the
+gale or the lightning. It is the troubles which spring from our own
+folly and weakness, or from that of those with whom our lives are
+intertwined, which really crush us. Now Arthur knew enough of the world
+to be aware that there is no folly to equal that of a woman who, of her
+own free will, truly loving one man whom she can marry if she wills it,
+deliberately gives herself to another. It is not only a folly, it is a
+crime, and, like most crimes, for this life, an irretrievable mistake.
+
+Long before he got back to London, the first unwholesome exaltation of
+mind that always follows a great misfortune, and which may perhaps be
+compared with the excitement that for awhile covers the shameful sense
+of defeat in an army, had evaporated, and he began to realize the
+crushing awfulness of the blow which had fallen on him, and to fear
+lest it should drive him mad. He looked round his little horizon for
+some straw of comfort at which to catch, and could find none; nothing
+but dreadful thoughts and sickening visions.
+
+And then suddenly, just as he was sinking into the dulness of despair,
+there came, like the first gleam of light in chaotic darkness, the
+memory of Mildred Carr. Truly she had spoken prophetically. His idol
+had been utterly cast down and crushed to powder by a hand stronger
+than his own. He would go to her in his suffering; perhaps she could
+find means to comfort him.
+
+When he reached town he took a hansom and went to look for some rooms;
+he would not return to those he had left on the previous afternoon, for
+the sympathetic landlord had helped him to pack up the wedding clothes
+and had admired the wedding gift. Arthur felt that he could not face
+him again. He found some to suit him in Duke Street, St. James, and
+left his things there. Thence he drove to Fenchurch Street and took a
+passage to Madeira. The clerk, the same one who had given him his
+ticket about a year before, remembered him perfectly, and asked him how
+he got on with Mrs. Carr. But when his passage was taken he was
+disgusted to find that the mail did not sail for another five days. He
+looked at his watch, it was only half-past one o’clock. He could
+scarcely believe what had happened had only occurred that morning, only
+seven hours ago. It seemed to him that he had stood face to face with
+Angela, not that morning, but years ago, and miles away, on some
+desolate shore which lay on the other side of a dead ocean of pain. And
+yet it was only seven hours! If the hours went with such heavy wings,
+how would the days pass, and the months, and the years?
+
+What should he do with himself? In his condition perpetual activity was
+as necessary to him as air, he must do something to dull the sharp edge
+of his suffering, or the sword of madness which hung over him by such a
+slender thread would fall. Suddenly he bethought him of a man whom he
+had known slightly up at Cambridge, a man of wealth and evil
+reputation. This man would, he felt, be able to put him in a way of
+getting through his time. He knew his address and thither he drove.
+
+Four days later, a figure, shrunk, shaky, and looking prematurely old,
+with the glaze of intoxication scarcely faded from his eye, walked into
+Mr. Borley’s office. That respectable gentleman looked and looked
+again.
+
+“Good Heavens,” he said at length; “it isn’t Arthur Heigham.”
+
+“Yes, it is, though,” said an unequal voice; “I’ve come for some money.
+I’ve got none left and I am going to Madeira to-morrow.”
+
+“My dear boy, what has happened to you? You look so very strange. I
+have been expecting to see your marriage in the paper. Why, it’s only a
+few days ago that you left to be married.”
+
+“A few days, a few years, you mean. I’ve been jilted, that’s all,
+nothing to speak of, you know, but I had rather not talk about it, if
+you don’t mind. I’m like a nag with a flayed back, don’t like the sight
+of the saddle at present,” and poor Arthur, mentally and physically
+exhausted, put his head down on his arm and gulped.
+
+The old lawyer took in the situation at a glance.
+
+“Hard hit,” he said to himself; “and gone on to the burst,” and then
+aloud, “well, well, that has happened to many a man, in fact, you
+mightn’t believe it, but it once happened to me, and I don’t look much
+the worse, do I? But we won’t talk about it. The less said of a bad
+business the better, that’s my maxim. And so you are going abroad
+again. Have you got any friends at Madeira?”
+
+Arthur nodded.
+
+“And you want some more money. Let me see, I sent you 200 pounds last
+week.”
+
+“That was for my wedding tour. I’ve spent it now. You can guess how I
+have spent it. Pleasant contrast, isn’t it? Gives rise to moral
+reflections.”
+
+“Come, come, Heigham, you must not give way like that. These things
+happen to most men in the course of their lives, and if they are wise
+it teaches them that gingerbread isn’t all gilt, and to set down women
+at their proper value, and appreciate a good one if it pleases
+Providence to give them one in course of time. Don’t you go making a
+fool of yourself over this girl’s pretty face. Handsome is as handsome
+does. These things are hard to bear, I know, but you don’t make them
+any better by pitching your own reputation after a girl’s want of
+stability.”
+
+“I know that you are quite right, and I am much obliged to you for your
+kind advice, but we won’t say anything more about it. I suppose that
+you can let me have some money?”
+
+“Oh yes, if you want it, though I think we shall have to overdraw. What
+do you want? Two hundred? Here is the cheque.”
+
+“I am anxious about that young fellow,” said Mr. Borley to himself, in
+the pause between Arthur’s departure and the entry of the next client.
+“I hope his disappointment won’t send him to the dogs. He is not of the
+sort who take it easy, like I did, for instance. Dear me, that is a
+long while ago now. I wonder what the details of his little affair
+were, and who the girl married. Captain Shuffle! yes, show him in.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXII.
+
+
+Next morning Arthur cashed his cheque, and started on his travels. He
+had no very clear idea why he was going back to Madeira, or what he
+meant to do when he got there; but then, at this painful stage of his
+existence, none of his ideas could be called clear. Though he did not
+realize it, what he was searching for was sympathy, female sympathy of
+course; for in trouble members of either sex gravitate instinctively to
+the other for comfort. Perhaps they do not quite trust their own, or
+perhaps they are afraid of being laughed at.
+
+Arthur’s was not one of those natures that can lock their griefs within
+the bosom, and let them lie there till in process of time they shrivel
+away. Except among members of the peerage, as pictured in current
+literature, these stern, proud creatures are not common. Man, whether
+he figures in the world as a peer or a hedge-carpenter, is, as a matter
+of fact, mentally as well as physically, gregarious, and adverse to
+loneliness either in his joys or sorrows.
+
+Decidedly, too, the homoeopathic system must be founded on great
+natural facts, and there is philosophy, born of the observation of
+human nature, in the somewhat vulgar proverb that recommends a “hair of
+the dog that bit you.” Otherwise, nine men out of every ten who have
+been badly treated, or think that they have been badly treated, by a
+woman, would not at once rush headlong for refuge to another, a
+proceeding which also, in nine cases out of ten, ends in making
+confusion worse confounded.
+
+Arthur, though he was not aware of it, was exemplifying a natural law
+that has not yet been properly explained. But, even if he had known it,
+it is doubtful if the knowledge would have made him any happier; for it
+is irritating to reflect that we are the slaves of natural laws, that
+our action is not the outcome of our own volition, but of a vague force
+working silently as the Gulf Stream—since such knowledge makes a man
+measure his weakness, and so strikes at his tenderest point, his
+vanity.
+
+But, whilst we have been reflecting together, my reader and I, Arthur
+was making his way to Madeira, so we may as well all come to a halt off
+Funchal.
+
+Very shortly after the vessel had dropped her anchor, Arthur was
+greeted by his friend, the manager of “Miles’ Hotel.”
+
+“Glad to see you, sir, though I can’t say that you look well. I
+scarcely expected to find anybody for us at this time of year. Business
+is very slack in the summer.”
+
+“Yes, I suppose that Madeira is pretty empty.”
+
+“There is nobody here at all, sir.”
+
+“Is Mrs. Carr gone, then?” asked Arthur, in some alarm.
+
+“No; she is still here. She has not been away this year. But she has
+been very quiet; no parties or anything, which makes people think that
+she has lost money.”
+
+By this time the boat was rising on the roll of the last billow, to be
+caught next moment by a dozen hands, and dragged up the shingle. It was
+evening, or rather, verging that way, and from under the magnolia-
+trees below the cathedral there came the sound of the band summoning
+the inhabitants of Funchal to congregate, chatter, and flirt.
+
+“I think,” said Arthur, “that I will ask you to take my things up to
+the hotel. I will come by-and-by. I should like the same room I had
+before, if it is empty.”
+
+“Very good, Mr. Heigham. You will have the place nearly all to yourself
+now.”
+
+Having seen his baggage depart, Arthur turned, and resisting the
+importunities of beggars, guides, and parrot-sellers, who had not yet
+recognized him as an old hand, made his way towards the Quinta Carr.
+How well he knew the streets and houses, even to the withered faces of
+the women who sat by the doors, and yet he seemed to have grown old
+since he had seen them. Ten minutes of sharp walking brought him to the
+gates of the Quinta, and he paused before them, and thought how, a few
+months ago, he had quitted them, miserable at the grief of another, now
+to re-enter them utterly crushed by his own.
+
+He walked on through the beautiful gardens to the house. The hall-door
+stood open. He did not wait to ring, but, driven by some impulse,
+entered. After the glare of the sun, which at that time of the year was
+powerful even in its decline, the carefully shaded hall seemed quite
+dark. But by degrees his eyes adapted themselves to the altered light,
+and began to distinguish the familiar outline of the furniture. Next
+they travelled to the door of the drawing-room, where another sight
+awaited them. For there, herself a perfect picture, standing in the
+doorway for a frame, her hands outstretched in welcome, and a loving
+smile upon her lips, was Mildred.
+
+“I was waiting for you,” she said, gently. “I thought that you would
+come.”
+
+“Mildred, my idol has been cast down, and, as you told me to do, I have
+come back to you.”
+
+“Dear,” she answered, “you are very welcome.”
+
+And then came Miss Terry, pleased with all her honest heart to see him,
+and utterly ignorant of the fierce currents that swept under the smooth
+surface of their little social sea. Miss Terry was not by nature a keen
+observer.
+
+“Dear me, Mr. Heigham, who would have thought of seeing you again so
+soon? You _are_ brave to cross the bay so often” (her thoughts ran a
+great deal on the Bay of Biscay); “but I don’t think you look quite
+well, you have such black lines under your eyes, and, I declare,
+there’s a grey hair!”
+
+“Oh, I assure you your favourite bay was enough to turn anybody’s hair
+grey, Miss Terry.”
+
+And so, talking cheerfully, they went in to the pleasant little dinner,
+Mildred leaning over so slightly on his arm, and gazing into his sad
+face with full and happy eyes. After all that he had gone through, it
+seemed to Arthur as though he had dropped into a haven of rest.
+
+“See here,” said Mildred, when they rose from table, “a wonder has come
+to pass since you deserted us. Look, sceptic that you are!” and she led
+him to the window, and, lifting a glass shade which protected a
+flower-pot, showed him a green spike peeping from the soil.
+
+“What is that?”
+
+“What is it?—why, it is the mummy hyacinth which you declared that we
+should never see blossom in this world. It has budded; whether or not
+it will blossom, who can say?”
+
+“It is an omen,” he said, with a little laugh; and for the first time
+that evening their eyes met.
+
+“Come into the garden, and you can smoke on the museum verandah; it is
+pleasant there these hot nights.”
+
+“It is dangerous, your garden.”
+
+She laughed softly. “You have proved yourself superior to danger.”
+
+Then they passed out together. The evening was still and very sultry.
+Not a breath stirred the silence of the night. The magnolia, the moon-
+flower, and a thousand other blooms poured out their fragrance upon the
+surrounding air, where it lay in rich patches, like perfume thrown on
+water. A thin mist veiled the sea, and the little wavelets struck with
+a sorrowful sound against the rock below.
+
+“Tell me all about it, Arthur.”
+
+She had settled herself upon a long low chair, and as she leant back
+the starlight glanced white upon her arms and bosom.
+
+“There is not much to tell. It is a common story—at least, I believe
+so. She threw me over, and the day before I should have married her,
+married another man.”
+
+“Well?”
+
+“Well, I saw her the morning following her marriage. I do not remember
+what I said, but I believe I spoke what was in my mind. She fainted,
+and I left her.”
+
+“Ah, you spoke harshly, perhaps.”
+
+“Spoke harshly! Now that I have had time to think of it, I wish that I
+could have had ten imaginations to shape my thoughts, and ten tongues
+to speak them with! Do you understand what this woman has done? She has
+sold herself to a brute—oh, Mildred, such a brute—she has deserted me
+for a man who is not even a gentleman.”
+
+“Perhaps she was forced into it.”
+
+“Forced!—nonsense; we are not in the Middle Ages. A good woman should
+have been forced to drown herself before she consented to commit such a
+sacrilege against herself as to marry a man she hated. But she, ‘my
+love, my dove, my undefiled’—she whom I thought whiter than the snow
+—she could do this, and do it deliberately. I had rather have seen her
+dead, and myself dead with her.”
+
+“Don’t you take a rather exaggerated view, Arthur? Don’t you think,
+perhaps, that some of the fault lies with you for overrating women?
+Believe me, so far as my experience goes, and I have seen a good many,
+the majority of them do not possess the exalted purity of mind you and
+many very young men attribute to them. They are, on the contrary, for
+the most part quite ready to exercise a wise discretion in the matter
+of marriage, even when the feeble tendencies which represent their
+affections point another way. A little pressure goes a long way with
+them; they are always glad to make the most of it; it is the dust they
+throw up to hide their retreat. Your Angela, for instance, was no
+doubt, and probably still is, very fond of you. You are a charming
+young man, with nice eyes and a taking way with women, and she would
+very much have liked to marry you; but then she also liked her cousin’s
+estates. She could not have both, and, being forced to choose, she
+chose the latter. You should take a common-sense view of the matter;
+you are not the first who has suffered. Women, especially young women,
+who do not understand the value of affection, must be very much in love
+before they submit to the self-sacrifice that is supposed to be
+characteristic of them, and what men talk of as stains upon them they
+do not consider as such. They know, if they know nothing else, that a
+good income and an establishment will make them perfectly clean in the
+opinion of their own small world—a little world of shams and forms that
+cares nothing for the spirit of the moral law, provided the letter is
+acted up to. It is by this that they mark their standard of personal
+virtues, not by the high rule you men imagine for them. There is no
+social fuller’s soap so effectual as money and position.”
+
+“You speak like a book, and give your own sex a high character. Tell
+me, then, would you do such a thing?”
+
+“I, Arthur? How can you ask me? I had rather be torn to pieces by wild
+horses. I spoke of the majority of the women, not of them all.”
+
+“Ah, and yet she could do it, and I thought her better than you.”
+
+“I do not think that you should speak bitterly of her, Arthur; I think
+that you should be sorry for her.”
+
+“Sorry for her? Why?”
+
+“Because from what I have gathered about her, she is not quite an
+ordinary young woman: however badly she may have treated you, she is a
+person of refined feelings and susceptibilities. Is it not so?”
+
+“Without a doubt.”
+
+“Well, then, you should pity her, because she will bitterly expiate her
+mistake. For myself, I do not pity her much, because I will not waste
+my sympathy on a fool; for, to my mind, the woman who could do what she
+has done, and deliberately throw away everything that can make life
+really worth living to us women, is a most contemptible fool. But you
+love her, and, therefore, you should be sorry for her.”
+
+“But why?”
+
+“Because she is a woman who at one-and-twenty has buried all the higher
+part of life, who has, of her own act, for ever deprived herself of
+joys that nothing else can bring her. Love, true love, is almost the
+only expression, of which we women are capable, of all the nobler
+instincts and vague yearnings after what is higher and better than the
+things we see and feel around us. When we love most, and love happily,
+then we are at our topmost bent, and soar further above the earth than
+anything else can carry us. Consequently, when a woman is faithless to
+her love, which is the purest and most honourable part of her, the very
+best thing to which she can attain, she clips her wings, and can fly no
+more, but must be tossed, like a crippled gull, hither and thither upon
+the stormy surface of her little sea. Of course, I speak of women of
+the higher stamp. Many, perhaps most, will feel nothing of all this. In
+a little while they will grow content with their dull round and the
+alien nature which they have mated with, and in their children, and
+their petty cares and dissipations, will forget that they possess a
+higher part, if indeed they do possess it. Like everything else in the
+world, they find their level. But with women like your Angela it is
+another thing. For them time only serves to increasingly unveil the
+Medusa-headed truth, till at last they see it as it is, and their
+hearts turn to stone. Backed with a sick longing to see a face that is
+gone from them, they become lost spirits, wandering everlastingly in
+the emptiness they have chosen, and finding no rest. Even her children
+will not console her.”
+
+Arthur uttered a smothered exclamation.
+
+“Don’t start, Arthur; you _must_ accustom yourself to the fact that
+that woman has passed away from you, and is as completely the personal
+property of another man, as that chair is mine. But, there, the subject
+is a painful one to you; shall we change it?”
+
+“It is one that you seem to have studied pretty deeply.”
+
+“Yes, because I have realized its importance to a woman. For some years
+I have longed to be able to fall in love, and when at last I did so,
+Arthur,” and here her voice grew very soft, “it was with a man who
+could care nothing for me. Such has been my unlucky chance. That a
+woman, herself beloving and herself worthily beloved, could throw her
+blessed opportunity away is to me a thing inconceivable, and that,
+Arthur, is what your Angela has done.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIII.
+
+“Then you will not marry now, Mildred?” said Arthur, after a pause.
+
+“No, Arthur.”
+
+“No one?”
+
+“No one, Arthur.”
+
+He rose, and, leaning over the railing of the verandah, looked at the
+sea. The mist that hid it was drifting and eddying hither and thither
+before little puffs of wind, and the clear sky was clouding up.
+
+“There is going to be a storm,” he said, presently.
+
+“Yes, I think so, the air feels like it.”
+
+He hesitated a while, and looked down at her. She seemed very lovely in
+the half lights, as indeed she was. She, too, looked up at him
+inquiringly. At last he spoke.
+
+“Mildred, you said just now that you would not marry anybody. Will you
+make an exception?—will you marry me?”
+
+It was her turn to pause now.
+
+“You are very good,” she murmured.
+
+“No, I am not at all good. You know how the case stands. You know that
+I still love Angela, and that I shall in all probability always love
+her. I cannot help that. But if you will have me, Mildred, I will try
+to be a good husband to you, and to make you happy. Will you marry me,
+dear?”
+
+“No, Arthur.”
+
+“Why not? Have you, then, ceased to care for me?”
+
+“No, dear. I love you more than ever. You cannot dream how much I do
+love you.”
+
+“Then why will you not marry me? Is it because of this business?”
+
+“No,” and raising herself in the low chair, she looked at him with
+intense earnestness, “that is not the reason. I will not marry you,
+because I have become a better woman since you went away, because I do
+not wish to ruin your life. You ask me to do so now in all sincerity,
+but you do not know what you ask. You come from the scene of as bitter
+a disappointment as can befall a man, and you are a little touched by
+the contrasting warmth of your reception here, a little moved by my
+evident interest, and perhaps a little influenced by my good looks,
+though _they_ are nothing much. Supposing that I consented, supposing I
+said, ‘Arthur, I will put my hand in yours and be your wife,’ and that
+we were married to-morrow, do you think, when the freshness of the
+thing had worn off, that you would be happy with me? I do not. You
+would soon get horribly tired of me, Arthur, for the little leaven that
+leavens the whole lump is wanting. You do not love me; and the
+redundance of my affection would weary you, and, for my part, I should
+find it difficult to continually struggle against an impalpable rival,
+though, indeed, I should be very willing to put up with that.”
+
+“I am sorry you think so.”
+
+“Yes, Arthur, I do think so; but you do not know what it costs me to
+say it. I am deliberately shutting the door which bars me from my
+heaven; I am throwing away the chance I strove so hard to win. That
+will tell you how much I think it. Do you know, I must be a strange
+contradiction. When I knew you were engaged to another woman, I
+strained my every nerve to win you from her. While the object was still
+to be gained, I felt no compunction; I was fettered by no scruples. I
+wanted to steal you from her and marry you myself. But now that all
+this is changed, and that you of your own free will come and offer to
+make me your wife, I for the first time feel how wrong it would be of
+me to take advantage of you in a moment of pique and disappointment,
+and bind you for life to a nature which you do not really understand,
+to a violent and a jealous woman. Too late, when your life was hampered
+and your future spoiled, you would discover that you hated me. Arthur
+dear, I will not consent to bind you to me by any tie that cannot be
+broken.”
+
+“Hush, Mildred! you should not say such things about yourself. If you
+are as violent and jealous as you say, you are also a very noble-
+hearted woman, for none other would so sacrifice herself. Perhaps you
+are right; I do not know. But, whether you are right or wrong, I cannot
+tell you how you have made me respect you.”
+
+“Dear, those are the most comfortable words I have ever heard; after
+what has passed between us, I scarcely thought to win your respect.”
+
+“Then you will not marry me, Mildred?”
+
+“No.”
+
+“That is your fixed determination?”
+
+“It is.”
+
+“Ah, well!” he sighed, “I suppose that I had better ‘top my boom’
+again?”
+
+“Do what?”
+
+“I mean I had better leave Madeira.”
+
+“Why should you leave Madeira?”
+
+He hesitated a little before replying.
+
+“Well, because if I do not marry you, and still come here, people will
+talk. They did before, you know.”
+
+“Are you afraid of being talked about, then?”
+
+“I? Oh! dear no. What can it matter to me now?”
+
+“And supposing I were to tell you that what ‘people’ say, with or
+without foundation, is as much a matter of indifference to me as the
+blowing of next summer’s breezes, would you still consider it necessary
+to leave Madeira?”
+
+“I don’t know.”
+
+He again rose and leant over the verandah rail.
+
+“It is going to be a wild night,” he said, presently.
+
+“Yes; the wind will spoil all the magnolias. Pick me that bud; it is
+too good to be wasted.”
+
+He obeyed, and, just as he stepped back on to the verandah, a fierce
+rush of wind came up from the sea, and went howling away behind them.
+
+“I love a storm,” she murmured, as he brought the flower to her. “It
+makes me feel so strong,” and she stretched out her perfect arms as
+though to catch the wind.
+
+“What am I to do with this magnolia?”
+
+“Give it to me. I will pin it in my dress—no, do you fasten it for me.”
+
+The chair in which she was lounging was so low that, to do as she bade
+him, Arthur was forced to kneel beside her. Kneeling thus, the sweet,
+upturned face was but just beneath his own; the breath from the curved
+lips played amongst his hair, and again there crept over him that
+feeling of fascination, of utter helplessness, that he had once before
+resisted. But this time he did not attempt to resist, and no vision
+came to save him. Slowly drawn by the beauty of her tender eyes, he
+yielded to the spell, and soon her lips were pressed upon his own, and
+the white arms had closed around his neck, whilst the crushed magnolia
+bloom shed its perfume round them.
+
+Fiercer swept the storm, the lightning flashed, and the gale catching
+the crests of the rising waves dashed them in spray to where they sat.
+
+“Dear,” he said presently, “you must not stop here, the spray is
+wetting you.”
+
+“I wish that it would drown me,” she answered, almost fiercely, “I
+shall never be so happy again. You think that you love me now; I should
+like to die before you learn to hate me. Come, let us go in!”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIV.
+
+
+When Mildred received Lady Bellamy’s telegram, she was so sure that it
+would prove the forerunner of Arthur’s arrival at Madeira that she had
+at once set about making arrangements for his amusement.
+
+It so happened that there was at the time a very beautiful sea-going
+steam yacht of about two hundred and fifty tons burden lying in the
+roadstead. She belonged to a nobleman who was suddenly recalled to
+England by mail-steamer, and, through a series of chances, Mildred was
+enabled to buy her a bargain. The crew of the departed nobleman also
+continued in her service.
+
+The morning after the storm broke sweet and clear, and, except that the
+flowers were somewhat shattered, all Nature looked the fresher for its
+violent visitation. Arthur, who had come up early to the Quinta,
+Mildred, and Miss Terry were all seated at breakfast in a room that
+looked out to the sea, which, although the wind had died away, still
+ran rather high. They made a pretty picture as they sat round the
+English-looking breakfast-table, with the light pouring in upon them
+from the open windows, Miss Terry, with her usual expression of good-
+humoured solemnity, pouring out the tea, and Mildred and Arthur, who
+sat exactly opposite to each other, drinking it. Never had the former
+looked more lovely than she did that morning.
+
+“My dear,” said Agatha to her, “what have you done to yourself? You
+look beautiful.”
+
+“Do I, dear? Then it is because I am happy.”
+
+Agatha was quite right, thought Arthur, she did look beautiful, there
+was such depth and rest in her clear eyes, such a wealth of happy
+triumph written on her features. She might have sat that morning as a
+study of the “Venus Victrix.” Her talk, too, was as bright as herself.
+She laughed and shone and sparkled like the rain-drops on the bamboo
+sprays that rocked in the sunshine, and whenever she addressed herself
+to Arthur, which was often enough, every sentence seemed wrapped in
+tender meaning. Her whole life went out towards him, a palpable thing;
+she waited on his words and basked in his smile. Mildred Carr did
+nothing by halves.
+
+Arthur was the least cheerful of the three, though at times he tried
+his best to join in Mildred’s merriment. Any one who knew him well
+could have told that he was suffering from one of his fits of
+constitutional melancholy, and a physiognomist, looking at the somewhat
+dreamy eyes and pensive face, would probably have added that he neither
+was nor ever would be an entirely happy man.
+
+By degrees, however, he seemed to get the better of his thoughts,
+whatever they might be.
+
+“Now, Arthur, if you are quite awake,” began, or rather went on,
+Mildred, “perhaps you will come to the window. I have something to show
+you.”
+
+“Here I am at your service; what may it be?”
+
+“Good. Now look; do you see that little vessel in the bay beneath there
+to the right of Leeuw Rock?”
+
+“Yes, and uncommonly pretty she is; what of her?”
+
+“What of her? Why, she is my yacht.”
+
+“Your yacht?”
+
+“Goodness gracious, Mildred, you don’t mean to say that you’ve been
+buying a yacht and told me nothing about it? Just think! Well, I call
+that sly.”
+
+“Yes, my dear Agatha, I have; a yacht and a ready-made crew, and the
+very prettiest saloon in the world, and sleeping-cabins that you will
+think it an honour to be sea-sick in, and a cook’s galley with bright
+copper fittings, and a cook with a white cap, and steam-steering gear
+if you care to use it, and——”
+
+“For goodness sake, don’t overwhelm us; and what are you going to do
+with your white elephant, now that you have got it?”
+
+“Do with it? why, ride on it, of course. ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ or
+rather ‘lady and gentleman.’ Attention! You will both be in marching,
+or rather in sailing, order by four this afternoon, for at five we
+start for the Canaries. Now, no remarks; I’m a skipper, and I expect to
+be obeyed, or I’ll put you in irons.”
+
+“You’ve done that already,” said Arthur, _sotto voce_.
+
+“Mildred, I won’t go, and that’s flat.”
+
+“My dear, you mean that you are afraid of being flat. But, Agatha,
+seriously, you must come; nobody is sick in those semi-tropical waters,
+and, if you won’t, I suppose it would not be quite the thing for Arthur
+and I to go alone. And then, my dear, just think what a splendid place
+the Canaries must be for insects.”
+
+“Why?” asked Agatha, solemnly.
+
+“Because of all the little birds it has to support.”
+
+“But I thought they lived on hemp-seed.”
+
+“Oh, no—not in their native land.”
+
+“Well, I suppose I must go; but I really believe that you will kill me
+with your mania for sea-voyages, Mildred. I suppose you will take to
+ballooning next.”
+
+“That is by no means a bad idea; I should like to see you in a balloon,
+Agatha.”
+
+“Mildred, I know where to draw the line. Into a balloon I will never
+go. I have been into a Madeira sledge, and that is quite enough for me.
+I always dream about it twice a week.”
+
+“Well, my dear, I promise never to ask you when I want to go
+ballooning; Arthur and I will go by ourselves. It would be a grand
+opportunity for a tête-à-tête. And now go and see about getting the
+things ready—there’s a dear; and, Arthur, do you send John down to
+Miles’ for your portmanteau.”
+
+“Hadn’t I better go and see about it myself?”
+
+“Certainly not; I want you to help me, and come down and talk to the
+skipper, for he will be under your orders, you know. He is such a
+delightful sailor-man, perfect down to his quid, and always says, ‘Ay,
+ay,’ in the orthodox fashion. Certainly you must not go; I will not
+trust you out of my sight—you might run away and leave me alone, and
+then what should I do?”
+
+Arthur laughed and acquiesced. Sitting down, he wrote a note asking the
+manager of the hotel to send his things up to the Quinta Carr, together
+with his account, as he was leaving Madeira for the present.
+
+The rest of the morning was spent by everybody in busy preparation.
+Boxes were packed and provisions shipped sufficient to victual an
+Arctic expedition. At last everything was ready, and at a little after
+three they went down the steps leading to the tiny bay, and, embarking
+on the smart boat that was waiting for them, were conveyed in safety to
+the _Evening Star_, for such was the yacht’s name. Arthur suggested
+that it should be changed to the _Mildred Carr_, and got snubbed for
+his pains.
+
+The _Evening Star_ was a beautiful craft, built on fine lines, but for
+all that a wonderful boat in a heavy sea. She was a three-masted
+schooner, square-rigged forward, of large beam. Her fittings below were
+perfect down to the painted panels after Watteau in the saloon and the
+electric bells, and she was rigged either to sail or steam as might be
+most convenient. On the present occasion, as there was not the
+slightest hurry and no danger of a lee-shore, it was determined that
+they should not avail themselves of the steam-power, so the propeller
+was hoisted up and everything got ready for that most delightful thing,
+a long cruise under canvas.
+
+Arthur was perfectly charmed with everything he saw, and so was Agatha
+Terry, until they got under way, when she discovered that a mail-
+steamer was a joke compared with the yacht in the matter of motion. In
+short, the unfortunate Agatha was soon reduced to her normal condition
+of torpor. Mildred always declared that she hibernated on board ship
+like a dormouse or a bear. She was not very sea-sick, she simply lay
+and slept, eating very little and thinking not at all.
+
+“By the way,” said Arthur, as they sailed out of the bay, “I never gave
+any directions about my letters.”
+
+“Oh! that will not matter,” answered Mildred, carelessly, for they were
+leaning over the taffrail together; “they will keep them for you at
+‘Miles’ Hotel.’ But, my dear boy, do you know what time it is? Ten
+minutes to seven; that dreadful bell will be going in a minute, and the
+soup will be spoiled. Run and get ready, do.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXV.
+
+
+When dinner was over—Miss Terry would have none—they went and sat upon
+the moonlit deck. The little vessel was under all her canvas, for the
+breeze was light, and skimmed over the water like a gull with its wings
+spread. In the low light Madeira was nothing but a blot on the
+sky-line. The crew were forward, with the solitary exception of the man
+steering the vessel from his elevated position on the bridge; and
+sitting as they were, abaft the deck-cabin, the two were utterly alone
+between the great silence of the stars and of the sea. She looked into
+his face, and it was tender towards her—that night was made for
+lovers—and tears of happiness stood in her eyes. She took his hand in
+hers, and her head nestled upon his breast.
+
+“I should like to sail on for ever so, quite alone with you. I never
+again wish to see the land or the sun, or any other sea than this, or
+any other eyes than yours, to hear any more of the things that I have
+known, to learn to know any fresh things. If I could choose, I would
+ask that I might now glide gently from your arms into those of eternal
+sleep. Oh! Arthur, I am so happy now—so happy that I scarcely dare to
+speak, for fear lest I should break the spell, and I feel so good—so
+much nearer heaven. When I think of all my past life, it seems like a
+stupid dream full of little nothings, of which I cannot recall any
+memory except that they were empty and without meaning. But the future
+is worse than the past, because it looks fair, and snakes always hide
+in flowers. It makes me afraid. How do I know what the future will
+bring? I wish that the present—the pleasant, certain present that I
+hold with my hand—could last for ever.”
+
+“Who does know, Mildred? If the human race could see the pleasant
+surprises in store for it individually, I believe that it would drown
+itself _en masse_. Who has not sometimes caught at the skirt of to-day
+and cried, ‘Stay a little—do not let to-morrow come yet!’ You know the
+lines—
+
+“‘O temps suspends ton vol, et vous heures propices
+Suspendez votre cours,
+Laissez nous savourer les rapides delices
+Des plus beaux de nos jours.’
+
+
+“Lamartine only crystallized a universal aspiration when he wrote
+that.”
+
+“Oh! Arthur, I tell you of love and happiness wide as the great sea
+round us, and you talk of ‘universal aspirations.’ It is the first cold
+breath from that grey-skied future that I fear. Oh! dear, I wonder—you
+do not know how I wonder—if, should you ask me again, I shall ever with
+a clear conscience be able to say, ‘Arthur, I will marry you.’”
+
+“My dear, I asked you to be my wife last night, and what I said then I
+say again now. In any case, until you dismiss me, I consider myself
+bound to you; but I tell you frankly that I should myself prefer that
+you would marry me for both our sakes.”
+
+“How cold and correct you are, how clearly you realize the position in
+which I am likely to be put, and in what a gentlemanlike way you assure
+me that your honour will always keep you bound to me! That is a weak
+thread, Arthur, in matters of the heart. Let Angela reappear as my
+rival—would honour keep you to my side? Honour, forsooth! it is like a
+nurse’s bogey in the cupboard—it is a shibboleth men use to frighten
+naughty women with, which for themselves is almost devoid of meaning.
+Even in this light I can see your face flush at her name. What chance
+shall I ever have against her?”
+
+“Do not speak of her, Mildred; let her memory be dead between us. She
+who belonged to me before God, and whom I believed in as I believe in
+my God, she offered me the most deadly insult that a woman can offer to
+a man she loves—she sold herself. What do I care what the price was,
+whether it were money, or position, or convenience, or the approbation
+of her surroundings? The result is the same. Never mention her name to
+me again; I tell you that I hate her.”
+
+“What a tirade! There is warmth enough about you now. I shall be
+careful how I touch on the subject again; but your very energy shows
+that you are deceiving yourself. I wish I could hear you speak of me
+like that, because then I should know you loved me. Oh! if she only
+knew it—she has her revenge for all your bitter words. You are lashed
+to her chariot-wheels, Arthur. You do _not_ hate her; on the contrary,
+you still long to see her face; it is still your secret and most
+cherished hope that you will meet her again either in this or another
+world. You love her as much as ever. If she were dead, you could bear
+it; but the sharpest sting of your suffering lies in the humiliating
+sense that you are forced to worship a god you know to be false, and to
+give your own pure love to a woman whom you see debased.”
+
+He put his hands to his face and groaned aloud.
+
+“You are right,” he said. “I would rather have known her dead than know
+her as she is. But there is no reason why I should bore you with all
+this.”
+
+“Arthur, you are nothing if not considerate, and I do not pretend that
+this is a very pleasant conversation for me; but I began it, so I
+suppose I must endure to see you groaning for another woman. You say,”
+she went on, with a sudden flash of passion, “that you should like to
+see her dead. I say that I should like to kill her, for she has struck
+me a double blow—she has injured you whom I love, and she has beggared
+me of your affection. Oh! Arthur,” she continued, changing her voice
+and throwing a caressing arm about his neck, “have you no heart left to
+give _me?_ is there no lingering spark that _I_ can cherish and blow to
+flame? I will never treat you so, dear. Learn to love me, and I will
+marry you and make you happy, make you forget this faithless woman with
+the angel face. I will——” here her voice broke down in sobs, and in the
+starlight the great tears glistened upon her coral-tinted face like
+dew-drops on a pomegranate’s blushing rind.
+
+“There, there, dear, I will try to forget; don’t cry,” and he touched
+her on the forehead with his lips.
+
+She stopped, and then said, with just the faintest tinge of bitterness
+in her voice: “If it had been Angela who cried, you would not be so
+cold, you would have kissed away her tears.”
+
+Who can say what hidden chord of feeling those words touched, or what
+memories they awoke? but their effect upon Arthur was striking. He
+sprang up upon the deck, his eyes blazing, and his face white with
+anger.
+
+“How often,” he said, “must I forbid you to mention the name of that
+woman to me? Do you take a pleasure in torturing me? Curse her, may she
+eat out her empty heart in solitude, and find no living thing to
+comfort her! May she suffer as she makes me suffer, till her life
+becomes a hell——”
+
+“Be quiet, Arthur, it is shameful to say such things.”
+
+He stopped, and after the sharp ring of his voice, that echoed like the
+cry wrung from a person in intense pain, the loneliness and quiet of
+the night were very deep. And then an answer came to his mad, unmanly
+imprecations. For suddenly the air round them was filled with the sound
+of his own name uttered in such wild, despairing accents as, once
+heard, were not likely to be forgotten, accents which seemed to be
+around them and over them, and heard in their own brains, and yet to
+come travelling from immeasurable distances across the waste of waters.
+
+“_Arthur! Arthur!_”
+
+The sound that had sprung from nothing died away into nothingness
+again, and the moonlight glanced, and the waters heaved, and gave no
+sign of the place of its birth. It had come and gone, awful,
+untraceable, and in the place of its solemnity reigned silence
+absolute.
+
+They looked at each other with scared eyes.
+
+“_As I am a living man that voice was Angela’s!_”
+
+This was all he said.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVI.
+
+
+Dr. Williamson was a rising young practitioner at Roxham, and what is
+more, a gentleman and a doctor of real ability.
+
+On the night that Lady Bellamy took the poison he sat up very late,
+till the dawn, in fact, working up his books of reference with a view
+to making himself as much the master as possible of the symptoms and
+most approved treatment in such cases of insanity as appeared to
+resemble Angela Caresfoot’s. He had been called in to see her by Mr.
+Fraser, and had come away intensely interested from a medical point of
+view, and very much puzzled.
+
+At length he shut up his books with a sigh—for, like most books, though
+full of generalities, they did not tell him much—and went to bed.
+Before he had been asleep very long, however, the surgery bell was
+violently rung, and, having dressed himself with the rapidity
+characteristic of doctors and schoolboys, he descended to find a
+frightened footman waiting outside, from whom he gathered that
+something dreadful had happened to Lady Bellamy, who had been found
+lying apparently dead upon the floor of her drawing-room. Providing
+himself with some powerful restoratives and a portable electric battery
+he drove rapidly over to Rewtham House.
+
+Here he found the patient laid upon a sofa in the room where she had
+been found, and surrounded by a mob of terrified and half-dressed
+servants. At first he thought life was quite extinct, but presently he
+fancied that he could detect a faint tremor of the heart. He applied
+the most powerful of his restoratives and administered a sharp current
+from the battery, and, after a considerable time, was rewarded by
+seeing the patient open her eyes—but only to shut them again
+immediately. Directing his assistant to continue the treatment, he
+tried to elicit some information from the servants as to what had
+happened, but all he could gather was that the maid had received a
+message not to sit up. This made him suspicious of an attempt at
+suicide, and just then his eye fell upon a wineglass that lay upon the
+floor, broken at the shank. He took it up; in the bowl there was still
+a drop or two of liquid. He smelt it, then dipped his finger in and
+tasted it, with the result that his tongue was burnt and became rough
+and numb. Then his suspicions were confirmed.
+
+Presently Lady Bellamy opened her eyes again, and this time there was
+intelligence in them. She gazed round her with a wondering air. Next
+she spoke.
+
+“Where am I?”
+
+“In your own drawing-room, Lady Bellamy. Be quiet now, you will be
+better presently.”
+
+She tried first to move her head, then her arm, then her lower limbs,
+but they would not stir. By this time her faculties were wide awake.
+
+“Are you the doctor?” she said.
+
+“Yes, Lady Bellamy.”
+
+“Then tell me why cannot I move my arms.”
+
+He lifted her hand; it fell again like a lump of lead—and Dr.
+Williamson looked very grave. Then he applied a current of electricity.
+
+“Do you feel that?” he asked.
+
+She shook her head.
+
+“Why cannot I move? Do not trifle with me, tell me quick.”
+
+Dr. Williamson was a young man, and had not quite conquered
+nervousness. In his confusion, he muttered something about “paralysis.”
+
+“How is it that I am not dead?”
+
+“I have brought you back to life, but pray do not talk.”
+
+“You fool, why could you not let me die? You mean that you have brought
+my mind to life, and left my body dead. I feel now that I am quite
+paralysed.”
+
+He could not answer her, what she said was only too true, and his look
+told her so. She gazed steadily at him for a moment as he bent over
+her, and realized all the horrors of her position, and for the first
+time in her life her proud spirit absolutely gave way. For a few
+seconds she was silent, and then, without any change coming over the
+expression of her features—for the wild gaze with which she had faced
+eternity was for ever frozen there—she broke out into a succession of
+the most heart-rending shrieks that it had ever been his lot to listen
+to. At last she stopped exhausted.
+
+“Kill me!” she whispered, hoarsely, “kill me!”
+
+It was a dreadful scene.
+
+As the doctors afterwards concluded, rightly or wrongly, a very curious
+thing had happened to Lady Bellamy. Either the poison she had taken—and
+they were never able to discover what its exact nature was, nor would
+she enlighten them—had grown less deadly during all the years that she
+had kept it, or she had partially defeated her object by taking an
+overdose, or, as seemed more probable, there was some acid in the wine
+in which it had been mixed that had had the strange effect of rendering
+it to a certain degree innocuous. Its result, however, was, as she
+guessed, to render her a hopeless paralytic for life.
+
+At length the patient sank into the coma of exhaustion, and Dr.
+Williamson was able to leave her in the care of a brother practitioner
+whom he had sent for, and in that of his assistant. Sir John had been
+sent for, but had not arrived. It was then eleven o’clock, and at one
+the doctor was summoned as a witness to attend the inquest on George
+Caresfoot. He had, therefore, two hours at his disposal, and these he
+determined to utilise by driving round to see Angela, who was still
+lying at Mr. Fraser’s vicarage.
+
+Mr. Fraser heard him coming, and met him in the little drive. He
+briefly told him what he had just seen, and what, in his opinion, Lady
+Bellamy’s fate must be—one of living death. The clergyman’s remark was
+characteristic.
+
+“And yet,” he said, “there are people in the world who say that there
+is no God.”
+
+“How is Mrs. Caresfoot?” asked the doctor.
+
+“She had a dreadful fit of raving this morning, and we had to tie her
+down in bed. She is quieter now, poor dear. There, listen!”
+
+At that moment, through the open window of the bedroom, they heard a
+sweet though untrained voice beginning to sing. It was Angela’s, and
+she was singing snatches of an old-fashioned sailor-song, one of
+several which Arthur had taught her:
+
+“Fare ye well, and adieu to all you Spanish ladies,
+Fare ye well, and adieu to ye, ladies of Spain,
+For we’ve received orders to return to Old England,
+But we hope in a short time to see you again.
+
+*       *       *
+
+“We hove our ship to with the wind at sou’west, my boys;
+We hove our ship to for to strike soundings clear;
+It was forty-five fathom and a grey sandy bottom;
+Then we filled our main topsail, and up channel did steer.
+
+*       *       *
+
+“The signal was made for the grand fleet to anchor,
+All in the Downs that night for to meet;
+So cast off your shank-painter, let go your cat’s-topper,
+Hawl up your clew-garnets, let fly tack and sheet.”
+
+
+Without waiting to hear any more, they went up the stairs and entered
+the bedroom. The first person they saw was Pigott, who had been sent
+for to nurse Angela, standing by the side of the bed, and a trained
+nurse at a little table at the foot mixing some medicine. On the bed
+itself lay Angela, shorn of all her beautiful hair, her face flushed as
+with fever, except where a blue weal bore witness to the blow from her
+husband’s cruel whip, her head thrown back, and a strange light in her
+wild eyes. She was tied down in the bed, with a broad horse-girth
+stretched across her breast, but she had wrenched one arm free, and
+with it was beating time to her song on the bed-clothes. She caught
+sight of Mr. Fraser at once, and seemed to recognize him, for she
+stopped her singing and laughed.
+
+“That’s a pretty old song, isn’t it?” she said. “Somebody taught it me
+—who was it? Somebody—a long while ago. But I know another—I know
+another. You’ll like it; you are a clergyman, you know.” And she began
+again:
+
+“Says the parson one day as I cursed a Jew,
+Now do you not know that that is a sin?
+Of you sailors I fear there are but a few
+That St. Peter to heaven will ever let in.
+
+“Says I, Mr. Parson, to tell you my mind,
+Few sailors to knock were ever yet seen;
+Those who travel by land may steer against wind
+But we shape a course for Fiddler’s Green.”
+
+
+Suddenly she stopped, and her mind wandered off to the scene of two
+days previous with Arthur by the lake, and she began to quote the words
+wrung from the bitterness of his heart.
+
+“‘You miserable woman, do you know what you are? Shame upon you! Were
+you not married yesterday?’ It is quite true, Arthur—oh, yes, quite
+true! Say what you like of me, Arthur—I deserve it all; but oh! Arthur,
+I love you so. Don’t be hard upon me—I love you so, dear! Kill me if
+you like, dear, but don’t talk to me so. I shall go mad—I shall go
+mad!” and she broke into a flood of weeping.
+
+“Poor dear, she has been going on like that, off and on, all night. It
+clean broke my heart to see it, and that’s the holy truth,” and Pigott
+looked very much as though she were going to cry herself.
+
+By this time Angela had ceased weeping, and was brooding sullenly, with
+her face buried in the pillow.
+
+“There is absolutely nothing to be done,” said the doctor. “We can only
+trust to her fine constitution and youth to pull her through. She has
+received a series of dreadful mental shocks, and it is very doubtful if
+she will ever get over them. It is a pity to think that such a splendid
+creature may become permanently insane, is it not? You must be very
+careful, Pigott, that she does not do herself an injury; she is just in
+the state that she may throw herself out of the window or cut her
+throat. And now I must be going; I will call in again to-night.”
+
+Mr. Fraser accompanied him down to the gate, where he had left his
+trap. Before they got out of the front door, Angela had roused herself
+again, and they could hear her beginning to quote Homer, and then
+breaking out into snatches of her sailor-songs.
+
+“‘High aloft amongst the rigging
+Sings the loud exulting gale.’
+
+
+“That’s like me. I sing too,” and then followed peal upon peal of mad
+laughter.
+
+“A very sad case! She has a poor chance, I fear.”
+
+Mr. Fraser was too much affected to answer him.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVII.
+
+
+Public feeling in Marlshire was much excited about the Caresfoot
+tragedy, and, when it became known that Lady Bellamy had attempted to
+commit suicide, the excitement was trebled. It is not often that the
+dullest and most highly respectable part of an eminently dull and
+respectable county gets such a chance of cheerful and interesting
+conversation as these two events gave rise to. We may be sure that the
+godsend was duly appreciated; indeed, the whole story is up to this
+hour a favourite subject of conversation in those parts.
+
+Of course the members of the polite society of the neighbourhood of
+Roxham were divided into two camps. The men all thought that Angela had
+been shamefully treated, the elder and most intensely respectable
+ladies for the most part inclined to the other side of the question. It
+not being their habit to look at matters from the same point of view in
+which they present themselves to a man’s nicer sense of honour, they
+could see no great harm in George Caresfoot’s stratagems. A man so
+rich, they argued, was perfectly entitled to buy his wife. The marriage
+had been arranged, like their own, on the soundest property basis, and
+the woman who rose in rebellion against a husband merely because she
+loved another man, or some such romantic nonsense, deserved all she
+got. Gone mad, had she?—well, it was a warning! And these aristocratic
+matrons sniffed and turned up their noses. They felt that Angela, by
+going mad and creating a public excitement, had entered a mute protest
+against the recognized rules of marriage sale- and-barter as practised
+in this country—and Zululand. Having daughters to dispose of, they
+resented this, and poor Angela was for years afterwards spoken of among
+them as that “immoral girl.”
+
+But the lower and more human strata of society did not sympathize with
+this feeling. On the contrary, they were all for Angela and the dog
+Aleck who was supposed to have chocked that “carroty warmint,” George.
+
+The inquest on George’s body was held at Roxham, and was the object of
+the greatest possible interest. Indeed, the public excitement was so
+great that the coroner was, perhaps insensibly, influenced by it, and
+allowed the inquiry to travel a little beyond its professed object of
+ascertaining the actual cause of death, with the result that many of
+the details of the wicked plot from which Angela had been the principal
+sufferer became public property. Needless to say that they did not
+soothe the feelings of an excited crowd. When Philip, after spending
+one of the worst half-hours of his life in the witness-box, at length
+escaped with such shreds of reputation as he had hitherto possessed
+altogether torn off his back, his greeting from the mob outside the
+court may fairly be described as a warm one. As the witnesses’ door
+closed behind him, he found himself at one end of a long lane, that was
+hedged on both sides by faces not without a touch of ferocity about
+them, and with difficulty kept clear by the available force of the five
+Roxham policemen.
+
+“Who sold his daughter?” shouted a great fellow in his ear.
+
+“Let me come, there’s a dear man, and have a look at Judas,” said a
+skinny little woman with a squint, to an individual who blocked her
+view.
+
+The crowd caught at the word. “Judas!” it shouted, “go and hang
+yourself! Judas! Judas!”
+
+How Philip got out of that he never quite knew, but he did get out
+somehow.
+
+Meanwhile, Sir John Bellamy was being examined in court, and,
+notwithstanding the almost aggressive innocence of his appearance, he
+was not having a very good time. It chanced that he had fallen into the
+hands of a rival lawyer, who hated him like poison, and had good reason
+to hate him. It is wonderful, by the way, how enemies do spring up
+round a man in trouble like dogs who bite a wounded companion to death,
+and on the same principle. He is defenceless. This gentleman would
+insist on conducting the witnesses’ examination on the basis that he
+knew all about the fraud practised with reference to the supposed death
+of Arthur Heigham. Now, it will be remembered that Sir John, in his
+last interview with Lady Bellamy, had declared that there was no tittle
+of evidence against him, and that it would be impossible to implicate
+him in the exposure that must overtake her. To a certain extent he was
+right, but on one point he had overshot himself, for at that very
+inquest Mr. Fraser stated on oath that he (Mr. Fraser) had spoken of
+Arthur Heigham’s death in the presence of Sir John Bellamy, and had not
+been contradicted.
+
+In vain did Sir John protest that Mr. Fraser must be mistaken. Both the
+jury and the public looked at the probabilities of the matter, and,
+though his protestations were accepted in silence, when he left the
+witness-box there was not a man in court but was morally certain that
+he had been privy to the plot, and, so far as reputation was concerned,
+he was a ruined man. And yet legally there was not a jot of evidence
+against him. But public opinion required that a scapegoat should be
+found, and it was now his lot to figure as that unlucky animal.
+
+By the time he reached the exit into the street, the impression that he
+had had a hand in the business had, in some mysterious way,
+communicated itself to the mob outside, many a member of which had some
+old grudge to settle with “Lawyer Bellamy,” if only chance put an
+opportunity in their way. As he stepped through the door, utterly
+ignorant of the greeting which awaited him, his ears were assailed by
+an awful yell, followed by a storm of hoots and hisses.
+
+Sir John turned pale, and looked for a means of escape; but the
+policeman who had let him out had locked the door behind him, and all
+round him was the angry mob.
+
+“Here comes the —— that started the swim,” roared a voice, as soon as
+there was a momentary lull.
+
+“Gentlemen——” piped Sir John, with all the pippin hue gone from his
+cheeks, and rubbing his white hands together nervously.
+
+“Yah! he poisoned his own poor wife!” shouted a woman with a baby.
+
+“Ladies——” went on Sir John, in agonized tones.
+
+“Pelt him!” yelled a sweet little boy of ten or so, suiting the action
+to the word, and planting a rotten egg full upon Sir John’s imposing
+brow.
+
+“No, no,” said the woman who had nicknamed Philip “Judas.” “Why don’t
+you drop him in the pond? There’s only two feet of water, and it’s soft
+falling on the mud. You can pelt him _afterwards_.”
+
+The idea was received with acclamation, and notwithstanding his own
+efforts to the contrary, backed as they were by those of the five
+policemen, before he knew where he was, Sir John found himself being
+hustled by a lot of sturdy fellows towards the filthy duck-pond, like
+an aristocrat to the guillotine. They soon arrived, and then followed
+the most painful experience of all his life, one of which the very
+thought would ever afterwards move him most profoundly. Two strong men,
+utterly heedless of his yells and lamentations, took him by the heels,
+and two yet stronger than they caught him by his plump and tender
+wrists, and then, under the directions of the woman with the squint,
+they began to swing him from side to side. As soon as the lady
+directress considered that the impetus was sufficient, she said, “Now!”
+and away he went like a swallow, only to land, when his flying powers
+were exhausted, plump in the middle of the duck-pond.
+
+Some ten seconds afterwards, a pillar of slimy mud arose and staggered
+towards the bank, where a crowd of little boys, each holding something
+offensive in his right hand, were eagerly awaiting its arrival. The
+squint-eyed woman contemplated the figure with the most intense
+satisfaction.
+
+“He sold me up once,” she murmured; “but we’re quits now. That’s it,
+lads, let him have it.”
+
+But we will drop a veil over this too painful scene. Sir John Bellamy
+was unwell for some days afterwards; when he recovered he shook the
+dust of Roxham off his shoes for ever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXVIII.
+
+
+A fortnight or so afterwards, when the public excitement occasioned by
+the Caresfoot tragedy had been partially eclipsed by a particularly
+thrilling child-murder and suicide, a change for the better took place
+in Angela’s condition. One night, after an unusually violent fit of
+raving, she suddenly went to sleep about twelve o’clock, and slept all
+that night and all the next day. About half-past nine on the following
+evening, the watchers in her room—namely, Pigott, Mr. Fraser, and Dr.
+Williamson, who was trying to make out what this deep sleep meant— were
+suddenly astonished at seeing her sit up in her bed in a listening
+attitude, as though she could hear something that interested her
+intensely, for the webbing that tied her down had been temporarily
+removed, and then cry, in a tone of the most living anguish, and yet
+with a world of passionate remonstrance in her voice,
+
+“_Arthur, Arthur!_”
+
+Then she sank down again for a few minutes. It was the same night that
+Mildred and Arthur sat together on the deck of the _Evening Star_.
+Presently she opened her eyes, and the doctor saw that there was no
+longer any madness in them, only great trouble. Her glance first fell
+upon Pigott.
+
+“Run,” she said, “run and stop him; he cannot have gone far. Bring him
+back to me; quick, or he will be gone.”
+
+“Who do you mean, dear?”
+
+“Arthur, of course—Arthur.”
+
+“Hush, Angela!” said Mr. Fraser, “he has been gone a long time; you
+have been very ill.”
+
+She did not say anything, but turned her face to the pillow and wept,
+apparently as much from exhaustion as from any other cause, and then
+dropped off to sleep again.
+
+“Her reason is saved,” said Dr. Williamson, as soon as they were
+outside the door.
+
+“Thanks be to Providence and you, doctor.”
+
+“Thanks to Providence alone. It is a case in which I could do little or
+nothing. It is a most merciful deliverance. All that you have to do now
+is to keep her perfectly quiet, and, above all, do not let her father
+come near her at present. I will call in and tell him. Lady Bellamy?
+Oh! about the same. She is a strange woman; she never complains, and
+rarely speaks—though twice I have heard her break out shockingly. There
+will never be any alteration in her case till the last alteration.
+Good-bye; I will look round to-morrow.”
+
+After this, Angela’s recovery was, comparatively speaking, rapid,
+though of course the effects of so severe a shock to the nervous system
+could not be shaken off in a day. Though she was no longer mad, she was
+still in a disturbed state of mind, and subject to strange dreams or
+visions. One in particular that visited her several nights in
+succession, made a great impression upon her.
+
+First, it would seem to her that she was wide awake in the middle of
+the night, and there would creep over her a sense of unmeasured space,
+infinite silence, and intense solitude. She would think that she was
+standing on a dais at the end of a vast hall, down which ran endless
+rows of pillars supporting an inky sky which was the roof. There was no
+light in the hall, yet she could clearly see; there was no sound, but
+she could hear the silence. Only a soft radiance shone from her eyes
+and brow. She was not afraid, though lonely, but she felt that
+something would presently come to make an end of solitude. And so she
+stood for many years or ages—she could not tell which—trying to fathom
+the mystery of that great place, and watching the light that streamed
+from her forehead strike upon the marble floor and pillars, or thread
+the darkness like a shooting star, only to reveal new depths of
+blackness beyond those it pierced. At length there came, softly falling
+from the sky-roof which never stirred to any passing breeze, a flake of
+snow larger than a dove’s wing; but it was blood-red, and in its centre
+shone a wonderful light that made its passage through the darkness a
+track of glory. As it passed gently downwards without sound, she
+thought that it threw the shadow of a human face. It lit upon the
+marble floor, and the red snow melted there and turned to blood, but
+the light that had been its heart shone on pure and steady.
+
+Looking up again, she saw that the vault above her was thick with
+thousands upon thousands of these flakes, each glowing like a crimson
+lamp, and each throwing its own shadow. One of the shadows was like
+George, and she shuddered as it passed. And ever as they touched the
+marble pavement, the flakes melted and became blood, and some of the
+lights went out, but the most part burnt on, till at length there was
+no longer any floor, but a dead-sea of blood on which floated a myriad
+points of fire.
+
+And then it all grew clear to her, for a voice in her mind spoke and
+said that this was one of God’s storehouses for human souls; that the
+light was the soul, and the red in the snow which turned to blood was
+the sin which had, during its earthly passage, stained its first
+purity. The sea of blood before her was the sum of the scarlet
+wickedness of her age; from every soul there came some to swell its
+awful waters.
+
+At length the red snow ceased to fall, and a sound that was not a
+voice, but yet spoke, pealed through the silence, asking if all were
+ready. The voice that had spoken in her mind answered, “No, he has not
+come who is to see.” Then, looking upwards, she saw, miles on miles
+away, a bright being with half-shut wings flashing fast towards her,
+and she knew that it was Arthur, and the loneliness left her. He lit a
+breathing radiance by her side, and again the great sound pealed, “Let
+in the living waters, and cleanse away the sins of this generation.”
+
+It echoed and died away, and there followed a tumult like the flow of
+an angry sea. A mighty wind swept past her, and after it an ocean of
+molten crystal came rushing through the illimitable hall. The sea and
+the wind purged away the blood and put out the lamps, leaving behind
+them a glow of light like that upon her brow, and where the lamps had
+been stood myriads of seraphic beings, whilst from ten thousand tongues
+ran forth a paean of celestial song.
+
+Then everything vanished, and deep gloom, that was not, however, dark
+to her, settled round them. Taking Arthur by the hand, she spread her
+white wings and circled upwards. Far, far they sailed, till they
+reached a giant peak that split space in twain. Here they alighted, and
+watched the masses of cloud tearing through the gulfs on either side of
+them, and, looking beyond and below, gazed upon the shining worlds that
+peopled space beneath them.
+
+From the cloud-drifts to the right and left came a noise as of the
+soughings of many wings; but they did not know what caused it, till
+presently the vapours lifted, and they saw that alongside of and
+beneath them two separate streams of souls were passing on outstretched
+pinions: one stream, that to their left, proceeding to their earthly
+homes, and one, that to the right, returning from them. Those who went
+wore grief upon their shadowy faces, and had sad- coloured wings; but
+those who returned seemed for the most part happy, and their wings were
+tipped with splendour.
+
+The never-ending stream that came flowed from a far-off glory, and that
+which returned, having passed the dividing cliff on which they stood,
+was changed into a multitude of the red snow-flakes with the glowing
+hearts, and dropped gently downwards.
+
+So they stood, in happy peace, never tiring, from millennium to
+millennium. They watched new worlds collecting out of chaos, they saw
+them speed upon their high aerial course till, grown hoary, their
+foundation-rocks crumbling with age, they wasted away into the vastness
+whence they had gathered, to be replaced by fresh creations that in
+their turn took form, teemed with life, waxed, waned, and vanished.
+
+At length there came an end, and the soughing of wings was silent for
+ever; no more souls went downwards, and none came up from the earths.
+Then the distant glory from which the souls had come moved towards them
+with awful mutterings and robed in lightning, and space was filled with
+spirits, one of whom, sweeping past them, cried with a loud voice,
+“Children, Time is dead; now is the beginning of knowledge.” And she
+turned to Arthur, who had grown more radiant than the star which
+gleamed upon his forehead, and kissed him.
+
+Then she would wake.
+
+Time passed on, and gradually health and strength came back to Angela,
+till at last she was as powerful in mind, and—if that were possible—
+except that she was shorn of her lovely hair, more beautiful in body
+than she had been before her troubles overwhelmed her. Of Arthur she
+thought a great deal—indeed, she thought of little else; but it was
+with a sort of hopelessness that precluded action. Nobody had mentioned
+his name to her, as it was thought wiser not to do so, though Pigott
+and Mr. Fraser had, in as gentle terms as they could command, told her
+of the details of the plot against her, and of the consequences to the
+principal actors in it. Nor had she spoken of him. It seemed to her
+that she had lost him for good, that he could never come back to her
+after what had passed, that he must hate her too much. She supposed
+that, in acting as he did, he was aware of all the circumstances of her
+marriage, and could find no excuses for her. She did not even know
+where he was, and, in her ignorance of the uses of private detectives
+and advertisements, had no idea how to find out. And so she suffered in
+silence, and only saw him in her dreams.
+
+She still stopped at the vicarage with Pigott; nor had there as yet
+been any talk of her returning to the Abbey House. Indeed, she had not
+seen her father since the day of her marriage. But, now that she had
+recovered, she felt that something must be done about it. Wondering
+what it should be, she one afternoon walked to the churchyard, where
+she had not been since her illness, and, once there, made her way
+naturally to her mother’s grave. She was moving very quietly, and had
+almost reached the tree under which Hilda Caresfoot lay, when she
+became aware that there was already somebody kneeling by the grave,
+with his head rested against the marble cross.
+
+It was her father. Her shadow falling upon him, he turned and saw her,
+and they stood looking at each other. She was shocked at the dreadful
+alteration in his face. It was now that of an old man, nearly worn out
+with suffering. He put his hand before his eyes, and said,
+
+“Angela, how can I face you, least of all here?”
+
+For a moment the memory of her bitter wrongs swelled in her heart, for
+she now to a great extent understood what her father’s part in the plot
+had been, and she regarded him in silence.
+
+“Father,” she said, presently, “I have been in the hands of God, and
+not in yours, and though you have helped to ruin my life, and have very
+nearly driven me into a madhouse, I can still say, let the past be the
+past. But why do you look so wretched? You should look happy; you have
+got the land—my price, you know,” and she laughed a little bitterly.
+
+“Why do I look wretched? Because I am given over to a curse that you
+cannot understand, and I am not alone. Where are those who plotted
+against you? George dead, Bellamy gone, Lady Bellamy paralysed hand and
+foot, and myself—although I did not plot, I only let them be— accursed.
+But, if you can forget the past, why do you not come back to my house?
+Of course I cannot force you; you are free and rich, and can suit
+yourself.”
+
+“I will come for a time if you wish—if I can bring Pigott with me.”
+
+“You may bring twenty Pigotts, for all I care—so long as you will pay
+for their board,” he added, with a touch of his old miserliness. “But
+what do you mean ‘for a time’?”
+
+“I do not think I shall stop here long; I think that I am going into a
+sisterhood.”
+
+“Oh! well, you are your own mistress, and must do as you choose.”
+
+“Then I will come to-morrow,” and they parted.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXIX.
+
+
+And so on the following day Angela and Pigott returned to the Abbey
+House, but they both felt that it was a sad home-coming. Indeed, if
+there had been no other cause for melancholy, the sight of Philip’s
+face was enough to excite it in the most happy-minded person. Not that
+Angela saw much of him, however, for they still kept to their old habit
+of not living together. All day her father was shut up in his room
+transacting business that had reference to the accession of his
+property and the settlement of George’s affairs; for his cousin had
+died intestate, so he took his personalty and wound up the estate as
+heir-at-law. At night, however, he would go out and walk for miles, and
+in all weathers—he seemed to dread spending the dark hours at home.
+
+When Angela had been back about a month in the old place, she
+accidentally got a curious insight into her father’s mental sufferings.
+
+It so happened that one night, finding it impossible to sleep, and
+being much oppressed by sorrowful thoughts, she thought that she would
+read the hours away. But the particular book she wanted to find was
+downstairs, and it was two o’clock in the morning, and chilly in the
+passages. However, anything is better than sleeplessness, and the
+tyranny of sad thoughts and empty longings; so, throwing on her
+dressing-gown, she took a candle, and set off, thinking as she went how
+she had in the same guise fled before her husband.
+
+She got her book, and was returning, when she saw that there was still
+a light in her father’s study, and that the door was ajar. At that
+moment it so happened that an unusually sharp draught coming down one
+of the passages of the rambling old house, caught her candle and
+extinguished it. Making her way to the study-door, she pushed it open
+to see if anybody was there previous to asking for a light. At first
+she could see nobody. On the table, which was covered with papers,
+there stood two candles, a brandy-bottle, and a glass. She was just
+moving to the candle to get a light, when her eye fell on what she at
+first believed to be a heap of clothes huddled together on the floor in
+the corner of the room. Further examination showed that it was a
+man—she could distinctly see the backs of his hands. Her first ideas
+was that she had surprised a thief, and she stopped, feeling frightened
+and not knowing what to do. Just then the bundle straightened itself a
+little and dropped its hands, revealing to her wondering gaze her own
+father’s face, which wore the same awful look of abject fear which she
+had seen upon it when he passed through the hall beneath her just
+before Isleworth broke into flame on the night of her marriage. The
+eyes appeared to be starting from the sockets in an effort to clearly
+realize an undefinable horror, the hair, now daily growing greyer, was
+partially erect, and the pallid lips, half- opened, as though to speak
+words that would not come. He saw her too, but did not seem surprised
+at her presence. Covering up his eyes again with one hand, he shrank
+further back into his corner, and with the other pointed to a large
+leather arm-chair in which Pigott had told her her grandfather had
+died.
+
+“Look there,” he whispered, hoarsely.
+
+“Where, father? I see nothing.”
+
+“There, girl, in the chair—look how it glares at me!”
+
+Angela stood aghast. She was alarmed, in defiance of her own reason,
+and began to catch the contagion of superstition.
+
+“This is dreadful,” she said; “for heaven’s sake tell me what is the
+matter.”
+
+Philip’s ghastly gaze again fixed itself on the chair, and his teeth
+began to chatter.
+
+“_Great God,_” he said, “_it is coming._”
+
+And, uttering a smothered cry, he fell on his face in a half faint. The
+necessity for action brought Angela to herself. Seizing the
+water-bottle, she splashed some water into her father’s face. He came
+to himself almost instantly.
+
+“Where am I?” he said. “Ah! I remember; I have not been quite well. You
+must not think anything of that. What are you doing down here at this
+time of night? Pass me that bottle,” and he took nearly half a tumbler
+of raw brandy. “There, I am quite right again now; I had a bad attack
+of indigestion, that is all. Good night.”
+
+Angela went without a word. She understood now what her father had
+meant when he said that he was “accursed;” but she could not help
+wondering whether the brandy had anything to do with his “indigestion.”
+
+On the following day the doctor came to see her. It struck Angela that
+he came oftener than was necessary, the fact being that he would gladly
+have attended her gratis all year round. A doctor does not often get
+the chance of visiting such a patient.
+
+“You do not look quite so well to-day,” he said.
+
+“No,” she answered, with a little smile; “I had bad dreams last night.”
+
+“Ah! I thought so. You should try to avoid that sort of thing; you are
+far too imaginative already.”
+
+“One cannot run away from one’s dreams. Murder will out in sleep.”
+
+“Well, I have a message for you.”
+
+“Who from?”
+
+“Lady Bellamy. You know that she is paralysed?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+“Well, she wants you to go and see her. Shall you go?”
+
+Angela thought a little, and answered,
+
+“Yes, I think so.”
+
+“You must be prepared for some bitter language if she speaks at all.
+Very likely she will beg you to get her some poison to kill herself
+with. I have been obliged to take the greatest precautions to prevent
+her from obtaining any. I am not very sensitive, but once or twice she
+has positively made me shiver with the things she says.”
+
+“She can never say anything more dreadful to me than she has said
+already, Dr. Williamson.”
+
+“Perhaps not. Go if you like. If you were revengeful—which I am sure
+you are not—you would have good reason to be satisfied at what you will
+see. Medically speaking, it is a sad case.”
+
+Accordingly, that every afternoon, Angela, accompanied by Pigott,
+started off for Rewtham House, where Lady Bellamy still lived, or
+rather existed. It was her first outing since the inquest on George
+Caresfoot had caused her and her history to become publicly notorious,
+and, as she walked along, she was surprised to find that she was the
+object of popular sympathy. Every man she met touched or took off his
+hat, according to his degree, and, as soon as she had passed, turned
+round and stared at her. Some fine folks whom she did not know— indeed,
+she knew no one, though it had been the fashion to send and “inquire”
+during her illness—drove past in an open carriage and pair, and she saw
+a gentleman on the front seat whisper something to the ladies, bringing
+round their heads towards her as simultaneously as though they both
+worked on a single wire. Even the children coming out of the village
+school set up a cheer as she passed.
+
+“Good gracious, Pigott, what is it all about?” she asked, at last.
+
+“Well, you see, miss, they talk of you in the papers as the ‘Abbey
+House heroine’—and heroines is rare in these parts.”
+
+Overwhelmed with so much attention, Angela was thankful when at last
+they reached Rewtham House.
+
+Pigott went into the housekeeper’s room, and Angela was at once shown
+up into the drawing-room. The servant announced her name to a black-
+robed figure lying on a sofa, and closed the door.
+
+“Come here, Angela Caresfoot,” said a well-known voice, “and see how
+Fate has repaid the woman who tried to ruin you.”
+
+She advanced and looked at the deathly face, still as darkly beautiful
+as ever, on which was fixed that strange look of wild expectancy that
+it had worn when its owner took the poison.
+
+“Yes, look at me; think what I was, and then what I am, and learn how
+the Spirit of evil pays those who serve him. I thought to kill myself,
+but death was denied me, and now I live as you see me. I am an outcast
+from the society of my kind—not that I ever cared for that, except to
+rule it. I cannot stir hand or foot, I cannot write, I can scarcely
+read, I cannot even die. My only resource is the bitter sea of thought
+that seethes eternally in this stricken frame like fire pent in the
+womb of a volcano. Yes, Angela Caresfoot, and like the fire, too,
+sometimes it overflows, and then I can blaspheme and rave aloud till my
+voice fails. That is the only power which is left to me.”
+
+Angela uttered an exclamation of pity.
+
+“Pity—do not pity me; I will not be pitied by you. Mock me if you will;
+it is your turn now. You prophesied that it would come; now it is
+here.”
+
+“At any rate, you are still comfortable in your own house,” said
+Angela, nervously, anxious to change the subject, and not knowing what
+to say.
+
+“Oh! yes, I have money enough, if that is what you mean. My husband
+threatened to leave me destitute, but fear of public opinion—and I hear
+that he has run away, and is not well thought of now—or perhaps of
+myself, cripple as I am, caused him to change his mind. But do not let
+us talk of that poor creature. I sent for you here for a purpose. Where
+is your lover?”
+
+Angela turned pale and trembled.
+
+“What, do you not know, or are you tired of him?”
+
+“Tired of him! I shall never be tired of him; but he has gone.”
+
+“Shall I tell you where to find him?”
+
+“You would not if you could; you would deceive me again.”
+
+“No, oddly enough, I shall not. I have no longer any object in doing
+so. When I was bent upon marrying you to George Caresfoot, I lashed
+myself into hating you; now I hate you no longer, I respect you—
+indeed, I have done so all along.”
+
+“Then, why did you work me such a bitter wrong?”
+
+“Because I was forced to. Believe me or not as you will, I am not going
+to tell you the story—at any rate, not now. I can only repeat that I
+was forced to.”
+
+“Where is Arthur?”
+
+“In Madeira. Do you remember once telling me that you had only to lift
+your hand—so—ah! I forgot, I cannot lift mine—to draw him back to you,
+that no other woman in the world could keep him from you if you chose
+to bid him come?”
+
+“Yes, I remember.”
+
+“Then, if you wish to get him back, you had better exercise your power,
+for he has gone to another woman.”
+
+“Who is she? What is she like?”
+
+“She is a young widow—a Mrs. Carr. She is desperately in love with
+him—very beautiful and very rich.”
+
+“Beautiful! How do you mean? Tell me exactly what she is like.”
+
+“She has brown eyes, brown hair, a lovely complexion, and a perfect
+figure.”
+
+Angela glanced rapidly at her own reflection in the glass and sighed.
+
+“Then I fear that I shall have no chance against her—none!”
+
+“You are a fool! if you were alone in the same room with her, nobody
+would see her for looking at you.”
+
+Angela sighed again, this time from relief.
+
+“But there is worse than that; very possibly he has married her.”
+
+“Ah! then it is all over!”
+
+“Why? If he loves you as much as you think, you can bring him back to
+you, married or unmarried.”
+
+“Perhaps. Yes, I think I could; but I would not.”
+
+“Why? If he loves you and you love him, you have a right to him. Among
+all the shams and fictions that we call laws, there is only one true—
+the law of Nature, by virtue of which you belong to each other.”
+
+“No, there is a higher law—the law of duty, by means of which we try to
+curb the impulses of Nature. The woman who has won him has a right to
+consideration.”
+
+“Then, to gratify a foolish prejudice, you are prepared to lose him
+forever?”
+
+“No, Lady Bellamy; if I thought that I was to lose him for ever, I
+might be tempted to do what is wrong in order to be with him for a
+time; but I do not think that. I only lose him for a time that I may
+gain him for ever. In this world he is separated from me, in the worlds
+to come my rights will assert themselves, and we shall be together, and
+never part any more.”
+
+Lady Bellamy looked at her wonderingly, for her eyes could still
+express her emotions.
+
+“You are a fine creature,” she said, “and, if you believe that, perhaps
+it will be true for you, since Faith must be the measure of
+realization. But, after all, he may not have married her. That will be
+for you to find out.”
+
+“How can I find out?”
+
+“By writing to him, of course—to the care of Mrs. Carr, Madeira. That
+is sure to find him.”
+
+“Thank you. How can I thank you enough?”
+
+“It seems to me that you owe me few thanks. You are always foolish
+about what tends to secure your own happiness, or you would have
+thought of this before.”
+
+There was a pause, and then Angela rose to go.
+
+“Are you going. Yes, go. I am not fit company for such as you. Perhaps
+we shall not meet again; but, in thinking of all the injuries that I
+have done you, remember that my punishment is proportionate to my sin.
+They tell me that I may live for years.”
+
+Angela gazed at the splendid wreck beneath her, and an infinite pity
+swelled in her gentle heart. Stooping, she kissed her on the forehead.
+A wild astonishment filled Lady Bellamy’s great, dark eyes.
+
+“Child, child, what are you doing? you do not know what I am, or you
+would not kiss me!”
+
+“Yes, Lady Bellamy,” she said, quietly, “I do, that is, I know what you
+have been; but I want to forget that. Perhaps you will one day be able
+to forget it too. I do not wish to preach, but perhaps, after all, this
+terrible misfortune may lead you to something better. Thank God, there
+is forgiveness for us all.”
+
+Her words touched some forgotten chord in the stricken woman’s heart,
+and two big tears rolled down the frozen cheeks. They were the first
+Anne Bellamy had wept for many a day.
+
+“Your voice,” she said, “has a music that awakes the echoes from a time
+when I was good and pure like you, but that time has gone for ever.”
+
+“Surely, Lady Bellamy, the heart that can remember it can also strive
+to reach another like it. If you have descended the cliff whence those
+echoes spring, into a valley however deep, there is still another cliff
+before you that you may climb.”
+
+“It is easy to descend, but we need wings to climb. Look at me, Angela;
+my body is not more crippled and shorn of power than my dark spirit is
+of wings. How can _I_ climb?”
+
+Angela bent low beside her and whispered a few words in her ear, then
+rose with a shy blush upon her face. Lady Bellamy shut her eyes.
+Presently she opened them again.
+
+“Do not speak any more of this to me now,” she said. “I must have time.
+The instinct of years cannot be brushed away in a day. If you knew all
+the sins I have committed, perhaps you would think too that for such as
+I am there is no forgiveness and no hope.”
+
+“Whilst there is life there is hope, and, as I once heard Mr. Fraser
+say, the real key to forgiveness is the desire to be forgiven.”
+
+Again Lady Bellamy shut her eyes and thought, and, when she drew up
+their heavy lids, Angela saw that there was something of a peaceful
+look about them.
+
+“Stand so,” she said to Angela, “there where the light falls upon your
+face. That will do; now shall I tell you what I read there? On your
+forehead sit resolute power to grasp, and almost measureless capacity
+to imagine; in your eyes there is a sympathy not to be guessed by
+beings of a coarser fibre; those eyes could look at Heaven and not be
+dazzled. Your whole face speaks of a purity and single-mindedness which
+I can read but cannot understand. Your mind rejects the glittering
+bubbles that men follow, and seeks the solid truth. Your spirit is in
+tune with things of light and air; it can float to the extremest
+heights of our mental atmosphere, and thence can almost gaze into the
+infinite beyond. Pure, but not cold, thirsting for a wider knowledge,
+and at times breathing the air of a higher world; resolute, but
+patient; proud, and yet humble to learn; holy, but aspiring; conscious
+of gifts you do not know how to use, girl, you rise as near to what is
+divine as a mortal may. I have always thought so, now I am sure of it.”
+
+“Lady Bellamy!”
+
+“Hush! I have a reason for what I say. I do not ask you to waste time
+by listening to senseless panegyrics. Listen: I will tell you what I
+have never told to a living soul before. For years I have been a
+student of a lore almost forgotten in this country—a lore which once
+fully acquired will put the powers that lie hid in Nature at the
+command of its possessor, that will even enable him to look beyond
+Nature, and perhaps, so far as the duration of existence is concerned,
+for awhile to triumph over it. That lore you can learn, though it
+baffled me. My intellect and determination enabled me to find the cues
+to it, and to stumble on some of its secrets, but I could not follow
+them; too late I learnt that only the good and pure can do that. Much
+of the result of years of toil I destroyed the other night, but I still
+know enough to empower you to reconstruct what I annihilated; you can
+learn more in one year than I learnt in ten. I am grateful to you, and,
+if you wish it, I will show you the way.”
+
+Angela listened, open-eyed. Lady Bellamy was right, she was greedy of
+knowledge and the power that springs from knowledge.
+
+“But would it not be wrong?” she said.
+
+“There can be nothing wrong in what the ruling Wisdom allows us to
+acquire without the help of what is evil. But do not be deceived, such
+knowledge and power as this is not a thing to be trifled with. To
+obtain a mastery over it, you must devote your life to it; you must
+give it
+
+“‘Allegiance whole, not strained to suit desire,’
+
+
+“No earthly passion must come to trouble the fixed serenity of your
+aspirations; that was one, but only one, of the reasons of my failure.
+You must leave your Arthur to Mrs. Carr, and henceforward put him as
+much out of your mind as possible; and this, that you may be able to
+separate yourself from earthly bonds and hopes and fears. Troubled
+waters reflect a broken image.”
+
+“I must, then, choose between this knowledge and my love?”
+
+“Yes; and you will do well if you choose the knowledge; for, before you
+die—if, indeed, you do not in the end, for a certain period, overcome
+even death—you will be more of an angel than a woman. On the one hand,
+then, this proud and dizzy destiny awaits you; on the other, every-day
+joys and sorrows shared by all the world, and an ordinary attachment to
+a man against whom I have, indeed, nothing to say, but who is not your
+equal, and who is, at the best, full of weaknesses that you should
+despise.”
+
+“But, Lady Bellamy, his weaknesses are a part of himself, and I love
+him all, just as he is; weakness needs love more than what is strong.”
+
+“Perhaps; but, in return for your love, I offer you no empty cup. I do
+not ask you to follow fantastic theories—of that I will soon convince
+you. Shall I show you the semblance of your Arthur and Mrs. Carr as
+they are at this moment?”
+
+“No, Lady Bellamy, no, I have chosen. You offer, after years of
+devotion, to make me _almost like an angel_. The temptation is very
+great, and it fascinates me. But I hope, if I can succeed in living a
+good life, to become altogether an angel when I die. Why, then, should
+I attempt to filch fragments of a knowledge that will one day be all my
+own?—if, indeed, it is right to do so. Whilst I am here, Arthur’s love
+is more to me than such knowledge can ever be. If he is married, I may
+learn to think differently, and try to soothe my mind by forcing it to
+run in these hidden grooves. Till then, I choose Arthur and my petty
+hopes and fears; for, after all, they are the natural heritage of my
+humanity.”
+
+Lady Bellamy thought for awhile, and answered,
+
+“I begin to think that the Great Power who made us has mixed even His
+most perfect works with an element of weakness, lest they should soar
+too high, and see too far. The prick of a pin will bring a balloon to
+earth, and an earthly passion, Angela, will prevent you from soaring to
+the clouds. So be it. You have had your chance. It is only one more
+disappointment.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXX.
+
+
+Angela went home very thoughtful. The next three days she spent in
+writing. First, she wrote a clear and methodical account of all the
+events that had happened since Arthur’s first departure, more than a
+year ago, and attached to it copies of the various documents that had
+passed between herself and George, including one of the undertaking
+that her husband had signed before the marriage. This account was in
+the form of a statement, which she signed, and, taking it to Mr.
+Fraser, read it to him, and got him to sign it too. It took her two
+whole days to write, and, when it was done, she labelled it “to be read
+first.” On the third day she wrote the following letter to go with the
+statement:
+
+“For the first time in my life, Arthur, I take up my pen to write to
+you, and in truth the difficulty of the task before me, as well as my
+own want of skill, tends to bewilder me, and, though I have much upon
+my mind to say, I scarcely know if it will reach you—if, indeed, this
+letter is ever destined to lie open in your hands—in an intelligible
+form.
+
+“The statement that I enclose, however, will—in case you do not already
+know them—tell you all the details of what has happened since you left
+me more than a year ago. From it you will learn how cruelly I was
+deceived into marrying George Caresfoot, believing you dead. Oh,
+through all eternity, never shall I forget that fearful night, nor
+cease to thank God for my merciful escape from the fiend whom I had
+married. And then came the morning, and brought you—the dead—alive
+before my eyes. And whilst I stood in the first tumult of my amaze—
+forgetful of everything but that it was you, my own, my beloved Arthur,
+no spirit, but you in flesh and blood—whilst I yet stood thus, stricken
+to silence by the shock of an unutterable joy—you broke upon me with
+those dreadful words, so that I choked, feeling how just they must seem
+to you, and could not answer.
+
+“And yet it sometimes fills me with wonder and indignation to think of
+them; wonder that you could believe me so mad as to throw away the love
+of my life, and indignation that you could deem me so lost as to
+dishonour it. They drove me mad, those words, and from that moment
+forward I remember nothing but a chaos of the mind heaving endlessly
+like the sea. But all this has passed, and I am thankful to say that I
+am quite well again now.
+
+“Still I should not have written to you, Arthur; I did not even know
+where you were, and I never thought of recovering you. After what has
+passed, I looked upon you as altogether lost to me for this world. But
+a few days ago I went at her own request to see Lady Bellamy. All she
+said to me I will not now repeat, lest I should render this letter too
+wearisome to read, though a great deal of it was strange enough to be
+well worth repetition. In the upshot, however, she said that I had
+better write to you, and told me where to write. And so I write to you,
+dear. There was also another thing that she told me of sad import for
+myself, but which I must not shrink to face. She said that there lived
+at Madeira, where you are, a lady who is in love with you, and is
+herself both beautiful and wealthy, to whom you would have gone for
+comfort in your trouble, and in all probability have married.
+
+“Now, Arthur, I do not know if this is the case, but, if so, I hasten
+to say that I do not blame you. You smarted under what must have seemed
+to you an intolerable wrong, and you went for consolation to her who
+had it to offer. In a man that is perhaps natural, though it is not a
+woman’s way. If it be so, I say from my heart, be as happy as you can.
+But remember what I told you long ago, and do not fall into any
+delusions on the matter; do not imagine because circumstances have
+shaped themselves thus, therefore I am to be put out of your mind and
+forgotten, for this is not so. I cannot be forgotten, though for a
+while I may be justly discarded; it is possible that for this world you
+have passed out of my reach, but in the next I shall claim you as my
+own.
+
+“Yes, Arthur, I have made up my mind to lose you for this life as a
+fitting reward for my folly. But do not think that I do so without a
+pang, for, believe me, since my mind emerged stronger and clearer from
+the storms through which it has passed, bringing back to me the full
+life and strength of my womanhood, I have longed for you with an ever-
+increasing longing. I am not ashamed to own that I would give worlds to
+feel your arms about me and your kiss upon my lips. Why should I be? Am
+I not yours, body and soul?
+
+“But, dear, it has been given to me, perhaps as a compensation for all
+I have undergone and that is still left for me to undergo, to grasp a
+more enduring end than that of earthly ecstasy: for I can look forward
+with a confident assurance to the day when we shall embrace upon the
+threshold of the Infinite. Do not call this foolish imagination, or
+call it imagination, if you will—for what is imagination? Is it not the
+connecting link between us and our souls, and recalling memories of our
+home. Imagination, what would our higher life be without it? It is what
+the mind is to the body, it is the soul’s _thought_.
+
+“So in my imagination—since I know no better term—I foresee that
+heavenly hour, and I am not jealous for the earthly moment. Nor,
+indeed, have I altogether lost you, for at times, in the stillness of
+the night, when the earthly part is plunged in sleep and my spirit is
+released from the thraldom of the senses, it, at indefinite periods,
+has the power to summon your beloved form to its presence, and in this
+communion Nature vindicates her faithfulness. Thus, through the long
+night rest comes upon me with your presence.
+
+“And at last there will come a greater rest; at last—having lived
+misunderstood—we shall die, alone, and then the real life or lives will
+begin. It is not always night, for the Dawn is set beyond the night,
+and through the gates of Dawn we shall journey to the day. It is not
+always night; even in the womb of darkness throbs the promise of the
+morning. I often wonder, Arthur, how and what this change will be.
+Shall we be even as we are, but still, through unnumbered ages, growing
+slowly on to the Divine, or, casting off the very semblance of
+mortality, shall we rise at one wide sweep to the pinnacle of fulfilled
+time, there to learn the purposes and mark the measure of all Being.
+
+“How can I know? But this I believe, that whatever the change, however
+wide and deep the darkness which stretches between what is and what is
+not yet, we cannot lose ourselves therein. Identity will still be ours,
+and memory, the Janus-headed, will still pursue us, calling to our
+minds the enacted evil and that good which, having been, must always
+be. For we are immortal, and though we put off the mortal dress —yes,
+though our forms become as variable as the clouds, and assume
+proportions of which we cannot dream—yet shall memory companion us and
+identity remain. For we are each fashioned apart for ever, and built
+about with such an iron wall of individual life that all the force of
+time and change cannot so much as shake it. And while I am myself, and
+yet in any shape endure, of this be certain—the love that is a part of
+me will endure also. Oh, herein is set my hope—nay, not my hope, for
+hope upon the tongue whispers doubt within the heart, but the most
+fixed unchanging star of all my heaven. It is not always night, for the
+Dawn is set beyond the night; and oh, my heart’s beloved, at daybreak
+we shall meet again!
+
+“Oh! Arthur, even now I long for the purer air and flashing sympathies
+of that vast Hereafter, when the strong sense of knowledge shall
+scarcely find a limit ere it overleaps it; when visible power shall
+radiate from our being, and living on together through countless
+Existences, Periods, and Spheres, we shall progress from majesty to
+ever-growing majesty! Oh, for the day when you and I, messengers from
+the Seat of Power, shall sail high above these darkling worlds, and,
+seeing into each other’s souls, shall learn what love’s communion is!
+
+“Do not think me foolish, dear, for writing to you thus. I do not wish
+to make you the victim of an outburst of thought that you may think
+hysterical. But perhaps I may never be able to write to you again in
+this way; your wife, if you are married, may be jealous, or other
+things may occur to prevent it. I feel it, therefore, necessary to tell
+you my inmost thoughts now whilst I can, so that you may always
+remember them during the long coming years, and especially when you
+draw near to the end of the journey. I hope, dearest Arthur, that
+nothing will ever make you forget them, and also that, for the sake of
+the pure love you will for ever bear me, you will always live up to
+your noblest and your best, for in this way our meeting will be made
+more perfect.
+
+“Of course it is possible that you may still be free, and, after you
+know that I am not quite so much to blame as you may have thought,
+still willing to give your name to me. It is a blessed hope, but I
+scarcely dare to dwell upon it.
+
+“The other day I was reading a book Mr. Fraser lent me, which took my
+fancy very much, it was so full of contradictions. The unexpected
+always happened in it, and there was both grief and laughter in its
+pages. It did not end quite well or quite badly, or, rather it had _no_
+end, and deep down underneath the plotless story, only peeping up now
+and again when the actors were troubled, there ran a vein of real
+sorrow and sad, unchanging love. There was a hero in this odd book
+which was so like life—who, by the way, was no hero at all, but a
+curious, restless creature who seemed to have missed his mark in life,
+and went along looking for old truths and new ideas with his eyes so
+fixed upon the stars that he was always stumbling over the pebbles in
+his path, and thinking that they were rocks. He was a sensitive man,
+too, and as weak as he was sensitive, and often fell into pitfalls and
+did what he should not, and yet, for all that, he had a quaint and
+gentle mind, and there was something to like in him—at least, so
+thought the women in that book. There was a heroine, too, who was all
+that a heroine should be, very sweet and very beautiful, and she really
+had a heart, only she would not let it beat. And of course the hero and
+heroine loved each other: of course, too, they both behaved badly, and
+things went wrong, or there would have been no book.
+
+“But I tell you this story because once, in a rather touching scene,
+this hero who made such a mess of things set forth one of the ideas
+that he had found, and thought new, but which was really so very old.
+He told the heroine that he had read in the stars that happiness has
+only one key, and that its name is ‘Love,’ that, amidst all the
+mutabilities and disillusions of our life, the pure love of a man and
+woman alone stands firm and beautiful, alone defies change and
+disappointment; that it is the heaven-sent salve for all our troubles,
+the remedy for our mistakes, the magic glass reflecting only what is
+true and good. But in the end her facts overcame his theories, and he
+might have spared himself the trouble of telling. And, for all his
+star-gazing, this hero had no real philosophy, but in his grief and
+unresting pain went and threw himself into the biggest pitfalls that he
+could find, and would have perished there, had not a good angel come
+and dragged him out again and brushed the mud off his clothes, and,
+taking him by the hand, led him along a safer path. And so for awhile
+he drops out of the story, which says that, when he is not thinking of
+the lost heroine, he is perhaps happier than he deserves to be.
+
+“Now, Arthur, I think that this foolish hero was right, and the
+sensible heroine he worshipped so blindly, wrong.
+
+“If you are still unmarried, and still care to put his theories to the
+test, I believe that we also can make as beautiful a thing of our lives
+as he thought that he and his heroine could, and, ourselves supremely
+happy in each other’s perfect love, may perhaps be able to add to the
+happiness of some of our fellow-travellers. That is, I think, as noble
+an end as a a man and woman can set before themselves.
+
+“But if, on the other hand, you are tied to this other woman who loves
+you by ties that cannot be broken, or that honour will not let you
+break; or if you are unforgiving, and no longer wish to marry me as I
+wish to marry you, then till that bright hour of immortal hope—
+farewell. Yes, Arthur, farewell till the gate of Time has closed for
+us—till, in the presence of God our Father, I shall for ever call you
+mine.
+
+“Alas! I am so weak that my tears fall as I write the word. Perhaps I
+may never speak or write to you again, so once more, my dearest, my
+beloved, my earthly treasure and my heavenly hope, farewell. May the
+blessing of God be as constantly around you as my thoughts, and may He
+teach you that these are not foolish words, but rather the faint shadow
+of an undying light!
+
+“I send back the ring that was used to trick me with. Perhaps, whatever
+happens, you will wear it for my sake. It is, you know, a symbol of
+Eternity.
+
+“Angela Caresfoot.”
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXI.
+
+
+Just as Angela was engaged in finishing her long letter to Arthur—
+surely one of the strangest ever written by a girl to the man she
+loved—Mr. Fraser was reading an epistle which had reached him by that
+afternoon’s post. We will look over his shoulder, and see what was in
+it.
+
+It was a letter dated from the vicarage of one of the poorest parishes
+in the great Dock district in the east of London. It began—
+
+“Dear Sir,
+
+“I shall be only too thankful to entertain your proposal for an
+exchange of livings, more especially as, at first sight, it would seem
+that all the advantage is on my side. The fact is, that the incessant
+strain of work here has at last broken down my health to such a degree,
+that the doctors tell me plainly I must choose between the comparative
+rest of a country parish, or the certainty of passing to a completer
+quiet before my time. Also, now that my children are growing up, I am
+very anxious to remove them from the sights and sounds and tainted
+moral atmosphere of this poverty- stricken and degraded quarter.
+
+“But, however that may be, I should not be doing my duty to you, if I
+did not warn you that this is no parish for a man of your age to
+undertake, unless for strong reasons (for I see by the Clergy List that
+you are a year or so older than myself). The work is positively
+ceaseless, and often of a most shocking and thankless character; and
+there are almost no respectable inhabitants; for nobody lives in the
+parish, except those who are too poor to live elsewhere. The stipend,
+too, is, as you are aware, not large. However, if, in face of these
+disadvantages, you still entertain the idea of an exchange, perhaps we
+had better meet. . . .”
+
+
+The letter then entered into details.
+
+“I think that will suit me very well,” said Mr. Fraser, aloud to
+himself, as he put it down. “It will not greatly matter if my health
+does break down; and I ought to have gone long ago. ‘Positively
+ceaseless,’ he says the work is. Well, ceaseless work is the only thing
+that can stifle thought. And yet it will be hard, coming up by the
+roots after all these years. Ah me! this is a queer world, and a sad
+one for some of us! I will write to the bishop at once.”
+
+From which it will be gathered that things had not been going well with
+Mr. Fraser.
+
+Meanwhile, Angela put her statement and the accompanying letter into a
+large envelope. Then she took the queer emerald ring off her finger,
+and, as there was nobody looking, she kissed it, and wrapped it up in a
+piece of cotton-wool, and stowed it away in the letter, and sealed it
+up. Next she addressed it, in her clear miniature handwriting, to
+
+“Arthur P. Heigham, Esq.,
+“Care of Mrs. Carr,
+“Madeira,”
+
+
+as Lady Bellamy had told her; and, calling to Pigott to come with her,
+started off to the post-office to register and post her precious
+packet, for the Madeira mail left Southampton on the morrow.
+
+She had just time to reach the office, affix the three shillings’ worth
+of stamps that the letter took, and register it, when the postman came
+up, and she saw it stamped and bundled into his bag with the others,
+just as though it were nothing, instead of her whole life depending on
+it; and away it went on its journey, as much beyond recall as
+yesterday’s sins.
+
+“And so you have been a-writing to him, Miss?” said Pigott, as soon as
+they were out of the office.
+
+“Yes, Pigott,” and she told her what Lady Bellamy had said. She
+listened attentively, with a shrewd twinkle in her eyes.
+
+“I’m thinking, dearie, that it’s a pity you didn’t post yourself,
+that’s the best letter; it can’t make no mistakes, nor fall into the
+hands of them it isn’t meant for.”
+
+“What can you mean?”
+
+“I’m thinking, miss, that change of air is a wonderful good thing after
+sickness, especially sea-air,” answered Pigott, oracularly.
+
+“I don’t in the least understand you. Really, Pigott, you drive me wild
+with your parables.”
+
+“Lord, dear, for all you’re so clever you never could see half an inch
+into a brick wall, and that with my meaning as clear as a haystick in a
+thunderstorm.”
+
+This last definition quite finished Angela. Why, she wondered, should a
+haystack be clearer in a thunderstorm than at any other time. She
+looked at her companion helplessly, and was silent.
+
+“Bless me, what I have been telling, as plain as plain can be, is, why
+don’t you go to this Mad—Mad—what’s the name?—I never can think of them
+foreign names. I’m like Jakes and the flowers: he says the smaller and
+‘footier’ they are, the longer the name they sticks on to them, just to
+puzzle a body who——”
+
+“Madeira,” suggested Angela, with the calmness of despair.
+
+“Yes, that’s it—Madeiry. Well, why don’t you go to Madeiry along with
+your letter to look after Mr. Arthur? Like enough he is in a bit of a
+mess there. So far as I know anything about their ways, young men
+always are, in a general sort of way, for everlasting a-caterwauling
+after some one or other, for all the world like a tom on the tiles,
+more especial if they are in love with somebody else. But, dear me, a
+sensible woman don’t bother her head about that. She just goes and
+hooks them out of it, and then she knows where they are, and keeps them
+there.”
+
+“Oh, Pigott, never mind all these reflections, though I’m sure I don’t
+know how you can think of such things. The idea of comparing poor dear
+Arthur with a tom-cat! But tell me, how can I go to Madeira? Supposing
+that he is married?”
+
+“Well, then you would learn all about it for yourself, and no
+gammoning; and there’d be an end to it, one way or the other.”
+
+“But would it be quite modest, to run after him like that?”
+
+“Modest, indeed! And why shouldn’t a young lady travel for her health?
+I have heard say that this Madeiry is a wonderful place for the
+stomach.”
+
+“The lungs, Pigott—the lungs.”
+
+“Well, then, the lungs. But it don’t matter; they ain’t far off each
+other.”
+
+“But, Pigott, who could I go with? I could not go alone.”
+
+“Go with? Why, me, of course.”
+
+“I can hardly fancy you at sea, Pigott.”
+
+“And why not, miss? I dare say I shall do as well as other folks there;
+and if I do go to the bottom, as seems likely, there’s plenty of room
+for a respectable person there, I should hope. Look here, dear. You’ll
+never be happy unless you marry Mr. Arthur; so don’t you go and throw
+away a chance, just out of foolishness, and for fear of what folks say.
+That’s how dozens of women make a mess of it. Folks say one thing
+to-day and another to-morrow, but you’ll remain you for all that. Maybe
+he’s married; and, if so, it’s a bad business, and there’s an end of
+it; but maybe, too, he isn’t. As for that letter, as likely as not the
+other one will put it in the fire. I should, I doubt, if I were in her
+shoes. So don’t you lose any time, for, if he isn’t married, it’s like
+enough he soon will be.”
+
+Angela felt that there was sense in what her old nurse said, though the
+idea was a new one to her, and it made her thoughtful.
+
+“I’ll think about it,” she said, presently. “I wonder what Mr. Fraser
+would say about it.”
+
+“Perhaps one thing, and perhaps another. He’s good and kind, but he
+hasn’t got much head for these sort of things, he’s always thinking of
+something else. Just look what a fool Squire George (may he twist and
+turn in his grave) made of him. You ask him, if you like; but you be
+guided by yourself, dearie. Your head is worth six Reverend Fraser’s
+when you bring it to a thing. But I must be off, and count the linen.”
+
+That evening, after tea, Angela went down to Mr. Fraser’s. He was
+directing an envelope to the Lord Bishop of his diocese when she
+entered; but he hurriedly put it away in the blotting-paper.
+
+“Well, Angela, did you get your letter off?”
+
+“Yes, Mr. Fraser, it was just in time to catch the mail to-morrow. But,
+do you know, that is what I want to speak to you about. Pigott thinks
+that, under all the circumstances”—here Angela hesitated a little—“she
+and I had better go to Madeira and find out how things stand, and I
+almost think that she is right.”
+
+“Certainly,” answered Mr. Fraser, rising and looking out of the window.
+“You have a great deal at stake.”
+
+“You do not think that it would be immodest?”
+
+“My dear Angela, when in such a case as this a woman goes to seek the
+man she loves, and whom she believes loves her, I do not myself see
+where there is room for immodesty.”
+
+“No, nor do I, and I do love him so very dearly; he is all my life to
+me.”
+
+Mr. Fraser winced visibly.
+
+“What is the matter? have you got a headache?”
+
+“Nothing, only a twinge here,” and he pointed to his heart.
+
+Angela looked alarmed; she took a womanly interest in anybody’s
+ailments.
+
+“I know what it is,” she said. “Widow James suffers from it. You must
+take it in hand at once, or it will become chronic after meals, as hers
+is.”
+
+Mr. Fraser smiled grimly as he answered:
+
+“I am afraid that I have neglected it too long—it has become chronic
+already. But about Madeira; have you, then, made up your mind to go?”
+
+“Yes, I think that I shall go. If he—is married, you know—I can always
+come back again, and perhaps Pigott is right; the letter might
+miscarry, and there is so much at stake.”
+
+“When shall you go, then?”
+
+“By the next steamer, I suppose. They go every week, I think. I will
+tell my father that I am going to-morrow.”
+
+“Ah! you will want money, I suppose.”
+
+“No, I believe that I have plenty of money of my own now.”
+
+“Oh! yes, under your marriage settlement, no doubt. Well, my dear, I am
+sure I hope that your journey will not be in vain. Did I tell you I
+have also written to Mr. Heigham by this mail, and told him all I knew
+about the matter?”
+
+“That is very kind and thoughtful of you; it is just like you,”
+answered Angela, gently.
+
+“Not at all, not at all; but you have never told me how you got on with
+Lady Bellamy—that is, except what she told you about Mr. Heigham.”
+
+“Oh! it was a strange interview. What do you think she wanted to teach
+me?”
+
+“I have not the faintest idea.”
+
+“Magic.”
+
+“Nonsense.”
+
+“Yes, she did; she told me that she could read all sorts of things in
+my face, and offered, if I would give myself up to it, to make me more
+than human.”
+
+“Pshaw! it was a bit of charlatanism; she wanted to frighten you.”
+
+“No, I think she believed what she said, and I think that she has some
+sort of power. She seemed disappointed when I refused, and, do you know
+it, if it had not been for Arthur, I do not think that I should have
+refused. I love power, or rather knowledge; but then I love Arthur
+more.”
+
+“And why is he incompatible with knowledge?”
+
+“I do not know; but she said that, to triumph over the mysteries she
+wished to teach me, I must free myself from earthly love and cares. I
+told her that, if Arthur is married, I would think of it.”
+
+“Well, Angela, to be frank, I do not believe in Lady Bellamy’s magic,
+and, if its practice brings people to what she is, I think it is best
+left alone; indeed, I expect that the whole thing is a delusion arising
+from her condition. But I think she is right when she told you that to
+become a mistress of her art—or, indeed, of any noble art— you must
+separate yourself from earthly passions. I owe your Arthur a grudge as
+well as Lady Bellamy. I hoped, Angela, to see you rise like a star upon
+this age of insolence and infidelity. I wanted you to be a great woman;
+but that dream is all over now.”
+
+“Why, Mr. Fraser?”
+
+“Because, my dear, both history and observation teach us that great
+gifts like yours partake of the character of an accident in a woman;
+they are not natural to her, and she does not wear such jewels easily
+—they put her outside of her sex. It is something as though a man were
+born into the world with wings. At first he would be very proud of
+them, and go sailing about in the sky to the admiration of the crowds
+beneath him; but by-and-by he would grow tired of flying alone, and
+after all, it is not necessary to fly to transact the ordinary business
+of the world. And perhaps at last he would learn to love somebody
+without wings, somebody who could not fly, and he would always want to
+be with her down on the homely earth, and not alone up in the heavenly
+heights. If a woman had all the genius of Plato or all the learning of
+Solomon, it would be forgotten at the touch of a baby’s fingers.
+
+“Well, well, we cannot fight against human nature, and I daresay that
+in a few years you will forget that you can read Greek as well as you
+can English, and were very near finding out a perfect way of squaring
+the circle. Perhaps it is best so. Lady Bellamy may have read a great
+many fine things in your face. Shall I tell you what I read there? I
+read that you will marry your Arthur, and become a happy wife and a
+happier mother; that your life will be one long story of unassuming
+kindness, and that, when at last you die, you will become a sacred
+memory in many hearts. That is what I read. The only magic you will
+ever wield, Angela, will be the magic of your goodness.”
+
+“Who knows? We cannot read the future,” she answered.
+
+“And so you are going to Madeira next week. Then, this will be the last
+time that we shall meet—before you go, I mean—for I am off to London
+to-morrow, for a while, on some business. When next we meet, if we do
+meet again, Angela, you will be a married woman. Do not start, dear;
+there is nothing shocking about that. But, perhaps, we shall not meet
+any more.”
+
+“Oh, Mr. Fraser! why do you say such dreadful things?”
+
+“There is nothing dreadful about it, Angela. I am getting on in life,
+and am not so strong as I was; and you are both young and strong, and
+must in the ordinary course of things outlive me for many years. But,
+whatever happens, my dear, I know that you always keep a warm corner in
+your memory for your old master; and, as for me, I can honestly say,
+that to have known and taught you has been the greatest privilege of a
+rather lonely life.”
+
+Here Angela began to cry.
+
+“Don’t cry, my dear. There is, thank God, another meeting-place than
+this, and, if I reach the shore of that great future before you, I
+shall—but there, my dear, it is time for you to be going home. You must
+not stop here to listen to this melancholy talk. Go home, Angela, and
+think about your lover. I am busy to-night. Give me a kiss, dear, and
+go.”
+
+Presently, she was gone, and he heard the front-door close behind her.
+He went to the window, and watched the tall form gradually growing
+fainter in the gloaming, till it vanished altogether.
+
+Then he came back, and, sitting down at his writing-table, rested his
+grizzled head upon his hand and thought. Presently he raised it, and
+there was a sad smile flickering round the wrinkles of the nervous
+mouth.
+
+“And now for ‘hard labour at the London docks,’” he said, aloud.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXII.
+
+
+Nothing occurred to mar the prosperity of the voyage of the _Evening
+Star_. That beautiful little vessel declined to simplify the course of
+this history by going to the bottom with Mildred and Arthur, as the
+imaginative reader may have perhaps expected. She did not even get into
+a terrific storm, in order to give Arthur the opportunity of performing
+heroic feats, and the writer of this history the chance of displaying a
+profound knowledge of the names of ropes and spars. On the contrary,
+she glided on upon a sea so still that even Miss Terry was persuaded to
+arouse herself from her torpor, and come upon deck, till at last, one
+morning, the giant peak of Teneriffe, soaring high above its circling
+clouds, broke upon the view of her passengers.
+
+Here they stopped for a week or so, enjoying themselves very much in
+their new surroundings, till at length Arthur grew tired of the
+islands, which was of course the signal for their departure. So they
+returned, reaching Madeira after an absence of close upon a month. As
+they dropped anchor in the little bay, Mildred came up to Arthur, and,
+touching him with that gentle deference which she always showed towards
+him, asked him if he was not glad to be home again.
+
+“Home!” he said. “I have no home.”
+
+“Oh, Arthur;” she answered, “why do you try to pain me? Is not my home
+yours also?”
+
+So soon as they landed, he started off to “Miles’ Hotel,” to see if any
+letters had come for him during his absence, and returned, looking very
+much put out.
+
+“What is the matter, Arthur?” asked Miss Terry, once again happy at
+feeling her feet upon solid soil.
+
+“Why, those idiots at the hotel have returned a letter sent to me by my
+lawyer. They thought that I had left Madeira for good, and the letter
+was marked, ‘If left, return to Messrs. Borley and Son,’ with the
+address. And the mail went out this afternoon into the bargain, so it
+will be a month before I can get it back again.”
+
+Had Arthur known that this letter contained clippings of the newspaper
+reports of the inquest on George Caresfoot, of whose death even he was
+in total ignorance, he would have had good reason to be put out.
+
+“Never mind, Arthur,” said Mildred’s clear voice at his elbow—she was
+rarely much further from him than his shadow; “lawyers’ letters are
+not, as a rule, very interesting. I never yet had one that would not
+keep. Come and see if your pavilion—isn’t that a grand name?—is
+arranged to your liking, and then let us go to dinner, for Agatha here
+is dying of hunger—she has to make up for her abstinence at sea.”
+
+“I was always told,” broke in that lady, “that yachting was charming,
+but I tell you frankly I have never been more miserable in my life than
+I was on board your _Evening Star_.”
+
+“Never mind, dear, you shall have a nice long rest before we start for
+the coast of Spain.”
+
+And so Arthur soon settled down again into the easy tenor of Madeira
+life. He now scarcely made a pretence of living at the hotel, since,
+during their cruise, Mildred had had a pavilion which stood in the
+garden luxuriously set up for his occupation. Here he was happy enough
+in a dull, numb way, and, as the days went on, something of the old
+light came back to his eyes, and his footfall again grew quick and
+strong as when it used to fall in the corridors of the Abbey House. Of
+the past he never spoke, nor did Mildred ever allude to Angela after
+that conversation at sea which had ended so strangely. She contented
+herself with attempting to supplant her, and to a certain extent she
+was successful. No man could have for very long remained obdurate to
+such beauty and such patient devotion, and it is not wonderful that he
+grew in a way to love her.
+
+But there was this peculiarity about the affair—namely, that the
+affection which he bore her was born more of her stronger will than of
+his own feelings, as was shown by the fact that, so long as he was
+actually with her and within the circle of her influence, her power
+over him was predominant; but, the moment that he was out of her sight,
+his thoughts would fall back into their original channels, and the old
+sores would begin to run. However much, too, he might be successful in
+getting the mastery of his troubles by day, at night they would assert
+themselves, and from the constant and tormenting dreams which they
+inspired he could find no means of escape.
+
+For at least four nights out of every seven, from the moment that he
+closed his eyes till he opened them again in the morning, it would seem
+to him that he had been in the company of Angela, under every possible
+variety of circumstance, talking to her, walking with her, meeting her
+suddenly or unexpectedly in crowded places or at dinner-parties— always
+her, and no one else—till at last poor Arthur began to wonder if his
+spirit took leave of his body in sleep and went to seek her, and, what
+is more, found her. Or was it nothing but a fantasy? He could not tell;
+but, at any rate, it was a fact, and it would have been hard to say if
+it distressed or rejoiced him most.
+
+Occasionally, too, he would fall into a fit of brooding melancholy that
+would last him for a day or two, and which Mildred would find it quite
+impossible to dispel. Indeed, when he got in that way, she soon
+discovered that the only thing to do was to leave him alone. He was
+suffering acutely, there was no doubt about that, and when any animal
+suffers, including man, it is best left in solitude. A sick or wounded
+beast always turns out of the herd to recover or die.
+
+When Mildred saw him in this state of mental desolation, she would
+shake her head and sigh, for it told her that she was as far as ever
+from the golden gate of her Eldorado. As has been said, hers was the
+strongest will, and, even if he had not willed it, she could have
+married him any day she wished; but, odd as it may seem, she was too
+conscientious. She had determined that she would not marry him unless
+she was certain that he loved her, and to this resolution, as yet, she
+firmly held. Whatever her faults may have been, Mildred Carr had all
+the noble unselfishness that is so common in her sex. For herself and
+her own reputation she cared, comparatively speaking, nothing; whilst
+for Arthur’s ultimate happiness she was very solicitous.
+
+One evening—it was one of Arthur’s black days, when he had got a fit of
+what Mildred called “Angela fever”—they were walking together in the
+garden, Arthur in silence, with his hands in his pockets and his pipe
+in his mouth, and Mildred humming a little tune by way of amusing
+herself, when they came to the wall that edged the precipice. Arthur
+leant over it and gazed at the depths below.
+
+“Don’t, dear, you will tumble over,” said Mildred, in some alarm.
+
+“I think it would be a good thing if I did,” he answered, moodily.
+
+“Are you, then, so tired of the world—and me?”
+
+“No, dear, I am not tired of you; forgive me, Mildred, but I am
+dreadfully miserable. I know that it is very ungracious and ungrateful
+of me, but it is the fact.”
+
+“You are thinking of _her_ again, Arthur?”
+
+“Yes, I have got a fit of it. I suppose that she has not been out of my
+mind for an hour altogether during the last forty-eight hours. Talk of
+being haunted by a dead person, it is infinitely worse being haunted by
+a living one.”
+
+“I am very sorry for you, dear.”
+
+“Do you suppose, Mildred, that this will go on for all my life, that I
+shall always be at the mercy of these bitter memories and thoughts?”
+
+“I don’t know, Arthur. I hope not.”
+
+“I wish I were dead—I wish I were dead,” he broke out, passionately.
+“She has destroyed my life, all that was happy in me is dead, only my
+body lives on. I am sure I don’t know, Mildred, how you can care for
+anything so worthless.”
+
+She kissed him, and answered,
+
+“Dearest, I had rather love you as you are than any other man alive.
+Time does wonders; perhaps in time you will get over it. Oh! Arthur,
+when I think of what she has made you, and what you might have been if
+you had never known her, I long to tell that woman all my mind. But you
+must be a man, dear; it is weak to give way to a mad passion, such as
+this is now. Try to think of something else; work at something.”
+
+“I have no heart for it, Mildred, I don’t feel as though I could work;
+and, if you cannot make me forget, I am sure I do not know what will.”
+
+Mildred sighed, and did not answer. Though she spoke hopefully about it
+to him, she had little faith in his getting over his passion for Angela
+now. Either she must marry him as he was, or else let him go
+altogether; but which? The struggle between her affection and her idea
+of duty was very sore, and as yet she could come to no conclusion.
+
+One thing there was that troubled her considerably, and this was that,
+though Madeira was almost empty, there were enough people in it to get
+up a good deal of gossip about herself and Arthur. Now, it would have
+been difficult to find anybody more entirely careless of the judgments
+of society than Mildred, more especially as her great wealth and
+general popularity protected her from slights. But, for all her
+oddities, she was a thorough woman of the world; and she knew, none
+better, that, in pursuance of an almost invariable natural law, there
+is nothing that lowers a woman so much in the estimation of a man as
+the knowledge that she is talked about, even though he himself is the
+cause of the talk. This may be both illogical and unjust, but it is,
+none the less, true.
+
+But, if Mildred still hesitated, Arthur did not. He was very anxious
+that they should be married; indeed, he almost insisted on it. The
+position was one that was far from being agreeable to him, for all such
+intimacies must, from their very nature, necessitate a certain amount
+of false swearing. They are throughout an acted lie; and, when the lie
+is acted, it must sometimes be spoken. Now, this is a state of affairs
+that is repugnant to an honourable man, and one that not unfrequently
+becomes perfectly intolerable. Many is the love-affair that comes to a
+sudden end because the man finds it impossible to permanently
+constitute himself a peregrinating falsehood. But, oddly enough, it has
+been found difficult to persuade the other contracting party of the
+validity of the excuse, and, however unjust it may be, one has known of
+men who have seen their defection energetically set down to more vulgar
+causes.
+
+Arthur was no exception to this rule. He found himself in a false
+position, and he hated it. Indeed, he determined before long he would
+place it before Mildred in the light of an alternative, that he should
+either marry her, or that an end should be put to their existing
+relations.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIII.
+
+
+As the autumn came on, a great south-west gale burst over Madeira, and
+went sweeping away up the Bay of Biscay. It blew for three days and
+nights, and was one of the heaviest on record. When it first began, the
+English mail was due; but when it passed there were still no signs of
+her, and prophets of evil were not wanting who went to and fro shaking
+their heads, and suggesting that she had probably foundered in the Bay.
+
+Two more days went by, and there were still no signs of her, though the
+telegraph told them that she had left Southampton Docks at the
+appointed time and date. By this time, people in Madeira could talk of
+nothing else.
+
+“Well, Arthur, no signs of the _Roman?_” said Mildred, on the fifth
+day.
+
+“No, the _Garth Castle_ is due in to-day. Perhaps she may have heard
+something of her.”
+
+“Yes,” said Miss Terry, absently; “she may have fallen in with some of
+the wreckage.”
+
+“I must say that is a cheerful suggestion,” answered Arthur. “She is an
+awful old tub, and, I daresay, ran before the gale for Vigo, that is
+all.”
+
+“Let us hope so,” said Mildred, doubtfully. “What is it, John?”
+
+“The housemaid wishes to speak to you, please, ma’am.”
+
+“Very good, I will come.”
+
+It has been hinted that Agatha Terry was looking absent on the morning
+in question. There was a reason for it. For some time past there had
+been growing up in the bosom of this excellent lady a consciousness
+that things were not altogether as they should be. Miss Terry was not
+clever, indeed it may be said that she was dense, but still she could
+not but see that there was something odd in the relations between
+Arthur and Mildred. For instance, it struck her as unusual that two
+persons who were not married, nor even, so far as she knew, engaged,
+should habitually call each other “dear,” and even sometimes “dearest.”
+
+But on the previous evening, when engaged in a search after that
+species of beetle that loves the night, she chanced to come across the
+pair standing together on the museum verandah, and, to her horror, she
+saw, even in that light, that Mildred’s arm was round Arthur’s neck,
+and her head was resting on his heart. Standing aghast, she saw more;
+for presently Mildred raised her hand, and, drawing Arthur’s head down
+to the level of her own, kissed him upon the face.
+
+There was no doubt about it, it was a most deliberate kiss—a kiss
+without any extenuating circumstances. He was not even going away, and
+Agatha could only come to one conclusion, that they were either going
+to be married—or “they ought to be.”
+
+She sought no more beetles that evening, but on the following morning,
+when Mildred departed to see the housemaid, leaving Arthur and herself
+together on the verandah, she thought it was her “duty” to seek a
+little information.
+
+“Arthur,” she said, with a beating heart, “I want to ask you something.
+Are you engaged to Mildred?”
+
+He hesitated, and then answered.
+
+“No, I suppose not, Miss Terry.”
+
+“Nor married to her?”
+
+“No; why do you ask?”
+
+“Because I think you ought to be.”
+
+“I quite agree with you. I suppose that you have noticed something?”
+
+“Yes, I have. I saw her kissing you, Arthur.”
+
+He blushed like a girl.
+
+“Oh, Arthur,” she went on, bursting into tears, “don’t let this sort of
+thing go on, or poor Mildred will lose her reputation; and you must
+know what a dreadful thing that is for any woman. Why don’t you marry
+her?”
+
+“Because she refused to marry me.”
+
+“And yet—and yet she kisses you—like that!” added Miss Terry, as the
+peculiar fervour of the embrace in question came back to her
+recollection. “Ah, I don’t know what to think.”
+
+“Best not think about it at all, Miss Terry. It won’t bear reflection.”
+
+“Oh, Arthur, how could you?”
+
+He looked very uncomfortable as he answered—
+
+“I know that I must seem a dreadful brute to you. I daresay I am; but,
+Miss Terry, it would, under all the circumstances, be much more to the
+point, if you insisted on Mildred’s marrying me.”
+
+“I dare not. You do not know Mildred. She would never submit to it from
+me.”
+
+“Then I must; and, what is more, I will do it now.”
+
+“Thank you, Arthur, thank you. I cannot tell you how grateful I am to
+you.”
+
+“There is no need to be grateful to the author of this mischief.”
+
+“And supposing she refuses—what will you do then?”
+
+“Then I think that I shall go away at once. Hush! here she comes.”
+
+“Well, Arthur, what are you and Agatha plotting together? You both look
+serious enough.”
+
+“Nothing, Mildred—that is, only another sea-voyage.”
+
+Mildred glanced at him uneasily. She did not like the tone in his
+voice.
+
+“I have a bit of bad news for you, Arthur. That fool, that idiot,
+Jane”—and she stamped her little foot upon the pavement—“has upset the
+mummy hyacinth-pot and broken the flower off just as it was coming into
+bloom. I have given her a quarter’s wages and her passage back to
+England, and packed her off.”
+
+“Why, Mildred,” remonstrated Miss Terry, “what a fuss to make about a
+flower!”
+
+She turned on her almost fiercely.
+
+“I had rather have broken my arm, or anything short of my neck, than
+that she should have broken that flower. Arthur planted it, and now the
+clumsy girl has destroyed it,” and Mildred looked as though she were
+going to cry.
+
+As there was nothing more to be said, Miss Terry went away. As soon as
+she was gone, Mildred turned to Arthur and said—
+
+“You were right, Arthur; we shall never see it bloom in this world.”
+
+“Never mind about the flower, dear; it cannot be helped. I want to
+speak to you of something more important. Miss Terry saw you kiss me
+last night, and she not unnaturally is anxious to know what it all
+means.”
+
+“And did you tell her?”
+
+“Yes.”
+
+It was Mildred’s turn to blush now.
+
+“Mildred, you must listen to me. This cannot go on any more; either you
+must marry me, or——”
+
+“Or what?”
+
+“Or I must go away. At present our whole life is a lie.”
+
+“Do you really wish me to marry you, Arthur?”
+
+“I not only wish it, I think it necessary.”
+
+“Have you nothing more to say than that?”
+
+“Yes, I have to say that I will do my best to make you a good and
+faithful husband, and that I am sure you will make me a good wife.”
+
+She dropped her face upon her hands and thought.
+
+Just then Miss Terry came hurrying up.
+
+“Oh, Arthur!” she said, “just think, the _Roman_ is in, after all, but
+all her boats are gone, and they say that half of her passengers and
+crew are washed overboard; do go down and see about it.”
+
+He hesitated a little.
+
+“Go, dear,” whispered Mildred. “I want time to think. I will give you
+my answer this afternoon.”
+
+Mildred sat still on the verandah thinking, but she had not been there
+many minutes before a servant came with her English letters that had
+been brought by the unfortunate _Roman_, and at the same time informed
+her that the _Garth Castle_ had been sighted, and would anchor in a few
+hours. Mildred reflected that it was not often they got two English
+mails in one day. She began idly turning over the packet before her. Of
+late letters had lost much of their interest for Mildred.
+
+Presently, however, her hand made a movement of almost electric
+swiftness, and the colour left her face as she seized a stout envelope
+directed in a hand of peculiar delicacy to “Arthur Heigham, Esq., care
+of Mrs. Carr, Madeira.” Mildred knew the handwriting, she had seen it
+in Arthur’s pocket-book. It was Angela Caresfoot’s. Next to it there
+was another letter addressed to Arthur in a hand that she did not know,
+but bearing the same postmarks, “Bratham” and “Roxham.” She put them
+both aside, and then took up the thick letter and examined it. It had
+two peculiarities—first, it was open, having come unsealed in transit,
+and been somewhat roughly tied up with a piece of twine; and secondly,
+it contained some article of jewellery. Indeed, by dint of a little
+pressing on the outside paper, she was able to form a pretty accurate
+opinion as to what it was. It was a ring. If she had turned pale before
+when she saw the letter, she was paler still now.
+
+“Heavens,” she thought, “why does she send him a ring? Has anything
+happened to her husband? If she is a free woman, I am lost.”
+
+Mildred looked at the letter lying open before her, and a terrible
+temptation took possession of her. She took it up and put it down
+again, and then again she took it up, wiping the cold perspiration from
+her forehead.
+
+“My whole life is at stake,” she thought.
+
+Then she hesitated no longer, but, taking the letter, slipped off the
+piece of twine, and drew its contents from the envelope. The first
+thing to fall out, wrapped in a little cotton-wool, was the ring. She
+looked at it, and recognized it as Arthur’s engagement ring, the same
+that Lady Bellamy had taken with her. Then, putting aside the
+statement, she deliberately unfolded the letter, and read it.
+
+Do not think too hardly of her, my reader. The temptation was very
+sore. But, when one yields to temptation, retribution is not
+unfrequently hard upon its track, and it would only have been necessary
+to watch Mildred’s face to see that, if she had sinned, the sin went
+hand in hand with punishment. In turn, it took an expression of
+astonishment, grief, awe, and despair. She read the letter to the last
+word, then she took the statement, and glanced through it, smiling once
+or twice as she read. Next she replaced everything in the envelope,
+and, taking it, together with the other letter addressed to Arthur,
+unbuttoned the top of her loose-bodied white dress, and placed them in
+her bosom.
+
+“It is over,” she said to herself. “I can never marry him now. That
+woman is as far above me as the stars, and, sooner or later, he would
+find it all out. He must go, ah, God! he must go to marry _her_. Why
+should I not destroy these letters, and marry him to-morrow? bind him
+to me by a tie that no letters can ever break? What! purchase his
+presence at the price of his daily scorn? Oh, such water is too bitter
+for me to drink! I have sinned against you, Arthur, but I will sin no
+more. Good-bye, my dear, good-bye.”
+
+And she laid her throbbing head upon the rail of the verandah, and wept
+bitterly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXIV.
+
+
+About three o’clock that afternoon Arthur returned to the Quinta,
+having lunched on board the _Roman_. He found Mildred sitting in her
+favourite place on the museum verandah. She was very pale, and, if he
+had watched her, he would have seen that she was trembling all over,
+but he did not observe her particularly.
+
+“Well,” he said, “it is all nonsense about half the crew being drowned;
+only one man was killed, by the fall of a spar, poor chap. They ran
+into Vigo, as I thought. The other mail is just coming in— but what is
+the matter, Mildred? You look pale.”
+
+“Nothing, dear; I have a good deal to think of, that is all.”
+
+“Ah, yes! Well, my love, have you made up your mind?”
+
+“Why did I refuse to marry you before; for your sake, or mine, Arthur?”
+
+“You said—absurdly, I thought—for mine!”
+
+“And what I said I meant, and what I meant, I mean. Look me in the
+face, dear, and tell me, upon your honour as a gentleman, that you love
+me, really love me, and I will marry you to-morrow.”
+
+“I am very fond of you, Mildred, and I will make you a good and true
+husband.”
+
+“Precisely; that is what I expected, but it is _not_ enough for me.
+There was a time when I thought that I could be well satisfied if you
+would only look kindly upon me, but I suppose that _l’appetit vient en
+mangeant_, for, now you do that, I am not satisfied. I long to reign
+alone. But that is not all. I will not consent to tie you, who do not
+love me, to my apron-strings for life. Believe me, the time is very
+near when you would curse me, if I did. You say”—and she rose and
+stretched out her arm—“that you will either marry me or go. I have made
+my choice. I will not beat out my heart against a stone. I will _not_
+marry you. Go, Arthur, go!”
+
+A great anxiety came into his face.
+
+“Do you fully understand what you are saying, Mildred? Such ties as
+exist between us cannot be lightly broken.”
+
+“But I will break them, and my own heart with them, before they become
+chains so heavy that you cannot bear them. Arthur”—and she came up to
+him, and put her hands upon his shoulders, looking, with wild and
+sorrowful eyes, straight into his face—“tell me now, dear—do not
+palter, or put me off with any courteous falsehood—tell me as truly as
+you will speak upon the judgment-day, do you still love Angela
+Caresfoot as much as ever?”
+
+“Mildred, you should not ask me such painful questions; it is not right
+of you.”
+
+“It is right; and you will soon know that it is. Answer me.”
+
+“Then, if you must have it, _I do_.”
+
+Her face became quite hard. Slowly she took her hands from his
+shoulders.
+
+“And you have the effrontery to ask me to marry you with one breath,
+and to tell me this with the next. Arthur, you had better go. Do not
+consider yourself under any false obligation to me. Go, and go
+quickly.”
+
+“For God’s sake, think what you are doing, Mildred!”
+
+“Oh! I have thought—I have thought too much. There is nothing left but
+to say good-bye. Yes, it is a very cruel word. Do you know that you
+have passed over my life like a hurricane, and wrenched it up by the
+roots?”
+
+“Really, Mildred, you mystify me. I don’t understand you. What can be
+the meaning of all this?”
+
+She looked at him for a few seconds, and then answered, in a quiet,
+matter-of-fact voice.
+
+“I forgot, Arthur; here are your English letters;” and she drew them
+from her bosom and gave them to him. “Perhaps they will explain things
+a little. Meanwhile, I will tell you something. Angela Caresfoot’s
+husband is dead; indeed, she was never _really_ married to him.” And
+then she turned, and slowly walked towards the entrance of the museum.
+In the boudoir, however, her strength seemed to fail her, and she sank
+on a chair.
+
+Arthur took the letter, written by the woman he loved, and warm from
+the breast of the woman he was about to leave, and stood speechless.
+His heart stopped for a moment, and then sent the blood bounding
+through his veins like a flood of joy. The shock was so great that for
+a second or two he staggered, and nearly fell. Presently, however, he
+recovered himself, and another and very different thought overtook him.
+
+Putting the letters into his pocket, he followed Mildred into the
+boudoir. She was sitting, looking very faint, upon a chair, her arms
+hanging down helplessly by her side.
+
+“Mildred,” he said, hoarsely.
+
+She looked up with a faint air of surprise.
+
+“What, are you not gone?”
+
+“Mildred, beyond what you have just said I know nothing of the contents
+of these letters; but whatever they may be, here and now, before I read
+them, I again offer to marry you. I owe it to you and to my own sense
+of what is right that I should marry you.”
+
+He spoke calmly, and with evident sincerity.
+
+“Do you know that I read your letter just now, and had half a mind to
+burn it; that I am little better than a thief?”
+
+“I guessed that you had read it.”
+
+“And do you understand that your Angela is unmarried, that she was
+never really married at all—and that she asks nothing better than to
+marry you?”
+
+“I understand.”
+
+“And you still offer to make me your wife?”
+
+“I do. What do you say?”
+
+A flood of light filled Mildred’s eyes as she rose and confronted him.
+
+“I say, Arthur, that you are a very noble gentleman, and, that though
+from this day I must be a miserable woman, I shall always be proud to
+have loved you. Listen, my dear. When I read that letter, I felt that
+your Angela towered over me like the Alps, her snowy purity stained
+only by the reflected lights of heaven. I felt that I could not compete
+with such a woman as this, that I could never hope to hold you from one
+so calmly faithful, so dreadfully serene, and I knew that she had
+conquered, robbing me for Time, and, as I fear, leaving me beggared for
+Eternity. In the magnificence of her undying power, in the calm
+certainty of her command, she flings me your life as though it were
+nothing. ‘Take it,’ she says; ‘he will never love you—he is mine; but I
+can afford to wait. I shall claim him before the throne of God.’ But
+now, look you, Arthur, if you can behave like the generous- hearted
+gentleman you are, I will show you that I am not behind you in
+generosity. I will _not_ marry you. I have done with you; or, to be
+more correct,” and she gave a hard little laugh, “you have done with
+me. Go back to Angela, the beautiful woman with inscrutable grey eyes,
+who waits for you, clothed in her eternal calm, like a mountain in its
+snows. I shall send her that tiara as a wedding-present; it will become
+her well. Go back, Arthur; but sometimes, when you are cloyed with
+unearthly virtue and perfection, remember that a _woman_ loved you.
+There, I have made you quite a speech; you will always think of me in
+connection with fine words. Why don’t you go?”
+
+Arthur stood utterly confused.
+
+“And what will you do, Mildred?”
+
+“I!” she answered, with the same hard laugh. “Oh, don’t trouble
+yourself about me. I shall be a happy woman yet. I mean to see life
+now—go in for pleasure, power, ritualism, whatever comes first.
+Perhaps, when we meet again, I shall be Lady Minster, or some other
+great lady, and shall be able to tell you that I am very, very happy. A
+woman always likes to tell her old lover that, you know, though she
+would not like him to believe it. Perhaps, too”—and here her eyes grew
+soft, and her voice broke into a sob—“I shall have a consolation you
+know nothing of.”
+
+He did not know what she meant; indeed, he was half-distracted with
+grief and doubt.
+
+For a moment more they stood facing each other in silence, and then
+suddenly she flung her arms above her head, and uttering a low cry of
+grief, turned, and ran swiftly down the stone passage into the museum.
+Arthur hesitated for a while, and then followed her.
+
+A painful sight awaited him in that silent chamber; for there—
+stretched on the ground before the statue of Osiris, like some hopeless
+sinner before an inexorable justice, with her brown hair touched to
+gold by a ray of sunlight from the roof—lay Mildred, as still as though
+she were dead. He went to her, and tried to raise her, but she wrenched
+herself loose, and, in an abandonment of misery, flung herself upon the
+ground again.
+
+“I thought it was over,” she said, “and that you were gone. Go, dear,
+or this will drive me mad. Perhaps, sometimes, you will write me.”
+
+He knelt beside her and kissed her, and then he rose and went.
+
+But for many a year was he haunted by that scene of human misery
+enacted in the weird chamber of the dead. Never could he forget the
+sight of Mildred lying in the sunlight, with the marble face of mocking
+calm looking down upon her, and the mortal frames of those who, in
+their day, had suffered as she suffered, and ages since had found the
+rest that she in time would reach, scattered all around—fit emblems of
+the fragile vanity of passions which suck their strength from earth
+alone.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXV.
+
+
+When Arthur got out of the gates of the Quinta Carr, he hurried to the
+hotel, with the intention of reading the letters Mildred had given him,
+and, passing through the dining-room, seated himself upon the “stoep”
+which overlooked the garden in order to do so. At this time of year it
+was, generally speaking, a quiet place enough; but on this particular
+day scarcely had Arthur taken the letter from his pocket, and—having
+placed the ring that it contained upon his trembling finger, and
+repudiating the statement, marked “to be read first,” on account of its
+business-like appearance—glanced at the two first lines of Angela’s own
+letter, when the sound of hurrying feet and many chattering voices
+reminded him that he could expect no peace anywhere in the
+neighbourhood of the hotel. The second English mail was in, and all the
+crowd of passengers, who were at this time pouring out to the Cape to
+escape the English winter, had come, rejoicing, ashore, to eat, drink,
+be merry, and buy parrots and wicker chairs while the vessel coaled.
+
+He groaned and fled, in his hurry leaving the statement on the bench on
+which he was seated.
+
+Some half-mile or so away, to the left of the town, where the sea had
+encroached a little upon the shore of the island, there was a nook of
+peculiar loveliness. Here the giant hand of Nature had cleft a ravine
+in the mountains that make Madeira, down which a crystal streamlet
+trickled to the patch of yellow sand that edged the sea. Its banks
+sloped like a natural terrace, and were clothed with masses of
+maidenhair ferns interwoven with feathery grasses, whilst up above
+among the rocks grew aloes and every sort of flowering shrub.
+
+Behind, clothed in forest, lay the mass of mountains, varied by the
+rich green of the vine-clad valleys, and in front heaved the endless
+ocean, broken only by one lonely rock that stood grimly out against the
+purpling glories of the evening sky. This spot Arthur had discovered in
+the course of his rambles with Mildred, and it was here that he bent
+his steps to be alone to read his letters. Scarcely had he reached the
+place, however, when he discovered, to his intense vexation, that he
+had left the enclosure in Angela’s letter upon the verandah at the
+hotel. But, luckily, it chanced that, within a few yards of the spot
+where he had seated himself, there was a native boy cutting
+walking-sticks from the scrub. He called to him in Portuguese, of which
+he had learnt a little, and, writing something on a card, told him to
+take it to the manager of the hotel, and to bring back what he would
+give him. Delighted at the chance of earning sixpence, the boy started
+at a run, and at last he was able to begin to read his letter.
+
+Had Arthur not been in quite such a hurry to leave the hotel, he might
+have seen something which would have interested him, namely, a very
+lovely woman—so lovely, indeed, that everybody turned their heads to
+look at her as she passed, accompanied by another woman clad in a stiff
+black gown, not at all lovely, and rather ancient, but, for all that,
+well-favoured and pleasant to look on, being duly convoyed to their
+room in the hotel by his friend the manager.
+
+“Well, thank my stars, here we be at last,” said the elderly stout
+person, with a gasp, as the door of the room closed upon the pair; “and
+it’s my opinion that here I shall stop till my dying day, for, as for
+getting on board one of those beastly ships again, I couldn’t do it,
+and that’s flat. Now look here, dearie, don’t you sit there and look
+frightened, but just set to and clean yourself up a bit. I’m off
+downstairs to see if I can find out about things; everybody’s sure to
+know everybody else’s business in a place like this, because, you see,
+the gossip can’t get out of a bit of an island, it must travel round
+and round till it ewaporates. I shall soon know if he is married or
+not, and if he is, why, what’s done can’t be undone, and it’s no use
+crying over spilt milk, and we’ll be off home, though I doubt I sha’n’t
+live to get there, and if he isn’t why so much the better.”
+
+“Oh! nurse, do stop talking, and go quickly; can’t you see that I am in
+an agony of suspense? I must get it over one way or the other.”
+
+“Hurry no man’s cattle, my dear, or I shall make a mess of it. Now,
+Miss Angela, just you keep cool, it ain’t no manner of use flying into
+a state. I’ll be back presently.”
+
+But, as soon as she was gone, poor Angela flew into a considerable
+state; for, flinging herself upon her knees by the bed, she broke into
+hysterical prayers to her Maker that Arthur might not be taken from
+her. Poor girl! alternately racked by sick fears and wild hopes, hers
+was not a very enviable position during the apparently endless ten
+minutes that followed.
+
+Meanwhile, Pigott had descended to the cool hall, round which were
+arranged rows of hammocks, and was looking out for some one with whom
+to enter into conversation. A Portuguese waiter approached her, but she
+majestically waved him away, under the impression that he could not
+speak English, though as a matter of fact his English was purer than
+her own.
+
+Presently a pretty little woman, leading a baby by the hand, came up to
+her.
+
+“Pray, do you want anything? I am the wife of the manager.”
+
+“Yes, ma’am. I want a little information—at least, there’s another that
+does. Did you ever happen to hear of a Mr. Heigham?”
+
+“Mr. Heigham? Indeed, yes; I know him well. He was here a few minutes
+since.”
+
+“Then perhaps, ma’am, you can tell me if he is married to a Mrs. Carr
+that lives on this island?”
+
+“Not that I know of,” she answered, with a little smile; “but there is
+a good deal of talk about them—people say that, though they are not
+married, they ought to be, you know.”
+
+“That’s the best bit of news I have heard for many a day. As for the
+talk, I don’t pay no manner of heed to that. If he ain’t married to
+her, he won’t marry her now, I’ll go bail. Thank you kindly, ma’am.”
+
+At that moment they were interrupted by the entrance of a little ragged
+boy into the hall, who timidly held out a card to the lady to whom
+Pigott was talking.
+
+“Do you want to find Mr. Heigham?” she said. “Because if so, this boy
+will show you where he is. He has sent here for a paper that he left. I
+found it on the verandah just now, and wondered what it was. Perhaps
+you would take it to him if you go. I don’t like trusting this boy—as
+likely as not he will lose it.”
+
+“That will just suit. Just you tell the boy to wait while I fetch my
+young lady, and we will go with him. Is this the paper? And in her
+writing, too! Well, I never! There, I’ll be back in no time.”
+
+Pigott went upstairs far too rapidly for a person of her size and
+years, with the result that when she reached their room, where Angela
+was waiting half dead with suspense, she could only gasp.
+
+“Well,” said Angela, “be quick and tell me.”
+
+“Oh, Lord! them stairs!” gasped Pigott.
+
+“For pity’s sake, tell me the worst!”
+
+“Now, miss, _do_ give a body time, and don’t be a fool—begging pardon
+for——”
+
+“Oh, Pigott, you are torturing me!”
+
+“Well, miss, you muddle me so—but I am coming to it. I went down them
+dratted stairs, and there I see a wonderful nice-looking party with a
+baby.”
+
+“For God’s sake tell me—_is Arthur married?_”
+
+“Why, no, dearie—of course not. I was just a-going to say——”
+
+But whatever valuable remark Pigott was going to make was lost to the
+world for ever, for Angela flung her arms round her neck and began
+kissing her.
+
+“Oh, oh! thank God—thank God! Oh, oh, oh!”
+
+Whereupon Pigott, being a very sensible person, took her by the
+shoulders and tried to shake her, but it was no joke shaking a person
+of her height. Angela stood firm, and Pigott oscillated—that was the
+only visible result.
+
+“Now, then, miss,” she said, giving up the shaking as a bad job, “no
+highstrikes, _if_ you please. Just you put on your hat and come for a
+bit of a walk in this queer place with me. I haven’t brought you up by
+hand this two-and-twenty year or thereabouts, to see you go off in
+highstrikes, like a housemaid as has seen a ghost.”
+
+Angela stopped, and did as she was bid.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LXXVI.
+
+
+Arthur read his letter, and his heart burnt with passionate love of the
+true woman he had dared to doubt. Then he flung himself upon the grass
+and looked at the ocean that sparkled and heaved before him, and tried
+to think; but as yet he could not. The engines of his mind were
+reversed full speed, whilst his mind itself, with quick shudders and
+confusion, still forged ahead upon its former course. He rose, and cast
+upon the scene around him that long look we give to the place where a
+great happiness has found us.
+
+The sun was sinking fast behind the mountains, turning their slabbed
+sides and soaring pinnacles to giant shields and spears of fire.
+Beneath their mass, shadows—forerunners of the night—crept over the
+forests and the crested rollers, whilst further from him the ocean
+heaved in a rosy glow. Above, the ever-changing vault of heaven was of
+a beauty that no brush could paint. On a ground-work of burning red
+were piled, height upon height, deep ridges of purples and of crimsons.
+Nearer the horizon the colours brightened to a dazzling gold, till at
+length they narrowed to the white intensity of the half- hidden eye of
+the sun vanishing behind the mountains; whilst underlying the steady
+splendour of the upper skies flushed soft and melting shades of rose
+and lilac. Blue space above him was broken up by fantastic clouds that
+floated all on fire, and glowed like molten metal. The reflection, too,
+of all these massed and varied lights in the azure of the eastern skies
+was full of sharp contrasts and soft surprises, and a travelling eagle,
+sailing through space before them, seemed to gather all their tints
+upon his vivid wings, and, as he passed away, to leave a rainbow track
+of broken light.
+
+But such a glory was too bright to last. The sun sank swiftly, the
+celestial fires paled, the purples grew faint and died, and, where they
+had been, night trailed her sombre plumes across the sea and sky.
+
+But still the quiet glow of evening lingered, and presently a line of
+light was shot athwart it, cutting a track of glory across the shadowed
+sea, so weird and sudden, that it might well have been the first ray of
+a resurrection morn breaking in upon the twilight of the dead.
+
+He gazed almost in awe, till the majestic sight stilled the tumult of
+his heart, and his thoughts went up in thanks to the Creator for the
+pure love he had found again, and which had not betrayed him. Then he
+looked up, and there, stately and radiant, standing out clear against
+the shadows, her face illumined by that soft, yet vivid light, her
+trembling arms outstretched to clasp him—was his lost Angela.
+
+He saw her questioning glances fall upon him, and the red blood waver
+on her cheek; he saw the love-lights gather in her eyes; and then he
+saw no more, for she was in his arms, murmuring sweet broken words.
+
+Happy are those who thus shall find their Angela, whether it be here
+or—on the further shore of yonder solemn sea!
+
+And Mildred? She lay there before the stone symbol of inexorable
+judgment, and sobbed till the darkness covered her, and her heart broke
+in the silence.
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 10892 ***