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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of John Marchmont's Legacy, Volumes I-III, by
+Mary E. Braddon
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: John Marchmont's Legacy, Volumes I-III
+
+Author: Mary E. Braddon
+
+Release Date: December 1, 2010 [EBook #34542]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Clare Graham, using scans from the Internet Archive
+
+
+
+
+JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY.
+
+
+BY [M.E. Braddon] THE AUTHOR OF
+"LADY AUDLEY'S SECRET,"
+ETC. ETC. ETC.
+
+
+Published by Tinsley Brothers of London in 1863 (third edition).
+
+
+THIS STORY
+
+Is Dedicated
+
+TO
+
+MY MOTHER
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+ VOLUME I
+  CHAPTER I. THE MAN WITH THE BANNER.
+  CHAPTER II. LITTLE MARY.
+  CHAPTER III. ABOUT THE LINCOLNSHIRE PROPERTY.
+  CHAPTER IV. GOING AWAY.
+  CHAPTER V. MARCHMONT TOWERS.
+  CHAPTER VI. THE YOUNG SOLDIER'S RETURN.
+  CHAPTER VII. OLIVIA.
+  CHAPTER VIII. "MY LIFE IS COLD, AND DARK, AND DREARY."
+  CHAPTER IX. "WHEN SHALL I CEASE TO BE ALL ALONE?"
+  CHAPTER X. MARY'S STEPMOTHER.
+  CHAPTER XI. THE DAY OF DESOLATION.
+  CHAPTER XII. PAUL.
+  CHAPTER XIII. OLIVIA'S DESPAIR.
+  CHAPTER XIV. DRIVEN AWAY.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ VOLUME II.
+  CHAPTER I. MARY'S LETTER.
+  CHAPTER II. A NEW PROTECTOR.
+  CHAPTER III. PAUL'S SISTER.
+  CHAPTER IV. A STOLEN HONEYMOON.
+  CHAPTER V. SOUNDING THE DEPTHS.
+  CHAPTER VI. RISEN FROM THE GRAVE.
+  CHAPTER VII. FACE TO FACE.
+  CHAPTER VIII. THE PAINTING-ROOM BY THE RIVER.
+  CHAPTER IX. IN THE DARK.
+  CHAPTER X. THE PARAGRAPH IN THE NEWSPAPER.
+  CHAPTER XI. EDWARD ARUNDEL'S DESPAIR.
+  CHAPTER XII. EDWARD'S VISITORS.
+  CHAPTER XIII. ONE MORE SACRIFICE.
+  CHAPTER XIV. THE CHILD'S VOICE IN THE PAVILION BY THE WATER.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+ VOLUME III
+  CHAPTER I. CAPTAIN ARUNDEL'S REVENGE.
+  CHAPTER II. THE DESERTED CHAMBERS.
+  CHAPTER III. TAKING IT QUIETLY.
+  CHAPTER IV. MISS LAWFORD SPEAKS HER MIND.
+  CHAPTER V. THE RETURN OF THE WANDERER.
+  CHAPTER VI. A WIDOWER'S PROPOSAL.
+  CHAPTER VII. HOW THE TIDINGS WERE RECEIVED IN LINCOLNSHIRE.
+  CHAPTER VIII. MR. WESTON REFUSES TO BE TRAMPLED ON.
+  CHAPTER IX. "GOING TO BE MARRIED!"
+  CHAPTER X. THE TURNING OF THE TIDE.
+  CHAPTER XI. BELINDA'S WEDDING DAY.
+  CHAPTER XII. MARY'S STORY.
+  CHAPTER XIII. "ALL WITHIN IS DARK AS NIGHT."
+  CHAPTER XIV. "THERE IS CONFUSION WORSE THAN DEATH."
+  CHAPTER THE LAST. "DEAR IS THE MEMORY OF OUR WEDDED LIVES."
+  THE EPILOGUE.
+
+
+
+
+JOHN MARCHMONT'S LEGACY.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME I.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE MAN WITH THE BANNER.
+
+
+The history of Edward Arundel, second son of Christopher Arundel
+Dangerfield Arundel, of Dangerfield Park, Devonshire, began on a
+certain dark winter's night upon which the lad, still a schoolboy, went
+with his cousin, Martin Mostyn, to witness a blank-verse tragedy at one
+of the London theatres.
+
+There are few men who, looking back at the long story of their lives,
+cannot point to one page in the record of the past at which the actual
+history of life began. The page may come in the very middle of the
+book, perhaps; perhaps almost at the end. But let it come where it
+will, it is, after all, only the actual commencement. At an appointed
+hour in man's existence, the overture which has been going on ever
+since he was born is brought to a sudden close by the sharp vibration
+of the prompter's signal-bell; the curtain rises, and the drama of life
+begins. Very insignificant sometimes are the first scenes of the
+play,--common-place, trite, wearisome; but watch them closely, and
+interwoven with every word, dimly recognisable in every action, may be
+seen the awful hand of Destiny. The story has begun: already we, the
+spectators, can make vague guesses at the plot, and predicate the
+solemn climax; it is only the actors who are ignorant of the meaning of
+their several parts, and who are stupidly reckless of the obvious
+catastrophe.
+
+The story of young Arundel's life began when he was a light-hearted,
+heedless lad of seventeen, newly escaped for a brief interval from the
+care of his pastors and masters.
+
+The lad had come to London on a Christmas visit to his father's sister,
+a worldly-minded widow, with a great many sons and daughters, and an
+income only large enough to enable her to keep up the appearances of
+wealth essential to the family pride of one of the Arundels of
+Dangerfield.
+
+Laura Arundel had married a Colonel Mostyn, of the East India Company's
+service, and had returned from India after a wandering life of some
+years, leaving her dead husband behind her, and bringing away with her
+five daughters and three sons, most of whom had been born under canvas.
+
+Mrs. Mostyn bore her troubles bravely, and contrived to do more with
+her pension, and an additional income of four hundred a year from a
+small fortune of her own, than the most consummate womanly management
+can often achieve. Her house in Montague Square was elegantly
+furnished, her daughters were exquisitely dressed, her sons sensibly
+educated, her dinners well cooked. She was not an agreeable woman; she
+was perhaps, if any thing, too sensible,--so very sensible as to be
+obviously intolerant of anything like folly in others. She was a good
+mother; but by no means an indulgent one. She expected her sons to
+succeed in life, and her daughters to marry rich men; and would have
+had little patience with any disappointment in either of these
+reasonable expectations. She was attached to her brother Christopher
+Arundel, and she was very well pleased to spend the autumn months at
+Dangerfield, where the hunting-breakfasts gave her daughters an
+excellent platform for the exhibition of charming demi-toilettes and
+social and domestic graces, perhaps more dangerous to the susceptible
+hearts of rich young squires than the fascinations of a _valse a deux
+temps_ or an Italian scena.
+
+But the same Mrs. Mostyn, who never forgot to keep up her
+correspondence with the owner of Dangerfield Park, utterly ignored the
+existence of another brother, a certain Hubert Arundel, who had,
+perhaps, much more need of her sisterly friendship than the wealthy
+Devonshire squire. Heaven knows, the world seemed a lonely place to
+this younger son, who had been educated for the Church, and was fain to
+content himself with a scanty living in one of the dullest and dampest
+towns in fenny Lincolnshire. His sister might have very easily made
+life much more pleasant to the Rector of Swampington and his only
+daughter; but Hubert Arundel was a great deal too proud to remind her
+of this. If Mrs. Mostyn chose to forget him,--the brother and sister
+had been loving friends and dear companions long ago, under the beeches
+at Dangerfield,--she was welcome to do so. She was better off than he
+was; and it is to be remarked, that if A's income is three hundred a
+year, and B's a thousand, the chances are as seven to three that B will
+forget any old intimacy that may have existed between himself and A.
+Hubert Arundel had been wild at college, and had put his autograph
+across so many oblong slips of blue paper, acknowledging value received
+that had been only half received, that by the time the claims of all
+the holders of these portentous morsels of stamped paper had been
+satisfied, the younger son's fortune had melted away, leaving its
+sometime possessor the happy owner of a pair of pointers, a couple of
+guns by crack makers, a good many foils, single-sticks, boxing-gloves,
+wire masks, basket helmets, leathern leg-guards, and other
+paraphernalia, a complete set of the old _Sporting Magazine_, from 1792
+to the current year, bound in scarlet morocco, several boxes of very
+bad cigars, a Scotch terrier, and a pipe of undrinkable port.
+
+Of all these possessions, only the undrinkable port now remained to
+show that Hubert Arundel had once had a decent younger son's fortune,
+and had succeeded most admirably in making ducks and drakes of it. The
+poor about Swampington believed in the sweet red wine, which had been
+specially concocted for Israelitish dealers in jewelry, cigars,
+pictures, wines, and specie. The Rector's pensioners smacked their lips
+over the mysterious liquid and confidently affirmed that it did them
+more good than all the doctor's stuff the parish apothecary could send
+them. Poor Hubert Arundel was well content to find that at least this
+scanty crop of corn had grown up from the wild oats he had sown at
+Cambridge. The wine pleased the poor creatures who drank it, and was
+scarcely likely to do them any harm; and there was a reasonable
+prospect that the last bottle would by-and-by pass out of the rectory
+cellars, and with it the last token of that bitterly regretted past.
+
+I have no doubt that Hubert Arundel felt the sting of his only sister's
+neglect, as only a poor and proud man can feel such an insult; but he
+never let any confession of this sentiment escape his lips; and when
+Mrs. Mostyn, being seized with a fancy for doing this forgotten brother
+a service, wrote him a letter of insolent advice, winding up with an
+offer to procure his only child a situation as nursery governess, the
+Rector of Swampington only crushed the missive in his strong hand, and
+flung it into his study-fire, with a muttered exclamation that sounded
+terribly like an oath.
+
+"A _nursery_ governess!" he repeated, savagely; "yes; an underpaid
+drudge, to teach children their A B C, and mend their frocks and make
+their pinafores. I should like Mrs. Mostyn to talk to my little Livy
+for half an hour. I think my girl would have put the lady down so
+completely by the end of that time, that we should never hear any more
+about nursery governesses."
+
+He laughed bitterly as he repeated the obnoxious phrase; but his laugh
+changed to a sigh.
+
+Was it strange that the father should sigh as he remembered how he had
+seen the awful hand of Death fall suddenly upon younger and stronger
+men than himself? What if he were to die, and leave his only child
+unmarried? What would become of her, with her dangerous gifts, with her
+fatal dowry of beauty and intellect and pride?
+
+"But she would never do any thing wrong," the father thought. "Her
+religious principles are strong enough to keep her right under any
+circumstances, in spite of any temptation. Her sense of duty is more
+powerful than any other sentiment. She would never be false to that;
+she would never be false to that."
+
+In return for the hospitality of Dangerfield Park, Mrs. Mostyn was in
+the habit of opening her doors to either Christopher Arundel or his
+sons, whenever any one of the three came to London. Of course she
+infinitely preferred seeing Arthur Arundel, the eldest son and heir,
+seated at her well-spread table, and flirting with one of his pretty
+cousins, than to be bored with his rackety younger brother, a noisy lad
+of seventeen, with no better prospects than a commission in her
+Majesty's service, and a hundred and fifty pounds a year to eke out his
+pay; but she was, notwithstanding, graciously pleased to invite Edward
+to spend his Christmas holidays in her comfortable household; and it
+was thus it came to pass that on the 29th of December, in the year
+1838, the story of Edward Arundel's life began in a stage-box at Drury
+Lane Theatre.
+
+The box had been sent to Mrs. Mostyn by the fashionable editor of a
+fashionable newspaper; but that lady and her daughters being previously
+engaged, had permitted the two boys to avail themselves of the
+editorial privilege.
+
+The tragedy was the dull production of a distinguished literary
+amateur, and even the great actor who played the principal character
+could not make the performance particularly enlivening. He certainly
+failed in impressing Mr. Edward Arundel, who flung himself back in his
+chair and yawned dolefully during the earlier part of the
+entertainment.
+
+"It ain't particularly jolly, is it, Martin?" he said naively, "Let's
+go out and have some oysters, and come in again just before the
+pantomime begins."
+
+"Mamma made me promise that we wouldn't leave the theatre till we left
+for good, Ned," his cousin answered; "and then we're to go straight
+home in a cab."
+
+Edward Arundel sighed.
+
+"I wish we hadn't come till half-price, old fellow," he said drearily.
+"If I'd known it was to be a tragedy, I wouldn't have come away from
+the Square in such a hurry. I wonder why people write tragedies, when
+nobody likes them."
+
+He turned his back to the stage, and folded his arms upon the velvet
+cushion of the box preparatory to indulging himself in a deliberate
+inspection of the audience. Perhaps no brighter face looked upward that
+night towards the glare and glitter of the great chandelier than that
+of the fair-haired lad in the stage-box. His candid blue eyes beamed
+with a more radiant sparkle than any of the myriad lights in the
+theatre; a nimbus of golden hair shone about his broad white forehead;
+glowing health, careless happiness, truth, good-nature, honesty, boyish
+vivacity, and the courage of a young lion,--all were expressed in the
+fearless smile, the frank yet half-defiant gaze. Above all, this lad of
+seventeen looked especially what he was,--a thorough gentleman. Martin
+Mostyn was prim and effeminate, precociously tired of life,
+precociously indifferent to everything but his own advantage; but the
+Devonshire boy's talk was still fragrant with the fresh perfume of
+youth and innocence, still gay with the joyous recklessness of early
+boyhood. He was as impatient for the noisy pantomime overture, and the
+bright troops of fairies in petticoats of spangled muslin, as the most
+inveterate cockney cooling his snub-nose against the iron railing of
+the gallery. He was as ready to fall in love with the painted beauty of
+the ill-paid ballet-girls, as the veriest child in the wide circle of
+humanity about him. Fresh, untainted, unsuspicious, he looked out at
+the world, ready to believe in everything and everybody.
+
+"How you do fidget, Edward!" whispered Martin Mostyn peevishly; "why
+don't you look at the stage? It's capital fun."
+
+"Fun!"
+
+"Yes; I don't mean the tragedy you know, but the supernumeraries. Did
+you ever see such an awkward set of fellows in all your life? There's a
+man there with weak legs and a heavy banner, that I've been watching
+all the evening. He's more fun than all the rest of it put together."
+
+Mr. Mostyn, being of course much too polite to point out the man in
+question, indicated him with a twitch of his light eyebrows; and Edward
+Arundel, following that indication, singled out the banner-holder from
+a group of soldiers in medieval dress, who had been standing wearily
+enough upon one side of the stage during a long, strictly private and
+confidential dialogue between the princely hero of the tragedy and one
+of his accommodating satellites. The lad uttered a cry of surprise as
+he looked at the weak-legged banner-holder.
+
+Mr. Mostyn turned upon his cousin with some vexation.
+
+"I can't help it, Martin," exclaimed young Arundel; "I can't be
+mistaken--yes--poor fellow, to think that he should come to this!--you
+haven't forgotten him, Martin, surely?"
+
+"Forgotten what--forgotten whom? My dear Edward, what _do_ you mean?"
+
+"John Marchmont, the poor fellow who used to teach us mathematics at
+Vernon's; the fellow the governor sacked because----"
+
+"Well, what of him?"
+
+"The poor chap with the banner!" exclaimed the boy, in a breathless
+whisper; "don't you see, Martin? didn't you recognise him? It's
+Marchmont, poor old Marchmont, that we used to chaff, and that the
+governor sacked because he had a constitutional cough, and wasn't
+strong enough for his work."
+
+"Oh, yes, I remember him well enough," Mr. Mostyn answered,
+indifferently. "Nobody could stand his cough, you know; and he was a
+vulgar fellow, into the bargain."
+
+"He wasn't a vulgar fellow," said Edward indignantly;--"there, there's
+the curtain down again;--he belonged to a good family in Lincolnshire,
+and was heir-presumptive to a stunning fortune. I've heard him say so
+twenty times."
+
+Martin Mostyn did not attempt to repress an involuntary sneer, which
+curled his lips as his cousin spoke.
+
+"Oh, I dare say you've heard _him_ say so, my dear boy," he murmured
+superciliously.
+
+"Ah, and it was true," cried Edward; "he wasn't a fellow to tell lies;
+perhaps he'd have suited Mr. Vernon better if he had been. He had bad
+health, and was weak, and all that sort of thing; but he wasn't a snob.
+He showed me a signet-ring once that he used to wear on his
+watch-chain----"
+
+"A _silver_ watch-chain," simpered Mr. Mostyn, "just like a
+carpenter's."
+
+"Don't be such a supercilious cad, Martin. He was very kind to me, poor
+Marchmont; and I know I was always a nuisance to him, poor old fellow;
+for you know I never could get on with Euclid. I'm sorry to see him
+here. Think, Martin, what an occupation for him! I don't suppose he
+gets more than nine or ten shillings a week for it."
+
+"A shilling a night is, I believe, the ordinary remuneration of a
+stage-soldier. They pay as much for the real thing as for the sham, you
+see; the defenders of our country risk their lives for about the same
+consideration. Where are you going, Ned?"
+
+Edward Arundel had left his place, and was trying to undo the door of
+the box.
+
+"To see if I can get at this poor fellow."
+
+"You persist in declaring, then, that the man with the weak legs is our
+old mathematical drudge? Well, I shouldn't wonder. The fellow was
+coughing all through the five acts, and that's uncommonly like
+Marchmont. You're surely not going to renew your acquaintance with
+him?"
+
+But young Arundel had just succeeded in opening the door, and he left
+the box without waiting to answer his cousin's question. He made his
+way very rapidly out of the theatre, and fought manfully through the
+crowds who were waiting about the pit and gallery doors, until he found
+himself at the stage-entrance. He had often looked with reverent wonder
+at the dark portal; but he had never before essayed to cross the sacred
+threshold. But the guardian of the gate to this theatrical paradise,
+inhabited by fairies at a guinea a week, and baronial retainers at a
+shilling a night, is ordinarily a very inflexible individual, not to be
+corrupted by any mortal persuasion, and scarcely corruptible by the
+more potent influence of gold or silver. Poor Edward's half-a-crown had
+no effect whatever upon the stern door-keeper, who thanked him for his
+donation, but told him that it was against his orders to let anybody go
+up-stairs.
+
+"But I want to see some one so particularly," the boy said eagerly.
+"Don't you think you could manage it for me, you know? He's an old
+friend of mine,--one of the supernu--what's-its-names?" added Edward,
+stumbling over the word. "He carried a banner in the tragedy, you know;
+and he's got such an awful cough, poor chap."
+
+"Ze man who garried ze panner vith a gough," said the door-keeper
+reflectively. He was an elderly German, and had kept guard at that
+classic doorway for half-a-century or so; "Parking Cheremiah."
+
+"Barking Jeremiah!"
+
+"Yes, sir. They gall him Parking pecause he's berbetually goughin' his
+poor veag head off; and they gall him Cheremiah pecause he's alvays
+belangholy."
+
+"Oh, do let me see him," cried Mr. Edward Arundel. "I know you can
+manage it; so do, that's a good fellow. I tell you he's a friend of
+mine, and quite a gentleman too. Bless you, there isn't a move in
+mathematics he isn't up to; and he'll come into a fortune some of these
+days--"
+
+"Yaase," interrupted the door-keeper, sarcastically, "Zey bake von of
+him pegause off dad."
+
+"And can I see him?"
+
+"I phill dry and vind him vor you. Here, you Chim," said the
+door-keeper, addressing a dirty youth, who had just nailed an official
+announcement of the next morning's rehearsal upon the back of a
+stony-hearted swing-door, which was apt to jam the fingers of the
+uninitiated,--"vot is ze name off zat zuber vith ze pad gough, ze man
+zay gall Parking."
+
+"Oh, that's Mortimore."
+
+"To you know if he's on in ze virsd zene?"
+
+"Yes. He's one of the demons; but the scene's just over. Do you want
+him?"
+
+"You gan dake ub zis young chendleman's gard do him, and dell him to
+slib town here if he has kod a vaid," said the door-keeper.
+
+Mr. Arundel handed his card to the dirty boy.
+
+"He'll come to me fast enough, poor fellow," he muttered. "I usen't to
+chaff him as the others did, and I'm glad I didn't, now."
+
+Edward Arundel could not easily forget that one brief scrutiny in which
+he had recognised the wasted face of the schoolmaster's hack, who had
+taught him mathematics only two years before. Could there be anything
+more piteous than that degrading spectacle? The feeble frame, scarcely
+able to sustain that paltry one-sided banner of calico and tinsel; the
+two rude daubs of coarse vermilion upon the hollow cheeks; the black
+smudges that were meant for eyebrows; the wretched scrap of horsehair
+glued upon the pinched chin in dismal mockery of a beard; and through
+all this the pathetic pleading of large hazel eyes, bright with the
+unnatural lustre of disease, and saying perpetually, more plainly than
+words can speak, "Do not look at me; do not despise me; do not even
+pity me. It won't last long."
+
+That fresh-hearted schoolboy was still thinking of this, when a wasted
+hand was laid lightly and tremulously on his arm, and looking up he saw
+a man in a hideous mask and a tight-fitting suit of scarlet and gold
+standing by his side.
+
+"I'll take off my mask in a minute, Arundel," said a faint voice, that
+sounded hollow and muffled within a cavern of pasteboard and
+wickerwork. "It was very good of you to come round; very, very good!"
+
+"I was so sorry to see you here, Marchmont; I knew you in a moment, in
+spite of the disguise."
+
+The supernumerary had struggled out of his huge head-gear by this time,
+and laid the fabric of papier-mache and tinsel carefully aside upon a
+shelf. He had washed his face before putting on the mask, for he was
+not called upon to appear before a British public in martial semblance
+any more upon that evening. The pale wasted face was interesting and
+gentlemanly, not by any means handsome, but almost womanly in its
+softness of expression. It was the face of a man who had not yet seen
+his thirtieth birthday; who might never live to see it, Edward Arundel
+thought mournfully.
+
+"Why do you do this, Marchmont?" the boy asked bluntly.
+
+"Because there was nothing else left for me to do," the stage-demon
+answered with a sad smile. "I can't get a situation in a school, for my
+health won't suffer me to take one; or it won't suffer any employer to
+take me, for fear of my falling ill upon his hands, which comes to the
+same thing; so I do a little copying for the law-stationers, and this
+helps out that, and I get on as well as I can. I wouldn't so much mind
+if it wasn't for--"
+
+He stopped suddenly, interrupted by a paroxysm of coughing.
+
+"If it wasn't for whom, old fellow?"
+
+"My poor little girl; my poor little motherless Mary."
+
+Edward Arundel looked grave, and perhaps a little ashamed of himself.
+He had forgotten until this moment that his old tutor had been left a
+widower at four-and-twenty, with a little daughter to support out of
+his scanty stipend.
+
+"Don't be down-hearted, old fellow," the lad whispered, tenderly;
+"perhaps I shall be able to help you, you know. And the little girl can
+go down to Dangerfield; I know my mother would take care of her, and
+will keep her there till you get strong and well. And then you might
+start a fencing-room, or a shooting-gallery, or something of that sort,
+at the West End; and I'd come to you, and bring lots of fellows to you,
+and you'd get on capitally, you know."
+
+Poor John Marchmont, the asthmatic supernumerary, looked perhaps the
+very last person in the world whom it could be possible to associate
+with a pair of foils, or a pistol and a target; but he smiled faintly
+at his old pupil's enthusiastic talk.
+
+"You were always a good fellow, Arundel," he said, gravely. "I don't
+suppose I shall ever ask you to do me a service; but if, by-and-by,
+this cough makes me knock under, and my little Polly should be
+left--I--I think you'd get your mother to be kind to her,--wouldn't
+you, Arundel?"
+
+A picture rose before the supernumerary's weary eyes as he said this;
+the picture of a pleasant lady whose description he had often heard
+from the lips of a loving son, a rambling old mansion, wide-spreading
+lawns, and long arcades of oak and beeches leading away to the blue
+distance. If this Mrs. Arundel, who was so tender and compassionate and
+gentle to every red-cheeked cottage-girl who crossed her
+pathway,--Edward had told him this very often,--would take compassion
+also upon this little one! If she would only condescend to see the
+child, the poor pale neglected flower, the fragile lily, the frail
+exotic blossom, that was so cruelly out of place upon the bleak
+pathways of life!
+
+"If that's all that troubles you," young Arundel cried eagerly, "you
+may make your mind easy, and come and have some oysters. We'll take
+care of the child. I'll adopt her, and my mother shall educate her, and
+she shall marry a duke. Run away, now, old fellow, and change your
+clothes, and come and have oysters, and stout out of the pewter."
+
+Mr. Marchmont shook his head.
+
+"My time's just up," he said; "I'm on in the next scene. It was very
+kind of you to come round, Arundel; but this isn't exactly the best
+place for you. Go back to your friends, my dear boy, and don't think
+any more of me. I'll write to you some day about little Mary."
+
+"You'll do nothing of the kind," exclaimed the boy. "You'll give me
+your address instanter, and I'll come to see you the first thing
+to-morrow morning, and you'll introduce me to little Mary; and if she
+and I are not the best friends in the world, I shall never again boast
+of my successes with lovely woman. What's the number, old fellow?"
+
+Mr. Arundel had pulled out a smart morocco pocket-book and a gold
+pencil-case.
+
+"Twenty-seven, Oakley Street, Lambeth. But I'd rather you wouldn't
+come, Arundel; your friends wouldn't like it."
+
+"My friends may go hang themselves. I shall do as I like, and I'll be
+with you to breakfast, sharp ten."
+
+The supernumerary had no time to remonstrate. The progress of the
+music, faintly audible from the lobby in which this conversation had
+taken place, told him that his scene was nearly on.
+
+"I can't stop another moment. Go back to your friends, Arundel. Good
+night. God bless you!"
+
+"Stay; one word. The Lincolnshire property--"
+
+"Will never come to me, my boy," the demon answered sadly, through his
+mask; for he had been busy re-investing himself in that demoniac guise.
+"I tried to sell my reversion, but the Jews almost laughed in my face
+when they heard me cough. Good night."
+
+He was gone, and the swing-door slammed in Edward Arundel's face. The
+boy hurried back to his cousin, who was cross and dissatisfied at his
+absence. Martin Mostyn had discovered that the ballet-girls were all
+either old or ugly, the music badly chosen, the pantomime stupid, the
+scenery a failure. He asked a few supercilious questions about his old
+tutor, but scarcely listened to Edward's answers; and was intensely
+aggravated with his companion's pertinacity in sitting out the comic
+business--in which poor John Marchmont appeared and re-appeared; now as
+a well-dressed passenger carrying a parcel, which he deliberately
+sacrificed to the felonious propensities of the clown; now as a
+policeman, now as a barber, now as a chemist, now as a ghost; but
+always buffeted, or cajoled, or bonneted, or imposed upon; always
+piteous, miserable, and long-suffering; with arms that ached from
+carrying a banner through five acts of blank-verse weariness, with a
+head that had throbbed under the weight of a ponderous edifice of
+pasteboard and wicker, with eyes that were sore with the evil influence
+of blue-fire and gunpowder smoke, with a throat that had been poisoned
+by sulphurous vapours, with bones that were stiff with the playful
+pummelling of clown and pantaloon; and all for--a shilling a night!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+LITTLE MARY.
+
+
+Poor John Marchmont had given his address unwillingly enough to his old
+pupil. The lodging in Oakley Street was a wretched back-room upon the
+second-floor of a house whose lower regions were devoted to that
+species of establishment commonly called a "ladies' wardrobe." The poor
+gentleman, the teacher of mathematics, the law-writer, the Drury-Lane
+supernumerary, had shrunk from any exposure of his poverty; but his
+pupil's imperious good-nature had overridden every objection, and John
+Marchmont awoke upon the morning after the meeting at Drury-Lane to the
+rather embarrassing recollection that he was to expect a visitor to
+breakfast with him.
+
+How was he to entertain this dashing, high-spirited young schoolboy,
+whose lot was cast in the pleasant pathways of life, and who was no
+doubt accustomed to see at his matutinal meal such luxuries as John
+Marchmont had only beheld in the fairy-like realms of comestible beauty
+exhibited to hungry foot-passengers behind the plate-glass windows of
+Italian warehouses?
+
+"He has hams stewed in Madeira, and Perigord pies, I dare say, at his
+Aunt Mostyn's," John thought, despairingly. "What can I give him to
+eat?"
+
+But John Marchmont, after the manner of the poor, was apt to
+over-estimate the extravagance of the rich. If he could have seen the
+Mostyn breakfast then preparing in the lower regions of Montague
+Square, he might have been considerably relieved; for he would have
+only beheld mild infusions of tea and coffee--in silver vessels,
+certainly--four French rolls hidden under a glistening damask napkin,
+six triangular fragments of dry toast, cut from a stale half-quartern,
+four new-laid eggs, and about half a pound of bacon cut into rashers of
+transcendental delicacy. Widow ladies who have daughters to marry do
+not plunge very deep into the books of Messrs. Fortnum and Mason.
+
+"He used to like hot rolls when I was at Vernon's," John thought,
+rather more hopefully; "I wonder whether he likes hot rolls still?"
+
+Pondering thus, Mr. Marchmont dressed himself,--very neatly, very
+carefully; for he was one of those men whom even poverty cannot rob of
+man's proudest attribute, his individuality. He made no noisy protest
+against the humiliations to which he was compelled to submit; he
+uttered no boisterous assertions of his own merit; he urged no
+clamorous demand to be treated as a gentleman in his day of misfortune;
+but in his own mild, undemonstrative way he did assert himself, quite
+as effectually as if he had raved all day upon the hardship of his lot,
+and drunk himself mad and blind under the pressure of his calamities.
+He never abandoned the habits which had been peculiar to him from his
+childhood. He was as neat and orderly in his second-floor-back as he
+had been seven or eight years before in his simple apartments at
+Cambridge. He did not recognise that association which most men
+perceive between poverty and shirt-sleeves, or poverty and beer. He was
+content to wear threadbare cloth, but adhered most obstinately to a
+prejudice in favour of clean linen. He never acquired those lounging
+vagabond habits peculiar to some men in the day of trouble. Even
+amongst the supernumeraries of Drury Lane, he contrived to preserve his
+self-respect; if they nicknamed him Barking Jeremiah, they took care
+only to pronounce that playful sobriquet when the gentleman-super was
+safely out of hearing. He was so polite in the midst of his reserve,
+that the person who could wilfully have offended him must have been
+more unkindly than any of her Majesty's servants. It is true, that the
+great tragedian, on more than one occasion, apostrophised the
+weak-kneed banner-holder as "BEAST" when the super's cough had
+peculiarly disturbed his composure; but the same great man gave poor
+John Marchmont a letter to a distinguished physician, compassionately
+desiring the relief of the same pulmonary affection. If John Marchmont
+had not been prompted by his own instincts to struggle against the evil
+influences of poverty, he would have done battle sturdily for the sake
+of one who was ten times dearer to him than himself.
+
+If he _could_ have become a swindler or a reprobate,--it would have
+been about as easy for him to become either as to have burst at once,
+and without an hour's practice, into a full-blown Leotard or
+Olmar,--his daughter's influence would have held him back as securely
+as if the slender arms twined tenderly about him had been chains of
+adamant forged by an enchanter's power.
+
+How could he be false to his little one, this helpless child, who had
+been confided to him in the darkest hour of his existence; the hour in
+which his wife had yielded to the many forces arrayed against her in
+life's battle, and had left him alone in the world to fight for his
+little girl?
+
+"If I were to die, I think Arundel's mother would be kind to her," John
+Marchmont thought, as he finished his careful toilet. "Heaven knows, I
+have no right to ask or expect such a thing; but Polly will be rich
+by-and-by, perhaps, and will be able to repay them."
+
+A little hand knocked lightly at the door of his room while he was
+thinking this, and a childish voice said,
+
+"May I come in, papa?"
+
+The little girl slept with one of the landlady's children, in a room
+above her father's. John opened the door, and let her in. The pale
+wintry sunshine, creeping in at the curtainless window near which Mr.
+Marchmont sat, shone full upon the child's face as she came towards
+him. It was a small, pale face, with singularly delicate features, a
+tiny straight nose, a pensive mouth, and large thoughtful hazel eyes.
+The child's hair fell loosely upon her shoulders; not in those
+corkscrew curls so much affected by mothers in the humbler walks of
+life, nor yet in those crisp undulations lately adopted in Belgravian
+nurseries; but in soft silken masses, only curling at the extreme end
+of each tress. Miss Marchmont--she was always called Miss Marchmont in
+that Oakley Street household--wore her brown-stuff frock and scanty
+diaper pinafore as neatly as her father wore his threadbare coat and
+darned linen. She was very pretty, very lady-like, very interesting;
+but it was impossible to look at her without a vague feeling of pain,
+that was difficult to understand. You knew, by-and-by, why you were
+sorry for this little girl. She had never been a child. That divine
+period of perfect innocence,--innocence of all sorrow and trouble,
+falsehood and wrong,--that bright holiday-time of the soul, had never
+been hers. The ruthless hand of poverty had snatched away from her the
+gift which God had given her in her cradle; and at eight years old she
+was a woman,--a woman invested with all that is most beautiful amongst
+womanly attributes--love, tenderness, compassion, carefulness for
+others, unselfish devotion, uncomplaining patience, heroic endurance.
+She was a woman by reason of all these virtues; but she was no longer a
+child. At three years old she had bidden farewell for ever to the
+ignorant selfishness, the animal enjoyment of childhood, and had
+learned what it was to be sorry for poor papa and mamma; and from that
+first time of awakening to the sense of pity and love, she had never
+ceased to be the comforter of the helpless young husband who was so
+soon to be left wifeless.
+
+John had been compelled to leave his child, in order to get a living
+for her and for himself in the hard service of Mr. Laurence Vernon, the
+principal of the highly select and expensive academy at which Edward
+Arundel and Martin Mostyn had been educated. But he had left her in
+good hands; and when the bitter day of his dismissal came, he was
+scarcely as sorry as he ought to have been for the calamity which
+brought him back to his little Mary. It is impossible for any words of
+mine to tell how much he loved the child; but take into consideration
+his hopeless poverty, his sensitive and reserved nature, his utter
+loneliness, the bereavement that had cast a shadow upon his youth, and
+you will perhaps understand an affection that was almost morbid in its
+intensity, and which was reciprocated most fully by its object. The
+little girl loved her father _too much_. When he was with her, she was
+content to sit by his side, watching him as he wrote; proud to help
+him, if even by so much as wiping his pens or handing him his
+blotting-paper; happy to wait upon him, to go out marketing for him, to
+prepare his scanty meals, to make his tea, and arrange and re-arrange
+every object in the slenderly furnished second-floor back-room. They
+talked sometimes of the Lincolnshire fortune,--the fortune which
+_might_ come to Mr. Marchmont, if three people, whose lives when Mary's
+father had last heard of them, were each worth three times his own
+feeble existence, would be so obliging as to clear the way for the
+heir-at-law, by taking an early departure to the churchyard. A more
+practical man than John Marchmont would have kept a sharp eye upon
+these three lives, and by some means or other contrived to find out
+whether number one was consumptive, or number two dropsical, or number
+three apoplectic; but John was utterly incapable of any such
+Machiavellian proceeding. I think he sometimes beguiled his weary walks
+between Oakley Street and Drury Lane by the dreaming of such childish
+day-dreams as I should be almost ashamed to set down upon this sober
+page. The three lives might all happen to be riding in the same express
+upon the occasion of a terrible collision; but the poor fellow's gentle
+nature shrank appalled before the vision he had invoked. He could not
+sacrifice a whole train-full of victims, even for little Mary. He
+contented himself with borrowing a "Times" newspaper now and then, and
+looking at the top of the second column, with the faint hope that he
+should see his own name in large capitals, coupled with the
+announcement that by applying somewhere he might hear of something to
+his advantage. He contented himself with this, and with talking about
+the future to little Mary in the dim firelight. They spent long hours
+in the shadowy room, only lighted by the faint flicker of a pitiful
+handful of coals; for the commonest dip-candles are
+sevenpence-halfpenny a pound, and were dearer, I dare say, in the year
+'38. Heaven knows what splendid castles in the air these two
+simple-hearted creatures built for each other's pleasure by that
+comfortless hearth. I believe that, though the father made a pretence
+of talking of these things only for the amusement of his child, he was
+actually the more childish of the two. It was only when he left that
+fire-lit room, and went back into the hard, reasonable, commonplace
+world, that he remembered how foolish the talk was, and how it was
+impossible--yes, impossible--that he, the law-writer and supernumerary,
+could ever come to be master of Marchmont Towers.
+
+Poor little Mary was in this less practical than her father. She
+carried her day-dreams into the street, until all Lambeth was made
+glorious by their supernal radiance. Her imagination ran riot in a
+vision of a happy future, in which her father would be rich and
+powerful. I am sorry to say that she derived most of her ideas of
+grandeur from the New Cut. She furnished the drawing-room at Marchmont
+Towers from the splendid stores of an upholsterer in that thoroughfare.
+She laid flaming Brussels carpets upon the polished oaken floors which
+her father had described to her, and hung cheap satin damask of
+gorgeous colours before the great oriel windows. She put gilded vases
+of gaudy artificial flowers on the high carved mantel-pieces in the old
+rooms, and hung a disreputable gray parrot--for sale at a
+greengrocer's, and given to the use of bad language--under the stone
+colonnnade at the end of the western wing. She appointed the
+tradespeople who should serve the far-away Lincolnshire household; the
+small matter of distance would, of course, never stand in the way of
+her gratitude and benevolence. Her papa would employ the civil
+greengrocer who gave such excellent halfpennyworths of watercresses;
+the kind butterman who took such pains to wrap up a quarter of a pound
+of the best eighteenpenny fresh butter for the customer whom he always
+called "little lady;" the considerate butcher who never cut _more_ than
+the three-quarters of a pound of rump-steak, which made an excellent
+dinner for Mr. Marchmont and his little girl. Yes, all these people
+should be rewarded when the Lincolnshire property came to Mary's papa.
+Miss Marchmont had some thoughts of building a shop close to Marchmont
+Towers for the accommodating butcher, and of adopting the greengrocer's
+eldest daughter for her confidante and companion. Heaven knows how many
+times the little girl narrowly escaped being run over while walking the
+material streets in some ecstatic reverie such as this; but Providence
+was very careful of the motherless girl, and she always returned safely
+to Oakley Street with her pitiful little purchases of tea and sugar,
+butter and meat. You will say, perhaps, that at least these foolish
+day-dreams were childish; but I maintain still, that Mary's soul had
+long ago bade adieu to infancy, and that even in these visions she was
+womanly; for she was always thoughtful of others rather than of
+herself, and there was a great deal more of the practical business of
+life mingled with the silvery web of her fancies than there should have
+been so soon after her eighth birthday. At times, too, an awful horror
+would quicken the pulses of her loving heart as she heard the hacking
+sound of her father's cough; and a terrible dread would seize her,--the
+fear that John Marchmont might never live to inherit the Lincolnshire
+fortune. The child never said her prayers without adding a little
+extempore supplication, that she might die when her father died. It was
+a wicked prayer, perhaps; and a clergyman might have taught her that
+her life was in the hands of Providence; and that it might please Him
+who had created her to doom her to many desolate years of loneliness;
+and that it was not for her, in her wretched and helpless ignorance, to
+rebel against His divine will. I think if the Archbishop of Canterbury
+had driven from Lambeth Palace to Oakley Street to tell little Mary
+this, he would have taught her in vain; and that she would have fallen
+asleep that night with the old prayer upon her lips, the fond foolish
+prayer that the bonds which love had woven so firmly might never be
+roughly broken by death.
+
+Miss Marchmont heard the story of last night's meeting with great
+pleasure, though it must be owned she looked a little grave when she
+was told that the generous-hearted school-boy was coming to breakfast;
+but her gravity was only that of a thoughtful housekeeper, who ponders
+ways and means, and even while you are telling her the number and
+quality of your guests, sketches out a rough ground-plan of her dishes,
+considers the fish in season, and the soups most fitting to precede
+them, and balances the contending advantages of Palestine and Julienne
+or Hare and Italian.
+
+"A 'nice' breakfast you say, papa," she said, when her father had
+finished speaking; "then we must have watercresses, _of course_."
+
+"And hot rolls, Polly dear. Arundel was always fond of hot rolls."
+
+"And hot rolls, four for threepence-halfpenny in the Cut."--(I am
+ashamed to say that this benighted child talked as deliberately of the
+"Cut" as she might have done of the "Row.")--"There'll be one left for
+tea, papa; for we could never eat four rolls. They'll take _such_ a lot
+of butter, though."
+
+The little housekeeper took out an antediluvian bead-purse, and began
+to examine her treasury. Her father handed all his money to her, as he
+would have done to his wife; and Mary doled him out the little sums he
+wanted,--money for half an ounce of tobacco, money for a pint of beer.
+There were no penny papers in those days, or what a treat an occasional
+"Telegraph" would have been to poor John Marchmont!
+
+Mary had only one personal extravagance. She read novels,--dirty,
+bloated, ungainly volumes,--which she borrowed from a snuffy old woman
+in a little back street, who charged her the smallest hire ever known
+in the circulating-library business, and who admired her as a wonder of
+precocious erudition. The only pleasure the child knew in her father's
+absence was the perusal of these dingy pages; she neglected no duty,
+she forgot no tender office of ministering care for the loved one who
+was absent; but when all the little duties had been finished, how
+delicious it was to sit down to "Madeleine the Deserted," or "Cosmo the
+Pirate," and to lose herself far away in illimitable regions, peopled
+by wandering princesses in white satin, and gentlemanly bandits, who
+had been stolen from their royal fathers' halls by vengeful hordes of
+gipsies. During these early years of poverty and loneliness, John
+Marchmont's daughter stored up, in a mind that was morbidly sensitive
+rather than strong, a terrible amount of dim poetic sentiment; the
+possession of which is scarcely, perhaps, the best or safest dower for
+a young lady who has life's journey all before her.
+
+At half-past nine o'clock, all the simple preparations necessary for
+the reception of a visitor had been completed by Mr. Marchmont and his
+daughter. All vestiges of John's bed had disappeared; leaving, it is
+true, rather a suspicious-looking mahogany chest of drawers to mark the
+spot where once a bed had been. The window had been opened, the room
+aired and dusted, a bright little fire burned in the shining grate, and
+the most brilliant of tin tea-kettles hissed upon the hob. The white
+table-cloth was darned in several places; but it was a remnant of the
+small stock of linen with which John had begun married life; and the
+Irish damask asserted its superior quality, in spite of many darns, as
+positively as Mr. Marchmont's good blood asserted itself in spite of
+his shabby coat. A brown teapot full of strong tea, a plate of French
+rolls, a pat of fresh butter, and a broiled haddock, do not compose a
+very epicurean repast; but Mary Marchmont looked at the humble
+breakfast as a prospective success.
+
+"We could have haddocks every day at Marchmont Towers, couldn't we,
+papa?" she said naively.
+
+But the little girl was more than delighted when Edward Arundel dashed
+up the narrow staircase, and burst into the room, fresh, radiant,
+noisy, splendid, better dressed even than the waxen preparations of
+elegant young gentlemen exhibited at the portal of a great outfitter in
+the New Cut, and yet not at all like either of those red-lipped types
+of fashion. How delighted the boy declared himself with every thing! He
+had driven over in a cabriolet, and he was awfully hungry, he informed
+his host. The rolls and watercresses disappeared before him as if by
+magic; little Mary shivered at the slashing cuts he made at the butter;
+the haddock had scarcely left the gridiron before it was no more.
+
+"This is ten times better than Aunt Mostyn's skinny breakfasts," the
+young gentleman observed candidly. "You never get enough with her. Why
+does she say, 'You won't take another egg, will you, Edward?' if she
+wants me to have one? You should see our hunting-breakfasts at
+Dangerfield, Marchmont. Four sorts of claret, and no end of Moselle and
+champagne. You shall go to Dangerfield some day, to see my mother, Miss
+Mary."
+
+He called her "Miss Mary," and seemed rather shy of speaking to her.
+Her womanliness impressed him in spite of himself. He had a fancy that
+she was old enough to feel the humiliation of her father's position,
+and to be sensitive upon the matter of the two-pair back; and he was
+sorry the moment after he had spoken of Dangerfield.
+
+"What a snob I am!" he thought; "always bragging of home."
+
+But Mr. Arundel was not able to stop very long in Oakley Street, for
+the supernumerary had to attend a rehearsal at twelve o'clock; so at
+half-past eleven John Marchmont and his pupil went out together, and
+little Mary was left alone to clear away the breakfast, and perform the
+rest of her household duties.
+
+She had plenty of time before her, so she did not begin at once, but
+sat upon a stool near the fender, gazing dreamily at the low fire.
+
+"How good and kind he is!" she thought; "just like Cosmo,--only Cosmo
+was dark; or like Reginald Ravenscroft,--but then he was dark too. I
+wonder why the people in novels are always dark? How kind he is to
+papa! Shall we ever go to Dangerfield, I wonder, papa and I? Of course
+I wouldn't go without papa."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+ABOUT THE LINCOLNSHIRE PROPERTY.
+
+
+While Mary sat absorbed in such idle visions as these, Mr. Marchmont
+and his old pupil walked towards Waterloo Bridge together.
+
+"I'll go as far as the theatre with you, Marchmont," the boy said;
+"it's my holidays now, you know, and I can do as I like. I am going to
+a private tutor in another month, and he's to prepare me for the army.
+I want you to tell me all about that Lincolnshire property, old boy. Is
+it anywhere near Swampington?"
+
+"Yes; within nine miles."
+
+"Goodness gracious me! Lord bless my soul! what an extraordinary
+coincidence! My uncle Hubert's Rector of Swampington--such a hole! I go
+there sometimes to see him and my cousin Olivia. Isn't she a stunner,
+though! Knows more Greek and Latin than I, and more mathematics than
+you. Could eat our heads off at any thing."
+
+John Marchmont did not seem very much impressed by the coincidence that
+appeared so extraordinary to Edward Arundel; but, in order to oblige
+his friend, he explained very patiently and lucidly how it was that
+only three lives stood between him and the possession of Marchmont
+Towers, and all lands and tenements appertaining thereto.
+
+"The estate's a very large one," he said finally; "but the idea of _my_
+ever getting it is, of course, too preposterous."
+
+"Good gracious me! I don't see that at all," exclaimed Edward with
+extraordinary vivacity. "Let me see, old fellow; if I understand your
+story right, this is how the case stands: your first cousin is the
+present possessor of Marchmont Towers; he has a son, fifteen years of
+age, who may or may not marry; only one son, remember. But he has also
+an uncle--a bachelor uncle, and your uncle, too--who, by the terms of
+your grandfather's will, must get the property before you can succeed
+to it. Now, this uncle is an old man: so of course _he'll_ die soon.
+The present possessor himself is a middle-aged man; so I shouldn't
+think _he_ can be likely to last long. I dare say he drinks too much
+port, or hunts, or something of that sort; goes to sleep after dinner,
+and does all manner of apoplectic things, I'll be bound. Then there's
+the son, only fifteen, and not yet marriageable; consumptive, I dare
+say. Now, will you tell me the chances are not six to six he dies
+unmarried? So you see, my dear old boy, you're sure to get the fortune;
+for there's nothing to keep you out of it, except--"
+
+"Except three lives, the worst of which is better than mine. It's kind
+of you to look at it in this sanguine way, Arundel; but I wasn't born
+to be a rich man. Perhaps, after all, Providence has used me better
+than I think. I mightn't have been happy at Marchmont Towers. I'm a
+shy, awkward, humdrum fellow. If it wasn't for Mary's sake--"
+
+"Ah, to be sure!" cried Edward Arundel. "You're not going to forget all
+about--Miss Marchmont!" He was going to say "little Mary," but had
+checked himself abruptly at the sudden recollection of the earnest
+hazel eyes that had kept wondering watch upon his ravages at the
+breakfast-table. "I'm sure Miss Marchmont's born to be an heiress. I
+never saw such a little princess."
+
+"What!" demanded John Marchmont sadly, "in a darned pinafore and a
+threadbare frock?"
+
+The boy's face flushed, almost indignantly, as his old master said
+this.
+
+"You don't think I'm such a snob as to admire a lady"--he spoke thus of
+Miss Mary Marchmont, yet midway between her eighth and ninth
+birthday--"the less because she isn't rich? But of course your daughter
+will have the fortune by-and-by, even if--"
+
+He stopped, ashamed of his want of tact; for he knew John would divine
+the meaning of that sudden pause.
+
+"Even if I should die before Philip Marchmont," the teacher of
+mathematics answered, quietly. "As far as that goes, Mary's chance is
+as remote as my own. The fortune can only come to her in the event of
+Arthur dying without issue, or, having issue, failing to cut off the
+entail, I believe they call it."
+
+"Arthur! that's the son of the present possessor?"
+
+"Yes. If I and my poor little girl, who is delicate like her mother,
+should die before either of these three men, there is another who will
+stand in my shoes, and will look out perhaps more eagerly than I have
+done for his chances of getting the property."
+
+"Another!" exclaimed Mr. Arundel. "By Jove, Marchmont, it's the most
+complicated affair I ever heard of. It's worse than those sums you used
+to set me in barter: 'If A. sells B. 999 Stilton cheeses at 9 1/2_d_ a
+pound,' and all that sort of thing, you know. Do make me understand it,
+old fellow, if you can."
+
+John Marchmont sighed.
+
+"It's a wearisome story, Arundel," he said. "I don't know why I should
+bore you with it."
+
+"But you don't bore me with it," cried the boy energetically. "I'm
+awfully interested in it, you know; and I could walk up and down here
+all day talking about it."
+
+The two gentlemen had passed the Surrey toll-gate of Waterloo Bridge by
+this time. The South-Western Terminus had not been built in the year
+'38, and the bridge was about the quietest thoroughfare any two
+companions confidentially inclined could have chosen. The shareholders
+knew this, to their cost.
+
+Perhaps Mr. Marchmont might have been beguiled into repeating the old
+story, which he had told so often in the dim firelight to his little
+girl; but the great clock of St. Paul's boomed forth the twelve
+ponderous strokes that told the hour of noon, and a hundred other
+steeples upon either side of the water made themselves clamorous with
+the same announcement.
+
+"I must leave you, Arundel," the supernumerary said hurriedly; he had
+just remembered that it was time for him to go and be browbeaten by a
+truculent stage-manager. "God bless you, my dear boy! It was very good
+of you to want to see me, and the sight of your fresh face has made me
+very happy. I _should_ like you to understand all about the
+Lincolnshire property. God knows there's small chance of its ever
+coming to me or to my child; but when I am dead and gone, Mary will be
+left alone in the world, and it would be some comfort to me to know
+that she was not without _one_ friend--generous and disinterested like
+you, Arundel,--who, if the chance _did_ come, would see her righted."
+
+"And so I would," cried the boy eagerly. His face flushed, and his eyes
+fired. He was a preux chevalier already, in thought, going forth to do
+battle for a hazel-eyed mistress.
+
+"I'll _write_ the story, Arundel," John Marchmont said; "I've no time
+to tell it, and you mightn't remember it either. Once more, good-bye;
+once more, God bless you!"
+
+"Stop!" exclaimed Edward Arundel, flushing a deeper red than
+before,--he had a very boyish habit of blushing,--"stop, dear old boy.
+You must borrow this of me, please. I've lots of them. I should only
+spend it on all sorts of bilious things; or stop out late and get
+tipsy. You shall pay me with interest when you get Marchmont Towers. I
+shall come and see you again soon. Good-bye."
+
+The lad forced some crumpled scrap of paper into his old tutor's hand,
+bolted through the toll-bar, and jumped into a cabriolet, whose
+high-stepping charger was dawdling along Lancaster Place.
+
+The supernumerary hurried on to Drury Lane as fast as his weak legs
+could carry him. He was obliged to wait for a pause in the rehearsal
+before he could find an opportunity of looking at the parting gift
+which his old pupil had forced upon him. It was a crumpled and rather
+dirty five-pound note, wrapped round two half-crowns, a shilling, and
+half-a-sovereign.
+
+The boy had given his friend the last remnant of his slender stock of
+pocket-money. John Marchmont turned his face to the dark wing that
+sheltered him, and wept silently. He was of a gentle and rather womanly
+disposition, be it remembered; and he was in that weak state of health
+in which a man's eyes are apt to moisten, in spite of himself, under
+the influence of any unwonted emotion.
+
+He employed a part of that afternoon in writing the letter which he had
+promised to send to his boyish friend:--
+
+"MY DEAR ARUNDEL,
+
+"My purpose in writing to you to-day is so entirely connected with the
+future welfare of my beloved and only child, that I shall carefully
+abstain from any subject not connected with her interests. I say
+nothing, therefore, respecting your conduct of this morning, which,
+together with my previous knowledge of your character, has decided me
+upon confiding to you the doubts and fears which have long tormented me
+upon the subject of my darling's future.
+
+"I am a doomed man, Arundel! The doctors have told me this; but they
+have told me also that, though I can never escape the sentence of death
+which was passed upon me long ago, I may live for some years if I live
+the careful life which only a rich man can lead. If I go on carrying
+banners and breathing sulphur, I cannot last long. My little girl will
+be left penniless, but not quite friendless; for there are humble
+people, relatives of her poor mother, who would help her kindly, I am
+sure, in their own humble way. The trials which I fear for my orphan
+girl are not so much the trials of poverty as the dangers of wealth. If
+the three men who, on my death, would alone stand between Mary and the
+Lincolnshire property die childless, my poor darling will become the
+only obstacle in the pathway of a man whom, I will freely own to you, I
+distrust.
+
+"My father, John Marchmont, was the third of four brothers. The eldest,
+Philip, died leaving one son, also called Philip, and the present
+possessor of Marchmont Towers. The second, Marmaduke, is still alive, a
+bachelor. The third, John, left four children, of whom I alone survive.
+The fourth, Paul, left a son and two daughters. The son is an artist,
+exercising his profession now in London; one of the daughters is
+married to a parish surgeon, who practises at Stanfield, in
+Lincolnshire; the other is an old maid, and entirely dependent upon her
+brother.
+
+"It is this man, Paul Marchmont the artist, whom I fear.
+
+"Do not think me weak, or foolishly suspicious, Arundel, when I tell
+you that the very thought of this man brings the cold sweat upon my
+forehead, and seems to stop the beating of my heart. I know that this
+is a prejudice, and an unworthy one. I do not believe Paul Marchmont is
+a good man; but I can assign no sufficient reason for my hatred and
+terror of him. It is impossible for you, a frank and careless boy, to
+realise the feelings of a man who looks at his only child, and
+remembers that she may soon be left, helpless and defenceless, to fight
+the battle of life with a bad man. Sometimes I pray to God that the
+Marchmont property may never come to my child after my death; for I
+cannot rid myself of the thought--may Heaven forgive me for its
+unworthiness!--that Paul Marchmont would leave no means untried,
+however foul, to wrest the fortune from her. I dare say worldly people
+would laugh at me for writing this letter to you, my dear Arundel; but
+I address myself to the best friend I have,--the only creature I know
+whom the influence of a bad man is never likely to corrupt. _Noblesse
+oblige!_ I am not afraid that Edward Dangerfield Arundel will betray
+any trust, however foolish, that may have been confided to him.
+
+"Perhaps, in writing to you thus, I may feel something of that blind
+hopefulness--amid the shipwreck of all that commonly gives birth to
+hope--which the mariner cast away upon some desert island feels, when
+he seals his simple story in a bottle, and launches it upon the waste
+of waters that close him in on every side. Before my little girl is
+four years older, you will be a man, Arundel--with a man's intellect, a
+man's courage, and, above all, a man's keen sense of honour. So long as
+my darling remains poor, her humble friends will be strong enough to
+protect her; but if ever Providence should think fit to place her in a
+position of antagonism to Paul Marchmont,--for he would look upon any
+one as an enemy who stood between him and fortune,--she would need a
+far more powerful protector than any she could find amongst her poor
+mother's relatives. Will _you_ be that protector, Edward Arundel? I am
+a drowning man, you see, and catch at the frailest straw that floats
+past me. I believe in you, Edward, as much as I distrust Paul
+Marchmont. If the day ever comes in which my little girl should have to
+struggle with this man, will you help her to fight the battle? It will
+not be an easy one.
+
+"Subjoined to this letter I send you an extract from the copy of my
+grandfather's will, which will explain to you how he left his property.
+Do not lose either the letter or the extract. If you are willing to
+undertake the trust which I confide to you to-day, you may have need to
+refer to them after my death. The legacy of a child's helplessness is
+the only bequest which I can leave to the only friend I have.
+
+"JOHN MARCHMONT.
+
+"27, OAKLEY STREET, LAMBETH,
+
+"_December_ 30_th_, 1838.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+"EXTRACT FROM THE WILL OF PHILIP MARCHMONT, SENIOR, OF MARCHMONT
+TOWERS.
+
+"'I give and devise all that my estate known as Marchmont Towers and
+appurtenances thereto belonging to the use of my eldest son Philip
+Marchmont during his natural life without impeachment of waste and from
+and after his decease then to the use of my grandson Philip the first
+son of my said son Philip during the term of his natural life without
+impeachment of waste and after the decease of my said grandson Philip
+to the use of the first and every other son of my said grandson
+severally and successively according to their respective seniority in
+tail and for default of such issue to the use of all and every the
+daughters and daughter of my said grandson Philip as tenants in common
+in tail with cross remainders between or amongst them in tail and if
+all the daughters of my said grandson Philip except one shall die
+without issue or if there shall be but one such daughter then to the
+use of such one or only daughter in tail and in default of such issue
+then to the use of the second and every other son of my said eldest son
+severally and successively according to his respective seniority in
+tail and in default of such issue to the use of all and every the
+daughters and daughter of my said eldest son Philip as tenants in
+common in tail with cross remainders between or amongst them in tail
+and in default of such issue to the use of my second son Marmaduke and
+his assigns during the term of his natural life without impeachment of
+waste and after his decease to the use of the first and every son of my
+said son Marmaduke severally and successively according to their
+respective seniorities in tail and for default of such issue to the use
+of all and every the daughters and daughter of my said son Marmaduke as
+tenants in common in tail with cross remainders between or amongst them
+in tail and if all the daughters of my said son Marmaduke except one
+shall die without issue or if there shall be but one such daughter then
+to the use of such one or only daughter in tail and in default of such
+issue then to the use of my third son John during the term of his
+natural life without impeachment of waste and from and after his
+decease then to the use of my grandson John the first son of my said
+son John during the term of his natural life without impeachment of
+waste and after the decease of my said grandson John to the use of the
+first and every other son of my said grandson John severally and
+successively according to their respective seniority in tail and for
+default of such issue to the use of all and every the daughters and
+daughter of my said grandson John as tenants in common in tail with
+cross remainders between or among them in tail and if all the daughters
+of my said grandson John except one shall die without issue or if there
+shall be but one such daughter' [_This, you will see, is my little
+Mary_] 'then to the use of such one or only daughter in tail and in
+default of such issue then to the use of the second and every other son
+of my said third son John severally and successively according to his
+respective seniority in tail and in default of such issue to the use of
+all and every the daughters and daughter of my said third son John as
+tenants in common in tail with cross remainders between or amongst them
+in tail and in default of such issue to the use of my fourth son Paul
+during the term of his natural life without impeachment of waste and
+from and after his decease then to the use of my grandson Paul the son
+of my said son Paul during his natural life without impeachment of
+waste and after the decease of my said grandson Paul to the use of the
+first and every other son of my said grandson severally and
+successively according to their respective seniority in tail and for
+default of such issue to the use of all and every the daughters and
+daughter of my said grandson Paul as tenants in common in tail with
+cross remainders between or amongst them in tail and if all the
+daughters of my said grandson Paul except one shall die without issue
+or if there shall be but one such daughter then to the use of such one
+or only daughter in tail and in default of such issue then to the use
+of the second and every other son of my said fourth son Paul severally
+and successively according to his respective seniority in tail and in
+default of such issue to the use of all and every the daughters and
+daughter of my said fourth son Paul as tenants in common in tail with
+cross remainders between or amongst them in tail,' &c. &c.
+
+"P.S.--Then comes what the lawyers call a general devise to trustees,
+to preserve the contingent remainders before devised from being
+destroyed; but what that means, perhaps you can get somebody to tell
+you. I hope it may be some legal jargon to preserve my _very_
+contingent remainder."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The tone of Edward Arundel's answer to this letter was more
+characteristic of the writer than in harmony with poor John's solemn
+appeal.
+
+"You dear, foolish old Marchmont," the lad wrote, "of course I shall
+take care of Miss Mary; and my mother shall adopt her, and she shall
+live at Dangerfield, and be educated with my sister Letitia, who has
+the jolliest French governess, and a German maid for conversation; and
+don't let Paul Marchmont try on any of his games with me, that's all!
+But what do you mean, you ridiculous old boy, by talking about dying,
+and drowning, and shipwrecked mariners, and catching at straws, and all
+that sort of humbug, when you know very well that you'll live to
+inherit the Lincolnshire property, and that I'm coming to you every
+year to shoot, and that you're going to build a tennis-court,--of
+course there _is_ a billiard-room,--and that you're going to have a
+stud of hunters, and be master of the hounds, and no end of bricks to
+
+"Your ever devoted Roman countryman and lover,
+
+"EDWARD"
+
+"42, MONTAGUE SQUARE,
+
+"_December_ 3l_st_, 1838.
+
+"P.S.--By-the-bye, don't you think a situation in a lawyer's office
+would suit you better than the T. R. D. L.? If you do, I think I could
+manage it. A happy new year to Miss Mary!"
+
+ * * * * *
+
+It was thus that Mr. Edward Arundel accepted the solemn trust which his
+friend confided to him in all simplicity and good faith. Mary Marchmont
+herself was not more innocent in the ways of the world outside Oakley
+Street, the Waterloo Road, and the New Cut, than was the little girl's
+father; nothing seemed more natural to him than to intrust the doubtful
+future of his only child to the bright-faced handsome boy, whose early
+boyhood had been unblemished by a mean sentiment or a dishonourable
+action. John Marchmont had spent three years in the Berkshire Academy
+at which Edward and his cousin, Martin Mostyn, had been educated; and
+young Arundel, who was far behind his kinsman in the comprehension of a
+problem in algebra, had been wise enough to recognise that paradox
+which Martin Mostyn could not understand--a gentleman in a shabby coat.
+It was thus that a friendship had arisen between the teacher of
+mathematics and his handsome pupil; and it was thus that an unreasoning
+belief in Edward Arundel had sprung up in John's simple mind.
+
+"If my little girl were certain of inheriting the fortune," Mr.
+Marchmont thought, "I might find many who would be glad to accept my
+trust, and to serve her well and faithfully. But the chance is such a
+remote one. I cannot forget how the Jews laughed at me two years ago,
+when I tried to borrow money upon my reversionary interest. No! I must
+trust this brave-hearted boy, for I have no one else to confide in; and
+who else is there who would not ridicule my fear of my cousin Paul?"
+
+Indeed, Mr. Marchmont had some reason to be considerably ashamed of his
+antipathy to the young artist working for his bread, and for the bread
+of his invalid mother and unmarried sister, in that bitter winter of
+'38; working patiently and hopefully, in despite of all discouragement,
+and content to live a joyless and monotonous life in a dingy lodging
+near Fitzroy Square. I can find no excuse for John Marchmont's
+prejudice against an industrious and indefatigable young man, who was
+the sole support of two helpless women. Heaven knows, if to be adored
+by two women is any evidence of a man's virtue, Paul must have been the
+best of men; for Stephanie Marchmont, and her daughter Clarisse,
+regarded the artist with a reverential idolatry that was not without a
+tinge of romance. I can assign no reason, then, for John's dislike of
+his cousin. They had been schoolfellows at a wretched suburban school,
+where the children of poor people were boarded, lodged, and educated
+all the year round for a pitiful stipend of something under twenty
+pounds. One of the special points of the prospectus was the
+announcement that there were no holidays; for the jovial Christmas
+gatherings of merry faces, which are so delightful to the wealthy
+citizens of Bloomsbury or Tyburnia, take another complexion in
+poverty-stricken households, whose scantily-stocked larders can ill
+support the raids of rawboned lads clamorous for provender. The two
+boys had met at a school of this calibre, and had never met since. They
+may not have been the best friends, perhaps, at the classical academy;
+but their quarrels were by no means desperate. They may have rather
+freely discussed their several chances of the Lincolnshire property;
+but I have no romantic story to tell of a stirring scene in the humble
+schoolroom--no exciting record of deadly insult and deep vows of
+vengeance. No inkstand was ever flung by one boy into the face of the
+other; no savage blow from a horsewhip ever cut a fatal scar across the
+brow of either of the cousins. John Marchmont would have been almost as
+puzzled to account for his objection to his kinsman, as was the
+nameless gentleman who so naively confessed his dislike of Dr. Fell. I
+fear that a great many of our likings and dislikings are too apt to be
+upon the Dr. Fell principle. Mr. Wilkie Collins's Basil could not tell
+_why_ he fell madly in love with the lady whom it was his evil fortune
+to meet in an omnibus; nor why he entertained an uncomfortable feeling
+about the gentleman who was to be her destroyer. David Copperfield
+disliked Uriah Heep even before he had any substantial reason for
+objecting to the evil genius of Agnes Wickfield's father. The boy
+disliked the snake-like schemer of Canterbury because his eyes were
+round and red, and his hands clammy and unpleasant to the touch.
+Perhaps John Marchmont's reasons for his aversion to his cousin were
+about as substantial as those of Master Copperfield. It may be that the
+schoolboy disliked his comrade because Paul Marchmont's handsome grey
+eyes were a little too near together; because his thin and delicately
+chiselled lips were a thought too tightly compressed; because his
+cheeks would fade to an awful corpse-like whiteness under circumstances
+which would have brought the rushing life-blood, hot and red, into
+another boy's face; because he was silent and suppressed when it would
+have been more natural to be loud and clamorous; because he could smile
+under provocations that would have made another frown; because, in
+short, there was that about him which, let it be found where it will,
+always gives birth to suspicion,--MYSTERY!
+
+So the cousins had parted, neither friends nor foes, to tread their
+separate roads in the unknown country, which is apt to seem barren and
+desolate enough to travellers who foot it in hobnailed boots
+considerably the worse for wear; and as the iron hand of poverty held
+John Marchmont even further back than Paul upon the hard road which
+each had to tread, the quiet pride of the teacher of mathematics most
+effectually kept him out of his kinsman's way. He had only heard enough
+of Paul to know that he was living in London, and working hard for a
+living; working as hard as John himself, perhaps; but at least able to
+keep afloat in a higher social position than the law-stationer's hack
+and the banner-holder of Drury Lane.
+
+But Edward Arundel did not forget his friends in Oakley Street. The boy
+made a morning call upon his father's solicitors, Messrs. Paulette,
+Paulette, and Mathewson, of Lincoln's Inn Fields, and was so extremely
+eloquent in his needy friend's cause, as to provoke the good-natured
+laughter of one of the junior partners, who declared that Mr. Edward
+Arundel ought to wear a silk gown before he was thirty. The result of
+this interview was, that before the first month of the new year was
+out, John Marchmont had abandoned the classic banner and the demoniac
+mask to a fortunate successor, and had taken possession of a
+hard-seated, slim-legged stool in one of the offices of Messrs.
+Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson, as copying and out-door clerk, at a
+salary of thirty shillings a week.
+
+So little Mary entered now upon a golden age, in which her evenings
+were no longer desolate and lonely, but spent pleasantly with her
+father in the study of such learning as was suited to her years, or
+perhaps rather to her capacity, which was far beyond her years; and on
+certain delicious nights, to be remembered ever afterwards, John
+Marchmont took his little girl to the gallery of one or other of the
+transpontine theatres; and I am sorry to say that my heroine--for she
+is to be my heroine by-and-by--sucked oranges, ate Abernethy biscuits,
+and cooled her delicate nose against the iron railing of the gallery,
+after the manner of the masses when they enjoy the British Drama.
+
+But all this time John Marchmont was utterly ignorant of one rather
+important fact in the history of those three lives which he was apt to
+speak of as standing between him and Marchmont Towers. Young Arthur
+Marchmont, the immediate heir of the estate, had been shot to death
+upon the 1st of September, 1838, without blame to anyone or anything
+but his own boyish carelessness, which had induced him to scramble
+through a hedge with his fowling-piece, the costly present of a doating
+father, loaded and on full-cock. This melancholy event, which had been
+briefly recorded in all the newspapers, had never reached the knowledge
+of poor John Marchmont, who had no friends to busy themselves about his
+interests, or to rush eagerly to carry him any intelligence affecting
+his prosperity. Nor had he read the obituary notice respecting
+Marmaduke Marchmont, the bachelor, who had breathed his last stertorous
+breath in a fit of apoplexy exactly one twelvemonth before the day upon
+which Edward Arundel breakfasted in Oakley Street.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+GOING AWAY.
+
+
+Edward Arundel went from Montague Square straight into the household of
+the private tutor of whom he had spoken, there to complete his
+education, and to be prepared for the onerous duties of a military
+life. From the household of this private tutor he went at once into a
+cavalry regiment; after sundry examinations, which were not nearly so
+stringent in the year one thousand eight hundred and forty, as they
+have since become. Indeed, I think the unfortunate young cadets who are
+educated upon the high-pressure system, and who are expected to give a
+synopsis of Portuguese political intrigue during the eighteenth
+century, a scientific account of the currents of the Red Sea, and a
+critical disquisition upon the comedies of Aristophanes as compared
+with those of Pedro Calderon de la Barca, not forgetting to glance at
+the effect of different ages and nationalities upon the respective
+minds of the two playwrights, within a given period of, say
+half-an-hour,--would have envied Mr. Arundel for the easy manner in
+which he obtained his commission in a distinguished cavalry regiment.
+Mr. Edward Arundel therefore inaugurated the commencement of the year
+1840 by plunging very deeply into the books of a crack military-tailor
+in New Burlington Street, and by a visit to Dangerfield Park; where he
+went to make his adieux before sailing for India, whither his regiment
+had just been ordered.
+
+I do not doubt that Mrs Arundel was very sorrowful at this sudden
+parting with her yellow-haired younger son. The boy and his mother
+walked together in the wintry sunset under the leafless beeches at
+Dangerfield, and talked of the dreary voyage that lay before the lad;
+the arid plains and cruel jungles far away; perils by sea and perils by
+land; but across them all, Fame waving her white beckoning arms to the
+young soldier, and crying, "Come, conqueror that shall be! come,
+through trial and danger, through fever and famine,--come to your rest
+upon my bloodstained lap!" Surely this boy, being only just eighteen
+years of age, may be forgiven if he is a little romantic, a little over
+eager and impressionable, a little too confident that the next thing to
+going out to India as a sea-sick subaltern in a great transport-ship is
+coming home with the reputation of a Clive. Perhaps he may be forgiven,
+too, if, in his fresh enthusiasm, he sometimes forgot the shabby friend
+whom he had helped little better than a twelvemonth before, and the
+earnest hazel eyes that had shone upon him in the pitiful Oakley Street
+chamber. I do not say that he was utterly unmindful of his old teacher
+of mathematics. It was not in his nature to forget anyone who had need
+of his services; for this boy, so eager to be a soldier, was of the
+chivalrous temperament, and would have gone out to die for his
+mistress, or his friend, if need had been. He had received two or three
+grateful letters from John Marchmont; and in these letters the lawyer's
+clerk had spoken pleasantly of his new life, and hopefully of his
+health, which had improved considerably, he said, since his resignation
+of the tragic banner and the pantomimic mask. Neither had Edward quite
+forgotten his promise of enlisting Mrs. Arundel's sympathies in aid of
+the motherless little girl. In one of these wintry walks beneath the
+black branches at Dangerfield, the lad had told the sorrowful story of
+his well-born tutor's poverty and humiliation.
+
+"Only think, mother!" he cried at the end of the little history. "I saw
+the poor fellow carrying a great calico flag, and marching about at the
+heel of a procession, to be laughed at by the costermongers in the
+gallery; and I know that he belongs to a capital Lincolnshire family,
+and will come in for no end of money if he only lives long enough. But
+if he should die, mother, and leave his little girl destitute, you'll
+look after her, won't you?"
+
+I don't know whether Mrs. Arundel quite entered into her son's ideas
+upon the subject of adopting Mary Marchmont, or whether she had any
+definite notion of bringing the little girl home to Dangerfield for the
+natural term of her life, in the event of the child being left an
+orphan. But she was a kind and charitable lady, and she scarcely cared
+to damp her boy's spirits by holding forth upon the doubtful wisdom of
+his adopting, or promising to adopt, any stray orphans who might cross
+his pathway.
+
+"I hope the little girl may not lose her father, Edward," she said
+gently. "Besides, dear, you say that Mr. Marchmont tells you he has
+humble friends, who would take the child if anything happened to him.
+He does not wish us to adopt the little girl; he only asks us to
+interest ourselves in her fate."
+
+"And you will do that, mother darling?" cried the boy. "You will take
+an interest in her, won't you? You couldn't help doing so, if you were
+to see her. She's not like a child, you know,--not a bit like Letitia.
+She's as grave and quiet as you are, mother,--or graver, I think; and
+she looks like a lady, in spite of her poor, shabby pinafore and
+frock."
+
+"Does she wear shabby frocks?" said the mother. "I could help her in
+that matter, at all events, Ned. I might send her a great trunk-full of
+Letitia's things: she outgrows them before they have been worn long
+enough to be shabby."
+
+The boy coloured, and shook his head.
+
+"It's very kind of you to think of it, mother dear; but I don't think
+that would quite answer," he said.
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because, you see, John Marchmont is a gentleman; and, you know, though
+he's so dreadfully poor now, he _is_ heir to Marchmont Towers. And
+though he didn't mind doing any thing in the world to earn a few
+shillings a week, he mightn't like to take cast-off clothes."
+
+So nothing more was to be said or done upon the subject.
+
+Edward Arundel wrote his humble friend a pleasant letter, in which he
+told John that he had enlisted his mother's sympathy in Mary's cause,
+and in which he spoke in very glowing terms of the Indian expedition
+that lay before him.
+
+"I wish I could come to say good-bye to you and Miss Mary before I go,"
+he wrote; "but that's impossible. I go straight from here to
+Southampton by coach at the end of this month, and the _Auckland_ sails
+on the 2nd of February. Tell Miss Mary I shall bring her home all kinds
+of pretty presents from Affghanistan,--ivory fans, and Cashmere shawls,
+and Chinese puzzles, and embroidered slippers with turned-up toes, and
+diamonds, and attar-of-roses, and suchlike; and remember that I expect
+you to write to me, and to give me the earliest news of your coming
+into the Lincolnshire property."
+
+John Marchmont received this letter in the middle of January. He gave a
+despondent sigh as he refolded the boyish epistle, after reading it to
+his little girl.
+
+"We haven't so many friends, Polly," he said, "that we should be
+indifferent to the loss of this one."
+
+Mary Marchmont's cheek grew paler at her father's sorrowful speech.
+That imaginative temperament, which was, as I have said, almost morbid
+in its intensity, presented every object to the little girl in a light
+in which things are looked at by very few children. Only these few
+words, and her fancy roamed far away to that cruel land whose perils
+her father had described to her. Only these few words, and she was away
+in the rocky Bolan Pass, under hurricanes of drifting snow; she saw the
+hungry soldiers fighting with savage dogs for the possession of foul
+carrion. She had heard all the perils and difficulties which had
+befallen the Army of the Indus in the year '39, and the womanly heart
+ached with the pain of those cruel memories.
+
+"He will go to India and be killed, papa dear," she said. "Oh! why, why
+do they let him go? His mother can't love him, can she? She would never
+let him go, if she did."
+
+John Marchmont was obliged to explain to his daughter that motherly
+love must not go so far as to deprive a nation of its defenders; and
+that the richest jewels which Cornelia can give to her country are
+those ruby life-drops which flow from the hearts of her bravest and
+brightest sons. Mary was no political economist; she could not reason
+upon the necessity of chastising Persian insolence, or checking Russian
+encroachments upon the far-away shores of the Indus. Was Edward
+Arundel's bright head, with its aureola of yellow hair, to be cloven
+asunder by an Affghan renegade's sabre, because the young Shah of
+Persia had been contumacious?
+
+Mary Marchmont wept silently that day over a three-volume novel, while
+her father was away serving writs upon wretched insolvents, in his
+capacity of out-door clerk to Messrs. Paulette, Paulette, and
+Mathewson.
+
+The young lady no longer spent her quiet days in the two-pair back. Mr.
+Marchmont and his daughter had remained faithful to Oakley Street and
+the proprietress of the ladies' wardrobe, who was a good, motherly
+creature; but they had descended to the grandeur of the first floor,
+whose gorgeous decorations Mary had glanced at furtively in the days
+gone by, when the splendid chambers were occupied by an elderly and
+reprobate commission-agent, who seemed utterly indifferent to the
+delights of a convex mirror, surmounted by a maimed eagle, whose
+dignity was somewhat impaired by the loss of a wing; but which bijou
+appeared, to Mary, to be a fitting adornment for the young Queen's
+palace in St. James's Park.
+
+But neither the eagle nor the third volume of a thrilling romance could
+comfort Mary upon this bleak January day. She shut her book, and stood
+by the window, looking out into the dreary street, that seemed so
+blotted and dim under the falling snow.
+
+"It snowed in the Pass of Bolan," she thought; "and the treacherous
+Indians harassed the brave soldiers, and killed their camels. What will
+become of him in that dreadful country? Shall we ever see him again?"
+
+Yes, Mary, to your sorrow! Indian scimitars will let him go scatheless;
+famine and fever will pass him by; but the hand which points to that
+far-away day on which you and he are to meet, will never fail or falter
+in its purpose until the hour of your meeting comes.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+We have no need to dwell upon the preparations which were made for the
+young soldier's departure from home, nor on the tender farewells
+between the mother and her son.
+
+Mr. Arundel was a country gentleman _pur et simple_; a hearty,
+broad-shouldered squire, who had no thought above his farm and his
+dog-kennel, or the hunting of the red deer with which his neighbourhood
+abounded. He sent his younger son to India as coolly as he had sent the
+elder to Oxford. The boy had little to inherit, and must be provided
+for in a gentlemanly manner. Other younger sons of the House of Arundel
+had fought and conquered in the Honourable East India Company's
+service; and was Edward any better than they, that there should be
+sentimental whining because the lad was going away to fight his way to
+fortune, if he could? Mr. Arundel went even further than this, and
+declared that Master Edward was a lucky dog to be going out at such a
+time, when there was plenty of fighting, and a very fair chance of
+speedy promotion for a good soldier.
+
+He gave the young cadet his blessing, reminded him of the limit of such
+supplies as he was to expect from home, bade him keep clear of the
+brandy-bottle and the dice-box; and having done this, believed that he
+had performed his duty as an Englishman and a father.
+
+If Mrs. Arundel wept, she wept in secret, loth to discourage her son by
+the sight of those natural, womanly tears. If Miss Letitia Arundel was
+sorry to lose her brother, she mourned with most praiseworthy
+discretion, and did not forget to remind the young traveller that she
+expected to receive a muslin frock, embroidered with beetle-wings, by
+an early mail. And as Algernon Fairfax Dangerfield Arundel, the heir,
+was away at college, there was no one else to mourn. So Edward left the
+home of his forefathers by a branch-coach, which started from the
+"Arundel Arms" in time to meet the "Telegraph" at Exeter; and no noisy
+lamentations shook the sky above Dangerfield Park--no mourning voices
+echoed through the spacious rooms. The old servants were sorry to lose
+the younger-born, whose easy, genial temperament had made him an
+especial favourite; but there was a certain admixture of joviality with
+their sorrow, as there generally is with all mourning in the basement;
+and the strong ale, the famous Dangerfield October, went faster upon
+that 31st of January than on any day since Christmas.
+
+I doubt if any one at Dangerfield Park sorrowed as bitterly for the
+departure of the boyish soldier as a romantic young lady, of nine years
+old, in Oakley Street, Lambeth; whose one sentimental
+day-dream--half-childish, half-womanly--owned Edward Arundel as its
+centre figure.
+
+So the curtain falls on the picture of a brave ship sailing eastward,
+her white canvas strained against the cold grey February sky, and a
+little girl weeping over the tattered pages of a stupid novel in a
+shabby London lodging.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+MARCHMONT TOWERS.
+
+
+There is a lapse of three years and a half between the acts; and the
+curtain rises to reveal a widely-different picture:--the picture of a
+noble mansion in the flat Lincolnshire country; a stately pile of
+building, standing proudly forth against a background of black
+woodland; a noble building, supported upon either side by an octagon
+tower, whose solid masonry is half-hidden by the ivy which clings about
+the stonework, trailing here and there, and flapping restlessly with
+every breath of wind against the narrow casements.
+
+A broad stone terrace stretches the entire length of the grim facade,
+from tower to tower; and three flights of steps lead from the terrace
+to the broad lawn, which loses itself in a vast grassy flat, only
+broken by a few clumps of trees and a dismal pool of black water, but
+called by courtesy a park. Grim stone griffins surmount the
+terrace-steps, and griffins' heads and other architectural
+monstrosities, worn and moss-grown, keep watch and ward over every door
+and window, every archway and abutment--frowning threat and defiance
+upon the daring visitor who approaches the great house by this, the
+formidable chief entrance.
+
+The mansion looks westward: but there is another approach, a low
+archway on the southern side, which leads into a quadrangle, where
+there is a quaint little door under a stone portico, ivy-covered like
+the rest; a comfortable little door of massive oak, studded with knobs
+of rusty iron,--a door generally affected by visitors familiar with the
+house.
+
+This is Marchmont Towers,--a grand and stately mansion, which had been
+a monastery in the days when England and the Pope were friends and
+allies; and which had been bestowed upon Hugh Marchmont, gentleman, by
+his Sovereign Lord and Most Christian Majesty the King Henry VIII, of
+blessed memory, and by that gentleman-commoner extended and improved at
+considerable outlay. This is Marchmont Towers,--a splendid and a
+princely habitation truly, but perhaps scarcely the kind of dwelling
+one would choose for the holy resting-place we call home. The great
+mansion is a little too dismal in its lonely grandeur: it lacks shelter
+when the dreary winds come sweeping across the grassy flats in the
+bleak winter weather; it lacks shade when the western sun blazes on
+every window-pane in the stifling summer evening. It is at all times
+rather too stony in its aspect; and is apt to remind one almost
+painfully of every weird and sorrowful story treasured in the
+storehouse of memory. Ancient tales of enchantment, dark German
+legends, wild Scottish fancies, grim fragments of half-forgotten
+demonology, strange stories of murder, violence, mystery, and wrong,
+vaguely intermingle in the stranger's mind as he looks, for the first
+time, at Marchmont Towers.
+
+But of course these feelings wear off in time. So invincible is the
+power of custom, that we might make ourselves comfortable in the Castle
+of Otranto, after a reasonable sojourn within its mysterious walls:
+familiarity would breed contempt for the giant helmet, and all the
+other grim apparitions of the haunted dwelling. The commonplace and
+ignoble wants of every-day life must surely bring disenchantment with
+them. The ghost and the butcher's boy cannot well exist
+contemporaneously; and the avenging shade can scarcely continue to lurk
+beneath the portal which is visited by the matutinal milkman. Indeed,
+this is doubtless the reason that the most restless and impatient
+spirit, bent on early vengeance and immediate retribution, will yet
+wait until the shades of night have fallen before he reveals himself,
+rather than run the risk of an ignominious encounter with the postman
+or the parlour-maid. Be it how it might, the phantoms of Marchmont
+Towers were not intrusive. They may have perambulated the long
+tapestried corridors, the tenantless chambers, the broad black
+staircase of shining oak; but, happily, no dweller in the mansion was
+ever scared by the sight of their pale faces. All the dead-and-gone
+beauties, and soldiers, and lawyers, and parsons, and simple
+country-squires of the Marchmont race may have descended from their
+picture-frames to hold a witches' sabbath in the old mansion; but as
+the Lincolnshire servants were hearty eaters and heavy sleepers, the
+ghosts had it all to themselves. I believe there was one dismal story
+attached to the house,--the story of a Marchmont of the time of Charles
+I, who had murdered his coachman in a fit of insensate rage; and it was
+even asserted, upon the authority of an old housekeeper, that John
+Marchmont's grandmother, when a young woman and lately come as a bride
+to the Towers, had beheld the murdered coachman stalk into her chamber,
+ghastly and blood-bedabbled, in the dim summer twilight. But as this
+story was not particularly romantic, and possessed none of the elements
+likely to insure popularity,--such as love, jealousy, revenge, mystery,
+youth, and beauty,--it had never been very widely disseminated.
+
+I should think that the new owner of Marchmont Towers--new within the
+last six months--was about the last person in Christendom to be
+hypercritical, or to raise fanciful objections to his dwelling; for
+inasmuch as he had come straight from a wretched transpontine lodging
+to this splendid Lincolnshire mansion, and had at the same time
+exchanged a stipend of thirty shillings a week for an income of eleven
+thousand a year (derivable from lands that spread far away, over fenny
+flats and low-lying farms, to the solitary seashore), he had ample
+reason to be grateful to Providence, and well pleased with his new
+abode.
+
+Yes; Philip Marchmont, the childless widower, had died six months
+before, at the close of the year '43, of a broken heart,--his old
+servants said, broken by the loss of his only and idolised son; after
+which loss he had never been known to smile. He was one of those
+undemonstrative men who can take a great sorrow quietly, and only--die
+of it. Philip Marchmont lay in a velvet-covered coffin, above his
+son's, in the stone recess set apart for them in the Marchmont vault
+beneath Kemberling Church, three miles from the Towers; and John
+reigned in his stead. John Marchmont, the supernumerary, the
+banner-holder of Drury Lane, the patient, conscientious copying and
+outdoor clerk of Lincoln's Inn, was now sole owner of the Lincolnshire
+estate, sole master of a household of well-trained old servants, sole
+proprietor of a very decent country-gentleman's stud, and of chariots,
+barouches, chaises, phaetons, and other vehicles--a little shabby and
+out of date it may be, but very comfortable to a man for whom an
+omnibus ride had long been a treat and a rarity. Nothing had been
+touched or disturbed since Philip Marchmont's death. The rooms he had
+used were still the occupied apartments; the chambers he had chosen to
+shut up were still kept with locked doors; the servants who had served
+him waited upon his successor, whom they declared to be a quiet, easy
+gentleman, far too wise to interfere with old servants, every one of
+whom knew the ways of the house a great deal better than he did, though
+he was the master of it.
+
+There was, therefore, no shadow of change in the stately mansion. The
+dinner-bell still rang at the same hour; the same tradespeople left the
+same species of wares at the low oaken door; the old housekeeper,
+arranging her simple _menu_, planned her narrow round of soups and
+roasts, sweets and made-dishes, exactly as she had been wont to do, and
+had no new tastes to consult. A grey-haired bachelor, who had been
+own-man to Philip, was now own-man to John. The carriage which had
+conveyed the late lord every Sunday to morning and afternoon service at
+Kemberling conveyed the new lord, who sat in the same seat that his
+predecessor had occupied in the great family-pew, and read his prayers
+out of the same book,--a noble crimson, morocco-covered volume, in
+which George, our most gracious King and Governor, and all manner of
+dead-and-gone princes and princesses were prayed for.
+
+The presence of Mary Marchmont made the only change in the old house;
+and even that change was a very trifling one. Mary and her father were
+as closely united at Marchmont Towers as they had been in Oakley
+Street. The little girl clung to her father as tenderly as ever--more
+tenderly than ever perhaps; for she knew something of that which the
+physicians had said, and she knew that John Marchmont's lease of life
+was not a long one. Perhaps it would be better to say that he had no
+lease at all. His soul was a tenant on sufferance in its frail earthly
+habitation, receiving a respite now and again, when the flicker of the
+lamp was very low--every chance breath of wind threatening to
+extinguish it for ever. It was only those who knew John Marchmont very
+intimately who were fully acquainted with the extent of his danger. He
+no longer bore any of those fatal outward signs of consumption, which
+fatigue and deprivation had once made painfully conspicuous. The hectic
+flush and the unnatural brightness of the eyes had subsided; indeed,
+John seemed much stronger and heartier than of old; and it is only
+great medical practitioners who can tell to a nicety what is going on
+_inside_ a man, when he presents a very fair exterior to the
+unprofessional eye. But John was decidedly better than he had been. He
+might live three years, five, seven, possibly even ten years; but he
+must live the life of a man who holds himself perpetually upon his
+defence against death; and he must recognise in every bleak current of
+wind, in every chilling damp, or perilous heat, or over-exertion, or
+ill-chosen morsel of food, or hasty emotion, or sudden passion, an
+insidious ally of his dismal enemy.
+
+Mary Marchmont knew all this,--or divined it, perhaps, rather than knew
+it, with the child-woman's subtle power of divination, which is even
+stronger than the actual woman's; for her father had done his best to
+keep all sorrowful knowledge from her. She knew that he was in danger;
+and she loved him all the more dearly, as the one precious thing which
+was in constant peril of being snatched away. The child's love for her
+father has not grown any less morbid in its intensity since Edward
+Arundel's departure for India; nor has Mary become more childlike since
+her coming to Marchmont Towers, and her abandonment of all those sordid
+cares, those pitiful every-day duties, which had made her womanly.
+
+It may be that the last lingering glamour of childhood had for ever
+faded away with the realisation of the day-dream which she had carried
+about with her so often in the dingy transpontine thoroughfares around
+Oakley Street. Marchmont Towers, that fairy palace, whose lighted
+windows had shone upon her far away across a cruel forest of poverty
+and trouble, like the enchanted castle which appears to the lost
+wanderer of the child's story, was now the home of the father she
+loved. The grim enchanter Death, the only magician of our modern
+histories, had waved his skeleton hand, more powerful than the
+star-gemmed wand of any fairy godmother, and the obstacles which had
+stood between John Marchmont and his inheritance had one by one been
+swept away.
+
+But was Marchmont Towers quite as beautiful as that fairy palace of
+Mary's day-dream? No, not quite--not quite. The rooms were
+handsome,--handsomer and larger, even, than the rooms she had dreamed
+of; but perhaps none the better for that. They were grand and gloomy
+and magnificent; but they were not the sunlit chambers which her fancy
+had built up, and decorated with such shreds and patches of splendour
+as her narrow experience enabled her to devise. Perhaps it was rather a
+disappointment to Miss Marchmont to discover that the mansion was
+completely furnished, and that there was no room in it for any of those
+splendours which she had so often contemplated in the New Cut. The
+parrot at the greengrocer's was a vulgar bird, and not by any means
+admissible in Lincolnshire. The carrying away and providing for Mary's
+favourite tradespeople was not practicable; and John Marchmont had
+demurred to her proposal of adopting the butcher's daughter.
+
+There is always something to be given up even when our brightest
+visions are realised; there is always some one figure (a low one
+perhaps) missing in the fullest sum of earthly happiness. I dare say if
+Alnaschar had married the Vizier's daughter, he would have found her a
+shrew, and would have looked back yearningly to the humble days in
+which he had been an itinerant vendor of crockery-ware.
+
+If, therefore, Mary Marchmont found her sunlit fancies not quite
+realised by the great stony mansion that frowned upon the fenny
+countryside, the wide grassy flat, the black pool, with its dismal
+shelter of weird pollard-willows, whose ugly reflections, distorted on
+the bosom of the quiet water, looked like the shadows of hump-backed
+men;--if these things did not compose as beautiful a picture as that
+which the little girl had carried so long in her mind, she had no more
+reason to be sorry than the rest of us, and had been no more foolish
+than other dreamers. I think she had built her airy castle too much
+after the model of a last scene in a pantomime, and that she expected
+to find spangled waters twinkling in perpetual sunshine, revolving
+fountains, ever-expanding sunflowers, and gilded clouds of
+rose-coloured gauze,--every thing except the fairies, in short,--at
+Marchmont Towers. Well, the dream was over: and she was quite a woman
+now, and very grateful to Providence when she remembered that her
+father had no longer need to toil for his daily bread, and that he was
+luxuriously lodged, and could have the first physicians in the land at
+his beck and call.
+
+"Oh, papa, it is so nice to be rich!" the young lady would exclaim now
+and then, in a fleeting transport of enthusiasm. "How good we ought to
+be to the poor people, when we remember how poor we once were!"
+
+And the little girl did not forget to be good to the poor about
+Kemberling and Marchmont Towers. There were plenty of poor, of
+course--free-and-easy pensioners, who came to the Towers for brandy,
+and wine, and milk, and woollen stuffs, and grocery, precisely as they
+would have gone to a shop, except that there was to be no bill. The
+housekeeper doled out her bounties with many short homilies upon the
+depravity and ingratitude of the recipients, and gave tracts of an
+awful and denunciatory nature to the pitiful petitioners--tracts
+interrogatory, and tracts fiercely imperative; tracts that asked,
+"Where are you going?" "Why are you wicked?" "What will become of you?"
+and other tracts which cried, "Stop, and think!" "Pause, while there is
+time!" "Sinner, consider!" "Evil-doer, beware!" Perhaps it may not be
+the wisest possible plan to begin the work of reformation by
+frightening, threatening, and otherwise disheartening the wretched
+sinner to be reformed. There is a certain sermon in the New Testament,
+containing sacred and comforting words which were spoken upon a
+mountain near at hand to Jerusalem, and spoken to an auditory amongst
+which there must have been many sinful creatures; but there is more of
+blessing than cursing in that sublime discourse, and it might be rather
+a tender father pleading gently with his wayward children than an
+offended Deity dealing out denunciation upon a stubborn and refractory
+race. But the authors of the tracts may have never read this sermon,
+perhaps; and they may take their ideas of composition from that
+comforting service which we read on Ash-Wednesday, cowering in fear and
+trembling in our pews, and calling down curses upon ourselves and our
+neighbours. Be it as it might, the tracts were not popular amongst the
+pensioners of Marchmont Towers. They infinitely preferred to hear Mary
+read a chapter in the New Testament, or some pretty patriarchal story
+of primitive obedience and faith. The little girl would discourse upon
+the Scripture histories in her simple, old-fashioned manner; and many a
+stout Lincolnshire farm-labourer was content to sit over his hearth,
+with a pipe of shag-tobacco and a mug of fettled beer, while Miss
+Marchmont read and expounded the history of Abraham and Isaac, or
+Joseph and his brethren.
+
+"It's joost loike a story-book to hear her," the man would say to his
+wife; "and yet she brings it all hoame, too, loike. If she reads about
+Abraham, she'll say, maybe, 'That's joost how you gave your only son to
+be a soldier, you know, Muster Moggins;'--she allus says Muster
+Moggins;--'you gave un into God's hands, and you troosted God would
+take care of un; and whatever cam' to un would be the best, even if it
+was death.' That's what she'll say, bless her little heart! so gentle
+and tender loike. The wust o' chaps couldn't but listen to her."
+
+Mary Marchmont's morbidly sensitive nature adapted her to all
+charitable offices. No chance word in her simple talk ever inflicted a
+wound upon the listener. She had a subtle and intuitive comprehension
+of other people's feelings, derived from the extreme susceptibility of
+her own. She had never been vulgarised by the associations of poverty;
+for her self-contained nature took no colour from the things that
+surrounded her, and she was only at Marchmont Towers that which she had
+been from the age of six--a little lady, grave and gentle, dignified,
+discreet, and wise.
+
+There was one bright figure missing out of the picture which Mary had
+been wont of late years to make of the Lincolnshire mansion, and that
+was the figure of the yellow-haired boy who had breakfasted upon
+haddocks and hot rolls in Oakley Street. She had imagined Edward
+Arundel an inhabitant of that fair Utopia. He would live with them; or,
+if he could not live with them, he would be with them as a
+visitor,--often--almost always. He would leave off being a soldier, for
+of course her papa could give him more money than he could get by being
+a soldier--(you see that Mary's experience of poverty had taught her to
+take a mercantile and sordid view of military life)--and he would come
+to Marchmont Towers, and ride, and drive, and play tennis (what was
+tennis? she wondered), and read three-volume novels all day long. But
+that part of the dream was at least broken. Marchmont Towers was Mary's
+home, but the young soldier was far away; in the Pass of Bolan,
+perhaps,--Mary had a picture of that cruel rocky pass almost always in
+her mind,--or cutting his way through a black jungle, with the yellow
+eyes of hungry tigers glaring out at him through the rank tropical
+foliage; or dying of thirst and fever under a scorching sun, with no
+better pillow than the neck of a dead camel, with no more tender
+watcher than the impatient vulture flapping her wings above his head,
+and waiting till he, too, should be carrion. What was the good of
+wealth, if it could not bring this young soldier home to a safe shelter
+in his native land? John Marchmont smiled when his daughter asked this
+question, and implored her father to write to Edward Arundel, recalling
+him to England.
+
+"God knows how glad I should be to have the boy here, Polly!" John
+said, as he drew his little girl closer to his breast,--she sat on his
+knee still, though she was thirteen years of age. "But Edward has a
+career before him, my dear, and could not give it up for an inglorious
+life in this rambling old house. It isn't as if I could hold out any
+inducement to him: you know, Polly, I can't; for I mustn't leave any
+money away from my little girl."
+
+"But he might have half my money, papa, or all of it," Mary added
+piteously. "What could I do with money, if----?"
+
+She didn't finish the sentence; she never could complete any such
+sentence as this; but her father knew what she meant.
+
+So six months had passed since a dreary January day upon which John
+Marchmont had read, in the second column of the "Times," that he could
+hear of something greatly to his advantage by applying to a certain
+solicitor, whose offices were next door but one to those of Messrs.
+Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson's. His heart began to beat very
+violently when he read that advertisement in the supplement, which it
+was one of his duties to air before the fire in the clerks' office; but
+he showed no other sign of emotion. He waited until he took the papers
+to his employer; and as he laid them at Mr. Mathewson's elbow, murmured
+a respectful request to be allowed to go out for half-an-hour, upon his
+own business.
+
+"Good gracious me, Marchmont!" cried the lawyer; "what can you want to
+go out for at this time in the morning? You've only just come; and
+there's that agreement between Higgs and Sandyman must be copied
+before----"
+
+"Yes, I know, sir. I'll be back in time to attend to it; but I--I think
+I've come into a fortune, sir; and I should like to go and see about
+it."
+
+The solicitor turned in his revolving library-chair, and looked aghast
+at his clerk. Had this Marchmont--always rather unnaturally reserved
+and eccentric--gone suddenly mad? No; the copying-clerk stood by his
+employer's side, grave, self-possessed as ever, with his forefinger
+upon the advertisement.
+
+"Marchmont--John--call--Messrs. Tindal and Trollam--" gasped Mr.
+Mathewson. "Do you mean to tell me it's _you_?"
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+"Egad, I'll go with you!" cried the solicitor, hooking his arm through
+that of his clerk, snatching his hat from an adjacent stand, and
+dashing through the outer office, down the great staircase, and into
+the next door but one before John Marchmont knew where he was.
+
+John had not deceived his employer. Marchmont Towers was his, with all
+its appurtenances. Messrs. Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson took him
+in hand, much to the chagrin of Messrs. Tindal and Trollam, and proved
+his identity in less than a week. On a shelf above the high wooden desk
+at which John had sat, copying law-papers, with a weary hand and an
+aching spine, appeared two bran-new deed-boxes, inscribed, in white
+letters, with the name and address of JOHN MARCHMONT, ESQ., MARCHMONT
+TOWERS. The copying-clerk's sudden accession to fortune was the talk of
+all the _employes_ in "The Fields." Marchmont Towers was exaggerated
+into half Lincolnshire, and a tidy slice of Yorkshire; eleven thousand
+a year was expanded into an annual million. Everybody expected largesse
+from the legatee. How fond people had been of the quiet clerk, and how
+magnanimously they had concealed their sentiments during his poverty,
+lest they should wound him, as they urged, "which" they knew he was
+sensitive; and how expansively they now dilated on their
+long-suppressed emotions! Of course, under these circumstances, it is
+hardly likely that everybody could be satisfied; so it is a small thing
+to say that the dinner which John gave--by his late employers'
+suggestion (he was about the last man to think of giving a dinner)--at
+the "Albion Tavern," to the legal staff of Messrs. Paulette, Paulette,
+and Mathewson, and such acquaintance of the legal profession as they
+should choose to invite, was a failure; and that gentlemen who were
+pretty well used to dine upon liver and bacon, or beefsteak and onions,
+or the joint, vegetables, bread, cheese, and celery for a shilling,
+turned up their noses at the turbot, murmured at the paucity of green
+fat in the soup, made light of red mullet and ortolans, objected to the
+flavour of the truffles, and were contemptuous about the wines.
+
+John knew nothing of this. He had lived a separate and secluded
+existence; and his only thought now was of getting away to Marchmont
+Towers, which had been familiar to him in his boyhood, when he had been
+wont to go there on occasional visits to his grandfather. He wanted to
+get away from the turmoil and confusion of the big, heartless city, in
+which he had endured so much; he wanted to carry away his little girl
+to a quiet country home, and live and die there in peace. He liberally
+rewarded all the good people about Oakley Street who had been kind to
+little Mary; and there was weeping in the regions of the Ladies'
+Wardrobe when Mr. Marchmont and his daughter went away one bitter
+winter's morning in a cab, which was to carry them to the hostelry
+whence the coach started for Lincoln.
+
+It is strange to think how far those Oakley-street days of privation
+and endurance seem to have receded in the memories of both father and
+daughter. The impalpable past fades away, and it is difficult for John
+and his little girl to believe that they were once so poor and
+desolate. It is Oakley Street now that is visionary and unreal. The
+stately county families bear down upon Marchmont Towers in great
+lumbering chariots, with brazen crests upon the hammer-cloths, and
+sulky coachmen in Brown-George wigs. The county mammas patronise and
+caress Miss Marchmont--what a match she will be for one of the county
+sons by-and-by!--the county daughters discourse with Mary about her
+poor, and her fancy-work, and her piano. She is getting on slowly
+enough with her piano, poor little girl! under the tuition of the
+organist of Swampington, who gives lessons to that part of the county.
+And there are solemn dinners now and then at Marchmont Towers--dinners
+at which Miss Mary appears when the cloth has been removed, and
+reflects in silent wonder upon the change that has come to her father
+and herself. Can it be true that she has ever lived in Oakley Street,
+whither came no more aristocratic visitors than her Aunt Sophia, who
+was the wife of a Berkshire farmer, and always brought hogs' puddings,
+and butter, and home-made bread, and other rustic delicacies to her
+brother-in-law; or Mrs. Brigsome, the washer-woman, who made a
+morning-call every Monday, to fetch John Marchmont's shabby shirts? The
+shirts were not shabby now; and it was no longer Mary's duty to watch
+them day by day, and manipulate them tenderly when the linen grew
+frayed at the sharp edges of the folds, or the buttonholes gave signs
+of weakness. Corson, Mr. Marchmont's own-man, had care of the shirts
+now: and John wore diamond-studs and a black-satin waistcoat, when he
+gave a dinner-party. They were not very lively, those Lincolnshire
+dinner-parties; though the dessert was a sight to look upon, in Mary's
+eyes. The long shining table, the red and gold and purple Indian china,
+the fluffy woollen d'oyleys, the sparkling cut-glass, the sticky
+preserved ginger and guava-jelly, and dried orange rings and chips, and
+all the stereotyped sweetmeats, were very grand and beautiful, no
+doubt; but Mary had seen livelier desserts in Oakley Street, though
+there had been nothing better than a brown-paper bag of oranges from
+the Westminster Road, and a bottle of two-and-twopenny Marsala from a
+licensed victualler's in the Borough, to promote conviviality.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+THE YOUNG SOLDIER'S RETURN.
+
+
+The rain beats down upon the battlemented roof of Marchmont Towers this
+July day, as if it had a mind to flood the old mansion. The flat waste
+of grass, and the lonely clumps of trees, are almost blotted out by the
+falling rain. The low grey sky shuts out the distance. This part of
+Lincolnshire--fenny, misty, and flat always--seems flatter and mistier
+than usual to-day. The rain beats hopelessly upon the leaves in the
+wood behind Marchmont Towers, and splashes into great pools beneath the
+trees, until the ground is almost hidden by the fallen water, and the
+trees seem to be growing out of a black lake. The land is lower behind
+Marchmont Towers, and slopes down gradually to the bank of a dismal
+river, which straggles through the Marchmont property at a snail's
+pace, to gain an impetus farther on, until it hurries into the sea
+somewhere northward of Grimsby. The wood is not held in any great
+favour by the household at the Towers; and it has been a pet project of
+several Marchmonts to level and drain it, but a project not very easily
+to be carried out. Marchmont Towers is said to be unhealthy, as a
+dwelling-house, by reason of this wood, from which miasmas rise in
+certain states of the weather; and it is on this account that the back
+of the house--the eastern front, at least, as it is called--looking to
+the wood is very little used.
+
+Mary Marchmont sits at a window in the western drawing-room, watching
+the ceaseless falling of the rain upon this dreary summer afternoon.
+She is little changed since the day upon which Edward Arundel saw her
+in Oakley Street. She is taller, of course, but her figure is as
+slender and childish as ever: it is only her face in which the
+earnestness of premature womanhood reveals itself in a grave and sweet
+serenity very beautiful to contemplate. Her soft brown eyes have a
+pensive shadow in their gentle light; her mouth is even more pensive.
+It has been said of Jane Grey, of Mary Stuart, of Marie Antoinette,
+Charlotte Corday, and other fated women, that in the gayest hours of
+their youth they bore upon some feature, or in some expression, the
+shadow of the End--an impalpable, indescribable presage of an awful
+future, vaguely felt by those who looked upon them.
+
+Is it thus with Mary Marchmont? Has the solemn hand of Destiny set that
+shadowy brand upon the face of this child, that even in her prosperity,
+as in her adversity, she should be so utterly different from all other
+children? Is she already marked out for some womanly martyrdom--already
+set apart for more than common suffering?
+
+She sits alone this afternoon, for her father is busy with his agent.
+Wealth does not mean immunity from all care and trouble; and Mr.
+Marchmont has plenty of work to get through, in conjunction with his
+land-steward, a hard-headed Yorkshireman, who lives at Kemberling, and
+insists on doing his duty with pertinacious honesty.
+
+The large brown eyes looked wistfully out at the dismal waste and the
+falling rain. There was a wretched equestrian making his way along the
+carriage-drive.
+
+"Who can come to see us on such a day?" Mary thought. "It must be Mr.
+Gormby, I suppose;"--the agent's name was Gormby. "Mr. Gormby never
+cares about the wet; but then I thought he was with papa. Oh, I hope it
+isn't anybody coming to call."
+
+But Mary forgot all about the struggling equestrian the next moment.
+She had some morsel of fancy-work upon her lap, and picked it up and
+went on with it, setting slow stitches, and letting her thoughts wander
+far away from Marchmont Towers--to India, I am afraid; or to that
+imaginary India which she had created for herself out of such images as
+were to be picked up in the "Arabian Nights." She was roused suddenly
+by the opening of a door at the farther end of the room, and by the
+voice of a servant, who mumbled a name which sounded something like Mr.
+Armenger.
+
+She rose, blushing a little, to do honour to one of her father's county
+acquaintance, as she thought; when a fair-haired gentleman dashed in,
+very much excited and very wet, and made his way towards her.
+
+"I _would_ come, Miss Marchmont," he said,--"I would come, though the
+day was so wet. Everybody vowed I was mad to think of it, and it was as
+much as my poor brute of a horse could do to get over the ten miles of
+swamp between this and my uncle's house; but I would come! Where's
+John? I want to see John. Didn't I always tell him he'd come into the
+Lincolnshire property? Didn't I always say so, now? You should have
+seen Martin Mostyn's face--he's got a capital berth in the War Office,
+and he's such a snob!--when I told him the news: it was as long as my
+arm! But I must see John, dear old fellow! I long to congratulate him."
+
+Mary stood with her hands clasped, and her breath coming quickly. The
+blush had quite faded out, and left her unusually pale. But Edward
+Arundel did not see this: young gentlemen of four-and-twenty are not
+very attentive to every change of expression in little girls of
+thirteen.
+
+"Oh, is it you, Mr. Arundel? Is it really you?"
+
+She spoke in a low voice, and it was almost difficult to keep the
+rushing tears back while she did so. She had pictured him so often in
+peril, in famine, in sickness, in death, that to see him here, well,
+happy, light-hearted, cordial, handsome, and brave, as she had seen him
+four-and-a-half years before in the two-pair back in Oakley Street, was
+almost too much for her to bear without the relief of tears. But she
+controlled her emotion as bravely as if she had been a woman of twenty.
+
+"I am so glad to see you," she said quietly; "and papa will be so glad
+too! It is the only thing we want, now we are rich; to have you with
+us. We have talked of you so often; and I--we--have been so unhappy
+sometimes, thinking that----"
+
+"That I should be killed, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes; or wounded very, very badly. The battles in India have been
+dreadful, have they not?"
+
+Mr. Arundel smiled at her earnestness.
+
+"They have not been exactly child's play," he said, shaking back his
+chesnut hair and smoothing his thick moustache. He was a man now, and a
+very handsome one; something of that type which is known in this year
+of grace as "swell"; but brave and chivalrous withal, and not afflicted
+with any impediment in his speech. "The men who talk of the Affghans as
+a chicken-hearted set of fellows are rather out of their reckoning. The
+Indians can fight, Miss Mary, and fight like the devil; but we can lick
+'em!"
+
+He walked over to the fireplace, where--upon this chilly wet day, there
+was a fire burning--and began to shake himself dry. Mary, following him
+with her eyes, wondered if there was such another soldier in all Her
+Majesty's dominions, and how soon he would be made General-in-Chief of
+the Army of the Indus.
+
+"Then you've not been wounded at all, Mr. Arundel?" she said, after a
+pause.
+
+"Oh, yes, I've been wounded; I got a bullet in my shoulder from an
+Affghan musket, and I'm home on sick-leave."
+
+This time he saw the expression of her face, and interpreted her look
+of alarm.
+
+"But I'm not ill, you know, Miss Marchmont," he said, laughing. "Our
+fellows are very glad of a wound when they feel home-sick. The 8th come
+home before long, all of 'em; and I've a twelvemonth's leave of
+absence; and we're pretty sure to be ordered out again by the end of
+that time, as I don't believe there's much chance of quiet over there."
+
+"You will go out again!----"
+
+Edward Arundel smiled at her mournful tone.
+
+"To be sure, Miss Mary. I have my captaincy to win, you know; I'm only
+a lieutenant, as yet."
+
+It was only a twelvemonth's reprieve, after all, then, Mary thought. He
+would go back again--to suffer, and to be wounded, and to die, perhaps.
+But then, on the other hand, there was a twelvemonth's respite; and her
+father might in that time prevail upon the young soldier to stay at
+Marchmont Towers. It was such inexpressible happiness to see him once
+more, to know that he was safe and well, that Mary could scarcely do
+otherwise than see all things in a sunny light just now.
+
+She ran to John Marchmont's study to tell him of the coming of this
+welcome visitor; but she wept upon her father's shoulder before she
+could explain who it was whose coming had made her so glad. Very few
+friendships had broken the monotony of her solitary existence; and
+Edward Arundel was the only chivalrous image she had ever known, out of
+her books.
+
+John Marchmont was scarcely less pleased than his child to see the man
+who had befriended him in his poverty. Never has more heartfelt welcome
+been given than that which greeted Edward Arundel at Marchmont Towers.
+
+"You will stay with us, of course, my dear Arundel," John said; "you
+will stop for September and the shooting. You know you promised you'd
+make this your shooting-box; and we'll build the tennis-court. Heaven
+knows, there's room enough for it in the great quadrangle; and there's
+a billiard-room over this, though I'm afraid the table is out of order.
+But we can soon set that right, can't we, Polly?"
+
+"Yes, yes, papa; out of my pocket-money, if you like."
+
+Mary Marchmont said this in all good faith. It was sometimes difficult
+for her to remember that her father was really rich, and had no need of
+help out of her pocket-money. The slender savings in her little purse
+had often given him some luxury that he would not otherwise have had,
+in the time gone by.
+
+"You got my letter, then?" John said; "the letter in which I told
+you----"
+
+"That Marchmont Towers was yours. Yes, my dear old boy. That letter was
+amongst a packet my agent brought me half-an-hour before I left
+Calcutta. God bless you, dear old fellow; how glad I was to hear of it!
+I've only been in England a fortnight. I went straight from Southampton
+to Dangerfield to see my father and mother, stayed there little over
+ten days, and then offended them all by running away. I reached
+Swampington yesterday, slept at my uncle Hubert's, paid my respects to
+my cousin Olivia, who is,--well, I've told you what she is,--and rode
+over here this morning, much to the annoyance of the inhabitants of the
+Rectory. So, you see, I've been doing nothing but offending people for
+your sake, John; and for yours, Miss Mary. By-the-by, I've brought you
+such a doll!"
+
+A doll! Mary's pale face flushed a faint crimson. Did he think her
+still a child, then, this soldier; did he think her only a silly child,
+with no thought above a doll, when she would have gone out to India,
+and braved every peril of that cruel country, to be his nurse and
+comfort in fever and sickness, like the brave Sisters of Mercy she had
+read of in some of her novels?
+
+Edward Arundel saw that faint crimson glow lighting up in her face.
+
+"I beg your pardon, Miss Marchmont," he said. "I was only joking; of
+course you are a young lady now, almost grown up, you know. Can you
+play chess?"
+
+"No, Mr. Arundel."
+
+"I am sorry for that; for I have brought you a set of chessmen that
+once belonged to Dost Mahommed Khan. But I'll teach you the game, if
+you like?"
+
+"Oh, yes, Mr. Arundel; I should like it very, very much."
+
+The young soldier could not help being amused by the little girl's
+earnestness. She was about the same age as his sister Letitia; but, oh,
+how widely different to that bouncing and rather wayward young lady,
+who tore the pillow-lace upon her muslin frocks, rumpled her long
+ringlets, rasped the skin off the sharp points of her elbows, by
+repeated falls upon the gravel-paths at Dangerfield, and tormented a
+long-suffering Swiss attendant, half-lady's-maid, half-governess, from
+morning till night. No fold was awry in Mary Marchmont's simple
+black-silk frock; no plait disarranged in the neat cambric tucker that
+encircled the slender white throat. Intellect here reigned supreme.
+Instead of the animal spirits of a thoughtless child, there was a
+woman's loving carefulness for others, a woman's unselfishness and
+devotion.
+
+Edward Arundel did not understand all this, but I think he had a dim
+comprehension of the greater part of it.
+
+"She is a dear little thing," he thought, as he watched her clinging to
+her father's arm; and then he began to talk about Marchmont Towers, and
+insisted upon being shown over the house; and, perhaps for the first
+time since the young heir had shot himself to death upon a bright
+September morning in a stubble-field within earshot of the park, the
+sound of merry laughter echoed through the long corridors, and
+resounded in the unoccupied rooms.
+
+Edward Arundel was in raptures with everything. "There never was such a
+dear old place," he said. "'Gloomy?' 'dreary?' 'draughty?' pshaw! Cut a
+few logs out of that wood at the back there, pile 'em up in the wide
+chimneys, and set a light to 'em, and Marchmont Towers would be like a
+baronial mansion at Christmas-time." He declared that every dingy
+portrait he looked at was a Rubens or a Velasquez, or a Vandyke, a
+Holbein, or a Lely.
+
+"Look at that fur border to the old woman's black-velvet gown, John;
+look at the colouring of the hands! Do you think anybody but Peter Paul
+could have painted that? Do you see that girl with the blue-satin
+stomacher and the flaxen ringlets?--one of your ancestresses, Miss
+Mary, and very like you. If that isn't in Sir Peter Lely's best
+style,--his earlier style, you know, before he was spoiled by royal
+patronage, and got lazy,--I know nothing of painting."
+
+The young soldier ran on in this manner, as he hurried his host from
+room to room; now throwing open windows to look out at the wet
+prospect; now rapping against the wainscot to find secret hiding-places
+behind sliding panels; now stamping on the oak-flooring in the hope of
+discovering a trap-door. He pointed out at least ten eligible sites for
+the building of the tennis-court; he suggested more alterations and
+improvements than a builder could have completed in a lifetime. The
+place brightened under the influence of his presence, as a landscape
+lights up under a burst of sudden sunshine breaking through a dull grey
+sky.
+
+Mary Marchmont did not wait for the removal of the table-cloth that
+evening, but dined with her father and his friend in a snug
+oak-panelled chamber, half-breakfast-room, half-library, which opened
+out of the western drawing-room. How different Edward Arundel was to
+all the rest of the world, Miss Marchmont thought; how gay, how bright,
+how genial, how happy! The county families, mustered in their fullest
+force, couldn't make such mirth amongst them as this young soldier
+created in his single person.
+
+The evening was an evening in fairy-land. Life was sometimes like the
+last scene in a pantomime, after all, with rose-coloured cloud and
+golden sunlight.
+
+One of the Marchmont servants went over to Swampington early the next
+day to fetch Mr. Arundel's portmanteaus from the Rectory; and after
+dinner upon that second evening, Mary Marchmont took her seat opposite
+Edward, and listened reverently while he explained to her the moves
+upon the chessboard.
+
+"So you don't know my cousin Olivia?" the young soldier said by-and-by.
+"That's odd! I should have thought she would have called upon you long
+before this."
+
+Mary Marchmont shook her head.
+
+"No," she said; "Miss Arundel has never been to see us; and I should so
+like to have seen her, because she would have told me about you. Mr.
+Arundel has called one or twice upon papa; but I have never seen him.
+He is not our clergyman, you know; Marchmont Towers belongs to
+Kemberling parish."
+
+"To be sure; and Swampington is ten miles off. But, for all that, I
+should have thought Olivia would have called upon you. I'll drive you
+over to-morrow, if John thinks me whip enough to trust you with me, and
+you shall see Livy. The Rectory's such a queer old place!"
+
+Perhaps Mr. Marchmont was rather doubtful as to the propriety of
+committing his little girl to Edward Arundel's charioteership for a
+ten-mile drive upon a wretched road. Be it as it might, a lumbering
+barouche, with a pair of over-fed horses, was ordered next morning,
+instead of the high, old-fashioned gig which the soldier had proposed
+driving; and the safety of the two young people was confided to a sober
+old coachman, rather sulky at the prospect of a drive to Swampington so
+soon after the rainy weather.
+
+It does not rain always, even in this part of Lincolnshire; and the
+July morning was bright and pleasant, the low hedges fragrant with
+starry opal-tinted wild roses and waxen honeysuckle, the yellowing corn
+waving in the light summer breeze. Mary assured her companion that she
+had no objection whatever to the odour of cigar-smoke; so Mr. Arundel
+lolled upon the comfortable cushions of the barouche, with his back to
+the horses, smoking cheroots, and talking gaily, while Miss Marchmont
+sat in the place of state opposite to him. A happy drive; a drive in a
+fairy chariot through regions of fairyland, for ever and for ever to be
+remembered by Mary Marchmont.
+
+They left the straggling hedges and the yellowing corn behind them
+by-and-by, as they drew near the outskirts of Swampington. The town
+lies lower even than the surrounding country, flat and low as that
+country is. A narrow river crawls at the base of a half-ruined wall,
+which once formed part of the defences of the place. Black barges lie
+at anchor here; and a stone bridge, guarded by a toll-house, spans the
+river. Mr. Marchmont's carriage lumbered across this bridge, and under
+an archway, low, dark, stony, and grim, into a narrow street of solid,
+well-built houses, low, dark, stony, and grim, like the archway, but
+bearing the stamp of reputable occupation. I believe the grass grew,
+and still grows, in this street, as it does in all the other streets
+and in the market-place of Swampington. They are all pretty much in the
+same style, these streets,--all stony, narrow, dark, and grim; and they
+wind and twist hither and thither, and in and out, in a manner utterly
+bewildering to the luckless stranger, who, seeing that they are all
+alike, has no landmarks for his guidance.
+
+There are two handsome churches, both bearing an early date in the
+history of Norman supremacy: one crowded into an inconvenient corner of
+a back street, and choked by the houses built up round about it; the
+other lying a little out of the town, upon a swampy waste looking
+towards the sea, which flows within a mile of Swampington. Indeed,
+there is no lack of water in that Lincolnshire borough. The river winds
+about the outskirts of the town; unexpected creeks and inlets meet you
+at every angle; shallow pools lie here and there about the marshy
+suburbs; and in the dim distance the low line of the grey sea meets the
+horizon.
+
+But perhaps the positive ugliness of the town is something redeemed by
+a vague air of romance and old-world mystery which pervades it. It is
+an exceptional place, and somewhat interesting thereby. The great
+Norman church upon the swampy waste, the scattered tombstones, bordered
+by the low and moss-grown walls, make a picture which is apt to dwell
+in the minds of those who look upon it, although it is by no means a
+pretty picture. The Rectory lies close to the churchyard; and a
+wicket-gate opens from Mr. Arundel's garden into a narrow pathway,
+leading across a patch of tangled grass and through a lane of sunken
+and lopsided tombstones, to the low vestry door. The Rectory itself is
+a long irregular building, to which one incumbent after another has
+built the additional chamber, or chimney, or porch, or bow-window,
+necessary for his accommodation. There is very little garden in front
+of the house, but a patch of lawn and shrubbery and a clump of old
+trees at the back.
+
+"It's not a pretty house, is it, Miss Marchmont?" asked Edward, as he
+lifted his companion out of the carriage.
+
+"No, not very pretty," Mary answered; "but I don't think any thing is
+pretty in Lincolnshire. Oh, there's the sea!" she cried, looking
+suddenly across the marshes to the low grey line in the distance. "How
+I wish we were as near the sea at Marchmont Towers!"
+
+The young lady had something of a romantic passion for the
+wide-spreading ocean. It was an unknown region, that stretched far
+away, and was wonderful and beautiful by reason of its solemn mystery.
+All her Corsair stories were allied to that far, fathomless deep. The
+white sail in the distance was Conrad's, perhaps; and he was speeding
+homeward to find Medora dead in her lonely watch-tower, with fading
+flowers upon her breast. The black hull yonder, with dirty canvas
+spread to the faint breeze, was the bark of some terrible pirate bound
+on rapine and ravage. (She was a coal-barge, I have no doubt, sailing
+Londonward with her black burden.) Nymphs and Lurleis, Mermaids and
+Mermen, and tiny water-babies with silvery tails, for ever splashing in
+the sunshine, were all more or less associated with the long grey line
+towards which Mary Marchmont looked with solemn, yearning eyes.
+
+"We'll drive down to the seashore some morning, Polly," said Mr.
+Arundel. He was beginning to call her Polly, now and then, in the easy
+familiarity of their intercourse. "We'll spend a long day on the sands,
+and I'll smoke cheroots while you pick up shells and seaweed."
+
+Miss Marchmont clasped her hands in silent rapture. Her face was
+irradiated by the new light of happiness. How good he was to her, this
+brave soldier, who must undoubtedly be made Commander-in-Chief of the
+Army of the Indus in a year or so!
+
+Edward Arundel led his companion across the flagged way between the
+iron gate of the Rectory garden and a half-glass door leading into the
+hall. Out of this simple hall, only furnished with a couple of chairs,
+a barometer, and an umbrella-stand, they went, without announcement,
+into a low, old-fashioned room, half-study, half-parlour, where a young
+lady was sitting at a table writing.
+
+She rose as Edward opened the door, and came to meet him.
+
+"At last!" she said; "I thought your rich friends engrossed all your
+attention."
+
+She paused, seeing Mary.
+
+"This is Miss Marchmont, Olivia," said Edward; "the only daughter of my
+old friend. You must be very fond of her, please; for she is a dear
+little girl, and I know she means to love you."
+
+Mary lifted her soft brown eyes to the face of the young lady, and then
+dropped her eyelids suddenly, as if half-frightened by what she had
+seen there.
+
+What was it? What was it in Olivia Arundel's handsome face from which
+those who looked at her so often shrank, repelled and disappointed?
+Every line in those perfectly-modelled features was beautiful to look
+at; but, as a whole, the face was not beautiful. Perhaps it was too
+much like a marble mask, exquisitely chiselled, but wanting in variety
+of expression. The handsome mouth was rigid; the dark grey eyes had a
+cold light in them. The thick bands of raven-black hair were drawn
+tightly off a square forehead, which was the brow of an intellectual
+and determined man rather than of a woman. Yes; womanhood was the
+something wanted in Olivia Arundel's face. Intellect, resolution,
+courage, are rare gifts; but they are not the gifts whose tokens we
+look for most anxiously in a woman's face. If Miss Arundel had been a
+queen, her diadem would have become her nobly; and she might have been
+a very great queen: but Heaven help the wretched creature who had
+appealed from minor tribunals to _her_ mercy! Heaven help delinquents
+of every kind whose last lingering hope had been in her compassion!
+
+Perhaps Mary Marchmont vaguely felt something of all this. At any rate,
+the enthusiasm with which she had been ready to regard Edward Arundel's
+cousin cooled suddenly beneath the winter in that pale, quiet face.
+
+Miss Arundel said a few words to her guest; kindly enough; but rather
+too much as if she had been addressing a child of six. Mary, who was
+accustomed to be treated as a woman, was wounded by her manner.
+
+"How different she is from Edward!" thought Miss Marchmont. "I shall
+never like her as I like him."
+
+"So this is the pale-faced child who is to have Marchmont Towers
+by-and-by," thought Miss Arundel; "and these rich friends are the
+people for whom Edward stays away from us."
+
+The lines about the rigid mouth grew harder, the cold light in the grey
+eyes grew colder, as the young lady thought this.
+
+It was thus that these two women met: while one was but a child in
+years; while the other was yet in the early bloom of womanhood: these
+two, who were predestined to hate each other, and inflict suffering
+upon each other in the days that were to come. It was thus that they
+thought of one another; each with an unreasonable dread, an undefined
+aversion gathering in her breast.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Six weeks passed, and Edward Arundel kept his promise of shooting the
+partridges on the Marchmont preserves. The wood behind the Towers, and
+the stubbled corn-fields on the home-farm, bristled with game. The
+young soldier heartily enjoyed himself through that delicious first
+week in September; and came home every afternoon, with a heavy game-bag
+and a light heart, to boast of his prowess before Mary and her father.
+
+The young man was by this time familiar with every nook and corner of
+Marchmont Towers; and the builders were already at work at the
+tennis-court which John had promised to erect for his friend's
+pleasure. The site ultimately chosen was a bleak corner of the eastern
+front, looking to the wood; but as Edward declared the spot in every
+way eligible, John had no inclination to find fault with his friend's
+choice. There was other work for the builders; for Mr. Arundel had
+taken a wonderful fancy to a ruined boat-house upon the brink of the
+river; and this boat-house was to be rebuilt and restored, and made
+into a delightful pavilion, in the upper chambers of which Mary might
+sit with her father in the hot summer weather, while Mr. Arundel kept a
+couple of trim wherries in the recesses below.
+
+So, you see, the young man made himself very much at home, in his own
+innocent, boyish fashion, at Marchmont Towers. But as he had brought
+life and light to the old Lincolnshire mansion, nobody was inclined to
+quarrel with him for any liberties which he might choose to take: and
+every one looked forward sorrowfully to the dark days before Christmas,
+at which time he was under a promise to return to Dangerfield Park;
+there to spend the remainder of his leave of absence.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+OLIVIA.
+
+
+While busy workmen were employed at Marchmont Towers, hammering at the
+fragile wooden walls of the tennis-court,--while Mary Marchmont and
+Edward Arundel wandered, with the dogs at their heels, amongst the
+rustle of the fallen leaves in the wood behind the great gaunt
+Lincolnshire mansion,--Olivia, the Rector's daughter, sat in her
+father's quiet study, or walked to and fro in the gloomy streets of
+Swampington, doing her duty day by day.
+
+Yes, the life of this woman is told in these few words: she did her
+duty. From the earliest age at which responsibility can begin, she had
+done her duty, uncomplainingly, unswervingly, as it seemed to those who
+watched her.
+
+She was a good woman. The bishop of the diocese had specially
+complimented her for her active devotion to that holy work which falls
+somewhat heavily upon the only daughter of a widowed rector. All the
+stately dowagers about Swampington were loud in their praises of Olivia
+Arundel. Such devotion, such untiring zeal in a young person of
+three-and-twenty years of age, were really most laudable, these solemn
+elders said, in tones of supreme patronage; for the young saint of whom
+they spoke wore shabby gowns, and was the portionless daughter of a
+poor man who had let the world slip by him, and who sat now amid the
+dreary ruins of a wasted life, looking yearningly backward, with hollow
+regretful eyes, and bewailing the chances he had lost. Hubert Arundel
+loved his daughter; loved her with that sorrowful affection we feel for
+those who suffer for our sins, whose lives have been blighted by our
+follies.
+
+Every shabby garment which Olivia wore was a separate reproach to her
+father; every deprivation she endured stung him as cruelly as if she
+had turned upon him and loudly upbraided him for his wasted life and
+his squandered patrimony. He loved her; and he watched her day after
+day, doing her duty to him as to all others; doing her duty for ever
+and for ever; but when he most yearned to take her to his heart, her
+own cold perfections arose, and separated him from the child he loved.
+What was he but a poor, vacillating, erring creature; weak, supine,
+idle, epicurean; unworthy to approach this girl, who never seemed to
+sicken of the hardness of her life, who never grew weary of well-doing?
+
+But how was it that, for all her goodness, Olivia Arundel won so small
+a share of earthly reward? I do not allude to the gold and jewels and
+other worldly benefits with which the fairies in our children's
+story-books reward the benevolent mortals who take compassion upon them
+when they experimentalise with human nature in the guise of old women;
+but I speak rather of the love and gratitude, the tenderness and
+blessings, which usually wait upon the footsteps of those who do good
+deeds. Olivia Arundel's charities were never ceasing; her life was one
+perpetual sacrifice to her father's parishioners. There was no natural
+womanly vanity, no simple girlish fancy, which this woman had not
+trodden under foot, and trampled out in the hard pathway she had chosen
+for herself.
+
+The poor people knew this. Rheumatic men and women, crippled and
+bed-ridden, knew that the blankets which covered them had been bought
+out of money that would have purchased silk dresses for the Rector's
+handsome daughter, or luxuries for the frugal table at the Rectory.
+They knew this. They knew that, through frost and snow, through storm
+and rain, Olivia Arundel would come to sit beside their dreary hearths,
+their desolate sick-beds, and read holy books to them; sublimely
+indifferent to the foul weather without, to the stifling atmosphere
+within, to dirt, discomfort, poverty, inconvenience; heedless of all,
+except the performance of the task she had set herself.
+
+People knew this; and they were grateful to Miss Arundel, and
+submissive and attentive in her presence; they gave her such return as
+they were able to give for the benefits, spiritual and temporal, which
+she bestowed upon them: but they did not love her.
+
+They spoke of her in reverential accents, and praised her whenever her
+name was mentioned; but they spoke with tearless eyes and unfaltering
+voices. Her virtues were beautiful, of course, as virtue in the
+abstract must always be; but I think there was a want of individuality
+in her goodness, a lack of personal tenderness in her kindness, which
+separated her from the people she benefited.
+
+Perhaps there was something almost chilling in the dull monotony of
+Miss Arundel's benevolence. There was no blemish of mortal weakness
+upon the good deeds she performed; and the recipients of her bounties,
+seeing her so far off, grew afraid of her, even by reason of her
+goodness, and _could_ not love her.
+
+She made no favourites amongst her father's parishioners. Of all the
+school-children she had taught, she had never chosen one curly-headed
+urchin for a pet. She had no good days and bad days; she was never
+foolishly indulgent or extravagantly cordial. She was always the
+same,--Church-of-England charity personified; meting out all mercies by
+line and rule; doing good with a note-book and a pencil in her hand;
+looking on every side with calm, scrutinising eyes; rigidly just,
+terribly perfect.
+
+It was a fearfully monotonous, narrow, and uneventful life which Olivia
+Arundel led at Swampington Rectory. At three-and-twenty years of age
+she could have written her history upon a few pages. The world outside
+that dull Lincolnshire town might be shaken by convulsions, and made
+irrecognisable by repeated change; but all those outer changes and
+revolutions made themselves but little felt in the quiet grass-grown
+streets, and the flat surrounding swamps, within whose narrow boundary
+Olivia Arundel had lived from infancy to womanhood; performing and
+repeating the same duties from day to day, with no other progress to
+mark the lapse of her existence than the slow alternation of the
+seasons, and the dark hollow circles which had lately deepened beneath
+her grey eyes, and the depressed lines about the corners of her firm
+lower-lip.
+
+These outward tokens, beyond her own control, alone betrayed this
+woman's secret. She was weary of her life. She sickened under the dull
+burden which she had borne so long, and carried so patiently. The slow
+round of duty was loathsome to her. The horrible, narrow, unchanging
+existence, shut in by cruel walls, which bounded her on every side and
+kept her prisoner to herself, was odious to her. The powerful intellect
+revolted against the fetters that bound and galled it. The proud heart
+beat with murderous violence against the bonds that kept it captive.
+
+"Is my life always to be this--always, always, always?" The passionate
+nature burst forth sometimes, and the voice that had so long been
+stifled cried aloud in the black stillness of the night, "Is it to go
+on for ever and for ever; like the slow river that creeps under the
+broken wall? O my God! is the lot of other women never to be mine? Am I
+never to be loved and admired; never to be sought and chosen? Is my
+life to be all of one dull, grey, colourless monotony; without one
+sudden gleam of sunshine, without one burst of rainbow-light?"
+
+How shall I anatomise this woman, who, gifted with no womanly
+tenderness of nature, unendowed with that pitiful and unreasoning
+affection which makes womanhood beautiful, yet tried, and tried
+unceasingly, to do her duty, and to be good; clinging, in the very
+blindness of her soul, to the rigid formulas of her faith, but unable
+to seize upon its spirit? Some latent comprehension of the want in her
+nature made her only the more scrupulous in the performance of those
+duties which she had meted out for herself. The holy sentences she had
+heard, Sunday after Sunday, feebly read by her father, haunted her
+perpetually, and would not be put away from her. The tenderness in
+every word of those familiar gospels was a reproach to the want of
+tenderness in her own heart. She could be good to her father's
+parishioners, and she could make sacrifices for them; but she could not
+love them, any more than they could love her.
+
+That divine and universal pity, that spontaneous and boundless
+affection, which is the chief loveliness of womanhood and Christianity,
+had no part in her nature. She could understand Judith with the
+Assyrian general's gory head held aloft in her uplifted hand; but she
+could not comprehend that diviner mystery of sinful Magdalene sitting
+at her Master's feet, with the shame and love in her face half hidden
+by a veil of drooping hair.
+
+No; Olivia Arundel was not a good woman, in the commoner sense we
+attach to the phrase. It was not natural to her to be gentle and
+tender, to be beneficent, compassionate, and kind, as it is to the
+women we are accustomed to call "good." She was a woman who was for
+ever fighting against her nature; who was for ever striving to do
+right; for ever walking painfully upon the difficult road mapped out
+for her; for ever measuring herself by the standard she had set up for
+her self-abasement. And who shall say that such a woman as this, if she
+persevere unto the end, shall not wear a brighter crown than her more
+gentle sisters,--the starry circlet of a martyr?
+
+If she persevere unto the end! But was Olivia Arundel the woman to do
+this? The deepening circles about her eyes, the hollowing cheeks, and
+the feverish restlessness of manner which she could not always control,
+told how terrible the long struggle had become to her. If she could
+have died then,--if she had fallen beneath the weight of her
+burden,--what a record of sin and anguish might have remained unwritten
+in the history of woman's life! But this woman was one of those who can
+suffer, and yet not die. She bore her burden a little longer; only to
+fling it down by-and-by, and to abandon herself to the eager devils who
+had been watching for her so untiringly.
+
+Hubert Arundel was afraid of his daughter. The knowledge that he had
+wronged her,--wronged her even before her birth by the foolish waste of
+his patrimony, and wronged her through life by his lack of energy in
+seeking such advancement as a more ambitious man might have won,--the
+knowledge of this, and of his daughter's superior virtues, combined to
+render the father ashamed and humiliated by the presence of his only
+child. The struggle between this fear and his remorseful love of her
+was a very painful one; but fear had the mastery, and the Rector of
+Swampington was content to stand aloof, mutely watchful of his
+daughter, wondering feebly whether she was happy, striving vainly to
+discover that one secret, that keystone of the soul, which must exist
+in every nature, however outwardly commonplace.
+
+Mr. Arundel had hoped that his daughter would marry, and marry well,
+even at Swampington; for there were rich young landowners who visited
+at the Rectory. But Olivia's handsome face won her few admirers, and at
+three-and-twenty Miss Arundel had received no offer of marriage. The
+father reproached himself for this. It was he who had blighted the life
+of his penniless girl; it was his fault that no suitors came to woo his
+motherless child. Yet many dowerless maidens have been sought and
+loved; and I do not think it was Olivia's lack of fortune which kept
+admirers at bay. I believe it was rather that inherent want of
+tenderness which chilled and dispirited the timid young Lincolnshire
+squires.
+
+Had Olivia ever been in love? Hubert Arundel constantly asked himself
+this question. He did so because he saw that some blighting influence,
+even beyond the poverty and dulness of her home, had fallen upon the
+life of his only child. What was it? What was it? Was it some hopeless
+attachment, some secret tenderness, which had never won the sweet
+return of love for love?
+
+He would no more have ventured to question his daughter upon this
+subject than he would have dared to ask his fair young Queen, newly
+married in those days, whether she was happy with her handsome husband.
+
+Miss Arundel stood by the Rectory gate in the early September evening,
+watching the western sunlight on the low sea-line beyond the marshes.
+She was wearied and worn out by a long day devoted to visiting amongst
+her parishioners; and she stood with her elbow leaning on the gate, and
+her head resting on her hand, in an attitude peculiarly expressive of
+fatigue. She had thrown off her bonnet, and her black hair was pushed
+carelessly from her forehead. Those masses of hair had not that purple
+lustre, nor yet that wandering glimmer of red gold, which gives
+peculiar beauty to some raven tresses. Olivia's hair was long and
+luxuriant; but it was of that dead, inky blackness, which is all
+shadow. It was dark, fathomless, inscrutable, like herself. The cold
+grey eyes looked thoughtfully seaward. Another day's duty had been
+done. Long chapters of Holy Writ had been read to troublesome old women
+afflicted with perpetual coughs; stifling, airless cottages had been
+visited; the dull, unvarying track had been beaten by the patient feet,
+and the yellow sun was going down upon another joyless day. But did the
+still evening hour bring peace to that restless spirit? No; by the
+rigid compression of the lips, by the feverish lustre in the eyes, by
+the faint hectic flush in the oval cheeks, by every outward sign of
+inward unrest, Olivia Arundel was not at peace! The listlessness of her
+attitude was merely the listlessness of physical fatigue. The mental
+struggle was not finished with the close of the day's work.
+
+The young lady looked up suddenly as the tramp of a horse's hoofs, slow
+and lazy-sounding on the smooth road, met her ear. Her eyes dilated,
+and her breath went and came more rapidly; but she did not stir from
+her weary attitude.
+
+The horse was from the stables at Marchmont Towers, and the rider was
+Mr. Arundel. He came smiling to the Rectory gate, with the low sunshine
+glittering in his chesnut hair, and the light of careless, indifferent
+happiness irradiating his handsome face.
+
+"You must have thought I'd forgotten you and my uncle, my dear Livy,"
+he said, as he sprang lightly from his horse. "We've been so busy with
+the tennis-court, and the boat-house, and the partridges, and goodness
+knows what besides at the Towers, that I couldn't get the time to ride
+over till this evening. But to-day we dined early, on purpose that I
+might have the chance of getting here. I come upon an important
+mission, Livy, I assure you."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+There was no change in Miss Arundel's voice when she spoke to her
+cousin; but there was a change, not easily to be defined, in her face
+when she looked at him. It seemed as if that weary hopelessness of
+expression which had settled on her countenance lately grew more weary,
+more hopeless, as she turned towards this bright young soldier,
+glorious in the beauty of his own light-heartedness. It may have been
+merely the sharpness of contrast which produced this effect. It may
+have been an actual change arising out of some secret hidden in
+Olivia's breast.
+
+"What do you mean by an important mission, Edward?" she said.
+
+She had need to repeat the question; for the young man's attention had
+wandered from her, and he was watching his horse as the animal cropped
+the tangled herbage about the Rectory gate.
+
+"Why, I've come with an invitation to a dinner at Marchmont Towers.
+There's to be a dinner-party; and, in point of fact, it's to be given
+on purpose for you and my uncle. John and Polly are full of it. You'll
+come, won't you, Livy?"
+
+Miss Arundel shrugged her shoulders, with an impatient sigh.
+
+"I hate dinner-parties," she said; "but, of course, if papa accepts Mr.
+Marchmont's invitation, I cannot refuse to go. Papa must choose for
+himself."
+
+There had been some interchange of civilities between Marchmont Towers
+and Swampington Rectory during the six weeks which had passed since
+Mary's introduction to Olivia Arundel; and this dinner-party was the
+result of John's simple desire to do honour to his friend's kindred.
+
+"Oh, you must come, Livy," Mr. Arundel exclaimed. "The tennis-court is
+going on capitally. I want you to give us your opinion again. Shall I
+take my horse round to the stables? I am going to stop an hour or two,
+and ride back by moonlight."
+
+Edward Arundel took the bridle in his hand, and the cousins walked
+slowly round by the low garden-wall to a dismal and rather dilapidated
+stable-yard at the back of the Rectory, where Hubert Arundel kept a
+wall-eyed white horse, long-legged, shallow-chested, and large-headed,
+and a fearfully and wonderfully made phaeton, with high wheels and a
+mouldy leathern hood.
+
+Olivia walked by the young soldier's side with that air of hopeless
+indifference that had so grown upon her very lately. Her eyelids
+drooped with a look of sullen disdain; but the grey eyes glanced
+furtively now and again at her companion's handsome face. He was very
+handsome. The glitter of reddish gold in his hair, and the light in his
+fearless blue eyes; the careless grace peculiar to the kind of man we
+call "a swell;" the gay _insouciance_ of an easy, candid, generous
+nature,--all combined to make Edward Arundel singularly attractive.
+These spoiled children of nature demand our admiration, in very spite
+of ourselves. These beautiful, useless creatures call upon us to
+rejoice in their valueless beauty, like the flaunting poppies in the
+cornfield, and the gaudy wild-flowers in the grass.
+
+The darkness of Olivia's face deepened after each furtive glance she
+cast at her cousin. Could it be that this girl, to whom nature had
+given strength but denied grace, envied the superficial attractions of
+the young man at her side? She did envy him; she envied him that sunny
+temperament which was so unlike her own; she envied him that wondrous
+power of taking life lightly. Why should existence be so bright and
+careless to him; while to her it was a terrible fever-dream, a long
+sickness, a never-ceasing battle?
+
+"Is my uncle in the house?" Mr. Arundel asked, as he strolled from the
+stable into the garden with his cousin by his side.
+
+"No; he has been out since dinner," Olivia answered; "but I expect him
+back every minute. I came out into the garden,--the house seemed so hot
+and stifling to-night, and I have been sitting in close cottages all
+day."
+
+"Sitting in close cottages!" repeated Edward. "Ah, to be sure; visiting
+your rheumatic old pensioners, I suppose. How good you are, Olivia!"
+
+"Good!"
+
+She echoed the word in the very bitterness of a scorn that could not be
+repressed.
+
+"Yes; everybody says so. The Millwards were at Marchmont Towers the
+other day, and they were talking of you, and praising your goodness,
+and speaking of your schools, and your blanket-associations, and your
+invalid-societies, and your mutual-help clubs, and all your plans for
+the parish. Why, you must work as hard as a prime-minister, Livy, by
+their account; you, who are only a few years older than I."
+
+Only a few years! She started at the phrase, and bit her lip.
+
+"I was three-and-twenty last month," she said.
+
+"Ah, yes; to be sure. And I'm one-and-twenty. Then you're only two
+years older than I, Livy. But, then, you see, you're so clever, that
+you seem much older than you are. You'd make a fellow feel rather
+afraid of you, you know. Upon my word you do, Livy."
+
+Miss Arundel did not reply to this speech of her cousin's. She was
+walking by his side up and down a narrow gravelled pathway, bordered by
+a hazel-hedge; she had gathered one of the slender twigs, and was idly
+stripping away the fluffy buds.
+
+"What do you think, Livy?" cried Edward suddenly, bursting out laughing
+at the end of the question. "What do you think? It's my belief you've
+made a conquest."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"There you go; turning upon a fellow as if you could eat him. Yes,
+Livy; it's no use your looking savage. You've made a conquest; and of
+one of the best fellows in the world, too. John Marchmont's in love
+with you."
+
+Olivia Arundel's face flushed a vivid crimson to the roots of her black
+hair.
+
+"How dare you come here to insult me, Edward Arundel?" she cried
+passionately.
+
+"Insult you? Now, Livy dear, that's too bad, upon my word,"
+remonstrated the young man. "I come and tell you that as good a man as
+ever breathed is over head and ears in love with you, and that you may
+be mistress of one of the finest estates in Lincolnshire if you please,
+and you turn round upon me like no end of furies."
+
+"Because I hate to hear you talk nonsense," answered Olivia, her bosom
+still heaving with that first outburst of emotion, but her voice
+suppressed and cold. "Am I so beautiful, or so admired or beloved, that
+a man who has not seen me half a dozen times should fall in love with
+me? Do those who know me estimate me so much, or prize me so highly,
+that a stranger should think of me? You _do_ insult me, Edward Arundel,
+when you talk as you have talked to-night."
+
+She looked out towards the low yellow light in the sky with a black
+gloom upon her face, which no reflected glimmer of the sinking sun
+could illumine; a settled darkness, near akin to the utter blackness of
+despair.
+
+"But, good heavens, Olivia, what do you mean?" cried the young man. "I
+tell you something that I think a good joke, and you go and make a
+tragedy out of it. If I'd told Letitia that a rich widower had fallen
+in love with her, she'd think it the finest fun in the world."
+
+"I'm not your sister Letitia."
+
+"No; but I wish you'd half as good a temper as she has, Livy. However,
+never mind; I'll say no more. If poor old Marchmont has fallen in love
+with you, that's his look-out. Poor dear old boy, he's let out the
+secret of his weakness half a dozen ways within these last few days.
+It's Miss Arundel this, and Miss Arundel the other; so unselfish, so
+accomplished, so ladylike, so good! That's the way he goes on, poor
+simple old dear; without having the remotest notion that he's making a
+confounded fool of himself."
+
+Olivia tossed the rumpled hair from her forehead with an impatient
+gesture of her hand.
+
+"Why should this Mr. Marchmont think all this of me?" she said,
+"when--" she stopped abruptly.
+
+"When--what, Livy?"
+
+"When other people don't think it."
+
+"How do you know what other people think? You haven't asked them, I
+suppose?"
+
+The young soldier treated his cousin in very much the same
+free-and-easy manner which he displayed towards his sister Letitia. It
+would have been almost difficult for him to recognise any degree in his
+relationship to the two girls. He loved Letitia better than Olivia; but
+his affection for both was of exactly the same character.
+
+Hubert Arundel came into the garden, wearied out, like his daughter,
+while the two cousins were walking under the shadow of the neglected
+hazels. He declared his willingness to accept the invitation to
+Marchmont Towers, and promised to answer John's ceremonious note the
+next day.
+
+"Cookson, from Kemberling, will be there, I suppose," he said, alluding
+to a brother parson, "and the usual set? Well, I'll come, Ned, if you
+wish it. You'd like to go, Olivia?"
+
+"If you like, papa."
+
+There was a duty to be performed now--the duty of placid obedience to
+her father; and Miss Arundel's manner changed from angry impatience to
+grave respect. She owed no special duty, be it remembered, to her
+cousin. She had no line or rule by which to measure her conduct to him.
+
+She stood at the gate nearly an hour later, and watched the young man
+ride away in the dim moonlight. If every separate tramp of his horse's
+hoofs had struck upon her heart, it could scarcely have given her more
+pain than she felt as the sound of those slow footfalls died away in
+the distance.
+
+"O my God," she cried, "is this madness to undo all that I have done?
+Is this folly to be the climax of my dismal life? Am I to die for the
+love of a frivolous, fair-haired boy, who laughs in my face when he
+tells me that his friend has pleased to 'take a fancy to me'?"
+
+She walked away towards the house; then stopping, with a sudden shiver,
+she turned, and went back to the hazel-alley she had paced with Edward
+Arundel.
+
+"Oh, my narrow life!" she muttered between her set teeth; "my narrow
+life! It is that which has made me the slave of this madness. I love
+him because he is the brightest and fairest thing I have ever seen. I
+love him because he brings me all I have ever known of a more beautiful
+world than that I live in. Bah! why do I reason with myself?" she
+cried, with a sudden change of manner. "I love him because I am mad."
+
+She paced up and down the hazel-shaded pathway till the moonlight grew
+broad and full, and every ivy-grown gable of the Rectory stood sharply
+out against the vivid purple of the sky. She paced up and down, trying
+to trample the folly within her under her feet as she went; a fierce,
+passionate, impulsive woman, fighting against her mad love for a
+bright-faced boy.
+
+"Two years older--only two years!" she said; "but he spoke of the
+difference between us as if it had been half a century. And then I am
+so clever, that I seem older than I am; and he is afraid of me! Is it
+for this that I have sat night after night in my father's study, poring
+over the books that were too difficult for him? What have I made of
+myself in my pride of intellect? What reward have I won for my
+patience?"
+
+Olivia Arundel looked back at her long life of duty--a dull, dead
+level, unbroken by one of those monuments which mark the desert of the
+past; a desolate flat, unlovely as the marshes between the low Rectory
+wall and the shimmering grey sea.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+"MY LIFE IS COLD, AND DARK, AND DREARY."
+
+
+Mr. Richard Paulette, of that eminent legal firm, Paulette, Paulette,
+and Mathewson, coming to Marchmont Towers on business, was surprised to
+behold the quiet ease with which the sometime copying-clerk received
+the punctilious country gentry who came to sit at his board and do him
+honour.
+
+Of all the legal fairy-tales, of all the parchment-recorded romances,
+of all the poetry run into affidavits, in which the solicitor had ever
+been concerned, this story seemed the strangest. Not so very strange in
+itself, for such romances are not uncommon in the history of a lawyer's
+experience; but strange by reason of the tranquil manner in which John
+Marchmont accepted his new position, and did the honours of his house
+to his late employer.
+
+"Ah, Paulette," Edward Arundel said, clapping the solicitor on the
+back, "I don't suppose you believed me when I told you that my friend
+here was heir-presumptive to a handsome fortune."
+
+The dinner-party at the Towers was conducted with that stately grandeur
+peculiar to such solemnities. There was the usual round of country-talk
+and parish-talk; the hunting squires leading the former section of the
+discourse, the rectors and rectors' wives supporting the latter part of
+the conversation. You heard on one side that Martha Harris' husband had
+left off drinking, and attended church morning and evening; and on the
+other that the old grey fox that had been hunted nine seasons between
+Crackbin Bottom and Hollowcraft Gorse had perished ignobly in the
+poultry-yard of a recusant farmer. While your left ear became conscious
+of the fact that little Billy Smithers had fallen into a copper of
+scalding water, your right received the dismal tidings that all the
+young partridges had been drowned by the rains after St. Swithin, and
+that there were hardly any of this year's birds, sir, and it would be a
+very blue look-out for next season.
+
+Mary Marchmont had listened to gayer talk in Oakley Street than any
+that was to be heard that night in her father's drawing-rooms, except
+indeed when Edward Arundel left off flirting with some pretty girls in
+blue, and hovered near her side for a little while, quizzing the
+company. Heaven knows the young soldier's jokes were commonplace
+enough; but Mary admired him as the most brilliant and accomplished of
+wits.
+
+"How do you like my cousin, Polly?" he asked at last.
+
+"Your cousin, Miss Arundel?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"She is very handsome."
+
+"Yes, I suppose so," the young man answered carelessly. "Everybody says
+that Livy's handsome; but it's rather a cold style of beauty, isn't it?
+A little too much of the Pallas Athene about it for my taste. I like
+those girls in blue, with the crinkly auburn hair,--there's a touch of
+red in it in the light,--and the dimples. You've a dimple, Polly, when
+you smile."
+
+Miss Marchmont blushed as she received this information, and her brown
+eyes wandered away, looking very earnestly at the pretty girls in blue.
+She looked at them with a strange interest, eager to discover what it
+was that Edward admired.
+
+"But you haven't answered my question, Polly," said Mr. Arundel. "I am
+afraid you have been drinking too much wine, Miss Marchmont, and
+muddling that sober little head of yours with the fumes of your papa's
+tawny port. I asked you how you liked Olivia."
+
+Mary blushed again.
+
+"I don't know Miss Arundel well enough to like her--yet," she answered
+timidly.
+
+"But shall you like her when you've known her longer? Don't be
+jesuitical, Polly. Likings and dislikings are instantaneous and
+instinctive. I liked you before I'd eaten half a dozen mouthfuls of the
+roll you buttered for me at that breakfast in Oakley Street, Polly. You
+don't like my cousin Olivia, miss; I can see that very plainly. You're
+jealous of her."
+
+"Jealous of her!"
+
+The bright colour faded out of Mary Marchmont's face, and left her ashy
+pale.
+
+"Do _you_ like her, then?" she asked.
+
+But Mr. Arundel was not such a coxcomb as to catch at the secret so
+naively betrayed in that breathless question.
+
+"No, Polly," he said, laughing; "she's my cousin, you know, and I've
+known her all my life; and cousins are like sisters. One likes to tease
+and aggravate them, and all that; but one doesn't fall in love with
+them. But I think I could mention somebody who thinks a great deal of
+Olivia."
+
+"Who?"
+
+"Your papa."
+
+Mary looked at the young soldier in utter bewilderment.
+
+"Papa!" she echoed.
+
+"Yes, Polly. How would you like a stepmamma? How would you like your
+papa to marry again?"
+
+Mary Marchmont started to her feet, as if she would have gone to her
+father in the midst of all those spectators. John was standing near
+Olivia and her father, talking to them, and playing nervously with his
+slender watch-chain when he addressed the young lady.
+
+"My papa--marry again!" gasped Mary. "How dare you say such a thing,
+Mr. Arundel?"
+
+Her childish devotion to her father arose in all its force; a flood of
+passionate emotion that overwhelmed her sensitive nature. Marry again!
+marry a woman who would separate him from his only child! Could he ever
+dream for one brief moment of such a horrible cruelty?
+
+She looked at Olivia's sternly handsome face, and trembled. She could
+almost picture that very woman standing between her and her father, and
+putting her away from him. Her indignation quickly melted into grief.
+Indignation, however intense, was always short-lived in that gentle
+nature.
+
+"Oh, Mr Arundel!" she said, piteously appealing to the young man, "papa
+would never, never, never marry again,--would he?"
+
+"Not if it was to grieve you, Polly, I dare say," Edward answered
+soothingly.
+
+He had been dumbfounded by Mary's passionate sorrow. He had expected
+that she would have been rather pleased, than otherwise, at the idea of
+a young stepmother,--a companion in those vast lonely rooms, an
+instructress and a friend as she grew to womanhood.
+
+"I was only talking nonsense, Polly darling," he said. "You mustn't
+make yourself unhappy about any absurd fancies of mine. I think your
+papa admires my cousin Olivia: and I thought, perhaps, you'd be glad to
+have a stepmother."
+
+"Glad to have any one who'd take papa's love away from me?" Mary said
+plaintively. "Oh, Mr. Arundel, how could you think so?"
+
+In all their familiarity the little girl had never learned to call her
+father's friend by his Christian name, though he had often told her to
+do so. She trembled to pronounce that simple Saxon name, which was so
+beautiful and wonderful because it was his: but when she read a very
+stupid novel, in which the hero was a namesake of Mr. Arundel's, the
+vapid pages seemed to be phosphorescent with light wherever the name
+appeared upon them.
+
+I scarcely know why John Marchmont lingered by Miss Arundel's chair. He
+had heard her praises from every one. She was a paragon of goodness, an
+uncanonised saint, for ever sacrificing herself for the benefit of
+others. Perhaps he was thinking that such a woman as this would be the
+best friend he could win for his little girl. He turned from the county
+matrons, the tender, kindly, motherly creatures, who would have been
+ready to take little Mary to the loving shelter of their arms, and
+looked to Olivia Arundel--this cold, perfect benefactress of the
+poor--for help in his difficulty.
+
+"She, who is so good to all her father's parishioners, could not refuse
+to be kind to my poor Mary?" he thought.
+
+But how was he to win this woman's friendship for his darling? He asked
+himself this question even in the midst of the frivolous people about
+him, and with the buzz of their conversation in his ears. He was
+perpetually tormenting himself about his little girl's future, which
+seemed more dimly perplexing now than it had ever appeared in Oakley
+Street, when the Lincolnshire property was a far-away dream, perhaps
+never to be realised. He felt that his brief lease of life was running
+out; he felt as if he and Mary had been standing upon a narrow tract of
+yellow sand; very bright, very pleasant under the sunshine; but with
+the slow-coming tide rising like a wall about them, and creeping
+stealthily onward to overwhelm them.
+
+Mary might gather bright-coloured shells and wet seaweed in her
+childish ignorance; but he, who knew that the flood was coming, could
+but grow sick at heart with the dull horror of that hastening doom. If
+the black waters had been doomed to close over them both, the father
+might have been content to go down under the sullen waves, with his
+daughter clasped to his breast. But it was not to be so. He was to sink
+in that unknown stream while she was left upon the tempest-tossed
+surface, to be beaten hither and thither, feebly battling with the
+stormy billows.
+
+Could John Marchmont be a Christian, and yet feel this horrible dread
+of the death which must separate him from his daughter? I fear this
+frail, consumptive widower loved his child with an intensity of
+affection that is scarcely reconcilable with Christianity. Such great
+passions as these must be put away before the cross can be taken up,
+and the troublesome path followed. In all love and kindness towards his
+fellow-creatures, in all patient endurance of the pains and troubles
+that befel himself, it would have been difficult to find a more
+single-hearted follower of Gospel-teaching than John Marchmont; but in
+this affection for his motherless child he was a very Pagan. He set up
+an idol for himself, and bowed down before it. Doubtful and fearful of
+the future, he looked hopelessly forward. He _could_ not trust his
+orphan child into the hands of God; and drop away himself into the
+fathomless darkness, serene in the belief that she would be cared for
+and protected. No; he could not trust. He could be faithful for
+himself; simple and confiding as a child; but not for her. He saw the
+gloomy rocks louring black in the distance; the pitiless waves beating
+far away yonder, impatient to devour the frail boat that was so soon to
+be left alone upon the waters. In the thick darkness of the future he
+could see no ray of light, except one,--a new hope that had lately
+risen in his mind; the hope of winning some noble and perfect woman to
+be the future friend of his daughter.
+
+The days were past in which, in his simplicity, he had looked to Edward
+Arundel as the future shelter of his child. The generous boy had grown
+into a stylish young man, a soldier, whose duty lay far away from
+Marchmont Towers. No; it was to a good woman's guardianship the father
+must leave his child.
+
+Thus the very intensity of his love was the one motive which led John
+Marchmont to contemplate the step that Mary thought such a cruel and
+bitter wrong to her.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+It was not till long after the dinner-party at Marchmont Towers that
+these ideas resolved themselves into any positive form, and that John
+began to think that for his daughter's sake he might be led to
+contemplate a second marriage. Edward Arundel had spoken the truth when
+he told his cousin that John Marchmont had repeatedly mentioned her
+name; but the careless and impulsive young man had been utterly unable
+to fathom the feeling lurking in his friend's mind. It was not Olivia
+Arundel's handsome face which had won John's admiration; it was the
+constant reiteration of her praises upon every side which had led him
+to believe that this woman, of all others, was the one whom he would do
+well to win for his child's friend and guardian in the dark days that
+were to come.
+
+The knowledge that Olivia's intellect was of no common order, together
+with the somewhat imperious dignity of her manner, strengthened this
+belief in John Marchmont's mind. It was not a good woman only whom he
+must seek in the friend he needed for his child; it was a woman
+powerful enough to shield her in the lonely path she would have to
+tread; a woman strong enough to help her, perhaps, by-and-by to do
+battle with Paul Marchmont.
+
+So, in the blind paganism of his love, John refused to trust his child
+into the hands of Providence, and chose for himself a friend and
+guardian who should shelter his darling. He made his choice with so
+much deliberation, and after such long nights and days of earnest
+thought, that he may be forgiven if he believed he had chosen wisely.
+
+Thus it was that in the dark November days, while Edward and Mary
+played chess by the wide fireplace in the western drawing-room, or ball
+in the newly-erected tennis-court, John Marchmont sat in his study
+examining his papers, and calculating the amount of money at his own
+disposal, in serious contemplation of a second marriage.
+
+Did he love Olivia Arundel? No. He admired her and respected her, and
+he firmly believed her to be the most perfect of women. No impulse of
+affection had prompted the step he contemplated taking. He had loved
+his first wife truly and tenderly; but he had never suffered very
+acutely from any of those torturing emotions which form the several
+stages of the great tragedy called Love.
+
+But had he ever thought of the likelihood of his deliberate offer being
+rejected by the young lady who had been the object of such careful
+consideration? Yes; he had thought of this, and was prepared to abide
+the issue. He should, at least, have tried his uttermost to secure a
+friend for his darling.
+
+With such unloverlike feelings as these the owner of Marchmont Towers
+drove into Swampington one morning, deliberately bent upon offering
+Olivia Arundel his hand. He had consulted with his land-steward, and
+with Messrs. Paulette, and had ascertained how far he could endow his
+bride with the goods of this world. It was not much that he could give
+her, for the estate was strictly entailed; but there would be his own
+savings for the brief term of his life, and if he lived only a few
+years these savings might accumulate to a considerable amount, so
+limited were the expenses of the quiet Lincolnshire household; and
+there was a sum of money, something over nine thousand pounds, left him
+by Philip Marchmont, senior. He had something, then, to offer to the
+woman he sought to make his wife; and, above all, he had a supreme
+belief in Olivia Arundel's utter disinterestedness. He had seen her
+frequently since the dinner-party, and had always seen her the
+same,--grave, reserved, dignified; patiently employed in the strict
+performance of her duty.
+
+He found Miss Arundel sitting in her father's study, busily cutting out
+coarse garments for her poor. A newly-written sermon lay open on the
+table. Had Mr. Marchmont looked closely at the manuscript, he would
+have seen that the ink was wet, and that the writing was Olivia's. It
+was a relief to this strange woman to write sermons sometimes--fierce
+denunciatory protests against the inherent wickedness of the human
+heart. Can you imagine a woman with a wicked heart steadfastly trying
+to do good, and to be good? It is a dark and horrible picture; but it
+is the only true picture of the woman whom John Marchmont sought to win
+for his wife.
+
+The interview between Mary's father and Olivia Arundel was not a very
+sentimental one; but it was certainly the very reverse of commonplace.
+John was too simple-hearted to disguise the purpose of his wooing. He
+pleaded, not for a wife for himself, but a mother for his orphan child.
+He talked of Mary's helplessness in the future, not of his own love in
+the present. Carried away by the egotism of his one affection, he let
+his motives appear in all their nakedness. He spoke long and earnestly;
+he spoke until the blinding tears in his eyes made the face of her he
+looked at seem blotted and dim.
+
+Miss Arundel watched him as he pleaded; sternly, unflinchingly. But she
+uttered no word until he had finished; and then, rising suddenly, with
+a dusky flush upon her face, she began to pace up and down the narrow
+room. She had forgotten John Marchmont. In the strength and vigour of
+her intellect, this weak-minded widower, whose one passion was a
+pitiful love for his child, appeared to her so utterly insignificant,
+that for a few moments she had forgotten his presence in that room--his
+very existence, perhaps. She turned to him presently, and looked him
+full in the face.
+
+"You do not love me, Mr. Marchmont?" she said.
+
+"Pardon me," John stammered; "believe me, Miss Arundel, I respect, I
+esteem you so much, that--"
+
+"That you choose me as a fitting friend for your child. I understand. I
+am not the sort of woman to be loved. I have long comprehended that. My
+cousin Edward Arundel has often taken the trouble to tell me as much.
+And you wish me to be your wife in order that you may have a guardian
+for your child? It is very much the same thing as engaging a governess;
+only the engagement is to be more binding."
+
+"Miss Arundel," exclaimed John Marchmont, "forgive me! You
+misunderstand me; indeed you do. Had I thought that I could have
+offended you--"
+
+"I am not offended. You have spoken the truth where another man would
+have told a lie. I ought to be flattered by your confidence in me. It
+pleases me that people should think me good, and worthy of their
+trust."
+
+She broke into a sigh as she finished speaking.
+
+"And you will not reject my appeal?"
+
+"I scarcely know what to do," answered Olivia, pressing her hand to her
+forehead.
+
+She leaned against the angle of the deep casement window, looking out
+at the garden, desolate and neglected in the bleak winter weather. She
+was silent for some minutes. John Marchmont did not interrupt her; he
+was content to wait patiently until she should choose to speak.
+
+"Mr. Marchmont," she said at last, turning upon poor John with an
+abrupt vehemence that almost startled him, "I am three-and-twenty; and
+in the long, dull memory of the three-and-twenty years that have made
+my life, I cannot look back upon one joy--no, so help me Heaven, not
+one!" she cried passionately. "No prisoner in the Bastille, shut in a
+cell below the level of the Seine, and making companions of rats and
+spiders in his misery, ever led a life more hopelessly narrow, more
+pitifully circumscribed, than mine has been. These grass-grown streets
+have made the boundary of my existence. The flat fenny country round me
+is not flatter or more dismal than my life. You will say that I should
+take an interest in the duties which I do; and that they should be
+enough for me. Heaven knows I have tried to do so; but my life is hard.
+Do you think there has been nothing in all this to warp my nature? Do
+you think after hearing this, that I am the woman to be a second mother
+to your child?"
+
+She sat down as she finished speaking, and her hands dropped listlessly
+in her lap. The unquiet spirit raging in her breast had been stronger
+than herself, and had spoken. She had lifted the dull veil through
+which the outer world beheld her, and had showed John Marchmont her
+natural face.
+
+"I think you are a good woman, Miss Arundel," he said earnestly. "If I
+had thought otherwise, I should not have come here to-day. I want a
+good woman to be kind to my child; kind to her when I am dead and
+gone," he added, in a lower voice.
+
+Olivia Arundel sat silent and motionless, looking straight before her
+out into the black dulness of the garden. She was trying to think out
+the dark problem of her life.
+
+Strange as it may seem, there was a certain fascination for her in John
+Marchmont's offer. He offered her something, no matter what; it would
+be a change. She had compared herself to a prisoner in the Bastille;
+and I think she felt very much as such a prisoner might have felt upon
+his gaoler's offering to remove him to Vincennes. The new prison might
+be worse than the old one, perhaps; but it would be different. Life at
+Marchmont Towers might be more monotonous, more desolate, than at
+Swampington; but it would be a new monotony, another desolation. Have
+you never felt, when suffering the hideous throes of toothache, that it
+would be a relief to have the earache or the rheumatism; that variety
+even in torture would be agreeable?
+
+Then, again, Olivia Arundel, though unblest with many of the charms of
+womanhood, was not entirely without its weaknesses. To marry John
+Marchmont would be to avenge herself upon Edward Arundel. Alas! she
+forgot how impossible it is to inflict a dagger-thrust upon him who is
+guarded by the impenetrable armour of indifference. She saw herself the
+mistress of Marchmont Towers, waited upon by liveried servants,
+courted, not patronised by the country gentry; avenged upon the
+mercenary aunt who had slighted her, who had bade her go out and get
+her living as a nursery governess. She saw this; and all that was
+ignoble in her nature arose, and urged her to snatch the chance offered
+her--the one chance of lifting herself out of the horrible obscurity of
+her life. The ambition which might have made her an empress lowered its
+crest, and cried, "Take this; at least it is something." But, through
+all, the better voices which she had enlisted to do battle with the
+natural voice of her soul cried, "This is a temptation of the devil;
+put it away from thee."
+
+But this temptation came to her at the very moment when her life had
+become most intolerable; too intolerable to be borne, she thought. She
+knew now, fatally, certainly, that Edward Arundel did not love her;
+that the one only day-dream she had ever made for herself had been a
+snare and a delusion. The radiance of that foolish dream had been the
+single light of her life. That taken away from her, the darkness was
+blacker than the blackness of death; more horrible than the obscurity
+of the grave.
+
+In all the future she had not one hope: no, not one. She had loved
+Edward Arundel with all the strength of her soul; she had wasted a
+world of intellect and passion upon this bright-haired boy. This
+foolish, grovelling madness had been the blight of her life. But for
+this, she might have grown out of her natural self by force of her
+conscientious desire to do right; and might have become, indeed, a good
+and perfect woman. If her life had been a wider one, this wasted love
+would, perhaps, have shrunk into its proper insignificance; she would
+have loved, and suffered, and recovered; as so many of us recover from
+this common epidemic. But all the volcanic forces of an impetuous
+nature, concentrated into one narrow focus, wasted themselves upon this
+one feeling, until that which should have been a sentiment became a
+madness.
+
+To think that in some far-away future time she might cease to love
+Edward Arundel, and learn to love somebody else, would have seemed
+about as reasonable to Olivia as to hope that she could have new legs
+and arms in that distant period. She could cut away this fatal passion
+with a desperate stroke, it may be, just as she could cut off her arm;
+but to believe that a new love would grow in its place was quite as
+absurd as to believe in the growing of a new arm. Some cork monstrosity
+might replace the amputated limb; some sham and simulated affection
+might succeed the old love.
+
+Olivia Arundel thought of all these things, in about ten minutes by the
+little skeleton clock upon the mantel-piece, and while John Marchmont
+fidgeted rather nervously, with a pair of gloves in the crown of his
+hat, and waited for some definite answer to his appeal. Her mind came
+back at last, after all its passionate wanderings, to the rigid channel
+she had so laboriously worn for it,--the narrow groove of duty. Her
+first words testified this.
+
+"If I accept this responsibility, I will perform it faithfully," she
+said, rather to herself than to Mr. Marchmont.
+
+"I am sure you will, Miss Arundel," John answered eagerly; "I am sure
+you will. You mean to undertake it, then? you mean to consider my
+offer? May I speak to your father? may I tell him that I have spoken to
+you? may I say that you have given me a hope of your ultimate consent?"
+
+"Yes, yes," Olivia said, rather impatiently; "speak to my father; tell
+him anything you please. Let him decide for me; it is my duty to obey
+him."
+
+There was a terrible cowardice in this. Olivia Arundel shrank from
+marrying a man she did not love, prompted by no better desire than the
+mad wish to wrench herself away from her hated life. She wanted to
+fling the burden of responsibility in this matter away from her. Let
+another decide, let another urge her to do this wrong; and let the
+wrong be called a sacrifice.
+
+So for the first time she set to work deliberately to cheat her own
+conscience. For the first time she put a false mark upon the standard
+she had made for the measurement of her moral progress.
+
+She sank into a crouching attitude on a low stool by the fire-place, in
+utter prostration of body and mind, when John Marchmont had left her.
+She let her weary head fall heavily against the carved oaken shaft that
+supported the old-fashioned mantel-piece, heedless that her brow struck
+sharply against the corner of the wood-work.
+
+If she could have died then, with no more sinful secret than a woman's
+natural weakness hidden in her breast; if she could have died then,
+while yet the first step upon the dark pathway of her life was
+untrodden,--how happy for herself, how happy for others! How miserable
+a record of sin and suffering might have remained unwritten in the
+history of woman's life!
+
+ * * * * *
+
+She sat long in the same attitude. Once, and once only, two solitary
+tears gathered in her eyes, and rolled slowly down her pale cheeks.
+
+"Will you be sorry when I am married, Edward Arundel?" she murmured;
+"will you be sorry?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+"WHEN SHALL I CEASE TO BE ALL ALONE?"
+
+
+Hubert Arundel was not so much surprised as might have been anticipated
+at the proposal made him by his wealthy neighbour. Edward had prepared
+his uncle for the possibility of such a proposal by sundry jocose
+allusions and arch hints upon the subject of John Marchmont's
+admiration for Olivia. The frank and rather frivolous young man thought
+it was his cousin's handsome face that had captivated the master of
+Marchmont Towers, and was quite unable to fathom the hidden motive
+underlying all John's talk about Miss Arundel.
+
+The Rector of Swampington, being a simple-hearted and not very
+far-seeing man, thanked God heartily for the chance that had befallen
+his daughter. She would be well off and well cared for, then, by the
+mercy of Providence, in spite of his own shortcomings, which had left
+her with no better provision for the future than a pitiful Policy of
+Assurance upon her father's life. She would be well provided for
+henceforward, and would live in a handsome house; and all those noble
+qualities which had been dwarfed and crippled in a narrow sphere would
+now expand, and display themselves in unlooked-for grandeur.
+
+"People have called her a good girl," he thought; "but how could they
+ever know her goodness, unless they had seen, as I have, the
+deprivations she has borne so uncomplainingly?"
+
+John Marchmont, being newly instructed by his lawyer, was able to give
+Mr. Arundel a very clear statement of the provision he could make for
+his wife's future. He could settle upon her the nine thousand pounds
+left him by Philip Marchmont. He would allow her five hundred a year
+pin-money during his lifetime; he would leave her his savings at his
+death; and he would effect an insurance upon his life for her benefit.
+The amount of these savings would, of course, depend upon the length of
+John's life; but the money would accumulate very quickly, as his income
+was eleven thousand a year, and his expenditure was not likely to
+exceed three.
+
+The Swampington living was worth little more than three hundred and
+fifty pounds a year; and out of that sum Hubert Arundel and his
+daughter had done treble as much good for the numerous poor of the
+parish as ever had been achieved by any previous Rector or his family.
+Hubert and his daughter had patiently endured the most grinding
+poverty, the burden ever falling heavier on Olivia, who had the heroic
+faculty of endurance as regards all physical discomfort. Can it be
+wondered, then, that the Rector of Swampington thought the prospect
+offered to his child a very brilliant one? Can it be wondered that he
+urged his daughter to accept this altered lot?
+
+He did urge her, pleading John Marchmont's cause a great deal more
+warmly than the widower had himself pleaded.
+
+"My darling," he said, "my darling girl! if I can live to see you
+mistress of Marchmont Towers, I shall go to my grave contented and
+happy. Think, my dear, of the misery from which this marriage will save
+you. Oh, my dear girl, I can tell you now what I never dared tell you
+before; I can tell you of the long, sleepless nights I have passed
+thinking of you, and of the wicked wrongs I have done you. Not wilful
+wrongs, my love," the Rector added, with the tears gathering in his
+eyes; "for you know how dearly I have always loved you. But a father's
+responsibility towards his children is a very heavy burden. I have only
+looked at it in this light lately, my dear,--now that I've let the time
+slip by, and it is too late to redeem the past. I've suffered very
+much, Olivia; and all this has seemed to separate us, somehow. But
+that's past now, isn't it, my dear? and you'll marry this Mr.
+Marchmont. He appears to be a very good, conscientious man, and I think
+he'll make you happy."
+
+The father and daughter were sitting together after dinner in the dusky
+November twilight, the room only lighted by the fire, which was low and
+dim. Hubert Arundel could not see his daughter's face as he talked to
+her; he could only see the black outline of her figure sharply defined
+against the grey window behind her, as she sat opposite to him. He
+could see by her attitude that she was listening to him, with her head
+drooping and her hands lying idle in her lap.
+
+She was silent for some little time after he had finished speaking; so
+silent that he feared his words might have touched her too painfully,
+and that she was crying.
+
+Heaven help this simple-hearted father! She had scarcely heard three
+consecutive words that he had spoken, but had only gathered dimly from
+his speech that he wanted her to accept John Marchmont's offer.
+
+Every great passion is a supreme egotism. It is not the object which we
+hug so determinedly; it is not the object which coils itself about our
+weak hearts: it is our own madness we worship and cleave to, our own
+pitiable folly which we refuse to put away from us. What is Bill Sykes'
+broken nose or bull-dog visage to Nancy? The creature she loves and
+will not part from is not Bill, but her own love for Bill,--the one
+delusion of a barren life; the one grand selfishness of a feeble
+nature.
+
+Olivia Arundel's thoughts had wandered far away while her father had
+spoken so piteously to her. She had been thinking of her cousin Edward,
+and had been asking herself the same question over and over again.
+Would he be sorry? would he be sorry if she married John Marchmont?
+
+But she understood presently that her father was waiting for her to
+speak; and, rising from her chair, she went towards him, and laid her
+hand upon his shoulder.
+
+"I am afraid I have not done my duty to you, papa," she said.
+
+Latterly she had been for ever harping upon this one theme,--her duty!
+That word was the keynote of her life; and her existence had latterly
+seemed to her so inharmonious, that it was scarcely strange she should
+repeatedly strike that leading note in the scale.
+
+"My darling," cried Mr. Arundel, "you have been all that is good!"
+
+"No, no, papa; I have been cold, reserved, silent."
+
+"A little silent, my dear," the Rector answered meekly; "but you have
+not been happy. I have watched you, my love, and I know you have not
+been happy. But that is not strange. This place is so dull, and your
+life has been so fatiguing. How different that would all be at
+Marchmont Towers!"
+
+"You wish me to many Mr. Marchmont, then, papa?"
+
+"I do, indeed, my love. For your own sake, of course," the Rector added
+deprecatingly.
+
+"You really wish it?"
+
+"Very, very much, my dear."
+
+"Then I will marry him, papa."
+
+She took her hand from the Rector's shoulder, and walked away from him
+to the uncurtained window, against which she stood with her back to her
+father, looking out into the grey obscurity.
+
+I have said that Hubert Arundel was not a very clever or far-seeing
+person; but he vaguely felt that this was not exactly the way in which
+a brilliant offer of marriage should be accepted by a young lady who
+was entirely fancy-free, and he had an uncomfortable apprehension that
+there was something hidden under his daughter's quiet manner.
+
+"But, my dear Olivia," he said nervously, "you must not for a moment
+suppose that I would force you into this marriage, if it is in any way
+repugnant to yourself. You--you may have formed some prior
+attachment--or, there may be somebody who loves you, and has loved you
+longer than Mr. Marchmont, who--"
+
+His daughter turned upon him sharply as he rambled on.
+
+"Somebody who loves me!" she echoed. "What have you ever seen that
+should make you think any one loved me?"
+
+The harshness of her tone jarred upon Mr. Arundel, and made him still
+more nervous.
+
+"My love, I beg your pardon, I have seen nothing. I--"
+
+"Nobody loves me, or has ever loved me,--but you," resumed Olivia,
+taking no heed of her father's feeble interruption. "I am not the sort
+of woman to be loved; I feel and know that. I have an aquiline nose,
+and a clear skin, and dark eyes, and people call me handsome; but
+nobody loves me, or ever will, so long as I live."
+
+"But Mr. Marchmont, my dear,--surely he loves and admires you?"
+remonstrated the Rector.
+
+"Mr. Marchmont wants a governess and _chaperone_ for his daughter, and
+thinks me a suitable person to fill such a post; that is all the _love_
+Mr. Marchmont has for me. No, papa; there is no reason I should shrink
+from this marriage. There is no one who will be sorry for it; no one! I
+am asked to perform a duty towards this little girl, and I am prepared
+to perform it faithfully. That is my part of the bargain. Do I commit a
+sin in marrying John Marchmont in this spirit, papa?"
+
+She asked the question eagerly, almost breathlessly; as if her decision
+depended upon her father's answer.
+
+"A sin, my dear! How can you ask such a question?"
+
+"Very well, then; if I commit no sin in accepting this offer, I will
+accept it."
+
+It was thus Olivia paltered with her conscience, holding back half the
+truth. The question she should have asked was this, "Do I commit a sin
+in marrying one man, while my heart is racked by a mad passion for
+another?"
+
+Miss Arundel could not visit her poor upon the day after this interview
+with her father. Her monotonous round of duty seemed more than ever
+abhorrent to her. She wandered across the dreary marshes, down by the
+lonely seashore, in the grey November fog.
+
+She stood for a long time, shivering with the cold dampness of the
+atmosphere, but not even conscious that she was cold, looking at a
+dilapidated boat that lay upon the rugged beach. The waters before her
+and the land behind her were hidden by a dense veil of mist. It seemed
+as if she stood alone in the world,--utterly isolated, utterly
+forgotten.
+
+"O my God!" she murmured, "if this boat at my feet could drift me away
+to some desert island, I could never be more desolate than I am,
+amongst the people who do not love me."
+
+Dim lights in distant windows were gleaming across the flats when she
+returned to Swampington, to find her father sitting alone and
+dispirited at his frugal dinner. Miss Arundel took her place quietly at
+the bottom of the table, no trace of emotion upon her face.
+
+"I am sorry I stayed out so long, papa" she said; "I had no idea it was
+so late."
+
+"Never mind, my dear, I know you have always enough to occupy you. Mr.
+Marchmont called while you were out. He seemed very anxious to hear
+your decision, and was delighted when he found that it was favourable
+to himself."
+
+Olivia dropped her knife and fork, and rose from her chair suddenly,
+with a strange look, which was almost terror, in her face.
+
+"It is quite decided, then?" she said.
+
+"Yes, my love. But you are not sorry, are you?"
+
+"Sorry! No; I am glad."
+
+She sank back into her chair with a sigh of relief. She _was_ glad. The
+prospect of this strange marriage offered a relief from the horrible
+oppression of her life.
+
+"Henceforward to think of Edward Arundel will be a sin," she thought.
+"I have not won another man's love; but I shall be another man's wife."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+MARY'S STEPMOTHER.
+
+
+Perhaps there was never a quieter courtship than that which followed
+Olivia's acceptance of John Marchmont's offer. There had been no
+pretence of sentiment on either side; yet I doubt if John had been much
+more sentimental during his early love-making days, though he had very
+tenderly and truly loved his first wife. There were few sparks of the
+romantic or emotional fire in his placid nature. His love for his
+daughter, though it absorbed his whole being, was a silent and
+undemonstrative affection; a thoughtful and almost fearful devotion,
+which took the form of intense but hidden anxiety for his child's
+future, rather than any outward show of tenderness.
+
+Had his love been of a more impulsive and demonstrative character, he
+would scarcely have thought of taking such a step as that he now
+contemplated, without first ascertaining whether it would be agreeable
+to his daughter.
+
+But he never for a moment dreamt of consulting Mary's will upon this
+important matter. He looked with fearful glances towards the dim
+future, and saw his darling, a lonely figure upon a barren landscape,
+beset by enemies eager to devour her; and he snatched at this one
+chance of securing her a protectress, who would be bound to her by a
+legal as well as a moral tie; for John Marchmont meant to appoint his
+second wife the guardian of his child. He thought only of this; and he
+hurried on his suit at the Rectory, fearful lest death should come
+between him and his loveless bride, and thus deprive his darling of a
+second mother.
+
+This was the history of John Marchmont's marriage. It was not till a
+week before the day appointed for the wedding that he told his daughter
+what he was about to do. Edward Arundel knew the secret, but he had
+been warned not to reveal it to Mary.
+
+The father and daughter sat together late one evening in the first week
+of December, in the great western drawing-room. Edward had gone to a
+party at Swampington, and was to sleep at the Rectory; so Mary and her
+father were alone.
+
+It was nearly eleven o'clock; but Miss Marchmont had insisted upon
+sitting up until her father should retire to rest. She had always sat
+up in Oakley Street, she had remonstrated, though she was much younger
+then. She sat on a velvet-covered hassock at her father's feet, with
+her loose hair falling over his knee, as her head lay there in loving
+abandonment. She was not talking to him; for neither John nor Mary were
+great talkers; but she was with him--that was quite enough.
+
+Mr. Marchmont's thin fingers twined themselves listlessly in and out of
+the fair curls upon his knee. Mary was thinking of Edward and the party
+at Swampington. Would he enjoy himself very, very much? Would he be
+sorry that she was not there? It was a grown-up party, and she wasn't
+old enough for grown-up parties yet. Would the pretty girls in blue be
+there? and would he dance with them?
+
+Her father's face was clouded by a troubled expression, as he looked
+absently at the red embers in the low fireplace. He spoke presently,
+but his observation was a very commonplace one. The opening speeches of
+a tragedy are seldom remarkable for any ominous or solemn meaning. Two
+gentlemen meet each other in a street very near the footlights, and
+converse rather flippantly about the aspect of affairs in general;
+there is no hint of bloodshed and agony till we get deeper into the
+play.
+
+So Mr. Marchmont, bent upon making rather an important communication to
+his daughter, and for the first time feeling very fearful as to how she
+would take it, began thus:
+
+"You really ought to go to bed earlier, Polly dear; you've been looking
+very pale lately, and I know such hours as these must be bad for you."
+
+"Oh, no, papa dear," cried the young lady; "I'm always pale; that's
+natural to me. Sitting up late doesn't hurt me, papa. It never did in
+Oakley Street, you know."
+
+John Marchmont shook his head sadly.
+
+"I don't know that," he said. "My darling had to suffer many evils
+through her father's poverty. If you had some one who loved you, dear,
+a lady, you know,--for a man does not understand these sort of
+things,--your health would be looked after more carefully,
+and--and--your education--and--in short, you would be altogether
+happier; wouldn't you, Polly darling?"
+
+He asked the question in an almost piteously appealing tone. A terrible
+fear was beginning to take possession of him. His daughter might be
+grieved at this second marriage. The very step which he had taken for
+her happiness might cause her loving nature pain and sorrow. In the
+utter cowardice of his affection he trembled at the thought of causing
+his darling any distress in the present, even for her own
+welfare,--even for her future good; and he _knew_ that the step he was
+about to take would secure that. Mary started from her reclining
+position, and looked up into her father's face.
+
+"You're not going to engage a governess for me, papa?" she cried
+eagerly. "Oh, please don't. We are so much better as it is. A governess
+would keep me away from you, papa; I know she would. The Miss Llandels,
+at Impley Grange, have a governess; and they only come down to dessert
+for half an hour, or go out for a drive sometimes, so that they very
+seldom see their papa. Lucy told me so; and they said they'd give the
+world to be always with their papa, as I am with you. Oh, pray, pray,
+papa darling, don't let me have a governess."
+
+The tears were in her eyes as she pleaded to him. The sight of those
+tears made him terribly nervous.
+
+"My own dear Polly," he said, "I'm not going to engage a governess.
+I--; Polly, Polly dear, you must be reasonable. You mustn't grieve your
+poor father. You are old enough to understand these things now, dear.
+You know what the doctors have said. I may die, Polly, and leave you
+alone in the world."
+
+She clung closely to her father, and looked up, pale and trembling, as
+she answered him.
+
+"When you die, papa, I shall die too. I could never, never live without
+you."
+
+"Yes, yes, my darling, you would. You will live to lead a happy life,
+please God, and a safe one; but if I die, and leave you very young,
+very inexperienced, and innocent, as I may do, my dear, you must not be
+without a friend to watch over you, to advise, to protect you. I have
+thought of this long and earnestly, Polly; and I believe that what I am
+going to do is right."
+
+"What you are going to do!" Mary cried, repeating her father's words,
+and looking at him in sudden terror. "What do you mean, papa? What are
+you going to do? Nothing that will part us! O papa, papa, you will
+never do anything to part us!"
+
+"No, Polly darling," answered Mr. Marchmont. "Whatever I do, I do for
+your sake, and for that alone. I'm going to be married, my dear."
+
+Mary burst into a low wail, more pitiful than any ordinary weeping.
+
+"O papa, papa," she cried, "you never will, you never will!"
+
+The sound of that piteous voice for a few moments quite unmanned John
+Marchmont; but he armed himself with a desperate courage. He determined
+not to be influenced by this child to relinquish the purpose which he
+believed was to achieve her future welfare.
+
+"Mary, Mary dear," he said reproachfully, "this is very cruel of you.
+Do you think I haven't consulted your happiness before my own? Do you
+think I shall love you less because I take this step for your sake? You
+are very cruel to me, Mary."
+
+The little girl rose from her kneeling attitude, and stood before her
+father, with the tears streaming down her white cheeks, but with a
+certain air of resolution about her. She had been a child for a few
+moments; a child, with no power to look beyond the sudden pang of that
+new sorrow which had come to her. She was a woman now, able to rise
+superior to her sorrow in the strength of her womanhood.
+
+"I won't be cruel, papa," she said; "I was selfish and wicked to talk
+like that. If it will make you happy to have another wife, papa, I'll
+not be sorry. No, I won't be sorry, even if your new wife separates
+us--a little."
+
+"But, my darling," John remonstrated, "I don't mean that she should
+separate us at all. I wish you to have a second friend, Polly; some one
+who can understand you better than I do, who may love you perhaps
+almost as well." Mary Marchmont shook her head; she could not realise
+this possibility. "Do you understand me, my dear?" her father continued
+earnestly. "I want you to have some one who will be a mother to you;
+and I hope--I am sure that Olivia--"
+
+Mary interrupted him by a sudden exclamation, that was almost like a
+cry of pain.
+
+"Not Miss Arundel!" she said. "O papa, it is not Miss Arundel you're
+going to marry!"
+
+Her father bent his head in assent.
+
+"What is the matter with you, Mary?" he said, almost fretfully, as he
+saw the look of mingled grief and terror in his daughter's face. "You
+are really quite unreasonable to-night. If I am to marry at all, who
+should I choose for a wife? Who could be better than Olivia Arundel?
+Everybody knows how good she is. Everybody talks of her goodness."
+
+In these two sentences Mr. Marchmont made confession of a fact he had
+never himself considered. It was not his own impulse, it was no
+instinctive belief in her goodness, that had led him to choose Olivia
+Arundel for his wife. He had been influenced solely by the reiterated
+opinions of other people.
+
+"I know she is very good, papa," Mary cried; "but, oh, why, why do you
+marry her? Do you love her so very, very much?"
+
+"Love her!" exclaimed Mr. Marchmont naively; "no, Polly dear; you know
+I never loved any one but you."
+
+"Why do you marry her then?"
+
+"For your sake, Polly; for your sake."
+
+"But don't then, papa; oh, pray, pray don't. I don't want her. I don't
+like her. I could never be happy with her."
+
+"Mary! Mary!"
+
+"Yes, I know it's very wicked to say so, but it's true, papa; I never,
+never, never could be happy with her. I know she is good, but I don't
+like her. If I did anything wrong, I should never expect her to forgive
+me for it; I should never expect her to have mercy upon me. Don't marry
+her, papa; pray, pray don't marry her."
+
+"Mary," said Mr. Marchmont resolutely, "this is very wrong of you. I
+have given my word, my dear, and I cannot recall it. I believe that I
+am acting for the best. You must not be childish now, Mary. You have
+been my comfort ever since you were a baby; you mustn't make me unhappy
+now."
+
+Her father's appeal went straight to her heart. Yes, she had been his
+help and comfort since her earliest infancy, and she was not unused to
+self-sacrifice: why should she fail him now? She had read of martyrs,
+patient and holy creatures, to whom suffering was glory; she would be a
+martyr, if need were, for his sake. She would stand steadfast amid the
+blazing fagots, or walk unflinchingly across the white-hot ploughshare,
+for his sake, for his sake.
+
+"Papa, papa," she cried, flinging herself upon her father's neck, "I
+will not make you sorry. I will be good and obedient to Miss Arundel,
+if you wish it."
+
+Mr. Marchmont carried his little girl up to her comfortable bedchamber,
+close at hand to his own. She was very calm when she bade him good
+night, and she kissed him with a smile upon her face; but all through
+the long hours before the late winter morning Mary Marchmont lay awake,
+weeping silently and incessantly in her new sorrow; and all through the
+same weary hours the master of that noble Lincolnshire mansion slept a
+fitful and troubled slumber, rendered hideous by confused and horrible
+dreams, in which the black shadow that came between him and his child,
+and the cruel hand that thrust him for ever from his darling, were
+Olivia Arundel's.
+
+But the morning light brought relief to John Marchmont and his child.
+Mary arose with the determination to submit patiently to her father's
+choice, and to conceal from him all traces of her foolish and
+unreasoning sorrow. John awoke from troubled dreams to believe in the
+wisdom of the step he had taken, and to take comfort from the thought
+that in the far-away future his daughter would have reason to thank and
+bless him for the choice he had made.
+
+So the few days before the marriage passed away--miserably short days,
+that flitted by with terrible speed; and the last day of all was made
+still more dismal by the departure of Edward Arundel, who left
+Marchmont Towers to go to Dangerfield Park, whence he was most likely
+to start once more for India.
+
+Mary felt that her narrow world of love was indeed crumbling away from
+her. Edward was lost, and to-morrow her father would belong to another.
+Mr. Marchmont dined at the Rectory upon that last evening; for there
+were settlements to be signed, and other matters to be arranged; and
+Mary was alone--quite alone--weeping over her lost happiness.
+
+"This would never have happened," she thought, "if we hadn't come to
+Marchmont Towers. I wish papa had never had the fortune; we were so
+happy in Oakley Street,--so very happy. I wouldn't mind a bit being
+poor again, if I could be always with papa."
+
+Mr. Marchmont had not been able to make himself quite comfortable in
+his mind, after that unpleasant interview with his daughter in which he
+had broken to her the news of his approaching marriage. Argue with
+himself as he might upon the advisability of the step he was about to
+take, he could not argue away the fact that he had grieved the child he
+loved so intensely. He could not blot away from his memory the pitiful
+aspect of her terror-stricken face as she had turned it towards him
+when he uttered the name of Olivia Arundel.
+
+No; he had grieved and distressed her. The future might reconcile her
+to that grief, perhaps, as a bygone sorrow which she had been allowed
+to suffer for her own ultimate advantage. But the future was a long way
+off: and in the meantime there was Mary's altered face, calm and
+resigned, but bearing upon it a settled look of sorrow, very close at
+hand; and John Marchmont could not be otherwise than unhappy in the
+knowledge of his darling's grief.
+
+I do not believe that any man or woman is ever suffered to take a fatal
+step upon the roadway of life without receiving ample warning by the
+way. The stumbling-blocks are placed in the fatal path by a merciful
+hand; but we insist upon clambering over them, and surmounting them in
+our blind obstinacy, to reach that shadowy something beyond, which we
+have in our ignorance appointed to be our goal. A thousand ominous
+whispers in his own breast warned John Marchmont that the step he
+considered so wise was not a wise one: and yet, in spite of all these
+subtle warnings, in spite of the ever-present reproach of his
+daughter's altered face, this man, who was too weak to trust blindly in
+his God, went on persistently upon his way, trusting, with a thousand
+times more fatal blindness, in his own wisdom.
+
+He could not be content to confide his darling and her altered fortunes
+to the Providence which had watched over her in her poverty, and
+sheltered her from every harm. He could not trust his child to the
+mercy of God; but he cast her upon the love of Olivia Arundel.
+
+A new life began for Mary Marchmont after the quiet wedding at
+Swampington Church. The bride and bridegroom went upon a brief
+honeymoon excursion far away amongst snow-clad Scottish mountains and
+frozen streams, upon whose bloomless margins poor John shivered
+dismally. I fear that Mr. Marchmont, having been, by the hard pressure
+of poverty, compelled to lead a Cockney life for the better half of his
+existence, had but slight relish for the grand and sublime in nature. I
+do not think he looked at the ruined walls which had once sheltered
+Macbeth and his strong-minded partner with all the enthusiasm which
+might have been expected of him. He had but one idea about Macbeth, and
+he was rather glad to get out of the neighbourhood associated with the
+warlike Thane; for his memories of the past presented King Duncan's
+murderer as a very stern and uncompromising gentleman, who was utterly
+intolerant of banners held awry, or turned with the blank and ignoble
+side towards the audience, and who objected vehemently to a violent fit
+of coughing on the part of any one of his guests during the blank
+barmecide feast of pasteboard and Dutch metal with which he was wont to
+entertain them. No; John Marchmont had had quite enough of Macbeth, and
+rather wondered at the hot enthusiasm of other red-nosed tourists,
+apparently indifferent to the frosty weather.
+
+I fear that the master of Marchmont Towers would have preferred Oakley
+Street, Lambeth, to Princes Street, Edinburgh; for the nipping and
+eager airs of the Modern Athens nearly blew him across the gulf between
+the new town and the old. A visit to the Calton Hill produced an attack
+of that chronic cough which had so severely tormented the weak-kneed
+supernumerary in the draughty corridors of Drury Lane. Melrose and
+Abbotsford fatigued this poor feeble tourist; he tried to be interested
+in the stereotyped round of associations beloved by other travellers,
+but he had a weary craving for rest, which was stronger than any
+hero-worship; and he discovered, before long, that he had done a very
+foolish thing in coming to Scotland in December and January, without
+having consulted his physician as to the propriety of such a step.
+
+But above all personal inconvenience, above all personal suffering,
+there was one feeling ever present in his heart--a sick yearning for
+the little girl he had left behind him; a mournful longing to be back
+with his child. Already Mary's sad forebodings had been in some way
+realised; already his new wife had separated him, unintentionally of
+course, from his daughter. The aches and pains he endured in the bleak
+Scottish atmosphere reminded him only too forcibly of the warnings he
+had received from his physicians. He was seized with a panic, almost,
+when he remembered his own imprudence. What if he had needlessly
+curtailed the short span of his life? What if he were to die
+soon--before Olivia had learned to love her stepdaughter; before Mary
+had grown affectionately familiar with her new guardian? Again and
+again he appealed to his wife, imploring her to be tender to the orphan
+child, if he should be snatched away suddenly.
+
+"I know you will love her by-and-by, Olivia," he said; "as much as I
+do, perhaps; for you will discover how good she is, how patient and
+unselfish. But just at first, and before you know her very well, you
+will be kind to her, won't you, Olivia? She has been used to great
+indulgence; she has been spoiled, perhaps; but you'll remember all
+that, and be very kind to her?"
+
+"I will try and do my duty," Mrs. Marchmont answered. "I pray that I
+never may do less."
+
+There was no tender yearning in Olivia Marchmont's heart towards the
+motherless girl. She herself felt that such a sentiment was wanting,
+and comprehended that it should have been there. She would have loved
+her stepdaughter in those early days, if she could have done so; but
+_she could not_--she could not. All that was tender or womanly in her
+nature had been wasted upon her hopeless love for Edward Arundel. The
+utter wreck of that small freight of affection had left her nature
+warped and stunted, soured, disappointed, unwomanly.
+
+How was she to love this child, this hazel-haired, dove-eyed girl,
+before whom woman's life, with all its natural wealth of affection,
+stretched far away, a bright and fairy vista? How was _she_ to love
+her,--she, whose black future was unchequered by one ray of light; who
+stood, dissevered from the past, alone in the dismal, dreamless
+monotony of the present?
+
+"No" she thought; "beggars and princes can never love one another. When
+this girl and I are equals,--when she, like me, stands alone upon a
+barren rock, far out amid the waste of waters, with not one memory to
+hold her to the past, with not one hope to lure her onward to the
+future, with nothing but the black sky above and the black waters
+around,--_then_ we may grow fond of each other."
+
+But always more or less steadfast to the standard she had set up for
+herself, Olivia Marchmont intended to do her duty to her stepdaughter.
+She had not failed in other duties, though no glimmer of love had
+brightened them, no natural affection had made them pleasant. Why
+should she fail in this?
+
+If this belief in her own power should appear to be somewhat arrogant,
+let it be remembered that she had set herself hard tasks before now,
+and had performed them. Would the new furnace through which she was to
+pass be more terrible than the old fires? She had gone to God's altar
+with a man for whom she had no more love than she felt for the lowest
+or most insignificant of the miserable sinners in her father's flock.
+She had sworn to honour and obey him, meaning at least faithfully to
+perform that portion of her vow; and on the night before her loveless
+bridal she had grovelled, white, writhing, mad, and desperate, upon the
+ground, and had plucked out of her lacerated heart her hopeless love
+for another man.
+
+Yes; she had done this. Another woman might have spent that bridal eve
+in vain tears and lamentations, in feeble prayers, and such weak
+struggles as might have been evidenced by the destruction of a few
+letters, a tress of hair, some fragile foolish tokens of a wasted love.
+She would have burnt five out of six letters, perhaps, that helpless,
+ordinary sinner, and would have kept the sixth, to hoard away hidden
+among her matrimonial trousseau; she would have thrown away
+fifteen-sixteenths of that tress of hair, and would have kept the
+sixteenth portion,--one delicate curl of gold, slender as the thread by
+which her shattered hopes had hung,--to be wept over and kissed in the
+days that were to come. An ordinary woman would have played fast and
+loose with love and duty; and so would have been true to neither.
+
+But Olivia Arundel did none of these things. She battled with her
+weakness as St George battled with the fiery dragon. She plucked the
+rooted serpent from her heart, reckless as to how much of that
+desperate heart was to be wrenched away with its roots. A cowardly
+woman would have killed herself, perhaps, rather than endure this
+mortal agony. Olivia Arundel killed more than herself; she killed the
+passion that had become stronger than herself.
+
+"Alone she did it;" unaided by any human sympathy or compassion,
+unsupported by any human counsel, not upheld by her God; for the
+religion she had made for herself was a hard creed, and the many words
+of tender comfort which must have been familiar to her were
+unremembered in that long night of anguish.
+
+It was the Roman's stern endurance, rather than the meek faithfulness
+of the Christian, which upheld this unhappy girl under her torture. She
+did not do this thing because it pleased her to be obedient to her God.
+She did not do it because she believed in the mercy of Him who
+inflicted the suffering, and looked forward hopefully, even amid her
+passionate grief, to the day when she should better comprehend that
+which she now saw so darkly. No; she fought the terrible fight, and she
+came forth out of it a conqueror, by reason of her own indomitable
+power of suffering, by reason of her own extraordinary strength of
+will.
+
+But she did conquer. If her weapon was the classic sword and not the
+Christian cross, she was nevertheless a conqueror. When she stood
+before the altar and gave her hand to John Marchmont, Edward Arundel
+was dead to her. The fatal habit of looking at him as the one centre of
+her narrow life was cured. In all her Scottish wanderings, her thoughts
+never once went back to him; though a hundred chance words and
+associations tempted her, though a thousand memories assailed her,
+though some trick of his face in the faces of other people, though some
+tone of his voice in the voices of strangers, perpetually offered to
+entrap her. No; she was steadfast.
+
+Dutiful as a wife as she had been dutiful as a daughter, she bore with
+her husband when his feeble health made him a wearisome companion. She
+waited upon him when pain made him fretful, and her duties became
+little less arduous than those of a hospital nurse. When, at the
+bidding of the Scotch physician who had been called in at Edinburgh,
+John Marchmont turned homewards, travelling slowly and resting often on
+the way, his wife was more devoted to him than his experienced servant,
+more watchful than the best-trained sick-nurse. She recoiled from
+nothing, she neglected nothing; she gave him full measure of the honour
+and obedience which she had promised upon her wedding-day. And when she
+reached Marchmont Towers upon a dreary evening in January, she passed
+beneath the solemn portal of the western front, carrying in her heart
+the full determination to hold as steadfastly to the other half of her
+bargain, and to do her duty to her stepchild.
+
+Mary ran out of the western drawing-room to welcome her father and his
+wife. She had cast off her black dresses in honour of Mr. Marchmont's
+marriage, and she wore some soft, silken fabric, of a pale shimmering
+blue, which contrasted exquisitely with her soft, brown hair, and her
+fair, tender face. She uttered a cry of mingled alarm and sorrow when
+she saw her father, and perceived the change that had been made in his
+looks by the northern journey; but she checked herself at a warning
+glance from her stepmother, and bade that dear father welcome, clinging
+about him with an almost desperate fondness. She greeted Olivia gently
+and respectfully.
+
+"I will try to be very good, mamma," she said, as she took the passive
+hand of the lady who had come to rule at Marchmont Towers.
+
+"I believe you will, my dear," Olivia answered, kindly.
+
+She had been startled a little as Mary addressed her by that endearing
+corruption of the holy word mother. The child had been so long
+motherless, that she felt little of that acute anguish which some
+orphans suffer when they have to look up in a strange face and say
+"mamma." She had taught herself the lesson of resignation, and she was
+prepared to accept this stranger as her new mother, and to look up to
+her and obey her henceforward. No thought of her own future position,
+as sole owner of that great house and all appertaining to it, ever
+crossed Mary Marchmont's mind, womanly as that mind had become in the
+sharp experiences of poverty. If her father had told her that he had
+cut off the entail, and settled Marchmont Towers upon his new wife, I
+think she would have submitted meekly to his will, and would have seen
+no injustice in the act. She loved him blindly and confidingly. Indeed,
+she could only love after one fashion. The organ of veneration must
+have been abnormally developed in Mary Marchmont's head. To believe
+that any one she loved was otherwise than perfect, would have been, in
+her creed, an infidelity against love. Had any one told her that Edward
+Arundel was not eminently qualified for the post of General-in-Chief of
+the Army of the Indus; or that her father could by any possible chance
+be guilty of a fault or folly: she would have recoiled in horror from
+the treasonous slanderer.
+
+A dangerous quality, perhaps, this quality of guilelessness which
+thinketh no evil, which cannot be induced to see the evil under its
+very nose. But surely, of all the beautiful and pure things upon this
+earth, such blind confidence is the purest and most beautiful. I knew a
+lady, dead and gone,--alas for this world, which could ill afford to
+lose so good a Christian!--who carried this trustfulness of spirit,
+this utter incapacity to believe in wrong, through all the strife and
+turmoil of a troubled life, unsullied and unlessened, to her grave. She
+was cheated and imposed upon, robbed and lied to, by people who loved
+her, perhaps, while they wronged her,--for to know her was to love her.
+She was robbed systematically by a confidential servant for years, and
+for years refused to believe those who told her of his delinquencies.
+She _could_ not believe that people were wicked. To the day of her
+death she had faith in the scoundrels and scamps who had profited by
+her sweet compassion and untiring benevolence; and indignantly defended
+them against those who dared to say that they were anything more than
+"unfortunate." To go to her was to go to a never-failing fountain of
+love and tenderness. To know her goodness was to understand the
+goodness of God; for her love approached the Infinite, and might have
+taught a sceptic the possibility of Divinity. Three-score years and ten
+of worldly experience left her an accomplished lady, a delightful
+companion; but in guilelessness a child.
+
+So Mary Marchmont, trusting implicitly in those she loved, submitted to
+her father's will, and prepared to obey her stepmother. The new life at
+the Towers began very peacefully; a perfect harmony reigned in the
+quiet household. Olivia took the reins of management with so little
+parade, that the old housekeeper, who had long been paramount in the
+Lincolnshire mansion, found herself superseded before she knew where
+she was. It was Olivia's nature to govern. Her strength of will
+asserted itself almost unconsciously. She took possession of Mary
+Marchmont as she had taken possession of her school-children at
+Swampington, making her own laws for the government of their narrow
+intellects. She planned a routine of study that was actually terrible
+to the little girl, whose education had hitherto been conducted in a
+somewhat slip-slop manner by a weakly-indulgent father. She came
+between Mary and her one amusement,--the reading of novels. The
+half-bound romances were snatched ruthlessly from this young devourer
+of light literature, and sent back to the shabby circulating library at
+Swampington. Even the gloomy old oak book-cases in the library at the
+Towers, and the Abbotsford edition of the Waverley Novels, were
+forbidden to poor Mary; for, though Sir Walter Scott's morality is
+irreproachable, it will not do for a young lady to be weeping over Lucy
+Ashton or Amy Robsart when she should be consulting her terrestrial
+globe, and informing herself as to the latitude and longitude of the
+Fiji Islands.
+
+So a round of dry and dreary lessons began for poor Miss Marchmont, and
+her brain grew almost dazed under that continuous and pelting shower of
+hard facts which many worthy people consider the one sovereign method
+of education. I have said that her mind was far in advance of her
+years; Olivia perceived this, and set her tasks in advance of her mind:
+in order that the perfection attained by a sort of steeple-chase of
+instruction might not be lost to her. If Mary learned difficult lessons
+with surprising rapidity, Mrs. Marchmont plied her with even yet more
+difficult lessons, thus keeping the spur perpetually in the side of
+this heavily-weighted racer on the road to learning. But it must not be
+thought that Olivia wilfully tormented or oppressed her stepdaughter.
+It was not so. In all this, John Marchmont's second wife implicitly
+believed that she was doing her duty to the child committed to her
+care. She fully believed that this dreary routine of education was wise
+and right, and would be for Mary's ultimate advantage. If she caused
+Miss Marchmont to get up at abnormal hours on bleak wintry mornings,
+for the purpose of wrestling with a difficult variation by Hertz or
+Schubert, she herself rose also, and sat shivering by the piano,
+counting the time of the music which her stepdaughter played.
+
+Whatever pains and trouble she inflicted on Mary, she most
+unshrinkingly endured herself. She waded through the dismal slough of
+learning side by side with the younger sufferer: Roman emperors,
+medieval schisms, early British manufactures, Philippa of Hainault,
+Flemish woollen stuffs, Magna Charta, the sidereal heavens, Luther,
+Newton, Huss, Galileo, Calvin, Loyola, Sir Robert Walpole, Cardinal
+Wolsey, conchology, Arianism in the Early Church, trial by jury, Habeas
+Corpus, zoology, Mr. Pitt, the American war, Copernicus, Confucius,
+Mahomet, Harvey, Jenner, Lycurgus, and Catherine of Arragon; through a
+very diabolical dance of history, science, theology, philosophy, and
+instruction of all kinds, did this devoted priestess lead her hapless
+victim, struggling onward towards that distant altar at which Pallas
+Athene waited, pale and inscrutable, to receive a new disciple.
+
+But Olivia Marchmont did not mean to be unmerciful; she meant to be
+good to her stepdaughter. She did not love her; but, on the other hand,
+she did not dislike her. Her feelings were simply negative. Mary
+understood this, and the submissive obedience she rendered to her
+stepmother was untempered by affection. So for nearly two years these
+two people led a monotonous life, unbroken by any more important event
+than a dinner party at Marchmont Towers, or a brief visit to Harrowgate
+or Scarborough.
+
+This monotonous existence was not to go on for ever. The fatal day, so
+horribly feared by John Marchmont, was creeping closer and closer. The
+sorrow which had been shadowed in every childish dream, in every
+childish prayer, came at last; and Mary Marchmont was left an orphan.
+
+Poor John had never quite recovered the effects of his winter excursion
+to Scotland; neither his wife's devoted nursing, nor his physician's
+care, could avail for ever; and, late in the autumn of the second year
+of his marriage, he sank, slowly and peacefully enough as regards
+physical suffering, but not without bitter grief of mind.
+
+In vain Hubert Arundel talked to him; in vain did he himself pray for
+faith and comfort in this dark hour of trial. He _could_ not bear to
+leave his child alone in the world. In the foolishness of his love, he
+would have trusted in the strength of his own arm to shield her in the
+battle; yet he could not trust her hopefully to the arm of God. He
+prayed for her night and day during the last week of his illness; while
+she was praying passionately, almost madly, that he might be spared to
+her, or that she might die with him. Better for her, according to all
+mortal reasoning, if she had. Happier for her, a thousand times, if she
+could have died as she wished to die, clinging to her father's breast.
+
+The blow fell at last upon those two loving hearts. These were the
+awful shadows of death that shut his child's face from John Marchmont's
+fading sight. His feeble arms groped here and there for her in that dim
+and awful obscurity.
+
+Yes, this was death. The narrow tract of yellow sand had little by
+little grown narrower and narrower. The dark and cruel waters were
+closing in; the feeble boat went down into the darkness: and Mary stood
+alone, with her dead father's hand clasped in hers,--the last feeble
+link which bound her to the Past,--looking blankly forward to an
+unknown Future.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+THE DAY OF DESOLATION.
+
+
+Yes; the terrible day had come. Mary Marchmont roamed hither and
+thither in the big gaunt rooms, up and down the long dreary corridors,
+white and ghostlike in her mute anguish, while the undertaker's men
+were busy in her father's chamber, and while John's widow sat in the
+study below, writing business letters, and making all necessary
+arrangements for the funeral.
+
+In those early days no one attempted to comfort the orphan. There was
+something more terrible than the loudest grief in the awful quiet of
+the girl's anguish. The wan eyes, looking wearily out of a white
+haggard face, that seemed drawn and contracted as if by some hideous
+physical torture, were tearless. Except the one long wail of despair
+which had burst from her lips in the awful moment of her father's death
+agony, no cry of sorrow, no utterance of pain, had given relief to Mary
+Marchmont's suffering.
+
+She suffered, and was still. She shrank away from all human
+companionship; she seemed specially to avoid the society of her
+stepmother. She locked the door of her room upon all who would have
+intruded on her, and flung herself upon the bed, to lie there in a dull
+stupor for hour after hour. But when the twilight was grey in the
+desolate corridors, the wretched girl wandered out into the gallery on
+which her father's room opened, and hovered near that solemn
+death-chamber; fearful to go in, fearful to encounter the watchers of
+the dead, lest they should torture her by their hackneyed expressions
+of sympathy, lest they should agonise her by their commonplace talk of
+the lost.
+
+Once during that brief interval, while the coffin still held terrible
+tenancy of the death-chamber, the girl wandered in the dead of the
+night, when all but the hired watchers were asleep, to the broad
+landing of the oaken staircase, and into a deep recess formed by an
+embayed window that opened over the great stone porch which sheltered
+the principal entrance to Marchmont Towers.
+
+The window had been left open; for even in the bleak autumn weather the
+atmosphere of the great house seemed hot and oppressive to its living
+inmates, whose spirits were weighed down by a vague sense of the Awful
+Presence in that Lincolnshire mansion. Mary had wandered to this open
+window, scarcely knowing whither she went, after remaining for a long
+time on her knees by the threshold of her father's room, with her head
+resting against the oaken panel of the door,--not praying; why should
+she pray now, unless her prayers could have restored the dead? She had
+come out upon the wide staircase, and past the ghostly pictured faces,
+that looked grimly down upon her from the oaken wainscot against which
+they hung; she had wandered here in the dim grey light--there was light
+somewhere in the sky, but only a shadowy and uncertain glimmer of
+fading starlight or coming dawn--and she stood now with her head
+resting against one of the angles of the massive stonework, looking out
+of the open window.
+
+The morning which was already glimmering dimly in the eastern sky
+behind Marchmont Towers was to witness poor John's funeral. For nearly
+six days Mary Marchmont had avoided all human companionship: for nearly
+six days she had shunned all human sympathy and comfort. During all
+that time she had never eaten, except when forced to do so by her
+stepmother; who had visited her from time to time, and had insisted
+upon sitting by her bedside while she took the food that had been
+brought to her. Heaven knows how often the girl had slept during those
+six dreary days; but her feverish slumbers had brought her very little
+rest or refreshment. They had brought her nothing but cruel dreams, in
+which her father was still alive; in which she felt his thin arms
+clasped round her neck, his faint and fitful breath warm upon her
+cheek.
+
+A great clock in the stables struck five while Mary Marchmont stood
+looking out of the Tudor window. The broad grey flat before the house
+stretched far away, melting into the shadowy horizon. The pale stars
+grew paler as Mary looked at them; the black-water pools began to
+glimmer faintly under the widening patch of light in the eastern sky.
+The girl's senses were bewildered by her suffering, and her head was
+light and dizzy.
+
+Her father's death had made so sudden and terrible a break in her
+existence, that she could scarcely believe the world had not come to an
+end, with all the joys and sorrows of its inhabitants. Would there be
+anything more after to-morrow? she thought; would the blank days and
+nights go monotonously on when the story that had given them a meaning
+and a purpose had come to its dismal end? Surely not; surely, after
+those gaunt iron gates, far away across the swampy waste that was
+called a park, had closed upon her father's funeral train, the world
+would come to an end, and there would be no more time or space. I think
+she really believed this in the semi-delirium into which she had fallen
+within the last hour. She believed that all would be over; and that she
+and her despair would melt away into the emptiness that was to engulf
+the universe after her father's funeral.
+
+Then suddenly the full reality of her grief flashed upon her with
+horrible force. She clasped her hands upon her forehead, and a low
+faint cry broke from her white lips.
+
+It was _not_ all over. Time and space would _not_ be annihilated. The
+weary, monotonous, workaday world would still go on upon its course.
+_Nothing_ would be changed. The great gaunt stone mansion would still
+stand, and the dull machinery of its interior would still go on: the
+same hours; the same customs; the same inflexible routine. John
+Marchmont would be carried out of the house that had owned him master,
+to lie in the dismal vault under Kemberling Church; and the world in
+which he had made so little stir would go on without him. The
+easy-chair in which he had been wont to sit would be wheeled away from
+its corner by the fireplace in the western drawing-room. The papers in
+his study would be sorted and put away, or taken possession of by
+strange hands. Cromwells and Napoleons die, and the earth reels for a
+moment, only to be "alive and bold" again in the next instant, to the
+astonishment of poets, and the calm satisfaction of philosophers; and
+ordinary people eat their breakfasts while the telegram lies beside
+them upon the table, and while the ink in which Mr. Reuter's message is
+recorded is still wet from the machine in Printing-house Square.
+
+Anguish and despair more terrible than any of the tortures she had felt
+yet took possession of Mary Marchmont's breast. For the first time she
+looked out at her own future. Until now she had thought only of her
+father's death. She had despaired because he was gone; but she had
+never contemplated the horror of her future life,--a life in which she
+was to exist without him. A sudden agony, that was near akin to
+madness, seized upon this girl, in whose sensitive nature affection had
+always had a morbid intensity. She shuddered with a wild dread at the
+prospect of that blank future; and as she looked out at the wide stone
+steps below the window from which she was leaning, for the first time
+in her young life the idea of self-destruction flashed across her mind.
+
+She uttered a cry, a shrill, almost unearthly cry, that was
+notwithstanding low and feeble, and clambered suddenly upon the broad
+stone sill of the Tudor casement. She wanted to fling herself down and
+dash her brains out upon the stone steps below; but in the utter
+prostration of her state she was too feeble to do this, and she fell
+backwards and dropped in a heap upon the polished oaken flooring of the
+recess, striking her forehead as she fell. She lay there unconscious
+until nearly seven o'clock, when one of the women-servants found her,
+and carried her off to her own room, where she suffered herself to be
+undressed and put to bed.
+
+Mary Marchmont did not speak until the good-hearted Lincolnshire
+housemaid had laid her in her bed, and was going away to tell Olivia of
+the state in which she had found the orphan girl.
+
+"Don't tell my stepmother anything about me, Susan," she said; "I think
+I was mad last night."
+
+This speech frightened the housemaid, and she went straight to the
+widow's room. Mrs. Marchmont, always an early riser, had been up and
+dressed for some time, and went at once to look at her stepdaughter.
+
+She found Mary very calm and reasonable. There was no trace of
+bewilderment or delirium now in her manner; and when the principal
+doctor of Swampington came a couple of hours afterwards to look at the
+young heiress, he declared that there was no cause for any alarm. The
+young lady was sensitive, morbidly sensitive, he said, and must be kept
+very quiet for a few days, and watched by some one whose presence would
+not annoy her. If there was any girl of her own age whom she had ever
+shown a predilection for, that girl would be the fittest companion for
+her just now. After a few days, it would be advisable that she should
+have change of air and change of scene. She must not be allowed to
+brood continuously on her father's death. The doctor repeated this last
+injunction more than once. It was most important that she should not
+give way too perpetually to her grief.
+
+So Mary Marchmont lay in her darkened room while her father's funeral
+train was moving slowly away from the western entrance. It happened
+that the orphan girl's apartments looked out into the quadrangle; so
+she heard none of the subdued sounds which attended the departure of
+that solemn procession. In her weakness she had grown submissive to the
+will of others. She thought this feebleness and exhaustion gave warning
+of approaching death. Her prayers would be granted, after all. This
+anguish and despair would be but of brief duration, and she would ere
+long be carried to the vault under Kemberling Church, to lie beside her
+father in the black stillness of that solemn place.
+
+Mrs. Marchmont strictly obeyed the doctor's injunctions. A girl of
+seventeen, the daughter of a small tenant farmer near the Towers, had
+been a special favourite with Mary, who was not apt to make friends
+amongst strangers. This girl, Hester Pollard, was sent for, and came
+willingly and gladly to watch her young patroness. She brought her
+needlework with her, and sat near the window busily employed, while
+Mary lay shrouded by the curtains of the bed. All active services
+necessary for the comfort of the invalid were performed by Olivia or
+her own special attendant--an old servant who had lived with the Rector
+ever since his daughter's birth, and had only left him to follow that
+daughter to Marchmont Towers after her marriage. So Hester Pollard had
+nothing to do but to keep very quiet, and patiently await the time when
+Mary might be disposed to talk to her. The farmer's daughter was a
+gentle, unobtrusive creature, very well fitted for the duty imposed
+upon her.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+PAUL.
+
+
+Olivia Marchmont sat in her late husband's study while John's funeral
+train was moving slowly along under the misty October sky. A long
+stream of carriages followed the stately hearse, with its four black
+horses, and its voluminous draperies of rich velvet, and nodding plumes
+that were damp and heavy with the autumn atmosphere. The unassuming
+master of Marchmont Towers had won for himself a quiet popularity
+amongst the simple country gentry, and the best families in
+Lincolnshire had sent their chiefs to do honour to his burial, or at
+the least their empty carriages to represent them at that mournful
+ceremonial. Olivia sat in her dead husband's favourite chamber. Her
+head lay back upon the cushion of the roomy morocco-covered arm-chair
+in which he had so often sat. She had been working hard that morning,
+and indeed every morning since John Marchmont's death, sorting and
+arranging papers, with the aid of Richard Paulette, the Lincoln's Inn
+solicitor, and James Gormby, the land-steward. She knew that she had
+been left sole guardian of her stepdaughter, and executrix to her
+husband's will; and she had lost no time in making herself acquainted
+with the business details of the estate, and the full nature of the
+responsibilities intrusted to her.
+
+She was resting now. She had done all that could be done until after
+the reading of the will. She had attended to her stepdaughter. She had
+stood in one of the windows of the western drawing-room, watching the
+departure of the funeral _cortege_; and now she abandoned herself for a
+brief space to that idleness which was so unusual to her.
+
+A fire burned in the low grate at her feet, and a rough cur--half
+shepherd's dog, half Scotch deer-hound, who had been fond of John, but
+was not fond of Olivia--lay at the further extremity of the hearth-rug,
+watching her suspiciously.
+
+Mrs. Marchmont's personal appearance had not altered during the two
+years of her married life. Her face was thin and haggard; but it had
+been thin and haggard before her marriage. And yet no one could deny
+that the face was handsome, and the features beautifully chiselled. But
+the grey eyes were hard and cold, the line of the faultless eyebrows
+gave a stern expression to the countenance; the thin lips were rigid
+and compressed. The face wanted both light and colour. A sculptor
+copying it line by line would have produced a beautiful head. A painter
+must have lent his own glowing tints if he wished to represent Olivia
+Marchmont as a lovely woman.
+
+Her pale face looked paler, and her dead black hair blacker, against
+the blank whiteness of her widow's cap. Her mourning dress clung
+closely to her tall, slender figure. She was little more than
+twenty-five, but she looked a woman of thirty. It had been her
+misfortune to look older than she was from a very early period in her
+life.
+
+She had not loved her husband when she married him, nor had she ever
+felt for him that love which in most womanly natures grows out of
+custom and duty. It was not in her nature to love. Her passionate
+idolatry of her boyish cousin had been the one solitary affection that
+had ever held a place in her cold heart. All the fire of her nature had
+been concentrated in this one folly, this one passion, against which
+only heroic endurance had been able to prevail.
+
+Mrs. Marchmont felt no grief, therefore, at her husband's loss. She had
+felt the shock of his death, and the painful oppression of his dead
+presence in the house. She had faithfully nursed him through many
+illnesses; she had patiently tended him until the very last; she had
+done her duty. And now, for the first time, she had leisure to
+contemplate the past, and look forward to the future.
+
+So far this woman had fulfilled the task which she had taken upon
+herself; she had been true and loyal to the vow she had made before
+God's altar, in the church of Swampington. And now she was free. No,
+not quite free; for she had a heavy burden yet upon her hands; the
+solemn charge of her stepdaughter during the girl's minority. But as
+regarded marriage-vows and marriage-ties she was free.
+
+She was free to love Edward Arundel again.
+
+The thought came upon her with a rush and an impetus, wild and strong
+as the sudden uprising of a whirlwind, or the loosing of a
+mountain-torrent that had long been bound. She was a wife no longer. It
+was no longer a sin to think of the bright-haired soldier, fighting far
+away. She was free. When Edward returned to England by-and-by, he would
+find her free once more; a young widow,--young, handsome, and rich
+enough to be no bad prize for a younger son. He would come back and
+find her thus; and then--and then--!
+
+She flung one of her clenched hands up into the air, and struck it on
+her forehead in a sudden paroxysm of rage. What then? Would he love her
+any better then than he had loved her two years ago? No; he would treat
+her with the same cruel indifference, the same commonplace cousinly
+friendliness, with which he had mocked and tortured her before. Oh,
+shame! Oh, misery! Was there no pride in women, that there could be one
+among them fallen so low as her; ready to grovel at the feet of a
+fair-haired boy, and to cry aloud, "Love me, love me! or be pitiful,
+and strike me dead!"
+
+Better that John Marchmont should have lived for ever, better that
+Edward Arundel should die far away upon some Eastern battle-field,
+before some Affghan fortress, than that he should return to inflict
+upon her the same tortures she had writhed under two years before.
+
+"God grant that he may never come back!" she thought. "God grant that
+he may marry out yonder, and live and die there! God keep him from me
+for ever and for ever in this weary world!"
+
+And yet in the next moment, with the inconsistency which is the chief
+attribute of that madness we call love, her thoughts wandered away
+dreamily into visions of the future; and she pictured Edward Arundel
+back again at Swampington, at Marchmont Towers. Her soul burst its
+bonds and expanded, and drank in the sunlight of gladness: and she
+dared to think that it _might_ be so--there _might_ be happiness yet
+for her. He had been a boy when he went back to India--careless,
+indifferent. He would return a man,--graver, wiser, altogether changed:
+changed so much as to love her perhaps.
+
+She knew that, at least, no rival had shut her cousin's heart against
+her, when she and he had been together two years before. He had been
+indifferent to her; but he had been indifferent to others also. There
+was comfort in that recollection. She had questioned him very sharply
+as to his life in India and at Dangerfield, and she had discovered no
+trace of any tender memory of the past, no hint of a cherished dream of
+the future. His heart had been empty: a boyish, unawakened heart: a
+temple in which the niches were untenanted, the shrine unhallowed by
+the presence of a goddess.
+
+Olivia Marchmont thought of these things. For a few moments, if only
+for a few moments, she abandoned herself to such thoughts as these. She
+let herself go. She released the stern hold which it was her habit to
+keep upon her own mind; and in those bright moments of delicious
+abandonment the glorious sunshine streamed in upon her narrow life, and
+visions of a possible future expanded before her like a fairy panorama,
+stretching away into realms of vague light and splendour. It was
+_possible_; it was at least possible.
+
+But, again, in the next moment the magical panorama collapsed and
+shrivelled away, like a burning scroll; the fairy picture, whose
+gorgeous colouring she had looked upon with dazzled eyes, almost
+blinded by its overpowering glory, shrank into a handful of black
+ashes, and was gone. The woman's strong nature reasserted itself; the
+iron will rose up, ready to do battle with the foolish heart.
+
+"I _will_ not be fooled a second time," she cried. "Did I suffer so
+little when I blotted that image out of my heart? Did the destruction
+of my cruel Juggernaut cost me so small an agony that I must needs be
+ready to elevate the false god again, and crush out my heart once more
+under the brazen wheels of his chariot? _He will never love me!_"
+
+She writhed; this self-sustained and resolute woman writhed in her
+anguish as she uttered those five words, "He will never love me!" She
+knew that they were true; that of all the changes that Time could bring
+to pass, it would never bring such a change as that. There was not one
+element of sympathy between herself and the young soldier; they had not
+one thought in common. Nay, more; there was an absolute antagonism
+between them, which, in spite of her love, Olivia fully recognised.
+Over the gulf that separated them no coincidence of thought or fancy,
+no sympathetic emotion, ever stretched its electric chain to draw them
+together in mysterious union. They stood aloof, divided by the width of
+an intellectual universe. The woman knew this, and hated herself for
+her folly, scorning alike her love and its object; but her love was not
+the less because of her scorn. It was a madness, an isolated madness,
+which stood alone in her soul, and fought for mastery over her better
+aspirations, her wiser thoughts. We are all familiar with strange
+stories of wise and great minds which have been ridden by some
+hobgoblin fancy, some one horrible monomania; a bleeding head upon a
+dish, a grinning skeleton playing hide-and-seek in the folds of the
+bed-curtains; some devilry or other before which the master-spirit
+shrank and dwindled until the body withered and the victim died.
+
+Had Olivia Marchmont lived a couple of centuries before, she would have
+gone straight to the nearest old crone, and would have boldly accused
+the wretched woman of being the author of her misery.
+
+"You harbour a black cat and other noisome vermin, and you prowl about
+muttering to yourself o' nights" she might have said. "You have been
+seen to gather herbs, and you make strange and uncanny signs with your
+palsied old fingers. The black cat is the devil, your colleague; and
+the rats under your tumble-down roof are his imps, your associates. It
+is _you_ who have instilled this horrible madness into my soul; for it
+_could_ not come of itself."
+
+And Olivia Marchmont, being resolute and strong-minded, would not have
+rested until her tormentor had paid the penalty of her foul work at a
+stake in the nearest market-place.
+
+And indeed some of our madnesses are so mad, some of our follies are so
+foolish, that we might almost be forgiven if we believed that there was
+a company of horrible crones meeting somewhere on an invisible Brocken,
+and making incantations for our destruction. Take up a newspaper and
+read its hideous revelations of crime and folly; and it will be
+scarcely strange if you involuntarily wonder whether witchcraft is a
+dark fable of the middle ages, or a dreadful truth of the nineteenth
+century. Must not some of these miserable creatures whose stories we
+read be _possessed_; possessed by eager, relentless demons, who lash
+and goad them onward, until no black abyss of vice, no hideous gulf of
+crime, is black or hideous enough to content them?
+
+Olivia Marchmont might have been a good and great woman. She had all
+the elements of greatness. She had genius, resolution, an indomitable
+courage, an iron will, perseverance, self-denial, temperance, chastity.
+But against all these qualities was set a fatal and foolish love for a
+boy's handsome face and frank and genial manner. If Edward Arundel had
+never crossed her path, her unfettered soul might have taken the
+highest and grandest flight; but, chained down, bound, trammelled by
+her love for him, she grovelled on the earth like some maimed and
+wounded eagle, who sees his fellows afar off, high in the purple
+empyrean, and loathes himself for his impotence.
+
+"What do I love him for?" she thought. "Is it because he has blue eyes
+and chestnut hair, with wandering gleams of golden light in it? Is it
+because he has gentlemanly manners, and is easy and pleasant, genial
+and light-hearted? Is it because he has a dashing walk, and the air of
+a man of fashion? It must be for some of these attributes, surely; for
+I know nothing more in him. Of all the things he has ever said, I can
+remember nothing--and I remember his smallest words, Heaven help
+me!--that any sensible person could think worth repeating. He is brave,
+I dare say, and generous; but what of that? He is neither braver nor
+more generous than other men of his rank and position."
+
+She sat lost in such a reverie as this while her dead husband was being
+carried to the roomy vault set apart for the owners of Marchmont Towers
+and their kindred; she was absorbed in some such thoughts as these,
+when one of the grave, grey-headed old servants brought her a card upon
+a heavy salver emblazoned with the Marchmont arms.
+
+Olivia took the card almost mechanically. There are some thoughts which
+carry us a long way from the ordinary occupations of every-day life,
+and it is not always easy to return to the dull jog-trot routine. The
+widow passed her left hand across her brow before she looked at the
+name inscribed upon the card in her right.
+
+"Mr. Paul Marchmont."
+
+She started as she read the name. Paul Marchmont! She remembered what
+her husband had told her of this man. It was not much; for John's
+feelings on the subject of his cousin had been of so vague a nature
+that he had shrunk from expounding them to his stern, practical wife.
+He had told her, therefore, that he did not very much care for Paul,
+and that he wished no intimacy ever to arise between the artist and
+Mary; but he had said nothing more than this.
+
+"The gentleman is waiting to see me, I suppose?" Mrs. Marchmont said.
+
+"Yes, ma'am. The gentleman came to Kemberling by the 11.5 train from
+London, and has driven over here in one of Harris's flys."
+
+"Tell him I will come to him immediately. Is he in the drawing-room?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+The man bowed and left the room. Olivia rose from her chair and
+lingered by the fireplace with her foot on the fender, her elbow
+resting on the carved oak chimneypiece.
+
+"Paul Marchmont! He has come to the funeral, I suppose. And he expects
+to find himself mentioned in the will, I dare say. I think, from what
+my husband told me, he will be disappointed in that. Paul Marchmont! If
+Mary were to die unmarried, this man or his sisters would inherit
+Marchmont Towers."
+
+There was a looking-glass over the mantelpiece; a narrow, oblong glass,
+in an old-fashioned carved ebony frame, which was inclined forward.
+Olivia looked musingly in this glass, and smoothed the heavy bands of
+dead-black hair under her cap.
+
+"There are people who would call me handsome," she thought, as she
+looked with a moody frown at her image in the glass; "and yet I have
+seen Edward Arundel's eyes wander away from my face, even while I have
+been talking to him, to watch the swallows skimming by in the sun, or
+the ivy-leaves flapping against the wall."
+
+She turned from the glass with a sigh, and went out into a dusky
+corridor. The shutters of all the principal rooms and the windows upon
+the grand staircase were still closed; the wide hall was dark and
+gloomy, and drops of rain spattered every now and then upon the logs
+that smouldered on the wide old-fashioned hearth. The misty October
+morning had heralded a wet day.
+
+Paul Marchmont was sitting in a low easy-chair before a blazing fire in
+the western drawing-room, the red light full upon his face. It was a
+handsome face, or perhaps, to speak more exactly, it was one of those
+faces that are generally called "interesting." The features were very
+delicate and refined, the pale greyish-blue eyes were shaded by long
+brown lashes, and the small and rather feminine mouth was overshadowed
+by a slender auburn moustache, under which the rosy tint of the lips
+was very visible. But it was Paul Marchmont's hair which gave a
+peculiarity to a personal appearance that might otherwise have been in
+no way out of the common. This hair, fine, silky, and luxuriant, was
+_white_, although its owner could not have been more than thirty-seven
+years of age.
+
+The uninvited guest rose as Olivia Marchmont entered the room.
+
+"I have the honour of speaking to my cousin's widow?" he said, with a
+courteous smile.
+
+"Yes, I am Mrs. Marchmont."
+
+Olivia seated herself near the fire. The wet day was cold and
+cheerless. Mrs. Marchmont shivered as she extended her long thin hand
+to the blaze.
+
+"And you are doubtless surprised to see me here, Mrs. Marchmont?" the
+artist said, leaning upon the back of his chair in the easy attitude of
+a man who means to make himself at home. "But believe me, that although
+I never took advantage of a very friendly letter written to me by poor
+John----"
+
+Paul Marchmont paused for a moment, keeping sharp watch upon the
+widow's face; but no sorrowful expression, no evidence of emotion, was
+visible in that inflexible countenance.
+
+"Although, I repeat, I never availed myself of a sort of general
+invitation to come and shoot his partridges, or borrow money of him, or
+take advantage of any of those other little privileges generally
+claimed by a man's poor relations, it is not to be supposed, my dear
+Mrs. Marchmont, that I was altogether forgetful of either Marchmont
+Towers or its owner, my cousin. I did not come here, because I am a
+hard-working man, and the idleness of a country house would have been
+ruin to me. But I heard sometimes of my cousin from neighbours of his."
+
+"Neighbours!" repeated Olivia, in a tone of surprise.
+
+"Yes; people near enough to be called neighbours in the country. My
+sister lives at Stanfield. She is married to a surgeon who practises in
+that delightful town. You know Stanfield, of course?"
+
+"No, I have never been there. It is five-and-twenty miles from here."
+
+"Indeed! too far for a drive, then. Yes, my sister lives at Stanfield.
+John never knew much of her in his adversity; and therefore may be
+forgiven if he forgot her in his prosperity. But she did not forget
+him. We poor relations have excellent memories. The Stanfield people
+have so little to talk about, that it is scarcely any wonder if they
+are inquisitive about the affairs of the grand country gentry round
+about them. I heard of John through my sister; I heard of his marriage
+through her,"--he bowed to Olivia as he said this,--"and I wrote
+immediately to congratulate him upon that happy event,"--he bowed again
+here;--"and it was through Lavinia Weston, my sister, that I heard of
+poor John's death; one day before the announcement appeared in the
+columns of the 'Times.' I am sorry to find that I am too late for the
+funeral. I could have wished to have paid my cousin the last tribute of
+esteem that one man can pay another."
+
+"You would wish to hear the reading of the will?" Olivia said,
+interrogatively.
+
+Paul Marchmont shrugged his shoulders, with a low, careless laugh; not
+an indecorous laugh,--nothing that this man did or said ever appeared
+ill-advised or out of place. The people who disliked him were compelled
+to acknowledge that they disliked him unreasonably, and very much on
+the Doctor-Fell principle; for it was impossible to take objection to
+either his manners or his actions.
+
+"That important legal document can have very little interest for me, my
+dear Mrs. Marchmont," he said gaily. "John can have had nothing to
+leave me. I am too well acquainted with the terms of my grandfather's
+will to have any mercenary hopes in coming to Marchmont Towers."
+
+He stopped, and looked at Olivia's impassible face.
+
+"What on earth could have induced this woman to marry my cousin?" he
+thought. "John could have had very little to leave his widow."
+
+He played with the ornaments at his watch-chain, looking reflectively
+at the fire for some moments.
+
+"Miss Marchmont,--my cousin, Mary Marchmont, I should say,--bears her
+loss pretty well, I hope?"
+
+Olivia shrugged her shoulders.
+
+"I am sorry to say that my stepdaughter displays very little Christian
+resignation," she said.
+
+And then a spirit within her arose and whispered, with a mocking voice,
+"What resignation do _you_ show beneath _your_ affliction,--you, who
+should be so good a Christian? How have _you_ learned to school your
+rebellious heart?"
+
+"My cousin is very young," Paul Marchmont said, presently.
+
+"She was fifteen last July."
+
+"Fifteen! Very young to be the owner of Marchmont Towers and an income
+of eleven thousand a year," returned the artist. He walked to one of
+the long windows, and drawing aside the edge of the blind, looked out
+upon the terrace and the wide flats before the mansion. The rain
+dripped and splashed upon the stone steps; the rain-drops hung upon the
+grim adornments of the carved balustrade, soaking into moss-grown
+escutcheons and half-obliterated coats-of-arms. The weird willows by
+the pools far away, and a group of poplars near the house, looked gaunt
+and black against the dismal grey sky.
+
+Paul Marchmont dropped the blind, and turned away from the gloomy
+landscape with a half-contemptuous gesture. "I don't know that I envy
+my cousin, after all," he said: "the place is as dreary as Tennyson's
+Moated Grange."
+
+There was the sound of wheels on the carriage-drive before the terrace,
+and presently a subdued murmur of hushed voices in the hall. Mr.
+Richard Paulette, and the two medical men who had attended John
+Marchmont, had returned to the Towers, for the reading of the will.
+Hubert Arundel had returned with them; but the other followers in the
+funeral train had departed to their several homes. The undertaker and
+his men had come back to the house by the side-entrance, and were
+making themselves very comfortable in the servants'-hall after the
+fulfilment of their mournful duties.
+
+The will was to be read in the dining-room; and Mr. Paulette and the
+clerk who had accompanied him to Marchmont Towers were already seated
+at one end of the long carved-oak table, busy with their papers and
+pens and ink, assuming an importance the occasion did not require.
+Olivia went out into the hall to speak to her father.
+
+"You will find Mr. Marchmont's solicitor in the dining-room," she said
+to Paul, who was looking at some of the old pictures on the
+drawing-room walls.
+
+A large fire was blazing in the wide grate at the end of the
+dining-room. The blinds had been drawn up. There was no longer need
+that the house should be wrapped in darkness. The Awful Presence had
+departed; and such light as there was in the gloomy October sky was
+free to enter the rooms, which the death of one quiet, unobtrusive
+creature had made for a time desolate.
+
+There was no sound in the room but the low voice of the two doctors
+talking of their late patient in undertones near the fireplace, and the
+occasional fluttering of the papers under the lawyer's hand. The clerk,
+who sat respectfully a little way behind his master, and upon the very
+edge of his ponderous morocco-covered chair, had been wont to give John
+Marchmont his orders, and to lecture him for being tardy with his work
+a few years before, in the Lincoln's Inn office. He was wondering now
+whether he should find himself remembered in the dead man's will, to
+the extent of a mourning ring or an old-fashioned silver snuff-box.
+
+Richard Paulette looked up as Olivia and her father entered the room,
+followed at a little distance by Paul Marchmont, who walked at a
+leisurely pace, looking at the carved doorways and the pictures against
+the wainscot, and appearing, as he had declared himself, very little
+concerned in the important business about to be transacted.
+
+"We shall want Miss Marchmont here, if you please," Mr. Paulette said,
+as he looked up from his papers.
+
+"Is it necessary that she should be present?" Olivia asked.
+
+"Very necessary."
+
+"But she is ill; she is in bed."
+
+"It is most important that she should be here when the will is read.
+Perhaps Mr. Bolton"--the lawyer looked towards one of the medical
+men--"will see. He will be able to tell us whether Miss Marchmont can
+safely come downstairs."
+
+Mr. Bolton, the Swampington surgeon who had attended Mary that morning,
+left the room with Olivia. The lawyer rose and warmed his hands at the
+blaze, talking to Hubert Arundel and the London physician as he did so.
+Paul Marchmont, who had not been introduced to any one, occupied
+himself entirely with the pictures for a little time; and then,
+strolling over to the fireplace, fell into conversation with the three
+gentlemen, contriving, adroitly enough, to let them know who he was.
+The lawyer looked at him with some interest,--a professional interest,
+no doubt; for Mr. Paulette had a copy of old Philip Marchmont's will in
+one of the japanned deed-boxes inscribed with poor John's name. He knew
+that this easy-going, pleasant-mannered, white-haired gentleman was the
+Paul Marchmont named in that document, and stood next in succession to
+Mary. Mary might die unmarried, and it was as well to be friendly and
+civil to a man who was at least a possible client.
+
+The four gentlemen stood upon the broad Turkey hearth-rug for some
+time, talking of the dead man, the wet weather, the cold autumn, the
+dearth of partridges, and other very safe topics of conversation.
+Olivia and the Swampington doctor were a long time absent; and Richard
+Paulette, who stood with his back to the fire, glanced every now and
+then towards the door.
+
+It opened at last, and Mary Marchmont came into the room, followed by
+her stepmother.
+
+Paul Marchmont turned at the sound of the opening of that ponderous
+oaken door, and for the first time saw his second cousin, the young
+mistress of Marchmont Towers. He started as he looked at her, though
+with a scarcely perceptible movement, and a change came over his face.
+The feminine pinky hue in his cheeks faded suddenly, and left them
+white. It had been a peculiarity of Paul Marchmont's, from his boyhood,
+always to turn pale with every acute emotion.
+
+What was the emotion which had now blanched his cheeks? Was he
+thinking, "Is _this_ fragile creature the mistress of Marchmont Towers?
+Is _this_ frail life all that stands between me and eleven thousand a
+year?"
+
+The light which shone out of that feeble earthly tabernacle did indeed
+seem a frail and fitful flame, likely to be extinguished by any rude
+breath from the coarse outer world. Mary Marchmont was deadly pale;
+black shadows encircled her wistful hazel eyes. Her new mourning-dress,
+with its heavy trimmings of lustreless crape, seemed to hang loose upon
+her slender figure; her soft brown hair, damp with the water with which
+her burning forehead had been bathed, fell in straight lank tresses
+about her shoulders. Her eyes were tearless, her mouth terribly
+compressed. The rigidity of her face betokened the struggle by which
+her sorrow was repressed. She sat in an easy-chair which Olivia
+indicated to her, and with her hands lying on the white handkerchief in
+her lap, and her swollen eyelids drooping over her eyes, waited for the
+reading of her father's will. It would be the last, the very last, she
+would ever hear of that dear father's words. She remembered this, and
+was ready to listen attentively; but she remembered nothing else. What
+was it to her that she was sole heiress of that great mansion, and of
+eleven thousand a year? She had never in her life thought of the
+Lincolnshire fortune with any reference to herself or her own
+pleasures; and she thought of it less than ever now.
+
+The will was dated February 4th, 1844, exactly two months after John's
+marriage. It had been made by the master of Marchmont Towers without
+the aid of a lawyer, and was only witnessed by John's housekeeper, and
+by Corson the old valet, a confidential servant who had attended upon
+Mr. Marchmont's predecessor.
+
+Richard Paulette began to read; and Mary, for the first time since she
+had taken her seat near the fire, lifted her eyes, and listened
+breathlessly, with faintly tremulous lips. Olivia sat near her
+stepdaughter; and Paul Marchmont stood in a careless attitude at one
+corner of the fireplace, with his shoulders resting against the massive
+oaken chimneypiece. The dead man's will ran thus:
+
+"I John Marchmont of Marchmont Towers declare this to be my last will
+and testament Being persuaded that my end is approaching I feel my dear
+little daughter Mary will be left unprotected by any natural guardian
+My young friend Edward Arundel I had hoped when in my poverty would
+have been a friend and adviser to her if not a protector but her tender
+years and his position in life must place this now out of the question
+and I may die before a fond hope which I have long cherished can be
+realised and which may now never be realised I now desire to make my
+will more particularly to provide as well as I am permitted for the
+guardianship and care of my dear little Mary during her minority Now I
+will and desire that my wife Olivia shall act as guardian adviser and
+mother to my dear little Mary and that she place herself under the
+charge and guardianship of my wife And as she will be an heiress of
+very considerable property I would wish her to be guided by the advice
+of my said wife in the management of her property and particularly in
+the choice of a husband As my dear little Mary will be amply provided
+for on my death I make no provision for her by this my will but I
+direct my executrix to present to her a diamond-ring which I wish her
+to wear in memory of her loving father so that she may always have me
+in her thoughts and particularly of these my wishes as to her future
+life until she shall be of age and capable of acting on her own
+judgment. I also request my executrix to present my young friend Edward
+Arundel also with a diamond-ring of the value of at least one hundred
+guineas as a slight tribute of the regard and esteem which I have ever
+entertained for him. . . . As to all the property as well real as
+personal over which I may at the time of my death have any control and
+capable of claiming or bequeathing I give devise and bequeath to my
+wife Olivia absolutely And I appoint my said wife sole executrix of
+this my will and guardian of my dear little Mary."
+
+There were a few very small legacies, including a mourning-ring to the
+expectant clerk; and this was all. Paul Marchmont had been quite right;
+nobody could be less interested than himself in this will.
+
+But he was apparently very much interested in John's widow and
+daughter. He tried to enter into conversation with Mary, but the girl's
+piteous manner seemed to implore him to leave her unmolested; and Mr.
+Bolton approached his patient almost immediately after the reading of
+the will, and in a manner took possession of her. Mary was very glad to
+leave the room once more, and to return to the dim chamber where Hester
+Pollard sat at needlework. Olivia left her stepdaughter to the care of
+this humble companion, and went back to the long dining-room, where the
+gentlemen still hung listlessly over the fire, not knowing very well
+what to do with themselves.
+
+Mrs. Marchmont could not do less than invite Paul to stay a few days at
+the Towers. She was virtually mistress of the house during Mary's
+minority, and on her devolved all the troubles, duties, and
+responsibilities attendant on such a position. Her father was going to
+stay with her till the end of the week; and he therefore would be able
+to entertain Mr. Marchmont. Paul unhesitatingly accepted the widow's
+hospitality. The old place was picturesque and interesting, he said;
+there were some genuine Holbeins in the hall and dining-room, and one
+good Lely in the drawing-room. He would give himself a couple of days'
+holiday, and go to Stanfield by an early train on Saturday.
+
+"I have not seen my sister for a long time," he said; "her life is dull
+enough and hard enough, Heaven knows, and she will be glad to see me
+upon my way back to London."
+
+Olivia bowed. She did not persuade Mr. Marchmont to extend his visit.
+The common courtesy she offered him was kept within the narrowest
+limits. She spent the best part of the time in the dead man's study
+during Paul's two-days' stay, and left the artist almost entirely to
+her father's companionship.
+
+But she was compelled to appear at dinner, and she took her accustomed
+place at the head of the table. Paul therefore had some opportunity of
+sounding the depths of the strangest nature he had ever tried to
+fathom. He talked to her very much, listening with unvarying attention
+to every word she uttered. He watched her--but with no obtrusive
+gaze--almost incessantly; and when he went away from Marchmont Towers,
+without having seen Mary since the reading of the will, it was of
+Olivia he thought; it was the recollection of Olivia which interested
+as much as it perplexed him.
+
+The few people waiting for the London train looked at the artist as he
+strolled up and down the quiet platform at Kemberling Station, with his
+head bent and his eyebrows slightly contracted. He had a certain easy,
+careless grace of dress and carriage, which harmonised well with his
+delicate face, his silken silvery hair, his carefully-trained auburn
+moustache, and rosy, womanish mouth. He was a romantic-looking man. He
+was the beau-ideal of the hero in a young lady's novel. He was a man
+whom schoolgirls would have called "a dear." But it had been better, I
+think, for any helpless wretch to be in the bull-dog hold of the
+sturdiest Bill Sykes ever loosed upon society by right of his
+ticket-of-leave, than in the power of Paul Marchmont, artist and
+teacher of drawing, of Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square.
+
+He was thinking of Olivia as he walked slowly up and down the bare
+platform, only separated by a rough wooden paling from the flat open
+fields on the outskirts of Kemberling.
+
+"The little girl is as feeble as a pale February butterfly." he
+thought; "a puff of frosty wind might wither her away. But that woman,
+that woman--how handsome she is, with her accurate profile and iron
+mouth; but what a raging fire there is hidden somewhere in her breast,
+and devouring her beauty by day and night! If I wanted to paint the
+sleeping scene in _Macbeth_, I'd ask her to sit for the Thane's wicked
+wife. Perhaps she has some bloody secret as deadly as the murder of a
+grey-headed Duncan upon her conscience, and leaves her bedchamber in
+the stillness of the night to walk up and down those long oaken
+corridors at the Towers, and wring her hands and wail aloud in her
+sleep. Why did she marry John Marchmont? His life gave her little more
+than a fine house to live in; his death leaves her with nothing but ten
+or twelve thousand pounds in the Three per Cents. What is her
+mystery--what is her secret, I wonder? for she must surely have one."
+
+Such thoughts as these filled his mind as the train carried him away
+from the lonely little station, and away from the neighbourhood of
+Marchmont Towers, within whose stony walls Mary lay in her quiet
+chamber, weeping for her dead father, and wishing--God knows in what
+utter singleness of heart!--that she had been buried in the vault by
+his side.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+OLIVIA'S DESPAIR.
+
+
+The life which Mary and her stepmother led at Marchmont Towers after
+poor John's death was one of those tranquil and monotonous existences
+that leave very little to be recorded, except the slow progress of the
+weeks and months, the gradual changes of the seasons. Mary bore her
+sorrows quietly, as it was her nature to bear all things. The doctor's
+advice was taken, and Olivia removed her stepdaughter to Scarborough
+soon after the funeral. But the change of scene was slow to effect any
+change in the state of dull despairing sorrow into which the girl had
+fallen. The sea-breezes brought no colour into her pale cheeks. She
+obeyed her stepmother's behests unmurmuringly, and wandered wearily by
+the dreary seashore in the dismal November weather, in search of health
+and strength. But wherever she went, she carried with her the awful
+burden of her grief; and in every changing cadence of the low winter
+winds, in every varying murmur of the moaning waves, she seemed to hear
+her dead father's funeral dirge.
+
+I think that, young as Mary Marchmont was, this mournful period was the
+grand crisis of her life. The past, with its one great affection, had
+been swept away from her, and as yet there was no friendly figure to
+fill the dismal blank of the future. Had any kindly matron, any gentle
+Christian creature been ready to stretch out her arms to the desolate
+orphan, Mary's heart would have melted, and she would have crept to the
+shelter of that womanly embrace, to nestle there for ever. But there
+was no one. Olivia Marchmont obeyed the letter of her husband's solemn
+appeal, as she had obeyed the letter of those Gospel sentences that had
+been familiar to her from her childhood, but was utterly unable to
+comprehend its spirit. She accepted the charge intrusted to her. She
+was unflinching in the performance of her duty; but no one glimmer of
+the holy light of motherly love and tenderness, the semi-divine
+compassion of womanhood, ever illumined the dark chambers of her heart.
+Every night she questioned herself upon her knees as to her rigid
+performance of the level round of duty she had allotted to herself;
+every night--scrupulous and relentless as the hardest judge who ever
+pronounced sentence upon a criminal--she took note of her own
+shortcomings, and acknowledged her deficiencies.
+
+But, unhappily, this self-devotion of Olivia's pressed no less heavily
+upon Mary than on the widow herself. The more rigidly Mrs. Marchmont
+performed the duties which she understood to be laid upon her by her
+dead husband's last will and testament, the harder became the orphan's
+life. The weary treadmill of education worked on, when the young
+student was well-nigh fainting upon every step in that hopeless
+revolving ladder of knowledge. If Olivia, on communing with herself at
+night, found that the day just done had been too easy for both mistress
+and pupil, the morrow's allowance of Roman emperors and French grammar
+was made to do penance for yesterday's shortcomings.
+
+"This girl has been intrusted to my care, and one of my first duties is
+to give her a good education," Olivia Marchmont thought. "She is
+inclined to be idle; but I must fight against her inclination, whatever
+trouble the struggle entails upon myself. The harder the battle, the
+better for me if I am conqueror."
+
+It was only thus that Olivia Marchmont could hope to be a good woman.
+It was only by the rigid performance of hard duties, the patient
+practice of tedious rites, that she could hope to attain that eternal
+crown which simpler Christians seem to win so easily.
+
+Morning and night the widow and her stepdaughter read the Bible
+together; morning and night they knelt side by side to join in the same
+familiar prayers; yet all these readings and all these prayers failed
+to bring them any nearer together. No tender sentence of inspiration,
+not the words of Christ himself, ever struck the same chord in these
+two women's hearts, bringing both into sudden unison. They went to
+church three times upon every dreary Sunday,--dreary from the terrible
+uniformity which made one day a mechanical repetition of another,--and
+sat together in the same pew; and there were times when some solemn
+word, some sublime injunction, seemed to fall with a new meaning upon
+the orphan girl's heart; but if she looked at her stepmother's face,
+thinking to see some ray of that sudden light which had newly shone
+into her own mind reflected _there_, the blank gloom of Olivia's
+countenance seemed like a dead wall, across which no glimmer of
+radiance ever shone.
+
+They went back to Marchmont Towers in the early spring. People imagined
+that the young widow would cultivate the society of her husband's old
+friends, and that morning callers would be welcome at the Towers, and
+the stately dinner-parties would begin again, when Mrs. Marchmont's
+year of mourning was over. But it was not so; Olivia closed her doors
+upon almost all society, and devoted herself entirely to the education
+of her stepdaughter. The gossips of Swampington and Kemberling, the
+county gentry who had talked of her piety and patience, her unflinching
+devotion to the poor of her father's parish, talked now of her
+self-abnegation, the sacrifices she made for her stepdaughter's sake,
+the noble manner in which she justified John Marchmont's confidence in
+her goodness. Other women would have intrusted the heiress's education
+to some hired governess, people said; other women would have been upon
+the look-out for a second husband; other women would have grown weary
+of the dulness of that lonely Lincolnshire mansion, the monotonous
+society of a girl of sixteen. They were never tired of lauding Mrs.
+Marchmont as a model for all stepmothers in time to come.
+
+Did she sacrifice much, this woman, whose spirit was a raging fire, who
+had the ambition of a Semiramis, the courage of a Boadicea, the
+resolution of a Lady Macbeth? Did she sacrifice much in resigning such
+provincial gaieties as might have adorned her life,--a few
+dinner-parties, an occasional county ball, a flirtation with some
+ponderous landed gentleman or hunting squire?
+
+No; these things would very soon have grown odious to her--more odious
+than the monotony of her empty life, more wearisome even than the
+perpetual weariness of her own spirit. I said, that when she accepted a
+new life by becoming the wife of John Marchmont, she acted in the
+spirit of a prisoner, who is glad to exchange his old dungeon for a new
+one. But, alas! the novelty of the prison-house had very speedily worn
+off, and that which Olivia Arundel had been at Swampington Rectory,
+Olivia Marchmont was now in the gaunt country mansion,--a wretched
+woman, weary of herself and all the world, devoured by a slow-consuming
+and perpetual fire.
+
+This woman was, for two long melancholy years, Mary Marchmont's sole
+companion and instructress. I say sole companion advisedly; for the
+girl was not allowed to become intimate with the younger members of
+such few county families as still called occasionally at the Towers,
+lest she should become empty-headed and frivolous by their
+companionship. Alas, there was little fear of Mary becoming
+empty-headed! As she grew taller, and more slender, she seemed to get
+weaker and paler; and her heavy head drooped wearily under the load of
+knowledge which it had been made to carry, like some poor sickly flower
+oppressed by the weight of the dew-drops, which would have revivified a
+hardier blossom.
+
+Heaven knows to what end Mrs. Marchmont educated her stepdaughter! Poor
+Mary could have told the precise date of any event in universal
+history, ancient or modern; she could have named the exact latitude and
+longitude of the remotest island in the least navigable ocean, and
+might have given an accurate account of the manners and customs of its
+inhabitants, had she been called upon to do so. She was alarmingly
+learned upon the subject of tertiary and old red sandstone, and could
+have told you almost as much as Mr. Charles Kingsley himself about the
+history of a gravel-pit,--though I doubt if she could have conveyed her
+information in quite such a pleasant manner; she could have pointed out
+every star in the broad heavens above Lincolnshire, and could have told
+the history of its discovery; she knew the hardest names that science
+had given to the familiar field-flowers she met in her daily
+walks;--yet I cannot say that her conversation was any the more
+brilliant because of this, or that her spirits grew lighter under the
+influence of this general mental illumination.
+
+But Mrs. Marchmont did most earnestly believe that this laborious
+educationary process was one of the duties she owed her stepdaughter;
+and when, at seventeen years of age, Mary emerged from the struggle,
+laden with such intellectual spoils as I have described above, the
+widow felt a quiet satisfaction as she contemplated her work, and said
+to herself, "In this, at least, I have done my duty."
+
+Amongst all the dreary mass of instruction beneath which her health had
+very nearly succumbed, the girl had learned one thing that was a source
+of pleasure to herself; she had learned to become a very brilliant
+musician. She was not a musical genius, remember; for no such vivid
+flame as the fire of genius had ever burned in her gentle breast; but
+all the tenderness of her nature, all the poetry of a hyper-poetical
+mind, centred in this one accomplishment, and, condemned to perpetual
+silence in every other tongue, found a new and glorious language here.
+The girl had been forbidden to read Byron and Scott; but she was not
+forbidden to sit at her piano, when the day's toils were over, and the
+twilight was dusky in her quiet room, playing dreamy melodies by
+Beethoven and Mozart, and making her own poetry to Mendelssohn's
+wordless songs. I think her soul must have shrunk and withered away
+altogether had it not been for this one resource, this one refuge, in
+which her mind regained its elasticity, springing up, like a trampled
+flower, into new life and beauty.
+
+Olivia was well pleased to see the girl sit hour after hour at her
+piano. She had learned to play well and brilliantly herself, mastering
+all difficulties with the proud determination which was a part of her
+strong nature; but she had no special love for music. All things that
+compose the poetry and beauty of life had been denied to this woman, in
+common with the tenderness which makes the chief loveliness of
+womankind. She sat by the piano and listened while Mary's slight hands
+wandered over the keys, carrying the player's soul away into trackless
+regions of dream-land and beauty; but she heard nothing in the music
+except so many chords, so many tones and semitones, played in such or
+such a time.
+
+It would have been scarcely natural for Mary Marchmont, reserved and
+self-contained though she had been ever since her father's death, to
+have had no yearning for more genial companionship than that of her
+stepmother. The girl who had kept watch in her room, by the doctor's
+suggestion, was the one friend and confidante whom the young mistress
+of Marchmont Towers fain would have chosen. But here Olivia interposed,
+sternly forbidding any intimacy between the two girls. Hester Pollard
+was the daughter of a small tenant-farmer, and no fit associate for
+Mrs. Marchmont's stepdaughter. Olivia thought that this taste for
+obscure company was the fruit of Mary's early training--the taint left
+by those bitter, debasing days of poverty, in which John Marchmont and
+his daughter had lived in some wretched Lambeth lodging.
+
+"But Hester Pollard is fond of me, mamma," the girl pleaded; "and I
+feel so happy at the old farm house! They are all so kind to me when I
+go there,--Hester's father and mother, and little brothers and sisters,
+you know; and the poultry-yard, and the pigs and horses, and the green
+pond, with the geese cackling round it, remind me of my aunt's, in
+Berkshire. I went there once with poor papa for a day or two; it was
+_such_ a change after Oakley Street."
+
+But Mrs. Marchmont was inflexible upon this point. She would allow her
+stepdaughter to pay a ceremonial visit now and then to Farmer
+Pollard's, and to be entertained with cowslip-wine and pound-cake in
+the low, old-fashioned parlour, where all the polished mahogany chairs
+were so shining and slippery that it was a marvel how anybody ever
+contrived to sit down upon them. Olivia allowed such solemn visits as
+these now and then, and she permitted Mary to renew the farmer's lease
+upon sufficiently advantageous terms, and to make occasional presents
+to her favourite, Hester. But all stolen visits to the farmyard, all
+evening rambles with the farmer's daughter in the apple orchard at the
+back of the low white farmhouse, were sternly interdicted; and though
+Mary and Hester were friends still, they were fain to be content with a
+chance meeting once in the course of a dreary interval of months, and a
+silent pressure of the hand.
+
+"You mustn't think that I am proud of my money, Hester," Mary said to
+her friend, "or that I forget you now that we see each other so seldom.
+Papa used to let me come to the farm whenever I liked; but papa had
+seen a great deal of poverty. Mamma keeps me almost always at home at
+my studies; but she is very good to me, and of course I am bound to
+obey her; papa wished me to obey her."
+
+The orphan girl never for a moment forgot the terms of her father's
+will. _He_ had wished her to obey; what should she do, then, but be
+obedient? Her submission to Olivia's lightest wish was only a part of
+the homage which she paid to that beloved father's memory.
+
+It was thus she grew to early womanhood; a child in gentle obedience
+and docility; a woman by reason of that grave and thoughtful character
+which had been peculiar to her from her very infancy. It was in a life
+such as this, narrow, monotonous, joyless, that her seventeenth
+birthday came and went, scarcely noticed, scarcely remembered, in the
+dull uniformity of the days which left no track behind them; and Mary
+Marchmont was a woman,--a woman with all the tragedy of life before
+her; infantine in her innocence and inexperience of the world outside
+Marchmont Towers.
+
+The passage of time had been so long unmarked by any break in its
+tranquil course, the dull routine of life had been so long undisturbed
+by change, that I believe the two women thought their lives would go on
+for ever and ever. Mary, at least, had never looked beyond the dull
+horizon of the present. Her habit of castle-building had died out with
+her father's death. What need had she to build castles, now that he
+could no longer inhabit them? Edward Arundel, the bright boy she
+remembered in Oakley Street, the dashing young officer who had come to
+Marchmont Towers, had dropped back into the chaos of the past. Her
+father had been the keystone in the arch of Mary's existence: he was
+gone, and a mass of chaotic ruins alone remained of the familiar
+visions which had once beguiled her. The world had ended with John
+Marchmont's death, and his daughter's life since that great sorrow had
+been at best only a passive endurance of existence. They had heard very
+little of the young soldier at Marchmont Towers. Now and then a letter
+from some member of the family at Dangerfield had come to the Rector of
+Swampington. The warfare was still raging far away in the East, cruel
+and desperate battles were being fought, and brave Englishmen were
+winning loot and laurels, or perishing under the scimitars of Sikhs and
+Affghans, as the case might be. Squire Arundel's youngest son was not
+doing less than his duty, the letters said. He had gained his
+captaincy, and was well spoken of by great soldiers, whose very names
+were like the sound of the war-trumpet to English ears.
+
+Olivia heard all this. She sat by her father, sometimes looking over
+his shoulder at the crumpled letter, as he read aloud to her of her
+cousin's exploits. The familiar name seemed to be all ablaze with lurid
+light as the widow's greedy eyes devoured it. How commonplace the
+letters were! What frivolous nonsense Letitia Arundel intermingled with
+the news of her brother!--"You'll be glad to hear that my grey pony has
+got the better of his lameness. Papa gave a hunting-breakfast on
+Tuesday week. Lord Mountlitchcombe was present; but the hunting-men are
+very much aggravated about the frost, and I fear we shall have no
+crocuses. Edward has got his captaincy, papa told me to tell you. Sir
+Charles Napier and Major Outram have spoken very highly of him; but
+he--Edward, I mean--got a sabre-cut on his left arm, besides a wound on
+his forehead, and was laid up for nearly a month. I daresay you
+remember old Colonel Tollesly, at Halburton Lodge? He died last
+November; and has left all his money to----" and the young lady ran on
+thus, with such gossip as she thought might be pleasing to her uncle;
+and there were no more tidings of the young soldier, whose life-blood
+had so nearly been spilt for his country's glory.
+
+Olivia thought of him as she rode back to Marchmont Towers. She thought
+of the sabre-cut upon his arm, and pictured him wounded and bleeding,
+lying beneath the canvass-shelter of a tent, comfortless, lonely,
+forsaken.
+
+"Better for me if he had died," she thought; "better for me if I were
+to hear of his death to-morrow!"
+
+And with the idea the picture of such a calamity arose before her so
+vividly and hideously distinct, that she thought for one brief moment
+of agony, "This is not a fancy, it is a presentiment; it is second
+sight; the thing will occur."
+
+She imagined herself going to see her father as she had gone that
+morning. All would be the same: the low grey garden-wall of the
+Rectory; the ceaseless surging of the sea; the prim servant-maid; the
+familiar study, with its litter of books and papers; the smell of stale
+cigar-smoke; the chintz curtains flapping in the open window; the dry
+leaves fluttering in the garden without. There would be nothing changed
+except her father's face, which would be a little graver than usual.
+And then, after a little hesitation--after a brief preamble about the
+uncertainty of life, the necessity for looking always beyond this
+world, the horrors of war,--the dreadful words would be upon his lips,
+when she would read all the hideous truth in his face, and fall prone
+to the ground, before he could say, "Edward Arundel is dead!"
+
+Yes; she felt all the anguish. It would be this--this sudden paralysis
+of black despair. She tested the strength of her endurance by this
+imaginary torture,--scarcely imaginary, surely, when it seemed so
+real,--and asked herself a strange question: "Am I strong enough to
+bear this, or would it be less terrible to go on, suffering for
+ever--for ever abased and humiliated by the degradation of my love for
+a man who does not care for me?"
+
+So long as John Marchmont had lived, this woman would have been true to
+the terrible victory she had won upon the eve of her bridal. She would
+have been true to herself and to her marriage-vow; but her husband's
+death, in setting her free, had cast her back upon the madness of her
+youth. It was no longer a sin to think of Edward Arundel. Having once
+suffered this idea to arise in her mind, her idol grew too strong for
+her, and she thought of him by night and day.
+
+Yes; she thought of him for ever and ever. The narrow life to which she
+doomed herself, the self-immolation which she called duty, left her a
+prey to this one thought. Her work was not enough for her. Her powerful
+mind wasted and shrivelled for want of worthy employment. It was like
+one vast roll of parchment whereon half the wisdom of the world might
+have been inscribed, but on which was only written over and over again,
+in maddening repetition, the name of Edward Arundel. If Olivia
+Marchmont could have gone to America, and entered herself amongst the
+feminine professors of law or medicine,--if she could have turned
+field-preacher, like simple Dinah Morris, or set up a printing-press in
+Bloomsbury, or even written a novel,--I think she might have been
+saved. The superabundant energy of her mind would have found a new
+object. As it was, she did none of these things. She had only dreamt
+one dream, and by force of perpetual repetition the dream had become a
+madness.
+
+But the monotonous life was not to go on for ever. The dull, grey,
+leaden sky was to be illumined by sudden bursts of sunshine, and swept
+by black thunder-clouds, whose stormy violence was to shake the very
+universe for these two solitary women.
+
+John Marchmont had been dead nearly three years. Mary's humble friend,
+the farmer's daughter, had married a young tradesman in the village of
+Kemberling, a mile and a half from the Towers. Mary was a woman now,
+and had seen the last of the Roman emperors and all the dry-as-dust
+studies of her early girlhood. She had nothing to do but accompany her
+stepmother hither and thither amongst the poor cottagers about
+Kemberling and two or three other small parishes within a drive of the
+Towers, "doing good," after Olivia's fashion, by line and rule. At home
+the young lady did what she pleased, sitting for hours together at her
+piano, or wading through gigantic achievements in the way of
+embroidery-work. She was even allowed to read novels now, but only such
+novels as were especially recommended to Olivia, who was one of the
+patronesses of a book-club at Swampington: novels in which young ladies
+fell in love with curates, and didn't marry them: novels in which
+everybody suffered all manner of misery, and rather liked it: novels in
+which, if the heroine did marry the man she loved--and this happy
+conclusion was the exception, and not the rule--the smallpox swept away
+her beauty, or a fatal accident deprived him of his legs, or eyes, or
+arms before the wedding-day.
+
+The two women went to Kemberling Church together three times every
+Sunday. It was rather monotonous--the same church, the same rector and
+curate, the same clerk, the same congregation, the same old organ-tunes
+and droning voices of Lincolnshire charity-children, the same sermons
+very often. But Mary had grown accustomed to monotony. She had ceased
+to hope or care for anything since her father's death, and was very
+well contented to be let alone, and allowed to dawdle through a dreary
+life which was utterly without aim or purpose. She sat opposite her
+stepmother on one particular afternoon in the state-pew at Kemberling,
+which was lined with faded red baize, and raised a little above the
+pews of meaner worshippers; she was sitting with her listless hands
+lying in her lap, looking thoughtfully at her stepmother's stony face,
+and listening to the dull droning of the rector's voice above her head.
+It was a sunny afternoon in early June, and the church was bright with
+a warm yellow radiance; one of the old diamond-paned windows was open,
+and the tinkling of a sheep-bell far away in the distance, and the hum
+of bees in the churchyard, sounded pleasantly in the quiet of the hot
+atmosphere.
+
+The young mistress of Marchmont Towers felt the drowsy influence of
+that tranquil summer weather creeping stealthily upon her. The heavy
+eyelids drooped over her soft brown eyes, those wistful eyes which had
+so long looked wearily out upon a world in which there seemed so little
+joy. The rector's sermon was a very long one this warm afternoon, and
+there was a low sound of snoring somewhere in one of the shadowy and
+sheltered pews beneath the galleries. Mary tried very hard to keep
+herself awake. Mrs. Marchmont had frowned darkly at her once or twice
+already, for to fall asleep in church was a dire iniquity in Olivia's
+rigid creed; but the drowsiness was not easily to be conquered, and the
+girl was sinking into a peaceful slumber in spite of her stepmother's
+menacing frowns, when the sound of a sharp footfall on one of the
+gravel pathways in the churchyard aroused her attention.
+
+Heaven knows why she should have been awoke out of her sleep by the
+sound of that step. It was different, perhaps, to the footsteps of the
+Kemberling congregation. The brisk, sharp sound of the tread striking
+lightly but firmly on the gravel was not compatible with the shuffling
+gait of the tradespeople and farmers' men who formed the greater part
+of the worshippers at that quiet Lincolnshire church. Again, it would
+have been a monstrous sin in that tranquil place for any one member of
+the congregation to disturb the devotions of the rest by entering at
+such a time as this. It was a stranger, then, evidently. What did it
+matter? Miss Marchmont scarcely cared to lift her eyelids to see who or
+what the stranger was; but the intruder let in such a flood of June
+sunshine when he pushed open the ponderous oaken door under the
+church-porch, that she was dazzled by that sudden burst of light, and
+involuntarily opened her eyes.
+
+The stranger let the door swing softly to behind him, and stood beneath
+the shadow of the porch, not caring to advance any further, or to
+disturb the congregation by his presence.
+
+Mary could not see him very plainly at first. She could only dimly
+define the outline of his tall figure, the waving masses of chestnut
+hair tinged with gleams of gold; but little by little his face seemed
+to grow out of the shadow, until she saw it all,--the handsome
+patrician features, the luminous blue eyes, the amber moustache,--the
+face which, in Oakley Street eight years ago, she had elected as her
+type of all manly perfection, her ideal of heroic grace.
+
+Yes; it was Edward Arundel. Her eyes lighted up with an unwonted
+rapture as she looked at him; her lips parted; and her breath came in
+faint gasps. All the monotonous years, the terrible agonies of sorrow,
+dropped away into the past; and Mary Marchmont was conscious of nothing
+except the unutterable happiness of the present.
+
+The one friend of her childhood had come back. The one link, the almost
+forgotten link, that bound her to every day-dream of those foolish
+early days, was united once more by the presence of the young soldier.
+All that happy time, nearly five years ago,--that happy time in which
+the tennis-court had been built, and the boat-house by the river
+restored,--those sunny autumn days before her father's second
+marriage,--returned to her. There was pleasure and joy in the world,
+after all; and then the memory of her father came back to her mind, and
+her eyes filled with tears. How sorry Edward would be to see his old
+friend's empty place in the western drawing-room; how sorry for her,
+and for her loss! Olivia Marchmont saw the change in her stepdaughter's
+face, and looked at her with stern amazement. But, after the first
+shock of that delicious surprise, Mary's training asserted itself. She
+folded her hands,--they trembled a little, but Olivia did not see
+that,--and waited patiently, with her eyes cast down and a faint flush
+lighting up her pale cheeks, until the sermon was finished, and the
+congregation began to disperse. She was not impatient. She felt as if
+she could have waited thus peacefully and contentedly for ever, knowing
+that the only friend she had on earth was near her.
+
+Olivia was slow to leave her pew; but at last she opened the door and
+went out into the quiet aisle, followed by Mary, out under the shadowy
+porch and into the gravel-walk in the churchyard, where Edward Arundel
+was waiting for the two ladies.
+
+John Marchmont's widow uttered no cry of surprise when she saw her
+cousin standing a little way apart from the slowly-dispersing
+Kemberling congregation. Her dark face faded a little, and her heart
+seemed to stop its pulsation suddenly, as if she had been turned into
+stone; but this was only for a moment. She held out her hand to Mr.
+Arundel in the next instant, and bade him welcome to Lincolnshire.
+
+"I did not know you were in England," she said.
+
+"Scarcely any one knows it yet," the young man answered; "and I have
+not even been home. I came to Marchmont Towers at once."
+
+He turned from his cousin to Mary, who was standing a little behind her
+stepmother.
+
+"Dear Polly," he said, taking both her hands in his, "I was so sorry
+for you, when I heard----"
+
+He stopped, for he saw the tears welling up to her eyes. It was not his
+allusion to her father's death that had distressed her. He had called
+her Polly, the old familiar name, which she had never heard since that
+dead father's lips had last spoken it.
+
+The carriage was waiting at the gate of the churchyard, and Edward
+Arundel went back to Marchmont Towers with the two ladies. He had
+reached the house a quarter of an hour after they had left it for
+afternoon church, and had walked over to Kemberling.
+
+"I was so anxious to see you, Polly," he said, "after all this long
+time, that I had no patience to wait until you and Livy came back from
+church."
+
+Olivia started as the young man said this. It was Mary Marchmont whom
+he had come to see, then--not herself. Was _she_ never to be anything?
+Was she to be for ever insulted by this humiliating indifference? A
+dark flush came over her face, as she drew her head up with the air of
+an offended empress, and looked angrily at her cousin. Alas! he did not
+even see that indignant glance. He was bending over Mary, telling her,
+in a low tender voice, of the grief he had felt at learning the news of
+her father's death.
+
+Olivia Marchmont looked with an eager, scrutinising gaze at her
+stepdaughter. Could it be possible that Edward Arundel might ever come
+to love this girl? _Could_ such a thing be possible? A hideous depth of
+horror and confusion seemed to open before her with the thought. In all
+the past, amongst all things she had imagined, amongst all the
+calamities she had pictured to herself, she had never thought of
+anything like this. Would such a thing ever come to pass? Would she
+ever grow to hate this girl--this girl, who had been intrusted to her
+by her dead husband--with the most terrible hatred that one woman can
+feel towards another?
+
+In the next moment she was angry with herself for the abject folly of
+this new terror. She had never yet learned to think of Mary as a woman.
+She had never thought of her otherwise than as the pale childlike girl
+who had come to her meekly, day after day, to recite difficult lessons,
+standing in a submissive attitude before her, and rendering obedience
+to her in all things. Was it likely, was it possible, that this
+pale-faced girl would enter into the lists against her in the great
+battle of her life? Was it likely that she was to find her adversary
+and her conqueror here, in the meek child who had been committed to her
+charge?
+
+She watched her stepdaughter's face with a jealous, hungry gaze. Was it
+beautiful? No! The features were delicate; the brown eyes soft and
+dovelike, almost lovely, now that they were irradiated by a new light,
+as they looked shyly up at Edward Arundel. But the girl's face was wan
+and colourless. It lacked the splendour of beauty. It was only after
+you had looked at Mary for a very long time that you began to think her
+rather pretty.
+
+The five years during which Edward Arundel had been away had made
+little alteration in him. He was rather taller, perhaps; his amber
+moustache thicker; his manner more dashing than of old. The mark of a
+sabre-cut under the clustering chestnut curls upon the temple gave him
+a certain soldierly dignity. He seemed a man of the world now, and Mary
+Marchmont was rather afraid of him. He was so different to the
+Lincolnshire squires, the bashful younger sons who were to be educated
+for the Church: he was so dashing, so elegant, so splendid! From the
+waving grace of his hair to the tip of the polished boot peeping out of
+his well-cut trouser (there were no pegtops in 1847, and it was _le
+genre_ to show very little of the boot), he was a creature to be
+wondered at, to be almost reverenced, Mary thought. She could not help
+admiring the cut of his coat, the easy _nonchalance_ of his manner, the
+waxed ends of his curved moustache, the dangling toys of gold and
+enamel that jingled at his watch-chain, the waves of perfume that
+floated away from his cambric handkerchief. She was childish enough to
+worship all these external attributes in her hero.
+
+"Shall I invite him to Marchmont Towers?" Olivia thought; and while she
+was deliberating upon this question, Mary Marchmont cried out, "You
+will stop at the Towers, won't you, Mr. Arundel, as you did when poor
+papa was alive?"
+
+"Most decidedly, Miss Marchmont," the young man answered. "I mean to
+throw myself upon your hospitality as confidingly as I did a long time
+ago in Oakley Street, when you gave me hot rolls for my breakfast."
+
+Mary laughed aloud--perhaps for the first time since her father's
+death. Olivia bit her lip. She was of so little account, then, she
+thought, that they did not care to consult her. A gloomy shadow spread
+itself over her face. Already, already she began to hate this
+pale-faced, childish orphan girl, who seemed to be transformed into a
+new being under the spell of Edward Arundel's presence.
+
+But she made no attempt to prevent his stopping at the Towers, though a
+word from her would have effectually hindered his coming. A dull torpor
+of despair took possession of her; a black apprehension paralysed her
+mind. She felt that a pit of horror was opening before her ignorant
+feet. All that she had suffered was as nothing to what she was about to
+suffer. Let it be, then! What could she do to keep this torture away
+from her? Let it come, since it seemed that it must come in some shape
+or other.
+
+She thought all this, while she sat back in a corner of the carriage
+watching the two faces opposite to her, as Edward and Mary, seated with
+their backs to the horses, talked together in low confidential tones,
+which scarcely reached her ear. She thought all this during the short
+drive between Kemberling and Marchmont Towers; and when the carriage
+drew up before the low Tudor portico, the dark shadow had settled on
+her face. Her mind was made up. Let Edward Arundel come; let the worst
+come. She had struggled; she had tried to do her duty; she had striven
+to be good. But her destiny was stronger than herself, and had brought
+this young soldier over land and sea, safe out of every danger, rescued
+from every peril, to be her destruction. I think that in this crisis of
+her life the last faint ray of Christian light faded out of this lost
+woman's soul, leaving utter darkness and desolation. The old landmarks,
+dimly descried in the weary desert, sank for ever down into the
+quicksands, and she was left alone,--alone with her despair. Her
+jealous soul prophesied the evil which she dreaded. This man, whose
+indifference to her was almost an insult, would fall in love with Mary
+Marchmont,--with Mary Marchmont, whose eyes lit up into new beauty
+under the glances of his, whose pale face blushed into faint bloom as
+he talked to her. The girl's undisguised admiration would flatter the
+young man's vanity, and he would fall in love with her out of very
+frivolity and weakness of purpose.
+
+"He is weak and vain, and foolish and frivolous, I daresay," Olivia
+thought; "and if I were to fling myself upon my knees at his feet, and
+tell him that I loved him, he would be flattered and grateful, and
+would be ready to return my affection. If I could tell him what this
+girl tells him in every look and word, he would be as pleased with me
+as he is with her."
+
+Her lip curled with unutterable scorn as she thought this. She was so
+despicable to herself by the deep humiliation of her wasted love, that
+the object of that foolish passion seemed despicable also. She was for
+ever weighing Edward Arundel against all the tortures she had endured
+for his sake, and for ever finding him wanting. He must have been a
+demigod if his perfections could have outweighed so much misery; and
+for this reason she was unjust to her cousin, and could not accept him
+for that which he really was,--a generous-hearted, candid, honourable
+young man (not a great man or a wonderful man),--a brave and
+honest-minded soldier, very well worthy of a good woman's love.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Mr. Arundel stayed at the Towers, occupying the room which had been his
+in John Marchmont's lifetime; and a new existence began for Mary. The
+young man was delighted with his old friend's daughter. Among all the
+Calcutta belles whom he had danced with at Government-House balls and
+flirted with upon the Indian racecourse, he could remember no one as
+fascinating as this girl, who seemed as childlike now, in her early
+womanhood, as she had been womanly while she was a child. Her naive
+tenderness for himself bewitched and enraptured him. Who could have
+avoided being charmed by that pure and innocent affection, which was as
+freely given by the girl of eighteen as it had been by the child, and
+was unchanged in character by the lapse of years? The young officer had
+been so much admired and caressed in Calcutta, that perhaps, by reason
+of his successes, he had returned to England heart-whole; and he
+abandoned himself, without any _arriere-pensee_, to the quiet happiness
+which he felt in Mary Marchmont's society. I do not say that he was
+intoxicated by her beauty, which was by no means of the intoxicating
+order, or that he was madly in love with her. The gentle fascination of
+her society crept upon him before he was aware of its influence. He had
+never taken the trouble to examine his own feelings; they were
+disengaged,--as free as butterflies to settle upon which flower might
+seem the fairest; and he had therefore no need to put himself under a
+course of rigorous self-examination. As yet he believed that the
+pleasure he now felt in Mary's society was the same order of enjoyment
+he had experienced five years before, when he had taught her chess, and
+promised her long rambles by the seashore.
+
+They had no long rambles now in solitary lanes and under flowering
+hedgerows beside the waving green corn. Olivia watched them with
+untiring eyes. The tortures to which a jealous woman may condemn
+herself are not much greater than those she can inflict upon others.
+Mrs. Marchmont took good care that her ward and her cousin were not
+_too_ happy. Wherever they went, she went also; whenever they spoke,
+she listened; whatever arrangement was most likely to please them was
+opposed by her. Edward was not coxcomb enough to have any suspicion of
+the reason of this conduct on his cousin's part. He only smiled and
+shrugged his shoulders; and attributed her watchfulness to an
+overstrained sense of her responsibility, and the necessity of
+_surveillance_.
+
+"Does she think me such a villain and a traitor," he thought, "that she
+fears to leave me alone with my dead friend's orphan daughter, lest I
+should whisper corruption into her innocent ear? How little these good
+women know of us, after all! What vulgar suspicions and narrow-minded
+fears influence them against us! Are they honourable and honest towards
+one another, I wonder, that they can entertain such pitiful doubts of
+our honour and honesty?"
+
+So, hour after hour, and day after day, Olivia Marchmont kept watch and
+ward over Edward and Mary. It seems strange that love could blossom in
+such an atmosphere; it seems strange that the cruel gaze of those hard
+grey eyes did not chill the two innocent hearts, and prevent their free
+expansion. But it was not so; the egotism of love was all-omnipotent.
+Neither Edward nor Mary was conscious of the evil light in the glance
+that so often rested upon them. The universe narrowed itself to the one
+spot of earth upon which these two stood side by side.
+
+Edward Arundel had been more than a month at Marchmont Towers when
+Olivia went, upon a hot July evening, to Swampington, on a brief visit
+to the Rector,--a visit of duty. She would doubtless have taken Mary
+Marchmont with her; but the girl had been suffering from a violent
+headache throughout the burning summer day, and had kept her room.
+Edward Arundel had gone out early in the morning upon a fishing
+excursion to a famous trout-stream seven or eight miles from the
+Towers, and was not likely to return until after nightfall. There was
+no chance, therefore, of a meeting between Mary and the young officer,
+Olivia thought--no chance of any confidential talk which she would not
+be by to hear.
+
+Did Edward Arundel love the pale-faced girl, who revealed her devotion
+to him with such childlike unconsciousness? Olivia Marchmont had not
+been able to answer that question. She had sounded the young man
+several times upon his feelings towards her stepdaughter; but he had
+met her hints and insinuations with perfect frankness, declaring that
+Mary seemed as much a child to him now as she had appeared nearly nine
+years before in Oakley Street, and that the pleasure he took in her
+society was only such as he might have felt in that of any innocent and
+confiding child.
+
+"Her simplicity is so bewitching, you know, Livy," he said; "she looks
+up in my face, and trusts me with all her little secrets, and tells me
+her dreams about her dead father, and all her foolish, innocent
+fancies, as confidingly as if I were some playfellow of her own age and
+sex. She's so refreshing after the artificial belles of a Calcutta
+ballroom, with their stereotyped fascinations and their complete manual
+of flirtation, the same for ever and ever. She is such a pretty little
+spontaneous darling, with her soft, shy, brown eyes, and her low voice,
+which always sounds to me like the cooing of the doves in the
+poultry-yard."
+
+I think that Olivia, in the depth of her gloomy despair, took some
+comfort from such speeches as these. Was this frank expression of
+regard for Mary Marchmont a token of _love_? No; not as the widow
+understood the stormy madness. Love to her had been a dark and terrible
+passion, a thing to be concealed, as monomaniacs have sometimes
+contrived to keep the secret of their mania, until it burst forth at
+last, fatal and irrepressible, in some direful work of wreck and ruin.
+
+So Olivia Marchmont took an early dinner alone, and drove away from the
+Towers at four o'clock on a blazing summer afternoon, more at peace
+perhaps than she had been since Edward Arundel's coming. She paid her
+dutiful visit to her father, sat with him for some time, talked to the
+two old servants who waited upon him, walked two or three times up and
+down the neglected garden, and then drove back to the Towers.
+
+The first object upon which her eyes fell as she entered the hall was
+Edward Arundel's fishing-tackle lying in disorder upon an oaken bench
+near the broad arched door that opened out into the quadrangle. An
+angry flush mounted to her face as she turned upon the servant near
+her.
+
+"Mr. Arundel has come home?" she said.
+
+"Yes, ma'am, he came in half an hour ago; but he went out again almost
+directly with Miss Marchmont."
+
+"Indeed! I thought Miss Marchmont was in her room?"
+
+"No, ma'am; she came down to the drawing-room about an hour after you
+left. Her head was better, ma'am, she said."
+
+"And she went out with Mr. Arundel? Do you know which way they went?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am; I heard Mr. Arundel say he wanted to look at the old
+boat-house by the river."
+
+"And they have gone there?"
+
+"I think so, ma'am."
+
+"Very good; I will go down to them. Miss Marchmont must not stop out in
+the night-air. The dew is falling already."
+
+The door leading into the quadrangle was open; and Olivia swept across
+the broad threshold, haughty and self-possessed, very stately-looking
+in her long black garments. She still wore mourning for her dead
+husband. What inducement had she ever had to cast off that sombre
+attire; what need had she to trick herself out in gay colours? What
+loving eyes would be charmed by her splendour? She went out of the
+door, across the quadrangle, under a stone archway, and into the low
+stunted wood, which was gloomy even in the summer-time. The setting sun
+was shining upon the western front of the Towers; but here all seemed
+cold and desolate. The damp mists were rising from the sodden ground
+beneath the tree; the frogs were croaking down by the river-side. With
+her small white teeth set, and her breath coming in fitful gasps,
+Olivia Marchmont hurried to the water's edge, winding in and out
+between the trees, tearing her black dress amongst the brambles,
+scorning all beaten paths, heedless where she trod, so long as she made
+her way speedily to the spot she wanted to reach.
+
+At last the black sluggish river and the old boat-house came in sight,
+between a long vista of ugly distorted trunks and gnarled branches of
+pollard oak and willow. The building was dreary and
+dilapidated-looking, for the improvements commenced by Edward Arundel
+five years ago had never been fully carried out; but it was
+sufficiently substantial, and bore no traces of positive decay. Down by
+the water's edge there was a great cavernous recess for the shelter of
+the boats, and above this there was a pavilion, built of brick and
+stone, containing two decent-sized chambers, with latticed windows
+overlooking the river. A flight of stone steps with an iron balustrade
+led up to the door of this pavilion, which was supported upon the solid
+side-walls of the boat-house below.
+
+In the stillness of the summer twilight Olivia heard the voices of
+those whom she came to seek. They were standing down by the edge of the
+water, upon a narrow pathway that ran along by the sedgy brink of the
+river, and only a few paces from the pavilion. The door of the
+boat-house was open; a long-disused wherry lay rotting upon the damp
+and mossy flags. Olivia crept into the shadowy recess. The door that
+faced the river had fallen from its rusty hinges, and the slimy
+woodwork lay in ruins upon the shore. Sheltered by the stone archway
+that had once been closed by this door, Olivia listened to the voices
+beside the still water.
+
+Mary Marchmont was standing close to the river's edge; Edward stood
+beside her, leaning against the trunk of a willow that hung over the
+water.
+
+"My childish darling," the young man murmured, as if in reply to
+something his companion had said, "and so you think, because you are
+simple-minded and innocent, I am not to love you. It is your innocence
+I love, Polly dear,--let me call you Polly, as I used five years
+ago,--and I wouldn't have you otherwise for all the world. Do you know
+that sometimes I am almost sorry I ever came back to Marchmont Towers?"
+
+"Sorry you came back?" cried Mary, in a tone of alarm. "Oh, why do you
+say that, Mr. Arundel?"
+
+"Because you are heiress to eleven thousand a year, Mary, and the
+Moated Grange behind us; and this dreary wood, and the river,--the
+river is yours, I daresay, Miss Marchmont;--and I wish you joy of the
+possession of so much sluggish water and so many square miles of swamp
+and fen."
+
+"But what then?" Mary asked wonderingly.
+
+"What then? Do you know, Polly darling, that if I ask you to marry me
+people will call me a fortune-hunter, and declare that I came to
+Marchmont Towers bent upon stealing its heiress's innocent heart,
+before she had learned the value of the estate that must go along with
+it? God knows they'd wrong me, Polly, as cruelly as ever an honest man
+was wronged; for, so long as I have money to pay my tailor and
+tobacconist,--and I've more than enough for both of them,--I want
+nothing further of the world's wealth. What should I do with all this
+swamp and fen, Miss Marchmont--with all that horrible complication of
+expired leases to be renewed, and income-taxes to be appealed against,
+that rich people have to endure? If you were not rich, Polly, I----"
+
+He stopped and laughed, striking the toe of his boot amongst the weeds,
+and knocking the pebbles into the water. The woman crouching in the
+shadow of the archway listened with whitened cheeks and glaring eyes;
+listened as she might have listened to the sentence of her death,
+drinking in every syllable, in her ravenous desire to lose no breath
+that told her of her anguish.
+
+"If I were not rich!" murmured Mary; "what if I were not rich?"
+
+"I should tell you how dearly I love you, Polly, and ask you to be my
+wife by-and-by."
+
+The girl looked up at him for a few moments in silence, shyly at first,
+and then more boldly, with a beautiful light kindling in her eyes.
+
+"I love you dearly too, Mr. Arundel," she said at last; "and I would
+rather you had my money than any one else in the world; and there was
+something in papa's will that made me think--"
+
+"There was something that made you think he would wish this, Polly,"
+cried the young man, clasping the trembling little figure to his
+breast. "Mr. Paulette sent me a copy of the will, Polly, when he sent
+my diamond-ring; and I think there were some words in it that hinted at
+such a wish. Your father said he left me this legacy, darling,--I have
+his letter still,--the legacy of a helpless girl. God knows I will try
+to be worthy of such a trust, Mary dearest; God knows I will be
+faithful to my promise, made nine years ago."
+
+The woman listening in the dark archway sank down upon the damp flags
+at her feet, amongst the slimy rotten wood and rusty iron nails and
+broken bolts and hinges. She sat there for a long time, not
+unconscious, but quite motionless, her white face leaning against the
+moss-grown arch, staring blankly out of the black shadows. She sat
+there and listened, while the lovers talked in low tender murmurs of
+the sorrowful past and of the unknown future; that beautiful untrodden
+region, in which they were to go hand in hand through all the long
+years of quiet happiness between the present moment and the grave. She
+sat and listened till the moonlight faintly shimmered upon the water,
+and the footsteps of the lovers died away upon the narrow pathway by
+which they went back to the house.
+
+Olivia Marchmont did not move until an hour after they had gone. Then
+she raised herself with an effort, and walked with stiffened limbs
+slowly and painfully to the house, and to her own room, where she
+locked her door, and flung herself upon the ground in the darkness.
+
+Mary came to her to ask why she did not come to the drawing-room, and
+Mrs. Marchmont answered, with a hoarse voice, that she was ill, and
+wished to be alone. Neither Mary, nor the old woman-servant who had
+been Olivia's nurse long ago, and who had some little influence over
+her, could get any other answer than this.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+DRIVEN AWAY.
+
+
+Mary Marchmont and Edward Arundel were happy. They were happy; and how
+should they guess the tortures of that desperate woman, whose benighted
+soul was plunged in a black gulf of horror by reason of their innocent
+love? How should these two--very children in their ignorance of all
+stormy passions, all direful emotions--know that in the darkened
+chamber where Olivia Marchmont lay, suffering under some vague illness,
+for which the Swampington doctor was fain to prescribe quinine, in
+utter unconsciousness as to the real nature of the disease which he was
+called upon to cure,--how should they know that in that gloomy chamber
+a wicked heart was abandoning itself to all the devils that had so long
+held patient watch for this day?
+
+Yes; the struggle was over. Olivia Marchmont flung aside the cross she
+had borne in dull, mechanical obedience, rather than in Christian love
+and truth. Better to have been sorrowful Magdalene, forgiven for her
+love and tears, than this cold, haughty, stainless woman, who had never
+been able to learn the sublime lessons which so many sinners have taken
+meekly to heart. The religion which was wanting in the vital principle
+of Christianity, the faith which showed itself only in dogged
+obedience, failed this woman in the hour of her agony. Her pride arose;
+the defiant spirit of the fallen angel asserted its gloomy grandeur.
+
+"What have I done that I should suffer like this?" she thought. "What
+am I that an empty-headed soldier should despise me, and that I should
+go mad because of his indifference? Is this the recompense for my long
+years of obedience? Is this the reward Heaven bestows upon me for my
+life of duty!"
+
+She remembered the histories of other women,--women who had gone their
+own way and had been happy; and a darker question arose in her mind;
+almost the question which Job asked in his agony.
+
+"Is there neither truth nor justice in the dealings of God?" she
+thought. "Is it useless to be obedient and submissive, patient and
+untiring? Has all my life been a great mistake, which is to end in
+confusion and despair?"
+
+And then she pictured to herself the life that might have been hers if
+Edward Arundel had loved her. How good she would have been! The
+hardness of her iron nature would have been melted and subdued. By
+force of her love and tenderness for him, she would have learned to be
+loving and tender to others. Her wealth of affection for him would have
+overflowed in gentleness and consideration for every creature in the
+universe. The lurking bitterness which had lain hidden in her heart
+ever since she had first loved Edward Arundel, and first discovered his
+indifference to her; and the poisonous envy of happier women, who had
+loved and were beloved,--would have been blotted away. Her whole nature
+would have undergone a wondrous transfiguration, purified and exalted
+by the strength of her affection. All this might have come to pass if
+he had loved her,--if he had only loved her. But a pale-faced child had
+come between her and this redemption; and there was nothing left for
+her but despair.
+
+Nothing but despair? Yes; perhaps something further,--revenge.
+
+But this last idea took no tangible shape. She only knew that, in the
+black darkness of the gulf into which her soul had gone down, there
+was, far away somewhere, one ray of lurid light. She only knew this as
+yet, and that she hated Mary Marchmont with a mad and wicked hatred. If
+she could have thought meanly of Edward Arundel,--if she could have
+believed him to be actuated by mercenary motives in his choice of the
+orphan girl,--she might have taken some comfort from the thought of his
+unworthiness, and of Mary's probable sorrow in the days to come. But
+she _could_ not think this. Little as the young soldier had said in the
+summer twilight beside the river, there had been that in his tones and
+looks which had convinced the wretched watcher of his truth. Mary might
+have been deceived by the shallowest pretender; but Olivia's eyes
+devoured every glance; Olivia's greedy ears drank in every tone; and
+she _knew_ that Edward Arundel loved her stepdaughter.
+
+She knew this, and she hated Mary Marchmont. What had she done, this
+girl, who had never known what it was to fight a battle with her own
+rebellious heart? what had she done, that all this wealth of love and
+happiness should drop into her lap unsought,--comparatively unvalued,
+perhaps?
+
+John Marchmont's widow lay in her darkened chamber thinking over these
+things; no longer fighting the battle with her own heart, but utterly
+abandoning herself to her desperation,--reckless, hardened, impenitent.
+
+Edward Arundel could not very well remain at the Towers while the
+reputed illness of his hostess kept her to her room. He went over to
+Swampington, therefore, upon a dutiful visit to his uncle; but rode to
+the Towers every day to inquire very particularly after his cousin's
+progress, and to dawdle on the sunny western terrace with Mary
+Marchmont.
+
+Their innocent happiness needs little description. Edward Arundel
+retained a good deal of that boyish chivalry which had made him so
+eager to become the little girl's champion in the days gone by. Contact
+with the world had not much sullied the freshness of the young man's
+spirit. He loved his innocent, childish companion with the purest and
+truest devotion; and he was proud of the recollection that in the day
+of his poverty John Marchmont had chosen _him_ as the future shelterer
+of this tender blossom.
+
+"You must never grow any older or more womanly, Polly," he said
+sometimes to the young mistress of Marchmont Towers. "Remember that I
+always love you best when I think of you as the little girl in the
+shabby pinafore, who poured out my tea for me one bleak December
+morning in Oakley Street."
+
+They talked a great deal of John Marchmont. It was such a happiness to
+Mary to be able to talk unreservedly of her father to some one who had
+loved and comprehended him.
+
+"My stepmamma was very good to poor papa, you know, Edward," she said,
+"and of course he was very grateful to her; but I don't think he ever
+loved her quite as he loved you. You were the friend of his poverty,
+Edward; he never forgot that."
+
+Once, as they strolled side by side together upon the terrace in the
+warm summer noontide, Mary Marchmont put her little hand through her
+lover's arm, and looked up shyly in his face.
+
+"Did papa say that, Edward?" she whispered; "did he really say that?"
+
+"Did he really say what, darling?"
+
+"That he left me to you as a legacy?"
+
+"He did indeed, Polly," answered the young man. "I'll bring you the
+letter to-morrow."
+
+And the next day he showed Mary Marchmont the yellow sheet of
+letter-paper and the faded writing, which had once been black and wet
+under her dead father's hand. Mary looked through her tears at the old
+familiar Oakley-street address, and the date of the very day upon which
+Edward Arundel had breakfasted in the shabby lodging. Yes--there were
+the words: "The legacy of a child's helplessness is the only bequest I
+can leave to the only friend I have."
+
+"And you shall never know what it is to be helpless while I am near
+you, Polly darling," the soldier said, as he refolded his dead friend's
+epistle. "You may defy your enemies henceforward, Mary--if you have any
+enemies. O, by-the-bye, you have never heard any thing of that Paul
+Marchmont, I suppose?"
+
+"Papa's cousin--Mr Marchmont the artist?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"He came to the reading of papa's will."
+
+"Indeed! and did you see much of him?"
+
+"Oh, no, very little. I was ill, you know," the girl added, the tears
+rising to her eyes at the recollection of that bitter time,--"I was
+ill, and I didn't notice any thing. I know that Mr. Marchmont talked to
+me a little; but I can't remember what he said."
+
+"And he has never been here since?"
+
+"Never."
+
+Edward Arundel shrugged his shoulders. This Paul Marchmont could not be
+such a designing villain, after all, or surely he would have tried to
+push his acquaintance with his rich cousin!
+
+"I dare say John's suspicion of him was only one of the poor fellow's
+morbid fancies," he thought. "He was always full of morbid fancies."
+
+Mrs. Marchmont's rooms were in the western front of the house; and
+through her open windows she heard the fresh young voices of the lovers
+as they strolled up and down the terrace. The cavalry officer was
+content to carry a watering-pot full of water, for the refreshment of
+his young mistress's geraniums in the stone vases on the balustrade,
+and to do other under-gardener's work for her pleasure. He talked to
+her of the Indian campaign; and she asked a hundred questions about
+midnight marches and solitary encampments, fainting camels, lurking
+tigers in the darkness of the jungle, intercepted supplies of
+provisions, stolen ammunition, and all the other details of the war.
+
+Olivia arose at last, before the Swampington surgeon's saline draughts
+and quinine mixtures had subdued the fiery light in her eyes, or cooled
+the raging fever that devoured her. She arose because she could no
+longer lie still in her desolation knowing that, for two hours in each
+long summer's day, Edward Arundel and Mary Marchmont could be happy
+together in spite of her. She came down stairs, therefore, and renewed
+her watch--chaining her stepdaughter to her side, and interposing
+herself for ever between the lovers.
+
+The widow arose from her sick-bed an altered woman, as it appeared to
+all who knew her. A mad excitement seemed to have taken sudden
+possession of her. She flung off her mourning garments, and ordered
+silks and laces, velvets and satins, from a London milliner; she
+complained of the absence of society, the monotonous dulness of her
+Lincolnshire life; and, to the surprise of every one, sent out cards of
+invitation for a ball at the Towers in honour of Edward Arundel's
+return to England. She seemed to be seized with a desire to do
+something, she scarcely cared what, to disturb the even current of her
+days.
+
+During the brief interval between Mrs. Marchmont's leaving her room and
+the evening appointed for the ball, Edward Arundel found no very
+convenient opportunity of informing his cousin of the engagement
+entered into between himself and Mary. He had no wish to hurry this
+disclosure; for there was something in the orphan girl's childishness
+and innocence that kept all definite ideas of an early marriage very
+far away from her lover's mind. He wanted to go back to India, and win
+more laurels, to lay at the feet of the mistress of Marchmont Towers.
+He wanted to make a name for himself, which should cause the world to
+forget that he was a younger son,--a name that the vilest tongue would
+never dare to blacken with the epithet of fortune-hunter.
+
+The young man was silent therefore, waiting for a fitting opportunity
+in which to speak to Mary's stepmother. Perhaps he rather dreaded the
+idea of discussing his attachment with Olivia; for she had looked at
+him with cold angry eyes, and a brow as black as thunder, upon those
+occasions on which she had sounded him as to his feelings for Mary.
+
+"She wants poor Polly to marry some grandee, I dare say," he thought,
+"and will do all she can to oppose my suit. But her trust will cease
+with Mary's majority; and I don't want my confiding little darling to
+marry me until she is old enough to choose for herself, and to choose
+wisely. She will be one-and-twenty in three years; and what are three
+years? I would wait as long as Jacob for my pet, and serve my fourteen
+years' apprenticeship under Sir Charles Napier, and be true to her all
+the time."
+
+Olivia Marchmont hated her stepdaughter. Mary was not slow to perceive
+the change in the widow's manner towards her. It had always been cold,
+and sometimes severe; but it was now almost abhorrent. The girl shrank
+appalled from the sinister light in her stepmother's gray eyes, as they
+followed her unceasingly, dogging her footsteps with a hungry and evil
+gaze. The gentle girl wondered what she had done to offend her
+guardian, and then, being unable to think of any possible delinquency
+by which she might have incurred Mrs. Marchmont's displeasure, was fain
+to attribute the change in Olivia's manner to the irritation consequent
+upon her illness, and was thus more gentle and more submissive than of
+old; enduring cruel looks, returning no answer to bitter speeches, but
+striving to conciliate the supposed invalid by her sweetness and
+obedience.
+
+But the girl's amiability only irritated the despairing woman. Her
+jealousy fed upon every charm of the rival who had supplanted her. That
+fatal passion fed upon Edward Arundel's every look and tone, upon the
+quiet smile which rested on Mary's face as the girl sat over her
+embroidery, in meek silence, thinking of her lover. The self-tortures
+which Olivia Marchmont inflicted upon herself were so horrible to bear,
+that she turned, with a mad desire for relief, upon those she had the
+power to torture. Day by day, and hour by hour, she contrived to
+distress the gentle girl, who had so long obeyed her, now by a word,
+now by a look, but always with that subtle power of aggravation which
+some women possess in such an eminent degree--until Mary Marchmont's
+life became a burden to her, or would have so become, but for that
+inexpressible happiness, of which her tormentor could not deprive
+her,--the joy she felt in her knowledge of Edward Arundel's love.
+
+She was very careful to keep the secret of her stepmother's altered
+manner from the young soldier. Olivia was his cousin, and he had said
+long ago that she was to love her. Heaven knows she had tried to do so,
+and had failed most miserably; but her belief in Olivia's goodness was
+still unshaken. If Mrs. Marchmont was now irritable, capricious, and
+even cruel, there was doubtless some good reason for the alteration in
+her conduct; and it was Mary's duty to be patient. The orphan girl had
+learned to suffer quietly when the great affliction of her father's
+death had fallen upon her; and she suffered so quietly now, that even
+her lover failed to perceive any symptoms of her distress. How could
+she grieve him by telling him of her sorrows, when his very presence
+brought such unutterable joy to her?
+
+So, on the morning of the ball at Marchmont Towers,--the first
+entertainment of the kind that had been given in that grim Lincolnshire
+mansion since young Arthur Marchmont's untimely death,--Mary sat in her
+room, with her old friend Farmer Pollard's daughter, who was now Mrs.
+Jobson, the wife of the most prosperous carpenter in Kemberling. Hester
+had come up to the Towers to pay a dutiful visit to her young
+patroness; and upon this particular occasion Olivia had not cared to
+prevent Mary and her humble friend spending half an hour together. Mrs.
+Marchmont roamed from room to room upon this day, with a perpetual
+restlessness. Edward Arundel was to dine at the Towers, and was to
+sleep there after the ball. He was to drive his uncle over from
+Swampington, as the Rector had promised to show himself for an hour or
+two at his daughter's entertainment. Mary had met her stepmother
+several times that morning, in the corridors and on the staircase; but
+the widow had passed her in silence, with a dark face, and a shivering,
+almost abhorrent gesture.
+
+The bright July day dragged itself out at last, with hideous slowness
+for the desperate woman, who could not find peace or rest in all those
+splendid rooms, on all that grassy flat, dry and burning under the
+blazing summer sun. She had wandered out upon the waste of barren turf,
+with her head bared to the hot sky, and had loitered here and there by
+the still pools, looking gloomily at the black tideless water, and
+wondering what the agony of drowning was like. Not that she had any
+thought of killing herself. No: the idea of death was horrible to her;
+for after her death Edward and Mary would be happy. Could she ever find
+rest in the grave, knowing this? Could there be any possible extinction
+that would blot out her jealous fury? Surely the fire of her hate--it
+was no longer love, but hate, that raged in her heart--would defy
+annihilation, eternal by reason of its intensity. When the dinner-hour
+came, and Edward and his uncle arrived at the Towers, Olivia
+Marchmont's pale face was lit up with eyes that flamed like fire; but
+she took her accustomed place very quietly, with her father opposite to
+her, and Mary and Edward upon either side.
+
+"I'm sure you're ill, Livy," the young man said; "you're as pale as
+death, and your hand is dry and burning. I'm afraid you've not been
+obedient to the Swampington doctor."
+
+Mrs. Marchmont shrugged her shoulders with a short contemptuous laugh.
+
+"I am well enough," she said. "Who cares whether I am well or ill?"
+
+Her father looked up at her in mute surprise. The bitterness of her
+tone startled and alarmed him; but Mary never lifted her eyes. It was
+in such a tone as this that her stepmother had spoken constantly of
+late.
+
+But two or three hours afterwards, when the flats before the house were
+silvered by the moonlight, and the long ranges of windows glittered
+with the lamps within, Mrs. Marchmont emerged from her dressing-room
+another creature, as it seemed.
+
+Edward and his uncle were walking up and down the great oaken
+banqueting-hall, which had been decorated and fitted up as a ballroom
+for the occasion, when Olivia crossed the wide threshold of the
+chamber. The young officer looked up with an involuntary expression of
+surprise. In all his acquaintance with his cousin, he had never seen
+her thus. The gloomy black-robed woman was transformed into a
+Semiramis. She wore a voluminous dress of a deep claret-coloured
+velvet, that glowed with the warm hues of rich wine in the lamplight.
+Her massive hair was coiled in a knot at the back of her head, and
+diamonds glittered amidst the thick bands that framed her broad white
+brow. Her stern classical beauty was lit up by the unwonted splendour
+of her dress, and asserted itself as obviously as if she had said, "Am
+I a woman to be despised for the love of a pale-faced child?"
+
+Mary Marchmont came into the room a few minutes after her stepmother.
+Her lover ran to welcome her, and looked fondly at her simple dress of
+shadowy white crape, and the pearl circlet that crowned her soft brown
+hair. The pearls she wore upon this night had been given to her by her
+father on her fourteenth birthday.
+
+Olivia watched the young man as he bent over Mary Marchmont.
+
+He wore his uniform to-night for the special gratification of his young
+mistress, and he was looking down with a tender smile at her childish
+admiration of the bullion ornaments upon his coat, and the decoration
+he had won in India.
+
+The widow looked from the two lovers to an antique glass upon an ebony
+bureau in a niche opposite to her, which reflected her own face,--her
+own face, more beautiful than she had ever seen it before, with a
+feverish glow of vivid crimson lighting up her hollow cheeks.
+
+"I might have been beautiful if he had loved me," she thought; and then
+she turned to her father, and began to talk to him of his parishioners,
+the old pensioners upon her bounty, whose little histories were so
+hatefully familiar to her. Once more she made a feeble effort to tread
+the old hackneyed pathway, which she had toiled upon with such weary
+feet; but she could not,--she could not. After a few minutes she turned
+abruptly from the Rector, and seated herself in a recess of the window,
+from which she could see Edward and Mary.
+
+But Mrs. Marchmont's duties as hostess soon demanded her attention. The
+county families began to arrive; the sound of carriage-wheels seemed
+perpetual upon the crisp gravel-drive before the western front; the
+names of half the great people in Lincolnshire were shouted by the old
+servants in the hall. The band in the music-gallery struck up a
+quadrille, and Edward Arundel led the youthful mistress of the mansion
+to her place in the dance.
+
+To Olivia that long night seemed all glare and noise and confusion. She
+did the honours of the ballroom, she received her guests, she meted out
+due attention to all; for she had been accustomed from her earliest
+girlhood to the stereotyped round of country society. She neglected no
+duty; but she did all mechanically, scarcely knowing what she said or
+did in the feverish tumult of her soul.
+
+Yet, amidst all the bewilderment of her senses, in all the confusion of
+her thoughts, two figures were always before her. Wherever Edward
+Arundel and Mary Marchmont went, her eyes followed them--her fevered
+imagination pursued them. Once, and once only, in the course of that
+long night she spoke to her stepdaughter.
+
+"How often do you mean to dance with Captain Arundel, Miss Marchmont?"
+she said.
+
+But before Mary could answer, her stepmother had moved away upon the
+arm of a portly country squire, and the girl was left in sorrowful
+wonderment as to the reason of Mrs. Marchmont's angry tone.
+
+Edward and Mary were standing in one of the deep embayed windows of the
+banqueting-hall, when the dancers began to disperse, long after supper.
+The girl had been very happy that evening, in spite of her stepmother's
+bitter words and disdainful glances. For almost the first time in her
+life, the young mistress of Marchmont Towers had felt the contagious
+influence of other people's happiness. The brilliantly-lighted
+ballroom, the fluttering dresses of the dancers, the joyous music, the
+low sound of suppressed laughter, the bright faces which smiled at each
+other upon every side, were as new as any thing in fairyland to this
+girl, whose narrow life had been overshadowed by the gloomy figure of
+her stepmother, for ever interposed between her and the outer world.
+The young spirit arose and shook off its fetters, fresh and radiant as
+the butterfly that escapes from its chrysalis. The new light of
+happiness illumined the orphan's delicate face, until Edward Arundel
+began to wonder at her loveliness, as he had wondered once before that
+night at the fiery splendour of his cousin Olivia.
+
+"I had no idea that Olivia was so handsome, or you so pretty, my
+darling," he said, as he stood with Mary in the embrasure of the
+window. "You look like Titania, the queen of the fairies, Polly, with
+your cloudy draperies and crown of pearls."
+
+The window was open, and Captain Arundel looked wistfully at the broad
+flagged quadrangle beautified by the light of the full summer moon. He
+glanced back into the room; it was nearly empty now; and Mrs. Marchmont
+was standing near the principal doorway, bidding the last of her guests
+goodnight.
+
+"Come into the quadrangle, Polly," he said, "and take a turn with me
+under the colonnade. It was a cloister once, I dare say, in the good
+old days before Harry the Eighth was king; and cowled monks have paced
+up and down under its shadow, muttering mechanical aves and
+paternosters, as the beads of their rosaries dropped slowly through
+their shrivelled old fingers. Come out into the quadrangle, Polly; all
+the people we know or care about are gone; and we'll go out and walk in
+the moonlight as true lovers ought."
+
+The soldier led his young companion across the threshold of the window,
+and out into a cloister-like colonnade that ran along one side of the
+house. The shadows of the Gothic pillars were black upon the moonlit
+flags of the quadrangle, which was as light now as in the day; but a
+pleasant obscurity reigned in the sheltered colonnade.
+
+"I think this little bit of pre-Lutheran masonry is the best of all
+your possessions, Polly," the young man said, laughing. "By-and-by,
+when I come home from India a general,--as I mean to do, Miss
+Marchmont, before I ask you to become Mrs. Arundel,--I shall stroll up
+and down here in the still summer evenings, smoking my cheroots. You
+will let me smoke out of doors, won't you, Polly? But suppose I should
+leave some of my limbs on the banks of the Sutlej, and come limping
+home to you with a wooden leg, would you have me then, Mary; or would
+you dismiss me with ignominy from your sweet presence, and shut the
+doors of your stony mansion upon myself and my calamities? I'm afraid,
+from your admiration of my gold epaulettes and silk sash, that glory in
+the abstract would have very little attraction for you."
+
+Mary Marchmont looked up at her lover with widely-opened and wondering
+eyes, and the clasp of her hand tightened a little upon his arm.
+
+"There is nothing that could ever happen to you that would make me love
+you less _now_," she said naively. "I dare say at first I liked you a
+little because you were handsome, and different to every one else I had
+ever seen. You were so very handsome, you know," she added
+apologetically; "but it was not because of that _only_ that I loved
+you. I loved you because papa told me you were good and generous, and
+his true friend when he was in cruel need of a friend. Yes; you were
+his friend at school, when your cousin, Martin Mostyn, and the other
+pupils sneered at him and ridiculed him. How can I ever forget that,
+Edward? How can I ever love you enough to repay you for that?" In the
+enthusiasm of her innocent devotion, she lifted her pure young brow,
+and the soldier bent down and kissed that white throne of all virginal
+thoughts, as the lovers stood side by side; half in the moonlight, half
+in the shadow.
+
+Olivia Marchmont came into the embrasure of the open window, and took
+her place there to watch them.
+
+She came again to the torture. From the remotest end of the long
+banqueting-room she had seen the two figures glide out into the
+moonlight. She had seen them, and had gone on with her courteous
+speeches, and had repeated her formula of hospitality, with the fire in
+her heart devouring and consuming her. She came again, to watch and to
+listen, and to endure her self-imposed agonies--as mad and foolish in
+her fatal passion as some besotted wretch who should come willingly to
+the wheel upon which his limbs had been well-nigh broken, and
+supplicate for a renewal of the torture. She stood rigid and motionless
+in the shadow of the arched window, hiding herself, as she had hidden
+in the dark cavernous recess by the river; she stood and listened to
+all the childish babble of the lovers as they loitered up and down the
+vaulted cloister. How she despised them, in the haughty superiority of
+an intellect which might have planned a revolution, or saved a sinking
+state! What bitter scorn curled her lip, as their foolish talk fell
+upon her ear! They talked like Florizel and Perdita, like Romeo and
+Juliet, like Paul and Virginia; and they talked a great deal of
+nonsense, no doubt--soft harmonious foolishness, with little more
+meaning in it than there is in the cooing of doves, but tender and
+musical, and more than beautiful, to each other's ears. A tigress,
+famished and desolate, and but lately robbed of her whelps, would not
+be likely to listen very patiently to the communing of a pair of
+prosperous ringdoves. Olivia Marchmont listened with her brain on fire,
+and the spirit of a murderess raging in her breast. What was she that
+she should be patient? All the world was lost to her. She was thirty
+years of age, and she had never yet won the love of any human being.
+She was thirty years of age, and all the sublime world of affection was
+a dismal blank for her. From the outer darkness in which she stood, she
+looked with wild and ignorant yearning into that bright region which
+her accursed foot had never trodden, and saw Mary Marchmont wandering
+hand-in-hand with the only man _she_ could have loved--the only
+creature who had ever had the power to awake the instinct of womanhood
+in her soul.
+
+She stood and waited until the clock in the quadrangle struck the first
+quarter after three: the moon was fading out, and the colder light of
+early morning glimmered in the eastern sky.
+
+"I mustn't keep you out here any longer, Polly," Captain Arundel said,
+pausing near the window. "It's getting cold, my dear, and it's high
+time the mistress of Marchmont should retire to her stony bower.
+Good-night, and God bless you, my darling! I'll stop in the quadrangle
+and smoke a cheroot before I go to my room. Your stepmamma will be
+wondering what has become of you, Mary, and we shall have a lecture
+upon the proprieties to-morrow; so, once more, good-night."
+
+He kissed the fair young brow under the coronal of pearls, stopped to
+watch Mary while she crossed the threshold of the open window, and then
+strolled away into the flagged court, with his cigar-case in his hand.
+
+Olivia Marchmont stood a few paces from the window when her
+stepdaughter entered the room, and Mary paused involuntarily, terrified
+by the cruel aspect of the face that frowned upon her: terrified by
+something that she had never seen before,--the horrible darkness that
+overshadows the souls of the lost.
+
+"Mamma!" the girl cried, clasping her hands in sudden affright--"mamma!
+why do you look at me like that? Why have you been so changed to me
+lately? I cannot tell you how unhappy I have been. Mamma, mamma! what
+have I done to offend you?"
+
+Olivia Marchmont grasped the trembling hands uplifted entreatingly to
+her, and held them in her own,--held them as if in a vice. She stood
+thus, with her stepdaughter pinioned in her grasp, and her eyes fixed
+upon the girl's face. Two streams of lurid light seemed to emanate from
+those dilated gray eyes; two spots of crimson blazed in the widow's
+hollow cheeks.
+
+"_What_ have you done?" she cried. "Do you think I have toiled for
+nothing to do the duty which I promised my dead husband to perform for
+your sake? Has all my care of you been so little, that I am to stand by
+now and be silent, when I see what you are? Do you think that I am
+blind, or deaf, or besotted; that you defy me and outrage me, day by
+day, and hour by hour, by your conduct?"
+
+"Mamma, mamma! what do you mean?"
+
+"Heaven knows how rigidly you have been educated; how carefully you
+have been secluded from all society, and sheltered from every
+influence, lest harm or danger should come to you. I have done my duty,
+and I wash my hands of you. The debasing taint of your mother's low
+breeding reveals itself in your every action. You run after my cousin
+Edward Arundel, and advertise your admiration of him, to himself, and
+every creature who knows you. You fling yourself into his arms, and
+offer him yourself and your fortune: and in your low cunning you try to
+keep the secret from me, your protectress and guardian, appointed by
+the dead father whom you pretend to have loved so dearly."
+
+Olivia Marchmont still held her stepdaughter's wrists in her iron
+grasp. The girl stared wildly at her with her trembling lips apart. She
+began to think that the widow had gone mad.
+
+"I blush for you--I am ashamed of you!" cried Olivia. It seemed as if
+the torrent of her words burst forth almost in spite of herself. "There
+is not a village girl in Kemberling, there is not a scullerymaid in
+this house, who would have behaved as you have done. I have watched
+you, Mary Marchmont, remember, and I know all. I know your wanderings
+down by the river-side. I heard you--yes, by the Heaven above me!--I
+heard you offer yourself to my cousin."
+
+Mary drew herself up with an indignant gesture, and over the whiteness
+of her face there swept a sudden glow of vivid crimson that faded as
+quickly as it came. Her submissive nature revolted against her
+stepmother's horrible tyranny. The dignity of innocence arose and
+asserted itself against Olivia's shameful upbraiding.
+
+"If I offered myself to Edward Arundel, mamma," she said, "it was
+because we love each other very truly, and because I think and believe
+papa wished me to marry his old friend."
+
+"Because _we_ love each other very truly!" Olivia echoed in a tone of
+unmitigated scorn. "You can answer for Captain Arundel's heart, I
+suppose, then, as well as for your own? You must have a tolerably good
+opinion of yourself, Miss Marchmont, to be able to venture so much.
+Bah!" she cried suddenly, with a disdainful gesture of her head; "do
+you think your pitiful face has won Edward Arundel? Do you think he has
+not had women fifty times your superior, in every quality of mind and
+body, at his feet out yonder in India? Are you idiotic and besotted
+enough to believe that it is anything but your fortune this man cares
+for? Do you know the vile things people will do, the lies they will
+tell, the base comedies of guilt and falsehood they will act, for the
+love of eleven thousand a year? And you think that he loves you! Child,
+dupe, fool! are you weak enough to be deluded by a fortune-hunter's
+pretty pastoral flatteries? Are you weak enough to be duped by a man of
+the world, worn out and jaded, no doubt, as to the world's
+pleasures--in debt perhaps, and in pressing need of money, who comes
+here to try and redeem his fortunes by a marriage with a semi-imbecile
+heiress?"
+
+Olivia Marchmont released her hold of the shrinking girl, who seemed to
+have become transfixed to the spot upon which she stood, a pale statue
+of horror and despair.
+
+The iron will of the strong and resolute woman rode roughshod over the
+simple confidence of the ignorant girl. Until this moment, Mary
+Marchmont had believed in Edward Arundel as implicitly as she had
+trusted in her dead father. But now, for the first time, a dreadful
+region of doubt opened before her; the foundations of her world reeled
+beneath her feet. Edward Arundel a fortune-hunter! This woman, whom she
+had obeyed for five weary years, and who had acquired that ascendancy
+over her which a determined and vigorous nature must always exercise
+over a morbidly sensitive disposition, told her that she had been
+deluded. This woman laughed aloud in bitter scorn of her credulity.
+This woman, who could have no possible motive for torturing her, and
+who was known to be scrupulously conscientious in all her dealings,
+told her, as plainly as the most cruel words could tell a cruel truth,
+that her own charms could not have won Edward Arundel's affection.
+
+All the beautiful day-dreams of her life melted away from her. She had
+never questioned herself as to her worthiness of her lover's devotion.
+She had accepted it as she accepted the sunshine and the starlight--as
+something beautiful and incomprehensible, that came to her by the
+beneficence of God, and not through any merits of her own. But as the
+fabric of her happiness dwindled away, the fatal spell exercised over
+the girl's weak nature by Olivia's violent words evoked a hundred
+doubts. How should he love her? why should he love her in preference to
+every other woman in the world? Set any woman to ask herself this
+question, and you fill her mind with a thousand suspicions, a thousand
+jealous doubts of her lover, though he were the truest and noblest in
+the universe.
+
+Olivia Marchmont stood a few paces from her stepdaughter, watching her
+while the black shadow of doubt blotted every joy from her heart, and
+utter despair crept slowly into her innocent breast. The widow expected
+that the girl's self-esteem would assert itself--that she would
+contradict and defy the traducer of her lover's truth; but it was not
+so. When Mary spoke again, her voice was low and subdued, her manner as
+submissive as it had been two or three years before, when she had stood
+before her stepmother, waiting to repeat some difficult lesson.
+
+"I dare say you are right, mamma," she said in a low dreamy tone,
+looking not at her stepmother, but straight before her into vacancy, as
+if her tearless eyes ware transfixed by the vision of all her shattered
+hopes, filling with wreck and ruin the desolate foreground of a blank
+future. "I dare say you are right, mamma; it was very foolish of me to
+think that Edward--that Captain Arundel could care for me, for--for--my
+own sake; but if--if he wants my fortune, I should wish him to have it.
+The money will never be any good to me, you know, mamma; and he was so
+kind to papa in his poverty--so kind! I will never, never believe
+anything against him;--but I couldn't expect him to love me. I
+shouldn't have offered to be his wife; I ought only to have offered him
+my fortune."
+
+She heard her lover's footstep in the quadrangle without, in the
+stillness of the summer morning, and shivered at the sound. It was less
+than a quarter of an hour since she had been walking with him up and
+down that cloistered way, in which his footsteps were echoing with a
+hollow sound; and now----. Even in the confusion of her anguish, Mary
+Marchmont could not help wondering, as she thought in how short a time
+the happiness of a future might be swept away into chaos.
+
+"Good-night, mamma," she said presently, with an accent of weariness.
+She did not look at her stepmother (who had turned away from her now,
+and had walked towards the open window), but stole quietly from the
+room, crossed the hall, and went up the broad staircase to her own
+lonely chamber. Heiress though she was, she had no special attendant of
+her own: she had the privilege of summoning Olivia's maid whenever she
+had need of assistance; but she retained the simple habits of her early
+life, and very rarely troubled Mrs. Marchmont's grim and elderly
+Abigail.
+
+Olivia stood looking out into the stony quadrangle. It was broad
+daylight now; the cocks were crowing in the distance, and a skylark
+singing somewhere in the blue heaven, high up above Marchmont Towers.
+The faded garlands in the banqueting-room looked wan in the morning
+sunshine; the lamps were burning still, for the servants waited until
+Mrs. Marchmont should have retired, before they entered the room.
+Edward Arundel was walking up and down the cloister, smoking his second
+cigar.
+
+He stopped presently, seeing his cousin at the window.
+
+"What, Livy!" he cried, "not gone to bed yet?"
+
+"No; I am going directly."
+
+"Mary has gone, I hope?"
+
+"Yes; she has gone. Good-night."
+
+"Good _morning_, my dear Mrs. Marchmont," the young man answered,
+laughing. "If the partridges were in, I should be going out shooting,
+this lovely morning, instead of crawling ignominiously to bed, like a
+worn-out reveller who has drunk too much sparkling hock. I like the
+still best, by-the-bye,--the Johannisberger, that poor John's
+predecessor imported from the Rhine. But I suppose there is no help for
+it, and I must go to bed in the face of all that eastern glory. I
+should be mounting for a gallop on the race-course, if I were in
+Calcutta. But I'll go to bed, Mrs Marchmont, and humbly await your
+breakfast-hour. They're stacking the new hay in the meadows beyond the
+park. Don't you smell it?"
+
+Olivia shrugged her shoulders with an impatient frown. Good heavens!
+how frivolous and senseless this man's talk seemed to her! She was
+plunging her soul into an abyss of sin and ruin for his sake; and she
+hated him, and rebelled against him, because he was so little worthy of
+the sacrifice.
+
+"Good morning," she said abruptly; "I'm tired to death."
+
+She moved away, and left him.
+
+Five minutes afterwards, he went up the great oak-staircase after her,
+whistling a serenade from _Fra Diavolo_ as he went. He was one of those
+people to whom life seems all holiday. Younger son though he was, he
+had never known any of the pitfalls of debt and difficulty into which
+the junior members of rich families are so apt to plunge headlong in
+early youth, and from which they emerge enfeebled and crippled, to
+endure an after-life embittered by all the shabby miseries which wait
+upon aristocratic pauperism. Brave, honourable, and simple-minded,
+Edward Arundel had fought the battle of life like a good soldier, and
+had carried a stainless shield when the fight was thickest, and victory
+hard to win. His sunshiny nature won him friends, and his better
+qualities kept them. Young men trusted and respected him; and old men,
+gray in the service of their country, spoke well of him. His handsome
+face was a pleasant decoration at any festival; his kindly voice and
+hearty laugh at a dinner-table were as good as music in the gallery at
+the end of the banqueting-chamber.
+
+He had that freshness of spirit which is the peculiar gift of some
+natures; and he had as yet never known sorrow, except, indeed, such
+tender and compassionate sympathy as he had often felt for the
+calamities of others.
+
+Olivia Marchmont heard her cousin's cheery tenor voice as he passed her
+chamber. "How happy he is!" she thought. "His very happiness is one
+insult the more to me."
+
+The widow paced up and down her room in the morning sunshine, thinking
+of the things she had said in the banqueting-hall below, and of her
+stepdaughter's white despairing face. What had she done? What was the
+extent of the sin she had committed? Olivia Marchmont asked herself
+these two questions. The old habit of self-examination was not quite
+abandoned yet. She sinned, and then set herself to work to try and
+justify her sin.
+
+"How should he love her?" she thought. "What is there in her pale
+unmeaning face that should win the love of a man who despises me?"
+
+She stopped before a cheval-glass, and surveyed herself from head to
+foot, frowning angrily at her handsome image, hating herself for her
+despised beauty. Her white shoulders looked like stainless marble
+against the rich ruby darkness of her velvet dress. She had snatched
+the diamond ornaments from her head, and her long black hair fell about
+her bosom in thick waveless tresses.
+
+"I am handsomer than she is, and cleverer; and I love him better, ten
+thousand times, than she loves him," Olivia Marchmont thought, as she
+turned contemptuously from the glass. "Is it likely, then, that he
+cares for anything but her fortune? Any other woman in the world would
+have argued as I argued to-night. Any woman would have believed that
+she did her duty in warning this besotted girl against her folly. What
+do I know of Edward Arundel that should lead me to think him better or
+nobler than other men? and how many men sell themselves for the love of
+a woman's wealth! Perhaps good may come of my mad folly, after all; and
+I may have saved this girl from a life of misery by the words I have
+spoken to-night."
+
+The devils--for ever lying in wait for this woman, whose gloomy pride
+rendered her in some manner akin to themselves--may have laughed at her
+as she argued thus with herself.
+
+She lay down at last to sleep, worn out by the excitement of the long
+night, and to dream horrible dreams. The servants, with the exception
+of one who rose betimes to open the great house, slept long after the
+unwonted festival. Edward Arundel slumbered as heavily as any member of
+that wearied household; and thus it was that there was no one in the
+way to see a shrinking, trembling figure creep down the
+sunlit-staircase, and steal across the threshold of the wide hall door.
+
+There was no one to see Mary Marchmont's silent flight from the gaunt
+Lincolnshire mansion in which she had known so little real happiness.
+There was no one to comfort the sorrow-stricken girl in her despair and
+desolation of spirit. She crept away, like some escaped prisoner, in
+the early morning, from the house which the law called her own.
+
+And the hand of the woman whom John Marchmont had chosen to be his
+daughter's friend and counsellor was the hand which drove that daughter
+from the shelter of her home. The voice of her whom the weak father had
+trusted in, fearful to confide his child into the hand of God, but
+blindly confident in his own judgment--was the voice which had uttered
+the lying words, whose every syllable had been as a separate dagger
+thrust in the orphan girl's lacerated heart. It was her father,--her
+father, who had placed this woman over her, and had entailed upon her
+the awful agony that drove her out into an unknown world, careless
+whither she went in her despair.
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME II.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+MARY'S LETTER.
+
+
+It was past twelve o'clock when Edward Arundel strolled into the
+dining-room. The windows were open, and the scent of the mignionette
+upon the terrace was blown in upon the warm summer breeze.
+
+Mrs. Marchmont was sitting at one end of the long table, reading a
+newspaper. She looked up as Edward entered the room. She was pale, but
+not much paler than usual. The feverish light had faded out of her
+eyes, and they looked dim and heavy.
+
+"Good morning, Livy," the young man said. "Mary is not up yet, I
+suppose?"
+
+"I believe not."
+
+"Poor little girl! A long rest will do her good after her first ball.
+How pretty and fairy-like she looked in her white gauze dress, and with
+that circlet of pearls round her hair! Your taste, I suppose, Olivia?
+She looked like a snow-drop among all the other gaudy flowers,--the
+roses and tiger-lilies, and peonies and dahlias. That eldest Miss
+Hickman is handsome, but she's so terribly conscious of her
+attractions. That little girl from Swampington with the black ringlets
+is rather pretty; and Laura Filmer is a jolly, dashing girl; she looks
+you full in the face, and talks to you about hunting with as much gusto
+as an old whipper-in. I don't think much of Major Hawley's three tall
+sandy-haired daughters; but Fred Hawley's a capital fellow: it's a pity
+he's a civilian. In short, my dear Olivia, take it altogether, I think
+your ball was a success, and I hope you'll give us another in the
+hunting-season."
+
+Mrs. Marchmont did not condescend to reply to her cousin's meaningless
+rattle. She sighed wearily, and began to fill the tea-pot from the
+old-fashioned silver urn. Edward loitered in one of the windows,
+whistling to a peacock that was stalking solemnly backwards and
+forwards upon the stone balustrade.
+
+"I should like to drive you and Mary down to the seashore, Livy, after
+breakfast. Will you go?"
+
+Mrs. Marchmont shook her head.
+
+"I am a great deal too tired to think of going out to-day," she said
+ungraciously.
+
+"And I never felt fresher in my life," the young man responded,
+laughing; "last night's festivities seem to have revivified me. I wish
+Mary would come down," he added, with a yawn; "I could give her another
+lesson in billiards, at any rate. Poor little girl, I am afraid she'll
+never make a cannon."
+
+Captain Arundel sat down to his breakfast, and drank the cup of tea
+poured out for him by Olivia. Had she been a sinful woman of another
+type, she would have put arsenic into the cup perhaps, and so have made
+an end of the young officer and of her own folly. As it was, she only
+sat by, with her own untasted breakfast before her, and watched him
+while he ate a plateful of raised pie, and drank his cup of tea, with
+the healthy appetite which generally accompanies youth and a good
+conscience. He sprang up from the table directly he had finished his
+meal, and cried out impatiently, "What can make Mary so lazy this
+morning? she is usually such an early riser."
+
+Mrs. Marchmont rose as her cousin said this, and a vague feeling of
+uneasiness took possession of her mind. She remembered the white face
+which had blanched beneath the angry glare of her eyes, the blank look
+of despair that had come over Mary's countenance a few hours before.
+
+"I will go and call her myself," she said. "N--no; I'll send Barbara."
+She did not wait to ring the bell, but went into the hall, and called
+sharply, "Barbara! Barbara!"
+
+A woman came out of a passage leading to the housekeeper's room, in
+answer to Mrs. Marchmont's call; a woman of about fifty years of age,
+dressed in gray stuff, and with a grave inscrutable face, a wooden
+countenance that gave no token of its owner's character. Barbara
+Simmons might have been the best or the worst of women, a Mrs. Fry or a
+Mrs. Brownrigg, for any evidence her face afforded against either
+hypothesis.
+
+"I want you to go up-stairs, Barbara, and call Miss Marchmont," Olivia
+said. "Captain Arundel and I have finished breakfast."
+
+The woman obeyed, and Mrs. Marchmont returned to the dining-room, where
+Edward was trying to amuse himself with the "Times" of the previous
+day.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards Barbara Simmons came into the room carrying a
+letter on a silver waiter. Had the document been a death-warrant, or a
+telegraphic announcement of the landing of the French at Dover, the
+well-trained servant would have placed it upon a salver before
+presenting it to her mistress.
+
+"Miss Marchmont is not in her room, ma'am," she said; "the bed has not
+been slept on; and I found this letter, addressed to Captain Arundel,
+upon the table."
+
+Olivia's face grew livid; a horrible dread rushed into her mind. Edward
+snatched the letter which the servant held towards him.
+
+"Mary not in her room! What, in Heaven's name, can it mean?" he cried.
+
+He tore open the letter. The writing was not easily decipherable for
+the tears which the orphan girl had shed over it.
+
+"MY OWN DEAR EDWARD,--I have loved you so dearly and so foolishly, and
+you have been so kind to me, that I have quite forgotten how unworthy I
+am of your affection. But I am forgetful no longer. Something has
+happened which has opened my eyes to my own folly,--I know now that you
+did not love me; that I had no claim to your love; no charms or
+attractions such as so many other women possess, and for which you
+might have loved me. I know this now, dear Edward, and that all my
+happiness has been a foolish dream; but do not think that I blame any
+one but myself for what has happened. Take my fortune: long ago, when I
+was a little girl, I asked my father to let me share it with you. I ask
+you now to take it all, dear friend; and I go away for ever from a
+house in which I have learnt how little happiness riches can give. Do
+not be unhappy about me. I shall pray for you always,--always
+remembering your goodness to my dead father; always looking back to the
+day upon which you came to see us in our poor lodging. I am very
+ignorant of all worldly business, but I hope the law will let me give
+you Marchmont Towers, and all my fortune, whatever it may be. Let Mr.
+Paulette see this latter part of my letter, and let him fully
+understand that I abandon all my rights to you from this day. Good-bye,
+dear friend; think of me sometimes, but never think of me sorrowfully.
+
+"MARY MARCHMONT."
+
+This was all. This was the letter which the heart-broken girl had
+written to her lover. It was in no manner different from the letter she
+might have written to him nine years before in Oakley Street. It was as
+childish in its ignorance and inexperience; as womanly in its tender
+self-abnegation.
+
+Edward Arundel stared at the simple lines like a man in a dream,
+doubtful of his own identity, doubtful of the reality of the world
+about him, in his hopeless wonderment. He read the letter line by line
+again and again, first in dull stupefaction, and muttering the words
+mechanically as he read them, then with the full light of their meaning
+dawning gradually upon him.
+
+Her fortune! He had never loved her! She had discovered her own folly!
+What did it all mean? What was the clue to the mystery of this letter,
+which had stunned and bewildered him, until the very power of
+reflection seemed lost? The dawning of that day had seen their parting,
+and the innocent face had been lifted to his, beaming with love and
+trust. And now--? The letter dropped from his hand, and fluttered
+slowly to the ground. Olivia Marchmont stooped to pick it up. Her
+movement aroused the young man from his stupor, and in that moment he
+caught the sight of his cousin's livid face.
+
+He started as if a thunderbolt had burst at his feet. An idea, sudden
+as some inspired revelation, rushed into his mind.
+
+"Read that letter, Olivia Marchmont!" he said.
+
+The woman obeyed. Slowly and deliberately she read the childish epistle
+which Mary had written to her lover. In every line, in every word, the
+widow saw the effect of her own deadly work; she saw how deeply the
+poison, dropped from her own envenomed tongue, had sunk into the
+innocent heart of the girl.
+
+Edward Arundel watched her with flaming eyes. His tall soldierly frame
+trembled in the intensity of his passion. He followed his cousin's eyes
+along the lines in Mary Marchmont's letter, waiting till she should
+come to the end. Then the tumultuous storm of indignation burst forth,
+until Olivia cowered beneath the lightning of her cousin's glance.
+
+Was this the man she had called frivolous? Was this the boyish
+red-coated dandy she had despised? Was this the curled and perfumed
+representative of swelldom, whose talk never soared to higher flights
+than the description of a day's snipe-shooting, or a run with the
+Burleigh fox-hounds? The wicked woman's eyelids drooped over her
+averted eyes; she turned away, shrinking from this fearless accuser.
+
+"This mischief is some of _your_ work, Olivia Marchmont!" Edward
+Arundel cried. "It is you who have slandered and traduced me to my dead
+friend's daughter! Who else would dare accuse a Dangerfield Arundel of
+baseness? who else would be vile enough to call my father's son a liar
+and a traitor? It is you who have whispered shameful insinuations into
+this poor child's innocent ear! I scarcely need the confirmation of
+your ghastly face to tell me this. It is you who have driven Mary
+Marchmont from the home in which you should have sheltered and
+protected her! You envied her, I suppose,--envied her the thousands
+which might have ministered to your wicked pride and ambition;--the
+pride which has always held you aloof from those who might have loved
+you; the ambition that has made you a soured and discontented woman,
+whose gloomy face repels all natural affection. You envied the gentle
+girl whom your dead husband committed to your care, and who should have
+been most sacred to you. You envied her, and seized the first occasion
+upon which you might stab her to the very core of her tender heart.
+What other motive could you have had for doing this deadly wrong? None,
+so help me Heaven!"
+
+No other motive! Olivia Marchmont dropped down in a heap on the ground
+near her cousin's feet; not kneeling, but grovelling upon the carpeted
+floor, writhing convulsively, with her hands twisted one in the other,
+and her head falling forward on her breast. She uttered no syllable of
+self-justification or denial. The pitiless words rained down upon her
+provoked no reply. But in the depths of her heart sounded the echo of
+Edward Arundel's words: "The pride which has always held you aloof from
+those who might have loved you; . . . a discontented woman, whose
+gloomy face repels all natural affection."
+
+"O God!" she thought, "he might have loved me, then! He _might_ have
+loved me, if I could have locked my anguish in my own heart, and smiled
+at him and flattered him."
+
+And then an icy indifference took possession of her. What did it matter
+that Edward Arundel repudiated and hated her? He had never loved her.
+His careless friendliness had made as wide a gulf between them as his
+bitterest hate could ever make. Perhaps, indeed, his new-born hate
+would be nearer to love than his indifference had been, for at least he
+would think of her now, if he thought ever so bitterly.
+
+"Listen to me, Olivia Marchmont," the young man said, while the woman
+still crouched upon the ground near his feet, self-confessed in the
+abandonment of her despair. "Wherever this girl may have gone, driven
+hence by your wickedness, I will follow her. My answer to the lie you
+have insinuated against me shall be my immediate marriage with my old
+friend's orphan child. _He_ knew me well enough to know how far I was
+above the baseness of a fortune-hunter, and he wished that I should be
+his daughter's husband. I should be a coward and a fool were I to be
+for one moment influenced by such a slander as that which you have
+whispered in Mary Marchmont's ear. It is not the individual only whom
+you traduce. You slander the cloth I wear, the family to which I
+belong; and my best justification will be the contempt in which I hold
+your infamous insinuations. When you hear that I have squandered Mary
+Marchmont's fortune, or cheated the children I pray God she may live to
+bear me, it will be time enough for you to tell the world that your
+kinsman Edward Dangerfield Arundel is a swindler and a traitor."
+
+He strode out into the hall, leaving his cousin on the ground; and she
+heard his voice outside the dining-room door making inquiries of the
+servants.
+
+They could tell him nothing of Mary's flight. Her bed had not been
+slept in; nobody had seen her leave the house; it was most likely,
+therefore, that she had stolen away very early, before the servants
+were astir.
+
+Where had she gone? Edward Arundel's heart beat wildly as he asked
+himself that question. He remembered how often he had heard of women,
+as young and innocent as Mary Marchmont, who had rushed to destroy
+themselves in a tumult of agony and despair. How easily this poor
+child, who believed that her dream of happiness was for ever broken,
+might have crept down through the gloomy wood to the edge of the
+sluggish river, to drop into the weedy stream, and hide her sorrow
+under the quiet water. He could fancy her, a new Ophelia, pale and pure
+as the Danish prince's slighted love, floating past the weird branches
+of the willows, borne up for a while by the current, to sink in silence
+amongst the shadows farther down the stream.
+
+He thought of these things in one moment, and in the next dismissed the
+thought. Mary's letter breathed the spirit of gentle resignation rather
+than of wild despair. "I shall always pray for you; I shall always
+remember you," she had written. Her lover remembered how much sorrow
+the orphan girl had endured in her brief life. He looked back to her
+childish days of poverty and self-denial; her early loss of her mother;
+her grief at her father's second marriage; the shock of that beloved
+father's death. Her sorrows had followed each other in gloomy
+succession, with only narrow intervals of peace between them. She was
+accustomed, therefore, to grief. It is the soul untutored by
+affliction, the rebellious heart that has never known calamity, which
+becomes mad and desperate, and breaks under the first blow. Mary
+Marchmont had learned the habit of endurance in the hard school of
+sorrow.
+
+Edward Arundel walked out upon the terrace, and re-read the missing
+girl's letter. He was calmer now, and able to face the situation with
+all its difficulties and perplexities. He was losing time perhaps in
+stopping to deliberate; but it was no use to rush off in reckless
+haste, undetermined in which direction he should seek for the lost
+mistress of Marchmont Towers. One of the grooms was busy in the stables
+saddling Captain Arundel's horse, and in the mean time the young man
+went out alone upon the sunny terrace to deliberate upon Mary's letter.
+
+Complete resignation was expressed in every line of that childish
+epistle. The heiress spoke most decisively as to her abandonment of her
+fortune and her home. It was clear, then, that she meant to leave
+Lincolnshire; for she would know that immediate steps would be taken to
+discover her hiding-place, and bring her back to Marchmont Towers.
+
+Where was she likely to go in her inexperience of the outer world?
+where but to those humble relations of her dead mother's, of whom her
+father had spoken in his letter to Edward Arundel, and with whom the
+young man knew she had kept up an occasional correspondence, sending
+them many little gifts out of her pocket-money. These people were small
+tenant-farmers, at a place called Marlingford, in Berkshire. Edward
+knew their name and the name of the farm.
+
+"I'll make inquiries at the Kemberling station to begin with," he
+thought. "There's a through train from the north that stops at
+Kemberling at a little before six. My poor darling may have easily
+caught that, if she left the house at five."
+
+Captain Arundel went back into the hall, and summoned Barbara Simmons.
+The woman replied with rather a sulky air to his numerous questions;
+but she told him that Miss Marchmont had left her ball-dress upon the
+bed, and had put on a gray cashmere dress trimmed with black ribbon,
+which she had worn as half-mourning for her father; a black straw
+bonnet, with a crape veil, and a silk mantle trimmed with crape. She
+had taken with her a small carpet-bag, some linen,--for the
+linen-drawer of her wardrobe was open, and the things scattered
+confusedly about,--and the little morocco case in which she kept her
+pearl ornaments, and the diamond ring left her by her father.
+
+"Had she any money?" Edward asked.
+
+"Yes, sir; she was never without money. She spent a good deal amongst
+the poor people she visited with my mistress; but I dare say she may
+have had between ten and twenty pounds in her purse."
+
+"She will go to Berkshire," Edward Arundel thought: "the idea of going
+to her humble friends would be the first to present itself to her mind.
+She will go to her dead mother's sister, and give her all her jewels,
+and ask for shelter in the quiet farmhouse. She will act like one of
+the heroines in the old-fashioned novels she used to read in Oakley
+Street, the simple-minded damsels of those innocent story-books, who
+think nothing of resigning a castle and a coronet, and going out into
+the world to work for their daily bread in a white satin gown, and with
+a string of pearls to bind their dishevelled locks."
+
+Captain Arundel's horse was brought round to the terrace-steps, as he
+stood with Mary's letter in his hand, waiting to hurry away to the
+rescue of his sorrowful love.
+
+"Tell Mrs. Marchmont that I shall not return to the Towers till I bring
+her stepdaughter with me," he said to the groom; and then, without
+stopping to utter another word, he shook the rein on his horse's neck,
+and galloped away along the gravelled drive leading to the great iron
+gates of Marchmont Towers.
+
+Olivia heard his message, which had been spoken in a clear loud voice,
+like some knightly defiance, sounding trumpet-like at a castle-gate.
+She stood in one of the windows of the dining-room, hidden by the faded
+velvet curtain, and watched her cousin ride away, brave and handsome as
+any knight-errant of the chivalrous past, and as true as Bayard
+himself.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+A NEW PROTECTOR.
+
+
+Captain Arundel's inquiries at the Kemberling station resulted in an
+immediate success. A young lady--a young woman, the railway official
+called her--dressed in black, wearing a crape veil over her face, and
+carrying a small carpet-bag in her hand, had taken a second-class
+ticket for London, by the 5.50., a parliamentary train, which stopped
+at almost every station on the line, and reached Euston Square at
+half-past twelve.
+
+Edward looked at his watch. It was ten minutes to two o'clock. The
+express did not stop at Kemberling; but he would be able to catch it at
+Swampington at a quarter past three. Even then, however, he could
+scarcely hope to get to Berkshire that night.
+
+"My darling girl will not discover how foolish her doubts have been
+until to-morrow," he thought. "Silly child! has my love so little the
+aspect of truth that she _can_ doubt me?"
+
+He sprang on his horse again, flung a shilling to the railway porter
+who had held the bridle, and rode away along the Swampington road. The
+clocks in the gray old Norman turrets were striking three as the young
+man crossed the bridge, and paid his toll at the little toll-house by
+the stone archway.
+
+The streets were as lonely as usual in the hot July afternoon; and the
+long line of sea beyond the dreary marshes was blue in the sunshine.
+Captain Arundel passed the two churches, and the low-roofed rectory,
+and rode away to the outskirts of the town, where the station glared in
+all the brilliancy of new red bricks, and dazzling stuccoed chimneys,
+athwart a desert of waste ground.
+
+The express-train came tearing up to the quiet platform two minutes
+after Edward had taken his ticket; and in another minute the clanging
+bell pealed out its discordant signal, and the young man was borne,
+with a shriek and a whistle, away upon the first stage of his search
+for Mary Marchmont.
+
+It was nearly seven o'clock when he reached Euston Square; and he only
+got to the Paddington station in time to hear that the last train for
+Marlingford had just started. There was no possibility of his reaching
+the little Berkshire village that night. No mail-train stopped within a
+reasonable distance of the obscure station. There was no help for it,
+therefore, Captain Arundel had nothing to do but to wait for the next
+morning.
+
+He walked slowly away from the station, very much disheartened by this
+discovery.
+
+"I'd better sleep at some hotel up this way," he thought, as he
+strolled listlessly in the direction of Oxford Street, "so as to be on
+the spot to catch the first train to-morrow morning. What am I to do
+with myself all this night, racked with uncertainty about Mary?"
+
+He remembered that one of his brother officers was staying at the hotel
+in Covent Garden where Edward himself stopped, when business detained
+him in London for a day or two.
+
+"Shall I go and see Lucas?" Captain Arundel thought. "He's a good
+fellow, and won't bore me with a lot of questions, if he sees I've
+something on my mind. There may be some letters for me at E----'s. Poor
+little Polly!"
+
+He could never think of her without something of that pitiful
+tenderness which he might have felt for a young and helpless child,
+whom it was his duty and privilege to protect and succour. It may be
+that there was little of the lover's fiery enthusiasm mingled with the
+purer and more tender feelings with which Edward Arundel regarded his
+dead friend's orphan daughter; but in place of this there was a
+chivalrous devotion, such as woman rarely wins in these degenerate
+modern days.
+
+The young soldier walked through the lamp-lit western streets thinking
+of the missing girl; now assuring himself that his instinct had not
+deceived him, and that Mary must have gone straight to the Berkshire
+farmer's house, and in the next moment seized with a sudden terror that
+it might be otherwise: the helpless girl might have gone out into a
+world of which she was as ignorant as a child, determined to hide
+herself from all who had ever known her. If it should be thus: if, on
+going down to Marlingford, he obtained no tidings of his friend's
+daughter, what was he to do? Where was he to look for her next?
+
+He would put advertisements in the papers, calling upon his betrothed
+to trust him and return to him. Perhaps Mary Marchmont was, of all
+people in this world, the least likely to look into a newspaper; but at
+least it would be doing something to do this, and Edward Arundel
+determined upon going straight off to Printing-House Square, to draw up
+an appeal to the missing girl.
+
+It was past ten o'clock when Captain Arundel came to this
+determination, and he had reached the neighbourhood of Covent Garden
+and of the theatres. The staring play-bills adorned almost every
+threshold, and fluttered against every door-post; and the young
+soldier, going into a tobacconist's to fill his cigar-case, stared
+abstractedly at a gaudy blue-and-red announcement of the last dramatic
+attraction to be seen at Drury Lane. It was scarcely strange that the
+Captain's thoughts wandered back to his boyhood, that shadowy time, far
+away behind his later days of Indian warfare and glory, and that he
+remembered the December night upon which he had sat with his cousin in
+a box at the great patent theatre, watching the consumptive
+supernumerary struggling under the weight of his banner. From the box
+at Drury Lane to the next morning's breakfast in Oakley Street, was but
+a natural transition of thought; but with that recollection of the
+humble Lambeth lodging, with the picture of a little girl in a pinafore
+sitting demurely at her father's table, and meekly waiting on his
+guest, an idea flashed across Edward Arundel's mind, and brought the
+hot blood into his face.
+
+What if Mary had gone to Oakley Street? Was not this even more likely
+than that she should seek refuge with her kinsfolk in Berkshire? She
+had lived in the Lambeth lodging for years, and had only left that
+plebeian shelter for the grandeur of Marchmont Towers. What more
+natural than that she should go back to the familiar habitation, dear
+to her by reason of a thousand associations with her dead father? What
+more likely than that she should turn instinctively, in the hour of her
+desolation, to the humble friends whom she had known in her childhood?
+
+Edward Arundel was almost too impatient to wait while the smart young
+damsel behind the tobacconist's counter handed him change for the
+half-sovereign which he had just tendered her. He darted out into the
+street, and shouted violently to the driver of a passing hansom,--there
+are always loitering hansoms in the neighbourhood of Covent
+Garden,--who was, after the manner of his kind, looking on any side
+rather than that upon which Providence had sent him a fare.
+
+"Oakley Street, Lambeth," the young man cried. "Double fare if you get
+there in ten minutes."
+
+The tall raw-boned horse rattled off at that peculiar pace common to
+his species, making as much noise upon the pavement as if he had been
+winning a metropolitan Derby, and at about twenty minutes past nine
+drew up, smoking and panting, before the dimly lighted windows of the
+Ladies' Wardrobe, where a couple of flaring tallow-candles illuminated
+the splendour of a foreground of dirty artificial flowers, frayed satin
+shoes, and tarnished gilt combs; a middle distance of blue gauzy
+tissue, embroidered with beetles' wings; and a background of greasy
+black silk. Edward Arundel flung back the doors of the hansom with a
+bang, and leaped out upon the pavement. The proprietress of the Ladies'
+Wardrobe was lolling against the door-post, refreshing herself with the
+soft evening breezes from the roads of Westminster and Waterloo, and
+talking to her neighbour.
+
+"Bless her pore dear innercent 'art!" the woman was saying; "she's
+cried herself to sleep at last. But you never hear any think so pitiful
+as she talked to me at fust, sweet love!--and the very picture of my
+own poor Eliza Jane, as she looked. You might have said it was Eliza
+Jane come back to life, only paler and more sickly like, and not that
+beautiful fresh colour, and ringlets curled all round in a crop, as
+Eliza Ja--"
+
+Edward Arundel burst in upon the good woman's talk, which rambled on in
+an unintermitting stream, unbroken by much punctuation.
+
+"Miss Marchmont is here," he said; "I know she is. Thank God, thank
+God! Let me see her please, directly. I am Captain Arundel, her
+father's friend, and her affianced husband. You remember me, perhaps? I
+came here nine years ago to breakfast, one December morning. I can
+recollect you perfectly, and I know that you were always good to my
+poor friend's daughter. To think that I should find her here! You shall
+be well rewarded for your kindness to her. But take me to her; pray
+take me to her at once!"
+
+The proprietress of the wardrobe snatched up one of the candles that
+guttered in a brass flat-candlestick upon the counter, and led the way
+up the narrow staircase. She was a good lazy creature, and she was so
+completely borne down by Edward's excitement, that she could only
+mutter disjointed sentences, to the effect that the gentleman had
+brought her heart into her mouth, and that her legs felt all of a
+jelly; and that her poor knees was a'most giving way under her, and
+other incoherent statements concerning the physical effect of the
+mental shocks she had that day received.
+
+She opened the door of that shabby sitting-room upon the first-floor,
+in which the crippled eagle brooded over the convex mirror, and stood
+aside upon the threshold while Captain Arundel entered the room. A
+tallow candle was burning dimly upon the table, and a girlish form lay
+upon the narrow horsehair sofa, shrouded by a woollen shawl.
+
+"She went to sleep about half-an-hour ago, sir," the woman said, in a
+whisper; "and she cried herself to sleep, pore lamb, I think. I made
+her some tea, and got her a few creases and a French roll, with a bit
+of best fresh; but she wouldn't touch nothin', or only a few spoonfuls
+of the tea, just to please me. What is it that's drove her away from
+her 'ome, sir, and such a good 'ome too? She showed me a diamont ring
+as her pore par gave her in his will. He left me twenty pound, pore
+gentleman,--which he always acted like a gentleman bred and born; and
+Mr. Pollit, the lawyer, sent his clerk along with it and his
+compliments,--though I'm sure I never looked for nothink, having always
+had my rent faithful to the very minute: and Miss Mary used to bring it
+down to me so pretty, and--"
+
+But the whispering had grown louder by this time, and Mary Marchmont
+awoke from her feverish sleep, and lifted her weary head from the hard
+horsehair pillow and looked about her, half forgetful of where she was,
+and of what had happened within the last eighteen hours of her life.
+Her eyes wandered here and there, doubtful as to the reality of what
+they looked upon, until the girl saw her lover's figure, tall and
+splendid in the humble apartment, a tender half-reproachful smile upon
+his face, and his handsome blue eyes beaming with love and truth. She
+saw him, and a faint shriek broke from her tremulous lips, as she rose
+and fell upon his breast.
+
+"You love me, then, Edward," she cried; "you do love me!"
+
+"Yes, my darling, as truly and tenderly as ever woman was loved upon
+this earth."
+
+And then the soldier sat down upon the hard bristly sofa, and with
+Mary's head still resting upon his breast, and his strong hand straying
+amongst her disordered hair, he reproached her for her foolishness, and
+comforted and soothed her; while the proprietress of the apartment
+stood, with the brass candlestick in her hand, watching the young
+lovers and weeping over their sorrows, as if she had been witnessing a
+scene in a play. Their innocent affection was unrestrained by the good
+woman's presence; and when Mary had smiled upon her lover, and assured
+him that she would never, never, never doubt him again, Captain Arundel
+was fain to kiss the soft-hearted landlady in his enthusiasm, and to
+promise her the handsomest silk dress that had ever been seen in Oakley
+Street, amongst all the faded splendours of silk and satin that
+ladies'-maids brought for her consideration.
+
+"And now my darling, my foolish run-away Polly, what is to be done with
+you?" asked the young soldier. "Will you go back to the Towers
+to-morrow morning?"
+
+Mary Marchmont clasped her hands before her face, and began to tremble
+violently.
+
+"Oh, no, no, no!" she cried; "don't ask me to do that, don't ask me to
+go back, Edward. I can never go back to that house again, while--"
+
+She stopped suddenly, looking piteously at her lover.
+
+"While my cousin Olivia Marchmont lives there," Captain Arundel said
+with an angry frown. "God knows it's a bitter thing for me to think
+that your troubles should come from any of my kith and kin, Polly. She
+has used you very badly, then, this woman? She has been very unkind to
+you?"
+
+"No, no! never before last night. It seems so long ago; but it was only
+last night, was it? Until then she was always kind to me. I didn't love
+her, you know, though I tried to do so for papa's sake, and out of
+gratitude to her for taking such trouble with my education; but one can
+be grateful to people without loving them, and I never grew to love
+her. But last night--last night--she said such cruel things to me--such
+cruel things. O Edward, Edward!" the girl cried suddenly, clasping her
+hands and looking imploringly at Captain Arundel, "were the cruel
+things she said true? Did I do wrong when I offered to be your wife?"
+
+How could the young man answer this question except by clasping his
+betrothed to his heart? So there was another little love-scene, over
+which Mrs. Pimpernel,--the proprietress's name was Pimpernel--wept
+fresh tears, murmuring that the Capting was the sweetest young man,
+sweeter than Mr. Macready in Claude Melnock; and that the scene
+altogether reminded her of that "cutting" episode where the proud
+mother went on against the pore young man, and Miss Faucit came out so
+beautiful. They are a playgoing population in Oakley Street, and
+compassionate and sentimental like all true playgoers.
+
+"What shall I do with you, Miss Marchmont?" Edward Arundel asked gaily,
+when the little love-scene was concluded. "My mother and sister are
+away, at a German watering-place, trying some unpronounceable Spa for
+the benefit of poor Letty's health. Reginald is with them, and my
+father's alone at Dangerfield. So I can't take you down there, as I
+might have done if my mother had been at home; I don't much care for
+the Mostyns, or you might have stopped in Montague Square. There are no
+friendly friars nowadays who will marry Romeo and Juliet at
+half-an-hour's notice. You must live a fortnight somewhere, Polly:
+where shall it be?"
+
+"Oh, let me stay here, please," Miss Marchmont pleaded; "I was always
+so happy here!"
+
+"Lord love her precious heart!" exclaimed Mrs. Pimpernel, lifting up
+her hands in a rapture of admiration. "To think as she shouldn't have a
+bit of pride, after all the money as her pore par come into! To think
+as she should wish to stay in her old lodgins, where everythink shall
+be done to make her comfortable; and the air back and front is very
+'ealthy, though you might not believe it, and the Blind School and
+Bedlam hard by, and Kennington Common only a pleasant walk, and
+beautiful and open this warm summer weather."
+
+"Yes, I should like to stop here, please," Mary murmured. Even in the
+midst of her agitation, overwhelmed as she was by the emotions of the
+present, her thoughts went back to the past, and she remembered how
+delightful it would be to go and see the accommodating butcher, and the
+greengrocer's daughter, the kind butterman who had called her "little
+lady," and the disreputable gray parrot. How delightful it would be to
+see these humble friends, now that she was grown up, and had money
+wherewith to make them presents in token of her gratitude!
+
+"Very well, then, Polly," Captain Arundel said, "you'll stay here. And
+Mrs.----"
+
+"Pimpernel," the landlady suggested.
+
+"Mrs. Pimpernel will take as good care of you as if you were Queen of
+England, and the welfare of the nation depended upon your safety. And
+I'll stop at my hotel in Covent Garden; and I'll see Richard
+Paulette,--he's my lawyer as well as yours, you know, Polly,--and tell
+him something of what has happened, and make arrangements for our
+immediate marriage."
+
+"Our marriage!"
+
+Mary Marchmont echoed her lover's last words, and looked up at him
+almost with a bewildered air. She had never thought of an early
+marriage with Edward Arundel as the result of her flight from
+Lincolnshire. She had a vague notion that she would live in Oakley
+Street for years, and that in some remote time the soldier would come
+to claim her.
+
+"Yes, Polly darling, Olivia Marchmont's conduct has made me decide upon
+a very bold step. It is evident to me that my cousin hates you; for
+what reason, Heaven only knows, since you can have done nothing to
+provoke her hate. When your father was a poor man, it was to me he
+would have confided you. He changed his mind afterwards, very
+naturally, and chose another guardian for his orphan child. If my
+cousin had fulfilled this trust, Mary, I would have deferred to her
+authority, and would have held myself aloof until your minority was
+passed, rather than ask you to marry me without your stepmother's
+consent. But Olivia Marchmont has forfeited her right to be consulted
+in this matter. She has tortured you and traduced me by her poisonous
+slander. If you believe in me, Mary, you will consent to be my wife. My
+justification lies in the future. You will not find that I shall sponge
+upon your fortune, my dear, or lead an idle life because my wife is a
+rich woman."
+
+Mary Marchmont looked up with shy tenderness at her lover.
+
+"I would rather the fortune were yours than mine, Edward," she said. "I
+will do whatever you wish; I will be guided by you in every thing."
+
+It was thus that John Marchmont's daughter consented to become the wife
+of the man she loved, the man whose image she had associated since her
+childhood with all that was good and beautiful in mankind. She knew
+none of those pretty stereotyped phrases, by means of which well-bred
+young ladies can go through a graceful fencing-match of hesitation and
+equivocation, to the anguish of a doubtful and adoring suitor. She had
+no notion of that delusive negative, that bewitching feminine "no,"
+which is proverbially understood to mean "yes." Weary courses of Roman
+Emperors, South-Sea Islands, Sidereal Heavens, Tertiary and Old Red
+Sandstone, had very ill-prepared this poor little girl for the stern
+realities of life.
+
+"I will be guided by you, dear Edward," she said; "my father wished me
+to be your wife; and if I did not love you, it would please me to obey
+him."
+
+It was eleven o'clock when Captain Arundel left Oakley Street. The
+hansom had been waiting all the time, and the driver, seeing that his
+fare was young, handsome, dashing, and what he called
+"milingtary-like," demanded an enormous sum when he landed the soldier
+before the portico of the hotel in Covent Garden.
+
+Edward took a hasty breakfast the next morning, and then hurried off to
+Lincoln's-Inn Fields. But here a disappointment awaited him. Richard
+Paulette had started for Scotland upon a piscatorial excursion. The
+elder Paulette was an octogenarian, who lived in the south of France,
+and kept his name in the business as a fiction, by means of which
+elderly and obstinate country clients were deluded into the belief that
+the solicitor who conducted their affairs was the same legal
+practitioner who had done business for their fathers and grandfathers
+before them. Mathewson, a grim man, was away amongst the Yorkshire
+wolds, superintending the foreclosure of certain mortgages upon a
+bankrupt baronet's estate. A confidential clerk, who received clients,
+and kept matters straight during the absence of his employers, was very
+anxious to be of use to Captain Arundel: but it was not likely that
+Edward could sit down and pour his secrets into the bosom of a clerk,
+however trustworthy a personage that employe might be.
+
+The young man's desire had been that his marriage with Mary Marchmont
+should take place at least with the knowledge and approbation of her
+dead father's lawyer: but he was impatient to assume the only title by
+which he might have a right to be the orphan girl's champion and
+protector; and he had therefore no inclination to wait until the long
+vacation was over, and Messrs. Paulette and Mathewson returned from
+their northern wanderings. Again, Mary Marchmont suffered from a
+continual dread that her stepmother would discover the secret of her
+humble retreat, and would follow her and reassume authority over her.
+
+"Let me be your wife before I see her again, Edward," the girl pleaded
+innocently, when this terror was uppermost in her mind. "She could not
+say cruel things to me if I were your wife. I know it is wicked to be
+so frightened of her; because she was always good to me until that
+night: but I cannot tell you how I tremble at the thought of being
+alone with her at Marchmont Towers. I dream sometimes that I am with
+her in the gloomy old house, and that we two are alone there, even the
+servants all gone, and you far away in India, Edward,--at the other end
+of the world."
+
+It was as much as her lover could do to soothe and reassure the
+trembling girl when these thoughts took possession of her. Had he been
+less sanguine and impetuous, less careless in the buoyancy of his
+spirits, Captain Arundel might have seen that Mary's nerves had been
+terribly shaken by the scene between her and Olivia, and all the
+anguish which had given rise to her flight from Marchmont Towers. The
+girl trembled at every sound. The shutting of a door, the noise of a
+cab stopping in the street below, the falling of a book from the table
+to the floor, startled her almost as much as if a gunpowder-magazine
+had exploded in the neighbourhood. The tears rose to her eyes at the
+slightest emotion. Her mind was tortured by vague fears, which she
+tried in vain to explain to her lover. Her sleep was broken by dismal
+dreams, foreboding visions of shadowy evil.
+
+For a little more than a fortnight Edward Arundel visited his betrothed
+daily in the shabby first-floor in Oakley Street, and sat by her side
+while she worked at some fragile scrap of embroidery, and talked gaily
+to her of the happy future; to the intense admiration of Mrs.
+Pimpernel, who had no greater delight than to assist in the pretty
+little sentimental drama that was being enacted on her first-floor.
+
+Thus it was that, on a cloudy and autumnal August morning, Edward
+Arundel and Mary Marchmont were married in a great empty-looking church
+in the parish of Lambeth, by an indifferent curate, who shuffled
+through the service at railroad speed, and with far less reverence for
+the solemn rite than he would have displayed had he known that the
+pale-faced girl kneeling before the altar-rails was undisputed mistress
+of eleven thousand a-year. Mrs. Pimpernel, the pew-opener, and the
+registrar who was in waiting in the vestry, and was beguiled thence to
+give away the bride, were the only witnesses to this strange wedding.
+It seemed a dreary ceremonial to Mrs. Pimpernel, who had been married
+at the same church five-and-twenty years before, in a cinnamon satin
+spencer, and a coal-scuttle bonnet, and with a young person in the
+dressmaking line in attendance upon her as bridesmaid.
+
+It _was_ rather a dreary wedding, no doubt. The drizzling rain dripped
+ceaselessly in the street without, and there was a smell of damp
+plaster in the great empty church. The melancholy street-cries sounded
+dismally from the outer world, while the curate was hurrying through
+those portentous words which were to unite Edward Arundel and Mary
+Marchmont until the final day of earthly separation. The girl clung
+shivering to her lover, her husband now, as they went into the vestry
+to sign their names in the marriage-register. Throughout the service
+she had expected to hear a footstep in the aisle behind her, and Olivia
+Marchmont's cruel voice crying out to forbid the marriage.
+
+"I am your wife now, Edward, am I not?" she said, when she had signed
+her name in the register.
+
+"Yes, my darling, for ever and for ever."
+
+"And nothing can part us now?"
+
+"Nothing but death, my dear."
+
+In the exuberance of his spirits, Edward Arundel spoke of the King of
+Terrors as if he had been a mere nobody, whose power to change or mar
+the fortunes of mankind was so trifling as to be scarcely worth
+mentioning.
+
+The vehicle in waiting to carry the mistress of Marchmont Towers upon
+the first stage of her bridal tour was nothing better than a hack cab.
+The driver's garments exhaled stale tobacco-smoke in the moist
+atmosphere, and in lieu of the flowers which are wont to bestrew the
+bridal path of an heiress, Miss Marchmont trod upon damp and mouldy
+straw. But she was happy,--happy, with a fearful apprehension that her
+happiness could not be real,--a vague terror of Olivia's power to
+torture and oppress her, which even the presence of her lover-husband
+could not altogether drive away. She kissed Mrs. Pimpernel, who stood
+upon the edge of the pavement, crying bitterly, with the slippery white
+lining of a new silk dress, which Edward Arundel had given her for the
+wedding, gathered tightly round her.
+
+"God bless you, my dear!" cried the honest dealer in frayed satins and
+tumbled gauzes; "I couldn't take this more to heart if you was my own
+Eliza Jane going away with the young man as she was to have married,
+and as is now a widower with five children, two in arms, and the
+youngest brought up by hand. God bless your pretty face, my dear; and
+oh, pray take care of her, Captain Arundel, for she's a tender flower,
+sir, and truly needs your care. And it's but a trifle, my own sweet
+young missy, for the acceptance of such as you, but it's given from a
+full heart, and given humbly."
+
+The latter part of Mrs. Pimpernel's speech bore relation to a hard
+newspaper parcel, which she dropped into Mary's lap. Mrs. Arundel
+opened the parcel presently, when she had kissed her humble friend for
+the last time, and the cab was driving towards Nine Elms, and found
+that Mrs. Pimpernel's wedding-gift was a Scotch shepherdess in china,
+with a great deal of gilding about her tartan garments, very red legs,
+a hat and feathers, and a curly sheep. Edward put this article of
+_virtu_ very carefully away in his carpet-bag; for his bride would not
+have the present treated with any show of disrespect.
+
+"How good of her to give it me!" Mary said; "it used to stand upon the
+back-parlour chimney-piece when I was a little girl; and I was so fond
+of it. Of course I am not fond of Scotch shepherdesses now, you know,
+dear; but how should Mrs. Pimpernel know that? She thought it would
+please me to have this one."
+
+"And you'll put it in the western drawing-room at the Towers, won't
+you, Polly?" Captain Arundel asked, laughing.
+
+"I won't put it anywhere to be made fun of, sir," the young bride
+answered, with some touch of wifely dignity; "but I'll take care of it,
+and never have it broken or destroyed; and Mrs. Pimpernel shall see it,
+when she comes to the Towers,--if I ever go back there," she added,
+with a sudden change of manner.
+
+"_If_ you ever go back there!" cried Edward. "Why, Polly, my dear,
+Marchmont Towers is your own house. My cousin Olivia is only there upon
+sufferance, and her own good sense will tell her she has no right to
+stay there, when she ceases to be your friend and protectress. She is a
+proud woman, and her pride will surely never suffer her to remain where
+she must feel she can be no longer welcome."
+
+The young wife's face turned white with terror at her husband's words.
+
+"But I could never ask her to go, Edward," she said. "I wouldn't turn
+her out for the world. She may stay there for ever if she likes. I
+never have cared for the place since papa's death; and I couldn't go
+back while she is there, I'm so frightened of her, Edward, I'm so
+frightened of her."
+
+The vague apprehension burst forth in this childish cry. Edward Arundel
+clasped his wife to his breast, and bent over her, kissing her pale
+forehead, and murmuring soothing words, as he might have done to a
+child.
+
+"My dear, my dear," he said, "my darling Mary, this will never do; my
+own love, this is so very foolish."
+
+"I know, I know, Edward; but I can't help it, I can't indeed; I was
+frightened of her long ago; frightened of her even the first day I saw
+her, the day you took me to the Rectory. I was frightened of her when
+papa first told me he meant to marry her; and I am frightened of her
+now; even now that I am your wife, Edward, I'm frightened of her
+still."
+
+Captain Arundel kissed away the tears that trembled on his wife's
+eyelids; but she had scarcely grown quite composed even when the cab
+stopped at the Nine Elms railway station. It was only when she was
+seated in the carriage with her husband, and the rain cleared away as
+they advanced farther into the heart of the pretty pastoral country,
+that the bride's sense of happiness and safety in her husband's
+protection, returned to her. But by that time she was able to smile in
+his face, and to look forward with delight to a brief sojourn in that
+pretty Hampshire village, which Edward had chosen for the scene of his
+honeymoon.
+
+"Only a few days of quiet happiness, Polly," he said; "a few days of
+utter forgetfulness of all the world except you; and then I must be a
+man of business again, and write to your stepmother and my father and
+mother, and Messrs. Paulette and Mathewson, and all the people who
+ought to know of our marriage."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+PAUL'S SISTER.
+
+
+Olivia Marchmont shut herself once more in her desolate chamber, making
+no effort to find the runaway mistress of the Towers; indifferent as to
+what the slanderous tongues of her neighbours might say of her;
+hardened, callous, desperate.
+
+To her father, and to any one else who questioned her about Mary's
+absence,--for the story of the girl's flight was soon whispered abroad,
+the servants at the Towers having received no injunctions to keep the
+matter secret,--Mrs. Marchmont replied with such an air of cold and
+determined reserve as kept the questioners at bay ever afterwards.
+
+So the Kemberling people, and the Swampington people, and all the
+country gentry within reach of Marchmont Towers, had a mystery and a
+scandal provided for them, which afforded ample scope for repeated
+discussion, and considerably relieved the dull monotony of their lives.
+But there were some questioners whom Mrs. Marchmont found it rather
+difficult to keep at a distance; there were some intruders who dared to
+force themselves upon the gloomy woman's solitude, and who _would_ not
+understand that their presence was abhorrent to her.
+
+These people were a surgeon and his wife, who had newly settled at
+Kemberling; the best practice in the village falling into the market by
+reason of the death of a steady-going, gray-headed old practitioner,
+who for many years had shared with one opponent the responsibility of
+watching over the health of the Lincolnshire village.
+
+It was about three weeks after Mary Marchmont's flight when these
+unwelcome guests first came to the Towers.
+
+Olivia sat alone in her dead husband's study,--the same room in which
+she had sat upon the morning of John Marchmont's funeral,--a dark and
+gloomy chamber, wainscoted with blackened oak, and lighted only by a
+massive stone-framed Tudor window looking out into the quadrangle, and
+overshadowed by that cloistered colonnade beneath whose shelter Edward
+and Mary had walked upon the morning of the girl's flight. This
+wainscoted study was an apartment which most women, having all the
+rooms in Marchmont Towers at their disposal, would have been likely to
+avoid; but the gloom of the chamber harmonised with that horrible gloom
+which had taken possession of Olivia's soul, and the widow turned from
+the sunny western front, as she turned from all the sunlight and
+gladness in the universe, to come here, where the summer radiance
+rarely crept through the diamond-panes of the window, where the shadow
+of the cloister shut out the glory of the blue sky.
+
+She was sitting in this room,--sitting near the open window, in a
+high-backed chair of carved and polished oak, with her head resting
+against the angle of the embayed window, and her handsome profile
+thrown into sharp relief by the dark green-cloth curtain, which hung in
+straight folds from the low ceiling to the ground, and made a sombre
+background to the widow's figure. Mrs. Marchmont had put away all the
+miserable gew-gaws and vanities which she had ordered from London in a
+sudden excess of folly or caprice, and had reassumed her mourning-robes
+of lustreless black. She had a book in her hand,--some new and popular
+fiction, which all Lincolnshire was eager to read; but although her
+eyes were fixed upon the pages before her, and her hand mechanically
+turned over leaf after leaf at regular intervals of time, the
+fashionable romance was only a weary repetition of phrases, a dull
+current of words, always intermingled with the images of Edward Arundel
+and Mary Marchmont, which arose out of every page to mock the hopeless
+reader.
+
+Olivia flung the book away from her at last, with a smothered cry of
+rage.
+
+"Is there no cure for this disease?" she muttered. "Is there no relief
+except madness or death?"
+
+But in the infidelity which had arisen out of her despair this woman
+had grown to doubt if either death or madness could bring her oblivion
+of her anguish. She doubted the quiet of the grave; and half-believed
+that the torture of jealous rage and slighted love might mingle even
+with that silent rest, haunting her in her coffin, shutting her out of
+heaven, and following her into a darker world, there to be her torment
+everlastingly. There were times when she thought madness must mean
+forgetfulness; but there were other moments when she shuddered,
+horror-stricken, at the thought that, in the wandering brain of a mad
+woman, the image of that grief which had caused the shipwreck of her
+senses might still hold its place, distorted and exaggerated,--a
+gigantic unreality, ten thousand times more terrible than the truth.
+Remembering the dreams which disturbed her broken sleep,--those dreams
+which, in their feverish horror, were little better than intervals of
+delirium,--it is scarcely strange if Olivia Marchmont thought thus.
+
+She had not succumbed without many struggles to her sin and despair.
+Again and again she had abandoned herself to the devils at watch to
+destroy her, and again and again she had tried to extricate her soul
+from their dreadful power; but her most passionate endeavours were in
+vain. Perhaps it was that she did not strive aright; it was for this
+reason, surely, that she failed so utterly to arise superior to her
+despair; for otherwise that terrible belief attributed to the
+Calvinists, that some souls are foredoomed to damnation, would be
+exemplified by this woman's experience. She could not forget. She could
+not put away the vengeful hatred that raged like an all-devouring fire
+in her breast, and she cried in her agony, "There is no cure for this
+disease!"
+
+I think her mistake was in this, that she did not go to the right
+Physician. She practised quackery with her soul, as some people do with
+their bodies; trying their own remedies, rather than the simple
+prescriptions of the Divine Healer of all woes. Self-reliant, and
+scornful of the weakness against which her pride revolted, she trusted
+to her intellect and her will to lift her out of the moral slough into
+which her soul had gone down. She said:
+
+"I am not a woman to go mad for the love of a boyish face; I am not a
+woman to die for a foolish fancy, which the veriest schoolgirl might be
+ashamed to confess to her companion. I am not a woman to do this, and I
+_will_ cure myself of my folly."
+
+Mrs. Marchmont made an effort to take up her old life, with its dull
+round of ceaseless duty, its perpetual self-denial. If she had been a
+Roman Catholic, she would have gone to the nearest convent, and prayed
+to be permitted to take such vows as might soonest set a barrier
+between herself and the world; she would have spent the long weary days
+in perpetual and secret prayer; she would have worn deeper indentations
+upon the stones already hollowed by faithful knees. As it was, she made
+a routine of penance for herself, after her own fashion: going long
+distances on foot to visit her poor, when she might have ridden in her
+carriage; courting exposure to rain and foul weather; wearing herself
+out with unnecessary fatigue, and returning footsore to her desolate
+home, to fall fainting into the strong arms of her grim attendant,
+Barbara.
+
+But this self-appointed penance could not shut Edward Arundel and Mary
+Marchmont from the widow's mind. Walking through a fiery furnace their
+images would have haunted her still, vivid and palpable even in the
+agony of death. The fatigue of the long weary walks made Mrs. Marchmont
+wan and pale; the exposure to storm and rain brought on a tiresome,
+hacking cough, which worried her by day and disturbed her fitful
+slumbers by night. No good whatever seemed to come of her endeavours;
+and the devils who rejoiced at her weakness and her failure claimed her
+as their own. They claimed her as their own; and they were not without
+terrestrial agents, working patiently in their service, and ready to
+help in securing their bargain.
+
+The great clock in the quadrangle had struck the half-hour after three;
+the atmosphere of the August afternoon was sultry and oppressive. Mrs.
+Marchmont had closed her eyes after flinging aside her book, and had
+fallen into a doze: her nights were broken and wakeful, and the hot
+stillness of the day had made her drowsy.
+
+She was aroused from this half-slumber by Barbara Simmons, who came
+into the room carrying two cards upon a salver,--the same old-fashioned
+and emblazoned salver upon which Paul Marchmont's card had been brought
+to the widow nearly three years before. The Abigail stood halfway
+between the door and the window by which the widow sat, looking at her
+mistress's face with a glance of sharp scrutiny.
+
+"She's changed since he came back, and changed again since he went
+away," the woman thought; "just as she always changed at the Rectory at
+his coming and going. Why didn't he take to her, I wonder? He might
+have known her fancy for him, if he'd had eyes to watch her face, or
+ears to listen to her voice. She's handsomer than the other one, and
+cleverer in book-learning; but she keeps 'em off--she seems allers to
+keep 'em off."
+
+I think Olivia Marchmont would have torn the very heart out of this
+waiting-woman's breast, had she known the thoughts that held a place in
+it: had she known that the servant who attended upon her, and took
+wages from her, dared to pluck out her secret, and to speculate upon
+her suffering.
+
+The widow awoke suddenly, and looked up with an impatient frown. She
+had not been awakened by the opening of the door, but by that
+unpleasant sensation which almost always reveals the presence of a
+stranger to a sleeper of nervous temperament.
+
+"What is it, Barbara?" she asked; and then, as her eyes rested on the
+cards, she added, angrily, "Haven't I told you that I would not see any
+callers to-day? I am worn out with my cough, and feel too ill to see
+any one."
+
+"Yes, Miss Livy," the woman answered;--she called her mistress by this
+name still, now and then, so familiar had it grown to her during the
+childhood and youth of the Rector's daughter;--"I didn't forget that,
+Miss Livy: I told Richardson you was not to be disturbed. But the lady
+and gentleman said, if you saw what was wrote upon the back of one of
+the cards, you'd be sure to make an exception in their favour. I think
+that was what the lady said. She's a middle-aged lady, very talkative
+and pleasant-mannered," added the grim Barbara, in nowise relaxing the
+stolid gravity of her own manner as she spoke.
+
+Olivia snatched the cards from the salver.
+
+"Why do people worry me so?" she cried, impatiently. "Am I not to be
+allowed even five minutes' sleep without being broken in upon by some
+intruder or other?"
+
+Barbara Simmons looked at her mistress's face. Anxiety and sadness
+dimly showed themselves in the stolid countenance of the lady's-maid. A
+close observer, penetrating below that aspect of wooden solemnity which
+was Barbara's normal expression, might have discovered a secret: the
+quiet waiting-woman loved her mistress with a jealous and watchful
+affection, that took heed of every change in its object.
+
+Mrs. Marchmont examined the two cards, which bore the names of Mr. and
+Mrs. Weston, Kemberling. On the back of the lady's card these words
+were written in pencil:
+
+"Will Mrs. Marchmont be so good as to see Lavinia Weston, Paul
+Marchmont's younger sister, and a connection of Mrs. M.'s?"
+
+Olivia shrugged her shoulders, as she threw down the card.
+
+"Paul Marchmont! Lavinia Weston!" she muttered; "yes, I remember he
+said something about a sister married to a surgeon at Stanfield. Let
+these people come to me, Barbara."
+
+The waiting-woman looked doubtfully at her mistress.
+
+"You'll maybe smooth your hair, and freshen yourself up a bit, before
+ye see the folks, Miss Livy," she said, in a tone of mingled suggestion
+and entreaty. "Ye've had a deal of worry lately, and it's made ye look
+a little fagged and haggard-like. I'd not like the Kemberling folks to
+say as you was ill."
+
+Mrs. Marchmont turned fiercely upon the Abigail.
+
+"Let me alone!" she cried. "What is it to you, or to any one, how I
+look? What good have my looks done me, that I should worry myself about
+them?" she added, under her breath. "Show these people in here, if they
+want to see me."
+
+"They've been shown into the western drawing-room, ma'am;--Richardson
+took 'em in there."
+
+Barbara Simmons fought hard for the preservation of appearances. She
+wanted the Rector's daughter to receive these strange people, who had
+dared to intrude upon her, in a manner befitting the dignity of John
+Marchmont's widow. She glanced furtively at the disorder of the gloomy
+chamber. Books and papers were scattered here and there; the hearth and
+low fender were littered with heaps of torn letters,--for Olivia
+Marchmont had no tenderness for the memorials of the past, and indeed
+took a fierce delight in sweeping away the unsanctified records of her
+joyless, loveless life. The high-backed oaken chairs had been pushed
+out of their places; the green-cloth cover had been drawn half off the
+massive table, and hung in trailing folds upon the ground. A book flung
+here; a shawl there; a handkerchief in another place; an open
+secretaire, with scattered documents and uncovered inkstand,--littered
+the room, and bore mute witness of the restlessness of its occupant. It
+needed no very subtle psychologist to read aright those separate tokens
+of a disordered mind; of a weary spirit which had sought distraction in
+a dozen occupations, and had found relief in none. It was some vague
+sense of this that caused Barbara Simmons's anxiety. She wished to keep
+strangers out of this room, in which her mistress, wan, haggard, and
+weary-looking, revealed her secret by so many signs and tokens. But
+before Olivia could make any answer to her servant's suggestion, the
+door, which Barbara had left ajar, was pushed open by a very gentle
+hand, and a sweet voice said, in cheery chirping accents,
+
+"I am sure I may come in; may I not, Mrs. Marchmont? The impression my
+brother Paul's description gave me of you is such a very pleasant one,
+that I venture to intrude uninvited, almost forbidden, perhaps."
+
+The voice and manner of the speaker were so airy and self-possessed,
+there was such a world of cheerfulness and amiability in every tone,
+that, as Olivia Marchmont rose from her chair, she put her hand to her
+head, dazed and confounded, as if by the too boisterous carolling of
+some caged bird. What did they mean, these accents of gladness, these
+clear and untroubled tones, which sounded shrill, and almost
+discordant, in the despairing woman's ears? She stood, pale and worn,
+the very picture of all gloom and misery, staring hopelessly at her
+visitor; too much abandoned to her grief to remember, in that first
+moment, the stern demands of pride. She stood still; revealing, by her
+look, her attitude, her silence, her abstraction, a whole history to
+the watchful eyes that were looking at her.
+
+Mrs. Weston lingered on the threshold of the chamber in a pretty
+half-fluttering manner; which was charmingly expressive of a struggle
+between a modest poor-relation-like diffidence and an earnest desire to
+rush into Olivia's arms. The surgeon's wife was a delicate-looking
+little woman, with features that seemed a miniature and feminine
+reproduction of her brother Paul's, and with very light hair,--hair so
+light and pale that, had it turned as white as the artist's in a single
+night, very few people would have been likely to take heed of the
+change. Lavinia Weston was eminently what is generally called a
+_lady-like_ woman. She always conducted herself in that especial and
+particular manner which was exactly fitted to the occasion. She
+adjusted her behaviour by the nicest shades of colour and hair-breadth
+scale of measurement. She had, as it were, made for herself a
+homoeopathic system of good manners, and could mete out politeness and
+courtesy in the veriest globules, never administering either too much
+or too little. To her husband she was a treasure beyond all price; and
+if the Lincolnshire surgeon, who was a fat, solemn-faced man, with a
+character as level and monotonous as the flats and fens of his native
+county, was henpecked, the feminine autocrat held the reins of
+government so lightly, that her obedient subject was scarcely aware how
+very irresponsible his wife's authority had become.
+
+As Olivia Marchmont stood confronting the timid hesitating figure of
+the intruder, with the width of the chamber between them, Lavinia
+Weston, in her crisp muslin-dress and scarf, her neat bonnet and bright
+ribbons and primly-adjusted gloves, looked something like an
+adventurous canary who had a mind to intrude upon the den of a hungry
+lioness. The difference, physical and moral, between the timid bird and
+the savage forest-queen could be scarcely wider than that between the
+two women.
+
+But Olivia did not stand for ever embarrassed and silent in her
+visitor's presence. Her pride came to her rescue. She turned sternly
+upon the polite intruder.
+
+"Walk in, if you please, Mrs. Weston," she said, "and sit down. I was
+denied to you just now because I have been ill, and have ordered my
+servants to deny me to every one."
+
+"But, my dear Mrs. Marchmont," murmured Lavinia Weston in soft, almost
+dove-like accents, "if you have been ill, is not your illness another
+reason for seeing us, rather than for keeping us away from you? I would
+not, of course, say a word which could in any way be calculated to give
+offence to your regular medical attendant,--you have a regular medical
+attendant, no doubt; from Swampington, I dare say,--but a doctor's wife
+may often be useful when a doctor is himself out of place. There are
+little nervous ailments--depression of spirits, mental uneasiness--from
+which women, and sensitive women, suffer acutely, and which perhaps a
+woman's more refined nature alone can thoroughly comprehend. You are
+not looking well, my dear Mrs. Marchmont. I left my husband in the
+drawing-room, for I was so anxious that our first meeting should take
+place without witnesses. Men think women sentimental when they are only
+impulsive. Weston is a good simple-hearted creature, but he knows as
+much about a woman's mind as he does of an AEolian harp. When the
+strings vibrate, he hears the low plaintive notes, but he has no idea
+whence the melody comes. It is thus with us, Mrs. Marchmont. These
+medical men watch us in the agonies of hysteria; they hear our sighs,
+they see our tears, and in their awkwardness and ignorance they
+prescribe commonplace remedies out of the pharmacopoeia. No, dear Mrs.
+Marchmont, you do not look well. I fear it is the mind, the mind, which
+has been over-strained. Is it not so?"
+
+Mrs. Weston put her head on one side as she asked this question, and
+smiled at Olivia with an air of gentle insinuation. If the doctor's
+wife wished to plumb the depths of the widow's gloomy soul, she had an
+advantage here; for Mrs. Marchmont was thrown off her guard by the
+question, which had been perhaps asked hap-hazard, or it may be with a
+deeply considered design. Olivia turned fiercely upon the polite
+questioner.
+
+"I have been suffering from nothing but a cold which I caught the other
+day," she said; "I am not subject to any fine-ladylike hysteria, I can
+assure you, Mrs. Weston."
+
+The doctor's wife pursed up her lips into a sympathetic smile, not at
+all abashed by this rebuff. She had seated herself in one of the
+high-backed chairs, with her muslin skirt spread out about her. She
+looked a living exemplification of all that is neat and prim and
+commonplace, in contrast with the pale, stern-faced woman, standing
+rigid and defiant in her long black robes.
+
+"How very chy-arming!" exclaimed Mrs. Weston. "You are really _not_
+nervous. Dee-ar me; and from what my brother Paul said, I should have
+imagined that any one so highly organised must be rather nervous. But I
+really fear I am impertinent, and that I presume upon our very slight
+relationship. It _is_ a relationship, is it not, although such a very
+slight one?"
+
+"I have never thought of the subject," Mrs. Marchmont replied coldly.
+"I suppose, however, that my marriage with your brother's cousin--"
+
+"And _my_ cousin--"
+
+"Made a kind of connexion between us. But Mr. Marchmont gave me to
+understand that you lived at Stanfield, Mrs. Weston."
+
+"Until last week, positively until last week," answered the surgeon's
+wife. "I see you take very little interest in village gossip, Mrs.
+Marchmont, or you would have heard of the change at Kemberling."
+
+"What change?"
+
+"My husband's purchase of poor old Mr. Dawnfield's practice. The dear
+old man died a month ago,--you heard of his death, of course,--and Mr.
+Weston negotiated the purchase with Mrs. Dawnfield in less than a
+fortnight. We came here early last week, and already we are making
+friends in the neighbourhood. How strange that you should not have
+heard of our coming!"
+
+"I do not see much society," Olivia answered indifferently, "and I hear
+nothing of the Kemberling people."
+
+"Indeed!" cried Mrs. Weston; "and we hear so much of Marchmont Towers
+at Kemberling."
+
+She looked full in the widow's face as she spoke, her stereotyped smile
+subsiding into a look of greedy curiosity; a look whose intense
+eagerness could not be concealed.
+
+That look, and the tone in which her last sentence had been spoken,
+said as plainly as the plainest words could have done, "I have heard of
+Mary Marchmont's flight."
+
+Olivia understood this; but in the passionate depth of her own madness
+she had no power to fathom the meanings or the motives of other people.
+She revolted against this Mrs. Weston, and disliked her because the
+woman intruded upon her in her desolation; but she never once thought
+of Lavinia Weston's interest in Mary's movements; she never once
+remembered that the frail life of that orphan girl only stood between
+this woman's brother and the rich heritage of Marchmont Towers.
+
+Blind and forgetful of everything in the hideous egotism of her
+despair, what was Olivia Marchmont but a fitting tool, a plastic and
+easily-moulded instrument, in the hands of unscrupulous people, whose
+hard intellects had never been beaten into confused shapelessness in
+the fiery furnace of passion?
+
+Mrs. Weston had heard of Mary Marchmont's flight; but she had heard
+half a dozen different reports of that event, as widely diversified in
+their details as if half a dozen heiresses had fled from Marchmont
+Towers. Every gossip in the place had a separate story as to the
+circumstances which had led to the girl's running away from her home.
+The accounts vied with each other in graphic force and minute
+elaboration; the conversations that had taken place between Mary and
+her stepmother, between Edward Arundel and Mrs. Marchmont, between the
+Rector of Swampington and nobody in particular, would have filled a
+volume, as related by the gossips of Kemberling; but as everybody
+assigned a different cause for the terrible misunderstanding at the
+Towers, and a different direction for Mary's flight,--and as the
+railway official at the station, who could have thrown some light on
+the subject, was a stern and moody man, who had little sympathy with
+his kind, and held his tongue persistently,--it was not easy to get
+very near the truth. Under these circumstances, then, Mrs. Weston
+determined upon seeking information at the fountain-head, and
+approaching the cruel stepmother, who, according to some of the
+reports, had starved and beaten her dead husband's child.
+
+"Yes, dear Mrs. Marchmont," said Lavinia Weston, seeing that it was
+necessary to come direct to the point if she wished to wring the truth
+from Olivia; "yes, we hear of everything at Kemberling; and I need
+scarcely tell you, that we heard of the sad trouble which you have had
+to endure since your ball--the ball that is spoken of as the most
+chy-arming entertainment remembered in the neighbourhood for a long
+time. We heard of this sad girl's flight."
+
+Mrs. Marchmont looked up with a dark frown, but made no answer.
+
+"Was she--it really is such a very painful question, that I almost
+shrink from--but was Miss Marchmont at all--eccentric--a little
+mentally deficient? Pray pardon me, if I have given you pain by such a
+question; but----"
+
+Olivia started, and looked sharply at her visitor. "Mentally deficient?
+No!" she said. But as she spoke her eyes dilated, her pale cheeks grew
+paler, her upper lip quivered with a faint convulsive movement. It
+seemed as if some idea presented itself to her with a sudden force that
+almost took away her breath.
+
+"_Not_ mentally deficient!" repeated Lavinia Weston; "dee-ar me! It's a
+great comfort to hear that. Of course Paul saw very little of his
+cousin, and he was not therefore in a position to judge,--though his
+opinions, however rapidly arrived at, are generally so _very_
+accurate;--but he gave me to understand that he thought Miss Marchmont
+appeared a little--just a little--weak in her intellect. I am very glad
+to find he was mistaken."
+
+Olivia made no reply to this speech. She had seated herself in her
+chair by the window; she looked straight before her into the flagged
+quadrangle, with her hands lying idle in her lap. It seemed as if she
+were actually unconscious of her visitor's presence, or as if, in her
+scornful indifference, she did not even care to affect any interest in
+that visitor's conversation.
+
+Lavinia Weston returned again to the attack.
+
+"Pray, Mrs. Marchmont, do not think me intrusive or impertinent," she
+said pleadingly, "if I ask you to favour me with the true particulars
+of this sad event. I am sure you will be good enough to remember that
+my brother Paul, my sister, and myself are Mary Marchmont's nearest
+relatives on her father's side, and that we have therefore some right
+to feel interested in her?"
+
+By this very polite speech Lavinia Weston plainly reminded the widow of
+the insignificance of her own position at Marchmont Towers. In her
+ordinary frame of mind Olivia would have resented the ladylike slight,
+but to-day she neither heard nor heeded it; she was brooding with a
+stupid, unreasonable persistency over the words "mental deficiency,"
+"weak intellect." She only roused herself by a great effort to answer
+Mrs. Weston's question, when that lady had repeated it in very plain
+words.
+
+"I can tell you nothing about Miss Marchmont's flight," she said,
+coldly, "except that she chose to run away from her home. I found
+reason to object to her conduct upon the night of the ball; and the
+next morning she left the house, assigning no reason--to me, at any
+rate--for her absurd and improper behaviour."
+
+"She assigned no reason to _you_, my dear Mrs. Marchmont; but she
+assigned a reason to somebody, I infer, from what you say?"
+
+"Yes; she wrote a letter to my cousin, Captain Arundel."
+
+"Telling him the reason of her departure?"
+
+"I don't know--I forget. The letter told nothing clearly; it was wild
+and incoherent."
+
+Mrs. Weston sighed,--a long-drawn, desponding sigh.
+
+"Wild and incoherent!" she murmured, in a pensive tone. "How grieved
+Paul will be to hear of this! He took such an interest in his cousin--a
+delicate and fragile-looking young creature, he told me. Yes, he took a
+very great interest in her, Mrs. Marchmont, though you may perhaps
+scarcely believe me when I say so. He kept himself purposely aloof from
+this place; his sensitive nature led him to abstain from even revealing
+his interest in Miss Marchmont. His position, you must remember, with
+regard to this poor dear girl, is a very delicate--I may say a very
+painful--one."
+
+Olivia remembered nothing of the kind. The value of the Marchmont
+estates; the sordid worth of those wide-stretching farms, spreading
+far-away into Yorkshire; the pitiful, closely-calculated revenue, which
+made Mary a wealthy heiress,--were so far from the dark thoughts of
+this woman's desperate heart, that she no more suspected Mrs. Weston of
+any mercenary design in coming to the Towers, than of burglarious
+intentions with regard to the silver spoons in the plate-room. She only
+thought that the surgeon's wife was a tiresome woman, against whose
+pertinacious civility her angry spirit chafed and rebelled, until she
+was almost driven to order her from the room.
+
+In this cruel weariness of spirit Mrs. Marchmont gave a short impatient
+sigh, which afforded a sufficient hint to such an accomplished
+tactician as her visitor.
+
+"I know I have tired you, my dear Mrs. Marchmont," the doctor's wife
+said, rising and arranging her muslin scarf as she spoke, in token of
+her immediate departure. "I am so sorry to find you a sufferer from
+that nasty hacking cough; but of course you have the best advice,--Mr.
+Barlow from Swampington, I think you said?"--Olivia had said nothing of
+the kind;--"and I trust the warm weather will prevent the cough taking
+any hold of your chest. If I might venture to suggest flannels--so many
+young women quite ridicule the idea of flannels--but, as the wife of a
+humble provincial practitioner, I have learned their value. Good-bye,
+dear Mrs. Marchmont. I may come again, may I not, now that the ice is
+broken, and we are so well acquainted with each other? Good-bye."
+
+Olivia could not refuse to take at least _one_ of the two plump and
+tightly-gloved hands which were held out to her with an air of frank
+cordiality; but the widow's grasp was loose and nerveless, and,
+inasmuch as two consentient parties are required to the shaking of
+hands as well as to the getting up of a quarrel, the salutation was not
+a very hearty one.
+
+The surgeon's pony must have been weary of standing before the flight
+of shallow steps leading to the western portico, when Mrs. Weston took
+her seat by her husband's side in the gig, which had been newly painted
+and varnished since the worthy couple's hegira from Stanfield.
+
+The surgeon was not an ambitious man, nor a designing man; he was
+simply stupid and lazy--lazy although, in spite of himself, he led an
+active and hard-working life; but there are many square men whose sides
+are cruelly tortured by the pressure of the round holes into which they
+are ill-advisedly thrust, and if our destinies were meted out to us in
+strict accordance with our temperaments, Mr. Weston should have been a
+lotus-eater. As it was, he was content to drudge on, mildly complying
+with every desire of his wife; doing what she told him, because it was
+less trouble to do the hardest work at her bidding than to oppose her.
+It would have been surely less painful for Macbeth to have finished
+that ugly business of the murder than to have endured my lady's black
+contemptuous scowl, and the bitter scorn and contumely concentrated in
+those four words, "Give _me_ the daggers."
+
+Mr. Weston asked one or two commonplace questions about his wife's
+interview with John Marchmont's widow; but, slowly apprehending that
+Lavinia did not care to discuss the matter, he relapsed into meek
+silence, and devoted all his intellectual powers to the task of keeping
+the pony out of the deeper ruts in the rugged road between Marchmont
+Towers and Kemberling High Street.
+
+"What is the secret of that woman's life?" thought Lavinia Weston
+during that homeward drive. "Has she ill-treated the girl, or is she
+plotting in some way or other to get hold of the Marchmont fortune?
+Pshaw! that's impossible. And yet she may be making a purse, somehow or
+other, out of the estate. Anyhow, there is bad blood between the two
+women."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+A STOLEN HONEYMOON.
+
+
+The village to which Edward Arundel took his bride was within a few
+miles of Winchester. The young soldier had become familiar with the
+place in his early boyhood, when he had gone to spend a part of one
+bright midsummer holiday at the house of a schoolfellow; and had ever
+since cherished a friendly remembrance of the winding trout-streams,
+the rich verdure of the valleys, and the sheltering hills that shut in
+the pleasant little cluster of thatched cottages, the pretty
+white-walled villas, and the grey old church.
+
+But to Mary, whose experiences of town and country were limited to the
+dingy purlieus of Oakley Street and the fenny flats of Lincolnshire,
+this Hampshire village seemed a rustic paradise, which neither trouble
+nor sorrow could ever approach. She had trembled at the thought of
+Olivia's coming in Oakley Street; but here she seemed to lose all
+terror of her stern stepmother,--here, sheltered and protected by her
+young husband's love, she fancied that she might live her life out
+happy and secure.
+
+She told Edward this one sunny morning, as they sat by the young man's
+favourite trout-stream. Captain Arundel's fishing-tackle lay idle on
+the turf at his side, for he had been beguiled into forgetfulness of a
+ponderous trout he had been watching and finessing with for upwards of
+an hour, and had flung himself at full length upon the mossy margin of
+the water, with his uncovered head lying in Mary's lap.
+
+The childish bride would have been content to sit for ever thus in that
+rural solitude, with her fingers twisted in her husband's chestnut
+curls, and her soft eyes keeping timid watch upon his handsome
+face,--so candid and unclouded in its careless repose. The undulating
+meadow-land lay half-hidden in a golden haze, only broken here and
+there by the glitter of the brighter sunlight that lit up the waters of
+the wandering streams that intersected the low pastures. The massive
+towers of the cathedral, the grey walls of St. Cross, loomed dimly in
+the distance; the bubbling plash of a mill-stream sounded like some
+monotonous lullaby in the drowsy summer atmosphere. Mary looked from
+the face she loved to the fair landscape about her, and a tender
+solemnity crept into her mind--a reverent love and admiration for this
+beautiful earth, which was almost akin to awe.
+
+"How pretty this place is, Edward!" she said. "I had no idea there were
+such places in all the wide world. Do you know, I think I would rather
+be a cottage-girl here than an heiress in Lincolnshire. Edward, if I
+ask you a favour, will you grant it?"
+
+She spoke very earnestly, looking down at her husband's upturned face;
+but Captain Arundel only laughed at her question, without even caring
+to lift the drowsy eyelids that drooped over his blue eyes.
+
+"Well, my pet, if you want anything short of the moon, I suppose your
+devoted husband is scarcely likely to refuse it. Our honeymoon is not a
+fortnight old yet, Polly dear; you wouldn't have me turn tyrant quite
+as soon as this. Speak out, Mrs. Arundel, and assert your dignity as a
+British matron. What is the favour I am to grant?"
+
+"I want you to live here always, Edward darling," pleaded the girlish
+voice. "Not for a fortnight or a month, but for ever and ever. I have
+never been happy at Marchmont Towers. Papa died there, you know, and I
+cannot forget that. Perhaps that ought to have made the place sacred to
+me, and so it has; but it is sacred like papa's tomb in Kemberling
+Church, and it seems like profanation to be happy in it, or to forget
+my dead father even for a moment. Don't let us go back there, Edward.
+Let my stepmother live there all her life. It would seem selfish and
+cruel to turn her out of the house she has so long been mistress of.
+Mr. Gormby will go on collecting the rents, you know, and can send us
+as much money as we want; and we can take that pretty house we saw to
+let on the other side of Milldale,--the house with the rookery, and the
+dovecotes, and the sloping lawn leading down to the water. You know you
+don't like Lincolnshire, Edward, any more than I do, and there's
+scarcely any trout-fishing near the Towers."
+
+Captain Arundel opened his eyes, and lifted himself out of his
+reclining position before he answered his wife.
+
+"My own precious Polly," he said, smiling fondly at the gentle childish
+face turned in such earnestness towards his own; "my runaway little
+wife, rich people have their duties to perform as well as poor people;
+and I am afraid it would never do for you to hide in this
+out-of-the-way Hampshire village, and play absentee from stately
+Marchmont and all its dependencies. I love that pretty, infantine,
+unworldly spirit of yours, my darling; and I sometimes wish we were two
+grown-up babes in the wood, and could wander about gathering wild
+flowers, and eating blackberries and hazel-nuts, until the shades of
+evening closed in, and the friendly robins came to bury us. Don't fancy
+I am tired of our honeymoon, Polly, or that I care for Marchmont Towers
+any more than you do; but I fear the non-residence plan would never
+answer. The world would call my little wife eccentric, if she ran away
+from her grandeur; and Paul Marchmont the artist,--of whom your poor
+father had rather a bad opinion, by the way,--would be taking out a
+statute of lunacy against you."
+
+"Paul Marchmont!" repeated Mary. "Did papa dislike Mr. Paul Marchmont?"
+
+"Well, poor John had a sort of a prejudice against the man, I believe;
+but it was only a prejudice, for he freely confessed that he could
+assign no reason for it. But whatever Mr. Paul Marchmont may be, you
+must live at the Towers, Mary, and be Lady Bountiful-in-chief in your
+neighbourhood, and look after your property, and have long interviews
+with Mr. Gormby, and become altogether a woman of business; so that
+when I go back to India----"
+
+Mary interrupted him with a little cry:
+
+"Go back to India!" she exclaimed. "What do you mean, Edward?"
+
+"I mean, my darling, that my business in life is to fight for my Queen
+and country, and not to spunge upon my wife's fortune. You don't
+suppose I'm going to lay down my sword at seven-and-twenty years of
+age, and retire upon my pension? No, Polly; you remember what Lord
+Nelson said on the deck of the _Victory_ at Trafalgar. That saying can
+never be so hackneyed as to lose its force. I must do my duty, Polly--I
+must do my duty, even if duty and love pull different ways, and I have
+to leave my darling, in the service of my country."
+
+Mary clasped her hands in despair, and looked piteously at her
+lover-husband, with the tears streaming down her pale cheeks.
+
+"O Edward," she cried, "how cruel you are; how very, very cruel you are
+to me! What is the use of my fortune if you won't share it with me, if
+you won't take it all; for it is yours, my dearest--it is all yours? I
+remember the words in the Marriage Service, 'with all my goods I thee
+endow.' I have given you Marchmont Towers, Edward; nobody in the world
+can take it away from you. You never, never, never could be so cruel as
+to leave me! I know how brave and good you are, and I am proud to think
+of your noble courage and all the brave deeds you did in India. But you
+_have_ fought for your country, Edward; you _have_ done your duty.
+Nobody can expect more of you; nobody shall take you from me. O my
+darling, my husband, you promised to shelter and defend me while our
+lives last! You won't leave me--you won't leave me, will you?"
+
+Edward Arundel kissed the tears away from his wife's pale face, and
+drew her head upon his bosom.
+
+"My love," he said tenderly, "you cannot tell how much pain it gives me
+to hear you talk like this. What can I do? To give up my profession
+would be to make myself next kin to a pauper. What would the world say
+of me, Mary? Think of that. This runaway marriage would be a dreadful
+dishonour to me, if it were followed by a life of lazy dependence on my
+wife's fortune. Nobody can dare to slander the soldier who spends the
+brightest years of his life in the service of his country. You would
+not surely have me be less than true to myself, Mary darling? For my
+honour's sake, I must leave you."
+
+"O no, no, no!" cried the girl, in a low wailing voice. Unselfish and
+devoted as she had been in every other crisis of her young life, she
+could not be reasonable or self-denying here; she was seized with
+despair at the thought of parting with her husband. No, not even for
+his honour's sake could she let him go. Better that they should both
+die now, in this early noontide of their happiness.
+
+"Edward, Edward," she sobbed, clinging convulsively about the young
+man's neck, "don't leave me--don't leave me!"
+
+"Will you go with me to India, then, Mary?"
+
+She lifted her head suddenly, and looked her husband in the face, with
+the gladness in her eyes shining through her tears, like an April sun
+through a watery sky.
+
+"I would go to the end of the world with you, my own darling," she
+said; "the burning sands and the dreadful jungles would have no terrors
+for me, if I were with you, Edward."
+
+Captain Arundel smiled at her earnestness.
+
+"I won't take you into the jungle, my love," he answered, playfully;
+"or if I do, your palki shall be well guarded, and all ravenous beasts
+kept at a respectful distance from my little wife. A great many ladies
+go to India with their husbands, Polly, and come back very little the
+worse for the climate or the voyage; and except your money, there is no
+reason you should not go with me."
+
+"Oh, never mind my money; let anybody have that."
+
+"Polly," cried the soldier, very seriously, "we must consult Richard
+Paulette as to the future. I don't think I did right in marrying you
+during his absence; and I have delayed writing to him too long, Polly.
+Those letters must be written this afternoon."
+
+"The letter to Mr. Paulette and to your father?"
+
+"Yes; and the letter to my cousin Olivia."
+
+Mary's face grew sorrowful again, as Captain Arundel said this.
+
+"_Must_ you tell my stepmother of our marriage?" she said.
+
+"Most assuredly, my dear. Why should we keep her in ignorance of it?
+Your father's will gave her the privilege of advising you, but not the
+power to interfere with your choice, whatever that choice might be. You
+were your own mistress, Mary, when you married me. What reason have you
+to fear my cousin Olivia?"
+
+"No reason, perhaps," the girl answered, sadly; "but I do fear her. I
+know I am very foolish, Edward, and you have reason to despise me,--you
+who are so brave. But I could never tell you how I tremble at the
+thought of being once more in my stepmother's power. She said cruel
+things to me, Edward. Every word she spoke seemed to stab me to the
+heart; but it isn't that only. There's something more than that;
+something that I can't describe, that I can't understand; something
+which tells me that she hates me."
+
+"Hates you, darling?"
+
+"Yes, Edward; yes, she hates me. It wasn't always so, you know. She
+used to be only cold and reserved, but lately her manner has changed. I
+thought that she was ill, perhaps, and that my presence worried her.
+People often wish to be alone, I know, when they are ill. O Edward, I
+have seen her shrink from me, and shudder if her dress brushed against
+mine, as if I had been some horrible creature. What have I done,
+Edward, that she should hate me?"
+
+Captain Arundel knitted his brows, and set himself to work out this
+womanly problem, but he could make nothing of it. Yes, what Mary had
+said was perfectly true: Olivia hated her. The young man had seen that
+upon the morning of the girl's flight from Marchmont Towers; he had
+seen vengeful fury and vindictive passion raging in the dark face of
+John Marchmont's widow. But what reason could the woman have for her
+hatred of this innocent girl? Again and again Olivia's cousin asked
+himself this question; and he was so far away from the truth at last,
+that he could only answer it by imagining the lowest motive for the
+widow's bad feeling. "She envies my poor little girl her fortune and
+position," he thought.
+
+"But you won't leave me alone with my stepmother, will you, Edward?"
+Mary said, recurring to her old prayer. "I am not afraid of her, nor of
+anybody or anything in the world, while you are with me,--how should I
+be?--but I think if I were to be alone with her again, I should die.
+She would speak to me again as she spoke upon the night of the ball,
+and her bitter taunts would kill me. I _could_ not bear to be in her
+power again, Edward."
+
+"And you shall not, my darling," answered the young man, enfolding the
+slender, trembling figure in his strong arms. "My own childish pet, you
+shall never be exposed to any woman's insolence or tyranny. You shall
+be sheltered and protected, and hedged in on every side by your
+husband's love. And when I go to India, you shall sail with me, my
+pearl. Mary, look up and smile at me, and let's have no more talk of
+cruel stepmothers. How strange it seems to me, Polly dear, that you
+should have been so womanly when you were a child, and yet are so
+childlike now you are a woman!"
+
+The mistress of Marchmont Towers looked doubtfully at her husband, as
+if she feared her childishness might be displeasing to him.
+
+"You don't love me any the less because of that, do you, Edward?" she
+asked timidly.
+
+"Because of what, my treasure?"
+
+"Because I am so--childish?"
+
+"Polly," cried the young man, "do you think Jupiter liked Hebe any the
+less because she was as fresh and innocent as the nectar she served out
+to him? If he had, my dear, he'd have sent for Clotho, or Atropos, or
+some one or other of the elderly maiden ladies of Hades, to wait upon
+him as cupbearer. I wouldn't have you otherwise than you are, Polly, by
+so much as one thought."
+
+The girl looked up at her husband in a rapture of innocent affection.
+
+"I am too happy, Edward," she said, in a low awe-stricken whisper--"I
+am too happy! So much happiness can never last."
+
+Alas! the orphan girl's experience of this life had early taught her
+the lesson which some people learn so late. She had learnt to distrust
+the equal blue of a summer sky, the glorious splendour of the blazing
+sunlight. She was accustomed to sorrow; but these brief glimpses of
+perfect happiness filled her with a dim sense of terror. She felt like
+some earthly wanderer who had strayed across the threshold of Paradise.
+In the midst of her delight and admiration, she trembled for the moment
+in which the ruthless angels, bearing flaming swords, should drive her
+from the celestial gates.
+
+"It can't last, Edward," she murmured.
+
+"Can't last, Polly!" cried the young man; "why, my dove is transformed
+all at once into a raven. We have outlived our troubles, Polly, like
+the hero and heroine in one of your novels; and what is to prevent our
+living happy ever afterwards, like them? If you remember, my dear, no
+sorrows or trials ever fall to the lot of people _after_ marriage. The
+persecutions, the separations, the estrangements, are all ante-nuptial.
+When once your true novelist gets his hero and heroine up to the
+altar-rails in real earnest,--he gets them into the church sometimes,
+and then forbids the banns, or brings a former wife, or a rightful
+husband, pale and denouncing, from behind a pillar, and drives the
+wretched pair out again, to persecute them through three hundred pages
+more before he lets them get back again,--but when once the important
+words are spoken and the knot tied, the story's done, and the happy
+couple get forty or fifty years' wedded bliss, as a set-off against the
+miseries they have endured in the troubled course of a twelvemonth's
+courtship. That's the sort of thing, isn't it, Polly?"
+
+The clock of St. Cross, sounding faintly athwart the meadows, struck
+three as the young man finished speaking.
+
+"Three o'clock, Polly!" he cried; "we must go home, my pet. I mean to
+be businesslike to-day."
+
+Upon each day in that happy honeymoon holiday Captain Arundel had made
+some such declaration with regard to his intention of being
+businesslike; that is to say, setting himself deliberately to the task
+of writing those letters which should announce and explain his marriage
+to the people who had a right to hear of it. But the soldier had a
+dislike to all letter-writing, and a special horror of any epistolary
+communication which could come under the denomination of a
+business-letter; so the easy summer days slipped by,--the delicious
+drowsy noontides, the soft and dreamy twilight, the tender moonlit
+nights,--and the Captain put off the task for which he had no fancy,
+from after breakfast until after dinner, and from after dinner until
+after breakfast; always beguiled away from his open travelling-desk by
+a word from Mary, who called him to the window to look at a pretty
+child on the village green before the inn, or at the blacksmith's dog,
+or the tinker's donkey, or a tired Italian organ-boy who had strayed
+into that out-of-the-way nook, or at the smart butcher from Winchester,
+who rattled over in a pony-cart twice a week to take orders from the
+gentry round about, and to insult and defy the local purveyor, whose
+stock-in-trade generally seemed to consist of one leg of mutton and a
+dish of pig's fry.
+
+The young couple walked slowly through the meadows, crossing rustic
+wooden bridges that spanned the winding stream, loitering to look down
+into the clear water at the fish which Captain Arundel pointed out, but
+which Mary could never see;--that young lady always fixing her eyes
+upon some long trailing weed afloat in the transparent water, while the
+silvery trout indicated by her husband glided quietly away to the sedgy
+bottom of the stream. They lingered by the water-mill, beneath whose
+shadow some children were fishing; they seized upon every pretext for
+lengthening that sunny homeward walk, and only reached the inn as the
+village clocks were striking four, at which hour Captain Arundel had
+ordered dinner.
+
+But after the simple little repast, mild and artless in its nature as
+the fair young spirit of the bride herself; after the landlord,
+sympathetic yet respectful, had in his own person attended upon his two
+guests; after the pretty rustic chamber had been cleared of all
+evidence of the meal that had been eaten, Edward Arundel began
+seriously to consider the business in hand.
+
+"The letters must be written, Polly," he said, seating himself at a
+table near the open window. Trailing branches of jasmine and
+honeysuckle made a framework round the diamond-paned casement; the
+perfumed blossoms blew into the room with every breath of the warm
+August breeze, and hung trembling in the folds of the chintz curtains.
+Mr. Arundel's gaze wandered dreamily away through this open window to
+the primitive picture without,--the scattered cottages upon the other
+side of the green, the cattle standing in the pond, the cackling geese
+hurrying homeward across the purple ridge of common, the village
+gossips loitering beneath the faded sign that hung before the low white
+tavern at the angle of the road. He looked at all these things as he
+flung his leathern desk upon the table, and made a great parade of
+unlocking and opening it.
+
+"The letters must be written," he repeated, with a smothered sigh. "Did
+you ever notice a peculiar property in stationery, Polly?"
+
+Mrs. Edward Arundel only opened her brown eyes to their widest extent,
+and stared at her husband.
+
+"No, I see you haven't," said the young man. "How should you, you
+fortunate Polly? You've never had to write any business-letters yet,
+though you are an heiress. The peculiarity of all stationery, my dear,
+is, that it is possessed of an intuitive knowledge of the object for
+which it is to be used. If one has to write an unpleasant letter,
+Polly, it might go a little smoother, you know; one might round one's
+paragraphs, and spell the difficult words--the 'believes' and
+'receives,' the 'tills' and 'untils,' and all that sort of
+thing--better with a pleasant pen, an easy-going, jolly, soft-nibbed
+quill, that would seem to say, 'Cheer up, old fellow! I'll carry you
+through it; we'll get to "your very obedient servant" before you know
+where you are,' and so on. But, bless your heart, Polly! let a poor
+unbusinesslike fellow try to write a business-letter, and everything
+goes against him. The pen knows what he's at, and jibs, and stumbles,
+and shies about the paper, like a broken-down screw; the ink turns
+thick and lumpy; the paper gets as greasy as a London pavement after a
+fall of snow, till a poor fellow gives up, and knocks under to the
+force of circumstances. You see if my pen doesn't splutter, Polly, the
+moment I address Richard Paulette."
+
+Captain Arundel was very careful in the adjustment of his sheet of
+paper, and began his letter with an air of resolution.
+
+"White Hart Inn, Milldale, near Winchester,
+"August 14th.
+
+"MY DEAR SIR,"
+
+He wrote as much as this with great promptitude, and then, with his
+elbow on the table, fell to staring at his pretty young wife and
+drumming his fingers on his chin. Mary was sitting opposite her husband
+at the open window, working, or making a pretence of being occupied
+with some impossible fragment of Berlin wool-work, while she watched
+her husband.
+
+"How pretty you look in that white frock, Polly!" said the soldier;
+"you call those things frocks, don't you? And that blue sash, too,--you
+ought always to wear white, Mary, like your namesakes abroad who are
+_vouee au blanc_ by their faithful mothers, and who are a blessing to
+the laundresses for the first seven or fourteen years of their lives.
+What shall I say to Paulette? He's such a jolly fellow, there oughtn't
+to be much difficulty about the matter. 'My dear sir,' seems absurdly
+stiff; 'my dear Paulette,'--that's better,--'I write this to inform you
+that your client, Miss Mary March----' What's that, Polly?"
+
+It was the postman, a youth upon a pony, with the afternoon letters
+from London. Captain Arundel flung down his pen and went to the window.
+He had some interest in this young man's arrival, as he had left orders
+that such letters as were addressed to him at the hotel in Covent
+Garden should be forwarded to him at Milldale.
+
+"I daresay there's a letter from Germany, Polly," he said eagerly. "My
+mother and Letitia are capital correspondents; I'll wager anything
+there's a letter, and I can answer it in the one I'm going to write
+this evening, and that'll be killing two birds with one stone. I'll run
+down to the postman, Polly."
+
+Captain Arundel had good reason to go after his letters, for there
+seemed little chance of those missives being brought to him. The
+youthful postman was standing in the porch drinking ale out of a
+ponderous earthenware mug, and talking to the landlord, when Edward
+went down.
+
+"Any letters for me, Dick?" the Captain asked. He knew the Christian
+name of almost every visitor or hanger-on at the little inn, though he
+had not stayed there an entire fortnight, and was as popular and
+admired as if he had been some free-spoken young squire to whom all the
+land round about belonged.
+
+"'Ees, sir," the young man answered, shuffling off his cap; "there be
+two letters for ye."
+
+He handed the two packets to Captain Arundel, who looked doubtfully at
+the address of the uppermost, which, like the other, had been
+re-directed by the people at the London hotel. The original address of
+this letter was in a handwriting that was strange to him; but it bore
+the postmark of the village from which the Dangerfield letters were
+sent.
+
+The back of the inn looked into an orchard, and through an open door
+opposite to the porch Edward Arundel saw the low branches of the trees,
+and the ripening fruit red and golden in the afternoon sunlight. He
+went out into this orchard to read his letters, his mind a little
+disturbed by the strange handwriting upon the Dangerfield epistle.
+
+The letter was from his father's housekeeper, imploring him most
+earnestly to go down to the Park without delay. Squire Arundel had been
+stricken with paralysis, and was declared to be in imminent danger.
+Mrs. and Miss Arundel and Mr. Reginald were away in Germany. The
+faithful old servant implored the younger son to lose no time in
+hurrying home, if he wished to see his father alive.
+
+The soldier leaned against the gnarled grey trunk of an old apple-tree,
+and stared at this letter with a white awe-stricken face.
+
+What was he to do? He must go to his father, of course. He must go
+without a moment's delay. He must catch the first train that would
+carry him westward from Southampton. There could be no question as to
+his duty. He must go; he must leave his young wife.
+
+His heart sank with a sharp thrill of pain, and with perhaps some faint
+shuddering sense of an unknown terror, as he thought of this.
+
+"It was lucky I didn't write the letters," he reflected; "no one will
+guess the secret of my darling's retreat. She can stay here till I come
+back to her. God knows I shall hurry back the moment my duty sets me
+free. These people will take care of her. No one will know where to
+look for her. I'm very glad I didn't write to Olivia. We were so happy
+this morning! Who could think that sorrow would come between us so
+soon?"
+
+Captain Arundel looked at his watch. It was a quarter to six o'clock,
+and he knew that an express left Southampton for the west at eight.
+There would be time for him to catch that train with the help of a
+sturdy pony belonging to the landlord of the White Hart, which would
+rattle him over to the station in an hour and a half. There would be
+time for him to catch the train; but, oh! how little time to comfort
+his darling--how little time to reconcile his young wife to the
+temporary separation!
+
+He hurried back to the porch, briefly explained to the landlord what
+had happened, ordered the pony and gig to be got ready immediately, and
+then went very, very slowly upstairs, to the room in which his young
+wife sat by the open window waiting for his return.
+
+Mary looked up at his face as he entered the room, and that one glance
+told her of some new sorrow.
+
+"Edward," she cried, starting up from her chair with a look of terror,
+"my stepmother has come."
+
+Even in his trouble the young man smiled at his foolish wife's
+all-absorbing fear of Olivia Marchmont.
+
+"No, my darling," he said; "I wish to heaven our worst trouble were the
+chance of your father's widow breaking in upon us. Something has
+happened, Mary; something very sorrowful, very serious for me. My
+father is ill, Polly dear, dangerously ill, and I must go to him."
+
+Mary Arundel drew a long breath. Her face had grown very white, and the
+hands that were linked tightly round her husband's arm trembled a
+little.
+
+"I will try to bear it," she said; "I will try to bear it."
+
+"God bless you, my darling!" the soldier answered fervently, clasping
+his young wife to his breast. "I know you will. It will be a very short
+parting, Mary dearest. I will come back to you directly I have seen my
+father. If he is worse, there will be little need for me to stop at
+Dangerfield; if he is better, I can take you back there with me. My own
+darling love, it is very bitter for us to be parted thus; but I know
+that you will bear it like a heroine. Won't you, Polly?"
+
+"I will try to bear it, dear."
+
+She said very little more than this, but clung about her husband, not
+with any desperate force, not with any clamorous and tumultuous grief,
+but with a half-despondent resignation; as a drowning man, whose
+strength is well-nigh exhausted, may cling, in his hopelessness, to a
+spar, which he knows he must presently abandon.
+
+Mary Arundel followed her husband hither and thither while he made his
+brief and hurried preparations for the sudden journey; but although she
+was powerless to assist him,--for her trembling hands let fall
+everything she tried to hold, and there was a mist before her eyes,
+which distorted and blotted the outline of every object she looked
+at,--she hindered him by no noisy lamentations, she distressed him by
+no tears. She suffered, as it was her habit to suffer, quietly and
+uncomplainingly.
+
+The sun was sinking when she went with Edward downstairs to the porch,
+before which the landlord's pony and gig were in waiting, in custody of
+a smart lad who was to accompany Mr. Arundel to Southampton. There was
+no time for any protracted farewell. It was better so, perhaps, Edward
+thought. He would be back so soon, that the grief he felt in this
+parting--and it may be that his suffering was scarcely less than
+Mary's--seemed wasted anguish, to which it would have been sheer
+cowardice to give way. But for all this the soldier very nearly broke
+down when he saw his childish wife's piteous face, white in the evening
+sunlight, turned to him in mute appeal, as if the quivering lips would
+fain have entreated him to abandon all and to remain. He lifted the
+fragile figure in his arms,--alas! it had never seemed so fragile as
+now,--and covered the pale face with passionate kisses and
+fast-dropping tears.
+
+"God bless and defend you, Mary! God keep----"
+
+He was ashamed of the huskiness of his voice, and putting his wife
+suddenly away from him, he sprang into the gig, snatched the reins from
+the boy's hand, and drove away at the pony's best speed. The
+old-fashioned vehicle disappeared in a cloud of dust; and Mary, looking
+after her husband with eyes that were as yet tearless, saw nothing but
+glaring light and confusion, and a pastoral landscape that reeled and
+heaved like a stormy sea.
+
+It seemed to her, as she went slowly back to her room, and sat down
+amidst the disorder of open portmanteaus and overturned hatboxes, which
+the young man had thrown here and there in his hurried selection of the
+few things necessary for him to take on his hasty journey--it seemed as
+if the greatest calamity of her life had now befallen her. As
+hopelessly as she had thought of her father's death, she now thought of
+Edward Arundel's departure. She could not see beyond the acute anguish
+of this separation. She could not realise to herself that there was no
+cause for all this terrible sorrow; that the parting was only a
+temporary one; and that her husband would return to her in a few days
+at the furthest. Now that she was alone, now that the necessity for
+heroism was past, she abandoned herself utterly to the despair that had
+held possession of her soul from the moment in which Captain Arundel
+had told her of his father's illness.
+
+The sun went down behind the purple hills that sheltered the western
+side of the little village. The tree-tops in the orchard below the open
+window of Mrs. Arundel's bedroom grew dim in the grey twilight. Little
+by little the sound of voices in the rooms below died away into
+stillness. The fresh rosy-cheeked country girl who had waited upon the
+young husband and wife, came into the sitting-room with a pair of
+wax-candles in old-fashioned silver candlesticks, and lingered in the
+room for a little time, expecting to receive some order from the lonely
+watcher. But Mary had locked the door of her bedchamber, and sat with
+her head upon the sill of the open window, looking out into the dim
+orchard. It was only when the stars glimmered in the tranquil sky that
+the girl's blank despair gave way before a sudden burst of tears, and
+she flung herself down beside the white-curtained bed to pray for her
+young husband. She prayed for him in an ecstatic fervour of love and
+faith, carried away by the new hopefulness that arose out of her ardent
+supplications, and picturing him going triumphant on his course, to
+find his father out of danger,--restored to health, perhaps,--and to
+return to her before the stars glimmered through the darkness of
+another summer's night. She prayed for him, hoping and believing
+everything; though at the hour in which she knelt, with the faint
+starlight shimmering upon her upturned face and clasped hands, Edward
+Arundel was lying, maimed and senseless, in the wretched waiting-room
+of a little railway-station in Dorsetshire, watched over by an obscure
+country surgeon, while the frightened officials scudded here and there
+in search of some vehicle in which the young man might be conveyed to
+the nearest town.
+
+There had been one of those accidents which seem terribly common on
+every line of railway, however well managed. A signalman had mistaken
+one train for another; a flag had been dropped too soon; and the
+down-express had run into a heavy luggage-train blundering up from
+Exeter with farm-produce for the London markets. Two men had been
+killed, and a great many passengers hurt; some very seriously. Edward
+Arundel's case was perhaps one of the most serious amongst these.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+SOUNDING THE DEPTHS.
+
+
+Lavinia Weston spent the evening after her visit to Marchmont Towers at
+her writing-desk, which, like everything else appertaining to her, was
+a model of neatness and propriety; perfect in its way, although it was
+no marvellous specimen of walnut-wood and burnished gold, no elegant
+structure of papier-mache and mother-of-pearl, but simply a
+schoolgirl's homely rosewood desk, bought for fifteen shillings or a
+guinea.
+
+Mrs. Weston had administered the evening refreshment of weak tea, stale
+bread, and strong butter to her meek husband, and had dismissed him to
+the surgery, a sunken and rather cellar-like apartment opening out of
+the prim second-best parlour, and approached from the village street by
+a side-door. The surgeon was very well content to employ himself with
+the preparation of such draughts and boluses as were required by the
+ailing inhabitants of Kemberling, while his wife sat at her desk in the
+room above him. He left his gallipots and pestle and mortar once or
+twice in the course of the evening, to clamber ponderously up the three
+or four stairs leading to the sitting-room, and stare through the
+keyhole of the door at Mrs. Weston's thoughtful face, and busy hand
+gliding softly over the smooth note-paper. He did this in no prying or
+suspicious spirit, but out of sheer admiration for his wife.
+
+"What a mind she has!" he murmured rapturously, as he went back to his
+work; "what a mind!"
+
+The letter which Lavinia Weston wrote that evening was a very long one.
+She was one of those women who write long letters upon every convenient
+occasion. To-night she covered two sheets of note-paper with her small
+neat handwriting. Those two sheets contained a detailed account of the
+interview that had taken place that day between the surgeon's wife and
+Olivia; and the letter was addressed to the artist, Paul Marchmont.
+
+Perhaps it was in consequence of the receipt of this letter that Paul
+Marchmont arrived at his sister's house at Kemberling two days after
+Mrs. Weston's visit to Marchmont Towers. He told the surgeon that he
+came to Lincolnshire for a few days' change of air, after a long spell
+of very hard work; and George Weston, who looked upon his
+brother-in-law as an intellectual demigod, was very well content to
+accept any explanation of Mr. Marchmont's visit.
+
+"Kemberling isn't a very lively place for you, Mr. Paul," he said
+apologetically,--he always called his wife's brother Mr. Paul,--"but I
+dare say Lavinia will contrive to make you comfortable. She persuaded
+me to come here when old Dawnfield died; but I can't say she acted with
+her usual tact, for the business ain't as good as my Stanfield
+practice; but I don't tell Lavinia so."
+
+Paul Marchmont smiled.
+
+"The business will pick up by-and-by, I daresay," he said. "You'll have
+the Marchmont Towers family to attend to in good time, I suppose."
+
+"That's what Lavinia said," answered the surgeon. "'Mrs. John Marchmont
+can't refuse to employ a relation,' she says; 'and, as first-cousin to
+Mary Marchmont's father, I ought'--meaning herself, you know--'to have
+some influence in that quarter.' But then, you see, the very week we
+come here the gal goes and runs away; which rather, as one may say,
+puts a spoke in our wheel, you know."
+
+Mr. George Weston rubbed his chin reflectively as he concluded thus. He
+was a man given to spending his leisure-hours--when he had any leisure,
+which was not very often--in tavern parlours, where the affairs of the
+nation were settled and unsettled every evening over sixpenny glasses
+of hollands and water; and he regretted his removal from Stanfield,
+which had been as the uprooting of all his dearest associations. He was
+a solemn man, who never hazarded an opinion lightly,--perhaps because
+he never had an opinion to hazard,--and his stolidity won him a good
+deal of respect from strangers; but in the hands of his wife he was
+meeker than the doves that cooed in the pigeon-house behind his
+dwelling, and more plastic than the knob of white wax upon which
+industrious Mrs. Weston was wont to rub her thread when engaged in the
+mysteries of that elaborate and terrible science which women
+paradoxically call _plain_ needlework.
+
+Paul Marchmont presented himself at the Towers upon the day after his
+arrival at Kemberling. His interview with the widow was a very long
+one. He had studied every line of his sister's letter; he had weighed
+every word that had fallen from Olivia's lips and had been recorded by
+Lavinia Weston; and taking the knowledge thus obtained as his
+starting-point, he took his dissecting-knife and went to work at an
+intellectual autopsy. He anatomised the wretched woman's soul. He made
+her tell her secret, and bare her tortured breast before him; now
+wringing some hasty word from her impatience, now entrapping her into
+some admission,--if only so much as a defiant look, a sudden lowering
+of the dark brows, an involuntary compression of the lips. He _made_
+her reveal herself to him. Poor Rosencranz and Guildenstern were sorry
+blunderers in that art which is vulgarly called pumping, and were
+easily put out by a few quips and quaint retorts from the mad Danish
+prince; but Paul Marchmont _would_ have played upon Hamlet more deftly
+than ever mortal musician played upon pipe or recorder, and would have
+fathomed the remotest depths of that sorrowful and erratic soul. Olivia
+writhed under the torture of that polite inquisition, for she knew that
+her secrets were being extorted from her; that her pitiful folly--that
+folly which she would have denied even to herself, if possible--was
+being laid bare in all its weak foolishness. She knew this; but she was
+compelled to smile in the face of her bland inquisitor, to respond to
+his commonplace expressions of concern about the protracted absence of
+the missing girl, and meekly to receive his suggestions respecting the
+course it was her duty to take. He had the air of responding to _her_
+suggestions, rather than of himself dictating any particular line of
+conduct. He affected to believe that he was only agreeing with some
+understood ideas of hers, while he urged his own views upon her.
+
+"Then we are quite of one mind in this, my dear Mrs. Marchmont," he
+said at last; "this unfortunate girl must not be suffered to remain
+away from her legitimate home any longer than we can help. It is our
+duty to find and bring her back. I need scarcely say that you, being
+bound to her by every tie of affection, and having, beyond this, the
+strongest claim upon her gratitude for your devoted fulfilment of the
+trust confided in you,--one hears of these things, Mrs. Marchmont, in a
+country village like Kemberling,--I need scarcely say that you are the
+most fitting person to win the poor child back to a sense of her
+duty--if she _can_ be won to such a sense." Paul Marchmont added, after
+a sudden pause and a thoughtful sigh, "I sometimes fear----"
+
+He stopped abruptly, waiting until Olivia should question him.
+
+"You sometimes fear----?"
+
+"That--that the error into which Miss Marchmont has fallen is the
+result of a mental rather than of a moral deficiency."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"I mean this, my dear Mrs. Marchmont," answered the artist, gravely;
+"one of the most powerful evidences of the soundness of a man's brain
+is his capability of assigning a reasonable motive for every action of
+his life. No matter how unreasonable the action in itself may seem, if
+the motive for that action can be demonstrated. But the moment a man
+acts _without_ motive, we begin to take alarm and to watch him. He is
+eccentric; his conduct is no longer amenable to ordinary rule; and we
+begin to trace his eccentricities to some weakness or deficiency in his
+judgment or intellect. Now, I ask you what motive Mary Marchmont can
+have had for running away from this house?"
+
+Olivia quailed under the piercing scrutiny of the artist's cold grey
+eyes, but she did not attempt to reply to his question.
+
+"The answer is very simple," he continued, after that long scrutiny;
+"the girl could have had no cause for flight; while, on the other hand,
+every reasonable motive that can be supposed to actuate a woman's
+conduct was arrayed against her. She had a happy home, a kind
+stepmother. She was within a few years of becoming undisputed mistress
+of a very large estate. And yet, immediately after having assisted at a
+festive entertainment, to all appearance as gay and happy as the gayest
+and happiest there, this girl runs away in the dead of the night,
+abandoning the mansion which is her own property, and assigning no
+reason whatever for what she does. Can you wonder, then, if I feel
+confirmed in an opinion that I formed upon the day on which I heard the
+reading of my cousin's will?"
+
+"What opinion?"
+
+"That Mary Marchmont is as feeble in mind as she is fragile in body."
+
+He launched this sentence boldly, and waited for Olivia's reply. He had
+discovered the widow's secret. He had fathomed the cause of her jealous
+hatred of Mary Marchmont; but even _he_ did not yet understand the
+nature of the conflict in the desperate woman's breast. She could not
+be wicked all at once. Against every fresh sin she made a fresh
+struggle, and she would not accept the lie which the artist tried to
+force upon her.
+
+"I do not think that there is any deficiency in my stepdaughter's
+intellect," she said, resolutely.
+
+She was beginning to understand that Paul Marchmont wanted to ally
+himself with her against the orphan heiress, but as yet she did not
+understand why he should do so. She was slow to comprehend feelings
+that were utterly foreign to her own nature. There was so little of
+mercenary baseness in this strange woman's soul, that had the flame of
+a candle alone stood between her and the possession of Marchmont
+Towers, I doubt if she would have cared to waste a breath upon its
+extinction. She had lived away from the world, and out of the world;
+and it was difficult for her to comprehend the mean and paltry
+wickedness which arise out of the worship of Baal.
+
+Paul Marchmont recoiled a little before the straight answer which the
+widow had given him.
+
+"You think Miss Marchmont strong-minded, then, perhaps?" he said.
+
+"No; not strong minded."
+
+"My dear Mrs. Marchmont, you deal in paradoxes," exclaimed the artist.
+"You say that your stepdaughter is neither weak-minded nor
+strong-minded?"
+
+"Weak enough, perhaps, to be easily influenced by other people; weak
+enough to believe anything my cousin Edward Arundel might choose to
+tell her; but not what is generally called deficient in intellect."
+
+"You think her perfectly able to take care of herself?"
+
+"Yes; I think so."
+
+"And yet this running away looks almost as if----. But I have no wish
+to force any unpleasant belief upon you, my dear madam. I think--as you
+yourself appear to suggest--that the best thing we can do is to get
+this poor girl home again as quickly as possible. It will never do for
+the mistress of Marchmont Towers to be wandering about the world with
+Mr. Edward Arundel. Pray pardon me, Mrs. Marchmont, if I speak rather
+disrespectfully of your cousin; but I really cannot think that the
+gentleman has acted very honourably in this business."
+
+Olivia was silent. She remembered the passionate indignation of the
+young soldier, the angry defiance hurled at her, as Edward Arundel
+galloped away from the gaunt western facade. She remembered these
+things, and involuntarily contrasted them with the smooth blandness of
+Paul Marchmont's talk, and the deadly purpose lurking beneath it--of
+which deadly purpose some faint suspicion was beginning to dawn upon
+her.
+
+If she could have thought Mary Marchmont mad,--if she could have
+thought Edward Arundel base, she would have been glad; for then there
+would have been some excuse for her own wickedness. But she could not
+think so. She slipped little by little down into the black gulf; now
+dragged by her own mad passion; now lured yet further downward by Paul
+Marchmont.
+
+Between this man and eleven thousand a year the life of a fragile girl
+was the solitary obstacle. For three years it had been so, and for
+three years Paul Marchmont had waited--patiently, as it was his habit
+to wait--the hour and the opportunity for action. The hour and
+opportunity had come, and this woman, Olivia Marchmont, only stood in
+his way. She must become either his enemy or his tool, to be baffled or
+to be made useful. He had now sounded the depths of her nature, and he
+determined to make her his tool.
+
+"It shall be my business to discover this poor child's hiding-place,"
+he said; "when that is found I will communicate with you, and I know
+you will not refuse to fulfil the trust confided to you by your late
+husband. You will bring your stepdaughter back to this house, and
+henceforward protect her from the dangerous influence of Edward
+Arundel."
+
+Olivia looked at the speaker with an expression which seemed like
+terror. It was as if she said,--
+
+"Are you the devil, that you hold out this temptation to me, and twist
+my own passions to serve your purpose?"
+
+And then she paltered with her conscience.
+
+"Do you consider that it is my duty to do this?" she asked.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Marchmont, most decidedly."
+
+"I will do it, then. I--I--wish to do my duty."
+
+"And you can perform no greater act of charity than by bringing this
+unhappy girl back to a sense of _her_ duty. Remember, that her
+reputation, her future happiness, may fall a sacrifice to this foolish
+conduct, which, I regret to say, is very generally known in the
+neighbourhood. Forgive me if I express my opinion too freely; but I
+cannot help thinking, that if Mr. Arundel's intentions had been
+strictly honourable, he would have written to you before this, to tell
+you that his search for the missing girl had failed; or, in the event
+of his finding her, he would have taken the earliest opportunity of
+bringing her back to her own home. My poor cousin's somewhat
+unprotected position, her wealth, and her inexperience of the world,
+place her at the mercy of a fortune-hunter; and Mr. Arundel has himself
+to thank if his conduct gives rise to the belief that he wishes to
+compromise this girl in the eyes of the scandalous, and thus make sure
+of your consent to a marriage which would give him command of my
+cousin's fortune."
+
+Olivia Marchmont's bosom heaved with the stormy beating of her heart.
+Was she to sit calmly by and hold her peace while this man slandered
+the brave young soldier, the bold, reckless, generous-hearted lad, who
+had shone upon her out of the darkness of her life, as the very
+incarnation of all that is noble and admirable in mankind? Was she to
+sit quietly by and hear a stranger lie away her kinsman's honour,
+truth, and manhood?
+
+Yes, she must do so. This man had offered her a price for her truth and
+her soul. He was ready to help her to the revenge she longed for. He
+was ready to give her his aid in separating the innocent young lovers,
+whose pure affection had poisoned her life, whose happiness was worse
+than the worst death to her. She kept silent, therefore, and waited for
+Paul to speak again.
+
+"I will go up to Town to-morrow, and set to work about this business,"
+the artist said, as he rose to take leave of Mrs. Marchmont. "I do not
+believe that I shall have much difficulty in finding the young lady's
+hiding-place. My first task shall be to look for Mr. Arundel. You can
+perhaps give me the address of some place in London where your cousin
+is in the habit of staying?"
+
+"I can."
+
+"Thank you; that will very much simplify matters. I shall write you
+immediate word of any discovery I make, and will then leave all the
+rest to you. My influence over Mary Marchmont as an entire stranger
+could be nothing. Yours, on the contrary, must be unbounded. It will be
+for you to act upon my letter."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Olivia Marchmont waited for two days and nights for the promised
+letter. Upon the third morning it came. The artist's epistle was very
+brief:
+
+"MY DEAR MRS. MARCHMONT,--I have made the necessary discovery. Miss
+Marchmont is to be found at the White Hart Inn, Milldale, near
+Winchester. May I venture to urge your proceeding there in search of
+her without delay?
+
+"Yours very faithfully,
+
+"PAUL MARCHMONT.
+
+"_Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square,_
+"_Aug._ 15_th_."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+RISEN FROM THE GRAVE.
+
+
+The rain dripped ceaselessly upon the dreary earth under a grey
+November sky,--a dull and lowering sky, that seemed to brood over this
+lower world with some menace of coming down to blot out and destroy it.
+The express-train, rushing headlong across the wet flats of
+Lincolnshire, glared like a meteor in the gray fog; the dismal shriek
+of the engine was like the cry of a bird of prey. The few passengers
+who had chosen that dreary winter's day for their travels looked
+despondently out at the monotonous prospect, seeking in vain to descry
+some spot of hope in the joyless prospect; or made futile attempts to
+read their newspapers by the dim light of the lamp in the roof of the
+carriage. Sulky passengers shuddered savagely as they wrapped
+themselves in huge woollen rugs or ponderous coverings made from the
+skins of wild beasts. Melancholy passengers drew grotesque and hideous
+travelling-caps over their brows, and, coiling themselves in the corner
+of their seats, essayed to sleep away the weary hours. Everything upon
+this earth seemed dismal and damp, cold and desolate, incongruous and
+uncomfortable.
+
+But there was one first-class passenger in that Lincolnshire express
+who made himself especially obnoxious to his fellows by the display of
+an amount of restlessness and superabundant energy quite out of keeping
+with the lazy despondency of those about him.
+
+This was a young man with a long tawny beard and a white face,--a very
+handsome face, though wan and attenuated, as if with some terrible
+sickness, and somewhat disfigured by certain strappings of plaister,
+which were bound about a patch of his skull a little above the left
+temple. This young man had one side of the carriage to himself; and a
+sort of bed had been made up for him with extra cushions, upon which he
+lay at full length, when he was still, which was never for very long
+together. He was enveloped almost to the chin in voluminous
+railway-rugs, but, in spite of these coverings, shuddered every now and
+then, as if with cold. He had a pocket-pistol amongst his travelling
+paraphernalia, which he applied occasionally to his dry lips. Sometimes
+drops of perspiration broke suddenly out upon his forehead, and were
+brushed away by a tremulous hand, that was scarcely strong enough to
+hold a cambric handkerchief. In short, it was sufficiently obvious to
+every one that this young man with the tawny beard had only lately
+risen from a sick-bed, and had risen therefrom considerably before the
+time at which any prudent medical practitioner would have given him
+licence to do so.
+
+It was evident that he was very, very ill, but that he was, if
+anything, more ill at ease in mind than in body; and that some terrible
+gnawing anxiety, some restless care, some horrible uncertainty or
+perpetual foreboding of trouble, would not allow him to be at peace. It
+was as much as the three fellow-passengers who sat opposite to him
+could do to bear with his impatience, his restlessness, his short
+half-stifled moans, his long weary sighs; the horror of his fidgety
+feet shuffled incessantly upon the cushions; the suddenly convulsive
+jerks with which he would lift himself upon his elbow to stare fiercely
+into the dismal fog outside the carriage window; the groans that were
+wrung from him as he flung himself into new and painful positions; the
+frightful aspect of physical agony which came over his face as he
+looked at his watch,--and he drew out and consulted that ill-used
+chronometer, upon an average, once in a quarter of an hour; his
+impatient crumpling of the crisp leaves of a new "Bradshaw," which he
+turned over ever and anon, as if, by perpetual reference to that
+mysterious time-table, he might hasten the advent of the hour at which
+he was to reach his destination. He was, altogether, a most aggravating
+and exasperating travelling companion; and it was only out of Christian
+forbearance with the weakness of his physical state that his irritated
+fellow-passengers refrained from uniting themselves against him, and
+casting him bodily out of the window of the carriage; as a clown
+sometimes flings a venerable but tiresome pantaloon through a square
+trap or pitfall, lurking, undreamed of, in the facade of an honest
+tradesman's dwelling.
+
+The three passengers had, in divers manners, expressed their sympathy
+with the invalid traveller; but their courtesies had not been responded
+to with any evidence of gratitude or heartiness. The young man had
+answered his companions in an absent fashion, scarcely deigning to look
+at them as he spoke;--speaking altogether with the air of some
+sleep-walker, who roams hither and thither absorbed in a dreadful
+dream, making a world for himself, and peopling it with horrible images
+unknown to those about him.
+
+Had he been ill?--Yes, very ill. He had had a railway accident, and
+then brain-fever. He had been ill for a long time.
+
+Somebody asked him how long.
+
+He shuffled about upon the cushions, and groaned aloud at this
+question, to the alarm of the man who had asked it.
+
+"How long?" he cried, in a fierce agony of mental or bodily
+uneasiness;--"how long? Two months,--three months,--ever since the 15th
+of August."
+
+Then another passenger, looking at the young man's very evident
+sufferings from a commercial point of view, asked him whether he had
+had any compensation.
+
+"Compensation!" cried the invalid. "What compensation?"
+
+"Compensation from the Railway Company. I hope you've a strong case
+against them, for you've evidently been a terrible sufferer."
+
+It was dreadful to see the way in which the sick man writhed under this
+question.
+
+"Compensation!" he cried. "What compensation can they give me for an
+accident that shut me in a living grave for three months, that
+separated me from----? You don't know what you're talking about, sir,"
+he added suddenly; "I can't think of this business patiently; I can't
+be reasonable. If they'd hacked _me_ to pieces, I shouldn't have cared.
+I've been under a red-hot Indian sun, when we fellows couldn't see the
+sky above us for the smoke of the cannons and the flashing of the
+sabres about our heads, and I'm not afraid of a little cutting and
+smashing more or less; but when I think what others may have suffered
+through----I'm almost mad, and----!"
+
+He couldn't say any more, for the intensity of his passion had shaken
+him as a leaf is shaken by a whirlwind; and he fell back upon the
+cushions, trembling in every limb, and groaning aloud. His
+fellow-passengers looked at each other rather nervously, and two out of
+the three entertained serious thoughts of changing carriages when the
+express stopped midway between London and Lincoln.
+
+But they were reassured by-and-by; for the invalid, who was Captain
+Edward Arundel, or that pale shadow of the dashing young cavalry
+officer which had risen from a sick-bed, relapsed into silence, and
+displayed no more alarming symptoms than that perpetual restlessness
+and disquietude which is cruelly wearying even to the strongest nerves.
+He only spoke once more, and that was when the short day, in which
+there had been no actual daylight, was closing in, and the journey
+nearly finished, when he startled his companions by crying out
+suddenly,--
+
+"O my God! will this journey never come to an end? Shall I never be put
+out of this horrible suspense?"
+
+The journey, or at any rate Captain Arundel's share of it, came to an
+end almost immediately afterwards, for the train stopped at
+Swampington; and while the invalid was staggering feebly to his feet,
+eager to scramble out of the carriage, his servant came to the door to
+assist and support him.
+
+"You seem to have borne the journey wonderful, sir," the man said
+respectfully, as he tried to rearrange his master's wrappings, and to
+do as much as circumstances, and the young man's restless impatience,
+would allow of being done for his comfort.
+
+"I have suffered the tortures of the infernal regions, Morrison,"
+Captain Arundel ejaculated, in answer to his attendant's congratulatory
+address. "Get me a fly directly; I must go to the Towers at once."
+
+"Not to-night, sir, surely?" the servant remonstrated, in a tone of
+alarm. "Your Mar and the doctors said you _must_ rest at Swampington
+for a night."
+
+"I'll rest nowhere till I've been to Marchmont Towers," answered the
+young soldier passionately. "If I must walk there,--if I'm to drop down
+dead on the road,--I'll go. If the cornfields between this and the
+Towers were a blazing prairie or a raging sea, I'd go. Get me a fly,
+man; and don't talk to me of my mother or the doctors. I'm going to
+look for my wife. Get me a fly."
+
+This demand for a commonplace hackney vehicle sounded rather like an
+anti-climax, after the young man's talk of blazing prairies and raging
+seas; but passionate reality has no ridiculous side, and Edward
+Arundel's most foolish words were sublime by reason of their
+earnestness.
+
+"Get me a fly, Morrison," he said, grinding his heel upon the platform
+in the intensity of his impatience. "Or, stay; we should gain more in
+the end if you were to go to the George--it's not ten minutes' walk
+from here; one of the porters will take you--the people there know me,
+and they'll let you have some vehicle, with a pair of horses and a
+clever driver. Tell them it's for an errand of life and death, and that
+Captain Arundel will pay them three times their usual price, or six
+times, if they wish. Tell them anything, so long as you get what we
+want."
+
+The valet, an old servant of Edward Arundel's father, was carried away
+by the young man's mad impetuosity. The vitality of this broken-down
+invalid, whose physical weakness contrasted strangely with his mental
+energy, bore down upon the grave man-servant like an avalanche, and
+carried him whither it would. He was fain to abandon all hope of being
+true to the promises which he had given to Mrs. Arundel and the medical
+men, and to yield himself to the will of the fiery young soldier.
+
+He left Edward Arundel sitting upon a chair in the solitary
+waiting-room, and hurried after the porter who had volunteered to show
+him the way to the George Inn, the most prosperous hotel in
+Swampington.
+
+The valet had good reason to be astonished by his young master's energy
+and determination; for Mary Marchmont's husband was as one rescued from
+the very jaws of death. For eleven weeks after that terrible concussion
+upon the South-Western Railway, Edward Arundel had lain in a state of
+coma,--helpless, mindless; all the story of his life blotted away, and
+his brain transformed into as blank a page as if he had been an infant
+lying on his mother's knees. A fractured skull had been the young
+Captain's chief share in those injuries which were dealt out pretty
+freely to the travellers in the Exeter mail on the 15th of August; and
+the young man had been conveyed to Dangerfield Park, whilst his
+father's corpse lay in stately solemnity in one of the chief rooms,
+almost as much a corpse as that dead father.
+
+Mrs. Arundel's troubles had come, as the troubles of rich and
+prosperous people often do come, in a sudden avalanche, that threatened
+to overwhelm the tender-hearted matron. She had been summoned from
+Germany to attend her husband's deathbed; and she was called away from
+her faithful watch beside that deathbed, to hear tidings of the
+accident that had befallen her younger son.
+
+Neither the Dorsetshire doctor who attended the stricken traveller upon
+his homeward journey, and brought the strong man, helpless as a child,
+to claim the same tender devotion that had watched over his infancy,
+nor the Devonshire doctors who were summoned to Dangerfield, gave any
+hope of their patient's recovery. The sufferer might linger for years,
+they said; but his existence would be only a living death, a horrible
+blank, which it was a cruelty to wish prolonged. But when a great
+London surgeon appeared upon the scene, a new light, a wonderful gleam
+of hope, shone in upon the blackness of the mother's despair.
+
+This great London surgeon, who was a very unassuming and matter-of-fact
+little man, and who seemed in a great hurry to earn his fee and run
+back to Saville Row by the next express, made a brief examination of
+the patient, asked a very few sharp and trenchant questions of the
+reverential provincial medical practitioners, and then declared that
+the chief cause of Edward Arundel's state lay in the fact that a
+portion of the skull was depressed,--a splinter pressed upon the brain.
+
+The provincial practitioners opened their eyes very wide; and one of
+them ventured to mutter something to the effect that he had thought as
+much for a long time. The London surgeon further stated, that until the
+pressure was removed from the patient's brain, Captain Edward Arundel
+would remain in precisely the same state as that into which he had
+fallen immediately upon the accident. The splinter could only be
+removed by a very critical operation, and this operation must be
+deferred until the patient's bodily strength was in some measure
+restored.
+
+The surgeon gave brief but decisive directions to the provincial
+medical men as to the treatment of their patient during this
+interregnum, and then departed, after promising to return as soon as
+Captain Arundel was in a fit state for the operation. This period did
+not arrive till the first week in November, when the Devonshire doctors
+ventured to declare their patient's shattered frame in a great measure
+renovated by their devoted attention, and the tender care of the best
+of mothers.
+
+The great surgeon came. The critical operation was performed, with such
+eminent success as to merit a very long description, which afterwards
+appeared in the _Lancet_; and slowly, like the gradual lifting of a
+curtain, the black shadows passed away from Edward Arundel's mind, and
+the memory of the past returned to him.
+
+It was then that he raved madly about his young wife, perpetually
+demanding that she might be summoned to him; continually declaring that
+some great misfortune would befall her if she were not brought to his
+side, that, even in his feebleness, he might defend and protect her.
+His mother mistook his vehemence for the raving of delirium. The
+doctors fell into the same error, and treated him for brain-fever. It
+was only when the young soldier demonstrated to them that he could, by
+making an effort over himself, be as reasonable as they were, that he
+convinced them of their mistake. Then he begged to be left alone with
+his mother; and, with his feverish hands clasped in hers, asked her the
+meaning of her black dress, and the reason why his young wife had not
+come to him. He learned that his mother's mourning garments were worn
+in memory of his dead father. He learned also, after much bewilderment
+and passionate questioning, that no tidings of Mary Marchmont had ever
+come to Dangerfield.
+
+It was then that the young man told his mother the story of his
+marriage: how that marriage had been contracted in haste, but with no
+real desire for secrecy; how he had, out of mere idleness, put off
+writing to his friends until that last fatal night; and how, at the
+very moment when the pen was in his hand and the paper spread out
+before him, the different claims of a double duty had torn him asunder,
+and he had been summoned from the companionship of his bride to the
+deathbed of his father.
+
+Mrs. Arundel tried in vain to set her son's mind at rest upon the
+subject of his wife's silence.
+
+"No, mother!" he cried; "it is useless talking to me. You don't know my
+poor darling. She has the courage of a heroine, as well as the
+simplicity of a child. There has been some foul play at the bottom of
+this; it is treachery that has kept my wife from me. She would have
+come here on foot, had she been free to come. I know whose hand is in
+this business. Olivia Marchmont has kept my poor girl a prisoner;
+Olivia Marchmont has set herself between me and my darling!"
+
+"But you don't know this, Edward. I'll write to Mr. Paulette; he will
+be able to tell us what has happened."
+
+The young man writhed in a sudden paroxysm of mental agony.
+
+"Write to Mr. Paulette!" he exclaimed. "No, mother; there shall be no
+delay, no waiting for return-posts. That sort of torture would kill me
+in a few hours. No, mother; I will go to my wife by the first train
+that will take me on my way to Lincolnshire."
+
+"You will go! You, Edward! in your state!"
+
+There was a terrible outburst of remonstrance and entreaty on the part
+of the poor mother. Mrs. Arundel went down upon her knees before her
+son, imploring him not to leave Dangerfield till his strength was
+recovered; imploring him to let her telegraph a summons to Richard
+Paulette; to let her go herself to Marchmont Towers in search of Mary;
+to do anything rather than carry out the one mad purpose that he was
+bent on,--the purpose of going himself to look for his wife.
+
+The mother's tears and prayers were vain; no adamant was ever firmer
+than the young soldier.
+
+"She is my wife, mother," he said; "I have sworn to protect and cherish
+her; and I have reason to think she has fallen into merciless hands. If
+I die upon the road, I must go to her. It is not a case in which I can
+do my duty by proxy. Every moment I delay is a wrong to that poor
+helpless girl. Be reasonable, dear mother, I implore you; I should
+suffer fifty times more by the torture of suspense if I stayed here,
+than I can possibly suffer in a railroad journey from here to
+Lincolnshire."
+
+The soldier's strong will triumphed over every opposition. The
+provincial doctors held up their hands, and protested against the
+madness of their patient; but without avail. All that either Mrs.
+Arundel or the doctors could do, was to make such preparations and
+arrangements as would render the weary journey easier; and it was under
+the mother's superintendence that the air-cushions, the brandy-flasks,
+the hartshorn, sal-volatile, and railway-rugs, had been provided for
+the Captain's comfort.
+
+It was thus that, after a blank interval of three months, Edward
+Arundel, like some creature newly risen from the grave, returned to
+Swampington, upon his way to Marchmont Towers.
+
+The delay seemed endless to this restless passenger, sitting in the
+empty waiting-room of the quiet Lincolnshire station, though the ostler
+and stable-boys at the "George" were bestirring themselves with
+good-will, urged on by Mr. Morrison's promises of liberal reward for
+their trouble, and though the man who was to drive the carriage lost no
+time in arraying himself for the journey. Captain Arundel looked at his
+watch three times while he sat in that dreary Swampington waiting-room.
+There was a clock over the mantelpiece, but he would not trust to that.
+
+"Eight o'clock!" he muttered. "It will be ten before I get to the
+Towers, if the carriage doesn't come directly."
+
+He got up, and walked from the waiting-room to the platform, and from
+the platform to the door of the station. He was so weak as to be
+obliged to support himself with his stick; and even with that help he
+tottered and reeled sometimes like a drunken man. But, in his eager
+impatience, he was almost unconscious of his own weakness.
+
+"Will it never come?" he muttered. "Will it never come?"
+
+At last, after an intolerable delay, as it seemed to the young man, the
+carriage-and-pair from the George Inn rattled up to the door of the
+station, with Mr. Morrison upon the box, and a postillion loosely
+balanced upon one of the long-legged, long-backed, bony grey horses.
+Edward Arundel got into the vehicle before his valet could alight to
+assist him.
+
+"Marchmont Towers!" he cried to the postillion; "and a five-pound note
+if you get there in less than an hour."
+
+He flung some money to the officials who had gathered about the door to
+witness his departure, and who had eagerly pressed forward to render
+him that assistance which, even in his weakness, he disdained.
+
+These men looked gravely at each other as the carriage dashed off into
+the fog, blundering and reeling as it went along the narrow half-made
+road, that led from the desert patch of waste ground upon which the
+station was built into the high-street of Swampington.
+
+"Marchmont Towers!" said one of the men, in a tone that seemed to imply
+that there was something ominous even in the name of the Lincolnshire
+mansion. "What does _he_ want at Marchmont Towers, I wonder?"
+
+"Why, don't you know who he is, mate?" responded the other man,
+contemptuously.
+
+"No."
+
+"He's Parson Arundel's nevy,--the young officer that some folks said
+ran away with the poor young miss oop at the Towers."
+
+"My word! is he now? Why, I shouldn't ha' known him."
+
+"No; he's a'most like the ghost of what he was, poor young chap. I've
+heerd as he was in that accident as happened last August on the
+Sou'-Western."
+
+The railway official shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"It's all a queer story," he said. "I can't make out naught about it;
+but I know _I_ shouldn't care to go up to the Towers after dark."
+
+Marchmont Towers had evidently fallen into rather evil repute amongst
+these simple Lincolnshire people.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The carriage in which Edward Arundel rode was a superannuated old
+chariot, whose uneasy springs rattled and shook the sick man to pieces.
+He groaned aloud every now and then from sheer physical agony; and yet
+I almost doubt if he knew that he suffered, so superior in its
+intensity was the pain of his mind to every bodily torture. Whatever
+consciousness he had of his racked and aching limbs was as nothing in
+comparison to the racking anguish of suspense, the intolerable agony of
+anxiety, which seemed multiplied by every moment. He sat with his face
+turned towards the open window of the carriage, looking out steadily
+into the night. There was nothing before him but a blank darkness and
+thick fog, and a flat country blotted out by the falling rain; but he
+strained his eyes until the pupils dilated painfully, in his desire to
+recognise some landmark in the hidden prospect.
+
+"_When_ shall I get there?" he cried aloud, in a paroxysm of rage and
+grief. "My own one, my pretty one, my wife, when shall I get to you?"
+
+He clenched his thin hands until the nails cut into his flesh. He
+stamped upon the floor of the carriage. He cursed the rusty, creaking
+springs, the slow-footed horses, the pools of water through which the
+wretched animals floundered pastern-deep. He cursed the darkness of the
+night, the stupidity of the postillion, the length of the
+way,--everything, and anything, that kept him back from the end which
+he wanted to reach.
+
+At last the end came. The carriage drew up before the tall iron gates,
+behind which stretched, dreary and desolate as some patch of
+common-land, that melancholy waste which was called a park.
+
+A light burned dimly in the lower window of the lodge,--a little spot
+that twinkled faintly red and luminous through the darkness and the
+rain; but the iron gates were as closely shut as if Marchmont Towers
+had been a prison-house. Edward Arundel was in no humour to linger long
+for the opening of those gates. He sprang from the carriage, reckless
+of the weakness of his cramped limbs, before the valet could descend
+from the rickety box-seat, or the postillion could get off his horse,
+and shook the wet and rusty iron bars with his own wasted hands. The
+gates rattled, but resisted the concussion; they had evidently been
+locked for the night. The young man seized an iron ring, dangling at
+the end of a chain, which hung beside one of the stone pillars, and
+rang a peal that resounded like an alarm-signal through the darkness. A
+fierce watchdog far away in the distance howled dismally at the
+summons, and the dissonant shriek of a peacock sounded across the flat.
+
+The door of the lodge was opened about five minutes after the bell had
+rung, and an old man peered out into the night, holding a candle shaded
+by his feeble hand, and looking suspiciously towards the gate.
+
+"Who is it?" he said.
+
+"It is I, Captain Arundel. Open the gate, please."
+
+The man, who was very old, and whose intellect seemed to have grown as
+dim and foggy as the night itself, reflected for a few moments, and
+then mumbled,--
+
+"Cap'en Arundel! Ay, to be sure, to be sure. Parson Arundel's nevy; ay,
+ay."
+
+He went back into the lodge, to the disgust and aggravation of the
+young soldier, who rattled fiercely at the gate once more in his
+impatience. But the old man emerged presently, as tranquil as if the
+blank November night had been some sunshiny noontide in July, carrying
+a lantern and a bunch of keys, one of which he proceeded in a leisurely
+manner to apply to the great lock of the gate.
+
+"Let me in!" cried Edward Arundel. "Man alive! do you think I came down
+here to stand all night staring through these iron bars? Is Marchmont
+Towers a prison, that you shut your gates as if they were never to be
+opened until the Day of Judgment?"
+
+The old man responded with a feeble, chirpy laugh, an audible grin,
+senile and conciliatory.
+
+"We've no need to keep t' geates open arter dark," he said; "folk
+doan't coome to the Toowers arter dark."
+
+He had succeeded by this time in turning the key in the lock; one of
+the gates rolled slowly back upon its rusty hinges, creaking and
+groaning as if in hoarse protest against all visitors to the Towers;
+and Edward Arundel entered the dreary domain which John Marchmont had
+inherited from his kinsman.
+
+The postillion turned his horses from the highroad without the gates
+into the broad drive leading up to the mansion. Far away, across the
+wet flats, the broad western front of that gaunt stone dwelling-place
+frowned upon the travellers, its black grimness only relieved by two or
+three dim red patches, that told of lighted windows and human
+habitation. It was rather difficult to associate friendly flesh and
+blood with Marchmont Towers on this dark November night. The nervous
+traveller would have rather expected to find diabolical denizens
+lurking within those black and stony walls; hideous enchantments
+beneath that rain-bespattered roof; weird and incarnate horrors
+brooding by deserted hearths, and fearful shrieks of souls in perpetual
+pain breaking upon the stillness of the night.
+
+Edward Arundel had no thought of these things. He knew that the place
+was darksome and gloomy, and that, in very spite of himself, he had
+always been unpleasantly impressed by it; but he knew nothing more. He
+only wanted to reach the house without delay, and to ask for the young
+wife whom he had parted with upon a balmy August evening three months
+before. He wanted this passionately, almost madly; and every moment
+made his impatience wilder, his anxiety more intense. It seemed as if
+all the journey from Dangerfield Park to Lincolnshire was as nothing
+compared to the space that still lay between him and Marchmont Towers.
+
+"We've done it in double-quick time, sir," the postillion said,
+complacently pointing to the steaming sides of his horses. "Master'll
+gie it to me for driving the beasts like this."
+
+Edward Arundel looked at the panting animals. They had brought him
+quickly, then, though the way had seemed so long.
+
+"You shall have a five-pound note, my lad," he said, "if you get me up
+to yonder house in five minutes."
+
+He had his hand upon the door of the carriage, and was leaning against
+it for support, while he tried to recover enough strength with which to
+clamber into the vehicle, when his eye was caught by some white object
+flapping in the rain against the stone pillar of the gate, and made
+dimly visible in a flickering patch of light from the lodge-keeper's
+lantern.
+
+"What's that?" he cried, pointing to this white spot upon the
+moss-grown stone.
+
+The old man slowly raised his eyes to the spot towards which the
+soldier's finger pointed.
+
+"That?" he mumbled. "Ay, to be sure, to be sure. Poor young lady!
+That's the printed bill as they stook oop. It's the printed bill, to be
+sure, to be sure. I'd a'most forgot it. It ain't been much good,
+anyhow; and I'd a'most forgot it."
+
+"The printed bill! the young lady!" gasped Edward Arundel, in a hoarse,
+choking voice.
+
+He snatched the lantern from the lodge-keeper's hand with a force that
+sent the old man reeling and tottering several paces backward; and,
+rushing to the stone pillar, held the light up above his head, on a
+level with the white placard which had attracted his notice. It was
+damp and dilapidated at the edges; but that which was printed upon it
+was as visible to the soldier as though each commonplace character had
+been a fiery sign inscribed upon a blazing scroll.
+
+This was the announcement which Edward Arundel read upon the gate-post
+of Marchmont Towers:--
+
+"ONE HUNDRED POUNDS REWARD.--Whereas Miss Mary Marchmont left her home
+on Wednesday last, October 17th, and has not since been heard of, this
+is to give notice that the above reward will be given to any one who
+shall afford such information as will lead to her recovery if she be
+alive, or to the discovery of her body if she be dead. The missing
+young lady is eighteen years of age, rather below the middle height, of
+fair complexion, light-brown hair, and hazel eyes. When she left her
+home, she had on a grey silk dress, grey shawl, and straw bonnet. She
+was last seen near the river-side upon the afternoon of Wednesday, the
+17th instant.
+"_Marchmont Towers, October_ 20_th_, 1848."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+FACE TO FACE.
+
+
+It is not easy to imagine a lion-hearted young cavalry officer, whose
+soldiership in the Punjaub had won the praises of a Napier and an
+Outram, fainting away like a heroine of romance at the coming of evil
+tidings; but Edward Arundel, who had risen from a sick-bed to take a
+long and fatiguing journey in utter defiance of the doctors, was not
+strong enough to bear the dreadful welcome that greeted him upon the
+gate-post at Marchmont Towers.
+
+He staggered, and would have fallen, had not the extended arms of his
+father's confidential servant been luckily opened to receive and
+support him. But he did not lose his senses.
+
+"Get me into the carriage, Morrison," he cried. "Get me up to that
+house. They've tortured and tormented my wife while I've been lying
+like a log on my bed at Dangerfield. For God's sake, get me up there as
+quick as you can!"
+
+Mr. Morrison had read the placard on the gate across his young master's
+shoulder. He lifted the Captain into the carriage, shouted to the
+postillion to drive on, and took his seat by the young man's side.
+
+"Begging you pardon, Mr. Edward," he said, gently; "but the young lady
+may be found by this time. That bill's been sticking there for upwards
+of a month, you see, sir, and it isn't likely but what Miss Marchmont
+has been found between that time and this."
+
+The invalid passed his hand across his forehead, down which the cold
+sweat rolled in great beads.
+
+"Give me some brandy," he whispered; "pour some brandy down my throat,
+Morrison, if you've any compassion upon me; I must get strength somehow
+for the struggle that lies before me."
+
+The valet took a wicker-covered flask from his pocket, and put the neck
+of it to Edward Arundel's lips.
+
+"She may be found, Morrison," muttered the young man, after drinking a
+long draught of the fiery spirit; he would willingly have drunk living
+fire itself, in his desire to obtain unnatural strength in this crisis.
+"Yes; you're right there. She may be found. But to think that she
+should have been driven away! To think that my poor, helpless, tender
+girl should have been driven a second time from the home that is her
+own! Yes; her own by every law and every right. Oh, the relentless
+devil, the pitiless devil!--what can be the motive of her conduct? Is
+it madness, or the infernal cruelty of a fiend incarnate?"
+
+Mr. Morrison thought that his young master's brain had been disordered
+by the shock he had just undergone, and that this wild talk was mere
+delirium.
+
+"Keep your heart up, Mr. Edward," he murmured, soothingly; "you may
+rely upon it, the young lady has been found."
+
+But Edward was in no mind to listen to any mild consolatory remarks
+from his valet. He had thrust his head out of the carriage-window, and
+his eyes were fixed upon the dimly-lighted casements of the western
+drawing-room.
+
+"The room in which John and Polly and I used to sit together when first
+I came from India," he murmured. "How happy we were!--how happy we
+were!"
+
+The carriage stopped before the stone portico, and the young man got
+out once more, assisted by his servant. His breath came short and quick
+now that he stood upon the threshold. He pushed aside the servant who
+opened the familiar door at the summons of the clanging bell, and
+strode into the hall. A fire burned on the wide hearth; but the
+atmosphere of the great stone-paved chamber was damp and chilly.
+
+Captain Arundel walked straight to the door of the western
+drawing-room. It was there that he had seen lights in the windows; it
+was there that he expected to find Olivia Marchmont.
+
+He was not mistaken. A shaded lamp burnt dimly on a table near the
+fire. There was a low invalid-chair beside this table, an open book
+upon the floor, and an Indian shawl, one he had sent to his cousin,
+flung carelessly upon the pillows. The neglected fire burned low in the
+old-fashioned grate, and above the dull-red blaze stood the figure of a
+woman, tall, dark, and gloomy of aspect.
+
+It was Olivia Marchmont, in the mourning-robes that she had worn, with
+but one brief intermission, ever since her husband's death. Her profile
+was turned towards the door by which Edward Arundel entered the room;
+her eyes were bent steadily upon the low heap of burning ashes in the
+grate. Even in that doubtful light the young man could see that her
+features were sharpened, and that a settled frown had contracted her
+straight black brows.
+
+In her fixed attitude, in her air of deathlike tranquillity, this woman
+resembled some sinful vestal sister, set, against her will, to watch a
+sacred fire, and brooding moodily over her crimes.
+
+She did not hear the opening of the door; she had not even heard the
+trampling of the horses' hoofs, or the crashing of the wheels upon the
+gravel before the house. There were times when her sense of external
+things was, as it were, suspended and absorbed in the intensity of her
+obstinate despair.
+
+"Olivia!" said the soldier.
+
+Mrs. Marchmont looked up at the sound of that accusing voice, for there
+was something in Edward Arundel's simple enunciation of her name which
+seemed like an accusation or a menace. She looked up, with a great
+terror in her face, and stared aghast at her unexpected visitor. Her
+white cheeks, her trembling lips, and dilated eyes could not have more
+palpably expressed a great and absorbing horror, had the young man
+standing quietly before her been a corpse newly risen from its grave.
+
+"Olivia Marchmont," said Captain Arundel, after a brief pause, "I have
+come here to look for my wife."
+
+The woman pushed her trembling hands across her forehead, brushing the
+dead black hair from her temples, and still staring with the same
+unutterable horror at the face of her cousin. Several times she tried
+to speak; but the broken syllables died away in her throat in hoarse,
+inarticulate mutterings. At last, with a great effort, the words came.
+
+"I--I--never expected to see you," she said; "I heard that you were
+very ill; I heard that you----"
+
+"You heard that I was dying," interrupted Edward Arundel; "or that, if
+I lived, I should drag out the rest of my existence in hopeless idiocy.
+The doctors thought as much a week ago, when one of them, cleverer than
+the rest I suppose, had the courage to perform an operation that
+restored me to consciousness. Sense and memory came back to me by
+degrees. The thick veil that had shrouded the past was rent asunder;
+and the first image that came to me was the image of my young wife, as
+I had seen her upon the night of our parting. For more than three
+months I had been dead. I was suddenly restored to life. I asked those
+about me to give me tidings of my wife. Had she sought me out?--had she
+followed me to Dangerfield? No! They could tell me nothing. They
+thought that I was delirious, and tried to soothe me with compassionate
+speeches, merciful falsehoods, promising me that I should see my
+darling. But I soon read the secret of their scared looks. I saw pity
+and wonder mingled in my mother's face, and I entreated her to be
+merciful to me, and to tell me the truth. She had compassion upon me,
+and told me all she knew, which was very little. She had never heard
+from my wife. She had never heard of any marriage between Mary
+Marchmont and me. The only communication which she had received from
+any of her Lincolnshire relations had been a letter from my uncle
+Hubert, in reply to one of hers telling him of my hopeless state.
+
+"This was the shock that fell upon me when life and memory came back. I
+could not bear the imprisonment of a sick-bed. I felt that for the
+second time I must go out into the world to look for my darling; and in
+defiance of the doctors, in defiance of my poor mother, who thought
+that my departure from Dangerfield was a suicide, I am here. It is here
+that I come first to seek for my wife. I might have stopped in London
+to see Richard Paulette; I might sooner have gained tidings of my
+darling. But I came here; I came here without stopping by the way,
+because an uncontrollable instinct and an unreasoning impulse tells me
+that it is here I ought to seek her. I am here, her husband, her only
+true and legitimate defender; and woe be to those who stand between me
+and my wife!"
+
+He had spoken rapidly in his passion; and he stopped, exhausted by his
+own vehemence, and sank heavily into a chair near the lamplit table.
+
+Then for the first time that night Olivia Marchmont plainly saw her
+cousin's face, and saw the terrible change that had transformed the
+handsome young soldier, since the bright August morning on which he had
+gone forth from Marchmont Towers. She saw the traces of a long and
+wearisome illness sadly visible in his waxen-hued complexion, his
+hollow cheeks, the faded lustre of his eyes, his dry and pallid lips.
+She saw all this, the woman whose one great sin had been to love this
+man wickedly and madly, in spite of her better self, in spite of her
+womanly pride; she saw the change in him that had altered him from a
+young Apollo to a shattered and broken invalid. And did any revulsion
+of feeling arise in her breast? Did any corresponding transformation in
+her own heart bear witness to the baseness of her love?
+
+No; a thousand times, no! There was no thrill of disgust, how transient
+soever; not so much as one passing shudder of painful surprise, one
+pang of womanly regret. No! In place of these, a passionate yearning
+arose in this woman's haughty soul; a flood of sudden tenderness rushed
+across the black darkness of her mind. She fain would have flung
+herself upon her knees, in loving self-abasement, at the sick man's
+feet. She fain would have cried aloud, amid a tempest of passionate
+sobs,--
+
+"O my love, my love! you are dearer to me a hundred times by this cruel
+change. It was _not_ your bright-blue eyes and waving chestnut
+hair,--it was not your handsome face, your brave, soldier-like bearing
+that I loved. My love was not so base as that. I inflicted a cruel
+outrage upon myself when I thought that I was the weak fool of a
+handsome face. Whatever _I_ have been, my love, at least, has been
+pure. My love is pure, though I am base. I will never slander that
+again, for I know now that it is immortal."
+
+In the sudden rush of that flood-tide of love and tenderness, all these
+thoughts welled into Olivia Marchmont's mind. In all her sin and
+desperation she had never been so true a woman as now; she had never,
+perhaps, been so near being a good woman. But the tender emotion was
+swept out of her breast the next moment by the first words of Edward
+Arundel.
+
+"Why do you not answer my question?" he said.
+
+She drew herself up in the erect and rigid attitude that had become
+almost habitual to her. Every trace of womanly feeling faded out of her
+face, as the sunlight disappears behind the sudden darkness of a
+thundercloud.
+
+"What question?" she asked, with icy indifference.
+
+"The question I have come to Lincolnshire to ask--the question I have
+perilled my life, perhaps, to ask," cried the young man. "Where is my
+wife?"
+
+The widow turned upon him with a horrible smile.
+
+"I never heard that you were married," she said. "Who is your wife?"
+
+"Mary Marchmont, the mistress of this house."
+
+Olivia opened her eyes, and looked at him in half-sardonic surprise.
+
+"Then it was not a fable?" she said.
+
+"What was not a fable?"
+
+"The unhappy girl spoke the truth when she said that you had married
+her at some out-of-the-way church in Lambeth."
+
+"The truth! Yes!" cried Edward Arundel. "Who should dare to say that
+she spoke other than the truth? Who should dare to disbelieve her?"
+
+Olivia Marchmont smiled again,--that same strange smile which was
+almost too horrible for humanity, and yet had a certain dark and gloomy
+grandeur of its own. Satan, the star of the morning, may have so smiled
+despairing defiance upon the Archangel Michael.
+
+"Unfortunately," she said, "no one believed the poor child. Her story
+was such a very absurd one, and she could bring forward no shred of
+evidence in support of it."
+
+"O my God!" ejaculated Edward Arundel, clasping his hands above his
+head in a paroxysm of rage and despair. "I see it all--I see it all! My
+darling has been tortured to death. Woman!" he cried, "are you
+possessed by a thousand fiends? Is there no one sentiment of womanly
+compassion left in your breast? If there is one spark of womanhood in
+your nature, I appeal to that; I ask you what has happened to my wife?"
+
+"My wife! my wife!" The reiteration of that familiar phrase was to
+Olivia Marchmont like the perpetual thrust of a dagger aimed at an open
+wound. It struck every time upon the same tortured spot, and inflicted
+the same agony.
+
+"The placard upon the gates of this place can tell you as much as I
+can," she said.
+
+The ghastly whiteness of the soldier's face told her that he had seen
+the placard of which she spoke.
+
+"She has not been found, then?" he said, hoarsely.
+
+"No."
+
+"How did she disappear?"
+
+"As she disappeared upon the morning on which you followed her. She
+wandered out of the house, this time leaving no letter, nor message,
+nor explanation of any kind whatever. It was in the middle of the day
+that she went out; and for some time her absence caused no alarm. But,
+after some hours, she was waited for and watched for very anxiously.
+Then a search was made."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Wherever she had at any time been in the habit of walking,--in the
+park; in the wood; along the narrow path by the water; at Pollard's
+farm; at Hester's house at Kemberling,--in every place where it might
+be reasonably imagined there was the slightest chance of finding her."
+
+"And all this was without result?"
+
+"It was."
+
+"_Why_ did she leave this place? God help you, Olivia Marchmont, if it
+was your cruelty that drove her away!"
+
+The widow took no notice of the threat implied in these words. Was
+there anything upon earth that she feared now? No--nothing. Had she not
+endured the worst long ago, in Edward Arundel's contempt? She had no
+fear of a battle with this man; or with any other creature in the
+world; or with the whole world arrayed and banded together against her,
+if need were. Amongst all the torments of those black depths to which
+her soul had gone down, there was no such thing as fear. That cowardly
+baseness is for the happy and prosperous, who have something to lose.
+This woman was by nature dauntless and resolute as the hero of some
+classic story; but in her despair she had the desperate and reckless
+courage of a starving wolf. The hand of death was upon her; what could
+it matter how she died?
+
+"I am very grateful to you, Edward Arundel," she said, bitterly, "for
+the good opinion you have always had of me. The blood of the
+Dangerfield Arundels must have had some drop of poison intermingled
+with it, I should think, before it could produce so vile a creature as
+myself; and yet I have heard people say that my mother was a good
+woman."
+
+The young man writhed impatiently beneath the torture of his cousin's
+deliberate speech. Was there to be no end to this unendurable delay?
+Even now,--now that he was in this house, face to face with the woman
+he had come to question--it seemed as if he _could_ not get tidings of
+his wife.
+
+So, often in his dreams, he had headed a besieging-party against the
+Affghans, with the scaling-ladders reared against the wall; he had seen
+the dark faces grinning down upon him--all savage glaring eyes and
+fierce glistening teeth--and had heard the voices of his men urging him
+on to the encounter, but had felt himself paralysed and helpless, with
+his sabre weak as a withered reed in his nerveless hand.
+
+"For God's sake, let there be no quarrelling with phrases between you
+and me, Olivia!" he cried. "If you or any other living being have
+injured my wife, the reckoning between us shall be no light one. But
+there will be time enough to talk of that by-and-by. I stand before
+you, newly risen from a grave in which I have lain for more than three
+months, as dead to the world, and to every creature I have ever loved
+or hated, as if the Funeral Service had been read over my coffin. I
+come to demand from you an account of what has happened during that
+interval. If you palter or prevaricate with me, I shall know that it is
+because you fear to tell me the truth."
+
+"Fear!"
+
+"Yes; you have good reason to fear, if you have wronged Mary Arundel.
+Why did she leave this house?"
+
+"Because she was not happy in it, I suppose. She chose to shut herself
+up in her own room, and to refuse to be governed, or advised, or
+consoled. I tried to do my duty to her; yes," cried Olivia Marchmont,
+suddenly raising her voice, as if she had been vehemently
+contradicted;--"yes, I did try to do my duty to her. I urged her to
+listen to reason; I begged her to abandon her foolish falsehood about a
+marriage with you in London."
+
+"You disbelieved in that marriage?"
+
+"I did," answered Olivia.
+
+"You lie!" cried Edward Arundel. "You knew the poor child had spoken
+the truth. You knew her--you knew me--well enough to know that I should
+not have detained her away from her home an hour, except to make her my
+wife--except to give myself the strongest right to love and defend
+her."
+
+"I knew nothing of the kind, Captain Arundel; you and Mary Marchmont
+had taken good care to keep your secrets from me. I knew nothing of
+your plots, your intentions. _I_ should have considered that one of the
+Dangerfield Arundels would have thought his honour sullied by such an
+act as a stolen marriage with an heiress, considerably under age, and
+nominally in the guardianship of her stepmother. I did, therefore,
+disbelieve the story Mary Marchmont told me. Another person, much more
+experienced than I, also disbelieved the unhappy girl's account of her
+absence."
+
+"Another person! What other person?"
+
+"Mr. Marchmont."
+
+"Mr. Marchmont!"
+
+"Yes; Paul Marchmont,--my husband's first-cousin."
+
+A sudden cry of rage and grief broke from Edward Arundel's lips.
+
+"O my God!" he exclaimed, "there was some foundation for the warning in
+John Marchmont's letter, after all. And I laughed at him; I laughed at
+my poor friend's fears."
+
+The widow looked at her kinsman in mute wonder.
+
+"Has Paul Marchmont been in this house?" he asked.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"When was he here?"
+
+"He has been here often; he comes here constantly. He has been living
+at Kemberling for the last three months."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"For his own pleasure, I suppose," Olivia answered haughtily. "It is no
+business of mine to pry into Mr. Marchmont's motives."
+
+Edward Arundel ground his teeth in an access of ungovernable passion.
+It was not against Olivia, but against himself this time that he was
+enraged. He hated himself for the arrogant folly, the obstinate
+presumption, with which he had ridiculed and slighted John Marchmont's
+vague fears of his kinsman Paul.
+
+"So this man has been here,--is here constantly," he muttered. "Of
+course, it is only natural that he should hang about the place. And you
+and he are stanch allies, I suppose?" he added, turning upon Olivia.
+
+"Stanch allies! Why?"
+
+"Because you both hate my wife."
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"You both hate her. You, out of a base envy of her wealth; because of
+her superior rights, which made you a secondary person in this house,
+perhaps,--there is nothing else for which you _could_ hate her. Paul
+Marchmont, because she stands between him and a fortune. Heaven help
+her! Heaven help my poor, gentle, guileless darling! Surely Heaven must
+have had some pity upon her when her husband was not by!"
+
+The young man dashed the blinding tears from his eyes. They were the
+first that he had shed since he had risen from that which many people
+had thought his dying-bed, to search for his wife.
+
+But this was no time for tears or lamentations. Stern determination
+took the place of tender pity and sorrowful love. It was a time for
+resolution and promptitude.
+
+"Olivia Marchmont," he said, "there has been some foul play in this
+business. My wife has been missing a month; yet when I asked my mother
+what had happened at this house during my illness, she could tell me
+nothing. Why did you not write to tell her of Mary's flight?"
+
+"Because Mrs. Arundel has never done me the honour to cultivate any
+intimacy between us. My father writes to his sister-in-law sometimes; I
+scarcely ever write to my aunt. On the other hand, your mother had
+never seen Mary Marchmont, and could not be expected to take any great
+interest in her proceedings. There was, therefore, no reason for my
+writing a special letter to announce the trouble that had befallen me."
+
+"You might have written to my mother about my marriage. You might have
+applied to her for confirmation of the story which you disbelieved."
+
+Olivia Marchmont smiled.
+
+"Should I have received that confirmation?" she said. "No. I saw your
+mother's letters to my father. There was no mention in those letters of
+any marriage; no mention whatever of Mary Marchmont. This in itself was
+enough to confirm my disbelief. Was it reasonable to imagine that you
+would have married, and yet have left your mother in total ignorance of
+the fact?"
+
+"O God, help me!" cried Edward Arundel, wringing his hands. "It seems
+as if my own folly, my own vile procrastination, have brought this
+trouble upon my wife. Olivia Marchmont, have pity upon me. If you hate
+this girl, your malice must surely have been satisfied by this time.
+She has suffered enough. Pity me, and help me; if you have any human
+feeling in your breast. She left this house because her life here had
+grown unendurable; because she saw herself doubted, disbelieved,
+widowed in the first month of her marriage, utterly desolate and
+friendless. Another woman might have borne up against all this misery.
+Another woman would have known how to assert herself, and to defend
+herself, even in the midst of her sorrow and desolation. But my poor
+darling is a child; a baby in ignorance of the world. How should _she_
+protect herself against her enemies? Her only instinct was to run away
+from her persecutors,--to hide herself from those whose pretended
+doubts flung the horror of dishonour upon her. I can understand all
+now; I can understand. Olivia Marchmont, this man Paul has a strong
+reason for being a villain. The motives that have induced you to do
+wrong must be very small in comparison to his. He plays an infamous
+game, I believe; but he plays for a high stake."
+
+A high stake! Had not _she_ perilled her soul upon the casting of this
+die? Had _she_ not flung down her eternal happiness in that fatal game
+of hazard?
+
+"Help me, then, Olivia," said Edward, imploringly; "help me to find my
+wife; and atone for all that you have ever done amiss in the past. It
+is not too late."
+
+His voice softened as he spoke. He turned to her, with his hands
+clasped, waiting anxiously for her answer. Perhaps this appeal was the
+last cry of her good angel, pleading against the devils for her
+redemption. But the devils had too long held possession of this woman's
+breast. They arose, arrogant and unpitying, and hardened her heart
+against that pleading voice.
+
+"How much he loves her!" thought Olivia Marchmont; "how dearly he loves
+her! For her sake he humiliates himself to me."
+
+Then, with no show of relenting in her voice or manner, she said
+deliberately:
+
+"I can only tell you again what I told you before. The placard you saw
+at the park-gates can tell you as much as I can. Mary Marchmont ran
+away. She was sought for in every direction, but without success. Mr.
+Marchmont, who is a man of the world, and better able to suggest what
+is right in such a case as this, advised that Mr. Paulette should be
+sent for. He was accordingly communicated with. He came, and instituted
+a fresh search. He also caused a bill to be printed and distributed
+through the country. Advertisements were inserted in the 'Times' and
+other papers. For some reason--I forget what reason--Mary Marchmont's
+name did not appear in these advertisements. They were so worded as to
+render the publication of the name unnecessary."
+
+Edward Arundel pushed his hand across his forehead.
+
+"Richard Paulette has been here?" he murmured, in a low voice.
+
+He had every confidence in the lawyer; and a deadly chill came over him
+at the thought that the cool, hard-headed solicitor had failed to find
+the missing girl.
+
+"Yes; he was here two or three days."
+
+"And he could do nothing?"
+
+"Nothing, except what I have told you."
+
+The young man thrust his hand into his breast to still the cruel
+beating of his heart. A sudden terror had taken possession of him,--a
+horrible dread that he should never look upon his young wife's face
+again. For some minutes there was a dead silence in the room, only
+broken once or twice by the falling of some ashes on the hearth.
+Captain Arundel sat with his face hidden behind his hand. Olivia still
+stood as she had stood when her cousin entered the room, erect and
+gloomy, by the old-fashioned chimney-piece.
+
+"There was something in that placard," the soldier said at last, in a
+hoarse, altered voice,--"there was something about my wife having been
+seen last by the water-side. Who saw her there?"
+
+"Mr. Weston, a surgeon of Kemberling,--Paul Marchmont's
+brother-in-law."
+
+"Was she seen by no one else?"
+
+"Yes; she was seen at about the same time--a little sooner or later, we
+don't know which--by one of Farmer Pollard's men."
+
+"And she has never been seen since?"
+
+"Never; that is to say, we can hear of no one who has seen her."
+
+"At what time in the day was she seen by this Mr. Weston?"
+
+"At dusk; between five and six o'clock."
+
+Edward Arundel put his hand suddenly to his throat, as if to check some
+choking sensation that prevented his speaking.
+
+"Olivia," he said, "my wife was last seen by the river-side. Does any
+one think that, by any unhappy accident, by any terrible fatality, she
+lost her way after dark, and fell into the water? or that--O God, that
+would be too horrible!--does any one suspect that she drowned herself?"
+
+"Many things have been said since her disappearance," Olivia Marchmont
+answered. "Some people say one thing, some another."
+
+"And it has been said that she--that she was drowned?"
+
+"Yes; many people have said so. The river was dragged while Mr.
+Paulette was here, and after he went away. The men were at work with
+the drags for more than a week."
+
+"And they found nothing?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Was there any other reason for supposing that--that my wife fell into
+the river?"
+
+"Only one reason."
+
+"What was that?"
+
+"I will show you," Olivia Marchmont answered.
+
+She took a bunch of keys from her pocket, and went to an old-fashioned
+bureau or cabinet upon the other side of the room. She unlocked the
+upper part of this bureau, opened one of the drawers, and took from it
+something which she brought to Edward Arundel.
+
+This something was a little shoe; a little shoe of soft bronzed
+leather, stained and discoloured with damp and moss, and trodden down
+upon one side, as if the wearer had walked a weary way in it, and had
+been unaccustomed to so much walking.
+
+Edward Arundel remembered, in that brief, childishly-happy honeymoon at
+the little village near Winchester, how often he had laughed at his
+young wife's propensity for walking about damp meadows in such delicate
+little slippers as were better adapted to the requirements of a
+ballroom. He remembered the slender foot, so small that he could take
+it in his hand; the feeble little foot that had grown tired in long
+wanderings by the Hampshire trout-streams, but which had toiled on in
+heroic self-abnegation so long as it was the will of the sultan to
+pedestrianise.
+
+"Was this found by the river-side?" he asked, looking piteously at the
+slipper which Mrs. Marchmont had put into his hand.
+
+"Yes; it was found amongst the rushes on the shore, a mile below the
+spot at which Mr. Weston saw my step-daughter."
+
+Edward Arundel put the little shoe into his bosom.
+
+"I'll not believe it," he cried suddenly; "I'll not believe that my
+darling is lost to me. She was too good, far too good, to think of
+suicide; and Providence would never suffer my poor lonely child to be
+led away to a dreary death upon that dismal river-shore. No, no; she
+fled away from this place because she was too wretched here. She went
+away to hide herself amongst those whom she could trust, until her
+husband came to claim her. I will believe anything in the world except
+that she is lost to me. And I will not believe that, I will never
+believe that, until I look down at her corpse; until I lay my hand on
+her cold breast, and feel that her true heart has ceased beating. As I
+went out of this place four months ago to look for her, I will go again
+now. My darling, my darling, my innocent pet, my childish bride; I will
+go to the very end of the world in search of you."
+
+The widow ground her teeth as she listened to her kinsman's passionate
+words. Why did he for ever goad her to blacker wickedness by this
+parade of his love for Mary? Why did he force her to remember every
+moment how much cause she had to hate this pale-faced girl?
+
+Captain Arundel rose, and walked a few paces, leaning on his stick as
+he went.
+
+"You will sleep here to-night, of course?" Olivia Marchmont said.
+
+"Sleep here!"
+
+His tone expressed plainly enough that the place was abhorrent to him.
+
+"Yes; where else should you stay?"
+
+"I meant to have stopped at the nearest inn."
+
+"The nearest inn is at Kemberling."
+
+"That would suit me well enough," the young man answered indifferently;
+"I must be in Kemberling early to-morrow, for I must see Paul
+Marchmont. I am no nearer the comprehension of my wife's flight by
+anything that you have told me. It is to Paul Marchmont that I must
+look next. Heaven help him if he tries to keep the truth from me."
+
+"You will see Mr. Marchmont here as easily as at Kemberling," Olivia
+answered; "he comes here every day."
+
+"What for?"
+
+"He has built a sort of painting-room down by the river-side, and he
+paints there whenever there is light."
+
+"Indeed!" cried Edward Arundel; "he makes himself at home at Marchmont
+Towers, then?"
+
+"He has a right to do so, I suppose," answered the widow indifferently.
+"If Mary Marchmont is dead, this place and all belonging to it is his.
+As it is, I am only here on sufferance."
+
+"He has taken possession, then?"
+
+"On the contrary, he shrinks from doing so."
+
+"And, by the Heaven above us, he does wisely," cried Edward Arundel.
+"No man shall seize upon that which belongs to my darling. No foul plot
+of this artist-traitor shall rob her of her own. God knows how little
+value _I_ set upon her wealth; but I will stand between her and those
+who try to rob her, until my last gasp. No, Olivia; I'll not stay here;
+I'll accept no hospitality from Mr. Marchmont. I suspect him too much."
+
+He walked to the door; but before he reached it the widow went to one
+of the windows, and pushed aside the blind.
+
+"Look at the rain," she said; "hark at it; don't you hear it, drip,
+drip, drip upon the stone? I wouldn't turn a dog out of doors upon such
+a night as this; and you--you are so ill--so weak. Edward Arundel, do
+you hate me so much that you refuse to share the same shelter with me,
+even for a night?"
+
+There is nothing so difficult of belief to a man, who is not a coxcomb,
+as the simple fact that he is beloved by a woman whom he does not love,
+and has never wooed by word or deed. But for this, surely Edward
+Arundel must, in that sudden burst of tenderness, that one piteous
+appeal, have discovered a clue to his cousin's secret.
+
+He discovered nothing; he guessed nothing. But he was touched by her
+tone, even in spite of his utter ignorance of its meaning, and he
+replied, in an altered manner,
+
+"Certainly, Olivia, if you really wish it, I will stay. Heaven knows I
+have no desire that you and I should be ill friends. I want your help;
+your pity, perhaps. I am quite willing to believe that any cruel things
+you said to Mary arose from an outbreak of temper. I cannot think that
+you could be base at heart. I will even attribute your disbelief of the
+statement made by my poor girl as to our marriage to the narrow
+prejudices learnt in a small country town. Let us be friends, Olivia."
+
+He held out his hand. His cousin laid her cold fingers in his open
+palm, and he shuddered as if he had come in contact with a corpse.
+There was nothing very cordial in the salutation. The two hands seemed
+to drop asunder, lifeless and inert; as if to bear mute witness that
+between these two people there was no possibility of sympathy or union.
+
+But Captain Arundel accepted his cousin's hospitality. Indeed he had
+need to do so; for he found that his valet had relied upon his master's
+stopping at the Towers, and had sent the carriage back to Swampington.
+A tray with cold meat and wine was brought into the drawing-room for
+the young soldier's refreshment. He drank a glass of Madeira, and made
+some pretence of eating a few mouthfuls, out of courtesy to Olivia; but
+he did this almost mechanically. He sat silent and gloomy, brooding
+over the terrible shock that he had so newly received; brooding over
+the hidden things that had happened in that dreary interval, during
+which he had been as powerless to defend his wife from trouble as a
+dead man.
+
+Again and again the cruel thought returned to him, each time with a
+fresh agony,--that if he had written to his mother, if he had told her
+the story of his marriage, the things which had happened could never
+have come to pass. Mary would have been sheltered and protected by a
+good and loving woman. This thought, this horrible self-reproach, was
+the bitterest thing the young man had to bear.
+
+"It is too great a punishment," he thought; "I am too cruelly punished
+for having forgotten everything in my happiness with my darling."
+
+The widow sat in her low easy-chair near the fire, with her eyes fixed
+upon the burning coals; the grate had been replenished, and the light
+of the red blaze shone full upon Olivia Marchmont's haggard face.
+Edward Arundel, aroused for a few moments out of his gloomy
+abstraction, was surprised at the change which an interval of a few
+months had made in his cousin. The gloomy shadow which he had often
+seen on her face had become a fixed expression; every line had
+deepened, as if by the wear and tear of ten years, rather than by the
+progress of a few months. Olivia Marchmont had grown old before her
+time. Nor was this the only change. There was a look, undefined and
+undefinable, in the large luminous grey eyes, unnaturally luminous now,
+which filled Edward Arundel with a vague sense of terror; a terror
+which he would not--which he dared not--attempt to analyse. He
+remembered Mary's unreasoning fear of her stepmother, and he now
+scarcely wondered at that fear. There was something almost weird and
+unearthly in the aspect of the woman sitting opposite to him by the
+broad hearth: no vestige of colour in her gloomy face, a strange light
+burning in her eyes, and her black draperies falling round her in
+straight, lustreless folds.
+
+"I fear you have been ill, Olivia," the young man said, presently.
+
+Another sentiment had arisen in his breast side by side with that vague
+terror,--a fancy that perhaps there was some reason why his cousin
+should be pitied.
+
+"Yes," she answered indifferently; as if no subject of which Captain
+Arundel could have spoken would have been of less concern to
+her,--"yes, I have been very ill."
+
+"I am sorry to hear it."
+
+Olivia looked up at him and smiled. Her smile was the strangest he had
+ever seen upon a woman's face.
+
+"I am very sorry to hear it. What has been the matter with you?"
+
+"Slow fever, Mr. Weston said."
+
+"Mr. Weston?"
+
+"Yes; Mr. Marchmont's brother-in-law. He has succeeded to Mr.
+Dawnfield's practice at Kemberling. He attended me, and he attended my
+step-daughter."
+
+"My wife was ill, then?"
+
+"Yes; she had brain-fever: she recovered from that, but she did not
+recover strength. Her low spirits alarmed me, and I considered it only
+right--Mr. Marchmont suggested also--that a medical man should be
+consulted."
+
+"And what did this man, this Mr. Weston, say?"
+
+"Very little; there was nothing the matter with Mary, he said. He gave
+her a little medicine, but only in the desire of strengthening her
+nervous system. He could give her no medicine that would have any very
+good effect upon her spirits, while she chose to keep herself
+obstinately apart from every one."
+
+The young man's head sank upon his breast. The image of his desolate
+young wife arose before him; the image of a pale, sorrowful girl,
+holding herself apart from her persecutors, abandoned, lonely,
+despairing. Why had she remained at Marchmont Towers? Why had she ever
+consented to go there, when she had again and again expressed such
+terror of her stepmother? Why had she not rather followed her husband
+down to Devonshire, and thrown herself upon his relatives for
+protection? Was it like this girl to remain quietly here in
+Lincolnshire, when the man she loved with such innocent devotion was
+lying between life and death in the west?
+
+"She is such a child," he thought,--"such a child in her ignorance of
+the world. I must not reason about her as I would about another woman."
+
+And then a sudden flush of passionate emotion rose to his face, as a
+new thought flashed into his mind. What if this helpless girl had been
+detained by force at Marchmont Towers?
+
+"Olivia," he cried, "whatever baseness this man, Paul Marchmont, may be
+capable of, you at least must be superior to any deliberate sin. I have
+all my life believed in you, and respected you, as a good woman. Tell
+me the truth, then, for pity's sake. Nothing that you can tell me will
+fill up the dead blank that the horrible interval since my accident has
+made in my life. But you can give me some help. A few words from you
+may clear away much of this darkness. How did you find my wife? How did
+you induce her to come back to this place? I know that she had an
+unreasonable dread of returning here."
+
+"I found her through the agency of Mr. Marchmont," Olivia answered,
+quietly. "I had some difficulty in inducing her to return here; but
+after hearing of your accident--"
+
+"How was the news of that broken to her?"
+
+"Unfortunately she saw a paper that had happened to be left in her
+way."
+
+"By whom?"
+
+"By Mr. Marchmont."
+
+"Where was this?"
+
+"In Hampshire."
+
+"Indeed! Then Paul Marchmont went with you to Hampshire?"
+
+"He did. He was of great service to me in this crisis. After seeing the
+paper, my stepdaughter was seized with brain-fever. She was unconscious
+when we brought her back to the Towers. She was nursed by my old
+servant Barbara, and had the highest medical care. I do not think that
+anything more could have been done for her."
+
+"No," answered Edward Arundel, bitterly; "unless you could have loved
+her."
+
+"We cannot force our affections," the widow said, in a hard voice.
+
+Another voice in her breast seemed to whisper, "Why do you reproach me
+for not having loved this girl? If you had loved _me_, the whole world
+would have been different."
+
+"Olivia Marchmont," said Captain Arundel, "by your own avowal there has
+never been any affection for this orphan girl in your heart. It is not
+my business to dwell upon the fact, as something almost unnatural under
+the peculiar circumstances through which that helpless child was cast
+upon your protection. It is needless to try to understand why you have
+hardened your heart against my poor wife. Enough that it is so. But I
+may still believe that, whatever your feelings may be towards your dead
+husband's daughter, you would not be guilty of any deliberate act of
+treachery against her. I can afford to believe this of you; but I
+cannot believe it of Paul Marchmont. That man is my wife's natural
+enemy. If he has been here during my illness, he has been here to plot
+against her. When he came here, he came to attempt her destruction. She
+stands between him and this estate. Long ago, when I was a careless
+schoolboy, my poor friend, John Marchmont, told me that, if ever the
+day came upon which Mary's interests should be opposed to the interests
+of her cousin, that man would be a dire and bitter enemy; so much the
+more terrible because in all appearance her friend. The day came; and
+I, to whom the orphan girl had been left as a sacred legacy, was not by
+to defend her. But I have risen from a bed that many have thought a bed
+of death; and I come to this place with one indomitable resolution
+paramount in my breast,--the determination to find my wife, and to
+bring condign punishment upon the man who has done her wrong."
+
+Captain Arundel spoke in a low voice; but his passion was all the more
+terrible because of the suppression of those common outward evidences
+by which anger ordinarily betrays itself. He relapsed into thoughtful
+silence.
+
+Olivia made no answer to anything that he had said. She sat looking at
+him steadily, with an admiring awe in her face. How splendid he
+was--this young hero--even in his sickness and feebleness! How
+splendid, by reason of the grand courage, the chivalrous devotion, that
+shone out of his blue eyes!
+
+The clock struck eleven while the cousins sat opposite to each
+other,--only divided, physically, by the width of the tapestried
+hearth-rug; but, oh, how many weary miles asunder in spirit!--and
+Edward Arundel rose, startled from his sorrowful reverie.
+
+"If I were a strong man," he said, "I would see Paul Marchmont
+to-night. But I must wait till to-morrow morning. At what time does he
+come to his painting-room?"'
+
+"At eight o'clock, when the mornings are bright; but later when the
+weather is dull."
+
+"At eight o'clock! I pray Heaven the sun may shine early to-morrow! I
+pray Heaven I may not have to wait long before I find myself face to
+face with that man! Good-night, Olivia."
+
+He took a candle from a table near the door, and lit it almost
+mechanically. He found Mr. Morrison waiting for him, very sleepy and
+despondent, in a large bedchamber in which Captain Arundel had never
+slept before,--a dreary apartment, decked out with the faded splendours
+of the past; a chamber in which the restless sleeper might expect to
+see a phantom lady in a ghostly sacque, cowering over the embers, and
+spreading her transparent hands above the red light.
+
+"It isn't particular comfortable, after Dangerfield," the valet
+muttered in a melancholy voice; "and all I 'ope, Mr. Edward, is, that
+the sheets are not damp. I've been a stirrin' of the fire and puttin'
+on fresh coals for the last hour. There's a bed for me in the dressin'
+room, within call."
+
+Captain Arundel scarcely heard what his servant said to him. He was
+standing at the door of the spacious chamber, looking out into a long
+low-roofed corridor, in which he had just encountered Barbara, Mrs.
+Marchmont's confidential attendant,--the wooden-faced,
+inscrutable-looking woman, who, according to Olivia, had watched and
+ministered to his wife.
+
+"Was that the tenderest face that looked down upon my darling as she
+lay on her sick-bed?" he thought. "I had almost as soon have had a
+ghoul to watch by my poor dear's pillow."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+THE PAINTING-ROOM BY THE RIVER.
+
+
+Edward Arundel lay awake through the best part of that November night,
+listening to the ceaseless dripping of the rain upon the terrace, and
+thinking of Paul Marchmont. It was of this man that he must demand an
+account of his wife. Nothing that Olivia had told him had in any way
+lessened this determination. The little slipper found by the water's
+edge; the placard flapping on the moss-grown pillar at the entrance to
+the park; the story of a possible suicide, or a more probable
+accident;--all these things were as nothing beside the young man's
+suspicion of Paul Marchmont. He had pooh-poohed John's dread of his
+kinsman as weak and unreasonable; and now, with the same unreason, he
+was ready to condemn this man, whom he had never seen, as a traitor and
+a plotter against his young wife.
+
+He lay tossing from side to side all that night, weak and feverish,
+with great drops of cold perspiration rolling down his pale face,
+sometimes falling into a fitful sleep, in whose distorted dreams Paul
+Marchmont was for ever present, now one man, now another. There was no
+sense of fitness in these dreams; for sometimes Edward Arundel and the
+artist were wrestling together with newly-sharpened daggers in their
+eager hands, each thirsting for the other's blood; and in the next
+moment they were friends, and had been friendly--as it seemed--for
+years.
+
+The young man woke from one of these last dreams, with words of
+good-fellowship upon his lips, to find the morning light gleaming
+through the narrow openings in the damask window-curtains, and Mr.
+Morrison laying out his master's dressing apparatus upon the carved oak
+toilette-table.
+
+Captain Arundel dressed himself as fast as he could, with the
+assistance of the valet, and then made his way down the broad
+staircase, with the help of his cane, upon which he had need to lean
+pretty heavily, for he was as weak as a child.
+
+"You had better give me the brandy-flask, Morrison," he said. "I am
+going out before breakfast. You may as well come with me, by-the-by;
+for I doubt if I could walk as far as I want to go, without the help of
+your arm."
+
+In the hall Captain Arundel found one of the servants. The western door
+was open, and the man was standing on the threshold looking out at the
+morning. The rain had ceased; but the day did not yet promise to be
+very bright, for the sun gleamed like a ball of burnished copper
+through a pale November mist.
+
+"Do you know if Mr. Paul Marchmont has gone down to the boat-house?"
+Edward asked.
+
+"Yes, sir," the man answered; "I met him just now in the quadrangle.
+He'd been having a cup of coffee with my mistress."
+
+Edward started. They were friends, then, Paul Marchmont and
+Olivia!--friends, but surely not allies! Whatever villany this man
+might be capable of committing, Olivia must at least be guiltless of
+any deliberate treachery?
+
+Captain Arundel took his servant's arm and walked out into the
+quadrangle, and from the quadrangle to the low-lying woody swamp, where
+the stunted trees looked grim and weird-like in their leafless
+ugliness. Weak as the young man was, he walked rapidly across the
+sloppy ground, which had been almost flooded by the continual rains. He
+was borne up by his fierce desire to be face to face with Paul
+Marchmont. The savage energy of his mind was stronger than any physical
+debility. He dismissed Mr. Morrison as soon as he was within sight of
+the boat-house, and went on alone, leaning on his stick, and pausing
+now and then to draw breath, angry with himself for his weakness.
+
+The boat-house, and the pavilion above it, had been patched up by some
+country workmen. A handful of plaster here and there, a little new
+brickwork, and a mended window-frame bore witness of this. The
+ponderous old-fashioned wooden shutters had been repaired, and a good
+deal of the work which had been begun in John Marchmont's lifetime had
+now, in a certain rough manner, been completed. The place, which had
+hitherto appeared likely to fall into utter decay, had been rendered
+weather-tight and habitable; the black smoke creeping slowly upward
+from the ivy-covered chimney, gave evidence of occupation. Beyond this,
+a large wooden shed, with a wide window fronting the north, had been
+erected close against the boat-house. This rough shed Edward Arundel at
+once understood to be the painting-room which the artist had built for
+himself.
+
+He paused a moment outside the door of this shed. A man's voice--a
+tenor voice, rather thin and metallic in quality--was singing a scrap
+of Rossini upon the other side of the frail woodwork.
+
+Edward Arundel knocked with the handle of his stick upon the door. The
+voice left off singing, to say "Come in."
+
+The soldier opened the door, crossed the threshold, and stood face to
+face with Paul Marchmont in the bare wooden shed. The painter had
+dressed himself for his work. His coat and waistcoat lay upon a chair
+near the door. He had put on a canvas jacket, and had drawn a loose
+pair of linen trousers over those which belonged to his usual costume.
+So far as this paint-besmeared coat and trousers went, nothing could
+have been more slovenly than Paul Marchmont's appearance; but some
+tincture of foppery exhibited itself in the black velvet smoking-cap,
+which contrasted with and set off the silvery whiteness of his hair, as
+well as in the delicate curve of his amber moustache. A moustache was
+not a very common adornment in the year 1848. It was rather an
+eccentricity affected by artists, and permitted as the wild caprice of
+irresponsible beings, not amenable to the laws that govern rational and
+respectable people.
+
+Edward Arundel sharply scrutinised the face and figure of the artist.
+He cast a rapid glance round the bare whitewashed walls of the shed,
+trying to read even in those bare walls some chance clue to the
+painter's character. But there was not much to be gleaned from the
+details of that almost empty chamber. A dismal, black-looking iron
+stove, with a crooked chimney, stood in one corner. A great easel
+occupied the centre of the room. A sheet of tin, nailed upon a wooden
+shutter, swung backwards and forwards against the northern window,
+blown to and fro by the damp wind that crept in through the crevices in
+the framework of the roughly-fashioned casement. A heap of canvases
+were piled against the walls, and here and there a half-finished
+picture--a lurid Turneresque landscape; a black stormy sky; or a rocky
+mountain-pass, dyed blood-red by the setting sun--was propped up
+against the whitewashed background. Scattered scraps of water-colour,
+crayon, old engravings, sketches torn and tumbled, bits of rockwork and
+foliage, lay littered about the floor; and on a paint-stained
+deal-table of the roughest and plainest fashion were gathered the
+colour-tubes and palettes, the brushes and sponges and dirty cloths,
+the greasy and sticky tin-cans, which form the paraphernalia of an
+artist. Opposite the northern window was the moss-grown stone-staircase
+leading up to the pavilion over the boat-house. Mr. Marchmont had built
+his painting-room against the side of the pavilion, in such a manner as
+to shut in the staircase and doorway which formed the only entrance to
+it. His excuse for the awkwardness of this piece of architecture was
+the impossibility of otherwise getting the all-desirable northern light
+for the illumination of his rough studio.
+
+This was the chamber in which Edward Arundel found the man from whom he
+came to demand an account of his wife's disappearance. The artist was
+evidently quite prepared to receive his visitor. He made no pretence of
+being taken off his guard, as a meaner pretender might have done. One
+of Paul Marchmont's theories was, that as it is only a fool who would
+use brass where he could as easily employ gold, so it is only a fool
+who tells a lie when he can conveniently tell the truth.
+
+"Captain Arundel, I believe?" he said, pushing a chair forward for his
+visitor. "I am sorry to say I recognise you by your appearance of ill
+health. Mrs. Marchmont told me you wanted to see me. Does my meerschaum
+annoy you? I'll put it out if it does. No? Then, if you'll allow me,
+I'll go on smoking. Some people say tobacco-smoke gives a tone to one's
+pictures. If so, mine ought to be Rembrandts in depth of colour."
+
+Edward Arundel dropped into the chair that had been offered to him. If
+he could by any possibility have rejected even this amount of
+hospitality from Paul Marchmont, he would have done so; but he was a
+great deal too weak to stand, and he knew that his interview with the
+artist must be a long one.
+
+"Mr. Marchmont," he said, "if my cousin Olivia told you that you might
+expect to see me here to-day, she most likely told you a great deal
+more. Did she tell you that I looked to you to account to me for the
+disappearance of my wife?"
+
+Paul Marchmont shrugged his shoulders, as who should say, "This young
+man is an invalid. I must not suffer myself to be aggravated by his
+absurdity." Then taking his meerschaum from his lips, he set it down,
+and seated himself at a few paces from Edward Arundel on the lowest of
+the moss-grown steps leading up to the pavilion.
+
+"My dear Captain Arundel," he said, very gravely, "your cousin did
+repeat to me a great deal of last night's conversation. She told me
+that you had spoken of me with a degree of violence, natural enough
+perhaps to a hot-tempered young soldier, but in no manner justified by
+our relations. When you call upon me to account for the disappearance
+of Mary Marchmont, you act about as rationally as if you declared me
+answerable for the pulmonary complaint that carried away her father.
+If, on the other hand, you call upon me to assist you in the endeavour
+to fathom the mystery of her disappearance, you will find me ready and
+willing to aid you to the very uttermost. It is to my interest as much
+as to yours that this mystery should be cleared up."
+
+"And in the meantime you take possession of this estate?"
+
+"No, Captain Arundel. The law would allow me to do so; but I decline to
+touch one farthing of the revenue which this estate yields, or to
+commit one act of ownership, until the mystery of Mary Marchmont's
+disappearance, or of her death, is cleared up."
+
+"The mystery of her death?" said Edward Arundel; "you believe, then,
+that she is dead?"
+
+"I anticipate nothing; I think nothing," answered the artist; "I only
+wait. The mysteries of life are so many and so incomprehensible,--the
+stories, which are every day to be read by any man who takes the
+trouble to look through a newspaper, are so strange, and savour so much
+of the improbabilities of a novel-writer's first wild fiction,--that I
+am ready to believe everything and anything. Mary Marchmont struck me,
+from the first moment in which I saw her, as sadly deficient in mental
+power. Nothing she could do would astonish me. She may be hiding
+herself away from us, prompted only by some eccentric fancy of her own.
+She may have fallen into the power of designing people. She may have
+purposely placed her slipper by the water-side, in order to give the
+idea of an accident or a suicide; or she may have dropped it there by
+chance, and walked barefoot to the nearest railway-station. She acted
+unreasonably before when she ran away from Marchmont Towers; she may
+have acted unreasonably again."
+
+"You do not think, then, that she is dead?"
+
+"I hesitate to form any opinion; I positively decline to express one."
+
+Edward Arundel gnawed savagely at the ends of his moustache. This man's
+cool imperturbability, which had none of the studied smoothness of
+hypocrisy, but which seemed rather the plain candour of a thorough man
+of the world, who had no wish to pretend to any sentiment he did not
+feel, baffled and infuriated the passionate young soldier. Was it
+possible that this man, who met him with such cool self-assertion, who
+in no manner avoided any discussion of Mary Marchmont's
+disappearance,--was it possible that he could have had any treacherous
+and guilty part in that calamity? Olivia's manner looked like guilt;
+but Paul Marchmont's seemed the personification of innocence. Not angry
+innocence, indignant that its purity should have been suspected; but
+the matter-of-fact, commonplace innocence of a man of the world, who is
+a great deal too clever to play any hazardous and villanous game.
+
+"You can perhaps answer me this question, Mr. Marchmont," said Edward
+Arundel. "Why was my wife doubted when she told the story of her
+marriage?"
+
+The artist smiled, and rising from his seat upon the stone step, took a
+pocket-book from one of the pockets of the coat that he had been
+wearing.
+
+"I _can_ answer that question," he said, selecting a paper from amongst
+others in the pocket-book. "This will answer it."
+
+He handed Edward Arundel the paper, which was a letter folded
+lengthways, and indorsed, "From Mrs. Arundel, August 31st." Within this
+letter was another paper, indorsed, "Copy of letter to Mrs. Arundel,
+August 28th."
+
+"You had better read the copy first," Mr. Marchmont said, as Edward
+looked doubtfully at the inner paper.
+
+The copy was very brief, and ran thus:
+
+"Marchmont Towers, August 28, 1848.
+
+"MADAM,--I have been given to understand that your son, Captain
+Arundel, within a fortnight of his sad accident, contracted a secret
+marriage with a young lady, whose name I, for several reasons, prefer
+to withhold. If you can oblige me by informing me whether there is any
+foundation for this statement, you will confer a very great favour upon
+
+"Your obedient servant,
+
+"PAUL MARCHMONT."
+
+The answer to this letter, in the hand of Edward Arundel's mother, was
+equally brief:
+
+"Dangerfield Park, August 31, 1848.
+
+"SIR,--In reply to your inquiry, I beg to state that there can be no
+foundation whatever for the report to which you allude. My son is too
+honourable to contract a secret marriage; and although his present
+unhappy state renders it impossible for me to receive the assurance
+from his own lips, my confidence in his high principles justifies me in
+contradicting any such report as that which forms the subject of your
+letter.
+
+"I am, sir,
+
+"Yours obediently,
+
+"LETITIA ARUNDEL."
+
+The soldier stood, mute and confounded, with his mother's letter in his
+hand. It seemed as if every creature had been against the helpless girl
+whom he had made his wife. Every hand had been lifted to drive her from
+the house that was her own; to drive her out upon the world, of which
+she was ignorant, a wanderer and an outcast; perhaps to drive her to a
+cruel death.
+
+"You can scarcely wonder if the receipt of that letter confirmed me in
+my previous belief that Mary Marchmont's story of a marriage arose out
+of the weakness of a brain, never too strong, and at that time very
+much enfeebled by the effect of a fever."
+
+Edward Arundel was silent. He crushed his mother's letter in his hand.
+Even his mother--even his mother--that tender and compassionate woman,
+whose protection he had so freely promised, ten years before, in the
+lobby of Drury Lane, to John Marchmont's motherless child,--even she,
+by some hideous fatality, had helped to bring grief and shame upon the
+lonely girl. All this story of his young wife's disappearance seemed
+enveloped in a wretched obscurity, through whose thick darkness he
+could not penetrate. He felt himself encompassed by a web of mystery,
+athwart which it was impossible to cut his way to the truth. He asked
+question after question, and received answers which seemed freely
+given; but the story remained as dark as ever. What did it all mean?
+What was the clue to the mystery? Was this man, Paul Marchmont,--busy
+amongst his unfinished pictures, and bearing in his every action, in
+his every word, the stamp of an easy-going, free-spoken soldier of
+fortune,--likely to have been guilty of any dark and subtle villany
+against the missing girl? He had disbelieved in the marriage; but he
+had had some reason for his doubt of a fact that could not very well be
+welcome to him.
+
+The young man rose from his chair, and stood irresolute, brooding over
+these things.
+
+"Come, Captain Arundel," cried Paul Marchmont, heartily, "believe me,
+though I have not much superfluous sentimentality left in my
+composition after a pretty long encounter with the world, still I can
+truly sympathise with your regret for this poor silly child. I hope,
+for your sake, that she still lives, and is foolishly hiding herself
+from us all. Perhaps, now you are able to act in the business, there
+may be a better chance of finding her. I am old enough to be your
+father, and am ready to give you the help of any knowledge of the world
+which I may have gathered in the experience of a lifetime. Will you
+accept my help?"
+
+Edward Arundel paused for a moment, with his head still bent, and his
+eyes fixed upon the ground. Then suddenly lifting his head, he looked
+full in the artist's face as he answered him.
+
+"No!" he cried. "Your offer may be made in all good faith, and if so, I
+thank you for it; but no one loves this missing girl as I love her; no
+one has so good a right as I have to protect and shelter her. I will
+look for my wife, alone, unaided; except by such help as I pray that
+God may give me."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+IN THE DARK.
+
+
+Edward Arundel walked slowly back to the Towers, shaken in body,
+perplexed in mind, baffled, disappointed, and most miserable; the young
+husband, whose married life had been shut within the compass of a brief
+honeymoon, went back to that dark and gloomy mansion within whose
+encircling walls Mary had pined and despaired.
+
+"Why did she stop here?" he thought; "why didn't she come to me? I
+thought her first impulse would have brought her to me. I thought my
+poor childish love would have set out on foot to seek her husband, if
+need were."
+
+He groped his way feebly and wearily amidst the leafless wood, and
+through the rotting vegetation decaying in oozy slime beneath the black
+shelter of the naked trees. He groped his way towards the dismal
+eastern front of the great stone dwelling-house, his face always turned
+towards the blank windows, that stared down at him from the discoloured
+walls.
+
+"Oh, if they could speak!" he exclaimed, almost beside himself in his
+perplexity and desperation; "if they could speak! If those cruel walls
+could find a voice, and tell me what my darling suffered within their
+shadow! If they could tell me why she despaired, and ran away to hide
+herself from her husband and protector! _If_ they could speak!"
+
+He ground his teeth in a passion of sorrowful rage.
+
+"I should gain as much by questioning yonder stone wall as by talking
+to my cousin, Olivia Marchmont," he thought, presently. "Why is that
+woman so venomous a creature in her hatred of my innocent wife? Why is
+it that, whether I threaten, or whether I appeal, I can gain nothing
+from her--nothing? She baffles me as completely by her measured
+answers, which seem to reply to my questions, and which yet tell me
+nothing, as if she were a brazen image set up by the dark ignorance of
+a heathen people, and dumb in the absence of an impostor-priest. She
+baffles me, question her how I will. And Paul Marchmont, again,--what
+have I learned from him? Am I a fool, that people can prevaricate and
+lie to me like this? Has my brain no sense, and my arm no strength,
+that I cannot wring the truth from the false throats of these
+wretches?"
+
+The young man gnashed his teeth again in the violence of his rage.
+
+Yes, it was like a dream; it was like nothing but a dream. In dreams he
+had often felt this terrible sense of impotence wrestling with a mad
+desire to achieve something or other. But never before in his waking
+hours had the young soldier experienced such a sensation.
+
+He stopped, irresolute, almost bewildered, looking back at the
+boat-house, a black spot far away down by the sedgy brink of the slow
+river, and then again turning his face towards the monotonous lines of
+windows in the eastern frontage of Marchmont Towers.
+
+"I let that man play with me to-day," he thought; "but our reckoning is
+to come. We have not done with each other yet."
+
+He walked on towards the low archway leading into the quadrangle.
+
+The room which had been John Marchmont's study, and which his widow had
+been wont to occupy since his death, looked into this quadrangle.
+Edward Arundel saw his cousin's dark head bending over a book, or a
+desk perhaps, behind the window.
+
+"Let her beware of me, if she has done any wrong to my wife!" he
+thought. "To which of these people am I to look for an account of my
+poor lost girl? To which of these two am I to look! Heaven guide me to
+find the guilty one; and Heaven have mercy upon that wretched creature
+when the hour of reckoning comes; for I will have none."
+
+Olivia Marchmont, looking through the window, saw her kinsman's face
+while this thought was in his mind. The expression which she saw there
+was so terrible, so merciless, so sublime in its grand and vengeful
+beauty, that her own face blanched even to a paler hue than that which
+had lately become habitual to it.
+
+"Am I afraid of him?" she thought, as she pressed her forehead against
+the cold glass, and by a physical effort restrained the convulsive
+trembling that had suddenly shaken her frame. "Am I afraid of him? No;
+what injury can he inflict upon me worse than that which he has done me
+from the very first? If he could drag me to a scaffold, and deliver me
+with his own hands into the grasp of the hangman, he would do me no
+deeper wrong than he has done me from the hour of my earliest
+remembrance of him. He could inflict no new pangs, no sharper tortures,
+than I have been accustomed to suffer at his hands. He does not love
+me. He has never loved me. He never will love me. _That_ is my wrong;
+and it is for that I take my revenge!"
+
+She lifted her head, which had rested in a sullen attitude against the
+glass, and looked at the soldier's figure slowly advancing towards the
+western side of the house.
+
+Then, with a smile,--the same horrible smile which Edward Arundel had
+seen light up her face on the previous night,--she muttered between her
+set teeth:--
+
+"Shall I be sorry because this vengeance has fallen across my pathway?
+Shall I repent, and try to undo what I have done? Shall I thrust myself
+between others and Mr. Edward Arundel? Shall _I_ make myself the ally
+and champion of this gallant soldier, who seldom speaks to me except to
+insult and upbraid me? Shall _I_ take justice into my hands, and
+interfere for my kinsman's benefit? No; he has chosen to threaten me;
+he has chosen to believe vile things of me. From the first his
+indifference has been next kin to insolence. Let him take care of
+himself."
+
+Edward Arundel took no heed of the grey eyes that watched him with such
+a vengeful light in their fixed gaze. He was still thinking of his
+missing wife, still feeling, to a degree that was intolerably painful,
+that miserable dream-like sense of helplessness and prostration.
+
+"What am I to do?" he thought. "Shall I be for ever going backwards and
+forwards between my Cousin Olivia and Paul Marchmont; for ever
+questioning them, first one and then the other, and never getting any
+nearer to the truth?"
+
+He asked himself this question, because the extreme anguish, the
+intense anxiety, which he had endured, seemed to have magnified the
+smallest events, and to have multiplied a hundred-fold the lapse of
+time. It seemed as if he had already spent half a lifetime in his
+search after John Marchmont's lost daughter.
+
+"O my friend, my friend!" he thought, as some faint link of
+association, some memory thrust upon him by the aspect of the place in
+which he was, brought back the simple-minded tutor who had taught him
+mathematics eighteen years before,--"my poor friend, if this girl had
+not been my love and my wife, surely the memory of your trust in me
+would be enough to make me a desperate and merciless avenger of her
+wrongs."
+
+He went into the hall, and from the hall to the tenantless western
+drawing-room,--a dreary chamber, with its grim and faded splendour, its
+stiff, old-fashioned furniture; a chamber which, unadorned by the
+presence of youth and innocence, had the aspect of belonging to a day
+that was gone, and people that were dead. So might have looked one of
+those sealed-up chambers in the buried cities of Italy, when the doors
+were opened, and eager living eyes first looked in upon the habitations
+of the dead.
+
+Edward Arundel walked up and down the empty drawing-room. There were
+the ivory chessmen that he had brought from India, under a glass shade
+on an inlaid table in a window. How often he and Mary had played
+together in that very window; and how she had always lost her pawns,
+and left bishops and knights undefended, while trying to execute
+impossible manoeuvres with her queen! The young man paced slowly
+backwards and forwards across the old-fashioned bordered carpet, trying
+to think what he should do. He must form some plan of action in his own
+mind, he thought. There was foul work somewhere, he most implicitly
+believed; and it was for him to discover the motive of the treachery,
+and the person of the traitor.
+
+Paul Marchmont! Paul Marchmont!
+
+His mind always travelled back to this point. Paul Marchmont was Mary's
+natural enemy. Paul Marchmont was therefore surely the man to be
+suspected, the man to be found out and defeated.
+
+And yet, if there was any truth in appearances, it was Olivia who was
+most inimical to the missing girl; it was Olivia whom Mary had feared;
+it was Olivia who had driven John Marchmont's orphan-child from her
+home once, and who might, by the same power to tyrannise and torture a
+weak and yielding nature, have so banished her again.
+
+Or these two, Paul and Olivia, might both hate the defenceless girl,
+and might have between them plotted a wrong against her.
+
+"Who will tell me the truth about my lost darling?" cried Edward
+Arundel. "Who will help me to look for my missing love?"
+
+His lost darling; his missing love. It was thus that the young man
+spoke of his wife. That dark thought which had been suggested to him by
+the words of Olivia, by the mute evidence of the little bronze slipper
+picked up near the river-brink, had never taken root, or held even a
+temporary place in his breast. He would not--nay, more, he could
+not--think that his wife was dead. In all his confused and miserable
+dreams that dreary November night, no dream had ever shown him _that_.
+No image of death had mingled itself with the distorted shadows that
+had tormented his sleep. No still white face had looked up at him
+through a veil of murky waters. No moaning sob of a rushing stream had
+mixed its dismal sound with the many voices of his slumbers. No; he
+feared all manner of unknown sorrows; he looked vaguely forward to a
+sea of difficulty, to be waded across in blindness and bewilderment
+before he could clasp his rescued wife in his arms; but he never
+thought that she was dead.
+
+Presently the idea came to him that it was outside Marchmont
+Towers,--away, beyond the walls of this grim, enchanted castle, where
+evil spirits seemed to hold possession,--that he should seek for the
+clue to his wife's hiding-place.
+
+"There is Hester, that girl who was fond of Mary," he thought; "she may
+be able to tell me something, perhaps. I will go to her."
+
+He went out into the hall to look for his servant, the faithful
+Morrison, who had been eating a very substantial breakfast with the
+domestics of the Towers--"the sauce to meat" being a prolonged
+discussion of the facts connected with Mary Marchmont's disappearance
+and her relations with Edward Arundel--and who came, radiant and greasy
+from the enjoyment of hot buttered cakes and Lincolnshire bacon, at the
+sound of his master's voice.
+
+"I want you to get me some vehicle, and a lad who will drive me a few
+miles, Morrison," the young soldier said; "or you can drive me
+yourself, perhaps?"
+
+"Certainly, Master Edward; I have driven your pa often, when we was
+travellin' together. I'll go and see if there's a phee-aton or a shay
+that will suit you, sir; something that goes easy on its springs."
+
+"Get anything," muttered Captain Arundel, "so long as you can get it
+without loss of time."
+
+All fuss and anxiety upon the subject of his health worried the young
+man. He felt his head dizzied with weakness and excitement; his
+arm--that muscular right arm, which had done him good service two years
+before in an encounter with a tigress--was weaker than the jewel-bound
+wrist of a woman. But he chafed against anything like consideration of
+his weakness; he rebelled against anything that seemed likely to hinder
+him in that one object upon which all the powers of his mind were bent.
+
+Mr. Morrison went away with some show of briskness, but dropped into a
+very leisurely pace as soon as he was fairly out of his master's sight.
+He went straight to the stables, where he had a pleasant gossip with
+the grooms and hangers-on, and amused himself further by inspecting
+every bit of horseflesh in the Marchmont stables, prior to selecting a
+quiet grey cob which he felt himself capable of driving, and an
+old-fashioned gig with a yellow body and black and yellow wheels,
+bearing a strong resemblance to a monstrous wooden wasp.
+
+While the faithful attendant to whom Mrs. Arundel had delegated the
+care of her son was thus employed, the soldier stood in the stone hall,
+looking out at the dreary wintry landscape, and pining to hurry away
+across the dismal swamps to the village in which he hoped to hear
+tidings of her he sought. He was lounging in a deep oaken window-seat,
+looking hopelessly at that barren prospect, that monotonous expanse of
+flat morass and leaden sky, when he heard a footstep behind him; and
+turning round saw Olivia's confidential servant, Barbara Simmons, the
+woman who had watched by his wife's sick-bed,--the woman whom he had
+compared to a ghoule.
+
+She was walking slowly across the hall towards Olivia's room, whither a
+bell had just summoned her. Mrs. Marchmont had lately grown fretful and
+capricious, and did not care to be waited upon by any one except this
+woman, who had known her from her childhood, and was no stranger to her
+darkest moods.
+
+Edward Arundel had determined to appeal to every living creature who
+was likely to know anything of his wife's disappearance, and he
+snatched the first opportunity of questioning this woman.
+
+"Stop, Mrs. Simmons," he said, moving away from the window; "I want to
+speak to you; I want to talk to you about my wife."
+
+The woman turned to him with a blank face, whose expressionless stare
+might mean either genuine surprise or an obstinate determination not to
+understand anything that might be said to her.
+
+"Your wife, Captain Arundel!" she said, in cold measured tones, but
+with an accent of astonishment.
+
+"Yes; my wife. Mary Marchmont, my lawfully-wedded wife. Look here,
+woman," cried Edward Arundel; "if you cannot accept the word of a
+soldier, and an honourable man, you can perhaps believe the evidence of
+your eyes."
+
+He took a morocco memorandum-book from his breast-pocket. It was full
+of letters, cards, bank-notes, and miscellaneous scraps of paper
+carelessly stuffed into it, and amongst them Captain Arundel found the
+certificate of his marriage, which he had put away at random upon his
+wedding morning, and which had lain unheeded in his pocket-book ever
+since.
+
+"Look here," he cried, spreading the document before the
+waiting-woman's eyes, and pointing, with a shaking hand, to the lines.
+"You believe that, I suppose?"
+
+"O yes, sir," Barbara Simmons answered, after deliberately reading the
+certificate. "I have no reason to disbelieve it; no wish to disbelieve
+it."
+
+"No; I suppose not," muttered Edward Arundel, "unless you too are
+leagued with Paul Marchmont."
+
+The woman did not flinch at this hinted accusation, but answered the
+young man in that slow and emotionless manner which no change of
+circumstance seemed to have power to alter.
+
+"I am leagued with no one, sir," she said, coldly. "I serve no one
+except my mistress, Miss Olivia--I mean Mrs. Marchmont."
+
+The study-bell rang for the second time while she was speaking.
+
+"I must go to my mistress now, sir," she said. "You heard her ringing
+for me."
+
+"Go, then, and let me see you as you come back. I tell you I must and
+will speak to you. Everybody in this house tries to avoid me. It seems
+as if I was not to get a straight answer from any one of you. But I
+_will_ know all that is to be known about my lost wife. Do you hear,
+woman? I will know!"
+
+"I will come back to you directly, sir," Barbara Simmons answered
+quietly.
+
+The leaden calmness of this woman's manner irritated Edward Arundel
+beyond all power of expression. Before his cousin Olivia's gloomy
+coldness he had been flung back upon himself as before an iceberg; but
+every now and then some sudden glow of fiery emotion had shot up amid
+that frigid mass, lurid and blazing, and the iceberg had been
+transformed into an angry and passionate woman, who might, in that
+moment of fierce emotion, betray the dark secrets of her soul. But
+_this_ woman's manner presented a passive barrier, athwart which the
+young soldier was as powerless to penetrate as he would have been to
+walk through a block of solid stone.
+
+Olivia was like some black and stony castle, whose barred windows bade
+defiance to the besieger, but behind whose narrow casements transient
+flashes of light gleamed fitfully upon the watchers without, hinting at
+the mysteries that were hidden within the citadel.
+
+Barbara Simmons resembled a blank stone wall, grimly confronting the
+eager traveller, and giving no indication whatever of the unknown
+country on the other side.
+
+She came back almost immediately, after being only a few moments in
+Olivia's room,--certainly not long enough to consult with her mistress
+as to what she was to say or to leave unsaid,--and presented herself
+before Captain Arundel.
+
+"If you have any questions to ask, sir, about Miss Marchmont--about
+your wife--I shall be happy to answer them," she said.
+
+"I have a hundred questions to ask," exclaimed the young man; "but
+first answer me this one plainly and truthfully--Where do you think my
+wife has gone? What do you think has become of her?"
+
+The woman was silent for a few moments, and then answered very
+gravely,--
+
+"I would rather not say what I think, sir."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because I might say that which would make you unhappy."
+
+"Can anything be more miserable to me than the prevarication which I
+meet with on every side?" cried Edward Arundel. "If you or any one else
+will be straightforward with me--remembering that I come to this place
+like a man who has risen from the grave, depending wholly on the word
+of others for the knowledge of that which is more vital to me than
+anything upon this earth--that person will be the best friend I have
+found since I rose from my sick-bed to come hither. You can have had no
+motive--if you are not in Paul Marchmont's pay--for being cruel to my
+poor girl. Tell me the truth, then; speak, and speak fearlessly."
+
+"I have no reason to fear, sir," answered Barbara Simmons, lifting her
+faded eyes to the young man's eager face, with a gaze that seemed to
+say, "I have done no wrong, and I do not shrink from justifying
+myself." "I have no reason to fear, sir; I was piously brought up, and
+have done my best always to do my duty in the state of life in which
+Providence has been pleased to place me. I have not had a particularly
+happy life, sir; for thirty years ago I lost all that made me happy, in
+them that loved me, and had a claim to love me. I have attached myself
+to my mistress; but it isn't for me to expect a lady like her would
+stoop to make me more to her or nearer to her than I have a right to be
+as a servant."
+
+There was no accent of hypocrisy or cant in any one of these
+deliberately-spoken words. It seemed as if in this speech the woman had
+told the history of her life; a brief, unvarnished history of a barren
+life, out of which all love and sunlight had been early swept away,
+leaving behind a desolate blank, that was not destined to be filled up
+by any affection from the young mistress so long and patiently served.
+
+"I am faithful to my mistress, sir," Barbara Simmons added, presently;
+"and I try my best to do my duty to her. I owe no duty to any one
+else."
+
+"You owe a duty to humanity," answered Edward Arundel. "Woman, do you
+think duty is a thing to be measured by line and rule? Christ came to
+save the lost sheep of the children of Israel; but was He less pitiful
+to the Canaanitish woman when she carried her sorrows to His feet? You
+and your mistress have made hard precepts for yourselves, and have
+tried to live by them. You try to circumscribe the area of your
+Christian charity, and to do good within given limits. The traveller
+who fell among thieves would have died of his wounds, for any help he
+might have had from you, if he had lain beyond your radius. Have you
+yet to learn that Christianity is cosmopolitan, illimitable,
+inexhaustible, subject to no laws of time or space? The duty you owe to
+your mistress is a duty that she buys and pays for--a matter of sordid
+barter, to be settled when you take your wages; the duty you owe to
+every miserable creature in your pathway is a sacred debt, to be
+accounted for to God."
+
+As the young soldier spoke thus, carried away by his passionate
+agitation, suddenly eloquent by reason of the intensity of his feeling,
+a change came over Barbara's face. There was no very palpable evidence
+of emotion in that stolid countenance; but across the wooden blankness
+of the woman's face flitted a transient shadow, which was like the
+shadow of fear.
+
+"I tried to do my duty to Miss Marchmont as well as to my mistress,"
+she said. "I waited on her faithfully while she was ill. I sat up with
+her six nights running; I didn't take my clothes off for a week. There
+are folks in the house who can tell you as much."
+
+"God knows I am grateful to you, and will reward you for any pity you
+may have shown my poor darling," the young man answered, in a more
+subdued tone; "only, if you pity me, and wish to help me, speak out,
+and speak plainly. What do you think has become of my lost girl?"
+
+"I cannot tell you, sir. As God looks down upon me and judges me, I
+declare to you that I know no more than you know. But I think----"
+
+"You think what?"
+
+"That you will never see Miss Marchmont again."
+
+Edward Arundel started as violently as if, of all sentences, this was
+the last he had expected to hear pronounced. His sanguine temperament,
+fresh in its vigorous and untainted youth, could not grasp the thought
+of despair. He could be mad with passionate anger against the obstacles
+that separated him from his wife; but he could not believe those
+obstacles to be insurmountable. He could not doubt the power of his own
+devotion and courage to bring him back his lost love.
+
+"Never--see her--again!"
+
+He repeated these words as if they had belonged to a strange language,
+and he were trying to make out their meaning.
+
+"You think," he gasped hoarsely, after a long pause,--"you
+think--that--she is--dead?"
+
+"I think that she went out of this house in a desperate state of mind.
+She was seen--not by me, for I should have thought it my duty to stop
+her if I had seen her so--she was seen by one of the servants crying
+and sobbing awfully as she went away upon that last afternoon."
+
+"And she was never seen again?"
+
+"Never by me."
+
+"And--you--you think she went out of this house with the intention
+of--of--destroying herself?"
+
+The words died away in a hoarse whisper, and it was by the motion of
+his white lips that Barbara Simmons perceived what the young man meant.
+
+"I do, sir."
+
+"Have you any--particular reason for thinking so?"
+
+"No reason beyond what I have told you, sir."
+
+Edward Arundel bent his head, and walked away to hide his blanched
+face. He tried instinctively to conceal this mental suffering, as he
+had sometimes hidden physical torture in an Indian hospital, prompted
+by the involuntary impulse of a brave man. But though the woman's words
+had come upon him like a thunderbolt, he had no belief in the opinion
+they expressed. No; his young spirit wrestled against and rejected the
+awful conclusion. Other people might think what they chose; but he knew
+better than they. His wife was _not_ dead. His life had been so smooth,
+so happy, so prosperous, so unclouded and successful, that it was
+scarcely strange he should be sceptical of calamity,--that his mind
+should be incapable of grasping the idea of a catastrophe so terrible
+as Mary's suicide.
+
+"She was intrusted to me by her father," he thought. "She gave her
+faith to me before God's altar. She _cannot_ have perished body and
+soul; she _cannot_ have gone down to destruction for want of my arm
+outstretched to save her. God is too good to permit such misery."
+
+The young soldier's piety was of the simplest and most unquestioning
+order, and involved an implicit belief that a right cause must always
+be ultimately victorious. With the same blind faith in which he had
+often muttered a hurried prayer before plunging in amidst the mad havoc
+of an Indian battle-field, confident that the justice of Heaven would
+never permit heathenish Affghans to triumph over Christian British
+gentlemen, he now believed that, in the darkest hour of Mary
+Marchmont's life, God's arm had held her back from the dread
+horror--the unatonable offence--of self-destruction.
+
+"I thank you for having spoken frankly to me," he said to Barbara
+Simmons; "I believe that you have spoken in good faith. But I do not
+think my darling is for ever lost to me. I anticipate trouble and
+anxiety, disappointment, defeat for a time,--for a long time, perhaps;
+but I _know_ that I shall find her in the end. The business of my life
+henceforth is to look for her."
+
+Barbara's dull eyes held earnest watch upon the young man's countenance
+as he spoke. Anxiety and even fear were in that gaze, palpable to those
+who knew how to read the faint indications of the woman's stolid face.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE PARAGRAPH IN THE NEWSPAPER.
+
+
+Mr. Morrison brought the gig and pony to the western porch while
+Captain Arundel was talking to his cousin's servant, and presently the
+invalid was being driven across the flat between the Towers and the
+high-road to Kemberling.
+
+Mary's old favourite, Farmer Pollard's daughter, came out of a low
+rustic shop as the gig drew up before her husband's door. This
+good-natured, tender-hearted Hester, advanced to matronly dignity under
+the name of Mrs. Jobson, carried a baby in her arms, and wore a white
+dimity hood, that made a penthouse over her simple rosy face. But at
+the sight of Captain Arundel nearly all the rosy colour disappeared
+from the country-woman's plump cheeks, and she stared aghast at the
+unlooked-for visitor, almost ready to believe that, if anything so
+substantial as a pony and gig could belong to the spiritual world, it
+was the phantom only of the soldier that she looked upon.
+
+"O sir!" she said; "O Captain Arundel, is it really you?"
+
+Edward alighted before Hester could recover from the surprise
+occasioned by his appearance.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. Jobson," he said. "May I come into your house? I wish to
+speak to you."
+
+Hester curtseyed, and stood aside to allow her visitor to pass her. Her
+manner was coldly respectful, and she looked at the young officer with
+a grave, reproachful face, which was strange to him. She ushered her
+guest into a parlour at the back of the shop; a prim apartment,
+splendid with varnished mahogany, shell-work boxes--bought during
+Hester's honeymoon-trip to a Lincolnshire watering-place--and
+voluminous achievements in the way of crochet-work; a gorgeous and
+Sabbath-day chamber, looking across a stand of geraniums into a garden
+that was orderly and trimly kept even in this dull November weather.
+
+Mrs. Jobson drew forward an uneasy easy-chair, covered with horsehair,
+and veiled by a crochet-work representation of a peacock embowered
+among roses. She offered this luxurious seat to Captain Arundel, who,
+in his weakness, was well content to sit down upon the slippery
+cushions.
+
+"I have come here to ask you to help me in my search for my wife,
+Hester," Edward Arundel said, in a scarcely audible voice.
+
+It is not given to the bravest mind to be utterly independent and
+defiant of the body; and the soldier was beginning to feel that he had
+very nearly run the length of his tether, and must soon submit himself
+to be prostrated by sheer physical weakness.
+
+"Your wife!" cried Hester eagerly. "O sir, is that true?"
+
+"Is what true?"
+
+"That poor Miss Mary was your lawful wedded wife?"
+
+"She was," replied Edward Arundel sternly, "my true and lawful wife.
+What else should she have been, Mrs. Jobson?"
+
+The farmer's daughter burst into tears.
+
+"O sir," she said, sobbing violently as she spoke,--"O sir, the things
+that was said against that poor dear in this place and all about the
+Towers! The things that was said! It makes my heart bleed to think of
+them; it makes my heart ready to break when I think what my poor sweet
+young lady must have suffered. And it set me against you, sir; and I
+thought you was a bad and cruel-hearted man!"
+
+"What did they say?" cried Edward. "What did they dare to say against
+her or against me?"
+
+"They said that you had enticed her away from her home, sir, and
+that--that--there had been no marriage; and that you had deluded that
+poor innocent dear to run away with you; and that you'd deserted her
+afterwards, and the railway accident had come upon you as a punishment
+like; and that Mrs. Marchmont had found poor Miss Mary all alone at a
+country inn, and had brought her back to the Towers."
+
+"But what if people did say this?" exclaimed Captain Arundel. "You
+could have contradicted their foul slanders; you could have spoken in
+defence of my poor helpless girl."
+
+"Me, sir!"
+
+"Yes. You must have heard the truth from my wife's own lips."
+
+Hester Jobson burst into a new flood of tears as Edward Arundel said
+this.
+
+"O no, sir," she sobbed; "that was the most cruel thing of all. I never
+could get to see Miss Mary; they wouldn't let me see her."
+
+"Who wouldn't let you?"
+
+"Mrs. Marchmont and Mr. Paul Marchmont. I was laid up, sir, when the
+report first spread about that Miss Mary had come home. Things was kept
+very secret, and it was said that Mrs. Marchmont was dreadfully cut up
+by the disgrace that had come upon her stepdaughter. My baby was born
+about that time, sir; but as soon as ever I could get about, I went up
+to the Towers, in the hope of seeing my poor dear miss. But Mrs.
+Simmons, Mrs. Marchmont's own maid, told me that Miss Mary was ill,
+very ill, and that no one was allowed to see her except those that
+waited upon her and that she was used to. And I begged and prayed that
+I might be allowed to see her, sir, with the tears in my eyes; for my
+heart bled for her, poor darling dear, when I thought of the cruel
+things that was said against her, and thought that, with all her riches
+and her learning, folks could dare to talk of her as they wouldn't dare
+talk of a poor man's wife like me. And I went again and again, sir; but
+it was no good; and, the last time I went, Mrs. Marchmont came out into
+the hall to me, and told me that I was intrusive and impertinent, and
+that it was me, and such as me, as had set all manner of scandal afloat
+about her stepdaughter. But I went again, sir, even after that; and I
+saw Mr. Paul Marchmont, and he was very kind to me, and frank and
+free-spoken,--almost like you, sir; and he told me that Mrs. Marchmont
+was rather stern and unforgiving towards the poor young lady,--he spoke
+very kind and pitiful of poor Miss Mary,--and that he would stand my
+friend, and he'd contrive that I should see my poor dear as soon as
+ever she picked up her spirits a bit, and was more fit to see me; and I
+was to come again in a week's time, he said."
+
+"Well; and when you went----?"
+
+"When I went, sir," sobbed the carpenter's wife, "it was the 18th of
+October, and Miss Mary had run away upon the day before, and every body
+at the Towers was being sent right and left to look for her. I saw Mrs.
+Marchmont for a minute that afternoon; and she was as white as a sheet,
+and all of a tremble from head to foot, and she walked about the place
+as if she was out of her mind like."
+
+"Guilt," thought the young soldier; "guilt of some sort. God only knows
+what that guilt has been!"
+
+He covered his face with his hands, and waited to hear what more Hester
+Jobson had to tell him. There was no need of questioning here--no
+reservation or prevarication. With almost as tender regret as he
+himself could have felt, the carpenter's wife told him all that she
+knew of the sad story of Mary's disappearance.
+
+"Nobody took much notice of me, sir, in the confusion of the place,"
+Mrs. Jobson continued; "and there is a parlour-maid at the Towers
+called Susan Rose, that had been a schoolfellow with me ten years
+before, and I got her to tell me all about it. And she said that poor
+dear Miss Mary had been weak and ailing ever since she had recovered
+from the brain-fever, and that she had shut herself up in her room, and
+had seen no one except Mrs. Marchmont, and Mr. Paul, and Barbara
+Simmons; but on the 17th Mrs. Marchmont sent for her, asking her to
+come to the study. And the poor young lady went; and then Susan Rose
+thinks that there was high words between Mrs. Marchmont and her
+stepdaughter; for as Susan was crossing the hall poor Miss came out of
+the study, and her face was all smothered in tears, and she cried out,
+as she came into the hall, 'I can't bear it any longer. My life is too
+miserable; my fate is too wretched!' And then she ran upstairs, and
+Susan Rose followed up to her room and listened outside the door; and
+she heard the poor dear sobbing and crying out again and again, 'O
+papa, papa! If you knew what I suffer! O papa, papa, papa!'--so
+pitiful, that if Susan Rose had dared she would have gone in to try and
+comfort her; but Miss Mary had always been very reserved to all the
+servants, and Susan didn't dare intrude upon her. It was late that
+evening when my poor young lady was missed, and the servants sent out
+to look for her."
+
+"And you, Hester,--you knew my wife better than any of these
+people,--where do you think she went?"
+
+Hester Jobson looked piteously at the questioner.
+
+"O sir!" she cried; "O Captain Arundel, don't ask me; pray, pray don't
+ask me."
+
+"You think like these other people,--you think that she went away to
+destroy herself?"
+
+"O sir, what can I think, what can I think except that? She was last
+seen down by the water-side, and one of her shoes was picked up amongst
+the rushes; and for all there's been such a search made after her, and
+a reward offered, and advertisements in the papers, and everything done
+that mortal could do to find her, there's been no news of her,
+sir,--not a trace to tell of her being living; not a creature to come
+forward and speak to her being seen by them after that day. What can I
+think, sir, what can I think, except--"
+
+"Except that she threw herself into the river behind Marchmont Towers."
+
+"I've tried to think different, sir; I've tried to hope I should see
+that poor sweet lamb again; but I can't, I can't. I've worn mourning
+for these three last Sundays, sir; for I seemed to feel as if it was a
+sin and a disrespectfulness towards her to wear colours, and sit in the
+church where I have seen her so often, looking so meek and beautiful,
+Sunday after Sunday."
+
+Edward Arundel bowed his head upon his hands and wept silently. This
+woman's belief in Mary's death afflicted him more than he dared confess
+to himself. He had defied Olivia and Paul Marchmont, as enemies, who
+tried to force a false conviction upon him; but he could neither doubt
+nor defy this honest, warm-hearted creature, who wept aloud over the
+memory of his wife's sorrows. He could not doubt her sincerity; but he
+still refused to accept the belief which on every side was pressed upon
+him. He still refused to think that his wife was dead.
+
+"The river was dragged for more than a week," he said, presently, "and
+my wife's body was never found."
+
+Hester Jobson shook her head mournfully.
+
+"That's a poor sign, sir," she answered; "the river's full of holes,
+I've heard say. My husband had a fellow-'prentice who drowned himself
+in that river seven year ago, and _his_ body was never found."
+
+Edward Arundel rose and walked towards the door.
+
+"I do not believe that my wife is dead," he cried. He held out his hand
+to the carpenter's wife. "God bless you!" he said. "I thank you from my
+heart for your tender feeling towards my lost girl."
+
+He went out to the gig, in which Mr. Morrison waited for him, rather
+tired of his morning's work.
+
+"There is an inn a little way farther along the street, Morrison,"
+Captain Arundel said. "I shall stop there."
+
+The man stared at his master.
+
+"And not go back to Marchmont Towers, Mr. Edward?"
+
+"No."
+
+Edward Arundel had held Nature in abeyance for more than
+four-and-twenty hours, and this outraged Nature now took her revenge by
+flinging the young man prostrate and powerless upon his bed at the
+simple Kemberling hostelry, and holding him prisoner there for three
+dreary days; three miserable days, with long, dark interminable
+evenings, during which the invalid had no better employment than to lie
+brooding over his sorrows, while Mr. Morrison read the "Times"
+newspaper in a monotonous and droning voice, for his sick master's
+entertainment.
+
+How that helpless and prostrate prisoner, bound hand and foot in the
+stern grasp of retaliative Nature, loathed the leading-articles, the
+foreign correspondence, in the leviathan journal! How he sickened at
+the fiery English of Printing-House Square, as expounded by Mr.
+Morrison! The sound of the valet's voice was like the unbroken flow of
+a dull river. The great names that surged up every now and then upon
+that sluggish tide of oratory made no impression upon the sick man's
+mind. What was it to him if the glory of England were in danger, the
+freedom of a mighty people wavering in the balance? What was it to him
+if famine-stricken Ireland were perishing, and the far-away Indian
+possessions menaced by contumacious and treacherous Sikhs? What was it
+to him if the heavens were shrivelled like a blazing scroll, and the
+earth reeling on its shaken foundations? What had he to do with any
+catastrophe except that which had fallen upon his innocent young wife?
+
+"O my broken trust!" he muttered sometimes, to the alarm of the
+confidential servant; "O my broken trust!"
+
+But during the three days in which Captain Arundel lay in the best
+chamber at the Black Bull--the chief inn of Kemberling, and a very
+splendid place of public entertainment long ago, when all the
+northward-bound coaches had passed through that quiet Lincolnshire
+village--he was not without a medical attendant to give him some feeble
+help in the way of drugs and doctor's stuff, in the battle which he was
+fighting with offended Nature. I don't know but that the help, however
+well intended, may have gone rather to strengthen the hand of the
+enemy; for in those days--the year '48 is very long ago when we take
+the measure of time by science--country practitioners were apt to place
+themselves upon the side of the disease rather than of the patient, and
+to assist grim Death in his siege, by lending the professional aid of
+purgatives and phlebotomy.
+
+On this principle Mr. George Weston, the surgeon of Kemberling, and the
+submissive and well-tutored husband of Paul Marchmont's sister, would
+fain have set to work with the prostrate soldier, on the plea that the
+patient's skin was hot and dry, and his white lips parched with fever.
+But Captain Arundel protested vehemently against any such treatment.
+
+"You shall not take an ounce of blood out of my veins," he said, "or
+give me one drop of medicine that will weaken me. What I want is
+strength; strength to get up and leave this intolerable room, and go
+about the business that I have to do. As to fever," he added
+scornfully, "as long as I have to lie here and am hindered from going
+about the business of my life, every drop of my blood will boil with a
+fever that all the drugs in Apothecaries' Hall would have no power to
+subdue. Give me something to strengthen me. Patch me up somehow or
+other, Mr. Weston, if you can. But I warn you that, if you keep me long
+here, I shall leave this place either a corpse or a madman."
+
+The surgeon, drinking tea with his wife and brother-in-law half an hour
+afterwards, related the conversation that had taken place between
+himself and his patient, breaking up his narrative with a great many "I
+said's" and "said he's," and with a good deal of rambling commentary
+upon the text.
+
+Lavinia Weston looked at her brother while the surgeon told his story.
+
+"He is very desperate about his wife, then, this dashing young
+captain?" Mr. Marchmont said, presently.
+
+"Awful," answered the surgeon; "regular awful. I never saw anything
+like it. Really it was enough to cut a man up to hear him go on so. He
+asked me all sorts of questions about the time when she was ill and I
+attended upon her, and what did she say to me, and did she seem very
+unhappy, and all that sort of thing. Upon my word, you know, Mr.
+Paul,--of course I am very glad to think of your coming into the
+fortune, and I'm very much obliged to you for the kind promises you've
+made to me and Lavinia; but I almost felt as if I could have wished the
+poor young lady hadn't drowned herself."
+
+Mrs. Weston shrugged her shoulders, and looked at her brother.
+
+"_Imbecile!_" she muttered.
+
+She was accustomed to talk to her brother very freely in rather
+school-girl French before her husband, to whom that language was as the
+most recondite of tongues, and who heartily admired her for superior
+knowledge.
+
+He sat staring at her now, and eating bread-and-butter with a simple
+relish, which in itself was enough to mark him out as a man to be
+trampled upon.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+On the fourth day after his interview with Hester, Edward Arundel was
+strong enough to leave his chamber at the Black Bull.
+
+"I shall go to London by to-night's mail, Morrison," he said to his
+servant; "but before I leave Lincolnshire, I must pay another visit to
+Marchmont Towers. You can stop here, and pack my portmanteau while I
+go."
+
+A rumbling old fly--looked upon as a splendid equipage by the
+inhabitants of Kemberling--was furnished for Captain Arundel's
+accommodation by the proprietor of the Black Bull; and once more the
+soldier approached that ill-omened dwelling-place which had been the
+home of his wife.
+
+He was ushered without any delay to the study in which Olivia spent the
+greater part of her time.
+
+The dusky afternoon was already closing in. A low fire burned in the
+old-fashioned grate, and one lighted wax-candle stood upon an open
+davenport, before which the widow sat amid a confusion of torn papers,
+cast upon the ground about her.
+
+The open drawers of the davenport, the littered scraps of paper and
+loosely-tied documents, thrust, without any show of order, into the
+different compartments of the desk, bore testimony to that state of
+mental distraction which had been common to Olivia Marchmont for some
+time past. She herself, the gloomy tenant of the Towers, sat with her
+elbow resting on her desk, looking hopelessly and absently at the
+confusion before her.
+
+"I am very tired," she said, with a sigh, as she motioned her cousin to
+a chair. "I have been trying to sort my papers, and to look for bills
+that have to be paid, and receipts. They come to me about everything. I
+am very tired."
+
+Her manner was changed from that stern defiance with which she had last
+confronted her kinsman to an air of almost piteous feebleness. She
+rested her head on her hand, repeating, in a low voice,
+
+"Yes, I am very tired."
+
+Edward Arundel looked earnestly at her faded face, so faded from that
+which he remembered it in its proud young beauty, that, in spite of his
+doubt of this woman, he could scarcely refrain from some touch of pity
+for her.
+
+"You are ill, Olivia," he said.
+
+"Yes, I am ill; I am worn out; I am tired of my life. Why does not God
+have pity upon me, and take the bitter burden away? I have carried it
+too long."
+
+She said this not so much to her cousin as to herself. She was like Job
+in his despair, and cried aloud to the Supreme Himself in a gloomy
+protest against her anguish.
+
+"Olivia," said Edward Arundel very earnestly, "what is it that makes
+you unhappy? Is the burden that you carry a burden on your conscience?
+Is the black shadow upon your life a guilty secret? Is the cause of
+your unhappiness that which I suspect it to be? Is it that, in some
+hour of passion, you consented to league yourself with Paul Marchmont
+against my poor innocent girl? For pity's sake, speak, and undo what
+you have done. You cannot have been guilty of a crime. There has been
+some foul play, some conspiracy, some suppression; and my darling has
+been lured away by the machinations of this man. But he could not have
+got her into his power without your help. You hated her,--Heaven alone
+knows for what reason,--and in an evil hour you helped him, and now you
+are sorry for what you have done. But it is not too late, Olivia;
+Olivia, it is surely not too late. Speak, speak, woman, and undo what
+you have done. As you hope for mercy and forgiveness from God, undo
+what you have done. I will exact no atonement from you. Paul Marchmont,
+this smooth traitor, this frank man of the world, who defied me with a
+smile,--he only shall be called upon to answer for the wrong done
+against my darling. Speak, Olivia, for pity's sake," cried the young
+man, casting himself upon his knees at his cousin's feet. "You are of
+my own blood; you must have some spark of regard for me; have
+compassion upon me, then, or have compassion upon your own guilty soul,
+which must perish everlastingly if you withhold the truth. Have pity,
+Olivia, and speak!"
+
+The widow had risen to her feet, recoiling from the soldier as he knelt
+before her, and looking at him with an awful light in the eyes that
+alone gave life to her corpse-like face.
+
+Suddenly she flung her arms up above her head, stretching her wasted
+hands towards the ceiling.
+
+"By the God who has renounced and abandoned me," she cried, "I have no
+more knowledge than you have of Mary Marchmont's fate. From the hour in
+which she left this house, upon the 17th of October, until this present
+moment, I have neither seen her nor heard of her. If I have lied to
+you, Edward Arundel," she added, dropping her extended arms, and
+turning quietly to her cousin,--"if I have lied to you in saying this,
+may the tortures which I suffer be doubled to me,--if in the infinite
+of suffering there is any anguish worse than that I now endure."
+
+Edward Arundel paused for a little while, brooding over this strange
+reply to his appeal. Could he disbelieve his cousin?
+
+It is common to some people to make forcible and impious asseverations
+of an untruth shamelessly, in the very face of an insulted Heaven. But
+Olivia Marchmont was a woman who, in the very darkest hour of her
+despair, knew no wavering from her faith in the God she had offended.
+
+"I cannot refuse to believe you, Olivia," Captain Arundel said
+presently. "I do believe in your solemn protestations, and I no longer
+look for help from you in my search for my lost love. I absolve you
+from all suspicion of being aware of her fate _after_ she left this
+house. But so long as she remained beneath this roof she was in your
+care, and I hold you responsible for the ills that may have then
+befallen her. You, Olivia, must have had some hand in driving that
+unhappy girl away from her home."
+
+The widow had resumed her seat by the open davenport. She sat with her
+head bent, her brows contracted, her mouth fixed and rigid, her left
+hand trifling absently with the scattered papers before her.
+
+"You accused me of this once before, when Mary Marchmont left this
+house," she said sullenly.
+
+"And you were guilty then," answered Edward.
+
+"I cannot hold myself answerable for the actions of others. Mary
+Marchmont left this time, as she left before, of her own free will."
+
+"Driven away by your cruel words."
+
+"She must have been very weak," answered Olivia, with a sneer, "if a
+few harsh words were enough to drive her away from her own house."
+
+"You deny, then, that you were guilty of causing this poor deluded
+child's flight from this house?"
+
+Olivia Marchmont sat for some moments in moody silence; then suddenly
+raising her head, she looked her cousin full in the face.
+
+"I do," she exclaimed; "if any one except herself is guilty of an act
+which was her own, I am not that person."
+
+"I understand," said Edward Arundel; "it was Paul Marchmont's hand that
+drove her out upon the dreary world. It was Paul Marchmont's brain that
+plotted against her. You were only a minor instrument; a willing tool,
+in the hands of a subtle villain. But he shall answer; he shall
+answer!"
+
+The soldier spoke the last words between his clenched teeth. Then with
+his chin upon his breast, he sat thinking over what he had just heard.
+
+"How was it?" he muttered; "how was it? He is too consummate a villain
+to use violence. His manner the other morning told me that the law was
+on his side. He had done nothing to put himself into my power, and he
+defied me. How was it, then? By what means did he drive my darling to
+her despairing flight?"
+
+As Captain Arundel sat thinking of these things, his cousin's idle
+fingers still trifled with the papers on the desk; while, with her chin
+resting on her other hand, and her eyes fixed upon the wall before her,
+she stared blankly at the reflection of the flame of the candle on the
+polished oaken panel. Her idle fingers, following no design, strayed
+here and there among the scattered papers, until a few that lay nearest
+the edge of the desk slid off the smooth morocco, and fluttered to the
+ground.
+
+Edward Arundel, as absent-minded as his cousin, stooped involuntarily
+to pick up the papers. The uppermost of those that had fallen was a
+slip cut from a country newspaper, to which was pinned an open letter,
+a few lines only. The paragraph in the newspaper slip was marked by
+double ink-lines, drawn round it by a neat penman. Again almost
+involuntarily, Edward Arundel looked at this marked paragraph. It was
+very brief:
+
+"We regret to be called upon to state that another of the sufferers in
+the accident which occurred last August on the South-Western Railway
+has expired from injuries received upon that occasion. Captain Arundel,
+of the H.E.I.C.S., died on Friday night at Dangerfield Park, Devon, the
+seat of his elder brother."
+
+The letter was almost as brief as the paragraph:
+
+"Kemberling, October 17th.
+
+"MY DEAR MRS. MARCHMONT,--The enclosed has just come to hand. Let us
+hope it is not true. But, in case of the worst, it should be shown to
+Miss Marchmont _immediately_. Better that she should hear the news from
+you than from a stranger.
+
+"Yours sincerely,
+
+"PAUL MARCHMONT."
+
+"I understand everything now," said Edward Arundel, laying these two
+papers before his cousin; "it was with this printed lie that you and
+Paul Marchmont drove my wife to despair--perhaps to death. My darling,
+my darling," cried the young man, in a burst of uncontrollable agony,
+"I refused to believe that you were dead; I refused to believe that you
+were lost to me. I can believe it now; I can believe it now."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+EDWARD ARUNDEL'S DESPAIR.
+
+
+Yes; Edward Arundel could believe the worst now. He could believe now
+that his young wife, on hearing tidings of his death, had rushed madly
+to her own destruction; too desolate, too utterly unfriended and
+miserable, to live under the burden of her sorrows.
+
+Mary had talked to her husband in the happy, loving confidence of her
+bright honeymoon; she had talked to him of her father's death, and the
+horrible grief she had felt; the heart-sickness, the eager yearning to
+be carried to the same grave, to rest in the same silent sleep.
+
+"I think I tried to throw myself from the window upon the night before
+papa's funeral," she had said; "but I fainted away. I know it was very
+wicked of me. But I was mad. My wretchedness had driven me mad."
+
+He remembered this. Might not this girl, this helpless child, in the
+first desperation of her grief, have hurried down to that dismal river,
+to hide her sorrows for ever under its slow and murky tide?
+
+Henceforward it was with a new feeling that Edward Arundel looked for
+his missing wife. The young and hopeful spirit which had wrestled
+against conviction, which had stubbornly preserved its own sanguine
+fancies against the gloomy forebodings of others, had broken down
+before the evidence of that false paragraph in the country newspaper.
+That paragraph was the key to the sad mystery of Mary Arundel's
+disappearance. Her husband could understand now why she ran away, why
+she despaired; and how, in that desperation and despair, she might have
+hastily ended her short life.
+
+It was with altered feelings, therefore, that he went forth to look for
+her. He was no longer passionate and impatient, for he no longer
+believed that his young wife lived to yearn for his coming, and to
+suffer for the want of his protection; he no longer thought of her as a
+lonely and helpless wanderer driven from her rightful home, and in her
+childish ignorance straying farther and farther away from him who had
+the right to succour and to comfort her. No; he thought of her now with
+sullen despair at his heart; he thought of her now in utter
+hopelessness; he thought of her with a bitter and agonising regret,
+which we only feel for the dead.
+
+But this grief was not the only feeling that held possession of the
+young soldier's breast. Stronger even than his sorrow was his eager
+yearning for vengeance, his savage desire for retaliation.
+
+"I look upon Paul Marchmont as the murderer of my wife," he said to
+Olivia, on that November evening on which he saw the paragraph in the
+newspaper; "I look upon that man as the deliberate destroyer of a
+helpless girl; and he shall answer to me for her life. He shall answer
+to me for every pang she suffered, for every tear she shed. God have
+mercy upon her poor erring soul, and help me to my vengeance upon her
+destroyer."
+
+He lifted his eyes to heaven as he spoke, and a solemn shadow
+overspread his pale face, like a dark cloud upon a winter landscape.
+
+I have said that Edward Arundel no longer felt a frantic impatience to
+discover his wife's fate. The sorrowful conviction which at last had
+forced itself upon him left no room for impatience. The pale face he
+had loved was lying hidden somewhere beneath those dismal waters. He
+had no doubt of that. There was no need of any other solution to the
+mystery of his wife's disappearance. That which he had to seek for was
+the evidence of Paul Marchmont's guilt.
+
+The outspoken young soldier, whose nature was as transparent as the
+stainless soul of a child, had to enter into the lists with a man who
+was so different from himself, that it was almost difficult to believe
+the two individuals belonged to the same species.
+
+Captain Arundel went back to London, and betook himself forthwith to
+the office of Messrs. Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson. He had the
+idea, common to many of his class, that all lawyers, whatever claims
+they might have to respectability, are in a manner past-masters in
+every villanous art; and, as such, the proper people to deal with a
+villain.
+
+"Richard Paulette will be able to help me," thought the young man;
+"Richard Paulette saw through Paul Marchmont, I dare say."
+
+But Richard Paulette had very little to say about the matter. He had
+known Edward Arundel's father, and he had known the young soldier from
+his early boyhood, and he seemed deeply grieved to witness his client's
+distress; but he had nothing to say against Paul Marchmont.
+
+"I cannot see what right you have to suspect Mr. Marchmont of any
+guilty share in your wife's disappearance," he said. "Do not think I
+defend him because he is our client. You know that we are rich enough,
+and honourable enough, to refuse the business of any man whom we
+thought a villain. When I was in Lincolnshire, Mr. Marchmont did
+everything that a man could do to testify his anxiety to find his
+cousin."
+
+"Oh, yes," Edward Arundel answered bitterly; "that is only consistent
+with the man's diabolical artifice; _that_ was a part of his scheme. He
+wished to testify that anxiety, and he wanted you as a witness to his
+conscientious search after my--poor--lost girl." His voice and manner
+changed for a moment as he spoke of Mary.
+
+Richard Paulette shook his head.
+
+"Prejudice, prejudice, my dear Arundel," he said; "this is all
+prejudice upon your part, I assure you. Mr. Marchmont behaved with
+perfect honesty and candour. 'I won't tell you that I'm sorry to
+inherit this fortune,' he said, 'because if I did you wouldn't believe
+me--what man in his senses _could_ believe that a poor devil of a
+landscape painter would regret coming into eleven thousand a year?--but
+I am very sorry for this poor little girl's unhappy fate.' And I
+believe," added Mr. Paulette, decisively, "that the man was heartily
+sorry."
+
+Edward Arundel groaned aloud.
+
+"O God! this is too terrible," he muttered. "Everybody will believe in
+this man rather than in me. How am I to be avenged upon the wretch who
+caused my darling's death?"
+
+He talked for a long time to the lawyer, but with no result. Richard
+Paulette considered the young man's hatred of Paul Marchmont only a
+natural consequence of his grief for Mary's death.
+
+"I can't wonder that you are prejudiced against Mr. Marchmont," he
+said; "it's natural; it's only natural; but, believe me, you are wrong.
+Nothing could be more straightforward, and even delicate, than his
+conduct. He refuses to take possession of the estate, or to touch a
+farthing of the rents. 'No,' he said, when I suggested to him that he
+had a right to enter in possession,--'no; we will not shut the door
+against hope. My cousin may be hiding herself somewhere; she may return
+by-and-by. Let us wait a twelvemonth. If at the end of that time, she
+does not return, and if in the interim we receive no tidings from her,
+no evidence of her existence, we may reasonably conclude that she is
+dead; and I may fairly consider myself the rightful owner of Marchmont
+Towers. In the mean time, you will act as if you were still Mary
+Marchmont's agent, holding all moneys as in trust for her, but to be
+delivered up to me at the expiration of a year from the day on which
+she disappeared.' I do not think anything could be more straightforward
+than that," added Richard Paulette, in conclusion.
+
+"No," Edward answered, with a sigh; "it _seems_ very straightforward.
+But the man who could strike at a helpless girl by means of a lying
+paragraph in a newspaper--"
+
+"Mr. Marchmont may have believed in that paragraph."
+
+Edward Arundel rose, with a gesture of impatience.
+
+"I came to you for help, Mr. Paulette," he said; "but I see you don't
+mean to help me. Good day."
+
+He left the office before the lawyer could remonstrate with him. He
+walked away, with passionate anger against all the world raging in his
+breast.
+
+"Why, what a smooth-spoken, false-tongued world it is!" he thought.
+"Let a man succeed in the vilest scheme, and no living creature will
+care to ask by what foul means he may have won his success. What
+weapons can I use against this Paul Marchmont, who twists truth and
+honesty to his own ends, and masks his basest treachery under an
+appearance of candour?"
+
+From Lincoln's Inn Fields Captain Arundel drove over Waterloo Bridge to
+Oakley Street. He went to Mrs. Pimpernel's establishment, without any
+hope of the glad surprise that had met him there a few months before.
+He believed implicitly that his wife was dead, and wherever he went in
+search of her he went in utter hopelessness, only prompted by the
+desire to leave no part of his duty undone.
+
+The honest-hearted dealer in cast-off apparel wept bitterly when she
+heard how sadly the Captain's honeymoon had ended. She would have been
+content to detain the young soldier all day, while she bemoaned the
+misfortunes that had come upon him; and now, for the first time, Edward
+heard of dismal forebodings, and horrible dreams, and unaccountable
+presentiments of evil, with which this honest woman had been afflicted
+on and before his wedding-day, and of which she had made special
+mention at the time to divers friends and acquaintances.
+
+"I never shall forget how shivery-like I felt as the cab drove off,
+with that pore dear a-lookin' and smilin' at me out of the winder. I
+says to Mrs. Polson, as her husband is in the shoemakin' line, two
+doors further down,--I says, 'I do hope Capting Harungdell's lady will
+get safe to the end of her journey.' I felt the cold shivers a-creepin'
+up my back just azackly like I did a fortnight before my pore Jane
+died, and I couldn't get it off my mind as somethink was goin' to
+happen."
+
+From London Captain Arundel went to Winchester, much to the disgust of
+his valet, who was accustomed to a luxuriously idle life at Dangerfield
+Park, and who did not by any means relish this desultory wandering from
+place to place. Perhaps there was some faint ray of hope in the young
+man's mind, as he drew near to that little village-inn beneath whose
+shelter he had been so happy with his childish bride. If she had _not_
+committed suicide; if she had indeed wandered away, to try and bear her
+sorrows in gentle Christian resignation; if she had sought some retreat
+where she might be safe from her tormentors,--would not every instinct
+of her loving heart have led her here?--here, amid these low meadows
+and winding streams, guarded and surrounded by the pleasant shelter of
+grassy hill-tops, crowned by waving trees?--here, where she had been so
+happy with the husband of her choice?
+
+But, alas! that newly-born hope, which had made the soldier's heart
+beat and his cheek flush, was as delusive as many other hopes that lure
+men and women onward in their weary wanderings upon this earth. The
+landlord of the White Hart Inn answered Edward Arundel's question with
+stolid indifference.
+
+No; the young lady had gone away with her ma, and a gentleman who came
+with her ma. She had cried a deal, poor thing, and had seemed very much
+cut up. (It was from the chamber-maid Edward heard this.) But her ma
+and the gentleman had seemed in a great hurry to take her away. The
+gentleman said that a village inn wasn't the place for her, and he said
+he was very much shocked to find her there; and he had a fly got ready,
+and took the two ladies away in it to the George, at Winchester, and
+they were to go from there to London; and the young lady was crying
+when she went away, and was as pale as death, poor dear.
+
+This was all that Captain Arundel gained by his journey to Milldale. He
+went across country to the farming people near Reading, his wife's poor
+relations. But they had heard nothing of her. They had wondered,
+indeed, at having no letters from her, for she had been very kind to
+them. They were terribly distressed when they were told of her
+disappearance.
+
+This was the forlorn hope. It was all over now. Edward Arundel could no
+longer struggle against the cruel truth. He could do nothing now but
+avenge his wife's sorrows. He went down to Devonshire, saw his mother,
+and told her the sad story of Mary's flight. But he could not rest at
+Dangerfield, though Mrs. Arundel implored him to stay long enough to
+recruit his shattered health. He hurried back to London, made
+arrangements with his agent for being bought out of his regiment by his
+brother officers, and then, turning his back upon the career that had
+been far dearer to him than his life, he went down to Lincolnshire once
+more, in the dreary winter weather, to watch and wait patiently, if
+need were, for the day of retribution.
+
+There was a detached cottage, a lonely place enough, between Kemberling
+and Marchmont Towers, that had been to let for a long time, being very
+much out of repair, and by no means inviting in appearance. Edward
+Arundel took this cottage. All necessary repairs and alterations were
+executed under the direction of Mr. Morrison, who was to remain
+permanently in the young man's service. Captain Arundel had a couple of
+horses brought down to his new stable, and hired a country lad, who was
+to act as groom under the eye of the factotum. Mr. Morrison and this
+lad, with one female servant, formed Edward's establishment.
+
+Paul Marchmont lifted his auburn eyebrows when he heard of the new
+tenant of Kemberling Retreat. The lonely cottage had been christened
+Kemberling Retreat by a sentimental tenant; who had ultimately
+levanted, leaving his rent three quarters in arrear. The artist
+exhibited a gentlemanly surprise at this new vagary of Edward
+Arundel's, and publicly expressed his pity for the foolish young man.
+
+"I am so sorry that the poor fellow should sacrifice himself to a
+romantic grief for my unfortunate cousin," Mr. Marchmont said, in the
+parlour of the Black Bull, where he condescended to drop in now and
+then with his brother-in-law, and to make himself popular amongst the
+magnates of Kemberling, and the tenant-farmers, who looked to him as
+their future, if not their actual, landlord. "I am really sorry for the
+poor lad. He's a handsome, high-spirited fellow, and I'm sorry he's
+been so weak as to ruin his prospects in the Company's service. Yes; I
+am heartily sorry for him."
+
+Mr. Marchmont discussed the matter very lightly in the parlour of the
+Black Bull, but he kept silence as he walked home with the surgeon; and
+Mr. George Weston, looking askance at his brother-in-law's face, saw
+that something was wrong, and thought it advisable to hold his peace.
+
+Paul Marchmont sat up late that night talking to Lavinia after the
+surgeon had gone to bed. The brother and sister conversed in subdued
+murmurs as they stood close together before the expiring fire, and the
+faces of both were very grave, indeed, almost apprehensive.
+
+"He must be terribly in earnest," Paul Marchmont said, "or he would
+never have sacrificed his position. He has planted himself here, close
+upon us, with a determination of watching us. We shall have to be very
+careful."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+It was early in the new year that Edward Arundel completed all his
+arrangements, and took possession of Kemberling Retreat. He knew that,
+in retiring from the East India Company's service, he had sacrificed
+the prospect of a brilliant and glorious career, under some of the
+finest soldiers who ever fought for their country. But he had made this
+sacrifice willingly--as an offering to the memory of his lost love; as
+an atonement for his broken trust. For it was one of his most bitter
+miseries to remember that his own want of prudence had been the first
+cause of all Mary's sorrows. Had he confided in his mother,--had he
+induced her to return from Germany to be present at his marriage, and
+to accept the orphan girl as a daughter,--Mary need never again have
+fallen into the power of Olivia Marchmont. His own imprudence, his own
+rashness, had flung this poor child, helpless and friendless, into the
+hands of the very man against whom John Marchmont had written a solemn
+warning,--a warning that it should have been Edward's duty to remember.
+But who could have calculated upon the railway accident; and who could
+have foreseen a separation in the first blush of the honeymoon? Edward
+Arundel had trusted in his own power to protect his bride from every
+ill that might assail her. In the pride of his youth and strength he
+had forgotten that he was not immortal, and the last idea that could
+have entered his mind was the thought that he should be stricken down
+by a sudden calamity, and rendered even more helpless than the girl he
+had sworn to shield and succour.
+
+The bleak winter crept slowly past, and the shrill March winds were
+loud amidst the leafless trees in the wood behind Marchmont Towers.
+This wood was open to any foot-passenger who might choose to wander
+that way; and Edward Arundel often walked upon the bank of the slow
+river, and past the boat-house, beneath whose shadow he had wooed his
+young wife in the bright summer that was gone. The place had a mournful
+attraction for the young man, by reason of the memory of the past, and
+a different and far keener fascination in the fact of Paul Marchmont's
+frequent occupation of his roughly-built painting-room.
+
+In a purposeless and unsettled frame of mind, Edward Arundel kept watch
+upon the man he hated, scarcely knowing why he watched, or for what he
+hoped, but with a vague belief that something would be discovered; that
+some accident might come to pass which would enable him to say to Paul
+Marchmont,
+
+"It was by your treachery my wife perished; and it is you who must
+answer to me for her death."
+
+Edward Arundel had seen nothing of his cousin Olivia during that dismal
+winter. He had held himself aloof from the Towers,--that is to say, he
+had never presented himself there as a guest, though he had been often
+on horseback and on foot in the wood by the river. He had not seen
+Olivia, but he had heard of her through his valet, Mr. Morrison, who
+insisted on repeating the gossip of Kemberling for the benefit of his
+listless and indifferent master.
+
+"They do say as Mr. Paul Marchmont is going to marry Mrs. John
+Marchmont, sir," Mr. Morrison said, delighted at the importance of his
+information. "They say as Mr. Paul is always up at the Towers visitin'
+Mrs. John, and that she takes his advice about everything as she does,
+and that she's quite wrapped up in him like."
+
+Edward Arundel looked at his attendant with unmitigated surprise.
+
+"My cousin Olivia marry Paul Marchmont!" he exclaimed. "You should be
+wiser than to listen to such foolish gossip, Morrison. You know what
+country people are, and you know they can't keep their tongues quiet."
+
+Mr. Morrison took this reproach as a compliment to his superior
+intelligence.
+
+"It ain't oftentimes as I listens to their talk, sir," he said; "but if
+I've heard this said once, I've heard it twenty times; and I've heard
+it at the Black Bull, too, Mr. Edward, where Mr. Marchmont fre_quents_
+sometimes with his sister's husband; and the landlord told me as it had
+been spoken of once before his face, and he didn't deny it."
+
+Edward Arundel pondered gravely over this gossip of the Kemberling
+people. It was not so very improbable, perhaps, after all. Olivia only
+held Marchmont Towers on sufferance. It might be that, rather than be
+turned out of her stately home, she would accept the hand of its
+rightful owner. She would marry Paul Marchmont, perhaps, as she had
+married his brother,--for the sake of a fortune and a position. She had
+grudged Mary her wealth, and now she sought to become a sharer in that
+wealth.
+
+"Oh, the villany, the villany!" cried the soldier. "It is all one base
+fabric of treachery and wrong. A marriage between these two will be
+only a part of the scheme. Between them they have driven my darling to
+her death, and they will now divide the profits of their guilty work."
+
+The young man determined to discover whether there had been any
+foundation for the Kemberling gossip. He had not seen his cousin since
+the day of his discovery of the paragraph in the newspaper, and he went
+forthwith to the Towers, bent on asking Olivia the straight question as
+to the truth of the reports that had reached his ears.
+
+He walked over to the dreary mansion. He had regained his strength by
+this time, and he had recovered his good looks; but something of the
+brightness of his youth was gone; something of the golden glory of his
+beauty had faded. He was no longer the young Apollo, fresh and radiant
+with the divinity of the skies. He had suffered; and suffering had left
+its traces on his countenance. That smiling hopefulness, that supreme
+confidence in a bright future, which is the virginity of beauty, had
+perished beneath the withering influence of affliction.
+
+Mrs. Marchmont was not to be seen at the Towers. She had gone down to
+the boat-house with Mr. Paul Marchmont and Mrs. Weston, the servant
+said.
+
+"I will see them together," Edward Arundel thought. "I will see if my
+cousin dares to tell me that she means to marry this man."
+
+He walked through the wood to the lonely building by the river. The
+March winds were blowing among the leafless trees, ruffling the black
+pools of water that the rain had left in every hollow; the smoke from
+the chimney of Paul Marchmont's painting-room struggled hopelessly
+against the wind, and was beaten back upon the roof from which it tried
+to rise. Everything succumbed before that pitiless north-easter.
+
+Edward Arundel knocked at the door of the wooden edifice erected by his
+foe. He scarcely waited for the answer to his summons, but lifted the
+latch, and walked across the threshold, uninvited, unwelcome.
+
+There were four people in the painting-room. Two or three seemed to
+have been talking together when Edward knocked at the door; but the
+speakers had stopped simultaneously and abruptly, and there was a dead
+silence when he entered.
+
+Olivia Marchmont was standing under the broad northern window; the
+artist was sitting upon one of the steps leading up to the pavilion;
+and a few paces from him, in an old cane-chair near the easel, sat
+George Weston, the surgeon, with his wife leaning over the back of his
+chair. It was at this man that Edward Arundel looked longest, riveted
+by the strange expression of his face. The traces of intense agitation
+have a peculiar force when seen in a usually stolid countenance. Your
+mobile faces are apt to give an exaggerated record of emotion. We grow
+accustomed to their changeful expression, their vivid betrayal of every
+passing sensation. But this man's was one of those faces which are only
+changed from their apathetic stillness by some moral earthquake, whose
+shock arouses the most impenetrable dullard from his stupid
+imperturbability. Such a shock had lately affected George Weston, the
+quiet surgeon of Kemberling, the submissive husband of Paul Marchmont's
+sister. His face was as white as death; a slow trembling shook his
+ponderous frame; with one of his big fat hands he pulled a cotton
+handkerchief from his pocket, and tremulously wiped the perspiration
+from his bald forehead. His wife bent over him, and whispered a few
+words in his ear; but he shook his head with a piteous gesture, as if
+to testify his inability to comprehend her. It was impossible for a man
+to betray more obvious signs of violent agitation than this man
+betrayed.
+
+"It's no use, Lavinia," he murmured hopelessly, as his wife whispered
+to him for the second time; "it's no use, my dear; I can't get over
+it."
+
+Mrs. Weston cast one rapid, half-despairing, half-appealing glance at
+her brother, and in the next moment recovered herself, by an effort
+only such as great women, or wicked women, are capable of.
+
+"Oh, you men!" she cried, in her liveliest voice; "oh, you men! What
+big silly babies, what nervous creatures you are! Come, George, I won't
+have you giving way to this foolish nonsense, just because an extra
+glass or so of Mrs. Marchmont's very fine old port has happened to
+disagree with you. You must not think we are a drunkard, Mr. Arundel,"
+added the lady, turning playfully to Edward, and patting her husband's
+clumsy shoulder as she spoke; "we are only a poor village surgeon, with
+a limited income, and a very weak head, and quite unaccustomed to old
+light port. Come, Mr. George Weston, walk out into the open air, sir,
+and let us see if the March wind will bring you back your senses."
+
+And without another word Lavinia Weston hustled her husband, who walked
+like a man in a dream, out of the painting-room, and closed the door
+behind her.
+
+Paul Marchmont laughed as the door shut upon his brother-in-law.
+
+"Poor George!" he said, carelessly; "I thought he helped himself to the
+port a little too liberally. He never could stand a glass of wine; and
+he's the most stupid creature when he is drunk."
+
+Excellent as all this by-play was, Edward Arundel was not deceived by
+it.
+
+"The man was not drunk," he thought; "he was frightened. What could
+have happened to throw him into that state? What mystery are these
+people hiding amongst themselves; and what should _he_ have to do with
+it?"
+
+"Good evening, Captain Arundel," Paul Marchmont said. "I congratulate
+you on the change in your appearance since you were last in this place.
+You seem to have quite recovered the effects of that terrible railway
+accident."
+
+Edward Arundel drew himself up stiffly as the artist spoke to him.
+
+"We cannot meet except as enemies, Mr. Marchmont," he said. "My cousin
+has no doubt told you what I said of you when I discovered the lying
+paragraph which you caused to be shown to my wife."
+
+"I only did what any one else would have done under the circumstances,"
+Paul Marchmont answered quietly. "I was deceived by a penny-a-liner's
+false report. How should I know the effect that report would have upon
+my unhappy cousin?"
+
+"I cannot discuss this matter with you," cried Edward Arundel, his
+voice tremulous with passion; "I am almost mad when I think of it. I am
+not safe; I dare not trust myself. I look upon you as the deliberate
+assassin of a helpless girl; but so skilful an assassin, that nothing
+less than the vengeance of God can touch you. I cry aloud to Him night
+and day, in the hope that He will hear me and avenge my wife's death. I
+cannot look to any earthly law for help: but I trust in God; I put my
+trust in God."
+
+There are very few positive and consistent atheists in this world. Mr.
+Paul Marchmont was a philosopher of the infidel school, a student of
+Voltaire and the brotherhood of the Encyclopedia, and a believer in
+those liberal days before the Reign of Terror, when Frenchmen, in
+coffee-houses, discussed the Supreme under the soubriquet of Mons.
+l'Etre; but he grew a little paler as Edward Arundel, with kindling
+eyes and uplifted hand, declared his faith in a Divine Avenger.
+
+The sceptical artist may have thought,
+
+"What if there should be some reality in the creed so many weak fools
+confide in? What if there _is_ a God who cannot abide iniquity?"
+
+"I came here to look for you, Olivia," Edward Arundel said presently.
+"I want to ask you a question. Will you come into the wood with me?"
+
+"Yes, if you wish it," Mrs. Marchmont answered quietly.
+
+The cousins went out of the painting-room together, leaving Paul
+Marchmont alone. They walked on for a few yards in silence.
+
+"What is the question you came here to ask me?" Olivia asked abruptly.
+
+"The Kemberling people have raised a report about you which I should
+fancy would be scarcely agreeable to yourself," answered Edward. "You
+would hardly wish to benefit by Mary's death, would you, Olivia?"
+
+He looked at her searchingly as he spoke. Her face was at all times so
+expressive of hidden cares, of cruel mental tortures, that there was
+little room in her countenance for any new emotion. Her cousin looked
+in vain for any change in it now.
+
+"Benefit by her death!" she exclaimed. "How should I benefit by her
+death?"
+
+"By marrying the man who inherits this estate. They say you are going
+to marry Paul Marchmont."
+
+Olivia looked at him with an expression of surprise.
+
+"Do they say that of me?" she asked. "Do people say that?"
+
+"They do. Is it true, Olivia?"
+
+The widow turned upon him almost fiercely.
+
+"What does it matter to you whether it is true or not? What do you care
+whom I marry, or what becomes of me?"
+
+"I care this much," Edward Arundel answered, "that I would not have
+your reputation lied away by the gossips of Kemberling. I should
+despise you if you married this man. But if you do not mean to marry
+him, you have no right to encourage his visits; you are trifling with
+your own good name. You should leave this place, and by that means give
+the lie to any false reports that have arisen about you."
+
+"Leave this place!" cried Olivia Marchmont, with a bitter laugh. "Leave
+this place! O my God, if I could; if I could go away and bury myself
+somewhere at the other end of the world, and forget,--and forget!" She
+said this as if to herself; as if it had been a cry of despair wrung
+from her in despite of herself; then, turning to Edward Arundel, she
+added, in a quieter voice, "I can never leave this place till I leave
+it in my coffin. I am a prisoner here for life."
+
+She turned from him, and walked slowly away, with her face towards the
+dying sunlight in the low western sky.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+EDWARD'S VISITORS.
+
+
+Perhaps no greater sacrifice had ever been made by an English gentleman
+than that which Edward Arundel willingly offered up as an atonement for
+his broken trust, as a tribute to his lost wife. Brave, ardent,
+generous, and sanguine, this young soldier saw before him a brilliant
+career in the profession which he loved. He saw glory and distinction
+beckoning to him from afar, and turned his back upon those shining
+sirens. He gave up all, in the vague hope of, sooner or later, avenging
+Mary's wrongs upon Paul Marchmont.
+
+He made no boast, even to himself, of that which he had done. Again and
+again memory brought back to him the day upon which he breakfasted in
+Oakley Street, and walked across Waterloo Bridge with the Drury Lane
+supernumerary. Every word that John Marchmont had spoken; every look of
+the meek and trusting eyes, the pale and thoughtful face; every
+pressure of the thin hand which had grasped his in grateful affection,
+in friendly confidence,--came back to Edward Arundel after an interval
+of nearly ten years, and brought with it a bitter sense of
+self-reproach.
+
+"He trusted his daughter to me," the young man thought. "Those last
+words in the poor fellow's letter are always in my mind: 'The only
+bequest which I can leave to the only friend I have is the legacy of a
+child's helplessness.' And I have slighted his solemn warning: and I
+have been false to my trust."
+
+In his scrupulous sense of honour, the soldier reproached himself as
+bitterly for that imprudence, out of which so much evil had arisen, as
+another man might have done after a wilful betrayal of his trust. He
+could not forgive himself. He was for ever and ever repeating in his
+own mind that one brief phase which is the universal chorus of erring
+men's regret: "If I had acted differently, if I had done otherwise,
+this or that would not have come to pass." We are perpetually wandering
+amid the hopeless deviations of a maze, finding pitfalls and
+precipices, quicksands and morasses, at every turn in the painful way;
+and we look back at the end of our journey to discover a straight and
+pleasant roadway by which, had we been wise enough to choose it, we
+might have travelled safely and comfortably to our destination.
+
+But Wisdom waits for us at the goal instead of accompanying us upon our
+journey. She is a divinity whom we meet very late in life; when we are
+too near the end of our troublesome march to derive much profit from
+her counsels. We can only retail them to our juniors, who, not getting
+them from the fountain-head, have very small appreciation of their
+value.
+
+The young captain of East Indian cavalry suffered very cruelly from the
+sacrifice which he had made. Day after day, day after day, the slow,
+dreary, changeless, eventless, and unbroken life dragged itself out;
+and nothing happened to bring him any nearer to the purpose of this
+monotonous existence; no promise of even ultimate success rewarded his
+heroic self-devotion. Afar, he heard of the rush and clamour of war, of
+dangers and terror, of conquest and glory. His own regiment was in the
+thick of the strife, his brothers in arms were doing wonders. Every
+mail brought some new record of triumph and glory.
+
+The soldier's heart sickened as he read the story of each new
+encounter; his heart sickened with that terrible yearning,--that
+yearning which seems physically palpable in its perpetual pain; the
+yearning with which a child at a hard school, lying broad awake in the
+long, gloomy, rush-lit bedchamber in the dead of the silent night,
+remembers the soft resting-place of his mother's bosom; the yearning
+with which a faithful husband far away from home sighs for the presence
+of the wife he loves. Even with such a heart-sickness as this Edward
+Arundel pined to be amongst the familiar faces yonder in the East,--to
+hear the triumphant yell of his men as they swarmed after him through
+the breach in an Affghan wall,--to see the dark heathens blanch under
+the terror of Christian swords.
+
+He read the records of the war again and again, again and again, till
+every scene arose before him,--a picture, flaming and lurid, grandly
+beautiful, horribly sublime. The very words of those newspaper reports
+seemed to blaze upon the paper on which they were written, so palpable
+were the images which they evoked in the soldier's mind. He was frantic
+in his eager impatience for the arrival of every mail, for the coming
+of every new record of that Indian warfare. He was like a devourer of
+romances, who reads a thrilling story link by link, and who is
+impatient for every new chapter of the fiction. His dreams were of
+nothing but battle and victory, danger, triumph, and death; and he
+often woke in the morning exhausted by the excitement of those
+visionary struggles, those phantom terrors.
+
+His sabre hung over the chimney-piece in his simple bedchamber. He took
+it down sometimes, and drew it from the sheath. He could have almost
+wept aloud over that idle sword. He raised his arm, and the weapon
+vibrated with a whirring noise as he swept the glittering steel in a
+wide circle through the empty air. An infidel's head should have been
+swept from his vile carcass in that rapid circle of the keen-edged
+blade. The soldier's arm was as strong as ever, his wrist as supple,
+his muscular force unwasted by mental suffering. Thank Heaven for that!
+But after that brief thanksgiving his arm dropped inertly, and the idle
+sword fell out of his relaxing grasp.
+
+"I seem a craven to myself," he cried; "I have no right to be here--I
+have no right to be here while those other fellows are fighting for
+their lives out yonder. O God, have mercy upon me! My brain gets dazed
+sometimes; and I begin to wonder whether I am most bound to remain here
+and watch Paul Marchmont, or to go yonder and fight for my country and
+my Queen."
+
+There were many phases in this mental fever. At one time the young man
+was seized with a savage jealousy of the officer who had succeeded to
+his captaincy. He watched this man's name, and every record of his
+movements, and was constantly taking objection to his conduct. He was
+grudgingly envious of this particular officer's triumphs, however
+small. He could not feel generously towards this happy successor, in
+the bitterness of his own enforced idleness.
+
+"What opportunities this man has!" he thought; "_I_ never had such
+chances."
+
+It is almost impossible for me to faithfully describe the tortures
+which this monotonous existence inflicted upon the impetuous young man.
+It is the speciality of a soldier's career that it unfits most men for
+any other life. They cannot throw off the old habitudes. They cannot
+turn from the noisy stir of war to the tame quiet of every-day life;
+and even when they fancy themselves wearied and worn out, and willingly
+retire from service, their souls are stirred by every sound of the
+distant contest, as the war-steed is aroused by the blast of a trumpet.
+But Edward Arundel's career had been cut suddenly short at the very
+hour in which it was brightest with the promise of future glory. It was
+as if a torrent rushing madly down a mountain-side had been dammed up,
+and its waters bidden to stagnate upon a level plain. The rebellious
+waters boiled and foamed in a sullen fury. The soldier could not submit
+himself contentedly to his fate. He might strip off his uniform, and
+accept sordid coin as the price of the epaulettes he had won so dearly;
+but he was at heart a soldier still. When he received the sum which had
+been raised amongst his juniors as the price of his captaincy, it
+seemed to him almost as if he had sold his brother's blood.
+
+It was summer-time now. Ten months had elapsed since his marriage with
+Mary Marchmont, and no new light had been thrown upon the disappearance
+of his young wife. No one could feel a moment's doubt as to her fate.
+She had perished in that lonely river which flowed behind Marchmont
+Towers, and far away down to the sea.
+
+The artist had kept his word, and had as yet taken no step towards
+entering into possession of the estate which he inherited by his
+cousin's death. But Mr. Paul Marchmont spent a great deal of time at
+the Towers, and a great deal more time in the painting-room by the
+river-side, sometimes accompanied by his sister, sometimes alone.
+
+The Kemberling gossips had grown by no means less talkative upon the
+subject of Olivia and the new owner of Marchmont Towers. On the
+contrary, the voices that discussed Mrs. Marchmont's conduct were a
+great deal more numerous than heretofore; in other words, John
+Marchmont's widow was "talked about." Everything is said in this
+phrase. It was scarcely that people said bad things of her; it was
+rather that they talked more about her than any woman can suffer to be
+talked of with safety to her fair fame. They began by saying that she
+was going to marry Paul Marchmont; they went on to wonder _whether_ she
+was going to marry him; then they wondered _why_ she didn't marry him.
+From this they changed the venue, and began to wonder whether Paul
+Marchmont meant to marry her,--there was an essential difference in
+this new wonderment,--and next, why Paul Marchmont didn't marry her.
+And by this time Olivia's reputation was overshadowed by a terrible
+cloud, which had arisen no bigger than a man's hand, in the first
+conjecturings of a few ignorant villagers.
+
+People made it their business first to wonder about Mrs. Marchmont, and
+then to set up their own theories about her; to which theories they
+clung with a stupid persistence, forgetting, as people generally do
+forget, that there might be some hidden clue, some secret key, to the
+widow's conduct, for want of which the cleverest reasoning respecting
+her was only so much groping in the dark.
+
+Edward Arundel heard of the cloud which shadowed his cousin's name. Her
+father heard of it, and went to remonstrate with her, imploring her to
+come to him at Swampington, and to leave Marchmont Towers to the new
+lord of the mansion. But she only answered him with gloomy, obstinate
+reiteration, and almost in the same terms as she had answered Edward
+Arundel; declaring that she would stay at the Towers till her death;
+that she would never leave the place till she was carried thence in her
+coffin.
+
+Hubert Arundel, always afraid of his daughter, was more than ever
+afraid of her now; and he was as powerless to contend against her
+sullen determination as he would have been to float up the stream of a
+rushing river.
+
+So Olivia was talked about. She had scared away all visitors, after the
+ball at the Towers, by the strangeness of her manner and the settled
+gloom in her face; and she lived unvisited and alone in the gaunt stony
+mansion; and people said that Paul Marchmont was almost perpetually
+with her, and that she went to meet him in the painting-room by the
+river.
+
+Edward Arundel sickened of his wearisome life, and no one helped him to
+endure his sufferings. His mother wrote to him imploring him to resign
+himself to the loss of his young wife, to return to Dangerfield, to
+begin a new existence, and to blot out the memory of the past.
+
+"You have done all that the most devoted affection could prompt you to
+do," Mrs. Arundel wrote. "Come back to me, my dearest boy. I gave you
+up to the service of your country because it was my duty to resign you
+then. But I cannot afford to lose you now; I cannot bear to see you
+sacrificing yourself to a chimera. Return to me; and let me see you
+make a new and happier choice. Let me see my son the father of little
+children who will gather round my knees when I grow old and feeble."
+
+"A new and happier choice!" Edward Arundel repeated the words with a
+melancholy bitterness. "No, my poor lost girl; no, my blighted wife; I
+will not be false to you. The smiles of happy women can have no
+sunlight for me while I cherish the memory of the sad eyes that watched
+me when I drove away from Milldale, the sweet sorrowful face that I was
+never to look upon again."
+
+The dull empty days succeeded each other, and _did_ resemble each
+other, with a wearisome similitude that well-nigh exhausted the
+patience of the impetuous young man. His fiery nature chafed against
+this miserable delay. It was so hard to have to wait for his vengeance.
+Sometimes he could scarcely refrain from planting himself somewhere in
+Paul Marchmont's way, with the idea of a hand-to-hand struggle in which
+either he or his enemy must perish.
+
+Once he wrote the artist a desperate letter, denouncing him as an
+arch-plotter and villain; calling upon him, if his evil nature was
+redeemed by one spark of manliness, to fight as men had been in the
+habit of fighting only a few years before, with a hundred times less
+reason than these two men had for their quarrel.
+
+"I have called you a villain and traitor; in India we fellows would
+kill each other for smaller words than those," wrote the soldier. "But
+I have no wish to take any advantage of my military experience. I may
+be a better shot than you. Let us have only one pistol, and draw lots
+for it. Let us fire at each other across a dinner-table. Let us do
+anything; so that we bring this miserable business to an end."
+
+Mr. Marchmont read this letter slowly and thoughtfully, more than once;
+smiling as he read.
+
+"He's getting tired," thought the artist. "Poor young man, I thought he
+would be the first to grow tired of this sort of work."
+
+He wrote Edward Arundel a long letter; a friendly but rather facetious
+letter; such as he might have written to a child who had asked him to
+jump over the moon. He ridiculed the idea of a duel, as something
+utterly Quixotic and absurd.
+
+"I am fifteen years older than you, my dear Mr. Arundel," he wrote,
+"and a great deal too old to have any inclination to fight with
+windmills; or to represent the windmill which a high-spirited young
+Quixote may choose to mistake for a villanous knight, and run his hot
+head against in that delusion. I am not offended with you for calling
+me bad names, and I take your anger merely as a kind of romantic manner
+you have of showing your love for my poor cousin. We are not enemies,
+and we never shall be enemies; for I will never suffer myself to be so
+foolish as to get into a passion with a brave and generous-hearted
+young soldier, whose only error is an unfortunate hallucination with
+regard to
+
+"Your very humble servant,
+
+"PAUL MARCHMONT."
+
+Edward ground his teeth with savage fury as he read this letter.
+
+"Is there no making this man answer for his infamy?" he muttered. "Is
+there no way of making him suffer?"
+
+ * * * * *
+
+June was nearly over, and the year was wearing round to the anniversary
+of Edward's wedding-day, the anniversaries of those bright days which
+the young bride and bridegroom had loitered away by the trout-streams
+in the Hampshire meadows, when some most unlooked-for visitors made
+their appearance at Kemberling Retreat.
+
+The cottage lay back behind a pleasant garden, and was hidden from the
+dusty high road by a hedge of lilacs and laburnums which grew within
+the wooden fence. It was Edward's habit, in this hot summer-time, to
+spend a great deal of his time in the garden; walking up and down the
+neglected paths, with a cigar in his mouth; or lolling in an easy chair
+on the lawn reading the papers. Perhaps the garden was almost prettier,
+by reason of the long neglect which it had suffered, than it would have
+been if kept in the trimmest order by the industrious hands of a
+skilful gardener. Everything grew in a wild and wanton luxuriance, that
+was very beautiful in this summer-time, when the earth was gorgeous
+with all manner of blossoms. Trailing branches from the espaliered
+apple-trees hung across the pathways, intermingled with roses that had
+run wild; and made "bits" that a landscape-painter might have delighted
+to copy. Even the weeds, which a gardener would have looked upon with
+horror, were beautiful. The wild convolvulus flung its tendrils into
+fantastic wreaths about the bushes of sweetbrier; the honeysuckle,
+untutored by the pruning-knife, mixed its tall branches with seringa
+and clematis; the jasmine that crept about the house had mounted to the
+very chimney-pots, and strayed in through the open windows; even the
+stable-roof was half hidden by hardy monthly roses that had clambered
+up to the thatch. But the young soldier took very little interest in
+this disorderly garden. He pined to be far away in the thick jungle, or
+on the burning plain. He hated the quiet and repose of an existence
+which seemed little better than the living death of a cloister.
+
+The sun was low in the west at the close of a long midsummer day, when
+Mr. Arundel strolled up and down the neglected pathways, backwards and
+forwards amid the long tangled grass of the lawn, smoking a cigar, and
+brooding over his sorrows.
+
+He was beginning to despair. He had defied Paul Marchmont, and no good
+had come of his defiance. He had watched him, and there had been no
+result of his watching. Day after day he had wandered down to the
+lonely pathway by the river side; again and again he had reconnoitered
+the boat-house, only to hear Paul Marchmont's treble voice singing
+scraps out of modern operas as he worked at his easel; or on one or two
+occasions to see Mr. George Weston, the surgeon, or Lavinia his wife,
+emerge from the artist's painting-room.
+
+Upon one of these occasions Edward Arundel had accosted the surgeon of
+Kemberling, and had tried to enter into conversation with him. But Mr.
+Weston had exhibited such utterly hopeless stupidity, mingled with a
+very evident terror of his brother-in-law's foe, that Edward had been
+fain to abandon all hope of any assistance from this quarter.
+
+"I'm sure I'm very sorry for you, Mr. Arundel," the surgeon said,
+looking, not at Edward, but about and around him, in a hopeless,
+wandering manner, like some hunted animal that looks far and near for a
+means of escape from his pursuer,--"I'm very sorry for you--and for all
+your trouble--and I was when I attended you at the Black Bull--and you
+were the first patient I ever had there--and it led to my having many
+more--as I may say--though that's neither here nor there. And I'm very
+sorry for you, and for the poor young woman too--particularly for the
+poor young woman--and I always tell Paul so--and--and Paul--"
+
+And at this juncture Mr. Weston stopped abruptly, as if appalled by the
+hopeless entanglement of his own ideas, and with a brief "Good evening,
+Mr. Arundel," shot off in the direction of the Towers, leaving Edward
+at a loss to understand his manner.
+
+So, on this midsummer evening, the soldier walked up and down the
+neglected grass-plat, thinking of the men who had been his comrades,
+and of the career which he had abandoned for the love of his lost wife.
+
+He was aroused from his gloomy reverie by the sound of a fresh girlish
+voice calling to him by his name.
+
+"Edward! Edward!"
+
+Who could there be in Lincolnshire with the right to call to him thus
+by his Christian name? He was not long left in doubt. While he was
+asking himself the question, the same feminine voice cried out again.
+
+"Edward! Edward! Will you come and open the gate for me, please? Or do
+you mean to keep me out here for ever?"
+
+This time Mr. Arundel had no difficulty in recognising the familiar
+tones of his sister Letitia, whom he had believed, until that moment,
+to be safe under the maternal wing at Dangerfield. And lo, here she
+was, on horseback at his own gate; with a cavalier hat and feathers
+overshadowing her girlish face; and with another young Amazon on a
+thorough-bred chestnut, and an elderly groom on a thorough-bred bay, in
+the background.
+
+Edward Arundel, utterly confounded by the advent of such visitors,
+flung away his cigar, and went to the low wooden gate beyond which his
+sister's steed was pawing the dusty road, impatient of this stupid
+delay, and eager to be cantering stablewards through the scented summer
+air.
+
+"Why, Letitia!" cried the young man, "what, in mercy's name, has
+brought you here?"
+
+Miss Arundel laughed aloud at her brother's look of surprise.
+
+"You didn't know I was in Lincolnshire, did you?" she asked; and then
+answered her own question in the same breath: "Of course you didn't,
+because I wouldn't let mamma tell you I was coming; for I wanted to
+surprise you, you know. And I think I have surprised you, haven't I? I
+never saw such a scared-looking creature in all my life. If I were a
+ghost coming here in the gloaming, you couldn't look more frightened
+than you did just now. I only came the day before yesterday--and I'm
+staying at Major Lawford's, twelve miles away from here--and this is
+Miss Lawford, who was at school with me at Bath. You've heard me talk
+of Belinda Lawford, my dearest, dearest friend? Miss Lawford, my
+brother; my brother, Miss Lawford. Are you going to open the gate and
+let us in, or do you mean to keep your citadel closed upon us
+altogether, Mr. Edward Arundel?"
+
+At this juncture the young lady in the background drew a little nearer
+to her friend, and murmured a remonstrance to the effect that it was
+very late, and that they were expected home before dark; but Miss
+Arundel refused to hear the voice of wisdom.
+
+"Why, we've only an hour's ride back," she cried; "and if it should be
+dark, which I don't think it will be, for it's scarcely dark all night
+through at this time of year, we've got Hoskins with us, and Hoskins
+will take care of us. Won't you, Hoskins?" demanded the young lady,
+turning to the elderly groom.
+
+Of course Hoskins declared that he was ready to achieve all that man
+could do or dare in the defence of his liege ladies, or something
+pretty nearly to that effect; but delivered in a vile Lincolnshire
+patois, not easily rendered in printer's ink.
+
+Miss Arundel waited for no further discussion, but gave her hand to her
+brother, and vaulted lightly from her saddle.
+
+Then, of course, Edward Arundel offered his services to his sister's
+companion, and then for the first time he looked in Belinda Lawford's
+face, and even in that one first glance saw that she was a good and
+beautiful creature, and that her hair, of which she had a great
+quantity, was of the colour of her horse's chestnut coat; that her eyes
+were the bluest he had ever seen, and that her cheeks were like the
+neglected roses in his garden. He held out his hand to her. She took it
+with a frank smile, and dismounted, and came in amongst the grass-grown
+pathways, amid the confusion of trailing branches and bright
+garden-flowers growing wild.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+In that moment began the second volume of Edward Arundel's life. The
+first volume had begun upon the Christmas night on which the boy of
+seventeen went to see the pantomime at Drury Lane Theatre. The old
+story had been a long, sad story, fall of tenderness and pathos, but
+with a cruel and dismal ending. The new story began to-night, in this
+fading western sunshine, in this atmosphere of balmy perfume, amidst
+these dew-laden garden-flowers growing wild.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+But, as I think I observed before at the outset of this story, we are
+rarely ourselves aware of the commencement of any new section in our
+lives. It is only after the fact that we recognise the awful importance
+which actions, in themselves most trivial, assume by reason of their
+consequences; and when the action, in itself so unimportant, in its
+consequences so fatal, has been in any way a deviation from the right,
+how bitterly we reproach ourselves for that false step!
+
+"I am so _glad_ to see you, Edward!" Miss Arundel exclaimed, as she
+looked about her, criticising her brother's domain; "but you don't seem
+a bit glad to see me, you poor gloomy old dear. And how much better you
+look than you did when you left Dangerfield! only a little careworn,
+you know, still. And to think of your coming and burying yourself here,
+away from all the people who love you, you silly old darling! And
+Belinda knows the story, and she's so sorry for you. Ain't you, Linda?
+I call her Linda for short, and because it's prettier than _Be_-linda,"
+added the young lady aside to her brother, and with a contemptuous
+emphasis upon the first syllable of her friend's name.
+
+Miss Lawford, thus abruptly appealed to, blushed, and said nothing.
+
+If Edward Arundel had been told that any other young lady was
+acquainted with the sad story of his married life, I think he would
+have been inclined to revolt against the very idea of her pity. But
+although he had only looked once at Belinda Lawford, that one look
+seemed to have told him a great deal. He felt instinctively that she
+was as good as she was beautiful, and that her pity must be a most
+genuine and tender emotion, not to be despised by the proudest man upon
+earth.
+
+The two ladies seated themselves upon a dilapidated rustic bench amid
+the long grass, and Mr. Arundel sat in the low basket-chair in which he
+was wont to lounge a great deal of his time away.
+
+"Why don't you have a gardener, Ned?" Letitia Arundel asked, after
+looking rather contemptuously at the flowery luxuriance around her.
+
+Her brother shrugged his shoulders with a despondent gesture.
+
+"Why should I take any care of the place?" he said. "I only took it
+because it was near the spot where--where my poor girl--where I wanted
+to be. I have no object in beautifying it. I wish to Heaven I could
+leave it, and go back to India."
+
+He turned his face eastward as he spoke, and the two girls saw that
+half-eager, half-despairing yearning that was always visible in his
+face when he looked to the east. It was over yonder, the scene of
+strife, the red field of glory, only separated from him by a patch of
+purple ocean and a strip of yellow sand. It was yonder. He could almost
+feel the hot blast of the burning air. He could almost hear the shouts
+of victory. And he was a prisoner here, bound by a sacred duty,--by a
+duty which he owed to the dead.
+
+"Major Lawford--Major Lawford is Belinda's papa; 33rd Foot--Major
+Lawford knew that we were coming here, and he begged me to ask you to
+dinner; but I said you wouldn't come, for I knew you had shut yourself
+out of all society--though the Major's the dearest creature, and the
+Grange is a most delightful place to stay at. I was down here in the
+midsummer holidays once, you know, while you were in India. But I give
+the message as the Major gave it to me; and you are to come to dinner
+whenever you like."
+
+Edward Arundel murmured a few polite words of refusal. No; he saw no
+society; he was in Lincolnshire to achieve a certain object; he should
+remain there no longer than was necessary in order for him to do so.
+
+"And you don't even say that you're glad to see me!" exclaimed Miss
+Arundel, with an offended air, "though it's six months since you were
+last at Dangerfield! Upon my word, you're a nice brother for an
+unfortunate girl to waste her affections upon!"
+
+Edward smiled faintly at his sister's complaint.
+
+"I am very glad to see you, Letitia," he said; "very, very glad."
+
+And indeed the young hermit could not but confess to himself that those
+two innocent young faces seemed to bring light and brightness with
+them, and to shed a certain transitory glimmer of sunshine upon the
+horrible gloom of his life. Mr. Morrison had come out to offer his duty
+to the young lady--whom he had been intimate with from a very early
+period of her existence, and had carried upon his shoulder some fifteen
+years before--under the pretence of bringing wine for the visitors; and
+the stable-lad had been sent to a distant corner of the garden to
+search for strawberries for their refreshment. Even the solitary
+maid-servant had crept into the parlour fronting the lawn, and had
+shrouded herself behind the window-curtains, whence she could peep out
+at the two Amazons, and gladden her eyes with the sight of something
+that was happy and beautiful.
+
+But the young ladies would not stop to drink any wine, though Mr.
+Morrison informed Letitia that the sherry was from the Dangerfield
+cellar, and had been sent to Master Edward by his ma; nor to eat any
+strawberries, though the stable-boy, who made the air odorous with the
+scent of hay and oats, brought a little heap of freshly-gathered fruit
+piled upon a cabbage-leaf, and surmounted by a rampant caterpillar of
+the woolly species. They could not stay any longer, they both declared,
+lest there should be terror at Lawford Grange because of their absence.
+So they went back to the gate, escorted by Edward and his confidential
+servant; and after Letitia had given her brother a kiss, which
+resounded almost like the report of a pistol through the still evening
+air, the two ladies mounted their horses, and cantered away in the
+twilight.
+
+"I shall come and see you again, Ned," Miss Arundel cried, as she shook
+the reins upon her horse's neck; "and so will Belinda--won't you,
+Belinda?"
+
+Miss Lawford's reply, if she spoke at all, was quite inaudible amidst
+the clattering of the horses' hoofs upon the hard highroad.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+ONE MORE SACRIFICE.
+
+
+Letitia Arundel kept her word, and came very often to Kemberling
+Retreat; sometimes on horseback, sometimes in a little pony-carriage;
+sometimes accompanied by Belinda Lawford, sometimes accompanied by a
+younger sister of Belinda's, as chestnut-haired and blue-eyed as
+Belinda herself, but at the school-room and bread-and-butter period of
+life, and not particularly interesting. Major Lawford came one day with
+his daughter and her friend, and Edward and the half-pay officer walked
+together up and down the grass-plat, smoking and talking of the Indian
+war, while the two girls roamed about the garden amidst the roses and
+butterflies, tearing the skirts of their riding-habits every now and
+then amongst the briers and gooseberry-bushes. It was scarcely strange
+after this visit that Edward Arundel should consent to accept Major
+Lawford's invitation to name a day for dining at the Grange; he could
+not, with a very good grace, have refused. And yet--and yet--it seemed
+to him almost a treason against his lost love, his poor pensive
+Mary,--whose face, with the very look it had worn upon that last day,
+was ever present with him,--to mix with happy people who had never
+known sorrow. But he went to the Grange nevertheless, and grew more and
+more friendly with the Major, and walked in the gardens--which were
+very large and old-fashioned, but most beautifully kept--with his
+sister and Belinda Lawford; with Belinda Lawford, who knew his story
+and was sorry for him. He always remembered _that_ as he looked at her
+bright face, whose varying expression gave perpetual evidence of a
+compassionate and sympathetic nature.
+
+"If my poor darling had had this girl for a friend," he thought
+sometimes, "how much happier she might have been!"
+
+I dare say there have been many lovelier women in this world than
+Belinda Lawford; many women whose faces, considered artistically, came
+nearer perfection; many noses more exquisitely chiselled, and scores of
+mouths bearing a closer affinity to Cupid's bow; but I doubt if any
+face was ever more pleasant to look upon than the face of this blooming
+English maiden. She had a beauty that is sometimes wanting in perfect
+faces, and, lacking which, the most splendid loveliness will pall at
+last upon eyes that have grown weary of admiring; she had a charm for
+want of which the most rigidly classical profiles, the most exquisitely
+statuesque faces, have seemed colder and harder than the marble it was
+their highest merit to resemble. She had the beauty of goodness, and to
+admire her was to do homage to the purest and brightest attributes of
+womanhood. It was not only that her pretty little nose was straight and
+well-shaped, that her lips were rosy red, that her eyes were bluer than
+the summer heavens, and her chestnut hair tinged with the golden light
+of a setting sun; above and beyond such commonplace beauties as these,
+the beauties of tenderness, truth, faith, earnestness, hope and
+charity, were enthroned upon her broad white brow, and crowned her
+queen by right divine of womanly perfection. A loving and devoted
+daughter, an affectionate sister, a true and faithful friend, an
+untiring benefactress to the poor, a gentle mistress, a well-bred
+Christian lady; in every duty and in every position she bore out and
+sustained the impression which her beauty made on the minds of those
+who looked upon her. She was only nineteen years of age, and no sorrow
+had ever altered the brightness of her nature. She lived a happy life
+with a father who was proud of her, and with a mother who resembled her
+in almost every attribute. She led a happy but a busy life, and did her
+duty to the poor about her as scrupulously as even Olivia had done in
+the old days at Swampington Rectory; but in such a genial and cheerful
+spirit as to win, not cold thankfulness, but heartfelt love and
+devotion from all who partook of her benefits.
+
+Upon the Egyptian darkness of Edward Arundel's life this girl arose as
+a star, and by-and-by all the horizon brightened under her influence.
+The soldier had been very little in the society of women. His mother,
+his sister Letitia, his cousin Olivia, and John Marchmont's gentle
+daughter were the only women whom he had ever known in the familiar
+freedom of domestic intercourse; and he trusted himself in the presence
+of this beautiful and noble-minded girl in utter ignorance of any
+danger to his own peace of mind. He suffered himself to be happy at
+Lawford Grange; and in those quiet hours which he spent there he put
+away his old life, and forgot the stern purpose that alone held him a
+prisoner in England.
+
+But when he went back to his lonely dwelling-place, he reproached
+himself bitterly for that which he considered a treason against his
+love.
+
+"What right have I to be happy amongst these people?" he thought; "what
+right have I to take life easily, even for an hour, while my darling
+lies in her unhallowed grave, and the man who drove her to her death
+remains unpunished? I will never go to Lawford Grange again."
+
+It seemed, however, as if everybody, except Belinda, was in a plot
+against this idle soldier; for sometimes Letitia coaxed him to ride
+back with her after one of her visits to Kemberling Retreat, and very
+often the Major himself insisted, in a hearty military fashion, upon
+the young man's taking the empty seat in his dog-cart, to be driven
+over to the Grange. Edward Arundel had never once mentioned Mary's name
+to any member of this hospitable and friendly family. They were very
+good to him, and were prepared, he knew, to sympathise with him; but he
+could not bring himself to talk of his lost wife. The thought of that
+rash and desperate act which had ended her short life was too cruel to
+him. He would not speak of her, because he would have had to plead
+excuses for that one guilty act; and her image to him was so stainless
+and pure, that he could not bear to plead for her as for a sinner who
+had need of men's pity, rather than a claim to their reverence.
+
+"Her life had been so sinless," he cried sometimes; "and to think that
+it should have ended in sin! If I could forgive Paul Marchmont for all
+the rest--if I could forgive him for my loss of her, I would never
+forgive him for that."
+
+The young widower kept silence, therefore, upon the subject which
+occupied so large a share of his thoughts, which was every day and
+every night the theme of his most earnest prayers; and Mary's name was
+never spoken in his presence at Lawford Grange.
+
+But in Edward Arundel's absence the two girls sometimes talked of the
+sad story.
+
+"Do you really think, Letitia, that your brother's wife committed
+suicide?" Belinda asked her friend.
+
+"Oh, as for that, there can't be any doubt about it, dear," answered
+Miss Arundel, who was of a lively, not to say a flippant, disposition,
+and had no very great reverence for solemn things; "the poor dear
+creature drowned herself. I think she must have been a little wrong in
+her head. I don't say so to Edward, you know; at least, I did say so
+once when he was at Dangerfield, and he flew into an awful passion, and
+called me hard-hearted and cruel, and all sorts of shocking things; so,
+of course, I have never said so since. But really, the poor dear
+thing's goings-on were so eccentric: first she ran away from her
+stepmother and went and hid herself in a horrid lodging; and then she
+married Edward at a nasty church in Lambeth, without so much as a
+wedding-dress, or a creature to give her away, or a cake, or cards, or
+anything Christian-like; and then she ran away again; and as her father
+had been a super--what's its name?--a man who carries banners in
+pantomimes, and all that--I dare say she'd seen Mr. Macready as Hamlet,
+and had Ophelia's death in her head when she ran down to the river-side
+and drowned herself. I'm sure it's a very sad story; and, of course,
+I'm awfully sorry for Edward."
+
+The young lady said no more than this; but Belinda brooded over the
+story of that early marriage,--the stolen honeymoon, the sudden
+parting. How dearly they must have loved each other, the young bride
+and bridegroom, absorbed in their own happiness, and forgetful of all
+the outer world! She pictured Edward Arundel's face as it must have
+been before care and sorrow had blotted out the brightest attribute of
+his beauty. She thought of him, and pitied him, with such tender
+sympathy, that by-and-by the thought of this young man's sorrow seemed
+to shut almost every idea out of her mind. She went about all her
+duties still, cheerfully and pleasantly, as it was her nature to do
+everything; but the zest with which she had performed every loving
+office--every act of sweet benevolence, seemed lost to her now.
+
+Remember that she was a simple country damsel, leading a quiet life,
+whose peaceful course was almost as calm and eventless as the existence
+of a cloister; a life so quiet that a decently-written romance from the
+Swampington book-club was a thing to be looked forward to with
+impatience, to read with breathless excitement, and to brood upon
+afterwards for months. Was it strange, then, that this romance in real
+life--this sweet story of love and devotion, with its sad climax,--this
+story, the scene of which lay within a few miles of her home, the hero
+of which was her father's constant guest,--was it strange that this
+story, whose saddest charm was its truth, should make a strong
+impression upon the mind of an innocent and unworldly woman, and that
+day by day and hour by hour she should, all unconsciously to herself,
+feel a stronger interest in the hero of the tale?
+
+She was interested in him. Alas! the truth must be set down, even if it
+has to be in the plain old commonplace words. _She fell in love with
+him_. But love in this innocent and womanly nature was so different a
+sentiment to that which had raged in Olivia's stormy breast, that even
+she who felt it was unconscious of its gradual birth. It was not "an
+Adam at its birth," by-the-by. It did not leap, Minerva-like, from the
+brain; for I believe that love is born of the brain oftener than of the
+heart, being a strange compound of ideality, benevolence, and
+veneration. It came rather like the gradual dawning of a summer's
+day,--first a little patch of light far away in the east, very faint
+and feeble; then a slow widening of the rosy brightness; and at last a
+great blaze of splendour over all the width of the vast heavens. And
+then Miss Lawford grew more reserved in her intercourse with her
+friend's brother. Her frank good-nature gave place to a timid,
+shrinking bashfulness, that made her ten times more fascinating than
+she had been before. She was so very young, and had mixed so little
+with the world, that she had yet to learn the comedy of life. She had
+yet to learn to smile when she was sorry, or to look sorrowful when she
+was pleased, as prudence might dictate--to blush at will, or to grow
+pale when it was politic to sport the lily tint. She was a natural,
+artless, spontaneous creature; and she was utterly powerless to conceal
+her emotions, or to pretend a sentiment she did not feel. She blushed
+rosy red when Edward Arundel spoke to her suddenly. She betrayed
+herself by a hundred signs; mutely confessing her love almost as
+artlessly as Mary had revealed her affection a twelvemonth before. But
+if Edward saw this, he gave no sign of having made the discovery. His
+voice, perhaps, grew a little lower and softer in its tone when he
+spoke to Belinda; but there was a sad cadence in that low voice, which
+was too mournful for the accent of a lover. Sometimes, when his eyes
+rested for a moment on the girl's blushing face, a shadow would darken
+his own, and a faint quiver of emotion stir his lower lip; but it is
+impossible to say what this emotion may have been. Belinda hoped
+nothing, expected nothing. I repeat, that she was unconscious of the
+nature of her own feeling; and she had never for a moment thought of
+Edward otherwise than as a man who would go to his grave faithful to
+that sad love-story which had blighted the promise of his youth. She
+never thought of him otherwise than as Mary's constant mourner; she
+never hoped that time would alter his feelings or wear out his
+constancy; yet she loved him, notwithstanding.
+
+All through July and August the young man visited at the Grange, and at
+the beginning of September Letitia Arundel went back to Dangerfield.
+But even then Edward was still a frequent guest at Major Lawford's; for
+his enthusiasm upon all military matters had made him a favourite with
+the old officer. But towards the end of September Mr. Arundel's visits
+suddenly were restricted to an occasional call upon the Major; he left
+off dining at the Grange; his evening rambles in the gardens with Mrs.
+Lawford and her blooming daughters--Belinda had no less than four
+blue-eyed sisters, all more or less resembling herself--ceased
+altogether, to the wonderment of every one in the old-fashioned
+country-house.
+
+Edward Arundel shut out the new light which had dawned upon his life,
+and withdrew into the darkness. He went back to the stagnant monotony,
+the hopeless despondency, the bitter regret of his old existence.
+
+"While my sister was at the Grange, I had an excuse for going there,"
+he said to himself sternly. "I have no excuse now."
+
+But the old monotonous life was somehow or other a great deal more
+difficult to bear than it had been before. Nothing seemed to interest
+the young man now. Even the records of Indian victories were "flat,
+stale, and unprofitable." He wondered as he remembered with what eager
+impatience he had once pined for the coming of the newspapers, with
+what frantic haste he had devoured every syllable of the Indian news.
+All his old feelings seemed to have gone away, leaving nothing in his
+mind but a blank waste, a weary sickness of life and all belonging to
+it. Leaving nothing else--positively nothing? "No!" he answered, in
+reply to these mute questionings of his own spirit,--"no," he repeated
+doggedly, "nothing."
+
+It was strange to find what a blank was left in his life by reason of
+his abandonment of the Grange. It seemed as if he had suddenly retired
+from an existence full of pleasure and delight into the gloomy solitude
+of La Trappe. And yet what was it that he had lost, after all? A quiet
+dinner at a country-house, and an evening spent half in the leafy
+silence of an old-fashioned garden, half in a pleasant drawing-room
+amongst a group of well-bred girls, and only enlivened by simple
+English ballads, or pensive melodies by Mendelssohn. It was not much to
+forego, surely. And yet Edward Arundel felt, in sacrificing these new
+acquaintances at the Grange to the stern purpose of his life, almost as
+if he had resigned a second captaincy for Mary's sake.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THE CHILD'S VOICE IN THE PAVILION BY THE WATER.
+
+
+The year wore slowly on. Letitia Arundel wrote very long letters to her
+friend and confidante, Belinda Lawford, and in each letter demanded
+particular intelligence of her brother's doings. Had he been to the
+Grange? how had he looked? what had he talked about? &c., &c. But to
+these questions Miss Lawford could only return one monotonous reply:
+Mr. Arundel had not been to the Grange; or Mr. Arundel had called on
+papa one morning, but had only stayed a quarter of an hour, and had not
+been seen by any female member of the family.
+
+The year wore slowly on. Edward endured his self-appointed solitude,
+and waited, waited, with a vengeful hatred for ever brooding in his
+breast, for the day of retribution. The year wore on, and the
+anniversary of the day upon which Mary ran away from the Towers, the
+17th of October, came at last.
+
+Paul Marchmont had declared his intention of taking possession of the
+Towers upon the day following this. The twelvemonth's probation which
+he had imposed upon himself had expired; every voice was loud in praise
+of his conscientious and honourable conduct. He had grown very popular
+during his residence at Kemberling. Tenant farmers looked forward to
+halcyon days under his dominion; to leases renewed on favourable terms;
+to repairs liberally executed; to everything that is delightful between
+landlord and tenant. Edward Arundel heard all this through his faithful
+servitor, Mr. Morrison, and chafed bitterly at the news. This traitor
+was to be happy and prosperous, and to have the good word of honest
+men; while Mary lay in her unhallowed grave, and people shrugged their
+shoulders, half compassionately, half contemptuously, as they spoke of
+the mad heiress who had committed suicide.
+
+Mr. Morrison brought his master tidings of all Paul Marchmont's doings
+about this time. He was to take possession of the Towers on the 19th.
+He had already made several alterations in the arrangement of the
+different rooms. He had ordered new furniture from
+Swampington,--another man would have ordered it from London; but Mr.
+Marchmont was bent upon being popular, and did not despise even the
+good opinion of a local tradesman,--and by several other acts,
+insignificant enough in themselves, had asserted his ownership of the
+mansion which had been the airy castle of Mary Marchmont's day-dreams
+ten years before.
+
+The coming-in of the new master of Marchmont Towers was to be, take it
+altogether, a very grand affair. The Chorley-Castle foxhounds were to
+meet at eleven o'clock, upon the great grass-flat, or lawn, as it was
+popularly called, before the western front. The county gentry from far
+and near had been invited to a hunting breakfast. Open house was to be
+kept all day for rich and poor. Every male inhabitant of the district
+who could muster anything in the way of a mount was likely to join the
+friendly gathering. Poor Reynard is decidedly England's most powerful
+leveller. All differences of rank and station, all distinctions which
+Mammon raises in every other quarter, melt away before the friendly
+contact of the hunting-field. The man who rides best is the best man;
+and the young butcher who makes light of sunk fences, and skims,
+bird-like, over bullfinches and timber, may hold his own with the dandy
+heir to half the country-side. The cook at Marchmont Towers had enough
+to do to prepare for this great day. It was the first meet of the
+season, and in itself a solemn festival. Paul Marchmont knew this; and
+though the Cockney artist of Fitzroy Square knew about as much of
+fox-hunting as he did of the source of the Nile, he seized upon the
+opportunity of making himself popular, and determined to give such a
+hunting-breakfast as had never been given within the walls of Marchmont
+Towers since the time of a certain rackety Hugh Marchmont, who had
+drunk himself to death early in the reign of George III. He spent the
+morning of the 17th in the steward's room, looking through the
+cellar-book with the old butler, selecting the wines that were to be
+drunk the following day, and planning the arrangements for the mass of
+visitors, who were to be entertained in the great stone entrance-hall,
+in the kitchens, in the housekeeper's room, in the servants' hall, in
+almost every chamber that afforded accommodation for a guest.
+
+"You will take care that people get placed according to their rank,"
+Paul said to the grey-haired servant. "You know everybody about here, I
+dare say, and will be able to manage so that we may give no offence."
+
+The gentry were to breakfast in the long dining-room and in the western
+drawing-room. Sparkling hocks and Burgundies, fragrant Moselles,
+champagnes of choicest brand and rarest bouquet, were to flow like
+water for the benefit of the country gentlemen who should come to do
+honour to Paul Marchmont's installation. Great cases of comestibles had
+been sent by rail from Fortnum and Mason's; and the science of the cook
+at the Towers had been taxed to the utmost, in the struggles which she
+made to prove herself equal to the occasion. Twenty-one casks of ale,
+every cask containing twenty-one gallons, had been brewed long ago, at
+the birth of Arthur Marchmont, and had been laid in the cellar ever
+since, waiting for the majority of the young heir who was never to come
+of age. This very ale, with a certain sense of triumph, Paul Marchmont
+ordered to be brought forth for the refreshment of the commoners.
+
+"Poor young Arthur!" he thought, after he had given this order. "I saw
+him once when he was a pretty boy with fair ringlets, dressed in a suit
+of black velvet. His father brought him to my studio one day, when he
+came to patronise me and buy a picture of me,--out of sheer charity, of
+course, for he cared as much for pictures as I care for foxhounds. _I_
+was a poor relation then, and never thought to see the inside of
+Marchmont Towers. It was a lucky September morning that swept that
+bright-faced boy out of my pathway, and left only sickly John Marchmont
+and his daughter between me and fortune."
+
+Yes; Mr. Paul Marchmont's year of probation was past. He had asserted
+himself to Messrs. Paulette, Paulette, and Mathewson, and before the
+face of all Lincolnshire, in the character of an honourable and
+high-minded man; slow to seize upon the fortune that had fallen to him,
+conscientious, punctilious, generous, and unselfish. He had done all
+this; and now the trial was over, and the day of triumph had come.
+
+There has been a race of villains of late years very popular with the
+novel-writer and the dramatist, but not, I think, quite indigenous to
+this honest British soil; a race of pale-faced, dark-eyed, and
+all-accomplished scoundrels, whose chiefest attribute is
+imperturbability. The imperturbable villain has been guilty of every
+iniquity in the black catalogue of crimes; but he has never been guilty
+of an emotion. He wins a million of money at _trente et quarante_, to
+the terror and astonishment of all Homburg; and by not so much as one
+twinkle of his eye or one quiver of his lip does that imperturbable
+creature betray a sentiment of satisfaction. Ruin or glory, shame or
+triumph, defeat, disgrace, or death,--all are alike to the callous
+ruffian of the Anglo-Gallic novel. He smiles, and murders while he
+smiles, and smiles while he murders. He kills his adversary, unfairly,
+in a duel, and wipes his sword on a cambric handkerchief; and withal he
+is so elegant, so fascinating, and so handsome, that the young hero of
+the novel has a very poor chance against him; and the reader can
+scarcely help being sorry when retribution comes with the last chapter,
+and some crushing catastrophe annihilates the well-bred scoundrel.
+
+Paul Marchmont was not this sort of man. He was a hypocrite when it was
+essential to his own safety to practice hypocrisy; but he did not
+accept life as a drama, in which he was for ever to be acting a part.
+Life would scarcely be worth the having to any man upon such terms. It
+is all very well to wear heavy plate armour, and a casque that weighs
+fourteen pounds or so, when we go into the thick of the fight. But to
+wear the armour always, to live in it, to sleep in it, to carry the
+ponderous protection about us for ever and ever! Safety would be too
+dear if purchased by such a sacrifice of all personal ease. Paul
+Marchmont, therefore, being a selfish and self-indulgent man, only wore
+his armour of hypocrisy occasionally, and when it was vitally necessary
+for his preservation. He had imposed upon himself a penance, and acted
+a part in holding back for a year from the enjoyment of a splendid
+fortune; and he had made this one great sacrifice in order to give the
+lie to Edward Arundel's vague accusations, which might have had an
+awkward effect upon the minds of other people, had the artist grasped
+too eagerly at his missing cousin's wealth. Paul Marchmont had made
+this sacrifice; but he did not intend to act a part all his life. He
+meant to enjoy himself, and to get the fullest possible benefit out of
+his good fortune. He meant to do this; and upon the 17th of October he
+made no effort to restrain his spirits, but laughed and talked joyously
+with whoever came in his way, winning golden opinions from all sorts of
+men; for happiness is contagious, and everybody likes happy people.
+
+Forty years of poverty is a long apprenticeship to the very hardest of
+masters,--an apprenticeship calculated to give the keenest possible
+zest to newly-acquired wealth. Paul Marchmont rejoiced in his wealth
+with an almost delirious sense of delight. It was his at last. At last!
+He had waited, and waited patiently; and at last, while his powers of
+enjoyment were still in their zenith, it had come. How often he had
+dreamed of this; how often he had dreamed of that which was to take
+place to-morrow! How often in his dreams he had seen the stone-built
+mansion, and heard the voices of the crowd doing him honour. He had
+felt all the pride and delight of possession, to awake suddenly in the
+midst of his triumph, and gnash his teeth at the remembrance of his
+poverty. And now the poverty was a thing to be dreamt about, and the
+wealth was his. He had always been a good son and a kind brother; and
+his mother and sister were to arrive upon the eve of his installation,
+and were to witness his triumph. The rooms that had been altered were
+those chosen by Paul for his mother and maiden sister, and the new
+furniture had been ordered for their comfort. It was one of his many
+pleasures upon this day to inspect these apartments, to see that all
+his directions had been faithfully carried out, and to speculate upon
+the effect which these spacious and luxurious chambers would have upon
+the minds of Mrs. Marchmont and her daughter, newly come from shabby
+lodgings in Charlotte Street.
+
+"My poor mother!" thought the artist, as he looked round the pretty
+sitting-room. This sitting-room opened into a noble bedchamber, beyond
+which there was a dressing-room. "My poor mother!" he thought; "she has
+suffered a long time, and she has been patient. She has never ceased to
+believe in me; and she will see now that there was some reason for that
+belief. I told her long ago, when our fortunes were at the lowest ebb,
+when I was painting landscapes for the furniture-brokers at a pound
+a-piece,--I told her I was meant for something better than a
+tradesman's hack; and I have proved it--I have proved it."
+
+He walked about the room, arranging the furniture with his own hands;
+walking a few paces backwards now and then to contemplate such and such
+an effect from an artistic point of view; flinging the rich stuff of
+the curtains into graceful folds; admiring and examining everything,
+always with a smile on his face. He seemed thoroughly happy. If he had
+done any wrong; if by any act of treachery he had hastened Mary
+Arundel's death, no recollection of that foul work arose in his breast
+to disturb the pleasant current of his thoughts. Selfish and
+self-indulgent, only attached to those who were necessary to his own
+happiness, his thoughts rarely wandered beyond the narrow circle of his
+own cares or his own pleasures. He was thoroughly selfish. He could
+have sat at a Lord Mayor's feast with a famine-stricken population
+clamouring at the door of the banquet-chamber. He believed in himself
+as his mother and sister had believed; and he considered that he had a
+right to be happy and prosperous, whosoever suffered sorrow or
+adversity.
+
+Upon this 17th of October Olivia Marchmont sat in the little study
+looking out upon the quadrangle, while the household was busied with
+the preparations for the festival of the following day. She was to
+remain at Marchmont Towers as a guest of the new master of the mansion.
+She would be protected from all scandal, Paul had said, by the presence
+of his mother and sister. She could retain the apartments she had been
+accustomed to occupy; she could pursue her old mode of life. He himself
+was not likely to be very much at the Towers. He was going to travel
+and to enjoy life now that he was a rich man.
+
+These were the arguments which Mr. Marchmont used when openly
+discussing the widow's residence in his house. But in a private
+conversation between Olivia and himself he had only said a very few
+words upon the subject.
+
+"You _must_ remain," he said; and Olivia submitted, obeying him with a
+sullen indifference that was almost like the mechanical submission of
+an irresponsible being.
+
+John Marchmont's widow seemed entirely under the dominion of the new
+master of the Towers. It was as if the stormy passions which had arisen
+out of a slighted love had worn out this woman's mind, and had left her
+helpless to stand against the force of Paul Marchmont's keen and
+vigorous intellect. A remarkable change had come over Olivia's
+character. A dull apathy had succeeded that fiery energy of soul which
+had enfeebled and well-nigh worn out her body. There were no outbursts
+of passion now. She bore the miserable monotony of her life
+uncomplainingly. Day after day, week after week, month after month,
+idle and apathetic, she sat in her lonely room, or wandered slowly in
+the grounds about the Towers. She very rarely went beyond those
+grounds. She was seldom seen now in her old pew at Kemberling Church;
+and when her father went to her and remonstrated with her for her
+non-attendance, she told him sullenly that she was too ill to go. She
+_was_ ill. George Weston attended her constantly; but he found it very
+difficult to administer to such a sickness as hers, and he could only
+shake his head despondently when he felt her feeble pulse, or listened
+to the slow beating of her heart. Sometimes she would shut herself up
+in her room for a month at a time, and see no one but her faithful
+servant Barbara, and Mr. Weston--whom, in her utter indifference, she
+seemed to regard as a kind of domestic animal, whose going or coming
+were alike unimportant.
+
+This stolid, silent Barbara waited upon her mistress with untiring
+patience. She bore with every change of Olivia's gloomy temper; she was
+a perpetual shield and protection to her. Even upon this day of
+preparation and disorder Mrs. Simmons kept guard over the passage
+leading to the study, and took care that no one intruded upon her
+mistress. At about four o'clock all Paul Marchmont's orders had been
+given, and the new master of the house dined for the first time by
+himself at the head of the long carved-oak dining-table, waited upon in
+solemn state by the old butler. His mother and sister were to arrive by
+a train that would reach Swampington at ten o'clock, and one of the
+carriages from the Towers was to meet them at the station. The artist
+had leisure in the meantime for any other business he might have to
+transact.
+
+He ate his dinner slowly, thinking deeply all the time. He did not stop
+to drink any wine after dinner; but, as soon as the cloth was removed,
+rose from the table, and went straight to Olivia's room.
+
+"I am going down to the painting-room," he said. "Will you come there
+presently? I want very much to say a few words to you."
+
+Olivia was sitting near the window, with her hands lying idle in her
+lap. She rarely opened a book now, rarely wrote a letter, or occupied
+herself in any manner. She scarcely raised her eyes as she answered
+him.
+
+"Yes," she said; "I will come."
+
+"Don't be long, then. It will be dark very soon. I am not going down
+there to paint; I am going to fetch a landscape that I want to hang in
+my mother's room, and to say a few words about--"
+
+He closed the door without stopping to finish the sentence, and went
+out into the quadrangle.
+
+Ten minutes afterwards Olivia Marchmont rose, and taking a heavy
+woollen shawl from a chair near her, wrapped it loosely about her head
+and shoulders.
+
+"I am his slave and his prisoner," she muttered to herself. "I must do
+as he bids me."
+
+A cold wind was blowing in the quadrangle, and the stone pavement was
+wet with a drizzling rain. The sun had just gone down, and the dull
+autumn sky was darkening. The fallen leaves in the wood were sodden
+with damp, and rotted slowly on the swampy ground.
+
+Olivia took her way mechanically along the narrow pathway leading to
+the river. Half-way between Marchmont Towers and the boat-house she
+came suddenly upon the figure of a man walking towards her through the
+dusk. This man was Edward Arundel.
+
+The two cousins had not met since the March evening upon which Edward
+had gone to seek the widow in Paul Marchmont's painting-room. Olivia's
+pale face grew whiter as she recognised the soldier.
+
+"I was coming to the house to speak to you, Mrs. Marchmont," Edward
+said sternly. "I am lucky in meeting you here, for I don't want any one
+to overhear what I've got to say."
+
+He had turned in the direction in which Olivia had been walking; but
+she made a dead stop, and stood looking at him.
+
+"You were going to the boat-house," he said. "I will go there with
+you."
+
+She looked at him for a moment, as if doubtful what to do, and then
+said,
+
+"Very well. You can say what you have to say to me, and then leave me.
+There is no sympathy between us, there is no regard between us; we are
+only antagonists."
+
+"I hope not, Olivia. I hope there is some spark of regard still, in
+spite of all. I separate you in my own mind from Paul Marchmont. I pity
+you; for I believe you to be his tool."
+
+"Is this what you have to say to me?"
+
+"No; I came here, as your kinsman, to ask you what you mean to do now
+that Paul Marchmont has taken possession of the Towers?"
+
+"I mean to stay there."
+
+"In spite of the gossip that your remaining will give rise to amongst
+these country-people!"
+
+"In spite of everything. Mr. Marchmont wishes me to stay. It suits me
+to stay. What does it matter what people say of me? What do I care for
+any one's opinion--now?"
+
+"Olivia," cried the young man, "are you mad?"
+
+"Perhaps I am," she answered, coldly.
+
+"Why is it that you shut yourself from the sympathy of those who have a
+right to care for you? What is the mystery of your life?"
+
+His cousin laughed bitterly.
+
+"Would you like to know, Edward Arundel?" she said. "You _shall_ know,
+perhaps, some day. You have despised me all my life; you will despise
+me more then."
+
+They had reached Paul Marchmont's painting-room by this time. Olivia
+opened the door and walked in, followed by Edward. Paul was not there.
+There was a picture covered with green-baize upon the easel, and the
+artist's hat stood upon the table amidst the litter of brushes and
+palettes; but the room was empty. The door at the top of the stone
+steps leading to the pavilion was ajar.
+
+"Have you anything more to say to me?" Olivia asked, turning upon her
+cousin as if she would have demanded why he had followed her.
+
+"Only this: I want to know your determination; whether you will be
+advised by me--and by your father,--I saw my uncle Hubert this morning,
+and his opinion exactly coincides with mine,--or whether you mean
+obstinately to take your own course in defiance of everybody?"
+
+"I do," Olivia answered. "I shall take my own course. I defy everybody.
+I have not been gifted with the power of winning people's affection.
+Other women possess that power, and trifle with it, and turn it to bad
+account. I have prayed, Edward Arundel,--yes, I have prayed upon my
+knees to the God who made me, that He would give me some poor measure
+of that gift which Nature has lavished upon other women; but He would
+not hear me, He would not hear me! I was not made to be loved. Why,
+then, should I make myself a slave for the sake of winning people's
+esteem? If they have despised me, I can despise them."
+
+"Who has despised you, Olivia?" Edward asked, perplexed by his cousin's
+manner.
+
+"YOU HAVE!" she cried, with flashing eyes; "you have! From first to
+last--from first to last!" She turned away from him impatiently. "Go,"
+she said; "why should we keep up a mockery of friendliness and
+cousinship? We are nothing to each other."
+
+Edward walked towards the door; but he paused upon the threshold, with
+his hat in his hand, undecided as to what he ought to do.
+
+As he stood thus, perplexed and irresolute, a cry, the feeble cry of a
+child, sounded within the pavilion.
+
+The young man started, and looked at his cousin. Even in the dusk he
+could see that her face had suddenly grown livid.
+
+"There is a child in that place," he said pointing to the door at the
+top of the steps.
+
+The cry was repeated as he spoke,--the low, complaining wail of a
+child. There was no other voice to be heard,--no mother's voice
+soothing a helpless little one. The cry of the child was followed by a
+dead silence.
+
+"There is a child in that pavilion," Edward Arundel repeated.
+
+"There is," Olivia answered.
+
+"Whose child?"
+
+"What does it matter to you?"
+
+"Whose child?"
+
+"I cannot tell you, Edward Arundel."
+
+The soldier strode towards the steps, but before he could reach them,
+Olivia flung herself across his pathway.
+
+"I will see whose child is hidden in that place," he said. "Scandalous
+things have been said of you, Olivia. I will know the reason of your
+visits to this place."
+
+She clung about his knees, and hindered him from moving; half kneeling,
+half crouching on the lowest of the stone steps, she blocked his
+pathway, and prevented him from reaching the door of the pavilion. It
+had been ajar a few minutes ago; it was shut now. But Edward had not
+noticed this.
+
+"No, no, no!" shrieked Olivia; "you shall trample me to death before
+you enter that place. You shall walk over my corpse before you cross
+that threshold."
+
+The young man struggled with her for a few moments; then he suddenly
+flung her from him; not violently, but with a contemptuous gesture.
+
+"You are a wicked woman, Olivia Marchmont," he said; "and it matters
+very little to me what you do, or what becomes of you. I know now the
+secret of the mystery between you and Paul Marchmont. I can guess your
+motive for perpetually haunting this place."
+
+He left the solitary building by the river, and walked slowly back
+through the wood.
+
+His mind--predisposed to think ill of Olivia by the dark rumours he had
+heard through his servant, and which had had a certain amount of
+influence upon him, as all scandals have, however baseless--could
+imagine only one solution to the mystery of a child's presence in the
+lonely building by the river. Outraged and indignant at the discovery
+he had made, he turned his back upon Marchmont Towers.
+
+"I will stay in this hateful place no longer," he thought, as he went
+back to his solitary home; "but before I leave Lincolnshire the whole
+county shall know what I think of Paul Marchmont."
+
+
+
+
+VOLUME III.
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+CAPTAIN ARUNDEL'S REVENGE.
+
+
+Edward Arundel went back to his lonely home with a settled purpose in
+his mind. He would leave Lincolnshire,--and immediately. He had no
+motive for remaining. It may be, indeed, that he had a strong motive
+for going away from the neighbourhood of Lawford Grange. There was a
+lurking danger in the close vicinage of that pleasant, old-fashioned
+country mansion, and the bright band of blue-eyed damsels who inhabited
+there.
+
+"I will turn my back upon Lincolnshire for ever," Edward Arundel said
+to himself once more, upon his way homeward through the October
+twilight; "but before I go, the whole country shall know what I think
+of Paul Marchmont."
+
+He clenched his fists and ground his teeth involuntarily as he thought
+this.
+
+It was quite dark when he let himself in at the old-fashioned
+half-glass door that led into his humble sitting-room at Kemberling
+Retreat. He looked round the little chamber, which had been furnished
+forty years before by the proprietor of the cottage, and had served for
+one tenant after another, until it seemed as if the spindle-legged
+chairs and tables had grown attenuated and shadowy by much service. He
+looked at the simple room, lighted by a bright fire and a pair of
+wax-candles in antique silver candlesticks. The red firelight flickered
+and trembled upon the painted roses on the walls, on the obsolete
+engravings in clumsy frames of imitation-ebony and tarnished gilt. A
+silver tea-service and a Sevres china cup and saucer, which Mrs.
+Arundel had sent to the cottage for her son's use, stood upon the small
+oval table: and a brown setter, a favourite of the young man's, lay
+upon the hearth-rug, with his chin upon his outstretched paws, blinking
+at the blaze.
+
+As Mr. Arundel lingered in the doorway, looking at these things, an
+image rose before him, as vivid and distinct as any apparition of
+Professor Pepper's manufacture; and he thought of what that commonplace
+cottage-chamber might have been if his young wife had lived. He could
+fancy her bending over the low silver teapot,--the sprawling inartistic
+teapot, that stood upon quaint knobs like gouty feet, and had been long
+ago banished from the Dangerfield breakfast-table as utterly rococo and
+ridiculous. He conjured up the dear dead face, with faint blushes
+flickering amidst its lily pallor, and soft hazel eyes looking up at
+him through the misty steam of the tea-table, innocent and virginal as
+the eyes of that mythic nymph who was wont to appear to the old Roman
+king. How happy she would have been! How willing to give up fortune and
+station, and to have lived for ever and ever in that queer old cottage,
+ministering to him and loving him!
+
+Presently the face changed. The hazel-brown hair was suddenly lit up
+with a glitter of barbaric gold; the hazel eyes grew blue and bright;
+and the cheeks blushed rosy red. The young man frowned at this new and
+brighter vision; but he contemplated it gravely for some moments, and
+then breathed a long sigh, which was somehow or other expressive of
+relief.
+
+"No," he said to himself, "I am _not_ false to my poor lost girl; I do
+_not_ forget her. Her image is dearer to me than any living creature.
+The mournful shadow of her face is more precious to me than the
+brightest reality."
+
+He sat down in one of the spindle-legged arm-chairs, and poured out a
+cup of tea. He drank it slowly, brooding over the fire as he sipped the
+innocuous beverage, and did not deign to notice the caresses of the
+brown setter, who laid his cold wet nose in his master's hand, and
+performed a species of spirit-rapping upon the carpet with his tail.
+
+After tea the young man rang the bell, which was answered by Mr.
+Morrison.
+
+"Have I any clothes that I can hunt in, Morrison?" Mr. Arundel asked.
+
+His factotum stared aghast at this question.
+
+"You ain't a-goin' to 'unt, are you, Mr. Edward?" he inquired,
+anxiously.
+
+"Never mind that. I asked you a question about my clothes, and I want a
+straightforward answer."
+
+"But, Mr. Edward," remonstrated the old servant, "I don't mean no
+offence; and the 'orses is very tidy animals in their way; but if
+you're thinkin' of goin' across country,--and a pretty stiffish country
+too, as I've heard, in the way of bulfinches and timber,--neither of
+them 'orses has any more of a 'unter in him than I have."
+
+"I know that as well as you do," Edward Arundel answered coolly; "but I
+am going to the meet at Marchmont Towers to-morrow morning, and I want
+you to look me out a decent suit of clothes--that's all. You can have
+Desperado saddled ready for me a little after eleven o'clock."
+
+Mr. Morrison looked even more astonished than before. He knew his
+master's savage enmity towards Paul Marchmont; and yet that very master
+now deliberately talked of joining in an assembly which was to gather
+together for the special purpose of doing the same Paul Marchmont
+honour. However, as he afterwards remarked to the two fellow-servants
+with whom he sometimes condescended to be familiar, it wasn't his place
+to interfere or to ask any questions, and he had held his tongue
+accordingly.
+
+Perhaps this respectful reticence was rather the result of prudence
+than of inclination; for there was a dangerous light in Edward
+Arundel's eyes upon this particular evening which Mr. Morrison never
+had observed before.
+
+The factotum said something about this later in the evening.
+
+"I do really think," he remarked, "that, what with that young 'ooman's
+death, and the solitood of this most dismal place, and the rainy
+weather,--which those as says it always rains in Lincolnshire ain't far
+out,--my poor young master is not the man he were."
+
+He tapped his forehead ominously to give significance to his words, and
+sighed heavily over his supper-beer.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The sun shone upon Paul Marchmont on the morning of the 18th of
+October. The autumn sunshine streamed into his bedchamber, and awoke
+the new master of Marchmont Towers. He opened his eyes and looked about
+him. He raised himself amongst the down pillows, and contemplated the
+figures upon the tapestry in a drowsy reverie. He had been dreaming of
+his poverty, and had been disputing a poor-rate summons with an
+impertinent tax-collector in the dingy passage of the house in
+Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square. Ah! that horrible house had so long
+been the only scene of his life, that it had grown almost a part of his
+mind, and haunted him perpetually in his sleep, like a nightmare of
+brick and mortar, now that he was rich, and had done with it for ever.
+
+Mr. Marchmont gave a faint shudder, and shook off the influence of the
+bad dream. Then, propped up by the pillows, he amused himself by
+admiring his new bedchamber.
+
+It was a handsome room, certainly--the very room for an artist and a
+sybarite. Mr. Marchmont had not chosen it without due consideration. It
+was situated in an angle of the house; and though its chief windows
+looked westward, being immediately above those of the western
+drawing-room, there was another casement, a great oriel window, facing
+the east, and admitting all the grandeur of the morning sun through
+painted glass, on which the Marchmont escutcheon was represented in
+gorgeous hues of sapphire and ruby, emerald and topaz, amethyst and
+aqua-marine. Bright splashes of these colours flashed and sparkled on
+the polished oaken floor, and mixed themselves with the Oriental
+gaudiness of a Persian carpet, stretched beneath the low Arabian bed,
+which was hung with ruby-coloured draperies that trailed upon the
+ground. Paul Marchmont was fond of splendour, and meant to have as much
+of it as money could buy. There was a voluptuous pleasure in all this
+finery, which only a parvenu could feel; it was the sharpness of the
+contrast between the magnificence of the present and the shabby
+miseries of the past that gave a piquancy to the artist's enjoyment of
+his new habitation.
+
+All the furniture and draperies of the chamber had been made by Paul
+Marchmont's direction; but its chief beauty was the tapestry that
+covered the walls, which had been worked, two hundred and fifty years
+before, by a patient chatelaine of the House of Marchmont. This
+tapestry lined the room on every side. The low door had been cut in it;
+so that a stranger going into that apartment at night, a little under
+the influence of the Marchmont cellars, and unable to register the
+topography of the chamber upon the tablet of his memory, might have
+been sorely puzzled to find an exit the next morning. Most tapestried
+chambers have a certain dismal grimness about them, which is more
+pleasant to the sightseer than to the constant inhabitant; but in this
+tapestry the colours were almost as bright and glowing to-day as when
+the fingers that had handled the variegated worsteds were still warm
+and flexible. The subjects, too, were of a more pleasant order than
+usual. No mailed ruffians or drapery-clad barbarians menaced the
+unoffending sleeper with uplifted clubs, or horrible bolts, in the very
+act of being launched from ponderous crossbows; no wicked-looking
+Saracens, with ferocious eyes and copper-coloured visages, brandished
+murderous scimitars above their turbaned heads. No; here all was
+pastoral gaiety and peaceful delight. Maidens, with flowing kirtles and
+crisped yellow hair, danced before great wagons loaded with golden
+wheat. Youths, in red and purple jerkins, frisked as they played the
+pipe and tabor. The Flemish horses dragging the heavy wain were hung
+with bells and garlands as for a rustic festival, and tossed their
+untrimmed manes into the air, and frisked and gamboled with their
+awkward legs, in ponderous imitation of the youths and maidens. Afar
+off, in the distance, wonderful villages, very queer as to perspective,
+but all a-bloom with gaudy flowers and quaint roofs of bright-red
+tiles, stood boldly out against a bluer sky than the most enthusiastic
+pre-Raphaelite of to-day would care to send to the Academy in Trafalgar
+Square.
+
+Paul Marchmont smiled at the youths and maidens, the laden wagons, the
+revellers, and the impossible village. He was in a humour to be pleased
+with everything to-day. He looked at his dressing-table, which stood
+opposite to him, in the deep oriel window. His valet--he had a valet
+now--had opened the great inlaid dressing-case, and the silver-gilt
+fittings reflected the crimson hues of the velvet lining, as if the
+gold had been flecked with blood. Glittering bottles of diamond-cut
+glass, that presented a thousand facets to the morning light, stood
+like crystal obelisks amid the litter of carved-ivory brushes and
+Sevres boxes of pomatum; and one rare hothouse flower, white and
+fragile, peeped out of a slender crystal vase, against a background of
+dark shining leaves.
+
+"It's better than Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square," said Mr.
+Marchmont, throwing himself back amongst the pillows until such time as
+his valet should bring him a cup of strong tea to refresh and
+invigorate his nerves withal. "I remember the paper in my room: drab
+hexagons and yellow spots upon a brown ground. _So_ pretty! And then
+the dressing-table: deal, gracefully designed; with a shallow drawer,
+in which my razors used to rattle like castanets when I tried to pull
+it open; a most delicious table, exquisitely painted in stripes,
+olive-green upon stone colour, picked out with the favourite brown. Oh,
+it was a most delightful life; but it's over, thank Providence; it's
+over!"
+
+Mr. Paul Marchmont thanked Providence as devoutly as if he had been the
+most patient attendant upon the Divine pleasure, and had never for one
+moment dreamed of intruding his own impious handiwork amid the
+mysterious designs of Omnipotence.
+
+The sun shone upon the new master of Marchmont Towers. This bright
+October morning was not the very best for hunting purposes; for there
+was a fresh breeze blowing from the north, and a blue unclouded sky.
+But it was most delightful weather for the breakfast, and the
+assembling on the lawn, and all the pleasant preliminaries of the day's
+sport. Mr. Paul Marchmont, who was a thorough-bred Cockney, troubled
+himself very little about the hunt as he basked in that morning light.
+He only thought that the sun was shining upon him, and that he had come
+at last--no matter by what crooked ways--to the realisation of his
+great day-dream, and that he was to be happy and prosperous for the
+rest of his life.
+
+He drank his tea, and then got up and dressed himself. He wore the
+conventional "pink," the whitest buckskins, the most approved boots and
+tops; and he admired himself very much in the cheval glass when this
+toilet was complete. He had put on the dress for the gratification of
+his vanity, rather than from any serious intention of doing what he was
+about as incapable of doing, as he was of becoming a modern Rubens or a
+new Raphael. He would receive his friends in this costume, and ride to
+cover, and follow the hounds, perhaps,--a little way. At any rate, it
+was very delightful to him to play the country gentleman; and he had
+never felt so much a country gentleman as at this moment, when he
+contemplated himself from head to heel in his hunting costume.
+
+At ten o'clock the guests began to assemble; the meet was not to take
+place until twelve, so that there might be plenty of time for the
+breakfast.
+
+I don't think Paul Marchmont ever really knew what took place at that
+long table, at which he sat for the first time in the place of host and
+master. He was intoxicated from the first with the sense of triumph and
+delight in his new position; and he drank a great deal, for he drank
+unconsciously, emptying his glass every time it was filled, and never
+knowing who filled it, or what was put into it. By this means he took a
+very considerable quantity of various sparkling and effervescing wines;
+sometimes hock, sometimes Moselle, very often champagne, to say nothing
+of a steady undercurrent of unpronounceable German hocks and crusted
+Burgundies. But he was not drunk after the common fashion of mortals;
+he could not be upon this particular day. He was not stupid, or drowsy,
+or unsteady upon his legs; he was only preternaturally excited, looking
+at everything through a haze of dazzling light, as if all the gold of
+his newly-acquired fortune had been melted into the atmosphere.
+
+He knew that the breakfast was a great success; that the long table was
+spread with every delicious comestible that the science of a first-rate
+cook, to say nothing of Fortnum and Mason, could devise; that the
+profusion of splendid silver, the costly china, the hothouse flowers,
+and the sunshine, made a confused mass of restless glitter and glowing
+colour that dazzled his eyes as he looked at it. He knew that everybody
+courted and flattered him, and that he was almost stifled by the
+overpowering sense of his own grandeur. Perhaps he felt this most when
+a certain county magnate, a baronet, member of Parliament, and great
+landowner, rose,--primed with champagne, and rather thicker of
+utterance than a man should be who means to be in at the death,
+by-and-by,--and took the opportunity of--hum--expressing, in a few
+words,--haw--the very great pleasure which he--aw, yes--and he thought
+he might venture to remark,--aw--everybody about him--ha--felt on this
+most--arrah, arrah--interesting--er--occasion; and said a great deal
+more, which took a very long time to say, but the gist of which was,
+that all these country gentlemen were so enraptured by the new addition
+to their circle, and so altogether delighted with Mr. Paul Marchmont,
+that they really were at a loss to understand how it was they had ever
+managed to endure existence without him.
+
+And then there was a good deal of rather unnecessary but very
+enthusiastic thumping of the table, whereat the costly glass shivered,
+and the hothouse blossoms trembled, amidst the musical chinking of
+silver forks; while the foxhunters declared in chorus that the new
+owner of Marchmont Towers was a jolly good fellow, which--_i.e._, the
+fact of his jollity--nobody could deny.
+
+It was not a very fine demonstration, but it was a very hearty one.
+Moreover, these noisy foxhunters were all men of some standing in the
+county; and it is a proof of the artist's inherent snobbery that to him
+the husky voices of these half-drunken men were more delicious than the
+sweet soprano tones of an equal number of Pattis--penniless and obscure
+Pattis, that is to say--sounding his praises. He was lifted at last out
+of that poor artist-life, in which he had always been a groveller,--not
+so much for lack of talent as by reason of the smallness of his own
+soul,--into a new sphere, where everybody was rich and grand and
+prosperous, and where the pleasant pathways were upon the necks of
+prostrate slaves, in the shape of grooms and hirelings, respectful
+servants, and reverential tradespeople.
+
+Yes, Paul Marchmont was more drunken than any of his guests; but his
+drunkenness was of a different kind to theirs. It was not the wine, but
+his own grandeur that intoxicated and besotted him.
+
+These foxhunters might get the better of their drunkenness in half an
+hour or so; but his intoxication was likely to last for a very long
+time, unless he should receive some sudden shock, powerful enough to
+sober him.
+
+Meanwhile the hounds were yelping and baying upon the lawn, and the
+huntsmen and whippers-in were running backwards and forwards from the
+lawn to the servants' hall, devouring snacks of beef and ham,--a pound
+and a quarter or so at one sitting; or crunching the bones of a
+frivolous young chicken,--there were not half a dozen mouthfuls on such
+insignificant half-grown fowls; or excavating under the roof of a great
+game-pie; or drinking a quart or so of strong ale, or half a tumbler of
+raw brandy, _en passant_; and doing a great deal more in the same way,
+merely to beguile the time until the gentlefolks should appear upon the
+broad stone terrace.
+
+It was half-past twelve o'clock, and Mr. Marchmont's guests were still
+drinking and speechifying. They had been on the point of making a move
+ever so many times; but it had happened every time that some gentleman,
+who had been very quiet until that moment, suddenly got upon his legs,
+and began to make swallowing and gasping noises, and to wipe his lips
+with a napkin; whereby it was understood that he was going to propose
+somebody's health. This had considerably lengthened the entertainment,
+and it seemed rather likely that the ostensible business of the day
+would be forgotten altogether. But at half-past twelve, the county
+magnate, who had bidden Paul Marchmont a stately welcome to
+Lincolnshire, remembered that there were twenty couple of impatient
+hounds scratching up the turf in front of the long windows of the
+banquet-chamber, while as many eager young tenant-farmers, stalwart
+yeomen, well-to-do butchers, and a herd of tag-rag and bobtail, were
+pining for the sport to begin;--at last, I say, Sir Lionel Boport
+remembered this, and led the way to the terrace, leaving the renegades
+to repose on the comfortable sofas lurking here and there in the
+spacious rooms. Then the grim stone front of the house was suddenly
+lighted up into splendour. The long terrace was one blaze of "pink,"
+relieved here and there by patches of sober black and forester's green.
+Amongst all these stalwart, florid-visaged country gentlemen, Paul
+Marchmont, very elegant, very picturesque, but extremely
+unsportsmanlike, the hero of the hour, walked slowly down the broad
+stone steps amidst the vociferous cheering of the crowd, the snapping
+and yelping of impatient hounds, and the distant braying of a horn.
+
+It was the crowning moment of his life; the moment he had dreamed of
+again and again in the wretched days of poverty and obscurity. The
+scene was scarcely new to him,--he had acted it so often in his
+imagination; he had heard the shouts and seen the respectful crowd.
+There was a little difference in detail; that was all. There was no
+disappointment, no shortcoming in the realisation; as there so often is
+when our brightest dreams are fulfilled, and the one great good, the
+all-desired, is granted to us. No; the prize was his, and it was worth
+all that he had sacrificed to win it.
+
+He looked up, and saw his mother and his sisters in the great window
+over the porch. He could see the exultant pride in his mother's pale
+face; and the one redeeming sentiment of his nature, his love for the
+womankind who depended upon him, stirred faintly in his breast, amid
+the tumult of gratified ambition and selfish joy.
+
+This one drop of unselfish pleasure filled the cup to the brim. He took
+off his hat and waved it high up above his head in answer to the
+shouting of the crowd. He had stopped halfway down the flight of steps
+to bow his acknowledgment of the cheering. He waved his hat, and the
+huzzas grew still louder; and a band upon the other side of the lawn
+played that familiar and triumphant march which is supposed to apply to
+every living hero, from a Wellington just come home from Waterloo, to
+the winner of a boat-race, or a patent-starch proprietor newly elected
+by an admiring constituency.
+
+There was nothing wanting. I think that in that supreme moment Paul
+Marchmont quite forgot the tortuous and perilous ways by which he had
+reached this all-glorious goal. I don't suppose the young princes
+smothered in the Tower were ever more palpably present in Tyrant
+Richard's memory than when the murderous usurper grovelled in
+Bosworth's miry clay, and knew that the great game of life was lost. It
+was only when Henry the Eighth took away the Great Seal that Wolsey was
+able to see the foolishness of man's ambition. In that moment memory
+and conscience, never very wakeful in the breast of Paul Marchmont,
+were dead asleep, and only triumph and delight reigned in their stead.
+No; there was nothing wanting. This glory and grandeur paid him a
+thousandfold for his patience and self-abnegation during the past year.
+
+He turned half round to look up at those eager watchers at the window.
+
+Good God! It was his sister Lavinia's face he saw; no longer full of
+triumph and pleasure, but ghastly pale, and staring at someone or
+something horrible in the crowd. Paul Marchmont turned to look for this
+horrible something the sight of which had power to change his sister's
+face; and found himself confronted by a young man,--a young man whose
+eyes flamed like coals of fire, whose cheeks were as white as a sheet
+of paper, and whose firm lips were locked as tightly as if they had
+been chiseled out of a block of granite.
+
+This man was Edward Arundel,--the young widower, the handsome
+soldier,--whom everybody remembered as the husband of poor lost Mary
+Marchmont.
+
+He had sprung out from amidst the crowd only one moment before, and had
+dashed up the steps of the terrace before any one had time to think of
+hindering him or interfering with him. It seemed to Paul Marchmont as
+if his foe must have leaped out of the solid earth, so sudden and so
+unlooked-for was his coming. He stood upon the step immediately below
+the artist; but as the terrace-steps were shallow, and as he was taller
+by half a foot than Paul, the faces of the two men were level, and they
+confronted each other.
+
+The soldier held a heavy hunting-whip in his hand--no foppish toy, with
+a golden trinket for its head, but a stout handle of stag-horn, and a
+formidable leathern thong. He held this whip in his strong right hand,
+with the thong twisted round the handle; and throwing out his left arm,
+nervous and muscular as the limb of a young gladiator, he seized Paul
+Marchmont by the collar of that fashionably-cut scarlet coat which the
+artist had so much admired in the cheval-glass that morning.
+
+There was a shout of surprise and consternation from the gentlemen on
+the terrace and the crowd upon the lawn, a shrill scream from the
+women; and in the next moment Paul Marchmont was writhing under a
+shower of blows from the hunting-whip in Edward Arundel's hand. The
+artist was not physically brave, yet he was not such a cur as to submit
+unresistingly to this hideous disgrace; but the attack was so sudden
+and unexpected as to paralyse him--so rapid in its execution as to
+leave him no time for resistance. Before he had recovered his presence
+of mind; before he knew the meaning of Edward Arundel's appearance in
+that place; even before he could fully realise the mere fact of his
+being there,--the thing was done; he was disgraced for ever. He had
+sunk in that one moment from the very height of his new grandeur to the
+lowest depth of social degradation.
+
+"Gentlemen!" Edward Arundel cried, in a loud voice, which was
+distinctly heard by every member of the gaping crowd, "when the law of
+the land suffers a scoundrel to prosper, honest men must take the law
+into their own hands. I wished you to know my opinion of the new master
+of Marchmont Towers; and I think I've expressed it pretty clearly. I
+know him to be a most consummate villain; and I give you fair warning
+that he is no fit associate for honourable men. Good morning."
+
+Edward Arundel lifted his hat, bowed to the assembly, and then ran down
+the steps. Paul Marchmont, livid, and foaming at the mouth, rushed
+after him, brandishing his clenched fists, and gesticulating in
+impotent rage; but the young man's horse was waiting for him at a few
+paces from the terrace, in the care of a butcher's apprentice, and he
+was in the saddle before the artist could overtake him.
+
+"I shall not leave Kemberling for a week, Mr. Marchmont," he called
+out; and then he walked his horse away, holding himself erect as a
+dart, and staring defiance at the crowd.
+
+I am sorry to have to testify to the fickle nature of the British
+populace; but I am bound to own that a great many of the stalwart
+yeomen who had eaten game-pies and drunk strong liquors at Paul
+Marchmont's expense not half an hour before, were base enough to feel
+an involuntary admiration for Edward Arundel, as he rode slowly away,
+with his head up and his eyes flaming. There is seldom very much
+genuine sympathy for a man who has been horsewhipped; and there is a
+pretty universal inclination to believe that the man who inflicts
+chastisement upon him must be right in the main. It is true that the
+tenant-farmers, especially those whose leases were nearly run out, were
+very loud in their indignation against Mr. Arundel, and one adventurous
+spirit made a dash at the young man's bridle as he went by; but the
+general feeling was in favour of the conqueror, and there was a lack of
+heartiness even in the loudest expressions of sympathy.
+
+The crowd made a lane for Paul Marchmont as he went back to the house,
+white and helpless, and sick with shame.
+
+Several of the gentlemen upon the terrace came forward to shake hands
+with him, and to express their indignation, and to offer any friendly
+service that he might require of them by-and-by,--such as standing by
+to see him shot, if he should choose an old-fashioned mode of
+retaliation; or bearing witness against Edward Arundel in a law-court,
+if Mr. Marchmont preferred to take legal measures. But even these men
+recoiled when they felt the cold dampness of the artist's hands, and
+saw that _he had been frightened_. These sturdy, uproarious foxhunters,
+who braved the peril of sudden death every time they took a day's
+sport, entertained a sovereign contempt for a man who _could_ be
+frightened of anybody or anything. They made no allowance for Paul
+Marchmont's Cockney education; they were not in the dark secrets of his
+life, and knew nothing of his guilty conscience; and it was _that_
+which had made him more helpless than a child in the fierce grasp of
+Edward Arundel.
+
+So one by one, after this polite show of sympathy, the rich man's
+guests fell away from him; and the yelping hounds and the cantering
+horses left the lawn before Marchmont Towers; the sound of the brass
+band and the voices of the people died away in the distance; and the
+glory of the day was done.
+
+Paul Marchmont crawled slowly back to that luxurious bedchamber which
+he had left only a few hours before, and, throwing himself at full
+length upon the bed, sobbed like a frightened child.
+
+He was panic-stricken; not because of the horsewhipping, but because of
+a sentence that Edward Arundel had whispered close to his ear in the
+midst of the struggle.
+
+"I know _everything_," the young man had said; "I know the secrets you
+hide in the pavilion by the river!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+THE DESERTED CHAMBERS.
+
+
+Edward Arundel kept his word. He waited for a week and upwards, but
+Paul Marchmont made no sign; and after having given him three days'
+grace over and above the promised time, the young man abandoned
+Kemberling Retreat, for ever, as he thought, and went away from
+Lincolnshire.
+
+He had waited; hoping that Paul Marchmont would try to retaliate, and
+that some desperate struggle, physical or legal,--he scarcely cared
+which,--would occur between them. He would have courted any hazard
+which might have given him some chance of revenge. But nothing
+happened. He sent out Mr. Morrison to beat up information about the
+master of Marchmont Towers; and the factotum came back with the
+intelligence that Mr. Marchmont was ill, and would see no
+one--"leastways" excepting his mother and Mr. George Weston.
+
+Edward Arundel shrugged his shoulders when he heard these tidings.
+
+"What a contemptible cur the man is!" he thought. "There was a time
+when I could have suspected him of any foul play against my lost girl.
+I know him better now, and know that he is not even capable of a great
+crime. He was only strong enough to stab his victim in the dark, with
+lying paragraphs in newspapers, and dastardly hints and inuendoes."
+
+It would have been only perhaps an act of ordinary politeness had
+Edward Arundel paid a farewell visit to his friends at the Grange. But
+he did not go near the hospitable old house. He contented himself with
+writing a cordial letter to Major Lawford, thanking him for his
+hospitality and kindness, and referring, vaguely enough, to the hope of
+a future meeting.
+
+He despatched this letter by Mr. Morrison, who was in very high spirits
+at the prospect of leaving Kemberling, and who went about his work with
+almost boyish activity in the exuberance of his delight. The valet
+worked so briskly as to complete all necessary arrangements in a couple
+of days; and on the 29th of October, late in the afternoon, all was
+ready, and he had nothing to do but to superintend the departure of the
+two horses from the Kemberling railway-station, under the guardianship
+of the lad who had served as Edward's groom.
+
+Throughout that last day Mr. Arundel wandered here and there about the
+house and garden that so soon were to be deserted. He was dreadfully at
+a loss what to do with himself, and, alas! it was not to-day only that
+he felt the burden of his hopeless idleness. He felt it always; a
+horrible load, not to be cast away from him. His life had been broken
+off short, as it were, by the catastrophe which had left him a widower
+before his honeymoon was well over. The story of his existence was
+abruptly broken asunder; all the better part of his life was taken away
+from him, and he did not know what to do with the blank and useless
+remnant. The ravelled threads of a once-harmonious web, suddenly
+wrenched in twain, presented a mass of inextricable confusion; and the
+young man's brain grew dizzy when he tried to draw them out, or to
+consider them separately.
+
+His life was most miserable, most hopeless, by reason of its emptiness.
+He had no duty to perform, no task to achieve. That nature must be
+utterly selfish, entirely given over to sybarite rest and
+self-indulgence, which does not feel a lack of something wanting
+these,--a duty or a purpose. Better to be Sisyphus toiling up the
+mountain-side, than Sisyphus with the stone taken away from him, and no
+hope of ever reaching the top. I heard a man once--a bill-sticker, and
+not by any means a sentimental or philosophical person--declare that he
+had never known real prosperity until he had thirteen orphan
+grandchildren to support; and surely there was a universal moral in
+that bill-sticker's confession. He had been a drunkard before,
+perhaps,--he didn't say anything about that,--and a reprobate, it may
+be; but those thirteen small mouths clamoring for food made him sober
+and earnest, brave and true. He had a duty to do, and was happy in its
+performance. He was wanted in the world, and he was somebody. From
+Napoleon III., holding the destinies of civilised Europe in his hands,
+and debating whether he shall re-create Poland or build a new
+boulevard, to Paterfamilias in a Government office, working for the
+little ones at home,--and from Paterfamilias to the crossing-sweeper,
+who craves his diurnal halfpenny from busy citizens, tramping to their
+daily toil,--every man has his separate labour and his different
+responsibility. For ever and for ever the busy wheel of life turns
+round; but duty and ambition are the motive powers that keep it going.
+
+Edward Arundel felt the barrenness of his life, now that he had taken
+the only revenge which was possible for him upon the man who had
+persecuted his wife. _That_ had been a rapturous but brief enjoyment.
+It was over. He could do no more to the man; since there was no lower
+depth of humiliation--in these later days, when pillories and
+whipping-posts and stocks are exploded from our market-places--to which
+a degraded creature could descend. No; there was no more to be done. It
+was useless to stop in Lincolnshire. The sad suggestion of the little
+slipper found by the water-side was but too true. Paul Marchmont had
+not murdered his helpless cousin; he had only tortured her to death. He
+was quite safe from the law of the land, which, being of a positive and
+arbitrary nature, takes no cognisance of indefinable offences. This
+most infamous man was safe; and was free to enjoy his ill-gotten
+grandeur--if he could take much pleasure in it, after the scene upon
+the stone terrace.
+
+The only joy that had been left for Edward Arundel after his retirement
+from the East India Company's service was this fierce delight of
+vengeance. He had drained the intoxicating cup to the dregs, and had
+been drunken at first in the sense of his triumph. But he was sober
+now; and he paced up and down the neglected garden beneath a chill
+October sky, crunching the fallen leaves under his feet, with his arms
+folded and his head bent, thinking of the barren future. It was all
+bare,--a blank stretch of desert land, with no city in the distance; no
+purple domes or airy minarets on the horizon. It was in the very nature
+of this young man to be a soldier; and he was nothing if not a soldier.
+He could never remember having had any other aspiration than that eager
+thirst for military glory. Before he knew the meaning of the word
+"war," in his very infancy, the sound of a trumpet or the sight of a
+waving banner, a glittering weapon, a sentinel's scarlet coat, had
+moved him to a kind of rapture. The unvarnished schoolroom records of
+Greek and Roman warfare had been as delightful to him as the finest
+passages of a Macaulay or a Froude, a Thiers or Lamartine. He was a
+soldier by the inspiration of Heaven, as all great soldiers are. He had
+never known any other ambition, or dreamed any other dream. Other lads
+had talked of the bar, and the senate, and _their_ glories. Bah! how
+cold and tame they seemed! What was the glory of a parliamentary
+triumph, in which words were the only weapons wielded by the
+combatants, compared with a hand-to-hand struggle, ankle deep in the
+bloody mire of a crowded trench, or a cavalry charge, before which a
+phalanx of fierce Affghans fled like frightened sheep upon a moor!
+Edward Arundel was a soldier, like the Duke of Wellington or Sir Colin
+Campbell,--one writes the old romantic name involuntarily, because one
+loves it best,--or Othello. The Moor's first lamentation when he
+believes that Desdemona is false, and his life is broken, is that
+sublime farewell to all the glories of the battle-field. It was almost
+the same with Edward Arundel. The loss of his wife and of his captaincy
+were blent and mingled in his mind and he could only bewail the one
+great loss which left life most desolate.
+
+He had never felt the full extent of his desolation until now; for
+heretofore he had been buoyed up by the hope of vengeance upon Paul
+Marchmont; and now that his solitary hope had been realised to the
+fullest possible extent, there was nothing left,--nothing but to revoke
+the sacrifice he had made, and to regain his place in the Indian army
+at any cost.
+
+He tried not to think of the possibility of this. It seemed to him
+almost an infidelity towards his dead wife to dream of winning honours
+and distinction, now that she, who would have been so proud of any
+triumph won by him, was for ever lost.
+
+So, under the grey October sky he paced up and down upon the
+grass-grown pathways, amidst the weeds and briars, the brambles and
+broken branches that crackled as he trod upon them; and late in the
+afternoon, when the day, which had been sunless and cold, was melting
+into dusky twilight, he opened the low wooden gateway and went out into
+the road. An impulse which he could not resist took him towards the
+river-bank and the wood behind Marchmont Towers. Once more, for the
+last time in his life perhaps, he went down to that lonely shore. He
+went to look at the bleak unlovely place which had been the scene of
+his betrothal.
+
+It was not that he had any thought of meeting Olivia Marchmont; he had
+dismissed her from his mind ever since his last visit to the lonely
+boat-house. Whatever the mystery of her life might be, her secret lay
+at the bottom of a black depth which the impetuous soldier did not care
+to fathom. He did not want to discover that hideous secret. Tarnished
+honour, shame, falsehood, disgrace, lurked in the obscurity in which
+John Marchmont's widow had chosen to enshroud her life. Let them rest.
+It was not for him to drag away the curtain that sheltered his
+kinswoman from the world.
+
+He had no thought, therefore, of prying into any secrets that might be
+hidden in the pavilion by the water. The fascination that lured him to
+the spot was the memory of the past. He could not go to Mary's grave;
+but he went, in as reverent a spirit as he would have gone thither, to
+the scene of his betrothal, to pay his farewell visit to the spot which
+had been for ever hallowed by the confession of her innocent love.
+
+It was nearly dark when he got to the river-side. He went by a path
+which quite avoided the grounds about Marchmont Towers,--a narrow
+footpath, which served as a towing-path sometimes, when some black
+barge crawled by on its way out to the open sea. To-night the river was
+hidden by a mist,--a white fog,--that obscured land and water; and it
+was only by the sound of the horses' hoofs that Edward Arundel had
+warning to step aside, as a string of them went by, dragging a chain
+that grated on the pebbles by the river-side.
+
+"Why should they say my darling committed suicide?" thought Edward
+Arundel, as he groped his way along the narrow pathway. "It was on such
+an evening as this that she ran away from home. What more likely than
+that she lost the track, and wandered into the river? Oh, my own poor
+lost one, God grant it was so! God grant it was by His will, and not
+your own desperate act, that you were lost to me!"
+
+Sorrowful as the thought of his wife's death was to him, it soothed him
+to believe that death might have been accidental. There was all the
+difference betwixt sorrow and despair in the alternative.
+
+Wandering ignorantly and helplessly through this autumnal fog, Edward
+Arundel found himself at the boat-house before he was aware of its
+vicinity.
+
+There was a light gleaming from the broad north window of the
+painting-room, and a slanting line of light streamed out of the
+half-open door. In this lighted doorway Edward saw the figure of a
+girl,--an unkempt, red-headed girl, with a flat freckled face; a girl
+who wore a lavender-cotton pinafore and hob-nailed boots, with a good
+deal of brass about the leathern fronts, and a redundancy of rusty
+leathern boot-lace twisted round the ankles.
+
+The young man remembered having seen this girl once in the village of
+Kemberling. She had been in Mrs. Weston's service as a drudge, and was
+supposed to have received her education in the Swampington union.
+
+This young lady was supporting herself against the half-open door, with
+her arms a-kimbo, and her hands planted upon her hips, in humble
+imitation of the matrons whom she had been wont to see lounging at
+their cottage-doors in the high street of Kemberling, when the labours
+of the day were done.
+
+Edward Arundel started at the sudden apparition of this damsel.
+
+"Who are you, girl?" he asked; "and what brings you to this place?"
+
+He trembled as he spoke. A sudden agitation had seized upon him, which
+he had no power to account for. It seemed as if Providence had brought
+him to this spot to-night, and had placed this ignorant country-girl in
+his way, for some special purpose. Whatever the secrets of this place
+might be, he was to know them, it appeared, since he had been led here,
+not by the promptings of curiosity, but only by a reverent love for a
+scene that was associated with his dead wife.
+
+"Who are you, girl?" he asked again.
+
+"Oi be Betsy Murrel, sir," the damsel answered; "some on 'em calls me
+'Wuk-us Bet;' and I be coom here to cle-an oop a bit."
+
+"To clean up what?"
+
+"The paa-intin' room. There's a de-al o' moock aboot, and aw'm to
+fettle oop, and make all toidy agen t' squire gets well."
+
+"Are you all alone here?"
+
+"All alo-an? Oh, yes, sir."
+
+"Have you been here long?"
+
+The girl looked at Mr. Arundel with a cunning leer, which was one of
+her "wuk-us" acquirements.
+
+"Aw've bin here off an' on ever since t' squire ke-ame," she said.
+"There's a deal o' cleanin' down 'ere."
+
+Edward Arundel looked at her sternly; but there was nothing to be
+gathered from her stolid countenance after its agreeable leer had
+melted away. The young man might have scrutinised the figure-head of
+the black barge creeping slowly past upon the hidden river with quite
+as much chance of getting any information out of its play of feature.
+
+He walked past the girl into Paul Marchmont's painting-room. Miss Betsy
+Murrel made no attempt to hinder him. She had spoken the truth as to
+the cleaning of the place, for the room smelt of soapsuds, and a pail
+and scrubbing-brush stood in the middle of the floor. The young man
+looked at the door behind which he had heard the crying of the child.
+It was ajar, and the stone-steps leading up to it were wet, bearing
+testimony to Betsy Murrel's industry.
+
+Edward Arundel took the flaming tallow-candle from the table in the
+painting-room, and went up the steps into the pavilion. The girl
+followed, but she did not try to restrain him, or to interfere with
+him. She followed him with her mouth open, staring at him after the
+manner of her kind, and she looked the very image of rustic stupidity.
+
+With the flaring candle shaded by his left hand, Edward Arundel
+examined the two chambers in the pavilion. There was very little to
+reward his scrutiny. The two small rooms were bare and cheerless. The
+repairs that had been executed had only gone so far as to make them
+tolerably inhabitable, and secure from wind and weather. The furniture
+was the same that Edward remembered having seen on his last visit to
+the Towers; for Mary had been fond of sitting in one of the little
+rooms, looking out at the slow river and the trembling rushes on the
+shore. There was no trace of recent occupation in the empty rooms, no
+ashes in the grates. The girl grinned maliciously as Mr. Arundel raised
+the light above his head, and looked about him. He walked in and out of
+the two rooms. He stared at the obsolete chairs, the rickety tables,
+the dilapidated damask curtains, flapping every now and then in the
+wind that rushed in through the crannies of the doors and windows. He
+looked here and there, like a man bewildered; much to the amusement of
+Miss Betsy Murrel, who, with her arms crossed, and her elbows in the
+palms of her moist hands, followed him backwards and forwards between
+the two small chambers.
+
+"There was some one living here a week ago," he said; "some one who had
+the care of a----"
+
+He stopped suddenly. If he had guessed rightly at the dark secret, it
+was better that it should remain for ever hidden. This girl was perhaps
+more ignorant than himself. It was not for him to enlighten her.
+
+"Do you know if anybody has lived here lately?" he asked.
+
+Betsy Murrel shook her head.
+
+"Nobody has lived here--not that _oi_ knows of," she replied; "not to
+take their victuals, and such loike. Missus brings her work down
+sometimes, and sits in one of these here rooms, while Muster Poll does
+his pictur' paa-intin'; that's all _oi_ knows of."
+
+Edward went back to the painting-room, and set down his candle. The
+mystery of those empty chambers was no business of his. He began to
+think that his cousin Olivia was mad, and that her outbursts of terror
+and agitation had been only the raving of a mad woman, after all. There
+had been a great deal in her manner during the last year that had
+seemed like insanity. The presence of the child might have been purely
+accidental; and his cousin's wild vehemence only a paroxysm of
+insanity. He sighed as he left Miss Murrel to her scouring. The world
+seemed out of joint; and he, whose energetic nature fitted him for the
+straightening of crooked things, had no knowledge of the means by which
+it might be set right.
+
+"Good-bye, lonely place," he said; "good-bye to the spot where my young
+wife first told me of her love."
+
+He walked back to the cottage, where the bustle of packing and
+preparation was all over, and where Mr. Morrison was entertaining a
+select party of friends in the kitchen. Early the next morning Mr.
+Arundel and his servant left Lincolnshire; the key of Kemberling
+Retreat was given up to the landlord; and a wooden board, flapping
+above the dilapidated trellis-work of the porch, gave notice that the
+habitation was to be let.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+TAKING IT QUIETLY.
+
+
+All the county, or at least all that part of the county within a
+certain radius of Marchmont Towers, waited very anxiously for Mr. Paul
+Marchmont to make some move. The horsewhipping business had given quite
+a pleasant zest, a flavour of excitement, a dash of what it is the
+fashion nowadays to call "sensation," to the wind-up of the hunting
+breakfast. Poor Paul's thrashing had been more racy and appetising than
+the finest olives that ever grew, and his late guests looked forward to
+a great deal more excitement and "sensation" before the business was
+done with. Of course Paul Marchmont would do something. He _must_ make
+a stir; and the sooner he made it the better. Matters would have to be
+explained. People expected to know the _cause_ of Edward Arundel's
+enmity; and of course the new master of the Towers would see the
+propriety of setting himself right in the eyes of his influential
+acquaintance, his tenantry, and retainers; especially if he
+contemplated standing for Swampington at the next general election.
+
+This was what people said to each other. The scene at the
+hunting-breakfast was a most fertile topic of conversation. It was
+almost as good as a popular murder, and furnished scandalous paragraphs
+_ad infinitum_ for the provincial papers, most of them beginning, "It
+is understood--," or "It has been whispered in our hearing that--," or
+"Rochefoucault has observed that--." Everybody expected that Paul
+Marchmont would write to the papers, and that Edward Arundel would
+answer him in the papers; and that a brisk and stirring warfare would
+be carried on in printer's-ink--at least. But no line written by either
+of the gentlemen appeared in any one of the county journals; and by
+slow degrees it dawned upon people that there was no further amusement
+to be got out of Paul's chastisement, and that the master of the Towers
+meant to take the thing quietly, and to swallow the horrible outrage,
+taking care to hide any wry faces he made during that operation.
+
+Yes; Paul Marchmont let the matter drop. The report was circulated that
+he was very ill, and had suffered from a touch of brain-fever, which
+kept him a victim to incessant delirium until after Mr. Arundel had
+left the county. This rumour was set afloat by Mr. Weston the surgeon;
+and as he was the only person admitted to his brother-in-law's
+apartment, it was impossible for any one to contradict his assertion.
+
+The fox-hunting squires shrugged their shoulders; and I am sorry to say
+that the epithets, "hound," "cur," "sneak," and "mongrel," were more
+often applied to Mr. Marchmont than was consistent with Christian
+feeling on the part of the gentlemen who uttered them. But a man who
+can swallow a sound thrashing, administered upon his own door-step, has
+to contend with the prejudices of society, and must take the
+consequences of being in advance of his age.
+
+So, while his new neighbours talked about him, Paul Marchmont lay in
+his splendid chamber, with the frisking youths and maidens staring at
+him all day long, and simpering at him with their unchanging faces,
+until he grew sick at heart, and began to loathe all this new grandeur,
+which had so delighted him a little time ago. He no longer laughed at
+the recollection of shabby Charlotte Street. He dreamt one night that
+he was back again in the old bedroom, with the painted deal furniture,
+and the hideous paper on the walls, and that the Marchmont-Towers
+magnificence had been only a feverish vision; and he was glad to be
+back in that familiar place, and was sorry on awaking to find that
+Marchmont Towers was a splendid reality.
+
+There was only one faint red streak upon his shoulders, for the
+thrashing had not been a brutal one. It was _disgrace_ Edward Arundel
+had wanted to inflict, not physical pain, the commonplace punishment
+with which a man corrects his refractory horse. The lash of the
+hunting-whip had done very little damage to the artist's flesh; but it
+had slashed away his manhood, as the sickle sweeps the flowers amidst
+the corn.
+
+He could never look up again. The thought of going out of this house
+for the first time, and the horror of confronting the altered faces of
+his neighbours, was as dreadful to him as the anticipation of that
+awful exit from the Debtor's Door, which is the last step but one into
+eternity, must be to the condemned criminal.
+
+"I shall go abroad," he said to his mother, when he made his appearance
+in the western drawing-room, a week after Edward's departure. "I shall
+go on the Continent, mother; I have taken a dislike to this place,
+since that savage attacked me the other day."
+
+Mrs. Marchmont sighed.
+
+"It will seem hard to lose you, Paul, now that you are rich. You were
+so constant to us through all our poverty; and we might be so happy
+together now."
+
+The artist was walking up and down the room, with his hands in the
+pockets of his braided velvet coat. He knew that in the conventional
+costume of a well-bred gentleman he showed to a disadvantage amongst
+other men; and he affected a picturesque and artistic style of dress,
+whose brighter hues and looser outlines lighted up his pale face, and
+gave a grace to his spare figure.
+
+"You think it worth something, then, mother?" he said presently, half
+kneeling, half lounging in a deep-cushioned easy chair near the table
+at which his mother sat. "You think our money is worth something to us?
+All these chairs and tables, this great rambling house, the servants
+who wait upon us, and the carriages we ride in, are worth something,
+are they not? they make us happier, I suppose. I know I always thought
+such things made up the sum of happiness when I was poor. I have seen a
+hearse going away from a rich man's door, carrying his cherished wife,
+or his only son, perhaps; and I've thought, 'Ah, but he has forty
+thousand a year!' You are happier here than you were in Charlotte
+Street, eh, mother?"
+
+Mrs. Marchmont was a Frenchwoman by birth, though she had lived so long
+in London as to become Anglicised. She only retained a slight accent of
+her native tongue, and a good deal more vivacity of look and gesture
+than is common to Englishwomen. Her elder daughter was sitting on the
+other side of the broad fireplace. She was only a quieter and older
+likeness of Lavinia Weston.
+
+"_Am_ I happier?" exclaimed Mrs. Marchmont. "Need you ask me the
+question, Paul? But it is not so much for myself as for your sake that
+I value all this grandeur."
+
+She held out her long thin hand, which was covered with rings, some
+old-fashioned and comparatively valueless, others lately purchased by
+her devoted son, and very precious. The artist took the shrunken
+fingers in his own, and raised them to his lips.
+
+"I'm very glad that I've made you happy, mother," he said; "that's
+something gained, at any rate."
+
+He left the fireplace, and walked slowly up and down the room, stopping
+now and then to look out at the wintry sky, or the flat expanse of turf
+below it; but he was quite a different creature to that which he had
+been before his encounter with Edward Arundel. The chairs and tables
+palled upon him. The mossy velvet pile of the new carpets seemed to him
+like the swampy ground of a morass. The dark-green draperies of Genoa
+velvet deepened into black with the growing twilight, and seemed as if
+they had been fashioned out of palls.
+
+What was it worth, this fine house, with the broad flat before it?
+Nothing, if he had lost the respect and consideration of his
+neighbours. He wanted to be a great man as well as a rich one. He
+wanted admiration and flattery, reverence and esteem; not from poor
+people, whose esteem and admiration were scarcely worth having, but
+from wealthy squires, his equals or his superiors by birth and fortune.
+He ground his teeth at the thought of his disgrace. He had drunk of the
+cup of triumph, and had tasted the very wine of life; and at the moment
+when that cup was fullest, it had been snatched away from him by the
+ruthless hand of his enemy.
+
+Christmas came, and gave Paul Marchmont a good opportunity of playing
+the country gentleman of the olden time. What was the cost of a couple
+of bullocks, a few hogsheads of ale, and a waggon-load of coals, if by
+such a sacrifice the master of the Towers could secure for himself the
+admiration due to a public benefactor? Paul gave _carte blanche_ to the
+old servants; and tents were erected on the lawn, and monstrous
+bonfires blazed briskly in the frosty air; while the populace, who
+would have accepted the bounties of a new Nero fresh from the burning
+of a modern Rome, drank to the health of their benefactor, and warmed
+themselves by the unlimited consumption of strong beer.
+
+Mrs. Marchmont and her invalid daughter assisted Paul in his attempt to
+regain the popularity he had lost upon the steps of the western
+terrace. The two women distributed square miles of flannel and
+blanketing amongst greedy claimants; they gave scarlet cloaks and
+poke-bonnets to old women; they gave an insipid feast, upon temperance
+principles, to the children of the National Schools. And they had their
+reward; for people began to say that this Paul Marchmont was a very
+noble fellow, after all, by Jove, sir and that fellow Arundel must have
+been in the wrong, sir; and no doubt Marchmont had his own reasons for
+not resenting the outrage, sir; and a great deal more to the like
+effect.
+
+After this roasting of the two bullocks the wind changed altogether.
+Mr. Marchmont gave a great dinner-party upon New-Year's Day. He sent
+out thirty invitations, and had only two refusals. So the long
+dining-room was filled with all the notabilities of the district, and
+Paul held his head up once more, and rejoiced in his own grandeur.
+After all, one horsewhipping cannot annihilate a man with a fine estate
+and eleven thousand a year, if he knows how to make a splash with his
+money.
+
+Olivia Marchmont shared in none of the festivals that were held. Her
+father was very ill this winter; and she spent a good deal of her time
+at Swampington Rectory, sitting in Hubert Arundel's room, and reading
+to him. But her presence brought very little comfort to the sick man;
+for there was something in his daughter's manner that filled him with
+inexpressible terror; and he would lie for hours together watching her
+blank face, and wondering at its horrible rigidity. What was it? What
+was the dreadful secret which had transformed this woman? He tormented
+himself perpetually with this question, but he could imagine no answer
+to it. He did not know the power which a master-passion has upon these
+strong-minded women, whose minds are strong because of their
+narrowness, and who are the bonden slaves of one idea. He did not know
+that in a breast which holds no pure affection the master-fiend Passion
+rages like an all-devouring flame, perpetually consuming its victim. He
+did not know that in these violent and concentrative natures the line
+that separates reason from madness is so feeble a demarcation, that
+very few can perceive the hour in which it is passed.
+
+Olivia Marchmont had never been the most lively or delightful of
+companions. The tenderness which is the common attribute of a woman's
+nature had not been given to her. She ought to have been a great man.
+Nature makes these mistakes now and then, and the victim expiates the
+error. Hence comes such imperfect histories as that of English
+Elizabeth and Swedish Christina. The fetters that had bound Olivia's
+narrow life had eaten into her very soul, and cankered there. If she
+could have been Edward Arundel's wife, she would have been the noblest
+and truest wife that ever merged her identity into that of another, and
+lived upon the refracted glory of her husband's triumphs. She would
+have been a Rachel Russell, a Mrs. Hutchinson, a Lady Nithisdale, a
+Madame de Lavalette. She would have been great by reason of her power
+of self-abnegation; and there would have been a strange charm in the
+aspect of this fierce nature attuned to harmonise with its master's
+soul, all the barbaric discords melting into melody, all the harsh
+combinations softening into perfect music; just as in Mr. Buckstone's
+most poetic drama we are bewitched by the wild huntress sitting at the
+feet of her lord, and admire her chiefly because we know that only that
+one man upon all the earth could have had power to tame her. To any one
+who had known Olivia's secret, there could have been no sadder
+spectacle than this of her decay. The mind and body decayed together,
+bound by a mysterious sympathy. All womanly roundness disappeared from
+the spare figure, and Mrs. Marchmont's black dresses hung about her in
+loose folds. Her long, dead, black hair was pushed away from her thin
+face, and twisted into a heavy knot at the back of her head. Every
+charm that she had ever possessed was gone. The oldest women generally
+retain some traits of their lost beauty, some faint reflection of the
+sun that has gone down, to light up the soft twilight of age, and even
+glimmer through the gloom of death. But this woman's face retained no
+token of the past. No empty hull, with shattered bulwarks crumbled by
+the fury of fierce seas, cast on a desert shore to rot and perish
+there, was ever more complete a wreck than she was. Upon her face and
+figure, in every look and gesture, in the tone of every word she spoke,
+there was an awful something, worse than the seal of death. Little by
+little the miserable truth dawned upon Hubert Arundel. His daughter was
+mad! He knew this; but he kept the dreadful knowledge hidden in his own
+breast,--a hideous secret, whose weight oppressed him like an actual
+burden. He kept the secret; for it would have seemed to him the most
+cruel treason against his daughter to have confessed his discovery to
+any living creature, unless it should be absolutely necessary to do so.
+Meanwhile he set himself to watch Olivia, detaining her at the Rectory
+for a week together, in order that he might see her in all moods, under
+all phases.
+
+He found that there were no violent or outrageous evidences of this
+mental decay. The mind had given way under the perpetual pressure of
+one set of thoughts. Hubert Arundel, in his ignorance of his daughter's
+secrets, could not discover the cause of her decadence; but that cause
+was very simple. If the body is a wonderful and complex machine which
+must not be tampered with, surely that still more complex machine the
+mind must need careful treatment. If such and such a course of diet is
+fatal to the body's health, may not some thoughts be equally fatal to
+the health of the brain? may not a monotonous recurrence of the same
+ideas be above all injurious? If by reason of the peculiar nature of a
+man's labour, he uses one limb or one muscle more than the rest,
+strange bosses rise up to testify to that ill usage, the idle limbs
+wither, and the harmonious perfection of Nature gives place to
+deformity. So the brain, perpetually pressed upon, for ever strained to
+its utmost tension by the wearisome succession of thoughts, becomes
+crooked and one-sided, always leaning one way, continually tripping up
+the wretched thinker.
+
+John Marchmont's widow had only one set of ideas. On every subject but
+that one which involved Edward Arundel and his fortunes her memory had
+decayed. She asked her father the same questions--commonplace questions
+relating to his own comfort, or to simple household matters, twenty
+times a day, always forgetting that he had answered her. She had that
+impatience as to the passage of time which is one of the most painful
+signs of madness. She looked at her watch ten times an hour, and would
+wander out into the cheerless garden, indifferent to the bitter
+weather, in order to look at the clock in the church-steeple, under the
+impression that her own watch, and her father's, and all the
+time-keepers in the house, were slow.
+
+She was sometimes restless, taking up one occupation after another, to
+throw all aside with equal impatience, and sometimes immobile for hours
+together. But as she was never violent, never in any way unreasonable,
+Hubert Arundel had not the heart to call science to his aid, and to
+betray her secret. The thought that his daughter's malady might be
+cured never entered his mind as within the range of possibility. There
+was nothing to cure; no delusions to be exorcised by medical treatment;
+no violent vagaries to be held in check by drugs and nostrums. The
+powerful intellect had decayed; its force and clearness were gone. No
+drugs that ever grew upon this earth could restore that which was lost.
+
+This was the conviction which kept the Rector silent. It would have
+given him unutterable anguish to have told his daughter's secret to any
+living being; but he would have endured that misery if she could have
+been benefitted thereby. He most firmly believed that she could not,
+and that her state was irremediable.
+
+"My poor girl!" he thought to himself; "how proud I was of her ten
+years ago! I can do nothing for her; nothing except to love and cherish
+her, and hide her humiliation from the world."
+
+But Hubert Arundel was not allowed to do even this much for the
+daughter he loved; for when Olivia had been with him a little more than
+a week, Paul Marchmont and his mother drove over to Swampington Rectory
+one morning and carried her away with them. The Rector then saw for the
+first time that his once strong-minded daughter was completely under
+the dominion of these two people, and that they knew the nature of her
+malady quite as well as he did. He resisted her return to the Towers;
+but his resistance was useless. She submitted herself willingly to her
+new friends, declaring that she was better in their house than anywhere
+else. So she went back to her old suite of apartments, and her old
+servant Barbara waited upon her; and she sat alone in dead John
+Marchmont's study, listening to the January winds shrieking in the
+quadrangle, the distant rooks calling to each other amongst the bare
+branches of the poplars, the banging of the doors in the corridor, and
+occasional gusts of laughter from the open door of the
+dining-room,--while Paul Marchmont and his guests gave a jovial welcome
+to the new year.
+
+While the master of the Towers re-asserted his grandeur, and made
+stupendous efforts to regain the ground he had lost, Edward Arundel
+wandered far away in the depths of Brittany, travelling on foot, and
+making himself familiar with the simple peasants, who were ignorant of
+his troubles. He had sent Mr. Morrison down to Dangerfield with the
+greater part of his luggage; but he had not the heart to go back
+himself--yet awhile. He was afraid of his mother's sympathy, and he
+went away into the lonely Breton villages, to try and cure himself of
+his great grief, before he began life again as a soldier. It was
+useless for him to strive against his vocation. Nature had made him a
+soldier, and nothing else; and wherever there was a good cause to be
+fought for, his place was on the battle-field.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+MISS LAWFORD SPEAKS HER MIND.
+
+
+Major Lawford and his blue-eyed daughters were not amongst those guests
+who accepted Paul Marchmont's princely hospitalities. Belinda Lawford
+had never heard the story of Edward's lost bride as he himself could
+have told it; but she had heard an imperfect version of the sorrowful
+history from Letitia, and that young lady had informed her friend of
+Edward's animus against the new master of the Towers.
+
+"The poor dear foolish boy will insist upon thinking that Mr. Marchmont
+was at the bottom of it all," she had said in a confidential chat with
+Belinda, "somehow or other; but whether he was, or whether he wasn't,
+I'm sure I can't say. But if one attempts to take Mr. Marchmont's part
+with Edward, he does get so violent and go on so, that one's obliged to
+say all sorts of dreadful things about Mary's cousin for the sake of
+peace. But really, when I saw him one day in Kemberling, with a black
+velvet shooting-coat, and his beautiful smooth white hair and auburn
+moustache, I thought him most interesting. And so would you, Belinda,
+if you weren't so wrapped up in that doleful brother of mine."
+
+Whereupon, of course, Miss Lawford had been compelled to declare that
+she was not "wrapped up" in Edward, whatever state of feeling that
+obscure phrase might signify; and to express, by the vehemence of her
+denial, that, if anything, she rather detested Miss Arundel's brother.
+By-the-by, did you ever know a young lady who could understand the
+admiration aroused in the breast of other young ladies for that most
+uninteresting object, a _brother_? Or a gentleman who could enter with
+any warmth of sympathy into his friend's feelings respecting the auburn
+tresses or the Grecian nose of "a sister"? Belinda Lawford, I say, knew
+something of the story of Mary Arundel's death, and she implored her
+father to reject all hospitalities offered by Paul Marchmont.
+
+"You won't go to the Towers, papa dear?" she said, with her hands
+clasped upon her father's arm, her cheeks kindling, and her eyes
+filling with tears as she spoke to him; "you won't go and sit at Paul
+Marchmont's table, and drink his wine, and shake hands with him? I know
+that he had something to do with Mary Arundel's death. He had indeed,
+papa. I don't mean anything that the world calls crime; I don't mean
+any act of open violence. But he was cruel to her, papa; he was cruel
+to her. He tortured her and tormented her until she--" The girl paused
+for a moment, and her voice faltered a little. "Oh, how I wish that I
+had known her, papa," she cried presently, "that I might have stood by
+her, and comforted her, all through that sad time!"
+
+The Major looked down at his daughter with a tender smile,--a smile
+that was a little significant, perhaps, but full of love and
+admiration.
+
+"You would have stood by Arundel's poor little wife, my dear?" he said.
+"You would stand by her _now_, if she were alive, and needed your
+friendship?"
+
+"I would indeed, papa," Miss Lawford answered resolutely.
+
+"I believe it, my dear; I believe it with all my heart. You are a good
+girl, my Linda; you are a noble girl. You are as good as a son to me,
+my dear."
+
+Major Lawford was silent for a few moments, holding his daughter in his
+arms and pressing his lips upon her broad forehead.
+
+"You are fit to be a soldier's daughter, my darling," he said, "or--or
+a soldier's wife."
+
+He kissed her once more, and then left her, sighing thoughtfully as he
+went away.
+
+This is how it was that neither Major Lawford nor any of his family
+were present at those splendid entertainments which Paul Marchmont gave
+to his new friends. Mr. Marchmont knew almost as well as the Lawfords
+themselves why they did not come, and the absence of them at his
+glittering board made his bread bitter to him and his wine tasteless.
+He wanted these people as much as the others,--more than the others,
+perhaps, for they had been Edward Arundel's friends; and he wanted them
+to turn their backs upon the young man, and join in the general outcry
+against his violence and brutality. The absence of Major Lawford at the
+lighted banquet-table tormented this modern rich man as the presence of
+Mordecai at the gate tormented Haman. It was not enough that all the
+others should come if these stayed away, and by their absence tacitly
+testified to their contempt for the master of the Towers.
+
+He met Belinda sometimes on horseback with the old grey-headed groom
+behind her, a fearless young amazon, breasting the January winds, with
+her blue eyes sparkling, and her auburn hair blowing away from her
+candid face: he met her, and looked out at her from the luxurious
+barouche in which it was his pleasure to loll by his mother's side,
+half-buried amongst soft furry rugs and sleek leopard-skins, making the
+chilly atmosphere through which he rode odorous with the scent of
+perfumed hair, and smiling over cruelly delicious criticisms in
+newly-cut reviews. He looked out at this fearless girl whose friends so
+obstinately stood by Edward Arundel; and the cold contempt upon Miss
+Lawford's face cut him more keenly than the sharpest wind of that
+bitter January.
+
+Then he took counsel with his womankind; not telling them his thoughts,
+fears, doubts, or wishes--it was not his habit to do that--but taking
+_their_ ideas, and only telling them so much as it was necessary for
+them to know in order that they might be useful to him. Paul
+Marchmont's life was regulated by a few rules, so simple that a child
+might have learned them; indeed I regret to say that some children are
+very apt pupils in that school of philosophy to which the master of
+Marchmont Towers belonged, and cause astonishment to their elders by
+the precocity of their intelligence. Mr. Marchmont might have inscribed
+upon a very small scrap of parchment the moral maxims by which he
+regulated his dealings with mankind.
+
+"Always conciliate," said this philosopher. "Never tell an unnecessary
+lie. Be agreeable and generous to those who serve you. N.B. No good
+carpenter would allow his tools to get rusty. Make yourself master of
+the opinions of others, but hold your own tongue. Seek to obtain the
+maximum of enjoyment with the minimum of risk."
+
+Such golden saws as these did Mr. Marchmont make for his own especial
+guidance; and he hoped to pass smoothly onwards upon the railway of
+life, riding in a first-class carriage, on the greased wheels of a very
+easy conscience. As for any unfortunate fellow-travellers pitched out
+of the carriage-window in the course of the journey, or left lonely and
+helpless at desolate stations on the way, Providence, and not Mr.
+Marchmont, was responsible for _their_ welfare. Paul had a high
+appreciation of Providence, and was fond of talking--very piously, as
+some people said; very impiously, as others secretly thought--about the
+inestimable Wisdom which governed all the affairs of this lower world.
+Nowhere, according to the artist, had the hand of Providence been more
+clearly visible than in this matter about Paul's poor little cousin
+Mary. If Providence had intended John Marchmont's daughter to be a
+happy bride, a happy wife, the prosperous mistress of that stately
+habitation, why all that sad business of old Mr. Arundel's sudden
+illness, Edward's hurried journey, the railway accident, and all the
+complications that had thereupon arisen? Nothing would have been easier
+than for Providence to have prevented all this; and then he, Paul,
+would have been still in Charlotte Street, Fitzroy Square, patiently
+waiting for a friendly lift upon the high-road of life. Nobody could
+say that he had ever been otherwise than patient. Nobody could say that
+he had ever intruded himself upon his rich cousins at the Towers, or
+had been heard to speculate upon his possible inheritance of the
+estate; or that he had, in short, done any thing but that which the
+best, truest, most conscientious and disinterested of mankind should
+do.
+
+In the course of that bleak, frosty January, Mr. Marchmont sent his
+mother and his sister Lavinia to make a call at the Grange. The Grange
+people had never called upon Mrs. Marchmont; but Paul did not allow any
+flimsy ceremonial law to stand in his way when he had a purpose to
+achieve. So the ladies went to the Grange, and were politely received;
+for Miss Lawford and her mother were a great deal too innocent and
+noble-minded to imagine that these pale-faced, delicate-looking women
+could have had any part, either directly or indirectly, in that cruel
+treatment which had driven Edward's young wife from her home. Mrs.
+Marchmont and Mrs. Weston were kindly received, therefore; and in a
+little conversation with Belinda about birds, and dahlias, and worsted
+work, and the most innocent subjects imaginable, the wily Lavinia
+contrived to lead up to Miss Letitia Arundel, and thence, by the
+easiest conversational short-cut, to Edward and his lost wife. Mrs.
+Weston was obliged to bring her cambric handkerchief out of her muff
+when she talked about her cousin Mary; but she was a clever woman, and
+she had taken to heart Paul's pet maxim about the folly of
+_unnecessary_ lies; and she was so candid as to entirely disarm Miss
+Lawford, who had a schoolgirlish notion that every kind of hypocrisy
+and falsehood was outwardly visible in a servile and slavish manner.
+She was not upon her guard against those practised adepts in the art of
+deception, who have learnt to make that subtle admixture of truth and
+falsehood which defies detection; like some fabrics in whose woof silk
+and cotton are so cunningly blended that only a practised eye can
+discover the inferior material.
+
+So when Lavinia dried her eyes and put her handkerchief back in her
+muff, and said, betwixt laughing and crying,--
+
+"Now you know, my dear Miss Lawford, you mustn't think that I would for
+a moment pretend to be sorry that my brother has come into this
+fortune. Of course any such pretence as that would be ridiculous, and
+quite useless into the bargain, as it isn't likely anybody would
+believe me. Paul is a dear, kind creature, the best of brothers, the
+most affectionate of sons, and deserves any good fortune that could
+fall to his lot; but I am truly sorry for that poor little girl. I am
+truly sorry, believe me, Miss Lawford; and I only regret that Mr.
+Weston and I did not come to Kemberling sooner, so that I might have
+been a friend to the poor little thing; for then, you know, I might
+have prevented that foolish runaway match, out of which almost all the
+poor child's troubles arose. Yes, Miss Lawford; I wish I had been able
+to befriend that unhappy child, although by my so doing Paul would have
+been kept out of the fortune he now enjoys--for some time, at any rate.
+I say for some time, because I do not believe that Mary Marchmont would
+have lived to be old, under the happiest circumstances. Her mother died
+very young; and her father, and her father's father, were consumptive."
+
+Then Mrs. Weston took occasion, incidentally of course, to allude to
+her brother's goodness; but even then she was on her guard, and took
+care not to say too much.
+
+"The worst actors are those who over-act their parts." That was another
+of Paul Marchmont's golden maxims.
+
+"I don't know what my brother may be to the rest of the world," Lavinia
+said; "but I know how good he is to those who belong to him. I should
+be ashamed to tell you all he has done for Mr. Weston and me. He gave
+me this cashmere shawl at the beginning of the winter, and a set of
+sables fit for a duchess; though I told him they were not at all the
+thing for a village surgeon's wife, who keeps only one servant, and
+dusts her own best parlour."
+
+And Mrs. Marchmont talked of her son; with no loud enthusiasm, but with
+a tone of quiet conviction that was worth any money to Paul. To have an
+innocent person, some one not in the secret, to play a small part in
+the comedy of his life, was a desideratum with the artist. His mother
+had always been this person, this unconscious performer, instinctively
+falling into the action of the play, and shedding real tears, and
+smiling actual smiles,--the most useful assistant to a great schemer.
+
+But during the whole of the visit nothing was said as to Paul's conduct
+towards his unhappy cousin; nothing was said either to praise or to
+exculpate; and when Mrs. Marchmont and her daughter drove away, in one
+of the new equipages which Paul had selected for his mother, they left
+only a vague impression in Belinda's breast. She didn't quite know what
+to think. These people were so frank and candid, they had spoken of
+Paul with such real affection, that it was almost impossible to doubt
+them. Paul Marchmont might be a bad man, but his mother and sister
+loved him, and surely they were ignorant of his wickedness.
+
+Mrs. Lawford troubled herself very little about this unexpected morning
+call. She was an excellent, warm-hearted, domestic creature, and
+thought a great deal more about the grand question as to whether she
+should have new damask curtains for the drawing-room, or send the old
+ones to be dyed; or whether she should withdraw her custom from the
+Kemberling grocer, whose "best black" at four-and-sixpence was really
+now so very inferior; or whether Belinda's summer silk dress could be
+cut down into a frock for Isabella to wear in the winter
+evenings,--than about the rights or wrongs of that story of the
+horsewhipping which had been administered to Mr. Marchmont.
+
+"I'm sure those Marchmont-Towers people seem very nice, my dear," the
+lady said to Belinda; "and I really wish your papa would go and dine
+there. You know I like him to dine out a good deal in the winter,
+Linda; not that I want to save the housekeeping money,--only it is so
+difficult to vary the side-dishes for a man who has been accustomed to
+mess-dinners, and a French cook."
+
+But Belinda stuck fast to her colours. She was a soldier's daughter, as
+her father said, and she was almost as good as a son. The Major meant
+this latter remark for very high praise; for the great grief of his
+life had been the want of a boy's brave face at his fireside. She was
+as good as a son; that is to say, she was braver and more outspoken
+than most women; although she was feminine and gentle withal, and by no
+means strong-minded. She would have fainted, perhaps, at the first
+sight of blood upon a battle-field; but she would have bled to death
+with the calm heroism of a martyr, rather than have been false to a
+noble cause.
+
+"I think papa is quite right not to go to Marchmont Towers, mamma," she
+said; the artful minx omitted to state that it was by reason of her
+entreaties her father had stayed away. "I think he is quite right. Mrs.
+Marchmont and Mrs. Weston may be very nice, and of course it isn't
+likely _they_ would be cruel to poor young Mrs. Arundel; but I _know_
+that Mr. Marchmont must have been unkind to that poor girl, or Mr.
+Arundel would never have done what he did."
+
+It is in the nature of good and brave men to lay down their masculine
+rights when they leave their hats in the hall, and to submit themselves
+meekly to feminine government. It is only the whippersnapper, the
+sneak, the coward out of doors who is a tyrant at home. See how meekly
+the Conqueror of Italy went home to his charming Creole wife! See how
+pleasantly the Liberator of Italy lolls in the carriage of his
+golden-haired Empress, when the young trees in that fair wood beyond
+the triumphal arch are green in the bright spring weather, and all the
+hired vehicles in Paris are making towards the cascade! Major Lawford's
+wife was too gentle, and too busy with her store-room and her domestic
+cares, to tyrannise over her lord and master; but the Major was duly
+henpecked by his blue-eyed daughters, and went here and there as they
+dictated.
+
+So he stayed away from Marchmont Towers to please Belinda; and only
+said, "Haw," "Yes," "'Pon my honour, now!" "Bless my soul!" when his
+friends told him of the magnificence of Paul's dinners.
+
+But although the Major and his eldest daughter did not encounter Mr.
+Marchmont in his own house, they met him sometimes on the neutral
+ground of other people's dining-rooms, and upon one especial evening at
+a pleasant little dinner-party given by the rector of the parish in
+which the Grange was situated.
+
+Paul made himself particularly agreeable upon this occasion; but in the
+brief interval before dinner he was absorbed in a conversation with Mr.
+Davenant, the rector, upon the subject of ecclesiastical
+architecture,--he knew everything, and could talk about everything,
+this dear Paul,--and made no attempt to approach Miss Lawford. He only
+looked at her now and then, with a furtive, oblique glance out of his
+almond-shaped, pale-grey eyes; a glance that was wisely hidden by the
+light auburn lashes, for it had an unpleasant resemblance to the leer
+of an evil-natured sprite. Mr. Marchmont contented himself with keeping
+this furtive watch upon Belinda, while she talked gaily with the
+Rector's two daughters in a pleasant corner near the piano. And as the
+artist took Mrs. Davenant down to the dining-room, and sat next her at
+dinner, he had no opportunity of fraternising with Belinda during that
+meal; for the young lady was divided from him by the whole length of
+the table and, moreover, very much occupied by the exclusive attentions
+of two callow-looking officers from the nearest garrison-town, who were
+afflicted with extreme youth, and were painfully conscious of their
+degraded state, but tried notwithstanding to carry it off with a high
+hand, and affected the opinions of used-up fifty.
+
+Mr. Marchmont had none of his womankind with him at this dinner; for
+his mother and invalid sister had neither of them felt strong enough to
+come, and Mr. and Mrs. Weston had not been invited. The artist's
+special object in coming to this dinner was the conquest of Miss
+Belinda Lawford: she sided with Edward Arundel against him: she must be
+made to believe Edward wrong, and himself right; or she might go about
+spreading her opinions, and doing him mischief. Beyond that, he had
+another idea about Belinda; and he looked to this dinner as likely to
+afford him an opportunity of laying the foundation of a very diplomatic
+scheme, in which Miss Lawford should unconsciously become his tool. He
+was vexed at being placed apart from her at the dinner-table, but he
+concealed his vexation; and he was aggravated by the Rector's
+old-fashioned hospitality, which detained the gentlemen over their wine
+for some time after the ladies left the dining-room. But the
+opportunity that he wanted came nevertheless, and in a manner that he
+had not anticipated.
+
+The two callow defenders of their country had sneaked out of the
+dining-room, and rejoined the ladies in the cosy countrified
+drawing-rooms. They had stolen away, these two young men; for they were
+oppressed by the weight of a fearful secret. _They couldn't drink
+claret!_ No; they had tried to like it; they had smacked their lips and
+winked their eyes--both at once, for even winking with _one_ eye is an
+accomplishment scarcely compatible with extreme youth--over vintages
+that had seemed to them like a happy admixture of red ink and
+green-gooseberry juice. They had perjured their boyish souls with
+hideous falsehoods as to their appreciation of pale tawny port, light
+dry wines, '42-ports, '45-ports, Kopke Roriz, Thompson and Croft's, and
+Sandemann's; when, in the secret recesses of their minds, they affected
+sweet and "slab" compounds, sold by publicans, and facetiously called
+"Our prime old port, at four-and-sixpence." They were very young, these
+beardless soldiers. They liked strawberry ices, and were on the verge
+of insolvency from a predilection for clammy bath-buns, jam-tarts, and
+cherry-brandy. They liked gorgeous waistcoats; and varnished boots in a
+state of virgin brilliancy; and little bouquets in their button-holes;
+and a deluge of _millefleurs_ upon their flimsy handkerchiefs. They
+were very young. The men they met at dinner-parties to-day had tipped
+them at Eton or Woolwich only yesterday, as it seemed, and remembered
+it and despised them. It was only a few months since they had been
+snubbed for calling the Douro a mountain in Switzerland, and the
+Himalayas a cluster of islands in the Pacific, at horrible
+examinations, in which the cold perspiration had bedewed their pallid
+young cheeks. They were delighted to get away from those elderly
+creatures in the Rector's dining-room to the snug little back
+drawing-room, where Belinda Lawford and the two Misses Davenant were
+murmuring softly in the firelight, like young turtles in a sheltered
+dove-cote; while the matrons in the larger apartment sipped their
+coffee, and conversed in low awful voices about the iniquities of
+housemaids, and the insubordination of gardeners and grooms.
+
+Belinda and her two companions were very polite to the helpless young
+wanderers from the dining-room; and they talked pleasantly enough of
+all manner of things; until somehow or other the conversation came
+round to the Marchmont-Towers scandal, and Edward's treatment of his
+lost wife's kinsman.
+
+One of the young men had been present at the hunting-breakfast on that
+bright October morning, and he was not a little proud of his superior
+acquaintance with the whole business.
+
+"I was the-aw, Miss Lawford," he said. "I was on the tew-wace after
+bweakfast,--and a vewy excellent bweakfast it was, I ass-haw you; the
+still Moselle was weally admiwable, and Marchmont has some Medewa that
+immeasuwably surpasses anything I can indooce my wine-merchant to send
+me;--I was on the tew-wace, and I saw Awundel comin' up the steps,
+awful pale, and gwasping his whip; and I was a witness of all the west
+that occurred; and if I had been Marchmont I should have shot Awundel
+befaw he left the pawk, if I'd had to swing for it, Miss Lawford; for I
+should have felt, b'Jove, that my own sense of honaw demanded the
+sacwifice. Howevaw, Marchmont seems a vewy good fella; so I suppose
+it's all wight as far as he goes; but it was a bwutal business
+altogethaw, and that fella Awundel must be a scoundwel."
+
+Belinda could not bear this. She had borne a great deal already. She
+had been obliged to sit by very often, and hear Edward Arundel's
+conduct discussed by Thomas, Richard, and Henry, or anybody else who
+chose to talk about it; and she had been patient, and had held her
+peace, with her heart bumping indignantly in her breast, and passionate
+crimson blushes burning her cheeks. But she could _not_ submit to hear
+a beardless, pale-faced, and rather weak-eyed young ensign--who had
+never done any greater service for his Queen and country than to cry
+"SHUDDRUPH!" to a detachment of raw recruits in a barrack-yard, in the
+early bleakness of a winter's morning--take upon himself to blame
+Edward Arundel, the brave soldier, the noble Indian hero, the devoted
+lover and husband, the valiant avenger of his dead wife's wrongs.
+
+"I don't think you know anything of the real story, Mr. Palliser,"
+Belinda said boldly to the half-fledged ensign. "If you did, I'm sure
+you would admire Mr. Arundel's conduct instead of blaming it. Mr.
+Marchmont fully deserved the disgrace which Edward--which Mr. Arundel
+inflicted upon him."
+
+The words were still upon her lips, when Paul Marchmont himself came
+softly through the flickering firelight to the low chair upon which
+Belinda sat. He came behind her, and laying his hand lightly upon the
+scroll-work at the back of her chair, bent over her, and said, in a low
+confidential voice,--
+
+"You are a noble girl, Miss Lawford. I am sorry that you should think
+ill of me: but I like you for having spoken so frankly. You are a most
+noble girl. You are worthy to be your father's daughter."
+
+This was said with a tone of suppressed emotion; but it was quite a
+random shot. Paul didn't know anything about the Major, except that he
+had a comfortable income, drove a neat dog-cart, and was often seen
+riding on the flat Lincolnshire roads with his eldest daughter. For all
+Paul knew to the contrary, Major Lawford might have been the veriest
+bully and coward who ever made those about him miserable; but Mr.
+Marchmont's tone as good as expressed that he was intimately acquainted
+with the old soldier's career, and had long admired and loved him. It
+was one of Paul's happy inspirations, this allusion to Belinda's
+father; one of those bright touches of colour laid on with a skilful
+recklessness, and giving sudden brightness to the whole picture; a
+little spot of vermilion dabbed upon the canvas with the point of the
+palette-knife, and lighting up all the landscape with sunshine.
+
+"You know my father?" said Belinda, surprised.
+
+"Who does not know him?" cried the artist. "Do you think, Miss Lawford,
+that it is necessary to sit at a man's dinner-table before you know
+what he is? I know your father to be a good man and a brave soldier, as
+well as I know that the Duke of Wellington is a great general, though I
+never dined at Apsley House. I respect your father, Miss Lawford; and I
+have been very much distressed by his evident avoidance of me and
+mine."
+
+This was coming to the point at once. Mr. Marchmont's manner was
+candour itself. Belinda looked at him with widely-opened, wondering
+eyes. She was looking for the evidence of his wickedness in his face. I
+think she half-expected that Mr. Marchmont would have corked eyebrows,
+and a slouched hat, like a stage ruffian. She was so innocent, this
+simple young Belinda, that she imagined wicked people must necessarily
+look wicked.
+
+Paul Marchmont saw the wavering of her mind in that half-puzzled
+expression, and he went on boldly.
+
+"I like your father, Miss Lawford," he said; "I like him, and I respect
+him; and I want to know him. Other people may misunderstand me, if they
+please. I can't help their opinions. The truth is generally strongest
+in the end; and I can afford to wait. But I can_not_ afford to forfeit
+the friendship of a man I esteem; I cannot afford to be misunderstood
+by your father, Miss Lawford; and I have been very much pained--yes,
+very much pained--by the manner in which the Major has repelled my
+little attempts at friendliness."
+
+Belinda's heart smote her. She knew that it was her influence that had
+kept her father away from Marchmont Towers. This young lady was very
+conscientious. She was a Christian, too; and a certain sentence
+touching wrongful judgments rose up against her while Mr. Marchmont was
+speaking. If she had wronged this man; if Edward Arundel has been
+misled by his passionate grief for Mary; if she had been deluded by
+Edward's error,--how very badly Mr. Marchmont had been treated between
+them! She didn't say anything, but sat looking thoughtfully at the
+fire; and Paul saw that she was more and more perplexed. This was just
+what the artist wanted. To talk his antagonist into a state of
+intellectual fog was almost always his manner of commencing an
+argument.
+
+Belinda was silent, and Paul seated himself in a chair close to hers.
+The callow ensigns had gone into the lamp-lit front drawing-room, and
+were busy turning over the leaves--and never turning them over at the
+right moment--of a thundering duet which the Misses Davenant were
+performing for the edification of their papa's visitors. Miss Lawford
+and Mr. Marchmont were alone, therefore, in that cosy inner chamber,
+and a very pretty picture they made: the rosy-cheeked girl and the
+pale, sentimental-looking artist sitting side by side in the glow of
+the low fire, with a background of crimson curtains and gleaming
+picture-frames; winter flowers piled in grim Indian jars; the fitful
+light flickering now and then upon one sharp angle of the high carved
+mantelpiece, with all its litter of antique china; and the rest of the
+room in sombre shadow. Paul had the field all to himself, and felt that
+victory would be easy. He began to talk about Edward Arundel.
+
+If he had said one word against the young soldier, I think this
+impetuous girl, who had not yet learned to count the cost of what she
+did, would have been passionately eloquent in defence of her friend's
+brother--for no other reason than that he was the brother of her
+friend, of course; what other reason should she have for defending Mr.
+Arundel?
+
+But Paul Marchmont did not give her any occasion for indignation. On
+the contrary, he spoke in praise of the hot-headed young soldier who
+had assaulted him, making all manner of excuses for the young man's
+violence, and using that tone of calm superiority with which a man of
+the world might naturally talk about a foolish boy.
+
+"He has been very unreasonable, Miss Lawford," Paul said by-and-by; "he
+has been very unreasonable, and has most grossly insulted me. But, in
+spite of all, I believe him to be a very noble young fellow, and I
+cannot find it in my heart to be really angry with him. What his
+particular grievance against me may be, I really do not know."
+
+The furtive glance from the long narrow grey eyes kept close watch upon
+Belinda's face as Paul said this. Mr. Marchmont wanted to ascertain
+exactly how much Belinda knew of that grievance of Edward's; but he
+could see only perplexity in her face. She knew nothing definite,
+therefore; she had only heard Edward talk vaguely of his wrongs. Paul
+Marchmont was convinced of this; and he went on boldly now, for he felt
+that the ground was all clear before him.
+
+"This foolish young soldier chooses to be angry with me because of a
+calamity which I was as powerless to avert, as to prevent that accident
+upon the South-Western Railway by which Mr. Arundel so nearly lost his
+life. I cannot tell you how sincerely I regret the misconception that
+has arisen in his mind. Because I have profited by the death of John
+Marchmont's daughter, this impetuous young husband imagines--what? I
+cannot answer that question; nor can he himself, it seems, since he has
+made no definite statement of his wrongs to any living being."
+
+The artist looked more sharply than ever at Belinda's listening face.
+There was no change in its expression; the same wondering look, the
+same perplexity,--that was all.
+
+"When I say that I regret the young man's folly, Miss Lawford," Paul
+continued, "believe me, it is chiefly on his account rather than my
+own. Any insult which he can inflict upon me can only rebound upon
+himself, since everybody in Lincolnshire knows that I am in the right,
+and he in the wrong."
+
+Mr. Marchmont was going on very smoothly; but at this point Miss
+Lawford, who had by no means deserted her colours, interrupted his easy
+progress.
+
+"It remains to be proved who is right and who wrong, Mr. Marchmont,"
+she said. "Mr. Arundel is the brother of my friend. I cannot easily
+believe him to have done wrong."
+
+Paul looked at her with a smile--a smile that brought hot blushes to
+her face; but she returned his look without flinching. The brave girl
+looked full into the narrow grey eyes sheltered under pale auburn
+lashes, and her steadfast gaze did not waver.
+
+"Ah, Miss Lawford," said the artist, still smiling, "when a young man
+is handsome, chivalrous, and generous-hearted, it is very difficult to
+convince a woman that he can do wrong. Edward Arundel has done wrong.
+His ultra-quixotism has made him blind to the folly of his own acts. I
+can afford to forgive him. But I repeat that I regret his infatuation
+about this poor lost girl far more upon his account than on my own; for
+I know--at least I venture to think--that a way lies open to him of a
+happier and a better life than he could ever have known with my poor
+childish cousin Mary Marchmont. I have reason to know that he has
+formed another attachment, and that it is only a chivalrous delusion
+about that poor girl--whom he was never really in love with, and whom
+he only married because of some romantic notion inspired by my cousin
+John--that withholds him from that other and brighter prospect."
+
+He was silent for a few moments, and then he said hastily,--
+
+"Pardon me, Miss Lawford; I have been betrayed into saying much that I
+had better have left unsaid, more especially to you. I----"
+
+He hesitated a little, as if embarrassed; and then rose and looked into
+the next room, where the duet had been followed by a solo.
+
+One of the Rector's daughters came towards the inner drawing-room,
+followed by a callow ensign.
+
+"We want Belinda to sing," exclaimed Miss Davenant. "We want you to
+sing, you tiresome Belinda, instead of hiding yourself in that dark
+room all the evening."
+
+Belinda came out of the darkness, with her cheeks flushed and her
+eyelids drooping. Her heart was beating so fast as to make it quite
+impossible to speak just yet, or to sing either. But she sat down
+before the piano, and, with hands that trembled in spite of herself,
+began to play one of her pet sonatas.
+
+Unhappily, Beethoven requires precision of touch in the pianist who is
+bold enough to seek to interpret him; and upon this occasion I am
+compelled to admit that Miss Lawford's fingering was eccentric, not to
+say ridiculous,--in common parlance, she made a mess of it; and just as
+she was going to break down, friendly Clara Davenant cried out,--
+
+"That won't do, Belinda! We want you to sing, not to play. You are
+trying to cheat us. We would rather have one of Moore's melodies than
+all Beethoven's sonatas."
+
+So Miss Lawford, still blushing, with her eyelids still drooping,
+played Sir John Stevenson's simple symphony, and in a fresh swelling
+voice, that filled the room with melody, began:
+
+  "Oh, the days are gone when beauty bright
+    My heart's chain wove;
+   When my dream of life, from morn till night,
+    Was love, still love!"
+
+And Paul Marchmont, sitting at the other end of the room turning over
+Miss Davenant's scrap-book, looked up through his auburn lashes, and
+smiled at the beaming face of the singer. He felt that he had improved
+the occasion.
+
+"I am not afraid of Miss Lawford now," he thought to himself.
+
+This candid, fervent girl was only another piece in the schemer's game
+of chess; and he saw a way of making her useful in the attainment of
+that great end which, in the strange simplicity of cunning, he believed
+to be the one purpose of _every_ man's life,--Self-Aggrandisement.
+
+It never for a moment entered into his mind that Edward Arundel was any
+more _real_ than he was himself. There can be no perfect comprehension
+where there is no sympathy. Paul believed that Edward had tried to
+become master of Mary Marchmont's heritage; and had failed; and was
+angry because of his failure. He believed this passionate young man to
+be a schemer like himself; only a little more impetuous and blundering
+in his manner of going to work.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+THE RETURN OF THE WANDERER.
+
+
+The March winds were blowing amongst the oaks in Dangerfield Park, when
+Edward Arundel went back to the house which had never been his home
+since his boyhood. He went back because he had grown weary of lonely
+wanderings in that strange Breton country. He had grown weary of
+himself and of his own thoughts. He was worn out by the eager desire
+that devoured him by day and by night,--the passionate yearning to be
+far away beyond that low Eastern horizon line; away amid the carnage
+and riot of an Indian battle-field.
+
+So he went back at last to his mother, who had written to him again and
+again, imploring him to return to her, and to rest, and to be happy in
+the familiar household where he was beloved. He left his luggage at the
+little inn where the coach that had brought him from Exeter stopped,
+and then he walked quietly homewards in the gloaming. The early spring
+evening was bleak and chill. The blacksmith's fire roared at him as he
+went by the smithy. All the lights in the queer latticed windows
+twinkled and blinked at him, as if in friendly welcome to the wanderer.
+He remembered them all: the quaint, misshapen, lopsided roofs; the
+tumble-down chimneys; the low doorways, that had sunk down below the
+level of the village street, until all the front parlours became
+cellars, and strange pedestrians butted their heads against the
+flower-pots in the bedroom windows; the withered iron frame and pitiful
+oil-lamp hung out at the corner of the street, and making a faint spot
+of feeble light upon the rugged pavement; mysterious little shops in
+diamond-paned parlour windows, where Dutch dolls and stationery, stale
+gingerbread and pickled cabbage, were mixed up with wooden pegtops,
+squares of yellow soap, rickety paper kites, green apples, and string;
+they were all familiar to him.
+
+It had been a fine thing once to come into this village with Letitia,
+and buy stale gingerbread and rickety kites of a snuffy old pensioner
+of his mother's. The kites had always stuck in the upper branches of
+the oaks, and the gingerbread had invariably choked him; but with the
+memory of the kites and gingerbread came back all the freshness of his
+youth, and he looked with a pensive tenderness at the homely little
+shops, the merchandise flickering in the red firelight, that filled
+each quaint interior with a genial glow of warmth and colour.
+
+He passed unquestioned by a wicket at the side of the great gates. The
+firelight was rosy in the windows of the lodge, and he heard a woman's
+voice singing a monotonous song to a sleepy child. Everywhere in this
+pleasant England there seemed to be the glow of cottage-fires, and
+friendliness, and love, and home. The young man sighed as he remembered
+that great stone mansion far away in dismal Lincolnshire, and thought
+how happy he might have been in this bleak spring twilight, if he could
+have sat by Mary Marchmont's side in the western drawing-room, watching
+the firelight and the shadows trembling on her fair young face.
+
+It never had been; and it never was to be. The happiness of a home; the
+sweet sense of ownership; the delight of dispensing pleasure to others;
+all the simple domestic joys which make life beautiful,--had never been
+known to John Marchmont's daughter, since that early time in which she
+shared her father's lodging in Oakley Street, and went out in the cold
+December morning to buy rolls for Edward Arundel's breakfast. From the
+bay-window of his mother's favourite sitting-room the same red light
+that he had seen in every lattice in the village streamed out upon the
+growing darkness of the lawn. There was a half-glass door leading into
+a little lobby near this sitting-room. Edward Arundel opened it and
+went in, very quietly. He expected to find his mother and his sister in
+the room with the bay-window.
+
+The door of this familiar apartment was ajar; he pushed it open, and
+went in. It was a very pretty room, and all the womanly litter of open
+books and music, needlework and drawing materials, made it homelike.
+The firelight flickered upon everything--on the pictures and
+picture-frames, the black oak paneling, the open piano, a cluster of
+snowdrops in a tall glass on the table, the scattered worsteds by the
+embroidery-frame, the sleepy dogs upon the hearth-rug. A young lady
+stood in the bay-window with her back to the fire. Edward Arundel crept
+softly up to her, and put his arm round her waist.
+
+"Letty!"
+
+It was not Letitia, but a young lady with very blue eyes, who blushed
+scarlet, and turned upon the young man rather fiercely; and then
+recognising him, dropped into the nearest chair and began to tremble
+and grow pale.
+
+"I am sorry I startled you, Miss Lawford," Edward said, gently; "I
+really thought you were my sister. I did not even know that you were
+here."
+
+"No, of course not. I--you didn't startle me much, Mr. Arundel; only
+you were not expected home. I thought you were far away in Brittany. I
+had no idea that there was any chance of your returning. I thought you
+meant to be away all the summer--Mrs. Arundel told me so."
+
+Belinda Lawford said all this in that fresh girlish voice which was
+familiar to Mr. Arundel; but she was still very pale, and she still
+trembled a little, and there was something almost apologetic in the way
+in which she assured Edward that she had believed he would be abroad
+throughout the summer. It seemed almost as if she had said: "I did not
+come here because I thought I should see you. I had no thought or hope
+of meeting you."
+
+But Edward Arundel was not a coxcomb, and he was very slow to
+understand any such signs as these. He saw that he had startled the
+young lady, and that she had turned pale and trembled as she recognised
+him; and he looked at her with a half-wondering, half-pensive
+expression in his face.
+
+She blushed as he looked at her. She went to the table and began to
+gather together the silks and worsteds, as if the arrangement of her
+workbasket were a matter of vital importance, to be achieved at any
+sacrifice of politeness. Then, suddenly remembering that she ought to
+say something to Mr. Arundel, she gave evidence of the originality of
+her intellect by the following remark:
+
+"How surprised Mrs. Arundel and Letitia will be to see you!"
+
+Even as she said this her eyes were still bent upon the skeins of
+worsted in her hand.
+
+"Yes; I think they will be surprised. I did not mean to come home until
+the autumn. But I got so tired of wandering about a strange country
+alone. Where are they--my mother and Letitia?"
+
+"They have gone down the village, to the school. They will be back to
+tea. Your brother is away; and we dine at three o'clock, and drink tea
+at eight. It is so much pleasanter than dining late."
+
+This was quite an effort of genius; and Miss Lawford went on sorting
+the skeins of worsted in the firelight. Edward Arundel had been
+standing all this time with his hat in his hand, almost as if he had
+been a visitor making a late morning call upon Belinda; but he put his
+hat down now, and seated himself near the table by which the young lady
+stood, busy with the arrangement of her workbasket.
+
+Her heart was beating very fast, and she was straining her arithmetical
+powers to the uttermost, in the endeavour to make a very abstruse
+calculation as to the time in which Mrs. Arundel and Letitia could walk
+to the village schoolhouse and back to Dangerfield, and the delay that
+might arise by reason of sundry interruptions from obsequious gaffers
+and respectful goodies, eager for a word of friendly salutation from
+their patroness.
+
+The arrangement of the workbasket could not last for ever. It had
+become the most pitiful pretence by the time Miss Lawford shut down the
+wicker lid, and seated herself primly in a low chair by the fireplace.
+She sat looking down at the fire, and twisting a slender gold chain in
+and out between her smooth white fingers. She looked very pretty in
+that fitful firelight, with her waving brown hair pushed off her
+forehead, and her white eyelids hiding the tender blue eyes. She sat
+twisting the chain in her fingers, and dared not lift her eyes to Mr.
+Arundel's face; and if there had been a whole flock of geese in the
+room, she could not have said "Bo!" to one of them.
+
+And yet she was not a stupid girl. Her father could have indignantly
+refuted any such slander as that against the azure-eyed Hebe who made
+his home pleasant to him. To the Major's mind Belinda was all that man
+could desire in the woman of his choice, whether as daughter or wife.
+She was the bright genius of the old man's home, and he loved her with
+that chivalrous devotion which is common to brave soldiers, who are the
+simplest and gentlest of men when you chain them to their firesides,
+and keep them away from the din of the camp and the confusion of the
+transport-ship.
+
+Belinda Lawford was clever; but only just clever enough to be charming.
+I don't think she could have got through "Paradise Lost," or Gibbon's
+"Decline and Fall," or a volume by Adam Smith or McCulloch, though you
+had promised her a diamond necklace when she came conscientiously to
+"Finis." But she could read Shakespeare for the hour together, and did
+read him aloud to her father in a fresh, clear voice, that was like
+music on the water. And she read Macaulay's "History of England," with
+eyes that kindled with indignation against cowardly, obstinate James,
+or melted with pity for poor weak foolish Monmouth, as the case might
+be. She could play Mendelssohn and Beethoven,--plaintive sonatas;
+tender songs, that had no need of words to expound the mystic meaning
+of the music. She could sing old ballads and Irish melodies, that
+thrilled the souls of those who heard her, and made hard men pitiful to
+brazen Hibernian beggars in the London streets for the memory of that
+pensive music. She could read the leaders in the "Times," with no false
+quantities in the Latin quotations, and knew what she was reading
+about; and had her favourites at St. Stephen's; and adored Lord
+Palmerston, and was liberal to the core of her tender young heart. She
+was as brave as a true Englishwoman should be, and would have gone to
+the wars with her old father, and served him as his page; or would have
+followed him into captivity, and tended him in prison, if she had lived
+in the days when there was such work for a high-spirited girl to do.
+
+But she sat opposite Mr. Edward Arundel, and twisted her chain round
+her fingers, and listened for the footsteps of the returning mistress
+of the house. She was like a bashful schoolgirl who has danced with an
+officer at her first ball. And yet amidst her shy confusion, her fears
+that she should seem agitated and embarrassed, her struggles to appear
+at her ease, there was a sort of pleasure in being seated there by the
+low fire with Edward Arundel opposite to her. There was a strange
+pleasure, an almost painful pleasure, mingled with her feelings in
+those quiet moments. She was acutely conscious of every sound that
+broke the stillness--the sighing of the wind in the wide chimney; the
+falling of the cinders on the hearth; the occasional snort of one of
+the sleeping dogs; and the beating of her own restless heart. And
+though she dared not lift her eyelids to the young soldier's face, that
+handsome, earnest countenance, with the chestnut hair lit up with
+gleams of gold, the firm lips shaded by a brown moustache, the pensive
+smile, the broad white forehead, the dark-blue handkerchief tied
+loosely under a white collar, the careless grey travelling-dress, even
+the attitude of the hand and arm, the bent head drooping a little over
+the fire,--were as present to her inner sight as if her eyes had kept
+watch all this time, and had never wavered in their steady gaze.
+
+There is a second-sight that is not recognised by grave professors of
+magic--a second-sight which common people call Love.
+
+But by-and-by Edward began to talk, and then Miss Lawford found
+courage, and took heart to question him about his wanderings in
+Brittany. She had only been a few weeks in Devonshire, she said. Her
+thoughts went back to the dreary autumn in Lincolnshire as she spoke;
+and she remembered the dull October day upon which her father had come
+into the girl's morning-room at the Grange with Edward's farewell
+letter in his hand. She remembered this, and all the talk that there
+had been about the horsewhipping of Mr. Paul Marchmont upon his own
+threshold. She remembered all the warm discussions, the speculations,
+the ignorant conjectures, the praise, the blame; and how it had been
+her business to sit by and listen and hold her peace, except upon that
+one never-to-be-forgotten night at the Rectory, when Paul Marchmont had
+hinted at something whose perfect meaning she had never dared to
+imagine, but which had, somehow or other, mingled vaguely with all her
+day-dreams ever since.
+
+Was there any truth in that which Paul Marchmont had said to her? Was
+it true that Edward Arundel had never really loved his young bride?
+
+Letitia had said as much, not once, but twenty times.
+
+"It's quite ridiculous to suppose that he could have ever been in love
+with the poor, dear, sickly thing," Miss Arundel had exclaimed; "it was
+only the absurd romance of the business that captivated him; for Edward
+is really ridiculously romantic, and her father having been a
+supernumer--(it's no use, I don't think anybody ever did know how many
+syllables there are in that word)--and having lived in Oakley Street,
+and having written a pitiful letter to Edward, about this motherless
+daughter and all that sort of thing, just like one of those tiresome
+old novels with a baby left at a cottage-door, and all the _s's_
+looking like _f's_, and the last word of one page repeated at the top
+of the next page, and printed upon thick yellow-looking ribbed paper,
+you know. _That_ was why my brother married Miss Marchmont, you may
+depend upon it, Linda; and all I hope is, that he'll be sensible enough
+to marry again soon, and to have a Christianlike wedding, with
+carriages, and a breakfast, and two clergymen; and _I_ should wear
+white glace silk, with tulle puffings, and a tulle bonnet (I suppose I
+must wear a bonnet, being only a bridesmaid?), all showered over with
+clematis, as if I'd stood under a clematis-bush when the wind was
+blowing, you know, Linda."
+
+With such discourse as this Miss Arundel had frequently entertained her
+friend; and she had indulged in numerous inuendoes of an embarrassing
+nature as to the propriety of old friends and schoolfellows being
+united by the endearing tie of sister-in-lawhood, and other
+observations to the like effect.
+
+Belinda knew that if Edward ever came to love her,--whenever she did
+venture to speculate upon such a chance, she never dared to come at all
+near it, but thought of it as a thing that might come to pass in half a
+century or so--if he should choose her for his second wife, she knew
+that she would be gladly and tenderly welcomed at Dangerfield. Mrs.
+Arundel had hinted as much as this. Belinda knew how anxiously that
+loving mother hoped that her son might, by-and-by, form new ties, and
+cease to lead a purposeless life, wasting his brightest years in
+lamentations for his lost bride: she knew all this; and sitting
+opposite to the young man in the firelight, there was a dull pain at
+her heart; for there was something in the soldier's sombre face that
+told her he had not yet ceased to lament that irrevocable past.
+
+But Mrs. Arundel and Letitia came in presently, and gave utterance to
+loud rejoicings; and preparations were made for the physical comfort of
+the wanderer,--bells were rung, lighted wax-candles and a glittering
+tea-service were brought in, a cloth was laid, and cold meats and other
+comestibles spread forth, with that profusion which has made the west
+country as proverbial as the north for its hospitality. I think Miss
+Lawford would have sat opposite the traveller for a week without asking
+any such commonplace question as to whether Mr. Arundel required
+refreshment. She had read in her Hort's "Pantheon" that the gods
+sometimes ate and drank like ordinary mortals; yet it had never entered
+into her mind that Edward could be hungry. But she now had the
+satisfaction of seeing Mr. Arundel eat a very good dinner; while she
+herself poured out the tea, to oblige Letitia, who was in the middle of
+the third volume of a new novel, and went on reading it as coolly as if
+there had been no such person as that handsome young soldier in the
+world.
+
+"The books must go back to the club to-morrow morning, you know, mamma
+dear, or I wouldn't read at tea-time," the young lady remarked
+apologetically. "I want to know whether _he'll_ marry Theodora or that
+nasty Miss St. Ledger. Linda thinks he'll marry Miss St. Ledger, and be
+miserable, and Theodora will die. I believe Linda likes love-stories to
+end unhappily. I don't. I hope if he _does_ marry Miss St. Ledger--and
+he'll be a wicked wretch if he does, after the _things_ he has said to
+Theodora--I hope, if he does, she'll die--catch cold at a _dejeuner_ at
+Twickenham, or something of that kind, you know; and then he'll marry
+Theodora afterwards, and all will end happily. Do you know, Linda, I
+always fancy that you're like Theodora, and that Edward's like _him_."
+
+After which speech Miss Arundel went back to her book, and Edward
+helped himself to a slice of tongue rather awkwardly, and Belinda
+Lawford, who had her hand upon the urn, suffered the teapot to overflow
+amongst the cups and saucers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+A WIDOWER'S PROPOSAL.
+
+
+For some time after his return Edward Arundel was very restless and
+gloomy: roaming about the country by himself, under the influence of a
+pretended passion for pedestrianism; reading hard for the first time in
+his life, shutting himself in his dead father's library, and sitting
+hour after hour in a great easy-chair, reading the histories of all the
+wars that have ever ravaged this earth--from the days in which the
+elephants of a Carthaginian ruler trampled upon the soldiery of Rome,
+to the era of that Corsican barrister's wonderful son, who came out of
+his simple island home to conquer the civilised half of a world.
+
+Edward Arundel showed himself a very indifferent brother; for, do what
+she would, Letitia could not induce him to join in any of her pursuits.
+She caused a butt to be set up upon the lawn; but all she could say
+about Belinda's "best gold" could not bring the young man out upon the
+grass to watch the two girls shooting. He looked at them by stealth
+sometimes through the window of the library, and sighed as he thought
+of the blight upon his manhood, and of all the things that might have
+been.
+
+Might not these things even yet come to pass? Had he not done his duty
+to the dead; and was he not free now to begin a fresh life? His mother
+was perpetually hinting at some bright prospect that lay smiling before
+him, if he chose to take the blossom-bestrewn path that led to that
+fair country. His sister told him still more plainly of a prize that
+was within his reach, if he were but brave enough to stretch out his
+hand and claim the precious treasure for his own. But when he thought
+of all this,--when he pondered whether it would not be wise to drop the
+dense curtain of forgetfulness over that sad picture of the
+past,--whether it would not be well to let the dead bury their dead,
+and to accept that other blessing which the same Providence that had
+blighted his first hope seemed to offer to him now,--the shadowy
+phantom of John Marchmont arose out of the mystic realms of the dead,
+and a ghostly voice cried to him, "I charged you with my daughter's
+safe keeping; I trusted you with her innocent love; I gave you the
+custody of her helplessness. What have you done to show yourself worthy
+of my faith in you?"
+
+These thoughts tormented the young widower perpetually, and deprived
+him of all pleasure in the congenial society of his sister and Belinda
+Lawford; or infused so sharp a flavour of remorse into his cup of
+enjoyment, that pleasure was akin to pain.
+
+So I don't know how it was that, in the dusky twilight of a bright day
+in early May, nearly two months after his return to Dangerfield, Edward
+Arundel, coming by chance upon Miss Lawford as she sat alone in the
+deep bay-window where he had found her on his first coming, confessed
+to her the terrible struggle of feeling that made the great trouble of
+his life, and asked her if she was willing to accept a love which, in
+its warmest fervour, was not quite unclouded by the shadows of the
+sorrowful past.
+
+"I love you dearly, Linda," he said; "I love, I esteem, I admire you;
+and I know that it is in your power to give me the happiest future that
+ever a man imagined in his youngest, brightest dreams. But if you do
+accept my love, dear, you must take my memory with it. I cannot forget,
+Linda. I have tried to forget. I have prayed that God, in His mercy,
+might give me forgetfulness of that irrevocable past. But the prayer
+has never been granted; the boon has never been bestowed. I think that
+love for the living and remorse for the dead must for ever reign side
+by side in my heart. It is no falsehood to you that makes me remember
+her; it is no forgetfulness of her that makes me love you. I offer my
+brighter and happier self to you, Belinda; I consecrate my sorrow and
+my tears to her. I love you with all my heart, Belinda; but even for
+the sake of your love I will not pretend that I can forget her. If John
+Marchmont's daughter had died with her head upon my breast, and a
+prayer on her lips, I might have regretted her as other men regret
+their wives; and I might have learned by-and-by to look back upon my
+grief with only a tender and natural regret, that would have left my
+future life unclouded. But it can never be so. The poison of remorse is
+blended with that sorrowful memory. If I had done otherwise,--if I had
+been wiser and more thoughtful,--my darling need never have suffered;
+my darling need never have sinned. It is the thought that her death may
+have been a sinful one, that is most cruel to me, Belinda. I have seen
+her pray, with her pale earnest face uplifted, and the light of faith
+shining in her gentle eyes; I have seen the inspiration of God upon her
+face; and I cannot bear to think that, in the darkness that came down
+upon her young life, that holy light was quenched; I cannot bear to
+think that Heaven was ever deaf to the pitiful cry of my innocent
+lamb."
+
+And here Mr. Arundel paused, and sat silently, looking out at the long
+shadows of the trees upon the darkening lawn; and I fear that, for the
+time being, he forgot that he had just made Miss Lawford an offer of
+his hand, and so much of his heart as a widower may be supposed to have
+at his disposal.
+
+Ah me! we can only live and die _once_. There are some things, and
+those the most beautiful of all things, that can never be renewed: the
+bloom on a butterfly's wing; the morning dew upon a newly-blown rose;
+our first view of the ocean; our first pantomime, when all the fairies
+were fairies for ever, and when the imprudent consumption of the
+contents of a pewter quart-measure in sight of the stage-box could not
+disenchant us with that elfin creature, Harlequin the graceful,
+faithful betrothed of Columbine the fair. The firstlings of life are
+most precious. When the black wing of the angel of death swept over
+agonised Egypt, and the children were smitten, offended Heaven, eager
+for a sacrifice, took the firstborn. The young mothers would have other
+children, perhaps; but between those others and the mother's love there
+would be the pale shadow of that lost darling whose tiny hands _first_
+drew undreamed-of melodies from the sleeping chords, _first_ evoked the
+slumbering spirit of maternal love. Amongst the later lines--the most
+passionate, the most sorrowful--that George Gordon Noel Byron wrote,
+are some brief verses that breathed a lament for the lost freshness,
+the never-to-be-recovered youth.
+
+ "Oh, could I feel as I have felt; or be what I have been;
+  Or weep as I could once have wept!"
+
+cried the poet, when he complained of that "mortal coldness of the
+soul," which is "like death itself." It is a pity certainly that so
+great a man should die in the prime of life; but if Byron had survived
+to old age after writing these lines, he would have been a living
+anticlimax. When a man writes that sort of poetry he pledges himself to
+die young.
+
+Edward Arundel had grown to love Belinda Lawford unconsciously, and in
+spite of himself; but the first love of his heart, the first fruit of
+his youth, had perished. He could not feel quite the same devotion, the
+same boyish chivalry, that he had felt for the innocent bride who had
+wandered beside him in the sheltered meadows near Winchester. He might
+begin a _new_ life, but he could not live the _old_ life over again. He
+must wear his rue with a difference this time. But he loved Belinda
+very dearly, nevertheless; and he told her so, and by-and-by won from
+her a tearful avowal of affection.
+
+Alas! she had no power to question the manner of his wooing. He loved
+her--he had said as much; and all the good she had desired in this
+universe became hers from the moment of Edward Arundel's utterance of
+those words. He loved her; that was enough. That he should cherish a
+remorseful sorrow for that lost wife, made him only the truer, nobler,
+and dearer in Belinda's sight. She was not vain, or exacting, or
+selfish. It was not in her nature to begrudge poor dead Mary the tender
+thoughts of her husband. She was generous, impulsive, believing; and
+she had no more inclination to doubt Edward's love for her, after he
+had once avowed such a sentiment, than to disbelieve in the light of
+heaven when she saw the sun shining. Unquestioning, and unutterably
+happy, she received her lover's betrothal kiss, and went with him to
+his mother, blushing and trembling, to receive that lady's blessing.
+
+"Ah, if you knew how I have prayed for this, Linda!" Mrs. Arundel
+exclaimed, as she folded the girl's slight figure in her arms.
+
+"And I shall wear white glace with pinked flounces, instead of tulle
+puffings, you sly Linda," cried Letitia.
+
+"And I'll give Ted the home-farm, and the white house to live in, if he
+likes to try his hand at the new system of farming," said Reginald
+Arundel, who had come home from the Continent, and had amused himself
+for the last week by strolling about his estate and staring at his
+timber, and almost wishing that there was a necessity for cutting down
+all the oaks in the avenue, so that he might have something to occupy
+him until the 12th of August.
+
+Never was promised bride more welcome to a household than bright
+Belinda Lawford; and as for the young lady herself, I must confess that
+she was almost childishly happy, and that it was all that she could do
+to prevent her light step from falling into a dance as she floated
+hither and thither through the house at Dangerfield,--a fresh young
+Hebe in crisp muslin robes; a gentle goddess, with smiles upon her face
+and happiness in her heart.
+
+"I loved you from the first, Edward," she whispered one day to her
+lover. "I knew that you were good, and brave, and noble; and I loved
+you because of that."
+
+And a little for the golden glimmer in his clustering curls; and a
+little for his handsome profile, his flashing eyes, and that
+distinguished air peculiar to the defenders of their country; more
+especially peculiar, perhaps, to those who ride on horseback when they
+sally forth to defend her. Once a soldier for ever a soldier, I think.
+You may rob the noble warrior of his uniform, if you will; but the _je
+ne sais quoi_, the nameless air of the "long-sword, saddle, bridle,"
+will hang round him still.
+
+Mrs. Arundel and Letitia took matters quite out of the hands of the two
+lovers. The elderly lady fixed the wedding-day, by agreement with Major
+Lawford, and sketched out the route for the wedding-tour. The younger
+lady chose the fabrics for the dresses of the bride and her attendants;
+and all was done before Edward and Belinda well knew what their friends
+were about. I think that Mrs. Arundel feared her son might change his
+mind if matters were not brought swiftly to a climax, and that she
+hurried on the irrevocable day in order that he might have no breathing
+time until the vows had been spoken and Belinda Lawford was his wedded
+wife. It had been arranged that Edward should escort Belinda back to
+Lincolnshire, and that his mother and Letitia, who was to be chief
+bridesmaid, should go with them. The marriage was to be solemnised at
+Hillingsworth church, which was within a mile and a half of the Grange.
+
+The 1st of July was the day appointed by agreement between Major and
+Mrs. Lawford and Mrs. Arundel; and on the 18th of June Edward was to
+accompany his mother, Letitia, and Belinda to London. They were to
+break the journey by stopping in town for a few days, in order to make
+a great many purchases necessary for Miss Lawford's wedding
+paraphernalia, for which the Major had sent a bouncing cheque to his
+favourite daughter.
+
+And all this time the only person at all unsettled, the only person
+whose mind was ill at ease, was Edward Arundel, the young widower who
+was about to take to himself a second wife. His mother, who watched him
+with a maternal comprehension of every change in his face, saw this,
+and trembled for her son's happiness.
+
+"And yet he cannot be otherwise than happy with Belinda Lawford," Mrs.
+Arundel thought to herself.
+
+But upon the eve of that journey to London Edward sat alone with his
+mother in the drawing-room at Dangerfield, after the two younger ladies
+had retired for the night. They slept in adjoining apartments, these
+two young ladies; and I regret to say that a great deal of their
+conversation was about Valenciennes lace, and flounces cut upon the
+cross, moire antique, mull muslin, glace silk, and the last "sweet
+thing" in bonnets. It was only when loquacious Letitia was shut out
+that Miss Lawford knelt alone in the still moonlight, and prayed that
+she might be a good wife to the man who had chosen her. I don't think
+she ever prayed that she might be faithful and true and pure; for it
+never entered into her mind that any creature bearing the sacred name
+of wife could be otherwise. She only prayed for the mysterious power to
+preserve her husband's affection, and make his life happy.
+
+Mrs. Arundel, sitting _tete-a-tete_ with her younger son in the
+lamp-lit drawing-room, was startled by hearing the young man breathe a
+deep sigh. She looked up from her work to see a sadder expression in
+his face than perhaps ever clouded the countenance of an expectant
+bridegroom.
+
+"Edward!" she exclaimed.
+
+"What, mother?"
+
+"How heavily you sighed just now!"
+
+"Did I?" said Mr. Arundel, abstractedly. Then, after a brief pause, he
+said, in a different tone, "It is no use trying to hide these things
+from you, mother. The truth is, I am not happy."
+
+"Not happy, Edward!" cried Mrs. Arundel; "but surely you----?"
+
+"I know what you are going to say, mother. Yes, mother, I love this
+dear girl Linda with all my heart; I love her most sincerely; and I
+could look forward to a life of unalloyed happiness with her, if--if
+there was not some inexplicable dread, some vague and most miserable
+feeling always coming between me and my hopes. I have tried to look
+forward to the future, mother; I have tried to think of what my life
+may be with Belinda; but I cannot, I cannot. I cannot look forward; all
+is dark to me. I try to build up a bright palace, and an unknown hand
+shatters it. I try to turn away from the memory of my old sorrows; but
+the same hand plucks me back, and chains me to the past. If I could
+retract what I have done; if I could, with any show of honour, draw
+back, even now, and not go upon this journey to Lincolnshire; if I
+_could_ break my faith to this poor girl who loves me, and whom I love,
+as God knows, with all truth and earnestness, I would do so--I would do
+so."
+
+"Edward!"
+
+"Yes, mother; I would do it. It is not in me to forget. My dead wife
+haunts me by night and day. I hear her voice crying to me, 'False,
+false, false; cruel and false; heartless and forgetful!' There is never
+a night that I do not dream of that dark sluggish river down in
+Lincolnshire. There is never a dream that I have--however purposeless,
+however inconsistent in all its other details--in which I do not see
+_her_ dead face looking up at me through the murky waters. Even when I
+am talking to Linda, when words of love for her are on my lips, my mind
+wanders away, back--always back--to the sunset by the boat-house, when
+my little wife gave me her hand; to the trout-stream in the meadow,
+where we sat side by side and talked about the future."
+
+For a few minutes Mrs. Arundel was quite silent. She abandoned herself
+for that brief interval to complete despair. It was all over. The
+bridegroom would cry off; insulted Major Lawford would come post-haste
+to Dangerfield, to annihilate this dismal widower, who did not know his
+own mind. All the shimmering fabrics--the gauzes, and laces, and silks,
+and velvets--that were in course of preparation in the upper chambers
+would become so much useless finery, to be hidden in out-of-the-way
+cupboards, and devoured by misanthropical moths,--insect iconoclasts,
+who take a delight in destroying the decorations of the human temple.
+
+Poor Mrs. Arundel took a mental photograph of all the complicated
+horrors of the situation. An offended father; a gentle, loving girl
+crushed like some broken lily; gossip, slander; misery of all kinds.
+And then the lady plucked up courage and gave her recreant son a sound
+lecture, to the effect that this conduct was atrociously wicked; and
+that if this trusting young bride, this fair young second wife, were to
+be taken away from him as the first had been, such a calamity would
+only be a fitting judgment upon him for his folly.
+
+But Edward told his mother, very quietly, that he had no intention of
+being false to his newly-plighted troth.
+
+"I love Belinda," he said; "and I will be true to her, mother. But I
+cannot forget the past; it hangs about me like a bad dream."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+HOW THE TIDINGS WERE RECEIVED IN LINCOLNSHIRE.
+
+
+The young widower made no further lamentation, but did his duty to his
+betrothed bride with a cheerful visage. Ah! what a pleasant journey it
+was to Belinda, that progress through London on the way to
+Lincolnshire! It was like that triumphant journey of last March, when
+the Royal bridegroom led his Northern bride through a surging sea of
+eager, smiling faces, to the musical jangling of a thousand bells. If
+there were neither populace nor joy-bells on this occasion, I scarcely
+think Miss Lawford knew that those elements of a triumphal progress
+were missing. To her ears all the universe was musical with the sound
+of mystic joy-bells; all the earth was glad with the brightness of
+happy faces. The railway-carriage,--the commonplace vehicle,--frouzy
+with the odour of wool and morocco, was a fairy chariot, more wonderful
+than Queen Mab's; the white chalk-cutting in the hill was a shining
+cleft in a mountain of silver; the wandering streams were melted
+diamonds; the stations were enchanted castles. The pale sherry, carried
+in a pocket-flask, and sipped out of a little silver tumbler--there is
+apt to be a warm flatness about sherry taken out of pocket-flasks that
+is scarcely agreeable to the connoisseur--was like nectar newly brewed
+for the gods; even the anchovies in the sandwiches were like the
+enchanted fish in the Arabian story. A magical philter had been infused
+into the atmosphere: the flavour of first love was in every sight and
+sound.
+
+Was ever bridegroom more indulgent, more devoted, than Edward Arundel?
+He sat at the counters of silk-mercers for the hour together, while
+Mrs. Arundel and the two girls deliberated over crisp fabrics unfolded
+for their inspection. He was always ready to be consulted, and gave his
+opinion upon the conflicting merits of peach-colour and pink,
+apple-green and maize, with unwearying attention. But sometimes, even
+while Belinda was smiling at him, with the rippling silken stuff held
+up in her white hands, and making a lustrous cascade upon the counter,
+the mystic hand plucked him back, and his mind wandered away to that
+childish bride who had chosen no splendid garments for her wedding, but
+had gone with him to the altar as trustfully as a baby goes in its
+mother's arms to the cradle. If he had been left alone with Belinda,
+with tender, sympathetic Belinda,--who loved him well enough to
+understand him, and was always ready to take her cue from his face, and
+to be joyous or thoughtful according to his mood,--it might have been
+better for him. But his mother and Letitia reigned paramount during
+this ante-nuptial week, and Mr. Arundel was scarcely suffered to take
+breath. He was hustled hither and thither in the hot summer noontide.
+He was taken to choose a dressing-case for his bride; and he was made
+to look at glittering objects until his eyes ached, and he could see
+nothing but a bewildering dazzle of ormolu and silver-gilt. He was
+taken to a great emporium in Bond Street to select perfumery, and made
+to sniff at divers essences until his nostrils were unnaturally
+distended, and his olfactory nerves afflicted with temporary paralysis.
+There was jewellery of his mother and of Belinda's mother to be re-set;
+and the hymeneal victim was compelled to sit for an hour or so,
+blinking at fiery-crested serpents that were destined to coil up his
+wife's arms, and emerald padlocks that were to lie upon her breast. And
+then, when his soul was weary of glaring splendours and glittering
+confusions, they took him round the Park, in a whirlpool of diaphanous
+bonnets, and smiling faces, and brazen harness, and emblazoned
+hammer-cloths, on the margin of a river whose waters were like molten
+gold under the blazing sun. And then they gave him a seat in an
+opera-box, and the crash of a monster orchestra, blended with the hum
+of a thousand voices, to soothe his nerves withal.
+
+But the more wearied this young man became with glitter, and dazzle,
+and sunshine, and silk-mercer's ware, the more surely his mind wandered
+back to the still meadows, and the limpid trout-stream, the sheltering
+hills, the solemn shadows of the cathedral, the distant voices of the
+rooks high up in the waving elms.
+
+The bustle of preparation was over at last, and the bridal party went
+down to Lincolnshire. Pleasant chambers had been prepared at the Grange
+for Mr. Arundel and his mother and sister; and the bridegroom was
+received with enthusiasm by Belinda's blue-eyed younger sisters, who
+were enchanted to find that there was going to be a wedding and that
+they were to have new frocks.
+
+So Edward would have been a churl indeed had he seemed otherwise than
+happy, had he been anything but devoted to the bright girl who loved
+him.
+
+Tidings of the coming wedding flew like wildfire through Lincolnshire.
+Edward Arundel's romantic story had elevated him into a hero; all
+manner of reports had been circulated about his devotion to his lost
+young wife. He had sworn never to mingle in society again, people said.
+He had sworn never to have a new suit of clothes, or to have his hair
+cut, or to shave, or to eat a hot dinner. And Lincolnshire by no means
+approved of the defection implied by his approaching union with
+Belinda. He was only a commonplace widower, after all, it seemed; ready
+to be consoled as soon as the ceremonious interval of decent grief was
+over. People had expected something better of him. They had expected to
+see him in a year or two with long grey hair, dressed in shabby
+raiment, and, with his beard upon his breast, prowling about the
+village of Kemberling, baited by little children. Lincolnshire was very
+much disappointed by the turn that affairs had taken. Shakesperian
+aphorisms were current among the gossips at comfortable tea-tables; and
+people talked about funeral baked meats, and the propriety of building
+churches if you have any ambitious desire that your memory should
+outlast your life; and indulged in other bitter observations, familiar
+to all admirers of the great dramatist.
+
+But there were some people in Lincolnshire to whom the news of Edward
+Arundel's intended marriage was more welcome than the early May-flowers
+to rustic children eager for a festival. Paul Marchmont heard the
+report, and rubbed his hands stealthily, and smiled to himself as he
+sat reading in the sunny western drawing-room. The good seed that he
+had sown that night at the Rectory had borne this welcome fruit. Edward
+Arundel with a young wife would be very much less formidable than
+Edward Arundel single and discontented, prowling about the
+neighbourhood of Marchmont Towers, and perpetually threatening
+vengeance upon Mary's cousin.
+
+It was busy little Lavinia Weston who first brought her brother the
+tidings. He took both her hands in his, and kissed them in his
+enthusiasm.
+
+"My best of sisters," he said, "you shall have a pair of diamond
+earrings for this."
+
+"For only bringing you the news, Paul?"
+
+"For only bringing me the news. When a messenger carries the tidings of
+a great victory to his king, the king makes him a knight upon the spot.
+This marriage is a victory to me, Lavinia. From to-day I shall breathe
+freely."
+
+"But they are not married yet. Something may happen, perhaps, to
+prevent----"
+
+"What should happen?" asked Paul, rather sharply. "By-the-bye, it will
+be as well to keep this from Mrs. John," he added, thoughtfully;
+"though really now I fancy it matters very little what she hears."
+
+He tapped his forehead lightly with his two slim fingers, and there was
+a horrible significance in the action.
+
+"She is not likely to hear anything," Mrs. Weston said; "she sees no
+one but Barbara Simmons."
+
+"Then I should be glad if you would give Simmons a hint to hold her
+tongue. This news about the wedding would disturb her mistress."
+
+"Yes, I'll tell her so. Barbara is a very excellent person. I can
+always manage Barbara. But oh, Paul, I don't know what I'm to do with
+that poor weak-witted husband of mine."
+
+"How do you mean?"
+
+"Oh, Paul, I have had such a scene with him to-day--such a scene! You
+remember the way he went on that day down in the boat-house when Edward
+Arundel came in upon us unexpectedly? Well, he's been going on as badly
+as that to-day, Paul,--or worse, I really think."
+
+Mr. Marchmont frowned, and flung aside his newspaper, with a gesture
+expressive of considerable vexation.
+
+"Now really, Lavinia, this is too bad," he said; "if your husband is a
+fool, I am not going to be bored about his folly. You have managed him
+for fifteen years: surely you can go on managing him now without
+annoying _me_ about him? If Mr. George Weston doesn't know when he's
+well off, he's an ungrateful cur, and you may tell him so, with my
+compliments."
+
+He picked up his newspaper again, and began to read. But Lavinia
+Weston, looking anxiously at her brother's face, saw that his pale
+auburn brows were contracted in a thoughtful frown, and that, if he
+read at all, the words upon which his eyes rested could convey very
+little meaning to his brain.
+
+She was right; for presently he spoke to her, still looking at the page
+before him, and with an attempt at carelessness.
+
+"Do you think that fellow would go to Australia, Lavinia?"
+
+"Alone?" asked his sister.
+
+"Yes, alone of course," said Mr. Marchmont, putting down his paper, and
+looking at Mrs. Weston rather dubiously. "I don't want you to go to the
+Antipodes; but if--if the fellow refused to go without you, I'd make it
+well worth your while to go out there, Lavinia. You shouldn't have any
+reason to regret obliging me, my dear girl."
+
+The dear girl looked rather sharply at her affectionate brother.
+
+"It's like your selfishness, Paul, to propose such a thing," she said,
+"after all I've done----!"
+
+"I have not been illiberal to you, Lavinia."
+
+"No; you've been generous enough to me, I know, in the matter of gifts;
+but you're rich, Paul, and you can afford to give. I don't like the
+idea that you're so willing to pack me out of the way now that I can be
+no longer useful to you."
+
+Mr. Marchmont shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"For Heaven's sake, Lavinia, don't be sentimental. If there's one thing
+I despise more than another, it is this kind of mawkish sentimentality.
+You've been a very good sister to me; and I've been a very decent
+brother to you. If you have served me, I have made it answer your
+purpose to do so. I don't want you to go away. You may bring all your
+goods and chattels to this house to-morrow, if you like, and live at
+free quarters here for the rest of your existence. But if George Weston
+is a pig-headed brute, who can't understand upon which side his bread
+is buttered, he must be got out of the way somehow. I don't care what
+it costs me; but he must be got out of the way. I'm not going to live
+the life of a modern Damocles, with a blundering sword always dangling
+over my head, in the person of Mr. George Weston. And if the man
+objects to leave the country without you, why, I think your going with
+him would be only a sisterly act towards me. I hate selfishness,
+Lavinia, almost as much as I detest sentimentality."
+
+Mrs. Weston was silent for some minutes, absorbed in reflection. Paul
+got up, kicked aside a footstool, and walked up and down the room with
+his hands in his pockets.
+
+"Perhaps I might get George to leave England, if I promised to join him
+as soon as he was comfortably settled in the colonies," Mrs. Weston
+said, at last.
+
+"Yes," cried Paul; "nothing could be more easy. I'll act very liberally
+towards him, Lavinia; I'll treat him well; but he shall not stay in
+England. No, Lavinia; after what you have told me to-day, I feel that
+he must be got out of the country."
+
+Mr. Marchmont went to the door and looked out, to see if by chance any
+one had been listening to him. The coast was quite clear. The
+stone-paved hall looked as desolate as some undiscovered chamber in an
+Egyptian temple. The artist went back to Lavinia, and seated himself by
+her side. For some time the brother and sister talked together
+earnestly.
+
+They settled everything for poor henpecked George Weston. He was to
+sail for Sydney immediately. Nothing could be more easy than for
+Lavinia to declare that her brother had accidentally heard of some
+grand opening for a medical practitioner in the metropolis of the
+Antipodes. The surgeon was to have a very handsome sum given him, and
+Lavinia would _of course_ join him as soon as he was settled. Paul
+Marchmont even looked through the "Shipping Gazette" in search of an
+Australian vessel which should speedily convey his brother-in-law to a
+distant shore.
+
+Lavinia Weston went home armed with all necessary credentials. She was
+to promise almost anything to her husband, provided that he gave his
+consent to an early departure.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+MR. WESTON REFUSES TO BE TRAMPLED UPON.
+
+
+Upon the 31st of June, the eve of Edward Arundel's wedding-day, Olivia
+Marchmont sat in her own room,--the room that she had chiefly occupied
+ever since her husband's death,--the study looking out into the
+quadrangle. She sat alone in that dismal chamber, dimly lighted by a
+pair of wax-candles, in tall tarnished silver candlesticks. There could
+be no greater contrast than that between this desolate woman and the
+master of the house. All about him was bright and fresh, and glittering
+and splendid; around her there was only ruin and decay, thickening dust
+and gathering cobwebs,--outward evidences of an inner wreck. John
+Marchmont's widow was of no importance in that household. The servants
+did not care to trouble themselves about her whims or wishes, nor to
+put her rooms in order. They no longer curtseyed to her when they met
+her, wandering--with a purposeless step and listless feet that dragged
+along the ground--up and down the corridor, or out in the dreary
+quadrangle. What was to be gained by any show of respect to her, whose
+brain was too weak to hold the memory of their conduct for five minutes
+together?
+
+Barbara Simmons only was faithful to her mistress with an unvarying
+fidelity. She made no boast of her devotion; she expected neither fee
+nor reward for her self-abnegation. That rigid religion of discipline
+which had not been strong enough to preserve Olivia's stormy soul from
+danger and ruin was at least all-sufficient for this lower type of
+woman. Barbara Simmons had been taught to do her duty, and she did it
+without question or complaint. As she went through rain, snow, hail, or
+sunshine twice every Sunday to Kemberling church,--as she sat upon a
+cushionless seat in an uncomfortable angle of the servants' pew, with
+the sharp edges of the woodwork cutting her thin shoulders, to listen
+patiently to dull rambling sermons upon the hardest texts of St.
+Paul,--so she attended upon her mistress, submitting to every caprice,
+putting up with every hardship; because it was her duty so to do. The
+only relief she allowed herself was an hour's gossip now and then in
+the housekeeper's room; but she never alluded to her mistress's
+infirmities, nor would it have been safe for any other servant to have
+spoken lightly of Mrs. John Marchmont in stern Barbara's presence.
+
+Upon this summer evening, when happy people were still lingering
+amongst the wild flowers in shady lanes, or in the dusky pathways by
+the quiet river, Olivia sat alone, staring at the candles.
+
+Was there anything in her mind; or was she only a human automaton,
+slowly decaying into dust? There was no speculation in those large
+lustreless eyes, fixed upon the dim light of the candles. But, for all
+that, the mind was not a blank. The pictures of the past, for ever
+changing like the scenes in some magic panorama, revolved before her.
+She had no memory of that which had happened a quarter of an hour ago;
+but she could remember every word that Edward Arundel had said to her
+in the Rectory-garden at Swampington,--every intonation of the voice in
+which those words had been spoken.
+
+There was a tea-service on the table: an attenuated little silver
+teapot; a lopsided cream-jug, with thin worn edges and one dumpy little
+foot missing; and an antique dragon china cup and saucer with the
+gilding washed off. That meal, which is generally called social, has
+but a dismal aspect when it is only prepared for one. The solitary
+teacup, half filled with cold, stagnant tea, with a leaf or two
+floating upon the top, like weeds on the surface of a tideless pond;
+the teaspoon, thrown askew across a little pool of spilt milk in the
+tea-tray,--looked as dreary as the ruins of a deserted city.
+
+In the western drawing-room Paul was strolling backwards and forwards,
+talking to his mother and sisters, and admiring his pictures. He had
+spent a great deal of money upon art since taking possession of the
+Towers, and the western drawing-room was quite a different place to
+what it had been in John Marchmont's lifetime.
+
+Etty's divinities smiled through hazy draperies, more transparent than
+the summer vapours that float before the moon. Pearly-complexioned
+nymphs, with faces archly peeping round the corner of soft rosy
+shoulders, frolicked amidst the silver spray of classic fountains.
+Turner's Grecian temples glimmered through sultry summer mists; while
+glimpses of ocean sparkled here and there, and were as beautiful as if
+the artist's brush had been dipped in melted opals. Stanfield's breezy
+beaches made cool spots of freshness on the wall, and sturdy
+sailor-boys, with their hands up to their mouths and their loose hair
+blowing in the wind, shouted to their comrades upon the decks of
+brown-sailed fishing-smacks. Panting deer upon dizzy crags, amid the
+misty Highlands, testified to the hand of Landseer. Low down, in the
+corners of the room, there lurked quaint cottage-scenes by Faed and
+Nichol. Ward's patched and powdered beaux and beauties,--a Rochester,
+in a light perriwig; a Nell Gwynne, showing her white teeth across a
+basket of oranges; a group of _Incroyables_, with bunches of ribbons
+hanging from their low topboots, and two sets of dangling seals at
+their waists--made a blaze of colour upon the walls: and amongst all
+these glories of to-day there were prim Madonnas and stiff-necked
+angels by Raphael and Tintoretto; a brown-faced grinning boy by Murillo
+(no collection ever was complete without that inevitable brown-faced
+boy); an obese Venus, by the great Peter Paul; and a pale Charles the
+First, with martyrdom foreshadowed in his pensive face, by Vandyke.
+
+Paul Marchmont contemplated his treasures complacently, as he strolled
+about the room, with his coffee-cup in his hand; while his mother
+watched him admiringly from her comfortable cushioned nest at one end
+of a luxurious sofa.
+
+"Well, mother," Mr. Marchmont said presently, "let people say what they
+may of me, they can never say that I have used my money badly. When I
+am dead and gone, these pictures will remain to speak for me; posterity
+will say, 'At any rate the fellow was a man of taste.' Now what, in
+Heaven's name, could that miserable little Mary have done with eleven
+thousand a year, if--if she had lived to enjoy it?"
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The minute-hand of the little clock in Mrs. John Marchmont's study was
+creeping slowly towards the quarter before eleven, when Olivia was
+aroused suddenly from that long reverie, in which the images of the
+past had shone upon her across the dull stagnation of the present like
+the domes and minarets in a Phantasm City gleaming athwart the barren
+desert-sands.
+
+She was aroused by a cautious tap upon the outside of her window. She
+got up, opened the window, and looked out. The night was dark and
+starless, and there was a faint whisper of wind among the trees.
+
+"Don't be frightened," whispered a timid voice; "it's only me, George
+Weston. I want to talk to you, Mrs. John. I've got something particular
+to tell you--awful particular; but _they_ mustn't hear it; _they_
+mustn't know I'm here. I came round this way on purpose. You can let me
+in at the little door in the lobby, can't you, Mrs. John? I tell you, I
+must tell you what I've got to tell you," cried Mr. Weston, indifferent
+to tautology in his excitement. "Do let me in, there's a dear good
+soul. The little door in the lobby, you know; it's locked, you know,
+but I dessay the key's there."
+
+"The door in the lobby?" repeated Olivia, in a dreamy voice.
+
+"Yes, _you_ know. Do let me in now, that's a good creature. It's awful
+particular, I tell you. It's about Edward Arundel."
+
+Edward Arundel! The sound of that name seemed to act upon the woman's
+shattered nerves like a stroke of electricity. The drooping head reared
+itself erect. The eyes, so lustreless before, flashed fire from their
+sombre depths. Comprehension, animation, energy returned; as suddenly
+as if the wand of an enchanter had summoned the dead back to life.
+
+"Edward Arundel!" she cried, in a clear voice, which was utterly unlike
+the dull deadness of her usual tones.
+
+"Hush," whispered Mr. Weston; "don't speak loud, for goodness gracious
+sake. I dessay there's all manner of spies about. Let me in, and I'll
+tell you everything."
+
+"Yes, yes; I'll let you in. The door by the lobby--I understand; come,
+come."
+
+Olivia disappeared from the window. The lobby of which the surgeon had
+spoken was close to her own apartment. She found the key in the lock of
+the door. The place was dark; she opened the door almost noiselessly,
+and Mr. Weston crept in on tiptoe. He followed Olivia into the study,
+closed the door behind him, and drew a long breath.
+
+"I've got in," he said; "and now I am in, wild horses shouldn't hold me
+from speaking my mind, much less Paul Marchmont."
+
+He turned the key in the door as he spoke, and even as he did so
+glanced rather suspiciously towards the window. To his mind the very
+atmosphere of that house was pervaded by the presence of his
+brother-in-law.
+
+"O Mrs. John!" exclaimed the surgeon, in piteous accents, "the way that
+I've been trampled upon. _You've_ been trampled upon, Mrs. John, but
+you don't seem to mind it; and perhaps it's better to bring oneself to
+that, if one can; but I can't. I've tried to bring myself to it; I've
+even taken to drinking, Mrs. John, much as it goes against me; and I've
+tried to drown my feelings as a man in rum-and-water. But the more
+spirits I consume, Mrs. John, the more of a man I feel."
+
+Mr. Weston struck the top of his hat with his clenched fist, and stared
+fiercely at Olivia, breathing very hard, and breathing rum-and-water
+with a faint odour of lemon-peel.
+
+"Edward Arundel!--what about Edward Arundel?" said Olivia, in a low
+eager voice.
+
+"I'm coming to that, Mrs. John, in due c'course," returned Mr. Weston,
+with an air of dignity that was superior even to hiccough. "What I say,
+Mrs. John," he added, in a confidential and argumentative tone, "is
+this: _I won't be trampled upon!_" Here his voice sank to an awful
+whisper. "Of course it's pleasant enough to have one's rent provided
+for, and not to be kept awake by poor's-rates, Mrs. John; but, good
+gracious me! I'd rather have the Queen's taxes and the poor-rates
+following me up day and night, and a man in possession to provide for
+at every meal--and you don't know how contemptuous a man in possession
+can look at you if you offer him salt butter, or your table in a
+general way don't meet his views--than the conscience I've had since
+Paul Marchmont came into Lincolnshire. I feel, Mrs. John, as if I'd
+committed oceans of murders. It's a miracle to me that my hair hasn't
+turned white before this; and it would have done it, Mrs. J., if it
+wasn't of that stubborn nature which is too wiry to give expression to
+a man's sufferings. O Mrs. John, when I think how my pangs of
+conscience have been made game of,--when I remember the insulting names
+I have been called, because my heart didn't happen to be made of
+adamant,--my blood boils; it boils, Mrs. John, to that degree, that I
+feel the time has come for action. I have been put upon until the
+spirit of manliness within me blazes up like a fiery furnace. I have
+been trodden upon, Mrs. John; but I'm not the worm they took me for.
+To-day they've put the finisher upon it." The surgeon paused to take
+breath. His mild and rather sheep-like countenance was flushed; his
+fluffy eyebrows twitched convulsively in his endeavours to give
+expression to the violence of his feelings. "To-day they've put the
+finisher upon it," he repeated. "I'm to go to Australia, am I? Ha! ha!
+we'll see about that. There's a nice opening in the medical line, is
+there? and dear Paul will provide the funds to start me! Ha! ha! two
+can play at that game. It's all brotherly kindness, of course, and
+friendly interest in my welfare--that's what it's _called_, Mrs. J.
+Shall I tell you what it _is_? I'm to be got rid of, at any price, for
+fear my conscience should get the better of me, and I should speak.
+I've been made a tool of, and I've been trampled upon; but they've been
+_obliged_ to trust me. I've got a conscience, and I don't suit their
+views. If I hadn't got a conscience, I might stop here and have my rent
+and taxes provided for, and riot in rum-and-water to the end of my
+days. But I've a conscience that all the pineapple rum in Jamaica
+wouldn't drown, and they're frightened of me."
+
+Olivia listened to all this with an impatient frown upon her face. I
+doubt if she knew the meaning of Mr. Weston's complaints. She had been
+listening only for the one name that had power to transform her from a
+breathing automaton into a living, thinking, reasoning woman. She
+grasped the surgeon's wrist fiercely.
+
+"You told me you came here to speak about Edward Arundel," she said.
+"Have you been only trying to make a fool of me."
+
+"No, Mrs. John; I have come to speak about him, and I come to you,
+because I think you're not so bad as Paul Marchmont. I think that
+you've been a tool, like myself; and they've led you on, step by step,
+from bad to worse, pretty much as they have led me. You're Edward
+Arundel's blood-relation, and it's your business to look to any wrong
+that's done him, more than it is mine. But if you don't speak, Mrs.
+John, I will. Edward Arundel is going to be married."
+
+"Going to be married!" The words burst from Olivia's lips in a kind of
+shriek, and she stood glaring hideously at the surgeon, with her lips
+apart and her eyes dilated. Mr. Weston was fascinated by the horror of
+that gaze, and stared at her in silence for some moments. "You are a
+madman!" she exclaimed, after a pause; "you are a madman! Why do you
+come here with your idiotic fancies? Surely my life is miserable enough
+without this!"
+
+"I ain't mad, Mrs. John, any more than"--Mr. Weston was going to say,
+"than you are;" but it struck him that, under existing circumstances,
+the comparison might be ill-advised--"I ain't any madder than other
+people," he said, presently. "Edward Arundel is going to be married. I
+have seen the young lady in Kemberling with her pa; and she's a very
+sweet young woman to look at; and her name is Belinda Lawford; and the
+wedding is to be at eleven o'clock to-morrow morning at Hillingsworth
+church."
+
+Olivia slowly lifted her hands to her head, and swept the loose hair
+away from her brow. All the mists that had obscured her brain melted
+slowly away, and showed her the past as it had really been in all its
+naked horror. Yes; step by step the cruel hand had urged her on from
+bad to worse; from bad to worse; until it had driven her _here_.
+
+It was for _this_ that she had sold her soul to the powers of hell. It
+was for _this_ that she had helped to torture that innocent girl whom a
+dying father had given into her pitiless hand. For this! for this! To
+find at last that all her iniquity had been wasted, and that Edward
+Arundel had chosen another bride--fairer, perhaps, than the first. The
+mad, unholy jealousy of her nature awoke from the obscurity of mental
+decay, a fierce ungovernable spirit. But another spirit arose in the
+next moment. CONSCIENCE, which so long had slumbered, awoke and cried
+to her, in an awful voice, "Sinner, whose sin has been wasted, repent!
+restore! It is not yet too late."
+
+The stern precepts of her religion came back to her. She had rebelled
+against those rigid laws, she had cast off those iron fetters, only to
+fall into a worse bondage; only to submit to a stronger tyranny. She
+had been a servant of the God of Sacrifice, and had rebelled when an
+offering was demanded of her. She had cast off the yoke of her Master,
+and had yielded herself up the slave of sin. And now, when she
+discovered whither her chains had dragged her, she was seized with a
+sudden panic, and wanted to go back to her old master.
+
+She stood for some minutes with her open palms pressed upon her
+forehead, and her chest heaving as if a stormy sea had raged in her
+bosom.
+
+"This marriage must not take place," she cried, at last.
+
+"Of course it mustn't," answered Mr. Weston; "didn't I say so just now?
+And if you don't speak to Paul and prevent it, I will. I'd rather you
+spoke to him, though," added the surgeon thoughtfully, "because, you
+see, it would come better from you, wouldn't it now?"
+
+Olivia Marchmont did not answer. Her hands had dropped from her head,
+and she was standing looking at the floor.
+
+"There shall be no marriage," she muttered, with a wild laugh. "There's
+another heart to be broken--that's all. Stand aside, man," she cried;
+"stand aside, and let me go to _him_; let me go to him."
+
+She pushed the terrified surgeon out of her pathway, and locked the
+door, hurried along the passage and across the hall. She opened the
+door of the western drawing-room, and went in.
+
+Mr. Weston stood in the corridor looking after her. He waited for a few
+minutes, listening for any sound that might come from the western
+drawing-room. But the wide stone hall was between him and that
+apartment; and however loudly the voices might have been uplifted, no
+breath of them could have reached the surgeon's ear. He waited for
+about five minutes, and then crept into the lobby and let himself out
+into the quadrangle.
+
+"At any rate, nobody can say that I'm a coward," he thought
+complacently, as he went under a stone archway that led into the park.
+"But what a whirlwind that woman is! O my gracious, what a perfect
+whirlwind she is!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+"GOING TO BE MARRIED!"
+
+
+Paul Marchmont was still strolling hither and thither about the room,
+admiring his pictures, and smiling to himself at the recollection of
+the easy manner in which he had obtained George Weston's consent to the
+Australian arrangement. For in his sober moments the surgeon was ready
+to submit to anything his wife and brother-in-law imposed upon him; it
+was only under the influence of pineapple rum that his manhood asserted
+itself. Paul was still contemplating his pictures when Olivia burst
+into the room; but Mrs. Marchmont and her invalid daughter had retired
+for the night, and the artist was alone,--alone with his own thoughts,
+which were rather of a triumphal and agreeable character just now; for
+Edward's marriage and Mr. Weston's departure were equally pleasant to
+him.
+
+He was startled a little by Olivia's abrupt entrance, for it was not
+her habit to intrude upon him or any member of that household; on the
+contrary, she had shown an obstinate determination to shut herself up
+in her own room, and to avoid every living creature except her servant
+Barbara Simmons.
+
+Paul turned and confronted her very deliberately, and with the smile
+that was almost habitual to him upon his thin pale lips. Her sudden
+appearance had blanched his face a little; but beyond this he betrayed
+no sign of agitation.
+
+"My dear Mrs. Marchmont, you quite startle me. It is so very unusual to
+see you here, and at this hour especially."
+
+It did not seem as if she had heard his voice. She went sternly up to
+him, with her thin listless arms hanging at her side, and her haggard
+eyes fixed upon his face.
+
+"Is this true?" she asked.
+
+He started a little, in spite of himself; for he understood in a moment
+what she meant. Some one, it scarcely mattered who, had told her of the
+coming marriage.
+
+"Is what true, my dear Mrs. John?" he said carelessly.
+
+"Is this true that George Weston tells me?" she cried, laying her thin
+hand upon his shoulder. Her wasted fingers closed involuntarily upon
+the collar of his coat, her lips contracted into a ghastly smile, and a
+sudden fire kindled in her eyes. A strange sensation awoke in the tips
+of those tightening fingers, and thrilled through every vein of the
+woman's body,--such a horrible thrill as vibrates along the nerves of a
+monomaniac, when the sight of a dreadful terror in his victim's face
+first arouses the murderous impulse in his breast.
+
+Paul's face whitened as he felt the thin finger-points tightening upon
+his neck. He was afraid of Olivia.
+
+"My dear Mrs. John, what is it you want of me?" he said hastily. "Pray
+do not be violent."
+
+"I am not violent."
+
+She dropped her hand from his breast. It was true, she was not violent.
+Her voice was low; her hand fell loosely by her side. But Paul was
+frightened of her, nevertheless; for he saw that if she was not
+violent, she was something worse--she was dangerous.
+
+"Did George Weston tell me the truth just now?" she said.
+
+Paul bit his nether-lip savagely. George Weston had tricked him, then,
+after all, and had communicated with this woman. But what of that? She
+would scarcely be likely to trouble herself about this business of
+Edward Arundel's marriage. She must be past any such folly as that. She
+would not dare to interfere in the matter. She could not.
+
+"Is it true?" she said; "_is_ it? Is it true that Edward Arundel is
+going to be married to-morrow?"
+
+She waited, looking with fixed, widely-opened eyes at Paul's face.
+
+"My dear Mrs. John, you take me so completely by surprise, that I----"
+
+"That you have not got a lying answer ready for me," said Olivia,
+interrupting him. "You need not trouble yourself to invent one. I see
+that George Weston told me the truth. There was reality in his words.
+There is nothing but falsehood in yours."
+
+Paul stood looking at her, but not listening to her. Let her abuse and
+upbraid him to her heart's content; it gave him leisure to reflect, and
+plan his course of action; and perhaps these bitter words might exhaust
+the fire within her, and leave her malleable to his skilful hands once
+more. He had time to think this, and to settle his own line of conduct
+while Olivia was speaking to him. It was useless to deny the marriage.
+She had heard of it from George Weston, and she might hear of it from
+any one else whom she chose to interrogate. It was useless to try to
+stifle this fact.
+
+"Yes, Mrs. John," he said, "it is quite true. Your cousin, Mr. Arundel,
+is going to marry Belinda Lawford; a very lucky thing for us, believe
+me, as it will put an end to all questioning and watching and
+suspicion, and place us beyond all danger."
+
+Olivia looked at him, with her bosom heaving, her breath growing
+shorter and louder with every word he spoke.
+
+"You mean to let this be, then?" she said, when he had finished
+speaking.
+
+"To let what be?"
+
+"This marriage. You will let it take place?"
+
+"Most certainly. Why should I prevent it?"
+
+"Why should you prevent it?" she cried fiercely; and then, in an
+altered voice, in tones of anguish that were like a wail of despair,
+she exclaimed, "O my God! my God! what a dupe I have been; what a
+miserable tool in this man's hands! O my offended God! why didst Thou
+so abandon me, when I turned away from Thee, and made Edward Arundel
+the idol of my wicked heart?"
+
+Paul sank into the nearest chair, with a faint sigh of relief.
+
+"She will wear herself out," he thought, "and then I shall be able to
+do what I like with her."
+
+But Olivia turned to him again while he was thinking this.
+
+"Do you imagine that _I_ will let this marriage take place?" she asked.
+
+"I do not think that you will be so mad as to prevent it. That little
+mystery which you and I have arranged between us is not exactly child's
+play, Mrs. John. We can neither of us afford to betray the other. Let
+Edward Arundel marry, and work for his wife, and be happy; nothing
+could be better for us than his marriage. Indeed, we have every reason
+to be thankful to Providence for the turn that affairs have taken," Mr.
+Marchmont concluded, piously.
+
+"Indeed!" said Olivia; "and Edward Arundel is to have another bride. He
+is to be happy with another wife; and I am to hear of their happiness,
+to see him some day, perhaps, sitting by her side and smiling at her,
+as I have seen him smile at Mary Marchmont. He is to be happy, and I am
+to know of his happiness. Another baby-faced girl is to glory in the
+knowledge of his love; and I am to be quiet--I am to be quiet. Is it
+for this that I have sold my soul to you, Paul Marchmont? Is it for
+this I have shared your guilty secrets? Is it for this I have heard
+_her_ feeble wailing sounding in my wretched feverish slumbers, as I
+have heard it every night, since the day she left this house? Do you
+remember what you said to me? Do you remember _how_ you tempted me? Do
+you remember how you played upon my misery, and traded on the tortures
+of my jealous heart? 'He has despised your love,' you said: 'will you
+consent to see him happy with another woman?' That was your argument,
+Paul Marchmont. You allied yourself with the devil that held possession
+of my breast, and together you were too strong for me. I was set apart
+to be damned, and you were the chosen instrument of my damnation. You
+bought my soul, Paul Marchmont. You shall not cheat me of the price for
+which I sold it. You shall hinder this marriage!"
+
+"You are a madwoman, Mrs. John Marchmont, or you would not propose any
+such thing."
+
+"Go," she said, pointing to the door; "go to Edward Arundel, and do
+something, no matter what, to prevent this marriage."
+
+"I shall do nothing of the kind."
+
+He had heard that a monomaniac was always to be subdued by indomitable
+resolution, and he looked at Olivia, thinking to tame her by his
+unfaltering glance. He might as well have tried to look the raging sea
+into calmness.
+
+"I am not a fool, Mrs. John Marchmont," he said, "and I shall do
+nothing of the kind."
+
+He had risen, and stood by the lamp-lit table, trifling rather
+nervously with its elegant litter of delicately-bound books,
+jewel-handled paper-knives, newly-cut periodicals, and pretty
+fantastical toys collected by the women of the household.
+
+The faces of the two were nearly upon a level as they stood opposite to
+each other, with only the table between them.
+
+"Then _I_ will prevent it!" Olivia cried, turning towards the door.
+
+Paul Marchmont saw the resolution stamped upon her face. She would do
+what she threatened. He ran to the door and had his hand upon the lock
+before she could reach it.
+
+"No, Mrs. John," he said, standing at the door, with his back turned to
+Olivia, and his fingers busy with the bolts and key. In spite of
+himself, this woman had made him a little nervous, and it was as much
+as he could do to find the handle of the key. "No, no, my dear Mrs.
+John; you shall not leave this house, nor this room, in your present
+state of mind. If you choose to be violent and unmanageable, we will
+give you the full benefit of your violence, and we will give you a
+better sphere of action. A padded room will be more suitable to your
+present temper, my dear madam. If you favour us with this sort of
+conduct, we will find people more fitted to restrain you."
+
+He said all this in a sneering tone that had a trifling tremulousness
+in it, while he locked the door and assured himself that it was safely
+secured. Then he turned, prepared to fight out the battle somehow or
+other.
+
+At the very moment of his turning there was a sudden crash, a shiver of
+broken glass, and the cold night-wind blew into the room. One of the
+long French windows was wide open, and Olivia Marchmont was gone.
+
+He was out upon the terrace in the next moment; but even then he was
+too late, for he could not see her right or left of him upon the long
+stone platform. There were three separate flights of steps, three
+different paths, widely diverging across the broad grassy flat before
+Marchmont Towers. How could he tell which of these ways Olivia might
+have chosen? There was the great porch, and there were all manner of
+stone abutments along the grim facade of the house. She might have
+concealed herself behind any one of them. The night was hopelessly
+dark. A pair of ponderous bronze lamps, which Paul had placed before
+the principal doorway, only made two spots of light in the gloom. He
+ran along the terrace, looking into every nook and corner which might
+have served as a hiding-place; but he did not find Olivia.
+
+She had left the house with the avowed intention of doing something to
+prevent the marriage. What would she do? What course would this
+desperate woman take in her jealous rage? Would she go straight to
+Edward Arundel and tell him----?
+
+Yes, this was most likely; for how else could she hope to prevent the
+marriage?
+
+Paul stood quite still upon the terrace for a few minutes, thinking.
+There was only one course for him. To try and find Olivia would be next
+to hopeless. There were half-a-dozen outlets from the park. There were
+ever so many different pathways through the woody labyrinth at the back
+of the Towers. This woman might have taken any one of them. To waste
+the night in searching for her would be worse than useless.
+
+There was only one thing to be done. He must countercheck this
+desperate creature's movements.
+
+He went back to the drawing-room, shut the window, and then rang the
+bell.
+
+There were not many of the old servants who had waited upon John
+Marchmont at the Towers now. The man who answered the bell was a person
+whom Paul had brought down from London.
+
+"Get the chesnut saddled for me, Peterson," said Mr. Marchmont. "My
+poor cousin's widow has left the house, and I am going after her. She
+has given me very great alarm to-night by her conduct. I tell you this
+in confidence; but you can say as much to Mrs. Simmons, who knows more
+about her mistress than I do. See that there's no time lost in saddling
+the chesnut. I want to overtake this unhappy woman, if I can. Go and
+give the order, and then bring me my hat."
+
+The man went away to obey his master. Paul walked to the chimneypiece
+and looked at the clock.
+
+"They'll be gone to bed at the Grange," he thought to himself. "Will
+she go there and knock them up, I wonder? Does she know that Edward's
+there? I doubt that; and yet Weston may have told her. At any rate, I
+can be there before her. It would take her a long time to get there on
+foot. I think I did the right thing in saying what I said to Peterson.
+I must have the report of her madness spread everywhere. I must face it
+out. But how--but how? So long as she was quiet, I could manage
+everything. But with her against me, and George Weston--oh, the cur,
+the white-hearted villain, after all that I've done for him and
+Lavinia! But what can a man expect when he's obliged to put his trust
+in a fool?"
+
+He went to the window, and stood there looking out until he saw the
+groom coming along the gravel roadway below the terrace, leading a
+horse by the bridle. Then he put on the hat that the servant had
+brought him, ran down the steps, and got into the saddle.
+
+"All right, Jeffreys," he said; "tell them not to expect me back till
+to-morrow morning. Let Mrs. Simmons sit up for her mistress. Mrs. John
+may return at any hour in the night."
+
+He galloped away along the smooth carriage-drive. At the lodge he
+stopped to inquire if any one had been through that way. No, the woman
+said; she had opened the gates for no one. Paul had expected no other
+answer. There was a footpath that led to a little wicket-gate opening
+on the high-road; and of course Olivia had chosen that way, which was a
+good deal shorter than the carriage-drive.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+THE TURNING OF THE TIDE.
+
+
+It was past two o'clock in the morning of the day which had been
+appointed for Edward Arundel's wedding, when Paul Marchmont drew rein
+before the white gate that divided Major Lawford's garden from the
+high-road. There was no lodge, no pretence of grandeur here. An
+old-fashioned garden surrounded an old-fashioned red-brick house. There
+was an apple-orchard upon one side of the low white gate, and a
+flower-garden, with a lawn and fish-pond, upon the other. The
+carriage-drive wound sharply round to a shallow flight of steps, and a
+broad door with a narrow window upon each side of it.
+
+Paul got off his horse at the gate, and went in, leading the animal by
+the bridle. He was a Cockney, heart and soul, and had no sense of any
+enjoyments that were not of a Cockney nature. So the horse he had
+selected for himself was anything but a fiery creature. He liked plenty
+of bone and very little blood in the steed he rode, and was contented
+to go at a comfortable, jog-trot, seven-miles-an-hour pace, along the
+wretched country roads.
+
+There was a row of old-fashioned wooden posts, with iron chains
+swinging between them, upon both sides of the doorway. Paul fastened
+the horse's bridle to one of these, and went up the steps. He rang a
+bell that went clanging and jangling through the house in the stillness
+of the summer night. All the way along the road he had looked right and
+left, expecting to pass Olivia; but he had seen no sign of her. This
+was nothing, however; for there were byways by which she might come
+from Marchmont Towers to Lawford Grange.
+
+"I must be before her, at any rate," Paul thought to himself, as he
+waited patiently for an answer to his summons.
+
+The time seemed very long to him, of course; but at last he saw a light
+glimmering through the mansion windows, and heard a shuffling foot in
+the hall. Then the door was opened very cautiously, and a woman's
+scared face peered out at Mr. Marchmont through the opening.
+
+"What is it?" the woman asked, in a frightened voice.
+
+"It is I, Mr. Marchmont, of Marchmont Towers. Your master knows me. Mr.
+Arundel is here, is he not?"
+
+"Yes, and Mrs. Arundel too; but they're all abed."
+
+"Never mind that; I must see Major Lawford immediately."
+
+"But they're all abed."
+
+"Never mind that, my good woman; I tell you I must see him."
+
+"But won't to-morrow mornin' do? It's near three o'clock, and
+to-morrow's our eldest miss's weddin'-day; and they're all abed."
+
+"I _must_ see your master. For mercy's sake, my good woman, do what I
+tell you! Go and call up Major Lawford,--you can do it quietly,--and
+tell him I must speak to him at once."
+
+The woman, with the chain of the door still between her and Mr.
+Marchmont, took a timid survey of Paul's face. She had heard of him
+often enough, but had never seen him before, and she was rather
+doubtful as to his identity. She knew that thieves and robbers resorted
+to all sorts of tricks in the course of their evil vocation. Mightn't
+this application for admittance in the dead of the night be only a part
+of some burglarious plot against the spoons and forks, and that
+hereditary silver urn with lions' heads holding rings in their mouths
+for handles, the fame of which had no doubt circulated throughout all
+Lincolnshire? Mr. Marchmont had neither a black mask nor a
+dark-lantern, and to Martha Philpot's mind these were essential
+attributes of the legitimate burglar; but he might be burglariously
+disposed, nevertheless, and it would be well to be on the safe side.
+
+"I'll go and tell 'em," the discreet Martha said civilly; "but perhaps
+you won't mind my leaving the chain oop. It ain't like as if it was
+winter," she added apologetically.
+
+"You may shut the door, if you like," answered Paul; "only be quick and
+wake your master. You can tell him that I want to see him upon a matter
+of life and death."
+
+Martha hurried away, and Paul stood upon the broad stone steps waiting
+for her return. Every moment was precious to him, for he wanted to be
+beforehand with Olivia. He had no thought except that she would come
+straight to the Grange to see Edward Arundel; unless, indeed, she was
+by any chance ignorant of his whereabouts.
+
+Presently the light appeared again in the narrow windows, and this time
+a man's foot sounded upon the stone-flagged hall. This time, too,
+Martha let down the chain, and opened the door wide enough for Mr.
+Marchmont to enter. She had no fear of burglarious marauders now that
+the valiant Major was at her elbow.
+
+"Mr. Marchmont," exclaimed the old soldier, opening a door leading into
+a little study, "you will excuse me if I seem rather bewildered by your
+visit. When an old fellow like me is called up in the middle of the
+night, he can't be expected to have his wits about him just at first.
+(Martha, bring us a light.) Sit down, Mr. Marchmont; there's a chair at
+your elbow. And now may I ask the reason----?"
+
+"The reason I have disturbed you in this abrupt manner. The occasion
+that brings me here is a very painful one; but I believe that my coming
+may save you and yours from much annoyance."
+
+"Save us from annoyance! Really, my dear sir, you----"
+
+"I mystify you for the moment, no doubt," Paul interposed blandly; "but
+if you will have a little patience with me, Major Lawford, I think I
+can make everything very clear,--only too painfully clear. You have
+heard of my relative, Mrs. John Marchmont,--my cousin's widow?"
+
+"I have," answered the Major, gravely.
+
+The dark scandals that had been current about wretched Olivia Marchmont
+came into his mind with the mention of her name, and the memory of
+those miserable slanders overshadowed his frank face.
+
+Paul waited while Martha brought in a smoky lamp, with the half-lighted
+wick sputtering and struggling in its oily socket. Then he went on, in
+a calm, dispassionate voice, which seemed the voice of a benevolent
+Christian, sublimely remote from other people's sorrows, but tenderly
+pitiful of suffering humanity, nevertheless.
+
+"You have heard of my unhappy cousin. You have no doubt heard that she
+is--mad?"
+
+He dropped his voice into so low a whisper, that he only seemed to
+shape this last word with his thin flexible lips.
+
+"I have heard some rumour to that effect," the Major answered; "that is
+to say, I have heard that Mrs. John Marchmont has lately become
+eccentric in her habits."
+
+"It has been my dismal task to watch the slow decay of a very powerful
+intellect," continued Paul. "When I first came to Marchmont Towers,
+about the time of my cousin Mary's unfortunate elopement with Mr.
+Arundel, that mental decay had already set in. Already the compass of
+Olivia Marchmont's mind had become reduced to a monotone, and the one
+dominant thought was doing its ruinous work. It was my fate to find the
+clue to that sad decay; it was my fate very speedily to discover the
+nature of that all-absorbing thought which, little by little, had grown
+into monomania."
+
+Major Lawford stared at his visitor's face. He was a plain-spoken man,
+and could scarcely see his way clearly through all this obscurity of
+fine words.
+
+"You mean to say you found out what had driven your cousin's widow
+mad?" he said bluntly.
+
+"You put the question very plainly, Major Lawford. Yes; I discovered
+the secret of my unhappy relative's morbid state of mind. That secret
+lies in the fact, that for the last ten years Olivia Marchmont has
+cherished a hopeless affection for her cousin, Mr. Edward Arundel."
+
+The Major almost bounded off his chair in horrified surprise.
+
+"Good gracious!" he exclaimed; "you surprise me, Mr. Marchmont,
+and--and--rather unpleasantly."
+
+"I should never have revealed this secret to you or to any other living
+creature, Major Lawford, had not circumstances compelled me to do so.
+As far as Mr. Arundel is concerned, I can set your mind quite at ease.
+He has chosen to insult me very grossly; but let that pass. I must do
+him the justice to state that I believe him to have been from first to
+last utterly ignorant of the state of his cousin's mind."
+
+"I hope so, sir; egad, I hope so!" exclaimed the Major, rather
+fiercely. "If I thought that this young man had trifled with the lady's
+affection; if I thought----"
+
+"You need think nothing to the detriment of Mr. Arundel," answered
+Paul, with placid politeness, "except that he is hot-headed, obstinate,
+and foolish. He is a young man of excellent principles, and has never
+fathomed the secret of his cousin's conduct towards him. I am rather a
+close observer,--something of a student of human nature,--and I have
+watched this unhappy woman. She loves, and has loved, her cousin Edward
+Arundel; and hers is one of those concentrative natures in which a
+great passion is nearly akin to a monomania. It was this hopeless,
+unreturned affection that embittered her character, and made her a
+harsh stepmother to my poor cousin Mary. For a long time this wretched
+woman has been very quiet; but her tranquillity has been only a
+deceitful calm. To-night the storm broke. Olivia Marchmont heard of the
+marriage that is to take place to-morrow; and, for the first time, a
+state of melancholy mania developed into absolute violence. She came to
+me, and attacked me upon the subject of this intended marriage. She
+accused me of having plotted to give Edward Arundel another bride; and
+then, after exhausting herself by a torrent of passionate invective
+against me, against her cousin Edward, your daughter,--every one
+concerned in to-morrow's event,--this wretched woman rushed out of the
+house in a jealous fury, declaring that she would do something--no
+matter what--to hinder the celebration of Edward Arundel's second
+marriage."
+
+"Good Heavens!" gasped the Major. "And you mean to say----"
+
+"I mean to say, that there is no knowing what may be attempted by a
+madwoman, driven mad by a jealousy in itself almost as terrible as
+madness. Olivia Marchmont has sworn to hinder your daughter's marriage.
+What has not been done by unhappy creatures in this woman's state of
+mind? Every day we read of such things in the newspapers--deeds of
+horror at which the blood grows cold in our veins; and we wonder that
+Heaven can permit such misery. It is not any frivolous motive that
+brings me here in the dead of the night, Major Lawford. I come to tell
+you that a desperate woman has sworn to hinder to-morrow's marriage.
+Heaven knows what she may do in her jealous frenzy! She _may_ attack
+your daughter."
+
+The father's face grew pale. His Linda, his darling, exposed to the
+fury of a madwoman! He could conjure up the scene: the fair girl
+clinging to her lover's breast, and desperate Olivia Marchmont swooping
+down upon her like an angry tigress.
+
+"For mercy's sake, tell me what I am to do, Mr. Marchmont!" cried the
+Major. "God bless you, sir, for bringing me this warning! But what am I
+to do? What do you advise? Shall we postpone the wedding?"
+
+"On no account. All you have to do is to keep this wretched woman at
+bay. Shut your doors upon her. Do not let her be admitted to this house
+upon any pretence whatever. Get the wedding over an hour earlier than
+has been intended, if it is possible for you to do so, and hurry the
+bride and bridegroom away upon the first stage of their wedding-tour.
+If you wish to escape all the wretchedness of a public scandal, avoid
+seeing this woman."
+
+"I will, I will," answered the bewildered Major. "It's a most awful
+situation. My poor Belinda! Her wedding-day! And a mad woman to
+attempt--Upon my word, Mr. Marchmont, I don't know how to thank you for
+the trouble you have taken."
+
+"Don't speak of that. This woman is my cousin's widow: any shame of
+hers is disgrace to me. Avoid seeing her. If by any chance she does
+contrive to force herself upon you, turn a deaf ear to all she may say.
+She horrified me to-night by her mad assertions. Be prepared for
+anything she may declare. She is possessed by all manner of delusions,
+remember, and may make the most ridiculous assertions. There is no
+limit to her hallucinations. She may offer to bring Edward Arundel's
+dead wife from the grave, perhaps. But you will not, on any account,
+allow her to obtain access to your daughter."
+
+"No, no--on no account. My poor Belinda! I am very grateful to you, Mr.
+Marchmont, for this warning. You'll stop here for the rest of the
+night? Martha's beds are always aired. You'll accept the shelter of our
+spare room until to-morrow morning?"
+
+"You are very good, Major Lawford; but I must hurry away directly.
+Remember that I am quite ignorant as to where my unhappy relative may
+be wandering at this hour of the night. She may have returned to the
+Towers. Her jealous fury may have exhausted itself; and in that case I
+have exaggerated the danger. But, at any rate I thought it best to give
+you this warning."
+
+"Most decidedly, my dear sir; I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
+But you'll take something--wine, tea, brandy-and-water--eh?"
+
+Paul had put on his hat and made his way into the hall by this time.
+There was no affectation in his eagerness to be away. He glanced
+uneasily towards the door every now and then while the Major was
+offering hospitable hindrance to his departure. He was very pale, with
+a haggard, ashen pallor that betrayed his anxiety, in spite of his
+bland calmness of manner.
+
+"You are very kind. No; I will get away at once. I have done my duty
+here; I must now try and do what I can for this wretched woman. Good
+night. Remember; shut your doors upon her."
+
+He unfastened the bridle of his horse, mounted, and rode away slowly,
+so long as there was any chance of the horse's tread being heard at the
+Grange. But when he was a quarter of a mile away from Major Lawford's
+house, he urged the horse into a gallop. He had no spurs; but he used
+his whip with a ruthless hand, and went off at a tearing pace along a
+narrow lane, where the ruts were deep.
+
+He rode for fifteen miles; and it was grey morning when he drew rein at
+a dilapidated five-barred gate leading into the great, tenantless yard
+of an uninhabited farmhouse. The place had been unlet for some years;
+and the land was in the charge of a hind in Mr. Marchmont's service.
+The hind lived in a cottage at the other extremity of the farm; and
+Paul had erected new buildings, with engine-houses and complicated
+machinery for pumping the water off the low-lying lands. Thus it was
+that the old farmhouse and the old farmyard were suffered to fall into
+decay. The empty sties, the ruined barns and outhouses, the rotting
+straw, and pools of rank corruption, made this tenantless farmyard the
+very abomination of desolation. Paul Marchmont opened the gate and went
+in. He picked his way very cautiously through the mud and filth,
+leading his horse by the bridle till he came to an outhouse, where he
+secured the animal. Then he crossed the yard, lifted the rusty latch of
+a narrow wooden door set in a plastered wall, and went into a dismal
+stone court, where one lonely hen was moulting in miserable solitude.
+
+Long rank grass grew in the interstices of the flags. The lonely hen
+set up a roopy cackle, and fluttered into a corner at sight of Paul
+Marchmont. There were some rabbit-hutches, tenantless; a dovecote,
+empty; a dog-kennel, and a broken chain rusting slowly in a pool of
+water, but no dog. The courtyard was at the back of the house, looked
+down upon by a range of latticed windows, some with closed shutters,
+others with shutters swinging in the wind, as if they had been fain to
+beat themselves to death in very desolation of spirit.
+
+Mr. Marchmont opened a door and went into the house. There were empty
+cellars and pantries, dairies and sculleries, right and left of him.
+The rats and mice scuttled away at sound of the intruder's footfall.
+The spiders ran upon the damp-stained walls, and the disturbed cobwebs
+floated slowly down from the cracked ceilings and tickled Mr.
+Marchmont's face.
+
+Farther on in the interior of the gloomy habitation Paul found a great
+stone-paved kitchen, at the darkest end of which there was a rusty
+grate, in which a minimum of flame struggled feebly with a maximum of
+smoke. An open oven-door revealed a dreary black cavern; and the very
+manner of the rusty door, and loose, half-broken handle, was an
+advertisement of incapacity for any homely hospitable use. Pale, sickly
+fungi had sprung up in clusters at the corners of the damp hearthstone.
+Spiders and rats, damp and cobwebs, every sign by which Decay writes
+its name upon the dwelling man has deserted, had set its separate mark
+upon this ruined place.
+
+Paul Marchmont looked round him with a contemptuous shudder. He called
+"Mrs. Brown! Mrs. Brown!" two or three times, each time waiting for an
+answer; but none came, and Mr. Marchmont passed on into another room.
+
+Here at least there was some poor pretence of comfort. The room was in
+the front of the house, and the low latticed window looked out upon a
+neglected garden, where some tall foxgloves reared their gaudy heads
+amongst the weeds. At the end of the garden there was a high brick
+wall, with pear-trees trained against it, and dragon's-mouth and
+wallflower waving in the morning-breeze.
+
+There was a bed in this room, empty; an easy-chair near the window;
+near that a little table, and a _set of Indian chessmen_. Upon the bed
+there were some garments scattered, as if but lately flung there; and
+on the floor, near the fireplace, there were the fragments of a child's
+first toys--a tiny trumpet, bought at some village fair, a baby's
+rattle, and a broken horse.
+
+Paul Marchmont looked about him--a little puzzled at first; then with a
+vague dread in his haggard face.
+
+"Mrs. Brown!" he cried, in a loud voice, hurrying across the room
+towards an inner door as he spoke.
+
+The inner door was opened before Paul could reach it, and a woman
+appeared; a tall, gaunt-looking woman, with a hard face and bare,
+brawny arms.
+
+"Where, in Heaven's name, have you been hiding yourself, woman?" Paul
+cried impatiently. "And where's--your patient?"
+
+"Gone, sir."
+
+"Gone! Where?"
+
+"With her stepmamma, Mrs. Marchmont--not half an hour ago. As it was
+your wish I should stop behind to clear up, I've done so, sir; but I
+did think it would have been better for me to have gone with----"
+
+Paul clutched the woman by the arm, and dragged her towards him.
+
+"Are you mad?" he cried, with an oath. "Are you mad, or drunk? Who gave
+you leave to let that woman go? Who----?"
+
+He couldn't finish the sentence. His throat grew dry, and he gasped for
+breath; while all the blood in his body seemed to rush into his swollen
+forehead.
+
+"You sent Mrs. Marchmont to fetch my patient away, sir," exclaimed the
+woman, looking frightened. "You did, didn't you? She said so!"
+
+"She is a liar; and you are a fool or a cheat. She paid you, I dare
+say! Can't you speak, woman? Has the person I left in your care, whom
+you were paid, and paid well, to take care of,--have you let her go?
+Answer me that."
+
+"I have, sir," the woman faltered,--she was big and brawny, but there
+was that in Paul Marchmont's face that frightened her
+notwithstanding,--"seeing as it was your orders."
+
+"That will do," cried Paul Marchmont, holding up his hand and looking
+at the woman with a ghastly smile; "that will do. You have ruined me;
+do you hear? You have undone a work that has cost me--O my God! why do
+I waste my breath in talking to such a creature as this? All my plots,
+my difficulties, my struggles and victories, my long sleepless nights,
+my bad dreams,--has it all come to this? Ruin, unutterable ruin,
+brought upon me by a madwoman!"
+
+He sat down in the chair by the window, and leaned upon the table,
+scattering the Indian chessmen with his elbow. He did not weep. That
+relief--terrible relief though it be for a man's breast--was denied
+him. He sat there with his face covered, moaning aloud. That helpless
+moan was scarcely like the complaint of a man; it was rather like the
+hopeless, dreary utterance of a brute's anguish; it sounded like the
+miserable howling of a beaten cur.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+BELINDA'S WEDDING-DAY.
+
+
+The sun shone upon Belinda Lawford's wedding-day. The birds were
+singing in the garden under her window as she opened her lattice and
+looked out. The word lattice is not a poetical license in this case;
+for Miss Lawford's chamber was a roomy, old-fashioned apartment at the
+back of the house, with deep window-seats and diamond-paned casements.
+
+The sun shone, and the roses bloomed in all their summer glory. "'Twas
+in the time of roses," as gentle-minded Thomas Hood so sweetly sang;
+surely the time of all others for a bridal morning. The girl looked out
+into the sunshine with her loose hair falling about her shoulders, and
+lingered a little looking at the familiar garden, with a half-pensive
+smile.
+
+"Oh, how often, how often," she said, "I have walked up and down by
+those laburnums, Letty!" There were two pretty white-curtained
+bedsteads in the old-fashioned room, and Miss Arundel had shared her
+friend's apartment for the last week. "How often mamma and I have sat
+under the dear old cedar, making our poor children's frocks! People say
+monotonous lives are not happy: mine has been the same thing over and
+over again; and yet how happy, how happy! And to think that we"--she
+paused a moment, and the rosy colour in her cheeks deepened by just one
+shade; it was so sweet to use that simple monosyllable "we" when Edward
+Arundel was the other half of the pronoun,--"to think that we shall be
+in Paris to-morrow!"
+
+"Driving in the Bois," exclaimed Miss Arundel; "and dining at the
+Maison Doree, or the Cafe de Paris. Don't dine at Meurice's, Linda;
+it's dreadfully slow dining at one's hotel. And you'll be a young
+married woman, and can do anything, you know. If I were a young married
+woman, I'd ask my husband to take me to the Mabille, just for half an
+hour, with an old bonnet and a thick veil. I knew a girl whose
+first-cousin married a cornet in the Guards, and they went to the
+Mabille one night. Come, Belinda, if you mean to have your back-hair
+done at all, you'd better sit down at once and let me commence
+operations."
+
+Miss Arundel had stipulated that, upon this particular morning, she was
+to dress her friend's hair; and she turned up the frilled sleeves of
+her white dressing-gown, and set to work in the orthodox manner,
+spreading a network of shining tresses about Miss Lawford's shoulders,
+prior to the weaving of elaborate plaits that were to make a crown for
+the fair young bride. Letitia's tongue went as fast as her fingers; but
+Belinda was very silent.
+
+She was thinking of the bounteous Providence that had given her the man
+she loved for her husband. She had been on her knees in the early
+morning, long before Letitia's awakening, breathing out innocent
+thanksgiving for the happiness that overflowed her fresh young heart. A
+woman had need to be country-bred, and to have been reared in the
+narrow circle of a happy home, to feel as Belinda Lawford felt. Such
+love as hers is only given to bright and innocent spirits, untarnished
+even by the knowledge of sin.
+
+Downstairs Edward Arundel was making a wretched pretence of
+breakfasting _tete-a-tete_ with his future father-in-law.
+
+The Major had held his peace as to the unlooked-for visitant of the
+past night. He had given particular orders that no stranger should be
+admitted to the house, and that was all. But being of a naturally
+frank, not to say loquacious disposition, the weight of this secret was
+a very terrible burden to the honest half-pay soldier. He ate his dry
+toast uneasily, looking at the door every now and then, in the
+perpetual expectation of beholding that barrier burst open by mad
+Olivia Marchmont.
+
+The breakfast was not a very cheerful meal, therefore. I don't suppose
+any ante-nuptial breakfast ever is very jovial. There was the state
+banquet--_the_ wedding breakfast--to be eaten by-and-by; and Mrs.
+Lawford, attended by all the females of the establishment, was engaged
+in putting the last touches to the groups of fruit and confectionery,
+the pyramids of flowers, and that crowning glory, the wedding-cake.
+
+"Remember the Madeira and still Hock are to go round first, and then
+the sparkling; and tell Gogram to be particular about the corks,
+Martha," Mrs. Lawford said to her confidential maid, as she gave a
+nervous last look at the table. "I was at a breakfast once where a
+champagne-cork hit the bridegroom on the bridge of his nose at the very
+moment he rose to return thanks; and being a nervous man, poor
+fellow,--in point of fact, he was a curate, and the bride was the
+rector's daughter, with two hundred a year of her own,--it quite
+overcame him, and he didn't get over it all through the breakfast. And
+now I must run and put on my bonnet."
+
+There was nothing but putting on bonnets, and pinning lace-shawls, and
+wild outcries for hair-pins, and interchanging of little feminine
+services, upon the bedroom floor for the next half-hour.
+
+Major Lawford walked up and down the hall, putting on his white gloves,
+which were too large for him,--elderly men's white gloves always are
+too large for them,--and watching the door of the citadel. Olivia must
+pass over a father's body, the old soldier thought, before she should
+annoy Belinda on her bridal morning.
+
+By-and-by the carriages came round to the door. The girl bridesmaids
+came crowding down the stairs, hustling each other's crisped garments,
+and disputing a little in a sisterly fashion; then Letitia Arundel,
+with nine rustling flounces of white silk ebbing and flowing and
+surging about her, and with a pleased simper upon her face; and then
+followed Mrs. Arundel, stately in silver-grey moire, and Mrs. Lawford,
+in violet silk--until the hall was a show of bonnets and bouquets and
+muslin.
+
+And last of all, Belinda Lawford, robed in cloudlike garments of
+spotless lace, with bridal flowers trembling round her hair, came
+slowly down the broad old-fashioned staircase, to see her lover
+loitering in the hall below.
+
+He looked very grave; but he greeted his bride with a tender smile. He
+loved her, but he could not forget. Even upon this, his wedding-day,
+the haunting shadow of the past was with him: not to be shaken off.
+
+He did not wait till Belinda reached the bottom of the staircase. There
+was a sort of ceremonial law to be observed, and he was not to speak to
+Miss Lawford upon this special morning until he met her in the vestry
+at Hillingsworth church; so Letitia and Mrs. Arundel hustled the young
+man into one of the carriages, while Major Lawford ran to receive his
+daughter at the foot of the stairs.
+
+The Arundel carriage drove off about five minutes before the vehicle
+that was to convey Major Lawford, Belinda, and as many of the girl
+bridesmaids as could be squeezed into it without detriment to lace and
+muslin. The rest went with Mrs. Lawford in the third and last carriage.
+Hillingsworth church was about three-quarters of a mile from the
+Grange. It was a pretty irregular old place, lying in a little nook
+under the shadow of a great yew-tree. Behind the square Norman tower
+there was a row of poplars, black against the blue summer sky; and
+between the low gate of the churchyard and the grey, moss-grown porch,
+there was an avenue of good old elms. The rooks were calling to each
+other in the topmost branches of the trees as Major Lawford's carriage
+drew up at the churchyard gate.
+
+Belinda was a great favourite amongst the poor of Hillingsworth parish,
+and the place had put on a gala-day aspect in honour of her wedding.
+Garlands of honeysuckle and wild clematis were twined about the stout
+oaken gate-posts. The school-children were gathered in clusters in the
+churchyard, with their pinafores full of fresh flowers from shadowy
+lanes and from prim cottage-gardens,--bright homely blossoms, with the
+morning dew still upon them.
+
+The rector and his curate were standing in the porch waiting for the
+coming of the bride; and there were groups of well-dressed people
+dotted about here and there in the drowsy-sheltered pews near the
+altar. There were humbler spectators clustered under the low ceiling of
+the gallery--tradesmen's wives and daughters, radiant with new ribbons,
+and whispering to one another in delighted anticipation of the show.
+
+Everybody round about the Grange loved pretty, genial Belinda Lawford,
+and there was universal rejoicing because of her happiness.
+
+The wedding party came out of the vestry presently in appointed order:
+the bride with her head drooping, and her face hidden by her veil; the
+bridesmaids' garments making a fluttering noise as they came up the
+aisle, like the sound of a field of corn faintly stirred by summer
+breezes.
+
+Then the grave voice of the rector began the service with the brief
+preliminary exordium; and then, in a tone that grew more solemn with
+the increasing solemnity of the words, he went on to that awful charge
+which is addressed especially to the bridegroom and the bride:
+
+"I require and charge you both, as ye will answer at the dreadful day
+of judgment, when the secrets of all hearts shall be disclosed, that if
+either of you know any impediment, why ye may not be lawfully joined
+together in matrimony, ye do now confess it. For be ye well
+assured----"
+
+The rector read no further; for a woman's voice from out the dusky
+shadows at the further end of the church cried "Stop!"
+
+There was a sudden silence; people stared at each other with scared
+faces, and then turned in the direction whence the voice had come. The
+bride lifted her head for the first time since leaving the vestry, and
+looked round about her, ashy pale and trembling.
+
+"O Edward, Edward!" she cried, "what is it?"
+
+The rector waited, with his hand still upon the open book. He waited,
+looking towards the other end of the chancel. He had no need to wait
+long: a woman, with a black veil thrown back from a white, haggard
+face, and with dusty garments dragging upon the church-floor, came
+slowly up the aisle.
+
+Her two hands were clasped upon her breast, and her breath came in
+gasps, as if she had been running.
+
+"Olivia!" cried Edward Arundel, "what, in Heaven's name--"
+
+But Major Lawford stepped forward, and spoke to the rector.
+
+"Pray let her be got out of the way," he said, in a low voice. "I was
+warned of this. I was quite prepared for some such disturbance." He
+sank his voice to a whisper. "_She is mad!_" he said, close in the
+rector's ear.
+
+The whisper was like whispering in general,--more distinctly audible
+than the rest of the speech. Olivia Marchmont heard it.
+
+"Mad until to-day," she cried; "but not mad to-day. O Edward Arundel! a
+hideous wrong has been done by me and through me. Your wife--your
+wife--"
+
+"My wife! what of her? She--"
+
+"She is alive!" gasped Olivia; "an hour's walk from here. I came on
+foot. I was tired, and I have been long coming. I thought that I should
+be in time to stop you before you got to the church; but I am very
+weak. I ran the last part of the way--"
+
+She dropped her hands upon the altar-rails, and seemed as if she would
+have fallen. The rector put his arm about her to support her, and she
+went on:
+
+"I thought I should have spared her this," she said, pointing to
+Belinda; "but I can't help it. _She_ must bear her misery as well as
+others. It can't be worse for her than it has been for others. She must
+bear--"
+
+"My wife!" said Edward Arundel; "Mary, my poor sorrowful
+darling--alive?"
+
+Belinda turned away, and buried her face upon her mother's shoulder.
+She could have borne anything better than this.
+
+His heart--that supreme treasure, for which she had rendered up thanks
+to her God--had never been hers after all. A word, a breath, and she
+was forgotten; his thoughts went back to that other one. There was
+unutterable joy, there was unspeakable tenderness in his tone, as he
+spoke of Mary Marchmont, though _she_ stood by his side, in all her
+foolish bridal finery, with her heart newly broken.
+
+"O mother," she cried, "take me away! take me away, before I die!"
+
+Olivia flung herself upon her knees by the altar-rails. Where the pure
+young bride was to have knelt by her lover's side this wretched sinner
+cast herself down, sunk far below all common thoughts in the black
+depth of her despair.
+
+"O my sin, my sin!" she cried, with clasped hands lifted up above her
+head. "Will God ever forgive my sin? will God ever have pity upon me?
+Can He pity, can He forgive, such guilt as mine? Even this work of
+to-day is no atonement to be reckoned against my wickedness. I was
+jealous of this other woman; I was jealous! Earthly passion was still
+predominant in this miserable breast."
+
+She rose suddenly, as if this outburst had never been, and laid her
+hand upon Edward Arundel's arm.
+
+"Come!" she said; "come!"
+
+"To her--to Mary--my wife?"
+
+They had taken Belinda away by this time; but Major Lawford stood
+looking on. He tried to draw Edward aside; but Olivia's hand upon the
+young man's arm held him like a vice.
+
+"She is mad," whispered the Major. "Mr. Marchmont came to me last
+night, and warned me of all this. He told me to be prepared for
+anything; she has all sorts of delusions. Get her away, if you can,
+while I go and explain matters to Belinda. Edward, if you have a spark
+of manly feeling, get this woman away."
+
+But Olivia held the bridegroom's arm with a tightening grasp.
+
+"Come!" she said; "come! Are you turned to stone, Edward Arundel? Is
+your love worth no more than this? I tell you, your wife, Mary
+Marchmont, is alive. Let those who doubt me come and see for
+themselves."
+
+The eager spectators, standing up in the pews or crowding in the narrow
+aisle, were only too ready to respond to this invitation.
+
+Olivia led her cousin out into the churchyard; she led him to the gate
+where the carriages were waiting. The crowd flocked after them; and the
+people outside began to cheer as they came out. That cheer was the
+signal for which the school-children had waited; and they set to work
+scattering flowers upon the narrow pathway, before they looked up to
+see who was coming to trample upon the rosebuds and jessamine, the
+woodbine and seringa. But they drew back, scared and wondering, as
+Olivia came along the pathway, sweeping those tender blossoms after her
+with her trailing black garments, and leading the pale bridegroom by
+his arm.
+
+She led him to the door of the carriage beside which Major Lawford's
+gray-haired groom was waiting, with a big white satin favour pinned
+upon his breast, and a bunch of roses in his button hole. There were
+favours in the horses' ears, and favours upon the breasts of the
+Hillingsworth tradespeople who supplied bread and butcher's meat and
+grocery to the family at the Grange. The bell-ringers up in the
+church-tower saw the crowd flock out of the porch, and thought the
+marriage ceremony was over. The jangling bells pealed out upon the hot
+summer air as Edward stood by the churchyard-gate, with Olivia
+Marchmont by his side.
+
+"Lend me your carriage," he said to Major Lawford, "and come with me. I
+must see the end of this. It may be all a delusion; but I must see the
+end of it. If there is any truth in instinct, I believe that I shall
+see my wife--alive."
+
+He got into the carriage without further ceremony, and Olivia and Major
+Lawford followed him.
+
+"Where is my wife?" the young man asked, letting down the front window
+as he spoke.
+
+"At Kemberling, at Hester Jobson's."
+
+"Drive to Kemberling," Edward said to the coachman,--"to Kemberling
+High Street, as fast as you can go."
+
+The man drove away from the churchyard-gate. The humbler spectators,
+who were restrained by no niceties of social etiquette, hurried after
+the vehicle, raising white clouds of dust upon the high road with their
+eager feet. The higher classes lingered about the churchyard, talking
+to each other and wondering.
+
+Very few people stopped to think of Belinda Lawford. "Let the stricken
+deer go weep." A stricken deer is a very uninteresting object when
+there are hounds in full cry hard by, and another deer to be hunted.
+
+"Since when has my wife been at Kemberling?" Edward Arundel asked
+Olivia, as the carriage drove along the high road between the two
+villages.
+
+"Since daybreak this morning."
+
+"Where was she before then?"
+
+"At Stony-Stringford Farm."
+
+"And before then?"
+
+"In the pavilion over the boat-house at Marchmont."
+
+"My God! And--"
+
+The young man did not finish his sentence. He put his head out of the
+window, looking towards Kemberling, and straining his eyes to catch the
+earliest sight of the straggling village street.
+
+"Faster!" he cried every now and then to the coachman; "faster!"
+
+In little more than half an hour from the time at which it had left the
+churchyard-gate, the carriage stopped before the little carpenter's
+shop. Mr. Jobson's doorway was adorned by a painted representation of
+two very doleful-looking mutes standing at a door; for Hester's husband
+combined the more aristocratic avocation of undertaker with the homely
+trade of carpenter and joiner.
+
+Olivia Marchmont got out of the carriage before either of the two men
+could alight to assist her. Power was the supreme attribute of this
+woman's mind. Her purpose never faltered; from the moment she had left
+Marchmont Towers until now, she had known neither rest of body nor
+wavering of intention.
+
+"Come," she said to Edward Arundel, looking back as she stood upon the
+threshold of Mr. Jobson's door; "and you too," she added, turning to
+Major Lawford,--"follow us, and _see_ whether I am MAD."
+
+She passed through the shop, and into that prim, smart parlour in which
+Edward Arundel had lamented his lost wife.
+
+The latticed windows were wide open, and the warm summer sunshine
+filled the room.
+
+A girl, with loose tresses of hazel-brown hair falling about her face,
+was sitting on the floor, looking down at a beautiful fair-haired
+nursling of a twelvemonth old.
+
+The girl was John Marchmont's daughter; the child was Edward Arundel's
+son. It was _his_ childish cry that the young man had heard upon that
+October night in the pavilion by the water.
+
+"Mary Arundel," said Olivia, in a hard voice, "I give you back your
+husband."
+
+The young mother got up from the ground with a low cry, tottered
+forward, and fell into her husband's arms.
+
+"They told me you were dead! They made me believe that you were dead!"
+she said, and then fainted on the young man's breast. Edward carried
+her to a sofa and laid her down, white and senseless; and then knelt
+down beside her, crying over her, and sobbing out inarticulate
+thanksgiving to the God who had given his lost wife back to him.
+
+"Poor sweet lamb!" murmured Hester Jobson; "she's as weak as a baby;
+and she's gone through so much a'ready this morning."
+
+It was some time before Edward Arundel raised his head from the pillow
+upon which his wife's pale face lay, half hidden amid the tangled hair.
+But when he did look up, he turned to Major Lawford and stretched out
+his hand.
+
+"Have pity upon me," he said. "I have been the dupe of a villain. Tell
+your poor child how much I esteem her, how much I regret that--that--we
+should have loved each other as we have. The instinct of my heart would
+have kept me true to the past; but it was impossible to know your
+daughter and not love her. The villain who has brought this sorrow upon
+us shall pay dearly for his infamy. Go back to your daughter; tell her
+everything. Tell her what you have seen here. I know her heart, and I
+know that she will open her arms to this poor ill-used child."
+
+The Major went away very downcast. Hester Jobson bustled about bringing
+restoratives and pillows, stopping every now and then in an outburst of
+affection by the slippery horsehair couch on which Mary lay.
+
+Mrs. Jobson had prepared her best bedroom for her beloved visitor, and
+Edward carried his young wife up to the clean, airy chamber. He went
+back to the parlour to fetch the child. He carried the fair-haired
+little one up-stairs in his own arms; but I regret to say that the
+infant showed an inclination to whimper in his newly-found father's
+embrace. It is only in the British Drama that newly discovered fathers
+are greeted with an outburst of ready-made affection. Edward Arundel
+went back to the sitting-room presently, and sat down, waiting till
+Hester should bring him fresh tidings of his wife. Olivia Marchmont
+stood by the window, with her eyes fixed upon Edward.
+
+"Why don't you speak to me?" she said presently. "Can you find no words
+that are vile enough to express your hatred of me? Is that why you are
+silent?"
+
+"No, Olivia," answered the young man, calmly. "I am silent, because I
+have nothing to say to you. Why you have acted as you have acted,--why
+you have chosen to be the tool of a black-hearted villain,--is an
+unfathomable mystery to me. I thank God that your conscience was
+aroused this day, and that you have at least hindered the misery of an
+innocent girl. But why you have kept my wife hidden from me,--why you
+have been the accomplice of Paul Marchmont's crime,--is more than I can
+even attempt to guess."
+
+"Not yet?" said Olivia, looking at him with a strange smile. "Even yet
+I am a mystery to you?"
+
+"You are, indeed, Olivia."
+
+She turned away from him with a laugh.
+
+"Then I had better remain so till the end," she said, looking out into
+the garden. But after a moment's silence she turned her head once more
+towards the young man. "I will speak," she said; "I _will_ speak,
+Edward Arundel. I hope and believe that I have not long to live, and
+that all my shame and misery, my obstinate wickedness, my guilty
+passion, will come to an end, like a long feverish dream. O God, have
+mercy on my waking, and make it brighter than this dreadful sleep! I
+loved you, Edward Arundel. Ah! you start. Thank God at least for that.
+I kept my secret well. You don't know what that word 'love' means, do
+you? You think you love that childish girl yonder, perhaps; but I can
+tell you that you don't know what love is. _I_ know what it is. I have
+loved. For ten years,--for ten long, dreary, desolate, miserable years,
+fifty-two weeks in every year, fifty-two Sundays, with long idle hours
+between the two church services--I have loved you, Edward. Shall I tell
+you what it is to love? It is to suffer, to hate, yes, to hate even the
+object of your love, when that love is hopeless; to hate him for the
+very attributes that have made you love him; to grudge the gifts and
+graces that have made him dear. It is to hate every creature on whom
+his eyes look with greater tenderness than they look on you; to watch
+one face until its familiar lines become a perpetual torment to you,
+and you cannot sleep because of its eternal presence staring at you in
+all your dreams. It is to be like some wretched drunkard, who loathes
+the fiery spirit that is destroying him, body and soul, and yet goes
+on, madly drinking, till he dies. Love! How many people upon this great
+earth know the real meaning of that hideous word! I have learnt it
+until my soul loathes the lesson. They will tell you that I am mad,
+Edward, and they will tell you something near the truth; but not quite
+the truth. My madness has been my love. From long ago, when you were
+little more than a boy--you remember, don't you, the long days at the
+Rectory? _I_ remember every word you ever spoke to me, every sentiment
+you ever expressed, every look of your changing face--you were the
+first bright thing that came across my barren life; and I loved you. I
+married John Marchmont--why, do you think?--because I wanted to make a
+barrier between you and me. I wanted to make my love for you impossible
+by making it a sin. So long as my husband lived, I shut your image out
+of my mind as I would have shut out the Prince of Darkness, if he had
+come to me in a palpable shape. But since then--oh, I hope I have been
+mad since then; I hope that God may forgive my sins because I have been
+mad!"
+
+Her thoughts wandered away to that awful question which had been so
+lately revived in her mind--Could she be forgiven? Was it within the
+compass of heavenly mercy to forgive such a sin as hers?
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+MARY'S STORY.
+
+
+One of the minor effects of any great shock, any revolution, natural or
+political, social or domestic, is a singular unconsciousness, or an
+exaggerated estimate, of the passage of time. Sometimes we fancy that
+the common functions of the universe have come to a dead stop during
+the tempest which has shaken our being to its remotest depths.
+Sometimes, on the other hand, it seems to us that, because we have
+endured an age of suffering, or half a lifetime of bewildered joy, the
+terrestrial globe has spun round in time to the quickened throbbing of
+our passionate hearts, and that all the clocks upon earth have been
+standing still.
+
+When the sun sank upon the summer's day that was to have been the day
+of Belinda's bridal, Edward Arundel thought that it was still early in
+the morning. He wondered at the rosy light all over the western sky,
+and that great ball of molten gold dropping down below the horizon. He
+was fain to look at his watch, in order to convince himself that the
+low light was really the familiar sun, and not some unnatural
+appearance in the heavens.
+
+And yet, although he wondered at the closing of the day, with a strange
+inconsistency his mind could scarcely grapple with the idea that only
+last night he had sat by Belinda Lawford's side, her betrothed husband,
+and had pondered, Heaven only knows with what sorrowful regret, upon
+the unknown grave in which his dead wife lay.
+
+"I only knew it this morning," he thought; "I only knew this morning
+that my young wife still lives, and that I have a son."
+
+He was sitting by the open window in Hester Jobson's best bedroom. He
+was sitting in an old-fashioned easy-chair, placed between the head of
+the bed and the open window,--a pure cottage window, with diamond panes
+of thin greenish glass, and a broad painted ledge, with a great jug of
+homely garden-flowers standing on it. The young man was sitting by the
+side of the bed upon which his newly-found wife and son lay asleep; the
+child's head nestled on his mother's breast, one flushed cheek peeping
+out of a tangled confusion of hazel-brown and babyish flaxen hair.
+
+The white dimity curtains overshadowed the loving sleepers. The pretty
+fluffy knotted fringe--neat Hester's handiwork--made fantastical
+tracery upon the sunlit counterpane. Mary slept with one arm folded
+round her child, and with her face turned to her husband. She had
+fallen asleep with her hand clasped in his, after a succession of
+fainting-fits that had left her terribly prostrate.
+
+Edward Arundel watched that tender picture with a smile of ineffable
+affection.
+
+"I can understand now why Roman Catholics worship the Virgin Mary," he
+thought. "I can comprehend the inspiration that guided Raphael's hand
+when he painted the Madonna de la Chaise. In all the world there is no
+picture so beautiful. From all the universe he could have chosen no
+subject more sublime. O my darling wife, given back to me out of the
+grave, restored to me,--and not alone restored! My little son! my
+baby-son! whose feeble voice I heard that dark October night. To think
+that I was so wretched a dupe! to think that my dull ears could hear
+that sound, and no instinct rise up in my heart to reveal the presence
+of my child! I was so near them, not once, but several times,--so near,
+and I never knew--I never guessed!"
+
+He clenched his fists involuntarily at the remembrance of those
+purposeless visits to the lonely boat-house. His young wife was
+restored to him. But nothing could wipe away the long interval of agony
+in which he and she had been the dupe of a villanous trickster and a
+jealous woman. Nothing could give back the first year of that baby's
+life,--that year which should have been one long holiday of love and
+rejoicing. Upon what a dreary world those innocent eyes had opened,
+when they should have looked only upon sunshine and flowers, and the
+tender light of a loving father's smile!
+
+"O my darling, my darling!" the young husband thought, as he looked at
+his wife's wan face, upon which the evidence of all that past agony was
+only too painfully visible,--"how bitterly we two have suffered! But
+how much more terrible must have been your suffering than mine, my poor
+gentle darling, my broken lily!"
+
+In his rapture at finding the wife he had mourned as dead, the young
+man had for a time almost forgotten the villanous plotter who had kept
+her hidden from him. But now, as he sat quietly by the bed upon which
+Mary and her baby lay, he had leisure to think of Paul Marchmont.
+
+What was he to do with that man? What vengeance could he wreak upon the
+head of that wretch who, for nearly two years, had condemned an
+innocent girl to cruel suffering and shame? To shame; for Edward knew
+now that one of the most bitter tortures which Paul Marchmont had
+inflicted upon his cousin had been his pretended disbelief in her
+marriage.
+
+"What can I do to him?" the young man asked himself. "_What_ can I do
+to him? There is no personal chastisement worse than that which he has
+endured already at my hands. The scoundrel! the heartless villain! the
+false, cold-blooded cur! What can I do to him? I can only repeat that
+shameful degradation, and I _will_ repeat it. This time he shall howl
+under the lash like some beaten hound. This time I will drag him
+through the village-street, and let every idle gossip in Kemberling see
+how a scoundrel writhes under an honest man's whip. I will--"
+
+Edward Arundel's wife woke while he was thinking what chastisement he
+should inflict upon her deadly foe; and the baby opened his round
+innocent blue eyes in the next moment, and sat up, staring at his new
+parent.
+
+Mr. Arundel took the child in his arms, and held him very tenderly,
+though perhaps rather awkwardly. The baby's round eyes opened wider at
+sight of those golden absurdities dangling at his father's watch-chain,
+and the little pudgy hands began to play with the big man's lockets and
+seals.
+
+"He comes to me, you see, Mary!" Edward said, with naive wonder.
+
+And then he turned the baby's face towards him, and tenderly
+contemplated the bright surprised blue eyes, the tiny dimples, the soft
+moulded chin. I don't know whether fatherly vanity prompted the fancy,
+but Edward Arundel certainly did believe that he saw some faint
+reflection of his own features in that pink and white baby-face; a
+shadowy resemblance, like a tremulous image looking up out of a river.
+But while Edward was half-thinking this, half-wondering whether there
+could be any likeness to him in that infant countenance, Mary settled
+the question with womanly decision.
+
+"Isn't he like you, Edward?" she whispered. "It was only for his sake
+that I bore my life all through that miserable time; and I don't think
+I could have lived even for him, if he hadn't been so like you. I used
+to look at his face sometimes for hours and hours together, crying over
+him, and thinking of you. I don't think I ever cried except when he was
+in my arms. Then something seemed to soften my heart, and the tears
+came to my eyes. I was very, very, very ill, for a long time before my
+baby was born; and I didn't know how the time went, or where I was. I
+used to fancy sometimes I was back in Oakley Street, and that papa was
+alive again, and that we were quite happy together, except for some
+heavy hammer that was always beating, beating, beating upon both our
+heads, and the dreadful sound of the river rushing down the street
+under our windows. I heard Mr. Weston tell his wife that it was a
+miracle I lived through that time."
+
+Hester Jobson came in presently with a tea-tray, that made itself
+heard, by a jingling of teaspoons and rattling of cups and saucers, all
+the way up the narrow staircase.
+
+The friendly carpenter's wife had produced her best china and her
+silver teapot,--an heirloom inherited from a wealthy maiden aunt of her
+husband's. She had been busy all the afternoon, preparing that elegant
+little collation of cake and fruit which accompanied the tea-tray; and
+she spread the lavender-scented table-cloth, and arranged the cups and
+saucers, the plates and dishes, with mingled pride and delight.
+
+But she had to endure a terrible disappointment by-and-by; for neither
+of her guests was in a condition to do justice to her hospitality. Mary
+got up and sat in the roomy easy-chair, propped up with pillows. Her
+pensive eyes kept a loving watch upon the face of her husband, turned
+towards her own, and slightly crimsoned by that rosy flush fading out
+in the western sky. She sat up and sipped a cup of tea; and in that
+lovely summer twilight, with the scent of the flowers blowing in
+through the open window, and a stupid moth doing his best to beat out
+his brains against one of the diamond panes in the lattice, the
+tortured heart, for the first time since the ruthless close of that
+brief honeymoon, felt the heavenly delight of repose.
+
+"O Edward!" murmured the young wife, "how strange it seems to be
+happy!"
+
+He was at her feet, half-kneeling, half-sitting on a hassock of
+Hester's handiwork, with both his wife's hands clasped in his, and his
+head leaning upon the arm of her chair. Hester Jobson had carried off
+the baby, and these two were quite alone, all in all to each other,
+with a cruel gap of two years to be bridged over by sorrowful memories,
+by tender words of consolation. They were alone, and they could talk
+quite freely now, without fear of interruption; for although in purity
+and beauty an infant is first cousin to the angels, and although I most
+heartily concur in all that Mr. Bennett and Mr. Buchanan can say or
+sing about the species, still it must be owned that a baby _is_ rather
+a hindrance to conversation, and that a man's eloquence does not flow
+quite so smoothly when he has to stop every now and then to rescue his
+infant son from the imminent peril of strangulation, caused by a futile
+attempt at swallowing one of his own fists.
+
+Mary and Edward were alone; they were together once more, as they had
+been by the trout-stream in the Winchester meadows. A curtain had
+fallen upon all the wreck and ruin of the past, and they could hear the
+soft, mysterious music that was to be the prelude of a new act in
+life's drama.
+
+"I shall try to forget all that time," Mary said presently; "I shall
+try to forget it, Edward. I think the very memory of it would kill me,
+if it was to come back perpetually in the midst of my joy, as it does
+now, even now, when I am so happy--so happy that I dare not speak of my
+happiness."
+
+She stopped, and her face drooped upon her husband's clustering hair.
+
+"You are crying, Mary!"
+
+"Yes, dear. There is something painful in happiness when it comes after
+such suffering."
+
+The young man lifted his head, and looked in his wife's face. How
+deathly pale it was, even in that shadowy twilight; how worn and
+haggard and wasted since it had smiled at him in his brief honeymoon.
+Yes, joy is painful when it comes after a long continuance of
+suffering; it is painful because we have become sceptical by reason of
+the endurance of such anguish. We have lost the power to believe in
+happiness. It comes, the bright stranger; but we shrink appalled from
+its beauty, lest, after all, it should be nothing but a phantom.
+
+Heaven knows how anxiously Edward Arundel looked at his wife's altered
+face. Her eyes shone upon him with the holy light of love. She smiled
+at him with a tender, reassuring smile; but it seemed to him that there
+was something almost supernal in the brightness of that white, wasted
+face; something that reminded him of the countenance of a martyr who
+has ceased to suffer the anguish of death in a foretaste of the joys of
+Heaven.
+
+"Mary," he said, presently, "tell me every cruelty that Paul Marchmont
+or his tools inflicted upon you; tell me everything, and I will never
+speak of our miserable separation again. I will only punish the cause
+of it," he added, in an undertone. "Tell me, dear. It will be painful
+for you to speak of it; but it will be only once. There are some things
+I must know. Remember, darling, that you are in my arms now, and that
+nothing but death can ever again part us."
+
+The young man had his arms round his wife. He felt, rather than heard,
+a low plaintive sigh as he spoke those last words.
+
+"Nothing but death, Edward; nothing but death," Mary said, in a solemn
+whisper. "Death would not come to me when I was very miserable. I used
+to pray that I might die, and the baby too; for I could not have borne
+to leave him behind. I thought that we might both be buried with you,
+Edward. I have dreamt sometimes that I was lying by your side in a
+tomb, and I have stretched out my dead hand to clasp yours. I used to
+beg and entreat them to let me be buried with you when I died; for I
+believed that you were dead, Edward. I believed it most firmly. I had
+not even one lingering hope that you were alive. If I had felt such a
+hope, no power upon earth would have kept me prisoner."
+
+"The wretches!" muttered Edward between his set teeth; "the dastardly
+wretches! the foul liars!"
+
+"Don't, Edward; don't, darling. There is a pain in my heart when I hear
+you speak like that. I know how wicked they have been; how cruel--how
+cruel. I look back at all my suffering as if it were some one else who
+suffered; for now that you are with me I cannot believe that miserable,
+lonely, despairing creature was really me, the same creature whose head
+now rests upon your shoulder, whose breath is mixed with yours. I look
+back and see all my past misery, and I cannot forgive them, Edward; I
+am very wicked, for I cannot forgive my cousin Paul and his
+sister--yet. But I don't want you to speak of them; I only want you to
+love me; I only want you to smile at me, and tell me again and again
+and again that nothing can part us now--but death."
+
+She paused for a few moments, exhausted by having spoken so long. Her
+head lay upon her husband's shoulder, and she clung a little closer to
+him, with a slight shiver.
+
+"What is the matter, darling?"
+
+"I feel as if it couldn't be real."
+
+"What, dear?"
+
+"The present--all this joy. Edward, is it real? Is it--is it? Or am I
+only dreaming? Shall I wake presently and feel the cold air blowing in
+at the window, and see the moonlight on the wainscot at Stony
+Stringford? Is it all real?"
+
+"It is, my precious one. As real as the mercy of God, who will give you
+compensation for all you have suffered; as real as God's vengeance,
+which will fall most heavily upon your persecutors. And now, darling,
+tell me,--tell me all. I must know the story of these two miserable
+years during which I have mourned for my lost love."
+
+Mr. Arundel forgot to mention that during those two miserable years he
+had engaged himself to become the husband of another woman. But
+perhaps, even when he is best and truest, a man is always just a shade
+behind a woman in the matter of constancy.
+
+"When you left me in Hampshire, Edward, I was very, very miserable,"
+Mary began, in a low voice; "but I knew that it was selfish and wicked
+of me to think only of myself. I tried to think of your poor father,
+who was ill and suffering; and I prayed for him, and hoped that he
+would recover, and that you would come back to me very soon. The people
+at the inn were very kind to me. I sat at the window from morning till
+night upon the day after you left me, and upon the day after that; for
+I was so foolish as to fancy, every time I heard the sound of horses'
+hoofs or carriage-wheels upon the high-road, that you were coming back
+to me, and that all my grief was over. I sat at the window and watched
+the road till I knew the shape of every tree and housetop, every ragged
+branch of the hawthorn-bushes in the hedge. At last--it was the third
+day after you went away--I heard carriage-wheels, that slackened as
+they came to the inn. A fly stopped at the door, and oh, Edward, I did
+not wait to see who was in it,--I never imagined the possibility of its
+bringing anybody but you. I ran down-stairs, with my heart beating so
+that I could hardly breathe; and I scarcely felt the stairs under my
+feet. But when I got to the door--O my love, my love!--I cannot bear to
+think of it; I cannot endure the recollection of it--"
+
+She stopped, gasping for breath, and clinging to her husband; and then,
+with an effort, went on again:
+
+"Yes; I will tell you, dear; I must tell you. My cousin Paul and my
+stepmother were standing in the little hall at the foot of the stairs.
+I think I fainted in my stepmother's arms; and when my consciousness
+came back, I was in our sitting-room,--the pretty rustic room, Edward,
+in which you and I had been so happy together.
+
+"I must not stop to tell you everything. It would take me so long to
+speak of all that happened in that miserable time. I knew that
+something must be wrong, from my cousin Paul's manner; but neither he
+nor my stepmother would tell me what it was. I asked them if you were
+dead; but they said, 'No, you were not dead.' Still I could see that
+something dreadful had happened. But by-and-by, by accident, I saw your
+name in a newspaper that was lying on the table with Paul's hat and
+gloves. I saw the description of an accident on the railway, by which I
+knew you had travelled. My heart sank at once, and I think I guessed
+all that had happened. I read your name amongst those of the people who
+had been dangerously hurt. Paul shook his head when I asked him if
+there was any hope.
+
+"They brought me back here. I scarcely know how I came, how I endured
+all that misery. I implored them to let me come to you, again and
+again, on my knees at their feet. But neither of them would listen to
+me. It was impossible, Paul said. He always seemed very, very kind to
+me; always spoke softly; always told me that he pitied me, and was
+sorry for me. But though my stepmother looked sternly at me, and spoke,
+as she always used to speak, in a harsh, cold voice, I sometimes think
+she might have given way at last and let me come to you, but for
+him--but for my cousin Paul. He could look at me with a smile upon his
+face when I was almost mad with my misery; and he never wavered; he
+never hesitated.
+
+"So they took me back to the Towers. I let them take me; for I scarcely
+felt my sorrow any longer. I only felt tired; oh, so dreadfully tired;
+and I wanted to lie down upon the ground in some quiet place, where no
+one could come near me. I thought that I was dying. I believe I was
+very ill when we got back to the Towers. My stepmother and Barbara
+Simmons watched by my bedside, day after day, night after night.
+Sometimes I knew them; sometimes I had all sorts of fancies. And
+often--ah, how often, darling!--I thought that you were with me. My
+cousin Paul came every day, and stood by my bedside. I can't tell you
+how hateful it was to me to have him there. He used to come into the
+room as silently as if he had been walking upon snow; but however
+noiselessly he came, however fast asleep I was when he entered the
+room, I always knew that he was there, standing by my bedside, smiling
+at me. I always woke with a shuddering horror thrilling through my
+veins, as if a rat had run across my face.
+
+"By-and-by, when the delirium was quite gone, I felt ashamed of myself
+for this. It seemed so wicked to feel this unreasonable antipathy to my
+dear father's cousin; but he had brought me bad news of you, Edward,
+and it was scarcely strange that I should hate him. One day he sat down
+by my bedside, when I was getting better, and was strong enough to
+talk. There was no one besides ourselves in the room, except my
+stepmother, and she was standing at the window, with her head turned
+away from us, looking out. My cousin Paul sat down by the bedside, and
+began to talk to me in that gentle, compassionate way that used to
+torture me and irritate me in spite of myself.
+
+"He asked me what had happened to me after my leaving the Towers on the
+day after the ball.
+
+"I told him everything, Edward--about your coming to me in Oakley
+Street; about our marriage. But, oh, my darling, my husband, he
+wouldn't believe me; he wouldn't believe. Nothing that I could say
+would make him believe me. Though I swore to him again and again--by my
+dead father in heaven, as I hoped for the mercy of my God--that I had
+spoken the truth, and the truth only, he wouldn't believe me; he
+wouldn't believe. He shook his head, and said he scarcely wondered I
+should try to deceive him; that it was a very sad story, a very
+miserable and shameful story, and my attempted falsehood was little
+more than natural.
+
+"And then he spoke against you, Edward--against you. He talked of my
+childish ignorance, my confiding love, and your villany. O Edward, he
+said such shameful things; such shameful, horrible things! You had
+plotted to become master of my fortune; to get me into your power,
+because of my money; and you had not married me. You had _not_ married
+me; he persisted in saying that.
+
+"I was delirious again after this; almost mad, I think. All through the
+delirium I kept telling my cousin Paul of our marriage. Though he was
+very seldom in the room, I constantly thought that he was there, and
+told him the same thing--the same thing--till my brain was on fire. I
+don't know how long it lasted. I know that, once in the middle of the
+night, I saw my stepmother lying upon the ground, sobbing aloud and
+crying out about her wickedness; crying out that God would never
+forgive her sin.
+
+"I got better at last, and then I went downstairs; and I used to sit
+sometimes in poor papa's study. The blind was always down, and none of
+the servants, except Barbara Simmons, ever came into the room. My
+cousin Paul did not live at the Towers; but he came there every day,
+and often stayed there all day. He seemed the master of the house. My
+stepmother obeyed him in everything, and consulted him about
+everything.
+
+"Sometimes Mrs. Weston came. She was like her brother. She always
+smiled at me with a grave compassionate smile, just like his; and she
+always seemed to pity me. But she wouldn't believe in my marriage. She
+spoke cruelly about you, Edward; cruelly, but in soft words, that
+seemed only spoken out of compassion for me. No one would believe in my
+marriage.
+
+"No stranger was allowed to see me. I was never suffered to go out.
+They treated me as if I was some shameful creature, who must be hidden
+away from the sight of the world.
+
+"One day I entreated my cousin Paul to go to London and see Mrs.
+Pimpernel. She would be able to tell him of our marriage. I had
+forgotten the name of the clergyman who married us, and the church at
+which we were married. And I could not tell Paul those; but I gave him
+Mrs. Pimpernel's address. And I wrote to her, begging her to tell my
+cousin, all about my marriage; and I gave him the note unsealed.
+
+"He went to London about a week afterwards; and when he came back, he
+brought me my note. He had been to Oakley Street, he said; but Mrs.
+Pimpernel had left the neighbourhood, and no one knew where she was
+gone."
+
+"A lie! a villanous lie!" muttered Edward Arundel. "Oh, the scoundrel!
+the infernal scoundrel!"
+
+"No words would ever tell the misery of that time; the bitter anguish;
+the unendurable suspense. When I asked them about you, they would tell
+me nothing. Sometimes I thought that you had forgotten me; that you had
+only married me out of pity for my loneliness; and that you were glad
+to be freed from me. Oh, forgive me, Edward, for that wicked thought;
+but I was so very miserable, so utterly desolate. At other times I
+fancied that you were very ill, helpless, and unable to come to me. I
+dared not think that you were dead. I put away that thought from me
+with all my might; but it haunted me day and night. It was with me
+always like a ghost. I tried to shut it away from my sight; but I knew
+that it was there.
+
+"The days were all alike,--long, dreary, and desolate; so I scarcely
+know how the time went. My stepmother brought me religious books, and
+told me to read them; but they were hard, difficult books, and I
+couldn't find one word of comfort in them. They must have been written
+to frighten very obstinate and wicked people, I think. The only book
+that ever gave me any comfort, was that dear Book I used to read to
+papa on a Sunday evening in Oakley Street. I read that, Edward, in
+those miserable days; I read the story of the widow's only son who was
+raised up from the dead because his mother was so wretched without him.
+I read that sweet, tender story again and again, until I used to see
+the funeral train, the pale, still face upon the bier, the white,
+uplifted hand, and that sublime and lovely countenance, whose image
+always comes to us when we are most miserable, the tremulous light upon
+the golden hair, and in the distance the glimmering columns of white
+temples, the palm-trees standing out against the purple Eastern sky. I
+thought that He who raised up a miserable woman's son chiefly because
+he was her only son, and she was desolate without him, would have more
+pity upon me than the God in Olivia's books: and I prayed to Him,
+Edward, night and day, imploring Him to bring you back to me.
+
+"I don't know what day it was, except that it was autumn, and the dead
+leaves were blowing about in the quadrangle, when my stepmother sent
+for me one afternoon to my room, where I was sitting, not reading, not
+even thinking--only sitting with my head upon my hands, staring
+stupidly out at the drifting leaves and the gray, cold sky. My
+stepmother was in papa's study; and I was to go to her there. I went,
+and found her standing there, with a letter crumpled up in her clenched
+hand, and a slip of newspaper lying on the table before her. She was as
+white as death, and she was trembling violently from head to foot.
+
+"'See,' she said, pointing to the paper; 'your lover is dead. But for
+you he would have received the letter that told him of his father's
+illness upon an earlier day; he would have gone to Devonshire by a
+different train. It was by your doing that he travelled when he did. If
+this is true, and he is dead, his blood be upon your head; his blood be
+upon your head!'
+
+"I think her cruel words were almost exactly those. I did not hope for
+a minute that those horrible lines in the newspaper were false. I
+thought they must be true, and I was mad, Edward--I was mad; for utter
+despair came to me with the knowledge of your death. I went to my own
+room, and put on my bonnet and shawl; and then I went out of the house,
+down into that dreary wood, and along the narrow pathway by the
+river-side. I wanted to drown myself; but the sight of the black water
+filled me with a shuddering horror. I was frightened, Edward; and I
+went on by the river, scarcely knowing where I was going, until it was
+quite dark; and I was tired, and sat down upon the damp ground by the
+brink of the river, all amongst the broad green flags and the wet
+rushes. I sat there for hours, and I saw the stars shining feebly in a
+dark sky. I think I was delirious, for sometimes I knew that I was
+there by the water side, and then the next minute I thought that I was
+in my bedroom at the Towers; sometimes I fancied that I was with you in
+the meadows near Winchester, and the sun was shining, and you were
+sitting by my side, and I could see your float dancing up and down in
+the sunlit water. At last, after I had been there a very, very long
+time, two people came with a lantern, a man and a woman; and I heard a
+startled voice say, 'Here she is; here, lying on the ground!' And then
+another voice, a woman's voice, very low and frightened, said, 'Alive!'
+And then two people lifted me up; the man carried me in his arms, and
+the woman took the lantern. I couldn't speak to them; but I knew that
+they were my cousin Paul and his sister, Mrs. Weston. I remember being
+carried some distance in Paul's arms; and then I think I must have
+fainted away, for I can recollect nothing more until I woke up one day
+and found myself lying in a bed in the pavilion over the boat-house,
+with Mr. Weston watching by my bedside.
+
+"I don't know how the time passed; I only know that it seemed endless.
+I think my illness was rheumatic fever, caught by lying on the damp
+ground nearly all that night when I ran away from the Towers. A long
+time went by--there was frost and snow. I saw the river once out of the
+window when I was lifted out of bed for an hour or two, and it was
+frozen; and once at midnight I heard the Kemberling church-bells
+ringing in the New Year. I was very ill, but I had no doctor; and all
+that time I saw no one but my cousin Paul, and Lavinia Weston, and a
+servant called Betsy, a rough country girl, who took care of me when my
+cousins were away. They were kind to me, and took great care of me."
+
+"You did not see Olivia, then, all this time?" Edward asked eagerly.
+
+"No; I did not see my stepmother till some time after the New Year
+began. She came in suddenly one evening, when Mrs. Weston was with me,
+and at first she seemed frightened at seeing me. She spoke to me kindly
+afterwards, but in a strange, terror-stricken voice; and she laid her
+head down upon the counterpane of the bed, and sobbed aloud; and then
+Paul took her away, and spoke to her cruelly, very cruelly--taunting
+her with her love for you. I never understood till then why she hated
+me: but I pitied her after that; yes, Edward, miserable as I was, I
+pitied her, because you had never loved her. In all my wretchedness I
+was happier than her; for you had loved me, Edward--you had loved me!"
+
+Mary lifted her face to her husband's lips, and those dear lips were
+pressed tenderly upon her pale forehead.
+
+"O my love, my love!" the young man murmured; "my poor suffering angel!
+Can God ever forgive these people for their cruelty to you? But, my
+darling, why did you make no effort to escape?"
+
+"I was too ill to move; I believed that I was dying."
+
+"But afterwards, darling, when you were better, stronger,--did you make
+no effort then to escape from your persecutors?"
+
+Mary shook her head mournfully.
+
+"Why should I try to escape from them?" she said. "What was there for
+me beyond that place? It was as well for me to be there as anywhere
+else. I thought you were dead, Edward; I thought you were dead, and
+life held nothing more for me. I could do nothing but wait till He who
+raised the widow's son should have pity upon me, and take me to the
+heaven where I thought you and papa had gone before me. I didn't want
+to go away from those dreary rooms over the boat-house. What did it
+matter to me whether I was there or at Marchmont Towers? I thought you
+were dead, and all the glories and grandeurs of the world were nothing
+to me. Nobody ill-treated me; I was let alone. Mrs. Weston told me that
+it was for my own sake they kept me hidden from everybody about the
+Towers. I was a poor disgraced girl, she told me; and it was best for
+me to stop quietly in the pavilion till people had got tired of talking
+of me, and then my cousin Paul would take me away to the Continent,
+where no one would know who I was. She told me that the honour of my
+father's name, and of my family altogether, would be saved by this
+means. I replied that I had brought no dishonour on my dear father's
+name; but she only shook her head mournfully, and I was too weak to
+dispute with her. What did it matter? I thought you were dead, and that
+the world was finished for me. I sat day after day by the window; not
+looking out, for there was a Venetian blind that my cousin Paul had
+nailed down to the window-sill, and I could only see glimpses of the
+water through the long, narrow openings between the laths. I used to
+sit there listening to the moaning of the wind amongst the trees, or
+the sounds of horses' feet upon the towing-path, or the rain dripping
+into the river upon wet days. I think that even in my deepest misery
+God was good to me, for my mind sank into a dull apathy, and I seemed
+to lose even the capacity of suffering.
+
+"One day,--one day in March, when the wind was howling, and the smoke
+blew down the narrow chimney and filled the room,--Mrs. Weston brought
+her husband, and he talked to me a little, and then talked to his wife
+in whispers. He seemed terribly frightened, and he trembled all the
+time, and kept saying, 'Poor thing; poor young woman!' but his wife was
+cross to him, and wouldn't let him stop long in the room. After that,
+Mr. Weston came very often, always with Lavinia, who seemed cleverer
+than he was, even as a doctor; for she dictated to him, and ordered him
+about in everything. Then, by-and-by, when the birds were singing, and
+the warm sunshine came into the room, my baby was born, Edward; my baby
+was born. I thought that God, who raised the widow's son, had heard my
+prayer, and had raised you up from the dead; for the baby's eyes were
+like yours, and I used to think sometimes that your soul was looking
+out of them and comforting me.
+
+"Do you remember that poor foolish German woman who believed that the
+spirit of a dead king came to her in the shape of a blackbird? She was
+not a good woman, I know, dear; but she must have loved the king very
+truly, or she never could have believed anything so foolish. I don't
+believe in people's love when they love 'wisely,' Edward: the truest
+love is that which loves 'too well.'
+
+"From the time of my baby's birth everything was changed. I was more
+miserable, perhaps, because that dull, dead apathy cleared away, and my
+memory came back, and I thought of you, dear, and cried over my little
+angel's face as he slept. But I wasn't alone any longer. The world
+seemed narrowed into the little circle round my darling's cradle. I
+don't think he is like other babies, Edward. I think he has known of my
+sorrow from the very first, and has tried in his mute way to comfort
+me. The God who worked so many miracles, all separate tokens of His
+love and tenderness and pity for the sorrows of mankind, could easily
+make my baby different from other children, for a wretched mother's
+consolation.
+
+"In the autumn after my darling's birth, Paul and his sister came for
+me one night, and took me away from the pavilion by the water to a
+deserted farmhouse, where there was a woman to wait upon me and take
+care of me. She was not unkind to me, but she was rather neglectful of
+me. I did not mind that, for I wanted nothing except to be alone with
+my precious boy--your son, Edward; your son. The woman let me walk in
+the garden sometimes. It was a neglected garden, but there were bright
+flowers growing wild, and when the spring came again my pet used to lie
+on the grass and play with the buttercups and daisies that I threw into
+his lap; and I think we were both of us happier and better than we had
+been in those two close rooms over the boat-house.
+
+"I have told you all now, Edward, all except what happened this
+morning, when my stepmother and Hester Jobson came into my room in the
+early daybreak, and told me that I had been deceived, and that you were
+alive. My stepmother threw herself upon her knees at my feet, and asked
+me to forgive her, for she was a miserable sinner, she said, who had
+been abandoned by God; and I forgave her, Edward, and kissed her; and
+you must forgive her too, dear, for I know that she has been very, very
+wretched. And she took the baby in her arms, and kissed him,--oh, so
+passionately!--and cried over him. And then they brought me here in Mr.
+Jobson's cart, for Mr. Jobson was with them, and Hester held me in her
+arms all the time. And then, darling, then after a long time you came
+to me."
+
+Edward put his arms round his wife, and kissed her once more. "We will
+never speak of this again, darling," he said. "I know all now; I
+understand it all. I will never again distress you by speaking of your
+cruel wrongs."
+
+"And you will forgive Olivia, dear?"
+
+"Yes, my pet, I will forgive--Olivia."
+
+He said no more, for there was a footstep on the stair, and a glimmer
+of light shone through the crevices of the door. Hester Jobson came
+into the room with a pair of lighted wax-candles, in white
+crockery-ware candlesticks. But Hester was not alone; close behind her
+came a lady in a rustling silk gown, a tall matronly lady, who cried
+out,--
+
+"Where is she, Edward? Where is she? Let me see this poor ill-used
+child."
+
+It was Mrs. Arundel, who had come to Kemberling to see her newly-found
+daughter-in-law.
+
+"Oh, my dear mother," cried the young man, "how good of you to come!
+Now, Mary, you need never again know what it is to want a protector, a
+tender womanly protector, who will shelter you from every harm."
+
+Mary got up and went to Mrs. Arundel, who opened her arms to receive
+her son's young wife. But before she folded Mary to her friendly
+breast, she took the girl's two hands in hers, and looked earnestly at
+her pale, wasted face.
+
+She gave a long sigh as she contemplated those wan features, the
+shining light in the eyes, that looked unnaturally large by reason of
+the girl's hollow cheeks.
+
+"Oh, my dear," cried Mrs. Arundel, "my poor long-suffering child, how
+cruelly they have treated you!"
+
+Edward looked at his mother, frightened by the earnestness of her
+manner; but she smiled at him with a bright, reassuring look.
+
+"I shall take you home to Dangerfield with me, my poor love," she said
+to Mary; "and I shall nurse you, and make you as plump as a partridge,
+my poor wasted pet. And I'll be a mother to you, my motherless child.
+Oh, to think that there should be any wretch vile enough to--But I
+won't agitate you, my dear. I'll take you away from this bleak horrid
+county by the first train to-morrow morning, and you shall sleep
+to-morrow night in the blue bedroom at Dangerfield, with the roses and
+myrtles waving against your window; and Edward shall go with us, and
+you shan't come back here till you are well and strong; and you'll try
+and love me, won't you, dear? And, oh, Edward, I've seen the boy! and
+he's a _superb_ creature, the very _image_ of what you were at a
+twelvemonth old; and he came to me, and smiled at me, almost as if he
+knew I was his grandmother; and he has got FIVE teeth, but I'm _sorry_
+to tell you he's cutting them crossways, the top first instead of the
+bottom, Hester says."
+
+"And Belinda, mother dear?" Edward said presently, in a grave
+undertone.
+
+"Belinda is an angel," Mrs. Arundel answered, quite as gravely. "She
+has been in her own room all day, and no one has seen her but her
+mother; but she came down to the hall as I was leaving the house this
+evening, and said to me, 'Dear Mrs. Arundel, tell him that he must not
+think I am so selfish as to be sorry for what has happened. Tell him
+that I am very glad to think his young wife has been saved.' She put
+her hand up to my lips to stop my speaking, and then went back again to
+her room; and if that isn't acting like an angel, I don't know what
+is."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+"ALL WITHIN IS DARK AS NIGHT."
+
+
+Paul Marchmont did not leave Stony-Stringford Farmhouse till dusk upon
+that bright summer's day; and the friendly twilight is slow to come in
+the early days of July, however a man may loathe the sunshine. Paul
+Marchmont stopped at the deserted farmhouse, wandering in and out of
+the empty rooms, strolling listlessly about the neglected garden, or
+coming to a dead stop sometimes, and standing stock-still for ten
+minutes at a time, staring at the wall before him, and counting the
+slimy traces of the snails upon the branches of a plum-tree, or the
+flies in a spider's web. Paul Marchmont was afraid to leave that lonely
+farmhouse. He was afraid as yet. He scarcely knew what he feared, for a
+kind of stupor had succeeded the violent emotions of the past few
+hours; and the time slipped by him, and his brain grew bewildered when
+he tried to realise his position.
+
+It was very difficult for him to do this. The calamity that had come
+upon him was a calamity that he had never anticipated. He was a clever
+man, and he had put his trust in his own cleverness. He had never
+expected to be _found out_.
+
+Until this hour everything had been in his favour. His dupes and
+victims had played into his hands. Mary's grief, which had rendered her
+a passive creature, utterly indifferent to her own fate,--her peculiar
+education, which had taught her everything except knowledge of the
+world in which she was to live,--had enabled Paul Marchmont to carry
+out a scheme so infamous and daring that it was beyond the suspicion of
+honest men, almost too base for the comprehension of ordinary villains.
+
+He had never expected to be found out. All his plans had been
+deliberately and carefully prepared. Immediately after Edward's
+marriage and safe departure for the Continent, Paul had intended to
+convey Mary and the child, with the grim attendant whom he had engaged
+for them, far away, to one of the remotest villages in Wales.
+
+Alone he would have done this; travelling by night, and trusting no
+one; for the hired attendant knew nothing of Mary's real position. She
+had been told that the girl was a poor relation of Paul's, and that her
+story was a very sorrowful one. If the poor creature had strange
+fancies and delusions, it was no more than might be expected; for she
+had suffered enough to turn a stronger brain than her own. Everything
+had been arranged, and so cleverly arranged, that Mary and the child
+would disappear after dusk one summer's evening, and not even Lavinia
+Weston would be told whither they had gone.
+
+Paul had never expected to be found out. But he had least of all
+expected betrayal from the quarter whence it had come. He had made
+Olivia his tool; but he had acted cautiously even with her. He had
+confided nothing to her; and although she had suspected some foul play
+in the matter of Mary's disappearance, she had been certain of nothing.
+She had uttered no falsehood when she swore to Edward Arundel that she
+did not know where his wife was. But for her accidental discovery of
+the secret of the pavilion, she would never have known of Mary's
+existence after that October afternoon on which the girl left Marchmont
+Towers.
+
+But here Paul had been betrayed by the carelessness of the hired girl
+who acted as Mary Arundel's gaoler and attendant. It was Olivia's habit
+to wander often in that dreary wood by the water during the winter in
+which Mary was kept prisoner in the pavilion over the boat-house.
+Lavinia Weston and Paul Marchmont spent each of them a great deal of
+their time in the pavilion; but they could not be always on guard
+there. There was the world to be hoodwinked; and the surgeon's wife had
+to perform all her duties as a matron before the face of Kemberling,
+and had to give some plausible account of her frequent visits to the
+boat-house. Paul liked the place for his painting, Mrs. Weston informed
+her friends; and he was _so_ enthusiastic in his love of art, that it
+was really a pleasure to participate in his enthusiasm; so she liked to
+sit with him, and talk to him or read to him while he painted. This
+explanation was quite enough for Kemberling; and Mrs. Weston went to
+the pavilion at Marchmont Towers three or four times a week without
+causing any scandal thereby.
+
+But however well you may manage things yourself, it is not always easy
+to secure the careful co-operation of the people you employ. Betsy
+Murrel was a stupid, narrow-minded young person, who was very safe so
+far as regarded the possibility of any sympathy with, or compassion
+for, Mary Arundel arising in her stolid nature; but the stupid
+stolidity which made her safe in one way rendered her dangerous in
+another. One day, while Mrs. Weston was with the hapless young
+prisoner, Miss Murrel went out upon the water-side to converse with a
+good-looking young bargeman, who was a connexion of her family, and
+perhaps an admirer of the young lady herself; and the door of the
+painting-room being left wide open, Olivia Marchmont wandered
+listlessly into the pavilion--there was a dismal fascination for her in
+that spot, on which she had heard Edward Arundel declare his love for
+John Marchmont's daughter--and heard Mary's voice in the chamber at the
+top of the stone steps.
+
+This was how Olivia had surprised Paul's secret; and from that hour it
+had been the artist's business to rule this woman by the only weapon
+which he possessed against her,--her own secret, her own weak folly,
+her mad love of Edward Arundel and jealous hatred of the woman whom he
+had loved. This weapon was a very powerful one, and Paul used it
+unsparingly.
+
+When the woman who, for seven-and-twenty years of her life, had lived
+without sin; who from the hour in which she had been old enough to know
+right from wrong, until Edward Arundel's second return from India, had
+sternly done her duty,--when this woman, who little by little had
+slipped away from her high standing-point and sunk down into a morass
+of sin; when this woman remonstrated with Mr. Marchmont, he turned upon
+her and lashed her with the scourge of her own folly.
+
+"You come and upbraid me," he said, "and you call me villain and
+arch-traitor, and say that you cannot abide this, your sin; and that
+your guilt, in keeping our secret, cries to you in the dead hours of
+the night; and you call upon me to undo what I have done, and to
+restore Mary Marchmont to her rights. Do you remember what her highest
+right is? Do you remember that which I must restore to her when I give
+her back this house and the income that goes along with it? If I
+restore Marchmont Towers, I must restore to her _Edward Arundel's
+love!_ You have forgotten that, perhaps. If she ever re-enters this
+house, she will come back to it leaning on his arm. You will see them
+together--you will hear of their happiness; and do you think that _he_
+will ever forgive you for your part of the conspiracy? Yes, it is a
+conspiracy, if you like; if you are not afraid to call it by a hard
+name, why should I fear to do so? Will he ever forgive you, do you
+think, when he knows that his young wife has been the victim of a
+senseless, vicious love? Yes, Olivia Marchmont; any love is vicious
+which is given unsought, and is so strong a passion, so blind and
+unreasoning a folly, that honour, mercy, truth, and Christianity are
+trampled down before it. How will you endure Edward Arundel's contempt
+for you? How will you tolerate his love for Mary, multiplied twentyfold
+by all this romantic business of separation and persecution?
+
+"You talk to me of my sin. Who was it who first sinned? Who was it who
+drove Mary Marchmont from this house,--not once only, but twice, by her
+cruelty? Who was it who persecuted her and tortured her day by day and
+hour by hour, not openly, not with an uplifted hand or blows that could
+be warded off, but by cruel hints and inuendoes, by unwomanly sneers
+and hellish taunts? Look into your heart, Olivia Marchmont; and when
+you make atonement for your sin, I will make restitution for mine. In
+the meantime, if this business is painful to you, the way lies open
+before you: go and take Edward Arundel to the pavilion yonder, and give
+him back his wife; give the lie to all your past life, and restore
+these devoted young lovers to each other's arms."
+
+This weapon never failed in its effect. Olivia Marchmont might loathe
+herself, and her sin, and her life, which was made hideous to her
+because of her sin; but she _could_ not bring herself to restore Mary
+to her lover-husband; she could not tolerate the idea of their
+happiness. Every night she grovelled on her knees, and swore to her
+offended God that she would do this thing, she would render this
+sacrifice of atonement; but every morning, when her weary eyes opened
+on the hateful sunlight, she cried, "Not to-day--not to-day."
+
+Again and again, during Edward Arundel's residence at Kemberling
+Retreat, she had set out from Marchmont Towers with the intention of
+revealing to him the place where his young wife was hidden; but, again
+and again, she had turned back and left her work undone. She _could_
+not--she could not. In the dead of the night, under pouring rain, with
+the bleak winds of winter blowing in her face, she had set out upon
+that unfinished journey, only to stop midway, and cry out, "No, no,
+no--not to-night; I cannot endure it yet!"
+
+It was only when another and a fiercer jealousy was awakened in this
+woman's breast, that she arose all at once, strong, resolute, and
+undaunted, to do the work she had so miserably deferred. As one poison
+is said to neutralise the evil power of another, so Olivia Marchmont's
+jealousy of Belinda seemed to blot out and extinguish her hatred of
+Mary. Better anything than that Edward Arundel should have a new, and
+perhaps a fairer, bride. The jealous woman had always looked upon Mary
+Marchmont as a despicable rival. Better that Edward should be tied to
+this girl, than that he should rejoice in the smiles of a lovelier
+woman, worthier of his affection. _This_ was the feeling paramount in
+Olivia's breast, although she was herself half unconscious how entirely
+this was the motive power which had given her new strength and
+resolution. She tried to think that it was the awakening of her
+conscience that had made her strong enough to do this one good work;
+but in the semi-darkness of her own mind there was still a feeble
+glimmer of the light of truth, and it was this that had prompted her to
+cry out on her knees before the altar in Hillingsworth church, and
+declare the sinfulness of her nature.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+Paul Marchmont stopped several times before the ragged, untrimmed
+fruit-trees in his purposeless wanderings in the neglected garden at
+Stony Stringford, before the vaporous confusion cleared away from his
+brain, and he was able to understand what had happened to him.
+
+His first reasonable action was to take out his watch; but even then he
+stood for some moments staring at the dial before he remembered why he
+had taken the watch from his pocket, or what it was that he wanted to
+know. By Mr. Marchmont's chronometer it was ten minutes past seven
+o'clock; but the watch had been unwound upon the previous night, and
+had run down. Paul put it back in his waistcoat-pocket, and then walked
+slowly along the weedy pathway to that low latticed window in which he
+had often seen Mary Arundel standing with her child in her arms. He
+went to this window and looked in, with his face against the glass. The
+room was neat and orderly now; for the woman whom Mr. Marchmont had
+hired had gone about her work as usual, and was in the act of filling a
+little brown earthenware teapot from a kettle on the hob when Paul
+stared in at her.
+
+She looked up as Mr. Marchmont's figure came between her and the light,
+and nearly dropped the little brown teapot in her terror of her
+offended employer.
+
+But Paul pulled open the window, and spoke to her very quietly. "Stop
+where you are," he said; "I want to speak to you. I'll come in."
+
+He went into the house by a door, that had once been the front and
+principal entrance, which opened into a low wainscoted hall. From this
+room he went into the parlour, which had been Mary Arundel's apartment,
+and in which the hired nurse was now preparing her breakfast. "I
+thought I might as well get a cup of tea, sir, whiles I waited for your
+orders," the woman murmured, apologetically; "for bein' knocked up so
+early this morning, you see, sir, has made my head _that_ bad, I could
+scarcely bear myself; and----"
+
+Paul lifted his hand to stop the woman's talk, as he had done before.
+He had no consciousness of what she was saying, but the sound of her
+voice pained him. His eyebrows contracted with a spasmodic action, as
+if something had hurt his head.
+
+There was a Dutch clock in the corner of the room, with a long pendulum
+swinging against the wall. By this clock it was half-past eight.
+
+"Is your clock right?" Paul asked.
+
+"Yes, sir. Leastways, it may be five minutes too slow, but not more."
+
+Mr. Marchmont took out his watch, wound it up, and regulated it by the
+Dutch clock.
+
+"Now," he said, "perhaps you can tell me clearly what happened. I want
+no excuses, remember; I only want to know what occurred, and what was
+said--word for word, remember."
+
+He sat down but got up again directly, and walked to the window; then
+he paced up and down the room two or three times, and then went back to
+the fireplace and sat down again. He was like a man who, in the racking
+torture of some physical pain, finds a miserable relief in his own
+restlessness.
+
+"Come," he said; "I am waiting."
+
+"Yes, sir; which, begging your parding, if you wouldn't mind sitting
+still like, while I'm a-telling of you, which it do remind me of the
+wild beastes in the Zoological, sir, to that degree, that the boil, to
+which I am subjeck, sir, and have been from a child, might prevent me
+bein' as truthful as I should wish. Mrs. Marchmont, sir, she come
+before it was light, _in_ a cart, sir, which it was a shaycart, and
+made comfortable with cushions and straw, and suchlike, or I should not
+have let the young lady go away in it; and she bring with her a
+respectable, homely-looking young person, which she call Hester Jobling
+or Gobson, or somethink of that sound like, which my memory is
+treechrous, and I don't wish to tell a story on no account; and Mrs.
+Marchmont she go straight up to my young lady, and she shakes her by
+the shoulder; and then the young woman called Hester, she wakes up my
+young lady quite gentle like, and kisses her and cries over her; and a
+man as drove the cart, which looked a small tradesman well-to-do,
+brings his trap round to the front-door,--you may see the trax of the
+wheels upon the gravel now, sir, if you disbelieve me. And Mrs.
+Marchmont and the young woman called Hester, between 'em they gets my
+young lady up, and dresses her, and dresses the child; and does it all
+so quick, and overrides me to such a degree, that I hadn't no power to
+prevent 'em; but I say to Mrs. Marchmont, I say: 'Is it Mr. Marchmont's
+orders as his cousin should be took away this morning?' and she stare
+at me hard, and say, 'Yes;' and she have allus an abrumpt way, but was
+abrumpter than ordinary this morning. And, oh sir, bein' a poor lone
+woman, what was I to do?"
+
+"Have you nothing more to tell me?"
+
+"Nothing, sir; leastways, except as they lifted my young lady into the
+cart, and the man got in after 'em, and drove away as fast as his horse
+would go; and they had been gone two minutes when I began to feel all
+in a tremble like, for fear as I might have done wrong in lettin' of
+'em go."
+
+"You have done wrong," Paul answered, sternly; "but no matter. If these
+officious friends of my poor weak-witted cousin choose to take her
+away, so much the better for me, who have been burdened with her long
+enough. Since your charge has gone, your services are no longer wanted.
+I shan't act illiberally to you, though I am very much annoyed by your
+folly and stupidity. Is there anything due to you?"
+
+Mrs. Brown hesitated for a moment, and then replied, in a very
+insinuating tone,--
+
+"Not _wages_, sir; there ain't no _wages_ doo to me,--which you paid me
+a quarter in advance last Saturday was a week, and took a receipt, sir,
+for the amount. But I have done my dooty, sir, and had but little sleep
+and rest, which my 'ealth ain't what it was when I answered your
+advertisement, requirin' a respectable motherly person, to take charge
+of a invalid lady, not objectin' to the country--which I freely tell
+you, sir, if I'd known that the country was a rheumatic old place like
+this, with rats enough to scare away a regyment of soldiers, I would
+not have undertook the situation; so any present as you might think
+sootable, considerin' all things, and----"
+
+"That will do," said Paul Marchmont, taking a handful of loose money
+from his waistcoat pocket; "I suppose a ten-pound note would satisfy
+you?"
+
+"Indeed it would, sir, and very liberal of you too----"
+
+"Very well. I've got a five-pound note here, and five sovereigns. The
+best thing you can do is to get back to London at once; there's a train
+leaves Milsome Station at eleven o'clock--Milsome's not more than a
+mile and a half from here. You can get your things together; there's a
+boy about the place who will carry them for you, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, sir; there's a boy by the name of William."
+
+"He can go with you, then; and if you look sharp, you can catch the
+eleven-o'clock train."
+
+"Yes, sir; and thank you kindly, sir."
+
+"I don't want any thanks. See that you don't miss the train; that's all
+you have to take care of."
+
+Mr. Marchmont went out into the garden again. He had done something, at
+any rate; he had arranged for getting this woman out of the way.
+
+If--if by any remote chance there might be yet a possibility of keeping
+the secret of Mary's existence, here was one witness already got rid
+of.
+
+But was there any chance? Mr. Marchmont sat down on a rickety old
+garden-seat, and tried to think--tried to take a deliberate survey of
+his position.
+
+No; there was no hope for him. Look which way he could, there was not
+one ray of light. With George Weston and Olivia, Betsy Murrel the
+servant-girl, and Hester Jobson to bear witness against him, what could
+he hope?
+
+The surgeon would be able to declare that the child was Mary's son, her
+legitimate son, sole heir to that estate of which Paul had taken
+possession.
+
+There was no hope. There was no possibility that Olivia should waver in
+her purpose; for had she not brought with her two witnesses--Hester
+Jobson and her husband?
+
+From that moment the case was taken out of her hands. The honest
+carpenter and his wife would see that Mary had her rights.
+
+"It will be a glorious speculation for them," thought Paul Marchmont,
+who naturally measured other people's characters by a standard derived
+from an accurate knowledge of his own.
+
+Yes, his ruin was complete. Destruction had come upon him, swift and
+sudden as the caprice of a madwoman--or--the thunderbolt of an offended
+Providence. What should he do? Run away, sneak away by back-lanes and
+narrow footpaths to the nearest railway-station, hide himself in a
+third-class carriage going Londonwards, and from London get away to
+Liverpool, to creep on board some emigrant vessel bound for New York?
+
+He could not even do this, for he was without the means of getting so
+much as the railway-ticket that should carry him on the first stage of
+his flight. After having given ten pounds to Mrs. Brown, he had only a
+few shillings in his waistcoat-pocket. He had only one article of any
+great value about him, and that was his watch, which had cost fifty
+pounds. But the Marchmont arms were emblazoned on the outside of the
+case; and Paul's name in full, and the address of Marchmont Towers,
+were ostentatiously engraved inside, so that any attempt to dispose of
+the watch must inevitably lead to the identification of the owner.
+
+Paul Marchmont had made no provision for this evil day. Supreme in the
+consciousness of his own talents, he had never imagined discovery and
+destruction. His plans had been so well arranged. On the very day after
+Edward's second marriage, Mary and her child would have been conveyed
+away to the remotest district in Wales; and the artist would have
+laughed at the idea of danger. The shallowest schemer might have been
+able to manage this poor broken-hearted girl, whose many sorrows had
+brought her to look upon life as a thing which was never meant to be
+joyful, and which was only to be endured patiently, like some slow
+disease that would be surely cured in the grave. It had been so easy to
+deal with this ignorant and gentle victim that Paul had grown bold and
+confident, and had ignored the possibility of such ruin as had now come
+down upon him.
+
+What was he to do? What was the nature of his crime, and what penalty
+had he incurred? He tried to answer these questions; but as his offence
+was of no common kind, he knew of no common law which could apply to
+it. Was it a felony, this appropriation of another person's property,
+this concealment of another person's existence; or was it only a
+conspiracy, amenable to no criminal law; and would he be called upon
+merely to make restitution of that which he had spent and wasted? What
+did it matter? Either way, there was nothing for him but
+ruin--irretrievable ruin.
+
+There are some men who can survive discovery and defeat, and begin a
+new life in a new world, and succeed in a new career. But Paul
+Marchmont was not one of these. He could not stick a hunting-knife and
+a brace of revolvers in his leathern belt, sling a game-bag across his
+shoulders, take up his breech-loading rifle, and go out into the
+backwoods of an uncivilised country, to turn sheep-breeder, and hold
+his own against a race of agricultural savages. He was a Cockney, and
+for him there was only one world--a world in which men wore varnished
+boots and enamelled shirt-studs with portraits of La Montespan or La
+Dubarry, and lived in chambers in the Albany, and treated each other to
+little dinners at Greenwich and Richmond, or cut a grand figure at a
+country-house, and collected a gallery of art and a museum of _bric a
+brac_. This was the world upon the outer edge of which Paul Marchmont
+had lived so long, looking in at the brilliant inhabitants with hungry,
+yearning eyes through all the days of his poverty and obscurity. This
+was the world into which he had pushed himself at last by means of a
+crime.
+
+He was forty years of age; and in all his life he had never had but one
+ambition,--and that was to be master of Marchmont Towers. The remote
+chance of that inheritance had hung before him ever since his boyhood,
+a glittering prize, far away in the distance, but so brilliant as to
+blind him to the brightness of all nearer chances. Why should he slave
+at his easel, and toil to become a great painter? When would art earn
+him eleven thousand a year? The greatest painter of Mr. Marchmont's
+time lived in a miserable lodging at Chelsea. It was before the days of
+the "Railway Station" and the "Derby Day;" or perhaps Paul might have
+made an effort to become that which Heaven never meant him to be--a
+great painter. No; art was only a means of living with this man. He
+painted, and sold his pictures to his few patrons, who beat him down
+unmercifully, giving him a small profit upon his canvas and colours,
+for the encouragement of native art; but he only painted to live.
+
+He was waiting. From the time when he could scarcely speak plain,
+Marchmont Towers had been a familiar word in his ears and on his lips.
+He knew the number of lives that stood between his father and the
+estate, and had learned to say, naively enough then,--
+
+"O pa, don't you wish that Uncle Philip and Uncle Marmaduke and Cousin
+John would die soon?"
+
+He was two-and-twenty years of age when his father died; and he felt a
+faint thrill of satisfaction, even in the midst of his sorrow, at the
+thought that there was one life the less between him and the end of his
+hopes. But other lives had sprung up in the interim. There was young
+Arthur, and little Mary; and Marchmont Towers was like a caravanserai
+in the desert, which seems to be farther and farther away as the weary
+traveller strives to reach it.
+
+Still Paul hoped, and watched, and waited. He had all the instincts of
+a sybarite, and he fancied, therefore, that he was destined to be a
+rich man. He watched, and waited, and hoped, and cheered his mother and
+sister when they were downcast with the hope of better days. When the
+chance came, he seized upon it, and plotted, and succeeded, and
+revelled in his brief success.
+
+But now ruin had come to him, what was he to do? He tried to make some
+plan for his own conduct; but he could not. His brain reeled with the
+effort which he made to realise his own position.
+
+He walked up and down one of the pathways in the garden until a quarter
+to ten o'clock; then he went into the house, and waited till Mrs. Brown
+had departed from Stony-Stringford Farm, attended by the boy, who
+carried two bundles, a bandbox, and a carpet-bag.
+
+"Come back here when you have taken those things to the station," Paul
+said; "I shall want you."
+
+He watched the dilapidated five-barred gate swing to after the
+departure of Mrs. Brown and her attendant, and then went to look at his
+horse. The patient animal had been standing in a shed all this time,
+and had had neither food nor water. Paul searched amongst the empty
+barns and outhouses, and found a few handfuls of fodder. He took this
+to the animal, and then went back again to the garden,--to that quiet
+garden, where the bees were buzzing about in the sunshine with a
+drowsy, booming sound, and where a great tabby-cat was sleeping
+stretched flat upon its side, on one of the flower-beds.
+
+Paul Marchmont waited here very impatiently till the boy came back.
+
+"I must see Lavinia," he thought. "I dare not leave this place till I
+have seen Lavinia. I don't know what may be happening at Hillingsworth
+or Kemberling. These things are taken up sometimes by the populace.
+They may make a party against me; they may--"
+
+He stood still, gnawing the edges of his nails, and staring down at the
+gravel-walk.
+
+He was thinking of things that he had read in the newspapers,--cases in
+which some cruel mother who had ill-used her child, or some suspected
+assassin who, in all human probability, had poisoned his wife, had been
+well-nigh torn piecemeal by an infuriated mob, and had been glad to
+cling for protection to the officers of justice, or to beg leave to
+stay in prison after acquittal, for safe shelter from honest men and
+women's indignation.
+
+He remembered one special case in which the populace, unable to get at
+a man's person, tore down his house, and vented their fury upon
+unsentient bricks and mortar.
+
+Mr. Marchmont took out a little memorandum book, and scrawled a few
+lines in pencil:
+
+"I am here, at Stony-Stringford Farmhouse," he wrote. "For God's sake,
+come to me, Lavinia, and at once; you can drive here yourself. I want
+to know what has happened at Kemberling and at Hillingsworth. Find out
+everything for me, and come.    P. M."
+
+It was nearly twelve o'clock when the boy returned. Paul gave him this
+letter, and told the lad to get on his own horse, and ride to
+Kemberling as fast as he could go. He was to leave the horse at
+Kemberling, in Mr. Weston's stable, and was to come back to
+Stony-Stringford with Mrs. Weston. This order Paul particularly
+impressed upon the boy, lest he should stop in Kemberling, and reveal
+the secret of Paul's hiding-place.
+
+Mr. Paul Marchmont was afraid. A terrible sickening dread had taken
+possession of him, and what little manliness there had ever been in his
+nature seemed to have deserted him to-day.
+
+Oh, the long dreary hours of that miserable day! the hideous sunshine,
+that scorched Mr. Marchmont's bare head, as he loitered about the
+garden!--he had left his hat in the house; but he did not even know
+that he was bareheaded. Oh, the misery of that long day of suspense and
+anguish! The sick consciousness of utter defeat, the thought of the
+things that he might have done, the purse that he might have made with
+the money that he had lavished on pictures, and decorations, and
+improvements, and the profligate extravagance of splendid
+entertainments. This is what he thought of, and these were the thoughts
+that tortured him. But in all that miserable day he never felt one pang
+of remorse for the agonies that he had inflicted upon his innocent
+victim; on the contrary, he hated her because of this discovery, and
+gnashed his teeth as he thought how she and her young husband would
+enjoy all the grandeur of Marchmont Towers,--all that noble revenue
+which he had hoped to hold till his dying day.
+
+It was growing dusk when Mr. Marchmont heard the sound of wheels in the
+dusty lane outside the garden-wall. He went through the house, and into
+the farmyard, in time to receive his sister Lavinia at the gate. It was
+the wheels of her pony-carriage he had heard. She drove a pair of
+ponies, which Paul had given her. He was angry with himself as he
+remembered that this was another piece of extravagance,--another sum of
+money recklessly squandered, when it might have gone towards the making
+of a rich provision for this evil day.
+
+Mrs. Weston was very pale; and her brother could see by her face that
+she brought him no good news. She left her ponies to the care of the
+boy, and went into the garden with her brother.
+
+"Well, Lavinia?"
+
+"Well, Paul, it is a dreadful business," Mrs. Weston said, in a low
+voice.
+
+"It's all George's doing! It's all the work of that infernal
+scoundrel!" cried Paul, passionately. "But he shall pay bitterly
+for----"
+
+"Don't let us talk of him, Paul; no good can come of that. What are you
+going to do?"
+
+"I don't know. I sent for you because I wanted your help and advice.
+What's the good of your coming if you bring me no help?"
+
+"Don't be cruel, Paul. Heaven knows, I'll do my best. But I can't see
+what's to be done--except for you to get away, Paul. Everything's
+known. Olivia stopped the marriage publicly in Hillingsworth Church;
+and all the Hillingsworth people followed Edward Arundel's carriage to
+Kemberling. The report spread like wildfire; and, oh Paul, the
+Kemberling people have taken it up, and our windows have been broken,
+and there's been a crowd all day upon the terrace before the Towers,
+and they've tried to get into the house, declaring that they know
+you're hiding somewhere. Paul, Paul, what are we to do? The people
+hooted after me as I drove away from the High Street, and the boys
+threw stones at the ponies. Almost all the servants have left the
+Towers. The constables have been up there trying to get the crowd off
+the terrace. But what are we to do, Paul? what are we to do?"
+
+"Kill ourselves," answered the artist savagely. "What else should we
+do? What have we to live for? You have a little money, I suppose; I
+have none. Do you think I can go back to the old life? Do you think I
+can go back, and live in that shabby house in Charlotte Street, and
+paint the same rocks and boulders, the same long stretch of sea, the
+same low lurid streaks of light,--all the old subjects over again,--for
+the same starvation prices? Do you think I can ever tolerate shabby
+clothes again, or miserable make-shift dinners,--hashed mutton, with
+ill-cut hunks of lukewarm meat floating about in greasy slop called
+gravy, and washed down with flat porter fetched half an hour too soon
+from a public-house,--do you think I can go back to _that_? No; I have
+tasted the wine of life: I have lived; and I'll never go back to the
+living death called poverty. Do you think I can stand in that passage
+in Charlotte Street again, Lavinia, to be bullied by an illiterate
+tax-gatherer, or insulted by an infuriated baker? No, Lavinia; I have
+made my venture, and I have failed."
+
+"But what will you do, Paul?"
+
+"I don't know," he answered, moodily.
+
+This was a lie. He knew well enough what he meant to do: he would kill
+himself.
+
+That resolution inspired him with a desperate kind of courage. He would
+escape from the mob; he would get away somewhere or other quietly and
+there kill himself. He didn't know how, as yet; but he would deliberate
+upon that point at his leisure, and choose the death that was supposed
+to be least painful.
+
+"Where are my mother and Clarissa?" he asked presently.
+
+"They are at our house; they came to me directly they heard the rumour
+of what had happened. I don't know how they heard it; but every one
+heard of it, simultaneously, as it seemed. My mother is in a dreadful
+state. I dared not tell her that I had known it all along."
+
+"Oh, of course not," answered Paul, with a sneer; "let me bear the
+burden of my guilt alone. What did my mother say?"
+
+"She kept saying again and again, 'I can't believe it. I can't believe
+that he could do anything cruel; he has been such a good son.'"
+
+"I was not cruel," Paul cried vehemently; "the girl had every comfort.
+I never grudged money for her comfort. She was a miserable, apathetic
+creature, to whom fortune was almost a burden rather than an advantage.
+If I separated her from her husband--bah!--was that such a cruelty? She
+was no worse off than if Edward Arundel had been killed in that railway
+accident; and it might have been so."
+
+He didn't waste much time by reasoning on this point. He thought of his
+mother and sisters. From first to last he had been a good son and a
+good brother.
+
+"What money have you, Lavinia?"
+
+"A good deal; you have been very generous to me, Paul; and you shall
+have it all back again, if you want it. I have got upwards of two
+thousand pounds altogether; for I have been very careful of the money
+you have given me."
+
+"You have been wise. Now listen to me, Lavinia. I _have_ been a good
+son, and I have borne my burdens uncomplainingly. It is your turn now
+to bear yours. I must get back to Marchmont Towers, if I can, and
+gather together whatever personal property I have there. It isn't
+much--only a few trinkets, and suchlike. You must send me some one you
+can trust to fetch those to-night; for I shall not stay an hour in the
+place. I may not even be admitted into it; for Edward Arundel may have
+already taken possession in his wife's name. Then you will have to
+decide where you are to go. You can't stay in this part of the country.
+Weston must be liable to some penalty or other for his share in the
+business, unless he's bought over as a witness to testify to the
+identity of Mary's child. I haven't time to think of all this. I want
+you to promise me that you will take care of your mother and your
+invalid sister."
+
+"I will, Paul; I will indeed. But tell me what you are going to do
+yourself, and where you are going?"
+
+"I don't know," Paul Marchmont answered, in the same tone as before;
+"but whatever I do, I want you to give me your solemn promise that you
+will be good to my mother and sister."
+
+"I will, Paul; I promise you to do as you have done."
+
+"You had better leave Kemberling by the first train to-morrow morning;
+take my mother and Clarissa with you; take everything that is worth
+taking, and leave Weston behind you to bear the brunt of this business.
+You can get a lodging in the old neighbourhood, and no one will molest
+you when you once get away from this place. But remember one thing,
+Lavinia: if Mary Arundel's child should die, and Mary herself should
+die childless, Clarissa will inherit Marchmont Towers. Don't forget
+that. There's a chance yet for you: it's far away, and unlikely enough;
+but it _is_ a chance."
+
+"But you are more likely to outlive Mary and her child than Clarissa
+is," Mrs. Weston answered, with a feeble attempt at hopefulness; "try
+and think of that, Paul, and let the hope cheer you."
+
+"Hope!" cried Mr. Marchmont, with a discordant laugh. "Yes; I'm forty
+years old, and for five-and-thirty of those years I've hoped and waited
+for Marchmont Towers. I can't hope any longer, or wait any longer. I
+give it up; I've fought hard, but I'm beaten."
+
+It was nearly dark by this time, the shadowy darkness of a midsummer's
+evening; and there were stars shining faintly out of the sky.
+
+"You can drive me back to the Towers," Paul Marchmont said. "I don't
+want to lose any time in getting there; I may be locked out by Mr.
+Edward Arundel if I don't take care."
+
+Mrs. Weston and her brother went back to the farmyard. It was sixteen
+miles from Kemberling to Stony Stringford; and the ponies were
+steaming, for Lavinia had come at a good rate. But it was no time for
+the consideration of horseflesh. Paul took a rug from the empty seat,
+and wrapped himself in it. He would not be likely to be recognised in
+the darkness, sitting back in the low seat, and made bulky by the
+ponderous covering in which he had enveloped himself. Mrs. Weston took
+the whip from the boy, gathered up the reins, and drove off. Paul had
+left no orders about the custody of the old farmhouse. The boy went
+home to his master, at the other end of the farm; and the night-winds
+wandered wherever they listed through the deserted habitation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+THERE IS CONFUSION WORSE THAN DEATH.
+
+
+The brother and sister exchanged very few words during the drive
+between Stony Stringford and Marchmont Towers. It was arranged between
+them that Mrs. Weston should drive by a back-way leading to a lane that
+skirted the edge of the river, and that Paul should get out at a gate
+opening into the wood, and by that means make his way, unobserved, to
+the house which had so lately been to all intents and purposes his own.
+
+He dared not attempt to enter the Towers by any other way; for the
+indignant populace might still be lurking about the front of the house,
+eager to inflict summary vengeance upon the persecutor of a helpless
+girl.
+
+It was between nine and ten o'clock when Mr. Marchmont got out at the
+little gate. All here was very still; and Paul heard the croaking of
+the frogs upon the margin of a little pool in the wood, and the sound
+of horses' hoofs a mile away upon the loose gravel by the water-side.
+
+"Good night, Lavinia," he said. "Send for the things as soon as you go
+back; and be sure you send a safe person for them."
+
+"O yes, dear; but hadn't you better take any thing of value yourself?"
+Mrs. Weston asked anxiously. "You say you have no money. Perhaps it
+would be best for you to send me the jewellery, though, and I can send
+you what money you want by my messenger."
+
+"I shan't want any money--at least I have enough for what I want. What
+have you done with your savings?"
+
+"They are in a London bank. But I have plenty of ready money in the
+house. You must want money, Paul?"
+
+"I tell you, no; I have as much as I want."
+
+"But tell me your plans, Paul; I must know your plans before I leave
+Lincolnshire myself. Are _you_ going away?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Immediately?"
+
+"Immediately."
+
+"Shall you go to London?"
+
+"Perhaps. I don't know yet."
+
+"But when shall we see you again, Paul? or how shall we hear of you?"
+
+"I'll write to you."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"At the Post-office in Rathbone Place. Don't bother me with a lot of
+questions to-night Lavinia; I'm not in the humour to answer them."
+
+Paul Marchmont turned away from his sister impatiently, and opened the
+gate; but before she had driven off, he went back to her.
+
+"Shake hands, Lavinia," he said; "shake hands, my dear; it may be a
+long time before you and I meet again."
+
+He bent down and kissed his sister.
+
+"Drive home as fast as you can, and send the messenger directly. He had
+better come to the door of the lobby, near Olivia's room. Where is
+Olivia, by-the-bye? Is she still with the stepdaughter she loves so
+dearly?"
+
+"No; she went to Swampington early in the afternoon. A fly was ordered
+from the Black Bull, and she went away in it."
+
+"So much the better," answered Mr. Marchmont. "Good night, Lavinia.
+Don't let my mother think ill of me. I tried to do the best I could to
+make her happy. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, dear Paul; God bless you!"
+
+The blessing was invoked with as much sincerity as if Lavinia Weston
+had been a good woman, and her brother a good man. Perhaps neither of
+those two was able to realise the extent of the crime which they had
+assisted each other to commit.
+
+Mrs. Weston drove away; and Paul went up to the back of the Towers, and
+under an archway leading into the quadrangle. All about the house was
+as quiet as if the Sleeping Beauty and her court had been its only
+occupants.
+
+The inhabitants of Kemberling and the neighbourhood were an orderly
+people, who burnt few candles between May and September; and however
+much they might have desired to avenge Mary Arundel's wrongs by tearing
+Paul Marchmont to pieces, their patience had been exhausted by
+nightfall, and they had been glad to return to their respective abodes,
+to discuss Paul's iniquities comfortably over the nine-o'clock beer.
+
+Paul stood still in the quadrangle for a few moments, and listened. He
+could hear no human breath or whisper; he only heard the sound of the
+corn-crake in the fields to the right of the Towers, and the distant
+rumbling of wagon-wheels on the high-road. There was a glimmer of light
+in one of the windows belonging to the servants' offices,--only one dim
+glimmer, where there had usually been a row of brilliantly-lighted
+casements. Lavinia was right, then; almost all the servants had left
+the Towers. Paul tried to open the half-glass door leading into the
+lobby; but it was locked. He rang a bell; and after about three
+minutes' delay, a buxom country-girl appeared in the lobby carrying a
+candle. She was some kitchenmaid or dairymaid or scullerymaid, whom
+Paul could not remember to have ever seen until now. She opened the
+door, and admitted him, dropping a curtsey as he passed her. There was
+some relief even in this. Mr. Marchmont had scarcely expected to get
+into the house at all; still less to be received with common civility
+by any of the servants, who had so lately obeyed him and fawned upon
+him.
+
+"Where are all the rest of the servants?" he asked.
+
+"They're all gone, sir; except him as you brought down from
+London,--Mr. Peterson,--and me and mother. Mother's in the laundry,
+sir; and I'm scullerymaid."
+
+"Why did the other servants leave the place?"
+
+"Mostly because they was afraid of the mob upon the terrace, I think,
+sir; for there's been people all the afternoon throwin' stones, and
+breakin' the windows; and I don't think as there's a whole pane of
+glass in the front of the house, sir; and Mr. Gormby, sir, he come
+about four o'clock, and he got the people to go away, sir, by tellin'
+'em as it wern't your property, sir, but the young lady's, Miss Mary
+Marchmont,--leastways, Mrs. Airendale,--as they was destroyin' of; but
+most of the servants had gone before that, sir, except Mr. Peterson;
+and Mr. Gormby gave orders as me and mother was to lock all the doors,
+and let no one in upon no account whatever; and he's coming to-morrow
+mornin' to take possession, he says; and please, sir, you can't come
+in; for his special orders to me and mother was, no one, and you in
+particklar."
+
+"Nonsense, girl!" exclaimed Mr. Marchmont, decisively; "who is Mr.
+Gormby, that he should give orders as to who comes in or stops out? I'm
+only coming in for half an hour, to pack my portmanteau. Where's
+Peterson?"
+
+"In the dinin'-room, sir; but please, sir, you mustn't----"
+
+The girl made a feeble effort to intercept Mr. Marchmont, in accordance
+with the steward's special orders; which were, that Paul should, upon
+no pretence whatever, be suffered to enter the house. But the artist
+snatched the candlestick from her hand, and went towards the
+dining-room, leaving her to stare after him in amazement.
+
+Paul found his valet Peterson, taking what he called a snack, in the
+dining-room. A cloth was spread upon the corner of the table; and there
+was a fore-quarter of cold roast-lamb, a bottle of French brandy, and a
+decanter half-full of Madeira before the valet.
+
+He started as his master entered the room, and looked up, not very
+respectfully, but with no unfriendly glance.
+
+"Give me half a tumbler of that brandy, Peterson," said Mr. Marchmont.
+
+The man obeyed; and Paul drained the fiery spirit as if it had been so
+much water. It was four-and-twenty hours since meat or drink had
+crossed his dry white lips.
+
+"Why didn't you go away with the rest?" he asked, as he set down the
+empty glass.
+
+"It's only rats, sir, that run away from a falling house. I stopped,
+thinkin' you'd be goin' away somewhere, and that you'd want me."
+
+The solid and unvarnished truth of the matter was, that Peterson had
+taken it for granted that his master had made an excellent purse
+against this evil day, and would be ready to start for the Continent or
+America, there to lead a pleasant life upon the proceeds of his
+iniquity. The valet never imagined his master guilty of such besotted
+folly as to be _un_prepared for this catastrophe.
+
+"I thought you might still want me, sir," he said; "and wherever you're
+going, I'm quite ready to go too. You've been a good master to me, sir;
+and I don't want to leave a good master because things go against him."
+
+Paul Marchmont shook his head, and held out the empty tumbler for his
+servant to pour more brandy into it.
+
+"I am going away," he said; "but I want no servant where I'm going; but
+I'm grateful to you for your offer, Peterson. Will you come upstairs
+with me? I want to pack a few things."
+
+"They're all packed, sir. I knew you'd be leaving, and I've packed
+everything."
+
+"My dressing-case?"
+
+"Yes, sir. You've got the key of that."
+
+"Yes; I know, I know."
+
+Paul Marchmont was silent for a few minutes, thinking. Everything that
+he had in the way of personal property of any value was in the
+dressing-case of which he had spoken. There was five or six hundred
+pounds' worth of jewellery in Mr. Marchmont's dressing-case; for the
+first instinct of the _nouveau riche_ exhibits itself in diamond
+shirt-studs, cameo rings, malachite death's-heads with emerald eyes;
+grotesque and pleasing charms in the form of coffins, coal-scuttles,
+and hobnailed boots; fantastical lockets of ruby and enamel; wonderful
+bands of massive yellow gold, studded with diamonds, wherein to insert
+the two ends of flimsy lace cravats. Mr. Marchmont reflected upon the
+amount of his possessions, and their security in the jewel-drawer of
+his dressing-case. The dressing-case was furnished with a Chubb's lock,
+the key of which he carried in his waistcoat-pocket. Yes, it was all
+safe.
+
+"Look here, Peterson," said Paul Marchmont; "I think I shall sleep at
+Mrs. Weston's to-night. I should like you to take my dressing-case down
+there at once."
+
+"And how about the other luggage, sir,--the portmanteaus and
+hat-boxes?"
+
+"Never mind those. I want you to put the dressing-case safe in my
+sister's hands. I can send here for the rest to-morrow morning. You
+needn't wait for me now. I'll follow you in half an hour."
+
+"Yes, sir. You want the dressing-case carried to Mrs. Weston's house,
+and I'm to wait for you there?"
+
+"Yes; you can wait for me."
+
+"But is there nothing else I can do, sir?"
+
+"Nothing whatever. I've only got to collect a few papers, and then I
+shall follow you."
+
+"Yes, sir."
+
+The discreet Peterson bowed, and retired to fetch the dressing-case. He
+put his own construction upon Mr. Marchmont's evident desire to get rid
+of him, and to be left alone at the Towers. Paul had, of course, made a
+purse, and had doubtless put his money away in some very artful
+hiding-place, whence he now wanted to take it at his leisure. He had
+stuffed one of his pillows with bank-notes, perhaps; or had hidden a
+cash-box behind the tapestry in his bedchamber; or had buried a bag of
+gold in the flower-garden below the terrace. Mr. Peterson went upstairs
+to Paul's dressing-room, put his hand through the strap of the
+dressing-case, which was very heavy, went downstairs again, met his
+master in the hall, and went out at the lobby-door.
+
+Paul locked the door upon his valet, and then went back into the lonely
+house, where the ticking of the clocks in the tenantless rooms sounded
+unnaturally loud in the stillness. All the windows had been broken; and
+though the shutters were shut, the cold night-air blew in at many a
+crack and cranny, and well-nigh extinguished Mr. Marchmont's candle as
+he went from room to room looking about him.
+
+He went into the western drawing-room, and lighted some of the lamps in
+the principal chandelier. The shutters were shut, for the windows here,
+as well as elsewhere, had been broken; fragments of shivered glass,
+great jagged stones, and handfuls of gravel, lay about upon the rich
+carpet,--the velvet-pile which he had chosen with such artistic taste,
+such careful deliberation. He lit the lamps and walked about the room,
+looking for the last time at his treasures. Yes, _his_ treasures. It
+was he who had transformed this chamber from a prim, old-fashioned
+sitting-room--with quaint japanned cabinets, shabby chintz-cushioned
+cane-chairs, cracked Indian vases, and a faded carpet--into a saloon
+that would have been no discredit to Buckingham Palace or Alton Towers.
+
+It was he who had made the place what it was. He had squandered the
+savings of Mary's minority upon pictures that the richest collector in
+England might have been proud to own; upon porcelain that would have
+been worthy of a place in the Vienna Museum or the Bernal Collection.
+He had done this, and these things were to pass into the possession of
+the man he hated,--the fiery young soldier who had horsewhipped him
+before the face of wondering Lincolnshire. He walked about the room,
+thinking of his life since he had come into possession of this place,
+and of what it had been before that time, and what it must be again,
+unless he summoned up a desperate courage--and killed himself.
+
+His heart beat fast and loud, and he felt an icy chill creeping slowly
+through his every vein as he thought of this. How was he to kill
+himself? He had no poison in his possession,--no deadly drug that would
+reduce the agony of death to the space of a lightning-flash. There were
+pistols, rare gems of choicest workmanship, in one of the buhl-cabinets
+in that very room; there were both fowling-piece and ammunition in Mr.
+Marchmont's dressing-room: but the artist was not expert with the use
+of firearms, and he might fail in the attempt to blow out his brains,
+and only maim or disfigure himself hideously. There was the river,--the
+black, sluggish river: but then, drowning is a slow death, and Heaven
+only knows how long the agony may seem to the wretch who endures it!
+Alas! the ghastly truth of the matter is that Mr. Marchmont was afraid
+of death. Look at the King of Terrors how he would, he could not
+discover any pleasing aspect under which he could meet the grim monarch
+without flinching.
+
+He looked at life; but if life was less terrible than death, it was not
+less dreary. He looked forward with a shudder to see--what?
+Humiliation, disgrace, perhaps punishment,--life-long transportation,
+it may be; for this base conspiracy might be a criminal offence,
+amenable to criminal law. Or, escaping all this, what was there for
+him? What was there for this man even then? For forty years he had been
+steeped to the lips in poverty, and had endured his life. He looked
+back now, and wondered how it was that he had been patient; he wondered
+why he had not made an end of himself and his obscure troubles twenty
+years before this night. But after looking back a little longer, he saw
+the star which had illumined the darkness of that miserable and sordid
+existence, and he understood the reason of his endurance. He had hoped.
+Day after day he had got up to go through the same troubles, to endure
+the same humiliations: but every day, when his life had been hardest to
+him, he had said, "To-morrow I may be master of Marchmont Towers." But
+he could never hope this any more; he could not go back to watch and
+wait again, beguiled by the faint hope that Mary Arundel's son might
+die, and to hear by-and-by that other children were born to her to
+widen the great gulf betwixt him and fortune.
+
+He looked back, and he saw that he had lived from day to day, from year
+to year, lured on by this one hope. He looked forward, and he saw that
+he could not live without it.
+
+There had never been but this one road to good fortune open to him. He
+was a clever man, but his was not the cleverness which can transmute
+itself into solid cash. He could only paint indifferent pictures; and
+he had existed long enough by picture-painting to realise the utter
+hopelessness of success in that career.
+
+He had borne his life while he was in it, but he could not bear to go
+back to it. He had been out of it, and had tasted another phase of
+existence; and he could see it all now plainly, as if he had been a
+spectator sitting in the boxes and watching a dreary play performed
+upon a stage before him. The performers in the remotest provincial
+theatre believe in the play they are acting. The omnipotence of passion
+creates dewy groves and moonlit atmospheres, ducal robes and beautiful
+women. But the metropolitan spectator, in whose mind the memory of
+better things is still fresh, sees that the moonlit trees are poor
+distemper daubs, pushed on by dirty carpenters, and the moon a green
+bottle borrowed from a druggist's shop, the ducal robes threadbare
+cotton velvet and tarnished tinsel, and the heroine of the drama old
+and ugly.
+
+So Paul looked at the life he had endured, and wondered as he saw how
+horrible it was.
+
+He could see the shabby lodging, the faded furniture, the miserable
+handful of fire struggling with the smoke in a shallow grate, that had
+been half-blocked up with bricks by some former tenant as badly off as
+himself. He could look back at that dismal room, with the ugly paper on
+the walls, the scanty curtains flapping in the wind which they
+pretended to shut out; the figure of his mother sitting near the
+fireplace, with that pale, anxious face, which was a perpetual
+complaint against hardship and discomfort. He could see his sister
+standing at the window in the dusky twilight, patching up some worn-out
+garment, and straining her eyes for the sake of economising in the
+matter of half an inch of candle. And the street below the window,--the
+shabby-genteel street, with a dingy shop breaking out here and there,
+and children playing on the doorsteps, and a muffin-bell jingling
+through the evening fog, and a melancholy Italian grinding "Home, sweet
+Home!" in the patch of lighted road opposite the pawnbroker's. He saw
+it all; and it was all alike--sordid, miserable, hopeless.
+
+Paul Marchmont had never sunk so low as his cousin John. He had never
+descended so far in the social scale as to carry a banner at Drury
+Lane, or to live in one room in Oakley Street, Lambeth. But there had
+been times when to pay the rent of three rooms had been next kin to an
+impossibility to the artist, and when the honorarium of a shilling a
+night would have been very acceptable to him. He had drained the cup of
+poverty to the dregs; and now the cup was filled again, and the bitter
+draught was pushed once more into his unwilling hand.
+
+He must drink that, or another potion,--a sleeping-draught, which is
+commonly called Death. He must die! But how? His coward heart sank as
+the awful alternative pressed closer upon him. He must
+die!--to-night,--at once,--in that house; so that when they came in the
+morning to eject him, they would have little trouble; they would only
+have to carry out a corpse.
+
+He walked up and down the room, biting his finger-nails to the quick,
+but coming to no resolution, until he was interrupted by the ringing of
+the bell at the lobby-door. It was the messenger from his sister, no
+doubt. Paul drew his watch from his waistcoat-pocket, unfastened his
+chain, took a set of gold-studs from the breast of his shirt, and a
+signet-ring from his finger; then he sat down at a writing-table, and
+packed the watch and chain, the studs and signet-ring, and a bunch of
+keys, in a large envelope. He sealed this packet, and addressed it to
+his sister; then he took a candle, and went to the lobby. Mrs. Weston
+had sent a young man who was an assistant and pupil of her husband's--a
+good-tempered young fellow, who willingly served her in her hour of
+trouble. Paul gave this messenger the key of his dressing-case and
+packet.
+
+"You will be sure and put that in my sister's hands," he said.
+
+"O yes, sir. Mrs. Weston gave me this letter for you, sir. Am I to wait
+for an answer?"
+
+"No; there will be no answer. Good night."
+
+"Good night, sir."
+
+The young man went away; and Paul Marchmont heard him whistle a popular
+melody as he walked along the cloistered way and out of the quadrangle
+by a low archway commonly used by the tradespeople who came to the
+Towers.
+
+The artist stood and listened to the young man's departing footsteps.
+Then, with a horrible thrill of anguish, he remembered that he had seen
+his last of humankind--he had heard his last of human voices: for he
+was to kill himself that night. He stood in the dark lobby, looking out
+into the quadrangle. He was quite alone in the house; for the girl who
+had let him in was in the laundry with her mother. He could see the
+figures of the two women moving about in a great gaslit chamber upon
+the other side of the quadrangle--a building which had no communication
+with the rest of the house. He was to die that night; and he had not
+yet even determined how he was to die.
+
+He mechanically opened Mrs. Weston's letter: it was only a few lines,
+telling him that Peterson had arrived with the portmanteau and
+dressing-case, and that there would be a comfortable room prepared for
+him. "I am so glad you have changed your mind, and are coming to me,
+Paul," Mrs. Weston concluded. "Your manner, when we parted to-night,
+almost alarmed me."
+
+Paul groaned aloud as he crushed the letter in his hand. Then he went
+back to the western drawing-room. He heard strange noises in the empty
+rooms as he passed by their open doors, weird creaking sounds and
+melancholy moanings in the wide chimneys. It seemed as if all the
+ghosts of Marchmont Towers were astir to-night, moved by an awful
+prescience of some coming horror.
+
+Paul Marchmont was an atheist; but atheism, although a very pleasant
+theme for a critical and argumentative discussion after a
+lobster-supper and unlimited champagne, is but a poor staff to lean
+upon when the worn-out traveller approaches the mysterious portals of
+the unknown land.
+
+The artist had boasted of his belief in annihilation; and had declared
+himself perfectly satisfied with a materialistic or pantheistic
+arrangement of the universe, and very indifferent as to whether he
+cropped up in future years as a summer-cabbage, or a new Raphael; so
+long as the ten stone or so of matter of which he was composed was made
+use of somehow or other, and did its duty in the great scheme of a
+scientific universe. But, oh! how that empty, soulless creed slipped
+away from him now, when he stood alone in this tenantless house,
+shuddering at strange spirit-noises, and horrified by a host of mystic
+fears--gigantic, shapeless terrors--that crowded in his empty, godless
+mind, and filled it with their hideous presence!
+
+He had refused to believe in a personal God. He had laughed at the idea
+that there was any Deity to whom the individual can appeal, in his hour
+of grief or trouble, with the hope of any separate mercy, any special
+grace. He had rejected the Christian's simple creed, and now--now that
+he had floated away from the shores of life, and felt himself borne
+upon an irresistible current to that mysterious other side, what did he
+_not_ believe in?
+
+Every superstition that has ever disturbed the soul of ignorant man
+lent some one awful feature to the crowd of hideous images uprising in
+this man's mind:--awful Chaldean gods and Carthaginian goddesses,
+thirsting for the hot blood of human sacrifices, greedy for hecatombs
+of children flung shrieking into fiery furnaces, or torn limb from limb
+by savage beasts; Babylonian abominations; Egyptian Isis and Osiris;
+classical divinities, with flaming swords and pale impassible faces,
+rigid as the Destiny whose type they were; ghastly Germanic demons and
+witches.--All the dread avengers that man, in the knowledge of his own
+wickedness, has ever shadowed for himself out of the darkness of his
+ignorant mind, swelled that ghastly crowd, until the artist's brain
+reeled, and he was fain to sit with his head in his hands, trying, by a
+great effort of the will, to exorcise these loathsome phantoms.
+
+"I must be going mad," he muttered to himself. "I am going mad."
+
+But still the great question was unanswered--How was he to kill
+himself?
+
+"I must settle that," he thought. "I dare not think of anything that
+may come afterwards. Besides, what _should_ come? I _know_ that there
+is nothing. Haven't I heard it demonstrated by cleverer men than I am?
+Haven't I looked at it in every light, and weighed it in every
+scale--always with the same result? Yes; I know that there is nothing
+_after_ the one short pang, any more than there is pain in the nerve of
+a tooth when the tooth is gone. The nerve was the soul of the tooth, I
+suppose; but wrench away the body, and the soul is dead. Why should I
+be afraid? One short pain--it will seem long, I dare say--and then I
+shall lie still for ever and ever, and melt slowly back into the
+elements out of which I was created. Yes; I shall lie still--and be
+_nothing_."
+
+Paul Marchmont sat thinking of this for a long time. Was it such a
+great advantage, after all, this annihilation, the sovereign good of
+the atheist's barren creed? It seemed to-night to this man as if it
+would be better to be anything--to suffer any anguish, any penalty for
+his sins, than to be blotted out for ever and ever from any conscious
+part in the grand harmony of the universe. If he could have believed in
+that Roman Catholic doctrine of purgatory, and that after cycles of
+years of suffering he might rise at last, purified from his sins,
+worthy to dwell among the angels, how differently would death have
+appeared to him! He might have gone away to hide himself in some
+foreign city, to perform patient daily sacrifices, humble acts of
+self-abnegation, every one of which should be a new figure, however
+small a one, to be set against the great sum of his sin.
+
+But he could not believe. There is a vulgar proverb which says, "You
+cannot have your loaf and eat it;" or if proverbs would only be
+grammatical, it might be better worded, "You cannot eat your loaf, and
+have it to eat on some future occasion." Neither can you indulge in
+rationalistic discussions or epigrammatic pleasantry about the Great
+Creator who made you, and then turn and cry aloud to Him in the
+dreadful hour of your despair: "O my God, whom I have insulted and
+offended, help the miserable wretch who for twenty years has
+obstinately shut his heart against Thee!" It may be that God would
+forgive and hear even at that last supreme moment, as He heard the
+penitent thief upon the cross; but the penitent thief had been a
+sinner, not an unbeliever, and he _could_ pray. The hard heart of the
+atheist freezes in his breast when he would repent and put away his
+iniquities. When he would fain turn to his offended Maker, the words
+that he tries to speak die away upon his lips; for the habit of
+blasphemy is too strong upon him; he can _blague_ upon all the mighty
+mysteries of heaven and hell, but he _cannot_ pray.
+
+Paul Marchmont could not fashion a prayer. Horrible witticisms arose up
+between him and the words he would have spoken--ghastly _bon mots_,
+that had seemed so brilliant at a lamp-lit dinner-table, spoken to a
+joyous accompaniment of champagne-corks and laughter. Ah, me! the world
+was behind this man now, with all its pleasures; and he looked back
+upon it, and thought that, even when it seemed gayest and brightest, it
+was only like a great roaring fair, with flaring lights, and noisy
+showmen clamoring for ever to a struggling crowd.
+
+How should he die? Should he go upstairs and cut his throat?
+
+He stood before one of his pictures--a pet picture; a girl's face by
+Millais, looking through the moonlight, fantastically beautiful. He
+stood before this picture, and he felt one small separate pang amid all
+his misery as he remembered that Edward and Mary Arundel were now
+possessors of this particular gem.
+
+"They sha'n't have it," he muttered to himself; "they sha'n't have
+_this_, at any rate."
+
+He took a penknife from his pocket, and hacked and ripped the canvas
+savagely, till it hung in ribbons from the deep gilded frame.
+
+Then he smiled to himself, for the first time since he had entered that
+house, and his eyes flashed with a sudden light.
+
+"I have lived like Sardanapalus for the last year," he cried aloud;
+"and I will die like Sardanapalus!"
+
+There was a fragile piece of furniture near him,--an _etagere_ of
+marqueterie work, loaded with costly _bric a brac_, Oriental porcelain,
+Sevres and Dresden, old Chelsea and crown Derby cups and saucers, and
+quaint teapots, crawling vermin in Pallissy ware, Indian monstrosities,
+and all manner of expensive absurdities, heaped together in artistic
+confusion. Paul Marchmont struck the slim leg of the _etagere_ with his
+foot, and laughed aloud as the fragile toys fell into a ruined heap
+upon the carpet. He stamped upon the broken china; and the frail cups
+and saucers crackled like eggshells under his savage feet.
+
+"I will die like Sardanapalus!" he cried; "the King Arbaces shall never
+rest in the palace I have beautified.
+
+                    'Now order here
+  Fagots, pine-nuts, and wither'd leaves, and such
+  Things as catch fire with one sole spark;
+  Bring cedar, too, and precious drugs, and spices,
+  And mighty planks, to nourish a tall pile;
+  Bring frankincense and myrrh, too; for it is
+  For a great sacrifice I build the pyre.'
+
+I don't think much of your blank verse, George Gordon Noel Byron. Your
+lines end on lame syllables; your ten-syllable blank verse lacks the
+fiery ring of your rhymes. I wonder whether Marchmont Towers is
+insured? Yes, I remember paying a premium last Christmas. They may have
+a sharp tussle with the insurance companies though. Yes, I will die
+like Sardanapalus--no, not like him, for I have no Myrrha to mount the
+pile and cling about me to the last. Pshaw! a modern Myrrha would leave
+Sardanapalus to perish alone, and be off to make herself safe with the
+new king."
+
+Paul snatched up the candle, and went out into the hall. He laughed
+discordantly, and spoke in loud ringing tones. His manner had that
+feverish excitement which the French call exaltation. He ran up the
+broad stairs leading to the long corridor, out of which his own rooms,
+and his mother's and sister's rooms, opened.
+
+Ah, how pretty they were! How elegant he had made them in his reckless
+disregard of expense, his artistic delight in the task of
+beautification! There were no shutters here, and the summer breeze blew
+in through the broken windows, and stirred the gauzy muslin curtains,
+the gay chintz draperies, the cloudlike festoons of silk and lace. Paul
+Marchmont went from room to room with the flaring candle in his hand;
+and wherever there were curtains or draperies about the windows, the
+beds, the dressing-tables, the low lounging-chairs, and cosy little
+sofas, he set alight to them. He did this with wonderful rapidity,
+leaving flames behind him as he traversed the long corridor, and coming
+back thus to the stairs. He went downstairs again, and returned to the
+western drawing-room. Then he blew out his candle, turned out the gas,
+and waited.
+
+"How soon will it come?" he thought.
+
+The shutters were shut, and the room was quite dark.
+
+"Shall I ever have courage to stop till it comes?"
+
+Paul Marchmont groped his way to the door, double-locked it, and then
+took the key from the lock.
+
+He went to one of the windows, clambered upon a chair, opened the top
+shutter, and flung the key out through the broken window. He heard it
+strike jingling upon the stone terrace and then bound away, Heaven
+knows where.
+
+"I shan't be able to go out by the door, at any rate," he thought.
+
+It was quite dark in the room, but the reflection of the spreading
+flames was growing crimson in the sky outside. Mr. Marchmont went away
+from the window, feeling his way amongst the chairs and tables. He
+could see the red light through the crevices of the shutters, and a
+lurid patch of sky through that one window, the upper half of which he
+had left open. He sat down, somewhere near the centre of the room, and
+waited.
+
+"The smoke will kill me," he thought. "I shall know nothing of the
+fire."
+
+He sat quite still. He had trembled violently while he had gone from
+room to room doing his horrible work; but his nerves seemed steadier
+now. Steadier! why, he was transformed to stone! His heart seemed to
+have stopped beating; and he only knew by a sick anguish, a dull aching
+pain, that it was still in his breast.
+
+He sat waiting and thinking. In that time all the long story of the
+past was acted before him, and he saw what a wretch he had been. I do
+not know whether this was penitence; but looking at that enacted story,
+Paul Marchmont thought that his own part in the play was a mistake, and
+that it was a foolish thing to be a villain.
+
+ * * * * *
+
+When a great flock of frightened people, with a fire-engine out of
+order, and drawn by whooping men and boys, came hurrying up to the
+Towers, they found a blazing edifice, which looked like an enchanted
+castle--great stone-framed windows vomiting flame; tall chimneys
+toppling down upon a fiery roof; molten lead, like water turned to
+fire, streaming in flaming cataracts upon the terrace; and all the sky
+lit up by that vast pile of blazing ruin. Only salamanders, or poor Mr.
+Braidwood's own chosen band, could have approached Marchmont Towers
+that night. The Kemberling firemen and the Swampington firemen, who
+came by-and-by, were neither salamanders nor Braidwoods. They stood
+aloof and squirted water at the flames, and recoiled aghast by-and-by
+when the roof came down like an avalanche of blazing timber, leaving
+only a gaunt gigantic skeleton of red-hot stone where Marchmont Towers
+once had been.
+
+When it was safe to venture in amongst the ruins--and this was not for
+many hours after the fire had burnt itself out--people looked for Paul
+Marchmont; but amidst all that vast chaos of smouldering ashes, there
+was nothing found that could be identified as the remains of a human
+being. No one knew where the artist had been at the time of the fire,
+or indeed whether he had been in the house at all; and the popular
+opinion was, that Paul had set fire to the mansion, and had fled away
+before the flames began to spread.
+
+But Lavinia Weston knew better than this. She knew now why her brother
+had sent her every scrap of valuable property belonging to him. She
+understood now why he had come back to her to bid her good-night for
+the second time, and press his cold lips to hers.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER THE LAST.
+
+"DEAR IS THE MEMORY OF OUR WEDDED LIVES."
+
+
+Mary and Edward Arundel saw the awful light in the sky, and heard the
+voices of the people shouting in the street below, and calling to one
+another that Marchmont Towers was on fire.
+
+The young mistress of the burning pile had very little concern for her
+property. She only kept saying, again and again, "O Edward! I hope
+there is no one in the house. God grant there may be no one in the
+house!"
+
+And when the flames were highest, and it seemed by the light in the sky
+as if all Lincolnshire had been blazing, Edward Arundel's wife flung
+herself upon her knees, and prayed aloud for any unhappy creature that
+might be in peril.
+
+Oh, if we could dare to think that this innocent girl's prayer was
+heard before the throne of an Awful Judge, pleading for the soul of a
+wicked man!
+
+Early the next morning Mrs. Arundel came from Lawford Grange with her
+confidential maid, and carried off her daughter-in-law and the baby, on
+the first stage of the journey into Devonshire. Before she left
+Kemberling, Mary was told that no dead body had been found amongst the
+ruins of the Towers; and this assertion deluded her into the belief
+that no unhappy creature had perished. So she went to Dangerfield
+happier than she had ever been since the sunny days of her honeymoon,
+to wait there for the coming of Edward Arundel, who was to stay behind
+to see Richard Paulette and Mr. Gormby, and to secure the testimony of
+Mr. Weston and Betsy Murrel with a view to the identification of Mary's
+little son, who had been neither registered nor christened.
+
+I have no need to dwell upon this process of identification,
+registration, and christening, through which Master Edward Arundel had
+to pass in the course of the next month. I had rather skip this
+dry-as-dust business, and go on to that happy time which Edward and his
+young wife spent together under the oaks at Dangerfield--that bright
+second honeymoon season, while they were as yet houseless; for a pretty
+villa-like mansion was being built on the Marchmont property, far away
+from the dank wood and the dismal river, in a pretty pastoral little
+nook, which was a fair oasis amidst the general dreariness of
+Lincolnshire.
+
+I need scarcely say that the grand feature of this happy time was THE
+BABY. It will be of course easily understood that this child stood
+alone amongst babies. There never had been another such infant; it was
+more than probable there would never again be such a one. In every
+attribute of babyhood he was a twelvemonth in advance of the rest of
+his race. Prospective greatness was stamped upon his brow. He would be
+a Clive or a Wellington, unless indeed he should have a fancy for the
+Bar and the Woolsack, in which case he would be a little more erudite
+than Lyndhurst, a trifle more eloquent than Brougham. All this was
+palpable to the meanest capacity in the very manner in which this child
+crowed in his nurse's arms, or choked himself with farinaceous food, or
+smiled recognition at his young father, or performed the simplest act
+common to infancy.
+
+I think Mr. Sant would have been pleased to paint one of those summer
+scenes at Dangerfield--the proud soldier-father; the pale young wife;
+the handsome, matronly grandmother; and, as the mystic centre of that
+magic circle, the toddling flaxen-haired baby, held up by his father's
+hands, and taking caricature strides in imitation of papa's big steps.
+
+To my mind, it is a great pity that children are not children for
+ever--that the pretty baby-boy by Sant, all rosy and flaxen and
+blue-eyed, should ever grow into a great angular pre-Raphaelite
+hobadahoy, horribly big and out of drawing. But neither Edward nor Mary
+nor, above all, Mrs. Arundel were of this opinion. They were as eager
+for the child to grow up and enter for the great races of this life, as
+some speculative turf magnate who has given a fancy price for a
+yearling, and is pining to see the animal a far-famed three-year-old,
+and winner of the double event.
+
+Before the child had cut a double-tooth Mrs. Arundel senior had decided
+in favour of Eton as opposed to Harrow, and was balancing the
+conflicting advantages of classical Oxford and mathematical Cambridge;
+while Edward could not see the baby-boy rolling on the grass, with blue
+ribbons and sashes fluttering in the breeze, without thinking of his
+son's future appearance in the uniform of his own regiment, gorgeous in
+the splendid crush of a levee at St. James's.
+
+How many airy castles were erected in that happy time, with the baby
+for the foundation-stone of all of them! _The_ BABY! Why, that definite
+article alone expresses an infinity of foolish love and admiration.
+Nobody says _the_ father, the husband, the mother; it is "my" father,
+my husband, as the case may be. But every baby, from St. Giles's to
+Belgravia, from Tyburnia to St. Luke's, is "the" baby. The infant's
+reign is short, but his royalty is supreme, and no one presumes to
+question his despotic rule.
+
+Edward Arundel almost worshipped the little child whose feeble cry he
+had heard in the October twilight, and had _not_ recognised. He was
+never tired of reproaching himself for this omission. That baby-voice
+_ought_ to have awakened a strange thrill in the young father's breast.
+
+That time at Dangerfield was the happiest period of Mary's life. All
+her sorrows had melted away. They did not tell her of Paul Marchmont's
+suspected fate; they only told her that her enemy had disappeared, and
+that no one knew whither he had gone. Mary asked once, and once only,
+about her stepmother; and she was told that Olivia was at Swampington
+Rectory, living with her father, and that people said she was mad.
+George Weston had emigrated to Australia, with his wife, and his wife's
+mother and sister. There had been no prosecution for conspiracy; the
+disappearance of the principal criminal had rendered that unnecessary.
+
+This was all that Mary ever heard of her persecutors. She did not wish
+to hear of them; she had forgiven them long ago. I think that in the
+inner depths of her innocent heart she had forgiven them from the
+moment she had fallen on her husband's breast in Hester's parlour at
+Kemberling, and had felt his strong arms clasped about her, sheltering
+her from all harm for evermore.
+
+She was very happy; and her nature, always gentle, seemed sublimated by
+the sufferings she had endured, and already akin to that of the angels.
+Alas, this was Edward Arundel's chief sorrow! This young wife, so
+precious to him in her fading loveliness, was slipping away from him,
+even in the hour when they were happiest together--was separated from
+him even when they were most united. She was separated from him by that
+unconquerable sadness in his heart, which was prophetic of a great
+sorrow to come.
+
+Sometimes, when Mary saw her husband looking at her with a mournful
+tenderness, an almost despairing love in his eyes, she would throw
+herself into his arms, and say to him:
+
+"You must remember how happy I have been, Edward. O my darling! promise
+me always to remember how happy I have been."
+
+When the first chill breezes of autumn blew among the Dangerfield oaks,
+Edward Arundel took his wife southwards, with his mother and the
+inevitable baby in her train. They went to Nice, and they were very
+quiet, very happy, in the pretty southern town, with snow-clad
+mountains behind them, and the purple Mediterranean before.
+
+The villa was building all this time in Lincolnshire. Edward's agent
+sent him plans and sketches for Mrs. Arundel's approval; and every
+evening there was some fresh talk about the arrangement of the rooms,
+and the laying-out of gardens. Mary was always pleased to see the plans
+and drawings, and to discuss the progress of the work with her husband.
+She would talk of the billiard-room, and the cosy little smoking-room,
+and the nurseries for the baby, which were to have a southern aspect,
+and every advantage calculated to assist the development of that rare
+and marvellous blossom; and she would plan the comfortable apartments
+that were to be specially kept for dear grandmamma, who would of course
+spend a great deal of her time at the Sycamores--the new place was to
+be called the Sycamores. But Edward could never get his wife to talk of
+a certain boudoir opening into a tiny conservatory, which he himself
+had added on to the original architect's plan. He could never get Mary
+to speak of this particular chamber; and once, when he asked her some
+question about the colour of the draperies, she said to him, very
+gently,--
+
+"I would rather you would not think of that room, darling."
+
+"Why, my pet?"
+
+"Because it will make you sorry afterwards."
+
+"Mary, my darling----"
+
+"O Edward! you know,--you must know, dearest,--that I shall never see
+that place?"
+
+But her husband took her in his arms, and declared that this was only a
+morbid fancy, and that she was getting better and stronger every day,
+and would live to see her grandchildren playing under the maples that
+sheltered the northern side of the new villa. Edward told his wife
+this, and he believed in the truth of what he said. He could not
+believe that he was to lose this young wife, restored to him after so
+many trials. Mary did not contradict him just then; but that night,
+when he was sitting in her room reading by the light of a shaded lamp
+after she had gone to bed,--Mary went to bed very early, by order of
+the doctors, and indeed lived altogether according to medical
+_regime_,--she called her husband to her.
+
+"I want to speak to you, dear," she said; "there is something that I
+must say to you."
+
+The young man knelt down by his wife's bed.
+
+"What is it, darling?" he asked.
+
+"You know what we said to-day, Edward?"
+
+"What, darling? We say so many things every day--we are so happy
+together, and have so much to talk about."
+
+"But you remember, Edward,--you remember what I said about never seeing
+the Sycamores? Ah! don't stop me, dear love," Mary said reproachfully,
+for Edward put his lips to hers to stay the current of mournful
+words,--"don't stop me, dear, for I must speak to you. I want you to
+know that _it must be_, Edward darling. I want you to remember how
+happy I have been, and how willing I am to part with you, dear, since
+it is God's will that we should be parted. And there is something else
+that I want to say, Edward. Grandmamma told me something--all about
+Belinda. I want you to promise me that Belinda shall be happy
+by-and-by; for she has suffered so much, poor girl! And you will love
+her, and she will love the baby. But you won't love her quite the same
+way that you loved me, will you, dear? because you never knew her when
+she was a little child, and very poor. She has never been an orphan,
+and quite lonely, as I have been. You have never been _all the world_
+to her."
+
+ * * * * *
+
+The Sycamores was finished by the following midsummer, but no one took
+possession of the newly-built house; no brisk upholsterer's men came,
+with three-foot rules and pencils and memorandum-books, to take
+measurements of windows and floors; no wagons of splendid furniture
+made havoc of the gravel-drive before the principal entrance. The only
+person who came to the new house was a snuff-taking crone from
+Stanfield, who brought a turn-up bedstead, a Dutch clock, and a few
+minor articles of furniture, and encamped in a corner of the best
+bedroom.
+
+Edward Arundel, senior, was away in India, fighting under Napier and
+Outram; and Edward Arundel, junior, was at Dangerfield, under the
+charge of his grandmother.
+
+Perhaps the most beautiful monument in one of the English cemeteries at
+Nice is that tall white marble cross and kneeling figure, before which
+strangers pause to read an inscription to the memory of Mary, the
+beloved wife of Edward Dangerfield Arundel.
+
+
+
+
+THE EPILOGUE.
+
+
+Four years after the completion of that pretty stuccoed villa, which
+seemed destined never to be inhabited, Belinda Lawford walked alone up
+and down the sheltered shrubbery-walk in the Grange garden in the
+fading September daylight.
+
+Miss Lawford was taller and more womanly-looking than she had been on
+the day of her interrupted wedding. The vivid bloom had left her
+cheeks; but I think she was all the prettier because of that delicate
+pallor, which gave a pensive cast to her countenance. She was very
+grave and gentle and good; but she had never forgotten the shock of
+that broken bridal ceremonial in Hillingsworth Church.
+
+The Major had taken his eldest daughter abroad almost immediately after
+that July day; and Belinda and her father had travelled together very
+peacefully, exploring quiet Belgian cities, looking at celebrated
+altar-pieces in dusky cathedrals, and wandering round battle-fields,
+which the intermingled blood of rival nations had once made one crimson
+swamp. They had been nearly a twelvemonth absent, and then Belinda
+returned to assist at the marriage of a younger sister, and to hear
+that Edward Arundel's wife had died of a lingering pulmonary complaint
+at Nice.
+
+She was told this: and she was told how Olivia Marchmont still lived
+with her father at Swampington, and how day by day she went the same
+round from cottage to cottage, visiting the sick; teaching little
+children, or sometimes rough-bearded men, to read and write and cipher;
+reading to old decrepit pensioners; listening to long histories of
+sickness and trial, and exhibiting an unwearying patience that was akin
+to sublimity. Passion had burnt itself out in this woman's breast, and
+there was nothing in her mind now but remorse, and the desire to
+perform a long penance, by reason of which she might in the end be
+forgiven.
+
+But Mrs. Marchmont never visited anyone alone. Wherever she went,
+Barbara Simmons accompanied her, constant as her shadow. The
+Swampington people said this was because the Rector's daughter was not
+quite right in her mind; and there were times when she forgot where she
+was, and would have wandered away in a purposeless manner, Heaven knows
+where, had she not been accompanied by her faithful servant. Clever as
+the Swampington people and the Kemberling people might be in finding
+out the business of their neighbours, they never knew that Olivia
+Marchmont had been consentient to the hiding-away of her stepdaughter.
+They looked upon her, indeed, with considerable respect, as a heroine
+by whose exertions Paul Marchmont's villany had been discovered. In the
+hurry and confusion of the scene at Hillingsworth Church, nobody had
+taken heed of Olivia's incoherent self-accusations: Hubert Arundel was
+therefore spared the misery of knowing the extent of his daughter's
+sin.
+
+Belinda Lawford came home in order to be present at her sister's
+wedding; and the old life began again for her, with all the old duties
+that had once been so pleasant. She went about them very cheerfully
+now. She worked for her poor pensioners, and took the chief burden of
+the housekeeping off her mother's hands. But though she jingled her
+keys with a cheery music as she went about the house, and though she
+often sang to herself over her work, the old happy smile rarely lit up
+her face. She went about her duties rather like some widowed matron who
+had lived her life, than a girl before whom the future lies, mysterious
+and unknown.
+
+It has been said that happiness comes to the sleeper--the meaning of
+which proverb I take to be, that Joy generally comes to us when we
+least look for her lovely face. And it was on this September afternoon,
+when Belinda loitered in the garden after her round of small duties was
+finished, and she was free to think or dream at her leisure, that
+happiness came to her,--unexpected, unhoped-for, supreme; for, turning
+at one end of the sheltered alley, she saw Edward Arundel standing at
+the other end, with his hat in his hand, and the summer wind blowing
+amongst his hair.
+
+Miss Lawford stopped quite still. The old-fashioned garden reeled
+before her eyes, and the hard-gravelled path seemed to become a quaking
+bog. She could not move; she stood still, and waited while Edward came
+towards her.
+
+"Letitia has told me about you, Linda," he said; "she has told me how
+true and noble you have been; and she sent me here to look for a wife,
+to make new sunshine in my empty home,--a young mother to smile upon my
+motherless boy."
+
+Edward and Belinda walked up and down the sheltered alley for a long
+time, talking a great deal of the sad past, a little of the
+fair-seeming future. It was growing dusk before they went in at the
+old-fashioned half-glass door leading into the drawing-room, where Mrs.
+Lawford and her younger daughters were sitting, and where Lydia, who
+was next to Belinda, and had been three years married to the Curate of
+Hillingsworth, was nursing her second baby.
+
+"Has she said 'yes'?" this young matron cried directly; for she had
+been told of Edward's errand to the Grange. "But of course she has.
+What else should she say, after refusing all manner of people, and
+giving herself the airs of an old-maid? Yes, um pressus Pops, um Aunty
+Lindy's going to be marriedy-pariedy," concluded the Curate's wife,
+addressing her three-months-old baby in that peculiar patois which is
+supposed to be intelligible to infants by reason of being
+unintelligible to everybody else.
+
+"I suppose you are not aware that my future brother-in-law is a major?"
+said Belinda's third sister, who had been struggling with a variation
+by Thalberg, all octaves and accidentals, and who twisted herself round
+upon her music-stool to address her sister. "I suppose you are not
+aware that you have been talking to Major Arundel, who has done all
+manner of splendid things in the Punjaub? Papa told us all about it
+five minutes ago."
+
+It was as much as Belinda could do to support the clamorous
+felicitations of her sisters, especially the unmarried damsels, who
+were eager to exhibit themselves in the capacity of bridesmaids; but
+by-and-by, after dinner, the Curate's wife drew her sisters away from
+that shadowy window in which Edward Arundel and Belinda were sitting,
+and the lovers were left to themselves.
+
+That evening was very peaceful, very happy, and there were many other
+evenings like it before Edward and Belinda completed that ceremonial
+which they had left unfinished more than five years before.
+
+The Sycamores was very prettily furnished, under Belinda's
+superintendence; and as Reginald Arundel had lately married, Edward's
+mother came to live with her younger son, and brought with her the
+idolised grandchild, who was now a tall, yellow-haired boy of six years
+old.
+
+There was only one room in the Sycamores which was never tenanted by
+any one of that little household except Edward himself, who kept the
+key of the little chamber in his writing-desk, and only allowed the
+servants to go in at stated intervals to keep everything bright and
+orderly in the apartment.
+
+The shut-up chamber was the boudoir which Edward Arundel had planned
+for his first wife. He had ordered it to be furnished with the very
+furniture which he had intended for Mary. The rosebuds and butterflies
+on the walls, the guipure curtains lined with pale blush-rose silk, the
+few chosen books in the little cabinet near the fireplace, the Dresden
+breakfast-service, the statuettes and pictures, were things he had
+fixed upon long ago in his own mind as the decorations for his wife's
+apartment. He went into the room now and then, and looked at his first
+wife's picture--a crayon sketch taken in London before Mary and her
+husband started for the South of France. He looked a little wistfully
+at this picture, even when he was happiest in the new ties that bound
+him to life, and all that is brightest in life.
+
+Major Arundel took his eldest son into this room one day, when young
+Edward was eight or nine years old, and showed the boy his mother's
+portrait.
+
+"When you are a man, this place will be yours, Edward," the father
+said. "_You_ can give your wife this room, although I have never given
+it to mine. You will tell her that it was built for your mother, and
+that it was built for her by a husband who, even when most grateful to
+God for every new blessing he enjoyed, never ceased to be sorry for the
+loss of his first love."
+
+And so I leave my soldier-hero, to repose upon laurels that have been
+hardly won, and secure in that modified happiness which is chastened by
+the memory of sorrow. I leave him with bright children crowding round
+his knees, a loving wife smiling at him across those fair childish
+heads. I leave him happy and good and useful, filling his place in the
+world, and bringing up his children to be wise and virtuous men and
+women in the days that are to come. I leave him, above all, with the
+serene lamp of faith for ever burning in his soul, lighting the image
+of that other world in which there is neither marrying nor giving in
+marriage, and where his dead wife will smile upon him from amidst the
+vast throng of angel faces--a child for ever and ever before the throne
+of God!
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of John Marchmont's Legacy, Volumes I-III, by
+Mary E. Braddon
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