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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Charming Fellow, Volume III (of 3), by
+Frances Eleanor Trollope
+
+
+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: A Charming Fellow, Volume III (of 3)
+
+
+Author: Frances Eleanor Trollope
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 28, 2011  [eBook #35430]
+Most recently updated: November 10, 2011
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHARMING FELLOW, VOLUME III (OF
+3)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has the other two volumes of this
+      novel.
+      Volume I: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35428
+      Volume II: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35429
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/charmingfellow03trol
+
+
+
+
+
+A CHARMING FELLOW.
+
+by
+
+FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE,
+
+Author of "Aunt Margaret's Trouble," "Mabel's Progress," etc. etc.
+
+In Three Volumes.
+
+VOL. III.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London:
+Chapman and Hall, 193, Piccadilly.
+1876.
+
+Charles Dickens and Evans,
+Crystal Palace Press.
+
+
+
+
+A CHARMING FELLOW.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+There was a "scene" that evening at Ivy Lodge--not the less a "scene" in
+that it was conducted on genteel methods. Mrs. Algernon Errington
+inflicted on her husband during dinner a recapitulation of all her
+wrongs and injuries which could be covertly hinted at. She would not
+broadly speak out her meaning before "the servants." The phrase shaped
+itself thus in her mind from old habit. But in truth "the servants" were
+represented by one plump-faced damsel in a yellow print gown, into which
+her person seemed to have been inserted in the same way that bran is
+inserted into the cover of a pincushion. She seemed to have been stuffed
+into it by means of considerable force, and with less reference to the
+natural shape of her body than to the arbitrary outlines of the case
+made for it by a Whitford dressmaker.
+
+This girl ministered to her master and mistress during dinner, pouring
+water and wine, changing knives and plates, handing vegetables, and not
+unfrequently dropping a spoon or a sprinkling of hot gravy into the laps
+of her employers. She had succeeded to Slater, who resigned her post
+after a trial of some six weeks' duration. Castalia, in despair at this
+desertion, had written to Lady Seely to send her a maid from London
+forthwith. But to this application she received a reply to the effect
+that my lady could not undertake to find any one who would suit her
+niece, and that her ladyship thought Castalia had much better make up
+her mind to do without a regular lady's-maid, and take some humbler
+attendant, who would make herself generally useful.
+
+"I always knew Slater wouldn't stay with you," wrote Lady Seely; "and
+you won't get any woman of that kind to stay. You can't afford to keep
+one. Your uncle is fairly well; but poor Fido gives me a great deal of
+unhappiness. He eats nothing."
+
+Not by any means from conviction or submission to the imperious advice
+of Lady Seely, but under the yoke of stern necessity, Castalia had
+consented to try a young woman of the neighbourhood, "highly
+recommended." And this abigail, in her tight yellow gown, was the cause
+of Mrs. Algernon's reticence during dinner. The poor lady might,
+however, have spared herself this restraint, if its object were to keep
+her servants in the dark as to domestic disagreements; for no sooner had
+Lydia (that was the abigail's name) reached the kitchen, than she and
+Polly, the cook, began a discussion of Mr. and Mrs. Algernon Errington's
+private affairs, which displayed a surprising knowledge of very minute
+details, and an almost equally surprising power of piecing evidence
+together.
+
+When Lydia was gone, Algernon lit a cigar and drew up his chair to the
+fireside, where he sat silent, staring at his elegantly-slippered feet
+on the fender. Castalia rose, fidgeted about the room, walked to the
+door, stopped, turned back, and, standing directly opposite to Algernon,
+said querulously, "Do you mean to remain here?"
+
+"For the present, yes; out of consideration for you. You dislike me to
+smoke in the drawing-room, do you not?"
+
+"Why should you smoke at all?"
+
+Algernon raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, crossed one leg
+over the other, and made no answer. His wife went away, and sitting down
+alone on a corner of the sofa in her little drawing-room, cried bitterly
+for a long time.
+
+She was made to raise her tear-stained face by feeling a hand passed
+gently over her hair. She looked up, and found her husband standing
+beside her. "What's the matter, little woman?" he asked, in a
+half-coaxing, half-bantering tone, like one speaking to a naughty
+child, too young to be seriously reproved or argued with.
+
+Now, although Castalia was haughty by education and insolent by temper,
+she had very little real pride and no dignity in her character. To be
+noticed and caressed by Algernon was to her a sufficient compensation
+for almost any indignity. There was but one passion of her nature which
+had any chance of resisting his personal influence, and that passion had
+never yet been fully aroused, although frequently irritated. Her
+jealousy was like a young tiger that had never yet tasted blood.
+
+"What's the matter, little woman?" repeated Algernon, seating himself
+beside her, and putting his arm round her waist. She shrugged her
+shoulders fretfully, but at the same time nestled herself nearer to his
+side. She loved him, and it put her at an immense disadvantage with him.
+
+"Don't you mean to vouchsafe me an answer, Mrs. Algernon Ancram
+Errington?"
+
+"Oh, I daresay you're very sorry that I am Mrs. Errington. I have no
+doubt you repent."
+
+"Really! And is that what you were crying for?"
+
+No reply.
+
+"It looks rather as if you repented, madam!"
+
+"Oh, you know I don't; unless you like other people better than you like
+me!"
+
+"'Other people' don't cry in my company."
+
+"No; because they don't care for you. And because they're----they're
+nasty, artful minxes!"
+
+"Hear, hear! A charming definition! Castalia, you are really _impayable_
+sometimes. How my lord would enjoy that speech of yours!"
+
+"No, he wouldn't. Uncle Val would never enjoy what vexed me. My lady
+might; nasty, disagreeable old thing!"
+
+"There, I can agree with you. A vulgar kind of woman--though she is my
+blood-relation--thoroughly coarse in the grain. But now that we have
+relieved our feelings, and spoken our minds on that score, suppose we
+converse rationally?"
+
+"I don't want to converse rationally."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because that means that you are going to scold me."
+
+"Well--that might be highly rational, certainly; only I never do it."
+
+"Well, but you'll manage to make out that I'm in the wrong and you're in
+the right, somehow or other."
+
+"Cassy, I want you to write a letter."
+
+"A letter? Whom do you want me to write to?"
+
+Her tears were completely dried, and she looked up at him with a faint
+smile on her countenance, which, however, looked rueful enough, with red
+nose and swollen eyes.
+
+"You must write to my lord, and get him to help us with a little money."
+
+Her face fell.
+
+"Ask Uncle Val for money again, Ancram? It is such a short time since he
+sent me some!"
+
+"And to-morrow, at this hour, it will be 'such a short time' since you
+had your dinner! Nevertheless, I suppose you will want another dinner."
+
+"I--I don't think Uncle Val can afford it, Ancram."
+
+"Leave that to him. Afford it? Pshaw!"
+
+Algernon made the little sharp ejaculation in a tone expressive of the
+most impatient contempt.
+
+"But do we really--is it absolutely necessary for us to beg of my uncle
+again?"
+
+"Not at all. Do just as you please," answered her husband, rising and
+walking away from the sofa to a distant chair.
+
+Castalia's eyes followed him piteously.
+
+"But what can I say?" she asked. "What excuse can I make? I hate to
+worry Uncle Val. It isn't as if he had more money than he knew what to
+do with. And if Lady Seely knew about his helping us, she would lead him
+such a life!"
+
+"Do as you please. It would be a thousand pities to worry your uncle.
+Let all the worry fall on me."
+
+He took up a book and threw himself back in his chair as if he had
+dismissed the subject.
+
+"I don't know what to do!" exclaimed Castalia, with fretful
+helplessness. At length, after sitting silent for some time twisting her
+handkerchief backwards and forwards in her fingers, she got up and
+crossed the room to her husband's chair.
+
+"Ancram!" she said softly.
+
+"Eh? I beg your pardon!" looking up with an appearance of great
+abstraction, as if the perusal of his book had absorbed all his
+attention.
+
+"I wish to do what will please you. I only care to please you in the
+world. But--can't you explain to me a little better why I must write to
+Uncle Val?"
+
+Explain! Of course he would! He desired nothing better. He had brought
+her to a point at which encouragement was needed, not coldness. And with
+the singular flexibility that belonged to him, he was able immediately
+to plunge into an animated statement of his present situation, which
+sufficed to persuade his hearer that no course of conduct could be so
+desirable, so prudent--nay, so praiseworthy, as the course he had
+suggested.
+
+To be sure the details were vague, but the general impression was vivid
+enough. If Algernon's pictures were a little inaccurate in drawing, they
+were at least always admirably coloured. And the general impression was
+this: that there never had been a person of such brilliant abilities and
+charming qualities as Algernon Ancram Errington so unjustly consigned
+to obscurity and poverty. And no contributions to his comfort, luxury,
+or well-being were too much to expect and claim from the world in
+general, and his wife's relations in particular. Common honesty--common
+decency almost--would compel Lord Seely to make all the amends in his
+power for having placed Algernon in the Whitford Post-office. And there
+was an insinuation very skilfully and delicately mixed with all the
+seemingly unstudied and spontaneous outpourings of Algy's conjugal
+confidence--an insinuation which affected the flavour of the whole, as
+an accomplished cook will contrive to mingle garlic in a ragoût, never
+coarsely obtrusive, and yet distinctly perceptible--to the effect that
+the hand of Miss Castalia Kilfinane had been somewhat officiously thrust
+upon her charming husband; and that the family owed him no little
+gratitude for having been kind enough to accept it.
+
+Poor Castalia had an uneasy feeling, at the end of his fluent discourse,
+that Algernon had been a victim to her great relations, and, in some dim
+way, to herself. But the garlic was so admirably blended with the whole
+mass, that it was impossible for her to pick it out, or resent it, or do
+anything but declare her willingness to help her husband by any means in
+her power.
+
+"Why, my dear girl, it is as much for your sake as for mine! And as to
+the necessity for it, I must tell you what Minnie Bodkin said to me
+to-day. Minnie is an excellent creature, full of friendly feeling--a
+little too conceited and fond of lecturing" (Castalia's face
+brightened); "but much must be excused to an afflicted invalid, who
+never meets her fellow-creatures on equal terms."
+
+Castalia looked almost happy. But she said, "As to her affliction, it
+seems to me that she has been growing much stronger lately."
+
+"Yes; I am glad to think so too. But let the best happen that can be
+hoped--let the disease, that has kept her helpless on her couch all
+these years, be overcome--still she must always be so lame as to make
+her an object of pity."
+
+"Poor thing! I daresay it does warp her mind a good deal. What did she
+say to you?"
+
+Algernon recapitulated a part of Minnie's warnings, but gave them such a
+turn as to make it appear that the greatest wrath and impatience of the
+Whitford tradesmen were directed against his wife. "They have a narrow
+kind of provincial prejudice against you, Cassy, on account of your
+being a 'London fine lady.' Me they know; and, in their great
+condescension, are pleased to approve of."
+
+"Oh, everybody likes you better than me, of course," answered Castalia,
+simply. "But I don't care for that, if you will only like me better
+than anybody."
+
+The genuine devotion with which this was said would have touched most
+men. It might have touched Algernon, had he not been too much engrossed
+in mentally composing the rough draft of Castalia's letter to her uncle,
+and putting his not inconsiderable powers of plausible persuasion to the
+task of making it appear that his wife's personal extravagance was the
+chief cause of their need for ready money.
+
+"Don't tell him that I even know of your writing. My lord will be more
+willing to come down handsomely if he thinks it's for you only, Cassy,"
+said Algernon, as he drew up his wife's writing-table for her, placed a
+chair, opened her inkstand, and performed several little acts of
+attention with a really charming grace and gallantry.
+
+So Castalia, writing almost literally what her husband
+dictated--(although he kept saying at every sentence, "My dear child,
+you ought to know best how to address your uncle;" "Well, I really don't
+know, but I think you might put it thus;" and so forth)--completed an
+appeal to Lord Seely to anticipate by nearly a quarter the allowance he
+continued to make her for her dress out of his private purse, and, if
+possible, to increase its amount.
+
+One such appeal had already been made and responded to by a gift of
+money. It had been made immediately after the arrival of the
+newly-married couple in Whitford, on the ground of the unforeseen
+expenses attendant on installing themselves in their new habitation. In
+answering it Lord Seely had written kindly, but with evident disapproval
+of the step that had been taken. "I cannot, Castalia," he said, "bid you
+keep anything secret from your husband, and yet I can scarcely help
+saying that I wish he did not know of the cheque I inclose. I fear he is
+disposed to be reckless in money matters; and nothing encourages such a
+disposition more than the idea that aid can be had from friends for the
+asking. Ancram will recollect a serious conversation I had with him the
+evening before your marriage, and I can only now reiterate what I then
+assured him of--that it will be impossible for me to repeat the
+assistance I gave him on that occasion."
+
+"What assistance was that, Ancram?" asked Castalia, who knew not a word
+of the matter.
+
+"Oh, I believe my lord made me the munificent present of two pair of
+breeches, and an old coat and waistcoat, or so."
+
+"Made you a present of an old coat and breeches! What on earth do you
+mean?"
+
+"I mean that he paid a twopenny outstanding tailor's bill for me. And he
+writes now as if he had conferred the most overwhelming obligation."
+
+The fact was that Lord Seely had discharged a great number of Algernon's
+debts; all of them, as his lordship imagined. But there was clearly no
+need of troubling Castalia with these details.
+
+When the letter was finished and sealed, Castalia still sat musingly
+tracing unmeaning figures with the point of her pen on the
+blotting-book. At length she said with some hesitation, "Ancram, how is
+it that we spend so much money? I don't think I am very extravagant."
+
+"'So much money!' Good Heavens, Castalia--but you really have no
+conception of these things. Our whole income, and twice our income, is a
+miserable pittance. The Dormers pay their butler more."
+
+She was again silent for a little while. Then she said, "Isn't there
+anything we could do without?"
+
+Her husband looked at her in astonishment. It was a quite unexpected
+suggestion on Castalia's part. "Could you be kind enough to point out
+anything?" he asked drily. She looked somewhat cast down by his tone,
+but answered, "There's that last case of wine from town--the Rhine wine.
+Don't you think we might send it back unopened, and do with a bottle of
+sherry, now and then, from the 'Blue Bell?' Your mother finds that very
+good."
+
+"Pshaw!" with the accustomed sharp, impatient contempt. "My mother knows
+no more about wine than a baby. To drink bad wine is absolutely to
+poison oneself. I can't do it, and I don't mean to let you do it,
+either. And when one knows that it is only a question of a few months,
+more or less, and that directly I get a better berth these greedy
+rascals will be paid their extortionate bills in full--positively,
+Castalia, it seems to me childish to talk in that way!"
+
+It was the same with one or two other suggestions of retrenchment she
+ventured to make. Algernon showed conclusively (conclusively enough to
+satisfy his hearer, at all events) that it would not do--that it would
+be absolutely imprudent, on their part, to make any open retrenchment.
+All these sharks would come round them at once, if they smelt poverty.
+"I know these gentry better than you do, Castalia," said he. "There is
+no way of getting on with them except by not being in a hurry to pay
+them. Nothing spoils tradespeople so much as any over-alacrity of that
+kind. They immediately conclude that you can't do without them!"
+
+"Oh, they're disgustingly impudent creatures, these Whitford
+tradespeople! There is no doubt in the world about that," said Castalia,
+in perfect good faith. "Only I thought you seemed to be made uneasy by
+what Miss Bodkin said to you on the subject."
+
+"To be sure! But, my dear girl, your method would never answer! I do
+want money, very badly. And I do hope and expect--as I think I have some
+right to do--that my lord will assist us without delay, and without
+making one of his intolerable prosy preachments on the occasion. And we
+must have a few pounds to go on with, and stop the mouths of these
+rapacious rascals. But no retrenchment, Castalia! No 'Blue Bell' sherry!
+Good Heavens, it makes one bilious to think of it! I really cannot
+sacrifice my digestion to advance the commercial prosperity of Whitford.
+And when one considers it, why should we destroy our peace of mind by
+worrying ourselves? Lord Seely has got us into this scrape, and Lord
+Seely must get us out of it. _Voilà tout!_"
+
+After that the rest of the evening was spent very harmoniously. Algernon
+could not repress two or three prodigious yawns, but he politely
+concealed them. And when Castalia went to her pianoforte, he woke up at
+the conclusion of an intricate fantasia quite in time to thank her for
+the performance, and to praise its brilliancy. In a word, so agreeable
+an evening, Castalia told herself, she had not passed for many weeks,
+although it had certainly begun in an unpromising way. So softened was
+she, indeed, by this gleam of happiness, that several times she was on
+the point of making a confession to her husband, and entreating his
+forgiveness. But she could not bear to risk bringing a cloud over the
+light of his countenance, which was the only sunshine in her life.
+"Ancram would be so angry!" was a thought that checked back words which
+were on her lips a dozen times. "And since the matter is all over, and
+he need never know anything about it, I may as well hold my tongue."
+
+It needed, however, no confession on Castalia's part to convince
+Algernon that she had opened his secretaire, and taken Minnie Bodkin's
+letter thence, instead of having found it lying open on his table, as
+she had said. For on the next morning, when he entered his private room
+at the office, his first action was to try the little secretaire, which
+was unlocked. He then remembered that, after having secured that
+repository of his private papers, he had re-opened it, to throw Minnie's
+note into a drawer of it; and, having been called away at that moment,
+must have forgotten to re-lock it.
+
+"Damnably provoking!" muttered Algernon to himself as he stood looking
+at the little cabinet with gloomy, anxious brows. Then, having first
+bolted the door of his room, he made a thorough search throughout the
+secretaire. "Nothing disturbed! She probably flew off to Dr. Bodkin's
+house directly after reading Minnie's note; and that lay in the little
+empty drawer right in front. It would be the first she opened."
+
+Then he sat down in a mighty comfortable armchair, which was placed in
+front of an official-looking desk, and meditated so deeply that he
+forgot to unbolt the door, and was roused by Mr. Gibbs tapping at it,
+and desiring to speak with him on business.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Mr. Gibbs's errand was not a pleasant one. He came to speak to his chief
+of complaints that had reached the office as to lost and missing
+letters. The most serious case was that of a man living in the
+neighbourhood of Duckwell, who complained that a money letter had never
+reached him, although it had been posted in Bristol three weeks back.
+Some inquiries had previously been made, but without result. And now the
+Duckwell man declared he would make a fine fuss, and bring the matter
+before the very highest authorities, if his letter were not forthcoming.
+
+"What does the bumpkin mean, Gibbs?" asked Algernon, impatiently tapping
+with his fingers on the desk before him.
+
+"I'm afraid he'll give us a deal of bother, sir," returned Mr. Gibbs
+slowly. "And I can't understand what has come of the letter. It's very
+awkward."
+
+"Very awkward for him, if he really has lost his money. But I should not
+be surprised to learn that it never was posted at all."
+
+"Humph! I don't know. He swears that the sender at Bristol can prove
+that it was posted."
+
+"And why the deuce do people go on sending bank-notes by post, without
+the least care or precaution? One must have been connected with a
+post-office in order fully to appreciate the imbecility of one's
+fellow-creatures!"
+
+"I don't know that it was bank-notes, sir. It may have been a cheque."
+
+"Oh, depend upon it, it was whatever was stupidest to send, and most
+calculated to give trouble; if it was sent, that is to say! If it was
+sent!"
+
+"I can't call to mind such a thing happening for twenty years back; not
+in this office. But lately there seems to be no end to things going
+wrong."
+
+"Well, don't distress yourself about it, Gibbs. I have full reliance on
+you in every way."
+
+"Oh no, sir! It is unpleasant, but I don't know that I specially need
+distress myself about it."
+
+"Only because you have had the uncontrolled management of the office,
+Gibbs. And it is too bad, when one has worked so conscientiously as you
+have, to be worried by blundering bumpkins. I assure you, Gibbs, I am
+constantly singing your praises to Lord Seely. I tell him frankly, that
+if it were not for you, I don't know in the least how I should fulfil my
+onerous duties here! When I'm removed from this place, the powers that
+be won't have far to look for my successor."
+
+This was the most explicit word that had yet fallen from Mr. Errington
+on the subject of his subordinate's promotion. And it decidedly
+gratified Mr. Obadiah Gibbs. Nevertheless, that steady individual was
+not so elated by the prospect held out to him as to dismiss from his
+mind the business he had come to speak about. "It is the most
+unaccountable thing!" said he. "Three or four cases of the kind within
+two months! And up to that time no office in the kingdom bore a better
+character than Whitford. I hope the thing may be cleared up. But it is
+next to impossible to trace a stolen letter. The Duckwell man--Heath,
+his name is; Roger Heath--says he is determined to complain to the
+Postmaster-General. I suppose we shall be having the surveyor coming to
+look after us. You see, it isn't like a solitary case. That's the worst
+of it. There's what you may term an accumulation, sir."
+
+Whilst Mr. Gibbs poured forth his troubled mind in these and many more
+slow sentences, Algernon rose, took his hat, brushed it lightly with his
+glove, put it on, and was evidently about to depart. Gibbs ventured to
+lay his hand on his coat-sleeve to detain him. The clerk was not
+satisfied that the matter should be dismissed so lightly. It might not
+be possible to do anything, truly; but (in common with a great many
+other people) Mr. Obadiah Gibbs felt that, where efficacious action was
+impracticable, it was all the more desirable to mark the gravity of an
+unpleasant circumstance by copious talking of it. Life would become, in
+some sort, too frivolous and easy if, when a matter clearly could not be
+remedied, every one agreed to say no more about it! A vast deal of sage
+eloquence would thus be choked and dammed up. And Mr. Gibbs, for his
+special part, was conscious of having some reputation amongst his fellow
+Wesleyans for a gift of utterance.
+
+"I really don't know, sir, what to say to Roger Heath," he persisted.
+
+"Oh--tell him inquiries will be made in the proper quarters."
+
+"That, sir, has been said already. He has been here twice or thrice."
+
+"Then tell him to go to the devil!" said Algernon, sharply jerking his
+arm away from the clerk's grasp, and walking off.
+
+The pious and respectable Mr. Gibbs shook his head disapprovingly at
+this profane speech, and went back to his stool in the outer office with
+a lowering brow.
+
+Algernon walked along the High Street, and turned down a narrow lane
+leading towards the river, and past one corner of the Grammar School.
+The boys were just coming out of school with the usual shrill babble and
+rush. A party of Dr. Bodkin's private scholars were on their way to Whit
+Meadow.
+
+"Good day, Ingleby," said Algernon, addressing the eldest of them, the
+same lad who had been Rhoda's squire in the tea-room on the night of
+Mrs. Algernon Errington's _début_ in Whitford society. "Where are you
+off to?"
+
+"We're going to have a row. I've got a boat, and we're going up the
+river as far as Duckwell Reach. We have leave from the doctor. Deuce of
+a job to get it, though!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, because he's nervous about the river; thinks it dangerous, and all
+that."
+
+"Well, you know, Ingleby," said a younger boy, with much eagerness,
+"lots of people have been drowned in that bit of the river between here
+and Duckwell Reach."
+
+"Lots of people! Gammon!"
+
+"Well, two since I've been here!"
+
+"Oh, I daresay. Well, if you funk it you needn't come. There's plenty
+without you."
+
+"You know I don't funk it for myself, Ingleby. I can swim."
+
+"Yes, my friend. You wouldn't get into my boat if you couldn't. I'm on
+honour with the doctor to take none but swimmers," said Ingleby, turning
+to Algernon; "and of course that settles the matter. But, for my part, I
+should have thought anybody but the quite small boys might walk out of
+the Whit if they tumbled into it." "Oh no! You do our noble river
+injustice. You are not a Whitfordian or you would know better than that.
+There are some very ugly places between here and Duckwell Reach; places
+where I wouldn't give much for your chance of getting out if once you
+fell in, swimmer though you are. Good-bye. A pleasant row to you."
+
+The boys pursued their way to the boat, and Algernon, turning off at
+right angles when he reached the bottom of the lane, got into Whit
+Meadow through a turnstile at the foot of the Grammar School playground.
+
+There was a footpath through the meadow, and some fields beyond, which
+made a pleasant walk enough in fine summer weather, and was then a good
+deal frequented. But at this season it was damp, muddy, and lonely. The
+day was fine, but the ground had been saturated by previous rains, and
+that part of the meadow nearest to the margin of the river was almost a
+swamp. The path continued to skirt the Whit for some miles, running in
+the direction of Duckwell, and as Algernon walked along it he saw the
+windings of the river shining in the sun, and presently there appeared
+on it the boat full of schoolboys. One of them wore a scarlet cap, and
+thus made a bright spot of colour in the landscape. The sound of their
+young voices was carried across the water to Algernon's ears.
+
+He stood for a minute or so at the gate of his own garden, which ran
+down behind the house to the river path, and watched them. The thought
+crossed his mind that, if any accident should occur to the boat at that
+spot, there would be little chance of assistance reaching it quickly.
+Ivy Lodge was the last house on that side of the river between Whitford
+and Duckwell Reach. And on the willow-fringed shore opposite not a
+living creature was to be seen, except some cattle grazing in the plashy
+fields.
+
+The whole scene--the vivid green of the marsh grass, the grey willows,
+the boat with its wet oars flashing at regular intervals, the red-capped
+boy, and the sound of the fresh, shrill laughter of the crew, all fixed
+themselves on his mind with that vividness of impression which trivial
+external things so often make upon a brain labouring with some inward
+trouble.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+"What a state your boots are in!" exclaimed Castalia, pausing at the
+foot of the stairs, which she happened to be descending as her husband
+entered the house. "And why did you come by the back way?"
+
+"I was worried, and did not wish to meet people and be chattered to. I
+thought the meadow-path would be quiet, and so it was."
+
+"Quiet! Yes; but how horribly muddy! Do change your wet boots at once,
+Ancram!"
+
+There was little need for her to insist on this proceeding. Algernon
+hastened to his room, pulled off his wet boots, and desired that they
+should be thrown away.
+
+"They can be dried and cleaned, sir," said plump-faced Lydia, aghast at
+this order.
+
+"My good girl you may do what you please with them. I shall never wear
+them again. Slight boots of that sort that have once been wet through
+become shapeless, don't you understand? Take them away."
+
+When the master of the house descended to the drawing-room, he found a
+paper, squarely folded in the shape of a letter, lying in a conspicuous
+position on the centre table. It was Mr. Gladwish the shoemaker's bill,
+accompanied by an urgent request for immediate payment.
+
+"More wall-paper, Cassy," said her husband, flinging himself on the
+sofa.
+
+"Do you know, Lydia tells me the man was quite insolent!" said Castalia.
+"What can be done with such people? They don't seem to me to have the
+least idea who we are!"
+
+"Oh, confound the brutes! Don't let us talk about them!"
+
+But Castalia continued to talk about them in a strain of mingled wonder
+and disgust. She did not cease until dinner was announced, and Algernon
+was by that time so thoroughly wearied by his conjugal _tête-à-tête_,
+that he even received with something like satisfaction the announcement
+that Castalia expected the Misses Rose and Violet McDougall to pass the
+evening at Ivy Lodge.
+
+"I daresay your mother will come too," said Castalia, "and bring Rhoda
+Maxfield with her. I asked her."
+
+"Rhoda? Why on earth do you invite that little Maxfield?"
+
+"What is your objection to her, Ancram?"
+
+"Oh, I have no objection to her in the world. But I should not have
+thought she was precisely the sort of person to suit you."
+
+"That's exactly what Miss Bodkin says! Miss Bodkin tried to keep Rhoda
+apart from me, I am perfectly sure. And I can't fathom her motive. And
+now you say the same sort of thing. However, I always notice that you
+echo her words. But I don't intend to be guided by Miss Bodkin's likes
+and dislikes. I haven't the same opinion of Miss Bodkin's wisdom that
+the people have here, and I shall choose my friends for myself. It's
+quite absurd, the fuss that is made in this place about Miss Bodkin;
+absolutely sickening. Rose McDougall is the only person of the whole set
+who seems to keep her senses on the subject."
+
+"Rose McDougall will never lose her senses from admiration of another
+woman," returned Algernon. And then the colloquy was broken up by the
+arrival of the Misses McDougall, clogged and cloaked, and attended by
+their maid-servant. After having exchanged greetings with these ladies,
+Algernon withdrew, murmuring something about going to smoke his cigar.
+
+"You'll not be long, Ancram, shall you?" said his wife, in a complaining
+tone. But he disappeared from the room without replying to her.
+
+"I'm so dreadfully afraid that I drive your husband away when I come
+here, my dear," said Rose McDougall with a spiteful glance at Algernon's
+retreating figure.
+
+"Good gracious, no! He doesn't think of minding you at all."
+
+"Oh, I daresay he does not mind me; does not think me of importance
+enough to be taken any notice of. But I cannot help observing that he
+always keeps out of the way as much as possible when I am spending an
+evening here."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Castalia, tranquilly continuing to string steel beads
+on to red silk for the manufacture of a purse.
+
+"You might as well say that it is I who drive Mr. Errington away, Rose,"
+put in Violet.
+
+"Not at all!" returned her sister, with sudden sharpness. "That's quite
+a different matter."
+
+"I don't see why, Rose!"
+
+The true answer to this remark, in the elder Miss McDougall's mind,
+would have been, "You are so utterly insignificant, compared with me,
+that you are effaced in my company, and are neither liked nor disliked
+on your own merits." But she could not quite say that, so she merely
+repeated with increased sharpness, "That's a very different matter."
+
+Rose McDougall was one of those persons who prefer animosity to
+indifference. That any one should simply not care about her was a
+suggestion so intolerable that she was wont to declare of persons who
+did not show any special desire for her society, that they hated her.
+She was sure Mr. A. detested the sight of her, and Miss B. was her
+bitter enemy. But, perhaps, in Algernon's case, she had more reason for
+declaring he disliked her than in many others. He did in truth object to
+the sort of influence she exercised over Castalia. He knew that Castalia
+was insatiably curious about even the most trifling details of his past
+life in Whitford; and he knew that Miss McDougall was very capable of
+misrepresenting--even of innocently misrepresenting--many circumstances
+and persons in such a way as to irritate Castalia's easily-aroused
+jealousy; and Castalia's easily-aroused jealousy was an element of
+discomfort in his daily life. In a word, there had arisen since his
+marriage a smouldering sort of hostility between him and Rose McDougall.
+But he was far from conceiving the acrid nature of her feelings towards
+him. For his part, he laughed at her a little in a playful way, and
+contradicted her, and, above all, he did not permit her to bore him by
+exacting any attention from him which he was disinclined to pay. But
+there was no bitterness in all that. None in the world!
+
+Only he did not reckon on the bitterness excited in Miss Rose's breast
+by being laughed at and neglected. The graceful and charming way in
+which the laughter and neglect were accomplished by no means mollified
+the sting of them; a point which graceful and charming persons would do
+well sometimes to consider, but to which they are often singularly
+blind.
+
+"And what have you been doing with yourself all day, Castalia dear?"
+asked Violet with a great display of affection.
+
+"Oh--what can one do with oneself in this horrid hole?"
+
+"To be sure!" responded Violet. But she responded rather uncertainly. To
+her, Whitford seemed by no means a horrid hole. She had been content
+enough to live there for many years--ever since her uncle had brought
+her and her sister from Scotland in their mourning clothes, and received
+his orphan nieces into his home.
+
+"Don't speak of it, my dear!" exclaimed Rose, on whom the reminiscences
+of the years spent in Whitford wrought by no means a softening effect.
+"What possessed Uncle James to stick himself down in this place, of all
+places, I cannot conjecture. He might as well have buried us girls alive
+at once."
+
+"Oh, well, I suppose you have had time enough to get used to it," said
+Castalia, coolly. "Violet, will you ring the bell? It is close to you.
+Thank you.--Lydia," when the girl appeared, "where is your master?"
+
+"In the dining-room, ma'am."
+
+"What is he doing?"
+
+"Smoking and reading, ma'am."
+
+"Go and ask him to come here, with my love."
+
+"How the woman worrits him! She doesn't leave him a minute's peace," was
+Lydia's comment to the cook on this embassy.
+
+"She worrits everybody, in her slow, crawley kind o' way; but I'm sorry
+for her sometimes, too. It's a trying thing to care more for a person's
+little finger than a person cares for your whole body and soul,"
+returned Polly, who had a kind of broad good-nature and candour. But
+Lydia felt no sympathy with her mistress, and maintained that it was all
+her own fault then! What did she be always nagging at him for?--having
+that pitiless contempt for other women's mistakes in the management of
+their husbands which is not uncommon with her sex.
+
+Some such thoughts as Lydia's probably passed through the minds of the
+Misses McDougall, but, of course, that was not the time or place to
+express them. They exerted themselves to entertain their hostess with a
+variety of Whitford gossip, while Castalia--her attention divided
+between the purse she was making and the drawing-room door, at which she
+hoped to see her husband presently appear--merely threw in a languid
+interjection now and then as her contribution to the conversation.
+
+At length she rose, and flung the crimson and steel purse down on the
+table.
+
+"Do you want anything, dear?" asked the obliging Violet with officious
+alacrity.
+
+"No; I shan't be long gone. Sit still, Violet."
+
+"She's gone to implore her husband to honour us with a little of his
+society," whispered Rose, when Castalia had shut the door. "I'm certain
+of it. More fool she!"
+
+The sisters sat silent for a few minutes. Then they heard the door of
+the dining-room open, as though Castalia were coming back, and the sound
+of voices. Rose was seated nearest to the door, which was separated from
+that of the little dining-room opposite by a very narrow passage, and
+she distinctly heard Algernon say, "Pooh! The old girl doesn't want me."
+And again, "Says I hate her? Nonsense! I look on her with the veneration
+due to her years and virtues." And then Castalia said, "Well, she can't
+help her years. Besides, that's not the question. You ought to come, for
+my sake. It's very unkind of you, Ancram." After that there was a lower
+murmur of speech, as though the speakers had changed their places in the
+room, and Rose was able to distinguish no more.
+
+When Mrs. Algernon Errington returned to the drawing-room, she found
+Violet in her old seat near the pianoforte; but Rose had shifted her
+position, and was standing near the window.
+
+"What are you doing there, Rose? Enjoying the prospect?" asked Castalia.
+The shutters were not closed, but, as the night was very dark, there
+certainly did not seem to be any inducement to look out of the window.
+
+"Can't you persuade your husband to come, dear? I'm so sorry!" said
+Rose, turning round; and her sister looked up quickly at the sound of
+her voice, which, to Violet's accustomed ear, betrayed in its
+inflections suppressed anger. Her face, too, was crimson, and her little
+light blue eyes sparkled with unusual brightness.
+
+Castalia, however, noticed none of these things. "Oh, he'll come
+presently," she said. "He really was finishing a cigar. I told him that
+you were offended with him, and----"
+
+"I offended with your husband? Oh dear no! Why on earth should I be? You
+ought not to have said that, Castalia."
+
+"Well, you thought he was offended with you, or something of the sort.
+It's all the same," returned Castalia, with her air of weary
+indifference. "And he says it's nonsense."
+
+"My dear, I am only sorry on your account that he won't come. Really, to
+myself, it matters very little; very little indeed. What a pity that
+you have not some one to amuse him! We are none of us clever enough,
+that is clear."
+
+"Oh, you are quite mistaken if you think Ancram cares particularly for
+clever women!" said Castalia, whose thoughts instantly reverted to
+Minnie Bodkin. "Even Miss Bodkin, whom everybody declares to be such a
+wonder of talent, bores him sometimes, I can tell you. Of course he has
+known her from his childhood, and all that; but he said to me only
+yesterday that she was conceited, and too fond of preaching. So you see!
+I daresay, poor thing, she fancies all the time that she is enchanting
+him by her wisdom."
+
+"Dear me," said Violet timidly, and with a sort of strangled sigh. "I
+think that, as a rule, gentlemen don't like any kind of women except
+pretty women! Though, to be sure, Minnie is handsome enough if it wasn't
+for her affliction."
+
+"Oh, I wasn't thinking of Minnie," said Rose, viciously twitching at her
+sewing thread. "I meant it was a pity there was no one here who was
+clever enough, and who thought it worth while, to play off pretty airs
+and graces for Mr. Errington's amusement. That's the kind of cleverness
+that attracts men. And your husband, my dear, was always remarkably fond
+of flirting."
+
+Violet opened her eyes in astonishment, and, from her place a little
+behind Castalia, made a warning grimace to her sister; but Rose only
+responded by a defiant toss of the head. Castalia's attention was now
+effectually aroused, and although she still spoke in the querulous drawl
+that was natural to her (or had become so from long habit), it was with
+a countenance earnestly addressed to her interlocutor, instead of, as
+hitherto, with carelessly averted eyes. "I never heard any one say
+before that Ancram was fond of flirting," she said.
+
+"I should have thought it was not necessary to hear it. You might see it
+for yourself; unless, indeed, he is very sly about it in your presence.
+He, he, he!"
+
+"See it for myself? Why--there's nobody here for him to flirt with!"
+
+This naïve ignoring of any pretensions on the part of her present guests
+to be eligible for the purposes of flirtation was not lost on Rose.
+
+"Not many who would flirt with a married man. No, I hope and believe
+not! But there are many kinds of flirtation, you know. There's the soft
+and sentimental, the shy, sweet sixteen style--little Miss Maxfield's
+style, for instance."
+
+"Rhoda!"
+
+"Yes; that is her name, I believe. I have never been intimate with the
+young person myself. Uncle James has always been very particular as to
+whom we associated with. However, since you have taken her up, my dear,
+I suppose she may be considered visitable."
+
+"We have met her at Dr. Bodkin's, you know, Rose," put in Violet, who
+was looking and listening with a distressed expression of face.
+
+"Oh yes; I believe Minnie asked her there at first to please Algernon.
+Minnie can be good-natured in that sort of way. But I don't know that it
+was very judicious."
+
+"Why should you suppose it was to please my husband that Rhoda was
+invited to the Bodkins?" asked Castalia. "I don't see that at all. The
+girl might have been asked to please Miss Bodkin. I daresay she had
+heard of her from Mrs. Errington. Mrs. Errington is always raving about
+her."
+
+Rose smiled with tightly-closed lips, and nodded. "To be sure! Poor dear
+Mrs. Errington--I mean no disrespect to your mother-in-law, Castalia,
+who is really a superior woman, only in some things she is as blind as a
+bat."
+
+Castalia's sallow face was paler than ever. Her nostrils were dilated as
+if she had been running fast. "You never told me a word of this before,"
+she said.
+
+"My dear creature," said Rose, looking full at Castalia for the first
+time, "why, what was there to tell? The subject was led to by chance
+now, and I had not the least idea that you did not know all Algy's old
+love-stories. Everybody here--except, I suppose, poor dear Mrs.
+Errington--knew of the boy-and-girl nonsense between him and that
+little thing. But of course it never was serious. That was out of the
+question."
+
+"I don't believe it!" said Castalia, suddenly.
+
+"Well, I daresay the thing was exaggerated, as so often happens. For my
+part, I never could see what there was in the girl to make so many
+people admire her. A certain freshness, perhaps; and some men do think a
+great deal of that pink-and-white sort of insipidity."
+
+"At all events, Ancram does not care about her now," said Castalia,
+speaking in broken sentences, and twisting her watch-chain nervously
+backwards and forwards in her fingers.
+
+"Oh, of course not! I daresay he never did care about her in earnest.
+But that sort of philandering is a little dangerous, isn't it?"
+
+"He does not like me to ask her to the house even."
+
+"Doesn't he?"
+
+"No; he has said so more or less plainly several times. He said so this
+very evening."
+
+"Did he, indeed? Well, I really am glad to hear it. I scarcely gave
+Algy--Mr. Errington--credit for so much--prudence!"
+
+"Mrs. Errington and Miss Maxfield," announced Lydia at the door of the
+drawing-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Mrs. Errington advanced towards her daughter-in-law with her habitual
+serene stateliness, and Rhoda followed her, modestly, looking very
+pretty in a new dress, the delicate hue of which set off her fair
+complexion to great advantage. Castalia received them much as usual;
+that is to say, without displaying any emotion whatever. But when Mrs.
+Errington took her daughter-in-law's hand, she exclaimed, "Good
+gracious, Castalia, how cold you are! A perfect frog! And yet this
+little room of yours is very warm; oppressively warm to one coming from
+without."
+
+"We find the temperature so comfortable here!" said Violet. "Dear
+Castalia always has her rooms deliciously warm, we think."
+
+"Perhaps, Violet, you are chilly by nature. Some constitutions are so.
+For myself, I have a wonderful circulation. But it is hereditary. All my
+branch of the Ancrams were renowned for it. I don't know, my dear
+Castalia, whether my cousin, Lady Seely, has the same peculiarity?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure."
+
+"With us it was a well-known thing among the Faculty for miles around
+Ancram Park. Our extremities were never cold, nor had we ever red noses.
+I believe a red nose was absolutely unknown in our family. No doubt that
+was part of the same thing; perfect circulation of the blood."
+
+With that Mrs. Errington sat down tolerably near the fire and made
+herself comfortable. "Where is my dear boy?" she asked after a little
+while. "Not at that dreadful office I hope and trust!"
+
+"He is at home," replied Castalia, slowly. "I asked him to come into the
+drawing-room, and he said he would by-and-by."
+
+"Oh, I daresay he will come now, dear," said Rose McDougall, without
+raising her eyes from her sewing.
+
+"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Errington to her daughter-in-law, "and if he
+does come 'now' you must not be jealous."
+
+The two sisters glanced at the good lady in quick surprise, and then at
+Rhoda. Rhoda was looking, for the hundredth time, at a book of prints.
+It was her usual evening's occupation at Ivy Lodge. Mrs. Errington
+proceeded, placid, smiling, and condescending as ever: "You must not be
+jealous, Castalia, if he does come directly he learns that his mother
+is here. To be sure a wife ranks first. I have always acknowledged that;
+and, indeed, insisted on it. I am sure it was my own case with poor dear
+Dr. Errington, who would never have dreamed of putting any human being
+into competition with me. Still, allowances must be made for the very
+peculiar and devoted attachment Algy has always felt for me. He is, and
+ever was, an Ancram to the core. And this kind of--one may say
+romantic--affection for their mothers has always distinguished the
+scions of our house from time immemorial. Good evening, my dear Algy. I
+find our dear Castalia looking a little worn and ill, and I tell her she
+keeps her rooms too hot. What do you say?"
+
+Algernon had sauntered into the room during his mother's harangue,
+delivered in the full mellow voice that belonged to her, and now bent to
+kiss the worthy lady's cheek as he greeted her. It was a cool, firm,
+rosy cheek. Indeed, Mrs. Errington's freshness and bloom were in
+singular opposition to Castalia's sallow haggardness, and made the elder
+lady look doubly buxom and buoyant by the force of contrast.
+
+"You're flourishing, at all events, _chère madame_," said Algernon,
+looking at his mother with unfeigned satisfaction. It was a relief to
+him to see a contented, smiling, comfortable countenance. Nevertheless,
+although agreeable to look upon, Mrs. Errington was apt to become a
+little wearisome in point of conversation, and her dutiful son cast his
+eyes round the circle in search of a pleasant seat wherein to bestow
+himself. But his glance met no response. Rose McDougall had drawn near
+his wife, and after very stiffly returning his bow, had ceased to take
+any notice of him, markedly avoiding his eye, and keeping silence after
+he had spoken. Violet was divided between listening to the elder Mrs.
+Errington and watching her sister. Castalia was more lazy, more silent,
+more indifferent than usual. Algernon was as unaccustomed as a spoiled
+child to be taken no notice of. He to stand among those women as a
+person of secondary importance, not greeted, not flattered, not smiled
+upon!
+
+He looked across the group round the fire to Rhoda, who happened to
+raise her eyes at that moment, and being taken by surprise at meeting
+his, dropped them hastily, with a vivid blush. Rhoda's blushes were as
+unmeaning as the smiles of an infant. The most trivial cause made her
+change colour, as Algernon very well knew. But at least the soft bright
+pink hue on pretty Rhoda's cheek showed some emotion, however slight or
+transient, at the sight of him. And, moved partly by a boyish, pettish
+resentment against the others, partly by the desire to hear a pleasant
+voice and pleasant words, and look upon a pretty woman's face with its
+delicate contour and fine subtle changes of tint, he walked across the
+room and seated himself beside Rhoda Maxfield.
+
+Castalia pushed her chair back out of the lamplight. "You can't see to
+do your purse in that dark corner, Castalia," exclaimed Mrs. Errington.
+
+"I don't want to do my purse. I'm sick of it."
+
+"Naughty, fickle girl!" This was said playfully. Then in a loud whisper,
+addressed to the McDougalls as well as to her daughter-in-law, Mrs.
+Errington exclaimed, "Doesn't Rhoda look charming to-night? That pale
+lilac is the very colour for her. Trying to skins that have the least
+tinge of yellow in them, but she is so wonderfully fair! Dear me, it
+reminds one of old times to see those two side by side. As children they
+were always together."
+
+No one responded. Violet McDougall fidgeted nervously on her chair and
+cast an appealing look at her sister. She would have tried to lead Mrs.
+Errington to talk of something else had she dared, but in Rose's
+presence Violet never ventured to take the initiative; and, besides, she
+was afraid of doing more harm than good, Mrs. Errington not being one of
+those persons who take a hint easily. The silence of her three listeners
+was no check to the worthy lady's eloquence. She continued to descant on
+Rhoda's attractions, and graces, and good manners; she dropped hints of
+the excellent opportunities Rhoda now had of "settling in life," only
+that she was a little fastidious from long association with such refined
+persons as the Erringtons, and had turned the cold shoulder to several
+well-to-do wooers in her own rank of life; she related anecdotes of
+Rhoda's early devotion to herself and her son, until Violet McDougall
+muttered under her breath, in a paroxysm of nervous impatience, "One
+would think the woman was doing it on purpose!"
+
+Meanwhile Algernon was talking to Rhoda more freely and confidentially
+than he had spoken to her for a long, long time. He was indulging in the
+luxury of playing victim before a spectator whose pity would certainly
+be admiring, not contemptuous. And, as he spoke, the old habit of
+appealing to Rhoda, and confiding in Rhoda, and taking Rhoda's sympathy
+for granted, resumed its power over him. There was no strain of
+tenderness in his words. He said not a syllable that his wife and all
+the world might not freely have listened to. He talked as a petted boy
+might talk to an idolising sister--with a mixture of boastfulness and
+repining, which he would have been ashamed to display to a man.
+
+Rhoda listened with sorrowful interest. How could it be that Algernon
+should have to endure all these troubles and mortifications? He was so
+clever, so accomplished, so highly connected, had such great and
+powerful relations! It appeared natural enough that folks like Mrs.
+Thimbleby, and the Gladwishes, and even her brother Seth, should
+sometimes be pressed for money. She herself, although she had never
+known privation in her father's house, had, until within the last year
+or so, been accustomed to the most rigid economy--not to say
+parsimony--and it had never cost her a care. But that Algernon Errington
+should desire money for various purposes, and not be able to get it,
+seemed to her a very hard case.
+
+But Algernon's note was not all of complaint. There were occasional
+intervals in which he spoke of the brightness of his prospects
+ultimately, when once he should have tided over his present difficulties
+and had got out of Whitford. And there were a few flourishes about his
+social successes in town last year. In the indulgence of his
+all-absorbing egotism, he seemed to forget that the girl beside him had
+ever been--or had ever had either expectation or right to be--anything
+more to him than the patient, admiring, sisterly, humble confidante on
+whom he had relied for praise and sympathy from the time of his earliest
+recollections, and who supplied him with the most delicious food for his
+vanity, because unmingled with any doubt of its genuineness. No thought
+of her feelings (save that they were kindly and admiring towards
+himself) crossed his mind whilst he talked to her, bending down his head
+and gesticulating slightly with his white, handsome hands.
+
+But when his mother called to her, "Come, Rhoda, I think, we must be
+going; I heard the carriage at the gate, child. You and Algy have been
+having a famous long chat! Reminded you of old times, didn't it?"
+
+When I say Algernon heard these words, a spark of manhood made his
+cheeks tingle and his tongue stammer as he said, "I--I'm afraid I must
+have been--boring you dreadfully, Rhoda?"
+
+In truth he was surprised to find that he had spent the whole evening in
+talking to Rhoda about himself. He glanced quickly at his wife, but she
+was occupied with the Misses McDougall. So occupied was she that she
+hardly returned Mrs. Errington's "Good night," which negligence,
+however, little ruffled that lady's equanimity. But when Rhoda
+approached to take leave of Castalia, the latter moved aside so suddenly
+that the movement might almost be called a start, and facing round, came
+opposite to her own image in the mirror above the chimney-piece, with
+Rhoda's fair image looking over its shoulder.
+
+For one second, perhaps--it could scarcely have been more--the smooth
+surface of the glass gave back the two women's faces: one youthful,
+lily-hued, innocently surprised, with chestnut eyebrows and shining
+chestnut curls, and tender rosy lips parted like those of a child; the
+other yellow, worn full of fretful creases, with glittering eager eyes,
+and a thin mouth set into a straight line, and yet over all the
+undefinable pathos of a suffering spirit; behind the two, Algernon
+looking into his wife's dark eyes and recognising something there that
+he had never seen in them before.
+
+In no longer time than it would take for a breath to dim the mirror all
+these images were gone, and the cold shiny glass indifferently showed a
+confusion of cloaks and shoulders and the back of a huge bonnet crowning
+Mrs. Errington's majestic figure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From that day forth Castalia gave herself up to a devouring jealousy of
+Rhoda. She spied her goings and comings; she watched her husband's face
+when the girl was spoken of; she opened the letters that she found in
+the pockets of his clothes; she lay in wait to surprise some proof, no
+matter what, of a tender feeling on his part for his old love. In a
+word, she pursued her own misery with more eagerness, vigilance, and
+unflagging singleness of purpose than most people devote to the
+attainment of any object whatsoever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The discovery of Minnie Bodkin's note in Algernon's secretaire at the
+office had incited Castalia to make some other attempts to pry into that
+depository of her husband's papers. She made excuses to step into the
+post-office whenever she had any reason for thinking Algernon was
+absent. Sometimes it was with the pretence of wishing to see him,
+sometimes on the plea of wanting to rest. She had learned that her
+husband frequently went into the "Blue Bell," to have luncheon, in the
+middle of the day; and that, from one cause or another, the Whitford
+Post-office was not really honoured with so much of his personal
+superintendence as she had been led to suppose. And this again was a
+fertile source of self-tormenting. Where was he, when he was not at the
+office?
+
+It whetted her suspicious curiosity to find the secretaire always
+carefully locked, ever since her discovery of Miss Bodkin's note there.
+She now wished that she had searched it thoroughly when she had the
+opportunity, instead of hastening off to Dr. Bodkin's house, after
+having read the first letter she came upon. But her feelings at that
+time had been very different from what they now were. She had been
+nettled, truly, and jealous of any private consultation between Minnie
+Bodkin and her husband; hating to think that he could trust, and be
+confidential with, another woman than herself, but not distinctly
+suspecting either Minnie or Algernon of any intent to wrong her. Miss
+Bodkin loved power, and influence, and admiration, and Castalia wished
+no woman to influence Algernon, or to be admired by him for any
+qualities whatsoever, except herself; but all her little envious
+resentments against Minnie had been mere pinpricks compared with the
+cruel pangs of jealousy that now pierced her heart when she thought of
+Rhoda Maxfield.
+
+That secretaire! It seemed to have an irresistible attraction for her
+thoughts. She even dreamt sometimes of trying to open it, and finding
+fresh fastenings arise more and more complicated, as she succeeded in
+undoing one lock after the other. It was not Algernon's habit to lock up
+anything belonging to him. There must be some special reason for his
+doing so in this case! And to Castalia's jaundiced mind it seemed that
+the special reason could only be a desire to keep his letters secret
+from her. She grew day by day more restless. The servants at Ivy Lodge
+remarked with wonder their mistress's frequent absences from home. She,
+who had so dreaded and disliked walking, was now constantly to be seen
+on the road to the town, or on the meadow-path by the river. This kind
+of exercise, however, merely fatigued without refreshing her, and she
+became so lean and haggard, and her eyes had such a feverish glitter,
+that her looks might have alarmed anyone who loved her, and witnessed
+the change in her.
+
+"There she goes again!" exclaimed Lydia to her fellow servant, as she
+watched her mistress down the garden-path, behind the house, one
+afternoon. "She can't bide at home for an hour together now!"
+
+"She wears herself to the bone," said Polly, shaking her head.
+
+"She wears other folks to the bone, and that's worse," returned the
+pitiless Lydia.
+
+Meanwhile Castalia had passed out of the little wicket-gate of her
+garden into the fields, and so along the meadow-path towards Whitford.
+She made her way along the path resolutely, though with a languid step.
+The ground was hardened by recent frost, and the usually muddy track was
+dry. At the corner of the Grammar School playground she turned up the
+lane towards the High Street, keeping close to the wall of the Grammar
+School, so as to be out of view of any from the side windows. Before she
+quite reached the High Street she caught sight of Mr. Diamond, walking
+briskly along in the direction of his lodgings. He did not see Castalia,
+or did not choose to see her; for, although she had once or twice
+saluted him in the street, she had on another occasion regarded him with
+her most unrecognising stare, and Matthew Diamond was not a man to risk
+enduring that a second time. But Castalia quickened her step so as to
+intercept him before he crossed the end of Grammar School Lane.
+
+"Mr. Diamond!" she said almost out of breath.
+
+"Madam!"
+
+Diamond raised his hat and stood still, in some surprise.
+
+"Would you be kind enough--do you happen to know whether Mr. Errington
+has left the post-office? You must have passed the door. You might have
+seen him coming out."
+
+"I am sorry, madam, that I cannot inform you."
+
+"You--you haven't seen him anywhere in the town?"
+
+"No; I have only just left the Grammar School. Have you any further
+commands?"
+
+He asked the question after a slight pause, because Castalia remained
+standing exactly across his path, glancing anxiously up and down the
+High Street, and apparently oblivious of Diamond's existence.
+
+"Oh no! I beg your pardon," she answered, moving aside. As she did so
+young Ingleby came up, and was about to pass them when Diamond touched
+him on the shoulder and said, "Ingleby, have you chanced to see Mr.
+Errington?"
+
+"Yes, sir; I saw him going down the High Street not two minutes ago,
+close to old Maxfield's shop. Do you want him, Mrs. Errington? I can
+easily catch him if I run."
+
+"No, no, no! Don't go! You must not go after him."
+
+She walked away without any word or sign of farewell, leaving Diamond
+and the boy looking after her in surprise.
+
+"That is the most disagreeable woman I ever came across!" exclaimed
+Ingleby, with school-boy frankness. "I hate her stuck-up airs. But
+Errington is such a capital fellow----! I'd do anything for him."
+
+Diamond did not choose to discuss either the husband or the wife with
+young Ingleby, but he said to himself, as he pursued his homeward way,
+that Mrs. Errington's manner had been not only disagreeable but very
+strange.
+
+Castalia reached the office and walked in. She entered the inner part
+that was screened off from the public, and passed Mr. Gibbs, behind his
+desk, without any recognition. She was about to enter Algernon's private
+room at the back, when Gibbs, rising and bowing, said "Did you want
+anything, ma'am? Mr. Errington is not there."
+
+"Oh! I'll go in and sit down."
+
+Gibbs looked uneasy and doubtful, and presently made an excuse to follow
+her into the room. Her frequent visits to the office of late by no means
+pleased Mr. Obadiah Gibbs.
+
+"I didn't know how the fire was," said he, poking at the hot coals, and
+looking furtively at Mrs. Errington.
+
+She was seated in her husband's chair in front of his desk. The little
+secretaire stood on a table at one side of it.
+
+"I'm afraid Mr. Errington may not be back very soon," said Gibbs.
+
+"Do you know where he's gone?"
+
+"Not I, ma'am."
+
+"Does he often go away during business hours?"
+
+"Why--I don't know what you would call 'often,' ma'am--I crave pardon. I
+must attend to the office now; there is some one there." And Mr. Gibbs
+withdrew, leaving the door half open.
+
+Castalia shut it, and fastened it inside. Then she pulled out a bunch of
+keys from her pocket, and tried them, one after the other, on the lock
+of the secretaire. This time it was safely secured, and not one of her
+keys fitted it. Then she opened the drawer of the table, and examined
+its contents. They consisted of papers, some printed, some written, a
+pair of driving gloves, and the cover of a letter directed to Algernon
+Errington, Esq., in a woman's hand. Castalia pounced on the cover, and
+thrust it into her pocket. After that, she looked behind the almanac on
+the chimney-piece, and rummaged amongst a litter of newspapers, and torn
+scraps of writing that lay in a basket. She was thus engaged when Mr.
+Gibbs's hand was laid on the handle of the door, and Mr. Gibbs's voice
+was heard demanding admission.
+
+Castalia opened the door at once, and Mr. Gibbs came in with a look of
+unconcealed annoyance on his face. He looked round the room sharply.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Castalia.
+
+"I want to see that all's right here, ma'am. I'm responsible."
+
+"What should be wrong? What do you mean?" she demanded with so
+coldly-haughty an air, that Gibbs was abashed. He felt he had gone too
+far, and muttered an apology. "I wanted to see to the fire. I'm afraid
+the coal-box is nearly empty. That old woman is so careless. I beg your
+pardon, but Mr. Errington is very particular about the room being kept
+warm."
+
+Castalia deigned not to notice him or his speech. She drew her shawl
+round her shoulders, and began to move away.
+
+"Can I give any message for you to Mr. Errington, ma'am?"
+
+"No----you need not mention that I came. I shall tell him myself this
+evening."
+
+As she walked down the High Street, she reflected on Mr. Gibbs's
+unwonted rudeness of look and manner.
+
+"He is told to watch me; to drive me away if possible; to prevent me
+making any discoveries. I daresay they are all in a league together. I
+am the poor dupe of a wife--the stranger who knows nothing, and is to
+know nothing. We shall see; we shall see. I wonder where Ancram can have
+gone! That boy spoke of seeing him near Maxfield's house."
+
+At that moment she found herself close to it, and with a sudden impulse
+she entered the shop, and, walking up to a man who stood behind the
+counter, said, "Is Mr. Errington here?"
+
+The man was James Maxfield, and he answered sulkily, "I don't know
+whether he's gone or not. You'd better inquire at the private door."
+
+Castalia's heart gave a great throb. "He has been here, then?" she said.
+
+"You'd better inquire at the private door," was all James's response,
+delivered still more surlily than before.
+
+Castalia left the shop, and knocked at the door indicated to her by
+James's thumb jerked over his shoulder. "Is Mr. Errington gone?" she
+asked of the girl who opened the door.
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Did he--did he stay long?"
+
+"About half an hour, I think."
+
+"Is Mr. Maxfield at home?"
+
+"No, ma'am; master is at Duckwell, and has been since Saturday."
+
+"Who is it, Sally?" cried Betty Grimshaw's voice from the parlour, and
+upon hearing it Castalia walked hastily away.
+
+When she reached her own home again, between fatigue and excitement she
+could scarcely stand. She threw herself on the sofa in her little
+drawing-room, unable to mount the stairs.
+
+"Deary me, missus," cried Polly, who happened to admit her, "why you're
+a'most dead! Where-ever have you been?"
+
+"I've been walking in the fields. I came round by the road. I'm very
+tired."
+
+"Tired? Nay, and well you may be if you took all that round! I thought
+you'd happen been into Whitford. Lawk, how you're squashing your bonnet!
+Let me take it off for you."
+
+"I don't care; leave it alone."
+
+But Polly would not endure to see "good clothes ruinated," as she said,
+so she removed her mistress's shawl and bonnet--folding, and smoothing,
+and straightening them as well as she could. "Now you'd better take a
+drop o' wine," she said. "You're a'most green. I never saw such a
+colour."
+
+Despite her rustic bluntness, Polly was kind in her way. She made her
+mistress swallow some wine, and put her slippers on her feet for her,
+and brought a pillow to place beneath her head. "You see you han't got
+no strength to spare. You're very weak, missus," she said. Then she
+muttered as she walked away, "Lord, I wouldn't care to be a lady myself!
+I think they're mostly poor creeturs."
+
+Left alone, Castalia closed her eyes and tried to review the situation,
+but at first her brain would do nothing but represent to her over and
+over again certain scenes and circumstances, with a great gap here and
+there, like a broken kaleidoscope.
+
+Ancram had been to Maxfield's house, and it could not have been to see
+the old man, who had been absent for some days. Perhaps Ancram was in
+the habit of going thither! He had never said a word to her about it.
+How sly he had been! How sly Rhoda had been! All his pretended
+unwillingness to have Rhoda invited to Ivy Lodge had been a blind. There
+was nothing clear or definite in her mind except a bitter, burning,
+jealous hatred of Rhoda.
+
+"We shall see if Ancram confesses to having been to that house to-day,"
+said Castalia to herself. Then she went upstairs wearily. She was
+physically tired, being weak and utterly unused to much walking, and
+called Lydia to dress her and brush her hair. And when her toilet was
+completed, she sat quite still in the drawing-room, neither playing,
+reading, nor working--quite still, with her hands folded before her, and
+awaited her husband.
+
+She would first try to lead him to confess his visit to the Maxfields,
+and, if that failed, would boldly tax him with it. She even went over
+the very words she would say to her husband when he should descend from
+his dressing-room before dinner.
+
+But she could not foresee a circumstance which disturbed the plan she
+had arranged in her mind. When Algernon returned to Ivy Lodge he did not
+go into his dressing-room as usual, but marched straight into the
+drawing-room, where Castalia was sitting.
+
+"That's an agreeable sort of letter!" he said, flinging one down on the
+table.
+
+He was not in a passion--he had never been known to be in a passion--but
+he was evidently much vexed. His mouth was curved into a satirical
+smile; he drew his breath between his teeth with a hissing sound, and
+nodded his head twice or thrice, after repeating ironically, "That's an
+uncommonly agreeable sort of letter!" Then he thrust his hands deep into
+his pockets, threw himself into an easy-chair, stretched his legs
+straight out before him, and looked at his wife.
+
+Castalia was surprised, and curious, and a little anxious, but she made
+an effort to carry out her programme despite this unexpected beginning.
+She remained motionless on the sofa, and said, with elaborate
+indifference of manner, "Do you wish me to read the letter? I wonder at
+your allowing me to know anything of your affairs."
+
+"Read it? Of course! Why else did I give it to you? Don't be absurd,
+Castalia. Pshaw!" And he impatiently changed the position of his feet
+with a sharp, sudden movement.
+
+Castalia's sympathy with his evident annoyance overcame her resentment
+for the moment. She could not bear to see him troubled. She opened the
+letter.
+
+"Why it's from Uncle Val!" she exclaimed.
+
+It was from her uncle, addressed to her husband, and was written in a
+tone of considerable severity. To Castalia it appeared barbarously
+cruel. Lord Seely curtly refused any money assistance; and stated that
+he wrote to Algernon instead of to Castalia, because he perceived that,
+although the application for money had been written by Castalia's hand,
+it had not been dictated by her head. Lord Seely further advised his
+niece's husband, in the strongest and plainest terms, to use every
+method of economy, to retrench his expenditure, to refrain from
+superfluous luxuries, and to live on his salary.
+
+"The little allowance I give Castalia for her dress will be continued to
+her," wrote his lordship. "Beyond that, I am unable to give either her
+or you one farthing. Understand this, and act on it. And, moreover, I
+had better tell you at once, as an additional inducement to be prudent,
+that I see no prospect of procuring advancement for you in any other
+department of his Majesty's service than the one you are in at present.
+My advice to you is to endeavour to merit advancement by diligence in
+the performance of your duties. You have abilities which are sure to
+serve you if honestly applied. You are so young, that even after ten or
+fifteen years' work you would be in the prime of all your faculties and
+powers. And ten or fifteen years' good work might give you an excellent
+position. As to Castalia, I cannot help feeling a conviction that her
+discontent is chiefly reflected, and that if she saw you cheerful and
+active in your daily business, she would not repine at her lot."
+
+Castalia put the letter down on the table in silence. She was
+astonished, indignant; but yet a little gleam of satisfaction pierced
+through those feelings--a hope that she and her husband might be drawn
+closer together by this common trouble. She would show him how well able
+she was to endure this, and worse, if he would only love her and trust
+her entirely. Even her jealousy for Rhoda Maxfield was mitigated for the
+moment. All that fair-weather prettiness and philandering would be put
+out of sight at the first growl of a storm. The wife would be the
+nearest to him if troubles came. No pink-and-white coquetry could usurp
+her right to suffer with him and for him, at all events.
+
+"That's a pleasant sort of thing, isn't it?" said Algernon, who had been
+watching her face as she read.
+
+"It is too bad of Uncle Val, Ancram."
+
+"Too bad! Yes; to put it mildly, it is too bad, I think. Too bad? By
+George, I never heard of anything so outrageous!"
+
+"Do you know, I think that my lady is at the bottom of it."
+
+"I wish she was at the bottom of the Thames!"
+
+"Ancram, I do feel sorry for you. It is such a shame to bury your
+talents, and all that. But still, you know, it is true what he says
+about your having plenty of time before you. And as to being poor--of
+course it is horrid to be poor, but we can bear it, I daresay. And,
+really, I don't think I should mind it so much if once we were
+acknowledged to be quite, quite poor; because then it wouldn't matter
+what one wore, and nobody would expect one to have things like other
+people of one's rank."
+
+Poor Castalia was not eloquent, but had she possessed the most fluent
+and persuasive tongue in the world, it would not have availed to make
+Algernon acquiesce in her view of the situation. She was for indignantly
+breaking off all connection with relatives who could behave as Uncle Val
+had behaved. It was not his refusing to advance more money (in her
+conscience Castalia did not believe he could afford much assistance of
+that kind), but his writing with such cruel coldness to Ancram--his
+declaring that Ancram's case was not a hard one--his lecturing about
+duties, and cheerful activity, and so on, just as if Ancram had been an
+ordinary plodding young man instead of a being exceptionally gifted with
+all sorts of shining qualities--these were offences not to be forgiven.
+Castalia, for her part, would have endured any privation, rather than
+beg more favours of Uncle Val and my lady.
+
+But Algernon's feeling in the matter was by no means the same as
+Castalia's. He dismissed all her attempts to express her willingness to
+share his lot for good or ill as matters of no importance. She might
+find it easy enough. Yes; the chief burthen would not fall on her! And,
+besides, she did not at all realise what it would be to have to live on
+the salary of the postmaster of Whitford, and to practise "rigid
+economy," as my lord phrased it. It was really provoking to see the cool
+way in which she took it for granted that matters would be mended by
+their being "acknowledged to be quite, quite poor." "My dear Castalia,"
+he said, with an air of superior tolerance, "you have about as much
+comprehension of the actual state of the case as a canary-bird."
+
+She paused, silently looking at him for a moment. Then she drew nearer
+to him, and laid her arm round his shoulder. She wore a dinner-dress
+with loose hanging sleeves, which were not becoming to her wasted frame.
+But the poor thin arm clung with a loving touch to her husband, as she
+said, "I know I am not so clever as you, Ancram, but I can see and
+understand that if we haven't money enough to pay for things we must do
+without them." (Castalia advanced this in the tone of one stating a
+self-evident proposition.) "And I shan't care, Ancram, if you trust me,
+and--and--don't put any one else before me. I never put any one before
+you. I was fond of Uncle Val. I think he was the only person I really
+loved in the world before I saw you. But if he treats you badly I shall
+give him up."
+
+Algernon shook off the clinging arm from his shoulder, not roughly, but
+slightingly.
+
+"What on earth are you talking about, Cassy? What do you suppose we are
+to do? I tell you I must have some money, and you must write to your
+uncle again without delay."
+
+She drew back with a hurt sense of having been unappreciated. The tears
+sprang to her eyes, and she put her hand into her pocket to take her
+handkerchief. The hand fell on something that rustled, and was stiff. It
+was the letter cover she had found in her husband's office that morning.
+The touch of the crisp paper recalled not only the events of the
+afternoon, but her own sensations during them. "Where were you this
+afternoon?" she asked, suddenly checking her tears, as the dry, burning,
+jealous feeling awoke again in her heart.
+
+"Where was I? Where must I be? Where am I every afternoon? At the
+office--confound it!"
+
+"You were not there all the afternoon. I--happened to look in there, and
+you were gone."
+
+"I suppose you came just at the moment I happened to be absent, then. I
+had to see one or two men on business. Not pleasant business. I was not
+amusing myself, I assure you," he added with a short hard laugh.
+
+"What men had you to see?"
+
+"Oh, no one whom you know anything about. Isn't dinner ready? I shan't
+dress. I have to go out again this evening."
+
+"This evening!"
+
+"Yes; it is a frightful bore, but I have a business appointment. Do ring
+and tell the cook to make haste."
+
+"You are not going out again this evening, Ancram?"
+
+"I tell you I must. How can you be so childish, Castalia? Whilst I am
+gone you can employ yourself in making out the draught of a letter to
+your uncle."
+
+"I will not write to my uncle! I will not. You don't care for me.
+You--you deceive me," burst out Castalia. And then a storm of sobs
+choked her voice, and she hurried away, filling the little house with a
+torrent of incoherent sounds.
+
+Algy looked after her, with his head bent down and his eyebrows raised.
+Castalia was really very trying to live with. As to her refusal to write
+to her uncle, she would not of course persist in it. It was out of the
+question that she should persist in opposing any wish of his. But she
+was really very trying.
+
+When dinner was announced, Castalia sent word that she had a headache
+and could not eat. She was lying down in her own room. Her husband
+murmured a few words of sympathy, but ate his dinner with no sensible
+diminution of appetite, and, as soon as it was despatched, he lit a
+cigar, wrapped himself in his great-coat, and went out.
+
+Castalia heard the street-door shut. She rose swiftly from the bed on
+which she had thrown herself, put on a bonnet and cloak, muffled her
+face in a veil, and followed her husband.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The night was dark and cheerless. It was one of those murky November
+nights when one seems to see and breathe through a dusky gauze. The road
+from Ivy Lodge to Whitford was not lighted. At a long distance before
+her, Castalia saw a red, glowing speck, which she knew to be the lamp
+over the chemist's shop, kept by Mr. Barker, her landlord. After that, a
+few street lamps glimmered, and the town of Whitford had fairly begun.
+
+It was not late, and yet most of the shops were shut, and the streets
+very silent and deserted. Castalia strained her eyes onward through the
+darkness, and presently saw her husband's figure come into the circle of
+faint light made by a street lamp, traverse it, and disappear again into
+the shade. She had walked so quickly in her excitement as to have
+overtaken him sooner than she had expected. Whither was he going?
+
+She slunk along in the shadow of the houses, frightened at the faint
+sound of her own footfall on the flagstones, starting nervously at every
+noise, hurrying across the lighted spaces in front of the few shops that
+remained open with averted face and beating heart, fearing to be noticed
+by those within. But never once did she falter in her purpose of
+following her husband. She would have been turned back by no obstacle
+short of one which defied her physical powers to pass it.
+
+Algernon was now nearing Maxfield's house. The shutters of the shop were
+closed, but the door was still open, and a light streamed from it on to
+the pavement. Castalia followed, watching breathlessly. Her husband
+passed the shop, went on a pace or two, stopped at the private door, and
+rang the bell. She could see the action of his arm as he raised it. The
+door was opened without much delay, and Algernon went in.
+
+Castalia stood still, trying to collect her thoughts and determine on
+her course of action. What should she do? Her husband might be an
+hour--hours--in that house. She could not stand there in the street. An
+impulse came upon her to make herself known--to go in and tax Algernon
+with perfidy and deception then and there. But she checked the impulse.
+It would have been a desperate step. Algernon might never forgive her.
+It might be possible for her to reach a pitch of rage and jealousy which
+would make her deaf to any such considerations--careless as to the
+consequences of her actions if she could but gratify the imperious
+passion of the moment. She was dimly conscious that this might be
+possible; but for the present she had sufficient control over her own
+actions to pause and deliberate. There she stood, alone at night, in
+Whitford High Street--stealthily, trembling, and wretched--she, Castalia
+Kilfinane! Who would believe it? What would her uncle feel if he could
+see her now, or guess what she was enduring?
+
+The idea came into her mind--floating like a waif on the current of
+indignant misery that seemed to flood all her spirit--that there might
+be hundreds of human beings whom she had seen and thought happy smarting
+with some secret wound like her own, and living lives the half of which
+was never known to the world. Castalia had never been apt to let her
+imagination busy itself with the sorrows of others, and at this moment
+the conception had no softening effect. It only added an extra flavour
+of bitterness and rebellion to her sufferings. It was too cruel. Why
+should such things be? And what had she done to merit so much
+unhappiness? She shivered a little as a breeze from the river came
+bringing with it the clammy breath of the marsh mists--the white
+cloud-kraken that Minnie Bodkin had so often watched from her window.
+
+How long Castalia remained standing at her post she could never reckon;
+she was conscious only of burning pain of mind, and of a determination
+not to shrink from her purpose because of the pain. A footstep came
+sounding along the quiet street and startled her. She shrank back as far
+as she could, pressing her shoulder close against the wall, and
+uncertain whether to walk on or remain still. It was a man who came
+towards her, turning from a narrow street opening into the High Street,
+which Castalia knew to be Lady Lane. He walked with a very rapid step,
+hanging his head, and looking neither to the right nor to the left.
+Castalia was, perhaps, the only dweller in Whitford who would not have
+recognised the figure as being that of David Powell, the Methodist
+preacher.
+
+As Powell neared Castalia, he seemed to become aware of her presence by
+some sixth sense, for to all appearance he had not looked towards her.
+The truth was, that all his outward perceptions were habitually
+disregarded by him, except such as carried with them some suggestion of
+helpfulness and sympathy. A fashionable lady might have stood facing him
+during a long sermon in chapel, or in the open fields, and (unless she
+had displayed signs of "grace") he would have taken no heed of
+her--would not have been able to tell the colour of her garments. But
+let the same woman be tearful, ragged, sick, or injured, and no
+observation could be more rapid and comprehensive than David Powell's,
+to convey all needful particulars of her state and requirements. So this
+night, as he passed along the quiet Whitford streets, the few persons he
+had met hitherto were to him as shadows. But when the vague outline of a
+woman's form made itself a blot of blacker shadow in the darkness, those
+accustomed sentinels, his senses, gave the spirit notice of a
+fellow-creature in want, possibly of bread, certainly of sympathy.
+
+He stopped within a few paces of Castalia, and perceived by that time
+that she was well and warmly clad, and that her trouble, whatever it
+was, could not be alleviated by alms. In her desire to avoid notice, she
+shrank away more and more almost crouching down against the wall. It
+occurred to Powell that she might be ill. "Are you suffering?" he asked,
+in a low musical voice. "Can I help you?"
+
+Finding that she did not reply, he advanced a step farther, and was
+stretching out his hand to touch her on the shoulder, when, driven to
+bay, she raised herself up to her full height, and answered quickly and
+resentfully, "No; I am not ill. I am waiting for some one."
+
+He stood still, irresolutely. Her voice and accent struck him with
+surprise, he recognised them as belonging to a person of a different
+class from any he had expected. How came such a lady to be alone at
+that hour, standing in the cold street? At length he said, gently, "If I
+may advise you, it would be well for you to go home. The person who
+keeps you waiting in the street in such weather, and at this hour, must
+surely be very thoughtless. Can I not assist you? I am David Powell, a
+poor preacher of the Word. You need have no fear of me."
+
+"No; please to go away. I am not at all afraid. Go away, go away!" she
+added with an imperative emphasis, for she began to fear lest her
+husband should come out of the house, hear the sound of her voice, and
+find her there. Powell obeyed her, and walked slowly away. There was, in
+truth, so far as he knew, no reason to fear that any evil could happen
+to the woman in Whitford High Street, except the evil of standing so
+long in the cold, raw weather. It had now begun to rain; a fine
+drizzling rain, that was very chill.
+
+When he had walked some distance along the High Street, and was close to
+the turning that led to Mrs. Thimbleby's house, he stopped and looked
+back. Almost at the same moment he saw a man come out of Maxfield's
+house, and advance along the street towards him. Then, at rather a long
+interval, the cloaked lady began to move onward also, but without
+overtaking the man, or apparently trying to do so. It was a strange
+adventure, and one entirely unparalleled in Powell's experience of the
+little town; and after he had reached his lodgings he could not, for a
+long time, divert his thoughts from dwelling on it.
+
+Meanwhile, Algernon, unconscious of the watcher behind him, proceeded
+straight onward to the post-office. Then he turned up the narrow passage
+or entry in which was the side door that gave access to his private
+office. Castalia did not follow him beyond the mouth of the entry.
+Standing there and listening, she heard the sharp sound of a match being
+struck, then the turning of a key, and a door softly opened and shut.
+
+It then struck Castalia for the first time that this unexpected visit to
+the office afforded an opportunity for her to reach home without her
+husband's discovering her absence. She had not considered before how
+this was to be accomplished; and, indeed, had Algernon returned directly
+to Ivy Lodge from Maxfield's house it would have been impossible.
+
+She now saw this, and hastened back along the road, in a tremor at her
+narrow escape; for, although the impulse had crossed her mind to declare
+herself, and boldly enter Maxfield's house in quest of her husband, that
+was a very different matter from being suddenly discovered against her
+will. In the latter case she would, as she well knew, have been at an
+immense disadvantage with her husband, who, instead of being accused,
+would become accuser.
+
+Nothing short, indeed, of the passion of jealousy within her would have
+given her strength to combat her husband. This was the only way in which
+her idolatrous admiration, her very love for him, could be turned into a
+weapon against him.
+
+"I could bear anything else! Anything else!" she said to herself. "But
+to be fooled and deceived, and put aside for that girl----!" A great hot
+wave of passion seemed to flow through her whole body as she thought of
+Rhoda. "Let the servants see me! What do I care?" she said recklessly.
+At that moment she would not have heeded if the whole town had seen her,
+and known her errand into Whitford, and its result. She rang loudly at
+the bell of Ivy Lodge, and walked in past the servant, with a white face
+and glittering eyes.
+
+"Isn't master coming?" stammered the girl, staring at her mistress.
+
+"I don't know. Go to bed. I don't want you."
+
+There was something in her face which checked further speech on Lydia's
+part. Lydia was fairly frightened. She crept away to the garret, where
+Polly was already sleeping soundly, and vainly tried to rouse her
+fellow-servant, to feel some interest in her account of how missus had
+stalked into the house by herself like a ghost, and had ordered her off
+to bed, and to get up a discussion as to missus's strange goings on
+altogether of late.
+
+Castalia went to her own room, uncertain whether to undress and go to
+bed or to remain up and confront her husband when he should return. One
+dominant desire had been growing in her heart for many days past, and
+had now become a force overwhelming all smaller motives, and drawing
+them resistlessly into its strong current. This dominant desire was to
+be revenged--not on her husband, but on Rhoda Maxfield. And it might be
+that by waiting and watching yet awhile, by concealing from Ancram the
+discovery she had that night made, she might be enabled more effectually
+to strike at her rival. If Ancram knew, he would try to shield Rhoda. He
+would put the thing in such a light before the world as to elicit
+sympathy for Rhoda and make her (Castalia) appear ridiculous or
+obnoxious. He had the gift to do such things when it pleased him. But
+Rhoda should not escape. No; she would keep her own counsel yet awhile
+longer.
+
+When Algernon came home about midnight, letting himself into the house
+with a private key which he carried, he found his wife asleep, or
+seeming to sleep, and congratulating himself on escaping the querulous
+catechism as to where he had been, and what he had been doing, which he
+would have to endure had Castalia been awake on his return. As he
+crossed the bedchamber to his dressing-room, she moved, and put up one
+hand to screen her eyes from the light.
+
+"Don't let me disturb you, Cassy," he said. "I have been detained very
+late. I am going downstairs again--there is a spark of fire in the
+dining-room--to have one cigar before I turn in. Go to sleep again."
+
+He bent down to kiss her, but she kept her face obstinately buried in
+the pillow. So he took her left hand, which hung down, and lightly
+touched it with his lips, saying, "Poor sleepy Cassy!" and went away.
+
+And then she raised her thin left hand, on which her wedding-ring hung
+loosely, and passionately kissed it where her husband's lips had rested,
+and burst into a storm of crying, until she fairly sobbed herself to
+sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+"So you had that fine gentleman, Mr.
+Algernon--What-d'ye-call-it--Errington, here last evening?" said
+Jonathan Maxfield to his daughter, on his return from Duckwell.
+
+"Yes, father; he had been before in the afternoon. He was very anxious
+to see you; but Aunt Betty told him you wouldn't be back until to-day."
+
+"Very anxious to see me, was he? I have my own opinion about that. But,
+no doubt, he wants me to believe that he's anxious."
+
+"He seems in a good deal of distress of mind, father."
+
+"I daresay. And what about the minds of the folks as hold his promises
+to pay? Just so much waste paper, those are, I take it; I'd as lief have
+his word of honour myself. And most people in Whitford know what that's
+worth."
+
+"I think he has been very unfortunate, father."
+
+"H'm! What worldly folks calls misfortin' is generally the Lord's
+dealing according to deserts. It's set forth in Scripture that the
+righteous man shall prosper, and the unrighteous be brought to naught."
+
+"But--father, even good people are sometimes chastened by afflictions,"
+said Rhoda timidly.
+
+Old Max knitted his brows.
+
+"There's nothing," said he, "more dangerous than for the young and
+inexperienced to wrest texts; it leads 'em far astray. When that kind o'
+chastening is spoken of, it don't mean the sort of trouble as has fallen
+on young Errington. The Almighty has given every man reason enough to
+understand that, if he spends thirteenpence out of every shilling, he'll
+be beggared before the year's end. I don't believe in men being ruined
+without fault or foolishness of their own."
+
+"He asked me if I--if you--if I thought----he asked me to ask you to
+have a little patience with him about some bills. I didn't know that he
+had any bill here; but he said you would understand."
+
+"Aye, aye! I understand. It isn't bills for tea, and flour, and bacon,
+and such like. It's a different kind o' bills the young gentleman's been
+meddling with; and a fine hand he's made of it."
+
+"Couldn't you help him, father?"
+
+Rhoda spoke pleadingly, but with the timidity which always attended her
+requests to her father, whose recent indulgence had never reached a
+point of weakness, and who clearly showed, in all his dealings with his
+daughter, that he was not carried away by his affection for her, but
+acted with the consciousness of a will unfettered by precedents, and
+perfectly able to choose its course without regard to what other people
+might expect of him.
+
+For herself, in pleading for Algernon, she was not moved by
+self-conscious sentimentality, neither did she suppose herself to be
+doing anything heroic. The peculiar tenderness she still felt for him
+was made up of pity and memory. The Algy she had loved was gone--had
+melted into thin air, like a dream under the morning sunlight. Mr.
+Errington, the postmaster of Whitford, and the husband of the Honourable
+Castalia Kilfinane, was a very different personage. Still he was
+inextricably connected in her mind with that bright idol of her
+childhood and her youth. His marriage had put all possibility of
+love-making between him and herself as much out of the question, to her
+mind, as if he had been proved to be her brother. Rhoda had read no
+romances, and she was neither of an innovating spirit nor a passionate
+temperament, and it is surprising what power a sincere conviction of the
+irrevocable and inevitable has to control the "natural feelings" we hear
+so much of! But she clung tenaciously to a better opinion of Algernon
+than his actions warranted--as has been the case with many another
+woman--chiefly to justify herself for ever having loved him.
+
+"Couldn't you help him, father?" she repeated, seeing that her father
+did not at once reply, but was sitting meditating, with a not altogether
+ill-pleased expression of face.
+
+"Help him!" cried old Max. "Why should I help him? A reprobate,
+unregenerate, vain, ungrateful worldling! I did help him once, and
+earned much gratitude for my pains. And what a sneaking, poor, mean,
+pitiful fellow he must be to come here and whine to you! A poor, pitiful
+fellow! Talk of a gentleman! Yah!"
+
+Old Max derived so much grim satisfaction from the contemplation of
+Algernon's pitiful behaviour that it seemed almost to soften him towards
+the culprit, in whom any glimpse of nobility would not have been very
+welcome to his enemy. When you hate a man on excellent private grounds,
+it is certainly unpleasant to see him displaying qualities in public
+which win a fallacious admiration. And this aggravation was one which
+old Max had been suffering for some time at the hands of the popular
+Algernon. His present money difficulties, combined with his unworthy
+methods of meeting them, at once gratified and justified Jonathan
+Maxfield's vindictiveness.
+
+He gave forth the queer grunting noise that served him for a laugh, as
+he said, "And a lot o' good his fine marriage has done him! And his
+grand relations! I told him long ago that if he wanted help from such as
+them, he must ask it with a pocket full of money. Then he might ha' been
+uplifted into high places. And it wasn't only my own wisdom neither,
+though that might ha' been enough for such a half-fledged young cockerel
+as he was in them days, seeing it has been enough for his betters before
+now. I had the warrant of Scripture; for what says Solomon? 'Wealth
+maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbour.'"
+
+Still Rhoda did not altogether despair of inducing her father to do
+something for Algernon. What that something might be, or how far it was
+possible for her father to assist young Errington, except by simply
+giving or lending him money, Rhoda was ignorant. Algernon in talking to
+her had spoken very glibly, but, to her, very unintelligibly, of bills
+which were in her father's hands; and had pointed out, with an air of
+candour and conviction, that it would be imprudent on Mr. Maxfield's
+part to drive matters to extremity. It had all sounded very convincing,
+simply from the tone in which it was said. Many of us are astonishingly
+uncritical as to the coherence and cogency of words if they be but set
+to a good tune.
+
+Algernon himself was rather hopeful since that interview with Rhoda. It
+could not be, after all, that Jonathan Maxfield would actually cause
+him, Algernon Errington, any personal inconvenience for the sake of a
+sum which was really a mere trifle to Maxfield, and which appeared very
+trifling to Algernon under every aspect except that of being called upon
+to pay it.
+
+He had learned not long previously that certain bills he had given,
+backed by the name of that solid capitalist, the Honourable Jack Price,
+had found their way into old Max's hands. This startled him
+considerably, for he had no reason to count on the old man's
+forbearance. The time was drawing nigh when the bills would become due.
+
+About a month ago some other bills had fallen due, and had been duly
+honoured. They had been given to a London wine merchant, who would
+certainly not have scrupled to take any strong measure for getting his
+money. And even the name of Jack Price was no talisman to charm away
+this grasping tradesman's determination to be paid for goods delivered;
+the wine merchant in question doing a large City business, and feeling
+no anxiety as to the opinion entertained by the Honourable Mr. Price's
+fashionable connection about himself or his wares. Under the pressure of
+this disagreeable conviction, the money had been found to honour the
+bills held by the wine merchant.
+
+For the discharge of the liabilities represented by the bills now in
+Maxfield's hands, Algernon had reckoned on Castalia's extracting some
+money from her uncle. Algernon did not abandon the hope that she might
+yet succeed in doing so. Castalia must be urged to make new and stronger
+representations of their necessities to Lord Seely. But it could not be
+denied that my lord's last letter had been a very heavy blow; and that,
+moreover, a number of slight embarrassments, which Algernon had hitherto
+looked on as mere gossamer threads, to be broken when he pleased, had
+recently exhibited a disconcerting toughness and power of constraining
+his actions and destroying his comfort.
+
+The thought not infrequently occurred to him that, if he were alone in
+the world, unhampered by a wife who had no flexibility of character, and
+who had recently displayed a stubborn kind of obtuseness, showing itself
+in such remarks as that if they had not money to pay for luxuries, they
+must do without luxuries, and that if they were poor, it would be better
+to seem poor, and the like dull commonplaces, which were peculiarly
+distasteful to Algernon's vivacious intelligence--if, he thought, he had
+no wife, or a different wife, things would undoubtedly go better with
+him. He was too quick not to perceive that his marriage, far from
+improving his social position, had been eminently unpopular amongst his
+friends and acquaintances. To be sure he had never intended to return to
+Whitford after allying himself with the family of Lord Seely. He had
+meant to shake the dust of the sleepy little town from his feet for
+ever. He reckoned up the advantages he had expected to gain by marrying
+Castalia, and set the real result against each one in his mind.
+
+He had expected to get into the diplomatic service. He was a provincial
+postmaster!
+
+He had expected to live in some splendid metropolis. He found himself in
+the obscure town which, of all others, he wished to avoid!
+
+He had expected to be courted and caressed by wealthy, noble, and
+distinguished persons. He was looked coldly or shyly upon by even the
+insignificant middle-class society of a county town!
+
+All this seemed peculiarly hard and unjust, because Algernon had always
+intended to bear his honours gracefully, without stiffness or arrogance.
+He would cut nobody; he would turn the cold shoulder to nobody. He had
+pictured himself sometimes making a meteoric reappearance in Whitford
+some day; flashing with brief brilliancy across the horizon of that
+remote neighbourhood, affably shaking hands with old acquaintance,
+occupying the best rooms in the "Blue Bell," and scattering largesse
+among the servants, rattling through the streets side by side with some
+county magnate, whose companionship should by no means chill his
+recognition of such local stars of the second or third magnitude as the
+Pawkinses of Pudcombe Hall. He was inclined by taste and temperament to
+be thoroughly "_bon prince_."
+
+Such fancies may seem childish, but it was a fact that Algernon had
+indulged in them. With all his tact, he had a considerable strain of his
+mother's Ancramism in his blood. And the contrast between those former
+day-dreams and the present reality was so terrible, so mortifying, so
+ridiculous (direst and most soul-chilling word of all to Algernon!) that
+he was unable to face it. Some way out must be found. It was impossible,
+on any tenable theory of society, that he should be permanently
+consigned to oblivion and the daily round of inglorious duties.
+
+As to what Lord Seely said about meriting advancement by diligence, and
+working for ten or fifteen years, it seemed to Algernon pretty much like
+exhorting a convict to step his daily round of treadmill in so
+painstaking a manner as to win the approbation of the gaol authorities.
+What would he care for their approbation? It was impossible to take
+either pride or pleasure in working out one's penal sentence.
+
+Algernon felt very bitter against Lord Seely as he pondered these
+things, and not a little bitter against Castalia, who had, as it were,
+bound him to this wheel, and had latterly added the sting of her
+intolerable temper to his other vexations. Fate had used him
+despitefully. He seemed to consider that some gratitude was due to him
+on the part of the supernal powers for his excellent intentions--he
+would have borne prosperity so well! A feeling grew upon him, which
+would have been desperation but for his ever-present, instinctive
+efforts not to hurt himself.
+
+On the morning after the visit to Maxfield's house--of which Castalia
+had been an unseen witness--Algernon went to the post-office somewhat
+earlier than usual. As he reached it a man was coming out, who scowled
+upon him with so sullen and hostile a countenance, that it affected him
+like a blow.
+
+He was, on the whole, in better spirits on this special morning than he
+had been for some time past. Not that he was habitually depressed by his
+troubles, but there was a certain apprehension and anxiety in his daily
+life which flavoured it all unpleasantly. But on this morning he was,
+for various reasons, feeling hopeful of at least a reprieve from care,
+and the man's angry frown not only hurt but startled him.
+
+"Who is that fellow who has just gone out?" he asked of Gibbs, entering
+the office by the public door instead of his own private one, in order
+to put the question.
+
+"That is Roger Heath, the man who has lost his money-letter."
+
+"An uncommonly ill-looking rascal, I take leave to think."
+
+"Ahem! He is a decent, God-fearing man, sir, I believe; but at present
+he is wrath, and not without some excuse, either. He tells me he has
+written to the head office----"
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"And has been told that due inquiries will be made, of course."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Why then--I suppose that's the last he'll hear of it."
+
+Algernon lightly flicked a white handkerchief over his face and bright
+curling hair, filling the close little office with a delicate perfume as
+he said, "So there's an end of that!"
+
+"An end of it, I suppose, so far as Heath is concerned. But I doubt we
+shall hear more of the matter in the office."
+
+Algernon paused with his hand on the lock of the door leading to his
+private room. He kept his hand there, and scarcely turned his head as he
+asked, "How so?"
+
+Mr. Gibbs shook his head, and began to expatiate on the singular
+misfortunes which had been accumulated on the Whitford Post-office, and
+to hint that when two or three suspicious cases had followed each other
+in that way, an office was marked by the superior authorities, and means
+were taken to discover the culprit.
+
+"Means! What means?" said Algernon, carelessly. "You said yourself that
+it was next to impossible to trace a stolen letter. And, really, if
+people will be such idiots as to send money by post without precaution,
+in spite of all the warnings that are given to them, they deserve to
+lose it."
+
+"That may be, sir. Still, of course, it is no light matter to steal a
+letter. And as to the means of tracing it, why I have heard of
+trap-letters being sent, containing marked money."
+
+The handle clicked, the door was opened and sharply shut again, and the
+Whitford postmaster disappeared into his private room.
+
+It was more than an hour before Algernon reappeared in the outer office.
+He advanced towards Gibbs, and leaning on his shoulder with great
+affability, said to him in a low voice, "You've no suspicion of any one
+about this place, eh? The old woman that cleans the office, that boy
+Jem, no suspicion of anybody, eh? Oh! well I'm excessively glad of that!
+One hates to be distrustful of the people about one."
+
+Gibbs shook his head emphatically and decisively. "No one has access to
+the office unless in my presence, sir; not a creature."
+
+"The fact is," said Algernon, slowly, "that I have missed one or two
+papers of my own lately; matters of no consequence. God knows why anyone
+should have thought it worth while to take them! But they're gone."
+
+Gibbs looked up with serious alarm in his face.
+
+"Dear me, sir!" he exclaimed; "dear me, Mr. Errington! I wish you had
+mentioned this before."
+
+"Oh well, you know, I thought I might be mistaken. I hate being on the
+watch about trifles. But latterly I am quite sure that papers have
+disappeared from my secretaire."
+
+"From that little cabinet with drawers in it, that stands in your room?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"But--I was under the impression that you kept that carefully locked!"
+
+Algernon laughed outright. "What a fellow you are, Gibbs! Fancy my
+keeping anything carefully locked! The fact is, it is as often open as
+shut. Only a few days ago, for instance, Mrs. Errington mentioned to me
+that she found it unlocked when she was here----" He stopped as if
+struck by a sudden thought, and turned his eyes away from Gibbs, who was
+looking up at him with the same uneasy expression on his face.
+"By-the-way, Mrs. Errington did not stay very long here, did she?" asked
+Algernon, with a degree of marked embarrassment very unusual in him. It
+was an embarrassment so ingeniously displayed that one might almost have
+suspected he wished it to be observed.
+
+"When do you mean, sir? Mrs. Errington comes very often; very often
+indeed."
+
+"Does she?--I mean--I mean the last time she was here. Did she stay long
+then?"
+
+"N--no," answered Gibbs, removing his eyes from Algernon's face, and
+biting the feather of his pen thoughtfully. "At least, I think not, sir.
+I cannot be sure. She very often does not pass out through my office,
+but goes away by the private door in the passage."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I really am very glad that you don't suspect any of the people about
+the place, Gibbs," said Algernon at length, rousing himself with some
+apparent effort from a reverie. "As long as I have any authority here,
+no innocent person shall be made unhappy for one moment by watchfulness
+and suspicion."
+
+"That's a very kind feeling, Mr. Errington. But I shouldn't think an
+innocent person would mind being watched in such a case. For my own
+part, I hope we shall trace the matter out. It shan't be my fault if we
+don't."
+
+"You are wonderfully energetic, Gibbs. An invaluable public servant.
+But, Gibbs, it will not, I think, be any part of your duty to mention to
+any one at present the losses I have spoken of from my secretaire. There
+is no reason, as yet, to connect them with the missing letters. I did
+not duly consider what I was saying. The papers, after all, were only
+private letters of my own, Gibbs. They concern no one but myself. One
+was a mere note--an invitation from a lady. They could have had no value
+for a thief, you know. I--I daresay I mislaid it, and never put it into
+the secretaire at all."
+
+Algernon went away with downcast eyes and hurried step, and Mr. Gibbs
+stared after him with a bewildered gaze. Then slowly the expression of
+his face changed to one of consternation and pity. "Poor young man!" he
+exclaimed, half aloud. "That woman has been making free with his papers
+beyond a doubt. And he does his best to shield her. A worldly-minded,
+vain woman she is, that looks at us as if we were made of a different
+kind of clay from her. And they say she is furiously jealous of her
+husband. But this--this is serious! This is very serious, indeed. I am
+sorry for the young man with all my heart!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+It was no more possible to do anything unusual in Whitford without
+arresting attention, and being subjected to animadversion, than it was
+possible for atmospheric conditions to change without affecting the
+barometer.
+
+Who could tell how it got abroad in the town that young Mrs. Errington
+was in the habit of following her husband about; of watching him, spying
+on his actions, and examining his private correspondence? Mr. Obadiah
+Gibbs, who could have told more than any one on the latter head, was not
+given to talking. Yet the fact oozed out.
+
+It assumed, of course, a great variety of forms and colours, according
+to the more or less distorting mediums through which it passed.
+The fact, as uttered by Miss Chubb, for example, was a very
+different-looking fact from that which was narrated with bated breath,
+and nods, and winks, by Mrs. Smith, the surgeon's wife. And her
+version, again, varied considerably from those of Mr. Gladwish, the
+Methodist shoemaker; Mr. Barker, the Church of England chemist; and the
+bosom friends of the servants at Ivy Lodge. Still, under one shape and
+another, Mrs. Algernon Errington's jealousy of her husband, and her
+consequent behaviour, were within the cognisance of Whitford, and were
+discussed in all circles there.
+
+The predominant feeling ran strongly against Castalia. There were
+persons, indeed, who, exercising an exemplary impartiality (on which
+they much prided themselves), refused to take sides in the matter, but
+considered it most probable that both parties were to blame. Mrs. Smith
+was among these. She had, she declared, that rare gift in woman--a
+judicial mind, although her conception of the judicial functions
+appeared to be limited to putting on the black cap and passing sentence.
+But in the main, public sympathy was with Algernon. He had offended many
+old acquaintances by his aristocratic marriage; but at least he was now
+making the only amends in his power by being extremely unhappy in it! A
+great many wiseacres, male and female, were now able to shake their
+heads, and say they had known all along how it would turn out. This came
+of flying too high; for, if Mrs. Errington, senior, was an Ancram by
+birth, her husband had been only a country surgeon--not even M.D.,
+though she called him "doctor." And this justifying of their predictions
+was, in a vague way, imputed to Algernon as a merit; or, at the least,
+it softened disapproval. Then, too, in justice to Whitfordians, it must
+be said that all their knowledge of Castalia showed them an insolent,
+supercilious, uninteresting woman, who made no secret of her contempt
+for them and their town, and who, "although but a poor postmaster's
+wife, when you came to look at it," as Mrs. Smith the judicial truly
+observed, gave herself more airs than a duchess. What good, or
+capacities for good, there might be in her, was hidden from Whitford,
+whilst her unpleasant qualities were abundantly manifested to all
+beholders.
+
+Poor Castalia, in her quite unaffected nonchalance and disregard of "all
+those people," was totally ignorant how much resentment and dislike she
+was creating, and in what a hostile atmosphere she was living. Her
+husband's popularity, dimmed by his alliance with her, began to revive
+when it was perceived that she persecuted and harassed him, and (as was
+shrewdly suspected) involved him in money difficulties by her
+extravagance. Some of the men thought it served him right; why did he
+marry such a woman? But the ladies, as a rule, were on Algernon's side.
+
+There were exceptions, of course. Miss McDougall stood up for her
+friend, as she said, albeit with some admixture of Mrs. Smith's judicial
+tendency to blame everybody all round, and a personal disposition
+towards spitefulness. Minnie Bodkin said very little when the subject
+was mentioned in her presence; but when an opinion was forced from her,
+she did not deliver it entirely in favour of Algernon. She was sorry for
+his wife, she said. And nine-tenths of her hearers would retort with
+raised hands and eyes, that they, for their part, were sorry for the
+young man, and that they could not understand what dear Minnie found to
+pity in Mrs. Algernon Errington. "A woman who spies on her husband, my
+dear! Who condescends to open his letters--how a woman can so degrade
+herself is a mystery to me! And they say she actually follows him about
+the street at nights--skulks after him! Oh! it is almost too bad to
+repeat!"
+
+"I don't know that all that is true. But if it be so, it seems to me
+that there is great cause for pity," Minnie would reply. And the answer
+was set down to poor dear Miss Bodkin's eccentricity.
+
+There had been, for some time back, a talk of carelessness and
+mismanagement at the Whitford Post-office. Then Roger Heath made no
+secret of his loss, and was not soft-hearted or mild in his manner of
+speaking of it. He complained aloud, and spared nobody. And there were
+plenty of voices ready to carry his denunciations through all classes of
+Whitford society. It was very strange! Such a thing as the loss of a
+money-letter had been almost unknown during the reign of the late
+postmaster; and now there was, not one case, but two--three--a dozen!
+The number increased, as it passed from mouth to mouth, at a wonderful
+rate. There must be great negligence (to say the least of it) somewhere
+in the Whitford Post-office. If the present postmaster was too much
+above his business to look after it properly, it was a pity his high
+friends didn't remove him to some situation better suited to such a fine
+gentleman!
+
+To be sure he was worried out of his wits by that woman. It really was
+true that she haunted the office at all hours. She had been seen
+slipping out of the private door in the entry. She was even said to have
+a pass key which enabled her to go in and out at her will. Was it not
+rumoured on very good authority that she had actually gone to the office
+alone, in the dead of night? What could she want to be always prowling
+about there for? It was all very well to say she went to spy on her
+husband, but if things went wrong in the office in consequence of her
+spyings, it became a public evil. Anyway, it was most extraordinary and
+unheard-of behaviour, and somebody ought to take the matter up! This
+latter somewhat vague suggestion was a favourite climax to gossip on
+the subject of the Algernon Erringtons.
+
+With respect to their private affairs, things did not mend. Tradesmen
+dunned, and grumbled, and could not get their money, and some declined
+to execute further orders from Ivy Lodge until their accounts were
+settled. Among the angriest had been Mr. Ravell, the principal draper of
+the town, whom Castalia had honoured with a good deal of her custom. But
+one day, not long after Algernon's conversation with his clerk,
+mentioned in the last chapter, he was met in the High Street by Mr.
+Ravell, who bowed very deferentially, and stopped, hesitatingly. "Could
+I say a word to you, sir?" said Mr. Ravell.
+
+"Certainly," replied Algernon. They were close to the post-office, and
+he took the draper into his private room, and bade him be seated.
+
+"I suppose, Mr. Ravell," said Algernon, with a shrug and a smile, "that
+you have come about your bill! Mrs. Errington mentioned to me a short
+time ago that you had been rather importunate. Upon my word, Mr. Ravell,
+I think you need not have been in such a deuce of a hurry! I know Mrs.
+Errington does not understand making bargains, and I suppose you don't
+neglect to arrange your prices so as not to lose by giving her a little
+credit, eh?"
+
+This was said lightly, but either the words or the tone made Mr. Ravell
+colour and look a little confused. He was seated, and Algernon was
+standing near him with his back to the fire, expressing a sense of his
+own superiority to the draper in every turn of his well-built figure and
+every line of his half-smiling, half-bored countenance.
+
+"Why, you see, Mr. Errington, we are not in the habit of giving long
+credit, unless to a few old-established customers who deal largely with
+us. It would not suit our style of doing business. And it was reported
+that you were not settled permanently here. And--and--one or two
+unpleasant things had been said. But I hope you will not continue to
+feel so greatly offended with us for sending in the account. It was
+merely in the regular way of our transactions, I assure you."
+
+"Oh, I'm not offended at all, Mr. Ravell! And I hope by the end of this
+month to clear off all scores between us entirely. Mrs. Errington has
+not furnished me with any details, but----"
+
+Ravell looked up quickly. "Clear off all scores between us, sir?" he
+said.
+
+"I presume you will have no objection to that, Mr. Ravell?"
+
+"Oh, of course, sir, you will have your joke! I am glad you are not
+offended. You see ladies don't always understand these matters. Mrs.
+Errington was a little severe on us when she paid the account
+yesterday. At least, so my cashier said."
+
+"My wife paid your account yesterday?" cried Algernon, with a blank
+look.
+
+"Yes, sir, in full. We should have been quite satisfied if settlement
+had been made up to the end of last quarter. But it was paid in full.
+Oh, I thought you had been aware of it! Mrs. Errington said--my people
+understood her to say, that it was by your wish, as you were so greatly
+annoyed at the bill being sent in so often."
+
+"Oh! Yes. Quite right, Mr. Ravell."
+
+He spoke slowly, and as if he were thinking of something other than the
+words he uttered. Ravell looked at him curiously. Algernon suddenly
+caught the man's eye, and broke into a little careless laugh. "The fact
+is," said he, with a frank toss of his head, "that I did not know Mrs.
+Errington had paid you. I suppose she had received some remittances,
+or--but in short," checking himself, and laughing once more, "I daresay
+you won't trouble yourself as to where the money comes from so long as
+it comes to you!"
+
+Mr. Ravell laughed back again, but rather in a forced manner. "Not at
+all, sir! Not at all," he said, bowing and smiling. And, seeing Algernon
+look significantly at his watch, he bowed and smiled himself out of the
+office.
+
+Then Mr. Ravell went away to report to his wife the details of his
+interview with the postmaster, and before noon the next day it was
+reported throughout Whitford that Mrs. Algernon Errington had the
+command of mysterious stores of money whereof her husband knew nothing;
+and that, nevertheless, she ran him into debt right and left, and
+refused to pay a farthing until she was absolutely forced to do so.
+
+This report was not calculated to make those tradesmen who had not been
+paid more patient and forbearing. If Mrs. Algernon Errington could find
+money for one she could for another, they argued, and a shower of bills
+descended on Ivy Lodge within the next week or two. Algernon said they
+came like a swarm of locusts, and threatened to devour all before them.
+He acknowledged to himself that the payment of Ravell's bill had been a
+fatal precedent. "And, perhaps," he thought, "there was no need for
+getting rid of the notes after all! However, the thing is done and can't
+be undone."
+
+The necessity for another appeal to Lord Seely grew more and more
+imminent. Castalia had displayed an unexpected obstinacy about the
+matter. She had held to her refusal to ask for more money from her
+uncle, but Algernon had not yet urged her very strongly to do so. The
+moment had now come, he thought, when an appeal absolutely must be made,
+and he doubted not his own power to cause Castalia to make it. Her
+manner, to be sure, had been very singular of late; alternately sullen
+and excited, passing from cold silence to passionate tenderness without
+any intermediate phases. He had surprised her occasionally crying
+convulsively, and at other times on coming home he had found her sitting
+absolutely unoccupied, with a blank, fixed face. The few persons who saw
+Castalia frequently, observed the change in her, and commented on it.
+Miss Chubb once dropped a word to Algernon indicating a vague suspicion
+that his wife's intellect was disordered. He did not choose to appear to
+perceive the drift of her words, but the hint dwelt in his mind.
+
+"You must write to Lord Seely this evening, Cassy," he said one day on
+returning home to dinner. He had found his wife at her desk, and, on
+seeing him, she huddled away a confused heap of papers into a drawer,
+and hastily shut it.
+
+"Must I?" she answered gloomily.
+
+"Well, I don't wish to use an offensive phrase. You will write to oblige
+me. It has been put off long enough."
+
+"Why should I oblige you?" said Castalia, looking up at him with sunken
+eyes. She looked so ill and haggard, as to arrest Algernon's
+attention--not too lavishly bestowed on her in general.
+
+"Cassy," said he, "I am afraid you are not well!"
+
+The tears came into her eyes. She turned her head away. "Do you really
+care whether I am ill or well?" she asked.
+
+"Do I really care? What a question! Of course I care. Are you
+suffering?"
+
+"N--no; not now. I believe I should not feel any suffering if you only
+loved me, Ancram."
+
+"Castalia! How can you be so absurd?"
+
+He rose from his seat beside her, and walked impatiently up and down the
+room. Nothing irritated him so much as to be called on for sentiment or
+tenderness.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed, with a little despondent gesture of the head,
+"you were speaking and looking kindly, and I have driven you away! I
+wish I was dead."
+
+Algernon stopped in his walk, and cast a singular look at his wife. Then
+after a moment he said, in his usual light manner, "My dear Cassy, you
+are low and nervous. It really is not good for you to mope by yourself
+as you do. Come, rouse yourself to write this letter to my lord, then
+after dinner you can have the fly to drive to my mother's. She complains
+that she sees you very seldom."
+
+"Will you come too, Ancram?"
+
+"I----well, yes; if it is possible, I will come too."
+
+"I think," said Castalia, putting her hands on his shoulders, and
+gazing wistfully into his face, "that if you and I could go away to some
+quiet strange place--far away from all these odious people--across the
+seas somewhere--I think we might be happy even now."
+
+"Upon my honour, there's nothing I should like so much as to get away
+across the seas! And you might as well hint to my lord, in the course of
+your letter, that I should be very well contented with a berth in the
+Colonies. A good climate, of course! One wouldn't care to be shipped off
+to Sierra Leone!"
+
+"I will write that to Uncle Val, willingly. But--don't ask me to beg
+money of him again."
+
+Algernon made a rapid calculation in his mind, and answered without
+appreciable pause, "Well, Cassy, it shall be as you will. But as to
+begging----that, I think, is scarcely the word between us and Lord
+Seely."
+
+"I'll run upstairs and bathe my eyes, and I shall still have time to
+write before dinner," said Castalia, and left the room.
+
+When he was alone, Algernon opened the writing-table drawer, and glanced
+at the papers in it. Castalia's hurried manner of concealing them had
+suggested to his mind the suspicion that she might have been writing
+secretly to her uncle. He found no letter addressed to Lord Seely, but
+he did find an unfinished fragment of writing addressed to himself. It
+consisted of a few incoherent phrases of despondency and reproach--the
+expression of confidence betrayed and affection unrequited. There was a
+word or two in it about the writer's weariness of life and desire to
+quit it.
+
+Castalia had written many such fragments of late; sometimes as a mere
+outlet for suppressed feeling, sometimes under the impression that she
+really could not long support an existence uncheered by sympathy or
+counsel, embittered by jealousy, and chilled by neglect. She had written
+such fragments, and then torn them up in many a lonely hour, but she had
+never thought of complaining of Algernon to Lord Seely. She would
+complain of him to no human being. But all Algernon's insight into his
+wife's character did not enable him to feel sure of this. Indeed, he had
+often said to himself that no rational being could be expected to follow
+the vagaries of Castalia's sickly fancies and impracticable temper. He
+would not have been surprised to find her pouring out a long string of
+lamentations about her lot to Lord Seely. He was not much surprised at
+what he did find her to have written, although the state of feeling it
+displayed seemed to him as unreasonable and unaccountable as ever. He
+gave himself no account of the motive which made him take the fragment
+of writing, fold it, and place it carefully inside a little pocket-book
+which he carried.
+
+"I wonder," he thought to himself, "if Castalia is likely to die!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The letter to Lord Seely was duly written, and this time in Castalia's
+own words. Algernon refused to assist her in the composition of it,
+saying, in answer to her appeals, "No, no, Cassy; I shall make no
+suggestion whatsoever. I don't choose to expose myself to any more
+grandiloquence from your uncle about letters being 'written by your
+hand, but not dictated by your head.' I wonder at my lord talking such
+high-flown stuff. But pomposity is his master weakness."
+
+Castalia's letter was as follows:
+
+     "Whitford, November 23rd.
+
+     "DEAR UNCLE VAL,--I am sure you will understand that I was very
+     much surprised and hurt at the tone of your last letter to
+     Ancram. Of course, if you have not the money to help us with,
+     you cannot lend it. And I don't complain of that. But I was
+     vexed at the way you wrote to Ancram. You won't think me
+     ungrateful to you. I know how good you have always been to me,
+     and I am fonder of you than of anybody in the world except
+     Ancram. But nobody can be unkind to him without hurting me, and
+     I shall always resent any slight to him. But I am writing now
+     to ask you something that 'I wish for very much myself;' it is
+     quite my own desire. I am not at all happy in this place. And I
+     want you to get Ancram a berth somewhere in the Colonies, quite
+     away. It is no use changing from one town in England to
+     another. What we want is to get 'far away,' and put the seas
+     between us and all the odious people here. I am sure you might
+     get us something if you would try. I assure you Ancram is
+     perfectly wasted in this hole. Any stupid grocer or
+     tallow-chandler could do what he has to do. Do, dear Uncle Val,
+     try to help us in this. Indeed I shall never be happy in
+     Whitford.--Your affectionate niece,
+
+     "C. ERRINGTON.
+
+     "Give my love to Aunt Belinda if she cares to have it. But I
+     daresay she won't.--C. E."
+
+"I think my lord will not doubt the genuineness of that epistle!"
+thought Algernon, after having read it at his wife's request.
+
+Then the fly was announced, and they set off together to pass the
+evening at the elder Mrs. Errington's lodgings. The "Blue Bell" driver
+touched his hat in a very respectful manner. His master's long-standing
+account was unpaid, but he continued to receive, for his part, frequent
+half-crowns from Algernon, who liked the immediate popularity to be
+purchased by a gift somewhat out of proportion to his means. Indeed, our
+young friend enjoyed a better reputation amongst menials and underlings
+than amongst their employers. The former were apt to speak of him as a
+pleasant gentleman who was free with his money; and to declare that they
+felt as if they could do anything for young Mr. Errington, so they
+could! He had such a way with him! Whereas the mere payment of humdrum
+debts excites no such agreeable glow of feeling, and is altogether a
+flat, stale, and unprofitable proceeding.
+
+"What o'clock shall we say, Castalia?" asked her husband, as they
+alighted at Mrs. Thimbleby's door.
+
+"Tell him to come at half-past ten," returned Castalia.
+
+It chanced that David Powell was re-entering his lodgings at the moment
+the younger Erringtons reached the door. He stood aside to let the lady
+pass into the house before him, and thus heard her answer. The sound of
+her voice made him start and bend forward to look at her face when the
+light from the open door fell upon it. She turned round at the same
+instant, and the two looked full at each other. David Powell asked Mrs.
+Thimbleby if that lady were not the wife of Mr. Algernon Errington.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Powell, she is his wife; and more's the pity, if all tales be
+true!"
+
+"Judge not uncharitably, sister Thimbleby! Nor let your tongue belie the
+gentleness of your spirit. It is an unruly member that speaks not always
+out of the fulness of the heart. The lady seems very sick, and bears the
+traces of much sorrow on her countenance."
+
+"Oh yes, indeed, poor thing! Sickly enough she looks, and sorry. Nay, I
+daresay she has her own trials, but I fear me she leads that pleasant
+young husband of hers a poor life of it. I shouldn't say as much to
+anyone but you, sir, for I do try to keep my tongue from evil-speaking.
+But had you never seen her before, Mr. Powell?"
+
+Powell answered musingly, "N--no--scarcely seen her. But I had heard her
+voice."
+
+Mrs. Errington received her son and daughter-in-law with an effusive
+welcome. She was so astonished; so delighted. It was so long since she
+had seen them. And then to see them together! That had latterly become
+quite a rare treat. The good lady expatiated on this theme until
+Castalia's brow grew gloomy with the recollection of her wrongs, her
+solitary hours spent so drearily, and her suspicions as to how her
+husband employed the hours of his absence from her. And then Mrs.
+Errington began playfully to reprove her for being dull and silent,
+instead of enjoying dear Algy's society now that she had it! "I am sure,
+my dear Castalia," said the elder lady with her usual self-complacent
+stateliness, "you won't mind my telling you that I consider one of the
+great secrets of the perfect felicity I enjoyed during my married life
+to have been the interest and pleasure I always took--and showed that I
+took--in Dr. Errington's society."
+
+"Perhaps he liked your society," returned Castalia with a languid sneer,
+followed by a short bitter sigh.
+
+"Preferred it to any in the world, my dear!" said Mrs. Errington,
+mellifluously. She said it, too, with an _aplomb_ and an air of
+conviction that mightily tickled Algernon, who, remembering the family
+rumours which haunted his childhood, thought that his respected father,
+if he preferred his wife's society to any other, must have put a
+considerable constraint on his inclinations, not to say sacrificed them
+altogether to the claims of a convivial circle of friends. "The dear old
+lady is as good as a play!" thought he. Indeed, he thoroughly relished
+this bit of domestic comedy.
+
+"But then," proceeded Mrs. Errington, as she rang the bell to order
+tea, "I have not the vanity to suppose that he would have done so
+without the exercise of some little care and tact on my part. Tact, my
+dear Castalia--tact is the most precious gift a wife can bring to the
+domestic circle. But the Ancrams always had enormous tact--Give us some
+tea, if you please, Mrs. Thimbleby, and be careful that the water
+boils--proverbial for it, in fact!"
+
+Algernon thought it time to come to the rescue. He did not choose his
+comfort to be destroyed by a passage of arms between his mother and his
+wife, so he deftly turned the conversation to less dangerous topics, and
+things proceeded peacefully until the tea was served.
+
+"Who was that man that was coming in to the house with us?" asked
+Castalia, as she sipped her tea from one of Mrs. Errington's antique
+blue and white china cups.
+
+"Would it be Mr. Diamond----? But no; you know him by sight. Or--oh, I
+suppose it was that Methodist preacher, Powell!"
+
+"Powell! Yes, that was the name--David Powell."
+
+"Most likely. He is in and out at all hours. Really, Algernon, do you
+know--you remember the fellow, how he used to annoy us at Maxfield's.
+Well, do you know, I believe he is quite crazy!"
+
+"You have always entertained that opinion, I believe, ma'am."
+
+"Oh, but, my dear boy, I think he is demented in real downright earnest
+now. I do indeed. I'm sure the things that poor weak-minded Mrs.
+Thimbleby tells me about him----! He has delusions of all kinds; hears
+voices, sees visions. I should say it is a case of what your father
+would have called 'melancholy madness.' Really, Algy, I frequently think
+about it. It is quite alarming sometimes in the night if I happen to
+wake up, to remember that there is a lunatic sleeping overhead. You know
+he might take it into his head to murder one! Or if he only killed
+himself--which is perhaps more likely--it would be a highly unpleasant
+circumstance. I could not possibly remain in the lodgings, you know. Out
+of the question! And so I told that silly Thimbleby. I said to her,
+'Observe, Mrs. Thimbleby, if any dreadful thing happens in this house--a
+suicide or anything of that sort--I shall leave you at an hour's notice.
+I wish you well, and I have no desire to withdraw my patronage from you,
+but you could not expect me to look over a coroner's inquest.'"
+
+Algernon threw his head back and laughed heartily. "That was a fair
+warning, at any rate!" said he. "And if Mr. David Powell has any
+consideration for his landlady, he will profit by it--that is to say,
+supposing Mrs. Thimbleby tells him of it. What did she say?"
+
+"Oh, she merely cried and whimpered, and hid her face in her apron. She
+is terribly weak-minded, poor creature."
+
+Castalia had been listening in silence. All at once she said, "How many
+miserable people there are!"
+
+"Very true, Cassy; provincial postmasters and others. And part of my
+miserable lot is to go down to the office again for an hour to-night."
+
+"My poor boy!" "Go to the office again to-night?" exclaimed his mother
+and his wife simultaneously.
+
+"Yes; it is now half-past eight. I have an appointment. At least--I
+shall be back in an hour, I have no doubt."
+
+Algernon walked off with an air of good-humoured resignation, smiling
+and shrugging his shoulders. The two women, left alone together, took
+his departure very differently. Mrs. Errington was majestically wrathful
+with a system of things which involved so much discomfort to a scion of
+the house of Ancram. She was of opinion that some strong representations
+should be made to the ministry; that Parliament should be appealed to.
+And she rather enjoyed her own eloquence, and was led on by it to make
+some most astounding assertions, and utter some scathing condemnations
+with an air of comfortable self-satisfaction. Castalia, on the other
+hand, remained gloomily taciturn, huddled into an easy-chair by the
+hearth, and staring fixedly at the fire.
+
+It has been recorded in these pages that Mrs. Errington did not much
+object to silence on the part of her companion for the time being; she
+only required an assenting or admiring interjection now and then, to
+enable her to carry on what she supposed to be a very agreeable
+conversation, but she did like her confidante to do that much towards
+social intercourse. And she liked, moreover, to see some look of
+pleasure, interest, or sympathy on the confidante's face. Looking at
+Castalia's moody and abstracted countenance, she could not but remember
+the gentle listener in whom she had been wont for so many years to find
+a sweet response to all her utterances.
+
+"Oddly enough," she said, "I have been disappointed of a visitor this
+evening, and so should have been quite alone if you and Algy had not
+come in. I had asked Rhoda to spend the evening with me."
+
+Castalia looked round at the sound of that name. "Why didn't she come?"
+she asked abruptly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. She merely said she could not leave home to-night.
+That old father of hers sometimes takes tyrannical fancies into his
+head. He has been kinder to dear Rhoda of late, and has treated her
+more becomingly--chiefly, I believe I may say, owing to my influence,
+although the old booby chose to quarrel with me--but when he takes a
+thing into his head he is as obstinate as a mule."
+
+"I don't know about treating her 'becomingly,' but I think she needs
+some one to look after her and keep her in check."
+
+"Who, Rhoda? My dear Castalia, she is the very sweetest-tempered
+creature I ever met with in my life; and that is saying a good deal, let
+me tell you, for the Ancram temper was something quite special. A gift.
+I don't boast of it, because I believe it was simply constitutional. But
+such was the fact."
+
+"The girl is dressed up beyond her station. The last time I saw her it
+was absurd. Scarcely reputable, I should think."
+
+Mrs. Errington by no means liked this attack. Over and above the fact
+that Rhoda was her pet and her _protégée_, which would have sufficed to
+make any animadversions on her appear impertinent, she was genuinely
+fond of the girl, and answered with some warmth, "I am sure, Castalia,
+that whatever Rhoda Maxfield might be dressed in, she would look modest
+and sweet, not to say excessively pretty, for I suppose there cannot be
+a doubt about that?"
+
+"I thought you were a stickler for people keeping to their own station,
+and not aping their betters!"
+
+"We must distinguish, Castalia. Birth will ever be with me the first
+consideration. Coming of the race I do, it could not be otherwise. But
+it is useless to shut one's eyes to the fact that money nowadays will do
+much. Look at our best families!--families of lineage as good as my own.
+What do we see? We see them allying themselves with commercial people
+right and left. Now, there was Miss Pickleham. The way in which she was
+thrown at Algy's head would surprise you. She had a hundred thousand
+pounds of her own on the day she married, and expectations of much more
+on old Picklekam's decease. But I never encouraged the thing. Perhaps I
+was wrong. However!--she married Sir Peregrine Puffin last season. And
+the Puffins were in Cornwall before the Conquest."
+
+Castalia shrugged her shoulders in undisguised scorn. "All that nonsense
+is nothing to the purpose," said she, throwing her head back against the
+cushion of the chair she sat on. Mrs. Errington opened her blue eyes to
+their widest extent. "Really, Castalia! 'All that nonsense!' You are not
+very polite."
+
+"I'm sick of all the pretences, and shams, and deceptions," returned
+Castalia, her eyes glittering feverishly, and her thin fingers twining
+themselves together with nervous restlessness. "I don't know whether you
+are made a fool of yourself, or are trying to make a fool of me----"
+
+"Castalia!"
+
+"But, in either case, I am not duped. Your 'sweet Rhoda!' Don't you know
+that she is an artful, false coquette--perhaps worse!"
+
+"Castalia!"
+
+"Yes, worse. Why should she not be as bad as any other low-bred creature
+who lures on gentlemen to make love to her? Men are such idiots! So
+false and fickle! But, though I may be injured and insulted, I will not
+be laughed at for a dupe."
+
+"Good heavens, Castalia! What does this mean?"
+
+"And I will tell you another thing, if you really are so blind to what
+goes on, and has been going on, for years: I don't believe Ancram has
+gone to the post-office to-night at all. I believe he has gone to see
+Rhoda. It would not be the first time he has deceived me on that score!"
+
+Mrs. Errington sat holding the arms of her easy-chair with both hands,
+and staring at her daughter-in-law. The poor lady felt as if the world
+were turned upside down. It was not so long since old Maxfield had
+astonished her by plainly showing that he thought her of no importance,
+and choosing to turn her out of his house. And now, here was Castalia
+conducting herself in a still more amazing manner. Whilst she revolved
+the case in her brain--much confused and bewildered as that organ
+was--and endeavoured to come to some clear opinion on it, the younger
+woman got up and walked up and down the room with the restless, aimless,
+anxious gait of a caged animal.
+
+At length Mrs. Errington slowly nodded her head two or three times, drew
+a long breath, folded her hands, and, assuming a judicial air, spoke as
+follows:
+
+"My dear Castalia! I shall overlook the unbecomingness of certain
+expressions that you have used towards myself, because I can make
+allowance for an excited state of feeling. But you must permit me to
+give you a little advice. Endeavour to control yourself; try to look at
+things with calmness and judgment, and you will soon perceive how wrong
+and foolish your present conduct is. And, moreover, you need not be
+startled if I have discovered the real motive at the bottom of all this
+display of temper. There never was a member of my family yet who had not
+a wonderful gift of reading motives. I'm sure it is nothing to envy us!
+I have often, for my own part, wished myself as slow of perception as
+other people, for the truth is not always pleasant. But I must say that
+I can see one thing very plainly--and that is, that you are most
+unfortunately and most unreasonably giving way to jealousy! I can see
+it, Castalia, as plain as possible."
+
+Mrs. Errington had finished her harangue with much majesty, bringing out
+the closing sentences as if they were a most unexpected and powerful
+climax, when the effect of the whole was marred by her giving a violent
+start and exclaiming, with more naturalness than dignity, "Mercy on us!
+Castalia, what will you do next? Do shut that window, for pity's sake! I
+shall get my death of cold!"
+
+Castalia had opened the window, and was leaning out of it, regardless of
+the sleet which fell in slanting lines and beat against her cheek. "I
+knew that was his step," she said, speaking, as it seemed, more to
+herself than to her mother-in-law. "And he has no umbrella, and those
+light shoes on!" She ran to the fireplace and stirred the fire into a
+blaze, displaying an activity which was singularly contrasted with her
+usual languid slowness of movement. "Can't you give him some hot wine
+and water?" she asked, ringing the bell at the same time. When her
+husband came in she removed his damp great-coat with her own hands, made
+him sit down near the fire, and brought him a pair of his mother's
+slippers, which were quite sufficiently roomy to admit his slender
+feet. Algernon submitted to be thus cherished and taken care of,
+declaring, with an amused smile, as he sipped the hot negus, that this
+fuss was very kind, but entirely unnecessary, as he had not been three
+minutes in the rain.
+
+As to Mrs. Errington, she was so perplexed by her daughter-in-law's
+sudden change of mood and manner, that she lost her presence of mind,
+and remained gazing from Algernon to his wife very blankly. "I never
+knew such a thing!" thought the good lady. "One moment she's raging and
+scolding, and abusing her husband for deceiving her, and the next she is
+petting him up as if he was a baby!"
+
+When the fly was announced, and Castalia left the little drawing-room to
+put on her cloak and bonnet, Mrs. Errington drew near to her son and
+whispered to him solemnly, "Algy, there is something very strange about
+your wife. I never saw such a changed creature within the last few
+weeks. Don't you think you should have some one to see her?--some
+professional person I mean? I fear that her brain is affected!"
+
+"Good gracious, mother! Another lunatic? You are getting to have a
+monomania on that subject yourself!" Algernon laughed as he said it.
+
+"My dear, there may be two persons afflicted in the same way, may there
+not? But I said nothing about lunatics, Algy. Only--really, I think some
+temporary disturbance of the brain is going on. I do, indeed."
+
+"Pooh, pooh! Nonsense, ma'am! But it is odd enough that you are the
+second person who has made that agreeable suggestion to me within a
+fortnight. Poor Cassy! That's all she gets by her airs and her temper."
+
+"Another person, was there?"
+
+"Yes; it was little Miss Chubb, and----"
+
+"Miss Chubb! Upon my word, I think that Miss Chubb was guilty of taking
+a considerable liberty in suggesting anything of the kind about the
+Honourable Mrs. Ancram Errington!"
+
+"Oh, I don't know about liberty; but, of course, I laughed at her; and,
+of course, you will too, if she says anything of the kind to you."
+
+"I shall undoubtedly check her pretty severely if she attempts anything
+of the sort with me! Miss Chubb, indeed!"
+
+The consequence was, that Mrs. Errington went about among her Whitford
+friends elaborately contradicting and denying "the innuendos spread
+abroad about her daughter-in-law by certain presumptuous and gossiping
+persons;" and thus brought the suggestion before many who would not
+otherwise have heard of it. All which, of course, surprised and annoyed
+Algernon very much, who had, naturally, not expected anything of the
+sort from his mother's well-known tact and discretion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+One dreary Sunday afternoon, about this time--that is to say, about the
+end of November--Matthew Diamond rang at the bell of Mr. Maxfield's
+door. He had a couple of books under his arm, and he asked the servant,
+who admitted him, if she could give him back the volume he had last lent
+to Miss Maxfield. Sally looked askance at the books as she took them
+from his hand, and shook her head doubtfully.
+
+"It's one o' them French books, isn't it, sir? I don't know one from
+another. Would you please step upstairs yourself? Miss Rhoda's in the
+drawing-room."
+
+Diamond went upstairs and tapped at the door of the sitting-room.
+
+"Come in," said a soft, sweet voice, that seemed to him the most
+deliciously musical he had ever heard, and he entered.
+
+The old room looked very different from what it had looked in the days
+when Matthew Diamond used to come there to read Latin and history with
+Algernon Errington. There were still the clumsy beams in the low
+ceiling, and the old-fashioned cushioned seats in the bay-window, but
+everything else was changed. A rich carpet covered the floor; there were
+handsome hangings, and a couch, and a French clock on the chimney-piece;
+there was a small pianoforte in the room, too; and, at one end, a
+bookcase well filled with gaily-bound books. These things were the
+products of old Max's money. But there were evidences about the place of
+taste and refinement, which were due entirely to Rhoda. She had got a
+stand of hyacinths like those in Miss Bodkin's room. She had softened
+and hidden the glare of the bright, brand-new upholstery by dainty bits
+of lacework spread over the couch and the chairs; and she had, with some
+difficulty, persuaded her father to substitute for two staring coloured
+French lithographs, which had decked the walls, a couple of good
+engravings after Italian pictures. There was a fire glowing redly in the
+grate, and the room was warm and fragrant. Rhoda was curled up on the
+window-seat, with a book in her hand, and bending down her pretty head
+over it, until the soft brown curls swept the page.
+
+Diamond stood still for a moment in the doorway, admiring the graceful
+figure well defined against the light.
+
+"Come in, Sally," said Rhoda. And then she looked up from her book and
+saw him.
+
+"I'm afraid I disturb you!" said Diamond. "But the maid told me to come
+up."
+
+"Oh no! I was just reading----"
+
+"Straining your eyes by this twilight! That's very wrong."
+
+"Yes! I'm afraid it is not very wise, but I wanted to finish the
+chapter; and my eyes are really very strong."
+
+"I thought you might be at church," said Diamond, seating himself on the
+opposite side of the bay-window, and within its recess, "so I asked the
+maid to get me the book I wanted. But she sent me upstairs."
+
+"Aunt Betty is at church, and James; but father wouldn't let me go. He
+said it was so raw and foggy, and I had been to church this morning."
+
+"Yes; I saw you there. But have you not been well, that your father did
+not wish you to go out?"
+
+"Oh yes; I'm very well, thank you. But I had a little cold last week;
+and I should have had to walk to St. Chad's and back, you know. Father
+doesn't think it right to drive on the Lord's day, so he made me stay at
+home."
+
+"How very right of him! What were you reading?"
+
+He drew a little nearer to her as he asked the question, and looked at
+the book she held.
+
+"Oh, it's a Sunday book," said Rhoda, simply. "'The Pilgrim's Progress.'
+I like it very much."
+
+"I wonder whether you will care to hear of some good news I had to-day?"
+
+"Oh yes; I shall be very glad to hear it."
+
+"I think I stand a good chance of getting the head-mastership of
+Dorrington Proprietary School. Dorrington is in the next county, you
+know."
+
+"Oh! I'm very glad."
+
+"It would be a very good position. I am not certain of it yet, you know;
+but Dr. Bodkin has been very friendly, and has promised to canvass the
+governing committee for me."
+
+"Oh! I'm very glad indeed."
+
+"I don't know yet myself whether I am very glad or not."
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+Rhoda looked up at him in genuine surprise; but her eyes fell before the
+answering look they encountered, and she blushed from brow to chin.
+
+"No; it all depends on you, Rhoda, whether I am glad of it to the bottom
+of my heart, or whether I give it all up as a thing not worth striving
+for."
+
+There was a pause, which Rhoda broke at length, because the silence
+embarrassed her unendurably.
+
+"Oh, I don't think it can depend upon me, Mr. Diamond," she said,
+speaking in a little quivering voice that was barely audible; whilst, at
+the same time, she hurriedly turned over the pages of "The Pilgrim's
+Progress" with her eyes fixed on them, although she assuredly did not
+see one letter. Diamond gently drew the book from her hand and took the
+hand in his own.
+
+"Yes, Rhoda," he said--and, having once called her so, his lips seemed
+to dwell lovingly on the sound of her name--"I think you do know! You
+must know that, if I look forward hopefully and happily to anything in
+my future life, it is only because I have a hope that you may be able to
+love me a little. I love you so much."
+
+She trembled violently, but did not withdraw her hand from his clasp.
+She sat quite still with downcast eyes, neither moving nor looking to
+the right or the left.
+
+"Rhoda! Rhoda! Won't you say one word to me?"
+
+"I'm trying--thinking what I ought to say,'" she answered, almost in a
+whisper.
+
+"Is it so difficult, Rhoda?"
+
+She made a strong effort to command her voice, but she had not the
+courage to look full at him as she answered, "Yes; it is very difficult
+for me. I want to do right, Mr. Diamond. I want not to deceive you."
+
+"I am very sure that you will not deceive me, Rhoda!"
+
+"Not if I can help it. But it is so hard to say just the exact truth."
+
+"I don't find it hard to say the exact truth to you. You may believe me
+implicitly, Rhoda, when I say that I love you with all my heart, and
+will do my best to make you happy if you will let me."
+
+"I do believe you. I believe you are really fond of me. Only--of course
+you are much cleverer and wiser than I am, except in thinking too much
+of me--and you can say just whatever is in your mind. But I can't; not
+all at once."
+
+"I will wait, Rhoda. I will have patience, and not distress you."
+
+The tears were falling down her cheeks now, not from sorrow, but from
+sheer agitation. She thanked him by a gesture of her head, and drew her
+hand away from his very gently, and wiped her eyes. He could not command
+himself at sight of her tears, although he had resolved not to speak
+again until she should be calm and ready to hear him.
+
+"My darling," he said, clasping his hands together and looking at her
+with eyes full of anxious compassion, "don't cry! Is it my fault? You
+must have had some knowledge of what was in my heart to say to you! I
+have not startled you and taken you by surprise?"
+
+"No; that's just it, Mr. Diamond. It's that that makes me feel so afraid
+of doing wrong and deceiving you. I--I--have thought for some time past
+that you were getting to like me very much. Some one said so too. But
+yet I couldn't do anything, could I? I couldn't say, 'Don't get fond of
+me, Mr. Diamond!'"
+
+"It would have been quite in vain to say, 'Don't get fond of me.' I'm a
+desperately obstinate man, Rhoda!"
+
+"So then I--I mean to tell you the exact truth, you know, as well as I
+can. I began to think whether I liked you very much."
+
+"Well, Rhoda?"
+
+There was a rather long silence.
+
+"Well, I thought--yes, I did."
+
+He clasped his arms round her with a sudden impetuous movement, but she
+held him off with her two hands on his shoulders. "No, but please
+listen! I did love somebody else once very much. Of course we were very
+young, and it was nonsense. But I did wrong in being secret, and keeping
+it from father. And I never want to be secret any more. And--though I do
+like you very much, and--and--I should be very sorry if you went
+away--yet it isn't quite the same that I felt before. That is the truth
+as well as I can say it, and I am very grateful to you for thinking so
+well of me."
+
+He drew the young head with its soft shining chestnut curls down on to
+his breast, and pressed his lips to her cheek.
+
+"Now you are mine, my very own--are you not, Rhoda?"
+
+"Yes; if you like, Mr. Diamond."
+
+Matthew Diamond had been successful in his wooing, after feeling very
+doubtful of success. And he should naturally have been elated in
+proportion to his previous trepidation. And he was happy, of course; yet
+scarcely with the fulness of joyful triumph he had promised himself if
+pretty Rhoda should incline her ear to his suit. There was a subtle
+flavour of disappointment in it all. Rhoda had behaved very well, very
+honestly, in making that effort to be quite clear and candid about her
+feelings. It was a great thing to be able to feel perfect confidence in
+the woman who was to be his companion for life. And as to her loving him
+with the same fervour he felt towards her, that was not to be expected.
+He never had expected that. She was gentle, sweet, modest, thoroughly
+feminine, and exquisitely pretty. She was willing to give herself to
+him, and would doubtless be a true and affectionate wife. He held her
+slight waist in his arm, and her head rested confidingly on his bosom.
+Of course he was very happy. Only--if only Rhoda were not quite so
+silent and cold; if she would say one little word of tenderness, or
+even nestle herself fondly against his shoulder without speaking!
+
+Some such thoughts were vaguely flitting through Diamond's mind when
+Rhoda raised her head, and, emboldened by the gathering dusk, looked up
+into his face and said, "You know it cannot be unless father consents."
+
+"I shall speak to him this evening. Do you think he will be stern and
+hard to persuade, Rhoda?"
+
+"I don't know. He said once that he would like to--to--that he would
+like to know I had some one to take care of me."
+
+"On that score I am not afraid of falling short. Your father could give
+his treasure to no man who would take more loving care of her than I!"
+
+"And then you are a gentleman; and father thinks a great deal of that,
+although he makes no pretence at being anything more than a tradesman
+himself. And of course I am only a tradesman's daughter. I am greatly
+below you in station--I know that."
+
+"My Rhoda! As if there could be any question of that between us! God
+knows I have been poor and obscure enough all my life. But now I shall
+be able to tell your father that I hope to have a home to offer you that
+will be at least not sordid, and the position of a lady."
+
+"I hope you won't repent, Mr. Diamond."
+
+"Repent! But, Rhoda, won't you call me by my name? Say Matthew, not Mr.
+Diamond."
+
+"Yes; I will if you like. But I'm afraid I can't all at once. It seems
+so strange."
+
+"I wish you liked my name one thousandth part as much as I love the
+sound of yours! It seems so sweet to be able to call you Rhoda."
+
+"Oh, I like your name very much indeed. But I think, please, that you
+had better go now. The people are coming out of church, and Aunt Betty
+may be back at any moment; and I don't wish her to find you here before
+you have spoken to father."
+
+Rhoda stood up as she said it, and Diamond had no choice but to rise
+too, and say farewell. He drew her gently towards him and kissed her.
+"Will you try to love me, Rhoda?" he said, in a tone of almost sad
+entreaty. "Do you think you shall be able to love me a little?"
+
+"I should not have accepted you if I felt that I could never be fond of
+you," returned Rhoda, and a little flush spread itself over her face as
+she spoke. "But you know I have told you the truth. I have told you
+about----"
+
+He put up his hand to check her. "Yes, yes; you have been quite candid
+and honourable, and I won't be exacting or unreasonable, or too
+impatient." He did not think he could endure to hear Rhoda, in her
+anxiety not to deceive him, recapitulate the confession of her
+"different feeling" for another man in days past; and yet he had known,
+or guessed, that it had been so.
+
+Then he took his leave, an accepted lover; and he told himself that he
+was a very fortunate and happy man. As he passed the door of old Max's
+little parlour downstairs, he saw a light gleaming under the door into
+the almost dark passage. He stopped and tapped at the door. "Come in,"
+said Jonathan Maxfield's harsh voice. And Diamond went into the
+parlour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Old Max looked up at his visitor over the great tortoise-shell
+spectacles on his nose. He had a large Bible open on the table before
+him. The large Bible was placed there every evening, and on Sunday
+evenings any other mundane volume which might chance to be lying in the
+parlour was carefully removed out of sight, to be restored to the light
+of day on Monday morning. This was the custom of the house, and had been
+so for years. It had obtained all through the Methodist days, and now
+lasted under the new orthodox dispensation. Since old Max had his
+spectacles on, it was to be supposed that he had been reading, and,
+since there was no other printed document within sight, not even an
+almanac, it was clear that he could have been reading nothing but his
+Bible. And yet it was nearly an hour since he had turned the page before
+him. He had been dozing, sitting up in his chair by the fire. This had
+latterly become a habit with him whenever he was left alone in the
+evening. And once, even, he had fallen into a sleep, or a stupor, in the
+midst of the assembled family, and, on awaking, had been lethargic in
+his movements, and dazed in his manner for some time.
+
+He was quite awake now, however, as he peered sharply at Diamond over
+his glasses. The latter found some little difficulty in beginning his
+communication, not being assisted by a word from old Max, who stared at
+him silently.
+
+"I have a few words to say to you, Mr. Maxfield, if you are at leisure
+to hear them," he said at length.
+
+"If it's anything in the natur' of a business communication, I can't
+attend to it now," returned old Max deliberately. "It has been a rule of
+mine through life to transact no manner of business on the Lord's day,
+and I have found it prosper with me."
+
+"No, no; it is not a matter of business, Mr. Maxfield," said Diamond
+smiling, but not quite at his ease. Then he sat down and told his
+errand. Maxfield listened in perfect silence. "May I hope, Mr. Maxfield,
+that you will give us your consent and approbation?" asked Diamond,
+after a pause.
+
+"You're pretty glib, sir! I must know a little more about this matter
+before I can give an answer one way or another."
+
+"You shall know all that I can tell you, Mr. Maxfield. Indeed, I do not
+see what more I have to say. I have explained to you what my prospects
+in life are. I have told you every particular with the most absolute
+fulness and candour. As to my feeling for your daughter, I don't think I
+could fully express that if I talked to you all night."
+
+"What did my daughter say to you?"
+
+"She--she told me that she was willing to be my wife, but that it must
+depend upon your consent."
+
+"Rhoda has always been a very dutiful daughter. There's not many like
+Rhoda."
+
+"I appreciate her, Mr. Maxfield. You may believe that I do most heartily
+appreciate her. I have long known that all my happiness depended on
+winning Rhoda for my wife. I have loved her long. But, of course, I
+could not venture to ask her to marry me, or to ask you to give her to
+me, until I had some prospect of a home to offer her."
+
+"Ah! And this prospect, now--you aren't sure about it?"
+
+"No; I am not quite sure."
+
+"And, supposing you don't get the place--how then?"
+
+"Why, then, Mr. Maxfield, I should look for another. If you will give
+your consent to my engagement to Rhoda, I am not afraid of not finding
+a place in the world for her. I have a fair share of resolution; I am
+industrious and well educated; I am not quite thirty years old. If you
+will give me a word of encouragement I shall be sure to succeed."
+
+"Head-master of Dorrington Proprietary School, eh? Will that be a place
+like Dr. Bodkin's?"
+
+"Something of that kind, only not so lucrative."
+
+"Dr. Bodkin is thought a good deal of in Whitford."
+
+"Mr. Maxfield, may I hope for a favourable answer from you before I go?"
+
+Old Max struck his hand sharply on the table as he exclaimed, almost
+with a snarl, "I will not be hurried, sir! nor made to speak rashly and
+without duly pondering and meditating my words." Then he added, in a
+different tone, "You are glib, sir! mighty glib! Do you know what Miss
+Maxfield will have to her portion--if I choose to give it her?"
+
+"No, Mr. Maxfield, I do not. Nor do I care to know. I would take her to
+my heart to-morrow if she would come, although she were the poorest
+beggar in the world!"
+
+"And would you take her without my consent?"
+
+"I would, if you had no reasonable grounds for withholding it."
+
+"You would steal my daughter away without my consent?"
+
+"I said nothing about stealing. I should not think of deceiving you in
+the matter. I think you must acknowledge that I am speaking to you
+pretty frankly, at any rate!"
+
+Maxfield could not but acknowledge to himself that the young man was
+honest and straightforward, and spoke fairly. He was well-looking too,
+and had the air of a gentleman, although there was not a trace about him
+of the peculiar airy elegance, the graceful charm of face and figure,
+which made Algernon Errington so attractive. Neither had he Algernon's
+gift of flattery, so adroitly conveyed as to appear unconscious;
+nor--what might, under the present circumstances, have served him
+equally well with the old tradesman--Algernon's good-humoured way of
+taking for granted his own incontestable social superiority over the
+Whitford grocer. Maxfield had his doubts as to whether this young man,
+ex-usher at the Grammar School, a fellow who went about to people's
+houses and gave lessons for money, could prove to be a fine enough match
+for his Rhoda, even though he should become head-master at
+Dorrington--Maxfield had so set his heart on seeing Rhoda "made a lady
+of," in the phraseology of his class.
+
+"I shall have some conversation with my daughter, and let you have my
+answer after that, sir," said he, looking half sullenly, half
+thoughtfully at the suitor. "And as there will be questions of figures
+to go into, maybe, I am not willing to consider the subject more at
+length on the Lord's day."
+
+But I am bound to confess that this was an afterthought on old Max's
+part.
+
+When Diamond had gone, the old man sent for his daughter to come to him
+in the parlour. "You can take yourself off, Betty Grimshaw," said he to
+that respectable spinster, very unceremoniously. "You and James can bide
+in the kitchen till supper's ready. When it is, come and tell me."
+
+Rhoda came, in answer to her father's summons, very calmly. She had, of
+course, expected it. She had quite got over the agitation of the
+interview with her lover, and was her usual sweet, placid self again.
+Yes; she said Mr. Diamond had asked her to marry him, and she was
+willing to marry him if her father would consent. She believed Mr.
+Diamond loved her very much, and she liked him very much. She had been
+afraid of him once because he was so very learned and clever, and seemed
+rather proud and stern. But he was really extremely gentle when you came
+to know him. She was sure he would be kind to her.
+
+"It's not a thing to decide upon all in a moment, Rhoda," said her
+father.
+
+"No, father; but I have thought of it for some time past," answered
+Rhoda, simply.
+
+The old man looked at her with a slight feeling of surprise. "Rhoda has
+a vast deal of common sense," thought he. "She has some of my brains
+inside that pretty brown head of hers, that is so like her poor
+mother's!" Then he said aloud, "You see, this Mr. Diamond is nobody
+after all. A schoolmaster! Well, that's no great shakes."
+
+"Dr. Bodkin is a schoolmaster, father."
+
+"Dr. Bodkin is rector of St. Chad's and D.D., and a man of substance
+besides."
+
+"Mr. Diamond is a gentleman, father. Everybody allows that."
+
+"Do you think you could be happy to be his wife, Rhoda?" As he asked
+this question her father's voice was almost tender, and he placed his
+hand gently on her head.
+
+"Yes, father; I think so. He would take care of me, and be good to me,
+and guide me right. And he would never put himself between you and me,
+father. I mean he would wish me always to be dutiful and affectionate to
+you."
+
+"Well, Rhoda, we must consider. And I hope the Lord will send me wisdom
+in the matter. I would fain see thee happy before I am called away. God
+bless thee, child."
+
+Jonathan Maxfield turned the matter in his mind during the watches of
+the night with much anxious consideration, according to his lights. In
+social status there was truly not much to complain of, he thought. A man
+in a position like that of Dr. Bodkin, who should have money of his own
+(or of his wife's) to render him independent of the profits of his
+place, might come to be a personage of importance. "And money there will
+be; more'n they think for," said old Max to himself. "The young man
+seemed to worship Rhoda; as he ought." She had shown herself to be very
+dutiful, very honest, very sensible on this occasion. "He's out and away
+a better man than that t'other one! Lives clear and clean before the
+world, and is ashamed to look no man in the face."
+
+Thus old Max reflected. And it will be seen that his reflections tended
+more and more to favour the acceptance of Matthew Diamond as his
+son-in-law. Yes; he should be glad to see Rhoda safe and happy under a
+husband's care before he died. And yet--and yet--he felt, as the
+prosperous wooer had felt, a dim sense of dissatisfaction. Old Max could
+not be accused of being sentimental, but he had looked forward to
+Rhoda's marriage as an occasion of triumph and exultation. If she found
+a husband whom he approved of, he would be large and generous in his
+dealings with them. He would show the world that Rhoda Maxfield was no
+tocherless lass, but an heiress, courted, and sought after, and destined
+to belong to a sphere far above that of Whitford shopkeepers. Now the
+husband had been found--he had almost made up his mind as to that--but
+there was no exultation; certainly no triumph. Rhoda was so cool and
+quiet. Very sensible! Oh, admirably sensible; but----. In a word, the
+whole affair seemed a little flat and chilly. Of all the three
+personages chiefly interested, Rhoda was the only one who was conscious
+of no disappointment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Miss Chubb could keep a secret. She was proud of being entrusted with
+one. She was much gratified when Rhoda Maxfield, on the Monday after
+Diamond's proposal, called at the maiden lady's modest lodgings, and
+confided to her the fact that Mr. Diamond had asked her to marry him,
+and that she had accepted him subject to her father's consent. It may
+seem strange that Rhoda should have chosen to make this confidence to
+Miss Chubb, rather than to Mrs. Errington, or to Minnie Bodkin, with
+both of whom she was more intimate. But she told Miss Chubb that she
+wanted her help.
+
+"My help, my dear! I'm sure I don't know how I can help you. But if I
+can I will. And I congratulate you sincerely. I've seen how it would be
+all along. You know I told you that a certain gentleman was falling over
+head and ears in love, a long time ago. Didn't I, now?"
+
+Rhoda acknowledged that it was so; and then she said she had come to ask
+a great favour. Would Miss Chubb mind saying a word or two on Mr.
+Diamond's behalf to her father? "Father told me this morning, after
+breakfast, that he should make some inquiries about Mr. Diamond. I am
+quite sure that nothing will come out that is not honourable to him; I
+am not the least afraid of that. And I believe Dr. Bodkin will praise
+him very highly, but he will not perhaps say the sort of things that
+would please father most. He will tell him what a good scholar he is,
+and all that, but he will never think of making father understand that
+Mr. Diamond is looked upon as being as much a gentleman as he is
+himself. Gentlefolks like Dr. Bodkin take those things for granted. But
+father would like to be told them. He thinks so very much of my
+marrying--above my own class, for, of course, I have learnt enough to
+know that Mr. Diamond belongs to a different sort of people from mine."
+
+"I understand, my dear," returned Miss Chubb, nodding her head shrewdly.
+"And you may depend on my doing my best, if I have the chance. But I'm
+afraid it is not likely that Mr. Maxfield will consult me on the
+subject."
+
+"I told him to come to you. Father knows you are one of the few people
+with whom Mr. Diamond has associated in Whitford."
+
+"Why don't you send him to Mrs. Errington? Oh, I forgot! Your father and
+she are two." Miss Chubb laughed to cover a little confusion on her own
+part, for she guessed that Rhoda might have other reasons for not asking
+Mrs. Errington's testimony in favour of her suitor. Then she added
+quickly, "Or Minnie Bodkin, now! Minnie's word would go farther with
+your father than mine would. And Minnie and Mr. Diamond are such
+cronies. You had better send him to Minnie."
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"But why not? Good gracious, she is the very person!"
+
+"No, I think not. We don't wish it known until father has given his
+decided consent. I have only told you in confidence, Miss Chubb."
+
+"But--if the doctor knows it, Minnie must know it! And if I know it, why
+shouldn't she?"
+
+"No, thank you. I don't want to ask Miss Minnie about it."
+
+"I wonder why that is, now!" pondered Miss Chubb, when Rhoda was gone.
+And very probably Rhoda could not have told her why.
+
+Old Maxfield duly paid his visit to Miss Chubb. The good-natured little
+woman waited at home all day lest she should miss him. And about an hour
+after her early dinner Mr. Maxfield sent in his respects, and would be
+glad to have a word with her if she were at leisure.
+
+"I hope you will overlook the intrusion, ma'am," said Maxfield, standing
+up with his hat in his hand, just inside the door of the little
+sitting-room, where Miss Chubb asked him to walk in.
+
+"No intrusion at all, Mr. Maxfield! I'm very glad to see you. Please to
+sit down."
+
+He obeyed, and holding his thick stick upright before him, and his hat
+on his knees, he thus began:
+
+"I'm not a-going to waste your time and mine with vain and worldly
+discourse, ma'am. I am a man as knows the value of time, thanks be! And
+I have a serious matter on my mind. You know my daughter Rhoda?"
+
+"I know Rhoda, and like her, and admire her very much."
+
+"Yes; Rhoda is a girl such as you don't see many like her. There's a
+young man seeking her in marriage."
+
+"I'm not surprised at that!"
+
+"No; there has been several others too. But she gave 'em no
+encouragement; nor should I have been willing that she should. Some of
+them were persons in my own rank of life, and that would not do for
+Rhoda."
+
+"I think you are quite right there, Mr. Maxfield. Rhoda is naturally
+very refined, and she has associated a good deal with persons of
+cultivated manners. I don't think Rhoda would be happy if she were
+obliged to give up certain little graces of life, which a great many
+excellent people can do without perfectly well."
+
+Maxfield nodded approvingly. "You speak with a good deal of judgment,
+ma'am," said he, with the air of a recognised authority on wisdom. "But
+it isn't only that. Rhoda will have money--a great deal of money--more
+than some folks that holds their heads very high ever had or will have.
+Now it is but just and rightful that I should expect her husband to
+bring some advantages in return."
+
+"Of course. And--ahem!--I'm sure you are too sensible a man not to
+consider that the best thing a husband could bring in exchange would be
+an honest, loving heart, and a real esteem and respect for your
+daughter."
+
+Little Miss Chubb became quite fluttered after making this speech, and
+coloured as if she had been a girl of eighteen.
+
+"Not at all," returned old Max decisively. "The loving heart and the
+esteem and respect are due to my Rhoda if she hadn't a penny. In return
+for her fortin' I expect something over and above."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Chubb, a good deal taken aback.
+
+"Now I don't feel sure that the young man in question has that something
+over and above. It is Mr. Matthew Diamond, tutor at the Grammar School
+in this town."
+
+"A most excellent young man! And, I'm sure, most devotedly in love with
+Rhoda."
+
+"But very poor, and not of much account in the world, as far as I can
+make out."
+
+"Oh, don't say that, Mr. Maxfield! He is proud and shy, and has kept
+himself aloof from society because he chose to do so. But he would be a
+welcome guest anywhere in the town or county. Young Mr. Pawkins, of
+Pudcombe Hall, quite courts him; he is always asking him to go over
+there."
+
+Thus much and more Miss Chubb valiantly spoke on behalf of Matthew
+Diamond in his character of Rhoda's wooer. And then she expatiated on
+the excellent position he would hold as master of Dorrington School. It
+was such a "select seminary;" and so many of the first county people
+sent their boys there. "Dear me," said Miss Chubb, "it seems to me to be
+the very position for Rhoda! Not too far from Whitford, and yet not too
+near--of course she couldn't keep up all her old acquaintances here,
+could she?--and altogether so refined, and scholastic, and quiet! And
+really, Mr. Maxfield, see how everything turns out for the best. I
+thought at one time that young Errington was very much smitten with
+Rhoda; but, if she had taken him, you wouldn't have been so satisfied
+with her position in life now, would you? With all his talent and
+connection, see what a poor place he has of it. Mr. Diamond has done
+best, ten to one."
+
+This was a master-stroke, and made a great impression on old Max. Not
+that the latter even now was at all dazzled by the prospect of having
+the head-master of Dorrington School for his son-in-law. But Miss
+Chubb's allusion did suffice to show him that the world would consider
+Diamond to be a triumphantly successful man in comparison with
+Errington.
+
+"Oh, him!" said Maxfield in a tone of bitter contempt. "No; such as him
+was not for Miss Maxfield. And I'll tell you, moreover, that I don't
+know but what she's throwing herself away more or less if she takes this
+other. She's a great catch for him; I know the world, and I know that
+she is a great catch. But I've felt latterly one or two warnings that my
+end is near----"
+
+"Dear me, Mr. Maxfield! Don't say so! I'm sure you look very hearty!"
+exclaimed Miss Chubb, much startled by this cool announcement.
+
+"That my end is near," repeated old Max doggedly, "and I wish to set my
+house in order, and see my daughter provided for, before I go. And she
+seems to be contented with this young man. Rhoda ain't just easy to
+please. It might be a long time, if ever, before she found some one to
+suit her so well."
+
+Miss Chubb was a little shocked at this singularly prosaic and
+unemotional way of treating the subject of love and marriage, as to
+which she herself preserved the most romantic freshness of ideas. She
+would have liked the young couple to be like the lovers in a story-book,
+and the father to bestow his daughter and his blessing with tears of
+joy. However, she did her best to encourage Mr. Maxfield in giving his
+consent after his own fashion, and they parted on excellent terms with
+each other.
+
+"That dry old chip, Jonathan Maxfield, has been to me to-day," said Dr.
+Bodkin after dinner to his wife and daughter. "He came to ask me what
+prospect I thought Diamond had of getting the mastership of Dorrington,
+explaining to me that Diamond was a suitor for his daughter's hand. It
+took me quite by surprise. Had you any inkling of the matter, Minnie?"
+
+"Oh yes, papa."
+
+"Dear me! Well, women see these things so quickly! H'm! Well, Master
+Diamond has shown good taste, I must say. That little Rhoda is the
+prettiest girl I know. And such a sweet, soft, lovable creature! I think
+she's too good for him."
+
+"It is a singular thing, but I have remarked very often that men in
+general are apt to think pretty girls too good for anybody but
+themselves!"
+
+The doctor frowned, and then smiled. "Have you so, Saucebox?" he said.
+
+"I don't know about her being too good for him," said Mrs. Bodkin, in
+her quick, low tones; "but I suppose he knows very well what he is
+about. Old Maxfield has feathered his nest very considerably. It will be
+a very good match for a poor man like Matthew Diamond."
+
+Mrs. Bodkin had for some time past exhibited symptoms of dislike to
+Diamond. She never had a good word for him; she even was almost
+rancorous against him at times, although she seldom allowed the feeling
+to express itself in words before her daughter. Minnie understood it all
+very well. "Poor mother!" she thought to herself, "she cannot forgive
+him. I wish I could persuade her that there is nothing to forgive. How
+could he help it if I was a fool?" Yet the mother and daughter had never
+exchanged a word on the subject. And Minnie comforted herself with the
+conviction that her mother was the only person in the world who guessed
+her secret. "Mamma has a sixth sense where I am concerned," said she to
+herself.
+
+"I hope you said a good word for the lovers to Mr. Maxfield, papa," she
+said aloud, in a clear, cheerful voice.
+
+"I had not much to say. I told him that I thought Diamond stood a good
+chance of getting Dorrington School."
+
+"When will it be known positively, papa?"
+
+"About Dorrington? Oh, before Christmas. I should say by the end of the
+first week in December. Diamond will be a loss to me, but I shall be
+glad of his promotion. He's a gentleman, and a very good fellow,
+although his manner is a trifle self-opiniated. And," added the doctor,
+shaking his head and lowering his voice as one does who is forced to
+admit a painful truth, "I am sorry to say that his views as to the use
+of the Digamma are by no means sound."
+
+"Perhaps Rhoda won't find that a drawback to her happiness!" said
+Minnie, laughing her sweet, musical laugh.
+
+"Probably not, Puss!"
+
+Then the Rev. Peter Warlock and Mr. Dockett dropped in. A whist-table
+was made up in the drawing-room. The doctor and Mr. Dockett won three
+rubbers out of four against Mrs. Bodkin and the curate. And the
+latter--being seated where he could command a full view of Minnie as she
+reclined near the fire with a book--made two revokes, and drew down upon
+himself a very severe homily and a practical lecture or short course on
+the science of whist, illustrated by all the errors he had made during
+the evening, from Dr. Bodkin. For the doctor, although he liked to win,
+cared not for inglorious victory, and was almost as indignant with his
+opponents as with his partner for any symptom of slovenly play. The
+Reverend Peter's brow grew serious, even to gloom, and it seemed to him
+as if the doctor's scolding were almost more than human patience could
+endure. "I don't mind losing my sixpences," thought the curate, "and I
+could make up my mind to sacrificing an hour or two over those
+accursed," (I'm afraid he did mentally use that strong expression!)
+"those thrice-accursed bits of pasteboard. But to be lectured and
+scolded at into the bargain----!" He arose from the green table with an
+almost defiant sullenness.
+
+However, when the tray was brought in and the victimised gentleman had
+comforted his inner man with hot negus, and was at liberty to sip it in
+close proximity to Miss Bodkin's chair, and had received one or two kind
+looks from Miss Bodkin's eyes, and several kind words from Miss Bodkin's
+lips, his heart grew soft within him, and he began to think that even
+six, ten--a dozen rubbers of whist with the doctor would not be too high
+a price to pay for these privileges! Then they talked of Diamond's
+engagement to Rhoda--it had been spoken of all over Whitford hours
+ago!--and of his prospects. And Mr. Warlock was quite effusive in his
+rejoicings on both scores. He had been dimly jealous of Minnie's regard
+for Diamond, and was heartily glad of the prospect of getting rid of
+him. Mr. Dockett, too, seemed to think the match a desirable one. He
+pursed up his mouth and looked knowing as he dropped a mysterious hint
+as to the extent of Rhoda's dowry. "I made old Max's will myself," said
+he; "and without violating professional secrecy, I may confirm what I
+hear old Max bruits abroad at every opportunity--namely, that he is a
+warm man--a very warm man in--deed! But I'm sure Mr. Diamond is a young
+man of sound principles, and will make the girl a good husband. And it
+is decided promotion for her too, you know. A grocer's daughter! Eh? I'm
+sure I wish them well most sincerely." And shall we blame Mr. Dockett
+if, in his fatherly anxiety, he rejoiced at the removal of a dangerous
+rival to his little Ally, on whom young Pawkins had recently bestowed a
+good deal of attention whenever Rhoda Maxfield was out of his reach?
+
+"I never knew such a popular engagement," said Dr. Bodkin, innocently.
+"Everybody seems to approve! One might almost fear it could not be a
+case of true love, it runs so very smooth. There does not appear to be a
+single objection."
+
+"Except the Digamma, papa!"
+
+"Except the Digamma," echoed the doctor merrily. And when he was alone
+with his wife that night, he remarked to her that he was immensely
+thankful to see the great improvement in their beloved child this
+winter.
+
+"Minnie is certainly stronger," said the mother.
+
+"And in such excellent spirits!" said the father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+The days passed by and brought no letter, in answer to Castalia's, from
+Lord Seely. Dreary were the hours in Ivy Lodge. The wife was devoured by
+passionate jealousy and a vain yearning for affection; the husband found
+that even the bright, smooth, hard metal of his own character was not
+impervious to the corrosive action of daily cares, regrets, and
+apprehensions. Algernon was not apt to hate. He usually perceived the
+absurd side of persons who were obnoxious to him with too keen an
+amusement to detest them; and the inmost feeling of his heart with
+respect to his fellow-creatures in general approached, perhaps, as
+nearly to perfect indifference as it is given to a mortal to attain. But
+it was not possible to preserve a condition of indifference towards
+Castalia. She was a thorn in his flesh, a mote in his eye, a weariness
+to his spirit; and he began to dislike the very sight of the sallow,
+sickly face, red-eyed too often, and haggard with discontent, that met
+his view whenever he was in his own home. It was the daily "worry" of
+it, he told himself, that was unendurable. It was the being shut up with
+her in a box like Ivy Lodge, where there was no room for them to get
+away from each other. If he could have shared a mansion in Grosvenor
+Square with Castalia he might have got on with her well enough! But
+then, that mansion in Grosvenor Square would have made so many things
+different in his life.
+
+At length one day came a letter to Castalia, with the London post-mark
+and sealed with the well-known coat of arms, but it did not bear Lord
+Seely's frank. Another name was scrawled in the corner, and the
+direction was written in Lady Seely's crooked, cramped little
+characters.
+
+"I'm afraid Uncle Val must be ill!" exclaimed Castalia, opening the
+letter with a trembling hand. She was so weak and nervous now that the
+most trifling agitation made her heart beat painfully. My lady's epistle
+was not long, and, as a knowledge of its contents is essential to the
+due comprehension of this story, it is given in full, with her
+ladyship's own phraseology and orthography:--
+
+     "MY DEAR CASTALIA,--I cannot think what on earth you are about
+     to write such letters to your uncle. Go abroad, indeed! I
+     suppose Ancram would like the embassy to St. Petersburg, or to
+     be governor of the Ionian Islands. It's all nonsense, and you
+     had better put such ideas out of your head at once, and for
+     all. I should think you might know that we have other people to
+     think of besides your husband, especially after all we have
+     done for him. Your uncle is very ill in bed with an attack of
+     the gout, and can't write himself. The doctor thinks he won't
+     be about again for weeks. You can guess what trouble this
+     throws on to my shoulders, so I hope you won't worry me by any
+     more such letters as the last. As if there was not anxiety
+     enough, Fido had a fit on Thursday. I hope you are pretty well.
+     What a blessing you've no sign of a family. With only you two
+     to keep, you ought to do very well on Ancram's salary, and you
+     can tell him I say so. Yours affectionately,
+
+     "B. SEELY."
+
+"Poor Uncle Val!" exclaimed Castalia, dropping the letter from her hand.
+"I was afraid he was ill."
+
+"Pshaw! A touch of the gout won't kill him," said Algernon, who had been
+reading over her shoulder. "But it's deuced unfortunate for me that he
+should be laid up at this time, and quite helpless in the hands of that
+old catamaran."
+
+"Poor Uncle Val! Perhaps he never got my letter at all."
+
+"Nothing more likely, if my lady could prevent his getting it."
+
+"Perhaps, when he gets better, I can write to him again, and ask
+him----"
+
+"When he gets better? Oh yes, certainly. We have plenty of time. There
+is no hurry, of course!"
+
+"I see that you are speaking satirically, Ancram, but I don't know why."
+
+Her husband shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the room. As he
+left the house he was met at the garden-gate by a bright-eyed,
+consumptive-looking lad, in shabby working clothes, who touched his cap,
+and held out a paper to Algernon. "What do you want?" asked the latter.
+"Mr. Gladwish, sir. His account, if you please, sir."
+
+"And who the devil is Mr. Gladwish?"
+
+"The shoemaker, sir."
+
+"Oh! Mr. Gladwish, then, is an extremely importunate, impatient,
+troublesome fellow. This is the third or fourth time within a very few
+weeks that he has sent in his bill. I'm not accustomed to that sort of
+thing. I don't understand it. Don't give me the paper, boy. Take it into
+the house."
+
+"Please, sir," began the lad, and stopped, hesitatingly. Then seeing
+that Mr. Errington was walking off without taking any further notice of
+him, he repeated in a louder, firmer tone, "Please, sir, Mr. Gladwish is
+really in want of the money. He has two of the children bad with fever.
+And I was to say that even five pounds on account would be acceptable."
+
+"Five pounds! He's too modest. I haven't got five pounds, nor five
+minutes. I'm busy."
+
+"Then, I'm sorry to say, sir, that Mr. Gladwish will take legal
+proceedings for the debt at once. He told me to tell you so."
+
+"Nice state of things!" muttered Algernon, as he walked towards the
+post-office, with his head bent down and his hands deep in his pockets.
+"But that's nothing. It's those cursed bills in Maxfield's hands that
+are on my mind like lead."
+
+His spirits were not lightened by that which awaited him at the office.
+He had to undergo an interview with the district surveyor, who was very
+grave, not to say severe, in speaking of the irregularities which had
+been complained of, and were looked on as very serious at the head
+office. The surveyor ended by plainly hinting his hope that persons
+having no business at the office would be strictly forbidden from having
+access to it at abnormal hours. "I--I don't understand you," stammered
+Algernon.
+
+"Mr. Errington," said the surveyor, "I am speaking to you, not
+officially, but confidentially, and as man to man. I have been having a
+little conversation with Mr. Gibbs--who seems to have none but good
+feeling towards you, but who--in short, I think it is not needful to be
+more explicit. I advise you in all friendliness to be stern and decisive
+in keeping every person out of this office except such as have
+recognised business to be here. If further trouble arises, I shall have
+to do my duty, and make my report without respect of any persons
+whatsoever."
+
+"Perhaps," said Algernon, who was white to his lips, but otherwise
+apparently unmoved, "perhaps it would be best for me to resign my post
+here at once. If the authorities above me find cause for
+dissatisfaction----"
+
+"I can give you no advice as to that, Mr. Errington. You must know your
+own affairs better than I do."
+
+"There are things which a man can scarcely say even to himself;
+considerations which are painful as they float dimly in one's own mind,
+but which would be unendurable uttered aloud in words. Anything like a
+public scandal--or--or--disgrace to me, would involve a large circle of
+persons--many of them persons of rank and consideration in the world.
+You are possibly aware that--my wife"--there was a peculiar tone in
+Algernon's voice as he said these two words--"is a niece of Lord
+Seely?"
+
+But the official gentleman declined to enter into the question of Mr.
+Errington's family connections. "Oh," said he, coldly; "we must hope
+there will be no question of scandal or disgrace." Then he went away,
+leaving Algernon in a chaos of doubt as to whether he should, or should
+not, speak further on the subject to Obadiah Gibbs. Obadiah Gibbs,
+however, decided the question for him. He came into Algernon's room,
+closing the door carefully behind him, and asked to speak a few words in
+private. Algernon was sitting in the luxurious easy-chair which he had
+had carried into the office for his own use. It was about three o'clock
+in the afternoon of a dull November day. The single window which looked
+on to a white-washed court threw a ghastly pallid light on Algernon's
+face as he sat opposite to it, with his head thrown back against the
+cushions of the high chair. Mr. Gibbs was touched with compassion at
+seeing how changed the bright young face looked since he had first been
+acquainted with it. And yet, in truth, the change was not a very deep
+one: it was more in colouring, and the expression of the moment, than in
+any lines which care had graven.
+
+"Come in, Gibbs; come in," said Algernon, with his affable air. The
+clerk seemed the more anxious and disturbed of the two. He sat down on
+the chair Algernon pointed out to him in a constrained posture, and
+seemed to have some difficulty in beginning to speak, albeit not a man
+usually liable to embarrassment of manner. His superior stretched his
+feet out nearer to the hearth, and slightly moved his white hand to and
+fro, looking, as a child might have done, at the glitter of a ring he
+wore in the firelight.
+
+"Mr. Wing did not seem very well pleased, sir," said Gibbs, after
+clearing his throat.
+
+"Of course he had to appear displeased, whether he was or not, Gibbs. A
+little hocus-pocus, a little official solemnity, is the thing to assume,
+I suppose. I think that man's nose is the very longest I ever saw.
+Remarkable nose, eh, Gibbs?"
+
+"But, sir," continued Gibbs, declining to discuss the surveyor's nose,
+"he said that from inquiries that had been made, it's pretty certain
+that the missing letters were--stolen--they must have been stolen--at
+Whitford."
+
+"Very intelligent on the part of the official, Mr. Wing! Only I think
+you and I had come to pretty nearly the same conclusion before."
+
+"He made strict inquiries about the people in the office here, and I had
+to give him what information I could, sir."
+
+"Of course, of course, Gibbs! I quite understand," said Algernon,
+putting his hand out to shake that of the clerk with so frank a
+cordiality that the latter felt the tears spring into his eyes as he
+took the cool white hand into his own. "I have felt very much for you,
+Mr. Errington," said he. "Your position is a trying one, indeed. I would
+do almost anything in my power to set your mind more at rest. But I'm
+sorry to say that I have an unpleasant matter to speak of."
+
+"I wonder," thought Algernon, leaning back in his chair once more,
+"whether my friend Obadiah conceives our conversation hitherto to have
+been of an agreeable and entertaining nature, that he now announces
+something unpleasant by way of a change!"
+
+"You will understand," said Gibbs, "that I am speaking to you in the
+very strictest confidence. I should be sorry for it to come out that I
+had meddled in the matter. Nor, sir, would it be well for you to have it
+known that I gave you any warning."
+
+"I wish the old bore would not be so confoundedly long-winded!" thought
+Algernon, nodding meanwhile with an air of thoughtful attention.
+
+But Gibbs was prone to long-windedness and to the making of speeches.
+And he now availed himself of the opportunity of haranguing the
+postmaster (one of whose chief faults was a vivacious impatience of his
+clerk's eloquence) to the fullest extent. But the gist of what he had to
+say was this: Roger Heath, the man whose money-letter had been lost,
+now declared that his correspondent at Bristol, being interrogated in
+the hope that he might be able to furnish some clue to the
+identification of the missing notes, stated that he remembered one was
+endorsed in blue ink instead of black: and that he, Heath, had reason to
+know that one of the notes paid by young Mrs. Errington to Ravell, the
+mercer, had been endorsed in blue ink!
+
+"Now, sir," proceeded Gibbs, "I remember its being a good deal talked of
+in the town at the time, that young Mrs. Errington had money unknown to
+you, and Mrs. Ravell spoke of it to many."
+
+"Damn Mrs. Ravell! What does it all mean, Gibbs?"
+
+Algernon got up from his chair, and leant his elbows on the
+chimney-piece, and hid his face in his hands, but he so stood that he
+could watch the clerk's countenance between his fingers. That
+countenance expressed trouble and compassion. Gibbs got up too, and
+stood looking at Algernon and shaking his head ruefully.
+
+"I thought it well you should know what was being said, Mr. Errington,"
+said he.
+
+"What can I do, Gibbs? How can I stop their cursed tongues?" Algernon
+still spoke with his face hidden.
+
+"No, sir, you cannot stop their tongues, but--you might possibly put a
+stop to what sets their tongues going. Of course, the matter may be all
+explained simply enough. There may be plenty of bank-notes endorsed in
+blue ink----"
+
+"Of course there may! Chattering idiots!"
+
+"And as to that particular note, Mr. Ravell paid it away, as well as the
+others Mrs. Errington gave him, to the agent of a Manchester house he
+deals with, the next day after it came into his hands. I ascertained
+that from Ravell himself."
+
+"I'll have the note traced!" exclaimed Algernon, looking up for the
+first time.
+
+"That would be a difficult matter, sir. It has gone far and wide before
+now."
+
+"I tell you I will have it traced! And I will have that malignant
+scoundrel, Heath, pulled up pretty sharply, if he dares to make any more
+insinuations that----it is not difficult to see what he is driving at!"
+
+Gibbs laid his hand on the young man's shoulder.
+
+"I feel for you, Mr. Errington," he said. "If I did not, I shouldn't put
+myself in the disagreeable position of saying what I have said. I should
+have attended to my own business, and let matters take their course. I
+hope you believe that I had only a kind motive in speaking?"
+
+"I do believe it--heartily!"
+
+"Thank you, sir. Then I shall make bold to give you one word of advice.
+Don't stir in the matter, nor make any threats against any one, until
+you have ascertained from Mrs. Errington where she got the notes that
+she paid to Ravell."
+
+Algernon had bent down his head again, and he now answered without
+looking up:
+
+"No doubt Mrs. Errington can account for them to me, but she is not
+bound to do so to any one else. Nor can I allow any one to hint that she
+is so bound. I should be a blackguard if I could listen to a word of
+that sort."
+
+"I hope it may come right, Mr. Errington. After all, there has been
+nothing, and, so far as I see, there can be nothing, but talk to hurt
+you."
+
+"My good fellow," said Algernon, as he once more gave his hand to his
+clerk, "it's a kind of talk which poisons a man's life. You know that as
+well as I do."
+
+Then Gibbs took his leave of his superior, and went back into the outer
+office to watch over the epistolary correspondence of Whitford. As he
+sat at his desk there his mind was full of sympathy with Algernon
+Errington. "Poor young man! He took it beautifully. It must be a
+terrible blow--an awful blow. But, no doubt, he has had his suspicions
+before now. What a warning against worldly-mindedness! He is a victim to
+that vain and godless woman; and that's all that comes of the marriage
+that so uplifted the heart of his mother. But he would be a beautiful
+character, if he had only got religion, and would leave off profane
+swearing. He is so guileless and outspoken, like a child, almost. Ah,
+poor young man! I hope the Lord may bless this trial to him.
+But--religion or no religion--I don't believe he'll ever be fit to be
+postmaster of Whitford." Thus ran the reflections of Mr. Obadiah Gibbs.
+
+When Algernon reached home that evening, he bade Lydia put up a few
+things for him into a little travelling valise; and when he met his wife
+at the dinner-table, he told her he should go up to London that night by
+the mail-coach. He explained, in answer to her surprised inquiries,
+lamentations, and objections, uttered in a querulous drawl, that he must
+get help from Lord Seely; that it was useless to write to him under the
+present circumstances, seeing that his wife would probably intercept the
+letter; and that, therefore, he had resolved to go to town himself and
+obtain a personal interview with Lord Seely.
+
+"But, Ancram!--what's the use? Why on earth should you fly off in this
+way? I'm sure it won't do! Do you suppose for an instant that Aunt
+Belinda will let you get at him?"
+
+"I must try for it. Things have got to that pass now, that----Do you
+know what happened to me just as I went out after lunch? Gladwish, the
+shoemaker, sent to threaten me with arrest! I shall be walked off to
+prison, I suppose, for a few wretched pairs of abominable shoes. The
+fellow has no more notion of fitting my foot than a farrier."
+
+"To prison! Oh, Ancram! But Gladwish's bill cannot be so very large----"
+
+"Of course it's not 'so very large!'"
+
+"Then, if we paid it, or even part of it----"
+
+"Paid it! Upon my word, Cassy, you are too absurd! 'Paid it!' In the
+first place, I have only a very few pounds in the house--barely enough
+to take me to town, I think; and, in the next place, if I paid Gladwish,
+what would be the result? The butcher, the baker, and the
+candlestick-maker would be all down on me with summonses, and writs, and
+executions, and bedevilments of every imaginable kind. But you have no
+more notion--you take it all so coolly. 'Pay him!' By George! Cassy,
+it's very hard to stand such nonsense!"
+
+Castalia withdrew from the table, and sat down on the little sofa and
+cried. Her husband looked at her across a glass of very excellent
+sherry, which he was just about to hold up to the light. "I think,
+Castalia," he said, "I really do think, that when a man is in such
+trouble as I am, reduced to the brink of ruin, not knowing which way to
+turn for a ten-pound note, struggling, striving, bothering his brains to
+find a way out of the confounded mess, he might expect something more
+cheering and encouraging from his wife than perpetual snivelling." With
+that he cracked a filbert with a sharp jerk of indignation. But
+Algernon's forte was not the minatory or impressively wrathful style of
+eloquence. He could hurl a sarcasm, sharp, light, and polished; but when
+he came to wielding such a ponderous weapon as serious reproof on moral
+considerations, he was apt to make a poor hand of it. It was excessively
+disagreeable, too, to see that woman's thin shoulders moving
+convulsively under her gay-coloured dress, as she sobbed with her head
+buried in the sofa cushions. That really must be put a stop to. So, as
+it appeared evident that scolding would not quench the tears, he tried
+coaxing. The coaxing was not so efficacious as it would have been once.
+Still, Castalia responded to it to the extent of endeavouring to check
+the sobs which still shook her frail chest and throat. "When shall you
+be back, Ancram?" she said, looking beseechingly at him. He answered
+that he hoped to be in Whitford again on Tuesday night, or Wednesday at
+the latest (it was then Monday), and he particularly impressed on her
+the necessity of telling any one who might inquire the cause of his
+absence, that he had been suddenly called up to town by the illness of
+Lord Seely. He had, in fact, said a word or two to that effect when, on
+his way home, he had ordered the fly, which was to carry him and his
+valise to the coach-office. Castalia insisted on accompanying him to the
+coach, despite the damp cold of the night, a proceeding which he did not
+much combat, since he felt it would serve to give colour to his
+statement to the landlord of the "Blue Bell."
+
+"Keep up your spirits, Cassy," he cried, waving his hand from the
+coach-window as he stood in the inn yard, muffled in shawls and furs. "I
+hope I shall bring back good news of your uncle."
+
+Then Castalia was trundled back to Ivy Lodge in the jingling old fly,
+whilst her husband rolled swiftly behind four fleet horses towards
+London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Stiff, tired, and cold, Algernon alighted the next morning at the
+coach-office in London after his night journey. He drove to a
+fashionable hotel not very far from Lord Seely's house, and refreshed
+himself with a warm bath and a luxurious breakfast. By the time that was
+done it was eleven o'clock in the forenoon. He had been considering how
+best to proceed, in a leisurely way, during his breakfast, and had
+decided to go to Lord Seely's house without further delay. He knew Lady
+Seely's habits well enough to feel tolerably sure that she would not be
+out of her bed before eleven o'clock, nor out of her room before
+mid-day. He thought he might gain access to his lordship by a _coup de
+main_, if he so timed his visit as to avoid encountering my lady. So he
+had himself driven to within a few yards of the house, and walked up to
+the well-known door. It was a different arrival from his first
+appearance on that threshold. Algernon did not fail to think of the
+contrast, and he told himself that he had been very badly used by the
+whole Seely family: they had done so infinitely less for him than he had
+expected! The sense of injury awakened by this reflection was as
+supporting to him as a cordial.
+
+The servant who opened the door, and who at once recognised Algernon,
+stared in surprise on seeing him, but was too well trained to express
+emotion in any other way. After a few inquiries about Lord Seely's
+health, Algernon asked if he could be allowed to see his lordship. This,
+however, was a difficult matter. My lord was better, certainly, the
+footman said, but my lady had given strict orders that he was not to be
+disturbed. No one was admitted to his room except the doctor, who would
+not make his visit until late in the afternoon.
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't think of disturbing my lady at this hour," said
+Algernon, "but I must speak with Lord Seely. It is of the very greatest
+importance."
+
+"I'll call Mr. Briggs, sir," the footman was beginning, when Algernon
+stopped him. Mr. Briggs was Lord Seely's own man, and, like all the
+servants in the house, was certain to obey his mistress's orders rather
+than his master's, if the two should happen to conflict. Algernon
+slipped some money into the footman's hand, together with a note which
+he had written that morning. "There, James," said he; "if you will
+manage to convey that into his lordship's own hand, I know he will see
+me. And, moreover, he would be seriously annoyed if I were sent away
+without having spoken to him on business of very great importance."
+
+James reflected that the worst that could happen to him would be a
+scolding from my lady. That was certainly no trifling evil; but he
+decided to risk it, being moved to do so not only by the bribe, but by a
+real liking for young Errington, who was generally a favourite with
+other people's servants.
+
+The note which James carried upstairs was as follows:--
+
+     "MY LORD,--I write in the driest and most matter-of-fact terms
+     I can find, to ask for an interview with your lordship with the
+     least possible delay, being unwilling to make, or to appear to
+     make, any claim on the regard you once professed for me, or on
+     the connection which unites us, and desiring you to understand
+     that I appeal to you on behalf of another person; and that,
+     were it not for that other person I should ask no more favours
+     of your lordship--nor, perhaps, need any.
+
+     "A. ANCRAM ERRINGTON."
+
+In a few moments James came running downstairs and begged Algernon,
+almost in a whisper, to walk up to his lordship's room.
+
+Lord Seely was not in bed. He was reclining in an easy-chair, with one
+foot and leg supported on cushions. He seemed ill and worn, but his dark
+eyes sparkled as he looked eagerly at Algernon, who entered quietly and
+closed the door behind him. "What is it? I'm afraid you have bad news,
+Ancram," said Lord Seely, holding out his hand.
+
+Algernon did not take it. He bowed very gravely, and stood opposite to
+the little nobleman.
+
+"Castalia----!" cried Lord Seely, much dismayed by the young man's
+manner. "Don't keep me in suspense, for God's sake! Is she ill? Is she
+dead?"
+
+"No, my lord. Castalia is not dead. Neither, so far as I know, is she
+ill--in body."
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"I must crave a patient hearing, my lord. I regret to have to trouble
+you whilst you are ill and suffering; but what I have to say must be
+said without delay. May I ask if there is anyone within hearing?"
+
+"No! No one. You can close the door of that dressing-closet if you
+choose. But there is no one there."
+
+Algernon adopted the suggestion at once, and then sat down opposite to
+Lord Seely's chair. His whole manner of proceeding was so unusual and
+unexpected that it produced a very painful impression on Lord Seely.
+Algernon rather enjoyed this. He began to speak with only one distinct
+purpose in his mind: namely, to frighten his wife's uncle into making a
+strong effort to help him out of Whitford. How much pressure would be
+necessary to achieve that purpose he could not yet tell. And he began to
+speak with a sort of reckless abandonment of himself to the guidance of
+the moment, a mood of mind which had become very frequent with him of
+late.
+
+"Did your lordship receive a letter from Castalia begging you to obtain
+a post abroad for me?"
+
+"Certainly. My wife answered it. I--I was unable to write myself. But I
+intended to reply more at length so soon as I should be better."
+
+"Castalia showed me Lady Seely's reply. That was the first intimation I
+had of Castalia's having made such an application. I mention this
+because I know your lordship suspected me of being the prime mover in
+all her applications to you for assistance."
+
+Lord Seely coloured a little as he replied, "It was natural to suppose
+that you influenced your wife, Ancram."
+
+"Your lordship must not judge all cases by your own," returned the young
+man, with a candid raising of his brows; and the colour on Lord Seely's
+face deepened to a dark red flush, which faded, leaving him paler than
+before. "As I said," continued Algernon, "I did not know what it was
+that Castalia had asked you to do for us. But, now that I do know it, I
+may say at once that I heartily concur with her as to its desirability."
+
+"I cannot agree with you there; but, even if it were so, I assure you it
+is out of my power----"
+
+"Allow me, my lord! I must tax your patience to listen to what I have to
+say before you give me any positive answer."
+
+Lord Seely leaned back in his chair, and motioned with his head for
+Algernon to proceed. The latter went on:
+
+"Exile from England and from all the hopes and ambitions not very
+unnatural at my age, is not such an alluring prospect that I should be
+suspected of having incited Castalia to write as she has done? However,
+I will say no more as to my own private and personal feelings in the
+matter. I did not mean to allude to them. I beg your pardon." Algernon
+sat leaning a little forward in his chair. His hands were clasped
+loosely together, and rested on his knees. He kept his eyes gloomily
+fixed on the carpet for the most part, and only raised them occasionally
+to look up at Lord Seely without raising his head at the same time. "I
+could not write what I had to say to you, my lord. I dared not write it.
+Perhaps, even, if I had written, the letter might not have reached you
+at once; and I could not wish its falling into other hands, so I came
+away from Whitford last night quite suddenly. I have no leave of
+absence; the clerk at the post-office, even, did not know I was coming
+away."
+
+"Do you mean to say, Ancram, that you have deliberately risked the loss
+of your situation?"
+
+"My 'situation' was as good as lost already. Do you know what happened
+yesterday, Lord Seely? I was subjected to the agreeable ordeal of a
+visit from the surveyor of the postal district in which Whitford is
+situated. I was catechised magisterially. The whole office--including my
+private room--was subjected to a sort of scrutiny. There have been a
+great many letters missing at Whitford lately; some money-letters. That
+is to say, letters which should have passed through our office have
+never reached their destination. Nothing has been traced. Nothing is
+known with certainty. But the concurrence of various circumstances
+points to Whitford as the place where the letters have been--stolen. I
+am told on all hands that such things never happened in Mr. Cooper's
+time. (Mr. Cooper was my predecessor as postmaster.) I am scowled at,
+and almost openly insulted in the streets, by a miller, or a baker, or
+something of the kind, who lives in the neighbourhood. He declares he
+has lost a considerable sum of money by the post, and plainly considers
+me responsible. You may guess how pleasant my 'situation' has become in
+consequence of these things being known and talked about."
+
+"But, good Heavens, Ancram----! I don't comprehend your way of looking
+at the matter. These irregularities are doubtless very distressing, but
+surely your rational course would be to use every effort to discover the
+cause of them and set matters right; not run away as if you were a
+culprit!"
+
+"Your lordship judges without knowing all the facts."
+
+"Pardon me, Ancram, but no facts can justify such rash behaviour. I have
+some experience of men and of the world, and I give you my deliberate
+opinion that you have acted very indiscreetly, to say the least. I am
+disappointed in you, Ancram. I regret to say it, but I am disappointed
+in you. You have shown a want of steadiness, and--and--almost of common
+sense! The more I think of it, the more I disapprove of the step you
+have taken. It shows a great want of consideration for others; for your
+wife. If you were alone it might be pardonable--although, excessively
+ill-judged--to throw up your post at the first experience of the rough
+side of things. We all have difficulties to contend with. The most
+exalted position is not secure from them, as, indeed, it would appear
+almost superfluous to point out! The record of my own--my own--official
+life might supply you with more than one example of the value of
+steadfast energy, and an inflexible determination to conquer
+antagonistic circumstances."
+
+Poor Lord Seely! He had been subdued by sickness more completely under
+the dominion of his wife than could ever be the case when he was able to
+move about, to get away from her, and to converse with persons who were
+not entirely devoid of any semblance of respect for his opinion. Lady
+Seely, it might be said, respected nobody--a point of resemblance
+between herself and her young kinsman which had not led to any very
+great sympathy or harmony between them; for, as it is your professed
+joker who can least bear to be laughed at, so those persons who most
+flippantly ignore any sentiment of reverence towards others are by no
+means prepared to tolerate a want of deference towards themselves.
+Certainly, my lady had snubbed her husband during his illness almost
+unmercifully; she wished him to get better, and she took care that the
+doctor's orders were faithfully carried out. But her course of treatment
+was anything but soothing to the spirit, and my lord's pet vanities
+received no consideration whatever from her. His mind being now relieved
+from the first shock of apprehension which Algernon's sudden visit had
+occasioned (for, though things were bad, it was a relief to him to find
+that Castalia was safe and well), he could not resist the temptation to
+lecture a little, and be pompous, and display his suppressed self-esteem
+with a little more emphasis than usual.
+
+Poor Lord Seely! By so doing he unconsciously drew down a terrible
+catastrophe. It seemed a trivial cause to determine Algernon to speak as
+he next spoke--as trivial as the heedless footfall or too-loudly spoken
+word which brings the avalanche toppling down from the rock.
+
+"The selfishness and egotism of the man are incredible!" thought
+Algernon, looking at Lord Seely. "Not one word of sympathy with me! Not
+a syllable to show that my feelings are worthy of any consideration
+whatever. Pompous little ass!" Then he said, very gravely and quietly,
+"I think, my lord, that you have forgotten what I said to you in the
+hurried note I sent upstairs, about appealing to you on behalf of
+another person."
+
+Lord Seely had forgotten it.
+
+"Ha!--no, Ancram. I--I remember what you said; but, I--I take leave to
+think that if you wish to consider that other person--it is your wife
+of whom you spoke, I presume?"
+
+Algernon bowed his head.
+
+"If you wish to consider that person effectually, you ought not to have
+flown off at a tangent in the manner you have done. You
+might--ahem!--you might, at least, have written to me for advice."
+
+"Lord Seely, I am sorry to say that you are under an entire
+misapprehension as to the state of the case."
+
+Lord Seely was not accustomed to be told that he was under an entire
+misapprehension on any subject.
+
+"If so, Ancram," he answered, with some hauteur, "the fault must be
+yours. I believe I should succeed in comprehending any moderately clear
+and accurate statement."
+
+"I will try to speak plainly. During the last six weeks I have been made
+seriously unhappy by rumours floating about in Whitford respecting my
+wife."
+
+"Rumours----! Respecting your wife?"
+
+"They reach my ears through various channels, and appear to be rife in
+every social circle in the place."
+
+"Rumours! Of what nature?"
+
+There was a little pause; then Algernon said, "The least terrible of
+them is, that Castalia's reason is affected, and that she is not
+responsible for her actions."
+
+Lord Seely started into a more upright posture, and then sank back again
+with a suppressed cry of pain. Algernon went on, without looking up:
+"Her manner has been very singular of late. She has taken to wandering
+about alone, and to make her wanderings as secretly as may be; she
+haunts the post-office in my absence, carefully informing herself
+beforehand whether I am in my private room or not; and if I am reported
+absent, she enters it, searches the drawers, and, I have the strongest
+reason to believe--indeed I may say I know--that she has tampered with a
+little cabinet in which I keep a few private papers, and taken letters
+out of it!"
+
+"Ancram!"
+
+"These things, my lord, are commonly reported and spoken of by every
+gossiping tongue in Whitford. I can't help the people talking. Castalia
+is not liked there; her manners are unpopular, and even the persons who
+were inclined to receive her kindly for my sake have been offended and
+alienated. Still, the things I have told you are facts."
+
+"I am shocked--I am surprised--and, forgive me, Ancram, a little
+incredulous. You may have listened to malicious tongues; you say that my
+niece is not liked by the--the class of persons with whom she now
+associates, and it may be----"
+
+"I am sorry to say, my lord, that Castalia cannot be said to associate
+with any 'class of persons' in Whitford, for latterly it has become
+plain to me that all our acquaintances have given her the cold
+shoulder."
+
+The mingled expression of amazement, incredulity, and offended pride on
+Lord Seely's face, when Algernon made this announcement, did not operate
+with the latter as an inducement to spare him. Indeed, he had now gone
+almost too far to stop short. He held up his hand to deprecate any
+interruption, and said, "One moment, my lord! I must ask you a question.
+Have you at any time privately supplied Castalia with money unknown to
+me?"
+
+"Never! I----"
+
+"Then, Lord Seely, I have only one more circumstance to add: Castalia,
+the other day, paid a bill of considerable amount to a mercer in
+Whitford without my knowledge, and without my knowing where she found
+the money to pay it; and yesterday my clerk, an honest fellow and much
+attached to me, told me in private and in strict confidence, that it was
+currently reported in the town that one of the notes paid by my wife to
+the mercer was endorsed in the same way as a note in one of the missing
+money-letters I have told you of."
+
+"Good God, Ancram! what do you mean?"
+
+"I told you that the least terrible rumour about Castalia was the rumour
+that her mind was affected."
+
+Lord Seely's face was almost lead-coloured. He pressed his hands one on
+each side of his head with a gesture of hopeless bewilderment. "This is
+the most appalling thing!" he murmured, and his voice was scarcely
+audible as he said it.
+
+"I had to make my choice without delay, Lord Seely. I regret to inflict
+this blow on you in your present suffering state of body; but, if I
+spared you, I could not have spared Castalia. I chose to spare my wife."
+
+"Yes, yes;--quite--quite right. Spare Castalia! I--I thank you,
+Ancram--for choosing to spare her rather than me." The poor little
+nobleman's face was convulsed by a kind of spasm for a second or two,
+and then he burst into tears, sobbing out, with his face hidden in his
+trembling hands, "What is to be done? Gracious heavens! what is to be
+done?"
+
+"I talked about choosing to spare Castalia," said Algernon, looking at
+her uncle with a sort of furtive curiosity and a feeling that was more
+akin to contempt than pity, "but I don't know how long it may be in my
+power, or anyone's power, to spare her. The only chance for either of us
+is to get away out of Whitford as quickly as possible."
+
+"But--but----My head is so confused. I am stunned, Ancram--stunned!
+But--what was I going to say? Oh! have you interrogated Castalia? What
+representations does she make as to the money? There is so much to be
+said--to be asked. It cannot be but that there is some error. It cannot
+be. My poor Castalia!"
+
+"Interrogating Castalia would be quite useless; worse than useless. You
+don't know what her behaviour and temper have been lately. She is
+utterly unreasonable. Ask anyone who knows our house in Whitford; ask my
+servants what my home has been latterly. I have bought the honour of
+your lordship's alliance somewhat dear."
+
+Lord Seely sank down in his chair as if he had been struck, and his grey
+head drooped on his breast. "What can I do, Ancram?" he asked, in a tone
+so contrasted in its feebleness with his usual self-assured, rather
+strident voice, that it might have touched some persons with compassion.
+"What can I do?" Then he seemed to make a strong effort to recover some
+energy of manner, and added, "If it were not for this unfortunate attack
+which disables me, I would return with you to Whitford to-night. I would
+see Castalia myself."
+
+Algernon heartily congratulated himself on the fit of gout which kept
+Lord Seely a prisoner. There was nothing he less desired than that her
+uncle should be confronted with Castalia. He represented that the only
+efficacious help Lord Seely could give under the circumstances would be
+to furnish them with money to pay their debts and leave Whitford
+forthwith. He pointed out that Castalia must have felt this herself,
+when she wrote urging her uncle to get them some post abroad. Algernon
+became eager and persuasive as he spoke, and offered a glimpse to the
+man before him, whose pride and whose affections were equally wounded,
+of a future which should make some amends for the bitter present--a
+future in which Castalia might have peace and safety at least, and in
+which her mind might regain its balance. He would be gentle, and
+patient, and tender with her; and, if they were in a position that
+offered no such temptations as the post-office at Whitford, the anxiety
+to all who regarded Castalia would be greatly lessened. Lord Seely was,
+as he had said, too much stunned by the whole interview to follow
+Algernon's rapid eloquence step by step. He felt that he must have time
+for reflection; besides, he was physically exhausted. He bade Algernon
+leave him for a time, and return later in the day. He would give orders
+that he should be admitted at once. "You--you have not seen my lady?"
+said Lord Seely hesitatingly.
+
+"No; I purposely avoided doing so. She would have naturally inquired the
+cause of my unexpected presence in town, and I could speak of all this
+trouble to nobody on earth but yourself, my lord."
+
+"Right, right, Ancram. But my lady will not fail to learn that you have
+been here, and we must give her some reason."
+
+"I can say, if you choose, that I came to London on post-office
+business."
+
+Lord Seely bowed his head almost humbly, and Algernon left him. He left
+him with an air of sombre resignation, but inwardly he felt himself to
+be master of the situation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+"Rubbish!" cried my lady. "It's a trick. _I_ know the Ancrams, and there
+isn't one of them, and never was one of them--of the Warwickshire
+Ancrams, that is--who would stick at a lie!"
+
+Lady Seely was in a towering passion. She had met Algernon Errington on
+the stairs as he was leaving her husband's room for the second time that
+afternoon. Algernon had slipped past her with a silent bow, and had
+refused to return, although she screamed after him at the full pitch of
+her lungs. Upon this Lady Seely had gone to her husband's room, and in a
+few minutes had drawn from him the confession that he had promised
+Algernon to use his utmost endeavours to obtain a post for him on the
+Continent. And then, on her violent opposition to this scheme, Lord
+Seely had been led on to tell her pretty nearly what Algernon had told
+him; dwelling very strongly on the circumstance that Castalia was in a
+strange, excited state, and might not be deemed responsible for her
+actions. But neither did this terrible revelation make much impression
+on my lady.
+
+"Rubbish!" she said again. "And if she is in this queer excited
+condition, what makes her so?"
+
+"Belinda, you do not realise the full extent. This is a more serious, a
+more frightful matter than you seem to think."
+
+"Oh no it isn't, my lord! You'll see! A young rascal, to come here with
+his cock-and-a-bull stories, and try to frighten you into getting a
+berth for him! Why, there's nothing to be had, if one was willing to
+try, except the consulate at what's-his-name, on the Mediterranean, that
+Mr. Buller mentioned when you spoke to him about my nephew."
+
+"I thought that might be got for Ancram, Belinda."
+
+"Got for Ancram! Fiddlestick's end! What next? If the consulate is to be
+had, Reginald shall have it, that's flat!"
+
+Lord Seely lay back in his chair and groaned.
+
+"Yes," cried his wife, her cheeks flaming with anger until the rouge she
+wore seemed but a pale pigment on the hot colour beneath, "there it is!
+He has made you ever so much worse; upset you completely; thrown you
+back a fortnight, as Dr. Nokes said. He couldn't think what was the
+matter when he came at one o'clock. No more could I. 'My lord appears to
+have been agitated!' said he. Agitated! Yes; _I'd_ agitate that young
+villain with a vengeance if I could get hold of him!"
+
+"But you agitate me--_me_, Belinda. And, let me tell you, that you are
+not showing a proper feeling in the case as regards Castalia; my niece
+Castalia; poor unhappy girl!"
+
+My lady stood up--she had risen to her feet in her wrath against
+Algernon--big, florid, loud of voice, and vehement of will, and looked
+down upon her husband in his invalid's chair. And as she looked into his
+face she perceived, and acknowledged to herself, that it would not do to
+drive him to extremities; that on this occasion neither indolence,
+habit, and bodily weakness on the one hand, nor sheer force of tongue
+and temper on the other, would avail to make him succumb to her. She
+changed her tone, and began to give her view of the case. She gave it
+the more effectively in that she spoke the truth, as far as the
+representation of her genuine opinion went. She did not believe a word
+about Castalia's having stolen money-letters. (Lord Seely winced when
+she blurted out the accusation nakedly in so many words.) Not one word!
+As to the gossip in Whitford, that might be, or might not; they had but
+Ancram's word for it. If Castalia _was_ in this nervous, miserable state
+of mind; if she did pry on her husband, and prowl about the
+post-office, and even open his letters (_that_ might be; nothing more
+likely!); if all these statements were true, what conclusion did they
+point to? Not that Castalia was a thief (my lord put his hand up at the
+word, as if to ward off a stab), but that she was _insanely jealous_.
+
+The suggestion brought a gleam of comfort to Lord Seely. And it approved
+itself to his reason. The one explanation was in harmony with all that
+he knew of his niece's character. The other was not.
+
+"Jealous, eh, Belinda?"
+
+"Of course! _Insanely_ jealous, that always was her character, when she
+lived in our house. She was jealous of Lady Harriet Dormer; she was
+jealous of everybody and everything that Ancram looked at."
+
+"Jealous!" repeated my lord musingly. "But to act so strangely--to
+expose herself to animadversion--to go the length of opening desks and
+letters!--She must have had some cause, some great provocation."
+
+"Nothing more likely! Ancram is good-looking and young; and
+Castalia--isn't."
+
+"But where did she procure that money without her husband's knowledge?"
+
+"Don't know, I'm sure."
+
+"And her extravagance, and running him into debt as she has done--it
+seems to point to some mental aberration, does it not, Belinda?"
+
+"Oh, fiddle-faddle, my lord! _Why_ this, and _how_ that! How do we know
+what truth there is in the whole story?"
+
+"Belinda?"
+
+"Oh, bless you, I'm too old a bird to be caught by any chaff the
+_Ancrams_ can offer me."
+
+"But, good heavens, Belinda, it is utterly incredible----"
+
+"Nothing's incredible of an Ancram in the way of lying," returned the
+great lady of that family with much coolness. "This young jackanapes has
+got into a scrape down at What-do-ye-call-it. Things have gone wrong in
+the office--(I'll be bound he don't mind his business a bit)--he and his
+wife have got into debt between them. He don't like the place; and after
+bothering your life out for money, he comes off here without 'with your
+leave' or 'by your leave,' and asks to be sent abroad. That's my notion
+of the matter. And any way, if I were you, Valentine, I should take no
+sort of action, nor commit myself in any way, until I'd had Castalia's
+version of the story."
+
+Lord Seely pressed his hand to his forehead, and writhed on his chair.
+"I wish to God that I could go to the place and speak with Castalia
+myself!" he cried. "There are things that cannot be written. But here I
+am a prisoner. It is a dreadful misfortune."
+
+"_I_ can't undertake to go trapesing down there in this weather,"
+exclaimed my lady. "And, besides, I wouldn't leave you just now."
+
+Lord Seely by no means wished that his wife should interfere personally
+in the matter. He well knew that nothing but discord was likely to arise
+from any interview between Castalia and her aunt. "There is no one I
+could send," he murmured. "No one I could trust."
+
+"No, no! It would never do to send anybody at all. This kind of family
+wash had better be done in private. I tell you what you do,
+Valentine--you just dictate a letter to me to be sent to Castalia. Send
+it off _at once_. When does Ancram return? To-morrow? Very well, then.
+Send it off _at once_, so that it shall reach Whitford before he does."
+
+"Why so, Belinda?" asked my lord anxiously.
+
+"Why so? Dear me, Valentine; how st----unsuspicious you are! If Ancram
+was there when the letter arrived, do you suppose she would ever get
+it?"
+
+Lord Seely stared at the florid, fat, unfeeling face before him, with a
+sensation of oppression and dismay. How was it possible to attribute
+such actions and motives to persons of one's own family with an air of
+such matter-of-fact indifference? It was not the first time that his
+wife's coarseness of feeling had been thrust on his observation to the
+shocking of his own finer taste and sentiment--for my lord was a
+gentleman at heart--but this was an amount of phlegmatic cynicism which
+hurt him to the core. He could not forget that it was his wife who had
+promoted the marriage of Castalia with this young man. It was his wife
+who had declared that the Honourable Miss Kilfinane was not likely to
+make a better match. It was his wife who had urged him to put young
+Errington into the Whitford Post-office, declaring that the place was in
+every way a suitable one for him. And now it was his wife who coolly
+described Ancram as a wretch, full of the vilest duplicity!
+
+The fact was, that my lady was by no means so indifferent on the subject
+as her words and manner would seem to imply. She was--not pained as Lord
+Seely was, but--angered excessively. She foresaw various troubles to
+herself and her husband--even the distant possibility of having Castalia
+"returned upon their hands," as she phrased it, and of having, sooner or
+later, to find money, or make interest, to get Ancram a berth which she
+would more willingly have bestowed on some of her nearer kith and kin.
+And her fashion of venting her anger was roundly to declare Ancram
+Errington capable of anything! And in her heart she believed him
+capable of a good deal of falsehood.
+
+Lord Seely made no immediate reply to his wife's suggestion. He was ill
+and grieved, and he felt as if his final exit from this world of
+troubles might not be altogether undesirable. His interview with
+Algernon had agitated him terribly. His interview with his
+wife--although she had opened the door for a ray of hope that things
+might be not quite so terribly bad as he had feared--had certainly not
+soothed him. But before the departure of the evening mail that night, he
+had completed and despatched a letter to Castalia. He had insisted on
+writing it with his own hand, sitting up in bed to do so, although his
+fingers were scarcely able to guide the pen.
+
+Meanwhile, Algernon was spending a very pleasant evening. He went to the
+club to which the Honourable Jack Price had introduced him during the
+brief butterfly period of his London existence. There he found the
+genial Jack, friendly, affectionate, expansive, as ever: a trifle
+balder, maybe, but otherwise unchanged. There, too, he found several of
+his former acquaintances ("old friends," he called them), who, after
+having his name recalled to their recollection by Jack Price, said,
+"Hulloa, Errington, where the dooce have you been hiding yourself?" and
+shook hands with the utmost cordiality. Then Jack Price insisted on
+adjourning to a favourite haunt of his, and ordering supper in
+celebration of Algernon's unexpected visit. And the "old friends" were
+flatteringly willing to do Algernon the honour of eating it. They were
+mostly unfledged lads, such as affected very often the society of Jack
+Price, who was really a kind companion, and gave the boys long lectures
+on steadiness of purpose and energy, illustrated by warning examples
+from his own career, and delivered amid such agreeable accompaniments to
+moral reflection as hot whisky-punch and first-rate Havanas. But there
+were one or two older men: a newspaper editor from Dublin, who had been
+at college with Jack; and a grey-whiskered major of cavalry, who had
+served with Jack during his brief military career; and a middle-aged
+attaché to His Majesty's legation at the Grand Duchy of Prundenhausen,
+who had been a contemporary of Jack in the Foreign Office. And all these
+gentlemen, being warmed by wine and meat, became excessively
+companionable and entertaining. The Dublin editor, a fat, short, rather
+humorous-looking individual, sang Irish sentimental ballads with a sweet
+tenor voice, and, at the whisky-punch stage of the entertainment,
+brought tears into the eyes of the cavalry major and Jack Price. The
+middle-aged attaché did not cry; he considered such a manifestation
+beneath the dignity of the diplomatic service. And although he affected
+a bitter tone, and secretly considered himself to be a mute inglorious
+Talleyrand, much injured and unappreciated by the blundering chiefs at
+the Foreign Office, yet to outsiders he maintained the dignity of the
+service, at the cost of a good deal of trouble and starch.
+
+Algernon did not cry either. Indeed, the combination of sentimental
+ballad and stout Dublin editor struck him as being pleasantly comic. But
+he paid the singer so easy and well-turned a compliment as put to shame
+the clumsy "Thanks, O'Reilly!" "By Jove, that was delightful!" "What a
+sweet whistle you have of your own!" and the general shout of "Bravo!"
+by which the others expressed their approbation. And then he sang
+himself--one of the French romances for which he had gained a little
+reputation among a certain society in town. The romance was somewhat
+thread-bare, and the singer's voice out of practice; still, the
+performance was favourably received. But Algernon soon changed his
+ground, and, eschewing music altogether, began to entertain his hearers
+with stories about the eccentric worthies of Whitford, illustrated by
+admirable mimicry of their peculiarities of voice, face, and
+phraseology, so that he soon had the table in a roar of laughter, and
+achieved a genuine success. Jack Price was enchanted--partly with the
+consciousness that it was he who had provided his friends with this
+diverting entertainment, and explained to every one who would listen to
+him: "Oh, you know, it's great! What? Great, sir! Mathews isn't a patch
+on him. Inimitable, what? He is the dearest, brightest, most lovable
+fellow! What a burning shame that a thing of this sort should be hidden
+under a bushel--I mean, down in what-d'ye-call-it! _By_ George! What?"
+
+Yes; Algernon spent a very agreeable evening, and thoroughly enjoyed
+himself. He certainly had a wonderful share of what his mother called
+"the Ancram elasticity!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Mrs. Errington was greatly astonished to hear of Algernon's sudden
+departure from Whitford. The news came to her through Mrs. Thimbleby,
+who had learned it from the baker, who had been told by the barman at
+the "Blue Bell" that young Mr. Errington had gone off to London by the
+night mail on Monday. At first Mrs. Errington was incredulous. But Mrs.
+Thimbleby's information was so circumstantial, that at length her lodger
+resolved to go to Ivy Lodge and ascertain the truth. She found Castalia
+in a very gloomy humour. Yes; Ancram was gone, she said. Why? Well, _he_
+said he went because Lord Seely was ill. She, for her part, made no such
+statement. And, beyond that, it was not possible to draw much
+information out of her.
+
+Mrs. Errington, however, returned not altogether ill-pleased to her
+lodgings, and assumed an air of majestic melancholy. She desired Mrs.
+Thimbleby to prepare a cup of chocolate for her, and to bring it
+forthwith to the sitting-room. And when it appeared she began to sip it
+languidly, and to hold forth, and to enjoy herself.
+
+"Oh, my dear good soul," she said, half closing her eyes and slowly
+shaking her head, "I've had a great shock--a great shock!"
+
+"Deary me, ma'am!" cried simple Mrs. Thimbleby, with ready sympathy,
+looking into her lodger's round comely face. "Nothing wrong with Mr.
+Algernon, I hope?"
+
+"No, thank Heaven! Not that; but perhaps the next greatest trial that
+could befall me, in the illness of a dear relative."
+
+"Young Mrs.----" Mrs. Thimbleby checked herself, having been reproved
+for using that distinctive epithet of "young" to Algernon's wife, and
+substituted the form of words her lodger had taught her. "The Honourable
+Mrs. Errington ain't ill, ma'am, is she?"
+
+"No, my good creature. We had a despatch last evening announcing the
+illness of Lord Seely. It was sent to Algy, because dear Lady Seely was
+so fearful of startling me. And, for the same reason, dear Algy went off
+without telling me a word about it."
+
+Mrs. Thimbleby had only the haziest notion as to what kinship existed
+between Mrs. Errington and the nobleman in question. But she knew that
+her lodger was nearly connected with high folks; but she had often been
+troubled by doubts and misgivings, as to how far this fact might
+militate against her lodger's spiritual welfare, as being apt to promote
+worldliness and vain-glory. But Mrs. Thimbleby was full of abounding
+charity, and she was always ready to attribute what appeared to her evil
+to her own "poor head," rather than to other people's poor heart. So she
+merely expressed a hope that "the poor gentleman would soon get over
+it."
+
+"I trust so, Mrs. Thimbleby. His removal from the scene of life would be
+a terrible loss to this country. From the sovereign downwards, we should
+all feel it."
+
+"Should we, ma'am?"
+
+"Not, of course, as acutely as the family would feel it. That could not
+be, of course! But I trust he will recover. I wish I could have
+accompanied Algy to town, to help to nurse the dear patient, and take
+some of the care off the shoulders of my poor darling cousin, Belinda.
+Belinda is Lady Seely's Christian-name, my good Thimbleby. But of course
+that was impossible. I have not strength for it."
+
+"No, for sure, ma'am; but them high gentle-folks like them--lords, I
+mean, will be sure to have nurse-tenders, and doctors, and servants, as
+many as they need!"
+
+"Oh, as to that----! The king's own physician twice daily."
+
+"I hope," said Mrs. Thimbleby, timidly, before leaving the room, "that
+the Lord will soften your daughter-in-law's heart to you in this
+trouble."
+
+It must be understood that Mrs. Errington had of late, and especially
+since Castalia's outburst against Rhoda Maxfield, spoken of her
+daughter-in-law with a good deal of disapprobation; pitying her son for
+all he had to endure, and lamenting that he should have thrown himself
+away as he had done, when so many brilliant matches were, as it might be
+said, at his feet. "The dear Seelys," she would say, "considered that he
+was making a sacrifice. That, I happen to _know_. But she displayed so
+undisguised an attachment--and Algy--Algy is the soul of chivalry. All
+the Ancrams ever have been."
+
+It had certainly taken some time for the worthy lady to discover that
+her son's marriage wasn't quite a satisfactory one. But when the
+discovery did force itself on her perceptions, she was by no means
+tender to Castalia. Her moral toughness of hide prevented her from being
+much hurt by such speeches as, "Dear me! Not happy together! Why, I
+thought this was such a model marriage, Mrs. Errington!" Or, "Ah!
+jealous and fretful, is she? Well, I always thought it wouldn't do. But
+of course I said nothing. You plumed yourself so much on the match, you
+know, at the time." She could always retreat to illogical strongholds of
+unreason, whence she sent forth retorts, and arguments, and statements,
+which were found to be unanswerable by the average intellect of
+Whitford.
+
+"I wonder the woman isn't ashamed--really now!" exclaimed Miss Chubb
+once in the exasperation of listening to Mrs. Errington calmly superior
+to facts, and of being quite unable to touch her self-complacency by any
+recapitulation of them.
+
+"Do you?" asked Rose McDougall tartly. "How odd! Now, as to me, nothing
+would surprise me more than to find Mrs. Errington ashamed of anything."
+
+These and similar things had been freely spoken in Whitford, and
+although the world resented Mrs. Errington's manner of complaint, as
+being deficient in humility and candour--for it is provoking to find
+people who ought to lament in sackcloth and ashes, holding up their
+heads and making a merit of their deserved misfortunes--yet the world
+admitted that Mrs. Errington had substantial cause for complaint. The
+Honourable Castalia was really intolerable, and the only possible excuse
+for her behaviour was--what had been whispered with many nods and becks,
+and much mystery--that she was not quite of sound mind. And when the
+news began to circulate in Whitford that young Errington had gone to
+London suddenly, and almost secretly, the first, and most general,
+impression was that he had run away from his wife. To this solution the
+tradesmen to whom he owed money added, "And his debts!" Mrs. Errington's
+statement as to Lord Seely's illness was not much believed. And if he
+were ill, was it likely that my lord should cause Algernon Errington to
+be sent for? Later on in the course of the day, it began to be known
+that Castalia had accompanied her husband to the coach-office, so that
+his departure had not been clandestine so far as she was concerned, at
+all events. But was it not rather odd, the postmaster rushing off in
+this sudden manner? How did he manage to leave his business? Mr. Cooper
+never did such things! Not, probably, that it would make much difference
+whether Algernon Errington were here or not; for everybody knew pretty
+well that he was a mere cipher in the office, and Mr. Gibbs did
+everything!
+
+As to Mr. Gibbs, he was inwardly much disquieted at his chief's
+unwarranted absence. He had received a note which Algernon had left
+behind him to be delivered on the morning after his departure. But the
+note was not very satisfactory:--
+
+     "MY DEAR GIBBS," it said--"I am off to town by the night mail.
+     My wife's uncle, Lord Seely, is ill, and I must see him. I
+     shall speak to him on your behalf, of course. The inheritance
+     must soon fall to you, without waiting for the demise of the
+     present holder. I shall be back on Wednesday at latest.
+     Meanwhile, I trust implicitly to your discretion.
+
+     "Yours always,
+
+     "A. A. E."
+
+This was oracular enough. But Mr. Obadiah Gibbs understood very well, as
+he read it, that by the "inheritance" which must soon fall to him,
+Algernon meant the place of postmaster. Still there was nothing in the
+note to commit Algernon in any way whatever. And his going off to London
+without leave and without notice, was a proceeding which shocked all the
+old clerk's notions of what was fitting. The thought did cross his mind,
+"Suppose he should never come back! Suppose he is off to America, as a
+short cut out of his troubles!" The thing was possible. And the
+possibility haunted Mr. Obadiah Gibbs persistently, though he tried to
+argue it away.
+
+In the afternoon of Tuesday, Rhoda Maxfield walked into the post-office,
+and asked to speak with Mr. Errington. She was on foot and alone, and
+was looking so pretty and blooming as to arrest the attention of the dry
+old clerk. When he told her that Mr. Errington was away in London, and
+would not be back until the next day, she appeared disappointed. "Will
+you tell him, please, that I came, and wanted to speak to him
+particularly, and beg him to come to me as soon as ever he gets back to
+Whitford?" she said, in her soft lady's voice. Mr. Gibbs did not answer
+her. He stared straight over her shoulder as if Medusa's head had
+suddenly appeared behind her. Rhoda turned to see what had petrified Mr.
+Gibbs into silence, and saw Castalia Errington.
+
+Rhoda was startled, but more from sympathy with Gibbs than from any
+other reason. The quick colour mounted into her cheeks and deepened
+their blush rose hue to damask. "Oh, Mrs. Errington," she said, and held
+out her hand. Castalia did not take it; did not speak; did not, after
+one baleful stare of anger, look at her. "Come into the private office,"
+she said, addressing Gibbs in a dry, husky voice, and with a manner of
+imperious harshness. As she stood with her hand on the lock of the door
+leading into the inner room, she looked round over her shoulder and
+flung these words at Rhoda like a missile; "You have made a mistake. My
+husband is not here to-day, of all days. He has been remiss in not
+letting you know of his journey. But men are apt, I have been told, to
+fail in polite attention to persons of your sort."
+
+"Mrs. Errington!" cried Rhoda, turning pale, less at the words than at
+the look and tone which interpreted their meaning so that it was
+impossible altogether to misunderstand it. "I came here to speak to Mr.
+Errington about something he wished to hear of. And if I may say it to
+you instead----"
+
+"To ME? How dare you?" Castalia turned full on her with a livid, furious
+face, lit by a pair of hollow, burning eyes. Poor, artificial, small
+product of her social surroundings as she usually seemed, the passion in
+the woman transfigured her now with a tragic fire and force, before
+which Rhoda's innocent lily nature seemed shrivelled and discoloured,
+like a flower in the blast of a furnace. It was strange to himself, but
+Mr. Gibbs, as he looked at the two women, and was fully conscious on
+which side lay the right in the matter, could not help feeling an
+inexplicable thrill of sympathy with Castalia as she stood there
+breathing quickly and hard, with dilated nostrils and suffering,
+tearless eyes. The truth is that there was some subtle ingredient in Mr.
+Gibbs's composition which was more cognate with flesh and blood--even
+erring, passionate flesh and blood--than with the cool fluid that
+circulates in the petals of a lily. David Powell would have said that it
+was a manifest stirring of the Old Adam which caused the regenerate
+Obadiah Gibbs--a professing Christian, a confirmed and tried pillar of
+Methodism, a man whose precious experiences had been poured forth for
+the edification of many a band meeting--to be conscious for the first
+time of some fellow-feeling with Castalia, at the very moment when she
+was conducting herself in a manner to shock every sentiment of what was
+just and fitting. But whether it were due to original sin, or to
+whatever other cause, the fact remained that Obadiah Gibbs for the first
+time in his life now felt disposed to spare and screen the postmaster's
+wife.
+
+"I'll give the message when Mr. Errington comes back," said he to Rhoda,
+almost hustling her out of the office as he spoke. "The poor thing is
+not very well," he added, in a lower voice. "She has been a good deal
+cut up, one way and another. You mustn't think anything of her manner,
+nor bear malice, Miss Maxfield. Good morning."
+
+When Rhoda was gone--feeling almost dizzy with surprise and
+fright--Gibbs followed Mrs. Errington into the inner office. He found
+her openly examining the contents of the table-drawer, having tossed all
+the papers she had found in it pell-mell on to the table. Gibbs entered
+and closed the door carefully. "Mrs. Errington," he began, intending to
+remonstrate with her--or, perhaps, utter something stronger than a
+remonstrance--on her manner of conducting herself in the office, when
+she interrupted him at once, looking up from the heap of papers. "What
+message did that creature give you for my husband?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Errington, you really must not go on in this way! I'm
+responsible to Mr. Errington, you know, for things being right here."
+
+"Did you hear me? What message did that creature give you?"
+
+"Oh now, really, Mrs. Errington, I think you ought not to speak of Rhoda
+Maxfield in that way. She is a very good girl, and you hurt her terribly
+by your manner."
+
+Castalia smiled bitterly. "Did I?" she said. "Of course you're in league
+with her. Why does this good young woman come here in secret to see my
+husband? What can she want to say to him that cannot be said openly?"
+
+"I cannot hear such things, ma'am; I cannot, indeed. If you would give
+yourself an instant for reflection, you would remember that Miss
+Maxfield offered to tell her message to you yourself."
+
+"Offered to tell me! Do you really suppose I am duped by such low
+tricks? I heard her say, 'Send him to me directly he comes back'--heard
+it with my own ears. But of course you won't tell me the truth."
+
+"I am obliged to say, Mrs. Errington, that you really must leave the
+office. I am very sorry, but I am responsible in Mr. Errington's
+absence, and I cannot allow you to turn everything topsy-turvy here in
+this way. There has been trouble enough by your coming here already."
+
+"Trouble enough! Who says so? Who is troubled?"
+
+"Mr. Errington is troubled, and I am troubled, and--in short, it's
+altogether out of rule."
+
+"Then he confesses, does he, that he is afraid of my coming here to make
+discoveries about him? Why should he be troubled if he had nothing to
+conceal?"
+
+Castalia spoke with trembling eagerness and excitement. She had thrown
+all semblance of dignity or reserve to the winds. She would have spoken
+as she was speaking at that moment in Whitford market-place. Gibbs
+looked at her, and a doubt came into his mind as to whether his
+suspicions, and other people's suspicions, about her were quite so
+well-founded as he had thought. She was terribly violent, jealous,
+insolent, unconverted, full of the leaven of unrighteousness--but was
+she a practised hypocrite, a woman experienced in dishonesty? For the
+life of him, Obadiah Gibbs could not feel so sure of this as he had
+felt, now that he looked into her poor, haggard face, and met her eyes,
+and heard her utterly incautious and vehement speeches.
+
+"As to me not telling you the truth, Mrs. Errington," he said, "I
+suppose you know the truth as to why your visits here bring trouble on
+everybody?"
+
+"Tell it me, you!"
+
+"Well, I--oh you must be aware of it, I suppose. And if I was to tell
+you, you would only be more angry and offended with me than ever, though
+what I have done to excite your displeasure I don't know."
+
+"Tell me this truth that I know so well! Do you think I should seriously
+care for anything _you_ could say, except as it concerned my husband?"
+
+"Mrs. Errington, I don't know whether you are feigning or not. But,
+anyway, I think it my duty to answer you with Christian sincerity. It is
+borne in upon me that I ought to do so."
+
+"Go on, go on, go on!" cried Castalia, drumming with restless fingers on
+the table and looking up at the clerk with eyes that blazed with
+excitement and impatience.
+
+"You are aware that there have been unpleasant circumstances at the
+post-office--letters lost--_money-letters_ lost. Well, your name has
+been mentioned in connection with those losses. It is known in Whitford
+that you come haunting the office at all hours when your husband is
+away. A little while ago you paid a bill with some notes that were
+endorsed in a peculiar way. People ask where you got those notes. I
+thought it my duty to mention the subject to Mr. Errington the other
+day. He was greatly distressed, of course. He said he should interrogate
+you about the notes. My advice to you is--in all sincerity and charity,
+as the Lord sees me--to tell your husband the truth, whatever it is."
+
+He ended his speech with a tremor of compassion in his voice, and with a
+sudden breakdown of his rhetorical manner, for Castalia's face changed
+so piteously, so terribly, as he spoke, that the man's heart was deeply
+touched by it. She grew ashy pale. The quick fingers that had been
+tapping impatiently on the table seemed turned to lead. They lay there
+heavy and motionless. Her mouth was half open, and her eyes stared
+straight before her at the blank wall of the yard, as though they saw a
+spectre.
+
+"Lord have mercy on us, she is guilty!" thought Obadiah Gibbs. And at
+that moment if he could have hidden her crime from the eyes of all men,
+I believe he would have done it at the cost of a lie.
+
+"Of course you're not bound to say anything to me, you know, Mrs.
+Errington," he went on, after a short pause. And as he spoke he bent
+nearer to her, to rouse her, for she seemed neither to hear nor to see
+him. "You'd better go home now at once, you don't seem very strong."
+
+Still she did not move.
+
+"Look here, Mrs. Errington, I--you may rely upon my not breaking a
+word--not one syllable to anybody else, if you--if you will try to make
+things straight again as far as in your power lies. Go home now, pray
+do!"
+
+Still she did not move.
+
+"You don't look much able to walk, I fear. Shall I send the boy for a
+fly? Let me send for a fly?"
+
+He softly touched her shoulder as he spoke, and she immediately turned
+her head and answered with a composure that startled him, "Yes; get me a
+fly." Then she sat quite still again, staring at the wall as before.
+
+Gibbs went out into the outer office and sent the boy for a vehicle.
+There he remained, pen in hand, behind his desk until the jingle of the
+fly was heard at the door. He went back himself to the private office to
+call Castalia, and found her sitting in exactly the same place and
+attitude. She rose mechanically to her feet when he told her the fly was
+ready, but as she began to walk towards the door she staggered and
+caught at Gibbs's arm. He supported her with a sort of quiet
+gravity;--much as if he had been her old servant, and she a cripple
+whose infirmity was a matter of course,--which showed much delicacy of
+feeling, and as they neared the door he said in her ear, "Take my
+advice, ma'am, and tell your husband the truth." She turned her eyes on
+him with a singular look, but said nothing. "Tell him the truth!
+and--and look upward. Lift your heart in prayer. There is a fountain of
+grace and love ready for all who seek it!"
+
+"Not for me," she answered in a very low but distinct voice.
+
+"Oh, my poor soul, don't say so! Don't think so!"
+
+By this time she was in the carriage, having been almost lifted into it
+by Gibbs. She was perfectly quiet and tearless, and as the vehicle drove
+away, and Gibbs stood watching it disappear, he said to himself that her
+face was as the face of a corpse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+Castalia was driven home, and walked up the path of the tiny garden in
+front of Ivy Lodge with a step much like her ordinary one. She went into
+the drawing-room and looked about her curiously, as if she were a
+stranger seeing the place for the first time. Then she sat down for a
+minute, still in her bonnet and shawl. But she got up again quickly from
+the sofa, holding her hand to her throat as if she were choking, and
+went out to the garden behind the house, and from thence to the meadows
+near the river. There was at the bottom of the garden, and outside of
+it, a miserable, dilapidated wooden shed, euphoniously called a
+summer-house. There was a worm-eaten wooden bench in it looking towards
+the Whit, and commanding a view of the wide meadows on the other side of
+it, of a turn in the river, now lead-coloured beneath a dreary sky, and
+of the distant spire of Duckwell Church rising beyond the hazy woods of
+Pudcombe. No one ever entered this summer-house. It was rotting to
+pieces with damp and decay, and was inhabited by a colony of insects and
+a toad that squatted in one corner. In this wretched place Castalia sat
+down, being indeed unable to walk farther, but feeling a sensation of
+suffocation at the mere thought of returning to the house. She fancied
+she could not breathe there. A steaming mist was rising from the river
+and the damp meadows beyond it. The grey clouds seemed to touch the grey
+horizon. It was cold, and the last brown leaf or two, hanging, as it
+seemed, by a thread on the boughs of a tree just within sight from the
+summer-house, twirled, and shook, and shuddered in the slight gusts of
+wind that arose now and again. There was not a sound to be heard except
+the mournful lowing of some cattle in a distant field, until all at once
+a movement of the air brought from Whitford the sound of the old chimes
+muffled by the heavy atmosphere. There sat Castalia and stared at the
+river, and the mist, and the brown withered leaves, much as she had
+stared at the blank yard wall in the office.
+
+"My heart is sore pained within me, and the terrors of death are fallen
+upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath
+overwhelmed me!"
+
+She heard a voice saying these words distinctly. She did not start. She
+scarcely felt surprise. The direful lamentation was in harmony with all
+she saw, and heard, and felt.
+
+Again the voice spoke: "Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and
+thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee and were delivered; they
+trusted in thee and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a
+reproach of men, and despised of the people!"
+
+Castalia heard, scarcely listening. The words flowed by her like a tune
+that brings tears to the eyes by mere sympathy with its sad sound.
+
+Presently a man passed before her, walking with an unequal pace--now
+quick, now slow, now stopping outright. He had his hands clasped at the
+back of his neck; his head was bent down, and he was talking aloud to
+himself.
+
+"Aye, there have been such. The lot has fallen upon me. I know it with a
+sure knowledge. It is borne in upon me with a certainty that pierces
+through bone and marrow. I am of the number of those that go down to the
+pit. Why, O Lord--Nay! though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him. For
+he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come
+together in judgment."
+
+He stopped in his walk; stood still for a second or two, and then turned
+to pace back again. In so doing he saw Castalia. She also looked full
+at him, and recognised the Methodist preacher. David Powell went up to
+her without hesitation. He remembered her at once; and he remembered,
+too, in a confused way, something of what Mrs. Thimbleby had been
+recently telling him about dissensions between this woman and her
+husband; of unhappiness and quarrels; and--what was that the widow had
+said of young Mrs. Errington being jealous of Rhoda? Ah, yes! He had it
+all now.
+
+The time had been when David Powell would have had to wrestle hard with
+indignation against anyone who should have spoken evil of Rhoda. He
+would have felt a hot, human flush of anger; and would have combated it
+as a stirring of the unregenerate man within him. But all such feelings
+were over with him. No ray from the outside world appeared able to
+pierce the gloom which had gathered thicker and thicker in his own mind,
+unless it touched his sense of sympathy with suffering. He was still
+sensitive to that, as certain chemicals are to the light.
+
+He went close up to Castalia, and said, without any preliminary or usual
+greeting, "You are in affliction. Have you called upon the Lord? Have
+you cast your burthen upon him? He is a good shepherd. He will carry the
+weary and footsore of his flock lest they faint by the way and perish
+utterly."
+
+It was noticeable when he spoke that his voice, which had been of such
+full sweetness, was now hoarse, and even harsh here and there, like a
+fine instrument that has been jarred. This did not seem to be altogether
+due to physical causes; for there still came out of his mouth every now
+and then a tone that was exquisitely musical. But the discord seemed to
+be in the spirit that moved the voice, and could not guide it with
+complete freedom and mastery.
+
+Castalia shook her head impatiently, and turned her eyes away from him.
+But she did not do so with any of her old hauteur and intimation of the
+vast distance which separated her from her humbler fellow-creatures.
+Pain of mind had familiarised her with the conception that she held her
+humanity in common with a very heterogeneous multitude. Had Powell been
+a sleek, smug personage like Brother Jackson, veiling profound
+self-complacency under the technical announcement of himself as a
+miserable sinner, she might have turned from him in disgust. As it was,
+she felt merely the unwillingness to be disturbed, of a creature in whom
+the numbness of apathy has succeeded to acute anguish. She wanted to be
+rid of him. He looked at her with the yearning pity which was so
+fundamental a part of his nature. "Pray!" he said, clasping his hands
+together. "Go to your Father, which is in Heaven, and He shall give you
+rest. Oh, God loves you--he _loves_ you!"
+
+"No one loves me," returned Castalia, with white rigid lips. Then she
+got up from the bench, and went back into her own garden and into the
+house, with the air of a person walking in sleep.
+
+Powell looked after her sadly. "If she would but pray!" he murmured. "I
+would pray for her. I would wrestle with the Lord on her behalf. But--of
+late I have feared more and more that my prayers are not acceptable;
+that my voice is an abomination to the Lord."
+
+He resumed his walk along the river bank, speaking aloud, and
+gesticulating to himself as he went.
+
+Meanwhile, Castalia wandered about her own house "like a ghost," as the
+servants said. She went from the little dining-room to the drawing-room,
+and then she painfully mounted the steep staircase to her bed-room,
+opened the door of her husband's little dressing-closet, shut it again,
+and went downstairs once more. She could not sit still; she could not
+read; she could not even think. She could only suffer, and move about
+restlessly, as if with a dim instinctive idea of escaping from her
+suffering. Presently she began to open the drawers of a little toy
+cabinet in the drawing-room, and examine their contents, as if she had
+never seen them before. From that she went to a window-seat, made
+hollow, and with a cushioned lid, so that it served as a seat and a box,
+and began to rummage among its contents. These consisted chiefly of
+valueless scraps, odds and ends, put there to be hidden and out of the
+way. Among them were some of poor Mrs. Errington's wedding-presents to
+her son and daughter-in-law. Castalia's maid, Slater, had
+unceremoniously consigned these to oblivion, together with a few other
+old-fashioned articles, under the generic name of "rubbish." There was a
+pair of hand-screens elaborately embroidered in silk, very faded and out
+of date. Mrs. Errington declared them to be the work of her grand-aunt,
+the beautiful Miss Jacintha Ancram, who made such a great match, and
+became a Marchioness. There was an ancient carved ivory fan, yellow with
+age, brought by a cadet of the house of Ancram from India, as a present
+to some forgotten sweetheart. There was a little cardboard box, covered
+with fragments of raised rice-paper, arranged in a pattern. This was the
+work of Mrs. Errington's own hands in her school-girl days, and was of
+the kind called then, if I mistake not, "filagree work." Castalia took
+these and other things out of the window-seat, and examined them and put
+them back, one by one, moving exactly like an automaton figure that had
+been wound up to perform those motions. When she came to the filagree
+box, she opened that too. There was a Tonquin bean in it, filling the
+box with its faint sweet odour. There was a pair of gold buckles, that
+seemed to be attenuated with age; and a garnet-brooch, with one or two
+stones missing. And then at the bottom of the box was something flat,
+wrapped in silver paper. She unwrapped it and looked at it.
+
+It was a water-colour drawing done by Algernon immediately on his return
+from Llanryddan, in the first flush of his love-making, and represented
+himself and Rhoda standing side by side in front of the little cottage
+where they had lodged there. Algernon had given himself pinker cheeks,
+bluer eyes, and more amber-coloured hair than nature had endowed him
+with. Rhoda was equally over-tinted. There was no merit in the drawing,
+which was stiff and school-boyish, but the very exaggerations of form
+and colour emphasised the likeness in a way not to be mistaken.
+
+Castalia trembled from head to foot as she looked on the two rosy
+simpering faces. A curious ripple or tremor ran over her body, such as
+may be observed in persons recovering consciousness after a swoon. She
+tore the drawing into small fragments. Her teeth were set. Her eyes
+glared. She looked like a murderess. She trod the scattered bits into
+the carpet with her heel. Then, as if with an afterthought, she swept
+them contemptuously into the bright steel shovel, and threw them into
+the fire, and stood and watched them blaze and smoulder. After that she
+wrapped her shawl more tightly round her--she had forgotten to remove
+either it or her bonnet on coming in--and went out at the front door,
+and walked straight into Whitford, and to Jonathan Maxfield's house.
+
+She asked for "the master." The old man was at home, in the little
+parlour, and Sally showed Mrs. Errington into the room almost without
+the ceremony of tapping with her knuckles at the door, and then made off
+to the kitchen to tell Mrs. Grimshaw. The lady's face had scared her.
+
+Old Max was sitting near the dull fire which burned in the grate. The
+big Bible, his constant companion now, lay open on the table. But he had
+not been devoting his attention to that solely. He had had a large
+old-fashioned wooden desk brought down from his own room, and had been
+fingering the papers in it, reading some, and merely glancing at the
+outside folds of others. He now looked up at Castalia without
+recognising her.
+
+"What is your business with me?" he asked, peering at her in perplexity.
+
+"I've come to speak to you----" began Castalia; and at the first sound
+of her voice, Maxfield recognised her. He remembered the only visit she
+had paid him previously, when she came to beg that Rhoda might be
+allowed to visit her. She had taken a great fancy to his pretty Rhoda,
+this skinny, yellow-faced, fine lady. Ha! Well, she might show what
+civilities she pleased to Rhoda. No objection to that. Indeed, it was a
+proceeding to be encouraged, seeing that it probably caused a good deal
+of discomfort and embarrassment to Algernon! So he gave a little nod,
+meant to be courteous, and said, "Oh, I didn't just know you at first.
+Won't you be seated?"
+
+Castalia refused by a gesture, and stood still opposite to him with one
+hand on the table, apparently in some embarrassment how to begin. Then
+it flashed on old Max that this "Honourable Missis," as he called her,
+had probably come to thank him, and found it not altogether easy to do
+so. But what could Castalia have to thank him for? This; Rhoda had so
+implored her father to relieve Algernon from his anxiety about the
+bills, that at length the old man had said with a chuckle, "Tell you
+what, Rhoda, I'll hand 'em over to Mr. Diamond, and maybe he will give
+them to you as a wedding present if he gets the school. And then you can
+do what you like with 'em. My gentleman won't be above taking a present
+from you or your husband. I've seen what meanness she can do and what
+dirt he can swallow, and not even make a wry face over it! Aye, dirt as
+would turn many a poor labouring man's stomach."
+
+Rhoda, upon this, had consulted Matthew Diamond, and had not found it
+difficult to make him agree with her wish to give up the bills to
+Algernon. Indeed, although he had almost come to old Max's opinion of
+his former pupil, he would not for the world have behaved so as to make
+Rhoda suppose that he bore him a grudge. Rhoda's errand to the
+post-office that afternoon had been to bring Algernon this comforting
+news. She had taken care not to tell her father of Mrs. Algernon's
+behaviour, but had come home and cried a little quietly in her own room,
+and kept her tears and the cause of them to herself. Therefore it was
+that Jonathan Maxfield supposed the fine lady to have come to thank him
+for his magnanimity on behalf of her absent husband, and he was already
+preparing to give her "a dose," as he phrased it, and to spare her no
+item of Rhoda's prosperity, and wealth, and good prospects in the world.
+
+Castalia remained leaning with one hand on the table, and did not
+continue her speech during the second or two in which these thoughts and
+intentions were passing through old Maxfield's brain. But it was by no
+means that she hesitated from embarrassment or lack of words: rather
+the words crowded to her lips too quickly and fiercely for utterance.
+
+"I've come to speak to you about your daughter," she said at length.
+
+"Aye, aye. Miss Maxfield's a bit of a friend o' yours. Miss Maxfield's
+allus been very kind to all the fam'ly ever since we've known 'em. But
+you'd best be seated."
+
+"They say you are an honest, decent man," Castalia went on, neither
+seating herself nor noticing the invitation to do so. "It may be so. I
+am willing to believe it. But, if so, you are grossly deceived, cheated,
+and played upon by that vile girl."
+
+Maxfield brought his two clenched fists heavily down on the table, and
+half raised himself in his chair. "Stop!" said he. "Who are you talking
+of?"
+
+"You may believe me. I tell you I have watched--I have seen. She was in
+love with my husband years ago. She used every art to catch him. And
+now--now that he is married, she receives secret visits from him. Do you
+know that he came at night--ten o'clock at night--to your house when you
+were away? She goes to the post-office slily to see him. I caught her
+there this morning leaving a private message for him with the clerk! Is
+that decent? Is it what you wish? Do you sanction it? She writes to
+him. She has turned his heart against me. He schemes to keep me out of
+the office. I know why now. Oh yes; I am not the blind dupe they think
+for. She has made him more cruel, more wicked to me than I could have
+imagined any man _could_ be. My heart is broken. But as true as there is
+a God in Heaven I'll have amends made to me. She shall beg my pardon on
+her knees. And you had better look to it, if you don't want her
+character to be torn to pieces by every foul tongue in this town. I have
+borne enough. Keep her at home. Keep her from decoying other women's
+husbands, I warn you----"
+
+Maxfield, who had been struggling to reach the bell, pulled it so
+violently that the wire was broken. At the peal Betty Grimshaw came
+running in, terrified. "Mercy, brother-in-law!" she cried. "What is it?"
+
+"Get the police," gasped old Max, as if he were choking. "Send some one
+for a policeman, to turn that mad quean out of my house. She's not fit
+for a decent house. She's--she's----Oh, but you shall repent this! I'll
+sell you up, every stick of trumpery in the place. You audacious
+Jezebel! Turn her out of doors, I say! Do you hear me?"
+
+Betty and the servant stood white and quivering, looking from the old
+man unable to rise from his chair without help, and the lady who stood
+opposite to him, glaring with a Medusa face. Neither of the two
+frightened women stirred hand or foot to fulfil the master's behest. But
+Castalia relieved them from any perplexity on that score, at least, by
+voluntarily turning to leave the room. In the doorway she met Rhoda, who
+had run downstairs in alarm at the violent pealing of the bell. Castalia
+drew herself suddenly aside, as though something unspeakably loathsome
+stood in her path, held her dress away from any passing contact with the
+amazed girl, and rushed out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+Algernon's state of mind during his return journey to Whitford was very
+much pleasanter than it had been on his way up to town. To be sure, he
+had committed himself distinctly to a very grave statement. That was
+always disagreeable. But then he had made an immense impression on Lord
+Seely by his statement. He had crushed and overwhelmed that "pompous
+little ass." He had humiliated that "absurd little upstart." And--best
+of all; for these others were mere _dilettante_ pleasures, which no man
+of intelligence would indulge in at the cost of his solid interests--he
+had terrified him so completely with the spectre of a public scandal and
+disgrace, that my lord was ready to do anything to help him and Castalia
+out of England. Of that there could be no doubt.
+
+It must be owned that Algernon had so far justified the quick suspicions
+of his Whitford creditors and acquaintances as to have conceived for a
+moment the idea of never more returning to that uninteresting town. It
+was extremely exhilarating to be in the position of a bachelor at large;
+to find himself free, for a time, of the dead weight of debt, which
+seemed to make breathing difficult in Whitford; for, although by
+plodding characters the relief might not have been felt until the debts
+were paid, Algernon Errington's spirit was of a sort that rose buoyant
+as ever, directly the external pressure was removed. It was delightful
+to be reinstated in the enjoyment of his reputation as a charming
+fellow--much fallen into oblivion at Whitford. And perhaps it was
+pleasantest of all to feel strengthened in the assurance that he still
+_was_ a charming fellow, with capacities for winning admiration and
+making a brilliant figure, quite uninjured (although they had been
+temporarily eclipsed) by all the cloud of troubles which had gathered
+around him.
+
+So he _had_, for a moment, thought of fairly running away from wife, and
+duns, and dangers of official severities. But it was but a brief
+unsubstantial vision that flashed for an instant and was gone. Algernon
+was too clear-sighted not to perceive that the course was
+inconvenient--nay, to one of his temperament, impracticable. People who
+started off to live on their wits in a foreign country ought to be armed
+with a coarser indifference to material comforts than he was gifted
+with. Alternations of ortolans and champagne, with bread and onions,
+would be--even supposing one could be sure of the ortolans, which
+Algernon knew he could not--entirely repugnant to his temperament. He
+had no such strain of adventurousness as would have given a pleasant
+glow of excitement to the endurance of privation under any circumstances
+whatever. Professed Bohemians might talk as they pleased about kicking
+over traces, and getting rid of trammels, and so forth; but, for his
+part, he had never felt his spirit in the least oppressed by velvet
+hangings, gilded furniture, or French cookery! Whereas to be obliged to
+wear shabby gloves would have been a kind of "trammel" he would strongly
+have objected to. In a word, he desired to be luxuriously comfortable
+always. And he consistently (albeit, perhaps, mistakenly, for the
+cleverest of us are liable to error) endeavoured to be so.
+
+Therefore he did not ship himself aboard an emigrant vessel for the
+United States; nor did he even cross the Channel to Calais; but found
+himself in a corner of the mail-coach on the night after Jack Price's
+supper party, bowling along, not altogether unpleasantly, towards
+Whitford. He had not seen Lord Seely again. He had inquired for him at
+his house, and had been told that his lordship was worse; was confined
+to bed entirely; and that Dr. Nokes had called in two other physicians
+in consultation. "Deuce of a job if he dies before I get a berth!"
+thought Algernon. But before he had gone many yards down the street, he
+was in a great measure reassured as to that danger, by seeing Lady Seely
+in her big yellow coach, with Fido on the seat beside her, and her
+favourite nephew lounging on the cushions opposite. The nephew had been
+apparently entertaining Lady Seely by some amusing story, for she was
+laughing (rather to the ear than the eye, as was her custom; for my lady
+made a great noise, sending out "Ha-ha-ha's!" with a kind of defiant
+distinctness, whilst all the while eyes and mouth plainly professed
+themselves disdainful of too cordial a hilarity, and ready to stop short
+in a second), and stroking Fido very unconcernedly with one fat
+tightly-gloved hand. Now although Algernon did not give my lady credit
+for much depth of sentiment, he felt sure that she would, for various
+reasons, have been greatly disquieted had any danger threatened her
+husband's life, and would certainly not have left his side to drive in
+the Park with young Reginald. So he drew the inference that my lord was
+not so desperately ill as he had been told, and that the servants had
+had orders to give him that account in order to keep him away--which was
+pretty nearly the fact.
+
+"The old woman would be in a fury with me when my lord told her he had
+promised me that post without consulting her," thought Algernon; "and
+would tell any lie to keep me out of the house. But we shall beat her
+this time." As he so thought he pulled off his hat and made so
+distinguished and condescending a bow to my lady, that her nephew, who
+was near-sighted and did not recognise Errington, pulled off his own hat
+in a hurry, very awkwardly, and acknowledged the salute with some
+confused idea that the graceful gentleman was a foreigner of
+distinction; whilst my lady, turning purple, shook her head at him in
+anger at the whole incident. All which Algernon saw, understood, and was
+immensely diverted by.
+
+In summing up the results of his journey to town, he was satisfied.
+Things were certainly not so pleasant as they might be. But were they
+not better, on the whole, than when he had left Whitford? He decidedly
+thought they were; which did not, of course, diminish his sense of being
+a victim to circumstances and the Seely family. Anyway he had broken
+with Whitford. My lord _must_ get him out of that _baraque_! The very
+thought of leaving the place raised his spirits. And, as he had the
+coach to himself during nearly all the journey, he was able to stretch
+his legs and make himself comfortable; and he awoke from a sound and
+refreshing sleep as the mail-coach rattled into the High Street and
+rumbled under the archway of the "Blue Bell."
+
+The hour was early, and the morning was raw, and Algernon resolved to
+refresh himself with a hot bath and breakfast before proceeding to Ivy
+Lodge. "No use disturbing Mrs. Errington so early," he said to the
+landlord, who appeared just as Algernon was sipping his tea before a
+blazing fire. "Very good devilled kidneys, Mr. Rumbold," he added
+condescendingly. Mr. Rumbold rubbed his hands and stood looking
+half-sulkily, half-deferentially at his guest. His wife had said to him,
+"Don't you go chatting with that young Errington, Rumbold; not if you
+want to get your money. I know what he is, and I know what you are,
+Rumbold; and he'll talk you over in no time."
+
+But Mr. Rumbold had allowed his own valour to override his wife's
+discretion, and had declared that he would make the young man understand
+before he left the "Blue Bell" that it was absolutely necessary to
+settle his account there without delay. And the result justified Mrs.
+Rumbold's apprehension; for Algernon Errington drove away from the inn
+without having paid even for the breakfast he had eaten there that
+morning, and having added the vehicle which carried him home to the long
+list beginning "Flys: A. Errington, Esq.," in which he figured as debtor
+to the landlord of the "Blue Bell." He had flourished Lord Seely in Mr.
+Rumbold's face with excellent effect, and was feeling quite cheerful
+when he alighted at the gate of Ivy Lodge.
+
+It was still early according to Castalia's reckoning--little more than
+ten o'clock. So he was not surprised at not finding her in the
+drawing-room or the dining-room. Lydia, of whom he inquired at length as
+to where her mistress was, having first bade her light a fire for him to
+have a cigar by, before going to the office--Lydia said with a queer,
+half-scared, half-saucy look, "Laws, sir, missus has been out this hour
+and a half."
+
+"Out!"
+
+"Yes, sir. She said as how she couldn't rest in her bed, nor yet in the
+house, sir. Polly made her take a cup of tea, and then she went off to
+Whit Meadow."
+
+"To Whit Meadow! In this damp raw weather at nine o'clock in the
+morning!"
+
+"Please, sir, me and Polly thought it wasn't safe for missus, and her so
+delicate. But she would go."
+
+Algernon shrugged his shoulders and said no more. Before the girl left
+the room, she said, "Oh, and please, sir, here's some letters as came
+for you," pointing to a little heap of papers on Castalia's desk.
+
+Left alone, Algernon drew his chair up to the fire and lit a cigar. He
+did not hasten himself to examine the letters. Bills, of course! What
+else could they be? He began to smoke and ruminate. He would have liked
+to see Castalia before going to the office. He would have liked to make
+his own representation to her of the story he had told Lord Seely. She
+must be got to corroborate it unknowingly if possible. He reflected with
+some bitterness that she had lately shown so much power of opposing him,
+that it might be she would insist on taking a course of conduct which
+would upset all the combination he--with the help of chance
+circumstances--had so neatly pieced together. And then he reflected
+further, knitting his brows a little, that at any cost she must be
+prevented from spoiling his plans; and that her conduct lately had been
+so strange that it wouldn't be very difficult to convince the world of
+her insanity. "'Gad, I'm almost convinced of it myself," said Algernon,
+half aloud. But it was not true.
+
+The fire was warm, the room was quiet, the cigar was good, the chair was
+easy. Algernon felt tempted to sit still and put off the moment when he
+must re-enter the Whitford Post-office. He shuddered as he thought of
+the place with a kind of physical repulsion. Nevertheless, it must be
+faced once or twice more. Not much more often, he hoped. He rose up, put
+on a great-coat, and said to himself lazily as he ran his fingers
+through his hair in front of the looking-glass, "Where the devil can
+Castalia have gone mooning to?" Then he turned to leave the room. As he
+turned his eyes fell on the little heap of letters. He took them up and
+turned them over with a grimace.
+
+"H'm! Ravell--respectful compliments. Ah! no; your mouth ought to have
+been stopped, I think! But that's the way. More they get, more they
+want. Never pay an instalment. Fatal precedent! What's this--a lawyer's
+letter! Gladwish. Oh! Very well, Mr. Gladwish. _Nous verrons._ Chemist!
+What on earth--? Oh, rose-water! Better than his boluses, I daresay, but
+not very good, and quite humorously dear. Extortionate rascal! And who
+are you, my illiterate-looking friend?"
+
+He took a square blue envelope between his finger and thumb, and
+examined the cramped handwriting on it, running in a slanting line from
+one corner to the other. It was addressed to "Mr. Algernon Errington."
+"Some _very_ angry creditor, who won't even indulge me with the
+customary 'Esquire,'" thought Algernon with a contemptuous smile and
+some genuine amusement. Then he opened it. It was from Jonathan
+Maxfield!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+In about a quarter of an hour after reading that letter, Algernon called
+to the servants to know if their mistress had come back. He did not ring
+as usual, but went to the door of the kitchen and spoke to both the
+women, saying that he was uneasy at Mrs. Errington's absence, and did
+not like to go to the office without seeing her. He said two or three
+times, how strange it was that his wife should have wandered out in that
+way; and plainly showed considerable anxiety about her. Both the women
+remarked how pale and upset their master looked. "Oh, it's enough to
+wear out anybody the way she goes on," said Lydia. "Poor young man! A
+nice way to welcome him home!"
+
+"Ah," returned Polly, the cook, shaking her head, "I'm afraid there's
+going to be awful trouble with missus, poor thing. _I_ believe she's
+half out of her mind with jealousy. Just think how she's been going on
+about Miss Maxfield. Why 'tis all over the place. And they say old Max
+is going to law against her, or something. But I can't but pity her,
+poor thing."
+
+"Oh! they say worse of her than being out of her mind with jealousy,"
+returned Lydia. "Don't you know what Mrs. Ravell's housemaid told her
+young man at the grocer's?" Et cetera, et cetera.
+
+The discussion was checked in full career by their master returning to
+say that he should not go to the office until he had seen Mrs.
+Errington, and that he was then going to Whit Meadow to look for her. He
+went out past the kitchen and through the garden at the back of the
+house.
+
+He looked about him when he got to the garden gate. Nothing to be seen
+but damp green meadow, leaden sky, and leaden river. Where was Castalia?
+A thought shot into his mind, swift and keen as an arrow--had she thrown
+herself into the Whit? And, if she had, what a load of his cares would
+be drowned with her! He walked a few paces towards the town, then turned
+and looked in the opposite direction. For as far as he could see, there
+was not a human being on the meadow-path. His eyes were very good and he
+used them eagerly, scanning all the space of Whit Meadow within their
+range of vision. At length he caught sight of something moving among a
+clump of low bushes--blackberry bushes and dog-roses, a tangle of
+leafless spikes now, although in the summer they would be fresh and
+fragrant, and the holiday haunt of little merry children--which grew on
+a sloping part of the bank between him and the Whit. He walked straight
+towards it, and as he drew nearer, became satisfied that the moving
+figure was that of his wife. He recognised a dark tartan shawl which she
+wore. It was not bright enough to be visible at a long distance; but as
+he advanced he became sure that he knew it. In a few minutes the husband
+and wife stood face to face.
+
+"This is a nice reception to give me," said Algernon, in a hard, cold
+voice, after they had looked at each other for a second, and Castalia
+had remained silent and still. In truth, she was physically unable to
+speak to him in that first moment of meeting. Her heart throbbed so that
+every beat of it seemed like an angry blow threatening her life.
+
+"Why do you wander out alone in this way? Why do you conduct yourself
+like a mad woman? Though, indeed, perhaps you are not so wrong there;
+madness might excuse your conduct. Nothing else can."
+
+"I couldn't stay in that house. I should have died there. Everything in
+every room reminded me of you."
+
+She answered so faintly that he had to strain his ear to hear her, and
+her colourless lips trembled as the lips tremble of a person trying to
+keep back tears. But her eyes were quite dry.
+
+Algernon was pale, with the peculiar ghastly pallor of a fresh ruddy
+complexion. His blue eyes had a glitter in them like ice, not fire; and
+there was a set, sarcastic, bitter smile on his mouth.
+
+"Look here, Castalia; we had better understand one another at once. I
+shall begin by telling you what I have resolved upon, and what I have
+done, and you will then have to obey me _implicitly_. There must be no
+sort of discussion or hesitation. Come back to the house with me at
+once."
+
+She shook her head quickly. "No! no! Tell me here--out here by
+ourselves, where no one can hear us. I cannot bear to go into that house
+yet."
+
+"Pshaw! What intolerable fooling! Well, here be it. I have no time to
+waste. I have seen your uncle. Don't interrupt me! He has promised to
+get us out of this cursed place, and to find a post for me abroad as
+consul. I had to exercise a good deal of persistence and ability to
+bring him to that point, but to that point I have brought him. We must
+keep him to it, and be active. My lady will move heaven and earth--or
+t'other place and earth, which is more in her line--to thwart us. Now,
+when it is necessary to keep things here as smooth as possible, to
+arouse no suspicion that we may be off at a moment's notice, to hold out
+hopes of everything being settled by Lord Seely's help, what do I find?
+I find that you have gone to a man who is a creditor of mine, who is not
+over fond of me to begin with, and have grossly and outrageously
+insulted him and his daughter! Just as if you had ingeniously cast about
+for the most effectual means of doing me a mischief. I found this letter
+on the table. He threatens to ruin me, and he can do it. If my name is
+posted, my bills protested, and a public hullabaloo made about them and
+other matters, your uncle's influence will hardly suffice to get me the
+berth I want in the face of the opposition newspapers' bellowing on the
+subject. Your uncle is but small beer in London at best. But that much
+he might have managed, if you hadn't behaved in this maniacal way."
+
+"And how have _you_ behaved? Oh, Ancram, Ancram, I would not have
+believed--I _could_ not----" She burst into tears, and sank down on the
+damp grass, covering her face with her hands, and shaking with sobs.
+
+"Listen! Castalia! Do you hear me?" said her husband, shaking her
+lightly by the arm.
+
+She did not answer, but continued to cry convulsively, rocking herself
+to and fro.
+
+Algernon stood looking down upon her with folded arms. "Upon my soul!"
+he said, after a minute, and with a contemptuous little nod of the head,
+which expressed an unbounded sense of the hopeless imbecility of the
+woman at his feet, and of his own long-suffering tolerance towards her,
+"Upon my life and soul, Castalia, I have never even heard of anyone so
+outrageously unreasonable as you are. Your jealousy--we may as well
+speak plainly--your jealousy has passed the bounds of sanity. But, as I
+told you, I am not going to argue with you. I am going to give
+directions for your guidance, since it is quite clear you are unable to
+guide yourself. In the first place----for God's sake stop that noise!"
+he cried, a sudden fierce irritation piercing through his
+self-restraint. "In the first place, you must make a full, free, and
+humble apology to Rhoda Maxfield!"
+
+Castalia started to her feet and confronted him. "Never!" she said. "I
+will never do it!"
+
+"I told you I was not going to argue with you. I am giving you your
+orders. A full, free, and humble--very humble--apology to Rhoda Maxfield
+is our one chance of softening her father. And if you have any sense or
+conscience left, you must know that Rhoda richly deserves every apology
+you can make her."
+
+"You think so, do you?"
+
+"Yes; I think so. She is a thoroughly good and charming girl. The only
+crime she has ever committed against you is being young and pretty. And
+if you quarrel with every woman who is so, you will find the battle a
+rather unequal one." He could not resist the sneer. He detested Castalia
+at that moment. Her whole nature, her violence, her passionate jealousy,
+her no less passionate love, her piteous grief, her demands on some
+sentiment in himself, which he knew to be non-existent; every turn of
+her body, every tone of her voice, were at that moment intensely
+repulsive to him.
+
+The poor thing was stung into such pain by his taunt that she scarcely
+knew what she said or what she did.
+
+"Oh, I know," she cried, "that you care more for her than for me! A
+pink-and-white face, that's all you value! More than wife,
+or--or--anything in the world. More than the honour of a gentleman.
+She's a devil; a sly, sleek little devil! She has got your love away
+from me. She has made you tell lies, and be cruel to me. But I'll expose
+her to all the world."
+
+"What, in the name of all that's incomprehensible, has put this craze
+into your head against Rhoda Maxfield? It's the wildest thing!"
+
+"Oh, Ancram! you can't deceive me any longer. I know--I have seen. She
+came on the sly to see you at the office. You used to go to her when you
+told me you had to be busy at the office. I watched you, I followed you
+all down Whitford High Street one night, and found out that you were
+cheating me."
+
+"Ha! And you also opened my desk at the office, and took out letters and
+papers! Do you know what people are called who do such things?" said
+Algernon, now in a white heat of anger.
+
+She drew back and looked at him. "Yes," she said, "I know."
+
+"Have you no shame, then? No common sense? You attack a young lady--yes,
+a lady! A far better lady than you are!--of whom you take it into your
+head to be jealous, merely because she is pretty and admired by
+everybody. By me amongst the everybodies. Why not? I didn't lose my
+eyesight when I married you. You talk about my not loving you----! Do
+you think you go the way to make me do anything but detest the sight of
+you? You disgrace me in the town. You disgrace me before my clerk in the
+office. You and your relations persecuted me into marrying you, and now
+you haven't even the decency to behave like a rational being, but make
+yourself a laughing-stock, and me a butt for contemptuous pity in having
+tied myself to such a woman. One would have thought you would try to
+make some amends for the troubles I have been plunged into by my
+marriage."
+
+She put her hands up one to each side of her head, and held them there
+tightly pressed. "Ancram," she said, "_do_ you detest the sight of me?"
+
+"You've tried your best to make me."
+
+"Have you no spark of kindness or affection for me in your heart--not
+one?"
+
+"Come, Castalia, let us have done with this! I thoroughly dislike and
+object to 'scenes' of any kind. You have a taste for them,
+unfortunately. What you have to do now is to do as I bid you, and try to
+make your peace by begging Rhoda's pardon, and so trying to undo a
+little of the mischief your insane temper has caused."
+
+"Ancram, say one kind word to me!"
+
+"Good God, Castalia! How can you be so exasperatingly childish?"
+
+"One word! Say you love me a little still! Say you did love me when you
+married me! Don't let me believe that I have been a miserable dupe all
+along."
+
+She no longer refused point-blank to obey him. She was bending into her
+old attitude of submission to his wishes. His ascendancy over her was
+paramount still. But she had made herself thoroughly obnoxious to him,
+and must be punished. Algernon's resentments were neither quick nor
+numerous, but they were lasting. His distaste for certain temperaments
+was profound. Castalia's intensity of emotion, and her ungoverned way of
+showing it, roused a sense of antagonism in him, which came nearer to
+passion than anything he had ever felt. With the sure instinct of
+cruelty, he confronted her wild, eager, supplicating face with a hard,
+cold, sarcastic smile, and a slight shrug. A blow from his hand would
+have been tender by comparison. Then he pulled out his watch and said,
+"How long do you intend this performance to last?" in the quietest voice
+in the world. And all the while he was in a white heat of anger, as I
+have said.
+
+"Oh, Ancram! Oh, Ancram!" she cried. Then with a sudden change of tone,
+she said, "Will you promise me one thing? Will you swear never to see
+Rhoda Maxfield again? If you will do that, I will--I will--try to
+forgive you."
+
+"To _forgive_ me! Then you really _have_ lost your senses?"
+
+"No; I wish I had! I would rather be mad than know what I know. But
+think, Ancram, think well before you refuse me! This one thing is all I
+ask. Never see or speak to her, or write to her again--not even when I
+am dead! Swear it. I think if you swore it you would keep to it,
+wouldn't you? This one poor thing for all I have borne, for all I am
+willing to bear. I'll take that as a proof that you don't love her best.
+I'll be content with that. I'll give up everything else in the whole
+world. Only do this one thing for me, Ancram; I beg it on my knees!"
+
+She did, indeed, fall on her knees as she spoke, and stretched out her
+clasped hands towards him. For one second their eyes met, then he turned
+his way and said, as quietly as ever, "I am going to Mr. and Miss
+Maxfield at once, with the most effectual apology which could be offered
+to them--namely, that you are a maniac, and in any case not responsible
+for your actions, nor to be treated like a rational being."
+
+She staggered up to her feet. "Very well," she gasped out, "then I shall
+not spare you--nor her. I have had a letter from my uncle. He has told
+me what you accused me of. I went to the office. That man there told me
+the same. The notes that I paid away to Ravell--you 'wondered'--_you_
+were 'uneasy!' Why, you gave me them yourself. Oh, Ancram, how _could_
+you have the heart? I wish I was dead!"
+
+"I wish to God you were!"
+
+She was standing close to the edge of the steep, slippery bank; and when
+he said these words she staggered and, with a little heart-broken moan,
+put out her hand to clutch at him, groping like a blind person. He shook
+off her grasp with a sudden rough movement, and the next instant she was
+deep in the dark ice-cold water.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+It was past mid-day when a loud peal at the bell of Ivy Lodge startled
+the women in the kitchen. Polly ran to the front door to open it. There
+stood her master, who pushed quickly into the house past her. "Is your
+mistress come back?" he asked almost breathlessly.
+
+"No, sir! Oh, mercy me, what's the matter? What has happened?" she
+cried, for his face showed undisguised terror and agitation. He sat down
+in the dining-room and asked for a glass of wine. Having drunk it at a
+gulp, he said, "I cannot understand it. I have been nearly to Whitford
+along the meadow-path; I didn't try the other way, but then she would
+not have wandered towards Duckwell, surely! Then I crossed the fields
+and came back by the road, looking everywhere, and asking every one I
+met. Nothing to be seen of her. Your mistress's manner has been so
+strange of late. You must have noticed it. I--I--am afraid--I cannot
+help being afraid that some terrible thing has happened to her. I have
+had a dreadful weight and presentiment on my mind all the morning. Where
+can she be?"
+
+"Oh no, no, sir. Never fear! She'll be all safe somewheres or other.
+She'll just have gone wandering on into the town. She _have_ been
+strange in her ways, poor thing! and we couldn't but see it, sir. But
+she can't have come to no harm. There's nothing to hurt her here-about."
+
+Thus honest Polly, consolingly. But she was infected, too, by the terror
+in her master's white face.
+
+"You don't know," said he tremulously, "what reason I have for
+uneasiness." He drew out from his pocket-book a torn scrap of paper with
+some writing on it. "I found this on the floor by her desk this morning.
+This is what alarmed me so before I went out, but I wouldn't say
+anything about it then."
+
+Polly stared at the paper with eager curiosity, but the sharp, slanting
+writing puzzled her eyes, never quite at their ease with the alphabet in
+any shape. "Is it missus's writing?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; see, she talks of being so wretched. Why, God knows! Her mind has
+been quite unhinged. That is the only explanation. And, you see, she
+says, 'It will not be long before this misery is at an end. I cannot
+live on as I am living. _I will not._'"
+
+"Lord, ha' mercy upon us!" ejaculated the woman, on whom the full force
+of her master's anxiety and alarm suddenly broke. Her round ruddy cheeks
+grew almost as white as his, and Lydia, who had been peeping and
+listening at the door, burst out crying, and began uttering a series of
+incoherent phrases.
+
+"Hold your noise!" said Polly roughly. "There's troubles enough without
+you. Now look ye here, sir. I'll put on my bonnet and go right down into
+Whitford. You take a look along Whit Meadow up Duckwell way. I bet ten
+pounds she's there somewhere's about. She has taken to going about
+through the fields, hasn't she, Lydia? Oh, hold your noise, and try and
+do something to help, you whimpering fool!"
+
+Polly's violent excitement and trepidation took a practical form, whilst
+the other woman was utterly helpless. She was bidden to stay at home and
+"receive missus," and tell her that master was come back, and beg her
+"to bide still in the house, until he should return."
+
+"But I'm afraid she'll never come back!" sobbed Lydia. "I'm so
+frightened to stop here by myself."
+
+"Ugh, you great silly! Haven't you got no feeling for the poor husband?
+He looks scared well-nigh to death, poor lad. And as for you, it ain't
+much _you_ care what's become of missus. You never had a good word for
+her. You're only crying because you're a coward."
+
+Meanwhile Algernon sat in the little dining-room, with a strange
+sensation, as if every muscle in his body had been turned into lead. He
+_must_ get up, and go out as the woman had said. He _must_! But there he
+sat with that sensation of marvellous _weight_ holding him down in his
+chair. The house was absolutely still. Lydia, unable to remain alone in
+the kitchen, had gone to stand at the front door and stare up and down
+the road. Thus she heard nothing of footsteps approaching the house at
+the back, coming hurriedly through the garden, and pausing at the
+threshold of the door, which was open.
+
+Presently, after some muttered conversation, in which two or three
+voices took part, a man entered the house and came along the passage,
+looking, as he went, into the kitchen and finding no one. Just as he
+reached the door of the dining-room, Algernon came out and confronted
+him.
+
+"There's been an accident, sir, I'm sorry to say," said the man. "The
+alarm was given up our way about an hour and a half ago. Somebody's
+fallen into the Whit. I'm very sorry, sir, but I'm afraid you must
+prepare for bad news."
+
+Whilst he was still speaking, the house had filled with an
+ever-gathering crowd. People stood in the passage, peeping over each
+other's shoulders, and pushing to get a glimpse of Algernon. There were
+even faces pressed to the windows outside, and the garden was blocked
+up. Polly had come hurrying back from the town, and now elbowed her way
+through the crowd to her master. She soon cleared the passage of the
+throng of idlers who blocked it up, and shut them outside the door by
+main force. They still swarmed about the house and garden, both on the
+side of the road and that of Whit Meadow. And their numbers increased
+every minute. Polly pulled the man who had been spokesman into the
+dining-room, and bade him say what he had to say without further
+preamble. "It's no use 'preparing' him," she said, pointing to Algernon,
+who had sunk into a chair, and was holding his forehead with his hands;
+"you'll only make it worse. I'm afraid you can't tell him anything
+dreadfuller than he's got into his head already. Speak out!"
+
+Thus requested, the man, a carpenter of Pudcombe village, told his tale.
+Some men, working in the fields about a mile above Whitford--half a
+mile, perhaps, from Ivy Lodge, had heard cries for help from the meadows
+near the river. He, the carpenter, happened to be passing along a field
+path from a farmhouse where he had been at work, and ran with the
+labourers down to the water's edge. There they saw David Powell, the
+Methodist preacher, wildly shouting for help, and with clothes dripping
+wet. He had waded waist-deep into the Whit to try to save some one who
+was drowning there, but in vain. He could not swim, and the current had
+carried the drowning person out of his reach. "You know," said the
+carpenter, "there are some ugly swirls and currents in the Whit, for all
+it looks so sluggish." A boat had been got out and manned, and had made
+all speed in the direction Powell pointed out. He insisted on
+accompanying them in his wet clothes. They searched the river for some
+time in vain. They had got as far as Duckwell Reach when they caught
+sight of a dark object close in shore. It was the form of a woman. Her
+clothes had caught in the broken stump of an old willow that grew half
+in the water; and she was thus held there, swinging to and fro with the
+current. She was taken out and carried to Duckwell Farm, where every
+effort had been made to restore her to consciousness. Powell understood
+the best methods to employ. The Seth Maxfields had done everything in
+their power, but it was no use. She had never moved, nor breathed, nor
+quivered an eyelash.
+
+That was the substance of the carpenter's story.
+
+"Is she dead?" asked Algernon with his face hidden. They were the first
+words he had spoken. And when the man answered with a mournful but
+positive "Yes; quite, quite dead," he said not a syllable further, but
+turned away from them, and buried his head in the cushions of the chair.
+
+"He hasn't even asked who the woman was!" whispered the carpenter to
+Polly. The tears were streaming down the woman's cheeks. Castalia had
+not made herself beloved in her own house, but Polly had felt the sort
+of regard for her which grows by acts of kindness, and forbearance and
+compassion, performed. She shook her head, and answered in an equally
+low tone, "No need for him to ask, poor young fellow. We've all been
+fearing something dreadful about missus all morning. And he had his
+reasons for being afraid as she had gone and done something desperate."
+
+"What--you don't mean that she made away with herself?" said the
+carpenter, raising his hands.
+
+"Oh, that's more than you and I know. Best say nothing. How can we
+judge? Poor soul! Well, I always did feel sorry for her, and that I'll
+say. Though, mind you, I'm sorry for him too. But there's some folks as
+can't stroke the dog without kicking the cat."
+
+The news spread rapidly through Whitford, and caused the utmost
+excitement there. Mrs. Algernon Errington had been found drowned in the
+Whit. How--whether by accident or design--no one knew. But that did not
+prevent people from hazarding a thousand conjectures. She had wandered
+out alone, had ventured too near the edge of the slippery bank, and had
+lost her footing. She had been robbed and thrown into the river. She had
+committed suicide from ungovernable jealousy. She had committed suicide
+in a fit of insanity. She had become a hypochondriac. She had gone
+raving mad. She had committed various frauds at the post-office, and had
+killed herself in terror at the prospect of their coming to light. This
+latter hypothesis found much credence. So many circumstances--trifling,
+perhaps, in themselves, but important when massed together--seemed to
+corroborate it. And then, if that did not seem an adequate motive for
+the desperate deed, Castalia's notorious and passionate jealousy was
+thrown in as a make-weight. There would be a coroner's inquest, of
+course. And the chief witness at it would probably be David Powell. It
+appeared he was the last person who had seen the unfortunate woman
+alive.
+
+Mrs. Thimbleby was in terrible affliction. Mr. Powell was very ill. He
+had plunged into the ice-cold river, and had then remained for hours in
+his wet clothes. He had not been able to walk back from Duckwell Farm,
+and Farmer Maxfield had brought him home himself in his spring-cart, and
+had bidden widow Thimbleby look after him a little, for he (Maxfield)
+thought the preacher in a very bad way. He was seized with violent fits
+of shivering, and the doctor whom Mrs. Thimbleby sent for to see him, on
+her own responsibility, told them to get him into bed at once, to keep
+him warm, and to administer certain remedies which he ordered. But no
+word would Powell speak about his ailments to the doctor, or to anyone
+else. He waved off all questions with a determined though gentle
+resolution. He allowed himself to be helped into bed, being absolutely
+unable to stand or walk without assistance. And he did not refuse the
+warm clothing which the widow heaped upon him. He lay still and passive,
+but he would say no word of his symptoms and sensations to the doctor.
+"The man can in no wise help me," he said to Mrs. Thimbleby. "All the
+wisdom of this world is foolishness to one whom the Lord has laid his
+hands on. I am bowed as a reed; yea, I am broken."
+
+His voice was hoarse and feeble, and his eyes blazed with a feverish
+light. The widow found it vain to importune him to swallow the medicines
+that had been sent. In her heart she had some misgivings that it might
+be wrong to interfere in the dealings of Providence with so holy a man,
+by administering drugs to him. But the misgivings never reached a point
+of conviction that might have comforted her.
+
+"I'll leave you quiet awhile, Mr. Powell," she said. "Maybe you'll
+sleep, and that would do you more good than anything. Sleep is God's own
+cure for a many troubles, isn't it?"
+
+He looked at her with a wild unrecognising stare. "When I say my bed
+shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint, then thou scarest me
+with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions," he murmured.
+
+The good woman softly went away, wiping the tears from her eyes. "One
+thing is a mercy," said the poor soul to herself, "and that is, that Mr.
+Diamond is so kind and thoughtful. He gives no trouble, and is a help on
+the contrary. And I'm sure I don't know how we should have managed
+without his arm to help Mr. Powell upstairs. And another thing is a
+mercy--I hope it isn't wrong to feel it so!--that Mrs. Errington is out
+of the house. I do not know how I should have been strengthened to keep
+up and attend upon her, and she in such a way, poor thing! The Lord has
+had pity on us for Mr. Powell's sake."
+
+Minnie Bodkin had driven to Mrs. Thimbleby's house early in the
+afternoon, and taken Mrs. Errington away with her. Mrs. Errington had
+rushed to Ivy Lodge under the first shock of the terrible news which Mr.
+Smith, the surgeon, communicated to her. She had seen her son for a few
+minutes. Her intention had been to remain with him, but this he would
+not allow. He had insisted on his mother's returning to her own lodgings
+after a very brief interview with him.
+
+"No wonder he can't bear to have her about, though she _is_ his mother.
+Tiresome old thing!" exclaimed Lydia, peevishly.
+
+But if Algernon got rid of his mother as quickly as possible, he refused
+to admit any one else at all, and remained shut up in the dining-room,
+whither he had had a sofa carried, meaning to sleep there. He had been
+obliged to receive Seth Maxfield, who came to ask when and how he would
+wish his wife's body conveyed from Duckwell Farm to Whitford. "Can't she
+stay there?" he had asked in a dazed sort of manner. Then added quickly,
+turning away his head, "I'll leave it all to you. You've been very good.
+You've done everything for the best, I am sure." And he put out his hand
+to the farmer with his face still turned away. And later on he had had
+to see some officials about the inquest. But after that was over, he
+locked his door, and refused to open it except to Polly, when she
+brought him food. He ate almost ravenously, drank a great deal of wine,
+and then lay down and dozed away the hours until dawn next day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+The inquest was to be held at the "Blue Bell" inn. And after the
+inquest, the dust of the Honourable Castalia Errington was to be laid
+beneath the turf of the humble village churchyard, amidst less noble
+dust, with the daisies growing impartially above all, and spreading
+their pink-edged petals over the just and the unjust alike.
+
+It was now currently reported that the thefts at the post-office had
+been Castalia's doing. Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Dockett had been "sure of it
+all along"--so they said, and so they really imagined now. The story of
+the mysterious notes paid to Ravell, the draper, was in every mouth.
+Roger Heath went about saying that Mr. Errington ought to make _his_
+loss good out of his own pocket, if he had any feelings of honour. But
+all the people who had not lost any money in the post-office were
+disgusted at Roger Heath's hardness and avarice, and asked indignantly
+if that was the moment to speak of such things? For the tragedy of
+Castalia's death had produced a strong effect in Whitford. Perhaps there
+was not one human being in the town who grieved that she was gone; but
+many were oppressed by the manner of her going. People had an uneasy
+feeling in remembering how much they had disliked her; almost as if
+their dislike made them guilty of her death in some vague, far-off,
+inexplicable way. They told themselves and each other that though "her
+manners had been repellent, poor thing," yet for their part they had
+always felt sorry for her, and had long perceived that her mind was
+astray, and that she was falling into a low melancholy state, that was
+likely to lead to some terrible catastrophe. By this time scarcely any
+one in Whitford entertained a doubt as to Castalia's having destroyed
+herself. And the social verdict, "Temporary insanity," was pronounced in
+assured anticipation that the legal verdict would be to that effect
+also.
+
+There were two men who did not mystify themselves by conjuring up any
+factitious tenderness about Castalia's memory, and who gave way to no
+superstitious uneasiness of conscience as to their dislike of her when
+she was alive. One of these men was Jonathan Maxfield; the other was the
+dead woman's husband.
+
+Maxfield had no retrospective softness on the subject. He, indeed, being
+accustomed to take certain passages of the Old Testament very seriously
+and literally, and having fed his mind almost exclusively upon those
+passages, was of opinion that Castalia's tragic fate had been brought
+about by a direct interposition of Providence as a judgment on her for
+her bad behaviour to himself and his daughter. And if this opinion on
+Maxfield's part should appear incredibly monstrous, let it be remembered
+that in his own mind "the godly" were typified by the Maxfield family,
+and "the ungodly" by the enemies of that family.
+
+As to Algernon--harassed, anxious, and doubtful of the future as he
+might be, he was glad that his wife was dead, and he knew that he was
+glad. Her death made a way out--apparently the only possible way out--of
+a labyrinth of troubles, and relieved Algernon from the apprehension of
+an exposure which it made him sick to think of. He had not meant to kill
+her, he said to himself. He had certainly laid no deliberate plan to do
+so. Had he, in truth, been the cause of her death? In the state of mind
+she was in, would she not have thrown herself into the river, or
+otherwise put an end to herself, without that touch from him which he
+had given, he knew not how?
+
+It all seemed unreal to him when he thought of it--the leaden water,
+the grey sky and meadows, and the slippery bank with its tufts of
+blackberry bushes. He went over and over again in his mind the words
+that had passed between himself and Castalia; her violence, and her wild
+jealousy and suspicions, and her allusion to her uncle's letter, and to
+what Gibbs had told her, and then her fierce threat that she would not
+spare him! She had become utterly unmanageable--mad, in fact. She had
+resolved to die. She had a suicidal mania. That scrap of writing would
+suffice to prove it. To be sure he had found it and put it in his
+pocket-book weeks ago, although he told the servant that he had picked
+it up off the floor that morning of his return from London. But that
+only indicated that the idea had long been rooted in her mind. And
+besides, the paper bore no date. There was nothing to show how long it
+had been written.
+
+No, it was not he who had killed Castalia. She had gone down willingly
+to death. She had uttered no sound, no cry. He should have heard a cry
+all across the silent meadows. He had not looked back. He had fled away
+from the river at his topmost speed after he saw her slip, and stagger,
+and fall heavily into the black water under the shadow of the bank. Had
+she risen again to the surface? It was said that drowning persons always
+rose three times. But she had made no sound. Surely she would have
+cried out if she had longed for life. Ugh! It was horrible to imagine
+her white face and staring eyes rising above the strong dragging current
+and looking for help. That was all very ghastly, very hideous. He would
+not think of it. It was over. Castalia was dead. And although he would
+have given much that she should have died in any other way, yet he was
+glad that she was dead, and he knew that he was glad.
+
+He made no pretence to himself of a factitious tenderness about her. She
+had been thoroughly antagonistic and distasteful to him of late. She had
+been the bitter drop flavouring every action, every hope, every minute
+of his life. He had been the victim of a hard fate, and of the false
+promises (implied, if not expressed) of Lord Seely. Those paltry
+sums--those notes that he had taken--he had been driven into committing
+that action altogether by stress of circumstances. It was strange to
+himself to think of the light that action would appear in to other
+people. To his own mind, knowing how it had come to pass in an instant,
+by the tug of a sudden impulse, it seemed so clear that there was no
+real ground for blaming him in the matter! He had felt the difficulty of
+getting money with a severity which the rest of the world probably could
+not conceive. He was absolutely indifferent to the question of abstract
+right or wrong, justice or injustice, in the case. But the concrete
+hardship to himself of being poor he had keenly felt to be undeserved.
+
+And now, if it were not for one thing, he should begin to breathe more
+freely. The one thing that weighed on him with a gloomy, though formless
+foreboding, was the inquest. He had been obliged to go to Duckwell Farm.
+He had been asked to look at Castalia's dead body. He had not dared to
+refuse to do so; but he had requested to be shown into the room where
+she lay, alone and without witnesses. The room was that sunny parlour
+where Rhoda Maxfield had sat on many a summer evening, and where the
+neighbours had discussed the news of his own marriage less than a year
+ago. But Algernon's imagination did not wander very far from the
+present. He walked to the window and looked out through the black
+trellis-work of leafless vine branches. Then he stared at the prints on
+the walls, and the gay china vases filled with winter nosegays of
+trembling grass and chrysanthemums. And then his eyes, which had
+wandered in every other direction, were compelled to turn towards the
+broad, old-fashioned sofa covered with fair white linen, under which the
+outlines of a human shape revealed themselves.
+
+Was that stiff, white, silent thing Castalia? He could not realise it.
+He would scarcely have started if the door had opened and his wife had
+walked into the room in her ordinary dress, and with her ordinary gait.
+He had seen her last full of passionate excitement. That stiff, white,
+silent thing could not be she. He would not lift the coverlet, though,
+nor look on that which lay beneath. But he stood and gazed at it until
+the heap beneath the linen sheet seemed to stir and change its outlines.
+Then he turned away shuddering to the window, and looked at his watch to
+see whether he might venture to leave the room yet. Would the people
+think he had been there too short a time? He came out at length, looking
+pale and depressed enough to excite a good deal of sympathy in the
+breast of Mrs. Seth Maxfield. And with his usual quick susceptibility to
+the impression he produced on others, he was fully aware of this, and
+gratified by it, despite the chill vision of the still white heap under
+the coverlet which persistently haunted his memory. He saw looks of
+pity; he heard whispered exclamations of admiration, and they did more
+than gratify, they reassured him. It had entered into nobody's mind to
+conceive that he had been the cause of his wife's death. Into whose
+head, indeed, should it enter? or how? He remembered the last
+lightning-quick glance he had cast over the wide meadows, and how it had
+shown them to him empty and bare of any living thing for as far as his
+eye could reach. No; he was safe from suspicion. Of course he was safe
+from suspicion! And yet--he would have given a year of his life to have
+the inquest over, and the dead woman safely put away beneath the daisies
+in Duckwell churchyard.
+
+Meanwhile the mortal frame that had so throbbed and suffered for his
+sake, lay there lonely and neglected. Strangers' hands had composed it
+decently; a stranger's roof sheltered it. It was to lie in a stranger's
+grave. Only one woman came and stood beside the couch in the sunny
+parlour, and looked on the dead shape with eyes full of compassionate
+tears; and, before going away, laid some sprays of fern and delicate
+hothouse blossoms on the quiet breast, and fastened there a curl of
+light hair. The hair had been cut jestingly from Algernon Errington's
+head when he was a school-boy, and then put away and forgotten for
+years. It now lay above his dead wife's heart. "She was so fond of him,
+poor soul!" said the compassionate woman. It was Minnie Bodkin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+The big room at the "Blue Bell" was full. It was a room associated in
+the minds of most of the people present with occasions of festivity or
+entertainment. The Archery Club balls were held in it. It was used for
+the exhibitions of any travelling conjurer, lecturer, or musician, whose
+evil fate brought him to Whitford. Once a strolling company of players
+had performed there before some fifteen persons and several dozen
+cane-bottomed chairs. There were the tarnished candelabra stuck in the
+walls, the little gallery up aloft where the fiddlers sat on ball
+nights, and the big looking-glass at one end of the room, muffled with
+yellow muslin, and surmounted by a dusty garland of paper flowers. Now
+the wintry daylight coming through the uncurtained windows, made all
+these things look chill, ghastly, and forlorn. People who had thought
+the "Blue Bell" Assembly Room a cheerful place enough under the bright
+illumination of wax candles, now shivered, and whispered to each other
+how dreary it was.
+
+The coroner's jury had been out to Duckwell Farm to view the body, and
+to look at the exact spot on the bank where it had been landed from the
+boat, and to stare at the willow stump to which it had been found
+fastened by the clothes. And they had returned to the "Blue Bell" inn to
+complete the inquiry into the causes of the death of Castalia Errington.
+A great many witnesses had already been examined. Their testimony went
+to show that the deceased lady's behaviour of late had been very
+strange, capricious, and unreasonable. Almost every one of the
+witnesses, including the servants at Ivy Lodge, confessed that they had
+heard rumours of young Mrs. Errington being "not right in her mind."
+They had observed an increasing depression of spirits in her of late.
+Obadiah Gibbs's evidence was the strongest of all, and his revelations
+created a great sensation. He described his last interview with Castalia
+at the post-office, and left the impression on all his hearers which was
+honestly his own; namely, that on Castalia, and on her alone, rested the
+onus of the irregularities and robberies of money-letters at Whitford.
+He did his best to spare her memory. He sincerely thought her
+irresponsible for her actions. But the facts, as he saw and represented
+them, admitted of but one conclusion being come to.
+
+Algernon Errington's appearance in the room elicited a low murmur of
+sympathy from the spectators. His manner of giving his evidence was
+perfect, and nothing could have been better in keeping with the
+circumstances of his painful position, than the subdued, yet quiet tones
+of his voice, and the white, strained look of his face, which revealed
+rather the effect of a great shock to the nerves than a deep wound to
+the heart. Of course he could not be expected to grieve as a husband
+would grieve who had lost a dearly-loved and loving wife; but their
+having been on somewhat bad terms, and Castalia's notorious jealousy and
+bad temper, made the manner of her death all the more terrible. Poor
+young man! He was dreadfully cut up, one could see that. But he made no
+pretences, put on no affectations of woe. He was so simple and quiet! In
+a word, he was credited with feeling precisely what he ought to have
+felt.
+
+His statement added scarcely any new fact to those already known. He had
+not seen his wife alive since he parted from her when he started for
+London to visit Lord Seely, who was ill. He corroborated his servants'
+testimony to the facts that Castalia had wandered out on to Whit Meadow
+about nine o'clock in the morning; that he had been made uneasy by her
+strange absence, and that he had gone himself to seek her, but without
+success. In reply to some questions by a juryman, as to whether he had
+gone to London solely because of Lord Seely's illness, he answered, with
+a look of quiet sadness, that that had not been his sole reason. There
+were private matters to be spoken of between himself and his wife's
+uncle--matters which admitted of no delay. Could he not have written
+them? No; he did not feel at liberty to write them. They concerned his
+wife. He had mentioned to Lord Seely his fears that her mind was giving
+way, as Lord Seely would be able to affirm. A letter found in the pocket
+of the deceased woman's gown was produced and read. It had become partly
+illegible from immersion in the water, but the greater portion of it
+could be made out. It was from Lord Seely, and referred to a painful
+conversation he had had with his niece's husband about herself. It was a
+kind letter, but written evidently in much agitation and pain of mind.
+The writer exhorted and even implored his niece to confide fully in him,
+for her own sake, as well as that of her family; and promised that he
+would help and support her under all circumstances, if she would but
+tell him the truth unreservedly.
+
+Nothing could have been better for Algernon's case than that letter.
+Instead of being the cause of his disgrace and exposure, it was
+obviously the means of confirming every one of his statements, implied
+as well as expressed. It showed clearly enough--first, that Algernon had
+given Lord Seely to understand that his wife laboured under grave
+suspicions of having stolen money-letters from the Whitford Post-office;
+secondly, that he (Algernon) believed those suspicions to be well
+founded; thirdly, that symptoms of mental aberration, which had recently
+manifested themselves in Castalia, were at once the explanation of, and
+the excuse for, her conduct. This letter, which, if Castalia were alive
+to speak for herself, would have been like a brand on her husband's
+forehead for life, was now a most valuable testimony in his favour.
+
+Algernon's hard and unrelenting mood towards his dead wife grew still
+harder and more unrelenting as he listened to this letter, and
+remembered that Castalia had threatened him with exposure, and had
+resolved not to spare him. Nothing in the world but her death could have
+saved him from ruin. Even supposing that she could have been cajoled
+into promising to comply with his directions, she would not have been
+able to do so. She was so stupidly literal in her statements. A direct
+lie would have embarrassed her. And then, at the first jealous fit which
+might have seized her, he would have been at her mercy. Lord Seely's
+letter showed a strong feeling of irritation--almost of
+hostility--against Algernon. It might not be recognisable by the
+audience at the inquest, but Algernon recognised it completely, and felt
+a distinct sense of triumph in the impotence of Lord Seely to harm him,
+or to wriggle away from under his heel. Algernon was master of the
+position. He appeared before the world in the light of a victim to his
+alliance with the Seelys. There could be no further talk on their part
+of condescension, or honour conferred. He and his mother had lived their
+lives as persons of gentle blood and unblemished reputation until the
+Honourable Castalia Kilfinane brought disgrace and misery into their
+home. In making these reflections Algernon was not, of course,
+considering the inward truth of facts, but their outward semblances. It
+made no difference to his indignation against the "pompous little ass"
+who had treated him with hauteur, nor to his satisfaction in humbling
+the "pompous little ass," that if all the secret circumstances hidden
+and silenced for ever under the cold white shroud that covered his dead
+wife could be revealed before the eyes of all men, Lord Seely would have
+the right to detest and despise him. Lord Seely had not treated him as
+he ought. He was firmly persuaded of that. And as he measured Lord
+Seely's duty towards him accurately by the extent of all he desired and
+expected of Lord Seely, it will be seen how far short the latter had
+fallen of Algernon's standard.
+
+The Seth Maxfields gave their testimony as to how the deceased body had
+been carried into their house; how they had tried all means to revive
+her; and how every effort had been in vain, and she had never moved nor
+breathed again. The two men who had rescued the body from the water, and
+the carpenter who had brought the news to Ivy Lodge, repeated their
+story, and corroborated all that the Maxfields had said. There only
+remained to be heard the important testimony of David Powell. He had
+been so ill that it was feared at one time that the inquest must be
+adjourned until he should be able to give his evidence. But he declared
+that he would come and speak before the jury; that he should be
+strengthened to do so when the moment arrived; and had opposed a fixed
+silence to all the representations and remonstrances of the doctor. On
+the morning of the inquest he arose and dressed himself before Mrs.
+Thimbleby was up, albeit she was no sluggard in the morning. He had gone
+out, while it was still dark, into the raw foggy atmosphere of Whit
+Meadow, and had wandered there for a long time. On returning to the
+widow Thimbleby's house, he had seated himself opposite to the blazing
+fire in the kitchen, staring at it, and muttering to himself like a man
+in a feverish dream.
+
+Nevertheless, when the due time arrived, he entered the room at the
+"Blue Bell" to give his evidence with a quiet steady gait. His
+appearance there produced a profound impression.
+
+A stranger contrast than he presented to the Whitford burghers by whom
+he was surrounded could scarcely be imagined. Not only were his bodily
+shape and colouring different from theirs, but the expression of his
+face was almost unearthly. There was some subtle contradiction between
+the expression of David Powell's sorrow-laden eyes and brow, and that of
+the mouth, with its tightly-closed lips drawn back at the corners with
+what on ordinary faces would have been a smile. But on his face, being
+coupled with a singular pinched look of the nostrils and a strained
+tightness of the upper lip, it became something which troubled the
+beholder with a sense of inexplicable pain--almost terror.
+
+As he advanced along the room, there was a hush of attentive
+expectation, during which Dr. Evans, the coroner, curiously examined the
+Methodist preacher with grave professional eyes. After a few
+preliminary questions, to which Powell gave brief, clear answers, he
+said, "I have been brought hither to testify in this matter. I am an
+instrument in the hands of the great and terrible God. He works not as
+men work. In His hand all tools are alike."
+
+"What can you tell us of the death of this unfortunate lady, Mr.
+Powell?" asked the coroner, quietly. "You were the first to see her
+struggling in the water, were you not? And you made a gallant effort to
+save her."
+
+"She struggled but little. She went to her death as a lamb to the
+slaughter; nay, as a victim who desires to die."
+
+Powell spoke in a low but distinct voice; broken and harsh, indeed,
+compared with what it once was, but still with a soft tremulous note in
+it now and then, that seemed to stir deep fibres of feeling in the
+hearts of those who heard him. In such a tone it was that he uttered the
+words, "as a victim who desires to die." And tears sprang into the eyes
+of many from sheer emotional sympathy with the sound of his voice.
+
+"You are of opinion, then, Mr. Powell," said the coroner, "that the
+deceased wilfully put an end to her own life."
+
+"No."
+
+"You think that she was not in a state of mind to be responsible for her
+actions?"
+
+"She was murdered," said Powell, in a distinct, grating tone, which was
+audible in every corner of the crowded room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+There was a momentary rustling, as if every person present had moved
+slightly, and then a deep hush. The silence seemed to last a long time;
+but, in fact, only a second or two elapsed before Powell, drawing up his
+tall, lean figure to its utmost height, and pointing with outstretched
+hand full at Algernon, exclaimed with a kind of cry, "There is her
+murderer! Woe to the cruel, woe to the unrighteous man! Ye have ploughed
+wickedness; ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies!"
+
+There arose a murmur, a movement, a confused sound of ejaculations.
+Algernon started up, and some one laid a hand on his shoulder and pushed
+him back into his seat. "Ask what he means," said Algernon; but his
+voice was so weak and faint that the words were not heard beyond the few
+persons who immediately surrounded him. He could scarcely grow paler
+than he had been from the beginning of the inquest, but a ghastly
+ashen-grey hue showed itself round his mouth. His lips were quite
+colourless. Terror, agonising terror, was in his heart. What did this
+preacher know? What had he seen? Had Castalia spoken and accused him
+before her death?
+
+Anguish for anguish; perhaps he suffered at that moment as much as his
+victim had suffered when she felt the hand she loved send her to her
+death.
+
+The movement and the murmur in the crowd were over in an instant. The
+coroner sternly commanded order. There was silence again, and the very
+air seemed charged with a horrible apprehension, which weighed upon
+every one as a coming thunderstorm oppresses the cowering birds.
+
+"You must speak clearly and plainly, Mr. Powell," said the coroner in a
+severe tone. "State what grounds you have for this very extraordinary
+accusation. The evidence laid before us to-day goes to show that Mr.
+Errington did not see his wife since parting from her on the Monday
+night to go to London, until he was called on to identify her dead body
+at Duckwell Farm."
+
+"He spoke with her in the meadow by the river's brink. She appealed to
+him; she implored him; she knelt to him. I saw her gestures. Then he
+hurled her down the steep bank into the water and fled away, leaving her
+to perish!"
+
+A most profound sensation was caused by these words throughout the whole
+assembly. The jury looked at each other like men suddenly aroused from
+sleep. They seemed not only startled but scared. Indeed, a singular
+expression of disquietude appeared on every face--almost as if each
+individual in the crowd had felt _himself_ accused. Before any further
+questions could be put to Powell, there was a stir and a commotion at
+the lower end of the room and a murmur of voices. Algernon Errington had
+swooned dead away. He must have fallen to the ground had he not been
+caught in the arms of his next neighbour, who happened to be Mr. Ravell,
+the draper. Some one in the crowd handed a smelling-bottle to be held
+under his nose, and they cleared a little space around him to give him
+air, by the directions of Mr. Smith, the surgeon, who was at hand. It
+was proposed to carry him away out of the heat and the throng; but in
+less than a couple of minutes he revived, and immediately on recovering
+consciousness he desired to remain where he was. The terror of listening
+to what Powell said was not so appalling to his imagination as the
+terror of fancying what he might be saying when he (Algernon) should not
+be there to hear it.
+
+Order being restored, the preacher's examination was continued. On being
+asked where he had been when the circumstances alleged to have taken
+place happened, he replied that he had been at some distance up the
+river, in the midst of a thick coppice which grew low down on the bank
+there. He had been near enough to see, although not to hear, the
+interview between young Errington and his wife. And to the questions
+what had brought him to that remote spot at such an hour, and why he did
+not make his presence known at once on seeing the deceased lady fall
+into the water, he answered, waving his hands to and fro, "I was
+prostrate on the earth--not praying, I may not pray, but suffering under
+the wrath of the powers of the air. The voices were very terrible on
+that day. They had aroused me from my bed. They had hunted me forth in
+the early morning. I had wandered for a long time--for hours, after your
+reckoning, but for years according to the time of the spirits."
+
+"Mr. Powell," said Dr. Evans, sternly, "this will not do. You must speak
+less wildly. Remember what a tremendous responsibility rests on you
+after making such an allegation as you have made! Answer the questions
+put to you clearly and seriously."
+
+But it was in vain that David Powell was catechised and cross-examined
+in the endeavour to draw from him any more definite account of the
+events of that last morning of Castalia's life. He reiterated, indeed,
+his statement that Algernon had wilfully and forcibly thrust his wife
+down the bank into the river, and had then fled away at his utmost
+speed. And he added that he (Powell) had not thought of pursuing or
+calling to the murderer, being absorbed in his attempts to rescue the
+drowning woman. He persisted, too, in declaring that Castalia had been
+willing, nay, wishful, to die. She had not struggled. She had not cried
+out. She had not tried to reach his outstretched hand. She had closed
+her eyes, and given herself up to the power of the death-cold waters. So
+far he was coherent and consistent; but when he endeavoured to describe
+how or why he had found himself on that spot at that hour, he wandered
+off into the wildest statements, and grew ever more and more excited.
+His face flushed. His eyes blazed. His voice rose almost to a scream. He
+broke into a torrent of words, standing up in face of the crowd and
+emphasising his discourse with strange violent gestures. "I will declare
+the truth," he exclaimed. "I will cry aloud, and spare not. Now,
+therefore, be content; look upon me, for it is evident unto you if I
+lie!" Then with a sudden change of tone, sinking his voice to a hoarse,
+hollow monotone, and gazing straight before him with wide,
+horror-stricken eyes, he added, "Let me speak, let me confess the truth,
+before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and
+the shadow of death. A land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the
+shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness."
+
+A shudder ran through the audience. The preacher seemed to hold them in
+a spell. No voice was raised to interrupt him. Many persons turned pale
+as they listened. But on one face in the crowd the colour faintly dawned
+again. In one breast the preacher's voice giving utterance to the awful
+and glowing imagery of the Hebrew of old time, awoke something like a
+sensation of relief and comfort. Algernon Errington felt the life-blood
+pulsing warmly again in his veins. This Methodist man was mad--clearly
+mad! What was his testimony worth?
+
+Powell went on, speaking still more brokenly and incoherently. "I am a
+castaway," he said. "I declare it before you all. Some of you have
+listened to my ministrations in other days. I spoke then of
+assurance--of Christian perfection. Those words were vain. There are but
+the elect and the reprobate, and unto the number of those latter am I
+doomed. I have long known it and struggled against the knowledge, but I
+declare it to ye now as a testimony. How shall a man be just with God?
+This is one thing, therefore I said it. He destroyeth the perfect and
+the wicked."
+
+The coroner recovered his presence of mind. In truth he had been so
+absorbed in studying David Powell with the professional interest of a
+doctor and a psychologist, that he had suffered him to ramble on thus
+far unchecked. But now he broke in upon him abruptly. "We cannot listen
+to this sort of thing, Mr. Powell," he said. "All this has no bearing on
+the present inquiry." Then he said a few words as to the desirability of
+an adjournment. Mr. Errington might wish to call some other witnesses.
+Powell had acknowledged that he had been too far distant to hear a word
+of the conversation he alleged to have taken place between the husband
+and wife. It was possible, therefore, that he had been too distant to
+see the two persons with sufficient distinctness to swear to their
+identity. Some more particular testimony might be obtained as to the
+precise hour at which the deceased lady had been last seen alive, and as
+to what her husband had been doing at that time. Upon this, Algernon
+Errington arose in his place and said in a clear, though slightly
+tremulous voice, "For myself, I desire no adjournment. But I should like
+to put a few questions to this witness."
+
+There was a sudden hush of profound attention. David Powell still stood
+up in face of the assembly. He was rocking himself to and fro in a
+singular, restless way, and muttering under his breath very rapidly. It
+was observable, too, that his eyes seemed continually attracted to one
+point in the room just behind Algernon Errington. Every now and then he
+passed his hands over his eyes, as if to obliterate, or shut out, some
+painful sight, but he did not turn his head away; and the next instant
+after making that gesture, he would stare at the same point again, with
+an expression of intense horror. Algernon waited for an instant before
+speaking. Then he said in such a tone as one uses to attract the
+attention of a very young child, "Mr. Powell, will you try to listen to
+me?"
+
+The preacher immediately looked full at him, but without replying.
+Algernon did not meet his eye, but turned his face aside towards the
+coroner and the jury. He looked at them with an appealing glance, and a
+slight movement of his head in the direction of Powell. Then he resumed:
+
+"The accusation you have brought against me is so overwhelming, so
+amazing, that it is not very wonderful if I feel almost stunned and
+dizzy. How such a notion ever entered your brain Heaven only knows! I
+deny it completely, unequivocally, solemnly. To me it seems that such a
+denial must be unnecessary. The thing is so monstrous! But will you try
+to answer one or two questions with some calmness? How long had you been
+in the copse before you saw my wife walking by the river-side?"
+
+Powell shook his head restlessly, and passed his hand over his forehead
+with the action of brushing something off. "I was called out before the
+dawn," he said. "The voices bade me go forth. They sounded like brazen
+bells in the silence, beating and quivering here," and he pressed his
+fingers on his temples.
+
+"You hear voices which are unheard by other people, then?"
+
+"Often. Every day. Every hour."
+
+"Tell me--do you not sometimes see forms that other persons cannot see?"
+
+Powell started, trembled violently, and looked at Algernon with an
+expression of bewildered terror. But it was at the same time manifest
+that some gleam of reason was struggling against the delusions in his
+mind. He felt and perceived dimly, as one perceives external
+circumstances through sleep, that a trap was being laid for him. The
+pathetic questioning look in his eyes, as he vainly tried to recover the
+government of his mind, was intensely painful. For a second or two, he
+remained silent with parted lips and clenched hands, like a man making a
+violent and supreme effort. It seemed as if in another instant he might
+succeed in gaining sufficient mastery over himself to reply collectedly.
+But Algernon did not give time for such a chance to happen. He repeated
+his question more eagerly and loudly, looking at the preacher almost
+threateningly as he spoke.
+
+"Tell me, Mr. Powell, and remember what a responsibility you have
+assumed before God and man in making this accusation--tell me truly
+whether you do not see visions--figures of men and women, that other
+people cannot see? Don't forms appear before your eyes and vanish again
+as suddenly? Have you not told your landlady, Mrs. Thimbleby, as much on
+many occasions? How can you dare to assert with confidence, that from
+the distance you say you were at, you could distinguish my face and that
+of my wife? All your description of her violent gestures, and kneeling
+on the ground, and clasping her hands--does not that seem more like the
+delusions of fancy than the information of your sober senses?"
+
+Algernon spoke with indignant heat and rapidity--a calculated heat, a
+purposed rapidity meant to have a confusing effect on the preacher, and
+which had that effect; but which also excited a sympathetic indignation
+in many of the auditors. Powell looked wildly around him, and clasped
+his hands above his head.
+
+"You must put one question at a time, Mr. Errington," said Dr. Evans.
+
+"Then I put this question: David Powell, do you, or do you not, see
+visions and faces and figures that the rest of the world is as
+unconscious of as of the voices that called you out on to Whit Meadow
+that morning that my poor wife was drowned?"
+
+Powell, with his eyes still fixed on the same point that he had been
+gazing on so long, suddenly cried out with a loud voice, "As God liveth,
+who hath taken away my judgment, and the Almighty, who hath vexed my
+soul, my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit!
+God forbid that I should justify you! Till I die I will not remove my
+integrity from me. It is there--there behind his shoulder. It has been
+holding me with the power of its eyes. Oh, how dreadful are those eyes,
+and that ashen-grey face! Look, behold! the Lord has brought a witness
+from the grave to testify to the truth. See, behold! Can you not see
+her? Look where she stands in her cold wet garments, with the water
+dripping from her hair! She points at him--oh God most terrible!--the
+drowned woman points her cold finger at her murderer!" He stretched out
+his arms towards Algernon, and then with one bound leaped shrieking into
+the midst of the crowd.
+
+A dozen hands were put forth to hold him. He struggled with the
+tremendous strength of insanity; but was at length forcibly carried out
+of the room a raving maniac.
+
+After that there were not many words of an official nature spoken in
+the room. The inquest was adjourned to the following day, and the
+assembly dispersed to carry the account of the strange scene that had
+happened all over Whitford and its neighbourhood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+The next day medical evidence was forthcoming as to the insanity of
+David Powell, who had been removed to the County Asylum. Testimony was,
+moreover, given by many persons showing that the preacher's mind had
+long been disordered. Even the widow Thimbleby's evidence, given with
+many tears, went to prove that. But she tried with all her might to bear
+witness to his goodness, and clung loyally to her loving admiration for
+his character. "He may not be quite in his right senses for matters of
+this world," sobbed the poor woman, "and he has been sorely tormented by
+taking up with these doctrines of election. But if ever there was an
+angel sent down to suffer on this earth, and help the sorrowful, and
+call sinners to repentance, Mr. Powell is that angel. I know what he is.
+And I have had other lodgers--good, kind gentlemen, too; I don't say to
+the contrary. But overboil their eggs in the morning, or leave a lump
+in their feather-bed, and you'd soon get a glimpse of the old Adam. Now
+with Mr. Powell, nothing put him out except sin; and even that did but
+make him the more eager to save your soul."
+
+Several witnesses who had testified on the previous day were
+re-examined. And some new ones were found who swore to having met Mr.
+Errington going along the road from his own house towards Whitford in
+great agitation, and asking everyone he met if they had seen his wife.
+The hour was such that to the best of their belief it was impossible he
+should have had such an interview as Powell described, with the
+deceased, between the time at which the cook swore he left his own house
+and their meeting him in the road. On this point, however, the evidence
+was somewhat conflicting. But the Whitford clocks were well known to be
+conflicting also; St. Mary's being always foremost with its jangling
+bell, the Town Hall clock coming next--except occasionally, when it
+hastened to be first with apparently quite capricious zeal--and the
+mellow chimes of St. Chad's, that were heard far over town and meadow,
+closing the chorus with their sweet cadence.
+
+There certainly appeared to be no cause, no conceivable motive for
+Algernon Errington to have committed the crime. Many witnesses combined
+to show with what sweetness and good-humour he bore his wife's jealous
+tempers. And, besides, it was notorious that he had hoped through her
+influence to obtain assistance and promotion from her uncle, Lord Seely.
+Whereas, on the other hand, there did seem to be several motives at work
+to induce the unfortunate lady to put an end to her own existence. There
+could be little doubt that she had committed the post-office robberies,
+and the fear of detection had weighed on her mind. Moreover, that she
+had for some time past been made unhappy by jealousy and discontent, and
+had contemplated making away with herself, was proved by several scraps
+of writing besides that which her husband had found and produced at the
+inquest the first day. In brief, no one was surprised when the foreman
+of the coroner's jury delivered a verdict to the effect that the
+deceased lady had committed suicide while under the influence of
+temporary insanity; and added a few words stating the opinion of the
+jury that Mr. Algernon Errington's character was quite unstained by the
+accusation of a maniac, who had been proved to have been subject to
+insane delusions for some time past. It was just the sort of verdict
+that every one had expected, and the general sympathy with Algernon
+still ran high.
+
+As for him, he got away from the "Blue Bell" as quickly as possible
+after the inquest was over, slipping away by a back door where a closed
+fly was waiting for him. When he reached his home he locked himself
+into the dining-room, and sat down on the sofa with closed eyes and his
+body leaning listlessly against the cushions, as if all vital force were
+gone from him. The prevailing--and, for a time, the only sensation he
+felt was one of utter weariness. He was so completely exhausted that the
+restful attitude, the silence, and the solitude seemed positive
+luxuries. He was scarcely conscious of his escape. He felt merely that
+the strain was over, and that voice, face, and limbs might sink back
+from the terrible tension he had held them in to a natural lassitude.
+
+But by-and-by he began to realise the danger he had passed, and to exult
+in his new sense of freedom. Castalia being removed, it seemed as if all
+troubles must be removed with her!
+
+The funeral of Mrs. Algernon Errington was to take place on the
+following day, and it was known that Lord Seely would be present at it
+if it were possible for him to make the journey from London. It was said
+that he had been very ill, but was now better, and would use his utmost
+endeavours to pay that mark of respect to his niece's memory. Mrs.
+Errington, indeed, talked of my lord's coming as a proof of his sympathy
+with her boy. But the world knew better than that. It knew, by some
+mysterious means, that Lord Seely had quarrelled with Algernon. And when
+his lordship did appear in Whitford, and took up his quarters at the
+"Blue Bell," rumours went about to the effect that he had refused to see
+young Errington, and had remained shut up in his own room, attended by
+his physician. This, however, was not true. Lord Seely had seen Algernon
+and spoken with him. But he had not touched his proffered hand; he had
+said no word to him of sympathy; he had barely looked at him. The poor
+old man was overpowered by grief for Castalia, and it was in vain for
+Algernon to put on a show of grief. About a matter of fact Lord Seely
+would even now have found it difficult to think that Algernon was
+telling him a point-blank lie; but on a matter of feeling it was
+different. Algernon's words and voice rang false and hollow, and the old
+man shrank from him.
+
+Lord Seely had come down to Whitford on getting the news of Castalia's
+terrible death, without knowing any particulars about it. Those were not
+the days when the telegraph brought a budget of intelligence from the
+most distant parts of the earth every morning. A few hurried and
+confused lines were all that Lord Seely had received, but they were
+sufficient to make him insist on performing the journey to Whitford at
+once. Lady Seely had tried to impress on him the necessity of shaking
+off young Errington now that Castalia was gone. "Wash your hands of him,
+Valentine," my lady had said. "If poor Cassy _has_ done this desperate
+deed, it's he that drove her to it--smooth-faced young villain!" To all
+this Lord Seely had made no reply. But in his own mind he had almost
+resolved to help Algernon to a place abroad. It was what his poor niece
+would have desired.
+
+But, then, after his arrival in Whitford all the painful details of the
+coroner's inquest were made known to him. He made inquiries in all
+directions, and learned a great deal about his niece's life in the
+little town. The prominent feelings in his mind were pity and remorse.
+Pity for Castalia's unhappy fate, and acute remorse for having been so
+weak as to let her marriage take place without any attempt to interfere,
+despite his own secret conviction that it was an ill-assorted and
+ill-omened one. "You couldn't have helped it, my lord," said the
+friendly physician, to whom he poured out some of the feelings that
+oppressed his heart. "Perhaps not; perhaps not. But I ought to have
+tried. My poor, dear, unhappy girl!"
+
+On the day of the funeral Lord Seely stood side by side with Algernon at
+Castalia's grave, in Duckwell churchyard. But, when it was over, they
+parted, and drove back to Whitford in separate carriages. Lord Seely was
+to return to London early the next morning, but before he went away he
+determined to pay a visit to the county lunatic asylum and see David
+Powell.
+
+On the day of the funeral Algernon had spoken a few words to Lord Seely
+about his wish to get away from the painful associations which must
+henceforward haunt him in Whitford; and had reminded his lordship of the
+promise made in London. But Lord Seely had made no definite answer, and,
+moreover, he had said that, by his doctor's advice, he must decline a
+visit which Algernon offered to make him that evening. Was the "pompous
+little ass" going to throw him over after all?
+
+In the course of that afternoon he heard that old Maxfield intended to
+come down on him pitilessly for the full amount of the bills he held. A
+reaction had set in in public sentiment. Tradesmen, who could not get
+paid, and whose hopes of eventual payment were greatly damped by the
+coolness of Lord Seely's behaviour to his nephew-in-law, began to feel
+their indignation once more override their compassion. The two servants
+at Ivy Lodge asked for their wages, and declared that they did not wish
+to remain there another week. Algernon's position at the post-office was
+forfeited. He knew that he could not keep it even if he would.
+
+It began to appear that the removal of Castalia had not, after all,
+removed all troubles from her husband's path!
+
+But the heaviest blow of all was to come.
+
+Lord Seely left Whitford without seeing him again, and sent back
+unopened a note, which Algernon had written, begging for an interview,
+with these words written outside the cover in a trembling hand: "_Dare
+not to write to me or importune me more._"
+
+Algernon received this late at night; and before noon the next day the
+fact was known all over Whitford. People began to say that Lord Seely
+had obtained access to David Powell, had spoken with him, and had gone
+away convinced of the substantial truth of his testimony; that his
+lordship had left orders that Powell should lack no comfort or attention
+which his unhappy state permitted of his enjoying; and that he had
+strongly expressed his grateful sense of the poor preacher's efforts to
+save his niece.
+
+From London Lord Seely--who had heard that Miss Bodkin had visited
+Duckwell Farm while his niece lay dead there, and had placed flowers on
+her unconscious breast--sent a mourning-ring and a letter, the contents
+of which Minnie communicated to no one but her parents. Nevertheless,
+its contents were discussed pretty widely, and were said to be of a
+nature very damnatory to Algernon Errington's character. However, the
+painful things that were said in Whitford could not hurt him, for he had
+gone--disappeared in the night like a thief, as his creditors said--and
+no one could say whither.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+Our tale is almost told. The last words that need saying can be briefly
+said. When some weeks had passed away, Mrs. Errington received a letter
+from her son demanding a remittance to be sent forthwith Poste Restante
+to a little seaport town on the Italian Riviera. He had not during the
+interval left his mother in absolute ignorance as to what had become of
+him, but had sent her a few brief lines from London, saying that he had
+been obliged to leave Whitford in order to escape being put in prison
+for debt; that his present intention was to go abroad; and that she
+should hear again from him before long.
+
+Algernon had been so quick in his movements that he managed to be in
+town before the story of Lord Seely's having cast him off had had time
+to be circulated amongst his acquaintance there. And he was enabled, as
+the result of his activity, to obtain from Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs and others
+several letters of introduction calculated to be of use to him abroad.
+He was described by Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs as a nephew of Lord Seely and her
+intimate friend, who was travelling on the Continent to recruit his
+health after the shock of his wife's sudden death.
+
+He had brought away from Whitford such few jewels belonging to his dead
+wife as were of any value, and he sold them in London. He furnished
+himself handsomely with such articles as were desirable for a gentleman
+of fortune travelling for his pleasure; and allowed the West-end
+tradesmen, to whom the Honourable John Patrick Price had recommended him
+during his brilliant London season, to write down against him in their
+books some very extortionate charges for the same. His outfit being
+accomplished in this inexpensive manner, he was enabled to travel with
+as much comfort as was compatible in those days with a journey from
+London to Calais, and he stepped on to the French shore with a
+considerable sum of money in his pocket.
+
+For a long time the tidings of him that reached Whitford were uncertain
+and conflicting; then they began to arrive at even wider and wider
+intervals; and, finally, after Mrs. Errington left the town, they
+ceased altogether to reach the general world of Whitfordians. The real
+history of the circumstances which induced Mrs. Errington to leave the
+home of so many years was known to very few persons. It was this:
+
+About a twelvemonth after Algernon's departure Mrs. Errington made a
+sudden journey to London; and, on her return, she confided to her old
+friend, Dr. Bodkin, that she had sold out of the funds nearly the whole
+sum from which her little income was derived and transmitted it to Algy,
+who had an absolute need for the money, which she considered paramount.
+"But, my dear soul, you have ruined yourself!" cried the doctor aghast.
+"Algernon will repay me, sir," replied the poor old woman, drawing
+herself up with the ghost of her old Ancram grandeur. The upshot was
+that Dr. Bodkin, in concert with one or two other old friends of her
+late husband, made some representations on her behalf to Mr. Filthorpe,
+the wealthy Bristol merchant, who was, as the reader may remember, a
+cousin of Dr. Errington; and that Mr. Filthorpe benevolently allowed his
+cousin's widow a small annuity, which, together with the few pounds that
+still remained to her of her own, enabled her to live in decent comfort.
+But she professed herself unable to remain in Whitford, and removed to a
+cottage in Dorrington, where she had a kind friend in the wife of the
+head-master of the proprietary school, whom we first presented to the
+reader as "little Rhoda Maxfield."
+
+Mrs. Diamond (as she was now) lived in a very handsome house, and wore
+very elegant dresses, and was looked upon as a personage of some
+importance in Dorrington and its vicinity. Her husband had decidedly
+opposed a proposition she made to him to receive Mrs. Errington as an
+inmate of his home. But he put no further constraint on Rhoda's
+affectionate solicitude about her old friend.
+
+And the two women drove together, and sewed together, and talked
+together; and their talk was chiefly about that exiled victim of
+unmerited misfortune, Algernon Errington. Rhoda preserved her faith in
+the Ancram glories. And although she acknowledged to herself that
+Algernon had treated her badly, he was invested in her mind with some
+mysterious immunity from the obligations that bind ordinary mortals.
+
+A visitor, who was often cordially welcomed at Dorrington by Matthew
+Diamond, was Miss Chubb. And the kind-hearted little spinster endured a
+vast amount of snubbing and patronage from her old enemy on the
+battle-ground of polite society--Mrs. Errington--with much charitable
+sweetness.
+
+Old Max lived to see his daughter's first-born child; but he was unable
+to move from his bed for many months before his death. Perhaps it was
+the period of quiet reflection thus obtained, when the things of this
+world were melting away from his grasp, which occasioned the addition of
+a codicil to the old man's will, that surprised most of his
+acquaintance. He had settled the bulk of his property on his daughter at
+her marriage, and, in his original testament, had bequeathed the whole
+of the residue to her also. But the codicil set forth that his only and
+beloved daughter being amply provided for, and his son James inheriting
+the stock, fixtures, and good-will of his flourishing business, together
+with the house and furniture, Jonathan Maxfield felt that he was doing
+injustice to no one by bequeathing the sum of three thousand pounds to
+Miss Minnie Bodkin as a mark of respect and admiration. And he,
+moreover, left one hundred pounds, free of duty, to "that God-fearing
+member of the Wesleyan Society, Richard Gibbs, now living as groom in
+the service of Orlando Pawkins, Esquire, of Pudcombe Hall;" a bequest
+which sensibly embittered the flavour of the sermon preached by the
+un-legacied Brother Jackson on the next Sunday after old Max's funeral.
+
+Dr. Bodkin still lives and rules in Whitford Grammar School. His wife's
+life is brightened by the sight of her Minnie's increased health and
+strength. But she has never quite forgiven Matthew Diamond, and has been
+heard to say that young Mrs. Diamond's children are the most singularly
+uninteresting she ever saw!
+
+Of Minnie herself, the chronicle hitherto records a life of useful
+benevolence, undisfigured by ascetic affectation, or the assumption of
+any pious livery whatever. She keeps her old delight in all the
+beautiful things of art and nature, and old Max's legacy has enabled her
+to enjoy some foreign travel. She is still in the first prime of
+womanhood, and more beautiful than ever. But, at the latest accounts,
+poor Mr. Warlock has not been tortured by the spectacle of any
+successful rival. For his part, he goes on worshipping Miss Bodkin with
+hopeless fidelity.
+
+For a long time Minnie continued to visit David Powell in the lunatic
+asylum at stated periods. He generally recognised her, and the sight of
+her seemed to soothe and comfort him. After a while he was pronounced
+cured, and left the asylum; but his madness returned on him at
+intervals, and he would voluntarily go and place himself under restraint
+when he felt the black fit coming. He did not live very long, being
+assailed by a mortal consumption. But as his body wasted, his mind grew
+clearer, stronger, and more serene; and before his death Minnie had the
+satisfaction to hear him profess a humble faith in the Divine Goodness,
+and a fearless confidence in the mysterious hand that was leading him
+even as a little child into the shadowy land. There was as large a
+concourse of people at his burial as had ever thronged to hear his fiery
+preaching on Whit Meadow. His memory became surrounded by a saintly
+radiance in the imaginations of the poor. Stories of his goodness and
+his afflictions, and the final ray of peace which God sent to cheer his
+last moments, were long retailed amongst the Whitford Methodists. And
+his grave is still bright with carefully-tended flowers.
+
+Of Algernon Errington the strangest rumours were circulated for a time.
+Some said he had become croupier at a foreign gambling-table; others
+declared he had married a West Indian heiress with a million of money,
+and was living in Florence in unheard-of luxury. Others, again, affirmed
+that they had the best authority for believing that he had gone to the
+United States, and had appeared on the stage there with immense success.
+However, the remembrance of him passed away from men's minds in Whitford
+within a few years; in London within a few months. But it was a long
+time before Jack Price left off recounting his final interview with
+Errington. "That young Ancram, you know. Captivating way of his own.
+What? On my honour, the rascal borrowed ten pounds of me. Ready money,
+sir, down on the nail! Bedad, it was a _tour de force_, for I never have
+a shilling in my pocket for my own use. But Ancram would coax the
+little birds off the bushes, as they say in my part of the world.
+Principle? Oh, devil a rag of principle in his whole composition. What?
+I wonder what the deuce has become of him! I give ye my word and honour
+he was really--_really_ now--a CHARMING FELLOW."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHARMING FELLOW, VOLUME III (OF
+3)***
+
+
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+<h1>The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Charming Fellow, Volume III (of 3), by
+Frances Eleanor Trollope</h1>
+<pre>
+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 <a href = "http://www.gutenberg.org">www.gutenberg.org</a></pre>
+<p>Title: A Charming Fellow, Volume III (of 3)</p>
+<p>Author: Frances Eleanor Trollope</p>
+<p>Release Date: February 28, 2011  [eBook #35430]<br />
+Most recently updated: November 10, 2011</p>
+<p>Language: English</p>
+<p>Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1</p>
+<p>***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHARMING FELLOW, VOLUME III (OF 3)***</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<h4>E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan,<br />
+    and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.pgdp.net">http://www.pgdp.net</a>)<br />
+    from page images generously made available by<br />
+    Internet Archive/American Libraries<br />
+    (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/americana">http://www.archive.org/details/americana</a>)</h4>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<table border="0" style="background-color: #ccccff;margin: 0 auto;" cellpadding="10">
+  <tr>
+    <td valign="top">
+      Note:
+    </td>
+    <td>
+      Project Gutenberg also has the other two volumes of this novel.<br />
+      Volume I: see <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35428/35428-h/35428-h.htm">http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35428/35428-h/35428-h.htm</a><br />
+      Volume II: see <a href="http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35429/35429-h/35429-h.htm">http://www.gutenberg.org/files/35429/35429-h/35429-h.htm</a><br />
+      <br />
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/charmingfellow03trol">
+      http://www.archive.org/details/charmingfellow03trol</a>
+	</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h1>A CHARMING FELLOW.</h1>
+
+<h2>BY FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE,</h2>
+
+<h3>AUTHOR OF "AUNT MARGARET'S TROUBLE," "MABEL'S PROGRESS," ETC. ETC.</h3>
+
+
+<h3>In Three Volumes.</h3>
+
+<h3>VOL. III.</h3>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<h3>London:</h3>
+
+<h3>CHAPMAN AND HALL, 193, PICCADILLY.</h3>
+
+<h3>1876.</h3>
+
+<h3>CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,<br />
+CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.</h3>
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+<!-- Autogenerated TOC. Modify or delete as required. -->
+<p>
+<a href="#CHAPTER_I">CHAPTER I.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_II">CHAPTER II.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_III">CHAPTER III.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IV">CHAPTER IV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_V">CHAPTER V.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VI">CHAPTER VI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VII">CHAPTER VII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_VIII">CHAPTER VIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_IX">CHAPTER IX.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_X">CHAPTER X.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XI">CHAPTER XI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XII">CHAPTER XII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIII">CHAPTER XIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIV">CHAPTER XIV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XV">CHAPTER XV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVI">CHAPTER XVI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVII">CHAPTER XVII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XVIII">CHAPTER XVIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XIX">CHAPTER XIX.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XX">CHAPTER XX.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXI">CHAPTER XXI.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXII">CHAPTER XXII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIII">CHAPTER XXIII.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXIV">CHAPTER XXIV.</a><br />
+<a href="#CHAPTER_XXV">CHAPTER XXV.</a><br />
+</p>
+<!-- End Autogenerated TOC. -->
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2>A CHARMING FELLOW.</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_I" id="CHAPTER_I"></a>CHAPTER I.</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was a "scene" that evening at Ivy Lodge&mdash;not the less a "scene" in
+that it was conducted on genteel methods. Mrs. Algernon Errington
+inflicted on her husband during dinner a recapitulation of all her
+wrongs and injuries which could be covertly hinted at. She would not
+broadly speak out her meaning before "the servants." The phrase shaped
+itself thus in her mind from old habit. But in truth "the servants" were
+represented by one plump-faced damsel in a yellow print gown, into which
+her person seemed to have been inserted in the same way that bran is
+inserted into the cover of a pincushion. She seemed to have been stuffed
+into it by means of considerable force, and with less reference to the
+natural shape of her body than to the arbitrary outlines of the case
+made for it by a Whitford dressmaker.</p>
+
+<p>This girl ministered to her master and mistress during dinner, pouring
+water and wine, changing knives and plates, handing vegetables, and not
+unfrequently dropping a spoon or a sprinkling of hot gravy into the laps
+of her employers. She had succeeded to Slater, who resigned her post
+after a trial of some six weeks' duration. Castalia, in despair at this
+desertion, had written to Lady Seely to send her a maid from London
+forthwith. But to this application she received a reply to the effect
+that my lady could not undertake to find any one who would suit her
+niece, and that her ladyship thought Castalia had much better make up
+her mind to do without a regular lady's-maid, and take some humbler
+attendant, who would make herself generally useful.</p>
+
+<p>"I always knew Slater wouldn't stay with you," wrote Lady Seely; "and
+you won't get any woman of that kind to stay. You can't afford to keep
+one. Your uncle is fairly well; but poor Fido gives me a great deal of
+unhappiness. He eats nothing."</p>
+
+<p>Not by any means from conviction or submission to the imperious advice
+of Lady Seely, but under the yoke of stern necessity, Castalia had
+consented to try a young woman of the neighbourhood, "highly
+recommended." And this abigail, in her tight yellow gown, was the cause
+of Mrs. Algernon's reticence during dinner. The poor lady might,
+however, have spared herself this restraint, if its object were to keep
+her servants in the dark as to domestic disagreements; for no sooner had
+Lydia (that was the abigail's name) reached the kitchen, than she and
+Polly, the cook, began a discussion of Mr. and Mrs. Algernon Errington's
+private affairs, which displayed a surprising knowledge of very minute
+details, and an almost equally surprising power of piecing evidence
+together.</p>
+
+<p>When Lydia was gone, Algernon lit a cigar and drew up his chair to the
+fireside, where he sat silent, staring at his elegantly-slippered feet
+on the fender. Castalia rose, fidgeted about the room, walked to the
+door, stopped, turned back, and, standing directly opposite to Algernon,
+said querulously, "Do you mean to remain here?"</p>
+
+<p>"For the present, yes; out of consideration for you. You dislike me to
+smoke in the drawing-room, do you not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you smoke at all?"</p>
+
+<p>Algernon raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, crossed one leg
+over the other, and made no answer. His wife went away, and sitting down
+alone on a corner of the sofa in her little drawing-room, cried bitterly
+for a long time.</p>
+
+<p>She was made to raise her tear-stained face by feeling a hand passed
+gently over her hair. She looked up, and found her husband standing
+beside her. "What's the matter, little woman?" he asked, in a
+half-coaxing, half-bantering tone, like one speaking to a naughty
+child, too young to be seriously reproved or argued with.</p>
+
+<p>Now, although Castalia was haughty by education and insolent by temper,
+she had very little real pride and no dignity in her character. To be
+noticed and caressed by Algernon was to her a sufficient compensation
+for almost any indignity. There was but one passion of her nature which
+had any chance of resisting his personal influence, and that passion had
+never yet been fully aroused, although frequently irritated. Her
+jealousy was like a young tiger that had never yet tasted blood.</p>
+
+<p>"What's the matter, little woman?" repeated Algernon, seating himself
+beside her, and putting his arm round her waist. She shrugged her
+shoulders fretfully, but at the same time nestled herself nearer to his
+side. She loved him, and it put her at an immense disadvantage with him.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you mean to vouchsafe me an answer, Mrs. Algernon Ancram
+Errington?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I daresay you're very sorry that I am Mrs. Errington. I have no
+doubt you repent."</p>
+
+<p>"Really! And is that what you were crying for?"</p>
+
+<p>No reply.</p>
+
+<p>"It looks rather as if you repented, madam!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you know I don't; unless you like other people better than you like
+me!"</p>
+
+<p>"'Other people' don't cry in my company."</p>
+
+<p>"No; because they don't care for you. And because they're&mdash;&mdash;they're
+nasty, artful minxes!"</p>
+
+<p>"Hear, hear! A charming definition! Castalia, you are really <i>impayable</i>
+sometimes. How my lord would enjoy that speech of yours!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, he wouldn't. Uncle Val would never enjoy what vexed me. My lady
+might; nasty, disagreeable old thing!"</p>
+
+<p>"There, I can agree with you. A vulgar kind of woman&mdash;though she is my
+blood-relation&mdash;thoroughly coarse in the grain. But now that we have
+relieved our feelings, and spoken our minds on that score, suppose we
+converse rationally?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to converse rationally."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because that means that you are going to scold me."</p>
+
+<p>"Well&mdash;that might be highly rational, certainly; only I never do it."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but you'll manage to make out that I'm in the wrong and you're in
+the right, somehow or other."</p>
+
+<p>"Cassy, I want you to write a letter."</p>
+
+<p>"A letter? Whom do you want me to write to?"</p>
+
+<p>Her tears were completely dried, and she looked up at him with a faint
+smile on her countenance, which, however, looked rueful enough, with red
+nose and swollen eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"You must write to my lord, and get him to help us with a little money."</p>
+
+<p>Her face fell.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask Uncle Val for money again, Ancram? It is such a short time since he
+sent me some!"</p>
+
+<p>"And to-morrow, at this hour, it will be 'such a short time' since you
+had your dinner! Nevertheless, I suppose you will want another dinner."</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I don't think Uncle Val can afford it, Ancram."</p>
+
+<p>"Leave that to him. Afford it? Pshaw!"</p>
+
+<p>Algernon made the little sharp ejaculation in a tone expressive of the
+most impatient contempt.</p>
+
+<p>"But do we really&mdash;is it absolutely necessary for us to beg of my uncle
+again?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all. Do just as you please," answered her husband, rising and
+walking away from the sofa to a distant chair.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia's eyes followed him piteously.</p>
+
+<p>"But what can I say?" she asked. "What excuse can I make? I hate to
+worry Uncle Val. It isn't as if he had more money than he knew what to
+do with. And if Lady Seely knew about his helping us, she would lead him
+such a life!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do as you please. It would be a thousand pities to worry your uncle.
+Let all the worry fall on me."</p>
+
+<p>He took up a book and threw himself back in his chair as if he had
+dismissed the subject.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know what to do!" exclaimed Castalia, with fretful
+helplessness. At length, after sitting silent for some time twisting her
+handkerchief backwards and forwards in her fingers, she got up and
+crossed the room to her husband's chair.</p>
+
+<p>"Ancram!" she said softly.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh? I beg your pardon!" looking up with an appearance of great
+abstraction, as if the perusal of his book had absorbed all his
+attention.</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to do what will please you. I only care to please you in the
+world. But&mdash;can't you explain to me a little better why I must write to
+Uncle Val?"</p>
+
+<p>Explain! Of course he would! He desired nothing better. He had brought
+her to a point at which encouragement was needed, not coldness. And with
+the singular flexibility that belonged to him, he was able immediately
+to plunge into an animated statement of his present situation, which
+sufficed to persuade his hearer that no course of conduct could be so
+desirable, so prudent&mdash;nay, so praiseworthy, as the course he had
+suggested.</p>
+
+<p>To be sure the details were vague, but the general impression was vivid
+enough. If Algernon's pictures were a little inaccurate in drawing, they
+were at least always admirably coloured. And the general impression was
+this: that there never had been a person of such brilliant abilities and
+charming qualities as Algernon Ancram Errington so unjustly consigned
+to obscurity and poverty. And no contributions to his comfort, luxury,
+or well-being were too much to expect and claim from the world in
+general, and his wife's relations in particular. Common honesty&mdash;common
+decency almost&mdash;would compel Lord Seely to make all the amends in his
+power for having placed Algernon in the Whitford Post-office. And there
+was an insinuation very skilfully and delicately mixed with all the
+seemingly unstudied and spontaneous outpourings of Algy's conjugal
+confidence&mdash;an insinuation which affected the flavour of the whole, as
+an accomplished cook will contrive to mingle garlic in a ragoût, never
+coarsely obtrusive, and yet distinctly perceptible&mdash;to the effect that
+the hand of Miss Castalia Kilfinane had been somewhat officiously thrust
+upon her charming husband; and that the family owed him no little
+gratitude for having been kind enough to accept it.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Castalia had an uneasy feeling, at the end of his fluent discourse,
+that Algernon had been a victim to her great relations, and, in some dim
+way, to herself. But the garlic was so admirably blended with the whole
+mass, that it was impossible for her to pick it out, or resent it, or do
+anything but declare her willingness to help her husband by any means in
+her power.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, my dear girl, it is as much for your sake as for mine! And as to
+the necessity for it, I must tell you what Minnie Bodkin said to me
+to-day. Minnie is an excellent creature, full of friendly feeling&mdash;a
+little too conceited and fond of lecturing" (Castalia's face
+brightened); "but much must be excused to an afflicted invalid, who
+never meets her fellow-creatures on equal terms."</p>
+
+<p>Castalia looked almost happy. But she said, "As to her affliction, it
+seems to me that she has been growing much stronger lately."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I am glad to think so too. But let the best happen that can be
+hoped&mdash;let the disease, that has kept her helpless on her couch all
+these years, be overcome&mdash;still she must always be so lame as to make
+her an object of pity."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor thing! I daresay it does warp her mind a good deal. What did she
+say to you?"</p>
+
+<p>Algernon recapitulated a part of Minnie's warnings, but gave them such a
+turn as to make it appear that the greatest wrath and impatience of the
+Whitford tradesmen were directed against his wife. "They have a narrow
+kind of provincial prejudice against you, Cassy, on account of your
+being a 'London fine lady.' Me they know; and, in their great
+condescension, are pleased to approve of."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, everybody likes you better than me, of course," answered Castalia,
+simply. "But I don't care for that, if you will only like me better
+than anybody."</p>
+
+<p>The genuine devotion with which this was said would have touched most
+men. It might have touched Algernon, had he not been too much engrossed
+in mentally composing the rough draft of Castalia's letter to her uncle,
+and putting his not inconsiderable powers of plausible persuasion to the
+task of making it appear that his wife's personal extravagance was the
+chief cause of their need for ready money.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't tell him that I even know of your writing. My lord will be more
+willing to come down handsomely if he thinks it's for you only, Cassy,"
+said Algernon, as he drew up his wife's writing-table for her, placed a
+chair, opened her inkstand, and performed several little acts of
+attention with a really charming grace and gallantry.</p>
+
+<p>So Castalia, writing almost literally what her husband
+dictated&mdash;(although he kept saying at every sentence, "My dear child,
+you ought to know best how to address your uncle;" "Well, I really don't
+know, but I think you might put it thus;" and so forth)&mdash;completed an
+appeal to Lord Seely to anticipate by nearly a quarter the allowance he
+continued to make her for her dress out of his private purse, and, if
+possible, to increase its amount.</p>
+
+<p>One such appeal had already been made and responded to by a gift of
+money. It had been made immediately after the arrival of the
+newly-married couple in Whitford, on the ground of the unforeseen
+expenses attendant on installing themselves in their new habitation. In
+answering it Lord Seely had written kindly, but with evident disapproval
+of the step that had been taken. "I cannot, Castalia," he said, "bid you
+keep anything secret from your husband, and yet I can scarcely help
+saying that I wish he did not know of the cheque I inclose. I fear he is
+disposed to be reckless in money matters; and nothing encourages such a
+disposition more than the idea that aid can be had from friends for the
+asking. Ancram will recollect a serious conversation I had with him the
+evening before your marriage, and I can only now reiterate what I then
+assured him of&mdash;that it will be impossible for me to repeat the
+assistance I gave him on that occasion."</p>
+
+<p>"What assistance was that, Ancram?" asked Castalia, who knew not a word
+of the matter.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I believe my lord made me the munificent present of two pair of
+breeches, and an old coat and waistcoat, or so."</p>
+
+<p>"Made you a present of an old coat and breeches! What on earth do you
+mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I mean that he paid a twopenny outstanding tailor's bill for me. And he
+writes now as if he had conferred the most overwhelming obligation."</p>
+
+<p>The fact was that Lord Seely had discharged a great number of Algernon's
+debts; all of them, as his lordship imagined. But there was clearly no
+need of troubling Castalia with these details.</p>
+
+<p>When the letter was finished and sealed, Castalia still sat musingly
+tracing unmeaning figures with the point of her pen on the
+blotting-book. At length she said with some hesitation, "Ancram, how is
+it that we spend so much money? I don't think I am very extravagant."</p>
+
+<p>"'So much money!' Good Heavens, Castalia&mdash;but you really have no
+conception of these things. Our whole income, and twice our income, is a
+miserable pittance. The Dormers pay their butler more."</p>
+
+<p>She was again silent for a little while. Then she said, "Isn't there
+anything we could do without?"</p>
+
+<p>Her husband looked at her in astonishment. It was a quite unexpected
+suggestion on Castalia's part. "Could you be kind enough to point out
+anything?" he asked drily. She looked somewhat cast down by his tone,
+but answered, "There's that last case of wine from town&mdash;the Rhine wine.
+Don't you think we might send it back unopened, and do with a bottle of
+sherry, now and then, from the 'Blue Bell?' Your mother finds that very
+good."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw!" with the accustomed sharp, impatient contempt. "My mother knows
+no more about wine than a baby. To drink bad wine is absolutely to
+poison oneself. I can't do it, and I don't mean to let you do it,
+either. And when one knows that it is only a question of a few months,
+more or less, and that directly I get a better berth these greedy
+rascals will be paid their extortionate bills in full&mdash;positively,
+Castalia, it seems to me childish to talk in that way!"</p>
+
+<p>It was the same with one or two other suggestions of retrenchment she
+ventured to make. Algernon showed conclusively (conclusively enough to
+satisfy his hearer, at all events) that it would not do&mdash;that it would
+be absolutely imprudent, on their part, to make any open retrenchment.
+All these sharks would come round them at once, if they smelt poverty.
+"I know these gentry better than you do, Castalia," said he. "There is
+no way of getting on with them except by not being in a hurry to pay
+them. Nothing spoils tradespeople so much as any over-alacrity of that
+kind. They immediately conclude that you can't do without them!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, they're disgustingly impudent creatures, these Whitford
+tradespeople! There is no doubt in the world about that," said Castalia,
+in perfect good faith. "Only I thought you seemed to be made uneasy by
+what Miss Bodkin said to you on the subject."</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure! But, my dear girl, your method would never answer! I do
+want money, very badly. And I do hope and expect&mdash;as I think I have some
+right to do&mdash;that my lord will assist us without delay, and without
+making one of his intolerable prosy preachments on the occasion. And we
+must have a few pounds to go on with, and stop the mouths of these
+rapacious rascals. But no retrenchment, Castalia! No 'Blue Bell' sherry!
+Good Heavens, it makes one bilious to think of it! I really cannot
+sacrifice my digestion to advance the commercial prosperity of Whitford.
+And when one considers it, why should we destroy our peace of mind by
+worrying ourselves? Lord Seely has got us into this scrape, and Lord
+Seely must get us out of it. <i>Voilà tout!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>After that the rest of the evening was spent very harmoniously. Algernon
+could not repress two or three prodigious yawns, but he politely
+concealed them. And when Castalia went to her pianoforte, he woke up at
+the conclusion of an intricate fantasia quite in time to thank her for
+the performance, and to praise its brilliancy. In a word, so agreeable
+an evening, Castalia told herself, she had not passed for many weeks,
+although it had certainly begun in an unpromising way. So softened was
+she, indeed, by this gleam of happiness, that several times she was on
+the point of making a confession to her husband, and entreating his
+forgiveness. But she could not bear to risk bringing a cloud over the
+light of his countenance, which was the only sunshine in her life.
+"Ancram would be so angry!" was a thought that checked back words which
+were on her lips a dozen times. "And since the matter is all over, and
+he need never know anything about it, I may as well hold my tongue."</p>
+
+<p>It needed, however, no confession on Castalia's part to convince
+Algernon that she had opened his secretaire, and taken Minnie Bodkin's
+letter thence, instead of having found it lying open on his table, as
+she had said. For on the next morning, when he entered his private room
+at the office, his first action was to try the little secretaire, which
+was unlocked. He then remembered that, after having secured that
+repository of his private papers, he had re-opened it, to throw Minnie's
+note into a drawer of it; and, having been called away at that moment,
+must have forgotten to re-lock it.</p>
+
+<p>"Damnably provoking!" muttered Algernon to himself as he stood looking
+at the little cabinet with gloomy, anxious brows. Then, having first
+bolted the door of his room, he made a thorough search throughout the
+secretaire. "Nothing disturbed! She probably flew off to Dr. Bodkin's
+house directly after reading Minnie's note; and that lay in the little
+empty drawer right in front. It would be the first she opened."</p>
+
+<p>Then he sat down in a mighty comfortable armchair, which was placed in
+front of an official-looking desk, and meditated so deeply that he
+forgot to unbolt the door, and was roused by Mr. Gibbs tapping at it,
+and desiring to speak with him on business.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_II" id="CHAPTER_II"></a>CHAPTER II.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mr. Gibbs's errand was not a pleasant one. He came to speak to his chief
+of complaints that had reached the office as to lost and missing
+letters. The most serious case was that of a man living in the
+neighbourhood of Duckwell, who complained that a money letter had never
+reached him, although it had been posted in Bristol three weeks back.
+Some inquiries had previously been made, but without result. And now the
+Duckwell man declared he would make a fine fuss, and bring the matter
+before the very highest authorities, if his letter were not forthcoming.</p>
+
+<p>"What does the bumpkin mean, Gibbs?" asked Algernon, impatiently tapping
+with his fingers on the desk before him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid he'll give us a deal of bother, sir," returned Mr. Gibbs
+slowly. "And I can't understand what has come of the letter. It's very
+awkward."</p>
+
+<p>"Very awkward for him, if he really has lost his money. But I should not
+be surprised to learn that it never was posted at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Humph! I don't know. He swears that the sender at Bristol can prove
+that it was posted."</p>
+
+<p>"And why the deuce do people go on sending bank-notes by post, without
+the least care or precaution? One must have been connected with a
+post-office in order fully to appreciate the imbecility of one's
+fellow-creatures!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that it was bank-notes, sir. It may have been a cheque."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, depend upon it, it was whatever was stupidest to send, and most
+calculated to give trouble; if it was sent, that is to say! If it was
+sent!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can't call to mind such a thing happening for twenty years back; not
+in this office. But lately there seems to be no end to things going
+wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, don't distress yourself about it, Gibbs. I have full reliance on
+you in every way."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, sir! It is unpleasant, but I don't know that I specially need
+distress myself about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Only because you have had the uncontrolled management of the office,
+Gibbs. And it is too bad, when one has worked so conscientiously as you
+have, to be worried by blundering bumpkins. I assure you, Gibbs, I am
+constantly singing your praises to Lord Seely. I tell him frankly, that
+if it were not for you, I don't know in the least how I should fulfil my
+onerous duties here! When I'm removed from this place, the powers that
+be won't have far to look for my successor."</p>
+
+<p>This was the most explicit word that had yet fallen from Mr. Errington
+on the subject of his subordinate's promotion. And it decidedly
+gratified Mr. Obadiah Gibbs. Nevertheless, that steady individual was
+not so elated by the prospect held out to him as to dismiss from his
+mind the business he had come to speak about. "It is the most
+unaccountable thing!" said he. "Three or four cases of the kind within
+two months! And up to that time no office in the kingdom bore a better
+character than Whitford. I hope the thing may be cleared up. But it is
+next to impossible to trace a stolen letter. The Duckwell man&mdash;Heath,
+his name is; Roger Heath&mdash;says he is determined to complain to the
+Postmaster-General. I suppose we shall be having the surveyor coming to
+look after us. You see, it isn't like a solitary case. That's the worst
+of it. There's what you may term an accumulation, sir."</p>
+
+<p>Whilst Mr. Gibbs poured forth his troubled mind in these and many more
+slow sentences, Algernon rose, took his hat, brushed it lightly with his
+glove, put it on, and was evidently about to depart. Gibbs ventured to
+lay his hand on his coat-sleeve to detain him. The clerk was not
+satisfied that the matter should be dismissed so lightly. It might not
+be possible to do anything, truly; but (in common with a great many
+other people) Mr. Obadiah Gibbs felt that, where efficacious action was
+impracticable, it was all the more desirable to mark the gravity of an
+unpleasant circumstance by copious talking of it. Life would become, in
+some sort, too frivolous and easy if, when a matter clearly could not be
+remedied, every one agreed to say no more about it! A vast deal of sage
+eloquence would thus be choked and dammed up. And Mr. Gibbs, for his
+special part, was conscious of having some reputation amongst his fellow
+Wesleyans for a gift of utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"I really don't know, sir, what to say to Roger Heath," he persisted.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;tell him inquiries will be made in the proper quarters."</p>
+
+<p>"That, sir, has been said already. He has been here twice or thrice."</p>
+
+<p>"Then tell him to go to the devil!" said Algernon, sharply jerking his
+arm away from the clerk's grasp, and walking off.</p>
+
+<p>The pious and respectable Mr. Gibbs shook his head disapprovingly at
+this profane speech, and went back to his stool in the outer office with
+a lowering brow.</p>
+
+<p>Algernon walked along the High Street, and turned down a narrow lane
+leading towards the river, and past one corner of the Grammar School.
+The boys were just coming out of school with the usual shrill babble and
+rush. A party of Dr. Bodkin's private scholars were on their way to Whit
+Meadow.</p>
+
+<p>"Good day, Ingleby," said Algernon, addressing the eldest of them, the
+same lad who had been Rhoda's squire in the tea-room on the night of
+Mrs. Algernon Errington's <i>début</i> in Whitford society. "Where are you
+off to?"</p>
+
+<p>"We're going to have a row. I've got a boat, and we're going up the
+river as far as Duckwell Reach. We have leave from the doctor. Deuce of
+a job to get it, though!"</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, because he's nervous about the river; thinks it dangerous, and all
+that."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you know, Ingleby," said a younger boy, with much eagerness,
+"lots of people have been drowned in that bit of the river between here
+and Duckwell Reach."</p>
+
+<p>"Lots of people! Gammon!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, two since I've been here!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I daresay. Well, if you funk it you needn't come. There's plenty
+without you."</p>
+
+<p>"You know I don't funk it for myself, Ingleby. I can swim."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my friend. You wouldn't get into my boat if you couldn't. I'm on
+honour with the doctor to take none but swimmers," said Ingleby, turning
+to Algernon; "and of course that settles the matter. But, for my part, I
+should have thought anybody but the quite small boys might walk out of
+the Whit if they tumbled into it." "Oh no! You do our noble river
+injustice. You are not a Whitfordian or you would know better than that.
+There are some very ugly places between here and Duckwell Reach; places
+where I wouldn't give much for your chance of getting out if once you
+fell in, swimmer though you are. Good-bye. A pleasant row to you."</p>
+
+<p>The boys pursued their way to the boat, and Algernon, turning off at
+right angles when he reached the bottom of the lane, got into Whit
+Meadow through a turnstile at the foot of the Grammar School playground.</p>
+
+<p>There was a footpath through the meadow, and some fields beyond, which
+made a pleasant walk enough in fine summer weather, and was then a good
+deal frequented. But at this season it was damp, muddy, and lonely. The
+day was fine, but the ground had been saturated by previous rains, and
+that part of the meadow nearest to the margin of the river was almost a
+swamp. The path continued to skirt the Whit for some miles, running in
+the direction of Duckwell, and as Algernon walked along it he saw the
+windings of the river shining in the sun, and presently there appeared
+on it the boat full of schoolboys. One of them wore a scarlet cap, and
+thus made a bright spot of colour in the landscape. The sound of their
+young voices was carried across the water to Algernon's ears.</p>
+
+<p>He stood for a minute or so at the gate of his own garden, which ran
+down behind the house to the river path, and watched them. The thought
+crossed his mind that, if any accident should occur to the boat at that
+spot, there would be little chance of assistance reaching it quickly.
+Ivy Lodge was the last house on that side of the river between Whitford
+and Duckwell Reach. And on the willow-fringed shore opposite not a
+living creature was to be seen, except some cattle grazing in the plashy
+fields.</p>
+
+<p>The whole scene&mdash;the vivid green of the marsh grass, the grey willows,
+the boat with its wet oars flashing at regular intervals, the red-capped
+boy, and the sound of the fresh, shrill laughter of the crew, all fixed
+themselves on his mind with that vividness of impression which trivial
+external things so often make upon a brain labouring with some inward
+trouble.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_III" id="CHAPTER_III"></a>CHAPTER III.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"What a state your boots are in!" exclaimed Castalia, pausing at the
+foot of the stairs, which she happened to be descending as her husband
+entered the house. "And why did you come by the back way?"</p>
+
+<p>"I was worried, and did not wish to meet people and be chattered to. I
+thought the meadow-path would be quiet, and so it was."</p>
+
+<p>"Quiet! Yes; but how horribly muddy! Do change your wet boots at once,
+Ancram!"</p>
+
+<p>There was little need for her to insist on this proceeding. Algernon
+hastened to his room, pulled off his wet boots, and desired that they
+should be thrown away.</p>
+
+<p>"They can be dried and cleaned, sir," said plump-faced Lydia, aghast at
+this order.</p>
+
+<p>"My good girl you may do what you please with them. I shall never wear
+them again. Slight boots of that sort that have once been wet through
+become shapeless, don't you understand? Take them away."</p>
+
+<p>When the master of the house descended to the drawing-room, he found a
+paper, squarely folded in the shape of a letter, lying in a conspicuous
+position on the centre table. It was Mr. Gladwish the shoemaker's bill,
+accompanied by an urgent request for immediate payment.</p>
+
+<p>"More wall-paper, Cassy," said her husband, flinging himself on the
+sofa.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, Lydia tells me the man was quite insolent!" said Castalia.
+"What can be done with such people? They don't seem to me to have the
+least idea who we are!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, confound the brutes! Don't let us talk about them!"</p>
+
+<p>But Castalia continued to talk about them in a strain of mingled wonder
+and disgust. She did not cease until dinner was announced, and Algernon
+was by that time so thoroughly wearied by his conjugal <i>tête-à-tête</i>,
+that he even received with something like satisfaction the announcement
+that Castalia expected the Misses Rose and Violet McDougall to pass the
+evening at Ivy Lodge.</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay your mother will come too," said Castalia, "and bring Rhoda
+Maxfield with her. I asked her."</p>
+
+<p>"Rhoda? Why on earth do you invite that little Maxfield?"</p>
+
+<p>"What is your objection to her, Ancram?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I have no objection to her in the world. But I should not have
+thought she was precisely the sort of person to suit you."</p>
+
+<p>"That's exactly what Miss Bodkin says! Miss Bodkin tried to keep Rhoda
+apart from me, I am perfectly sure. And I can't fathom her motive. And
+now you say the same sort of thing. However, I always notice that you
+echo her words. But I don't intend to be guided by Miss Bodkin's likes
+and dislikes. I haven't the same opinion of Miss Bodkin's wisdom that
+the people have here, and I shall choose my friends for myself. It's
+quite absurd, the fuss that is made in this place about Miss Bodkin;
+absolutely sickening. Rose McDougall is the only person of the whole set
+who seems to keep her senses on the subject."</p>
+
+<p>"Rose McDougall will never lose her senses from admiration of another
+woman," returned Algernon. And then the colloquy was broken up by the
+arrival of the Misses McDougall, clogged and cloaked, and attended by
+their maid-servant. After having exchanged greetings with these ladies,
+Algernon withdrew, murmuring something about going to smoke his cigar.</p>
+
+<p>"You'll not be long, Ancram, shall you?" said his wife, in a complaining
+tone. But he disappeared from the room without replying to her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm so dreadfully afraid that I drive your husband away when I come
+here, my dear," said Rose McDougall with a spiteful glance at Algernon's
+retreating figure.</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious, no! He doesn't think of minding you at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I daresay he does not mind me; does not think me of importance
+enough to be taken any notice of. But I cannot help observing that he
+always keeps out of the way as much as possible when I am spending an
+evening here."</p>
+
+<p>"Nonsense!" said Castalia, tranquilly continuing to string steel beads
+on to red silk for the manufacture of a purse.</p>
+
+<p>"You might as well say that it is I who drive Mr. Errington away, Rose,"
+put in Violet.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all!" returned her sister, with sudden sharpness. "That's quite
+a different matter."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't see why, Rose!"</p>
+
+<p>The true answer to this remark, in the elder Miss McDougall's mind,
+would have been, "You are so utterly insignificant, compared with me,
+that you are effaced in my company, and are neither liked nor disliked
+on your own merits." But she could not quite say that, so she merely
+repeated with increased sharpness, "That's a very different matter."</p>
+
+<p>Rose McDougall was one of those persons who prefer animosity to
+indifference. That any one should simply not care about her was a
+suggestion so intolerable that she was wont to declare of persons who
+did not show any special desire for her society, that they hated her.
+She was sure Mr. A. detested the sight of her, and Miss B. was her
+bitter enemy. But, perhaps, in Algernon's case, she had more reason for
+declaring he disliked her than in many others. He did in truth object to
+the sort of influence she exercised over Castalia. He knew that Castalia
+was insatiably curious about even the most trifling details of his past
+life in Whitford; and he knew that Miss McDougall was very capable of
+misrepresenting&mdash;even of innocently misrepresenting&mdash;many circumstances
+and persons in such a way as to irritate Castalia's easily-aroused
+jealousy; and Castalia's easily-aroused jealousy was an element of
+discomfort in his daily life. In a word, there had arisen since his
+marriage a smouldering sort of hostility between him and Rose McDougall.
+But he was far from conceiving the acrid nature of her feelings towards
+him. For his part, he laughed at her a little in a playful way, and
+contradicted her, and, above all, he did not permit her to bore him by
+exacting any attention from him which he was disinclined to pay. But
+there was no bitterness in all that. None in the world!</p>
+
+<p>Only he did not reckon on the bitterness excited in Miss Rose's breast
+by being laughed at and neglected. The graceful and charming way in
+which the laughter and neglect were accomplished by no means mollified
+the sting of them; a point which graceful and charming persons would do
+well sometimes to consider, but to which they are often singularly
+blind.</p>
+
+<p>"And what have you been doing with yourself all day, Castalia dear?"
+asked Violet with a great display of affection.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh&mdash;what can one do with oneself in this horrid hole?"</p>
+
+<p>"To be sure!" responded Violet. But she responded rather uncertainly. To
+her, Whitford seemed by no means a horrid hole. She had been content
+enough to live there for many years&mdash;ever since her uncle had brought
+her and her sister from Scotland in their mourning clothes, and received
+his orphan nieces into his home.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't speak of it, my dear!" exclaimed Rose, on whom the reminiscences
+of the years spent in Whitford wrought by no means a softening effect.
+"What possessed Uncle James to stick himself down in this place, of all
+places, I cannot conjecture. He might as well have buried us girls alive
+at once."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, I suppose you have had time enough to get used to it," said
+Castalia, coolly. "Violet, will you ring the bell? It is close to you.
+Thank you.&mdash;Lydia," when the girl appeared, "where is your master?"</p>
+
+<p>"In the dining-room, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"What is he doing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Smoking and reading, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Go and ask him to come here, with my love."</p>
+
+<p>"How the woman worrits him! She doesn't leave him a minute's peace," was
+Lydia's comment to the cook on this embassy.</p>
+
+<p>"She worrits everybody, in her slow, crawley kind o' way; but I'm sorry
+for her sometimes, too. It's a trying thing to care more for a person's
+little finger than a person cares for your whole body and soul,"
+returned Polly, who had a kind of broad good-nature and candour. But
+Lydia felt no sympathy with her mistress, and maintained that it was all
+her own fault then! What did she be always nagging at him for?&mdash;having
+that pitiless contempt for other women's mistakes in the management of
+their husbands which is not uncommon with her sex.</p>
+
+<p>Some such thoughts as Lydia's probably passed through the minds of the
+Misses McDougall, but, of course, that was not the time or place to
+express them. They exerted themselves to entertain their hostess with a
+variety of Whitford gossip, while Castalia&mdash;her attention divided
+between the purse she was making and the drawing-room door, at which she
+hoped to see her husband presently appear&mdash;merely threw in a languid
+interjection now and then as her contribution to the conversation.</p>
+
+<p>At length she rose, and flung the crimson and steel purse down on the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you want anything, dear?" asked the obliging Violet with officious
+alacrity.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I shan't be long gone. Sit still, Violet."</p>
+
+<p>"She's gone to implore her husband to honour us with a little of his
+society," whispered Rose, when Castalia had shut the door. "I'm certain
+of it. More fool she!"</p>
+
+<p>The sisters sat silent for a few minutes. Then they heard the door of
+the dining-room open, as though Castalia were coming back, and the sound
+of voices. Rose was seated nearest to the door, which was separated from
+that of the little dining-room opposite by a very narrow passage, and
+she distinctly heard Algernon say, "Pooh! The old girl doesn't want me."
+And again, "Says I hate her? Nonsense! I look on her with the veneration
+due to her years and virtues." And then Castalia said, "Well, she can't
+help her years. Besides, that's not the question. You ought to come, for
+my sake. It's very unkind of you, Ancram." After that there was a lower
+murmur of speech, as though the speakers had changed their places in the
+room, and Rose was able to distinguish no more.</p>
+
+<p>When Mrs. Algernon Errington returned to the drawing-room, she found
+Violet in her old seat near the pianoforte; but Rose had shifted her
+position, and was standing near the window.</p>
+
+<p>"What are you doing there, Rose? Enjoying the prospect?" asked Castalia.
+The shutters were not closed, but, as the night was very dark, there
+certainly did not seem to be any inducement to look out of the window.</p>
+
+<p>"Can't you persuade your husband to come, dear? I'm so sorry!" said
+Rose, turning round; and her sister looked up quickly at the sound of
+her voice, which, to Violet's accustomed ear, betrayed in its
+inflections suppressed anger. Her face, too, was crimson, and her little
+light blue eyes sparkled with unusual brightness.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia, however, noticed none of these things. "Oh, he'll come
+presently," she said. "He really was finishing a cigar. I told him that
+you were offended with him, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I offended with your husband? Oh dear no! Why on earth should I be? You
+ought not to have said that, Castalia."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, you thought he was offended with you, or something of the sort.
+It's all the same," returned Castalia, with her air of weary
+indifference. "And he says it's nonsense."</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, I am only sorry on your account that he won't come. Really, to
+myself, it matters very little; very little indeed. What a pity that
+you have not some one to amuse him! We are none of us clever enough,
+that is clear."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you are quite mistaken if you think Ancram cares particularly for
+clever women!" said Castalia, whose thoughts instantly reverted to
+Minnie Bodkin. "Even Miss Bodkin, whom everybody declares to be such a
+wonder of talent, bores him sometimes, I can tell you. Of course he has
+known her from his childhood, and all that; but he said to me only
+yesterday that she was conceited, and too fond of preaching. So you see!
+I daresay, poor thing, she fancies all the time that she is enchanting
+him by her wisdom."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me," said Violet timidly, and with a sort of strangled sigh. "I
+think that, as a rule, gentlemen don't like any kind of women except
+pretty women! Though, to be sure, Minnie is handsome enough if it wasn't
+for her affliction."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I wasn't thinking of Minnie," said Rose, viciously twitching at her
+sewing thread. "I meant it was a pity there was no one here who was
+clever enough, and who thought it worth while, to play off pretty airs
+and graces for Mr. Errington's amusement. That's the kind of cleverness
+that attracts men. And your husband, my dear, was always remarkably fond
+of flirting."</p>
+
+<p>Violet opened her eyes in astonishment, and, from her place a little
+behind Castalia, made a warning grimace to her sister; but Rose only
+responded by a defiant toss of the head. Castalia's attention was now
+effectually aroused, and although she still spoke in the querulous drawl
+that was natural to her (or had become so from long habit), it was with
+a countenance earnestly addressed to her interlocutor, instead of, as
+hitherto, with carelessly averted eyes. "I never heard any one say
+before that Ancram was fond of flirting," she said.</p>
+
+<p>"I should have thought it was not necessary to hear it. You might see it
+for yourself; unless, indeed, he is very sly about it in your presence.
+He, he, he!"</p>
+
+<p>"See it for myself? Why&mdash;there's nobody here for him to flirt with!"</p>
+
+<p>This naïve ignoring of any pretensions on the part of her present guests
+to be eligible for the purposes of flirtation was not lost on Rose.</p>
+
+<p>"Not many who would flirt with a married man. No, I hope and believe
+not! But there are many kinds of flirtation, you know. There's the soft
+and sentimental, the shy, sweet sixteen style&mdash;little Miss Maxfield's
+style, for instance."</p>
+
+<p>"Rhoda!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; that is her name, I believe. I have never been intimate with the
+young person myself. Uncle James has always been very particular as to
+whom we associated with. However, since you have taken her up, my dear,
+I suppose she may be considered visitable."</p>
+
+<p>"We have met her at Dr. Bodkin's, you know, Rose," put in Violet, who
+was looking and listening with a distressed expression of face.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes; I believe Minnie asked her there at first to please Algernon.
+Minnie can be good-natured in that sort of way. But I don't know that it
+was very judicious."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should you suppose it was to please my husband that Rhoda was
+invited to the Bodkins?" asked Castalia. "I don't see that at all. The
+girl might have been asked to please Miss Bodkin. I daresay she had
+heard of her from Mrs. Errington. Mrs. Errington is always raving about
+her."</p>
+
+<p>Rose smiled with tightly-closed lips, and nodded. "To be sure! Poor dear
+Mrs. Errington&mdash;I mean no disrespect to your mother-in-law, Castalia,
+who is really a superior woman, only in some things she is as blind as a
+bat."</p>
+
+<p>Castalia's sallow face was paler than ever. Her nostrils were dilated as
+if she had been running fast. "You never told me a word of this before,"
+she said.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear creature," said Rose, looking full at Castalia for the first
+time, "why, what was there to tell? The subject was led to by chance
+now, and I had not the least idea that you did not know all Algy's old
+love-stories. Everybody here&mdash;except, I suppose, poor dear Mrs.
+Errington&mdash;knew of the boy-and-girl nonsense between him and that
+little thing. But of course it never was serious. That was out of the
+question."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't believe it!" said Castalia, suddenly.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I daresay the thing was exaggerated, as so often happens. For my
+part, I never could see what there was in the girl to make so many
+people admire her. A certain freshness, perhaps; and some men do think a
+great deal of that pink-and-white sort of insipidity."</p>
+
+<p>"At all events, Ancram does not care about her now," said Castalia,
+speaking in broken sentences, and twisting her watch-chain nervously
+backwards and forwards in her fingers.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course not! I daresay he never did care about her in earnest.
+But that sort of philandering is a little dangerous, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>"He does not like me to ask her to the house even."</p>
+
+<p>"Doesn't he?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; he has said so more or less plainly several times. He said so this
+very evening."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he, indeed? Well, I really am glad to hear it. I scarcely gave
+Algy&mdash;Mr. Errington&mdash;credit for so much&mdash;prudence!"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Errington and Miss Maxfield," announced Lydia at the door of the
+drawing-room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IV" id="CHAPTER_IV"></a>CHAPTER IV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Errington advanced towards her daughter-in-law with her habitual
+serene stateliness, and Rhoda followed her, modestly, looking very
+pretty in a new dress, the delicate hue of which set off her fair
+complexion to great advantage. Castalia received them much as usual;
+that is to say, without displaying any emotion whatever. But when Mrs.
+Errington took her daughter-in-law's hand, she exclaimed, "Good
+gracious, Castalia, how cold you are! A perfect frog! And yet this
+little room of yours is very warm; oppressively warm to one coming from
+without."</p>
+
+<p>"We find the temperature so comfortable here!" said Violet. "Dear
+Castalia always has her rooms deliciously warm, we think."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, Violet, you are chilly by nature. Some constitutions are so.
+For myself, I have a wonderful circulation. But it is hereditary. All my
+branch of the Ancrams were renowned for it. I don't know, my dear
+Castalia, whether my cousin, Lady Seely, has the same peculiarity?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>"With us it was a well-known thing among the Faculty for miles around
+Ancram Park. Our extremities were never cold, nor had we ever red noses.
+I believe a red nose was absolutely unknown in our family. No doubt that
+was part of the same thing; perfect circulation of the blood."</p>
+
+<p>With that Mrs. Errington sat down tolerably near the fire and made
+herself comfortable. "Where is my dear boy?" she asked after a little
+while. "Not at that dreadful office I hope and trust!"</p>
+
+<p>"He is at home," replied Castalia, slowly. "I asked him to come into the
+drawing-room, and he said he would by-and-by."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I daresay he will come now, dear," said Rose McDougall, without
+raising her eyes from her sewing.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Errington to her daughter-in-law, "and if he
+does come 'now' you must not be jealous."</p>
+
+<p>The two sisters glanced at the good lady in quick surprise, and then at
+Rhoda. Rhoda was looking, for the hundredth time, at a book of prints.
+It was her usual evening's occupation at Ivy Lodge. Mrs. Errington
+proceeded, placid, smiling, and condescending as ever: "You must not be
+jealous, Castalia, if he does come directly he learns that his mother
+is here. To be sure a wife ranks first. I have always acknowledged that;
+and, indeed, insisted on it. I am sure it was my own case with poor dear
+Dr. Errington, who would never have dreamed of putting any human being
+into competition with me. Still, allowances must be made for the very
+peculiar and devoted attachment Algy has always felt for me. He is, and
+ever was, an Ancram to the core. And this kind of&mdash;one may say
+romantic&mdash;affection for their mothers has always distinguished the
+scions of our house from time immemorial. Good evening, my dear Algy. I
+find our dear Castalia looking a little worn and ill, and I tell her she
+keeps her rooms too hot. What do you say?"</p>
+
+<p>Algernon had sauntered into the room during his mother's harangue,
+delivered in the full mellow voice that belonged to her, and now bent to
+kiss the worthy lady's cheek as he greeted her. It was a cool, firm,
+rosy cheek. Indeed, Mrs. Errington's freshness and bloom were in
+singular opposition to Castalia's sallow haggardness, and made the elder
+lady look doubly buxom and buoyant by the force of contrast.</p>
+
+<p>"You're flourishing, at all events, <i>chère madame</i>," said Algernon,
+looking at his mother with unfeigned satisfaction. It was a relief to
+him to see a contented, smiling, comfortable countenance. Nevertheless,
+although agreeable to look upon, Mrs. Errington was apt to become a
+little wearisome in point of conversation, and her dutiful son cast his
+eyes round the circle in search of a pleasant seat wherein to bestow
+himself. But his glance met no response. Rose McDougall had drawn near
+his wife, and after very stiffly returning his bow, had ceased to take
+any notice of him, markedly avoiding his eye, and keeping silence after
+he had spoken. Violet was divided between listening to the elder Mrs.
+Errington and watching her sister. Castalia was more lazy, more silent,
+more indifferent than usual. Algernon was as unaccustomed as a spoiled
+child to be taken no notice of. He to stand among those women as a
+person of secondary importance, not greeted, not flattered, not smiled
+upon!</p>
+
+<p>He looked across the group round the fire to Rhoda, who happened to
+raise her eyes at that moment, and being taken by surprise at meeting
+his, dropped them hastily, with a vivid blush. Rhoda's blushes were as
+unmeaning as the smiles of an infant. The most trivial cause made her
+change colour, as Algernon very well knew. But at least the soft bright
+pink hue on pretty Rhoda's cheek showed some emotion, however slight or
+transient, at the sight of him. And, moved partly by a boyish, pettish
+resentment against the others, partly by the desire to hear a pleasant
+voice and pleasant words, and look upon a pretty woman's face with its
+delicate contour and fine subtle changes of tint, he walked across the
+room and seated himself beside Rhoda Maxfield.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia pushed her chair back out of the lamplight. "You can't see to
+do your purse in that dark corner, Castalia," exclaimed Mrs. Errington.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't want to do my purse. I'm sick of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Naughty, fickle girl!" This was said playfully. Then in a loud whisper,
+addressed to the McDougalls as well as to her daughter-in-law, Mrs.
+Errington exclaimed, "Doesn't Rhoda look charming to-night? That pale
+lilac is the very colour for her. Trying to skins that have the least
+tinge of yellow in them, but she is so wonderfully fair! Dear me, it
+reminds one of old times to see those two side by side. As children they
+were always together."</p>
+
+<p>No one responded. Violet McDougall fidgeted nervously on her chair and
+cast an appealing look at her sister. She would have tried to lead Mrs.
+Errington to talk of something else had she dared, but in Rose's
+presence Violet never ventured to take the initiative; and, besides, she
+was afraid of doing more harm than good, Mrs. Errington not being one of
+those persons who take a hint easily. The silence of her three listeners
+was no check to the worthy lady's eloquence. She continued to descant on
+Rhoda's attractions, and graces, and good manners; she dropped hints of
+the excellent opportunities Rhoda now had of "settling in life," only
+that she was a little fastidious from long association with such refined
+persons as the Erringtons, and had turned the cold shoulder to several
+well-to-do wooers in her own rank of life; she related anecdotes of
+Rhoda's early devotion to herself and her son, until Violet McDougall
+muttered under her breath, in a paroxysm of nervous impatience, "One
+would think the woman was doing it on purpose!"</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Algernon was talking to Rhoda more freely and confidentially
+than he had spoken to her for a long, long time. He was indulging in the
+luxury of playing victim before a spectator whose pity would certainly
+be admiring, not contemptuous. And, as he spoke, the old habit of
+appealing to Rhoda, and confiding in Rhoda, and taking Rhoda's sympathy
+for granted, resumed its power over him. There was no strain of
+tenderness in his words. He said not a syllable that his wife and all
+the world might not freely have listened to. He talked as a petted boy
+might talk to an idolising sister&mdash;with a mixture of boastfulness and
+repining, which he would have been ashamed to display to a man.</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda listened with sorrowful interest. How could it be that Algernon
+should have to endure all these troubles and mortifications? He was so
+clever, so accomplished, so highly connected, had such great and
+powerful relations! It appeared natural enough that folks like Mrs.
+Thimbleby, and the Gladwishes, and even her brother Seth, should
+sometimes be pressed for money. She herself, although she had never
+known privation in her father's house, had, until within the last year
+or so, been accustomed to the most rigid economy&mdash;not to say
+parsimony&mdash;and it had never cost her a care. But that Algernon Errington
+should desire money for various purposes, and not be able to get it,
+seemed to her a very hard case.</p>
+
+<p>But Algernon's note was not all of complaint. There were occasional
+intervals in which he spoke of the brightness of his prospects
+ultimately, when once he should have tided over his present difficulties
+and had got out of Whitford. And there were a few flourishes about his
+social successes in town last year. In the indulgence of his
+all-absorbing egotism, he seemed to forget that the girl beside him had
+ever been&mdash;or had ever had either expectation or right to be&mdash;anything
+more to him than the patient, admiring, sisterly, humble confidante on
+whom he had relied for praise and sympathy from the time of his earliest
+recollections, and who supplied him with the most delicious food for his
+vanity, because unmingled with any doubt of its genuineness. No thought
+of her feelings (save that they were kindly and admiring towards
+himself) crossed his mind whilst he talked to her, bending down his head
+and gesticulating slightly with his white, handsome hands.</p>
+
+<p>But when his mother called to her, "Come, Rhoda, I think, we must be
+going; I heard the carriage at the gate, child. You and Algy have been
+having a famous long chat! Reminded you of old times, didn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>When I say Algernon heard these words, a spark of manhood made his
+cheeks tingle and his tongue stammer as he said, "I&mdash;I'm afraid I must
+have been&mdash;boring you dreadfully, Rhoda?"</p>
+
+<p>In truth he was surprised to find that he had spent the whole evening in
+talking to Rhoda about himself. He glanced quickly at his wife, but she
+was occupied with the Misses McDougall. So occupied was she that she
+hardly returned Mrs. Errington's "Good night," which negligence,
+however, little ruffled that lady's equanimity. But when Rhoda
+approached to take leave of Castalia, the latter moved aside so suddenly
+that the movement might almost be called a start, and facing round, came
+opposite to her own image in the mirror above the chimney-piece, with
+Rhoda's fair image looking over its shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>For one second, perhaps&mdash;it could scarcely have been more&mdash;the smooth
+surface of the glass gave back the two women's faces: one youthful,
+lily-hued, innocently surprised, with chestnut eyebrows and shining
+chestnut curls, and tender rosy lips parted like those of a child; the
+other yellow, worn full of fretful creases, with glittering eager eyes,
+and a thin mouth set into a straight line, and yet over all the
+undefinable pathos of a suffering spirit; behind the two, Algernon
+looking into his wife's dark eyes and recognising something there that
+he had never seen in them before.</p>
+
+<p>In no longer time than it would take for a breath to dim the mirror all
+these images were gone, and the cold shiny glass indifferently showed a
+confusion of cloaks and shoulders and the back of a huge bonnet crowning
+Mrs. Errington's majestic figure.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 45%;" />
+
+<p>From that day forth Castalia gave herself up to a devouring jealousy of
+Rhoda. She spied her goings and comings; she watched her husband's face
+when the girl was spoken of; she opened the letters that she found in
+the pockets of his clothes; she lay in wait to surprise some proof, no
+matter what, of a tender feeling on his part for his old love. In a
+word, she pursued her own misery with more eagerness, vigilance, and
+unflagging singleness of purpose than most people devote to the
+attainment of any object whatsoever.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_V" id="CHAPTER_V"></a>CHAPTER V.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The discovery of Minnie Bodkin's note in Algernon's secretaire at the
+office had incited Castalia to make some other attempts to pry into that
+depository of her husband's papers. She made excuses to step into the
+post-office whenever she had any reason for thinking Algernon was
+absent. Sometimes it was with the pretence of wishing to see him,
+sometimes on the plea of wanting to rest. She had learned that her
+husband frequently went into the "Blue Bell," to have luncheon, in the
+middle of the day; and that, from one cause or another, the Whitford
+Post-office was not really honoured with so much of his personal
+superintendence as she had been led to suppose. And this again was a
+fertile source of self-tormenting. Where was he, when he was not at the
+office?</p>
+
+<p>It whetted her suspicious curiosity to find the secretaire always
+carefully locked, ever since her discovery of Miss Bodkin's note there.
+She now wished that she had searched it thoroughly when she had the
+opportunity, instead of hastening off to Dr. Bodkin's house, after
+having read the first letter she came upon. But her feelings at that
+time had been very different from what they now were. She had been
+nettled, truly, and jealous of any private consultation between Minnie
+Bodkin and her husband; hating to think that he could trust, and be
+confidential with, another woman than herself, but not distinctly
+suspecting either Minnie or Algernon of any intent to wrong her. Miss
+Bodkin loved power, and influence, and admiration, and Castalia wished
+no woman to influence Algernon, or to be admired by him for any
+qualities whatsoever, except herself; but all her little envious
+resentments against Minnie had been mere pinpricks compared with the
+cruel pangs of jealousy that now pierced her heart when she thought of
+Rhoda Maxfield.</p>
+
+<p>That secretaire! It seemed to have an irresistible attraction for her
+thoughts. She even dreamt sometimes of trying to open it, and finding
+fresh fastenings arise more and more complicated, as she succeeded in
+undoing one lock after the other. It was not Algernon's habit to lock up
+anything belonging to him. There must be some special reason for his
+doing so in this case! And to Castalia's jaundiced mind it seemed that
+the special reason could only be a desire to keep his letters secret
+from her. She grew day by day more restless. The servants at Ivy Lodge
+remarked with wonder their mistress's frequent absences from home. She,
+who had so dreaded and disliked walking, was now constantly to be seen
+on the road to the town, or on the meadow-path by the river. This kind
+of exercise, however, merely fatigued without refreshing her, and she
+became so lean and haggard, and her eyes had such a feverish glitter,
+that her looks might have alarmed anyone who loved her, and witnessed
+the change in her.</p>
+
+<p>"There she goes again!" exclaimed Lydia to her fellow servant, as she
+watched her mistress down the garden-path, behind the house, one
+afternoon. "She can't bide at home for an hour together now!"</p>
+
+<p>"She wears herself to the bone," said Polly, shaking her head.</p>
+
+<p>"She wears other folks to the bone, and that's worse," returned the
+pitiless Lydia.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Castalia had passed out of the little wicket-gate of her
+garden into the fields, and so along the meadow-path towards Whitford.
+She made her way along the path resolutely, though with a languid step.
+The ground was hardened by recent frost, and the usually muddy track was
+dry. At the corner of the Grammar School playground she turned up the
+lane towards the High Street, keeping close to the wall of the Grammar
+School, so as to be out of view of any from the side windows. Before she
+quite reached the High Street she caught sight of Mr. Diamond, walking
+briskly along in the direction of his lodgings. He did not see Castalia,
+or did not choose to see her; for, although she had once or twice
+saluted him in the street, she had on another occasion regarded him with
+her most unrecognising stare, and Matthew Diamond was not a man to risk
+enduring that a second time. But Castalia quickened her step so as to
+intercept him before he crossed the end of Grammar School Lane.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Diamond!" she said almost out of breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Madam!"</p>
+
+<p>Diamond raised his hat and stood still, in some surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"Would you be kind enough&mdash;do you happen to know whether Mr. Errington
+has left the post-office? You must have passed the door. You might have
+seen him coming out."</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry, madam, that I cannot inform you."</p>
+
+<p>"You&mdash;you haven't seen him anywhere in the town?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I have only just left the Grammar School. Have you any further
+commands?"</p>
+
+<p>He asked the question after a slight pause, because Castalia remained
+standing exactly across his path, glancing anxiously up and down the
+High Street, and apparently oblivious of Diamond's existence.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no! I beg your pardon," she answered, moving aside. As she did so
+young Ingleby came up, and was about to pass them when Diamond touched
+him on the shoulder and said, "Ingleby, have you chanced to see Mr.
+Errington?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir; I saw him going down the High Street not two minutes ago,
+close to old Maxfield's shop. Do you want him, Mrs. Errington? I can
+easily catch him if I run."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no, no! Don't go! You must not go after him."</p>
+
+<p>She walked away without any word or sign of farewell, leaving Diamond
+and the boy looking after her in surprise.</p>
+
+<p>"That is the most disagreeable woman I ever came across!" exclaimed
+Ingleby, with school-boy frankness. "I hate her stuck-up airs. But
+Errington is such a capital fellow&mdash;&mdash;! I'd do anything for him."</p>
+
+<p>Diamond did not choose to discuss either the husband or the wife with
+young Ingleby, but he said to himself, as he pursued his homeward way,
+that Mrs. Errington's manner had been not only disagreeable but very
+strange.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia reached the office and walked in. She entered the inner part
+that was screened off from the public, and passed Mr. Gibbs, behind his
+desk, without any recognition. She was about to enter Algernon's private
+room at the back, when Gibbs, rising and bowing, said "Did you want
+anything, ma'am? Mr. Errington is not there."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I'll go in and sit down."</p>
+
+<p>Gibbs looked uneasy and doubtful, and presently made an excuse to follow
+her into the room. Her frequent visits to the office of late by no means
+pleased Mr. Obadiah Gibbs.</p>
+
+<p>"I didn't know how the fire was," said he, poking at the hot coals, and
+looking furtively at Mrs. Errington.</p>
+
+<p>She was seated in her husband's chair in front of his desk. The little
+secretaire stood on a table at one side of it.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid Mr. Errington may not be back very soon," said Gibbs.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know where he's gone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not I, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Does he often go away during business hours?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why&mdash;I don't know what you would call 'often,' ma'am&mdash;I crave pardon. I
+must attend to the office now; there is some one there." And Mr. Gibbs
+withdrew, leaving the door half open.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia shut it, and fastened it inside. Then she pulled out a bunch of
+keys from her pocket, and tried them, one after the other, on the lock
+of the secretaire. This time it was safely secured, and not one of her
+keys fitted it. Then she opened the drawer of the table, and examined
+its contents. They consisted of papers, some printed, some written, a
+pair of driving gloves, and the cover of a letter directed to Algernon
+Errington, Esq., in a woman's hand. Castalia pounced on the cover, and
+thrust it into her pocket. After that, she looked behind the almanac on
+the chimney-piece, and rummaged amongst a litter of newspapers, and torn
+scraps of writing that lay in a basket. She was thus engaged when Mr.
+Gibbs's hand was laid on the handle of the door, and Mr. Gibbs's voice
+was heard demanding admission.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia opened the door at once, and Mr. Gibbs came in with a look of
+unconcealed annoyance on his face. He looked round the room sharply.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you want?" asked Castalia.</p>
+
+<p>"I want to see that all's right here, ma'am. I'm responsible."</p>
+
+<p>"What should be wrong? What do you mean?" she demanded with so
+coldly-haughty an air, that Gibbs was abashed. He felt he had gone too
+far, and muttered an apology. "I wanted to see to the fire. I'm afraid
+the coal-box is nearly empty. That old woman is so careless. I beg your
+pardon, but Mr. Errington is very particular about the room being kept
+warm."</p>
+
+<p>Castalia deigned not to notice him or his speech. She drew her shawl
+round her shoulders, and began to move away.</p>
+
+<p>"Can I give any message for you to Mr. Errington, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"No&mdash;&mdash;you need not mention that I came. I shall tell him myself this
+evening."</p>
+
+<p>As she walked down the High Street, she reflected on Mr. Gibbs's
+unwonted rudeness of look and manner.</p>
+
+<p>"He is told to watch me; to drive me away if possible; to prevent me
+making any discoveries. I daresay they are all in a league together. I
+am the poor dupe of a wife&mdash;the stranger who knows nothing, and is to
+know nothing. We shall see; we shall see. I wonder where Ancram can have
+gone! That boy spoke of seeing him near Maxfield's house."</p>
+
+<p>At that moment she found herself close to it, and with a sudden impulse
+she entered the shop, and, walking up to a man who stood behind the
+counter, said, "Is Mr. Errington here?"</p>
+
+<p>The man was James Maxfield, and he answered sulkily, "I don't know
+whether he's gone or not. You'd better inquire at the private door."</p>
+
+<p>Castalia's heart gave a great throb. "He has been here, then?" she said.</p>
+
+<p>"You'd better inquire at the private door," was all James's response,
+delivered still more surlily than before.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia left the shop, and knocked at the door indicated to her by
+James's thumb jerked over his shoulder. "Is Mr. Errington gone?" she
+asked of the girl who opened the door.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Did he&mdash;did he stay long?"</p>
+
+<p>"About half an hour, I think."</p>
+
+<p>"Is Mr. Maxfield at home?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, ma'am; master is at Duckwell, and has been since Saturday."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is it, Sally?" cried Betty Grimshaw's voice from the parlour, and
+upon hearing it Castalia walked hastily away.</p>
+
+<p>When she reached her own home again, between fatigue and excitement she
+could scarcely stand. She threw herself on the sofa in her little
+drawing-room, unable to mount the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"Deary me, missus," cried Polly, who happened to admit her, "why you're
+a'most dead! Where-ever have you been?"</p>
+
+<p>"I've been walking in the fields. I came round by the road. I'm very
+tired."</p>
+
+<p>"Tired? Nay, and well you may be if you took all that round! I thought
+you'd happen been into Whitford. Lawk, how you're squashing your bonnet!
+Let me take it off for you."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't care; leave it alone."</p>
+
+<p>But Polly would not endure to see "good clothes ruinated," as she said,
+so she removed her mistress's shawl and bonnet&mdash;folding, and smoothing,
+and straightening them as well as she could. "Now you'd better take a
+drop o' wine," she said. "You're a'most green. I never saw such a
+colour."</p>
+
+<p>Despite her rustic bluntness, Polly was kind in her way. She made her
+mistress swallow some wine, and put her slippers on her feet for her,
+and brought a pillow to place beneath her head. "You see you han't got
+no strength to spare. You're very weak, missus," she said. Then she
+muttered as she walked away, "Lord, I wouldn't care to be a lady myself!
+I think they're mostly poor creeturs."</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, Castalia closed her eyes and tried to review the situation,
+but at first her brain would do nothing but represent to her over and
+over again certain scenes and circumstances, with a great gap here and
+there, like a broken kaleidoscope.</p>
+
+<p>Ancram had been to Maxfield's house, and it could not have been to see
+the old man, who had been absent for some days. Perhaps Ancram was in
+the habit of going thither! He had never said a word to her about it.
+How sly he had been! How sly Rhoda had been! All his pretended
+unwillingness to have Rhoda invited to Ivy Lodge had been a blind. There
+was nothing clear or definite in her mind except a bitter, burning,
+jealous hatred of Rhoda.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see if Ancram confesses to having been to that house to-day,"
+said Castalia to herself. Then she went upstairs wearily. She was
+physically tired, being weak and utterly unused to much walking, and
+called Lydia to dress her and brush her hair. And when her toilet was
+completed, she sat quite still in the drawing-room, neither playing,
+reading, nor working&mdash;quite still, with her hands folded before her, and
+awaited her husband.</p>
+
+<p>She would first try to lead him to confess his visit to the Maxfields,
+and, if that failed, would boldly tax him with it. She even went over
+the very words she would say to her husband when he should descend from
+his dressing-room before dinner.</p>
+
+<p>But she could not foresee a circumstance which disturbed the plan she
+had arranged in her mind. When Algernon returned to Ivy Lodge he did not
+go into his dressing-room as usual, but marched straight into the
+drawing-room, where Castalia was sitting.</p>
+
+<p>"That's an agreeable sort of letter!" he said, flinging one down on the
+table.</p>
+
+<p>He was not in a passion&mdash;he had never been known to be in a passion&mdash;but
+he was evidently much vexed. His mouth was curved into a satirical
+smile; he drew his breath between his teeth with a hissing sound, and
+nodded his head twice or thrice, after repeating ironically, "That's an
+uncommonly agreeable sort of letter!" Then he thrust his hands deep into
+his pockets, threw himself into an easy-chair, stretched his legs
+straight out before him, and looked at his wife.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia was surprised, and curious, and a little anxious, but she made
+an effort to carry out her programme despite this unexpected beginning.
+She remained motionless on the sofa, and said, with elaborate
+indifference of manner, "Do you wish me to read the letter? I wonder at
+your allowing me to know anything of your affairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Read it? Of course! Why else did I give it to you? Don't be absurd,
+Castalia. Pshaw!" And he impatiently changed the position of his feet
+with a sharp, sudden movement.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia's sympathy with his evident annoyance overcame her resentment
+for the moment. She could not bear to see him troubled. She opened the
+letter.</p>
+
+<p>"Why it's from Uncle Val!" she exclaimed.</p>
+
+<p>It was from her uncle, addressed to her husband, and was written in a
+tone of considerable severity. To Castalia it appeared barbarously
+cruel. Lord Seely curtly refused any money assistance; and stated that
+he wrote to Algernon instead of to Castalia, because he perceived that,
+although the application for money had been written by Castalia's hand,
+it had not been dictated by her head. Lord Seely further advised his
+niece's husband, in the strongest and plainest terms, to use every
+method of economy, to retrench his expenditure, to refrain from
+superfluous luxuries, and to live on his salary.</p>
+
+<p>"The little allowance I give Castalia for her dress will be continued to
+her," wrote his lordship. "Beyond that, I am unable to give either her
+or you one farthing. Understand this, and act on it. And, moreover, I
+had better tell you at once, as an additional inducement to be prudent,
+that I see no prospect of procuring advancement for you in any other
+department of his Majesty's service than the one you are in at present.
+My advice to you is to endeavour to merit advancement by diligence in
+the performance of your duties. You have abilities which are sure to
+serve you if honestly applied. You are so young, that even after ten or
+fifteen years' work you would be in the prime of all your faculties and
+powers. And ten or fifteen years' good work might give you an excellent
+position. As to Castalia, I cannot help feeling a conviction that her
+discontent is chiefly reflected, and that if she saw you cheerful and
+active in your daily business, she would not repine at her lot."</p>
+
+<p>Castalia put the letter down on the table in silence. She was
+astonished, indignant; but yet a little gleam of satisfaction pierced
+through those feelings&mdash;a hope that she and her husband might be drawn
+closer together by this common trouble. She would show him how well able
+she was to endure this, and worse, if he would only love her and trust
+her entirely. Even her jealousy for Rhoda Maxfield was mitigated for the
+moment. All that fair-weather prettiness and philandering would be put
+out of sight at the first growl of a storm. The wife would be the
+nearest to him if troubles came. No pink-and-white coquetry could usurp
+her right to suffer with him and for him, at all events.</p>
+
+<p>"That's a pleasant sort of thing, isn't it?" said Algernon, who had been
+watching her face as she read.</p>
+
+<p>"It is too bad of Uncle Val, Ancram."</p>
+
+<p>"Too bad! Yes; to put it mildly, it is too bad, I think. Too bad? By
+George, I never heard of anything so outrageous!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know, I think that my lady is at the bottom of it."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish she was at the bottom of the Thames!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ancram, I do feel sorry for you. It is such a shame to bury your
+talents, and all that. But still, you know, it is true what he says
+about your having plenty of time before you. And as to being poor&mdash;of
+course it is horrid to be poor, but we can bear it, I daresay. And,
+really, I don't think I should mind it so much if once we were
+acknowledged to be quite, quite poor; because then it wouldn't matter
+what one wore, and nobody would expect one to have things like other
+people of one's rank."</p>
+
+<p>Poor Castalia was not eloquent, but had she possessed the most fluent
+and persuasive tongue in the world, it would not have availed to make
+Algernon acquiesce in her view of the situation. She was for indignantly
+breaking off all connection with relatives who could behave as Uncle Val
+had behaved. It was not his refusing to advance more money (in her
+conscience Castalia did not believe he could afford much assistance of
+that kind), but his writing with such cruel coldness to Ancram&mdash;his
+declaring that Ancram's case was not a hard one&mdash;his lecturing about
+duties, and cheerful activity, and so on, just as if Ancram had been an
+ordinary plodding young man instead of a being exceptionally gifted with
+all sorts of shining qualities&mdash;these were offences not to be forgiven.
+Castalia, for her part, would have endured any privation, rather than
+beg more favours of Uncle Val and my lady.</p>
+
+<p>But Algernon's feeling in the matter was by no means the same as
+Castalia's. He dismissed all her attempts to express her willingness to
+share his lot for good or ill as matters of no importance. She might
+find it easy enough. Yes; the chief burthen would not fall on her! And,
+besides, she did not at all realise what it would be to have to live on
+the salary of the postmaster of Whitford, and to practise "rigid
+economy," as my lord phrased it. It was really provoking to see the cool
+way in which she took it for granted that matters would be mended by
+their being "acknowledged to be quite, quite poor." "My dear Castalia,"
+he said, with an air of superior tolerance, "you have about as much
+comprehension of the actual state of the case as a canary-bird."</p>
+
+<p>She paused, silently looking at him for a moment. Then she drew nearer
+to him, and laid her arm round his shoulder. She wore a dinner-dress
+with loose hanging sleeves, which were not becoming to her wasted frame.
+But the poor thin arm clung with a loving touch to her husband, as she
+said, "I know I am not so clever as you, Ancram, but I can see and
+understand that if we haven't money enough to pay for things we must do
+without them." (Castalia advanced this in the tone of one stating a
+self-evident proposition.) "And I shan't care, Ancram, if you trust me,
+and&mdash;and&mdash;don't put any one else before me. I never put any one before
+you. I was fond of Uncle Val. I think he was the only person I really
+loved in the world before I saw you. But if he treats you badly I shall
+give him up."</p>
+
+<p>Algernon shook off the clinging arm from his shoulder, not roughly, but
+slightingly.</p>
+
+<p>"What on earth are you talking about, Cassy? What do you suppose we are
+to do? I tell you I must have some money, and you must write to your
+uncle again without delay."</p>
+
+<p>She drew back with a hurt sense of having been unappreciated. The tears
+sprang to her eyes, and she put her hand into her pocket to take her
+handkerchief. The hand fell on something that rustled, and was stiff. It
+was the letter cover she had found in her husband's office that morning.
+The touch of the crisp paper recalled not only the events of the
+afternoon, but her own sensations during them. "Where were you this
+afternoon?" she asked, suddenly checking her tears, as the dry, burning,
+jealous feeling awoke again in her heart.</p>
+
+<p>"Where was I? Where must I be? Where am I every afternoon? At the
+office&mdash;confound it!"</p>
+
+<p>"You were not there all the afternoon. I&mdash;happened to look in there, and
+you were gone."</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose you came just at the moment I happened to be absent, then. I
+had to see one or two men on business. Not pleasant business. I was not
+amusing myself, I assure you," he added with a short hard laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"What men had you to see?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no one whom you know anything about. Isn't dinner ready? I shan't
+dress. I have to go out again this evening."</p>
+
+<p>"This evening!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it is a frightful bore, but I have a business appointment. Do ring
+and tell the cook to make haste."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not going out again this evening, Ancram?"</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you I must. How can you be so childish, Castalia? Whilst I am
+gone you can employ yourself in making out the draught of a letter to
+your uncle."</p>
+
+<p>"I will not write to my uncle! I will not. You don't care for me.
+You&mdash;you deceive me," burst out Castalia. And then a storm of sobs
+choked her voice, and she hurried away, filling the little house with a
+torrent of incoherent sounds.</p>
+
+<p>Algy looked after her, with his head bent down and his eyebrows raised.
+Castalia was really very trying to live with. As to her refusal to write
+to her uncle, she would not of course persist in it. It was out of the
+question that she should persist in opposing any wish of his. But she
+was really very trying.</p>
+
+<p>When dinner was announced, Castalia sent word that she had a headache
+and could not eat. She was lying down in her own room. Her husband
+murmured a few words of sympathy, but ate his dinner with no sensible
+diminution of appetite, and, as soon as it was despatched, he lit a
+cigar, wrapped himself in his great-coat, and went out.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia heard the street-door shut. She rose swiftly from the bed on
+which she had thrown herself, put on a bonnet and cloak, muffled her
+face in a veil, and followed her husband.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VI" id="CHAPTER_VI"></a>CHAPTER VI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The night was dark and cheerless. It was one of those murky November
+nights when one seems to see and breathe through a dusky gauze. The road
+from Ivy Lodge to Whitford was not lighted. At a long distance before
+her, Castalia saw a red, glowing speck, which she knew to be the lamp
+over the chemist's shop, kept by Mr. Barker, her landlord. After that, a
+few street lamps glimmered, and the town of Whitford had fairly begun.</p>
+
+<p>It was not late, and yet most of the shops were shut, and the streets
+very silent and deserted. Castalia strained her eyes onward through the
+darkness, and presently saw her husband's figure come into the circle of
+faint light made by a street lamp, traverse it, and disappear again into
+the shade. She had walked so quickly in her excitement as to have
+overtaken him sooner than she had expected. Whither was he going?</p>
+
+<p>She slunk along in the shadow of the houses, frightened at the faint
+sound of her own footfall on the flagstones, starting nervously at every
+noise, hurrying across the lighted spaces in front of the few shops that
+remained open with averted face and beating heart, fearing to be noticed
+by those within. But never once did she falter in her purpose of
+following her husband. She would have been turned back by no obstacle
+short of one which defied her physical powers to pass it.</p>
+
+<p>Algernon was now nearing Maxfield's house. The shutters of the shop were
+closed, but the door was still open, and a light streamed from it on to
+the pavement. Castalia followed, watching breathlessly. Her husband
+passed the shop, went on a pace or two, stopped at the private door, and
+rang the bell. She could see the action of his arm as he raised it. The
+door was opened without much delay, and Algernon went in.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia stood still, trying to collect her thoughts and determine on
+her course of action. What should she do? Her husband might be an
+hour&mdash;hours&mdash;in that house. She could not stand there in the street. An
+impulse came upon her to make herself known&mdash;to go in and tax Algernon
+with perfidy and deception then and there. But she checked the impulse.
+It would have been a desperate step. Algernon might never forgive her.
+It might be possible for her to reach a pitch of rage and jealousy which
+would make her deaf to any such considerations&mdash;careless as to the
+consequences of her actions if she could but gratify the imperious
+passion of the moment. She was dimly conscious that this might be
+possible; but for the present she had sufficient control over her own
+actions to pause and deliberate. There she stood, alone at night, in
+Whitford High Street&mdash;stealthily, trembling, and wretched&mdash;she, Castalia
+Kilfinane! Who would believe it? What would her uncle feel if he could
+see her now, or guess what she was enduring?</p>
+
+<p>The idea came into her mind&mdash;floating like a waif on the current of
+indignant misery that seemed to flood all her spirit&mdash;that there might
+be hundreds of human beings whom she had seen and thought happy smarting
+with some secret wound like her own, and living lives the half of which
+was never known to the world. Castalia had never been apt to let her
+imagination busy itself with the sorrows of others, and at this moment
+the conception had no softening effect. It only added an extra flavour
+of bitterness and rebellion to her sufferings. It was too cruel. Why
+should such things be? And what had she done to merit so much
+unhappiness? She shivered a little as a breeze from the river came
+bringing with it the clammy breath of the marsh mists&mdash;the white
+cloud-kraken that Minnie Bodkin had so often watched from her window.</p>
+
+<p>How long Castalia remained standing at her post she could never reckon;
+she was conscious only of burning pain of mind, and of a determination
+not to shrink from her purpose because of the pain. A footstep came
+sounding along the quiet street and startled her. She shrank back as far
+as she could, pressing her shoulder close against the wall, and
+uncertain whether to walk on or remain still. It was a man who came
+towards her, turning from a narrow street opening into the High Street,
+which Castalia knew to be Lady Lane. He walked with a very rapid step,
+hanging his head, and looking neither to the right nor to the left.
+Castalia was, perhaps, the only dweller in Whitford who would not have
+recognised the figure as being that of David Powell, the Methodist
+preacher.</p>
+
+<p>As Powell neared Castalia, he seemed to become aware of her presence by
+some sixth sense, for to all appearance he had not looked towards her.
+The truth was, that all his outward perceptions were habitually
+disregarded by him, except such as carried with them some suggestion of
+helpfulness and sympathy. A fashionable lady might have stood facing him
+during a long sermon in chapel, or in the open fields, and (unless she
+had displayed signs of "grace") he would have taken no heed of
+her&mdash;would not have been able to tell the colour of her garments. But
+let the same woman be tearful, ragged, sick, or injured, and no
+observation could be more rapid and comprehensive than David Powell's,
+to convey all needful particulars of her state and requirements. So this
+night, as he passed along the quiet Whitford streets, the few persons he
+had met hitherto were to him as shadows. But when the vague outline of a
+woman's form made itself a blot of blacker shadow in the darkness, those
+accustomed sentinels, his senses, gave the spirit notice of a
+fellow-creature in want, possibly of bread, certainly of sympathy.</p>
+
+<p>He stopped within a few paces of Castalia, and perceived by that time
+that she was well and warmly clad, and that her trouble, whatever it
+was, could not be alleviated by alms. In her desire to avoid notice, she
+shrank away more and more almost crouching down against the wall. It
+occurred to Powell that she might be ill. "Are you suffering?" he asked,
+in a low musical voice. "Can I help you?"</p>
+
+<p>Finding that she did not reply, he advanced a step farther, and was
+stretching out his hand to touch her on the shoulder, when, driven to
+bay, she raised herself up to her full height, and answered quickly and
+resentfully, "No; I am not ill. I am waiting for some one."</p>
+
+<p>He stood still, irresolutely. Her voice and accent struck him with
+surprise, he recognised them as belonging to a person of a different
+class from any he had expected. How came such a lady to be alone at
+that hour, standing in the cold street? At length he said, gently, "If I
+may advise you, it would be well for you to go home. The person who
+keeps you waiting in the street in such weather, and at this hour, must
+surely be very thoughtless. Can I not assist you? I am David Powell, a
+poor preacher of the Word. You need have no fear of me."</p>
+
+<p>"No; please to go away. I am not at all afraid. Go away, go away!" she
+added with an imperative emphasis, for she began to fear lest her
+husband should come out of the house, hear the sound of her voice, and
+find her there. Powell obeyed her, and walked slowly away. There was, in
+truth, so far as he knew, no reason to fear that any evil could happen
+to the woman in Whitford High Street, except the evil of standing so
+long in the cold, raw weather. It had now begun to rain; a fine
+drizzling rain, that was very chill.</p>
+
+<p>When he had walked some distance along the High Street, and was close to
+the turning that led to Mrs. Thimbleby's house, he stopped and looked
+back. Almost at the same moment he saw a man come out of Maxfield's
+house, and advance along the street towards him. Then, at rather a long
+interval, the cloaked lady began to move onward also, but without
+overtaking the man, or apparently trying to do so. It was a strange
+adventure, and one entirely unparalleled in Powell's experience of the
+little town; and after he had reached his lodgings he could not, for a
+long time, divert his thoughts from dwelling on it.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Algernon, unconscious of the watcher behind him, proceeded
+straight onward to the post-office. Then he turned up the narrow passage
+or entry in which was the side door that gave access to his private
+office. Castalia did not follow him beyond the mouth of the entry.
+Standing there and listening, she heard the sharp sound of a match being
+struck, then the turning of a key, and a door softly opened and shut.</p>
+
+<p>It then struck Castalia for the first time that this unexpected visit to
+the office afforded an opportunity for her to reach home without her
+husband's discovering her absence. She had not considered before how
+this was to be accomplished; and, indeed, had Algernon returned directly
+to Ivy Lodge from Maxfield's house it would have been impossible.</p>
+
+<p>She now saw this, and hastened back along the road, in a tremor at her
+narrow escape; for, although the impulse had crossed her mind to declare
+herself, and boldly enter Maxfield's house in quest of her husband, that
+was a very different matter from being suddenly discovered against her
+will. In the latter case she would, as she well knew, have been at an
+immense disadvantage with her husband, who, instead of being accused,
+would become accuser.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing short, indeed, of the passion of jealousy within her would have
+given her strength to combat her husband. This was the only way in which
+her idolatrous admiration, her very love for him, could be turned into a
+weapon against him.</p>
+
+<p>"I could bear anything else! Anything else!" she said to herself. "But
+to be fooled and deceived, and put aside for that girl&mdash;&mdash;!" A great hot
+wave of passion seemed to flow through her whole body as she thought of
+Rhoda. "Let the servants see me! What do I care?" she said recklessly.
+At that moment she would not have heeded if the whole town had seen her,
+and known her errand into Whitford, and its result. She rang loudly at
+the bell of Ivy Lodge, and walked in past the servant, with a white face
+and glittering eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"Isn't master coming?" stammered the girl, staring at her mistress.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. Go to bed. I don't want you."</p>
+
+<p>There was something in her face which checked further speech on Lydia's
+part. Lydia was fairly frightened. She crept away to the garret, where
+Polly was already sleeping soundly, and vainly tried to rouse her
+fellow-servant, to feel some interest in her account of how missus had
+stalked into the house by herself like a ghost, and had ordered her off
+to bed, and to get up a discussion as to missus's strange goings on
+altogether of late.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia went to her own room, uncertain whether to undress and go to
+bed or to remain up and confront her husband when he should return. One
+dominant desire had been growing in her heart for many days past, and
+had now become a force overwhelming all smaller motives, and drawing
+them resistlessly into its strong current. This dominant desire was to
+be revenged&mdash;not on her husband, but on Rhoda Maxfield. And it might be
+that by waiting and watching yet awhile, by concealing from Ancram the
+discovery she had that night made, she might be enabled more effectually
+to strike at her rival. If Ancram knew, he would try to shield Rhoda. He
+would put the thing in such a light before the world as to elicit
+sympathy for Rhoda and make her (Castalia) appear ridiculous or
+obnoxious. He had the gift to do such things when it pleased him. But
+Rhoda should not escape. No; she would keep her own counsel yet awhile
+longer.</p>
+
+<p>When Algernon came home about midnight, letting himself into the house
+with a private key which he carried, he found his wife asleep, or
+seeming to sleep, and congratulating himself on escaping the querulous
+catechism as to where he had been, and what he had been doing, which he
+would have to endure had Castalia been awake on his return. As he
+crossed the bedchamber to his dressing-room, she moved, and put up one
+hand to screen her eyes from the light.</p>
+
+<p>"Don't let me disturb you, Cassy," he said. "I have been detained very
+late. I am going downstairs again&mdash;there is a spark of fire in the
+dining-room&mdash;to have one cigar before I turn in. Go to sleep again."</p>
+
+<p>He bent down to kiss her, but she kept her face obstinately buried in
+the pillow. So he took her left hand, which hung down, and lightly
+touched it with his lips, saying, "Poor sleepy Cassy!" and went away.</p>
+
+<p>And then she raised her thin left hand, on which her wedding-ring hung
+loosely, and passionately kissed it where her husband's lips had rested,
+and burst into a storm of crying, until she fairly sobbed herself to
+sleep.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VII" id="CHAPTER_VII"></a>CHAPTER VII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"So you had that fine gentleman, Mr.
+Algernon&mdash;What-d'ye-call-it&mdash;Errington, here last evening?" said
+Jonathan Maxfield to his daughter, on his return from Duckwell.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father; he had been before in the afternoon. He was very anxious
+to see you; but Aunt Betty told him you wouldn't be back until to-day."</p>
+
+<p>"Very anxious to see me, was he? I have my own opinion about that. But,
+no doubt, he wants me to believe that he's anxious."</p>
+
+<p>"He seems in a good deal of distress of mind, father."</p>
+
+<p>"I daresay. And what about the minds of the folks as hold his promises
+to pay? Just so much waste paper, those are, I take it; I'd as lief have
+his word of honour myself. And most people in Whitford know what that's
+worth."</p>
+
+<p>"I think he has been very unfortunate, father."</p>
+
+<p>"H'm! What worldly folks calls misfortin' is generally the Lord's
+dealing according to deserts. It's set forth in Scripture that the
+righteous man shall prosper, and the unrighteous be brought to naught."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;father, even good people are sometimes chastened by afflictions,"
+said Rhoda timidly.</p>
+
+<p>Old Max knitted his brows.</p>
+
+<p>"There's nothing," said he, "more dangerous than for the young and
+inexperienced to wrest texts; it leads 'em far astray. When that kind o'
+chastening is spoken of, it don't mean the sort of trouble as has fallen
+on young Errington. The Almighty has given every man reason enough to
+understand that, if he spends thirteenpence out of every shilling, he'll
+be beggared before the year's end. I don't believe in men being ruined
+without fault or foolishness of their own."</p>
+
+<p>"He asked me if I&mdash;if you&mdash;if I thought&mdash;&mdash;he asked me to ask you to
+have a little patience with him about some bills. I didn't know that he
+had any bill here; but he said you would understand."</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, aye! I understand. It isn't bills for tea, and flour, and bacon,
+and such like. It's a different kind o' bills the young gentleman's been
+meddling with; and a fine hand he's made of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't you help him, father?"</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda spoke pleadingly, but with the timidity which always attended her
+requests to her father, whose recent indulgence had never reached a
+point of weakness, and who clearly showed, in all his dealings with his
+daughter, that he was not carried away by his affection for her, but
+acted with the consciousness of a will unfettered by precedents, and
+perfectly able to choose its course without regard to what other people
+might expect of him.</p>
+
+<p>For herself, in pleading for Algernon, she was not moved by
+self-conscious sentimentality, neither did she suppose herself to be
+doing anything heroic. The peculiar tenderness she still felt for him
+was made up of pity and memory. The Algy she had loved was gone&mdash;had
+melted into thin air, like a dream under the morning sunlight. Mr.
+Errington, the postmaster of Whitford, and the husband of the Honourable
+Castalia Kilfinane, was a very different personage. Still he was
+inextricably connected in her mind with that bright idol of her
+childhood and her youth. His marriage had put all possibility of
+love-making between him and herself as much out of the question, to her
+mind, as if he had been proved to be her brother. Rhoda had read no
+romances, and she was neither of an innovating spirit nor a passionate
+temperament, and it is surprising what power a sincere conviction of the
+irrevocable and inevitable has to control the "natural feelings" we hear
+so much of! But she clung tenaciously to a better opinion of Algernon
+than his actions warranted&mdash;as has been the case with many another
+woman&mdash;chiefly to justify herself for ever having loved him.</p>
+
+<p>"Couldn't you help him, father?" she repeated, seeing that her father
+did not at once reply, but was sitting meditating, with a not altogether
+ill-pleased expression of face.</p>
+
+<p>"Help him!" cried old Max. "Why should I help him? A reprobate,
+unregenerate, vain, ungrateful worldling! I did help him once, and
+earned much gratitude for my pains. And what a sneaking, poor, mean,
+pitiful fellow he must be to come here and whine to you! A poor, pitiful
+fellow! Talk of a gentleman! Yah!"</p>
+
+<p>Old Max derived so much grim satisfaction from the contemplation of
+Algernon's pitiful behaviour that it seemed almost to soften him towards
+the culprit, in whom any glimpse of nobility would not have been very
+welcome to his enemy. When you hate a man on excellent private grounds,
+it is certainly unpleasant to see him displaying qualities in public
+which win a fallacious admiration. And this aggravation was one which
+old Max had been suffering for some time at the hands of the popular
+Algernon. His present money difficulties, combined with his unworthy
+methods of meeting them, at once gratified and justified Jonathan
+Maxfield's vindictiveness.</p>
+
+<p>He gave forth the queer grunting noise that served him for a laugh, as
+he said, "And a lot o' good his fine marriage has done him! And his
+grand relations! I told him long ago that if he wanted help from such as
+them, he must ask it with a pocket full of money. Then he might ha' been
+uplifted into high places. And it wasn't only my own wisdom neither,
+though that might ha' been enough for such a half-fledged young cockerel
+as he was in them days, seeing it has been enough for his betters before
+now. I had the warrant of Scripture; for what says Solomon? 'Wealth
+maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbour.'"</p>
+
+<p>Still Rhoda did not altogether despair of inducing her father to do
+something for Algernon. What that something might be, or how far it was
+possible for her father to assist young Errington, except by simply
+giving or lending him money, Rhoda was ignorant. Algernon in talking to
+her had spoken very glibly, but, to her, very unintelligibly, of bills
+which were in her father's hands; and had pointed out, with an air of
+candour and conviction, that it would be imprudent on Mr. Maxfield's
+part to drive matters to extremity. It had all sounded very convincing,
+simply from the tone in which it was said. Many of us are astonishingly
+uncritical as to the coherence and cogency of words if they be but set
+to a good tune.</p>
+
+<p>Algernon himself was rather hopeful since that interview with Rhoda. It
+could not be, after all, that Jonathan Maxfield would actually cause
+him, Algernon Errington, any personal inconvenience for the sake of a
+sum which was really a mere trifle to Maxfield, and which appeared very
+trifling to Algernon under every aspect except that of being called upon
+to pay it.</p>
+
+<p>He had learned not long previously that certain bills he had given,
+backed by the name of that solid capitalist, the Honourable Jack Price,
+had found their way into old Max's hands. This startled him
+considerably, for he had no reason to count on the old man's
+forbearance. The time was drawing nigh when the bills would become due.</p>
+
+<p>About a month ago some other bills had fallen due, and had been duly
+honoured. They had been given to a London wine merchant, who would
+certainly not have scrupled to take any strong measure for getting his
+money. And even the name of Jack Price was no talisman to charm away
+this grasping tradesman's determination to be paid for goods delivered;
+the wine merchant in question doing a large City business, and feeling
+no anxiety as to the opinion entertained by the Honourable Mr. Price's
+fashionable connection about himself or his wares. Under the pressure of
+this disagreeable conviction, the money had been found to honour the
+bills held by the wine merchant.</p>
+
+<p>For the discharge of the liabilities represented by the bills now in
+Maxfield's hands, Algernon had reckoned on Castalia's extracting some
+money from her uncle. Algernon did not abandon the hope that she might
+yet succeed in doing so. Castalia must be urged to make new and stronger
+representations of their necessities to Lord Seely. But it could not be
+denied that my lord's last letter had been a very heavy blow; and that,
+moreover, a number of slight embarrassments, which Algernon had hitherto
+looked on as mere gossamer threads, to be broken when he pleased, had
+recently exhibited a disconcerting toughness and power of constraining
+his actions and destroying his comfort.</p>
+
+<p>The thought not infrequently occurred to him that, if he were alone in
+the world, unhampered by a wife who had no flexibility of character, and
+who had recently displayed a stubborn kind of obtuseness, showing itself
+in such remarks as that if they had not money to pay for luxuries, they
+must do without luxuries, and that if they were poor, it would be better
+to seem poor, and the like dull commonplaces, which were peculiarly
+distasteful to Algernon's vivacious intelligence&mdash;if, he thought, he had
+no wife, or a different wife, things would undoubtedly go better with
+him. He was too quick not to perceive that his marriage, far from
+improving his social position, had been eminently unpopular amongst his
+friends and acquaintances. To be sure he had never intended to return to
+Whitford after allying himself with the family of Lord Seely. He had
+meant to shake the dust of the sleepy little town from his feet for
+ever. He reckoned up the advantages he had expected to gain by marrying
+Castalia, and set the real result against each one in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>He had expected to get into the diplomatic service. He was a provincial
+postmaster!</p>
+
+<p>He had expected to live in some splendid metropolis. He found himself in
+the obscure town which, of all others, he wished to avoid!</p>
+
+<p>He had expected to be courted and caressed by wealthy, noble, and
+distinguished persons. He was looked coldly or shyly upon by even the
+insignificant middle-class society of a county town!</p>
+
+<p>All this seemed peculiarly hard and unjust, because Algernon had always
+intended to bear his honours gracefully, without stiffness or arrogance.
+He would cut nobody; he would turn the cold shoulder to nobody. He had
+pictured himself sometimes making a meteoric reappearance in Whitford
+some day; flashing with brief brilliancy across the horizon of that
+remote neighbourhood, affably shaking hands with old acquaintance,
+occupying the best rooms in the "Blue Bell," and scattering largesse
+among the servants, rattling through the streets side by side with some
+county magnate, whose companionship should by no means chill his
+recognition of such local stars of the second or third magnitude as the
+Pawkinses of Pudcombe Hall. He was inclined by taste and temperament to
+be thoroughly "<i>bon prince</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Such fancies may seem childish, but it was a fact that Algernon had
+indulged in them. With all his tact, he had a considerable strain of his
+mother's Ancramism in his blood. And the contrast between those former
+day-dreams and the present reality was so terrible, so mortifying, so
+ridiculous (direst and most soul-chilling word of all to Algernon!) that
+he was unable to face it. Some way out must be found. It was impossible,
+on any tenable theory of society, that he should be permanently
+consigned to oblivion and the daily round of inglorious duties.</p>
+
+<p>As to what Lord Seely said about meriting advancement by diligence, and
+working for ten or fifteen years, it seemed to Algernon pretty much like
+exhorting a convict to step his daily round of treadmill in so
+painstaking a manner as to win the approbation of the gaol authorities.
+What would he care for their approbation? It was impossible to take
+either pride or pleasure in working out one's penal sentence.</p>
+
+<p>Algernon felt very bitter against Lord Seely as he pondered these
+things, and not a little bitter against Castalia, who had, as it were,
+bound him to this wheel, and had latterly added the sting of her
+intolerable temper to his other vexations. Fate had used him
+despitefully. He seemed to consider that some gratitude was due to him
+on the part of the supernal powers for his excellent intentions&mdash;he
+would have borne prosperity so well! A feeling grew upon him, which
+would have been desperation but for his ever-present, instinctive
+efforts not to hurt himself.</p>
+
+<p>On the morning after the visit to Maxfield's house&mdash;of which Castalia
+had been an unseen witness&mdash;Algernon went to the post-office somewhat
+earlier than usual. As he reached it a man was coming out, who scowled
+upon him with so sullen and hostile a countenance, that it affected him
+like a blow.</p>
+
+<p>He was, on the whole, in better spirits on this special morning than he
+had been for some time past. Not that he was habitually depressed by his
+troubles, but there was a certain apprehension and anxiety in his daily
+life which flavoured it all unpleasantly. But on this morning he was,
+for various reasons, feeling hopeful of at least a reprieve from care,
+and the man's angry frown not only hurt but startled him.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that fellow who has just gone out?" he asked of Gibbs, entering
+the office by the public door instead of his own private one, in order
+to put the question.</p>
+
+<p>"That is Roger Heath, the man who has lost his money-letter."</p>
+
+<p>"An uncommonly ill-looking rascal, I take leave to think."</p>
+
+<p>"Ahem! He is a decent, God-fearing man, sir, I believe; but at present
+he is wrath, and not without some excuse, either. He tells me he has
+written to the head office&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"And what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"And has been told that due inquiries will be made, of course."</p>
+
+<p>"And what then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why then&mdash;I suppose that's the last he'll hear of it."</p>
+
+<p>Algernon lightly flicked a white handkerchief over his face and bright
+curling hair, filling the close little office with a delicate perfume as
+he said, "So there's an end of that!"</p>
+
+<p>"An end of it, I suppose, so far as Heath is concerned. But I doubt we
+shall hear more of the matter in the office."</p>
+
+<p>Algernon paused with his hand on the lock of the door leading to his
+private room. He kept his hand there, and scarcely turned his head as he
+asked, "How so?"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Gibbs shook his head, and began to expatiate on the singular
+misfortunes which had been accumulated on the Whitford Post-office, and
+to hint that when two or three suspicious cases had followed each other
+in that way, an office was marked by the superior authorities, and means
+were taken to discover the culprit.</p>
+
+<p>"Means! What means?" said Algernon, carelessly. "You said yourself that
+it was next to impossible to trace a stolen letter. And, really, if
+people will be such idiots as to send money by post without precaution,
+in spite of all the warnings that are given to them, they deserve to
+lose it."</p>
+
+<p>"That may be, sir. Still, of course, it is no light matter to steal a
+letter. And as to the means of tracing it, why I have heard of
+trap-letters being sent, containing marked money."</p>
+
+<p>The handle clicked, the door was opened and sharply shut again, and the
+Whitford postmaster disappeared into his private room.</p>
+
+<p>It was more than an hour before Algernon reappeared in the outer office.
+He advanced towards Gibbs, and leaning on his shoulder with great
+affability, said to him in a low voice, "You've no suspicion of any one
+about this place, eh? The old woman that cleans the office, that boy
+Jem, no suspicion of anybody, eh? Oh! well I'm excessively glad of that!
+One hates to be distrustful of the people about one."</p>
+
+<p>Gibbs shook his head emphatically and decisively. "No one has access to
+the office unless in my presence, sir; not a creature."</p>
+
+<p>"The fact is," said Algernon, slowly, "that I have missed one or two
+papers of my own lately; matters of no consequence. God knows why anyone
+should have thought it worth while to take them! But they're gone."</p>
+
+<p>Gibbs looked up with serious alarm in his face.</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, sir!" he exclaimed; "dear me, Mr. Errington! I wish you had
+mentioned this before."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh well, you know, I thought I might be mistaken. I hate being on the
+watch about trifles. But latterly I am quite sure that papers have
+disappeared from my secretaire."</p>
+
+<p>"From that little cabinet with drawers in it, that stands in your room?"</p>
+
+<p>"Exactly."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;I was under the impression that you kept that carefully locked!"</p>
+
+<p>Algernon laughed outright. "What a fellow you are, Gibbs! Fancy my
+keeping anything carefully locked! The fact is, it is as often open as
+shut. Only a few days ago, for instance, Mrs. Errington mentioned to me
+that she found it unlocked when she was here&mdash;&mdash;" He stopped as if
+struck by a sudden thought, and turned his eyes away from Gibbs, who was
+looking up at him with the same uneasy expression on his face.
+"By-the-way, Mrs. Errington did not stay very long here, did she?" asked
+Algernon, with a degree of marked embarrassment very unusual in him. It
+was an embarrassment so ingeniously displayed that one might almost have
+suspected he wished it to be observed.</p>
+
+<p>"When do you mean, sir? Mrs. Errington comes very often; very often
+indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"Does she?&mdash;I mean&mdash;I mean the last time she was here. Did she stay long
+then?"</p>
+
+<p>"N&mdash;no," answered Gibbs, removing his eyes from Algernon's face, and
+biting the feather of his pen thoughtfully. "At least, I think not, sir.
+I cannot be sure. She very often does not pass out through my office,
+but goes away by the private door in the passage."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"I really am very glad that you don't suspect any of the people about
+the place, Gibbs," said Algernon at length, rousing himself with some
+apparent effort from a reverie. "As long as I have any authority here,
+no innocent person shall be made unhappy for one moment by watchfulness
+and suspicion."</p>
+
+<p>"That's a very kind feeling, Mr. Errington. But I shouldn't think an
+innocent person would mind being watched in such a case. For my own
+part, I hope we shall trace the matter out. It shan't be my fault if we
+don't."</p>
+
+<p>"You are wonderfully energetic, Gibbs. An invaluable public servant.
+But, Gibbs, it will not, I think, be any part of your duty to mention to
+any one at present the losses I have spoken of from my secretaire. There
+is no reason, as yet, to connect them with the missing letters. I did
+not duly consider what I was saying. The papers, after all, were only
+private letters of my own, Gibbs. They concern no one but myself. One
+was a mere note&mdash;an invitation from a lady. They could have had no value
+for a thief, you know. I&mdash;I daresay I mislaid it, and never put it into
+the secretaire at all."</p>
+
+<p>Algernon went away with downcast eyes and hurried step, and Mr. Gibbs
+stared after him with a bewildered gaze. Then slowly the expression of
+his face changed to one of consternation and pity. "Poor young man!" he
+exclaimed, half aloud. "That woman has been making free with his papers
+beyond a doubt. And he does his best to shield her. A worldly-minded,
+vain woman she is, that looks at us as if we were made of a different
+kind of clay from her. And they say she is furiously jealous of her
+husband. But this&mdash;this is serious! This is very serious, indeed. I am
+sorry for the young man with all my heart!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_VIII" id="CHAPTER_VIII"></a>CHAPTER VIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was no more possible to do anything unusual in Whitford without
+arresting attention, and being subjected to animadversion, than it was
+possible for atmospheric conditions to change without affecting the
+barometer.</p>
+
+<p>Who could tell how it got abroad in the town that young Mrs. Errington
+was in the habit of following her husband about; of watching him, spying
+on his actions, and examining his private correspondence? Mr. Obadiah
+Gibbs, who could have told more than any one on the latter head, was not
+given to talking. Yet the fact oozed out.</p>
+
+<p>It assumed, of course, a great variety of forms and colours, according
+to the more or less distorting mediums through which it passed. The
+fact, as uttered by Miss Chubb, for example, was a very
+different-looking fact from that which was narrated with bated breath,
+and nods, and winks, by Mrs. Smith, the surgeon's wife. And her
+version, again, varied considerably from those of Mr. Gladwish, the
+Methodist shoemaker; Mr. Barker, the Church of England chemist; and the
+bosom friends of the servants at Ivy Lodge. Still, under one shape and
+another, Mrs. Algernon Errington's jealousy of her husband, and her
+consequent behaviour, were within the cognisance of Whitford, and were
+discussed in all circles there.</p>
+
+<p>The predominant feeling ran strongly against Castalia. There were
+persons, indeed, who, exercising an exemplary impartiality (on which
+they much prided themselves), refused to take sides in the matter, but
+considered it most probable that both parties were to blame. Mrs. Smith
+was among these. She had, she declared, that rare gift in woman&mdash;a
+judicial mind, although her conception of the judicial functions
+appeared to be limited to putting on the black cap and passing sentence.
+But in the main, public sympathy was with Algernon. He had offended many
+old acquaintances by his aristocratic marriage; but at least he was now
+making the only amends in his power by being extremely unhappy in it! A
+great many wiseacres, male and female, were now able to shake their
+heads, and say they had known all along how it would turn out. This came
+of flying too high; for, if Mrs. Errington, senior, was an Ancram by
+birth, her husband had been only a country surgeon&mdash;not even M.D.,
+though she called him "doctor." And this justifying of their predictions
+was, in a vague way, imputed to Algernon as a merit; or, at the least,
+it softened disapproval. Then, too, in justice to Whitfordians, it must
+be said that all their knowledge of Castalia showed them an insolent,
+supercilious, uninteresting woman, who made no secret of her contempt
+for them and their town, and who, "although but a poor postmaster's
+wife, when you came to look at it," as Mrs. Smith the judicial truly
+observed, gave herself more airs than a duchess. What good, or
+capacities for good, there might be in her, was hidden from Whitford,
+whilst her unpleasant qualities were abundantly manifested to all
+beholders.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Castalia, in her quite unaffected nonchalance and disregard of "all
+those people," was totally ignorant how much resentment and dislike she
+was creating, and in what a hostile atmosphere she was living. Her
+husband's popularity, dimmed by his alliance with her, began to revive
+when it was perceived that she persecuted and harassed him, and (as was
+shrewdly suspected) involved him in money difficulties by her
+extravagance. Some of the men thought it served him right; why did he
+marry such a woman? But the ladies, as a rule, were on Algernon's side.</p>
+
+<p>There were exceptions, of course. Miss McDougall stood up for her
+friend, as she said, albeit with some admixture of Mrs. Smith's judicial
+tendency to blame everybody all round, and a personal disposition
+towards spitefulness. Minnie Bodkin said very little when the subject
+was mentioned in her presence; but when an opinion was forced from her,
+she did not deliver it entirely in favour of Algernon. She was sorry for
+his wife, she said. And nine-tenths of her hearers would retort with
+raised hands and eyes, that they, for their part, were sorry for the
+young man, and that they could not understand what dear Minnie found to
+pity in Mrs. Algernon Errington. "A woman who spies on her husband, my
+dear! Who condescends to open his letters&mdash;how a woman can so degrade
+herself is a mystery to me! And they say she actually follows him about
+the street at nights&mdash;skulks after him! Oh! it is almost too bad to
+repeat!"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know that all that is true. But if it be so, it seems to me
+that there is great cause for pity," Minnie would reply. And the answer
+was set down to poor dear Miss Bodkin's eccentricity.</p>
+
+<p>There had been, for some time back, a talk of carelessness and
+mismanagement at the Whitford Post-office. Then Roger Heath made no
+secret of his loss, and was not soft-hearted or mild in his manner of
+speaking of it. He complained aloud, and spared nobody. And there were
+plenty of voices ready to carry his denunciations through all classes of
+Whitford society. It was very strange! Such a thing as the loss of a
+money-letter had been almost unknown during the reign of the late
+postmaster; and now there was, not one case, but two&mdash;three&mdash;a dozen!
+The number increased, as it passed from mouth to mouth, at a wonderful
+rate. There must be great negligence (to say the least of it) somewhere
+in the Whitford Post-office. If the present postmaster was too much
+above his business to look after it properly, it was a pity his high
+friends didn't remove him to some situation better suited to such a fine
+gentleman!</p>
+
+<p>To be sure he was worried out of his wits by that woman. It really was
+true that she haunted the office at all hours. She had been seen
+slipping out of the private door in the entry. She was even said to have
+a pass key which enabled her to go in and out at her will. Was it not
+rumoured on very good authority that she had actually gone to the office
+alone, in the dead of night? What could she want to be always prowling
+about there for? It was all very well to say she went to spy on her
+husband, but if things went wrong in the office in consequence of her
+spyings, it became a public evil. Anyway, it was most extraordinary and
+unheard-of behaviour, and somebody ought to take the matter up! This
+latter somewhat vague suggestion was a favourite climax to gossip on
+the subject of the Algernon Erringtons.</p>
+
+<p>With respect to their private affairs, things did not mend. Tradesmen
+dunned, and grumbled, and could not get their money, and some declined
+to execute further orders from Ivy Lodge until their accounts were
+settled. Among the angriest had been Mr. Ravell, the principal draper of
+the town, whom Castalia had honoured with a good deal of her custom. But
+one day, not long after Algernon's conversation with his clerk,
+mentioned in the last chapter, he was met in the High Street by Mr.
+Ravell, who bowed very deferentially, and stopped, hesitatingly. "Could
+I say a word to you, sir?" said Mr. Ravell.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," replied Algernon. They were close to the post-office, and
+he took the draper into his private room, and bade him be seated.</p>
+
+<p>"I suppose, Mr. Ravell," said Algernon, with a shrug and a smile, "that
+you have come about your bill! Mrs. Errington mentioned to me a short
+time ago that you had been rather importunate. Upon my word, Mr. Ravell,
+I think you need not have been in such a deuce of a hurry! I know Mrs.
+Errington does not understand making bargains, and I suppose you don't
+neglect to arrange your prices so as not to lose by giving her a little
+credit, eh?"</p>
+
+<p>This was said lightly, but either the words or the tone made Mr. Ravell
+colour and look a little confused. He was seated, and Algernon was
+standing near him with his back to the fire, expressing a sense of his
+own superiority to the draper in every turn of his well-built figure and
+every line of his half-smiling, half-bored countenance.</p>
+
+<p>"Why, you see, Mr. Errington, we are not in the habit of giving long
+credit, unless to a few old-established customers who deal largely with
+us. It would not suit our style of doing business. And it was reported
+that you were not settled permanently here. And&mdash;and&mdash;one or two
+unpleasant things had been said. But I hope you will not continue to
+feel so greatly offended with us for sending in the account. It was
+merely in the regular way of our transactions, I assure you."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I'm not offended at all, Mr. Ravell! And I hope by the end of this
+month to clear off all scores between us entirely. Mrs. Errington has
+not furnished me with any details, but&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Ravell looked up quickly. "Clear off all scores between us, sir?" he
+said.</p>
+
+<p>"I presume you will have no objection to that, Mr. Ravell?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, of course, sir, you will have your joke! I am glad you are not
+offended. You see ladies don't always understand these matters. Mrs.
+Errington was a little severe on us when she paid the account
+yesterday. At least, so my cashier said."</p>
+
+<p>"My wife paid your account yesterday?" cried Algernon, with a blank
+look.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir, in full. We should have been quite satisfied if settlement
+had been made up to the end of last quarter. But it was paid in full.
+Oh, I thought you had been aware of it! Mrs. Errington said&mdash;my people
+understood her to say, that it was by your wish, as you were so greatly
+annoyed at the bill being sent in so often."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Yes. Quite right, Mr. Ravell."</p>
+
+<p>He spoke slowly, and as if he were thinking of something other than the
+words he uttered. Ravell looked at him curiously. Algernon suddenly
+caught the man's eye, and broke into a little careless laugh. "The fact
+is," said he, with a frank toss of his head, "that I did not know Mrs.
+Errington had paid you. I suppose she had received some remittances,
+or&mdash;but in short," checking himself, and laughing once more, "I daresay
+you won't trouble yourself as to where the money comes from so long as
+it comes to you!"</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Ravell laughed back again, but rather in a forced manner. "Not at
+all, sir! Not at all," he said, bowing and smiling. And, seeing Algernon
+look significantly at his watch, he bowed and smiled himself out of the
+office.</p>
+
+<p>Then Mr. Ravell went away to report to his wife the details of his
+interview with the postmaster, and before noon the next day it was
+reported throughout Whitford that Mrs. Algernon Errington had the
+command of mysterious stores of money whereof her husband knew nothing;
+and that, nevertheless, she ran him into debt right and left, and
+refused to pay a farthing until she was absolutely forced to do so.</p>
+
+<p>This report was not calculated to make those tradesmen who had not been
+paid more patient and forbearing. If Mrs. Algernon Errington could find
+money for one she could for another, they argued, and a shower of bills
+descended on Ivy Lodge within the next week or two. Algernon said they
+came like a swarm of locusts, and threatened to devour all before them.
+He acknowledged to himself that the payment of Ravell's bill had been a
+fatal precedent. "And, perhaps," he thought, "there was no need for
+getting rid of the notes after all! However, the thing is done and can't
+be undone."</p>
+
+<p>The necessity for another appeal to Lord Seely grew more and more
+imminent. Castalia had displayed an unexpected obstinacy about the
+matter. She had held to her refusal to ask for more money from her
+uncle, but Algernon had not yet urged her very strongly to do so. The
+moment had now come, he thought, when an appeal absolutely must be made,
+and he doubted not his own power to cause Castalia to make it. Her
+manner, to be sure, had been very singular of late; alternately sullen
+and excited, passing from cold silence to passionate tenderness without
+any intermediate phases. He had surprised her occasionally crying
+convulsively, and at other times on coming home he had found her sitting
+absolutely unoccupied, with a blank, fixed face. The few persons who saw
+Castalia frequently, observed the change in her, and commented on it.
+Miss Chubb once dropped a word to Algernon indicating a vague suspicion
+that his wife's intellect was disordered. He did not choose to appear to
+perceive the drift of her words, but the hint dwelt in his mind.</p>
+
+<p>"You must write to Lord Seely this evening, Cassy," he said one day on
+returning home to dinner. He had found his wife at her desk, and, on
+seeing him, she huddled away a confused heap of papers into a drawer,
+and hastily shut it.</p>
+
+<p>"Must I?" she answered gloomily.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I don't wish to use an offensive phrase. You will write to oblige
+me. It has been put off long enough."</p>
+
+<p>"Why should I oblige you?" said Castalia, looking up at him with sunken
+eyes. She looked so ill and haggard, as to arrest Algernon's
+attention&mdash;not too lavishly bestowed on her in general.</p>
+
+<p>"Cassy," said he, "I am afraid you are not well!"</p>
+
+<p>The tears came into her eyes. She turned her head away. "Do you really
+care whether I am ill or well?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Do I really care? What a question! Of course I care. Are you
+suffering?"</p>
+
+<p>"N&mdash;no; not now. I believe I should not feel any suffering if you only
+loved me, Ancram."</p>
+
+<p>"Castalia! How can you be so absurd?"</p>
+
+<p>He rose from his seat beside her, and walked impatiently up and down the
+room. Nothing irritated him so much as to be called on for sentiment or
+tenderness.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" she exclaimed, with a little despondent gesture of the head,
+"you were speaking and looking kindly, and I have driven you away! I
+wish I was dead."</p>
+
+<p>Algernon stopped in his walk, and cast a singular look at his wife. Then
+after a moment he said, in his usual light manner, "My dear Cassy, you
+are low and nervous. It really is not good for you to mope by yourself
+as you do. Come, rouse yourself to write this letter to my lord, then
+after dinner you can have the fly to drive to my mother's. She complains
+that she sees you very seldom."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you come too, Ancram?"</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;&mdash;well, yes; if it is possible, I will come too."</p>
+
+<p>"I think," said Castalia, putting her hands on his shoulders, and
+gazing wistfully into his face, "that if you and I could go away to some
+quiet strange place&mdash;far away from all these odious people&mdash;across the
+seas somewhere&mdash;I think we might be happy even now."</p>
+
+<p>"Upon my honour, there's nothing I should like so much as to get away
+across the seas! And you might as well hint to my lord, in the course of
+your letter, that I should be very well contented with a berth in the
+Colonies. A good climate, of course! One wouldn't care to be shipped off
+to Sierra Leone!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will write that to Uncle Val, willingly. But&mdash;don't ask me to beg
+money of him again."</p>
+
+<p>Algernon made a rapid calculation in his mind, and answered without
+appreciable pause, "Well, Cassy, it shall be as you will. But as to
+begging&mdash;&mdash;that, I think, is scarcely the word between us and Lord
+Seely."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll run upstairs and bathe my eyes, and I shall still have time to
+write before dinner," said Castalia, and left the room.</p>
+
+<p>When he was alone, Algernon opened the writing-table drawer, and glanced
+at the papers in it. Castalia's hurried manner of concealing them had
+suggested to his mind the suspicion that she might have been writing
+secretly to her uncle. He found no letter addressed to Lord Seely, but
+he did find an unfinished fragment of writing addressed to himself. It
+consisted of a few incoherent phrases of despondency and reproach&mdash;the
+expression of confidence betrayed and affection unrequited. There was a
+word or two in it about the writer's weariness of life and desire to
+quit it.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia had written many such fragments of late; sometimes as a mere
+outlet for suppressed feeling, sometimes under the impression that she
+really could not long support an existence uncheered by sympathy or
+counsel, embittered by jealousy, and chilled by neglect. She had written
+such fragments, and then torn them up in many a lonely hour, but she had
+never thought of complaining of Algernon to Lord Seely. She would
+complain of him to no human being. But all Algernon's insight into his
+wife's character did not enable him to feel sure of this. Indeed, he had
+often said to himself that no rational being could be expected to follow
+the vagaries of Castalia's sickly fancies and impracticable temper. He
+would not have been surprised to find her pouring out a long string of
+lamentations about her lot to Lord Seely. He was not much surprised at
+what he did find her to have written, although the state of feeling it
+displayed seemed to him as unreasonable and unaccountable as ever. He
+gave himself no account of the motive which made him take the fragment
+of writing, fold it, and place it carefully inside a little pocket-book
+which he carried.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," he thought to himself, "if Castalia is likely to die!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_IX" id="CHAPTER_IX"></a>CHAPTER IX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The letter to Lord Seely was duly written, and this time in Castalia's
+own words. Algernon refused to assist her in the composition of it,
+saying, in answer to her appeals, "No, no, Cassy; I shall make no
+suggestion whatsoever. I don't choose to expose myself to any more
+grandiloquence from your uncle about letters being 'written by your
+hand, but not dictated by your head.' I wonder at my lord talking such
+high-flown stuff. But pomposity is his master weakness."</p>
+
+<p>Castalia's letter was as follows:</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"Whitford, November 23rd.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Dear Uncle Val</span>,&mdash;I am sure you will understand that I was very
+much surprised and hurt at the tone of your last letter to
+Ancram. Of course, if you have not the money to help us with,
+you cannot lend it. And I don't complain of that. But I was
+vexed at the way you wrote to Ancram. You won't think me
+ungrateful to you. I know how good you have always been to me,
+and I am fonder of you than of anybody in the world except
+Ancram. But nobody can be unkind to him without hurting me, and
+I shall always resent any slight to him. But I am writing now
+to ask you something that 'I wish for very much myself;' it is
+quite my own desire. I am not at all happy in this place. And I
+want you to get Ancram a berth somewhere in the Colonies, quite
+away. It is no use changing from one town in England to
+another. What we want is to get 'far away,' and put the seas
+between us and all the odious people here. I am sure you might
+get us something if you would try. I assure you Ancram is
+perfectly wasted in this hole. Any stupid grocer or
+tallow-chandler could do what he has to do. Do, dear Uncle Val,
+try to help us in this. Indeed I shall never be happy in
+Whitford.&mdash;Your affectionate niece,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">C. Errington</span>.</p>
+
+<p>"Give my love to Aunt Belinda if she cares to have it. But I
+daresay she won't.&mdash;C. E."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"I think my lord will not doubt the genuineness of that epistle!"
+thought Algernon, after having read it at his wife's request.</p>
+
+<p>Then the fly was announced, and they set off together to pass the
+evening at the elder Mrs. Errington's lodgings. The "Blue Bell" driver
+touched his hat in a very respectful manner. His master's long-standing
+account was unpaid, but he continued to receive, for his part, frequent
+half-crowns from Algernon, who liked the immediate popularity to be
+purchased by a gift somewhat out of proportion to his means. Indeed, our
+young friend enjoyed a better reputation amongst menials and underlings
+than amongst their employers. The former were apt to speak of him as a
+pleasant gentleman who was free with his money; and to declare that they
+felt as if they could do anything for young Mr. Errington, so they
+could! He had such a way with him! Whereas the mere payment of humdrum
+debts excites no such agreeable glow of feeling, and is altogether a
+flat, stale, and unprofitable proceeding.</p>
+
+<p>"What o'clock shall we say, Castalia?" asked her husband, as they
+alighted at Mrs. Thimbleby's door.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell him to come at half-past ten," returned Castalia.</p>
+
+<p>It chanced that David Powell was re-entering his lodgings at the moment
+the younger Erringtons reached the door. He stood aside to let the lady
+pass into the house before him, and thus heard her answer. The sound of
+her voice made him start and bend forward to look at her face when the
+light from the open door fell upon it. She turned round at the same
+instant, and the two looked full at each other. David Powell asked Mrs.
+Thimbleby if that lady were not the wife of Mr. Algernon Errington.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Mr. Powell, she is his wife; and more's the pity, if all tales be
+true!"</p>
+
+<p>"Judge not uncharitably, sister Thimbleby! Nor let your tongue belie the
+gentleness of your spirit. It is an unruly member that speaks not always
+out of the fulness of the heart. The lady seems very sick, and bears the
+traces of much sorrow on her countenance."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, indeed, poor thing! Sickly enough she looks, and sorry. Nay, I
+daresay she has her own trials, but I fear me she leads that pleasant
+young husband of hers a poor life of it. I shouldn't say as much to
+anyone but you, sir, for I do try to keep my tongue from evil-speaking.
+But had you never seen her before, Mr. Powell?"</p>
+
+<p>Powell answered musingly, "N&mdash;no&mdash;scarcely seen her. But I had heard her
+voice."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Errington received her son and daughter-in-law with an effusive
+welcome. She was so astonished; so delighted. It was so long since she
+had seen them. And then to see them together! That had latterly become
+quite a rare treat. The good lady expatiated on this theme until
+Castalia's brow grew gloomy with the recollection of her wrongs, her
+solitary hours spent so drearily, and her suspicions as to how her
+husband employed the hours of his absence from her. And then Mrs.
+Errington began playfully to reprove her for being dull and silent,
+instead of enjoying dear Algy's society now that she had it! "I am sure,
+my dear Castalia," said the elder lady with her usual self-complacent
+stateliness, "you won't mind my telling you that I consider one of the
+great secrets of the perfect felicity I enjoyed during my married life
+to have been the interest and pleasure I always took&mdash;and showed that I
+took&mdash;in Dr. Errington's society."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps he liked your society," returned Castalia with a languid sneer,
+followed by a short bitter sigh.</p>
+
+<p>"Preferred it to any in the world, my dear!" said Mrs. Errington,
+mellifluously. She said it, too, with an <i>aplomb</i> and an air of
+conviction that mightily tickled Algernon, who, remembering the family
+rumours which haunted his childhood, thought that his respected father,
+if he preferred his wife's society to any other, must have put a
+considerable constraint on his inclinations, not to say sacrificed them
+altogether to the claims of a convivial circle of friends. "The dear old
+lady is as good as a play!" thought he. Indeed, he thoroughly relished
+this bit of domestic comedy.</p>
+
+<p>"But then," proceeded Mrs. Errington, as she rang the bell to order
+tea, "I have not the vanity to suppose that he would have done so
+without the exercise of some little care and tact on my part. Tact, my
+dear Castalia&mdash;tact is the most precious gift a wife can bring to the
+domestic circle. But the Ancrams always had enormous tact&mdash;Give us some
+tea, if you please, Mrs. Thimbleby, and be careful that the water
+boils&mdash;proverbial for it, in fact!"</p>
+
+<p>Algernon thought it time to come to the rescue. He did not choose his
+comfort to be destroyed by a passage of arms between his mother and his
+wife, so he deftly turned the conversation to less dangerous topics, and
+things proceeded peacefully until the tea was served.</p>
+
+<p>"Who was that man that was coming in to the house with us?" asked
+Castalia, as she sipped her tea from one of Mrs. Errington's antique
+blue and white china cups.</p>
+
+<p>"Would it be Mr. Diamond&mdash;&mdash;? But no; you know him by sight. Or&mdash;oh, I
+suppose it was that Methodist preacher, Powell!"</p>
+
+<p>"Powell! Yes, that was the name&mdash;David Powell."</p>
+
+<p>"Most likely. He is in and out at all hours. Really, Algernon, do you
+know&mdash;you remember the fellow, how he used to annoy us at Maxfield's.
+Well, do you know, I believe he is quite crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>"You have always entertained that opinion, I believe, ma'am."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, but, my dear boy, I think he is demented in real downright earnest
+now. I do indeed. I'm sure the things that poor weak-minded Mrs.
+Thimbleby tells me about him&mdash;&mdash;! He has delusions of all kinds; hears
+voices, sees visions. I should say it is a case of what your father
+would have called 'melancholy madness.' Really, Algy, I frequently think
+about it. It is quite alarming sometimes in the night if I happen to
+wake up, to remember that there is a lunatic sleeping overhead. You know
+he might take it into his head to murder one! Or if he only killed
+himself&mdash;which is perhaps more likely&mdash;it would be a highly unpleasant
+circumstance. I could not possibly remain in the lodgings, you know. Out
+of the question! And so I told that silly Thimbleby. I said to her,
+'Observe, Mrs. Thimbleby, if any dreadful thing happens in this house&mdash;a
+suicide or anything of that sort&mdash;I shall leave you at an hour's notice.
+I wish you well, and I have no desire to withdraw my patronage from you,
+but you could not expect me to look over a coroner's inquest.'"</p>
+
+<p>Algernon threw his head back and laughed heartily. "That was a fair
+warning, at any rate!" said he. "And if Mr. David Powell has any
+consideration for his landlady, he will profit by it&mdash;that is to say,
+supposing Mrs. Thimbleby tells him of it. What did she say?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, she merely cried and whimpered, and hid her face in her apron. She
+is terribly weak-minded, poor creature."</p>
+
+<p>Castalia had been listening in silence. All at once she said, "How many
+miserable people there are!"</p>
+
+<p>"Very true, Cassy; provincial postmasters and others. And part of my
+miserable lot is to go down to the office again for an hour to-night."</p>
+
+<p>"My poor boy!" "Go to the office again to-night?" exclaimed his mother
+and his wife simultaneously.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it is now half-past eight. I have an appointment. At least&mdash;I
+shall be back in an hour, I have no doubt."</p>
+
+<p>Algernon walked off with an air of good-humoured resignation, smiling
+and shrugging his shoulders. The two women, left alone together, took
+his departure very differently. Mrs. Errington was majestically wrathful
+with a system of things which involved so much discomfort to a scion of
+the house of Ancram. She was of opinion that some strong representations
+should be made to the ministry; that Parliament should be appealed to.
+And she rather enjoyed her own eloquence, and was led on by it to make
+some most astounding assertions, and utter some scathing condemnations
+with an air of comfortable self-satisfaction. Castalia, on the other
+hand, remained gloomily taciturn, huddled into an easy-chair by the
+hearth, and staring fixedly at the fire.</p>
+
+<p>It has been recorded in these pages that Mrs. Errington did not much
+object to silence on the part of her companion for the time being; she
+only required an assenting or admiring interjection now and then, to
+enable her to carry on what she supposed to be a very agreeable
+conversation, but she did like her confidante to do that much towards
+social intercourse. And she liked, moreover, to see some look of
+pleasure, interest, or sympathy on the confidante's face. Looking at
+Castalia's moody and abstracted countenance, she could not but remember
+the gentle listener in whom she had been wont for so many years to find
+a sweet response to all her utterances.</p>
+
+<p>"Oddly enough," she said, "I have been disappointed of a visitor this
+evening, and so should have been quite alone if you and Algy had not
+come in. I had asked Rhoda to spend the evening with me."</p>
+
+<p>Castalia looked round at the sound of that name. "Why didn't she come?"
+she asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know. She merely said she could not leave home to-night.
+That old father of hers sometimes takes tyrannical fancies into his
+head. He has been kinder to dear Rhoda of late, and has treated her
+more becomingly&mdash;chiefly, I believe I may say, owing to my influence,
+although the old booby chose to quarrel with me&mdash;but when he takes a
+thing into his head he is as obstinate as a mule."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about treating her 'becomingly,' but I think she needs
+some one to look after her and keep her in check."</p>
+
+<p>"Who, Rhoda? My dear Castalia, she is the very sweetest-tempered
+creature I ever met with in my life; and that is saying a good deal, let
+me tell you, for the Ancram temper was something quite special. A gift.
+I don't boast of it, because I believe it was simply constitutional. But
+such was the fact."</p>
+
+<p>"The girl is dressed up beyond her station. The last time I saw her it
+was absurd. Scarcely reputable, I should think."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Errington by no means liked this attack. Over and above the fact
+that Rhoda was her pet and her <i>protégée</i>, which would have sufficed to
+make any animadversions on her appear impertinent, she was genuinely
+fond of the girl, and answered with some warmth, "I am sure, Castalia,
+that whatever Rhoda Maxfield might be dressed in, she would look modest
+and sweet, not to say excessively pretty, for I suppose there cannot be
+a doubt about that?"</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you were a stickler for people keeping to their own station,
+and not aping their betters!"</p>
+
+<p>"We must distinguish, Castalia. Birth will ever be with me the first
+consideration. Coming of the race I do, it could not be otherwise. But
+it is useless to shut one's eyes to the fact that money nowadays will do
+much. Look at our best families!&mdash;families of lineage as good as my own.
+What do we see? We see them allying themselves with commercial people
+right and left. Now, there was Miss Pickleham. The way in which she was
+thrown at Algy's head would surprise you. She had a hundred thousand
+pounds of her own on the day she married, and expectations of much more
+on old Picklekam's decease. But I never encouraged the thing. Perhaps I
+was wrong. However!&mdash;she married Sir Peregrine Puffin last season. And
+the Puffins were in Cornwall before the Conquest."</p>
+
+<p>Castalia shrugged her shoulders in undisguised scorn. "All that nonsense
+is nothing to the purpose," said she, throwing her head back against the
+cushion of the chair she sat on. Mrs. Errington opened her blue eyes to
+their widest extent. "Really, Castalia! 'All that nonsense!' You are not
+very polite."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm sick of all the pretences, and shams, and deceptions," returned
+Castalia, her eyes glittering feverishly, and her thin fingers twining
+themselves together with nervous restlessness. "I don't know whether you
+are made a fool of yourself, or are trying to make a fool of me&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Castalia!"</p>
+
+<p>"But, in either case, I am not duped. Your 'sweet Rhoda!' Don't you know
+that she is an artful, false coquette&mdash;perhaps worse!"</p>
+
+<p>"Castalia!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, worse. Why should she not be as bad as any other low-bred creature
+who lures on gentlemen to make love to her? Men are such idiots! So
+false and fickle! But, though I may be injured and insulted, I will not
+be laughed at for a dupe."</p>
+
+<p>"Good heavens, Castalia! What does this mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"And I will tell you another thing, if you really are so blind to what
+goes on, and has been going on, for years: I don't believe Ancram has
+gone to the post-office to-night at all. I believe he has gone to see
+Rhoda. It would not be the first time he has deceived me on that score!"</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Errington sat holding the arms of her easy-chair with both hands,
+and staring at her daughter-in-law. The poor lady felt as if the world
+were turned upside down. It was not so long since old Maxfield had
+astonished her by plainly showing that he thought her of no importance,
+and choosing to turn her out of his house. And now, here was Castalia
+conducting herself in a still more amazing manner. Whilst she revolved
+the case in her brain&mdash;much confused and bewildered as that organ
+was&mdash;and endeavoured to come to some clear opinion on it, the younger
+woman got up and walked up and down the room with the restless, aimless,
+anxious gait of a caged animal.</p>
+
+<p>At length Mrs. Errington slowly nodded her head two or three times, drew
+a long breath, folded her hands, and, assuming a judicial air, spoke as
+follows:</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Castalia! I shall overlook the unbecomingness of certain
+expressions that you have used towards myself, because I can make
+allowance for an excited state of feeling. But you must permit me to
+give you a little advice. Endeavour to control yourself; try to look at
+things with calmness and judgment, and you will soon perceive how wrong
+and foolish your present conduct is. And, moreover, you need not be
+startled if I have discovered the real motive at the bottom of all this
+display of temper. There never was a member of my family yet who had not
+a wonderful gift of reading motives. I'm sure it is nothing to envy us!
+I have often, for my own part, wished myself as slow of perception as
+other people, for the truth is not always pleasant. But I must say that
+I can see one thing very plainly&mdash;and that is, that you are most
+unfortunately and most unreasonably giving way to jealousy! I can see
+it, Castalia, as plain as possible."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Errington had finished her harangue with much majesty, bringing out
+the closing sentences as if they were a most unexpected and powerful
+climax, when the effect of the whole was marred by her giving a violent
+start and exclaiming, with more naturalness than dignity, "Mercy on us!
+Castalia, what will you do next? Do shut that window, for pity's sake! I
+shall get my death of cold!"</p>
+
+<p>Castalia had opened the window, and was leaning out of it, regardless of
+the sleet which fell in slanting lines and beat against her cheek. "I
+knew that was his step," she said, speaking, as it seemed, more to
+herself than to her mother-in-law. "And he has no umbrella, and those
+light shoes on!" She ran to the fireplace and stirred the fire into a
+blaze, displaying an activity which was singularly contrasted with her
+usual languid slowness of movement. "Can't you give him some hot wine
+and water?" she asked, ringing the bell at the same time. When her
+husband came in she removed his damp great-coat with her own hands, made
+him sit down near the fire, and brought him a pair of his mother's
+slippers, which were quite sufficiently roomy to admit his slender
+feet. Algernon submitted to be thus cherished and taken care of,
+declaring, with an amused smile, as he sipped the hot negus, that this
+fuss was very kind, but entirely unnecessary, as he had not been three
+minutes in the rain.</p>
+
+<p>As to Mrs. Errington, she was so perplexed by her daughter-in-law's
+sudden change of mood and manner, that she lost her presence of mind,
+and remained gazing from Algernon to his wife very blankly. "I never
+knew such a thing!" thought the good lady. "One moment she's raging and
+scolding, and abusing her husband for deceiving her, and the next she is
+petting him up as if he was a baby!"</p>
+
+<p>When the fly was announced, and Castalia left the little drawing-room to
+put on her cloak and bonnet, Mrs. Errington drew near to her son and
+whispered to him solemnly, "Algy, there is something very strange about
+your wife. I never saw such a changed creature within the last few
+weeks. Don't you think you should have some one to see her?&mdash;some
+professional person I mean? I fear that her brain is affected!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good gracious, mother! Another lunatic? You are getting to have a
+monomania on that subject yourself!" Algernon laughed as he said it.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear, there may be two persons afflicted in the same way, may there
+not? But I said nothing about lunatics, Algy. Only&mdash;really, I think some
+temporary disturbance of the brain is going on. I do, indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"Pooh, pooh! Nonsense, ma'am! But it is odd enough that you are the
+second person who has made that agreeable suggestion to me within a
+fortnight. Poor Cassy! That's all she gets by her airs and her temper."</p>
+
+<p>"Another person, was there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; it was little Miss Chubb, and&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Miss Chubb! Upon my word, I think that Miss Chubb was guilty of taking
+a considerable liberty in suggesting anything of the kind about the
+Honourable Mrs. Ancram Errington!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't know about liberty; but, of course, I laughed at her; and,
+of course, you will too, if she says anything of the kind to you."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall undoubtedly check her pretty severely if she attempts anything
+of the sort with me! Miss Chubb, indeed!"</p>
+
+<p>The consequence was, that Mrs. Errington went about among her Whitford
+friends elaborately contradicting and denying "the innuendos spread
+abroad about her daughter-in-law by certain presumptuous and gossiping
+persons;" and thus brought the suggestion before many who would not
+otherwise have heard of it. All which, of course, surprised and annoyed
+Algernon very much, who had, naturally, not expected anything of the
+sort from his mother's well-known tact and discretion.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_X" id="CHAPTER_X"></a>CHAPTER X.</h2>
+
+
+<p>One dreary Sunday afternoon, about this time&mdash;that is to say, about the
+end of November&mdash;Matthew Diamond rang at the bell of Mr. Maxfield's
+door. He had a couple of books under his arm, and he asked the servant,
+who admitted him, if she could give him back the volume he had last lent
+to Miss Maxfield. Sally looked askance at the books as she took them
+from his hand, and shook her head doubtfully.</p>
+
+<p>"It's one o' them French books, isn't it, sir? I don't know one from
+another. Would you please step upstairs yourself? Miss Rhoda's in the
+drawing-room."</p>
+
+<p>Diamond went upstairs and tapped at the door of the sitting-room.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in," said a soft, sweet voice, that seemed to him the most
+deliciously musical he had ever heard, and he entered.</p>
+
+<p>The old room looked very different from what it had looked in the days
+when Matthew Diamond used to come there to read Latin and history with
+Algernon Errington. There were still the clumsy beams in the low
+ceiling, and the old-fashioned cushioned seats in the bay-window, but
+everything else was changed. A rich carpet covered the floor; there were
+handsome hangings, and a couch, and a French clock on the chimney-piece;
+there was a small pianoforte in the room, too; and, at one end, a
+bookcase well filled with gaily-bound books. These things were the
+products of old Max's money. But there were evidences about the place of
+taste and refinement, which were due entirely to Rhoda. She had got a
+stand of hyacinths like those in Miss Bodkin's room. She had softened
+and hidden the glare of the bright, brand-new upholstery by dainty bits
+of lacework spread over the couch and the chairs; and she had, with some
+difficulty, persuaded her father to substitute for two staring coloured
+French lithographs, which had decked the walls, a couple of good
+engravings after Italian pictures. There was a fire glowing redly in the
+grate, and the room was warm and fragrant. Rhoda was curled up on the
+window-seat, with a book in her hand, and bending down her pretty head
+over it, until the soft brown curls swept the page.</p>
+
+<p>Diamond stood still for a moment in the doorway, admiring the graceful
+figure well defined against the light.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, Sally," said Rhoda. And then she looked up from her book and
+saw him.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid I disturb you!" said Diamond. "But the maid told me to come
+up."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no! I was just reading&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Straining your eyes by this twilight! That's very wrong."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes! I'm afraid it is not very wise, but I wanted to finish the
+chapter; and my eyes are really very strong."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought you might be at church," said Diamond, seating himself on the
+opposite side of the bay-window, and within its recess, "so I asked the
+maid to get me the book I wanted. But she sent me upstairs."</p>
+
+<p>"Aunt Betty is at church, and James; but father wouldn't let me go. He
+said it was so raw and foggy, and I had been to church this morning."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I saw you there. But have you not been well, that your father did
+not wish you to go out?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes; I'm very well, thank you. But I had a little cold last week;
+and I should have had to walk to St. Chad's and back, you know. Father
+doesn't think it right to drive on the Lord's day, so he made me stay at
+home."</p>
+
+<p>"How very right of him! What were you reading?"</p>
+
+<p>He drew a little nearer to her as he asked the question, and looked at
+the book she held.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it's a Sunday book," said Rhoda, simply. "'The Pilgrim's Progress.'
+I like it very much."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder whether you will care to hear of some good news I had to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes; I shall be very glad to hear it."</p>
+
+<p>"I think I stand a good chance of getting the head-mastership of
+Dorrington Proprietary School. Dorrington is in the next county, you
+know."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I'm very glad."</p>
+
+<p>"It would be a very good position. I am not certain of it yet, you know;
+but Dr. Bodkin has been very friendly, and has promised to canvass the
+governing committee for me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! I'm very glad indeed."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know yet myself whether I am very glad or not."</p>
+
+<p>"Don't you?"</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda looked up at him in genuine surprise; but her eyes fell before the
+answering look they encountered, and she blushed from brow to chin.</p>
+
+<p>"No; it all depends on you, Rhoda, whether I am glad of it to the bottom
+of my heart, or whether I give it all up as a thing not worth striving
+for."</p>
+
+<p>There was a pause, which Rhoda broke at length, because the silence
+embarrassed her unendurably.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I don't think it can depend upon me, Mr. Diamond," she said,
+speaking in a little quivering voice that was barely audible; whilst, at
+the same time, she hurriedly turned over the pages of "The Pilgrim's
+Progress" with her eyes fixed on them, although she assuredly did not
+see one letter. Diamond gently drew the book from her hand and took the
+hand in his own.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Rhoda," he said&mdash;and, having once called her so, his lips seemed
+to dwell lovingly on the sound of her name&mdash;"I think you do know! You
+must know that, if I look forward hopefully and happily to anything in
+my future life, it is only because I have a hope that you may be able to
+love me a little. I love you so much."</p>
+
+<p>She trembled violently, but did not withdraw her hand from his clasp.
+She sat quite still with downcast eyes, neither moving nor looking to
+the right or the left.</p>
+
+<p>"Rhoda! Rhoda! Won't you say one word to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"I'm trying&mdash;thinking what I ought to say,'" she answered, almost in a
+whisper.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it so difficult, Rhoda?"</p>
+
+<p>She made a strong effort to command her voice, but she had not the
+courage to look full at him as she answered, "Yes; it is very difficult
+for me. I want to do right, Mr. Diamond. I want not to deceive you."</p>
+
+<p>"I am very sure that you will not deceive me, Rhoda!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not if I can help it. But it is so hard to say just the exact truth."</p>
+
+<p>"I don't find it hard to say the exact truth to you. You may believe me
+implicitly, Rhoda, when I say that I love you with all my heart, and
+will do my best to make you happy if you will let me."</p>
+
+<p>"I do believe you. I believe you are really fond of me. Only&mdash;of course
+you are much cleverer and wiser than I am, except in thinking too much
+of me&mdash;and you can say just whatever is in your mind. But I can't; not
+all at once."</p>
+
+<p>"I will wait, Rhoda. I will have patience, and not distress you."</p>
+
+<p>The tears were falling down her cheeks now, not from sorrow, but from
+sheer agitation. She thanked him by a gesture of her head, and drew her
+hand away from his very gently, and wiped her eyes. He could not command
+himself at sight of her tears, although he had resolved not to speak
+again until she should be calm and ready to hear him.</p>
+
+<p>"My darling," he said, clasping his hands together and looking at her
+with eyes full of anxious compassion, "don't cry! Is it my fault? You
+must have had some knowledge of what was in my heart to say to you! I
+have not startled you and taken you by surprise?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; that's just it, Mr. Diamond. It's that that makes me feel so afraid
+of doing wrong and deceiving you. I&mdash;I&mdash;have thought for some time past
+that you were getting to like me very much. Some one said so too. But
+yet I couldn't do anything, could I? I couldn't say, 'Don't get fond of
+me, Mr. Diamond!'"</p>
+
+<p>"It would have been quite in vain to say, 'Don't get fond of me.' I'm a
+desperately obstinate man, Rhoda!"</p>
+
+<p>"So then I&mdash;I mean to tell you the exact truth, you know, as well as I
+can. I began to think whether I liked you very much."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Rhoda?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a rather long silence.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I thought&mdash;yes, I did."</p>
+
+<p>He clasped his arms round her with a sudden impetuous movement, but she
+held him off with her two hands on his shoulders. "No, but please
+listen! I did love somebody else once very much. Of course we were very
+young, and it was nonsense. But I did wrong in being secret, and keeping
+it from father. And I never want to be secret any more. And&mdash;though I do
+like you very much, and&mdash;and&mdash;I should be very sorry if you went
+away&mdash;yet it isn't quite the same that I felt before. That is the truth
+as well as I can say it, and I am very grateful to you for thinking so
+well of me."</p>
+
+<p>He drew the young head with its soft shining chestnut curls down on to
+his breast, and pressed his lips to her cheek.</p>
+
+<p>"Now you are mine, my very own&mdash;are you not, Rhoda?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; if you like, Mr. Diamond."</p>
+
+<p>Matthew Diamond had been successful in his wooing, after feeling very
+doubtful of success. And he should naturally have been elated in
+proportion to his previous trepidation. And he was happy, of course; yet
+scarcely with the fulness of joyful triumph he had promised himself if
+pretty Rhoda should incline her ear to his suit. There was a subtle
+flavour of disappointment in it all. Rhoda had behaved very well, very
+honestly, in making that effort to be quite clear and candid about her
+feelings. It was a great thing to be able to feel perfect confidence in
+the woman who was to be his companion for life. And as to her loving him
+with the same fervour he felt towards her, that was not to be expected.
+He never had expected that. She was gentle, sweet, modest, thoroughly
+feminine, and exquisitely pretty. She was willing to give herself to
+him, and would doubtless be a true and affectionate wife. He held her
+slight waist in his arm, and her head rested confidingly on his bosom.
+Of course he was very happy. Only&mdash;if only Rhoda were not quite so
+silent and cold; if she would say one little word of tenderness, or
+even nestle herself fondly against his shoulder without speaking!</p>
+
+<p>Some such thoughts were vaguely flitting through Diamond's mind when
+Rhoda raised her head, and, emboldened by the gathering dusk, looked up
+into his face and said, "You know it cannot be unless father consents."</p>
+
+<p>"I shall speak to him this evening. Do you think he will be stern and
+hard to persuade, Rhoda?"</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know. He said once that he would like to&mdash;to&mdash;that he would
+like to know I had some one to take care of me."</p>
+
+<p>"On that score I am not afraid of falling short. Your father could give
+his treasure to no man who would take more loving care of her than I!"</p>
+
+<p>"And then you are a gentleman; and father thinks a great deal of that,
+although he makes no pretence at being anything more than a tradesman
+himself. And of course I am only a tradesman's daughter. I am greatly
+below you in station&mdash;I know that."</p>
+
+<p>"My Rhoda! As if there could be any question of that between us! God
+knows I have been poor and obscure enough all my life. But now I shall
+be able to tell your father that I hope to have a home to offer you that
+will be at least not sordid, and the position of a lady."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you won't repent, Mr. Diamond."</p>
+
+<p>"Repent! But, Rhoda, won't you call me by my name? Say Matthew, not Mr.
+Diamond."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I will if you like. But I'm afraid I can't all at once. It seems
+so strange."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish you liked my name one thousandth part as much as I love the
+sound of yours! It seems so sweet to be able to call you Rhoda."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I like your name very much indeed. But I think, please, that you
+had better go now. The people are coming out of church, and Aunt Betty
+may be back at any moment; and I don't wish her to find you here before
+you have spoken to father."</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda stood up as she said it, and Diamond had no choice but to rise
+too, and say farewell. He drew her gently towards him and kissed her.
+"Will you try to love me, Rhoda?" he said, in a tone of almost sad
+entreaty. "Do you think you shall be able to love me a little?"</p>
+
+<p>"I should not have accepted you if I felt that I could never be fond of
+you," returned Rhoda, and a little flush spread itself over her face as
+she spoke. "But you know I have told you the truth. I have told you
+about&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>He put up his hand to check her. "Yes, yes; you have been quite candid
+and honourable, and I won't be exacting or unreasonable, or too
+impatient." He did not think he could endure to hear Rhoda, in her
+anxiety not to deceive him, recapitulate the confession of her
+"different feeling" for another man in days past; and yet he had known,
+or guessed, that it had been so.</p>
+
+<p>Then he took his leave, an accepted lover; and he told himself that he
+was a very fortunate and happy man. As he passed the door of old Max's
+little parlour downstairs, he saw a light gleaming under the door into
+the almost dark passage. He stopped and tapped at the door. "Come in,"
+said Jonathan Maxfield's harsh voice. And Diamond went into the
+parlour.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XI" id="CHAPTER_XI"></a>CHAPTER XI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Old Max looked up at his visitor over the great tortoise-shell
+spectacles on his nose. He had a large Bible open on the table before
+him. The large Bible was placed there every evening, and on Sunday
+evenings any other mundane volume which might chance to be lying in the
+parlour was carefully removed out of sight, to be restored to the light
+of day on Monday morning. This was the custom of the house, and had been
+so for years. It had obtained all through the Methodist days, and now
+lasted under the new orthodox dispensation. Since old Max had his
+spectacles on, it was to be supposed that he had been reading, and,
+since there was no other printed document within sight, not even an
+almanac, it was clear that he could have been reading nothing but his
+Bible. And yet it was nearly an hour since he had turned the page before
+him. He had been dozing, sitting up in his chair by the fire. This had
+latterly become a habit with him whenever he was left alone in the
+evening. And once, even, he had fallen into a sleep, or a stupor, in the
+midst of the assembled family, and, on awaking, had been lethargic in
+his movements, and dazed in his manner for some time.</p>
+
+<p>He was quite awake now, however, as he peered sharply at Diamond over
+his glasses. The latter found some little difficulty in beginning his
+communication, not being assisted by a word from old Max, who stared at
+him silently.</p>
+
+<p>"I have a few words to say to you, Mr. Maxfield, if you are at leisure
+to hear them," he said at length.</p>
+
+<p>"If it's anything in the natur' of a business communication, I can't
+attend to it now," returned old Max deliberately. "It has been a rule of
+mine through life to transact no manner of business on the Lord's day,
+and I have found it prosper with me."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no; it is not a matter of business, Mr. Maxfield," said Diamond
+smiling, but not quite at his ease. Then he sat down and told his
+errand. Maxfield listened in perfect silence. "May I hope, Mr. Maxfield,
+that you will give us your consent and approbation?" asked Diamond,
+after a pause.</p>
+
+<p>"You're pretty glib, sir! I must know a little more about this matter
+before I can give an answer one way or another."</p>
+
+<p>"You shall know all that I can tell you, Mr. Maxfield. Indeed, I do not
+see what more I have to say. I have explained to you what my prospects
+in life are. I have told you every particular with the most absolute
+fulness and candour. As to my feeling for your daughter, I don't think I
+could fully express that if I talked to you all night."</p>
+
+<p>"What did my daughter say to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"She&mdash;she told me that she was willing to be my wife, but that it must
+depend upon your consent."</p>
+
+<p>"Rhoda has always been a very dutiful daughter. There's not many like
+Rhoda."</p>
+
+<p>"I appreciate her, Mr. Maxfield. You may believe that I do most heartily
+appreciate her. I have long known that all my happiness depended on
+winning Rhoda for my wife. I have loved her long. But, of course, I
+could not venture to ask her to marry me, or to ask you to give her to
+me, until I had some prospect of a home to offer her."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! And this prospect, now&mdash;you aren't sure about it?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I am not quite sure."</p>
+
+<p>"And, supposing you don't get the place&mdash;how then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Why, then, Mr. Maxfield, I should look for another. If you will give
+your consent to my engagement to Rhoda, I am not afraid of not finding
+a place in the world for her. I have a fair share of resolution; I am
+industrious and well educated; I am not quite thirty years old. If you
+will give me a word of encouragement I shall be sure to succeed."</p>
+
+<p>"Head-master of Dorrington Proprietary School, eh? Will that be a place
+like Dr. Bodkin's?"</p>
+
+<p>"Something of that kind, only not so lucrative."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Bodkin is thought a good deal of in Whitford."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Maxfield, may I hope for a favourable answer from you before I go?"</p>
+
+<p>Old Max struck his hand sharply on the table as he exclaimed, almost
+with a snarl, "I will not be hurried, sir! nor made to speak rashly and
+without duly pondering and meditating my words." Then he added, in a
+different tone, "You are glib, sir! mighty glib! Do you know what Miss
+Maxfield will have to her portion&mdash;if I choose to give it her?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Mr. Maxfield, I do not. Nor do I care to know. I would take her to
+my heart to-morrow if she would come, although she were the poorest
+beggar in the world!"</p>
+
+<p>"And would you take her without my consent?"</p>
+
+<p>"I would, if you had no reasonable grounds for withholding it."</p>
+
+<p>"You would steal my daughter away without my consent?"</p>
+
+<p>"I said nothing about stealing. I should not think of deceiving you in
+the matter. I think you must acknowledge that I am speaking to you
+pretty frankly, at any rate!"</p>
+
+<p>Maxfield could not but acknowledge to himself that the young man was
+honest and straightforward, and spoke fairly. He was well-looking too,
+and had the air of a gentleman, although there was not a trace about him
+of the peculiar airy elegance, the graceful charm of face and figure,
+which made Algernon Errington so attractive. Neither had he Algernon's
+gift of flattery, so adroitly conveyed as to appear unconscious;
+nor&mdash;what might, under the present circumstances, have served him
+equally well with the old tradesman&mdash;Algernon's good-humoured way of
+taking for granted his own incontestable social superiority over the
+Whitford grocer. Maxfield had his doubts as to whether this young man,
+ex-usher at the Grammar School, a fellow who went about to people's
+houses and gave lessons for money, could prove to be a fine enough match
+for his Rhoda, even though he should become head-master at
+Dorrington&mdash;Maxfield had so set his heart on seeing Rhoda "made a lady
+of," in the phraseology of his class.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall have some conversation with my daughter, and let you have my
+answer after that, sir," said he, looking half sullenly, half
+thoughtfully at the suitor. "And as there will be questions of figures
+to go into, maybe, I am not willing to consider the subject more at
+length on the Lord's day."</p>
+
+<p>But I am bound to confess that this was an afterthought on old Max's
+part.</p>
+
+<p>When Diamond had gone, the old man sent for his daughter to come to him
+in the parlour. "You can take yourself off, Betty Grimshaw," said he to
+that respectable spinster, very unceremoniously. "You and James can bide
+in the kitchen till supper's ready. When it is, come and tell me."</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda came, in answer to her father's summons, very calmly. She had, of
+course, expected it. She had quite got over the agitation of the
+interview with her lover, and was her usual sweet, placid self again.
+Yes; she said Mr. Diamond had asked her to marry him, and she was
+willing to marry him if her father would consent. She believed Mr.
+Diamond loved her very much, and she liked him very much. She had been
+afraid of him once because he was so very learned and clever, and seemed
+rather proud and stern. But he was really extremely gentle when you came
+to know him. She was sure he would be kind to her.</p>
+
+<p>"It's not a thing to decide upon all in a moment, Rhoda," said her
+father.</p>
+
+<p>"No, father; but I have thought of it for some time past," answered
+Rhoda, simply.</p>
+
+<p>The old man looked at her with a slight feeling of surprise. "Rhoda has
+a vast deal of common sense," thought he. "She has some of my brains
+inside that pretty brown head of hers, that is so like her poor
+mother's!" Then he said aloud, "You see, this Mr. Diamond is nobody
+after all. A schoolmaster! Well, that's no great shakes."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Bodkin is a schoolmaster, father."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Bodkin is rector of St. Chad's and D.D., and a man of substance
+besides."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Diamond is a gentleman, father. Everybody allows that."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you think you could be happy to be his wife, Rhoda?" As he asked
+this question her father's voice was almost tender, and he placed his
+hand gently on her head.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, father; I think so. He would take care of me, and be good to me,
+and guide me right. And he would never put himself between you and me,
+father. I mean he would wish me always to be dutiful and affectionate to
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, Rhoda, we must consider. And I hope the Lord will send me wisdom
+in the matter. I would fain see thee happy before I am called away. God
+bless thee, child."</p>
+
+<p>Jonathan Maxfield turned the matter in his mind during the watches of
+the night with much anxious consideration, according to his lights. In
+social status there was truly not much to complain of, he thought. A man
+in a position like that of Dr. Bodkin, who should have money of his own
+(or of his wife's) to render him independent of the profits of his
+place, might come to be a personage of importance. "And money there will
+be; more'n they think for," said old Max to himself. "The young man
+seemed to worship Rhoda; as he ought." She had shown herself to be very
+dutiful, very honest, very sensible on this occasion. "He's out and away
+a better man than that t'other one! Lives clear and clean before the
+world, and is ashamed to look no man in the face."</p>
+
+<p>Thus old Max reflected. And it will be seen that his reflections tended
+more and more to favour the acceptance of Matthew Diamond as his
+son-in-law. Yes; he should be glad to see Rhoda safe and happy under a
+husband's care before he died. And yet&mdash;and yet&mdash;he felt, as the
+prosperous wooer had felt, a dim sense of dissatisfaction. Old Max could
+not be accused of being sentimental, but he had looked forward to
+Rhoda's marriage as an occasion of triumph and exultation. If she found
+a husband whom he approved of, he would be large and generous in his
+dealings with them. He would show the world that Rhoda Maxfield was no
+tocherless lass, but an heiress, courted, and sought after, and destined
+to belong to a sphere far above that of Whitford shopkeepers. Now the
+husband had been found&mdash;he had almost made up his mind as to that&mdash;but
+there was no exultation; certainly no triumph. Rhoda was so cool and
+quiet. Very sensible! Oh, admirably sensible; but&mdash;&mdash;. In a word, the
+whole affair seemed a little flat and chilly. Of all the three
+personages chiefly interested, Rhoda was the only one who was conscious
+of no disappointment.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XII" id="CHAPTER_XII"></a>CHAPTER XII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Miss Chubb could keep a secret. She was proud of being entrusted with
+one. She was much gratified when Rhoda Maxfield, on the Monday after
+Diamond's proposal, called at the maiden lady's modest lodgings, and
+confided to her the fact that Mr. Diamond had asked her to marry him,
+and that she had accepted him subject to her father's consent. It may
+seem strange that Rhoda should have chosen to make this confidence to
+Miss Chubb, rather than to Mrs. Errington, or to Minnie Bodkin, with
+both of whom she was more intimate. But she told Miss Chubb that she
+wanted her help.</p>
+
+<p>"My help, my dear! I'm sure I don't know how I can help you. But if I
+can I will. And I congratulate you sincerely. I've seen how it would be
+all along. You know I told you that a certain gentleman was falling over
+head and ears in love, a long time ago. Didn't I, now?"</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda acknowledged that it was so; and then she said she had come to ask
+a great favour. Would Miss Chubb mind saying a word or two on Mr.
+Diamond's behalf to her father? "Father told me this morning, after
+breakfast, that he should make some inquiries about Mr. Diamond. I am
+quite sure that nothing will come out that is not honourable to him; I
+am not the least afraid of that. And I believe Dr. Bodkin will praise
+him very highly, but he will not perhaps say the sort of things that
+would please father most. He will tell him what a good scholar he is,
+and all that, but he will never think of making father understand that
+Mr. Diamond is looked upon as being as much a gentleman as he is
+himself. Gentlefolks like Dr. Bodkin take those things for granted. But
+father would like to be told them. He thinks so very much of my
+marrying&mdash;above my own class, for, of course, I have learnt enough to
+know that Mr. Diamond belongs to a different sort of people from mine."</p>
+
+<p>"I understand, my dear," returned Miss Chubb, nodding her head shrewdly.
+"And you may depend on my doing my best, if I have the chance. But I'm
+afraid it is not likely that Mr. Maxfield will consult me on the
+subject."</p>
+
+<p>"I told him to come to you. Father knows you are one of the few people
+with whom Mr. Diamond has associated in Whitford."</p>
+
+<p>"Why don't you send him to Mrs. Errington? Oh, I forgot! Your father and
+she are two." Miss Chubb laughed to cover a little confusion on her own
+part, for she guessed that Rhoda might have other reasons for not asking
+Mrs. Errington's testimony in favour of her suitor. Then she added
+quickly, "Or Minnie Bodkin, now! Minnie's word would go farther with
+your father than mine would. And Minnie and Mr. Diamond are such
+cronies. You had better send him to Minnie."</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you."</p>
+
+<p>"But why not? Good gracious, she is the very person!"</p>
+
+<p>"No, I think not. We don't wish it known until father has given his
+decided consent. I have only told you in confidence, Miss Chubb."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;if the doctor knows it, Minnie must know it! And if I know it, why
+shouldn't she?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank you. I don't want to ask Miss Minnie about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder why that is, now!" pondered Miss Chubb, when Rhoda was gone.
+And very probably Rhoda could not have told her why.</p>
+
+<p>Old Maxfield duly paid his visit to Miss Chubb. The good-natured little
+woman waited at home all day lest she should miss him. And about an hour
+after her early dinner Mr. Maxfield sent in his respects, and would be
+glad to have a word with her if she were at leisure.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you will overlook the intrusion, ma'am," said Maxfield, standing
+up with his hat in his hand, just inside the door of the little
+sitting-room, where Miss Chubb asked him to walk in.</p>
+
+<p>"No intrusion at all, Mr. Maxfield! I'm very glad to see you. Please to
+sit down."</p>
+
+<p>He obeyed, and holding his thick stick upright before him, and his hat
+on his knees, he thus began:</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not a-going to waste your time and mine with vain and worldly
+discourse, ma'am. I am a man as knows the value of time, thanks be! And
+I have a serious matter on my mind. You know my daughter Rhoda?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know Rhoda, and like her, and admire her very much."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; Rhoda is a girl such as you don't see many like her. There's a
+young man seeking her in marriage."</p>
+
+<p>"I'm not surprised at that!"</p>
+
+<p>"No; there has been several others too. But she gave 'em no
+encouragement; nor should I have been willing that she should. Some of
+them were persons in my own rank of life, and that would not do for
+Rhoda."</p>
+
+<p>"I think you are quite right there, Mr. Maxfield. Rhoda is naturally
+very refined, and she has associated a good deal with persons of
+cultivated manners. I don't think Rhoda would be happy if she were
+obliged to give up certain little graces of life, which a great many
+excellent people can do without perfectly well."</p>
+
+<p>Maxfield nodded approvingly. "You speak with a good deal of judgment,
+ma'am," said he, with the air of a recognised authority on wisdom. "But
+it isn't only that. Rhoda will have money&mdash;a great deal of money&mdash;more
+than some folks that holds their heads very high ever had or will have.
+Now it is but just and rightful that I should expect her husband to
+bring some advantages in return."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course. And&mdash;ahem!&mdash;I'm sure you are too sensible a man not to
+consider that the best thing a husband could bring in exchange would be
+an honest, loving heart, and a real esteem and respect for your
+daughter."</p>
+
+<p>Little Miss Chubb became quite fluttered after making this speech, and
+coloured as if she had been a girl of eighteen.</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," returned old Max decisively. "The loving heart and the
+esteem and respect are due to my Rhoda if she hadn't a penny. In return
+for her fortin' I expect something over and above."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Chubb, a good deal taken aback.</p>
+
+<p>"Now I don't feel sure that the young man in question has that something
+over and above. It is Mr. Matthew Diamond, tutor at the Grammar School
+in this town."</p>
+
+<p>"A most excellent young man! And, I'm sure, most devotedly in love with
+Rhoda."</p>
+
+<p>"But very poor, and not of much account in the world, as far as I can
+make out."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, don't say that, Mr. Maxfield! He is proud and shy, and has kept
+himself aloof from society because he chose to do so. But he would be a
+welcome guest anywhere in the town or county. Young Mr. Pawkins, of
+Pudcombe Hall, quite courts him; he is always asking him to go over
+there."</p>
+
+<p>Thus much and more Miss Chubb valiantly spoke on behalf of Matthew
+Diamond in his character of Rhoda's wooer. And then she expatiated on
+the excellent position he would hold as master of Dorrington School. It
+was such a "select seminary;" and so many of the first county people
+sent their boys there. "Dear me," said Miss Chubb, "it seems to me to be
+the very position for Rhoda! Not too far from Whitford, and yet not too
+near&mdash;of course she couldn't keep up all her old acquaintances here,
+could she?&mdash;and altogether so refined, and scholastic, and quiet! And
+really, Mr. Maxfield, see how everything turns out for the best. I
+thought at one time that young Errington was very much smitten with
+Rhoda; but, if she had taken him, you wouldn't have been so satisfied
+with her position in life now, would you? With all his talent and
+connection, see what a poor place he has of it. Mr. Diamond has done
+best, ten to one."</p>
+
+<p>This was a master-stroke, and made a great impression on old Max. Not
+that the latter even now was at all dazzled by the prospect of having
+the head-master of Dorrington School for his son-in-law. But Miss
+Chubb's allusion did suffice to show him that the world would consider
+Diamond to be a triumphantly successful man in comparison with
+Errington.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, him!" said Maxfield in a tone of bitter contempt. "No; such as him
+was not for Miss Maxfield. And I'll tell you, moreover, that I don't
+know but what she's throwing herself away more or less if she takes this
+other. She's a great catch for him; I know the world, and I know that
+she is a great catch. But I've felt latterly one or two warnings that my
+end is near&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me, Mr. Maxfield! Don't say so! I'm sure you look very hearty!"
+exclaimed Miss Chubb, much startled by this cool announcement.</p>
+
+<p>"That my end is near," repeated old Max doggedly, "and I wish to set my
+house in order, and see my daughter provided for, before I go. And she
+seems to be contented with this young man. Rhoda ain't just easy to
+please. It might be a long time, if ever, before she found some one to
+suit her so well."</p>
+
+<p>Miss Chubb was a little shocked at this singularly prosaic and
+unemotional way of treating the subject of love and marriage, as to
+which she herself preserved the most romantic freshness of ideas. She
+would have liked the young couple to be like the lovers in a story-book,
+and the father to bestow his daughter and his blessing with tears of
+joy. However, she did her best to encourage Mr. Maxfield in giving his
+consent after his own fashion, and they parted on excellent terms with
+each other.</p>
+
+<p>"That dry old chip, Jonathan Maxfield, has been to me to-day," said Dr.
+Bodkin after dinner to his wife and daughter. "He came to ask me what
+prospect I thought Diamond had of getting the mastership of Dorrington,
+explaining to me that Diamond was a suitor for his daughter's hand. It
+took me quite by surprise. Had you any inkling of the matter, Minnie?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh yes, papa."</p>
+
+<p>"Dear me! Well, women see these things so quickly! H'm! Well, Master
+Diamond has shown good taste, I must say. That little Rhoda is the
+prettiest girl I know. And such a sweet, soft, lovable creature! I think
+she's too good for him."</p>
+
+<p>"It is a singular thing, but I have remarked very often that men in
+general are apt to think pretty girls too good for anybody but
+themselves!"</p>
+
+<p>The doctor frowned, and then smiled. "Have you so, Saucebox?" he said.</p>
+
+<p>"I don't know about her being too good for him," said Mrs. Bodkin, in
+her quick, low tones; "but I suppose he knows very well what he is
+about. Old Maxfield has feathered his nest very considerably. It will be
+a very good match for a poor man like Matthew Diamond."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Bodkin had for some time past exhibited symptoms of dislike to
+Diamond. She never had a good word for him; she even was almost
+rancorous against him at times, although she seldom allowed the feeling
+to express itself in words before her daughter. Minnie understood it all
+very well. "Poor mother!" she thought to herself, "she cannot forgive
+him. I wish I could persuade her that there is nothing to forgive. How
+could he help it if I was a fool?" Yet the mother and daughter had never
+exchanged a word on the subject. And Minnie comforted herself with the
+conviction that her mother was the only person in the world who guessed
+her secret. "Mamma has a sixth sense where I am concerned," said she to
+herself.</p>
+
+<p>"I hope you said a good word for the lovers to Mr. Maxfield, papa," she
+said aloud, in a clear, cheerful voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I had not much to say. I told him that I thought Diamond stood a good
+chance of getting Dorrington School."</p>
+
+<p>"When will it be known positively, papa?"</p>
+
+<p>"About Dorrington? Oh, before Christmas. I should say by the end of the
+first week in December. Diamond will be a loss to me, but I shall be
+glad of his promotion. He's a gentleman, and a very good fellow,
+although his manner is a trifle self-opiniated. And," added the doctor,
+shaking his head and lowering his voice as one does who is forced to
+admit a painful truth, "I am sorry to say that his views as to the use
+of the Digamma are by no means sound."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps Rhoda won't find that a drawback to her happiness!" said
+Minnie, laughing her sweet, musical laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Probably not, Puss!"</p>
+
+<p>Then the Rev. Peter Warlock and Mr. Dockett dropped in. A whist-table
+was made up in the drawing-room. The doctor and Mr. Dockett won three
+rubbers out of four against Mrs. Bodkin and the curate. And the
+latter&mdash;being seated where he could command a full view of Minnie as she
+reclined near the fire with a book&mdash;made two revokes, and drew down upon
+himself a very severe homily and a practical lecture or short course on
+the science of whist, illustrated by all the errors he had made during
+the evening, from Dr. Bodkin. For the doctor, although he liked to win,
+cared not for inglorious victory, and was almost as indignant with his
+opponents as with his partner for any symptom of slovenly play. The
+Reverend Peter's brow grew serious, even to gloom, and it seemed to him
+as if the doctor's scolding were almost more than human patience could
+endure. "I don't mind losing my sixpences," thought the curate, "and I
+could make up my mind to sacrificing an hour or two over those
+accursed," (I'm afraid he did mentally use that strong expression!)
+"those thrice-accursed bits of pasteboard. But to be lectured and
+scolded at into the bargain&mdash;&mdash;!" He arose from the green table with an
+almost defiant sullenness.</p>
+
+<p>However, when the tray was brought in and the victimised gentleman had
+comforted his inner man with hot negus, and was at liberty to sip it in
+close proximity to Miss Bodkin's chair, and had received one or two kind
+looks from Miss Bodkin's eyes, and several kind words from Miss Bodkin's
+lips, his heart grew soft within him, and he began to think that even
+six, ten&mdash;a dozen rubbers of whist with the doctor would not be too high
+a price to pay for these privileges! Then they talked of Diamond's
+engagement to Rhoda&mdash;it had been spoken of all over Whitford hours
+ago!&mdash;and of his prospects. And Mr. Warlock was quite effusive in his
+rejoicings on both scores. He had been dimly jealous of Minnie's regard
+for Diamond, and was heartily glad of the prospect of getting rid of
+him. Mr. Dockett, too, seemed to think the match a desirable one. He
+pursed up his mouth and looked knowing as he dropped a mysterious hint
+as to the extent of Rhoda's dowry. "I made old Max's will myself," said
+he; "and without violating professional secrecy, I may confirm what I
+hear old Max bruits abroad at every opportunity&mdash;namely, that he is a
+warm man&mdash;a very warm man in&mdash;deed! But I'm sure Mr. Diamond is a young
+man of sound principles, and will make the girl a good husband. And it
+is decided promotion for her too, you know. A grocer's daughter! Eh? I'm
+sure I wish them well most sincerely." And shall we blame Mr. Dockett
+if, in his fatherly anxiety, he rejoiced at the removal of a dangerous
+rival to his little Ally, on whom young Pawkins had recently bestowed a
+good deal of attention whenever Rhoda Maxfield was out of his reach?</p>
+
+<p>"I never knew such a popular engagement," said Dr. Bodkin, innocently.
+"Everybody seems to approve! One might almost fear it could not be a
+case of true love, it runs so very smooth. There does not appear to be a
+single objection."</p>
+
+<p>"Except the Digamma, papa!"</p>
+
+<p>"Except the Digamma," echoed the doctor merrily. And when he was alone
+with his wife that night, he remarked to her that he was immensely
+thankful to see the great improvement in their beloved child this
+winter.</p>
+
+<p>"Minnie is certainly stronger," said the mother.</p>
+
+<p>"And in such excellent spirits!" said the father.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIII" id="CHAPTER_XIII"></a>CHAPTER XIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The days passed by and brought no letter, in answer to Castalia's, from
+Lord Seely. Dreary were the hours in Ivy Lodge. The wife was devoured by
+passionate jealousy and a vain yearning for affection; the husband found
+that even the bright, smooth, hard metal of his own character was not
+impervious to the corrosive action of daily cares, regrets, and
+apprehensions. Algernon was not apt to hate. He usually perceived the
+absurd side of persons who were obnoxious to him with too keen an
+amusement to detest them; and the inmost feeling of his heart with
+respect to his fellow-creatures in general approached, perhaps, as
+nearly to perfect indifference as it is given to a mortal to attain. But
+it was not possible to preserve a condition of indifference towards
+Castalia. She was a thorn in his flesh, a mote in his eye, a weariness
+to his spirit; and he began to dislike the very sight of the sallow,
+sickly face, red-eyed too often, and haggard with discontent, that met
+his view whenever he was in his own home. It was the daily "worry" of
+it, he told himself, that was unendurable. It was the being shut up with
+her in a box like Ivy Lodge, where there was no room for them to get
+away from each other. If he could have shared a mansion in Grosvenor
+Square with Castalia he might have got on with her well enough! But
+then, that mansion in Grosvenor Square would have made so many things
+different in his life.</p>
+
+<p>At length one day came a letter to Castalia, with the London post-mark
+and sealed with the well-known coat of arms, but it did not bear Lord
+Seely's frank. Another name was scrawled in the corner, and the
+direction was written in Lady Seely's crooked, cramped little
+characters.</p>
+
+<p>"I'm afraid Uncle Val must be ill!" exclaimed Castalia, opening the
+letter with a trembling hand. She was so weak and nervous now that the
+most trifling agitation made her heart beat painfully. My lady's epistle
+was not long, and, as a knowledge of its contents is essential to the
+due comprehension of this story, it is given in full, with her
+ladyship's own phraseology and orthography:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">My dear Castalia</span>,&mdash;I cannot think what on earth you are about
+to write such letters to your uncle. Go abroad, indeed! I
+suppose Ancram would like the embassy to St. Petersburg, or to
+be governor of the Ionian Islands. It's all nonsense, and you
+had better put such ideas out of your head at once, and for
+all. I should think you might know that we have other people to
+think of besides your husband, especially after all we have
+done for him. Your uncle is very ill in bed with an attack of
+the gout, and can't write himself. The doctor thinks he won't
+be about again for weeks. You can guess what trouble this
+throws on to my shoulders, so I hope you won't worry me by any
+more such letters as the last. As if there was not anxiety
+enough, Fido had a fit on Thursday. I hope you are pretty well.
+What a blessing you've no sign of a family. With only you two
+to keep, you ought to do very well on Ancram's salary, and you
+can tell him I say so. Yours affectionately,</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">B. Seely</span>."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>"Poor Uncle Val!" exclaimed Castalia, dropping the letter from her hand.
+"I was afraid he was ill."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw! A touch of the gout won't kill him," said Algernon, who had been
+reading over her shoulder. "But it's deuced unfortunate for me that he
+should be laid up at this time, and quite helpless in the hands of that
+old catamaran."</p>
+
+<p>"Poor Uncle Val! Perhaps he never got my letter at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing more likely, if my lady could prevent his getting it."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps, when he gets better, I can write to him again, and ask
+him&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"When he gets better? Oh yes, certainly. We have plenty of time. There
+is no hurry, of course!"</p>
+
+<p>"I see that you are speaking satirically, Ancram, but I don't know why."</p>
+
+<p>Her husband shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the room. As he
+left the house he was met at the garden-gate by a bright-eyed,
+consumptive-looking lad, in shabby working clothes, who touched his cap,
+and held out a paper to Algernon. "What do you want?" asked the latter.
+"Mr. Gladwish, sir. His account, if you please, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"And who the devil is Mr. Gladwish?"</p>
+
+<p>"The shoemaker, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Mr. Gladwish, then, is an extremely importunate, impatient,
+troublesome fellow. This is the third or fourth time within a very few
+weeks that he has sent in his bill. I'm not accustomed to that sort of
+thing. I don't understand it. Don't give me the paper, boy. Take it into
+the house."</p>
+
+<p>"Please, sir," began the lad, and stopped, hesitatingly. Then seeing
+that Mr. Errington was walking off without taking any further notice of
+him, he repeated in a louder, firmer tone, "Please, sir, Mr. Gladwish is
+really in want of the money. He has two of the children bad with fever.
+And I was to say that even five pounds on account would be acceptable."</p>
+
+<p>"Five pounds! He's too modest. I haven't got five pounds, nor five
+minutes. I'm busy."</p>
+
+<p>"Then, I'm sorry to say, sir, that Mr. Gladwish will take legal
+proceedings for the debt at once. He told me to tell you so."</p>
+
+<p>"Nice state of things!" muttered Algernon, as he walked towards the
+post-office, with his head bent down and his hands deep in his pockets.
+"But that's nothing. It's those cursed bills in Maxfield's hands that
+are on my mind like lead."</p>
+
+<p>His spirits were not lightened by that which awaited him at the office.
+He had to undergo an interview with the district surveyor, who was very
+grave, not to say severe, in speaking of the irregularities which had
+been complained of, and were looked on as very serious at the head
+office. The surveyor ended by plainly hinting his hope that persons
+having no business at the office would be strictly forbidden from having
+access to it at abnormal hours. "I&mdash;I don't understand you," stammered
+Algernon.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Errington," said the surveyor, "I am speaking to you, not
+officially, but confidentially, and as man to man. I have been having a
+little conversation with Mr. Gibbs&mdash;who seems to have none but good
+feeling towards you, but who&mdash;in short, I think it is not needful to be
+more explicit. I advise you in all friendliness to be stern and decisive
+in keeping every person out of this office except such as have
+recognised business to be here. If further trouble arises, I shall have
+to do my duty, and make my report without respect of any persons
+whatsoever."</p>
+
+<p>"Perhaps," said Algernon, who was white to his lips, but otherwise
+apparently unmoved, "perhaps it would be best for me to resign my post
+here at once. If the authorities above me find cause for
+dissatisfaction&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I can give you no advice as to that, Mr. Errington. You must know your
+own affairs better than I do."</p>
+
+<p>"There are things which a man can scarcely say even to himself;
+considerations which are painful as they float dimly in one's own mind,
+but which would be unendurable uttered aloud in words. Anything like a
+public scandal&mdash;or&mdash;or&mdash;disgrace to me, would involve a large circle of
+persons&mdash;many of them persons of rank and consideration in the world.
+You are possibly aware that&mdash;my wife"&mdash;there was a peculiar tone in
+Algernon's voice as he said these two words&mdash;"is a niece of Lord
+Seely?"</p>
+
+<p>But the official gentleman declined to enter into the question of Mr.
+Errington's family connections. "Oh," said he, coldly; "we must hope
+there will be no question of scandal or disgrace." Then he went away,
+leaving Algernon in a chaos of doubt as to whether he should, or should
+not, speak further on the subject to Obadiah Gibbs. Obadiah Gibbs,
+however, decided the question for him. He came into Algernon's room,
+closing the door carefully behind him, and asked to speak a few words in
+private. Algernon was sitting in the luxurious easy-chair which he had
+had carried into the office for his own use. It was about three o'clock
+in the afternoon of a dull November day. The single window which looked
+on to a white-washed court threw a ghastly pallid light on Algernon's
+face as he sat opposite to it, with his head thrown back against the
+cushions of the high chair. Mr. Gibbs was touched with compassion at
+seeing how changed the bright young face looked since he had first been
+acquainted with it. And yet, in truth, the change was not a very deep
+one: it was more in colouring, and the expression of the moment, than in
+any lines which care had graven.</p>
+
+<p>"Come in, Gibbs; come in," said Algernon, with his affable air. The
+clerk seemed the more anxious and disturbed of the two. He sat down on
+the chair Algernon pointed out to him in a constrained posture, and
+seemed to have some difficulty in beginning to speak, albeit not a man
+usually liable to embarrassment of manner. His superior stretched his
+feet out nearer to the hearth, and slightly moved his white hand to and
+fro, looking, as a child might have done, at the glitter of a ring he
+wore in the firelight.</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Wing did not seem very well pleased, sir," said Gibbs, after
+clearing his throat.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course he had to appear displeased, whether he was or not, Gibbs. A
+little hocus-pocus, a little official solemnity, is the thing to assume,
+I suppose. I think that man's nose is the very longest I ever saw.
+Remarkable nose, eh, Gibbs?"</p>
+
+<p>"But, sir," continued Gibbs, declining to discuss the surveyor's nose,
+"he said that from inquiries that had been made, it's pretty certain
+that the missing letters were&mdash;stolen&mdash;they must have been stolen&mdash;at
+Whitford."</p>
+
+<p>"Very intelligent on the part of the official, Mr. Wing! Only I think
+you and I had come to pretty nearly the same conclusion before."</p>
+
+<p>"He made strict inquiries about the people in the office here, and I had
+to give him what information I could, sir."</p>
+
+<p>"Of course, of course, Gibbs! I quite understand," said Algernon,
+putting his hand out to shake that of the clerk with so frank a
+cordiality that the latter felt the tears spring into his eyes as he
+took the cool white hand into his own. "I have felt very much for you,
+Mr. Errington," said he. "Your position is a trying one, indeed. I would
+do almost anything in my power to set your mind more at rest. But I'm
+sorry to say that I have an unpleasant matter to speak of."</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder," thought Algernon, leaning back in his chair once more,
+"whether my friend Obadiah conceives our conversation hitherto to have
+been of an agreeable and entertaining nature, that he now announces
+something unpleasant by way of a change!"</p>
+
+<p>"You will understand," said Gibbs, "that I am speaking to you in the
+very strictest confidence. I should be sorry for it to come out that I
+had meddled in the matter. Nor, sir, would it be well for you to have it
+known that I gave you any warning."</p>
+
+<p>"I wish the old bore would not be so confoundedly long-winded!" thought
+Algernon, nodding meanwhile with an air of thoughtful attention.</p>
+
+<p>But Gibbs was prone to long-windedness and to the making of speeches.
+And he now availed himself of the opportunity of haranguing the
+postmaster (one of whose chief faults was a vivacious impatience of his
+clerk's eloquence) to the fullest extent. But the gist of what he had to
+say was this: Roger Heath, the man whose money-letter had been lost,
+now declared that his correspondent at Bristol, being interrogated in
+the hope that he might be able to furnish some clue to the
+identification of the missing notes, stated that he remembered one was
+endorsed in blue ink instead of black: and that he, Heath, had reason to
+know that one of the notes paid by young Mrs. Errington to Ravell, the
+mercer, had been endorsed in blue ink!</p>
+
+<p>"Now, sir," proceeded Gibbs, "I remember its being a good deal talked of
+in the town at the time, that young Mrs. Errington had money unknown to
+you, and Mrs. Ravell spoke of it to many."</p>
+
+<p>"Damn Mrs. Ravell! What does it all mean, Gibbs?"</p>
+
+<p>Algernon got up from his chair, and leant his elbows on the
+chimney-piece, and hid his face in his hands, but he so stood that he
+could watch the clerk's countenance between his fingers. That
+countenance expressed trouble and compassion. Gibbs got up too, and
+stood looking at Algernon and shaking his head ruefully.</p>
+
+<p>"I thought it well you should know what was being said, Mr. Errington,"
+said he.</p>
+
+<p>"What can I do, Gibbs? How can I stop their cursed tongues?" Algernon
+still spoke with his face hidden.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir, you cannot stop their tongues, but&mdash;you might possibly put a
+stop to what sets their tongues going. Of course, the matter may be all
+explained simply enough. There may be plenty of bank-notes endorsed in
+blue ink&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course there may! Chattering idiots!"</p>
+
+<p>"And as to that particular note, Mr. Ravell paid it away, as well as the
+others Mrs. Errington gave him, to the agent of a Manchester house he
+deals with, the next day after it came into his hands. I ascertained
+that from Ravell himself."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll have the note traced!" exclaimed Algernon, looking up for the
+first time.</p>
+
+<p>"That would be a difficult matter, sir. It has gone far and wide before
+now."</p>
+
+<p>"I tell you I will have it traced! And I will have that malignant
+scoundrel, Heath, pulled up pretty sharply, if he dares to make any more
+insinuations that&mdash;&mdash;it is not difficult to see what he is driving at!"</p>
+
+<p>Gibbs laid his hand on the young man's shoulder.</p>
+
+<p>"I feel for you, Mr. Errington," he said. "If I did not, I shouldn't put
+myself in the disagreeable position of saying what I have said. I should
+have attended to my own business, and let matters take their course. I
+hope you believe that I had only a kind motive in speaking?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do believe it&mdash;heartily!"</p>
+
+<p>"Thank you, sir. Then I shall make bold to give you one word of advice.
+Don't stir in the matter, nor make any threats against any one, until
+you have ascertained from Mrs. Errington where she got the notes that
+she paid to Ravell."</p>
+
+<p>Algernon had bent down his head again, and he now answered without
+looking up:</p>
+
+<p>"No doubt Mrs. Errington can account for them to me, but she is not
+bound to do so to any one else. Nor can I allow any one to hint that she
+is so bound. I should be a blackguard if I could listen to a word of
+that sort."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope it may come right, Mr. Errington. After all, there has been
+nothing, and, so far as I see, there can be nothing, but talk to hurt
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"My good fellow," said Algernon, as he once more gave his hand to his
+clerk, "it's a kind of talk which poisons a man's life. You know that as
+well as I do."</p>
+
+<p>Then Gibbs took his leave of his superior, and went back into the outer
+office to watch over the epistolary correspondence of Whitford. As he
+sat at his desk there his mind was full of sympathy with Algernon
+Errington. "Poor young man! He took it beautifully. It must be a
+terrible blow&mdash;an awful blow. But, no doubt, he has had his suspicions
+before now. What a warning against worldly-mindedness! He is a victim to
+that vain and godless woman; and that's all that comes of the marriage
+that so uplifted the heart of his mother. But he would be a beautiful
+character, if he had only got religion, and would leave off profane
+swearing. He is so guileless and outspoken, like a child, almost. Ah,
+poor young man! I hope the Lord may bless this trial to him.
+But&mdash;religion or no religion&mdash;I don't believe he'll ever be fit to be
+postmaster of Whitford." Thus ran the reflections of Mr. Obadiah Gibbs.</p>
+
+<p>When Algernon reached home that evening, he bade Lydia put up a few
+things for him into a little travelling valise; and when he met his wife
+at the dinner-table, he told her he should go up to London that night by
+the mail-coach. He explained, in answer to her surprised inquiries,
+lamentations, and objections, uttered in a querulous drawl, that he must
+get help from Lord Seely; that it was useless to write to him under the
+present circumstances, seeing that his wife would probably intercept the
+letter; and that, therefore, he had resolved to go to town himself and
+obtain a personal interview with Lord Seely.</p>
+
+<p>"But, Ancram!&mdash;what's the use? Why on earth should you fly off in this
+way? I'm sure it won't do! Do you suppose for an instant that Aunt
+Belinda will let you get at him?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must try for it. Things have got to that pass now, that&mdash;&mdash;Do you
+know what happened to me just as I went out after lunch? Gladwish, the
+shoemaker, sent to threaten me with arrest! I shall be walked off to
+prison, I suppose, for a few wretched pairs of abominable shoes. The
+fellow has no more notion of fitting my foot than a farrier."</p>
+
+<p>"To prison! Oh, Ancram! But Gladwish's bill cannot be so very large&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course it's not 'so very large!'"</p>
+
+<p>"Then, if we paid it, or even part of it&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Paid it! Upon my word, Cassy, you are too absurd! 'Paid it!' In the
+first place, I have only a very few pounds in the house&mdash;barely enough
+to take me to town, I think; and, in the next place, if I paid Gladwish,
+what would be the result? The butcher, the baker, and the
+candlestick-maker would be all down on me with summonses, and writs, and
+executions, and bedevilments of every imaginable kind. But you have no
+more notion&mdash;you take it all so coolly. 'Pay him!' By George! Cassy,
+it's very hard to stand such nonsense!"</p>
+
+<p>Castalia withdrew from the table, and sat down on the little sofa and
+cried. Her husband looked at her across a glass of very excellent
+sherry, which he was just about to hold up to the light. "I think,
+Castalia," he said, "I really do think, that when a man is in such
+trouble as I am, reduced to the brink of ruin, not knowing which way to
+turn for a ten-pound note, struggling, striving, bothering his brains to
+find a way out of the confounded mess, he might expect something more
+cheering and encouraging from his wife than perpetual snivelling." With
+that he cracked a filbert with a sharp jerk of indignation. But
+Algernon's forte was not the minatory or impressively wrathful style of
+eloquence. He could hurl a sarcasm, sharp, light, and polished; but when
+he came to wielding such a ponderous weapon as serious reproof on moral
+considerations, he was apt to make a poor hand of it. It was excessively
+disagreeable, too, to see that woman's thin shoulders moving
+convulsively under her gay-coloured dress, as she sobbed with her head
+buried in the sofa cushions. That really must be put a stop to. So, as
+it appeared evident that scolding would not quench the tears, he tried
+coaxing. The coaxing was not so efficacious as it would have been once.
+Still, Castalia responded to it to the extent of endeavouring to check
+the sobs which still shook her frail chest and throat. "When shall you
+be back, Ancram?" she said, looking beseechingly at him. He answered
+that he hoped to be in Whitford again on Tuesday night, or Wednesday at
+the latest (it was then Monday), and he particularly impressed on her
+the necessity of telling any one who might inquire the cause of his
+absence, that he had been suddenly called up to town by the illness of
+Lord Seely. He had, in fact, said a word or two to that effect when, on
+his way home, he had ordered the fly, which was to carry him and his
+valise to the coach-office. Castalia insisted on accompanying him to the
+coach, despite the damp cold of the night, a proceeding which he did not
+much combat, since he felt it would serve to give colour to his
+statement to the landlord of the "Blue Bell."</p>
+
+<p>"Keep up your spirits, Cassy," he cried, waving his hand from the
+coach-window as he stood in the inn yard, muffled in shawls and furs. "I
+hope I shall bring back good news of your uncle."</p>
+
+<p>Then Castalia was trundled back to Ivy Lodge in the jingling old fly,
+whilst her husband rolled swiftly behind four fleet horses towards
+London.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIV" id="CHAPTER_XIV"></a>CHAPTER XIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Stiff, tired, and cold, Algernon alighted the next morning at the
+coach-office in London after his night journey. He drove to a
+fashionable hotel not very far from Lord Seely's house, and refreshed
+himself with a warm bath and a luxurious breakfast. By the time that was
+done it was eleven o'clock in the forenoon. He had been considering how
+best to proceed, in a leisurely way, during his breakfast, and had
+decided to go to Lord Seely's house without further delay. He knew Lady
+Seely's habits well enough to feel tolerably sure that she would not be
+out of her bed before eleven o'clock, nor out of her room before
+mid-day. He thought he might gain access to his lordship by a <i>coup de
+main</i>, if he so timed his visit as to avoid encountering my lady. So he
+had himself driven to within a few yards of the house, and walked up to
+the well-known door. It was a different arrival from his first
+appearance on that threshold. Algernon did not fail to think of the
+contrast, and he told himself that he had been very badly used by the
+whole Seely family: they had done so infinitely less for him than he had
+expected! The sense of injury awakened by this reflection was as
+supporting to him as a cordial.</p>
+
+<p>The servant who opened the door, and who at once recognised Algernon,
+stared in surprise on seeing him, but was too well trained to express
+emotion in any other way. After a few inquiries about Lord Seely's
+health, Algernon asked if he could be allowed to see his lordship. This,
+however, was a difficult matter. My lord was better, certainly, the
+footman said, but my lady had given strict orders that he was not to be
+disturbed. No one was admitted to his room except the doctor, who would
+not make his visit until late in the afternoon.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I shouldn't think of disturbing my lady at this hour," said
+Algernon, "but I must speak with Lord Seely. It is of the very greatest
+importance."</p>
+
+<p>"I'll call Mr. Briggs, sir," the footman was beginning, when Algernon
+stopped him. Mr. Briggs was Lord Seely's own man, and, like all the
+servants in the house, was certain to obey his mistress's orders rather
+than his master's, if the two should happen to conflict. Algernon
+slipped some money into the footman's hand, together with a note which
+he had written that morning. "There, James," said he; "if you will
+manage to convey that into his lordship's own hand, I know he will see
+me. And, moreover, he would be seriously annoyed if I were sent away
+without having spoken to him on business of very great importance."</p>
+
+<p>James reflected that the worst that could happen to him would be a
+scolding from my lady. That was certainly no trifling evil; but he
+decided to risk it, being moved to do so not only by the bribe, but by a
+real liking for young Errington, who was generally a favourite with
+other people's servants.</p>
+
+<p>The note which James carried upstairs was as follows:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">My Lord</span>,&mdash;I write in the driest and most matter-of-fact terms
+I can find, to ask for an interview with your lordship with the
+least possible delay, being unwilling to make, or to appear to
+make, any claim on the regard you once professed for me, or on
+the connection which unites us, and desiring you to understand
+that I appeal to you on behalf of another person; and that,
+were it not for that other person I should ask no more favours
+of your lordship&mdash;nor, perhaps, need any.</p>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">A. Ancram Errington.</span>"</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>In a few moments James came running downstairs and begged Algernon,
+almost in a whisper, to walk up to his lordship's room.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely was not in bed. He was reclining in an easy-chair, with one
+foot and leg supported on cushions. He seemed ill and worn, but his dark
+eyes sparkled as he looked eagerly at Algernon, who entered quietly and
+closed the door behind him. "What is it? I'm afraid you have bad news,
+Ancram," said Lord Seely, holding out his hand.</p>
+
+<p>Algernon did not take it. He bowed very gravely, and stood opposite to
+the little nobleman.</p>
+
+<p>"Castalia&mdash;&mdash;!" cried Lord Seely, much dismayed by the young man's
+manner. "Don't keep me in suspense, for God's sake! Is she ill? Is she
+dead?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, my lord. Castalia is not dead. Neither, so far as I know, is she
+ill&mdash;in body."</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter?"</p>
+
+<p>"I must crave a patient hearing, my lord. I regret to have to trouble
+you whilst you are ill and suffering; but what I have to say must be
+said without delay. May I ask if there is anyone within hearing?"</p>
+
+<p>"No! No one. You can close the door of that dressing-closet if you
+choose. But there is no one there."</p>
+
+<p>Algernon adopted the suggestion at once, and then sat down opposite to
+Lord Seely's chair. His whole manner of proceeding was so unusual and
+unexpected that it produced a very painful impression on Lord Seely.
+Algernon rather enjoyed this. He began to speak with only one distinct
+purpose in his mind: namely, to frighten his wife's uncle into making a
+strong effort to help him out of Whitford. How much pressure would be
+necessary to achieve that purpose he could not yet tell. And he began to
+speak with a sort of reckless abandonment of himself to the guidance of
+the moment, a mood of mind which had become very frequent with him of
+late.</p>
+
+<p>"Did your lordship receive a letter from Castalia begging you to obtain
+a post abroad for me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. My wife answered it. I&mdash;I was unable to write myself. But I
+intended to reply more at length so soon as I should be better."</p>
+
+<p>"Castalia showed me Lady Seely's reply. That was the first intimation I
+had of Castalia's having made such an application. I mention this
+because I know your lordship suspected me of being the prime mover in
+all her applications to you for assistance."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely coloured a little as he replied, "It was natural to suppose
+that you influenced your wife, Ancram."</p>
+
+<p>"Your lordship must not judge all cases by your own," returned the young
+man, with a candid raising of his brows; and the colour on Lord Seely's
+face deepened to a dark red flush, which faded, leaving him paler than
+before. "As I said," continued Algernon, "I did not know what it was
+that Castalia had asked you to do for us. But, now that I do know it, I
+may say at once that I heartily concur with her as to its desirability."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot agree with you there; but, even if it were so, I assure you it
+is out of my power&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Allow me, my lord! I must tax your patience to listen to what I have to
+say before you give me any positive answer."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely leaned back in his chair, and motioned with his head for
+Algernon to proceed. The latter went on:</p>
+
+<p>"Exile from England and from all the hopes and ambitions not very
+unnatural at my age, is not such an alluring prospect that I should be
+suspected of having incited Castalia to write as she has done? However,
+I will say no more as to my own private and personal feelings in the
+matter. I did not mean to allude to them. I beg your pardon." Algernon
+sat leaning a little forward in his chair. His hands were clasped
+loosely together, and rested on his knees. He kept his eyes gloomily
+fixed on the carpet for the most part, and only raised them occasionally
+to look up at Lord Seely without raising his head at the same time. "I
+could not write what I had to say to you, my lord. I dared not write it.
+Perhaps, even, if I had written, the letter might not have reached you
+at once; and I could not wish its falling into other hands, so I came
+away from Whitford last night quite suddenly. I have no leave of
+absence; the clerk at the post-office, even, did not know I was coming
+away."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you mean to say, Ancram, that you have deliberately risked the loss
+of your situation?"</p>
+
+<p>"My 'situation' was as good as lost already. Do you know what happened
+yesterday, Lord Seely? I was subjected to the agreeable ordeal of a
+visit from the surveyor of the postal district in which Whitford is
+situated. I was catechised magisterially. The whole office&mdash;including my
+private room&mdash;was subjected to a sort of scrutiny. There have been a
+great many letters missing at Whitford lately; some money-letters. That
+is to say, letters which should have passed through our office have
+never reached their destination. Nothing has been traced. Nothing is
+known with certainty. But the concurrence of various circumstances
+points to Whitford as the place where the letters have been&mdash;stolen. I
+am told on all hands that such things never happened in Mr. Cooper's
+time. (Mr. Cooper was my predecessor as postmaster.) I am scowled at,
+and almost openly insulted in the streets, by a miller, or a baker, or
+something of the kind, who lives in the neighbourhood. He declares he
+has lost a considerable sum of money by the post, and plainly considers
+me responsible. You may guess how pleasant my 'situation' has become in
+consequence of these things being known and talked about."</p>
+
+<p>"But, good Heavens, Ancram&mdash;&mdash;! I don't comprehend your way of looking
+at the matter. These irregularities are doubtless very distressing, but
+surely your rational course would be to use every effort to discover the
+cause of them and set matters right; not run away as if you were a
+culprit!"</p>
+
+<p>"Your lordship judges without knowing all the facts."</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon me, Ancram, but no facts can justify such rash behaviour. I have
+some experience of men and of the world, and I give you my deliberate
+opinion that you have acted very indiscreetly, to say the least. I am
+disappointed in you, Ancram. I regret to say it, but I am disappointed
+in you. You have shown a want of steadiness, and&mdash;and&mdash;almost of common
+sense! The more I think of it, the more I disapprove of the step you
+have taken. It shows a great want of consideration for others; for your
+wife. If you were alone it might be pardonable&mdash;although, excessively
+ill-judged&mdash;to throw up your post at the first experience of the rough
+side of things. We all have difficulties to contend with. The most
+exalted position is not secure from them, as, indeed, it would appear
+almost superfluous to point out! The record of my own&mdash;my own&mdash;official
+life might supply you with more than one example of the value of
+steadfast energy, and an inflexible determination to conquer
+antagonistic circumstances."</p>
+
+<p>Poor Lord Seely! He had been subdued by sickness more completely under
+the dominion of his wife than could ever be the case when he was able to
+move about, to get away from her, and to converse with persons who were
+not entirely devoid of any semblance of respect for his opinion. Lady
+Seely, it might be said, respected nobody&mdash;a point of resemblance
+between herself and her young kinsman which had not led to any very
+great sympathy or harmony between them; for, as it is your professed
+joker who can least bear to be laughed at, so those persons who most
+flippantly ignore any sentiment of reverence towards others are by no
+means prepared to tolerate a want of deference towards themselves.
+Certainly, my lady had snubbed her husband during his illness almost
+unmercifully; she wished him to get better, and she took care that the
+doctor's orders were faithfully carried out. But her course of treatment
+was anything but soothing to the spirit, and my lord's pet vanities
+received no consideration whatever from her. His mind being now relieved
+from the first shock of apprehension which Algernon's sudden visit had
+occasioned (for, though things were bad, it was a relief to him to find
+that Castalia was safe and well), he could not resist the temptation to
+lecture a little, and be pompous, and display his suppressed self-esteem
+with a little more emphasis than usual.</p>
+
+<p>Poor Lord Seely! By so doing he unconsciously drew down a terrible
+catastrophe. It seemed a trivial cause to determine Algernon to speak as
+he next spoke&mdash;as trivial as the heedless footfall or too-loudly spoken
+word which brings the avalanche toppling down from the rock.</p>
+
+<p>"The selfishness and egotism of the man are incredible!" thought
+Algernon, looking at Lord Seely. "Not one word of sympathy with me! Not
+a syllable to show that my feelings are worthy of any consideration
+whatever. Pompous little ass!" Then he said, very gravely and quietly,
+"I think, my lord, that you have forgotten what I said to you in the
+hurried note I sent upstairs, about appealing to you on behalf of
+another person."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely had forgotten it.</p>
+
+<p>"Ha!&mdash;no, Ancram. I&mdash;I remember what you said; but, I&mdash;I take leave to
+think that if you wish to consider that other person&mdash;it is your wife
+of whom you spoke, I presume?"</p>
+
+<p>Algernon bowed his head.</p>
+
+<p>"If you wish to consider that person effectually, you ought not to have
+flown off at a tangent in the manner you have done. You
+might&mdash;ahem!&mdash;you might, at least, have written to me for advice."</p>
+
+<p>"Lord Seely, I am sorry to say that you are under an entire
+misapprehension as to the state of the case."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely was not accustomed to be told that he was under an entire
+misapprehension on any subject.</p>
+
+<p>"If so, Ancram," he answered, with some hauteur, "the fault must be
+yours. I believe I should succeed in comprehending any moderately clear
+and accurate statement."</p>
+
+<p>"I will try to speak plainly. During the last six weeks I have been made
+seriously unhappy by rumours floating about in Whitford respecting my
+wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Rumours&mdash;&mdash;! Respecting your wife?"</p>
+
+<p>"They reach my ears through various channels, and appear to be rife in
+every social circle in the place."</p>
+
+<p>"Rumours! Of what nature?"</p>
+
+<p>There was a little pause; then Algernon said, "The least terrible of
+them is, that Castalia's reason is affected, and that she is not
+responsible for her actions."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely started into a more upright posture, and then sank back again
+with a suppressed cry of pain. Algernon went on, without looking up:
+"Her manner has been very singular of late. She has taken to wandering
+about alone, and to make her wanderings as secretly as may be; she
+haunts the post-office in my absence, carefully informing herself
+beforehand whether I am in my private room or not; and if I am reported
+absent, she enters it, searches the drawers, and, I have the strongest
+reason to believe&mdash;indeed I may say I know&mdash;that she has tampered with a
+little cabinet in which I keep a few private papers, and taken letters
+out of it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ancram!"</p>
+
+<p>"These things, my lord, are commonly reported and spoken of by every
+gossiping tongue in Whitford. I can't help the people talking. Castalia
+is not liked there; her manners are unpopular, and even the persons who
+were inclined to receive her kindly for my sake have been offended and
+alienated. Still, the things I have told you are facts."</p>
+
+<p>"I am shocked&mdash;I am surprised&mdash;and, forgive me, Ancram, a little
+incredulous. You may have listened to malicious tongues; you say that my
+niece is not liked by the&mdash;the class of persons with whom she now
+associates, and it may be&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"I am sorry to say, my lord, that Castalia cannot be said to associate
+with any 'class of persons' in Whitford, for latterly it has become
+plain to me that all our acquaintances have given her the cold
+shoulder."</p>
+
+<p>The mingled expression of amazement, incredulity, and offended pride on
+Lord Seely's face, when Algernon made this announcement, did not operate
+with the latter as an inducement to spare him. Indeed, he had now gone
+almost too far to stop short. He held up his hand to deprecate any
+interruption, and said, "One moment, my lord! I must ask you a question.
+Have you at any time privately supplied Castalia with money unknown to
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never! I&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Then, Lord Seely, I have only one more circumstance to add: Castalia,
+the other day, paid a bill of considerable amount to a mercer in
+Whitford without my knowledge, and without my knowing where she found
+the money to pay it; and yesterday my clerk, an honest fellow and much
+attached to me, told me in private and in strict confidence, that it was
+currently reported in the town that one of the notes paid by my wife to
+the mercer was endorsed in the same way as a note in one of the missing
+money-letters I have told you of."</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, Ancram! what do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I told you that the least terrible rumour about Castalia was the rumour
+that her mind was affected."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely's face was almost lead-coloured. He pressed his hands one on
+each side of his head with a gesture of hopeless bewilderment. "This is
+the most appalling thing!" he murmured, and his voice was scarcely
+audible as he said it.</p>
+
+<p>"I had to make my choice without delay, Lord Seely. I regret to inflict
+this blow on you in your present suffering state of body; but, if I
+spared you, I could not have spared Castalia. I chose to spare my wife."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes;&mdash;quite&mdash;quite right. Spare Castalia! I&mdash;I thank you,
+Ancram&mdash;for choosing to spare her rather than me." The poor little
+nobleman's face was convulsed by a kind of spasm for a second or two,
+and then he burst into tears, sobbing out, with his face hidden in his
+trembling hands, "What is to be done? Gracious heavens! what is to be
+done?"</p>
+
+<p>"I talked about choosing to spare Castalia," said Algernon, looking at
+her uncle with a sort of furtive curiosity and a feeling that was more
+akin to contempt than pity, "but I don't know how long it may be in my
+power, or anyone's power, to spare her. The only chance for either of us
+is to get away out of Whitford as quickly as possible."</p>
+
+<p>"But&mdash;but&mdash;&mdash;My head is so confused. I am stunned, Ancram&mdash;stunned!
+But&mdash;what was I going to say? Oh! have you interrogated Castalia? What
+representations does she make as to the money? There is so much to be
+said&mdash;to be asked. It cannot be but that there is some error. It cannot
+be. My poor Castalia!"</p>
+
+<p>"Interrogating Castalia would be quite useless; worse than useless. You
+don't know what her behaviour and temper have been lately. She is
+utterly unreasonable. Ask anyone who knows our house in Whitford; ask my
+servants what my home has been latterly. I have bought the honour of
+your lordship's alliance somewhat dear."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely sank down in his chair as if he had been struck, and his grey
+head drooped on his breast. "What can I do, Ancram?" he asked, in a tone
+so contrasted in its feebleness with his usual self-assured, rather
+strident voice, that it might have touched some persons with compassion.
+"What can I do?" Then he seemed to make a strong effort to recover some
+energy of manner, and added, "If it were not for this unfortunate attack
+which disables me, I would return with you to Whitford to-night. I would
+see Castalia myself."</p>
+
+<p>Algernon heartily congratulated himself on the fit of gout which kept
+Lord Seely a prisoner. There was nothing he less desired than that her
+uncle should be confronted with Castalia. He represented that the only
+efficacious help Lord Seely could give under the circumstances would be
+to furnish them with money to pay their debts and leave Whitford
+forthwith. He pointed out that Castalia must have felt this herself,
+when she wrote urging her uncle to get them some post abroad. Algernon
+became eager and persuasive as he spoke, and offered a glimpse to the
+man before him, whose pride and whose affections were equally wounded,
+of a future which should make some amends for the bitter present&mdash;a
+future in which Castalia might have peace and safety at least, and in
+which her mind might regain its balance. He would be gentle, and
+patient, and tender with her; and, if they were in a position that
+offered no such temptations as the post-office at Whitford, the anxiety
+to all who regarded Castalia would be greatly lessened. Lord Seely was,
+as he had said, too much stunned by the whole interview to follow
+Algernon's rapid eloquence step by step. He felt that he must have time
+for reflection; besides, he was physically exhausted. He bade Algernon
+leave him for a time, and return later in the day. He would give orders
+that he should be admitted at once. "You&mdash;you have not seen my lady?"
+said Lord Seely hesitatingly.</p>
+
+<p>"No; I purposely avoided doing so. She would have naturally inquired the
+cause of my unexpected presence in town, and I could speak of all this
+trouble to nobody on earth but yourself, my lord."</p>
+
+<p>"Right, right, Ancram. But my lady will not fail to learn that you have
+been here, and we must give her some reason."</p>
+
+<p>"I can say, if you choose, that I came to London on post-office
+business."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely bowed his head almost humbly, and Algernon left him. He left
+him with an air of sombre resignation, but inwardly he felt himself to
+be master of the situation.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XV" id="CHAPTER_XV"></a>CHAPTER XV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Rubbish!" cried my lady. "It's a trick. <i>I</i> know the Ancrams, and there
+isn't one of them, and never was one of them&mdash;of the Warwickshire
+Ancrams, that is&mdash;who would stick at a lie!"</p>
+
+<p>Lady Seely was in a towering passion. She had met Algernon Errington on
+the stairs as he was leaving her husband's room for the second time that
+afternoon. Algernon had slipped past her with a silent bow, and had
+refused to return, although she screamed after him at the full pitch of
+her lungs. Upon this Lady Seely had gone to her husband's room, and in a
+few minutes had drawn from him the confession that he had promised
+Algernon to use his utmost endeavours to obtain a post for him on the
+Continent. And then, on her violent opposition to this scheme, Lord
+Seely had been led on to tell her pretty nearly what Algernon had told
+him; dwelling very strongly on the circumstance that Castalia was in a
+strange, excited state, and might not be deemed responsible for her
+actions. But neither did this terrible revelation make much impression
+on my lady.</p>
+
+<p>"Rubbish!" she said again. "And if she is in this queer excited
+condition, what makes her so?"</p>
+
+<p>"Belinda, you do not realise the full extent. This is a more serious, a
+more frightful matter than you seem to think."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no it isn't, my lord! You'll see! A young rascal, to come here with
+his cock-and-a-bull stories, and try to frighten you into getting a
+berth for him! Why, there's nothing to be had, if one was willing to
+try, except the consulate at what's-his-name, on the Mediterranean, that
+Mr. Buller mentioned when you spoke to him about my nephew."</p>
+
+<p>"I thought that might be got for Ancram, Belinda."</p>
+
+<p>"Got for Ancram! Fiddlestick's end! What next? If the consulate is to be
+had, Reginald shall have it, that's flat!"</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely lay back in his chair and groaned.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," cried his wife, her cheeks flaming with anger until the rouge she
+wore seemed but a pale pigment on the hot colour beneath, "there it is!
+He has made you ever so much worse; upset you completely; thrown you
+back a fortnight, as Dr. Nokes said. He couldn't think what was the
+matter when he came at one o'clock. No more could I. 'My lord appears to
+have been agitated!' said he. Agitated! Yes; <i>I'd</i> agitate that young
+villain with a vengeance if I could get hold of him!"</p>
+
+<p>"But you agitate me&mdash;<i>me</i>, Belinda. And, let me tell you, that you are
+not showing a proper feeling in the case as regards Castalia; my niece
+Castalia; poor unhappy girl!"</p>
+
+<p>My lady stood up&mdash;she had risen to her feet in her wrath against
+Algernon&mdash;big, florid, loud of voice, and vehement of will, and looked
+down upon her husband in his invalid's chair. And as she looked into his
+face she perceived, and acknowledged to herself, that it would not do to
+drive him to extremities; that on this occasion neither indolence,
+habit, and bodily weakness on the one hand, nor sheer force of tongue
+and temper on the other, would avail to make him succumb to her. She
+changed her tone, and began to give her view of the case. She gave it
+the more effectively in that she spoke the truth, as far as the
+representation of her genuine opinion went. She did not believe a word
+about Castalia's having stolen money-letters. (Lord Seely winced when
+she blurted out the accusation nakedly in so many words.) Not one word!
+As to the gossip in Whitford, that might be, or might not; they had but
+Ancram's word for it. If Castalia <i>was</i> in this nervous, miserable state
+of mind; if she did pry on her husband, and prowl about the
+post-office, and even open his letters (<i>that</i> might be; nothing more
+likely!); if all these statements were true, what conclusion did they
+point to? Not that Castalia was a thief (my lord put his hand up at the
+word, as if to ward off a stab), but that she was <i>insanely jealous</i>.</p>
+
+<p>The suggestion brought a gleam of comfort to Lord Seely. And it approved
+itself to his reason. The one explanation was in harmony with all that
+he knew of his niece's character. The other was not.</p>
+
+<p>"Jealous, eh, Belinda?"</p>
+
+<p>"Of course! <i>Insanely</i> jealous, that always was her character, when she
+lived in our house. She was jealous of Lady Harriet Dormer; she was
+jealous of everybody and everything that Ancram looked at."</p>
+
+<p>"Jealous!" repeated my lord musingly. "But to act so strangely&mdash;to
+expose herself to animadversion&mdash;to go the length of opening desks and
+letters!&mdash;She must have had some cause, some great provocation."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing more likely! Ancram is good-looking and young; and
+Castalia&mdash;isn't."</p>
+
+<p>"But where did she procure that money without her husband's knowledge?"</p>
+
+<p>"Don't know, I'm sure."</p>
+
+<p>"And her extravagance, and running him into debt as she has done&mdash;it
+seems to point to some mental aberration, does it not, Belinda?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, fiddle-faddle, my lord! <i>Why</i> this, and <i>how</i> that! How do we know
+what truth there is in the whole story?"</p>
+
+<p>"Belinda?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, bless you, I'm too old a bird to be caught by any chaff the
+<i>Ancrams</i> can offer me."</p>
+
+<p>"But, good heavens, Belinda, it is utterly incredible&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing's incredible of an Ancram in the way of lying," returned the
+great lady of that family with much coolness. "This young jackanapes has
+got into a scrape down at What-do-ye-call-it. Things have gone wrong in
+the office&mdash;(I'll be bound he don't mind his business a bit)&mdash;he and his
+wife have got into debt between them. He don't like the place; and after
+bothering your life out for money, he comes off here without 'with your
+leave' or 'by your leave,' and asks to be sent abroad. That's my notion
+of the matter. And any way, if I were you, Valentine, I should take no
+sort of action, nor commit myself in any way, until I'd had Castalia's
+version of the story."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely pressed his hand to his forehead, and writhed on his chair.
+"I wish to God that I could go to the place and speak with Castalia
+myself!" he cried. "There are things that cannot be written. But here I
+am a prisoner. It is a dreadful misfortune."</p>
+
+<p>"<i>I</i> can't undertake to go trapesing down there in this weather,"
+exclaimed my lady. "And, besides, I wouldn't leave you just now."</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely by no means wished that his wife should interfere personally
+in the matter. He well knew that nothing but discord was likely to arise
+from any interview between Castalia and her aunt. "There is no one I
+could send," he murmured. "No one I could trust."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! It would never do to send anybody at all. This kind of family
+wash had better be done in private. I tell you what you do,
+Valentine&mdash;you just dictate a letter to me to be sent to Castalia. Send
+it off <i>at once</i>. When does Ancram return? To-morrow? Very well, then.
+Send it off <i>at once</i>, so that it shall reach Whitford before he does."</p>
+
+<p>"Why so, Belinda?" asked my lord anxiously.</p>
+
+<p>"Why so? Dear me, Valentine; how st&mdash;&mdash;unsuspicious you are! If Ancram
+was there when the letter arrived, do you suppose she would ever get
+it?"</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely stared at the florid, fat, unfeeling face before him, with a
+sensation of oppression and dismay. How was it possible to attribute
+such actions and motives to persons of one's own family with an air of
+such matter-of-fact indifference? It was not the first time that his
+wife's coarseness of feeling had been thrust on his observation to the
+shocking of his own finer taste and sentiment&mdash;for my lord was a
+gentleman at heart&mdash;but this was an amount of phlegmatic cynicism which
+hurt him to the core. He could not forget that it was his wife who had
+promoted the marriage of Castalia with this young man. It was his wife
+who had declared that the Honourable Miss Kilfinane was not likely to
+make a better match. It was his wife who had urged him to put young
+Errington into the Whitford Post-office, declaring that the place was in
+every way a suitable one for him. And now it was his wife who coolly
+described Ancram as a wretch, full of the vilest duplicity!</p>
+
+<p>The fact was, that my lady was by no means so indifferent on the subject
+as her words and manner would seem to imply. She was&mdash;not pained as Lord
+Seely was, but&mdash;angered excessively. She foresaw various troubles to
+herself and her husband&mdash;even the distant possibility of having Castalia
+"returned upon their hands," as she phrased it, and of having, sooner or
+later, to find money, or make interest, to get Ancram a berth which she
+would more willingly have bestowed on some of her nearer kith and kin.
+And her fashion of venting her anger was roundly to declare Ancram
+Errington capable of anything! And in her heart she believed him
+capable of a good deal of falsehood.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely made no immediate reply to his wife's suggestion. He was ill
+and grieved, and he felt as if his final exit from this world of
+troubles might not be altogether undesirable. His interview with
+Algernon had agitated him terribly. His interview with his
+wife&mdash;although she had opened the door for a ray of hope that things
+might be not quite so terribly bad as he had feared&mdash;had certainly not
+soothed him. But before the departure of the evening mail that night, he
+had completed and despatched a letter to Castalia. He had insisted on
+writing it with his own hand, sitting up in bed to do so, although his
+fingers were scarcely able to guide the pen.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Algernon was spending a very pleasant evening. He went to the
+club to which the Honourable Jack Price had introduced him during the
+brief butterfly period of his London existence. There he found the
+genial Jack, friendly, affectionate, expansive, as ever: a trifle
+balder, maybe, but otherwise unchanged. There, too, he found several of
+his former acquaintances ("old friends," he called them), who, after
+having his name recalled to their recollection by Jack Price, said,
+"Hulloa, Errington, where the dooce have you been hiding yourself?" and
+shook hands with the utmost cordiality. Then Jack Price insisted on
+adjourning to a favourite haunt of his, and ordering supper in
+celebration of Algernon's unexpected visit. And the "old friends" were
+flatteringly willing to do Algernon the honour of eating it. They were
+mostly unfledged lads, such as affected very often the society of Jack
+Price, who was really a kind companion, and gave the boys long lectures
+on steadiness of purpose and energy, illustrated by warning examples
+from his own career, and delivered amid such agreeable accompaniments to
+moral reflection as hot whisky-punch and first-rate Havanas. But there
+were one or two older men: a newspaper editor from Dublin, who had been
+at college with Jack; and a grey-whiskered major of cavalry, who had
+served with Jack during his brief military career; and a middle-aged
+attaché to His Majesty's legation at the Grand Duchy of Prundenhausen,
+who had been a contemporary of Jack in the Foreign Office. And all these
+gentlemen, being warmed by wine and meat, became excessively
+companionable and entertaining. The Dublin editor, a fat, short, rather
+humorous-looking individual, sang Irish sentimental ballads with a sweet
+tenor voice, and, at the whisky-punch stage of the entertainment,
+brought tears into the eyes of the cavalry major and Jack Price. The
+middle-aged attaché did not cry; he considered such a manifestation
+beneath the dignity of the diplomatic service. And although he affected
+a bitter tone, and secretly considered himself to be a mute inglorious
+Talleyrand, much injured and unappreciated by the blundering chiefs at
+the Foreign Office, yet to outsiders he maintained the dignity of the
+service, at the cost of a good deal of trouble and starch.</p>
+
+<p>Algernon did not cry either. Indeed, the combination of sentimental
+ballad and stout Dublin editor struck him as being pleasantly comic. But
+he paid the singer so easy and well-turned a compliment as put to shame
+the clumsy "Thanks, O'Reilly!" "By Jove, that was delightful!" "What a
+sweet whistle you have of your own!" and the general shout of "Bravo!"
+by which the others expressed their approbation. And then he sang
+himself&mdash;one of the French romances for which he had gained a little
+reputation among a certain society in town. The romance was somewhat
+thread-bare, and the singer's voice out of practice; still, the
+performance was favourably received. But Algernon soon changed his
+ground, and, eschewing music altogether, began to entertain his hearers
+with stories about the eccentric worthies of Whitford, illustrated by
+admirable mimicry of their peculiarities of voice, face, and
+phraseology, so that he soon had the table in a roar of laughter, and
+achieved a genuine success. Jack Price was enchanted&mdash;partly with the
+consciousness that it was he who had provided his friends with this
+diverting entertainment, and explained to every one who would listen to
+him: "Oh, you know, it's great! What? Great, sir! Mathews isn't a patch
+on him. Inimitable, what? He is the dearest, brightest, most lovable
+fellow! What a burning shame that a thing of this sort should be hidden
+under a bushel&mdash;I mean, down in what-d'ye-call-it! <i>By</i> George! What?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes; Algernon spent a very agreeable evening, and thoroughly enjoyed
+himself. He certainly had a wonderful share of what his mother called
+"the Ancram elasticity!"</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVI" id="CHAPTER_XVI"></a>CHAPTER XVI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Mrs. Errington was greatly astonished to hear of Algernon's sudden
+departure from Whitford. The news came to her through Mrs. Thimbleby,
+who had learned it from the baker, who had been told by the barman at
+the "Blue Bell" that young Mr. Errington had gone off to London by the
+night mail on Monday. At first Mrs. Errington was incredulous. But Mrs.
+Thimbleby's information was so circumstantial, that at length her lodger
+resolved to go to Ivy Lodge and ascertain the truth. She found Castalia
+in a very gloomy humour. Yes; Ancram was gone, she said. Why? Well, <i>he</i>
+said he went because Lord Seely was ill. She, for her part, made no such
+statement. And, beyond that, it was not possible to draw much
+information out of her.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Errington, however, returned not altogether ill-pleased to her
+lodgings, and assumed an air of majestic melancholy. She desired Mrs.
+Thimbleby to prepare a cup of chocolate for her, and to bring it
+forthwith to the sitting-room. And when it appeared she began to sip it
+languidly, and to hold forth, and to enjoy herself.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my dear good soul," she said, half closing her eyes and slowly
+shaking her head, "I've had a great shock&mdash;a great shock!"</p>
+
+<p>"Deary me, ma'am!" cried simple Mrs. Thimbleby, with ready sympathy,
+looking into her lodger's round comely face. "Nothing wrong with Mr.
+Algernon, I hope?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, thank Heaven! Not that; but perhaps the next greatest trial that
+could befall me, in the illness of a dear relative."</p>
+
+<p>"Young Mrs.&mdash;&mdash;" Mrs. Thimbleby checked herself, having been reproved
+for using that distinctive epithet of "young" to Algernon's wife, and
+substituted the form of words her lodger had taught her. "The Honourable
+Mrs. Errington ain't ill, ma'am, is she?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, my good creature. We had a despatch last evening announcing the
+illness of Lord Seely. It was sent to Algy, because dear Lady Seely was
+so fearful of startling me. And, for the same reason, dear Algy went off
+without telling me a word about it."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Thimbleby had only the haziest notion as to what kinship existed
+between Mrs. Errington and the nobleman in question. But she knew that
+her lodger was nearly connected with high folks; but she had often been
+troubled by doubts and misgivings, as to how far this fact might
+militate against her lodger's spiritual welfare, as being apt to promote
+worldliness and vain-glory. But Mrs. Thimbleby was full of abounding
+charity, and she was always ready to attribute what appeared to her evil
+to her own "poor head," rather than to other people's poor heart. So she
+merely expressed a hope that "the poor gentleman would soon get over
+it."</p>
+
+<p>"I trust so, Mrs. Thimbleby. His removal from the scene of life would be
+a terrible loss to this country. From the sovereign downwards, we should
+all feel it."</p>
+
+<p>"Should we, ma'am?"</p>
+
+<p>"Not, of course, as acutely as the family would feel it. That could not
+be, of course! But I trust he will recover. I wish I could have
+accompanied Algy to town, to help to nurse the dear patient, and take
+some of the care off the shoulders of my poor darling cousin, Belinda.
+Belinda is Lady Seely's Christian-name, my good Thimbleby. But of course
+that was impossible. I have not strength for it."</p>
+
+<p>"No, for sure, ma'am; but them high gentle-folks like them&mdash;lords, I
+mean, will be sure to have nurse-tenders, and doctors, and servants, as
+many as they need!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, as to that&mdash;&mdash;! The king's own physician twice daily."</p>
+
+<p>"I hope," said Mrs. Thimbleby, timidly, before leaving the room, "that
+the Lord will soften your daughter-in-law's heart to you in this
+trouble."</p>
+
+<p>It must be understood that Mrs. Errington had of late, and especially
+since Castalia's outburst against Rhoda Maxfield, spoken of her
+daughter-in-law with a good deal of disapprobation; pitying her son for
+all he had to endure, and lamenting that he should have thrown himself
+away as he had done, when so many brilliant matches were, as it might be
+said, at his feet. "The dear Seelys," she would say, "considered that he
+was making a sacrifice. That, I happen to <i>know</i>. But she displayed so
+undisguised an attachment&mdash;and Algy&mdash;Algy is the soul of chivalry. All
+the Ancrams ever have been."</p>
+
+<p>It had certainly taken some time for the worthy lady to discover that
+her son's marriage wasn't quite a satisfactory one. But when the
+discovery did force itself on her perceptions, she was by no means
+tender to Castalia. Her moral toughness of hide prevented her from being
+much hurt by such speeches as, "Dear me! Not happy together! Why, I
+thought this was such a model marriage, Mrs. Errington!" Or, "Ah!
+jealous and fretful, is she? Well, I always thought it wouldn't do. But
+of course I said nothing. You plumed yourself so much on the match, you
+know, at the time." She could always retreat to illogical strongholds of
+unreason, whence she sent forth retorts, and arguments, and statements,
+which were found to be unanswerable by the average intellect of
+Whitford.</p>
+
+<p>"I wonder the woman isn't ashamed&mdash;really now!" exclaimed Miss Chubb
+once in the exasperation of listening to Mrs. Errington calmly superior
+to facts, and of being quite unable to touch her self-complacency by any
+recapitulation of them.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you?" asked Rose McDougall tartly. "How odd! Now, as to me, nothing
+would surprise me more than to find Mrs. Errington ashamed of anything."</p>
+
+<p>These and similar things had been freely spoken in Whitford, and
+although the world resented Mrs. Errington's manner of complaint, as
+being deficient in humility and candour&mdash;for it is provoking to find
+people who ought to lament in sackcloth and ashes, holding up their
+heads and making a merit of their deserved misfortunes&mdash;yet the world
+admitted that Mrs. Errington had substantial cause for complaint. The
+Honourable Castalia was really intolerable, and the only possible excuse
+for her behaviour was&mdash;what had been whispered with many nods and becks,
+and much mystery&mdash;that she was not quite of sound mind. And when the
+news began to circulate in Whitford that young Errington had gone to
+London suddenly, and almost secretly, the first, and most general,
+impression was that he had run away from his wife. To this solution the
+tradesmen to whom he owed money added, "And his debts!" Mrs. Errington's
+statement as to Lord Seely's illness was not much believed. And if he
+were ill, was it likely that my lord should cause Algernon Errington to
+be sent for? Later on in the course of the day, it began to be known
+that Castalia had accompanied her husband to the coach-office, so that
+his departure had not been clandestine so far as she was concerned, at
+all events. But was it not rather odd, the postmaster rushing off in
+this sudden manner? How did he manage to leave his business? Mr. Cooper
+never did such things! Not, probably, that it would make much difference
+whether Algernon Errington were here or not; for everybody knew pretty
+well that he was a mere cipher in the office, and Mr. Gibbs did
+everything!</p>
+
+<p>As to Mr. Gibbs, he was inwardly much disquieted at his chief's
+unwarranted absence. He had received a note which Algernon had left
+behind him to be delivered on the morning after his departure. But the
+note was not very satisfactory:&mdash;</p>
+
+<blockquote><p>"<span class="smcap">My dear Gibbs</span>," it said&mdash;"I am off to town by the night mail.
+My wife's uncle, Lord Seely, is ill, and I must see him. I
+shall speak to him on your behalf, of course. The inheritance
+must soon fall to you, without waiting for the demise of the
+present holder. I shall be back on Wednesday at latest.
+Meanwhile, I trust implicitly to your discretion.</p>
+
+<p>"Yours always,</p>
+
+<p>"A. A. E."</p></blockquote>
+
+<p>This was oracular enough. But Mr. Obadiah Gibbs understood very well, as
+he read it, that by the "inheritance" which must soon fall to him,
+Algernon meant the place of postmaster. Still there was nothing in the
+note to commit Algernon in any way whatever. And his going off to London
+without leave and without notice, was a proceeding which shocked all the
+old clerk's notions of what was fitting. The thought did cross his mind,
+"Suppose he should never come back! Suppose he is off to America, as a
+short cut out of his troubles!" The thing was possible. And the
+possibility haunted Mr. Obadiah Gibbs persistently, though he tried to
+argue it away.</p>
+
+<p>In the afternoon of Tuesday, Rhoda Maxfield walked into the post-office,
+and asked to speak with Mr. Errington. She was on foot and alone, and
+was looking so pretty and blooming as to arrest the attention of the dry
+old clerk. When he told her that Mr. Errington was away in London, and
+would not be back until the next day, she appeared disappointed. "Will
+you tell him, please, that I came, and wanted to speak to him
+particularly, and beg him to come to me as soon as ever he gets back to
+Whitford?" she said, in her soft lady's voice. Mr. Gibbs did not answer
+her. He stared straight over her shoulder as if Medusa's head had
+suddenly appeared behind her. Rhoda turned to see what had petrified Mr.
+Gibbs into silence, and saw Castalia Errington.</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda was startled, but more from sympathy with Gibbs than from any
+other reason. The quick colour mounted into her cheeks and deepened
+their blush rose hue to damask. "Oh, Mrs. Errington," she said, and held
+out her hand. Castalia did not take it; did not speak; did not, after
+one baleful stare of anger, look at her. "Come into the private office,"
+she said, addressing Gibbs in a dry, husky voice, and with a manner of
+imperious harshness. As she stood with her hand on the lock of the door
+leading into the inner room, she looked round over her shoulder and
+flung these words at Rhoda like a missile; "You have made a mistake. My
+husband is not here to-day, of all days. He has been remiss in not
+letting you know of his journey. But men are apt, I have been told, to
+fail in polite attention to persons of your sort."</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Errington!" cried Rhoda, turning pale, less at the words than at
+the look and tone which interpreted their meaning so that it was
+impossible altogether to misunderstand it. "I came here to speak to Mr.
+Errington about something he wished to hear of. And if I may say it to
+you instead&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>"To ME? How dare you?" Castalia turned full on her with a livid, furious
+face, lit by a pair of hollow, burning eyes. Poor, artificial, small
+product of her social surroundings as she usually seemed, the passion in
+the woman transfigured her now with a tragic fire and force, before
+which Rhoda's innocent lily nature seemed shrivelled and discoloured,
+like a flower in the blast of a furnace. It was strange to himself, but
+Mr. Gibbs, as he looked at the two women, and was fully conscious on
+which side lay the right in the matter, could not help feeling an
+inexplicable thrill of sympathy with Castalia as she stood there
+breathing quickly and hard, with dilated nostrils and suffering,
+tearless eyes. The truth is that there was some subtle ingredient in Mr.
+Gibbs's composition which was more cognate with flesh and blood&mdash;even
+erring, passionate flesh and blood&mdash;than with the cool fluid that
+circulates in the petals of a lily. David Powell would have said that it
+was a manifest stirring of the Old Adam which caused the regenerate
+Obadiah Gibbs&mdash;a professing Christian, a confirmed and tried pillar of
+Methodism, a man whose precious experiences had been poured forth for
+the edification of many a band meeting&mdash;to be conscious for the first
+time of some fellow-feeling with Castalia, at the very moment when she
+was conducting herself in a manner to shock every sentiment of what was
+just and fitting. But whether it were due to original sin, or to
+whatever other cause, the fact remained that Obadiah Gibbs for the first
+time in his life now felt disposed to spare and screen the postmaster's
+wife.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll give the message when Mr. Errington comes back," said he to Rhoda,
+almost hustling her out of the office as he spoke. "The poor thing is
+not very well," he added, in a lower voice. "She has been a good deal
+cut up, one way and another. You mustn't think anything of her manner,
+nor bear malice, Miss Maxfield. Good morning."</p>
+
+<p>When Rhoda was gone&mdash;feeling almost dizzy with surprise and
+fright&mdash;Gibbs followed Mrs. Errington into the inner office. He found
+her openly examining the contents of the table-drawer, having tossed all
+the papers she had found in it pell-mell on to the table. Gibbs entered
+and closed the door carefully. "Mrs. Errington," he began, intending to
+remonstrate with her&mdash;or, perhaps, utter something stronger than a
+remonstrance&mdash;on her manner of conducting herself in the office, when
+she interrupted him at once, looking up from the heap of papers. "What
+message did that creature give you for my husband?" she asked abruptly.</p>
+
+<p>"Now, Mrs. Errington, you really must not go on in this way! I'm
+responsible to Mr. Errington, you know, for things being right here."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you hear me? What message did that creature give you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh now, really, Mrs. Errington, I think you ought not to speak of Rhoda
+Maxfield in that way. She is a very good girl, and you hurt her terribly
+by your manner."</p>
+
+<p>Castalia smiled bitterly. "Did I?" she said. "Of course you're in league
+with her. Why does this good young woman come here in secret to see my
+husband? What can she want to say to him that cannot be said openly?"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot hear such things, ma'am; I cannot, indeed. If you would give
+yourself an instant for reflection, you would remember that Miss
+Maxfield offered to tell her message to you yourself."</p>
+
+<p>"Offered to tell me! Do you really suppose I am duped by such low
+tricks? I heard her say, 'Send him to me directly he comes back'&mdash;heard
+it with my own ears. But of course you won't tell me the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"I am obliged to say, Mrs. Errington, that you really must leave the
+office. I am very sorry, but I am responsible in Mr. Errington's
+absence, and I cannot allow you to turn everything topsy-turvy here in
+this way. There has been trouble enough by your coming here already."</p>
+
+<p>"Trouble enough! Who says so? Who is troubled?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Errington is troubled, and I am troubled, and&mdash;in short, it's
+altogether out of rule."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he confesses, does he, that he is afraid of my coming here to make
+discoveries about him? Why should he be troubled if he had nothing to
+conceal?"</p>
+
+<p>Castalia spoke with trembling eagerness and excitement. She had thrown
+all semblance of dignity or reserve to the winds. She would have spoken
+as she was speaking at that moment in Whitford market-place. Gibbs
+looked at her, and a doubt came into his mind as to whether his
+suspicions, and other people's suspicions, about her were quite so
+well-founded as he had thought. She was terribly violent, jealous,
+insolent, unconverted, full of the leaven of unrighteousness&mdash;but was
+she a practised hypocrite, a woman experienced in dishonesty? For the
+life of him, Obadiah Gibbs could not feel so sure of this as he had
+felt, now that he looked into her poor, haggard face, and met her eyes,
+and heard her utterly incautious and vehement speeches.</p>
+
+<p>"As to me not telling you the truth, Mrs. Errington," he said, "I
+suppose you know the truth as to why your visits here bring trouble on
+everybody?"</p>
+
+<p>"Tell it me, you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I&mdash;oh you must be aware of it, I suppose. And if I was to tell
+you, you would only be more angry and offended with me than ever, though
+what I have done to excite your displeasure I don't know."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me this truth that I know so well! Do you think I should seriously
+care for anything <i>you</i> could say, except as it concerned my husband?"</p>
+
+<p>"Mrs. Errington, I don't know whether you are feigning or not. But,
+anyway, I think it my duty to answer you with Christian sincerity. It is
+borne in upon me that I ought to do so."</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, go on, go on!" cried Castalia, drumming with restless fingers on
+the table and looking up at the clerk with eyes that blazed with
+excitement and impatience.</p>
+
+<p>"You are aware that there have been unpleasant circumstances at the
+post-office&mdash;letters lost&mdash;<i>money-letters</i> lost. Well, your name has
+been mentioned in connection with those losses. It is known in Whitford
+that you come haunting the office at all hours when your husband is
+away. A little while ago you paid a bill with some notes that were
+endorsed in a peculiar way. People ask where you got those notes. I
+thought it my duty to mention the subject to Mr. Errington the other
+day. He was greatly distressed, of course. He said he should interrogate
+you about the notes. My advice to you is&mdash;in all sincerity and charity,
+as the Lord sees me&mdash;to tell your husband the truth, whatever it is."</p>
+
+<p>He ended his speech with a tremor of compassion in his voice, and with a
+sudden breakdown of his rhetorical manner, for Castalia's face changed
+so piteously, so terribly, as he spoke, that the man's heart was deeply
+touched by it. She grew ashy pale. The quick fingers that had been
+tapping impatiently on the table seemed turned to lead. They lay there
+heavy and motionless. Her mouth was half open, and her eyes stared
+straight before her at the blank wall of the yard, as though they saw a
+spectre.</p>
+
+<p>"Lord have mercy on us, she is guilty!" thought Obadiah Gibbs. And at
+that moment if he could have hidden her crime from the eyes of all men,
+I believe he would have done it at the cost of a lie.</p>
+
+<p>"Of course you're not bound to say anything to me, you know, Mrs.
+Errington," he went on, after a short pause. And as he spoke he bent
+nearer to her, to rouse her, for she seemed neither to hear nor to see
+him. "You'd better go home now at once, you don't seem very strong."</p>
+
+<p>Still she did not move.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Mrs. Errington, I&mdash;you may rely upon my not breaking a
+word&mdash;not one syllable to anybody else, if you&mdash;if you will try to make
+things straight again as far as in your power lies. Go home now, pray
+do!"</p>
+
+<p>Still she did not move.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't look much able to walk, I fear. Shall I send the boy for a
+fly? Let me send for a fly?"</p>
+
+<p>He softly touched her shoulder as he spoke, and she immediately turned
+her head and answered with a composure that startled him, "Yes; get me a
+fly." Then she sat quite still again, staring at the wall as before.</p>
+
+<p>Gibbs went out into the outer office and sent the boy for a vehicle.
+There he remained, pen in hand, behind his desk until the jingle of the
+fly was heard at the door. He went back himself to the private office to
+call Castalia, and found her sitting in exactly the same place and
+attitude. She rose mechanically to her feet when he told her the fly was
+ready, but as she began to walk towards the door she staggered and
+caught at Gibbs's arm. He supported her with a sort of quiet
+gravity;&mdash;much as if he had been her old servant, and she a cripple
+whose infirmity was a matter of course,&mdash;which showed much delicacy of
+feeling, and as they neared the door he said in her ear, "Take my
+advice, ma'am, and tell your husband the truth." She turned her eyes on
+him with a singular look, but said nothing. "Tell him the truth!
+and&mdash;and look upward. Lift your heart in prayer. There is a fountain of
+grace and love ready for all who seek it!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not for me," she answered in a very low but distinct voice.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, my poor soul, don't say so! Don't think so!"</p>
+
+<p>By this time she was in the carriage, having been almost lifted into it
+by Gibbs. She was perfectly quiet and tearless, and as the vehicle drove
+away, and Gibbs stood watching it disappear, he said to himself that her
+face was as the face of a corpse.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVII" id="CHAPTER_XVII"></a>CHAPTER XVII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Castalia was driven home, and walked up the path of the tiny garden in
+front of Ivy Lodge with a step much like her ordinary one. She went into
+the drawing-room and looked about her curiously, as if she were a
+stranger seeing the place for the first time. Then she sat down for a
+minute, still in her bonnet and shawl. But she got up again quickly from
+the sofa, holding her hand to her throat as if she were choking, and
+went out to the garden behind the house, and from thence to the meadows
+near the river. There was at the bottom of the garden, and outside of
+it, a miserable, dilapidated wooden shed, euphoniously called a
+summer-house. There was a worm-eaten wooden bench in it looking towards
+the Whit, and commanding a view of the wide meadows on the other side of
+it, of a turn in the river, now lead-coloured beneath a dreary sky, and
+of the distant spire of Duckwell Church rising beyond the hazy woods of
+Pudcombe. No one ever entered this summer-house. It was rotting to
+pieces with damp and decay, and was inhabited by a colony of insects and
+a toad that squatted in one corner. In this wretched place Castalia sat
+down, being indeed unable to walk farther, but feeling a sensation of
+suffocation at the mere thought of returning to the house. She fancied
+she could not breathe there. A steaming mist was rising from the river
+and the damp meadows beyond it. The grey clouds seemed to touch the grey
+horizon. It was cold, and the last brown leaf or two, hanging, as it
+seemed, by a thread on the boughs of a tree just within sight from the
+summer-house, twirled, and shook, and shuddered in the slight gusts of
+wind that arose now and again. There was not a sound to be heard except
+the mournful lowing of some cattle in a distant field, until all at once
+a movement of the air brought from Whitford the sound of the old chimes
+muffled by the heavy atmosphere. There sat Castalia and stared at the
+river, and the mist, and the brown withered leaves, much as she had
+stared at the blank yard wall in the office.</p>
+
+<p>"My heart is sore pained within me, and the terrors of death are fallen
+upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath
+overwhelmed me!"</p>
+
+<p>She heard a voice saying these words distinctly. She did not start. She
+scarcely felt surprise. The direful lamentation was in harmony with all
+she saw, and heard, and felt.</p>
+
+<p>Again the voice spoke: "Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and
+thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee and were delivered; they
+trusted in thee and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a
+reproach of men, and despised of the people!"</p>
+
+<p>Castalia heard, scarcely listening. The words flowed by her like a tune
+that brings tears to the eyes by mere sympathy with its sad sound.</p>
+
+<p>Presently a man passed before her, walking with an unequal pace&mdash;now
+quick, now slow, now stopping outright. He had his hands clasped at the
+back of his neck; his head was bent down, and he was talking aloud to
+himself.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, there have been such. The lot has fallen upon me. I know it with a
+sure knowledge. It is borne in upon me with a certainty that pierces
+through bone and marrow. I am of the number of those that go down to the
+pit. Why, O Lord&mdash;Nay! though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him. For
+he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come
+together in judgment."</p>
+
+<p>He stopped in his walk; stood still for a second or two, and then turned
+to pace back again. In so doing he saw Castalia. She also looked full
+at him, and recognised the Methodist preacher. David Powell went up to
+her without hesitation. He remembered her at once; and he remembered,
+too, in a confused way, something of what Mrs. Thimbleby had been
+recently telling him about dissensions between this woman and her
+husband; of unhappiness and quarrels; and&mdash;what was that the widow had
+said of young Mrs. Errington being jealous of Rhoda? Ah, yes! He had it
+all now.</p>
+
+<p>The time had been when David Powell would have had to wrestle hard with
+indignation against anyone who should have spoken evil of Rhoda. He
+would have felt a hot, human flush of anger; and would have combated it
+as a stirring of the unregenerate man within him. But all such feelings
+were over with him. No ray from the outside world appeared able to
+pierce the gloom which had gathered thicker and thicker in his own mind,
+unless it touched his sense of sympathy with suffering. He was still
+sensitive to that, as certain chemicals are to the light.</p>
+
+<p>He went close up to Castalia, and said, without any preliminary or usual
+greeting, "You are in affliction. Have you called upon the Lord? Have
+you cast your burthen upon him? He is a good shepherd. He will carry the
+weary and footsore of his flock lest they faint by the way and perish
+utterly."</p>
+
+<p>It was noticeable when he spoke that his voice, which had been of such
+full sweetness, was now hoarse, and even harsh here and there, like a
+fine instrument that has been jarred. This did not seem to be altogether
+due to physical causes; for there still came out of his mouth every now
+and then a tone that was exquisitely musical. But the discord seemed to
+be in the spirit that moved the voice, and could not guide it with
+complete freedom and mastery.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia shook her head impatiently, and turned her eyes away from him.
+But she did not do so with any of her old hauteur and intimation of the
+vast distance which separated her from her humbler fellow-creatures.
+Pain of mind had familiarised her with the conception that she held her
+humanity in common with a very heterogeneous multitude. Had Powell been
+a sleek, smug personage like Brother Jackson, veiling profound
+self-complacency under the technical announcement of himself as a
+miserable sinner, she might have turned from him in disgust. As it was,
+she felt merely the unwillingness to be disturbed, of a creature in whom
+the numbness of apathy has succeeded to acute anguish. She wanted to be
+rid of him. He looked at her with the yearning pity which was so
+fundamental a part of his nature. "Pray!" he said, clasping his hands
+together. "Go to your Father, which is in Heaven, and He shall give you
+rest. Oh, God loves you&mdash;he <i>loves</i> you!"</p>
+
+<p>"No one loves me," returned Castalia, with white rigid lips. Then she
+got up from the bench, and went back into her own garden and into the
+house, with the air of a person walking in sleep.</p>
+
+<p>Powell looked after her sadly. "If she would but pray!" he murmured. "I
+would pray for her. I would wrestle with the Lord on her behalf. But&mdash;of
+late I have feared more and more that my prayers are not acceptable;
+that my voice is an abomination to the Lord."</p>
+
+<p>He resumed his walk along the river bank, speaking aloud, and
+gesticulating to himself as he went.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, Castalia wandered about her own house "like a ghost," as the
+servants said. She went from the little dining-room to the drawing-room,
+and then she painfully mounted the steep staircase to her bed-room,
+opened the door of her husband's little dressing-closet, shut it again,
+and went downstairs once more. She could not sit still; she could not
+read; she could not even think. She could only suffer, and move about
+restlessly, as if with a dim instinctive idea of escaping from her
+suffering. Presently she began to open the drawers of a little toy
+cabinet in the drawing-room, and examine their contents, as if she had
+never seen them before. From that she went to a window-seat, made
+hollow, and with a cushioned lid, so that it served as a seat and a box,
+and began to rummage among its contents. These consisted chiefly of
+valueless scraps, odds and ends, put there to be hidden and out of the
+way. Among them were some of poor Mrs. Errington's wedding-presents to
+her son and daughter-in-law. Castalia's maid, Slater, had
+unceremoniously consigned these to oblivion, together with a few other
+old-fashioned articles, under the generic name of "rubbish." There was a
+pair of hand-screens elaborately embroidered in silk, very faded and out
+of date. Mrs. Errington declared them to be the work of her grand-aunt,
+the beautiful Miss Jacintha Ancram, who made such a great match, and
+became a Marchioness. There was an ancient carved ivory fan, yellow with
+age, brought by a cadet of the house of Ancram from India, as a present
+to some forgotten sweetheart. There was a little cardboard box, covered
+with fragments of raised rice-paper, arranged in a pattern. This was the
+work of Mrs. Errington's own hands in her school-girl days, and was of
+the kind called then, if I mistake not, "filagree work." Castalia took
+these and other things out of the window-seat, and examined them and put
+them back, one by one, moving exactly like an automaton figure that had
+been wound up to perform those motions. When she came to the filagree
+box, she opened that too. There was a Tonquin bean in it, filling the
+box with its faint sweet odour. There was a pair of gold buckles, that
+seemed to be attenuated with age; and a garnet-brooch, with one or two
+stones missing. And then at the bottom of the box was something flat,
+wrapped in silver paper. She unwrapped it and looked at it.</p>
+
+<p>It was a water-colour drawing done by Algernon immediately on his return
+from Llanryddan, in the first flush of his love-making, and represented
+himself and Rhoda standing side by side in front of the little cottage
+where they had lodged there. Algernon had given himself pinker cheeks,
+bluer eyes, and more amber-coloured hair than nature had endowed him
+with. Rhoda was equally over-tinted. There was no merit in the drawing,
+which was stiff and school-boyish, but the very exaggerations of form
+and colour emphasised the likeness in a way not to be mistaken.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia trembled from head to foot as she looked on the two rosy
+simpering faces. A curious ripple or tremor ran over her body, such as
+may be observed in persons recovering consciousness after a swoon. She
+tore the drawing into small fragments. Her teeth were set. Her eyes
+glared. She looked like a murderess. She trod the scattered bits into
+the carpet with her heel. Then, as if with an afterthought, she swept
+them contemptuously into the bright steel shovel, and threw them into
+the fire, and stood and watched them blaze and smoulder. After that she
+wrapped her shawl more tightly round her&mdash;she had forgotten to remove
+either it or her bonnet on coming in&mdash;and went out at the front door,
+and walked straight into Whitford, and to Jonathan Maxfield's house.</p>
+
+<p>She asked for "the master." The old man was at home, in the little
+parlour, and Sally showed Mrs. Errington into the room almost without
+the ceremony of tapping with her knuckles at the door, and then made off
+to the kitchen to tell Mrs. Grimshaw. The lady's face had scared her.</p>
+
+<p>Old Max was sitting near the dull fire which burned in the grate. The
+big Bible, his constant companion now, lay open on the table. But he had
+not been devoting his attention to that solely. He had had a large
+old-fashioned wooden desk brought down from his own room, and had been
+fingering the papers in it, reading some, and merely glancing at the
+outside folds of others. He now looked up at Castalia without
+recognising her.</p>
+
+<p>"What is your business with me?" he asked, peering at her in perplexity.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come to speak to you&mdash;&mdash;" began Castalia; and at the first sound
+of her voice, Maxfield recognised her. He remembered the only visit she
+had paid him previously, when she came to beg that Rhoda might be
+allowed to visit her. She had taken a great fancy to his pretty Rhoda,
+this skinny, yellow-faced, fine lady. Ha! Well, she might show what
+civilities she pleased to Rhoda. No objection to that. Indeed, it was a
+proceeding to be encouraged, seeing that it probably caused a good deal
+of discomfort and embarrassment to Algernon! So he gave a little nod,
+meant to be courteous, and said, "Oh, I didn't just know you at first.
+Won't you be seated?"</p>
+
+<p>Castalia refused by a gesture, and stood still opposite to him with one
+hand on the table, apparently in some embarrassment how to begin. Then
+it flashed on old Max that this "Honourable Missis," as he called her,
+had probably come to thank him, and found it not altogether easy to do
+so. But what could Castalia have to thank him for? This; Rhoda had so
+implored her father to relieve Algernon from his anxiety about the
+bills, that at length the old man had said with a chuckle, "Tell you
+what, Rhoda, I'll hand 'em over to Mr. Diamond, and maybe he will give
+them to you as a wedding present if he gets the school. And then you can
+do what you like with 'em. My gentleman won't be above taking a present
+from you or your husband. I've seen what meanness she can do and what
+dirt he can swallow, and not even make a wry face over it! Aye, dirt as
+would turn many a poor labouring man's stomach."</p>
+
+<p>Rhoda, upon this, had consulted Matthew Diamond, and had not found it
+difficult to make him agree with her wish to give up the bills to
+Algernon. Indeed, although he had almost come to old Max's opinion of
+his former pupil, he would not for the world have behaved so as to make
+Rhoda suppose that he bore him a grudge. Rhoda's errand to the
+post-office that afternoon had been to bring Algernon this comforting
+news. She had taken care not to tell her father of Mrs. Algernon's
+behaviour, but had come home and cried a little quietly in her own room,
+and kept her tears and the cause of them to herself. Therefore it was
+that Jonathan Maxfield supposed the fine lady to have come to thank him
+for his magnanimity on behalf of her absent husband, and he was already
+preparing to give her "a dose," as he phrased it, and to spare her no
+item of Rhoda's prosperity, and wealth, and good prospects in the world.</p>
+
+<p>Castalia remained leaning with one hand on the table, and did not
+continue her speech during the second or two in which these thoughts and
+intentions were passing through old Maxfield's brain. But it was by no
+means that she hesitated from embarrassment or lack of words: rather
+the words crowded to her lips too quickly and fiercely for utterance.</p>
+
+<p>"I've come to speak to you about your daughter," she said at length.</p>
+
+<p>"Aye, aye. Miss Maxfield's a bit of a friend o' yours. Miss Maxfield's
+allus been very kind to all the fam'ly ever since we've known 'em. But
+you'd best be seated."</p>
+
+<p>"They say you are an honest, decent man," Castalia went on, neither
+seating herself nor noticing the invitation to do so. "It may be so. I
+am willing to believe it. But, if so, you are grossly deceived, cheated,
+and played upon by that vile girl."</p>
+
+<p>Maxfield brought his two clenched fists heavily down on the table, and
+half raised himself in his chair. "Stop!" said he. "Who are you talking
+of?"</p>
+
+<p>"You may believe me. I tell you I have watched&mdash;I have seen. She was in
+love with my husband years ago. She used every art to catch him. And
+now&mdash;now that he is married, she receives secret visits from him. Do you
+know that he came at night&mdash;ten o'clock at night&mdash;to your house when you
+were away? She goes to the post-office slily to see him. I caught her
+there this morning leaving a private message for him with the clerk! Is
+that decent? Is it what you wish? Do you sanction it? She writes to
+him. She has turned his heart against me. He schemes to keep me out of
+the office. I know why now. Oh yes; I am not the blind dupe they think
+for. She has made him more cruel, more wicked to me than I could have
+imagined any man <i>could</i> be. My heart is broken. But as true as there is
+a God in Heaven I'll have amends made to me. She shall beg my pardon on
+her knees. And you had better look to it, if you don't want her
+character to be torn to pieces by every foul tongue in this town. I have
+borne enough. Keep her at home. Keep her from decoying other women's
+husbands, I warn you&mdash;&mdash;"</p>
+
+<p>Maxfield, who had been struggling to reach the bell, pulled it so
+violently that the wire was broken. At the peal Betty Grimshaw came
+running in, terrified. "Mercy, brother-in-law!" she cried. "What is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Get the police," gasped old Max, as if he were choking. "Send some one
+for a policeman, to turn that mad quean out of my house. She's not fit
+for a decent house. She's&mdash;she's&mdash;&mdash;Oh, but you shall repent this! I'll
+sell you up, every stick of trumpery in the place. You audacious
+Jezebel! Turn her out of doors, I say! Do you hear me?"</p>
+
+<p>Betty and the servant stood white and quivering, looking from the old
+man unable to rise from his chair without help, and the lady who stood
+opposite to him, glaring with a Medusa face. Neither of the two
+frightened women stirred hand or foot to fulfil the master's behest. But
+Castalia relieved them from any perplexity on that score, at least, by
+voluntarily turning to leave the room. In the doorway she met Rhoda, who
+had run downstairs in alarm at the violent pealing of the bell. Castalia
+drew herself suddenly aside, as though something unspeakably loathsome
+stood in her path, held her dress away from any passing contact with the
+amazed girl, and rushed out of the house.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XVIII" id="CHAPTER_XVIII"></a>CHAPTER XVIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>Algernon's state of mind during his return journey to Whitford was very
+much pleasanter than it had been on his way up to town. To be sure, he
+had committed himself distinctly to a very grave statement. That was
+always disagreeable. But then he had made an immense impression on Lord
+Seely by his statement. He had crushed and overwhelmed that "pompous
+little ass." He had humiliated that "absurd little upstart." And&mdash;best
+of all; for these others were mere <i>dilettante</i> pleasures, which no man
+of intelligence would indulge in at the cost of his solid interests&mdash;he
+had terrified him so completely with the spectre of a public scandal and
+disgrace, that my lord was ready to do anything to help him and Castalia
+out of England. Of that there could be no doubt.</p>
+
+<p>It must be owned that Algernon had so far justified the quick suspicions
+of his Whitford creditors and acquaintances as to have conceived for a
+moment the idea of never more returning to that uninteresting town. It
+was extremely exhilarating to be in the position of a bachelor at large;
+to find himself free, for a time, of the dead weight of debt, which
+seemed to make breathing difficult in Whitford; for, although by
+plodding characters the relief might not have been felt until the debts
+were paid, Algernon Errington's spirit was of a sort that rose buoyant
+as ever, directly the external pressure was removed. It was delightful
+to be reinstated in the enjoyment of his reputation as a charming
+fellow&mdash;much fallen into oblivion at Whitford. And perhaps it was
+pleasantest of all to feel strengthened in the assurance that he still
+<i>was</i> a charming fellow, with capacities for winning admiration and
+making a brilliant figure, quite uninjured (although they had been
+temporarily eclipsed) by all the cloud of troubles which had gathered
+around him.</p>
+
+<p>So he <i>had</i>, for a moment, thought of fairly running away from wife, and
+duns, and dangers of official severities. But it was but a brief
+unsubstantial vision that flashed for an instant and was gone. Algernon
+was too clear-sighted not to perceive that the course was
+inconvenient&mdash;nay, to one of his temperament, impracticable. People who
+started off to live on their wits in a foreign country ought to be armed
+with a coarser indifference to material comforts than he was gifted
+with. Alternations of ortolans and champagne, with bread and onions,
+would be&mdash;even supposing one could be sure of the ortolans, which
+Algernon knew he could not&mdash;entirely repugnant to his temperament. He
+had no such strain of adventurousness as would have given a pleasant
+glow of excitement to the endurance of privation under any circumstances
+whatever. Professed Bohemians might talk as they pleased about kicking
+over traces, and getting rid of trammels, and so forth; but, for his
+part, he had never felt his spirit in the least oppressed by velvet
+hangings, gilded furniture, or French cookery! Whereas to be obliged to
+wear shabby gloves would have been a kind of "trammel" he would strongly
+have objected to. In a word, he desired to be luxuriously comfortable
+always. And he consistently (albeit, perhaps, mistakenly, for the
+cleverest of us are liable to error) endeavoured to be so.</p>
+
+<p>Therefore he did not ship himself aboard an emigrant vessel for the
+United States; nor did he even cross the Channel to Calais; but found
+himself in a corner of the mail-coach on the night after Jack Price's
+supper party, bowling along, not altogether unpleasantly, towards
+Whitford. He had not seen Lord Seely again. He had inquired for him at
+his house, and had been told that his lordship was worse; was confined
+to bed entirely; and that Dr. Nokes had called in two other physicians
+in consultation. "Deuce of a job if he dies before I get a berth!"
+thought Algernon. But before he had gone many yards down the street, he
+was in a great measure reassured as to that danger, by seeing Lady Seely
+in her big yellow coach, with Fido on the seat beside her, and her
+favourite nephew lounging on the cushions opposite. The nephew had been
+apparently entertaining Lady Seely by some amusing story, for she was
+laughing (rather to the ear than the eye, as was her custom; for my lady
+made a great noise, sending out "Ha-ha-ha's!" with a kind of defiant
+distinctness, whilst all the while eyes and mouth plainly professed
+themselves disdainful of too cordial a hilarity, and ready to stop short
+in a second), and stroking Fido very unconcernedly with one fat
+tightly-gloved hand. Now although Algernon did not give my lady credit
+for much depth of sentiment, he felt sure that she would, for various
+reasons, have been greatly disquieted had any danger threatened her
+husband's life, and would certainly not have left his side to drive in
+the Park with young Reginald. So he drew the inference that my lord was
+not so desperately ill as he had been told, and that the servants had
+had orders to give him that account in order to keep him away&mdash;which was
+pretty nearly the fact.</p>
+
+<p>"The old woman would be in a fury with me when my lord told her he had
+promised me that post without consulting her," thought Algernon; "and
+would tell any lie to keep me out of the house. But we shall beat her
+this time." As he so thought he pulled off his hat and made so
+distinguished and condescending a bow to my lady, that her nephew, who
+was near-sighted and did not recognise Errington, pulled off his own hat
+in a hurry, very awkwardly, and acknowledged the salute with some
+confused idea that the graceful gentleman was a foreigner of
+distinction; whilst my lady, turning purple, shook her head at him in
+anger at the whole incident. All which Algernon saw, understood, and was
+immensely diverted by.</p>
+
+<p>In summing up the results of his journey to town, he was satisfied.
+Things were certainly not so pleasant as they might be. But were they
+not better, on the whole, than when he had left Whitford? He decidedly
+thought they were; which did not, of course, diminish his sense of being
+a victim to circumstances and the Seely family. Anyway he had broken
+with Whitford. My lord <i>must</i> get him out of that <i>baraque</i>! The very
+thought of leaving the place raised his spirits. And, as he had the
+coach to himself during nearly all the journey, he was able to stretch
+his legs and make himself comfortable; and he awoke from a sound and
+refreshing sleep as the mail-coach rattled into the High Street and
+rumbled under the archway of the "Blue Bell."</p>
+
+<p>The hour was early, and the morning was raw, and Algernon resolved to
+refresh himself with a hot bath and breakfast before proceeding to Ivy
+Lodge. "No use disturbing Mrs. Errington so early," he said to the
+landlord, who appeared just as Algernon was sipping his tea before a
+blazing fire. "Very good devilled kidneys, Mr. Rumbold," he added
+condescendingly. Mr. Rumbold rubbed his hands and stood looking
+half-sulkily, half-deferentially at his guest. His wife had said to him,
+"Don't you go chatting with that young Errington, Rumbold; not if you
+want to get your money. I know what he is, and I know what you are,
+Rumbold; and he'll talk you over in no time."</p>
+
+<p>But Mr. Rumbold had allowed his own valour to override his wife's
+discretion, and had declared that he would make the young man understand
+before he left the "Blue Bell" that it was absolutely necessary to
+settle his account there without delay. And the result justified Mrs.
+Rumbold's apprehension; for Algernon Errington drove away from the inn
+without having paid even for the breakfast he had eaten there that
+morning, and having added the vehicle which carried him home to the long
+list beginning "Flys: A. Errington, Esq.," in which he figured as debtor
+to the landlord of the "Blue Bell." He had flourished Lord Seely in Mr.
+Rumbold's face with excellent effect, and was feeling quite cheerful
+when he alighted at the gate of Ivy Lodge.</p>
+
+<p>It was still early according to Castalia's reckoning&mdash;little more than
+ten o'clock. So he was not surprised at not finding her in the
+drawing-room or the dining-room. Lydia, of whom he inquired at length as
+to where her mistress was, having first bade her light a fire for him to
+have a cigar by, before going to the office&mdash;Lydia said with a queer,
+half-scared, half-saucy look, "Laws, sir, missus has been out this hour
+and a half."</p>
+
+<p>"Out!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, sir. She said as how she couldn't rest in her bed, nor yet in the
+house, sir. Polly made her take a cup of tea, and then she went off to
+Whit Meadow."</p>
+
+<p>"To Whit Meadow! In this damp raw weather at nine o'clock in the
+morning!"</p>
+
+<p>"Please, sir, me and Polly thought it wasn't safe for missus, and her so
+delicate. But she would go."</p>
+
+<p>Algernon shrugged his shoulders and said no more. Before the girl left
+the room, she said, "Oh, and please, sir, here's some letters as came
+for you," pointing to a little heap of papers on Castalia's desk.</p>
+
+<p>Left alone, Algernon drew his chair up to the fire and lit a cigar. He
+did not hasten himself to examine the letters. Bills, of course! What
+else could they be? He began to smoke and ruminate. He would have liked
+to see Castalia before going to the office. He would have liked to make
+his own representation to her of the story he had told Lord Seely. She
+must be got to corroborate it unknowingly if possible. He reflected with
+some bitterness that she had lately shown so much power of opposing him,
+that it might be she would insist on taking a course of conduct which
+would upset all the combination he&mdash;with the help of chance
+circumstances&mdash;had so neatly pieced together. And then he reflected
+further, knitting his brows a little, that at any cost she must be
+prevented from spoiling his plans; and that her conduct lately had been
+so strange that it wouldn't be very difficult to convince the world of
+her insanity. "'Gad, I'm almost convinced of it myself," said Algernon,
+half aloud. But it was not true.</p>
+
+<p>The fire was warm, the room was quiet, the cigar was good, the chair was
+easy. Algernon felt tempted to sit still and put off the moment when he
+must re-enter the Whitford Post-office. He shuddered as he thought of
+the place with a kind of physical repulsion. Nevertheless, it must be
+faced once or twice more. Not much more often, he hoped. He rose up, put
+on a great-coat, and said to himself lazily as he ran his fingers
+through his hair in front of the looking-glass, "Where the devil can
+Castalia have gone mooning to?" Then he turned to leave the room. As he
+turned his eyes fell on the little heap of letters. He took them up and
+turned them over with a grimace.</p>
+
+<p>"H'm! Ravell&mdash;respectful compliments. Ah! no; your mouth ought to have
+been stopped, I think! But that's the way. More they get, more they
+want. Never pay an instalment. Fatal precedent! What's this&mdash;a lawyer's
+letter! Gladwish. Oh! Very well, Mr. Gladwish. <i>Nous verrons.</i> Chemist!
+What on earth&mdash;? Oh, rose-water! Better than his boluses, I daresay, but
+not very good, and quite humorously dear. Extortionate rascal! And who
+are you, my illiterate-looking friend?"</p>
+
+<p>He took a square blue envelope between his finger and thumb, and
+examined the cramped handwriting on it, running in a slanting line from
+one corner to the other. It was addressed to "Mr. Algernon Errington."
+"Some <i>very</i> angry creditor, who won't even indulge me with the
+customary 'Esquire,'" thought Algernon with a contemptuous smile and
+some genuine amusement. Then he opened it. It was from Jonathan
+Maxfield!</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XIX" id="CHAPTER_XIX"></a>CHAPTER XIX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>In about a quarter of an hour after reading that letter, Algernon called
+to the servants to know if their mistress had come back. He did not ring
+as usual, but went to the door of the kitchen and spoke to both the
+women, saying that he was uneasy at Mrs. Errington's absence, and did
+not like to go to the office without seeing her. He said two or three
+times, how strange it was that his wife should have wandered out in that
+way; and plainly showed considerable anxiety about her. Both the women
+remarked how pale and upset their master looked. "Oh, it's enough to
+wear out anybody the way she goes on," said Lydia. "Poor young man! A
+nice way to welcome him home!"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah," returned Polly, the cook, shaking her head, "I'm afraid there's
+going to be awful trouble with missus, poor thing. <i>I</i> believe she's
+half out of her mind with jealousy. Just think how she's been going on
+about Miss Maxfield. Why 'tis all over the place. And they say old Max
+is going to law against her, or something. But I can't but pity her,
+poor thing."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! they say worse of her than being out of her mind with jealousy,"
+returned Lydia. "Don't you know what Mrs. Ravell's housemaid told her
+young man at the grocer's?" Et cetera, et cetera.</p>
+
+<p>The discussion was checked in full career by their master returning to
+say that he should not go to the office until he had seen Mrs.
+Errington, and that he was then going to Whit Meadow to look for her. He
+went out past the kitchen and through the garden at the back of the
+house.</p>
+
+<p>He looked about him when he got to the garden gate. Nothing to be seen
+but damp green meadow, leaden sky, and leaden river. Where was Castalia?
+A thought shot into his mind, swift and keen as an arrow&mdash;had she thrown
+herself into the Whit? And, if she had, what a load of his cares would
+be drowned with her! He walked a few paces towards the town, then turned
+and looked in the opposite direction. For as far as he could see, there
+was not a human being on the meadow-path. His eyes were very good and he
+used them eagerly, scanning all the space of Whit Meadow within their
+range of vision. At length he caught sight of something moving among a
+clump of low bushes&mdash;blackberry bushes and dog-roses, a tangle of
+leafless spikes now, although in the summer they would be fresh and
+fragrant, and the holiday haunt of little merry children&mdash;which grew on
+a sloping part of the bank between him and the Whit. He walked straight
+towards it, and as he drew nearer, became satisfied that the moving
+figure was that of his wife. He recognised a dark tartan shawl which she
+wore. It was not bright enough to be visible at a long distance; but as
+he advanced he became sure that he knew it. In a few minutes the husband
+and wife stood face to face.</p>
+
+<p>"This is a nice reception to give me," said Algernon, in a hard, cold
+voice, after they had looked at each other for a second, and Castalia
+had remained silent and still. In truth, she was physically unable to
+speak to him in that first moment of meeting. Her heart throbbed so that
+every beat of it seemed like an angry blow threatening her life.</p>
+
+<p>"Why do you wander out alone in this way? Why do you conduct yourself
+like a mad woman? Though, indeed, perhaps you are not so wrong there;
+madness might excuse your conduct. Nothing else can."</p>
+
+<p>"I couldn't stay in that house. I should have died there. Everything in
+every room reminded me of you."</p>
+
+<p>She answered so faintly that he had to strain his ear to hear her, and
+her colourless lips trembled as the lips tremble of a person trying to
+keep back tears. But her eyes were quite dry.</p>
+
+<p>Algernon was pale, with the peculiar ghastly pallor of a fresh ruddy
+complexion. His blue eyes had a glitter in them like ice, not fire; and
+there was a set, sarcastic, bitter smile on his mouth.</p>
+
+<p>"Look here, Castalia; we had better understand one another at once. I
+shall begin by telling you what I have resolved upon, and what I have
+done, and you will then have to obey me <i>implicitly</i>. There must be no
+sort of discussion or hesitation. Come back to the house with me at
+once."</p>
+
+<p>She shook her head quickly. "No! no! Tell me here&mdash;out here by
+ourselves, where no one can hear us. I cannot bear to go into that house
+yet."</p>
+
+<p>"Pshaw! What intolerable fooling! Well, here be it. I have no time to
+waste. I have seen your uncle. Don't interrupt me! He has promised to
+get us out of this cursed place, and to find a post for me abroad as
+consul. I had to exercise a good deal of persistence and ability to
+bring him to that point, but to that point I have brought him. We must
+keep him to it, and be active. My lady will move heaven and earth&mdash;or
+t'other place and earth, which is more in her line&mdash;to thwart us. Now,
+when it is necessary to keep things here as smooth as possible, to
+arouse no suspicion that we may be off at a moment's notice, to hold out
+hopes of everything being settled by Lord Seely's help, what do I find?
+I find that you have gone to a man who is a creditor of mine, who is not
+over fond of me to begin with, and have grossly and outrageously
+insulted him and his daughter! Just as if you had ingeniously cast about
+for the most effectual means of doing me a mischief. I found this letter
+on the table. He threatens to ruin me, and he can do it. If my name is
+posted, my bills protested, and a public hullabaloo made about them and
+other matters, your uncle's influence will hardly suffice to get me the
+berth I want in the face of the opposition newspapers' bellowing on the
+subject. Your uncle is but small beer in London at best. But that much
+he might have managed, if you hadn't behaved in this maniacal way."</p>
+
+<p>"And how have <i>you</i> behaved? Oh, Ancram, Ancram, I would not have
+believed&mdash;I <i>could</i> not&mdash;&mdash;" She burst into tears, and sank down on the
+damp grass, covering her face with her hands, and shaking with sobs.</p>
+
+<p>"Listen! Castalia! Do you hear me?" said her husband, shaking her
+lightly by the arm.</p>
+
+<p>She did not answer, but continued to cry convulsively, rocking herself
+to and fro.</p>
+
+<p>Algernon stood looking down upon her with folded arms. "Upon my soul!"
+he said, after a minute, and with a contemptuous little nod of the head,
+which expressed an unbounded sense of the hopeless imbecility of the
+woman at his feet, and of his own long-suffering tolerance towards her,
+"Upon my life and soul, Castalia, I have never even heard of anyone so
+outrageously unreasonable as you are. Your jealousy&mdash;we may as well
+speak plainly&mdash;your jealousy has passed the bounds of sanity. But, as I
+told you, I am not going to argue with you. I am going to give
+directions for your guidance, since it is quite clear you are unable to
+guide yourself. In the first place&mdash;&mdash;for God's sake stop that noise!"
+he cried, a sudden fierce irritation piercing through his
+self-restraint. "In the first place, you must make a full, free, and
+humble apology to Rhoda Maxfield!"</p>
+
+<p>Castalia started to her feet and confronted him. "Never!" she said. "I
+will never do it!"</p>
+
+<p>"I told you I was not going to argue with you. I am giving you your
+orders. A full, free, and humble&mdash;very humble&mdash;apology to Rhoda Maxfield
+is our one chance of softening her father. And if you have any sense or
+conscience left, you must know that Rhoda richly deserves every apology
+you can make her."</p>
+
+<p>"You think so, do you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; I think so. She is a thoroughly good and charming girl. The only
+crime she has ever committed against you is being young and pretty. And
+if you quarrel with every woman who is so, you will find the battle a
+rather unequal one." He could not resist the sneer. He detested Castalia
+at that moment. Her whole nature, her violence, her passionate jealousy,
+her no less passionate love, her piteous grief, her demands on some
+sentiment in himself, which he knew to be non-existent; every turn of
+her body, every tone of her voice, were at that moment intensely
+repulsive to him.</p>
+
+<p>The poor thing was stung into such pain by his taunt that she scarcely
+knew what she said or what she did.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, I know," she cried, "that you care more for her than for me! A
+pink-and-white face, that's all you value! More than wife,
+or&mdash;or&mdash;anything in the world. More than the honour of a gentleman.
+She's a devil; a sly, sleek little devil! She has got your love away
+from me. She has made you tell lies, and be cruel to me. But I'll expose
+her to all the world."</p>
+
+<p>"What, in the name of all that's incomprehensible, has put this craze
+into your head against Rhoda Maxfield? It's the wildest thing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Ancram! you can't deceive me any longer. I know&mdash;I have seen. She
+came on the sly to see you at the office. You used to go to her when you
+told me you had to be busy at the office. I watched you, I followed you
+all down Whitford High Street one night, and found out that you were
+cheating me."</p>
+
+<p>"Ha! And you also opened my desk at the office, and took out letters and
+papers! Do you know what people are called who do such things?" said
+Algernon, now in a white heat of anger.</p>
+
+<p>She drew back and looked at him. "Yes," she said, "I know."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you no shame, then? No common sense? You attack a young lady&mdash;yes,
+a lady! A far better lady than you are!&mdash;of whom you take it into your
+head to be jealous, merely because she is pretty and admired by
+everybody. By me amongst the everybodies. Why not? I didn't lose my
+eyesight when I married you. You talk about my not loving you&mdash;&mdash;! Do
+you think you go the way to make me do anything but detest the sight of
+you? You disgrace me in the town. You disgrace me before my clerk in the
+office. You and your relations persecuted me into marrying you, and now
+you haven't even the decency to behave like a rational being, but make
+yourself a laughing-stock, and me a butt for contemptuous pity in having
+tied myself to such a woman. One would have thought you would try to
+make some amends for the troubles I have been plunged into by my
+marriage."</p>
+
+<p>She put her hands up one to each side of her head, and held them there
+tightly pressed. "Ancram," she said, "<i>do</i> you detest the sight of me?"</p>
+
+<p>"You've tried your best to make me."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you no spark of kindness or affection for me in your heart&mdash;not
+one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Come, Castalia, let us have done with this! I thoroughly dislike and
+object to 'scenes' of any kind. You have a taste for them,
+unfortunately. What you have to do now is to do as I bid you, and try to
+make your peace by begging Rhoda's pardon, and so trying to undo a
+little of the mischief your insane temper has caused."</p>
+
+<p>"Ancram, say one kind word to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Good God, Castalia! How can you be so exasperatingly childish?"</p>
+
+<p>"One word! Say you love me a little still! Say you did love me when you
+married me! Don't let me believe that I have been a miserable dupe all
+along."</p>
+
+<p>She no longer refused point-blank to obey him. She was bending into her
+old attitude of submission to his wishes. His ascendancy over her was
+paramount still. But she had made herself thoroughly obnoxious to him,
+and must be punished. Algernon's resentments were neither quick nor
+numerous, but they were lasting. His distaste for certain temperaments
+was profound. Castalia's intensity of emotion, and her ungoverned way of
+showing it, roused a sense of antagonism in him, which came nearer to
+passion than anything he had ever felt. With the sure instinct of
+cruelty, he confronted her wild, eager, supplicating face with a hard,
+cold, sarcastic smile, and a slight shrug. A blow from his hand would
+have been tender by comparison. Then he pulled out his watch and said,
+"How long do you intend this performance to last?" in the quietest voice
+in the world. And all the while he was in a white heat of anger, as I
+have said.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Ancram! Oh, Ancram!" she cried. Then with a sudden change of tone,
+she said, "Will you promise me one thing? Will you swear never to see
+Rhoda Maxfield again? If you will do that, I will&mdash;I will&mdash;try to
+forgive you."</p>
+
+<p>"To <i>forgive</i> me! Then you really <i>have</i> lost your senses?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; I wish I had! I would rather be mad than know what I know. But
+think, Ancram, think well before you refuse me! This one thing is all I
+ask. Never see or speak to her, or write to her again&mdash;not even when I
+am dead! Swear it. I think if you swore it you would keep to it,
+wouldn't you? This one poor thing for all I have borne, for all I am
+willing to bear. I'll take that as a proof that you don't love her best.
+I'll be content with that. I'll give up everything else in the whole
+world. Only do this one thing for me, Ancram; I beg it on my knees!"</p>
+
+<p>She did, indeed, fall on her knees as she spoke, and stretched out her
+clasped hands towards him. For one second their eyes met, then he turned
+his way and said, as quietly as ever, "I am going to Mr. and Miss
+Maxfield at once, with the most effectual apology which could be offered
+to them&mdash;namely, that you are a maniac, and in any case not responsible
+for your actions, nor to be treated like a rational being."</p>
+
+<p>She staggered up to her feet. "Very well," she gasped out, "then I shall
+not spare you&mdash;nor her. I have had a letter from my uncle. He has told
+me what you accused me of. I went to the office. That man there told me
+the same. The notes that I paid away to Ravell&mdash;you 'wondered'&mdash;<i>you</i>
+were 'uneasy!' Why, you gave me them yourself. Oh, Ancram, how <i>could</i>
+you have the heart? I wish I was dead!"</p>
+
+<p>"I wish to God you were!"</p>
+
+<p>She was standing close to the edge of the steep, slippery bank; and when
+he said these words she staggered and, with a little heart-broken moan,
+put out her hand to clutch at him, groping like a blind person. He shook
+off her grasp with a sudden rough movement, and the next instant she was
+deep in the dark ice-cold water.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XX" id="CHAPTER_XX"></a>CHAPTER XX.</h2>
+
+
+<p>It was past mid-day when a loud peal at the bell of Ivy Lodge startled
+the women in the kitchen. Polly ran to the front door to open it. There
+stood her master, who pushed quickly into the house past her. "Is your
+mistress come back?" he asked almost breathlessly.</p>
+
+<p>"No, sir! Oh, mercy me, what's the matter? What has happened?" she
+cried, for his face showed undisguised terror and agitation. He sat down
+in the dining-room and asked for a glass of wine. Having drunk it at a
+gulp, he said, "I cannot understand it. I have been nearly to Whitford
+along the meadow-path; I didn't try the other way, but then she would
+not have wandered towards Duckwell, surely! Then I crossed the fields
+and came back by the road, looking everywhere, and asking every one I
+met. Nothing to be seen of her. Your mistress's manner has been so
+strange of late. You must have noticed it. I&mdash;I&mdash;am afraid&mdash;I cannot
+help being afraid that some terrible thing has happened to her. I have
+had a dreadful weight and presentiment on my mind all the morning. Where
+can she be?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh no, no, sir. Never fear! She'll be all safe somewheres or other.
+She'll just have gone wandering on into the town. She <i>have</i> been
+strange in her ways, poor thing! and we couldn't but see it, sir. But
+she can't have come to no harm. There's nothing to hurt her here-about."</p>
+
+<p>Thus honest Polly, consolingly. But she was infected, too, by the terror
+in her master's white face.</p>
+
+<p>"You don't know," said he tremulously, "what reason I have for
+uneasiness." He drew out from his pocket-book a torn scrap of paper with
+some writing on it. "I found this on the floor by her desk this morning.
+This is what alarmed me so before I went out, but I wouldn't say
+anything about it then."</p>
+
+<p>Polly stared at the paper with eager curiosity, but the sharp, slanting
+writing puzzled her eyes, never quite at their ease with the alphabet in
+any shape. "Is it missus's writing?" she asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; see, she talks of being so wretched. Why, God knows! Her mind has
+been quite unhinged. That is the only explanation. And, you see, she
+says, 'It will not be long before this misery is at an end. I cannot
+live on as I am living. <i>I will not.</i>'"</p>
+
+<p>"Lord, ha' mercy upon us!" ejaculated the woman, on whom the full force
+of her master's anxiety and alarm suddenly broke. Her round ruddy cheeks
+grew almost as white as his, and Lydia, who had been peeping and
+listening at the door, burst out crying, and began uttering a series of
+incoherent phrases.</p>
+
+<p>"Hold your noise!" said Polly roughly. "There's troubles enough without
+you. Now look ye here, sir. I'll put on my bonnet and go right down into
+Whitford. You take a look along Whit Meadow up Duckwell way. I bet ten
+pounds she's there somewhere's about. She has taken to going about
+through the fields, hasn't she, Lydia? Oh, hold your noise, and try and
+do something to help, you whimpering fool!"</p>
+
+<p>Polly's violent excitement and trepidation took a practical form, whilst
+the other woman was utterly helpless. She was bidden to stay at home and
+"receive missus," and tell her that master was come back, and beg her
+"to bide still in the house, until he should return."</p>
+
+<p>"But I'm afraid she'll never come back!" sobbed Lydia. "I'm so
+frightened to stop here by myself."</p>
+
+<p>"Ugh, you great silly! Haven't you got no feeling for the poor husband?
+He looks scared well-nigh to death, poor lad. And as for you, it ain't
+much <i>you</i> care what's become of missus. You never had a good word for
+her. You're only crying because you're a coward."</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile Algernon sat in the little dining-room, with a strange
+sensation, as if every muscle in his body had been turned into lead. He
+<i>must</i> get up, and go out as the woman had said. He <i>must</i>! But there he
+sat with that sensation of marvellous <i>weight</i> holding him down in his
+chair. The house was absolutely still. Lydia, unable to remain alone in
+the kitchen, had gone to stand at the front door and stare up and down
+the road. Thus she heard nothing of footsteps approaching the house at
+the back, coming hurriedly through the garden, and pausing at the
+threshold of the door, which was open.</p>
+
+<p>Presently, after some muttered conversation, in which two or three
+voices took part, a man entered the house and came along the passage,
+looking, as he went, into the kitchen and finding no one. Just as he
+reached the door of the dining-room, Algernon came out and confronted
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"There's been an accident, sir, I'm sorry to say," said the man. "The
+alarm was given up our way about an hour and a half ago. Somebody's
+fallen into the Whit. I'm very sorry, sir, but I'm afraid you must
+prepare for bad news."</p>
+
+<p>Whilst he was still speaking, the house had filled with an
+ever-gathering crowd. People stood in the passage, peeping over each
+other's shoulders, and pushing to get a glimpse of Algernon. There were
+even faces pressed to the windows outside, and the garden was blocked
+up. Polly had come hurrying back from the town, and now elbowed her way
+through the crowd to her master. She soon cleared the passage of the
+throng of idlers who blocked it up, and shut them outside the door by
+main force. They still swarmed about the house and garden, both on the
+side of the road and that of Whit Meadow. And their numbers increased
+every minute. Polly pulled the man who had been spokesman into the
+dining-room, and bade him say what he had to say without further
+preamble. "It's no use 'preparing' him," she said, pointing to Algernon,
+who had sunk into a chair, and was holding his forehead with his hands;
+"you'll only make it worse. I'm afraid you can't tell him anything
+dreadfuller than he's got into his head already. Speak out!"</p>
+
+<p>Thus requested, the man, a carpenter of Pudcombe village, told his tale.
+Some men, working in the fields about a mile above Whitford&mdash;half a
+mile, perhaps, from Ivy Lodge, had heard cries for help from the meadows
+near the river. He, the carpenter, happened to be passing along a field
+path from a farmhouse where he had been at work, and ran with the
+labourers down to the water's edge. There they saw David Powell, the
+Methodist preacher, wildly shouting for help, and with clothes dripping
+wet. He had waded waist-deep into the Whit to try to save some one who
+was drowning there, but in vain. He could not swim, and the current had
+carried the drowning person out of his reach. "You know," said the
+carpenter, "there are some ugly swirls and currents in the Whit, for all
+it looks so sluggish." A boat had been got out and manned, and had made
+all speed in the direction Powell pointed out. He insisted on
+accompanying them in his wet clothes. They searched the river for some
+time in vain. They had got as far as Duckwell Reach when they caught
+sight of a dark object close in shore. It was the form of a woman. Her
+clothes had caught in the broken stump of an old willow that grew half
+in the water; and she was thus held there, swinging to and fro with the
+current. She was taken out and carried to Duckwell Farm, where every
+effort had been made to restore her to consciousness. Powell understood
+the best methods to employ. The Seth Maxfields had done everything in
+their power, but it was no use. She had never moved, nor breathed, nor
+quivered an eyelash.</p>
+
+<p>That was the substance of the carpenter's story.</p>
+
+<p>"Is she dead?" asked Algernon with his face hidden. They were the first
+words he had spoken. And when the man answered with a mournful but
+positive "Yes; quite, quite dead," he said not a syllable further, but
+turned away from them, and buried his head in the cushions of the chair.</p>
+
+<p>"He hasn't even asked who the woman was!" whispered the carpenter to
+Polly. The tears were streaming down the woman's cheeks. Castalia had
+not made herself beloved in her own house, but Polly had felt the sort
+of regard for her which grows by acts of kindness, and forbearance and
+compassion, performed. She shook her head, and answered in an equally
+low tone, "No need for him to ask, poor young fellow. We've all been
+fearing something dreadful about missus all morning. And he had his
+reasons for being afraid as she had gone and done something desperate."</p>
+
+<p>"What&mdash;you don't mean that she made away with herself?" said the
+carpenter, raising his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, that's more than you and I know. Best say nothing. How can we
+judge? Poor soul! Well, I always did feel sorry for her, and that I'll
+say. Though, mind you, I'm sorry for him too. But there's some folks as
+can't stroke the dog without kicking the cat."</p>
+
+<p>The news spread rapidly through Whitford, and caused the utmost
+excitement there. Mrs. Algernon Errington had been found drowned in the
+Whit. How&mdash;whether by accident or design&mdash;no one knew. But that did not
+prevent people from hazarding a thousand conjectures. She had wandered
+out alone, had ventured too near the edge of the slippery bank, and had
+lost her footing. She had been robbed and thrown into the river. She had
+committed suicide from ungovernable jealousy. She had committed suicide
+in a fit of insanity. She had become a hypochondriac. She had gone
+raving mad. She had committed various frauds at the post-office, and had
+killed herself in terror at the prospect of their coming to light. This
+latter hypothesis found much credence. So many circumstances&mdash;trifling,
+perhaps, in themselves, but important when massed together&mdash;seemed to
+corroborate it. And then, if that did not seem an adequate motive for
+the desperate deed, Castalia's notorious and passionate jealousy was
+thrown in as a make-weight. There would be a coroner's inquest, of
+course. And the chief witness at it would probably be David Powell. It
+appeared he was the last person who had seen the unfortunate woman
+alive.</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Thimbleby was in terrible affliction. Mr. Powell was very ill. He
+had plunged into the ice-cold river, and had then remained for hours in
+his wet clothes. He had not been able to walk back from Duckwell Farm,
+and Farmer Maxfield had brought him home himself in his spring-cart, and
+had bidden widow Thimbleby look after him a little, for he (Maxfield)
+thought the preacher in a very bad way. He was seized with violent fits
+of shivering, and the doctor whom Mrs. Thimbleby sent for to see him, on
+her own responsibility, told them to get him into bed at once, to keep
+him warm, and to administer certain remedies which he ordered. But no
+word would Powell speak about his ailments to the doctor, or to anyone
+else. He waved off all questions with a determined though gentle
+resolution. He allowed himself to be helped into bed, being absolutely
+unable to stand or walk without assistance. And he did not refuse the
+warm clothing which the widow heaped upon him. He lay still and passive,
+but he would say no word of his symptoms and sensations to the doctor.
+"The man can in no wise help me," he said to Mrs. Thimbleby. "All the
+wisdom of this world is foolishness to one whom the Lord has laid his
+hands on. I am bowed as a reed; yea, I am broken."</p>
+
+<p>His voice was hoarse and feeble, and his eyes blazed with a feverish
+light. The widow found it vain to importune him to swallow the medicines
+that had been sent. In her heart she had some misgivings that it might
+be wrong to interfere in the dealings of Providence with so holy a man,
+by administering drugs to him. But the misgivings never reached a point
+of conviction that might have comforted her.</p>
+
+<p>"I'll leave you quiet awhile, Mr. Powell," she said. "Maybe you'll
+sleep, and that would do you more good than anything. Sleep is God's own
+cure for a many troubles, isn't it?"</p>
+
+<p>He looked at her with a wild unrecognising stare. "When I say my bed
+shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint, then thou scarest me
+with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions," he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>The good woman softly went away, wiping the tears from her eyes. "One
+thing is a mercy," said the poor soul to herself, "and that is, that Mr.
+Diamond is so kind and thoughtful. He gives no trouble, and is a help on
+the contrary. And I'm sure I don't know how we should have managed
+without his arm to help Mr. Powell upstairs. And another thing is a
+mercy&mdash;I hope it isn't wrong to feel it so!&mdash;that Mrs. Errington is out
+of the house. I do not know how I should have been strengthened to keep
+up and attend upon her, and she in such a way, poor thing! The Lord has
+had pity on us for Mr. Powell's sake."</p>
+
+<p>Minnie Bodkin had driven to Mrs. Thimbleby's house early in the
+afternoon, and taken Mrs. Errington away with her. Mrs. Errington had
+rushed to Ivy Lodge under the first shock of the terrible news which Mr.
+Smith, the surgeon, communicated to her. She had seen her son for a few
+minutes. Her intention had been to remain with him, but this he would
+not allow. He had insisted on his mother's returning to her own lodgings
+after a very brief interview with him.</p>
+
+<p>"No wonder he can't bear to have her about, though she <i>is</i> his mother.
+Tiresome old thing!" exclaimed Lydia, peevishly.</p>
+
+<p>But if Algernon got rid of his mother as quickly as possible, he refused
+to admit any one else at all, and remained shut up in the dining-room,
+whither he had had a sofa carried, meaning to sleep there. He had been
+obliged to receive Seth Maxfield, who came to ask when and how he would
+wish his wife's body conveyed from Duckwell Farm to Whitford. "Can't she
+stay there?" he had asked in a dazed sort of manner. Then added quickly,
+turning away his head, "I'll leave it all to you. You've been very good.
+You've done everything for the best, I am sure." And he put out his hand
+to the farmer with his face still turned away. And later on he had had
+to see some officials about the inquest. But after that was over, he
+locked his door, and refused to open it except to Polly, when she
+brought him food. He ate almost ravenously, drank a great deal of wine,
+and then lay down and dozed away the hours until dawn next day.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXI" id="CHAPTER_XXI"></a>CHAPTER XXI.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The inquest was to be held at the "Blue Bell" inn. And after the
+inquest, the dust of the Honourable Castalia Errington was to be laid
+beneath the turf of the humble village churchyard, amidst less noble
+dust, with the daisies growing impartially above all, and spreading
+their pink-edged petals over the just and the unjust alike.</p>
+
+<p>It was now currently reported that the thefts at the post-office had
+been Castalia's doing. Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Dockett had been "sure of it
+all along"&mdash;so they said, and so they really imagined now. The story of
+the mysterious notes paid to Ravell, the draper, was in every mouth.
+Roger Heath went about saying that Mr. Errington ought to make <i>his</i>
+loss good out of his own pocket, if he had any feelings of honour. But
+all the people who had not lost any money in the post-office were
+disgusted at Roger Heath's hardness and avarice, and asked indignantly
+if that was the moment to speak of such things? For the tragedy of
+Castalia's death had produced a strong effect in Whitford. Perhaps there
+was not one human being in the town who grieved that she was gone; but
+many were oppressed by the manner of her going. People had an uneasy
+feeling in remembering how much they had disliked her; almost as if
+their dislike made them guilty of her death in some vague, far-off,
+inexplicable way. They told themselves and each other that though "her
+manners had been repellent, poor thing," yet for their part they had
+always felt sorry for her, and had long perceived that her mind was
+astray, and that she was falling into a low melancholy state, that was
+likely to lead to some terrible catastrophe. By this time scarcely any
+one in Whitford entertained a doubt as to Castalia's having destroyed
+herself. And the social verdict, "Temporary insanity," was pronounced in
+assured anticipation that the legal verdict would be to that effect
+also.</p>
+
+<p>There were two men who did not mystify themselves by conjuring up any
+factitious tenderness about Castalia's memory, and who gave way to no
+superstitious uneasiness of conscience as to their dislike of her when
+she was alive. One of these men was Jonathan Maxfield; the other was the
+dead woman's husband.</p>
+
+<p>Maxfield had no retrospective softness on the subject. He, indeed, being
+accustomed to take certain passages of the Old Testament very seriously
+and literally, and having fed his mind almost exclusively upon those
+passages, was of opinion that Castalia's tragic fate had been brought
+about by a direct interposition of Providence as a judgment on her for
+her bad behaviour to himself and his daughter. And if this opinion on
+Maxfield's part should appear incredibly monstrous, let it be remembered
+that in his own mind "the godly" were typified by the Maxfield family,
+and "the ungodly" by the enemies of that family.</p>
+
+<p>As to Algernon&mdash;harassed, anxious, and doubtful of the future as he
+might be, he was glad that his wife was dead, and he knew that he was
+glad. Her death made a way out&mdash;apparently the only possible way out&mdash;of
+a labyrinth of troubles, and relieved Algernon from the apprehension of
+an exposure which it made him sick to think of. He had not meant to kill
+her, he said to himself. He had certainly laid no deliberate plan to do
+so. Had he, in truth, been the cause of her death? In the state of mind
+she was in, would she not have thrown herself into the river, or
+otherwise put an end to herself, without that touch from him which he
+had given, he knew not how?</p>
+
+<p>It all seemed unreal to him when he thought of it&mdash;the leaden water,
+the grey sky and meadows, and the slippery bank with its tufts of
+blackberry bushes. He went over and over again in his mind the words
+that had passed between himself and Castalia; her violence, and her wild
+jealousy and suspicions, and her allusion to her uncle's letter, and to
+what Gibbs had told her, and then her fierce threat that she would not
+spare him! She had become utterly unmanageable&mdash;mad, in fact. She had
+resolved to die. She had a suicidal mania. That scrap of writing would
+suffice to prove it. To be sure he had found it and put it in his
+pocket-book weeks ago, although he told the servant that he had picked
+it up off the floor that morning of his return from London. But that
+only indicated that the idea had long been rooted in her mind. And
+besides, the paper bore no date. There was nothing to show how long it
+had been written.</p>
+
+<p>No, it was not he who had killed Castalia. She had gone down willingly
+to death. She had uttered no sound, no cry. He should have heard a cry
+all across the silent meadows. He had not looked back. He had fled away
+from the river at his topmost speed after he saw her slip, and stagger,
+and fall heavily into the black water under the shadow of the bank. Had
+she risen again to the surface? It was said that drowning persons always
+rose three times. But she had made no sound. Surely she would have
+cried out if she had longed for life. Ugh! It was horrible to imagine
+her white face and staring eyes rising above the strong dragging current
+and looking for help. That was all very ghastly, very hideous. He would
+not think of it. It was over. Castalia was dead. And although he would
+have given much that she should have died in any other way, yet he was
+glad that she was dead, and he knew that he was glad.</p>
+
+<p>He made no pretence to himself of a factitious tenderness about her. She
+had been thoroughly antagonistic and distasteful to him of late. She had
+been the bitter drop flavouring every action, every hope, every minute
+of his life. He had been the victim of a hard fate, and of the false
+promises (implied, if not expressed) of Lord Seely. Those paltry
+sums&mdash;those notes that he had taken&mdash;he had been driven into committing
+that action altogether by stress of circumstances. It was strange to
+himself to think of the light that action would appear in to other
+people. To his own mind, knowing how it had come to pass in an instant,
+by the tug of a sudden impulse, it seemed so clear that there was no
+real ground for blaming him in the matter! He had felt the difficulty of
+getting money with a severity which the rest of the world probably could
+not conceive. He was absolutely indifferent to the question of abstract
+right or wrong, justice or injustice, in the case. But the concrete
+hardship to himself of being poor he had keenly felt to be undeserved.</p>
+
+<p>And now, if it were not for one thing, he should begin to breathe more
+freely. The one thing that weighed on him with a gloomy, though formless
+foreboding, was the inquest. He had been obliged to go to Duckwell Farm.
+He had been asked to look at Castalia's dead body. He had not dared to
+refuse to do so; but he had requested to be shown into the room where
+she lay, alone and without witnesses. The room was that sunny parlour
+where Rhoda Maxfield had sat on many a summer evening, and where the
+neighbours had discussed the news of his own marriage less than a year
+ago. But Algernon's imagination did not wander very far from the
+present. He walked to the window and looked out through the black
+trellis-work of leafless vine branches. Then he stared at the prints on
+the walls, and the gay china vases filled with winter nosegays of
+trembling grass and chrysanthemums. And then his eyes, which had
+wandered in every other direction, were compelled to turn towards the
+broad, old-fashioned sofa covered with fair white linen, under which the
+outlines of a human shape revealed themselves.</p>
+
+<p>Was that stiff, white, silent thing Castalia? He could not realise it.
+He would scarcely have started if the door had opened and his wife had
+walked into the room in her ordinary dress, and with her ordinary gait.
+He had seen her last full of passionate excitement. That stiff, white,
+silent thing could not be she. He would not lift the coverlet, though,
+nor look on that which lay beneath. But he stood and gazed at it until
+the heap beneath the linen sheet seemed to stir and change its outlines.
+Then he turned away shuddering to the window, and looked at his watch to
+see whether he might venture to leave the room yet. Would the people
+think he had been there too short a time? He came out at length, looking
+pale and depressed enough to excite a good deal of sympathy in the
+breast of Mrs. Seth Maxfield. And with his usual quick susceptibility to
+the impression he produced on others, he was fully aware of this, and
+gratified by it, despite the chill vision of the still white heap under
+the coverlet which persistently haunted his memory. He saw looks of
+pity; he heard whispered exclamations of admiration, and they did more
+than gratify, they reassured him. It had entered into nobody's mind to
+conceive that he had been the cause of his wife's death. Into whose
+head, indeed, should it enter? or how? He remembered the last
+lightning-quick glance he had cast over the wide meadows, and how it had
+shown them to him empty and bare of any living thing for as far as his
+eye could reach. No; he was safe from suspicion. Of course he was safe
+from suspicion! And yet&mdash;he would have given a year of his life to have
+the inquest over, and the dead woman safely put away beneath the daisies
+in Duckwell churchyard.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile the mortal frame that had so throbbed and suffered for his
+sake, lay there lonely and neglected. Strangers' hands had composed it
+decently; a stranger's roof sheltered it. It was to lie in a stranger's
+grave. Only one woman came and stood beside the couch in the sunny
+parlour, and looked on the dead shape with eyes full of compassionate
+tears; and, before going away, laid some sprays of fern and delicate
+hothouse blossoms on the quiet breast, and fastened there a curl of
+light hair. The hair had been cut jestingly from Algernon Errington's
+head when he was a school-boy, and then put away and forgotten for
+years. It now lay above his dead wife's heart. "She was so fond of him,
+poor soul!" said the compassionate woman. It was Minnie Bodkin.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXII" id="CHAPTER_XXII"></a>CHAPTER XXII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The big room at the "Blue Bell" was full. It was a room associated in
+the minds of most of the people present with occasions of festivity or
+entertainment. The Archery Club balls were held in it. It was used for
+the exhibitions of any travelling conjurer, lecturer, or musician, whose
+evil fate brought him to Whitford. Once a strolling company of players
+had performed there before some fifteen persons and several dozen
+cane-bottomed chairs. There were the tarnished candelabra stuck in the
+walls, the little gallery up aloft where the fiddlers sat on ball
+nights, and the big looking-glass at one end of the room, muffled with
+yellow muslin, and surmounted by a dusty garland of paper flowers. Now
+the wintry daylight coming through the uncurtained windows, made all
+these things look chill, ghastly, and forlorn. People who had thought
+the "Blue Bell" Assembly Room a cheerful place enough under the bright
+illumination of wax candles, now shivered, and whispered to each other
+how dreary it was.</p>
+
+<p>The coroner's jury had been out to Duckwell Farm to view the body, and
+to look at the exact spot on the bank where it had been landed from the
+boat, and to stare at the willow stump to which it had been found
+fastened by the clothes. And they had returned to the "Blue Bell" inn to
+complete the inquiry into the causes of the death of Castalia Errington.
+A great many witnesses had already been examined. Their testimony went
+to show that the deceased lady's behaviour of late had been very
+strange, capricious, and unreasonable. Almost every one of the
+witnesses, including the servants at Ivy Lodge, confessed that they had
+heard rumours of young Mrs. Errington being "not right in her mind."
+They had observed an increasing depression of spirits in her of late.
+Obadiah Gibbs's evidence was the strongest of all, and his revelations
+created a great sensation. He described his last interview with Castalia
+at the post-office, and left the impression on all his hearers which was
+honestly his own; namely, that on Castalia, and on her alone, rested the
+onus of the irregularities and robberies of money-letters at Whitford.
+He did his best to spare her memory. He sincerely thought her
+irresponsible for her actions. But the facts, as he saw and represented
+them, admitted of but one conclusion being come to.</p>
+
+<p>Algernon Errington's appearance in the room elicited a low murmur of
+sympathy from the spectators. His manner of giving his evidence was
+perfect, and nothing could have been better in keeping with the
+circumstances of his painful position, than the subdued, yet quiet tones
+of his voice, and the white, strained look of his face, which revealed
+rather the effect of a great shock to the nerves than a deep wound to
+the heart. Of course he could not be expected to grieve as a husband
+would grieve who had lost a dearly-loved and loving wife; but their
+having been on somewhat bad terms, and Castalia's notorious jealousy and
+bad temper, made the manner of her death all the more terrible. Poor
+young man! He was dreadfully cut up, one could see that. But he made no
+pretences, put on no affectations of woe. He was so simple and quiet! In
+a word, he was credited with feeling precisely what he ought to have
+felt.</p>
+
+<p>His statement added scarcely any new fact to those already known. He had
+not seen his wife alive since he parted from her when he started for
+London to visit Lord Seely, who was ill. He corroborated his servants'
+testimony to the facts that Castalia had wandered out on to Whit Meadow
+about nine o'clock in the morning; that he had been made uneasy by her
+strange absence, and that he had gone himself to seek her, but without
+success. In reply to some questions by a juryman, as to whether he had
+gone to London solely because of Lord Seely's illness, he answered, with
+a look of quiet sadness, that that had not been his sole reason. There
+were private matters to be spoken of between himself and his wife's
+uncle&mdash;matters which admitted of no delay. Could he not have written
+them? No; he did not feel at liberty to write them. They concerned his
+wife. He had mentioned to Lord Seely his fears that her mind was giving
+way, as Lord Seely would be able to affirm. A letter found in the pocket
+of the deceased woman's gown was produced and read. It had become partly
+illegible from immersion in the water, but the greater portion of it
+could be made out. It was from Lord Seely, and referred to a painful
+conversation he had had with his niece's husband about herself. It was a
+kind letter, but written evidently in much agitation and pain of mind.
+The writer exhorted and even implored his niece to confide fully in him,
+for her own sake, as well as that of her family; and promised that he
+would help and support her under all circumstances, if she would but
+tell him the truth unreservedly.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could have been better for Algernon's case than that letter.
+Instead of being the cause of his disgrace and exposure, it was
+obviously the means of confirming every one of his statements, implied
+as well as expressed. It showed clearly enough&mdash;first, that Algernon had
+given Lord Seely to understand that his wife laboured under grave
+suspicions of having stolen money-letters from the Whitford Post-office;
+secondly, that he (Algernon) believed those suspicions to be well
+founded; thirdly, that symptoms of mental aberration, which had recently
+manifested themselves in Castalia, were at once the explanation of, and
+the excuse for, her conduct. This letter, which, if Castalia were alive
+to speak for herself, would have been like a brand on her husband's
+forehead for life, was now a most valuable testimony in his favour.</p>
+
+<p>Algernon's hard and unrelenting mood towards his dead wife grew still
+harder and more unrelenting as he listened to this letter, and
+remembered that Castalia had threatened him with exposure, and had
+resolved not to spare him. Nothing in the world but her death could have
+saved him from ruin. Even supposing that she could have been cajoled
+into promising to comply with his directions, she would not have been
+able to do so. She was so stupidly literal in her statements. A direct
+lie would have embarrassed her. And then, at the first jealous fit which
+might have seized her, he would have been at her mercy. Lord Seely's
+letter showed a strong feeling of irritation&mdash;almost of
+hostility&mdash;against Algernon. It might not be recognisable by the
+audience at the inquest, but Algernon recognised it completely, and felt
+a distinct sense of triumph in the impotence of Lord Seely to harm him,
+or to wriggle away from under his heel. Algernon was master of the
+position. He appeared before the world in the light of a victim to his
+alliance with the Seelys. There could be no further talk on their part
+of condescension, or honour conferred. He and his mother had lived their
+lives as persons of gentle blood and unblemished reputation until the
+Honourable Castalia Kilfinane brought disgrace and misery into their
+home. In making these reflections Algernon was not, of course,
+considering the inward truth of facts, but their outward semblances. It
+made no difference to his indignation against the "pompous little ass"
+who had treated him with hauteur, nor to his satisfaction in humbling
+the "pompous little ass," that if all the secret circumstances hidden
+and silenced for ever under the cold white shroud that covered his dead
+wife could be revealed before the eyes of all men, Lord Seely would have
+the right to detest and despise him. Lord Seely had not treated him as
+he ought. He was firmly persuaded of that. And as he measured Lord
+Seely's duty towards him accurately by the extent of all he desired and
+expected of Lord Seely, it will be seen how far short the latter had
+fallen of Algernon's standard.</p>
+
+<p>The Seth Maxfields gave their testimony as to how the deceased body had
+been carried into their house; how they had tried all means to revive
+her; and how every effort had been in vain, and she had never moved nor
+breathed again. The two men who had rescued the body from the water, and
+the carpenter who had brought the news to Ivy Lodge, repeated their
+story, and corroborated all that the Maxfields had said. There only
+remained to be heard the important testimony of David Powell. He had
+been so ill that it was feared at one time that the inquest must be
+adjourned until he should be able to give his evidence. But he declared
+that he would come and speak before the jury; that he should be
+strengthened to do so when the moment arrived; and had opposed a fixed
+silence to all the representations and remonstrances of the doctor. On
+the morning of the inquest he arose and dressed himself before Mrs.
+Thimbleby was up, albeit she was no sluggard in the morning. He had gone
+out, while it was still dark, into the raw foggy atmosphere of Whit
+Meadow, and had wandered there for a long time. On returning to the
+widow Thimbleby's house, he had seated himself opposite to the blazing
+fire in the kitchen, staring at it, and muttering to himself like a man
+in a feverish dream.</p>
+
+<p>Nevertheless, when the due time arrived, he entered the room at the
+"Blue Bell" to give his evidence with a quiet steady gait. His
+appearance there produced a profound impression.</p>
+
+<p>A stranger contrast than he presented to the Whitford burghers by whom
+he was surrounded could scarcely be imagined. Not only were his bodily
+shape and colouring different from theirs, but the expression of his
+face was almost unearthly. There was some subtle contradiction between
+the expression of David Powell's sorrow-laden eyes and brow, and that of
+the mouth, with its tightly-closed lips drawn back at the corners with
+what on ordinary faces would have been a smile. But on his face, being
+coupled with a singular pinched look of the nostrils and a strained
+tightness of the upper lip, it became something which troubled the
+beholder with a sense of inexplicable pain&mdash;almost terror.</p>
+
+<p>As he advanced along the room, there was a hush of attentive
+expectation, during which Dr. Evans, the coroner, curiously examined the
+Methodist preacher with grave professional eyes. After a few
+preliminary questions, to which Powell gave brief, clear answers, he
+said, "I have been brought hither to testify in this matter. I am an
+instrument in the hands of the great and terrible God. He works not as
+men work. In His hand all tools are alike."</p>
+
+<p>"What can you tell us of the death of this unfortunate lady, Mr.
+Powell?" asked the coroner, quietly. "You were the first to see her
+struggling in the water, were you not? And you made a gallant effort to
+save her."</p>
+
+<p>"She struggled but little. She went to her death as a lamb to the
+slaughter; nay, as a victim who desires to die."</p>
+
+<p>Powell spoke in a low but distinct voice; broken and harsh, indeed,
+compared with what it once was, but still with a soft tremulous note in
+it now and then, that seemed to stir deep fibres of feeling in the
+hearts of those who heard him. In such a tone it was that he uttered the
+words, "as a victim who desires to die." And tears sprang into the eyes
+of many from sheer emotional sympathy with the sound of his voice.</p>
+
+<p>"You are of opinion, then, Mr. Powell," said the coroner, "that the
+deceased wilfully put an end to her own life."</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"You think that she was not in a state of mind to be responsible for her
+actions?"</p>
+
+<p>"She was murdered," said Powell, in a distinct, grating tone, which was
+audible in every corner of the crowded room.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIII" id="CHAPTER_XXIII"></a>CHAPTER XXIII.</h2>
+
+
+<p>There was a momentary rustling, as if every person present had moved
+slightly, and then a deep hush. The silence seemed to last a long time;
+but, in fact, only a second or two elapsed before Powell, drawing up his
+tall, lean figure to its utmost height, and pointing with outstretched
+hand full at Algernon, exclaimed with a kind of cry, "There is her
+murderer! Woe to the cruel, woe to the unrighteous man! Ye have ploughed
+wickedness; ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies!"</p>
+
+<p>There arose a murmur, a movement, a confused sound of ejaculations.
+Algernon started up, and some one laid a hand on his shoulder and pushed
+him back into his seat. "Ask what he means," said Algernon; but his
+voice was so weak and faint that the words were not heard beyond the few
+persons who immediately surrounded him. He could scarcely grow paler
+than he had been from the beginning of the inquest, but a ghastly
+ashen-grey hue showed itself round his mouth. His lips were quite
+colourless. Terror, agonising terror, was in his heart. What did this
+preacher know? What had he seen? Had Castalia spoken and accused him
+before her death?</p>
+
+<p>Anguish for anguish; perhaps he suffered at that moment as much as his
+victim had suffered when she felt the hand she loved send her to her
+death.</p>
+
+<p>The movement and the murmur in the crowd were over in an instant. The
+coroner sternly commanded order. There was silence again, and the very
+air seemed charged with a horrible apprehension, which weighed upon
+every one as a coming thunderstorm oppresses the cowering birds.</p>
+
+<p>"You must speak clearly and plainly, Mr. Powell," said the coroner in a
+severe tone. "State what grounds you have for this very extraordinary
+accusation. The evidence laid before us to-day goes to show that Mr.
+Errington did not see his wife since parting from her on the Monday
+night to go to London, until he was called on to identify her dead body
+at Duckwell Farm."</p>
+
+<p>"He spoke with her in the meadow by the river's brink. She appealed to
+him; she implored him; she knelt to him. I saw her gestures. Then he
+hurled her down the steep bank into the water and fled away, leaving her
+to perish!"</p>
+
+<p>A most profound sensation was caused by these words throughout the whole
+assembly. The jury looked at each other like men suddenly aroused from
+sleep. They seemed not only startled but scared. Indeed, a singular
+expression of disquietude appeared on every face&mdash;almost as if each
+individual in the crowd had felt <i>himself</i> accused. Before any further
+questions could be put to Powell, there was a stir and a commotion at
+the lower end of the room and a murmur of voices. Algernon Errington had
+swooned dead away. He must have fallen to the ground had he not been
+caught in the arms of his next neighbour, who happened to be Mr. Ravell,
+the draper. Some one in the crowd handed a smelling-bottle to be held
+under his nose, and they cleared a little space around him to give him
+air, by the directions of Mr. Smith, the surgeon, who was at hand. It
+was proposed to carry him away out of the heat and the throng; but in
+less than a couple of minutes he revived, and immediately on recovering
+consciousness he desired to remain where he was. The terror of listening
+to what Powell said was not so appalling to his imagination as the
+terror of fancying what he might be saying when he (Algernon) should not
+be there to hear it.</p>
+
+<p>Order being restored, the preacher's examination was continued. On being
+asked where he had been when the circumstances alleged to have taken
+place happened, he replied that he had been at some distance up the
+river, in the midst of a thick coppice which grew low down on the bank
+there. He had been near enough to see, although not to hear, the
+interview between young Errington and his wife. And to the questions
+what had brought him to that remote spot at such an hour, and why he did
+not make his presence known at once on seeing the deceased lady fall
+into the water, he answered, waving his hands to and fro, "I was
+prostrate on the earth&mdash;not praying, I may not pray, but suffering under
+the wrath of the powers of the air. The voices were very terrible on
+that day. They had aroused me from my bed. They had hunted me forth in
+the early morning. I had wandered for a long time&mdash;for hours, after your
+reckoning, but for years according to the time of the spirits."</p>
+
+<p>"Mr. Powell," said Dr. Evans, sternly, "this will not do. You must speak
+less wildly. Remember what a tremendous responsibility rests on you
+after making such an allegation as you have made! Answer the questions
+put to you clearly and seriously."</p>
+
+<p>But it was in vain that David Powell was catechised and cross-examined
+in the endeavour to draw from him any more definite account of the
+events of that last morning of Castalia's life. He reiterated, indeed,
+his statement that Algernon had wilfully and forcibly thrust his wife
+down the bank into the river, and had then fled away at his utmost
+speed. And he added that he (Powell) had not thought of pursuing or
+calling to the murderer, being absorbed in his attempts to rescue the
+drowning woman. He persisted, too, in declaring that Castalia had been
+willing, nay, wishful, to die. She had not struggled. She had not cried
+out. She had not tried to reach his outstretched hand. She had closed
+her eyes, and given herself up to the power of the death-cold waters. So
+far he was coherent and consistent; but when he endeavoured to describe
+how or why he had found himself on that spot at that hour, he wandered
+off into the wildest statements, and grew ever more and more excited.
+His face flushed. His eyes blazed. His voice rose almost to a scream. He
+broke into a torrent of words, standing up in face of the crowd and
+emphasising his discourse with strange violent gestures. "I will declare
+the truth," he exclaimed. "I will cry aloud, and spare not. Now,
+therefore, be content; look upon me, for it is evident unto you if I
+lie!" Then with a sudden change of tone, sinking his voice to a hoarse,
+hollow monotone, and gazing straight before him with wide,
+horror-stricken eyes, he added, "Let me speak, let me confess the truth,
+before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and
+the shadow of death. A land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the
+shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness."</p>
+
+<p>A shudder ran through the audience. The preacher seemed to hold them in
+a spell. No voice was raised to interrupt him. Many persons turned pale
+as they listened. But on one face in the crowd the colour faintly dawned
+again. In one breast the preacher's voice giving utterance to the awful
+and glowing imagery of the Hebrew of old time, awoke something like a
+sensation of relief and comfort. Algernon Errington felt the life-blood
+pulsing warmly again in his veins. This Methodist man was mad&mdash;clearly
+mad! What was his testimony worth?</p>
+
+<p>Powell went on, speaking still more brokenly and incoherently. "I am a
+castaway," he said. "I declare it before you all. Some of you have
+listened to my ministrations in other days. I spoke then of
+assurance&mdash;of Christian perfection. Those words were vain. There are but
+the elect and the reprobate, and unto the number of those latter am I
+doomed. I have long known it and struggled against the knowledge, but I
+declare it to ye now as a testimony. How shall a man be just with God?
+This is one thing, therefore I said it. He destroyeth the perfect and
+the wicked."</p>
+
+<p>The coroner recovered his presence of mind. In truth he had been so
+absorbed in studying David Powell with the professional interest of a
+doctor and a psychologist, that he had suffered him to ramble on thus
+far unchecked. But now he broke in upon him abruptly. "We cannot listen
+to this sort of thing, Mr. Powell," he said. "All this has no bearing on
+the present inquiry." Then he said a few words as to the desirability of
+an adjournment. Mr. Errington might wish to call some other witnesses.
+Powell had acknowledged that he had been too far distant to hear a word
+of the conversation he alleged to have taken place between the husband
+and wife. It was possible, therefore, that he had been too distant to
+see the two persons with sufficient distinctness to swear to their
+identity. Some more particular testimony might be obtained as to the
+precise hour at which the deceased lady had been last seen alive, and as
+to what her husband had been doing at that time. Upon this, Algernon
+Errington arose in his place and said in a clear, though slightly
+tremulous voice, "For myself, I desire no adjournment. But I should like
+to put a few questions to this witness."</p>
+
+<p>There was a sudden hush of profound attention. David Powell still stood
+up in face of the assembly. He was rocking himself to and fro in a
+singular, restless way, and muttering under his breath very rapidly. It
+was observable, too, that his eyes seemed continually attracted to one
+point in the room just behind Algernon Errington. Every now and then he
+passed his hands over his eyes, as if to obliterate, or shut out, some
+painful sight, but he did not turn his head away; and the next instant
+after making that gesture, he would stare at the same point again, with
+an expression of intense horror. Algernon waited for an instant before
+speaking. Then he said in such a tone as one uses to attract the
+attention of a very young child, "Mr. Powell, will you try to listen to
+me?"</p>
+
+<p>The preacher immediately looked full at him, but without replying.
+Algernon did not meet his eye, but turned his face aside towards the
+coroner and the jury. He looked at them with an appealing glance, and a
+slight movement of his head in the direction of Powell. Then he resumed:</p>
+
+<p>"The accusation you have brought against me is so overwhelming, so
+amazing, that it is not very wonderful if I feel almost stunned and
+dizzy. How such a notion ever entered your brain Heaven only knows! I
+deny it completely, unequivocally, solemnly. To me it seems that such a
+denial must be unnecessary. The thing is so monstrous! But will you try
+to answer one or two questions with some calmness? How long had you been
+in the copse before you saw my wife walking by the river-side?"</p>
+
+<p>Powell shook his head restlessly, and passed his hand over his forehead
+with the action of brushing something off. "I was called out before the
+dawn," he said. "The voices bade me go forth. They sounded like brazen
+bells in the silence, beating and quivering here," and he pressed his
+fingers on his temples.</p>
+
+<p>"You hear voices which are unheard by other people, then?"</p>
+
+<p>"Often. Every day. Every hour."</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me&mdash;do you not sometimes see forms that other persons cannot see?"</p>
+
+<p>Powell started, trembled violently, and looked at Algernon with an
+expression of bewildered terror. But it was at the same time manifest
+that some gleam of reason was struggling against the delusions in his
+mind. He felt and perceived dimly, as one perceives external
+circumstances through sleep, that a trap was being laid for him. The
+pathetic questioning look in his eyes, as he vainly tried to recover the
+government of his mind, was intensely painful. For a second or two, he
+remained silent with parted lips and clenched hands, like a man making a
+violent and supreme effort. It seemed as if in another instant he might
+succeed in gaining sufficient mastery over himself to reply collectedly.
+But Algernon did not give time for such a chance to happen. He repeated
+his question more eagerly and loudly, looking at the preacher almost
+threateningly as he spoke.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell me, Mr. Powell, and remember what a responsibility you have
+assumed before God and man in making this accusation&mdash;tell me truly
+whether you do not see visions&mdash;figures of men and women, that other
+people cannot see? Don't forms appear before your eyes and vanish again
+as suddenly? Have you not told your landlady, Mrs. Thimbleby, as much on
+many occasions? How can you dare to assert with confidence, that from
+the distance you say you were at, you could distinguish my face and that
+of my wife? All your description of her violent gestures, and kneeling
+on the ground, and clasping her hands&mdash;does not that seem more like the
+delusions of fancy than the information of your sober senses?"</p>
+
+<p>Algernon spoke with indignant heat and rapidity&mdash;a calculated heat, a
+purposed rapidity meant to have a confusing effect on the preacher, and
+which had that effect; but which also excited a sympathetic indignation
+in many of the auditors. Powell looked wildly around him, and clasped
+his hands above his head.</p>
+
+<p>"You must put one question at a time, Mr. Errington," said Dr. Evans.</p>
+
+<p>"Then I put this question: David Powell, do you, or do you not, see
+visions and faces and figures that the rest of the world is as
+unconscious of as of the voices that called you out on to Whit Meadow
+that morning that my poor wife was drowned?"</p>
+
+<p>Powell, with his eyes still fixed on the same point that he had been
+gazing on so long, suddenly cried out with a loud voice, "As God liveth,
+who hath taken away my judgment, and the Almighty, who hath vexed my
+soul, my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit!
+God forbid that I should justify you! Till I die I will not remove my
+integrity from me. It is there&mdash;there behind his shoulder. It has been
+holding me with the power of its eyes. Oh, how dreadful are those eyes,
+and that ashen-grey face! Look, behold! the Lord has brought a witness
+from the grave to testify to the truth. See, behold! Can you not see
+her? Look where she stands in her cold wet garments, with the water
+dripping from her hair! She points at him&mdash;oh God most terrible!&mdash;the
+drowned woman points her cold finger at her murderer!" He stretched out
+his arms towards Algernon, and then with one bound leaped shrieking into
+the midst of the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>A dozen hands were put forth to hold him. He struggled with the
+tremendous strength of insanity; but was at length forcibly carried out
+of the room a raving maniac.</p>
+
+<p>After that there were not many words of an official nature spoken in
+the room. The inquest was adjourned to the following day, and the
+assembly dispersed to carry the account of the strange scene that had
+happened all over Whitford and its neighbourhood.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXIV" id="CHAPTER_XXIV"></a>CHAPTER XXIV.</h2>
+
+
+<p>The next day medical evidence was forthcoming as to the insanity of
+David Powell, who had been removed to the County Asylum. Testimony was,
+moreover, given by many persons showing that the preacher's mind had
+long been disordered. Even the widow Thimbleby's evidence, given with
+many tears, went to prove that. But she tried with all her might to bear
+witness to his goodness, and clung loyally to her loving admiration for
+his character. "He may not be quite in his right senses for matters of
+this world," sobbed the poor woman, "and he has been sorely tormented by
+taking up with these doctrines of election. But if ever there was an
+angel sent down to suffer on this earth, and help the sorrowful, and
+call sinners to repentance, Mr. Powell is that angel. I know what he is.
+And I have had other lodgers&mdash;good, kind gentlemen, too; I don't say to
+the contrary. But overboil their eggs in the morning, or leave a lump
+in their feather-bed, and you'd soon get a glimpse of the old Adam. Now
+with Mr. Powell, nothing put him out except sin; and even that did but
+make him the more eager to save your soul."</p>
+
+<p>Several witnesses who had testified on the previous day were
+re-examined. And some new ones were found who swore to having met Mr.
+Errington going along the road from his own house towards Whitford in
+great agitation, and asking everyone he met if they had seen his wife.
+The hour was such that to the best of their belief it was impossible he
+should have had such an interview as Powell described, with the
+deceased, between the time at which the cook swore he left his own house
+and their meeting him in the road. On this point, however, the evidence
+was somewhat conflicting. But the Whitford clocks were well known to be
+conflicting also; St. Mary's being always foremost with its jangling
+bell, the Town Hall clock coming next&mdash;except occasionally, when it
+hastened to be first with apparently quite capricious zeal&mdash;and the
+mellow chimes of St. Chad's, that were heard far over town and meadow,
+closing the chorus with their sweet cadence.</p>
+
+<p>There certainly appeared to be no cause, no conceivable motive for
+Algernon Errington to have committed the crime. Many witnesses combined
+to show with what sweetness and good-humour he bore his wife's jealous
+tempers. And, besides, it was notorious that he had hoped through her
+influence to obtain assistance and promotion from her uncle, Lord Seely.
+Whereas, on the other hand, there did seem to be several motives at work
+to induce the unfortunate lady to put an end to her own existence. There
+could be little doubt that she had committed the post-office robberies,
+and the fear of detection had weighed on her mind. Moreover, that she
+had for some time past been made unhappy by jealousy and discontent, and
+had contemplated making away with herself, was proved by several scraps
+of writing besides that which her husband had found and produced at the
+inquest the first day. In brief, no one was surprised when the foreman
+of the coroner's jury delivered a verdict to the effect that the
+deceased lady had committed suicide while under the influence of
+temporary insanity; and added a few words stating the opinion of the
+jury that Mr. Algernon Errington's character was quite unstained by the
+accusation of a maniac, who had been proved to have been subject to
+insane delusions for some time past. It was just the sort of verdict
+that every one had expected, and the general sympathy with Algernon
+still ran high.</p>
+
+<p>As for him, he got away from the "Blue Bell" as quickly as possible
+after the inquest was over, slipping away by a back door where a closed
+fly was waiting for him. When he reached his home he locked himself
+into the dining-room, and sat down on the sofa with closed eyes and his
+body leaning listlessly against the cushions, as if all vital force were
+gone from him. The prevailing&mdash;and, for a time, the only sensation he
+felt was one of utter weariness. He was so completely exhausted that the
+restful attitude, the silence, and the solitude seemed positive
+luxuries. He was scarcely conscious of his escape. He felt merely that
+the strain was over, and that voice, face, and limbs might sink back
+from the terrible tension he had held them in to a natural lassitude.</p>
+
+<p>But by-and-by he began to realise the danger he had passed, and to exult
+in his new sense of freedom. Castalia being removed, it seemed as if all
+troubles must be removed with her!</p>
+
+<p>The funeral of Mrs. Algernon Errington was to take place on the
+following day, and it was known that Lord Seely would be present at it
+if it were possible for him to make the journey from London. It was said
+that he had been very ill, but was now better, and would use his utmost
+endeavours to pay that mark of respect to his niece's memory. Mrs.
+Errington, indeed, talked of my lord's coming as a proof of his sympathy
+with her boy. But the world knew better than that. It knew, by some
+mysterious means, that Lord Seely had quarrelled with Algernon. And when
+his lordship did appear in Whitford, and took up his quarters at the
+"Blue Bell," rumours went about to the effect that he had refused to see
+young Errington, and had remained shut up in his own room, attended by
+his physician. This, however, was not true. Lord Seely had seen Algernon
+and spoken with him. But he had not touched his proffered hand; he had
+said no word to him of sympathy; he had barely looked at him. The poor
+old man was overpowered by grief for Castalia, and it was in vain for
+Algernon to put on a show of grief. About a matter of fact Lord Seely
+would even now have found it difficult to think that Algernon was
+telling him a point-blank lie; but on a matter of feeling it was
+different. Algernon's words and voice rang false and hollow, and the old
+man shrank from him.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely had come down to Whitford on getting the news of Castalia's
+terrible death, without knowing any particulars about it. Those were not
+the days when the telegraph brought a budget of intelligence from the
+most distant parts of the earth every morning. A few hurried and
+confused lines were all that Lord Seely had received, but they were
+sufficient to make him insist on performing the journey to Whitford at
+once. Lady Seely had tried to impress on him the necessity of shaking
+off young Errington now that Castalia was gone. "Wash your hands of him,
+Valentine," my lady had said. "If poor Cassy <i>has</i> done this desperate
+deed, it's he that drove her to it&mdash;smooth-faced young villain!" To all
+this Lord Seely had made no reply. But in his own mind he had almost
+resolved to help Algernon to a place abroad. It was what his poor niece
+would have desired.</p>
+
+<p>But, then, after his arrival in Whitford all the painful details of the
+coroner's inquest were made known to him. He made inquiries in all
+directions, and learned a great deal about his niece's life in the
+little town. The prominent feelings in his mind were pity and remorse.
+Pity for Castalia's unhappy fate, and acute remorse for having been so
+weak as to let her marriage take place without any attempt to interfere,
+despite his own secret conviction that it was an ill-assorted and
+ill-omened one. "You couldn't have helped it, my lord," said the
+friendly physician, to whom he poured out some of the feelings that
+oppressed his heart. "Perhaps not; perhaps not. But I ought to have
+tried. My poor, dear, unhappy girl!"</p>
+
+<p>On the day of the funeral Lord Seely stood side by side with Algernon at
+Castalia's grave, in Duckwell churchyard. But, when it was over, they
+parted, and drove back to Whitford in separate carriages. Lord Seely was
+to return to London early the next morning, but before he went away he
+determined to pay a visit to the county lunatic asylum and see David
+Powell.</p>
+
+<p>On the day of the funeral Algernon had spoken a few words to Lord Seely
+about his wish to get away from the painful associations which must
+henceforward haunt him in Whitford; and had reminded his lordship of the
+promise made in London. But Lord Seely had made no definite answer, and,
+moreover, he had said that, by his doctor's advice, he must decline a
+visit which Algernon offered to make him that evening. Was the "pompous
+little ass" going to throw him over after all?</p>
+
+<p>In the course of that afternoon he heard that old Maxfield intended to
+come down on him pitilessly for the full amount of the bills he held. A
+reaction had set in in public sentiment. Tradesmen, who could not get
+paid, and whose hopes of eventual payment were greatly damped by the
+coolness of Lord Seely's behaviour to his nephew-in-law, began to feel
+their indignation once more override their compassion. The two servants
+at Ivy Lodge asked for their wages, and declared that they did not wish
+to remain there another week. Algernon's position at the post-office was
+forfeited. He knew that he could not keep it even if he would.</p>
+
+<p>It began to appear that the removal of Castalia had not, after all,
+removed all troubles from her husband's path!</p>
+
+<p>But the heaviest blow of all was to come.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Seely left Whitford without seeing him again, and sent back
+unopened a note, which Algernon had written, begging for an interview,
+with these words written outside the cover in a trembling hand: "<i>Dare
+not to write to me or importune me more.</i>"</p>
+
+<p>Algernon received this late at night; and before noon the next day the
+fact was known all over Whitford. People began to say that Lord Seely
+had obtained access to David Powell, had spoken with him, and had gone
+away convinced of the substantial truth of his testimony; that his
+lordship had left orders that Powell should lack no comfort or attention
+which his unhappy state permitted of his enjoying; and that he had
+strongly expressed his grateful sense of the poor preacher's efforts to
+save his niece.</p>
+
+<p>From London Lord Seely&mdash;who had heard that Miss Bodkin had visited
+Duckwell Farm while his niece lay dead there, and had placed flowers on
+her unconscious breast&mdash;sent a mourning-ring and a letter, the contents
+of which Minnie communicated to no one but her parents. Nevertheless,
+its contents were discussed pretty widely, and were said to be of a
+nature very damnatory to Algernon Errington's character. However, the
+painful things that were said in Whitford could not hurt him, for he had
+gone&mdash;disappeared in the night like a thief, as his creditors said&mdash;and
+no one could say whither.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><a name="CHAPTER_XXV" id="CHAPTER_XXV"></a>CHAPTER XXV.</h2>
+
+<h3>CONCLUSION.</h3>
+
+
+<p>Our tale is almost told. The last words that need saying can be briefly
+said. When some weeks had passed away, Mrs. Errington received a letter
+from her son demanding a remittance to be sent forthwith Poste Restante
+to a little seaport town on the Italian Riviera. He had not during the
+interval left his mother in absolute ignorance as to what had become of
+him, but had sent her a few brief lines from London, saying that he had
+been obliged to leave Whitford in order to escape being put in prison
+for debt; that his present intention was to go abroad; and that she
+should hear again from him before long.</p>
+
+<p>Algernon had been so quick in his movements that he managed to be in
+town before the story of Lord Seely's having cast him off had had time
+to be circulated amongst his acquaintance there. And he was enabled, as
+the result of his activity, to obtain from Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs and others
+several letters of introduction calculated to be of use to him abroad.
+He was described by Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs as a nephew of Lord Seely and her
+intimate friend, who was travelling on the Continent to recruit his
+health after the shock of his wife's sudden death.</p>
+
+<p>He had brought away from Whitford such few jewels belonging to his dead
+wife as were of any value, and he sold them in London. He furnished
+himself handsomely with such articles as were desirable for a gentleman
+of fortune travelling for his pleasure; and allowed the West-end
+tradesmen, to whom the Honourable John Patrick Price had recommended him
+during his brilliant London season, to write down against him in their
+books some very extortionate charges for the same. His outfit being
+accomplished in this inexpensive manner, he was enabled to travel with
+as much comfort as was compatible in those days with a journey from
+London to Calais, and he stepped on to the French shore with a
+considerable sum of money in his pocket.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time the tidings of him that reached Whitford were uncertain
+and conflicting; then they began to arrive at even wider and wider
+intervals; and, finally, after Mrs. Errington left the town, they
+ceased altogether to reach the general world of Whitfordians. The real
+history of the circumstances which induced Mrs. Errington to leave the
+home of so many years was known to very few persons. It was this:</p>
+
+<p>About a twelvemonth after Algernon's departure Mrs. Errington made a
+sudden journey to London; and, on her return, she confided to her old
+friend, Dr. Bodkin, that she had sold out of the funds nearly the whole
+sum from which her little income was derived and transmitted it to Algy,
+who had an absolute need for the money, which she considered paramount.
+"But, my dear soul, you have ruined yourself!" cried the doctor aghast.
+"Algernon will repay me, sir," replied the poor old woman, drawing
+herself up with the ghost of her old Ancram grandeur. The upshot was
+that Dr. Bodkin, in concert with one or two other old friends of her
+late husband, made some representations on her behalf to Mr. Filthorpe,
+the wealthy Bristol merchant, who was, as the reader may remember, a
+cousin of Dr. Errington; and that Mr. Filthorpe benevolently allowed his
+cousin's widow a small annuity, which, together with the few pounds that
+still remained to her of her own, enabled her to live in decent comfort.
+But she professed herself unable to remain in Whitford, and removed to a
+cottage in Dorrington, where she had a kind friend in the wife of the
+head-master of the proprietary school, whom we first presented to the
+reader as "little Rhoda Maxfield."</p>
+
+<p>Mrs. Diamond (as she was now) lived in a very handsome house, and wore
+very elegant dresses, and was looked upon as a personage of some
+importance in Dorrington and its vicinity. Her husband had decidedly
+opposed a proposition she made to him to receive Mrs. Errington as an
+inmate of his home. But he put no further constraint on Rhoda's
+affectionate solicitude about her old friend.</p>
+
+<p>And the two women drove together, and sewed together, and talked
+together; and their talk was chiefly about that exiled victim of
+unmerited misfortune, Algernon Errington. Rhoda preserved her faith in
+the Ancram glories. And although she acknowledged to herself that
+Algernon had treated her badly, he was invested in her mind with some
+mysterious immunity from the obligations that bind ordinary mortals.</p>
+
+<p>A visitor, who was often cordially welcomed at Dorrington by Matthew
+Diamond, was Miss Chubb. And the kind-hearted little spinster endured a
+vast amount of snubbing and patronage from her old enemy on the
+battle-ground of polite society&mdash;Mrs. Errington&mdash;with much charitable
+sweetness.</p>
+
+<p>Old Max lived to see his daughter's first-born child; but he was unable
+to move from his bed for many months before his death. Perhaps it was
+the period of quiet reflection thus obtained, when the things of this
+world were melting away from his grasp, which occasioned the addition of
+a codicil to the old man's will, that surprised most of his
+acquaintance. He had settled the bulk of his property on his daughter at
+her marriage, and, in his original testament, had bequeathed the whole
+of the residue to her also. But the codicil set forth that his only and
+beloved daughter being amply provided for, and his son James inheriting
+the stock, fixtures, and good-will of his flourishing business, together
+with the house and furniture, Jonathan Maxfield felt that he was doing
+injustice to no one by bequeathing the sum of three thousand pounds to
+Miss Minnie Bodkin as a mark of respect and admiration. And he,
+moreover, left one hundred pounds, free of duty, to "that God-fearing
+member of the Wesleyan Society, Richard Gibbs, now living as groom in
+the service of Orlando Pawkins, Esquire, of Pudcombe Hall;" a bequest
+which sensibly embittered the flavour of the sermon preached by the
+un-legacied Brother Jackson on the next Sunday after old Max's funeral.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bodkin still lives and rules in Whitford Grammar School. His wife's
+life is brightened by the sight of her Minnie's increased health and
+strength. But she has never quite forgiven Matthew Diamond, and has been
+heard to say that young Mrs. Diamond's children are the most singularly
+uninteresting she ever saw!</p>
+
+<p>Of Minnie herself, the chronicle hitherto records a life of useful
+benevolence, undisfigured by ascetic affectation, or the assumption of
+any pious livery whatever. She keeps her old delight in all the
+beautiful things of art and nature, and old Max's legacy has enabled her
+to enjoy some foreign travel. She is still in the first prime of
+womanhood, and more beautiful than ever. But, at the latest accounts,
+poor Mr. Warlock has not been tortured by the spectacle of any
+successful rival. For his part, he goes on worshipping Miss Bodkin with
+hopeless fidelity.</p>
+
+<p>For a long time Minnie continued to visit David Powell in the lunatic
+asylum at stated periods. He generally recognised her, and the sight of
+her seemed to soothe and comfort him. After a while he was pronounced
+cured, and left the asylum; but his madness returned on him at
+intervals, and he would voluntarily go and place himself under restraint
+when he felt the black fit coming. He did not live very long, being
+assailed by a mortal consumption. But as his body wasted, his mind grew
+clearer, stronger, and more serene; and before his death Minnie had the
+satisfaction to hear him profess a humble faith in the Divine Goodness,
+and a fearless confidence in the mysterious hand that was leading him
+even as a little child into the shadowy land. There was as large a
+concourse of people at his burial as had ever thronged to hear his fiery
+preaching on Whit Meadow. His memory became surrounded by a saintly
+radiance in the imaginations of the poor. Stories of his goodness and
+his afflictions, and the final ray of peace which God sent to cheer his
+last moments, were long retailed amongst the Whitford Methodists. And
+his grave is still bright with carefully-tended flowers.</p>
+
+<p>Of Algernon Errington the strangest rumours were circulated for a time.
+Some said he had become croupier at a foreign gambling-table; others
+declared he had married a West Indian heiress with a million of money,
+and was living in Florence in unheard-of luxury. Others, again, affirmed
+that they had the best authority for believing that he had gone to the
+United States, and had appeared on the stage there with immense success.
+However, the remembrance of him passed away from men's minds in Whitford
+within a few years; in London within a few months. But it was a long
+time before Jack Price left off recounting his final interview with
+Errington. "That young Ancram, you know. Captivating way of his own.
+What? On my honour, the rascal borrowed ten pounds of me. Ready money,
+sir, down on the nail! Bedad, it was a <i>tour de force</i>, for I never have
+a shilling in my pocket for my own use. But Ancram would coax the
+little birds off the bushes, as they say in my part of the world.
+Principle? Oh, devil a rag of principle in his whole composition. What?
+I wonder what the deuce has become of him! I give ye my word and honour
+he was really&mdash;<i>really</i> now&mdash;a <span class="smcap">Charming Fellow</span>."</p>
+
+
+<h3>THE END.</h3>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+<hr class="full" />
+<p>***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHARMING FELLOW, VOLUME III (OF 3)***</p>
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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, A Charming Fellow, Volume III (of 3), by
+Frances Eleanor Trollope
+
+
+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: A Charming Fellow, Volume III (of 3)
+
+
+Author: Frances Eleanor Trollope
+
+
+
+Release Date: February 28, 2011  [eBook #35430]
+Most recently updated: November 10, 2011
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHARMING FELLOW, VOLUME III (OF
+3)***
+
+
+E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team (http://www.pgdp.net) from page images
+generously made available by Internet Archive/American Libraries
+(http://www.archive.org/details/americana)
+
+
+
+Note: Project Gutenberg also has the other two volumes of this
+      novel.
+      Volume I: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35428
+      Volume II: see http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/35429
+
+
+      Images of the original pages are available through
+      Internet Archive/American Libraries. See
+      http://www.archive.org/details/charmingfellow03trol
+
+
+
+
+
+A CHARMING FELLOW.
+
+by
+
+FRANCES ELEANOR TROLLOPE,
+
+Author of "Aunt Margaret's Trouble," "Mabel's Progress," etc. etc.
+
+In Three Volumes.
+
+VOL. III.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+London:
+Chapman and Hall, 193, Piccadilly.
+1876.
+
+Charles Dickens and Evans,
+Crystal Palace Press.
+
+
+
+
+A CHARMING FELLOW.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+
+There was a "scene" that evening at Ivy Lodge--not the less a "scene" in
+that it was conducted on genteel methods. Mrs. Algernon Errington
+inflicted on her husband during dinner a recapitulation of all her
+wrongs and injuries which could be covertly hinted at. She would not
+broadly speak out her meaning before "the servants." The phrase shaped
+itself thus in her mind from old habit. But in truth "the servants" were
+represented by one plump-faced damsel in a yellow print gown, into which
+her person seemed to have been inserted in the same way that bran is
+inserted into the cover of a pincushion. She seemed to have been stuffed
+into it by means of considerable force, and with less reference to the
+natural shape of her body than to the arbitrary outlines of the case
+made for it by a Whitford dressmaker.
+
+This girl ministered to her master and mistress during dinner, pouring
+water and wine, changing knives and plates, handing vegetables, and not
+unfrequently dropping a spoon or a sprinkling of hot gravy into the laps
+of her employers. She had succeeded to Slater, who resigned her post
+after a trial of some six weeks' duration. Castalia, in despair at this
+desertion, had written to Lady Seely to send her a maid from London
+forthwith. But to this application she received a reply to the effect
+that my lady could not undertake to find any one who would suit her
+niece, and that her ladyship thought Castalia had much better make up
+her mind to do without a regular lady's-maid, and take some humbler
+attendant, who would make herself generally useful.
+
+"I always knew Slater wouldn't stay with you," wrote Lady Seely; "and
+you won't get any woman of that kind to stay. You can't afford to keep
+one. Your uncle is fairly well; but poor Fido gives me a great deal of
+unhappiness. He eats nothing."
+
+Not by any means from conviction or submission to the imperious advice
+of Lady Seely, but under the yoke of stern necessity, Castalia had
+consented to try a young woman of the neighbourhood, "highly
+recommended." And this abigail, in her tight yellow gown, was the cause
+of Mrs. Algernon's reticence during dinner. The poor lady might,
+however, have spared herself this restraint, if its object were to keep
+her servants in the dark as to domestic disagreements; for no sooner had
+Lydia (that was the abigail's name) reached the kitchen, than she and
+Polly, the cook, began a discussion of Mr. and Mrs. Algernon Errington's
+private affairs, which displayed a surprising knowledge of very minute
+details, and an almost equally surprising power of piecing evidence
+together.
+
+When Lydia was gone, Algernon lit a cigar and drew up his chair to the
+fireside, where he sat silent, staring at his elegantly-slippered feet
+on the fender. Castalia rose, fidgeted about the room, walked to the
+door, stopped, turned back, and, standing directly opposite to Algernon,
+said querulously, "Do you mean to remain here?"
+
+"For the present, yes; out of consideration for you. You dislike me to
+smoke in the drawing-room, do you not?"
+
+"Why should you smoke at all?"
+
+Algernon raised his eyebrows, shrugged his shoulders, crossed one leg
+over the other, and made no answer. His wife went away, and sitting down
+alone on a corner of the sofa in her little drawing-room, cried bitterly
+for a long time.
+
+She was made to raise her tear-stained face by feeling a hand passed
+gently over her hair. She looked up, and found her husband standing
+beside her. "What's the matter, little woman?" he asked, in a
+half-coaxing, half-bantering tone, like one speaking to a naughty
+child, too young to be seriously reproved or argued with.
+
+Now, although Castalia was haughty by education and insolent by temper,
+she had very little real pride and no dignity in her character. To be
+noticed and caressed by Algernon was to her a sufficient compensation
+for almost any indignity. There was but one passion of her nature which
+had any chance of resisting his personal influence, and that passion had
+never yet been fully aroused, although frequently irritated. Her
+jealousy was like a young tiger that had never yet tasted blood.
+
+"What's the matter, little woman?" repeated Algernon, seating himself
+beside her, and putting his arm round her waist. She shrugged her
+shoulders fretfully, but at the same time nestled herself nearer to his
+side. She loved him, and it put her at an immense disadvantage with him.
+
+"Don't you mean to vouchsafe me an answer, Mrs. Algernon Ancram
+Errington?"
+
+"Oh, I daresay you're very sorry that I am Mrs. Errington. I have no
+doubt you repent."
+
+"Really! And is that what you were crying for?"
+
+No reply.
+
+"It looks rather as if you repented, madam!"
+
+"Oh, you know I don't; unless you like other people better than you like
+me!"
+
+"'Other people' don't cry in my company."
+
+"No; because they don't care for you. And because they're----they're
+nasty, artful minxes!"
+
+"Hear, hear! A charming definition! Castalia, you are really _impayable_
+sometimes. How my lord would enjoy that speech of yours!"
+
+"No, he wouldn't. Uncle Val would never enjoy what vexed me. My lady
+might; nasty, disagreeable old thing!"
+
+"There, I can agree with you. A vulgar kind of woman--though she is my
+blood-relation--thoroughly coarse in the grain. But now that we have
+relieved our feelings, and spoken our minds on that score, suppose we
+converse rationally?"
+
+"I don't want to converse rationally."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Because that means that you are going to scold me."
+
+"Well--that might be highly rational, certainly; only I never do it."
+
+"Well, but you'll manage to make out that I'm in the wrong and you're in
+the right, somehow or other."
+
+"Cassy, I want you to write a letter."
+
+"A letter? Whom do you want me to write to?"
+
+Her tears were completely dried, and she looked up at him with a faint
+smile on her countenance, which, however, looked rueful enough, with red
+nose and swollen eyes.
+
+"You must write to my lord, and get him to help us with a little money."
+
+Her face fell.
+
+"Ask Uncle Val for money again, Ancram? It is such a short time since he
+sent me some!"
+
+"And to-morrow, at this hour, it will be 'such a short time' since you
+had your dinner! Nevertheless, I suppose you will want another dinner."
+
+"I--I don't think Uncle Val can afford it, Ancram."
+
+"Leave that to him. Afford it? Pshaw!"
+
+Algernon made the little sharp ejaculation in a tone expressive of the
+most impatient contempt.
+
+"But do we really--is it absolutely necessary for us to beg of my uncle
+again?"
+
+"Not at all. Do just as you please," answered her husband, rising and
+walking away from the sofa to a distant chair.
+
+Castalia's eyes followed him piteously.
+
+"But what can I say?" she asked. "What excuse can I make? I hate to
+worry Uncle Val. It isn't as if he had more money than he knew what to
+do with. And if Lady Seely knew about his helping us, she would lead him
+such a life!"
+
+"Do as you please. It would be a thousand pities to worry your uncle.
+Let all the worry fall on me."
+
+He took up a book and threw himself back in his chair as if he had
+dismissed the subject.
+
+"I don't know what to do!" exclaimed Castalia, with fretful
+helplessness. At length, after sitting silent for some time twisting her
+handkerchief backwards and forwards in her fingers, she got up and
+crossed the room to her husband's chair.
+
+"Ancram!" she said softly.
+
+"Eh? I beg your pardon!" looking up with an appearance of great
+abstraction, as if the perusal of his book had absorbed all his
+attention.
+
+"I wish to do what will please you. I only care to please you in the
+world. But--can't you explain to me a little better why I must write to
+Uncle Val?"
+
+Explain! Of course he would! He desired nothing better. He had brought
+her to a point at which encouragement was needed, not coldness. And with
+the singular flexibility that belonged to him, he was able immediately
+to plunge into an animated statement of his present situation, which
+sufficed to persuade his hearer that no course of conduct could be so
+desirable, so prudent--nay, so praiseworthy, as the course he had
+suggested.
+
+To be sure the details were vague, but the general impression was vivid
+enough. If Algernon's pictures were a little inaccurate in drawing, they
+were at least always admirably coloured. And the general impression was
+this: that there never had been a person of such brilliant abilities and
+charming qualities as Algernon Ancram Errington so unjustly consigned
+to obscurity and poverty. And no contributions to his comfort, luxury,
+or well-being were too much to expect and claim from the world in
+general, and his wife's relations in particular. Common honesty--common
+decency almost--would compel Lord Seely to make all the amends in his
+power for having placed Algernon in the Whitford Post-office. And there
+was an insinuation very skilfully and delicately mixed with all the
+seemingly unstudied and spontaneous outpourings of Algy's conjugal
+confidence--an insinuation which affected the flavour of the whole, as
+an accomplished cook will contrive to mingle garlic in a ragout, never
+coarsely obtrusive, and yet distinctly perceptible--to the effect that
+the hand of Miss Castalia Kilfinane had been somewhat officiously thrust
+upon her charming husband; and that the family owed him no little
+gratitude for having been kind enough to accept it.
+
+Poor Castalia had an uneasy feeling, at the end of his fluent discourse,
+that Algernon had been a victim to her great relations, and, in some dim
+way, to herself. But the garlic was so admirably blended with the whole
+mass, that it was impossible for her to pick it out, or resent it, or do
+anything but declare her willingness to help her husband by any means in
+her power.
+
+"Why, my dear girl, it is as much for your sake as for mine! And as to
+the necessity for it, I must tell you what Minnie Bodkin said to me
+to-day. Minnie is an excellent creature, full of friendly feeling--a
+little too conceited and fond of lecturing" (Castalia's face
+brightened); "but much must be excused to an afflicted invalid, who
+never meets her fellow-creatures on equal terms."
+
+Castalia looked almost happy. But she said, "As to her affliction, it
+seems to me that she has been growing much stronger lately."
+
+"Yes; I am glad to think so too. But let the best happen that can be
+hoped--let the disease, that has kept her helpless on her couch all
+these years, be overcome--still she must always be so lame as to make
+her an object of pity."
+
+"Poor thing! I daresay it does warp her mind a good deal. What did she
+say to you?"
+
+Algernon recapitulated a part of Minnie's warnings, but gave them such a
+turn as to make it appear that the greatest wrath and impatience of the
+Whitford tradesmen were directed against his wife. "They have a narrow
+kind of provincial prejudice against you, Cassy, on account of your
+being a 'London fine lady.' Me they know; and, in their great
+condescension, are pleased to approve of."
+
+"Oh, everybody likes you better than me, of course," answered Castalia,
+simply. "But I don't care for that, if you will only like me better
+than anybody."
+
+The genuine devotion with which this was said would have touched most
+men. It might have touched Algernon, had he not been too much engrossed
+in mentally composing the rough draft of Castalia's letter to her uncle,
+and putting his not inconsiderable powers of plausible persuasion to the
+task of making it appear that his wife's personal extravagance was the
+chief cause of their need for ready money.
+
+"Don't tell him that I even know of your writing. My lord will be more
+willing to come down handsomely if he thinks it's for you only, Cassy,"
+said Algernon, as he drew up his wife's writing-table for her, placed a
+chair, opened her inkstand, and performed several little acts of
+attention with a really charming grace and gallantry.
+
+So Castalia, writing almost literally what her husband
+dictated--(although he kept saying at every sentence, "My dear child,
+you ought to know best how to address your uncle;" "Well, I really don't
+know, but I think you might put it thus;" and so forth)--completed an
+appeal to Lord Seely to anticipate by nearly a quarter the allowance he
+continued to make her for her dress out of his private purse, and, if
+possible, to increase its amount.
+
+One such appeal had already been made and responded to by a gift of
+money. It had been made immediately after the arrival of the
+newly-married couple in Whitford, on the ground of the unforeseen
+expenses attendant on installing themselves in their new habitation. In
+answering it Lord Seely had written kindly, but with evident disapproval
+of the step that had been taken. "I cannot, Castalia," he said, "bid you
+keep anything secret from your husband, and yet I can scarcely help
+saying that I wish he did not know of the cheque I inclose. I fear he is
+disposed to be reckless in money matters; and nothing encourages such a
+disposition more than the idea that aid can be had from friends for the
+asking. Ancram will recollect a serious conversation I had with him the
+evening before your marriage, and I can only now reiterate what I then
+assured him of--that it will be impossible for me to repeat the
+assistance I gave him on that occasion."
+
+"What assistance was that, Ancram?" asked Castalia, who knew not a word
+of the matter.
+
+"Oh, I believe my lord made me the munificent present of two pair of
+breeches, and an old coat and waistcoat, or so."
+
+"Made you a present of an old coat and breeches! What on earth do you
+mean?"
+
+"I mean that he paid a twopenny outstanding tailor's bill for me. And he
+writes now as if he had conferred the most overwhelming obligation."
+
+The fact was that Lord Seely had discharged a great number of Algernon's
+debts; all of them, as his lordship imagined. But there was clearly no
+need of troubling Castalia with these details.
+
+When the letter was finished and sealed, Castalia still sat musingly
+tracing unmeaning figures with the point of her pen on the
+blotting-book. At length she said with some hesitation, "Ancram, how is
+it that we spend so much money? I don't think I am very extravagant."
+
+"'So much money!' Good Heavens, Castalia--but you really have no
+conception of these things. Our whole income, and twice our income, is a
+miserable pittance. The Dormers pay their butler more."
+
+She was again silent for a little while. Then she said, "Isn't there
+anything we could do without?"
+
+Her husband looked at her in astonishment. It was a quite unexpected
+suggestion on Castalia's part. "Could you be kind enough to point out
+anything?" he asked drily. She looked somewhat cast down by his tone,
+but answered, "There's that last case of wine from town--the Rhine wine.
+Don't you think we might send it back unopened, and do with a bottle of
+sherry, now and then, from the 'Blue Bell?' Your mother finds that very
+good."
+
+"Pshaw!" with the accustomed sharp, impatient contempt. "My mother knows
+no more about wine than a baby. To drink bad wine is absolutely to
+poison oneself. I can't do it, and I don't mean to let you do it,
+either. And when one knows that it is only a question of a few months,
+more or less, and that directly I get a better berth these greedy
+rascals will be paid their extortionate bills in full--positively,
+Castalia, it seems to me childish to talk in that way!"
+
+It was the same with one or two other suggestions of retrenchment she
+ventured to make. Algernon showed conclusively (conclusively enough to
+satisfy his hearer, at all events) that it would not do--that it would
+be absolutely imprudent, on their part, to make any open retrenchment.
+All these sharks would come round them at once, if they smelt poverty.
+"I know these gentry better than you do, Castalia," said he. "There is
+no way of getting on with them except by not being in a hurry to pay
+them. Nothing spoils tradespeople so much as any over-alacrity of that
+kind. They immediately conclude that you can't do without them!"
+
+"Oh, they're disgustingly impudent creatures, these Whitford
+tradespeople! There is no doubt in the world about that," said Castalia,
+in perfect good faith. "Only I thought you seemed to be made uneasy by
+what Miss Bodkin said to you on the subject."
+
+"To be sure! But, my dear girl, your method would never answer! I do
+want money, very badly. And I do hope and expect--as I think I have some
+right to do--that my lord will assist us without delay, and without
+making one of his intolerable prosy preachments on the occasion. And we
+must have a few pounds to go on with, and stop the mouths of these
+rapacious rascals. But no retrenchment, Castalia! No 'Blue Bell' sherry!
+Good Heavens, it makes one bilious to think of it! I really cannot
+sacrifice my digestion to advance the commercial prosperity of Whitford.
+And when one considers it, why should we destroy our peace of mind by
+worrying ourselves? Lord Seely has got us into this scrape, and Lord
+Seely must get us out of it. _Voila tout!_"
+
+After that the rest of the evening was spent very harmoniously. Algernon
+could not repress two or three prodigious yawns, but he politely
+concealed them. And when Castalia went to her pianoforte, he woke up at
+the conclusion of an intricate fantasia quite in time to thank her for
+the performance, and to praise its brilliancy. In a word, so agreeable
+an evening, Castalia told herself, she had not passed for many weeks,
+although it had certainly begun in an unpromising way. So softened was
+she, indeed, by this gleam of happiness, that several times she was on
+the point of making a confession to her husband, and entreating his
+forgiveness. But she could not bear to risk bringing a cloud over the
+light of his countenance, which was the only sunshine in her life.
+"Ancram would be so angry!" was a thought that checked back words which
+were on her lips a dozen times. "And since the matter is all over, and
+he need never know anything about it, I may as well hold my tongue."
+
+It needed, however, no confession on Castalia's part to convince
+Algernon that she had opened his secretaire, and taken Minnie Bodkin's
+letter thence, instead of having found it lying open on his table, as
+she had said. For on the next morning, when he entered his private room
+at the office, his first action was to try the little secretaire, which
+was unlocked. He then remembered that, after having secured that
+repository of his private papers, he had re-opened it, to throw Minnie's
+note into a drawer of it; and, having been called away at that moment,
+must have forgotten to re-lock it.
+
+"Damnably provoking!" muttered Algernon to himself as he stood looking
+at the little cabinet with gloomy, anxious brows. Then, having first
+bolted the door of his room, he made a thorough search throughout the
+secretaire. "Nothing disturbed! She probably flew off to Dr. Bodkin's
+house directly after reading Minnie's note; and that lay in the little
+empty drawer right in front. It would be the first she opened."
+
+Then he sat down in a mighty comfortable armchair, which was placed in
+front of an official-looking desk, and meditated so deeply that he
+forgot to unbolt the door, and was roused by Mr. Gibbs tapping at it,
+and desiring to speak with him on business.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+
+Mr. Gibbs's errand was not a pleasant one. He came to speak to his chief
+of complaints that had reached the office as to lost and missing
+letters. The most serious case was that of a man living in the
+neighbourhood of Duckwell, who complained that a money letter had never
+reached him, although it had been posted in Bristol three weeks back.
+Some inquiries had previously been made, but without result. And now the
+Duckwell man declared he would make a fine fuss, and bring the matter
+before the very highest authorities, if his letter were not forthcoming.
+
+"What does the bumpkin mean, Gibbs?" asked Algernon, impatiently tapping
+with his fingers on the desk before him.
+
+"I'm afraid he'll give us a deal of bother, sir," returned Mr. Gibbs
+slowly. "And I can't understand what has come of the letter. It's very
+awkward."
+
+"Very awkward for him, if he really has lost his money. But I should not
+be surprised to learn that it never was posted at all."
+
+"Humph! I don't know. He swears that the sender at Bristol can prove
+that it was posted."
+
+"And why the deuce do people go on sending bank-notes by post, without
+the least care or precaution? One must have been connected with a
+post-office in order fully to appreciate the imbecility of one's
+fellow-creatures!"
+
+"I don't know that it was bank-notes, sir. It may have been a cheque."
+
+"Oh, depend upon it, it was whatever was stupidest to send, and most
+calculated to give trouble; if it was sent, that is to say! If it was
+sent!"
+
+"I can't call to mind such a thing happening for twenty years back; not
+in this office. But lately there seems to be no end to things going
+wrong."
+
+"Well, don't distress yourself about it, Gibbs. I have full reliance on
+you in every way."
+
+"Oh no, sir! It is unpleasant, but I don't know that I specially need
+distress myself about it."
+
+"Only because you have had the uncontrolled management of the office,
+Gibbs. And it is too bad, when one has worked so conscientiously as you
+have, to be worried by blundering bumpkins. I assure you, Gibbs, I am
+constantly singing your praises to Lord Seely. I tell him frankly, that
+if it were not for you, I don't know in the least how I should fulfil my
+onerous duties here! When I'm removed from this place, the powers that
+be won't have far to look for my successor."
+
+This was the most explicit word that had yet fallen from Mr. Errington
+on the subject of his subordinate's promotion. And it decidedly
+gratified Mr. Obadiah Gibbs. Nevertheless, that steady individual was
+not so elated by the prospect held out to him as to dismiss from his
+mind the business he had come to speak about. "It is the most
+unaccountable thing!" said he. "Three or four cases of the kind within
+two months! And up to that time no office in the kingdom bore a better
+character than Whitford. I hope the thing may be cleared up. But it is
+next to impossible to trace a stolen letter. The Duckwell man--Heath,
+his name is; Roger Heath--says he is determined to complain to the
+Postmaster-General. I suppose we shall be having the surveyor coming to
+look after us. You see, it isn't like a solitary case. That's the worst
+of it. There's what you may term an accumulation, sir."
+
+Whilst Mr. Gibbs poured forth his troubled mind in these and many more
+slow sentences, Algernon rose, took his hat, brushed it lightly with his
+glove, put it on, and was evidently about to depart. Gibbs ventured to
+lay his hand on his coat-sleeve to detain him. The clerk was not
+satisfied that the matter should be dismissed so lightly. It might not
+be possible to do anything, truly; but (in common with a great many
+other people) Mr. Obadiah Gibbs felt that, where efficacious action was
+impracticable, it was all the more desirable to mark the gravity of an
+unpleasant circumstance by copious talking of it. Life would become, in
+some sort, too frivolous and easy if, when a matter clearly could not be
+remedied, every one agreed to say no more about it! A vast deal of sage
+eloquence would thus be choked and dammed up. And Mr. Gibbs, for his
+special part, was conscious of having some reputation amongst his fellow
+Wesleyans for a gift of utterance.
+
+"I really don't know, sir, what to say to Roger Heath," he persisted.
+
+"Oh--tell him inquiries will be made in the proper quarters."
+
+"That, sir, has been said already. He has been here twice or thrice."
+
+"Then tell him to go to the devil!" said Algernon, sharply jerking his
+arm away from the clerk's grasp, and walking off.
+
+The pious and respectable Mr. Gibbs shook his head disapprovingly at
+this profane speech, and went back to his stool in the outer office with
+a lowering brow.
+
+Algernon walked along the High Street, and turned down a narrow lane
+leading towards the river, and past one corner of the Grammar School.
+The boys were just coming out of school with the usual shrill babble and
+rush. A party of Dr. Bodkin's private scholars were on their way to Whit
+Meadow.
+
+"Good day, Ingleby," said Algernon, addressing the eldest of them, the
+same lad who had been Rhoda's squire in the tea-room on the night of
+Mrs. Algernon Errington's _debut_ in Whitford society. "Where are you
+off to?"
+
+"We're going to have a row. I've got a boat, and we're going up the
+river as far as Duckwell Reach. We have leave from the doctor. Deuce of
+a job to get it, though!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Oh, because he's nervous about the river; thinks it dangerous, and all
+that."
+
+"Well, you know, Ingleby," said a younger boy, with much eagerness,
+"lots of people have been drowned in that bit of the river between here
+and Duckwell Reach."
+
+"Lots of people! Gammon!"
+
+"Well, two since I've been here!"
+
+"Oh, I daresay. Well, if you funk it you needn't come. There's plenty
+without you."
+
+"You know I don't funk it for myself, Ingleby. I can swim."
+
+"Yes, my friend. You wouldn't get into my boat if you couldn't. I'm on
+honour with the doctor to take none but swimmers," said Ingleby, turning
+to Algernon; "and of course that settles the matter. But, for my part, I
+should have thought anybody but the quite small boys might walk out of
+the Whit if they tumbled into it." "Oh no! You do our noble river
+injustice. You are not a Whitfordian or you would know better than that.
+There are some very ugly places between here and Duckwell Reach; places
+where I wouldn't give much for your chance of getting out if once you
+fell in, swimmer though you are. Good-bye. A pleasant row to you."
+
+The boys pursued their way to the boat, and Algernon, turning off at
+right angles when he reached the bottom of the lane, got into Whit
+Meadow through a turnstile at the foot of the Grammar School playground.
+
+There was a footpath through the meadow, and some fields beyond, which
+made a pleasant walk enough in fine summer weather, and was then a good
+deal frequented. But at this season it was damp, muddy, and lonely. The
+day was fine, but the ground had been saturated by previous rains, and
+that part of the meadow nearest to the margin of the river was almost a
+swamp. The path continued to skirt the Whit for some miles, running in
+the direction of Duckwell, and as Algernon walked along it he saw the
+windings of the river shining in the sun, and presently there appeared
+on it the boat full of schoolboys. One of them wore a scarlet cap, and
+thus made a bright spot of colour in the landscape. The sound of their
+young voices was carried across the water to Algernon's ears.
+
+He stood for a minute or so at the gate of his own garden, which ran
+down behind the house to the river path, and watched them. The thought
+crossed his mind that, if any accident should occur to the boat at that
+spot, there would be little chance of assistance reaching it quickly.
+Ivy Lodge was the last house on that side of the river between Whitford
+and Duckwell Reach. And on the willow-fringed shore opposite not a
+living creature was to be seen, except some cattle grazing in the plashy
+fields.
+
+The whole scene--the vivid green of the marsh grass, the grey willows,
+the boat with its wet oars flashing at regular intervals, the red-capped
+boy, and the sound of the fresh, shrill laughter of the crew, all fixed
+themselves on his mind with that vividness of impression which trivial
+external things so often make upon a brain labouring with some inward
+trouble.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+
+"What a state your boots are in!" exclaimed Castalia, pausing at the
+foot of the stairs, which she happened to be descending as her husband
+entered the house. "And why did you come by the back way?"
+
+"I was worried, and did not wish to meet people and be chattered to. I
+thought the meadow-path would be quiet, and so it was."
+
+"Quiet! Yes; but how horribly muddy! Do change your wet boots at once,
+Ancram!"
+
+There was little need for her to insist on this proceeding. Algernon
+hastened to his room, pulled off his wet boots, and desired that they
+should be thrown away.
+
+"They can be dried and cleaned, sir," said plump-faced Lydia, aghast at
+this order.
+
+"My good girl you may do what you please with them. I shall never wear
+them again. Slight boots of that sort that have once been wet through
+become shapeless, don't you understand? Take them away."
+
+When the master of the house descended to the drawing-room, he found a
+paper, squarely folded in the shape of a letter, lying in a conspicuous
+position on the centre table. It was Mr. Gladwish the shoemaker's bill,
+accompanied by an urgent request for immediate payment.
+
+"More wall-paper, Cassy," said her husband, flinging himself on the
+sofa.
+
+"Do you know, Lydia tells me the man was quite insolent!" said Castalia.
+"What can be done with such people? They don't seem to me to have the
+least idea who we are!"
+
+"Oh, confound the brutes! Don't let us talk about them!"
+
+But Castalia continued to talk about them in a strain of mingled wonder
+and disgust. She did not cease until dinner was announced, and Algernon
+was by that time so thoroughly wearied by his conjugal _tete-a-tete_,
+that he even received with something like satisfaction the announcement
+that Castalia expected the Misses Rose and Violet McDougall to pass the
+evening at Ivy Lodge.
+
+"I daresay your mother will come too," said Castalia, "and bring Rhoda
+Maxfield with her. I asked her."
+
+"Rhoda? Why on earth do you invite that little Maxfield?"
+
+"What is your objection to her, Ancram?"
+
+"Oh, I have no objection to her in the world. But I should not have
+thought she was precisely the sort of person to suit you."
+
+"That's exactly what Miss Bodkin says! Miss Bodkin tried to keep Rhoda
+apart from me, I am perfectly sure. And I can't fathom her motive. And
+now you say the same sort of thing. However, I always notice that you
+echo her words. But I don't intend to be guided by Miss Bodkin's likes
+and dislikes. I haven't the same opinion of Miss Bodkin's wisdom that
+the people have here, and I shall choose my friends for myself. It's
+quite absurd, the fuss that is made in this place about Miss Bodkin;
+absolutely sickening. Rose McDougall is the only person of the whole set
+who seems to keep her senses on the subject."
+
+"Rose McDougall will never lose her senses from admiration of another
+woman," returned Algernon. And then the colloquy was broken up by the
+arrival of the Misses McDougall, clogged and cloaked, and attended by
+their maid-servant. After having exchanged greetings with these ladies,
+Algernon withdrew, murmuring something about going to smoke his cigar.
+
+"You'll not be long, Ancram, shall you?" said his wife, in a complaining
+tone. But he disappeared from the room without replying to her.
+
+"I'm so dreadfully afraid that I drive your husband away when I come
+here, my dear," said Rose McDougall with a spiteful glance at Algernon's
+retreating figure.
+
+"Good gracious, no! He doesn't think of minding you at all."
+
+"Oh, I daresay he does not mind me; does not think me of importance
+enough to be taken any notice of. But I cannot help observing that he
+always keeps out of the way as much as possible when I am spending an
+evening here."
+
+"Nonsense!" said Castalia, tranquilly continuing to string steel beads
+on to red silk for the manufacture of a purse.
+
+"You might as well say that it is I who drive Mr. Errington away, Rose,"
+put in Violet.
+
+"Not at all!" returned her sister, with sudden sharpness. "That's quite
+a different matter."
+
+"I don't see why, Rose!"
+
+The true answer to this remark, in the elder Miss McDougall's mind,
+would have been, "You are so utterly insignificant, compared with me,
+that you are effaced in my company, and are neither liked nor disliked
+on your own merits." But she could not quite say that, so she merely
+repeated with increased sharpness, "That's a very different matter."
+
+Rose McDougall was one of those persons who prefer animosity to
+indifference. That any one should simply not care about her was a
+suggestion so intolerable that she was wont to declare of persons who
+did not show any special desire for her society, that they hated her.
+She was sure Mr. A. detested the sight of her, and Miss B. was her
+bitter enemy. But, perhaps, in Algernon's case, she had more reason for
+declaring he disliked her than in many others. He did in truth object to
+the sort of influence she exercised over Castalia. He knew that Castalia
+was insatiably curious about even the most trifling details of his past
+life in Whitford; and he knew that Miss McDougall was very capable of
+misrepresenting--even of innocently misrepresenting--many circumstances
+and persons in such a way as to irritate Castalia's easily-aroused
+jealousy; and Castalia's easily-aroused jealousy was an element of
+discomfort in his daily life. In a word, there had arisen since his
+marriage a smouldering sort of hostility between him and Rose McDougall.
+But he was far from conceiving the acrid nature of her feelings towards
+him. For his part, he laughed at her a little in a playful way, and
+contradicted her, and, above all, he did not permit her to bore him by
+exacting any attention from him which he was disinclined to pay. But
+there was no bitterness in all that. None in the world!
+
+Only he did not reckon on the bitterness excited in Miss Rose's breast
+by being laughed at and neglected. The graceful and charming way in
+which the laughter and neglect were accomplished by no means mollified
+the sting of them; a point which graceful and charming persons would do
+well sometimes to consider, but to which they are often singularly
+blind.
+
+"And what have you been doing with yourself all day, Castalia dear?"
+asked Violet with a great display of affection.
+
+"Oh--what can one do with oneself in this horrid hole?"
+
+"To be sure!" responded Violet. But she responded rather uncertainly. To
+her, Whitford seemed by no means a horrid hole. She had been content
+enough to live there for many years--ever since her uncle had brought
+her and her sister from Scotland in their mourning clothes, and received
+his orphan nieces into his home.
+
+"Don't speak of it, my dear!" exclaimed Rose, on whom the reminiscences
+of the years spent in Whitford wrought by no means a softening effect.
+"What possessed Uncle James to stick himself down in this place, of all
+places, I cannot conjecture. He might as well have buried us girls alive
+at once."
+
+"Oh, well, I suppose you have had time enough to get used to it," said
+Castalia, coolly. "Violet, will you ring the bell? It is close to you.
+Thank you.--Lydia," when the girl appeared, "where is your master?"
+
+"In the dining-room, ma'am."
+
+"What is he doing?"
+
+"Smoking and reading, ma'am."
+
+"Go and ask him to come here, with my love."
+
+"How the woman worrits him! She doesn't leave him a minute's peace," was
+Lydia's comment to the cook on this embassy.
+
+"She worrits everybody, in her slow, crawley kind o' way; but I'm sorry
+for her sometimes, too. It's a trying thing to care more for a person's
+little finger than a person cares for your whole body and soul,"
+returned Polly, who had a kind of broad good-nature and candour. But
+Lydia felt no sympathy with her mistress, and maintained that it was all
+her own fault then! What did she be always nagging at him for?--having
+that pitiless contempt for other women's mistakes in the management of
+their husbands which is not uncommon with her sex.
+
+Some such thoughts as Lydia's probably passed through the minds of the
+Misses McDougall, but, of course, that was not the time or place to
+express them. They exerted themselves to entertain their hostess with a
+variety of Whitford gossip, while Castalia--her attention divided
+between the purse she was making and the drawing-room door, at which she
+hoped to see her husband presently appear--merely threw in a languid
+interjection now and then as her contribution to the conversation.
+
+At length she rose, and flung the crimson and steel purse down on the
+table.
+
+"Do you want anything, dear?" asked the obliging Violet with officious
+alacrity.
+
+"No; I shan't be long gone. Sit still, Violet."
+
+"She's gone to implore her husband to honour us with a little of his
+society," whispered Rose, when Castalia had shut the door. "I'm certain
+of it. More fool she!"
+
+The sisters sat silent for a few minutes. Then they heard the door of
+the dining-room open, as though Castalia were coming back, and the sound
+of voices. Rose was seated nearest to the door, which was separated from
+that of the little dining-room opposite by a very narrow passage, and
+she distinctly heard Algernon say, "Pooh! The old girl doesn't want me."
+And again, "Says I hate her? Nonsense! I look on her with the veneration
+due to her years and virtues." And then Castalia said, "Well, she can't
+help her years. Besides, that's not the question. You ought to come, for
+my sake. It's very unkind of you, Ancram." After that there was a lower
+murmur of speech, as though the speakers had changed their places in the
+room, and Rose was able to distinguish no more.
+
+When Mrs. Algernon Errington returned to the drawing-room, she found
+Violet in her old seat near the pianoforte; but Rose had shifted her
+position, and was standing near the window.
+
+"What are you doing there, Rose? Enjoying the prospect?" asked Castalia.
+The shutters were not closed, but, as the night was very dark, there
+certainly did not seem to be any inducement to look out of the window.
+
+"Can't you persuade your husband to come, dear? I'm so sorry!" said
+Rose, turning round; and her sister looked up quickly at the sound of
+her voice, which, to Violet's accustomed ear, betrayed in its
+inflections suppressed anger. Her face, too, was crimson, and her little
+light blue eyes sparkled with unusual brightness.
+
+Castalia, however, noticed none of these things. "Oh, he'll come
+presently," she said. "He really was finishing a cigar. I told him that
+you were offended with him, and----"
+
+"I offended with your husband? Oh dear no! Why on earth should I be? You
+ought not to have said that, Castalia."
+
+"Well, you thought he was offended with you, or something of the sort.
+It's all the same," returned Castalia, with her air of weary
+indifference. "And he says it's nonsense."
+
+"My dear, I am only sorry on your account that he won't come. Really, to
+myself, it matters very little; very little indeed. What a pity that
+you have not some one to amuse him! We are none of us clever enough,
+that is clear."
+
+"Oh, you are quite mistaken if you think Ancram cares particularly for
+clever women!" said Castalia, whose thoughts instantly reverted to
+Minnie Bodkin. "Even Miss Bodkin, whom everybody declares to be such a
+wonder of talent, bores him sometimes, I can tell you. Of course he has
+known her from his childhood, and all that; but he said to me only
+yesterday that she was conceited, and too fond of preaching. So you see!
+I daresay, poor thing, she fancies all the time that she is enchanting
+him by her wisdom."
+
+"Dear me," said Violet timidly, and with a sort of strangled sigh. "I
+think that, as a rule, gentlemen don't like any kind of women except
+pretty women! Though, to be sure, Minnie is handsome enough if it wasn't
+for her affliction."
+
+"Oh, I wasn't thinking of Minnie," said Rose, viciously twitching at her
+sewing thread. "I meant it was a pity there was no one here who was
+clever enough, and who thought it worth while, to play off pretty airs
+and graces for Mr. Errington's amusement. That's the kind of cleverness
+that attracts men. And your husband, my dear, was always remarkably fond
+of flirting."
+
+Violet opened her eyes in astonishment, and, from her place a little
+behind Castalia, made a warning grimace to her sister; but Rose only
+responded by a defiant toss of the head. Castalia's attention was now
+effectually aroused, and although she still spoke in the querulous drawl
+that was natural to her (or had become so from long habit), it was with
+a countenance earnestly addressed to her interlocutor, instead of, as
+hitherto, with carelessly averted eyes. "I never heard any one say
+before that Ancram was fond of flirting," she said.
+
+"I should have thought it was not necessary to hear it. You might see it
+for yourself; unless, indeed, he is very sly about it in your presence.
+He, he, he!"
+
+"See it for myself? Why--there's nobody here for him to flirt with!"
+
+This naive ignoring of any pretensions on the part of her present guests
+to be eligible for the purposes of flirtation was not lost on Rose.
+
+"Not many who would flirt with a married man. No, I hope and believe
+not! But there are many kinds of flirtation, you know. There's the soft
+and sentimental, the shy, sweet sixteen style--little Miss Maxfield's
+style, for instance."
+
+"Rhoda!"
+
+"Yes; that is her name, I believe. I have never been intimate with the
+young person myself. Uncle James has always been very particular as to
+whom we associated with. However, since you have taken her up, my dear,
+I suppose she may be considered visitable."
+
+"We have met her at Dr. Bodkin's, you know, Rose," put in Violet, who
+was looking and listening with a distressed expression of face.
+
+"Oh yes; I believe Minnie asked her there at first to please Algernon.
+Minnie can be good-natured in that sort of way. But I don't know that it
+was very judicious."
+
+"Why should you suppose it was to please my husband that Rhoda was
+invited to the Bodkins?" asked Castalia. "I don't see that at all. The
+girl might have been asked to please Miss Bodkin. I daresay she had
+heard of her from Mrs. Errington. Mrs. Errington is always raving about
+her."
+
+Rose smiled with tightly-closed lips, and nodded. "To be sure! Poor dear
+Mrs. Errington--I mean no disrespect to your mother-in-law, Castalia,
+who is really a superior woman, only in some things she is as blind as a
+bat."
+
+Castalia's sallow face was paler than ever. Her nostrils were dilated as
+if she had been running fast. "You never told me a word of this before,"
+she said.
+
+"My dear creature," said Rose, looking full at Castalia for the first
+time, "why, what was there to tell? The subject was led to by chance
+now, and I had not the least idea that you did not know all Algy's old
+love-stories. Everybody here--except, I suppose, poor dear Mrs.
+Errington--knew of the boy-and-girl nonsense between him and that
+little thing. But of course it never was serious. That was out of the
+question."
+
+"I don't believe it!" said Castalia, suddenly.
+
+"Well, I daresay the thing was exaggerated, as so often happens. For my
+part, I never could see what there was in the girl to make so many
+people admire her. A certain freshness, perhaps; and some men do think a
+great deal of that pink-and-white sort of insipidity."
+
+"At all events, Ancram does not care about her now," said Castalia,
+speaking in broken sentences, and twisting her watch-chain nervously
+backwards and forwards in her fingers.
+
+"Oh, of course not! I daresay he never did care about her in earnest.
+But that sort of philandering is a little dangerous, isn't it?"
+
+"He does not like me to ask her to the house even."
+
+"Doesn't he?"
+
+"No; he has said so more or less plainly several times. He said so this
+very evening."
+
+"Did he, indeed? Well, I really am glad to hear it. I scarcely gave
+Algy--Mr. Errington--credit for so much--prudence!"
+
+"Mrs. Errington and Miss Maxfield," announced Lydia at the door of the
+drawing-room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+Mrs. Errington advanced towards her daughter-in-law with her habitual
+serene stateliness, and Rhoda followed her, modestly, looking very
+pretty in a new dress, the delicate hue of which set off her fair
+complexion to great advantage. Castalia received them much as usual;
+that is to say, without displaying any emotion whatever. But when Mrs.
+Errington took her daughter-in-law's hand, she exclaimed, "Good
+gracious, Castalia, how cold you are! A perfect frog! And yet this
+little room of yours is very warm; oppressively warm to one coming from
+without."
+
+"We find the temperature so comfortable here!" said Violet. "Dear
+Castalia always has her rooms deliciously warm, we think."
+
+"Perhaps, Violet, you are chilly by nature. Some constitutions are so.
+For myself, I have a wonderful circulation. But it is hereditary. All my
+branch of the Ancrams were renowned for it. I don't know, my dear
+Castalia, whether my cousin, Lady Seely, has the same peculiarity?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure."
+
+"With us it was a well-known thing among the Faculty for miles around
+Ancram Park. Our extremities were never cold, nor had we ever red noses.
+I believe a red nose was absolutely unknown in our family. No doubt that
+was part of the same thing; perfect circulation of the blood."
+
+With that Mrs. Errington sat down tolerably near the fire and made
+herself comfortable. "Where is my dear boy?" she asked after a little
+while. "Not at that dreadful office I hope and trust!"
+
+"He is at home," replied Castalia, slowly. "I asked him to come into the
+drawing-room, and he said he would by-and-by."
+
+"Oh, I daresay he will come now, dear," said Rose McDougall, without
+raising her eyes from her sewing.
+
+"Well, my dear," said Mrs. Errington to her daughter-in-law, "and if he
+does come 'now' you must not be jealous."
+
+The two sisters glanced at the good lady in quick surprise, and then at
+Rhoda. Rhoda was looking, for the hundredth time, at a book of prints.
+It was her usual evening's occupation at Ivy Lodge. Mrs. Errington
+proceeded, placid, smiling, and condescending as ever: "You must not be
+jealous, Castalia, if he does come directly he learns that his mother
+is here. To be sure a wife ranks first. I have always acknowledged that;
+and, indeed, insisted on it. I am sure it was my own case with poor dear
+Dr. Errington, who would never have dreamed of putting any human being
+into competition with me. Still, allowances must be made for the very
+peculiar and devoted attachment Algy has always felt for me. He is, and
+ever was, an Ancram to the core. And this kind of--one may say
+romantic--affection for their mothers has always distinguished the
+scions of our house from time immemorial. Good evening, my dear Algy. I
+find our dear Castalia looking a little worn and ill, and I tell her she
+keeps her rooms too hot. What do you say?"
+
+Algernon had sauntered into the room during his mother's harangue,
+delivered in the full mellow voice that belonged to her, and now bent to
+kiss the worthy lady's cheek as he greeted her. It was a cool, firm,
+rosy cheek. Indeed, Mrs. Errington's freshness and bloom were in
+singular opposition to Castalia's sallow haggardness, and made the elder
+lady look doubly buxom and buoyant by the force of contrast.
+
+"You're flourishing, at all events, _chere madame_," said Algernon,
+looking at his mother with unfeigned satisfaction. It was a relief to
+him to see a contented, smiling, comfortable countenance. Nevertheless,
+although agreeable to look upon, Mrs. Errington was apt to become a
+little wearisome in point of conversation, and her dutiful son cast his
+eyes round the circle in search of a pleasant seat wherein to bestow
+himself. But his glance met no response. Rose McDougall had drawn near
+his wife, and after very stiffly returning his bow, had ceased to take
+any notice of him, markedly avoiding his eye, and keeping silence after
+he had spoken. Violet was divided between listening to the elder Mrs.
+Errington and watching her sister. Castalia was more lazy, more silent,
+more indifferent than usual. Algernon was as unaccustomed as a spoiled
+child to be taken no notice of. He to stand among those women as a
+person of secondary importance, not greeted, not flattered, not smiled
+upon!
+
+He looked across the group round the fire to Rhoda, who happened to
+raise her eyes at that moment, and being taken by surprise at meeting
+his, dropped them hastily, with a vivid blush. Rhoda's blushes were as
+unmeaning as the smiles of an infant. The most trivial cause made her
+change colour, as Algernon very well knew. But at least the soft bright
+pink hue on pretty Rhoda's cheek showed some emotion, however slight or
+transient, at the sight of him. And, moved partly by a boyish, pettish
+resentment against the others, partly by the desire to hear a pleasant
+voice and pleasant words, and look upon a pretty woman's face with its
+delicate contour and fine subtle changes of tint, he walked across the
+room and seated himself beside Rhoda Maxfield.
+
+Castalia pushed her chair back out of the lamplight. "You can't see to
+do your purse in that dark corner, Castalia," exclaimed Mrs. Errington.
+
+"I don't want to do my purse. I'm sick of it."
+
+"Naughty, fickle girl!" This was said playfully. Then in a loud whisper,
+addressed to the McDougalls as well as to her daughter-in-law, Mrs.
+Errington exclaimed, "Doesn't Rhoda look charming to-night? That pale
+lilac is the very colour for her. Trying to skins that have the least
+tinge of yellow in them, but she is so wonderfully fair! Dear me, it
+reminds one of old times to see those two side by side. As children they
+were always together."
+
+No one responded. Violet McDougall fidgeted nervously on her chair and
+cast an appealing look at her sister. She would have tried to lead Mrs.
+Errington to talk of something else had she dared, but in Rose's
+presence Violet never ventured to take the initiative; and, besides, she
+was afraid of doing more harm than good, Mrs. Errington not being one of
+those persons who take a hint easily. The silence of her three listeners
+was no check to the worthy lady's eloquence. She continued to descant on
+Rhoda's attractions, and graces, and good manners; she dropped hints of
+the excellent opportunities Rhoda now had of "settling in life," only
+that she was a little fastidious from long association with such refined
+persons as the Erringtons, and had turned the cold shoulder to several
+well-to-do wooers in her own rank of life; she related anecdotes of
+Rhoda's early devotion to herself and her son, until Violet McDougall
+muttered under her breath, in a paroxysm of nervous impatience, "One
+would think the woman was doing it on purpose!"
+
+Meanwhile Algernon was talking to Rhoda more freely and confidentially
+than he had spoken to her for a long, long time. He was indulging in the
+luxury of playing victim before a spectator whose pity would certainly
+be admiring, not contemptuous. And, as he spoke, the old habit of
+appealing to Rhoda, and confiding in Rhoda, and taking Rhoda's sympathy
+for granted, resumed its power over him. There was no strain of
+tenderness in his words. He said not a syllable that his wife and all
+the world might not freely have listened to. He talked as a petted boy
+might talk to an idolising sister--with a mixture of boastfulness and
+repining, which he would have been ashamed to display to a man.
+
+Rhoda listened with sorrowful interest. How could it be that Algernon
+should have to endure all these troubles and mortifications? He was so
+clever, so accomplished, so highly connected, had such great and
+powerful relations! It appeared natural enough that folks like Mrs.
+Thimbleby, and the Gladwishes, and even her brother Seth, should
+sometimes be pressed for money. She herself, although she had never
+known privation in her father's house, had, until within the last year
+or so, been accustomed to the most rigid economy--not to say
+parsimony--and it had never cost her a care. But that Algernon Errington
+should desire money for various purposes, and not be able to get it,
+seemed to her a very hard case.
+
+But Algernon's note was not all of complaint. There were occasional
+intervals in which he spoke of the brightness of his prospects
+ultimately, when once he should have tided over his present difficulties
+and had got out of Whitford. And there were a few flourishes about his
+social successes in town last year. In the indulgence of his
+all-absorbing egotism, he seemed to forget that the girl beside him had
+ever been--or had ever had either expectation or right to be--anything
+more to him than the patient, admiring, sisterly, humble confidante on
+whom he had relied for praise and sympathy from the time of his earliest
+recollections, and who supplied him with the most delicious food for his
+vanity, because unmingled with any doubt of its genuineness. No thought
+of her feelings (save that they were kindly and admiring towards
+himself) crossed his mind whilst he talked to her, bending down his head
+and gesticulating slightly with his white, handsome hands.
+
+But when his mother called to her, "Come, Rhoda, I think, we must be
+going; I heard the carriage at the gate, child. You and Algy have been
+having a famous long chat! Reminded you of old times, didn't it?"
+
+When I say Algernon heard these words, a spark of manhood made his
+cheeks tingle and his tongue stammer as he said, "I--I'm afraid I must
+have been--boring you dreadfully, Rhoda?"
+
+In truth he was surprised to find that he had spent the whole evening in
+talking to Rhoda about himself. He glanced quickly at his wife, but she
+was occupied with the Misses McDougall. So occupied was she that she
+hardly returned Mrs. Errington's "Good night," which negligence,
+however, little ruffled that lady's equanimity. But when Rhoda
+approached to take leave of Castalia, the latter moved aside so suddenly
+that the movement might almost be called a start, and facing round, came
+opposite to her own image in the mirror above the chimney-piece, with
+Rhoda's fair image looking over its shoulder.
+
+For one second, perhaps--it could scarcely have been more--the smooth
+surface of the glass gave back the two women's faces: one youthful,
+lily-hued, innocently surprised, with chestnut eyebrows and shining
+chestnut curls, and tender rosy lips parted like those of a child; the
+other yellow, worn full of fretful creases, with glittering eager eyes,
+and a thin mouth set into a straight line, and yet over all the
+undefinable pathos of a suffering spirit; behind the two, Algernon
+looking into his wife's dark eyes and recognising something there that
+he had never seen in them before.
+
+In no longer time than it would take for a breath to dim the mirror all
+these images were gone, and the cold shiny glass indifferently showed a
+confusion of cloaks and shoulders and the back of a huge bonnet crowning
+Mrs. Errington's majestic figure.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From that day forth Castalia gave herself up to a devouring jealousy of
+Rhoda. She spied her goings and comings; she watched her husband's face
+when the girl was spoken of; she opened the letters that she found in
+the pockets of his clothes; she lay in wait to surprise some proof, no
+matter what, of a tender feeling on his part for his old love. In a
+word, she pursued her own misery with more eagerness, vigilance, and
+unflagging singleness of purpose than most people devote to the
+attainment of any object whatsoever.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The discovery of Minnie Bodkin's note in Algernon's secretaire at the
+office had incited Castalia to make some other attempts to pry into that
+depository of her husband's papers. She made excuses to step into the
+post-office whenever she had any reason for thinking Algernon was
+absent. Sometimes it was with the pretence of wishing to see him,
+sometimes on the plea of wanting to rest. She had learned that her
+husband frequently went into the "Blue Bell," to have luncheon, in the
+middle of the day; and that, from one cause or another, the Whitford
+Post-office was not really honoured with so much of his personal
+superintendence as she had been led to suppose. And this again was a
+fertile source of self-tormenting. Where was he, when he was not at the
+office?
+
+It whetted her suspicious curiosity to find the secretaire always
+carefully locked, ever since her discovery of Miss Bodkin's note there.
+She now wished that she had searched it thoroughly when she had the
+opportunity, instead of hastening off to Dr. Bodkin's house, after
+having read the first letter she came upon. But her feelings at that
+time had been very different from what they now were. She had been
+nettled, truly, and jealous of any private consultation between Minnie
+Bodkin and her husband; hating to think that he could trust, and be
+confidential with, another woman than herself, but not distinctly
+suspecting either Minnie or Algernon of any intent to wrong her. Miss
+Bodkin loved power, and influence, and admiration, and Castalia wished
+no woman to influence Algernon, or to be admired by him for any
+qualities whatsoever, except herself; but all her little envious
+resentments against Minnie had been mere pinpricks compared with the
+cruel pangs of jealousy that now pierced her heart when she thought of
+Rhoda Maxfield.
+
+That secretaire! It seemed to have an irresistible attraction for her
+thoughts. She even dreamt sometimes of trying to open it, and finding
+fresh fastenings arise more and more complicated, as she succeeded in
+undoing one lock after the other. It was not Algernon's habit to lock up
+anything belonging to him. There must be some special reason for his
+doing so in this case! And to Castalia's jaundiced mind it seemed that
+the special reason could only be a desire to keep his letters secret
+from her. She grew day by day more restless. The servants at Ivy Lodge
+remarked with wonder their mistress's frequent absences from home. She,
+who had so dreaded and disliked walking, was now constantly to be seen
+on the road to the town, or on the meadow-path by the river. This kind
+of exercise, however, merely fatigued without refreshing her, and she
+became so lean and haggard, and her eyes had such a feverish glitter,
+that her looks might have alarmed anyone who loved her, and witnessed
+the change in her.
+
+"There she goes again!" exclaimed Lydia to her fellow servant, as she
+watched her mistress down the garden-path, behind the house, one
+afternoon. "She can't bide at home for an hour together now!"
+
+"She wears herself to the bone," said Polly, shaking her head.
+
+"She wears other folks to the bone, and that's worse," returned the
+pitiless Lydia.
+
+Meanwhile Castalia had passed out of the little wicket-gate of her
+garden into the fields, and so along the meadow-path towards Whitford.
+She made her way along the path resolutely, though with a languid step.
+The ground was hardened by recent frost, and the usually muddy track was
+dry. At the corner of the Grammar School playground she turned up the
+lane towards the High Street, keeping close to the wall of the Grammar
+School, so as to be out of view of any from the side windows. Before she
+quite reached the High Street she caught sight of Mr. Diamond, walking
+briskly along in the direction of his lodgings. He did not see Castalia,
+or did not choose to see her; for, although she had once or twice
+saluted him in the street, she had on another occasion regarded him with
+her most unrecognising stare, and Matthew Diamond was not a man to risk
+enduring that a second time. But Castalia quickened her step so as to
+intercept him before he crossed the end of Grammar School Lane.
+
+"Mr. Diamond!" she said almost out of breath.
+
+"Madam!"
+
+Diamond raised his hat and stood still, in some surprise.
+
+"Would you be kind enough--do you happen to know whether Mr. Errington
+has left the post-office? You must have passed the door. You might have
+seen him coming out."
+
+"I am sorry, madam, that I cannot inform you."
+
+"You--you haven't seen him anywhere in the town?"
+
+"No; I have only just left the Grammar School. Have you any further
+commands?"
+
+He asked the question after a slight pause, because Castalia remained
+standing exactly across his path, glancing anxiously up and down the
+High Street, and apparently oblivious of Diamond's existence.
+
+"Oh no! I beg your pardon," she answered, moving aside. As she did so
+young Ingleby came up, and was about to pass them when Diamond touched
+him on the shoulder and said, "Ingleby, have you chanced to see Mr.
+Errington?"
+
+"Yes, sir; I saw him going down the High Street not two minutes ago,
+close to old Maxfield's shop. Do you want him, Mrs. Errington? I can
+easily catch him if I run."
+
+"No, no, no! Don't go! You must not go after him."
+
+She walked away without any word or sign of farewell, leaving Diamond
+and the boy looking after her in surprise.
+
+"That is the most disagreeable woman I ever came across!" exclaimed
+Ingleby, with school-boy frankness. "I hate her stuck-up airs. But
+Errington is such a capital fellow----! I'd do anything for him."
+
+Diamond did not choose to discuss either the husband or the wife with
+young Ingleby, but he said to himself, as he pursued his homeward way,
+that Mrs. Errington's manner had been not only disagreeable but very
+strange.
+
+Castalia reached the office and walked in. She entered the inner part
+that was screened off from the public, and passed Mr. Gibbs, behind his
+desk, without any recognition. She was about to enter Algernon's private
+room at the back, when Gibbs, rising and bowing, said "Did you want
+anything, ma'am? Mr. Errington is not there."
+
+"Oh! I'll go in and sit down."
+
+Gibbs looked uneasy and doubtful, and presently made an excuse to follow
+her into the room. Her frequent visits to the office of late by no means
+pleased Mr. Obadiah Gibbs.
+
+"I didn't know how the fire was," said he, poking at the hot coals, and
+looking furtively at Mrs. Errington.
+
+She was seated in her husband's chair in front of his desk. The little
+secretaire stood on a table at one side of it.
+
+"I'm afraid Mr. Errington may not be back very soon," said Gibbs.
+
+"Do you know where he's gone?"
+
+"Not I, ma'am."
+
+"Does he often go away during business hours?"
+
+"Why--I don't know what you would call 'often,' ma'am--I crave pardon. I
+must attend to the office now; there is some one there." And Mr. Gibbs
+withdrew, leaving the door half open.
+
+Castalia shut it, and fastened it inside. Then she pulled out a bunch of
+keys from her pocket, and tried them, one after the other, on the lock
+of the secretaire. This time it was safely secured, and not one of her
+keys fitted it. Then she opened the drawer of the table, and examined
+its contents. They consisted of papers, some printed, some written, a
+pair of driving gloves, and the cover of a letter directed to Algernon
+Errington, Esq., in a woman's hand. Castalia pounced on the cover, and
+thrust it into her pocket. After that, she looked behind the almanac on
+the chimney-piece, and rummaged amongst a litter of newspapers, and torn
+scraps of writing that lay in a basket. She was thus engaged when Mr.
+Gibbs's hand was laid on the handle of the door, and Mr. Gibbs's voice
+was heard demanding admission.
+
+Castalia opened the door at once, and Mr. Gibbs came in with a look of
+unconcealed annoyance on his face. He looked round the room sharply.
+
+"What do you want?" asked Castalia.
+
+"I want to see that all's right here, ma'am. I'm responsible."
+
+"What should be wrong? What do you mean?" she demanded with so
+coldly-haughty an air, that Gibbs was abashed. He felt he had gone too
+far, and muttered an apology. "I wanted to see to the fire. I'm afraid
+the coal-box is nearly empty. That old woman is so careless. I beg your
+pardon, but Mr. Errington is very particular about the room being kept
+warm."
+
+Castalia deigned not to notice him or his speech. She drew her shawl
+round her shoulders, and began to move away.
+
+"Can I give any message for you to Mr. Errington, ma'am?"
+
+"No----you need not mention that I came. I shall tell him myself this
+evening."
+
+As she walked down the High Street, she reflected on Mr. Gibbs's
+unwonted rudeness of look and manner.
+
+"He is told to watch me; to drive me away if possible; to prevent me
+making any discoveries. I daresay they are all in a league together. I
+am the poor dupe of a wife--the stranger who knows nothing, and is to
+know nothing. We shall see; we shall see. I wonder where Ancram can have
+gone! That boy spoke of seeing him near Maxfield's house."
+
+At that moment she found herself close to it, and with a sudden impulse
+she entered the shop, and, walking up to a man who stood behind the
+counter, said, "Is Mr. Errington here?"
+
+The man was James Maxfield, and he answered sulkily, "I don't know
+whether he's gone or not. You'd better inquire at the private door."
+
+Castalia's heart gave a great throb. "He has been here, then?" she said.
+
+"You'd better inquire at the private door," was all James's response,
+delivered still more surlily than before.
+
+Castalia left the shop, and knocked at the door indicated to her by
+James's thumb jerked over his shoulder. "Is Mr. Errington gone?" she
+asked of the girl who opened the door.
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"Did he--did he stay long?"
+
+"About half an hour, I think."
+
+"Is Mr. Maxfield at home?"
+
+"No, ma'am; master is at Duckwell, and has been since Saturday."
+
+"Who is it, Sally?" cried Betty Grimshaw's voice from the parlour, and
+upon hearing it Castalia walked hastily away.
+
+When she reached her own home again, between fatigue and excitement she
+could scarcely stand. She threw herself on the sofa in her little
+drawing-room, unable to mount the stairs.
+
+"Deary me, missus," cried Polly, who happened to admit her, "why you're
+a'most dead! Where-ever have you been?"
+
+"I've been walking in the fields. I came round by the road. I'm very
+tired."
+
+"Tired? Nay, and well you may be if you took all that round! I thought
+you'd happen been into Whitford. Lawk, how you're squashing your bonnet!
+Let me take it off for you."
+
+"I don't care; leave it alone."
+
+But Polly would not endure to see "good clothes ruinated," as she said,
+so she removed her mistress's shawl and bonnet--folding, and smoothing,
+and straightening them as well as she could. "Now you'd better take a
+drop o' wine," she said. "You're a'most green. I never saw such a
+colour."
+
+Despite her rustic bluntness, Polly was kind in her way. She made her
+mistress swallow some wine, and put her slippers on her feet for her,
+and brought a pillow to place beneath her head. "You see you han't got
+no strength to spare. You're very weak, missus," she said. Then she
+muttered as she walked away, "Lord, I wouldn't care to be a lady myself!
+I think they're mostly poor creeturs."
+
+Left alone, Castalia closed her eyes and tried to review the situation,
+but at first her brain would do nothing but represent to her over and
+over again certain scenes and circumstances, with a great gap here and
+there, like a broken kaleidoscope.
+
+Ancram had been to Maxfield's house, and it could not have been to see
+the old man, who had been absent for some days. Perhaps Ancram was in
+the habit of going thither! He had never said a word to her about it.
+How sly he had been! How sly Rhoda had been! All his pretended
+unwillingness to have Rhoda invited to Ivy Lodge had been a blind. There
+was nothing clear or definite in her mind except a bitter, burning,
+jealous hatred of Rhoda.
+
+"We shall see if Ancram confesses to having been to that house to-day,"
+said Castalia to herself. Then she went upstairs wearily. She was
+physically tired, being weak and utterly unused to much walking, and
+called Lydia to dress her and brush her hair. And when her toilet was
+completed, she sat quite still in the drawing-room, neither playing,
+reading, nor working--quite still, with her hands folded before her, and
+awaited her husband.
+
+She would first try to lead him to confess his visit to the Maxfields,
+and, if that failed, would boldly tax him with it. She even went over
+the very words she would say to her husband when he should descend from
+his dressing-room before dinner.
+
+But she could not foresee a circumstance which disturbed the plan she
+had arranged in her mind. When Algernon returned to Ivy Lodge he did not
+go into his dressing-room as usual, but marched straight into the
+drawing-room, where Castalia was sitting.
+
+"That's an agreeable sort of letter!" he said, flinging one down on the
+table.
+
+He was not in a passion--he had never been known to be in a passion--but
+he was evidently much vexed. His mouth was curved into a satirical
+smile; he drew his breath between his teeth with a hissing sound, and
+nodded his head twice or thrice, after repeating ironically, "That's an
+uncommonly agreeable sort of letter!" Then he thrust his hands deep into
+his pockets, threw himself into an easy-chair, stretched his legs
+straight out before him, and looked at his wife.
+
+Castalia was surprised, and curious, and a little anxious, but she made
+an effort to carry out her programme despite this unexpected beginning.
+She remained motionless on the sofa, and said, with elaborate
+indifference of manner, "Do you wish me to read the letter? I wonder at
+your allowing me to know anything of your affairs."
+
+"Read it? Of course! Why else did I give it to you? Don't be absurd,
+Castalia. Pshaw!" And he impatiently changed the position of his feet
+with a sharp, sudden movement.
+
+Castalia's sympathy with his evident annoyance overcame her resentment
+for the moment. She could not bear to see him troubled. She opened the
+letter.
+
+"Why it's from Uncle Val!" she exclaimed.
+
+It was from her uncle, addressed to her husband, and was written in a
+tone of considerable severity. To Castalia it appeared barbarously
+cruel. Lord Seely curtly refused any money assistance; and stated that
+he wrote to Algernon instead of to Castalia, because he perceived that,
+although the application for money had been written by Castalia's hand,
+it had not been dictated by her head. Lord Seely further advised his
+niece's husband, in the strongest and plainest terms, to use every
+method of economy, to retrench his expenditure, to refrain from
+superfluous luxuries, and to live on his salary.
+
+"The little allowance I give Castalia for her dress will be continued to
+her," wrote his lordship. "Beyond that, I am unable to give either her
+or you one farthing. Understand this, and act on it. And, moreover, I
+had better tell you at once, as an additional inducement to be prudent,
+that I see no prospect of procuring advancement for you in any other
+department of his Majesty's service than the one you are in at present.
+My advice to you is to endeavour to merit advancement by diligence in
+the performance of your duties. You have abilities which are sure to
+serve you if honestly applied. You are so young, that even after ten or
+fifteen years' work you would be in the prime of all your faculties and
+powers. And ten or fifteen years' good work might give you an excellent
+position. As to Castalia, I cannot help feeling a conviction that her
+discontent is chiefly reflected, and that if she saw you cheerful and
+active in your daily business, she would not repine at her lot."
+
+Castalia put the letter down on the table in silence. She was
+astonished, indignant; but yet a little gleam of satisfaction pierced
+through those feelings--a hope that she and her husband might be drawn
+closer together by this common trouble. She would show him how well able
+she was to endure this, and worse, if he would only love her and trust
+her entirely. Even her jealousy for Rhoda Maxfield was mitigated for the
+moment. All that fair-weather prettiness and philandering would be put
+out of sight at the first growl of a storm. The wife would be the
+nearest to him if troubles came. No pink-and-white coquetry could usurp
+her right to suffer with him and for him, at all events.
+
+"That's a pleasant sort of thing, isn't it?" said Algernon, who had been
+watching her face as she read.
+
+"It is too bad of Uncle Val, Ancram."
+
+"Too bad! Yes; to put it mildly, it is too bad, I think. Too bad? By
+George, I never heard of anything so outrageous!"
+
+"Do you know, I think that my lady is at the bottom of it."
+
+"I wish she was at the bottom of the Thames!"
+
+"Ancram, I do feel sorry for you. It is such a shame to bury your
+talents, and all that. But still, you know, it is true what he says
+about your having plenty of time before you. And as to being poor--of
+course it is horrid to be poor, but we can bear it, I daresay. And,
+really, I don't think I should mind it so much if once we were
+acknowledged to be quite, quite poor; because then it wouldn't matter
+what one wore, and nobody would expect one to have things like other
+people of one's rank."
+
+Poor Castalia was not eloquent, but had she possessed the most fluent
+and persuasive tongue in the world, it would not have availed to make
+Algernon acquiesce in her view of the situation. She was for indignantly
+breaking off all connection with relatives who could behave as Uncle Val
+had behaved. It was not his refusing to advance more money (in her
+conscience Castalia did not believe he could afford much assistance of
+that kind), but his writing with such cruel coldness to Ancram--his
+declaring that Ancram's case was not a hard one--his lecturing about
+duties, and cheerful activity, and so on, just as if Ancram had been an
+ordinary plodding young man instead of a being exceptionally gifted with
+all sorts of shining qualities--these were offences not to be forgiven.
+Castalia, for her part, would have endured any privation, rather than
+beg more favours of Uncle Val and my lady.
+
+But Algernon's feeling in the matter was by no means the same as
+Castalia's. He dismissed all her attempts to express her willingness to
+share his lot for good or ill as matters of no importance. She might
+find it easy enough. Yes; the chief burthen would not fall on her! And,
+besides, she did not at all realise what it would be to have to live on
+the salary of the postmaster of Whitford, and to practise "rigid
+economy," as my lord phrased it. It was really provoking to see the cool
+way in which she took it for granted that matters would be mended by
+their being "acknowledged to be quite, quite poor." "My dear Castalia,"
+he said, with an air of superior tolerance, "you have about as much
+comprehension of the actual state of the case as a canary-bird."
+
+She paused, silently looking at him for a moment. Then she drew nearer
+to him, and laid her arm round his shoulder. She wore a dinner-dress
+with loose hanging sleeves, which were not becoming to her wasted frame.
+But the poor thin arm clung with a loving touch to her husband, as she
+said, "I know I am not so clever as you, Ancram, but I can see and
+understand that if we haven't money enough to pay for things we must do
+without them." (Castalia advanced this in the tone of one stating a
+self-evident proposition.) "And I shan't care, Ancram, if you trust me,
+and--and--don't put any one else before me. I never put any one before
+you. I was fond of Uncle Val. I think he was the only person I really
+loved in the world before I saw you. But if he treats you badly I shall
+give him up."
+
+Algernon shook off the clinging arm from his shoulder, not roughly, but
+slightingly.
+
+"What on earth are you talking about, Cassy? What do you suppose we are
+to do? I tell you I must have some money, and you must write to your
+uncle again without delay."
+
+She drew back with a hurt sense of having been unappreciated. The tears
+sprang to her eyes, and she put her hand into her pocket to take her
+handkerchief. The hand fell on something that rustled, and was stiff. It
+was the letter cover she had found in her husband's office that morning.
+The touch of the crisp paper recalled not only the events of the
+afternoon, but her own sensations during them. "Where were you this
+afternoon?" she asked, suddenly checking her tears, as the dry, burning,
+jealous feeling awoke again in her heart.
+
+"Where was I? Where must I be? Where am I every afternoon? At the
+office--confound it!"
+
+"You were not there all the afternoon. I--happened to look in there, and
+you were gone."
+
+"I suppose you came just at the moment I happened to be absent, then. I
+had to see one or two men on business. Not pleasant business. I was not
+amusing myself, I assure you," he added with a short hard laugh.
+
+"What men had you to see?"
+
+"Oh, no one whom you know anything about. Isn't dinner ready? I shan't
+dress. I have to go out again this evening."
+
+"This evening!"
+
+"Yes; it is a frightful bore, but I have a business appointment. Do ring
+and tell the cook to make haste."
+
+"You are not going out again this evening, Ancram?"
+
+"I tell you I must. How can you be so childish, Castalia? Whilst I am
+gone you can employ yourself in making out the draught of a letter to
+your uncle."
+
+"I will not write to my uncle! I will not. You don't care for me.
+You--you deceive me," burst out Castalia. And then a storm of sobs
+choked her voice, and she hurried away, filling the little house with a
+torrent of incoherent sounds.
+
+Algy looked after her, with his head bent down and his eyebrows raised.
+Castalia was really very trying to live with. As to her refusal to write
+to her uncle, she would not of course persist in it. It was out of the
+question that she should persist in opposing any wish of his. But she
+was really very trying.
+
+When dinner was announced, Castalia sent word that she had a headache
+and could not eat. She was lying down in her own room. Her husband
+murmured a few words of sympathy, but ate his dinner with no sensible
+diminution of appetite, and, as soon as it was despatched, he lit a
+cigar, wrapped himself in his great-coat, and went out.
+
+Castalia heard the street-door shut. She rose swiftly from the bed on
+which she had thrown herself, put on a bonnet and cloak, muffled her
+face in a veil, and followed her husband.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The night was dark and cheerless. It was one of those murky November
+nights when one seems to see and breathe through a dusky gauze. The road
+from Ivy Lodge to Whitford was not lighted. At a long distance before
+her, Castalia saw a red, glowing speck, which she knew to be the lamp
+over the chemist's shop, kept by Mr. Barker, her landlord. After that, a
+few street lamps glimmered, and the town of Whitford had fairly begun.
+
+It was not late, and yet most of the shops were shut, and the streets
+very silent and deserted. Castalia strained her eyes onward through the
+darkness, and presently saw her husband's figure come into the circle of
+faint light made by a street lamp, traverse it, and disappear again into
+the shade. She had walked so quickly in her excitement as to have
+overtaken him sooner than she had expected. Whither was he going?
+
+She slunk along in the shadow of the houses, frightened at the faint
+sound of her own footfall on the flagstones, starting nervously at every
+noise, hurrying across the lighted spaces in front of the few shops that
+remained open with averted face and beating heart, fearing to be noticed
+by those within. But never once did she falter in her purpose of
+following her husband. She would have been turned back by no obstacle
+short of one which defied her physical powers to pass it.
+
+Algernon was now nearing Maxfield's house. The shutters of the shop were
+closed, but the door was still open, and a light streamed from it on to
+the pavement. Castalia followed, watching breathlessly. Her husband
+passed the shop, went on a pace or two, stopped at the private door, and
+rang the bell. She could see the action of his arm as he raised it. The
+door was opened without much delay, and Algernon went in.
+
+Castalia stood still, trying to collect her thoughts and determine on
+her course of action. What should she do? Her husband might be an
+hour--hours--in that house. She could not stand there in the street. An
+impulse came upon her to make herself known--to go in and tax Algernon
+with perfidy and deception then and there. But she checked the impulse.
+It would have been a desperate step. Algernon might never forgive her.
+It might be possible for her to reach a pitch of rage and jealousy which
+would make her deaf to any such considerations--careless as to the
+consequences of her actions if she could but gratify the imperious
+passion of the moment. She was dimly conscious that this might be
+possible; but for the present she had sufficient control over her own
+actions to pause and deliberate. There she stood, alone at night, in
+Whitford High Street--stealthily, trembling, and wretched--she, Castalia
+Kilfinane! Who would believe it? What would her uncle feel if he could
+see her now, or guess what she was enduring?
+
+The idea came into her mind--floating like a waif on the current of
+indignant misery that seemed to flood all her spirit--that there might
+be hundreds of human beings whom she had seen and thought happy smarting
+with some secret wound like her own, and living lives the half of which
+was never known to the world. Castalia had never been apt to let her
+imagination busy itself with the sorrows of others, and at this moment
+the conception had no softening effect. It only added an extra flavour
+of bitterness and rebellion to her sufferings. It was too cruel. Why
+should such things be? And what had she done to merit so much
+unhappiness? She shivered a little as a breeze from the river came
+bringing with it the clammy breath of the marsh mists--the white
+cloud-kraken that Minnie Bodkin had so often watched from her window.
+
+How long Castalia remained standing at her post she could never reckon;
+she was conscious only of burning pain of mind, and of a determination
+not to shrink from her purpose because of the pain. A footstep came
+sounding along the quiet street and startled her. She shrank back as far
+as she could, pressing her shoulder close against the wall, and
+uncertain whether to walk on or remain still. It was a man who came
+towards her, turning from a narrow street opening into the High Street,
+which Castalia knew to be Lady Lane. He walked with a very rapid step,
+hanging his head, and looking neither to the right nor to the left.
+Castalia was, perhaps, the only dweller in Whitford who would not have
+recognised the figure as being that of David Powell, the Methodist
+preacher.
+
+As Powell neared Castalia, he seemed to become aware of her presence by
+some sixth sense, for to all appearance he had not looked towards her.
+The truth was, that all his outward perceptions were habitually
+disregarded by him, except such as carried with them some suggestion of
+helpfulness and sympathy. A fashionable lady might have stood facing him
+during a long sermon in chapel, or in the open fields, and (unless she
+had displayed signs of "grace") he would have taken no heed of
+her--would not have been able to tell the colour of her garments. But
+let the same woman be tearful, ragged, sick, or injured, and no
+observation could be more rapid and comprehensive than David Powell's,
+to convey all needful particulars of her state and requirements. So this
+night, as he passed along the quiet Whitford streets, the few persons he
+had met hitherto were to him as shadows. But when the vague outline of a
+woman's form made itself a blot of blacker shadow in the darkness, those
+accustomed sentinels, his senses, gave the spirit notice of a
+fellow-creature in want, possibly of bread, certainly of sympathy.
+
+He stopped within a few paces of Castalia, and perceived by that time
+that she was well and warmly clad, and that her trouble, whatever it
+was, could not be alleviated by alms. In her desire to avoid notice, she
+shrank away more and more almost crouching down against the wall. It
+occurred to Powell that she might be ill. "Are you suffering?" he asked,
+in a low musical voice. "Can I help you?"
+
+Finding that she did not reply, he advanced a step farther, and was
+stretching out his hand to touch her on the shoulder, when, driven to
+bay, she raised herself up to her full height, and answered quickly and
+resentfully, "No; I am not ill. I am waiting for some one."
+
+He stood still, irresolutely. Her voice and accent struck him with
+surprise, he recognised them as belonging to a person of a different
+class from any he had expected. How came such a lady to be alone at
+that hour, standing in the cold street? At length he said, gently, "If I
+may advise you, it would be well for you to go home. The person who
+keeps you waiting in the street in such weather, and at this hour, must
+surely be very thoughtless. Can I not assist you? I am David Powell, a
+poor preacher of the Word. You need have no fear of me."
+
+"No; please to go away. I am not at all afraid. Go away, go away!" she
+added with an imperative emphasis, for she began to fear lest her
+husband should come out of the house, hear the sound of her voice, and
+find her there. Powell obeyed her, and walked slowly away. There was, in
+truth, so far as he knew, no reason to fear that any evil could happen
+to the woman in Whitford High Street, except the evil of standing so
+long in the cold, raw weather. It had now begun to rain; a fine
+drizzling rain, that was very chill.
+
+When he had walked some distance along the High Street, and was close to
+the turning that led to Mrs. Thimbleby's house, he stopped and looked
+back. Almost at the same moment he saw a man come out of Maxfield's
+house, and advance along the street towards him. Then, at rather a long
+interval, the cloaked lady began to move onward also, but without
+overtaking the man, or apparently trying to do so. It was a strange
+adventure, and one entirely unparalleled in Powell's experience of the
+little town; and after he had reached his lodgings he could not, for a
+long time, divert his thoughts from dwelling on it.
+
+Meanwhile, Algernon, unconscious of the watcher behind him, proceeded
+straight onward to the post-office. Then he turned up the narrow passage
+or entry in which was the side door that gave access to his private
+office. Castalia did not follow him beyond the mouth of the entry.
+Standing there and listening, she heard the sharp sound of a match being
+struck, then the turning of a key, and a door softly opened and shut.
+
+It then struck Castalia for the first time that this unexpected visit to
+the office afforded an opportunity for her to reach home without her
+husband's discovering her absence. She had not considered before how
+this was to be accomplished; and, indeed, had Algernon returned directly
+to Ivy Lodge from Maxfield's house it would have been impossible.
+
+She now saw this, and hastened back along the road, in a tremor at her
+narrow escape; for, although the impulse had crossed her mind to declare
+herself, and boldly enter Maxfield's house in quest of her husband, that
+was a very different matter from being suddenly discovered against her
+will. In the latter case she would, as she well knew, have been at an
+immense disadvantage with her husband, who, instead of being accused,
+would become accuser.
+
+Nothing short, indeed, of the passion of jealousy within her would have
+given her strength to combat her husband. This was the only way in which
+her idolatrous admiration, her very love for him, could be turned into a
+weapon against him.
+
+"I could bear anything else! Anything else!" she said to herself. "But
+to be fooled and deceived, and put aside for that girl----!" A great hot
+wave of passion seemed to flow through her whole body as she thought of
+Rhoda. "Let the servants see me! What do I care?" she said recklessly.
+At that moment she would not have heeded if the whole town had seen her,
+and known her errand into Whitford, and its result. She rang loudly at
+the bell of Ivy Lodge, and walked in past the servant, with a white face
+and glittering eyes.
+
+"Isn't master coming?" stammered the girl, staring at her mistress.
+
+"I don't know. Go to bed. I don't want you."
+
+There was something in her face which checked further speech on Lydia's
+part. Lydia was fairly frightened. She crept away to the garret, where
+Polly was already sleeping soundly, and vainly tried to rouse her
+fellow-servant, to feel some interest in her account of how missus had
+stalked into the house by herself like a ghost, and had ordered her off
+to bed, and to get up a discussion as to missus's strange goings on
+altogether of late.
+
+Castalia went to her own room, uncertain whether to undress and go to
+bed or to remain up and confront her husband when he should return. One
+dominant desire had been growing in her heart for many days past, and
+had now become a force overwhelming all smaller motives, and drawing
+them resistlessly into its strong current. This dominant desire was to
+be revenged--not on her husband, but on Rhoda Maxfield. And it might be
+that by waiting and watching yet awhile, by concealing from Ancram the
+discovery she had that night made, she might be enabled more effectually
+to strike at her rival. If Ancram knew, he would try to shield Rhoda. He
+would put the thing in such a light before the world as to elicit
+sympathy for Rhoda and make her (Castalia) appear ridiculous or
+obnoxious. He had the gift to do such things when it pleased him. But
+Rhoda should not escape. No; she would keep her own counsel yet awhile
+longer.
+
+When Algernon came home about midnight, letting himself into the house
+with a private key which he carried, he found his wife asleep, or
+seeming to sleep, and congratulating himself on escaping the querulous
+catechism as to where he had been, and what he had been doing, which he
+would have to endure had Castalia been awake on his return. As he
+crossed the bedchamber to his dressing-room, she moved, and put up one
+hand to screen her eyes from the light.
+
+"Don't let me disturb you, Cassy," he said. "I have been detained very
+late. I am going downstairs again--there is a spark of fire in the
+dining-room--to have one cigar before I turn in. Go to sleep again."
+
+He bent down to kiss her, but she kept her face obstinately buried in
+the pillow. So he took her left hand, which hung down, and lightly
+touched it with his lips, saying, "Poor sleepy Cassy!" and went away.
+
+And then she raised her thin left hand, on which her wedding-ring hung
+loosely, and passionately kissed it where her husband's lips had rested,
+and burst into a storm of crying, until she fairly sobbed herself to
+sleep.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+"So you had that fine gentleman, Mr.
+Algernon--What-d'ye-call-it--Errington, here last evening?" said
+Jonathan Maxfield to his daughter, on his return from Duckwell.
+
+"Yes, father; he had been before in the afternoon. He was very anxious
+to see you; but Aunt Betty told him you wouldn't be back until to-day."
+
+"Very anxious to see me, was he? I have my own opinion about that. But,
+no doubt, he wants me to believe that he's anxious."
+
+"He seems in a good deal of distress of mind, father."
+
+"I daresay. And what about the minds of the folks as hold his promises
+to pay? Just so much waste paper, those are, I take it; I'd as lief have
+his word of honour myself. And most people in Whitford know what that's
+worth."
+
+"I think he has been very unfortunate, father."
+
+"H'm! What worldly folks calls misfortin' is generally the Lord's
+dealing according to deserts. It's set forth in Scripture that the
+righteous man shall prosper, and the unrighteous be brought to naught."
+
+"But--father, even good people are sometimes chastened by afflictions,"
+said Rhoda timidly.
+
+Old Max knitted his brows.
+
+"There's nothing," said he, "more dangerous than for the young and
+inexperienced to wrest texts; it leads 'em far astray. When that kind o'
+chastening is spoken of, it don't mean the sort of trouble as has fallen
+on young Errington. The Almighty has given every man reason enough to
+understand that, if he spends thirteenpence out of every shilling, he'll
+be beggared before the year's end. I don't believe in men being ruined
+without fault or foolishness of their own."
+
+"He asked me if I--if you--if I thought----he asked me to ask you to
+have a little patience with him about some bills. I didn't know that he
+had any bill here; but he said you would understand."
+
+"Aye, aye! I understand. It isn't bills for tea, and flour, and bacon,
+and such like. It's a different kind o' bills the young gentleman's been
+meddling with; and a fine hand he's made of it."
+
+"Couldn't you help him, father?"
+
+Rhoda spoke pleadingly, but with the timidity which always attended her
+requests to her father, whose recent indulgence had never reached a
+point of weakness, and who clearly showed, in all his dealings with his
+daughter, that he was not carried away by his affection for her, but
+acted with the consciousness of a will unfettered by precedents, and
+perfectly able to choose its course without regard to what other people
+might expect of him.
+
+For herself, in pleading for Algernon, she was not moved by
+self-conscious sentimentality, neither did she suppose herself to be
+doing anything heroic. The peculiar tenderness she still felt for him
+was made up of pity and memory. The Algy she had loved was gone--had
+melted into thin air, like a dream under the morning sunlight. Mr.
+Errington, the postmaster of Whitford, and the husband of the Honourable
+Castalia Kilfinane, was a very different personage. Still he was
+inextricably connected in her mind with that bright idol of her
+childhood and her youth. His marriage had put all possibility of
+love-making between him and herself as much out of the question, to her
+mind, as if he had been proved to be her brother. Rhoda had read no
+romances, and she was neither of an innovating spirit nor a passionate
+temperament, and it is surprising what power a sincere conviction of the
+irrevocable and inevitable has to control the "natural feelings" we hear
+so much of! But she clung tenaciously to a better opinion of Algernon
+than his actions warranted--as has been the case with many another
+woman--chiefly to justify herself for ever having loved him.
+
+"Couldn't you help him, father?" she repeated, seeing that her father
+did not at once reply, but was sitting meditating, with a not altogether
+ill-pleased expression of face.
+
+"Help him!" cried old Max. "Why should I help him? A reprobate,
+unregenerate, vain, ungrateful worldling! I did help him once, and
+earned much gratitude for my pains. And what a sneaking, poor, mean,
+pitiful fellow he must be to come here and whine to you! A poor, pitiful
+fellow! Talk of a gentleman! Yah!"
+
+Old Max derived so much grim satisfaction from the contemplation of
+Algernon's pitiful behaviour that it seemed almost to soften him towards
+the culprit, in whom any glimpse of nobility would not have been very
+welcome to his enemy. When you hate a man on excellent private grounds,
+it is certainly unpleasant to see him displaying qualities in public
+which win a fallacious admiration. And this aggravation was one which
+old Max had been suffering for some time at the hands of the popular
+Algernon. His present money difficulties, combined with his unworthy
+methods of meeting them, at once gratified and justified Jonathan
+Maxfield's vindictiveness.
+
+He gave forth the queer grunting noise that served him for a laugh, as
+he said, "And a lot o' good his fine marriage has done him! And his
+grand relations! I told him long ago that if he wanted help from such as
+them, he must ask it with a pocket full of money. Then he might ha' been
+uplifted into high places. And it wasn't only my own wisdom neither,
+though that might ha' been enough for such a half-fledged young cockerel
+as he was in them days, seeing it has been enough for his betters before
+now. I had the warrant of Scripture; for what says Solomon? 'Wealth
+maketh many friends; but the poor is separated from his neighbour.'"
+
+Still Rhoda did not altogether despair of inducing her father to do
+something for Algernon. What that something might be, or how far it was
+possible for her father to assist young Errington, except by simply
+giving or lending him money, Rhoda was ignorant. Algernon in talking to
+her had spoken very glibly, but, to her, very unintelligibly, of bills
+which were in her father's hands; and had pointed out, with an air of
+candour and conviction, that it would be imprudent on Mr. Maxfield's
+part to drive matters to extremity. It had all sounded very convincing,
+simply from the tone in which it was said. Many of us are astonishingly
+uncritical as to the coherence and cogency of words if they be but set
+to a good tune.
+
+Algernon himself was rather hopeful since that interview with Rhoda. It
+could not be, after all, that Jonathan Maxfield would actually cause
+him, Algernon Errington, any personal inconvenience for the sake of a
+sum which was really a mere trifle to Maxfield, and which appeared very
+trifling to Algernon under every aspect except that of being called upon
+to pay it.
+
+He had learned not long previously that certain bills he had given,
+backed by the name of that solid capitalist, the Honourable Jack Price,
+had found their way into old Max's hands. This startled him
+considerably, for he had no reason to count on the old man's
+forbearance. The time was drawing nigh when the bills would become due.
+
+About a month ago some other bills had fallen due, and had been duly
+honoured. They had been given to a London wine merchant, who would
+certainly not have scrupled to take any strong measure for getting his
+money. And even the name of Jack Price was no talisman to charm away
+this grasping tradesman's determination to be paid for goods delivered;
+the wine merchant in question doing a large City business, and feeling
+no anxiety as to the opinion entertained by the Honourable Mr. Price's
+fashionable connection about himself or his wares. Under the pressure of
+this disagreeable conviction, the money had been found to honour the
+bills held by the wine merchant.
+
+For the discharge of the liabilities represented by the bills now in
+Maxfield's hands, Algernon had reckoned on Castalia's extracting some
+money from her uncle. Algernon did not abandon the hope that she might
+yet succeed in doing so. Castalia must be urged to make new and stronger
+representations of their necessities to Lord Seely. But it could not be
+denied that my lord's last letter had been a very heavy blow; and that,
+moreover, a number of slight embarrassments, which Algernon had hitherto
+looked on as mere gossamer threads, to be broken when he pleased, had
+recently exhibited a disconcerting toughness and power of constraining
+his actions and destroying his comfort.
+
+The thought not infrequently occurred to him that, if he were alone in
+the world, unhampered by a wife who had no flexibility of character, and
+who had recently displayed a stubborn kind of obtuseness, showing itself
+in such remarks as that if they had not money to pay for luxuries, they
+must do without luxuries, and that if they were poor, it would be better
+to seem poor, and the like dull commonplaces, which were peculiarly
+distasteful to Algernon's vivacious intelligence--if, he thought, he had
+no wife, or a different wife, things would undoubtedly go better with
+him. He was too quick not to perceive that his marriage, far from
+improving his social position, had been eminently unpopular amongst his
+friends and acquaintances. To be sure he had never intended to return to
+Whitford after allying himself with the family of Lord Seely. He had
+meant to shake the dust of the sleepy little town from his feet for
+ever. He reckoned up the advantages he had expected to gain by marrying
+Castalia, and set the real result against each one in his mind.
+
+He had expected to get into the diplomatic service. He was a provincial
+postmaster!
+
+He had expected to live in some splendid metropolis. He found himself in
+the obscure town which, of all others, he wished to avoid!
+
+He had expected to be courted and caressed by wealthy, noble, and
+distinguished persons. He was looked coldly or shyly upon by even the
+insignificant middle-class society of a county town!
+
+All this seemed peculiarly hard and unjust, because Algernon had always
+intended to bear his honours gracefully, without stiffness or arrogance.
+He would cut nobody; he would turn the cold shoulder to nobody. He had
+pictured himself sometimes making a meteoric reappearance in Whitford
+some day; flashing with brief brilliancy across the horizon of that
+remote neighbourhood, affably shaking hands with old acquaintance,
+occupying the best rooms in the "Blue Bell," and scattering largesse
+among the servants, rattling through the streets side by side with some
+county magnate, whose companionship should by no means chill his
+recognition of such local stars of the second or third magnitude as the
+Pawkinses of Pudcombe Hall. He was inclined by taste and temperament to
+be thoroughly "_bon prince_."
+
+Such fancies may seem childish, but it was a fact that Algernon had
+indulged in them. With all his tact, he had a considerable strain of his
+mother's Ancramism in his blood. And the contrast between those former
+day-dreams and the present reality was so terrible, so mortifying, so
+ridiculous (direst and most soul-chilling word of all to Algernon!) that
+he was unable to face it. Some way out must be found. It was impossible,
+on any tenable theory of society, that he should be permanently
+consigned to oblivion and the daily round of inglorious duties.
+
+As to what Lord Seely said about meriting advancement by diligence, and
+working for ten or fifteen years, it seemed to Algernon pretty much like
+exhorting a convict to step his daily round of treadmill in so
+painstaking a manner as to win the approbation of the gaol authorities.
+What would he care for their approbation? It was impossible to take
+either pride or pleasure in working out one's penal sentence.
+
+Algernon felt very bitter against Lord Seely as he pondered these
+things, and not a little bitter against Castalia, who had, as it were,
+bound him to this wheel, and had latterly added the sting of her
+intolerable temper to his other vexations. Fate had used him
+despitefully. He seemed to consider that some gratitude was due to him
+on the part of the supernal powers for his excellent intentions--he
+would have borne prosperity so well! A feeling grew upon him, which
+would have been desperation but for his ever-present, instinctive
+efforts not to hurt himself.
+
+On the morning after the visit to Maxfield's house--of which Castalia
+had been an unseen witness--Algernon went to the post-office somewhat
+earlier than usual. As he reached it a man was coming out, who scowled
+upon him with so sullen and hostile a countenance, that it affected him
+like a blow.
+
+He was, on the whole, in better spirits on this special morning than he
+had been for some time past. Not that he was habitually depressed by his
+troubles, but there was a certain apprehension and anxiety in his daily
+life which flavoured it all unpleasantly. But on this morning he was,
+for various reasons, feeling hopeful of at least a reprieve from care,
+and the man's angry frown not only hurt but startled him.
+
+"Who is that fellow who has just gone out?" he asked of Gibbs, entering
+the office by the public door instead of his own private one, in order
+to put the question.
+
+"That is Roger Heath, the man who has lost his money-letter."
+
+"An uncommonly ill-looking rascal, I take leave to think."
+
+"Ahem! He is a decent, God-fearing man, sir, I believe; but at present
+he is wrath, and not without some excuse, either. He tells me he has
+written to the head office----"
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"And has been told that due inquiries will be made, of course."
+
+"And what then?"
+
+"Why then--I suppose that's the last he'll hear of it."
+
+Algernon lightly flicked a white handkerchief over his face and bright
+curling hair, filling the close little office with a delicate perfume as
+he said, "So there's an end of that!"
+
+"An end of it, I suppose, so far as Heath is concerned. But I doubt we
+shall hear more of the matter in the office."
+
+Algernon paused with his hand on the lock of the door leading to his
+private room. He kept his hand there, and scarcely turned his head as he
+asked, "How so?"
+
+Mr. Gibbs shook his head, and began to expatiate on the singular
+misfortunes which had been accumulated on the Whitford Post-office, and
+to hint that when two or three suspicious cases had followed each other
+in that way, an office was marked by the superior authorities, and means
+were taken to discover the culprit.
+
+"Means! What means?" said Algernon, carelessly. "You said yourself that
+it was next to impossible to trace a stolen letter. And, really, if
+people will be such idiots as to send money by post without precaution,
+in spite of all the warnings that are given to them, they deserve to
+lose it."
+
+"That may be, sir. Still, of course, it is no light matter to steal a
+letter. And as to the means of tracing it, why I have heard of
+trap-letters being sent, containing marked money."
+
+The handle clicked, the door was opened and sharply shut again, and the
+Whitford postmaster disappeared into his private room.
+
+It was more than an hour before Algernon reappeared in the outer office.
+He advanced towards Gibbs, and leaning on his shoulder with great
+affability, said to him in a low voice, "You've no suspicion of any one
+about this place, eh? The old woman that cleans the office, that boy
+Jem, no suspicion of anybody, eh? Oh! well I'm excessively glad of that!
+One hates to be distrustful of the people about one."
+
+Gibbs shook his head emphatically and decisively. "No one has access to
+the office unless in my presence, sir; not a creature."
+
+"The fact is," said Algernon, slowly, "that I have missed one or two
+papers of my own lately; matters of no consequence. God knows why anyone
+should have thought it worth while to take them! But they're gone."
+
+Gibbs looked up with serious alarm in his face.
+
+"Dear me, sir!" he exclaimed; "dear me, Mr. Errington! I wish you had
+mentioned this before."
+
+"Oh well, you know, I thought I might be mistaken. I hate being on the
+watch about trifles. But latterly I am quite sure that papers have
+disappeared from my secretaire."
+
+"From that little cabinet with drawers in it, that stands in your room?"
+
+"Exactly."
+
+"But--I was under the impression that you kept that carefully locked!"
+
+Algernon laughed outright. "What a fellow you are, Gibbs! Fancy my
+keeping anything carefully locked! The fact is, it is as often open as
+shut. Only a few days ago, for instance, Mrs. Errington mentioned to me
+that she found it unlocked when she was here----" He stopped as if
+struck by a sudden thought, and turned his eyes away from Gibbs, who was
+looking up at him with the same uneasy expression on his face.
+"By-the-way, Mrs. Errington did not stay very long here, did she?" asked
+Algernon, with a degree of marked embarrassment very unusual in him. It
+was an embarrassment so ingeniously displayed that one might almost have
+suspected he wished it to be observed.
+
+"When do you mean, sir? Mrs. Errington comes very often; very often
+indeed."
+
+"Does she?--I mean--I mean the last time she was here. Did she stay long
+then?"
+
+"N--no," answered Gibbs, removing his eyes from Algernon's face, and
+biting the feather of his pen thoughtfully. "At least, I think not, sir.
+I cannot be sure. She very often does not pass out through my office,
+but goes away by the private door in the passage."
+
+There was a pause.
+
+"I really am very glad that you don't suspect any of the people about
+the place, Gibbs," said Algernon at length, rousing himself with some
+apparent effort from a reverie. "As long as I have any authority here,
+no innocent person shall be made unhappy for one moment by watchfulness
+and suspicion."
+
+"That's a very kind feeling, Mr. Errington. But I shouldn't think an
+innocent person would mind being watched in such a case. For my own
+part, I hope we shall trace the matter out. It shan't be my fault if we
+don't."
+
+"You are wonderfully energetic, Gibbs. An invaluable public servant.
+But, Gibbs, it will not, I think, be any part of your duty to mention to
+any one at present the losses I have spoken of from my secretaire. There
+is no reason, as yet, to connect them with the missing letters. I did
+not duly consider what I was saying. The papers, after all, were only
+private letters of my own, Gibbs. They concern no one but myself. One
+was a mere note--an invitation from a lady. They could have had no value
+for a thief, you know. I--I daresay I mislaid it, and never put it into
+the secretaire at all."
+
+Algernon went away with downcast eyes and hurried step, and Mr. Gibbs
+stared after him with a bewildered gaze. Then slowly the expression of
+his face changed to one of consternation and pity. "Poor young man!" he
+exclaimed, half aloud. "That woman has been making free with his papers
+beyond a doubt. And he does his best to shield her. A worldly-minded,
+vain woman she is, that looks at us as if we were made of a different
+kind of clay from her. And they say she is furiously jealous of her
+husband. But this--this is serious! This is very serious, indeed. I am
+sorry for the young man with all my heart!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+It was no more possible to do anything unusual in Whitford without
+arresting attention, and being subjected to animadversion, than it was
+possible for atmospheric conditions to change without affecting the
+barometer.
+
+Who could tell how it got abroad in the town that young Mrs. Errington
+was in the habit of following her husband about; of watching him, spying
+on his actions, and examining his private correspondence? Mr. Obadiah
+Gibbs, who could have told more than any one on the latter head, was not
+given to talking. Yet the fact oozed out.
+
+It assumed, of course, a great variety of forms and colours, according
+to the more or less distorting mediums through which it passed.
+The fact, as uttered by Miss Chubb, for example, was a very
+different-looking fact from that which was narrated with bated breath,
+and nods, and winks, by Mrs. Smith, the surgeon's wife. And her
+version, again, varied considerably from those of Mr. Gladwish, the
+Methodist shoemaker; Mr. Barker, the Church of England chemist; and the
+bosom friends of the servants at Ivy Lodge. Still, under one shape and
+another, Mrs. Algernon Errington's jealousy of her husband, and her
+consequent behaviour, were within the cognisance of Whitford, and were
+discussed in all circles there.
+
+The predominant feeling ran strongly against Castalia. There were
+persons, indeed, who, exercising an exemplary impartiality (on which
+they much prided themselves), refused to take sides in the matter, but
+considered it most probable that both parties were to blame. Mrs. Smith
+was among these. She had, she declared, that rare gift in woman--a
+judicial mind, although her conception of the judicial functions
+appeared to be limited to putting on the black cap and passing sentence.
+But in the main, public sympathy was with Algernon. He had offended many
+old acquaintances by his aristocratic marriage; but at least he was now
+making the only amends in his power by being extremely unhappy in it! A
+great many wiseacres, male and female, were now able to shake their
+heads, and say they had known all along how it would turn out. This came
+of flying too high; for, if Mrs. Errington, senior, was an Ancram by
+birth, her husband had been only a country surgeon--not even M.D.,
+though she called him "doctor." And this justifying of their predictions
+was, in a vague way, imputed to Algernon as a merit; or, at the least,
+it softened disapproval. Then, too, in justice to Whitfordians, it must
+be said that all their knowledge of Castalia showed them an insolent,
+supercilious, uninteresting woman, who made no secret of her contempt
+for them and their town, and who, "although but a poor postmaster's
+wife, when you came to look at it," as Mrs. Smith the judicial truly
+observed, gave herself more airs than a duchess. What good, or
+capacities for good, there might be in her, was hidden from Whitford,
+whilst her unpleasant qualities were abundantly manifested to all
+beholders.
+
+Poor Castalia, in her quite unaffected nonchalance and disregard of "all
+those people," was totally ignorant how much resentment and dislike she
+was creating, and in what a hostile atmosphere she was living. Her
+husband's popularity, dimmed by his alliance with her, began to revive
+when it was perceived that she persecuted and harassed him, and (as was
+shrewdly suspected) involved him in money difficulties by her
+extravagance. Some of the men thought it served him right; why did he
+marry such a woman? But the ladies, as a rule, were on Algernon's side.
+
+There were exceptions, of course. Miss McDougall stood up for her
+friend, as she said, albeit with some admixture of Mrs. Smith's judicial
+tendency to blame everybody all round, and a personal disposition
+towards spitefulness. Minnie Bodkin said very little when the subject
+was mentioned in her presence; but when an opinion was forced from her,
+she did not deliver it entirely in favour of Algernon. She was sorry for
+his wife, she said. And nine-tenths of her hearers would retort with
+raised hands and eyes, that they, for their part, were sorry for the
+young man, and that they could not understand what dear Minnie found to
+pity in Mrs. Algernon Errington. "A woman who spies on her husband, my
+dear! Who condescends to open his letters--how a woman can so degrade
+herself is a mystery to me! And they say she actually follows him about
+the street at nights--skulks after him! Oh! it is almost too bad to
+repeat!"
+
+"I don't know that all that is true. But if it be so, it seems to me
+that there is great cause for pity," Minnie would reply. And the answer
+was set down to poor dear Miss Bodkin's eccentricity.
+
+There had been, for some time back, a talk of carelessness and
+mismanagement at the Whitford Post-office. Then Roger Heath made no
+secret of his loss, and was not soft-hearted or mild in his manner of
+speaking of it. He complained aloud, and spared nobody. And there were
+plenty of voices ready to carry his denunciations through all classes of
+Whitford society. It was very strange! Such a thing as the loss of a
+money-letter had been almost unknown during the reign of the late
+postmaster; and now there was, not one case, but two--three--a dozen!
+The number increased, as it passed from mouth to mouth, at a wonderful
+rate. There must be great negligence (to say the least of it) somewhere
+in the Whitford Post-office. If the present postmaster was too much
+above his business to look after it properly, it was a pity his high
+friends didn't remove him to some situation better suited to such a fine
+gentleman!
+
+To be sure he was worried out of his wits by that woman. It really was
+true that she haunted the office at all hours. She had been seen
+slipping out of the private door in the entry. She was even said to have
+a pass key which enabled her to go in and out at her will. Was it not
+rumoured on very good authority that she had actually gone to the office
+alone, in the dead of night? What could she want to be always prowling
+about there for? It was all very well to say she went to spy on her
+husband, but if things went wrong in the office in consequence of her
+spyings, it became a public evil. Anyway, it was most extraordinary and
+unheard-of behaviour, and somebody ought to take the matter up! This
+latter somewhat vague suggestion was a favourite climax to gossip on
+the subject of the Algernon Erringtons.
+
+With respect to their private affairs, things did not mend. Tradesmen
+dunned, and grumbled, and could not get their money, and some declined
+to execute further orders from Ivy Lodge until their accounts were
+settled. Among the angriest had been Mr. Ravell, the principal draper of
+the town, whom Castalia had honoured with a good deal of her custom. But
+one day, not long after Algernon's conversation with his clerk,
+mentioned in the last chapter, he was met in the High Street by Mr.
+Ravell, who bowed very deferentially, and stopped, hesitatingly. "Could
+I say a word to you, sir?" said Mr. Ravell.
+
+"Certainly," replied Algernon. They were close to the post-office, and
+he took the draper into his private room, and bade him be seated.
+
+"I suppose, Mr. Ravell," said Algernon, with a shrug and a smile, "that
+you have come about your bill! Mrs. Errington mentioned to me a short
+time ago that you had been rather importunate. Upon my word, Mr. Ravell,
+I think you need not have been in such a deuce of a hurry! I know Mrs.
+Errington does not understand making bargains, and I suppose you don't
+neglect to arrange your prices so as not to lose by giving her a little
+credit, eh?"
+
+This was said lightly, but either the words or the tone made Mr. Ravell
+colour and look a little confused. He was seated, and Algernon was
+standing near him with his back to the fire, expressing a sense of his
+own superiority to the draper in every turn of his well-built figure and
+every line of his half-smiling, half-bored countenance.
+
+"Why, you see, Mr. Errington, we are not in the habit of giving long
+credit, unless to a few old-established customers who deal largely with
+us. It would not suit our style of doing business. And it was reported
+that you were not settled permanently here. And--and--one or two
+unpleasant things had been said. But I hope you will not continue to
+feel so greatly offended with us for sending in the account. It was
+merely in the regular way of our transactions, I assure you."
+
+"Oh, I'm not offended at all, Mr. Ravell! And I hope by the end of this
+month to clear off all scores between us entirely. Mrs. Errington has
+not furnished me with any details, but----"
+
+Ravell looked up quickly. "Clear off all scores between us, sir?" he
+said.
+
+"I presume you will have no objection to that, Mr. Ravell?"
+
+"Oh, of course, sir, you will have your joke! I am glad you are not
+offended. You see ladies don't always understand these matters. Mrs.
+Errington was a little severe on us when she paid the account
+yesterday. At least, so my cashier said."
+
+"My wife paid your account yesterday?" cried Algernon, with a blank
+look.
+
+"Yes, sir, in full. We should have been quite satisfied if settlement
+had been made up to the end of last quarter. But it was paid in full.
+Oh, I thought you had been aware of it! Mrs. Errington said--my people
+understood her to say, that it was by your wish, as you were so greatly
+annoyed at the bill being sent in so often."
+
+"Oh! Yes. Quite right, Mr. Ravell."
+
+He spoke slowly, and as if he were thinking of something other than the
+words he uttered. Ravell looked at him curiously. Algernon suddenly
+caught the man's eye, and broke into a little careless laugh. "The fact
+is," said he, with a frank toss of his head, "that I did not know Mrs.
+Errington had paid you. I suppose she had received some remittances,
+or--but in short," checking himself, and laughing once more, "I daresay
+you won't trouble yourself as to where the money comes from so long as
+it comes to you!"
+
+Mr. Ravell laughed back again, but rather in a forced manner. "Not at
+all, sir! Not at all," he said, bowing and smiling. And, seeing Algernon
+look significantly at his watch, he bowed and smiled himself out of the
+office.
+
+Then Mr. Ravell went away to report to his wife the details of his
+interview with the postmaster, and before noon the next day it was
+reported throughout Whitford that Mrs. Algernon Errington had the
+command of mysterious stores of money whereof her husband knew nothing;
+and that, nevertheless, she ran him into debt right and left, and
+refused to pay a farthing until she was absolutely forced to do so.
+
+This report was not calculated to make those tradesmen who had not been
+paid more patient and forbearing. If Mrs. Algernon Errington could find
+money for one she could for another, they argued, and a shower of bills
+descended on Ivy Lodge within the next week or two. Algernon said they
+came like a swarm of locusts, and threatened to devour all before them.
+He acknowledged to himself that the payment of Ravell's bill had been a
+fatal precedent. "And, perhaps," he thought, "there was no need for
+getting rid of the notes after all! However, the thing is done and can't
+be undone."
+
+The necessity for another appeal to Lord Seely grew more and more
+imminent. Castalia had displayed an unexpected obstinacy about the
+matter. She had held to her refusal to ask for more money from her
+uncle, but Algernon had not yet urged her very strongly to do so. The
+moment had now come, he thought, when an appeal absolutely must be made,
+and he doubted not his own power to cause Castalia to make it. Her
+manner, to be sure, had been very singular of late; alternately sullen
+and excited, passing from cold silence to passionate tenderness without
+any intermediate phases. He had surprised her occasionally crying
+convulsively, and at other times on coming home he had found her sitting
+absolutely unoccupied, with a blank, fixed face. The few persons who saw
+Castalia frequently, observed the change in her, and commented on it.
+Miss Chubb once dropped a word to Algernon indicating a vague suspicion
+that his wife's intellect was disordered. He did not choose to appear to
+perceive the drift of her words, but the hint dwelt in his mind.
+
+"You must write to Lord Seely this evening, Cassy," he said one day on
+returning home to dinner. He had found his wife at her desk, and, on
+seeing him, she huddled away a confused heap of papers into a drawer,
+and hastily shut it.
+
+"Must I?" she answered gloomily.
+
+"Well, I don't wish to use an offensive phrase. You will write to oblige
+me. It has been put off long enough."
+
+"Why should I oblige you?" said Castalia, looking up at him with sunken
+eyes. She looked so ill and haggard, as to arrest Algernon's
+attention--not too lavishly bestowed on her in general.
+
+"Cassy," said he, "I am afraid you are not well!"
+
+The tears came into her eyes. She turned her head away. "Do you really
+care whether I am ill or well?" she asked.
+
+"Do I really care? What a question! Of course I care. Are you
+suffering?"
+
+"N--no; not now. I believe I should not feel any suffering if you only
+loved me, Ancram."
+
+"Castalia! How can you be so absurd?"
+
+He rose from his seat beside her, and walked impatiently up and down the
+room. Nothing irritated him so much as to be called on for sentiment or
+tenderness.
+
+"There!" she exclaimed, with a little despondent gesture of the head,
+"you were speaking and looking kindly, and I have driven you away! I
+wish I was dead."
+
+Algernon stopped in his walk, and cast a singular look at his wife. Then
+after a moment he said, in his usual light manner, "My dear Cassy, you
+are low and nervous. It really is not good for you to mope by yourself
+as you do. Come, rouse yourself to write this letter to my lord, then
+after dinner you can have the fly to drive to my mother's. She complains
+that she sees you very seldom."
+
+"Will you come too, Ancram?"
+
+"I----well, yes; if it is possible, I will come too."
+
+"I think," said Castalia, putting her hands on his shoulders, and
+gazing wistfully into his face, "that if you and I could go away to some
+quiet strange place--far away from all these odious people--across the
+seas somewhere--I think we might be happy even now."
+
+"Upon my honour, there's nothing I should like so much as to get away
+across the seas! And you might as well hint to my lord, in the course of
+your letter, that I should be very well contented with a berth in the
+Colonies. A good climate, of course! One wouldn't care to be shipped off
+to Sierra Leone!"
+
+"I will write that to Uncle Val, willingly. But--don't ask me to beg
+money of him again."
+
+Algernon made a rapid calculation in his mind, and answered without
+appreciable pause, "Well, Cassy, it shall be as you will. But as to
+begging----that, I think, is scarcely the word between us and Lord
+Seely."
+
+"I'll run upstairs and bathe my eyes, and I shall still have time to
+write before dinner," said Castalia, and left the room.
+
+When he was alone, Algernon opened the writing-table drawer, and glanced
+at the papers in it. Castalia's hurried manner of concealing them had
+suggested to his mind the suspicion that she might have been writing
+secretly to her uncle. He found no letter addressed to Lord Seely, but
+he did find an unfinished fragment of writing addressed to himself. It
+consisted of a few incoherent phrases of despondency and reproach--the
+expression of confidence betrayed and affection unrequited. There was a
+word or two in it about the writer's weariness of life and desire to
+quit it.
+
+Castalia had written many such fragments of late; sometimes as a mere
+outlet for suppressed feeling, sometimes under the impression that she
+really could not long support an existence uncheered by sympathy or
+counsel, embittered by jealousy, and chilled by neglect. She had written
+such fragments, and then torn them up in many a lonely hour, but she had
+never thought of complaining of Algernon to Lord Seely. She would
+complain of him to no human being. But all Algernon's insight into his
+wife's character did not enable him to feel sure of this. Indeed, he had
+often said to himself that no rational being could be expected to follow
+the vagaries of Castalia's sickly fancies and impracticable temper. He
+would not have been surprised to find her pouring out a long string of
+lamentations about her lot to Lord Seely. He was not much surprised at
+what he did find her to have written, although the state of feeling it
+displayed seemed to him as unreasonable and unaccountable as ever. He
+gave himself no account of the motive which made him take the fragment
+of writing, fold it, and place it carefully inside a little pocket-book
+which he carried.
+
+"I wonder," he thought to himself, "if Castalia is likely to die!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+The letter to Lord Seely was duly written, and this time in Castalia's
+own words. Algernon refused to assist her in the composition of it,
+saying, in answer to her appeals, "No, no, Cassy; I shall make no
+suggestion whatsoever. I don't choose to expose myself to any more
+grandiloquence from your uncle about letters being 'written by your
+hand, but not dictated by your head.' I wonder at my lord talking such
+high-flown stuff. But pomposity is his master weakness."
+
+Castalia's letter was as follows:
+
+     "Whitford, November 23rd.
+
+     "DEAR UNCLE VAL,--I am sure you will understand that I was very
+     much surprised and hurt at the tone of your last letter to
+     Ancram. Of course, if you have not the money to help us with,
+     you cannot lend it. And I don't complain of that. But I was
+     vexed at the way you wrote to Ancram. You won't think me
+     ungrateful to you. I know how good you have always been to me,
+     and I am fonder of you than of anybody in the world except
+     Ancram. But nobody can be unkind to him without hurting me, and
+     I shall always resent any slight to him. But I am writing now
+     to ask you something that 'I wish for very much myself;' it is
+     quite my own desire. I am not at all happy in this place. And I
+     want you to get Ancram a berth somewhere in the Colonies, quite
+     away. It is no use changing from one town in England to
+     another. What we want is to get 'far away,' and put the seas
+     between us and all the odious people here. I am sure you might
+     get us something if you would try. I assure you Ancram is
+     perfectly wasted in this hole. Any stupid grocer or
+     tallow-chandler could do what he has to do. Do, dear Uncle Val,
+     try to help us in this. Indeed I shall never be happy in
+     Whitford.--Your affectionate niece,
+
+     "C. ERRINGTON.
+
+     "Give my love to Aunt Belinda if she cares to have it. But I
+     daresay she won't.--C. E."
+
+"I think my lord will not doubt the genuineness of that epistle!"
+thought Algernon, after having read it at his wife's request.
+
+Then the fly was announced, and they set off together to pass the
+evening at the elder Mrs. Errington's lodgings. The "Blue Bell" driver
+touched his hat in a very respectful manner. His master's long-standing
+account was unpaid, but he continued to receive, for his part, frequent
+half-crowns from Algernon, who liked the immediate popularity to be
+purchased by a gift somewhat out of proportion to his means. Indeed, our
+young friend enjoyed a better reputation amongst menials and underlings
+than amongst their employers. The former were apt to speak of him as a
+pleasant gentleman who was free with his money; and to declare that they
+felt as if they could do anything for young Mr. Errington, so they
+could! He had such a way with him! Whereas the mere payment of humdrum
+debts excites no such agreeable glow of feeling, and is altogether a
+flat, stale, and unprofitable proceeding.
+
+"What o'clock shall we say, Castalia?" asked her husband, as they
+alighted at Mrs. Thimbleby's door.
+
+"Tell him to come at half-past ten," returned Castalia.
+
+It chanced that David Powell was re-entering his lodgings at the moment
+the younger Erringtons reached the door. He stood aside to let the lady
+pass into the house before him, and thus heard her answer. The sound of
+her voice made him start and bend forward to look at her face when the
+light from the open door fell upon it. She turned round at the same
+instant, and the two looked full at each other. David Powell asked Mrs.
+Thimbleby if that lady were not the wife of Mr. Algernon Errington.
+
+"Yes, Mr. Powell, she is his wife; and more's the pity, if all tales be
+true!"
+
+"Judge not uncharitably, sister Thimbleby! Nor let your tongue belie the
+gentleness of your spirit. It is an unruly member that speaks not always
+out of the fulness of the heart. The lady seems very sick, and bears the
+traces of much sorrow on her countenance."
+
+"Oh yes, indeed, poor thing! Sickly enough she looks, and sorry. Nay, I
+daresay she has her own trials, but I fear me she leads that pleasant
+young husband of hers a poor life of it. I shouldn't say as much to
+anyone but you, sir, for I do try to keep my tongue from evil-speaking.
+But had you never seen her before, Mr. Powell?"
+
+Powell answered musingly, "N--no--scarcely seen her. But I had heard her
+voice."
+
+Mrs. Errington received her son and daughter-in-law with an effusive
+welcome. She was so astonished; so delighted. It was so long since she
+had seen them. And then to see them together! That had latterly become
+quite a rare treat. The good lady expatiated on this theme until
+Castalia's brow grew gloomy with the recollection of her wrongs, her
+solitary hours spent so drearily, and her suspicions as to how her
+husband employed the hours of his absence from her. And then Mrs.
+Errington began playfully to reprove her for being dull and silent,
+instead of enjoying dear Algy's society now that she had it! "I am sure,
+my dear Castalia," said the elder lady with her usual self-complacent
+stateliness, "you won't mind my telling you that I consider one of the
+great secrets of the perfect felicity I enjoyed during my married life
+to have been the interest and pleasure I always took--and showed that I
+took--in Dr. Errington's society."
+
+"Perhaps he liked your society," returned Castalia with a languid sneer,
+followed by a short bitter sigh.
+
+"Preferred it to any in the world, my dear!" said Mrs. Errington,
+mellifluously. She said it, too, with an _aplomb_ and an air of
+conviction that mightily tickled Algernon, who, remembering the family
+rumours which haunted his childhood, thought that his respected father,
+if he preferred his wife's society to any other, must have put a
+considerable constraint on his inclinations, not to say sacrificed them
+altogether to the claims of a convivial circle of friends. "The dear old
+lady is as good as a play!" thought he. Indeed, he thoroughly relished
+this bit of domestic comedy.
+
+"But then," proceeded Mrs. Errington, as she rang the bell to order
+tea, "I have not the vanity to suppose that he would have done so
+without the exercise of some little care and tact on my part. Tact, my
+dear Castalia--tact is the most precious gift a wife can bring to the
+domestic circle. But the Ancrams always had enormous tact--Give us some
+tea, if you please, Mrs. Thimbleby, and be careful that the water
+boils--proverbial for it, in fact!"
+
+Algernon thought it time to come to the rescue. He did not choose his
+comfort to be destroyed by a passage of arms between his mother and his
+wife, so he deftly turned the conversation to less dangerous topics, and
+things proceeded peacefully until the tea was served.
+
+"Who was that man that was coming in to the house with us?" asked
+Castalia, as she sipped her tea from one of Mrs. Errington's antique
+blue and white china cups.
+
+"Would it be Mr. Diamond----? But no; you know him by sight. Or--oh, I
+suppose it was that Methodist preacher, Powell!"
+
+"Powell! Yes, that was the name--David Powell."
+
+"Most likely. He is in and out at all hours. Really, Algernon, do you
+know--you remember the fellow, how he used to annoy us at Maxfield's.
+Well, do you know, I believe he is quite crazy!"
+
+"You have always entertained that opinion, I believe, ma'am."
+
+"Oh, but, my dear boy, I think he is demented in real downright earnest
+now. I do indeed. I'm sure the things that poor weak-minded Mrs.
+Thimbleby tells me about him----! He has delusions of all kinds; hears
+voices, sees visions. I should say it is a case of what your father
+would have called 'melancholy madness.' Really, Algy, I frequently think
+about it. It is quite alarming sometimes in the night if I happen to
+wake up, to remember that there is a lunatic sleeping overhead. You know
+he might take it into his head to murder one! Or if he only killed
+himself--which is perhaps more likely--it would be a highly unpleasant
+circumstance. I could not possibly remain in the lodgings, you know. Out
+of the question! And so I told that silly Thimbleby. I said to her,
+'Observe, Mrs. Thimbleby, if any dreadful thing happens in this house--a
+suicide or anything of that sort--I shall leave you at an hour's notice.
+I wish you well, and I have no desire to withdraw my patronage from you,
+but you could not expect me to look over a coroner's inquest.'"
+
+Algernon threw his head back and laughed heartily. "That was a fair
+warning, at any rate!" said he. "And if Mr. David Powell has any
+consideration for his landlady, he will profit by it--that is to say,
+supposing Mrs. Thimbleby tells him of it. What did she say?"
+
+"Oh, she merely cried and whimpered, and hid her face in her apron. She
+is terribly weak-minded, poor creature."
+
+Castalia had been listening in silence. All at once she said, "How many
+miserable people there are!"
+
+"Very true, Cassy; provincial postmasters and others. And part of my
+miserable lot is to go down to the office again for an hour to-night."
+
+"My poor boy!" "Go to the office again to-night?" exclaimed his mother
+and his wife simultaneously.
+
+"Yes; it is now half-past eight. I have an appointment. At least--I
+shall be back in an hour, I have no doubt."
+
+Algernon walked off with an air of good-humoured resignation, smiling
+and shrugging his shoulders. The two women, left alone together, took
+his departure very differently. Mrs. Errington was majestically wrathful
+with a system of things which involved so much discomfort to a scion of
+the house of Ancram. She was of opinion that some strong representations
+should be made to the ministry; that Parliament should be appealed to.
+And she rather enjoyed her own eloquence, and was led on by it to make
+some most astounding assertions, and utter some scathing condemnations
+with an air of comfortable self-satisfaction. Castalia, on the other
+hand, remained gloomily taciturn, huddled into an easy-chair by the
+hearth, and staring fixedly at the fire.
+
+It has been recorded in these pages that Mrs. Errington did not much
+object to silence on the part of her companion for the time being; she
+only required an assenting or admiring interjection now and then, to
+enable her to carry on what she supposed to be a very agreeable
+conversation, but she did like her confidante to do that much towards
+social intercourse. And she liked, moreover, to see some look of
+pleasure, interest, or sympathy on the confidante's face. Looking at
+Castalia's moody and abstracted countenance, she could not but remember
+the gentle listener in whom she had been wont for so many years to find
+a sweet response to all her utterances.
+
+"Oddly enough," she said, "I have been disappointed of a visitor this
+evening, and so should have been quite alone if you and Algy had not
+come in. I had asked Rhoda to spend the evening with me."
+
+Castalia looked round at the sound of that name. "Why didn't she come?"
+she asked abruptly.
+
+"Oh, I don't know. She merely said she could not leave home to-night.
+That old father of hers sometimes takes tyrannical fancies into his
+head. He has been kinder to dear Rhoda of late, and has treated her
+more becomingly--chiefly, I believe I may say, owing to my influence,
+although the old booby chose to quarrel with me--but when he takes a
+thing into his head he is as obstinate as a mule."
+
+"I don't know about treating her 'becomingly,' but I think she needs
+some one to look after her and keep her in check."
+
+"Who, Rhoda? My dear Castalia, she is the very sweetest-tempered
+creature I ever met with in my life; and that is saying a good deal, let
+me tell you, for the Ancram temper was something quite special. A gift.
+I don't boast of it, because I believe it was simply constitutional. But
+such was the fact."
+
+"The girl is dressed up beyond her station. The last time I saw her it
+was absurd. Scarcely reputable, I should think."
+
+Mrs. Errington by no means liked this attack. Over and above the fact
+that Rhoda was her pet and her _protegee_, which would have sufficed to
+make any animadversions on her appear impertinent, she was genuinely
+fond of the girl, and answered with some warmth, "I am sure, Castalia,
+that whatever Rhoda Maxfield might be dressed in, she would look modest
+and sweet, not to say excessively pretty, for I suppose there cannot be
+a doubt about that?"
+
+"I thought you were a stickler for people keeping to their own station,
+and not aping their betters!"
+
+"We must distinguish, Castalia. Birth will ever be with me the first
+consideration. Coming of the race I do, it could not be otherwise. But
+it is useless to shut one's eyes to the fact that money nowadays will do
+much. Look at our best families!--families of lineage as good as my own.
+What do we see? We see them allying themselves with commercial people
+right and left. Now, there was Miss Pickleham. The way in which she was
+thrown at Algy's head would surprise you. She had a hundred thousand
+pounds of her own on the day she married, and expectations of much more
+on old Picklekam's decease. But I never encouraged the thing. Perhaps I
+was wrong. However!--she married Sir Peregrine Puffin last season. And
+the Puffins were in Cornwall before the Conquest."
+
+Castalia shrugged her shoulders in undisguised scorn. "All that nonsense
+is nothing to the purpose," said she, throwing her head back against the
+cushion of the chair she sat on. Mrs. Errington opened her blue eyes to
+their widest extent. "Really, Castalia! 'All that nonsense!' You are not
+very polite."
+
+"I'm sick of all the pretences, and shams, and deceptions," returned
+Castalia, her eyes glittering feverishly, and her thin fingers twining
+themselves together with nervous restlessness. "I don't know whether you
+are made a fool of yourself, or are trying to make a fool of me----"
+
+"Castalia!"
+
+"But, in either case, I am not duped. Your 'sweet Rhoda!' Don't you know
+that she is an artful, false coquette--perhaps worse!"
+
+"Castalia!"
+
+"Yes, worse. Why should she not be as bad as any other low-bred creature
+who lures on gentlemen to make love to her? Men are such idiots! So
+false and fickle! But, though I may be injured and insulted, I will not
+be laughed at for a dupe."
+
+"Good heavens, Castalia! What does this mean?"
+
+"And I will tell you another thing, if you really are so blind to what
+goes on, and has been going on, for years: I don't believe Ancram has
+gone to the post-office to-night at all. I believe he has gone to see
+Rhoda. It would not be the first time he has deceived me on that score!"
+
+Mrs. Errington sat holding the arms of her easy-chair with both hands,
+and staring at her daughter-in-law. The poor lady felt as if the world
+were turned upside down. It was not so long since old Maxfield had
+astonished her by plainly showing that he thought her of no importance,
+and choosing to turn her out of his house. And now, here was Castalia
+conducting herself in a still more amazing manner. Whilst she revolved
+the case in her brain--much confused and bewildered as that organ
+was--and endeavoured to come to some clear opinion on it, the younger
+woman got up and walked up and down the room with the restless, aimless,
+anxious gait of a caged animal.
+
+At length Mrs. Errington slowly nodded her head two or three times, drew
+a long breath, folded her hands, and, assuming a judicial air, spoke as
+follows:
+
+"My dear Castalia! I shall overlook the unbecomingness of certain
+expressions that you have used towards myself, because I can make
+allowance for an excited state of feeling. But you must permit me to
+give you a little advice. Endeavour to control yourself; try to look at
+things with calmness and judgment, and you will soon perceive how wrong
+and foolish your present conduct is. And, moreover, you need not be
+startled if I have discovered the real motive at the bottom of all this
+display of temper. There never was a member of my family yet who had not
+a wonderful gift of reading motives. I'm sure it is nothing to envy us!
+I have often, for my own part, wished myself as slow of perception as
+other people, for the truth is not always pleasant. But I must say that
+I can see one thing very plainly--and that is, that you are most
+unfortunately and most unreasonably giving way to jealousy! I can see
+it, Castalia, as plain as possible."
+
+Mrs. Errington had finished her harangue with much majesty, bringing out
+the closing sentences as if they were a most unexpected and powerful
+climax, when the effect of the whole was marred by her giving a violent
+start and exclaiming, with more naturalness than dignity, "Mercy on us!
+Castalia, what will you do next? Do shut that window, for pity's sake! I
+shall get my death of cold!"
+
+Castalia had opened the window, and was leaning out of it, regardless of
+the sleet which fell in slanting lines and beat against her cheek. "I
+knew that was his step," she said, speaking, as it seemed, more to
+herself than to her mother-in-law. "And he has no umbrella, and those
+light shoes on!" She ran to the fireplace and stirred the fire into a
+blaze, displaying an activity which was singularly contrasted with her
+usual languid slowness of movement. "Can't you give him some hot wine
+and water?" she asked, ringing the bell at the same time. When her
+husband came in she removed his damp great-coat with her own hands, made
+him sit down near the fire, and brought him a pair of his mother's
+slippers, which were quite sufficiently roomy to admit his slender
+feet. Algernon submitted to be thus cherished and taken care of,
+declaring, with an amused smile, as he sipped the hot negus, that this
+fuss was very kind, but entirely unnecessary, as he had not been three
+minutes in the rain.
+
+As to Mrs. Errington, she was so perplexed by her daughter-in-law's
+sudden change of mood and manner, that she lost her presence of mind,
+and remained gazing from Algernon to his wife very blankly. "I never
+knew such a thing!" thought the good lady. "One moment she's raging and
+scolding, and abusing her husband for deceiving her, and the next she is
+petting him up as if he was a baby!"
+
+When the fly was announced, and Castalia left the little drawing-room to
+put on her cloak and bonnet, Mrs. Errington drew near to her son and
+whispered to him solemnly, "Algy, there is something very strange about
+your wife. I never saw such a changed creature within the last few
+weeks. Don't you think you should have some one to see her?--some
+professional person I mean? I fear that her brain is affected!"
+
+"Good gracious, mother! Another lunatic? You are getting to have a
+monomania on that subject yourself!" Algernon laughed as he said it.
+
+"My dear, there may be two persons afflicted in the same way, may there
+not? But I said nothing about lunatics, Algy. Only--really, I think some
+temporary disturbance of the brain is going on. I do, indeed."
+
+"Pooh, pooh! Nonsense, ma'am! But it is odd enough that you are the
+second person who has made that agreeable suggestion to me within a
+fortnight. Poor Cassy! That's all she gets by her airs and her temper."
+
+"Another person, was there?"
+
+"Yes; it was little Miss Chubb, and----"
+
+"Miss Chubb! Upon my word, I think that Miss Chubb was guilty of taking
+a considerable liberty in suggesting anything of the kind about the
+Honourable Mrs. Ancram Errington!"
+
+"Oh, I don't know about liberty; but, of course, I laughed at her; and,
+of course, you will too, if she says anything of the kind to you."
+
+"I shall undoubtedly check her pretty severely if she attempts anything
+of the sort with me! Miss Chubb, indeed!"
+
+The consequence was, that Mrs. Errington went about among her Whitford
+friends elaborately contradicting and denying "the innuendos spread
+abroad about her daughter-in-law by certain presumptuous and gossiping
+persons;" and thus brought the suggestion before many who would not
+otherwise have heard of it. All which, of course, surprised and annoyed
+Algernon very much, who had, naturally, not expected anything of the
+sort from his mother's well-known tact and discretion.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+
+One dreary Sunday afternoon, about this time--that is to say, about the
+end of November--Matthew Diamond rang at the bell of Mr. Maxfield's
+door. He had a couple of books under his arm, and he asked the servant,
+who admitted him, if she could give him back the volume he had last lent
+to Miss Maxfield. Sally looked askance at the books as she took them
+from his hand, and shook her head doubtfully.
+
+"It's one o' them French books, isn't it, sir? I don't know one from
+another. Would you please step upstairs yourself? Miss Rhoda's in the
+drawing-room."
+
+Diamond went upstairs and tapped at the door of the sitting-room.
+
+"Come in," said a soft, sweet voice, that seemed to him the most
+deliciously musical he had ever heard, and he entered.
+
+The old room looked very different from what it had looked in the days
+when Matthew Diamond used to come there to read Latin and history with
+Algernon Errington. There were still the clumsy beams in the low
+ceiling, and the old-fashioned cushioned seats in the bay-window, but
+everything else was changed. A rich carpet covered the floor; there were
+handsome hangings, and a couch, and a French clock on the chimney-piece;
+there was a small pianoforte in the room, too; and, at one end, a
+bookcase well filled with gaily-bound books. These things were the
+products of old Max's money. But there were evidences about the place of
+taste and refinement, which were due entirely to Rhoda. She had got a
+stand of hyacinths like those in Miss Bodkin's room. She had softened
+and hidden the glare of the bright, brand-new upholstery by dainty bits
+of lacework spread over the couch and the chairs; and she had, with some
+difficulty, persuaded her father to substitute for two staring coloured
+French lithographs, which had decked the walls, a couple of good
+engravings after Italian pictures. There was a fire glowing redly in the
+grate, and the room was warm and fragrant. Rhoda was curled up on the
+window-seat, with a book in her hand, and bending down her pretty head
+over it, until the soft brown curls swept the page.
+
+Diamond stood still for a moment in the doorway, admiring the graceful
+figure well defined against the light.
+
+"Come in, Sally," said Rhoda. And then she looked up from her book and
+saw him.
+
+"I'm afraid I disturb you!" said Diamond. "But the maid told me to come
+up."
+
+"Oh no! I was just reading----"
+
+"Straining your eyes by this twilight! That's very wrong."
+
+"Yes! I'm afraid it is not very wise, but I wanted to finish the
+chapter; and my eyes are really very strong."
+
+"I thought you might be at church," said Diamond, seating himself on the
+opposite side of the bay-window, and within its recess, "so I asked the
+maid to get me the book I wanted. But she sent me upstairs."
+
+"Aunt Betty is at church, and James; but father wouldn't let me go. He
+said it was so raw and foggy, and I had been to church this morning."
+
+"Yes; I saw you there. But have you not been well, that your father did
+not wish you to go out?"
+
+"Oh yes; I'm very well, thank you. But I had a little cold last week;
+and I should have had to walk to St. Chad's and back, you know. Father
+doesn't think it right to drive on the Lord's day, so he made me stay at
+home."
+
+"How very right of him! What were you reading?"
+
+He drew a little nearer to her as he asked the question, and looked at
+the book she held.
+
+"Oh, it's a Sunday book," said Rhoda, simply. "'The Pilgrim's Progress.'
+I like it very much."
+
+"I wonder whether you will care to hear of some good news I had to-day?"
+
+"Oh yes; I shall be very glad to hear it."
+
+"I think I stand a good chance of getting the head-mastership of
+Dorrington Proprietary School. Dorrington is in the next county, you
+know."
+
+"Oh! I'm very glad."
+
+"It would be a very good position. I am not certain of it yet, you know;
+but Dr. Bodkin has been very friendly, and has promised to canvass the
+governing committee for me."
+
+"Oh! I'm very glad indeed."
+
+"I don't know yet myself whether I am very glad or not."
+
+"Don't you?"
+
+Rhoda looked up at him in genuine surprise; but her eyes fell before the
+answering look they encountered, and she blushed from brow to chin.
+
+"No; it all depends on you, Rhoda, whether I am glad of it to the bottom
+of my heart, or whether I give it all up as a thing not worth striving
+for."
+
+There was a pause, which Rhoda broke at length, because the silence
+embarrassed her unendurably.
+
+"Oh, I don't think it can depend upon me, Mr. Diamond," she said,
+speaking in a little quivering voice that was barely audible; whilst, at
+the same time, she hurriedly turned over the pages of "The Pilgrim's
+Progress" with her eyes fixed on them, although she assuredly did not
+see one letter. Diamond gently drew the book from her hand and took the
+hand in his own.
+
+"Yes, Rhoda," he said--and, having once called her so, his lips seemed
+to dwell lovingly on the sound of her name--"I think you do know! You
+must know that, if I look forward hopefully and happily to anything in
+my future life, it is only because I have a hope that you may be able to
+love me a little. I love you so much."
+
+She trembled violently, but did not withdraw her hand from his clasp.
+She sat quite still with downcast eyes, neither moving nor looking to
+the right or the left.
+
+"Rhoda! Rhoda! Won't you say one word to me?"
+
+"I'm trying--thinking what I ought to say,'" she answered, almost in a
+whisper.
+
+"Is it so difficult, Rhoda?"
+
+She made a strong effort to command her voice, but she had not the
+courage to look full at him as she answered, "Yes; it is very difficult
+for me. I want to do right, Mr. Diamond. I want not to deceive you."
+
+"I am very sure that you will not deceive me, Rhoda!"
+
+"Not if I can help it. But it is so hard to say just the exact truth."
+
+"I don't find it hard to say the exact truth to you. You may believe me
+implicitly, Rhoda, when I say that I love you with all my heart, and
+will do my best to make you happy if you will let me."
+
+"I do believe you. I believe you are really fond of me. Only--of course
+you are much cleverer and wiser than I am, except in thinking too much
+of me--and you can say just whatever is in your mind. But I can't; not
+all at once."
+
+"I will wait, Rhoda. I will have patience, and not distress you."
+
+The tears were falling down her cheeks now, not from sorrow, but from
+sheer agitation. She thanked him by a gesture of her head, and drew her
+hand away from his very gently, and wiped her eyes. He could not command
+himself at sight of her tears, although he had resolved not to speak
+again until she should be calm and ready to hear him.
+
+"My darling," he said, clasping his hands together and looking at her
+with eyes full of anxious compassion, "don't cry! Is it my fault? You
+must have had some knowledge of what was in my heart to say to you! I
+have not startled you and taken you by surprise?"
+
+"No; that's just it, Mr. Diamond. It's that that makes me feel so afraid
+of doing wrong and deceiving you. I--I--have thought for some time past
+that you were getting to like me very much. Some one said so too. But
+yet I couldn't do anything, could I? I couldn't say, 'Don't get fond of
+me, Mr. Diamond!'"
+
+"It would have been quite in vain to say, 'Don't get fond of me.' I'm a
+desperately obstinate man, Rhoda!"
+
+"So then I--I mean to tell you the exact truth, you know, as well as I
+can. I began to think whether I liked you very much."
+
+"Well, Rhoda?"
+
+There was a rather long silence.
+
+"Well, I thought--yes, I did."
+
+He clasped his arms round her with a sudden impetuous movement, but she
+held him off with her two hands on his shoulders. "No, but please
+listen! I did love somebody else once very much. Of course we were very
+young, and it was nonsense. But I did wrong in being secret, and keeping
+it from father. And I never want to be secret any more. And--though I do
+like you very much, and--and--I should be very sorry if you went
+away--yet it isn't quite the same that I felt before. That is the truth
+as well as I can say it, and I am very grateful to you for thinking so
+well of me."
+
+He drew the young head with its soft shining chestnut curls down on to
+his breast, and pressed his lips to her cheek.
+
+"Now you are mine, my very own--are you not, Rhoda?"
+
+"Yes; if you like, Mr. Diamond."
+
+Matthew Diamond had been successful in his wooing, after feeling very
+doubtful of success. And he should naturally have been elated in
+proportion to his previous trepidation. And he was happy, of course; yet
+scarcely with the fulness of joyful triumph he had promised himself if
+pretty Rhoda should incline her ear to his suit. There was a subtle
+flavour of disappointment in it all. Rhoda had behaved very well, very
+honestly, in making that effort to be quite clear and candid about her
+feelings. It was a great thing to be able to feel perfect confidence in
+the woman who was to be his companion for life. And as to her loving him
+with the same fervour he felt towards her, that was not to be expected.
+He never had expected that. She was gentle, sweet, modest, thoroughly
+feminine, and exquisitely pretty. She was willing to give herself to
+him, and would doubtless be a true and affectionate wife. He held her
+slight waist in his arm, and her head rested confidingly on his bosom.
+Of course he was very happy. Only--if only Rhoda were not quite so
+silent and cold; if she would say one little word of tenderness, or
+even nestle herself fondly against his shoulder without speaking!
+
+Some such thoughts were vaguely flitting through Diamond's mind when
+Rhoda raised her head, and, emboldened by the gathering dusk, looked up
+into his face and said, "You know it cannot be unless father consents."
+
+"I shall speak to him this evening. Do you think he will be stern and
+hard to persuade, Rhoda?"
+
+"I don't know. He said once that he would like to--to--that he would
+like to know I had some one to take care of me."
+
+"On that score I am not afraid of falling short. Your father could give
+his treasure to no man who would take more loving care of her than I!"
+
+"And then you are a gentleman; and father thinks a great deal of that,
+although he makes no pretence at being anything more than a tradesman
+himself. And of course I am only a tradesman's daughter. I am greatly
+below you in station--I know that."
+
+"My Rhoda! As if there could be any question of that between us! God
+knows I have been poor and obscure enough all my life. But now I shall
+be able to tell your father that I hope to have a home to offer you that
+will be at least not sordid, and the position of a lady."
+
+"I hope you won't repent, Mr. Diamond."
+
+"Repent! But, Rhoda, won't you call me by my name? Say Matthew, not Mr.
+Diamond."
+
+"Yes; I will if you like. But I'm afraid I can't all at once. It seems
+so strange."
+
+"I wish you liked my name one thousandth part as much as I love the
+sound of yours! It seems so sweet to be able to call you Rhoda."
+
+"Oh, I like your name very much indeed. But I think, please, that you
+had better go now. The people are coming out of church, and Aunt Betty
+may be back at any moment; and I don't wish her to find you here before
+you have spoken to father."
+
+Rhoda stood up as she said it, and Diamond had no choice but to rise
+too, and say farewell. He drew her gently towards him and kissed her.
+"Will you try to love me, Rhoda?" he said, in a tone of almost sad
+entreaty. "Do you think you shall be able to love me a little?"
+
+"I should not have accepted you if I felt that I could never be fond of
+you," returned Rhoda, and a little flush spread itself over her face as
+she spoke. "But you know I have told you the truth. I have told you
+about----"
+
+He put up his hand to check her. "Yes, yes; you have been quite candid
+and honourable, and I won't be exacting or unreasonable, or too
+impatient." He did not think he could endure to hear Rhoda, in her
+anxiety not to deceive him, recapitulate the confession of her
+"different feeling" for another man in days past; and yet he had known,
+or guessed, that it had been so.
+
+Then he took his leave, an accepted lover; and he told himself that he
+was a very fortunate and happy man. As he passed the door of old Max's
+little parlour downstairs, he saw a light gleaming under the door into
+the almost dark passage. He stopped and tapped at the door. "Come in,"
+said Jonathan Maxfield's harsh voice. And Diamond went into the
+parlour.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Old Max looked up at his visitor over the great tortoise-shell
+spectacles on his nose. He had a large Bible open on the table before
+him. The large Bible was placed there every evening, and on Sunday
+evenings any other mundane volume which might chance to be lying in the
+parlour was carefully removed out of sight, to be restored to the light
+of day on Monday morning. This was the custom of the house, and had been
+so for years. It had obtained all through the Methodist days, and now
+lasted under the new orthodox dispensation. Since old Max had his
+spectacles on, it was to be supposed that he had been reading, and,
+since there was no other printed document within sight, not even an
+almanac, it was clear that he could have been reading nothing but his
+Bible. And yet it was nearly an hour since he had turned the page before
+him. He had been dozing, sitting up in his chair by the fire. This had
+latterly become a habit with him whenever he was left alone in the
+evening. And once, even, he had fallen into a sleep, or a stupor, in the
+midst of the assembled family, and, on awaking, had been lethargic in
+his movements, and dazed in his manner for some time.
+
+He was quite awake now, however, as he peered sharply at Diamond over
+his glasses. The latter found some little difficulty in beginning his
+communication, not being assisted by a word from old Max, who stared at
+him silently.
+
+"I have a few words to say to you, Mr. Maxfield, if you are at leisure
+to hear them," he said at length.
+
+"If it's anything in the natur' of a business communication, I can't
+attend to it now," returned old Max deliberately. "It has been a rule of
+mine through life to transact no manner of business on the Lord's day,
+and I have found it prosper with me."
+
+"No, no; it is not a matter of business, Mr. Maxfield," said Diamond
+smiling, but not quite at his ease. Then he sat down and told his
+errand. Maxfield listened in perfect silence. "May I hope, Mr. Maxfield,
+that you will give us your consent and approbation?" asked Diamond,
+after a pause.
+
+"You're pretty glib, sir! I must know a little more about this matter
+before I can give an answer one way or another."
+
+"You shall know all that I can tell you, Mr. Maxfield. Indeed, I do not
+see what more I have to say. I have explained to you what my prospects
+in life are. I have told you every particular with the most absolute
+fulness and candour. As to my feeling for your daughter, I don't think I
+could fully express that if I talked to you all night."
+
+"What did my daughter say to you?"
+
+"She--she told me that she was willing to be my wife, but that it must
+depend upon your consent."
+
+"Rhoda has always been a very dutiful daughter. There's not many like
+Rhoda."
+
+"I appreciate her, Mr. Maxfield. You may believe that I do most heartily
+appreciate her. I have long known that all my happiness depended on
+winning Rhoda for my wife. I have loved her long. But, of course, I
+could not venture to ask her to marry me, or to ask you to give her to
+me, until I had some prospect of a home to offer her."
+
+"Ah! And this prospect, now--you aren't sure about it?"
+
+"No; I am not quite sure."
+
+"And, supposing you don't get the place--how then?"
+
+"Why, then, Mr. Maxfield, I should look for another. If you will give
+your consent to my engagement to Rhoda, I am not afraid of not finding
+a place in the world for her. I have a fair share of resolution; I am
+industrious and well educated; I am not quite thirty years old. If you
+will give me a word of encouragement I shall be sure to succeed."
+
+"Head-master of Dorrington Proprietary School, eh? Will that be a place
+like Dr. Bodkin's?"
+
+"Something of that kind, only not so lucrative."
+
+"Dr. Bodkin is thought a good deal of in Whitford."
+
+"Mr. Maxfield, may I hope for a favourable answer from you before I go?"
+
+Old Max struck his hand sharply on the table as he exclaimed, almost
+with a snarl, "I will not be hurried, sir! nor made to speak rashly and
+without duly pondering and meditating my words." Then he added, in a
+different tone, "You are glib, sir! mighty glib! Do you know what Miss
+Maxfield will have to her portion--if I choose to give it her?"
+
+"No, Mr. Maxfield, I do not. Nor do I care to know. I would take her to
+my heart to-morrow if she would come, although she were the poorest
+beggar in the world!"
+
+"And would you take her without my consent?"
+
+"I would, if you had no reasonable grounds for withholding it."
+
+"You would steal my daughter away without my consent?"
+
+"I said nothing about stealing. I should not think of deceiving you in
+the matter. I think you must acknowledge that I am speaking to you
+pretty frankly, at any rate!"
+
+Maxfield could not but acknowledge to himself that the young man was
+honest and straightforward, and spoke fairly. He was well-looking too,
+and had the air of a gentleman, although there was not a trace about him
+of the peculiar airy elegance, the graceful charm of face and figure,
+which made Algernon Errington so attractive. Neither had he Algernon's
+gift of flattery, so adroitly conveyed as to appear unconscious;
+nor--what might, under the present circumstances, have served him
+equally well with the old tradesman--Algernon's good-humoured way of
+taking for granted his own incontestable social superiority over the
+Whitford grocer. Maxfield had his doubts as to whether this young man,
+ex-usher at the Grammar School, a fellow who went about to people's
+houses and gave lessons for money, could prove to be a fine enough match
+for his Rhoda, even though he should become head-master at
+Dorrington--Maxfield had so set his heart on seeing Rhoda "made a lady
+of," in the phraseology of his class.
+
+"I shall have some conversation with my daughter, and let you have my
+answer after that, sir," said he, looking half sullenly, half
+thoughtfully at the suitor. "And as there will be questions of figures
+to go into, maybe, I am not willing to consider the subject more at
+length on the Lord's day."
+
+But I am bound to confess that this was an afterthought on old Max's
+part.
+
+When Diamond had gone, the old man sent for his daughter to come to him
+in the parlour. "You can take yourself off, Betty Grimshaw," said he to
+that respectable spinster, very unceremoniously. "You and James can bide
+in the kitchen till supper's ready. When it is, come and tell me."
+
+Rhoda came, in answer to her father's summons, very calmly. She had, of
+course, expected it. She had quite got over the agitation of the
+interview with her lover, and was her usual sweet, placid self again.
+Yes; she said Mr. Diamond had asked her to marry him, and she was
+willing to marry him if her father would consent. She believed Mr.
+Diamond loved her very much, and she liked him very much. She had been
+afraid of him once because he was so very learned and clever, and seemed
+rather proud and stern. But he was really extremely gentle when you came
+to know him. She was sure he would be kind to her.
+
+"It's not a thing to decide upon all in a moment, Rhoda," said her
+father.
+
+"No, father; but I have thought of it for some time past," answered
+Rhoda, simply.
+
+The old man looked at her with a slight feeling of surprise. "Rhoda has
+a vast deal of common sense," thought he. "She has some of my brains
+inside that pretty brown head of hers, that is so like her poor
+mother's!" Then he said aloud, "You see, this Mr. Diamond is nobody
+after all. A schoolmaster! Well, that's no great shakes."
+
+"Dr. Bodkin is a schoolmaster, father."
+
+"Dr. Bodkin is rector of St. Chad's and D.D., and a man of substance
+besides."
+
+"Mr. Diamond is a gentleman, father. Everybody allows that."
+
+"Do you think you could be happy to be his wife, Rhoda?" As he asked
+this question her father's voice was almost tender, and he placed his
+hand gently on her head.
+
+"Yes, father; I think so. He would take care of me, and be good to me,
+and guide me right. And he would never put himself between you and me,
+father. I mean he would wish me always to be dutiful and affectionate to
+you."
+
+"Well, Rhoda, we must consider. And I hope the Lord will send me wisdom
+in the matter. I would fain see thee happy before I am called away. God
+bless thee, child."
+
+Jonathan Maxfield turned the matter in his mind during the watches of
+the night with much anxious consideration, according to his lights. In
+social status there was truly not much to complain of, he thought. A man
+in a position like that of Dr. Bodkin, who should have money of his own
+(or of his wife's) to render him independent of the profits of his
+place, might come to be a personage of importance. "And money there will
+be; more'n they think for," said old Max to himself. "The young man
+seemed to worship Rhoda; as he ought." She had shown herself to be very
+dutiful, very honest, very sensible on this occasion. "He's out and away
+a better man than that t'other one! Lives clear and clean before the
+world, and is ashamed to look no man in the face."
+
+Thus old Max reflected. And it will be seen that his reflections tended
+more and more to favour the acceptance of Matthew Diamond as his
+son-in-law. Yes; he should be glad to see Rhoda safe and happy under a
+husband's care before he died. And yet--and yet--he felt, as the
+prosperous wooer had felt, a dim sense of dissatisfaction. Old Max could
+not be accused of being sentimental, but he had looked forward to
+Rhoda's marriage as an occasion of triumph and exultation. If she found
+a husband whom he approved of, he would be large and generous in his
+dealings with them. He would show the world that Rhoda Maxfield was no
+tocherless lass, but an heiress, courted, and sought after, and destined
+to belong to a sphere far above that of Whitford shopkeepers. Now the
+husband had been found--he had almost made up his mind as to that--but
+there was no exultation; certainly no triumph. Rhoda was so cool and
+quiet. Very sensible! Oh, admirably sensible; but----. In a word, the
+whole affair seemed a little flat and chilly. Of all the three
+personages chiefly interested, Rhoda was the only one who was conscious
+of no disappointment.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+Miss Chubb could keep a secret. She was proud of being entrusted with
+one. She was much gratified when Rhoda Maxfield, on the Monday after
+Diamond's proposal, called at the maiden lady's modest lodgings, and
+confided to her the fact that Mr. Diamond had asked her to marry him,
+and that she had accepted him subject to her father's consent. It may
+seem strange that Rhoda should have chosen to make this confidence to
+Miss Chubb, rather than to Mrs. Errington, or to Minnie Bodkin, with
+both of whom she was more intimate. But she told Miss Chubb that she
+wanted her help.
+
+"My help, my dear! I'm sure I don't know how I can help you. But if I
+can I will. And I congratulate you sincerely. I've seen how it would be
+all along. You know I told you that a certain gentleman was falling over
+head and ears in love, a long time ago. Didn't I, now?"
+
+Rhoda acknowledged that it was so; and then she said she had come to ask
+a great favour. Would Miss Chubb mind saying a word or two on Mr.
+Diamond's behalf to her father? "Father told me this morning, after
+breakfast, that he should make some inquiries about Mr. Diamond. I am
+quite sure that nothing will come out that is not honourable to him; I
+am not the least afraid of that. And I believe Dr. Bodkin will praise
+him very highly, but he will not perhaps say the sort of things that
+would please father most. He will tell him what a good scholar he is,
+and all that, but he will never think of making father understand that
+Mr. Diamond is looked upon as being as much a gentleman as he is
+himself. Gentlefolks like Dr. Bodkin take those things for granted. But
+father would like to be told them. He thinks so very much of my
+marrying--above my own class, for, of course, I have learnt enough to
+know that Mr. Diamond belongs to a different sort of people from mine."
+
+"I understand, my dear," returned Miss Chubb, nodding her head shrewdly.
+"And you may depend on my doing my best, if I have the chance. But I'm
+afraid it is not likely that Mr. Maxfield will consult me on the
+subject."
+
+"I told him to come to you. Father knows you are one of the few people
+with whom Mr. Diamond has associated in Whitford."
+
+"Why don't you send him to Mrs. Errington? Oh, I forgot! Your father and
+she are two." Miss Chubb laughed to cover a little confusion on her own
+part, for she guessed that Rhoda might have other reasons for not asking
+Mrs. Errington's testimony in favour of her suitor. Then she added
+quickly, "Or Minnie Bodkin, now! Minnie's word would go farther with
+your father than mine would. And Minnie and Mr. Diamond are such
+cronies. You had better send him to Minnie."
+
+"No, thank you."
+
+"But why not? Good gracious, she is the very person!"
+
+"No, I think not. We don't wish it known until father has given his
+decided consent. I have only told you in confidence, Miss Chubb."
+
+"But--if the doctor knows it, Minnie must know it! And if I know it, why
+shouldn't she?"
+
+"No, thank you. I don't want to ask Miss Minnie about it."
+
+"I wonder why that is, now!" pondered Miss Chubb, when Rhoda was gone.
+And very probably Rhoda could not have told her why.
+
+Old Maxfield duly paid his visit to Miss Chubb. The good-natured little
+woman waited at home all day lest she should miss him. And about an hour
+after her early dinner Mr. Maxfield sent in his respects, and would be
+glad to have a word with her if she were at leisure.
+
+"I hope you will overlook the intrusion, ma'am," said Maxfield, standing
+up with his hat in his hand, just inside the door of the little
+sitting-room, where Miss Chubb asked him to walk in.
+
+"No intrusion at all, Mr. Maxfield! I'm very glad to see you. Please to
+sit down."
+
+He obeyed, and holding his thick stick upright before him, and his hat
+on his knees, he thus began:
+
+"I'm not a-going to waste your time and mine with vain and worldly
+discourse, ma'am. I am a man as knows the value of time, thanks be! And
+I have a serious matter on my mind. You know my daughter Rhoda?"
+
+"I know Rhoda, and like her, and admire her very much."
+
+"Yes; Rhoda is a girl such as you don't see many like her. There's a
+young man seeking her in marriage."
+
+"I'm not surprised at that!"
+
+"No; there has been several others too. But she gave 'em no
+encouragement; nor should I have been willing that she should. Some of
+them were persons in my own rank of life, and that would not do for
+Rhoda."
+
+"I think you are quite right there, Mr. Maxfield. Rhoda is naturally
+very refined, and she has associated a good deal with persons of
+cultivated manners. I don't think Rhoda would be happy if she were
+obliged to give up certain little graces of life, which a great many
+excellent people can do without perfectly well."
+
+Maxfield nodded approvingly. "You speak with a good deal of judgment,
+ma'am," said he, with the air of a recognised authority on wisdom. "But
+it isn't only that. Rhoda will have money--a great deal of money--more
+than some folks that holds their heads very high ever had or will have.
+Now it is but just and rightful that I should expect her husband to
+bring some advantages in return."
+
+"Of course. And--ahem!--I'm sure you are too sensible a man not to
+consider that the best thing a husband could bring in exchange would be
+an honest, loving heart, and a real esteem and respect for your
+daughter."
+
+Little Miss Chubb became quite fluttered after making this speech, and
+coloured as if she had been a girl of eighteen.
+
+"Not at all," returned old Max decisively. "The loving heart and the
+esteem and respect are due to my Rhoda if she hadn't a penny. In return
+for her fortin' I expect something over and above."
+
+"Oh!" exclaimed Miss Chubb, a good deal taken aback.
+
+"Now I don't feel sure that the young man in question has that something
+over and above. It is Mr. Matthew Diamond, tutor at the Grammar School
+in this town."
+
+"A most excellent young man! And, I'm sure, most devotedly in love with
+Rhoda."
+
+"But very poor, and not of much account in the world, as far as I can
+make out."
+
+"Oh, don't say that, Mr. Maxfield! He is proud and shy, and has kept
+himself aloof from society because he chose to do so. But he would be a
+welcome guest anywhere in the town or county. Young Mr. Pawkins, of
+Pudcombe Hall, quite courts him; he is always asking him to go over
+there."
+
+Thus much and more Miss Chubb valiantly spoke on behalf of Matthew
+Diamond in his character of Rhoda's wooer. And then she expatiated on
+the excellent position he would hold as master of Dorrington School. It
+was such a "select seminary;" and so many of the first county people
+sent their boys there. "Dear me," said Miss Chubb, "it seems to me to be
+the very position for Rhoda! Not too far from Whitford, and yet not too
+near--of course she couldn't keep up all her old acquaintances here,
+could she?--and altogether so refined, and scholastic, and quiet! And
+really, Mr. Maxfield, see how everything turns out for the best. I
+thought at one time that young Errington was very much smitten with
+Rhoda; but, if she had taken him, you wouldn't have been so satisfied
+with her position in life now, would you? With all his talent and
+connection, see what a poor place he has of it. Mr. Diamond has done
+best, ten to one."
+
+This was a master-stroke, and made a great impression on old Max. Not
+that the latter even now was at all dazzled by the prospect of having
+the head-master of Dorrington School for his son-in-law. But Miss
+Chubb's allusion did suffice to show him that the world would consider
+Diamond to be a triumphantly successful man in comparison with
+Errington.
+
+"Oh, him!" said Maxfield in a tone of bitter contempt. "No; such as him
+was not for Miss Maxfield. And I'll tell you, moreover, that I don't
+know but what she's throwing herself away more or less if she takes this
+other. She's a great catch for him; I know the world, and I know that
+she is a great catch. But I've felt latterly one or two warnings that my
+end is near----"
+
+"Dear me, Mr. Maxfield! Don't say so! I'm sure you look very hearty!"
+exclaimed Miss Chubb, much startled by this cool announcement.
+
+"That my end is near," repeated old Max doggedly, "and I wish to set my
+house in order, and see my daughter provided for, before I go. And she
+seems to be contented with this young man. Rhoda ain't just easy to
+please. It might be a long time, if ever, before she found some one to
+suit her so well."
+
+Miss Chubb was a little shocked at this singularly prosaic and
+unemotional way of treating the subject of love and marriage, as to
+which she herself preserved the most romantic freshness of ideas. She
+would have liked the young couple to be like the lovers in a story-book,
+and the father to bestow his daughter and his blessing with tears of
+joy. However, she did her best to encourage Mr. Maxfield in giving his
+consent after his own fashion, and they parted on excellent terms with
+each other.
+
+"That dry old chip, Jonathan Maxfield, has been to me to-day," said Dr.
+Bodkin after dinner to his wife and daughter. "He came to ask me what
+prospect I thought Diamond had of getting the mastership of Dorrington,
+explaining to me that Diamond was a suitor for his daughter's hand. It
+took me quite by surprise. Had you any inkling of the matter, Minnie?"
+
+"Oh yes, papa."
+
+"Dear me! Well, women see these things so quickly! H'm! Well, Master
+Diamond has shown good taste, I must say. That little Rhoda is the
+prettiest girl I know. And such a sweet, soft, lovable creature! I think
+she's too good for him."
+
+"It is a singular thing, but I have remarked very often that men in
+general are apt to think pretty girls too good for anybody but
+themselves!"
+
+The doctor frowned, and then smiled. "Have you so, Saucebox?" he said.
+
+"I don't know about her being too good for him," said Mrs. Bodkin, in
+her quick, low tones; "but I suppose he knows very well what he is
+about. Old Maxfield has feathered his nest very considerably. It will be
+a very good match for a poor man like Matthew Diamond."
+
+Mrs. Bodkin had for some time past exhibited symptoms of dislike to
+Diamond. She never had a good word for him; she even was almost
+rancorous against him at times, although she seldom allowed the feeling
+to express itself in words before her daughter. Minnie understood it all
+very well. "Poor mother!" she thought to herself, "she cannot forgive
+him. I wish I could persuade her that there is nothing to forgive. How
+could he help it if I was a fool?" Yet the mother and daughter had never
+exchanged a word on the subject. And Minnie comforted herself with the
+conviction that her mother was the only person in the world who guessed
+her secret. "Mamma has a sixth sense where I am concerned," said she to
+herself.
+
+"I hope you said a good word for the lovers to Mr. Maxfield, papa," she
+said aloud, in a clear, cheerful voice.
+
+"I had not much to say. I told him that I thought Diamond stood a good
+chance of getting Dorrington School."
+
+"When will it be known positively, papa?"
+
+"About Dorrington? Oh, before Christmas. I should say by the end of the
+first week in December. Diamond will be a loss to me, but I shall be
+glad of his promotion. He's a gentleman, and a very good fellow,
+although his manner is a trifle self-opiniated. And," added the doctor,
+shaking his head and lowering his voice as one does who is forced to
+admit a painful truth, "I am sorry to say that his views as to the use
+of the Digamma are by no means sound."
+
+"Perhaps Rhoda won't find that a drawback to her happiness!" said
+Minnie, laughing her sweet, musical laugh.
+
+"Probably not, Puss!"
+
+Then the Rev. Peter Warlock and Mr. Dockett dropped in. A whist-table
+was made up in the drawing-room. The doctor and Mr. Dockett won three
+rubbers out of four against Mrs. Bodkin and the curate. And the
+latter--being seated where he could command a full view of Minnie as she
+reclined near the fire with a book--made two revokes, and drew down upon
+himself a very severe homily and a practical lecture or short course on
+the science of whist, illustrated by all the errors he had made during
+the evening, from Dr. Bodkin. For the doctor, although he liked to win,
+cared not for inglorious victory, and was almost as indignant with his
+opponents as with his partner for any symptom of slovenly play. The
+Reverend Peter's brow grew serious, even to gloom, and it seemed to him
+as if the doctor's scolding were almost more than human patience could
+endure. "I don't mind losing my sixpences," thought the curate, "and I
+could make up my mind to sacrificing an hour or two over those
+accursed," (I'm afraid he did mentally use that strong expression!)
+"those thrice-accursed bits of pasteboard. But to be lectured and
+scolded at into the bargain----!" He arose from the green table with an
+almost defiant sullenness.
+
+However, when the tray was brought in and the victimised gentleman had
+comforted his inner man with hot negus, and was at liberty to sip it in
+close proximity to Miss Bodkin's chair, and had received one or two kind
+looks from Miss Bodkin's eyes, and several kind words from Miss Bodkin's
+lips, his heart grew soft within him, and he began to think that even
+six, ten--a dozen rubbers of whist with the doctor would not be too high
+a price to pay for these privileges! Then they talked of Diamond's
+engagement to Rhoda--it had been spoken of all over Whitford hours
+ago!--and of his prospects. And Mr. Warlock was quite effusive in his
+rejoicings on both scores. He had been dimly jealous of Minnie's regard
+for Diamond, and was heartily glad of the prospect of getting rid of
+him. Mr. Dockett, too, seemed to think the match a desirable one. He
+pursed up his mouth and looked knowing as he dropped a mysterious hint
+as to the extent of Rhoda's dowry. "I made old Max's will myself," said
+he; "and without violating professional secrecy, I may confirm what I
+hear old Max bruits abroad at every opportunity--namely, that he is a
+warm man--a very warm man in--deed! But I'm sure Mr. Diamond is a young
+man of sound principles, and will make the girl a good husband. And it
+is decided promotion for her too, you know. A grocer's daughter! Eh? I'm
+sure I wish them well most sincerely." And shall we blame Mr. Dockett
+if, in his fatherly anxiety, he rejoiced at the removal of a dangerous
+rival to his little Ally, on whom young Pawkins had recently bestowed a
+good deal of attention whenever Rhoda Maxfield was out of his reach?
+
+"I never knew such a popular engagement," said Dr. Bodkin, innocently.
+"Everybody seems to approve! One might almost fear it could not be a
+case of true love, it runs so very smooth. There does not appear to be a
+single objection."
+
+"Except the Digamma, papa!"
+
+"Except the Digamma," echoed the doctor merrily. And when he was alone
+with his wife that night, he remarked to her that he was immensely
+thankful to see the great improvement in their beloved child this
+winter.
+
+"Minnie is certainly stronger," said the mother.
+
+"And in such excellent spirits!" said the father.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+The days passed by and brought no letter, in answer to Castalia's, from
+Lord Seely. Dreary were the hours in Ivy Lodge. The wife was devoured by
+passionate jealousy and a vain yearning for affection; the husband found
+that even the bright, smooth, hard metal of his own character was not
+impervious to the corrosive action of daily cares, regrets, and
+apprehensions. Algernon was not apt to hate. He usually perceived the
+absurd side of persons who were obnoxious to him with too keen an
+amusement to detest them; and the inmost feeling of his heart with
+respect to his fellow-creatures in general approached, perhaps, as
+nearly to perfect indifference as it is given to a mortal to attain. But
+it was not possible to preserve a condition of indifference towards
+Castalia. She was a thorn in his flesh, a mote in his eye, a weariness
+to his spirit; and he began to dislike the very sight of the sallow,
+sickly face, red-eyed too often, and haggard with discontent, that met
+his view whenever he was in his own home. It was the daily "worry" of
+it, he told himself, that was unendurable. It was the being shut up with
+her in a box like Ivy Lodge, where there was no room for them to get
+away from each other. If he could have shared a mansion in Grosvenor
+Square with Castalia he might have got on with her well enough! But
+then, that mansion in Grosvenor Square would have made so many things
+different in his life.
+
+At length one day came a letter to Castalia, with the London post-mark
+and sealed with the well-known coat of arms, but it did not bear Lord
+Seely's frank. Another name was scrawled in the corner, and the
+direction was written in Lady Seely's crooked, cramped little
+characters.
+
+"I'm afraid Uncle Val must be ill!" exclaimed Castalia, opening the
+letter with a trembling hand. She was so weak and nervous now that the
+most trifling agitation made her heart beat painfully. My lady's epistle
+was not long, and, as a knowledge of its contents is essential to the
+due comprehension of this story, it is given in full, with her
+ladyship's own phraseology and orthography:--
+
+     "MY DEAR CASTALIA,--I cannot think what on earth you are about
+     to write such letters to your uncle. Go abroad, indeed! I
+     suppose Ancram would like the embassy to St. Petersburg, or to
+     be governor of the Ionian Islands. It's all nonsense, and you
+     had better put such ideas out of your head at once, and for
+     all. I should think you might know that we have other people to
+     think of besides your husband, especially after all we have
+     done for him. Your uncle is very ill in bed with an attack of
+     the gout, and can't write himself. The doctor thinks he won't
+     be about again for weeks. You can guess what trouble this
+     throws on to my shoulders, so I hope you won't worry me by any
+     more such letters as the last. As if there was not anxiety
+     enough, Fido had a fit on Thursday. I hope you are pretty well.
+     What a blessing you've no sign of a family. With only you two
+     to keep, you ought to do very well on Ancram's salary, and you
+     can tell him I say so. Yours affectionately,
+
+     "B. SEELY."
+
+"Poor Uncle Val!" exclaimed Castalia, dropping the letter from her hand.
+"I was afraid he was ill."
+
+"Pshaw! A touch of the gout won't kill him," said Algernon, who had been
+reading over her shoulder. "But it's deuced unfortunate for me that he
+should be laid up at this time, and quite helpless in the hands of that
+old catamaran."
+
+"Poor Uncle Val! Perhaps he never got my letter at all."
+
+"Nothing more likely, if my lady could prevent his getting it."
+
+"Perhaps, when he gets better, I can write to him again, and ask
+him----"
+
+"When he gets better? Oh yes, certainly. We have plenty of time. There
+is no hurry, of course!"
+
+"I see that you are speaking satirically, Ancram, but I don't know why."
+
+Her husband shrugged his shoulders and walked out of the room. As he
+left the house he was met at the garden-gate by a bright-eyed,
+consumptive-looking lad, in shabby working clothes, who touched his cap,
+and held out a paper to Algernon. "What do you want?" asked the latter.
+"Mr. Gladwish, sir. His account, if you please, sir."
+
+"And who the devil is Mr. Gladwish?"
+
+"The shoemaker, sir."
+
+"Oh! Mr. Gladwish, then, is an extremely importunate, impatient,
+troublesome fellow. This is the third or fourth time within a very few
+weeks that he has sent in his bill. I'm not accustomed to that sort of
+thing. I don't understand it. Don't give me the paper, boy. Take it into
+the house."
+
+"Please, sir," began the lad, and stopped, hesitatingly. Then seeing
+that Mr. Errington was walking off without taking any further notice of
+him, he repeated in a louder, firmer tone, "Please, sir, Mr. Gladwish is
+really in want of the money. He has two of the children bad with fever.
+And I was to say that even five pounds on account would be acceptable."
+
+"Five pounds! He's too modest. I haven't got five pounds, nor five
+minutes. I'm busy."
+
+"Then, I'm sorry to say, sir, that Mr. Gladwish will take legal
+proceedings for the debt at once. He told me to tell you so."
+
+"Nice state of things!" muttered Algernon, as he walked towards the
+post-office, with his head bent down and his hands deep in his pockets.
+"But that's nothing. It's those cursed bills in Maxfield's hands that
+are on my mind like lead."
+
+His spirits were not lightened by that which awaited him at the office.
+He had to undergo an interview with the district surveyor, who was very
+grave, not to say severe, in speaking of the irregularities which had
+been complained of, and were looked on as very serious at the head
+office. The surveyor ended by plainly hinting his hope that persons
+having no business at the office would be strictly forbidden from having
+access to it at abnormal hours. "I--I don't understand you," stammered
+Algernon.
+
+"Mr. Errington," said the surveyor, "I am speaking to you, not
+officially, but confidentially, and as man to man. I have been having a
+little conversation with Mr. Gibbs--who seems to have none but good
+feeling towards you, but who--in short, I think it is not needful to be
+more explicit. I advise you in all friendliness to be stern and decisive
+in keeping every person out of this office except such as have
+recognised business to be here. If further trouble arises, I shall have
+to do my duty, and make my report without respect of any persons
+whatsoever."
+
+"Perhaps," said Algernon, who was white to his lips, but otherwise
+apparently unmoved, "perhaps it would be best for me to resign my post
+here at once. If the authorities above me find cause for
+dissatisfaction----"
+
+"I can give you no advice as to that, Mr. Errington. You must know your
+own affairs better than I do."
+
+"There are things which a man can scarcely say even to himself;
+considerations which are painful as they float dimly in one's own mind,
+but which would be unendurable uttered aloud in words. Anything like a
+public scandal--or--or--disgrace to me, would involve a large circle of
+persons--many of them persons of rank and consideration in the world.
+You are possibly aware that--my wife"--there was a peculiar tone in
+Algernon's voice as he said these two words--"is a niece of Lord
+Seely?"
+
+But the official gentleman declined to enter into the question of Mr.
+Errington's family connections. "Oh," said he, coldly; "we must hope
+there will be no question of scandal or disgrace." Then he went away,
+leaving Algernon in a chaos of doubt as to whether he should, or should
+not, speak further on the subject to Obadiah Gibbs. Obadiah Gibbs,
+however, decided the question for him. He came into Algernon's room,
+closing the door carefully behind him, and asked to speak a few words in
+private. Algernon was sitting in the luxurious easy-chair which he had
+had carried into the office for his own use. It was about three o'clock
+in the afternoon of a dull November day. The single window which looked
+on to a white-washed court threw a ghastly pallid light on Algernon's
+face as he sat opposite to it, with his head thrown back against the
+cushions of the high chair. Mr. Gibbs was touched with compassion at
+seeing how changed the bright young face looked since he had first been
+acquainted with it. And yet, in truth, the change was not a very deep
+one: it was more in colouring, and the expression of the moment, than in
+any lines which care had graven.
+
+"Come in, Gibbs; come in," said Algernon, with his affable air. The
+clerk seemed the more anxious and disturbed of the two. He sat down on
+the chair Algernon pointed out to him in a constrained posture, and
+seemed to have some difficulty in beginning to speak, albeit not a man
+usually liable to embarrassment of manner. His superior stretched his
+feet out nearer to the hearth, and slightly moved his white hand to and
+fro, looking, as a child might have done, at the glitter of a ring he
+wore in the firelight.
+
+"Mr. Wing did not seem very well pleased, sir," said Gibbs, after
+clearing his throat.
+
+"Of course he had to appear displeased, whether he was or not, Gibbs. A
+little hocus-pocus, a little official solemnity, is the thing to assume,
+I suppose. I think that man's nose is the very longest I ever saw.
+Remarkable nose, eh, Gibbs?"
+
+"But, sir," continued Gibbs, declining to discuss the surveyor's nose,
+"he said that from inquiries that had been made, it's pretty certain
+that the missing letters were--stolen--they must have been stolen--at
+Whitford."
+
+"Very intelligent on the part of the official, Mr. Wing! Only I think
+you and I had come to pretty nearly the same conclusion before."
+
+"He made strict inquiries about the people in the office here, and I had
+to give him what information I could, sir."
+
+"Of course, of course, Gibbs! I quite understand," said Algernon,
+putting his hand out to shake that of the clerk with so frank a
+cordiality that the latter felt the tears spring into his eyes as he
+took the cool white hand into his own. "I have felt very much for you,
+Mr. Errington," said he. "Your position is a trying one, indeed. I would
+do almost anything in my power to set your mind more at rest. But I'm
+sorry to say that I have an unpleasant matter to speak of."
+
+"I wonder," thought Algernon, leaning back in his chair once more,
+"whether my friend Obadiah conceives our conversation hitherto to have
+been of an agreeable and entertaining nature, that he now announces
+something unpleasant by way of a change!"
+
+"You will understand," said Gibbs, "that I am speaking to you in the
+very strictest confidence. I should be sorry for it to come out that I
+had meddled in the matter. Nor, sir, would it be well for you to have it
+known that I gave you any warning."
+
+"I wish the old bore would not be so confoundedly long-winded!" thought
+Algernon, nodding meanwhile with an air of thoughtful attention.
+
+But Gibbs was prone to long-windedness and to the making of speeches.
+And he now availed himself of the opportunity of haranguing the
+postmaster (one of whose chief faults was a vivacious impatience of his
+clerk's eloquence) to the fullest extent. But the gist of what he had to
+say was this: Roger Heath, the man whose money-letter had been lost,
+now declared that his correspondent at Bristol, being interrogated in
+the hope that he might be able to furnish some clue to the
+identification of the missing notes, stated that he remembered one was
+endorsed in blue ink instead of black: and that he, Heath, had reason to
+know that one of the notes paid by young Mrs. Errington to Ravell, the
+mercer, had been endorsed in blue ink!
+
+"Now, sir," proceeded Gibbs, "I remember its being a good deal talked of
+in the town at the time, that young Mrs. Errington had money unknown to
+you, and Mrs. Ravell spoke of it to many."
+
+"Damn Mrs. Ravell! What does it all mean, Gibbs?"
+
+Algernon got up from his chair, and leant his elbows on the
+chimney-piece, and hid his face in his hands, but he so stood that he
+could watch the clerk's countenance between his fingers. That
+countenance expressed trouble and compassion. Gibbs got up too, and
+stood looking at Algernon and shaking his head ruefully.
+
+"I thought it well you should know what was being said, Mr. Errington,"
+said he.
+
+"What can I do, Gibbs? How can I stop their cursed tongues?" Algernon
+still spoke with his face hidden.
+
+"No, sir, you cannot stop their tongues, but--you might possibly put a
+stop to what sets their tongues going. Of course, the matter may be all
+explained simply enough. There may be plenty of bank-notes endorsed in
+blue ink----"
+
+"Of course there may! Chattering idiots!"
+
+"And as to that particular note, Mr. Ravell paid it away, as well as the
+others Mrs. Errington gave him, to the agent of a Manchester house he
+deals with, the next day after it came into his hands. I ascertained
+that from Ravell himself."
+
+"I'll have the note traced!" exclaimed Algernon, looking up for the
+first time.
+
+"That would be a difficult matter, sir. It has gone far and wide before
+now."
+
+"I tell you I will have it traced! And I will have that malignant
+scoundrel, Heath, pulled up pretty sharply, if he dares to make any more
+insinuations that----it is not difficult to see what he is driving at!"
+
+Gibbs laid his hand on the young man's shoulder.
+
+"I feel for you, Mr. Errington," he said. "If I did not, I shouldn't put
+myself in the disagreeable position of saying what I have said. I should
+have attended to my own business, and let matters take their course. I
+hope you believe that I had only a kind motive in speaking?"
+
+"I do believe it--heartily!"
+
+"Thank you, sir. Then I shall make bold to give you one word of advice.
+Don't stir in the matter, nor make any threats against any one, until
+you have ascertained from Mrs. Errington where she got the notes that
+she paid to Ravell."
+
+Algernon had bent down his head again, and he now answered without
+looking up:
+
+"No doubt Mrs. Errington can account for them to me, but she is not
+bound to do so to any one else. Nor can I allow any one to hint that she
+is so bound. I should be a blackguard if I could listen to a word of
+that sort."
+
+"I hope it may come right, Mr. Errington. After all, there has been
+nothing, and, so far as I see, there can be nothing, but talk to hurt
+you."
+
+"My good fellow," said Algernon, as he once more gave his hand to his
+clerk, "it's a kind of talk which poisons a man's life. You know that as
+well as I do."
+
+Then Gibbs took his leave of his superior, and went back into the outer
+office to watch over the epistolary correspondence of Whitford. As he
+sat at his desk there his mind was full of sympathy with Algernon
+Errington. "Poor young man! He took it beautifully. It must be a
+terrible blow--an awful blow. But, no doubt, he has had his suspicions
+before now. What a warning against worldly-mindedness! He is a victim to
+that vain and godless woman; and that's all that comes of the marriage
+that so uplifted the heart of his mother. But he would be a beautiful
+character, if he had only got religion, and would leave off profane
+swearing. He is so guileless and outspoken, like a child, almost. Ah,
+poor young man! I hope the Lord may bless this trial to him.
+But--religion or no religion--I don't believe he'll ever be fit to be
+postmaster of Whitford." Thus ran the reflections of Mr. Obadiah Gibbs.
+
+When Algernon reached home that evening, he bade Lydia put up a few
+things for him into a little travelling valise; and when he met his wife
+at the dinner-table, he told her he should go up to London that night by
+the mail-coach. He explained, in answer to her surprised inquiries,
+lamentations, and objections, uttered in a querulous drawl, that he must
+get help from Lord Seely; that it was useless to write to him under the
+present circumstances, seeing that his wife would probably intercept the
+letter; and that, therefore, he had resolved to go to town himself and
+obtain a personal interview with Lord Seely.
+
+"But, Ancram!--what's the use? Why on earth should you fly off in this
+way? I'm sure it won't do! Do you suppose for an instant that Aunt
+Belinda will let you get at him?"
+
+"I must try for it. Things have got to that pass now, that----Do you
+know what happened to me just as I went out after lunch? Gladwish, the
+shoemaker, sent to threaten me with arrest! I shall be walked off to
+prison, I suppose, for a few wretched pairs of abominable shoes. The
+fellow has no more notion of fitting my foot than a farrier."
+
+"To prison! Oh, Ancram! But Gladwish's bill cannot be so very large----"
+
+"Of course it's not 'so very large!'"
+
+"Then, if we paid it, or even part of it----"
+
+"Paid it! Upon my word, Cassy, you are too absurd! 'Paid it!' In the
+first place, I have only a very few pounds in the house--barely enough
+to take me to town, I think; and, in the next place, if I paid Gladwish,
+what would be the result? The butcher, the baker, and the
+candlestick-maker would be all down on me with summonses, and writs, and
+executions, and bedevilments of every imaginable kind. But you have no
+more notion--you take it all so coolly. 'Pay him!' By George! Cassy,
+it's very hard to stand such nonsense!"
+
+Castalia withdrew from the table, and sat down on the little sofa and
+cried. Her husband looked at her across a glass of very excellent
+sherry, which he was just about to hold up to the light. "I think,
+Castalia," he said, "I really do think, that when a man is in such
+trouble as I am, reduced to the brink of ruin, not knowing which way to
+turn for a ten-pound note, struggling, striving, bothering his brains to
+find a way out of the confounded mess, he might expect something more
+cheering and encouraging from his wife than perpetual snivelling." With
+that he cracked a filbert with a sharp jerk of indignation. But
+Algernon's forte was not the minatory or impressively wrathful style of
+eloquence. He could hurl a sarcasm, sharp, light, and polished; but when
+he came to wielding such a ponderous weapon as serious reproof on moral
+considerations, he was apt to make a poor hand of it. It was excessively
+disagreeable, too, to see that woman's thin shoulders moving
+convulsively under her gay-coloured dress, as she sobbed with her head
+buried in the sofa cushions. That really must be put a stop to. So, as
+it appeared evident that scolding would not quench the tears, he tried
+coaxing. The coaxing was not so efficacious as it would have been once.
+Still, Castalia responded to it to the extent of endeavouring to check
+the sobs which still shook her frail chest and throat. "When shall you
+be back, Ancram?" she said, looking beseechingly at him. He answered
+that he hoped to be in Whitford again on Tuesday night, or Wednesday at
+the latest (it was then Monday), and he particularly impressed on her
+the necessity of telling any one who might inquire the cause of his
+absence, that he had been suddenly called up to town by the illness of
+Lord Seely. He had, in fact, said a word or two to that effect when, on
+his way home, he had ordered the fly, which was to carry him and his
+valise to the coach-office. Castalia insisted on accompanying him to the
+coach, despite the damp cold of the night, a proceeding which he did not
+much combat, since he felt it would serve to give colour to his
+statement to the landlord of the "Blue Bell."
+
+"Keep up your spirits, Cassy," he cried, waving his hand from the
+coach-window as he stood in the inn yard, muffled in shawls and furs. "I
+hope I shall bring back good news of your uncle."
+
+Then Castalia was trundled back to Ivy Lodge in the jingling old fly,
+whilst her husband rolled swiftly behind four fleet horses towards
+London.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+Stiff, tired, and cold, Algernon alighted the next morning at the
+coach-office in London after his night journey. He drove to a
+fashionable hotel not very far from Lord Seely's house, and refreshed
+himself with a warm bath and a luxurious breakfast. By the time that was
+done it was eleven o'clock in the forenoon. He had been considering how
+best to proceed, in a leisurely way, during his breakfast, and had
+decided to go to Lord Seely's house without further delay. He knew Lady
+Seely's habits well enough to feel tolerably sure that she would not be
+out of her bed before eleven o'clock, nor out of her room before
+mid-day. He thought he might gain access to his lordship by a _coup de
+main_, if he so timed his visit as to avoid encountering my lady. So he
+had himself driven to within a few yards of the house, and walked up to
+the well-known door. It was a different arrival from his first
+appearance on that threshold. Algernon did not fail to think of the
+contrast, and he told himself that he had been very badly used by the
+whole Seely family: they had done so infinitely less for him than he had
+expected! The sense of injury awakened by this reflection was as
+supporting to him as a cordial.
+
+The servant who opened the door, and who at once recognised Algernon,
+stared in surprise on seeing him, but was too well trained to express
+emotion in any other way. After a few inquiries about Lord Seely's
+health, Algernon asked if he could be allowed to see his lordship. This,
+however, was a difficult matter. My lord was better, certainly, the
+footman said, but my lady had given strict orders that he was not to be
+disturbed. No one was admitted to his room except the doctor, who would
+not make his visit until late in the afternoon.
+
+"Oh, I shouldn't think of disturbing my lady at this hour," said
+Algernon, "but I must speak with Lord Seely. It is of the very greatest
+importance."
+
+"I'll call Mr. Briggs, sir," the footman was beginning, when Algernon
+stopped him. Mr. Briggs was Lord Seely's own man, and, like all the
+servants in the house, was certain to obey his mistress's orders rather
+than his master's, if the two should happen to conflict. Algernon
+slipped some money into the footman's hand, together with a note which
+he had written that morning. "There, James," said he; "if you will
+manage to convey that into his lordship's own hand, I know he will see
+me. And, moreover, he would be seriously annoyed if I were sent away
+without having spoken to him on business of very great importance."
+
+James reflected that the worst that could happen to him would be a
+scolding from my lady. That was certainly no trifling evil; but he
+decided to risk it, being moved to do so not only by the bribe, but by a
+real liking for young Errington, who was generally a favourite with
+other people's servants.
+
+The note which James carried upstairs was as follows:--
+
+     "MY LORD,--I write in the driest and most matter-of-fact terms
+     I can find, to ask for an interview with your lordship with the
+     least possible delay, being unwilling to make, or to appear to
+     make, any claim on the regard you once professed for me, or on
+     the connection which unites us, and desiring you to understand
+     that I appeal to you on behalf of another person; and that,
+     were it not for that other person I should ask no more favours
+     of your lordship--nor, perhaps, need any.
+
+     "A. ANCRAM ERRINGTON."
+
+In a few moments James came running downstairs and begged Algernon,
+almost in a whisper, to walk up to his lordship's room.
+
+Lord Seely was not in bed. He was reclining in an easy-chair, with one
+foot and leg supported on cushions. He seemed ill and worn, but his dark
+eyes sparkled as he looked eagerly at Algernon, who entered quietly and
+closed the door behind him. "What is it? I'm afraid you have bad news,
+Ancram," said Lord Seely, holding out his hand.
+
+Algernon did not take it. He bowed very gravely, and stood opposite to
+the little nobleman.
+
+"Castalia----!" cried Lord Seely, much dismayed by the young man's
+manner. "Don't keep me in suspense, for God's sake! Is she ill? Is she
+dead?"
+
+"No, my lord. Castalia is not dead. Neither, so far as I know, is she
+ill--in body."
+
+"What is the matter?"
+
+"I must crave a patient hearing, my lord. I regret to have to trouble
+you whilst you are ill and suffering; but what I have to say must be
+said without delay. May I ask if there is anyone within hearing?"
+
+"No! No one. You can close the door of that dressing-closet if you
+choose. But there is no one there."
+
+Algernon adopted the suggestion at once, and then sat down opposite to
+Lord Seely's chair. His whole manner of proceeding was so unusual and
+unexpected that it produced a very painful impression on Lord Seely.
+Algernon rather enjoyed this. He began to speak with only one distinct
+purpose in his mind: namely, to frighten his wife's uncle into making a
+strong effort to help him out of Whitford. How much pressure would be
+necessary to achieve that purpose he could not yet tell. And he began to
+speak with a sort of reckless abandonment of himself to the guidance of
+the moment, a mood of mind which had become very frequent with him of
+late.
+
+"Did your lordship receive a letter from Castalia begging you to obtain
+a post abroad for me?"
+
+"Certainly. My wife answered it. I--I was unable to write myself. But I
+intended to reply more at length so soon as I should be better."
+
+"Castalia showed me Lady Seely's reply. That was the first intimation I
+had of Castalia's having made such an application. I mention this
+because I know your lordship suspected me of being the prime mover in
+all her applications to you for assistance."
+
+Lord Seely coloured a little as he replied, "It was natural to suppose
+that you influenced your wife, Ancram."
+
+"Your lordship must not judge all cases by your own," returned the young
+man, with a candid raising of his brows; and the colour on Lord Seely's
+face deepened to a dark red flush, which faded, leaving him paler than
+before. "As I said," continued Algernon, "I did not know what it was
+that Castalia had asked you to do for us. But, now that I do know it, I
+may say at once that I heartily concur with her as to its desirability."
+
+"I cannot agree with you there; but, even if it were so, I assure you it
+is out of my power----"
+
+"Allow me, my lord! I must tax your patience to listen to what I have to
+say before you give me any positive answer."
+
+Lord Seely leaned back in his chair, and motioned with his head for
+Algernon to proceed. The latter went on:
+
+"Exile from England and from all the hopes and ambitions not very
+unnatural at my age, is not such an alluring prospect that I should be
+suspected of having incited Castalia to write as she has done? However,
+I will say no more as to my own private and personal feelings in the
+matter. I did not mean to allude to them. I beg your pardon." Algernon
+sat leaning a little forward in his chair. His hands were clasped
+loosely together, and rested on his knees. He kept his eyes gloomily
+fixed on the carpet for the most part, and only raised them occasionally
+to look up at Lord Seely without raising his head at the same time. "I
+could not write what I had to say to you, my lord. I dared not write it.
+Perhaps, even, if I had written, the letter might not have reached you
+at once; and I could not wish its falling into other hands, so I came
+away from Whitford last night quite suddenly. I have no leave of
+absence; the clerk at the post-office, even, did not know I was coming
+away."
+
+"Do you mean to say, Ancram, that you have deliberately risked the loss
+of your situation?"
+
+"My 'situation' was as good as lost already. Do you know what happened
+yesterday, Lord Seely? I was subjected to the agreeable ordeal of a
+visit from the surveyor of the postal district in which Whitford is
+situated. I was catechised magisterially. The whole office--including my
+private room--was subjected to a sort of scrutiny. There have been a
+great many letters missing at Whitford lately; some money-letters. That
+is to say, letters which should have passed through our office have
+never reached their destination. Nothing has been traced. Nothing is
+known with certainty. But the concurrence of various circumstances
+points to Whitford as the place where the letters have been--stolen. I
+am told on all hands that such things never happened in Mr. Cooper's
+time. (Mr. Cooper was my predecessor as postmaster.) I am scowled at,
+and almost openly insulted in the streets, by a miller, or a baker, or
+something of the kind, who lives in the neighbourhood. He declares he
+has lost a considerable sum of money by the post, and plainly considers
+me responsible. You may guess how pleasant my 'situation' has become in
+consequence of these things being known and talked about."
+
+"But, good Heavens, Ancram----! I don't comprehend your way of looking
+at the matter. These irregularities are doubtless very distressing, but
+surely your rational course would be to use every effort to discover the
+cause of them and set matters right; not run away as if you were a
+culprit!"
+
+"Your lordship judges without knowing all the facts."
+
+"Pardon me, Ancram, but no facts can justify such rash behaviour. I have
+some experience of men and of the world, and I give you my deliberate
+opinion that you have acted very indiscreetly, to say the least. I am
+disappointed in you, Ancram. I regret to say it, but I am disappointed
+in you. You have shown a want of steadiness, and--and--almost of common
+sense! The more I think of it, the more I disapprove of the step you
+have taken. It shows a great want of consideration for others; for your
+wife. If you were alone it might be pardonable--although, excessively
+ill-judged--to throw up your post at the first experience of the rough
+side of things. We all have difficulties to contend with. The most
+exalted position is not secure from them, as, indeed, it would appear
+almost superfluous to point out! The record of my own--my own--official
+life might supply you with more than one example of the value of
+steadfast energy, and an inflexible determination to conquer
+antagonistic circumstances."
+
+Poor Lord Seely! He had been subdued by sickness more completely under
+the dominion of his wife than could ever be the case when he was able to
+move about, to get away from her, and to converse with persons who were
+not entirely devoid of any semblance of respect for his opinion. Lady
+Seely, it might be said, respected nobody--a point of resemblance
+between herself and her young kinsman which had not led to any very
+great sympathy or harmony between them; for, as it is your professed
+joker who can least bear to be laughed at, so those persons who most
+flippantly ignore any sentiment of reverence towards others are by no
+means prepared to tolerate a want of deference towards themselves.
+Certainly, my lady had snubbed her husband during his illness almost
+unmercifully; she wished him to get better, and she took care that the
+doctor's orders were faithfully carried out. But her course of treatment
+was anything but soothing to the spirit, and my lord's pet vanities
+received no consideration whatever from her. His mind being now relieved
+from the first shock of apprehension which Algernon's sudden visit had
+occasioned (for, though things were bad, it was a relief to him to find
+that Castalia was safe and well), he could not resist the temptation to
+lecture a little, and be pompous, and display his suppressed self-esteem
+with a little more emphasis than usual.
+
+Poor Lord Seely! By so doing he unconsciously drew down a terrible
+catastrophe. It seemed a trivial cause to determine Algernon to speak as
+he next spoke--as trivial as the heedless footfall or too-loudly spoken
+word which brings the avalanche toppling down from the rock.
+
+"The selfishness and egotism of the man are incredible!" thought
+Algernon, looking at Lord Seely. "Not one word of sympathy with me! Not
+a syllable to show that my feelings are worthy of any consideration
+whatever. Pompous little ass!" Then he said, very gravely and quietly,
+"I think, my lord, that you have forgotten what I said to you in the
+hurried note I sent upstairs, about appealing to you on behalf of
+another person."
+
+Lord Seely had forgotten it.
+
+"Ha!--no, Ancram. I--I remember what you said; but, I--I take leave to
+think that if you wish to consider that other person--it is your wife
+of whom you spoke, I presume?"
+
+Algernon bowed his head.
+
+"If you wish to consider that person effectually, you ought not to have
+flown off at a tangent in the manner you have done. You
+might--ahem!--you might, at least, have written to me for advice."
+
+"Lord Seely, I am sorry to say that you are under an entire
+misapprehension as to the state of the case."
+
+Lord Seely was not accustomed to be told that he was under an entire
+misapprehension on any subject.
+
+"If so, Ancram," he answered, with some hauteur, "the fault must be
+yours. I believe I should succeed in comprehending any moderately clear
+and accurate statement."
+
+"I will try to speak plainly. During the last six weeks I have been made
+seriously unhappy by rumours floating about in Whitford respecting my
+wife."
+
+"Rumours----! Respecting your wife?"
+
+"They reach my ears through various channels, and appear to be rife in
+every social circle in the place."
+
+"Rumours! Of what nature?"
+
+There was a little pause; then Algernon said, "The least terrible of
+them is, that Castalia's reason is affected, and that she is not
+responsible for her actions."
+
+Lord Seely started into a more upright posture, and then sank back again
+with a suppressed cry of pain. Algernon went on, without looking up:
+"Her manner has been very singular of late. She has taken to wandering
+about alone, and to make her wanderings as secretly as may be; she
+haunts the post-office in my absence, carefully informing herself
+beforehand whether I am in my private room or not; and if I am reported
+absent, she enters it, searches the drawers, and, I have the strongest
+reason to believe--indeed I may say I know--that she has tampered with a
+little cabinet in which I keep a few private papers, and taken letters
+out of it!"
+
+"Ancram!"
+
+"These things, my lord, are commonly reported and spoken of by every
+gossiping tongue in Whitford. I can't help the people talking. Castalia
+is not liked there; her manners are unpopular, and even the persons who
+were inclined to receive her kindly for my sake have been offended and
+alienated. Still, the things I have told you are facts."
+
+"I am shocked--I am surprised--and, forgive me, Ancram, a little
+incredulous. You may have listened to malicious tongues; you say that my
+niece is not liked by the--the class of persons with whom she now
+associates, and it may be----"
+
+"I am sorry to say, my lord, that Castalia cannot be said to associate
+with any 'class of persons' in Whitford, for latterly it has become
+plain to me that all our acquaintances have given her the cold
+shoulder."
+
+The mingled expression of amazement, incredulity, and offended pride on
+Lord Seely's face, when Algernon made this announcement, did not operate
+with the latter as an inducement to spare him. Indeed, he had now gone
+almost too far to stop short. He held up his hand to deprecate any
+interruption, and said, "One moment, my lord! I must ask you a question.
+Have you at any time privately supplied Castalia with money unknown to
+me?"
+
+"Never! I----"
+
+"Then, Lord Seely, I have only one more circumstance to add: Castalia,
+the other day, paid a bill of considerable amount to a mercer in
+Whitford without my knowledge, and without my knowing where she found
+the money to pay it; and yesterday my clerk, an honest fellow and much
+attached to me, told me in private and in strict confidence, that it was
+currently reported in the town that one of the notes paid by my wife to
+the mercer was endorsed in the same way as a note in one of the missing
+money-letters I have told you of."
+
+"Good God, Ancram! what do you mean?"
+
+"I told you that the least terrible rumour about Castalia was the rumour
+that her mind was affected."
+
+Lord Seely's face was almost lead-coloured. He pressed his hands one on
+each side of his head with a gesture of hopeless bewilderment. "This is
+the most appalling thing!" he murmured, and his voice was scarcely
+audible as he said it.
+
+"I had to make my choice without delay, Lord Seely. I regret to inflict
+this blow on you in your present suffering state of body; but, if I
+spared you, I could not have spared Castalia. I chose to spare my wife."
+
+"Yes, yes;--quite--quite right. Spare Castalia! I--I thank you,
+Ancram--for choosing to spare her rather than me." The poor little
+nobleman's face was convulsed by a kind of spasm for a second or two,
+and then he burst into tears, sobbing out, with his face hidden in his
+trembling hands, "What is to be done? Gracious heavens! what is to be
+done?"
+
+"I talked about choosing to spare Castalia," said Algernon, looking at
+her uncle with a sort of furtive curiosity and a feeling that was more
+akin to contempt than pity, "but I don't know how long it may be in my
+power, or anyone's power, to spare her. The only chance for either of us
+is to get away out of Whitford as quickly as possible."
+
+"But--but----My head is so confused. I am stunned, Ancram--stunned!
+But--what was I going to say? Oh! have you interrogated Castalia? What
+representations does she make as to the money? There is so much to be
+said--to be asked. It cannot be but that there is some error. It cannot
+be. My poor Castalia!"
+
+"Interrogating Castalia would be quite useless; worse than useless. You
+don't know what her behaviour and temper have been lately. She is
+utterly unreasonable. Ask anyone who knows our house in Whitford; ask my
+servants what my home has been latterly. I have bought the honour of
+your lordship's alliance somewhat dear."
+
+Lord Seely sank down in his chair as if he had been struck, and his grey
+head drooped on his breast. "What can I do, Ancram?" he asked, in a tone
+so contrasted in its feebleness with his usual self-assured, rather
+strident voice, that it might have touched some persons with compassion.
+"What can I do?" Then he seemed to make a strong effort to recover some
+energy of manner, and added, "If it were not for this unfortunate attack
+which disables me, I would return with you to Whitford to-night. I would
+see Castalia myself."
+
+Algernon heartily congratulated himself on the fit of gout which kept
+Lord Seely a prisoner. There was nothing he less desired than that her
+uncle should be confronted with Castalia. He represented that the only
+efficacious help Lord Seely could give under the circumstances would be
+to furnish them with money to pay their debts and leave Whitford
+forthwith. He pointed out that Castalia must have felt this herself,
+when she wrote urging her uncle to get them some post abroad. Algernon
+became eager and persuasive as he spoke, and offered a glimpse to the
+man before him, whose pride and whose affections were equally wounded,
+of a future which should make some amends for the bitter present--a
+future in which Castalia might have peace and safety at least, and in
+which her mind might regain its balance. He would be gentle, and
+patient, and tender with her; and, if they were in a position that
+offered no such temptations as the post-office at Whitford, the anxiety
+to all who regarded Castalia would be greatly lessened. Lord Seely was,
+as he had said, too much stunned by the whole interview to follow
+Algernon's rapid eloquence step by step. He felt that he must have time
+for reflection; besides, he was physically exhausted. He bade Algernon
+leave him for a time, and return later in the day. He would give orders
+that he should be admitted at once. "You--you have not seen my lady?"
+said Lord Seely hesitatingly.
+
+"No; I purposely avoided doing so. She would have naturally inquired the
+cause of my unexpected presence in town, and I could speak of all this
+trouble to nobody on earth but yourself, my lord."
+
+"Right, right, Ancram. But my lady will not fail to learn that you have
+been here, and we must give her some reason."
+
+"I can say, if you choose, that I came to London on post-office
+business."
+
+Lord Seely bowed his head almost humbly, and Algernon left him. He left
+him with an air of sombre resignation, but inwardly he felt himself to
+be master of the situation.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+"Rubbish!" cried my lady. "It's a trick. _I_ know the Ancrams, and there
+isn't one of them, and never was one of them--of the Warwickshire
+Ancrams, that is--who would stick at a lie!"
+
+Lady Seely was in a towering passion. She had met Algernon Errington on
+the stairs as he was leaving her husband's room for the second time that
+afternoon. Algernon had slipped past her with a silent bow, and had
+refused to return, although she screamed after him at the full pitch of
+her lungs. Upon this Lady Seely had gone to her husband's room, and in a
+few minutes had drawn from him the confession that he had promised
+Algernon to use his utmost endeavours to obtain a post for him on the
+Continent. And then, on her violent opposition to this scheme, Lord
+Seely had been led on to tell her pretty nearly what Algernon had told
+him; dwelling very strongly on the circumstance that Castalia was in a
+strange, excited state, and might not be deemed responsible for her
+actions. But neither did this terrible revelation make much impression
+on my lady.
+
+"Rubbish!" she said again. "And if she is in this queer excited
+condition, what makes her so?"
+
+"Belinda, you do not realise the full extent. This is a more serious, a
+more frightful matter than you seem to think."
+
+"Oh no it isn't, my lord! You'll see! A young rascal, to come here with
+his cock-and-a-bull stories, and try to frighten you into getting a
+berth for him! Why, there's nothing to be had, if one was willing to
+try, except the consulate at what's-his-name, on the Mediterranean, that
+Mr. Buller mentioned when you spoke to him about my nephew."
+
+"I thought that might be got for Ancram, Belinda."
+
+"Got for Ancram! Fiddlestick's end! What next? If the consulate is to be
+had, Reginald shall have it, that's flat!"
+
+Lord Seely lay back in his chair and groaned.
+
+"Yes," cried his wife, her cheeks flaming with anger until the rouge she
+wore seemed but a pale pigment on the hot colour beneath, "there it is!
+He has made you ever so much worse; upset you completely; thrown you
+back a fortnight, as Dr. Nokes said. He couldn't think what was the
+matter when he came at one o'clock. No more could I. 'My lord appears to
+have been agitated!' said he. Agitated! Yes; _I'd_ agitate that young
+villain with a vengeance if I could get hold of him!"
+
+"But you agitate me--_me_, Belinda. And, let me tell you, that you are
+not showing a proper feeling in the case as regards Castalia; my niece
+Castalia; poor unhappy girl!"
+
+My lady stood up--she had risen to her feet in her wrath against
+Algernon--big, florid, loud of voice, and vehement of will, and looked
+down upon her husband in his invalid's chair. And as she looked into his
+face she perceived, and acknowledged to herself, that it would not do to
+drive him to extremities; that on this occasion neither indolence,
+habit, and bodily weakness on the one hand, nor sheer force of tongue
+and temper on the other, would avail to make him succumb to her. She
+changed her tone, and began to give her view of the case. She gave it
+the more effectively in that she spoke the truth, as far as the
+representation of her genuine opinion went. She did not believe a word
+about Castalia's having stolen money-letters. (Lord Seely winced when
+she blurted out the accusation nakedly in so many words.) Not one word!
+As to the gossip in Whitford, that might be, or might not; they had but
+Ancram's word for it. If Castalia _was_ in this nervous, miserable state
+of mind; if she did pry on her husband, and prowl about the
+post-office, and even open his letters (_that_ might be; nothing more
+likely!); if all these statements were true, what conclusion did they
+point to? Not that Castalia was a thief (my lord put his hand up at the
+word, as if to ward off a stab), but that she was _insanely jealous_.
+
+The suggestion brought a gleam of comfort to Lord Seely. And it approved
+itself to his reason. The one explanation was in harmony with all that
+he knew of his niece's character. The other was not.
+
+"Jealous, eh, Belinda?"
+
+"Of course! _Insanely_ jealous, that always was her character, when she
+lived in our house. She was jealous of Lady Harriet Dormer; she was
+jealous of everybody and everything that Ancram looked at."
+
+"Jealous!" repeated my lord musingly. "But to act so strangely--to
+expose herself to animadversion--to go the length of opening desks and
+letters!--She must have had some cause, some great provocation."
+
+"Nothing more likely! Ancram is good-looking and young; and
+Castalia--isn't."
+
+"But where did she procure that money without her husband's knowledge?"
+
+"Don't know, I'm sure."
+
+"And her extravagance, and running him into debt as she has done--it
+seems to point to some mental aberration, does it not, Belinda?"
+
+"Oh, fiddle-faddle, my lord! _Why_ this, and _how_ that! How do we know
+what truth there is in the whole story?"
+
+"Belinda?"
+
+"Oh, bless you, I'm too old a bird to be caught by any chaff the
+_Ancrams_ can offer me."
+
+"But, good heavens, Belinda, it is utterly incredible----"
+
+"Nothing's incredible of an Ancram in the way of lying," returned the
+great lady of that family with much coolness. "This young jackanapes has
+got into a scrape down at What-do-ye-call-it. Things have gone wrong in
+the office--(I'll be bound he don't mind his business a bit)--he and his
+wife have got into debt between them. He don't like the place; and after
+bothering your life out for money, he comes off here without 'with your
+leave' or 'by your leave,' and asks to be sent abroad. That's my notion
+of the matter. And any way, if I were you, Valentine, I should take no
+sort of action, nor commit myself in any way, until I'd had Castalia's
+version of the story."
+
+Lord Seely pressed his hand to his forehead, and writhed on his chair.
+"I wish to God that I could go to the place and speak with Castalia
+myself!" he cried. "There are things that cannot be written. But here I
+am a prisoner. It is a dreadful misfortune."
+
+"_I_ can't undertake to go trapesing down there in this weather,"
+exclaimed my lady. "And, besides, I wouldn't leave you just now."
+
+Lord Seely by no means wished that his wife should interfere personally
+in the matter. He well knew that nothing but discord was likely to arise
+from any interview between Castalia and her aunt. "There is no one I
+could send," he murmured. "No one I could trust."
+
+"No, no! It would never do to send anybody at all. This kind of family
+wash had better be done in private. I tell you what you do,
+Valentine--you just dictate a letter to me to be sent to Castalia. Send
+it off _at once_. When does Ancram return? To-morrow? Very well, then.
+Send it off _at once_, so that it shall reach Whitford before he does."
+
+"Why so, Belinda?" asked my lord anxiously.
+
+"Why so? Dear me, Valentine; how st----unsuspicious you are! If Ancram
+was there when the letter arrived, do you suppose she would ever get
+it?"
+
+Lord Seely stared at the florid, fat, unfeeling face before him, with a
+sensation of oppression and dismay. How was it possible to attribute
+such actions and motives to persons of one's own family with an air of
+such matter-of-fact indifference? It was not the first time that his
+wife's coarseness of feeling had been thrust on his observation to the
+shocking of his own finer taste and sentiment--for my lord was a
+gentleman at heart--but this was an amount of phlegmatic cynicism which
+hurt him to the core. He could not forget that it was his wife who had
+promoted the marriage of Castalia with this young man. It was his wife
+who had declared that the Honourable Miss Kilfinane was not likely to
+make a better match. It was his wife who had urged him to put young
+Errington into the Whitford Post-office, declaring that the place was in
+every way a suitable one for him. And now it was his wife who coolly
+described Ancram as a wretch, full of the vilest duplicity!
+
+The fact was, that my lady was by no means so indifferent on the subject
+as her words and manner would seem to imply. She was--not pained as Lord
+Seely was, but--angered excessively. She foresaw various troubles to
+herself and her husband--even the distant possibility of having Castalia
+"returned upon their hands," as she phrased it, and of having, sooner or
+later, to find money, or make interest, to get Ancram a berth which she
+would more willingly have bestowed on some of her nearer kith and kin.
+And her fashion of venting her anger was roundly to declare Ancram
+Errington capable of anything! And in her heart she believed him
+capable of a good deal of falsehood.
+
+Lord Seely made no immediate reply to his wife's suggestion. He was ill
+and grieved, and he felt as if his final exit from this world of
+troubles might not be altogether undesirable. His interview with
+Algernon had agitated him terribly. His interview with his
+wife--although she had opened the door for a ray of hope that things
+might be not quite so terribly bad as he had feared--had certainly not
+soothed him. But before the departure of the evening mail that night, he
+had completed and despatched a letter to Castalia. He had insisted on
+writing it with his own hand, sitting up in bed to do so, although his
+fingers were scarcely able to guide the pen.
+
+Meanwhile, Algernon was spending a very pleasant evening. He went to the
+club to which the Honourable Jack Price had introduced him during the
+brief butterfly period of his London existence. There he found the
+genial Jack, friendly, affectionate, expansive, as ever: a trifle
+balder, maybe, but otherwise unchanged. There, too, he found several of
+his former acquaintances ("old friends," he called them), who, after
+having his name recalled to their recollection by Jack Price, said,
+"Hulloa, Errington, where the dooce have you been hiding yourself?" and
+shook hands with the utmost cordiality. Then Jack Price insisted on
+adjourning to a favourite haunt of his, and ordering supper in
+celebration of Algernon's unexpected visit. And the "old friends" were
+flatteringly willing to do Algernon the honour of eating it. They were
+mostly unfledged lads, such as affected very often the society of Jack
+Price, who was really a kind companion, and gave the boys long lectures
+on steadiness of purpose and energy, illustrated by warning examples
+from his own career, and delivered amid such agreeable accompaniments to
+moral reflection as hot whisky-punch and first-rate Havanas. But there
+were one or two older men: a newspaper editor from Dublin, who had been
+at college with Jack; and a grey-whiskered major of cavalry, who had
+served with Jack during his brief military career; and a middle-aged
+attache to His Majesty's legation at the Grand Duchy of Prundenhausen,
+who had been a contemporary of Jack in the Foreign Office. And all these
+gentlemen, being warmed by wine and meat, became excessively
+companionable and entertaining. The Dublin editor, a fat, short, rather
+humorous-looking individual, sang Irish sentimental ballads with a sweet
+tenor voice, and, at the whisky-punch stage of the entertainment,
+brought tears into the eyes of the cavalry major and Jack Price. The
+middle-aged attache did not cry; he considered such a manifestation
+beneath the dignity of the diplomatic service. And although he affected
+a bitter tone, and secretly considered himself to be a mute inglorious
+Talleyrand, much injured and unappreciated by the blundering chiefs at
+the Foreign Office, yet to outsiders he maintained the dignity of the
+service, at the cost of a good deal of trouble and starch.
+
+Algernon did not cry either. Indeed, the combination of sentimental
+ballad and stout Dublin editor struck him as being pleasantly comic. But
+he paid the singer so easy and well-turned a compliment as put to shame
+the clumsy "Thanks, O'Reilly!" "By Jove, that was delightful!" "What a
+sweet whistle you have of your own!" and the general shout of "Bravo!"
+by which the others expressed their approbation. And then he sang
+himself--one of the French romances for which he had gained a little
+reputation among a certain society in town. The romance was somewhat
+thread-bare, and the singer's voice out of practice; still, the
+performance was favourably received. But Algernon soon changed his
+ground, and, eschewing music altogether, began to entertain his hearers
+with stories about the eccentric worthies of Whitford, illustrated by
+admirable mimicry of their peculiarities of voice, face, and
+phraseology, so that he soon had the table in a roar of laughter, and
+achieved a genuine success. Jack Price was enchanted--partly with the
+consciousness that it was he who had provided his friends with this
+diverting entertainment, and explained to every one who would listen to
+him: "Oh, you know, it's great! What? Great, sir! Mathews isn't a patch
+on him. Inimitable, what? He is the dearest, brightest, most lovable
+fellow! What a burning shame that a thing of this sort should be hidden
+under a bushel--I mean, down in what-d'ye-call-it! _By_ George! What?"
+
+Yes; Algernon spent a very agreeable evening, and thoroughly enjoyed
+himself. He certainly had a wonderful share of what his mother called
+"the Ancram elasticity!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Mrs. Errington was greatly astonished to hear of Algernon's sudden
+departure from Whitford. The news came to her through Mrs. Thimbleby,
+who had learned it from the baker, who had been told by the barman at
+the "Blue Bell" that young Mr. Errington had gone off to London by the
+night mail on Monday. At first Mrs. Errington was incredulous. But Mrs.
+Thimbleby's information was so circumstantial, that at length her lodger
+resolved to go to Ivy Lodge and ascertain the truth. She found Castalia
+in a very gloomy humour. Yes; Ancram was gone, she said. Why? Well, _he_
+said he went because Lord Seely was ill. She, for her part, made no such
+statement. And, beyond that, it was not possible to draw much
+information out of her.
+
+Mrs. Errington, however, returned not altogether ill-pleased to her
+lodgings, and assumed an air of majestic melancholy. She desired Mrs.
+Thimbleby to prepare a cup of chocolate for her, and to bring it
+forthwith to the sitting-room. And when it appeared she began to sip it
+languidly, and to hold forth, and to enjoy herself.
+
+"Oh, my dear good soul," she said, half closing her eyes and slowly
+shaking her head, "I've had a great shock--a great shock!"
+
+"Deary me, ma'am!" cried simple Mrs. Thimbleby, with ready sympathy,
+looking into her lodger's round comely face. "Nothing wrong with Mr.
+Algernon, I hope?"
+
+"No, thank Heaven! Not that; but perhaps the next greatest trial that
+could befall me, in the illness of a dear relative."
+
+"Young Mrs.----" Mrs. Thimbleby checked herself, having been reproved
+for using that distinctive epithet of "young" to Algernon's wife, and
+substituted the form of words her lodger had taught her. "The Honourable
+Mrs. Errington ain't ill, ma'am, is she?"
+
+"No, my good creature. We had a despatch last evening announcing the
+illness of Lord Seely. It was sent to Algy, because dear Lady Seely was
+so fearful of startling me. And, for the same reason, dear Algy went off
+without telling me a word about it."
+
+Mrs. Thimbleby had only the haziest notion as to what kinship existed
+between Mrs. Errington and the nobleman in question. But she knew that
+her lodger was nearly connected with high folks; but she had often been
+troubled by doubts and misgivings, as to how far this fact might
+militate against her lodger's spiritual welfare, as being apt to promote
+worldliness and vain-glory. But Mrs. Thimbleby was full of abounding
+charity, and she was always ready to attribute what appeared to her evil
+to her own "poor head," rather than to other people's poor heart. So she
+merely expressed a hope that "the poor gentleman would soon get over
+it."
+
+"I trust so, Mrs. Thimbleby. His removal from the scene of life would be
+a terrible loss to this country. From the sovereign downwards, we should
+all feel it."
+
+"Should we, ma'am?"
+
+"Not, of course, as acutely as the family would feel it. That could not
+be, of course! But I trust he will recover. I wish I could have
+accompanied Algy to town, to help to nurse the dear patient, and take
+some of the care off the shoulders of my poor darling cousin, Belinda.
+Belinda is Lady Seely's Christian-name, my good Thimbleby. But of course
+that was impossible. I have not strength for it."
+
+"No, for sure, ma'am; but them high gentle-folks like them--lords, I
+mean, will be sure to have nurse-tenders, and doctors, and servants, as
+many as they need!"
+
+"Oh, as to that----! The king's own physician twice daily."
+
+"I hope," said Mrs. Thimbleby, timidly, before leaving the room, "that
+the Lord will soften your daughter-in-law's heart to you in this
+trouble."
+
+It must be understood that Mrs. Errington had of late, and especially
+since Castalia's outburst against Rhoda Maxfield, spoken of her
+daughter-in-law with a good deal of disapprobation; pitying her son for
+all he had to endure, and lamenting that he should have thrown himself
+away as he had done, when so many brilliant matches were, as it might be
+said, at his feet. "The dear Seelys," she would say, "considered that he
+was making a sacrifice. That, I happen to _know_. But she displayed so
+undisguised an attachment--and Algy--Algy is the soul of chivalry. All
+the Ancrams ever have been."
+
+It had certainly taken some time for the worthy lady to discover that
+her son's marriage wasn't quite a satisfactory one. But when the
+discovery did force itself on her perceptions, she was by no means
+tender to Castalia. Her moral toughness of hide prevented her from being
+much hurt by such speeches as, "Dear me! Not happy together! Why, I
+thought this was such a model marriage, Mrs. Errington!" Or, "Ah!
+jealous and fretful, is she? Well, I always thought it wouldn't do. But
+of course I said nothing. You plumed yourself so much on the match, you
+know, at the time." She could always retreat to illogical strongholds of
+unreason, whence she sent forth retorts, and arguments, and statements,
+which were found to be unanswerable by the average intellect of
+Whitford.
+
+"I wonder the woman isn't ashamed--really now!" exclaimed Miss Chubb
+once in the exasperation of listening to Mrs. Errington calmly superior
+to facts, and of being quite unable to touch her self-complacency by any
+recapitulation of them.
+
+"Do you?" asked Rose McDougall tartly. "How odd! Now, as to me, nothing
+would surprise me more than to find Mrs. Errington ashamed of anything."
+
+These and similar things had been freely spoken in Whitford, and
+although the world resented Mrs. Errington's manner of complaint, as
+being deficient in humility and candour--for it is provoking to find
+people who ought to lament in sackcloth and ashes, holding up their
+heads and making a merit of their deserved misfortunes--yet the world
+admitted that Mrs. Errington had substantial cause for complaint. The
+Honourable Castalia was really intolerable, and the only possible excuse
+for her behaviour was--what had been whispered with many nods and becks,
+and much mystery--that she was not quite of sound mind. And when the
+news began to circulate in Whitford that young Errington had gone to
+London suddenly, and almost secretly, the first, and most general,
+impression was that he had run away from his wife. To this solution the
+tradesmen to whom he owed money added, "And his debts!" Mrs. Errington's
+statement as to Lord Seely's illness was not much believed. And if he
+were ill, was it likely that my lord should cause Algernon Errington to
+be sent for? Later on in the course of the day, it began to be known
+that Castalia had accompanied her husband to the coach-office, so that
+his departure had not been clandestine so far as she was concerned, at
+all events. But was it not rather odd, the postmaster rushing off in
+this sudden manner? How did he manage to leave his business? Mr. Cooper
+never did such things! Not, probably, that it would make much difference
+whether Algernon Errington were here or not; for everybody knew pretty
+well that he was a mere cipher in the office, and Mr. Gibbs did
+everything!
+
+As to Mr. Gibbs, he was inwardly much disquieted at his chief's
+unwarranted absence. He had received a note which Algernon had left
+behind him to be delivered on the morning after his departure. But the
+note was not very satisfactory:--
+
+     "MY DEAR GIBBS," it said--"I am off to town by the night mail.
+     My wife's uncle, Lord Seely, is ill, and I must see him. I
+     shall speak to him on your behalf, of course. The inheritance
+     must soon fall to you, without waiting for the demise of the
+     present holder. I shall be back on Wednesday at latest.
+     Meanwhile, I trust implicitly to your discretion.
+
+     "Yours always,
+
+     "A. A. E."
+
+This was oracular enough. But Mr. Obadiah Gibbs understood very well, as
+he read it, that by the "inheritance" which must soon fall to him,
+Algernon meant the place of postmaster. Still there was nothing in the
+note to commit Algernon in any way whatever. And his going off to London
+without leave and without notice, was a proceeding which shocked all the
+old clerk's notions of what was fitting. The thought did cross his mind,
+"Suppose he should never come back! Suppose he is off to America, as a
+short cut out of his troubles!" The thing was possible. And the
+possibility haunted Mr. Obadiah Gibbs persistently, though he tried to
+argue it away.
+
+In the afternoon of Tuesday, Rhoda Maxfield walked into the post-office,
+and asked to speak with Mr. Errington. She was on foot and alone, and
+was looking so pretty and blooming as to arrest the attention of the dry
+old clerk. When he told her that Mr. Errington was away in London, and
+would not be back until the next day, she appeared disappointed. "Will
+you tell him, please, that I came, and wanted to speak to him
+particularly, and beg him to come to me as soon as ever he gets back to
+Whitford?" she said, in her soft lady's voice. Mr. Gibbs did not answer
+her. He stared straight over her shoulder as if Medusa's head had
+suddenly appeared behind her. Rhoda turned to see what had petrified Mr.
+Gibbs into silence, and saw Castalia Errington.
+
+Rhoda was startled, but more from sympathy with Gibbs than from any
+other reason. The quick colour mounted into her cheeks and deepened
+their blush rose hue to damask. "Oh, Mrs. Errington," she said, and held
+out her hand. Castalia did not take it; did not speak; did not, after
+one baleful stare of anger, look at her. "Come into the private office,"
+she said, addressing Gibbs in a dry, husky voice, and with a manner of
+imperious harshness. As she stood with her hand on the lock of the door
+leading into the inner room, she looked round over her shoulder and
+flung these words at Rhoda like a missile; "You have made a mistake. My
+husband is not here to-day, of all days. He has been remiss in not
+letting you know of his journey. But men are apt, I have been told, to
+fail in polite attention to persons of your sort."
+
+"Mrs. Errington!" cried Rhoda, turning pale, less at the words than at
+the look and tone which interpreted their meaning so that it was
+impossible altogether to misunderstand it. "I came here to speak to Mr.
+Errington about something he wished to hear of. And if I may say it to
+you instead----"
+
+"To ME? How dare you?" Castalia turned full on her with a livid, furious
+face, lit by a pair of hollow, burning eyes. Poor, artificial, small
+product of her social surroundings as she usually seemed, the passion in
+the woman transfigured her now with a tragic fire and force, before
+which Rhoda's innocent lily nature seemed shrivelled and discoloured,
+like a flower in the blast of a furnace. It was strange to himself, but
+Mr. Gibbs, as he looked at the two women, and was fully conscious on
+which side lay the right in the matter, could not help feeling an
+inexplicable thrill of sympathy with Castalia as she stood there
+breathing quickly and hard, with dilated nostrils and suffering,
+tearless eyes. The truth is that there was some subtle ingredient in Mr.
+Gibbs's composition which was more cognate with flesh and blood--even
+erring, passionate flesh and blood--than with the cool fluid that
+circulates in the petals of a lily. David Powell would have said that it
+was a manifest stirring of the Old Adam which caused the regenerate
+Obadiah Gibbs--a professing Christian, a confirmed and tried pillar of
+Methodism, a man whose precious experiences had been poured forth for
+the edification of many a band meeting--to be conscious for the first
+time of some fellow-feeling with Castalia, at the very moment when she
+was conducting herself in a manner to shock every sentiment of what was
+just and fitting. But whether it were due to original sin, or to
+whatever other cause, the fact remained that Obadiah Gibbs for the first
+time in his life now felt disposed to spare and screen the postmaster's
+wife.
+
+"I'll give the message when Mr. Errington comes back," said he to Rhoda,
+almost hustling her out of the office as he spoke. "The poor thing is
+not very well," he added, in a lower voice. "She has been a good deal
+cut up, one way and another. You mustn't think anything of her manner,
+nor bear malice, Miss Maxfield. Good morning."
+
+When Rhoda was gone--feeling almost dizzy with surprise and
+fright--Gibbs followed Mrs. Errington into the inner office. He found
+her openly examining the contents of the table-drawer, having tossed all
+the papers she had found in it pell-mell on to the table. Gibbs entered
+and closed the door carefully. "Mrs. Errington," he began, intending to
+remonstrate with her--or, perhaps, utter something stronger than a
+remonstrance--on her manner of conducting herself in the office, when
+she interrupted him at once, looking up from the heap of papers. "What
+message did that creature give you for my husband?" she asked abruptly.
+
+"Now, Mrs. Errington, you really must not go on in this way! I'm
+responsible to Mr. Errington, you know, for things being right here."
+
+"Did you hear me? What message did that creature give you?"
+
+"Oh now, really, Mrs. Errington, I think you ought not to speak of Rhoda
+Maxfield in that way. She is a very good girl, and you hurt her terribly
+by your manner."
+
+Castalia smiled bitterly. "Did I?" she said. "Of course you're in league
+with her. Why does this good young woman come here in secret to see my
+husband? What can she want to say to him that cannot be said openly?"
+
+"I cannot hear such things, ma'am; I cannot, indeed. If you would give
+yourself an instant for reflection, you would remember that Miss
+Maxfield offered to tell her message to you yourself."
+
+"Offered to tell me! Do you really suppose I am duped by such low
+tricks? I heard her say, 'Send him to me directly he comes back'--heard
+it with my own ears. But of course you won't tell me the truth."
+
+"I am obliged to say, Mrs. Errington, that you really must leave the
+office. I am very sorry, but I am responsible in Mr. Errington's
+absence, and I cannot allow you to turn everything topsy-turvy here in
+this way. There has been trouble enough by your coming here already."
+
+"Trouble enough! Who says so? Who is troubled?"
+
+"Mr. Errington is troubled, and I am troubled, and--in short, it's
+altogether out of rule."
+
+"Then he confesses, does he, that he is afraid of my coming here to make
+discoveries about him? Why should he be troubled if he had nothing to
+conceal?"
+
+Castalia spoke with trembling eagerness and excitement. She had thrown
+all semblance of dignity or reserve to the winds. She would have spoken
+as she was speaking at that moment in Whitford market-place. Gibbs
+looked at her, and a doubt came into his mind as to whether his
+suspicions, and other people's suspicions, about her were quite so
+well-founded as he had thought. She was terribly violent, jealous,
+insolent, unconverted, full of the leaven of unrighteousness--but was
+she a practised hypocrite, a woman experienced in dishonesty? For the
+life of him, Obadiah Gibbs could not feel so sure of this as he had
+felt, now that he looked into her poor, haggard face, and met her eyes,
+and heard her utterly incautious and vehement speeches.
+
+"As to me not telling you the truth, Mrs. Errington," he said, "I
+suppose you know the truth as to why your visits here bring trouble on
+everybody?"
+
+"Tell it me, you!"
+
+"Well, I--oh you must be aware of it, I suppose. And if I was to tell
+you, you would only be more angry and offended with me than ever, though
+what I have done to excite your displeasure I don't know."
+
+"Tell me this truth that I know so well! Do you think I should seriously
+care for anything _you_ could say, except as it concerned my husband?"
+
+"Mrs. Errington, I don't know whether you are feigning or not. But,
+anyway, I think it my duty to answer you with Christian sincerity. It is
+borne in upon me that I ought to do so."
+
+"Go on, go on, go on!" cried Castalia, drumming with restless fingers on
+the table and looking up at the clerk with eyes that blazed with
+excitement and impatience.
+
+"You are aware that there have been unpleasant circumstances at the
+post-office--letters lost--_money-letters_ lost. Well, your name has
+been mentioned in connection with those losses. It is known in Whitford
+that you come haunting the office at all hours when your husband is
+away. A little while ago you paid a bill with some notes that were
+endorsed in a peculiar way. People ask where you got those notes. I
+thought it my duty to mention the subject to Mr. Errington the other
+day. He was greatly distressed, of course. He said he should interrogate
+you about the notes. My advice to you is--in all sincerity and charity,
+as the Lord sees me--to tell your husband the truth, whatever it is."
+
+He ended his speech with a tremor of compassion in his voice, and with a
+sudden breakdown of his rhetorical manner, for Castalia's face changed
+so piteously, so terribly, as he spoke, that the man's heart was deeply
+touched by it. She grew ashy pale. The quick fingers that had been
+tapping impatiently on the table seemed turned to lead. They lay there
+heavy and motionless. Her mouth was half open, and her eyes stared
+straight before her at the blank wall of the yard, as though they saw a
+spectre.
+
+"Lord have mercy on us, she is guilty!" thought Obadiah Gibbs. And at
+that moment if he could have hidden her crime from the eyes of all men,
+I believe he would have done it at the cost of a lie.
+
+"Of course you're not bound to say anything to me, you know, Mrs.
+Errington," he went on, after a short pause. And as he spoke he bent
+nearer to her, to rouse her, for she seemed neither to hear nor to see
+him. "You'd better go home now at once, you don't seem very strong."
+
+Still she did not move.
+
+"Look here, Mrs. Errington, I--you may rely upon my not breaking a
+word--not one syllable to anybody else, if you--if you will try to make
+things straight again as far as in your power lies. Go home now, pray
+do!"
+
+Still she did not move.
+
+"You don't look much able to walk, I fear. Shall I send the boy for a
+fly? Let me send for a fly?"
+
+He softly touched her shoulder as he spoke, and she immediately turned
+her head and answered with a composure that startled him, "Yes; get me a
+fly." Then she sat quite still again, staring at the wall as before.
+
+Gibbs went out into the outer office and sent the boy for a vehicle.
+There he remained, pen in hand, behind his desk until the jingle of the
+fly was heard at the door. He went back himself to the private office to
+call Castalia, and found her sitting in exactly the same place and
+attitude. She rose mechanically to her feet when he told her the fly was
+ready, but as she began to walk towards the door she staggered and
+caught at Gibbs's arm. He supported her with a sort of quiet
+gravity;--much as if he had been her old servant, and she a cripple
+whose infirmity was a matter of course,--which showed much delicacy of
+feeling, and as they neared the door he said in her ear, "Take my
+advice, ma'am, and tell your husband the truth." She turned her eyes on
+him with a singular look, but said nothing. "Tell him the truth!
+and--and look upward. Lift your heart in prayer. There is a fountain of
+grace and love ready for all who seek it!"
+
+"Not for me," she answered in a very low but distinct voice.
+
+"Oh, my poor soul, don't say so! Don't think so!"
+
+By this time she was in the carriage, having been almost lifted into it
+by Gibbs. She was perfectly quiet and tearless, and as the vehicle drove
+away, and Gibbs stood watching it disappear, he said to himself that her
+face was as the face of a corpse.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+Castalia was driven home, and walked up the path of the tiny garden in
+front of Ivy Lodge with a step much like her ordinary one. She went into
+the drawing-room and looked about her curiously, as if she were a
+stranger seeing the place for the first time. Then she sat down for a
+minute, still in her bonnet and shawl. But she got up again quickly from
+the sofa, holding her hand to her throat as if she were choking, and
+went out to the garden behind the house, and from thence to the meadows
+near the river. There was at the bottom of the garden, and outside of
+it, a miserable, dilapidated wooden shed, euphoniously called a
+summer-house. There was a worm-eaten wooden bench in it looking towards
+the Whit, and commanding a view of the wide meadows on the other side of
+it, of a turn in the river, now lead-coloured beneath a dreary sky, and
+of the distant spire of Duckwell Church rising beyond the hazy woods of
+Pudcombe. No one ever entered this summer-house. It was rotting to
+pieces with damp and decay, and was inhabited by a colony of insects and
+a toad that squatted in one corner. In this wretched place Castalia sat
+down, being indeed unable to walk farther, but feeling a sensation of
+suffocation at the mere thought of returning to the house. She fancied
+she could not breathe there. A steaming mist was rising from the river
+and the damp meadows beyond it. The grey clouds seemed to touch the grey
+horizon. It was cold, and the last brown leaf or two, hanging, as it
+seemed, by a thread on the boughs of a tree just within sight from the
+summer-house, twirled, and shook, and shuddered in the slight gusts of
+wind that arose now and again. There was not a sound to be heard except
+the mournful lowing of some cattle in a distant field, until all at once
+a movement of the air brought from Whitford the sound of the old chimes
+muffled by the heavy atmosphere. There sat Castalia and stared at the
+river, and the mist, and the brown withered leaves, much as she had
+stared at the blank yard wall in the office.
+
+"My heart is sore pained within me, and the terrors of death are fallen
+upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and horror hath
+overwhelmed me!"
+
+She heard a voice saying these words distinctly. She did not start. She
+scarcely felt surprise. The direful lamentation was in harmony with all
+she saw, and heard, and felt.
+
+Again the voice spoke: "Our fathers trusted in thee: they trusted, and
+thou didst deliver them. They cried unto thee and were delivered; they
+trusted in thee and were not confounded. But I am a worm, and no man; a
+reproach of men, and despised of the people!"
+
+Castalia heard, scarcely listening. The words flowed by her like a tune
+that brings tears to the eyes by mere sympathy with its sad sound.
+
+Presently a man passed before her, walking with an unequal pace--now
+quick, now slow, now stopping outright. He had his hands clasped at the
+back of his neck; his head was bent down, and he was talking aloud to
+himself.
+
+"Aye, there have been such. The lot has fallen upon me. I know it with a
+sure knowledge. It is borne in upon me with a certainty that pierces
+through bone and marrow. I am of the number of those that go down to the
+pit. Why, O Lord--Nay! though he slay me, yet will I trust in Him. For
+he is not a man, as I am, that I should answer him, and we should come
+together in judgment."
+
+He stopped in his walk; stood still for a second or two, and then turned
+to pace back again. In so doing he saw Castalia. She also looked full
+at him, and recognised the Methodist preacher. David Powell went up to
+her without hesitation. He remembered her at once; and he remembered,
+too, in a confused way, something of what Mrs. Thimbleby had been
+recently telling him about dissensions between this woman and her
+husband; of unhappiness and quarrels; and--what was that the widow had
+said of young Mrs. Errington being jealous of Rhoda? Ah, yes! He had it
+all now.
+
+The time had been when David Powell would have had to wrestle hard with
+indignation against anyone who should have spoken evil of Rhoda. He
+would have felt a hot, human flush of anger; and would have combated it
+as a stirring of the unregenerate man within him. But all such feelings
+were over with him. No ray from the outside world appeared able to
+pierce the gloom which had gathered thicker and thicker in his own mind,
+unless it touched his sense of sympathy with suffering. He was still
+sensitive to that, as certain chemicals are to the light.
+
+He went close up to Castalia, and said, without any preliminary or usual
+greeting, "You are in affliction. Have you called upon the Lord? Have
+you cast your burthen upon him? He is a good shepherd. He will carry the
+weary and footsore of his flock lest they faint by the way and perish
+utterly."
+
+It was noticeable when he spoke that his voice, which had been of such
+full sweetness, was now hoarse, and even harsh here and there, like a
+fine instrument that has been jarred. This did not seem to be altogether
+due to physical causes; for there still came out of his mouth every now
+and then a tone that was exquisitely musical. But the discord seemed to
+be in the spirit that moved the voice, and could not guide it with
+complete freedom and mastery.
+
+Castalia shook her head impatiently, and turned her eyes away from him.
+But she did not do so with any of her old hauteur and intimation of the
+vast distance which separated her from her humbler fellow-creatures.
+Pain of mind had familiarised her with the conception that she held her
+humanity in common with a very heterogeneous multitude. Had Powell been
+a sleek, smug personage like Brother Jackson, veiling profound
+self-complacency under the technical announcement of himself as a
+miserable sinner, she might have turned from him in disgust. As it was,
+she felt merely the unwillingness to be disturbed, of a creature in whom
+the numbness of apathy has succeeded to acute anguish. She wanted to be
+rid of him. He looked at her with the yearning pity which was so
+fundamental a part of his nature. "Pray!" he said, clasping his hands
+together. "Go to your Father, which is in Heaven, and He shall give you
+rest. Oh, God loves you--he _loves_ you!"
+
+"No one loves me," returned Castalia, with white rigid lips. Then she
+got up from the bench, and went back into her own garden and into the
+house, with the air of a person walking in sleep.
+
+Powell looked after her sadly. "If she would but pray!" he murmured. "I
+would pray for her. I would wrestle with the Lord on her behalf. But--of
+late I have feared more and more that my prayers are not acceptable;
+that my voice is an abomination to the Lord."
+
+He resumed his walk along the river bank, speaking aloud, and
+gesticulating to himself as he went.
+
+Meanwhile, Castalia wandered about her own house "like a ghost," as the
+servants said. She went from the little dining-room to the drawing-room,
+and then she painfully mounted the steep staircase to her bed-room,
+opened the door of her husband's little dressing-closet, shut it again,
+and went downstairs once more. She could not sit still; she could not
+read; she could not even think. She could only suffer, and move about
+restlessly, as if with a dim instinctive idea of escaping from her
+suffering. Presently she began to open the drawers of a little toy
+cabinet in the drawing-room, and examine their contents, as if she had
+never seen them before. From that she went to a window-seat, made
+hollow, and with a cushioned lid, so that it served as a seat and a box,
+and began to rummage among its contents. These consisted chiefly of
+valueless scraps, odds and ends, put there to be hidden and out of the
+way. Among them were some of poor Mrs. Errington's wedding-presents to
+her son and daughter-in-law. Castalia's maid, Slater, had
+unceremoniously consigned these to oblivion, together with a few other
+old-fashioned articles, under the generic name of "rubbish." There was a
+pair of hand-screens elaborately embroidered in silk, very faded and out
+of date. Mrs. Errington declared them to be the work of her grand-aunt,
+the beautiful Miss Jacintha Ancram, who made such a great match, and
+became a Marchioness. There was an ancient carved ivory fan, yellow with
+age, brought by a cadet of the house of Ancram from India, as a present
+to some forgotten sweetheart. There was a little cardboard box, covered
+with fragments of raised rice-paper, arranged in a pattern. This was the
+work of Mrs. Errington's own hands in her school-girl days, and was of
+the kind called then, if I mistake not, "filagree work." Castalia took
+these and other things out of the window-seat, and examined them and put
+them back, one by one, moving exactly like an automaton figure that had
+been wound up to perform those motions. When she came to the filagree
+box, she opened that too. There was a Tonquin bean in it, filling the
+box with its faint sweet odour. There was a pair of gold buckles, that
+seemed to be attenuated with age; and a garnet-brooch, with one or two
+stones missing. And then at the bottom of the box was something flat,
+wrapped in silver paper. She unwrapped it and looked at it.
+
+It was a water-colour drawing done by Algernon immediately on his return
+from Llanryddan, in the first flush of his love-making, and represented
+himself and Rhoda standing side by side in front of the little cottage
+where they had lodged there. Algernon had given himself pinker cheeks,
+bluer eyes, and more amber-coloured hair than nature had endowed him
+with. Rhoda was equally over-tinted. There was no merit in the drawing,
+which was stiff and school-boyish, but the very exaggerations of form
+and colour emphasised the likeness in a way not to be mistaken.
+
+Castalia trembled from head to foot as she looked on the two rosy
+simpering faces. A curious ripple or tremor ran over her body, such as
+may be observed in persons recovering consciousness after a swoon. She
+tore the drawing into small fragments. Her teeth were set. Her eyes
+glared. She looked like a murderess. She trod the scattered bits into
+the carpet with her heel. Then, as if with an afterthought, she swept
+them contemptuously into the bright steel shovel, and threw them into
+the fire, and stood and watched them blaze and smoulder. After that she
+wrapped her shawl more tightly round her--she had forgotten to remove
+either it or her bonnet on coming in--and went out at the front door,
+and walked straight into Whitford, and to Jonathan Maxfield's house.
+
+She asked for "the master." The old man was at home, in the little
+parlour, and Sally showed Mrs. Errington into the room almost without
+the ceremony of tapping with her knuckles at the door, and then made off
+to the kitchen to tell Mrs. Grimshaw. The lady's face had scared her.
+
+Old Max was sitting near the dull fire which burned in the grate. The
+big Bible, his constant companion now, lay open on the table. But he had
+not been devoting his attention to that solely. He had had a large
+old-fashioned wooden desk brought down from his own room, and had been
+fingering the papers in it, reading some, and merely glancing at the
+outside folds of others. He now looked up at Castalia without
+recognising her.
+
+"What is your business with me?" he asked, peering at her in perplexity.
+
+"I've come to speak to you----" began Castalia; and at the first sound
+of her voice, Maxfield recognised her. He remembered the only visit she
+had paid him previously, when she came to beg that Rhoda might be
+allowed to visit her. She had taken a great fancy to his pretty Rhoda,
+this skinny, yellow-faced, fine lady. Ha! Well, she might show what
+civilities she pleased to Rhoda. No objection to that. Indeed, it was a
+proceeding to be encouraged, seeing that it probably caused a good deal
+of discomfort and embarrassment to Algernon! So he gave a little nod,
+meant to be courteous, and said, "Oh, I didn't just know you at first.
+Won't you be seated?"
+
+Castalia refused by a gesture, and stood still opposite to him with one
+hand on the table, apparently in some embarrassment how to begin. Then
+it flashed on old Max that this "Honourable Missis," as he called her,
+had probably come to thank him, and found it not altogether easy to do
+so. But what could Castalia have to thank him for? This; Rhoda had so
+implored her father to relieve Algernon from his anxiety about the
+bills, that at length the old man had said with a chuckle, "Tell you
+what, Rhoda, I'll hand 'em over to Mr. Diamond, and maybe he will give
+them to you as a wedding present if he gets the school. And then you can
+do what you like with 'em. My gentleman won't be above taking a present
+from you or your husband. I've seen what meanness she can do and what
+dirt he can swallow, and not even make a wry face over it! Aye, dirt as
+would turn many a poor labouring man's stomach."
+
+Rhoda, upon this, had consulted Matthew Diamond, and had not found it
+difficult to make him agree with her wish to give up the bills to
+Algernon. Indeed, although he had almost come to old Max's opinion of
+his former pupil, he would not for the world have behaved so as to make
+Rhoda suppose that he bore him a grudge. Rhoda's errand to the
+post-office that afternoon had been to bring Algernon this comforting
+news. She had taken care not to tell her father of Mrs. Algernon's
+behaviour, but had come home and cried a little quietly in her own room,
+and kept her tears and the cause of them to herself. Therefore it was
+that Jonathan Maxfield supposed the fine lady to have come to thank him
+for his magnanimity on behalf of her absent husband, and he was already
+preparing to give her "a dose," as he phrased it, and to spare her no
+item of Rhoda's prosperity, and wealth, and good prospects in the world.
+
+Castalia remained leaning with one hand on the table, and did not
+continue her speech during the second or two in which these thoughts and
+intentions were passing through old Maxfield's brain. But it was by no
+means that she hesitated from embarrassment or lack of words: rather
+the words crowded to her lips too quickly and fiercely for utterance.
+
+"I've come to speak to you about your daughter," she said at length.
+
+"Aye, aye. Miss Maxfield's a bit of a friend o' yours. Miss Maxfield's
+allus been very kind to all the fam'ly ever since we've known 'em. But
+you'd best be seated."
+
+"They say you are an honest, decent man," Castalia went on, neither
+seating herself nor noticing the invitation to do so. "It may be so. I
+am willing to believe it. But, if so, you are grossly deceived, cheated,
+and played upon by that vile girl."
+
+Maxfield brought his two clenched fists heavily down on the table, and
+half raised himself in his chair. "Stop!" said he. "Who are you talking
+of?"
+
+"You may believe me. I tell you I have watched--I have seen. She was in
+love with my husband years ago. She used every art to catch him. And
+now--now that he is married, she receives secret visits from him. Do you
+know that he came at night--ten o'clock at night--to your house when you
+were away? She goes to the post-office slily to see him. I caught her
+there this morning leaving a private message for him with the clerk! Is
+that decent? Is it what you wish? Do you sanction it? She writes to
+him. She has turned his heart against me. He schemes to keep me out of
+the office. I know why now. Oh yes; I am not the blind dupe they think
+for. She has made him more cruel, more wicked to me than I could have
+imagined any man _could_ be. My heart is broken. But as true as there is
+a God in Heaven I'll have amends made to me. She shall beg my pardon on
+her knees. And you had better look to it, if you don't want her
+character to be torn to pieces by every foul tongue in this town. I have
+borne enough. Keep her at home. Keep her from decoying other women's
+husbands, I warn you----"
+
+Maxfield, who had been struggling to reach the bell, pulled it so
+violently that the wire was broken. At the peal Betty Grimshaw came
+running in, terrified. "Mercy, brother-in-law!" she cried. "What is it?"
+
+"Get the police," gasped old Max, as if he were choking. "Send some one
+for a policeman, to turn that mad quean out of my house. She's not fit
+for a decent house. She's--she's----Oh, but you shall repent this! I'll
+sell you up, every stick of trumpery in the place. You audacious
+Jezebel! Turn her out of doors, I say! Do you hear me?"
+
+Betty and the servant stood white and quivering, looking from the old
+man unable to rise from his chair without help, and the lady who stood
+opposite to him, glaring with a Medusa face. Neither of the two
+frightened women stirred hand or foot to fulfil the master's behest. But
+Castalia relieved them from any perplexity on that score, at least, by
+voluntarily turning to leave the room. In the doorway she met Rhoda, who
+had run downstairs in alarm at the violent pealing of the bell. Castalia
+drew herself suddenly aside, as though something unspeakably loathsome
+stood in her path, held her dress away from any passing contact with the
+amazed girl, and rushed out of the house.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+Algernon's state of mind during his return journey to Whitford was very
+much pleasanter than it had been on his way up to town. To be sure, he
+had committed himself distinctly to a very grave statement. That was
+always disagreeable. But then he had made an immense impression on Lord
+Seely by his statement. He had crushed and overwhelmed that "pompous
+little ass." He had humiliated that "absurd little upstart." And--best
+of all; for these others were mere _dilettante_ pleasures, which no man
+of intelligence would indulge in at the cost of his solid interests--he
+had terrified him so completely with the spectre of a public scandal and
+disgrace, that my lord was ready to do anything to help him and Castalia
+out of England. Of that there could be no doubt.
+
+It must be owned that Algernon had so far justified the quick suspicions
+of his Whitford creditors and acquaintances as to have conceived for a
+moment the idea of never more returning to that uninteresting town. It
+was extremely exhilarating to be in the position of a bachelor at large;
+to find himself free, for a time, of the dead weight of debt, which
+seemed to make breathing difficult in Whitford; for, although by
+plodding characters the relief might not have been felt until the debts
+were paid, Algernon Errington's spirit was of a sort that rose buoyant
+as ever, directly the external pressure was removed. It was delightful
+to be reinstated in the enjoyment of his reputation as a charming
+fellow--much fallen into oblivion at Whitford. And perhaps it was
+pleasantest of all to feel strengthened in the assurance that he still
+_was_ a charming fellow, with capacities for winning admiration and
+making a brilliant figure, quite uninjured (although they had been
+temporarily eclipsed) by all the cloud of troubles which had gathered
+around him.
+
+So he _had_, for a moment, thought of fairly running away from wife, and
+duns, and dangers of official severities. But it was but a brief
+unsubstantial vision that flashed for an instant and was gone. Algernon
+was too clear-sighted not to perceive that the course was
+inconvenient--nay, to one of his temperament, impracticable. People who
+started off to live on their wits in a foreign country ought to be armed
+with a coarser indifference to material comforts than he was gifted
+with. Alternations of ortolans and champagne, with bread and onions,
+would be--even supposing one could be sure of the ortolans, which
+Algernon knew he could not--entirely repugnant to his temperament. He
+had no such strain of adventurousness as would have given a pleasant
+glow of excitement to the endurance of privation under any circumstances
+whatever. Professed Bohemians might talk as they pleased about kicking
+over traces, and getting rid of trammels, and so forth; but, for his
+part, he had never felt his spirit in the least oppressed by velvet
+hangings, gilded furniture, or French cookery! Whereas to be obliged to
+wear shabby gloves would have been a kind of "trammel" he would strongly
+have objected to. In a word, he desired to be luxuriously comfortable
+always. And he consistently (albeit, perhaps, mistakenly, for the
+cleverest of us are liable to error) endeavoured to be so.
+
+Therefore he did not ship himself aboard an emigrant vessel for the
+United States; nor did he even cross the Channel to Calais; but found
+himself in a corner of the mail-coach on the night after Jack Price's
+supper party, bowling along, not altogether unpleasantly, towards
+Whitford. He had not seen Lord Seely again. He had inquired for him at
+his house, and had been told that his lordship was worse; was confined
+to bed entirely; and that Dr. Nokes had called in two other physicians
+in consultation. "Deuce of a job if he dies before I get a berth!"
+thought Algernon. But before he had gone many yards down the street, he
+was in a great measure reassured as to that danger, by seeing Lady Seely
+in her big yellow coach, with Fido on the seat beside her, and her
+favourite nephew lounging on the cushions opposite. The nephew had been
+apparently entertaining Lady Seely by some amusing story, for she was
+laughing (rather to the ear than the eye, as was her custom; for my lady
+made a great noise, sending out "Ha-ha-ha's!" with a kind of defiant
+distinctness, whilst all the while eyes and mouth plainly professed
+themselves disdainful of too cordial a hilarity, and ready to stop short
+in a second), and stroking Fido very unconcernedly with one fat
+tightly-gloved hand. Now although Algernon did not give my lady credit
+for much depth of sentiment, he felt sure that she would, for various
+reasons, have been greatly disquieted had any danger threatened her
+husband's life, and would certainly not have left his side to drive in
+the Park with young Reginald. So he drew the inference that my lord was
+not so desperately ill as he had been told, and that the servants had
+had orders to give him that account in order to keep him away--which was
+pretty nearly the fact.
+
+"The old woman would be in a fury with me when my lord told her he had
+promised me that post without consulting her," thought Algernon; "and
+would tell any lie to keep me out of the house. But we shall beat her
+this time." As he so thought he pulled off his hat and made so
+distinguished and condescending a bow to my lady, that her nephew, who
+was near-sighted and did not recognise Errington, pulled off his own hat
+in a hurry, very awkwardly, and acknowledged the salute with some
+confused idea that the graceful gentleman was a foreigner of
+distinction; whilst my lady, turning purple, shook her head at him in
+anger at the whole incident. All which Algernon saw, understood, and was
+immensely diverted by.
+
+In summing up the results of his journey to town, he was satisfied.
+Things were certainly not so pleasant as they might be. But were they
+not better, on the whole, than when he had left Whitford? He decidedly
+thought they were; which did not, of course, diminish his sense of being
+a victim to circumstances and the Seely family. Anyway he had broken
+with Whitford. My lord _must_ get him out of that _baraque_! The very
+thought of leaving the place raised his spirits. And, as he had the
+coach to himself during nearly all the journey, he was able to stretch
+his legs and make himself comfortable; and he awoke from a sound and
+refreshing sleep as the mail-coach rattled into the High Street and
+rumbled under the archway of the "Blue Bell."
+
+The hour was early, and the morning was raw, and Algernon resolved to
+refresh himself with a hot bath and breakfast before proceeding to Ivy
+Lodge. "No use disturbing Mrs. Errington so early," he said to the
+landlord, who appeared just as Algernon was sipping his tea before a
+blazing fire. "Very good devilled kidneys, Mr. Rumbold," he added
+condescendingly. Mr. Rumbold rubbed his hands and stood looking
+half-sulkily, half-deferentially at his guest. His wife had said to him,
+"Don't you go chatting with that young Errington, Rumbold; not if you
+want to get your money. I know what he is, and I know what you are,
+Rumbold; and he'll talk you over in no time."
+
+But Mr. Rumbold had allowed his own valour to override his wife's
+discretion, and had declared that he would make the young man understand
+before he left the "Blue Bell" that it was absolutely necessary to
+settle his account there without delay. And the result justified Mrs.
+Rumbold's apprehension; for Algernon Errington drove away from the inn
+without having paid even for the breakfast he had eaten there that
+morning, and having added the vehicle which carried him home to the long
+list beginning "Flys: A. Errington, Esq.," in which he figured as debtor
+to the landlord of the "Blue Bell." He had flourished Lord Seely in Mr.
+Rumbold's face with excellent effect, and was feeling quite cheerful
+when he alighted at the gate of Ivy Lodge.
+
+It was still early according to Castalia's reckoning--little more than
+ten o'clock. So he was not surprised at not finding her in the
+drawing-room or the dining-room. Lydia, of whom he inquired at length as
+to where her mistress was, having first bade her light a fire for him to
+have a cigar by, before going to the office--Lydia said with a queer,
+half-scared, half-saucy look, "Laws, sir, missus has been out this hour
+and a half."
+
+"Out!"
+
+"Yes, sir. She said as how she couldn't rest in her bed, nor yet in the
+house, sir. Polly made her take a cup of tea, and then she went off to
+Whit Meadow."
+
+"To Whit Meadow! In this damp raw weather at nine o'clock in the
+morning!"
+
+"Please, sir, me and Polly thought it wasn't safe for missus, and her so
+delicate. But she would go."
+
+Algernon shrugged his shoulders and said no more. Before the girl left
+the room, she said, "Oh, and please, sir, here's some letters as came
+for you," pointing to a little heap of papers on Castalia's desk.
+
+Left alone, Algernon drew his chair up to the fire and lit a cigar. He
+did not hasten himself to examine the letters. Bills, of course! What
+else could they be? He began to smoke and ruminate. He would have liked
+to see Castalia before going to the office. He would have liked to make
+his own representation to her of the story he had told Lord Seely. She
+must be got to corroborate it unknowingly if possible. He reflected with
+some bitterness that she had lately shown so much power of opposing him,
+that it might be she would insist on taking a course of conduct which
+would upset all the combination he--with the help of chance
+circumstances--had so neatly pieced together. And then he reflected
+further, knitting his brows a little, that at any cost she must be
+prevented from spoiling his plans; and that her conduct lately had been
+so strange that it wouldn't be very difficult to convince the world of
+her insanity. "'Gad, I'm almost convinced of it myself," said Algernon,
+half aloud. But it was not true.
+
+The fire was warm, the room was quiet, the cigar was good, the chair was
+easy. Algernon felt tempted to sit still and put off the moment when he
+must re-enter the Whitford Post-office. He shuddered as he thought of
+the place with a kind of physical repulsion. Nevertheless, it must be
+faced once or twice more. Not much more often, he hoped. He rose up, put
+on a great-coat, and said to himself lazily as he ran his fingers
+through his hair in front of the looking-glass, "Where the devil can
+Castalia have gone mooning to?" Then he turned to leave the room. As he
+turned his eyes fell on the little heap of letters. He took them up and
+turned them over with a grimace.
+
+"H'm! Ravell--respectful compliments. Ah! no; your mouth ought to have
+been stopped, I think! But that's the way. More they get, more they
+want. Never pay an instalment. Fatal precedent! What's this--a lawyer's
+letter! Gladwish. Oh! Very well, Mr. Gladwish. _Nous verrons._ Chemist!
+What on earth--? Oh, rose-water! Better than his boluses, I daresay, but
+not very good, and quite humorously dear. Extortionate rascal! And who
+are you, my illiterate-looking friend?"
+
+He took a square blue envelope between his finger and thumb, and
+examined the cramped handwriting on it, running in a slanting line from
+one corner to the other. It was addressed to "Mr. Algernon Errington."
+"Some _very_ angry creditor, who won't even indulge me with the
+customary 'Esquire,'" thought Algernon with a contemptuous smile and
+some genuine amusement. Then he opened it. It was from Jonathan
+Maxfield!
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+In about a quarter of an hour after reading that letter, Algernon called
+to the servants to know if their mistress had come back. He did not ring
+as usual, but went to the door of the kitchen and spoke to both the
+women, saying that he was uneasy at Mrs. Errington's absence, and did
+not like to go to the office without seeing her. He said two or three
+times, how strange it was that his wife should have wandered out in that
+way; and plainly showed considerable anxiety about her. Both the women
+remarked how pale and upset their master looked. "Oh, it's enough to
+wear out anybody the way she goes on," said Lydia. "Poor young man! A
+nice way to welcome him home!"
+
+"Ah," returned Polly, the cook, shaking her head, "I'm afraid there's
+going to be awful trouble with missus, poor thing. _I_ believe she's
+half out of her mind with jealousy. Just think how she's been going on
+about Miss Maxfield. Why 'tis all over the place. And they say old Max
+is going to law against her, or something. But I can't but pity her,
+poor thing."
+
+"Oh! they say worse of her than being out of her mind with jealousy,"
+returned Lydia. "Don't you know what Mrs. Ravell's housemaid told her
+young man at the grocer's?" Et cetera, et cetera.
+
+The discussion was checked in full career by their master returning to
+say that he should not go to the office until he had seen Mrs.
+Errington, and that he was then going to Whit Meadow to look for her. He
+went out past the kitchen and through the garden at the back of the
+house.
+
+He looked about him when he got to the garden gate. Nothing to be seen
+but damp green meadow, leaden sky, and leaden river. Where was Castalia?
+A thought shot into his mind, swift and keen as an arrow--had she thrown
+herself into the Whit? And, if she had, what a load of his cares would
+be drowned with her! He walked a few paces towards the town, then turned
+and looked in the opposite direction. For as far as he could see, there
+was not a human being on the meadow-path. His eyes were very good and he
+used them eagerly, scanning all the space of Whit Meadow within their
+range of vision. At length he caught sight of something moving among a
+clump of low bushes--blackberry bushes and dog-roses, a tangle of
+leafless spikes now, although in the summer they would be fresh and
+fragrant, and the holiday haunt of little merry children--which grew on
+a sloping part of the bank between him and the Whit. He walked straight
+towards it, and as he drew nearer, became satisfied that the moving
+figure was that of his wife. He recognised a dark tartan shawl which she
+wore. It was not bright enough to be visible at a long distance; but as
+he advanced he became sure that he knew it. In a few minutes the husband
+and wife stood face to face.
+
+"This is a nice reception to give me," said Algernon, in a hard, cold
+voice, after they had looked at each other for a second, and Castalia
+had remained silent and still. In truth, she was physically unable to
+speak to him in that first moment of meeting. Her heart throbbed so that
+every beat of it seemed like an angry blow threatening her life.
+
+"Why do you wander out alone in this way? Why do you conduct yourself
+like a mad woman? Though, indeed, perhaps you are not so wrong there;
+madness might excuse your conduct. Nothing else can."
+
+"I couldn't stay in that house. I should have died there. Everything in
+every room reminded me of you."
+
+She answered so faintly that he had to strain his ear to hear her, and
+her colourless lips trembled as the lips tremble of a person trying to
+keep back tears. But her eyes were quite dry.
+
+Algernon was pale, with the peculiar ghastly pallor of a fresh ruddy
+complexion. His blue eyes had a glitter in them like ice, not fire; and
+there was a set, sarcastic, bitter smile on his mouth.
+
+"Look here, Castalia; we had better understand one another at once. I
+shall begin by telling you what I have resolved upon, and what I have
+done, and you will then have to obey me _implicitly_. There must be no
+sort of discussion or hesitation. Come back to the house with me at
+once."
+
+She shook her head quickly. "No! no! Tell me here--out here by
+ourselves, where no one can hear us. I cannot bear to go into that house
+yet."
+
+"Pshaw! What intolerable fooling! Well, here be it. I have no time to
+waste. I have seen your uncle. Don't interrupt me! He has promised to
+get us out of this cursed place, and to find a post for me abroad as
+consul. I had to exercise a good deal of persistence and ability to
+bring him to that point, but to that point I have brought him. We must
+keep him to it, and be active. My lady will move heaven and earth--or
+t'other place and earth, which is more in her line--to thwart us. Now,
+when it is necessary to keep things here as smooth as possible, to
+arouse no suspicion that we may be off at a moment's notice, to hold out
+hopes of everything being settled by Lord Seely's help, what do I find?
+I find that you have gone to a man who is a creditor of mine, who is not
+over fond of me to begin with, and have grossly and outrageously
+insulted him and his daughter! Just as if you had ingeniously cast about
+for the most effectual means of doing me a mischief. I found this letter
+on the table. He threatens to ruin me, and he can do it. If my name is
+posted, my bills protested, and a public hullabaloo made about them and
+other matters, your uncle's influence will hardly suffice to get me the
+berth I want in the face of the opposition newspapers' bellowing on the
+subject. Your uncle is but small beer in London at best. But that much
+he might have managed, if you hadn't behaved in this maniacal way."
+
+"And how have _you_ behaved? Oh, Ancram, Ancram, I would not have
+believed--I _could_ not----" She burst into tears, and sank down on the
+damp grass, covering her face with her hands, and shaking with sobs.
+
+"Listen! Castalia! Do you hear me?" said her husband, shaking her
+lightly by the arm.
+
+She did not answer, but continued to cry convulsively, rocking herself
+to and fro.
+
+Algernon stood looking down upon her with folded arms. "Upon my soul!"
+he said, after a minute, and with a contemptuous little nod of the head,
+which expressed an unbounded sense of the hopeless imbecility of the
+woman at his feet, and of his own long-suffering tolerance towards her,
+"Upon my life and soul, Castalia, I have never even heard of anyone so
+outrageously unreasonable as you are. Your jealousy--we may as well
+speak plainly--your jealousy has passed the bounds of sanity. But, as I
+told you, I am not going to argue with you. I am going to give
+directions for your guidance, since it is quite clear you are unable to
+guide yourself. In the first place----for God's sake stop that noise!"
+he cried, a sudden fierce irritation piercing through his
+self-restraint. "In the first place, you must make a full, free, and
+humble apology to Rhoda Maxfield!"
+
+Castalia started to her feet and confronted him. "Never!" she said. "I
+will never do it!"
+
+"I told you I was not going to argue with you. I am giving you your
+orders. A full, free, and humble--very humble--apology to Rhoda Maxfield
+is our one chance of softening her father. And if you have any sense or
+conscience left, you must know that Rhoda richly deserves every apology
+you can make her."
+
+"You think so, do you?"
+
+"Yes; I think so. She is a thoroughly good and charming girl. The only
+crime she has ever committed against you is being young and pretty. And
+if you quarrel with every woman who is so, you will find the battle a
+rather unequal one." He could not resist the sneer. He detested Castalia
+at that moment. Her whole nature, her violence, her passionate jealousy,
+her no less passionate love, her piteous grief, her demands on some
+sentiment in himself, which he knew to be non-existent; every turn of
+her body, every tone of her voice, were at that moment intensely
+repulsive to him.
+
+The poor thing was stung into such pain by his taunt that she scarcely
+knew what she said or what she did.
+
+"Oh, I know," she cried, "that you care more for her than for me! A
+pink-and-white face, that's all you value! More than wife,
+or--or--anything in the world. More than the honour of a gentleman.
+She's a devil; a sly, sleek little devil! She has got your love away
+from me. She has made you tell lies, and be cruel to me. But I'll expose
+her to all the world."
+
+"What, in the name of all that's incomprehensible, has put this craze
+into your head against Rhoda Maxfield? It's the wildest thing!"
+
+"Oh, Ancram! you can't deceive me any longer. I know--I have seen. She
+came on the sly to see you at the office. You used to go to her when you
+told me you had to be busy at the office. I watched you, I followed you
+all down Whitford High Street one night, and found out that you were
+cheating me."
+
+"Ha! And you also opened my desk at the office, and took out letters and
+papers! Do you know what people are called who do such things?" said
+Algernon, now in a white heat of anger.
+
+She drew back and looked at him. "Yes," she said, "I know."
+
+"Have you no shame, then? No common sense? You attack a young lady--yes,
+a lady! A far better lady than you are!--of whom you take it into your
+head to be jealous, merely because she is pretty and admired by
+everybody. By me amongst the everybodies. Why not? I didn't lose my
+eyesight when I married you. You talk about my not loving you----! Do
+you think you go the way to make me do anything but detest the sight of
+you? You disgrace me in the town. You disgrace me before my clerk in the
+office. You and your relations persecuted me into marrying you, and now
+you haven't even the decency to behave like a rational being, but make
+yourself a laughing-stock, and me a butt for contemptuous pity in having
+tied myself to such a woman. One would have thought you would try to
+make some amends for the troubles I have been plunged into by my
+marriage."
+
+She put her hands up one to each side of her head, and held them there
+tightly pressed. "Ancram," she said, "_do_ you detest the sight of me?"
+
+"You've tried your best to make me."
+
+"Have you no spark of kindness or affection for me in your heart--not
+one?"
+
+"Come, Castalia, let us have done with this! I thoroughly dislike and
+object to 'scenes' of any kind. You have a taste for them,
+unfortunately. What you have to do now is to do as I bid you, and try to
+make your peace by begging Rhoda's pardon, and so trying to undo a
+little of the mischief your insane temper has caused."
+
+"Ancram, say one kind word to me!"
+
+"Good God, Castalia! How can you be so exasperatingly childish?"
+
+"One word! Say you love me a little still! Say you did love me when you
+married me! Don't let me believe that I have been a miserable dupe all
+along."
+
+She no longer refused point-blank to obey him. She was bending into her
+old attitude of submission to his wishes. His ascendancy over her was
+paramount still. But she had made herself thoroughly obnoxious to him,
+and must be punished. Algernon's resentments were neither quick nor
+numerous, but they were lasting. His distaste for certain temperaments
+was profound. Castalia's intensity of emotion, and her ungoverned way of
+showing it, roused a sense of antagonism in him, which came nearer to
+passion than anything he had ever felt. With the sure instinct of
+cruelty, he confronted her wild, eager, supplicating face with a hard,
+cold, sarcastic smile, and a slight shrug. A blow from his hand would
+have been tender by comparison. Then he pulled out his watch and said,
+"How long do you intend this performance to last?" in the quietest voice
+in the world. And all the while he was in a white heat of anger, as I
+have said.
+
+"Oh, Ancram! Oh, Ancram!" she cried. Then with a sudden change of tone,
+she said, "Will you promise me one thing? Will you swear never to see
+Rhoda Maxfield again? If you will do that, I will--I will--try to
+forgive you."
+
+"To _forgive_ me! Then you really _have_ lost your senses?"
+
+"No; I wish I had! I would rather be mad than know what I know. But
+think, Ancram, think well before you refuse me! This one thing is all I
+ask. Never see or speak to her, or write to her again--not even when I
+am dead! Swear it. I think if you swore it you would keep to it,
+wouldn't you? This one poor thing for all I have borne, for all I am
+willing to bear. I'll take that as a proof that you don't love her best.
+I'll be content with that. I'll give up everything else in the whole
+world. Only do this one thing for me, Ancram; I beg it on my knees!"
+
+She did, indeed, fall on her knees as she spoke, and stretched out her
+clasped hands towards him. For one second their eyes met, then he turned
+his way and said, as quietly as ever, "I am going to Mr. and Miss
+Maxfield at once, with the most effectual apology which could be offered
+to them--namely, that you are a maniac, and in any case not responsible
+for your actions, nor to be treated like a rational being."
+
+She staggered up to her feet. "Very well," she gasped out, "then I shall
+not spare you--nor her. I have had a letter from my uncle. He has told
+me what you accused me of. I went to the office. That man there told me
+the same. The notes that I paid away to Ravell--you 'wondered'--_you_
+were 'uneasy!' Why, you gave me them yourself. Oh, Ancram, how _could_
+you have the heart? I wish I was dead!"
+
+"I wish to God you were!"
+
+She was standing close to the edge of the steep, slippery bank; and when
+he said these words she staggered and, with a little heart-broken moan,
+put out her hand to clutch at him, groping like a blind person. He shook
+off her grasp with a sudden rough movement, and the next instant she was
+deep in the dark ice-cold water.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+It was past mid-day when a loud peal at the bell of Ivy Lodge startled
+the women in the kitchen. Polly ran to the front door to open it. There
+stood her master, who pushed quickly into the house past her. "Is your
+mistress come back?" he asked almost breathlessly.
+
+"No, sir! Oh, mercy me, what's the matter? What has happened?" she
+cried, for his face showed undisguised terror and agitation. He sat down
+in the dining-room and asked for a glass of wine. Having drunk it at a
+gulp, he said, "I cannot understand it. I have been nearly to Whitford
+along the meadow-path; I didn't try the other way, but then she would
+not have wandered towards Duckwell, surely! Then I crossed the fields
+and came back by the road, looking everywhere, and asking every one I
+met. Nothing to be seen of her. Your mistress's manner has been so
+strange of late. You must have noticed it. I--I--am afraid--I cannot
+help being afraid that some terrible thing has happened to her. I have
+had a dreadful weight and presentiment on my mind all the morning. Where
+can she be?"
+
+"Oh no, no, sir. Never fear! She'll be all safe somewheres or other.
+She'll just have gone wandering on into the town. She _have_ been
+strange in her ways, poor thing! and we couldn't but see it, sir. But
+she can't have come to no harm. There's nothing to hurt her here-about."
+
+Thus honest Polly, consolingly. But she was infected, too, by the terror
+in her master's white face.
+
+"You don't know," said he tremulously, "what reason I have for
+uneasiness." He drew out from his pocket-book a torn scrap of paper with
+some writing on it. "I found this on the floor by her desk this morning.
+This is what alarmed me so before I went out, but I wouldn't say
+anything about it then."
+
+Polly stared at the paper with eager curiosity, but the sharp, slanting
+writing puzzled her eyes, never quite at their ease with the alphabet in
+any shape. "Is it missus's writing?" she asked.
+
+"Yes; see, she talks of being so wretched. Why, God knows! Her mind has
+been quite unhinged. That is the only explanation. And, you see, she
+says, 'It will not be long before this misery is at an end. I cannot
+live on as I am living. _I will not._'"
+
+"Lord, ha' mercy upon us!" ejaculated the woman, on whom the full force
+of her master's anxiety and alarm suddenly broke. Her round ruddy cheeks
+grew almost as white as his, and Lydia, who had been peeping and
+listening at the door, burst out crying, and began uttering a series of
+incoherent phrases.
+
+"Hold your noise!" said Polly roughly. "There's troubles enough without
+you. Now look ye here, sir. I'll put on my bonnet and go right down into
+Whitford. You take a look along Whit Meadow up Duckwell way. I bet ten
+pounds she's there somewhere's about. She has taken to going about
+through the fields, hasn't she, Lydia? Oh, hold your noise, and try and
+do something to help, you whimpering fool!"
+
+Polly's violent excitement and trepidation took a practical form, whilst
+the other woman was utterly helpless. She was bidden to stay at home and
+"receive missus," and tell her that master was come back, and beg her
+"to bide still in the house, until he should return."
+
+"But I'm afraid she'll never come back!" sobbed Lydia. "I'm so
+frightened to stop here by myself."
+
+"Ugh, you great silly! Haven't you got no feeling for the poor husband?
+He looks scared well-nigh to death, poor lad. And as for you, it ain't
+much _you_ care what's become of missus. You never had a good word for
+her. You're only crying because you're a coward."
+
+Meanwhile Algernon sat in the little dining-room, with a strange
+sensation, as if every muscle in his body had been turned into lead. He
+_must_ get up, and go out as the woman had said. He _must_! But there he
+sat with that sensation of marvellous _weight_ holding him down in his
+chair. The house was absolutely still. Lydia, unable to remain alone in
+the kitchen, had gone to stand at the front door and stare up and down
+the road. Thus she heard nothing of footsteps approaching the house at
+the back, coming hurriedly through the garden, and pausing at the
+threshold of the door, which was open.
+
+Presently, after some muttered conversation, in which two or three
+voices took part, a man entered the house and came along the passage,
+looking, as he went, into the kitchen and finding no one. Just as he
+reached the door of the dining-room, Algernon came out and confronted
+him.
+
+"There's been an accident, sir, I'm sorry to say," said the man. "The
+alarm was given up our way about an hour and a half ago. Somebody's
+fallen into the Whit. I'm very sorry, sir, but I'm afraid you must
+prepare for bad news."
+
+Whilst he was still speaking, the house had filled with an
+ever-gathering crowd. People stood in the passage, peeping over each
+other's shoulders, and pushing to get a glimpse of Algernon. There were
+even faces pressed to the windows outside, and the garden was blocked
+up. Polly had come hurrying back from the town, and now elbowed her way
+through the crowd to her master. She soon cleared the passage of the
+throng of idlers who blocked it up, and shut them outside the door by
+main force. They still swarmed about the house and garden, both on the
+side of the road and that of Whit Meadow. And their numbers increased
+every minute. Polly pulled the man who had been spokesman into the
+dining-room, and bade him say what he had to say without further
+preamble. "It's no use 'preparing' him," she said, pointing to Algernon,
+who had sunk into a chair, and was holding his forehead with his hands;
+"you'll only make it worse. I'm afraid you can't tell him anything
+dreadfuller than he's got into his head already. Speak out!"
+
+Thus requested, the man, a carpenter of Pudcombe village, told his tale.
+Some men, working in the fields about a mile above Whitford--half a
+mile, perhaps, from Ivy Lodge, had heard cries for help from the meadows
+near the river. He, the carpenter, happened to be passing along a field
+path from a farmhouse where he had been at work, and ran with the
+labourers down to the water's edge. There they saw David Powell, the
+Methodist preacher, wildly shouting for help, and with clothes dripping
+wet. He had waded waist-deep into the Whit to try to save some one who
+was drowning there, but in vain. He could not swim, and the current had
+carried the drowning person out of his reach. "You know," said the
+carpenter, "there are some ugly swirls and currents in the Whit, for all
+it looks so sluggish." A boat had been got out and manned, and had made
+all speed in the direction Powell pointed out. He insisted on
+accompanying them in his wet clothes. They searched the river for some
+time in vain. They had got as far as Duckwell Reach when they caught
+sight of a dark object close in shore. It was the form of a woman. Her
+clothes had caught in the broken stump of an old willow that grew half
+in the water; and she was thus held there, swinging to and fro with the
+current. She was taken out and carried to Duckwell Farm, where every
+effort had been made to restore her to consciousness. Powell understood
+the best methods to employ. The Seth Maxfields had done everything in
+their power, but it was no use. She had never moved, nor breathed, nor
+quivered an eyelash.
+
+That was the substance of the carpenter's story.
+
+"Is she dead?" asked Algernon with his face hidden. They were the first
+words he had spoken. And when the man answered with a mournful but
+positive "Yes; quite, quite dead," he said not a syllable further, but
+turned away from them, and buried his head in the cushions of the chair.
+
+"He hasn't even asked who the woman was!" whispered the carpenter to
+Polly. The tears were streaming down the woman's cheeks. Castalia had
+not made herself beloved in her own house, but Polly had felt the sort
+of regard for her which grows by acts of kindness, and forbearance and
+compassion, performed. She shook her head, and answered in an equally
+low tone, "No need for him to ask, poor young fellow. We've all been
+fearing something dreadful about missus all morning. And he had his
+reasons for being afraid as she had gone and done something desperate."
+
+"What--you don't mean that she made away with herself?" said the
+carpenter, raising his hands.
+
+"Oh, that's more than you and I know. Best say nothing. How can we
+judge? Poor soul! Well, I always did feel sorry for her, and that I'll
+say. Though, mind you, I'm sorry for him too. But there's some folks as
+can't stroke the dog without kicking the cat."
+
+The news spread rapidly through Whitford, and caused the utmost
+excitement there. Mrs. Algernon Errington had been found drowned in the
+Whit. How--whether by accident or design--no one knew. But that did not
+prevent people from hazarding a thousand conjectures. She had wandered
+out alone, had ventured too near the edge of the slippery bank, and had
+lost her footing. She had been robbed and thrown into the river. She had
+committed suicide from ungovernable jealousy. She had committed suicide
+in a fit of insanity. She had become a hypochondriac. She had gone
+raving mad. She had committed various frauds at the post-office, and had
+killed herself in terror at the prospect of their coming to light. This
+latter hypothesis found much credence. So many circumstances--trifling,
+perhaps, in themselves, but important when massed together--seemed to
+corroborate it. And then, if that did not seem an adequate motive for
+the desperate deed, Castalia's notorious and passionate jealousy was
+thrown in as a make-weight. There would be a coroner's inquest, of
+course. And the chief witness at it would probably be David Powell. It
+appeared he was the last person who had seen the unfortunate woman
+alive.
+
+Mrs. Thimbleby was in terrible affliction. Mr. Powell was very ill. He
+had plunged into the ice-cold river, and had then remained for hours in
+his wet clothes. He had not been able to walk back from Duckwell Farm,
+and Farmer Maxfield had brought him home himself in his spring-cart, and
+had bidden widow Thimbleby look after him a little, for he (Maxfield)
+thought the preacher in a very bad way. He was seized with violent fits
+of shivering, and the doctor whom Mrs. Thimbleby sent for to see him, on
+her own responsibility, told them to get him into bed at once, to keep
+him warm, and to administer certain remedies which he ordered. But no
+word would Powell speak about his ailments to the doctor, or to anyone
+else. He waved off all questions with a determined though gentle
+resolution. He allowed himself to be helped into bed, being absolutely
+unable to stand or walk without assistance. And he did not refuse the
+warm clothing which the widow heaped upon him. He lay still and passive,
+but he would say no word of his symptoms and sensations to the doctor.
+"The man can in no wise help me," he said to Mrs. Thimbleby. "All the
+wisdom of this world is foolishness to one whom the Lord has laid his
+hands on. I am bowed as a reed; yea, I am broken."
+
+His voice was hoarse and feeble, and his eyes blazed with a feverish
+light. The widow found it vain to importune him to swallow the medicines
+that had been sent. In her heart she had some misgivings that it might
+be wrong to interfere in the dealings of Providence with so holy a man,
+by administering drugs to him. But the misgivings never reached a point
+of conviction that might have comforted her.
+
+"I'll leave you quiet awhile, Mr. Powell," she said. "Maybe you'll
+sleep, and that would do you more good than anything. Sleep is God's own
+cure for a many troubles, isn't it?"
+
+He looked at her with a wild unrecognising stare. "When I say my bed
+shall comfort me, my couch shall ease my complaint, then thou scarest me
+with dreams, and terrifiest me through visions," he murmured.
+
+The good woman softly went away, wiping the tears from her eyes. "One
+thing is a mercy," said the poor soul to herself, "and that is, that Mr.
+Diamond is so kind and thoughtful. He gives no trouble, and is a help on
+the contrary. And I'm sure I don't know how we should have managed
+without his arm to help Mr. Powell upstairs. And another thing is a
+mercy--I hope it isn't wrong to feel it so!--that Mrs. Errington is out
+of the house. I do not know how I should have been strengthened to keep
+up and attend upon her, and she in such a way, poor thing! The Lord has
+had pity on us for Mr. Powell's sake."
+
+Minnie Bodkin had driven to Mrs. Thimbleby's house early in the
+afternoon, and taken Mrs. Errington away with her. Mrs. Errington had
+rushed to Ivy Lodge under the first shock of the terrible news which Mr.
+Smith, the surgeon, communicated to her. She had seen her son for a few
+minutes. Her intention had been to remain with him, but this he would
+not allow. He had insisted on his mother's returning to her own lodgings
+after a very brief interview with him.
+
+"No wonder he can't bear to have her about, though she _is_ his mother.
+Tiresome old thing!" exclaimed Lydia, peevishly.
+
+But if Algernon got rid of his mother as quickly as possible, he refused
+to admit any one else at all, and remained shut up in the dining-room,
+whither he had had a sofa carried, meaning to sleep there. He had been
+obliged to receive Seth Maxfield, who came to ask when and how he would
+wish his wife's body conveyed from Duckwell Farm to Whitford. "Can't she
+stay there?" he had asked in a dazed sort of manner. Then added quickly,
+turning away his head, "I'll leave it all to you. You've been very good.
+You've done everything for the best, I am sure." And he put out his hand
+to the farmer with his face still turned away. And later on he had had
+to see some officials about the inquest. But after that was over, he
+locked his door, and refused to open it except to Polly, when she
+brought him food. He ate almost ravenously, drank a great deal of wine,
+and then lay down and dozed away the hours until dawn next day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+The inquest was to be held at the "Blue Bell" inn. And after the
+inquest, the dust of the Honourable Castalia Errington was to be laid
+beneath the turf of the humble village churchyard, amidst less noble
+dust, with the daisies growing impartially above all, and spreading
+their pink-edged petals over the just and the unjust alike.
+
+It was now currently reported that the thefts at the post-office had
+been Castalia's doing. Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Dockett had been "sure of it
+all along"--so they said, and so they really imagined now. The story of
+the mysterious notes paid to Ravell, the draper, was in every mouth.
+Roger Heath went about saying that Mr. Errington ought to make _his_
+loss good out of his own pocket, if he had any feelings of honour. But
+all the people who had not lost any money in the post-office were
+disgusted at Roger Heath's hardness and avarice, and asked indignantly
+if that was the moment to speak of such things? For the tragedy of
+Castalia's death had produced a strong effect in Whitford. Perhaps there
+was not one human being in the town who grieved that she was gone; but
+many were oppressed by the manner of her going. People had an uneasy
+feeling in remembering how much they had disliked her; almost as if
+their dislike made them guilty of her death in some vague, far-off,
+inexplicable way. They told themselves and each other that though "her
+manners had been repellent, poor thing," yet for their part they had
+always felt sorry for her, and had long perceived that her mind was
+astray, and that she was falling into a low melancholy state, that was
+likely to lead to some terrible catastrophe. By this time scarcely any
+one in Whitford entertained a doubt as to Castalia's having destroyed
+herself. And the social verdict, "Temporary insanity," was pronounced in
+assured anticipation that the legal verdict would be to that effect
+also.
+
+There were two men who did not mystify themselves by conjuring up any
+factitious tenderness about Castalia's memory, and who gave way to no
+superstitious uneasiness of conscience as to their dislike of her when
+she was alive. One of these men was Jonathan Maxfield; the other was the
+dead woman's husband.
+
+Maxfield had no retrospective softness on the subject. He, indeed, being
+accustomed to take certain passages of the Old Testament very seriously
+and literally, and having fed his mind almost exclusively upon those
+passages, was of opinion that Castalia's tragic fate had been brought
+about by a direct interposition of Providence as a judgment on her for
+her bad behaviour to himself and his daughter. And if this opinion on
+Maxfield's part should appear incredibly monstrous, let it be remembered
+that in his own mind "the godly" were typified by the Maxfield family,
+and "the ungodly" by the enemies of that family.
+
+As to Algernon--harassed, anxious, and doubtful of the future as he
+might be, he was glad that his wife was dead, and he knew that he was
+glad. Her death made a way out--apparently the only possible way out--of
+a labyrinth of troubles, and relieved Algernon from the apprehension of
+an exposure which it made him sick to think of. He had not meant to kill
+her, he said to himself. He had certainly laid no deliberate plan to do
+so. Had he, in truth, been the cause of her death? In the state of mind
+she was in, would she not have thrown herself into the river, or
+otherwise put an end to herself, without that touch from him which he
+had given, he knew not how?
+
+It all seemed unreal to him when he thought of it--the leaden water,
+the grey sky and meadows, and the slippery bank with its tufts of
+blackberry bushes. He went over and over again in his mind the words
+that had passed between himself and Castalia; her violence, and her wild
+jealousy and suspicions, and her allusion to her uncle's letter, and to
+what Gibbs had told her, and then her fierce threat that she would not
+spare him! She had become utterly unmanageable--mad, in fact. She had
+resolved to die. She had a suicidal mania. That scrap of writing would
+suffice to prove it. To be sure he had found it and put it in his
+pocket-book weeks ago, although he told the servant that he had picked
+it up off the floor that morning of his return from London. But that
+only indicated that the idea had long been rooted in her mind. And
+besides, the paper bore no date. There was nothing to show how long it
+had been written.
+
+No, it was not he who had killed Castalia. She had gone down willingly
+to death. She had uttered no sound, no cry. He should have heard a cry
+all across the silent meadows. He had not looked back. He had fled away
+from the river at his topmost speed after he saw her slip, and stagger,
+and fall heavily into the black water under the shadow of the bank. Had
+she risen again to the surface? It was said that drowning persons always
+rose three times. But she had made no sound. Surely she would have
+cried out if she had longed for life. Ugh! It was horrible to imagine
+her white face and staring eyes rising above the strong dragging current
+and looking for help. That was all very ghastly, very hideous. He would
+not think of it. It was over. Castalia was dead. And although he would
+have given much that she should have died in any other way, yet he was
+glad that she was dead, and he knew that he was glad.
+
+He made no pretence to himself of a factitious tenderness about her. She
+had been thoroughly antagonistic and distasteful to him of late. She had
+been the bitter drop flavouring every action, every hope, every minute
+of his life. He had been the victim of a hard fate, and of the false
+promises (implied, if not expressed) of Lord Seely. Those paltry
+sums--those notes that he had taken--he had been driven into committing
+that action altogether by stress of circumstances. It was strange to
+himself to think of the light that action would appear in to other
+people. To his own mind, knowing how it had come to pass in an instant,
+by the tug of a sudden impulse, it seemed so clear that there was no
+real ground for blaming him in the matter! He had felt the difficulty of
+getting money with a severity which the rest of the world probably could
+not conceive. He was absolutely indifferent to the question of abstract
+right or wrong, justice or injustice, in the case. But the concrete
+hardship to himself of being poor he had keenly felt to be undeserved.
+
+And now, if it were not for one thing, he should begin to breathe more
+freely. The one thing that weighed on him with a gloomy, though formless
+foreboding, was the inquest. He had been obliged to go to Duckwell Farm.
+He had been asked to look at Castalia's dead body. He had not dared to
+refuse to do so; but he had requested to be shown into the room where
+she lay, alone and without witnesses. The room was that sunny parlour
+where Rhoda Maxfield had sat on many a summer evening, and where the
+neighbours had discussed the news of his own marriage less than a year
+ago. But Algernon's imagination did not wander very far from the
+present. He walked to the window and looked out through the black
+trellis-work of leafless vine branches. Then he stared at the prints on
+the walls, and the gay china vases filled with winter nosegays of
+trembling grass and chrysanthemums. And then his eyes, which had
+wandered in every other direction, were compelled to turn towards the
+broad, old-fashioned sofa covered with fair white linen, under which the
+outlines of a human shape revealed themselves.
+
+Was that stiff, white, silent thing Castalia? He could not realise it.
+He would scarcely have started if the door had opened and his wife had
+walked into the room in her ordinary dress, and with her ordinary gait.
+He had seen her last full of passionate excitement. That stiff, white,
+silent thing could not be she. He would not lift the coverlet, though,
+nor look on that which lay beneath. But he stood and gazed at it until
+the heap beneath the linen sheet seemed to stir and change its outlines.
+Then he turned away shuddering to the window, and looked at his watch to
+see whether he might venture to leave the room yet. Would the people
+think he had been there too short a time? He came out at length, looking
+pale and depressed enough to excite a good deal of sympathy in the
+breast of Mrs. Seth Maxfield. And with his usual quick susceptibility to
+the impression he produced on others, he was fully aware of this, and
+gratified by it, despite the chill vision of the still white heap under
+the coverlet which persistently haunted his memory. He saw looks of
+pity; he heard whispered exclamations of admiration, and they did more
+than gratify, they reassured him. It had entered into nobody's mind to
+conceive that he had been the cause of his wife's death. Into whose
+head, indeed, should it enter? or how? He remembered the last
+lightning-quick glance he had cast over the wide meadows, and how it had
+shown them to him empty and bare of any living thing for as far as his
+eye could reach. No; he was safe from suspicion. Of course he was safe
+from suspicion! And yet--he would have given a year of his life to have
+the inquest over, and the dead woman safely put away beneath the daisies
+in Duckwell churchyard.
+
+Meanwhile the mortal frame that had so throbbed and suffered for his
+sake, lay there lonely and neglected. Strangers' hands had composed it
+decently; a stranger's roof sheltered it. It was to lie in a stranger's
+grave. Only one woman came and stood beside the couch in the sunny
+parlour, and looked on the dead shape with eyes full of compassionate
+tears; and, before going away, laid some sprays of fern and delicate
+hothouse blossoms on the quiet breast, and fastened there a curl of
+light hair. The hair had been cut jestingly from Algernon Errington's
+head when he was a school-boy, and then put away and forgotten for
+years. It now lay above his dead wife's heart. "She was so fond of him,
+poor soul!" said the compassionate woman. It was Minnie Bodkin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+The big room at the "Blue Bell" was full. It was a room associated in
+the minds of most of the people present with occasions of festivity or
+entertainment. The Archery Club balls were held in it. It was used for
+the exhibitions of any travelling conjurer, lecturer, or musician, whose
+evil fate brought him to Whitford. Once a strolling company of players
+had performed there before some fifteen persons and several dozen
+cane-bottomed chairs. There were the tarnished candelabra stuck in the
+walls, the little gallery up aloft where the fiddlers sat on ball
+nights, and the big looking-glass at one end of the room, muffled with
+yellow muslin, and surmounted by a dusty garland of paper flowers. Now
+the wintry daylight coming through the uncurtained windows, made all
+these things look chill, ghastly, and forlorn. People who had thought
+the "Blue Bell" Assembly Room a cheerful place enough under the bright
+illumination of wax candles, now shivered, and whispered to each other
+how dreary it was.
+
+The coroner's jury had been out to Duckwell Farm to view the body, and
+to look at the exact spot on the bank where it had been landed from the
+boat, and to stare at the willow stump to which it had been found
+fastened by the clothes. And they had returned to the "Blue Bell" inn to
+complete the inquiry into the causes of the death of Castalia Errington.
+A great many witnesses had already been examined. Their testimony went
+to show that the deceased lady's behaviour of late had been very
+strange, capricious, and unreasonable. Almost every one of the
+witnesses, including the servants at Ivy Lodge, confessed that they had
+heard rumours of young Mrs. Errington being "not right in her mind."
+They had observed an increasing depression of spirits in her of late.
+Obadiah Gibbs's evidence was the strongest of all, and his revelations
+created a great sensation. He described his last interview with Castalia
+at the post-office, and left the impression on all his hearers which was
+honestly his own; namely, that on Castalia, and on her alone, rested the
+onus of the irregularities and robberies of money-letters at Whitford.
+He did his best to spare her memory. He sincerely thought her
+irresponsible for her actions. But the facts, as he saw and represented
+them, admitted of but one conclusion being come to.
+
+Algernon Errington's appearance in the room elicited a low murmur of
+sympathy from the spectators. His manner of giving his evidence was
+perfect, and nothing could have been better in keeping with the
+circumstances of his painful position, than the subdued, yet quiet tones
+of his voice, and the white, strained look of his face, which revealed
+rather the effect of a great shock to the nerves than a deep wound to
+the heart. Of course he could not be expected to grieve as a husband
+would grieve who had lost a dearly-loved and loving wife; but their
+having been on somewhat bad terms, and Castalia's notorious jealousy and
+bad temper, made the manner of her death all the more terrible. Poor
+young man! He was dreadfully cut up, one could see that. But he made no
+pretences, put on no affectations of woe. He was so simple and quiet! In
+a word, he was credited with feeling precisely what he ought to have
+felt.
+
+His statement added scarcely any new fact to those already known. He had
+not seen his wife alive since he parted from her when he started for
+London to visit Lord Seely, who was ill. He corroborated his servants'
+testimony to the facts that Castalia had wandered out on to Whit Meadow
+about nine o'clock in the morning; that he had been made uneasy by her
+strange absence, and that he had gone himself to seek her, but without
+success. In reply to some questions by a juryman, as to whether he had
+gone to London solely because of Lord Seely's illness, he answered, with
+a look of quiet sadness, that that had not been his sole reason. There
+were private matters to be spoken of between himself and his wife's
+uncle--matters which admitted of no delay. Could he not have written
+them? No; he did not feel at liberty to write them. They concerned his
+wife. He had mentioned to Lord Seely his fears that her mind was giving
+way, as Lord Seely would be able to affirm. A letter found in the pocket
+of the deceased woman's gown was produced and read. It had become partly
+illegible from immersion in the water, but the greater portion of it
+could be made out. It was from Lord Seely, and referred to a painful
+conversation he had had with his niece's husband about herself. It was a
+kind letter, but written evidently in much agitation and pain of mind.
+The writer exhorted and even implored his niece to confide fully in him,
+for her own sake, as well as that of her family; and promised that he
+would help and support her under all circumstances, if she would but
+tell him the truth unreservedly.
+
+Nothing could have been better for Algernon's case than that letter.
+Instead of being the cause of his disgrace and exposure, it was
+obviously the means of confirming every one of his statements, implied
+as well as expressed. It showed clearly enough--first, that Algernon had
+given Lord Seely to understand that his wife laboured under grave
+suspicions of having stolen money-letters from the Whitford Post-office;
+secondly, that he (Algernon) believed those suspicions to be well
+founded; thirdly, that symptoms of mental aberration, which had recently
+manifested themselves in Castalia, were at once the explanation of, and
+the excuse for, her conduct. This letter, which, if Castalia were alive
+to speak for herself, would have been like a brand on her husband's
+forehead for life, was now a most valuable testimony in his favour.
+
+Algernon's hard and unrelenting mood towards his dead wife grew still
+harder and more unrelenting as he listened to this letter, and
+remembered that Castalia had threatened him with exposure, and had
+resolved not to spare him. Nothing in the world but her death could have
+saved him from ruin. Even supposing that she could have been cajoled
+into promising to comply with his directions, she would not have been
+able to do so. She was so stupidly literal in her statements. A direct
+lie would have embarrassed her. And then, at the first jealous fit which
+might have seized her, he would have been at her mercy. Lord Seely's
+letter showed a strong feeling of irritation--almost of
+hostility--against Algernon. It might not be recognisable by the
+audience at the inquest, but Algernon recognised it completely, and felt
+a distinct sense of triumph in the impotence of Lord Seely to harm him,
+or to wriggle away from under his heel. Algernon was master of the
+position. He appeared before the world in the light of a victim to his
+alliance with the Seelys. There could be no further talk on their part
+of condescension, or honour conferred. He and his mother had lived their
+lives as persons of gentle blood and unblemished reputation until the
+Honourable Castalia Kilfinane brought disgrace and misery into their
+home. In making these reflections Algernon was not, of course,
+considering the inward truth of facts, but their outward semblances. It
+made no difference to his indignation against the "pompous little ass"
+who had treated him with hauteur, nor to his satisfaction in humbling
+the "pompous little ass," that if all the secret circumstances hidden
+and silenced for ever under the cold white shroud that covered his dead
+wife could be revealed before the eyes of all men, Lord Seely would have
+the right to detest and despise him. Lord Seely had not treated him as
+he ought. He was firmly persuaded of that. And as he measured Lord
+Seely's duty towards him accurately by the extent of all he desired and
+expected of Lord Seely, it will be seen how far short the latter had
+fallen of Algernon's standard.
+
+The Seth Maxfields gave their testimony as to how the deceased body had
+been carried into their house; how they had tried all means to revive
+her; and how every effort had been in vain, and she had never moved nor
+breathed again. The two men who had rescued the body from the water, and
+the carpenter who had brought the news to Ivy Lodge, repeated their
+story, and corroborated all that the Maxfields had said. There only
+remained to be heard the important testimony of David Powell. He had
+been so ill that it was feared at one time that the inquest must be
+adjourned until he should be able to give his evidence. But he declared
+that he would come and speak before the jury; that he should be
+strengthened to do so when the moment arrived; and had opposed a fixed
+silence to all the representations and remonstrances of the doctor. On
+the morning of the inquest he arose and dressed himself before Mrs.
+Thimbleby was up, albeit she was no sluggard in the morning. He had gone
+out, while it was still dark, into the raw foggy atmosphere of Whit
+Meadow, and had wandered there for a long time. On returning to the
+widow Thimbleby's house, he had seated himself opposite to the blazing
+fire in the kitchen, staring at it, and muttering to himself like a man
+in a feverish dream.
+
+Nevertheless, when the due time arrived, he entered the room at the
+"Blue Bell" to give his evidence with a quiet steady gait. His
+appearance there produced a profound impression.
+
+A stranger contrast than he presented to the Whitford burghers by whom
+he was surrounded could scarcely be imagined. Not only were his bodily
+shape and colouring different from theirs, but the expression of his
+face was almost unearthly. There was some subtle contradiction between
+the expression of David Powell's sorrow-laden eyes and brow, and that of
+the mouth, with its tightly-closed lips drawn back at the corners with
+what on ordinary faces would have been a smile. But on his face, being
+coupled with a singular pinched look of the nostrils and a strained
+tightness of the upper lip, it became something which troubled the
+beholder with a sense of inexplicable pain--almost terror.
+
+As he advanced along the room, there was a hush of attentive
+expectation, during which Dr. Evans, the coroner, curiously examined the
+Methodist preacher with grave professional eyes. After a few
+preliminary questions, to which Powell gave brief, clear answers, he
+said, "I have been brought hither to testify in this matter. I am an
+instrument in the hands of the great and terrible God. He works not as
+men work. In His hand all tools are alike."
+
+"What can you tell us of the death of this unfortunate lady, Mr.
+Powell?" asked the coroner, quietly. "You were the first to see her
+struggling in the water, were you not? And you made a gallant effort to
+save her."
+
+"She struggled but little. She went to her death as a lamb to the
+slaughter; nay, as a victim who desires to die."
+
+Powell spoke in a low but distinct voice; broken and harsh, indeed,
+compared with what it once was, but still with a soft tremulous note in
+it now and then, that seemed to stir deep fibres of feeling in the
+hearts of those who heard him. In such a tone it was that he uttered the
+words, "as a victim who desires to die." And tears sprang into the eyes
+of many from sheer emotional sympathy with the sound of his voice.
+
+"You are of opinion, then, Mr. Powell," said the coroner, "that the
+deceased wilfully put an end to her own life."
+
+"No."
+
+"You think that she was not in a state of mind to be responsible for her
+actions?"
+
+"She was murdered," said Powell, in a distinct, grating tone, which was
+audible in every corner of the crowded room.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+There was a momentary rustling, as if every person present had moved
+slightly, and then a deep hush. The silence seemed to last a long time;
+but, in fact, only a second or two elapsed before Powell, drawing up his
+tall, lean figure to its utmost height, and pointing with outstretched
+hand full at Algernon, exclaimed with a kind of cry, "There is her
+murderer! Woe to the cruel, woe to the unrighteous man! Ye have ploughed
+wickedness; ye have reaped iniquity; ye have eaten the fruit of lies!"
+
+There arose a murmur, a movement, a confused sound of ejaculations.
+Algernon started up, and some one laid a hand on his shoulder and pushed
+him back into his seat. "Ask what he means," said Algernon; but his
+voice was so weak and faint that the words were not heard beyond the few
+persons who immediately surrounded him. He could scarcely grow paler
+than he had been from the beginning of the inquest, but a ghastly
+ashen-grey hue showed itself round his mouth. His lips were quite
+colourless. Terror, agonising terror, was in his heart. What did this
+preacher know? What had he seen? Had Castalia spoken and accused him
+before her death?
+
+Anguish for anguish; perhaps he suffered at that moment as much as his
+victim had suffered when she felt the hand she loved send her to her
+death.
+
+The movement and the murmur in the crowd were over in an instant. The
+coroner sternly commanded order. There was silence again, and the very
+air seemed charged with a horrible apprehension, which weighed upon
+every one as a coming thunderstorm oppresses the cowering birds.
+
+"You must speak clearly and plainly, Mr. Powell," said the coroner in a
+severe tone. "State what grounds you have for this very extraordinary
+accusation. The evidence laid before us to-day goes to show that Mr.
+Errington did not see his wife since parting from her on the Monday
+night to go to London, until he was called on to identify her dead body
+at Duckwell Farm."
+
+"He spoke with her in the meadow by the river's brink. She appealed to
+him; she implored him; she knelt to him. I saw her gestures. Then he
+hurled her down the steep bank into the water and fled away, leaving her
+to perish!"
+
+A most profound sensation was caused by these words throughout the whole
+assembly. The jury looked at each other like men suddenly aroused from
+sleep. They seemed not only startled but scared. Indeed, a singular
+expression of disquietude appeared on every face--almost as if each
+individual in the crowd had felt _himself_ accused. Before any further
+questions could be put to Powell, there was a stir and a commotion at
+the lower end of the room and a murmur of voices. Algernon Errington had
+swooned dead away. He must have fallen to the ground had he not been
+caught in the arms of his next neighbour, who happened to be Mr. Ravell,
+the draper. Some one in the crowd handed a smelling-bottle to be held
+under his nose, and they cleared a little space around him to give him
+air, by the directions of Mr. Smith, the surgeon, who was at hand. It
+was proposed to carry him away out of the heat and the throng; but in
+less than a couple of minutes he revived, and immediately on recovering
+consciousness he desired to remain where he was. The terror of listening
+to what Powell said was not so appalling to his imagination as the
+terror of fancying what he might be saying when he (Algernon) should not
+be there to hear it.
+
+Order being restored, the preacher's examination was continued. On being
+asked where he had been when the circumstances alleged to have taken
+place happened, he replied that he had been at some distance up the
+river, in the midst of a thick coppice which grew low down on the bank
+there. He had been near enough to see, although not to hear, the
+interview between young Errington and his wife. And to the questions
+what had brought him to that remote spot at such an hour, and why he did
+not make his presence known at once on seeing the deceased lady fall
+into the water, he answered, waving his hands to and fro, "I was
+prostrate on the earth--not praying, I may not pray, but suffering under
+the wrath of the powers of the air. The voices were very terrible on
+that day. They had aroused me from my bed. They had hunted me forth in
+the early morning. I had wandered for a long time--for hours, after your
+reckoning, but for years according to the time of the spirits."
+
+"Mr. Powell," said Dr. Evans, sternly, "this will not do. You must speak
+less wildly. Remember what a tremendous responsibility rests on you
+after making such an allegation as you have made! Answer the questions
+put to you clearly and seriously."
+
+But it was in vain that David Powell was catechised and cross-examined
+in the endeavour to draw from him any more definite account of the
+events of that last morning of Castalia's life. He reiterated, indeed,
+his statement that Algernon had wilfully and forcibly thrust his wife
+down the bank into the river, and had then fled away at his utmost
+speed. And he added that he (Powell) had not thought of pursuing or
+calling to the murderer, being absorbed in his attempts to rescue the
+drowning woman. He persisted, too, in declaring that Castalia had been
+willing, nay, wishful, to die. She had not struggled. She had not cried
+out. She had not tried to reach his outstretched hand. She had closed
+her eyes, and given herself up to the power of the death-cold waters. So
+far he was coherent and consistent; but when he endeavoured to describe
+how or why he had found himself on that spot at that hour, he wandered
+off into the wildest statements, and grew ever more and more excited.
+His face flushed. His eyes blazed. His voice rose almost to a scream. He
+broke into a torrent of words, standing up in face of the crowd and
+emphasising his discourse with strange violent gestures. "I will declare
+the truth," he exclaimed. "I will cry aloud, and spare not. Now,
+therefore, be content; look upon me, for it is evident unto you if I
+lie!" Then with a sudden change of tone, sinking his voice to a hoarse,
+hollow monotone, and gazing straight before him with wide,
+horror-stricken eyes, he added, "Let me speak, let me confess the truth,
+before I go whence I shall not return, even to the land of darkness and
+the shadow of death. A land of darkness as darkness itself; and of the
+shadow of death without any order, and where the light is as darkness."
+
+A shudder ran through the audience. The preacher seemed to hold them in
+a spell. No voice was raised to interrupt him. Many persons turned pale
+as they listened. But on one face in the crowd the colour faintly dawned
+again. In one breast the preacher's voice giving utterance to the awful
+and glowing imagery of the Hebrew of old time, awoke something like a
+sensation of relief and comfort. Algernon Errington felt the life-blood
+pulsing warmly again in his veins. This Methodist man was mad--clearly
+mad! What was his testimony worth?
+
+Powell went on, speaking still more brokenly and incoherently. "I am a
+castaway," he said. "I declare it before you all. Some of you have
+listened to my ministrations in other days. I spoke then of
+assurance--of Christian perfection. Those words were vain. There are but
+the elect and the reprobate, and unto the number of those latter am I
+doomed. I have long known it and struggled against the knowledge, but I
+declare it to ye now as a testimony. How shall a man be just with God?
+This is one thing, therefore I said it. He destroyeth the perfect and
+the wicked."
+
+The coroner recovered his presence of mind. In truth he had been so
+absorbed in studying David Powell with the professional interest of a
+doctor and a psychologist, that he had suffered him to ramble on thus
+far unchecked. But now he broke in upon him abruptly. "We cannot listen
+to this sort of thing, Mr. Powell," he said. "All this has no bearing on
+the present inquiry." Then he said a few words as to the desirability of
+an adjournment. Mr. Errington might wish to call some other witnesses.
+Powell had acknowledged that he had been too far distant to hear a word
+of the conversation he alleged to have taken place between the husband
+and wife. It was possible, therefore, that he had been too distant to
+see the two persons with sufficient distinctness to swear to their
+identity. Some more particular testimony might be obtained as to the
+precise hour at which the deceased lady had been last seen alive, and as
+to what her husband had been doing at that time. Upon this, Algernon
+Errington arose in his place and said in a clear, though slightly
+tremulous voice, "For myself, I desire no adjournment. But I should like
+to put a few questions to this witness."
+
+There was a sudden hush of profound attention. David Powell still stood
+up in face of the assembly. He was rocking himself to and fro in a
+singular, restless way, and muttering under his breath very rapidly. It
+was observable, too, that his eyes seemed continually attracted to one
+point in the room just behind Algernon Errington. Every now and then he
+passed his hands over his eyes, as if to obliterate, or shut out, some
+painful sight, but he did not turn his head away; and the next instant
+after making that gesture, he would stare at the same point again, with
+an expression of intense horror. Algernon waited for an instant before
+speaking. Then he said in such a tone as one uses to attract the
+attention of a very young child, "Mr. Powell, will you try to listen to
+me?"
+
+The preacher immediately looked full at him, but without replying.
+Algernon did not meet his eye, but turned his face aside towards the
+coroner and the jury. He looked at them with an appealing glance, and a
+slight movement of his head in the direction of Powell. Then he resumed:
+
+"The accusation you have brought against me is so overwhelming, so
+amazing, that it is not very wonderful if I feel almost stunned and
+dizzy. How such a notion ever entered your brain Heaven only knows! I
+deny it completely, unequivocally, solemnly. To me it seems that such a
+denial must be unnecessary. The thing is so monstrous! But will you try
+to answer one or two questions with some calmness? How long had you been
+in the copse before you saw my wife walking by the river-side?"
+
+Powell shook his head restlessly, and passed his hand over his forehead
+with the action of brushing something off. "I was called out before the
+dawn," he said. "The voices bade me go forth. They sounded like brazen
+bells in the silence, beating and quivering here," and he pressed his
+fingers on his temples.
+
+"You hear voices which are unheard by other people, then?"
+
+"Often. Every day. Every hour."
+
+"Tell me--do you not sometimes see forms that other persons cannot see?"
+
+Powell started, trembled violently, and looked at Algernon with an
+expression of bewildered terror. But it was at the same time manifest
+that some gleam of reason was struggling against the delusions in his
+mind. He felt and perceived dimly, as one perceives external
+circumstances through sleep, that a trap was being laid for him. The
+pathetic questioning look in his eyes, as he vainly tried to recover the
+government of his mind, was intensely painful. For a second or two, he
+remained silent with parted lips and clenched hands, like a man making a
+violent and supreme effort. It seemed as if in another instant he might
+succeed in gaining sufficient mastery over himself to reply collectedly.
+But Algernon did not give time for such a chance to happen. He repeated
+his question more eagerly and loudly, looking at the preacher almost
+threateningly as he spoke.
+
+"Tell me, Mr. Powell, and remember what a responsibility you have
+assumed before God and man in making this accusation--tell me truly
+whether you do not see visions--figures of men and women, that other
+people cannot see? Don't forms appear before your eyes and vanish again
+as suddenly? Have you not told your landlady, Mrs. Thimbleby, as much on
+many occasions? How can you dare to assert with confidence, that from
+the distance you say you were at, you could distinguish my face and that
+of my wife? All your description of her violent gestures, and kneeling
+on the ground, and clasping her hands--does not that seem more like the
+delusions of fancy than the information of your sober senses?"
+
+Algernon spoke with indignant heat and rapidity--a calculated heat, a
+purposed rapidity meant to have a confusing effect on the preacher, and
+which had that effect; but which also excited a sympathetic indignation
+in many of the auditors. Powell looked wildly around him, and clasped
+his hands above his head.
+
+"You must put one question at a time, Mr. Errington," said Dr. Evans.
+
+"Then I put this question: David Powell, do you, or do you not, see
+visions and faces and figures that the rest of the world is as
+unconscious of as of the voices that called you out on to Whit Meadow
+that morning that my poor wife was drowned?"
+
+Powell, with his eyes still fixed on the same point that he had been
+gazing on so long, suddenly cried out with a loud voice, "As God liveth,
+who hath taken away my judgment, and the Almighty, who hath vexed my
+soul, my lips shall not speak wickedness, nor my tongue utter deceit!
+God forbid that I should justify you! Till I die I will not remove my
+integrity from me. It is there--there behind his shoulder. It has been
+holding me with the power of its eyes. Oh, how dreadful are those eyes,
+and that ashen-grey face! Look, behold! the Lord has brought a witness
+from the grave to testify to the truth. See, behold! Can you not see
+her? Look where she stands in her cold wet garments, with the water
+dripping from her hair! She points at him--oh God most terrible!--the
+drowned woman points her cold finger at her murderer!" He stretched out
+his arms towards Algernon, and then with one bound leaped shrieking into
+the midst of the crowd.
+
+A dozen hands were put forth to hold him. He struggled with the
+tremendous strength of insanity; but was at length forcibly carried out
+of the room a raving maniac.
+
+After that there were not many words of an official nature spoken in
+the room. The inquest was adjourned to the following day, and the
+assembly dispersed to carry the account of the strange scene that had
+happened all over Whitford and its neighbourhood.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+The next day medical evidence was forthcoming as to the insanity of
+David Powell, who had been removed to the County Asylum. Testimony was,
+moreover, given by many persons showing that the preacher's mind had
+long been disordered. Even the widow Thimbleby's evidence, given with
+many tears, went to prove that. But she tried with all her might to bear
+witness to his goodness, and clung loyally to her loving admiration for
+his character. "He may not be quite in his right senses for matters of
+this world," sobbed the poor woman, "and he has been sorely tormented by
+taking up with these doctrines of election. But if ever there was an
+angel sent down to suffer on this earth, and help the sorrowful, and
+call sinners to repentance, Mr. Powell is that angel. I know what he is.
+And I have had other lodgers--good, kind gentlemen, too; I don't say to
+the contrary. But overboil their eggs in the morning, or leave a lump
+in their feather-bed, and you'd soon get a glimpse of the old Adam. Now
+with Mr. Powell, nothing put him out except sin; and even that did but
+make him the more eager to save your soul."
+
+Several witnesses who had testified on the previous day were
+re-examined. And some new ones were found who swore to having met Mr.
+Errington going along the road from his own house towards Whitford in
+great agitation, and asking everyone he met if they had seen his wife.
+The hour was such that to the best of their belief it was impossible he
+should have had such an interview as Powell described, with the
+deceased, between the time at which the cook swore he left his own house
+and their meeting him in the road. On this point, however, the evidence
+was somewhat conflicting. But the Whitford clocks were well known to be
+conflicting also; St. Mary's being always foremost with its jangling
+bell, the Town Hall clock coming next--except occasionally, when it
+hastened to be first with apparently quite capricious zeal--and the
+mellow chimes of St. Chad's, that were heard far over town and meadow,
+closing the chorus with their sweet cadence.
+
+There certainly appeared to be no cause, no conceivable motive for
+Algernon Errington to have committed the crime. Many witnesses combined
+to show with what sweetness and good-humour he bore his wife's jealous
+tempers. And, besides, it was notorious that he had hoped through her
+influence to obtain assistance and promotion from her uncle, Lord Seely.
+Whereas, on the other hand, there did seem to be several motives at work
+to induce the unfortunate lady to put an end to her own existence. There
+could be little doubt that she had committed the post-office robberies,
+and the fear of detection had weighed on her mind. Moreover, that she
+had for some time past been made unhappy by jealousy and discontent, and
+had contemplated making away with herself, was proved by several scraps
+of writing besides that which her husband had found and produced at the
+inquest the first day. In brief, no one was surprised when the foreman
+of the coroner's jury delivered a verdict to the effect that the
+deceased lady had committed suicide while under the influence of
+temporary insanity; and added a few words stating the opinion of the
+jury that Mr. Algernon Errington's character was quite unstained by the
+accusation of a maniac, who had been proved to have been subject to
+insane delusions for some time past. It was just the sort of verdict
+that every one had expected, and the general sympathy with Algernon
+still ran high.
+
+As for him, he got away from the "Blue Bell" as quickly as possible
+after the inquest was over, slipping away by a back door where a closed
+fly was waiting for him. When he reached his home he locked himself
+into the dining-room, and sat down on the sofa with closed eyes and his
+body leaning listlessly against the cushions, as if all vital force were
+gone from him. The prevailing--and, for a time, the only sensation he
+felt was one of utter weariness. He was so completely exhausted that the
+restful attitude, the silence, and the solitude seemed positive
+luxuries. He was scarcely conscious of his escape. He felt merely that
+the strain was over, and that voice, face, and limbs might sink back
+from the terrible tension he had held them in to a natural lassitude.
+
+But by-and-by he began to realise the danger he had passed, and to exult
+in his new sense of freedom. Castalia being removed, it seemed as if all
+troubles must be removed with her!
+
+The funeral of Mrs. Algernon Errington was to take place on the
+following day, and it was known that Lord Seely would be present at it
+if it were possible for him to make the journey from London. It was said
+that he had been very ill, but was now better, and would use his utmost
+endeavours to pay that mark of respect to his niece's memory. Mrs.
+Errington, indeed, talked of my lord's coming as a proof of his sympathy
+with her boy. But the world knew better than that. It knew, by some
+mysterious means, that Lord Seely had quarrelled with Algernon. And when
+his lordship did appear in Whitford, and took up his quarters at the
+"Blue Bell," rumours went about to the effect that he had refused to see
+young Errington, and had remained shut up in his own room, attended by
+his physician. This, however, was not true. Lord Seely had seen Algernon
+and spoken with him. But he had not touched his proffered hand; he had
+said no word to him of sympathy; he had barely looked at him. The poor
+old man was overpowered by grief for Castalia, and it was in vain for
+Algernon to put on a show of grief. About a matter of fact Lord Seely
+would even now have found it difficult to think that Algernon was
+telling him a point-blank lie; but on a matter of feeling it was
+different. Algernon's words and voice rang false and hollow, and the old
+man shrank from him.
+
+Lord Seely had come down to Whitford on getting the news of Castalia's
+terrible death, without knowing any particulars about it. Those were not
+the days when the telegraph brought a budget of intelligence from the
+most distant parts of the earth every morning. A few hurried and
+confused lines were all that Lord Seely had received, but they were
+sufficient to make him insist on performing the journey to Whitford at
+once. Lady Seely had tried to impress on him the necessity of shaking
+off young Errington now that Castalia was gone. "Wash your hands of him,
+Valentine," my lady had said. "If poor Cassy _has_ done this desperate
+deed, it's he that drove her to it--smooth-faced young villain!" To all
+this Lord Seely had made no reply. But in his own mind he had almost
+resolved to help Algernon to a place abroad. It was what his poor niece
+would have desired.
+
+But, then, after his arrival in Whitford all the painful details of the
+coroner's inquest were made known to him. He made inquiries in all
+directions, and learned a great deal about his niece's life in the
+little town. The prominent feelings in his mind were pity and remorse.
+Pity for Castalia's unhappy fate, and acute remorse for having been so
+weak as to let her marriage take place without any attempt to interfere,
+despite his own secret conviction that it was an ill-assorted and
+ill-omened one. "You couldn't have helped it, my lord," said the
+friendly physician, to whom he poured out some of the feelings that
+oppressed his heart. "Perhaps not; perhaps not. But I ought to have
+tried. My poor, dear, unhappy girl!"
+
+On the day of the funeral Lord Seely stood side by side with Algernon at
+Castalia's grave, in Duckwell churchyard. But, when it was over, they
+parted, and drove back to Whitford in separate carriages. Lord Seely was
+to return to London early the next morning, but before he went away he
+determined to pay a visit to the county lunatic asylum and see David
+Powell.
+
+On the day of the funeral Algernon had spoken a few words to Lord Seely
+about his wish to get away from the painful associations which must
+henceforward haunt him in Whitford; and had reminded his lordship of the
+promise made in London. But Lord Seely had made no definite answer, and,
+moreover, he had said that, by his doctor's advice, he must decline a
+visit which Algernon offered to make him that evening. Was the "pompous
+little ass" going to throw him over after all?
+
+In the course of that afternoon he heard that old Maxfield intended to
+come down on him pitilessly for the full amount of the bills he held. A
+reaction had set in in public sentiment. Tradesmen, who could not get
+paid, and whose hopes of eventual payment were greatly damped by the
+coolness of Lord Seely's behaviour to his nephew-in-law, began to feel
+their indignation once more override their compassion. The two servants
+at Ivy Lodge asked for their wages, and declared that they did not wish
+to remain there another week. Algernon's position at the post-office was
+forfeited. He knew that he could not keep it even if he would.
+
+It began to appear that the removal of Castalia had not, after all,
+removed all troubles from her husband's path!
+
+But the heaviest blow of all was to come.
+
+Lord Seely left Whitford without seeing him again, and sent back
+unopened a note, which Algernon had written, begging for an interview,
+with these words written outside the cover in a trembling hand: "_Dare
+not to write to me or importune me more._"
+
+Algernon received this late at night; and before noon the next day the
+fact was known all over Whitford. People began to say that Lord Seely
+had obtained access to David Powell, had spoken with him, and had gone
+away convinced of the substantial truth of his testimony; that his
+lordship had left orders that Powell should lack no comfort or attention
+which his unhappy state permitted of his enjoying; and that he had
+strongly expressed his grateful sense of the poor preacher's efforts to
+save his niece.
+
+From London Lord Seely--who had heard that Miss Bodkin had visited
+Duckwell Farm while his niece lay dead there, and had placed flowers on
+her unconscious breast--sent a mourning-ring and a letter, the contents
+of which Minnie communicated to no one but her parents. Nevertheless,
+its contents were discussed pretty widely, and were said to be of a
+nature very damnatory to Algernon Errington's character. However, the
+painful things that were said in Whitford could not hurt him, for he had
+gone--disappeared in the night like a thief, as his creditors said--and
+no one could say whither.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV.
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+Our tale is almost told. The last words that need saying can be briefly
+said. When some weeks had passed away, Mrs. Errington received a letter
+from her son demanding a remittance to be sent forthwith Poste Restante
+to a little seaport town on the Italian Riviera. He had not during the
+interval left his mother in absolute ignorance as to what had become of
+him, but had sent her a few brief lines from London, saying that he had
+been obliged to leave Whitford in order to escape being put in prison
+for debt; that his present intention was to go abroad; and that she
+should hear again from him before long.
+
+Algernon had been so quick in his movements that he managed to be in
+town before the story of Lord Seely's having cast him off had had time
+to be circulated amongst his acquaintance there. And he was enabled, as
+the result of his activity, to obtain from Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs and others
+several letters of introduction calculated to be of use to him abroad.
+He was described by Mrs. Machyn-Stubbs as a nephew of Lord Seely and her
+intimate friend, who was travelling on the Continent to recruit his
+health after the shock of his wife's sudden death.
+
+He had brought away from Whitford such few jewels belonging to his dead
+wife as were of any value, and he sold them in London. He furnished
+himself handsomely with such articles as were desirable for a gentleman
+of fortune travelling for his pleasure; and allowed the West-end
+tradesmen, to whom the Honourable John Patrick Price had recommended him
+during his brilliant London season, to write down against him in their
+books some very extortionate charges for the same. His outfit being
+accomplished in this inexpensive manner, he was enabled to travel with
+as much comfort as was compatible in those days with a journey from
+London to Calais, and he stepped on to the French shore with a
+considerable sum of money in his pocket.
+
+For a long time the tidings of him that reached Whitford were uncertain
+and conflicting; then they began to arrive at even wider and wider
+intervals; and, finally, after Mrs. Errington left the town, they
+ceased altogether to reach the general world of Whitfordians. The real
+history of the circumstances which induced Mrs. Errington to leave the
+home of so many years was known to very few persons. It was this:
+
+About a twelvemonth after Algernon's departure Mrs. Errington made a
+sudden journey to London; and, on her return, she confided to her old
+friend, Dr. Bodkin, that she had sold out of the funds nearly the whole
+sum from which her little income was derived and transmitted it to Algy,
+who had an absolute need for the money, which she considered paramount.
+"But, my dear soul, you have ruined yourself!" cried the doctor aghast.
+"Algernon will repay me, sir," replied the poor old woman, drawing
+herself up with the ghost of her old Ancram grandeur. The upshot was
+that Dr. Bodkin, in concert with one or two other old friends of her
+late husband, made some representations on her behalf to Mr. Filthorpe,
+the wealthy Bristol merchant, who was, as the reader may remember, a
+cousin of Dr. Errington; and that Mr. Filthorpe benevolently allowed his
+cousin's widow a small annuity, which, together with the few pounds that
+still remained to her of her own, enabled her to live in decent comfort.
+But she professed herself unable to remain in Whitford, and removed to a
+cottage in Dorrington, where she had a kind friend in the wife of the
+head-master of the proprietary school, whom we first presented to the
+reader as "little Rhoda Maxfield."
+
+Mrs. Diamond (as she was now) lived in a very handsome house, and wore
+very elegant dresses, and was looked upon as a personage of some
+importance in Dorrington and its vicinity. Her husband had decidedly
+opposed a proposition she made to him to receive Mrs. Errington as an
+inmate of his home. But he put no further constraint on Rhoda's
+affectionate solicitude about her old friend.
+
+And the two women drove together, and sewed together, and talked
+together; and their talk was chiefly about that exiled victim of
+unmerited misfortune, Algernon Errington. Rhoda preserved her faith in
+the Ancram glories. And although she acknowledged to herself that
+Algernon had treated her badly, he was invested in her mind with some
+mysterious immunity from the obligations that bind ordinary mortals.
+
+A visitor, who was often cordially welcomed at Dorrington by Matthew
+Diamond, was Miss Chubb. And the kind-hearted little spinster endured a
+vast amount of snubbing and patronage from her old enemy on the
+battle-ground of polite society--Mrs. Errington--with much charitable
+sweetness.
+
+Old Max lived to see his daughter's first-born child; but he was unable
+to move from his bed for many months before his death. Perhaps it was
+the period of quiet reflection thus obtained, when the things of this
+world were melting away from his grasp, which occasioned the addition of
+a codicil to the old man's will, that surprised most of his
+acquaintance. He had settled the bulk of his property on his daughter at
+her marriage, and, in his original testament, had bequeathed the whole
+of the residue to her also. But the codicil set forth that his only and
+beloved daughter being amply provided for, and his son James inheriting
+the stock, fixtures, and good-will of his flourishing business, together
+with the house and furniture, Jonathan Maxfield felt that he was doing
+injustice to no one by bequeathing the sum of three thousand pounds to
+Miss Minnie Bodkin as a mark of respect and admiration. And he,
+moreover, left one hundred pounds, free of duty, to "that God-fearing
+member of the Wesleyan Society, Richard Gibbs, now living as groom in
+the service of Orlando Pawkins, Esquire, of Pudcombe Hall;" a bequest
+which sensibly embittered the flavour of the sermon preached by the
+un-legacied Brother Jackson on the next Sunday after old Max's funeral.
+
+Dr. Bodkin still lives and rules in Whitford Grammar School. His wife's
+life is brightened by the sight of her Minnie's increased health and
+strength. But she has never quite forgiven Matthew Diamond, and has been
+heard to say that young Mrs. Diamond's children are the most singularly
+uninteresting she ever saw!
+
+Of Minnie herself, the chronicle hitherto records a life of useful
+benevolence, undisfigured by ascetic affectation, or the assumption of
+any pious livery whatever. She keeps her old delight in all the
+beautiful things of art and nature, and old Max's legacy has enabled her
+to enjoy some foreign travel. She is still in the first prime of
+womanhood, and more beautiful than ever. But, at the latest accounts,
+poor Mr. Warlock has not been tortured by the spectacle of any
+successful rival. For his part, he goes on worshipping Miss Bodkin with
+hopeless fidelity.
+
+For a long time Minnie continued to visit David Powell in the lunatic
+asylum at stated periods. He generally recognised her, and the sight of
+her seemed to soothe and comfort him. After a while he was pronounced
+cured, and left the asylum; but his madness returned on him at
+intervals, and he would voluntarily go and place himself under restraint
+when he felt the black fit coming. He did not live very long, being
+assailed by a mortal consumption. But as his body wasted, his mind grew
+clearer, stronger, and more serene; and before his death Minnie had the
+satisfaction to hear him profess a humble faith in the Divine Goodness,
+and a fearless confidence in the mysterious hand that was leading him
+even as a little child into the shadowy land. There was as large a
+concourse of people at his burial as had ever thronged to hear his fiery
+preaching on Whit Meadow. His memory became surrounded by a saintly
+radiance in the imaginations of the poor. Stories of his goodness and
+his afflictions, and the final ray of peace which God sent to cheer his
+last moments, were long retailed amongst the Whitford Methodists. And
+his grave is still bright with carefully-tended flowers.
+
+Of Algernon Errington the strangest rumours were circulated for a time.
+Some said he had become croupier at a foreign gambling-table; others
+declared he had married a West Indian heiress with a million of money,
+and was living in Florence in unheard-of luxury. Others, again, affirmed
+that they had the best authority for believing that he had gone to the
+United States, and had appeared on the stage there with immense success.
+However, the remembrance of him passed away from men's minds in Whitford
+within a few years; in London within a few months. But it was a long
+time before Jack Price left off recounting his final interview with
+Errington. "That young Ancram, you know. Captivating way of his own.
+What? On my honour, the rascal borrowed ten pounds of me. Ready money,
+sir, down on the nail! Bedad, it was a _tour de force_, for I never have
+a shilling in my pocket for my own use. But Ancram would coax the
+little birds off the bushes, as they say in my part of the world.
+Principle? Oh, devil a rag of principle in his whole composition. What?
+I wonder what the deuce has become of him! I give ye my word and honour
+he was really--_really_ now--a CHARMING FELLOW."
+
+
+THE END.
+
+
+
+***END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK A CHARMING FELLOW, VOLUME III (OF
+3)***
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