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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Small House at Allington
+by Anthony Trollope
+(#30 in our series by Anthony Trollope)
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+Title: The Small House at Allington
+
+Author: Anthony Trollope
+
+Release Date: October, 2003  [Etext #4599]
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+[This file was first posted on February 13, 2002]
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+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Small House at Allington
+by Anthony Trollope
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+
+THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON
+
+BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE SQUIRE OF ALLINGTON
+
+
+Of course there was a Great House at Allington. How otherwise should 
+there have been a Small House? Our story will, as its name imports, 
+have its closest relations with those who lived in the less dignified 
+domicile of the two; but it will have close relations also with the 
+more dignified, and it may be well that I should, in the first 
+instance, say a few words as to the Great House and its owner.
+
+The squires of Allington had been squires of Allington since squires, 
+such as squires are now, were first known in England. From father to 
+son, and from uncle to nephew, and, in one instance, from second cousin 
+to second cousin, the sceptre had descended in the family of the Dales; 
+and the acres had remained intact, growing in value and not decreasing 
+in number, though guarded by no entail and protected by no wonderful 
+amount of prudence or wisdom. The estate of Dale of Allington had been 
+coterminous with the parish of Allington for some hundreds of years; 
+and though, as I have said, the race of squires had possessed nothing 
+of superhuman discretion, and had perhaps been guided in their walks 
+through life by no very distinct principles, still there had been with 
+them so much of adherence to a sacred law, that no acre of the property 
+had ever been parted from the hands of the existing squire. Some futile 
+attempts had been made to increase the territory, as indeed had been 
+done by Kit Dale, the father of Christopher Dale, who will appear as 
+our squire of Allington when the persons of our drama are introduced. 
+Old Kit Dale, who had married money, had bought outlying farms-a bit of 
+ground here and a bit there-talking, as he did so, much of political 
+influence and of the good old Tory cause. But these farms and bits of 
+ground had gone again before our time. To them had been attached no 
+religion. When old Kit had found himself pressed in that matter of the 
+majority of the Nineteenth Dragoons, in which crack regiment his second 
+son made for himself quite a career, he found it easier to sell than to 
+save-seeing that that which he sold was his own and not the patrimony 
+of the Dales. At his death the remainder of these purchases had gone. 
+Family arrangements required completion, and Christopher Dale required 
+ready money. The outlying farms flew away, as such new purchases had 
+flown before; but the old patrimony of the Dales remained untouched, as 
+it had ever remained.
+
+It had been a religion among them; and seeing that the worship had been 
+carried on without fail, that the vestal fire had never gone down upon 
+the hearth, I should not have said that the Dales had walked their ways 
+without high principle. For this religion they had all adhered, and the 
+new heir had ever entered in upon his domain without other encumbrances 
+than those with which he himself was then already burdened. And yet 
+there had been no entail. The idea of an entail was not in accordance 
+with the peculiarities of the Dale mind. It was necessary to the Dale 
+religion that each squire should have the power of wasting the acres of 
+Allington-and that he should abstain from wasting them. I remember to 
+have dined at a house, the whole glory and fortune of which depended on 
+the safety of a glass goblet. We all know the story. If the luck of 
+Edenhall should be shattered, the doom of the family would be sealed. 
+Nevertheless I was bidden to drink out of the fatal glass, as were all 
+guests in that house. It would not have contented the chivalrous mind 
+of the master to protect his doom by lock and key and padded chest. And 
+so it was with the Dales of Allington. To them an entail would have 
+been a lock and key and a padded chest; but the old chivalry of their 
+house denied to them the use of such protection.
+I have spoken something slightingly of the acquirements and doings of 
+the family; and indeed their acquirements had been few and their doings 
+little. At Allington, Dale of Allington had always been known as a 
+king. At Guestwick, the neighbouring market town, he was a great man-to 
+be seen frequently on Saturdays, standing in the market-place, and 
+laying down the law as to barley and oxen among men who knew usually 
+more about barley and oxen than did he. At Hamersham, the assize town, 
+he was generally in some repute, being a constant grand juror for the 
+county, and a man who paid his way. But even at Hamersham the glory of 
+the Dales had, at most periods, begun to pale, for they had seldom been 
+widely conspicuous in the county, and had earned no great reputation by 
+their knowledge of jurisprudence in the grand jury room. Beyond 
+Hamersham their fame had not spread itself.
+
+They had been men generally built in the same mould, inheriting each 
+from his father the same virtues and the same vices-men who would have 
+lived, each, as his father had lived before him, had not the new ways 
+of the world gradually drawn away with them, by an invisible magnetism, 
+the upcoming Dale of the day-not indeed in any case so moving him as to 
+bring him up to the spirit of the age in which he lived, but dragging 
+him forward to a line in advance of that on which his father had 
+trodden. They had been obstinate men; believing much in themselves; 
+just according to their ideas of justice; hard to their tenants-but not 
+known to be hard even by the tenants themselves, for the rules followed 
+had ever been the rules on the Allington estate; imperious to their 
+wives and children, but imperious within bounds, so that no Mrs Dale 
+had fled from her lord's roof, and no loud scandals had existed between 
+father and sons; exacting in their ideas as to money, expecting that 
+they were to receive much and to give little, and yet not thought to be 
+mean, for they paid their way, and gave money in parish charity and in 
+county charity.
+
+They had ever been steady supporters of the Church, graciously 
+receiving into their parish such new vicars as, from time to time, were 
+sent to them from King's College, Cambridge, to which establishment the 
+gift of the living belonged-but, nevertheless, the Dales had ever 
+carried on some unpronounced warfare against the clergyman, so that the 
+intercourse between the lay family and the clerical had seldom been in 
+all respects pleasant.
+
+Such had been the Dales of Allington, time out of mind, and such in all 
+respects would have been the Christopher Dale of our time, had he not 
+suffered two accidents in his youth. He had fallen in love with a 
+lady-who obstinately refused his hand, and on her account he had 
+remained single; that was his first accident. The second had fallen 
+upon him with reference to his father's assumed wealth. He had supposed 
+himself to be richer than other Dales of Allington when coming in upon 
+his property, and had consequently entertained an idea of sitting in 
+Parliament for his county. In order that he might attain this honour he 
+had allowed himself to be talked by the men of Hamersham and Guestwick 
+out of his old family politics, and had declared himself a Liberal. He 
+had never gone to the poll, and, indeed, had never actually stood for 
+the seat. But he had come forward as a liberal politician, and had 
+failed; and, although it was well known to all around that Christopher 
+Dale was in heart as thoroughly conservative as any of his forefathers, 
+this accident had made him sour and silent on the subject of politics, 
+and had somewhat estranged him from his brother squires.
+
+In other respects our Christopher Dale was, if anything, superior to 
+the average of the family. Those whom he did love he loved dearly. 
+Those whom he hated he did not ill-use beyond the limits of justice. He 
+was close in small matters of money, and yet in certain family 
+arrangements he was, as we shall see, capable of much liberality. He 
+endeavoured to do his duty in accordance with his lights, and had 
+succeeded in weaning himself from personal indulgences, to which during 
+the early days of his high hopes he had become accustomed. And in that 
+matter of his unrequited love he had been true throughout. In his hard, 
+dry, unpleasant way he had loved the woman; and when at least he 
+learned to know that she would not have his love, he had been unable to 
+transfer his heart to another. This had happened just at the period of 
+his father's death, and he had endeavoured to console himself with 
+politics, with what fate we have already seen. A constant, upright, and 
+by no means insincere man was our Christopher Dale-thin and meagre in 
+his mental attributes, by no means even understanding the fullness of a 
+full man, with power of eye-sight very limited in seeing aught which 
+was above him, but yet worthy of regard in that he had realised a path 
+of duty and did endeavour to walk therein. And, moreover, our Mr 
+Christopher Dale was a gentleman.
+
+Such in character was the squire of Allington, the only regular 
+inhabitant of the Great House. In person, he was a plain, dry man, with 
+short grizzled hair and thick grizzled eyebrows. Of beard, he had very 
+little, carrying the smallest possible grey whiskers, which hardly fell 
+below the points of his ears. His eyes were sharp and expressive, and 
+his nose was straight and well formed-as was also his chin. But the 
+nobility of his face was destroyed by a mean mouth with thin lips; and 
+his forehead, which was high and narrow, though it forbad you to take 
+Mr Dale for a fool, forbad you also to take him for a man of great 
+parts, or of a wide capacity. In height, he was about five feet ten; 
+and at the time of our story was as near to seventy as he was to sixty. 
+But years had treated him very lightly, and he bore few signs of age. 
+Such in person was Christopher Dale, Esq, the squire of Allington, and 
+owner of some three thousand a year, all of which proceeded from the 
+lands of that parish.
+
+And now I will speak of the Great House of Allington. After all, it was 
+not very great; nor was it surrounded by much of that exquisite 
+nobility of park appurtenance winch graces the habitations of most of 
+our old landed proprietors. But the house itself was very graceful. It 
+had been built in the days of the early Stuarts, in that style of 
+architecture to which we give the name of the Tudors. On its front it 
+showed three pointed roofs, or gables, as I believe they should be 
+called; and between each gable a thin tall chimney stood, the two 
+chimneys thus raising themselves just above the three peaks I have 
+mentioned. I think that the beauty of the house depended much on those 
+two chimneys; on them, and on the mullioned windows with which the 
+front of the house was closely filled. The door, with its jutting 
+porch, was by no means in the centre of the house. As you entered, 
+there was but one window on your right hand, while on your left there 
+were three. And over these there was a line of five windows, one taking 
+its place above the porch. We all know the beautiful old Tudor window, 
+with its stout stone mullions and its stone transoms, crossing from 
+side to side at a point much nearer to the top than to the bottom. Of 
+all windows ever invented it is the sweetest. And here, at Allington, I 
+think their beauty was enhanced by the fact that they were not regular 
+in their shape. Some of these windows were long windows, while some of 
+them were high. That to the right of the door, and that at the other 
+extremity of the house, were among the former. But the others had been 
+put in without regard to uniformity, a long window here, and a high 
+window there, with a general effect which could hardly have been 
+improved. Then above, in the three gables, were three other smaller 
+apertures. But these also were mullioned, and the entire frontage of 
+the house was uniform in its style.
+
+Round the house there were trim gardens, not very large, but worthy of 
+much note in that they were so trim-gardens with broad gravel paths, 
+with one walk running in front of the house so broad as to be fitly 
+called a terrace. But this, though in front of the house, was 
+sufficiently removed from it to allow of a coach-road running inside it 
+to the front door. The Dales of Allington had always been gardeners, 
+and their garden was perhaps more noted in the county than any other of 
+their properties. But outside the gardens no pretensions had been made 
+to the grandeur of a domain. The pastures round the house were but 
+pretty fields, in which timber was abundant. There was no deer-park at 
+Allington; and though the Allington woods were well known, they formed 
+no portion of a whole of which the house was a part. They lay away, out 
+of sight, a full mile from the back of the house; but not on that 
+account of less avail for the fitting preservation of foxes.
+
+And the house stood much too near the road for purposes of grandeur, 
+had such purposes ever swelled the breast of any of the squires of 
+Allington. But I fancy that our ideas of rural grandeur have altered 
+since many of our older country seats were built. To be near the 
+village, so as in some way to afford comfort, protection, and 
+patronage, and perhaps also with some view to the pleasantness of 
+neighbourhood for its own inmates, seemed to be the object of a 
+gentleman when building his house in the old days. A solitude in the 
+centre of a wide park is now the only site that can be recognised as 
+eligible. No cottage must be seen, unless the cottage orn of the 
+gardener. The village, if it cannot be abolished, must be got out of 
+sight. The sound of the church bells is not desirable, and the road on 
+which the profane vulgar travel by their own right must be at a 
+distance. When some old Dale of Allington built his house, he thought 
+differently. There stood the church and there the village, and, pleased 
+with such vicinity, he sat himself down close to his God and to his 
+tenants.
+
+As you pass along the road from Guestwick into the village you see the 
+church near to you on your left hand; but the house is hidden from the 
+road. As you approach the church, reaching the gate of it which is not 
+above two hundred yards from the high road, you see the full front of 
+the Great House. Perhaps the best view of it is from the churchyard. 
+The lane leading up to the church ends in a gate, which is the entrance 
+into Mr Dale's place. There is no lodge there, and the gate generally 
+stands open-indeed, always does so, unless some need of cattle grazing 
+within requires that it should be closed. But there is an inner gate, 
+leading from the home paddock through the gardens to the house, and 
+another inner gate, some thirty yards farther on, which will take you 
+into the farmyard. Perhaps it is a defect at Allington that the 
+farmyard is very close to the house. But the stables, and the 
+straw-yards, and the unwashed carts, and the lazy lingering cattle of 
+the homestead, are screened off by a row of chestnuts, which, when in 
+its glory of flower, in the early days of May, no other row in England 
+can surpass in beauty. Had any one told Dale of Allington-this Dale or 
+any former Dale-that his place wanted wood, he would have pointed with 
+mingled pride and disdain to his belt of chestnuts.
+
+Of the church itself I will say the fewest possible number of words. It 
+was a church such as there are, I think, thousands in England-low, 
+incommodious, kept with difficulty in repair, too often pervious to the 
+wet, and yet strangely picturesque, and correct too, according to great 
+rules of architecture. It was built with a nave and aisles, visibly in 
+the form of a cross, though with its arms clipped down to the trunk, 
+with a separate chancel, with a large square short tower, and with a 
+bell-shaped spire, covered with lead and irregular in its proportions. 
+Who does not know the low porch, the perpendicular Gothic window, the 
+flat-roofed aisles, and the noble old grey tower of such a church as 
+this? As regards its interior, it was dusty; it was blocked up with 
+high-backed ugly pews; the gallery in which the children sat at the end 
+of the church, and in which two ancient musicians blew their bassoons, 
+was all awry, and looked as though it would fall; the pulpit was an 
+ugly useless edifice, as high nearly as the roof would allow, and the 
+reading-desk under it hardly permitted the parson to keep his head free 
+from the dangling tassels of the cushion above him. A clerk also was 
+there beneath him, holding a third position somewhat elevated; and upon 
+the whole thing there were not quite as I would have had them. But, 
+nevertheless, the place looked like a church, and I can hardly say so 
+much for all the modern edifices which have been built in my days 
+towards the glory of God. It looked like a church, and not the less so 
+because in walking up the passage between the pews the visitor trod 
+upon the brass plates which dignified the resting-places of the 
+departed Dales of old.
+
+Below the church, and between that and the village, stood the vicarage, 
+in such position that the small garden of the vicarage stretched from 
+the churchyard down to the backs of the village cottages. This was a 
+pleasant residence, newly built within the last thirty years, and 
+creditable to the ideas of comfort entertained by the rich collegiate 
+body from which the vicars of Allington always came. Doubtless we shall 
+in the course of our sojourn at Allington visit the vicarage now and 
+then, but I do not know that any farther detailed account of its 
+comforts will be necessary to us.
+
+Passing by the lane leading to the vicarage, the church, and to the 
+house, the high road descends rapidly to a little brook which runs 
+through the village. On the right as you descend you will have seen the 
+"Red Lion," and will have seen no other house conspicuous in any way. 
+At the bottom, close to the brook, is the post-office, kept surely by 
+the crossest old woman in all those parts. Here the road passes through 
+the water, the accommodation of a narrow wooden bridge having been 
+afforded for those on foot. But before passing the stream, you will see 
+a cross street, running to the left, as had run that other lane leading 
+to the house. Here, as this cross street rises the hill, are the best 
+houses in the village. The baker lives here, and that respectable 
+woman, Mrs Frummage, who sells ribbons, and toys, and soap, and straw 
+bonnets, with many other things too long to mention. Here, too, lives 
+an apothecary, whom the veneration of this and neighbouring parishes 
+has raised to the dignity of a doctor. And here also, in the smallest 
+but prettiest cottage that can be imagined, lives Mrs Hearn, the widow 
+of a former vicar, on terms, however, with her neighbour the squire 
+which I regret to say are not as friendly as they should be. Beyond 
+this lady's modest residence, Allington Street, for so the road is 
+called, turns suddenly round towards the church, and at the point of 
+the turn is a pretty low iron railing with a gate, and with a covered 
+way, which leads up to the front door of the house which stands there, 
+I will only say here, at this fag end of a chapter, that it is the 
+Small House at Allington. Allington Street, as I have said, turns short 
+round towards the church at this point, and there ends at a white gate, 
+leading into the churchyard by a second entrance.
+
+So much it was needful that I should say of Allington Great House, of 
+the Squire, and of the village. Of the Small House, I will speak 
+separately in a further chapter.
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TWO PEARLS OF ALLINGTON
+
+
+"But Mr Crosbie is only a mere clerk." This sarcastic condemnation was 
+spoken by Miss Lilian Dale to her sister Isabella, and referred to a 
+gentleman with whom we shall have much concern in these pages. I do not 
+say that Mr Crosbie will be our hero, seeing that that part in the 
+drama will be cut up, as it were, into fragments. Whatever of the 
+magnificent may be produced will be diluted and apportioned out in very 
+moderate quantities among two or more, probably among three or four, 
+young gentlemen-to none of whom will be vouchsafed the privilege of 
+much heroic action.
+
+"I don't know what you call a mere clerk, Lily. Mr Fanfaron is a mere 
+barrister, and Mr Boyce is a mere clergyman." Mr Boyce was the vicar of 
+Allington, and Mr Fanfaron was a lawyer who had made his way over to 
+Allington during the last assizes."You might as well say that Lord de 
+Guest is a mere earl."
+
+"So he is-only a mere earl. Had he ever done anything except have fat 
+oxen, one wouldn't say so. You know what I mean by a mere clerk? It 
+isn't much in a man to be in a public office, and yet Mr Crosbie gives 
+himself airs."
+
+"You don't suppose that Mr Crosbie is the same as John Eames," said 
+Bell, who, by her tone of voice, did not seem inclined to undervalue 
+the qualifications of Mr Crosbie. Now John Eames was a young man from 
+Guestwick, who had been appointed to a clerkship in the Income-tax 
+Office, with eighty pounds a year, two years ago.
+
+"Then Johnny Eames is a mere clerk," said Lily; "and Mr Crosbie 
+is-After all, Bell, what is Mr Crosbie, if he is not a mere clerk? Of 
+course, he is older than John Eames; and, as he has been longer at it, 
+I suppose he has more than eighty pounds a year."
+
+"I am not in Mr Crosbie's confidence. He is in the General Committee 
+Office, I know; and, I believe, has pretty nearly the management of the 
+whole of it. I have heard Bernard say that he has six or seven young 
+men under him, and that-but, of course, I don't know what he does at 
+his office."
+
+"I'll tell you what he is, Bell; Mr Crosbie is a swell." And Lilian 
+Dale was right; Mr Crosbie was a swell.
+
+And here I may perhaps best explain who Bernard was, and who was Mr 
+Crosbie. Captain Bernard Dale was an officer in the corps of Engineers, 
+was the first cousin of the two girls who have been speaking, and was 
+nephew and heir presumptive to the squire. His father, Colonel Dale, 
+and his mother, Lady Fanny Dale, were still living at Torquay-an 
+effete, invalid, listless couple, pretty well dead to all the world 
+beyond the region of the Torquay card-tables. He it was who had made 
+for himself quite a career in the Nineteenth Dragoons. This he did by 
+eloping with the penniless daughter of that impoverished earl, the Lord 
+de Guest. After the conclusion of that event circumstances had not 
+afforded him the opportunity of making himself conspicuous; and he had 
+gone on declining gradually in the world's esteem-for the world had 
+esteemed him when he first made good his running with the Lady 
+Fanny-till now, in his slippered years, he and his Lady Fanny were 
+unknown except among those Torquay Bath chairs and card-tables. His 
+elder brother was still a hearty man, walking in thick shoes, and 
+constant in his saddle; but the colonel, with nothing beyond his wife's 
+title to keep his body awake, had fallen asleep somewhat prematurely 
+among his slippers. Of him and of Lady Fanny, Bernard Dale was the only 
+son. Daughters they had had; some were dead, some married, and one 
+living with them among the card-tables. Of his parents Bernard had 
+latterly not seen much; not more, that is, than duty and a due 
+attention to the fifth commandment required of him. He also was making 
+a career for himself, having obtained a commission in the Engineers, 
+and being known to all his compeers as the nephew of an earl, and as 
+the heir to a property of three thousand a year. And when I say that 
+Bernard Dale was not inclined to throw away any of these advantages, I 
+by no means intend to speak in his dispraise. The advantage of being 
+heir to a good property is so manifest-the advantages over and beyond 
+those which are merely fiscal-that no man thinks of throwing them away, 
+or expects another man to do so. Moneys in possession or in expectation 
+do give a set to the head, and a confidence to the voice, and an 
+assurance to the man, which will help him much in his walk in life-if 
+the owner of them will simply use them, and not abuse them. And for 
+Bernard Dale I will say that he did not often talk of his uncle the 
+earl. He was conscious that his uncle was an earl, and that other men 
+knew the fact. He knew that he would not otherwise have been elected at 
+the Beaufort, or at that most aristocratic of little clubs called 
+Sebright's. When noble blood was called in question he never alluded 
+specially to his own, but he knew how to speak as one of whom all the 
+world was aware on which side he had been placed by the circumstances 
+of his birth. Thus he used his advantage, and did not abuse it. And in 
+his profession he had been equally fortunate. By industry, by a small 
+but wakeful intelligence, and by some aid from patronage, he had got on 
+till he had almost achieved the reputation of talent. His name hid 
+become known among scientific experimentalists, not as that of one who 
+had himself invented a cannon or an antidote to a cannon, but as of a 
+man understanding in cannons and well fitted to look at those invented 
+by others; who would honestly test this or that antidote; or, if not 
+honestly, seeing that such thin-minded men can hardly go to the proof 
+of any matter without some pre-judgment in their minds, at any rate 
+with such appearance of honesty that the world might be satisfied. And 
+in this way Captain Dale was employed much at home, about London; and 
+was not called on to build barracks in Nova Scotia, or to make roads in 
+the Punjaub.
+
+He was a small slight man, smaller than his uncle, but in. face very 
+like him. He had the same eyes, and nose, and chin, and the same mouth; 
+but his forehead was better-less high and pointed, and better formed 
+about the brows. And then he wore moustaches, which somewhat hid the 
+thinness of his mouth.
+
+On the whole, he was not ill-looking; and, as I have said before, he 
+carried with him an air of self-assurance and a confident balance, 
+which in itself gives a grace to a young man.
+
+He was staying at the present time in his uncle's house, during the 
+delicious warmth of the summer-for, as yet, the month of July was not 
+all past; and his intimate friend, Adolphus Crosbie, who was or was not 
+a mere clerk as my readers may choose to form their own opinions on 
+that matter, was a guest in the house with him. I am inclined to say 
+that Adolphus Crosbie was not a mere clerk; and I do not think that he 
+would have been so called, even by Lily Dale, had he not given signs to 
+her that he was a" swell." Now a man in becoming a swell-a swell of 
+such an order as could possibly be known to Lily Dale-must have ceased 
+to be a mere clerk in that very process. And, moreover, Captain Dale 
+would not have been Damon to any Pythias, of whom it might fairly be 
+said that he was a mere clerk. Nor could any mere clerk have got 
+himself in either at the Beaufort or at Sebright's. The evidence 
+against that former assertion made by Lily Dale is very strong; but 
+then the evidence as to her latter assertion is as strong, Mr Crosbie 
+certainly was a swell. It is true that he was a clerk in the General 
+Committee Office. But then, in the first place, the General Committee 
+Office is situated in Whitehall; whereas poor John Eames was forced to 
+travel daily from his lodgings in Burton Crescent, ever so far beyond 
+Russell Square, to his dingy room in Somerset House. And Adolphus 
+Crosbie, when very young, had been a private secretary, and had 
+afterwards mounted up in his office to some quasi authority and 
+senior-clerkship, bringing him in seven hundred a year, and giving him 
+a status among assistant secretaries and the like, which even in an 
+official point of view was something. But the triumphs of Adolphus 
+Crosbie had been other than these. Not because he had been intimate 
+with assistant secretaries, and was allowed in Whitehall a room to 
+himself with an arm-chair, would he have been entitled to stand upon 
+the rug at Sebright's and speak while rich men listened-rich men, and 
+men also who had handles to their names! Adolphus Crosbie had done more 
+than make minutes with discretion on the papers of the General 
+Committee Office. He had set himself down before the gates of the city 
+of fashion, and had taken them by storm; or, perhaps, to speak with 
+more propriety, he had picked the locks and let himself in. In his 
+walks of life he was somebody in London. A man at the West End who did 
+not know who was Adolphus Crosbie knew nothing. I do not say that he 
+was the intimate friend of many great men; but even great men 
+acknowledged the acquaintance of Adolphus Crosbie, and he was to be 
+seen in the drawing-rooms, or at any rate on the staircases, of Cabinet 
+Ministers.
+
+Lilian Dale, dear Lily Dale-for my reader must know that she is to be 
+very dear, and that my story will be nothing to him if he do not love 
+Lily Dale-Lilian Dale had discovered that Mr Crosbie was a swell. But I 
+am bound to say that Mr Crosbie did not habitually proclaim the fact in 
+any offensive manner; nor in becoming a swell had he become altogether 
+a bad fellow. It was not to be expected that a man who was petted at 
+Sebright's should carry himself in the Allington drawing-room as would 
+Johnny Eames, who had never been petted by any one but his mother. And 
+this fraction of a hero of ours had other advantages to back him, over 
+and beyond those which fashion had given him. He was a tall, 
+well-looking man, with pleasant eyes and an expressive mouth-a man whom 
+you would probably observe in whatever room you might meet him. And he 
+knew how to talk, and had in him something which justified talking. He 
+was no butterfly or dandy, who flew about in the world's sun, warmed 
+into prettiness by a sunbeam. Crosbie had his opinion on things-on 
+politics, on religion, on the philanthropic tendencies of the age, and 
+had read something here and there as he formed his opinion. Perhaps he 
+might have done better in the world had he not been placed so early in 
+life in that Whitehall public office. There was that in him which might 
+have earned better bread for him in an open profession.
+
+But in that matter of his bread the fate of Adolphus Crosbie had by 
+this time been decided for him, and he had reconciled himself to fate 
+that was now inexorable. Some very slight patrimony, a hundred a year 
+or so, had fallen to his share. Beyond that he had his salary from his 
+office, and nothing else; and on his income, thus made up, he had lived 
+as a bachelor in London, enjoying all that London could give him as a 
+man in moderately easy circumstances, and looking forward to no costly 
+luxuries-such as a wife, a house of his own, or a stable full of 
+horses. Those which he did enjoy of the good things of the world would, 
+if known to John Eames, have made him appear fabulously rich in the 
+eyes of that brother clerk. His lodgings in Mount Street were elegant 
+in their belongings. During three months of the season in London he 
+called himself the master of a very neat hack. He was always well 
+dressed, though never over-dressed. At his clubs he could live on equal 
+terms with men having ten times his income. He was not married. He had 
+acknowledged to himself that he could not marry without money; and he 
+would not marry for money. He had put aside from him, as not within his 
+reach, the comforts of marriage. But-We will not, however, at the 
+present moment inquire more curiously into the private life and 
+circumstances of our new friend Adolphus Crosbie.
+
+After the sentence pronounced against him by Lilian, the two girls 
+remained silent for awhile. Bell was, perhaps, a little angry with her 
+sister. It was not often that she allowed herself to say much in praise 
+of any gentleman; and, now that she had spoken a word or two in favour 
+of Mr Crosbie, she felt herself to be rebuked by her sister for this 
+unwonted enthusiasm. Lily was at work on a drawing, and in a minute or 
+two had forgotten all about Mr Crosbie; but the injury remained on 
+Bell's mind and prompted her to go back to the subject." I don't like 
+those slang words, Lily."
+
+"What slang words?"
+
+"You know what you called Bernard's friend."
+
+"Oh; a swell. I fancy I do like slang. I think it's awfully jolly to 
+talk about things being jolly. Only that I was afraid of your nerves I 
+should have called him stunning. It's so slow, you know, to use nothing 
+but words out of a dictionary."
+
+"I don't think it's nice in talking of gentlemen."
+
+"Isn't it? Well, I'd like to be nice-if I knew how." If she knew how! 
+There is no knowing how, for a girl, in that matter. If nature and her 
+mother have not done it for her, there is no hope for her on that head. 
+I think I may say that nature and her mother had been sufficiently 
+efficacious for Lilian Dale in this respect.
+
+"Mr Crosbie is, at any rate, a gentleman, and knows how to make himself 
+pleasant. That was all that I meant. Mamma said a great deal more about 
+him than I did."
+
+"Mr Crosbie is an Apollo; and I always look upon Apollo as the 
+greatest-you know what-that ever lived. I mustn't say the word, because 
+Apollo was a gentleman." At this moment, while the name of the god was 
+still on her lips, the high open window of the drawing-room was 
+darkened, and Bernard entered, followed by Mr Crosbie.
+
+"Who is talking about Apollo?" said Captain Dale.
+
+The girls were both stricken dumb. How would it be with them if Mr 
+Crosbie had heard himself spoken of in those last words of poor Lily's? 
+This was the rashness of which Bell was ever accusing her sister, and 
+here was the result! But, in truth, Bernard had heard nothing more than 
+the name, and Mr Crosbie. who had been behind him, had heard nothing.
+
+"As sweet and musical as bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair," 
+said Mr Crosbie, not meaning much by the quotation, but perceiving that 
+the two girls had been in some way put out and silenced.
+
+"What very bad music it must have made," said Lily; "unless, indeed, 
+his hair was very different from ours."
+
+"It was all sunbeams," suggested Bernard. But by that time Apollo had 
+served his turn, and the ladies welcomed their guests in the proper 
+form.
+
+"Mamma is in the garden," said Bell, with that hypocritical pretence so 
+common with young ladies when young gentlemen call; as though they were 
+aware that mamma was the object specially sought.
+
+"Picking peas, with a sun bonnet on," said Lily.
+
+"Let us by all means go and help her," said Mr Crosbie; and then they 
+issued out into the garden.
+
+The gardens of the Great House of Allington and those of the Small 
+House open on to each other. A proper boundary of thick laurel hedge, 
+and wide ditch, and of iron spikes guarding the ditch, there is between 
+them; but over the wide ditch there is a foot-bridge, and at the bridge 
+there is a gate which has no key; and for all purposes of enjoyment the 
+gardens of each house are open to the other. And the gardens of the 
+Small House are very pretty. The Small House itself is so near the road 
+that there is nothing between the dining-room windows and the iron rail 
+but a narrow edge rather than border, and a little path made with round 
+fixed cobble stones, not above two feet broad, into which no one but 
+the gardener ever makes his way. The distance from the road to the 
+house is not above five or six feet, and the entrance from the gate is 
+shut in by a covered way. But the garden behind the house, on to which 
+the windows from the drawing-room open, is to all the senses as private 
+as though there were no village of Allington, and no road up to the 
+church within a hundred yards of the lawn. The steeple of the church, 
+indeed, can be seen from the lawn, peering, as it were, between the 
+yew-trees which stand in the corner of the churchyard adjoining to Mrs 
+Dale's wall. But none of the Dale family have any objection to the 
+sight of that steeple. The glory of the Small House at Allington 
+certainly consists in its lawn, which is as smooth, as level, and as 
+much like velvet as grass has ever yet been made to look. Lily Dale, 
+taking pride in her own lawn, has declared often that it is no good 
+attempting to play croquet up at the Great House. The grass, she says, 
+grows in tufts, and nothing that Hopkins, the gardener, can or will do 
+has any effect upon the tufts. But there are no tufts at the Small 
+House. As the squire himself has never been very enthusiastic about 
+croquet, the croquet implements have been moved permanently down to the 
+Small House, and croquet there has become quite an institution.
+
+And while I am on the subject of the garden I may also mention Mrs 
+Dale's conservatory, as to which Bell was strenuously of opinion that 
+the Great House had nothing to offer equal to it-"For flowers, of 
+course, I mean," she would say, correcting herself; for at the Great 
+House there was a grapery very celebrated. On thus matter the squire 
+would be less tolerant than as regarded the croquet, and would tell his 
+niece that she knew nothing about flowers." "Perhaps not, Uncle 
+Christopher," she would say. "All the same, I like our geraniums best"; 
+for there was a spice of obstinacy about Miss Dale-as, indeed, there 
+was in all the Dales, male and female, young and old.
+
+It may be as well to explain that the care of this lawn and of this 
+conservatory, and, indeed, of the entire garden belonging to the Small 
+House, was in the hands of Hopkins, the head gardener at the Great 
+House; and it was so simply for this reason, that Mrs Dale could not 
+afford to keep a gardener herself. A working lad, at ten shillings a 
+week, who cleaned the knives and shoes, and dug the ground, was the 
+only male attendant on the three ladies. But Hopkins, the head gardener 
+of Allington, who had men under him, was as widely awake to the lawn 
+and the conservatory of the humbler establishment as he was to the 
+grapery, peach-walls, and terraces of the grander one. In his eyes it 
+was all one place. The Small House belonged to his master, as indeed 
+did the very furniture within it; and it was lent, not let, to Mrs 
+Dale. Hopkins, perhaps, did not love Mrs Dale, seeing that he owed her 
+no duty as one born a Dale. The two young ladies he did love, and also 
+snubbed in a very peremptory way sometimes. To Mrs Dale he was coldly 
+civil, always referring to the squire if any direction worthy of 
+special notice as concerning the garden was given to him.
+
+All this will serve to explain the terms on which Mrs Dale was living 
+at the Small House-a matter needful of explanation sooner or later. Her 
+husband had been the youngest of three brothers, and in many respects 
+the brightest. Early in life he had gone up to London, and there had 
+done well as a land surveyor. He had done so well that Government had 
+employed him, and for some three or four years he had enjoyed a large 
+income, but death had come suddenly on him, while he was only yet 
+ascending the ladder; and, when he died, he had hardly begun to realise 
+the golden prospects which he had seen before him. This had happened 
+some fifteen years before our story commenced, so that the two girls 
+hardly retained any memory of their father. For the first five years of 
+her widowhood, Mrs Dale, who had never been a favourite of the 
+squire's, lived with her two little girls in such modest way as her 
+very limited means allowed. Old Mrs Dale, the squire's mother, then 
+occupied the Small House. But when old Mrs Dale died, the squire 
+offered the place rent-free to his sister-in-law, intimating to her 
+that her daughters would obtain considerable social advantages by 
+living at Allington. She had accepted the offer, and the social 
+advantages had certainly followed. Mrs Dale was poor, her whole income 
+not exceeding three hundred a year, and therefore her own style of 
+living was of necessity very unassuming; but she saw her girls becoming 
+popular in the county, much liked by the families around them, and 
+enjoying nearly all the advantages which would have accrued to them had 
+they been the daughters of Squire Dale of Allington. Under such 
+circumstances it was little to her whether or no she were loved by her 
+brother-in-law, or respected by Hopkins. Her own girls loved her, and 
+respected her, and that was pretty much all that she demanded of the 
+world on her own behalf.
+
+And Uncle Christopher had been very good to the girls in his own 
+obstinate and somewhat ungracious manner. There were two ponies in the 
+stables of the Great House, which they were allowed to ride, and which, 
+unless on occasions, nobody else did ride. I think he might have given 
+the ponies to the girls, but he thought differently. And he contributed 
+to their dresses, sending them. home now and again things which he 
+thought necessary, not in the pleasantest way in the world. Money he 
+never gave them, nor did he make them any promises. But they were 
+Dales, and he loved them; and with Christopher Dale to love once was to 
+love always. Bell was his chief favourite, sharing with his nephew 
+Bernard the best warmth of his heart. About these two he had his 
+projects, intending that Bell should be the future mistress of the 
+Great House of Allington; as to which project, however, Miss Dale was 
+as yet in very absolute ignorance.
+
+We may now, I think, go back to our four friends, as they walked out 
+upon the lawn. They were understood to be on a mission to assist Mrs 
+Dale in the picking of the peas; but pleasure intervened in the way of 
+business, and the young people, forgetting the labours of their elder, 
+allowed themselves to be carried away by the fascinations of croquet. 
+The iron hoops and the sticks were fixed. The mallets and the balls 
+were lying about; and then the party was so nicely made up! "I haven't 
+had a game of croquet yet," said Mr Crosbie. It cannot be said that he 
+had lost much time, seeing that he had only arrived before dinner on 
+the preceding day. And then the mallets were in their hands in a moment.
+
+"We'll play sides, of course," said Lily. "Bernard and I'll play 
+together." But this was not allowed. Lily was well known to be the 
+queen of the croquet ground; and as Bernard was supposed to be more 
+efficient than his friend, Lily had to take Mr Crosbie as her partner. 
+"Apollo can't get through the hoops," Lily said afterwards to her 
+sister; "but then how gracefully he fails to do it!" Lily, however, had 
+been beaten, and may therefore be excused for a little spite against 
+her partner. But it so turned out that before Mr Crosbie took his final 
+departure from Allington he could get through the hoops; and Lily, 
+though she was still queen of the croquet ground, had to acknowledge a 
+male sovereign in that dominion.
+
+"That's not the way we played at-" said Crosbie, at one point of the 
+game, and then stopped himself.
+
+"Where was that?" said Bernard.
+
+"A place I was at last summer-in Shropshire,"
+
+"Then they don't play the game, Mr Crosbie, at the place you were at 
+last summer-in Shropshire," said Lily.
+
+"You mean Lady Hartletop's," said Bernard. Now, the Marchioness of 
+Hartletop was a very great person indeed, and a leader in the 
+fashionable world.
+
+"Oh! Lady Hartletop's!" said Lily. "Then I suppose we must give in;" 
+which little bit of sarcasm was not lost upon Mr Crosbie, and was put 
+down by him in the tablets of his mind as quite undeserved. He had 
+endeavoured to avoid any mention of Lady Hartletop and her croquet 
+ground, and her ladyship's name had been forced upon him. Nevertheless, 
+he liked Lily Dale through it all. But he thought that he liked Bell 
+the best, though she said little; for Bell was the beauty of the family.
+
+During the game Bernard remembered that they had especially come over 
+to bid the three ladies to dinner at the house on that day. They had 
+all dined there on the day before, and the girls' uncle had now sent 
+directions to them to come again." I'll go and ask mamma about it," 
+said Bell, who was out first. And then she returned, saying, that she 
+and her sister would obey their uncle's behest; but that her mother 
+would prefer to remain at home." There are the peas to be eaten, you 
+know," said Lily.
+
+"Send them up to the Great House," said Bernard.
+
+"Hopkins would not allow it," said Lily. "He calls that a mixing of 
+things. Hopkins doesn't like mixings." And then when the game was over, 
+they sauntered about, out of the small garden into the larger one, and 
+through the shrubberies, and out upon the fields, where they found the 
+still lingering remnants of the haymaking. And Lily took a rake, and 
+raked for two minutes; and Mr Crosbie, making an attempt to pitch the 
+hay into the cart, had to pay half-a-crown for his footing to the 
+hay-makers; and Bell sat quiet under a tree, mindful of her complexion; 
+whereupon Mr Crosbie, finding the hay-pitching not much to his taste, 
+threw himself under the same tree also, quite after the manner of 
+Apollo, as Lily said to her mother late in the evening. Then Bernard 
+covered Lily with hay, which was a great feat in the jocose way for 
+him; and Lily in returning the compliment, almost smothered Mr 
+Crosbie-by accident.
+
+"Oh, Lily," said Bell.
+
+"I'm sure I beg your pardon, Mr Crosbie. It was Bernard's fault. 
+Bernard, I never will come into a hayfield with you again." And so they 
+all became very intimate; while Bell sat quietly under the tree, 
+listening to a word or two now and then as Mr Crosbie chose to speak 
+them. There is a kind of enjoyment to be had in society, in which very 
+few words are necessary. Dell was less vivacious than her sister Lily; 
+and when, an hour after this, she was dressing herself for dinner, she 
+acknowledged that she had passed a pleasant afternoon, though Mr 
+Crosbie had not said very much.
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE WIDOW DALE OF ALLINGTON
+
+
+As Mrs Dale, of the Small House, was not a Dale by birth, there can be 
+no necessity for insisting on the fact that none of the Dale 
+peculiarities should be sought for in her character. These 
+peculiarities were not, perhaps, very conspicuous in her daughters, who 
+had taken more in that respect from their mother than from their 
+father; but a close observer might recognise the girls as Dales. They 
+were constant, perhaps obstinate, occasionally a little uncharitable in 
+their judgment, and prone to think that there was a great deal in being 
+a Dale, though not prone to say much about it. But they had also a 
+better pride than this, which had come to them as their mother's 
+heritage.
+
+Mrs Dale was certainly a proud woman-not that there was anything 
+appertaining to herself in which she took a pride. In birth she had 
+been much lower than her husband, seeing that her grandfather had been 
+almost nobody. Her fortune had been considerable for her rank in life, 
+and on its proceeds she now mainly depended; but it had not been 
+sufficient to give any of the pride of wealth. And she had been a 
+beauty; according to my taste, was still very lovely; but certainly at 
+this time of life, she, a widow of fifteen years' standing, with two 
+grown-up daughters, took no pride in her beauty. Nor had she any 
+conscious pride in the fact that she was a lady. That she was a lady, 
+inwards and outwards, from the crown of her head to the sole of her 
+feet, in head, in heart, and in mind, a lady by education and a lady by 
+nature, a lady also by birth in spite of that deficiency respecting her 
+grandfather, I hereby state as a fact-mea periculo. And the squire, 
+though he had no special love for her, had recognised this, and in all 
+respects treated her as his equal.
+
+But her position was one which required that she should either be very 
+proud or else very humble. She was poor, and yet her daughters moved in 
+a position which belongs, as a rule, to the daughters of rich men only. 
+This they did as nieces of the childless squire of Allington, and as 
+his nieces she felt that they were entitled to accept his countenance 
+and kindness, without loss of self-respect either to her or to them. 
+She would have ill done her duty as a mother to them had she allowed 
+any pride of her own to come between them and such advantage in the 
+world as their uncle might be able to give them. On their behalf she 
+had accepted the loan of the house in which she lived, and the use of 
+many of the appurtenances belonging to her brother-in-law; but on her 
+own account she had accepted nothing. Her marriage with Philip Dale had 
+been disliked by his brother the squire, and the squire, while Philip 
+was still living, had continued to show that his feelings in this 
+respect were not to be overcome. They never had been overcome; and now, 
+though the brother-in-law and sister-in-law had been close neighbours 
+for years, living as one may say almost in the same family, they had 
+never become friends. There had not been a word of quarrel between 
+them. They met constantly. The squire had unconsciously come to 
+entertain a profound respect for his brother's widow. The widow had 
+acknowledged to herself the truth of the affection shown by the uncle 
+to her daughters. But yet they had never come together as friends. Of 
+her own money matters Mrs Dale had never spoken a word to the squire. 
+Of his intention respecting the girls the squire had never spoken a 
+word to the mother. And in this way they had lived and were living at 
+Allington.
+
+The life which Mrs Dale led was not altogether an easy life-was not 
+devoid of much painful effort on her part. The theory of her life one 
+may say was this-that she should bury herself in order that her 
+daughters might live well above ground. And in order to carry out this 
+theory, it was necessary that she should abstain from all complaint or 
+show of uneasiness before her girls. Their life above ground would not 
+be well if they understood that their mother, in this underground life 
+of hers, was enduring any sacrifice on their behalf. It was needful 
+that they should think that the picking of peas in a sun bonnet, or 
+long readings by her own fire-side, and solitary hours spent in 
+thinking, were specially to her mind. "Mamma doesn't like going out."
+
+"I don't think mamma is happy anywhere out of her own drawing-room." I 
+do not say that the girls were taught to say such words, but they were 
+taught to have thoughts which led to such words, and in the early days 
+of their going out into the world used so to speak of their mother. But 
+a time came to them before long-to one first and then to the other, in 
+which they knew that it was not so, and knew also all that their mother 
+had suffered for their sakes.
+
+And in truth Mrs Dale could have been as young in heart as they were. 
+She, too, could have played croquet, and have coquetted with a 
+haymaker's rake, and have delighted in her pony, ay, and have listened 
+to little nothings from this and that Apollo, had she thought that 
+things had been conformable thereto. Women at forty do not become 
+ancient misanthropes, or stem Rhadamanthine moralists, indifferent to 
+the world's pleasures-no, not even though they be widows. There are 
+those who think that such should be the phase of their minds. I profess 
+that I do not so think. I would have women, and men also, young as long 
+as they can be young. It is not that a woman should call herself in 
+years younger than her father's family Bible will have her to be. Let 
+her who is forty call herself forty; but if she can be young in spirit 
+at forty, let her show that she is so.
+
+I think that Mrs Dale was wrong. She would have joined that party on 
+the croquet ground, instead of remaining among the pea-sticks in her 
+sun bonnet, had she done as I would have counselled her. Not a word was 
+spoken among the four that she did not hear. Those pea-sticks were only 
+removed from the lawn by a low wall and a few shrubs. She listened, not 
+as one suspecting, but simply as one loving. The voices of her girls 
+were very dear to her, and the silver ringing tones of Lily's tongue 
+were as sweet to her ears as the music of the gods. She heard all that 
+about Lady Hartletop, and shuddered at Lily's bold sarcasm. And she 
+heard Lily say that mamma would stay at home and eat the peas, and said 
+to herself sadly that that was now her lot in life.
+
+"Dear darling girl-and so it should be!" It was thus her thoughts ran. 
+And then, when her ear had traced them, as they passed across the 
+little bridge into the other grounds, she returned across the lawn to 
+the house with her burden on her arm, and sat herself down on the step 
+of the drawing-room window, looking out on the sweet summer flowers and 
+the smooth surface of the grass before her.
+
+Had not God done well for her to place her where she was? Had not her 
+lines been set for her in pleasant places? Was she not happy in her 
+girls-her sweet, loving, trusting, trusty children? As it was to be 
+that her lord, that best half of herself, was to be taken from her in 
+early life, and that the springs of all the lighter pleasures were to 
+be thus stopped for her, had it not been well that in her bereavement 
+so much had been done to soften her lot in life and give it grace and 
+beauty? Twas so, she argued with herself, and yet she acknowledged to 
+herself that she was not happy. She had resolved, as she herself had 
+said often, to put away childish things, and now she pined for those 
+things which she so put from her. As she sat she could still hear 
+Lily's voice as they went through the shrubbery-hear it when none but a 
+mother's ears would have distinguished the sound. Now that those young 
+men were at the Great House it was natural that her girls should be 
+there too. The squire would not have had young men to stay with him had 
+there been no ladies to grace his table. But for her-she knew that no 
+one would want her there. Now and again she must go, as otherwise her 
+very existence, without going, would be a thing disagreeably 
+noticeable. But there was no other reason why she should join the 
+party; nor in joining it would she either give or receive pleasure. Let 
+her daughters eat from her brother's table and drink of his cup. They 
+were made welcome to do so from the heart. For her there was no such 
+welcome as that at the Great House-nor at any other house, or any other 
+table!
+
+"Mamma will stay at home to eat the peas." And then she repeated to 
+herself the words which Lily had spoken, sitting there, leaning with 
+her elbow on her knee, and her head upon her hand.
+
+"Please, ma'am, cook says, can we have the peas to shell?" and then her 
+reverie was broken.
+
+Whereupon Mrs Dale got up and gave over her basket. "Cook knows that 
+the young ladies are going to dine at the Great House?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"She needn't mind getting dinner for me. I will have tea early." And 
+so, after all, Mrs Dale did not perform that special duty appointed for 
+her.
+
+But she soon set herself to work upon another duty. When a family of 
+three persons has to live upon an income of three hundred a year, and, 
+nevertheless, makes some pretence of going into society, it has to be 
+very mindful of small details, even though that family may consist only 
+of ladies. Of this Mrs Dale was well aware, and as it pleased her that 
+her daughters should be nice and fresh, and pretty in their attire, 
+many a long hour was given up to that care. The squire would send them 
+shawls in winter, and had given them riding habits, and had sent them 
+down brown silk dresses from London-so limited in quantity that the due 
+manufacture of two dresses out of the material had been found to be 
+beyond the art of woman, and the brown silk garments had been a 
+difficulty from that day to this-the squire having a good memory in 
+such matters, and being anxious to see the fruits of his liberality. 
+All this was doubtless of assistance, but had the squire given the 
+amount which he so expended in money to his nieces, the benefit would 
+have been greater. As it was, the girls were always nice and fresh and 
+pretty, they themselves not being idle in that matter; but their 
+tire-woman in chief was their mother. And now she went up to their room 
+and got out their muslin frocks, and-but, perhaps, I should not tell 
+such tales!-She, however, felt no shame in her work, as she sent for a 
+hot iron, and with her own hands smoothed out the creases, and gave the 
+proper set to the crimp flounces, and fixed a new ribbon where it was 
+wanted, and saw that all was as it should be. Men think but little how 
+much of this kind is endured that their eyes may be pleased, even 
+though it be but for an hour.
+
+"Oh! mamma, how good you are," said Bell, as the two girls came in, 
+only just in time to make themselves ready for returning to dinner.
+
+"Mamma is always good," said Lily. "I wish, mamma, I could do the same 
+for you oftener," and then she kissed her mother. But the squire was 
+exact about dinner, so they dressed themselves in haste, and went off 
+again through the garden, their mother accompanying them to the little 
+bridge.
+
+"Your uncle did not seem vexed at my not coming?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"We have not seen him, mamma," said Lily. "We have been ever so far 
+down the fields, and forgot altogether what o'clock it was."
+
+"I don't think Uncle Christopher was about the place, or we should have 
+met him," said Bell.
+
+"But I am vexed with you, mamma. Are not you, Bell? It is very bad of 
+you to stay here all alone, and not come."
+
+"I suppose mamma likes being at home better than up at the Great 
+House," said Bell, very gently; and as she spoke she was holding her 
+mother's hand.
+
+"Well; good-bye, dears. I shall expect you between ten and eleven. But 
+don't hurry yourselves if anything is going on." And so they went, and 
+the widow was again alone. The path from the bridge ran straight up 
+towards the back of the Great House, so that for a moment or two she 
+could see them as they tripped on almost in a run. And then she saw 
+their dresses flutter as they turned sharp round, up the terrace steps, 
+She would not go beyond the nook among the laurels by which she was 
+surrounded, lest any one should see her as she looked after her girls. 
+But when the last flutter of the pink muslin had been whisked away from 
+her sight, she felt it hard that she might not follow them. She stood 
+there, however, without advancing a step. She would not have Hopkins 
+telling how she watched her daughters as they went from her own home to 
+that of her brother-in-law. It was not within the capacity of Hopkins 
+to understand why she watched them.
+
+"Well, girls, you're not much too soon. I think your mother might have 
+come with you," said Uncle Christopher. And this was the manner of the 
+man. Had he known his own wishes he must have acknowledged to himself 
+that he was better pleased that Mrs Dale should stay away. He felt 
+himself more absolutely master and more comfortably at home at his own 
+table without her company than with it. And yet he frequently made a 
+grievance of her not corning, and himself believed in that grievance.
+
+"I think mamma was tired," said Bell.
+
+"Hem. It's not so very far across from one house to the other. If I 
+were to shut myself up whenever I'm tired-. But never mind. Let's go to 
+dinner. Mr Crosbie, will you take my niece Lilian." And then, offering 
+his own arm to Bell, he walked off to the dining-room.
+
+"If he scolds mamma any more, I'll go away," said Lily to her 
+companion; by which it may be seen that they had all become very 
+intimate during the long day that they had passed together.
+
+Mrs Dale, after remaining for a moment on the bridge, went in to her 
+tea. What succedaneum of mutton chop or broiled ham she had for the 
+roast duck and green peas which were to have beers provided for the 
+family dinner we will not particularly inquire. We may, however, 
+imagine that she did not devote herself to her evening repast with any 
+peculiar energy of appetite. She took a book with her as she sat 
+herself down-some novel, probably, for Mrs Dale was not above 
+novels-and read a page or two as she sipped her tea. But the book was 
+soon laid on one side, and the tray on which the warm plate had become 
+cold was neglected, and she threw herself back in her own familiar 
+chair, thinking of herself, and of her girls, and thinking also what 
+might have been her lot in life had he lived who had loved her truly 
+during the few years that they had been together.
+
+It is especially the nature of a Dale to be constant in his likings and 
+his dislikings. Her husband's affection for her had been unswerving-so 
+much so that he had quarrelled with his brother because his brother 
+would not express himself in brotherly terms about his wife; but, 
+nevertheless, the two brothers had loved each other always. Many years 
+had now gone by since these things had occurred, but still the same 
+feelings remained. When she had first come down to Allington she had 
+resolved to win the squire's regard, but she had now long known that 
+any such winning was out of the question; indeed, there was no longer a 
+wish for it. Mrs Dale was not one of those soft-hearted women who 
+sometimes thank God that they can love any one. She could once have 
+felt affection for her brother-in-law-affection, and close, careful, 
+sisterly friendship; but she could not do so now. He had been cold to 
+her, and had with perseverance rejected her advances. That was now 
+seven years since; and during those years Mrs Dale had been, at any 
+rate, as cold to him as he had been to her.
+
+But all this was very hard to bear. That her daughters should love 
+their uncle was not only reasonable, but in every way desirable. He was 
+not cold to them. To them he was generous and affectionate. If she were 
+only out of the way, he would have taken them to his house as his own, 
+and they would in all respects have stood before the world as his 
+adopted children. Would it not be better if she were out of the way?
+
+It was only in her most dismal moods that this question would get 
+itself asked within her mind, and then she would recover herself, and 
+answer it stoutly with an indignant protest against her own morbid 
+weakness. It would not be well that she should be away from her 
+girls-not though their uncle should have been twice a better uncle; not 
+though, by her absence, they might become heiresses of all Allington. 
+Was it not above everything to them that they should have a mother near 
+them? And as she asked of herself that morbid question-wickedly asked 
+it, as she declared to herself-did she not know that they loved her 
+better than all the world beside, and would prefer her caresses and her 
+care to the guardianship of any uncle, let his house be ever so great? 
+As yet they loved her better than all the world beside. Of other love, 
+should it come, she would not be jealous. And if it should come, and 
+should be happy, might there not yet be a bright evening of life for 
+herself? If they should marry, and if their lords would accept her 
+love, her friendship, and her homage, she might yet escape from the 
+deathlike coldness of that Great House, and be happy in some tiny 
+cottage, from which she might go forth at times among those who would 
+really welcome her. A certain doctor there was, living not very far 
+from Allington, at Guestwick, as to whom she had once thought that he 
+might fill that place of son-in-law-to be well-beloved. Her quiet, 
+beautiful Bell had seemed to like the man; and he had certainly done 
+more than seem to like her. But now, for some weeks past, this hope, or 
+rather this idea, had faded away. Mrs Dale had never questioned her 
+daughter on the matter; she was not a woman prone to put such 
+questions. But during the month or two last past, she had seen with 
+regret that Bell looked almost coldly on the man whom her mother 
+favoured.
+
+In thinking of all this the long evening passed away, and at eleven 
+o'clock she heard the coming steps across the garden. The young men 
+had, of course, accompanied the girls home; and as she stepped out from 
+the still open window of her own drawing-room, she saw them all on the 
+centre of the lawn before her.
+
+"There's mamma," said Lily." Mamma, Mr Crosbie wants to play croquet by 
+moonlight."
+
+"I don't think there is light enough for that," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"There is light enough for him," said Lily, "for he plays quite 
+independently of the hoops; don't you, Mr Crosbie?"
+
+"There's very pretty croquet light, I should say," said Mr Crosbie, 
+looking up at the bright moon; "and then it is so stupid going to bed."
+
+"Yes, it is stupid going to bed," said Lily;" but people in the country 
+are stupid, you know. Billiards, that you can play all night by gas, is 
+much better, isn't it?"
+
+"Your arrows fall terribly astray there, Miss Dale, for I never touch a 
+cue; you should talk to your cousin about billiards."
+
+"Is Bernard a great billiard player," asked Bell.
+
+"Well, I do play now and again; about as well as Crosbie does croquet. 
+Come, Crosbie, we'll go home and smoke a cigar."
+
+"Yes," said Lily; "and then, you know, we stupid people can go to bed. 
+Mamma, I wish you had a little smoking-room here for us. I don't like 
+being considered stupid." And then they parted-the ladies going into 
+the house, and the two men returning across the lawn.
+
+"Lily, my love," said Mrs Dale, when they were all together in her 
+bedroom, "it seems to me that you are very hard upon Mr Crosbie."
+
+"She has been going on like that all the evening," said Bell.
+
+"I'm sure we are very good friends," said Lily.
+
+"Oh, very," said Bell.
+
+"Now, Bell, you're jealous; you know you are." And then, seeing that 
+her sister was in some slight degree vexed, she went up to her and 
+kissed her. "She shan't be called jealous; shall she, mamma?"
+
+"I don't think she deserves it," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Now, you don't mean to say that you think I meant anything," said 
+Lily. "As if I cared a buttercup about Mr Crosbie."
+
+"Or I either, Lily."
+
+"Of course you don't. But I do care for him very much, mamma. He is 
+such a duck of an Apollo. I shall always call him Apollo; Phoebus 
+Apollo! And when I draw his picture he shall have a mallet in his hand 
+instead of a bow. Upon my word I am very much obliged to Bernard for 
+bringing him down here; and I do wish he was not going away the day 
+after tomorrow."
+
+"The day after tomorrow!" said Mrs Dale. It was hardly worth coming for 
+two days."
+
+"No, it wasn't-disturbing us all in our quiet little ways just for such 
+a spell as that-not giving one time even to count his rays."
+"But he says he shall perhaps come again," said Bell.
+
+"There is that hope for us," said Lily. "Uncle Christopher asked him to 
+come down when he gets his long leave of absence. This is only a short 
+sort of leave. He is better off than poor Johnny Eames. Johnny Eames 
+only has a month, but Mr Crosbie has two months just whenever he likes 
+it; and seems co be pretty much his own master all the year round 
+besides."
+
+"And Uncle Christopher asked him to come down for the shooting in 
+September," said Bell.
+
+"And though he didn't say he'd come I think he meant it," said Lily. 
+"There is that hope for us, mamma."
+
+"Then you'll have to draw Apollo with a gun instead of a mallet."
+
+"That is the worst of it, mamma. We shan't see much of him or of 
+Bernard either. They wouldn't let us go out into the woods as beaters, 
+would they?"
+
+"You'd make too much noise to be of any use."
+
+"Should I? I thought the beaters had to shout at the birds. I should 
+get very tired of shouting at birds, so I think I'll stay at home and 
+look after my clothes."
+
+"I hope he will come, because Uncle Christopher seems to like him so 
+much," said Bell.
+
+"I wonder whether a certain gentleman at Guestwick will like his 
+coming," said Lily. And then, as soon as she had spoken the words, she 
+looked at her sister, and saw that she had grieved her.
+
+"Lily, you let your tongue run too fast," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I didn't mean anything, Bell," said Lily." I beg your pardon."
+
+"It doesn't signify," said Bell. "Only Lily says things without 
+thinking." And then that conversation came to an end, and nothing more 
+was said among them beyond what appertained to their toilet, and a few 
+last words at parting. But the two girls occupied the same room, and 
+when their own door was closed upon them, Bell did allude to what had 
+passed with some spirit.
+
+"Lily, you promised me," she said, "that you would not say anything 
+more to me about Dr Crofts."
+
+"I know I did, and I was very wrong. I beg your pardon, Bell; and I 
+won't do it again-not if I can help it."
+
+"Not help it, Lily!"
+
+"But I'm sure I don't know why I shouldn't speak of him-only not in the 
+way of laughing at you. Of all the men I ever saw in my life I like him 
+best. And only that I love you better than I love myself I could find 
+it in my heart to grudge you his-"
+
+"Lily, what did you promise just now?"
+
+"Well; after to-night. And I don't know why you should turn against 
+him."
+
+"I have never turned against him or for him."
+
+"There's no turning about him. He'd give his left hand if you'd only 
+smile on him. Or his right either-and that's what I should like to see; 
+so now you've heard it."
+
+"You know you are talking nonsense."
+
+"So I should like to see it. And so would mamma too, I'm sure; though I 
+never heard her say a word about him. In my mind he's the finest fellow 
+I ever saw. What's Mr Apollo Crosbie to him? And now, as it makes you 
+unhappy, I'll never say another word about him." As Bell wished her 
+sister good-night with perhaps more than her usual affection, it was 
+evident that Lily's words and eager tone had in some way pleased her, 
+in spite of their opposition to the request which she had made. And 
+Lily was aware that it was so.
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MRS ROPER'S BOARDING-HOUSE
+
+
+I have said that John Eames had been petted by none but his mother, but 
+I would not have it supposed, on this account, that John Eames had no 
+friends. There is a class of young men who never get petted, though 
+they may not be the less esteemed, or perhaps loved. They do not come 
+forth to the world as Apollos, nor shine at all, keeping what light 
+they may have for inward purposes. Such young men are often awkward, 
+ungainly, and not yet formed in their gait; they straggle with their 
+limbs, and are shy; words do not come to them with ease, when words are 
+required, among any but their accustomed associates. Social meetings 
+are periods of penance to them, and any appearance in public will 
+unnerve them. They go much about alone, and blush when women speak to 
+them. In truth, they are not as yet men, whatever the number may be of 
+their years; and, as they are no longer boys, the world has found for 
+them the ungraceful name of hobbledehoy.
+
+Such observations, however, as I have been enabled to make in this 
+matter have led me to believe that the hobbledehoy is by no means the 
+least valuable species of the human race. When I compare the 
+hobbledehoy of one or two and twenty to some finished Apollo of the 
+same age, I regard the former as unripe fruit, and the latter as fruit 
+that is ripe. Then comes the question as to the two fruits. Which is 
+the better fruit, that which ripens early-which is, perhaps, favoured 
+with some little forcing apparatus, or which, at least, is backed by 
+the warmth of a southern wall; or that fruit of slower growth, as to 
+which nature works without assistance, on which the sun operates in its 
+own time-or perhaps never operates if some ungenial shade has been 
+allowed to interpose itself? The world, no doubt, is in favour of the 
+forcing apparatus or of the southern wall. The fruit comes certainly, 
+and at an assured period. It is spotless, speck-less, and of a certain 
+quality by no means despicable. The owner has it when he wants it, and 
+it serves its turn. But, nevertheless, according to my thinking, the 
+fullest flavour of the sun is given to that other fruit-is given in the 
+sun's own good time, if so be that no ungenial shade has interposed 
+itself. I like the smack of the natural growth, and like it, perhaps, 
+the better because that which has been obtained has been obtained 
+without favour.
+
+But the hobbledehoy, though he blushes when women address him, and is 
+uneasy even when he is near them, though he is not master of his limbs 
+in a ball-room, and is hardly master of his tongue at any time, is the 
+most eloquent of beings, and especially eloquent among beautiful women. 
+He enjoys all the triumphs of a Don Juan, without any of Don Juan's 
+heartlessness, and is able to conquer in all encounters, through the 
+force of his wit and the sweetness of his voice. But this eloquence is 
+heard only by his own inner ears, and these triumphs are the triumphs 
+of his imagination.
+
+The true hobbledehoy is much alone, not being greatly given to social 
+intercourse even with other hohbledehoys-a trait in his character which 
+I think has hardly been sufficiently observed by the world at large. He 
+has probably become a hobbledehoy instead of an Apollo, because 
+circumstances have not afforded him much social intercourse; and, 
+therefore, he wanders about in solitude, taking long walks, in which he 
+dreams of those successes which are so far removed from his powers of 
+achievement. Out in the fields, with his stick in his hand, he is very 
+eloquent, cutting off the heads of the springing summer weeds, as he 
+practises his oratory with energy. And thus he feeds an imagination for 
+which those who know him give him but scanty credit, and unconsciously 
+prepares himself for that latter ripening, if only the ungenial shade 
+will some day cease to interpose itself.
+
+Such hobbledehoys receive but little petting, unless it be from a 
+mother; and such a hobbledehoy was John Eames when he was sent away 
+from Guestwick to begin his life in the big room of a public office in 
+London. We may say that there was nothing of the young Apollo about 
+him. But yet he was not without friends-friends who wished him well, 
+and thought much of his welfare. And he had a younger sister who loved 
+him dearly, who had no idea that he was a hobbledehoy, being somewhat 
+of a hobbledehoy herself. Mrs Eames, their mother, was a widow, living 
+in a small house in Guestwick, whose husband had been throughout his 
+whole life an intimate friend of our squire. He had been a man of many 
+misfortunes, having begun the world almost with affluence, and having 
+ended it in poverty. He had lived all his days in Guestwick, having at 
+one time occupied a large tract of land, and lost much money in 
+experimental farming; and late in life he had taken a small house on 
+the outskirts of the town, and there had died, some two years 
+previously to the commencement of this story. With no other man had Mr 
+Dale lived on terms so intimate; and when Mr Eames died Mr Dale acted 
+as executor under his will, and as guardian to his children. He had, 
+moreover, obtained for John Eames that situation under the Crown which 
+he now held.
+
+And Mrs Eames had been and still was on very friendly terms with Mrs 
+Dale. The squire had never taken quite kindly to Mrs Eames, whom her 
+husband had not met till he was already past forty years of age. But 
+Mrs Dale had made up by her kindness to the poor forlorn woman for any 
+lack of that cordiality which might have been shown to her from the 
+Great House. Mrs Eames was a poor forlorn woman-forlorn even during the 
+time of her husband's life, but very woebegone now in her widowhood. In 
+matters of importance the squire had been kind to her; arranging for 
+her little money affairs, advising her about her house and income, also 
+getting for her that appointment for her son. But he snubbed her when 
+he met her, and poor Mrs Eames held him in great awe. Mrs Dale held her 
+brother-in-law in no awe, and sometimes gave to the widow from 
+Guestwick advice quite at variance to that given by the squire. In this 
+way there had grown up an intimacy between Bell and Lily and the young 
+Eames, and either of the girls was prepared to declare that Johnny 
+Eames was her own and well-loved friend. Nevertheless, they spoke of 
+him occasionally with some little dash of merriment-as is not unusual 
+with pretty girls who have hobbledehoys among their intimate friends, 
+and who are not themselves unaccustomed to the grace of an Apollo.
+
+I may as well announce at once that John Eames, when he went up to 
+London, was absolutely and irretrievably in love with Lily Dale. He had 
+declared his passion in the most moving language a hundred times; but 
+he had declared it only to himself. He had written much poetry about 
+Lily, but he kept his lines safe under double lock and key. When he 
+gave the reins to his imagination, he flattered himself that he might 
+win not only her but the world at large also by his verses; but he 
+would have perished rather than exhibit them to human eye. During the 
+last ten weeks of his life at Guestwick, while he was preparing for his 
+career in London, he hung about Allington, walking over frequently and 
+then walking back again; but all in vain. During these visits he would 
+sit in Mrs Dale's drawing-room, speaking but little, and addressing 
+himself usually to the mother; but on each occasion, as he started on 
+his long, hot walk, he resolved that he would say something by which 
+Lily might know of his love. When he left for London that something had 
+not been said.
+
+He had not dreamed of asking her to be his wife. John Eames was about 
+to begin the world with eighty pounds a year, and an allowance of 
+twenty more from his mother's purse. He was well aware that with such 
+an income he could not establish himself as a married man in London, 
+and he also felt that the man who might be fortunate enough to win Lily 
+for his wife should be prepared to give her every soft luxury that the 
+world could afford. He knew well that he ought not to expect any 
+assurance of Lily's love; but, nevertheless, he thought it possible 
+that he might give her an assurance of his love. It would probably be 
+in vain. He had no real hope, unless when he was in one of those poetic 
+moods. He had acknowledged to himself, in some indistinct way, that he 
+was no more than a hobbledehoy, awkward, silent, ungainly, with a face 
+unfinished, as it were, or unripe. All this he knew, and knew also that 
+there were Apollos in the world who would be only too ready to carry 
+off Lily in their splendid cars. But not the less did he make up his 
+mind that having loved her once, it behoved him, as a true man, to love 
+her on to the end.
+
+One little word he had said to her when they parted, but it had been a 
+word of friendship rather than of love. He had strayed out after her on 
+to the lawn, leaving Bell alone in the drawing-room. Perhaps Lily had 
+understood something of the boy's feelings, and had wished to speak 
+kindly to him at parting, or almost more than kindly. There is a silent 
+love which women recognise, and which in some silent way they 
+acknowledge-giving gracious but silent thanks for the respect which 
+accompanies it." I have come to say good-bye, Lily," said Johnny Eames, 
+following the girl down one of the paths.
+
+"Good-bye, John," said she, turning round. "You know how sorry we are 
+to lose you. But it's a great thing for you to be going up to London."
+
+"Well, yes. I suppose it is. I'd sooner remain here, though."
+
+"What! stay here, doing nothing! I am sure you would not."
+
+"Of course, I should like to do something. I mean-"
+
+"You mean that it is painful to part with old friends; and I'm sure 
+that we all feel that at parting with you. But you'll have a holiday 
+sometimes, and then we shall see you."
+
+"Yes; of course, I shall see you then. I think, Lily, I shall care more 
+about seeing you than anybody."
+
+"Oh, no, John. There'll be your own mother and sister."
+
+"Yes; there'll be mother and Mary, of course. But I will come, over 
+here the very first day-that is, if you'll care to see me?"
+
+"We shall care to see you very much. You know that. And-dear John, I do 
+hope you'll be happy." There was a tone in her voice as she spoke which 
+almost upset him; or, I should rather say, which almost put him up upon 
+his legs and made him speak; but its ultimate effect was less powerful."
+
+"Do you?" said he, as he held her hand for a few happy seconds. "And 
+I'm sure I hope you'll always be happy. Good-bye, Lily." Then he left 
+her, returning to the house, and she continued her walk, wandering down 
+among the trees in the shrubbery, and not showing herself for the next 
+half hour. How many girls have some such lover as that-a lover who says 
+no more to them than Johnny Eames then said to Lily Dale, who never 
+says more than that? And yet when, in after years, they count over the 
+names of all who have loved them, the name of that awkward youth is 
+never forgotten.
+
+That farewell had been spoken nearly two years since, and Lily Dale was 
+then seventeen. Since that time, John Eames had been home once, and 
+during his month's holidays had often visited Allington. But he had 
+never improved upon that occasion of which I have told. It had seemed 
+to him that Lily was colder to him than in old days, and he had become, 
+if anything, more shy in his ways with her. He was to return to 
+Guestwick again during this autumn; but, to tell honestly the truth in 
+the matter, Lily Dale did not think or care very much for his coming. 
+Girls of nineteen do not care for lovers of one-and-twenty, unless it 
+be when the fruit has had the advantage of some forcing apparatus or 
+southern wall.
+
+John Eames's love was still as hot as ever, having been sustained on 
+poetry, and kept alive, perhaps, by some close confidence in the ears 
+of a brother clerk; but it is not to be supposed that during these two 
+years he had been a melancholy lover. It might, perhaps, have been 
+better for him had his disposition led him to that line of life. Such, 
+however, had not been the case. He had already abandoned the flute on 
+which he had learned to sound three sad notes before he left Guestwick, 
+and, after the fifth or sixth Sunday, he had relinquished his solitary 
+walks along the towing-path of the Regent's Park Canal. To think of 
+one's absent love is very sweet; but it becomes monotonous after a mile 
+or two of a towing-path, and the mind will turn away to Aunt Sally, the 
+Cremorne Gardens, and financial questions. I doubt whether any girl 
+would be satisfied with her lover's mind if she knew the whole of it.
+
+"I say, Caudle, I wonder whether a fellow could get into a club?" This 
+proposition was made, on one of those Sunday walks, by John Eames to 
+the friend of his bosom, a brother clerk, whose legitimate name was 
+Cradell, and who was therefore called Caudle by his friends.
+
+"Get into a club? Fisher in our room belongs to a club."
+
+"That's only a chess-club. I mean a regular club."
+
+"One of the swell ones at the West End?" said Cradell, almost lost in 
+admiration at the ambition of his friend.
+
+"I shouldn't want it to be particularly swell. If a man isn't a swell, 
+I don't see what he gets by going among those who are. But it is so 
+uncommon slow at Mother Roper's." Now Mrs Roper was a respectable lady, 
+who kept a boarding-house in Burton Crescent, and to whom Mrs Eames had 
+been strongly recommended when she was desirous of finding a specially 
+safe domicile for her son. For the first year of his life in London 
+John Eames had lived alone in lodgings; but that had resulted in 
+discomfort, solitude, and, alas! in some amount of debt, which had come 
+heavily on the poor widow. Now, for the second year, some safer mode of 
+life was necessary. She had learned that Mrs Cradell, the widow of a 
+barrister, who had also succeeded in getting her son into the 
+Income-tax Office, had placed him in charge of Mrs Roper; and she, with 
+many injunctions to that motherly woman, submitted her own boy to the 
+same custody.
+
+"And about going to church?" Mrs Eames had said to Mrs Roper.
+
+"I don't suppose I can look after that, ma'am," Mrs Roper had answered, 
+conscientiously. "Young gentlemen choose mostly their own churches."
+
+"But they do go?" asked the mother, very anxious in her heart as to 
+this new life in which her boy was to be left to follow in so many 
+things the guidance of his own lights.
+
+"They who have been brought up steady do so, mostly."
+
+"He has been brought up steady, Mrs Roper. He has, indeed."
+
+"And you won't give him a latch-key?"
+
+"Well, they always do ask for it."
+
+"But he won't insist, if you tell him that I had rather that he 
+shouldn't have one." Mrs Roper promised accordingly, and Johnny Eames 
+was left under her charge. He did ask for the latch-key, and Mrs Roper 
+answered as she was bidden. But he asked again, having been 
+sophisticated by the philosophy of Cradell, and then Mrs Roper handed 
+him the key. She was a woman who plumed herself on being as good as her 
+word, not understanding that any one could justly demand from her more 
+than that. She gave Johnny Eames the key, as doubtless she had intended 
+to do; for Mrs Roper knew the world, and understood that young men 
+without latch-keys would not remain with her.
+
+"I thought you didn't seem to find it so dull since Amelia came home," 
+said Cradell.
+
+"Amelia! What's Amelia to me? I have told you everything, Cradell, and 
+yet you can talk to me about Amelia Roper!"
+
+"Come now, Johnny-"
+
+He had always been called Johnny, and the name had gone with him to his 
+office. Even Amelia Roper had called him Johnny on more than one 
+occasion before this.
+
+"You were as sweet to her the other night as though there were no such 
+person as L. D. in existence." John Eames turned away and shook his 
+head. Nevertheless, the words of his friend were grateful to him. The 
+character of a Don Juan was not unpleasant to his imagination, and he 
+liked to think that he might amuse Amelia Roper with a passing word, 
+though his heart was true to Lilian Dale. In truth, however, many more 
+of the passing words had been spoken by the fair Amelia than by him.
+
+Mrs Roper had been quite as good as her word when she told Mrs Eames 
+that her household was composed of herself, of a son who was in an 
+attorney's office, of an ancient maiden cousin, named Miss Spruce, who 
+lodged with her, and of Mr Cradell. The divine Amelia had not then been 
+living with her, and the nature of the statement which she was making 
+by no means compelled her to inform Mrs Eames that the young lady would 
+probably return home in the following winter. A Mr and Mrs Lupex had 
+also joined the family lately, and Mrs Roper's house was now supposed 
+to be full.
+
+And it must be acknowledged that Johnny Eames had, in certain unguarded 
+moments, confided to Cradell the secret of a second weaker passion for 
+Amelia. "She is a fine girl-a deuced fine girl!" Johnny Eames had said, 
+using a style of language which he had learned since he left Guestwick 
+and Allington. Mr Cradell, also, was an admirer of the fair sex; and, 
+alas! that I should say so, Mrs Lupex, at the present moment, was the 
+object of his admiration. Not that he entertained the slightest idea of 
+wronging Mr Lupex-a man who was a scene-painter, and knew the world. Mr 
+Cradell admired Mrs Lupex as a connoisseur, not simply as a man. "By 
+heavens! Johnny, what a figure that woman has!" he said, one morning, 
+as they were walking to their office.
+
+"Yes; she stands well on her pins."
+
+"I should think she did. If I understand anything of form," said 
+Cadell, "that woman is nearly perfect. What a torso she has?" From 
+which expression, and from the fact that Mrs Lupex depended greatly 
+upon her stays and crinoline for such figure as she succeeded in 
+displaying, it may, perhaps, be understood that Mr Cradell did not 
+understand much about form.
+
+"It seems to me that her nose isn't quite straight," said Johnny Eames. 
+Now, it undoubtedly was the fact that the nose on Mrs Lupex's face was 
+a little awry. It was a long, thin nose, which, as it progressed 
+forward into the air, certainly had a preponderating bias towards the 
+left side.
+
+"I care more for figure than face," said Cradell. "But Mrs Lupex has 
+fine eyes-very fine eyes."
+
+"And knows how to use them, too," said Johnny.
+
+"Why shouldn't she? And then she has lovely hair."
+
+"Only she never brushes it in the morning."
+
+"Do you know, I like that kind of deshabille," said Cadell. "Too much 
+care always betrays itself."
+
+"But a woman should be tidy."
+
+"What a word to apply to such a creature as Mrs Lupex! I call her a 
+splendid woman. And how well she was got up last night. Do you know, 
+I've an idea that Lupex treats her very badly. She said a word or two 
+to me yesterday that-," and then he paused. There are some confidences 
+which a man does not share even with his dearest friend.
+
+"I rather fancy it's quite the other way," said Eames.
+
+"How the other way?"
+
+"That Lupex has quite as much as he likes of Mrs L. The sound of her 
+voice sometimes makes me shake in my shoes, I know."
+
+"I like a woman with spirit," said Cradell.
+
+"Oh, so do I. But one may have too much of a good thing. Amelia did 
+tell me-only you won't mention it."
+
+"Of course, I won't."
+
+"She told me that Lupex sometimes was obliged to run away from her. He 
+goes down to the theatre, and remains there two or three days at a 
+time. Then she goes to fetch him, and there is no end of a row in the 
+house."
+
+"The fact is, he drinks," said Cadell. "By George, I pity a woman whose 
+husband drinks-and such a woman as that. too!"
+
+"Take care, old fellow, or you'll find yourself in a scrape."
+
+"I know what I'm at. Lord bless you, I'm not going to lose my head 
+because I see a fine woman."
+
+"Or your heart either?"
+
+"Oh, heart! There's nothing of that kind of thing about me. I regard a 
+woman as a picture or a statue. I dare say I shall marry some day, 
+because men do; but I've no idea of losing myself about a woman."
+
+"I'd lose myself ten times over for-"
+
+"L. D.," said Cradell.
+
+"That I would. And yet I know I shall never have her. I'm a jolly, 
+laughing sort of fellow; and yet, do you know, Caudle, when that girl 
+marries, it will be all up with me. It will, indeed."
+
+"Do you mean that you'll cut your throat?"
+
+"No; I shan't do that. I shan't do anything of that sort; and yet it 
+will be all up with me."
+
+"You are going down there in October-why don't you ask her to have you?"
+
+"With ninety pounds a year!" His grateful country had twice increased 
+his salary at the rate of five pounds each year. "With ninety pounds a 
+year, and twenty allowed me by my mother!"
+
+"She could wait, I suppose. I should ask her, and no mistake. If one is 
+to love a girl, it's no good one going on in that way!"
+
+"It isn't much good, certainly," said Johnny Eames. And then they 
+reached the door of the Income-tax Office, and each went away to his 
+own desk.
+
+>From this little dialogue, it may be imagined that though Mrs Roper 
+was as good as her word, she was not exactly the woman whom Mrs Eames 
+would have wished to select as a protecting angel for her son. But the 
+truth I take to be this, that protecting angels for widows' sons, at 
+forty-eight pounds a year, paid quarterly, are not to be found very 
+readily in London. Mrs Roper was not worse than others of her class. 
+She would much have preferred lodgers who were respectable to those who 
+were not so-if she could only have found respectable lodgers as she 
+wanted them. Mr and Mrs Lupex hardly came under that denomination; and 
+when she gave them up her big front bedroom at a hundred a year, she 
+knew she was doing wrong. And she was troubled, too, about her own 
+daughter Amelia, who was already over thirty years of age. Amelia was a 
+very clever young woman, who had been, if the truth must be told, first 
+young lady at a millinery establishment in Manchester. Mrs Roper knew 
+that Mrs Eames and Mrs, Cradell would not wish their sons to associate 
+with her daughter. But what could she do? She could not refuse the 
+shelter of her own house to her own child, and yet her heart misgave 
+her when she saw Amelia flirting with young Eames.
+
+"I wish, Amelia, you wouldn't have so much to say to that young man."
+
+"Laws, mother."
+
+"So I do. If you go on like that, you'll put me out of both my lodgers."
+
+"Go on like what, mother? If a gentleman speaks to me, I suppose I'm to 
+answer him? I know how to behave myself, I believe." And then she gave 
+her head a toss. Whereupon her mother was silent; for her mother was 
+afraid of her.
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ABOUT L. D.
+
+
+Apollo Crosbie left London for Allington on the 31st of August, 
+intending to stay there four weeks, with the declared intention of 
+recruiting his strength by an absence of two months from official 
+cares, and with no fixed purpose as to his destiny for the last of 
+those two months. Offers of hospitality had been made to him by the 
+dozen. Lady Hartletop's doors, in Shropshire, were open to him, if he 
+chose to enter them. He had been invited by the Countess de Courcy to 
+join her suite at Courcy Castle. His special friend Montgomerie Dobbs 
+had a place in Scotland, and then there was a yachting party by which 
+he was much wanted. But Mr Crosbie had as yet knocked himself down to 
+none of these biddings, having before him when he left London no other 
+fixed engagement than that which took him to Allington. On the first of 
+October we shall also find ourselves at Allington in company with 
+Johnny Eames; and Apollo Crosbie will still be there-by no means to the 
+comfort of our friend from the Income-tax Office.
+
+Johnny Eames cannot be called unlucky in that matter of his annual 
+holiday, seeing that he was allowed to leave London in October, a month 
+during which few chose to own that they remain in town. For myself, I 
+always regard May as the best month for holiday-making; but then no 
+Londoner cares to be absent in May. Young Eames, though he lived in 
+Burton Crescent and had as yet no connection with the West End, had 
+already learned his lesson in this respect. "Those fellows in the big 
+room want me to take May," he had said to his friend Cadell. "They must 
+think I'm uncommon green."
+
+"It's too bad," said Cadell. "A man shouldn't be asked to take his 
+leave in May. I never did, and what's more, I never will. I'd go to the 
+Board first." Eames had escaped this evil without going to the Board, 
+and had succeeded in obtaining for himself for his own holiday that 
+month of October, which, of all months, is perhaps the most highly 
+esteemed for holiday purposes. "I shall go down by the mail-train 
+tomorrow night," he said to Amelia Roper, on the evening before his 
+departure. At that moment he was sitting alone with Amelia in Mrs 
+Roper's back drawing-room. In the front room Cradell was talking to Mrs 
+Lupex; but as Miss Spruce was with them, it may be presumed that Mr 
+Lupex need have had no cause for jealousy.
+
+"Yes," said Amelia, "I know how great is your haste to get down to that 
+fascinating spot. I could not expect that you would lose one single 
+hour in hurrying away from Burton Crescent."
+
+Amelia Roper was a tall, well-grown young woman, with dark hair and 
+dark eyes-not handsome, for her nose was thick, and the lower part of 
+her face was heavy, but yet not without some feminine attractions. Her 
+eyes were bright; but then, also, they were mischievous. She could talk 
+fluently enough; but then, also, she could scold. She could assume 
+sometimes the plumage of a dove; but then again she could occasionally 
+ruffle her feathers like an angry kite. I am quite prepared to 
+acknowledge that John Eames should have kept himself clear of Amelia 
+Roper; but then young men so frequently do those things which they 
+should not do!
+
+"After twelve months up here in London one is glad to get away to one's 
+own friends," said Johnny.
+
+"Your own friends, Mr Eames! What sort of friends? Do you suppose I 
+don't know?"
+
+"Well, no. I don't think you do know."
+
+"L. D.!" said Amelia, showing that Lily had been spoken of among people 
+who should never have been allowed to hear her name. But perhaps, after 
+all, no more than those two initials were known in Burton Crescent. 
+From the tone which was now used in naming them, it was sufficiently 
+manifest that Amelia considered herself to be wronged by their very 
+existence.
+
+"L. S. D.," said Johnny, attempting the line of a witty, gay young 
+spendthrift. "That's my love; pounds, shillings, and pence; and a very 
+coy mistress she is."
+
+"Nonsense, sir. Don't talk to me in that way. As if I didn't know where 
+your heart was. What right had you to speak to me if you had an L. D. 
+down in the country?" It should be here declared on behalf of poor John 
+Eames that he had not ever spoken to Amelia-he had not spoken to her in 
+any such phrase as her words seemed to imply. But then he had written 
+to her a fatal note of which we will speak further before long, and 
+that perhaps was quite as bad-or worse.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Johnny. But the laugh was assumed, and not 
+assumed with ease.
+
+"Yes, sir; it's a laughing matter to you, I dare say. It is very easy 
+for a man to laugh under such circumstances-that is to say, if he is 
+perfectly heartless-if he's got a stone inside his bosom instead of 
+flesh and blood. Some men are made of stone, I know, and are troubled 
+with no feelings."
+
+"What is it you want me to say? You pretend to know all about it, and 
+it wouldn't be civil in me to contradict you."
+
+"What is it I want? You know very well what I want; or rather, I don't 
+want anything. What is it to me? It is nothing to me about L. D. You 
+can go down to Allington and do what you like for me. Only I hate such 
+ways."
+
+"What ways, Amelia?"
+
+"What ways! Now, look here, Johnny: I'm not going to make a fool of 
+myself for any man. When I came home here three months ago-and I wish I 
+never had;"-she paused here a moment, waiting for a word of tenderness; 
+but as the word of tenderness did not come, she went on-"but when I did 
+come home, I didn't think there was a man in all London could make me 
+care for him-that I didn't. And now you're going away, without so much 
+as hardly saying a word to me." And then she brought out her 
+handkerchief.
+
+"What am I to say, when you keep on scolding me all the time?"
+
+"Scolding you !-and me too! No, Johnny, I ain't scolding you, and don't 
+mean to. If it's to be all over between us, say the word, and I'll take 
+myself away out of the house before you come back again. I've had no 
+secrets from you. I can go back to my business in Manchester, though it 
+is beneath my birth, and not what I've been used to. If L. D. is more 
+to you than I am, I won't stand in your way. Only say the word."
+
+L. D. was more to him than Amelia Roper-ten times more to him. L. D. 
+would have been everything to him, and Amelia Roper was worse than 
+nothing. He felt all this at the moment, and struggled hard to collect 
+an amount of courage that would make him free.
+"Say the word," said she, rising on her feet before him," and all 
+between you and me shall be over. I have got your promise, but I'd 
+scorn to take advantage. If Amelia hasn't got your heart, she'd despise 
+to take your hand. Only I must have an answer." It would seem that an 
+easy way of escape was offered to him; but the lady probably knew that 
+the way as offered by her was not easy to such an one as John Eames.
+
+"Amelia," he said, still keeping his seat.
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"You know I love you."
+
+"And about L. D.?"
+
+"If you choose to believe all the nonsense that Cradell puts into your 
+head, I can't help it. If you like to make yourself jealous about two 
+letters, it isn't my fault."
+
+"And you love me?" said she.
+
+"Of course I love you." And then, upon hearing these words, Amelia 
+threw herself into his arms.
+
+As the folding doors between the two rooms were not closed, and as Miss 
+Spruce was sitting in her easy chair immediately opposite to them, it 
+was probable that she saw what passed. But Miss Spruce was a taciturn 
+old lady, not easily excited to any show of surprise or admiration; and 
+as she had lived with Mrs Roper for the last twelve years, she was 
+probably well acquainted with her daughter's ways.
+
+"You'll be true to me?" said Amelia, during the moment of that 
+embrace-"true to me for ever?
+
+"Oh, yes; that's a matter of course," said Johnny Eames. And then she 
+liberated him; and the two strolled into the front sitting-room.
+
+"I declare, Mr Eames," said Mrs Lupex," I'm glad you've come. Here's Mr 
+Cradell does say such queer things."
+
+"Queer things!" said Cadell. "Now, Miss Spruce, I appeal to you-Have I 
+said any queer things?"
+
+"If you did, sir, I didn't notice them," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"I noticed them, then," said Mrs Lurex. "An unmarried man like Mr 
+Cradell has no business to know whether a married lady wears a cap or 
+her own hair-has he, Mr Eames?"
+
+"I don't think I ever know," said Johnny, not intending any sarcasm on 
+Mrs Lupex.
+
+"I dare say not, sir," said the lady. "We all know where your attention 
+is riveted. If you were to wear a cap, my dear, somebody would see the 
+difference very soon-wouldn't they, Miss Spruce?"
+
+"I dare say they would," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"If I could look as nice in a cap as you do, Mrs Lupex, I'd wear one 
+tomorrow," said Amelia, who did not wish to quarrel with the married 
+lady at the present moment. There were occasions, however, on which Mrs 
+Lupex and Miss Roper were by no means so gracious to each other.
+
+"Does Lupex like caps?" asked Cradell.
+
+"If I wore a plumed helmet on my head, it's my belief he wouldn't know 
+the difference; nor yet if I had got no head at all. That's what comes 
+of getting married. It you'll take my advice, Miss Roper, you'll stay 
+as you are; even though somebody should break his heart about it. 
+Wouldn't you, Miss Spruce?"
+
+"Oh, as for me, I'm an old woman, you know," said Miss Spruce, which 
+was certainly true.
+
+"I don't see what any woman gets by marrying," continued Mrs Lurex. 
+"But a man gains everything. He don't know how to live, unless he's got 
+a woman to help him."
+
+"But is love to go for nothing?" said Cradell.
+
+"Oh, love! I don't believe in love. I suppose I thought I loved once, 
+but what did it come to after all? Now, there's Mr Eames-we all know 
+he's in love."
+
+"It comes natural to me, Mrs Lupex. I was born so," said Johnny.
+
+"And there's Miss Roper-one never ought to speak free about a lady, but 
+perhaps she's in love too."
+
+"Speak for yourself, Mrs Lupex," said Amelia.
+
+"There's no harm in saying that, is there? I'm sure, if you ain't, 
+you're very hard-hearted; for, if ever there was a true lover, I 
+believe you've got one of your own. My !-if there's not Lupex's step on 
+the stair! What can bring him home at this hour? If he's been drinking, 
+he'll come home as cross as anything." Then Mr Lupex entered the room, 
+and the pleasantness of the party was destroyed.
+
+It may be said that neither Mrs Cradell nor Mrs Eames would have placed 
+their sons in Burton Crescent if they had known the dangers into which 
+the young men would fall. Each, it must be acknowledged, was imprudent; 
+but each clearly saw the imprudence of the other. Not a week before 
+this, Cradell had seriously warned his friend against the arts of Miss 
+Roper.
+
+"By George, Johnny, you'll get yourself entangled with that girl."
+
+"One always has to go through that sort of thing," said Johnny.
+
+"Yes; but those who go through too much of it never get out again. 
+Where would you be if she got a written promise of marriage from you?" 
+Poor Johnny did not answer this immediately, for in very truth Amelia 
+Roper had such a document in her possession.
+
+"Where should I be?" said he. "Among the breaches of promise, I 
+suppose."
+
+"Either that, or else among the victims of matrimony. My belief of you 
+is, that if you gave such a promise, you'd carry it out."
+
+"Perhaps I should," said Johnny; "but I don't know. It's a matter of 
+doubt what a man ought to do in such a case."
+
+"But there's been nothing of that kind yet?"
+
+"Oh dear, no!"
+
+"If I was you, Johnny, I'd keep away from her. It's very good fun, of 
+course, that sort of thing; but it is so uncommon dangerous! Where 
+would you be now with such a girl as that for your wife?"
+
+Such had been the caution given by Cradell to his friend. And now, just 
+as he was starting for Allington, Eames returned the compliment. They 
+had gone together to the Great Western station at Paddington, and 
+Johnny tendered his advice as they were walking together up and down 
+the platform.
+
+"I say, Caudle, old boy, you'll find yourself in trouble with that Mrs 
+Lupex, if you don't take care of yourself."
+
+"But I shall take care of myself. There's nothing so safe as a little 
+nonsense with a married woman. Of course, it means nothing, you know, 
+between her and me."
+
+"I don't suppose it does mean anything. But she's always talking about 
+Lupex being jealous; and if he was to cut up rough, you wouldn't find 
+it pleasant."
+
+Cradell, however, seemed to think that there was no danger. His little 
+affair with Mrs Lupex was quite platonic and safe. As for doing any 
+real harm, his principles, as he assured his friend, were too high. Mrs 
+Lupex was a woman of talent, whom no one seemed to understand, and, 
+therefore, he had taken some pleasure in studying her character. It was 
+merely a study of character, and nothing more. Then the friends parted, 
+and Eames was carried away by the night mail-train down to Guestwick.
+
+How his mother was up to receive him at four o'clock in the morning, 
+how her maternal heart was rejoicing at seeing the improvement in his 
+gait, and the manliness of appearance imparted to him by his whiskers, 
+I need not describe at length. Many of the attributes of a hobbledehoy 
+had fallen from him, and even Lily Dale might now probably acknowledge 
+that he was no longer a boy. All which might be regarded as good, if 
+only in putting off childish things he had taken up things which were 
+better than childish.
+
+On the very first day of his arrival he made his way over to Allington. 
+He did not walk on this occasion as he had used to do in the old happy 
+days. He had an idea that it might not be well for him to go into Mrs 
+Dale's drawing-room with the dust of the road on his boots, and the 
+heat of the day on his brow. So he borrowed a horse and rode over, 
+taking some pride in a pair of spurs which he had bought in Piccadilly, 
+and in his kid gloves, which were brought out new for the occasion. 
+Alas, alas! I fear that those two years in London have not improved 
+John Eames; and yet I have to acknowledge that John Eames is one of the 
+heroes of my story.
+
+On entering Mrs Dale's drawing-room he found Mrs Dale and her eldest 
+daughter. Lily at the moment was not there, and as he shook hands with 
+the other two, of course, he asked for her.
+
+"She is only in the garden," said Bell. "She will be here directly."
+
+"She has walked across to the Great House with Mr Crosbie," said Mrs 
+Dale; "but she is not going to remain. She will be so glad to see you, 
+John! We all expected you today."
+
+"Did you?" said Johnny, whose heart had been plunged into cold water at 
+the mention of Mr Crosbie's name. He had been thinking of Lilian Dale 
+ever since his friend had left him on the railway platform; and, as I 
+beg to assure all ladies who may read my tale, the truth of his love 
+for Lily had moulted no feather through that unholy liaison between him 
+and Miss Roper. I fear that I shall be disbelieved in this; but it was 
+so. His heart was and ever had been true to Lilian, although he had 
+allowed himself to be talked into declarations of affection by such a 
+creature as Amelia Roper. He had been thinking of his meeting with Lily 
+all the night and throughout the morning, and now he heard that she was 
+walking alone about the gardens with a strange gentleman. That Mr 
+Crosbie was very grand and very fashionable he had heard, but he knew 
+no more of him. Why should Mr Crosbie be allowed to walk with Lily 
+Dale? And why should Mrs Dale mention the circumstance as though it 
+were quite a thing of course? Such mystery as there was in this was 
+solved very quickly.
+
+"I'm sure Lily won't object to my telling such a dear friend as you 
+what has happened," said Mrs Dale. "She is engaged to be married to Mr 
+Crosbie." The water into which Johnny's heart had been plunged now 
+closed over his head and left him speechless. Lily Dale was engaged to 
+be married to Mr Crosbie! He knew that he should have spoken when he 
+heard the tidings. He knew that the moments of silence as they passed 
+by told his secret to the two women before him-that secret which it 
+would now behove him to conceal from all the world. But yet he could 
+not speak.
+
+"We are all very well pleased at the match," said Mrs Dale, wishing to 
+spare him.
+
+"Nothing can be nicer than Mr Crosbie," said Bell. "We have often 
+talked about you, and he will be so happy to know you."
+
+"He won't know much about me," said Johnny; and even in speaking these 
+few senseless words-words which he uttered because it was necessary 
+that he should say something-the tone of his voice was altered. He 
+would have given the world to have been master of himself at this 
+moment, but he felt that he was utterly vanquished.
+
+"There is Lily coming across the lawn," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Then I'd better go," said Eames. "Don't say anything about it; pray 
+don't." And then, without waiting for another word, he escaped out of 
+the drawing-room.
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BEAUTIFUL DAYS
+
+
+I am well aware that I have not as yet given any description of Bell 
+and Lilian Dale, and equally well aware that the longer the doing so is 
+postponed the greater the difficulty becomes. I wish it could be 
+understood without any description that they were two pretty, 
+fair-haired girls, of whom Bell was the tallest and the prettiest, 
+whereas Lily was almost as pretty as her sister, and perhaps was more 
+attractive.
+
+They were fair-haired girls, very like each other, of whom I have 
+before my mind's eye a distinct portrait, which I fear I shall not be 
+able to draw in any such manner as will make it distinct to others. 
+They were something below the usual height, being slight and slender in 
+all their proportions. Lily was the shorter of the two, but the 
+difference was so trifling that it was hardly remembered unless the two 
+were together. And when I said that Bell was the prettier, I should, 
+perhaps, have spoken more justly had I simply declared that her 
+features were more regular than her sister's. The two girls were very 
+fair, so that the soft tint of colour which relieved the whiteness of 
+their complexion was rather acknowledged than distinctly seen. It was 
+there, telling its own tale of health, as its absence would have told a 
+tale of present or coming sickness; and yet nobody could ever talk 
+about the colour in their cheeks. The hair of the two girls was so 
+alike in hue and texture, that no one, not even their mother, could say 
+that there was a difference. It was not flaxen hair, and yet it was 
+very light. Nor did it approach to auburn; and yet there ran through it 
+a golden tint that gave it a distinct brightness of its own. But with 
+Bell it was more plentiful than with Lily, and therefore Lily would 
+always talk of her own scanty locks, and tell how beautiful were those 
+belonging to her sister. Nevertheless Lily's head was quite as lovely 
+as her sister's; for its form was perfect, and the simple braids in 
+which they both wore their hair did not require any great exuberance in 
+quantity. Their eyes were brightly blue; but Bell's were long, and 
+soft, and tender, often hardly daring to raise themselves to your face; 
+while those of Lily were rounder, but brighter, and seldom kept by any 
+want of courage from fixing themselves where they pleased. And Lily's 
+face was perhaps less oval in its formless perfectly oval-than her 
+sister's. The shape of the forehead was, I think, the same, but with 
+Bell the chin was something more slender and delicate. But Bell's chin 
+was unmarked, whereas on her sister's there was a dimple which amply 
+compensated for any other deficiency in its beauty. Bell's teeth were 
+more even than her sister's; but then she showed her teeth more 
+frequently. Her lips were thinner, and, as I cannot but think, less 
+expressive. Her nose was decidedly more regular in its beauty, for 
+Lily's nose was somewhat broader than it should have been. It may, 
+therefore, be understood that Bell would be considered the beauty by 
+the family.
+
+But there was, perhaps, more in the general impression made by these 
+girls, and in the whole tone of their appearance, than in the absolute 
+loveliness of their features or the grace of their figures. There was 
+about them a dignity of demeanour devoid of all stiffness or pride, and 
+a maidenly modesty which gave itself no airs. In them was always 
+apparent that sense of security which women should receive from an 
+unconscious dependence on their own mingled purity and weakness. These 
+two girls were never afraid of men-never looked as though they were so 
+afraid. And I may say that they had little cause for that kind of fear 
+to which I allude. It might be the lot of either of them to be ill-used 
+by a man, but it was hardly possible that either of them should ever be 
+insulted by one. Lily, as may, perhaps, have been already seen, could 
+be full of play, but in her play she never so carried herself that any 
+one could forget what was due to her.
+
+And now Lily Dale was engaged to be married, and the days of her 
+playfulness were over. It sounds sad, this sentence against her, but I 
+fear that it must be regarded as true. And when I think that it is 
+true-when I see that the sportiveness and kitten-like gambols of 
+girlhood should be over, and generally are over, when a girl has given 
+her troth, it becomes a matter of regret to me that the feminine world 
+should be in such a hurry after matrimony. I have, however, no remedy 
+to offer for the evil; and, indeed, am aware that the evil, if there be 
+an evil, is not well expressed in the words I have used. The hurry is 
+not for matrimony, but for love. Then, the love once attained, 
+matrimony seizes it for its own, and the evil is accomplished.
+
+And Lily Dale was engaged to be married to Adolphus Crosbie-to Apollo 
+Crosbie, as she still called him, confiding her little joke to his own 
+ears. And to her he was an Apollo, as a man who is loved should be to 
+the girl who loves him. He was handsome, graceful, clever, and 
+self-confident, and always cheerful when she ask him to be cheerful. 
+But he had also his more serious moments, and could talk to her of 
+serious matters. He would read to her, and explain to her things which 
+had hitherto been too hard for her young intelligence. His voice, too, 
+was pleasant, and well under command. It could be pathetic if pathos 
+were required, or ring with laughter as merry as her own. Was not such 
+a man fit to be an Apollo to such a girl, when once the girl had 
+acknowledged to herself that she loved him?
+
+She had acknowledged it to herself, and had acknowledged it to him-as 
+the reader will perhaps say without much delay. But the courtship had 
+so been carried on that no delay had been needed. All the world had 
+smiled upon it. When Mr Crosbie had first come among them at Allington, 
+as Bernard's guest, during those few days of his early visit, it had 
+seemed as though Bell had been chiefly noticed by him. And Bell in her 
+own quiet way had accepted his admiration, saying nothing of it and 
+thinking but very little. Lily was heart-free at the time, and had ever 
+been so. No first shadow from Love's wing had as yet been thrown across 
+the pure tablets of her bosom. With Bell it was not so-not so in 
+absolute strictness. Bell's story, too, must be told, but not on this 
+page. But before Crosbie had come among them, it was a thing fixed in 
+her mind that such love as she had felt must be overcome and 
+annihilated. We may say that it had been overcome and annihilated, and 
+that she would have sinned in no way had she listened to vows from this 
+new Apollo. It is almost sad to think that such a man might have had 
+the love of either of such girls, but I fear that I must acknowledge 
+that it was so. Apollo, in the plenitude of his power, soon changed his 
+mind; and before the end of his first visit, had transferred the 
+distant homage which he was then paying from the elder to the younger 
+sister. He afterwards returned, as the squire's guest, for a longer 
+sojourn among them, and at the end of the first month had already been 
+accepted as Lily's future husband.
+
+It was beautiful to see how Bell changed in her mood towards Crosbie 
+and towards her sister as soon as she perceived how the affair was 
+going. She was not long in perceiving it, having caught the first 
+glimpses of the idea on that evening when they both dined at the Great 
+House, leaving their mother alone to eat or to neglect the peas. For 
+some six or seven weeks Crosbie had been gone, and during that time 
+Bell had been much more open in speaking of him than her sister. She 
+had been present when Crosbie had bid them good-bye, and had listened 
+to his eagerness as he declared to Lily that he should soon be back 
+again at Allington. Lily had taken this very quietly, as though it had 
+not belonged at all to herself; but Bell had seen something of the 
+truth, and, believing in Crosbie as an earnest, honest man, had spoken 
+kind words of him, fostering any little aptitude for love which might 
+already have formed itself in Lily's bosom.
+
+"But he is such an Apollo, you know," Lily had said.
+
+"He is a gentleman; I can see that."
+
+"Oh, yes; a man can't be an Apollo unless he's a gentleman."
+
+"And he's very clever."
+
+"I suppose he is clever." There was nothing more said about his being a 
+mere clerk. Indeed, Lily had changed her mind on that subject. Johnny 
+Eames was a mere clerk; whereas Crosbie, if he was to be called a clerk 
+at all, was a clerk of some very special denomination. There may be a 
+great difference between one clerk and another! A Clerk of the Council 
+and a parish clerk are very different persons. Lily had got some such 
+idea as this into her head as she attempted in her own mind to rescue 
+Mr Crosbie from the lower orders of the Government service.
+
+"I wish he were not coming," Mrs Dale had said to her eldest daughter.
+
+"I think you are wrong, mamma."
+
+"But if she should become fond of him, and then-"
+
+"Lily will never become really fond of any man till he shall have given 
+her proper reason. And if he admires her, why should they not come 
+together?"
+
+"But she is so young, Bell."
+
+"She is nineteen; and if they were engaged, perhaps, they might wait 
+for a year or so. But it's no good talking in that way, mamma. If you 
+were to tell Lily not to give him encouragement, she would not speak to 
+him."
+
+"I should not think of interfering."
+
+"No, mamma; and therefore it must take its course. For myself, I like 
+Mr Crosbie very much."
+
+"So do I, my dear."
+
+"And so does my uncle. I wouldn't have Lily take a lover of my uncle's 
+choosing."
+
+"I should hope not."
+
+"But it must be considered a good thing if she happens to choose one of 
+his liking."
+
+In this way the matter had been talked over between the mother and her 
+elder daughter. Then Mr Crosbie had come; and before the end of the 
+first month his declared admiration for Lily had proved the correctness 
+of her sister's foresight. And during that short courtship all had gone 
+well with the lovers. The squire from the first had declared himself 
+satisfied with the match, informing Mrs Dale, in his cold manner, that 
+Mr Crosbie was a gentleman with an income sufficient for matrimony.
+
+"It would be close enough in London," Mrs Dale had said.
+
+"He has more than my brother had when he married," said the squire.
+"If he will only make her as happy as your brother made me-while it 
+lasted!" said Mrs Dale, as she turned away her face to conceal a tear 
+that was coming. And then there was nothing more said about it between 
+the squire and his sister-in-law. The squire spoke no word as to 
+assistance in money matters-did not even suggest that he would lend a 
+hand to the young people at starting, as an uncle in such a position 
+might surely have done. It may well be conceived that Mrs Dale herself 
+said nothing on the subject. And, indeed, it may be conceived, also, 
+that the squire, let his intentions be what they might, would not 
+divulge them to Mrs Dale. This was uncomfortable, but the position was 
+one that was well understood between them.
+
+Bernard Dale was still at Allington, and had remained there through the 
+period of Crosbie's absence. Whatever words Mrs Dale might choose to 
+speak on the matter would probably be spoken to him; but, then, Bernard 
+could be quite as close as his uncle. When Crosbie returned, he and 
+Bernard had, of course, lived much together; and, as was natural, there 
+came to be close discussion between them as to the two girls, when 
+Crosbie allowed it to be understood that his liking for Lily was 
+becoming strong.
+
+"You know, I suppose, that my uncle wishes me to marry the elder one," 
+Bernard had said.
+
+"I have guessed as much."
+
+"And I suppose the match will come off. She's a pretty girl, and as 
+good as gold."
+
+"Yes, she is."
+
+"I don't pretend to be very much in love with her. It's not my way, you 
+know. But, some of these days, I shall ask her to have me, and I 
+suppose it'll all go right. The governor has distinctly promised to 
+allow me eight hundred a year off the estate, and to take us in for 
+three months every year if we wish it. I told him simply that I 
+couldn't do it for less, and he agreed with me."
+
+"You and he get on very well together."
+
+"Oh, yes! There's never been any fal-lal between us about love, and 
+duty, and all that. I think we understand each other, and that's 
+everything. He knows the comfort of standing well with the heir, and I 
+know the comfort of standing well with the owner." It must be admitted, 
+I think, that there was a great deal of sound, common sense about 
+Bernard Dale.
+
+"What will he do for the younger sister?" asked Crosbie; and, as he 
+asked the important question, a close observer might have perceived 
+that there was some slight tremor in his voice.
+
+"Ah! that's more than I can tell you. If I were you, I should ask him. 
+The governor is a plain man, and likes plain business."
+
+"I suppose you couldn't ask him?
+
+"No; I don't think I could. It is my belief that he will not let her go 
+by any means empty-handed."
+
+"Well, I should suppose not."
+
+"But remember this, Crosbie-I can say nothing to you on which you are 
+to depend. Lily, also, is as good as gold; and, as you seem to be fond 
+of her, I should ask the governor, if I were you, in so many words, 
+what he intends to do. Of course, it's against my interest, for every 
+shilling he gives Lily will ultimately come out of my pocket. But I'm 
+not the man to care about that, as you know."
+
+What might be Crosbie's knowledge on this subject we will not here 
+inquire; but we may say that it would have mattered very little to him 
+out of whose pocket the money came, so long as it went into his own. 
+When he felt quite sure of Lily-having, in fact, received Lily's 
+permission to speak to her uncle, and Lily's promise that she would 
+herself speak to her mother-he did tell the squire what was his 
+intention. This he did in an open, manly way, as though he felt that in 
+asking for much he also offered to give much.
+
+"I have nothing to say against it," said the squire.
+
+"And I have your permission to consider myself as engaged to her?"
+
+"If you have hers and her mother's. Of course you are aware that I have 
+no authority over her."
+
+"She would not marry without your sanction."
+
+"She is very good to think so much of her uncle," said the squire; and 
+his words as he spoke them sounded very cold in Crosbie's ears. After 
+that Crosbie said nothing about money, having to confess to himself 
+that he was afraid to do so. "And what would be the use?" said he to 
+himself, wishing to make excuses for what he felt to be weak in his own 
+conduct. "If he should refuse to give her a shilling I could not go 
+back from it now." And then some ideas ran across his mind as to the 
+injustice to which men are subjected in this matter of matrimony. A man 
+has to declare himself before it is fitting that he should make any 
+inquiry about a lady's money; and then, when he has declared himself, 
+any such inquiry is unavailing. Which consideration somewhat cooled the 
+ardour of his happiness. Lily Dale was very pretty, very nice, very 
+refreshing in her innocence, her purity, and her quick intelligence. No 
+amusement could be more deliciously amusing than that of making love to 
+Lily Dale. Her way of flattering her lover without any intention of 
+flattery on her part, had put Crosbie into a seventh heaven. In all his 
+experience he had known nothing like it. "You may be sure of this," she 
+had said-"I shall love you with all my heart and all my strength." It 
+was very nice-but then what were they to live upon? Could it be that 
+he, Adolphus Crosbie, should settle down on the north side of the New 
+Road, as a married, man, with eight hundred a year? If indeed the 
+squire would be as good to Lily as he had promised to be to Bell, then 
+indeed things might be made to arrange themselves.
+
+But there was no such drawback on Lily's happiness. Her ideas about 
+money were rather vague, but they were very honest. She knew she had 
+none of her own, but supposed it was a husband's duty to find what 
+would be needful. She knew she had none of her own, and was therefore 
+aware that she ought nut to expect luxuries in the little household 
+that was to be prepared for her. She hoped, for his sake, that her 
+uncle might give some assistance, but was quite prepared to prove that 
+she could he a good poor man's wife. In the old colloquies on such 
+matters between her and her sister, she had always declared that some 
+decent income should be considered as indispensable before love could 
+be entertained. But eight hundred a year had been considered as doing 
+much more than fulfilling this stipulation. Bell had high-flown notions 
+as to the absolute glory of poverty. She had declared that income 
+should not be considered at all. If she had loved a man, she could 
+allow herself to be engaged to him, even though he had no income. Such 
+had been their theories; and as regarded money, Lily was quite 
+contented with the way in which she had carried out her own.
+
+In these beautiful days there was nothing to check her happiness. Her 
+mother and sister united in telling her that she had done well-that she 
+was happy in her choice, and justified in her love. On that first day, 
+when she told her mother all, she had been made exquisitely blissful by 
+the way in which her tidings had been received.
+
+"Oh! mamma, I must tell you something," she said, coming up to her 
+mother's bedroom, after a long ramble with Mr Crosbie through those 
+Allington fields.
+
+"Is it about Mr Crosbie?"
+
+"Yes, mamma." And then the rest had been said through the medium of 
+warm embraces and happy tears rather than by words.
+
+As she sat in her mother's room, hiding her face on. her mother's 
+shoulders, Bell had come, and had knelt at her feet.
+
+"Dear Lily," she had said, "I am so glad." And then Lily remembered how 
+she had, as it were, stolen her lover from her sister, and she put her 
+arms round Bell's neck and kissed her.
+
+"I knew how it was- going to be from the very first," said Bell.
+
+"Did I not, mamma?"
+
+"I'm sure I didn't," said Lily. "I never thought such a thing was 
+possible."
+
+"But we did-mamma and I."
+
+"Did you?" said Lily.
+
+"Bell told me that it was to be so," said Mrs Dale. "But I could hardly 
+bring myself at first to think that he was good enough for my darling."
+
+"Oh, mamma! you must not say that. You must think that he is good 
+enough for anything."
+
+"I will think that he is very good."
+
+"Who could be better? And then, when you remember all that he is to 
+give up for my sake-
+
+"And what can I do for him in return? What have I got to give him?"
+
+Neither Mrs Dale nor Bell could look at the matter in this light, 
+thinking that Lily gave quite as much as she received. But they both 
+declared that Crosbie was perfect, knowing that by such assurances only 
+could they now administer to Lily's happiness; and Lily, between them, 
+was made perfect in her happiness, receiving all manner of 
+encouragement in her love, and being nourished in her passion by the 
+sympathy and approval of her mother and sister.
+
+And then had come that visit from Johnny Eames. As the poor fellow 
+marched out of the room, giving them no time to say farewell, Mrs Dale 
+and Bell looked at each other sadly; but they were unable to concoct 
+any arrangement, for Lily had run across the lawn and was already on 
+the ground before the window.
+
+"As soon as we got to the end of the shrubbery there were Uncle 
+Christopher and Bernard close to us; so I told Adolphus. he might go on 
+by himself."
+
+"And who do you think has been here?" said Bell. But Mrs Dale said 
+nothing. Had time been given to her to use her own judgment, nothing 
+should have been said at that moment. as to Johnny's visit.
+
+"Has anybody been here since I went? Whoever it was didn't stay very 
+long."
+
+"Poor Johnny Eames," said Bell. Then the colour came up into Lily's 
+face, and she bethought herself in a moment that. the old friend of her 
+young days had loved her, that he, too, had had hopes as to his love, 
+and that now he had heard tidings which would put an end to such hopes. 
+She understood it all in a moment, but understood also that it was 
+necessary that she should conceal such understanding.
+
+"Dear Johnny!" she said. "Why did he not wait for me?
+
+"We told him you were out," said Mrs Dale. "He will be here again 
+before long, no doubt."
+
+"And he knows-?
+
+"Yes; I thought you would not object to my telling him."
+
+"No, mamma; of course not. And he has gone back to Guestwick?"
+
+There was no answer given to this question, nor were there any further 
+words then spoken about Johnny Eames, Each of these women understood 
+exactly how tile matter stood, and each knew that the others understood 
+it. The young man was loved by them all, but not loved with that sort 
+of admiring affection which had been accorded to Mr Crosbie. Johnny 
+Eames could not have been accepted as a suitor by their pet. Mrs Dale 
+and Bell both felt that. And yet they loved him for his love, and for 
+that distant, modest respect which had restrained him from any speech 
+regarding it. Poor Johnny! But he was young-hardly as yet out of his 
+hobbledehoyhood-and he would easily recover this blow, remembering, and 
+perhaps feeling to his advantage, some slight touch of its passing 
+romance. It is thus women think of men who love young and love in vain.
+
+But Johnny Eames himself, as he rode back to Guestwick, forgetful of 
+his spurs, and with his gloves stuffed into his pocket, thought of the 
+matter very differently. He had never promised to himself any success 
+as to his passion for Lily, and had, indeed, always acknowledged that 
+he could have no hope; but now, that she was actually promised to 
+another man, and as good as married, he was not the less broken-hearted 
+because his former hopes had not been high. He had never dared to speak 
+to Lily of his love, but he was conscious that she knew it, and he did 
+not now dare to stand before her as one convicted of having loved in 
+vain. And then, as he rode back, he thought also of his other love, not 
+with many of those pleasant thoughts which Lotharios and Don Juans may 
+be presumed to enjoy when they contemplate their successes. "I suppose 
+I shall marry her, and there'll be an end of me," he said to himself, 
+as he remembered a short note which he had once written to her in his 
+madness. There had been a little supper at Mrs Roper's, and Mrs Lupex 
+and Amelia had made the punch. After supper, he had been by some 
+accident alone with Amelia in the dining-parlour; and when, warmed by 
+the generous god, he had declared his passion, she had shaken her head 
+mournfully, and had fled from him to some upper region, absolutely 
+refusing his proffered embrace. But on the same night, before his head 
+had found its pillow, a note had come to him, half repentant, half 
+affectionate, half repellent-"If, indeed, he would swear to her that 
+his love was honest and manly, then, indeed, she might even yet-see him 
+through the chink of the doorway with the purport of telling him that 
+he was forgiven." Whereupon, a perfidious pencil being near to his 
+hand, he had written the requisite words. "My only object in life is to 
+call you my own for ever." Amelia had her misgivings whether such a 
+promise, in order that it might be used as legal evidence, should not 
+have been written in ink. It was a painful doubt; but nevertheless she 
+was as good as her word, and saw him through the chink, forgiving him 
+for his impetuosity in the parlour with, perhaps, more clemency than a 
+mere pardon required. "By George! how well she looked with her hair all 
+loose," he said to himself, as he at last regained his pillow, still 
+warm with the generous god. But now, as he thought of that night, 
+returning on his road from Allington to Guestwick, those loose, 
+floating locks were remembered by him with no strong feeling as to 
+their charms. And he thought also of Lily Dale, as she was when he had 
+said farewell to her on that day before he first went up to London. "I 
+shall care more about seeing you than anybody," he had said; and he had 
+often thought of the words since, wondering whether she had understood 
+them as meaning more than an assurance of ordinary friendship. And he 
+remembered well the dress she had then worn. It was an old brown 
+merino, which he had known before, and which, in truth, had nothing in 
+it to recommend it specially to a lover's notice. "Horrid old thing!" 
+had been Lily's own verdict respecting the frock, even before that day. 
+But she had hallowed it in his eyes, and he would have been only too 
+happy to have worn a shred of it near his heart, as a talisman. How 
+wonderful in its nature is that passion of which men speak when they 
+acknowledge to themselves that they are in love. Of all things, it is, 
+under one condition, the most foul, and under another, the most fair. 
+As that condition is, a man shows himself either as a beast or as a 
+god! And so we will let poor Johnny Eames ride back to Guestwick, 
+suffering much in that he had loved basely-and suffering much, also, in 
+that he had loved nobly.
+
+Lily, as she had tripped along through the shrubbery, under her lover's 
+arm, looking up, every other moment, into his face, had espied her 
+uncle and Bernard. "Stop," she had said, giving him a little pull at 
+the arm; "I won't go on. Uncle is always teasing me with some 
+old-fashioned wit. And I've had quite enough of you today, sir. Mind 
+you come over tomorrow before you go to your shooting." And so she had 
+left him.
+
+We may as well learn here what was the question in dispute between the 
+uncle and cousin, as they were walking there on the broad gravel path 
+behind the Great House. "Bernard," the old man had said," I wish this 
+matter could be settled between you and Bell."
+
+"Is there any hurry about it, sir?
+
+"Yes, there is hurry; or, rather, as I hate hurry in all things, I 
+would say that there is ground for despatch. Mind, I do not wish to 
+drive you. If you do not like your cousin, say so."
+
+"But I do like her; only I have a sort of feeling that these things 
+grow best by degrees. I quite share your dislike to being in a hurry."
+
+"But time enough has been taken now. You see, Bernard, I am going to 
+make a great sacrifice of income on your behalf."
+
+"I am sure I am very grateful."
+
+"I have no children, and have therefore always regarded you as my own. 
+But there is no reason why my brother Philip's daughter should not be 
+as dear to me as my brother Orlando's son."
+
+"Of course not, sir; or, rather, his two daughters."
+
+"You may leave that matter to me, Bernard. The younger girl is going to 
+marry this friend of yours, and as he has a sufficient income to 
+support a wife, I think that my sister-in-law has good reason to be 
+satisfied by the match. She will not be expected to give up any part of 
+her small income, as she must have done had Lily married a poor man."
+
+"I suppose she could hardly give up much."
+
+"People must be guided by circumstances. I am not disposed to put 
+myself in the place of a parent to them both. There is no reason why I 
+should, and I will not encourage false hopes. If I knew that this 
+matter between you and Bell was arranged, I should have reason to feel 
+satisfied with what I was doing." From all which Bernard began to 
+perceive that poor Crosbie's expectations in the matter of money would 
+not probably receive much gratification. But he also perceived-or 
+thought that he perceived-a kind of threat in this warning from his 
+uncle. "I have promised you eight hundred a year with your wife," the 
+warning seemed to say. "But if you do not at once accept it, or let me 
+feel that it will be accepted, it may be well for me to change my 
+mind-especially as this other niece is about to be married. If I am to 
+give you so large a fortune with Bell, I need do nothing for Lily. But 
+if you do not choose to take Bell and the fortune, why then-"
+
+And so on. It was thus that Bernard read his uncle's caution, as they 
+walked together on the broad gravel path.
+
+"I have no desire to postpone the matter any longer," said Bernard. "I 
+will propose to Bell at once, if you wish it."
+
+"If your mind be quite made up, I cannot see why you should delay it."
+
+And then, having thus arranged that matter, they received their future 
+relative with kind smiles and soft words.
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLES
+
+
+Lily, as she parted with her lover in the garden, had required of him 
+to attend upon her the next morning as he went to his shooting, and in 
+obedience to this command he appeared on Mrs Dale's lawn after 
+breakfast, accompanied by Bernard and two dogs. The men had guns in 
+their hands, and were got up with all proper sporting appurtenances, 
+but it so turned out that they did not reach the stubble-fields on the 
+farther side of the road until after luncheon. And may it not be fairly 
+doubted whether croquet is not as good as shooting when a man is in 
+love?
+
+It will be said that Bernard Dale was not in love; but they who bring 
+such accusation against him, will bring it falsely. He was in love with 
+his cousin Bell according to his manner and fashion. It was not his 
+nature to love Bell as John Eames loved Lily; but then neither would 
+his nature bring him into such a trouble as that which the charms of 
+Amelia Roper had brought upon the poor clerk from the Income-tax 
+Office. Johnny was susceptible, as the word goes; whereas Captain Dale 
+was a man who had his feelings well under control. He was not one to 
+make a fool of himself about a girl, or to die of a broken heart; but, 
+nevertheless, he would probably love his wife when he got a wife, and 
+would be a careful father to his children.
+
+They were very intimate with each other now-these four. It was Bernard 
+and Adolphus, or sometimes Apollo, and Bell and Lily among them; and 
+Crosbie found it to be pleasant enough. A new position of life had come 
+upon him, and one exceeding pleasant; but, nevertheless, there were 
+moments in which cold fits of a melancholy nature came upon him. He was 
+doing the very thing which throughout all the years of his manhood he 
+had declared to himself that he would not do. According to his plan of 
+life he was to have eschewed marriage, and to have allowed himself to 
+regard it as a possible event only under the circumstances of wealth, 
+rank, and beauty all coming in his way together. As he had expected no 
+such glorious prize, he had regarded himself as a man who would reign 
+at the Beaufort and be potent at Sebright's to the end of his chapter. 
+But now-
+
+It was the fact that he had fallen from his settled position, 
+vanquished by a silver voice, a pretty wit, and a. pair of moderately 
+bright eyes. He was very fond of Lily, having in truth a stronger 
+capability for falling in love than his friend Captain Dale; but was 
+the sacrifice worth his while? This was the question which he asked 
+himself in those melancholy moments; while he was lying in bed, for 
+instance, awake in the morning, when he was shaving himself, and 
+sometimes also when the squire was prosy after dinner. At such times as 
+these, while he would be listening to Mr Dale, his self-reproaches 
+would sometimes be very bitter. Why should he undergo this, he, Crosbie 
+of Sebright's, Crosbie of the General Committee Office, Crosbie who 
+would allow no one to bore him between Charing Cross and the far end of 
+Bayswater-why should he listen to the long-winded stories of such a one 
+as Squire Dale? If, indeed, the squire intended to be liberal to his 
+niece, then it might be very well. But as yet the squire had given no 
+sign of such intention, and Crosbie was angry with himself in that he 
+had not had the courage to ask a question on that subject.
+
+And thus the course of love was not all smooth to our Apollo. It was 
+still pleasant for him when he was there on the croquet ground, or 
+sitting in Mrs Dale's drawing-room with all the privileges of an 
+accepted lover. It was pleasant to him also as he sipped the squire's 
+claret, knowing that his coffee would soon be handed to him by a sweet 
+girl who would have tripped across the two gardens on purpose to 
+perform for him this service. There is nothing pleasanter than all 
+this, although a man when so treated does feel himself to look like a 
+calf at the altar, ready for the knife, with blue ribbons round his 
+horns and neck. Crosbie felt that he was such a calf-and the more 
+calf-like, in that he had not as yet dared to as a question about his 
+wife's fortune. "I will have it out of the old fellow this evening," he 
+said to himself, as he buttoned on his dandy shooting gaiters that 
+morning.
+
+"How nice he looks in them," Lily said to her sister afterwards, 
+knowing nothing of the thoughts which had troubled her lover's mind 
+while he was adorning his legs.
+
+"I suppose we shall come back this way," Crosbie said, as they prepared 
+to move away on their proper business when lunch was over.
+
+"Well, not exactly!" said Bernard.
+
+"We shall make our way round by Darvell's farm, and so back by 
+Gruddock's. Are the girls going to dine up at the Great House today?" 
+The girls declared that they were not going to dine up at the Great 
+House-that they did not intend going to the Great House at all that 
+evening.
+
+"Then, as you won't have to dress, you might as well meet us at 
+Gruddock's gate, at the back of the farmyard. We'll be there exactly at 
+half-past five."
+
+"That is to say, we're to be there at half-past five, and you'll keep 
+us waiting for three-quarters of an hour," said Lily. Nevertheless the 
+arrangement as proposed was made, and the two ladies were not at all 
+unwilling to make it. It is thus that the game is carried on among 
+unsophisticated people who really live in the country. The farmyard 
+gate at Farmer Gruddock's has not a fitting sound as a trysting-place 
+in romance, but for people who are in earnest it does as well as any 
+oak in the middle glade of a forest. Lily Dale was quite in earnest-and 
+so indeed was Adolphus Crosbie-only with him the earnest was beginning 
+to take that shade of brown which most earnest things have to wear in 
+this vale of tears. With Lily it was as yet all rose-coloured. And 
+Bernard Dale was also in earnest. Throughout this morning he had stood 
+very near to Bell on the lawn, and had thought that his cousin did not 
+receive his little whisperings with any aversion. Why should she? Lucky 
+girl that she was, thus to have eight hundred a year pinned to her 
+skirt!
+
+"I say, Dale," Crosbie said, as in the course of their day's work they 
+had come round upon Gruddock's ground, and were preparing to finish off 
+his turnips before they reached the farmyard gate. And now, as Crosbie 
+spoke, they stood leaning on the gate, looking at the turnips while the 
+two dogs squatted on their haunches. Crosbie had been very silent for 
+the last mile or two, and had been making up his mind for this 
+conversation.
+
+"I say, Dale-your uncle has never said a word to me yet as to Lily's 
+fortune."
+
+"As to Lily's fortune! The question is whether Lily has got a fortune."
+
+"He can hardly expect that I am to take her without some thing. Your 
+uncle is a man of the world and he knows-"
+
+"Whether or no my uncle is a man of the world, I will not say; but you 
+are, Crosbie, whether he is or not. Lily, as you have always known, has 
+nothing of her own."
+
+"I am not talking of Lily's own. I'm speaking of her uncle. I have been 
+straightforward with him; and when I became attached to your cousin I 
+declared what I meant at once."
+
+"You should have asked him the question, if you thought there was any 
+room for such a question."
+
+"Thought there was any room! Upon my word, you are a cool fellow."
+
+"Now look here, Crosbie; you may say what you like about my uncle, but 
+you must not say a word against Lily."
+
+"Who is going to say a word against her? You can little understand me 
+if you don't know that the protection of her name against evil words is 
+already more my care than it is yours. I regard Lily as my own."
+
+"I only meant to say, that any discontent you may feel as to her money, 
+or want of money, you must refer to my uncle, and not to the family at 
+the Small House."
+
+"I am quite well aware of that."
+
+"And though you are quite at liberty to say what you like to me about 
+my uncle, I cannot say that I can see that he has been to blame."
+
+"He should have told me what her prospects are."
+
+"But if she have got no prospects! It cannot be an uncle's duty to tell 
+everybody that he does not mean to give his niece a fortune. In point 
+of fact, why should you suppose that he has such an intention?"
+
+"Do you know that he has not? because you once led me to believe that 
+he would give his niece money."
+
+"Now, Crosbie, it is necessary that you and I should understand each 
+other in this matter-"
+
+"But did you not?
+
+"Listen to me for a moment. I never said a word to you about my uncle's 
+intentions in any way, until after you had become fully engaged to Lily 
+with the knowledge of us all. Then, when my belief on the subject could 
+make no possible difference in your conduct, I told you that I thought 
+my uncle would do something for her. I told you so because I did think 
+so-and as your friend, I should have told you what I thought in any 
+matter that concerned your interest."
+
+"And now you have changed your opinion?"
+
+"I have changed my opinion; but very probably without sufficient 
+ground."
+
+"That's hard upon me."
+
+"It may be hard to bear disappointment; but you cannot say that anybody 
+has ill-used you."
+
+"And you don't think he will give her anything?"
+
+"Nothing that will be of much moment to you."
+
+"And I'm not to say that that's hard? I think it confounded hard. Of 
+course I most put off my marriage."
+
+"Why do you not speak to my uncle?
+
+"I shall do so. To tell the truth, I think it would have come better 
+from him; but that is a matter of opinion. I shall tell him very 
+plainly what I think about it; and if he is angry, why, I suppose I 
+must leave his house; that will be all."
+
+"Look here, Crosbie; do not begin your conversation with the purpose of 
+angering him. He is not a bad-hearted man, but is very obstinate."
+
+"I can be quite as obstinate as he." And, then, without further parley, 
+they went in among the turnips, and each swore against his luck as he 
+missed his birds. There are certain phases of mind in which a man can 
+neither ride nor shoot, nor play a stroke at billiards, nor remember a 
+card at whist-and to such a phase of mind had come both Crosbie and 
+Dale after their conversation over the gate. They were not above 
+fifteen minutes late at the trysting-place, but nevertheless, punctual 
+though they had been, the girls were there before them. Of course the 
+first inquiries were made about the game, and of course the gentlemen 
+declared that the birds were scarcer than they had ever been before, 
+that the dogs were wilder, and their luck more excruciatingly bad-to 
+all which apologies very little attention was paid. Lily and Bell had 
+not come there to inquire after partridges, and would have forgiven the 
+sportsmen even though no single bird had been killed. But they could 
+not forgive the want of good spirits which was apparent.
+
+"I declare I don't know what's the matter with you," Lily said to her 
+lover.
+
+"We have been over fifteen miles of ground, and-"
+
+"I never knew anything so lackadaisical as you gentlemen from London. 
+Been over fifteen miles of ground! Why, Uncle Christopher would think 
+nothing of that."
+
+"Uncle Christopher is made of sterner stuff than we are," said Crosbie.
+
+"They used to he born so sixty or seventy years ago." And then they 
+walked on through Gruddock's fields, and the home paddocks, back to the 
+Great House, where they found the squire standing in the front of the 
+porch.
+
+The walk had not been so pleasant as they had all intended that it 
+should be when they made their arrangements for it. Crosbie had 
+endeavoured to recover his happy state of mind, but had been 
+unsuccessful; and Lily, fancying that her lover was not all that he 
+should be, had become reserved and silent. Bernard and Bell had not 
+shared this discomfiture, but then Bernard and Bell were, as a rule, 
+much more given to silence than the other two.
+
+"Uncle," said Lily, "these men have shot nothing, and you cannot 
+conceive how unhappy they are in consequence. It's all the fault of the 
+naughty partridges."
+
+"There are plenty of partridges if they knew how to get them," said the 
+squire.
+
+"The dogs are uncommonly wild," said Crosbie.
+
+"They are not wild with me," said the squire; "nor yet with Dingles." 
+Dingles was the squire's gamekeeper.
+
+"The fact is, you young men, nowadays, expect to have dogs trained to 
+do all the work for you. It's too much labour for you to walk up to 
+your game. You'll be late for dinner, girls, if you don't look sharp."
+
+"We're not coming up this evening, sir," said Bell.
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"We're going to stay with mamma."
+
+"And why will not your mother come with you? I'll be whipped if I can 
+understand it. One would have thought that under the present 
+circumstances she would have been glad to see you all as much together 
+as possible."
+
+"We're together quite enough," said Lily." And as for mamma, I suppose 
+she thinks-
+
+"And then she stopped herself, catching the glance of Bell's imploring 
+eye. She was going to make some indignant excuse for her mother-some 
+excuse which would be calculated to make her uncle angry. It was her 
+practice to say such sharp words to him, and consequently he did not 
+regard her as warmly as her more silent and more prudent sister. At the 
+present moment he turned quickly round and went into the house; and 
+then, with a very few words of farewell, the two young men followed 
+him. The girls went back over the little bridge by themselves, feeling 
+that the afternoon had not gone off altogether well.
+
+"You shouldn't provoke him, Lily," said Bell.
+
+"And he shouldn't say those things about mamma. It seems to me that you 
+don't mind what he says."
+
+"Oh, Lily."
+
+"No more you do. He makes me so angry that I cannot hold my tongue. He 
+thinks that because all the place is his, he is to say just what he 
+likes. Why should mamma go up there to please his humours?"
+
+"You may be sure that mamma will do what she thinks best. She is 
+stronger-minded than Uncle Christopher, and does not want any one to 
+help her. But, Lily, you shouldn't speak as though I were careless 
+about mamma. You didn't mean that, I know."
+
+"Of course I didn't." Then the two girls joined their mother in their 
+own little domain; but we will return to the men at the Great House.
+
+Crosbie, when he went up to dress for dinner, fell into one of those 
+melancholy fits of which I have spoken. Was he absolutely about to 
+destroy all the good that he bad done for himself throughout the past 
+years of his hitherto successful life? or rather, as he at last put the 
+question to himself more strongly-was it not the case that he had 
+already destroyed all that success? His marriage with Lily, whether it 
+was to be for good or bad, was now a settled thing, and was not 
+regarded as a matter admitting of any doubt. To do the man justice, I 
+must declare that in all these moments of misery he still did the best 
+he could to think of Lily herself as of a great treasure which he had 
+won-as of a treasure which should, and perhaps would, compensate him 
+for his misery. But there was the misery very plain. He must give up 
+his clubs, and his fashion, and all that he had hitherto gained, and be 
+content to live a plain, humdrum, domestic life, with eight hundred a 
+year, and a small house, full of babies. It was not the kind of Elysium 
+for which he had tutored himself. Lily was very nice, very nice indeed. 
+She was, as he said to himself, "by odds, the nicest girl that he had 
+ever seen." Whatever might now turn up, her happiness should be his 
+first care. But as for his own-he began to fear that the compensation 
+would hardly be perfect.
+
+"It is my own doing," he said to himself, intending to be rather noble 
+in the purport of his soliloquy, "I have trained myself for other 
+things-very foolishly. Of course I must suffer-suffer damnably. But she 
+shall never know it. Dear, sweet, innocent, pretty little thing! And 
+then he went on about the squire, as to whom he felt himself entitled 
+to be indignant by his own disinterested and manly line of conduct 
+towards the niece." But I will let him know what I think about it," he 
+said. "It's all very well for Dale to say that I have been treated 
+fairly. It isn't fair for a man to put forward his niece under false 
+pretences. Of course I thought that he intended to provide for her." 
+And then, having made up his mind in a very manly way that he would not 
+desert Lily altogether after having promised to marry her, he 
+endeavoured to find consolation in the reflection that he might, at any 
+rate, allow himself two years' more run as a bachelor in London. Girls 
+who have to get themselves married without fortunes always know that 
+they will have to wait. Indeed, Lily had already told him, that as far 
+as she was concerned, she was in no hurry. He need not, therefore, at 
+once withdraw his name from Sebright's. Thus he endeavoured to console 
+himself, still, however, resolving that he would have a little serious 
+conversation with the squire that very evening as to Lily's fortune.
+
+And what was the state of Lily's mind at the same moment, while she, 
+also, was performing some slight toilet changes preparatory to their 
+simple dinner at the Small House?
+
+"I didn't behave well to him," she said to herself; "I never do. I 
+forget how much he is giving up for me; and then, when anything annoys 
+him, I make it worse instead of comforting him."And upon that she made 
+accusation against herself that she did not love him half enough-that 
+she did not let him see how thoroughly and perfectly she loved him. She 
+had an idea of her own, that as a girl should never show any preference 
+for a man till circumstances should have fully entitled him to such 
+manifestation, so also should she make no drawback on her love, but 
+pour it forth for his benefit with all her strength, when such 
+circumstances had come to exist. But she was ever feeling that she was 
+not acting up to her theory, now that the time for such practice had 
+come. She would un-wittingly assume little reserves, and make small 
+pretences of indifference in spite of her own judgment. She had done so 
+on this afternoon, and had left him without giving him her hand to 
+press, without looking up into his face with an assurance of love, and 
+therefore she was angry with herself.
+
+"I know I shall teach him to hate me," she said out loud to Bell.
+
+"That would be very sad," said Bell; "but I don't see it."
+
+"If you were engaged to a man you would be much better to him. You 
+would not say so much, but what you did say would be all affection. I 
+am always making horrid little speeches, for which I should like to cut 
+out my tongue afterwards."
+
+"Whatever sort of speeches they are, I think that he likes them."
+
+"Does he? I'm not all so sure of that, Bell. Of course I don't expect 
+that he is to scold me-not yet, that is. But I know by his eye when he 
+is pleased and when he is displeased."
+
+And then they went down to their dinner.
+
+Up at the Great House the three gentlemen met together in apparent good 
+humour. Bernard Dale was a man of an equal temperament, who rarely 
+allowed any feeling, or even any annoyance, to interfere with his usual 
+manner-a man who could always come to table with a smile, and meet 
+either his friend or his enemy with a properly civil greeting. Not that 
+he was especially a false man. There was nothing of deceit in his 
+placidity of demeanour. It arose from true equanimity; but it was the 
+equanimity of a cold disposition rather than of one well ordered by 
+discipline. The squire was aware that he had been unreasonably petulant 
+before dinner, and having taken himself to task in his own way, now 
+entered the dining-room with the courteous greeting of a host.
+
+"I find that your bag was not so bad after all," he said, "and I hope 
+that your appetite is at least as good as your bag."
+
+Crosbie smiled, and made himself pleasant, and said a few flattering 
+words. A man who intends to take some very decided step in an hour or 
+two generally contrives to bear himself in the meantime as though the 
+trifles of the world were quite sufficient for him. So he praised the 
+squire's game; said a good-natured word as to Dingles, and bantered 
+himself as to his own want of skill. Then all went merry-not quite as a 
+marriage bell; but still merry enough for a party of three gentlemen.
+
+But Crosbie's resolution was fixed; and as soon, therefore, as the old 
+butler was permanently gone, and the wine steadily in transit upon the 
+table, he began his task, not without some apparent abruptness. Having 
+fully considered the matter, he had determined that he would not wait 
+for Bernard Dale's absence. He thought it possible that he might be 
+able to fight his battle better in Bernard's presence than he should do 
+behind his back.
+
+"Squire," he began. They all called him squire when they were on good 
+terms together, and Crosbie thought it well to begin as though there 
+was nothing amiss between them.
+
+"Squire, of course I am thinking a good deal at the present moment as 
+to my intended marriage."
+
+"That's natural enough," said the squire.
+
+"Yes, by George! sir, a man doesn't make a change like that without 
+finding that he has got something to think of."
+
+"I suppose not," said the squire. "I never was in the way of getting 
+married myself, but I can easily understand that."
+"I've been the luckiest fellow in the world in finding such a girl as 
+your niece-"
+
+"She is exactly everything that a girl ought to be."
+
+"She is a good girl," said Bernard.
+
+"Yes; I think she is," said the squire.
+
+"But it seems to me," said Crosbie, finding that it was necessary to 
+dash at once headlong into the water, "that something ought to be said 
+as to my means of supporting her properly."
+
+Then he paused for a moment, expecting that the squire would speak. But 
+the squire sat perfectly still, looking intently at the empty fireplace 
+and saying nothing.
+
+"Of supporting her," continued Crosbie," with all those comforts to 
+which she has been accustomed."
+
+"She has never been used to expense," said the squire.
+
+"Her mother, as you doubtless know, is not a rich woman."
+
+"But living here, Lily has had great advantages-a horse to ride, and 
+all that sort of thing."
+
+"I don't suppose she expects a horse in the park," said the squire, 
+with a very perceptible touch of sarcasm in his voice.
+
+"I hope not," said Crosbie.
+
+"I believe she has had the use of one of the ponies here sometimes, but 
+I hope that has not made her extravagant in her ideas. I did not think 
+that there was anything of that nonsense about either of them."
+
+"Nor is there-as far as I know."
+
+"Nothing of the sort," said Bernard.
+
+"But the long and the short of it is this, sir!" and Crosbie, as he 
+spoke, endeavoured to maintain his ordinary voice and usual coolness, 
+but his heightened colour betrayed that he was nervous. "Am I to expect 
+any accession of income with my wife?"
+
+"I have not spoken to my sister-in-law on the subject," said the 
+squire; "but I should fear that she cannot do much."
+
+"As a matter of course, I would not take a shilling from her," said 
+Crosbie.
+
+"Then that settles it," said the squire.
+
+Crosbie paused a moment, during which his colour became very red. He 
+unconsciously took up an apricot and ate it, and then he spoke out.
+
+"Of course I was not alluding to Mrs Dale's income; I would not, on any 
+account, disturb her arrangements. But I wished to learn, sir, whether 
+you intend to do anything for your niece."
+
+"In the way of giving her a fortune? Nothing at all. I intend to do 
+nothing at all."
+
+"Then I suppose we understand each other-at last," said Crosbie.
+
+"I should have thought that we might have understood each other at 
+first," said the squire.
+
+"Did I ever make you any promise, or give you any hint that I intended 
+to provide for my niece? Have I ever held out to you any such hope? I 
+don't know what you mean by that word 'at last '-unless it be to give 
+offence."
+
+"I meant the truth, sir-I meant this-that seeing the manner in which 
+your nieces lived with you, I thought it probable that you would treat 
+them both as though they were your daughters. Now I find out my 
+mistake-that is all!"
+
+"You have been mistaken-and without a shadow of excuse for your 
+mistake."
+
+"Others have been mistaken with me," said Crosbie, forgetting, on the 
+spur of the moment, that he had no right to drag the opinion of any 
+other person into the question.
+
+"What others?" said the squire, with anger; and his mind immediately 
+betook itself to his sister-in-law.
+
+"I do not want to make any mischief," said Crosbie.
+
+"If anybody connected with my family has presumed to tell you that I 
+intended to do more for my niece Lilian than I have already done, such 
+person has not only been false, but ungrateful. I have given to no one 
+any authority to make any promise on behalf of my niece."
+
+"No such promise has been made. It was only a suggestion," said Crosbie.
+
+He was not in the least aware to whom the squire was alluding in his 
+anger; but he perceived that his host was angry, and having already 
+reflected that he should not have alluded to the words which Bernard 
+Dale had spoken in his friendship, he resolved to name no one. Bernard, 
+as he sat by listening, knew exactly how the matter stood; but, as he 
+thought, there could be no reason why he should subject himself to his 
+uncle's ill-will, seeing that he had committed no sin.
+
+"No such suggestion should have been made," said the squire.
+
+"No one has had a right to make such a suggestion. No one has been 
+placed by me in a position to make such a suggestion to you without 
+manifest impropriety. I will ask no further questions about it; but it 
+is quite as well that you should understand at once that I do not 
+consider it to be my duty to give my niece Lilian a fortune on her 
+marriage. I trust that your offer to her was not made under any such 
+delusion."
+
+"No, sir; it was not," said Crosbie.
+
+"Then I suppose that no great harm has been done. I am sorry if false 
+hopes have been given to you; but I am sure you will acknowledge that 
+they were not given to you by me."
+
+"I think you have misunderstood me, sir. My hopes were never very high; 
+but I thought it right to ascertain your intentions."
+
+"Now you know them. I trust, for the girl's sake, that it will make no 
+difference to her. I can hardly believe that she has been to blame in 
+the matter."
+
+Crosbie hastened at once to exculpate Lily; and then, with more awkward 
+blunders than a man should have made who was so well acquainted with 
+fashionable life as the Apollo of the Beaufort, he proceeded to explain 
+that, as Lily was to have nothing, his own pecuniary arrangements would 
+necessitate some little delay in their marriage.
+
+"As far as I myself am concerned," said the squire, "I do not like long 
+engagements. But I am quite aware that in this matter I have no right 
+to interfere, unless, indeed-"
+
+"I suppose it will be well to fix some day; eh, Crosbie?" said Bernard.
+
+"I will discuss that matter with Mrs Dale," said Crosbie.
+
+"If you and she understand each other," said the squire,
+
+"that will be sufficient. Shall we go into the drawing-room now, or out 
+upon the lawn?"
+
+That evening, as Crosbie went to bed, he felt that he had not gained 
+the victory in his encounter with the squire.
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+IT CANNOT BE
+
+
+
+On the following morning at breakfast each of the three gentlemen at 
+the Great House received a little note on pink paper, nominally from 
+Mrs Dale, asking them to drink tea at the Small House on that day week. 
+At the bottom of the note which Lily had written for Mr Crosbie was 
+added:
+
+"Dancing on the lawn, if we can get anybody to stand up. Of course you 
+must come, whether you like it or not. And Bernard also. Do your 
+possible to talk my uncle into coming." And this note did something 
+towards re-creating good-humour among them at the breakfast-table. It 
+was shown to the squire, and at last he was brought to say that he 
+would perhaps go to Mrs Dale's little evening-party.
+
+It may be well to explain that this promised entertainment had been 
+originated with no special view to the pleasure of Mr Crosbie, but 
+altogether on behalf of poor Johnny Eames. What was to be done in that 
+matter? This question had been fully discussed between Mrs Dale and 
+Bell, and they had come to the conclusion that it would behest to ask 
+Johnny over to a little friendly gathering, in which he might be able 
+to meet Lily with some strangers around them. In this way his 
+embarrassment might be overcome. It would never do, as Mrs Dale said, 
+that he should be suffered to stay away, unnoticed by them.
+
+"When the ice is once broken he won't mind it, said Bell. And, 
+therefore, early in the day, a messenger was sent over to Guestwick, 
+who returned with a note from Mrs Eames, saying that she would come on 
+the evening in question, with her son and daughter. They would keep the 
+fly and get back to Guestwick the same evening. This was added, as an 
+offer had been made of beds for Mrs Eames and Mary.
+
+Before the evening of the party another memorable occurrence had taken 
+place at Allington, which must be described, in order that the feelings 
+of the different people on that evening may be understood. The squire 
+had given his nephew to understand that he wished to have that matter 
+settled as to his niece Bell; and as Bernard's views were altogether in 
+accordance with the squire's, he resolved to comply with his uncle's 
+wishes. The project with him was not a new thing. Re did love his 
+cousin quite sufficiently for purposes of matrimony, and was minded 
+that it would be a good thing for him to marry. He could not marry 
+without money, but this marriage would give him an income without the 
+trouble of intricate settlements, or the interference of lawyers 
+hostile to his own interests. It was possible that he might do better; 
+but then it was possible also that he might do much worse; and, in 
+addition to this, he was fond of his cousin. He discussed the matter 
+within himself, very calmly; made some excellent resolutions as to the 
+kind of life which it would behove him to live as a married man; 
+settled on the street in London in which he would have his house, and 
+behaved very prettily to Bell for four or five days running. That he 
+did not make love to her, in the ordinary sense of the word, must, I 
+suppose, be taken for granted, seeing that Bell herself did not 
+recognise the fact. She had always liked her cousin, and thought that 
+in these days he was making himself particularly agreeable.
+
+On the evening before the party the girls were at the Great House, 
+having come up nominally with the intention of discussing the 
+expediency of dancing on the lawn. Lily had made up her mind that it 
+was to be so, but Bell had objected that it would be cold and damp, and 
+that the drawing-room would be nicer for dancing.
+
+"You see we've only got four young gentlemen and one ungrown," said 
+Lily; "and they will look so stupid standing up all properly in a room, 
+as though we had a regular party."
+
+"Thank you for the compliment," said Crosbie, taking off his straw hat.
+
+"So you will; and we girls will look more stupid still. But out on the 
+lawn it won't look stupid at all. Two or three might stand up on the 
+lawn, and it would be jolly enough."
+
+"I don't quite see it," said Bernard.
+
+"Yes, I think I see it," said Crosbie.
+
+"The unadaptability of the lawn for the purpose of a ball-"
+
+"Nobody is thinking of a ball," said Lily, with mock petulance.
+
+"I'm defending you, and yet you won't let me speak. The unadaptability 
+of the lawn for the purpose of a ball will conceal the insufficiency of 
+four men and a boy as a supply of male dancers. But, Lily, who is the 
+ungrown gentleman? Is it your old friend Johnny Eames?"
+
+Lily's voice became sobered as she answered him.
+
+"Oh, no; I did not mean Mr Eames. He is coming, but I did not mean him. 
+Dick Boyce, Mr Boyce's son, is only sixteen. He is the ungrown 
+gentleman."
+
+"And who is the fourth adult."
+
+"Dr Crofts, from Guestwick. I do hope you will like him, Adolphus. We 
+think he is the very perfection of a man."
+
+"Then of course I shall hate him; and be very jealous, too!" And then 
+that pair went off together, fighting their own little battle on that 
+head, as turtle-doves will sometimes do. They went off, and Bernard was 
+left with Bell standing together over the ha-ha fence which divides the 
+garden at the back of the house from the field.
+
+"Bell," he said," they seem very happy, don't they?
+
+"And they ought to be happy now, oughtn't they? Dear Lily! I hope he 
+will be good to her. Do you know, Bernard, though he is your friend, I 
+am very, very anxious about it. It is such a vast trust to put in a man 
+when we do not quite know him."
+
+"Yes, it is; but they'll do very well together. Lily will be happy 
+enough."
+
+"And he?"
+
+"I suppose he'll be happy, too. He'll feel himself a little 
+straightened as to income at first, but that will all come round."
+"If he is not, she will be wretched."
+
+"They will do very well. Lily must be prepared to make the money go as 
+far as she can, that's all."
+
+"Lily won't feel the want of money. It is not that. But if he lets her 
+know that she has made him a poor man, then she will be unhappy. Is he 
+extravagant, Bernard?"
+
+But Bernard was anxious to discuss another subject, and therefore would 
+not speak such words of wisdom as to Lily's engagement as might have 
+been expected from him had he been in a different frame of mind.
+
+"No, I should say not," said he." But, Bell-"
+
+"I do not know that we could have acted otherwise than we have done, 
+and yet I fear that we have been rash. If he makes her unhappy, 
+Bernard, I shall never forgive you."
+
+But as she said this she put her hand lovingly upon his arm, as a 
+cousin might do, and spoke in a tone which divested her threat of its 
+acerbity.
+
+"You must not quarrel with me, Bell, whatever may happen. I cannot 
+afford to quarrel with you."
+
+"Of course I was not in earnest as to that."
+
+"You and I must never quarrel, Bell; at least, I hope not. I could bear 
+to quarrel with any one rather than with you." And then, as he spoke, 
+there was something in his voice which gave the girl some slight, 
+indistinct warning of what might be his intention. Not that she said to 
+herself at once, that he was going to make her an offer of his 
+hand-now, on the spot; but she felt that he intended something beyond 
+the tenderness of ordinary cousinly affection. I hope we shall never 
+quarrel," she said. But as she spoke, her mind was settling 
+itself-forming its resolution, and coming to a conclusion as to the 
+sort of love which Bernard might, perhaps, expect. And it formed 
+another conclusion; as to the sort of love which might be given in 
+return.
+
+"Bell," he said, "you and I have always been dear friends."
+
+"Yes; always."
+
+"Why should we not be something more than friends?"
+
+To give Captain Dale his due I must declare that his voice was 
+perfectly natural as he asked this question, and that he showed no 
+signs of nervousness, either in his face or limbs. He had made up his 
+mind to do it on that occasion, and he did it without any signs of 
+outward disturbance. He asked his question, and then he waited for his 
+answer. In this he was rather hard upon his cousin; for, though the 
+question had certainly been asked in language that could not be 
+mistaken, still the matter had not been put forward with all that 
+fullness which a young lady, under such circumstances, has a right to 
+expect.
+
+They had sat down on the turf close to the ha-ha, and they were so near 
+that Bernard was able to put out his hand with the view of taking that 
+of his cousin within his own. But she contrived to keep her hands 
+locked together, so that he merely held her gently by the wrist.
+"I don't quite understand, Bernard," she said, after a minute's pause.
+
+"Shall we be more than cousins? Shall we be man and wife?"
+
+Now, at least, she could not say that she did not understand. If the 
+question was ever asked plainly, Bernard Dale had asked it plainly. 
+Shall we be man and wife? Few men, I fancy, dare to put it all at once 
+in so abrupt a way, and yet I do not know that the English language 
+affords any better terms for the question.
+
+"Oh, Bernard! you have surprised me."
+
+"I hope I have not pained you, Bell. I have been long thinking of this, 
+but I am well aware that my own manner, even to you, has not been that 
+of a lover. It is not in me to smile and say soft things, as Crosbie 
+can. But I do not love you the less on that account. I have looked 
+about for a wife, and I have thought that if I could gain you I should 
+be very fortunate."
+
+He did not then say anything about his uncle, and the eight hundred a 
+year; but he fully intended to do so as soon as an opportunity should 
+serve. He was quite of opinion that eight hundred a year and the 
+good-will of a rich uncle were strong ground for matrimony-were grounds 
+even for love; and he did not doubt but his cousin would see the matter 
+in the same light.
+
+"You are very good to me-more than good. Of course I know that. But, 
+oh, Bernard I did not expect this a bit."
+
+"But you will answer me, Bell! Or if you would like time to think, or 
+to speak to my aunt, perhaps you will answer me tomorrow?"-
+
+"I think I ought to answer you, now."
+
+"Not if it be a refusal, Bell. Think well of it before you do that. I 
+should have told you that, our uncle wishes this match, and that he 
+will remove any difficulty there might be about money."-
+
+" I do not care for money."
+
+"But, as you were saying about Lily, one has to be prudent. Now, in our 
+marriage, everything of that kind would be well arranged. My uncle has 
+promised me that he would at once allow us-"
+
+"Stop, Bernard. You must not be led to suppose that any offer made by 
+my uncle would help to purchase-Indeed, there can be no need for us to 
+talk about money."
+
+"I wished to let you know the facts of the case, exactly as they are. 
+And as to our uncle, I cannot but think that you would be glad, in such 
+a matter, to have him on your side."
+
+"Yes, I should be glad to have him on my side; that is, if I were 
+going-But my uncle's wishes could not influence my decision. The fact 
+is, Bernard-"
+
+"Well, dearest, what is the fact?
+
+"I have always regarded you rather as a brother than as anything else."
+
+"But that regard may be changed."
+
+"No; I think not. Bernard, I will go further and speak on at once. It 
+cannot be changed. I know myself well enough to say that with 
+certainty. It cannot be changed."
+
+"You mean that you cannot love me?"
+
+"Not as you would have me do, I do love you very dearly-very dearly, 
+indeed. I would go to you in any trouble, exactly as I would go to a 
+brother."
+
+"And must that be all, Bell?"
+
+"Is not that all the sweetest love that can be felt? But you must not 
+think me ungrateful, or proud. I know well that you are-are proposing 
+to do for me much more than I deserve. Any girl might be proud of such 
+an offer. But, dear Bernard-"
+
+"Bell, before you give me a final answer, sleep upon this and talk it 
+over with your mother. Of course you were unprepared, and I cannot 
+expect that you should promise me so much without a moment's 
+consideration."
+
+"I was unprepared, and therefore I have not answered you as I should 
+have done. But as it has gone so far, I cannot let you leave me in 
+uncertainty. It is not necessary that I should keep you waiting. In 
+this matter I do know my own mind. Dear Bernard, indeed it cannot be as 
+you have proposed."
+
+She spoke in a low voice, and in a tone that had in it something of 
+almost imploring humility; but, nevertheless, it conveyed to her cousin 
+an assurance that she was in earnest; an assurance also that that 
+earnest would not readily be changed. Was she not a Dale? And when did 
+a Dale change his mind? For a while he sat silent by her; and she too, 
+having declared her intention, refrained from further words. For some 
+minutes they thus remained, looking down into the ha-ha. She still kept 
+her old position, holding her hands clasped together over her knees; 
+but he was now lying on his side, supporting his head upon his arm, 
+with his face indeed turned towards her, but with his eyes fixed upon 
+the grass. During this time, however, he was not idle. His cousin's 
+answer, though it had grieved him, had not come upon him as a blow 
+stunning him for a moment, and rendering him unfit for instant thought. 
+He was grieved, more grieved than he had thought he would have been. 
+The thing that he had wanted moderately, he now wanted the more in that 
+it was denied to him. But he was able to perceive the exact truth of 
+his position, and to calculate what might be his chances if he went on 
+with his suit, and what his advantage if he at once abandoned it.
+
+"I do not wish to press you unfairly, Bell; but may I ask if any other 
+preference-"
+
+"There is no other preference," she answered. And then again they were 
+silent for a minute or two.
+
+"My uncle will be much grieved at this," he said at last.
+
+"If that be all," said Bell, "I do not think that we need either of us 
+trouble ourselves. He can have no right to dispose of our hearts."
+
+"I understand the taunt, Bell."
+
+"Dear Bernard, there was no taunt. I intended none."
+
+"I need not speak of my own grief. You cannot but know how deep it must 
+be. Why should I have submitted myself to this mortification had not my 
+heart been concerned? But that I will bear, if I must bear it-". And 
+then he paused, looking up at her.
+
+"It will soon pass away," she said.
+
+I will accept it at any rate without complaint. But as to my uncle's 
+feelings, it is open to me to speak, and to you, I should think, to 
+listen without indifference. He has been kind to us both, and loves us 
+two above any other living beings. It's not surprising that he should 
+wish to see us married, and it will not be surprising if your refusal 
+should be a great blow to him."
+
+"I shall be sorry-very sorry."
+
+"I also shall be sorry. I am now speaking of him. He has set his heart 
+upon it; and as he has but few wishes, few desires, so is he the more 
+constant in those which he expresses. When he knows this, I fear that 
+we shall find him very stern."
+
+"Then he will be unjust."
+
+"No; he will not be unjust. He is always a just man. But he will be 
+unhappy, and will, I fear, make others unhappy. Dear Bell, may not this 
+thing remain for a while unsettled? You will not find that I take 
+advantage of your goodness. I will not intrude it on you again-say for 
+a fortnight-or till Crosbie shall be gone."
+
+"No, no, no," said Bell.
+
+"Why are you so eager in your noes? There can be no danger in such 
+delay. I will not press you-and you can let my uncle think that you 
+have at least taken time for consideration."
+
+"There are things as to which one is bound to answer at once. If I 
+doubted myself, I would let you persuade me. But I do not doubt myself, 
+and I should be wrong to keep you in suspense. Dear, dearest Bernard, 
+it cannot be; and as it cannot he, you, as my brother, would bid me say 
+so clearly. It cannot be."
+
+As she made this last assurance, they heard the steps of Lily and her 
+lover close to them, and they both felt that it would be well that 
+their intercourse should thus be brought to a close. Neither had known 
+how to get up and leave the place, and ye each had felt that nothing 
+further could then be said.
+
+"Did you ever see anything so sweet and affectionate and romantic?" 
+said Lily, standing over them and looking at them.
+
+"And all the while we have been so practical and worldly. Do you know, 
+Bell, that Adolphus seems to think we can't very well keep pigs in 
+London. It makes me so unhappy."
+
+"It does seem a pity," said Crosbie, "for Lily seems to know all about 
+pigs."
+"Of course I do. I haven't lived in the country all my life for 
+nothing. Oh, Bernard, I should so like to see you rolled down into the 
+bottom of the ha-ha. Just remain there, and we'll do it between us."
+
+Whereupon Bernard got up, as did Bell also, and they all went in to tea.
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MRS DALE'S LITTLE PARTY
+
+
+The next day was the day of the party. Not a word more was said on that 
+evening between Bell and her cousin, at least, nut a word more of any 
+peculiar note; and when Crosbie suggested to his friend on the 
+following morning that they should both step down and see how the 
+preparations were getting on at the Small House, Bernard declined.
+
+"You forget, my dear fellow, that I'm not in love as you are," said he.
+
+"But I thought you were," said Crosbie.
+
+"No; not at all as you are. You are an accepted lover, and will be 
+allowed to do anything-whip the creams, and tune the piano, if you know 
+how. I'm only a half sort of lover, meditating a mariage de convenance 
+to oblige an uncle, and by no means required by the terms of my 
+agreement to undergo a very rigid amount of drill. Your position is 
+just the reverse." In saying all which Captain Dale was no doubt very 
+false; but if falseness can be forgiven to a man in any position, it 
+may be forgiven in that which he then filled. So Crosbie went down to 
+the Small House alone.
+
+"Dale wouldn't come," said he, speaking to the three ladies together, 
+"I suppose he's keeping himself up for the dance on the lawn."
+
+"I hope he will be here in the evening," said Mrs Dale. But Bell said 
+never a word. She had determined, that under the existing 
+circumstances, it would be only fair to her cousin that his offer and 
+her answer to it should be kept secret. She knew why Bernard did not 
+come across from the Great House with his friend, but she said nothing 
+of her knowledge. Lily looked at her, but looked without speaking; and 
+as for Mrs Dale, she took no notice of the circumstance. Thus they 
+passed the afternoon together without further mention of Bernard Dale; 
+and it may be said, at any rate of Lily and Crosbie, that his presence 
+was not missed.
+
+Mrs Eames, with her son and daughter, were the first to come." It is so 
+nice of you to come early," said Lily, trying on the spur of the moment 
+to say something which should sound pleasant and happy, but in truth 
+using that form of welcome which to my ears sounds always the most 
+ungracious.
+
+"Ten minutes before the time named; and, of course, you must have 
+understood that I meant thirty minutes after it!" That is my 
+interpretation of the words-when I am thanked for coming early. But Mrs 
+Eames was a kind, patient, unexacting woman, who took all civil words 
+as meaning civility. And, indeed, Lily had meant nothing else.
+
+"Yes; we did come early," said Mrs Eames, "because Mary thought she 
+would like to go up into the girls' room and just settle her, hair, you 
+know."
+
+"So she shall," said Lily, who had taken Mary by the hand.
+
+"And we knew we shouldn't be in the way. Johnny can go out into the 
+garden if there's anything left to be done."
+"He shan't be banished unless he likes it," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"If he finds us women too much for his unaided strength-"
+
+John Eames muttered something about being very well as he was, and then 
+got himself into an arm-chair. He had shaken hands with Lily, trying as 
+he did so to pronounce articulately a little speech which he had 
+prepared for the occasion.
+
+"I have to congratulate you, Lily, and I hope with all my heart that 
+you will be happy." The words were simple enough, and were not 
+ill-chosen, but the poor young man never got them spoken. The word 
+"congratulate" did reach Lily's ears, and she understood it all-both 
+the kindness of the intended speech and the reason why it could not be 
+spoken.
+
+"Thank you, John," she said; "I hope I shall see so much of you in 
+London. It will be so nice to have an old Guestwick friend near me." 
+She had her own voice, and the pulses of her heart better under command 
+than had he; but she also felt that the occasion was trying to her. The 
+man had loved her honestly and truly-still did love her, paying her the 
+great homage of bitter grief in that he had lost her. Where is the girl 
+who will not sympathise with such love and such grief, if it be shown 
+only because it cannot be concealed, and be declared against the will 
+of him who declares it?
+
+Then came in old Mrs Hearn, whose cottage was not distant two minutes' 
+walk from the Small House. She always called Mrs Dale "my dear," and 
+petted the girls as though they had been children. When told of Lily's 
+marriage, she had thrown up her hands with surprise, for she had still 
+left in some corner of her drawers remnants of sugar-plums which she 
+had bought for Lily. "A London man, is he? Well, well. I wish he lived 
+in the country. Eight hundred a year, my dear?" she had said to Mrs 
+Dale. "That sounds nice down here, because we are all so poor. But I 
+suppose eight hundred a year isn't very much up in London?"
+
+"The squire's coming, I suppose, isn't he?" said Mrs Hearn, as she 
+seated herself on the sofa close to Mrs Dale.
+
+"Yes, he'll be here by-and-by; unless he changes his mind, you know. He 
+doesn't stand on ceremony with me."
+
+"He change his mind! When did you ever know Christopher Dale change his 
+mind?"
+
+"He is pretty constant, Mrs Hearn."
+
+"If he promised to give a man a penny, he'd give it. But if he promised 
+to take away a pound, he'd take it, though it cost him years to get it. 
+He's going to turn me out of my cottage, he says."
+
+"Nonsense, Mrs Hearn!"
+
+"Jolliffe came and told me"-Jolliffe, I should explain, was the 
+bailiff-"that if I didn't like it as it was, I might leave it, and that 
+the squire could get double the rent for it. Now all I asked was that 
+he should do a little painting in the kitchen; and the wood is all as 
+black as his hat."
+
+"I thought it was understood you were to paint inside."
+
+"How can I do it, my dear, with a hundred and forty pounds for 
+everything? I must live, you know! And he that has workmen about him 
+every day of the year! And was that a message to send to me, who have 
+lived in the parish for fifty years? Here he is." And Mrs Hearn 
+majestically raised herself from her seat as the squire entered the 
+room.
+
+With him entered Mr and Mrs Boyce, from the parsonage, with Dick Boyce, 
+the ungrown gentleman, and two girl Boyces, who were fourteen and 
+fifteen years of age. Mrs Dale, with the amount of good-nature usual on 
+such occasions, asked reproachfully why Jane, and Charles, and 
+Florence, and Bessy, did not come-Boyce being a man who had his quiver 
+full of them-and Mrs Boyce, giving the usual answer, declared that she 
+already felt that they had come as an avalanche.
+
+"But where are the-the-the young men?" asked Lily, assuming a look of 
+mock astonishment.
+
+"They'll be across in two or three hours' time," said the squire.
+
+"They both dressed for dinner, and, as I thought, made themselves very 
+smart; but for such a grand occasion as this they thought a second 
+dressing necessary. How do you do, Mrs Hearn? I hope you are quite 
+well. No rheumatism left, eh?" This the squire said very loud into Mrs 
+Hearn's ear. Mrs Hearn was perhaps a little hard of hearing; but it was 
+very little, and she hated to be thought deaf. She did not, moreover, 
+like to be thought rheumatic. This the squire knew, and therefore his 
+mode of address was not good-natured.
+
+"You needn't make me jump so, Mr Dale. I'm pretty well now, thank ye. I 
+did have a twinge in the spring-that cottage is so badly built for 
+draughts! I wonder you can live in it,' my sister said to me the last 
+time she was over. I suppose I should be better off over with her at 
+Hamersham, only one doesn't like to move, you know, after living fifty 
+years in one parish."
+
+"You mustn't think of going away from us," Mrs Boyce said, speaking by 
+no means loud, but slowly and plainly, hoping thereby to flatter the 
+old woman. But the old woman understood it all. "She's a sly creature, 
+is Mrs Boyce," Mrs Hearn said to Mrs Dale, before the evening was out. 
+There are some old people whom it is very hard to flatter, and with 
+whom it is, nevertheless, almost impossible to live unless you do 
+flatter them.
+
+At last the two heroes came in across the lawn at the drawing-room 
+window; and Lily, as they entered, dropped a low curtsy before them, 
+gently swelling down upon the ground with her light muslin dress, till 
+she looked like some wondrous flower that had bloomed upon the carpet, 
+and putting her two hands, with the backs of her fingers pressed 
+together, on the buckle of her girdle, she said, "We are waiting upon 
+your honours' kind grace, and feel how much we owe to you for favouring 
+our poor abode." And then she gently rose up again, smiling, oh, so 
+sweetly, on the man she loved, and the puffings and swellings went out 
+of her muslin.
+
+I think there is nothing in the world so pretty as the conscious little 
+tricks of love played off by a girl towards the man she loves, when she 
+has made up her mind boldly that all the world may know that she has 
+given herself away to him.
+
+I am not sure that Crosbie liked it all as much as he should have done. 
+The bold assurance of her love when they two were alone together he did 
+like. What man does not like such assurances on such occasions? But 
+perhaps he would have been better pleased had Lily shown more 
+reticence-been more secret, as it were, as to her feelings, when others 
+were around them. It was not that he accused her in his thoughts of any 
+want of delicacy. He read her character too well-was, if not quite 
+aright in his reading of it, at least too nearly so to admit of his 
+making against her any such accusation as that. It was the calf-like 
+feeling that was disagreeable to him. He did not like to be presented, 
+even to the world of Allington, as a victim caught for the sacrifice, 
+and bound with ribbon for the altar. And then there lurked behind it 
+all a feeling that it might be safer that the thing should not be so 
+openly manifested before all the world. Of course, everybody knew that 
+he was engaged to Lily Dale; nor had he, as he said to himself, perhaps 
+too frequently, the slightest idea of breaking from that engagement. 
+But then the marriage might possibly be delayed. He had not discussed 
+that matter yet with Lily, having, indeed, at the first moment of his 
+gratified love, created some little difficulty for himself by pressing 
+for an early day. "I will refuse you nothing," she had said to him; 
+"but do not make it too soon." He saw, therefore, before him some 
+little embarrassment, and was inclined to wish that Lily would abstain 
+from that manner which seemed to declare to all the world that she was 
+about to be married immediately. "I must speak to her tomorrow," he 
+said to himself, as he accepted her salute with a mock gravity equal to 
+her own.
+
+Poor Lily! How little she understood as yet what was passing through 
+his mind. Had she known his wish she would have wrapped up her love 
+carefully in a napkin, so that no one should have seen it-no one but 
+he, when he might choose to have the treasure uncovered for his sight. 
+And it was all for his sake that she had been thus open in her ways. 
+She had seen girls who were half ashamed of their love; but she would 
+never be ashamed of hers or of him. She had given herself to him; and 
+now all the world might know it, if all the world cared for such 
+knowledge. Why should she be ashamed of that which, to her thinking, 
+was so great an honour to her? She had heard of girls who would not 
+speak of their love, arguing to themselves cannily that there may be 
+many a slip between the cup and the lip. There could be no need of any 
+such caution with her. There could surely be no such slip! Should there 
+be such a fall-should any such fate, either by falseness or misfortune, 
+come upon her-no such caution could be of service to save her. The cup 
+would have been so shattered in its fall that no further piecing of its 
+parts would be in any way possible. So much as this she did not exactly 
+say to herself; but she felt it all, and went bravely forward-bold in 
+her love, and careful to hide it from none who chanced to see it.
+
+They had gone through the ceremony with the cake and teacups, and had 
+decided that, at any rate, the first dance or two should be held upon 
+the lawn when the last of the guests arrived.
+
+"Oh, Adolphus, I am so glad he has come," said Lily.
+
+"Do try to like him." Of Dr Crofts, who was the new comer, she had 
+sometimes spoken to her lover, but she had never coupled her sister's 
+name with that of the doctor, even in speaking to him. Nevertheless, 
+Crosbie had in some way conceived the idea that this Crofts either had 
+been, or was, or was to be, in love with Bell; and as he was prepared 
+to advocate his friend Dale's claims in that quarter, he was not 
+particularly anxious to welcome the doctor as a thoroughly intimate 
+friend of the family. He knew nothing as yet of Dale's. offer, or of 
+Bell's refusal, but he was prepared for war, if war should be 
+necessary. Of the squire, at the present moment, he was not very fond; 
+but if his destiny intended to give him a wife out of this family, he 
+should prefer the owner of Allington and nephew of Lord De Guest as a 
+brother-in-law to a village doctor-as he took upon himself, in his 
+pride, to call Dr Crofts.
+
+"It is very unfortunate," said he, "but I never do like Paragons."
+
+"But you must like this Paragon. Not that he is a Paragon at all, for 
+he smokes and hunts, and does all manner of wicked things." And then 
+she went forward to welcome her friend.
+
+Dr Crofts was a slight, spare man, about five feet nine in height, with 
+very bright dark eyes, a broad forehead, with dark hair that almost 
+curled, but which did not come so forward over his brow as it should 
+have done for purposes of beauty-with a thin well-cut nose, and a mouth 
+that would have been perfect had the lips been a little fuller. The 
+lower part of his face, when seen alone, had in it somewhat of 
+sternness, which, however, was redeemed by the brightness of his eyes. 
+And yet an artist would have declared that the lower features of his 
+face were by far the more handsome.
+
+Lily went across to him and greeted him heartily, declaring how glad 
+she was to have him there.
+
+"And I must introduce you to Mr Crosbie," she said, as though she was 
+determined to carry her point. The two men shook hands with each other, 
+coldly, without saying a word, as young men are apt to do when they are 
+brought together in that way. Then they separated at once, somewhat to 
+the disappointment of Lily. Crosbie stood off by himself, both his eyes 
+turned up towards the ceiling, and looking as though he meant to give 
+himself airs; while Crofts got himself quickly up to the fireplace, 
+making civil little speeches to Mrs Dale, Mrs Boyce, and Mrs Hearn. And 
+then at last he made his way round to Bell.
+
+"I am so glad," he said, "to congratulate you on your sister's 
+engagement."
+
+"Yes," said Bell;
+
+"we knew that you would be glad to hear of her happiness."
+
+"Indeed, I am glad; and thoroughly hope that she may be happy. You all 
+like him, do you not?"
+
+"We like him very much."
+
+"And I am told that he is well off. He is a very fortunate man-very 
+fortunate-very fortunate."
+
+"Of course we think so," said Bell.
+
+"Not, however, because he is rich."
+
+"No; not because he is rich. But because, being worthy of such 
+happiness, his circumstances should enable him to marry, and to enjoy 
+it."
+
+"Yes, exactly," said Bell. "That is just it." Then she sat down, and in 
+sitting down put an end to the conversation." That is just it," she had 
+said. But as soon as the words were spoken she declared to herself that 
+it was not so, and that Crofts was wrong. "We love him," she said to 
+herself, "not because he is rich enough to marry without anxious 
+thought, but because he dares to marry although he is not rich." And 
+then she told herself that she was angry with the doctor.
+
+After that Dr Crofts got off towards the door, and stood there by 
+himself, leaning against the wall, with the thumbs of both his hands 
+stuck into the armholes of his waistcoat. People said that he was a shy 
+man. I suppose he was shy, and yet he was a man that was by no means 
+afraid of doing anything that he had to do. He could speak before a 
+multitude without being abashed, whether it was a multitude of men or 
+of women. He could be very fixed too in his own opinion, and eager, if 
+not violent, in the prosecution of his purpose. But he could not stand 
+and say little words, when he had in truth nothing to say. He could not 
+keep his ground when he felt that he was not using the ground upon 
+which he stood. He had not learned the art of assuming himself to be of 
+importance in whatever place he might find himself. It was this art 
+which Crosbie had learned and by this art that he had flourished. So 
+Crofts retired and leaned against the wall near the door; and Crosbie 
+came forward and shone like an Apollo among all the guests.
+
+"How is it that he does it?" said John Eames to himself, envying the 
+perfect happiness of the London man of fashion.
+
+At last Lily got the dancers out upon the lawn, and then they managed 
+to go through one quadrille. But it was found that it did not answer. 
+The music of the single fiddle which Crosbie had hired from Guestwick 
+was not sufficient for the purpose; and then the grass, though it was 
+perfect for purposes of croquet, was not pleasant to the feet for 
+dancing.
+
+"This is very nice," said Bernard to his cousin." I don't know anything 
+that could be nicer; but perhaps-"
+
+"I know what you mean," said Lily.
+
+"But I shall stay here. There's no touch of romance about any of you. 
+Look at the moon there at the back of the steeple. I don't mean to go 
+in all night." Then she walked off by one of the paths, and her lover 
+went after her.
+
+"Don't you like the moon?" she said, as she took his arm, to which she 
+was now so accustomed that she hardly thought of it as she took it.
+
+"Like the moon ?-well; I fancy I like the sun better. I don't quite 
+believe in moonlight. I think it does best to talk about when one wants 
+to be sentimental."
+
+"Ah; that is just what I fear. That is what I say to Bell when I tell 
+her that her romance will fade as the roses do. And then I shall have 
+to learn that prose is more serviceable than poetry, and that the mind 
+is better than the heart, and-and that money is better than love. It's 
+all coming, I know; and yet I do like the moonlight."
+
+"And the poetry-and the love?"
+
+"Yes. The poetry much, and the love more. To be loved by you is sweeter 
+even than any of my dreams-is better than all the poetry I have read."
+
+"Dearest Lily," and his unchecked arm stole round her waist.
+
+"It is the meaning of the moonlight, and the essence of the poetry," 
+continued the impassioned girl.
+
+"I did not know then why I liked such things, but now I know. It was 
+because I longed to be loved."
+
+"And to love."
+"Oh, yes. I would be nothing without that. But that, you know, is your 
+delight-or should be. The other is mine. And yet it is a delight to 
+love you; to know that I may love you."
+
+"You mean that this is the realisation of your romance."
+
+"Yes; but it most not be the end of it, Adolphus. You most like the 
+soft twilight, and the long evenings when we shall be alone; and you 
+most read to me the books I love, and you most not teach me to think 
+that the world is hard, and dry, and cruel-not yet. I tell Bell so very 
+often; but you must not say so to me."
+
+"It shall not be dry and cruel, if I can prevent it."
+
+"You understand what I mean, dearest. I will not think it dry and 
+cruel, even though sorrow should come upon us, if you-I think you know 
+what I mean."
+
+"If I am good to you."
+
+"I am not afraid of that-I am not the least afraid of that. You do not 
+think that I could ever distrust you? But you must not be ashamed to 
+look at the moonlight, and to read poetry, and to-"
+
+"To talk nonsense, you mean."
+
+But as he said it, he pressed her closer to his side, and his tone was 
+pleasant to her.
+
+"I suppose I'm talking nonsense now?" she said, pouting." You liked me 
+better when I was talking about the pigs; didn't you?"
+
+"No; I like you best now."
+
+"And why didn't you like me then? Did I say anything to offend you?"
+
+"I like you best now, because-"
+
+They were standing in the narrow pathway of the gate leading from the 
+bridge into the gardens of the Great House, and the shadow of the 
+thick-spreading laurels was around them. But the moonlight still 
+pierced brightly through the little avenue, and she, as she looked up 
+to him, could see the form of his face and the loving softness of his 
+eye.
+
+"Because-," said he; and then he stooped over her and pressed her 
+closely, while she put up her lips to his, standing on tip-toe that she 
+might reach to his face.
+
+"Oh, my love!" she said. "My love! my love!"
+
+As Crosbie walked back to the Great House that night, he made a firm 
+resolution that no consideration of worldly welfare should ever induce 
+him to break his engagement with Lily Dale. He went somewhat further 
+also, and determined that he would not put off the marriage for more 
+than six or eight months, or, at the most, ten, if he could possibly 
+get his affairs arranged in that time. To be sure, he most give up 
+everything-all the aspirations and ambition of his life; but then, as 
+he declared to himself somewhat mournfully, he was prepared to do that. 
+Such were his resolutions, and, as he thought of them in bed, he came 
+to the conclusion that few men were less selfish than he was.
+
+"But what will they say to us for staying away?" said Lily, recovering 
+herself.
+
+"And I ought to be making the people dance, you know. Come along, and 
+do make yourself nice. Do waltz with Mary Eames-pray, do. If you don't, 
+I won't speak to you all night!"
+
+Acting under which threat, Crosbie did, on his return, solicit the 
+honour of that young lady's hand, thereby elating her into a seventh 
+heaven of happiness. What could the world afford better than a waltz 
+with such a partner as Adolphus Crosbie? And poor Mary Eames could 
+waltz well; though she could not talk much as she danced, and would 
+pant a good deal when she stopped. She put too much of her energy into 
+the motion, and was too anxious to do the mechanical part of the work 
+in a manner that should be satisfactory to her partner. "Oh! thank 
+you-it's very nice. I shall be able to go on-again directly." Her 
+conversation with Crosbie did not get much beyond that, and yet she 
+felt that she had never done better than on this occasion.
+
+Though there were, at most, not above five couples of dancers, and 
+though they who did not dance, such as the squire and Mr Boyce, and a 
+curate from a neighbouring parish, had, in fact, nothing to amuse them, 
+the affair was kept on very merrily for a considerable number of hours. 
+Exactly at twelve o'clock there was a little supper, which, no doubt, 
+served to relieve Mrs Hearn's ennui, and at which Mrs Boyce also seemed 
+to enjoy herself. As to the Mrs Boyces on such occasions, I profess 
+that I feel no pity. They are generally happy in their children's 
+happiness, or if not, they ought to be. At any rate, they are simply 
+performing a manifest duty, which duty, in their time, was performed on 
+their behalf. But on what account do the Mrs Hearns betake themselves 
+to such gatherings? Why did that ancient lady sit there hour after hour 
+yawning, longing for her bed, looking every ten minutes at her watch, 
+while her old bones were stiff and sore, and her old ears pained with 
+the noise? It could hardly have been simply for the sake of the supper. 
+After the supper,
+
+however, her maid took her across to her cottage, and Mrs Boyce also 
+then stole away home, and the squire went off with some little parade, 
+suggesting to the young men that they should make no noise in the house 
+as they returned. But the poor curate remained, talking a dull word 
+every now and then to Mrs Dale, and looking on with tantalised eyes at 
+the joys which the world had prepared for others than him. I must say 
+that I think that public opinion and the bishops together are too hard 
+upon curates in this particular.
+
+In the latter part of the night's delight, when time and practice had 
+made them all happy together, John Eames stood up for the first time to 
+dance with Lily. She had done all she could, short of asking him, to 
+induce him to do her this favour; for she felt that it would be a 
+favour. How great had been the desire on his part to ask her, and, at 
+the same time, how great the repugnance, Lily, perhaps, did not quite 
+understand. And yet she understood much of it. She knew that he was not 
+angry with her. She knew that he was suffering from the injured pride 
+of futile love, almost as much as from the futile love itself. She 
+wished to put him at his ease in this; but she did not quite give him 
+credit for the full sincerity, and the upright, uncontrolled heartiness 
+of his feelings.
+
+At length he did come up to her, and though, in truth, she was engaged, 
+she at once accepted his offer. Then she tripped across the room. 
+"Adolphus," she said," I can't dance with you, though I said I would. 
+John Eames has asked me, and I haven't stood up with him before. You 
+understand, and you'll be a good boy, won't you?
+Crosbie, not being in the least jealous, was a good boy, and sat 
+himself down to rest, hidden behind a door.
+
+For the first few minutes the conversation between Eames and Lily was 
+of a very matter-of-fact kind. She repeated her wish that she might see 
+him in London, and he said that of course he should come and call. Then 
+there was silence for a little while, and they went through their 
+figure dancing.
+
+"I don't at all know yet when we are to be married," said Lily, as soon 
+as they were again standing together.
+
+"No; I dare say not," said Eames.
+
+"But not this year, I suppose. Indeed, I should say, of course not."
+
+"In the spring, perhaps," suggested Eames. He had an unconscious desire 
+that it might be postponed to some Greek kalends, and yet he did not 
+wish to injure Lily.
+
+"The reason I mention it is this, that we should be so very glad if you 
+could be here. We all love you so much, and I should so like to have 
+you here on that day."
+
+Why is it that girls so constantly do this-so frequently ask men who 
+have loved them to be present at their marriages with other men? There 
+is no triumph in it. It is done in sheer kindness and affection. They 
+intend to offer something which shall soften and not aggravate the 
+sorrow that they have caused." You can't marry me yourself," the lady 
+seems to say. "But the next greatest blessing which I can offer you 
+shall be yours-you shall see me married to somebody else." I fully 
+appreciate the intention, but in honest truth, I doubt the eligibility 
+of the proffered entertainment.
+
+On the present occasion John Eames seemed to be of this opinion, for he 
+did not at once accept the invitation.
+
+"Will you not oblige me so far as that?" she said softly.
+
+"I would do anything to oblige you," said he gruffly; "almost anything."
+
+"But not that?"
+
+"No; not that. I could not do that." Then he went off upon his figure, 
+and when they were next both standing together, they remained silent 
+till their turn for dancing had again come. Why was it, that after that 
+night Lily thought more of John Eames than ever she had thought 
+before-felt for him, I mean, a higher respect, as for a man who had a 
+will of his own?
+
+And in that quadrille Crofts and Bell had been dancing together, and 
+they also had been talking of Lily's marriage. "A man may undergo what 
+he likes for himself," he had said, "but he has no right to make a 
+woman undergo poverty."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Bell.
+
+"That which is no suffering for a man-which no man should think of for 
+himself-will make a hell on earth for a woman."
+
+"I suppose it would," said Bell, answering him without a sign of 
+feeling in her face or voice. But she took in every word that he spoke, 
+and disputed their truth inwardly with all the strength of her heart 
+and mind, and with the very vehemence of her soul." As if a woman 
+cannot bear more than a man!" she said to herself, as she walked the 
+length of the room alone, when she had got herself free from the 
+doctor's arm.
+
+After that they all went to bed.
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MRS LUPEX AND AMELIA ROPER
+
+
+I should simply mislead a confiding reader if I were to tell him that 
+Mrs Lupex was an amiable woman. Perhaps the fact that she was not 
+amiable is the one great fault that should be laid to her charge; but 
+that fault had spread itself so widely, and had cropped forth in so 
+many different places of her life, Like a strong rank plant that will 
+show itself all over a garden, that it may almost be said that it made 
+her odious in every branch of life, and detestable alike to those who 
+knew her little and to those who knew her much. If a searcher could 
+have got at the inside spirit of the woman, that searcher would have 
+found that she wished to go right-that she did make, or at any rate 
+promise to herself that she would make, certain struggles to attain 
+decency and propriety. But it was so natural to her to torment those 
+whose misfortune brought them near to her, and especially that wretched 
+man who in an evil day had taken her to his bosom as his wife, that 
+decency fled from her, and propriety would not live in her quarters.
+
+Mrs Lupex was, as I have already described her, a woman not without 
+some feminine attraction in the eyes of those who like morning 
+negligence and evening finery, and do not object to a long nose 
+somewhat on one side. She was clever in her way, and could say smart 
+things. She could flatter also, though her very flattery had always in 
+it something that was disagreeable. And she must have had some power of 
+will, as otherwise her husband would have escaped from her before the 
+days of which I am writing. Otherwise, also, she could hardly have 
+obtained her footing and kept it in Mrs Roper's drawing-room. For 
+though the hundred pounds a year, either paid, or promised to be paid, 
+was matter with Mrs Roper of vast consideration, nevertheless the first 
+three months of Mrs Lupex's sojourn in Burton Crescent was not over 
+before the landlady of that house was most anxiously desirous of 
+getting herself quit of her married boarders.
+
+I shall perhaps best describe a little incident that had occurred in 
+Burton Crescent during the absence of our friend Eames, and the manner 
+in which things were going on in that locality, by giving at length two 
+letters which Johnny received by post at Guestwick on the morning after 
+Mrs Dale's party. One was from his friend Cradell, and the other from 
+the devoted Amelia. In this instance I will give that from the 
+gentleman first, presuming that I shall best consult my reader's wishes 
+by keeping the greater delicacy till the last.
+
+INCOME-TAX OFFICE, September 186-.
+
+MY DEAR JOHNNY-We have had a terrible affair in the Crescent; and I 
+really hardly know how to tell you; and yet I must do it, for I want 
+your advice. You know the sort of standing that I was on with Mrs 
+Lupex, and perhaps you remember what we were saying on the platform at 
+the station. I have, no doubt, been fond of her society, as I might be 
+of that of any other friend. I knew, of course, that she was a fin. 
+woman; and if her husband chose to be jealous, I couldn't help that. 
+But I never intended anything wrong; and, if it was necessary, couldn't 
+I call you as a witness to prove it I never spoke a word to her out of 
+Mrs Roper's drawing-room; and Miss Spruce, or Mrs Roper, or somebody 
+has always been there. You know he drinks horribly sometimes, but I do 
+not think he ever gets downright drunk. Well, he came home last night 
+about nine o'clock after one of these bouts. From what Jemima says 
+[Jemima was Mrs Roper's parlour-maid] I believe he had been at it down 
+at the theatre for three days. We hadn't seen him since Tuesday. He 
+went straight into the parlour and sent up Jemima to me, to say that he 
+wanted to see me. Mrs Lupex was in the room and heard the girl summon 
+me, and, jumping up, she declared that if there was going to be 
+bloodshed she would leave the house. There was nobody else in the room 
+but Miss Spruce, and she didn't say a word, but took her candle and 
+went upstairs. You must own it looked very uncomfortable. What was I to 
+do with a drunken man down in the parlour? However, she seemed to think 
+I ought to go." If he comes up here," said she," I shall be the victim. 
+You little know of what that man is capable, when his wrath has been 
+inflamed by wine?" Now, I think you are aware that I am not likely to 
+be very much afraid of any man; but why was I to be got into a row in 
+such a way as this? I hadn't done anything. And then, if there was to 
+be a quarrel, and anything was to come of it, as she seemed to 
+expect-like bloodshed, I mean, or a fight, or if he were to knock me on 
+the head with the poker, where should I be at my office? A man in a 
+public office, as you and I are, can't quarrel like anybody else. It 
+was this that I felt so much at the moment," Go down to him," said 
+she," unless you wish to see me murdered at your feet." Fisher says, 
+that if what I say is true, they must have arranged it all between 
+them. I don't think that; for I do believe that she really is fond of 
+me. And then everybody knows that they never do agree about anything. 
+But she certainly did implore me to go down to him. Well, I went down; 
+and, as I got to the bottom of the stairs, where I found Jemima, I 
+heard him walking up and down the parlour." Take care of yourself. Mr 
+Cradell," said the girl; and I could see by her face that she was in a 
+terrible fright.
+
+At that moment I happened to see my hat on the hall table, and it 
+occurred to mc that I ought to put myself into the hands of a friend. 
+Of course, I was not afraid of that man in the dining-room; but should 
+I have been justified in engaging in a struggle, perhaps for dear life, 
+in Mrs Roper's house? I was bound to think of her interests. So I took 
+up my hat, and deliberately walked out of the front door." Tell him," 
+said I to Jemima," that I'm not at home." And so I went away direct to 
+Fisher's, meaning to send him back to Lupex as my friend; but Fisher 
+was at his chess-club.
+
+As I thought there was no time to be lost on such an occasion as this. 
+I went down to the club and called him out. You know what a cool fellow 
+Fisher is. I don't suppose anything would ever excite him. When I told 
+him the story, he said that he would sleep upon it; and I had to walk 
+up and down before the club while he finished his game. Fisher seemed 
+to think that I might go back to Burton Crescent; but, of course I knew 
+that that would be out of the question. So it ended in my going home 
+and sleeping on his sofa, and sending for some of my things in the 
+morning. I wanted him to get up and see Lupex before going to the 
+office this morning. But he seemed to think It would be better to put 
+it off, and so be will call upon him at the theatre immediately after 
+office hours.
+
+I want you to write to me at once saying what you know about the 
+matter, I ask you, as I don't want to lug in any of the other people at 
+Roper's. It is very uncomfortable, as I can't exactly leave her at once 
+because of last quarter's money, otherwise I should cut and run; for 
+the house is not the sort of place either for you or time. You may take 
+my word for that, Master Johnny. And I could tell you another thing, 
+too about A.R., only I don't want to make mischief. But do you write 
+immediately. And now I think of it, you had better write to Fisher, so 
+that he can show your letter to Lupex-just saying, that to the best of 
+your belief there had never been anything between her and me but mere 
+friendship; and that, of course, you, as my friend, must have known 
+everything. Whether I shall go back to Roper's to-night will depend run 
+what Fisher says after the interview.
+
+Good-bye, old fellow! I hope you are enjoying yourself, and that L.D. 
+is quite well-
+
+Your sincere friend,
+
+JOSEPH CRADELL
+
+John Eames read this letter over twice before he opened that from 
+Amelia. He had never yet received a letter from Miss Roper; and felt 
+very little of that ardour for its perusal which young men generally 
+experience on the receipt of a first letter from a young lady. The 
+memory of Amelia was at the present moment distasteful to him; and he 
+would have thrown the letter unopened into the fire, had he not felt it 
+might be dangerous to do so. As regarded his friend Cradell, he could 
+not but feel ashamed of him-ashamed of him, not for running away from 
+Mr Lupex, but for excusing his escape on false pretences.
+
+And then, at last, he opened the letter from Amelia.
+
+"Dearest John," it began; and as he read the words, he crumpled the 
+paper up between his fingers. It was written in a fair female hand, 
+with sharp points instead of curves to the letters, but still very 
+legible, and looking as though there were a decided purport in every 
+word of it.
+
+DEAREST JOHN-it feels so strange to me to write to you in such language 
+as this, And yet you are dearest, and have I not a right to call you 
+so? And are you not my own, and am not I yours? [Again he crunched the 
+paper up in his hand, and, as he did so, he muttered words which I need 
+not repeat at length. But still he went on with his letter.] I know 
+that we understand each other perfectly, and when that is the case, 
+heart should be allowed to speak openly to heart. Those are my 
+feelings, and I believe that you will find them reciprocal in your own 
+bosom.  Is it not sweet to be loved? I find it so. And, dearest John, 
+let me assure you, with open candour, that there is no room for 
+jealousy in this breast with regard to you. I have too much confidence 
+for that, I can assure you, both in your honour and in my own-I would 
+say charms, only you would call me vain. You must not suppose that I 
+meant what I said about L. D.
+
+Of course, you wall be glad to see the friends of your childhood; and 
+it would be far from your Amelia's heart to begrudge you such 
+delightful pleasure. Your friends will. I hope, some day be any 
+friends. [Another crunch.] And if there be any one among them, any real 
+L. D. whom you have specially liked, I wall receive her to my heart, 
+specially also. [This assurance on the part of his Amelia was too much 
+for him, and he threw the letter from him, thinking whence he might get 
+relief-whether from suicide or from the colonies; but presently he took 
+it up again, and drained the bitter cup to the bottom.] And if I seemed 
+petulant to you before you went away, you must forgive your own Amelia. 
+I had nothing before me but misery for the month of your absence. There 
+is no one here congenial to my feelings-of course not. And you would 
+not wish me to be happy in your absence-would you? I can assure you, 
+let your wishes he what they may, I never can be happy again unless you 
+are with me. Write to me one little line, and tell me that you are 
+grateful to me for my devotion.
+
+And now, I must tell you that we have had a sad affair in the house; 
+and I do not think that your friend Mr Cradell has behaved at all well. 
+You remember how he has been always going on with Mrs Lupex. Mother was 
+quite unhappy about it, though she didn't like to say anything. Of 
+course, when a lady's name is concerned, it is particular. Bur Lupex 
+has become dreadful jealous during the last week, and we all knew that 
+something was coming. She is an artful woman, but I don't think she 
+meant anything bad-only to drive her husband to desperation. He came 
+here yesterday in one of his tantrums, and wanted to see Cradell; but 
+he got frightened, and took his hat and went off. Now, that wasn't 
+quite right. If he was innocent, why didn't he stand his ground and 
+explain the mistake? As mother says, it gives the house such a name. 
+Lupex swore last night that he'd be off to the Income Tax Office this 
+morning, and have Cradell out before the commissioners, and clerks, and 
+everybody. If he does that, it will get into the papers, and all London 
+will be full of it. She would like it. I know; for all she cares for is 
+to be talked about; but only thank what it will be for mother's house. 
+I wish you were here; for your high prudence and courage would set 
+everything right at once-at least, I think so.
+
+I shall count the minutes till I get an answer to this, and shall envy 
+the postman who will have your letter before it will reach me. Do write 
+at once. If I do not hear by Monday Morning I shall think that 
+something is the matter. Even though you are among your dear old 
+friends, surely you can find a moment to write to your own Amelia.
+
+Mother is very unhappy about this affair of the Lupexes. She says that 
+if you were here to advise her she should not mind it so much. It is 
+very hard upon her, for she does strive to make the house respectable 
+and comfortable for everybody. I would send my duty and love to your 
+dear mamma, if I only knew her, as I hope I shall do one day, and to 
+your sister, and to L. D. also, if you like to tell her how we are 
+situated together. So, now, no more from your
+
+Always affectionate sweetheart,
+
+AMELIA ROPER.
+
+Poor Eames did not feel the least gratified by any part of this fond 
+letter; but the last paragraph of it was the worst. Was it to be 
+endured by him that this woman should send her love to his mother and 
+to his sister, and even to Lily Dale! He felt that there was a 
+pollution in the very mention of Lily's name by such an one as Amelia 
+Roper. And yet Amelia Roper was, as she had assured him-his own. Much 
+as he disliked her at the present moment, he did believe that he 
+was-her own. He did feel that she had obtained a certain property in 
+him, and that his destiny in life would tie him to her. He had said 
+very few words of love to her at any time-very few, at least, that were 
+themselves of any moment; but among those few there had undoubtedly 
+been one or two in which he had told her that he loved her. And he had 
+written to her that fatal note! Upon the whole, would it not be as well 
+for him to go out to the great reservoir behind Guestwick, by which the 
+Hamersham Canal was fed with its waters, and put an end to his 
+miserable existence?
+
+On that same day he did write a letter to Fisher, and he wrote also to 
+Cradell. As to those letters he felt no difficulty. To Fisher he 
+declared his belief that Cradell was innocent as he was himself as 
+regarded Mrs Lupex. I don't think he is the sort of man to make up to a 
+married woman," he said, somewhat to Cradell's displeasure, when the 
+letter reached the Income-tax Office; for that gentleman was not averse 
+to the reputation for success in love which the little adventure was, 
+as he thoughts calculated to give him among his brother clerks. At the 
+first bursting of the shell, when that desperately jealous man was 
+raging in the parlour, incensed by the fumes both of wine and love, 
+Cradell had felt that the affair was disagreeably painful. But on the 
+morning of the third day-for he had passed two nights on his friend 
+Fisher's sofa-he had begun to be somewhat proud of it, and did not 
+dislike to hear Mrs Lupex's name in the mouths of the other clerks. 
+When, therefore, Fisher read to him the letter front Guestwick, he 
+hardly was pleased with his friend's tone. "Ha, ha, ha," said he, 
+laughing." That's just what I wanted him to say. Make up to a married 
+woman, indeed. No; I'm the last man in London to do that sort of thing."
+
+"Upon my word, Caudle, I think you are," said Fisher;" the very last 
+man."
+
+And then poor Cradell was not happy. On that afternoon he boldly went 
+to Burton Crescent, and ate his dinner there. Neither Mr nor Mrs Lupex 
+were to be seen, nor were their names mentioned to him by Mrs Roper. In 
+the course of the evening he did pluck up courage to ask Miss Spruce 
+where they were; but that ancient lady merely shook her head solemnly, 
+and declared that she knew nothing about such goings on-no. not she.
+
+But what was John Eames to do as to that letter from Amelia Roper? He 
+felt that any answer to it would be very dangerous, and yet that he 
+could not safely leave it unanswered. He walked off by himself across 
+Guestwick Common, and through the woods of Guestwick Manor, up by the 
+big avenue of elms in Lord De Guest's park, trying to resolve how he 
+might rescue himself from this scrape. Here, over the same ground, he 
+had wandered scores of times in his earlier years, when he knew nothing 
+beyond the innocence of his country home, thinking of Lily Dale, and 
+swearing to himself that she should be his wife. Here he had strung 
+together his rhymes, and fed his ambition with high hopes, building 
+gorgeous castles in the air, in all of which Lilian reigned as a queen; 
+and though in those days he had known himself to be awkward, poor, 
+uncared for by any in the world except his mother and his sister, yet 
+he had been happy in his hopes-happy in his hopes, even though he had 
+never taught himself really to believe that they would he realised. But 
+now there was nothing in his hopes or thoughts to make him happy. 
+Everything was black, and wretched, and ruinous. What would it matter, 
+after all, even if he should marry Amelia Roper. seeing that Lily was 
+to be given to another? But then the idea of Amelia as he had seen her 
+that night through the chink in the door came upon his memory, and he 
+confessed to himself that life with such a wife as that would be a 
+living death.
+
+At one moment he thought that he would tell his mother everything, and 
+leave her to write an answer to Amelia's letter. Should the worst come 
+to the worst, the Ropers could not absolutely destroy him. That they 
+could bring an action against him, and have him locked up for a term of 
+years, and dismissed from his office, and exposed in all the 
+newspapers, he seemed to know. That might all, however, be endured, if 
+only the gauntlet could be thrown down fur him by some one else. The 
+one thing which he felt that he could not do was, to write to a girl 
+whom he had professed to love, and tell her that he did not love her. 
+He knew that he could not himself form such words upon the paper; nor, 
+as he was well aware, could he himself find the courage to tell her to 
+her face that he had changed his mind. He knew that he must become the 
+victim of his Amelia, unless he could find some friendly knight to do 
+battle in his favour; and then again he thought of his mother.
+
+But when he returned home he was as far as ever from any resolve to 
+tell her how he was situated. I may say that his walk had done him no 
+good, and that he had not made up his mind to anything. He had been 
+building those pernicious castles in the air during more than half the 
+time; not castles in the building of which he could make himself happy, 
+as he had done in the old days, but black castles, with cruel dungeons. 
+into which hardly a ray of life could find its way. In all these 
+edifices his imagination pictured to him Lily as the wife of Mr 
+Crosbie. He accepted that as a fact, and then went to work in his 
+misery, making her as wretched as himself, through the misconduct and 
+harshness of her husband. He tried to think, and to resolve what he 
+would do; but there is no task so hard as that of thinking, when the 
+mind has an objection to the matter brought before it. The mind, under 
+such circumstances, is like a horse that is brought to the water, but 
+refuses to drink. So Johnny returned to his home, still doubting 
+whether or no he would answer Amelia's letter. And if he did not answer 
+it, how would he conduct himself on his return to Burton Crescent?
+
+I need hardly say that Miss Roper, in writing her letter, had been 
+aware of all this, and that Johnny's position had been carefully 
+prepared for him by-his affectionate sweetheart.
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SOCIAL LIFE
+
+
+Mr and Mrs Lupex had eaten a sweetbread together in much connubial 
+bliss on that day which had seen Cradell returning to Mrs Roper's 
+hospitable board. They had together eaten a sweetbread, with some other 
+delicacies of the season, in the neighbourhood of the theatre, and had 
+washed down all unkindness with bitter beer and brandy-and-water. But 
+of this reconciliation Cradell had not heard; and when he saw them come 
+together into the drawing-room, a few minutes after the question he had 
+addressed to Miss Spruce, he was certainly surprised.
+
+Lupex was not an ill-natured man nor one naturally savage by 
+disposition. He was a man fond of sweetbread and little dinners, and 
+one to whom hot brandy-and-water was too dear. Had the wife of his 
+bosom been a good helpmate to him, he might have gone through the 
+world, if not respectably, at any rate without open disgrace. But she 
+was a woman who left a man no solace except that to be found in 
+brandy-and-water. For eight years they had been man and wife; and 
+sometimes-I grieve to say it-he had been driven almost to hope that she 
+would commit a married woman's last sin, and leave him. In his misery, 
+any mode of escape would have been welcome to him. Had his energy been 
+sufficient he would have taken his scene-painting capabilities off to 
+Australia-or to the farthest shifting of scenes known on the world's 
+stage. But he was an easy, listless, self-indulgent man; and at any 
+moment, let his misery be as keen as might be, a little dinner, a few 
+soft words, and a glass of brandy-and-water would bring him round. The 
+second glass would make him the fondest husband living; hut the third 
+would restore to him the memory of all his wrongs, and give him courage 
+against his wife or all the world-even to the detriment of the 
+furniture around him, should a stray poker chance to meet his hand. All 
+these peculiarities of his character were not, however, known to 
+Cradell; and when our friend saw him enter the drawing-room with his 
+wife on his arm, he was astonished.
+
+"Mr Cradell, your hand," said Lupex, who had advanced as far as the 
+second glass of brandy-and-water, but had not been allowed to go beyond 
+it. "There has been a misunderstanding between us; let it be forgotten."
+
+"Mr Cradell, if I know him," said the lady, "is too much the gentleman 
+to bear any anger when a gentleman has offered him his hand."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure," said Cadell, "I'm quite-indeed, I'm delighted to find 
+there's nothing wrong after all." And then he shook hands with both of 
+them; whereupon Miss Spruce got up, curtsyed low, and also shook hands 
+with the husband and wife.
+
+"You're not a married man, Mr Cradell," said Lurex, "and therefore you 
+cannot understand the workings of a husband's heart. There have been 
+moments when my regard for that woman has been too much for me."
+
+"Now, Lupex, don't," said she, playfully tapping him with an old 
+parasol which she still held.
+
+"And I do not hesitate to say that my regard for her was too much for 
+me on that night when I sent for you to the dining-room."
+
+"I'm glad it's all put right now," said Cradell.
+
+"Very glad, indeed," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"And, therefore, we need not say any more about it," said Mrs Lupex.
+
+"One word," said Lupex, waving his hand. "Mr Cradell, I greatly rejoice 
+that you did not obey my summons on that night. Had you done so-I 
+confess it now-had you done so, blood would have been the consequence. 
+I was mistaken. I acknowledge my mistake-but blood would have been the 
+consequence."
+
+"Dear, dear, dear," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"Miss Spruce," continued Lurex, "there are moments when the heart 
+becomes too strong for a man."
+
+"I dare say," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"Now, Lupex, that will do," said his wife.
+
+"Yes; that will do. But I think it right to tell Mr Cradell that I am 
+glad he did not come to me. Your friend, Mr Cradell, did me the honour 
+of calling on me at the theatre yesterday, at half-past four; but I was 
+in the slings then and could not very well come down to him. I shall be 
+happy to see you both any day at five, and to bury all unkindness with 
+a chop and glass at the Pot and Poker, in Bow Street.
+
+"I'm sure you're very kind," said Cradell.
+
+"And Mrs Lupex will join us. There's a delightful little snuggery 
+upstairs at the Pot. and Poker; and if Miss Spruce will condescend to-"
+
+"Oh, I'm an old woman, sir."
+
+"No-no--no," said Lurex, "I deny that. Come, Cradell, what do you 
+say-just a snug little dinner for four, you know."
+
+It was, no doubt, pleasant to see Mr Lupex in his present mood-much 
+pleasanter than in that other mood of which blood would have been the 
+consequence: but pleasant as he now was, it was, nevertheless, apparent 
+that he was not quite sober. Cradell therefore, did not settle the day 
+for the little dinner; but merely remarked that he should be very happy 
+at some future day.
+
+"And now, Lupex, suppose you get off to bed," said his wife. "You've 
+had a very trying day, you know."
+
+"And you, ducky?"
+
+"I shall come presently. Now don't be making a fool of yourself, but 
+get yourself off. Come-"and she stood close up against the open door, 
+waiting for him to pass.
+
+"I rather think I shall remain where I am, and have a glass of 
+something hot," said he.
+"Lupex, do you want to aggravate me again?" said the lady, and she 
+looked at him with a glance of her eye which he thoroughly understood. 
+He was not in a humour for fighting, nor was he at present desirous of 
+blood; so he resolved to go. But as he went he prepared himself for new 
+battles. "I shall do something desperate-I am sure; I know I shall," he 
+said, as he pulled off his boots.
+
+"Oh, Mr Cradell," said Mrs Lupex as soon as she had closed the door 
+behind her retreating husband, "how am I ever to look you in the face 
+again after the events of these last memorable days?" And then she 
+seated herself on the sofa, and hid her face in a cambric handkerchief.
+
+"As for that," said Cradell," what does it signify-among friends like 
+us, you know?
+
+"but that it should be known at your office, as of course it is, 
+because of the gentleman that went down to him at the theatre-I don't 
+think I shall ever survive it."
+
+"You see I was obliged to send somebody, Mrs Lupex."
+
+"I'm not finding fault, Mr Cradell. I know very well that in my 
+melancholy position I have no right to find fault, and I don't pretend 
+to understand gentlemen's feelings towards each other. But to have had 
+my name mentioned up with yours in that way is-Oh! Mr Cradell, I don't 
+know how I'm ever to look you in the face again." And again she buried 
+hers in her pocket- handkerchief.
+
+"Handsome is as handsome does." said Miss Spruce; and there was that in 
+her tone of voice which seemed to convey much hidden meaning.
+
+"Exactly so, Miss Spruce," said Mrs Lurex; "and that's my only comfort 
+at the present moment. Mr Cradell is a gentleman who would scorn to 
+take advantage-I'm quite sure of that." And then she did contrive to 
+look at him over the edge of the hand which held the handkerchief.
+
+"That I wouldn't, I'm sure," said Cadell. "That is to say-"
+
+And then he paused. He did not wish to get into a scrape about Mrs 
+Lupex. He was by n means anxious to encounter her husband in one of his 
+fits of jealousy. But he did like the idea of being talked of as the 
+admirer of a married woman, and he did like the brightness of the 
+lady's eyes. When the unfortunate moth in his semi-blindness whisks 
+himself and his wings within the flame of the candle, and finds himself 
+mutilated and tortured, he even then will not take the lesson, but 
+returns again and again till he is destroyed. Such a moth was poor 
+Cradell. There was no warmth to be got by him from that flame. There 
+was no beauty in the light-not even the false brilliance of unhallowed 
+love. Injury might come to him--a pernicious clipping of the wings, 
+which might destroy all power of future flight; injury, and not 
+improbably destruction, if he should persevere. But one may say that no 
+single hour of happiness could accrue to him from his intimacy with Mrs 
+Lupex. lie felt for her no love. He was afraid of her, and, in mane 
+respects, disliked her. But to him, in his moth-like weakness, 
+ignorance, and blindness, it seemed to be a great thing that he should 
+be allowed to fly near the candle. Oh! my friends, if you will but 
+think of it, how many of you have been moths, and are now going about 
+ungracefully with wings more or less burnt off, and with bodies sadly 
+scorched!
+
+But before Mr Cradell could make up his mind whether or no he would 
+take advantage of the present opportunity for another dip into the 
+flame of the candle-in regard to which proceeding, however, he could 
+not but feel that the presence of Miss Spruce was objectionable-the 
+door of the room was opened, and Amelia Roper joined the party.
+
+"Oh, indeed; Mrs Lupex," she said. "And Mr Cradell!"
+
+"And Miss Spruce, my dear," said Mrs Lupex, pointing to the ancient 
+lady.
+
+"I'm only an old woman," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"Oh, yes; I see Miss Spruce," said Amelia. "I was not hinting anything, 
+I can assure you."
+
+"I should think not. my dear," said Mrs Lupex.
+
+"Only I didn't know that you two were quite-That is, when last I heard 
+about it, I fancied-But if the quarrel's made up, there's nobody more 
+rejoiced than I am."
+
+"The quarrel is made up," said Cradell.
+
+"If Mrs Lupex is satisfied, I'm sure I am," said Amelia.
+
+"Mr Lupex is satisfied," said Mrs Lupex;" and let me tell you, my dear, 
+seeing that you are expecting to get married yourself-"
+
+"Mrs Lupex, I'm not expecting to get married-not particularly, by any 
+means."
+
+"Oh, I thought you were. And let me tell you, that when you've got a 
+husband of your own, you won't find it so easy to keep everything 
+straight. That's the worst of these lodgings if there is any little 
+thing, everybody knows it. Don't they, Miss Spruce?"
+
+"Lodgings is so much more comfortable than house-keeping," said Miss 
+Spruce, who lived rather in fear of her relatives, the Ropers.
+
+"Everybody knows it; does he?" said Amelia. "Why, if a gentleman will 
+come home at night tipsy and threaten to murder another gentleman in 
+the same house; and if a lady-"
+
+And then Amelia paused, for she knew that the line-of-battle ship which 
+she was preparing to encounter had within her much power of fighting.
+
+"Well, miss," said Mrs Lupex, getting on her feet, "and what of the 
+lady?"
+
+Now we may say that the battle had begun, and that the two ships were 
+pledged by the general laws of courage and naval warfare to maintain 
+the contest till one of them should be absolutely disabled, if not 
+blown up or sunk. And at this moment it might be difficult for a 
+bystander to say with which of the combatants rested the better chance 
+of permanent success. Mrs Lupex had doubtless on her side more matured 
+power, a habit of fighting which had given her infinite skill, a 
+courage which deadened her to the feeling of all wounds while the heat 
+of the battle should last, and a recklessness which made her almost 
+indifferent whether she sank or swam. But then Amelia carried the 
+greater guns, and was able to pour in heavier metal than her enemy 
+could use; and she, too, swam in her own waters. Should they absolutely 
+come to grappling and boarding, Amelia would no doubt have the best of 
+it; but Mrs Lupex would probably be too crafty to permit such a 
+proceeding as that. She was, however, ready for the occasion, and 
+greedy for the fight.
+
+"And what of the lady?" said she, in a tone of voice that admitted of 
+no pacific rejoinder.
+
+"A lady, if she is a lady," said Amelia, "will know how to behave 
+herself."
+
+"And you're going to teach me, are you, Miss Roper? I'm sure I'm ever 
+so much obliged to you. It's Manchester manners, I suppose, that you 
+prefer?"
+
+"I prefer honest manners, Mrs Lupex, and decent manners, and manners 
+that won't shock a whole house full of people and I don't care whether 
+they come from Manchester or London."
+
+"Milliner's manners, I suppose?
+
+"I don't care whether they are milliner's manners or theatrical, Mrs 
+Lupex, as long as they're not downright bad manners-as yours are, Mrs 
+Lupex. And now you've got it. What are you going on for in this way 
+with that young man, till you'll drive your husband into a madhouse 
+with drink and jealousy?"
+
+"Miss Roper! Miss Roper!" said Cradell; " now really-"
+
+"Don't mind her. Mr Cradell," said Mrs Lurex; "she's not worthy for you 
+to speak to. And as to that poor fellow Eames, if you've any friendship 
+for him, you'll let him know what she is. My dear, how's Mr Juniper, of 
+Grogram's house, at Salford? I know all about you, and so shall John 
+Eames, too-poor unfortunate fool of a fellow! Telling me of drink and 
+jealousy. indeed"
+
+"Yes, telling you! And now you've mentioned Mr Juniper's name, Mr 
+Eames, and Mr Cradell too, may know the whole of it. There's been 
+nothing about Mr Juniper that I'm ashamed of."
+
+"It would be difficult to make you ashamed of anything, I believe."
+
+"But let me tell you this, Mrs Lupex, you're not going to destroy the 
+respectability of this house by your goings on."
+
+"It was a bad day for me when I let Lupex bring me into it."
+
+"Then pay your bill, and walk out of it," said Amelia, waving her hand 
+towards the door. "I'll undertake to say there shan't be any notice 
+required. Only you pay mother what you owe, and you're free to go at 
+once."
+
+"I shall go just when I please, and not one hour before. Who are you, 
+you gipsy, to speak to me in this way?"
+
+"And as for going, go you shall, if we have to call in the police to 
+make you."
+
+Amelia, as at this period of the fight she stood fronting her foe with 
+her arms akimbo, certainly seemed to have the best of the battle. But 
+the bitterness of Mrs Lupex's tongue had hardly yet produced its 
+greatest results. I am inclined to think that the married lady would 
+have silenced her who was single, had the fight been allowed to 
+rage-always presuming that no resort to grappling-irons took place. But 
+at this moment Mrs Roper entered the room, accompanied by her son, and 
+both the combatants for a moment retreated.
+
+"Amelia, what's all this?" said Mrs Roper, trying to assume a look of 
+agonised amazement.
+
+"Ask Mrs Lupex," said Amelia
+
+"And Mrs Lupex will answer," said that lady. "Your daughter has come in 
+here, and attacked me-in such language-before Mr Cradell too-"
+
+"Why doesn't she pay what she owes, and leave the house?" said Amelia.
+
+"Hold your tongue," said her brother.
+
+"What she owes is no affair of yours."
+
+"But it's an affair of mine, when I'm insulted by such a creature as 
+that."
+
+"Creature!" said Mrs Lurex. "I'd like to know which is most like a 
+creature! But I'll tell you, what it is, Amelia Roper-
+
+"Here, however, her eloquence was stopped, for Amelia had disappeared 
+through the door, having been pushed out of the room by her brother. 
+Whereupon Mrs Lupex, having found a sofa convenient for the service, 
+betook herself to hysterics. There for the moment we will leave her, 
+hoping that poor Mrs Roper was not kept late out of her bed.
+
+"What a deuce of a mess Eames will make of it if he marries that girl!" 
+Such was Cradell's reflection as he betook himself to his own room. But 
+of his own part in the night's transactions he was rather proud than 
+otherwise, feeling that the married lady's regard for him had been the 
+cause of the battle which had raged. So, likewise, did Paris derive 
+much gratification from the ten years' siege of Troy.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+LILIAN DALE BECOMES A BUTTERFLY
+
+
+And now we will go back to Allington. The same morning that brought to 
+John Eames the two letters which were given in the last chapter but 
+one, brought to the Great House, among others, the following epistle 
+for Adolphus Crosbie. It was from a countess, and was written on pink 
+paper, beautifully creamlaid and scented, ornamented with a coronet and 
+certain singularly-entwined initial. Altogether, the letter was very 
+fashionable and attractive, and Adolphus Crosbie was by no means sorry 
+to receive it.
+
+Courcy Castle, September 186-.
+
+My dear Mr Crosbie-We have heard of you from the Gazebees, who have 
+come down to us, and who tell us that you are rusticating at a charming 
+little village, in which, among other attractions, there are wood 
+nymphs and water nymphs, to whom much of your time is devoted. As this 
+is just the thing for your taste, I would not for worlds disturb you; 
+but if you should ever tear yourself away from the groves and fountains 
+of Allington, we shall be delighted to welcome you here, though you 
+will find us very unromantic after your late Elysium.
+
+Lady Dumbello is coming to us, who I know is a favourite of yours. Or 
+is it the other way, and are you a favourite of hers? I did ask Lady 
+Hartletop, but she cannot get away from the poor marquis, who is, you 
+know, so very infirm. The duke isn't at Gatherum at present, but, of 
+course, I don't mean that that has anything to do with dear Lady 
+Hartletop coming to us. I believe we shall have the house full, and 
+shall not want for nymphs either, though I fear they will not be of the 
+wood and water kind. Margaretta and Alexandrina particularly want you 
+to come, as they say you are so clever at making a houseful of people 
+go off well. If you can give us a week before you go back to manage the 
+affairs of the nation, pray do.-Yours very sincerely,
+
+Rosina de Courcy.
+
+The Countess de Courcy was a very old friend of Mr Crosbie's; that is 
+to say, as old friends go in the world in which he had been living. He 
+had known her for the last six or seven years, and had been in the 
+habit of going to all her London balls, and dancing with her daughters 
+everywhere, in a most good-natured and affable way. He had been 
+intimate, from old family relations, with Mr Mortimer Gazebee, who, 
+though only an attorney of the more distinguished kind, had married the 
+countess's eldest daughter, and now sat in Parliament for the city of 
+Barchester, near to which Courcy Castle was situated. And, to tell the 
+truth honestly at once, Mr Crosbie had been on terms of great 
+friendship with Lady de Courcy's daughters, the Ladies Margaretta and 
+Alexandrina-perhaps especially so with the latter, though I would not 
+have my readers suppose by my saving so that anything more tender than 
+friendship had ever existed between them.
+
+Crosbie said nothing about the letter on that morning; but during the 
+day, or, perhaps, as he thought over the matter in bed, he made up his 
+mind that he would accept Lady de Courcy's invitation. It was not only 
+that he would he glad to see the Gazebees, or glad to stay in the same 
+house with that great master in the high art of fashionable life, Lady 
+Dumbello, or glad to renew his friendship with the Ladies Margaretta 
+and Alexandrina. Had he felt that the circumstances of his engagement 
+with Lily made it expedient for him to stay with her till the end of 
+his holidays, he could have thrown over the De Courcys without a 
+struggle. But he told himself that it would
+
+be well for him now to tear himself away from Lily; or perhaps he said 
+that it would be well for Lily that he should be torn away. He must not 
+teach her to think that they were to live only in the sunlight of each 
+other's eyes during those months, or perhaps years, which mutt elapse 
+before their engagement could be carried out. Nor must he allow her to 
+suppose that either he or she were to depend solely upon the other for 
+the amusements and employments of life. In this way he argued the 
+matter very sensibly within hit own mind, and resolved, without much 
+difficulty, that he would go to Courcy Castle, and bask for a week in 
+the sunlight of the fashion which would he collected there. The quiet 
+humdrum of his own fireside would come upon him soon enough!
+
+"I think I shall leave you on Wednesday, sir," Crosbie said to the 
+squire at breakfast on Sunday morning.
+
+"Leave us on Wednesday!" said the squire, who had an old-fashioned idea 
+that people who were engaged to marry each other should remain together 
+as lone as circumstances could be made to admit of their doing so. 
+"Nothing wrong, is there?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no! But everything must come to an end some day; and as I 
+must make one or two short visits before I get back to town, I might as 
+well go on Wednesday. Indeed, I have made it as late as I possibly 
+could."
+
+"Where do you go from here?" asked Bernard.
+
+"Well, as it happens, only into the next county-to Courcy Castle." And 
+then there was nothing more said about the matter at that 
+breakfast-table.
+
+It had become their habit to meet together on the Sunday mornings 
+before church, on the lawn belonging to the Small House, and on this 
+day the three gentlemen walked down together, and found Lily and Bell 
+already waiting for them. They generally had some few minutes to spare 
+on those occasions before Mrs Dale summoned them to pass through the 
+house to church, and such was the case at present. The squire at these 
+times would stand in the middle of the grass-plot, surveying his 
+grounds, and taking stock of the shrubs, and flowers, and fruit-trees 
+round him; for he never forgot that it was all his own, and would thus 
+use this opportunity, as he seldom came down to see the spot on other 
+days. Mrs Dale, as she would see him from her own window while she was 
+tying on her bonnet, would feel that she knew what was passing through 
+his mind, and would regret that circumstances had forced her to be 
+beholden to him for such assistance. But, in truth, she did not know 
+all that he thought at such times. "It is mine," he would say to 
+himself. as he looked around on the pleasant place.
+
+"But it is well for me that they should enjoy it. She is my brother's 
+widow, and she is welcome-very welcome," I think that if those two 
+persons had known more than. they did of each other's hearts and minds 
+they might have loved each other better.
+
+And then Crosbie told Lily of his intention, "On Wednesday!" she said, 
+turning almost pale with emotion as she heard this news. He had told 
+her abruptly, not thinking, probably, that such tidings would affect 
+her so strongly.
+
+"Well, yes. I have written to Lady de Courcy and said Wednesday. It 
+wouldn't do for me exactly to drop everybody, and perhaps-"
+
+"Oh, no! And, Adolphus, you don't suppose I begrudge your going. Only 
+it does seem so sudden; does it not?"
+
+"You see, I've been here over six weeks."
+"Yes; you've been very good. When I think of it, what a six weeks it 
+has been! I wonder whether the difference seems to you as great as it 
+does to me. I've left off being a grub, and begun to be a butterfly."
+
+"But you mustn't be a butterfly when you're married, Lily."
+
+"No; not in that sense. But I meant that my real position in the 
+world-that for which I would fain hope that I was created-opened to me 
+only when I knew you and knew that you loved me. But mamma is calling 
+us, and we must go through to church. Going on Wednesday! There are 
+only three days more, then!"
+
+"Yes, just three days," he said, as he took her on his arm and passed 
+through the house on to the road.
+
+"And when are we to see you again?" she asked, as they reached the 
+churchyard.
+
+"Ah, who is to say that yet? We must ask the Chairman of Committees 
+when he will let me go again." Then there was nothing more said, and 
+they all followed the squire through the little porch and up to the big 
+family-pew in which they all sat. Here the squire took his place in one 
+special corner which he had occupied ever since his father's death, and 
+from which he read the responses loudly and plainly-so loudly and 
+plainly, that the parish clerk could by no means equal him, though with 
+emulous voice he still made the attempt. "T' squire d like to be 
+squire, and parson, and clerk, and everything; so a would," the poor 
+clerk would say, when complaining of the ill-usage which he suffered.
+
+If Lily's prayers were interrupted by her new sorrow, I think that her 
+fault in that respect would be forgiven. Of course she had known that 
+Crosbie was not going to remain at Allington much longer. She knew 
+quite as well as he did the exact day on which his leave of absence 
+came to its end, and the hour at which it behoved him to walk into his 
+room at the General Committee Office. She had taught herself to think 
+that he would remain with them up to the end of his vacation, and now 
+she felt as a schoolboy would fed who was told suddenly, a day or two 
+before the time, that the Last week of his holidays was to be taken 
+from him. The grievance would have been slight had she known it from 
+the first; but what schoolboy could stand such a shock, when the loss 
+amounted to two-thirds of his remaining wealth? Lily did not blame her 
+lover. She did not even think that he ought to stay. She would not 
+allow herself to suppose that he could propose anything that was 
+unkind. But she felt her loss, and more than once, as she knelt at her 
+prayers, she wiped a hidden tear from her eyes.
+
+Crosbie also was thinking of his departure more than he should have 
+done during Mr Boyce's sermon. "It's easy listening to him," Mrs Hearn 
+used to say of her husband's successor. "It don't give one much trouble 
+following him into his arguments." Mr Crosbie perhaps found the 
+difficulty greater than did Mrs Hearn, and would have devoted his mind 
+more perfectly to the discourse had the argument been deeper. It is 
+very hard, that necessity of listening to a man who says nothing. On 
+this occasion Crosbie ignored the necessity altogether, and gave up his 
+mind to the consideration of what it. might he expedient that he should 
+say to Lily before he went. He remembered well those few words which he 
+had spoken in the first ardour of his love, pleading that an early day 
+might be fixed for their marriage. And he remembered, also, how 
+prettily Lily had yielded to him. "Only do not let it be too soon," she 
+had said. Now he must unsay what he had then said, lie must plead 
+against his own pleadings, and explain to her that he desired to 
+postpone the marriage rather than to hasten it-a task which, I presume, 
+must always be an unpleasant one for any man engaged to he married. "I 
+might as well do it at once," he said to himself, as he bobbed his head 
+forward into his hands by way of returning thanks fur the termination 
+of Mr Boyce's sermon.
+
+As he had only three days left, it was certainly as well that he should 
+do this at once. Seeing that Lily had no fortune, she could not in 
+justice complain of a prolonged engagement. That was the argument which 
+he used in his own mind. But he as often told himself that she would 
+have very great ground of complaint if she were left for a day 
+unnecessarily in doubt as to this matter. Why had he rashly spoken 
+those hasty words to her in his love, betraying himself into all manner 
+of scrapes, as a schoolboy might do, or such a one as Johnny Eames? 
+What an ass he had been not to have remembered himself and to have been 
+collected-not to have bethought himself on the occasion of all that 
+might be due to Adolphus Crosbie! And then the idea came upon him 
+whether he had not altogether made himself an ass in this matter. And 
+as he gave his arm to Lily outside the church-door, he shrugged his 
+shoulders while making that reflection. "It is too late now," he said 
+to himself; and than turned round and made some sweet little loving 
+speech to her. Adolphus Crosbie was a clever man; and he meant also to 
+be a true man-if only the temptations to falsehood might not be too 
+great for him.
+
+"Lily" he said to her, "will you walk in the fields after lunch?"
+
+Walk in the fields with him! Of course she would. There were only three 
+days left, and would she not give up to him every moment of her time, 
+if he would accept of all her moments? And then they lunched at the 
+Small House, Mrs Dale having promised to join the dinner-party at the 
+squire's table, The squire did not eat any lunch, excusing himself on 
+the plea that lunch in itself was a had thing "He can eat lunch at his 
+own house," Mrs Dale afterwards said to Bell. "And I've often seen him 
+take a glass of sherry." While thinking of this. Mrs Dale made her own 
+dinner. If her brother-in-law would not eat at her board, neither would 
+she eat at his.
+
+And then in a few minutes Lily had on her hat, in place of that 
+decorous, church-going bonnet which Crosbie was wont to abuse with a 
+lover's privilege, feeling well assured that he might say what he liked 
+of the bonnet as long as he would praise the hat. "Only three days," 
+she said, as she walked down with him across the lawn at a quick pace. 
+But she said it in a voice which made no complaint-which seemed to say 
+simply this-that as the good time was to be so short, they must make 
+the most of it. And what compliment could be paid to a man so sweet as 
+that? What flattery could be more gratifying? All my earthly heaven is 
+with you; and now, for the delight of these immediately present months 
+or so, there are left to mc but three days of this heaven! Come, then I 
+will make the most of what happiness is given to me. Crosbie felt it 
+all as she felt it, and recognised the extent of the debt he owed her. 
+"I'll come down to them for a day at Christmas, though it be only for a 
+day," he said to himself. Then he reflected that as such was his 
+intention, it might be well for him to open his present conversation 
+with a promise to that effect.
+
+"Yes, Lily; there are only three days left now. But I wonder whether-I 
+suppose you'll all he at home at Christmas?"
+
+"At home at Christmas?-of course we shall be at home. You don't mean to 
+say you'll come to us!"
+
+"Well; I think I will, if you'll have me,"
+
+"Oh! that will make such a difference. Let me see. That will only be 
+three months. And to have you here on Christmas Day! I would sooner 
+have you then than on any other day in the year."
+
+"It will only be for one day, Lily. I shall come to dinner on Christmas 
+Eve, and must go away the day after."
+
+"But you will come direct to our house!"
+
+"If you can spare me a room."
+
+"Of course we can. So we could now. Only when you came, you know-"
+
+"When I came, I was the squire's friend and your cousin's rather than 
+yours. But that's all changed now."
+
+"Yes; you're my friend now-mine specially. I'm to be now and always 
+your own special, dearest friend-eh, Adolphus?" And thus she exacted 
+from him the repetition of the promise which he had so often given her.
+
+By this time they had passed through the grounds of the Great House and 
+were in the fields. "Lily," said he, speaking rather suddenly, and 
+making her feel by his manner that something of importance was to be 
+said; "I want to say a few words to you about-business." And he gave a 
+little laugh as he spoke the last word, making her fully understand 
+that he was not quite at his ease.
+
+"Of course I'll listen. And, Adolphus, pray don't be afraid about me. 
+What I mean is, don't think that I can't bear cares and troubles. I can 
+bear anything as long as you love me. I say that because I'm afraid I 
+seemed to complain about your going. I didn't mean to."
+
+"I never thought you complained, dearest. Nothing can be better than 
+you are at all times and in every war. A man would be very hard to 
+please if you didn't please him."
+
+"If I can only please you-"
+
+"You do please me in everything. Dear Lily, I think I found an angel 
+when I found you. But now about this business Perhaps I'd better tell 
+you everything."
+
+"Oh, yes, tell me everything.''
+
+"But then you mustn't misunderstand me. And if I talk about money, you 
+mustn't suppose that it has anything to do with my love for you."
+
+"I wish for your sake that I wasn't such a little pauper."
+
+"What I mean to say is this, that if I seem to be anxious about money, 
+you must not suppose that that anxiety hears any reference whatever to 
+my affection for you. I should love you just the same, and look forward 
+just as touch to my happiness in marrying you, whether you were rich or 
+poor. You understand that?
+
+She did not quite understand him; but she merely pressed his arm, so as 
+to encourage him to go on. She presumed that he intended to tell her 
+something as to their future mode of life-something which he supposed 
+it might not be pleasant for her to hear, and she was determined to 
+show him that she would receive it pleasantly.
+
+"You know" said he, "how anxious I have been that our marriage should 
+not be delayed. To me, of course, it must be everything now to call you 
+my own as soon as possible." In answer to which little declaration of 
+love, she merely pressed his arm again, the subject being one on which 
+she had not herself much to say.
+
+"Of course I must he very anxious, but I find it not so easy as I 
+expected."
+
+"You know what I said, Adolphus. I said that I thought we had better 
+wait. I'm sure mamma thinks so. And if we can only see you now and 
+then-"
+
+"That will he a matter of course. But, as I was saying-Let me see. 
+Yes-all that waiting will be intolerable to me. It is such a bore for a 
+man when he has made up his mind on such a matter as marriage, not to 
+make the change at once, especially when he is going to take to himself 
+such a little angel as you are," and as he spoke these loving words, 
+his arm was again put round her waist;" but-and then he stopped. He 
+wanted to make her understand that this change of intention on his part 
+was caused by the unexpected misconduct of her uncle. He desired that 
+she should know exactly how the matter stood; that he had been led to 
+suppose that her uncle would give her some small fortune, that he had 
+seen disappointed, and had a right to feel the disappointment keenly; 
+and that in consequence of this blow to his expectations, he must put 
+off his marriage. But he wished her also to understand at the same time 
+that this did not in the least mar his love for her; that he did not 
+join her at all in her uncle's fault. All this he was anxious to convey 
+to her, but he did not know how to get it said in a manner that would 
+not be offensive to her personally, and that should not appear to 
+accuse himself of sordid motives. He had begun by declaring that he 
+would tell her all; but sometimes it is not easy, that task of telling 
+a person everything, There are things which will not get themselves 
+told.
+
+"You mean, dearest," said she, "that you cannot afford to marry at 
+once."
+
+"Yes; that is it. I had expected that I should be able, but-"
+
+Did any man in love ever yet find himself able to tell the lady whom he 
+loved that he was very much disappointed on discovering that she had 
+got no money? If so, his courage, I should say, was greater than his 
+love. Crosbie found himself unable to do it, and thought himself 
+cruelly used because of the difficulty. The delay to which he intended 
+to subject her was occasioned, as he felt, by the squire, and not by 
+himself. I It was ready to do his part, if only the squire had been 
+willing to do the part which properly belonged to him. The squire would 
+not; and, therefore, neither could he-not as yet. Justice demanded that 
+all this should be understood but when he came to the telling of it, he 
+found that the story would not form itself properly. He must let the 
+thing go, and bear the injustice, consoling himself as best he might by 
+the reflection that he at least was behaving well in the matter.
+
+"It won't make me unhappy, Adolphus."
+
+"Will it not?" said he. "As regards myself, I own that I cannot bear 
+the delay with so much indifference."
+"Nay, my love; but you should not misunderstand me," she said, stopping 
+and facing him on the path in which they were walking. "I suppose I 
+ought to protest, according to the common rules, that I would rather 
+wait. Young ladies are expected to say so. If you were pressing me to 
+marry at once, I should say so, no doubt. But now, as it is, I will be 
+more honest. I have only one wish in the world, and that is, to be your 
+wife-to be able to share everything with you. The sooner we can be 
+together the better it will be-at any rate, for me. There; will that 
+satisfy you?"
+
+"My own, own Lily!"
+
+"Yes, your own Lily, You shall have no cause to doubt me, dearest. But 
+I do not expect that I am to have everything exactly as I want it. I 
+say again, that I shall not be unhappy in waiting. How can I be unhappy 
+while I feel certain of your love? I was disappointed just now when you 
+said that you were going so soon; and I am afraid I showed it. But 
+those little things are more unendurable than the big things."
+
+"Yes; that's very true."
+
+"But there are three more days, and I mean to enjoy them so much! And 
+then you will write to me: and you will come at Christmas. And next 
+year, when you have your holiday, you will come down to us again; will 
+you not?
+
+"You may be quite sure of that."
+
+"And so the time will go by till it suits you to come and take me. I 
+shall not be unhappy."
+
+"I, at any rate, shall be impatient."
+
+"Ah, men always are impatient. It is one of their privileges, I 
+suppose. And I don't think that a man ever has the same positive and 
+complete satisfaction in knowing that he is loved, which a girl feels. 
+You are my bird that I have shot with my own gun; and the assurance of 
+my success is sufficient for my happiness."
+
+"You have bowled me over, and know that I can't get up again."
+
+"I don't know about can't. I would let you up quick enough, if you 
+wished it."
+
+How he made his loving assurance that he did not wish it, never would 
+or could wish it. the reader will readily understand. And then he 
+considered that he might as well leave all those money questions as 
+they now stood. His real object had been to convince her that their 
+joint circumstances did not admit of an immediate marriage; and as to 
+that she completely understood him. Perhaps, during the next three 
+days, some opportunity might arise for explaining the whole matter to 
+Mrs Dale. At any rate, he had declared his own purpose honestly, and no 
+one could complain of him.
+
+On the following day they all rode over to Guestwick together-the all 
+consisting of the two girls, with Bernard and Crosbie. Their object was 
+to pay two visits-one to their very noble and highly exalted ally, the 
+Lady Julia de Guest: and the other to their humbler and better known 
+friend, Mrs Eames. As Guestwick Manor lay on their road into the town, 
+they performed the grander ceremony the first. The present Earl de 
+Guest, brother of that Lady Fanny who ran away with Major Dale, was an 
+unmarried nobleman, who devoted himself chiefly to the breeding of 
+cattle. And as he bred very good cattle, taking infinite satisfaction 
+in the employment, devoting all his energies thereto, and abstaining 
+from all prominently evil courses, it should be acknowledged that he 
+was not a bad member of society. He was a thorough-going old Tory, 
+whose proxy was always in the hand of the leader of his party; and who 
+seldom himself went near the metropolis, unless called thither by some 
+occasion of cattle-showing. He was a short, stumpy man, with red cheeks 
+and a round face; who was usually to be seen till dinner-time dressed 
+in a very old shooting coat, with breeches, gaiters, and very thick 
+shoes. He lived generally out of doors, and was almost as great in the 
+preserving of game as in the breeding of oxen, lie knew every acre of 
+his own estate, and every tree upon it, as thoroughly as a lady knows 
+the ornaments in her drawing-room. There was no gap in a fence of which 
+he did not remember the exact bearings, no path hither or thither as to 
+which he could nit tell the why and the wherefore. He had been in his 
+earlier years a poor man as regarded his income-very poor, seeing that 
+he was an earl. But he was not at present by any means an impoverished 
+man, having been taught a lesson by the miseries of his father and 
+grandfather, and having learned to live within his means. Now, as he 
+was going down the vale of years, men said that he was becoming rich, 
+and that he had ready money to spend.-a position in which no Lord de 
+Guest had found himself for many generations back. His father and 
+grandfather had been known as spend-thrifts; and now men said that this 
+earl was a miser.
+
+There was not much of nobility in his appearance; but they greatly 
+mistook Lord de Guest who conceived that on that account his pride of 
+place was not dear to his soul. His peerage dated back to the time of 
+King John, and there were but three lords in England whose patents had 
+been conferred before his own. He knew what privileges were due to him 
+on behalf of his blood, and was not disposed to abate one jot of them. 
+He was not loud in demanding them. As he went through the world he sent 
+no trumpeters to the right or left, proclaiming that the Earl de Guest 
+was coming. When he spread his board for his friends, which he did but 
+on rare occasions, he entertained them simply with a mild, tedious, 
+old-fashioned courtesy. We may say that, if properly treated, the earl 
+never walked over anybody. But he could, if ill-treated, be grandly 
+indignant; and if attacked, could hold his own against all the world. 
+He knew himself to be every inch an earl, pottering about after his 
+oxen with his muddy gaiters and red cheeks, as much as though he were 
+glittering with stars in courtly royal ceremonies among his peers at 
+Westminster-ay, more an earl than any of those who use their nobility 
+for pageant purposes. Woe be to him who should mistake that old coat 
+for a badge of rural degradation! Now and again some unlucky wight did 
+make such a mistake, and had to do his penance very uncomfortably.
+
+With the earl lived a maiden sister, the Lady Julia. Bernard Dale's 
+father had, in early life, run away with one sister, but no suitor had 
+been fortunate enough to induce the Lady Julia to run with him, 
+Therefore she still lived, in maiden blessedness, as mistress of 
+Guestwick Manor; and as such had no mean opinion of the high position 
+which destiny had called upon her to fill. She was a tedious, dull, 
+virtuous old woman, who gave herself infinite credit for having 
+remained all her days in the home of her youth, probably forgetting, in 
+her present advanced years, that her temptations to leave it had not 
+been strong or numerous. She generally spoke of her sister Fanny with 
+some little contempt, as though that poor lady had degraded herself in 
+marrying a younger brother. She was as proud of her own position as was 
+the earl her brother, hut her pride was maintained with more of outward 
+show and less of inward nobility. It was hardly enough for her that the 
+world should know that she was a De Guest, and therefore she had 
+assumed little pompous ways and certain airs of condescension which did 
+not make her popular with her neighbours.
+
+The intercourse between Guestwick Manor and Allington was not very 
+frequent or very cordial. Soon after the running away of the Lady 
+Fanny, the two families had agreed to acknowledge their connection with 
+each other, and to let it be known by the world that they were on 
+friendly terms. Either that course was necessary to them, or the other 
+course, of letting it he known that they were enemies. Friendship was 
+the less troublesome, and therefore the two families called on each 
+other from time to time, and gave each other dinners about once a year. 
+The earl regarded the squire as a man who had deserted his politics, 
+and had thereby forfeited the respect due to him as an hereditary laud 
+magnate; and the squire was wont to belittle the earl as one who 
+understood nothing of the outer world. At Guestwick Manor Bernard was 
+to some extent a favourite. He was actually a relative, having in his 
+veins blood of the De Guests, and was not the less a favourite because 
+he was the heir to Allington, and because the blood of the Dales was 
+older even than that of the noble family to which he was allied. When 
+Bernard should come to be the squire, then indeed there might be 
+cordial relations between Guestwick Manor and Allington; unless, 
+indeed, the earl's heir and the squire's heir should have some fresh 
+cause of ill-will between themselves.
+
+They found Lady Julia sitting in her drawing-room alone, and introduced 
+to her Mr Crosbie in due firm. The fact of Lily's engagement was of 
+course known at the manor, and it was quite understood that her 
+intended husband was now brought over that he might be looked at and 
+approved. Lady Julia made a very elaborate curtsy, and expressed a hope 
+that her young friend might be made happy in that sphere of life to
+
+which it had pleased God to call her.
+
+"I hope I shall, Lady Julia," said Lily, with a little laugh; "at any 
+rate I mean to try"
+
+"We all try, my dear, but many of us fail to try with sufficient energy 
+of purpose. It is only by doing our duty that we can hope to be happy, 
+whether in single life or in married."
+
+"Miss Dale means to be a dragon of perfection in the performance of 
+hers," said Crosbie.
+
+"A dragon!" said Lady Julia. "No; I hope Miss Lily Dale will never 
+become a dragon." And then she turned to her nephew. It may be as well 
+to say at once that she never forgave Mr Crosbie the freedom of the 
+expression which he had used. He had been in the drawing-room of 
+Guestwick Manor for two minutes only, and it did not become him to talk 
+about dragons. "Bernard," she said," I heard from your mother 
+yesterday. I am afraid she does not seem to be very strong." And then 
+there was a little conversation, not very interesting in its nature, 
+between the aunt and the nephew as to the general health of Lady Fanny.
+
+"I didn't know my aunt was so unwell" said Bell.
+
+"She isn't ill," said Bernard. "She never is ill; but then she is never 
+well."
+
+"Your aunt," said Lady Julia, seeming to put a touch of sarcasm into 
+the tone of her voice as she repeated the word-"
+
+"A very long time," said Crosbie, who was not accustomed to be left in 
+his chair silent. "You, Dale, at any rate, can hardly remember it."
+
+"But I can remember it," said Lady Julia. gathering herself up. "I can 
+remember when my sister Fanny was recognised as the beauty of the 
+country. It is a dangerous gift, that of beauty."
+
+"Very dangerous," said Crosbie. Then Lily laughed again, and Lady Julia 
+became more angry than ever. What odious man was this whom her 
+neighbours were going to take into their very bosom! But she had heard 
+of Mr Crosbie before, and Mr Crosbie also had heard of her.
+
+"By-the-by, Lady Julia," said he, "I think I know some very dear 
+friends of yours."
+
+"Very dear friends is a very strong word. I have not many very dear 
+friends."
+
+"I mean the Gazebees. I have heard Mortimer Gazebee and Lady Amelia 
+speak of you."
+
+Whereupon Lady Julia confessed that she did know the Gazebees. Mr 
+Gazebee, she said, was a man who in early life had wanted many 
+advantages, but still he was a very estimable person. He was now in 
+Parliament, and she understood that he was making himself useful. She 
+had not quite approved of Lady Amelia's marriage at the time, and so 
+she had told her very old friend Lady de Courcy; but"-And then Lady 
+Julia said many words in praise of Mr Gazebee, which seemed to amount 
+to this; that he was an excellent sort of man, with a full conviction 
+of the too great honour done to him by the earl's daughter who had 
+married him, and a complete consciousness that even that marriage had 
+not put him on a par with his wife's relations, or even with his wife. 
+And then it came out that Lady Julia in the course of the next week was 
+going to meet the Gazebees at Courcy Castle.
+
+"I am delighted to think that I shall have the pleasure of seeing you 
+there," said Crosbie.
+
+"Indeed!" said Lady Julia.
+
+"I am going to Courcy on Wednesday. That, I fear, will be too early to 
+allow of my being of any service to your ladyship."
+
+Lady Julia drew herself up, and declined the escort which Mr Crosbie 
+had seemed to offer. It grieved her to find that Lily Dale's future 
+husband was an intimate friend of her friend's and it especially 
+grieved her to find that he was now going to that friends house. It was 
+a grief to her, and she showed that it was. It also grieved Crosbie to 
+find that Lady Julia was to be a fellow guest with himself at Courcy 
+Castle; but he did not show it. He expressed nothing but smiles and 
+civil self-congratulation on the matter, pretending that he would have 
+much delight in again meeting Lady Julia; but, in truth, he would have 
+given much could he have invented any manoeuvre by which her ladyship 
+might have been kept at home.
+
+"What a horrid old woman she is," said Lily, as they rode back down the 
+avenue. "I beg your pardon, Bernard; for, of course, she is your aunt."
+
+"Yes; she is my aunt; and though I am not very fond of her, I deny that 
+she is a horrid old woman. She never murdered anybody, or robbed 
+anybody, or stole away any other woman's lover."
+
+"I should think not," said Lily.
+
+"She says her prayers earnestly, I have no doubt," continued Bernard, 
+"and gives away money to the poor, and would sacrifice tomorrow any 
+desire of her own to her brother's wish. I acknowledge that she is 
+ugly, and pompous, and that, being a woman, she ought not to have such 
+a long black beard on her upper lip."
+
+"I don't care a bit about her beard," said Lily. But why did she tell 
+me to do my duty? I didn't go there to have a sermon preached to me."
+
+"And why did she talk about beauty being dangerous? said Bell." Of 
+course, we all knew what she meant."
+
+"I didn't know at all what she meant," said Lily," and I don't know 
+now."
+
+"I think she's a charming woman, and I shall be especially civil to her 
+at Lady de Courcy's," said Crosbie.
+
+And in this way, saying hard things of the poor old spinster whom they 
+had left, they made their way into Guestwick, and again dismounted at 
+Mrs Eames's door.
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A VISIT TO GUESTWICK
+
+
+As the party from Allington rode up the narrow High Street of 
+Guestwick, and across the market square towards the small, respectable, 
+but very dull row of new houses in which Mrs Eames lived, the people of 
+Guestwick were all aware that Miss Lily Dale was escorted by her future 
+husband. The opinion that she had been a very fortunate girl was 
+certainly general among the Guestwickians, though it was not always 
+expressed in open or generous terms. "It was a great match for her," 
+some said, but shook their heads at the same time, hinting that Mr 
+Crosbie's life in London was not all that it should be, and suggesting 
+that she might have been more safe had she been content to bestow 
+herself upon some country neighbour of less dangerous pretensions. 
+Others declared that it was no such great match after all. They knew 
+his income to a penny, and believed that the young people would find it 
+very difficult to keep a house in London unless the old squire intended 
+to assist them. But, nevertheless, Lily was envied as she rode through 
+the town with her handsome lover by her side.
+
+And she was very happy. I will not deny that she had some feeling of 
+triumphant satisfaction in the knowledge that she was envied. Such a 
+feeling on her part was natural, and is natural to all men and women 
+who are conscious that they have done well in the adjustment of their 
+own affairs. As she herself had said, he was her bird, the spoil of her 
+own gun, the product of such capacity as she had in her, on which she 
+was to live, and, if possible, to thrive during the remainder of her 
+life. Lily fully recognised the importance of the thing she was doing, 
+and, in soberest guise, had thought much of this matter of marriage. 
+But the more she thought of it the more satisfied she was that she was 
+doing well. And yet she knew that there was a risk. He who was now 
+everything to her might die; nay, it was possible that he might be 
+other than she thought him to be; that he might neglect her, desert 
+her, or misuse her. But she had resolved to trust in everything, and, 
+having so trusted, she would not provide for herself any possibility of 
+retreat. Her ship should go out into the middle ocean, beyond all ken 
+of the secure port from which it had sailed; her army should fight its 
+battle with no hope of other safety than that which victory gives. All 
+the world might know that she loved him if all the world chose to 
+inquire about the matter. She triumphed in her lover, and did not deny 
+even to herself that she was triumphant.
+
+Mrs Eames was delighted to see them. It was so good in Mr Crosbie to 
+come over and call upon such a poor, forlorn woman as her, and so good 
+in Captain Dale; so good also in the dear girls, who, at the present 
+moment, had so much to make them happy at home at Allington! Little 
+things, accounted as bare civilities by others, were esteemed as great 
+favours by Mrs Eames.
+
+"And dear Mrs Dale? I hope she was not fatigued when we kept her up the 
+other night so unconscionably late?" Bell and Lily both assured her 
+that their mother was none the worse for what she had gone through; and 
+then Mrs Eames got up and left the room, with the declared purpose of 
+looking for John and Mary, but bent, in truth, on the production of 
+some cake and sweet wine which she kept under lock and key in the 
+little parlour.
+
+"Don't let's stay here very long," whispered Crosbie.
+
+"No, not very long," said Lily. "But when you come to see my friends 
+you mustn't be in a hurry, Mr Crosbie."
+
+"He had his turn with Lady Julia," said Bell " and we must have ours 
+now."
+
+"At any rate, Mrs Eames won't tell us to do our duty and to beware of 
+being too beautiful," said Lily.
+
+Mary and John came into the room before their mother returned; then 
+came Mrs Eames, and a few minutes afterwards the cake and wine arrived. 
+It certainly was rather dull, as none of the party seemed to be at 
+their ease. The grandeur of Mr Crosbie was too great for Mrs Eames and 
+her daughter, and John was almost silenced by the misery of his 
+position. He had not yet answered Miss Roper's letter, nor had he even 
+made up his mind whether he would answer it or no. And then the sight 
+of Lily's happiness did not fill him with all that friendly joy which 
+he should perhaps have felt as the friend of her childhood. To tell the 
+truth, he hated Crosbie, and so he had told himself; and had so told 
+his sister also very frequently since the day of the party.
+
+"I tell you what it is, Molly," he had said, "if there was any way of 
+doing it, I'd fight that man."
+
+"What; and make Lily wretched?"
+
+"She'll never be happy with him. I'm sure she won't. I don't want to do 
+her any harm, but yet I'd like to fight that man-if I only knew how to 
+manage it."
+
+And then he bethought himself that if they could both be slaughtered in 
+such an encounter it would be the only fitting termination to the 
+present state of things. In that way, too, there would be an escape 
+from Amelia, and, at the present moment, he saw none other.
+
+When he entered the room he shook hands with all the party from 
+Allington, but, as he told his sister afterwards, his flesh crept when 
+he touched Crosbie. Crosbie, as he contemplated the Eames family 
+sitting stiff and ill at ease in their own drawing-room chairs, made up 
+his mind that it would be well that his wife should see as little of 
+John Eames as might be when she came to London-not that he was in any 
+way jealous of her lover. He had learned everything from Lily-all, at 
+least, that Lily knew-and regarded the matter rather as a good joke.
+
+"Don't see him too often," he had said to her, "for fear he should make 
+an ass of himself." Lily had told him everything-all that she could 
+tell; but yet he did not in the least comprehend that Lily had, in 
+truth, a warm affection for the young man whom he despised.
+
+"Thank you, no," said Crosbie." I never do take wine in the middle of 
+the day."
+
+"But a bit of cake?" And Mrs Eames by her look implored him to do her 
+so much honour. She implored Captain Dale, also, but they were both 
+inexorable. I do not know that the two girls were at all more inclined 
+to eat and drink than the two men; but they understood that Mrs Eames 
+would be brokenhearted if no one partook of her delicacies. The little 
+sacrifices of society are all made by women, as are also the great 
+sacrifices of life. A man who is good for anything is always ready for 
+his duty, and so is a good woman always ready for a sacrifice.
+
+"We really must go now," said Bell, "because of the horses." And under 
+this excuse they got away.
+
+"You will come over before you go back to London, John?" said Lily, as 
+he came out with the intention of helping her mount, from which 
+purpose, however, he was forced to recede by the iron will of Mr 
+Crosbie.
+
+"Yes, I'll come over again-before I go. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, John," said Bell. "Good-bye, Eames," said Captain Dale. 
+Crosbie, as he seated himself in the saddle, made the very slightest 
+sign of recognition, to which his rival would not condescend to pay any 
+attention. "I'll manage to have a fight with him in some way," said 
+Eames to himself as he walked back through the passage of his mother's 
+house. And Crosbie, as he settled his feet in the stirrups, felt that 
+he disliked the young man more and more. It would be monstrous to 
+suppose that there could be aught of jealousy in the feeling; and yet 
+he did dislike him very strongly, and felt almost angry with Lily for 
+asking him to come again to Allington. "I must put an end to all that," 
+he said to himself as he rode silently out of town.
+
+"You must not snub my friends, sir," said Lily, smiling as she spoke, 
+but yet with something of earnestness in her voice. They were out of 
+the town by this time, and Crosbie had hardly uttered a word since they 
+had left Mrs Eames's door. They were now on the high road, and Bell and 
+Bernard Dale were somewhat in advance of them.
+
+"I never snub anybody," said Crosbie, petulantly; "that is unless they 
+have absolutely deserved snubbing."
+
+"And have I deserved it? Because I seem to have got it," said Lily.
+
+"Nonsense, Lily. I never snubbed you yet, and I don't think it likely 
+that I shall begin. But you ought not to accuse me of not being civil 
+to your friends. In the first place I am as civil to them as my nature 
+will allow me to be. And, in the second place-"
+
+"Well; in the second place-?
+
+"I am not quite sure that you are very wise to encourage that young 
+man's-friendship just at present."
+
+"That means, I suppose, that I am very wrong to do so?"
+
+"No, dearest, it does not mean that. If I meant so I would tell you so 
+honestly. I mean just what I say. There can, I suppose, be no doubt 
+that he has filled himself with some kind of romantic attachment for 
+you-a foolish kind of love which I don't suppose he ever expected to 
+gratify, but the idea of which lends a sort of grace to his life. When 
+he meets some young woman fit to be his wife he will forget all about 
+it, but till then he will go about fancying himself a despairing lover. 
+And then such a young man as John Eames is very apt to talk of his 
+fancies."
+
+"I don't believe for a moment that he would mention my name to any one."
+
+"But, Lily, perhaps I may know more of young men than you do."
+
+"Yes, of course you do."
+
+
+"And I can assure you that they are generally too well inclined to make 
+free with the names of girls whom they think that they like. You must 
+not be surprised if I am unwilling that any man should make free with 
+your name."
+
+After this Lily was silent for a minute or two. She felt that an 
+injustice was being done to her and she was not inclined to put up with 
+it, but she could not quite see where the injustice lay. A great deal 
+was owing from her to Crosbie. In very much she was bound to yield to 
+him, and she was anxious to do on his behalf even more than her duty. 
+But yet she had a strong conviction that it would not be well that she 
+should give way to him in everything. She wished to think as he thought 
+as far as possible, but she could not say that she agreed with him when 
+she knew that she differed from him. John Eames was an old friend whom 
+she could not abandon, and so much at the present time she felt herself 
+obliged to say.
+
+"But, Adolphus-"
+
+"Well, dearest?
+
+"You would not wish me to be unkind to so very old a friend as John 
+Eames? I have known him all my life, and we have all of us had a very 
+great regard for the whole family. His father was my uncle's most 
+particular friend."
+
+"I think, Lily, you must understand what I mean. I don't want you to 
+quarrel with any of them, or to be what you call unkind. But you need 
+not give special and pressing invitations to this young man to come and 
+see you before he goes back to London, and then to come and see you 
+directly you get to London. You tell me that he had some kind of 
+romantic idea of being in love with you-of being in despair because you 
+are not in love with him. It's all great nonsense, no doubt, but it 
+seems to me that under such circumstances you'd better-just leave him 
+alone."
+
+Again Lily was silent. These were her three last days, in which it was 
+her intention to be especially happy, but above all things to make him 
+especially happy. On no account would she say to him sharp words, or 
+encourage in her own heart a feeling of animosity against him, and yet 
+she believed him to be wrong; and so believing could hardly bring 
+herself to bear the injury. Such was her nature, as a Dale. And let it 
+be remembered that very many who can devote themselves for great 
+sacrifices, cannot bring themselves to the endurance of little 
+injuries. Lily could have given up any gratification for her lover, but 
+she could not allow herself to have been in the wrong, believing 
+herself to have been in the right.
+
+"I have asked him now, and he must come," she said, "But do not press 
+him to come any more."
+
+"Certainly not, after what you have said, Adolphus. If he comes over to 
+Allington, he will see me in mamma's house, to which he has always been 
+made welcome by her. Of course I understand perfectly-"
+
+"You understand what, Lily?"
+
+But she had stopped herself, fearing that she might say that which 
+would be offensive to him if she continued.
+
+"What is it you understand, Lily?"
+"Do not press me to go on, Adolphus. As far as I can, I will do all 
+that you want me to do."
+
+"You meant to say that when you find yourself an inmate of my house, as 
+a matter of course you could not ask your own friends to come and see 
+you. Was that gracious?"
+
+"Whatever I may have meant to say, I did not say that. Nor in truth did 
+I mean it. Pray don't go on about it now. These are to be our last 
+days, you know, and we shouldn't waste them by talking of things that 
+are unpleasant. After all poor Johnny Eames is nothing to me; nothing, 
+nothing. How can any one be anything to me when I think of you?"
+
+But even this did not bring Crosbie back at once into a pleasant 
+humour. Had Lily yielded to him and confessed that he was right, he 
+would have made himself at once as pleasant as the sun in May. But this 
+she had not done. She had simply abstained from her argument because 
+she did not choose to be vexed, and had declared her continued purpose 
+of seeing Eames on his promised visit. Crosbie would have had her 
+acknowledge herself wrong, and would have delighted in the privilege of 
+forgiving her. But Lily Dale was one who did not greatly relish 
+forgiveness, or any necessity of being forgiven. So they rode on, if 
+not in silence, without much joy in their conversation. It was now late 
+on the Monday afternoon, and Crosbie was to go early on the Wednesday 
+morning. What if these three last days should come to be marred with 
+such terrible drawbacks as these!
+
+Bernard Dale had not spoken a word to his cousin of his suit, since 
+they had been interrupted by Crosbie and Lily as they were lying on the 
+bank by the ha-ha. He had danced with her again and again at Mrs Dale's 
+party, and had seemed to revert to his old modes of conversation 
+without difficulty. Bell, therefore, had believed the matter to be 
+over, and was thankful to her cousin, declaring within her own bosom 
+that the whole matter should be treated by her as though it had never 
+happened. To no one-not even to her mother, would she tell it. To such 
+reticence she bound herself for his sake, feeling that he would be best 
+pleased that it should be so. But now as they rode on together, far in 
+advance of the other couple, he again returned to the subject.
+
+"Bell," said he," am I to have any hope?
+
+"Any hope as to what, Bernard?
+
+"I hardly know whether a man is bound to take a single answer on such a 
+subject. But this I know, that if a man's heart is concerned, he is not 
+very willing to do so."
+
+"When that answer has been given honestly and truly-"
+
+"Oh, no doubt. I don't at all suppose that you were dishonest or false 
+when you refused to allow me to speak to you."
+
+"But, Bernard, I did not refuse to allow you to speak to me."
+
+"Something very like it. But, however, I have no doubt you were true 
+enough. But, Bell, why should it be so? If you were in love with any 
+one else I could understand it."
+
+"I am not in love with any one else."
+
+"Exactly. And there are so many reasons why you. and I should join our 
+fortunes together."
+"It cannot be a question of fortune, Bernard."
+
+"Do listen to me. Do let me speak, at any rate. I presume I may at 
+least suppose that you do not dislike me."
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"And though you might not be willing to accept any man's hand merely on 
+a question of fortune, surely the fact that our marriage would be in 
+every way suitable as regards money should not set you against it. Of 
+my own love for you I will not speak further, as I do not doubt that 
+you believe what I say; but should you not question your own feelings 
+very closely before you determine to oppose the wishes of all those who 
+are nearest to you?"
+
+"Do you mean mamma, Bernard?"
+
+"Not her especially, though I cannot but think she would like a 
+marriage that would keep all the family together, and would give you an 
+equal claim to the property to that which I have."
+
+"That would not have a feather's-weight with mamma."
+
+"Have you asked her?"
+
+"No, I have mentioned the matter to no one."
+
+"Then you cannot know. And as to my uncle, I have the means of knowing 
+that it is the great desire of his life. I must say that I think some 
+consideration for him should induce you to pause before you give a 
+final answer, even though no consideration for me should have any 
+weight with you."
+
+"I would do more for you than for him-much more."
+
+"Then do this for me, Allow me to think that I have not yet had an 
+answer to my proposal; give me to this day month, to Christmas; till 
+any time that you like to name, so that I may think that it is not yet 
+settled, and may tell Uncle Christopher that such is the case."
+
+"Bernard, it would he useless."
+
+"It would at any rate show him that you are willing to think of it."
+
+"But I am not willing to think of it-not in that way. I do know my own 
+mind thoroughly, and I should be very wrong if I were to deceive you."
+
+"And you wish me to give that as your only answer to my uncle?"
+
+"To tell the truth, Bernard, I do not much care what you may say to my 
+uncle in this matter. He can have no right to interfere in the disposal 
+of my hand, and therefore I need not regard his wishes on the subject. 
+I will explain to you in one word what my feelings are about it. I 
+would accept no man in opposition to mamma's wishes; but not even for 
+her could I accept any man in opposition to my own. But as concerns my 
+uncle, I do not feel myself called on to consult him in any way on such 
+a matter."
+"And yet he is the head of our family."
+
+"I don't care anything about the family.-not in that way."
+
+"And he has been very generous to you all."
+
+"That I deny. He has not been generous to mamma. He is very hard and 
+ungenerous to mamma. He lets her have that house because he is anxious 
+that the Dales should seem to be respectable before the world; and she 
+lives in it, because she thinks it better for us that she should do so. 
+If I had my way, she should leave it tomorrow-or, at any rate, as soon 
+as Lily is married. I would much sooner go into Guestwick, and live as 
+the Eames do."
+
+"I think you are ungrateful, Bell."
+
+"No; I am not ungrateful. And as to consulting; Bernard-I should be 
+much more inclined to consult you than him about my marriage. If you 
+would let me look on you altogether as a brother, I should think little 
+of promising to marry no one whom you did not approve."
+
+But such an agreement between them would by no means have suited 
+Bernard's views. He had thought, some four or five weeks back, that he 
+was not personally very anxious for this match. He had declared to 
+himself that he liked his cousin well enough; that it would be a good 
+thing for him to settle himself; that his uncle was reasonable in his 
+wishes and sufficiently liberal in his offers; and that, therefore, he 
+would marry. it had hardly occurred to him as probable that his cousin 
+would reject so eligible an offer, and had certainly never occurred to 
+him that he would have to suffer anything from such rejection. He had 
+entertained none of that feeling of which lovers speak when they 
+declare that they are staking their all upon the hazard of a die, It 
+had not seemed to him that he was staking anything, as he gently told 
+his tale of languid love, lying on the turf by the ha-ha. He had not 
+regarded the possibility of disappointment, of sorrow, and of a 
+deeply-vexed mind. He would have felt but little triumph if accepted, 
+and had not thought that he could be humiliated by any rejection. In 
+this frame of mind he had gone to his work; but now he found, to his 
+own surprise, that this girl's answer had made him absolutely unhappy. 
+Having expressed a wish for this thing, the very expression of the wish 
+made him long to possess it. He found, as he rode along silently by her 
+side, that he was capable of more earnestness of desire than he had 
+known himself to possess. He was at this moment unhappy, disappointed, 
+anxious, distrustful of the future, and more intent on one special toy 
+than he had ever been before, even as a boy. He was vexed, and felt 
+himself to be sore at heart. He looked round at her, as she sat silent, 
+quiet, and somewhat sad upon her pony, and declared to himself that she 
+was very beautiful-that she was a thing to be gained if still there 
+might he the possibility of gaining her. He felt that he really loved 
+her, and yet he was almost angry with himself for so feeling. Why had 
+he subjected himself to this numbing weakness? His love had never given 
+him any pleasure. Indeed he had never hitherto acknowledged it; but now 
+he was driven to do so on finding it to be the source of trouble and 
+pain. I think it is open to us to doubt whether, even yet, Bernard Dale 
+was in love with his cousin; whether he was not rather in love with his 
+own desire. But against himself he found a verdict that he was in love, 
+and was angry with himself and with all the world.
+
+"Ah, Bell," he said, coming close up to her, "I wish you could 
+understand how I love you." And, as he spoke, his cousin unconsciously 
+recognised more of affection in his tone, and less of that spirit of 
+bargaining which had seemed to pervade all his former pleas, than she 
+had ever found before.
+"And do I not love you? Have I not offered to be to you in all respects 
+as a sister?"
+
+"That is nothing. Such an offer to me now is simply laughing at me. 
+Bell, I tell you what-I will not give you up. The fact is, you do not 
+know me yet-not know me as you must know any man before you choose him 
+for your husband. You and Lily are not alike in this. You are cautious, 
+doubtful of yourself, and perhaps, also, somewhat doubtful of others. 
+My heart is set upon this, and I shall still try to succeed."
+
+"Ah, Bernard, do not say that! Believe me, when I tell you that it can 
+never be."
+
+"No; I will not believe you. I will not allow myself to be made utterly 
+wretched. I tell you fairly that I will not believe you. I may surely 
+hope if I choose to hope. No, Bell, I will never give you up-unless, 
+indeed, I should see you become another man's wife."
+
+As he said this, they all turned in through the squire's gate, and rode 
+up to the yard in which it was their habit to dismount from their 
+horses.
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+JOHN EAMES TAKES A WALK
+
+
+John Eames watched the party of cavaliers as they rode away from his 
+mother's door, and then started upon a solitary walk, as soon as the 
+noise of the horses' hoofs had passed away out of the street. He was by 
+no means happy in his mind as he did so. Indeed, he was overwhelmed 
+with care and trouble, and as he went along very gloomy thoughts passed 
+through his mind. Had he not better go to Australia, or Vancouver's 
+Island, or-? I will not name the places which the poor fellow suggested 
+to himself as possible terminations of the long journeys which he might 
+not improbably be called upon to take. That very day, just before the 
+Dales had come in, he had received a second letter from his darling 
+Amelia, written very closely upon the heels of the first. Why had he 
+not answered her? Was he ill? Was he untrue? No; she would not believe 
+that, and therefore fell back upon the probability of his illness. II 
+it was so, she would rush down to see him. Nothing on earth should keep 
+her from the bedside of her betrothed. If she did net get an answer 
+from her beloved John by return of post, she would be down with him at 
+Guestwick by the express train. Here was a position for such a young 
+man as John Eames! And of Amelia Roper we may say that she was a young 
+woman who would not give up hem game, as long as the least chance 
+remained of her winning it. "I must go somewhere," John said to 
+himself, as he put on his slouched hat and wandered forth through the 
+back streets of Guestwick. What would his mother say when she heard of 
+Amelia Roper? What would she say when she saw her?
+
+He walked away towards the Manor, so that he might roam about the 
+Guestwick woods in solitude. There was a path with a stile, leading off 
+from the high road, about half a mile beyond the lodges through which 
+the Dales had ridden up to the house, and by this path John Eames 
+turned in, and went away till he had left the Manor house behind him, 
+and was in the centre of the Guestwick woods. He knew the whole ground 
+well, having roamed there ever since he was first allowed to go forth 
+upon his walks alone. He had thought of Lily Dale by the hour together, 
+as he had lost himself among the oak-trees; but in those former days he 
+had thought of her with some pleasure. Now he could only think of hem 
+as of one gone from him for ever; and then he had also to think of her 
+whom he had taken to himself in Lily's place.
+
+Young men, very young men-men so young that it may be almost a question 
+whether or no they have as yet reached their manhood-are more inclined 
+to be earnest and thoughtful when alone than they ever are when with 
+others, even though those others be their elders. I fancy that, as we 
+grow old ourselves, we are apt to forget that it was so with us; and, 
+forgetting it, we do not believe that it is so with our children. We 
+constantly talk of the thoughtlessness of youth. I do not know whether 
+we might not more appropriately speak of its thoughtfulness. It is, 
+however, no doubt, true that thought will not at once produce wisdom. 
+It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in 
+our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of 
+temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution. Men, 
+full fledged and at their work, are, for the most part, too busy for 
+much thought; but lads, on whom the work of the world has not yet 
+fallen with all its pressure-they have time for thinking.
+
+And thus John Eames was thoughtful. They who knew him best accounted 
+him to be a gay, good-hearted, somewhat reckless young man, open to 
+temptation, but also open to good impressions; as to whom no great 
+success could be predicated, but of whom his friends might fairly hope 
+that he might so live as to bring upon them no disgrace and not much 
+trouble. But, above all things, they would have called him thoughtless. 
+In so calling him, they judged him wrong. He was ever thinking-thinking 
+much of the world as it appeared to him, and of himself as he appeared 
+to the world; and thinking, also, of things beyond the world. What was 
+to be his fate here and hereafter? Lily Dale was gone from him, and 
+Amelia Roper was hanging round his neck like a millstone! What, under 
+such circumstances, was to be his fate here and hereafter?
+
+We may say that the difficulties in his way were not as yet very great. 
+As to Lily, indeed, he had no room for hope; but, then, his love for 
+Lily had, perhaps, been a sentiment rather than a passion. Most young 
+men have to go through that disappointment, and are enabled to bear it 
+without much injury to their prospects or happiness. And in after-life 
+the remembrance of such love is a blessing rather than a curse, 
+enabling the possessor of it to feel that in those early days there was 
+something within him of which he had no cause to be ashamed. I do not 
+pity John Eames much in regard to Lily Dale. And then, as to Amelia 
+Roper-had he achieved but a tithe of that lady's experience in the 
+world, or possessed a quarter of her audacity, surely such a difficulty 
+as that need not have stood much in his way! What could Amelia do to 
+him if he fairly told her that he was not minded to marry her? In very 
+truth he had never promised to do so. He was in no way bound to her, 
+not even by honour. Honour, indeed, with such as her! But men are 
+cowards before women until they become tyrants; and are easy dupes, 
+till of a sudden they recognise the fact that it is pleasanter to be 
+the victimiser than the victim-and as easy. There are men, indeed, who 
+never learn the latter lesson.
+
+But, though the cause for fear was so slight, poor John Eames was 
+thoroughly afraid. Little things which, in connection with so deep a 
+sorrow as his, it is almost ridiculous to mention, added to his 
+embarrassments, and made an escape from them seem to him to be 
+impossible. He could not return to London without going to Burton 
+Crescent, because his clothes were there, and because he owed to Mrs 
+Roper some small sum of money which on his return to London he would 
+not have immediately in his pocket. He must therefore meet Amelia, and 
+he knew that he had not the courage to tell a girl, face to face, that 
+he did not love her, after he had once been induced to say that he did 
+do so. His boldest conception did not go beyond the writing of a letter 
+in which he would renounce her, and removing himself altogether from 
+that quarter of the town in which Burton Crescent was situated. But 
+then about his clothes, and that debt of his? And what if Amelia should 
+in the meantime come down to Guestwick and claim him? Could he in his 
+mother's presence declare that she had no right to make such claim? The 
+difficulties, in truth, were not very great, but they were too heavy 
+for that poor young clerk from the Income-tax Office.
+
+You will declare that he must have been a fool and a coward. Yet he 
+could read and understand Shakespeare. He knew much-by far too much-of 
+Byron's poetry by heart. He was a deep critic, often writing down his 
+criticisms in a lengthy journal which he kept. He could write quickly, 
+and with understanding; and I may declare that men at his office had 
+already ascertained that he was no fool. He knew his business, and 
+could do it-as many men failed to do who were much less foolish before 
+the world. And as to that matter of cowardice, he would have thought it 
+the greatest blessing in the world to be shut up in a room with 
+Crosbie, having permission to fight with him till one of them should 
+have been brought by stress of battle to give up his claim to Lily 
+Dale. Eames was no coward. He feared no man on earth. But he was 
+terribly afraid of Amelia Roper.
+
+He wandered about through the old Manor woods very ill at ease. The 
+post from Guestwick went out at seven, and he must at once make up his 
+mind whether or no he would write to Amelia on that day. He must also 
+make up his mind as to what he would say to her. He felt that he should 
+at least answer her letter, let his answer he what it might, Should he 
+promise to marry her-say, in ten or twelve years' time? Should he tell 
+her that he was a blighted being, unfit for love, and with humility 
+entreat of her that he might be excused? Or should he write to her 
+mother, telling her that Burton Crescent would not suit him any longer, 
+promising her to send the balance on receipt of his next payment, and 
+asking her to send his clothes in a bundle to the Income-tax Office? Or 
+should he go home to his own mother, and boldly tell it all to her?
+
+He at last resolved that he must write the letter, and as he composed 
+it in his mind he sat himself down beneath an old tree which stood on a 
+spot at which many of the forest tracks met and crossed each other. The 
+letter, as he framed it here, was not a bad letter, if only he could 
+have got it written and posted. Every word of it he chose with 
+precision, and in his mind lie emphasised every expression which told 
+his mind clearly and justified his purpose." He acknowledged himself to 
+have been wrong in misleading his correspondent, and allowing her to 
+imagine that she possessed his heart. He had not a heart at her 
+disposal. He had been weak not to write to her before, having been 
+deterred from doing so by the fear of giving her pain; but now he felt 
+that lie was bound in honour to tell her the truth. Having so told her, 
+he would not return to Burton Crescent, if it would pain her to see him 
+there. He would always have a deep regard for her,"-Oh, Johnny!-
+
+"and would hope anxiously that her welfare in life might be complete." 
+That was the letter, as he wrote it on the tablets of his mind under 
+the tree; but the getting it put on to paper was a task, as he knew, of 
+greater difficulty. Then, as he repeated it to himself, he fell asleep.
+
+"Young man," said a voice in his ear as he slept. At first the voice 
+spoke as a voice from his dream without waking him, but when it was 
+repeated, he sat up and saw that a stout gentleman was standing over 
+him. For a moment he did not know where he was, or how he had come 
+there; nor could he recollect, as he saw the trees about him, hew long 
+he had been in the wood. But he knew the stout gentleman well enough, 
+though he had not seen him for more than two years." Young man," said 
+the voice, "if you want to catch rheumatism, that's the way to do it. 
+Why, it's young Eames, isn't it?
+
+"Yes, my lord," said Johnny, raising himself up so that he was new 
+sitting, instead of lying, as he looked up into the earl's rosy face.
+
+"I knew your father, and a very good man he was; only he shouldn't have 
+taken to farming. People think they can farm without learning the 
+trade, but that's a very great mistake. I can farm, because I've 
+learned it. Don't you think you'd better get up?" Whereupon Johnny 
+raised himself to Ins feet." Not but what you're very welcome to lie 
+there if you like it. Only, in October, you know-"
+
+"I'm afraid I'm trespassing, my lord," said Eames." I came in off the 
+path, and-"
+
+"You're welcome; you're very welcome. If you'll come up to the house, 
+I'll give you some luncheon." This hospitable offer, however, Johnny 
+declined, alleging that it was late, and that he was going home to 
+dinner.
+
+"Come along," said the earl. "You can't go any shorter way than by the 
+house. Dear, dear, how well I remember your father. He was a much 
+cleverer man than I am-very much; but he didn't knew how to send a 
+beast to market any better than a child. By-the-by, they have put you 
+into a public office, haven't they?
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"And a very good thing, too-a very good thing, indeed. But why were you 
+asleep in the wood? It isn't warm, you know. I call it rather cold." 
+And the earl stopped, and looked at him, scrutinising him, as though 
+resolved to inquire into so deep a mystery.
+
+"I was taking a walk, and thinking of something, I sat down."
+
+"Leave of absence, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"Have you got into trouble? You look as though you were in trouble. 
+Your poor father used to be in trouble."
+
+"I haven't taken to farming," said Johnny, with an attempt at a smile.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha-quite right. No, don't take to farming. Unless you learn 
+it, you know, you might just as well take to shoemaking-just the same. 
+You haven't got into trouble, then; eh?
+
+"No, my lord, not particularly."
+
+"Not particularly! I knew very well that young men do get into trouble 
+when they get up to London. If you want any-any advice, or that sort of 
+thing, you may come to me; for I knew your father well. Do you like 
+shooting?
+
+"I never did sheet anything."
+
+"Well perhaps better not. To tell the truth, I'm not very fond of young 
+men who take to shooting without having anything to sheet at. 
+By-the-by, new I think of it, I'll send your mother some game." It may, 
+however, here be fair to mention that game very often came from 
+Guestwick Manor to Mrs Eames. "And look here, cold pheasant for 
+breakfast is the best thing I know of. Pheasants at dinner are 
+rubbish-mere rubbish. Here we are at the house. Will you come in and 
+have a glass of wine?
+
+But this John Eames declined, pleasing the earl better by doing so than 
+he would have done by accepting it. Not that the lord was inhospitable 
+or insincere in his offer, but he preferred that such a one as John 
+Eames should receive his proffered familiarity without too much 
+immediate assurance. He felt that Eames was a little in awe of his 
+companion's rank, and he like I him the better for it. He liked him the 
+better for it, and was a man apt to remember his likings. "If you won't 
+come in, Good-bye," and he gave Johnny his hand.
+
+"Good-evening, my lord," said Johnny.
+
+"And remember this; it is the deuce of a thing to have rheumatism in 
+your loins. I wouldn't go to sleep under a tree, if I were you-not in 
+October. But you're always welcome to go anywhere about the place."
+
+"Thank you, my lord."
+
+"And if you should take to shooting-but I dare say you won't; and if 
+you come to trouble, and want advice, or that sort of thing, write to 
+me. I knew your father well." And so they parted, Eames returning on 
+his read towards Guestwick.
+
+For some reason, which he could not define, he felt better after his 
+interview with the earl. There had been something about the fat, 
+good-natured, sensible old man, which had cheered him, in spite of his 
+sorrow. "Pheasants for dinner are rubbish-mere rubbish," he said to 
+himself, over and over again, as he went along the read; and they were 
+the first words which he spoke to his mother, after entering the house.
+
+"I wish we had some of that sort of rubbish," said she.
+
+"So you will, tomorrow"; and then he described to her his interview.
+
+"The earl was, at any rate, quite right about lying upon the ground. I 
+wonder you can be so foolish. And he is right about your poor father 
+too. But you have got to change your boots; and we shall be ready for 
+dinner almost immediately."
+
+But Johnny Eames, before he sat down to dinner, did write his letter to 
+Amelia, and did go out to post it with his own hands-much to his 
+mother's annoyance. But the letter would not get itself written in that 
+strong and appropriate language which had come to him as he was roaming 
+through the woods. It was a bald letter, and somewhat cowardly withal.
+
+DEAR AMELIA (the letter ran)-I have received both of yours; and did not 
+answer the first because I felt that there was a difficulty in 
+expressing what I wish to say; and now it will be better that you 
+should allow the subject to stand over till I am back in town. I shall 
+be there in ten days from this. I have been quite well, and am so; but 
+of course am much obliged by your inquiries. I know you will think this 
+very cold; but when I tell you everything, you will agree with me that 
+it is best. If I were to marry, I know that we should be unhappy, 
+because we should have nothing to live on. If I have ever said anything 
+to deceive you, I beg your pardon with all my heart-but perhaps it will 
+be better to let the subject remain till we shall meet again in London.
+
+Believe me to be
+
+Your most sincere friend,
+
+And I may say admirer-[Oh, John Eames!]
+
+JOHN EAMES.
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE LAST DAY
+
+
+Last days are wretched days; and so are last moments wretched moments. 
+It is not the fact that the parting is coming which makes these days 
+and moments so wretched, but the feeling that something special is 
+expected from them, which something they always fail to produce. 
+Spasmodic periods of pleasure, of affection, or even of study, seldom 
+fail of disappointment when premeditated. When last days are coming, 
+they should be allowed to come and to glide away without special notice 
+or mention. And as for last moments, there should he none such. Let 
+them ever be ended, even before their presence has been acknowledged.
+
+But Lily Dale had not yet been taught these lessons by her world's 
+experience, and she expected that this sweetest cup of which she had 
+ever drank should go on being sweet-sweeter and still sweeter-as long 
+as she could press it to her lips. How the dregs had come to mix 
+themselves with the last drops we have already seen; and on that same 
+day-on the Monday evening-the bitter task still remained; for Crosbie, 
+as they walked about through the gardens in the evening, found other 
+subjects on which he thought it necessary to give her sundry hints, 
+intended for her edification, which came to her with much of the savour 
+of a lecture. A girl, when she is thoroughly in love, as surely was the 
+case with Lily, likes to receive hints as to her future life from the 
+man to whom she is devoted; but she would, I think, prefer that such 
+hints should be short, and that the lesson should be implied rather 
+than declared-that they should, in fact, be hints and not lectures. 
+Crosbie, who was a man of tact, who understood the world and had been 
+dealing with women for many years, no doubt understood all this as well 
+as we do. But he had come to entertain a notion that he was an injured 
+man, that he was giving very much more than was to be given to him, and 
+that therefore he was entitled to take liberties which might not fairly 
+be within the reach of another lover. My reader will say that in all 
+this he was ungenerous. Well; he was ungenerous. I do not know that I 
+have ever said that much generosity was to be expected from him. He had 
+some principles of right and wrong under the guidance of which it may 
+perhaps be hoped that he will not go utterly astray; but his past life 
+had not been of a nature to make him unselfish. He was ungenerous, and 
+Lily felt it, though she would not acknowledge it even to herself. She 
+had been very open with him-acknowledging the depth of her love for 
+him; telling him that he was now all in all to her; that life without 
+his love would be impossible to her: and in a certain way he took 
+advantage of these strong avowals, treating her as though she were a 
+creature utterly in his power-as indeed she was.
+
+On that evening he said no more of Johnny Eames, but said much of the 
+difficulty of a man establishing himself with a wife in London, who had 
+nothing but his own moderate income on which to rely. He did not in so 
+many words tell her that if her friends could make up for her two or 
+three thousand pounds-that being much less than he had expected when he 
+first made his offer-this terrible difficulty would be removed; but he 
+said enough to make her understand that the world would call him very 
+imprudent in taking a girl who had nothing. And as he spoke of these 
+things, Lily remaining for the most part silent as he did so, it 
+occurred to him that he might talk to her freely of his past life-more 
+freely than he would have done had he feared that he might lose her by 
+any such disclosures. He had no fear of losing her. Alas! might it not 
+be possible that he had some such hope!
+
+He told her that his past life had been expensive; that, though he was 
+not in debt, he had lived up to every shilling that he had, and that he 
+had contracted habits of expenditure which it would be almost 
+impossible for him to lay aside at a day's notice. Then he spoke of 
+entanglements, meaning, as he did so, to explain more fully what were 
+their nature-but not daring to do so when he found that Lily was 
+altogether in the dark as to what he meant. No; he was not a generous 
+man-a very ungenerous man. And yet, during all this time, he thought 
+that he was guided by principle. "It will be best that I should be 
+honest with her," he said to himself. And then he told himself, scores 
+of times, that when making his offer he had expected, and had a right 
+to expect, that she would not be penniless. Under those circumstances 
+he had done the best he could for her-offering her his heart honestly, 
+with a quick readiness to make her his own at the earliest day that she 
+might think possible. Had he been more cautious, he need not have 
+fallen into this cruel mistake; but she, at any rate, could not quarrel 
+with him for his imprudence. And still he was determined to stand by 
+his engagement and willing to marry her, although, as he the more 
+thought of it, he felt the more strongly that he would thereby ruin his 
+prospects, and thrust beyond his own reach all those good things which 
+he had hoped to win. At he continued to talk to her he gave himself 
+special credit for his generosity, and felt that he was only doing his 
+duty by her in pointing out to her all the difficulties which lay in 
+the way of their marriage.
+
+At first Lily said some words intended to convey an assurance that she 
+would be the most economical wife that man ever had, but she soon 
+ceased from such promises as these. Her perceptions were keen, and she 
+discovered that the difficulties of which he was afraid were those 
+which he must overcome before his marriage, not any which might be 
+expected to overwhelm him after it. "A cheap and nasty ménage would be 
+my aversion," he said to her. "It is that which I want to avoid-chiefly 
+for your sake." Then she promised him that she would wait patiently for 
+his time-"I suppose we shall have to wait two years. And that's a deuce 
+of a bore-a terrible bore." And there was that in the tone of his voice 
+which grated on her feelings, and made her wretched for the moment.
+
+As he parted with her for the night on her own side of the little 
+bridge which led from one garden to the other, he put his arm round her 
+to embrace her and kiss her, as he had often done at that spot. It had 
+become a habit with them to say their evening farewells there, and the 
+secluded little nook amongst the shrubs was inexpressibly dear to Lily. 
+But on the present occasion she made an effort to avoid his caress, She 
+turned from him-very slightly, but it was enough, and he felt it. "Are 
+you angry with me?" he said. "Oh, no! Adolphus; how can I be angry with 
+you?" And then she turned to him and gave him her face to kiss almost 
+before he had again asked for it. "He shall not at any rate think that 
+I am unkind to him-and it will not matter now," she said to herself, as 
+she walked slowly across the lawn, in the dark, up to her mother's 
+drawing-room window.
+
+"Well, dearest," said Mrs Dale, who was there alone; "did the beards 
+wag merry in the Great Hall this evening?" That was a joke with them, 
+for neither Crosbie nor Bernard Dale used a razor at his toilet.
+
+"Not specially merry. And I think it was my fault, for I have a 
+headache. Mamma, I believe I will go at once to bed."
+
+"My darling, is there anything wrong?
+
+"Nothing, mamma. But we had such a long ride; and then Adolphus is 
+going, and of course we have so much to say. Tomorrow will be the last 
+day, for I shall only just see him on Wednesday morning; and as I want 
+to be well, if possible, I'll go to bed." And so she took her candle 
+and went.
+
+When Bell came up, Lily was still awake, but she begged her sister not 
+to disturb her. "Don't talk to me, Bell," she said." I'm trying to make 
+myself quiet, and I half feel that I should get childish if I went on 
+talking. I have almost more to think of than I know how to manage." And 
+she strove, not altogether unsuccessfully, to speak with a cheery tone, 
+as though the cares which weighed upon her were not unpleasant in their 
+nature. Then her sister kissed her and left her to her thoughts.
+
+And she had great matter for thinking; so great, that many hours 
+sounded in her ears from the clock on the stairs before she brought her 
+thoughts to a shape that satisfied herself. She did so bring them at 
+last, and then she slept. She did so bring them, toiling over her work 
+with tears that made her pillow wet, with heart-burning and almost with 
+heart-breaking, with much doubting, and many anxious, eager inquiries 
+within her own bosom as to that which she ought to do, and that which 
+she could endure to do. But at last her resolve was taken, and then she 
+slept.
+
+It had been agreed between them that Crosbie should come down to the 
+Small House on the next day after breakfast, and remain there till the 
+time came for riding. But Lily determined to alter this arrangement, 
+and accordingly put on her hat immediately after breakfast, and posted 
+herself at the bridge, so as to intercept her lover as he came. He soon 
+appeared with his friend Dale, and she at once told him her purpose.
+
+"I want to have a talk with you, Adolphus, before you go in to mamma; 
+so come with me into the field."
+
+"All right," said he.
+
+"And Bernard can finish his cigar on the lawn. Mamma and Bell will join 
+him there."
+
+"All right," said Bernard. So they separated; and Crosbie went away 
+with Lily into the field where they had first learned to know each 
+other in those haymaking days.
+
+She did not say much till they were well away from the house; but 
+answered what words he chose to speak-not knowing very well of what he 
+spoke. But when she considered that they had reached the proper spot, 
+she began very abruptly.
+
+"Adolphus," she said, "I have something to say to you-something to 
+which you must listen very carefully." Then he looked at her, and at 
+once knew that she was in earnest.
+
+"This is the last day on which I could say it," she continued; "and I 
+am very glad that I have not let the last day go by without saying it. 
+I should not have known how to put it in a letter."
+
+"What is it, Lily?"
+
+"And I do not know that I can say it properly; but I hope that you will 
+not be hard upon me. Adolphus, if you wish that all this between us 
+should be over, I will consent."
+
+"Lily!"
+
+"I mean what I say. If you wish it, I will consent; and when I have 
+said so, proposing it myself, you may be quite sure that I shall never 
+blame you, if you take me at my word."
+
+"Are you tired of me, Lily?"
+
+"No. I shall never be tired of you-never weary with loving you. I did 
+not wish to say so now; but I will answer your question boldly. Tired 
+of you! I fancy that a girl can never grow tired of her lover. But I 
+would sooner die in the struggle than be the cause of your ruin. It 
+would be better-in every way better."
+
+"I have said nothing of being ruined."
+
+"But listen to me. I should not die if you left me-not be utterly 
+broken-hearted. Nothing on earth can I ever love as I have loved you. 
+But I have a God and a Saviour that will be enough for me. I can turn 
+to them with content, if it be well that you should leave me. I have 
+gone to them, and-"
+
+But at this moment she could utter no more words. She had broken down 
+in her effort, losing her voice through the strength of her emotion. As 
+she did not choose that he should see her overcome, she turned from him 
+and walked away across the grass. Of course he followed her; but he was 
+not so quick after her, but that time had been given to her to recover 
+herself. "It is true," she said." I have the strength of which I tell 
+you. Though I have given myself to you as your wife, I can hear to be 
+divorced from you now-now. And, my love, though it may sound heartless, 
+I would sooner be so divorced from you, than cling to you as a log that 
+must drag you down under the water, and drown you in trouble and care. 
+I would-indeed I would. If you go, of course that kind of thing is over 
+for me. But the world has more than that-much more; and I would make 
+myself happy-yes, my love, I would be happy. You need not fear that."
+
+"But, Lily, why is all this said to me here today?"
+
+"Because it is my duty to say it. I understand all your position now, 
+though it is only now. It never flashed on me till yesterday. When you 
+proposed to me, you thought that I-that I had some fortune."
+
+"Never mind that now, Lily."
+
+"But you did. I see it all now. I ought perhaps to have told you that 
+it was not so. There has been the mistake, and we are both sufferers. 
+But we need not make the suffering deeper than needs be. My love, you 
+are free-from this moment. And even my heart shall not blame you for 
+accepting your freedom."
+
+"And are you afraid of poverty?" he asked her.
+
+"I am afraid of poverty for you. You and I have lived differently. 
+Luxuries, of which I know nothing, have been your daily comforts. I 
+tell you I can bear to part with you. but I cannot bear to become the 
+source of your unhappiness. Yes; I will bear it; and none shall dare in 
+my hearing to speak against you. I have brought you here to say the 
+word; nay, more than that-to advise you to say it."
+
+He stood silent for a moment, during which he held her by the hand. She 
+was looking into his face, but he was looking away into the clouds; 
+striving to appear as though he was the master of the occasion. But 
+during those moments his mind was wracked with doubt. What if he should 
+take her at her word? Some few would say bitter things against him, but 
+such bitter things had been said against many another man without 
+harming him. Would it not be well for both if he should take her at her 
+word? She would recover and love again, as other girls had done; and as 
+for him, he would thus escape from the ruin at which he had been gazing 
+for the last week past. For it was ruin-utter ruin. He did love her; so 
+he declared to himself. But was he a man who ought to throw the world 
+away for love? Such men there were; but was he one of them? Could he be 
+happy in that small house, somewhere near the New Road, with five 
+children and horrid misgivings as to the baker's bill? Of all men 
+living, was not he the last that should have allowed himself to fall 
+into such a trap? All this passed through his mind as he turned his 
+face up to the clouds with a look that was intended to be grand and 
+noble.
+
+"Speak to me, Adolphus, and say that it shall be so."
+
+Then his heart misgave him, and he lacked the courage to extricate 
+himself from his trouble; or, as he afterwards said to himself, he had 
+not the heart to do it. "If I understand you, rightly, Lily, all this 
+comes from no want of love on your own part?
+
+"Want of love on my part? But you should not ask me that."
+
+"Until you tell me that there is such a want, I will agree to no 
+parting. "Then he took her hand and put it within his arm.
+
+"No, Lily; whatever may be our cares and troubles, we are bound 
+together-indissolubly."
+
+"Are we?" said she; and as she spoke, her voice trembled, and her hand 
+shook.
+
+"Much too firmly for any such divorce as that. No, Lily, I claim the 
+right to tell you all my troubles; but I shall not let you go."
+
+"But, Adolphus-"
+
+and the hand on his arm was beginning to cling to it again.
+
+"Adolphus," said he, "has got nothing more to say on that subject. He 
+exercises the right which he believes to be his own, and chooses to 
+retain the prize which he has won."
+
+She was now clinging to him in very truth. "Oh, my love!" she said. "I 
+do not know how to say it again. It is of you that I am thinking-of 
+you, of you!"
+
+"I know you are; but you have misunderstood me a little; that's all."
+
+"Have I? Then listen to me again, once more, my heart's own darling, my 
+love, my husband, my lord! If I cannot be to you at once like Ruth, and 
+never cease from coming after you, my thoughts to you shall be like 
+those of Ruth-if aught but death part thee and me, may God do so to me 
+and more also." Then she fell upon his breast and wept.
+
+He still hardly understood the depth of her character. He was not 
+himself deep enough to comprehend it all. But yet he was awed by her 
+great love, and exalted to a certain solemnity of feeling which for the 
+time made him rejoice in his late decision. For a few hours he was 
+minded to throw the world behind him, and wear this woman, as such a 
+woman should be worn-as a comforter to him in all things, and a strong 
+shield against great troubles. "Lily," he said, "my own Lily!
+"Yes, your own, to take when you please, and leave untaken while you 
+please; and as much your own in one way as in the other." Then she 
+looked up again, and essayed to laugh as she did so." You will think I 
+am frantic, but I am so happy. I don't care about your going now; 
+indeed I don't. There; you may go now, this minute, if you like it." 
+And she withdrew her hand from his. "I feel so differently from what I 
+have done for the last few days. I am so glad you have spoken to me as 
+you did. Of course I ought to bear all those things with you. But I 
+cannot be unhappy about it now. I wonder if I went to work and made a 
+lot of things, whether that would help?
+
+"A set of shirts for me, for instance?"
+
+"I could do that, at any rate."
+
+"It may come to that yet, some of these days."
+
+"I pray God that it may." Then again she was serious, and the tears 
+came once more into her eyes. "I pray God that it may. To be of use to 
+you-to work for you--to do something for you that may have in it some 
+sober, earnest purport of usefulness-that is what I want above all 
+things. I want to be with you at once that I may be of service to you. 
+Would that you and I were alone together, that I might do everything 
+for you. I sometimes think that a very poor man's wife is the happiest, 
+because she does do everything."
+
+"You shall do everything very soon," said he; and then they sauntered 
+along pleasantly through the morning hours, and when they again 
+appeared at Mrs Dale's table, Mrs Dale and Bell were astonished at 
+Lily's brightness. All her old ways had seemed to return to her, and 
+she made her little saucy speeches to Mr Crosbie as she had used to do 
+when he was first becoming fascinated by her sweetness. "You know that 
+you'll be such a swell when you get to that countess's house that 
+you'll forget all about Allington."
+
+"Of course I shall," said he.
+
+"And the paper you write upon will be all over coronets-that is, if 
+ever you do write. Perhaps you will to Bernard some day, just to show 
+that you are staying at a castle."
+
+"You certainly don't deserve that he should write to you," sad Mrs Dale.
+
+"I don't expect it for a moment-not till he gets back to London and 
+finds that he has nothing else to do at his office. But I should so 
+like to see how you and Lady Julia get on together. It was quite clear 
+that she regarded you as an ogre; didn't she, Bell?"
+
+"So many people are ogres to Lady Julia," said Bell.
+
+"I believe Lady Julia to be a very good woman," said Mrs Dale, "and I 
+won't have her abused."
+
+"Particularly before poor Bernard, who is her pet nephew," said Lily. 
+"I dare say Adolphus will become a pet too when she has been a week 
+with him at Courcy Castle. Do try and cut Bernard out."
+
+>From all which Mrs Dale learned that some care which had sat heavy on 
+Lily's heart was now lightened, if not altogether removed. She had 
+asked no questions of her daughter, but she had perceived during the 
+past few days that Lily was in trouble, and she knew that such trouble 
+had arisen from her engagement. She had asked no questions, but of 
+course she had been told what was Mr Crosbie's income, and had been 
+made to understand that it was not to he considered as amply sufficient 
+for all the wants of matrimony. There was little difficulty in guessing 
+what was the source of Lily's care, and as little in now perceiving 
+that something had been said between them by which that care had been 
+relieved.
+
+After that they all rode, and the afternoon went by pleasantly. It was 
+the last day indeed, but Lily had determined that she would not he sad. 
+She had told him that he might go now, and that she would not be 
+discontented at his going. She knew that the morrow would be very blank 
+to her; but she struggled to live up to the spirit of her promise, and 
+she succeeded. They all dined at the Great House, even Mrs Dale doing 
+so upon this occasion. When they had come in from the garden in the 
+evening, Crosbie talked more to Mrs Dale than he did even to Lily, 
+while Lily sat a little distant, listening with all her ears, sometimes 
+saying a low-toned word, and happy beyond expression in the feeling 
+that her mother and her lover should understand each other. And it must 
+be understood that Crosbie at this time was fully determined to conquer 
+the difficulties of which he had thought so much, and to fix the 
+earliest day which might be possible for his marriage. The solemnity of 
+that meeting in the field still hung about him, and gave to his present 
+feelings a manliness and a truth of purpose which were too generally 
+wanting to them. If only those feelings would last! But now he talked 
+to Mrs Dale about her daughter, and about their future prospects, in a 
+tone which he could not have used had not his mind for the time been 
+true to her. He had never spoken so freely to Lily's mother, and at no 
+time had Mrs Dale felt for him so much of a mother's love. He 
+apologised for the necessity of some delay, arguing that he could not 
+endure to see his young wife without the comfort of a home of her own, 
+and that he was now, as he always had been, afraid of incurring debt. 
+Mrs Dale disliked waiting engagements-as do all mothers-but she could 
+not answer unkindly to such pleading as this.
+
+"Lily is so very young," she said, "that she may well wait for a year 
+or so."
+
+"For seven years," said Lily, jumping up and whispering into her 
+mother's ear. "I shall hardly be six-and-twenty then, which is not at 
+all too old."
+
+And so the evening passed away very pleasantly.
+
+"God bless you, Adolphus!" Mrs Dale said to him, as she parted with him 
+at her own door. It was the first time that she had called him by his 
+Christian name. "I hope you understand how much we are trusting to you."
+
+"I do-I do," said he, as he pressed her hand. Then as he walked back 
+alone, he swore to himself, binding himself to the oath with all his 
+heart, that he would be true to those women-both to the daughter and to 
+the mother; for the solemnity of the morning was still upon him.
+
+He was to start the next morning before eight, Bernard having 
+undertaken to drive him over to the railway at Guestwick. The breakfast 
+was on the table shortly after seven; and just as the two men had come 
+down, Lily entered the room, with her hat and shawl. "I said I would be 
+in to pour out your tea," said she; and then she sat herself down over 
+against the teapot.
+
+It was a silent meal, for people do not know what to say in those last 
+minutes. And Bernard, too, was there; proving how true is the adage 
+which says, that two are company, but that three are not. I think that 
+Lily was wrong to come up on that last morning; but she would not hear 
+of letting him start without seeing him, when her lover had begged her 
+not to put herself to so much trouble. Trouble! Would she not have sat 
+up all night to see even the last of the top of his hat?
+
+Then Bernard, muttering something about the horse, went away. "I have 
+only one minute to speak to you," said she, jumping up, "and I have 
+been thinking all night of what I had to say. It is so easy to think, 
+and so hard to speak."
+
+"My darling, I understand it all."
+
+"But you must understand this, that I will never distrust you. I will 
+never ask you to give me up again, or say that I could be happy without 
+you. I could not live without you; that is, without the knowledge that 
+you are mine. But I will never be impatient, never. Pray, pray believe 
+me! Nothing shall make me distrust you."
+
+"Dearest Lily, I will endeavour to give you no cause."
+
+"I know you will not; but I specially wanted to tell you that. And you 
+will write-very soon?
+
+"Directly I get there."
+
+"And as often as you can. But I won't bother you; only your letters 
+will make me so happy. I shall be so proud when they come to me. I 
+shall be afraid of writing too much to you, for fear I should tire you."
+
+"You will never do that."
+
+"Shall I not? But you must write first, you know. If you could only 
+understand how I shall live upon your letters! And now good-bye. There 
+are the wheels. God bless you, my own, my own!" And she gave herself up 
+into his arms, as she had given herself up into his heart.
+
+She stood at the door as the two men got into the gig, and, as it 
+passed down through the gate, she hurried out upon the terrace, from 
+whence she could see it for a few yards down the lane. Then she ran 
+from the terrace to the gate, and, hurrying through the gate, made her 
+way into the churchyard, from the farther corner of which she could see 
+the heads of the two men till they had made the turn into the main road 
+beyond the parsonage. There she remained till the very sound of the 
+wheels no longer reached her ears, stretching her eyes in the direction 
+they had taken. Then she turned round slowly and made her way out at 
+the churchyard gate, which opened on to the road close to the front 
+door of the Small House.
+
+"I should like to punch his head," said Hopkins, the gardener, to 
+himself, as he saw the gig driven away and saw Lily trip after it, that 
+she might see the last of him whom it carried.
+
+"And I wouldn't think nothing of doing it; no more I wouldn't," Hopkins 
+added in his soliloquy. It was generally thought about the place that 
+Miss Lily was Hopkins's favourite, though he showed it chiefly by 
+snubbing her more frequently than he snubbed her sister.
+
+Lily had evidently intended to return home through the front door; but 
+she changed her purpose before she reached the house, and made her way 
+slowly back through the churchyard, and by the gate of the Great House, 
+and by the garden at the back of it, till she crossed the little 
+bridge. But on the bridge she rested awhile, leaning against the 
+railing as she had often leant with him, and thinking of all that had 
+passed since that July day on which she had first met him. On no spot 
+had he so often told her of his love as on this, and nowhere had she so 
+eagerly sworn to him that she would he his own dutiful loving wife.
+
+"And by God's help so I will," she said to herself, as she walked 
+firmly up to the house. "He has gone, mamma," she said, as she entered 
+the breakfast-room. "And now we'll go back to our work-a-day ways; it 
+has been all Sunday for me for the last six weeks."
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+MR CROSBIE MEETS AN OLD CLERGYMAN ON HIS WAY TO COURCY CASTLE
+
+
+For the first mile or two of their journey Crosbie and Bernard Dale 
+sat, for the most part, silent in their gig. Lily, as she ran down to 
+the churchyard corner and stood there looking after them with her 
+loving eyes, had not been seen by them. But the spirit of her devotion 
+was still strong upon them both, and they felt that it would not be 
+well to strike at once into any ordinary topic of conversation. And, 
+moreover, we may presume that Crosbie did feel much at thus parting 
+from such a girl as Lily Dale, with whom he had lived in close 
+intercourse for the last six weeks, and whom he loved with all his 
+heart-with all the heart that he had for such purposes. In those doubts 
+as to his marriage which had troubled him he had never expressed to 
+himself any disapproval of Lily. He had not taught himself to think 
+that she was other than he would have her be, that he might thus give 
+himself an excuse fur parting from her. Not as yet, at any rate, had he 
+had recourse to that practice, so common with men who wish to free 
+themselves from the bonds with which they have permitted themselves to 
+be bound. Lily had been too sweet to his eyes, to his touch, to all his 
+senses for that. He had enjoyed too keenly the pleasure of being with 
+her, and of hearing her tell him that she loved him, to allow of his 
+being personally tired of her. He had not been so spoilt by his club 
+life but that he had taken exquisite pleasure in all her nice country 
+ways, and soft, kind-hearted, womanly humour. He was by no means tired 
+of Lily. Better than any of his London pleasures was this pleasure of 
+making love in the green fields to Lily Dale. It was the consequences 
+of it that affrighted him. Babies with their belongings would come; and 
+dull evenings, over a dull fire, or else the pining grief of a 
+disappointed woman. He would be driven to be careful as to his clothes, 
+because the ordering of a new coat would entail a serious expenditure. 
+He could go no more among countesses and their daughters, because it 
+would be out of the question that his wife should visit at their 
+houses. All the victories that he had ever won must be given up. He was 
+thinking of this even while the gig was going round the corner near the 
+parsonage house, and while Lily's eyes were still blessed with some 
+view of his departing back; but he was thinking, also, that moment, 
+that there might be other victory in store for him; that it might he 
+possible for him to learn to like that fireside, even though babies 
+should be there, and a woman opposite to him intent on baby cares. He 
+was struggling as best he knew how; for the solemnity which Lily had 
+imparted to him had not yet vanished from his spirit.
+
+"I hope that, upon the whole, you feel contented with your visit?" said 
+Bernard to him, at last.
+
+"Contented? Of course I do."
+
+"That is easily said; and civility to me, perhaps, demands as much. But 
+I know that you have, to some extent, been disappointed."
+
+"Well; yes. I have been disappointed as regards money. It is of no use 
+denying it."
+
+"I should not mention it now, only that I want to know that you 
+exonerate me."
+
+"I have never blamed you-neither you, nor anybody else; unless, indeed, 
+it has been myself."
+
+"You mean that you regret what you've done?"
+
+"No; I don't mean that. I am too devotedly attached to that dear girl 
+whom we have just left to feel any regret that I have engaged myself to 
+her. But I do think that had I managed better with your uncle things 
+might have been different."
+
+"I doubt it. Indeed I know that it is not so; and can assure you that 
+you need not make yourself unhappy on that score. I had thought, as you 
+well know, that he would have done something for Lily-something, though 
+not as much as he always intended to do for Bell. But you may be sure 
+of this; that he had made up his mind as to what he would do. Nothing 
+that you or I could have said would have changed him."
+
+"Well; we won't say anything more about it," said Crosbie. Then they 
+went on again in silence, and arrived at Guestwick in ample time for 
+the train.
+
+"Let me know as soon as you get to town," said Crosbie. "Oh, of course. 
+I'll write to you before that."
+
+And so they parted. As Dale turned and went, Crosbie felt that he liked 
+him less than he had done before; and Bernard, also, as he was driving 
+him, came to the conclusion that Crosbie would not be so good a fellow 
+as a brother-in-law as he had been as a chance friend. "He'll give us 
+trouble, in some way; and I'm sorry that I brought him down." That was 
+Dale's inward conviction in the matter.
+
+Crosbie's way from Guestwick lay, by railway, to Barchester, the 
+cathedral city lying in the next county, from whence he purposed to 
+have himself conveyed over to Courcy. There had, in truth, been no 
+cause for his very early departure, as he was aware that all arrivals 
+at country houses should take place at some hour not much previous to 
+dinner. He had been determined to be so soon upon the road by a feeling 
+that it would be well for him to get over those last hours. Thus he 
+found himself in Barchester at eleven o'clock, with nothing on his 
+hands to do; and, having nothing else to do, he went to church. There 
+was a full service at the cathedral, and as the verger marshalled him 
+up to one of the empty stalls, a little spare old man was beginning to 
+chant the Litany. "I did not mean to fall in for all this," said 
+Crosbie, to himself, as he settled himself with his arms on the 
+cushion. But the peculiar charm of that old man's voice soon attracted 
+him-a voice that, though tremulous, was yet strong; and he ceased to 
+regret the saint whose honour and glory had occasioned the length of 
+that day's special service.
+
+"And who is the old gentleman who chanted the Litany?" he asked the 
+verger afterwards, as he allowed himself to be shown round the 
+monuments of the cathedral.
+
+"That's our precentor, sir, Mr Harding. You must have heard of Mr 
+Harding." But Crosbie, with a full apology, confessed his ignorance.
+
+"Well, sir; he's pretty well known too, tho' he is so shy like. He's 
+father-in-law to our dean, sir; and father-in-law to Archdeacon Grantly 
+also."
+
+"His daughters have all gone into the profession, then?"
+
+"Why, yes; but Miss Eleanor-for I remember her before she was married 
+at all-when they lived at the hospital-"
+
+"At the hospital?"
+"Hiram's hospital, sir. He was warden, you know. You should go and see 
+the hospital, sir, if you never was there before. Well, Miss 
+Eleanor-that was his youngest-she married Mr Bold as her first. But now 
+she's the dean's lady."
+
+"Oh; the dean's lady, is she?
+
+"Yes, indeed. And what do you think, sir? Mr Harding might have been 
+dean himself if he'd liked. They did offer it to him."
+
+"And he refused it?
+
+"Indeed he did, sir."
+
+"Nolo decanari. I never heard of that before. What made him so modest?
+
+"Just that, sir; because he is modest. He's past his seventy now-ever 
+so much; but he's just as modest as a young girl. A deal more modest 
+than some of them. To see him and his granddaughter together!"
+
+"And who is his granddaughter?"
+
+"Why Lady Dumbello, as will be the Marchioness of Hartletop."
+
+"I know Lady Dumbello," said Crosbie; not meaning, however, to boast to 
+the verger of his noble acquaintance.
+
+"Oh, do you, sir?" said the man, unconsciously touching his hat at this 
+sign of greatness in the stranger; though in truth he had no love for 
+her ladyship. "Perhaps you're going to be one of the party at Courcy 
+Castle."
+
+"Well, I believe I am."
+
+"You'll find her ladyship there before you. She lunched with her aunt 
+at the deanery as she went through, yesterday; finding it too much 
+trouble to go out to her father's, at Plumstead. Her father is the 
+archdeacon, you know. They do say-but her ladyship is your friend!"
+
+"No friend at all; only a very slight acquaintance. She's quite as much 
+above my line as she is above her father's."
+
+"Well, she is above them all. They say she would hardly as much as 
+speak to the old gentleman."
+
+"What, her father?
+
+"No, Mr Harding; he that chanted the Litany just now. There he is, sir, 
+coming out of the deanery."
+
+They were now standing at the door leading out from one of the 
+transepts, and Mr Harding passed them as they were speaking together. 
+He was a little, withered, shambling old man, with bent shoulders, 
+dressed in knee-breeches and long black gaiters, which hung rather 
+loosely about his poor old legs-rubbing his hands one over the other as 
+he went. And yet he walked quickly; not tottering as he walked, but 
+with an uncertain, doubtful step. The verger, as Mr Harding passed, put 
+his hand to his head, and Crosbie also raised his hat. Whereupon Mr 
+Harding raised his, and bowed, and turned round as though he were about 
+to speak. Crosbie felt that he had never seen a face on which traits of 
+human kindness were more plainly written. But the old man did not 
+speak. lie turned his body half round, and then shambled back, as 
+though ashamed of his intention, and passed on.
+
+"He is of that sort that they make the angels of," said the verger. 
+"But they can't make many if they want them all as good as he is. I'm 
+much obliged to you, sir." And he pocketed the half-crown which Crosbie 
+gave him.
+
+"So that's Lady Dumbello's grandfather," said Crosbie, to himself, as 
+he walked slowly round the close towards the hospital, by the path 
+which the verger had shown him. He had no great love for Lady Dumbello, 
+who had dared to snub him-even him. "They may make an angel of the old 
+gentleman," he continued to say; "but they'll never succeed in that way 
+with the granddaughter."
+
+He sauntered slowly on over a little bridge; and at the gate of the 
+hospital he again came upon Mr Harding. "I was going to venture in," 
+said he, "to look at the place. But perhaps I shall be intruding?
+
+"No, no; by no means," said Mr Harding. "Pray come in. I cannot say 
+that I am just at home here. I do not live here-not now. But I know the 
+ways of the place well, and can make you welcome. That's the warden's 
+house. Perhaps we won't go in so early in the day, as the lady has a 
+very large family. An excellent lady, and a dear friend of mine-as is 
+her husband."
+
+"And he is warden, you say?"
+
+"Yes, warden of the hospital. You see the house, sir. Very pretty, 
+isn't it? Very pretty. To my idea it's the prettiest built house I ever 
+saw."
+
+"I won't go quite so far as that," said Crosbie.
+
+"But you would if you'd lived there twelve years, as I did. I lived in 
+that house twelve years, and I don't think there's so sweet a spot on 
+the earth's surface. Did you ever see such turf as that?
+
+"Very nice indeed," said Crosbie, who began to make a comparison with 
+Mrs Dale's turf at the Small House, and to determine that the Allington 
+turf was better than that of the hospital.
+
+"I had that turf laid down myself. There were borders there when I 
+first came, with hollyhocks, and those sort of things. The turf was an 
+improvement."
+
+"There's no doubt of that, I should say."
+
+"The turf was an improvement, certainly. And I planted those shrubs, 
+too. There isn't such a Portugal laurel as that in the county."
+
+"Were you warden here, sir?" And Crosbie, as he asked the question, 
+remembered that, in his very young days, he had heard of some newspaper 
+quarrel which had taken place about Hiram's hospital at Barchester.
+
+"Yes, sir. I was warden here for twelve years. Dear, dear, dear! If 
+they had put any gentleman here that was not on friendly terms with me 
+it would have made me very unhappy-very. But, as it is, I go in and out 
+just as I like; almost as much as I did before they-But they didn't 
+turn me out. There were reasons which made it best that I should 
+resign."
+
+"And you live at the deanery now, Mr Harding?"
+
+"Yes; I live at the deanery now. But I am not dean, you know. My 
+son-in-law, Dr Arabin, is the dean. I have another daughter married in 
+the neighbourhood, and can truly say that my lines have fallen to me in 
+pleasant places."
+
+Then he took Crosbie in among the old men, into all of whose rooms he 
+went. It was an almshouse for aged men of the city, and before Crosbie 
+had left him Mr Harding had explained all the circumstances of the 
+hospital, and of the way in which he had left it. "I didn't like going, 
+you know; I thought it would break my heart. But I could not stay when 
+they said such things as that-I couldn't stay. And, what is more, I 
+should have been wrong to stay. I see it all now. But when I went out 
+under that arch, Mr Crosbie, leaning on my daughter's arm, I thought 
+that my heart would have broken." And the tears even nosy ran down the 
+old man's cheeks as he spoke.
+
+It was a long story, and it need not be repeated here. And there was no 
+reason why it should have been told to Mr Crosbie, other than this-that 
+Mr Harding was a fond garrulous old man, who loved to indulge his mind 
+in reminiscences of the past. But this was remarked by Crosbie; that, 
+in telling his story, no word was said by Mr Harding injurious to any 
+one. And yet he had been injured-injured very deeply." "It was all for 
+the best," he said at last; "especially as the happiness has not been 
+denied to me of making myself at home at the old place. I would take 
+you He had told the old clergyman who he was, and that he was on his 
+way to Courcy. "Where, as I understand, I shall meet a granddaughter of 
+yours."
+
+"Yes, yes; she is my grandchild. She and I have got into different 
+walks of life now, so that I don't see much of her. They tell me that 
+she does her duty well in that sphere of life to which it has pleased 
+God to call her."
+
+"That depends," thought Crosbie, "on what the duties of a viscountess 
+may be supposed to be." But he wished his new friend good-bye, without 
+saying anything further as to Lady Dumbello, and, at about six o'clock 
+in the evening, had himself driven up under the portico of Courcy 
+Castle.
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+COURCY CASTLE
+
+
+Courcy Castle was very full. In the first place, there was a great 
+gathering there of all the Courcy family. The earl was there-and the 
+countess, of course. At this period of the year Lady de Courcy was 
+always at home; but the presence of the earl himself had heretofore 
+been by no means so certain. He was a man who had been much given to 
+royal visitings and attendances, to parties in the Highlands, to-no 
+doubt necessary-prolongations of the London season, to sojournings at 
+certain German watering-places, convenient, probably, in order that he 
+might study the ways and ceremonies of German Courts-and to various 
+other absences from home, occasioned by a close pursuit of his own 
+special aims in life; for the Earl de Courcy had been a great courtier. 
+But of late gout, lumbago, and perhaps also some diminution in his 
+powers of making himself generally agreeable, had reconciled him to 
+domestic duties, and the earl spent much of his time at home. The 
+countess, in former days, had been heard to complain of her lord's 
+frequent absence. But it is hard to please some women-and now she would 
+not always be satisfied with his presence.
+
+And all the sons and daughters were there-excepting Lord Porlock, the 
+eldest, who never met his father. The earl and Lord Porlock were not on 
+terms, and indeed hated each other as only such fathers and such sons 
+can hate. The Honourable George de Courcy was there with his bride, he 
+having lately performed a manifest duty, in having married a young 
+woman with money. Very young she was not-having reached some years of 
+her life in advance of thirty; but then, neither was the Honourable 
+George very young; and in this respect the two were not ill-sorted. The 
+lady's money had not been very much-perhaps thirty thousand pounds or 
+so. But then the Honour-able George's money had been absolutely none. 
+Now he had an income on which he could live, and therefore his father 
+and mother had forgiven him all his sins, and taken him again to their 
+bosom. And the marriage was matter of great moment, for the elder scion 
+of the house had not yet taken to himself a wife, and the De Courcy 
+family might have to look to this union for an heir. The lady herself 
+was not beautiful, or clever, or of imposing manners-nor was she of 
+high birth. But neither was she ugly, nor unbearably stupid. Her 
+manners were, at any rate, innocent; and as to her birth-seeing that, 
+from the first, she was not supposed to have had any-no disappointment 
+was felt. Her father had been a coal-merchant. She was always called 
+Mrs George, and the effort made respecting her by everybody in and 
+about the family was to treat her as though she were a figure of a 
+woman, a large well-dressed resemblance of a being, whom it was 
+necessary for certain purposes that the De Courcys should carry in 
+their train. Of the Honourable George we may further observe, that, 
+having been a spendthrift all his life, he had now become strictly 
+parsimonious. Having reached the discreet age of forty, he had at last 
+learned that beggary was objectionable; and he, therefore, devoted 
+every energy of his mind to saving shillings and pence wherever pence 
+and shillings might be saved. When first this turn came upon him both 
+his father and mother were delighted to observe it; but, although it 
+had hardly yet lasted over twelve months, some evil results were 
+beginning to appear. Though possessed of an income, he would take no 
+steps towards possessing himself of a house. He hung by the paternal 
+mansion, either in town or country; drank the paternal wines, rode the 
+paternal horses, and had even contrived to obtain his wife's dresses 
+from the maternal milliner. In the completion of which little last 
+success, however, some slight family dissent had showed itself.
+
+The Honourable John, the third son, was also at Courcy. He had as yet 
+taken to himself no wife, and as he had not hitherto made himself 
+conspicuously useful in any special walk of life his family were 
+beginning to regard him as a burden. Having no income of his own to 
+save, he had not copied his brother's virtue of parsimony; and, to tell 
+the truth plainly, had made himself so generally troublesome to his 
+father, that lie had been on more than one occasion threatened with 
+expulsion from the family roof. But it is not easy to expel a son, 
+Human fledglings cannot be driven out of the nest like young birds. An 
+Honour-able John turned adrift into absolute poverty will make himself 
+heard of in the world-if in no other way, by his ugliness as he 
+starves. A thorough-going ne'er-do-well in the upper classes has 
+eminent advantages on his side in the battle which he fights against 
+respectability. He can't be sent to Australia against his will. He 
+can't be sent to the poor-house without the knowledge of all the world. 
+He can't be kept out of tradesmen's shops; nor, without terrible 
+scandal, can he be kept away from the paternal properties. The earl had 
+threatened, and snarled, and shown his teeth; he was an angry man, and 
+a man who could look very angry; with eyes which could almost become 
+red, and a brow that wrinkled itself in perpendicular wrinkles, 
+sometimes very terrible to behold. But he was an inconstant man, and 
+the Honourable John had learned to measure his father, and in an 
+accurate balance.
+
+I have mentioned the sons first, because it is to be presumed that they 
+were the elder, seeing that their names were mentioned before those of 
+their sisters in all the peerages. But there were four daughters-the 
+Ladies Amelia, Rosina, Margaretta, and Alexandrina. They, we may say, 
+Were the flowers of the family, having so lived that they had created 
+none of those family feuds which had been so frequent between their 
+father and their brothers. They were discreet, highbred women, 
+thinking, perhaps, a little too much of their own position in the 
+world, and somewhat apt to put a wrong value on those advantages which 
+they possessed, and on those which they did not possess. The Lady 
+Amelia was already married, having made a substantial if not a 
+brilliant match with Mr Mortimer Gazebee, a flourishing solicitor, 
+belonging to a firm which had for many years acted as agents to the De 
+Courcy property. Mortimer Gazebee was now member of Parliament for 
+Barchester, partly through the influence of his father-in-law. That 
+this should be so was a matter of great disgust to the Honourable 
+George, who thought that the seat should have belonged to him. But as 
+Mr Gazebee had paid the very heavy expenses of the election out of his 
+own pocket, and as George de Courcy certainly could not have paid them, 
+the justice of his claim may be questionable. Mrs Gazebee was now the 
+happy mother of many babies, whom she was wont to carry with her on her 
+visits to Courcy Castle, and had become an excellent partner to her 
+husband He would perhaps have liked it better if she had not spoken so 
+frequently to him of her own high position as the daughter of an earl, 
+or so frequently to others of her low position as the wife of an 
+attorney. But, on the whole, they did very well together, and Mr 
+Gazebee had gotten from his marriage quite as much as he expected when 
+he made it.
+
+The Lady Rosina was very religious; and I do not know that she was 
+conspicuous in any other way, unless it might be that she somewhat 
+resembled her father, in her temper. It was of the Lady Rosina that the 
+servants were afraid, especially with reference to that so-called day 
+of rest which, under her dominion, had become to many of them a day of 
+restless torment. It had not always been so with the Lady Rosina; but 
+her eyes had been opened by the wife of a great church dignitary in the 
+neighbourhood, and she had undergone regeneration. How great may be the 
+misery inflicted by an energetic, unmarried, healthy woman in that 
+condition-a woman with no husband, or children, or duties, to distract 
+her from her work-I pray that my readers may never know.
+
+The Lady Margaretta was her mother's favourite, and she was like her 
+mother in all things-except that her mother had been a beauty. The 
+world called her proud, disdainful, and even insolent; but the world 
+was not aware that in all that she did she was acting in accordance 
+with a principle which had called for much self-abnegation. She had 
+considered it her duty to be a De Courcy and an earl's daughter at all 
+times; and consequently she had sacrificed to her idea of duty all 
+popularity, adulation, and such admiration as would have been awarded 
+to her as a well-dressed, tall, fashionable, and by no means stupid 
+young woman. To be at all times in something higher than they who were 
+manifestly below her in rank-that was the effort that she was ever 
+making. But she had been a good daughter, assisting her mother, as best 
+she might, in all family troubles, and never repining at the cold, 
+colourless, unlovely life which had been vouchsafed to her.
+
+Alexandrina was the beauty of the family, and was in truth the 
+youngest. But even she was not very young, and was beginning to make 
+her friends uneasy lest she, too, should let the precious season of 
+hay-harvest run by without due use of her summer's sun. She had, 
+perhaps, counted too much on her beauty, which had been beauty 
+according to law rather than beauty according to taste, and had looked, 
+probably, for too bounteous a harvest. That her forehead, and nose, and 
+cheeks, and chin were well-formed, no man could deny. Her hair was soft 
+and plentiful. Her teeth were good, and her eyes were long and oval. 
+But the fault of her face was this-that when you left her you could not 
+remember it. After a first acquaintance you could meet her again and 
+not know her. After many meetings you would fail to carry away with you 
+any portrait of her features. But such as she had been at twenty, such 
+was she now at thirty. Years had not robbed her face of its regularity, 
+or ruffled the smoothness of her too even forehead. Rumour had declared 
+that on more than one, or perhaps more than two occasions, Lady 
+Alexandrina had been already induced to plight her troth in return for 
+proffered love; but we all know that Rumour, when she takes to such 
+topics, exaggerates the truth, and sets down much in malice. The lady 
+was once engaged, the engagement lasting for two years, and the 
+engagement had been broken off, owing to some money difficulties 
+between the gentlemen of the families. Since that she had become 
+somewhat querulous, and was supposed to be uneasy on that subject of 
+her haymaking. Her glass and her maid assured her that her sun shone 
+still as brightly as ever; but her spirit was becoming weary with 
+waiting, and she dreaded lest she should become a terror to all, as was 
+her sister Rosina, or an object of interest to none, as was Margaretta. 
+It was from her especially that this message had been sent to our 
+friend Crosbie; for, during the last spring in London, she and Crosbie 
+had known each other well. Yes, my gentle readers; it is true, as your 
+heart suggests to you. Under such circumstances Mr Crosbie should not 
+have gone to Courcy Castle.
+
+Such was the family circle of the De Courcys. Among their present 
+guests I need not enumerate many. First and foremost in all respects 
+was Lady Dumbello, of whose parentage and position a few words were 
+said in the last chapter. She was a lady still very young, having as 
+yet been little more than two years married. But in those two years her 
+triumphs had been many-so many, that in the great world her standing 
+already equalled that of her celebrated mother-in-law, the Marchioness 
+of Hartletop, who, for twenty years, had owned no greater potentate 
+than herself in the realms of fashion. But Lady Dumbello was every inch 
+as great as she; and men said, and women also, that the daughter-in-law 
+would soon be the greater.
+
+"I'll be hanged if I can understand how she does it, "a certain noble 
+peer had once said to Crosbie, standing at the door of Sebright's, 
+during the latter days of the last season. "She never says anything to 
+any one. She won't speak ten words a whole night through."
+
+"I don't think she has an idea in her head," said Crosbie.
+
+"Let me tell you that she must be a very clever woman," continued the 
+noble peer. "No fool could do as she does. Remember, she's only a 
+parson's daughter; and as for beauty-"
+"I don't admire her for one," said Crosbie.
+
+"I don't want to run away with her, if you mean that," said the peer; 
+"but she is handsome, no doubt. I wonder whether Dumbello likes it."
+
+Dumbello did like it. It satisfied his ambition to be led about as the 
+senior lacquey in his wife's train. He believed himself to be a great 
+man because the world fought for his wife's presence; and considered 
+himself to be distinguished even among the eldest suns of marquises, by 
+the greatness reflected from the parson's daughter whom he had married. 
+He had now been brought to Courcy Castle, and felt himself proud of his 
+situation because Lady Dumbello had made considerable difficulty in 
+according this week to the Countess de Courcy.
+
+And Lady Julia de Guest was already there, the sister of the other old 
+earl, who lived in the next county. She had only arrived on the day 
+before, but had been quick in spreading the news as to Crosbie's 
+engagement. "Engaged to one of the Dales, is he?" said the countess, 
+with a pretty little smile, which showed plainly that the matter was 
+one of no interest to herself. "Has she got any money?"
+
+"Not a shilling, I should think," said the Lady Julia.
+
+"Pretty, I suppose?" suggested the countess.
+
+"Why, yes; she is pretty-and a nice girl. I don't know whether her 
+mother and uncle were very wise in encouraging Mr Crosbie. I don't hear 
+that he has anything special to recommend him-in the way of money I 
+mean."
+
+"I dare say it will come to nothing," said the countess, who liked to 
+hear of girls being engaged and then losing their promised husbands. 
+She did not know that she liked it, but she did; and already had 
+pleasure in anticipating poor Lily's discomfiture. But not the less was 
+she angry with Crosbie, feeling that he was making his way into her 
+house under false pretences.
+
+And Alexandrina also was angry when Lady Julia repeated the same 
+tidings in her hearing "I really don't think we care very much about 
+it, Lady Julia," said she, with a little toss of her head." That's 
+three times we've been told of Miss Dale's good fortune."
+
+"The Dales are related to you, I think?" said Margaretta.
+
+"Not at all," said Lady Julia, bristling up. "The lady whom Mr Crosbie 
+proposes to marry is in no way connected with us. Her cousin, who is 
+the heir to the Allington property, is my nephew by his mother." And 
+then the subject was dropped.
+
+Crosbie, on his arrival, was shown up into his room, told the hour of 
+dinner, and left to his devices. He had been at the castle before, and 
+knew the ways of the house. So he sat himself down to his table, and 
+began a letter to Lily. But he had not proceeded far, not having as yet 
+indeed made up his mind as to the form in which he would commence it, 
+but was sitting idly with the pen in his hand, thinking of Lily, and 
+thinking also how such houses as this in which he now found himself 
+would be soon closed against him, when there came a rap at his door, 
+and before he could answer the Honourable John entered the room.
+
+"Well, old fellow," said the Honourable John, "how are you?
+Crosbie had been intimate with John de Courcy, but never felt for him 
+either friendship or liking. Crosbie did not like such men as John de 
+Courcy; but nevertheless, they called each other old fellow, poked each 
+other's ribs, and were very intimate.
+
+"Heard you were here," continued the Honourable John "so I thought I 
+would come up and look after you. Going to be married, ain't you?
+
+"Not that I know of" said Crosbie.
+
+"Come, we know better than that. The women have been talking about it 
+for the last three days. I had her name quite pat yesterday, but I've 
+forgot it now. Hasn't got a tanner; has she?" And the Honourable John 
+had now seated himself upon the table.
+
+"You seem to know a great deal more about it than I do."
+
+"It is that old woman from Guestwick who told us, then. The women will 
+be at you at once, you'll find. If there's nothing in it, it's what I 
+call a d-shame. Why should they always pull a fellow to pieces in that 
+way? They were going to marry me the other day!"
+
+"Were they indeed, though?
+
+"To Harriet Twistleton. You know Harriet Twistleton? An uncommon fine 
+girl, you know. But I wasn't going to be caught like that. I'm very 
+fond of Harriet-in my way, you know; but they don't catch an old bird 
+like me with chaff."
+
+"I condole with Miss Twistleton for what she has lost."
+
+"I don't know about condoling. But upon my word that getting married is 
+a very slow thing. Have you seen George's wife?
+
+Crosbie declared that he had not as yet had that pleasure.
+
+"She's here now, you know. I wouldn't have taken her, not if she'd had 
+ten times thirty thousand pounds. By Jove, no. But he likes it well 
+enough. Would you believe it now ?-he cares for nothing on earth except 
+money. You never saw such a fellow. But I'll tell you what, his nose 
+will be out of joint yet, for Porlock is going to marry. I heard it 
+from Colepepper, who almost lives with Porlock. As soon as Porlock 
+heard that she was in the family way he immediately made up his mind to 
+cut him out."
+
+"That was a great sign of brotherly love," said Crosbie.
+
+"I knew he'd do it," said John; "and so I told George before he got 
+himself spliced. But he would go on. If he'd remained as he was for 
+four or five years longer there would have been no danger-for Porlock, 
+you know, is leading the deuce of a life, I shouldn't wonder if he 
+didn't reform now, and take to singing psalms or something of that 
+sort."
+
+"There's no knowing what a man may come to in this world."
+
+"By George, no. But I'll tell you what, they'll find no change in me. 
+If I marry it will not be with the intention of giving up life. I say, 
+old fellow, have you got a cigar here?
+"What, to smoke up here, do you mean?"
+
+"Yes; why not? we're ever so far from the women."
+
+"Not whilst I am occupier of this room. Besides, it's time to dress for 
+dinner,"
+
+"Is it? So it is, by George! But I mean to have a smoke first, I can 
+tell you. So it's all a lie about your being engaged; eh?"
+
+"As far as I know, it is," said Crosbie. And then his friend left him.
+
+What was he to do at once, now, this very day, as to his engagement? He 
+had felt sure that the report of it would be carried to Courcy by Lady 
+Julia de Guest, but he had not settled down upon any resolution as to 
+what he would do in consequence. It had not occurred to him that he 
+would immediately be charged with the offence, and called upon to plead 
+guilty or not guilty. He had never for a moment meditated any plea of 
+not guilty, but he was aware of an aversion on his part to declare 
+himself as engaged to Lilian Dale. It seemed that by doing so he would 
+cut himself off at once from all pleasure at such houses as Courcy 
+Castle; and, as he argued to himself, why should he not enjoy the 
+little remnant of his bachelor life? As to his denying his engagement 
+to John de Courcy-that was nothing. Any one would understand that he 
+would be justified in concealing a fact concerning himself from such a 
+one as he. The denial repeated from John's mouth would amount to 
+nothing-even among John's own sisters. But now it was necessary that 
+Crosbie should make up his mind as to what he would say when questioned 
+by the ladies of the house. If he were to deny the fact to them the 
+denial would be very serious. And, indeed, was it possible that he 
+should make such denial with Lady Julia opposite to him?
+
+Make such a denial! And was it the fact that he could wish to do 
+so-that he should think of such falsehood, and even meditate on the 
+perpetration of such cowardice? He had held that young girl to his 
+heart on that very morning. He had sworn to her, and had also sworn to 
+himself, that she should have no reason for distrusting him. He had 
+acknowledged most solemnly to himself that, whether for good or for 
+ill, he was bound to her; and could it be that he was already 
+calculating as to the practicability of disowning her? In doing so must 
+he not have told himself that he was a villain? But in truth he made no 
+such calculation. His object was to banish the subject, if it were 
+possible to do so; to think of some answer by which he might create a 
+doubt. It did not occur to him to tell the countess boldly that there 
+was no truth whatever in the report, and that Miss Dale was nothing to 
+him. But might he not skilfully laugh off the subject, even in the 
+presence of Lady Julia? Men who were engaged did so usually, and why 
+should not he? It was generally thought that solicitude for the lady's 
+feelings should prevent a man from talking openly of his own 
+engagement. Then he remembered the easy freedom with which his position 
+had been discussed throughout the whole neighbourhood of Allington, and 
+felt for the first time that the Dale family had been almost indelicate 
+in their want of reticence." I suppose it was done to tie me the 
+faster," he said to himself, as he pulled out the ends of his cravat. 
+"What a fool I was to come here, or indeed to go anywhere, after 
+settling myself as I have done." And then he went down into the 
+drawing-room.
+
+It was almost a relief to him when he found that he was not charged 
+with his sin at once. He himself had been so full of the subject that 
+he had expected to be attacked at the moment of his entrance, He was, 
+however, greeted without any allusion to the matter. The countess, in 
+her own quiet way, shook hands with him as though she had seen him only 
+the day before. The earl, who was seated in his arm-chair, asked some 
+one, out loud, who the stranger was, and then, with two fingers put 
+forth, muttered some apology for a welcome. But Crosbie was quite up to 
+that kind of thing. "How do, my lord?" he said, turning his face away 
+to some one else as he spoke; and then he took no further notice of the 
+master of the house. "Not know him, indeed!" Crippled though he was by 
+his matrimonial bond, Crosbie felt that, at any rate as yet, he was the 
+earl's equal in social importance. After that, he found himself in the 
+back part of the drawing-room, away from the elder people, standing 
+with Lady Alexandrina, with Miss Gresham. a cousin of the De Courcys, 
+and sundry other of the younger portion of the assembled community.
+
+"So you have Lady Dumbello here?" said Crosbie.
+
+"Oh, yes; the dear creature!" said Lady Margaretta. "It was so good of 
+her to come, you know."
+
+"She positively refused the Duchess of St Bungay," said Alexandrina. "I 
+hope you perceive how good we've been to you in getting you to meet 
+her. People have actually asked to come."
+
+"I am grateful; but, in truth, my gratitude has more to do with Courcy 
+Castle and its habitual inmates, than with Lady Dumbello. Is he here?
+
+"Oh, yes! he's in the room somewhere. There he is, standing up by Lady 
+Clandidlem. He always stands in that way before dinner. In the evening 
+he sits down much after the same fashion."
+
+Crosbie had seen him on first entering the room, and had seen every 
+individual in it. He knew better than to omit the duty of that 
+scrutinising glance; but it sounded well in his line not to have 
+observed Lord Dumbello.
+
+"And her ladyship is not down?" said he.
+
+"She is generally last," said Lady Margaretta.
+
+"And yet she has always three women to dress her," said Alexandrina.
+
+"But when finished, what a success it is!" said Crosbie.
+
+"Indeed it is!" said Margaretta, with energy. Then the door was opened, 
+and Lady Dumbello entered the room.
+
+There was immediately a commotion among them all. Even the gouty old 
+lord shuffled up out of his chair, and tried, with a grin, to look 
+sweet and pleasant. The countess came forward, looking very sweet and 
+pleasant, making little complimentary speeches, to which the 
+viscountess answered simply by a gracious smile. Lady Clandidlem, 
+though she was very fat and heavy, left the viscount, and got up to 
+join the group. Baron Potsneuf, a diplomatic German of great celebrity, 
+crossed his hands upon his breast. and made a low bow. The Honourable 
+George, who had stood silent for the last quarter of an hour, suggested 
+to her ladyship that she must have found the air rather cold; and the 
+Ladies Margaretta and Alexandrina fluttered up with little 
+complimentary speeches to their dear Lady Dumbello, hoping this and 
+beseeching that, as though the" Woman in White" before them had been 
+the dearest friend of their infancy.
+
+She was a woman in white, being dressed in white silk with white lace 
+over it, and with no other jewels upon her person than diamonds. Very 
+beautifully she was dressed; doing infinite credit, no doubt, to those 
+three artists who had, between them, succeeded in turning her out of 
+hand. And her face, also, was beautiful, with a certain cold, 
+inexpressive beauty. She walked up the room very slowly, smiling here 
+and smiling there; but still with very faint smiles, and took the place 
+which her hostess indicated to her. One word she said to the countess 
+and two to the earl. Beyond that she did not open her lips. All the 
+homage paid to her she received! as though it were clearly her due. She 
+was not in the least embarrassed, nor did she show herself to be in the 
+slightest degree ashamed of her own silence. She did not look like a 
+fool, nor was she even taken for a fool; but she contributed nothing to 
+society but her cold!, hard beauty, her gait, and her dress. We may say 
+that she contributed enough, for society acknowledged itself to be 
+deeply indebted to her.
+
+The only person in the room who did not move at Lady Dumbello's 
+entrance was her husband. But he remained unmoved from no want of 
+enthusiasm. A spark of pleasure actually beamed in his eye as he saw 
+the triumphant entrance of his wife. He felt that he had made a match 
+that was becoming to him as a great nobleman, and that the world was 
+acknowledging that he had done his duty. And yet Lady Dumbello had been 
+simply the daughter of a country parson, of a clergyman who had reached 
+no higher rank than that of an archdeacon. "How wonderfully well that 
+woman has educated her," the countess said that evening in her 
+dressing-room, to Margaretta. The woman alluded to was Mrs Grantly, the 
+wife of the parson and mother of Lady Dumbello.
+
+The old earl was very cross because destiny and the table of precedence 
+required him to take out Lady Clandidlem to dinner. He almost insulted 
+her, as she kindly endeavoured to assist him in his infirm step rather 
+than to lean upon him.
+
+"Ugh!" he said, "it's a bad arrangement that makes two old people like 
+you and me be sent out together to help each other."
+
+"Speak for yourself," said her ladyship, with a laugh. "I, at any rate, 
+can get about without any assistance,"-which, indeed, was true enough.
+
+"It's well for you!" growled the earl, as he got himself into his seat.
+
+And after that he endeavoured to solace his pain by a flirtation with 
+Lady Dumbello on his left. The earl's smiles and the earl's teeth, when 
+he whispered naughty little nothings to pretty young women, were 
+phenomena at which men might marvel. Whatever those naughty nothings 
+were on the present occasion, Lady Dumbello took them all with 
+placidity, smiling graciously, but speaking hardly more than 
+monosyllables.
+
+Lady Alexandrina fell to Crosbie's lot, and he felt gratified that it 
+was so. It might be necessary for him, as a married man, to give up 
+such acquaintances as the De Courcys, but he should like, if possible, 
+to maintain a friendship with Lady Alexandrina. What a friend Lady 
+Alexandrina would be for Lily, if any such friendship were only 
+possible! What an advantage would such an alliance confer upon that 
+dear little girl-for, after all, though the dear little girl's 
+attractions were very great, he could not but admit to himself that she 
+wanted a something-a way of holding herself and of speaking, which some 
+people call style. Lily might certainly learn a great deal from Lady 
+Alexandrina; and it was this conviction, no doubt, which made him so 
+sedulous in pleasing that lady on the present occasion.
+
+And she, as it seemed, was well inclined to be pleased. She said no 
+word to him during dinner about Lily; and yet she spoke about the 
+Dales, and about Allington, showing that she knew in what quarters he 
+had been staying, and then she alluded to their last parties in 
+London-those occasions on which, as Crosbie now remembered, the 
+intercourse between them had almost been tender. It was manifest to him 
+that at any rate she did not wish to quarrel with him. It was manifest, 
+also, that she had some little hesitation in speaking to him about his 
+engagement. He did not for the moment doubt that she was aware of it. 
+And in this way matters went on between them till the ladies left the 
+room.
+
+"So you're going to be married, too," said the Honourable George, by 
+whose side Crosbie found himself seated when the ladies were gone. 
+Crosbie was employing himself upon a walnut, and did not find it 
+necessary to make any answer.
+
+"It's the best thing a fellow can do," continued George; "that is, if 
+he has been careful to look to the main chance-if he hasn't been caught 
+napping, you know. It doesn't do for a man to go hanging on by nothing 
+till he finds himself an old man."
+
+"You've feathered your own nest, at any rate."
+
+"Yes; I've got something in the scramble, and I mean to keep it. Where 
+will John be when the governor goes off the hooks? Porlock wouldn't 
+give him a bit of bread and cheese and a glass of beer to save his 
+life-that is to say, not if he wanted it."
+
+"I'm told your elder brother is going to be married."
+
+"You've heard that from John. He's spreading that about everywhere to 
+take a rise out of me. I don't believe a word of it. Porlock never was 
+a marrying man-and, what's more, from all I hear, I don't think he'll 
+live long."
+
+In this way Crosbie escaped from his own difficulty; and when he rose 
+from the dinner-table had not as yet been driven to confess anything to 
+his own discredit.
+
+But the evening was not yet over. When he returned to the drawing-room 
+he endeavoured to avoid any conversation with the countess herself, 
+believing that the attack would more probably come from her than from 
+her daughter. He, therefore, got into conversation first with one and 
+then with another of the girls, till at last he found himself again 
+alone with Alexandrina.
+
+"Mr Crosbie," she said, in a low voice, as they were standing together 
+over one of the distant tables, with their backs to the rest of the 
+company, "I want you to tell me something about Miss Lilian Dale."
+
+"About Miss Lilian Dale!" he said, repeating her words.
+
+"Is she very pretty?
+
+"Yes she certainly is pretty."
+
+"And very nice, and attractive, and clever-and all that is delightful? 
+Is she perfect?
+
+"She is very attractive," said he; "but I don't think she's perfect."
+
+"And what are her faults?
+"That question is hardly fair, is it? Suppose any one were to ask me 
+what were your faults, do you think I should answer the question?
+
+"I am quite sure you would, and make a very long list of them, too. But 
+as to Miss Dale, you ought to think her perfect. If a gentleman were 
+engaged to me, I should expect him to swear before all the world that I 
+was the very pink of perfection."
+
+"But supposing the gentleman were not engaged to you?
+
+"That would be a different thing."
+
+"I am not engaged to you," said Crosbie. "Such happiness and such 
+honour are, I fear, very far beyond my reach. But, nevertheless, I am 
+prepared to testify as to your perfection anywhere."
+
+"And what would Miss Dale say?"
+
+"Allow me to assure you that such opinions as I may choose to express 
+of my friends will be my own opinions, and not depend on those of any 
+one else."
+
+"And you think, then, that you are not bound to be enslaved as yet? How 
+many more months of such freedom are you to enjoy?
+
+Crosbie remained silent for a minute before he answered, and then he 
+spoke in a serious voice." Lady Alexandrina," said he, "I would beg 
+from you a great favour."
+
+"What is the favour, Mr Crosbie?
+
+"I am quite in earnest. Will you be good enough, kind enough, enough my 
+friend, not to connect my name again with that of Miss Dale while I am 
+here?
+
+"Has there been a quarrel?
+
+"No; there has been no quarrel. I cannot explain to you now why I make 
+this request; but to you I will explain it before I go."
+
+"Explain it to me!!"
+
+"I have regarded you as more than an acquaintance-as a friend. In days 
+now past there were moments when I was almost rash enough to hope that 
+I might have said even more than that. I confess that I had no warrant 
+for such hopes, but I believe that I may still look on you!! as a 
+friend?
+
+"Oh, yes, certainly," said Alexandrina, in a very low voice, and with a 
+certain amount of tenderness in her tone. "I have always regarded you 
+as a friend."
+
+"And therefore I venture to make the request! The subject is not one on 
+which I can speak openly, without regret, at the present moment. But to 
+you, at least, I promise that I will explain it all before I leave 
+Courcy."
+
+He at any rate succeeded in mystifying Lady Alexandrina. "I don't 
+believe he is engaged a bit," she said to Lady Amelia Gazebee that 
+night.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear. Lady Julia wouldn't speak of it in that certain way 
+if she didn't know. Of course he doesn't wish to have it talked about."
+
+"If ever he has been engaged to her, he has broken it off again," said 
+Lady Alexandrina.
+
+"I dare say he will, my dear, if you give him encouragement" said the 
+married sister, with great sisterly good-nature.
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+LILY DALE'S FIRST LOVE-LETTER
+
+
+Crosbie was rather proud of himself when he went to bed. He had 
+succeeded in baffling the charge made against him, without saying 
+anything as to which his conscience need condemn him. So, at least, he 
+then told himself!. The impression left by what he had said would be! 
+that there had been some question of an engagement between him and! 
+Lilian Dale, but that nothing at this moment was absolutely fluted. But 
+in the morning his conscience was not quite so clear. What would Lily 
+think and say if she knew it all? Could he dare to tell her, or to tell 
+any one the real state of his mind?
+
+As he lay in bed, knowing that an hour remained to him before he need 
+encounter the perils of his tub, he felt that he hated Courcy Castle 
+and its inmates. Who was there, among them all, that was comparable to 
+Mrs Dale and her daughters? He detested both George and John. He 
+loathed the earl. As to the countess herself, he was perfectly 
+indifferent, regarding her as a woman whom it was well to know, but as 
+one only to be known as the mistress of Courcy Castle and a house in 
+London. As to the daughters, he had ridiculed them all from time to 
+time-even Alexandrina, whom he now professed to love. Perhaps in some 
+sort of way he had a weak fondness for her-but it was a fondness that 
+had never touched his heart. He could measure the whole thing at its 
+worth-Courcy Castle with its privileges, Lady Dumbello, Lady 
+Clandidlem, and the whole of it. He knew that he had been happier on 
+that lawn at Allington, and more contented with himself, than ever he 
+had been even under Lady Hartletop's splendid roof in Shropshire. Lady 
+Dumbello was satisfied with these things!, even in the inmost recesses 
+of her soul; but he was not a male Lady Dumbello. He knew that there 
+was something better, and that that something was within his reach.
+
+But, nevertheless, the air of Courcy was too much for him. In arguing 
+the matter wit himself he regarded himself as one infected with a 
+leprosy from which there could be no recovery, and who should, 
+therefore, make his whole life suitable to the circumstances of that 
+leprosy. It was of no use for him to tell himself that the Small House 
+at Allington was better than Courcy Castle. Satan knew that heaven was 
+better than hell; but he felt himself to be fitter for the latter 
+place. Crosbie ridiculed Lady Dumbello, even there among her friends, 
+with all the cutting words that his wit could find; but, nevertheless, 
+the privilege of staying in the same house with her was dear to him. It 
+was the line of life into which he had fallen, and he confessed 
+inwardly that the struggle to extricate himself would be too much for 
+him. All that had troubled him while he was yet at Allington, but it 
+overwhelmed him almost with dismay beneath the hangings of Courcy 
+Castle.
+
+Had he not better run from the place at once? He had almost 
+acknowledged to himself that he! repented his engagement with Lilian 
+Dale, but he still was resolved that he would fulfil it. He was bound 
+in honour to marry "that little girl," and he looked sternly up at the 
+drapery over his head, as he assured himself that he was a man of 
+honour. Yes; he would sacrifice himself. As he had been induced! to 
+pledge his word, he would not go back from it. He was too much of a man 
+for that!
+
+But had he not been wrong to refuse the result of Lily's wisdom when 
+she told him in the field that it would be better for them to part? He 
+did not tell himself that he had refused her offer merely because he 
+had not the courage to accept it on the spur of the moment. No. "He had 
+been too good to the poor girl to take her at her word." It was thus he 
+argued on the matter within his own breast. He had been too true to 
+her; and now the effect would be that they would both be unhappy for 
+life! He could not live in content with a family upon a small income. 
+He was well aware of that. No one could be harder upon him in that 
+matter than was he himself. But it was too late now to remedy the ill 
+effects of an early education.
+
+It was thus that he debated the matter as he lay in bed-contradicting 
+one argument by another over and over again; but still in all of them 
+teaching himself to think that this engagement of his was a misfortune. 
+Poor Lily! Her last words to him had conveyed an assurance that she 
+would never distrust him. And she also, as she lay wakeful in her bed 
+on this the first morning of his absence, thought much of their mutual 
+vows. How true she would be to them! How she would be his wife with all 
+her heart and spirit! It was not only that she would love him-but in 
+her love she would serve him to her utmost; serve him as regarded this 
+world, and if possible as regarded the next.
+
+"Bell," she said, "I wish you were going to he married too."
+
+"Thank'ye, dear," said Bell," Perhaps I shall some day."
+
+"Ah; but I'm not joking. It seems such a serious thing. And I can't 
+expect you to talk to me about it now as you would if you were in the 
+same position yourself. Do you think I shall make him happy?"
+
+"Yes, I do, certainly."
+
+"Happier than he would be with any one else that he might meet? I dare 
+not think that. I think I could give him up tomorrow, if I could see 
+any one that would suit him better." What would Lily have said had she 
+been made acquainted with all the fascinations of Lady Alexandrina de 
+Courcy?
+
+The countess was very civil to him, saying nothing about his 
+engagement, but still talking to him a good deal about his sojourn at 
+Allington. Crosbie was a pleasant man for ladies in a large house. 
+Though a sportsman, he was not so keen a sportsman as to be always out 
+with the gamekeepers. Though a politician, he did not sacrifice his 
+mornings to the perusal of blue-books or the preparation of party 
+tactics. Though a reading man, he did not devote himself to study. 
+Though a horseman, he was not often to be found in the stables. He 
+could supply conversation when it was wanted, and could take himself 
+out of the way when his presence among the women was not needed. 
+Between breakfast and lunch on the day following his arrival he talked 
+a good deal to the countess, and made himself very agreeable. She 
+continued to ridicule him gently for his prolonged stay among so 
+primitive and rural a tribe of people as the Dales, and he bore her 
+little sarcasm with the utmost good-humour.
+
+"Six weeks at Allington without a move! Why, Mr Crosbie, you must have 
+felt yourself to be growing there."
+
+"So I did-like an ancient tree. Indeed, I was so rooted that I could 
+hardly get away."
+
+"Was the house full of people all the time?"
+
+"There was nobody there but Bernard Dale, Lady Julia's nephew."
+"Quite a case of Damon and Pythias. Fancy your going down to the shades 
+of Allington to enjoy the uninterrupted pleasures of friendship for six 
+weeks."
+
+"Friendship and the partridges."
+
+"There was nothing else, then?"
+
+"Indeed there was. There was a widow with two very nice daughters, 
+living, not exactly in the same house, but on the same grounds."
+
+"Oh, indeed. That makes such a difference; doesn't it? You are not a 
+man to bear much privation on the score of partridges, nor a great 
+deal, I imagine, for friendship. But when you talk of pretty girls-"
+
+"It makes a difference, doesn't it?
+
+"A very great difference. I think I have heard of that Mrs Dale before. 
+And so her girls are nice?
+
+"Very nice indeed."
+
+"Play croquet, I suppose, and eat syllabubs on the lawn? But, really, 
+didn't you get very tired of it?
+
+"Oh dear, no. I was happy as the day was long."
+
+"Going about with a crook, I suppose?"
+
+"Not exactly a live crook; but doing all that kind of thing. I learned 
+a great deal about pigs."
+
+"Under the guidance of Miss Dale?"
+
+"Yes; under the guidance of Miss Dale."
+
+"I'm sure one is very much obliged to you for tearing yourself away 
+from such charms, and coming to such unromantic people as we are. !But 
+I fancy men always do that sort of thing once or twice in their 
+lives-and then they talk of their souvenirs. I suppose it won't go 
+beyond a souvenir with you."
+
+This was a direct question, but still admitted of a fencing answer. "It 
+has, at any rate, given me one," said he," which will last me my life!"
+
+The countess was quite contented. That Lady Julia's statement was 
+altogether true she had never for a moment doubted. That Crosbie should 
+become engaged to a young lady in the country, whereas he had shown 
+signs of being in love with her daughter in London, was not at all 
+wonderful. Nor, in her eyes, did such practice amount to any great sin. 
+Men did so daily, and girls were prepared for their so doing. A man in 
+her eyes was not to be regarded as safe from attack because he was 
+engaged. Let the young lady who took upon herself to own him have an 
+eye to that. When she looked back on the past careers of her own flock, 
+she had to reckon more than one such disappointment for her own 
+daughters. Others besides Alexandrina had been so treated. Lady de 
+Courcy had had her grand hopes respecting her girls, and after them 
+moderate hopes, and again after them bitter disappointments. Only one 
+had been married, and she was married to an attorney. It was not to be 
+supposed that she would have any very high-toned feelings as to Lily's 
+rights in this matter.
+
+Such a man as Crosbie was certainly no great match for an earl's 
+daughter. Such a marriage, indeed, would, one may say, be but a poor 
+triumph. When the countess, during the last season in town, had 
+observed how matters were going with Alexandrina, she had cautioned her 
+child, taking her to task for her imprudence. But the child had been at 
+this work for fourteen years, and was weary of it. Her sisters had been 
+at the work longer, and had almost given it up in despair. Alexandrina 
+did not tell her parent that her heart was now beyond her control, and 
+that she had devoted herself to Crosbie for ever; but she pouted, 
+saying that she knew very well what she was about, scolding her mother 
+in return, and making Lady de Courcy perceive that the struggle was 
+becoming very weary. And then there were other considerations. Mr 
+Crosbie had not much certainly in his own possession, but he was a man 
+out of whom something might be made by family influence and his own 
+standing. He was not a hopeless, ponderous man, whom no leaven could 
+raise. He was one of whose position in' society the countess and her 
+daughters need not be ashamed. Lady de Courcy had given no expressed 
+consent to the arrangement, but it had come to be understood between 
+her and her daughter that the scheme was to be entertained as 
+admissible.
+
+Then came these tidings of the little girl down at Allington. She felt 
+no anger against Crosbie. To be angry on such a subject would be 
+futile, foolish, and almost indecorous. It was a part of the game which 
+was as natural to her as fielding is to a cricketer. One cannot have it 
+all winnings at any game. Whether Crosbie should eventually become her 
+own son-in-law or not it came to her naturally, as a part of her duty 
+in life, to howl down the stumps of that young lady at Allington. If 
+Miss Dale knew the game well and could protect her own wicket, let her 
+do so.
+
+She had no doubt as to Crosbie's engagement with Lilian Dale, but she 
+had as little as to his being ashamed of that engagement. Had he really 
+cared for Miss Dale he would not have left her to come to Courcy 
+Castle. Had he been really resolved to marry her, he would not have 
+warded all questions respecting his engagement with fictitious answers. 
+He had amused himself with Lily Dale, and it was to be hoped' that the 
+young lady had not thought very seriously about it. That was the most 
+charitable light in which Lady de Courcy was disposed to regard the 
+question.
+
+It behoved Crosbie to write to Lily Dale before dinner. He had promised 
+to do so immediately on his arrival, and he was aware that he would be 
+regarded as being already one day beyond his promise. Lily had told him 
+that she would live upon his letters, and it was absolutely necessary 
+that he should furnish her with her first meal. So he betook himself to 
+his room in sufficient time before dinner, and got out his pen, ink, 
+and paper.
+
+He got out his pen, ink, and paper, and then he found that his 
+difficulties were beginning. I beg that it may be understood that 
+Crosbie was not altogether a villain. He could not sit down and write a 
+letter as coming from his heart, of which as he wrote it he knew the 
+words to be false, He was an ungenerous, worldly, inconstant man, very 
+prone to think well of himself, and to give himself credit for virtues 
+which he did not possess; but he could not be false with premeditated 
+cruelty to a woman he had sworn to love. He could not write an 
+affectionate, warm-hearted letter to Lily, without bringing himself, at 
+any rate for the time, to feel towards her in an affectionate, 
+warmhearted way. Therefore he now sat himself to work, while his pen 
+yet remained dry in his hand, to remodel his thoughts, which had been 
+turned against Lily and Allington by the craft of Lady de Courcy. It 
+takes some time before a man can do this. He has to struggle with 
+himself in a very uncomfortable way, making efforts which are often 
+unsuccessful. It is sometimes easier to lift a couple of hundredweights 
+than to raise a few thoughts in one's mind which at other moments will 
+come galloping in without a whistle,
+
+He had just written the date of his letter when a little tap came at 
+his door, and it was opened.
+
+"I say, Crosbie," said the Honourable John, "didn't you say something 
+yesterday about a cigar before dinner?
+
+"Not a word," said Crosbie, in rather an angry tone.
+
+"Then it must have been me," said John." But bring your case with you, 
+and come down to the harness-room, if you won't smoke here. I've had a 
+regular little snuggery fitted up there; and we can go in and see the 
+fellows making up the horses."
+
+Crosbie wished the Honourable John at the mischief.
+
+"I have letters to write," said he. "Besides, I never smoke before 
+dinner."
+
+"That's nonsense. I've smoked hundreds of cigars with you before 
+dinner. Are you going to turn curmudgeon, too, like George and the rest 
+of them? I don't know what's coming to the world! I suppose the fact 
+is, that little girl at Allington won't let you smoke."
+
+"The little girl at Allington-" began Crosbie; and then he reflected 
+that it would not be well for him to say anything to his present 
+companion about that little girl.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is," said he.
+
+"I really have got letters to write which must go by this post. There's 
+my cigar-case on the dressing-table."
+
+"I hope it will be long before I'm brought to such a state," said John, 
+taking up the cigars in his hand.
+
+"Let me have the case back," said Crosbie.
+
+"A present from the little girl, I suppose?" said John.
+
+"All right, old fellow! you shall have it."
+
+"There would be a nice brother-in-law for a man," said Crosbie to 
+himself, as the door closed behind the retreating scion of the De 
+Courcy family. And then, again, he took up his pen. The letter must be 
+written, and therefore he threw himself upon the table, resolved that 
+the words should come and the paper be filled.
+
+	COURCY CASTLE, October, 186-.
+
+DEAREST LILY-This is the first letter I ever wrote to you, except those 
+little notes when I sent you my compliments discreetly-and it sounds so 
+odd. You will think that this does not come as soon as it should; but 
+the truth is that after all I only got in here just before dinner 
+yesterday. I stayed ever so long at Barchester, and came across such a 
+queer character. For you most know I went to church, and afterwards 
+fraternised with the clergyman who did the service; such a gentle old 
+soul-and, singularly enough, he is the grandfather of Lady Dumbello, 
+who is staying here. I wonder what you'd think of Lady Dumbello, or how 
+you'd like to be shut up in the same house with her for a week?
+
+But with reference to my staying at Barchester, I most tell you the 
+truth now, though I was a gross impostor the day that I went away. I 
+wanted to avoid a parting on that last morning, and therefore I started 
+much sooner than I need have done. I know you will be very angry with 
+me; hot open confession is good for the soul. You frustrated all my 
+little plan by your early rising; and as I saw you standing on the 
+terrace, looking after us as we went, I acknowledged that you had been 
+right, and that I was wrong. When the time came, I was very glad to 
+have you with me at the last moment.
+
+My own dearest Lily, you cannot think how different this place is from 
+the two houses at Allington, or how much I prefer the sort of life 
+which belongs to the latter. I know that I have been what the world 
+calls worldly, but you will have to cure me of that. I have questioned 
+myself very much since I left you, and I do not think that I am quite 
+beyond the reach of a cure. At any rate, I will put myself trustingly 
+into the doctor's hands. I know it is hard for a man to change his 
+habits; but I can with truth say this for myself, that I was happy at 
+Allington, enjoying every hour of the day, and that here I am ennuy by 
+everybody and nearly by everything. One of the girls of the house I do 
+like; but as to other people, I can hardly find a companion among them, 
+let alone a friend. However, it would not have done for me to have 
+broken away from all such alliance too suddenly.
+
+When I get up to London-and now I really am anxious to get there-I can 
+write to you more at my ease, and more freely than I do here. I know 
+that I am hardly myself among these people-or rather, I am hardly 
+myself as you know me, and as I hope you always will know me. But, 
+nevertheless, I am not so overcome by the miasma but what I can tell 
+you hew truly I love you. Even though my spirit should be here. which 
+it is not, my heart would be on the Allington lawns. That dear lawn and 
+that dear bridge!
+
+Give my kind love to Bell and your mother. I feel already that I might 
+almost say my mother. And Lily, my darling, write to me at once. I 
+expect your letters to me to be longer, and better, and brighter than 
+mine to you. But I will endeavour to make mine nicer when I get back to 
+town.
+
+God bless you.
+
+Yours, with all my heart,
+
+A. C.
+
+As he waxed warm with his writing he had forced himself to be 
+affectionate, and, as he flattered himself, frank and candid. 
+Nevertheless, he was partly conscious that he was preparing for himself 
+a mode of escape in those allusions of his to his own worldliness; if 
+escape should ultimately be necessary. "I have tried," he would then 
+say; "I have struggled honestly, with my best efforts for success; but 
+I am not good enough for such success." I do not intend to say that he 
+wrote with a premeditated intention of thus using his words; but as he 
+wrote them he could not keep himself from reflecting that they might be 
+used in that way.
+
+He read his letter over, felt satisfied with it, and resolved that he 
+might now free his mind from that consideration for the next 
+forty-eight hours. Whatever might he his sins he had done his duty by 
+Lily! And with this comfortable reflection he deposited his letter in 
+the Courcy Castle letter-box.
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE SQUIRE MAKES A VISIT TO THE SMALL HOUSE
+
+
+Mrs Dale acknowledged to herself that she had not much ground for 
+hoping that she should ever find in Crosbie's house much personal 
+happiness for her future life. She did not dislike Mr Crosbie, nor in 
+any great degree mistrust him; but she had seen enough of him to make 
+her certain that Lily's future home in London could not be a home for 
+her. He was worldly, or, at least, a man of the world. He would be 
+anxious to make the most of his income, and his life would be one long 
+struggle, not perhaps for money, but for those things which money only 
+can give. There are men to whom eight hundred a year is great wealth, 
+and houses to which it brings all the comforts that life requires. But 
+Crosbie was not such a man, nor would his house be such a house. Mrs 
+Dale hoped that Lily would be happy with him, and satisfied with his 
+modes of life, and she strove to believe that such would be the case; 
+but as regarded herself she was forced to confess that in such a 
+marriage her child would be much divided from her. That pleasant abode 
+to which she had long looked forward that she might have a welcome 
+there in coming years should be among fields and trees, not in some 
+narrow London street. Lily must now become a city lady; but Bell would 
+still be left to her, and it might still be hoped that Bell would find 
+for herself some country home.
+
+Since the day on which Lily had first told her mother of her 
+engagement, Mrs Dale had found herself talking much more fully and more 
+frequently with Bell than with her younger daughter. As long as Crosbie 
+was at Allington this was natural enough. He and Lily were of course 
+together, while Bell remained with her mother. But the same state of 
+things continued even after Crosbie was gone. It was not that there was 
+any coolness or want of affection between the mother and daughter, but 
+that Lily's heart was full of her lover, and that Mrs Dale, though she 
+had given her cordial consent to the marriage, felt that she had but 
+few points of sympathy with her future son-in-law. She had never said, 
+even to herself, that she disliked him; nay, she had sometimes declared 
+to herself that she was fond of him. But, in truth, he was not a man 
+after her own heart. He was not one who could ever be to her as her own 
+son and her own child.
+
+But she and Bell would pass hours together talking of Lily's 
+prospects." It seems strange to me," said Mrs Dale," that she of all 
+girls should have been fancied by such a man as Mr Crosbie, or that she 
+should have liked him. I cannot imagine Lily living in London."
+
+"If he is good and affectionate to her she will be happy wherever he 
+is," said Bell.
+
+"I hope so-I'm sure I hope so. But it seems as though she will be so 
+far separated from us. It is not the distance, but the manner of life 
+which makes the separation. I hope you'll never be taken so far from 
+me."
+
+"I don't think I shall allow myself to be taken up to London," said 
+Bell, laughing. "But one can never tell. If I do you must follow us, 
+mamma."
+
+"I do not want another Mr Crosbie for you, dear."
+
+"But perhaps I may want one for myself. You need not tremble quite yet, 
+however. Apollos do not come this road every day."
+
+"Poor Lily! Do you remember when she first called him Apollo? I do, 
+well. I remember his corning here the day after Bernard brought him 
+down, and how you were playing on the lawn, while I was in the other 
+garden. I little thought then what it would come to."
+
+"But, mamma, you don't regret it?"
+
+"Not if it's to make her happy. If she can be happy with him, of course 
+I shall not regret it; not though he were to take her to the world's 
+end away from us. What else have I to look for but that she and you 
+should both be happy?"
+
+"Men in London are happy with their wives as well as men in the 
+country."
+
+"Oh, yes; of all women I should be the first to acknowledge that."
+
+"And as to Adolphus himself, I do not know why we should distrust him."
+
+"No, my dear; there is no reason. If I did distrust him I should not 
+have given so ready an assent to the marriage. But, nevertheless-"
+
+"The truth is, you don't like him, mamma."
+
+"Not so cordially as I hope I may like any man whom you. may choose for 
+your husband."
+
+And Lily, though she said nothing on the subject to Mrs Dale felt that 
+her mother was in some degree estranged from her Crosbie's name was 
+frequently mentioned between them, but in the tone of Mrs Dale's voice, 
+and in her manner when she spoke of him, there was lacking that 
+enthusiasm and heartiness which real sympathy would have produced. Lily 
+did not analyse her own feelings, or closely make inquiry as to those 
+of her mother, but she perceived that it was not all as she would have 
+wished it to have been. "I know mamma does not love him," she said to 
+Bell on the evening of the day on which she received Crosbie's first 
+letter.
+
+"Not as you do, Lily; but she does love him."
+
+"Not as I do! To say that is nonsense, Bell; of course she does not 
+love him as I do. But the truth is she does not love him at all. Do you 
+think I cannot see it?"
+
+"I'm afraid that you see too much."
+
+"She never says a word against him; but if she really liked him she 
+would sometimes say a word in his favour. I do no think she would ever 
+mention his name unless you or I spoke to him before her. If she did 
+not approve of him, why did she no say so sooner?
+
+"That's hardly fair upon mamma," said Bell, with some earnestness. "She 
+does not disapprove of him, and she never did. You know mamma well 
+enough to be sure that she would not interfere with as in such a matter 
+without very strong reason. As regards Mr Crosbie, she gave her consent 
+without a moment's hesitation."
+
+"Yes, she did."
+
+"How can you say, then, that she disapproves of him?"
+"I didn't mean to find fault with mamma. Perhaps it will come all 
+right."
+
+"It will come all, right." But Bell, though she made this very 
+satisfactory promise, was as well aware as either of the others that 
+the family would be divided when Crosbie should have married Lily and 
+taken her off to London.
+
+On the following morning Mrs Dale and Bell were sitting together. Lily 
+was above in her own room, either writing to her lover, or reading his 
+letter, or thinking of him, or working for him. In some way she was 
+employed on his behalf, and with this object she was alone. It was now 
+the middle of October, and the fire was lit in Mrs Dale's drawing-room. 
+The window which opened upon the lawn was closed, the heavy curtains 
+had been put back in their places, and it had been acknowledged as an 
+unwelcome fact that the last of the summer was over. This was always a 
+sorrow to Mrs Dale; but it is one of those sorrows which hardly admit 
+of open expression.
+
+"Bell," she said, looking up suddenly; "there's your uncle at the 
+window. Let him in." For now, since the putting up of the curtains, the 
+window had been bolted as well as closed. So Bell got up, and opened a 
+passage for the squire's entrance. It was not often that he came down 
+in this way, and when he did do so it was generally for some purpose 
+which had been expressed before.
+
+"What! fires already?" said he. "I never have fires at the other house 
+in the morning till the first of November. I like to see a spark in the 
+grate after dinner."
+
+"I like a fire when I'm cold," said Mrs Dale. But this was a subject on 
+which the squire and his sister-in-law had differed before, and as Mr 
+Dale had some business in hand, he did not now choose to waste his 
+energy in supporting his own views on the question of fires.
+
+"Bell, my dear," said he, "I want to speak to your mother for a minute 
+or two on a matter of business. You wouldn't mind leaving us for a 
+little while, would you?" Whereupon Bell collected up her work and went 
+upstairs to her sister. Uncle Christopher is below with mamma," said 
+she, "talking about business. I suppose it is something to do with your 
+marriage." But Bell was wrong. The squire's visit had no reference to 
+Lily's marriage.
+
+Mrs Dale did not move or speak a word when Bell was gone, though it was 
+evident that the squire paused in order that she might ask some 
+question of him. "Mary," said he, at last, "I'll tell you what it is 
+that I have come to say to you." Whereupon she put the piece of 
+needlework which was in her hands down upon the work-basket before her, 
+and settled herself to listen to him.
+
+"I wish to speak to you about Bell."
+
+"About Bell?" said Mrs Dale, as though much surprised that he should 
+have anything to say to her respecting her eldest daughter.
+
+"Yes, about Bell. Here's Lily going to be married, and it will be well 
+that Bell should be married too."
+
+"I don't see that at all," said Mrs Dale. "I am by no means in a hurry 
+to be rid of her."
+
+"No, I dare say not. But, of course, you only regard her welfare, and I 
+can truly say that I do the same. There would be no necessity for hurry 
+as to a marriage for her under ordinary circumstances, but there may be 
+circumstances to make such a thing desirable, and I think that there 
+are." It was evident from the squire's tone and manner that he was very 
+much in earnest; but it was also evident that he found some difficulty 
+in opening out the budget with which he had prepared himself. He 
+hesitated a little in his voice, and seemed to be almost nervous. Mrs 
+Dale, with some little spice of ill-nature, altogether abstained from 
+assisting him. She was jealous of interference from him about her 
+girls, and though she was of course bound to listen to him, she did so 
+with a prejudice against and almost with a resolve to oppose anything 
+that he might say. When he had finished his little speech about 
+circumstances, the squire paused again; but Mrs Dale still sat silent, 
+with her eyes fixed upon his face.
+
+"I love your children very dearly;' said he, "though I believe you 
+hardly give me credit for doing so."
+
+"I am sure you do," said Mrs Dale, "and they are both well aware of it."
+
+"And I am very anxious that they should be comfortably established in 
+life. I have no children of my own, and those of my two brothers are 
+everything to me."
+
+Mrs Dale had always considered it as a matter of course that Bernard 
+should be the squire's heir, and had never felt that her daughters had 
+any claim on that score. It was a well-understood thing in the family 
+that the senior male Dale should have all the Dale property and all the 
+Dale money. She fully recognised even the propriety of such an 
+arrangement. But it seemed to her that the squire was almost guilty of 
+hypocrisy in naming his nephew and his two nieces together, as though 
+they were the joint heirs of his love. Bernard was his adopted son, and 
+no one had begrudged to the uncle the right of making such adoption. 
+Bernard was everything to him, and as being his heir was bound to obey 
+him in many things. But her daughters were no more to him than any 
+nieces might be to any uncle. He had nothing to do with their disposal 
+in marriage; and the mother's spirit was already up in arms and 
+prepared to do battle for her own independence, and for that of her 
+children. "If Bernard would marry well," said she, "I have no doubt it 
+would be a comfort to you,"-meaning to imply thereby that the squire 
+had no right to trouble himself about any other marriage.
+
+"That's just it," said the squire. "It would be a great comfort to me. 
+And if he and Bell could make up their minds together, it would, I 
+should think, be a great comfort to you also."
+
+"Bernard and Bell!" exclaimed Mrs Dale. No idea of such a union had 
+ever yet come upon her, and now in her surprise she sat silent. She had 
+always liked Bernard Dale, having felt for him more family affection 
+than for any other of the Dale family beyond her own hearth. He had 
+been very intimate in her house, having made himself almost as a 
+brother to her girls. But she had never thought of him as a husband for 
+either of them.
+
+"Then Bell has not spoken to you about it," said the squire.
+
+"Never a word."
+
+"And you had never thought about it?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"I have thought about it a great deal. For some years I have always 
+been thinking of it. I have set my heart upon it, and shall be very 
+unhappy if it cannot be brought about. They are both very dear to 
+me-dearer than anybody else. If I could see them man and wife, I should 
+not much care then how soon I left the old place to them."
+
+There was a purer touch of feeling in this than the squire had ever 
+before shown in his sister-in-law's presence, and more heartiness than 
+she had given him the credit of possessing. And she could not but 
+acknowledge to herself that her own child was included in this 
+unexpected warmth of love, and that she was bound at any rate to 
+entertain some gratitude for such kindness.
+
+"It is good of you to think of her," said the mother;" very good."
+
+"I think a great deal about her," said the squire." But that does not 
+much matter now. The fact is, that she has declined Bernard's offer."
+
+"Has Bernard offered to her?"
+
+"So he tells me; and she has refused him. It may perhaps be natural 
+that she should do so, never having taught herself to look at him in 
+the light of a lover. I don't blame her at all. I am not angry with 
+her."
+
+"Angry with her! No. You can hardly be angry with her for not being in 
+love with her cousin."
+
+"I say that I am not angry with her. But I think she might undertake to 
+consider the question. You would like such a match, would you not?"
+
+Mrs Dale did not at first make any answer, but began to revolve the 
+thing in her mind, and to look at it in various points of view. There 
+was a great deal in such an arrangement which at the first sight 
+recommended it to her very strongly. All the local circumstances were 
+in its favour. As regarded herself it would promise to her all that she 
+had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of 
+Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would 
+naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a 
+moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that, 
+even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up 
+something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy 
+would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children 
+were living so close to her!
+
+"Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face.
+
+"I was thinking," said Mrs Dale. "Do you say that she has already 
+refused him?"
+
+"I am afraid she has; but then you know-"
+
+"It must of course be left for her to judge."
+
+"If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we 
+all know she can't."
+
+"I mean rather more than that."
+
+"What do you mean, then?
+
+"That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no 
+persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed-"
+"Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he 
+should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary-she 
+has always been a very good child to you-"
+
+"Indeed she has."
+
+"And a word from you would go a long way with her-as it ought. If she 
+knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her 
+think it her duty-"
+
+"Ah I but that is just what I cannot try to make her think."
+
+"Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the 
+words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a 
+young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody-not but that, 
+as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not 
+quite so much of their own way."
+
+"I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man."
+
+"But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal 
+much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love 
+or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and 
+that was the case with Lily."
+
+"She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully."
+
+"Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is 
+bound to swear and declare that she never will be so."
+
+"I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind."
+
+"Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't 
+love him-and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it. 
+Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't 
+want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an 
+arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that. 
+We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as 
+though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives. 
+She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about 
+being his sister, and all that."
+
+"I don't see that it was nonsense at all."
+
+"Yes, it was nonsense-on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to 
+marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I 
+think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she 
+would soon learn to love him."
+
+"That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any 
+tutor."
+
+"You won't do anything to help me then?"
+
+"I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I 
+must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better 
+say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me-"
+
+"I think she ought to have told you."
+"No, Mr Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me. 
+Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But 
+if she made up her mind that she must reject him-"
+
+"She oughtn't to have made up her mind."
+
+"But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to 
+no one. She might probably think that. Bernard would be as well pleased 
+that it should not be known."
+
+"Psha-known!-of course it will be known. As you want time to consider 
+of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should 
+have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare."
+
+"I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is 
+best for her welfare. But, Mr Dale, you may be sure of this; I will 
+speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I 
+wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly."
+
+In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You 
+would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly I would," said Mrs Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I 
+believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a 
+question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any 
+bearing."
+
+And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the 
+drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview; 
+but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely 
+indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to 
+him. Mrs Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a 
+source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret 
+that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in 
+carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no 
+means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had 
+made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and 
+should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter 
+his future life-but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in 
+the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He 
+had told Mrs Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he 
+seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was 
+soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love 
+her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant, 
+undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder 
+in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others 
+believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who 
+having once desired a thing would desire it always.
+
+Mrs Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in 
+her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet 
+made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them 
+all, the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could 
+afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared 
+for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received 
+into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom 
+Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of 
+all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then, 
+as regarded Mrs Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage 
+which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realisation to 
+alt her dreams of future happiness.
+But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for 
+nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's 
+question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love. 
+She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry 
+any man without absolutely loving him-loving him as Lily loved her 
+lover, with all her heart and all her strength.
+
+With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could 
+not say much to Bell that would be of any service.
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+DR CROFTS
+
+
+If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite 
+certain, it was this-that she was not in love with Dr Crofts. As to 
+being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to 
+ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she 
+had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal, 
+she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr Crofts, 
+she had thought of it, and had make up her mind-in the manner above 
+described.
+
+It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the 
+matter even within her own bosom, unless authorised to do so by Dr 
+Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr Crofts had given her 
+some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss 
+Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him, 
+unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so.
+
+The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often 
+one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in 
+no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more 
+work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though 
+the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them 
+the different results of their profession-the young doctors doing all 
+the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may 
+account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so 
+many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be 
+excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life.
+
+Dr Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years, 
+having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old, 
+and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his 
+skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in 
+obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which 
+work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also 
+assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that 
+town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of 
+which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They, 
+moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness; 
+but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a 
+successful professional man. Whereas old Dr Gruffen, of whom but few 
+people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew 
+from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing 
+income. Now this was hard upon Dr Crofts-unless there was existing some 
+such well-understood arrangement as that above named.
+
+He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his 
+settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that 
+time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs Dale 
+counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most 
+trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted. by those who knew 
+him well.
+
+He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the 
+practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt 
+whether he was superior to John Eames-to John Eames, such as he might 
+become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether 
+passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all 
+were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And 
+there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without 
+which Mrs Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking 
+which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself 
+when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society. 
+Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen, 
+than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright; 
+and as for Johnny Eames-but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames 
+had not yet shown to the world what his character might be.
+
+It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical 
+advice on behalf of his friend Mrs Dale. She had then been ill for a 
+long period-some two or three months, and Dr Crofts had been frequent 
+in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with 
+Mrs Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young 
+unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from homes in which 
+there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons 
+hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors 
+ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working 
+for a living. Mrs Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely 
+children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she 
+held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be 
+that she selfishly preferred Dr Crofts, with all the danger to her 
+children, to Dr Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result 
+was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding 
+back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would 
+depend on his being able to marry Mrs Dale's eldest daughter. At that 
+time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year, 
+and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr Gruffen was esteemed as 
+much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and 
+that Dr Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better 
+chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass 
+that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had 
+no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then, 
+under those circumstances, what was he to do?
+
+It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into 
+those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years 
+before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to 
+Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain 
+have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his. 
+prudence prevented him. To Mrs Dale he did speak, not openly avowing 
+his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his 
+unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments.
+
+"It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he "or at any 
+rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to 
+me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present."
+
+"But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what 
+use will it be to me then?
+
+Mrs Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter 
+went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was, 
+and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He 
+had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only 
+have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her 
+upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an 
+autumn day, when Mrs Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition 
+of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk 
+with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her 
+things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind 
+her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained 
+to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented 
+him from thinking of marriage.
+
+"I suppose it must," said Bell.
+
+"I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as 
+mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies 
+had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the 
+difficulty.
+
+"I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he; 
+"besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell 
+did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they 
+went on walking in silence.
+
+"It is a hard thing to do," he then said-not looking at her, but 
+looking at the gravel on which he stood.
+
+"It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no 
+further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may 
+married-almost."
+
+"Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I 
+have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not 
+in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the 
+world as to which she was so certain as she was of this.
+
+And now, in these days, Dr Crofts did not come over to Allington very 
+often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have 
+been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the 
+village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr Gruffen. On the 
+occasion of Mrs Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially 
+invited; but Mrs Dale's special invitations to her friends were very 
+few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion 
+for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he 
+very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his 
+element at the workhouse and the hospital.
+
+Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step 
+towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning 
+by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The 
+family at the Manor had employed Dr Gruffen for the last thirty years, 
+and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe 
+the words.
+
+"The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to 
+see you if possible a little before dinner."
+
+"You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts.
+
+"Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir."
+
+"It wasn't Dr Gruffen?
+
+"No, sir; it wasn't Dr Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about 
+enough of Dr Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day."
+
+"Chaffed his lordship-his hands and feet, and that sort of thing? " 
+suggested the doctor.
+
+"Hands and feet!" said the man.
+
+"Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was 
+nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs Connor says that my lord's back was up 
+terribly high." And so Dr Crofts got on his horse and rode up to 
+Guestwick Manor.
+
+The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle.
+
+"How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl.
+
+"I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's 
+quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr 
+Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship.
+
+"I know all about you, you know," said the earl.
+
+"Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You 
+don't remember Lady Jemima?"
+
+"No," said Crofts.
+
+"I never had that honour."
+
+"An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You 
+see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but 
+upon my word" and then the earl stopped himself.
+
+"It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a 
+slight laugh.
+
+"Perhaps it'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The 
+fact is this; I'm very well, you know-as strong as a horse."
+
+"You look pretty well."
+
+"No man could be better-not of my age. I'm sixty, you know."
+
+"You don't look as though you were ailing."
+
+"I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing 
+for a man."
+
+"There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly."
+
+"And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl.
+
+"There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And, 
+let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred 
+acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean 
+to lose money by it."
+
+"I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer."
+
+"Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow 
+under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can 
+tell you."
+
+After this Dr Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special 
+physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time.
+
+"Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl.
+
+"They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after 
+dinner."
+
+"It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor.
+
+"I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell 
+the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair 
+in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me-so, at 
+least, she says."
+
+"And how's your appetite at dinner?"
+
+"Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and 
+enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port 
+wine-"
+
+"And feel sleepy afterwards?"
+
+"That's just it," said the earl.
+
+It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact 
+nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a 
+way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again.
+
+"And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose 
+you come over and dine with me tomorrow; then, if I should go to sleep, 
+you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't 
+exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says 
+about my-my snoring, you know."
+
+Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner 
+under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had 
+been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's 
+conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not 
+say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he 
+sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or 
+twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually 
+swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively.
+
+"Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel 
+lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but 
+then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort 
+of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a 
+crime-literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught 
+her napping! By-the-by, Dr Crofts, did you know that Mr Crosbie whom 
+Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying 
+at the same house now."
+
+"I met him once at Mrs Dale's."
+
+"Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?
+
+Whereupon Dr Crofts explained that Mr Crosbie was engaged to Lilian 
+Dale.
+
+"Ah, yes; a nice girl I'm told. You know all those Dales are 
+connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My 
+brother-it-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of 
+him; but of course I'm interested about the family."
+
+"They're very old friends of mine," said Crafts.
+
+"Yes, I dare say. There are two girls, are there not?"
+
+"Yes, two."
+
+"And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one 
+getting married, is there?
+
+"I've not heard anything of it."
+
+"A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's 
+last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard. 
+He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew."
+
+"I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said 
+Crofts.
+
+"They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements. 
+I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his 
+hands without any trouble."
+
+Dr Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not 
+anxious to argue it very closely with the earl.
+
+"The younger one," he said,
+
+"has provided for herself."
+
+"What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her 
+something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear, 
+that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless 
+old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he 
+has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle."
+
+Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised 
+the earl that he would dine with him again before long.
+
+"It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time," 
+said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it. 
+You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's 
+as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr Crofts." And 
+then the earl took himself off to bed.
+
+Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the 
+two girls at Allington.
+"He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come 
+to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his 
+engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind-no 
+feeling of chivalry?
+
+"He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl; 
+and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It 
+was in this tone that men spoke of women nowadays, and yet he himself 
+had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might 
+injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her 
+that he loved her.
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE
+
+IN BOTH
+
+Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was 
+not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and 
+Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed 
+when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however, 
+in the course of the morning walked down to the post-office, in order 
+that she might be sure that it was not remaining there.
+
+"Why, miss, they all be delivered; you know that," said Mrs Crump, the 
+post-mistress.
+
+"But one might be left behind, I thought."
+
+"John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for 
+your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them."
+
+"But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs Crump. He wouldn't come up 
+with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street."
+
+"Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no 
+how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters, 
+Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so 
+poor Lily went home discomforted.
+
+But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According 
+to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection. 
+When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that 
+he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she 
+smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got 
+the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words 
+which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last 
+moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he 
+was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should 
+be so. And when he accused himself of being worldly, she excused him, 
+persuading herself that he was nearly perfect in this respect as in 
+others. Of course a man living in London, and having to earn his bread 
+out in the world, must be more worldly than a country girl; but the 
+fact of his being able to love such a girl, to choose such a one for 
+his wife-was not that alone sufficient proof that the world had not 
+enslaved him?
+
+"My heart is on the Allington lawns," he said; and then, as she read 
+the words, she kissed the paper again.
+
+In her eyes, and to her ears, and to her heart, the letter was a 
+beautiful letter. I believe there is no bliss greater than that which a 
+thorough love-letter gives to a girl who knows that in receiving it she 
+commits no fault-who can open it before her father and mother with 
+nothing more than the slight blush which the consciousness of her 
+position gives her. And of all love-letters the first must be the 
+sweetest! What a value there is in every word! How each expression is 
+scanned and turned to the best account! With what importance are all 
+those little phrases invested, which too soon become mere phrases, used 
+as a matter of course. Crosbie had finished his letter by bidding God 
+bless her;
+"and you too," said Lily, pressing the letter to her bosom.
+
+"Does he say anything particular?" asked Mrs Dale.
+
+"Yes, mamma; it's all very particular."
+
+"But there's nothing for the public ear."
+
+"He sends his love to you and Bell."
+
+"We are very much obliged to him."
+
+"So you ought to be. And he says that he went to church going through 
+Barchester, and that the clergyman was the grandfather of that Lady 
+Dumbello. When he got to Courcy Castle Lady Dumbello was there."
+
+"What a singular coincidence!" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I won't tell you a word more about his letter," said Lily. So she 
+folded it up, and put it in her pocket. But as soon as she found 
+herself alone in her own room, she had it out again, and read it over 
+some half-a-dozen times.
+
+That was the occupation of her morning-that, and the manufacture of 
+some very intricate piece of work which was intended for the adornment 
+of Mr Crosbie's person. Her hands, however, were very full of work-or, 
+rather, she intended that they should be full. She would take with her 
+to her new home, when she was married, all manner of household gear, 
+the produce of her own industry and economy. She had declared that she 
+wanted to do something for her future husband, and she would begin that 
+something at once. And in this matter she did not belie her promises to 
+herself, or allow her good intentions to evaporate unaccomplished. She 
+soon surrounded herself with harder tasks than those embroidered 
+slippers with which she indulged herself immediately after his 
+departure. And Mrs Dale and Bell-though in their gentle way they 
+laughed at her-nevertheless they worked with her, sitting sternly to 
+their long tasks, in order that Crosbie's house might not be empty when 
+their darling should go to take her place there as his wife.
+
+But it was absolutely necessary that the letter should be answered. It 
+would in her eyes have been a great sin to have let that day's post go 
+without carrying a letter from her to Courcy Castle-a sin of which she 
+felt no temptation to be guilty. It was an exquisite pleasure to her to 
+seat herself at her little table, with her neat desk and small 
+appurtenances for epistle-craft, and to feel that she had a letter to 
+write in which she had truly much to say. Hitherto her correspondence 
+had been uninteresting and almost weak in its nature. From her mother 
+and sister she had hardly been yet parted; and though she had other 
+friends, she had seldom found herself with very much to tell them by 
+post. What could she communicate to Mary Eames at Guestwick, which 
+should be in itself exciting as she wrote it? When she wrote to John 
+Eames, and told "Dear John" that mamma hoped to have the pleasure of 
+seeing him to tea at such an hour, the work of writing was of little 
+moment to her, though the note when written became one of the choicest 
+treasures of him to whom it was addressed.
+
+But now the matter was very different. When she saw the words "Dearest 
+Adolphus" on the paper before her, she was startled with their 
+significance.
+
+"And four months ago I had never even heard of him," she said to 
+herself, almost with awe. And now he was more to her, and nearer to 
+her, than even was her sister or her mother! She recollected how she 
+had laughed at him behind his back, and called him a swell on the first 
+day of his coming to the Small House, and how, also, she had striven, 
+in her innocent way, to look her best when called upon to go out and 
+walk with the stranger from London. He was no longer a stranger now, 
+but her own dearest friend.
+
+She had put down her pen that she might think of all this-by no means 
+for the first time-and then resumed it with a sudden start as though 
+fearing that the postman might be in the village before her letter was 
+finished.
+
+"Dearest Adolphus, I need not tell you how delighted I was when your 
+letter was brought to me this morning." But I will not repeat the whole 
+of her letter here. She had no incident to relate, none even so 
+interesting as that of Mr Crosbie's encounter with Mr Harding at 
+Barchester. She had met no Lady Dumbello, and had no counterpart to 
+Lady Alexandrina, of whom, as a friend, she could say a word in praise. 
+John Eames's name she did not mention, knowing that John Eames was not 
+a favourite with Mr Crosbie; nor had she anything to say of John Eames, 
+that had not been already said. He had, indeed, promised to come over 
+to Allington; but this visit had not been made when Lily wrote her 
+first letter to Crosbie. It was a sweet, good, honest love-letter, full 
+of assurances of unalterable affection and unlimited confidence, 
+indulging in a little quiet fun as to the grandees of Courcy Castle, 
+and ending with a promise that she would be happy and contented if she 
+might receive his letters constantly, and live with the hope of seeing 
+him at Christmas.
+
+"I am in time, Mrs Crump, am I not?" she said, as she walked into the 
+post-office.
+
+"Of course you be-for the next half-hour. T' postman-he bain't stirred 
+from t' ale'us yet. Just put it into t' box wull ye?"
+
+"But you won't leave it there?"
+
+"Leave it there! Did you ever hear the like of that? If you're afeared 
+to put it in, you can take it away; that's all about it, Miss Lily." 
+And then Mrs Crump turned away to her avocations at the washing-tub. 
+Mrs Crump had a bad temper, but perhaps she had some excuse. A separate 
+call was made upon her time with reference to almost every letter 
+brought to her office, and for all this, as she often told her friends 
+in profound disgust, she received as salary no more than "tuppence 
+farden a day. It don't find me in shoe-leather; no more it don't." As 
+Mrs Crump was never seen out of her own house, unless it was in church 
+once a month, this latter assertion about her shoe-leather could hardly 
+have been true.
+
+Lily had received another letter, and had answered it before Eames made 
+his promised visit to Allington. He, as will be remembered, had also 
+had a correspondence. He had answered Miss Roper's letter, and had 
+since that been living in fear of two things; in a lesser fear of some 
+terrible rejoinder from Amelia, and in a greater fear of a more 
+terrible visit from his lady-love. Were she to swoop down in very truth 
+upon his Guestwick home, and declare herself to his mother and sister 
+as his affianced bride, what mode of escape would then be left for him? 
+But this she had not yet done, nor had she even answered his cruel 
+missive.
+
+"What an ass I am to be afraid of her!" he said to himself as he walked 
+along under the elms of Guestwick manor, which overspread the road to 
+Allington. When he first went over to Allington after his return home, 
+he had mounted himself on horseback, and had gone forth brilliant with 
+spurs, and trusting somewhat to the glories of his dress and gloves. 
+But he had then known nothing of Lily's engagement. Now he was 
+contented to walk; and as he had taken up his slouched hat and stick in 
+the passage of his mother's house, he had been very indifferent as to 
+his appearance. He walked quickly along the road, taking for the first 
+three miles the shade of the Guestwick elms, and keeping his feet on 
+the broad greensward which skirts the outside of the earl's palings.
+
+"What an ass I am to be afraid of her!" And as he swung his big stick 
+in his hand, striking a tree here and there, and knocking the stones 
+from his path, he began to question himself in earnest, and to be 
+ashamed of his position in the world.
+
+"Nothing on earth shall make me marry her," he said; "not if they bring 
+a dozen actions against me. She knows as well as I do, that I have 
+never intended to marry her. It's a cheat from beginning to end. If she 
+comes down here, I'll tell her so before my mother." But as the vision 
+of her sudden arrival came before his eyes, he acknowledged to himself 
+that he still held her in great fear. He had told her that he loved 
+her. He had written as much as that. If taxed with so much, he must 
+confess his sin.
+
+Then, by degrees, his mind turned away from Amelia Roper to Lily Dale, 
+not giving him a prospect much more replete with enjoyment than that 
+other one. He had said that he would call at Allington before he 
+returned to town, and he was now redeeming his promise. But he did not 
+know why he should go there. He felt that he should sit silent and 
+abashed in Mrs Dale's drawing-room, confessing by his demeanour that 
+secret which it behoved him now to hide from every one. He could not 
+talk easily before Lily, nor could he speak to her of the only subject 
+which would occupy his thoughts when in her presence. If indeed, he 
+might find her alone But, perhaps that might be worse for him than any 
+other condition.
+
+When he was shown into the drawing-room there was nobody there.
+
+"They were here a minute ago, all three," said the servant girl. "If 
+you'll walk down the garden, Mr John, you'll be sure to find some of 
+'em." So John Eames, with a little hesitation, walked down the garden.
+
+First of all he went the whole way round the walks, meeting nobody. 
+Then he crossed the lawn, returning again to the farther end; and 
+there, emerging from the little path which led from the Great House, he 
+encountered Lily alone.
+
+"Oh, John," she said, how d'ye do? I'm afraid you did not find anybody 
+in the house. Mamma and Bell are with Hopkins, away in the large 
+kitchen-garden."
+
+"I've just come over," said Eames, "because I promised. I said I'd come 
+before I went back to London."
+
+"And they'll be very glad to see you, and so am I. Shall we go after 
+them into the other grounds? But perhaps you walked over and are tired."
+
+"I did walk," said Eames; "not that I am very tired." But in truth he 
+did not wish to go after Mrs Dale, though he was altogether at a loss 
+as to what he would say to Lily while remaining with her. He had 
+fancied that he would like to have some opportunity of speaking to her 
+alone before he went away-of making some special use of the last 
+interview which he should have with her before she became a married 
+woman. But now the opportunity was there, and he hardly dared to avail 
+himself of it.
+
+"You'll stay and dine with us," said Lily.
+
+"No, I'll not do that, for I especially told my mother that I would be 
+back."
+
+"I'm sure it was very good of you to walk so far to see us. If you 
+really are not tired, I think we will go to mamma, as she would be very 
+sorry to miss you."
+
+This she said, remembering at the moment what had been Crosbie's 
+injunctions to her about John Eames. But John had resolved that he 
+would say those words which he had come to speak, and that, as Lily was 
+there with him, he would avail himself of the chance which fortune had 
+given him.
+
+"I don't think I'll go into the squire's garden," he said.
+
+"Uncle Christopher is not there. He is about the farm somewhere."
+
+"If you don't mind, Lily, I think I'll stay here. I suppose they'll be 
+back soon. Of course I should like to see them before I go away to 
+London. But, Lily, I came over now chiefly to see you. It was you who 
+asked me to promise."
+
+Had Crosbie been right in those remarks of his? Had she been imprudent 
+in her little endeavour to be cordially kind to her old friend?
+
+"Shall we go into the drawing-room?" she said, feeling that she would 
+be in some degree safer there than out among the shrubs and paths of 
+the garden. And I think she was right in this. A man will talk of love 
+out among the lilacs and roses, who would be stricken dumb by the 
+demure propriety of the four walls of a drawing-room. John Eames also 
+had some feeling of this kind, for he determined to remain out in the 
+garden, if he could so manage it.
+
+"I don't want to go in unless you wish it," he said.
+
+"Indeed, I'd rather stay here. So, Lily, you're going to be married?" 
+And thus he rushed at once into the middle of his discourse.
+
+"Yes," said she, "I believe I am."
+
+"I have not told you yet that I congratulated you."
+
+"I have known very well that you did so in your heart. I have always 
+been sure that you wished me well."
+
+"Indeed I have. And if congratulating a person is hoping that she may 
+always be happy, I do congratulate you. But, Lily-"And then he paused, 
+abashed by the beauty, purity, and woman's grace which had forced him 
+to love her.
+
+"I think I understand all that you would say. I do not want ordinary 
+words to tell me that I am to count you among my best friends."
+
+"No, Lily; you don't understand all that I would say. You have never 
+known how often and how much I have thought of you; how dearly I have 
+loved you."
+
+"John, you must not talk of that now."
+
+"I cannot go without telling you. When I came over here, and Mrs Dale 
+told me that you were to be married to that man-"
+
+"You must not speak of Mr Crosbie in that way," she said, turning upon 
+him almost fiercely.
+
+"I did not mean to say anything disrespectful of him to you. I should 
+hate myself if I were to do so. Of course you like him better than 
+anybody else?"
+
+"I love him better than all the world besides."
+
+"And so do I love you better than all the world besides." And as he 
+spoke he got up from his seat and stood before her.
+
+"I know how poor I am, and unworthy of you; and only that you are 
+engaged to him, I don't suppose that I should now tell you. Of course 
+you couldn't accept such a one as me. But I have loved you ever since 
+you remember; and now that you are going to be his wife, I cannot but 
+tell you that it is so. You will go and live in London; but as to my 
+seeing you there, it will be impossible. I could not go into that man's 
+house."
+
+"Oh, John."
+
+"No, never; not if you became his wife. I have loved you as well as he 
+does. When Mrs Dale told me of it, I thought I should have fallen. I 
+went away without seeing you because I was unable to speak to you. I 
+made a fool of myself, and have been a fool all along. I am foolish now 
+to tell you this, but I cannot help it."
+
+"You will forget it all when you meet some girl that you can really 
+love."
+
+"And have I not really loved you? Well, never mind. I have said what I 
+came to say, and I will now go. If it ever happens that we are down in 
+the country together, perhaps I may see you again; but never in London. 
+Good-bye, Lily." And he put out his hand to her.
+
+"And won't you stay for mamma?" she said.
+
+"No. Give her my love, and to Bell. They understand all about it. They 
+will know why I have gone. If ever you should want anybody to do 
+anything for you, remember that I will do it, whatever it is." And as 
+he paced away from her across the lawn, the special deed in her favour 
+to which his mind was turned-that one thing which he most longed to do 
+on her behalf-was an act of corporal chastisement upon Crosbie. If 
+Crosbie would but ill-treat her-ill-treat her with some anti-nuptial 
+barbarity-and if only he could be called in to avenge her wrongs! And 
+as he made his way back along the road towards Guestwick, he built up 
+within his own bosom a castle in the air, for her part in which Lily 
+Dale would by no means have thanked him.
+Lily when she was left alone burst into tears. She had certainly said 
+very little to encourage her forlorn suitor, and had so borne herself 
+during the interview that even Crosbie could hardly have been 
+dissatisfied; but now that Eames was gone her heart became very tender 
+towards him. She felt that she did love him also-not at all as she 
+loved Crosbie, but still with a love that was tender, soft, and true. 
+If Crosbie could have known all her thoughts at that moment, I doubt 
+whether he would have liked them. She burst into tears, and then 
+hurried away into some nook where she could not be seen by her mother 
+and Bell on their return.
+
+Eames went on his way, walking very quietly, swinging his stick and 
+kicking through the dust, with his heart full of the scene which had 
+just passed. He was angry with himself, thinking that he had played his 
+part badly, accusing himself in that he had been rough to her, and 
+selfish in the expression of his love ; and he was angry with her 
+because she had declared to him that she loved Crosbie better than all 
+the world besides. He knew that of course she must do so-that at any 
+rate it was to be expected that such was the case. Yet, he thought, she 
+might have refrained from saying so to him.
+
+"She chooses to scorn me now," he said to himself; "but the time may 
+come when she will wish that she had scorned him." That Crosbie was 
+wicked, bad, and selfish, he believed most fully. He felt sure that the 
+man would ill-use her and make her wretched. He had some slight doubt 
+whether he would marry her, and from this doubt he endeavoured to draw 
+a scrap of comfort. If Crosbie would desert her, and if to him might be 
+accorded the privilege of beating the man to death with his fists 
+because of this desertion, then the world would not be quite blank for 
+him. In all this he was no doubt very cruel to Lily-but then had not 
+Lily been very cruel to him?
+
+He was still thinking of these things when he came to the first of the 
+Guestwick pastures. The boundary of the earl's property was very 
+plainly marked, for with it commenced also the shady elms along the 
+roadside, and the broad green margin of turf, grateful equally to those 
+who walked and to those who rode. Eames had got himself on to the 
+grass, but, in the fulness of his thoughts, was unconscious of the 
+change in his path, when he was startled by a voice in the next field 
+and the loud bellowing of a bull. Lord de Guest's choice cattle he knew 
+were there, and there was one special bull which was esteemed by his 
+lordship as of great value, and regarded as a high favourite. The 
+people about the place declared that the beast was vicious, but Lord de 
+Guest had often been heard to boast that it was never vicious with him.
+
+"The boys tease him, and the men are almost worse than the boys," said 
+the earl; "but he'll never hurt any one that has not hurt him." Guided 
+by faith in his own teaching the earl had taught himself to look upon 
+his bull as a large, horned, innocent lamb of the flock.
+
+As Eames paused on the road, he fancied that he recognised the earl's 
+voice, and it was the voice of one in distress. Then the bull's roar 
+sounded very plain in his ear, and almost close-upon hearing which he 
+rushed on to the gate, and, without much thinking what he was doing, 
+vaulted over it, and advanced a few steps into the field.
+
+"Halloo!" shouted the earl. "There's a man. Come on." And then his 
+continued shoutings hardly formed themselves into intelligible words; 
+but Eames plainly understood that he was invoking assistance under 
+great pressure and stress of circumstances. The bull was making short 
+runs at his owner, as though determined in each run to have a toss at 
+his lordship; and at each run the earl would retreat quickly for a few 
+paces, but he retreated always facing his enemy, and as the animal got 
+near to him, would make digs at his face with the long spud which he 
+carried in his hand. But in thus making good his retreat he had been 
+unable to keep in a direct line to the gate, and there seemed to be 
+great danger lest the bull should succeed in pressing him up against 
+the hedge.
+
+"Come on!" shouted the earl, who was fighting his battle manfully, but 
+was by no means anxious to carry off all the laurels of the victory 
+himself.
+
+"Come on, I say!" Then he stopped in his path, shouted into the bull's 
+face, brandished his spud, and threw about his arms, thinking that he 
+might best dismay the beast by the display of these warlike gestures.
+
+Johnny Eames ran on gallantly to the peer's assistance, as he would 
+have run to that of any peasant in the land. He was one to whom I 
+should be perhaps wrong to attribute at this period of his life the 
+gift of very high courage. He feared many things which no man should 
+fear; but he did not fear personal mishap or injury to his own skin and 
+bones. When Cradell escaped out of the house in Burton Crescent, making 
+his way through the passage into the outer air, he did so because he 
+feared that Lupex would beat him or kick him, or otherwise ill-use him. 
+John Eames would also have desired to escape under similar 
+circumstances; but he would have so desired because he could not endure 
+to be looked upon in his difficulties by the people of the house, and 
+because his imagination would have painted the horrors of a policeman 
+dragging him off with a black eye and a torn coat. There was no one to 
+see him now, and no policeman to take offence. Therefore he rushed to 
+the earl's assistance, brandishing his stick, and roaring in emulation 
+of the bull.
+
+When the animal saw with what unfairness he was treated, and that the 
+number of his foes was doubled, while no assistance had lent itself on 
+his side, he stood for a while, disgusted by the injustice of humanity. 
+He stopped, and throwing his head up to the heavens, bellowed out his 
+complaint.
+
+"Don't come close!" said the earl, who was almost out of breath.
+
+"Keep a little apart. Ugh! ugh! whoop, whoop!" And he threw up his arms 
+manfully, jobbing about with his spud, ever and anon rubbing the 
+perspiration from off his eyebrows with the back of his hand.
+
+As the bull stood pausing, meditating whether under such circumstances 
+flight would not be preferable to gratified passion, Eames made a rush 
+in at him, attempting to hit him on the head.
+
+The earl, seeing this, advanced a step also, and got his spud almost up 
+to the animal's eye. But these indignities the beast could not stand. 
+He made a charge, bending his head first towards John Eames, and then, 
+with that weak vacillation which is as disgraceful in a bull as in a 
+general, he changed his purpose, and turned his horns upon his other 
+enemy. The consequence was that his steps carried him in between the 
+two, and that the earl and Eames found themselves for a while behind 
+his tail.
+
+"Now for the gate," said the earl.
+
+"Slowly does it; slowly does it; don't run!" said Johnny, assuming in 
+the heat of the moment a tone of counsel which would have been very 
+foreign to him under other circumstances.
+
+The earl was not a whit offended.
+"All right," said he, taking with a backward motion the direction of 
+the gate. Then as the bull again faced towards him, he jumped from the 
+ground, labouring painfully with arms and legs, and ever keeping his 
+spud well advanced against the foe. Eames, holding his position a 
+little apart from his friend, stooped low and beat the ground with his 
+stick, and as though defying the creature. The bull felt himself 
+defied, stood still and roared, and then made another vacillating 
+attack.
+
+"Hold on till we reach the gate," said Eames.
+
+"Ugh! ugh! Whoop! whoop!" shouted the earl. And so gradually they made 
+good their ground.
+
+"Now get over," said Eames, when they had both reached the corner of 
+the field in which the gate stood.
+
+"And what'll you do?" said the earl.
+
+"I'll go at the hedge to the right." And Johnny as he spoke dashed his 
+stick about, so as to monopolise, for a moment, the attention of the 
+brute. The earl made a spring at the gate, and got well on to the upper 
+rung. The bull seeing that his prey was going, made a final rush upon 
+the earl and struck the timber furiously with his head, knocking his 
+lordship down on the other side. Lord de Guest was already over, but 
+not off the rail; and thus, though he fell, he fell in safety on the 
+sward beyond the gate. He fell in safety, but utterly exhausted. Eames, 
+as he had purposed, made a leap almost sideways at a thick hedge which 
+divided the field from one of the Guestwick copses. There was a fairly 
+broad ditch, and on the other side a quickset hedge, which had, 
+however, been weakened and injured by trespassers at this corner, close 
+to the gate. Eames was young and active and jumped well. He jumped so 
+well that he carried his body full into the middle of the quickset, and 
+then scrambled through to the other side, not without much injury to 
+his clothes, and some damage also to his hands and face.
+
+The beast, recovering from his shock against the wooden bars, looked 
+wistfully at his last retreating enemy, as he still struggled amidst 
+the bushes. He looked at the ditch and at the broken hedge, but he did 
+not understand how weak were the impediments in his way. He had knocked 
+his head against the stout timber, which was strong enough to oppose 
+him, but was dismayed by the brambles which he might have trodden under 
+foot without an effort How many of us are like the bull, turning away 
+conquered by opposition which should be as nothing to us, and breaking 
+our feet, and worse still, our hearts, against rocks of adamant. The 
+bull at last made up his mind that he did not dare to face the hedge; 
+so he gave one final roar, and then turning himself round, walked 
+placidly back amidst the herd.
+
+Johnny made his way on to the road by a stile that led out of the 
+copse, and was soon standing over the earl, while the blood ran down 
+his cheeks from the scratches. One of the legs of his trousers had been 
+caught by a stake, and was torn from the hip downward, and his hat was 
+left in the field, the only trophy for the bull.
+
+"I hope you're not hurt, my lord," he said.
+
+"Oh dear, no; but I'm terribly out of breath. Why, you're bleeding all 
+over. He didn't get at you, did he?"
+
+"It's only the thorns in the hedge," said Johnny, passing his hand over 
+his face.
+"But I've lost my hat."
+
+"There are plenty more hats," said the earl.
+
+"I think I'll have a try for it," said Johnny, with whom the means of 
+getting hats had not been so plentiful as with the earl.
+
+"He looks quiet now." And he moved towards the gate.
+
+But Lord de Guest jumped upon his feet, and seized the young man by the 
+collar of his coat.
+
+"Go after your hat!" said he.
+
+"You must be a fool to think of it. If you're afraid of catching cold, 
+you shall have mine."
+
+"I'm not the least afraid of catching cold," said Johnny.
+
+"Is he often like that, my lord?" And he made a motion with his head 
+towards the bull.
+
+"The gentlest creature alive; he's like a lamb generally-just like a 
+lamb. Perhaps he saw my red pocket-handkerchief." And Lord de Guest 
+showed his friend that he carried such an article.
+
+"But where should I have been if you hadn't come up?"
+
+"You'd have got to the gate, my lord."
+
+"Yes; with my feet foremost, and four men carrying me. I'm very 
+thirsty. You don't happen to carry a flask, do you?"
+
+"No, my lord, I don't."
+
+"Then we'll make the best of our way home, and have a glass of wine 
+there." And on this occasion his lordship intended that his offer 
+should be accepted.
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+LORD DE GUEST AT HOME
+
+
+The earl and John Eames, after their escape from the bull, walked up to 
+the Manor House together.
+
+"You can write a note to your mother, and I'll send it by one of the 
+boys," said the earl. This was his lordship's answer when Eames 
+declined to dine at the Manor House, because he would be expected home.
+
+"But I'm so badly off for clothes, my lord," pleaded Johnny. "I tore my 
+trousers in the hedge."
+
+"There will be nobody there beside us two and Dr Crofts. The doctor 
+will forgive you when he hears the story; and as for me, I didn't care 
+if you hadn't a stitch to your back. You'll have company back to 
+Guestwick, so come along."
+
+Eames had no further excuse to offer, and therefore did as he was 
+bidden. He was by no means as much at home with the earl now as during 
+those minutes of the combat. He would rather have gone home, being 
+somewhat ashamed of being seen in his present tattered and bare-headed 
+condition by the servants of the house; and moreover, his mind would 
+sometimes revert to the scene which had taken place in the garden at 
+Allington. But he found himself obliged to obey the earl, and so he 
+walked on with him through the woods.
+
+The earl did not say very much, being tired and somewhat thoughtful. In 
+what little he did say he seemed to be specially hurt by the 
+ingratitude of the bull towards himself.
+
+"I never teased him, or annoyed him in any way."
+
+"I suppose they are dangerous beasts?" said Eames.
+
+"Not a bit of it, if they're properly treated. It must have been my 
+handkerchief, I suppose. I remember that I did blow my nose."
+
+He hardly said a word in the way of thanks to his assistant.
+
+"Where should I have been if you had not come to me?" he had exclaimed 
+immediately after his deliverance; but having said that he didn't think 
+it necessary to say much more to Eames. But he made himself very 
+pleasant, and by the time he had reached the house his companion was 
+almost glad that he had been forced to dine at the Manor House.
+
+"And now we'll have a drink," said the earl. "I don't know how you 
+feel, but I never was so thirsty in my life."
+
+Two servants immediately showed themselves, and evinced some surprise 
+at Johnny's appearance.
+
+"Has the gentleman hurt hisself, my lord?" asked the butler, looking at 
+the blood upon our friend's face.
+"He has hurt his trousers the worst, I believe," said the earl. "And if 
+he was to put on any of mine they'd be too short and too big, wouldn't 
+they? I am sorry you should be so uncomfortable, but you mustn't mind 
+it for once."
+
+"I don't mind it a bit," said Johnny.
+
+"And I'm sure I don't," said the earl.
+
+"Mr Eames is going to dine here, Vickers."
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"And his hat is down in the middle of the nineteen acres. Let three or 
+four men go for it."
+
+"Three or four men, my lord!"
+
+"Yes-three or four men. There's something gone wrong with that bull. 
+And you must get a boy with a pony to take a note into Guestwick, to 
+Mrs Eames. Oh dear, I'm better now," and he put down the tumbler from 
+which he'd been drinking.
+
+"Write your note here, and then we'll go and see my pet pheasants 
+before dinner."
+
+Vickers and the footman knew that something had happened of much 
+moment, for the earl was usually very particular about his 
+dinner-table. He expected every guest who sat there to be dressed in 
+such guise as the fashion of the day demanded; and he himself, though 
+his morning costume was by no means brilliant, never dined, even when 
+alone, without having put himself into a suit of black, with a white 
+cravat, and having exchanged the old silver hunting-watch which he 
+carried during the day tied round his neck by a bit of old ribbon, for 
+a small gold watch, with a chain and seals, which in the evening always 
+dangled over his waistcoat. Dr Gruffen had once been asked to dinner at 
+Guestwick Manor.
+
+"Just a bachelor's chop," said the earl; "for there's nobody at home 
+but myself." Whereupon Dr Gruffen had come in coloured trousers-and had 
+never again been asked to dine at Guestwick Manor. All this Vickers 
+knew well; and now his lordship had brought young Eames home to dine 
+with him with his clothes all hanging about him in a manner which 
+Vickers declared in the servants' hall wasn't more than half decent. 
+Therefore, they all knew that something very particular must have 
+happened.
+
+"It's some trouble about the bull, I know," said Vickers-"but bless 
+you, the bull couldn't have tore his things in that way!"
+
+Eames wrote his note, in which he told his mother that he had had an 
+adventure with Lord de Guest, and that his lordship had insisted on 
+bringing him home to dinner.
+
+"I have torn my trousers all to pieces," he added in a postscript, "and 
+have lost my hat. Everything else is all right." He was not aware that 
+the earl also sent a short note to Mrs Eames.
+
+DEAR MADAM (ran the earl's note)-Your son has, under Providence, 
+probably saved my life. I will leave the story for him to tell. He has 
+been good enough to accompany me home, and will return to Guestwick 
+after dinner with Dr Crofts, who dines here. I congratulate you on 
+having a son with so much cool courage and good feeling.
+
+Your very faithful servant,
+
+DE GUEST.
+
+GUESTWICK MANOR,
+
+Thursday, October, 186-
+
+And then they went to see the pheasants.
+
+"Now, I'll tell you what," said the earl.
+
+"I advise you to take to shooting. It's the amusement of a gentleman 
+when a man chances to have the command of game."
+
+"But I'm always up in London."
+
+"No, you're not. You're not up in London now. You always have your 
+holidays. If you choose to try it, I'll see that you have shooting 
+enough while you're here. It's better than going to sleep under the 
+trees. Ha, ha, ha! I wonder what made you lay yourself down there. You 
+hadn't been fighting a bull that day?"
+
+"No, my lord. I hadn't seen the bull then."
+
+"Well; you think of what I've been saying. When I say a thing, I mean 
+it. You shall have shooting enough, if you have a mind to try it." Then 
+they looked at the pheasants, and pottered about the place till the 
+earl said it was time to dress for dinner.
+
+"That's hard upon you, isn't it?" said he. "But, at any rate, you can 
+wash your hands, and get rid of the blood. I'll be down in the little 
+drawing-room five minutes before seven, and I suppose I'll find you 
+there."
+
+At five minutes before seven Lord de Guest came into the small 
+drawing-room, and found Johnny seated there, with a book before him. 
+The earl was a little fussy, and showed by his manner that he was not 
+quite at his ease, as some men do when they have any piece of work on 
+hand which is not customary with them. He held something in his hand, 
+and shuffled a little as he made his way up the room. He was dressed, 
+as usual, in black; but his gold chain was not, as usual, dangling over 
+his waistcoat.
+
+"Eames," he said, "I want you to accept a little present from me-just 
+as a memorial of our affair with the bull. It will make you think of it 
+sometimes, when I'm perhaps gone."
+
+"Oh, my lord-"
+
+"It's my own watch, that I have been wearing for some time; but I've 
+got another-two or three, I believe, somewhere upstairs. You mustn't 
+refuse me. I can't bear being refused. There are two or three little 
+seals, too, which I have worn. I have taken off the one with my arms, 
+because that's of no use to you, and it is to me. It doesn't want a 
+key, but winds up at the handle, in this way," and the earl proceeded 
+to explain the nature of the toy.
+
+"My lord, you think too much of what happened today," said Eames, 
+stammering.
+"No, I don't; I think very little about it. I know what I think of. Put 
+the watch in your pocket before the doctor comes. There; I hear his 
+horse. Why didn't he drive over, and then he could have taken you back?"
+
+"I can walk very well."
+
+"I'll make that all right. The servant shall ride Crofts' horse, and 
+bring back the little phaeton. How d'you do, doctor? You know Eames, I 
+suppose? You needn't look at him in that way. His leg is not broken; 
+it's only his trousers." And then the earl told the story of the bull.
+
+"Johnny will become quite a hero in town," said Crofts.
+
+"Yes; I fear he'll get the most of the credit; and yet I was at it 
+twice as long as he was. I'll tell you what, young men, when I got to 
+that gate I didn't think I'd breath enough left in me to get over it. 
+It's all very well jumping into a hedge when you're only 
+two-and-twenty; but when a man comes to be sixty he likes to take his 
+time about such things. Dinner ready, is it? So am I. I quite forgot 
+that mutton chop of yours today, doctor. But I suppose a man may eat a 
+good dinner after a fight with a bull?"
+
+The evening passed by without any very pleasurable excitement, and I 
+regret to say that the earl went fast to sleep in the drawing-room as 
+soon as he had swallowed his cup of coffee. During dinner he had been 
+very courteous to both his guests, but towards Eames he had used a 
+good-humoured and, almost affectionate familiarity. He had quizzed him 
+for having been found asleep under the tree, telling Crofts that he 
+had. looked very forlorn-
+
+"So that I haven't a doubt about his being in love," said the earl. And 
+he had asked Johnny to tell the name of the fair one, bringing up the 
+remnants of his half-forgotten classicalities to bear out the joke.
+
+"If I am to take more of the severe Falernian," said he, laying his 
+hand on the decanter of port,
+
+"I must know the lady's name. Whoever she be, I'm well sure you need 
+not blush for her. What! you refuse to tell! Then I'll drink no more." 
+And so the earl had walked out of the dining-room; but not till he had 
+perceived by his guest's cheeks that the joke had been too true to be 
+pleasant. As he went, however, he leaned with his hand on Eames's 
+shoulder, and the servants looking on saw that the young man was to be 
+a favourite.
+
+"He'll make him his heir," said Vickers.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder a bit if he don't make him his heir." But to this 
+the footman objected, endeavouring to prove to Mr Vickers that, in 
+accordance with the law of the land, his lordship's second cousin, once 
+removed, whom the earl had never seen, but whom he was supposed to 
+hate, must be his heir.
+
+"A hearl can never choose his own heir, like you or me," said the 
+footman, laying down the law.
+
+"Can't he though really, now? That's very hard on him; isn't it?" said 
+the pretty housemaid.
+
+"Psha," said Vickers: "you know nothing about it. My lord could make 
+young Eames his heir tomorrow; that is, the heir of his property. He 
+couldn't make him a hearl, because that must go to the heirs of his 
+body. As to his leaving him the place here, I don't just know how 
+that'd be; and I'm sure Richard don't."
+
+"But suppose he hasn't got any heirs of his body?" asked the pretty 
+housemaid, who was rather fond of putting down Mr Vickers.
+
+"He must have heirs of his body," said the butler. "Everybody has 'em. 
+If a man don't know 'em himself, the law finds 'em out." And then Mr 
+Vickers walked away, avoiding further dispute.
+
+In the meantime, the earl was asleep upstairs, and tie two young men 
+from Guestwick did not find that they could amuse themselves with any 
+satisfaction. Each took up a book; but there are times at which a man 
+is quite unable to read, and when a book is only a cover for his 
+idleness or dulness. At last, Dr Crofts suggested, in a whisper, that 
+they might as well begin to think of going home.
+
+"Eh; yes; what?" said the earl, "I'm not asleep." In answer to which 
+the doctor said that he thought he'd go home, if his lordship would let 
+him order his horse. But the earl was against fast bound in slumber, 
+and took no further notice of the proposition.
+
+"Perhaps we could get off without waking him," suggested Eames, in a 
+whisper.
+
+"Eh; what?" said the earl. So they both resumed their books, and 
+submitted themselves to their martyrdom for a further period of fifteen 
+minutes. At the expiration of that time, the footman brought in tea.
+
+"Eh, what? tea!" said the earl.
+
+"Yes, we'll have a little tea. I've heard every word you've been 
+saying." It was that assertion on the part of the earl which always 
+made Lady Julia so angry.
+
+"You cannot have heard what I have been saying, Theodore, because I 
+have said nothing," she would reply.
+
+"But I should have heard it if you had," the earl would rejoin, 
+snappishly. On the present occasion neither Crofts nor Eames 
+contradicted him, and he took his tea and swallowed it while still 
+three parts asleep.
+
+"If you'll allow me, my lord, I think I'll order my horse," said the 
+doctor.
+
+"Yes; horse-yes-" said the earl, nodding.
+
+"But what are you to do, Eames, if I ride?" said the doctor.
+
+"I'll walk," whispered Eames, in his very lowest voice.
+
+"What-what-what?" said the earl, jumping up on his feet.
+
+"Oh, ah, yes; going away, are you? I suppose you might as well, as sit 
+here and see me sleeping. But, doctor-I didn't snore, did I?"
+
+"Only occasionally."
+
+"Not loud, did I? Come, Eames, did I snore loud?
+
+"Well, my lord, you did snore rather loud two or three times."
+
+"Did I?" said the earl, in a voice of great disappointment.
+
+"And yet, do you know, I heard every word you said."
+
+The small phaeton had been already ordered, and the two young men 
+started back to Guestwick together, a servant from the house riding the 
+doctor's horse behind them.
+
+"Look here, Eames," said the earl, as they parted on the steps of the 
+hall door.
+
+"You're going back to town the day after tomorrow, you say, so I shan't 
+see you again?"
+
+"No, my lord", said Johnny.
+
+"Look you here, now. I shall be up for the Cattle-show before 
+Christmas. You must dine with me at my hotel, on the twenty-second of 
+December, Pawkins's, in Jermyn Street; seven o'clock, sharp. Mind you 
+do not forget, now. Put it down in your pocket-book when you get home. 
+Good-bye, doctor; good-bye. I see I must stick to that mutton chop in 
+the middle of the day." And then they drove off.
+
+"He'll make him his heir for certain," said Vickers to himself, as he 
+slowly returned to his own quarters.
+
+"You were returning from Allington, I suppose," said Crofts, "when you 
+came across Lord de Guest and the bull?"
+
+"Yes: I just walked over to say good-bye to them."
+
+"Did you find them all well?"
+
+"I only saw one. The other two were out"
+
+"Mrs Dale, was it?"
+
+"No; it was Lily."
+
+"Sitting alone, thinking of her fine London lover, of course. I suppose 
+we ought to look upon her as a very lucky girl. I have no doubt she 
+thinks herself so."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said Johnny.
+
+"I believe he's a very good young man," said the doctor; but I can't 
+say I quite liked his manner."
+
+"I should think not," said Johnny.
+"But then in all probability he did not like mine a bit better, or 
+perhaps yours either. And if so it's all fair."
+
+"I don't see that it's a bit fair. He's a snob," said Eames "and I 
+don't believe that I am." He had taken a glass or two of the earl's 
+"severe Falernian," and was disposed to a more generous confidence, and 
+perhaps also to stronger language, than might otherwise have been the 
+case.
+
+"No; I don't think he is a snob," said Crofts.
+
+"Had he been so, Mrs Dale would have perceived it."
+
+"You'll see," said Johnny, touching up the earl's horse with energy as 
+he spoke.
+
+"You'll see. A man who gives himself airs is a snob; and he gives 
+himself airs. And I don't believe he's a straightforward fellow. It was 
+a bad day for us all when he came among them at Allington."
+
+"I can't say that I see that."
+
+"I do. But mind, I haven't spoken a word of this to any one. And I 
+don't mean. What would be the good? I suppose she must marry him now?"
+
+"Of course she must."
+
+"And be wretched all her life. Oh-h-h-h!" and he muttered a deep groan.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is, Crofts. He is going to take the sweetest 
+girl out of this country that ever was in it, and he don't deserve her."
+
+"I don't think she can be compared to her sister," said Crofts slowly.
+
+"What; not Lily?" said Eames, as though the proposition made by the 
+doctor were one that could not hold water for a minute.
+
+"I have always thought that Bell was the more admired of the two," said 
+Crofts.
+
+"I'll tell you what," said Eames.
+
+"I have never yet set my eyes on any human creature whom I thought so 
+beautiful as Lily Dale. And now that beast is going to marry her! I'll 
+tell you what, Crofts; I'll manage to pick a quarrel with him yet." 
+Whereupon the doctor, seeing the nature of the complaint from which his 
+companion was suffering, said nothing more, either about Lily or about 
+Bell.
+
+Soon after this Eames was at his own door, and was received there by 
+his mother and sister with all the enthusiasm due to a hero.
+
+"He has saved the earl's life!" Mrs Eames had exclaimed to her daughter 
+on reading Lord de Guest's note.
+
+"Oh, goodness!" and she threw herself back upon the sofa almost in a 
+fainting condition.
+"Saved Lord de Guest's life!" said Mary.
+
+"Yes-under Providence," said Mrs Eames, as though that latter fact 
+added much to her son's good deed.
+
+"But how did he do it?"
+
+"By cool courage and good feeling-so his lordship says. But I wonder 
+how he really did do it?"
+
+"Whatever way it was, he's torn all his clothes and lost his hat," said 
+Mary.
+
+"I don't care a bit about that," said Mrs Eames.
+
+"I wonder whether the earl has any interest at the Income-tax. What a 
+thing it would be if he could get Johnny a step. It would be seventy 
+pounds a year at once. He was quite right to stay and dine when his 
+lordship asked him. And so Dr Crofts is there. It couldn't have been 
+anything in the doctoring way, I suppose."
+
+"No, I should say not; because of what he says of his trousers." And so 
+the two ladies were obliged to wait for John's return.
+
+"How did you do it, John?" said his mother, embracing him, as soon as 
+the door was opened.
+
+"How did you save the earl's life?" said Mary, who was standing behind 
+her mother.
+
+"Would his lordship really have been killed, if it had not been for 
+you?" asked Mrs Eames.
+
+"And was he very much hurt?" asked Mary.
+
+"Oh, bother," said Johnny, on whom the results of the day's work, 
+together with the earl's Falernian, had made some still remaining 
+impression. On ordinary occasions, Mrs Eames would have felt hurt at 
+being so answered by her son; but at the present moment she regarded 
+him as standing so high in general favour that she took no offence.
+
+"Oh, Johnny, do tell us. Of course we must be very anxious to know it 
+all."
+
+"There's nothing to tell, except that a bull ran at the earl, as I was 
+going by; so I went into the field and helped him, and then he made me 
+stay and dine with him."
+
+"But his lordship says that you saved his life," said Mary.
+
+"Under Providence," added their mother.
+
+"At any rate, he has given me a gold watch and chain," said Johnny, 
+drawing the present out of his pocket.
+
+"I wanted a watch badly. All the same, I didn't like taking it."
+
+"It would have been very wrong to refuse," said his mother.
+
+"And I am so glad you have been so fortunate. And look here, Johnny: 
+when a friend like that comes in your way, don't turn your back on 
+him." Then, at last, he thawed beneath their kindness, and told them 
+the whole of the story. I fear that, in recounting the earl's efforts 
+with the spud, he hardly spoke of his patron with all that deference 
+which would have been appropriate.
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+MR PLANTAGENET PALLISER
+
+
+A week passed over Mr Crosbie's head at Courcy Castle without much 
+inconvenience to him from the well-known fact of his matrimonial 
+engagement. Both George de Courcy and John de Courcy had in their 
+different ways charged him with his offence, and endeavoured to annoy 
+him by recurring to the subject; but he did not care much for the wit 
+or malice of George or John de Courcy. The countess had hardly alluded 
+to Lily Dale after those few words which she said on the first day of 
+his visit, and seemed perfectly willing to regard his doings at 
+Allington as the occupation natural to a young man in such a position. 
+He had been seduced down to a dull country house, and had, as a matter 
+of course, taken to such amusements as the place afforded. He had shot 
+the partridges and made love to the young lady, taking those little 
+recreations as compensation for the tedium of the squire's society. 
+Perhaps he had gone a little too far with the young lady; but then no 
+one knew better than the countess how difficult it is for a young man 
+to go far enough without going too far. It was not her business to make 
+herself a censor on a young man's conduct. The blame, no doubt, rested 
+quite as much with Miss Dale as with him. She was quite sorry that any 
+young lady should be disappointed; but if girls will be imprudent, and 
+set their caps at men above their mark, they must encounter 
+disappointment. With such language did Lady de Courcy speak of the 
+affair among her daughters, and her daughters altogether agreed with 
+her that it was out of the question that Mr Crosbie should marry Lily 
+Dale. From Alexandrina he encountered during the week none of that 
+raillery which he had expected. He had promised to explain to her 
+before he left the castle all the circumstances of his acquaintance 
+with Lily, and she at last showed herself determined to demand the 
+fulfilment of this promise; hut, previous to that, she said nothing to 
+manifest either offence or a lessened friendship. And I regret to say, 
+that in the intercourse which had taken place between them, that 
+friendship was by no means less tender that it had been in London.
+
+"And when will you tell me what you promised?" she asked him one 
+afternoon, speaking in a low voice, as they were standing together at 
+the window of the billiard-room, in that idle half-hour which always 
+occurs before the necessity for dinner preparation has come. She had 
+been riding and was still in her habit, and he had returned from 
+shooting. She knew that she looked more than ordinarily well in her 
+tall straight hat and riding gear, and was wont to hang about the 
+house, walking skilfully with her upheld drapery, during this period of 
+the day. It was dusk, but not dark, and there was no artificial light 
+in the billiard-room. There had been some pretence of knocking about 
+the balls, but it had been only pretence.
+
+"Even Diana," she had said, "could not have played billiards in a 
+habit. "Then she had put down her mace, and they had stood talking 
+together in the recess of a large bow-window.
+
+"And what did I promise?" said Crosbie.
+
+"You know well enough. Not that it is a matter of any special interest 
+to me; only, as you undertook to promise, of course my curiosity has 
+been raised."
+
+"If it be of no special interest" said Crosbie, "you will not object to 
+absolve me from my promise."
+
+"That is just like you," she said. "And how false you men always are. 
+You made up your mind to buy my silence on a distasteful subject by 
+pretending to offer me your future confidence; and now you tell me that 
+you do not mean to confide in me."
+
+"You begin by telling me that the matter is one that does not in the 
+least interest you."
+
+"That is so false again! You know very well what I meant. Do you 
+remember what you said to me the day you came? and am I not bound to 
+tell you after that, that your marriage with this or that young lady is 
+not matter of special interest to me? Still, as your friend-"
+
+"Well, as my friend!"
+
+"I shall be glad to know-But I am not going to beg for your confidence; 
+only I tell you this fairly, that no man is so mean in my eyes as a man 
+who fights under false colours."
+
+"And am I fighting under false colours?"
+
+"Yes, you are." And now, as she spoke, the Lady Alexandrina blushed 
+beneath her hat; and dull as was the remaining light of the. evening, 
+Crosbie, looking into her face, saw her heightened colour.
+
+"Yes, you are. A gentleman is fighting under false colours who comes 
+into a house like this, with a public rumour of his being engaged, and 
+then conducts himself as though nothing of the kind existed. Of course, 
+it is not anything to me specially; but that is fighting under false 
+colours. Now, sir, you may redeem the promise you made me when you 
+first came here-or you may let it alone."
+
+It must be acknowledged that the lady was fighting her battle with much 
+courage, and also with some skill. In three or four days Crosbie would 
+be gone; and this victory, if it were ever to be gained, must be gained 
+in those three or four days. And if there were to be no victory, then 
+it would be only fair that Crosbie should be punished for his 
+duplicity, and that she should be avenged as far as any revenge might 
+be in her power. Not that she meditated any deep revenge, or was 
+prepared to feel any strong anger. She liked Crosbie as well as she had 
+ever liked any man. She believed that he liked her also. She had no 
+conception of any very strong passion, but conceived that a married 
+life was more pleasant than one of single bliss. She had no doubt that 
+he had promised to make Lily Dale his wife, but so had he previously 
+promised her, or nearly so. It was a fair game, and she would win it if 
+she could. If she failed, she would show her anger; but she would show 
+it in a mild, weak manner-turning up her nose at Lily before Crosbie's 
+face, and saying little things against himself behind his back. Her 
+wrath would not carry her much beyond that.
+
+"Now, sir, you may redeem the promise you made me when you first came 
+here-or you may let it alone." So she spoke, and then she turned her 
+face away from him, gazing out into the darkness.
+
+"Alexandrina!" he said.
+
+"Well, sir? But you have no right to speak to me in that style. You 
+know that you have no right to call me by my name in that way!"
+
+"You mean that you insist upon your title?"
+
+"All ladies insist on what you call their title, from gentlemen, except 
+under the privilege of greater intimacy than you have the right to 
+claim. You did not call Miss Dale by her Christian name till you had 
+obtained permission, I suppose?"
+
+"You used to let me call you so."
+
+"Never! Once or twice, when you have done so, I have not forbidden it, 
+as I should have done. Very well, sir, as you have nothing to tell me, 
+I will leave you. I must confess that I did not think you were such a 
+coward." And she prepared to go, gathering up the skirts of her habit, 
+and taking up the whip which she had laid on the window-sill.
+
+"Stay a moment, Alexandrina," he said;
+
+"I am not happy, and you should not say words intended to make me more 
+miserable."
+
+"And why are you unhappy?"
+
+"Because I will tell you instantly, if I may believe that I am telling 
+you only, and not the whole household."
+
+"Of course I shall not talk of it to others. Do you think that I cannot 
+keep a secret?"
+
+"It is because I have promised to marry one woman, and because I love 
+another. I have told you everything now; and if you choose to say again 
+that I am fighting under false colours I will leave the castle before 
+you can see me again."
+
+"Mr Crosbie!"
+
+"Now you know it all, and may imagine whether or no I am very happy. I 
+think you said it was time to dress-suppose we go?" And without further 
+speech the two went off to their separate rooms.
+
+Crosbie, as soon as he was alone in his chamber, sat himself down in 
+his arm-chair, and went to work striving to make up his mind as to his 
+future conduct. It must not be supposed that the declaration just made 
+by him had been produced solely by his difficulty at the moment. The 
+atmosphere of Courcy Castle had been at work upon him for the last week 
+past. And every word that he had heard, and every word that he had 
+spoken, had tended to destroy all that was good and true within him, 
+and to foster all that was selfish and false. He had said to himself a 
+dozen times during that week that he never could be happy with Lily 
+Dale, and that he never could make her happy. And then he had used the 
+old sophistry in his endeavour to teach himself that it was right to do 
+that which he wished to do. Would it not be better for Lily that he 
+should desert her, than marry her against the dictates of his own 
+heart? And if he really did not love her, would he not be committing a 
+greater crime in marrying her than in deserting her? He confessed to 
+himself that he had been very wrong in allowing the outer world to get 
+such a hold upon him, that the love of a pure girl like Lily could not 
+suffice for his happiness. But there was the fact, and he found himself 
+unable to contend against it. If by any absolute self-sacrifice he 
+could secure Lily's well-being, he would not hesitate for a moment. But 
+would it be well to sacrifice her as well as himself?
+He had discussed the matter in this way within his own breast, till he 
+had almost taught himself to believe that it was his duty to break off 
+his engagement with Lily; and he had also almost taught himself to 
+believe that a marriage with a daughter of the house of Courcy, would 
+satisfy his ambition and assist him in his battle with the world. That 
+Lady Alexandrina would accept him he felt certain, if he could only 
+induce her to forgive him for his sin in becoming engaged to Miss Dale. 
+How very prone she would be to forgiveness in this matter, he had not 
+divined, having not as yet learned how easily such a woman can forgive 
+such a sin, if the ultimate triumph be accorded to herself.
+
+And there was another reason which operated much with Crosbie, urging 
+him on in his present mood and wishes, though it should have given an 
+exactly opposite impulse to his heart. He had hesitated as to marrying 
+Lily Dale at once, because of the smallness of his income. Now he had a 
+prospect of considerable increase to that income. One of the 
+commissioners at his office had been promoted to some greater 
+commissionership, and it was understood by everybody that the secretary 
+at the General Committee Office would be the new commissioner. As to 
+that there was no doubt. But then the question had arisen as to the 
+place of secretary. Crosbie had received two or three letters on the 
+subject, and it seemed that the likelihood of his obtaining this step 
+in the world was by no means slight. It would increase his official 
+income from seven hundred a year to twelve, and would place him 
+altogether above the world. His friend, the present secretary, had 
+written to him, assuring him that no other probable competitor was 
+spoken of as being in the field against him. If such good fortune 
+awaited him, would it not smooth any present difficulty which lay in 
+the way of his marriage with Lily Dale? But, alas, he had not looked at 
+the matter in that light! Might not the countess help him to this 
+preferment? And if his destiny intended for him the good things of this 
+world-secretaryships, commissionerships, chairmanships, and such like, 
+would it not be well that he should struggle on in his upward path by 
+such assistance as good connections might give him?
+
+He sat thinking over it all in his own room on that evening. He had 
+written twice to Lily since his arrival at Courcy Castle. His first 
+letter has been given. His second was written much in the same tone; 
+though Lily, as she had read it, had unconsciously felt somewhat less 
+satisfied than she had been with the first. Expressions of love were 
+not wanting, but they were vague and without heartiness. They savoured 
+of insincerity, though there was nothing in the words themselves to 
+convict them. Few liars can lie with the full roundness and 
+self-sufficiency of truth; and Crosbie, bad as he was, had not yet 
+become bad enough to reach that perfection. He had said nothing to Lily 
+of the hopes of promotion which had been opened to him; but he had 
+again spoken of his own worldliness-acknowledging that he received an 
+unsatisfying satisfaction from the pomps and vanities of Courcy Castle. 
+In fact he was paving the way for that which he had almost resolved 
+that he would do, now he had told Lady Alexandrina that he loved her; 
+and he was obliged to confess to himself that the die was cast.
+
+As he thought of all this, there was not wanting to him some of the 
+satisfaction of an escape. Soon after making that declaration of love 
+at Allington he had begun to feel that in making it he had cut his 
+throat. He had endeavoured to persuade himself that he could live 
+comfortably with his throat cut in that way; and as long as Lily was 
+with him he would believe that he could do so; but as soon as he was 
+again alone he would again accuse himself of suicide. This was his 
+frame of mind even while he was yet at Allington, and his ideas on the 
+subject had become stronger during his sojourn at Courcy. But the 
+self-immolation had not been completed, and he now began to think that 
+he could save himself. I need hardly say that this was not all triumph 
+to him. Even had there been no material difficulty as to his desertion 
+of Lily-no uncle, cousin, and mother whose anger he must face-no vision 
+of a pale face, more eloquent of wrong in its silence than even uncle, 
+cousin, and mother, with their indignant storm of words-he was not 
+altogether heartless. How should he tell all this to the girl who had 
+loved him so well; who had so loved him, that, as he himself felt, her 
+love would fashion all her future life either for weal or for woe?
+
+"I am unworthy of her, and will tell her so," he said to himself. How 
+many a false hound of a man has endeavoured to salve his own conscience 
+by such mock humility? But he acknowledged at this moment, as he rose 
+from his seat to dress himself, that the die was cast, and that it was 
+open to him now to say what he pleased to Lady Alexandrina.
+
+"Others have gone through the same fire before," he said to himself, as 
+he walked downstairs, "and have come out scatheless." And then he 
+recalled to himself the names of various men of high repute in the 
+world who were supposed to have committed in their younger days some 
+such little mistake as that into which he had been betrayed.
+
+In passing through the hail he overtook Lady Julia de Guest, and was in 
+time to open for her the door of the drawing-room. He then remembered 
+that she had come into the billiard-room at one side, and had gone out 
+at the other, while he was standing with Alexandrina at the window. He 
+had not, however, then thought much of Lady Julia; and as he now stood 
+for her to pass by him through the door-way, he made to her some 
+indifferent remark.
+
+But Lady Julia was on some subjects a stern woman, and not without a 
+certain amount of courage. In the last week she had seen what had been 
+going on, and had become more and more angry. Though she had disowned 
+any family connection with Lily Dale, nevertheless she now felt for her 
+sympathy and almost affection. Nearly every day she had repeated 
+stiffly to the countess some incident of Crosbie's courtship and 
+engagement to Miss Dale-speaking of it as with absolute knowledge, as a 
+thing settled at all points. This she had done to the countess alone, 
+in the presence of the countess and Alexandrina, and also before all 
+the female guests of the castle. But what she had said was received 
+simply with an incredulous smile.
+
+"Dear me! Lady Julia," the countess had replied at last,
+
+"I shall begin to think you are in love with Mr Crosbie yourself; you 
+harp so constantly on this affair of his. One would think that young 
+ladies in your part of the world must find it very difficult to get 
+husbands, seeing that the success of one young lady is trumpeted so 
+loudly." For the moment, Lady Julia was silenced; but it was not easy 
+to silence her altogether when she had a subject for speech near her 
+heart.
+
+Almost all the Courcy world were assembled in the drawing-room as she 
+now walked into the room with Crosbie at her heels. When she found 
+herself near the crowd she turned round, and addressed him in a voice 
+more audible than that generally required for purposes of drawing-room 
+conversation.
+
+"Mr Crosbie," she said, "have you heard lately from our dear friend, 
+Lily Dale?" And she looked him full in the face, in a manner more 
+significant, probably, than even she had intended it to be. There was, 
+at once, a general hush in the room, and all eyes were turned upon her 
+and upon him.
+
+Crosbie instantly made an effort to bear the attack gallantly, but he 
+felt that he could not quite command his colour, or prevent a sudden 
+drop of perspiration from showing itself upon his brow.
+
+"I had a letter from Allington yesterday," he said.
+
+"I suppose you have heard of your brother's encounter with the bull?
+
+"The bull!" said Lady Julia. And it was instantly manifest to all that 
+her attack had been foiled and her flank turned.
+
+"Good gracious! Lady Julia, how very odd you are!" said the countess.
+
+"But what about the bull?" asked the Honourable George.
+
+"It seems that the earl was knocked down in the middle of one of his 
+own fields."
+
+"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Alexandrina. And sundry other exclamations were 
+made by all the assembled ladies.
+
+"But he wasn't hurt," said Crosbie.
+
+"A young man named Eames seems to have fallen from the sky and carried 
+off the earl on his back."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" growled the other earl, as he heard of the 
+discomfiture of his brother peer.
+
+Lady Julia, who had received her own letters that day from Guestwick, 
+knew that nothing of importance had happened to her brother; but she 
+felt that she was foiled for that time.
+
+"I hope that there has not really been any accident," said Mr Gazebee, 
+with a voice of great solicitude.
+
+"My brother was quite well last night, thank you," said she. And then 
+the little groups again formed themselves, and Lady Julia was left 
+alone on the corner of a sofa.
+
+"Was that all an invention of yours, sir?" said Alexandrina to Crosbie.
+
+"Not quite. I did get a letter this morning from my friend Bernard 
+Dale-that old harridan's nephew; and Lord de Guest has been worried by 
+some of his animals. I wish I had told her that his stupid old neck had 
+been broken."
+
+"Fie, Mr Crosbie!"
+
+"What business has she to interfere with me?
+
+"But I mean to ask the same question that she asked, and you won't put 
+me off with a cock-and-bull story like that." But then, as she was 
+going to ask the question, dinner was announced.
+
+"And is it true that De Guest has been tossed by a bull?" said the 
+earl, as soon as the ladies were gone. He had spoken nothing during 
+dinner except what words he had muttered into the ear of Lady Dumbello. 
+It was seldom that conversation had many charms for him in his own 
+house; but there was a savour of pleasantry in the idea of Lord de 
+Guest having been tossed, by which even he was tickled.
+"Only knocked down, I believe," said Crosbie.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" growled the earl; then he filled his glass, and allowed 
+some one else to pass the bottle. Poor man! There was not much left to 
+him now in the world which did amuse him.
+
+"I don't see anything to laugh at," said Plantagenet Palliser, who was 
+sitting at the earl's right hand, opposite to Lord Dumbello.
+
+"Don't you?" said the earl.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"I'll be shot if I do. From all I hear De Guest is an uncommon good 
+farmer. And I don't see the joke of tossing a farmer merely because 
+he's a nobleman also. Do you?" and he turned round to Mr Gazebee, who 
+was sitting on the other side. The earl was an earl, and was also Mr 
+Gazebee's father-in-law. Mr Plantagenet Palliser was the heir to a 
+dukedom. Therefore, Mr Gazebee merely simpered, and did not answer the 
+question put to him. Mr Palliser said nothing more about it, nor did 
+the earl; and then the joke died away.
+
+Mr Plantagenet Palliser was the Duke of Omnium's heir-heir to that 
+nobleman's title and to his enormous wealth; and, therefore, was a man 
+of mark in the world. He sat in the House of Commons, of course. He was 
+about five-and-twenty years of age, and was, as yet, unmarried. He did 
+not hunt or shoot or keep a yacht, and had been heard to say that he 
+had never put a foot upon a race-course in his life. He dressed very 
+quietly, never changing the colour or form of his garments; and in 
+society was quiet, reserved, and very often silent. He was tall, 
+slight, and not ill-looking; but more than this cannot be said for his 
+personal appearance-except, indeed, this, that no one could mistake him 
+for other than a gentleman. With his uncle, the duke, he was on good 
+terms-that is to say, they had never quarrelled. A very liberal 
+allowance had been made to the nephew; but the two relatives had no 
+tastes in common, and did not often meet. Once a year Mr Palliser 
+visited the duke at his great country seat for two or three days, and 
+usually dined with him two or three times during the season in London. 
+Mr Palliser sat for a borough which was absolutely under the duke's 
+command; but had accepted his seat under the distinct understanding 
+that he was to take whatever part in politics might seem good to 
+himself. Under these well-understood arrangements, the duke and his 
+heir showed to the world quite a pattern of a happy family.
+
+"So different to the earl and Lord Porlock!" the people of West 
+Barsetshire used to say. For the estates, both of the duke and of the 
+earl, were situated in the western division of that county.
+
+Mr Palliser was chiefly known to the world as a rising politician. We 
+may say that he had everything at his command, in the way of pleasure, 
+that the world could offer him. He had wealth, position, power, and the 
+certainty of attaining the highest rank among, perhaps, the most 
+brilliant nobility of the world. He was courted by all who could get 
+near enough to court him. It is hardly too much to say that he might 
+have selected a bride from all that was most beautiful and best among 
+English women. If he would have bought race-horses, and have expended 
+thousands on the turf, he would have gratified his uncle by doing so. 
+He might have been the master of hounds, or the slaughterer of 
+hecatombs of birds. But to none of these things would he devote 
+himself. He had chosen to be a politician, and in that pursuit he 
+laboured with a zeal and perseverance which would have made his fortune 
+at any profession or in any trade. He was constant in committee-rooms 
+up to the very middle of August. He was rarely absent from any debate 
+of importance, and never from any important division. Though he seldom 
+spoke, he was always ready to speak if his purpose required it. No man 
+gave him credit for any great genius-few even considered that he could 
+become either an orator or a mighty statesman. But the world said that 
+he was a rising man, and old Nestor of the Cabinet looked on him as one 
+who would be able, at some far future day, to come among them as a 
+younger brother. Hitherto he had declined such inferior offices as had 
+been offered to him, biding his time carefully; and he was as yet tied 
+hand and neck to no party, though known to be liberal in all his 
+political tendencies. He was a great reader-not taking up a book here, 
+and another there, as chance brought books before him, but working 
+through an enormous course of books, getting up the great subject of 
+the world's history-filling himself full of facts-though perhaps not 
+destined to acquire the power of using those facts otherwise than as 
+precedents. He strove also diligently to become a linguist-not without 
+success, as far as a competent understanding of various languages. He 
+was a thin-minded, plodding, respectable man, willing to devote all his 
+youth to work, in order that in old age he might be allowed to sit 
+among the Councillors of the State.
+
+Hitherto his name had not been coupled by the world with that of any 
+woman whom he had been supposed to admire; but latterly it had been 
+observed that he had often been seen in the same room with Lady 
+Dumbello. It had hardly amounted to more than this; but when it was 
+remembered how undemonstrative were the two persons concerned-how 
+little disposed was either of them to any strong display of 
+feeling-even this was thought matter to be mentioned. He certainly 
+would speak to her from time to time almost with an air of interest; 
+and Lady Dumbello, when she saw that he was in the room, would be 
+observed to raise her head with some little show of life, and to look 
+round as though there were something there on which it might be worth 
+her while to allow her eyes to rest. When such innuendoes were abroad, 
+no one would probably make more of them than Lady de Courcy. Many, when 
+they heard that Mr Palliser was to be at the castle, had expressed 
+their surprise at her success in that quarter. Others, when they 
+learned that Lady Dumbello had consented to become he guest, had also 
+wondered greatly. But when it was ascertained that the two were to be 
+there together, her good-natured friends had acknowledged that she was 
+a very clever woman. To have either Mr Palliser or Lady Dumbello would 
+have been a feather in her cap; but to succeed in getting both, by 
+enabling each to know that the other would be there, was indeed a 
+triumph. As regards Lady Dumbello, however, the bargain was not fairly 
+carried out; for, after all, Mr Palliser came to Courcy Castle only for 
+two nights and a day, and during the whole of that day he was closeted 
+with sundry large blue-books. As for Lady de Courcy, she did not care 
+how he might be employed. Blue-books and Lady Dumbello were all the 
+same to her. Mr Palliser had been at Courcy Castle, and neither enemy 
+nor friend could deny the fact.
+
+This was his second evening; and as he had promised to meet his 
+constituents at Silverbridge at one p.m. on the following day, with the 
+view of explaining to them his own conduct and the political position 
+of the world in general; and as he was not to return from Silverbridge 
+to Courcy, Lady Dumbello, if she made any way at all, must take 
+advantage of the short gleam of sunshine which the present hour 
+afforded her. No one, however, could say that she showed any active 
+disposition to monopolise Mr Palliser's attention. When he sauntered 
+into the drawing-room she was sitting, alone, in a large, low chair, 
+made without arms, so as to admit the full expansion of her dress, but 
+hollowed and round at the back, so as to afford her the support that 
+was necessary to her. She had barely spoken three words since she had 
+left the dining-room, but the time had not passed heavily with her. 
+Lady Julia had again attacked the countess about Lily Dale and Mr 
+Crosbie, and Alexandrina, driven almost to rage, had stalked off to the 
+farther end of the room, not concealing her special concern in the 
+matter.
+
+"How I do wish they were married and done with," said the countess; 
+"and then we should hear no more about them."
+
+All of which Lady Dumbello heard and understood; and in all of it she 
+took a certain interest. She remembered such things, learning thereby 
+who was who, and regulating her own conduct by what she learned. She 
+was by no means idle at this or at other such times, going through, we 
+may say, a considerable amount of really hard work in her manner of 
+working. There she had sat speechless, unless when acknowledging by a 
+low word of assent some expression of flattery from those around her. 
+Then the door opened, and when Mr Palliser entered she raised her head, 
+and the faintest possible gleam of satisfaction might have been 
+discerned upon her features. But she made no attempt to speak to him; 
+and when, as he stood at the table, he took up a book and remained thus 
+standing for a quarter of an hour, she neither showed nor felt any 
+impatience. After that Lord Dumbello came in, and he stood at the table 
+without a book. Even then Lady Dumbello felt no impatience.
+
+Plantagenet Palliser skimmed through his little book, and probably 
+learned something. When he put it down he sipped a cup of tea, and 
+remarked to Lady de Courcy that he believed it was only twelve miles to 
+Silverbridge.
+
+"I wish it was a hundred and twelve," said the countess.
+
+"In that case I should be forced to start to-night," said Mr Palliser.
+
+"Then I wish it was a thousand and twelve," said Lady de Courcy.
+
+"In that case I should not have come at all," said Mr Palliser. He did 
+not mean to be uncivil, and had only stated a fact.
+
+"The young men are becoming absolute bears," said the countess to her 
+daughter Margaretta.
+
+He had been in the room nearly an hour when he did at last find himself 
+standing close to Lady Dumbello: close to her, and without any other 
+very near neighbour.
+
+"I should hardly have expected to find you here," he said.
+
+"Nor I you," she answered.
+
+"Though, for the matter of that, we are both near our own homes."
+
+"I am not near mine."
+
+"I meant Plumstead; your father's place."
+
+"Yes; that was my home once."
+
+"I wish I could show you my uncle's place. The castle is very fine, and 
+he has some good pictures."
+
+"So I have heard."
+
+"Do you stay here long?"
+
+"Oh, no. I go to Cheshire the day after tomorrow. Lord Dumbello is 
+always there when the hunting begins."
+
+"Ah, yes; of course. What a happy fellow he is; never any work to do! 
+His constituents never trouble him, I suppose?
+
+"I don't think they ever do, much."
+
+After that Mr Palliser sauntered away again, and Lady Dumbello passed 
+the rest of the evening in silence. It is to be hoped that they both 
+were rewarded by that ten minutes of sympathetic intercourse for the 
+inconvenience which they had suffered in coming to Courcy Castle.
+
+But that which seems so innocent to us had been looked on in a 
+different light by the stern moralists of that house.
+
+"By Jove!" said the Honourable George to his cousin, Mr Gresham,
+
+"I wonder how Dumbello likes it."
+
+"It seems to me that Dumbello takes it very easily."
+
+"There are some men who will take anything easily," said George, who, 
+since his own marriage, had learned to have a holy horror of such 
+wicked things.
+
+"She's beginning to come out a little," said Lady Clandidlem to Lady de 
+Courcy, when the two old women found themselves together over a fire in 
+some back sitting-room.
+
+"Still waters always run deep, you know."
+
+"I shouldn't at all wonder if she were to go off with him," said Lady 
+de Courcy.
+
+"He'll never be such a fool as that," said Lady Clandidlem.
+
+"I believe men will be fools enough for anything," said Lady de Courcy.
+
+"But, of course, if he did, it would come to nothing afterwards. I know 
+one who would not be sorry. If ever a man was tired of a woman, Lord 
+Dumbello is tired of her."
+
+But in this, as in almost everything else, the wicked old woman spoke 
+scandal. Lord Dumbello was still proud of his wife, and as fond of her 
+as a man can be of a woman whose fondness depends upon mere pride.
+
+There had not been much that was dangerous in the conversation between 
+Mr Palliser and Lady Dumbello, but I cannot say the same as to that 
+which was going on at the same moment between Crosbie and Lady 
+Alexandrina. She, as I have said, walked away in almost open dudgeon 
+when Lady Julia recommenced her attack about poor Lily, nor did she 
+return to the general circle during the evening. There were two huge 
+drawing-rooms at Courcy Castle, joined together by a narrow link of a 
+room, which might have been called a passage, ha it not been lighted by 
+two windows coming down to the floor, carpeted as were the 
+drawing-rooms, and warmed with a separate fireplace. Hither she betook 
+herself, and was son followed by her married sister Amelia.
+
+"That woman almost drives me mad," said Alexandrina, as they stood 
+together with their toes upon the fender.
+
+"But, my dear, you of all people should not allow yourself to be driven 
+mad on such a subject."
+
+"That's all very well, Amelia."
+
+"The question is this, my dear-what does Mr Crosbie mean to do?"
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+"If you don't know, it will be safer to suppose that he is going to 
+marry this girl; and in that case-"
+
+"Well, what in that case? Are you going to be another Lady Julia? What 
+do I care about the girl?"
+
+"I don't suppose you care much about the girl; and if you care as 
+little about Mr Crosbie, there's an end of it; only in that case, 
+Alexandrina-"
+
+"Well, what in that case?
+
+"You know I don't want to preach to you. Can't you tell me at once 
+whether you really like him? You and I have always been good friends." 
+And the married sister put her arm affectionately round the waist of 
+her who wished to be married.
+
+"I like him well enough."
+
+"And has he made any declaration to you?"
+
+"In a sort of a way he has. Hark, here he is!" And Crosbie, coming in 
+from the larger room, joined the sisters at the fireplace.
+
+"We were driven away by the clack of Lady Julia's tongue," said the 
+elder.
+
+"I never met such a woman," said Crosbie.
+
+"There cannot well be many like her," said Alexandrina. And after that 
+they all stood silent for a minute or two. Lady Amelia Gazebee was 
+considering whether or no she would do well to go and leave the two 
+together. If it were intended that Mr Crosbie should marry her sister, 
+it would certainly be well to give him an opportunity of expressing 
+such a wish on his own part. But if Alexandrina was simply making a 
+fool of herself, then it would be well for her to stay.
+
+"I suppose she would rather I should go," said the elder sister to 
+herself; and then, obeying the rule which should guide all our actions 
+from one to another, she went back and joined the crowd.
+
+"Will you come on into the other room?" said Crosbie.
+"I think we are very well here," Alexandrina replied.
+
+"But I wish to speak to you-particularly," said he.
+
+"And cannot you speak here?"
+
+"No. They will be passing backwards and forwards." Lady Alexandrina 
+said nothing further, but led the way into the other large room. That 
+also was lighted, and there were in it four or live persons. Lady 
+Rosina was reading a work on the millennium, with a light to herself in 
+one corner. Her brother John was asleep in an arm-chair, and a young 
+gentleman and lady were playing chess. There was, however, ample room 
+for Crosbie and Alexandrina to take up a position apart.
+
+"And now, Mr Crosbie, what have you got to say to me? But, first, I 
+mean to repeat Lady Julia's question, as I told you that I should 
+do.-When did you hear last from Miss Dale?"
+
+"It is cruel in you to ask me such a question, after what. I have 
+already told you. You know that I have given to Miss Dale a promise of 
+marriage."
+
+"Very well, sir. I don't see why you should bring me in here to tell me 
+anything that is so publicly known as that. With such a herald as Lady 
+Julia it was quite unnecessary."
+
+"If you can only answer me in that tone I will make an end of it at 
+once. When I told you of my engagement, I told you also that another 
+woman possessed my heart. Am I wrong to suppose that you knew to whom I 
+alluded?"
+
+"Indeed, I did not, Mr Crosbie. I am no conjuror, and I have not 
+scrutinised you so closely as your friend Lady Julia."
+
+"It is you that I love. I am sure I need hardly say so now."
+
+"Hardly, indeed-considering that you are engaged to Miss Dale."
+
+"As to that I have, of course, to own that I have behaved 
+foolishly-worse than foolishly, if you choose to say so. You cannot 
+condemn me more absolutely than I condemn myself. But I have made up my 
+mind as to one thing. I will not marry where I do not love." Oh, if 
+Lily could have heard him as he then spoke!
+
+"It would be impossible for me to speak in terms too high of Miss Dale; 
+but I am quite sure that I could not make her happy as her husband."
+
+"Why did you not think of that before you asked her?" said Alexandrina. 
+But there was very little of condemnation in her tone.
+
+"I ought to have done so; but it is hardly for you to blame me with 
+severity. Had you, when we were last together in London-had you been 
+less-"
+
+"Less what?"
+
+"Less defiant," said Crosbie, "all this might perhaps have been 
+avoided."
+Lady Alexandrina could not remember that she had been defiant; but, 
+however, she let that pass.
+
+"Oh, yes; of course it was my fault."
+
+"I went down there to Allington with my heart ill at ease, and now I 
+have fallen into this trouble. I tell you all as it has happened. It is 
+impossible that I should marry Miss Dale. It would be wicked in me to 
+do so, seeing that my heart belongs altogether to another. I have told 
+you who is that other; and now may I hope for an answer?"
+
+"An answer to what?"
+
+"Alexandrina, will you be my wife?"
+
+If it had been her object to bring him to a point-blank declaration and 
+proposition of marriage, she had certainly achieved her object now. And 
+she had that trust in her own power of management and in her mother's, 
+that she did not fear that in accepting him she would incur the risk of 
+being served as he was serving Lily Dale. She knew her own position and 
+his too well for that. If she accepted him she would in due course of 
+time become his wife-let Miss Dale and all her friends say what they 
+might to the contrary. As to that head she had no fear. But 
+nevertheless she did not accept him at once. Though she wished for the 
+prize, her woman's nature hindered her from taking it when it was 
+offered to her.
+
+"How long is it, Mr Crosbie," she said, "since you put the same 
+question to Miss Dale?"
+
+"I have told you everything, Alexandrina-as I promised that I would do. 
+If you intend to punish me for doing so-"
+
+"And I might ask another question. How long will it he before you put 
+the same question to some other girl?"
+
+He turned round as though to walk away from her in anger but when he 
+had gone half the distance to the door he returned.
+
+"By heaven!" he said, and he spoke somewhat roughly, too, "I'll have an 
+answer. You at any rate have nothing with which to reproach me. All 
+that I have done wrong, I have done through you, or on your behalf. You 
+have heard my proposal. Do you intend to accept it?"
+
+"I declare you startle me. If you demanded my money or my life, you 
+could not be more imperious."
+
+"Certainly not more resolute in my determination."
+
+"And if I decline the honour?"
+
+"I shall think you the most fickle of your sex."
+
+"And if I were to accept it?"
+
+"I would swear that you were the best, the dearest, and the sweetest of 
+women."
+
+"I would rather have your good opinion than your bad, certainly," said 
+Lady Alexandrina. And then it was understood by both of them that that 
+affair was settled. Whenever she was called on in future to speak of 
+Lily, she always called her, "that poor Miss Dale;" but she never again 
+spoke a word of reproach to her future lord about that little adventure.
+
+"I shall tell mamma, to-night," she said to him, as she bade him 
+good-night in some sequestered nook to which they had betaken 
+themselves. Lady Julia's eye was again on them as they came out from 
+the sequestered nook, but Alexandrina no longer cared for Lady Julia.
+
+"George, I cannot quite understand about that Mr Palliser. Isn't he to 
+be a duke, and oughtn't he to be a lord now?" This question was asked 
+by Mrs George de Courcy of her husband, when they found themselves 
+together in the seclusion of the nuptial chamber.
+
+"Yes; he'll be Duke of Omnium when the old fellow dies. I think he's 
+one of the slowest fellows I ever came across. He'll take deuced good 
+care of the property, though."
+
+"But, George, do explain it to me. It is so stupid not to understand, 
+and I am afraid of opening my mouth for fear of blundering."
+
+"Then keep your mouth shut, my dear. You'll learn all those sort of 
+things in time, and nobody notices it if you don't say anything."
+
+"Yes, but, George-I don't like to sit silent all the night. I'd sooner 
+be up here with a novel if I can't speak about anything."
+
+"Look at Lady Dumbello. She doesn't want to be always talking."
+
+"Lady Dumbello is very different from me. But do tell me, who is Mr 
+Palliser?
+
+"He's the duke's nephew. If he were the duke's son, he would be the 
+Marquis of Silverbridge."
+
+"And will he be plain Mister till his uncle dies?"
+
+"Yes, a very plain Mister."
+
+"What a pity for him. But, George-if I have a baby, and if he should be 
+a boy, and if-"
+
+"Oh, nonsense; it will be time enough to talk of that when he comes. 
+I'm going to sleep."
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A MOTHER-IN-LAW AND A FATHER-IN-LAW
+
+
+On the following morning Mr Plantagenet Palliser was off upon his 
+political mission before breakfast-either that, or else some private 
+comfort was afforded to him in guise of solitary rolls and coffee. The 
+public breakfast at Courcy Castle was going on at eleven o'clock, and 
+at that hour Mr Palliser was already closeted with the Mayor of 
+Silverbridge.
+
+"I must get off by the train," said Mr Palliser.
+
+"Who is there to speak after me?
+
+"Well, I shall say a few words; and Growdy-he'll expect them to listen 
+to him. Growdy has always stood very firm by his grace, Mr Palliser."
+
+"Mind we are in the room sharp at one. And you can have a fly, for me 
+to get away to the station, ready in the yard. I won't go a moment 
+before I can help. I shall be just an hour and a half myself. No, thank 
+you, I never take any wine in the morning." And I may here state that 
+Mr Palliser did get away by the 3.45 train, leaving Mr Growdy still 
+talking on the platform. Constituents must be treated with. respect; 
+but time has become so scarce nowadays that that respect has to be 
+meted out by the quarter of an hour with parsimonious care.
+
+In the meantime there was more leisure at Courcy Caste. Neither the 
+countess nor Lady Alexandrina came down to breakfast, but their absence 
+gave rise to no special remark. Breakfast at the castle was a morning 
+meal at which people showed themselves, or did not show themselves, as 
+it pleased them. Lady Julia was there looking very glum, and Crosbie 
+was sitting next to his future sister-in-law Margaretta, who already 
+had placed herself on terms of close affection with him. As he finished 
+his tea she whispered into his ear,
+
+"Mr Crosbie, if you could spare half an hour, mamma would so like to 
+see you in her own room." Crosbie declared that he would be delighted 
+to wait upon her, and did in truth feel some gratitude in being 
+welcomed as a son-in-law into the house. And yet he felt also that he 
+was being caught, and that in ascending into the private domains of the 
+countess he would be setting the seal upon his own captivity.
+
+Nevertheless, he went with a smiling face and a light steps Lady 
+Margaretta ushering him the way.
+
+"Mamma," said she, "I have brought Mr Crosbie up to you. I did not know 
+that you were here, Alexandrina, or I should have warned him."
+
+The countess and her youngest daughter had been breakfasting together 
+in the elder lady's sitting-room, and were now seated in a very 
+graceful and well-arranged deshabille. The tea-cups out of which they 
+had been drinking were made of some elegant porcelain, the teapot and 
+cream-jug were of chased silver and as delicate in their sway. The 
+remnant of food consisted of morsels of French roll which had not even 
+been allowed to crumble themselves in a disorderly fashion, and of 
+infinitesimal pats of butter. If the morning meal of the two ladies had 
+been as unsubstantial as the appearance of the fragments indicated, it 
+must be presumed that they intended to lunch early. The countess 
+herself was arrayed in an elaborate morning wrapper of figured silk, 
+but the simple Alexandrina wore a plain white muslin peignoir, fastened 
+with pink ribbon. Her hair, which she usually carried in long rolls, 
+now hung loose over her shoulders, and certainly added something to her 
+stock of female charms. The countess got up as Crosbie entered and 
+greeted him with an open hand; but Alexandrina kept her seat, and 
+merely nodded at him a little welcome.
+
+"I must run down again," said Margaretta, "or I shall have left Amelia 
+with all the cares of the house upon her" .
+
+"Alexandrina has told me all about it," said the countess, with her 
+sweetest smile, "and I have given her my approval. I really do think 
+you will suit each other very well."
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said Crosbie.
+
+"I'm sure at any rate of this-that she will suit me very well."
+
+"Yes; I think she will. She is a good sensible girl."
+
+"Psha, mamma; pray don't go on in that Goody Twoshoes sort of way."
+
+"So you are, my dear. If you were not it would not be well for you to 
+do as you are going to do. If you were giddy and harum-scarum, and 
+devoted to rank and wealth and that sort of thing, it would not be well 
+for you to marry a commoner without fortune. I'm sure Mr Crosbie will 
+excuse me for saying so much as that."
+
+"Of course I know," said Crosbie,
+
+"that I had no right to look so high."
+
+"Well; we'll say nothing more about it," said the countess.
+
+"Pray don't," said Alexandrina.
+
+"It sounds so like a sermon."
+
+"Sit down, Mr Crosbie," said the countess, "and let us have a little 
+conversation. She shall sit by you, if you like it. Nonsense, 
+Alexandrina-if he asks it!"
+
+"Don't, mamma-I mean to remain where I am."
+
+"Very well, my dear-then remain where you are. She is a wilful girl, Mr 
+Crosbie; as you will say when you hear that she has told me all that 
+you told her last night." Upon hearing this, he changed colour a 
+little, but said nothing.
+
+"She has told me," continued the countess, "about that young lady at 
+Allington. Upon my word, I'm afraid you have been very naughty."
+
+"I have been foolish, Lady de Courcy."
+
+"Of course; I did not mean anything worse than that. Yes, you have been 
+foolish-amusing yourself in a thoughtless way, you know, and, perhaps, 
+a little piqued because a certain lady was not to be won so easily as 
+your Royal Highness wished. Well, now, all that must be settled, you 
+know, as quickly as possible. I don't want to ask any indiscreet 
+questions; but if the young lady has really been left with any idea 
+that you meant anything, don't you think you should undeceive her at 
+once?"
+
+"Of course he will, mamma."
+
+"Of course you will; and it will be a great comfort to Alexandrina to 
+know that the matter is arranged. You hear what Lady Julia is saying 
+almost every hour of her life. Now, of course, Alexandrina does not 
+care what an old maid like Lady Julia may say; but it will be better 
+for all parties that the rumour should be put a stop to.
+
+"If the earl were to hear it, he might, you know-" And the countess 
+shook her head, thinking that she could thus best indicate what the 
+earl might do, if he were to take it into his head to do anything.
+
+Crosbie could not bring himself to hold any very confidential 
+intercourse with the countess about Lily; but he gave a muttered 
+assurance that he should, as a matter of course, make known the truth 
+to Miss Dale with as little delay as possible. He could not say exactly 
+when he would write, nor whether he would write to her or to her 
+mother; but the thing should be done immediately on his return to town.
+
+"If it will make the matter easier, I will write to Mrs Dale," said the 
+countess. But to this scheme Mr Crosbie objected very strongly.
+
+And then a few words were said about the earl. "I will tell him this 
+afternoon," said the countess;
+"and then you can see him tomorrow morning. I don't suppose he will say 
+very much, you know; and perhaps he may think-you won't mind my saying 
+it, I'm sure-that Alexandrina might have done better. But I don't 
+believe that he'll raise any strong objection. There will be something 
+about settlements, and that sort of thing, of course." Then the 
+countess went away, and Alexandrina was left with her lover for half an 
+hour. When the half-hour was over, he felt that he would have given all 
+that he had in the world to have back the last four-and-twenty hours of 
+his existence. But he had no hope. To jilt Lily Dale would, no doubt, 
+be within his power, but he knew that he could not jilt Lady 
+Alexandrina de Courcy.
+
+On the next morning at twelve o'clock he had his interview with the 
+father, and a very unpleasant interview it was. He was ushered into the 
+earl's room, and found the great peer standing on the rug, with his 
+back to the fire, and his hands in his breeches pockets.
+
+"So you mean to marry my daughter?" said he. "I'm not very well, as you 
+see; I seldom am."
+
+These last words were spoken in answer to Crosbie's greeting. Crosbie 
+had held out his hand to the earl, and had carried his point so far 
+that the earl had been forced to take one of his own out of his pocket, 
+and give it to his proposed son-in-law.
+
+"If your lordship has no objection. I have, at any rate, her permission 
+to ask for yours."
+
+"I believe you have not any fortune, have you? She's got none; of 
+course you know that?"
+"I have a few thousand pounds, and I believe she has as much."
+
+"About as much as will buy bread to keep the two of you from starving. 
+It's nothing to me. You can marry her if you like; only, look here, 
+I'll have no nonsense. I've had an old woman in with me this 
+morning-one of those that are here in the house-telling me some story 
+about some other girl that you have made a fool of. It's nothing to me 
+how much of that sort of thing you may have done, so that you do none 
+of it here. But-if you play any prank of that kind with me, you'll find 
+that you've made a mistake."
+
+Crosbie hardly made any answer to this, but got himself out of the room 
+as quickly as he could.
+
+"You'd better talk to Gazebee about the trifle of money you've got," 
+said the earl. Then he dismissed the subject from his mind, and no 
+doubt imagined that he had fully done his duty by his daughter.
+
+On the day after this, Crosbie was to go. On the last afternoon, 
+shortly before dinner, he was waylaid by Lady Julia, who had passed the 
+day in preparing traps to catch him.
+
+"Mr Crosbie," she said, "let me have one word with you. Is this true?"
+
+"Lady Julia," he said, "I really do not know why you should inquire 
+into my private affairs."
+
+"Yes, sir, you do know. you know very well. That poor young lady who 
+has no father and no brother, is my neighbour, and her friends are my 
+friends. She is a friend of my own, and being an old woman, I have a 
+right to speak for her. If this is true, Mr Crosbie, you are treating 
+her like a villain."
+
+"Lady Julia, I really must decline to discuss the matter with you."
+
+"I'll tell everybody what a villain you are; I will, indeed-a villain 
+and a poor weak silly fool. She was too good for you; that's what she 
+was." Crosbie, as Lady Julia was addressing to him the last words, 
+hurried upstairs away from her, but her ladyship, standing on a 
+landing-place, spoke up loudly, so that no word should be lost on her 
+retreating enemy.
+
+"We positively must get rid of that woman," the countess, who heard it 
+all, said to Margaretta. "She is disturbing the house and disgracing 
+herself every day."
+
+"She went to papa this morning, mamma."
+
+"She did not get much by that move," said the countess.
+
+On the following morning Crosbie returned to town, but just before he 
+left the castle he received a third letter from Lily Dale.
+
+"I have been rather disappointed at not hearing this morning," said 
+Lily, "for I thought the postman would have brought: me a letter. But I 
+know you'll be a better boy when you get back to London, and I won't 
+scold you. Scold you, indeed! No; I'll never scold you, not though I 
+shouldn't hear for a month."
+
+He would have given all that he had in the world, three times told, if 
+he could have blotted out that visit to Courcy Castle from the past 
+facts of his existence.
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+ADOLPHUS CROSBIE SPENDS AN EVENING AT HIS CLUB
+
+
+Crosbie, as he was being driven from the castle to the nearest station, 
+in a dog-cart hired from the hotel, could not keep himself from 
+thinking of that other morning, not yet a fortnight past, on which he 
+had left Allington; and as he thought of it he knew that he was a 
+villain. On this morning Alexandrina had not come out from the house to 
+watch his departure, and catch the last glance of his receding figure. 
+As he had not started very early she had sat with him at the breakfast 
+table; but others also had sat there, and when he got up to go, she did 
+no more than smile softly and give him her hand. It had been already 
+settled that he was to spend his Christmas at Courcy; as it had been 
+also settled that he was to spend it at Allington. Lady Amelia was, of 
+all the family, the most affectionate to him, and perhaps of them all 
+she was the one whose affection was worth the most. She was not a woman 
+endowed with a very high mind or with very noble feelings. She had 
+begun life trusting to the nobility of her blood for everything, and 
+declaring somewhat loudly among her friends that her father's rank and 
+her mother's birth imposed on her the duty of standing closely by her 
+own order. Nevertheless, at the age of thirty-three she had married her 
+father's man of business, under circumstances which were not altogether 
+creditable to her. But she had done her duty in her new sphere of life 
+with some constancy and a fixed purpose; and now that her sister was 
+going to marry, as she had done, a man much below herself in social 
+standing, she was prepared to do her duty as a sister and a 
+sister-in-law.
+
+"We shall be up in town in November, and of course you'll come to us at 
+once. Albert Villa, you know, in Hamilton Terrace, St. John's Wood. We 
+dine at seven, and on Sundays at two; and you'll always find a place. 
+Mind you come to us, and make yourself quite at home. I do so hope you 
+and Mortimer will get on well together."
+
+"I'm sure we shall," said Crosbie. But he had had higher hopes in 
+marrying into this noble family than that of becoming intimate with 
+Mortimer Gazebee. What those hopes were he could hardly define to 
+himself now that he had brought himself so near to the fruition of 
+them. Lady de Courcy had certainly promised to write to her first 
+cousin who was Under-Secretary of State for India, with reference to 
+that secretaryship at the General Committee Office; but Crosbie, when 
+he came to weigh in his mind what good might result to him from this, 
+was disposed to think that his chance of obtaining the promotion would 
+be quite as good without the interest of the Under-Secretary of State 
+for India as with it. Now that he belonged, as we may say, to this 
+noble family, he could hardly discern what were the advantages which he 
+had expected from this alliance. He had said to himself that it would 
+be much to have a countess for a mother-in-law; but now, even already, 
+although the possession to which he had looked was not yet garnered, he 
+was beginning to tell himself that the thing was not worth possessing.
+
+As he sat in the train, with a newspaper in his hand, he went on 
+acknowledging to himself that he was a villain. Lady Julia had spoken 
+the truth to him on the stairs at Courcy, and so he confessed over and 
+over again. But he was chiefly angry with himself for this-that he had 
+been a villain without gaining anything by his villany; that he had 
+been a villain, and was to lose so much by his villany. He made 
+comparison between Lily and Alexandrina, and owned to himself, over and 
+over again, that Lily would make the best wife that a man could take to 
+his boom. As to Alexandrina, he knew the thinness of her character. She 
+would stick by him, no doubt; and in a circuitous, discontented, 
+unhappy way, would probably be true to her duties as a wife and mother. 
+She would be nearly such another as Lady Amelia Gazebee. But was that a 
+prize sufficiently rich to make him contented with his own prowess and 
+skill in winning it? And was that a prize sufficiently rich to justify 
+him to himself for his terrible villany? Lily Dale he had loved; and he 
+now declared to himself that he could have continued to love her 
+through his whole life. But what was there for any man to love in 
+Alexandrina de Courcy?
+
+While resolving, during his first four or five days at the castle, that 
+he would throw Lily Dale overboard, he had contrived to quiet his 
+conscience by inward allusions to sundry heroes of romance. He had 
+thought of Lothario, Don Juan, and of Lovelace; and had told himself 
+that the world had ever been full of such heroes. And the world, too, 
+had treated such heroes well; not punishing them at all as villains, 
+but caressing them rather, and calling them curled darlings. Why should 
+not he be a curled darling as well as another? Ladies had ever been 
+fond of the Don Juan character, and Don Juan had generally been popular 
+with men also. And then he named to himself a dozen modern 
+Lotharios-men who were holding their heads well above water, although 
+it was known that they had played this lady false, and brought that 
+other one to death's door, or perhaps even to death itself. War and 
+love were alike, and the world was prepared to forgive any guile to 
+militants in either camp.
+
+But now that he had done the deed he found himself forced to look at it 
+from quite another point of view. Suddenly that character of Lothario 
+showed itself to him in a different light, and one in which it did not 
+please him to look at it as belonging to himself. He began to feel that 
+it would be almost impossible for him to write that letter to Lily, 
+which it was absolutely necessary that he should write. He was in a 
+position in which his mind would almost turn itself to thoughts of 
+self-destruction as the only means of escape. A fortnight ago he was a 
+happy man, having everything before him that a man ought to want; and 
+now-now that he was the accepted son-in-law of an earl, and the 
+confident expectant of high promotion-he was the most miserable, 
+degraded wretch in the world!
+
+He changed his clothes at his lodgings in Mount Street and went down to 
+his club to dinner. He could, at any rate, do nothing that night. His 
+letter to Allington must, no doubt, be written at once; but, as he 
+could not send it before the next night's post, he was not forced to 
+set to work upon it that evening. As he walked along Piccadilly on his 
+way to St. James's Square, it occurred to him that it might be well to 
+write a short line to Lily, telling her nothing of the truth-a note 
+written as though his engagement with her was still unbroken, but yet 
+written with care, saying nothing about that engagement, so as to give 
+him a little time. Then he thought that he would telegraph to Bernard 
+and tell everything to him. Bernard would, of course, be prepared to 
+avenge his cousin in some way, but for such vengeance Crosbie felt that 
+he should care little. Lady Julia had told him that Lily was without 
+father or brother, thereby accusing him of the basest cowardice.
+
+"I wish she had a dozen brothers," he said to himself. But he hardly 
+knew why he expressed such a wish.
+
+He returned to London on the last day of October, and he found the 
+streets at the West End nearly deserted. He thought, therefore, that he 
+should be quite alone at his club, but as he entered the dinner room he 
+saw one of his oldest and most intimate friends standing before the 
+fire. Fowler Pratt was the man who had first brought him into 
+Sebright's, and had given him almost his earliest start on his 
+successful career in life. Since that time he and his friend Fowler 
+Pratt had lived in close communion, though Pratt had always held a 
+certain ascendancy in their friendship. He was in age a few years 
+senior to Crosbie, and was in truth a man of better parts. But he was 
+less ambitious, less desirous of shining in the world, and much less 
+popular with men in general. He was possessed of a moderate private 
+fortune on which he lived in a quiet, modest manner, and was unmarried, 
+not likely to marry, inoffensive, useless, and prudent. For the first 
+few years of Crosbie's life in London he had lived very much with his 
+friend Pratt, and had been accustomed to depend much on his friend's 
+counsel; but latterly, since he had himself become somewhat noticeable, 
+he had found more pleasure in the society of such men as Dale, who were 
+not his superiors either in age or wisdom. But there had been no 
+coolness between him and Pratt, and now they met with perfect 
+cordiality.
+
+"I thought you were down in Barsetshire," said Pratt.
+
+"And I thought you were in Switzerland."
+
+"I have been in Switzerland," said Pratt.
+
+"And I have been in Barsetshire," said Crosbie. Then they ordered their 
+dinner together.
+
+"And so you're going to be married?" said Pratt, when the waiter had 
+carried away the cheese.
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+"Well, but you are? Never mind who told me, if I was told the truth."
+
+"But if it be not true?"
+
+"I have heard it for the last month," said Pratt, "and it has been 
+spoken of as a thing certain; and it is true; is it not?
+
+"I believe it is," said Crosbie, slowly.
+
+"Why, what on earth is the matter with you, that you speak of it in 
+that way? Am I to congratulate you, or am I not? The lady, I'm told, is 
+a cousin of Dale's."
+
+Crosbie had turned his chair from the table round to the fire, and said 
+nothing in answer to this. He sat with his glass of sherry in his hand, 
+looking at the coals, and thinking whether it would not be well that he 
+should tell the whole story to Pratt. No one could give him better 
+advice; and no one, as far as he knew his friend, would be less shocked 
+at the telling of such a story. Pratt had no romance about women, and 
+had never pretended to very high sentiments.
+
+"Come up into the smoking-room and I'll tell you all about it," said 
+Crosbie. So they went off together, and, as the smoking-room was 
+untenanted, Crosbie was able to tell his story.
+
+He found it very hard to tell-much harder than he had beforehand 
+fancied.
+
+"I have got into terrible trouble," he began by saying. Then he told 
+how he had fallen suddenly in love with Lily, how, he had been rash and 
+imprudent, how nice she was-" infinitely too good for such a man as I 
+am," he said-how she had accepted him, and then how he had repented.
+
+"I should have told you beforehand," he then said, "that I was already 
+half engaged to Lady Alexandrina de Courcy." The reader, however, will 
+understand that this half engagement was a fiction.
+
+"And now you mean that you are altogether engaged to her?"
+
+"Exactly so."
+
+"And that Miss Dale must be told that, on second thoughts, you have 
+changed your mind?"
+
+"I know that I have behaved very badly," said Crosbie.
+
+"Indeed you have," said his friend.
+
+"It is one of those troubles in which a man finds himself involved 
+almost before he knows where he is."
+
+"Well; I can't look at it exactly in that light. A man may amuse 
+himself with a girl, and I can understand his disappointing her and not 
+offering to marry her-though even that sort of thing isn't much to my 
+taste. But, by George, to make an offer of marriage to such a girl as 
+that in September, to live for a month in her family as her affianced 
+husband, and then coolly go away to another house in October, and make 
+an offer to another girl of higher rank-"
+
+"You know very well that that has had nothing to do with it."
+
+"It looks very like it. And how are you going to communicate these 
+tidings to Miss Dale?"
+
+"I don't know," said Crosbie, who was beginning to be very sore.
+
+"And you have quite made up your mind that you'll stick to the earl's 
+daughter?
+
+The idea of jilting Alexandrina instead of Lily had never as yet 
+presented itself to Crosbie, and now, as he thought of it, he could not 
+perceive that it was feasible.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I shall marry Lady Alexandrina-that is, if I do not 
+cut the whole concern, and my own throat into the bargain."
+
+"If I were in your shoes I think I should cut the whole concern. I 
+could not stand it. What do you mean to say to Miss Dale's uncle?
+
+"I don't care a- for Miss Dale's uncle," said, Crosbie.
+
+"If he were to walk in at that door this moment, I would tell him the 
+whole story, without-"
+
+As he was yet speaking, one of the club servants opened the door of the 
+smoking-room, and seeing Crosbie seated in a lounging-chair near the 
+fire, went up to him with a gentleman's card. Crosbie took the card and 
+read the name.
+
+"Mr Dale, Allington."
+
+"The gentleman is in the waiting-room," said the servant.
+
+Crosbie for the moment was struck dumb. He had declared that very 
+moment that he should feel no personal disinclination to meet Mr Dale, 
+and now that gentleman was within the walls of the club, waiting to see 
+him!
+
+"Who's that?" asked Pratt. And then Crosbie handed him the card.
+
+"Whew-w-w-hew," whistled Pratt.
+
+"Did you tell the gentleman I was here?" asked Crosbie.
+
+"I said I thought you were upstairs, sir."
+
+"That will do," said Pratt.
+
+"The gentleman will no doubt wait for a minute." And then the servant 
+went out of the room.
+
+"Now, Crosbie, you must make up your mind. By one of these women and 
+all her friends you will ever be regarded as a rascal, and they of 
+course will look out to punish you with such punishment as may come to 
+their hands. You must now choose which shall be the sufferer."
+
+The man was a coward at heart. The reflection that he might, even now, 
+at this moment, meet the old squire on pleasant terms-or at any rate 
+not on terms of defiance, pleaded more strongly in Lily's favour than 
+had any other argument since Crosbie had first made up his mind to 
+abandon her. He did not fear personal ill-usage-he was not afraid lest 
+he should be kicked or beaten; but he did not dare to face the just 
+anger of the angry man.
+
+"If I were you," said Pratt,
+
+"I would not go down to that man at the present moment for a trifle."
+
+"But what can I do?"
+
+"Shirk away out of the club. Only if you do that it seems to me that 
+you'll have to go on shirking for the rest of your life."
+
+"Pratt, I must say that I expected something more like friendship from 
+you."
+
+"What can I do for you? There are positions in which it is impossible 
+to help a man. I tell you plainly that you have behaved very badly. I 
+do not see that I can help you."
+
+"Would you see him?"
+
+"Certainly not, if I am to be expected to take your part."
+
+"Take any part you like-only tell him the truth."
+
+"And what is the truth?
+
+"I was part engaged to that other girl before; and then, when I came to 
+think of it, I knew that I was not fit to marry Miss Dale. I know I 
+have behaved badly; but, Pratt, thousands have done the same thing 
+before."
+
+"I can only say that I have not been so unfortunate as to reckon any of 
+those thousands among my friends."
+
+"You mean to tell me, then, that you are going to turn your back on 
+me?" said Crosbie.
+
+"I haven't said anything of the kind. I certainly won't undertake to 
+defend you, for I don't see that your conduct admits of defence. I will 
+see this gentleman if you wish it, and tell him anything that you 
+desire me to tell him."
+
+At this moment the servant returned with a note for Crosbie. Mr Dale 
+had called for paper and envelope, and sent up to him the following 
+missive-" Do you intend to come down to me? I know that you are in the 
+house." '
+
+"For heaven's sake go to him," said Crosbie.
+
+"He is well aware that I was deceived about his niece-that I thought he 
+was to give her some fortune. He knows all about that, and that when I 
+learned from him that she was to have nothing-"
+
+"Upon my word, Crosbie, I wish you could find another messenger."
+
+"Ah! you do not understand," said Crosbie in his agony.
+
+"You think that I am inventing this plea about her fortune now. It 
+isn't so. He will understand. 'We have talked all this over before, and 
+he knew how terribly I was disappointed. Shall I wait for you here, or 
+will you come to my lodgings? Or I will go down to the Beaufort, and 
+will wait for you there." And it was finally arranged that he should 
+get himself out of this club and wait at the other for Pratt's report 
+of the interview.
+
+"Do you go down first," said Crosbie.
+
+"Yes: I had better," said Pratt.
+
+"Otherwise you may be seen. Mr Dale would have his eye upon you, and 
+there would be a row in the house." There was a smile of sarcasm on 
+Pratt's face as he spoke which angered Crosbie even in his misery, and 
+made him long to tell his friend that he would not trouble him with 
+this mission-.-that he would manage his own affairs himself; but he was 
+weakened and mentally humiliated by the sense of his own rascality, and 
+had already lost the power of asserting himself, and of maintaining his 
+ascendancy. He was beginning to recognise the fact that he had done 
+that for which he must endure to be kicked, to be kicked morally if not 
+materially; and that it was no longer possible for him to hold his head 
+up without shame.
+
+Pratt took Mr Dale's note in his hand and went down into the stranger's 
+room. There he found the squire standing, so that he could see through 
+the open door of the room to the foot of the stairs down which Crosbie 
+must descend before he could leave the club. As a measure of first 
+precaution the ambassador closed the door; then he bowed to Mr Dale, 
+and asked him if he would take a chair.
+
+"I wanted to see Mr Crosbie," said the squire.
+
+"I have your note to that gentleman in my hand," said he.
+
+"He has thought it better that you should have this interview with 
+me-and under all the circumstances perhaps it is better."
+
+"Is he such a coward that he dare not see me?"
+
+"There are some actions, Mr Dale, that will make a coward of any man. 
+My friend Crosbie is, I take it, brave enough in the ordinary sense of 
+the word, but he has injured you."
+
+"It is all true, then?"
+
+"Yes, Mr Dale; I fear it is all true."
+
+"And you call that man your friend! Mr-; I don't know what your name 
+is."
+
+"Pratt-Fowler Pratt. I have known Crosbie for fourteen years-ever since 
+he was a boy; and it is not my way, Mr Dale, to throw over an old 
+friend under any circumstances."
+
+"Not if he committed a murder."
+
+"No; not though he committed a murder."
+
+"If what I hear is true, this man is worse than a murderer."
+
+"Of course, Mr Dale, I cannot know what you have heard. I believe that 
+Mr Crosbie has behaved very badly to your niece, Miss Dale; I believe 
+that he was engaged to marry her, or, at any rate, that some such 
+proposition had been made."
+
+"Proposition! Why, sir, it was a thing so completely understood that 
+everybody knew it in the county. It was so positively fixed that there 
+was no secret about it. Upon my honour, Mr Pratt, I can't as yet 
+understand it. If I remember right, its not a fortnight since he left 
+my house at Allington-not a fortnight. And that poor girl was with him 
+on the morning of his going as his betrothed bride. Not a fortnight 
+since! And now I've had a letter from an old family friend telling me 
+that he is going to marry one of Lord de Courcy's daughters! I went 
+instantly off to Courcy, and found that he had started for London. Now, 
+I have followed him here; and you tell me it's all true."
+
+"I am afraid it is, Mr Dale; too true."
+
+"I don't understand it; I don't, indeed. I cannot bring myself to 
+believe that the man who was sitting the other day at my table should 
+be so great a scoundrel. Did he mean it all the time that he was there?"
+
+"No; certainly not. Lady Alexandrina de Courcy was, I believe, an old 
+friend of his-with whom, perhaps, he had had some lover's quarrel. On 
+his going to Courcy they made it up, and this is the result."
+
+"And that is to be sufficient for my poor girl?"
+
+"You will, of course, understand that I am not defending Mr Crosbie. 
+The whole affair is very sad-very sad, indeed. I can only say, in his 
+excuse, that he is not the first man who has behaved badly to a lady."
+
+"And that is his message to me, is it? And that is what I am to tell my 
+niece? You have been deceived by a scoundrel. But what then? You are 
+not the first! Mr Pratt, I give you my word as a gentleman, I do not 
+understand it. I have lived a good deal out of the world, and am, 
+therefore, perhaps; more astonished than I ought to be."
+
+"Mr Dale, I feel for you-"
+
+"Feel for me! What is to become of my girl? And do you suppose that I 
+will let this other marriage go on; that I will not tell the De 
+Courcys, and all the world at large, what sort of a man this is-that I 
+will not get at him to punish him? Does he think that I will put up 
+with this?"
+
+"I do not know what he thinks; I must only beg that you will not mix me 
+up in the matter-as though I were a participator in his offence."
+
+"Will you tell him from me that I desire to see him?"
+
+"I do not think that that would do any good."
+
+"Never mind, sir; you have brought me his message; will you have the 
+goodness now to take back mine to him?"
+
+"Do you mean at once-this evening-now?"
+
+"Yes, at once-this evening-now-this minute."
+
+"Ah; he has left the club; he is not here now; he went when I came to 
+you."
+
+"Then he is a coward as well as a scoundrel." In answer to which 
+assertion, Mr Fowler Pratt merely shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"He is a coward as well as a scoundrel. Will you have the kindness to 
+tell your friend from me that he is a coward and a scoundrel-and a 
+liar, sir."
+
+"If it be so, Miss Dale is well quit of her engagement."
+
+"That is your consolation, is it? That may be all very well nowadays; 
+but when I was a young man, I would sooner have burnt out my tongue 
+than have spoken in such a way on such a subject. I would, indeed. 
+Good-night, Mr Pratt. Pray make your friend understand that he has not 
+yet seen the last of the Dales; although, as you hint, the ladies of 
+that family will no doubt have learned that he is not fit to associate 
+with them." Then, taking up his hat, the squire made his way out of the 
+club.
+
+"I would not have done it," said Pratt to himself, "for all the beauty, 
+and all the wealth, and all the rank that ever were owned by a woman."
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+LORD DE COURCY IN THE BOSOM OF HIS FAMILY
+
+
+Lady Julia De Guest had not during her life written many letters to Mr 
+Dale of Allington, nor had she ever been very fond of him. But when she 
+felt certain how things were going at Courcy, or rather, as we may say, 
+how they had already gone, she took pen in hand, and set herself to 
+work, doing, as she conceived, her duty by her neighbour.
+
+MY DEAR MR DALE (she said)-I believe I need make no secret of having 
+known that your niece Lilian is engaged to Mr Crosbie, of London. I 
+think it proper to warn you that if this be true Mr Crosbie is behaving 
+himself in a very improper manner here. I am not a person who concern 
+myself much in the affairs of other people; and under ordinary 
+circumstances, the conduct of Mr Crosbie would be nothing to me-or, 
+indeed, less than nothing; but I do to you as I would wish that others 
+should do unto me. I believe it is only too true that Mr Crosbie has 
+proposed to Lady Alexandrina de Courcy, and been accepted by her. I 
+think you will believe that I would not say this without warrant, and 
+if there be anything in it, it may be well, for the poor young lady's 
+sake, that you should put yourself in the way of learning the truth.
+
+Believe me to be yours sincerely,
+
+	JULIA DE GUEST.
+
+COURCY CASTLE, Thursday.	
+
+The squire had never been very fond of any of the De Guest family, and 
+had, perhaps, liked Lady Julia the least of them all. He was wont to 
+call her a meddling old woman-remembering her bitterness and pride in 
+those now long bygone days in which the gallant major had run off with 
+Lady Fanny. When he first received this letter, he did not, on the 
+first reading of it, believe a word of its contents.
+
+"Cross-grained old harridan," he said out loud to his nephew.
+
+"Look what that aunt of yours has written to me." Bernard read the 
+letter twice, and as he did so his face became hard and angry.
+
+"You don't mean to say you believe it?" said the squire.
+
+"I don't think it will be safe to disregard it."
+
+"What! you think it possible that your friend is doing as she says."
+
+"It is certainly possible. He was angry when he found that Lily had no 
+fortune."
+
+"Heavens, Bernard And you can speak of it in that way?"
+
+"I don't say that it is true; but I think we should look to it. I will 
+go to Courcy Castle and learn the truth."
+
+The squire at last decided that he would go. He went to Courcy Castle, 
+and found that Crosbie had started two hours before his arrival. He 
+asked for Lady Julia, and learned from her that Crosbie had actually 
+left the house as the betrothed husband of Lady Alexandrina.
+
+"The countess, I am sure, will not contradict it, if you will see her," 
+said Lady Julia. But this the squire was unwilling to do. He would not 
+proclaim the wretched condition of his niece more loudly than was 
+necessary, and therefore he started on his pursuit of Crosbie. What was 
+his success on that evening we have already learned.
+
+Both Lady Alexandrina and her mother heard of Mr Dale's arrival at the 
+castle, but nothing was said between them on the subject. Lady Amelia 
+Gazebee heard of it also, and she ventured to discuss the matter with 
+her sister.
+
+"You don't know exactly how far it went, do you?"
+
+"No; yes-not exactly, that is," said Alexandrina.
+
+"I suppose he did say something about marriage to the girl?"
+
+"Yes, I'm afraid he did."
+
+"Dear, dear! It's very unfortunate. What sort of people are those 
+Dales? I suppose he talked to you about them."
+
+"No, he didn't; not very much. I daresay she is an artful, sly thing! 
+It's a great pity men should go on in such a way."
+
+"Yes, it is," said Lady Amelia.
+
+"And I do suppose that in this case the blame has been more with him 
+than with her. It's only right I should tell you that."
+
+"But what can I do?"
+
+"I don't say you can do anything; but it's as well you should know."
+
+"But I don't know, and you don't know; and I can't see that there is 
+any use talking about it now. I knew him a long while before she did, 
+and if she has allowed him to make a fool of her, it isn't my fault."
+
+"Nobody says it is, my dear."
+
+"But you seem to preach to me about it. What can I do for the girl? The 
+fact is, he don't care for her a bit, and never did."
+
+"Then he shouldn't have told her that he did."
+
+"That's all very well, Amelia; but people don't always do exactly all 
+that they ought to do. I suppose Mr Crosbie isn't the first man that 
+has proposed to two ladies. I dare say it was wrong, but I can't help 
+it. As to Mr Dale coming here with a tale of his niece's wrongs, I 
+think it very absurd-very absurd indeed. It makes it look as though 
+there had been a scheme to catch Mr Crosbie, and it's my belief that 
+there was such a scheme."
+
+"I only hope that there'll be no quarrel."
+"Men don't fight duels nowadays, Amelia."
+
+"But do you remember what Frank Gresham did to Mr Moffat when he 
+behaved so badly to poor Augusta?"
+
+"Mr Crosbie isn't afraid of that kind of thing. And I always thought 
+that Frank was very wrong-very wrong indeed. What's the good of two men 
+beating each other in the street?
+
+"Well; I'm sure I hope there'll be no quarrel. But I own I don't like 
+the look of it. You see the uncle must have known all about it, and 
+have consented to the marriage, or he would not have come here."
+
+"I don't see that it can make any difference to me, Amelia."
+
+"No, my dear, I don't see that it can. We shall be up in town soon, and 
+I will see as much as possible of Mr Crosbie. The marriage, I hope, 
+will take place soon."
+
+"He talks of February."
+
+"Don't put it off, Alley, whatever you do. There are so many slips, you 
+know, in these things."
+
+"I'm not a bit afraid of that," said Alexandrina, sticking up her head.
+
+"I dare say not; and you may be sure that we will keep an eye on him. 
+Mortimer will get him up to dine with us as often as possible, and as 
+his leave of absence is all over, he can't get out of town. He's to be 
+here at Christmas, isn't he?"
+
+"Of course he is."
+
+"Mind you keep him to that. And as to these Dales, I would be very 
+careful, if I were you, not to say anything unkind of them to any one. 
+It sounds badly in your position." And with this last piece of advice 
+Lady Amelia Gazebee allowed the subject to drop.
+
+On that day Lady Julia returned to her own home. Her adieux to the 
+whole family at Courcy Castle were very cold, but about Mr Crosbie and 
+his lady-love at Allington she said no further word to any of them. 
+Alexandrina did not show herself at all on the occasion, and indeed had 
+not spoken to her enemy since that evening on which she had felt 
+herself constrained to retreat from the drawing-room.
+
+"Good-bye," said the countess.
+
+"You have been so good to come, and we have enjoyed it so much."
+
+"I thank you very much. Good-morning," said Lady Julia, with a stately 
+courtesy.
+
+"Pray remember me to your brother. I wish we could have seen him; I 
+hope he has not been hurt by the-the bull." And then Lady Julia went 
+her way.
+
+"What a fool I have been to have that woman in the house," said the 
+countess, before the door was closed behind her guest's back.
+"Indeed you have," said Lady Julia, screaming back through the passage. 
+Then there was a long silence, then a suppressed titter, and after that 
+a loud laugh.
+
+"Oh, mamma, what shall we do?" said Lady Amelia.
+
+"Do!" said Margaretta, "why should we do anything? She has heard the 
+truth for once in her life."
+
+"Dear Lady Dumbello, what will you think of us?" said the countess, 
+turning round to another guest, who was also just about to depart.
+
+"Did any one ever know such a woman before?
+
+"I think she's very nice," said Lady Dumbello, smiling.
+
+"I can't quite agree with you there," said Lady Clandidlem.
+
+"But I do believe she means to do her best. She is very charitable, and 
+all that sort of thing."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said Rosina.
+
+"I asked her for a subscription to the mission for putting down the 
+Papists in the west of Ireland, and she refused me point-blank."
+
+"Now, my dear, if you're quite ready," said Lord Dumbello, coming into 
+the room. Then there was another departure; but on this occasion the 
+countess waited till the doors were shut, and the retreating footsteps 
+were no longer heard.
+
+"Have you observed," said she to Lady Clandidlem, "that she has not 
+held her head up since Mr Palliser went away?"
+
+"Indeed I have," said Lady Clandidlem.
+
+"As for poor Dumbello, he's the blindest creature I ever saw in my 
+life."
+
+"We shall hear of something before next May," said Lady de Courcy, 
+shaking her head; "but for all that she'll never be Duchess of Omnium."
+
+"I wonder what your mamma will say of me when I go away tomorrow," said 
+Lady Clandidlem to Margaretta, as they walked across the hall together.
+
+"She won't say that you are going to run away with any gentleman," said 
+Margaretta.
+
+"At any rate not with the earl," said Lady Clandidlem.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! Well, we are all very good-natured, are we not? The best 
+is that it means nothing."
+
+Thus by degrees all the guests went, and the family of the De Courcys 
+was left to the bliss of their own domestic circle. This, we may 
+presume, was not without its charms, seeing that there were so many 
+feelings in common between the mother and her children. There were 
+drawbacks to it, no doubt, arising perhaps chiefly from the earl's 
+bodily infirmities.
+
+" When your father speaks to me," said Mrs George to her husband, "he 
+puts me in such a shiver that I cannot open my mouth to answer him."
+
+"You should stand up to him," said George.
+
+"He can't hurt you, you know. Your money's your own; and if I'm ever to 
+be the heir, it won't be by his doing."
+
+"But he gnashes his teeth at me."
+
+"You shouldn't care for that, if he don't bite. He used to gnash them 
+at me; and when I had to ask him for money I didn't like it; but now I 
+don't mind him a bit. He threw the peerage at me one day, but it didn't 
+go within a yard of my head."
+
+"If he throws anything at me, George, I shall drop upon the spot."
+
+But the countess had a worse time with the earl than any of her 
+children. It was necessary that she should see him daily, and necessary 
+also that she should say much that he did not like to hear, and make 
+many petitions that caused him to gnash his teeth. The earl was one of 
+those men who could not endure to live otherwise than expensively, and 
+yet was made miserable by every recurring expense. He ought to have 
+known by this time that butchers, and bakers, and corn-chandlers, and 
+coal-merchants will not supply their goods for nothing; and yet it 
+always seemed as though he had expected that at this special period 
+they would do so. He was an embarrassed man, no doubt, and had not been 
+fortunate in his speculations at Newmarket or Homburg; but, 
+nevertheless, he had still the means of living without daily torment; 
+and it must be supposed that his self-imposed sufferings, with regard 
+to money, rose rather from his disposition than his necessities. His 
+wife never knew whether he were really ruined, or simply pretending it. 
+She had now become so used to her position in this respect, that she 
+did not allow fiscal considerations to mar her happiness. Food and 
+clothing had always come to her-including velvet gowns, new trinkets, 
+and a man-cook-and she presumed that they would continue to come. But 
+that daily conference with her husband was almost too much for her. She 
+struggled to avoid it; and, as far as the ways and means were 
+concerned, would have allowed them to arrange themselves, if he would 
+only have permitted it. But he insisted on seeing her daily in his own 
+sitting-room; and she had acknowledged to her favourite daughter, 
+Margaretta, that those half-hours would soon be the death of her.
+
+" I sometimes feel," she said, "that I am going mad before I can get 
+out." And she reproached herself, probably without reason, in that she 
+had brought much of this upon herself. In former days the earl had been 
+constantly away from home, and the countess had complained. Like many 
+other women, she had not known when she was well off. She had 
+complained, urging upon her lord that he should devote more of his time 
+to his own hearth. It is probable that her ladyship's remonstrances had 
+been less efficacious than the state of his own health in producing 
+that domestic constancy which he now practised; but it is certain that 
+she looked back with bitter regret to the happy days when she was 
+deserted, jealous, and querulous.
+
+"Don't you wish we could get Sir Omicron to order him to the German 
+Spas?" she had said to Margaretta. Now Sir Omicron was the great London 
+physician, and might, no doubt, do much in that way.
+
+But no such happy order had as yet been given; and, as far as the 
+family could foresee, paterfamilias intended to pass the winter with 
+them at Courcy. The guests, as I have said, were all gone, and none but 
+the family were in the house when her ladyship waited upon her lord one 
+morning at twelve o'clock, a few days after Mr Dale's visit to the 
+castle. He always breakfasted alone, and after breakfast found in a 
+French novel and a cigar what solace those innocent recreations were 
+still able to afford him. When the novel no longer excited him and when 
+he was saturated with smoke, he would send for his wife. After that, 
+his valet would dress him.
+
+" She gets it worse than I do," the man declared in the servants' hall, 
+"and minds it a deal more. I can give warning, and she can't."
+
+"Better? No, I ain't better," the husband said, in answer to his wife's 
+inquiries. "I never shall be better while you keep that cook in the 
+kitchin."
+
+"But where are we to get another if we send him away?"
+
+"It's not my business to find cooks. I don't know where you're to get 
+one. It's my belief you won't have a cook at all before long. It seems 
+you have got two extra men into the house without telling me."
+
+"We must have servants, you know, when there is company. It wouldn't do 
+to have Lady Dumbello here, and no one to wait on her."
+
+"Who asked Lady Dumbello? I didn't."
+
+"I'm sure, my dear, you liked having her here."
+
+"Lady Dumbello!" and then there was a pause. The countess had no 
+objection whatsoever to the above proposition, and was rejoiced that 
+that question of the servants was allowed to slip aside, through the 
+aid of her ladyship.
+
+"Look at that letter from Porlock," said the earl; and he pushed over 
+to the unhappy mother a letter from her eldest son. Of all her children 
+he was the one she loved the best; but him she was never allowed to see 
+under her on roof. "I sometimes think that he is the greatest rascal 
+with whom I ever had occasion to concern myself," said the earl.
+
+She took the letter and read it. The epistle was certainly riot one 
+which a father could receive with pleasure from his son; but the 
+disagreeable nature of its contents was the fault rather of the parent 
+than of the child. The writer intimated that certain money due to him 
+had not been paid with necessary punctuality, and that unless he 
+received it, he should instruct his lawyer to take some authorised 
+legal proceedings. Lord de Courcy had raised certain moneys on the 
+family property, which he could not have raised without the 
+co-operation of his heir, and had bound himself, in return for that 
+co-operation, to pay a certain fixed income to his eldest son. This he 
+regarded as an allowance from himself; but Lord Porlock regarded it as 
+his own, by lawful claim. The son had not worded his letter with any 
+affectionate phraseology.
+
+"Lord Porlock begs to inform Lord de Courcy" Such had been the 
+commencement.
+
+"I suppose he must have his money; else how can he live? said the 
+countess, trembling.
+
+"Live!" shouted the earl.
+
+"And so you think it proper that he should write such a letter as that 
+to his father!"
+
+"It is all very unfortunate," she replied.
+
+"I don't know where the money's to come from. As for him, if he were 
+starving, it would serve him right. He's a disgrace to the name and the 
+family. From all I hear, he won't live long."
+
+"Oh, De Courcy, don't talk of it in that way"
+
+"What way am I to talk of it? If I say that he's my greatest comfort, 
+and living as becomes a nobleman, and is a fine healthy man of his age, 
+with a good wife and a lot of legitimate children, will that make you 
+believe it? Women are such fools. Nothing that I say will make him 
+worse than he is."
+
+"But he may reform."
+
+"Reform! He's over forty, and when I last saw him he looked nearly 
+sixty. There-you may answer his letter; I won't."
+
+"And about the money?"
+
+"Why doesn't he write to Gazebee about his dirty money? Why does he 
+trouble me? I haven't got his money. Ask Gazebee about his money. I 
+won't trouble myself about it."
+
+Then there was another pause, during which the countess folded the 
+letter, and put it in her pocket.
+
+"How long is George going to remain here with that woman?" he asked.
+
+"I'm sure she is very harmless," pleaded the countess.
+
+"I always think when I see her that I'm sitting down to dinner with my 
+own housemaid. I never saw such a woman. How he can put up with it! But 
+I don't suppose he cares for anything."
+
+"It has made him very steady."
+
+"Steady!"
+
+"And as she will be confined before long it may be as well that she 
+should remain here. If Porlock doesn't marry, you know-"
+
+"And so he means to live here altogether, does he? I'll tell you what 
+it is-I won't have it. He's better able to keep a house over his own 
+head and his wife's than I am to do it for them, and so you may tell 
+them. I won't have it. D'ye hear? "Then there was another short pause. 
+"D'ye hear?" he shouted at her.
+
+"Yes; of course I hear. I was only thinking you wouldn't wish me to 
+turn them out, just as her confinement is coming on."
+
+"I know what that means. Then they'd never go. I won't have it; and if 
+you don't tell them I will." In answer to this Lady de Courcy promised 
+that she would tell them, thinking perhaps that the earl's mode of 
+telling might not be beneficial in that particular epoch which was now 
+coming in the life of Mrs George.
+
+"Did you know," said he, breaking out on a new subject, "that a man had 
+been here named Dale, calling on somebody in this house?" In answer to 
+which the countess acknowledged that she had known it.
+
+"Then why did you keep it from me?" And that gnashing of the teeth took 
+place which was so specially objectionable to Mrs George.
+
+"It was a matter of no moment. He came to see Lady Julia de Guest."
+
+"Yes; but he came about that man Crosbie."
+
+"I suppose he did."
+
+"Why have you let that girl be such a fool? You'll find he'll play her 
+some knave's trick."
+
+"Oh dear, no."
+
+"And why should she want to marry such a man as that?"
+
+"He's quite a gentleman, you know, and very much thought of in the 
+world. It won't be at all bad for her, poor thing. It is so very hard 
+for a girl to get married nowadays without money."
+
+"And so they're to take up with anybody. As far as I can see, this is a 
+worse affair than that of Amelia."
+
+"Amelia has done very well, my dear."
+
+"Oh, if you call it doing well for your girls, I don't. I call it doing 
+uncommon badly; about as bad as they well can do. But it's your affair. 
+I have never meddled with them, and don't intend to do it now."
+
+"I really think she'll be happy, and she is devotedly attached to the 
+young man."
+
+"Devotedly attached to the young man!" The tone and manner in which the 
+earl repeated these words were such as to warrant an opinion that his 
+lordship might have done very well on the stage had his attention been 
+called to that profession.
+
+"It makes me sick to hear people talk in that way. She wants to get 
+married, and she's a fool for her pains-I can't help that; only 
+remember that I'll have no nonsense here about that other girl. If he 
+gives me trouble of that sort, by I'll be the death of him. When is the 
+marriage to be?
+
+"They talk of February."
+
+"I won't have any tomfoolery and expense. If she chooses to marry a 
+clerk in an office, she shall marry him as clerks are married."
+
+"He'll be the secretary before that, De Courcy."
+
+"What difference does that make? Secretary, indeed! What sort of men do 
+you suppose secretaries are? A beggar that came from nobody knows 
+where! I won't have any tomfoolery-d'ye hear?" Whereupon the countess 
+said that she did hear, and soon afterwards managed to escape. The 
+valet then took his turn; and repeated, after his hour of service, that 
+"Old Nick" in his tantrums had been more like the Prince of Darkness 
+than ever.
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+"ON MY HONOUR, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT"
+
+
+In the meantime Lady Alexandrina endeavoured to realise to herself all 
+the advantages and disadvantages of her own position. She was not 
+possessed of strong affections, nor of depth of character, nor of high 
+purpose; but she was no fool, nor was she devoid of principle. She had 
+asked herself many times whether her present life was so happy as to 
+make her think that a permanent continuance in it would suffice for her 
+desires, and she had always replied to herself that she would fain 
+change to some other life if it were possible. She had also questioned 
+herself as to her rank, of which she was quite sufficiently proud, and 
+had told herself that she could not degrade herself in the world 
+without a heavy pang. But she had at last taught herself to believe 
+that she had more to gain by becoming the wife of such a man as Crosbie 
+than by remaining as an unmarried daughter of her father's house. There 
+was much in her sister Amelia's position which she did not envy, but 
+there was less to envy in that of her sister Rosina. The Gazebee house 
+in St. John's Wood Road was not so magnificent as Courcy Castle; but 
+then it was less dull, less embittered by torment, and was moreover her 
+sister's own.
+
+"Very many do marry commoners," she had said to Margaretta.
+
+"Oh, yes, of course. It makes a difference, you know, when a man has a 
+fortune."
+
+Of course it did make a difference. Crosbie had no fortune, was not 
+even so rich as Mr Gazebee, could keep no carriage, and would have no 
+country house. But then he was a man of fashion, was more thought of in 
+the world than Mr Gazebee, might probably rise in his own 
+profession-and was at any rate thoroughly presentable. She would have 
+preferred a gentleman with L5,000 a year; but then as no gentleman with 
+L5,000 a year came that way, would she not be happier with Mr Crosbie 
+than she would be with no husband at all? She was not very much in love 
+with Mr Crosbie, but she thought that she could live with him 
+comfortably, and that on the whole it would be a good thing to be 
+married.
+
+And she made certain resolves as to the manner in which she would do 
+her duty by her husband. Her sister Amelia was paramount in her own 
+house, ruling indeed with a moderate, endurable dominion, and ruling 
+much to her husband's advantage. Alexandrina feared that she would not 
+be allowed to rule, but she could at any rate try; She would do all in 
+her power to make him comfortable, and would be specially careful not 
+to irritate him by any insistence on her own higher rank. She would be 
+very meek in this respect; and if children should come she would be as 
+painstaking about them as though her own father had been merely a 
+clergyman or, a lawyer. She thought also much about poor Lilian Dale, 
+asking herself sundry questions, with an idea of being high-principled 
+as to her duty in that respect. Was she wrong in taking Mr Crosbie away 
+from Lilian Dale? In answer to these questions she was able to assure 
+herself comfortably that she was not wrong. Mr Crosbie would not, under 
+any circumstances, marry Lilian Dale. He had told her so more than 
+once, and that in a solemn way. She could therefore be doing no harm to 
+Lilian Dale. If she entertained any inner feeling that Crosbie's fault 
+in jilting Lilian Dale was less than it would have been had, she 
+herself not been an earl's daughter-that her own rank did in some. 
+degree extenuate her lover's falseness-she did not express it in words 
+even to herself.
+
+She did not get very much sympathy from her own family.
+
+"I'm afraid he does not think much of his religious duties. I'm told 
+that young men of that sort seldom do," said Rosina.
+
+"I don't say you're wrong," said Margaretta.
+
+"By no means. Indeed I think less of it now than I did when Amelia did 
+the same thing. I shouldn't do it myself, that's all." Her father told 
+her that he supposed she knew her own mind. Her mother, who endeavoured 
+to comfort and in some sort to congratulate her, nevertheless, harped 
+constantly on the fact that the was marrying a man without rank and 
+without a fortune, Her congratulations were apologetic, and her 
+comfortings took the guise of consolation.
+
+"Of course you won't be rich, my dear; but I really think you'll do 
+very well. Mr Crosbie may be received anywhere, and you never need be 
+ashamed of him." By which the countess implied that her elder married 
+daughter was occasionally called on to be ashamed of her husband. "I 
+wish he could keep a carriage for you, but perhaps that will come some 
+day." Upon the whole Alexandrina did not repent, and stoutly told her 
+father that she did know her own mind.
+
+During all this time Lily Dale was as yet perfect in her happiness. 
+That delay of a day or two in the receipt of the expected letter from 
+her lover had not disquieted her. She had promised him that she would 
+not distrust him, and she was firmly minded to keep her promises. 
+Indeed no idea of breaking it came to her at this time. She was 
+disappointed when the postman would come and bring no letter for 
+her-disappointed, as the husbandman when the longed-for rain does not 
+come to refresh the parched earth; but she was in no degree angry.
+
+"He will explain it," she said to herself. And she assured Bell that 
+men never recognised the hunger and thirst after letters which women 
+feel when away from those whom they love.
+
+Then they heard at the Small House that the squire had gone away from 
+Allington. During the last few days Bernard had not been much with 
+them, and now they heard the news, not through their cousin, but from 
+Hopkins.
+
+"I really can't undertake to say, Miss Bell, where the master's gone 
+to. Its not likely the master'd tell me where he was going to; not 
+unless it was about seeds, or the likes of that."
+
+"He has gone very suddenly," said Bell.
+
+"Well, miss, I've nothing to say to that. And why shouldn't he go 
+sudden if he likes? I only know he had his gig, and went to the 
+station. If you was to bury me alive I couldn't tell you more."
+
+"I should like to try," said Lily as they walked away.
+
+"He is such a cross old thing. I wonder whether Bernard has gone with 
+my uncle." And then they thought no more about it.
+
+On the day after that Bernard came down to the Small House, but he said 
+nothing by way of accounting for the squire's absence.
+
+"He is in London, I know," said Bernard.
+
+"I hope he'll call on Mr Crosbie," said Lily. But on this subject 
+Bernard said not a word. He did ask Lily whether she had heard from 
+Adolphus, in answer to which she replied, with as indifferent a voice 
+as she could assume, that she had not had a letter that morning.
+
+"I shall be angry with him if he's not a good correspondent," said Mrs 
+Dale, when she and Lily were alone together.
+
+"No, mamma, you mustn't be angry with him. I won't let you be angry 
+with him. Please to remember he's my lover and not yours."
+
+"But I can see you when you watch for the postman."
+
+"I won't watch for the postman any more if it makes you have bad 
+thoughts about him. Yes, they are bad thoughts. I won't have you think 
+that he doesn't do everything that is right."
+
+On the next morning the postman brought a letter, or rather a note, and 
+Lily at once saw that it was from Crosbie. She had contrived to 
+intercept it near the back door, at which the postman called, so that 
+her mother should not watch her watchings, nor see her disappointment 
+if none should come.
+
+"Thank you, Jane," she said, very calmly, when the eager, kindly girl 
+ran to her with the little missive; and she walked off to some 
+solitude, trying to hide her impatience. The note had seemed so small 
+that it amazed her; but when she opened it the contents amazed her 
+more. There was neither beginning nor end. There was no appellation of 
+love, and no signature. It contained but two lines.
+
+"I will write to you at length tomorrow. This is my first day in 
+London, and I have been so driven about that I cannot write." That was 
+all, and it was scrawled on half a sheet of note-paper. Why, at any 
+rate, had he not called her his dearest Lily? Why had he not assured 
+her that he was ever her own? Such expressions, meaning so much, may be 
+conveyed in a glance of the pen.
+
+"Ah," she said, "if he knew how I hunger and thirst after his love!"
+
+She had but a moment left to her before she must join her mother and 
+sister, and she used that moment in remembering her promise.
+
+"I know it is all right," she said to herself.
+
+"He does not think of these things as I do. He had to write at the last 
+moment-as he was leaving his office." And then with a quiet, smiling 
+face, she walked into the breakfast-parlour.
+
+"What does he say, Lily?" asked Bell.
+
+"What would you give to know?" said Lily.
+
+"I wouldn't give twopence for the whole of it," said Bell.
+
+"When you get anybody to write to you letters, I wonder whether you'll 
+show them to everybody?"
+
+"But if there's any special London news, I suppose we might hear it," 
+said Mrs Dale.
+
+"But suppose there's no special London news, mamma. The poor man had 
+only been in town one day, you know: and there never is any news at 
+this time of the year."
+
+"Had he seen Uncle Christopher?"
+
+"I don't think he had; but he doesn't say. We shall get all the news 
+from him when he comes. He cares much more about London news than 
+Adolphus does." And then there was no more said about the letter.
+
+But Lily had read her two former letters over and over again at the 
+breakfast-table; and though she had not read them aloud, she had 
+repeated many words out of them, and had so annotated upon them that 
+her mother, who had heard her, could have almost re-written them. Now, 
+she did not even show the paper; and then her absence, during which she 
+had read the letter, had hardly exceeded a minute or two. All this Mrs 
+Dale observed, and she knew that her daughter had been again 
+disappointed.
+
+In fact that day Lily was very serious, but she did not appear to be 
+unhappy. Early after breakfast Bell went over to the parsonage, and Mrs 
+Dale and her youngest daughter sat together over their work.
+
+"Mamma," she said, "I hope you and I are not to be divided when I go to 
+live in London."
+
+"We shall never be divided in heart, my love."
+
+"Ah, but that will not be enough for happiness, though perhaps enough 
+to prevent absolute unhappiness. T I shall want to see you, touch you, 
+and pet you as I do now." And she came and knelt on the cushion at her 
+mother's feet.
+
+"You will have some one else to caress and pet-perhaps many others."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you are going to throw me off, mamma?"
+
+"God forbid, my darling. It is not mothers that throw off their 
+children. What shall I have left when you and Bell are gone from me?"
+
+"But we will never be gone. That's what I mean. We are to be just the 
+same to you always, even though we are married. I must have my right to 
+be here as much as I have it now; and, in return, you shall have your 
+right to be there. His house must be a home to you-not a cold place 
+which you may visit now and again, with your best clothes on. You know 
+what I mean, when I say that we must not be divided."
+
+"But Lily-"
+
+"Well, mamma?"
+
+"I have no doubt we shall be happy together-you and I."
+
+"But you were going to say more than that."
+"Only this-that your house will be his house, and will be full without 
+me. A daughter's marriage is always a painful parting."
+
+"Is it, mamma?"
+
+"Not that I would have it otherwise than it is. Do not think that I 
+would wish to keep you at home with me. Of course you will both marry 
+and leave me. I hope that he to whom you are going to devote yourself 
+may be spared to love you and protect you." Then the widow's heart 
+became too full, and she put away her child from her that she might 
+hide her face.
+
+"Mamma, mamma, I wish I was not going from you."
+
+"No, Lily; do not say that. I should not be contented with life if I 
+did not see both my girls married. I think that it is the only lot 
+which can give to a woman perfect content and satisfaction. I would 
+have you both married. I should be the most selfish being alive if I 
+wished otherwise."
+
+"Bell will settle herself near you, and then you will see more of her 
+and love her better than you do me."
+
+"I shall not love her better."
+
+"I wish she would marry some London man, and then you would come with 
+us, and be near to us. Do you know, mamma I sometimes think you don't 
+like this place here."
+
+"Your uncle has been very kind to give it to us."
+
+"I know he has; and we have been very happy here. But if Bell should 
+leave you-"
+
+"Then should I go also. Your uncle has been very kind. but I sometimes 
+feel that his kindness is a burden which I should not be strong enough 
+to bear solely on my own shoulders. And what should keep me here, then? 
+" Mrs Dale as she said this felt that the "here" "of which she spoke 
+extended beyond the limits of the home which she held through the 
+charity of her brother-in-law. Might not all the world, far as she was 
+concerned in it, be contained in that here? How was she to live if both 
+her children should be taken away from her? She had already realised 
+the fact that Crosbie's house could never be a home to her-never even a 
+temporary home. Her visits there must be of that full-dressed nature to 
+which Lily had alluded. It was impossible that she could explain this 
+to Lily. She would not prophesy that the hero of her girl's heart would 
+be inhospitable to his wife's mother; but such had been her reading of 
+Crosbie's character. Alas, alas, as matters were to go, his hospitality 
+or inhospitality would be matter of small moment to them.
+
+Again in the afternoon the two sisters were together, and Lily was 
+still more serious than her wont. It might almost have been gathered 
+from her manner that this marriage of hers was about to take place at 
+once, and that she was preparing to leave her home.
+
+"Bell," she said,
+
+"I wonder why Dr Crofts never comes to see us now?"
+
+"It isn't a month since he was here, at our party."
+"A month! But there was a time when he made some pretext for being here 
+every other day."
+
+"Yes, when mamma was ill."
+
+"Ay, and since mamma was well, too. But I suppose I must not break the 
+promise you made me give you. He's not to be talked about even yet, is 
+he?"
+
+"I didn't say he was not to be talked about. You know what I meant, 
+Lily; and what I meant then, I mean now."
+
+"And how long will it be before you mean something else? I do hope it 
+will come some day-I do indeed."
+
+"It never will, Lily. I once fancied that I cared for Dr Crofts, but it 
+was only fancy. I know it, because-" She was going to explain that her 
+knowledge on that point was assured to her, because since that day she 
+had felt that she might have learned to love another man. But that 
+other man had been Mr Crosbie, and so she stopped herself.
+
+"I wish he would come and ask you himself."
+
+"He will never do so. He would never ask such a question without 
+encouragement, and I shall give him none. Nor will he ever think of 
+marrying till he can do so without-without what he thinks to be 
+imprudence as regards money. He has courage enough to be poor himself 
+without unhappiness, but he has not courage to endure poverty with a 
+wife. I know well what his feelings are."
+
+"Well, we shall see," said Lily.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if you were married first now, Bell. For my part 
+I'm quite prepared to wait for three years."
+
+Late on that evening the squire returned to Allington, Bernard having 
+driven over to meet him at the station. He had telegraphed to his 
+nephew that he would be back by a late train, and no more than this had 
+been heard from him since he went. On that day Bernard had seen none of 
+the ladies at the Small House. With Bell at the present moment it was 
+impossible that he should be on easy terms. Re could not meet her alone 
+without recurring to the one special subject of interest between them, 
+and as to that he did not choose to speak without much forethought. He 
+had not known himself, when he had gone about his wooing so lightly, 
+thinking it a slight thing, whether or no he might be accepted. Now it 
+was no longer a slight thing to him. I do not know that it was love 
+that made him so eager; not good, honest, downright love. But he had 
+set his heart upon the object, and with the wilfulness of a Dale was 
+determined that it should be his. He had no remotest idea of giving up 
+his cousin, but he had at last persuaded himself that she was not to be 
+won without some toil, and perhaps also some delay.
+
+Nor had he been in a humour to talk either to Mrs Dale or to Lily. He 
+feared that Lady Julia's news was true-that at any rate there might be 
+in it something of truth; and while thus in doubt he could not go down 
+to the Small House. So he hung about the place by himself, with a cigar 
+in his mouth, fearing that something evil was going to happen, and when 
+the message came for him, almost shuddered as he seated himself in the 
+gig. What would it become him to do in this emergency if Crosbie had 
+truly been guilty of the villany with which Lady Julia had charged him? 
+Thirty years ago he would have called the man out, and shot at him till 
+one of them was hit. Nowadays it was hardly possible for a man to do 
+that; and yet what would the world say of him if he allowed such an 
+injury as this to pass without vengeance?
+
+His uncle, as he came forth from the station with his travelling-bag in 
+his hand, was stem, gloomy, and silent. He came out and took his place 
+in the gig almost without speaking. There were strangers about, and 
+therefore his nephew at first could ask no question, but as the gig 
+turned. the corner out of the station-house yard he demanded the news.
+
+"What have you heard?" he said.
+
+But even then the squire did not answer at once. He shook his head, and 
+turned away his face, as though he did not choose to be interrogated.
+
+"Have you seen him, sir?" asked Bernard.
+
+"No, he has not dared to see me."
+
+"Then it is true?
+
+"True?-yes, it is all true. Why did you bring the scoundrel here? It 
+has been your fault."
+
+"No, sir; I must contradict that. I did not know him for a scoundrel."
+
+"But it was your duty to have known him before you brought him here 
+among them. Poor girl! how is she to be told?"
+
+"Then she does not know it?"
+
+"I fear not. Have you seen them?
+
+"I saw them yesterday, and she did not know it then; she may have heard 
+it today."
+
+"I don't think so. I believe he has been too great a coward to write to 
+her. A coward indeed! How can any man find the courage to write such a 
+letter as that?"
+
+By degrees the squire told his tale. How he had gone to Lady Julia, had 
+made his way to London, had tracked Crosbie to his club, and had there 
+learned the whole truth from Crosbie's friend, Fowler Pratt, we already 
+know.
+
+"The coward escaped me while I was talking to the man he sent down," 
+said the squire.
+
+"It was a concerted plan, and I think he was right. I should have 
+brained him in the hall of the club." On the following morning Pratt 
+had called upon him at his inn with Crosbie's apology.
+
+"His apology!" said the squire.
+
+"I have it in my pocket. Poor reptile; wretched worm of a man! I cannot 
+understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think 
+men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been 
+impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling 
+how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie 
+declined an interview.
+
+"The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come 
+from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, that I cannot touch pitch 
+and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he 
+could not say a word for his friend."
+
+"I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him."
+
+"Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to 
+excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile.
+
+"On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It 
+is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that 
+it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it."
+
+"And he is engaged to this other girl?
+
+"Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and 
+the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must 
+have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't 
+suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time 
+here in the country."
+
+"He meant it up to the time of his leaving."
+
+"I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a 
+fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant 
+it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well, 
+here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own 
+house with so sore a heart."
+
+They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open 
+sorrow than might have been expected from his character.
+
+"What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over 
+again.
+
+"How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her 
+child?"
+
+"Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?"
+
+"As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done 
+so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his 
+blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know-that Crosbie would 
+probably have written to me. Then he brought me this. letter. There it 
+is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let 
+me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far 
+as he is concerned."
+
+It was a vile letter to have written-not because the language was bad, 
+or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated-but 
+because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds 
+which will not bear a gloss-sins as to which the perpetrator cannot 
+speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and 
+put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to 
+write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night 
+with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable 
+to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on 
+the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write 
+it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had 
+been written.
+
+"I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt.
+
+"If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with 
+inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at 
+last were forthcoming. Such words as they were!
+
+"I know that I can have no excuse to make to you-or to her. But, 
+circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should 
+not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I 
+best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had 
+proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words 
+such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves 
+constrained to write as reptiles.
+
+"As an honest man!" repeated the squire.
+
+"On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I 
+cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was 
+sitting the other day as a guest at my table."
+
+"What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while.
+
+"Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes 
+under your feet; but beware, above all things, that. he does not get 
+into your house. That is too late for us now."
+
+"There must he more than that, uncle."
+
+"I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is 
+doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by 
+the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do 
+what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!"
+
+Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle.
+
+"Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early tomorrow that I 
+will see her here, if she will be good enough. to come to me after 
+breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be 
+that he has written today."
+
+Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire, 
+meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave 
+to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club?
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE BOARD
+
+
+Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the 
+morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he 
+left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had 
+seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story 
+will have shown what took place at that interview.
+
+He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of 
+writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his 
+pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his 
+friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day 
+passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter 
+to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have 
+seen, was considered to have degraded himself to he vermin rank of 
+humanity by the meanness of his production.
+
+But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him-cares 
+which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his 
+mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of 
+his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the 
+messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference. 
+He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there 
+are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite 
+beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves 
+clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own 
+apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying 
+on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small, 
+and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old 
+friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary.
+
+"I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said 
+the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on 
+the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing 
+to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they 
+want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at the heels; but 
+you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will 
+give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since 
+they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," etc. etc. 
+He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little 
+interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without 
+seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in 
+promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of 
+Mr Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was 
+signed by Mr Butterwell himself.
+
+How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his 
+office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he 
+thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how 
+much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he 
+was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected 
+excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and 
+all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from 
+the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be 
+wiped out-not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing.
+
+And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments 
+which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were 
+withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight 
+hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or 
+thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this 
+promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been 
+declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle?' He even 
+said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt 
+had seen Mr Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire, 
+and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But 
+in that he lied to himself, and he knew that, he did so. An earl, in 
+his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason 
+towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had 
+been considered but little by him, when the: project first offered 
+itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it 
+was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess.
+
+That house full of babies' in St. John's Wood. appeared to him now 
+under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his 
+room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there Then such an 
+establishment had to him. the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though 
+he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach, 
+he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what 
+sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was 
+astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless, 
+how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which 
+he wore at the present moment.
+
+During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the 
+younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He 
+was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion. 
+Then he met, one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with 
+much less heartiness.
+
+"I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is 
+gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat 
+when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords' 
+families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun 
+to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest 
+and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted 
+because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady 
+de Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even 
+had time to write a note upon the subject.
+
+At eleven Mr Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary 
+was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr Butterwell was a pleasant, 
+handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire, 
+and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to 
+great men and a little more patronising to those below him than he 
+would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and 
+English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those 
+who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or 
+supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how 
+to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very 
+scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet 
+he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr Butterwell that 
+he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he 
+had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a 
+pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr Butterwell 
+heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English 
+gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to 
+look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had 
+not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had 
+begrudged it to him.
+
+"Tact," Mr Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the 
+paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact."
+
+"Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate 
+you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in 
+life, and you deserve it thoroughly-much better than I did when I was 
+appointed to the same office."
+
+"Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily.
+
+"But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I 
+told the commissioners."
+
+"I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you."
+
+"I've known it all along-before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had 
+told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two 
+thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the 
+Board."
+
+"Ah-I wish I'd known," said Crosbie.
+
+"You are much better as you are," said Butterwell.
+
+"There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of 
+that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew 
+it-swearing that I knew it-but I wouldn't have said so to a living 
+being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups 
+and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income Tax!"
+
+"Exactly so," said Crosbie.
+
+"But it's all right now. indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I 
+signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than 
+I gain."
+
+"What! with three hundred a year more and less work?"
+
+"Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees 
+everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say, 
+the lighter work will suit me. By-the-by, will you come down to Putney 
+tomorrow? Mrs Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary. 
+There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing."
+
+But Mr Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been 
+impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs Butterwell's table in 
+his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he 
+let Mr Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it 
+absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town.
+
+"And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present."
+
+"By-the-by-of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on 
+that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope 
+you'll be as lucky as I have been."
+
+"Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily.
+
+"A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those 
+parts?"
+
+"N-no," stammered Crosbie.
+"The lady comes from Barsetshire."
+
+"Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some 
+such name as that?"
+
+"No." said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name 
+is De Courcy."
+
+"One of the earl's daughters?"
+
+"Yes," said Crosbie.
+
+"Oh. I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a 
+very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in 
+life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand-having 
+offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief 
+that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr 
+Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard 
+from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece 
+of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick-a girl without 
+any money; and Mr Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend 
+Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to 
+marry one of the De Courcys! Mr Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends.
+
+"Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come 
+to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I 
+have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't 
+break your back."
+
+Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room, 
+and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye.
+
+He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to 
+lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind 
+him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he 
+could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be 
+banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a 
+turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief 
+down and trample it under foot; he can exercise the spirit of his 
+grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such 
+exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own 
+folly and sin-especially not if it has come from his own selfishness. 
+Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the 
+avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals; 
+which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this 
+letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an 
+end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat 
+himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion.
+
+But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I 
+must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a 
+pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there 
+was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden 
+must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two 
+o'clock, neglecting Mr Butterwell and his office papers, and not 
+stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board. 
+The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public 
+may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with 
+a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the 
+side of it, farthest from the door Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his 
+late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place, 
+talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was 
+uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last 
+appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly. 
+Mr Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at 
+Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with 
+small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind 
+the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the 
+departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr 
+Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily 
+Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was 
+showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him, 
+in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a 
+fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly 
+advocating the claims of Mr Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find 
+that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to 
+the praise of those powers which he obeys?
+
+Mr Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well 
+connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any 
+rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his 
+predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns 
+enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was 
+but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a 
+discontented, brokenhearted, silent man, who had been sent to the 
+General Committee Office some few years before because he was not 
+wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things 
+when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy 
+for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent 
+the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone 
+well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side 
+of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew 
+that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from 
+the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that 
+Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he 
+gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a 
+day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and 
+documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in 
+truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered 
+himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in 
+brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He 
+had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all 
+around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than 
+that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that 
+other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested, 
+false, or fraudulent.
+
+"Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say-for with Mr Butterwell he 
+maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that 
+gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close.
+
+"Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been 
+looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And 
+then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them 
+both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for 
+granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug 
+his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't 
+think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be.
+
+Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his 
+Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve 
+some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing 
+present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant 
+comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that 
+Mr Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the 
+villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and 
+that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think 
+that we need quarrel with his creed.
+
+Mr Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the 
+Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office, 
+and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right; 
+but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office, 
+he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle, 
+indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest 
+joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the 
+tones of that terrible knight's hated voice.
+
+Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed 
+that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential 
+position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who 
+did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty 
+nearly all his own way. As for "old Opt," there would be, they said, no 
+difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was 
+his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not 
+fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many 
+years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly 
+indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the 
+mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion.
+
+"Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug, 
+waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir 
+Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him.
+
+"Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug.
+
+"Mr Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr Optimist. 
+"Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You 
+have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to 
+fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man 
+to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum-hum-ha. As, regards 
+my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit 
+to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my 
+life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members 
+of the Board." And Mr Optimist looked around him for approving words. 
+He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to 
+welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had 
+risen from his. seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had 
+feathered, his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again.
+
+"Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell.
+
+"I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking 
+very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate 
+man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir 
+Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall 
+be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr Chancellor,' said I, ' Mr 
+Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr Crosbie shall be the man,' said the 
+Chancellor. And Mr Crosbie is the man."
+
+"Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the 
+Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present 
+moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord 
+Sark."
+
+"Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir 
+Raffle.
+
+"I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said 
+Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well-and also to your 
+footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself 
+in my favour."
+"I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle.
+
+"I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion, 
+given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of 
+the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I 
+will say good-morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which 
+the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle 
+Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours.
+
+"As to the duties of your new office"-and Mr Optimist continued his 
+speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what 
+was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more 
+satisfactory tone of voice-" you will find yourself quite familiar with 
+them."
+
+"Indeed he will," said Butterwell.
+
+"And I am quite sure that you will perform them with equal credit to 
+yourself, satisfaction to the department, and advantage to the public. 
+We shall always be glad to have your opinion on any subject of 
+importance that may come before us; and as regards the internal 
+discipline of the office, we feel that we may leave it safely in your 
+hands. In any matter of importance you will, of course, consult us, and 
+I feel very confident that we shall go on together with great comfort 
+and with mutual confidence." Then Mr Optimist looked at his brother 
+commissioners, sat down in his arm-chair, and taking in his hands some 
+papers before him, began the routine business of the day.
+
+It was nearly five o'clock when, on this special occasion, the 
+secretary returned from the board-room to his own office. Not for a 
+moment had the weight been off his shoulders while Sir Raffle had been 
+bragging or Mr Optimist making his speech. He had been thinking, not of 
+them, but of Lily Dale; and though they had not discovered his 
+thoughts, they had perceived that he was hardly like himself.
+
+"I never saw a man so little elated by good fortune in my life," said 
+Mr Optimist.
+
+"Ah, he's got something on his mind," said Butterwell. He's going to be 
+married, I believe."
+
+"If that's the case, it's no wonder he shouldn't be elated," said Major 
+Fiasco, who was himself a bachelor.
+
+When in his own room again, Crosbie at once seized on a sheet of 
+note-paper, as though by hurrying himself on with it he could get that 
+letter to Allington written. But thought the paper was before him, and 
+the pen in his hand, the letter did not, would not, get itself written. 
+With what words was he to begin it? To whom should it be written? How 
+was he to declare himself the villain which he had made himself? The 
+letters from his office were taken away every night shortly after six, 
+and at six o'clock he had not written a word.
+
+"I will do it at home to-night," he said, to himself, and then, tearing 
+off a scrap of paper, he scratched those few lines which Lily received, 
+and which she had declined to communicate to her mother or sister. 
+Crosbie, as he wrote them, conceived that they would in some way 
+prepare the poor girl for the coming blow-that they would, at any rate, 
+make her know that all was not right; but in so supposing he had not 
+counted on the constancy of her nature, nor had he thought of the 
+promise which, she had given him that nothing should make her doubt 
+him. He wrote the scrap, and then taking his hat walked off through the 
+gloom of the November evening. up Charing Cross and St. Martin's Lane, 
+towards the Seven Dials and Bloomsbury into regions of the town with 
+which he had no business, and which he never frequented. He hardly knew 
+where he went or wherefore. How was he to escape from the weight of the 
+burden which was now crushing him? It seemed to him as though he would 
+change his position with thankfulness for that of the junior clerk in 
+his office, if only that junior clerk had upon his mind no such 
+betrayal of trust as that of which he was guilty.
+
+At half-past seven he found himself at Sebright's, and there he dined. 
+A man will dine, even though his heart be breaking. Then he got into a 
+cab, and had himself taken home to Mount Street. During his walk he had 
+sworn to himself that he would not go to bed that night till the letter 
+was written and posted. It was twelve before the first words were 
+marked on the paper, and yet he kept his oath. Between two and three, 
+in the cold moonlight, he crawled out and deposited his letter in the 
+nearest post-office.
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+JOHN EAMES RETURNS TO BURTON CRESCENT
+
+
+John Eames and Crosbie returned to town on the same day. It will be 
+remembered how Eames had assisted Lord de Guest in the matter of the 
+bull, and how great had been the earl's gratitude on the occasion. The 
+memory of this, and the strong encouragement which he received from his 
+mother and sister for having made such a friend by his gallantry, lent 
+some slight satisfaction to his last hours at home. But his two 
+misfortunes were too serious to allow of anything like real happiness. 
+He was leaving Lily behind him, engaged to he married to a man whom he 
+hated, and he was returning to Burton Crescent, where he would have to 
+face Amelia Roper-Amelia either in her rage or in her love. The 
+prospect of Amelia in her rage was very terrible to him; but his 
+greatest fear was of Amelia in her love. He had in his letter declined 
+matrimony; but what if she talked down all his objections, and carried 
+him off to church in spite of himself!
+
+When he reached London and got into a cab with his portmanteau, he 
+could hardly fetch up courage to bid the man drive him to Burton 
+Crescent.
+
+"I might as well go to an hotel for the night," he said to himself, 
+"and then I can learn how things are going on from Cradell at the 
+office." Nevertheless, he did give the direction to Burton Crescent, 
+and when it was once given felt ashamed to change it. But, as he was 
+driven up to the wellknown door, his heart was so low within him that 
+he might almost be said to have lost it. When the cabman demanded 
+whether he should knock, he could not answer; and when the maid-servant 
+at the door greeted him, he almost ran away.
+
+"Who's at home?" said he, asking the question in a very low voice.
+
+"There's missus," said the girl, "and Miss Spruce, and Mrs Lupex. He's 
+away somewhere, in his tantrums again; and there's Mr-"
+
+"Is Miss Roper here?" he said, still whispering.
+
+"Oh, yes! Miss Mealyer's here," said the girl, speaking in a cruelly 
+loud voice. "She was in the dining-room just now, putting out the 
+table. Miss Mealyer!" And the girl, as she called out the name, opened 
+the dining-room door. Johnny Eames felt that his knees were too weak to 
+support him.
+
+But Miss Mealyer was not in the dining-room. She had perceived the 
+advancing cab of her sworn adorer, and had thought it expedient to 
+retreat from her domestic duties, and fortify herself among her brushes 
+and ribbons. Had it been possible that she should know how very weak 
+and cowardly was the enemy against whom she was called upon to put 
+herself in action, she might probably have fought her battle somewhat 
+differently, and have achieved a speedy victory, at the cost of an 
+energetic shot or two. But she did not know. She thought it probable 
+that she might obtain power over him and manage him; but it did not 
+occur to her that his legs were so weak beneath him that she might 
+almost blow him over with a breath. None but the worst and most 
+heartless of women know the extent of their own power over men-as none 
+but the worst and most heartless of men know the extent of their power 
+over women. Amelia Roper was not a good specimen of the female sex, but 
+there were worse women than her.
+
+"She ain't there, Mr Eames; but you'll see her in the drawenroom," said 
+the girl.
+
+"And it's she'll be glad to see you back again, Mr Eames." But he 
+scrupulously passed the door of the upstairs sitting-room, not even 
+looking within it, and contrived to get himself into his own chamber 
+without having encountered anybody.
+
+"Here's yer 'ot water, Mr Eames," said the girl, coming up to him after 
+an interval of half-an-hour, "and dinner'll be on the table in ten 
+minutes. Mr Cradell is come in, and so is missus's son."
+
+It was still open to him to go out and dine at some eating-house in the 
+Strand. He could start out, leaving word that he was engaged, and so 
+postpone the evil hour. He had almost made up his mind to do so, and 
+certainly would have done it, had not the sitting-room door opened as 
+he was on the landing-place. The door opened, and he found himself 
+confronting the assembled company. First came Cradell, and leaning on 
+his arm, I regret to say, was Mrs Lupex-Egyptia conjux! Then there came 
+Miss Spruce with young Roper; Amelia and her mother brought up the rear 
+together. There was no longer question of flight now; and poor Eames, 
+before he knew what he was doing, was carried down into the dining-room 
+with the rest of the company. They were all glad to see him, and 
+welcomed him back warmly, but he was so much beside himself that he 
+could not ascertain whether Amelia's voice was joined with the others. 
+He was already seated at table, and had before him a plate of soup, 
+before he recognised the fact that he was sitting between Mrs Roper and 
+Mrs Lupex. The latter lady had separated herself from Mr Cradell as she 
+entered the room.
+
+"Under all the circumstances perhaps it will be better for us to be 
+apart," she said. "A lady can't make herself too safe; can she, Mrs 
+Roper? There's no danger between you and me, is there, Mr 
+Eames-specially when Miss Amelia is opposite?" The last words, however, 
+were intended to be whispered into his ear.
+
+But Johnny made no answer to her; contenting himself for the moment 
+with wiping the perspiration from his brow. There was Amelia opposite 
+to him, looking at him-the very Amelia to whom he had written, 
+declining the honour of marrying her. Of what her mood towards him 
+might be, he could form no judgment from her looks. Her face was simply 
+stern and impassive, and she seemed inclined to eat her dinner in 
+silence. A slight smile of derision had passed across her face as she 
+heard Mrs Lupex whisper, and it might have been discerned that her 
+nose, at the same time, became somewhat elevated; but she said not a 
+word.
+
+"I hope you've enjoyed yourself, Mr Eames, among the vernal beauties of 
+the country," said Mrs Lupex.
+
+"Very much, thank you," he replied.
+
+"There's nothing like the country at this autumnal season of the year. 
+As for myself, I've never been accustomed to remain in London after the 
+breaking up of the beau monde. We've usually been to Broadstairs, which 
+is a very charming place, with most elegant society, but now-"and she 
+shook her head, by which all the company knew that she intended to 
+allude to the sins of Mr Lupex.
+
+"I'd never wish to sleep out of London for my part," said Mrs Roper.
+
+"When a woman's got a house over her head, I don't think her mind's 
+ever easy out of it."
+
+She had not intended any reflection on Mrs Lupex for not having a house 
+of her own, but that lady immediately bristled up.
+
+"That's just what the snails say, Mrs Roper. And as for having a house 
+of one's own, it's a very good thing, no doubt, sometimes; but that's 
+according to circumstances. It has suited me lately to live in 
+lodgings, but there's no knowing whether I mayn't fall lower than that 
+yet, and have-" but here she stopped herself, and looking over at Mr 
+Cradell nodded her head.
+
+"And have to let them," said Mrs Roper.
+
+"I hope you'll be more lucky with your lodgers than I have been with 
+some of mine. Jemima, hand the potatoes to Miss Spruce. Miss Spruce, do 
+let me send you a little more gravy? There's plenty here, really." Mrs 
+Roper was probably thinking of Mr Todgers.
+
+"I hope I shall," said Mrs Lupex.
+
+"But, as I was saying, Broadstairs is delightful. Were you ever at 
+Broadstairs, Mr Cradell?"
+
+"Never, Mrs Lupex. I generally go abroad in my leave. One sees more of 
+the world, you know. I was at Dieppe last June, and found that very 
+delightful-though rather lonely. I shall go to Ostend this year; only 
+December is so late for Ostend. It was a deuced shame my getting 
+December, wasn't it, Johnny?"
+
+"Yes, it was," said Eames.
+
+"I managed better."
+
+"And what have you been doing, Mr Eames?" said Mrs Lupex, with one of 
+her sweetest smiles.
+
+"Whatever it may have been, you've not been false to the cause of 
+beauty, I'm sure." And she looked over to Amelia with a knowing smile. 
+But Amelia was engaged upon her plate, and went on with her dinner 
+without turning her eyes either on Mrs Lupex or on John Eames.
+
+"I haven't done anything particular," said Eames.
+
+"I've just been staying with my mother."
+
+"We've been very social here, haven't we, Miss Amelia?" continued Mrs 
+Lupex.
+
+"Only now and then a cloud comes across the heavens, and the lights at 
+the banquet are darkened." Then she put her handkerchief up to her 
+eyes, sobbing deeply, and they all knew that she was again alluding to 
+the sins of her husband.
+
+As soon as dinner was over the ladies with young Mr Roper retired, and 
+Eames and Cradell were left to take their wine over the dining-room 
+fire-or their glass of gin and water, as it might be.
+
+"Well, Caudle, old fellow," said one.
+
+"Well, Johnny, my boy," said the other.
+
+"What's the news at the office?" said Eames.
+
+"Muggeridge has been playing the very mischief." Muggeridge was the 
+second clerk in Cradell's room.
+
+"We're going to put him into Coventry and not speak to him except 
+officially. But to tell you the truth, my hands have been so full here 
+at home, that I haven't thought much about the office. What am I to do 
+about that woman?
+
+"Do about her? How do about her?"
+
+"Yes; what am I to do about her? How am I to manage with her? There's 
+Lupex off again in one of his fits of jealousy."
+
+"But it's not your fault, I suppose?"
+
+"Well; I can't just say. I am fond of her, and that's the long and the 
+short of it; deuced fond of her."
+
+"But, my dear Caudle, you know she's that man's wife."
+
+"Oh, yes, I know all about it. I'm not going to defend myself. It's 
+wrong, I know-pleasant, but wrong. But what's a fellow to do? I suppose 
+in strict morality I ought to leave the lodgings. But, by George, I 
+don't see why a man's to be turned out in that way. And then I couldn't 
+make a clean score with old mother Roper. But I say, old fellow, who 
+gave you the gold chain?"
+
+"Well; it was an old family friend at Guestwick; or rather, I should 
+say, a man who said he knew my father."
+
+"And he gave you that because he knew your governor! Is there a watch 
+to it?
+
+"Yes, there's a watch. It wasn't exactly that. There was some trouble 
+about a bull. To tell the truth, it was Lord de Guest; the queerest 
+fellow, Caudle, you ever met in. your life; but such a trump. I've got 
+to go and dine with him at Christmas." And then the old story of the 
+bull was told.
+
+"I wish I could find a lord in a field with a bull," said Cradell. We 
+may, however, be permitted to doubt whether Mr Cradell would have 
+earned a watch even if he had had his wish.
+
+"You see," continued Cradell, reverting, to the subject on which he 
+most delighted to talk,
+
+"I'm not responsible for that man's ill-conduct."
+
+"Does anybody say you are?
+
+"No; nobody says so. But people seem to think so. When he is by I 
+hardly speak to her. She is thoughtless and giddy as women are, and 
+takes my arm, and that kind of. thing, you know. It makes him mad with 
+rage, but upon my honour I don't think she means any harm."
+"I don't suppose she does," said Eames.
+
+"Well; she may or she mayn't. I hope with all my heart she doesn't."
+
+"And where is he now?"
+
+"This is between ourselves, you know; but she went to find him this 
+afternoon. Unless he gives her money she can't stay here, nor, for the 
+matter of that, will she be able to go away. If I mention something to 
+you, you won't tell any one? '
+
+"Of course I won't."
+
+"I wouldn't have it known to any one for the world. I've lent her seven 
+pounds ten. It's that which makes me so short with mother Roper."
+
+"Then I think you're a fool for your pains."
+
+"Ah, that's so like you. I always said you'd no feeling of real 
+romance. If I cared for a woman I'd give her the coat off my back."
+
+"I'd do better than that," said Johnny.
+
+"I'd give her the heart out of my body. I'd be chopped up alive for a 
+girl I loved; but it shouldn't be for another man's wife."
+
+"That's a matter of taste. But she's been to Lupex today at that house 
+he goes to in Drury Lane. She had a terrible scene there. He was going 
+to commit suicide in the middle of the street, and she declares that it 
+all comes from jealousy. Think what a time I have of it-standing 
+always, as one may say, on gunpowder. He may turn up here any moment, 
+you know. But, upon my word, for the life of me I cannot desert her. If 
+I were to turn my back on her she wouldn't have a friend in the world. 
+And how's L. D.? I'll tell you what it is-you'll have some trouble with 
+the divine Amelia."
+
+"Shall I?"
+
+"By Jove, you will. But how's L. D. all this time?"
+
+"L. D. is engaged to be married to a man named Adolphus Crosbie," said 
+poor Johnny, slowly.
+
+"If you please, we will not say any more about her."
+
+"Whew-w-w! That's what makes you so down in the mouth! L. D. going to 
+marry Crosbie! Why, that's the man who is to be the new secretary at 
+the General Committee Office. Old Huffle Scuffle, who was their chair, 
+has come to us, you know. There's been a general move at the GC, and 
+this Crosbie has got to be secretary. He's a lucky chap, isn't he?"
+
+"I don't know anything about his luck. He's one of those fellows that 
+make me hate them the first time I look at them. I've a sort of a 
+feeling that I shall live to kick him some day."
+
+"That's the time, is it? Then I suppose Amelia will have it all her own 
+way now."
+"I'll tell you what, Caudle. I'd sooner get up through the trap-door, 
+and throw myself off the roof into the area, than marry Amelia Roper."
+
+"Have you and she had any conversation since you came back?"
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"Then I tell you fairly you've got trouble before you. Amelia and 
+Maria-Mrs Lupex, I mean-are as thick as thieves just at present, and 
+they have been talking you over. Maria-that is, Mrs Lupex-lets it all 
+out to me. You'll have to mind where you are, old fellow."
+
+Eames was not inclined to discuss the matter any further, so he 
+finished his toddy in silence. Cradell, however, who felt that there 
+was something in his affairs of which he had reason to be proud, soon 
+returned to the story of his own very extraordinary position.
+
+"By Jove, I don't know that a man was ever so circumstanced," he said.
+
+"She looks to me to protect her, and yet what can I do?"
+
+At last Cradell got up, and declared that he must go to the ladies. 
+"She's so nervous, that unless she has some one to countenance her she 
+becomes unwell."
+
+Eames declared his purpose of going to the divan, or to the theatre, or 
+to take a walk in the streets. The smiles of beauty had no longer 
+charms for him in Burton Crescent.
+
+"They'll expect you to take a cup of tea the first night," said 
+Cradell; but Eames declared that they might expect it.	
+
+"I'm in no humour for it," said he. "I'll tell you what, Cradell, I 
+shall leave this place, and take rooms for myself somewhere. I'll never 
+go into a lodging-house again."
+
+As he so spoke, he was standing at the dining-room door; but he was not 
+allowed to escape in this easy way. Jemima, as he went out into the 
+passage, was there with a three-cornered note in her hand.
+
+"From Miss Mealyer," she said. "Miss Mealyer is in the back parlour all 
+by herself."
+
+Poor Johnny took the note, and read it by the lamp over the front door.
+
+"Are you not going to speak to me on the day of your return? It cannot 
+be that you will leave the house without seeing me for a moment. I am 
+in the back parlour."
+
+When he had read these words, he paused in the passage, with his hat 
+on. Jemima, who could not understand why any young man should hesitate 
+as to seeing his lady-love in the back parlour alone, whispered to him 
+again, in her audible way,
+
+"Miss Mealyer is there, sir; and all the rest on 'em's upstairs!" So 
+compelled, Eames put down his hat, and walked with slow steps into the 
+back parlour.
+
+How was it to be with the enemy? Was he to encounter Amelia in anger, 
+or Amelia in love? She had seemed to be stern and defiant when he had 
+ventured to steal a look at her across the dining-table, and now he 
+expected that she would turn upon him with loud threatenings and 
+protestations as to her wrongs. But it was not so. When he entered 
+the-room she was standing with her back to him, leaning on the 
+mantel-piece, and at the first moment she did not essay to peak. He 
+walked into the middle of the room and stood there, waiting for her to 
+begin.
+
+"Shut the door!" she said, looking over her shoulder. "I suppose you 
+don't want the girl to hear all you've got to say to me!"
+
+Then he shut the door; but still Amelia stood with her back to him, 
+leaning upon the mantelpiece.
+
+It did not seem that he had much to say, for he remained perfectly 
+silent.
+
+"Well!" said Amelia, after a long pause, and she then again looked over 
+her shoulder. "Well, Mr Eames!"
+
+"Jemima gave me your note, and so I've come," said he.
+
+"And is this the way we meet!" she exclaimed, turning suddenly upon 
+him, and throwing her long black hair back over her shoulders. There 
+certainly was some beauty about her. Her eyes were large and bright, 
+and her shoulders were well turned. She might have done as an artist's 
+model for a Judith, but I doubt whether any man, looking well into her 
+face, could think that she would do well as a wife.
+
+"Oh, John, is it to be thus, after love such as ours?" And she clasped 
+her hands together, and stood before him.
+
+"I don't know what you mean," said Eames.
+
+"If you are engaged to marry L. D., tell me so at once. Be a man, and 
+speak out, sir."
+
+"No," said Eames; "I am not engaged to marry the lady to whom you 
+allude."
+
+"On your honour?"
+
+"I won't have her spoken about. I'm not going to marry her, and that's 
+enough."
+
+"Do you think that I wish to speak of her? What can L. D. be to me as 
+long as she is nothing to you? Oh, Johnny, why did you write me that 
+heartless letter?" Then she leaned upon his shoulder-or attempted to do 
+so.
+
+I cannot say that Eames shook her off, seeing that he lacked the 
+courage to do so; but he shuffled his shoulder about so that the 
+support was uneasy to her, and she was driven to stand erect again.
+
+"Why did you write that cruel letter?" she said again.
+
+"Because I thought it best, Amelia. What's a man to do with ninety 
+pound a year, you know?"
+
+"But your mother allows you twenty."
+"And what's a man to do with a hundred and ten?"
+
+"Rising five pounds every year," said the well-informed Amelia. "Of 
+course we should live here, with mamma, and you would just go on paying 
+her as you do now. If your heart was right, Johnny, you wouldn't think 
+so much about money. If you loved me-as you said you did-" Then a 
+little sob came, and the words were stopped. The words were stopped, 
+but she was again upon his shoulder. What was he to do? In truth, his 
+only wish was to escape, and yet his arm, quite in opposition to his 
+own desires, found its way round her waist. In such a combat a woman 
+has so many points in her favour!
+
+"Oh, Johnny," she said again, as soon as she felt the pressure of his 
+arm.
+
+"Gracious, what a beautiful watch you've got," and she took the trinket 
+out of his pocket.
+
+"Did you buy that?"
+
+"No; it was given to me."
+
+"John Eames, did L. D. give it you?"
+
+"No, no, no," he shouted, stamping on the floor as he spoke.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Amelia, quelled for the moment by his 
+energy.
+
+"Perhaps it was your mother."
+
+"No; it was a man. Never mind about the watch now."
+
+"I wouldn't mind anything, Johnny, if you would tell me that you loved 
+me again. Perhaps I oughtn't to ask you, and it isn't becoming in a 
+lady; but how can I help it, when you know you've got my heart. Come 
+upstairs and have tea with us now, won't you?"
+
+What was he to do? He said that he would go up and have tea; and as he 
+led her to the door he put down his face and kissed her. Oh, Johnny 
+Eames! But then a woman in such a contest has so many points in her 
+favour.
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+IS IT FROM HIM?
+
+
+I have already declared that Crosbie wrote and posted the fatal letter 
+to Allington, and we must now follow it down to that place. On the 
+morning following the squire's return to his own house Mrs Crump, the 
+post-mistress at Allington, received a parcel by post directed to 
+herself. She opened it, and found an enclosure addressed to Mrs Dale, 
+with a written request that she would herself deliver it into that 
+lady's own hand at once. This was Crosbie's letter.
+
+"It's from Miss Lily's gentleman," said Mrs Crump, looking at the 
+handwriting. "There's 'something up, or he wouldn't be writing to her 
+mamma in this way." But Mrs Crump lost no time in putting on her 
+bonnet, and trudging up with the letter to the Small House.
+
+"I must see the missus herself," said Mrs Crump. Whereupon Mrs Dale was 
+called downstairs into the hail, and there received the packet. Lily 
+was in the breakfast-parlour, and had seen the post-mistress arrive-had 
+seen also that she carried a letter in her hand. For a moment she had 
+thought that it was for her, and imagined that the old woman had 
+brought it herself from simple good-nature. But Lily, when she heard 
+her mother mentioned, instantly withdrew and shut the parlour door. Her 
+heart misgave her that something was wrong, but she hardly tried to 
+think what it might be. After all, the regular postman might bring the 
+letter she herself expected. Bell was not yet downstairs, and she stood 
+alone over the tea-cups on the breakfast-table, feeling that there was 
+something for her to fear. Her mother did not come at once into the 
+room, but, after a pause of a moment or two, went again upstairs. So 
+she remained, either standing against the table, or at the window, or 
+seated in one of the two arm-chairs, for a space of ten minutes, when 
+Bell entered the room.
+
+"Isn't mamma down yet?" said Bell.
+
+"Bell," said Lily, "something has happened. Mamma has got a letter."
+
+"Happened! What has happened? Is anybody ill? Who is the letter from?" 
+And Bell was going to return through the door in search of her mother.
+
+"Stop, Bell," said Lily. "Do not go to her yet. I think it's 
+from-Adolphus."
+
+"Oh, Lily, what do you mean?"
+
+"I don't know, dear. We'll wait a little longer. Don't look like that, 
+Bell." And Lily strove to appear calm, and strove almost successfully.
+
+"You have frightened me so," said Bell.
+
+"I am frightened myself. He only sent me one line yesterday, and now he 
+has sent nothing. If some misfortune should have happened to him! Mrs 
+Crump brought down the letter herself to mamma, and that is so odd, you 
+know."
+
+"Are you sure it was from him?"
+
+"No; I have not spoken to her. I will go up to her now. Don't you come, 
+Bell. Oh! Bell, do not look so unhappy." She then went over and kissed 
+her sister, and after that, with very gentle steps, made her way up to 
+her mother's room.
+
+"Mamma, may I come in?" she said.
+
+"Oh! my child!"
+
+"I know it is from him, mamma. Tell me all at once."
+
+Mrs Dale had read the letter. With quick, glancing eyes, she had made 
+herself mistress of its whole contents, and was already aware of the 
+nature and extent of the sorrow which had come upon them. It was a 
+sorrow that admitted of no hope. The man who had written that letter 
+could never return again; nor if he should return could he be welcomed 
+back to them. The blow had fallen, and it was to be borne. Inside the 
+letter to herself had been a very small note addressed to Lily.
+
+"Give her the enclosed," Crosbie had said in his letter, "if you do not 
+now think it wrong to do so. I have left it open, that you may read 
+it." Mrs Dale, however, had not yet read it, and she now concealed it 
+beneath her handkerchief.
+
+I will not repeat at length Crosbie's letter to Mrs Dale. It covered 
+four sides of letter-paper, and was such a letter that any man who 
+wrote it must have felt himself to be a rascal. We saw that he had 
+difficulty in writing it, but the miracle was, that any man could have 
+found it possible to write it.
+
+"I know you will curse me," said he; "and I deserve to be cursed. I 
+know that I shall be punished for this, and I must bear my punishment. 
+My worst punishment will be this-that I never more shall hold up my 
+head again." And then, again, he said-"My only excuse is my conviction 
+that I should never make her happy. She has been brought up as an 
+angel, with pure thoughts, with holy hopes, with a belief in all that 
+is good, and high, and noble. I have been surrounded through my whole 
+life by things low, and mean, and ignoble. How could I live with her, 
+or she with me? I know now that this is so; but my fault has been that 
+I did not know it when I was there with her. I choose to tell you all," 
+he continued, towards the end of the letter, "and therefore I let you 
+know that I have engaged myself to marry another woman. Ah! I can 
+foresee how bitter will be your feelings when you read this: but they 
+will not be so bitter as mine while I write it. Yes; I am already 
+engaged to one who will suit me, and whom I may suit. You will not 
+expect me to speak ill of her who is to be near and dear to me. But she 
+is one with whom I may mate myself without an inward conviction that I 
+shall destroy all her happiness by doing so. Lilian," he said, "shall 
+always have my prayers; and I trust that she may soon forget, in the 
+love of an honest man, that she ever knew one so dishonest as-Adolphus 
+Crosbie."
+
+Of what like must have been his countenance as he sat writing such 
+words of himself under the ghastly light of his own small, solitary 
+lamp? Had he written his letter at his office, in the day-time, with 
+men coming in and out of his room, he could hardly have written of 
+himself so plainly. He would have bethought himself that the written 
+words might remain, and be read hereafter by other eyes than those for 
+which they were intended. But, as he sat alone, during the small hours 
+of the night, almost repenting of his sin with true repentance, he 
+declared to himself that he did not care who might read them. They 
+should, at any rate, be true. Now they had been read by her to whom 
+they had been addressed, and the daughter was standing before the 
+mother to hear her doom.
+
+"Tell me all at once," Lily had said; but in what words was her mother 
+to tell her?
+
+"Lily," she said, rising from her seat, and leaving the two letters on 
+the couch; that addressed to the daughter was hidden beneath a 
+handkerchief, but that which she had read she left open and in sight. 
+She took both the girl's hands in hers as she looked into her face, and 
+spoke to her.
+
+"Lily, my child!" Then she burst into sobs, and was unable to tell her 
+tale.
+
+"Is it from him, mamma? May I read it? He cannot be-"
+
+"It is from Mr Crosbie."
+
+"Is he ill, mamma? Tell me at once. If he is ill I will go to him."
+
+"No, my darling, he is not ill. Not yet-do not read it yet. Oh, Lily! 
+It brings bad news; very bad news."
+
+"Mamma, if he is not in danger, I can read it. Is it bad to him, or 
+only bad to me?"
+
+At this moment the servant knocked, and not waiting for an answer half 
+opened the door.
+
+"If you please, ma'am, Mr Bernard is below, and wants to speak to you."
+
+"Mr Bernard! ask Miss Bell to see him."
+
+"Miss Bell is with him, ma'am, but he says that he specially wants to 
+speak to you."
+
+Mrs Dale felt that she could not leave Lily alone. She could not take 
+the letter away, nor could she leave her child with the letter open.
+
+"I cannot see him," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Ask him what it is. Tell him I cannot come down just at present." And 
+then the servant went, and Bernard left his message with Bell.
+
+"Bernard," she had said, "do you know of anything? Is there anything 
+wrong about Mr Crosbie?" Then, in a few words, he told her all, and 
+understanding why his aunt had not come down to him, he went back to 
+the Great House. Bell, almost stupefied by the tidings, seated herself 
+at the table unconsciously, leaning upon her elbows.
+
+"It will kill her," she said to herself.
+
+"My Lily, my darling Lily! It will surely kill her."
+
+But the mother was still with the daughter, and the story was still 
+untold.
+
+"Mamma," said Lily, "whatever it is, I must, of course, be made to know 
+it. I begin to guess the truth. It will pain you to say it. Shall I 
+read the letter?
+
+Mrs Dale was astonished at her calmness. It could not be that she had 
+guessed the truth, or she would not stand like that, with tearless eyes 
+and unquelled courage before her.
+
+"You shall read it, but I ought to tell you first. Oh, my child, my own 
+one!" Lily was now leaning against the bed, and her mother was standing 
+over her, caressing her.
+
+"Then tell me," said she.
+
+"But I know what it is. He has thought it all over while away from me, 
+and he finds that it must not be as we have supposed. Before he went I 
+offered to release him, and now he knows that he had better accept my 
+offer. Is it so, mamma?" In answer to this Mrs Dale did not speak, but 
+Lily understood from her signs that it was so.
+
+"He might have written it to me, myself," said Lily very proudly. 
+"Mamma, we will go down to breakfast. He has sent nothing to me, then?"
+
+"There is a note. He bids me read it, but I have not opened it. It is 
+here."
+
+"Give it me," said Lily, almost sternly. "Let me have his last words to 
+me" and she took the note from her mother's hands.
+
+"Lily," said the note, "your mother will have told you all. Before you 
+read these few words you will know that you have trusted one who was 
+quite untrustworthy. I know that you will hate me.-I cannot even ask 
+you to forgive me. You will let me pray that you may yet be happy.-A. 
+C."
+
+She read these few words, still leaning against the bed. Then she got 
+up, and walking to a chair, seated herself with her back to her mother. 
+Mrs Dale moving silently after her stood over the back of the chair, 
+not daring to speak to her. So she sat for some five minutes, with her 
+eyes fixed upon the open window, and with Crosbie's note in her hand.
+
+"I will not hate him, and I do forgive him," she said at last, 
+struggling to command her voice, and hardly showing that she could not 
+altogether succeed in her attempt. "I may not write to him again, but 
+you shall write and tell him so. Now we will go down to breakfast." And 
+so saying, she got up from her chair.
+
+Mrs Dale almost feared to speak to her, her composure was so complete, 
+and her manner so stern and fixed. She hardly knew how to offer pity 
+and sympathy, seeing that pity seemed to be so little necessary, and 
+that even sympathy was not demanded. And she could not understand all 
+that Lily had said. What had she meant by the offer to release him? Had 
+there, then, been some quarrel between them before he went? Crosbie had 
+made no such allusion in his letter. But Mrs Dale did not dare to ask 
+any questions.
+
+"You frighten me, Lily," she said. "Your very calmness frightens me."
+
+"Dear mamma!" and the poor girl absolutely smiled a she embraced her 
+mother.
+
+"You need not be frightened by my calmness. I know the truth well. I 
+have been very unfortunate-very. The brightest hopes of my life are all 
+gone-and I shall never again see him whom I love beyond all the world!" 
+Then at last she broke down, and wept in her mother's arms.
+
+There was not a word of anger spoken then against him who had done all 
+this. Mrs Dale felt that she did not dare to speak in anger against 
+him, and words of anger were not likely to come from poor Lily. She, 
+indeed, hitherto did not know the whole of his offence, for she had not 
+read his letter.
+
+"Give it me, mamma," she said at last. "It has to be done sooner or 
+later."
+
+"Not now, Lily. I have told you all-all that you need know at present."
+
+"Yes; now, mamma," and again that sweet silvery voice became stern. "I 
+will read it now, and there shall be an end." Whereupon Mrs Dale gave 
+her the letter and she read it in silence. Her mother, though standing 
+somewhat behind her, watched her narrowly as she did so. She was now 
+lying over upon the bed, and the letter was on the pillow, as she 
+propped herself upon her arm. Her tears were running, and ever and 
+again she would stop to dry her eyes. Her sobs too were very audible, 
+but she went on steadily with her reading till she came to the line on 
+which Crosbie told that he had already engaged himself to another 
+woman. Then her mother could see that she paused suddenly, and that a 
+shudder slightly convulsed all her limbs.
+
+"He has been very quick," she said, almost in a whisper; and then she 
+finished the letter. "Tell him, mamma," she said, "that I do forgive 
+him, and I will not hate him. You will tell him that-from me; will you 
+not?" And then she raised herself from the bed.
+
+Mrs Dale would give her no such assurance. In her present mood her 
+feelings against Crosbie were of a nature which she herself hardly 
+could understand or analyse. She felt that if he were present she could 
+almost fly at him as would a tigress. She had never hated before as she 
+now hated this man. He was to her a murderer, and worse than a 
+murderer. He had made his way like a wolf into her little fold, and 
+torn her ewe-lamb and left her maimed and mutilated for life. How could 
+a mother forgive such an offence as that, or consent to be the medium 
+through which forgiveness should be expressed?
+
+"You must, mamma; or, if you do not, I shall do so. Remember that I 
+love him. You know what it is to have loved one single man. He has made 
+me very unhappy; I hardly know yet how unhappy. But I have loved him, 
+and do love him. I believe, in my heart, that he still loves me. Where 
+this has been there must not be hatred and unforgiveness."
+
+"I will pray that I may become able to forgive him," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"But you must write to him those words. Indeed you must, mamma! 'She 
+bids me tell you that she has forgiven you, and will not hate you.' 
+Promise me that!"
+
+"I can make no promise now, Lily. I will think about it, and endeavour 
+to do my duty."
+
+Lily was now seated, and was holding the skirt of her mother's dress.
+
+"Mamma," she said, looking up into her mother's face, "you must be very 
+good to me now; and I must be very good to you. We shall be always 
+together now. I must be your friend and counsellor; and be everything 
+to you, more than ever. I must fall in love with you now;" and she 
+smiled again, and the tears were almost dry upon her checks.
+
+At last they went down to the breakfast-room, from which Bell had not 
+moved. Mrs Dale entered the room first, and lily followed, hiding 
+herself for a moment behind her mother. Then she came forward boldly, 
+and taking Bell in her arms, clasped her close to her bosom.
+
+"Bell," she said, "he has gone."
+
+"Lily! Lily! Lily!" said Bell, weeping.
+
+"He has gone! We shall talk it over in a few days, and shall know how 
+to do so without losing ourselves in misery. Today we will say no more 
+about it. I am so thirsty, Bell; do give me my tea" and she sat herself 
+down at the breakfast-table.
+
+Lily's tea was given to her, and she drank it. Beyond that I cannot say 
+that any of them partook with much heartiness of the meal. They sat 
+there, as they would have sat if no terrible thunderbolt had fallen 
+among them, and no word further was spoken about Crosbie and his 
+conduct. Immediately after breakfast they went into the other room, and 
+Lily, as was her wont, sat herself immediately down to her drawing. Her 
+mother looked at her with wistful eyes, longing to bid her spare 
+herself, but she shrank from interfering with her. For a quarter of an 
+hour Lily sat over her board, with her brush or pencil in her hand, and 
+then she rose up and put it away.
+
+"It is no good pretending," she said. "I am only spoiling the things; 
+but I will be better tomorrow. I'll go away and lie down by myself, 
+mamma." And so she went.
+
+Soon after this Mrs Dale took her bonnet and went up to the Great 
+House, having received her brother-in-law's message from Bell.
+
+"I know what he has to tell me," she said; "but I might as well go. It 
+will be necessary that we should speak to each other about it." So she 
+walked across the lawn, and up into the hail of the Great House.
+
+"Is my brother in the book-room?", she said to one of the maids; and 
+then knocking at the door, went in unannounced.
+
+The squire rose from his arm-chair, and came forward to meet her.
+
+"Mary," he said, "I believe you know it all."
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"You can read that," and she handed him Crosbie's letter.
+
+"How was one to know that any man could be so wicked as that?"
+
+"And she has heard it? " asked the squire.
+
+"Is she able to bear it?"
+"Wonderfully! She has amazed me by her strength. It frightens me; for I 
+know that a relapse must come. She has never sunk for a moment beneath 
+it. For myself, I feel as though it were her strength that enables me 
+to bear my share of it." And then she described to the squire all that 
+had taken place that morning.
+
+"Poor child!" said the squire.
+
+"Poor child! What can we do for her? Would it be good for her to go 
+away for a time? She is a sweet, good, lovely girl, and has deserved 
+better than that. Sorrow and disappointment come to us all; but they 
+are doubly heavy when they come so early."
+
+Mrs Dale was almost surprised at the amount of sympathy which he showed.
+
+"And what is to be his punishment?" she asked.
+
+"The scorn which men and women will feel for him; those, at least, 
+whose esteem or scorn are matters of concern to any one. I know no 
+other punishment. You would not have Lily's name brought before a 
+tribunal of law?"
+
+"Certainly not that."
+
+"And I will not have Bernard calling him out. Indeed, it would be for 
+nothing; for in these days a man is not expected to fight duels."
+
+"You cannot think that I would wish that."
+
+"What punishment is there, then? I know of none. There are evils which 
+a man may do, and no one can punish him. I know of nothing. I went up 
+to London after him, but he continued to crawl out of my way. What can 
+you do to a rat but keep clear of him?"
+
+Mrs Dale had felt in her heart that it would be well if Crosbie could 
+be beaten till all his bones were sore. I hardly know whether such 
+should have been a woman's thought, but it was hers. She had no wish 
+that he should be made to fight a duel. In that there would have been 
+much that was wicked, and in her estimation nothing that was just. But 
+she felt that if Bernard would thrash the coward for his cowardice she 
+would love her nephew better than ever she had loved him. Bernard also 
+had considered it probable that he might be expected to horsewhip the 
+man who had jilted his cousin, and, as regarded the absolute bodily 
+risk, he would not have felt any insuperable objection to undertake the 
+task. But such a piece of work was disagreeable to him in many ways. He 
+hated the idea of a row at his club. He was most desirous that his 
+cousin's name should not be made public. He wished to avoid anything 
+that might be impolitic. A wicked thing had been done, and he was quite 
+ready to hate Crosbie as Crosbie ought to be hated; but as regarded 
+himself, it made him unhappy to think that the world might probably 
+expect him to punish the man who had so lately been his friend. And 
+then he did not know where to catch him, or how to thrash him when 
+caught. He was very sorry for his cousin, and felt strongly that 
+Crosbie should not be allowed to escape. But what was he to do?
+
+"Would she like to go anywhere?" said the squire again, anxious, if he 
+could, to afford solace by some act of generosity. At this moment he 
+would have settled a hundred a year for life upon his niece if by so 
+doing he could have done her any good.
+
+"She will be better at home," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Poor thing. For a while she will wish to avoid going out."
+
+"I suppose so;" and then there was a pause.
+
+"I'll tell you what, Mary; I don't understand it. On my honour I don't 
+understand it. It is to me as wonderful as though I had caught the man 
+picking my pence out of my pocket. I don't think any man in the 
+position of a gentleman would have done such a thing when I was young. 
+I don't think any man would have dared to do it. But now it seems that 
+a man may act in that way and no harm come to him. He had a friend in 
+London who came to me and talked about it as though it were some 
+ordinary, everyday transaction of life. Yes; you may come in, Bernard. 
+The poor child knows it all now."
+
+Bernard offered to his aunt what of solace and sympathy he had to 
+offer, and made some sort of half-expressed apology for having 
+introduced this wolf into their flock.
+
+"We always thought very much of him at his club," said Bernard.
+
+"I don't know much about your London clubs nowadays," said his uncle, 
+"nor do I wish to do so if the society of that man can be endured after 
+what he has now done."
+
+"I don't suppose half-a-dozen men will ever know anything about it," 
+said Bernard.
+
+"Umph!" ejaculated the squire. He could not say that he wished 
+Crosbie's villany to be widely discussed, seeing that Lily's name was 
+so closely connected with it. But yet he could not support the idea 
+that Crosbie should not be punished by the frown of the world at large. 
+It seemed to him that from this time forward any man speaking to 
+Crosbie should be held to have disgraced himself by so doing.
+
+"Give her my best love," he said, as Mrs Dale got up to take her leave; 
+"my very best love. If her old uncle can do anything for her she has 
+only to let me know. She met the man in my house, and I feel that I owe 
+her much. Bid her come and see me. It will be better for her than 
+moping at home. And Mary"-this he said to her, whispering into her 
+ear-"think of what I said to you about Bell."
+
+Mrs Dale, as she walked back to her own house, acknowledged to herself 
+that her brother-in-law's manner was different to her from anything 
+that she had hitherto known of him.
+
+During the whole of that day Crosbie's name was not mentioned at the 
+Small House. Neither of the girls stirred out, and Bell spent the 
+greater part of the afternoon sitting, with her arm round her sister's 
+waist, upon the sofa. Each of them had a book; but though there was 
+little spoken, there was as little read. Who can describe the thoughts 
+that were passing through Lily's mind as she remembered the hours which 
+she had passed with Crosbie, of his warm assurances of love, of his 
+accepted caresses, of her uncontrolled and acknowledged joy in his 
+affection? It had all been holy to her then; and now those things which 
+were then sacred had been made almost disgraceful by his fault. And yet 
+as she thought of this she declared to herself over and over again that 
+she would forgive him-nay, that she had forgiven him.
+
+"And he shall know it, too," she said, speaking almost out loud.
+"Lily, dear Lily," said Bell, "turn your thoughts away from it for a 
+while, if you can."
+
+"They won't go away," said Lily. And that was all that was said between 
+them on the subject.
+
+Everybody would know it! I doubt whether that must not be one of the 
+bitterest drops in the cup which a girl in such circumstances is made 
+to drain. Lily perceived early in the day that the parlour-maid well 
+knew that she had been jilted. The girl's manner was intended to convey 
+sympathy; but it did convey pity; and Lily for a moment felt angry. But 
+she remembered that it must be so, and smiled upon the girl, and spoke 
+kindly to her. What mattered it? All the world would know it in a day 
+or two.
+
+On the following day she went up, by her mother's advice, to see her 
+uncle.
+
+"My child," said he, "I am sorry for you. My heart bleeds for you."
+
+"Uncle," she said, "do not mind it. Only do this for me-do not talk 
+about it-I mean to me."
+
+"No, no; I will not. That there should ever have been in my house so 
+great a rascal-"
+
+"Uncle! uncle! I will not have that! I will not listen to a word 
+against him from any human being-not a word! Remember that!" And her 
+eyes flashed as she spoke.
+
+He did not answer her, but took her hand and pressed it, and then she 
+left him.
+
+"The Dales were ever constant! " he said to himself, as he walked up 
+and down the terrace before his house. "Ever constant!"
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE WOUNDED FAWN
+
+
+Nearly two months passed away, and it was now Christmas time at 
+Allington. It may be presumed that there was no intention at either 
+house that the mirth should be very loud. Such a wound as that received 
+by Lily Dale was one from which recovery could not be quick, and it was 
+felt by all the family that a weight was upon them which made gaiety 
+impracticable. As for Lily herself it may be said that she bore her 
+misfortune with all a woman's courage. For the first week she stood up 
+as a tree that stands against the wind, which is soon to be shivered to 
+pieces because it will not bend. During that week her mother and sister 
+were frightened by her calmness and endurance. She would perform her 
+daily task. She would go out through the village, and appear at her 
+place in church on the first Sunday. She would sit over her book of an 
+evening, keeping back her tears; and would chide her mother and sister 
+when she found that they were regarding her with earnest anxiety.
+
+"Mamma, let it all be as though it had never been," she said.
+
+"Ah, dear! if that were but possible!"
+
+"God forbid that it should be possible inwardly," Lily replied.
+
+"But it is possible outwardly. I feel that you are more tender to me 
+than you used to be, and that upsets me. If you would only scold me 
+because I am idle, I should soon be better." But her mother could not 
+speak to her as she perhaps might have spoken had no grief fallen upon 
+her pet. She could not cease from those anxious tender glances which 
+made Lily know that she was looked on as a fawn wounded almost to death.
+
+At the end of the first week she gave way.
+
+"I won't get up, Bell," she said one morning, almost petulantly.
+
+"I am ill-I had better lie here out of the way. Don't make a fuss about 
+it. I'm stupid and foolish, and that makes me ill."
+
+Thereupon Mrs Dale and Bell were frightened, and looked into each 
+other's blank faces, remembering stories of poor broken-hearted girls 
+who had died because their loves had been unfortunate-as small wax 
+tapers whose lights are quenched if a breath of wind blows upon then 
+too strongly. But then Lily was in truth no such slight taper as that. 
+Nor was she the stem that must be broken because it will not bend. She 
+bent herself to the blast during that week of illness, and then arose 
+with her form still straight and graceful, and with her bright light 
+unquenched.
+
+After that she would talk more openly to her mother about her 
+loss-openly and with a true appreciation of the misfortune which had 
+befallen her; but with an assurance of strength which seemed to 
+ridicule the idea of a broken heart.
+
+"I know that I can bear it," she said, "and that I can bear it without 
+lasting unhappiness. Of course I shall always love him, and must feel 
+almost as you felt when you lost my father." In answer to this Mrs Dale 
+could say nothing. She could not speak out her thoughts about Crosbie, 
+and explain to Lily that he was unworthy of her love. Love does not 
+follow worth, and is not given to excellence-nor is it destroyed by 
+ill-usage, nor killed by blows and mutilation. When Lily declared that 
+she still loved the man who had so ill-used her, Mrs Dale would he 
+silent. Each perfectly understood the other, but on that matter even 
+they could not interchange their thoughts with freedom.
+
+"You must promise never to be tired of me, mamma," said Lily.
+
+"Mothers do not often get tired of their children, whatever the 
+children may do of their mothers."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that when the children turn out old maids. And I 
+mean to have a will of my own, too, mamma; and a way also, if it be 
+possible. When Bell is married I shall consider it a partnership, and I 
+shan't do what I'm told any longer."
+
+"Forewarned will be forearmed."
+
+"Exactly-and I don't want to take you by surprise. For a year or two 
+longer, till Bell is gone, I mean to be dutiful; but it would be very 
+stupid for a person to be dutiful all their lives."
+
+All of which Mrs Dale understood thoroughly. It amounted to an 
+assertion on Lily's part that she had loved once and could never love 
+again; that she had played her game, hoping, as other girls hope, that 
+she might win the prize of a husband; but that, having lost, she could 
+never play the game again. It was that inward conviction on Lily's part 
+which made her say such words to her mother. But Mrs Dale would by no 
+means allow herself to share this conviction. She declared to herself 
+that time would cure Lily's wound, and that her child might yet be 
+crowned by the bliss of a happy marriage. She would not in her heart 
+consent to that plan in accordance with which Lily's destiny in life 
+was to be regarded as already fixed. She had never really liked Crosbie 
+as a suitor, and would herself have preferred John Eames, with all the 
+faults of his hobbledehoyhood on his head. It might yet come to pass 
+that John Eames' love might be made happy.
+
+But in the meantime Lily, as I have said, had become strong in her 
+courage, and recommenced the work of living with no lackadaisical 
+self-assurance that because she had been made more unhappy than others, 
+therefore she should allow herself to be more idle. Morning and night 
+she prayed for him, and daily, almost hour by hour, she assured herself 
+that it was still her duty to love him. It was hard, this duty of 
+loving, without any power of expressing such love. But still she would 
+do her duty.
+
+"Tell me at once, mamma," she said one morning, "when you hear that the 
+day is fixed for his marriage. Pray don't keep me in the dark."
+
+"It is to be in February," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"But let me know the day. It must not be to me like ordinary days. But 
+do not look unhappy, mamma; I am not going to make a fool of myself. I 
+shan't steal off and appear in the church like a ghost." And then, 
+having uttered her little joke, a sob came, and she hid her face on her 
+mother's bosom. In a moment she raised it again.
+
+"Believe me, mamma, that I am not unhappy," she said.
+
+After the expiration of that second week Mrs Dale did write a letter to 
+Crosbie:
+
+
+I suppose (she said) it is right that I should acknowledge the receipt 
+of your letter. I do not know that I have aught else to say to you. It 
+would not become me as a woman to say what I think of your conduct, but 
+I believe that your conscience will tell you the same things. If it do 
+not, you must, indeed, be hardened. I have promised my child that I 
+will send to you a message from her. She bids me tell you that she has 
+forgiven you, and that she does not hate you. May God also forgive you, 
+and may you recover his love.
+
+MARY DALE.
+
+I beg that no rejoinder may be made to this letter, either to myself or 
+to any of my family.
+
+
+The squire wrote no answer to the letter which he had received, nor did 
+he take any steps towards the immediate punishment of Crosbie. Indeed 
+he had declared that no such steps could be taken, explaining to his 
+nephew that such a man could be served only as one serves a rat.
+
+"I shall never see him," he said once again; "if I did, I should not 
+scruple to hit him on the head with my stick; but I should think ill of 
+myself to go after him with such an object."
+
+And yet it was a terrible sorrow to the old man that the scoundrel who 
+had so injured him and his should escape scot-free. He had not forgiven 
+Crosbie. No idea of forgiveness had ever crossed his mind. He would 
+have hated himself had he thought it possible that he could be-induced 
+to forgive such an injury.
+
+"There is an amount of rascality in it-of low meanness, which I do not 
+understand," he would say over and over again to his nephew. And then 
+as he would walk alone on the terrace he would speculate within his own 
+mind whether Bernard would take any steps towards avenging; his 
+cousin's injury. "He is right," he would say to himself; "Bernard is 
+quite right. But when I was young I could not have stood it. In those 
+days a gentleman might have a fellow out who had treated him as he has 
+treated us. A man was satisfied in feeling that he had done something. 
+I suppose the world is different nowadays." The world is different; but 
+the squire by no means acknowledged in his heart that there had been 
+any improvement.
+
+Bernard also was greatly troubled in his mind. He would have had no 
+objection to fight a duel with Crosbie, had duels in these days been 
+possible. But he believed them to be no longer possible at any rate 
+without ridicule. And if he could not fight the man, in what other way 
+was he to punish him? Was it not the fact that for such a fault the 
+world afforded no punishment? Was it not in the power of a man like 
+Crosbie to amuse himself for a week or two at the expense of a girl's 
+happiness for life, and then to escape absolutely without any ill 
+effects to himself?
+
+"I shall be barred out of my club lest. I should meet him," Bernard 
+said to himself, "but he will not be barred out." Moreover, there was a 
+feeling within him that the matter would be one of triumph to Crosbie 
+rather than otherwise. In having secured for himself the pleasure of 
+his courtship with such a girl as Lily Dale, without encountering the 
+penalty usually consequent upon such amusement, he would be held by 
+many as having merited much admiration. He had sinned against all the 
+Dales, and yet the suffering arising from his sin was to fall upon the 
+Dales exclusively. Such was Bernard's reasoning, as he speculated on 
+the whole affair; sadly enough-wishing to be avenged, but not knowing 
+where to look for vengeance. For myself I believe him to have been 
+altogether wrong as to the light in which he supposed that Crosbie's 
+falsehood would be regarded by Crosbie's friends. Men will still talk 
+of such things lightly, professing that all is fair in love as it is in 
+war, and speaking almost with envy of the good fortunes of a practised 
+deceiver. But I have never come across the man who thought in this way 
+with reference to an individual case. Crosbie's own judgment as to the 
+consequences to himself of what he had done was more correct than that 
+formed by Bernard Dale. He had regarded the act as venial as long as it 
+was still to do while it was still within his power to leave it undone; 
+but from the moment of its accomplishment it had forced itself upon his 
+own view in its proper light. He knew that he had been a scoundrel, and 
+he knew that other men would so think of him. His friend Fowler Pratt, 
+who had the reputation of looking at women simply as toys, had so 
+regarded him. Instead of boasting of what he had done, he was as afraid 
+of alluding to any matter connected with his marriage as a man is of 
+talking of the articles which he has stolen. He had already felt that 
+men it his club looked askance at him; and, though he was no coward as 
+regarded his own skin and bones, he had an undefined fear lest some day 
+he might encounter Bernard Dale purposely armed with a stick. The 
+squire and his nephew were wrong in supposing that Crosbie was 
+unpunished.
+
+And as the winter came on he felt that he was closely watched by the 
+noble family of De Courcy. Some of that noble family he had already 
+learned to hate cordially. The Honourable John came up to town in 
+November, and persecuted him vilely: insisted on having dinners given 
+to him at Sebright's, of smoking throughout the whole afternoon in his 
+future brother-in-law's rooms, and on borrowing his future 
+brother-in-law's possessions; till at last Crosbie determined that it 
+would be wise to quarrel with the Honourable John-and he quarrelled 
+with him accordingly, turning him out of his rooms, and telling him in 
+so many words that he would have no more to do with him.
+
+"You'll have to do it, as I did," Mortimer Gazebee had said to him; "I 
+didn't like it because of the family, but Lady Amelia told me that it 
+must be so." Whereupon Crosbie took the advice of Mortimer Gazebee.
+
+But the hospitality of the Gazebees was perhaps more distressing to him 
+than even the importunities of the Honourable John. It seemed as though 
+his future sister-in-law was determined not to leave him alone. 
+Mortimer was sent to fetch him up for the Sunday afternoons, and he 
+found that he was constrained to go to the villa in St. John's Wood, 
+even in opposition to his own most strenuous will. He could not quite 
+analyse the circumstances of his own position, but he felt as though he 
+were a cock with his spurs cut off-as a dog with his teeth drawn. He 
+found himself becoming humble and meek. He had to acknowledge to 
+himself that he was afraid of Lady Amelia, and almost even afraid of 
+Mortimer Gazebee. He was aware that they watched him, and knew all his 
+goings out and comings in. They called him Adolphus, and made him tame. 
+That coming evil day in February was dinned into his ears. Lady Amelia 
+would go and look at furniture for him, and talked by the hour about 
+bedding and sheets.
+
+"You had better get your kitchen things at Tomkins'. They're all good, 
+and he'll give you ten per cent. off if you pay him ready money-which, 
+of course, you will, you know!" Was it for this that he had sacrificed 
+Lily Dale?-for this that he had allied himself with the noble house of 
+De Courcy?
+
+Mortimer had been at him about the settlements from the very first 
+moment of his return to London, and had already bound him up hand and 
+foot. His life was insured, and the policy was in Mortimer's hands. His 
+own little bit of money had been already handed over to be tied up with 
+Lady Alexandrina's little bit. It seemed to him that in all the 
+arrangements made the intention was that he should die off speedily, 
+and that Lady Alexandrina should be provided with a decent little 
+income, sufficient for St. John's Wood. Things were to be so settled 
+that he could not even spend the proceeds of his own money, or of hers. 
+They were to go, under the fostering hands of Mortimer Gazebee in 
+paying insurances. If he would only die the day after his marriage, 
+there would really be a very nice sum of money for Alexandrina, almost 
+worthy of the acceptance of an earl's daughter. Six months ago he would 
+have considered himself able to turn Mortimer Gazebee round his finger 
+on any subject that could be introduced between them. When they chanced 
+to meet Gazebee had been quite humble to him, treating him almost as a 
+superior being. He had looked down on Gazebee from a very great height. 
+But now it seemed as though he were powerless in this man's hands.
+
+But perhaps the countess had become this greatest aversion. She was 
+perpetually writing to him little notes in which she gave him 
+multitudes of commissions, sending him about as though he had been her 
+servant. And she pestered him with advice which was even worse than her 
+commissions, telling him of the style of life in which Alexandrina 
+would expect to live, and warning him very frequently that such an one 
+as he could not expect to be admitted within the bosom of so noble a 
+family without paying very dearly for that inestimable privilege. Her 
+letters had become odious to him, and he would chuck them on one side, 
+leaving them for the whole day unopened. He had already made up his 
+mind that he would quarrel with the countess also, very shortly after 
+his marriage; indeed, that he would separate himself from the whole 
+family if it were possible. And yet he had entered into this engagement 
+mainly with the view of reaping those advantages which would accrue to 
+him from being allied to the De Courcys! The squire and his nephew were 
+wretched in thinking that this man was escaping without punishment, but 
+they might have spared themselves that misery.
+
+It had been understood from the first that he was to spend his 
+Christmas at Courcy Castle. From this undertaking it was quite out of 
+his power to enfranchise himself: but he resolved that his visit should 
+be as short as possible. Christmas Day unfortunately came on a Monday, 
+and it was known to, the De Courcy world that Saturday was almost a 
+dies non at the General Committee Office. As to those three days there 
+was no escape for him; but he made Alexandrina understand that the 
+three Commissioners were men of iron as to any extension of those three 
+days.
+
+"I must be absent again in February, of course," he said, almost making 
+his wail audible in the words he used, "and therefore it is quite 
+impossible that I should stay now beyond the Monday." Had there been 
+attractions for him at Courcy Castle I think he might have arranged 
+with Mr Optimist for a week or ten days.
+
+"We shall be all alone," the countess wrote to him, "and I hope you 
+will have an opportunity of learning more of our ways than you have 
+ever really been able to do as yet." This was bitter as gall to him. 
+But in this world all valuable commodities have their price; and when 
+men such as Crosbie aspire to obtain for themselves an alliance with 
+noble families, they must pay the market price for the article which 
+they purchase.
+
+"You'll all come up and dine with us on Monday," the squire said to Mrs 
+Dale, about the middle of the previous week.
+
+"Well, I think not," said Mrs Dale, "we are better, perhaps, as we are."
+
+At this moment the squire and his sister-in-law were on much more 
+friendly terms than had been usual with them, and he took her reply in 
+good part, understanding her feeling. Therefore, he pressed his 
+request, and succeeded.
+"I think you're wrong," he said, "I don't suppose that we shall have a 
+very merry Christmas. You and the girls will hardly have that whether 
+you eat your pudding here or at the Great House. But it will be better 
+for us all to make the attempt. It's the right thing to do. That's the 
+way I look at it."
+
+"I'll ask Lily," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Do, do. Give her my love, and tell her from me that, in spite of all 
+that has come and gone, Christmas Day should still be to her a day of 
+rejoicing. We'll dine about three, so that the servants can have the 
+afternoon."
+
+"Of course we'll go," said Lily; "why not? We always do. And we'll have 
+blind-man's-buff with all the Boyces, as we had last year, if uncle 
+will ask them up." But the Boyces were not asked up for that occasion.
+
+But Lily, though she put on it all so brave a face, had much to suffer, 
+and did in truth suffer greatly. If you, my reader, ever chanced to 
+slip into the gutter on a wet day, did you not find that the sympathy 
+of the bystanders was by far the severest part of your misfortune? Did 
+you not declare to yourself that all might yet be well, if the people 
+would only walk on and not look at you? And yet you cannot blame those 
+who stood and pitied you; or, perhaps, essayed to rub you down, and 
+assist you in the recovery of your bedaubed hat. You, yourself, if you 
+see a man fall, cannot walk by as though nothing uncommon had happened 
+to him. It was so with Lily. The people of Allington could not regard 
+her with their ordinary eyes. They would look at her tenderly, knowing 
+that she was a wounded fawn, and thus they aggravated the soreness of 
+her wound. Old Mrs Hearn condoled with her, telling her that very 
+likely she would be better off as she was. Lily would not lie about it 
+in any way.
+
+"Mrs Hearn," she said, "the subject is painful to me." Mrs Hearn said 
+no more about it, but on every meeting between them she looked the 
+things she did not say.
+
+"Miss Lily!" said Hopkins, one day, "Miss Lily!"-and as he looked up 
+into her face a tear had almost formed itself in his old eye "I knew 
+what he was from the first. Oh, dear! oh, dear! if I could have had him 
+killed!"
+
+"Hopkins, how dare you?" said Lily. "If you speak to me again in such a 
+way, I will tell my uncle." She turned away from him but immediately 
+turned back again, and put out her little hand to him.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said. "I know how kind you are, and I love you 
+for it." And then she went away.
+
+"I'll go after him yet, and break the dirty neck of him," said Hopkins 
+to himself, as he walked down the path.
+
+Shortly before Christmas Day she called with her sister at the 
+vicarage. Bell, in the course of the visit, left the room with one of 
+the Boyce girls, to look at the last chrysanthemums of the year. Then 
+Mrs Boyce took advantage of the occasion to make her little speech.
+
+"My dear Lily," she said, "you will think me cold if I do not say one 
+word to you."
+
+"No, I shall not," said Lily, almost sharply, shrinking from the finger 
+that threatened to touch her sore. "There are things which should never 
+be talked about."
+
+"Well, well; perhaps so," said Mrs Boyce. But for a minute or two she 
+was unable to fall back upon any other topic, and sat looking at Lily 
+with, painful tenderness. I need hardly say what were Lily's sufferings 
+under such a gaze; but she bore it, acknowledging to herself in her 
+misery that the fault did not lie with Mrs Boyce. How could Mrs Boyce 
+have looked at her otherwise than tenderly?
+
+It was settled, then, that Lily was to dine up at the Great House on 
+Christmas Day, and thus show to the Allington world that she was not to 
+be regarded as a person shut out from the world by the depth of her 
+misfortune. That she was right there can, I think, be no doubt; but as 
+she walked across the little bridge, with her mother and sister, after 
+returning from church she would have given much to be able to have 
+turned round, and have gone to bed instead of to her uncle's dinner.
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+PAWKINS'S IN JERMYN STREET
+
+
+The show of fat beasts in London took place this year on the twentieth 
+day of December, and I have always understood that a certain bullock 
+exhibited by Lord de Guest was declared by the metropolitan butchers to 
+have realised all the possible excellences of breeding, feeding, and 
+condition. No doubt the butchers of the next half-century will have 
+learned much better, and the Guestwick beast, could it be embalmed and 
+then produced, would excite only ridicule at the agricultural ignorance 
+of the present age; but Lord de Guest took the praise that was offered 
+to him, and found himself in a seventh heaven of delight.
+
+He was never so happy as when surrounded by butchers; graziers, and 
+salesmen who were able to appreciate the work of his life, and who 
+regarded him as a model nobleman.
+
+"Look at that fellow," he said to Eames, pointing to the prize bullock, 
+Eames had joined his patron at the show after his office hours, looking 
+on upon the living beef by gaslight. "Isn't he like his sire? He was 
+got by Lambkin, you know."
+
+"Lambkin," said Johnny, who had not as yet been able to learn much 
+about the Guestwick stock.
+
+"Yes, Lambkin. The bull that we had the trouble with. He has just got 
+his sire's back and fore-quarters. Don't you see?"
+
+"I dare say," said Johnny, who looked very hard, but could not see.
+
+"It's very odd," exclaimed the earl, "but do you know, that bull has 
+been as quiet since that day-as quiet as-as anything. I think it must 
+have been my pocket-handkerchief."
+
+"I dare say it was," said Johnny "or perhaps the flies."
+
+"Flies!" said the earl, angrily. "Do you suppose he isn't used to 
+flies? Come away. I ordered dinner at seven, and it's past six now. My 
+brother-in-law, Colonel Dale, is up in town, and he dines with us." So 
+he took Johnny's arm, and led him off through the show, calling his 
+attention as he went to several beasts which were inferior to his own.
+
+And then they walked down through Portman Square and Grosvenor Square, 
+and across Piccadilly to Jermyn Street. John Eames acknowledged to 
+himself that it was odd that he should have an earl leaning on his arm 
+as he passed along through the streets. At home, in his own life, his 
+daily companions were Cradell and Amelia Roper, Mrs Lupex and Mrs 
+Roper. The difference was very great, and yet he found it quite as easy 
+to talk to the earl as to Mrs Lupex. "You know the Dales down at 
+Allington, of course," said the earl.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know them."
+
+"But, perhaps, you never met the colonel."	
+
+"I don't think I ever did."
+
+"He's a queer sort of fellow-very well in his way, but he never does 
+anything. He and my sister live at Torquay, and as far as I can find 
+out, they neither of them have any occupation of any sort. He's come up 
+to town now because we both had to meet our family lawyers and sign 
+some papers, but he looks on the journey as a great hardship. As for 
+me, I'm a year older than he is, but I wouldn't mind going up and down 
+from Guestwick every day."
+
+"It's looking after the bull that does it," said Eames.
+
+"By George! you're right, Master Johnny. My sister and Crofts may tell 
+me what they like, but when a man's out in the open air for eight or 
+nine hours every day, it doesn't much matter where he goes to sleep 
+after that. This is Pawkins's-capital good house, but not so good as it 
+used to be while old Pawkins was alive. Show Mr Eames up into a bedroom 
+to wash his hands."
+
+Colonel Dale was much like his brother in face, but was taller, even 
+thinner, and apparently older. When Eames went into the sitting-room, 
+the colonel was there alone, and had to take upon himself the trouble 
+of introducing himself. He did not get up from his arm-chair, but 
+nodded gently at the young man.
+
+"Mr Eames, I believe? I knew your father at Guestwick, a great many 
+years ago;" then he turned his face back towards the fire and sighed.
+
+"It's got very cold this afternoon," said Johnny, trying to make 
+conversation.
+
+"It's always cold in London," said the colonel.
+
+"If you had to be here in August you wouldn't say so."
+
+"God forbid," said the colonel, and he sighed again, with his eyes 
+fixed upon the fire. Eames had heard of the very gallant way in which 
+Orlando Dale had persisted in running away with Lord de Guest's sister, 
+in opposition to very terrible obstacles, and as he now looked at the 
+intrepid lover, he thought that there must have been a great change 
+since those days. After that nothing more was said till the earl came 
+down.
+
+Pawkins's house was thoroughly old-fashioned in all things, and the 
+Pawkins of that day himself stood behind the earl's elbow when the 
+dinner began, and himself removed the cover from the soup tureen. Lord 
+de Guest did not require much personal attention, but he would have 
+felt annoyed if this hadn't been done. As it was he had a civil word to 
+say to Pawkins about the fat cattle, thereby showing that he did not 
+mistake Pawkins for one of the waiters. Pawkins then took his 
+lordship's orders about the wine and retired.
+
+"He keeps up the old house pretty well," said the earl to his 
+brother-in-law. "It isn't like what it was thirty years ago, but then 
+everything of that sort has got worse and worse."
+
+"I suppose it has," said the colonel. "I remember when old Pawkins had 
+as good a glass of port as I've got at home-or nearly. They can't get 
+it now, you know."
+
+"I never drink port," said the colonel. "I seldom take anything after 
+dinner, except a little negus."
+
+His brother-in-law said nothing, but made a most eloquent grimace as he 
+turned his face towards his soup-plate. Eames saw it, and could hardly 
+refrain from laughing. When, at half-past nine o'clock, the colonel 
+retired from the room, the earl, as the door was closed, threw up his 
+hands, and uttered the one word "negus!" Then Eames took heart of grace 
+and had his laughter out.
+
+The dinner was very dull, and before the colonel went to bed Johnny 
+regretted that he had been induced to dine at Pawkins's. It might be a 
+very fine thing to be asked to dinner with an earl; and John Eames had 
+perhaps received at his office some little accession of dignity from 
+the circumstance, of which he had been not unpleasantly aware; but, as 
+he sat at the table, on which there were four or five apples and a 
+plate of dried nuts, looking at the earl, as he endeavoured to keep his 
+eyes open, and at the colonel, to whom it seemed absolutely a matter of 
+indifference whether his companions were asleep or awake, he confessed 
+to himself that the price he was paying was almost too dear. Mrs 
+Roper's tea-table was not pleasant to him, but even that would have 
+been preferable to the black dinginess of Pawkins's mahogany, with the 
+company of two tired old men, with whom he seemed to have no mutual 
+subject of conversation. Once or twice he tried a word with the 
+colonel, for the colonel sat with his eyes open looking at the fire. 
+But he was answered with monosyllables, and it was evident to him that 
+the colonel did not wish to talk. To sit still, with his hands closed 
+over each other on his lap, was work enough for Colonel Dale during his 
+after-dinner hours.
+
+But the earl knew what was going on. During that terrible conflict 
+between him and his slumber, in which the drowsy god fairly vanquished 
+him for some twenty minutes, his conscience was always accusing him of 
+treating his guests badly. He was very angry with himself, and tried to 
+arouse himself and talk. But his brother-in-law would not help him' in 
+his efforts; and even Eames was not bright in rendering him assistance. 
+Then for twenty minutes he slept soundly, and at the end of that he 
+woke himself with one of his own snorts.
+
+"By George!" he said, jumping up and standing on the rug, "we'll have 
+some coffee"; and after that he did not sleep any more.
+
+"Dale," said he, "won't you take some more wine?
+
+"Nothing more," said the colonel, still looking at the fire, and 
+shaking his head very slowly.
+
+"Come, Johnny, fill your glass." He had already got into the way of 
+calling his young friend Johnny, having found that Mrs Eames generally 
+spoke of her son by that name.
+
+"I have been filling my glass all the time," said Eames, taking the 
+decanter again in his hand as he spoke.
+
+"I'm glad you've found something to amuse you, for it has seemed to me 
+that you and Dale haven't had much to say to each other. I've been 
+listening all the time."
+
+"You've been asleep," said the colonel.
+
+"Then there's been some excuse for my holding my tongue," said the earl.
+
+"By-the-by, Dale, what do you think of that fellow Crosbie?"
+
+Eames's ears were instantly on the alert, and the spirit of dullness 
+vanished from him.
+
+"Think of him?" said the colonel. "He ought to have every bone in his 
+skin broken," said the earl.
+
+"So he ought," said Eames, getting up from his chair in his eagerness, 
+and speaking in a tone somewhat louder than was perhaps becoming in the 
+presence of his seniors. "So he ought, my lord. He is the most 
+abominable rascal that ever I met in my life. I wish I was Lily Dale's 
+brother." Then he sat down again, remembering that he was speaking in 
+the presence of Lily's uncle, and of the father of Bernard Dale, who 
+might be, supposed to occupy the place of Lily's brother.
+
+The colonel turned his head round, and looked at the young man with 
+surprise.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Eames, "but I have known Mrs Dale and 
+your nieces all my life."
+
+"Oh, have you?" said the colonel.
+
+"Nevertheless it is, perhaps, as well not to make too free with a young 
+lady's name. Not that I blame you in the least, Mr Eames."
+
+"I should think not," said the earl.
+
+"I honour him for his feeling. Johnny, my boy, if ever I am unfortunate 
+enough to meet that man, I shall tell him my mind, and I believe you 
+will do the same." On hearing this John Eames winked at the earl, and 
+made a motion with his head towards the colonel, whose back was turned 
+to him. And then the earl winked back at Eames.
+
+"De Guest," said the colonel, "I think I'll go upstairs; I always have 
+a little arrowroot in my own room."
+
+"I'll ring the bell for a candle," said the host. Then the colonel 
+went, and as the door was closed behind him, the earl raised his two 
+hands and uttered that single word, "negus!" Whereupon Johnny burst out 
+laughing, and coming round to the fire, sat himself down in the 
+arm-chair which the colonel had left.
+
+"I've no doubt it's all right," said the earl; "but I shouldn't like to 
+drink negus myself, nor yet to have arrowroot up in my bedroom."
+
+"I don't suppose there's any harm in it."
+
+"Oh dear, no; I wonder what Pawkins says about him. But I suppose they 
+have them of all sorts in an hotel."
+
+"The waiter didn't seem to think much of it when he brought it."
+
+"No, no. If he'd asked for senna and salts, the waiter wouldn't have 
+showed any surprise. By-the-by, you touched him up about that poor 
+girl."
+
+"Did I, my lord? I didn't mean it."
+
+"You see he's Bernard Dale's father, and the question is, whether 
+Bernard shouldn't punish the fellow for what he has done. Somebody 
+ought to do it. It isn't right that he should escape. Somebody ought to 
+let Mr Crosbie know what a scoundrel he has made himself."
+
+"I'd do it tomorrow, only I'm afraid-"
+
+"No, no, no," said the earl; "you are not the right person at all. What 
+have you got to do with it? You've merely known them as family friends, 
+but that's not enough."
+
+"No, I suppose not," said Eames, sadly.
+
+"Perhaps it's best as it is," said the earl. "I don't know that any 
+good would be got by knocking him over the head. And if we are to be 
+Christians, I suppose we ought to be Christians."
+
+"What sort of a Christian has he been?"
+
+"That's true enough; and if I was Bernard, I should be very apt to 
+forget my Bible lessons about meekness."
+
+"Do you know, my lord, I should think it the most Christian thing in 
+the world to pitch into him; I should, indeed. There are some things 
+for which a man ought to be beaten black and blue."
+
+"So that he shouldn't do them again?"
+
+"Exactly. You might say it isn't Christian to hang a man."
+
+"I'd always hang a murderer. It wasn't right to hang men for stealing 
+sheep."
+
+"Much better hang such a fellow as Crosbie," said Eames.
+
+"Well, I believe so. if any fellow wanted now to curry favour with the 
+young lady, what an opportunity he'd have."
+
+Johnny remained silent for a moment or two before he answered.
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," he said; mournfully, as though grieving at 
+the thought that there was no chance of currying favour with Lily by 
+thrashing her late lover.
+
+"I don't pretend to know much about girls," said Lord de Guest; "but I 
+should think it would be so. I should fancy that nothing would please 
+her so much as hearing that he had caught it, and that all the world 
+knew that he'd caught it." The earl had declared that he didn't know 
+much about, girls, and in so saving, he was no doubt right.
+
+"If I thought so," said Eames," I'd find him out tomorrow."
+
+"Why so? what difference does it make to you?" Then there was another 
+pause, during which Johnny looked very sheepish.
+
+"You don't mean to say that you're in love with Miss Lily Dale?"
+
+"I don't know much about being in love with her," said Johnny, turning 
+very red as he spoke. And then he made up his mind, in a wild sort of 
+way, to tell all the truth to his friend. Pawkins's port wine may, 
+perhaps, have something to do with the resolution. "But I'd go through 
+fire and water for her, my lord. I knew her years before he had ever 
+seen her, and have loved her a great deal better than he will ever love 
+any one. When I heard that she had accepted him, I had half a mind to 
+cut my own throat-or else his."
+
+"Highty tighty," said the earl.
+
+"It's very ridiculous, I know," said Johnny, "and, of course, she would 
+never have accepted me."
+
+"I don't see that at all."
+
+"I haven't a shilling in the world."
+
+"Girls don't care much for that."
+
+"And then a clerk in the Income-tax Office! It's such a poor thing."
+
+"The other fellow was only a clerk in another office."
+
+The earl living down at Guestwick did not understand, that the 
+Income-tax Office in the city, and the General Committee Office at 
+Whitehall, were as far apart as Dives and Lazarus and separated by as 
+impassable a gulf.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Johnny; "but his office is another kind of thing, and 
+then he was a swell himself."
+
+"By George, I don't see it," said the earl.
+
+"I don't wonder a bit at her accepting a fellow like that. I hated him 
+the first moment I saw him; but that's no reason she should hate him. 
+He had that sort of manner, you know. He was a swell, and girls like 
+that kind of thing. I never felt angry with her, but I could have eaten 
+him." As he spoke he looked as though he would have made some such 
+attempt had Crosbie been present.
+
+"Did you ever ask her to have you?" said the earl.
+
+"No; how could I ask her, when I hadn't bread to give her?"
+
+"And you never told her that you were in love with her, I mean, and all 
+that kind of thing."
+
+"She knows it now," said Johnny;
+
+"I went to say good-bye to her the other day when I thought she was 
+going to be married. I could not help telling her then."
+
+"But it seems to me, my dear fellow, that you ought to be very much 
+obliged to Crosbie-that is to say, if you've a mind to-"
+
+"I know what you mean, my lord. I am not a bit obliged to him. It's my 
+belief that all this will about kill her. As to myself, if I thought 
+she'd ever have me-"
+Then he was again silent, and the earl could see that the tears were in 
+his eyes.
+
+"I think I begin to understand it," said the earl, "and I'll give you a 
+bit of advice. You come down and spend your Christmas with me at 
+Guestwick."
+
+"Oh, my lord!"
+
+"Never mind my-lording me, but do as I tell you. Lady Julia sent you a 
+message, though I forgot all about it till now. She wants to thank you 
+herself for what you did in the field."
+
+"That's all nonsense, my lord."	
+
+"Very well; you can tell her so. You may take my word for this, too-my 
+sister hates Crosbie quite as much as you do. I think she'd pitch into 
+him, as you call it, herself, if she knew how. You come down to 
+Guestwick for the Christmas, and then go over to Allington and tell 
+them all plainly what you mean."
+
+"I couldn't say a word to her now."
+
+"Say it to the squire, then. Go to him, and tell him what you 
+mean-holding your head up like a man. Don't talk to me about swells. 
+The man who means honestly is the best swell I know. He's the only 
+swell I recognise. Go to old Dale, and say you come from me-from 
+Guestwick Manor. Tell him that if he'll put a little stick under the 
+pot to make it boil, I'll put a bigger one. He'll understand what that 
+means."
+
+"Oh, no, my lord."
+
+"But I say, oh, yes;" and the earl, who was now standing on the rug 
+before the fire, dug his hands deep down into his trousers' pockets. 
+"I'm very fond of that girl, and would do much for her. You ask Lady 
+Julia if I didn't say so to her before I ever knew of your casting a 
+sheep's-eye that way. And I've a sneaking kindness for you too, Master 
+Johnny. Lord bless you, I knew your father as well as I ever knew any 
+man; and to tell the truth, I believe I helped to ruin him. He held 
+land of me, you know, and there can't be any doubt that he did ruin 
+himself. He knew no more about a beast when he'd done, than-than-than 
+that waiter. If he'd gone on to this day he wouldn't have been any 
+wiser." Johnny sat silent, with his eyes full of tears. What was he to 
+say to his friend?
+
+"You come down with me," continued the earl, "and you'll find we'll 
+make it all straight. I dare say you're right about not speaking to the 
+girl just at present. But tell everything to the uncle, and then to the 
+mother. And, above all things, never think that you're not good enough 
+yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life 
+people will take you very much at your own reckoning. If you are made 
+of dirt, like that fellow Crosbie, you'll be found out at last, no 
+doubt. But then I don't think you are made of dirt."
+
+"I hope not."
+
+"And so do I. You can come down, I suppose, with me the day after 
+tomorrow?"
+
+"I'm afraid not. I have had all my leave."
+
+"Shall I write to old Buffle, and ask it as a favour?"
+"No," said Johnny; "I shouldn't like that. But I'll see tomorrow, and 
+then I'll let you know. I can go down by the mail train on Saturday, at 
+any rate."
+
+"That won't be comfortable. See and come with me if you can. Now, 
+good-night, my dear fellow, and remember this-when I say a thing I mean 
+it. I think I may boast that I never yet went back from my word."
+
+The earl as he spoke gave his left hand to his guest, and looking 
+somewhat grandly up over the young man's head, he tapped his own breast 
+thrice with his right hand. As he went through the little scene, John 
+Eames felt that he was every inch an earl.
+
+"I don't know what to say to you, my lord."
+
+"Say nothing-not a word more to me. But say to yourself that faint 
+heart never won fair lady. Good-night, my dear boy, good-night. I dine 
+out tomorrow, but you can call and let me know at about six."
+
+Eames then left the room without another word, and walked out into the 
+cold air of Jermyn Street. The moon was clear and bright, and the 
+pavement in the shining light seemed to be as clean as a lady's hand. 
+All the world was altered to him since he had entered Pawkins's Hotel. 
+Was it then possible that Lily Dale might even yet become his wife? 
+Could it be true that he, even now, was in a position to go boldly to 
+the Squire of Allington, and tell him what were his views with 
+reference to Lily? And how far would he be justified in taking the earl 
+at his word? Some incredible amount of wealth would be required before 
+he could marry Lily Dale. Two or three hundred pounds a year at the 
+very least! The earl could not mean him to understand that any such sum 
+as that would be made up with such an object! Nevertheless he resolved 
+as he walked home to Burton Crescent that he would go down to 
+Guestwick, and that he would obey the earl's behest. As regarded Lily 
+herself he felt that nothing could be said to her for many a long day 
+as yet.
+
+"Oh, John, how late you are!" said Amelia, slipping out from the back 
+parlour as he let himself in with his latch key.
+
+"Yes, I am very late," said John, taking his candle, and passing her by 
+on the stairs without another word.
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+"THE TIME WILL COME"
+
+
+"Did you hear that young Eames is staying at Guestwick Manor?"
+
+As these were the first words which the squire spoke to Mrs Dale as 
+they walked together up to the Great House, after church, on Christmas 
+Day, it was clear enough that the tidings of Johnny's visit, when told 
+to him, had made some impression.
+
+"At Guestwick Manor!" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Dear me! Do you hear that, Bell? There's promotion for Master Johnny!"
+
+"Don't you remember, mamma," said Bell, "that he helped his lordship in 
+his trouble with the bull?"
+
+Lily, who remembered accurately all the passages of her last interview 
+with John Eames, said nothing, but felt, in some sort, sore at the idea 
+that he should be so near her at such a time.
+
+In some unconscious way she had liked him for coming to her and saying 
+all that he did say. She, valued him more highly after that scene than 
+she did before. But now, she would feel herself injured and hurt if he 
+ever made his way into her presence under circumstances as they existed.
+
+"I should not have thought that Lord de Guest was the man to show so 
+much gratitude for so slight a favour," said the squire.
+
+"However, I'm going to dine there tomorrow."
+
+"To meet young Eames?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Yes-especially to meet young Eames. At least, I've been very specially 
+asked to come, and I've been told that he is to be there."	
+
+"And is Bernard going?"
+
+"Indeed I'm not," said Bernard, "I shall come over and dine with you."
+
+A half-formed idea flitted across Lily's mind, teaching her to imagine 
+for a moment that she might possibly be concerned in this arrangement. 
+But the thought vanished as quickly as it came, merely leaving some 
+soreness behind it. There are certain maladies which make the whole 
+body sore. The patient, let him be touched on any point-let him even be 
+nearly touched-will roar with agony as though his whole body had been 
+bruised. So it is also with maladies of he mind. Sorrows such as that 
+of poor Lily leave the heart sore at every point, and compel the 
+sufferer to be ever in fear of new wounds. Lily bore her cross bravely 
+and well; but not the less did it weigh heavily upon her at every turn 
+because she had the strength to walk as though she did not bear it. 
+Nothing happened to her, or in her presence, that did not in some way 
+connect itself with her misery. Her uncle was going over to meet John 
+Eames at Lord de Guest's. Of course the men there would talk about her, 
+and all such talking was an injury to her.
+
+The afternoon of that day did not pass away brightly. As long as the 
+servants were in the room the dinner went on much as other dinners. At 
+such times a certain amount of hypocrisy must always be practised in 
+closely domestic circles. At mixed dinner-parties people can talk 
+before Richard and William the same words that they would use if 
+Richard and William were not there. People so mixed do not talk 
+together their inward home thoughts. But when close friends are 
+together, a little conscious reticence is practised till the door is 
+tiled. At such a meeting as this that conscious reticence was of 
+service, and created an effect which was salutary. When the door was 
+tiled, and when the servants were gone, how could they be merry 
+together? By what mirth should the beards be made to wag on that 
+Christmas Day?
+
+"My father has been up in town," said Bernard.
+
+"He was with Lord de Guest at Pawkins's."
+
+"Why didn't you go and see him?" asked Mrs Dale.
+
+"Well, I don't know. He did not seem to wish it. I shall go down to 
+Torquay in February. I must be up in London you know, in a fortnight, 
+for good." Then they were all silent again for a few minutes. If 
+Bernard could have owned the truth, he would have acknowledged that he 
+had not gone up to London, because he did not yet know how to treat 
+Crosbie when he should meet him. His thoughts on this matter threw some 
+sort of shadow across poor Lily's mind, making her feel that her wound 
+was again opened.
+
+"I want him to give up his profession altogether," said the squire, 
+speaking firmly and slowly. "It would be better, I think, for both of 
+us that he should do so."
+
+"Would it be wise at his time of life," said Mrs Dale, "and when he has 
+been doing so well?"
+
+"I think it would be wise. If he were my son it would be thought better 
+that he should live here upon the property, among the people who are to 
+become his tenants, than remain up in London, or perhaps be sent to 
+India. He has one profession as the heir of this place, and that, I 
+think, should he enough."
+
+"I should have but an idle life of it down here," said Bernard.
+
+"That would be your own fault. But if you did as I would have you, your 
+life would not be idle." In this he was alluding to Bernard's proposed 
+marriage, but as to that nothing further could be said in Bell's 
+presence. Bell understood it all, and sat quite silent, with demure 
+countenance-perhaps even with something of sternness in her face.
+
+"But the fact is," said Mrs Dale, speaking in a low tone, and having 
+well considered what she was about to say, "that Bernard is not exactly 
+the same as your son."
+
+"Why not?" said the squire. "I have even offered to settle the property 
+on him if he will leave the service."
+
+"You do not owe him so much as you would owe your son-and, therefore, 
+he does not owe you as much as he would owe his father."
+
+"If you mean that I cannot constrain him, I know that well enough. As 
+regards money, I have offered to do for him quite as much as any father 
+would feel called upon to do for an only son."
+
+"I hope you don't think me ungrateful," said Bernard.
+
+"No, I do not; but I think you unmindful. I have nothing more to say 
+about it, however-not about that. If you should marry-"And then he 
+stopped himself, feeling that he could not go on in Bell's presence.
+
+"If he should marry," said Mrs Dale, "it may well be that his wife 
+would like a house of her own."
+
+"Wouldn't she have this house?," said the squire, angrily. "Isn't it 
+big enough? I only want one room for myself, and I'd give up that if it 
+were necessary."
+
+"That's nonsense," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"It isn't nonsense," said the squire.
+
+"You'll be squire of Allington for the next twenty years," said Mrs 
+Dale. "And as long as you are the squire, you'll be master of this 
+house; at least, I hope so. I don't approve of monarchs abdicating in 
+favour of young people."
+
+"I don't think Uncle Christopher would look at all well like Charles 
+the Fifth," said Lily.
+
+"I would always keep a cell for you, my darling, if I did," said the 
+squire, regarding her with that painful, special tenderness. Lily, who 
+was sitting next to Mrs Dale, put her hand out secretly and got hold of 
+her mother's, thereby indicating that she did not intend to occupy the 
+cell offered to her by her uncle; or to look to him as the companion of 
+her monastic seclusion. After that there was nothing more then said as 
+to Bernard's prospects.
+
+"Mrs Hearn is dining at the vicarage, I suppose?" asked the squire.
+
+"Yes; she went in after church," said Bell.
+
+"I saw her go with Mrs Boyce."
+
+"She told me she never would dine with them again after dark in 
+winter," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"The last time she was there, the boy let the lamp blow out as she was 
+going home, and she lost her way. The truth was, she was angry because 
+Mr Boyce didn't go with her."
+
+"She's always angry," said the squire.
+
+"She hardly speaks to me now. When she paid her rent the other day to 
+Jolliffe, she said she hoped it would do me much good; as though she 
+thought me a brute for taking it."
+
+"So she does," said Bernard.
+
+"She's very old, you know," said Bell.
+
+"I'd give her the house for nothing, if I were you, uncle," said Lily.
+
+"No, my dear; if you were me you would not. I should be very wrong to 
+do so. Why should Mrs Hearn have her house for nothing, any more than 
+her meat or her clothes? It would be much more reasonable were I to 
+give her so much money into her hand yearly; but it would be wrong in 
+me to do so, seeing that she is not an object of charity-and it would 
+be wrong in her to take it."
+
+"And she wouldn't take it," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I don't think she would. But if she did, I'm sure she would grumble 
+because it wasn't double the amount. And if Mr Boyce had gone home with 
+her, she would have grumbled because he walked too fast."
+
+"She is very old," said Bell, again.
+
+"But, nevertheless, she ought to know better than to speak 
+disparagingly of me to my servants. She should have more respect for 
+herself." And the squire showed by the tone of his voice that he 
+thought very much about it.
+
+It was very long and very dull that Christmas evening, making Bernard 
+feel strongly that he would be very foolish to give up his profession, 
+and tie himself down to a life at Allington. Women are more accustomed 
+than men to long, dull, unemployed hours; and, therefore, Mrs Dale and 
+her daughters bore the tedium courageously. While he yawned, stretched 
+himself, and went in and out of the room, they sat demurely, listening 
+as the squire laid down the law on small matters, and contradicting him 
+occasionally when the spirit of either of them prompted her specially 
+to do so.
+
+"Of course you know much better than I do," he would say.
+
+"Not at all," Mrs Dale would answer.
+
+"I don't pretend to know anything about it. But-"So the evening wore 
+itself away; and when the squire was left alone at half-past nine, he 
+did not feel that the day had passed badly with him. That was his style 
+of life, and he expected no more from it than he got. He did not look 
+to find things very pleasant, and, if not happy, he was, at any rate, 
+contented.
+
+"Only think of Johnny Eames being at Guestwick Manor!" said Bell, as 
+they were going home.
+
+"I don't see why he shouldn't be there," said Lily.
+
+"I would rather it should be he than I, because Lady Julia is so 
+grumpy."
+
+"But asking your Uncle Christopher especially to meet him!" said Mrs 
+Dale.
+
+"There must be some reason for it." Then Lily felt the soreness come 
+upon her again, and spoke no further upon the subject.
+
+We all know that there was a special reason, and that Lily's soreness 
+was not false in its mysterious forebodings. Eames, on the evening 
+after his dinner at Pawkins's, had seen the earl, and explained to him 
+that he could not leave town till the Saturday evening; but that he 
+could remain over the Tuesday. He must be at his office by twelve on 
+Wednesday, and could manage to do that by an early train, from 
+Guestwick.
+
+"Very well, Johnny," said the earl, talking to his young friend with 
+the bedroom candle in his hand, as he was going up to dress.
+
+"Then I'll tell you what; I've been thinking of it. I'll ask Dale to 
+come over to dinner on Tuesday; and if he'll come, I'll explain the 
+whole matter to him myself. He's a man of business, and he'll 
+understand. If he won't come, why then you must go over to Allington, 
+and find him, if you can, on the Tuesday morning; or I'll go to him 
+myself, which will be better. You mustn't keep me now, as I am ever so 
+much too late."
+
+Eames did not attempt to keep him, but went away feeling that the whole 
+matter was being arranged for him in a very wonderful way. And when he 
+got to Allington he found that the squire had accepted the earl's 
+invitation. Then he declared to himself that there was no longer any 
+possibility of retractation for him. Of course he did not wish to 
+retract. The one great longing of his life was to call Lily Dale his 
+own. But he felt afraid of the squire-that the squire would despise him 
+and snub him, and that the earl would perceive that he had made a 
+mistake when he saw how his client was scorned and snubbed. It was 
+arranged that the earl was to take the squire into his own room for a 
+few minutes before dinner, and Johnny felt that he would be hardly able 
+to stand his ground in the drawing-room when the two old men should 
+make their appearance together.
+
+He got on very well with Lady Julia, who gave herself no airs, and made 
+herself very civil. Her brother had told her the whole story, and she 
+felt as anxious as he did to provide Lily with another husband in place 
+of that horrible man Crosbie.
+
+"She has been very fortunate in her escape," she said to her brother; 
+"very fortunate." The earl agreed with this, saying that in his opinion 
+his own favourite Johnny would make much the nicer lover of the two. 
+But Lady Julia had her doubts as to Lily's acquiescence.
+
+"But, Theodore, he must not speak to Miss Lilian Dale herself about it 
+yet a while."
+
+"No," said the earl, "not for a month or so."
+
+"He will have a better chance if he can remain silent for six months," 
+said Lady Julia.
+
+"Bless my soul! somebody else will have picked her up before that," 
+said the earl.
+
+In answer to this Lady Julia merely shook her head.
+
+Johnny went over to his mother on Christmas Day after church, and was 
+received by her and by his sister with great honour. And she gave him 
+many injunctions as to his behaviour at the earl's table, even 
+descending to small details about his boots and linen. But Johnny had 
+already begun to feel at the Manor that, after all, people are not so 
+very different in their ways of life as they are supposed to be. Lady 
+Julia's manners were certainly not quite those of Mrs Roper; but she 
+made the tea very much in the way in which it was made at Burton 
+Crescent, and Eames found that he could eat his egg, at any rate on the 
+second morning, without any tremor in his hand, in spite of the coronet 
+on the silver egg-cup. He did feel himself to be rather out of his 
+place in the Manor pew on the Sunday, conceiving that all the 
+congregation was looking at him; but he got over this on Christmas Day, 
+and sat quite comfortably in his soft corner during the sermon, almost 
+going to sleep. And when he walked with the earl after church to the 
+gate over which the noble peer had climbed in his agony, and inspected 
+the hedge through which he had thrown himself, he was quite at home 
+with his little jokes, bantering his august companion as to the mode of 
+his somersault. But be it always remembered that there are two modes in 
+which a young man may he free and easy with his elder and superior-the 
+mode pleasant and the mode offensive. Had it been in Johnny's nature to 
+try the latter, the earl's back would soon have been up, and the play 
+would have been over. But it was not in Johnny's nature to do so, and 
+therefore it was that the earl liked him.
+
+At last came the hour of dinner on Tuesday, or at least the hour at 
+which the squire had been asked to show himself at the Manor House. 
+Eames, as by agreement with his patron, did not come down so as to show 
+himself till after the interview. Lady Julia, who had been present at 
+their discussions, had agreed to receive the squire; and then a servant 
+was to ask him to step into the earl's own room. It was pretty to see 
+the way in which the three conspired together, planning and plotting 
+with an eagerness that was beautifully green and fresh.
+
+"He can be as cross as an old stick when he likes it," said the earl, 
+speaking of the squire, "and we must take care not to rub him the wrong 
+way."
+
+"I shan't know what to say to him when I come down," said Johnny.
+
+"Just shake hands with him and don't say anything," said Lady Julia.
+
+"I'll give him some port wine that ought to soften his heart," said the 
+earl, "and then we'll see how he is in the evening."
+
+Eames heard the wheels of the squire's little open carriage and 
+trembled. The squire, unconscious of all schemes, soon found himself 
+with Lady Julia, and within two minutes of his entrance was walked off 
+to the earl's private room.
+
+"Certainly," he said, "certainly"; and followed the man-servant. The 
+earl, as he entered, was standing in the middle of the room, and his 
+round rosy face was a picture of good humour.
+
+"I'm very glad you've come, Dale," said he.
+
+"I've something I want to say to you."
+
+Mr Dale, who neither in heart nor in manner was so light a man as the 
+earl, took the proffered hand of his host, and bowed his head slightly, 
+signifying that he was willing to listen to anything.
+
+"I think I told you," continued the earl, "that young John Eames is 
+down here; but he goes back tomorrow, as they can't spare him at his 
+office. He's a very good fellow-as far as I am able to judge, an 
+uncommonly good young man. I've taken a great fancy to him myself."
+In answer to this Mr Dale did not say much. He sat down, and in some 
+general terms expressed his good-will towards all the Eames family.
+
+"As you know, Dale, I'm a very bad hand at talking, and therefore I 
+won't beat about the bush in what I've got to say at present. Of course 
+we've all heard of that scoundrel Crosbie, and the way he has treated 
+your niece Lilian."
+
+"He is a scoundrel-an unmixed scoundrel. But the less we say about that 
+the better. It is ill mentioning a girl's name in such a matter as 
+that."
+
+"But, my dear Dale, I must mention it at the present moment. Dear young 
+child, I would do anything to comfort her! And I hope that something 
+may be done to comfort her. 'Do you know that that young man was in 
+love with her long before Crosbie ever saw her?"
+
+"What-John Eames!"
+
+"Yes, John Eames. And I wish heartily for his sake that he had won her 
+regard before she had met that rascal whom you had to stay down at your 
+house."
+
+"A man cannot help these things, De Guest," said the squire.
+
+"No, no, no! There are such men about the world, and it is impossible 
+to know them at a glance. He was my nephew's friend, and I am not going 
+to say that my nephew was in fault. But I wish-I only say that I 
+wish-she had first known what are this young man's feelings towards 
+her."
+
+"But she might not have thought of him as you do."
+
+"He is an uncommonly good-looking young fellow; straight made, broad in 
+the chest, with a good, honest eye, and a young man's proper courage. 
+He has never been taught to give himself airs like a dancing monkey; 
+but I think he's all the better for that."
+
+"But it's too late now, De Guest."
+
+"No, no; that's just where it is. It mustn't be too late! That child is 
+not to lose her whole life because a villain has played her false. Of 
+course she'll suffer. Just at present it wouldn't do, I suppose, to 
+talk to her about a new sweetheart. But, Dale, the time will come; the 
+time will come-the time always does come."
+
+"It has never come to you and me," said the squire, with the slightest 
+possible smile on his dry cheeks. The story of their lives had been so 
+far the same; each had loved, and each had been disappointed, and then 
+each had remained single through life.
+
+"Yes, it has," said the earl, with no slight touch of feeling and even 
+of romance in what he said.
+
+"We have retricked our beams in our own ways, and our lives have not 
+been desolate. But for her-you and her mother will look forward to see 
+her married some day."
+
+"I have not thought about it."
+
+"But I want you to think about it. I want to interest you in this 
+fellow's favour; and in doing so, I mean to be very open with you. I 
+suppose you'll give her something?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure," said the squire almost offended at an inquiry 
+of such a nature.
+
+"Well, then, whether you do or not, I'll give him something," said the 
+earl.
+
+"I shouldn't have ventured to meddle in the matter had I not intended 
+to put myself in such a position with reference to him as would justify 
+me in asking the question." And the peer as he spoke drew himself up to 
+his full height.
+
+"If such a match can be made, it shall not be a bad marriage for your 
+niece in a pecuniary point of view. I shall have pleasure in giving to 
+him; but I shall have more pleasure if she can share what I give."
+
+"She ought to be very much obliged to you," said the squire.
+
+"I think she would be if she knew young Eames. I hope the day may come 
+when she will be so. I hope that you and I may see them happy together, 
+and that you too may thank me for having assisted in making them so. 
+Shall we go in to Lady Julia now?" The earl had felt that he had not 
+quite succeeded; that his offer had been accepted somewhat coldly, and 
+had not much hope that further good could be done on that day, even 
+with the help of his best port wine.
+
+"Half a moment," said the squire.
+
+"There are matters as to which I never find myself able to speak 
+quickly, and this certainly seems to be one of them. If you will allow 
+me I will think over what you have said, and then see you again."
+
+"Certainly, certainly."
+
+"But for your own part in the matter, for your great generosity and 
+kind heart, I beg to offer you my warmest thanks." Then the squire 
+bowed low, and preceded the earl out of the room.
+
+Lord de Guest still felt that he had not succeeded. We may probably 
+say, looking at the squire's character and peculiarities, that no 
+marked success was probable at the first opening-out of such a subject. 
+He had said of himself that he was never able to speak quickly in 
+matters of moment; but he would more correctly have described his own 
+character had he declared that he could not think of them quickly. As 
+it was, the earl was disappointed; but had he been able to read the 
+squire's mind, his disappointment would have been less strong. Mr Dale 
+knew well enough that he was being treated well, and that the effort 
+being made was intended with kindness to those belonging to him; but it 
+was not in his nature to be demonstrative and quick at expressions of 
+gratitude. So he entered the drawing-room with a cold, placid face, 
+leading Eames, and Lady Julia also, to suppose that no good had been 
+done.
+
+"How do you do, sir?" said Johnny, walking up to him in a wild sort of 
+manner-going through a premeditated lesson, but doing it without any 
+presence of mind.
+
+"How do you do, Eames?" said the squire, speaking with a very cold 
+voice. And then there was nothing further said till the dinner was 
+announced.
+"Dale, I know you drink port," said the earl when Lady Julia left them.
+
+"If you say you don't like that, I shall say you know nothing about it."
+
+"Ah! that's the '20," said the squire, tasting it.
+
+"I should rather think it is," said the earl. I was lucky enough to get 
+it early, and it hasn't been moved for thirty years. I like to give it 
+to a man who knows it, as you do, at the first glance. Now there's my 
+friend Johnny there; it's thrown away upon him."
+
+"No, my lord, it is not. I think it's uncommonly nice."
+
+"Uncommonly nice! So is champagne, or ginger-beer, or lollipops-for 
+those who like them. Do you mean to tell me you can taste wine with 
+half a pickled orange in your mouth?"
+
+"It'll come to him soon enough," said the squire.
+
+"Twenty port won't come to him when be is as old as we are," said the 
+earl, forgetting that by that time sixty port will be as wonderful to 
+the then living seniors of the age as was his own pet vintage to him.
+
+The good wine did in some sort soften the squire; but, as a matter of 
+course, nothing further was said as to the new matrimonial scheme. The 
+earl did observe, however, that Mr Dale was civil, and even kind, to 
+his own young friend, asking a question here and there as to his life 
+in London, and saying something about the work at the Income-tax Office.
+
+"It is hard work," said Eames.
+
+"If you're under the line, they make a great row about it, send for 
+you, and look at you as though you'd been robbing the bank; but they 
+think nothing of keeping you till five."
+
+"But how long do you have for lunch and reading the papers?" said the 
+earl.
+
+"Not ten minutes. We take a paper among twenty of us for half the day. 
+That's exactly nine minutes to each; and as for lunch, we only have a 
+biscuit dipped in ink."
+
+"Dipped in ink!" said the squire.
+
+"It comes to that, for you have to be writing while you munch it."
+
+"I hear all about you," said the earl;
+
+"Sir Raffle Buffle is an old crony of mine."
+
+"I don't suppose he ever heard my name as yet" said Johnny.
+
+"But do you really know him well, Lord de Guest?"
+
+"Haven't seen him these thirty years; but I did know him."
+
+"We call him old Huffle Scuffle."
+
+"Huffle Scuffle! Ha, ha, ha! He always was Huffle Scuffle; a noisy, 
+pretentious, empty-headed fellow. But I oughtn't to say so before you, 
+young man. Come, we'll go into the drawing-room."
+
+"And what did he say?" asked Lady Julia, as soon as the squire was gone.
+
+There was no attempt at concealment, and the question was asked in 
+Johnny's presence.
+
+"Well, he did not say much. And coming from him, that ought to be taken 
+as a good sign. He is to think of it, and let me see him again. You 
+hold your head up, Johnny, and remember that you shan't want a friend 
+on your side. Faint heart never won fair lady."
+
+At seven o'clock on the following morning Eames started on his return 
+journey, and was at his desk at twelve o'clock-as per agreement with 
+his taskmaster at the Income-tax Office.
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE COMBAT
+
+
+I have said that John Eames was at his office punctually at twelve; but 
+an incident had happened before his arrival there very important in the 
+annals which are now being told-so important that it is essentially 
+necessary that it should be described with some minuteness of detail.
+
+Lord de Guest, in the various conversations which he had had with Eames 
+as to Lily Dale and her present position, had always spoken of Crosbie 
+with the most vehement abhorrence.
+
+"He is a damned blackguard," said the earl, and the fire had come out 
+of his round eyes as he spoke. Now the earl was by no means given to 
+cursing and swearing, in the sense which is ordinarily applied to these 
+words. When he made use of such a phrase as that quoted above, it was 
+to be presumed that he in some sort meant what he said; and so he did, 
+and had intended to signify that Crosbie by his conduct had merited all 
+such condemnation as was the fitting punishment for blackguardism of 
+the worst description.
+
+"He ought to have his neck broken," said Johnny.
+
+"I don't know about that," said the earl.
+
+"The present times have become so pretty behaved that corporal 
+punishment seems to have gone out of fashion. I shouldn't care so much 
+about that, if any other punishment had taken its place. But it seems 
+to me that a blackguard such as Crosbie can escape now altogether 
+unscathed."
+
+"He hasn't escaped yet," said Johnny.
+
+"Don't you go and put your finger in the pie and make a fool of 
+yourself," said the earl. If it had behoved any one to resent in any 
+violent fashion the evil done by Crosbie, Bernard Dale, the earl's 
+nephew, should have been the avenger. This the earl felt, but under 
+these circumstances he was disposed to think that there should be no 
+such violent vengeance..
+
+"Things were different when I was young," he said to himself. But Eames 
+gathered from the earl's tone that the earl's words were not strictly 
+in accordance with his thoughts, and he declared to himself over and 
+over again that Crosbie had not yet escaped.
+
+He got into the train at Guestwick, taking a first-class ticket, 
+because the earl's groom in livery was in attendance upon him. Had he 
+been alone he would have gone in a cheaper carriage. Very weak in him, 
+was it not? little also, and mean? My friend, can you say that you 
+would not have done the same at his age? Are you quite sure that you 
+would not do the same now that you are double his age? Be that as it 
+may, Johnny Eames did that foolish thing, and gave the groom in livery 
+half-a-crown into the bargain.
+
+"We shall have you down again soon, Mr John," said the groom, who 
+seemed to understand that Mr Eames was to be made quite at home at the 
+manor.
+
+He went fast to sleep in the carriage, and did not awake till the train 
+was stopped at the Barchester Junction.
+"Waiting for the up-train from Barchester, sir," said the guard. 
+"They're always late." Then he went to sleep again, and was aroused in 
+a few minutes by some one entering the carriage in a great hurry. The 
+branch train had come in, just as the guardians of the line then 
+present had made up their minds that the passengers on the main line 
+should not be kept waiting any longer. The transfer of men, women, and 
+luggage was therefore made in great haste, and they who were now taking 
+their new seats had hardly time to look about them. An old gentleman, 
+very red about the gills, first came into Johnny's carriage, which up 
+to that moment he had shared with an old lady. The old gentleman was 
+abusing everybody, because he was hurried, and would not take himself 
+well into the compartment, but stuck in the doorway, standing on the 
+step.
+
+"Now, sir, when you're quite at leisure," said a voice behind the old 
+man, which instantly made Eames start up in his seat.
+
+"I'm not at all at leisure," said the old man; "and I'm not going to 
+break my legs if I know it."
+
+"Take your time, sir," said the guard.
+
+"So I mean," said the old man, seating himself in the corner nearest to 
+the open door, opposite to the old lady. Then Eames saw plainly that it 
+was Crosbie who had first spoken, and that he was getting into the 
+carriage.
+
+Crosbie at the first glance saw no one but the old gentleman and the 
+old lady, and he immediately made for the unoccupied corner seat. He 
+was busy with his umbrella and his dressingbag, and a little flustered 
+by the pushing and hurrying. The carriage was actually in motion before 
+he perceived that John Eames was opposite to him: Eames had, 
+instinctively, drawn up his legs so as not to touch him. He felt that 
+he had become very red in the face, and to tell the truth, the 
+perspiration had broken out upon his brow. It was a great 
+occasion-great in its imminent trouble, and great in its opportunity 
+for action. How was he to carry himself at the first moment of his 
+recognition by his enemy, and what was he to do afterwards?
+
+It need hardly be explained that Crosbie had also been spending his 
+Christmas with a certain earl of his acquaintance, and that he too was 
+returning to his office. In one respect he had been much more fortunate 
+than poor Eames, for he had been made happy with the smiles of his lady 
+love. Alexandrina and the countess had fluttered about him softly, 
+treating him as a tame chattel, now belonging to the noble house of De 
+Courcy, and in this way he had been initiated into the inner 
+domesticities of that illustrious family. The two extra men-servants, 
+hired to wait upon Lady Dumbello, had vanished. The champagne had 
+ceased to flow in a perennial stream. Lady Rosina had come out from her 
+solitude, and had preached at him constantly. Lady Margaretta had given 
+him some lessons in economy. The Honourable John, in spite of a late 
+quarrel, had borrowed five pounds from him. The Honourable George had 
+engaged to come and stay with his sister during the next May. The earl 
+had used a father-in-law's privilege, and had called him a fool. Lady 
+Alexandrina had told him more than once, in rather a tart voice, that 
+this must be done, and that that must be done; and the countess had 
+given him her orders as though it was his duty, in the course of 
+nature, to obey every word that fell from her. Such had been his 
+Christmas delights; and now, as he returned back from the enjoyment of 
+them, he found himself confronted in the railway carriage with Johnny 
+Eames.
+
+The eyes of the two met, and Crosbie made a slight inclination of the 
+head. To this Eames gave no acknowledgment whatever, but looked 
+straight into the other's face. Crosbie immediately saw that they were 
+not to know each other, and was well contented that it should be so. 
+Among all his many troubles, the enmity of John Eames did not go for 
+much. He showed no appearance of being disconcerted, though our friend 
+had shown much. He opened his bag, and taking out a book. was soon 
+deeply engaged in it, pursuing his studies as though the man opposite 
+was quite unknown to him. I will not say that his mind did not run away 
+from his book, for indeed there were many things of which he found it 
+impossible not to think; but it did not revert to John Eames. Indeed, 
+when the carriages reached Paddington, he had in truth all but 
+forgotten him; and as he stepped out of the carriage, with his bag in 
+his hand, was quite free from any remotest trouble on his account.
+
+But it had not been so with Eames himself. Every moment of the journey 
+had, for him been crowded with thought as to what he would do now that 
+chance had brought his enemy within his reach. He had been made quite 
+wretched by the intensity of his thinking; and yet, when the carriages 
+stopped, he had not made up his mind. His face had been covered with 
+perspiration ever since Crosbie had come across him, and his limbs had 
+hardly been under his own command. Here had come to him a great 
+opportunity, and he felt so little confidence. in himself that he 
+almost knew that he would not use it properly. Twice and thrice he had 
+almost flown at Crosbie's throat in the carriage, but he was restrained 
+by an idea that the. world and the police would be against him if he 
+did such a thing in the presence of that old lady.
+
+But when Crosbie turned his back upon him, and walked out, it was 
+absolutely necessary that he should do something. He was not going to 
+let the man escape, after, all that he had said as to the expediency of 
+thrashing him. Any other disgrace would be preferable to that. Fearing, 
+therefore, lest his enemy should be too quick for him, he hurried out 
+after him, and only just gave Crosbie time to turn round and face the 
+carriages. before he was upon him.
+
+"You confounded scoundrel!" he screamed out.
+
+"You confounded scoundrel!" and seized him by the throat, throwing 
+himself upon him, and almost devouring him by the fury of his eyes.
+
+The crowd upon the platform was not very dense, but there were quite 
+enough of people to make a very respectable audience for this little 
+play. Crosbie, in his dismay, retreated a step or two, and his retreat 
+was much accelerated by the weight of Eames's attack. He endeavoured to 
+free his throat from his foe's grasp; but in that he failed entirely. 
+For the minute, however, he did manage to escape any positive blow, 
+owing his safety in that respect rather to Eames's awkwardness than to 
+his own efforts. Something about the police he was just able to utter, 
+and there was, as a matter of course, an immediate call for a supply of 
+those functionaries. In about three minutes three policemen, assisted 
+by six porters, had captured our poor friend Johnny; but this had not 
+been done quick enough for Crosbie's purposes. The bystanders, taken by 
+surprise, had allowed the combatants to fall back upon Mr Smith's 
+book-stall, and there Eames laid his foe prostrate among the 
+newspapers, falling himself into the yellow shilling-novel depot by the 
+over fury of his own energy; but as he fell, he contrived to lodge one 
+blow with his fist in Crosbie's right eye-one telling blow; and Crosbie 
+had, to all intents and purposes, been thrashed.
+
+"Con-founded scoundrel, rascal, blackguard!" shouted Johnny, with what 
+remnants of voice were left to him, as the police dragged him off.
+
+"If you only knew what he's done." But in the meantime the policemen 
+held him fast.
+
+As a matter of course the first burst of public sympathy went with 
+Crosbie. He had been assaulted, and the assault had come from Eames. In 
+the British bosom there is so firm a love of well-constituted order, 
+that these facts alone were sufficient to bring twenty knights to the 
+assistance of the three policemen and the six porters; so that for 
+Eames, even had he desired it, there was no possible chance of escape. 
+But he did not desire it. One only sorrow consumed him at present. He 
+had, as he felt, attacked Crosbie, but had attacked him in vain. He had 
+had his opportunity, and had misused it. He was perfectly unconscious 
+of that happy blow, and was in absolute ignorance of the great fact 
+that his enemy's eye was already swollen and closed, and that in 
+another hour it would be as black as his hat.
+
+"He is a con-founded rascal!" ejaculated Eames, as the policemen and 
+porters hauled him about.
+
+"You don't know what he's done."
+
+"No, we don't," said the senior constable; "but we know what you have 
+done. I say, Bushers, where's that gentleman? He'd better come along 
+with us."
+
+Crosbie had been picked up from among the newspapers by another 
+policeman and two or three other porters, and was attended also by the 
+guard of the train, who knew him, and knew that he had come up from 
+Courcy Castle. Three or four hangers-on were standing also around him, 
+together with a benevolent medical man who was proposing to him an 
+immediate application of leeches. If he could have done as he wished, 
+he would have gone his way quietly, allowing Eames to do the same. A 
+great evil had befallen him, but he could in no way mitigate that evil 
+by taking the law of the man who had attacked him. To have the thing as 
+little talked about as possible should be his endeavour. What though he 
+should have Eames locked up and fined, and scolded by a police 
+magistrate? That would not in any degree lessen his calamity. If he 
+could have parried the attack, and got the better of his foe; if he 
+could have administered the black eye instead of receiving it, then 
+indeed he could have laughed the matter off at his club, and his 
+original crime would have been somewhat glozed over by his success in 
+arms. But such good fortune had not been his. He was forced, however, 
+on the moment to decide as to what he would do.
+
+"We've got him here in custody, sir," said Bushers, touching his hat. 
+It had become known from the guard that Crosbie was somewhat of a big 
+man, a frequent guest at Courcy Castle, and of repute and station in 
+the higher regions of the Metropolitan world.
+
+"The magistrates will be sitting at Paddington, now, sir-or will be by 
+the time we get there."
+
+By this time some mighty railway authority had come upon the scene and 
+made himself cognisant of the facts of the row-a stern official who 
+seemed to carry the weight of many engines on his brow; one at the very 
+sight of whom smokers would drop their cigars, and porters close their 
+fists against sixpences; a great man with an erect chin, a quick step, 
+and a well-brushed hat powerful with an elaborately upturned brim. This 
+was the platform-superintendent, dominant, even over the policemen.
+
+"Step into my room, Mr Crosbie," he said. "Stubbs, bring that man in 
+with you." And then, before Crosbie had been able to make up his mind 
+as to any other line of conduct, he found himself in the 
+superintendent's room, accompanied by the guard, and by the two 
+policemen who conducted Johnny Eames between them.
+
+"What's all this?" said the superintendent, still keeping on his hat, 
+for he was aware how much of the excellence of his personal dignity was 
+owing to the arrangement of that article; and as he spoke he frowned 
+upon the culprit with his utmost severity.
+
+"Mr Crosbie, I am very sorry that you should have been exposed to such 
+brutality on our platform."
+
+"You don't know what he has done," said Johnny. "He is the most 
+confounded scoundrel living. He has broken "-But then he stopped 
+himself. He was going to tell the superintendent that the confounded 
+scoundrel had broken a beautiful young lady's heart; but he bethought 
+himself that he would not allude more specially to Lily Dale in that 
+hearing.
+
+"Do you know who he is, Mr Crosbie?" said the superintendent.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Crosbie, whose eye was already becoming blue.
+
+"He is a clerk in the Income-tax Office, and his name is Eames. I 
+believe you had better leave him to me."
+
+But the superintendent at once wrote down the words "Income-tax 
+Office-Eames," on his tablet. "We can't allow a row like that to take 
+place on our platform and not notice it. I shall bring it before the 
+directors. It's a most disgraceful affair, Mr Eames-most disgraceful."
+
+But Johnny by this time had perceived that Crosbie's eye was in a state 
+which proved satisfactorily that his morning's work had not been thrown 
+away, and his spirits were rising accordingly. He did not care two 
+straws for the superintendent or even for the policemen, if only the 
+story could be made to tell well for himself hereafter. It was his 
+object to have thrashed Crosbie, and now, as he looked at his enemy's 
+face, he acknowledged that Providence had been good to him.
+
+"That's your opinion," said Johnny.
+
+"Yes, sir, it is," said the superintendent; "and I shall know how to 
+represent the matter to your superiors, young man."
+
+"You don't know all about it," said Eames; "and I don't suppose you 
+ever will. I had made up my mind what I'd do the first time I saw that 
+scoundrel there; and now I've done it. He'd have got much worse in the 
+railway carriage, only there was a lady there."
+
+"Mr Crosbie, I really think we had better take him before the 
+magistrates."
+
+To this, however, Crosbie objected. He assured the superintendent that 
+he would himself know how to deal with the matter-which, however, was 
+exactly what he did not know. Would the superintendent allow one of the 
+railway servants to get a cab for him, and to find his luggage? He was 
+very anxious to get home without being subjected to any more of Mr 
+Eames's insolence.
+
+"You haven't done with Mr Eames's insolence yet, I can tell you. All 
+London shall hear of it, and shall know why. If you have any shame in 
+you, you shall be ashamed to show your face."
+
+Unfortunate man! Who can say that punishment-adequate punishment-had 
+not overtaken him? For the present, he had to sneak home with a black 
+eye, with the knowledge inside him that he had been whipped by a clerk 
+in the Income-tax Office; and for the future-he was bound over to marry 
+Lady Alexandrina de Courcy!
+
+He got himself smuggled off in a cab, without being forced to go again 
+upon the platform-his luggage being brought to him by two assiduous 
+porters. But in all this there was very little balm for his hurt pride. 
+As he ordered the cabman to drive to Mount Street, he felt that he had 
+ruined himself by that step in life which he had taken at Courcy 
+Castle. Whichever way he looked he had no comfort.
+
+"D- the fellow!" he said, almost out loud in the cab; but though he did 
+with his outward voice allude to Eames, the curse in his inner thoughts 
+was uttered against himself.
+
+Johnny was allowed to make his way down to the platform, and there find 
+his own carpet-bag. One young porter, however, came up and fraternised 
+with him.
+
+"You guve it him tidy just at that last moment, sir. But, laws, sir, 
+you should have let out at him at fust. What's the use of clawing a 
+man's neck-collar?"
+
+It was then a quarter past eleven, but, nevertheless, Eames appeared at 
+his office precisely at twelve.
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+VAE VICTIS
+
+
+Crosbie had two engagements for that day; one being his natural 
+engagement to do his work at his office, and the other an engagement, 
+which was now very often becoming as natural, to dine at St. John's 
+Wood with Lady Amelia Gazebee. It was manifest to him when he looked at 
+himself in the glass hat he could keep neither of these engagements.
+
+"Oh, laws, Mr Crosbie," the woman of the house exclaimed when she saw 
+him.
+
+"Yes, I know," said he. "I've had an accident and got a black eye. 
+What's a good thing for it?"
+
+"Oh! an accident!" said the woman, who knew well that that mark had 
+been made by another man's fist. "They do say that a bit of raw beef is 
+about the best thing. But then it must be held on constant all the 
+morning."
+
+Anything would be better than leeches, which tell long-enduring tales, 
+and therefore Crosbie sat through the greater part of the morning 
+holding the raw beef to his eye. But it was necessary that he should 
+write two notes as he held it, one to Mr Butterwell at his office, and 
+the other to his future sister-in-law. He felt that it would hardly be 
+wise to attempt any entire concealment of the nature of his 
+catastrophe, as some of the circumstances would assuredly become known. 
+If he said that he had fallen over the coal-scuttle, or on to the 
+fender, thereby cutting his face, people would learn that he had 
+fibbed, and would learn also that he had had some reason for fibbing. 
+Therefore he constructed his notes with a phraseology that bound him to 
+no details. To Butterwell he said that he had had an accident-rather a 
+row-and that he had come out of it with considerable damage to his 
+frontispiece. He intended to be at the office on the next day, whether 
+able to appear decently there or not. But for the sake of decency he 
+thought it well to give himself that one half-day's chance. Then to the 
+Lady Amelia he also said that he had had an accident, and had been a 
+little hurt.
+
+"It is nothing at all serious, and affects only my appearance, so that 
+I had better remain in for a day. I shall certainly be with you on 
+Sunday. Don't let Gazebee trouble himself to come to me, as I shan't be 
+at home after today." Gazebee did trouble himself to come to Mount 
+Street so often, and South Audley Street, in which was Mr Gazebee's 
+office, was so disagreeably near to Mount Street, that Crosbie inserted 
+this in order to protect himself if possible. Then he gave special 
+orders that he was to be at home to no one, fearing that Gazebee would 
+call for him after the hours of business-to make him safe and carry him 
+off bodily to St. John's Wood.
+
+The beefsteak and the dose of physic and the cold-water application 
+which was kept upon it all night was not efficacious in dispelling that 
+horrid, black-blue colour by ten o'clock on the following morning.
+
+"It certainly have gone down, Mr Crosbie; it certainly have," said the 
+mistress of the lodgings, touching the part affected with her finger.
+
+"But the black won't go out of them all in a minute; it won't indeed. 
+Couldn't you just stay in one more day?"
+
+"But will one day do it, Mrs Phillips?"
+
+Mrs Phillips couldn't take upon herself to say that it would. "They 
+mostly come with little red streaks across the black before they goes 
+away," said Mrs Phillips, who would seem to have been the wife of a 
+prize-fighter, so well was she acquainted with black eyes.
+
+"And that won't be till tomorrow," said Crosbie, affecting to be 
+mirthful in his agony.
+
+"Not till the third day-and then they wears themselves out, gradual. I 
+never knew leeches do any good."
+
+He stayed at home the second day, and then resolved that he would go to 
+his office, black eye and all. In that morning's newspaper he saw an 
+account of the whole transaction, saying how Mr C- of the office of 
+General Committees, who was son about to lead to the hymeneal altar the 
+beautiful daughter of the Earl de C-, had been made the subject of a 
+brutal personal attack on the platform of the Great Western Railway 
+Station, and how he was confined to his room from the injuries which he 
+had received. The paragraph went on to state that the delinquent had, 
+as it was believed, dared to raise his eyes to the same lady, and that 
+his audacity had been treated with scorn by every member of the noble 
+family in question.
+
+"It was, however, satisfactory to know," so said the newspaper, "that 
+Mr C- had amply avenged himself, and had so flogged the young man in 
+question, that he had been unable to stir from his bed since the 
+occurrence."
+
+On reading this Crosbie felt that it would be better that he should 
+show himself at once, and tell as much of the truth as the world would 
+he likely to ascertain at last without his telling. So on that third 
+morning he put on his hat and gloves, and had himself taken to his 
+office, though the red-streaky period of his misfortune had hardly even 
+yet come upon him. The task of walking along the office passage, 
+through the messengers' lobby, and into his room, was very 
+disagreeable. Of course everybody looked at him, and, of course, he 
+failed in his attempt to appear as though he did not mind it.
+
+"Boggs," he said to one of the men as he passed by, "just see if Mr 
+Butterwell is in his room," and then, as he expected, Mr Butterwell 
+came to him after the expiration of a few minutes.
+
+"Upon my word, that is serious," said Mr Butterwell, looking into the 
+secretary's damaged face.
+
+"I don't think I would have come out if I had been you."
+
+"Of course it's disagreeable," said Crosbie; "but it's better to put up 
+with it. Fellows do tell such horrid lies if a man isn't seen for a day 
+or two. I believe it's best to put a good face upon it."
+
+"That's more than you can do just at present, eh, Crosbie?" And then Mr 
+Butterwell tittered.
+
+"But how on earth did it happen? The paper says that you pretty well 
+killed the fellow who did it."
+
+"The paper lies, as papers always do. I didn't touch him at all."
+
+"Didn't you, though? I should like to have had a poke at him after 
+getting such a tap in the face as that."
+
+"The policemen came, and all that sort of thing. One isn't allowed to 
+fight it out in a row of that kind as one would have to do on Salisbury 
+heath. Not that I mean to say that I could lick the fellow. How's a man 
+to know whether he can or not?"
+
+"How, indeed, unless he gets a licking-or gives it? But who was he, and 
+what's this about his having been scorned by the noble family?"
+
+"Trash and lies, of course. He had never seen any of the De Courcy 
+people."
+
+"I suppose the truth is, it was about that other-eh, Crosbie? I knew 
+you'd find yourself in some trouble before you'd done."
+
+"I don't know what it was about, or why he should have made such a 
+brute of himself. You have heard about those people at Allington?
+
+"Oh, yes; I have heard about them."
+
+"God knows, I didn't mean to say anything against them. They knew 
+nothing about it."
+
+"But the young fellow knew them? Ah, yes, I see all about it. He wants 
+to step into your shoes. I can't say that he sets about it in a bad 
+way. But what do you mean to do?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Nothing! Won't that look queer? I think I should have him before the 
+magistrates."
+
+"You see, Butterwell, I am bound to spare that girl's name. I know I 
+have behaved badly."
+
+"Well, yes; I fear you have."
+
+Mr Butterwell said this with some considerable amount of decision in 
+his voice, as though he did not intend to mince matters, or in any way 
+to hide his opinion. Crosbie had got into a way of condemning himself 
+in this matter of his marriage, but was very anxious that others, on 
+hearing such condemnation from him, should say something in the way of 
+palliating his fault. It would be so easy for a friend to remark that 
+such little peccadilloes were not altogether uncommon, and that it 
+would sometimes happen in life that people did not know their own 
+minds. He had hoped for some such benevolence from Fowler Pratt, but 
+had hoped in vain. Butterwell was a good-natured, easy man, anxious to 
+stand well with all about him, never pretending to any very high tone 
+of feeling or of morals; and yet Butterwell would say no word of 
+comfort to him. He could get no one to slur over his sin for him, as 
+though it were no sin-only an unfortunate mistake; no one but the De 
+Courcys, who had, as it were, taken, possession of him and swallowed 
+him alive.
+
+"It can't be helped now," said Crosbie.
+
+"But as for that fellow who made such a brutal attack on me the other 
+morning, he knows that he is safe behind her petticoats. I can do 
+nothing which would not make some mention of her name necessary."
+"Ah, yes; I see," said Butterwell.
+
+"It's very unfortunate; very. I don't know that I can do anything for 
+you. Will you come before the Board today?"
+
+"Yes; of course I shall," said Crosbie, who was becoming very sore. His 
+sharp ear had told him that all Butterwell's respect and cordiality 
+were gone-at any rate for the time. Butterwell, though holding the 
+higher official rank, had always been accustomed to treat him as though 
+he, the inferior, were to be courted. He had possessed, and had known 
+himself to possess, in his office as well as in the outside world, a 
+sort of rank much higher than that which from his position he could 
+claim legitimately. Now he was being deposed. There could be no better 
+touchstone in such a matter than Butterwell. He would go as the world 
+went, but he would perceive almost intuitively how the world intended 
+to go.
+
+"Tact, tact, tact," as he was in the habit of saying to himself when 
+walking along the paths of his Putney villa. Crosbie was now secretary, 
+whereas a few months before he had been simply a clerk; but, 
+nevertheless, Mr Butterwell's instinct told him that Crosbie had 
+fallen. Therefore he declined to offer any sympathy to the man in his 
+misfortune, and felt aware, as he left the secretary's room, that it 
+might probably be some time before he visited it again.
+
+Crosbie resolved in his soreness that henceforth he would brazen it 
+out. He would go to the Board, with as much indifference as to his 
+black eye as. he was able to assume, and if any one said aught to him 
+he would be ready with his answer. He would go to his club, and let him 
+who intended to show him any slight beware of him in his wrath. He 
+could not turn upon John Eames, but he could turn upon others if it 
+were necessary.
+
+He had not gained for himself a position before the world, and held it 
+now for some years, to allow himself to be crushed at once because he 
+had made a mistake. If the world, his world, chose to go to war with 
+him, he would be ready for the fight. As for Butterwell-Butterwell the 
+incompetent, Butterwell the vapid-for Butterwell, who in every little 
+official difficulty had for years past come to him, he would let 
+Butterwell know what it was to be thus disloyal to one who had 
+condescended to be his friend. He would show them all at the Board that 
+he scorned them, and could be their master. Then, too, as he was making 
+some other resolves as to his future conduct, he made one or two 
+resolutions respecting the De Courcy people. He would make it known to 
+them that he was not going to be their very humble servant. He would 
+speak out his mind with considerable plainness; and if upon that they 
+should choose to break off this "alliance," they might do so; he would 
+not break his heart. And as he leaned back in his arm chair, thinking 
+of all this, an idea made its way into his brain-a floating castle in 
+the air, rather than the image of a thing that might by possibility be 
+realised; and in this castle in the air he saw himself kneeling again 
+at Lily's feet, asking her pardon, and begging that he might once more 
+be taken to her heart.
+
+"Mr Crosbie is here today," said Mr Butterwell to Mr Optimist.
+
+"Oh, indeed," said Mr Optimist, very gravely; for he had heard all 
+about the row at the railway station.
+
+"They've made a monstrous show of him."
+
+"I am very sorry to hear it. It's so-so-so- If it were one of the 
+younger clerks, you know, we should tell him that it was discreditable 
+to the department."
+
+"If a man gets a blow in the eye, he can't help it, you know. He didn't 
+do it himself, I suppose," said Major Fiasco.
+
+"I am well aware that he didn't do it himself," continued Mr Optimist;
+
+"but I really think that, in his position, he should have kept himself 
+out of any such encounter."
+
+"He would have done so if he could, with all his heart," said the major.
+
+"I don't suppose he liked being thrashed any better than I should."
+
+"Nobody gives me a black eye," said Mr Optimist.
+
+"Nobody has as yet," said the major.
+
+"I hope they never will," said Mr Butterwell. Then, the hour for their 
+meeting having come round, Mr Crosbie came into the Board-room.
+
+"We have been very sorry to hear of this misfortune," said Mr Optimist, 
+very gravely.
+
+"Not half so sorry as I have been," said Crosbie, with a laugh.
+
+"It's an uncommon nuisance to have a black eye, and to go about looking 
+like a prize-fighter."
+
+"And like a prize-fighter that didn't win his battle, too," said Fiasco.
+
+"I don't know that there's much difference as to that, said Crosbie.
+
+"But the whole thing is a nuisance, and, if you please, we won't say 
+anything more about it."
+
+Mr Optimist almost entertained an opinion that it was his duty to say 
+something more about it. Was not he the chief Commissioner, and was not 
+Mr Crosbie secretary to the Board? Ought he, looking at their 
+respective positions, to pass over without a word of notice such a 
+manifest impropriety as this? Would not Sir Raffle Buffle have said 
+something had Mr Butterwell, when secretary, come to the office with a 
+black eye? He wished to exercise all the full rights of a chairman; 
+but, nevertheless, as he looked at the secretary he felt embarrassed, 
+and was unable to find the proper words.
+
+"H-m, ha, well; we'll go to business now, if you please," he said, as 
+though reserving to himself the right of returning to the secretary's 
+black eye, when the more usual business of the Board should be 
+completed. But when the more usual business of the Board had been 
+completed, the secretary left the room without any further reference to 
+his eye.
+
+Crosbie, when he got back to his own apartment, found Mortimer Gazebee 
+waiting there for him.
+
+"My dear fellow," said Gazebee, "this is a very nasty affair."
+
+"Uncommonly nasty," said Crosbie; so nasty that I don't mean to talk 
+about it to anybody."
+
+"Lady Amelia is quite unhappy." He always called her Lady Amelia, even 
+when speaking of her to his own brothers and sisters. He was too well 
+behaved to take the liberty of calling an earl's daughter by her plain 
+Christian name even though that earl's daughter was his own wife. She 
+fears that you have been a good deal hurt."
+
+"Not at all hurt; but disfigured, as you see."
+
+"And so you beat the fellow well that did it?
+
+"No, I didn't," said Crosbie very angrily.
+
+"I didn't beat him at all. You don't believe everything you read in the 
+newspapers; do you?"
+
+"No, I don't believe everything. Of course I didn't believe about his 
+having aspired to an alliance with Lady Alexandrina. That was untrue, 
+of course." Mr Gazebee showed by the tone of his voice that imprudence 
+so unparalleled as that was quite incredible.
+
+"You shouldn't believe anything; except this-that I have got a black 
+eye."
+
+"You certainly have got that. Lady Amelia thinks you would be more 
+comfortable if you would come up to us this evening. You can't go out, 
+of course; but Lady Amelia said, very good-naturedly, that you need not 
+mind with her."
+
+"Thank you, no; I'll come on Sunday."
+
+"Of course Lady Alexandrina will be very anxious to hear from her 
+sister; and Lady Amelia begged me very particularly to press you to 
+come."
+
+"Thank you, no; not today."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, simply because I shall be better at home."
+
+"How can you be better at home? You can have anything that you want. 
+Lady Amelia won't mind, you know."
+
+Another beefsteak to his eye, as he sat in the drawing-room, a 
+cold-water bandage, or any little medical appliance of that sort-these 
+were the things which Lady Amelia would, in her domestic good nature, 
+condescend not to mind!
+
+"I won't trouble her this evening," said Crosbie.
+
+"Well, upon my word, I think you're wrong. All manner of stories will 
+get down to Courcy Castle, and to the countess's ears; and you don't 
+know what harm may come of it. Lady Amelia thinks she had better write 
+and explain it; but she can't do so till she has heard something about 
+it from you."
+
+"Look here, Gazebee. I don't care one straw what story finds its way 
+down to Courcy Castle."
+
+"But if the earl were to hear anything, and be offended?
+
+"He may recover from his offence as he best likes."
+
+"My dear fellow; that's talking wildly, you know."
+
+"What on earth do you suppose the earl can do to me? Do you think I'm 
+going to live in fear of Lord de Courcy all my life, because I'm going 
+to many his daughter? I shall write to Alexandrina myself today, and 
+you can tell her sister so. I'll be up to dinner on Sunday, unless my 
+face makes it altogether out of the question."
+
+"And you won't come in time for church?"
+
+"Would you have me go to church with such a face as this?"
+
+Then Mr Mortimer Gazebee went and when he got home, he told his wife 
+that Crosbie was taking things with a high hand.
+
+"The fact is, my dear, that he's ashamed of himself, and therefore 
+tries to put a bold face upon it. It was very foolish of him throwing 
+himself in the way of that young man-very; and so I shall tell him on 
+Sunday. If he chooses to give himself airs to me, I shall make him 
+understand that he is very wrong. He should remember now that the way 
+in which he conducts himself is a matter of moment to all our family."
+
+"Of course he should," said Mr Gazebee.
+
+When the Sunday came the red-streaky period had arrived. but had by no 
+means as yet passed away. The men at the office had almost become used 
+to it; but Crosbie, in spite of his determination to go down to the 
+club, had not yet shown himself elsewhere. Of course he did not go to 
+church, but at five he made his appearance at the house in St. John's 
+Wood. They always dined at five on Sundays, having some idea that by 
+doing so they kept the Sabbath better than they would have done had 
+they dined at seven. If keeping the Sabbath consists in going to bed 
+early, or is in any way assisted by such a practice, they were right. 
+To the cook that semi-early dinner might perhaps be convenient, as it 
+gave her an excuse for not going to church in the afternoon, as the 
+servants' and children's dinner gave her a similar excuse in the 
+morning. Such little, attempts at goodness-proceeding half the way, or 
+perhaps, as in this instance, one quarter of the way, on the 
+disagreeable path towards goodness, are very common with respectable 
+people, such as Lady Amelia. If she would have dined at one o'clock, 
+and have eaten cold meat one perhaps might have felt that she was 
+entitled to some praise.
+
+"Dear, dear, dear; this is very sad, isn't it, Adolphus?" she said on 
+first seeing him.
+
+"Well, it is sad, Amelia," he said. He always called her Amelia, 
+because she called him Adolphus; but Gazebee himself was never quite 
+pleased when he heard it. Lady Amelia was older than Crosbie, and 
+entitled to call him anything she liked; but he should have remembered 
+the great difference in their rank.
+
+"It is sad, Amelia," he said.
+"But will you oblige me in one thing?"
+
+"What thing, Adolphus?"
+
+"Not to say a word more about it. The black eye is a bad thing, no 
+doubt, and has troubled me much; but the sympathy of my friends has 
+troubled me a great deal more. I had all the family commiseration from 
+Gazebee on Friday, and if it is repeated again, I shall lie down and 
+die."
+
+"Shall 'oo die Uncle Dolphus, 'cause 'oo've got a bad eye? asked De 
+Courcy Gazebee, the eldest hope of the family, looking up into his face.
+
+"No, my hero," said Crosbie, taking the boy up into his arms, "not 
+because I've got a black eye. There isn't very much harm in that, and 
+you'll have a great many before you leave school. But because the 
+people will go on talking about it."
+
+"But Aunt Dina on't like 'oo, if oo've got an ugly bad eye."
+
+"But, Adolphus," said Lady Amelia, settling herself for an argument,
+
+"that's all very well, you know-and I'm sure I'm very sorry to cause 
+you any annoyance-but really one doesn't know how to pass over such a 
+thing without speaking of it. I have had a letter from mamma."
+
+"I hope Lady de Courcy is quite well."
+
+"Quite well, thank you. But as a matter of course she is very anxious 
+about this affair. She had read what has been said in the newspapers, 
+and it may be necessary that Mortimer should take it up, as the family 
+solicitor."
+
+"Quite out of the question," said Adolphus.
+
+"I don't think I should advise any such step as that," said Gazebee.
+
+"Perhaps not; very likely not. But you cannot be surprised, Mortimer, 
+that my mother under such circumstances should wish to know what are 
+the facts of the case."
+
+" Not at all surprised," said Gazebee.
+
+"Then once for all, I'll tell you the facts. As I got out, of the train 
+a man I'd seen once before in my life made an attack upon me, and 
+before the police came up, I got a blow in the face. Now you know all 
+about it."
+
+At that moment dinner was announced.
+
+"Will you give Lady Amelia your arm?" said the husband.
+
+"It's a very sad occurrence," said Lady Amelia with a slight toss of 
+her head, "and, I'm afraid, will cost my sister a great deal of 
+vexation."
+
+"You agree with De Courcy, do you, that Aunt Dina won't like me with an 
+ugly black eye"
+"I really don't think it's a joking matter," said the Lady Amelia. And 
+then there was nothing more said about it during the dinner.
+
+There was nothing more said about it during the dinner, but it was 
+plain enough from Lady Amelia's countenance, that she was not very well 
+pleased with her future brother-in-law's conduct. She was very 
+hospitable to him, pressing him to eat; but even in doing that she made 
+repeated little references to his present unfortunate state. She told 
+him that she did not think fried plum-pudding would be bad for him, but 
+that she would recommend him not to drink port wine after dinner.
+
+"By-the-by, Mortimer, you'd better have some claret up," she remarked.
+
+"Adolphus shouldn't take anything that is heating."
+
+"Thank you," said Crosbie.
+
+"I'll have some brandy-and-water, if Gazebee will give it me."
+
+"Brandy-and-water!
+
+" said Lady Amelia. Crosbie in truth was not given to the drinking of 
+brandy-and-water; but he was prepared to call for raw gin, if he were 
+driven much further by Lady Amelia's solicitude.
+
+At these Sunday dinners the mistress of the house never went away into 
+the drawing-room, and the tea was always brought into them at the table 
+on which they had dined. It was another little step towards keeping 
+holy the first day of the week. When Lady Rosina was there, she was 
+indulged with the sight of six or seven solid good books which were 
+laid upon the mahogany as soon as the bottles were taken off it. At her 
+first prolonged visit she had obtained for herself the privilege of 
+reading a sermon; but as on such occasions both Lady Amelia and Mr 
+Gazebee would go to sleep-and as the footman had also once shown a 
+tendency that way-the sermon had been abandoned. But the master of the 
+house, on these evenings, when his sister-in-law was present, was 
+doomed to sit in idleness, or else to find solace in one of the solid 
+good books. But Lady Rosina just now was in the country, and therefore 
+the table was left unfurnished.
+
+"And what am I to say to my mother?" said Lady Amelia, when they were 
+alone.
+
+"Give her my kindest regards," said Crosbie. It was quite clear both to 
+the husband and to the wife, that he was preparing himself for 
+rebellion against authority.
+
+For some ten minutes there was nothing said. Crosbie amused himself by 
+playing with the boy whom he called Dicksey, by way of a nickname for 
+De Courcy.
+
+"Mamma, he calls me Dicksey. Am I Dicksey? I'll call oo old Cross and 
+then Aunt Dina on't like 'oo."
+
+"I wish you would not call the child nicknames, Adolphus. It seems as 
+though you would wish to cast a slur upon the one which he bears."
+
+"I should hardly think that he would feel disposed to do that," said Mr 
+Gazebee.
+
+"Hardly, indeed," said Crosbie.
+
+"It has never yet been disgraced in the annals of our country by being 
+made into a nickname," said the proud daughter of the house. She was 
+probably unaware that among many of his associates her father had been 
+called Lord de Curse'ye, from the occasional energy of his language.
+
+"And any such attempt is painful in my ears. I think something of my 
+family, I can assure you, Adolphus, and so does my husband."
+
+"A very great deal," said Mr Gazebee.
+
+"So do I of mine," said Crosbie.
+
+"That's natural to all of us. One of my ancestors came over with 
+William the Conqueror. I think he was one of the assistant cooks in the 
+king's tent."
+
+"A cook!" said young De Courcy.
+
+"Yes, my boy, a cook. That was the way most of our old families were 
+made noble. They were cooks, or butlers to the kings-or sometimes 
+something worse."
+
+" But your family isn't noble?
+
+" No-I'll tell you how that was. The king wanted this cook to poison 
+half-a-dozen of his officers who wished to have a way of their own; but 
+the cook said, 'No, my Lord King; I am a cook, not an executioner.' So 
+they sent him into the scullery, and when they called all the other 
+servants barons and lords, they only called him Cookey. They've changed 
+the name to Crosbie since that, by degrees."
+
+Mr Gazebee was awestruck, and the face of the. Lady Amelia became very 
+dark. Was it not evident that this snake, when taken into their 
+innermost bosoms that they might there Warm him, was becoming an adder, 
+and preparing to sting them? There was very little more conversation 
+that evening, and soon after the story of the cook, Crosbie got up and 
+went away to his own home.
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+SEE THE CONQUERING HERO COMES
+
+
+John Eames had reached his office precisely at twelve o'clock, but when 
+he did so he hardly knew whether he was standing on his heels or his 
+head. The whole morning had been to him one of intense excitement, and 
+latterly, to a certain extent, one of triumph. But he did not at all 
+know what might be the results. Would he be taken before a magistrate 
+and locked up? Would there be a row at the office? Would Crosbie call 
+him out, and, if so, would it be incumbent on him to fight a duel with 
+pistols? What would Lord de Guest say-Lord de Guest, who had specially 
+warned him not to take upon himself the duty of avenging Lily's wrongs? 
+What would all the Dale family say of his conduct? And, above all, what 
+would Lily say and think? Nevertheless, the feeling of triumph was 
+predominant; and now, at this interval of time, he was beginning to 
+remember with pleasure the sensation of his fist as it went into 
+Crosbie's eye.
+
+During his first day at the office he heard nothing about the affair, 
+nor did he say a word of it to any one. It was known in his room that 
+he had gone down to spend his Christmas holiday with Lord de Guest, and 
+he was treated with some increased consideration accordingly. And, 
+moreover, I must explain, in order that I may give Johnny Eames his 
+due, he was gradually acquiring for himself a good footing among the 
+income-tax officials. He knew his work, and did it with some manly 
+confidence in his own powers, and also with some manly indifference to 
+the occasional frowns of the mighty men of the department. He was, 
+moreover, popular-being somewhat of a radical in his official 
+demeanour, and holding by his own rights, even though mighty men should 
+frown In truth, he was emerging from his hobbledehoyhood and entering 
+upon his young manhood, having probably to go through much folly and 
+some false sentiment in that period of his existence, but still with 
+fair promise of true manliness beyond to those who were able to read 
+the signs of his character.
+
+Many questions on that first day were asked him about the glories of 
+his Christmas, but he had very little to say on the subject. Indeed 
+nothing could have been much more commonplace than his Christmas visit 
+it not been for the one great object which had taken him down to that 
+part of the country, and for the circumstance with which his holiday 
+had been ended. On neither of these subjects was he disposed to speak 
+openly; but as he walked home to Burton Crescent with Cradell, he did 
+tell him of the affair with Crosbie.
+
+"And you went in at him on the station?" asked Cradell, with admiring 
+doubt.
+
+"Yes I did. If I didn't do it there, where was I to do it? I'd said I 
+would and therefore when I saw him I did it." Then the whole affair was 
+told as to the black eye, the police, and the superintendent.
+
+"And what's to come next?" asked our hero.
+
+"Well, he'll put it in the hands of a friend, of course; as I did with 
+Fisher in: that affair with Lupex. And, upon my word, Johnny, I shall 
+have to do something of the kind again. His conduct last night was 
+outrageous; would you believe-"
+
+"Oh, he's a fool."
+
+"He's a fool you wouldn't like to meet when he's in one of his mad 
+fits, I can tell you that. I absolutely had to sit up in my own bedroom 
+all last night. Mother Roper told me that if I remained in the 
+drawing-room she would feel herself obliged to have a policeman in the 
+house. What could I do, you know? I made her have a fire for me of 
+course."
+
+"And then you went to bed."
+
+"I waited ever so long, because I thought that Maria would want to see 
+me. At last she sent me a note. Maria is so imprudent, you know. If he 
+had found anything in her writing, it would have been terrible, you 
+know-quite terrible. And who can say whether Jemima mayn't tell?
+
+"And what did she say?"
+
+"Come; that's tellings, Master Johnny. I took very good care to take it 
+with me to the office this morning, for fear of accidents."
+
+But Eames was not so widely awake to the importance of his friend's 
+adventures as he might have been had he not been weighted with 
+adventures of his own.
+
+"I shouldn't care so much," said he, "about that fellow Crosbie, going 
+to a friend, as I should about his going to a police magistrate."
+
+"He'll put it in a friend's hands, of course," said Cradell with the 
+air of a man who from experience was well up in such matters.
+
+"And I suppose you'll naturally come to me. It's a deuced bore to a man 
+in a public office, and all that kind of thing, of course. But I'm not 
+the man to desert my friend. I'll stand by you, Johnny, my boy."
+
+"Oh, thank you," said Eames, "I don't think that I shall want that."
+
+"You must be ready with a friend, you know."
+
+"I should write down to a man I know in the country, and ask his 
+advice, said Eames; "an older sort of friend, you know."
+
+"By Jove, old fellow, take care what you are about. Don't let them say 
+of you that you show the white feather. Upon my honour, I'd sooner have 
+an thing said of me than that. I would, indeed-anything."
+
+"I'm not afraid of that," said Eames, with a touch of scorn in his 
+voice.
+
+"There isn't much thought about white feathers nowadays-not in the way 
+of fighting duels."
+
+After that, Cradell managed to carry back the conversation to Mrs Lupex 
+and his own peculiar position, and as Eames did not care to ask from 
+his companion further advice in his own matters, he listened nearly in 
+silence till they reached Burton Crescent.
+
+"I hope you found the noble earl well," said Mrs Roper to him, as soon 
+as they were all seated at dinner."
+"I found the noble earl pretty well, thank you," said Johnny.
+
+It had become plainly understood by all the Roperites that Eames's 
+position was quite altered since he had been honoured with the 
+friendship of Lord de Guest. Mrs Lupex, next to whom he always sat at 
+dinner, with a view to protecting her as it were from the dangerous 
+neighbourhood of Cradell, treated him with a marked courtesy. Miss 
+Spruce always called him "sir." Mrs Roper helped him the first of the 
+gentlemen, and was mindful about his fat and gravy, and Amelia felt 
+less able than she was before to insist upon the possession of his 
+heart and affections. It must not be supposed that Amelia intended to 
+abandon the fight, and allow the enemy to walk off with his forces; but 
+she felt herself constrained to treat him with a, deference that was 
+hardly compatible with the perfect equality, which should attend any 
+union of hearts.
+
+"It is such a privilege to be on visiting terms with the nobility," 
+said Mrs Lupex. When I was a girl, I used to be very intimate-"
+
+"You ain't a girl any longer, and so you'd better not talk about it," 
+said Lupex. Mr Lupex had been at that little shop in Drury Lane after 
+he came down from his scene-painting.
+
+"My dear, you needn't be a brute to me before all Mrs Roper's company. 
+If, led away by feelings which I will not now describe, I left my 
+proper circles in marrying you, you need heed not before all the world 
+teach me how much I have to regret." And Mrs Lupex, putting down her 
+knife and fork, applied her handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+"That's pleasant for a man over his meal, isn't it? said Lupex, 
+appealing to Miss Spruce. I have plenty of that kind of thing and you 
+can't think how I like it."
+
+"Them whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder," said Miss 
+Spruce.
+
+"As for me myself, I'm only an old woman."
+
+This little ebullition threw a gloom over the dinner-table, and nothing 
+more was said on the occasion as to the glories of Eames's career. But, 
+in the course of the evening, Amelia heard of the encounter which had 
+taken place at the railway station, and at once perceived that she 
+might use the occasion for her own purposes.
+
+"John," she whispered to her victim, finding an opportunity for coming 
+upon him when almost alone, "what is this I hear? I insist upon 
+knowing. Are you going to fight a duel?"
+
+"Nonsense," said Johnny.
+
+"But it is not nonsense. You don't know what my feelings will be, if I 
+think that such a thing is going to happen. But then you are so 
+hardhearted!"
+
+"I ain't hardhearted a bit, and I'm not going to fight a duel."
+
+"But is it true that you beat Mr Crosbie at the station?"
+
+"It is true. I did beat him."
+
+"Oh, John! not that I mean to say you were wrong, and indeed I honour 
+you for the feeling. There can be nothing so dreadful as a young man's 
+deceiving a young woman; and leaving her after he has won her 
+heart-particularly when she has had promise in plain words, or, 
+perhaps, even in, black and white." John thought of that horrid, 
+foolish, wretched note which he had written.
+
+"And a poor girl, if she can't right herself by a breach of promise, 
+doesn't know what to do, Does she, John?"
+
+"A girl who'd right herself that way wouldn't be worth having."
+
+"I don't know about that. When a poor girl is in such a position she 
+has to be said by her friends. I suppose, then, Miss Lily Dale won't 
+bring a breach of promise against him."
+
+This mention of Lily's name in such a place was sacrilege in the ears 
+of poor Eames.
+
+"I cannot tell," said he, "what may be the intention of the lady of 
+whom you speak. But from what I know of her friends, I should not think 
+that she will be disgraced by such a proceeding."
+
+"That may be all very well for Miss Lily Dale-" Amelia said, and then 
+she hesitated. It would not be well, she thought, absolutely to 
+threaten him as yet-not as long as there was any possibility that he 
+might be won without a threat.
+
+"Of, course I know all about it," she continued. She was your L. D., 
+you know. Not that I was ever jealous of her. To you she was no more 
+than one of childhood's friends. Was she, Johnny?"
+
+He stamped his foot upon the floor, and then jumped up from his seat. 
+"I hate all that sort of twaddle about childhood's friends, and you 
+know I do. You'll make me swear that I'll never come into this room 
+again."
+
+"Johnny!"
+
+"So I will. The whole thing makes me sick. And as for that Mrs Lupex-"
+
+"If this is what you learn, John, by going to a lord's house, I think 
+you had better stay at home with your own friends."
+
+"Of course I had much better stay at home with my own friends. Here's 
+Mrs Lupex, and at any rate I can't stand her." So he went off, and 
+walked round the Crescent, and down to the New Road and almost into the 
+Regent's Park, thinking of Lily Dale and of his own cowardice with 
+Amelia Roper.
+
+On the following morning he received a message, at about one o'clock by 
+the mouth of the Board-room messenger informing him that his presence 
+was required in the Board-room.
+
+"Sir Raffle Buffle has desired your presence, Mr Eames."
+
+"My presence, Tupper! what for?" said Johnny, turning upon the 
+messenger, almost with dismay.
+
+"Indeed I can't say, Mr Eames; but Sir Raffle Buffle has desired your 
+presence in the Board-room."
+
+Such a message as that in official life always strikes awe into the 
+heart of a young man. And yet, young men generally come forth from such 
+interviews without having received any serious damage and generally 
+talk about the old gentlemen whom they have encountered with a good 
+deal of light-spirited sarcasm-or chaff as it is called in the slang 
+phraseology of the day. It is that same "majesty which doth hedge a 
+king" that does it. The turkey-cock in his own farmyard is master of 
+the occasion and the thought of him creates fear. A bishop in his lawn, 
+a judge on the bench, a chairman in the big room at the end of a long 
+table, or a policeman with his bull's-eye lamp upon his beat, can all 
+make themselves terrible by means of those appanages of majesty which 
+have been vouchsafed to them. But how mean is the policeman in his own 
+home, and how few thought much of Sir Raffle Buffle as he sat asleep 
+after dinner in his old slippers. How well can I remember the terror 
+created within me by the air of outraged dignity with which a certain 
+fine old gentleman, now long since gone, could rub his hands slowly, 
+one on the other, and look up to the ceiling, slightly shaking his 
+head, as though lost in the contemplation of my iniquities! I would 
+become sick in my stomach, and feel as though my ankles had been 
+broken. That upward turn of the eye unmanned me, so completely that I 
+was speechless as regarded any defence. I think that that old man could 
+hardly have known the extent of his own power.
+
+Once upon a time a careless lad, having the charge of a bundle of 
+letters addressed to the King-petitions, and such like, which in the 
+course of business would not get beyond the hands of some 
+Lord-in-waiting's deputy assistant-sent the bag which contained them to 
+the wrong place; to, Windsor perhaps, if the Court were, in London; or 
+to St. James's, if it were at Windsor. He was summoned; and the great 
+man of the occasion contented himself with holding his hands up to the 
+heavens as he stood up from his chair, and, exclaiming twice, "Mis-sent 
+the Monarch's pouch! Mis-sent the Monarch's pouch!" That young man 
+never knew how he escaped from the Board-room; but for a time he was 
+deprived of all power of exertion, and could not resume his work till 
+he had had six months' leave of absence, and been brought round upon 
+rum and asses' milk. In that instance the peculiar use of the word 
+Monarch had a power which the official magnate had never contemplated. 
+The story, is traditional; but I believe that the circumstance happened 
+as lately as in the days of George the Third.
+
+John Eames could laugh at the present chairman of the Income-tax Office 
+with great freedom, and call him old Ruffle Scuffle and the like; but 
+now that he was sent for, he also in, spite of his radical 
+propensities, felt a little weak about his ankle joints. He knew, from 
+the first hearing of the message, that he was wanted with reference to 
+that affair at the railway station. Perhaps there might be a rule, that 
+any clerk should. be dismissed who used his fists in any public place; 
+there were many rules entailing the punishment of dismissal for many 
+offences-and he began to think that he did remember something of such a 
+regulation. However he got up, looked once round him upon his friends, 
+and then followed Tupper into the Board-room.
+
+"There's Johnny been sent for by old Scuffles," said one clerk.
+
+"That's about his row with Crosbie," said another. The Board can't do 
+anything to him for that."
+
+"Can't it?" said the first. "Didn't young Outonites have to resign 
+because of that row at the Cider Cellars though his cousin, Sir 
+Constant Outonites, did all that he could for him?"
+
+"But he was regularly up the spout with accommodation bills."
+"I tell you that I wouldn't be in Eames's shoes for a trifle. Crosbie 
+is secretary at the Committee Office, where Scuffles was chairman 
+before he came here; and of course they're as thick as thieves. I 
+shouldn't wonder if they didn't make him go down and apologise."
+
+"Johnny won't do that," said the other. In the meantime John Eames was 
+standing in the August presence. Sir Raffle Buffle was throned in his 
+great oak armchair at the head of a long table in a very large room; 
+and by him, at the corner of the table, was seated one of the assistant 
+secretaries of the office. Another member of the Board was also at work 
+upon the long table; but he was reading and signing papers at some 
+distance from Sir Raffle, and paid no heed whatever to the scene. The 
+assistant secretary, looking on, could see that Sir Raffle was annoyed 
+by this want of attention on the part of his colleague, but all this 
+was lost upon Eames.
+
+"Mr Eames?" said Sir Raffle speaking with a peculiarly harsh voice. and 
+looking at the culprit through a pair of goldrimmed glasses, which he 
+perched for the occasion upon his big nose.
+
+"Isn't that Mr Eames?"
+
+"Yes," said the assistant secretary, "this is Eames."
+
+"Ah!"-and then there was a pause.
+
+"Come a little nearer, Mr Eames, will you?" and Johnny drew nearer 
+advancing noiselessly over the Turkey carpet."Let me see; in the second 
+class, isn't, he? Ah! Do you know, Mr Eames, that I have received a 
+letter from the secretary to the Directors of the Great Western Railway 
+Company, detailing circumstances which-if truly stated in that 
+letter-redound very much to your discredit?"
+
+"I did get into a row there yesterday, sir."
+
+"Got into a row! It seems to me that you have got into a very serious 
+row and that I must tell the Directors of the Great Western Railway 
+Company that the law must be allowed to take its course."
+
+"I shan't mind that, sir, in the least," said Eames, brightening up a 
+little under this view of the case.
+
+"Not mind that, sir!" said Sir Raffle-or rather, he shouted out the 
+words at the offender before him. I think that he overdid it, missing 
+the effect which a milder tone might have attained. Perhaps there was 
+lacking, to him some of that majesty of demeanour and dramatic 
+propriety-of voice which had been so efficacious in the little story as 
+to the King's bag of letters. As it was Johnny gave a slight jump, but 
+after his jump he felt better than he had been before.
+
+"'Not mind, sir, being dragged before the criminal tribunals of your 
+country, and being punished as a felon-or rather as a misdemeanour-for 
+an outrage committed on a public platform! Not mind it! What do you 
+mean, sir?"
+
+"I mean, that I don't think the magistrate would say very much about 
+it, sir. And I don't think Mr Crosbie would come forward."
+
+"But Mr Crosbie must come forward, young man. Do you suppose that an 
+outrage against the peace of the Metropolis is to go unpunished because 
+he may not wish to pursue the matter? I'm afraid you must be very 
+ignorant, young man."
+
+"Perhaps I am," said Johnny.
+
+"Very ignorant indeed-very ignorant indeed. And are you aware, sir, 
+that it would become a question, with the Commissioners of this Board 
+whether you could be retained in the service of this department if you 
+were publicly punished by a police magistrate for such a disgraceful 
+outrage as that?"
+
+Johnny looked round at the other Commissioner, but that gentleman did 
+not raise his face from his papers.
+
+"Mr Eames is a very good clerk," whispered the assistant secretary, but 
+in a voice which made his words audible to Eames "one of the best young 
+men we have" he added in a voice which was not audible.
+
+"Oh-ah; very well. Now, I'll tell you what, Mr Eames. I hope this will 
+be a lesson to you-a very serious lesson".
+
+The assistant secretary, leaning in his chair so as to be a little 
+behind the head of Sir Raffle, did manage to catch the eye of the other 
+Commissioner. The other Commissioner, barely looking round, smiled a 
+little and then the assistant secretary smiled also. Eames saw this, 
+and he smiled too.
+
+"Whether any ulterior consequences may still await the breach of the 
+peace of which you have been guilty, I am not yet prepared to say," 
+continued Sir Raffle. "You may go now."And Johnny returned to his own 
+place, with no increased reverence for the dignity of the chairman.
+
+On the following morning one of his colleagues showed him with great 
+glee the passage in the newspaper which informed the world that he had 
+been so desperately beaten by Crosbie that he was obliged to keep his 
+bed at this present time in consequence of the flogging that he had 
+received. Then his anger was aroused, and he bounced about the big room 
+of the Income-tax Office regardless of assistant secretaries, 
+head-clerks and all other official grandees whatsoever, denouncing the 
+iniquities of the public press, and declaring his opinion that it would 
+be better to live in Russia than in a country which allowed such 
+audacious falsehoods to be propagated.
+
+"He never touched me, Fisher; I don't think he ever tried; but, upon my 
+honour, he never touched me."
+
+"But, Johnny, it was bold in you to make up to Lord de Courcy's 
+daughter," said Fisher.
+
+"I never saw one of them in my life."
+
+"He's going it altogether among the aristocracy now, said another; I 
+suppose you wouldn't look ay anybody under a viscount?"
+
+"Can I help what that thief of an editor puts into his paper? Flogged! 
+Huffle Scuffle told me I was a felon, but that wasn't half so bad as 
+this fellow;" and Johnny kicked the newspaper across the room.
+
+"Indict him for a libel," said Fisher.
+
+"Particularly for saying you wanted to marry a countess's daughter," 
+said another clerk.
+
+"I never heard such a scandal in my life," declared a third; "and then 
+to say that the girl wouldn't look at you."
+
+But not the less was it felt by all in the office that Johnny Eames was 
+becoming a leading man among them, and that he was one with whom each 
+of them would be pleased to be intimate.
+
+And even among the grandees this affair of the railway station did him 
+no real harm. It was known that Crosbie had deserved, to be thrashed 
+and known that Eames had thrashed him. It was all very well for Sir 
+Raffle Buffle to talk of police magistrates and misdemeanours, but all 
+the world at the Income Tax Office knew very well that Eames had come 
+out from that affair with his head upright and his right foot foremost.
+
+"Never mind about the newspaper," a thoughtful old senior clerk said to 
+him. "As he did get the licking and you didn't, you can afford to laugh 
+at the newspaper."
+
+"And you wouldn't write to the editor?"
+
+"No, no; certainly not. No, one thinks of defending himself to a 
+newspaper except an ass-unless it be some fellow who wants to have his 
+name puffed. You may write what's as true as the gospel, but they'll 
+know how to make fun of it."
+
+Johnny, therefore, gave up his idea of an indignant letter to the 
+editor but he felt that he was bound to give some explanation of the 
+whole matter to Lord de Guest. The affair had happened as he was coming 
+from the earl's house, and all his. own concerns had now been made so 
+much a matter of interest to his kind friend, that he thought that he 
+could not with propriety leave the earl to learn from the newspapers 
+either the facts or the falsehoods. And, therefore, before he left his 
+office he wrote the following letter:-
+
+INCOME-TAX OFFICE, December 29, 186-.
+
+MY LORD-
+
+He thought a good deal about the style in which he ought to address the 
+peer, never having hitherto written to him. He began,
+
+"My dear Lord," on one sheet of paper, and then put it aside, thinking 
+that it looked over-bold.
+
+MY LORD-As you have been so very kind to me, I feel that I ought to 
+tell you what happened the other morning at the railway station, as I 
+was coming back from Guestwick. That scoundrel Crosbie got into the 
+same carriage with me at the Barchester Junction, and sat opposite to 
+me all the way up to London. I did not speak a word to him, or he to 
+me; but when he got out at the Paddington Station, I thought I ought 
+not to let him go away, so I-I can't say that I thrashed him as I 
+wished to do but I made an attempt, and I did give him a black eye. A 
+whole quantity of policemen got round us, and I hadn't a fair chance. I 
+know you will think that I was wrong, and perhaps I was; but what could 
+I do when he sat opposite to me there for two hours, looking as though 
+he thought himself the finest fellow in all London?
+
+They've put a horrible paragraph into one of the newspapers saying that 
+I got so "flogged" that I haven't been able to stir since. It is an 
+atrocious falsehood, as is all the rest of the newspaper account. I was 
+not touched. He was not nearly so bad a customer as the bull and seemed 
+to take it all very quietly. I must acknowledge, though, that he didn't 
+get such a beating as he deserved.
+
+Your friend Sir R. B. sent for me this morning, and told me I was a 
+felon. I didn't seem to care much for that, for he might as well have 
+called me a murderer or a burglar, but I shall care very much indeed if 
+I have made you angry with me. But what I most fear is the anger of 
+some one else-at Allington.
+
+Believe me to be, my Lord,
+
+Yours very much obliged and most sincerely,
+
+JOHN EAMES.
+
+"I knew he'd do it if ever he got the opportunity," said the earl when 
+he had read his letter; and he walked about his room striking his hands 
+together, and then thrusting his thumbs into his waistcoat-pockets. "I 
+knew he was made of the right stuff" and the earl rejoiced greatly in 
+the prowess of his favourite. "I'd have done it myself if I'd seen him. 
+I do believe I would." Then he went back to the breakfast-room and told 
+Lady Julia.
+
+"What do you think?" said he; "Johnny Eames has come across Crosbie, 
+and given him a desperate beating."
+
+"No!" said Lady Julia, putting down newspaper and spectacles, and 
+expressing by the light of her eyes anything but Christian horror at 
+the wickedness of the deed.
+
+"'But he has though. I knew he would if he saw him."
+
+"Beaten him! Actually beaten him!"
+
+"Sent him home to Lady Alexandrina with two black eyes."
+
+"Two black eyes! What a young pickle! But did he get hurt himself ?"
+
+"Not a scratch he says."
+
+"And what'll they do to him?"
+
+"Nothing. Crosbie won't be fool enough to do anything. A man becomes an 
+outlaw when he plays such a game as he has played. Anybody's hand may 
+be raised against him with know. He can't come impunity. He can't show 
+his face, you forward and answer questions as to what he has done. 
+There are offences which the law can't touch but which outrage public 
+feeling so strongly that any one may take upon himself the duty of 
+punishing them. He has been thrashed, and that will stick to him till 
+he dies."
+
+"Do tell Johnny from me that I hope he didn't get hurt," said Lady 
+Julia. The old lady could not absolutely congratulate him on his feat 
+of arms, but she did the next thing to it.
+
+But the earl did congratulate him with a full open assurance of his 
+approval.
+"I hope," he said "I should have done the same at your age, under 
+similar circumstances, and I'm very glad that he proved less difficult 
+than the bull. I'm quite sure you didn't want any one to help you with 
+Master Crosbie. As for that other person at Allington, if I understand 
+such matters at all, I think she will forgive you." It may, however, be 
+a question whether the earl did understand such matters at all. And 
+then he added in a postscript:
+
+"When you write to me again-and don't be long first, begin your letter 
+'My dear Lord De Guest '-that is the proper way."
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+AN OLD MAN'S COMPLAINT
+
+
+"Have you been thinking again of what I was saying to you, Bell?" 
+Bernard said to his cousin one morning.
+
+"Thinking of it, Bernard? Why should I think more of, it ? I had hoped 
+that you had forgotten it yourself."
+
+"No," he said; "I am not so easy-hearted as that. I cannot look on such 
+a thing as I would the purchase of a horse, which I could give up 
+without sorrow if I found that the animal was too costly for my purse. 
+I did not tell you that I loved you till I was sure of myself, and 
+having made myself sure I cannot change at all."
+
+"And yet you would have me change."
+
+"Yes, of course I would. If your heart be free now, it must of course 
+be changed before you come to love any man. Such change as that is to 
+be looked for. But when you have loved, then it will not be easy to 
+change you."
+
+"But I have not."
+
+"Then I have a right to hope. I have been hanging on here, Bell, longer 
+than I ought to have done, because, I could not bring myself to leave 
+you without speaking of this again. I did not wish to seem to you to be 
+importunate."
+
+"If you could only believe me in what I say."
+
+"It is not that I do not believe. I am not a puppy or a fool to flatter 
+myself that you must be in love with me. I believe you well enough. But 
+still it is possible that your mind may alter."
+
+"It is impossible."
+
+"I do not know whether my uncle or your mother have spoken to you about 
+this."
+
+"Such speaking would have no effect."
+
+In fact her mother had spoken to: her, but she truly said that such 
+speaking would have no effect. If her cousin could not win the battle 
+by his own skill, he might have been quite sure, looking at her 
+character as it was known to him, that he would not be able to win it 
+by the skill of others.
+
+"We have all been made very unhappy," he went on to say, by this 
+calamity which has fallen on poor Lily.
+
+"And because she has been deceived by the man she did love, I am to 
+make matters square by marrying a man I-" and then she paused.
+
+"Dear Bernard, you should not drive me to say words which will sound 
+harsh to you."
+"No words can be harsher than those which you have already spoken. But 
+Bell, at any rate, you may listen to me."
+
+Then he told her how desirable it was with reference to all the 
+concerns of the Dale family that she should endeavour to look 
+favourably on his proposition. It would be good for them all, he said, 
+especially for Lily, as to whom at the present moment their uncle felt 
+so kindly. He, as Bernard pleaded, was so anxious at heart for this 
+marriage, that he would do anything that was asked of him if he were 
+gratified. But if he were not gratified in this he would f eel that he 
+had ground for displeasure.
+
+Bell, as she had been desired to listen. did listen very patiently. But 
+when her cousin had finished, her answer was very short.
+
+"Nothing that my uncle can say, or think, or do can make any difference 
+in this" said she.
+
+"You will think nothing, then, of the happiness of others."
+
+"I would not marry a man I did not love, to ensure any amount of 
+happiness to others-at least I know I ought not to do so. But I do not 
+believe I should ensure any one's happiness by this marriage. Certainly 
+not yours."
+
+After this Bernard had acknowledged to himself that the difficulties in 
+his way were great.
+
+"I will go away till next autumn he said to his uncle."If you would 
+give up your profession and remain here, she would not be so perverse."
+
+"I cannot do that, sir. I cannot risk the well-being of my life on such 
+a chance." Then his uncle had been angry with him as well as with his 
+niece. In his anger he determined that he would go again to his 
+sister-in-law, and, after some unreasonable fashion he resolved that it 
+would become him to be very angry with her also, if she declined to 
+assist him with all her influence as a mother.
+
+"Why should they not both marry?" he said to himself. Lord de Guest's 
+offer as to young Eames had been very generous.
+
+As he had then declared, he had not been able to express his own 
+opinion at once; but on thinking over what the earl had said, he had 
+found himself very willing to heal the family wound in the manner 
+proposed if any such healing might be possible. That however could not 
+be. done quite as yet. When the time should come, and he thought it 
+might come soon-perhaps in the spring, when the days should be fine and 
+the evenings again long-he would be willing to take his share with the 
+earl in establishing that new household. To Crosbie he had refused to 
+give anything, and there was upon his conscience a shade of remorse in 
+that he had so refused. But if Lily could be brought to love this other 
+man, he would be more open-handed. She should have her share as though 
+she was in fact his daughter. But then, if he intended to do so much 
+for them at the Small House should not they in return do something also 
+for him? So thinking, he went again to his sister-in-law determined to 
+explain his views, even though it might be at the risk of some hard 
+words between them. As regarded himself, he did not much care for hard 
+words spoken to him. He almost expected that people's words should be 
+hard and painful. He did not look for the comfort of affectionate soft 
+greetings, and perhaps would not have appreciated them had they come to 
+him. He caught Mrs Dale walking in the garden, and brought her into his 
+own room, feeling that he had a better chance there than in her own 
+house. She with an old dislike to being lectured in that room had 
+endeavoured to avoid the interview but had failed.
+
+"So I met John Eames at the manor," he had said to her in the garden.
+
+"Ah, yes; and how did he get on there? I cannot conceive poor Johnny 
+keeping holiday with the earl and his sister. How did he behave to 
+them, and how did they behave to him?"
+
+"I can assure you he was very much at home there."
+
+"Was he, indeed? Well, I hope it will do him good. He is, I'm sure a 
+very good young man; only rather awkward."
+
+"I didn't think him awkward at all. You'll find, Mary, that he'll do 
+very well-a great deal better than his father did."
+
+"I'm sure I hope he may." After that Mrs Dale made her attempt to 
+escape; but the squire had taken her prisoner, and led her captive into 
+the house.
+
+"Mary," he said, as soon as he had induced her to sit down, it is time 
+that this should be settled between my nephew and niece."
+
+"I am afraid there will be nothing to settle."
+
+"What do you mean-that you disapprove of it?"
+
+"By no means-personally. I should approve of it very strongly. But that 
+has nothing to do with the question."
+
+"Yes, it has. I beg your pardon, but it must have, and should have a 
+great deal to do with it. Of course, I am not saying that anybody 
+should now ever be compelled to marry anybody."
+
+"I hope not."
+
+"I never said that they ought, and never thought so, But I do think 
+that the wishes of all her family should have very great weight with a 
+girl that has been well brought up."
+
+"I don't know whether Bell has been well brought up; but in such a 
+matter as this nobody's wishes would weigh a leather with her; and, 
+indeed, I could not take upon myself even to express a wish. To you I 
+can say that I should have been very happy if she could have regarded 
+her cousin as you wish her to do."
+
+"You mean that you are afraid to tell her so?"
+
+"I am afraid to do what I think is wrong, if you mean that."
+
+"I don't think it would be wrong, and therefore I shall speak to her 
+myself."
+
+"You must do as you like about that, Mr Dale; I can't prevent you. I 
+shall think you wrong to harass her on such a matter, and I fear also 
+that her answer will not be satisfactory to you. If you choose to tell 
+her your opinion, you must do so. Of course I shall think you wrong, 
+that's all."
+
+Mrs Dale's voice as she said this was stern enough, and so was her 
+countenance. She could not forbid the uncle to speak his mind to his 
+niece, but she specially disliked the idea of any interference with her 
+daughter. The squire got up and walked about the room, trying to 
+compose himself that he might answer her rationally, but without anger.
+
+"May I go now?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"May you go? Of course you may go if you like it. If you think that I 
+am intruding upon you in speaking to you of the welfare of your two 
+girls, whom I endeavour to regard as my own daughters-except in this, 
+that I know they have never been taught to love me-if you think that it 
+is an interference on my part to show anxiety for their welfare, of 
+course you may go."
+
+"I did not mean to say anything to hurt you, Mr Dale."
+
+"Hurt me! What does it signify whether I am hurt or not? I have no 
+children of my own, and of course my only business in life is to 
+provide for my nephews and nieces. I am an old fool if I expect that 
+they are to love me in return, and if I venture to express a wish I am 
+interfering and doing wrong I It is hard-very hard. I know well that 
+they have been brought up to dislike me, and yet I am endeavouring to 
+do my duty by them."
+
+"Mr Dale, that accusation has not been deserved. They have not been 
+brought up to dislike you. I believe that they have both loved and 
+respected you as their uncle; but such love and respect will not give 
+you a right to dispose of their hands."
+
+"Who wants to dispose of their hands?"
+
+"There are some things in which I think no uncle-no parent-should 
+interfere, and of all such things this is the chief. If after that you 
+may choose to tell her your wishes, of course you can do so."
+
+"It will not be much good after you have set her against me."
+
+"Mr Dale, you have no right to say such things to me, and you are very 
+unjust in doing so. If you think that I have set my girls against you, 
+it will be much better that we should leave Allington altogether. I 
+have been placed in circumstances which have made it difficult for me 
+to do my duty to my children; but I have endeavoured to do it, not 
+regarding my own personal wishes. I am quite sure, however, that it 
+would be wrong in me to keep them here, if I am to be told by you that 
+I have taught them to regard you unfavourably. Indeed, I cannot suffer 
+such a thing to be said to me."
+
+All this Mrs Dale said with an air of decision, and with a voice 
+expressing a sense of injury received, which made the squire feel that 
+she was very much in earnest.
+
+"Is it not true," he said, defending himself, "that in all that relates 
+to the girls you have ever regarded me with suspicion?"
+
+"No, it is not true." And then she corrected herself, feeling that 
+there was something of truth in the squire's last assertion.
+
+"Certainly not with suspicion," she said.
+
+"But as this matter has gone so far, I will explain what my real 
+feelings have, been. In worldly matters you can do much for my girls, 
+and have done much."
+
+"And wish to do more," said the squire.
+
+"I am sure you do. But I cannot on that account give up my place as 
+their only living parent. They are my children, and not yours. And even 
+could I bring myself to allow you to act as their guardian and natural 
+protector, they would not consent to such an arrangement. You cannot 
+call that suspicion."
+
+"I can call it jealousy."
+
+"And should not a mother be jealous of her children's love?"
+
+During all this time the squire was walking up and down the room with 
+his hands in his trousers pockets. And when Mrs Dale had last spoken, 
+he continued his walk for some time in silence.
+
+"Perhaps it is well that you should have spoken out," he said.
+
+"The manner in which you accused me made it necessary."
+
+"I did not intend to accuse you, and I do not do so now; but I think 
+that you have been, and that you are, very hard on me-very hard indeed. 
+I have endeavoured to make your children, and yourself also, sharers 
+with me in such prosperity as has been mine. I have striven to add to 
+your comfort and to their happiness. I am most anxious to secure their 
+future welfare. You would have been very wrong had you declined to 
+accept this on their behalf; but I think that in return for it you need 
+not have begrudged me the affection and obedience which generally 
+follows from such good offices."
+
+"Mr Dale, I have begrudged you nothing of this."
+
+"I am hurt-I am hurt," he continued. And she was surprised by his look 
+of pain even more than by the unaccustomed warmth of his words.
+
+"What you have said has, I have known, been the case all along. But 
+though I had felt it to be so, I own that I am hurt by your open words."
+
+"Because I have said that my own children must ever be my own?"
+
+"Ah, you have said more than that. You and the girls have been living 
+here, close to me, for-how many years is it now?-and during all those 
+years there has grown up for me no kindly feeling. Do you think that I 
+cannot hear, and see, and feel? Do you suppose that I am a fool and do 
+not know? As for yourself you would never enter this house if you did 
+not feel yourself constrained to do so for the sake of appearances. I 
+suppose it is all as it should be. Having no children of my own, I owe 
+the duty of a parent to my nieces; but I have no right to expect from 
+them in return either love, regard, or obedience. I know I am keeping 
+you here against your will, Mary. I won't do so any longer." And he 
+made a sign to her that she was to depart.
+
+As she rose from her seat her heart was softened towards him. In these 
+latter days he had shown much kindness to the girls-a kindness that was 
+more akin to the gentleness of love than had ever come from him before. 
+Lily's fate had seemed to melt even his sternness, and he had striven 
+to be tender in his words and ways. And now he spoke as though he had 
+loved the girls, and had loved them in vain. Doubtless he had been a 
+disagreeable neighbour to his sister-in-law, making her feel that it 
+was never for her personally that he had opened his hand. Doubtless he 
+had been moved by an unconscious desire to undermine and take upon 
+himself her authority with her own children. Doubtless he had looked 
+askance at her from the first day of her marriage with his brother. She 
+had been keenly alive to all this since she had first known him, and 
+more keenly alive to it than ever since the failure of those efforts 
+she had made to live with him on terms of affection, made during the 
+first year or two of her residence at the Small House. But, 
+nevertheless, in spite of all, her heart bled for him now. She had 
+gained her victory over him, having fully held her own position with 
+her children; but now, that he complained that he had been beaten in 
+the struggle, her heart bled for him.
+
+"My brother," she said, and as she spoke she offered him her hands, "it 
+may be that we have not thought as kindly of each other as we should 
+have done."
+
+"I have endeavoured," said the old man. "I have endeavoured-". And then 
+he stopped, either hindered by some excess of emotion, or unable to 
+find the words which were. necessary for the expression of his meaning.
+
+"Let us endeavour once again-both of us."
+
+"What, begin again at near seventy! No, Mary, there is no more 
+beginning again for me. All this shall make no difference to the girls. 
+As long as I am here they shall have the house. If they marry, I will 
+do for them what I can. I believe Bernard is much in earnest in his 
+suit, and if Bell will listen to him, she shall still be welcomed here 
+as mistress of Allington. What you have said shall make no 
+difference-but as to beginning again, it is simply impossible."
+
+After that Mrs Dale walked home through the garden by herself. He had 
+studiously told her that that house in which they lived should be lent, 
+not to her, but to her children, during his lifetime. He had positively 
+declined the offer of her warmer regard. He had made her understand 
+that they were to look on each other almost as enemies; but that she, 
+enemy as she was, should still be allowed the use of his. munificence, 
+because he chose to do his duty by his nieces!
+
+"It will be better for us that we shall leave it," she said to herself 
+as she seated herself in her own arm-chair over the drawing-room fire.
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+DOCTOR CROFTS IS CALLED IN
+
+
+Mrs Dale had not sat. long in her drawing-room. before tidings were 
+brought to her which. for a while drew her mind away from that question 
+of her removal.
+
+"Mamma, said Bell, entering the room, "I really do believe that Jane 
+has got scarlatina." Jane, the parlour-maid, had. been ailing for the 
+last two days, but nothing serious had hitherto been suspected.
+
+Mrs Dale instantly jumped up. "Who is with her?" she asked.
+
+It appeared from Bell's answer that both she and Lily had been with the 
+girl, and that Lily was still in the room. Whereupon Mrs Dale ran 
+upstairs, and there was on the sudden a commotion in the house. In an 
+hour or so the village doctor was there, and he expressed an opinion 
+that the girl's ailment was certainly scarlatina. Mrs Dale, not 
+satisfied with this, sent off a boy to Guestwick for Dr Crofts, having 
+herself maintained an opposition of many years' standing, against the 
+medical reputation of the apothecary, and gave a positive order to the 
+two girls not to visit poor Jane again. She herself had had scarlatina, 
+and might do as she pleased. Then, too, a nurse was hired.
+
+All this changed for a. few hours the current of Mrs Dale's thoughts: 
+but in the evening she went back to the subject of her morning 
+conversation, and before the. three ladies went to bed, they held 
+together an open council of war upon the subject. Dr Crofts had been 
+found to be away from Guestwick, and word had been sent on his behalf 
+that he would be over at Allington early on the following morning. Mrs 
+Dale had almost made up her mind that the malady of her favourite maid 
+was not scarlatina, but had not on that account relaxed her order as to 
+the absence of her daughters from, the maid's bedside.
+
+"Let us go at once," said Bell, who was even more opposed to any 
+domination on the part of her uncle than was her mother. In the 
+discussion which had been taking place between them the whole matter of 
+Bernard's courtship had come upon the carpet. Bell had kept her 
+cousin's offer to herself as long as she had been able to do so; but 
+since her uncle had pressed the subject upon Mrs Dale, it was 
+impossible for Bell to remain silent any longer.
+
+"You do not want me to marry him, mamma; do you?" she had said, when 
+her mother had spoken with some show of kindness towards Bernard. In 
+answer to this, Mrs Dale had protested vehemently that she had no such 
+wish, and Lily, who still held to her belief in Dr Crofts, was almost 
+equally animated. To them all, the idea. that their uncle should in any 
+way interfere in their own views of life, on the strength of the 
+pecuniary assistance which they had received from him, was peculiarly 
+distasteful. But it was especially distasteful that he should presume 
+to have even an opinion as to their disposition in marriage. They 
+declared to each other that their uncle could have no right to object 
+to any marriage which either of them might contemplate as long as their 
+mother should approve of it. The poor old squire had been right in 
+saying that he was regarded with suspicion. He was so regarded. The 
+fault had certainly been his own, in having endeavoured to win the 
+daughters without thinking it worth his while to win the mother. The 
+girls had unconsciously felt that the attempt was made, and had 
+vigorously rebelled against it. It had not been their fault that they 
+had been brought to live in their uncle's house, and made to ride on 
+his ponies, and to eat partially of his bread. They had so eaten, and 
+so lived, and declared themselves to be grateful. The squire was good 
+in his way, and they recognised his goodness; but not on that account 
+would they transfer to him one jot of the allegiance which as children 
+they owed to their mother. When she told them her tale, explaining to 
+them the words which their uncle had spoken that morning, they 
+expressed their regret that he should be so grieved; but they were 
+strong in assurances to their mother that she had been sinned against, 
+and was not sinning.
+
+"Let us go at once," said Bell.
+
+"It is much easier said than done, my dear."
+
+"Of course it is, mamma; else we shouldn't be here now. What I mean is 
+this-let us take some necessary first step at once. It is clear that my 
+uncle thinks that our remaining here should give him some right over 
+us. I do not say that he is wrong to think so. Perhaps it is natural. 
+Perhaps, in accepting his kindness, we ought to submit ourselves to 
+him. If that be so, it is a conclusive reason for our going."
+
+"Could we not pay him rent for the house," said Lily, "as Mrs Hearn 
+does? You would like to remain here, mamma, if you could do that?"
+
+"But we could not do that, Lily. We must choose for ourselves a smaller 
+house than this, and one that is not burdened with the expense of a 
+garden. Even if we paid but a moderate rent for this place, we should 
+not have the, means of living here."
+
+"Not if we lived on toast and tea?" said Lily, laughing.
+
+"But I should hardly wish you to live upon toast and tea and indeed I 
+fancy that I should get tired of such a diet myself."
+
+"Never, mamma," said Lily. "As for me, I confess to a longing after 
+mutton chops; but I don't think you would ever want such vulgar things."
+
+"At any rate, it would be impossible to remain here," said Bell.
+
+"Uncle Christopher would not take rent from mamma; and even if he did, 
+we should not know how to go on with our other arrangements after such 
+a change. No; we must give up the dear old Small House."
+
+"It is a dear old house," said Lily, thinking, as she spoke, more of 
+those late scenes in the garden, when Crosbie had been with them in the 
+autumn months, than of any of the former joys of her childhood.
+
+"After all, I do not know that I should be right to move," said Mrs 
+Dale, doubtingly.
+
+"Yes, yes," said both the girls at once.
+
+"Of course you will be right, mamma; there cannot be a doubt about it, 
+mamma. If we can get any cottage, or even lodgings, that would be 
+better than remaining here, now that we know what Uncle Christopher 
+thinks of it."
+
+"It will make him very unhappy," said Mrs Dale.
+
+But even this argument did not in the least move the girls. They were 
+very sorry that their uncle should be unhappy. They would endeavour to 
+show him by some increased show of affection that their feelings 
+towards him were not unkind. Should he speak to them they would 
+endeavour to explain to him that their thoughts towards him were 
+altogether affectionate. But they could not remain at Allington 
+increasing their load of gratitude, seeing that he expected a certain 
+payment which they did not feel themselves able to render.
+
+"We should be robbing him, if we stayed here," Bell declared-"wilfully 
+robbing him of what he believes to be his just share of the bargain."
+
+So it was settled among them that notice should be given to their uncle 
+of their intention to quit the Small House of Allington.
+
+And then came the question as to their new home. Mrs Dale was aware 
+that her income was at any rate better than that possessed by Mrs 
+Eames, and therefore she had fair ground for presuming that she could 
+afford to keep a house at Guestwick.
+
+"If we do go away, that is what we must do," she said.
+
+"And we shall have to walk out with Mary Eames, instead of Susan 
+Boyce," said Lily.
+
+"It won't make so much difference after all."
+
+"In that respect we shall gain as much as we lose," said Bell.
+
+"And then it will be so nice to have the shops," said Lily, ironically.
+
+"Only we shall never have any money to buy anything," said Bell.
+
+"But we shall see more of the world," said Lily.
+
+"Lady Julia's carriage comes into town twice a week, and the Miss 
+Gruffens drive about in great style. Upon the whole, we shall gain a 
+great deal; only for the poor old garden. Mamma, I do think I shall 
+break my heart at parting with Hopkins; and as to him, I shall be 
+disappointed in mankind if he ever holds his head up again after I am 
+gone."
+
+But in truth there was very much of sadness in their resolution, and to 
+Mrs Dale it seemed as though she were managing matters badly for her 
+daughters and allowing poverty and misfortune to come upon them through 
+her own fault. She well knew how great a load of, sorrow was lying on 
+Lily's heart, hidden beneath those little attempts at pleasantry which 
+she made. When she spoke of being disappointed in mankind, Mrs Dale 
+could hardly repress an outward shudder that would betray her thoughts. 
+And now she was consenting to take them forth from. their comfortable 
+home, from the luxury of their lawns and gardens, and to bring them to 
+some small dingy corner of a provincial town-because she had failed to 
+make herself happy with her brother-in-law. Could she be right to give 
+up all the advantages which they enjoyed at Allington-advantages which 
+had come to them from so legitimate a source-because her own feelings 
+had been wounded? In all their future want of comfort, in the 
+comfortless dowdiness of the new home to which she would remove them, 
+would she not always blame herself for having brought them to that by 
+her own false pride? And yet it seemed to her that she now had no 
+alternative. She could not now teach her daughters to obey their 
+uncle's wishes in all things. She could not make Bell understand that 
+it would be well that she should marry Bernard because the squire had 
+set his heart on such a 'marriage. She had gone so far that she could 
+not now go back.
+
+"I suppose we must move at Lady-day?" said Bell, who was in favour of 
+instant action.
+
+"If so, had you not better let Uncle Christopher know at once?"
+
+"I don't think that we can find a house by that time."
+
+"We can get in somewhere," continued Bell.
+
+"There are plenty of lodgings in Guestwick, you know." But the sound of 
+the word lodgings was uncomfortable in Mrs Dale's ears.
+
+"If we are to go, let us go at once," said Lily.
+
+"We need not stand much upon the order of our going."
+
+"Your uncle will be very much shocked," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"He cannot say that it is your fault," said Bell.
+
+It was thus agreed between them that the necessary information should 
+be at once given to the squire, and that the old, well-loved house 
+should be left for ever. It would be a great fall in a worldly point of 
+view-from the Allington Small House to an abode in some little street 
+of Guestwick. At Allington they had been county people-raised to a 
+level with their own squire and other squires by the circumstance of 
+their residence; but at Guestwick they would be small even among the 
+people of the town. They would be on an equality with the Eames'es, and 
+much looked down upon by the Gruffens. They would hardly dare to call 
+any more at Guestwick Manor, seeing that they certainly could not 
+expect Lady Julia to call upon them at Guestwick. Mrs Boyce no doubt 
+would patronise them, and they could already anticipate the condolence 
+which would be offered to them by Mrs Hearn. Indeed such a movement on 
+their part would be tantamount to a confession of failure in the full 
+hearing of so much of the world as was known to them.
+
+I must not allow my readers to suppose that these considerations were a 
+matter of indifference to any of the ladies at the Small House. To some 
+women of strong mind, of highly-strung philosophic tendencies, such 
+considerations might have been indifferent. But Mrs Dale was not of 
+this nature, nor were her daughters. The good things of the world were 
+good in their eyes, and they valued the privilege of a pleasant social 
+footing among their friends. They were by no means capable of a wise 
+contempt of the advantages which chance had hitherto given to them. 
+They could not go forth rejoicing in the comparative property of their 
+altered condition. But then, neither could they purchase those luxuries 
+which they were about to abandon at the price which was asked for them.
+
+"Had you not better write to my uncle?" said one of the girls. But to 
+this Mrs Dale objected that she could not make a letter on such a 
+subject clearly intelligible, and that therefore she would see the 
+squire on the following morning.
+"It will be very dreadful," she said, "but it will soon be over. It is 
+not what he will say at the moment that I fear so much, as the bitter 
+reproaches of his face when I shall meet him afterwards." So, on the 
+following morning, she again made her way, and now without invitation, 
+to the squire's study.
+
+"Mr Dale," she began, starting upon her work with some confusion in her 
+manner, and hurry in her speech, "I have been thinking over what we 
+were saying together yesterday, and I have come to a resolution which I 
+know I ought to make known to you without a moment's delay."
+
+The squire also had thought of what had passed between them, and had 
+suffered much as he had done so; but he had thought of it without 
+acerbity or anger. His thoughts were ever gentler than his words, and 
+his heart softer than any exponent of his heart that he was able to put 
+forth. He wished to love his brother's children, and to be loved by 
+them; but even failing that, he wished to do good to them. It had not 
+occurred to him to be angry with Mrs Dale after that interview was 
+over. The conversation had not gone pleasantly with him; but then he 
+hardly expected that things would go pleasantly. No idea had occurred 
+to him that evil could come upon any of the Dale ladies from the words 
+which had then been spoken. He regarded the Small House as their abode 
+and home as surely as the Great House was his own. In giving him his 
+due, it must be declared that any allusion to their holding these as a 
+benefit done to them by him had been very far from his thoughts. Mrs 
+Hearn, who held her cottage at half its real value, grumbled almost 
+daily at him as her landlord; but it never occurred to him that 
+therefore he should raise her rent, or that in not doing so he was 
+acting with special munificence. It had ever been to him a grumbling, 
+cross-grained, unpleasant world; and he did not expect from Mrs Hearn, 
+or from his sister-in-law, anything better than that to which he had 
+ever been used.
+
+"It will make me very happy," said he, "if it has any bearing on Bell's 
+marriage with her cousin."
+
+"Mr Dale, that is out of the question. I would not vex you by saying so 
+if I were not certain of it; but I know my child so well!"
+
+"Then we must leave it to time, Mary."
+
+"Yes, of course; but no time will suffice to make Bell change her mind. 
+We will, however, leave the subject. And now, Mr Dale, I have to tell 
+you of something else-we have resolved to leave the Small House."
+
+"Resolved on what?" said the squire, turning his eyes full upon her.
+
+"We have resolved to leave the Small House."
+
+"Leave the Small House!" he said, repeating her words; "and where on 
+earth do you mean to go?"
+
+"We think we shall go into Guestwick."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Ah, that is so hard to explain. If you would only accept the fact as I 
+tell it to you, and not ask for the reasons which have guided me!"
+
+"But that is out of the question, Mary. In such a matter as that I must 
+ask your reasons; and I must tell you also that, in my opinion, you 
+will not be doing your duty to your daughters in carrying out such an 
+intention, unless your reasons are very strong indeed."
+
+"But they are very strong," said Mrs Dale; and then she paused.
+
+"I cannot understand it," said the squire.
+
+"I cannot bring myself to believe that you are really in earnest. Are 
+you not comfortable there?"
+
+"More comfortable than we have any right to be with our means."
+
+"But I thought you always did very nicely with your money. You never 
+get into debt."
+
+"No; I never get into debt. It is not that, exactly. The fact is, Mr 
+Dale, we have no right to live there without paying rent; but we could 
+not afford to live there if we did pay rent."
+
+"Who has talked about rent?" he said, jumping up from his chair.
+
+"Some one has been speaking falsehoods of me behind my back." No gleam 
+of the real truth had yet come to him. No idea had reached his mind 
+that his relatives thought it necessary to leave his house in 
+consequence of any word that he himself had spoken. He had never 
+considered himself to have been in any special way generous to them, 
+and would not have thought it reasonable that they should abandon the 
+house in which they had been living, even if his anger against them had 
+been strong and hot.
+
+"Mary," he said, "I must insist upon getting to the bottom of this. As 
+for your leaving the house, it is out of the question. Where can you be 
+better off, or so well? As to going into Guestwick, what sort of life 
+would there be for the girls? I put all that aside as out of the 
+question; but I must know what has induced you to make such a 
+proposition. Tell me honestly-has any one spoken evil of me behind my 
+back?"
+
+Mrs Dale had been prepared for opposition and for reproach; but there 
+was a decision about the squire's words, and an air of masterdom in his 
+manner, which made her recognise more fully than she had yet done the 
+difficulty of her position. She almost began to fear that she would 
+lack power to carry out her purpose.
+
+"Indeed, it is not so, Mr Dale."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+"I know that if I attempt to tell you, you will be vexed, and will 
+contradict me."
+
+"Vexed I shall be, probably."
+
+"And yet I cannot help it. Indeed, I am endeavouring to do what is 
+right by you and by the children."
+
+"Never mind me; your duty is to think of them."
+
+"Of course it is; and in doing this they most cordially agree with me."
+
+In using such argument as that, Mrs Dale showed her weakness, and the 
+squire was not slow to take advantage of it.
+
+"Your duty is to them," he said; "but I do not mean by that that your 
+duty is to let them act in any way that may best please them for the 
+moment. I can understand that they should be run away with by some 
+romantic nonsense, but I cannot understand it of you."
+
+"The truth is this, Mr Dale. You think that my children owe to you that 
+sort of obedience which is due to a parent, and as long as they remain 
+here, accepting from your hands so large a part of their daily support, 
+it is perhaps natural that you should think so. In this unhappy affair 
+about Bell-"
+
+"I have never said anything of the kind," said the squire, interrupting 
+her.
+
+"No; you have not said so. And I do not wish you to think that I make 
+any complaint. But I feel that it is so, and they feel it. And, 
+therefore, we have made up our minds to go away."
+
+Mrs Dale, as she finished, was aware that she had not told her story 
+well, but she had acknowledged to herself that it was quite out of her 
+power to tell it as it should be told. Her main object was to make her 
+brother-in-law understand that she certainly would leave his house, 
+and. to make him understand this with as little pain to himself as 
+possible. . She did not in the least mind his thinking her foolish, if 
+only she could so carry her point as to be able to tell her daughters 
+on her return that the matter was settled. But the squire, from his 
+words and manners; seemed indisposed to give her this privilege.
+
+"Of all the propositions which I ever heard," said he "it is the most 
+unreasonable. It amounts to this, that you are too proud to live 
+rent-free in a house which belongs to your husband's brother, and 
+therefore you intend to subject yourself and your children to the great 
+discomfort of a very straitened 'income. If you yourself only were 
+concerned I should have no right to say anything; but I think myself 
+bound to tell you that, as regards the girls, everybody that knows you 
+will think you to have been very wrong. It is in the natural course of 
+things that they should live in that house. The place has never been 
+let. As far as I know, no rent has ever been paid for the house since 
+it was built. It has always been given to some member of the family, 
+who has been considered as having the best right to it. I have 
+considered your footing there as firm as my own here. A quarrel between 
+me and your children would be to me a great calamity, though, perhaps, 
+they might be indifferent to it. But if there were such a quarrel it 
+would afford no reason for their leaving that house. Let me beg you to 
+think over the matter again."
+
+The squire could assume an air of authority on certain occasions, and 
+he had done so now. Mrs Dale found that she could only answer him by a 
+simple repetition of her own intention; and, indeed, failed in making 
+him any serviceable answer whatsoever.
+
+"I know that you are very good to my girls," she said.
+
+"I will say nothing about that," he answered; not thinking at that 
+moment of the Small House, but of the full possession which he had 
+desired to give to the elder of all the privileges which should belong 
+to the mistress of Allington-thinking also of the means by which he was 
+hoping to repair poor Lily's shattered fortunes. What words were 
+further said had no great significance, and Mrs Dale got herself away, 
+feeling that she had failed. As soon as she was gone the squire arose, 
+and putting on his great-coat, went forth with his hat and stick to the 
+front of the house. He went out in order that his thoughts might be 
+more free, and that he might indulge in that solace which an injured 
+man finds in contemplating his injury. He declared to himself that he 
+was very hardly used-so hardly used, that he almost began to doubt 
+himself, and his own motives. Why was it that the people around him 
+disliked him so strongly-avoided him and thwarted him in the efforts 
+which he made for their welfare? He offered to his nephew all the 
+privileges of a son-much more indeed 'than the privileges of a 
+son-merely asking in return that he would consent to live permanently 
+in the house which was to be his own. But his nephew refused.
+
+"He cannot bear to live with me," said the old man to himself sorely. 
+He was prepared to treat his nieces with more generosity than the 
+daughters of the House of Allington had usually received from their 
+fathers; and they repelled his kindness, running away from him, and 
+telling him openly that they would not be beholden to him. He walked 
+slowly up and down the terrace, thinking of this very bitterly. He did 
+not find in the contemplation of his grievance all that solace which a 
+grievance usually gives, because he accused himself in his thoughts 
+rather than others. He declared to himself that he was made to be 
+hated, and protested to himself that it would be well that he should 
+die and be buried out of memory, so that the remaining Dales might have 
+a better chance of living happily; and then as he thus discussed all 
+this within his own bosom, his thoughts were very tender, and though he 
+was aggrieved, he was most affectionate to those who had most injured 
+him. But it was absolutely beyond his power to reproduce outwardly, 
+with words and outward signs, such thoughts and feelings.
+
+It was now very nearly the end of the year, but the weather was still 
+soft and open. The air was damp rather than cold, and the lawns and 
+fields still retained the green tints of new vegetation. As the squire 
+was walking on the terrace Hopkins came up to him, and touching his 
+hat, remarked that they should have frost in a day or two.
+
+"I suppose we shall," said the squire.
+
+"We must have the mason to the flues of that little grape-house, sir, 
+before I can do any good with a fire there."
+
+"Which grape-house?" said the squire, crossly.
+
+"Why, the grape-house in the other garden, sir. It ought to have been 
+done last year by rights." This Hopkins said to punish his master for 
+being cross to him. On that matter of the flues of Mrs Dale's 
+grape-house he had, with much consideration, spared his master during 
+the last winter, and he felt that this ought to be remembered now.
+
+"I can't put any fire in it, not to do any real good, till something's 
+done. That's sure."
+
+"Then don't put any fire in it," said the squire.
+
+Now the grapes in question were supposed to be peculiarly fine, and 
+were the glory of the garden of the Small House. They were always 
+forced, though not forced so early as those at the Great House, and 
+Hopkins was in a state of great confusion.
+
+"They'll never ripen; sir; not the whole year through."
+"Then let them be unripe," said the squire, walking about.
+
+Hopkins did not at all understand it. The squire in his natural course 
+was very unwilling to neglect any such matter as this, but would be 
+specially unwilling to neglect anything touching the Small House. So 
+Hopkins stood on the terrace, raising his hat and scratching his head.
+
+"There's something wrong amongst them," said he to himself, sorrowfully.
+
+But when the squire had walked to the end of the terrace and had turned 
+upon the path which led round the side of the house, he stopped and 
+called to Hopkins.
+
+"Have what is needful done to the flue," he said.
+
+"Yes, sir; very well, sir. It'll only be re-setting the bricks. Nothing 
+more ain't needful, just this winter."
+
+"Have the place put in perfect order while you're about it." said the 
+squire, and then he walked away.
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+DOCTOR CROFTS IS TURNED OUT
+
+
+"Have you heard the news, my dear, from the Small House?" said Mrs 
+Boyce to her husband, some two or three days after Mrs Dale's visit to 
+the squire. It was one o'clock, and the parish pastor had come in from 
+his ministrations to dine with his wife and children.
+
+"What news?" said Mr Boyce, for he had heard none.
+
+"Mrs Dale and the girls are going to leave the Small House; they're 
+going into Guestwick to live."
+
+"Mrs Dale going away; nonsense!" said the vicar. "What on earth should 
+take her into Guestwick? She doesn't pay a shilling of rent where she 
+is."
+
+"I can assure you it's true, my dear. I was with Mrs Hearn just now, 
+and she had it direct from Mrs Dale's own lips. Mrs Hearn said she'd 
+never been taken so much aback in her whole life. There's been some 
+quarrel, you may be sure of that."
+
+Mr Boyce sat silent, pulling off his dirty shoes preparatory to his 
+dinner. Tidings so important, as touching the social life of his 
+parish, had not come to him for many a day, and he could hardly bring 
+himself to credit them at so short a notice.
+
+"Mrs Hearn says that Mrs Dale spoke ever so firmly about it, as though 
+determined that nothing should change her."
+
+"And did she say why?"
+
+"Well, not exactly. But Mrs Hearn said she could understand there had 
+been words between her and the squire. It couldn't be anything else, 
+you know. Probably it had something to do with that man, Crosbie."
+
+"They'll be very pushed about money," said Mr Boyce, thrusting his feet 
+into his slippers.
+
+"That's just what I said to Mrs, Hearn. And those girls have never been 
+used to anything like real economy. What's to become of them I don't 
+know;" and Mrs Boyce, as she expressed her sympathy for her dear 
+friends, received considerable comfort from the prospect of their 
+future poverty. It always is so, and Mrs Boyce was not worse than her 
+neighbours.
+
+"You'll find they'll make it up before the time comes," said Mr Boyce, 
+to whom the excitement of such a change in affairs was almost too good 
+to be true.
+
+"I am afraid not," said Mrs Boyce; "I'm afraid not. They are both so 
+determined. I always thought that riding and giving the girls hats and 
+habits was injurious. It was treating them as though they were the 
+squire's daughters, and they were not the squire's daughters."
+
+"It was almost the same thing."
+
+"But now we see the difference," said the judicious Mrs Boyce.
+
+"I often said that dear Mrs Dale was wrong, and it turns out that I was 
+right. It will make no difference to me, as regards calling on them and 
+that sort of thing."
+
+"Of course it won't."
+
+"Not but what there must be a difference, and a very great difference 
+too. It will be a terrible come down for poor Lily, with the loss of 
+her fine husband and all."
+
+After dinner, when Mr Boyce had again gone forth upon his labours, the 
+same subject was discussed between Mrs Boyce and her daughters, and the 
+mother was very careful to teach her children that Mrs Dale would be 
+just as good a person as ever she had been, and quite as much a lady, 
+even though she should live in a very dingy house at Guestwick; from 
+which lesson the Boyce girls learned plainly that Mrs Dale, with Bell 
+and Lily, were about to have a fall in the world, and that they were to 
+be treated accordingly.
+
+>From all this, it will be discovered that Mrs Dale had not given way 
+to the squire's arguments, although she had found herself unable to 
+answer them. As she had returned home she had felt herself to be almost 
+vanquished, and had spoken to the girls with the air and tone of a 
+woman who hardly knew in which course lay the line of her duty. But 
+they had not seen the squire's manner on the occasion, nor heard his 
+words, and they could not understand that their own purpose should be 
+abandoned because he did not like it. So they talked their mother into 
+fresh resolves, and on the following morning she wrote a note to her 
+brother-in-law, assuring him that she had thought much of all that he 
+had said, but again declaring that she regarded herself as bound in 
+duty to leave the Small House. To this he had returned no answer, and 
+she had communicated her intention to Mrs Hearn, thinking it better 
+that there should be no secret in the matter.
+
+"I am sorry to hear that your sister-in-law is going to leave us," Mr 
+Boyce said to the squire that same afternoon.
+
+"Who told you that?" asked the squire, showing by his tone that he by 
+no means liked the topic of conversation which the parson had chosen.
+
+"Well, I had it from Mrs Boyce, and I think Mrs Hearn told her."
+
+"I wish Mrs Hearn would mind her own business, and not spread idle 
+reports."
+
+The squire said nothing more, and Mr Boyce felt that he had been very 
+unjustly snubbed.
+
+Dr Crofts had come over and pronounced as a fact that it was 
+scarlatina. Village apothecaries are generally wronged by the doubts 
+which are thrown upon them, for the town doctors when they come always 
+confirm what the village apothecaries have said.
+
+"There can be no doubt as to its being scarlatina," the doctor 
+declared; "but the symptoms are all favourable."
+
+There was, however, much worse coming than this. Two days afterwards 
+Lily found herself to be rather unwell. She endeavoured to keep it to 
+herself, fearing that she should be brought under the doctor's notice 
+as a patient; but her efforts were unavailing, and on the following 
+morning it was known that she had also taken the disease. Dr Crofts 
+declared that everything was in her favour. The weather was cold. The 
+presence of the malady in the house had caused them all to be careful, 
+and, moreover, good advice was at hand at once. The doctor begged Mrs 
+Dale not to be uneasy, but he was very eager in begging that the two 
+sisters might not be alIowed to be together.
+
+"Could you not send Bell, into Guestwick-to Mrs Eames's?" said he. But 
+Bell did not choose to be sent to Mrs Eames's, and was with great 
+difficulty kept out. of her mother's bedroom, to which Lily as an 
+invalid was transferred.
+
+"If you will allow me to say so," he said to Bell, on the second day 
+after Lily's complaint had declared itself, "you are wrong to stay here 
+in the house."
+
+"I certainly shall not leave mamma, when she has got so much upon her 
+hands," said Bell.
+
+"But if you should be taken ill she would have more on her hands," 
+pleaded the doctor.
+
+"I could not do it," Bell replied.
+
+"If I were taken over to Guestwick, I should be so uneasy that I should 
+walk back to Allington the first moment that I could escape from the 
+house."
+
+"I think your mother would be more comfortable without you."
+
+"And I think she would be more comfortable with me. I don't ever like 
+to hear of a woman running away from illness; but when a sister or a 
+daughter does so, it is intolerable." So Bell remained, without 
+permission indeed to see her sister, but performing various outside 
+administrations which were much needed.
+
+And thus all manner of trouble came upon the inhabitants of the Small 
+House, falling upon them as it were in a heap together. It was as yet 
+barely two months since those terrible tidings had come respecting 
+Crosbie; tidings which, it was felt at the time, would of themselves be 
+sufficient to crush them; and now to that misfortune other misfortunes 
+had been added-one quick upon the heels of another. In the teeth of the 
+doctor's kind prophecy Lily became very ill, and after a few days was 
+delirious. She would talk to her mother about Crosbie, speaking of him 
+as she used to speak in the autumn that was passed. But even in her 
+madness she remembered that they had resolved to leave their present 
+home; and she asked the doctor twice whether their lodgings at 
+Guestwick were ready for them.
+
+It was thus that Crofts first heard of their intention. Now, in these 
+days of Lily's worst illness, he came daily over to Allington, 
+remaining there, on one occasion, the whole night. For all this he 
+would take no fee-nor had he ever taken a fee from Mrs Dale.
+
+"I wish you would not come so often," Bell said to him one evening, as 
+he stood with her at the drawingroom fire, after he had left the 
+patient's room; "you are overloading us with obligations." On that day 
+Lily was over the worst of the fever, and he had been able to tell Mrs 
+Dale that he did not think that she was now in danger.
+
+"It will not be necessary much longer," he said; "the worst of it is 
+over."
+"It is such a luxury to hear you say so. I suppose we shall owe her 
+life to you; but nevertheless-"
+
+"Oh, no; scarlatina is not such a terrible thing now as it used to be."
+
+"Then why should you have devoted your time to her as you have done? It 
+frightens me when I think of the injury we must have done you."
+
+"My horse has felt it more than I have," said the doctor, laughing.
+
+"My patients at Guestwick are not so very numerous." Then, instead of 
+going, he sat himself down.
+
+"And it is really true," he said, "that you are all going to leave this 
+house?"
+
+"Quite true. We shall do so at the end of March, if Lily is well enough 
+to be moved."
+
+"Lily will be well long before that, I hope; not, indeed, that she 
+ought to be moved out of her own rooms for many weeks to come yet."
+
+"Unless we are stopped by her we shall certainly go at the end of 
+March." Bell now had also sat down, and they both remained for some 
+time looking at the fire in silence.
+
+"And why is it, Bell?" he said, at last.
+
+"But I don't know whether I have a right to ask."
+
+"You have a right to ask any question about us," she said
+
+"My uncle is very kind. He is more than kind; he is generous. But he 
+seems to think that our living here gives him a right to interfere with 
+mamma. We don't like that, and, therefore, we are going."
+
+The doctor still sat on one side of the fire, and Bell still sat 
+opposite to him; but the conversation did not form itself very freely 
+between them.
+
+"It is bad news," he said, at last.
+
+"At any rate, when we are ill you will not have so far to come and see 
+us."
+
+"Yes, I understand. That means that I am ungracious not to congratulate 
+myself on having you all so much nearer to me; but I do not in the 
+least. I cannot bear to think of you as living anywhere but here at 
+Allington. Dales will be out of their place in a street at Guestwick."
+
+"That's hard upon the Dales, too."
+
+"It is hard upon them. It's a sort of offshoot from that very 
+tyrannical law of noblesse oblige. I don't think you ought to go away 
+from Allington, unless the circumstances are very imperative."
+
+"But they are very imperative."
+"In that case, indeed!" And then again he fell into silence.
+
+"Have you never seen that mamma is not happy here?" she said, after 
+another pause.
+
+"For myself, I never quite understood it all before as I do now; but 
+now I see it."
+
+"And I have seen it-have seen at least what you mean. She has led a 
+life of restraint; but then, how frequently is such restraint the 
+necessity of a life? I hardly think that your mother would move on that 
+account."
+
+"No. It is on our account. But this restraint, as you call it, makes us 
+unhappy, and she is governed by seeing that. My uncle is generous to 
+her as regards money; but in other things-in matters of feeling-I think 
+he has been ungenerous."
+
+"Bell," said the doctor; and then he paused.
+
+She looked up at him, but made no answer. He had always called her by 
+her Christian name, and they two had ever regarded each other as close 
+friends. At the present moment she had forgotten all else besides this, 
+and yet she had infinite pleasure in sitting there and talking to him.
+
+"I am going to ask you a question which perhaps I ought not to ask, 
+only that I have known you so long that I almost feel that I am 
+speaking to a sister."
+
+"You may ask me what you please," said she.
+
+"It is about your cousin Bernard."
+
+"About Bernard!" said Bell.
+
+It was now dusk; and as they were sitting without other light than that 
+of the fire, she knew that he could not discern the colour which 
+covered her face as her cousin's name was mentioned. But, had the light 
+of day pervaded the whole room, I doubt whether Crofts would have seen 
+that blush, for he kept his eyes firmly fixed upon the fire.
+
+"Yes, about Bernard? I don't know whether I ought to ask you."
+
+"I'm sure I can't say," said Bell; speaking word of the nature of which 
+she was not conscious.
+
+"There has been a rumour in Guestwick that he and you-"
+
+"It is untrue," said Bell; "quite untrue. If you hear it repeated, you 
+should contradict it. I wonder why people should say such things."
+
+"It would have been an excellent marriage-all your friends must have 
+approved it."
+
+"What do you mean, Dr Crofts? How I do hate those words, 'an excellent 
+marriage'. In them is contained more of wicked worldliness than any 
+other words that one ever hears spoken. You want me to marry my cousin 
+simply because I should have a great house to live in, and a coach. I 
+know that you are my friend, but I hate such friendship as that."
+
+"I think you misunderstand me, Bell. I mean that it would have been an 
+excellent marriage, provided you had both loved each other."
+
+"No, I don't misunderstand you. Of course it would be an excellent 
+marriage, if we loved each other. You might say the same if I loved the 
+butcher or the baker. What you mean is, that it makes a reason for 
+loving him."
+
+"I don't think I did mean that."
+
+"Then you mean nothing."
+
+After that, there were again some minutes of silence during which Dr 
+Crofts got up to go away.
+
+"You have scolded me very dreadfully," he said, with a slight smile, 
+"and I believe I have deserved it for interfering."
+
+"No; not at all for interfering."
+
+"But at any rate you must forgive me before I go."
+
+"I won't forgive you at all, unless you repent of your sins, and alter 
+altogether the wickedness of your mind. You will become very soon as 
+bad as Dr Gruffen."
+
+"Shall I?"
+
+"Oh, but I will forgive you; for after all, you are the most generous 
+man in the world."
+
+"Oh, yes; of course I am. Well-good-bye."
+
+"But, Dr Crofts, you should not suppose others to be so much more 
+worldly than yourself. You do not care for money so very much-"
+
+"But I do care very much."
+
+"If you did, you would not come here for nothing day after day."
+
+"I do care for money very much. I have sometimes nearly broken my heart 
+because I could not get opportunities of earning it. It is the best 
+friend that a man can have-"
+
+"Oh, Dr Crofts!"
+
+"-the best friend that a man can have; if it be honestly come by. A 
+woman can hardly realise the sorrow which may fall upon a man from the 
+want of such a friend."
+
+"Of course a man likes to earn a decent living by his profession; and 
+you can do that."
+
+"That depends upon one's ideas of decency."
+
+"Ah! mine never ran very high. I've always had a sort of aptitude for 
+living in a pigsty ;-a clean pigsty, you know, with nice fresh bean 
+straw to lie upon. I think it was a mistake when they made a lady of 
+me. I do, indeed."
+
+"I do not," said Dr Crofts.
+
+"That because you don't quite know me yet. I've not the slightest 
+pleasure in putting on three different dresses a day. I do it very 
+often because it comes to me to do it, from the way in which we have 
+been taught to live. But when we get to Guestwick I mean to change all 
+that; and if you come in to tea, you'll see me in the same brown frock 
+that I wear in the morning-unless, indeed, the morning work makes the 
+brown frock dirty. Oh, Dr Crofts! you'll have it pitch-dark riding home 
+under the Guestwick elms."
+
+"I don't mind the dark," he said; and it seemed as though he hardly 
+intended to go even yet.
+
+"But I do," said Bell,
+
+"and I shall ring for candles." But he stopped her as she put her hand 
+out to the bell-pull.
+
+"Stop a moment, Bell. You need hardly have the candles before I go, and 
+you need not begrudge my staying either, seeing that I shall be all 
+alone at home."
+
+"Begrudge your staying!"
+
+"But, however, you shall begrudge it, or else make me very welcome." He 
+still held her by the wrist, which he had caught as he prevented her 
+from summoning the servant.
+
+"What do you mean?" said she..
+
+"You know you are welcome to us as flowers in May. You always were 
+welcome; but now, when you have come to us in our trouble. At any rate, 
+you shall never say that I turn you out."
+
+"Shall I never say so?" And still he held her by the wrist. Tie had 
+kept his chair throughout, but she was standing before him-between him 
+and the fire. But she, though he held her in this way, thought little 
+of his words, or of his action. They had known each other with great 
+intimacy, and though Lily would still laugh at her, saying that Dr 
+Crofts was her lover, she had long since taught herself that no such 
+feeling as that would ever exist between them.
+
+"Shall I never say so, Bell? What if so poor a man as I ask for the 
+hand that you will not give to so rich a man as your cousin Bernard?"
+
+She instantly withdrew her arm and moved back very quickly a step or 
+two across the rug. She did it almost with the motion which she might 
+have used had he insulted her; or had a man spoken such words who would 
+not, under any circumstances, have a right to speak them.
+
+"Ah, yes! I thought it would be so," he said. "I may go now, and may 
+know that I have been turned out."
+
+"What is it you mean, Dr Crofts? What is it you are saying? Why do you 
+talk that nonsense, trying to see if you can provoke me?"
+"Yes; it is nonsense. I have no right to address you in that way, and 
+certainly should not have done it now that I am in your house in the 
+way of my profession. I beg your pardon." Now he also was standing, but 
+he had not moved from his side of the fireplace.
+
+"Are you going to forgive me before I go?
+
+"Forgive you for what?" said she.
+
+"For daring to love you; for having loved you almost as long as you can 
+remember; for loving you better than all beside. This alone you should 
+forgive; but will you forgive me for having told it?"
+
+He had made her no offer, nor did she expect that he was about to make 
+one. She herself had hardly yet realised the meaning of his words, and 
+she certainly had asked herself no question as to the answer which she 
+should give to them. There are cases in which lovers present themselves 
+in so unmistakable a guise, that the first word of open love uttered by 
+them tells their whole story, and tells it without the possibility of a 
+surprise. And it is generally so when the lover has not been an old 
+friend, when even his acquaintance has been of modern date. It had been 
+so essentially in the case of Crosbie and Lily Dale. When Crosbie came 
+to Lily and made his offer, he did it with perfect ease and thorough 
+self-possession, for he almost knew that it was expected. And Lily, 
+though she had been flurried for a moment, had her answer pat enough. 
+She already loved the man with all her heart, delighted in his 
+presence, basked in the sunshine of his manliness, rejoiced in his wit, 
+and had tuned her ears to the tone of his voice. It had all been done, 
+and the world expected it. Had he not made his offer, Lily would have 
+been ill-treated-though, alas, alas, there was future ill-treatment, so 
+much heavier, in store for her! But there are other cases in which a 
+lover cannot make himself known as such without great difficulty, and 
+when he does do so, cannot hope for an immediate answer in his favour. 
+It is hard upon old friends that this difficulty should usually fall 
+the heaviest upon them. Crofts had been so intimate with the Dale 
+family that very many persons had thought it probable that he would 
+marry one of the girls. Mrs Dale herself had thought so, and had almost 
+hoped it. Lily had certainly done both. These thoughts and hopes had 
+somewhat faded away, but yet their former existence should have been in 
+the doctor's favour. But now, when he had in some way spoken out, Bell 
+started back from him and would not believe that he was in earnest. She 
+probably loved him better than any man in the world, and yet, when he 
+spoke to her of love, she could not bring herself to understand him.
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Dr Crofts; indeed I do not," she said.
+
+"I had meant to ask you to be my wife; simply that. But you shall not 
+have the pain of making me a positive refusal. As I rode here today I 
+thought of it. During my frequent rides of late I have thought of 
+little else. But I told myself that I had no right to do it. I have not 
+even a house in which it would be fit that you should live."
+
+"Dr Crofts, if I loved you-if I wished to marry you-" and then she 
+stopped herself.
+
+"But you do not?"
+
+"No; I think not. I suppose not. No. But in any way no consideration 
+about money has anything to do with it."
+
+"But I am not that butcher or that baker whom you could love?"
+
+"No," said Bell; and then she stopped herself from further speech, not 
+as intending to convey all her answer in that one word, but as not 
+knowing how to fashion any further words.
+
+"I knew it would be so," said the doctor.
+
+It will, I fear, be thought by those who condescend to criticise this 
+lover's conduct and his mode of carrying on his suit, that he was very 
+unfit for such work. Ladies will say that he wanted courage, and men 
+will say that he wanted wit. I am inclined, however, to believe that he 
+behaved as well as men generally do behave on such occasions, and that 
+he showed. himself to be a good average lover. There is your bold 
+lover, who knocks his lady-love over as he does a bird, and who would 
+anathematise himself all over, and swear that his gun was distraught, 
+and look about as though he thought the world was coming to an end, if 
+he missed to knock over his bird. And there is your timid lover, who 
+winks his eyes when he fires, who has felt certain from the moment in 
+which he buttoned on his knickerbockers that he at any rate would kill 
+nothing, and who, when he hears the loud congratulations of his 
+friends, cannot believe that he really did bag that beautiful winged 
+thing by his own prowess. The beautiful winged thing which the timid 
+man carries home in his bosom, declining to have it thrown into a 
+miscellaneous cart, so that it may never be lost in a common crowd of 
+game, is better to him than are the slaughtered hecatombs to those who 
+kill their birds by the hundred.
+
+But Dr Crofts had so winked his eye, that he was not in the least aware 
+whether he had winged his bird or no. Indeed, having no one at hand to 
+congratulate him, he was quite sure that the bird had flown away 
+uninjured into the next field. "No" was the only word which Bell had 
+given in answer to his last sidelong question, and No is not a 
+comfortable word to lovers. But there had been that in Bell's No which 
+might have taught him that the bird was not escaping without a wound, 
+if he had still had any of his wits about him.
+
+"Now I will go," said he. Then he paused for an answer, but none came. 
+"And you will understand what I meant when I spoke of being turned out."
+
+"Nobody turns you out." And Bell, as she spoke, had almost descended to 
+a sob.
+
+"It is time, at any rate, that I should go; is it not? And, Bell, don't 
+suppose that this little scene will keep me away from your sister's 
+bedside. I shall be here tomorrow, and you will find that you will 
+hardly know me again for the same person." Then in the dark he put out 
+his hand to her.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, giving him her hand. He pressed hers very 
+closely, but she, though she wished to do so, could not bring herself 
+to return the pressure. Her hand remained passive in his, showing no 
+sign of offence; but it was absolutely passive.
+
+"Good-bye, dearest friend," he said.
+
+"Good-bye," she answered-and then he was gone.
+
+She waited quite still till she heard the front-door close after him, 
+and then she crept silently up to her own bedroom, and sat herself down 
+in a low rocking-chair over the fire. It was in accordance with a 
+custom already established that her mother should remain with Lily till 
+the tea was ready downstairs; for in these days of illness such dinners 
+as were provided were eaten early. Bell, therefore, knew that she had 
+still some half-hour of her own, during which she might sit and think 
+undisturbed.
+
+And what naturally should have been her first thoughts? That she had 
+ruthlessly refused a man who, as she now knew, loved her well, and for 
+whom she had always felt at any rate the warmest friendship? Such were 
+not her thoughts, nor were they in any way akin to this. They ran back 
+instantly to years gone by-over long years, as her few years were 
+counted, and settled themselves on certain halcyon days, in which she 
+had dreamed that he had loved her, and had fancied that she had loved 
+him. How she had schooled herself for those days since that, and taught 
+herself to know that her thoughts had been over-bold! And now it had 
+all come round. The only man that she had ever liked had loved her. 
+Then there came to her a memory of a certain day, in which she had been 
+almost proud to think that Crosbie had admired her, in which she had 
+almost hoped that it might be so; and as she thought of this she 
+blushed, and struck her foot twice upon the floor.
+
+"Dear Lily," she said to herself-"poor Lily!" But the feeling which 
+induced her then to think of her sister had had no relation to that 
+which had first brought Crosbie into her mind.
+
+And this man had loved her through it all-this priceless, peerless 
+man-this man who was as true to the backbone as that other man had 
+shown himself to be false; who was as sound as the other man had proved 
+himself to be rotten. A smile came across her face as she sat looking 
+at the fire, thinking of this. A man had loved her, whose love was 
+worth possessing. She hardly remembered whether or no she had refused 
+him or accepted him. She hardly asked herself what she would do. As to 
+all that it was necessary that she should have many thoughts, but the 
+necessity did not press upon her quite immediately. For the present, at 
+any rate, she might sit and triumph-and thus triumphant she sat there 
+till the old nurse came in and told her that her mother was waiting for 
+her below.
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+PREPARATIONS FOR THE WEDDING
+
+
+The fourteenth of February was finally settled as the day on which Mr 
+Crosbie was to be made the happiest of men. A later day had been at 
+first named, the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth having been suggested 
+as an improvement, over the first week in March; but Lady Amelia had 
+been frightened by Crosbie's behaviour on that Sunday evening, and had 
+made the countess understand that there should be no unnecessary delay.
+
+"He doesn't scruple at that kind of thing," Lady Amelia had said in one 
+of her letters, showing perhaps less trust in the potency of her own 
+rank than might have been expected from her. The countess, however, had 
+agreed with her, and when Crosbie received from his mother-in-law a 
+very affectionate epistle, setting forth all the reasons which would 
+make the fourteenth so much more convenient a day than the 
+twenty-eighth, he was unable to invent an excuse for not being made 
+happy a fortnight earlier than the time named in the bargain. His first 
+impulse had been against yielding, arising from some feeling which made 
+him think that more than the bargain ought not to be exacted. But what 
+was the use to him of quarrelling? What the use, at least, of 
+quarrelling just then? He believed that he could more easily 
+enfranchise himself from the De Courcy tyranny when he should be once 
+married than he could do now. When Lady Alexandrina should be his own 
+he would let her know that he intended to be her master. If in doing so 
+it would be necessary that he should divide himself altogether from the 
+De Courcys, such division should be made. At the present moment he 
+would yield to them, at any rate in this matter. And so the fourteenth 
+of February was fixed for the marriage.
+
+In the second week in January Alexandrina came up to look after her 
+things; or, in more noble language, to fit herself with becoming bridal 
+appanages. As she could not properly do all this work alone, or even 
+under the surveillance and with the assistance of a sister, Lady de 
+Courcy was to come up also. But Alexandrina came first, remaining with 
+her sister in St. John's Wood till the countess should arrive. The 
+countess had never yet condescended to accept of her son-in-law's 
+hospitality, but always went to the cold, comfortless house in Portman 
+Square-the house which had been the De Courcy town family mansion for 
+many years, and which the countess would long since have willingly 
+exchanged for some abode on the other side of Oxford Street; but the 
+earl had been obdurate; his clubs and certain lodgings which he had 
+occasionally been wont to occupy, were on the right side of Oxford 
+Street; why should he change his old family residence? So the countess 
+was coming up to Portman Square, not having been even asked on this 
+occasion to St. John's Wood.
+
+"Don't you think we'd better," Mr Gazebee had said to his wife, almost 
+trembling at the renewal of his own proposition.
+
+"I think not, my dear," Lady Amelia had answered.
+
+"Mamma is not very particular; but there are little things, you know-"
+
+"Oh, yes, of course," said Mr Gazebee; and then the conversation had 
+been dropped. He would most willingly have entertained his august 
+mother-in-law during her visit to the metropolis, and yet her presence 
+in his house would have made him miserable as long as she remained 
+there.
+
+But for a week Alexandrina sojourned under Mr Gazebee's roof, during 
+which time Crosbie was made happy with all the delights of an expectant 
+bridegroom. Of course he was given to understand that he was to dine at 
+the Gazebees' every day, and spend all his evenings there; and, under 
+the circumstances, he had no excuse for not doing so. Indeed, at the 
+present moment, his hours would otherwise have hung heavily enough upon 
+his hands. In spite of his bold resolution with reference to his eye, 
+and his intention not to be debarred from the pleasures of society by 
+the marks of the late combat, he had not, since that occurrence, 
+frequented his club very closely; and though London was now again 
+becoming fairly full, he did not find himself going out so much as had 
+been his wont. The brilliance of his coming marriage did not seem to 
+have added much to his popularity; in fact, the world-his world-was 
+beginning to look coldly at him. Therefore that daily attendance at St. 
+John's Wood was not felt to be so irksome as might have been expected.
+
+A residence had been taken for the couple in a very fashionable row of 
+buildings abutting upon the Bayswater Road, called Princess Royal 
+Crescent. The house was quite new, and the street being unfinished had 
+about it strong smell of mortar, and a general aspect of builders' 
+poles and brickbats; but nevertheless, it was acknowledged to be a 
+quite correct locality. From one end of the crescent a corner of Hyde 
+Park could be seen, and the other abutted on a very handsome terrace 
+indeed, in which lived an ambassador-from South America-a few bankers' 
+senior clerks, and a peer of the realm. We know how vile is the sound 
+of Baker Street, and how absolutely foul to the polite ear is the name 
+of Fitzroy Square. The houses, however, in those purlieus are 
+substantial, warm, and of good size. The house in Princess Royal 
+Crescent was certainly not substantial, for in these days 
+substantially-built houses do not pay. It could hardly have been warm, 
+for, to speak the truth, it was even yet not finished throughout; and 
+as for the size, though the drawing-room was a noble apartment, 
+consisting of a section of the whole house, with a corner cut out for 
+the staircase, It was very much cramped in its other parts, and was 
+made like a cherub, in this respect, that it had no rear belonging to 
+it.
+
+"But if you have no private fortune of your own, you cannot have 
+everything," as the countess observed when Crosbie objected to the 
+house because a closet under the kitchen-stairs was to be assigned to 
+him as his own dressing-room.
+
+When the question of the house was first debated, Lady Amelia had been 
+anxious that St. John's Wood should be selected as the site, but to 
+this Crosbie had positively objected.
+
+"I think you don't like St. John's Wood," Lady Amelia had said to him 
+somewhat sternly, thinking to awe him into a declaration that he 
+entertained no general enmity to the neighbourhood. But Crosbie was not 
+weak enough for this.
+
+No; I do not," he said.
+
+"I have always disliked it. It amounts to a prejudice, I dare say. But 
+if I were made to live here I am convinced I should cut my throat in 
+the first six months."
+
+Lady Amelia had then drawn herself up, declaring her sorrow that her 
+house should be so hateful to him.
+
+"Oh, dear, no," said he.
+
+"I like it very much for you, and enjoy coming here of all things. I 
+speak only of the effect which living here myself would have upon me."
+
+Lady Amelia was quite clever enough to understand it all; but she had 
+her sister's interest at heart, and therefore persevered in her 
+affectionate solicitude for her brother-in-law, giving up that point as 
+to St. John's Wood. Crosbie himself had wished to go to one of the new 
+Pimlico squares down near Vauxhall Bridge and the river, actuated 
+chiefly by consideration of the enormous distance lying between that 
+locality and the northern region in which Lady Amelia lived; but to 
+this Lady Alexandrina had objected strongly. If, indeed, they could 
+have achieved Eaton Square, or a street leading out of Eaton Square-if 
+they could have crept on to the hem of the skirt of Belgravia-the bride 
+would have been delighted. And at first she was very nearly being taken 
+in with the idea that such was the proposal made to her. Her 
+geographical knowledge of Pimlico had not been perfect, and she had 
+nearly fallen into a fatal error. But a friend had kindly intervened.
+
+"For heaven's sake, my dear, don't let him take you anywhere beyond 
+Eccleston Square!" had been exclaimed to her in dismay by a faithful 
+married friend. Thus warned, Alexandrina had been firm, and now their 
+tent was to be pitched in Princess Royal Crescent, from one end of 
+which the Hyde Park may be seen.
+
+The furniture had been ordered chiefly under the inspection, and by the 
+experience, of the Lady Amelia. Crosbie had satisfied himself by 
+declaring that she at any rate could get the things cheaper than he 
+could buy them, and that he had no taste for such employment. 
+Nevertheless, he had felt that he was being made subject to tyranny and 
+brought under the thumb of subjection. He could not go cordially into 
+this matter of beds and chairs, and, therefore, at last deputed the 
+whole matter to the De Courcy faction. And for this there was another 
+reason, not hitherto mentioned. Mr Mortimer Gazebee was finding the 
+money with which all the furniture was being bought. He, with an honest 
+but almost unintelligible zeal for the De Courcy family; had tied up 
+every shilling on which he could lay his hand as belonging to Crosbie, 
+in the interest of Lady Alexandrina. He had gone to work for her, 
+scraping here and arranging there, strapping the new husband down upon 
+the grindstone of his matrimonial settlement, as though the future 
+bread of his, Gazebee's, own children were dependent on the validity of 
+his legal workmanship. And for this he was not to receive a penny, or 
+gain any advantage, immediate or ulterior. It came from his zeal-his 
+zeal for the coronet which Lord de Courcy wore. According to his mind 
+an earl and an earl's belongings were entitled to such zeal. It was the 
+theory in which he had been educated, and amounted to a worship which, 
+unconsciously, he practised. Personally, he disliked Lord de Courcy, 
+who ill-treated him. He knew that the earl was a heartless, cruel, bad 
+man. But as an earl he was entitled to an amount of service which no 
+commoner could have commanded from Mr Gazebee. Mr Gazebee, having thus 
+tied up all the available funds in favour of Lady Alexandrina's 
+seemingly expected widowhood, was himself providing the money with 
+which the new house was to be furnished.
+
+"You can pay me a hundred and fifty a year with four per cent, till it 
+is liquidated," he had said to Crosbie; and Crosbie had assented with a 
+grunt. Hitherto, though he had lived in London expensively, and as a 
+man of fashion, he had never owed any one anything. He was now to begin 
+that career of owing. But when a clerk in a public office marries an 
+earl's daughter, he cannot expect to have everything his own way.
+
+Lady Amelia had bought the ordinary furniture-the beds, the 
+stair-carpets, the washing-stands, and the kitchen things. Gazebee had 
+got a bargain of the dinner-table and sideboard. But Lady Alexandrina 
+herself was to come up with reference to the appurtenances of the 
+drawing-room. It was with reference to matters of costume that the 
+countess intended to lend her assistance-matters of costume as to which 
+the bill could not be sent in to Gazebee, and be paid for by him with 
+five per cent, duly charged against the bridegroom. The bridal 
+trousseau must be produced by De Courcy's means, and, therefore, it was 
+necessary that the countess herself should come upon the scene.
+
+"I will have no bills, d'ye hear?" snarled the earl, gnashing and 
+snapping upon his words with one specially ugly black tooth. "I won't 
+have any bills about this affair." And yet he made no offer of ready 
+money. It was very necessary under such circumstances that the countess 
+herself should come upon the scene. An ambiguous hint had been conveyed 
+to Mr Gazebee, during a visit of business which he had lately made to 
+Courcy Castle, that the milliner's bills might as well be pinned on to 
+those of the furniture-makers, the crockerymongers, and the like. The 
+countess, putting it in her own way, had gently suggested that the 
+fashion of the thing had changed lately, and that such an arrangement 
+was considered to be the proper thing among people who lived really in 
+the world. But Gazebee was a clear-headed, honest man; and he knew the 
+countess. He did not think that such an arrangement could be made on 
+the present occasion. Whereupon the countess pushed her suggestion no 
+further, but made up her mind that she must come up to London herself.
+
+It was pleasant to see the Ladies Amelia and Alexandrina, as they sat 
+within a vast emporium of carpets in Bond Street, asking questions of 
+the four men who were waiting upon them, putting their heads together 
+and whispering, calculating accurately as to extra twopences a yard, 
+and occasioning as much trouble as it was possible for them to give. It 
+was pleasant because they managed their large hoops cleverly among the 
+huge rolls of carpets, because they were enjoying themselves 
+thoroughly, and taking to themselves the homage of the men as clearly 
+their due. But it was not so pleasant to look at Crosbie, who was 
+fidgeting to get away to his office, to whom no power of choosing in 
+the matter was really given, and whom the men regarded as being 
+altogether supernumerary. The ladies had promised to be at the shop by 
+half-past ten, so that Crosbie should reach his office at eleven-or a 
+little after. But it was nearly eleven before they left the Gazebee 
+residence, and it was very evident that half-an-hour among the carpets 
+would be by no means sufficient. It seemed as though miles upon miles 
+of gorgeous colouring were unrolled before them; and then when any 
+pattern was regarded as at all practicable, it was unrolled backwards 
+and forwards till a room was nearly covered by it. Crosbie felt for the 
+men who were hauling about the huge heaps of material; but Lady Amelia 
+sat as composed as though it were her duty to inspect every yard of 
+stuff in the warehouse.
+
+"I think we'll look at that one at the bottom again." Then the men went 
+to work and removed a mountain.
+
+"No, my dear, that green in the scroll-work won't do. It would fly 
+directly, if any hot water were spilt." The man, smiling ineffably, 
+declared that that particular green never flew anywhere. But Lady 
+Amelia paid no attention to him, and the carpet for which the mountain 
+had been removed became part of another mountain.
+
+"That might do," said Alexandrina, gazing upon a magnificent crimson 
+ground through which rivers of yellow meandered, carrying with them in 
+their streams an infinity of blue flowers. And as she spoke she held 
+her head gracefully on one side, and looked down upon the carpet 
+doubtingly. Lady Amelia poked it with her parasol at though to test its 
+durability, and whispered something about yellows showing the dirt. 
+Crosbie took out his watch and groaned.
+"It's a superb carpet, my lady, and about the newest thing we have. We 
+put down four hundred and fifty yards of it for the Duchess of South 
+Wales, at Cwddglwlch Castle, only last month. Nobody has had it since, 
+for it has not been in stock." Whereupon Lady Amelia again poked it, 
+and then got up and walked upon it. Lady Alexandrina held her head a 
+little more on one side.
+
+"Five and three?" said Lady Amelia.
+
+"Oh, no, my lady; five and seven; and the cheapest carpet we have in 
+the house. There is twopence a yard more in the colour; there is, 
+indeed."
+
+"And the discount?" asked Lady Amelia.
+
+"Two and a half, my lady."
+
+"Oh dear, no," said Lady Amelia. "I always have five per cent. for 
+immediate payment-quite immediate, you know." Upon which the man 
+declared the question must be referred to his master. Two and a half 
+was the rule of the house. Crosbie, who had been looking out of the 
+window, said that upon his honour he couldn't wait any longer.
+
+"And what do you think of it, Adolphus?", asked Alexandrina.
+
+"Think of what?"
+
+"Of the carpet-this one, you know!"
+
+"Oh-what do I think of the carpet? I don't think I quite like all these 
+yellow bands; and isn't it too red? I should have thought something 
+brown with a small pattern would have been better. But, upon my word, I 
+don't much care."
+
+"Of course he doesn't," said Lady Amelia. Then the two ladies put their 
+heads together for another five minutes, and the carpet was 
+chosen-subject to that question of the discount.
+
+"And now about the rug," said Lady Amelia. But here Crosbie rebelled, 
+and insisted that he must leave them and go to his office.
+
+"You can't want me about the rug," he said.
+
+"Well, perhaps not," said Lady Amelia. But it was manifest that 
+Alexandrina did not approve of being thus left by her senior attendant.
+
+The same thing happened in Oxford Street with reference to the chairs 
+and sofas, and Crosbie began to wish that he were settled, even though 
+he should have to dress himself in the closet below the kitchen-stairs. 
+He was learning to hate the whole household in St. John's Wood, and 
+almost all that belonged to it. He was introduced there to little 
+family economies of which hitherto he had known nothing, and which were 
+disgusting to him, and the necessity for which was especially explained 
+to him. It was to men placed as he was about to place himself that 
+these economies were so vitally essential-to men who with limited means 
+had to maintain a decorous outward face towards the fashionable world. 
+Ample supplies of butchers' meat and unlimited washing-bills might be 
+very well upon fifteen hundred a year to those who went out but seldom, 
+and who could use the first cab that came to hand when they did go out. 
+But there were certain things that Lady Alexandrina must do, and 
+therefore the strictest household economy became necessary. Would Lily 
+Dale have required the use of a carriage, got up to look as though it 
+were private, at the expense of her husband's beefsteaks and clean 
+shirts? That question and others of that nature were asked by Crosbie 
+within his own mind, not unfrequently.
+
+But, nevertheless, he tried to love Alexandrina, or rather to persuade 
+himself that he loved her. If he could only get her away from the De 
+Courcy faction, and especially from the Gazebee branch of it, he would 
+break her of all that. He would teach her to sit triumphantly in a 
+street cab, and to cater for her table with a plentiful hand. Teach 
+her! at some age over thirty; and with such careful training as she had 
+already received! Did he intend to forbid her ever again to see her 
+relations, ever to go to St. John's Wood, or to correspond with the 
+countess and Lady Margaretta? Teach her, indeed! Had he yet to learn 
+that he could not wash a blackamoor white? that he could not have done 
+so even had he himself been well adapted for the attempt, whereas he 
+was in truth nearly as ill adapted as a man might be? But who could 
+pity him? Lily, whom he might have had in his bosom, would have been no 
+blackamoor.
+
+Then came the time of Lady de Courcy's visit to town, and Alexandrina 
+moved herself off to Portman Square. There was some apparent comfort in 
+this to Crosbie, for he would thereby be saved from those daily dreary 
+journeys up to the north-west. I may say that he positively hated that 
+windy corner near the church, round which he had to walk in getting to 
+the Gazebee residence, and that he hated the lamp which guided him to 
+the door, and the very door itself. This door stood buried as it were 
+in a wall, and opened on to a narrow passage which ran across a 
+so-called garden, or front yard, containing on each side two iron 
+receptacles for geraniums, painted to look like Palissy ware, and a 
+naked female on a pedestal. No spot in London was, as he thought, so 
+cold as the bit of pavement immediately in front of that door. And 
+there he would be kept five, ten, fifteen minutes, as he 
+declared-though I believe in my heart that the time never exceeded 
+three-while Richard was putting off the trappings of his work and 
+putting on the trappings of his grandeur.
+
+If people would only have their doors opened to you by such assistance 
+as may come most easily and naturally to the work! I stood lately for 
+some minutes on a Tuesday afternoon at a gallant portal, and as I waxed 
+impatient a pretty maiden came and opened it. She was a pretty maiden, 
+though her hands and face and apron told tales of the fire-grates.
+
+"Laws, sir," she said, "the visitors' day is Wednesday; and if you 
+would come then, there would be the man in livery!" She took my card 
+with the corner of her apron, and did just as well as the man in 
+livery; but what would have happened to her had her little speech been 
+overheard by her mistress?
+
+Crosbie hated the house in St. John's Wood, and therefore the coming of 
+the countess was a relief to him. Portman Square was easily to be 
+reached, and the hospitalities of the countess would not be pressed 
+upon him so strongly as those of the Gazebees. When he first called he 
+was shown into the great family dining-room, which looked out towards 
+the back of the house. The front windows were, of course, closed, as 
+the family was not supposed to be in London. Here he remained in the 
+room for some quarter of an hour, and then the countess descended upon 
+him in all her grandeur. Perhaps he had never before seen her so grand. 
+Her dress was very large, and rustled through the broad doorway, as if 
+demanding even a broader passage. She had on a wonder of a bonnet, and 
+a velvet mantle that was nearly as expansive as her petticoats. She 
+threw her head a little back as she accosted him, and he instantly 
+perceived that he was enveloped in the fumes of an affectionate but 
+somewhat contemptuous patronage. In old days he had liked the countess, 
+because her manner to him had always been flattering. In his 
+intercourse with her he had been able to feel that he gave quite as 
+much as he got, and that the countess was aware of the fact. In all the 
+circumstances of their acquaintance the ascendancy had been with him, 
+and therefore the acquaintance had been a pleasant one. The countess 
+had been a good-natured, agreeable woman, whose rank and position had 
+made her house pleasant to him; and therefore he had consented to shine 
+upon her with such light as he had to give. Why was it that the matter 
+was reversed, now that there was so much stronger a cause for good 
+feeling between them? He knew that there was such change, and with 
+bitter internal upbraidings he acknowledged to himself that this woman 
+was getting the mastery over him. As the friend of the countess he had 
+been a great man in her eyes-in all her little words and looks she had 
+acknowledged his power; but now, as her son-in-law, he was to become a 
+very little man-such as was Mortimer Gazebee!
+
+"My dear Adolphus," she said, taking both his hands, "the day is coming 
+very near now; is it not?"
+
+"Very near, indeed," he said.
+
+"Yes, it is very near. I hope you feel yourself a happy man."
+
+"Oh, yes, that's of course."
+
+"It ought to be. Speaking very seriously, I mean that it ought to be a 
+matter of course. She is. everything that a man should desire in a 
+wife. I am not alluding now to her rank, though of course you feel what 
+a great advantage she gives you in this respect."
+
+Crosbie muttered something as to his consciousness of having drawn a 
+prize in the lottery; but he so muttered it as not to convey to the 
+lady's ears a proper sense of his dependent gratitude.
+
+"I know of no man more fortunate than you have been," she continued 
+"and I hope that my dear girl will find that you are fully aware that 
+it is so. I think that she is looking rather fagged. You have allowed 
+her to do more than was good for her in the way of shopping."
+
+"She has done a good deal, certainly," said Crosbie.
+
+"She is so little used to anything of that kind! But of course, as 
+things have turned out, it was necessary that she should see to these 
+things herself."
+
+"I rather think she liked it," said Crosbie.
+
+"I believe she will always like doing her duty. We are just going now 
+to Madame Millefranc's, to see some silks-perhaps you would wish to go 
+with us?"
+
+Just at this moment Alexandrina came into the room, and, looked as 
+though she were in all respects a smaller edition of her mother. They 
+were both well-grown women, with handsome. large figures, and a certain 
+air about them which answered almost for beauty. As to the countess, 
+her face, on close inspection, bore, as it was entitled to do, deep 
+signs of age; but she so managed her face that any such close 
+inspection was never made; and her general appearance for her time of 
+life was certainly good. Very little more than this could be said in 
+favour of her daughter.
+
+"Oh dear, no, mamma," she said, having heard her mother's last words. 
+"He's the worst person in a shop in the world. He likes nothing, and 
+dislikes nothing. Do you, Adolphus?"
+
+"Indeed I do. I like all the cheap things, and dislike all the dear 
+things."
+
+"Then you certainly shall not go with us to Madame Millefranc's," said 
+Alexandrina.
+
+"It would not matter to him there, you know, my dear," said the 
+countess, thinking perhaps of the suggestion she had lately made to Mr 
+Gazebee.
+
+On this occasion Crosbie managed to escape, simply promising to return 
+to Portman Square in the evening after dinner.
+
+"By-the-by, Adolphus," said the countess, as he handed her into the 
+hired carriage which stood at the door,
+
+"I wish you would go to Lambert's, on Ludgate Hill, for me. He has had 
+a bracelet of mine for nearly three months. Do, there's a good. 
+creature. Get it if you can, and bring it up this evening."
+
+Crosbie, as he made his way back to his office, swore that he would not 
+do the bidding of the countess. He would not trudge off into the city 
+after her trinkets. But at five o'clock, when he left his office, he 
+did go there. He apologised to himself by saying that he had nothing 
+else to do, and bethought himself that at the present moment his lady 
+mother-in-law's smiles might be more convenient than her frowns. So he 
+went to Lambert's, on Ludgate Hill, and there learned that the bracelet 
+had been sent down to Courcy Castle full two months since.
+
+After that he dined at his club, at Sebright's. He dined alone, sitting 
+by no means in bliss with his half-pint of sherry on the table before 
+him. A man now and then came up and spoke to him, one a few words, and 
+another a few, and two or three congratulated him as to his marriage; 
+but the club was not the same thing to him as it had formerly been. He 
+did not stand in the centre of the rug, speaking indifferently to all 
+or any around him, ready with his joke, and loudly on the alert with 
+the last news of the day. How easy it is to be seen when any man has 
+fallen from his pride of place, though the altitude was ever so small, 
+and the fall ever so slight. Where is the man who can endure such a 
+fall without showing it in his face, in his voice, in his step, and in 
+every motion of every limb? Crosbie knew that he had fallen, and showed 
+that he knew it by the manner in which he ate his mutton chop.
+
+At half-past eight he was again in Portman Square, and found the two 
+ladies crowding over a small fire in a small back drawingroom. The 
+furniture was all covered with brown holland, and the place had about 
+it that cold comfortless feeling which uninhabited rooms always 
+produce. Crosbie, as he had walked from the club up to Portman Square, 
+had indulged in some serious thoughts. The kind of life which he had 
+hitherto led had certainly passed away from him. He could never again 
+be the pet of a club, or indulged as one to whom all good things were 
+to be given without any labour at earning them on his own part. Such 
+for some years had been his good fortune, but such could be his good 
+fortune no longer. Was there anything within his reach which he might 
+take in lieu of that which he had lost? He might still be victorious at 
+his office, having more capacity for such victory than others around 
+him. But such success alone would hardly suffice for him. Then he 
+considered whether he might not even yet be happy in his own 
+home-whether Alexandrina, when separated from her mother, might not 
+become such a wife as he could love. Nothing softens a man's feelings 
+so much as failure, or makes him turn so anxiously to an idea of home 
+as buffetings from those he meets abroad. He had abandoned Lily because 
+his outer world had seemed. to him too bright to be deserted. He would 
+endeavour to supply her place with Alexandrina, because his outer world 
+had seemed to him too harsh to be supported. Alas! alas! a man cannot 
+so easily repent of his sins, and wash himself white from their stains!
+
+When he entered the room the two ladies were sitting over the fire, as 
+I have stated, and Crosbie could immediately perceive that the spirit 
+of the countess was not serene. In fact there had been a few words 
+between the mother and child on that matter of the trousseau, and 
+Alexandrina had plainly told her mother that if she were to be married 
+at all she would be married with such garments belonging to her as were 
+fitting for an earl's daughter. It was in vain that her mother had 
+explained with many circumlocutional phrases, that the fitness in this 
+respect should be accommodated rather to the plebeian husband than to 
+the noble parent. Alexandrina had been very firm, and had insisted on 
+her rights, giving the countess to understand that if her orders for 
+finery were not complied with, she would return as a spinster to 
+Courcy, and prepare herself for partnership with Rosina.
+
+"My dear," said the countess, piteously, "you can have no idea of what 
+I shall have to go through with your father. And, of course, you could 
+get all these things afterwards."
+
+"Papa has no right to treat me in such a way. And if he would not give 
+me any money himself, he should have let me have some of my own."
+
+"Ah, my dear, that was Mr Gazebee's fault."
+
+"I don't care whose fault it was. It certainly was not mine. I won't 
+have him to tell me"-"him" was intended to signify Adolphus 
+Crosbie-"that he had to pay for my wedding-clothes."
+
+"Of course not that, my dear."
+
+"No; nor yet for the things which I wanted immediately. I'd much rather 
+go and tell him at once that the marriage must be put off."
+
+Alexandrina of course carried her point, the countess reflecting with a 
+maternal devotion equal almost to that of the pelican, that the earl 
+could not do more than kill her. So the things were ordered as 
+Alexandrina chose to order them, and the countess desired that the 
+bills might be sent in to Mr Gazebee. Much self-devotion had been 
+displayed by the mother, but the mother thought that none had been 
+displayed by the daughter, and therefore she had been very cross with 
+Alexandrina.
+
+Crosbie, taking a chair, sat himself between them, and in a very 
+good-humoured tone explained the little affair of the bracelet.
+
+"Your ladyship's memory must have played you false," said he, with a 
+smile.
+
+"My memory is very good," said the countess; "very good indeed. If 
+Twitch got it, and didn't tell me, that was not my fault." Twitch was 
+her ladyship's lady's-maid. Crosbie, seeing how the land lay, said 
+nothing more about the bracelet.
+
+After a minute or two he put out his hand to take that of Alexandrina. 
+They were to be married now in a week or two, and such a sign of love 
+might have been allowed to him, even in. the presence of the bride's 
+mother. He did succeed in getting hold of her fingers, but found in 
+them none of the softness of a response.
+
+"Don't," said Lady Alexandrina, withdrawing her hand; and the tone of 
+her voice as she spoke the word was not sweet to his ears. He 
+remembered at the moment a certain scene which took place one evening 
+at the little bridge at Allington and Lily's voice, and Lily's words, 
+and Lily's passion, as he caressed her: "Oh, my love, my love, my love!"
+
+"My dear," said the countess, "they know how tired I am. I wonder 
+whether they are going to give us any tea." Whereupon Crosbie rang the 
+bell, and, on resuming his chair, moved it a little farther away from 
+his lady-love.
+
+Presently the tea was brought to them by the housekeeper's assistant, 
+who did not appear to have made herself very smart for the occasion, 
+and Crosbie thought that he was de trop. This, however, was a mistake 
+on his part. As he had been admitted into the family, such little 
+matters were no longer subject of care. Two or three months since, the 
+countess would have fainted at the idea of such a domestic appearing 
+with a tea-tray before Mr Crosbie. Now, however, she was utterly 
+indifferent to any such consideration. Crosbie was to be admitted into 
+the family, thereby becoming entitled to certain privileges-and thereby 
+also becoming subject to certain domestic drawbacks. In Mrs Dale's 
+little household there had been no rising to grandeur; but then, also, 
+there had never been any bathos of dirt. Of this also Crosbie thought 
+as he sat with his tea in his hand.
+
+He soon, however, got himself away. When he rose to go Alexandrina also 
+rose, and he was permitted to press his nose against her cheekbone by 
+way of a salute.
+
+"Good-night, Adolphus," said the countess, putting out her hand to him.
+
+"But stop a minute; I know there is something I want you to do for me. 
+But you will look in as you go to your office tomorrow morning."
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+DOMESTIC TROUBLES
+
+
+When Crosbie was making his ineffectual inquiry after Lady de Courcy's 
+bracelet at Lambert's, John Eames was in the act of entering Mrs 
+Roper's front door in Burton Crescent.
+
+"Oh, John, where's Mr Cradell?" were the first words which greeted him, 
+and they were spoken by the divine Amelia. Now, in her usual practice 
+of life, Amelia did not interest herself much as to the whereabouts of 
+Mr Cradell.
+
+"Where's Caudle?" said Eames, repeating the question.
+
+"Upon my word, I don't know. I walked to the office with him, but I 
+haven't seen him since. We don't sit in the same room, you know."
+
+"John!" and then she stopped.
+
+"What's up now?" said John.
+
+"John! That woman's off and left her husband. As sure as your name's 
+John Eames, that foolish fellow has gone off with her."
+
+"What, Caudle? I don't believe it."
+
+"She went out of this house at two o'clock in the afternoon, and has 
+never been back since." That, certainly, was only four hours from the 
+present time, and such an absence from home in the middle of the day 
+was but weak evidence on which to charge a married woman with the great 
+sin of running off with a lover. This Amelia felt, and therefore she 
+went on to explain. "He's there upstairs in the drawing-room, the very 
+picture of disconsolateness."
+
+"Who-Caudle?"
+
+"Lupex is. He's been drinking a little, I'm afraid; but he's very 
+unhappy, indeed. He had an appointment to meet his wife here at four 
+o'clock, and when he came he found her gone. He rushed up into their 
+room, and now he says she has broken open a box he had and taken off 
+all his money."
+
+"But he never had any money."
+
+"He paid mother some the day before yesterday."
+
+"That's just the reason he shouldn't have any today."
+
+"She certainly has taken things she wouldn't have taken if she'd merely 
+gone out shopping or anything like that, for I've been up in the room 
+and looked about She'd three necklaces. They weren't much account; but 
+she must have them all on, or else have got them in her pocket."
+
+"Caudle has never gone off with her in that way. He may be a fool-"
+"Oh, he is, you know. I've never seen such a fool about a woman as he 
+has been."
+
+"But he wouldn't be a party to stealing a lot of trumpery trinkets, or 
+taking her husband's money. Indeed, I don't think he has anything to do 
+with it. Then Eames thought ever the circumstances of the day, and 
+remembered that he had certainly not seen Cradell since the morning. It 
+was that public servant's practice to saunter into Eames's room in the 
+middle of the day, and there consume bread and cheese and beer-in spite 
+of an assertion which Johnny had once made as to crumbs of biscuit 
+bathed in ink. But on this special day he had not done so.
+
+"I can't think he has been such a fool as that," said Johnny.
+
+"But he has," said Amelia. "It's dinner-time now, and where is he? Had 
+he any money left, Johnny?"
+
+So interrogated, Eames disclosed a secret confided to him by his friend 
+which no other circumstances would have succeeded in dragging from his 
+breast.
+
+"She borrowed twelve pounds from him about a fortnight since, 
+immediately after quarter-day. And she owed him money, too, before 
+that."
+
+"Oh, what a soft!" exclaimed Amelia; "and he hasn't paid mother a 
+shilling for the last two months!"
+
+"It was his money, perhaps, that Mrs Roper got from Lupex the day 
+before yesterday. If so, it comes to the same thing as far as she is 
+concerned, you know."
+
+"And what are we to do now?" said Amelia, as she went before her lover 
+upstairs. "Oh, John, what will become of me if ever you serve me in 
+that way? What should I do if you were to go off with another lady?"
+
+"Lupex hasn't gone off," said Eames, who hardly knew what to say when 
+the matter was brought before him with so closely personal a reference.
+
+"But it's the same thing," said Amelia. "Hearts is divided. Hearts that 
+have been joined together ought never to be divided; ought they?" And 
+then she hung upon his arm just as they got to the drawing-room door.
+
+"Hearts and darts are all my eye," said Johnny. "My belief is that a 
+man had better never marry at all. How d'you do, Mr Lupex? Is anything 
+the matter?"
+
+Mr Lupex was seated on a chair in the middle of the room, and was 
+leaning with his head over the back of it. So despondent was he in his 
+attitude that his head would have fallen off and rolled on to the 
+floor, had it followed the course which its owner seemed to intend that 
+it should take. His hands hung down also along the back legs of the 
+chair, till his fingers almost touched the ground, and altogether his 
+appearance was pendent, drooping, and woebegone. Miss Spruce was seated 
+in one corner of the room, with her hands folded in her lap before her, 
+and Mrs Roper was standing on the rug with a look of severe virtue on 
+her brow,-of virtue which, to judge by its appearance, was very severe. 
+Nor was its severity intended to be exercised solely against Mrs Lupex. 
+Mrs Roper was becoming very tired of Mr Lupex also, and would not have 
+been unhappy if he also had run away-leaving behind him so much of his 
+property as would have paid his bill.
+Mr Lupex did not stir when first addressed by John Eames, but a certain 
+convulsive movement was to be seen on the back of his head, indicating 
+that this new arrival in the drawing-room had produced a fresh 
+accession of agony. The chair, too, quivered under him, and his fingers 
+stretched themselves nearer to the ground and shook themselves.
+
+"Mr Lupex, we're going to dinner immediately," said Mrs Roper. "Mr 
+Eames, where is your friend, Mr Cradell?
+
+"Upon my word I don't know," said Eames.
+
+"But I know," said Lupex, jumping up and standing at his full height, 
+while he knocked down the chair which had lately supported him.
+
+"The traitor to domestic bliss! I know. And wherever he is, he has that 
+false woman in his arms. Would he were here!" And as he expressed the 
+last wish he went through a motion with his hands and arms which seemed 
+intended to signify that if that unfortunate young man were in the 
+company he would pull him in pieces and double him up, and pack him 
+close, and then despatch his remains off, through infinite space, to 
+the Prince of Darkness. "Traitor," he exclaimed, as he finished the 
+process. "False traitor! Foul traitor! And she too!" Then, as he 
+thought of this softer side of the subject, he prepared himself to 
+relapse again on to the chair. Finding it on the ground he had to pick 
+it up. He did pick it up, and once more flung away his head over the 
+back of it, and stretched his finger-nails almost down to the carpet.
+
+"James," said Mrs Roper to her son, who was now in the room, "I think 
+you'd better stay with Mr Lupex while we are at dinner. Come, Miss 
+Spruce, I'm very sorry that you should be annoyed by this kind of 
+thing."
+
+"It don't hurt me," said Miss Spruce, preparing to leave the room. "I'm 
+only an old woman." "Annoyed!" said Lupex, raising himself again from 
+his chair, not perhaps altogether disposed to remain upstairs while the 
+dinner, for which it was intended that he should some day pay, was 
+being eaten below. "Annoyed! It is a profound sorrow to me that any 
+lady should be annoyed by my misfortunes. As regards Miss Spruce, I 
+look upon her character with profound veneration."
+
+"You needn't mind me; I'm only an old woman," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"But, by heavens, I do mind!" exclaimed Lupex; and hurrying forward he 
+seized Miss Spruce by the hand. "I shall always regard age as 
+entitled-" But the special privileges which Mr Lupex would have 
+accorded to age were never made known to the inhabitants of Mrs Roper's 
+boarding-house, for the door of the room was again opened at this 
+moment, and Mr Cradell entered.
+
+"Here you are, old fellow, to answer for yourself," said Eames.
+
+Cradell, who had heard something as he came in at the front door, but 
+had not heard that Lupex was in the drawing-room, made a slight start 
+backwards when he saw that gentleman's face. "Upon my word and honour," 
+he began-but he was able to carry his speech no further. Lupex, 
+dropping the hand of the elderly lady whom he reverenced, was upon him 
+in an instant, and Cradell was shaking beneath his grasp like an aspen 
+leaf-or rather not like an aspen leaf, unless an aspen leaf when shaken 
+is to be seen with its eyes shut, its mouth open, and its tongue 
+hanging out.
+
+"Come, I say," said Eames, stepping forward to his friend's assistance; 
+"this won't do at all, Mr Lupex. You've been drinking. You'd better 
+wait till tomorrow morning, and speak to Cradell then."
+
+"Tomorrow morning, viper," shouted Lupex, still holding his prey, but 
+looking back at Eames over his shoulder. Who the viper was had not been 
+clearly indicated. "When will he restore to me my wife? When will he 
+restore to me my honour?"
+
+"Upon-on-on-on my-" It was for the moment in vain that poor Mr Cradell 
+endeavoured to asseverate his innocence, and to stake his honour upon 
+his own purity as regarded Mrs Lupex. Lupex still held to his enemy's 
+cravat, though Eames had now got him by the arm, and so far impeded his 
+movements as to hinder him from proceeding to any graver attack.
+
+"Jemima, Jemima, Jemima!" shouted Mrs Roper. "Run for the police; run 
+for the police!". But Amelia, who had more presence of mind than her 
+mother, stopped Jemima as she was making to one of the front windows. 
+"Keep where you are," said Amelia.
+
+"They'll come quiet in a minute or two. And Amelia no doubt was right. 
+Calling for the police when there is a row in the house is like 
+summoning the water-engines when the soot is on fire in the kitchen 
+chimney. In such cases good management will allow the soot to burn 
+itself out, without aid from the water-engines. In the present instance 
+the police were not called in, and I am inclined to think that their 
+presence would not have been advantageous to any of the party.
+
+"Upon-my-honour-I know nothing about her," were the first words which 
+Cradell was able to articulate, when Lupex, under Eames's persuasion, 
+at last relaxed his hold.
+
+Lupex turned round to Miss Spruce with a sardonic grin. "You hear his 
+words-this enemy to domestic bliss-Ha, ha! man, tell me whither you 
+have conveyed my wife!"
+
+"If you were to give me the Bank of England I don't know," said Cradell.
+
+"And I'm sure he does not know," said Mrs Roper, whose suspicions 
+against Cradell were beginning to subside. But as her suspicions 
+subsided, her respect for him decreased. Such was the case also with 
+Miss Spruce, and with Amelia, and with Jemima. They had all thought him 
+to be a great fool for running away with Mrs Lupex, but now they were 
+beginning to think him a poor creature because he had not done so. Had 
+he committed that active folly he would have been an interesting fool. 
+But now, if, as they all suspected, he knew no more about Mrs Lupex 
+than they did, he would be a fool without any special interest whatever.
+
+"Of course he doesn't," said Eames.
+
+"No more than I do," said Amelia.
+
+"His very looks show him innocent," said Mrs Roper.
+
+"Indeed they do," said Miss Spruce.
+
+Lupex turned from one to the other as they thus defended the man whom 
+he suspected, and shook his head at each assertion that was made. "And 
+if he doesn't know who does?" he asked. "Haven't I seen it all for the 
+last three months? Is it reasonable to suppose that a creature such as 
+she, used to domestic comforts all her life, should have gone off in 
+this way, at dinnertime, taking with her my property and all her 
+jewels, and that nobody should have instigated her; nobody assisted 
+her! Is that a story to tell to such a man as me! You may tell it to 
+the marines!" Mr Lupex, as he made this speech, was walking about the 
+room, and as he finished it he threw his pocket-handkerchief with 
+violence on to the floor. "I know what to do, Mrs Roper," he said. "I 
+know what steps to take. I shall put the affair into the hands of my 
+lawyers tomorrow morning." Then he picked up his handkerchief and 
+walked down into the dining-room.
+
+"Of course you know nothing about it?" said Eames to his friend, having 
+run upstairs for the purpose of saying a word to him while he washed 
+his hands.
+
+"What-about Maria? I don't know where she is, if you mean that."
+
+"Of course I mean that. What else should I mean? And what makes you 
+call her Maria?"
+
+"It is wrong. I admit it's wrong. The word will come out, you know."
+
+"Will come out! I'll tell you what it. is, old fellow, you'll get 
+yourself into a mess, and all for nothing. That fellow will have you up 
+before the police for stealing his things-"
+
+"But, Johnny-"
+
+"I know all about it. Of course you have not stolen them, and of course 
+there was nothing to steal. But if you go on calling her Maria you'll 
+find that he'll have a pull on you. Men don't call other men's wives 
+names for nothing."
+
+"Of course we've been friends," said Cradell, who rather liked this 
+view of the matter.
+
+"Yes-you have been friends! She's diddled you out of your money, and 
+that's the beginning and the end of it. And now, if you go on showing 
+off your friendship, you'll be done out of more money. You're making an 
+ass of yourself. That's the long and the short of it."
+
+"And what have you made of yourself with that girl? There are worse 
+asses than I am yet, Master Johnny." Eames, as he had no answer ready 
+to this counter attack, left the room and went downstairs. Cradell soon 
+followed him, and in a few minutes they were all eating their dinner 
+together at Mrs Roper's hospitable table.
+
+Immediately after dinner Lupex took himself away, and the conversation 
+upstairs became general on the subject of the lady's departure.
+
+"If I was him I'd never ask a question about her, but let her go," said 
+Amelia.
+
+"Yes; and then have all her bills following you, wherever you went," 
+said Amelia's brother.
+
+"I'd sooner have her bills than herself," said Eames.
+
+"My belief is, that she's been an ill-used woman," said Cradell. "If 
+she had a husband that she could respect and have loved, and all that 
+sort of thing, she would have been a charming woman."
+
+"She's every bit as bad as he is," said Mrs Roper.
+
+"I can't agree with you, Mrs Roper," continued the lady's champion. 
+"Perhaps I ought to understand her position better than any one here, 
+and-"
+
+"Then that's just what you ought not to do, Mr Cradell," said Mrs 
+Roper. And now the lady of the house spoke out her mind with much 
+maternal dignity and with some feminine severity.
+
+"That's just what a young man like you has no business to know. What's 
+a married woman like that to you, or you to her; or what have you to do 
+with understanding her position? When you've a wife of your own, if 
+ever you do have one, you'll find you'll have trouble enough then 
+without anybody else interfering with you. Not but what I believe 
+you're innocent as a lamb about Mrs Lupex; that is, as far as any harm 
+goes. But you've got yourself into all this trouble by meddling, and 
+was like enough to get yourself choked upstairs by that man. And who's 
+to wonder when you go on pretending to be in love with a woman in that 
+way, and she old enough to be your mother? What would your mamma say if 
+she saw you at it?"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Cradell.
+
+"It's all very well your laughing, but I hate such folly. If I see a 
+young man in love with a young woman, I respect him for it;" and then 
+she looked at Johnny Eames. "I respect him for it-even though he may 
+now and then do things as he shouldn't. They most of 'em does that. But 
+to see a young man like you, Mr Cradell, dangling after an old married 
+woman, who doesn't know how to behave herself; and all just because she 
+lets him to do it-ugh!-an old broomstick with a petticoat on would do 
+just as well! It makes me sick to see it, and that's the truth of it. I 
+don't call it manly; and it ain't manly, is it, Miss Spruce?"
+
+"Of course I know nothing about it," said the lady to whom the appeal 
+was thus made. "But a young gentleman should keep himself to himself 
+till the time comes for him to speak out-begging your pardon all the 
+same, Mr Cradell."
+
+"I don't see what a married woman should want with any one after her 
+but her own husband," said Amelia.
+
+"And perhaps not always that," said John Eames.
+
+It was about an hour after this when the front-door bell was rung, and 
+a scream from Jemima announced to them all that some critical moment 
+had arrived. Amelia, jumping up, opened the door, and then the rustle 
+of a woman's dress was heard on the lower stairs.
+
+"Oh, laws, ma'am, you have given us sich a turn," said Jemima. "We all 
+thought you was run away."
+
+"It's Mrs Lupex," said Amelia. And in two minutes more that ill-used 
+lady was in the room.
+
+"Well, my dears," said she, gaily, "I hope nobody has waited dinner."
+
+"No; we didn't wait dinner," said Mrs Roper, very gravely.
+
+"And where's my Orson? Didn't he dine at home? Mr Cradell, will you 
+oblige me by taking my shawl? But perhaps you had better not. People 
+are so censorious; ain't they, Miss Spruce? Mr Eames shall do it; and 
+everybody knows that that will be quite safe. Won't it, Miss Amelia?"
+
+"Quite, I should think," said Amelia. And Mrs Lupex knew that she was 
+not to look for an ally in that quarter on the present occasion. Eames 
+got up to take the shawl, and Mrs Lupex went on.
+
+"And didn't Orson dine at home? Perhaps they kept him down at the 
+theatre. But I've been thinking all day what fun it would be when he 
+thought his bird was flown."
+
+"He did dine at home," said Mrs Roper "and he didn't seem to like it. 
+There wasn't much fun, I can assure you."
+
+"Ah, wasn't there, though? I believe that man would like to have me 
+tied to his button-hole. I came across a few friends-lady friends, Mr 
+Cradell, though two of them had their husbands; so we made a party, and 
+just went down to Hampton Court. So my gentleman has gone again, has 
+he? That's what I get for gadding about myself, isn't it, Miss Spruce?"
+
+Mrs Roper, as she went to bed that night, made up her mind that, 
+whatever might be the cost and trouble of doing so, she would lose no 
+further time in getting rid of her married guests.
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+LILY'S BEDSIDE
+
+
+Lily Dale's constitution was good, and her recovery was retarded by no 
+relapse or lingering debility; but, nevertheless, she was forced to 
+keep her bed for many days after the fever had left her. During all 
+this period Dr Crofts came every day. It was in vain that Mrs Dale 
+begged him not to do so; telling him in simple words that she felt 
+herself bound not to accept from him all this continuation of his 
+unremunerated labours now that the absolute necessity for them was 
+over. He answered her only by little jokes, or did not answer her at 
+all; but still he came daily, almost always at the same hour, just as 
+the day was waning, so that he could sit for a quarter of an hour in 
+the dusk, and then ride home to Guestwick in the dark. At this time 
+Bell had been admitted into her sister's room, and she would always 
+meet Dr Crofts at Lily's bedside; but she never sat with him alone, 
+since the day n which he had offered her his love with half-articulated 
+words, and she had declined it with words also half articulated. She 
+had seen him alone since that, on the stairs, or standing in the hall, 
+but she had not remained with him, talking to him after her old 
+fashion, and no further word of his love had been spoken in speech 
+either half or wholly articulate.
+
+Nor had Bell spoken of what had passed to any one else. Lily would 
+probably have told both her mother and sister instantly; but then no 
+such scene as that which had taken place with Bell would have been 
+possible with Lily. In whatever way the matter might have gone with 
+her, there would certainly have been some clear tale to tell when the 
+interview was over. She would have known whether or no she loved the 
+man, or could love him, and would have given him some true and 
+intelligible answer. Bell had not done so, but had given him an answer 
+which, if true, was not intelligible, and if intelligible was not true. 
+And yet, when she had gone away to think over what had passed-she had 
+been happy and satisfied, and almost triumphant. She had never yet 
+asked herself whether she expected anything further from Dr Crofts, nor 
+what that something further might be-and yet she was happy!
+
+Lily had now become pert and saucy in her bed, taking upon herself the 
+little airs which are allowed to a convalescent invalid as compensation 
+for previous suffering and restraint. She pretended to much anxiety on 
+the subject of her dinner, and declared that she would go out on such 
+or such a day, let Dr Crofts be as imperious as he might. "He's an old 
+savage, after all," she said to her sister, one evening after he was 
+gone, "and just as bad as the rest of them."
+
+"I do not know who the rest of them are," said Bell, "but at any rate 
+he's not very old."
+
+"You know what I mean. He's just as grumpy as Dr Gruffen, and thinks 
+everybody is to do what he tells them. Of course, you take his part."
+
+"And of course you ought, seeing how good he has been."
+
+"And of course I should, to anybody but you. I do like to abuse him to 
+you."
+
+"Lily, Lily!"
+
+"So I do. It's so hard to knock any fire out of you, that when one does 
+find the place where the flint lies, one can't help hammering at it. 
+What did he mean by saying that I shouldn't get up on Sunday? Of course 
+I shall get up if I like it."
+
+"Not if mamma asks you not?"
+
+"Oh, but she won't, unless he interferes and dictates to her. Oh, Bell, 
+what a tyrant he would be if he were married!"
+
+"Would he?"
+
+"And how submissive you would be, if you were his wife! It's a thousand 
+pities that you are not in love with each other-that is, if you are 
+not."
+
+"Lily, I thought that there was a promise between us about that."
+
+"Ah! but that was in other days. Things are all altered since that 
+promise was given,-all the world has been altered." And as she said 
+this the tone of her voice was changed, and it had become almost sad. 
+"I feel as though I ought to be allowed to speak about anything I 
+please."
+
+"You shall, if it pleases you, my pet."
+
+"You see how it is, Bell; I can never again have anything of my own to 
+talk about."
+
+"Oh, my darling, do not say that."
+
+"But it is so, Bell; and why not say it? Do you think I never say it to 
+myself in the hours when I am all alone, thinking over it-thinking, 
+thinking, thinking. You must not-you must not grudge to let me talk of 
+it sometimes."
+
+"I will not grudge you anything-only I cannot believe that it must be 
+so always."
+
+"Ask yourself, Bell, how it would be with you. But I sometimes fancy 
+that you measure me differently from yourself."
+
+"Indeed I do, for I know how much better you are."
+
+"I am not so much better as to be ever able to forget all that. I know 
+I never shall do so. I have made up my mind about it clearly and with 
+an absolute certainty."
+
+"Lily, Lily, Lily! pray do not say so."
+
+"But I do say it. And yet I have not been very mopish and melancholy; 
+have I, Bell? I do think I deserve some little credit, and yet, I 
+declare, you won't allow me the least privilege in the world."
+
+"What privilege would you wish me to give you?"
+
+"To talk about Dr Crofts."
+
+"Lily, you are a wicked, wicked tyrant." And Bell leaned over her, and 
+fell upon her, and kissed her, hiding her own face in the gloom of the 
+evening. After that it came to be an accepted understanding between 
+them that Bell was not altogether indifferent to Dr Crofts.
+
+"You heard what he said, my darling," Mrs Dale said the next day, as 
+the three were in the room together after Dr Crofts was gone. Mrs Dale 
+was standing on one side of the bed, and Bell on the other, while Lily 
+was scolding them both. "You can get up for an hour or two tomorrow, 
+but he thinks you had better not go out of the room."
+
+"What would be the good of that, mamma? I am so tired of looking always 
+at the same paper. It is such a tiresome paper. It makes one count the 
+pattern over and over again. I wonder how you ever can live here."
+
+"I've got used to it, you see."
+
+"I never can get used to that sort of thing; but go on counting, and 
+counting, and counting. I'll tell you what I should like; and I'm sure 
+it would be the best thing, too."
+
+"And what would you like?" said Bell.
+
+"Just to get up at nine o'clock tomorrow, and go to church as though 
+nothing had happened. Then, when Dr Crofts came in the evening, you 
+would tell him I was down at the school."
+
+"I wouldn't quite advise that," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"It would give him such a delightful start. And when he found I didn't 
+die immediately, as of course I ought to do according to rule, he would 
+be so disgusted."
+
+"It would be very ungrateful, to say the least of it," said Bell.
+
+"No, it wouldn't, a bit. He needn't come, unless he likes it. And I 
+don't believe he comes to see me at all. It's all very well, mamma, 
+your looking in that way; but I'm sure it's true. And I'll tell you 
+what I'll do, I'll pretend to be bad again, otherwise the poor man will 
+be robbed of his only happiness."
+
+"I suppose we must allow her to say what she likes till she gets well," 
+said Mrs Dale, laughing. It was now nearly dark, and Mrs Dale did not 
+see that Bell's hand had crept under the bed-clothes, and taken hold of 
+that of her sister. "It's true, mamma," continued Lily, "and I defy her 
+to deny it. I would forgive him for keeping me in bed if he would only 
+make her fall in love with him."
+
+"She has made a bargain, mamma," said Bell, "that she is to say 
+whatever she likes till she gets well."
+
+"I am to say whatever I like always; that was the bargain, and I mean 
+to stand to it."
+
+On the following Sunday Lily did get up, but did not leave her mother's 
+bedroom. There she was, seated in that half-dignified and 
+half-luxurious state which belongs to the first getting up of an 
+invalid, when Dr Crofts called. There she had eaten her tiny bit of 
+roast mutton, and had called her mother a stingy old creature, because 
+she would not permit another morsel; and there she had drunk her half 
+glass of port wine, pretending that it was very bad, and twice worse 
+than the doctor's physic; and there, Sunday though it was, she had 
+fully enjoyed the last hour of daylight, reading that exquisite new 
+novel which had just completed itself, amidst the jarring criticisms of 
+the youth and age of the reading public.
+
+"I am quite sure she was right in accepting him, Bell," she said, 
+putting down the book as the light was fading, and beginning to praise 
+the story.
+
+"It was a matter of course," said Bell. "It always is right in the 
+novels. That's why I don't like them. They are too sweet."
+
+"That's why I do like them, because they are so sweet. A sermon is not 
+to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should 
+tell you not what you are to get, but what you'd like to get."
+
+"If so, then, I'd go back to the old school, and have the heroine 
+really a heroine, walking all the way up from Edinburgh to London, and 
+falling among thieves; or else nursing a wounded hero, and describing 
+the battle from the window. We've got tired of that; or else the people 
+who write can't do it nowadays. But if we are to have real life, let it 
+be real."
+
+"No, Bell, no," said Lily. "Real life sometimes is so painful." Then 
+her sister, in a moment, was down on the floor at her feet, kissing her 
+hand and caressing her knees, and praying that the wound might be 
+healed.
+
+On that morning Lily had succeeded in inducing her sister to tell her 
+all that had been said by Dr Crofts. All that had been said by herself 
+also, Bell had intended to tell; but when she came to this part of the 
+story, her account was very lame. "I don't think I said anything," she 
+said. "But silence always gives consent. He'll know that," Lily had 
+rejoined.
+
+"No, he will not; my silence didn't give any consent; I'm sure of that. 
+And he didn't think that it did."
+
+"But you didn't mean to refuse him?"
+
+"I think I did. I don't think I knew what I meant; and it was safer, 
+therefore, to look no, than to look yes. If I didn't say it, I'm sure I 
+looked it."
+
+"But you wouldn't refuse him now?" asked Lily.
+
+"I don't know," said Bell. "It seems as though I should want years to 
+make up my mind; and he won't ask me again."
+
+Bell was still at her sister's feet, caressing them, and praying with 
+all her heart that that wound might be healed in due time, when Mrs 
+Dale came in and announced the doctor's daily visit.
+
+"Then I'll go," said Bell.
+
+"Indeed you won't," said Lily. "He is coming simply to make a morning 
+call, and nobody need run away. Now, Dr Crofts, you need not come and 
+stand over me with your watch, for I won't let you touch my hand except 
+to shake hands with me;" and then she held her hand out to him."
+
+"And all you'll know of my tongue you'll learn from the sound."
+
+"I don't care in the least for your tongue."
+
+"I dare say not, and yet you may some of these days. I can speak out if 
+I like it; can't I, mamma?"
+
+"I should think Dr Crofts knows that by this time, my dear."
+
+"I don't know. There are some things gentlemen are very slow to learn. 
+But you must sit down, Dr Crofts, and make yourself comfortable and 
+polite; for you must understand that you are not master here any 
+longer. I am out of bed now, and your reign is over."
+
+"That's the gratitude of the world, all through," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Who is ever grateful to a doctor? He only cures you that he may 
+triumph over some other doctor, and declare, as he goes by Dr Gruffen's 
+door, 'There, had she called you in, she'd have been dead before now; 
+or else would have been ill for twelve months.' Don't you jump for joy 
+when Dr Gruffen's patients die?"
+
+"Of course I do-out in the market-place, so that everybody shall see 
+me," said the doctor.
+
+"Lily, how can you say such shocking things?" said her sister.
+
+Then the doctor did sit down, and they were all very cosy together over 
+the fire, talking about things which were not medical, or only half 
+medical in their appliance. By degrees the conversation came round to 
+Mrs Eames and to John Eames. Two or three days since Crofts had told 
+Mrs Dale of that affair at the railway station, of which up to that 
+time she had heard nothing. Mrs Dale, when she was assured that young 
+Eames had given Crosbie a tremendous thrashing-the tidings of the 
+affair which had got themselves substantiated at Guestwick so described 
+the nature of the encounter-could not withhold some meed of applause.
+
+"Dear boy!" she said, almost involuntarily. "Dear boy! it came from the 
+honestness of his heart!" And then she gave special injunctions to the 
+doctor-injunctions which were surely unnecessary-that no word of the 
+matter should be whispered before Lily.
+
+"I was at the manor, yesterday," said the doctor, "and the earl would 
+talk about nothing but Master Johnny. He says he's the finest fellow 
+going." Whereupon Mrs Dale touched him with her foot, fearing that the 
+conversation might be led away in the direction of Johnny's prowess.
+
+"I am so glad," said Lily. "I always knew that they'd find John out at 
+last."
+
+"And Lady Julia is just as fond of him," said the doctor.
+
+"Dear me!" said Lily. "Suppose they were to make up a match!"
+
+"Lily, how can you be so absurd?"
+
+"Let me see; what relation would he be to us? He would certainly be 
+Bernard's uncle, and Uncle Christopher's half brother-in-law. Wouldn't 
+it be odd?"
+
+"It would rather," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I hope he'll be civil to Bernard. Don't you, Bell? Is he to give up 
+the Income-tax Office, Dr Crofts?"
+
+"I didn't hear that that was settled yet." And so they went on talking 
+about John Eames.
+
+"Joking apart," said Lily, "I am very glad that Lord de Guest has taken 
+him by the hand. Not that I think an earl is better than anybody else, 
+but because it shows that people are beginning to understand that he 
+has got something in him. I always said that they who laughed at John 
+would see him hold up his head yet." All which words sank deep into Mrs 
+Dale's mind. If only, in some coming time, her pet might be taught to 
+love this new young hero! But then would not that last heroic deed of 
+his militate most strongly against any possibility of such love!
+
+"And now I may as well be going," said the doctor, rising from his 
+chair. At this time Bell had left the room, but Mrs Dale was still 
+there.
+
+"You need not be in such a hurry, especially this evening," said Lily.
+
+"Why especially this evening?"
+
+"Because it will be the last. Sit down again, Dr Crofts. I've got a 
+little speech to make to you. I've been preparing it all the morning, 
+and you must give me an opportunity of speaking it."
+
+"I'll come the day after tomorrow, and I'll hear it then."
+
+"But I choose, sir, that you should hear it now. Am I riot to be obeyed 
+when I first get up on to my own throne? Dear, dear Dr Crofts, how am I 
+to thank you for all that you have done?"
+
+"How are any of us to thank him?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I hate thanks," said the doctor. "One kind glance of the eye is worth 
+them all, and I've had many such in this house."
+
+"You have our hearts' love, at any rate," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"God bless you all!" said he, as he prepared to go.
+
+"But I haven't made my speech yet," said Lily. "And to tell the truth, 
+mamma, you must go away, or I shall never be able to make it. It's very 
+improper, is, it not, turning you out, but it shall only take three 
+minutes." Then Mrs Dale, with some little joking word, left the room; 
+but, as she left it, her mind was hardly at ease. Ought she to have 
+gone, leaving it to Lily's discretion to say what words he might think 
+fit to Dr Crofts? Hitherto she had never doubted her daughters-not even 
+their discretion; and therefore it had been natural to her to go when 
+she was bidden. But as she went downstairs she had her doubts whether 
+she was right or no.
+
+"Dr Crofts," said Lily, as soon as they were alone. "Sit down there, 
+close to me. I want to ask you a question. What was it you said to Bell 
+when you were alone with her the other evening in the parlour?"
+
+The doctor sat for a moment without answering, and Lily, who was 
+watching him closely, could see by the light of the fire that he had 
+been startled-had almost shuddered as the question was asked him.
+
+"What did I say to her?" and he repeated her words in a very low voice.
+
+"I asked her if she could love me, and be my wife."
+
+"And what answer did she make to you?"
+
+"What answer did she make? She simply refused me."
+
+"No, no, no; don't believe her, Dr Crofts. It was not so-I think it was 
+not so. Mind you, I can say nothing as coming from her. She has not 
+told me her own mind. But if you really love her, she will be mad to 
+refuse you."
+
+"I do love her, Lily; that at any rate is true."
+
+"Then go to her again. I am speaking for myself now. I cannot afford to 
+lose such a brother as you would be. I love you so dearly that I cannot 
+spare you. And she-I think she'll learn to love you as you would wish 
+to be loved. You know her nature, how silent she is, and averse to talk 
+about herself. She has confessed nothing to me but this-that you spoke 
+to her and took her by surprise. Are we to have another chance? I know 
+how wrong I am to ask such a question. But, after all, is not the truth 
+the best?"
+
+"Another chance!"
+
+"I know what you mean, and I think she is worthy to be your wife. I do, 
+indeed; and if so, she must be very worthy. You won't tell of me, will 
+you now, doctor?"
+
+"No; I won't tell of you."
+
+"And you'll try again?"
+
+"Yes; I'll try again."
+
+"God bless you, my brother! I hope-I hope you'll be my brother." Then, 
+as he put out his hand to her once more, she raised her head towards 
+him, and he, stooping down, kissed her forehead.
+
+"Make mamma come to me," were the last words she spoke as he went out 
+at the door.
+
+"So you've made your speech," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+"I hope it was a discreet speech."
+
+"I hope it was, mamma. But it has made me so tired, and I believe I'll 
+go to bed. Do you know I don't think I should have done much good down 
+at the school today?"
+
+Then Mrs Dale, in her anxiety to repair what injury might have been 
+done to her daughter by over-exertion, omitted any further mention of 
+the farewell speech.
+
+Dr Crofts as he rode home enjoyed but little of the triumph of a 
+successful lover.
+
+"It may be that she's right," he said to himself; "and, at any rate, 
+I'll ask again." Nevertheless, that "No" which Bell had spoken, and had 
+repeated, still sounded in his ears harsh and conclusive. There are men 
+to whom a peal of noes rattling about their ears never takes the sound 
+of a true denial, and others to whom the word once pronounced, be it 
+whispered ever so softly, comes as though it were an unchangeable 
+verdict from the supreme judgment-seat.
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+FIE, FIE!
+
+
+Will any reader remember the loves-no, not the loves; that word is so 
+decidedly ill-applied as to be incapable of awakening the remembrance 
+of any reader; but the flirtations-of Lady Dumbello and Mr Plantagenet 
+Palliser? Those flirtations, as they had been carried on at Courcy 
+Castle, were laid bare in all their enormities to the eye of the 
+public, and it must be confessed that if the eye of the public was 
+shocked, that eye must be shocked very easily.
+
+But the eye of the public was shocked, and people who were particular 
+as to their morals said very strange things. Lady de Courcy herself 
+said very strange things indeed, shaking her head, and dropping 
+mysterious words; whereas Lady Clandidlem spoke much more openly, 
+declaring her opinion that Lady Dumbello would be off before May. They 
+both agreed that it would not be altogether bad for Lord Dumbello that 
+he should lose his wife, but shook their heads very sadly when they 
+spoke of poor Plantagenet Palliser. As to the lady's fate, that lady 
+whom they had both almost worshipped during the days at Courcy 
+Castle,-they did not seem to trouble themselves about that.
+
+And it must be admitted that Mr Palliser had been a little 
+imprudent-imprudent, that is, if he knew anything about the rumours 
+afloat-seeing that soon after his visit at Courcy Castle he had gone 
+down to Lady Hartletop's place in Shropshire, at which the Dumbellos 
+intended to spend the winter, and on leaving it had expressed his 
+intention of returning in February. The Hartletop people had pressed 
+him very much-the pressure having come with peculiar force from Lord 
+Dumbello. Therefore it is reasonable to suppose that the Hartletop 
+people had at any rate not heard of the rumour.
+
+Mr Plantagenet Palliser spent his Christmas with his uncle, the Duke of 
+Omnium, at Gatherum Castle. That is to say, he reached the castle in 
+time for dinner on Christmas eve, and left it on the morning after 
+Christmas day. This was in accordance with the usual practice of his 
+life, and the tenants, dependants, and followers of the Omnium interest 
+were always delighted to see this manifestation of a healthy English 
+domestic family feeling between the duke and his nephew. But the amount 
+of intercourse on such occasions between them was generally trifling. 
+The duke would smile as he put out his right hand to his nephew, and 
+say-"Well, Plantagenet-very busy, I suppose?"
+
+The duke was the only living being who called him Plantagenet to his 
+face, though there were some scores of men who talked of Planty Pal 
+behind his back. The duke had been the only living being so to call 
+him. Let us hope that it still was so, and that there had arisen no 
+feminine exception, dangerous in its nature and improper in its 
+circumstances.
+
+"Well, Plantagenet," said the duke, on the present occasion, "very 
+busy, I suppose?
+
+"Yes, indeed, duke," said Mr Palliser.
+
+"When a man gets the harness on him he does not easily get quit of it."
+
+The duke remembered that his nephew had made almost the same remark at 
+his last Christmas visit.
+"By-the-by," said the duke, "I want to say a word or two to you before 
+you go."
+
+Such a proposition on the duke's part was a great departure from his 
+usual practice, but the nephew of course undertook to obey his uncle's 
+behests.
+
+"I'll see you before dinner tomorrow," said Plantagenet.
+
+"Ah, do," said the duke. "I'll not keep you five minutes." And at six 
+o'clock on the following afternoon the two were closeted together in 
+the duke's private room.
+
+"I don't suppose there is much in it," began the duke, "but people are 
+talking about you and Lady Dumbello."
+
+"Upon my word, people are very kind." And Mr Palliser bethought himself 
+of the fact-for it certainly was a fact-that people for a great many 
+years had talked about his uncle and Lady Dumbello's mother-in-law.
+
+"Yes; kind enough; are they not? You've just come from Hartlebury, I 
+believe." Hartlebury was the Marquis of Hartletop's seat in Shropshire.
+
+"Yes, I have. And I'm going there again in February."
+
+"Ah, I'm sorry for that. Not that I mean, of course, to interfere with 
+your arrangements. You will acknowledge that I have not often done so, 
+in any matter whatever."
+
+"No; you have not," said the nephew, comforting himself with an inward 
+assurance that no such interference on his uncle's part could have been 
+possible.
+
+"But in this instance it would suit me, and I really think it would 
+suit you too, that you should be as little at Hartlebury as possible. 
+You have said you would go there, and of course you will go. But if I 
+were you, I would not stay above a day or two."
+
+Mr Plantagenet Palliser received everything he had in the world from 
+his uncle. He sat in Parliament through his uncle's interest, and 
+received an allowance of ever so many thousand a year which his uncle 
+could stop tomorrow by his mere word. He was his uncle's heir, and the 
+dukedom, with certain entailed properties, must ultimately fall to him, 
+unless his uncle should marry and have a son. But by far the greater 
+portion of the duke's property was unentailed; the duke might probably 
+live for the next twenty years or more; and it was quite possible that, 
+if offended, he might marry and become a father. It may be said that no 
+man could well be more dependent on another than Plantagenet Palliser 
+was upon his uncle; and it may be said also that no father or uncle 
+ever troubled his heir with less interference. Nevertheless, the nephew 
+immediately felt himself aggrieved by this allusion to his private 
+life, and resolved at once that he would not submit to such 
+surveillance.
+
+"I don't know how long I shall stay," said he; "but I cannot say that 
+my visit will be influenced one way or the other by such a rumour as 
+that."
+
+"No; probably not. But it may perhaps be influenced by my request." And 
+the duke, as he spoke, looked a little savage.
+
+"You wouldn't ask me to regard a report that has no foundation."
+
+"I am not asking about its foundation. Nor do I in the least wish to 
+interfere with your manner in life." By which last observation the duke 
+intended his nephew to understand that he was quite at liberty to take 
+away any other gentleman's wife, but that he was not at liberty to give 
+occasion even for a surmise that he wanted to take Lord Dumbello's 
+wife. "The fact is this, Plantagenet. I have for many years been 
+intimate with that family. I have not many intimacies, and shall 
+probably never increase them. Such friends as I have, I wish to keep, 
+and you will easily perceive that any such, report as that which I have 
+mentioned, might make it unpleasant for me to go to Hartlebury, or for 
+the Hartlebury people to come here." The duke certainly could not have 
+spoken plainer, and Mr Palliser understood him thoroughly. Two such 
+alliances between the two families could not be expected to run 
+pleasantly together, and even the rumour of any such second alliance 
+might interfere with the pleasantness of the former one.
+
+"That's all," said the duke.
+
+"It's a most absurd slander," said Mr Palliser.
+
+"I dare say. Those slanders always are absurd; but what can we do? We 
+can't tie up people's tongues." And the duke looked as though he wished 
+to have the subject considered as finished, and to be left alone.
+
+"But we can disregard them," said the nephew, indiscreetly.
+
+"You may. I have never been able to do so. And yet, I believe, I have 
+not earned for myself the reputation of being subject to the voices of 
+men. You think that I am asking much of you; but you should remember 
+that hitherto I have given much and have asked nothing. I expect you to 
+oblige me in this matter."
+
+Then Mr Plantagenet Palliser left the room, knowing that he had been 
+threatened. What the duke had said amounted to this-If you go on 
+dangling after Lady Dumbello, I'll stop the seven thousand a year which 
+I give you. I'll oppose your next return at Silverbridge, and I'll make 
+a will and leave away from you Matching and The Horns-a beautiful 
+little place in Surrey, the use of which had been already offered to Mr 
+Palliser in the event of his marriage; all the Littlebury estate in 
+Yorkshire, and the enormous Scotch property. Of my personal goods, and 
+money invested in loans, shares, and funds, you shall never touch a 
+shilling, or the value of a shilling. And, if I find that I can suit 
+myself, it may be that I'll leave you plain Mr Plantagenet Palliser, 
+with a little first cousin for the head of your family.
+
+The full amount of this threat Mr Palliser understood, and, as he 
+thought of it, he acknowledged to himself that he had never felt for 
+Lady Dumbello anything like love. No conversation between them had ever 
+been warmer than that of which the reader has seen a sample. Lady 
+Dumbello had been nothing to him. But now-now that the matter had been 
+put before him in this way, might it not become him, as a gentleman, to 
+fall in love with so very beautiful a woman, whose name had already 
+been linked with his own? We all know that story of the priest, who, by 
+his question in the confessional, taught the ostler to grease the 
+horses teeth. "I never did yet," said the ostler, "but I'll have a try 
+at it." In this case, the duke had acted the part of the priest, and Mr 
+Palliser, before the night was over, had almost become as ready a pupil 
+as the ostler. As to the threat, it would ill become him, as a Palliser 
+and a Plantagenet, to regard it. The duke would not marry. Of all men 
+in the world he was the least likely to spite his own face by cutting 
+off his own nose; and, for the rest of it, Mr Palliser would take his 
+chance. Therefore he went down to Hartlebury early in February, having 
+fully determined to be very particular in his attentions to Lady 
+Dumbello.
+
+Among a houseful of people at Hartlebury, he found Lord Porlock, a 
+slight, sickly, worn-out looking man, who had something about his eye 
+of his father's hardness, but nothing in his mouth of his father's 
+ferocity.
+
+"So your sister's going to be married?" said Mr Palliser.
+
+"Yes. One has no right to be surprised at anything they do, when one 
+remembers the life their father leads them."
+
+"I was going to congratulate you."
+
+"Don't do that."
+
+"I met him at Courcy, and rather liked him."
+
+Mr Palliser had barely spoken to Mr Crosbie at Courcy, but then in the 
+usual course of his social life he seldom did more than barely speak to 
+anybody.
+
+"Did you?" said Lord Porlock. "For the poor girl's sake I hope he's not 
+a ruffian. How any man should propose to my father to marry a daughter 
+out of his house, is mere than I can understand. How was my mother 
+looking?"
+
+"I didn't see anything amiss about her."
+
+"I expect that he'll murder her some day." Then that conversation came 
+to an end.
+
+Mr Palliser himself perceived-as he looked at her he could not but 
+perceive-that a certain amount of social energy seemed to enliven Lady 
+Dumbello when he approached her. She was given to smile when addressed, 
+but her usual smile was meaningless, almost leaden, and never in any 
+degree flattering to the person to whom it was accorded. Very many 
+women smile as they answer the words which are spoken to them, and most 
+who do so flatter by their smile. The thing is so common that no one 
+thinks of it. The flattering pleases, but means nothing. The impression 
+unconsciously taken simply conveys a feeling that the woman has made 
+herself agreeable, as it was her duty to do-agreeable, as far as that 
+smile went, in some very infinitesimal degree. But she has thereby made 
+her little contribution to society. She will make the same contribution 
+a hundred times in the same evening. No one knows that she has 
+flattered anybody; she does not know it herself; and the world calls 
+her an agreeable woman. But Lady Dumbello put no flattery into her 
+customary smiles. They were cold, unmeaning, accompanied by no special 
+glance of the eye, and seldom addressed to the individual. They were 
+given to the room at large; and the room at large, acknowledging her 
+great pretensions, accepted them as sufficient. But when Mr Palliser 
+came near to her she would turn herself sIightly ever so slightly, on 
+her seat, and would allow her eyes to rest for a moment upon his face. 
+Then when he remarked that it had been rather cold, she would smile 
+actually upon him as she acknowledged the truth of his observation. All 
+this Mr Palliser taught himself to observe, having been instructed by 
+his foolish uncle in that lesson as to the greasing of the horses' 
+teeth.
+
+But, nevertheless, during the first week of his stay at Hartlebury, he 
+did not say a word to her more tender than his observation about the 
+weather. It is true that he was very busy. He had undertaken to speak 
+upon the address, and as Parliament was now about to be opened, and as 
+his speech was to be based upon statistics, he was full of figures and 
+papers. His correspondence was pressing, and the day was seldom long 
+enough for his purposes. He felt that the intimacy to which he aspired 
+was hindered by the laborious routine of his life; but nevertheless he 
+would do something before he left Hartlebury, to show the special 
+nature of his regard. He would say something to her, that should open 
+to her view the secret of-shall we say his heart? Such was his resolve, 
+day after day. And yet day after day went by, and nothing was said. He 
+fancied that Lord Dumbello was somewhat less friendly in his manner 
+than he had been, that he put himself in the way and looked cross; but, 
+as he declared to himself, he cared very little for Lord Dumbello's 
+looks.
+
+"When do you go to town?" he said to her one evening.
+
+"Probably in April. We certainly shall not leave Hartlebury before 
+that."
+
+"Ah, yes. You stay for the hunting."
+
+"Yes; Lord Dumbello always remains here through March. He may run up to 
+town for a day or two."
+
+"How comfortable! I must be in London on Thursday, you know."
+
+"When Parliament meets, I suppose?
+
+"Exactly. It is such a bore; but one has to do it."
+
+"When a man makes a business of it, I suppose he must."
+
+"Oh, dear, yes; it's quite imperative." Then Mr Palliser looked round 
+the room, and thought he saw Lord Dumbello's eye fixed upon him. It was 
+really very hard work. If the truth must be told, he did not know how 
+to begin. What was he to say to her? How was he to commence a 
+conversation that should end by being tender? She was very handsome 
+certainly, and for him she could look interesting; but for his very 
+life he did not know how to begin to say anything special to her. A 
+liaison with such a woman as Lady Dumbello-platonic, innocent, but 
+nevertheless very intimate-would certainly lend a grace to his life, 
+which, under its present circumstances, was rather dry. He was 
+told-told by public rumour, which had reached him through his 
+uncle-that the lady was willing. She certainly looked as though she 
+liked him; but how was he to begin? The art of startling the House of 
+Commons and frightening the British public by the voluminous accuracy 
+of his statistics he had already learned; but what was he to say to a 
+pretty woman?
+
+"You'll be sure to be in London in April?" This was on another occasion.
+
+"Oh, yes; I think so."
+
+"In Carlton Gardens, I suppose."
+
+"Yes; Lord Dumbello has got a lease of the house now."
+
+"Has he, indeed? Ah, it's an excellent house. I hope shall be allowed 
+to call there sometimes."
+
+"Certainly-only I know you must be so busy."
+
+"Not on Saturdays and Sundays."
+
+"I always receive on Sundays," said Lady Dumbello. Mr Palliser felt 
+that there was nothing peculiarly gracious in this. A permission to 
+call when all her other acquaintances would be there, was not much; but 
+still, perhaps, it was as much as he could expect to obtain on that 
+occasion. He looked up and saw that Lord Dumbello's eyes were again 
+upon him, and that Lord Dumbello's brow was black. He began to doubt 
+whether a country house, where all the people were thrown together, was 
+the best place in the world for such manoeuvring. Lady Dumbello was 
+very handsome, and he liked to look at her, but he could not find any 
+subject on which to interest her in that drawing-room at Hartlebury. 
+Later in the evening he found himself saying something to her about the 
+sugar duties, and then he knew that he had better give it up. He had 
+only one day more, and that was required imperatively for his speech. 
+The matter would go much easier in London and he would postpone it till 
+then. In the crowded rooms of London private conversation would be much 
+easier, and Lord Dumbello wouldn't stand over and look at him. Lady 
+Dumbello had taken his remarks about the sugar very kindly, and had 
+asked for a definition of an ad valorem duty. It was a nearer approach 
+to a real conversation than he had ever before made; but the subject 
+had been unlucky, and could not, in his hands, be brought round to 
+anything tender; so he resolved to postpone his gallantry till the 
+London spring should make it easy, and felt as he did so that he was 
+relieved for the time from a heavy weight.
+
+"Good-bye, Lady Dumbello," he said, on the next evening. "I start early 
+tomorrow morning."
+
+"Good-bye, Mr Palliser."
+
+As she spoke she smiled ever so sweetly, but she certainly had not 
+learned to call him Plantagenet as yet. He went up to London and 
+immediately got himself to work. The accurate and voluminous speech 
+came off with considerable credit to himself-credit of that quiet, 
+enduring kind which is accorded to such men. The speech was 
+respectable, dull, and correct. Men listened to it, or sat with their 
+hats over their eyes, asleep, pretending to do so; and the Daily 
+Jupiter in the morning had a leading article about it, which, however, 
+left the reader at its close altogether in doubt whether Mr Palliser 
+might be supposed to be a great financial pundit or no. Mr Palliser 
+might become a shining light to the moneyed world, and a glory to the 
+banking interests; he might be a future Chancellor of the Exchequer. 
+But then again, it might turn out that, in these affairs, he was a mere 
+ignis fatuus, a blind guide-a man to be laid aside as very respectable, 
+but of no depth. Who, then, at the present time, could judiciously risk 
+his credit by declaring whether Mr Palliser understood his subject or 
+did not understand it? We are not content in looking to our newspapers 
+for all the information that earth and human intellect can afford; but 
+we demand from them what we might demand if a daily sheet could come to 
+us from the world of spirits. The result, of course, is this-that the 
+papers do pretend that they have come daily from the world of spirits; 
+but the oracles are very doubtful, as were those of old.
+
+Plantagenet Palliser, though he was contented with this article, felt, 
+as he sat in his chambers in the Albany, that something else was 
+wanting to his happiness. This sort of life was all very well. Ambition 
+was a grand thing, and it became him, as a Palliser and a future peer, 
+to make politics his profession. But might he not spare an hour or two 
+for Amaryllis in the shade? Was it not hard, this life of his? Since he 
+had been told that Lady Dumbello smiled upon him, he had certainly 
+thought more about her smiles than had been good for his statistics. It 
+seemed as though a new vein in his body had been brought into use, and 
+that blood was running where blood had never run before. If he had seen 
+Lady Dumbello before Dumbello had seen her, might he not have married 
+her? Ah! in such case as that, had she been simply Miss Grantly, or 
+Lady Griselda Grantly, as the case might have been, he thought he might 
+have been able to speak to her with more ease. As it was, he certainly 
+had found the task difficult, down in the country, though he had heard 
+of men of his class doing the same sort of thing all his life. For my 
+own part, I believe, that the reputed sinners are much more numerous 
+than the sinners.
+
+As he sat there, a certain Mr Fothergill came in upon him. Mr 
+Fothergill was a gentleman who managed most of his uncle's ordinary 
+affairs-a clever fellow, who knew on which side his bread was buttered. 
+Mr Fothergill was naturally anxious to stand well with the heir; but to 
+stand well with the owner was his business in life, and with that 
+business he never allowed anything to interfere. On this occasion Mr 
+Fothergill was very civil, complimenting his future possible patron on 
+his very powerful speech, and predicting for him political power with 
+much more certainty than the newspapers which had, or had not, come 
+from the world of spirits. Mr Fothergill had come in to say a word or 
+two about some matter of business. As all Mr Palliser's money passed 
+through Mr Fothergill's hands, and as his electioneering interests were 
+managed by Mr Fothergill, Mr Fothergill not infrequently called to say 
+a necessary word or two. When this was clone he said another word or 
+two, which might be necessary or not, as the case might be.
+
+"Mr Palliser," said he, "I wonder you don't think of marrying. I hope 
+you'll excuse me."
+
+Mr Palliser was by no means sure that he would excuse him, and sat 
+himself suddenly upright in his chair in a manner that was intended to 
+exhibit a first symptom of outraged dignity. But, singularly enough, he 
+had himself been thinking of marriage at that moment. How would it have 
+been with him had he known the beautiful Griselda before the Dumbello 
+alliance had been arranged? Would he have married her? Would he have 
+been comfortable if he had married her? Of course he could not marry 
+now, seeing that he was in love with Lady Dumbello, and that the lady 
+in question, unfortunately, had a husband of her own; but though he had 
+been thinking of marrying, he did not like to have the subject thus 
+roughly thrust before his eyes, and, as it were, into his very lap by 
+his uncle's agent. Mr Fothergill, no doubt, saw the first symptom of 
+outraged dignity, for he was a clever, sharp man. But, perhaps, he did 
+not; in truth much regard it. Perhaps he had received instructions 
+which he was bound to regard above all other matters.
+
+"I hope you'll excuse me, Mr Palliser, I do, indeed; but I say it 
+because I am half afraid of some-some-some diminution of good feeling, 
+perhaps, I had better call it, between you and your uncle. Anything of 
+that kind would be such a monstrous pity."
+
+"I am not aware of any such probability."
+
+This Mr Palliser said with considerable dignity; but when the words 
+were spoken he bethought himself whether he had not told a fib.
+
+"No; perhaps not. I trust there is no such probability. But the duke is 
+a very determined man if he takes anything into his head-and then he 
+has so much in his power."
+
+"He has not me in his power, Mr Fothergill."
+
+"No, no, no. One man does not have another in his power in this 
+country-not in that way; but then you know, Mr Palliser, it would 
+hardly do to offend him; would it?"
+
+"I would rather not offend him, as is natural. Indeed, I do not wish to 
+offend any one."
+
+"Exactly so; and least of all the duke, who has the whole property in 
+his own hands. We may say the whole, for he can marry tomorrow if he 
+pleases. And then his life is so good. [don't know a stouter man of his 
+age, anywhere."
+
+"I'm very glad to hear it."
+
+"I'm sure you are, Mr Palliser. But if he were to take offence, you 
+know?"
+
+"I should put up with it."
+
+"Yes, exactly; that's what you would do. But it would be worth while to 
+avoid it, seeing how much he has in his power."
+
+"Has the duke sent you to me now, Mr Fothergill?
+
+"No, no, no-nothing of the sort. But he dropped words the other day 
+which made me fancy that he was not quite-quite-quite at ease about 
+you. I have long known that he would be very glad indeed to see an heir 
+born to the property. The other morning-I don't know whether there was 
+anything in it-but I fancied he was going to make some change in the 
+present arrangements. He did not do it, and it might have been fancy. 
+Only think, Mr Palliser, what one word of his might do! If he says a 
+word, he never goes back from it." Then, having said so much, Mr 
+Fothergill went his way.
+
+Mr Palliser understood the meaning of all this very well. It was not 
+the first occasion on which Mr Fothergill had given him advice-advice 
+such as Mr Fothergill himself had no right to give him. He always 
+received such counsel with an air of half-injured dignity, intending 
+thereby to explain to Mr Fothergill that he was intruding. But he knew 
+well whence the advice came; and though, in all such cases, he had made 
+up his mind not to follow such counsel, it had generally come to pass 
+that Mr Palliser's conduct had more or less accurately conformed itself 
+to Mr Fothergill's advice. A word from the duke might certainly do a 
+great deal! Mr Palliser resolved that in that affair of Lady Dumbello 
+he would follow his own devices. But, nevertheless, it was undoubtedly 
+true that a word from the duke might do a great deal!
+
+We, who are in the secret, know how far Mr Palliser had already 
+progressed in his iniquitous passion before he left Hartlebury. Others, 
+who were perhaps not so well informed, gave him credit for a much more 
+advanced success. Lady Candidly, in her letter to Lady de Courcy, 
+written immediately after the departure of Mr Palliser, declared that, 
+having heard of that gentleman's intended matutinal departure, she had 
+confidently expected to learn at the breakfast-table that Lady Dumbello 
+had flown with him. From the tone of her ladyship's language, it seemed 
+as though she had been robbed of an anticipated pleasure by Lady 
+Dumbello's prolonged sojourn in the halls of her husband's ancestors. 
+"I feel, however, quite convinced," said Lady Candidly, "that it cannot 
+go on longer than the spring. I never yet saw a man so infatuated as Mr 
+Palliser. He did not leave her for one moment all the time he was here. 
+No one but Lady Hartletop would have permitted it. But, you know, there 
+is nothing so pleasant as good old family friendships."
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+VALENTINE'S DAY AT ALLINGTON
+
+
+Lily had exacted a promise from her mother before her illness, and 
+during the period of her convalescence often referred to it, reminding 
+her mother that that promise had been made, and must be kept. Lily was 
+to be told the day on which Crosbie was to be married. It had come to 
+the knowledge of them all that the marriage was to take place in 
+February. But this was not sufficient for Lily. She must know the day.
+
+And as the time drew nearer-Lily becoming stronger the while, and less 
+subject to medical authority-the marriage of Crosbie and Alexandrina 
+was spoken of much more frequently at the Small House. It was not a 
+subject which Mrs Dale or Bell would have chosen for conversation; but 
+Lily would refer to it. She would begin by doing so almost in a 
+drolling strain, alluding to herself as a forlorn damsel in a 
+play-book; and then she would go on to speak of his interests as a 
+matter which was still of great moment to her. But in the course of 
+such talking she would too often break down, showing by some sad word 
+or melancholy tone how great was the burden on her heart. Mrs Dale and 
+Bell would willingly have avoided the subject, but Lily would not have 
+it avoided. For them it was a very difficult matter on which to speak 
+in her hearing. It was not permitted to them to say a word of abuse 
+against Crosbie, as to whom they thought that no word of condemnation 
+could be sufficiently severe; and they were forced to listen to such 
+excuses for his conduct as Lily chose to manufacture, never daring to 
+point out how vain those excuses were.
+
+Indeed, in those days Lily reigned as a queen at the Small House. 
+Ill-usage and illness together falling into her hands had given her 
+such power, that none of the other women were able to withstand it. 
+Nothing was said about it; but it was understood by them all, Jane and 
+the cook included, that Lily was for the time paramount. She was a 
+dear, gracious, loving, brave queen, and no one was anxious to 
+rebel-only that those praises of Crosbie were so very bitter in the 
+ears of her subjects. The day was named soon enough, and the tidings 
+came down to Allington. On the fourteenth of February, Crosbie was to 
+be made a happy man. This was not known to the Dales till the twelfth, 
+and they would willingly have spared the knowledge then, had it been 
+possible to spare it. But it was not so, and on that evening Lily was 
+told.
+
+During these days, Bell used to see her uncle daily. Her visits were 
+made with the pretence of taking to him information as to Lily's 
+health; but there was perhaps at the bottom of them a feeling that, as 
+the family intended to leave the Small House at the end of March, it 
+would he well to let the squire know that there was no enmity in their 
+hearts against him. Nothing more had been said about their 
+moving-nothing, that is, from them to him. But the matter was going on, 
+and he knew it. Dr Crofts was already in treaty on their behalf for a 
+small furnished house at Guestwick. The squire was very sad about 
+it-very sad indeed. When Hopkins spoke to him on the subject, he 
+sharply desired that faithful gardener to hold his tongue, giving it to 
+be understood that such things were not to be made matter of talk by 
+the Allington dependants till they had been officially announced. With 
+Bell during these visits he never alluded to the matter. She was the 
+chief sinner, in that she had refused to marry her cousin, and had 
+declined even to listen to rational counsel upon the matter. But the 
+squire felt that he could not discuss the subject with her, seeing that 
+he had been specially informed by Mrs Dale that his interference would 
+not be permitted; and then he was perhaps aware that if he did discuss 
+the subject with Bell, he would not gain much by such discussion. Their 
+conversation, therefore, generally fell upon Crosbie, and the tone in 
+which he was mentioned in the Great House was very different from that 
+assumed in Lily's presence.
+
+"He'll be a wretched man," said the squire, when he told Bell of the 
+day that had been fixed.
+
+"I don't want him to be wretched," said Bell. "But I can hardly think 
+that he can act as he has done without being punished."
+
+"He will be a wretched man. He gets no fortune with her, and she will 
+expect everything that fortune can give. I believe, too, that she is 
+older than he is. I cannot understand it. Upon my word, I cannot 
+understand how a man can be such a knave and such a fool. Give my love 
+to Lily. I'll see her tomorrow or the next day. She's well rid of him; 
+I'm sure of that-though I suppose it would not do to tell her so."
+
+The morning of the fourteenth came upon them at the Small House, as 
+comes the morning of those special days which have been long 
+considered, and which are to be long remembered. It brought with it a 
+hard, bitter frost-a black, biting frost-such a frost as breaks the 
+water-pipes, and binds the ground to the hardness of granite. Lily, 
+queen as she was, had not yet been allowed to go back to her own 
+chamber, but occupied the larger bed in her mother's room, her mother 
+sleeping on a smaller one.
+
+"Mamma," she said, "how cold they'll be!" Her mother had announced to 
+her the fact of the black frost, and these were the first words she 
+spoke.
+
+"I fear their hearts will be cold also," said Mrs Dale. She ought not 
+to have said so. She was transgressing the acknowledged rule of the 
+house in saying any word that could be construed as being inimical to 
+Crosbie or his bride. But her feeling on the matter was too strong, and 
+she could not restrain herself.
+
+"Why should their hearts be cold? Oh, mamma, that is a terrible thing 
+to say. Why should their hearts be cold?"
+
+"I hope it may not be so."
+
+"Of course you do; of course we all hope it. He was not cold-hearted, 
+at any rate. A man is not cold-hearted, because he does not know 
+himself. Mamma, I want you to wish for their happiness."
+
+Mrs Dale was silent for a minute or two before she answered this, but 
+then she did answer it. "I think I do," said she. "I think I do wish 
+for it."
+
+"I am very sure that I do," said Lily.
+
+At this time Lily had her breakfast upstairs, but went down into the 
+drawing-room in the course of the morning.
+
+"You must be very careful in wrapping yourself as you go downstairs," 
+said Bell, who stood by the tray on which she had brought up the toast 
+and tea. "The cold is what you would call awful."
+
+"I should call it jolly," said Lily, "if I could get up and go out. Do 
+you remember lecturing me about talking slang the day that he first 
+came?
+
+"Did I, my pet?
+
+"Don't you remember, when I called him a swell? Ah, dear! so he was. 
+That was the mistake, and it was all my own fault, as I had seen it 
+from the first."
+
+Bell for a moment turned her face away, and beat with her foot against 
+the ground. Her anger was more difficult of restraint than was even her 
+mother's-and now, not restraining it, but wishing to hide it, she gave 
+it vent in this way.
+
+"I understand, Bell. I know what your foot means when it goes in that 
+way; and you shan't do it. Come here, Bell, and let me teach you 
+Christianity. I'm a fine sort of teacher, am I not? And I did not quite 
+mean that."
+
+"I wish I could learn it from some one," said Bell. "There are 
+circumstances in which what we call Christianity seems to me to be 
+hardly possible."
+
+"When your foot goes in that way it is a very unchristian foot, and you 
+ought to keep it still. It means anger against him, because he 
+discovered before it was too late that he would not be happy-that is, 
+that he and I would not be happy together if we were married."
+
+"Don't scrutinise my foot too closely, Lily."
+
+"But your foot must bear scrutiny, and your eyes, and your voice. He 
+was very foolish to fall in love with me. And so was I very foolish to 
+let him love me, at a moment's notice-without a thought as it were. I 
+was so proud of having him, that I gave myself up to him all at once, 
+without giving him a chance of thinking of it. In a week or two it was 
+done. Who could expect that such an engagement should be lasting?"
+
+"And why not? That is nonsense, Lily. But we will not talk about it."
+
+"Ah, but I want to talk about it. It was as I have said. and if so, you 
+shouldn't hate him because he did the only thing which he honestly 
+could do when he found out his mistake."
+
+"What; become engaged again within a week!"
+
+"There had been a very old friendship, Bell; you must remember that. 
+But I was speaking of his conduct to me, and not of his conduct to-" 
+And then she remembered that that other lady might at this very moment 
+possess the name which she had once been so proud to think that she 
+would bear herself. "Bell," she said, stopping her other speech 
+suddenly, "at what o'clock do people get married in London?"
+
+"Oh, at all manner of hours-any time before twelve. They will be 
+fashionable, and will be married late."
+
+"You don't think she's Mrs Crosbie yet, then?
+
+"Lady Alexandrina Crosbie," said Bell, shuddering.
+"Yes, of course; I forgot. I should so like to see here I feel such an 
+interest about her. I wonder what coloured hair she has. I suppose she 
+is a sort of Juno of a woman-very tall and handsome. I'm sure she has 
+not got a pug-nose like me. Do you know what I should really like, only 
+of course it's not possible-to be godmother to his first child."
+
+"Oh, Lily!"
+
+"I should. Don't you hear me say that I know it's not possible? I'm not 
+going up to London to ask her. She'll have all manner of grandees for 
+her godfathers and godmothers. I wonder what those grand people are 
+really like."
+
+"I don't think there's any difference. Look at Lady Julia."
+
+"Oh, she's not a grand person. It isn't merely having a title. Don't 
+you remember that he told us that Mr Palliser is about the grandest 
+grandee of them all. I suppose people do learn to like them. He always 
+used to say that he had been so long among people of that sort, that it 
+would be very difficult for him to divide himself off from them. I 
+should never have done for that kind of thing; should I?"
+
+"There is nothing I despise so much as what you call that kind of 
+thing."
+
+"Do you? I don't. After all, think how much work they do. He used to 
+tell me of that. They have all the governing in their hands, and get 
+very little money for doing it."
+
+"Worse luck for the country."
+
+"The country seems to do pretty well. But you're a radical, Bell. My 
+belief is, you wouldn't be a lady if you could help it."
+
+"I'd sooner be an honest woman."
+
+"And so you are-my own dear, dearest, honest Bell-and the fairest lady 
+that I know. If I were a man, Bell, you are just the girl that I should 
+worship."
+
+"But you are not a man; so it's no good."
+
+"But you mustn't let your foot go astray in that way; you mustn't, 
+indeed. Somebody said, that whatever is, is right, and I declare I 
+believe it."
+
+"I'm sometimes inclined to think, that whatever is, is wrong."
+
+"That's because you're a radical. I think I'll get up now, Bell; only 
+it's so frightfully cold that I'm afraid."
+
+"There's a beautiful fire," said Bell.
+
+"Yes; I see. But the fire won't go all around me, like the bed does. I 
+wish I could know the very moment when they're at the altar. It's only 
+half-past ten yet."
+
+"I shouldn't be at all surprised if it's over."
+"Over! What a word that is! A thing like that is over, and then all the 
+world cannot put it back again. What if he should be unhappy after all?"
+
+"He must take his chance," said Bell, thinking within her own mind that 
+that chance would be a very bad one.
+
+"Of course he must take his chance. Well-I'll get up now." And then she 
+took her first step out into the cold world beyond her bed. "We must 
+all take our chance. I have made up my mind that it will be at 
+half-past eleven."
+
+When half-past eleven came, she was seated in a large easy chair over 
+the drawing-room fire, with a little table by her side, on which a 
+novel was lying. She had not opened her book that morning, and had been 
+sitting for some time perfectly silent, with her eyes closed, and her 
+watch in her hand.
+
+"Mamma," she said at last, "it is over now, I'm sure."
+
+"What is over, my dear?
+
+"He has made that lady his wife. I hope God will bless them, and I pray 
+that they may be happy." As she spoke these words, there was an 
+unwonted solemnity in her tone which startled Mrs Dale and Bell.
+
+"I also will hope so," said Mrs Dale. "And now, Lily, will it not be 
+well that you should turn your mind away from the subject, and 
+endeavour to think of other things?"
+
+"But I can't, mamma. It is so easy to say that; but people can't choose 
+their own thoughts."
+
+"They can usually direct them as they will, if they make the effort."
+
+"But I can't make the effort. Indeed, I don't know why I should. It 
+seems natural to me to think about him, and I don't suppose it can be 
+very wrong. When you have had so deep an interest in a person, you 
+can't drop him all of a sudden." Then there was again silence, and 
+after a while Lily took up her novel. She made that effort of which her 
+mother had spoken, but she made it altogether in vain. "I declare, 
+Bell," she said, "it's the greatest rubbish I ever attempted to read." 
+This was specially ungrateful, because Bell had recommended the book. 
+"All the books have got to be so stupid! I think I'll read Pilgrim's 
+Progress again."
+
+"What do you say to Robinson Crusoe?" said Bell.
+
+"Or Paul and Virginia?" said Lily. "But I believe I'll have Pilgrim's 
+Progress. I never can understand it, but I rather think that makes it 
+nicer."
+
+"I hate books I can't understand," said Bell. "I like a book to be 
+clear as running water, so that the whole meaning may be seen at once."
+
+"The quick seeing of the meaning must depend a little on the reader, 
+must it not? "said Mrs Dale.
+
+"The reader mustn't be a fool, of course," said Bell.
+"But then so many readers are fools," said Lily. "And yet they get 
+something out of their reading. Mrs Crump is always poring over the 
+Revelations, and nearly knows them by heart. I don't think she could 
+interpret a single image, but she has a hazy, misty idea of the truth. 
+That's why she likes it-because it's too beautiful to be understood; 
+and that's why I like Pilgrim's Progress." After which Bell offered to 
+get the book in question.
+
+"No, not now," said Lily. "I'll go on with this, as you say it's so 
+grand. The personages are always in their tantrums and go on as though 
+they were mad. Mamma, do you know where they're going for the 
+honeymoon?"
+
+"No, my dear."
+
+"He used to talk to me about going to the lakes." And then there was 
+another pause, during which Bell observed that her mother's face became 
+clouded with anxiety. "But I won't think of it any more," continued 
+Lily; "I will fix my mind to something." And then she got up from her 
+chair. "I don't think it would have been so difficult if I had not been 
+ill?"
+
+"Of course it would not, my darling."
+
+"And I'm going to be well again now, immediately. Let me see: I was 
+told to read Carlyle's History of the French Revolution, and I think 
+I'll begin now." It was Crosbie who had told her to read the book, as 
+both Bell and Mrs Dale were well aware. "But I must put it off till I 
+can get it down from the other house."
+
+"Jane shall fetch it, if you really want it," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Bell shall get it, when she goes up in the afternoon; will you, Bell? 
+And I'll try to get on with this stuff in the meantime." Then again she 
+sat with her eyes fixed upon the pages of the book. "I'll tell you 
+what, mamma-you may have some comfort in this: that when today's gone 
+by, I shan't make a fuss about any other day."
+
+"Nobody thinks that you are making a fuss, Lily."
+
+"Yes, but I am. Isn't it odd, Bell, that it should take place on 
+Valentine's day? I wonder whether it was so settled on purpose, because 
+of the day. Oh, dear, I used to think so often of the letter that I 
+should get from him on this day, when he would tell me that I was his 
+valentine. Well; he's got another-valen-tine-now." So much she said 
+with articulate voice, and then she broke down, bursting out into 
+convulsive sobs, and crying in her mother's arms as though she would 
+break her heart. And yet her heart was not broken, and she was still 
+strong in that resolve which she had made, that her grief should not 
+overpower her. As she had herself said, the thing would not have been 
+so difficult, had she not been weakened by illness.
+
+"Lily, my darling; my poor, ill-used darling."
+
+"No, mamma, I won't be that." And she struggled grievously to get the 
+better of the hysterical attack which had overpowered her. "I won't be 
+regarded as ill-used; not as specially ill-used. But I am your darling, 
+your own darling. Only I wish you'd beat me and thump me when I'm such 
+a fool, instead of pitying me. It's a great mistake being soft to 
+people when they make fools of themselves. There, Bell; there's your 
+stupid book, and I won't have any more of it. I believe it was that 
+that did it." And she pushed the book away from her.
+After this little scene she said no further word about Crosbie and his 
+bride on that day, but turned the conversation towards the prospect of 
+their new house at Guestwick.
+
+"It will be a great comfort to be nearer Dr Crofts; won't it, Bell?"
+
+"I don't know," said Bell.
+
+"Because if we are ill, he won't have such a terrible distance to come?"
+
+"That will be a comfort for him, I should think," said Bell, very 
+demurely.
+
+In the evening the first volume of the French Revolution had been 
+procured, and Lily stuck to her reading with laudable perseverance; 
+till at eight her mother insisted on her going to bed, queen as she was.
+
+"I don't believe a bit, you know, that the king was such a bad man as 
+that," she said.
+
+"I do," said Bell.
+
+"Ah, that's because you're a radical. I never will believe that kings 
+are so much worse than other people. As for Charles the First, he was 
+about the best man in history."
+
+This was an old subject of dispute; but Lily on the present occasion 
+was allowed her own way-as being an invalid.
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+VALENTINE'S DAY IN LONDON
+
+
+The fourteenth of February in London was quite as black, and cold, and 
+as wintersome as it was at Allington, and was, perhaps, somewhat more 
+melancholy in its coldness. Nevertheless Lady Alexandrina de Courcy 
+looked as bright as bridal finery could make her, when she got out of 
+her carriage and walked into St. James's church at eleven o'clock on 
+that morning.
+
+It had been finally arranged that the marriage should take place in 
+London. There were certainly many reasons which would have made a 
+marriage from Courcy Castle more convenient. The Dc Courcy family were 
+all assembled at their country family residence, and could therefore 
+have been present at the ceremony without cost or trouble. The castle 
+too was warm with the warmth of life, and the pleasantness of home 
+would have lent a grace to the departure of one of the daughters of the 
+house. The retainers and servants were there, and something of the rich 
+mellowness of a noble alliance might have been felt, at any rate by 
+Crosbie, at a marriage so celebrated.
+
+And it must have been acknowledged, even by Lady de Courcy, that the 
+house in Portman Square was very cold-that a marriage from thence would 
+be cold-that there could be no hope of attaching to it any honour and 
+glory, or of making it resound with fashionable clat in the columns of 
+the Morning Post. But then, had they been married in the country, the 
+earl would have been there; whereas there was no probability of his 
+travelling up to London for the purpose of being present on such an 
+occasion.
+
+The earl was very terrible in these days, and Alexandrina, as she 
+became confidential in her communications with her future husband, 
+spoke of him as of an ogre, who could not by any means be avoided in 
+all the concerns of life, but whom one might shun now and again by some 
+subtle device and careful arrangement of favourable circumstances. 
+Crosbie had more than once taken upon himself to hint that he did not 
+specially regard the ogre, seeing that for the future he could keep 
+himself altogether apart from the malicious monster's dominions.
+
+"He will not come to me in our new home," he had said to his love, with 
+some little touch of affection. But to this view of the case Lady 
+Alexandrina had demurred. The ogre in question was not only her parent, 
+but was also a noble peer, and she could not agree to any arrangement 
+by which their future connection with the earl, and with nobility in 
+general, might be endangered. Her parent, doubtless, was an ogre, and 
+in his ogreship could make himself very terrible to those near him; but 
+then might it not be better for them to be near to an earl who was an 
+ogre, than not to be near to any earl at all? She had therefore 
+signified to Crosbie that the ogre must be endured.
+
+But, nevertheless, it was a great thing to be rid of him on that happy 
+occasion. He would have said very dreadful things-things so dreadful 
+that there might have been a question whether the bridegroom could have 
+borne them. Since he had heard of Crosbie's accident at the railway 
+station, he had constantly talked with fiendish glee of the beating 
+which had been administered to his son-in-law. Lady de Courcy in taking 
+Crosbie's part, and maintaining that the match was fitting for her 
+daughter, had ventured to declare before her husband that Crosbie was a 
+man of fashion, and the earl would now ask, with a loathsome grin, 
+whether the bridegroom's fashion had been improved by his little 
+adventure at Paddington. Crosbie, to whom all this was not repeated, 
+would have preferred a wedding in the country. But the countess and 
+Lady Alexandrina knew better.
+
+The earl had strictly interdicted any expenditure, and the countess had 
+of necessity construed this as forbidding any unnecessary expense. "To 
+marry a girl without any immediate cost was a thing which nobody could 
+understand," as the countess remarked to her eldest daughter.
+
+"I would really spend as little as possible," Lady Amelia had answered. 
+"You see, mamma, there are circumstances about it which one doesn't 
+wish to have talked about just at present. There's the story of that 
+girl-and then that fracas at the station. I really think it ought to be 
+as quiet as possible." The good sense of Lady Amelia was not to be 
+disputed, as her mother acknowledged. But then if the marriage were 
+managed in any notoriously quiet way, the very notoriety of that quiet 
+would be as dangerous as an attempt at loud glory. "But it won't cost 
+as much," said Amelia. And thus it had been resolved that the wedding 
+should be very quiet.
+
+To this Crosbie had assented very willingly, though he had not relished 
+the manner in which the countess had explained to him her views.
+
+"I need not tell you, Adolphus," she had said, "how thoroughly 
+satisfied I am with this marriage. My dear girl feels that she can be 
+happy as your wife, and what more can I want? I declared to her and to 
+Amelia that I was not ambitious, for their sakes, and have allowed them 
+both to please themselves."
+
+"I hope they have pleased themselves," said Crosbie.
+
+"I trust so; but nevertheless-I don't know whether I make myself 
+understood?
+
+"Quite so, Lady de Courcy. If Alexandrina were going to marry the 
+eldest son of a marquis, you would have a longer procession to church 
+than will be necessary when she marries me."
+
+"You put it in such an odd way, Adolphus."
+
+"It's all right so long as we understand each other. I can assure you I 
+don't want any procession at all. I should be quite contented to go 
+down with Alexandrina, arm in arm, like Darby and Joan, and let the 
+clerk give her away."
+
+We may say that he would have been much better contented could he have 
+been allowed to go down the street without any encumbrance on his arm. 
+But there was no possibility now for such deliverance as that.
+
+Both Lady Amelia and Mr Gazebee had long since discovered the 
+bitterness of his heart and the fact of his repentance, and Gazebee had 
+ventured to suggest to his wife that his noble sister-in-law was 
+preparing for herself a life of misery.
+
+"He'll become quiet and happy when he's used to it," Lady Amelia had 
+replied, thinking, perhaps, of her own experiences.
+
+"I don't know, my dear; he's not a quiet man. There's something in his 
+eye which tells me that he could be very hard to a woman."
+
+"It has gone too far now for any change," Lady Amelia had answered.
+
+"Well; perhaps it has."
+
+"And I know my sister so well; she would not hear of it. I really think 
+they will do very well when they become used to each other."
+
+Mr Gazebee, who also had had his own experiences, hardly dared to hope 
+so much. His home had been satisfactory to him, because he had been a 
+calculating man, and having made his calculation correctly was willing 
+to take the net result. He had done so all his life with success. In 
+his house his wife was paramount-as he very well knew. But no effort on 
+his wife's part, had she wished to make such effort, could have forced 
+him to spend more than two-thirds of his income. Of this she also was 
+aware, and had trimmed her sails accordingly, likening herself to him 
+in this respect. But of such wisdom, and such trimmings, and such 
+adaptability, what likelihood was there with Mr Crosbie and Lady 
+Alexandrina?
+
+"At any rate, it is too late now," said Lady Amelia, thus concluding 
+the conversation.
+
+But nevertheless, when the last moment came, there was some little 
+attempt at glory. Who does not know the way in which a lately married 
+couple's little dinner-party stretches itself out from the pure 
+simplicity of a fried sole and a leg of mutton to the attempt at clear 
+soup, the unfortunately cold dish of round balls which is handed about 
+after the sole, and the brightly red jelly, and beautifully pink cream, 
+which are ordered, in the last agony of ambition, from the next 
+pastry-cook's shop?
+
+"We cannot give a dinner, my dear, with only cook and Sarah."
+
+It has thus begun, and the husband has declared that he has no such 
+idea. "If Phipps and Dowdney can come here and eat a bit of mutton, 
+they are very welcome; if not, let them stay away. And you might as 
+well ask Phipps's sister; just to have some one to go with you into the 
+drawing-room."
+
+"I'd much rather go alone-because then I can read,"-or sleep, we may 
+say."
+
+But her husband has explained that she would look friendless, in this 
+solitary state, and therefore Phipps's sister has been asked. Then the 
+dinner has progressed down to those costly jellies which have been 
+ordered in a last agony. There. has been a conviction on the minds of 
+both of them that the simple leg of mutton would have been more jolly 
+for them all. Had those round balls not been carried about by a hired 
+man; had simple mutton with hot potatoes been handed to Miss Phipps by 
+Sarah, Miss Phipps would not have simpered with such 'unmeaning 
+stiffness when young Dowdney spoke to her. They would have been much 
+more jolly. "Have a bit more mutton, Phipps; and where do you like it?" 
+How pleasant it sounds! But we all know that it is impossible. My young 
+friend had intended this, but his dinner had run itself away to cold 
+round balls and coloured forms from the pastrycook. And so it was with 
+the Crosbie marriage.
+
+The bride must leave the church in a properly appointed carriage, and 
+the postboys must have wedding favours. So the thing grew; not into 
+noble proportions, not into proportions of true glory, justifying the 
+attempt and making good the gala. A well-cooked rissole, brought 
+pleasantly to you, is good eating. A gala marriage, when everything is 
+in keeping, is excellent sport. Heaven forbid that we should have no 
+gala marriages. But the small spasmodic attempt, made in opposition to 
+manifest propriety, made with an inner conviction of failure-that 
+surely should be avoided in marriages, in dinners, and in all affairs 
+of life.
+
+There were bridesmaids and there was a breakfast. Both Margaretta and 
+Rosina came up to London for the occasion, as did also a first cousin 
+of theirs, one Miss Gresham, a lady whose father lived in the same 
+county. Mr Gresham had married a sister of Lord de Courcy's, and his 
+services were also called into requisition. He was brought up to give, 
+away the bride, because the earl-as the paragraph in the newspaper 
+declared-was confined at Courcy Castle by his old hereditary enemy, the 
+gout. A fourth bridesmaid also was procured, and thus there was a bevy, 
+though not so large a bevy as is now generally thought to be desirable. 
+There were only three or four carriages at the church, but even three 
+or four were something. The weather was so frightfully cold that the 
+light-coloured silks of the ladies carried with them a show of 
+discomfort. Girls should be very young to look nice in light dresses on 
+a frosty morning, and the bridesmaids at Lady Alexandrina's wedding 
+were not very young. Lady Rosina's nose was decidedly red. Lady 
+Margaretta was very wintry, and apparently very cross. Miss Gresham was 
+dull, tame, and insipid; and the Honourable Miss O'Flaherty, who filled 
+the fourth place, was sulky at finding that she had been invited to 
+take a share in so very lame a performance.
+
+But the marriage was made good, and Crosbie bore up against his 
+misfortunes like a man. Montgomerie Dobbs and Fowler Pratt both stood 
+by him, giving him, let us hope, some assurance that he was not 
+absolutely deserted by all the world-that he had not given himself up, 
+bound hand and foot, to the De Courcys, to be dealt with in all matters 
+as they might please. It was that feeling which had been so grievous to 
+him-and that other feeling, cognate to it, that if he should ultimately 
+succeed in rebelling against the De Courcys, he would find himself a 
+solitary man.
+
+"Yes; I shall go," Fowler Pratt had said to Montgomerie Dobbs. "I 
+always stick to a fellow if I can. Crosbie has behaved like a 
+blackguard, and like a fool also; and he knows that I think so. But I 
+don't see why I should drop him on that account. I shall go as he has 
+asked me."
+
+"So shall I," said Montgomerie Dobbs, who considered that he would be 
+safe in doing whatever Fowler Pratt did, and who remarked to himself 
+that after all Crosbie was marrying the daughter of an earl.
+
+Then, after the marriage, came the breakfast, at which the countess 
+presided with much noble magnificence. She had not gone to church, 
+thinking, no doubt, that she would be better able to maintain her good 
+humour at the feast, if she did not subject herself to the chance of 
+lumbago in the church. At the foot of the table sat Mr Gresham, her 
+brother-in-law, who had undertaken to give the necessary toast and make 
+the necessary speech. The Honourable John was there, saying all manner 
+of ill-natured things about his sister and new brother-in-law, because 
+he had been excluded from his proper position at the foot of the table. 
+But Alexandrina had declared that she would not have the matter 
+entrusted to her brother. The Honourable George would not come, because 
+the countess had not asked his wife.
+
+"Maria may be slow, and all that sort of thing," George had said; "but 
+she is my wife. And she had got what they haven't. Love me, love my 
+dog, you know." So he had stayed down at Courcy-very properly as I 
+think.
+
+Alexandrina had wished to go away before breakfast, and Crosbie would 
+not have cared how early an escape had been provided for him; but the 
+countess had told her daughter that if she would not wait for the 
+breakfast, there should be no breakfast at all, and in fact no wedding; 
+nothing but a simple marriage. Had there been a grand party, that going 
+away of the bride, and bridegroom might be very well; but the countess 
+felt that on such an occasion as this nothing but the presence of the 
+body of the sacrifice could give any reality to the festivity. So 
+Crosbie and Lady Alexandrina Crosbie heard Mr Gresham's speech, in 
+which he prophesied for the young couple an amount of happiness and 
+prosperity almost greater than is compatible with the circumstances of 
+humanity. His young friend Crosbie, whose acquaintance he had been 
+delighted to make, was well known as one of the rising pillars of the 
+State. Whether his future career might be parliamentary, or devoted to 
+the permanent Civil Service of the country, it would be alike great, 
+noble, and prosperous. As to his dear niece, who was now filling that 
+position in life which was most beautiful and glorious for a young 
+woman-she could not have done better. She had preferred genius to 
+wealth-so said Mr Gresham-and she would find her fitting reward. As to 
+her finding her fitting reward, whatever her preferences may have been, 
+there Mr Gresham was no doubt quite right. On that head I myself have 
+no doubt whatever. After that Crosbie returned thanks, making a much 
+better speech than nine men do out of ten on such occasions, and then 
+the thing was over. No other speaking was allowed, and within half an 
+hour from that time, he and his bride were in the post-chaise, being 
+carried away to the Folkestone railway station; for that place had been 
+chosen as the scene of their honeymoon. It had been at one time 
+intended that the journey to Folkestone should be made simply as the 
+first stage to Paris, but Paris and all foreign travelling had been 
+given up by degrees.
+
+"I don't care a bit about France-we have been there so often," 
+Alexandrina said.
+
+She had wished to be taken to Naples, but Crosbie had made her 
+understand at the first whispering of the word, that Naples was quite 
+out of the question. He must look now in all things to money. From the 
+very first outset of his career he must save a shilling wherever a 
+shilling could be saved. To this view of life no opposition was made by 
+the De Courcy interest. Lady Amelia had explained to her sister that 
+they ought so to do their honeymooning that it should not cost more 
+than if they began keeping house at once. Certain things must be done 
+which, no doubt, were costly in their nature. The bride must take with 
+her a well-dressed lady's-maid. The rooms at the Folkestone hotel must 
+be large, and on the first floor. A carriage must be hired for her use 
+while she remained; but every shilling must be saved the spending of 
+which would not make itself apparent to the outer world. Oh, deliver us 
+from the poverty of those who, with small means, affect a show of 
+wealth! There is no whitening equal to that of sepulchres whited as 
+they are whited!
+
+By the proper administration of a slight bribe Crosbie secured for 
+himself and his wife a compartment in the railway carriage to 
+themselves. And as he seated himself opposite to Alexandrina, having 
+properly tucked her up with all her bright-coloured trappings, he 
+remembered that he had never in truth been alone with her before. He 
+had danced with her frequently, and been left with her for a few 
+minutes between the figures. He had flirted with her in crowded 
+drawing-rooms, and had once found a moment at Courcy Castle to tell her 
+that he was willing to marry her in spite of his engagement with Lilian 
+Dale. But he had never walked with her for hours together as he had 
+walked with Lily. He had never talked to her about government, and 
+politics, and books, nor had she talked to him of poetry, of religion, 
+and of the little duties and comforts of life. He had known the Lady 
+Alexandrina for the last six or seven years; but he had never known 
+her-perhaps never would know her-as he had learned to know Lily Dale 
+within the space of two months.
+
+And now that she was his wife, what was he to say to her? They two had 
+commenced a partnership which was to make of them for the remaining 
+term of their lives one body and one flesh. They were to be all-in-all 
+to each other. But how was he to begin this all-in-all partnership? Had 
+the priest, with his blessing, done it so sufficiently that no other 
+doing on Crosbie's own part was necessary? There she was, opposite to 
+him, his very actual wife-bone of his bone; and what was he to, say to 
+her? As he settled himself on his seat, taking over his own knees a 
+part of a fine fur rug trimmed with scarlet, with which he had covered 
+her other mufflings, he bethought himself how much easier it would have 
+been to talk to Lily. And Lily would have been ready with all her ears, 
+and all her mind, and all her wit, to enter quickly upon whatever 
+thoughts had occurred to him. In that respect Lily would have been a 
+wife indeed-a wife that would have transferred herself with quick 
+mental activity into her husbands mental sphere. Had he begun about his 
+office Lily would have been ready for him, but Alexandrina had never 
+yet asked him a single question about his official life. Had he been 
+prepared with a plan for to-morrows happiness Lily would have taken it 
+up eagerly, but Alexandrina never cared for such trifles.
+
+"Are you quite comfortable?" he said, at last.
+
+"Oh, yes, quite, thank you. By-the-by, what did you do with my 
+dressing-case?"
+
+And that question she did ask with some energy.
+
+"It is under you. You can have it as foot-stool if you like it."
+
+"Oh, no; I should scratch it. I was afraid that if Hannah had it, it 
+might be lost." Then again there was silence, and Crosbie again 
+considered as to what he would next say to his wife.
+
+We all know the advice given us of old as to what we should do under 
+such circumstances; and who can be so thoroughly justified in following 
+that advice as a newly-married husband? So he put out his hand for hers 
+and drew her closer to him.
+
+"Take care of my bonnet," she said, as she felt the motion of the 
+railway carriage when he kissed her. I don't think he kissed her again 
+till he had landed her and her bonnet safely at Folkestone. How often 
+would he have kissed Lily, and how pretty would her bonnet have been 
+when she reached the end of her journey, and how delightfully happy 
+would she have looked when she scolded him for bending it! But 
+Alexandrina was quite in earnest about her bonnet; by far too much in 
+earnest for any appearance of happiness.
+
+So he sat without speaking, till the train came to the tunnel.
+
+"I do so hate tunnels," said Alexandrina.
+
+He had half intended to put out his hand again, under some mistaken 
+idea that the tunnel afforded him an opportunity. The whole journey was 
+one long opportunity, had he desired it; but his wife hated tunnels, 
+and so he drew his hand back again. Lily's little fingers would have 
+been ready for his touch. He thought of this, and could not help 
+thinking of it.
+
+He had The Times newspaper in his dressing-bag. She also had a novel 
+with her. Would she be offended if he took out the paper and read it? 
+The miles seemed to pass by very slowly; and there was still another 
+hour down to Folkestone. He longed for his Times, but resolved at last, 
+that he would not read unless she read first. She also had remembered 
+her novel; but by nature she was more patient than he, and she thought 
+that on such a journey any reading might perhaps be almost improper. So 
+she sat tranquilly, with her eyes fixed on the netting over her 
+husband's head.
+
+At last he could stand it no longer, and he dashed off into a 
+conversation, intended to be most affectionate and serious.
+
+"Alexandrina," he said, and his voice was well-tuned for the tender 
+serious manner, had her ears been alive to such tuning. "Alexandrina, 
+this is a very important step that you and I have taken today."
+
+"Yes; it is, indeed," said she.
+
+"I trust we shall succeed in making each other happy."
+
+"Yes; I hope we shall."
+
+"If we both think seriously of it, and remember that that is our chief 
+duty, we shall do so."
+
+"Yes, I suppose we shall. I only hope we shan't find the house very 
+cold. It is so new, and I am so subject to colds in my head. Amelia 
+says we shall find it very cold; but then she was always against our 
+going there."
+
+"The house will do very well," said Crosbie. And Alexandrina could 
+perceive that there was something of the master in his tone as he spoke.
+
+"I am only telling you what Amelia said," she replied.
+
+Had Lily been his bride, and had he spoken to her of their future life 
+and mutual duties, how she would have kindled to the theme! She would 
+have knelt at his feet on the floor of the carriage, and, looking up 
+into his face, would have promised him to do her best-her best-her very 
+best. And with what an eagerness of inward resolution would she have 
+determined to keep her promise. He thought of all this now, but he knew 
+that he ought not to think of it. Then, for some quarter of an hour, he 
+did take out his newspaper, and she, when she saw him do so, did take 
+out her novel.
+
+He took out his newspaper, but he could not fix his mind upon the 
+politics of the day. Had he not made a terrible mistake? Of what use to 
+him in life would be that thing of a woman that sat opposite to him? 
+Had not a great punishment come upon him, and had he not deserved the 
+punishment? In truth, a great punishment had come upon him. It was not 
+only that he had married a woman incapable of understanding the higher 
+duties of married life, but that he himself would have been capable of 
+appreciating the value of a woman who did understand them. He would 
+have been happy with Lily Dale; and therefore we may surmise that his 
+unhappiness with Lady Alexandrina would be the greater. There are men 
+who, in marrying such as Lady Alexandrina de Courcy, would get the 
+article best suited to them, as Mortimer Gazebee had done in marrying 
+her sister. Miss Griselda Grantly, who had become Lady Dumbello, though 
+somewhat colder and somewhat cleverer than Lady Alexandrina, had been 
+of the same sort. But in marrying her Lord Dumbello had got the article 
+best suited to him-if only the ill-natured world would allow him to 
+keep the article. It was in this that Crosbie's failure had been so 
+grievous-that he had seen and approved the better course, but had 
+chosen for himself to walk in that which was worse. During that week at 
+Courcy Castle-the week which he passed there immediately after his 
+second visit to Allington-he had deliberately made up his mind that he 
+was more fit for the bad course than for the good one. The course was 
+now before him, and he had no choice but to walk in it.
+
+It was very cold when they got to Folkestone, and Lady Alexandrina 
+shivered as she stepped into the private-looking carriage which had 
+been sent to the station for her use.
+
+"We shall find a good fire in the parlour at the hotel," said Crosbie.
+
+"Oh, I hope so," said Alexandrina, "and in the bedroom too."
+
+The young husband felt himself to be offended, but he hardly knew why. 
+He felt himself to be offended, and with difficulty induced himself to 
+go through all those little ceremonies the absence of which would have 
+been remarked by everybody. He did his work, however, seeing to all her 
+shawls and wrappings, speaking with good-nature to Hannah, and paying 
+special attention to the dressing-case.
+
+"What time would you like to dine?" he asked, as he prepared to leave 
+her alone with Hannah in the bedroom.
+
+"Whenever you please; only I should like some tea and bread-and-butter 
+presently."
+
+Crosbie went into the sitting-room, ordered the tea and 
+bread-and-butter, ordered also the dinner, and then stood himself up 
+with his back to the fire, in order that he might think a little of his 
+future career.
+
+He was a man who had long since resolved that his life should be a 
+success. It would seem that all men would so resolve, if the matter 
+were simply one of resolution. But the majority of men, as I take it, 
+make no such resolution, and very many men resolve that they will be 
+unsuccessful. Crosbie, however, had resolved on success, and had done 
+much towards carrying out his purpose. He had made a name for himself, 
+and had acquired a certain fame. That, however, was, as he acknowledged 
+to himself, departing from him. He looked the matter straight in the 
+face, and told himself that his fashion must be abandoned; but the 
+office remained to him. He might still rule over Mr Optimist, and make 
+a subservient slave of Butterwell. That must be his line in life now, 
+and to that, line he would endeavour to be true. As to his wife and his 
+home-he would look to them for his breakfast, and perhaps his dinner. 
+He would have, a comfortable arm-chair, and if Alexandrina should 
+become a mother he would endeavour to love his children; but above all 
+things he would never think of Lily. After that he stood and thought of 
+her for half an hour.
+
+"If you please, sir, my lady wants to know at what time you have 
+ordered dinner."
+
+"At seven, Hannah."
+
+"My lady says she is very tired, and will lie down till dinnertime."
+
+"Very well, Hannah. I will go into her room when it is time to dress. I 
+hope they are making you comfortable downstairs?"
+
+Then Crosbie strolled out on the pier in the dusk of the cold winter 
+evening.
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+JOHN EAMES AT HIS OFFICE
+
+
+Mr Crosbie and his wife went upon their honeymoon tour to Folkestone in 
+the middle of February, and returned to London about the end of March. 
+Nothing of special moment to the interests of our story occurred during 
+those six weeks, unless the proceedings of the young married couple by 
+the sea-side may be thought to have any special interest. With regard 
+to those proceedings I can only say that Crosbie was very glad when 
+they were brought to a close. All holiday-making is hard work, but 
+holiday-making with nothing to do is the hardest work of all. At the 
+end of March they went into their new house, and we will hope that Lady 
+Alexandrina did not find it very cold.
+
+During this time Lily's recovery from her illness was being completed. 
+She had no relapse-nor did anything occur to create a new fear on her 
+account. But, nevertheless, Dr Crofts gave it as his opinion that it 
+would be inexpedient to move her into a fresh house at Lady-day. March 
+is not a kindly month for invalids; and therefore with some regret on 
+the part of Mrs Dale, with much impatience on that of Bell, and with 
+considerable outspoken remonstrance from Lily herself, the squire was 
+requested to let them remain through the month of April. How the squire 
+received this request, and in, what way he assented to the doctor's 
+reasoning, will be told in the course of a chapter or two.
+
+In the meantime John Eames had continued his career in London without 
+much immediate satisfaction-to himself, or to the lady who boasted to 
+be his heart's chosen queen. Miss Amelia Roper, indeed, was becoming 
+very cross and in her ill-temper was playing a game that was tending to 
+create a frightful amount of hot water in Burton Crescent. She was 
+devoting herself to a flirtation with Mr Cradell, not only under the 
+immediate eyes of Johnny Eames, but also under those of Mrs Lupex. John 
+Eames, the blockhead, did not like it. He was above all things anxious 
+to get rid of Amelia and her claims; so anxious, that on certain, moody 
+occasions he would threaten himself with diverse tragical terminations 
+to his career in London. He would enlist. He would go to Australia. He 
+would blow out his brains. He would have "an explanation" with Amelia, 
+tell her that she was a vixen, and proclaim his hatred. He would rush 
+down to Allington and throw himself in despair at Lily's feet. Amelia, 
+was the bugbear of his life. Nevertheless, when she flirted with 
+Cradell, he did not like it, and was ass enough to speak to Cradell 
+about it.
+
+"Of course I don't care," he said, "only it seems to me that you are 
+making a fool of yourself."
+
+"I thought you wanted to get rid of her."
+
+"She's nothing on earth to me; only it does, you know-"
+
+"Does do what?," asked Cradell.
+
+"Why, if I was to be fal-lalling with that married woman, you wouldn't 
+like it. That's all about it. Do you mean to marry her?"
+
+"What!-Amelia?"
+
+"Yes; Amelia."
+"Not if I know it."
+
+"Then if I were you I would leave her alone. She's only making a fool 
+of you."
+
+Eames's advice may have been good, and the view taken by him of 
+Amelia's proceedings may have been correct; but as regarded his own 
+part in the affair, he was not wise. Miss Roper, no doubt, wished to 
+make him jealous; and she succeeded in the teeth of his aversion to her 
+and of his love elsewhere. He had no desire to say soft things to Miss 
+Roper. Miss Roper, with all her skill, could not extract a word 
+pleasantly soft from him one a week. But, nevertheless, soft words to 
+her and from her in another quarter made him uneasy. Such being the 
+case, must we not acknowledge that John Eames was still floundering in 
+the ignorance of his hobbledehoyhood?
+
+The Lupexes at this time still held their ground in the Crescent, 
+although repeated warnings to go had been given them. Mrs Roper, though 
+she constantly spoke of sacrificing all that they owed her, still 
+hankered, with a natural hankering, after her money. And as each 
+warning was accompanied by a demand for payment, and usually produced 
+some slight subsidy on account, the thing went on from week to week; 
+and at the beginning of April Mr and Mrs Lupex were still boarders at 
+Mrs Roper's house.
+
+Eames had heard nothing from Allington since the time of his Christmas 
+visit, and his subsequent correspondence with Lord de Guest. In his 
+letters from his mother he was told that game came frequently from 
+Guestwick Manor, and in this way he knew that he was not forgotten by 
+the earl. But of Lily he had heard not a word-except, indeed, the 
+rumour, which had now become general, that the Dale from the Small 
+House were about to move themselves into Guestwick. When first he 
+learned this he construed the tidings as favourable to himself, 
+thinking that Lily, removed from the grandeur of Allington, might 
+possibly be more easily within his reach; but, latterly, he had given 
+up any such hope as that, and was telling himself that his friend at 
+the Manor had abandoned all idea of making up the marriage. Three 
+months had already elapsed since his visit. Five months had passed 
+since Crosbie had surrendered his claim. Surely such a knave as Crosbie 
+might be forgotten in five months! If any steps could have been taken 
+through the squire, surely three months would have sufficed for them! 
+It was very manifest to him that there was no ground of hope for him at 
+Allington, and it would certainly be well for him to go off to 
+Australia. He would go to Australia, but he would thrash Cradell first 
+for having dared to interfere with Amelia Roper. That, generally, was, 
+the state of his mind during the first week in April.
+
+Then there came to him a letter from the earl which instantly effected 
+a great change in all his feelings; which taught him to regard 
+Australia as a dream, and almost put him into a good humour with 
+Cradell. The earl had by no means lost sight of his friend's interests 
+at Allington; and, moreover, those interests were now backed by an 
+ally, who in this matter must be regarded as much more powerful than 
+the earl. The squire had given in his consent to the Eames alliance.
+
+The earl's letter was as follows :-
+
+
+GUESTWICK MANOR, April , 18-.
+
+MY DEAR JOHN-I told you to write to me again, and you haven't done it. 
+I saw your mother the other day, or else you might have been dead for 
+anything I knew. A young man always ought to write letters when he is 
+told to do so.
+
+[Eames, when he had got so far, felt himself rather aggrieved by this 
+rebuke, knowing that he had abstained from writing to his patron simply 
+from an unwillingness to intrude upon him with his letters. "By Jove, 
+I'll write to him every week of his life, till he's sick of me," Johnny 
+said to himself when he found himself thus instructed as to a young 
+man's duties.]
+
+And now I have got to tell you a long story, and I should like it much 
+better if you were down here, so that I might save myself the trouble; 
+but you would think me ill-natured if I were to keep you waiting. I 
+happened to meet Mr Dale the other day, and he said that he should be 
+very glad if a certain young lady would make up her mind to listen to a 
+certain young friend of mine. So I asked him what he meant to do about 
+the young lady's fortune, and he declared himself willing to give her a 
+hundred a year during his life, and to settle four thousand pounds upon 
+her after his death. I said that I would do as much on my part by the 
+young man; but as two hundred a year, with your salary, would hardly 
+give you enough to begin with, I'll make mine a hundred and fifty. 
+You'll be getting up in your office soon, and with five hundred a year 
+you ought to be able to get along; especially as you need not insure 
+your life, I should live somewhere near Bloomsbury Square at first, 
+because I'm told you can get a house for nothing. After all, what's 
+fashion worth? You can bring your wife down here in the autumn, and 
+have some shooting. She won't let you go to sleep under the trees, I'll 
+be bound.
+
+But you must look after the young lady. You will understand that no one 
+has said a word to her about it; or, if they have, I don't know it. 
+You'll find the squire on your side. That's all. Couldn't you manage to 
+come down this Easter? Tell old Buffle, with my compliments, that I 
+want you. I'll write to him if you like it. I did know him at one time, 
+though I can't say I was ever fond of him. It stands to reason that you 
+can't get on with Miss Lily without seeing her; unless, indeed, you 
+like better to write to her, which always seems to me to be very poor 
+sort of fun. You'd much better come down, and go a-wooing in the 
+regular old-fashioned way. I need not tell you that Lady Julia will be 
+delighted to see you. You are a prime favourite with her since that 
+affair at the railway station. She thinks a great deal more about that 
+than she does about the bull.
+
+Now, my dear fellow, you know all about it, and I shall take it very 
+much amiss of you if you don't answer my letter soon.
+
+Your very sincere friend,
+
+DE GUEST.
+
+
+When Eames had finished this letter, sitting at his office-desk, his 
+surprise and elation were so great that he hardly knew where he was or 
+what he ought to do. Could it be the truth that Lily's uncle had not 
+only consented that the match should be made, but that he had also 
+promised to give his niece a considerable fortune? For a, few minutes 
+it seemed to Johnny as though all obstacles to his happiness were 
+removed, and that there was no impediment between him and an amount of 
+bliss of which he had hitherto hardly dared to dream. Then, when he 
+considered the earl's munificence, he almost cried. He found that he 
+could not compose his mind to think, or even his hand to write. He did 
+not know whether it would be right in him to accept such pecuniary 
+liberality from any living man, and almost thought that he should feel 
+himself bound to reject the earl's offer. As to the squire's money, 
+that he knew he might accept. All that comes in the shape of a young 
+woman's fortune may be taken by any man.
+
+He would certainly answer the earl's letter, and that at once. He would 
+not leave the office till he had done so. His friend should have cause 
+to bring no further charge against him of that kind. And then again he 
+reverted to the injustice which had been done to him in the matter of 
+letter-writing- as if that consideration were of moment in such a state 
+of circumstances as was now existing. But at last his thoughts brought 
+themselves to the real question at issue. Would Lily Dale accept him? 
+After all, the realisation of his good fortune depended altogether upon 
+her feelings; and, as he remembered this, his mind misgave him sorely. 
+It was filled not only with a young lover's ordinary doubts-with the 
+fear and trembling incidental to the bashfulness of hobbledehoyhood-but 
+with an idea that that affair with Crosbie would still stand in his 
+way. He did not, perhaps, rightly understand all that Lily, had 
+suffered, but he conceived it to be probable that there had been wounds 
+which even the last five months might not yet have cured. Could it be 
+that she would allow him to cure these wounds? As he thought of this he 
+felt almost crushed to the earth by an indomitable bashfulness and 
+conviction of his own unworthiness. What had he to offer worthy of the 
+acceptance of such a girl as Lilian Dale?
+
+I fear that the Crown did not get out of John Eames an adequate return 
+for his salary on that day. So adequate, however, had been the return 
+given by him for some time past, that promotion was supposed throughout 
+the Income-tax Office to be coming in his way, much to the jealousy of 
+Cradell, Fisher, and others, his immediate compeers and cronies. And 
+the place assigned to him by rumour was one which was, generally 
+regarded as a perfect Elysium upon earth in the Civil Service world. He 
+was, so rumour. said, to become private secretary to the First 
+Commissioner. He would be removed by such a change as this from the 
+large uncarpeted room in which he at present sat; occupying the same 
+desk with another man to whom he had felt himself to be: ignominiously 
+bound, as dogs must feel when they are coupled. This room had been the 
+bear-garden of the office. Twelve or fourteen men sat in it. Large 
+pewter pots were brought into it daily at one o'clock, giving it an air 
+that was not aristocratic. The senior of the room, one Mr Love, who was 
+presumed to have it under his immediate dominion, was a clerk of the 
+ancient stamp, dull, heavy, unambitious, living out on the farther side 
+of Islington, and unknown beyond the limits of his office to any of his 
+younger brethren. He was generally regarded as having given a bad tone 
+to the room. And then the clerks in this room would not unfrequently be 
+blown up-with very palpable blowings up-by an official swell, a certain 
+chief clerk, named Kissing, much higher in standing though younger in 
+age than the gentleman of whom we have before spoken. He would hurry 
+in, out of his own neighbouring chamber, with quick step and nose in 
+the air, shuffling in his office slippers, looking on each occasion as 
+though there were some cause to fear that the whole Civil Service were 
+coming to an abrupt termination, and would lay about him with hard 
+words, which some of those in the big room did not find it very easy to 
+bear. His hair was always brushed straight up, his eyes were always 
+very wide open-and he usually carried a big letter-book with him, 
+keeping, in it a certain place with his finger. This book was almost 
+too much for his strength, and he would flop it down, now on this man's 
+desk and now on that man's, and in along career of such floppings had 
+made himself to be very much hated. On the score of some old grudge he 
+and Mr Love did not speak to each other; and for this reason, on all 
+occasions of fault-finding, the blown-up young man would refer Mr 
+Kissing to his enemy.
+
+"I know nothing about it," Mr Love would say, not lifting his face from 
+his desk for a moment.
+
+"I shall certainly lay the matter before the Board,"-Mr Kissing would 
+reply, and would then shuffle out of the room with the big book.
+
+Sometimes Mr Kissing would lay the matter before the Board, and then 
+he, and Mr Love, and two or three delinquent clerks would be summoned 
+thither. It seldom led to much. The delinquent clerks would be 
+cautioned. One Commissioner would say a word in private to Mr Love, and 
+another a word in private to Mr Kissing. Then, when left alone, the 
+Commissioners would have their little jokes; saying that Kissing, they 
+feared, went by favour; and that Love should still be lord of all. But 
+these things were done in the mild days, before Sir Raffle Buffle came 
+to the Board.
+
+There had been some fun in this at first; but of late John Eames had 
+become tired of it. He disliked Mr Kissing, and the big book out of 
+which Mr Kissing was always endeavouring to convict him of some 
+official sin, and had got tired of that joke setting Kissing and Love 
+by the ears together. When the Assistant Secretary first suggested to 
+him that Sir Raffle had an idea of selecting him as private secretary, 
+and when he remembered the cosy little room, all carpeted, with a 
+leathern arm-chair and a separate washing-stand, which in such case 
+would be devoted to his use, and remembered also that he would be put 
+into receipt of an additional hundred a year, and would stand in the 
+way of still better promotion, he was overjoyed. But there were certain 
+drawbacks. The present private secretary-who had been private secretary 
+also to the late First Commissioner-was giving up his Elysium because 
+he could not endure the tones of Sir Raffle's voice. It was understood 
+that Sir Raffle required rather more of a private secretary, in the way 
+of obsequious attendance, than was desirable, and Eames almost doubted 
+his own fitness for the place.
+
+"And why should he choose me?" he had asked the Assistant Secretary.
+
+"Well, we have talked it over together, and I think that he prefers you 
+to any other that has been named."
+
+"But he was so very hard upon me about the affair at the railway 
+station."
+
+"I think he has heard more about that since; I think that some message 
+has reached him from your friend, Earl de Guest."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said Johnny, beginning to comprehend what it was to have 
+an earl for his friend. Since his acquaintance with the nobleman had 
+commenced, he had studiously avoided all mention of the earl's name at 
+his office; and yet he received almost daily intimation that the fact 
+was well known there, and not a little considered.
+
+"But he is so very rough," said Johnny.
+
+"You can put up with that," said his friend the Assistant Secretary 
+"His bark is worse than his bite, as you know, and then a hundred a 
+year is worth having."
+
+Eames was at that moment inclined to take a gloomy view of life in 
+general, and was disposed to refuse the place, should it be offered to 
+him. He had not then received the earl's letter; but now, as he sat 
+with that letter open before him, lying in the drawer beneath his desk 
+so that he could still read it as he leaned back in his chair, he was 
+enabled to look at things in general through a different atmosphere. In 
+the first place, Lilian Dale's husband ought to have a room to himself, 
+with a carpet and an arm-chair; and then that additional hundred a year 
+would raise his income at once to the sum as to which the earl had made 
+some sort of stipulation. But could he get that leave of absence at 
+Easter? If he consented to be Sir Raffle's private secretary, he would 
+make that a part of the bargain.
+
+At this moment the door of the big room was opened, and Mr Kissing 
+shuffled in with very quick little steps. He shuffled in, and coming 
+direct up to John's desk, flopped his ledger down upon it before its 
+owner had had time to close the drawer which contained the precious 
+letter.
+
+"What have you got in that drawer, Mr Eames?"
+
+"A private letter, Mr Kissing."
+
+"Oh-a private letter!" said Mr Kissing, feeling strongly convinced 
+there was a novel hidden there, but not daring to express his belief. 
+"I have been half the morning, Mr Eames, looking for this letter to the 
+Admiralty, and you've put it under S!" A bystander listening to Mr 
+Kissing's tone would have been led to believe that the whole Income-tax 
+Office was jeopardised by the terrible iniquity thus disclosed.
+
+"Somerset House," pleaded Johnny.
+
+"Psha-Somerset House! Half the offices in London-"
+
+"You'd better ask Mr Love," said Eames. "It's all done under his 
+special instructions." Mr Kissing looked at Mr Love; and Mr Love looked 
+steadfastly at his desk. "Mr Love knows all about the indexing," 
+continued Johnny. "He's index master general to the department."
+
+"No, I'm not, Mr Eames," said Mr Love, who rather liked John Eames, and 
+hated Mr Kissing with his whole heart. "But I believe the indexes, on 
+the whole, are very well done in this room. Some people don't know how 
+to find letters."
+
+"Mr Eames," began Mr Kissing, still pointing with a finger of bitter 
+reproach to the misused S, and. beginning an oration which was intended 
+for the benefit of the whole room, and for the annihilation of old Mr 
+Love, "if you have yet to learn that the word Admiralty begins with A 
+and not with S, you have much to learn which should have been acquired 
+before you first came into this office. Somerset House is not a 
+department." Then he turned round to the room at large, and repeated 
+the last words, as though they might become very useful if taken well 
+to heart-"Is not a department. The Treasury is a department; the Home 
+Office is a department; the India Board is a department-"
+
+"No, Mr Kissing, it isn't," said a young clerk from the other end of 
+the room.
+
+"You know very well what I mean, sir. The India Office is a department."
+
+"There's no Board, sir."
+
+"Never mind; but how any gentleman who has been in the service three 
+months-not to say three years-can suppose Somerset House to be a 
+department, is beyond my comprehension. If you have been improperly 
+instructed-"
+
+"We shall know all about it another time," said Eames. "Mr Love will 
+make a memorandum of it."
+
+"I shan't do anything of the kind," said Mr Love.
+
+"If you have been wrongly instructed-" Mr Kissing began again, stealing 
+a glance at Mr Love as he did so; but at this moment the door was again 
+opened, and a messenger summoned Johnny to the presence of the really 
+great man. "Mr Eames to wait upon Sir Raffle." Upon hearing this Johnny 
+immediately started, and left Mr Kissing and the big book in possession 
+of his desk. How the battle was waged, and how it raged in the large 
+room, we cannot stop to hear, as it is necessary that we should follow 
+our hero into the presence of Sir Raffle Buffle.
+
+"Ah, Eames-yes," said Sir Raffle, looking up from his desk when the 
+young man entered; "just wait half a minute, will you?" And the knight 
+went to work at his papers, as though fearing that any delay in what he 
+was doing might be very prejudicial to the nation at large. "Ah, 
+Eames-well-yes," he said again, as he pushed away from him, almost with 
+a jerk, the papers on which he had been writing. "They tell me that you 
+know the business of this office pretty well."
+
+"Some of it, sir," said Eames.
+
+"Well, yes; some of it. But you'll have to understand the whole of it 
+if you come to me. And you must be very sharp about it too. You know 
+that FitzHoward is leaving me?"
+
+"I have heard of it, sir."
+
+"A very excellent young man, though perhaps not-. But we won't mind 
+that. The work is a little too much for him, and he's going back into 
+the office. I believe Lord de Guest is a friend of yours; isn't he?"
+
+"Yes; he is a friend of mine, certainly. He's been very kind to me."
+
+"Ah, well. I've known the earl for many years-for very many years; and 
+intimately at one time. Perhaps you may have heard him mention my name?"
+
+"Yes, I have, Sir Raffle."
+
+"We were intimate once, but those things go off, you know. He's been 
+the country mouse and I've been the town mouse. Ha, ha, ha! You may 
+tell him that I say so. He won't mind that coming from me."
+
+"Oh, no; not at all," said Eames.
+
+"Mind you tell him when you see him. The earl is a man for whom I've 
+always had a great respect-a very great respect-I may say regard. And 
+now, Eames, what do you say to taking FitzHoward's place? The work is 
+hard. It is fair that I should tell you that. The work will, no doubt, 
+be very hard. I take a greater share of what's going than my 
+predecessors have done; and I don't mind telling you that I have been 
+sent here, because a man was wanted who would do that." The voice of 
+Sir Raffle, as he continued, became more and more harsh, and Eames 
+began to think how wise FitzHoward had been "I mean to do my duty, and 
+I shall expect that my private secretary will do his. But, Mr Eames, I 
+never forget a man. Whether he be good or bad, I never forget a man. 
+You don't dislike late hours, I suppose."
+
+"Coming late to the office you mean? Oh, no, not in the least."
+
+"Staying late-staying late. Six or seven o'clock if necessary-putting 
+your shoulder to the wheel when the coach gets into the mud. That's 
+what I've been doing all my life. They've known what I am very well. 
+They've always kept me for the heavy roads. If they paid, in the Civil 
+Service, by the hour, I believe I should have drawn a larger income 
+than any man in it. If you take the vacant chair in the next room 
+you'll find it's no joke. It's only fair that I should tell you that."
+
+"I can work as hard as any man," said Eames.
+
+"That's right. That's right. Stick to that and I'll stick to you. It 
+will be a great gratification to me to have by me a friend of my old 
+friend De Guest. Tell him I say so. And now you may as well get into 
+harness at once. FitzHoward is there. You can go in to him, and at 
+half-past four exactly I'll see you both. I'm very exact, mind-very-and 
+therefore you must be exact." Then Sir Raffle looked as though he 
+desired to be left alone.
+
+"Sir Raffle, there's one favour I want to ask of you," said Johnny.
+
+"And what's that?"
+
+"I am most anxious to be absent for a fortnight or three weeks, just at 
+Easter. I shall want to go in about ten days."
+
+"Absent for three weeks at Easter, when the parliamentary work is 
+beginning! That won't do for a private secretary."
+
+"But it's very important, Sir Raffle."
+
+"Out of the question, Eames; quite out of the question."
+
+"It's almost life and death to me."
+
+"Almost life and death. Why, what are you going to do?" With all his 
+grandeur and national importance, Sir Raffle would be very curious as 
+to little people.
+
+"Well, I can't exactly tell you, and I'm not quite sure myself."
+
+"Then don't talk nonsense. It's impossible that I should spare my 
+private secretary just at that time of the year. I couldn't do it. The 
+service won't admit of it. You're not entitled to leave at that season. 
+Private secretaries always take their leave in the autumn."
+
+"I should like to be absent in the autumn too, but-"
+
+"It's out of the question, Mr Eames."
+
+Then John Eames reflected that it behoved him in such an emergency to 
+fire off his big gun. He had a great dislike to firing this big gun 
+but, as he said to himself, there are occasions which make a big gun 
+very necessary. "I got a letter from Lord de Guest this morning, 
+pressing me very much to go to him at Easter. It's about business," 
+added Johnny. "If there was any difficulty, he said, he should write to 
+you."
+
+"Write to me," said Sir Raffle, who did not like to be approached too 
+familiarly in his office, even by an earl.
+
+"Of course I shouldn't tell him to do that. But, Sir Raffle, if I 
+remained out there, in the office," and Johnny pointed towards the big 
+room with his head, "I could choose April for my month. And as the 
+matter is so important to me, and to the earl-"
+
+"What can it be?" said Sir Raffle.
+
+"It's quite private," said John Eames.
+
+Hereupon Sir Raffle became very petulant, feeling that a bargain was 
+being made with him. This young man would only consent to become his 
+private secretary upon certain terms! "Well; go in to FitzHoward now. I 
+can't lose all my day in this way."
+
+"But I shall be able to get away at Easter?"
+
+"I don't know. We shall see about it. But don't stand talking there 
+now." Then John Eames went into FitzHoward's room, and received that 
+gentleman's congratulations on his appointment. "I hope you like being 
+rung for, like a servant, every minute, for he's always ringing that 
+bell. And he'll roar at you till you're deaf. You must give up all 
+dinner engagements, for though there is not much to do, he'll never let 
+you go. I don't think anybody ever asks him out to dinner, for he likes 
+being here till seven. And you'll have to write all manner of lies 
+about big people. And, sometimes, when he has sent Rafferty out about 
+his private business, he'll ask you to bring him his shoes." Now 
+Rafferty was the First Commissioner's messenger.
+
+It must be remembered, however, that this little account was given by 
+an outgoing and discomfited private secretary. "A man is not asked to 
+bring another man his shoes," said Eames to himself, "until he shows 
+himself fit for that sort of business." Then he made within his own 
+breast a little resolution about Sir Raffle's shoes.
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+THE NEW PRIVATE SECRETARY
+
+
+INCOME-TAX OFFICE, April 8, 18-.
+
+MY DEAR LORD DE GUEST-I hardly know how to answer your letter, it is so 
+very kind-more than kind. And about not writing before-I must explain 
+that I have not liked to trouble you with letters. I should have seemed 
+to be encroaching if I had written much. Indeed it didn't come from not 
+thinking about you. And first of all, about the money-as to your offer, 
+I mean. I really feel that I do not know what I ought to say to you 
+about it, without appearing to be a simpleton. The truth is, I don't 
+know what I ought to do, and can only trust to you not to put me wrong. 
+I have an idea that a man ought not to accept a present of money, 
+unless from his father, or somebody like that. And the sum you mention 
+is so very large that it makes me wish you had not named it. If you 
+choose to be so generous, would it not be better that you should leave 
+it me in your will?
+
+"So that he might always want me to be dying," said Lord de Guest, as 
+he read the letter out loud to his sister.
+
+"I'm sure he wouldn't want that," said Lady Julia. "But you may live 
+for twenty-five years, you know."
+
+"Say fifty," said the earl. And then he continued the reading of his 
+letter.
+
+But all that depends so much upon another person, that it is hardly 
+worth while talking about it. Of course I am very much obliged to Mr 
+Dale-very much indeed-and I think that he is behaving very handsomely 
+to his niece. But whether it will do me any good, that is quite another 
+thing. However, I shall certainly accept your kind invitation for 
+Easter, and find out whether I have a chance or not. I must tell you 
+that Sir Raffle Buffle has made me his private secretary, by which I 
+get a hundred a year. He says he was a great crony of yours many years 
+ago, and seems to like talking about you very much. You will understand 
+what all that means. He has sent you ever so many messages, but I don't 
+suppose you will care to get them. I am to go to him to-morrow and from 
+all I hear I shall have a hard time of it.
+
+"By George, he will," said the earl. "Poor fellow!"
+
+"But I thought a private secretary never had anything to do," said Lady 
+Julia.
+
+"I shouldn't like to be private secretary to Sir Raffle, myself. But 
+he's young, and a hundred a year is a great thing. How we all of us 
+used to hate that man. His voice sounded like a bell with a crack in 
+it. We always used to be asking for some one to muffle the Buffle. They 
+call him Huffle Scuffle at his office. Poor Johnny!" Then he finished 
+the letter:-
+
+I told him that I must have leave of absence at Easter, and he at first 
+declared that it was impossible. But I shall carry my point about that. 
+I would not stay away to be made private secretary to the Prime 
+Minister; and yet I almost feel that I might as well stay away for any 
+good that I shall do.
+
+Give my kind regards to Lady Julia, and tell her how very much obliged 
+to her I am. I cannot express the gratitude which I owe to you. But 
+pray believe me, my dear Lord de Guest, always very faithfully yours,
+
+JOHN EAMES.
+
+It was late before Eames had finished his letter. He had been making 
+himself ready for his exodus from the big room, and preparing his desk 
+and papers for his successor. About half-past five Cradell came up to 
+him, and suggested that they should walk home together.
+
+"What! you here still?" said Eames. "I thought you always went at 
+four." Cradell had remained, hanging about the office, in order that he 
+might walk home with the new private secretary. But Eames did not 
+desire this. He had much of which he desired to think alone, and would 
+fain have been allowed to walk by himself.
+
+"Yes; I had things to do. I say, Johnny, I congratulate you most 
+heartily; I do, indeed."
+
+"Thank you, old fellow!"
+
+"It is such a grand thing, you know. A hundred a year all at once! And 
+then such a snug room to yourself-and that fellow, Kissing, never can 
+come near you. He has been making himself such a beast all day. But, 
+Johnny, I always knew you'd come to something more than common. I 
+always said so."
+
+"There's nothing uncommon about this; except that Fitz says that old 
+Ruffle Scuffle makes himself uncommon nasty."
+
+"Never mind what Fitz says. It's all jealousy. You'll have it all your 
+own way, if you look sharp. I think you always do have it all your own 
+way. Are you nearly ready?"
+
+"Well-not quite. Don't wait for me, Caudle."
+
+"Oh, I'll wait. I don't mind waiting. They'll keep dinner for us if we 
+both stay. Besides, what matters? I'd do more than that for you."
+
+"I have some idea of working on till eight, and having a chop sent in," 
+said Johnny. "Besides-I've got somewhere to call, by myself."
+
+Then Cradell almost cried. He remained silent for two or three minutes, 
+striving to master his emotion; and at last, when he did speak, had 
+hardly succeeded in doing so. "Oh, Johnny," he said, "I know what that 
+means. You are going to throw me over because you are getting up in the 
+world. I have always stuck to you, through everything; haven't I?"
+
+"Don't make yourself a fool, Caudle."
+
+"Well; so I have. And if they had made me private secretary, I should 
+have been just the same to you as ever. You'd have found no change in 
+me."
+
+"What a goose you are. Do you say I'm changed, because I want to dine 
+in the city?"
+
+"It's all because you don't want to walk home with me, as we used to 
+do. I'm not such a goose but what I can see. But, Johnny-I suppose I 
+mustn't call you Johnny, now."
+
+"Don't be such a-con-founded-" Then Eames got up, and walked about the 
+room. "Come along," said he, I don't care about staying, and don't mind 
+where I dine." And he bustled away with his hat and gloves, hardly 
+giving Cradell time to catch him before he got out into the streets. "I 
+tell you what it is, Caudle," said he, "all that kind of thing is 
+disgusting."
+
+"But how would you feel," whimpered Cradell, who had never succeeded in 
+putting himself quite on a par with his friend, even in his own 
+estimation, since that glorious victory at the railway station. If he 
+could only have thrashed Lupex as Johnny had thrashed Crosbie; then 
+indeed they might have been equal-a pair of heroes. But he had not done 
+so. He had never told himself that he was a coward, but he considered 
+that circumstances had been specially unkind to him. "But how would you 
+feel," he whimpered, "if the friend whom you liked better than anybody 
+else in the world, turned his back upon you?"
+
+"I haven't turned my back upon you; except that I can't get you to walk 
+fast enough. Come along, old fellow, and don't talk confounded 
+nonsense. I hate all that kind of thing. You never ought to suppose 
+that a man will give himself airs, but wait till he does. I don't 
+believe I shall remain with old Scuffles above a month or two. From all 
+that I can hear that's as much as any one can bear."
+
+Then Cradell by degrees became happy and cordial, and during the whole 
+walk flattered Eames with all the flattery of which he was master. And 
+Johnny, though he did profess himself to be averse to "all that kind of 
+thing," was nevertheless open to flattery. When Cradell told him that 
+though FitzHoward could not manage the Tartar knight, he might probably 
+do so; he was inclined to believe what Cadell said. "And as to getting 
+him his shoes," said Cradell, "I don't suppose he'd ever think of 
+asking you to do such a thing, unless he was in a very great hurry, or 
+something of that kind."
+
+"Look here, Johnny," said Cradell, as they got into one of the streets 
+bordering on Burton Crescent, "you know the last thing in the world I 
+should like to do would be to offend you."
+
+"All right, Caudle," said Eames, going on, whereas his companion had 
+shown a tendency towards stopping.
+
+"Look here, now; if I have vexed you about Amelia Roper, I'll make you 
+a promise never to speak to her again."
+
+"D-- Amelia Roper," said Eames, suddenly stopping himself and stopping 
+Cradell as well. The exclamation was made in a deep angry voice which 
+attracted the notice of one or two who were passing. Johnny was very 
+wrong-wrong to utter any curse-very wrong to ejaculate that curse 
+against a human being; and especially wrong to fulminate it against a 
+woman-a woman whom he had professed to love! But he did do so, and I 
+cannot tell my story thoroughly without repeating the wicked word.
+
+Cradell looked up at him and stared. "I only meant to say," said 
+Cradell, "I'll do anything you like in the matter."
+
+"Then never mention her name to me again. And as to talking to her, you 
+may talk to her till you're both blue in the face, if you please."
+
+"Oh-I didn't know. You didn't seem to like it the other day."
+
+"I was a fool the other day-a confounded fool. And so I have been all 
+my life. Amelia Roper! Look here, Caudle; if she makes up to you this 
+evening, as I've no doubt she will, for she seems to be playing that 
+game constantly now, just let her have her fling. Never mind me; I'll 
+amuse myself with Mrs Lupex, or Miss Spruce."
+
+"But there'll be the deuce to pay with Mrs Lupex. She's as cross as 
+possible already whenever Amelia speaks to me. You don't know what a 
+jealous woman is, Johnny." Cradell had got upon what he considered to 
+be his high ground. And on that he felt himself equal to any man. It 
+was no doubt true that Eames had thrashed a man, and that he had not; 
+it was true also that Eames had risen to very high place in the social 
+world, having become a private secretary; but for a dangerous, 
+mysterious, overwhelming, life-enveloping intrigue-was not he the 
+acknowledged hero of such an affair? He had paid very dearly, both in 
+pocket and in comfort, for the blessing of Mrs Lupex's society; but he 
+hardly considered that he had paid too dearly. There are certain 
+luxuries which a man will find to be expensive; but, for all that, they 
+may be worth their price. Nevertheless as he went up the steps of Mrs 
+Roper's house he made up his mind that he would oblige his friend, The 
+intrigue might in that way become more mysterious, and more 
+life-enveloping; whereas it would not become more dangerous, seeing 
+that Mr Lupex could hardly find himself to be aggrieved by such a 
+proceeding.
+
+The whole number of Mrs Roper's boarders were assembled at dinner that 
+day. Mr Lupex seldom joined that festive board, but on this occasion he 
+was present, appearing from his voice and manner to be in high 
+good-humour. Cradell had communicated to the company in the 
+drawing-room the great good fortune which had fallen upon his friend, 
+and Johnny had thereby become the mark of a certain amount of 
+hero-worship.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs Roper. "An 'appy woman your mother will be when 
+she hears it. But I always said you'd come down right side uppermost."
+
+"Handsome is as handsome does," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"Oh, Mr Eames!" exclaimed Mrs Lupex, with graceful enthusiasm, "I wish 
+you joy from the very depth of my heart. It is such an elegant 
+appointment."
+
+"Accept the hand of a true and disinterested friend," said Lupex. And 
+Johnny did accept the hand, though it was very dirty and stained all 
+over with paint.
+
+Amelia stood apart and conveyed her congratulations by glance-or, I 
+might better say, by a series of glances. "And now-now will you not be 
+mine," the glances said; "now that you are rolling in wealth and 
+prosperity? "And then before they went downstairs she did whisper one 
+word to him. "Oh, I am so happy, John-so very happy."
+
+"Bother!" said Johnny, in a tone quite loud enough to reach the lady's 
+ear. Then making his way round the room, he gave his arm to Miss 
+Spruce. Amelia, as she walked downstairs alone, declared to herself 
+that she would wring his heart. She had been employed in wringing it 
+for some days past, and had been astonished at her own success. It had 
+been clear enough to her that Eames had been piqued by her overtures to 
+Cradell, and she had therefore to play out that game.
+
+"Oh, Mr Cradell," she said, as she took her seat next to him. "The 
+friends I like are the friends that remain always the same. I hate your 
+sudden rises. They do so often make a man upsetting."
+
+"I should like to try, myself, all the same," said Cradell.
+
+"Well, I don't think it would make any difference in you; I don't 
+indeed. And, of course, your time will come. too. It's that earl as has 
+done it-he that was worried by the bull. Since we have known an earl we 
+have been so mighty fine." And Amelia gave her head a little toss, and 
+then smiled archly, in a manner which, to Cradell's eyes, was really 
+very becoming. But he saw that Mrs Lupex was looking at him from the 
+other side of the table, and he could not quite enjoy the goods which 
+the gods had provided for him.
+
+When the ladies left the dining-room Lupex and the two young men drew 
+their chairs near the fire, and each prepared for himself a moderate 
+potation. Eames made a. little, attempt at leaving the room, but he was 
+implored by Lupex with such earnest protestations of friendship to 
+remain, and was so weakly fearful of being charged with giving himself 
+airs, that he did as he was desired.
+
+"And here, Mr Eames, is to your very good health," said Lupex, raising 
+to his mouth a steaming goblet of gin-and-water, and wishing you many 
+years to enjoy your official prosperity."
+
+"Thank ye," said Eames. "I don't know much about the prosperity, but 
+I'm just as much obliged."
+
+"Yes, sir; when I see a young man of your age beginning to rise in the 
+world, I know he'll go on. Now look at me, Mr Eames. Mr Cradell, here's 
+your very good health, and may all unkindness be drowned in the flowing 
+bowl. Look at me, Mr Eames. I've never risen in the world. I've never 
+done any good in the world, and never shall."
+
+"Oh, Mr Lupex, don't say that."
+
+"Ah, but I do say it. I've always been pulling the devil by the tail, 
+and never yet got as much as a good hold on to that. And I'll tell you 
+why; I never got a chance when I was young. If I could have got any big 
+fellow, a star, you know, to let me paint his portrait when I was your 
+age-such a one, let us say, as your friend Sir Raffle-"
+
+"What a star!" said Cradell.
+
+"Well, I suppose he's pretty much known in the world, isn't he? Or Lord 
+Derby, or Mr Spurgeon. You know what I mean. If I'd got such a chance 
+as that when I was young, I should never have been doing jobs of 
+scene-painting at the minor theatres at so much a square yard. You've 
+got the chance now, but I never had it."
+
+Whereupon Mr Lupex finished his first measure of gin-and-water.
+
+"It's a very queer thing-life is," continued Lupex; and, though he did 
+not at once go to work boldly at the mixing of another glass of toddy, 
+he began gradually, and as if by instinct, to finger the things which 
+would be necessary for that operation. "A very queer thing. Now, 
+remember, young gentlemen, I'm not denying that success in life will 
+depend upon good conduct-of course it does; but, then, how often good 
+conduct comes from success! Should I have been what I am now, do you 
+suppose, if some big fellow had taken me by the hand when I was 
+struggling to make an artist, of myself? I could have drunk claret and 
+champagne just as well as gin-and-water, and worn ruffles to my shirt 
+as gracefully as many a fellow who used to be very fond of me, and now 
+won't speak to me if he meets me in the streets. I never got a 
+chance-never."
+
+"But it's not too late yet, Mr Lupex," said Eames.
+
+"Yes, it is, Eames-yes, it is." And now Mr Lupex had grasped the 
+gin-bottle. "It's too late now. The game's over, and the match is lost. 
+The talent is here. I'm as sure of that now as ever I was. I've never 
+doubted my own ability-never for a moment. There are men this very day 
+making a thousand a year off their easels who haven't so good and true 
+an eye in drawing as I have, or so good a feeling in colours. I could 
+name them; only I won't."
+
+"And why shouldn't you try again?" said Eames.
+
+"If I were to paint the finest piece that ever delighted the eye of 
+man, who would come and look at it? Who would have enough belief in me 
+to come as far as this place and see if it were true? No, Eames; I know 
+my own position and my own ways, and I know my own weakness. I couldn't 
+do a day's work now, unless I were certain of getting a certain number 
+of shillings at the end of it. That's what a man comes to when things 
+have gone against him."
+
+"But I thought men got lots of money by scene-painting?"
+
+"I don't know what you may call lots, Mr Cradell; I don't call it lots. 
+But I'm not complaining. I know who I have to thank; and if ever I blow 
+my own brains out I shan't be putting the blame on the wrong shoulders. 
+If you'll take my advice,"-and now he turned round to Eames-"you'll 
+beware of marrying too soon in life."
+
+"I think a man should marry early, if he marries well," said Eames.
+
+"Don't misunderstand me," continued Lupex. "It isn't about Mrs L. I'm 
+speaking. I've always regarded my wife as a very fascinating woman."
+
+"Hear, hear, hear!" said Cradell, thumping the table.
+
+"Indeed she is," said Eames.
+
+"And when I caution you against marrying, don't you misunderstand me. 
+I've never said a word against her to any man, and never will. If a man 
+don't stand by his wife, whom will he stand by? I blame no one but 
+myself. But I do say this; I never had a chance-I never had a 
+chance-never had a chance." And as he repeated the words, for the third 
+time, his lips were already fixed to the rim of his tumbler.
+
+At this moment the door of the dining-room: was opened, and Mrs Lupex 
+put in her head.
+
+"Lupex," she said, "what are you doing?"
+
+"Yes, my dear. I can't say I'm doing anything at the present moment. I 
+was giving a little advice to these young gentlemen."
+
+"Mr Cradell, I wonder at you. And, Mr Eames, I wonder at you, too-in 
+your position! Lupex, come upstairs at once." She then stepped into the 
+room and secured the gin-bottle.
+
+"Oh, Mr Cradell, do come here," said Amelia, in her liveliest tone, as 
+soon as the men made their appearance above. "I've been waiting for you 
+this half-hour. I've got such a puzzle for you." And she made way for 
+him to a chair which was between herself and the wall. Cradell looked 
+half afraid of his fortunes as he took the proffered seat; but he did 
+take it, and was soon secured from any positive physical attack by the 
+strength and breadth of Miss Roper's crinoline.
+
+"Dear me! Here's a change," said Mrs Lupex, out loud.
+Johnny Eames was standing close, and whispered into her ear, "Changes 
+are so pleasant sometimes! Don't you think so? I do."
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+NEMESIS
+
+
+Crosbie had now settled down to the calm realities of married life, and 
+was beginning to think that the odium was dying away which for a week 
+or two had attached itself to him, partly on account of his usage of 
+Miss Dale, but more strongly in consequence of the thrashing which he 
+had received from John Eames. Not that he had in any way recovered his 
+former tone of life, or that he ever hoped to do so. But he was able to 
+go in and out of his club without embarrassment. He could talk with his 
+wonted voice, and act with his wonted authority at his office. He could 
+tell his friends, with some little degree of pleasure in the sound, 
+that Lady Alexandrina would be very happy to see them. And he could 
+make himself comfortable in his own chair after dinner, with his 
+slippers and his newspaper. He could make himself comfortable, or at 
+any rate could tell his wife that he did so.
+
+It was very dull. He was obliged to acknowledge to himself, when he 
+thought over the subject, that the life which he was leading was dull. 
+Though he could go into his club without annoyance, nobody there ever 
+thought of asking him to join them at dinner. It was taken for granted 
+that he was going to dine at home; and in the absence of any 
+provocation to the contrary, he always did dine at home. He had now 
+been in his house for three weeks, and had been asked with his wife to 
+a few bridal dinner-parties, given chiefly by friends of the De Courcy 
+family. Except on such occasions he never passed an evening out of his 
+own house, and had not yet, since his marriage, dined once away from 
+his wife. He told himself that his good conduct in this respect was the 
+result of his own resolution; but, nevertheless, he felt that there was 
+nothing else left, for him to do. Nobody asked him to go to the 
+theatre. Nobody begged him to drop in of an evening. Men never asked 
+him why he did not play a rubber. He would generally saunter into 
+Sebright's after he left his office, and lounge about the room for half 
+an hour, talking to a few men. Nobody was uncivil to him. But he knew 
+that the whole thing was changed, and he resolved, with some wisdom, to 
+accommodate himself to his altered circumstances.
+
+Lady Alexandrina also found her new life rather dull, and was sometimes 
+inclined to be a little querulous. She would tell her husband that she 
+never got out, and would declare, when he offered to walk with her, 
+that she did not care for walking in the streets. "I don't exactly see, 
+then, where you are to walk," he once replied. She did not tell him 
+that she was fond of riding, and that the Park was a very fitting place 
+for such exercise; but she looked it, and he understood her. "I'll do 
+all I can for her," he said to himself; "but I'll not ruin myself."
+
+"Amelia is coming to take me for a drive," she said another time. "Ah, 
+that'll be very nice," he answered. "No; it won't be very nice," said 
+Alexandrina. "Amelia is always shopping and bargaining with the 
+tradespeople. But it will be better than being kept in the house 
+without ever stirring out."
+
+They breakfasted nominally at half-past nine; in truth, it was always 
+nearly ten, as Lady Alexandrina found it difficult to get herself out 
+of her room. At half-past ten punctually he left his house for his 
+office. He usually got home by six, and then spent the greatest part of 
+the hour before dinner: in the ceremony of dressing. He went, at least, 
+into his dressing-room, after speaking a few words to his wife: and 
+there remained pulling things about, clipping his nails, looking over 
+any paper that came in his way, and killing the time. He expected his 
+dinner punctually at seven, and began to feel a little cross if he were 
+kept waiting. After dinner, he drank one glass of wine in company with 
+his wife, and one other by himself, during which latter ceremony he 
+would stare at the hot coals, and think of the thing he had done. Then 
+he would go upstairs, and have, first a cup of coffee, and then a cup 
+of tea. He would read his newspaper, open a book or two, hide his face 
+when he yawned, and try to make believe that he liked it. She had no 
+signs or words of love for him. She never sat on his knee, or caressed 
+him. She never showed him that any happiness had come to her in being 
+allowed to live close to him. They thought that they loved each 
+other-each thought so; but there was no love, no sympathy, no warmth. 
+The very atmosphere was cold-so cold that no fire could remove the 
+chill.
+
+In what way would it have been different had Lily Dale sat opposite to 
+him there as his wife, instead of Lady Alexandrina? He told himself 
+frequently that either with one or with the other life would have been 
+the same; that he had made himself for a while unfit for domestic life, 
+and that he must cure himself of that unfitness. But though he declared 
+this to himself in one set of half-spoken thoughts, he would also 
+declare to himself in another set, that Lily would have made the whole 
+house bright with her brightness; that had he brought her home to his 
+hearth, there would have been a sun shining on him every morning and 
+every evening. But, nevertheless, he strove to do his duty, and 
+remembered that the excitement of official life was still open to him. 
+From eleven in the morning till five in the afternoon he could still 
+hold a position which made it necessary that men should regard him with 
+respect, and speak to him with deference. In this respect he was better 
+off than his wife, for she had no office to which she could betake 
+herself.
+
+"Yes," she said to Amelia, "it is all very nice, and I don't mind the 
+house being damp; but I get so tired of being alone."
+
+"That must be the case with women who are married to men of business."
+
+"Oh, I don't complain. Of course I knew what I was about. I suppose it 
+won't be so very dull when everybody is up in London."
+
+"I don't find the season makes much difference to us after Christmas," 
+said Amelia; "but no doubt London is gayer in May. You'll find you'll 
+like it better next year; and perhaps you'll have a baby, you know."
+
+"Psha!" ejaculated Lady Alexandrina; "I don't want a baby, and don't 
+suppose I shall have one."
+
+"It's always something to do, you know."
+
+Lady Alexandrina, though she was not of an energetic temperament, could 
+not but confess to herself that she had made a mistake. She had been 
+tempted to marry Crosbie because Crosbie was a man of fashion, and now 
+she was told that the London season would make no difference to her-the 
+London season which had hitherto always brought to her the excitement 
+of parties, if it had not given her the satisfaction of amusement. She 
+had been tempted to marry at all because it appeared to her that a 
+married woman could enjoy society with less restraint than a girl who 
+was subject to her mother or her chaperon; that she would have more 
+freedom of action as a married woman; and now she was told that she 
+must wait for a baby before she could have anything to do. Courcy 
+Castle was sometimes dull, but Courcy Castle would have been better 
+than this.
+
+When Crosbie returned home after this little conversation about the 
+baby, he was told by his wife that they were to dine with the Gazebees 
+on the next Sunday. On hearing this he shook his head with vexation. He 
+knew, however, that he had no right to make complaint, as he had been 
+only taken. to St. John's Wood once since they had come home from their 
+marriage trip. There was, however, one point as to which he could 
+grumble. "Why, on earth, on Sunday?"
+
+"Because Amelia asked me for Sunday. If you are asked for Sunday, you 
+cannot say you'll go on Monday."
+
+"It is so terrible on a Sunday afternoon. At what hour?"
+
+"She said half-past five."
+
+"Heavens and earth! What are we to do all the evening?"
+
+"It is not kind of you, Adolphus, to speak in that way of my relations."
+
+"Come, my love, that's a joke; as if I hadn't heard you say the same 
+thing twenty times. You've complained of having to go up there much 
+more bitterly than I ever did. You know I like your sister, and, in his 
+way, Gazebee is a very good fellow; but after three or four hours, one 
+begins to have had enough of him."
+
+"It can't be much duller than it is-" but Lady Alexandrina stopped 
+herself before she finished her speech.
+
+"One can always read at home, at any rate," said Crosbie.
+
+"One can't always be reading. However, I have said you would go. If you 
+choose to refuse, you must write and explain."
+
+When the Sunday came the Crosbies of course did go to St. John's Wood, 
+arriving punctually at that door which he so hated at half-past five. 
+One of the earliest resolutions which he made when he first 
+contemplated the De Courcy match, was altogether hostile to the 
+Gazebees. He would see but very little of them. He would shake himself 
+free of that connection. It was not with that branch of the family that 
+he desired an alliance. But now, as things had gone, that was the only 
+branch of the family with which he seemed to be allied. He was always 
+hearing of the Gazebees. Amelia and Alexandrina were constantly 
+together. He was now dragged there to a Sunday dinner; and he knew that 
+he should often be dragged there-that he could not avoid such 
+draggings. He already owed money to Mortimer Gazebee, and was aware 
+that his affairs had been allowed to fall into that lawyer's hands in 
+such a way that he could not take them out again. His house was very 
+thoroughly furnished, and he knew that the bills had been paid; but he 
+had not paid them; every shilling had been paid through Mortimer 
+Gazebee.
+
+"Go with your mother and aunt, De Courcy," the attorney said to the 
+lingering child after dinner; and then Crosbie was left alone with his 
+wife's brother-in-law. This was the period of the St. John's Wood 
+purgatory which was so dreadful to him. With his sister-in-law he could 
+talk, remembering perhaps always that she was an earl's daughter. But 
+with Gazebee he had nothing in common. And he felt that Gazebee, who 
+had once treated him with great deference, had now lost all such 
+feeling. Crosbie had once been a man of fashion in the estimation of 
+the attorney, but that was all over. Crosbie, in the attorney's 
+estimation, was now simply the secretary of a public office-a man who 
+owed him money. The two had married sisters, and there was no reason 
+why the light of the prosperous attorney should pale before that of the 
+civil servant, who was not very prosperous. All this was understood 
+thoroughly by both the men.
+"There's terrible bad news from Courcy," said the attorney, as soon as 
+the boy was gone.
+
+"Why; what's the matter?"
+
+"Porlock has married-that woman, you know."
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+"He has. The old lady has been obliged to tell me, and she's nearly 
+broken-hearted about it. But that's not the worst of it to my mind. All 
+the world knows that Porlock had gone to the mischief. But he is going 
+to bring an action against his father for some arrears of his 
+allowance, and he threatens to have everything out in court, if he 
+doesn't get his money."
+
+"But is there money due to him?
+
+"Yes, there is. A couple of thousand pounds or so. I suppose I shall 
+have to find it. But, upon my honour, I don't know where it's to come 
+from; I don't, indeed. In one way or another, I've paid over fourteen 
+hundred pounds for you."
+
+"Fourteen hundred pounds!"
+
+"Yes, indeed-what with the insurance and the furniture, and the bill 
+from our house for the settlements. That's not paid yet, but it's the 
+same thing. A man doesn't get married for nothing, I can tell you."
+
+"But you've got security."
+
+"Oh, yes; I've got security. But the thing is the ready money. Our 
+house has advanced so much on the Courcy property, that they don't like 
+going any further; and therefore it is that I have to do this myself. 
+They'll all have to go abroad-that'll be the end of it. There's been 
+such a scene between the earl and George. George lost his temper and 
+told the earl that Porlock's marriage was his fault. It has ended in 
+George with his wife being turned out."
+
+"He has money of his own."
+
+"Yes, but he won't spend it. He's coming up here, and we shall find him 
+hanging about us. I don't mean to give him a bed here, and I advise you 
+not to do so either. You'll not get rid of him if you do."
+
+"I have the greatest possible dislike to him."
+
+"Yes; he's a bad fellow. So is John. Porlock was the best, but he's 
+gone altogether to ruin. They've made a nice mess of it between them; 
+haven't they?"
+
+This was the family for whose sake Crosbie had jilted Lily Dale! His 
+single and simple ambition had been that of being an earl's son-in-law. 
+To achieve that it had been necessary that he should make himself a 
+villain. In achieving it he had gone through all manner of dirt and 
+disgrace. He had married a woman whom he knew he did not love. He was 
+thinking almost hourly of a girl whom he had loved, whom he did love, 
+but whom he had so injured, that, under no circumstances, could he be 
+allowed to speak to her again. The attorney there-who sat opposite to 
+him, talking about his thousands of pounds with that disgusting assumed 
+solicitude which such men put on, when they know very well what they 
+are doing-had made a similar marriage. But he had known what he, was 
+about. He had got from his marriage all that he had expected. But what 
+had Crosbie got?
+
+"They're a bad set-a bad set," said he in his bitterness.
+
+"The men are," said Gazebee, very comfortably.
+
+"H-m," said Crosbie. It was manifest to Gazebee that his friend was 
+expressing a feeling that the women, also, were not all that they 
+should be, but he took no offence, though some portion of the censure 
+might thereby be supposed to attach to his own wife.
+
+"The countess means well," said Gazebee. "But she's had a hard life of 
+it-a very hard life. I've heard him call her names that would frighten 
+a coalheaver. I have, indeed. But he'll die soon, and then she'll be 
+comfortable. She has three thousand a year jointure."
+
+He'll die soon, and then she'll be comfortable! That was one phase of 
+married life. As Crosbie's mind dwelt upon the words, he remembered 
+Lily's promise made in the fields, that she would do everything for 
+him. He remembered his kisses; the touch of her fingers; the low 
+silvery laughing voice; the feel of her dress as she would press close 
+to him. After that he reflected whether it would not be well that he 
+too should die, so that Alexandrina might be comfortable. She and her 
+mother might be very comfortable together, with plenty of money, at 
+Baden Baden!
+
+The squire at Allington, and Mrs Dale, and Lady Julia de Guest, had 
+been, and still were, uneasy in their minds because no punishment had 
+fallen upon Crosbie-no vengeance had overtaken him in consequence of 
+his great sin. How little did they know about it! Cold he have been 
+prosecuted and put into prison, with hard labour, for twelve months, 
+the punishment would not have been heavier. He would, in that case, at 
+any rate, have been saved from Lady Alexandrina.
+
+"George and his wife are coming up to town; couldn't we ask them to 
+come to us for a week or so?" said his wife to him, as soon as they 
+were in the fly together, going home.
+
+"No," shouted Crosbie; "we will do no such thing." There was not 
+another word said on the subject-nor on any other subject till they got 
+home. When they reached their house Alexandrina had a headache, and 
+went up to her room immediately. Crosbie threw himself into a chair 
+before the remains of a fire in the dining-room, and resolved that he 
+would cut the whole De Courcy family together. His wife, as his wife, 
+should obey him. She should obey him-or else leave him and go her way 
+by herself, leaving him to go his way. There was an income of twelve 
+hundred a year. Would it not be a fine thing for him if he could keep 
+six hundred for himself and return to his old manner of life. All his 
+old comforts of course he would not have-nor the old esteem and regard 
+of men. But the luxury of a club dinner he might enjoy. Un-embarrassed 
+evenings might be his-with liberty to him to pass them as he pleased. 
+He knew many men who were separated from their wives, and who seemed to 
+be as happy as their neighbours. And then he remembered how ugly 
+Alexandrina had been this evening, wearing a great tinsel coronet full 
+of false stones, with a cold in her head which had reddened her nose. 
+There had, too, fallen upon her in these her married days a certain 
+fixed dreary dowdiness. She certainly was very plain! So he said to 
+himself, and then he went to bed. I myself am inclined to think that 
+his punishment was sufficiently severe.
+
+The next morning his wife still complained of headache, so that he 
+breakfasted alone. Since that positive refusal which he had given to 
+her proposition for inviting her brother, there had not been much 
+conversation between them. "My head is splitting, and Sarah shall bring 
+some tea and toast up to me, if you will not mind it."
+
+He did not mind it in the least, and ate his breakfast by himself, with 
+more enjoyment than usually attended that meal.
+
+It was clear to him that all the present satisfaction of his life must 
+come to him from his office work. There are men who find it difficult 
+to live without some source of daily comfort, and he was such a man. He 
+could hardly endure his life unless there were some page in it on which 
+he could look with gratified eyes. He had always liked his work, and he 
+now determined that he would, like it better than ever. But in order 
+that he might do so it was necessary that he should have much of his 
+own way. According to the theory of his office, it was incumbent on him 
+as Secretary simply to take the orders of the Commissioners, and see 
+that they were executed; and to such work as this his predecessor had 
+strictly confined himself. But he had already done, more than this, and 
+had conceived the ambition of holding the Board almost under his thumb. 
+He flattered himself that he knew his own work and theirs better than 
+they knew either, and that by a little management he might be their 
+master. It is not impossible that such might have been the case had 
+there been no fracas at the Paddington station; but, as we all know, 
+the dominant cock of the farmyard must be ever dominant. When he shall 
+once have had his wings so smeared with mud as to give him even the 
+appearance of adversity, no other cock will ever respect him again. Mr 
+Optimist and Mr Butterwell knew very well that their secretary had been 
+cudgelled, and they could not submit themselves to a secretary who had 
+been so treated.
+
+"Oh, by-the-by, Crosbie," said Butterwell, coming into his room, soon 
+after his arrival at his office on that day of his solitary breakfast, 
+"I want to say just a few words to you." And Butterwell turned round 
+and closed the door, the lock of which had not previously been 
+fastened. Crosbie, without much thinking, immediately foretold himself 
+the nature of the coming conversation.
+
+"Do you know-" said Butterwell, beginning.
+
+"Sit down, won't you?" said Crosbie, seating himself as he spoke. If 
+there was to be a contest, he would make the best fight he could. He 
+would show a better spirit here than he had done on the railway 
+platform. Butterwell did sit down and felt as he did so, that the very 
+motion of sitting took away some of his power. He ought to have sent 
+for Crosbie into his own room. A man, when he wishes to reprimand 
+another, should always have the benefit of his own atmosphere.
+
+"I don't want to find any fault," Butterwell began.
+
+"I hope you have not any cause," said Crosbie.
+
+"No, no; I don't say that I have. But we think at the Board-"
+
+"Stop, stop, Butterwell. If anything unpleasant is coming, it had 
+better come from the Board. I should take it in better spirit; I 
+should, indeed."
+
+"What takes place at the Board must be official."
+
+"I should not mind that in the least. I should rather like it than 
+otherwise."
+
+"It simply amounts to this-that we think you are taking a little too 
+much on yourself. No doubt, it's a fault on the right side, and arises 
+from your wishing to have the work well done."
+
+"And if I don't do it, who will?" asked Crosbie.
+
+"The Board is very well able to get through all that appertains to it. 
+Come, Crosbie, you and I have known each other a great many years, and 
+it would be pity that we should have any words. I have come to you in 
+this way because it would be disagreeable to you to have any question 
+raised officially. Optimist isn't given to being very angry, but he was 
+downright angry yesterday. You had better take what I say in good part, 
+and go along a little quieter."
+
+But Crosbie was not in a humour to take anything quietly. He was sore 
+all over, and prone to hit out at everybody that he met. "I have done 
+my duty to the best of my ability, Mr Butterwell," he said, "and I 
+believe I have done it well. I believe I know my duty here as well as 
+any one can teach me. If I have done more than my share of work, it is 
+because other people have done less than theirs". As he spoke, there 
+was a black cloud upon his brow, and the Commissioner could perceive 
+that the Secretary was very wrathful.
+
+"Oh! very well," said Butterwell, rising from his chair. "I can only, 
+under such circumstances, speak to the Chairman, and he will tell you 
+what he thinks at the Board. I think you're foolish; I do, indeed. As 
+for myself, I have only meant to act kindly by you." After that, Mr 
+Butterwell took himself off.
+
+On the same afternoon, Crosbie was summoned into the Board-room in the 
+usual way, between two and three. This was a daily occurrence, as he 
+always sat for about an hour with two out of the three Commissioners, 
+after they had fortified themselves with a biscuit and a glass of 
+sherry. On the present occasion, the usual amount of business was 
+transacted, but it was done in a manner which made Crosbie feel that 
+they did not all stand together on their usual footing. The three 
+Commissioners were all there. The Chairman gave his directions in a 
+solemn, pompous voice, which was by no means usual to him when he was 
+in good humour. The Major said little or nothing; but there was agleam 
+of satisfied sarcasm in his eye. Things were going wrong at the Board, 
+and he was pleased.
+
+Mr Butterwell was exceedingly civil in his demeanour, and rather more 
+than ordinarily brisk. As soon as the regular work of the day was over, 
+Mr Optimist shuffled about on his chair, rising from his seat, and then 
+sitting down again. He looked through a lot of papers close to his 
+hand, peering at them over his spectacles. Then he selected one, took 
+off his spectacles, leaned back in his chair, and began his little 
+speech.
+
+"Mr Crosbie," he said, "we are all very much gratified-very much 
+gratified, indeed-by your zeal and energy in the service."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Crosbie; "I am fond of the service."
+
+"Exactly, exactly; we all feel that. But we think that you-if I were to 
+say take too much upon yourself, I should say, perhaps, more than we 
+mean."
+
+"Don't say more than you mean, Mr Optimist." Crosbie's eyes, as he 
+spoke, gleamed slightly with his momentary triumph; as did also those 
+of Major Fiasco.
+
+"No, no, no," said Mr Optimist; "I would say rather less than more to 
+so very good a public servant as yourself. But you, doubtless, 
+understand me?"
+
+"I don't think I do quite, sir. If I have not taken too much on me, 
+what is it that I have done that I ought not to have done?"
+
+"You have given directions in many cases for which you ought first to 
+have received authority. Here is an instance," and the selected paper 
+was at once brought out.
+
+It was a matter in which the Secretary had been manifestly wrong 
+according to written law, and he could not defend it on its own merits.
+
+"If you wish me," said he, "to confine myself exactly to the positive 
+instructions of the office, I will do so; but I think you will find it 
+inconvenient."
+
+"It will be far the best" said Mr Optimist.
+
+"Very well," said Mr Crosbie, "it shall be done." And he at once 
+determined to make himself as unpleasant to the three gentlemen in the 
+room as he might find it within his power to do. He could make himself 
+very unpleasant, but the unpleasantness would be as much. to him as to 
+them.
+
+Nothing would now go right with him. He could look in no direction for 
+satisfaction. He sauntered into Sebright's, as he went home, but he 
+could not find-words to speak to any one about the little matters of 
+the day. He went home, and his wife, though she was up, complained 
+still of her headache.
+
+"I haven't been out of the house all day," she said, "and that has made 
+it worse."
+
+"I don't know how you are to get out if you won't walk," he answered.
+
+Then there was no more said between them till they sat down to their 
+meal.
+
+Had the squire at Allington known all, he might, I think, have been 
+satisfied with the punishment which Crosbie had encountered.
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+PREPARATIONS FOR GOING
+
+
+"Mamma, read that letter."
+
+It was Mrs Dale's eldest daughter who spoke to her, and they were alone 
+together in the parlour at the Small House. Mrs Dale took the letter 
+and read it very carefully. She then put it back into its envelope and 
+returned it to Bell.
+
+"It is, at any rate, a good letter, and, as I believe, tells the truth."
+
+"I think it tells a little more than the truth, mamma. As you say, it 
+is a well-written letter. He always writes well when he is in earnest. 
+But yet-"
+
+"Yet what, my dear?"
+
+"There is more head than heart in it."
+
+"If so, he will suffer the less; that is, if you are quite resolved in 
+the matter."
+
+"I am quite resolved, and I do not think he will suffer much. He would 
+not, I suppose, have taken the trouble to write like that, if he did 
+not wish this thing."
+
+"I am quite sure that he does wish it, most earnestly; and that he will 
+be greatly disappointed."
+
+"As he would be if any other scheme did not turn out to his 
+satisfaction; that is all."
+
+The letter, of course, was from Bell's cousin Bernard, and containing 
+the strongest plea he was able to make in favour, of his suit for her 
+hand. Bernard Dale was better able to press such a plea by letter than 
+by spoken words. He was a man capable of doing anything well in the 
+doing of, which a little time for consideration might be given to him; 
+but he had. not in him that power of passion which will force a man to 
+eloquence in asking for that which he desires to obtain. His letter on 
+this occasion was long, and well argued. If there was little in it of 
+passionate love, there was much of pleasant flattery. He told Bell how 
+advantageous to both their families their marriage would be; he 
+declared to her, that his own feeling in the matter had been rendered 
+stronger by absence; he alluded without boasting to his past career of 
+life as her best guarantee for his future conduct; he explained to her 
+that if this marriage could be arranged there need then, at any rate, 
+be no further question as to his aunt removing with Lily from the Small 
+House; and then he told her that his affection for herself was the 
+absorbing passion of his existence. Had the letter been written with 
+the view of obtaining from a third person a favourable verdict as to 
+his suit, it would have been a very good letter indeed; but there vas 
+not a word in it that could stir the heart of such a girl as Bell Dale.
+
+"Answer him kindly," Mrs Dale said.
+
+"As kindly as I know how," said Bell. "I wish you would write the 
+letter, mamma."
+
+"I fear that would not do. What I should say would only tempt him to 
+try again."
+Mrs Dale knew very well-had known for some months past-that Bernard's 
+suit was hopeless. She felt certain, although the matter had not been 
+discussed between them, that whenever Dr Crofts might choose to come 
+again and ask for her daughter's hand he would not be refused. Of the 
+two men she probably liked Dr Crofts the best; but she liked them both, 
+and she could not but remember that the one, in a worldly point of 
+view, would be a very poor match, whereas the other would, in all 
+respects, be excellent. She would not, on any account, say a word to 
+influence her daughter, and knew, moreover, that no word which she 
+could say would influence her; but she could not divest herself of some 
+regret that it should be so.
+
+"I know what you would wish, mamma," said Bell.
+
+"I have but one wish, dearest, and that is for your happiness. May God 
+preserve you from any such fate as Lily's. When I tell you to write 
+kindly to your cousin, I simply mean that II think him to have deserved 
+a kind reply by his honesty."
+
+"It shall be as kind as I can make it, mamma; but you know what the 
+lady says in the play-how hard it is to take the sting from that word 
+'no.'" Then Bell walked out alone for a while, and on her return got 
+her desk and wrote her letter. It was very firm and decisive. As for 
+that wit which should pluck the sting "from such a sharp and waspish 
+word as 'no,'" I fear she had it not. "It will be better to make him 
+understand that I, also, am in earnest," she said to herself; and in 
+this frame of mind she wrote her letter. "Pray do not allow yourself to 
+think that what I have said is unfriendly," she added, in a postscript. 
+"I know how good you are, and I know the great value of what I refuse; 
+but in this matter it must be my duty to tell you the simple truth."
+
+It had been decided between the squire and Mrs Dale that the removal 
+from the Small House to Guestwick was not to take place till the first 
+of May. When he had been made to understand that Dr Crofts had thought 
+it injudicious that Lily should be taken out of their present house in 
+March, he had used all the eloquence of which he was master to induce 
+Mrs Dale to consent to abandon her project. He had told her that he had 
+always considered that house as belonging, of right, to some other of 
+the family than himself; that it had always been so inhabited, and that 
+no squire of Allington had for years past taken rent for it. "There is 
+no favour conferred-none at all," he had said; but speaking 
+nevertheless in his usual sharp, ungenial tone.
+
+"There is a favour, a great favour, and great generosity," Mrs Dale had 
+replied. "And I have never been too proud to accept it; but when I tell 
+you that we think we shall be happier at Guestwick, you will not, 
+refuse to let us go. Lily has had a great blow in that house, and Bell 
+feels that she is running counter to your wishes on her behalf-wishes 
+that are so very kind!''
+
+"No more need be said about that. All that may come right yet, if you 
+will remain where you are."
+
+But Mrs Dale knew that "all that" could never come right, and 
+persisted. Indeed, she would hardly have dared to tell her girls that 
+she had yielded to the squire's entreaties. It was. just then, at that 
+very, time, that the squire was, as it were, in treaty with the earl 
+about Lily's fortune; and he did feel it hard that, he should be 
+opposed in such a way by his own relatives at the moment when he was 
+behaving towards them with so much generosity. But in his arguments 
+about the house he said nothing of Lily, or her future prospects.
+
+They were to move on the first of May, and one week of April was 
+already past. The squire had said nothing further on the matter after 
+the interview with Mrs Dale to which allusion has just been made. He 
+was vexed and sore at the separation, thinking that he, was ill-used, 
+by the feeling, which was displayed by this refusal. He had done his 
+duty by them, as he thought; indeed more than his duty, and now they 
+told him that they were leaving him because they could no longer bear 
+the weight of an obligation conferred by his hands. But in truth he did 
+not understand them; nor did they understand him. He had been hard in 
+his manner, and had occasionally domineered, not feeling that his 
+position, though it gave him all the privileges of a near and a dear 
+friend, did not give him the authority of a father or a husband. In 
+that matter of Bernard's proposed marriage he had spoken as though Bell 
+should have considered his wishes before she refused her cousin. He had 
+taken upon himself to scold Mrs Dale, and had thereby given offence to 
+the girls, which they at the time had found it utterly impossible to 
+forgive.
+
+But they were hardly better satisfied in the matter than was he; and 
+now that the time had come, though they could not bring themselves to 
+go back from their demand, almost felt that they were treating the 
+squire with cruelty. When their decision had been made-while it had 
+been making-he had been stern and hard to them. Since that he had been 
+softened by Lily's misfortune, and softened also by the anticipated 
+loneliness which would come upon him when they should be gone from his 
+side. It was hard upon him that they should so treat him when he was 
+doing his best for them all! And they also felt this, though they did 
+not know the extent to which he was anxious to go in serving them. When 
+they had sat round the fire planning the scheme of their removal, their 
+hearts had been hardened against him, and they had resolved to assert 
+their independence. But now, when the time for action had come, they 
+felt that their grievances against him had already been in a great 
+measure assuaged. This tinged all that they did with a certain sadness; 
+but still they continued their work.
+
+Who does not know how terrible are those preparations for 
+house-moving-how infinite in number are the articles which must be 
+packed, how inexpressibly uncomfortable is the period of packing, and 
+how poor and tawdry is the aspect of one's belongings while they are 
+thus in a state of dislocation? Nowadays people who understand the 
+world, and have money commensurate with their understanding, have 
+learned the way of shunning all these disasters, and of leaving the 
+work to the hands of persons paid for doing it. The crockery is left in 
+the cupboards, the books on the shelves, the wine in the bins, the 
+curtains in their poles, and the family that is understanding goes for 
+a fortnight to Brighton. At the end of that time the crockery is 
+comfortably settled in other cupboards, the books on other shelves, the 
+wine in other bins, the curtains are hung on other poles, and all is 
+arranged. But Mrs Dale and her daughters understood nothing of such a 
+method of moving as this. The assistance of the village carpenter in 
+filling certain cases that he had made was all that they knew how to 
+obtain beyond that of their own two servants. Every article had to pass 
+through the hands of some one of the family; and as they felt almost 
+overwhelmed by the extent of the work to be done, they began it much 
+sooner than was necessary, so that it became evident as they advanced 
+in their work, that they would have to pass a dreadfully dull, stupid, 
+uncomfortable week at last, among their boxes and cases, in all the 
+confusion of dismantled furniture.
+
+
+At first an edict had gone forth that Lily was to do nothing. She was 
+an invalid, and was to be petted and kept quiet. But this edict soon 
+fell to the ground, and Lily worked harder than either her mother or 
+her sister. In truth she was hardly an invalid any longer, and would 
+not submit to an invalid's treatment. She felt herself that for the 
+present constant occupation could alone save her from the misery of 
+looking back-and she had conceived an idea that the harder that 
+occupation was, the better it would be for her. While pulling down the 
+books, and folding the linen, and turning out from their old 
+hiding-places the small long-forgotten properties of the household, she 
+would be as gay as ever she had been in old times. She would talk over 
+her work, standing with flushed cheek and laughing eyes among the dusty 
+ruins around her, till for a moment her mother would think that all was 
+well within her. But then at other moments, when the reaction came, it 
+would seem as though nothing were well. She could not sit quietly over 
+the fire, with quiet rational work in her hands, and chat in a rational 
+quiet way. Not as yet could she do so. Nevertheless it was well with 
+her-within her own bosom. She had declared to herself that she would 
+conquer her misery-as she had also declared to herself during her 
+illness that her misfortune should not kill her-and she was in the way 
+to conquer it. She told herself that the world was not over for her 
+because her sweet hopes had been frustrated. The wound had been deep 
+and very sore, but the flesh of the patient had been sound and healthy, 
+and her blood pure. A physician having knowledge in such cases would 
+have declared, after long watching of her symptoms, that a cure was 
+probable. Her mother was the physician who watched her with the closest 
+eyes; and she, though she was sometimes driven to doubt, did hope, with 
+stronger hope from day to day, that her child might live to remember 
+the story of her love without abiding agony.
+
+
+That nobody should talk to her about it-that had been the one 
+stipulation which she had seemed to make, not sending forth a request 
+to that effect among her friends in so many words, but showing by 
+certain signs that such was her stipulation. A word to that effect she 
+had spoken to her uncle-as may be remembered, which word had been 
+regarded with the closest obedience. She had gone out into her little 
+world very soon after the news of Crosbie's falsehood had reached 
+her-first to church and then among the people of the village, resolving 
+to carry herself as though no crushing weight had fallen upon her. The 
+village people had understood it all, listening to her and answering 
+her without the proffer of any outspoken parley.
+
+"Lord bless ee," said Mrs Crump, the postmistress-and Mrs Crump was 
+supposed to have the sourest temper in Allington-"whenever I look at 
+thee, Miss Lily, I thinks that surely thee is the beautifulest young 
+'ooman in all these parts."
+
+"And you are the crossest old woman," said Lily, laughing, and giving 
+her hand to the postmistress.
+
+"So I be," said Mrs Crump. "So I be." Then Lily sat down in the cottage 
+and asked after her ailments. With Mrs Hearn it was the same. Mrs 
+Hearn, after that first meeting which has been already mentioned, 
+petted and caressed her, but spoke no further word of her misfortune. 
+When Lily called a second time upon Mrs Boyce, which she did boldly by 
+herself, that lady did begin one other word of commiseration. "My 
+dearest Lily, we have all been made so unhappy-" So far Mrs Boyce got, 
+sitting close to Lily and striving to look into her face; but Lily, 
+with a slightly heightened colour, turned sharp round upon one of the 
+Boyce girls, tearing Mrs Boyce's commiseration into the smallest 
+shreds. "Minnie," she said, speaking quite loud, almost with girlish 
+ecstasy, "what do you think Tartar did yesterday? I never laughed so 
+much in my life." Then she told a ludicrous story about a very ugly 
+terrier which belonged to the squire. After that even Mrs Boyce made no 
+further attempt. Mrs Dale and Bell both understood that such was to be 
+the rule-the rule even to them. Lily would speak to them occasionally 
+on the matter-to one of them at a time, beginning with some almost 
+single word of melancholy resignation, and then would go on till she 
+opened her very bosom before them; but no such conversation was ever 
+begun by them. But now, in these busy days of the packing, that topic 
+seemed to have been banished altogether.
+
+"Mamma," she said, standing on the top rung of a house-ladder, from 
+which position she was handing down glass out of a cupboard, "are you 
+sure that these things are ours? I think some of them belong to the 
+house."
+
+"I'm sure about that bowl at any rate, because it was my mother's 
+before I was married."
+
+"Oh, dear, what should I do if I were to break it? Whenever I handle 
+anything very precious I always feel inclined to throw it down and 
+smash it. Oh! it was as nearly gone as possible, mamma; but that was 
+your fault."
+
+"If you don't take care you'll be nearly gone yourself. Do take hold of 
+something."
+
+"Oh, Bell, here's the inkstand for which you've been moaning for three 
+years."
+
+"I haven't been moaning for three years; but who could have put it up 
+there?
+
+"Catch it," said Lily; and she threw the bottle down on to a pile of 
+carpets.
+
+At this moment a step was heard in the hall, and the squire entered 
+through the open door of the room. "So you're all at work," said he.
+
+"Yes, we're at work," said Mrs Dale, almost with a tone of shame. "If 
+it is to be done it is as well that it should be got over."
+
+"It makes me wretched enough," said the squire. "But I didn't come to 
+talk about that. I've brought you a note from Lady Julia de Guest, and 
+I've had one from the earl. They want us all to go there and stay the 
+week after Easter."
+
+Mrs Dale and the girls, when this very sudden proposition was made to 
+them, all remained fixed in their place, and, for a moment, were 
+speechless. Go and stay a week at Guestwick Manor! The whole family! 
+Hitherto the intercourse between the Manor and the Small House had been 
+confined to morning calls, very far between. Mrs Dale had never dined 
+there, and had latterly even deputed the calling to her daughters. Once 
+Bell had dined there with her uncle, the squire, and once Lily had gone 
+over with her uncle Orlando. Even this had been long ago, before they 
+were quite brought out, and they had regarded the occasion with the 
+solemn awe of children. Now, at this time of their flitting into some 
+small mean dwelling at Guestwick, they had previously settled among 
+themselves that that affair of calling at the Manor might be allowed to 
+drop. Mrs Eames never called, and they were descending to the level of 
+Mrs Eames. "Perhaps we shall get game sent to us, and that will be 
+better," Lily had said. And now, at this very moment of their descent 
+in life, they were all asked to go and stay a week at the Manor! Stay a 
+week with Lady Julia! Had the Queen sent the Lord Chamberlain down to 
+bid them all go to Windsor Castle it could hardly have startled them 
+more at the first blow. Bell had been seated on the folded carpet when 
+her uncle had entered, and now had again sat herself in the same place. 
+Lily was still standing at the top of the ladder, and Mrs Dale was at 
+the foot with one hand on Lily's dress. The squire had told his story 
+very abruptly, but he was a man who, having a story to tell, knew 
+nothing better than to tell it out abruptly, letting out everything at 
+the first moment.
+
+"Wants us all!" said Mrs Dale. "How many does the all mean?" Then she 
+opened Lady Julia's note and read it, not moving from her position at 
+the foot of the ladder.
+
+"Do let me see, mamma," said Lily; and then the note was handed up to 
+her. Had Mrs Dale well considered the matter she might probably have 
+kept the note to herself for a while, but the whole thing was so sudden 
+that she had not considered the matter well.
+
+My dear Mrs Dale (the letter ran)-I send this inside a note from my 
+brother to Mr Dale. We particularly want you and your two girls to come 
+to us for a week from the seventeenth of this month. Considering our 
+near connection we ought to have seen more of each other than we have 
+done for years past, and of course it has been our fault. But it is 
+never too late to amend one's ways; and I hope you will receive my 
+confession in the true spirit of affection in which it is intended, and 
+that you will show your goodness by coming to us. I will do all I can 
+to make the house pleasant to your girls, for both of whom I have much 
+real regard.
+
+I should tell you that John Eames will be here for the same week. My 
+brother is very fond of him, and thinks him the best young man of the 
+day. He is one of my heroes, too, I must confess.
+
+Very sincerely yours,
+
+JULIA DE GUEST.
+
+
+Lily, standing on the ladder, read the letter very attentively. The 
+squire meanwhile stood below speaking a word or two to his 
+sister-in-law and niece. No one could see Lily's face, as it was turned 
+away towards the window, and it was still averted when she spoke. "It 
+is out of the question that we should go, mamma -that is, all of us."
+
+"Why out of the question?" said the squire.
+
+"A whole family!" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"That is just what they want," said the squire.
+
+"I should like of all things to be left alone for a week," said Lily, 
+"if mamma and Bell would go."
+
+"That wouldn't do at all," said the squire. "Lady Julia specially wants 
+you to be one of the party."
+
+The thing had been badly managed altogether. The reference in Lady 
+Julia's note to John Eames had explained to Lily the whole scheme at 
+once, and had so opened her eyes that all the combined influence of the 
+Dale and De Guest families could not have dragged her over to the Manor.
+
+"Why not do? "said Lily. "It would be out of the question a whole 
+family going in that way, but it would be very nice for Bell."
+
+"No, it would not," said Bell.
+
+"Don't be ungenerous about it, my dear," said the squire turning to 
+Bell; "Lady Julia means to be kind. But, my darling," and the squire 
+turned again towards Lily, addressing her, as was his wont in these 
+days, with an affection that was almost vexatious to her; "but, my 
+darling, why should you not go? A change of scene like that will do you 
+all the good in the world, just when you are getting well. Mary, tell 
+the girls they ought to go."
+Mrs Dale stood silent, again reading the note, and Lily came down from 
+the ladder. When she reached the floor she went directly up to her 
+uncle, and taking his hand turned him round with herself towards one of 
+the windows, so that they stood with their backs to the room. "Uncle," 
+she said, "do not be angry with me. I can't go;" and then she put up 
+her face to kiss him.
+
+He stooped and kissed her and still held her hand. He looked into her 
+face and read it all. He knew well, now, why she could not go; or, 
+rather, why she herself thought that she could not go. "Cannot you, my 
+darling?" he said.
+
+"No, uncle. It is very kind-very kind; but I cannot go. I am not fit to 
+go anywhere."
+
+"But you should get over that feeling. You should make a struggle."
+
+"I am struggling, and I shall succeed; but I cannot do it all at once. 
+At any rate I could not go there. You must give my love to Lady Julia, 
+and not let her think me cross. Perhaps Bell will go."
+
+What would be the good of Bell's going-or the good of his putting 
+himself out of the way, by a visit which would of itself be so tiresome 
+to him, if the one object of the visit could not be carried out? The 
+earl and his sister had planned the invitation with the express 
+intention of bringing Lily and Eames together. It seemed that Lily was 
+firm in her determination to resist this intention; and, if so, it 
+would be better that the whole thing should fall to the ground. He was 
+very vexed, and yet he was not angry with her. Everybody lately had 
+opposed him in everything. All his intended family arrangements had 
+gone wrong. But yet he was seldom angry respecting them. He was so 
+accustomed to be thwarted that he hardly expected success. In this 
+matter of providing Lily with a second lover, he had not come forward 
+of his own accord. He had been appealed to by his neighbour the earl, 
+and had certainly answered the appeal with much generosity. He had been 
+induced to make the attempt with eagerness, and a true desire for its 
+accomplishment; but in this, as in all his own schemes, he was met at 
+once by opposition and failure.
+
+"I will leave you to talk it over among yourselves," he said. "But, 
+Mary, you had better see me before you send your answer. If you will 
+come up by-and-by, Ralph shall take the two notes over together in the 
+afternoon." So saying, he left the Small House, and went back to his 
+own solitary home.
+
+"Lily, dear," said Mrs Dale, as soon as the front door had been closed, 
+"this is meant for kindness to you-for most affectionate kindness."
+
+"I know it, mamma; and you must go to Lady Julia, and must tell her 
+that I know it. You must give her my love. And, indeed, I do love her 
+now. But-"
+
+"You won't go, Lily?" said Mrs Dale, beseechingly.
+
+"No, mamma; certainly I will not go." Then she escaped out of the room 
+by herself, and for the next hour neither of them dared to go to her.
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+MRS DALE IS THANKFUL FOR A GOOD THING
+
+
+On that day they dined early at the Small House, as they had been in 
+the habit of doing since the packing had commenced. And after dinner 
+Mrs Dale went through the gardens, up to the other house, with a 
+written note in her hand. In that note she had told Lady Julia, with 
+many protestations of gratitude, that Lily was unable to go out so soon 
+after her illness, and that she herself was obliged to stay with Lily. 
+She explained also, that the business of moving was in hand, and that, 
+therefore, she could not herself accept the invitation. But her other 
+daughter, she said, would be very happy to accompany her uncle to 
+Guestwick Manor. Then, without closing her letter, she took it up to 
+the squire in order that it might be decided whether it would or would 
+not suit his views. It might well he that he would not care to go to 
+Lord de Guest's with Bell alone.
+
+"Leave it with me," he said; "that is, if you do not object."
+
+"Oh dear, no!"
+
+"I'll tell you the plain truth at once, Mary. I shall go over myself 
+with it, and see the earl. Then I will decline it or not, according to 
+what passes between me and him. I wish Lily would have gone."
+
+"Ah! she could not."
+
+"I wish she could. I wish she could. I wish she could." As he repeated 
+the words over and over again, there was an eagerness in his voice that 
+filled Mrs Dale's heart with tenderness towards him.
+
+"The truth is," said Mrs Dale, "she could not go there to meet John 
+Eames."
+
+"Oh, I know," said the squire: "I understand it. But that is just what 
+we want her to do. Why should she not spend a week in the same house 
+with an honest young man whom we all like."
+
+
+"There are reasons why she would not wish it."
+
+"Ah, exactly; the very reasons which should make us induce her to go 
+there if we can. Perhaps I had better tell you all. Lord de Guest has 
+taken him by the hand, and wishes him to marry. He has promised to 
+settle on him an income which will make him comfortable for life."
+
+"That is very generous; and I am delighted to hear it-for John's sake."
+
+"And they have promoted him at his office."
+
+"Ah! then he will do well."
+
+"He will do very well. He is private secretary now to their head man. 
+And, Mary, so that she, Lily, should not be empty-handed if their 
+marriage can be arranged, I have undertaken to settle a hundred a year 
+on her-on her and her children, if she will accept him. Now you know it 
+all. I did not mean to tell you; but it is as well that you should have 
+the means of judging. That other man was a villain. This man is honest. 
+Would it not be well that she should learn to like him? She always did 
+like him, I thought, before that other fellow came down here among us."
+
+"She has always liked him-as a friend."
+
+"She will never get a better lover."
+
+Mrs Dale sat silent, thinking over it all. Every word that the squire 
+said was true. It would be a healing of wounds most desirable and 
+salutary; an arrangement advantageous to them all; a destiny for Lily 
+most devoutly to be desired-if only it were possible. Mrs Dale firmly 
+believed that if her daughter could be made to accept John Eames as her 
+second lover in a year or two all would be well. Crosbie would then be 
+forgotten or thought of without regret, and Lily would become the 
+mistress of a happy home. But there are positions which cannot be 
+reached, though there be no physical or material objection in the way. 
+It is the view which the mind takes of a thing which creates the sorrow 
+that arises from it. If the heart were always malleable and the 
+feelings could be controlled, who would permit himself to be tormented 
+by any of the reverses which affection meets? Death would create no 
+sorrow, ingratitude would lose its sting; and the betrayal of love 
+would do no injury beyond that which it might entail upon worldly 
+circumstances. But the heart is not malleable; nor will the feelings 
+admit of such control.
+
+"It is not possible for her," said Mrs Dale. "I fear it is not 
+possible. It is too soon."
+
+"Six months," pleaded the squire.
+
+"It will take years-not months," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"And she will lose all her youth."
+
+"Yes; he has done all that by his treachery. But it is done, and we 
+cannot now go back. She loves him yet as dearly as she ever loved him."
+
+Then the squire muttered certain words below his breath-ejaculations 
+against Crosbie, which were hardly voluntary; but even as involuntary 
+ejaculations were very improper. Mrs Dale heard them, and was not 
+offended either by their impropriety or their warmth. "But you can 
+understand," she said, "that she cannot bring herself to go there." The 
+squire struck the table with his fist, and repeated his ejaculations. 
+If he could only have known how very disagreeable Lady Alexandrina was 
+making herself, his spirit might, perhaps, have been less vehemently 
+disturbed. If, also, he could have perceived and understood the light 
+in which an alliance with the De Courcy family was now regarded by 
+Crosbie, I think that he would have received some consolation from that 
+consideration. Those who offend us are generally punished for the 
+offence they give; but we so frequently miss the satisfaction of 
+knowing that we are avenged! It is arranged, apparently, that the 
+injurer shall be punished, but that the person injured shall not 
+gratify his desire for vengeance.
+
+"And will you go to Guestwick yourself?" asked Mrs Dale.
+
+"I will take the note," said the squire, "and will let you know 
+tomorrow. The earl has behaved so kindly that every possible 
+consideration is due to him. I had better tell him the whole truth, and 
+go or stay, as he may wish. I don't see the good of going. What am I to 
+do at Guestwick Manor? I did think that if we had all been there it 
+might have cured some difficulties."
+
+Mrs Dale got up to leave him, but she could not go without saying some 
+word of gratitude for all that he had attempted to do for them. She 
+well knew what he meant by the curing of difficulties. He had intended 
+to signify that had they lived together for a week at Guestwick the 
+idea of flitting from Allington might possibly have been abandoned. It 
+seemed now to Mrs Dale as though her brother-in-law were heaping coals 
+of fire on her head in return for that intention. She felt half-ashamed 
+of what she was doing, almost acknowledging to herself that she should 
+have borne with his sternness in return for the benefits he had done to 
+her daughters. Had she not feared their reproaches she would, even now, 
+have given way.
+
+"I do not know what I ought to say to you for your kindness."
+
+"Say nothing-either for my kindness or unkindness; but stay where you 
+are, and let us live like Christians together, striving to think good 
+and not evil." These were kind, loving words, showing in themselves a 
+spirit of love and forbearance; but they were spoken in a harsh, 
+unsympathising voice, and the speaker, as he uttered them, looked 
+gloomily at the fire. In truth the squire, as he spoke, was 
+half-ashamed of the warmth of what he said.
+
+"At any rate I will not think evil," Mrs Dale answered, giving him her 
+hand. After that she left him, and returned home. It was too late for 
+her to abandon her project of moving and remain at the Small House; but 
+as she went across the garden she almost confessed to herself that she 
+repented of what she was doing.
+
+In these days of the cold early spring, the way from the lawn into the 
+house, through the drawing-room window, was not as yet open, and it was 
+necessary to go round by the kitchen-garden on to the road, and thence 
+in by the front door; or else to pass through the back door, and into 
+the house by the kitchen. This latter mode of entrance Mrs Dale now 
+adopted; and as she made her way into the hall Lily came upon her, with 
+very silent steps, out from the parlour, and arrested her progress. 
+There was a smile upon Lily's face as she lifted up her finger as if in 
+caution, and no one looking at her would have supposed that she was 
+herself in trouble. "Mamma," she said, pointing to the drawing-room 
+door, and speaking almost in a whisper, "you must not go in there; come 
+into the parlour."
+
+"Who's there? Where's Bell?" and Mrs Dale went into the parlour as she 
+was bidden. "But who is there?" she repeated.
+
+"He's there!"
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Oh, mamma, don't be a goose! Dr Crofts is there, of course. He's been 
+nearly an hour. I wonder how he is managing, for there is nothing on 
+earth to sit upon but the old lump of a carpet. The room is strewed 
+about with crockery, and Bell is such a figure! She has got on your old 
+checked apron, and when he came in she was rolling up the fire-irons in 
+brown paper. I don't suppose she was ever in such a mess before. 
+There's one thing certain-he can't kiss her hand."
+
+"It's you are the goose, Lily."
+
+"But he's in there certainly, unless he has gone out through the 
+window, or up the chimney."
+
+"What made you leave them?"
+
+"He met me here, in the passage, and spoke to me ever so seriously. 
+Come in, I said, and see Bell packing the pokers and tongs. I will go 
+in, he said, but don't come with me. He was ever so serious, and I'm 
+sure he had been thinking of it all the way along."
+
+"And why should he not be serious?"
+
+"Oh, no, of course he ought to be serious; but are you not glad, mamma? 
+I am so glad. We shall live alone together, you and I; but she will be 
+so close to us! My belief is that he'll stay there for ever unless 
+somebody does something. I have been so tired of waiting and looking 
+out for you. Perhaps he's helping her to pack the things. Don't you 
+think we might go in; or would it be ill-natured?
+
+"Lily, don't be in too great a hurry to say anything. You may be 
+mistaken, you know; and there's many a slip between the cup and the 
+lip."
+
+"Yes, mamma, there is," said Lily, putting her hand inside her mother's 
+arm, "that's true enough."
+
+"Oh, my darling, forgive me," said the mother, suddenly remembering 
+that the use of the old proverb at the present moment had been almost 
+cruel.
+
+"Do not mind it," said Lily, "it does not hurt me, it does me good; 
+that is to say, when there is nobody by except yourself. But, with 
+God's help, there shall be no slip here, and she shall be happy. It is 
+all the difference between one thing done in a hurry, and another done 
+with much thinking. But they'll remain there for ever if we don't go 
+in. Come, mamma, you open the door."
+
+Then Mrs Dale did open the door, giving some little premonitory notice 
+with the handle, so that the couple inside might be warned of 
+approaching footsteps. Crofts had not escaped, either through the 
+window or up the chimney, but was seated in the middle of the room on 
+an empty box, just opposite to Bell, who was seated upon the lump of 
+carpeting. Bell still wore the checked apron as described by her 
+sister. What might have been the state of her hands I will not pretend 
+to say; but I do not believe that her lover had found anything amiss 
+with them. "How do you do, doctor?" said Mrs Dale, striving to use her 
+accustomed voice, and to look as though there were nothing of special 
+importance in his visit. "I have just come down from the Great House."
+
+"Mamma," said Bell, jumping up, "you must not call him doctor any more."
+
+"Must I not? Has any one undoctored him?"
+
+"Oh, mamma, you understand," said Bell.
+
+"I understand," said Lily, going up to the doctor, and giving him her 
+cheek to kiss, "he is to be my brother, and I mean to claim him as such 
+from this moment. I expect him to do everything for us, and not to call 
+a moment of his time his own."
+
+"Mrs Dale," said the doctor, "Bell has consented that it shall be so, 
+if you will consent."
+
+"There is but little doubt of that," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"We shall not be rich-" began the doctor.
+
+"I hate to be rich," said Bell. "I hate even to talk about it. I don't 
+think it quite manly even to think about it; and I'm sure it isn't 
+womanly."
+
+"Bell was always a fanatic in praise of poverty," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"No; I'm no fanatic. I'm very fond of money earned. I would like to 
+earn some myself if I knew how."
+
+"Let her go out and visit the lady patients," said Lily. "They do in 
+America."
+
+Then they all went into the parlour and sat round the fire talking as 
+though they were already one family. The proceeding, considering the 
+nature of it-that a young lady, acknowledged to be of great beauty and 
+known to be of good birth, had on the occasion been asked and given in 
+marriage-was carried on after a somewhat humdrum fashion, and in a 
+manner that must be called commonplace. Row different had it been when 
+Crosbie had made his offer! Lily for the time had been raised to a 
+pinnacle-a pinnacle which might be dangerous, but which was, at any 
+rate, lofty. With what a pretty speech had Crosbie been greeted! How it 
+had been felt by all concerned that the fortunes of the Small House 
+were in the ascendant-felt, indeed, with some trepidation, but still 
+with much inward triumph. How great had been the occasion, forcing Lily 
+almost to lose herself in wonderment at what had occurred! There was no 
+great occasion now, and no wonderment. No one, unless it was Crofts, 
+felt very triumphant. But they were all very happy, and were sure that 
+there was safety in their happiness. It was but the other day that one 
+of them had been thrown rudely to the ground through the treachery of a 
+lover, but yet none of them feared treachery from this lover. Bell was 
+as sure of her lot in life as though she were already being taken home 
+to her modest house in Guestwick. Mrs Dale already looked upon the man 
+as her son, and the party of four as they sat round the fire grouped 
+themselves as though they already formed one family.
+
+But Bell was not seated next to her lover. Lily, when she had once 
+accepted Crosbie, seemed to think that she could never be too near to 
+him. She had been in no wise ashamed of her love, and had shown it 
+constantly by some little caressing motion of her hand, leaning on his 
+arm, looking into his face, as though she were continually desirous of 
+some palpable assurance of his presence. It was not so at all with 
+Bell. She was happy in loving and in being loved, but she required no 
+overt testimonies of affection. I do not think it would, have made her 
+unhappy if some sudden need had required that Crofts should go to India 
+and back before they were married. The thing was settled, and that was 
+enough for her. But, on the other hand, when he spoke of the expediency 
+of an immediate marriage, she raised no difficulty. As her mother was 
+about to go into a new residence, it might be as well that that 
+residence should be fitted to the wants of two persons instead of 
+three. So they talked about chairs and tables, carpets and kitchens, in 
+a most unromantic, homely, useful manner! A considerable portion of the 
+furniture in the house they were now about to leave belonged to the 
+squire-or to the house rather, as they were in the habit of saying. The 
+older and more solid things-articles of household stuff that stand the 
+wear of half a century-had been in the Small House when they came to 
+it. There was, therefore, a question of buying new furniture for a 
+house in Guestwick-a question not devoid of importance to the possessor 
+of so moderate an income as that owned by Mrs Dale. In the first month 
+or two they were to live in lodgings, and their goods were to be stored 
+in some friendly warehouse. Under such circumstances would it not be 
+well that Bell's marriage should be so arranged that the lodging 
+question might not be in any degree complicated by her necessities? 
+This was the last suggestion made by Dr Crofts, induced no doubt by the 
+great encouragement he had received.
+
+"That would be hardly possible," said Mrs Dale. "It only wants three 
+weeks-and with the house in such a condition!"
+
+"James is joking," said Bell.
+
+"I was not joking at all," said the doctor.
+
+"Why not send for Mr Boyce, and carry her off at once on a pillion 
+behind you?" said Lily. "It's just the sort of thing for primitive 
+people to do, like you and Bell. All the same, Bell, I do wish you 
+could have been married from this house."
+
+"I don't think it will make much difference," said Bell.
+
+"Only if you would have waited till summer we would have had such a 
+nice party on the lawn. It sounds so ugly, being married from lodgings; 
+doesn't it, mamma?"
+
+"It doesn't sound at all ugly to me," said Bell.
+
+"I shall always call you Dame Commonplace when you're married," said 
+Lily.
+
+Then they had tea, and after tea Dr Crofts got on his horse and rode 
+back to Guestwick.
+
+"Now may I talk about him?" said Lily, as soon as the door was closed 
+behind his back.
+
+"No; you may not."
+
+"As if I hadn't known it all along! And wasn't it hard to bear that you 
+should have scolded me with such pertinacious austerity, and that I 
+wasn't to say a word in answer!"
+
+"I don't remember the austerity," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Nor yet Lily's silence," said Bell.
+
+"But it's all settled now," said Lily, "and I'm downright happy. I 
+never felt more satisfaction-never, Bell!"
+
+"Nor did I," said her mother; "I may truly say that I thank God for 
+this good thing."
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+JOHN EAMES DOES THINGS WHICH HE OUGHT NOT TO HAVE DONE
+
+
+John Eames succeeded in making his bargain with Sir Raffle Buffle. Re 
+accepted the private secretaryship on the plainly expressed condition 
+that he was to have leave of absence for a fortnight towards the end of 
+April. Having arranged this he took an affectionate leave of Mr Love, 
+who was really much affected at parting with him, discussed valedictory 
+pots of porter in the big room, over which many wishes were expressed 
+that he might be enabled to compass the length and breadth of old 
+Ruffle's feet, uttered a last cutting joke at Mr Kissing as he met that 
+gentleman hurrying through the passages with an enormous ledger in his 
+hands, and then took his place in the comfortable arm-chair which 
+FitzHoward had been forced to relinquish.
+
+"Don't tell any of the fellows," said Fitz, "but I'm going to cut the 
+concern altogether. My governor wouldn't let me stop here in any other 
+place than that of private secretary."
+
+"Ah, your governor is a swell," said Eames.
+
+"I don't know about that," said FitzHoward. "Of course he has a good 
+deal of family interest. My cousin is to come in for St. Bungay at the 
+next election, and then I can do better than remain here."
+
+"That's a matter of course;" said Eames. "If my cousin were Member for 
+St Bungay, I'd never stand anything east of Whitehall."
+
+"And I don't mean," said FitzHoward. "This room, you know, is all very 
+nice; but it is a bore coming into the City every day. And then one 
+doesn't like to be rung for like a servant. Not that I mean to put you 
+out of conceit with it."
+
+"It will do very well for me," said Eames. "I never was very 
+particular."
+
+And so they parted, Eames assuming the beautiful arm-chair and the 
+peril of being asked to carry Sir Raffle's shoes, while FitzHoward took 
+the vacant desk in the big room till such time as some member of his 
+family should come into Parliament for the borough of St. Bungay.
+
+But Eames, though he drank the porter, and quizzed FitzHoward, and 
+gibed at Kissing, did not seat himself in his new arm-chair without 
+some serious thoughts. He was aware that his career in London had not 
+hitherto been one on which he could look back with self-respect. He had 
+lived, with friends whom he did not esteem; he had been idle, and 
+sometimes worse than idle; and he had allowed himself to be hampered by 
+the pretended love of a woman for whom he had never felt any true 
+affection, and by whom he had been cozened out of various foolish 
+promises which even yet were hanging over his head. As he sat with Sir 
+Raffle's notes before him, he thought almost with horror of the men and 
+women in Burton Crescent. It was now about three years since he had 
+first known Cradell, and he shuddered as he remembered how very poor a 
+creature was he whom he had chosen for his bosom friend. He could not 
+make for himself those excuses which we can make for him. He could not 
+tell himself that he had been driven by circumstances to choose a 
+friend, before he had learned to know what were the requisites for 
+which he should look. He had lived on terms of closest intimacy with 
+this man for three years, and now his eyes were opening themselves to 
+the nature of his friend's character. Cradell was in age three years 
+his senior. "I won't drop him," he said to himself; "but he is a poor 
+creature." He thought, too, of the Lupexes, of Miss Spruce, and of Mrs 
+Roper, and tried to imagine what Lily Dale would do if she found 
+herself among such people. It would be impossible that she should ever 
+so find herself. He might as well ask her to drink at the bar of a gin 
+shop as to sit down in Mrs Roper's drawing-room. If destiny had in 
+store for him such good fortune as that of calling Lily his own, it was 
+necessary that he should altogether alter his mode of life.
+
+In truth his hobbledehoyhood was dropping off from him, as its old skin 
+drops from a snake. Much of the feeling and something of the knowledge 
+of manhood was coming on him, and he was beginning to recognise to 
+himself that the future manner of his life must be to him a matter of 
+very serious concern. No such thought had come near him when he first 
+established himself in London. It seems to me that in this respect the 
+fathers and mothers of the present generation understand but little of 
+the inward nature of the young men for whom they are so anxious. They 
+give them credit for so much that it is impossible they should have, 
+and then deny them credit for so much that they possess! They expect 
+from them when boys the discretion of men-that discretion which comes 
+from thinking; but will not give them credit for any of that power of 
+thought which alone can ultimately produce good conduct. Young men are 
+generally thoughtful-more thoughtful than their seniors; but the fruit 
+of their thought is not as yet there. And then so little is done for 
+the amusement of lads who are turned loose into London at nineteen or 
+twenty. Can it be that any mother really expects her son to sit alone 
+evening after evening in a dingy room drinking bad tea, and reading 
+good books? And yet it seems that mothers do so expect-the very mothers 
+who talk about the thoughtlessness of youth! O ye mothers who from year 
+to year see your sons launched forth upon the perils of the world, and 
+who are so careful with your good advice, with under flannel shirting, 
+with books of devotion and tooth-powder, does it never occur to you 
+that provision should be made for amusement, for dancing, for parties, 
+for the excitement and comfort of women's society? That excitement your 
+sons will have, and if it be not provided by you of one kind, will 
+certainly be provided by themselves of another kind. If I were a mother 
+sending lads out into the world, the matter most in my mind would be 
+this-to what houses full of nicest girls could I get them admission, so 
+that they might do their flirting in good company.
+
+Poor John Eames had been so placed that he had been driven to do his 
+flirting in very bad company, and he was now fully aware that it had 
+been so. It wanted but two days to his departure for Guestwick Manor, 
+and as he sat breathing a while after the manufacture of a large batch 
+of Sir Raffle's notes, he made up his mind that he would give Mrs Roper 
+notice before he started, that on his return to London he would be seen 
+no more in Burton Crescent. He would break his bonds altogether 
+asunder, and if there should be any penalty for such breaking he would 
+pay it in what best manner he might be able. He acknowledged to himself 
+that he had been behaving badly to Amelia, confessing, indeed, more sin 
+in that respect than he had in truth committed; but this, at any rate, 
+was clear to him, that he must put himself on a proper footing in that 
+quarter before he could venture to speak to Lily Dale.
+
+As he came to a definite conclusion on this subject the little handbell 
+which always stood on Sir Raffle's table was sounded, and Eames was 
+called into the presence of the great man.
+
+"Ah," said Sir Raffle, leaning back in his arm-chair, and stretching 
+himself after the great exertions which he had been making-" Ah, let me 
+see! You are going out of town the day after tomorrow."
+
+"Yes, Sir Raffle, the day after tomorrow."
+
+"Ah! it's a great annoyance-a very great annoyance. But on such 
+occasions I never think of myself. I never have done so, and don't 
+suppose I ever shall. So you're going down to my old friend De Guest?"
+
+Eames was always angered when his new patron Sir Raffle talked of his 
+old friendship with the earl, and never gave the Commissioner any 
+encouragement. "I am going down to Guestwick," said he.
+
+"Ah! yes; to Guestwick Manor? I don't remember that I was ever there. I 
+dare say I may have been, but one forgets those things."
+
+"I never heard Lord de Guest speak of it."
+
+"Oh, dear, no. Why should his memory be better than mine? Tell him, 
+will you, how very glad I shall be to renew our old intimacy. I should 
+think nothing of running down to him for a day or two in the dull time 
+of the year-say in September or October. It's rather a coincidence our 
+both being interested about you-isn't it?
+
+"I'll be sure to tell him."
+
+"Mind you do. He's one of our most thoroughly independent noblemen, and 
+I respect him very highly. Let me see; didn't I ring my bell? What was 
+it I wanted? I think I rang my bell."
+
+"You did ring your bell."
+
+"Ah, yes; I know. I am going away, and I wanted my would you tell 
+Rafferty to bring me-my boots?" Whereupon Johnny rang the bell-not the 
+little handbell, but the other bell. "And I shan't be here tomorrow," 
+continued Sir Raffle. "I'll thank you to send my letters up to the 
+square; and if they should send down from the Treasury-but the 
+Chancellor would write, and in that case you'll send up his letter at 
+once by a special messenger, of course."
+
+"Here's Rafferty," said Eames, determined that he would not even sully 
+his lips with speaking of Sir Raffle's boots.
+
+"Oh, ah, yes; Rafferty, bring me my boots."
+
+"Anything else to say?" asked Eames.
+
+"No, nothing else. Of course you'll be careful to leave everything 
+straight behind you."
+
+"Oh, yes; I'll leave it all straight." Then Eames withdrew, so that he 
+might not be present at the interview between Sir Raffle and his boots. 
+"He'll not do," said Sir Raffle to himself. "He'll never do. He's not 
+quick enough-has no go in him. He's not man enough for the place. I 
+wonder why the earl has taken him by the hand in that way."
+
+Soon after the little episode of the boots Eames left his office, and 
+walked home alone to Burton Crescent. He felt that he had gained a 
+victory in Sir Raffle's room, but the victory there had been easy. Now 
+he had another battle on his hands, in which, as he believed, the 
+achievement of victory would be much more difficult. Amelia Roper was a 
+person much more to be feared than the Chief Commissioner. He had one 
+strong arrow in his quiver on which he would depend, if there should 
+come to him the necessity of giving his enemy a death-wound. During the 
+last week she had been making powerful love to Cradell, so as to 
+justify the punishment of desertion from a former lover. He would not 
+throw Cradell in her teeth if he could help it; but it was incumbent on 
+him to gain a victory, and if the worst should come to the worst, he 
+must use such weapons as destiny and the chance of war had given him.
+
+He found Mrs Roper in the dining-room as he entered, and immediately 
+began his work. "Mrs Roper," he said, "I'm going out of town the day 
+after tomorrow."
+
+"Oh, yes, Mr Eames, we know that. You're going as a visitor to the 
+noble mansion of the Earl de Guest."
+
+"I don't know about the mansion being very noble, but I'm going down 
+into the country for a fortnight. When I come back-"
+
+"When you come back, Mr Eames, I hope you'll find your room a deal more 
+comfortable. "I know it isn't quite what it should be for a gentleman 
+like you, and I've been thinking for some time past-"
+
+"But, Mrs Roper, I don't mean to come back here any more. It's just 
+that that I want to say to you."
+
+"Not come back to the crescent!"
+
+"No, Mrs Roper. A fellow must move sometimes, you know; and I'm sure 
+I've been very constant to you for a long time."
+
+"But where are you going, Mr Eames?"
+
+"Well; I haven't just made up my mind as yet. That is, it will depend 
+on what I may do-on what friends of mine may say down in the country. 
+You'll not think I'm quarrelling with you, Mrs Roper."
+
+"It's them Lupexes as have done it," said Mrs Roper, in her deep 
+distress.
+
+"No, indeed, Mrs Roper, nobody has done it."
+
+"Yes, it is; and I'm not going to blame you, Mr Eames. They've made the 
+house unfit for any decent young gentleman like you. I've been feeling 
+that all along; but it's hard upon a lone woman like me, isn't it, Mr 
+Eames?
+
+"But, Mrs Roper, the Lupexes have had nothing to do with my going."
+
+"Oh, yes, they have; I understand it all. But what could I do, Mr 
+Eames? I've been giving them warning every week for the last six 
+months; but the more I give them warning, the more they won't go. 
+Unless I were to send for a policeman, and have a row in the house-"
+
+"But I haven't complained of the Lupexes, Mrs Roper."
+
+"You wouldn't be quitting without any reason, Mr Eames. You are not 
+going to be married in earnest, are you, Mr Eames ?"
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"You may tell me; you may, indeed. I won't say a word-not to anybody. 
+It hasn't been my fault about Amelia. It hasn't really."
+
+"Who says there's been any fault?"
+
+"I can see, Mr Eames. Of course it didn't do for me to interfere. And 
+if you had liked her, I will say I believe she'd have made as good a 
+wife as any young man ever took; and she can make a few pounds go 
+farther than most girls. You can understand a mother's feelings; and if 
+there was to be anything, I couldn't spoil it; could I, now?"
+
+"But there isn't to be anything."
+
+"So I've told her for months past. I'm not going to say anything to 
+blame you; but young men ought to be very particular; indeed they 
+ought." Johnny did not choose to hint to the disconsolate mother that 
+it also behoved young women to be very particular, but he thought it. 
+"I've wished many a time, Mr Eames, that she had never come here; 
+indeed I have. But what's a mother to do? I couldn't put her outside 
+the door." Then Mrs Roper raised her apron up to her eyes, and began to 
+sob.
+
+"I'm very sorry if I've made any mischief," said Johnny.
+
+"It hasn't been your fault," continued the poor woman, from whom, as 
+her tears became uncontrollable, her true feelings forced themselves 
+and the real outpouring of her feminine nature. "Nor it hasn't been my 
+fault. But I knew what it would come to when I saw how she was going 
+on; and I told her so. I knew you wouldn't put up with the likes of 
+her."
+
+"Indeed, Mrs Roper, I've always had a great regard for her, and for you 
+too."
+
+"But you weren't going to marry her. I've told her so all along, and 
+I've begged her not to do it-almost on my knees I have; but she 
+wouldn't be said by me. She never would. She's always been that wilful 
+that I'd sooner have her away from me than with me. Though she's a good 
+young woman in the house-she is, indeed, Mr Eames-and there isn't a 
+pair of hands in it that works so hard; but it was no use my talking."
+
+"I don't think any harm has been done."
+
+"Yes, there has; great harm. It has made the place not respectable. 
+It's the Lupexes is the worst. There's Miss Spruce, who has been with 
+me for nine years-ever since I've had the house-she's been telling me 
+this morning that she means to go into the country. It's all the same 
+thing. I under stand it. I can see it. The house isn't respectable, as 
+it should be; and your mamma, if she were to know all, would have a 
+right to be angry with me. I did mean to be respectable, Mr Eames; I 
+did indeed."
+
+"Miss Spruce will think better of it."
+
+"You don't know what I've had to go through. There's none of them pays, 
+not regular-only she and you. She's been like the Bank of England, has 
+Miss Spruce."
+
+"I'm afraid I've not been very regular, Mrs Roper."
+
+"Oh, yes, you have. I don't think of a pound or two more or less at the 
+end of a quarter, if I'm sure to have it some day, The butcher-he 
+understands one's lodgers just as well as I do-if the money's really 
+coming, he'll wait; but he won't wait for such as them Lupexes, whose 
+money's nowhere. And there's Cradell; would you believe it, that fellow 
+owes me eight-and twenty pounds!"
+
+"Eight and twenty pounds!"
+
+"Yes, Mr Eames, eight-and-twenty pounds! He's a fool. It's them Lupexes 
+as have had his money. I know it. He don't talk of paying, and going 
+away. I shall be just left with him and the Lupexes on my hands; and 
+then the bailiffs may come and sell every stick about the place. I 
+won't say nay to them." Then she threw herself into the old horsehair 
+armchair, and gave way to her womanly sorrow.
+
+"I think I'll go upstairs, and get ready for dinner," said Eames.
+
+"And you must go away when you come back?" said Mrs Roper.
+
+"Well, yes, I'm afraid I must. I meant you to have a month's warning 
+from today. Of course I shall pay for the month."
+
+"I don't want to take any advantage; indeed, I don't. But I do hope 
+you'll leave your things. You can have them whenever you like. If 
+Chumpend knows that you and Miss Spruce are both going, of course he'll 
+be down upon me for his money." Chumpend was the butcher. But Eames 
+made no answer to this piteous plea. Whether or no he could allow his 
+old boots to remain in Burton Crescent for the next week or two, must 
+depend on the manner in which he might be received by Amelia Roper this 
+evening.
+
+When he came down to the drawing-room, there was no one there but Miss 
+Spruce. "A fine day, Miss Spruce," said he.
+
+"Yes, Mr Eames, it is a fine day for London; but don't you think the 
+country air is very nice?"
+
+"Give me the town," said Johnny, wishing to say a good word for poor 
+Mrs Roper, if it were possible.
+
+"You're a young man, Mr Eames; but I'm an old woman. That makes a 
+difference," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"Not much," said Johnny, meaning to be civil. "You don't like to be 
+dull any more than I do."
+
+"I like to be respectable, Mr Eames. I always have been respectable, Mr 
+Eames." This the old woman said almost in a whisper, looking anxiously 
+to see that the door had not been opened to other listening cars.
+
+"I'm sure Mrs Roper is very respectable."
+
+"Yes; Mrs Roper is respectable, Mr Eames; but there are some here 
+that-Hush-sh-sh!" And the old lady put her finger up to her lips. The 
+door opened and Mrs Lupex swam into the room.
+
+"How d'ye do, Miss Spruce? I declare you're always first. It's to get a 
+chance of having one of the young gentlemen to yourself, I believe. 
+What's the news in the city today, Mr Eames? In your position now of 
+course you hear all the news."
+
+"Sir Raffle Buffle has got a new pair of shoes. I don't know that for 
+certain, but I guess it from the time it took him to put them on."
+
+"Ah! now you're quizzing. That's always the way with you gentlemen when 
+you get a little up in the world. You don't think women are worth 
+talking to then, unless just for a joke or so."
+
+"I'd a great deal sooner talk to you, Mrs Lupex, than I would to Sir 
+Raffle Buffle."
+
+"It's all very well for you to say that. But we women know what such 
+compliments as those mean-don't we, Miss Spruce? A woman that's been 
+married five years as I have-or I may say six-doesn't expect much 
+attention from young men. And though I was young when I married-young 
+in years, that is-I'd seen too much and gone through too much to be 
+young in heart." This she said almost in a whisper; but Miss Spruce 
+heard it, and was confirmed in her belief that Burton Crescent was no 
+longer respectable.
+
+"I don't know what you were then, Mrs Lupex," said Eames; "but you're 
+young enough now for anything."
+
+"Mr Eames, I'd sell all that remains of my youth at a cheap rate-at a 
+very cheap rate, if I could only be sure of-"
+
+"Sure of what, Mrs Lupex?"
+
+"The undivided affection of the one person that I loved. That is all 
+that is necessary to a woman's happiness."
+
+"And isn't Lupex-"
+
+"Lupex! But hush, never mind. I should not have allowed myself to be 
+betrayed into an expression of feeling. Here's your friend Mr Cradell. 
+Do you know I sometimes wonder what you find in that man to be so fond 
+of him." Miss Spruce saw it all, and heard it all, and positively 
+resolved upon moving herself to those two small rooms at Dulwich.
+
+Hardly a word was exchanged between Amelia and Eames before dinner. 
+Amelia still devoted herself to Cradell, and Johnny saw that that 
+arrow, if it should be needed, would be a strong weapon. Mrs Roper they 
+found seated at her place at the dining-table, and Eames could perceive 
+the traces of her tears. Poor woman! Few positions in life could be 
+harder to bear than hers! To be ever tugging at others for money that 
+they could not pay; to be ever tugged at for money which she could not 
+pay; to desire respectability for its own sake, but to be driven to 
+confess that it was a luxury beyond her means; to put up with 
+disreputable belongings for the sake of lucre, and then not to get the 
+lucre, but be driven to feel that she was ruined by the attempt! How 
+many Mrs Ropers there are who from year to year sink down and fall 
+away, and no one knows whither they betake themselves! One fancies that 
+one sees them from time to time at the corners of the streets in 
+battered bonnets and thin gowns, with the tattered remnants of old 
+shawls upon their shoulders, still looking as though they had within 
+them a faint remembrance of long-distant respectability. With anxious 
+eyes they peer about, as though searching in the streets for other 
+lodgers. Where do they get their daily morsels of bread, and their poor 
+cups of thin tea-their cups of thin tea, with perhaps a pennyworth of 
+gin added to it, if Providence be good! Of this state of things Mrs 
+Roper had a lively appreciation, and now, poor woman, she feared that 
+she was reaching it, by the aid of the Lupexes. On the present occasion 
+she carved her joint of meat in silence, and sent out her slices to the 
+good guests that would leave her, and to the bad guests that would 
+remain, with apathetic impartiality. What was the use now of doing 
+favour to one lodger or disfavour to another? Let them take their 
+mutton-they who would pay for, it and they who would not. She would not 
+have the carving of many more joints in that house if Chumpend acted up 
+to all the threats which he had uttered to her that morning.
+
+The reader may, perhaps, remember the little back room behind the 
+dining parlour. A description was given in some former pages of an 
+interview which was held between Amelia and her lover. It was in that 
+room that all the interviews of Mrs Roper's establishment had their 
+existence. A special room for interviews is necessary in all households 
+of a mixed nature. If a man lives alone with his wife, he can have his 
+interviews where he pleases. Sons and daughters, even when they are 
+grown up, hardly create the necessity of an interview-chamber, though 
+some such need may he felt if the daughters are marriageable and 
+independent in their natures. But when the family becomes more 
+complicated than this, if an extra young man be introduced, or an aunt 
+comes into residence, or grown up children by a former wife interfere 
+with the domestic simplicity, then such accommodation becomes quite 
+indispensable. No woman would think of taking in lodgers without such a 
+room; and this room there was at Mrs Roper's, very small and dingy, but 
+still sufficient-just behind the dining parlour and opposite to the 
+kitchen stairs. Hither, after dinner, Amelia was summoned. She had just 
+seated herself between Mrs Lupex and Miss Spruce, ready to do battle 
+with the former because she would stay, and with the latter because she 
+would go, when she was called out by the servant girl.
+
+"Miss Mealyer, Miss Mealyer-sh-sh-sh! "And Amelia, looking round, saw a 
+large red hand beckoning to her. "He's down there," said Jemima, as 
+soon as her young mistress had joined her, "and wants to see you most 
+partic'lar."
+
+"Which of 'em? "asked Amelia, in a whisper.
+
+"Why, Mr Heames, to be sure. Don't you go and have anythink to say to 
+the other one, Miss Mealyer, pray don't; he ain't no good; he ain't 
+indeed."
+
+Amelia stood still for a moment on the landing, calculating whether it 
+would be well for her to have the interview, or well to decline it. Her 
+objects were two-or, rather, her object was in its nature twofold. She 
+was, naturally, anxious to drive John Eames to desperation; and anxious 
+also, by some slight added artifice, to make sure of Cradell if Eames's 
+desperation did not have a very speedy effect. She agreed with Jemima's 
+criticism in the main, but she did not go quite so far as to think that 
+Cradell was no good at all. Let it be Eames, if Eames were possible; 
+but let the other string be kept for use if Eames were not possible. 
+Poor girl! in coming to this resolve she had not done so without agony. 
+She had a heart, and with such power as it gave her, she loved John 
+Eames. But the world had been hard to her; knocking her about hither 
+and thither unmercifully; threatening, as it now threatened, to take 
+from her what few good things she enjoyed. When a girl is so 
+circumstanced she cannot afford to attend to her heart. She almost 
+resolved not to see Eames on the present occasion, thinking that he 
+might be made the more desperate by such refusal, and remembering also 
+that Cradell was in the house and would know of it.
+
+"He's there a-waiting, Miss Mealyer. Why don't yer come down?" and 
+Jemima plucked her young mistress by the arm.
+
+"I am coming," said Amelia. And with dignified steps she descended to 
+the interview.
+
+"Here she is, Mr Heames," said the girl. And then Johnny found himself 
+alone with his lady-love.
+
+"You have sent for me, Mr Eames," she said, giving her head a little 
+toss, and turning her face away from him. "I was engaged upstairs, but 
+I thought it uncivil not to come down to you as you sent for me so 
+special."
+
+"Yes, Miss Roper, I did want to see you very particularly."
+
+"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, and he understood fully that the exclamation 
+referred to his having omitted the customary use of her Christian name.
+
+"I saw your mother before dinner, and I told her that I am going away 
+the day after tomorrow."
+
+"We all know about that-to the earl's, of course!" And then there was 
+another chuck of her head.
+
+"And I told her also that I had made up my mind not to come back to 
+Burton Crescent."
+
+"What! leave the house altogether!"
+
+"Well; yes. A fellow must make a change sometimes, you know."
+
+"And where are you going, John?"
+
+"That I don't know as yet."
+
+"Tell me the truth, John; are you going to be married? Are you-going-to 
+marry-that young woman-Mr Crosbie's leavings? I demand to have an 
+answer at once. Are you going to marry her?"
+
+He had determined very resolutely that nothing she might say should 
+make him angry, but when she thus questioned him about "Crosbie's 
+leavings" he found it very difficult to keep his temper. "I have not 
+come," said he, "to speak to you about any one but ourselves."
+
+"That put-off won't do with me, sir. You are not to treat any girl you 
+may please in that sort of way-oh, John!" Then she looked at him as 
+though she did not know whether to fly at him and cover him with 
+kisses, or to fly at him and tear his hair.
+
+"I know I haven't behaved quite as I should have done," he began.
+
+"Oh, John!" and she shook her head. "You mean, then, to tell me that 
+you are going to marry her?"
+
+"I mean to say nothing of the kind-I only mean to say that I am going 
+away from Burton Crescent."
+
+"John Eames, I wonder what you think will come to you! Will you answer 
+me this; have I had a promise from you-a distinct promise, over and 
+over again, or have I not?"
+
+"I don't know about a distinct promise-"
+
+"Well, well! I did think that you was a gentleman that would not go 
+back from your word. I did think that. I did think that you would never 
+put a young lady to the necessity of bringing forward her own letters 
+to prove that she is not expecting more than she has a right! You don't 
+know! And that, after all that has been between us! John Eames!" And 
+again it seemed to him as though she were about to fly.
+
+"I tell you that I know I haven't behaved well. What more can I say?"
+
+"What more can you say? Oh, John! to ask me such a question! If you 
+were a man you would know very well what more to say. But all you 
+private secretaries are given to deceit, as the sparks fly upwards. 
+However, I despise you-I do, indeed. I despise you."
+
+"If you despise me, we might as well shake hands and part at once. I 
+dare say that will be best. One doesn't like to be despised, of course; 
+but sometimes one can't help it." And then he put out his hand to her.
+
+"And is this to be the end of all?"she said, taking it.
+
+"Well, yes; I suppose so. You say I'm despised."
+
+"You shouldn't take up a poor girl in that way for a sharp word-not 
+when she is suffering as I am made to suffer. If you only think of 
+it-think what I have been expecting!" And now Amelia began to cry, and 
+to look as though she were going to fall into his arms.
+
+"It is better to tell the truth," he said; "isn't it?"
+
+"But it shouldn't be the truth."
+
+"But it is the truth. I couldn't do it. I should ruin myself and you 
+too, and we should never be happy."
+
+"I should be happy-very happy indeed." At this moment the poor girl's 
+tears were unaffected, and her words were not artful. For a minute or 
+two her heart-her actual heart was allowed to prevail.
+
+"It cannot be, Amelia. Will you not say good-bye?"
+
+"Good-bye," she said, leaning against him as she spoke.
+
+"I do so hope you will be happy," he said. And then, putting his arm 
+round her waist, he kissed her; which he certainly ought not to have 
+done.
+
+When the interview was over, he escaped out into the crescent, and as 
+he walked down through the squares-Woburn Square, and Russell Square, 
+and Bedford Square-towards the heart of London, he felt himself elated 
+almost to a state of triumph. He had got himself well out of his 
+difficulties, and now he would be ready for his love-tale to Lily.
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+THE FIRST VISIT TO THE GUESTWICK BRIDGE
+
+
+When John Eames arrived at Guestwick Manor, he was first welcomed by 
+Lady Julia. "My dear Mr Eames," she said, "I cannot tell you how glad 
+we are to see you." After that she always called him John, and treated 
+him throughout his visit with wonderful kindness. No doubt that affair 
+of the bull had in some measure produced this feeling; no doubt, also, 
+she was well disposed to the man who she hoped might be accepted as a 
+lover by Lily Dale. But I am inclined to think that the fact of his 
+having beaten Crosbie had been the most potential cause of this 
+affection for our hero on the part of Lady Julia. Ladies-especially 
+discreet old ladies, such as Lady Julia de Guest-are bound to entertain 
+pacific theories, and to condemn all manner of violence. Lady Julia 
+would have blamed any one who might have advised Eames to commit an 
+assault upon Crosbie. But, nevertheless, deeds of prowess are still 
+dear to the female heart, and a woman, be she ever so old and discreet, 
+understands and appreciates the summary justice which may be done by 
+means of a thrashing. Lady Julia, had she been called upon to talk of 
+it, would undoubtedly have told Eames that he had committed a fault in 
+striking Mr Crosbie; but the deed had been done, and Lady Julia became 
+very fond of John Eames.
+
+"Vickers shall show you your room, if you like to go upstairs; but 
+you'll find my brother close about the house if you choose to go out; I 
+saw him not half an hour since." But John seemed to he well satisfied 
+to sit in his arm-chair over the fire, and talk to his hostess; so 
+neither of them moved.
+
+"And now that you're a private secretary, how do you like it?"
+
+"I like the work well enough; only I don't like the man, Lady Julia. 
+But I shouldn't say so, because he is such an intimate friend of your 
+brother's."
+
+"An intimate friend of Theodore's!-Sir Raffle Buffle!"
+
+Lady Julia stiffened her back and put on a serious face, not being 
+exactly pleased at being told that the Earl de Guest had any such 
+intimate friend.
+
+"At any rate he tells me so about four times a day, Lady Julia. And he 
+particularly wants to come down here next September."
+
+"Did he tell you that, too?
+
+"Indeed he did. You can't believe what a goose he is! Then his voice 
+sounds like a cracked bell; it's the most disagreeable voice you ever 
+heard in your life. And one has always to be on one's guard lest he 
+should make one do something that is-is-that isn't quite the thing for 
+a gentleman. You understand-what the messenger ought to do."
+
+"You shouldn't be too much afraid of your own dignity."
+
+"No, I'm not. If Lord de Guest were to ask me to fetch him his shoes, 
+I'd run to Guestwick and back for them and think nothing of it-just 
+because he's my friend. He'd have a right to send me. But I'm not going 
+to do such things as that for Sir Raffle Buffle."
+"Fetch him his shoes!
+
+"That's what FitzHoward had to do, and he didn't like it."
+
+"Isn't Mr FitzHoward nephew to the Duchess of St Bungay?"
+
+"Nephew, or cousin, or something."
+
+"Dear me!" said Lady Julia, "what a horrible man!" And in this way John 
+Eames and her ladyship became very intimate.
+
+There was no one at dinner at the Manor that day but the earl and his 
+sister and their single guest. The earl when he came in was very warm 
+in his welcome, slapping his young friend on the back, and poking jokes 
+at him with a goodhumoured if not brilliant pleasantry.
+
+"Thrashed anybody lately, John?"
+
+"Nobody to speak of," said Johnny.
+
+"Brought your nightcap down for your out-o'-doors nap?"
+
+"No, but I've got a grand stick for the bull," said Johnny.
+
+"Ah! that's no joke now, I can tell you," said the earl. "We had to 
+sell him, and it half broke my heart. We don't know what had come to 
+him, but he became quite unruly after that-knocked Darvel down in the 
+straw-yard! It was a very bad business-a very bad business, indeed! 
+Come, go and dress. Do you remember how you came down to dinner that 
+day? I shall never forget how Crofts stared at you. Come, you've only 
+got twenty minutes, and you London fellows always want an hour."
+
+"He's entitled to some consideration now he's a private secretary," 
+said Lady Julia.
+
+"Bless us all! yes; I. forgot that. Come, Mr Private Secretary, don't 
+stand on the grandeur of your neck-tie today, as there's nobody here 
+but ourselves. You shall have an opportunity tomorrow."
+
+Then Johnny was handed over to the groom of the chambers, and exactly 
+in twenty minutes he re-appeared in the drawing-room.
+
+As soon as Lady Julia had left them after dinner, the earl began to 
+explain his plan for the coming campaign. "I'll tell you now what I 
+have arranged," said he. "The squire is to be here tomorrow with his 
+eldest niece-your Miss Lily's sister, you know."
+
+"What, Bell?"
+
+"Yes, with Bell, if her name is Bell. She's a very pretty girl, too. I 
+don't know whether she's not the prettiest of the two, after all."
+
+"That's a matter of opinion."
+
+"Just so, Johnny; and do you stick to your own. They're coming here for 
+three or four days. Lady Julia did ask Mrs Dale and Lily. I wonder 
+whether you'll let me call her Lily?"
+
+"Oh, dear! I wish I might have the power of letting you."
+
+"That's just the battle that you've got to fight. But the mother and 
+the younger sister wouldn't come. Lady Julia says it's all right-that, 
+as a matter of course, she wouldn't come when she heard you were to be 
+here. I don't quite understand it. In my days the young girls were 
+ready enough to go where they knew they'd meet their lovers, and I 
+never thought any the worse of them for it."
+
+"It wasn't because of that," said Eames.
+
+"That's what Lady Julia says, and I always find her to be right in 
+things of that sort. And she says you'll have a better chance in going 
+over there than you would here, if she were in the same house with you. 
+If I was going to make love to a girl, of course I'd sooner have her 
+close to me-staying in the same house. I should think it the best fun 
+in the world. And we might have had a dance, and all that kind of 
+thing. But I couldn't make her come, you know."
+
+"Oh, no; of course not."
+
+"And Lady Julia thinks that it's best as it is. You must go over, you 
+know, and get the mother on your side, if you can. I take it, the truth 
+is this-you mustn't be angry with me, you know, for saying it."
+
+"You may be sure of that."
+
+"I suppose she was fond of that fellow, Crosbie. She can't be very fond 
+of him now, I should think, after the way he. has treated her; but 
+she'll find a difficulty in making her confession that she really likes 
+you better than she ever liked him. Of course that's what you'll want 
+her to say."
+
+"I want her to say that she'll be my wife-some day."
+
+"And when she has agreed to the some day, then you'll begin to press 
+her to agree to your day-eh, sir? My belief is you'll bring her round. 
+Poor girl! why should she break her heart when a decent fellow like you 
+will only be too glad to make her a happy woman?" And in this way the 
+earl talked to Eames till the latter almost believed that the 
+difficulties were vanishing from out of his path. "Could it be 
+possible," he asked himself, as he went to bed, "that in a fortnight's 
+time Lily Dale should have accepted him as her future husband?" Then he 
+remembered that day on which Crosbie, with the two girls, had called at 
+his mother's house, when in the bitterness of his heart, he had sworn 
+to himself that he would always regard Crosbie as his enemy. Since then 
+the world had gone well with him; and he had no longer any bitter 
+feeling against Crosbie. That matter had been arranged on the platform 
+of the Paddington Station. He felt that if Lily would now accept him he 
+could almost shake hands with Crosbie. The episode in his life and in 
+Lily's would have been painful; but he would learn to look back upon 
+that without regret, if Lily could be taught to believe that a kind 
+fate had at last given her to the better of her two lovers. "I'm afraid 
+she won't bring herself to forget him," he had said to the earl. 
+"She'll only be too happy to forget him," the earl had answered, "if 
+you can induce her to begin the attempt. Of course it is very bitter at 
+first-all the world knew about it; but, poor girl, she is not to be 
+wretched for ever, because of that. Do you go about your work with some 
+little confidence, and I doubt not but what you'll have your way. You 
+have everybody in your favour-the squire, her mother, and all." While 
+such words as these were in his ears how could he fail to hope and to 
+be confident? While he was sitting cosily over his bedroom fire he 
+resolved that it should be as the earl had said. But when he got up on 
+the following morning, and stood shivering as he came out of his bath, 
+he could not feel the same confidence. "Of course I shall go to her," 
+he said to himself, "and make a plain story of it. But I know what her 
+answer will be. She will tell me that she cannot forget him." Then his 
+feelings towards Crosbie were not so friendly as they had been on the 
+previous evening.
+
+He did not visit the Small House on that, his first day. It had been 
+thought better that he should first meet the squire and Bell at 
+Guestwick Manor, so he postponed his visit to Mrs Dale till the next 
+morning.
+
+"Go when you like," said the earl. "There's the brown cob for you to do 
+what you like with him while you are here."
+
+"I'll go and see my mother," said John; "but I won't take the cob 
+today. If you'll let me have him tomorrow, I'll ride to Allington." So 
+he walked off to Guestwick by himself.
+
+He knew well every yard of the ground over which he went, remembering 
+every gate and stile and greensward from the time of his early boyhood. 
+And now as he went along through his old haunts, he could not but look 
+back and think of the thoughts which had filled his mind in his earlier 
+wanderings. As I have said before, in some of these pages, no walks 
+taken by the man are so crowded with thought as those taken by the boy. 
+He had been early taught to understand that the world to him would be 
+very hard; that he had nothing to look to but his own exertions, and 
+that those exertions would not, unfortunately, be backed by any great 
+cleverness of his own. I do not know that anybody had told him that he 
+was a fool; but he had come to understand, partly through his own 
+modesty, and partly, no doubt, through the somewhat obtrusive 
+diffidence of his mother, that he was less sharp than other lads. It is 
+probably true that he had come to his sharpness later in life than is 
+the case with many young men. He had not grown on the sunny side of the 
+wall. Before that situation in the Income-tax Office had fallen in his 
+way, very humble modes of life had offered themselves-or, rather, had 
+not offered themselves for his acceptance. He had endeavoured to become 
+an usher at a commercial seminary, not supposed to be in a very 
+thriving condition; but he had been, luckily, found deficient in his 
+arithmetic. There had been some chance of his going into the 
+leather-warehouse of Messrs Basil and Pigskin, but those gentlemen had 
+required a premium, and any payment of that kind had been quite out of 
+his mother's power. A country attorney, who had known the family for 
+years, had been humbly solicited, the widow almost kneeling before him 
+with tears, to take Johnny by the hand and make a clerk of him; but the 
+attorney had discovered that Master Johnny Eames was not supposed to be 
+sharp, and would have none of him. During those days, those gawky, 
+gainless, unadmired days, in which he had wandered about the lanes of 
+Guestwick as his only amusement, and had composed hundreds of rhymes in 
+honour of Lily Dale which no human eye but his own had ever seen, he 
+had come to regard himself as almost a burden upon the earth. Nobody 
+seemed to want him. His own mother was very anxious; but her anxiety 
+seemed to him to indicate a continual desire to get rid of him. For 
+hours upon hours he would fill his mind with castles in the air, 
+dreaming of wonderful successes in the midst of which Lily Dale always 
+reigned as a queen. He would carry on the same story in his imagination 
+from month to month, almost contenting himself with such ideal 
+happiness. Had it not been for the possession of that power, what 
+comfort could there have been to him in his life? There are lads of 
+seventeen who can find happiness in study, who can busy themselves in 
+books and be at their ease among the creations of other minds. These 
+are they who afterwards become well-informed men. It was not so with 
+John Eames. He had never been studious. The perusal of a novel was to 
+him in those days a slow affair; and of poetry he read but little, 
+storing up accurately in his memory all that he did read. But he 
+created for himself his own romance, though to the eye a most 
+unromantic youth; and he wandered through the Guestwick woods with many 
+thoughts of which they who knew him best knew nothing. All this he 
+thought of now as, with devious steps, he made his way towards his old 
+home-with very devious steps, for he went backwards through the woods 
+by a narrow path which led right away from the town down to a little 
+water-course, over which stood a wooden foot-bridge with a rail. He 
+stood on the centre of the plank, at a spot which he knew well, and 
+rubbing his hand upon the rail, cleaned it for the space of a few 
+inches of the vegetable growth produced by the spray of the water. 
+There, rudely carved in the wood, was still the word LILY. When he cut 
+those letters she had been almost a child. "I wonder whether she will 
+come here with me and let me show it to her," he said to himself. Then 
+he took out his knife and cleared the cuttings of the letters, and 
+having done so, leaned upon the rail, and looked down upon the running 
+water. How well things in the world had gone for him! How well! And yet 
+what would it all be if Lily would not come to him? How well the world 
+had gone for him! In those days when he stood there carving the girl's 
+name everybody had seemed to regard him as a heavy burden, and he had 
+so regarded himself. Now he was envied by many, respected by many, 
+taken by the. hand as a friend by those high in the world's esteem. 
+When he had come near the Guestwick Mansion in his old walks-always, 
+however, keeping at a great distance lest the grumpy old lord should. 
+be down upon him and scold him-he had little dreamed that he and the 
+grumpy old lord would ever be together on such familiar terms, that he 
+would tell to that lord more of his private thoughts than to any other 
+living being; yet it had come to that. The grumpy old lord had now told 
+him that that gift of money was to be his whether Lily Dale accepted 
+him or no. "Indeed, the thing's done," said the grumpy lord, pulling 
+out from his pocket certain papers, "and you've got to receive the 
+dividends as they become due." Then, when Johnny had expostulated-as, 
+indeed, the circumstances had left him no alternative but to 
+expostulate-the earl had roughly bade him hold his tongue, telling him 
+that he would have to fetch Sir Raffle's boots directly he got back to 
+London. So the conversation had quickly turned itself away to Sir 
+Raffle, whom they had both ridiculed with much satisfaction. "If he 
+finds his way down here in September, Master Johnny, or in any other 
+month either, you may fit my head with a foolscap. Not remember, 
+indeed! Is it not wonderful that any man should make himself so mean 
+fool? All this was thought over again, as Eames leaned upon the bridge. 
+He remembered every word, and remembered many other words-earlier 
+words, spoken years ago, filling him with desolation as to the 
+prospects of his life. It had seemed that his friends had united in 
+prophesying that the outlook into the world for him was hopeless, and 
+that the earning of bread must be for ever beyond his power. And now 
+his lines had fallen to him in very pleasant places, and he was among 
+those whom the world had determined to caress. And yet, what. would it 
+all be if Lily would not share his happiness? When he had carved that 
+name on the rail, his love for Lily had been an idea. It had now become 
+a reality which might probably be full of pain. If it were so-if such 
+should be the result, of his wooing-would not those old dreamy days 
+have been better than these-the days of his success?
+
+It was one o'clock by the time that he reached his mother's house, and 
+he found her and his sister in a troubled and embarrassed state. "Of 
+course you know, John," said his mother, as soon as their first 
+embraces were over," that we are going to dine at the Manor this 
+evening?" But he did not know it, neither the earl nor Lady Julia 
+having said anything on the subject. "Of course we are going," said Mrs 
+Eames, "and it was so very kind. But I've never been out to such a 
+house for so many years, John, and I do feel in such a twitter. I dined 
+there once, soon after we were married; but I never have been there 
+since that."
+
+"It's not the earl I mind, but Lady Julia," said Mary Eames.
+
+"She's the most good-natured woman in the world," said Johnny.
+
+"Oh, dear; people say she is so cross!"
+
+"That's because people don't know her. If I was asked who is the 
+kindest-hearted woman I know in the world, I think I should say Lady 
+Julia de Guest. I think I should."
+
+"Ah! but then they're so fond of you," said the admiring mother. "You 
+saved his lordship's life-under Providence."
+
+"That's all bosh, mother. You ask Dr Crofts. He knows them as well as I 
+do."
+
+"Dr Crofts is going to marry Bell Dale," said Mary; and then the 
+conversation was turned from the subject of Lady Julia's perfections, 
+and the awe inspired by the earl.
+
+"Crofts going to marry Bell!" exclaimed Eames, thinking almost with 
+dismay of the doctor's luck in thus getting himself accepted all at 
+once, while he had been suing with the constancy
+
+almost of a Jacob.
+
+"Yes," said Mary; "and they say that she has refused her cousin 
+Bernard, and that, therefore, the squire is taking away the house from 
+them. You know they're all coming into Guestwick."
+
+"Yes, I know they are. But I don't believe that the squire is taking 
+away the house."
+
+"Why should they come then? Why should they give up such a charming 
+place as that?"
+
+"Rent-free!" said Mrs Eames.
+
+"I don't know why they should come away; but I can't believe the squire 
+is turning them out; at any rate not for that reason." The squire was 
+prepared to advocate John's suit, and therefore John was bound to do 
+battle on the squire's behalf.
+
+"He is a very stern man," said Mrs Eames, and they say that since that 
+affair of poor Lily's he has been more cross than ever with them. As 
+far as I know, it was not Lily's fault."
+
+"Poor Lily!" said Mary. "I do pity her. If I was her. I should hardly 
+know how to show my face; I shouldn't, indeed."
+
+"And why shouldn't she show her face?" said John, in an angry tone. 
+"What has she done to he ashamed of? Show her face indeed! I cannot 
+understand the spite which one woman will sometimes have to another."
+
+"There is no spite, John; and it's very wrong of you to say so," said 
+Mary, defending herself.
+
+"But it is a very unpleasant thing for a girl to be jilted. All the 
+world knows that she was engaged to him."
+
+"And all the world knows-" But he would not proceed to declare that all 
+the world knew that also Crosbie had been well thrashed for his 
+baseness. It would not become him to mention that even before his 
+mother and sister. All the world did know it; all the world that cared 
+to know anything of the matter-except Lily Dale herself. Nobody had 
+ever yet told Lily Dale of that occurrence at the Paddington Railway 
+Station, and it was well for John that her friends and his had been so 
+discreet.
+
+"Oh, of course you are her champion," said Mary. "And I didn't mean to 
+say anything unkind. Indeed I didn't. Of course it was a misfortune."
+
+"I think it was the best piece of good fortune that could have happened 
+to her, not to marry a d-- scoundrel like-"
+
+"Oh, John!" exclaimed Mrs Eames.
+
+"I beg your pardon, mother. But it isn't swearing to call such a man as 
+that a d-- scoundrel."
+
+And he particularly emphasised the naughty word, thinking that thereby 
+he would add to its import, and take away from its naughtiness. "But we 
+won't talk any more about him. I hate the man's very name. I hated him 
+the first moment that I saw him, and knew that he was a blackguard from 
+his look. And I don't believe a word about the squire having been cross 
+to them. Indeed I know he has been the reverse of cross. So Bell is 
+going to marry Dr Crofts!"
+
+"There is no doubt on earth about that," said Mary. "And they say that 
+Bernard Dale is going abroad with his regiment."
+
+Then John discussed with his mother his duties as private secretary, 
+and his intention of leaving Mrs Roper's house. "I suppose it isn't 
+nice enough for you now, John," said his mother.
+
+"It never was very nice, mother, to tell you the truth. There were 
+people there- But you mustn't think I am turning up my nose because I'm 
+getting grand. I don't want to live any better than we all lived at Mrs 
+Roper's; but she took in persons that were not agreeable. There is a Mr 
+and Mrs Lupex there." Then he described something of their life in 
+Burton Crescent, but did not say much about Amelia Roper. Amelia Roper 
+had not made her appearance in Guestwick, as he had once feared that 
+she would do; and therefore it did not need that he should at present 
+make known to his mother that episode in his life.
+
+When he got back to the Manor House he found that Mr Dale and his niece 
+had arrived. They were both sitting. with Lady Julia when he went into 
+the morning room, and Lord de Guest was standing over the fire talking 
+to them. Eames as he came among them felt terribly conscious of his 
+position, as though all there were aware that he had been brought down, 
+from London on purpose to make a declaration of love-as, indeed, all of 
+them were aware of that fact. Bell, though no one had told her so in 
+direct words, was as sure of it as the others.
+
+"Here comes the prince of matadores," said the earl.
+
+"No, my lord; you're the prince. I'm only your first follower." Though 
+he could contrive that his words should be gay, his looks were 
+sheepish, and when he gave his hand to the squire it was only by a 
+struggle that he could bring himself to look straight into the old 
+man's face.
+
+"I'm very glad to see you, John," said the squire, "very glad indeed."
+
+"And so am I," said Bell. "I have been so happy to hear that you have 
+been promoted at your office, and so is mamma."
+
+"I hope Mrs Dale is quite well," said he-"and Lily." The word had been 
+pronounced, but it had been done with so manifest an effort that all in 
+the room were conscious of it, and paused as Bell prepared her little 
+answer.
+
+"My sister has. been very ill, you know-with scarlatina. But she has 
+recovered with wonderful quickness, and is nearly well again now. She 
+will be so glad to see you if you will go over."
+
+"Yes; I shall certainly go over," said John.
+
+"And now shall I show you your room, Miss Dale?" said Lady Julia. And 
+so the party was broken up, and the ice had been broken.
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+LOQUITUR HOPKINS
+
+
+The squire had been told that his niece Bell had accepted Dr Crofts, 
+and he had signified a sort of acquiescence in the arrangement, saying 
+that if it were to be so, he had nothing to say against Dr Crofts. He 
+spoke this in a melancholy tone of voice, wearing on his face that look 
+of subdued sorrow. which was now habitual to him. It was to Mrs Dale 
+that he spoke on the subject. "I could have wished that it might have 
+been otherwise," he said, "as you are well aware. I had family reasons 
+for wishing that it might be otherwise. But I have nothing to say 
+against it. Dr Crofts, as her husband, shall be welcome to my house." 
+Mrs Dale, who had expected much worse than this, began to thank him for 
+his kindness, and to say that she also would have preferred to see her 
+daughter married to her cousin. "But in such a matter the decision 
+should be left entirely to the girl. Don't you think so?
+
+"I have not a word to say against her," he repeated. Then Mrs Dale left 
+him, and told her daughter that her uncle's manner of receiving the 
+news had been, for him, very gracious.
+
+"You were his favourite, but Lily will be so now," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I don't care a bit about that-or, rather, I do care, and think it will 
+be in every way better. But as I, who am the naughty one, will go away, 
+and as Lily, who is the good one, will remain with you, doesn't it 
+almost seem a pity that you should be leaving the house?"
+
+Mrs Dale thought it was almost a pity, but she could not say so now. 
+"You think Lily will remain," she said.
+
+"Yes, mamma; I feel sure she will."
+
+"She was always very fond of John Eames-and he is doing so well."
+
+"It will be of no use, mamma. She is fond of him-very fond. In a sort 
+of a way she loves him-so well, that I feel sure she never mentions his 
+name without some inward reference to her old childish thoughts and 
+fancies. If he had come before Mr Crosbie it would have all been well 
+with her. But she cannot do it now. Her pride would prevent her, even 
+if her heart permitted it. Oh! dear; it's very wrong of me to say so, 
+after all that I have said before; but I almost wish you were not 
+going. Uncle Christopher seems to be less hard than he used to be; and 
+as I was the sinner, and as I am disposed of-"
+
+"It is too late now, my dear."
+
+"And we should neither of us have the courage to mention it to Lily," 
+said Bell.
+
+On the following morning the squire sent for his sister-in-law, as it 
+was his wont to do when necessity came for any discussion on matters of 
+business. This was perfectly understood between them, and such sending 
+was not taken as indicating any lack of courtesy on the part of Mr 
+Dale. "Mary," he said, as soon as Mrs Dale was seated, "I shall do for 
+Bell exactly what I have proposed to do for Lily. I had intended more 
+than that once, of course. But then it would all have gone into 
+Bernard's pocket; as it is, it shall make no difference between them. 
+They shall each have a hundred a year-that is, when they marry. You had 
+better tell Crofts to speak to me."
+
+"Mr Dale, he doesn't expect it. He does not expect a penny."
+
+"So much the better for him; and, indeed, so much the better for her. 
+He won't make her the less welcome to his home because she brings some 
+assistance to it."
+
+"We have never thought of it-any of us. The offer has come so suddenly 
+that I don't know what I ought to say."
+
+"Say-nothing. If you choose to make me a return for it-but I am only 
+doing what I conceive to be my duty, and have no right to ask for a 
+kindness in return."
+
+"But what kindness can we show you, Mr Dale?"
+
+"Remain in that house." In saying these last words he spoke as though 
+he were again angry-as though he were again laying down the law to 
+them-as though he were telling her of a duty which was due to him and 
+incumbent on her. His voice was as stern and his face as acid as ever. 
+He said that he was asking for a kindness; but surely no man ever asked 
+for kindness in a voice so peremptory. "Remain in that house." Then he 
+turned himself in towards his table as though he had no more to say.
+
+But Mrs Dale was beginning, now at last, to understand something of his 
+mind and real character. He could be affectionate and forbearing in his 
+giving; but when asking, he could not be otherwise than stern. Indeed, 
+he could not ask; he could only demand.
+
+"We have done so much now," Mrs Dale began to plead.
+
+"Well, well, well. I did not mean to speak about that. Things are 
+unpacked easier than they are packed. But, however- Never mind. Bell is 
+to go with me this afternoon to Guestwick Manor. Let her be up here at 
+two. Grimes can bring her box round, I suppose."
+
+"Oh, yes: of course."
+
+"And don't be talking to her about money before she starts. I had 
+rather you didn't-you understand. But when you see Crofts, tell him to 
+come to me. Indeed, he'd better come at once, if this thing is to go on 
+quickly."
+
+It may easily be understood that Mrs Dale would disobey the injunctions 
+contained in the squire's last words. It was quite out of the question 
+that she should return to her daughters and not tell them the result of 
+her morning's interview with their uncle. A hundred a year in the 
+doctor's modest household would make all the difference between plenty 
+and want, between modest plenty and endurable want. Of course she told 
+them, giving Bell to understand that she must dissemble so far as to 
+pretend ignorance of the affair.
+
+"I shall thank him at once," said Bell; "and tell him that I did not at 
+all expect it, but am not too proud to accept it."
+
+"Pray don't, my dear; not just now. I am breaking a sort of promise in 
+telling you at all-only I could not keep it to myself. And he has so 
+many things to worry him! Though he says nothing about it now, he has 
+half broken his heart about you and Bernard." Then, too, Mrs Dale told 
+the girls what request the squire had just made, and the manner in 
+which he had made it. "The tone of his voice as he spoke brought tears 
+into my eyes. I almost wish we had not done anything."
+
+"But, mamma," said Lily, "what difference can it make to him? You know 
+that our presence near him was always a trouble to him. He never really 
+wanted us. He liked to have Bell there when he thought that Bell would 
+marry his pet."
+
+"Don't be unkind, Lily."
+
+"I don't mean to be unkind. Why shouldn't Bernard be his pet? I love 
+Bernard dearly, and always thought it the best point in Uncle 
+Christopher that he was so fond of him. I knew, you know, that it was 
+no use. Of course I knew it, as I understood all about somebody else. 
+But Bernard is his pet."
+
+"He's fond of you all, in his own way," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"But is he fond of you?-that's the question," said Lily. "We could have 
+forgiven him anything done to us, and have put up with any words he 
+might have spoken to us, because he regards us as children. His giving 
+a hundred a year to Bell won't make you comfortable in this house if he 
+still domineers over you. If a neighbour be neighbourly, near 
+neighbourhood is very nice. But Uncle Christopher has not been 
+neighbourly. He has wanted to be more than an uncle to us, on condition 
+that he might be less than a brother to you. Bell and I have always 
+felt that his regard on such terms was not worth having."
+
+"I almost feel that we have been wrong," said Mrs Dale; "but in truth I 
+never thought that the matter would be to him one of so much moment."
+
+When Bell had gone, Mrs Dale and Lily were not disposed to continue 
+with much energy the occupation on which they had all been employed for 
+some days past. There had been life and excitement in the work when 
+they had first commenced their packing, but now it was grown wearisome, 
+dull, and distasteful. Indeed so much of it was done that but little 
+was left to employ them, except those final strappings and fastenings, 
+and that last collection of odds and ends which could not be 
+accomplished till they were absolutely on the point of starting. The 
+squire had said that unpacking would be easier than packing, and Mrs 
+Dale, as she wandered about among the hampers and cases, began to 
+consider whether the task of restoring all the things to their old 
+places would be very disagreeable. She said nothing of this to Lily, 
+and Lily herself, whatever might be her thoughts, made no such 
+suggestion to her mother.
+
+"I think Hopkins will miss us more than any one else," she said. 
+"Hopkins will have no one to scold."
+
+Just at that moment Hopkins appeared at the parlour window, and 
+signified his desire for a conference.
+
+"You must come round," said Lily. "It's too cold for the window to he 
+opened. I always like to get him into the house, because he feels 
+himself a little abashed by the chairs and tables; or, perhaps, it is 
+the carpet that is too much for him. Out on the gravel-walks he is such 
+a terrible tyrant, and in the greenhouse he almost tramples upon one!
+
+Hopkins, when he did appear at the parlour door, seemed by his manner 
+to justify Lily's discretion. He was not at all masterful in his tone 
+or bearing, and seemed to pay to the chairs and tables all the 
+deference which they could have expected.
+
+"So you be going in earnest, ma'am," he said, looking down at Mrs 
+Dale's feet.
+
+As Mrs Dale did not answer him at once, Lily spoke-"Yes, Hopkins, we 
+are going in a very few days, now. We shall see you sometimes, I hope, 
+over at Guestwick."
+
+"Humph!" said Hopkins. "So you be really going! I didn't think it'd 
+ever come to that, miss; I didn't indeed-and no more it oughtn't; but 
+of course it isn't for me to speak."
+
+"People must change their residence sometimes, you know," said Mrs 
+Dale, using the same argument by which Eames had endeavoured to excuse 
+his departure to Mrs Roper.
+
+"Well, ma'am; it ain't for me to say anything. But this I will say, 
+I've lived here about t squire's place, man and boy, just all my life, 
+seeing I was born here, as you knows, Mrs Dale; and of all the bad 
+things I ever see come about the place, this is a sight the worst."
+
+"Oh, Hopkins!"
+
+"The worst of all, ma'am; the worst of all! It'll just kill t' squire! 
+There's ne'ery doubt in the world about that. It'll be the very death 
+of t' old man."
+
+"That's nonsense, Hopkins," said Lily.
+
+"Very well, miss. I don't say but what it is nonsense; only you'll see. 
+There's Mr Bernard-he's gone away; and by all accounts he never did 
+care very much for the place. They say all he's a-going to the Hingies. 
+And Miss Bell is going to be married-which is all proper, in course: 
+why shouldn't she? And why shouldn't you, too, Miss Lily?"
+
+"Perhaps I shall, some day, Hopkins."
+
+"There's no day like the present, Miss Lily. And I do say this, that 
+the man as pitched into him would be the man for my money." This, which 
+Hopkins spoke in the excitement of the moment, was perfectly 
+unintelligible to Lily, and Mrs Dale, who shuddered as she heard him, 
+said not a word to call for any explanation. "But," continued Hopkins, 
+"that's all as it may be, Miss Lily, and you be in the hands of 
+Providence-as is others."
+
+"Exactly so, Hopkins."
+
+"But why should your mamma be all for going away? She ain't going to 
+marry no one. Here's the house, and there's she, and there's t'squire; 
+and why should she be for going away? So much going away all at once 
+can't be for any good. It's just a breaking up of everything, as though 
+nothing wasn't good enough for nobody. I never went away, and I can't 
+abide it."
+
+"Well, Hopkins; it's settled now," said Mrs Dale, "and I'm afraid it 
+can't be unsettled."
+"Settled-well. Tell me this: do you expect, Mrs Dale, that he's to live 
+there all alone by hisself without any one to say a cross word 
+to-unless it be me or Dingles; for Jolliffe's worse than nobody, he's 
+so mortial cross hisself. Of course he can't stand it. If you goes 
+away, Mrs Dale; Mister Bernard, he'll be squire in less than twelve 
+months. He'll come back from the Hingies, then, I suppose?"
+
+"I don't think my brother-in-law will take it in that way, Hopkins."
+
+"A, ma'am, you don't know him-not as I knows him-all the ins and outs 
+and crinks and crannies of him. I knows him as I does the old 
+apple-trees that I've been a-handling for forty year. There's a deal of 
+bad wood about them old cankered trees, and some folk say they ain't 
+worth the ground they stand on; but I know where the sap runs, and when 
+the fruit-blossom shows itself I know where the fruit will be the 
+sweetest. It don't take much to kill one of them old trees-but there's 
+life in 'm yet if they be well handled."
+
+"I'm sure I hope my brother's life may be long spared to him," said Mrs 
+Dale.
+
+"Then don't be taking yourself away, ma'am, into them gashly lodgings 
+at Guestwick. I says they are gashly for the likes of a Dale. It is not 
+for me to speak, ma'am, of course. And I only came up now just to know 
+what things you'd like with you out of the greenhouse."
+
+"Oh, nothing, Hopkins, thank you," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"He told me to put up for you the best I could pick, and I means to do 
+it;" and Hopkins, as he spoke, indicated by a motion of his head that 
+he was making reference to the squire.
+
+"We shan't have any place for them," said Lily.
+
+"I must send a few, miss, just to cheer you up a bit. I fear you'll be 
+very dolesome there. And the doctor-he ain't got what you can call a 
+regular garden, but there is a bit of a place behind."
+
+"But we wouldn't rob the dear old place," said Lily.
+
+"For the matter of that what does it signify? T'squire'll be that 
+wretched he'll turn sheep in here to destroy the place, or he'll have 
+the garden ploughed. You see if he don't. As for the place, the place 
+is clean done for, if you leave it. You don't suppose he'll go and let 
+the Small House to strangers. T'squire ain't one of that sort any ways."
+
+"Ah me!" exclaimed Mrs Dale, as soon as Hopkins had taken himself off.
+
+"What is it, mamma? He's a dear old man, but surely what he says cannot 
+make you really unhappy."
+
+"It is so hard to know what one ought to do. I did not mean to be 
+selfish, but it seems to me as though I were doing the most selfish 
+thing in the world."
+
+"Nay, mamma; it has been anything but selfish. Besides, it is we that 
+have done it; not you."
+
+"Do you know, Lily, that I also have that feeling as to breaking up 
+one's old mode of life of which Hopkins spoke. I thought that I should 
+be glad to escape from this place, but now that the time has come I 
+dread it."
+
+"Do you mean that you repent?"
+
+Mrs Dale did not answer her daughter at once, fearing to commit herself 
+by words which could not be retracted. But at last she said, "Yes, 
+Lily; I think I do repent. I think that it has not been well done."
+
+"Then let it be undone," said Lily.
+
+The dinner-party at Guestwick Manor on that day was not very bright, 
+and yet the earl had done all in his power to make his guests happy. 
+But gaiety did not come naturally to his house, which, as will have 
+been seen, was an abode very unlike in its nature to that of the other 
+earl at Courcy Castle. Lady de Courcy at any rate understood how to 
+receive and entertain a houseful of people, though the practice of 
+doing so might give rise to difficult questions in the privacy of her 
+domestic relations. Lady Julia did not understand it; but then Lady 
+Julia was never called upon to answer for the expense of extra 
+servants, nor was she asked about twice a week who the -- was to pay 
+the wine-merchant's bill? As regards Lord de Guest and the Lady Julia 
+themselves, I think they had the best of it; but I am bound to admit, 
+with reference to chance guests, that the house was dull. The people 
+who were now gathered at the earl's table could hardly have been 
+expected to be very sprightly when in company with each other. The 
+squire was not a man much given to general society, and was unused to 
+amuse a table full of people. On the present occasion he sat next to 
+Lady Julia, and from time to time muttered a few words to her about the 
+state of the country. Mrs Eames was terribly afraid of everybody there, 
+and especially of the earl, next to whom she sat, and whom she 
+continually called "my lord," showing by her voice as she did so that 
+she was almost alarmed by the sound of her own voice. Mr and Mrs Boyce 
+were there, the parson sitting on the other side of Lady Julia, and the 
+parson's wife on the other side of the earl. Mrs Boyce was very 
+studious to show that he was quite at home, and talked perhaps more 
+than any one else; but in doing so she bored the earl most exquisitely, 
+so that he told John Eames the next morning that she was worse than the 
+bull. The parson ate his dinner, but said little or nothing between the 
+two graces. He was a heavy, sensible, slow man, who knew himself and 
+his own powers. "Uncommon good stewed beef," he said, as he went home; 
+"why can't we have our beef stewed like that?" "Because we don't pay 
+our cook sixty pounds a year," said Mrs Boyce. "A woman with sixteen 
+pounds can stew beef as well as a woman with sixty," said he; she only 
+wants looking after." The earl himself was possessed of a sort of 
+gaiety. There was about him a lightness of spirit which often made him 
+an agreeable companion to one single person. John Eames conceived him 
+to be the most sprightly old man of his day-an old man with the fun and 
+frolic almost of a boy. But this spirit, though it would show itself 
+before John Eames, was not up to the entertainment of John Eames's 
+mother and sister, together with the squire, the parson, and the 
+parson's wife of Allington. So that the earl was over-weighted and did 
+not shine on this occasion at his own dinner-table. Dr Crofts, who had 
+also been invited, and who had secured the place which was now 
+peculiarly his own, next to Bell Dale, was no doubt happy enough; as, 
+let us hope, was the young lady also; but they added very little to the 
+general hilarity of the company. John Eames was seated between his own 
+sister and the parson, and did not at all enjoy his position. He had a 
+full view of the doctor's felicity, as the happy pair sat opposite to 
+him, and conceived himself to be hardly treated by Lily's absence.
+
+The party was certainly very dull, as were all such dinners at 
+Guestwick Manor. There are houses, which, in their everyday course, are 
+not conducted by any means in a sad or unsatisfactory manner-in which 
+life, as a rule, runs along merrily enough; but which cannot give a 
+dinner-party; or, I might rather say, should never allow themselves to 
+be allured into the attempt. The owners of such houses are generally 
+themselves quite aware of the fact, and dread the dinner which they 
+resolved to give quite as much as it is dreaded by their friends. They 
+know that they prepare for their guests an evening of misery, and for 
+themselves certain long hours of purgatory which are hardly to be 
+endured. But they will do it. Why that long table, and all those 
+supernumerary glasses and knives and forks, if they are never to be 
+used? That argument produces all this misery; that and others cognate 
+to it. On the present occasion, no doubt, there were excuses to be 
+made. The squire and his niece had been invited on special cause, and 
+their presence would have been well enough. The doctor added in would 
+have done no harm. It was good-natured, too, that invitation given to 
+Mrs Eames and her daughter. The error lay in the parson and his wife. 
+There was no necessity for their being there, nor had they any ground 
+on which to stand, except the party-giving ground. Mr and Mrs Boyce 
+made the dinner-party, and destroyed the social circle. Lady Julia knew 
+that she had been wrong as soon as she had sent out the note.
+
+Nothing was said on that evening which has any bearing on our story. 
+Nothing, indeed, was said which had any bearing on anything. The earl's 
+professed object had been to bring the squire and young Eames together; 
+but people are never brought together on such melancholy occasions. 
+Though they sip their port in close contiguity, they are poles asunder 
+in their minds and feelings. When the Guestwick fly came for Mrs Eames, 
+and the parson's pony-phaeton came for him and Mrs Boyce, a great 
+relief was felt; but the misery of those who were left had gone too far 
+to allow of any reaction on that evening. The squire yawned, and the 
+earl yawned, and then there was an end of it for that night.
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+THE SECOND VISIT TO THE GUESTWICK BRIDGE
+
+
+Bell had declared that her sister would be very happy to see John Eames 
+if he would go over to Allington, and he had replied that of course he 
+would go there. So much having been, as it were, settled, he was able 
+to speak of his visit as a matter of course at the breakfast table, on 
+the morning after the earl's dinner-party. "I must get you to come 
+round with me, Dale, and see what I am doing to the land," the earl 
+said. And then he proposed to order saddle-horses. But the squire 
+preferred walking, and in this way they were disposed of soon after 
+breakfast.
+
+John had it in his mind to get Bell to himself for half an hour, and 
+hold a conference with her; but it either happened that Lady Julia was 
+too keen in her duties as a hostess, or else, as was more possible, 
+Bell avoided the meeting. No opportunity for such an interview offered 
+itself, though he hung about the drawing-room all the morning. "You had 
+better wait for luncheon, now," Lady Julia said to him about twelve. 
+But this he declined; and taking himself away hid himself about the 
+place for the next hour and a half. During this time he considered much 
+whether it would be better for him to ride or walk. If she should give 
+him any hope, he could ride back triumphant as a field-marshal. Then 
+the horse would be delightful to him. But if she should give him no 
+hope-if it should be his destiny to be rejected utterly on that 
+morning-then the horse would be terribly in the way of his sorrow. 
+Under such circumstances what could he do but roam wide across the 
+fields, resting when he might choose to rest, and running when it might 
+suit him to run. "And she is not like other girls," he thought to 
+himself. "She won't care for my boots being dirty." So at last he 
+elected to walk.
+
+"Stand up to her boldly, man," the earl had said to him. "By George, 
+what is there to be afraid of? It's my belief they'll give most to 
+those who ask for most. There's nothing sets' em against a man like 
+being sheepish." How the earl knew so much, seeing that he had not 
+himself given signs of any success in that walk of life, I am not 
+prepared to say. But Eames took his advice as being in itself good, and 
+resolved to act upon it. "Not that any resolution will be of any use," 
+he said to himself, as he walked along. "When the moment comes I know 
+that I shall tremble before her, and I know that she'll see it; but I 
+don't think it will make any difference in her." 
+
+He had last seen her on the lawn behind the Small House, just at that 
+time when her passion for Crosbie was at the strongest. Eames had gone 
+thither impelled by a foolish desire to declare to her his hopeless 
+love, and she had answered him by telling him that she loved Mr Crosbie 
+better than all the world besides. Of course she had done so, at that 
+time; but, nevertheless, her manner of telling him had seemed to him to 
+be cruel. And he also had been cruel. He had told her that he hated 
+Crosbie-calling him "that man," and assuring her that no earthly 
+consideration should induce him to go into "that man's house." Then he 
+had walked away moodily wishing him all manner of evil. Was it not 
+singular that all the evil things which he, in his mind, had meditated 
+for the man, had fallen upon him. Crosbie had lost his love! He had so 
+proved himself to be a villain that his name might not be so much as 
+mentioned! He had been ignominiously thrashed! But what good would all 
+this be if his image were still dear to Lily's heart? "I told her that 
+I loved her then," he said to himself, "though I had no right to do so. 
+At any rate I have a right to tell her now." 
+
+When he reached Allington he did not go in through the village and up 
+to the front of the Small House by the cross street, but turned by the 
+church gate and passed over the squire's terrace, and by the end of the 
+Great House through the garden. Here he encountered Hopkins. "Why, if 
+that b'aint Mr Eames!" said the gardener. "Mr John, may I make so 
+bold!" and Hopkins held out a very dirty hand, which Eames of course 
+took, unconscious of the cause of this new affection.
+
+"I'm just going to call at the Small House, and I thought I'd come this 
+way." 
+
+"To be sure; this way, or that way, or any way, who's so welcome, Mr 
+John? I envies you; I envies you more than I envies any man. If I could 
+a got him by the scuff of the neck, I'd a treated him jist like any 
+wermin-I would, indeed! He was wermin! I ollays said it. I hated him 
+ollays! I did indeed, Mr John, from the first moment when he used to be 
+nigging away at them foutry balls, knocking them in among the 
+rhododendrons, as though there weren't no flower blossoms for next 
+year. He never looked at one as though one were a Christian; did he, Mr 
+John?" 
+
+"I wasn't very fond of him myself, Hopkins." 
+
+"Of course you weren't very fond of him. Who was?-only she, poor young 
+lady. She'll be better now, Mr John, a deal better. He wasn't a 
+wholesome lover-not like you are. Tell me, Mr John, did you give it him 
+well when you got him? I heard you did-two black eyes, and all his face 
+one mash of gore!" And Hopkins, who was by no means a young man, 
+stiffly put himself into a fighting attitude.
+
+Eames passed on over the little bridge, which seemed to be in a state 
+of fast decay, unattended to by any friendly carpenter, now that the 
+days of its use were so nearly at an end; and on into the garden, 
+lingering on the spot where he had last said farewell to Lily. He 
+looked about as though he expected still to find her there; but there 
+was no one to be seen in the garden, and no sound to be heard. As every 
+step brought him nearer to her whom he was seeking, he became more and 
+more conscious of the hopelessness of his errand. Him she had never 
+loved, and why should he venture to hope that she would love him now? 
+He would have turned back had he not been aware that his promise to 
+others required that he should persevere. He had said that he would do 
+this thing, and he would be as good as, his word. But he hardly 
+ventured to hope that he might be successful. In this frame of mind he 
+slowly made his way up across the lawn.
+
+"My dear, there is John Eames," said Mrs Dale, who had first seen him 
+from the parlour window.
+
+"Don't go, mamma." 
+
+"I don't know; perhaps it will be better that I should." 
+
+"No, mamma, no; what good can it do? It can do no good. I like him as 
+well as I can like any one. I love him dearly. But it can do no good. 
+Let him come in here, and be very kind to him; but do not go away and 
+leave us. Of course I knew he would come, and I shall be very glad to 
+see him." 
+
+Then Mrs Dale went round to the other room, and admitted her visitor 
+through the window of the drawing-room. "We are in terrible confusion, 
+John, are we not?
+
+"And so you are really going to live in Guestwick?" 
+
+"Well, it looks like it, does it not? But, to tell you a secret-only it 
+must be a secret; you must not mention it at Guestwick Manor; even Bell 
+does not know-we have half made up our minds to unpack all our things 
+and stay where we are." 
+
+Eames was so intent on his own purpose, and so fully occupied with the 
+difficulty of the task before him, that he could hardly receive Mrs 
+Dale's tidings with all the interest which they deserved. "Unpack them 
+all again," he said. "That will be very troublesome. Is Lily with you, 
+Mrs Dale?" 
+
+"Yes, she is in the parlour. Come and see her." So he followed Mrs Dale 
+through the hall, and found himself in the presence of his love.
+
+"How do you do, John?" "How do you do, Lily?" We all know the way in 
+which such meetings are commenced. Each longed to be tender and 
+affectionate to the other-each in a different way; but neither knew how 
+to throw any tenderness into this first greeting. "So you're staying at 
+the Manor House," said Lily.
+
+"Yes; I'm staying there. Your uncle and Bell came yesterday afternoon." 
+
+"Have you heard about Bell?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Oh, yes; Mary told me. I'm so glad of it. I always liked Dr Crofts 
+very much. I have not congratulated her, because I didn't know whether 
+it was a secret. But Crofts was there last night, and if it is a secret 
+he didn't seem to be very careful about keeping it." 
+
+"It is no secret," said Mrs Dale. "I don't know that I am fond of such 
+secrets." But as she said this, she thought of Crosbie's engagement, 
+which had been told to every one, and of its consequences." 
+
+"Is it to be soon?" he asked.
+
+"Well, yes; we think so. Of course nothing is settled." 
+
+"It was such fun," said Lily. "James, who took, at any rate, a year or 
+two to make his proposal, wanted to be married the next day 
+afterwards." .
+
+"No, Lily; not quite that." 
+
+"Well, mamma, it was very nearly that. He thought it could all be done 
+this week. It has made us so happy, John! I don't know anybody I should 
+so much like for a brother. I'm very glad you like him-very glad. I 
+hope you'll be friends always." There was some little tenderness in 
+this-as John acknowledged to himself.
+
+"I'm sure we shall-if he likes it. That is, if I ever happen to see 
+him. I'll do anything for him I can if he ever comes up to London. 
+Wouldn't it be a good thing, Mrs Dale, if he settled himself in London?
+
+"No, John; it would be a very bad thing. Why should he wish to rob me 
+of my daughter?" 
+
+Mrs Dale was speaking of her eldest daughter; but the very allusion to 
+any such robbery covered John Eames's face with a blush, made him hot 
+up to the roots of his hair, and for the moment silenced him..
+
+"You think he would have a better career in London?" said Lily, 
+speaking under the influence of her superior presence of mind.
+
+She had certainly shown defective judgment in desiring her mother not 
+to leave them alone; and of this Mrs Dale soon felt herself aware. The 
+thing had to be done, and no little precautionary measure, such as this 
+of Mrs Dale's enforced presence, would prevent it. Of this Mrs Dale was 
+well aware; and she felt, moreover, that John was entitled to an 
+opportunity of pleading his own cause. It might be that such 
+opportunity would avail him nothing, but not the less should he have it 
+of right, seeing that he desired it. But yet Mrs Dale did not dare to 
+get up and leave the room. Lily had asked her not to do so, and at the 
+present period of their lives all Lily's requests were sacred. They 
+continued for some time to talk of Crofts and his marriage; and when 
+that subject was finished, they discussed their own probable-or, as it 
+seemed now, improbable-removal to Guestwick. "It's going too far, 
+mamma," said Lily, "to say that you think we shall not go. It was only 
+last night that you suggested it. The truth is, John, that Hopkins came 
+in and discoursed with the most wonderful eloquence. Nobody dared to 
+oppose Hopkins. He made us almost cry; he was so pathetic." 
+
+"He has just been talking to me, too," said John, "as I came through 
+the squire's garden." 
+
+"And what has he been saying to you?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Oh, I don't know; not much." John, however, remembered well, at this 
+moment, all that the gardener had said to him. Did she know of that 
+encounter between him and Crosbie? and if she did know of it, in what 
+light did she regard it?
+
+They had sat thus for an hour together, and Eames was not as yet an 
+inch nearer to his object. He had sworn to himself that he would not 
+leave the Small House without asking Lily to be his wife. It seemed to 
+him as though he would be guilty of falsehood towards the earl if he 
+did so. Lord de Guest had opened his house to him, and had asked all 
+the Dales there, and had offered himself up as a sacrifice at the cruel 
+shrine of a serious dinner-party, to say nothing of that easier and 
+lighter sacrifice which he had made in a pecuniary point of view, in 
+order that this thing might be done. Under such circumstances Eames was 
+too honest a man not to do it, let the difficulties in his way be what 
+they might.
+
+He had sat there for an hour, and Mrs Dale still remained with her 
+daughter. Should he get up boldly and ask Lily to put on her bonnet and 
+come out into the garden? As the thought struck him, he rose and 
+grasped at his hat. "I am going to walk back to Guestwick," said he.
+
+"It was very good of you to come so far to see us." 
+
+"I was always fond of walking," he said. "The earl wanted me to ride, 
+but I prefer being on foot when I know the country, as I do here." 
+
+"Have a glass of wine before you go." 
+
+"Oh, dear, no. I think I'll go back through the squire's fields, and 
+out on the road at the white gate. The path is quite dry now." 
+
+"I dare say it is," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Lily, I wonder whether you would come as far as that with me." As the 
+request was made Mrs Dale looked at her daughter almost beseechingly. 
+"Do, pray do," said he; "it is a beautiful day for walking." 
+
+The path proposed lay right across the field into which, Lily had taken 
+Crosbie when she made her offer to let him off from his engagement. 
+Could it be possible that she should ever walk there again with another 
+lover? "No, John," she said; "not today, I think. I am almost tired, 
+and I had rather not go out." 
+
+"It would do you good," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I don't want to be done good to, mamma. Besides, I should have to come 
+back by myself." 
+
+"I'll come back with you," said Johnny.
+
+"Oh, yes; and then I should have to go again with you. But, John, 
+really I don't wish to walk today." Whereupon John Eames again put down 
+his hat.
+
+"Lily," said he; and then he stopped. Mrs Dale walked away to the 
+window, turning her back upon her daughter and visitor. "Lily, I have 
+come over here on purpose to speak to you. Indeed, I have come down 
+from London only that I might see you." 
+
+"Have you, John?" 
+
+"Yes, I have. You know well all that I have got to tell you. I loved 
+you before he ever saw you; and now that he has gone, I love you better 
+than I ever did. Dear Lily!" and he put out his hand to her.
+
+"No, John; no," she answered.
+
+"Must it be always no?"
+
+"Always no to that. How can it be otherwise? You would not have me 
+marry you while I love another!" 
+
+"But he is gone. He has taken another wife." 
+
+"I cannot change myself because he is changed. If you are kind to me 
+you will let that be enough." 
+
+"But you are so unkind to me!" 
+
+"No, no; oh, I would wish to be so kind to you! John, here; take my 
+hand. It is the hand of a friend who loves you, and will always love 
+you. Dear John, I will do anything-everything for you but that." 
+"There is only one thing," said he, still holding her by the hand, but 
+with his face turned from her.
+
+"Nay; do not say so. Are you worse off than I am? I could not have that 
+one thing, and I was nearer to my heart's longings than you have ever 
+been. I cannot have that one thing; but I know that there are other 
+things, and I will not allow myself to be broken-hearted." 
+
+"You are stronger than I am," he said.
+
+"Not stronger, but more certain. Make yourself as sure as I am, and 
+you, too, will be strong. Is it not so, mamma?" 
+
+"I wish it could be otherwise-I wish it could be otherwise! If you can 
+give him any hope-"
+
+"Mamma!" 
+
+"Tell me that I may come again-in a year," he pleaded.
+
+"I cannot tell you so. You may not come again-not in this way. Do you 
+remember what, I told you before, in the garden; that I loved him 
+better than all the world besides? It is still the same. I still love 
+him better than all the world. How, then, can I give you any hope?" 
+
+"But it will not be so for ever, Lily."
+
+"For ever! Why should he not be mine as well as hers when that for ever 
+comes? John, if you understand what it is to love, you will say nothing 
+more of it. I have spoken to you more openly about this than I have 
+ever done to anybody, even to mamma, because I have wished to make you 
+understand my feelings. I should be disgraced in my own eyes if I 
+admitted the love of another man, after--after--. It is to me almost as 
+though I had married him. I am not blaming him, remember. These things 
+are different with a man." 
+
+She had not dropped his hand, and as she made her last speech was 
+sitting in her old chair with her eyes fixed upon the ground. She spoke 
+in a low voice, slowly, almost with difficulty; but still the words 
+came very clearly, with a clear, distinct voice which caused them to be 
+remembered with accuracy, both by Eames and Mrs Dale. To him it seemed 
+to be impossible that he should continue his suit after such a 
+declaration. To Mrs Dale they were terrible words, speaking of a 
+perpetual widowhood, and telling of an amount of suffering greater even 
+than that which she had anticipated. It was true that Lily had never 
+said so much to her as she had now said to John Eames, or had attempted 
+to make so clear an exposition of her own feelings. "I should be 
+disgraced in my own eyes if I admitted the love of another man!" They 
+were terrible words, but very easy to be understood. Mrs Dale had felt, 
+from the first, that Eames was coming too soon, that the earl and the 
+squire together were making an effort to cure the wound too quickly 
+after its infliction; that time should have been given to her girl to 
+recover. But now the attempt had been made, and words had been forced 
+from Lily's lips, the speaking of which would never be forgotten by 
+herself.
+
+"I knew that it would be so," said John.
+
+"Ah, yes; you know it, because your heart understands my heart. And you 
+will not be angry with me, and say naughty, cruel words, as you did 
+once before. We will think, of each other, John, and pray for each 
+other; and will always love one another. When we do meet let us be glad 
+to see each other. No other friend shall ever be dearer to me than you 
+are. You are so true and honest! When you marry I will tell your wife 
+what an infinite blessing God has given her." 
+
+"You shall never do that." 
+
+"Yes, I will. I understand what you mean; but yet I will." 
+
+"Good-bye, Mrs Dale," he said.
+
+"Good-bye, John. If it could have been otherwise with her, you should 
+have had all my best wishes in the matter. I would have loved you 
+dearly as my son; and I will love you now." Then she put up her lips 
+and kissed his face.
+
+"And so will I love you," said Lily, giving him her hand again. He 
+looked longingly into her face as though he had thought it possible 
+that she also might kiss him: then he pressed her hand to his lips, and 
+without speaking any further farewell, took up his hat and left the 
+room.
+
+"Poor fellow!" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"They should not have let him come," said Lily. "But they don't 
+understand. They think that I have lost a toy, and they mean to be 
+good-natured, and to give me another." Very shortly after that Lily 
+went away by herself, and sat alone for hours; and when she joined her 
+mother again at tea-time, nothing further was said of John Eames's 
+visit.
+
+He made his way out by the front door, and through the churchyard, and 
+in this way on to the field through which he had asked Lily to walk 
+with him. He hardly began to think of what had passed till he had left 
+the squire's house behind him. As he made his way through the 
+tombstones he paused and read one, as though it interested him. He 
+stood a moment under the tower looking up at the clock, and then pulled 
+out his own watch, as though to verify the one by the other. He made, 
+unconsciously, a struggle to drive away from his thoughts the facts of 
+the late scene, and for some five or ten minutes he succeeded.
+
+He said to himself a word or two about Sir Raffle and his letters, and 
+laughed inwardly as he remembered the figure of Rafferty bringing in 
+the knight's shoes. He had gone some half mile upon his way before he 
+ventured to stand still and tell himself that he had failed in the 
+great object of his life.
+
+Yes; he had failed: and he acknowledged to himself, with bitter 
+reproaches, that he had failed, now and for ever. He told himself that 
+he had obtruded upon her in her sorrow with an unmannerly love, and 
+rebuked himself as having been not only foolish but ungenerous. His 
+friend the earl had been wont, in his waggish way, to call him the 
+conquering hero, and had so talked him out of his common sense as to 
+have made him almost think that he would be successful in his suit. 
+Now, as he told himself that any such success must have been 
+impossible, he almost hated the earl for having brought him to this 
+condition. A conquering hero, indeed! How should he manage to sneak 
+back among them all at the Manor House, crestfallen and abject in his 
+misery? Everybody knew the errand on which he had gone, and everybody 
+must know of his failure. How could he have been such a fool as to 
+undertake such a task under the eyes of so many lookers-on? Was it not 
+the case that he had so fondly expected success, as to think only of 
+his triumph in returning, and not of his more probable disgrace? He had 
+allowed others to make a fool of him, and had so made a fool of himself 
+that now all hope and happiness were over for him. How could he escape 
+at once out of the country-back to London? How could he get away 
+without saying a word further to any one? That was the thought that at 
+first occupied his mind.
+
+He crossed the road at the end of the squire's property, where the 
+parish of Allington divides itself from that of Abbot's Guest in which 
+the earl's house stands, and made his way back along the copse which 
+skirted the field in which they had encountered the bull, into the high 
+woods which were at the back of the park. Ah, yes; it had been well for 
+him that he had not come out on horseback. That ride home along the 
+high road and up to the Manor House stables would, under his present 
+circumstances, have been almost impossible to him. As it was, he did 
+not think it possible that he should return to his place in the earl's 
+house. How could he pretend to maintain his ordinary demeanour under 
+the eyes of those two old men? It would be better for him to get home 
+to his mother-to send a message from thence to the Manor, and then to 
+escape back to London.
+So thinking, but with no resolution made, he went on through the woods, 
+and down from the hill back towards the town till he again came to the 
+little bridge over the brook. There he stopped and stood a while with 
+his broad hand spread over the letters which he had cut in those early 
+days, so as to hide them from his sight. "What an ass I have 
+been-always and ever!" he said to himself.
+
+It was not only of his late disappointment that he was thinking, but of 
+his whole past life. He was conscious of his hobbledehoyhood-of that 
+backwardness on his part in assuming manhood which had rendered him 
+incapable of making himself acceptable to Lily before she had fallen 
+into the clutches of Crosbie. As he thought of this he declared to 
+himself that if he could meet Crosbie again he would again thrash 
+him-that he would so belabour him as to send him out of the world, if 
+such sending might possibly be done by fair beating, regardless whether 
+he himself might be called upon to follow him. Was it not hard that for 
+the two of them-for Lily and for him also-there should be such 
+punishment because of the insincerity of that man? When he had thus 
+stood upon the bridge for some quarter of an hour, he took out his 
+knife, and, with deep rough gashes in the wood, cut out Lily's name 
+from the rail.
+
+He had hardly finished, and was still looking at the chips as they were 
+being carried away by the stream, when a gentle step came close up to 
+him, and turning round, he saw that Lady Julia was on the bridge. She 
+was close to him, and had already seen his handiwork. "Has she offended 
+you, John?" she said.
+
+"Oh, Lady Julia!" 
+
+"Has she offended you?" 
+
+"She has refused me, and it is all over." 
+
+"It may be that she has refused you, and that yet it need not be all 
+over. I am sorry that you have cut out the name. John. Do you mean to 
+cut it out from your heart?" 
+
+"Never. I would if I could, but I never shall." 
+
+"Keep to it as to a great treasure. It will be a joy to you in after 
+years, and not a sorrow. To have loved truly, even though you shall 
+have loved in vain, will be a consolation when you are as old as I am. 
+It is something to have had a heart." 
+
+"I don't know. I wish that I had none." 
+
+"And, John-I can understand her feeling now; and, indeed, I thought all 
+through that you were asking her too soon; but the time may yet come 
+when she will think better of your wishes." 
+
+"No, no; never. I begin to know her now." 
+
+"If you can be constant in your love you may win her yet. Remember how 
+young she is; and how young you both are. Come again in two years' 
+time, and then, when you have won her, you shall tell me that I have 
+been a good old woman to you both."
+
+"I shall never win her, Lady Julia." As he spoke these last words the 
+tears were running down his cheeks, and he was weeping openly in 
+presence of his companion. It was well for him that she had come upon 
+him in his sorrow. When he once knew that she had seen his tears, he 
+could pour out to her the whole story of his grief; and as he did so 
+she led him back quietly to the house.
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+NOT VERY FIE FIE AFTER ALL
+
+
+It will perhaps be remembered that terrible things had been foretold as 
+about to happen between the Hartletop and Omnium families. Lady 
+Dumbello had smiled whenever Mr Plantagenet Palliser had spoken to her. 
+Mr Palliser had confessed to himself that politics were not enough for 
+him, and that Love was necessary to make up the full complement of his 
+happiness. Lord Dumbello had frowned latterly when his eyes fell on the 
+tall figure of the duke's heir; and the duke himself-that potentate, 
+generally so mighty in his silence-the duke himself had spoken. Lady de 
+Courcy and Lady Clandidlem were, both of them, absolutely certain that 
+the thing had been fully arranged. I am, therefore, perfectly justified 
+in stating that the world was talking about the loves-the illicit 
+loves-of Mr Palliser and Lady Dumbello.
+
+And the talking of the world found its way down to that respectable 
+country parsonage in which Lady Dumbello had been born, and from which 
+she had been taken away to those noble halls which she now graced by 
+her presence. The talking of the world was heard at Plumstead Episcopi, 
+where still lived Archdeacon Grantly, the lady's father; and was heard 
+also at the deanery of Barchester, where lived the lady's aunt and 
+grandfather. By whose ill-mannered tongue the rumour was spread in 
+these ecclesiastical regions it boots not now to tell. But it may be 
+remembered that Courcy Castle was riot far from Barchester, and that 
+Lady de Courcy was not given to hide her lights under a bushel.
+
+It was a terrible rumour. To what mother must not such a rumour 
+respecting her daughter be very terrible? In no mother's ears could it 
+have sounded more frightfully than it did in those of Mrs Grantly. Lady 
+Dumbello, the daughter, might be altogether worldly; but Mrs Grantly 
+had never been more than half worldly. In one moiety of her character, 
+her habits, and her desires, she had been wedded to things good in 
+themselves-to religion, to charity, and to honest-hearted uprightness. 
+It is true that the circumstances of her life had induced her to serve 
+both God and Mammon, and that, therefore, she had gloried greatly in 
+the marriage of her daughter with the heir of a marquis. She had 
+revelled in the aristocratic elevation of her child, though she 
+continued to dispense books and catechisms with her own hands to the 
+children of the labourers of Plumstead Episcopi. When Griselda first 
+became Lady Dumbello the mother feared somewhat lest her child should 
+find herself unequal to the exigencies of her new position. But the 
+child had proved herself more than equal to them, and had mounted up to 
+a dizzy height of success, which brought to the mother great glory and 
+great fear also. She delighted to think that her Griselda was great 
+even among the daughters of marquises; but she trembled as she 
+reflected how deadly would be the fall from such a height-should there 
+ever be a fall!
+
+But she had never dreamed of such, a fall as this! She would have 
+said-indeed, she often had said-to the archdeacon that Griselda's 
+religious principles were too firmly fixed to be moved by outward 
+worldly matters; signifying, it may be, her conviction that that 
+teaching of Plumstead Episcopi had so fastened her daughter into a 
+groove, that all the future teaching of Hartlebury would not suffice to 
+undo the fastenings. When she had thus boasted no such idea as that of 
+her daughter running from her husband's house had ever come upon her; 
+but she had alluded to vices of a nature kindred to that vice-to vices 
+into which other aristocratic ladies sometimes fell, who had been less 
+firmly grooved; and her boastings had amounted to this-that she herself 
+had so successfully served God and Mammon together, that her child 
+might go forth and enjoy all worldly things without risk of damage to 
+things heavenly. Then came upon her this rumour. The archdeacon told 
+her in a hoarse whisper that he had been recommended to look to it, 
+that it was current through the world that Griselda was about to leave 
+her husband.
+
+"Nothing on earth shall make me believe it," said Mrs Grantly. But she 
+sat alone in her drawing-room afterwards and trembled. Then came her 
+sister, Mrs Arabin, the dean's wife, over to the parsonage, and in 
+half-hidden words told the same story. She had heard it from Mrs 
+Proudie, the bishop's wife. "That woman is as false as the father of 
+falsehoods," said Mrs Grantly. But she trembled the more; and as she 
+prepared her parish work, could think of nothing but her child. What 
+would be all her life to come, what would have been all that was past 
+of her life, if this thing should happen to her? She would not believe 
+it; but yet she trembled the more as she thought of her daughter's 
+exaltation, and remembered that such things had been done in that world 
+to which Griselda now belonged. Ah! would it not have been better for 
+them if they had not raised their heads so high! And she walked, out 
+alone among the tombs of the neighbouring churchyard, and stood over 
+the grave in which had been laid the body of her other daughter. Could 
+be it that the fate of that one had been the happier.
+
+Very few words were spoken on the subject between her and the 
+archdeacon, and yet it seemed agreed among them that something should 
+be done. He went up to London, and saw his daughter-not daring, 
+however, to mention such a subject. Lord Dumbello was cross with him, 
+and very uncommunicative. Indeed both the archdeacon and Mrs Grantly 
+had found that their daughter's house was not comfortable to them, and 
+as they were sufficiently proud among their own class they had not 
+cared to press themselves on the hospitality of their son-in-law. But 
+he had been able to perceive that all was not right in the house in 
+Carlton Gardens. Lord Dumbello was not gracious with his wife, and 
+there was something in the silence, rather than in the speech, of men, 
+which seemed to justify the report which had reached him.
+
+"He is there oftener than he should be," said the archdeacon. "And I am 
+sure of this, at least, that Dumbello does not like it."
+
+"I will write to her," said Mrs Grantly at last. "I am still her 
+mother-I will write to her. It may be that she does not know what 
+people say of her."
+
+And Mrs Grantly did write.
+
+
+
+
+PLUMSTEAD, April, 186-.
+
+DEAREST GRISELDA-It seems sometimes that you have been moved so far 
+away from me that I have hardly a right to concern myself more in the 
+affairs of your daily life, and I know that it is impossible that, you 
+should refer to me for advice or sympathy, as you would have done had 
+you married some gentleman of our own standing. But I am quite sure 
+that my child does not forget her mother, or fail to look back upon her 
+mother's love; and that she will allow me to speak to her if she be in 
+trouble, as I would to any other child whom I had loved and cherished. 
+I pray God that I may be wrong in supposing that such trouble is near 
+you. If I am so you will forgive me my solicitude.
+
+Rumours have reached us from more than one quarter that-Oh! Griselda, I 
+hardly know in what words to conceal and yet to declare that which I 
+have to write. They say that you are intimate with Mr Palliser, the 
+nephew of the duke, and that your husband is much offended. Perhaps I 
+had better tell you all, openly, cautioning you not to suppose that I 
+have believed it. They say that it is thought that you are going to put 
+yourself under Mr Palliser's protection. My dearest child, I think you 
+can imagine with what agony I write these words-with what terrible 
+grief I must have been oppressed before I could, have allowed myself to 
+entertain the thoughts which have produced them. Such things are said 
+openly in Barchester, and your father, who has been in town and has 
+seen you, feels himself unable to tell me that my mind may be at rest.
+
+I will not say to you a word as to the injury in a worldly point of 
+view which would come to you from any rupture with your husband. I 
+believe that you can see what would be the effect of so terrible a step 
+quite as plainly as I can show it you. You would break the heart of 
+your father and send your mother to her grave-but it is not even on 
+that that I may most insist. It is this-that you would offend your God 
+by the worst sin that a woman can commit, and cast yourself into a 
+depth of infamy in which repentance before God is almost impossible, 
+and from which escape before man is not permitted.
+
+I do not believe it, my dearest, dearest child-my only living daughter; 
+I do not believe what they have said to me. But as a mother I have not 
+dared to leave the slander unnoticed. If you will write to me and say 
+that it is not so, you will make me happy again, even though you should 
+rebuke me for my suspicion.
+
+Believe that at all times, and under all circumstances, I am still your 
+loving mother, as I was in other days.
+
+SUSAN GRANTLY.
+
+
+We will now go back to Mr Palliser as he sat in his chambers at the 
+Albany, thinking of his love. The duke had cautioned him, and the 
+duke's agent had cautioned him; and he, in spite of his high feeling of 
+independence, had almost been made to tremble. All his thousands a year 
+were in the balance, and perhaps everything on which depended his 
+position before the world. But, nevertheless, though he did tremble, he 
+resolved to persevere. Statistics were becoming dry to him, and love, 
+was very sweet. Statistics, he thought, might be made as enchanting as 
+ever, if only they could be mingled with, love. The mere idea of loving 
+Lady Dumbello had seemed to give a salt to his life of which he did not 
+now know how to rob himself. It is true that he had not as yet enjoyed 
+many of the absolute blessings of love, seeing that his conversations 
+with Lady Dumbello had never been warmer than those which have been 
+repeated in these pages; but his imagination had been at work; and now 
+that Lady Dumbello was fully established at her house in Carlton 
+Gardens, he was determined to declare his passion on the first 
+convenient opportunity. It was sufficiently manifest to him that the 
+world expected him to do so, and that the world was already a little 
+disposed to find fault with the slowness of his proceedings.
+
+He had been once at Carlton Gardens since the season had commenced, and 
+the lady had favoured him with her sweetest smile. But he had only been 
+half a minute alone with her, and during that half-minute had only time 
+to remark that he supposed she would now remain in London for the 
+season.
+"Oh, yes," she had answered, "we shall not leave till July." Nor could 
+he leave till July, because of the exigencies of his statistics. He 
+therefore had before him two, if not three, clear months in which to 
+manoeuvre, to declare his purposes, and prepare for the future events 
+of his life. As he resolved on a certain morning that he would say his 
+first tender word to Lady Dumbello that very night, in the drawing-room 
+of Lady de Courcy, where he knew that he should meet her, a letter came 
+to him by the post. He well knew the hand and the intimation which it 
+would contain. It was from the duke's agent, Mr Fothergill, and 
+informed him that a certain sum of money had been placed to his credit 
+at his banker's. But the letter went further, and informed him also 
+that the duke had given his agent to understand that special 
+instructions would be necessary before the next quarterly payment could 
+be made. Mr Fothergill said nothing further, but Mr Palliser understood 
+it all. He felt his blood run cold round his heart; but, nevertheless, 
+he determined that he would not break his word to Lady de Courcy that 
+night.
+
+And Lady Dumbello received her letter, also on the same morning. She 
+was being dressed as she read it, and the maidens who attended her 
+found no cause to suspect that anything in the letter had excited her 
+ladyship. Her ladyship was not often excited, though she was vigilant 
+in exacting from them their utmost cares. She read her letter, however, 
+very carefully, and as she sat beneath the toilet implements of her 
+maidens thought deeply of the tidings which had been brought to her. 
+She was angry with no one-she was thankful to no one. She felt no 
+special love for any person concerned in the matter. Her heart did not 
+say, "Oh, my lord and husband!" or "Oh, my lover!" or "Oh, my mother, 
+the friend of my childhood!" But she became aware that matter for 
+thought had been brought before her, and she did think. "Send my love 
+to Lord Dumbello," she said, when the operations were nearly completed, 
+"and tell him that I shall be so glad. to see him if he will come to me 
+while I am at breakfast."
+
+"Yes, my lady." And then the message came back: "His lordship would be 
+with her ladyship certainly." 
+
+"Gustavus," she said, as soon as she had seated herself discreetly in 
+her chair, "I have had a letter from my mother, which you had better 
+read;" and she handed to him the document. "I do not know what I have 
+done to deserve such suspicions from her; but she lives in the country, 
+and has probably been deceived by ill-natured people. At any rate you 
+must read it, and tell me what I should do."
+
+We may predicate from this that Mr Palliser's chance of being able to 
+shipwreck himself upon that rock was but small, and that he would, in 
+spite of himself, be saved from his uncle's anger. Lord Dumbello took 
+the letter and read it very slowly, standing, as he did so, with his 
+back to the fire. He read it very slowly, and his wife, though she 
+never turned her face directly upon his, could perceive that he became 
+very red, that he was fluttered and put beyond himself, and that his 
+answer was not ready. She was well aware that his conduct to her during 
+the last three months had been much altered from his former usages; 
+that he had been rougher with her in his speech when alone, and less 
+courteous in his attention when in society; but she had made no 
+complaint or spoken a word to show him that she had marked the change. 
+She had known, moreover, the cause of his altered manner, and having 
+considered much, had resolved that she would live it. down. She had 
+declared to herself that she had done no deed and spoken no word that 
+justified suspicion, and therefore she would make no change in her 
+ways, or show herself to be conscious that she was suspected. But 
+now-having her mother's letter in her hand-she could bring him to an 
+explanation without making him aware that she had ever thought that he 
+had been jealous of her. To her, her mother's letter was a great 
+assistance. It justified a scene like this, and enabled her to fight 
+her battle after her own fashion. As for eloping with any Mr Palliser, 
+and giving up the position which she had won-no, indeed! She had been 
+fastened in her grooves too well for that! Her mother, in entertaining 
+any fear on such a subject, had. shown herself to be ignorant of the 
+solidity of her daughter's character.
+
+"Well, Gustavus," she said at last. "You must say what answer I shall 
+make, or whether I shall make any answer.." But he was not even yet 
+ready to instruct her. So he unfolded the letter and read it again, and 
+she poured out for herself a cup of tea.
+
+"It's a very serious matter," said he.
+
+"Yes, it is serious; I could not but think such a letter from my mother 
+to be serious. Had it come from any one else I doubt whether I should 
+have troubled you; unless, indeed, it and been from any as near to you 
+as she is to me. As it is, you cannot but feel that I am right" 
+
+"Right! Oh, yes, you are right-quite right to tell me; you should tell 
+me everything. D-- them!" But whom he meant to condemn he did not 
+explain.
+
+"I am above all things averse to cause you trouble," 'she said. "I have 
+seen some little things of late-"
+
+"Has he ever said anything to you?" 
+
+"Who-Mr Palliser? Never a word." 
+
+"He has hinted at nothing of this kind?" 
+
+"Never a word. Had he done so. I must have made you understand that he 
+could not have been allowed again into my drawing-room." Then again he 
+read the letter, or pretended to do so.
+
+"Your mother means well," he said.
+
+"Oh, yes, she means well. She has been foolish to believe the 
+tittle-tattle that has reached her-very foolish to oblige me to give 
+you this annoyance." 
+
+"Oh, as for that, I'm not annoyed. By Jove, no. Come, Griselda, let us 
+have it all out; other people have said this, and I have been unhappy. 
+Now, you know it all."
+
+"Have I made you unhappy?" 
+
+"Well, no; not you.. Don't be hard upon me when I tell you the whole 
+truth. Fools and brutes have whispered things that have vexed me. They 
+may whisper till the devil fetches them, but they shan't annoy me 
+again. Give me a kiss, my girl." And he absolutely put out his arms and 
+embraced her. "Write a good-natured letter to your mother, and ask her 
+to come up for a week in May. That'll be the best thing; and then 
+she'll understand; By Jove, it's twelve o'clock. Goodbye."
+
+Lady Dumbello was well aware that she had triumphed, and that her 
+mother's letter had been invaluable to her. But it had been used, and 
+therefore she did not read it again. She ate her breakfast in quiet 
+comfort, looking over a milliner's French circular as she did so; and 
+then, when the time for such an operation had fully come, she got to 
+her writing-table and answered her mother's letter.
+
+
+DEAR MAMMA (she said)-I thought it best to show your letter at once to 
+Lord Dumbello. He said that people would be ill-natured, and seemed to 
+think that the telling of such stories could not be helped. As regards 
+you, he was not a bit angry, but said that you and papa had better come 
+to us for a week about the end of next month. Do come. We are to have 
+rather a large dinner-party on the 23rd. His Royal Highness is coming, 
+and I think papa would like to meet him. Have you observed that those 
+very high bonnets have all gone out: I never, liked them; and as I had 
+got a hint from Paris, I have been doing my best to put them down. I do 
+hope nothing will prevent your coming. 
+
+Your affectionate daughter
+
+CARLTON GARDENS, Wednesday. 		G. DUMBELLO
+
+
+Mrs Grantly was aware, from the moment in which she received the 
+letter, that she had wronged her daughter by her suspicions. It did not 
+occur to her to disbelieve a word that was said in the letter, or an 
+inference that was implied. She had been wrong, and rejoiced that it 
+was so. But nevertheless there was that in the letter which annoyed and 
+irritated her, though she could not explain to herself the cause of her 
+annoyance. She had thrown all her heart into that which she had 
+written, but in the words which her child had written not a vestige of 
+heart was to be found. In that reconciling of God and Mammon which Mrs 
+Grantly had carried on so successfully in the education of her 
+daughter, the organ had not been required, and had become withered, if 
+not defunct, through want of use.
+
+"We will not go there, I think" said Mrs Grantly, speaking to her 
+husband.
+
+"Oh dear, no; certainly not. If you want to go to town at all, I will 
+take rooms for you. And as for his Royal Highness I have a great 
+respect for his Royal Highness, but I do not in the least desire to 
+meet him at Dumbello's table." 
+
+And so that matter was settled, as regarded the inhabitants of 
+Plumstead Episcopi.
+
+And whither did Lord Dumbello betake himself. when he left his wife's 
+room in so great a hurry at twelve o'clock? Not to the Park, nor to 
+Tattersall's, nor to a Committee-room of the House of Commons, nor yet 
+to the bow-window of his club. But he went straight to a great 
+jeweller's in Ludgate Hill, and there purchased a wonderful green 
+necklace, very rare and curious, heavy with green sparkling drops, with 
+three row's of shining green stones embedded in chaste gold-a necklace 
+amounting almost to a jewelled cuirass in weight and extent. It had 
+been in all the exhibitions, and was very costly and magnificent. While 
+Lady Dumbello was still dressing in the evening this was brought to her 
+with her lord's love, as his token of renewed confidence; and Lady 
+Dumbello, as she counted the sparkles, triumphed inwardly, telling 
+herself that she had played her cards well.
+
+But while she counted the sparkles produced by her full reconciliation 
+with her lord, poor Plantagenet Palliser was still trembling in his 
+ignorance. If only he could have been allowed to see Mrs Grantly's 
+letter, and the lady's answer, and the lord's present! But no such 
+seeing was vouchsafed to him, and he was carried off in his brougham to 
+Lady de Courcy's house, twittering with expectant love, and trembling 
+with expectant ruin. To this conclusion he had come at any rate, that 
+if anything was to be done, it should be done now. He would speak a 
+word of love, and prepare his future in accordance with the acceptance 
+it might receive.
+Lady de Courcy's rooms were very crowded when he arrived there. It was 
+the first great crushing party of the season, and all the world had 
+been collected into Portman Square. Lady de Courcy was smiling as 
+though her lord had no teeth, as though her eldest son's condition was 
+quite happy, and all things were going well with the De Courcy 
+interests. Lady Margaretta was there behind her, bland without and 
+bitter within; and Lady Rosina also, at some further distance, 
+reconciled to this world's vanity and finery because there was to be no 
+dancing. And the married daughters of the house were there also, 
+striving to maintain their positions on the strength of their undoubted 
+birth, but subjected to some snubbing by the lowness of their absolute 
+circumstances. Gazebee was there, happy in the absolute fact of his 
+connection with an earl, and blessed with the consideration that was 
+extended to him as an earl's son-in-law. And Crosbie, also, was in the 
+rooms-was present there, though he had sworn to himself that he would 
+no longer dance attendance on the countess, and that he would sever 
+himself away from the wretchedness of the family. But if he gave up 
+them and their ways, what else would then be left to him? He had come, 
+therefore, and now stood alone, sullen in a corner, telling himself 
+that all was vanity. Yes; to the vain all will be vanity; and to the 
+poor of heart all will be poor.
+
+Lady Dumbello was there in a small inner room, seated on a couch to 
+which she had been brought on her first arrival at the house, and on 
+which she would remain till she departed. From time to time some very 
+noble or very elevated personage would come before her and say a word, 
+and she would answer that elevated personage with another word; but 
+nobody had attempted with her the task of conversation. It was 
+understood that Lady Dumbello did not converse-unless it were 
+occasionally with Mr Palliser.
+
+She knew well that Mr Palliser was to meet her there. He had told her 
+expressly that he should do so, having inquired, with much solicitude, 
+whether she intended to obey the invitation of the countess. "I shall 
+probably be there," she had said, and now had determined that her 
+mother's letter and her husband's conduct to her should not cause her 
+to break her word. Should Mr Palliser "forget" himself, she would know 
+how to say a word to him as she had known how to say a word to her 
+husband. Forget himself! She was very sure that Mr Palliser had been 
+making up his mind to forget himself for some months past.
+
+He did come to her, and stood over her, looking unutterable things. His 
+unutterable things, however, were so looked, that they did not 
+absolutely demand notice from the lady. He did not sigh like a furnace, 
+nor open his eyes upon her as though there were two suns in the 
+firmament above her head, nor did he beat his breast or tear his hair. 
+Mr Palliser had been brought up in a school which delights in 
+tranquillity, and never allows its pupils to commit themselves either 
+to the sublime or to the ridiculous. He did look an unutterable thing 
+or two; but he did it with so decorous an eye, that the lady, who was 
+measuring it all with great accuracy, could not, as yet, declare that 
+Mr Palliser had "forgotten himself." 
+
+There was room by her on the couch, and once or twice, at Hartlebury, 
+he had ventured so to seat himself. On the present occasion, however, 
+he could not do so without placing himself manifestly on her dress. She 
+would have known how to fill a larger couch even than that-as she would 
+have known, also, how to make room-had it been her mind to do so. So he 
+stood still over her, and she smiled at him. Such a smile! It was cold 
+as death, flattering no one, saying nothing, hideous in its unmeaning, 
+unreal grace. Ah! how I hate the smile of a woman who smiles by rote! 
+It made Mr Palliser feel very uncomfortable-but he did not analyse it, 
+and persevered.
+
+"Lady Dumbello," he said, and his voice was very low, "I have been 
+looking forward to meeting you here." 
+"Have you, Mr Palliser? Yes; I remember that you asked me whether I was 
+coming." 
+
+"I did. Hm-Lady Dumbello!" and he almost trenched upon the outside 
+verge of that schooling which had taught him to avoid both the sublime 
+and the ridiculous. But he had not forgotten himself as yet, and so she 
+smiled again.
+
+"Lady Dumbello, in this world in which we live, it is so hard to get a 
+moment in which we can speak." He had thought that she would move her 
+dress, but she did not.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she said; "one doesn't often want to say very much, 
+I think." 
+
+"Ah, no; not often, perhaps. But when one does want! How I do hate 
+these crowded rooms!" Yet, when he had been at Hartlebury he had 
+resolved that the only ground for him would be the crowded drawing-room 
+of some large London house. "I wonder whether you ever desire anything 
+beyond them?" 
+
+"Oh, yes," said she; "but I confess that I am fond of parties." 
+
+Mr Palliser looked round and thought that he saw that he was 
+unobserved. He had made up his mind as to what he would do, and he was 
+determined to do it. He had in him none of that readiness which enables 
+some men to make love and carry off their Dulcineas at a moment's 
+notice, but he had that pluck which would have made himself disgraceful 
+in his own eyes if he omitted to do that as to the doing of which he 
+had made a solemn resolution. He would have preferred to do it sitting, 
+but, faute de mieux, seeing that a seat was denied to him, he would do 
+it standing.
+
+"Griselda," he said-and it must be admitted that his tone was not bad. 
+The word sank softly into her ear, like small rain upon moss, and it 
+sank into no other ear. "Griselda!" 
+
+"Mr Palliser!" said she-and though she made no scene, though she merely 
+glanced upon him once, he could see that he was wrong.
+
+"May I not call you so?" 
+
+"Certainly not. Shall I ask you to see if my people are there?" He 
+stood a moment before her hesitating. "My carriage, I mean." As she 
+gave the command she glanced at him again, and then he obeyed her 
+orders.
+
+When he returned she had left her seat; but he heard her name announced 
+on the stairs, and caught a glance of the back of her head as she made 
+her way gracefully down through the crowd. He never attempted to make 
+love to her again, utterly disappointing the hopes of Lady de Courcy, 
+Mrs Proudie, and Lady Clandidlem.
+
+As I would wish those who are interested in Mr Palliser's fortunes to 
+know the ultimate result of this adventure, and as we shall not have 
+space to return to his affairs in this little history, I may, perhaps, 
+be allowed to press somewhat forward, and tell what Fortune did for him 
+before the close of that London season. Everybody knows that in that 
+spring Lady Glencora MacCluskie was brought out before the world, and 
+it is equally well known that she, as the only child of the late Lord 
+of the Isles, was the great heiress of the day. It is true that the 
+hereditary possession of Skye, Staffa, Mull, Arran, and Bute went, with 
+the title, to the Marquis of Auldreekie, together with the counties of 
+Caithness and Ross-shire. But the property in Fife, Aberdeen, Perth, 
+and Kincardineshire, comprising the greater part of those counties, and 
+the coal-mines in Lanark, as well as the enormous estate within the 
+city of Glasgow, were unentailed, and went to the Lady Glencora. She 
+was a fair girl, with bright blue eyes and short wavy flaxen hair, very 
+soft to the eye. The Lady Glencora was small in stature, and her happy 
+round face lacked, perhaps, the highest grace of female beauty. But 
+there was ever a smile upon it, at which it was very pleasant to look; 
+and the intense interest with which she would dance, and talk, and 
+follow up every amusement that was offered her, was very charming. The 
+horse she rode was the dearest love-oh! she loved him so dearly! And 
+she had a little dog that was almost as dear as the horse. The friend 
+of her youth, Sabrina Scott, was-oh, such a girl! And her cousin, the 
+little Lord of the Isles, the heir of the marquis, was so gracious and 
+beautiful that she was always covering him with kisses. Unfortunately 
+he was only six, so that there was hardly a possibility that the 
+properties should be brought together.
+
+But Lady Glencora, though she was so charming, had even in this, her 
+first outset upon the world, given great uneasiness to her friends, and 
+caused the Marquis of Auldreekie to be almost wild with dismay. There 
+was a terribly handsome man about town, who had spent every shilling 
+that anybody would give him, who was very fond of brandy, who was 
+known, but not trusted, at Newmarket, who was said to be deep in every 
+vice, whose father would not speak to him-and with him the Lady 
+Glencora was never tired of dancing. One morning she had told her 
+cousin the marquis, with a flashing eye-for the round blue eye could 
+flash-that Burgo Fitzgerald was more sinned against than sinning. Ah 
+me! what was a guardian marquis, anxious for the fate of the family 
+property, to do under such circumstances as that?
+
+But before the end of the season the marquis and the duke were both 
+happy men, and we will hope that the Lady Glencora also was satisfied. 
+Mr Plantagenet Palliser had danced with her twice, and had spoken his 
+mind. He had an interview with the marquis, which was preeminently 
+satisfactory, and everything was settled. Glencora no doubt told him 
+how she had accepted that plain gold ring from Burgo Fitzgerald, and 
+how she had restored it; but I doubt whether she ever told him of that 
+wavy lock of golden hair which Burgo still keeps in his receptacle for 
+such treasures.
+
+"Plantagenet," said the duke, with quite unaccustomed warmth, "in this, 
+as in all things, you have shown yourself to be everything that I could 
+desire. I have told the marquis that Matching Priory, with the whole 
+estate, should be given over to you at once. It is the most comfortable 
+country-house I know. Glencora shall have The Horns as her wedding 
+present." 
+
+But the genial, frank delight of Mr Fothergill pleased Mr Palliser the 
+most. The heir of the Pallisers had done his duty, and Mr Fothergill 
+was unfeignedly a happy man.
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+SHOWING HOW MR CROSBIE BECAME AGAIN A HAPPY MAN
+
+
+It has been told in the last chapter how Lady de Courcy gave a great 
+party in London in the latter days of April, and it may therefore be 
+thought that things were going well with the De Courcys; but I fear the 
+inference would be untrue. At any rate, things were not going well with 
+Lady Alexandrina, for she, on her mother's first arrival in town, had 
+rushed to Portman Square with a long tale of her sufferings.
+
+"Oh, mamma! you would not believe it; but he hardly ever speaks to me."
+
+"My dear, there are worse faults in a man than that." 
+
+"I am alone there all the day. I never get out. He never offers to get 
+me a carriage. He asked me to walk with him once last week, when it was 
+raining. I saw that he waited till the rain began. Only think, I have 
+not been out three evenings this month-except to Amelia's; and now he 
+says he won't go there any more, because a fly is so expensive. You 
+can't believe how uncomfortable the house is." 
+
+"I thought you chose it, my dear." 
+
+"I looked at it, but, of course, I didn't know what a house ought to 
+be. Amelia said it wasn't nice, but he would have it. He hates Amelia. 
+I'm sure of that, for he says everything he can to snub her and Mr 
+Gazebee. Mr Gazebee is as good as he, at any rate. What do you think? 
+He has given Richard warning to go. You never saw him, but he was a 
+very good servant. He has given him warning, and he is not talking of 
+getting another man. I won't live with him without somebody to wait 
+upon me."
+
+"My dearest girl, do not think of such a thing as leaving him."
+
+"But I will think of it, mamma. You do not know what my life is in that 
+house. He never speaks to me-never. He comes home before dinner at 
+half-past six, and when he has just shown himself he goes to his 
+dressing-room. He is always silent at dinner-time, and after dinner he 
+goes to sleep. He breakfasts always at nine, and goes away at half-past 
+nine, though I know he does not get to his office till eleven. If I 
+want anything, he says that it cannot be afforded. I never thought 
+before that he was stingy, but I am sure now that he must he a miser at 
+heart." 
+
+"It is better so than a spendthrift, Alexandrina." 
+
+"I don't know that it is better. He could not make me more unhappy than 
+I am. Unhappy is no word for it. What can I do, shut up in such a house 
+as that by myself from nine o'clock in the morning till six in the 
+evening? Everybody knows what he is, so that nobody will come to see 
+me. I tell you fairly, mamma, I will not stand it. If you cannot help 
+me, I will look for help elsewhere."
+
+It may, at any rate, be said that things were not going well with that 
+branch of the De Courcy family. Nor, indeed, was it going well with 
+some other branches. Lord Porlock had married, not having selected his 
+partner for life from the choicest cream of the aristocratic circles, 
+and his mother, while endeavouring to say a word in his favour, had 
+been so abused by the earl that she had been driven to declare that she 
+could no longer endure such usage. She had come up to London in direct 
+opposition to his commands, while he was fastened to his room by gout; 
+and had given her party in defiance of him, so that people should not 
+say, when her back was turned, that she had slunk away in despair.
+
+"I have borne it," she said to Margaretta, "longer than any other woman 
+in England would have done. While I thought that any of you would 
+marry-"
+
+"Oh, don't talk of that, mamma," said Margaretta, putting a little 
+scorn into her voice. She had not been quite pleased that even her 
+mother should intimate that all her chance was over, and yet she 
+herself had often told her mother that she had given up all thought of 
+marrying.
+
+"Rosina will go to Amelia's," the countess continued; "Mr Gazebee is 
+quite satisfied that it should be so, and he will take care that she 
+shall have enough to cover her own expenses. I propose that you and I, 
+dear, shall go to Baden-Baden."
+
+"And about money, mamma?"
+
+"Mr Gazebee must manage it. In spite of all that your father says, I 
+know that there must be money. The expense will be much less so than in 
+our present way."
+
+"And what will papa do himself?"
+
+"I cannot help it, my dear. No one knows what I have had to bear. 
+Another year of it would kill me. His language has become worse and 
+worse, and I fear every day that he is going to strike me with his 
+crutch."
+
+Under all these circumstances it cannot be said that the De Courcy 
+interests were prospering.
+
+But Lady de Courcy, when she had made up her mind to go to Baden-Baden, 
+had by no means intended to take her youngest daughter with her. She 
+had endured for years, and now Alexandrina was unable to endure for six 
+months. Her chief grievance, moreover, was this-that her husband was 
+silent. The mother felt that no woman had a right to complain much of 
+any such sorrow as that. If her earl had sinned only in that way, she 
+would have been content to have remained by him till the last!
+
+And yet I do not know whether Alexandrina's life was not quite as hard 
+as that of her mother. She barely exceeded the truth when she said that 
+he never spoke to her. The hours with her in her new comfortless house 
+were very long-very long and very tedious. Marriage with her had by no 
+means been the thing that she had expected. At home, with her mother, 
+there had always been people around her, but they had not always been 
+such as she herself would have chosen for her companions. She had 
+thought that, when married, she could choose and have those about her 
+who were congenial to her: but she found that none came to her. Her 
+sister, who was a wiser woman than she, had begun her married life with 
+a definite idea, and had carried it out; but this poor creature found 
+herself, as it were, stranded. When once she had conceived it in her 
+heart to feel anger against her husband-and she had done so before they 
+had been a week together-there was no love to bring her back to him 
+again. She cid not know that it behoved her to look pleased when he 
+entered the room, and to make him at any rate think that his presence 
+gave her happiness. She became gloomy before she reached her new house, 
+and never laid her gloom aside. He would have made a struggle for some 
+domestic comfort, had any seemed to be within his reach. As it was, he 
+struggled for domestic propriety, believing that he might so best 
+bolster up his present lot in life. But the task became harder and 
+harder to him, and the gloom became denser and more dense. He did not 
+think of her unhappiness, but of his own; as she did not think of his 
+tedium, but of hers. "If this be domestic felicity!" he would say to 
+himself, as he sat in his arm-chair, striving to fix his attention upon 
+a book.
+
+"If this be the happiness of married life!" she thought, as she 
+remained listless, without even the pretence of a book, behind her 
+teacups. In truth she would not walk with him, not caring for such 
+exercise round the pavement of a London square; and he had resolutely 
+determined that she should not run into debt for carriage hire. He was 
+not a curmudgeon with his money; he was no miser. But he had found that 
+in marrying an earl's daughter he had made himself a poor man, and he 
+was resolved that he would not also be an embarrassed man.
+
+When the bride heard that her mother and sister were about to escape to 
+Baden-Baden, there rushed upon her a sudden hope that she might be able 
+to accompany the flight. She would not be parted from her husband, or 
+at least not so parted that the world should suppose that they had 
+quarrelled. She would simply go away and make a long visit-a very long 
+visit. Two years ago a sojourn with her mother and Margaretta at 
+Baden-Baden would not have offered to her much that was attractive; but 
+now, in her eyes, such a life seemed to be a life in Paradise. In 
+truth, the tedium of those hours in Princess Royal Crescent had been 
+very heavy.
+
+But how could she contrive that it should be so? That conversation with 
+her mother had taken place on the day preceding the party, and Lady de 
+Courcy had repeated it with dismay to Margaretta.
+
+"Of course he would allow her an income," Margaretta had coolly said.
+
+"But, my dear, they have been married only ten weeks."
+
+"I don't see why anybody is to be made absolutely wretched because they 
+are married," Margaretta answered. "I don't want to persuade her to 
+leave him, but if what she says is true, it must be very uncomfortable."
+
+Crosbie had consented to go to the party in Portman Square, but had not 
+greatly enjoyed himself on that festive occasion. He had stood about 
+moodily, speaking hardly a word to any one. His whole aspect of life 
+seemed to have been altered during the last few months. It was here, in 
+such spots as this that he had been used to find his glory. On such 
+occasions he had shone with peculiar light, making envious the hearts 
+of many who watched the brilliance of his career as they stood around 
+in dull quiescence. But now no one in those rooms had been more dull, 
+more silent, or less courted than he; and yet he was established there 
+as the son-in-law of that noble house. "Rather slow work; isn't it?" 
+Gazebee had said to him, having, after many efforts, succeeded in 
+reaching his brother-in-law in a corner. In answer to this Crosbie had 
+only grunted. "As for myself," continued Gazebee, "I would a deal 
+sooner be at home with my paper and slippers. It seems to me these sort 
+of gatherings don't suit married men." Crosbie had again grunted, and 
+had then escaped into another corner.
+
+Crosbie and his wife went home together in a cab-speechless both of 
+them. Alexandrina hated cabs-but she had been plainly told that in such 
+vehicles, and in such vehicles only, could she be allowed to travel. On 
+the following morning he was at the breakfast-table punctually by nine, 
+but she did not make her appearance till after he had gone to his 
+office. Soon after that, however, she was away to her mother and her 
+sister; but she was seated grimly in her drawing-room when he came in 
+to see her, on his return to his house. Having said some word which 
+might be taken for a greeting, he was about to retire; but she stopped 
+him with a request that he would speak to her.
+
+"Certainly," said he. "I was only going to dress. It is nearly the 
+half-hour."
+
+"I won't keep you very long, and if dinner is a few minutes late it 
+won't signify. Mamma and Margaretta are going to Baden-Baden."
+
+"To Baden-Baden, are they?"
+
+"Yes; and they intend to remain there-for a considerable time." There 
+was a little pause, and Alexandrina found it necessary to clear her 
+voice and to prepare herself for further speech by a little cough. She 
+was determined to make her proposition, but was rather afraid of the 
+manner in which it might be first received.
+
+"Has anything happened at Courcy Castle?" Crosbie asked.
+
+"No; that is, yes; there may have been some words between papa and 
+mamma; but I don't quite know. That, however, does not matter now. 
+Mamma is going, and purposes to remain there for the rest of the year."
+
+"And the house in town will be given up."
+
+"I suppose so, but that will be as papa chooses. Have you any objection 
+to my going with mamma?"
+
+What a question to be asked by a bride of ten weeks standing! She had 
+hardly been above a month with her husband in her new house, and she 
+was now asking permission to leave it, and to leave him also, for an 
+indefinite number of months-perhaps for ever. But she showed no 
+excitement as she made her request. There was neither sorrow, nor 
+regret, nor hope in her face. She had not put on half the animation 
+which she had once assumed in asking for the use, twice a week, of a 
+carriage done up to look as though it were her own private possession. 
+Crosbie had then answered her with great sternness, and she had wept 
+when his refusal was made certain to her. But there was to be no 
+weeping now. She meant to go-with his permission if he would accord it, 
+and without it if he should refuse it. The question of money was no 
+doubt important, but Gazebee should manage that-as he managed all those 
+things.
+
+"Going with them to Baden-Baden?" said Crosbie. "For how long?"
+
+"Well: it would be no use unless it were for some time."
+
+"For how long a time do you mean, Alexandrina? Speak out what you 
+really have to say. For a month?"
+
+"Oh, more than that."
+
+"For two months, or six, or as long as they may stay there?"
+
+"We could settle that afterwards, when I am there." During all this 
+time she did not once look into his face, though he was looking hard at 
+her throughout.
+
+"You mean," said he, "that you wish to go away from me."
+
+"In one sense it would be going away, certainly."
+
+"But in the ordinary sense? is it not so? When you talk of going to 
+Baden-Baden for an unlimited number of months, have you any idea of 
+coming back again?"
+
+"Back to London, you mean?"
+
+"Back to me-to my house-to your duties as a wife! Why cannot you say at 
+once what it is you want? You wish to be separated from me?"
+
+"I am not happy here-in this house."
+
+"And who chose the house? Did I want to come here? But it is not that. 
+If you are not happy here, what could you have in any other house to 
+make you happy?"
+
+"If you were left alone in this room for seven or eight hours at a 
+time, without a soul to come to you, you would know what I mean. And 
+even after that, it is not much better. You never speak to me when you 
+are here."
+
+"Is it my fault that nobody comes to you? The fact is, Alexandrina, 
+that you will not reconcile yourself to the manner of life which is 
+suitable to my income. You are wretched because you cannot have 
+yourself driven round the Park. I cannot find you a carriage, and will 
+not attempt to do so. You may go to Baden-Baden, if you please-that is, 
+if your mother is willing to take you."
+
+"Of course I must pay my own expenses," said Alexandrina. But to this 
+he made no answer on the moment. As soon as he had given his permission 
+he had risen from his seat and was going, and her last words only 
+caught him in the doorway. After all, would not this be the cheapest 
+arrangement that he could make? As he went through his calculations he 
+stood up with his elbow on the mantelpiece in his dressing-room. He had 
+scolded his wife because she had been unhappy with him; but had he not 
+been quite as unhappy with her? Would it not be better that they should 
+part in this quiet, half-unnoticed way-that they should part and never 
+again come together? He was lucky in this, that hitherto had come upon 
+them no prospect of any little Crosbie to mar the advantages of such an 
+arrangement. If he gave her four hundred a year, and allowed Gazebee 
+two more towards the paying off of encumbrances, he would still have 
+six on which to enjoy himself in London. Of course he could not live as 
+he had lived in those happy days before his marriage, nor, 
+independently of the cost, would such a mode of life be within his 
+reach. But he might go to his club for his dinners; he might smoke his 
+cigar in luxury; he would not be bound to that wooden home which, in 
+spite of all his resolutions, had become almost unendurable to him. So 
+he made his calculations, and found that it would be well that his 
+bride should go. He would give over his house and furniture to Gazebee, 
+allowing Gazebee to do as he would about that. To be once more a 
+bachelor, in lodgings, with six hundred a year to spend on himself, 
+seemed to him now such a prospect of happiness that he almost became 
+light-hearted as he dressed himself. He would let her go to Baden Baden.
+
+There was nothing said about it at dinner, nor did he mention the 
+subject again till the servant had left the tea-things on the 
+drawing-room table. "You can go with your mother if you like it," he 
+then said.
+
+"I think it will be best," she answered.
+
+"Perhaps it will. At any rate you shall suit yourself."
+
+"And about money?"
+
+"You had better leave me to speak to Gazebee about that."
+
+"Very well. Will you have some tea?" And then the whole thing was 
+finished.
+
+On the next day she went after lunch to her mother's house, and never 
+came back again to Princess Royal Crescent. During that morning she 
+packed up those things which she cared to pack herself, and sent her 
+sisters there, with an old family servant, to bring away whatever else 
+might be supposed to belong to her. "Dear, dear," said Amelia, "what 
+trouble I had in getting these things together for them, and only the 
+other day. I can't but think she's wrong to go away."
+
+"I don't know," said Margaretta. "She has not been so lucky as you have 
+in the man she has married. I always felt that she would find it 
+difficult to manage him."
+
+"But, my dear, she has not tried. She has given up at once. It isn't 
+management that was wanting. The fact is that when Alexandrina began 
+she didn't make up her mind to the kind of thing she was coming to. I 
+did. I knew it wasn't to be all party-going and that sort of thing. But 
+I must own that Crosbie isn't the same sort of man as Mortimer. I don't 
+think I could have gone on with him. You might as well have those small 
+books put up; he won't care about them." And in this way Crosbie's 
+house was dismantled.
+
+She saw him no more, for he made no farewell visit to the house in 
+Portman Square. A note had been brought to him at his office: "I am 
+here with mamma, and may as well say good-bye now. We start on Tuesday. 
+If you wish to write, you can send your letters to the housekeeper 
+here. I hope you will make yourself comfortable, and that you will be 
+well. Yours affectionately, A. C." He made no answer to it, but went 
+that day and dined at his club.
+
+"I haven't seen you this age," said Montgomerie Dobbs.
+
+"No. My wife is going abroad with her mother, and while she is away I 
+shall come back here again."
+
+There was nothing more said to him, and no one ever made any inquiry 
+about his domestic affairs. It seemed to him now as though he had no 
+friend sufficiently intimate with him to ask him after his wife or 
+family. She was gone, and in a month's time he found himself again in 
+Mount Street-beginning the world with five hundred a year, not six. For 
+Mr Gazebee, when the reckoning came, showed him that a larger income at 
+the present moment was not possible for him. The countess had for a 
+long time refused to let Lady Alexandrina go with her on so small a 
+pittance as four hundred and fifty-and then were there not the 
+insurances to be maintained?
+
+But I think he would have consented to accept his liberty with three 
+hundred a year-so great to him was the relief.
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+LILIAN DALE VANQUISHES HER MOTHER
+
+Mrs Dale had been present during the interview in which John Eames had 
+made his prayer to her daughter, but she had said little or nothing on 
+that occasion. All her wishes had been in favour of the suitor, but she 
+had not dared to express them, neither had she dared to leave the room. 
+It had been hard upon him to be thus forced to declare his love in the 
+presence of a third person, but he had done it, and had gone away with 
+his answer. Then, when the thing was over, Lily, without any communion 
+with her mother, took herself off, and was no more seen till the 
+evening hours had come on, in which it was natural that they should be 
+together again.
+
+Mrs Dale, when thus alone, had been able to think of nothing but this 
+new suit for her daughter's hand. If only it might be accomplished! If 
+any words from her to Lily might be efficacious to such an end! And 
+yet, hitherto, she had been afraid almost to utter a word.
+
+She knew that it was very difficult. She declared to herself over and 
+over that he had come too soon-that the attempt had been made too 
+quickly after that other shipwreck. How was it possible that the ship 
+should put to sea again at once, with all her timbers so rudely 
+strained? And yet, now that the attempt had been made, now that Eames 
+had uttered his request and been sent away with an answer, she felt 
+that she must at once speak to Lily on the subject, if ever she were to 
+speak upon it. She thought that she understood her child and all her 
+feelings. She recognised the violence of the shock which must be 
+encountered before Lily could be brought to acknowledge such a change 
+in her heart. But if the thing could be done, Lily would be a happy 
+woman. When once done it would be in all respects a blessing. And if it 
+were not done, might not Lily's life be blank, lonely, and loveless to 
+the end? Yet when Lily came down in the evening, with some light, 
+half-joking word on her lips, as was usual to her, Mrs Dale was still 
+afraid to venture upon her task.
+
+"I suppose, mamma, we may consider it as a settled thing that 
+everything must be again unpacked, and that the lodging scheme will be 
+given up."
+
+"I don't know that, my dear."
+
+"Oh, but I do-after what you said just now. What geese everybody will 
+think us!"
+
+"I shouldn't care a bit for that, if we didn't think ourselves geese, 
+or if your uncle did not think us so."
+
+"I believe he would think we were swans. If I had ever thought he would 
+be so much in earnest about it, or that he would ever have cared about 
+our being here, I would never have voted for going. But he is so 
+strange. He is affectionate when he ought to he angry, and ill-natured 
+when he ought to be gentle and kind."
+
+"He has, at any rate, given us reason to feel sure of his affection."
+
+"For us girls, I never doubted it. But, mamma, I don't think I could 
+face Mrs Boyce. Mrs Hearn and Mrs Crump would be very bad, and Hopkins 
+would come down upon us terribly when he found that we had given way. 
+But Mrs Boyce would be worse than any of them. Can't you fancy the tone 
+of her congratulations? "
+"I think I should survive Mrs Boyce."
+
+"Ah, yes; because we should have to go and tell her. I know your 
+cowardice of old, mamma; don't I? And Bell wouldn't care a bit, because 
+of her lover. Mrs Boyce will be nothing to her. It is I that must bear 
+it all. Well, I don't mind; I'll vote for staying if you will promise 
+to be happy here. Oh, mamma, I'll vote for anything if you will be 
+happy."
+
+"And will you be happy?"
+
+"Yes, as happy as the day is long. Only I know we shall never see Bell. 
+People never do see each other when they live just at that distance. 
+It's too near for long visits, and too far for short visits. I'll tell 
+you what; we might make arrangements each to walk half-way, and meet at 
+the corner of Lord de Guest's wood. I wonder whether they'd let us put 
+up a seat there. I think we might have a little house and carry 
+sandwiches and a bottle of beer. Couldn't we see something of each 
+other in that way?"
+
+Thus it came to be the fixed idea of both of them that they would 
+abandon their plan of migrating to Guestwick, and on this subject they 
+continued to talk over their tea-table; but on that evening Mrs Dale 
+ventured to say nothing about John Eames.
+
+But they did not even yet dare to commence the work of reconstructing 
+their old home. Bell must come back before they would do that, and the 
+express assent of the squire must be formally obtained. Mrs Dale must, 
+in a degree, acknowledge herself to have been wrong, and ask to be 
+forgiven for her contumacy.
+
+"I suppose the three of us had better go up in sackcloth, and throw 
+ashes on our foreheads as we meet Hopkins in the garden," said Lily, 
+"and then I know he'll heap coals of fire on our heads by sending us an 
+early dish of peas. And Dingles would bring us in a pheasant, only that 
+pheasants don't grow in May."
+
+"If the sackcloth doesn't take an unpleasanter shape than that, I 
+shan't mind it."
+
+"That's because you've got no delicate feelings. And then Uncle 
+Christopher's gratitude!"
+
+"Ah! I shall feel that."
+
+"But, mamma, we'll wait till Bell comes home. She shall decide. She is 
+going away, and therefore she'll be free from prejudice. If uncle 
+offers to paint the house-and I know he will-then I shall be humbled to 
+the dust."
+
+But yet Mrs Dale had said nothing on the subject which was nearest to 
+her heart. When Lily in pleasantry had accused her of cowardice, her 
+mind had instantly gone off to that other matter, and she had told 
+herself that she was a coward. Why should she be afraid of offering her 
+counsel to her own child? It seemed to her as though she had neglected 
+some duty in allowing Crosbie's conduct to have passed away without 
+hardly a word of comment on it between herself and Lily. Should she not 
+have forced upon her daughter's conviction the fact that Crosbie had 
+been a villain, and as such should be discarded from her heart? As it 
+was, Lily had spoken the simple truth when she told John Eames that she 
+was dealing more openly with him on that affair of her engagement than 
+she had ever dealt, even with her mother. Thinking of this as she sat 
+in her own room that night, before she allowed herself to rest, Mrs 
+Dale resolved that on the next morning she would endeavour to make Lily 
+see as she saw and think as she thought.
+
+She let breakfast pass by before she began her task, and even then she 
+did not rush at it at once. Lily sat herself down to her work when the 
+teacups were taken away, and Mrs Dale went down to her kitchen as was 
+her wont. It was nearly eleven before she seated herself in the 
+parlour, and even then she got her work-box before her and took out her 
+needle.
+
+"I wonder how Bell gets on with Lady Julia," said Lily.
+
+"Very well, I'm sure."
+
+"Lady Julia won't bite her, I know, and I suppose her dismay at the 
+tall footmen has passed off by this time."
+
+"I don't know that they have any tall footmen."
+
+"Short footmen then-you know what I mean; all the noble belongings. 
+They must startle one at first, I'm sure, let one determine ever so 
+much not to be startled. It's a very mean thing, no doubt, to be afraid 
+of a lord merely because he is a lord; yet I'm sure I should be afraid 
+at first, even of Lord de Guest, if I were staying in the house."
+
+"It's well you didn't go then."
+
+"Yes, I think it is. Bell is of a firmer mind, and I dare say she'll 
+get over it after the first day. But what on earth does she do there? I 
+wonder whether they mend their stockings in such a house as that."
+
+"Not in public, I should think."
+
+"In very grand houses they throw them away at once, I suppose. I've 
+often thought about it. Do you believe the Prime Minister ever has his 
+shoes sent to a cobbler?
+
+"Perhaps a regular shoemaker will condescend to mend a Prime Minister's 
+shoes."
+
+"You do think they are mended then? But who orders it? Does he see 
+himself when there's a little hole coming, as I do? Does an archbishop 
+allow himself so many pairs of gloves in a year?"
+
+"Not very strictly, I should think."
+
+"Then I suppose it comes to this, that he has a new pair whenever he 
+wants them. But what constitutes the want? Does he ever say to himself 
+that they'll do for another Sunday? I remember the bishop coming here 
+once, and he had a hole at the end of his thumb. I was going to be 
+confirmed, and I remember thinking that he ought to have been smarter."
+
+"Why didn't you offer to mend it?"
+
+"I shouldn't have dared for all the world."
+
+The conversation had commenced itself in a manner that did not promise 
+much assistance to Mrs Dale's project. When Lily got upon any subject, 
+she was not easily induced to leave it, and when her mind had twisted 
+itself in one direction, it was difficult to untwist it. She was now 
+bent on a consideration of the smaller social habits of the high and 
+mighty among us, and was asking her mother whether she supposed that 
+the royal children ever carried halfpence in their pockets, or 
+descended so low as fourpenny-bits.
+
+"I suppose they have pockets like other children," said Lily. But her 
+mother stopped her suddenly-"Lily, dear, I want to say something to you 
+about John Eames."
+
+"Mamma, I'd sooner talk about the Royal Family just at present."
+
+"But, dear, you must forgive me if I persist. I have thought much about 
+it, and I'm sure you will not oppose me when I am doing what I think to 
+be my duty."
+
+"No, mamma; I won't oppose you, certainly."
+
+"Since Mr Crosbie's conduct was made known to you, I have mentioned his 
+name in your hearing very seldom."
+
+"No, mamma, you have not. And I have loved you so dearly for your 
+goodness to me. Do not think that I have not understood and known how 
+generous you have been. No other mother ever was so good as you have 
+been. I have known it all, and thought of it every day of my life, and 
+thanked you in my heart for your trusting silence. Of course, I 
+understand your feelings. You think him bad and you hate him for what 
+he has done."
+
+"I would not willingly hate any one, Lily."
+
+"Ah, but you do hate him. If I were you, I should hate him; but I am 
+not you, and I love him. I pray for his happiness every night and 
+morning, and for hers. I have forgiven him altogether, and I think that 
+he was right. When I am old enough to do so without being wrong, I will 
+go to him and tell him so. I should like to hear of all his doings and 
+all his success, if it were only possible. How, then, can you and I 
+talk about him? It is impossible. You have been silent and I have been 
+silent-let us remain silent."
+
+"It is not about Mr Crosbie that I wish to speak. But I think you ought 
+to understand that conduct such as his will be rebuked by all the 
+world. You may forgive him, but you should acknowledge-"
+
+"Mamma, I don't want to acknowledge anything-not about him. There are 
+things as to which a person cannot argue." Mrs Dale felt that this 
+present matter was one as to which she could not argue. "Of course, 
+mamma," continued Lily, "I don't want to oppose you in anything, but I 
+think we had better be silent about this."
+
+"Of course I am thinking only of your future happiness."
+
+"I know you are; but pray believe me that you need not be alarmed. I do 
+not mean to be unhappy. Indeed, I think I may say I am not unhappy; of 
+course I have been unhappy-very unhappy. I did think that my heart 
+would break. But that has passed away, and I believe I can be as happy 
+as my neighbours. We're all of us sure to have some troubles, as you 
+used to tell us when we were children."
+
+Mrs Dale felt that she had begun wrong, and that she would have been 
+able to make better progress had she omitted all mention of Crosbie's 
+name. She knew exactly what it was that she wished to say-what were the 
+arguments which she desired to expound before her daughter; but she did 
+not know what language to use, or how she might best put her thoughts 
+into words. She paused for a while, and Lily went on with her work as 
+though the conversation was over. But the conversation was not over.
+
+"It was about John Eames, and not about Mr Crosbie, that I wished to 
+speak to you."
+
+"Oh, mamma!"
+
+"My dear, you must not hinder me in doing what I think to be a duty. I 
+heard what he said to you and what you replied, and of course I cannot 
+but have my mind full of the subject. Why should you set yourself 
+against him in so fixed a manner?"
+
+"Because I love another man." These words she spoke out loud, in a 
+steady, almost dogged tone, with a certain show of audacity-as though 
+aware that the declaration was unseemly, but resolved that, though 
+unseemly, it must be made.
+
+"But, Lily, that love, from its very nature, must cease; or, rather, 
+such love is not the same as that you felt when you thought that you 
+were to he his wife."
+
+"Yes, it is. If she died, and he came to me in five years time, I would 
+still take him. I should think myself constrained to take him."
+
+"But she is not dead, nor likely to die."
+
+"That makes no difference. You don't understand me, mamma."
+
+"I think I do, and I want you to understand me also. I know how 
+difficult is your position; I know what your feelings are; but I know 
+this also, that if you could reason with yourself, and bring yourself 
+in time to receive John Eames as a dear friend-"
+
+"I did receive him as a dear friend. Why not? He is a dear friend. I 
+love him heartily-as you do."
+
+"You know what I mean?"
+
+"Yes, I do; and I tell you it is impossible."
+
+"If you would make the attempt, all this misery would soon be 
+forgotten. If once you could bring yourself to regard him as a friend, 
+who might become your husband, all this would be changed-and I should 
+see you happy!"
+
+"You are strangely anxious to be rid of me, mamma!"
+
+"Yes, Lily-to be rid of you in that way. If I could see you put your 
+hand in his as his promised wife, I think that I should be the happiest 
+woman in the world."
+"Mamma, I cannot make you happy in that way. If you really understood 
+my feelings, my doing as you propose would make you very unhappy. I 
+should commit a great sin-the sin against which women should be more 
+guarded than against any other. In my heart I am married to that other 
+man. I gave myself to him, and loved him, and rejoiced in his love. 
+When he kissed me I kissed him again, and I longed for his kisses. I 
+seemed to live only that he might caress me. All that time I never felt 
+myself to be wrong-because he was all in all to me. I was his own. That 
+has been changed-to my great misfortune; but it cannot be undone or 
+forgotten. I cannot be the girl I was before he came here. There are 
+things that will not have themselves buried and put out of sight, as 
+though they had never been. I am as you are, mamma-widowed. But you 
+have your daughter, and I have my mother. If you will be contented, so 
+will I." Then she got up and threw herself on her mother's neck.
+
+Mrs Dale's argument was over now. To such an appeal as that last made 
+by Lily no rejoinder on her part was possible. After that she was 
+driven to acknowledge to herself that she must be silent. Years as they 
+rolled on might make a change, but no reasoning could be of avail. She 
+embraced her daughter, weeping over her-whereas Lily's eyes were dry. 
+"It shall be as you will," Mrs Dale murmured.
+
+"Yes, as I will. I shall have my own way; shall I not? That is all I 
+want; to be a tyrant over you, and make you do my bidding in 
+everything, as a well-behaved mother should do. But I won't be stern in 
+my orderings. If you will only be obedient, I will be so gracious to 
+you! There's Hopkins again. I wonder whether he has come to knock us 
+down and trample upon us with another speech."
+
+Hopkins knew very well to which window he must come, as only one of the 
+rooms was at the present time habitable. He came up to the dining-room, 
+and almost flattened his nose against the glass.
+
+"Well, Hopkins," said Lily, "here we are." Mrs Dale had turned her face 
+away, for she knew that the tears were still on her cheek.
+
+"Yes, miss, I see you. I want to speak to your mamma, miss."
+
+"Come round," said Lily, anxious to spare her mother the necessity of 
+showing herself at once. "It's too cold to open the window; come round, 
+and I'll open the door."
+
+"Too cold!" muttered Hopkins, as he went. "They'll find it a deal 
+colder in lodgings at Guestwick." However, he. went round through the 
+kitchen, and Lily met him in the hall.
+
+"Well, Hopkins, what is it? Mamma has got a headache."
+
+"Got a headache, has she? I won't make her headache no worse. It's my 
+opinion that there's nothing for a headache so good as fresh air. Only 
+some people can't abear to be blowed upon, not for a minute. If you 
+don't let down the lights in a greenhouse more or less every day, 
+you'll never get any plants-never-and it's just the same with the 
+grapes. Is I to go back and say as how I couldn't see her?"
+
+"You can come in if you like; only be quiet, you know."
+
+"Ain't I ollays quiet, miss? Did anybody ever hear me rampage? If you 
+please, ma'am, the squire's come home.'
+
+"What, home from Guestwick? Has he brought Miss Bell?
+
+"He ain't brought none but hisself, cause he come on horseback; and 
+it's my belief he's going back almost immediate. But he wants you to 
+come to him, Mrs Dale."
+
+"Oh, yes, I'll come at once."
+
+"He bade me say with his kind love. I don't know whether that makes any 
+difference."
+
+"At any rate, I'll come, Hopkins."
+
+"And I ain't to say nothing about the headache?"
+
+"About what? "said Mrs Dale.
+
+"No, no, no," said Lily. "Mamma will be there at once. Go and tell my 
+uncle, there's a good man," and she put up her hand and backed him out 
+of the room.
+
+"I don't believe she's got no headache at all," said Hopkins, 
+grumbling, as he returned through the back premises. "What lies 
+gentlefolks do tell! If I said I'd a headache when I ought to be out 
+among the things, what would they say to me? But a poor man mustn't 
+never lie, nor yet drink, nor yet do nothing." And so he went back with 
+his message.
+
+"What can have brought your uncle home? "said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Just to look after the cattle, and to see that the pigs are not all 
+dead. My wonder is that he should ever have gone away."
+
+"I must go up to him at once."
+
+"Oh, yes, of course."
+
+"And what shall I say about the house?"
+
+"It's not about that-at least I think not. I don't think he'll speak 
+about that again till you speak to him."
+
+"But if he does?"
+
+"You must put your trust in Providence. Declare you've got a bad 
+headache, as I told Hopkins just now; only you would throw me over by 
+not understanding. I'll walk with you down to the bridge." So they went 
+off together across the lawn.
+
+But Lily was soon left alone, and continued her walk, waiting for her 
+mother's return. As she went round and round the gravel paths, she 
+thought of the words that she had said to her mother. She had declared 
+that she also was widowed. "And so it should be," she said, debating 
+the matter with herself.
+What can a heart be worth if it can be transferred hither and thither 
+as circumstances and convenience and comfort may require? When he held 
+me here in his arms"-and, as the thoughts ran through her brain, she 
+remembered the very spot on which they had stood-"oh, my love!" she had 
+said to him then as she returned his kisses-"oh, my love, my love, my 
+love!" "When he held me here in his arms, I told myself that it was 
+right, because he was my husband. He has changed, but I have not. It 
+might be that I should have ceased to love him, and then I should have 
+told him so. I should have done as he did." But, as she came to this, 
+she shuddered, thinking of the Lady Alexandrina. "It was very quick," 
+she said, still speaking to herself; "very, very. But then men are not 
+the same as women." And she walked on eagerly, hardly remembering where 
+she was, thinking over it all, as she did daily; remembering every 
+little thought and word of those few eventful months in which she had 
+learned to regard Crosbie as her husband and master. She had declared 
+that she had conquered her unhappiness; but there were moments in which 
+she was almost wild with misery. "Tell me to forget him!" she said. "It 
+is the one thing which will never be forgotten."
+
+At last she heard her mother's step coming down across the squire's 
+garden, and she took up her post at the bridge.
+
+"Stand and deliver," she said, as her mother put her foot upon the 
+plank. "That is, if you've got anything worth delivering. Is anything 
+settled?"
+
+"Come up to the house," said Mrs Dale, "and I'll tell you all."
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+THE FATE OF THE SMALL HOUSE
+
+There was something in the tone of Mrs Dale's voice, as she desired her 
+daughter to come up to the house, and declared that her budget of news 
+should be opened there, which at once silenced Lily's assumed 
+pleasantry. Her mother had been away fully two hours, during which Lily 
+had still continued her walk round the garden, till at last she had 
+become impatient for her mother's footstep. Something serious must have 
+been said between her uncle and her mother during those long two hours. 
+The interviews to which Mrs Dale was occasionally summoned at the Great 
+House did not usually exceed twenty minutes, and the upshot would be 
+communicated to the girls in a turn or two round the garden; but in the 
+present instance Mrs Dale positively declined to speak till she was 
+seated within the house.
+
+"Did he come over on purpose to see you, mamma?"
+
+"Yes, my dear, I believe so. He wished to see you, too; but I asked his 
+permission to postpone that till after I had talked to you."
+
+"To see me, mamma? About what?"
+
+"To kiss you, and bid you love him; solely for that. He has not a word 
+to say to you that will vex you."
+
+"Then I will kiss him, and love him, too."
+
+"Yes, you will when I have told you all. I have promised him solemnly 
+to give up all idea of going to Guestwick. So that is over."
+
+"Oh, oh! And we may begin to unpack at once? What an episode in one's 
+life!"
+
+"We may certainly unpack, for I have pledged myself to him; and he is 
+to go into Guestwick himself and arrange about the lodgings."
+
+"Does Hopkins know it?"
+
+"I should think not yet."
+
+"Nor Mrs Boyce! Mamma, I don't believe I shall be able to survive this 
+next week. We shall look such fools! I'll tell you what we'll do-it 
+will be the only comfort I can have-we'll go to work and get everything 
+back into its place before Bell comes home, so as to surprise her."
+
+"What! in two days?"
+
+"Why not? I'll make Hopkins come and help, and then he'll not be so 
+bad. I'll begin at once and go to the blankets and beds, because I can 
+undo them myself."
+
+"But I haven't half told you all; and, indeed, I don't know how to make 
+you understand what passed between us. He is very unhappy about 
+Bernard; Bernard has determined to go abroad, and may be away for 
+years."
+"One can hardly blame a man for following up his profession."
+
+"There was no blaming. He only said that it was very sad for him that, 
+in his old age, he should be left alone. This was before there was any 
+talk about our remaining. Indeed he seemed determined not to ask that 
+again as a favour. I could see that in his eye, and I understood it 
+from his tone. He went on to speak of you and Bell, saying how well he 
+loved you both; but that, unfortunately, his hopes regarding you had 
+not been fulfilled."
+
+"Ah, but he shouldn't have had hopes of that sort."
+
+"Listen, my dear, and I think that you will not feel angry with him. He 
+said that he felt his house had never been pleasant to you. Then there 
+followed words which I could not repeat, even if I could remember them. 
+He said much about myself, regretting that the feeling between us had 
+not been more kindly. But my heart, he said, has ever been kinder than 
+my words. Then I got up from where I was seated, and going over to him, 
+I told him that we would remain here."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"I don't know what he said. I know that I was crying, and that he 
+kissed me. It was the first time in his life. I know that he was 
+pleased-beyond measure pleased. After a while he became animated, and 
+talked of doing ever so many things. He promised that very painting of 
+which you spoke."
+
+"Ah, yes, I knew it; and Hopkins will be here with the peas before 
+dinner-time to-morrow, and Dingles with his shoulders smothered with 
+rabbits. And then Mrs Boyce! Mamma, he didn't think of Mrs Boyce; or, 
+in very charity of heart, he would still have maintained his sadness."
+
+"Then he did not think of her; for when I left him he was not at all 
+sad. But I haven't told you half yet."
+
+"Dear me, mamma; was there more than that?"
+
+"And I've told it all wrong; for what I've got to tell now was said 
+before a. word was spoken about the house. He brought it in just after 
+what he said about Bernard. He said that Bernard would, of course, be 
+his heir."
+
+"Of course he will."
+
+"And that he should think it wrong to encumber the property with any 
+charges for you girls."
+
+"Mamma, did any one ever-"
+
+"Stop, Lily, stop; and make your heart kinder towards him if you can."
+
+"It is kind; only I hate to be told that I'm not to have a lot of 
+money, as though I had ever shown a desire for it. I have never envied 
+Bernard his man-servant, or his maid-servant, or his ox, or his ass, or 
+anything that is his. To tell the truth I didn't even wish it to be 
+Bell's, because I knew well that there was somebody she would like a 
+great deal better than ever she could like Bernard." 
+
+"I shall never get to the end of my story."
+
+"Yes, you will, mamma, if you persevere."
+
+"The long and the short of it is this, that he has given Bell three 
+thousand pounds, and has given you three thousand also."
+
+"But why me, mamma?" said Lily, and the colour of her cheeks became red 
+as she spoke. There should if possible be nothing more said about John 
+Eames; but whatever might or might not be the necessity of speaking, at 
+any rate, let there be no mistake. 
+
+"But why me, mamma?"
+
+"Because, as he explained to me, he thinks it right to do the same by 
+each of you. The money is yours at this moment-to buy hair-pins with, 
+if you please. I had no idea that he could command so large a sum."
+
+"Three thousand pounds! The last money he gave me was half-a-crown, and 
+I thought that he was so stingy! I particularly wanted ten shillings. I 
+should have liked it so much better now if he had given me a nice new 
+five-pound note."
+
+"You'd better tell him so."
+
+"No; because then he'd give me that too. But with five pounds I should 
+have the feeling that I might do what I liked with it-buy a 
+dressing-case, and a thing for a squirrel to run round in. But nobody 
+ever gives girls money like that, so that they can enjoy it."
+
+"Oh, Lily; you ungrateful child!"
+
+"No, I deny it. I'm not ungrateful. I'm very grateful, because his 
+heart was softened-and because he cried and kissed you. I'll be ever so 
+good to him! But how I'm to thank him for giving me three thousand 
+pounds, I cannot think. It's a sort of thing altogether beyond my line 
+of life. It sounds like something that's to come to me in another 
+world, but which I don't want quite yet. I am grateful, but with a 
+misty, mazy sort of gratitude. Can you tell me how soon I shall have a 
+new pair of Balmoral boots because of this money? If that were brought 
+home to me I think it would enliven my gratitude."
+
+The squire, as he rode back to Guestwick, fell again from that 
+animation, which Mrs Dale had described, into his natural sombre mood. 
+He thought much of his past life, declaring to himself the truth of 
+those words in which he had told his sister in-law that his heart had 
+ever been kinder than his words. But the world, and all those nearest 
+to him in the world, had judged him always by his words rather than by 
+his heart. They had taken the appearance, which he could not command or 
+alter, rather than the facts, of which he had been the master. Had he 
+not been good to all his relations?-and yet was there one among them 
+that cared for him? "I'm almost sorry that they are going to stay," he 
+said to himself-"I know that I shall disappoint them." Yet when he met 
+Bell at the Manor House he accosted her cheerily, telling her with much 
+appearance of satisfaction that that flitting into Guestwick was not to 
+be accomplished.
+
+"I am so glad," said she. "It is long since I wished it."
+
+"And I do not think your mother wishes it now."
+
+"I am sure she does not. It was all a misunderstanding from the first. 
+When some of us could not do all that you wished, we thought it 
+better-" Then Bell paused, finding that she would get herself into a 
+mess if she persevered.
+
+"We will not say any more about it," said the squire. "The thing is 
+over, and I am very glad that it should be so pleasantly settled. I was 
+talking to Dr Crofts yesterday."
+
+"Were you, uncle?
+
+"Yes; and he is to come and stay with me the day before he is married. 
+We have arranged it all. And we'll have the breakfast up at the Great 
+House. Only you must fix the day. I should say some time in March. And, 
+my dear, you'll want to make yourself fine; here's a little money for 
+you. You are to spend that before your marriage, you know." Then he 
+shambled away, and as soon as he was alone, again became sad and 
+despondent. He was a man for whom we may predicate some gentle sadness 
+and continued despondency to the end of his life's chapter.
+
+We left John Eames in the custody of Lady Julia, who had overtaken him 
+in the act of erasing Lily's name from the railing which ran across the 
+brook. He had been premeditating an escape home to his mother's house 
+in Guestwick, and thence hack to London, without making any further 
+appearance at the Manor House. But as soon as he heard Lady Julia's 
+step, and saw her figure close upon him, he knew that his retreat was 
+cut off from him. So he allowed himself to be led away quietly up to 
+the house. With Lady Julia herself he openly discussed the whole 
+matter-telling her that his hopes were over, his happiness gone, and 
+his heart half-broken. Though he would perhaps have cared but little 
+for her congratulations in success, he could make himself more amenable 
+to consolation and sympathy from her than from any other inmate in the 
+earl's house. "I don't know what I shall say to your brother," he 
+whispered to her, as they approached the side door at which she 
+intended to enter.
+
+"Will you let me break it to him? After that he will say a few words to 
+you of course, but you need not be afraid of him."
+
+"And Mr Dale?" said Johnny. "Everybody has heard about it. Everybody 
+will know what a fool I have made myself." She suggested that the earl 
+should speak to the squire, assured him that nobody would think him at 
+all foolish, and then left him to make his way up to his own bedroom. 
+When there he found a letter from Cradell, which had been delivered in 
+his absence; but the contents of that letter may best be deferred to 
+the next chapter. They were not of a nature to give him comfort or to 
+add to his sorrow.
+
+About an hour before dinner there was a knock at his door, and the earl 
+himself, when summoned, made his appearance in the room. He was dressed 
+in his usual farming attire, having been caught by Lady Julia on the 
+first approach to the house, and had come away direct to his young 
+friend, after having been duly trained in what he ought to say by his 
+kind-hearted sister. I am not, however, prepared to declare that he 
+strictly followed his sister's teaching in all that he said upon the 
+occasion.
+
+"Well, my boy," he began, "so the young lady has been perverse."
+
+"Yes, my lord. That is, I don't know about being perverse. It is all 
+over."
+"That's as may be, Johnny. As far as I know, not half of them accept 
+their lovers the first time of asking."
+
+"I shall not ask her again."
+
+"Oh, yes, you will. You don't mean to say you are angry with her for 
+refusing you."
+
+"Not in the least. I have no right to be angry. I am only angry with 
+myself for being such a fool, Lord de Guest. I wish I had been dead 
+before I came down here on this errand. Now I think of it, I know there 
+are so many things which ought to have made me sure how it would be."
+
+"I don't see that at all. You come down again-let me see-it's May now. 
+Say you come when the shooting begins in September. If we can't get you 
+leave of absence in any other way, we'll make old Buffle come too. 
+Only, by George, I believe he'd shoot us all. But never mind; we'll 
+manage that. You keep up your spirits till September, and then we'll 
+fight the battle in another way. The squire shall get up a little party 
+for the bride, and my lady Lily must go then. You shall meet her so; 
+and then we'll shoot over the squire's land. We'll bring you together 
+so; you see if we don't. Lord bless me! Refused once! My belief is, 
+that in these days a girl thinks nothing of a man till she has refused 
+him half-a-dozen times."
+
+"I don't think Lily is at all like that."
+
+"Look here, Johnny. I have not a word to say against Miss Lily. I like 
+her very much, and think her one of the nicest girls 1 know. When she's 
+your wife, I'll love her dearly, if she'll let me. But she's made of 
+the same stuff as other girls, and will act in the same way. Things 
+have gone a little astray among you, and they won't right themselves 
+all in a minute. She knows now what your feelings are, and she'll go on 
+thinking of it, till at last you'll be in her thoughts more than that 
+other fellow. Don't tell me about her becoming an old maid, because at 
+her time of life she has been so unfortunate as to come across a 
+false-hearted man like that. It may take a little time; but if you'll 
+carry on and not be down-hearted, you'll find it will all come right in 
+the end. Everybody doesn't get all that they want in a minute. How I 
+shall quiz you about all this when you have been two or three years 
+married!"
+
+"I don't think I shall ever be able to ask her again; and I feel sure, 
+if I do, that her answer will be the same. She told me in so many 
+words; but never mind, I cannot repeat her words."
+
+"I don't want you to repeat them; nor yet to heed them beyond their 
+worth. Lily Dale is a very pretty girl; clever, too, I believe, and 
+good, I'm sure; but her words are not more sacred than those of other 
+men or women. What she has said to you now, she means, no doubt; but 
+the minds of men and women are prone to change, especially when such 
+changes are conducive to their own happiness."
+
+"At any rate I'll never forget your kindness, Lord de Guest."
+
+"And there is one other thing I want to say to you, Johnny. A man 
+should never allow himself to be cast down by anything-not outwardly, 
+to the eyes of other men."
+
+"But how is he to help it?
+
+"His pluck should prevent him. You were not afraid of a roaring bull, 
+nor yet of that man when you thrashed him at the railway station. 
+You've pluck enough of that kind. You must now show that you've that 
+other kind of pluck. You know the story of the boy who would not cry 
+though the wolf was gnawing him underneath his frock. Most of us have 
+some wolf to gnaw us somewhere; but we are generally gnawed beneath our 
+clothes, so that the world doesn't see; and it behoves us so to bear it 
+that the world shall not suspect. The man who goes about declaring 
+himself to be miserable will be not only miserable, but contemptible as 
+well."
+
+"But the wolf hasn't gnawed me beneath my clothes; everybody knows it."
+
+"Then let those who do know it learn that you are able to bear such 
+wounds without outward complaint. I tell you fairly that I cannot 
+sympathise with a lackadaisical lover."
+
+"I know that I have made myself ridiculous to everybody. I wish I had 
+never come here. I wish you had never seen me."
+
+"Don't say that, my dear boy; but take my advice for what it is worth. 
+And remember what it is that I say; with your grief I do sympathise, 
+but not with any outward expression of it-not with melancholy looks, 
+and a sad voice, and an unhappy gait. A man should always be able to 
+drink his wine and seem to enjoy it. If he can't, he is so much less of 
+a man than he would be otherwise-not so much more, as some people seem 
+to think. Now get yourself dressed, my dear fellow, and come down to 
+dinner as though nothing had happened to you."
+
+As soon as the earl was gone John looked at his watch and saw that it 
+still wanted some forty minutes to dinner. Fifteen minutes would 
+suffice for him to dress, and therefore there was time sufficient for 
+him to seat himself in his arm-chair and think over it all. He had for 
+a moment been very angry when his friend had told him that he could not 
+sympathise with a lackadaisical lover. It was an ill-natured word. He 
+felt it to be so when he heard it, and so he continued to think during 
+the whole of the half-hour that he sat in that chair. But it probably 
+did him more good than any word that the earl had ever spoken to him-or 
+any other word that he could have used. "Lackadaisical! I'm not 
+lackadaisical," he said to himself, jumping up from his chair, and 
+instantly sitting down again. "I didn't say anything to him. I didn't 
+tell him. Why did he come to me?" And yet, though he endeavoured to 
+abuse Lord de Guest in his thoughts, he knew that Lord de Guest was 
+right, and that he was wrong. He knew that he had been lackadaisical, 
+and was ashamed of himself; and at once resolved that he would 
+henceforth demean himself as though no calamity had happened to him. 
+"I've a good mind to take him at his word, and drink wine till I'm 
+drunk." Then he strove to get up his courage by a song.
+
+If she be not fair for me,
+
+What care I how-
+
+"But I do care. What stuff it is a man writing poetry and putting into 
+it such lies as that! Everybody knows that he did care-that is, if he 
+wasn't a heartless beast."
+
+
+But nevertheless, when the time came for him to go down into the 
+drawing-room he did make the effort which his friend had counselled, 
+and walked into the room with less of that hang-dog look than the earl 
+and Lady Julia had expected. They were both there, as was also the 
+squire, and Bell followed him in less than a minute.
+"You haven't seen Crofts to-day, John, have you?" said the earl.
+
+"No; I haven't been anywhere his way!"
+
+"His way! His ways are every way, I take it. I wanted him to come and 
+dine, but he seemed to think it improper to eat two dinners in the same 
+house two days running. Isn't that his theory, Miss Dale?"
+
+ "I'm sure I don't know, Lord de Guest. At any rate, it isn't mine."
+
+So they went to their feast, and before his last chance was over John 
+Eames found himself able to go through the pretence of enjoying his 
+roast mutton.
+
+
+There can, I think, be no doubt that in all such calamities as that 
+which he was now suffering, the agony of the misfortune is much 
+increased by the conviction that the facts of the case are known to 
+those round about the sufferer. A most warmhearted and 
+intensely-feeling young gentleman might, no doubt, eat an excellent 
+dinner after being refused by the girl of his devotions, provided that 
+he had reason to believe that none of those in whose company he ate it 
+knew anything of his rejection. But the same warm-hearted and 
+intensely-feeling young gentleman would find it very difficult to go 
+through the ceremony with any appearance of true appetite or 
+gastronomic enjoyment, if he were aware that all his convives knew all 
+the facts of his little misfortune. Generally, we may suppose, a man in 
+such condition goes to his club for his dinner, or seeks consolation in 
+the shades of some adjacent Richmond or Hampton Court. There he 
+meditates on his condition in silence, and does ultimately enjoy his 
+little plate of whitebait, his cutlet and his moderate pint of sherry. 
+He probably goes alone to the theatre, and, in his stall, speculates 
+with a somewhat bitter sarcasm on the vanity of the world. Then he 
+returns home, sad indeed, but with a moderated sadness, and as he puffs 
+out the smoke of his cigar at the open window-with perhaps the comfort 
+of a little brandy-and-water at his elbow-swears to himself that, "By 
+Jove, he'll have another try for it." Alone, a man may console himself, 
+or among a crowd of unconscious mortals; but it must be admitted that 
+the position of John Eames was severe. He had been invited down there 
+to woo Lily Dale, and the squire and Bell had been asked to be present 
+at the wooing. Had it all gone well, nothing could have been nicer. He 
+would have been the hero of the hour, and everybody would have sung for 
+him his song of triumph. But everything had not gone well, and he found 
+it very difficult to carry himself otherwise than lackadaisically. On 
+the whole, however, his effort was such that the earl gave him credit 
+for his demeanour, and told him when parting with him for the night 
+that he was a fine fellow, and that everything should go right with him 
+yet.
+
+
+"And you mustn't be angry with me for speaking harshly to you," he said.
+
+"I wasn't a bit angry." 
+
+"Yes, you were; and I rather meant that you should be. But you mustn't 
+go away in dudgeon." 
+
+He stayed at the Manor House one day longer, and then he returned to 
+his room at the Income-tax Office, to the disagreeable sound of Sir 
+Raffle's little bell, and the much more disagreeable sound of Sir 
+Raffle's big voice.
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+JOHN EAMES BECOMES A MAN
+
+Eames, when he was half way up to London in the railway carriage took 
+out from his pocket a letter and read it. During the former portion of 
+his journey he had been thinking of other things; but gradually he had 
+resolved that it would be better for him not to think more of those 
+other things for the present, and therefore he had recourse to his 
+letter by way of dissipating his thoughts. It was from Cradell, and ran 
+as follows:-
+
+INCOME-TAX OFFICE, May, 186-.
+
+MY DEAR JOHN-I hope the tidings which I have to give you will not make 
+you angry, and that you will not think I am untrue to the great 
+friendship which I have for you because of that which I am now going to 
+tell you. There is no man-[and the word man was underscored]-there is 
+no man whose regard I value so highly as I do yours; and though I feel 
+that you can have no just ground to be displeased with me after all 
+that I have beard you say on many occasions, nevertheless, in matters 
+of the heart it is very hard for one person to understand the 
+sentiments of another, and when the affections of a lady are concerned, 
+I know that quarrels will sometimes arise.
+
+Eames, when he had got so far as this, on the first perusal of the 
+letter, knew well what was to follow. "Poor Caudle!" he said to 
+himself; "he's hooked, and he'll never get himself off the hook again." 
+
+
+But let that be as it may, the matter has now gone too far for any 
+alteration to be made by me; nor would any mere earthly inducement 
+suffice to change me. The claims of friendship are very strong, but 
+those of love are paramount. Of course I know all that has passed 
+between you and Amelia Roper. Much of this I had heard from you before, 
+but the rest she has now told me with that pure-minded honesty which is 
+the most remarkable feature in her character. She has confessed that at 
+one time she felt attached to you, and that she was induced by your 
+perseverance to allow you to regard her as your fiancy. [Fancy-girl he 
+probably conceived to be the vulgar English for the elegant term which 
+he used.] But all that must be over between you now. Amelia has 
+promised to be mine-[this also was underscored]-and mine I intend that 
+she shall be. That you may find in the kind smiles of L. D. consolation 
+for any disappointment which this may occasion you, is the ardent wish 
+of your true friend,
+
+JOSEPH CRADELL.
+
+P.S.-Perhaps I had better tell you the whole. Mrs Roper has been in 
+some trouble about her house. She is a little in arrears with her rent, 
+and some bills have not been paid. As she explained that she has been 
+brought into this by those dreadful Lupexes I have consented to take 
+the house into my own hands, and have given bills to one or two 
+tradesmen for small amounts. Of course she will take them up, but it 
+was the credit that was wanting. She will carry on the house, but I 
+shall, in fact, be the proprietor. I suppose it will not suit you now 
+to remain here, but don't you think I might make it comfortable enough 
+for some of our fellows; say half-a-dozen, or so? That is Mrs Roper's 
+idea, and I certainly think it is not a bad one. Our first efforts must 
+be to get rid of the Lupexes. Miss Spruce goes next week. In the 
+meantime we are all taking our meals up in our own rooms, so that there 
+is nothing for the Lupexes to eat. But they don't seem to mind that, 
+and still keep the sitting-room and best bedroom. We mean to lock them 
+out after Tuesday, and send all their boxes to the public-house.
+
+
+Poor Cradell! Eames, as he threw himself back upon his seat and 
+contemplated the depth of misfortune into which his friend had fallen, 
+began to be almost in love with his own position. He himself was, no 
+doubt, a very miserable fellow. There was only one thing in life worth 
+living for, and that he could not get. He had been. thinking for the 
+last three days of throwing himself before a locomotive steam-engine, 
+and was not quite sure that he would not do it yet; hut, nevertheless, 
+his place was a place among the gods as compared to that which poor 
+Cradell had selected for himself. To be not only the husband of Amelia 
+Roper, but to have been driven to take upon himself as his bride's 
+fortune the whole of his future mother-in-law's debts! To find himself 
+the owner of a very indifferent lodging-house-the owner as regarded all 
+responsibility, though not the owner as regarded any possible profit! 
+And then, above and almost worse than all the rest, to find himself 
+saddled with the Lupexes in the beginning of his career! Poor Cradell 
+indeed!
+
+Eames had not taken his things away from the lodging-house before he 
+left London, and therefore determined to drive to Burton Crescent 
+immediately on his arrival, not with the intention of remaining there, 
+even for a night, hut that he might bid them farewell, speak his 
+congratulations to Amelia, and arrange for his final settlement with 
+Mrs Roper. It should have been explained in the last chapter that the 
+earl had told him before parting with him that his want of success with 
+Lily would make no difference as regarded money. John had, of course, 
+expostulated, saying that he did not want anything, and would not, 
+under his existing circumstances, accept anything; but the earl was a 
+man who knew how to have his own way, and in this matter did have it. 
+Our friend, therefore, was a man of wealth when he returned to London, 
+and could tell Mrs Roper that he would send her a cheque for her little 
+balance as soon as he reached his office.
+
+He arrived in the middle of the day-not timing his return at all after 
+the usual manner of Government clerks, who generally manage to reach 
+the metropolis not more than half an hour before the moment at which 
+they are bound to show themselves in their seats. But he had come back 
+two days before he was due, and had run away from the country as though 
+London in May to him were much pleasanter than the woods and fields. 
+But neither had London nor the woods and fields any influence on his 
+return. He had gone down that he might throw himself at the feet of 
+Lily Dale-gone down, as he now confessed to himself, with hopes almost 
+triumphant, and he had returned because Lily Dale would not have him at 
+her feet. "I loved him-him, Crosbie-better than all the world besides. 
+It is still the same. I still love him better than all the world." 
+
+Those were the words which had driven him back to London; and having 
+been sent away with such words as those, it was little matter to him 
+whether he reached his office a day or two sooner or later. The little 
+room in the city, even with the accompaniment of Sir Raffle's bell and 
+Sir Raffle's voice, would be now more congenial to him than Lady 
+Julia's drawing-room. He would therefore present himself to Sir Raffle 
+on that very afternoon, and expel some interloper from his seat. But he 
+would first call in Burton Crescent and say farewell to the Ropers.
+
+The door was opened for him by the faithful Jemima. "Mr Heames, Mr 
+Heames! ho dear, ho dear!" and the poor girl, who had always taken his 
+side in the adventures of the lodging-house, raised her hands on high 
+and lamented the fate which had separated her favourite from its 
+fortunes. "I suppose you knows it all, Mister Johnny? "Mister Johnny 
+said that he believed he did know it all, and asked for the mistress of 
+the house. "Yes, sure enough, she's at home. She don't dare stir out 
+much, 'cause of them Lupexes. Ain't this a pretty game? No dinner and 
+no nothink! Them boxes is Miss Spruce's. She's agoing now, this minute. 
+You'll find 'em all upstairs in the drawen-room." So upstairs into the 
+drawing-room he went, and there he found the mother and daughter, and 
+with them Miss Spruce, tightly packed up in her bonnet and shawl. 
+"Don't, mother," Amelia was saying; "what's the good of going on in 
+that way? If she chooses to go, let her go." 
+
+"But she's been with me now so many years," said Mrs Roper, sobbing; 
+"and I've always done everything for her! Haven't I, now, Sally 
+Spruce?" It struck Eames immediately that, though he had been an inmate 
+in the house for two years, he had never before heard that maiden 
+lady's Christian name. Miss Spruce was the first to see Eames as he 
+entered the room. It is probable that Mrs Roper's pathos might have 
+produced some answering pathos on her part had she remained unobserved, 
+but the sight of a young man brought her back to her usual state of 
+quiescence. "I'm only an old woman," said she; "and here's Mr Eames 
+come back again." 
+
+"How d'ye do, Mrs Roper? how d'ye do, Amelia?-how d'ye do, Miss 
+Spruce?" and he shook hands with them all.
+
+"Oh, laws," said Mrs Roper, "you have given me such a start!" 
+
+"Dear me, Mr Eames; only think of your coming back in that way," said 
+Amelia.
+
+ "Well, what way should I come back? You didn't hear me knock at the 
+door, that's all. So Miss Spruce is really going to leave you? "
+
+"Isn't it dreadful, Mr Eames? Nineteen years we've been together-taking 
+both houses together, Miss Spruce, we have, indeed." Miss Spruce, at 
+this point, struggled very hard to convince John Eames that the period 
+in question had in truth extended over only eighteen years, but Mrs 
+Roper was authoritative, and would not permit it. "It's nineteen years 
+if it's a day. No one ought to know dates if I don't, and there isn't 
+one in the world understands her ways unless it's me. Haven't I been up 
+to your bedroom every night, and with my own hand given you-" But she 
+stopped herself, and was too good a woman to declare before a young man 
+what had been the nature of her nightly ministrations to her guest.
+
+"I don't think you'll be so comfortable anywhere else, Miss Spruce," 
+said Eames.
+
+"Comfortable! of course she won't," said Amelia. "But if I was mother I 
+wouldn't have any more words about it." 
+
+"It isn't the money I'm thinking of, but the feeling of it," said Mrs 
+Roper. "The house will be so lonely like. I shan't know myself; that I 
+shan't. And now that things are all settled so pleasantly, and that the 
+Lupexes must go on Tuesday-I'll tell you what, Sally; I'll pay for the 
+cab myself, and I'll start off to Dulwich by the omnibus tomorrow, and 
+settle it all out of my own pocket. I will indeed. Come; there's the 
+cab. Let me go down, and send him away." 
+
+"I'll do that," said Eames. "It's only sixpence, off the stand," Mrs 
+Roper called to him as he left the room. But the cabman got a shilling, 
+and John, as he returned, found Jemima in the act of carrying Miss 
+Spruce's boxes back to her room. "So much the better for poor Caudle," 
+said he to himself. "As he has gone into the trade it's well that he 
+should have somebody that will pay him." 
+
+Mrs Roper followed Miss Spruce up the stairs and Johnny was left with 
+Amelia. "He's written to you, I know," said she, with her face turned a 
+little away from him. She was certainly very handsome, but there was a 
+hard, cross, almost sullen look about her, which robbed her countenance 
+of all its pleasantness. And yet she had no intention of being sullen 
+with him.
+
+"Yes," said John. "He has told me how it's all going to be." 
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+"Well?" said he.
+
+"Is that all you've got to say?"
+
+"I'll congratulate you, if you'll let me." 
+
+"Psha -congratulations! I hate such humbug. If you've no feelings about 
+it, I'm sure that I've none. Indeed I don't know what's the good of 
+feelings. They never did me any good. Are you engaged to marry L. D.?" 
+
+"No, I am not." 
+
+"And you've nothing else to say to me?" 
+
+"Nothing-except my hopes for your happiness. What else can I say? You 
+are engaged to marry my friend Cradell, and I think it will be a happy 
+match." 
+
+She turned away her face further from him, and the look of it became 
+even more sullen. Could it be possible that at such a moment she still 
+had a hope that he might come back to her?
+
+"Good-bye, Amelia," he said, putting out his hand to her.
+
+"And this is to be the last of you in this house!" 
+
+"Well, I don't know about that. I'll come and call upon you, if you'll 
+let me, when you're married." 
+
+"Yes," she said, "that there may be rows in the house, and noise, and 
+jealousy-as there have been with that wicked woman upstairs. Not if I 
+know it, you won't! John Eames, I wish I'd never seen you. I wish we 
+might have both fallen dead when we first met. I didn't think ever to 
+have cared for a man as I have cared for you. It's all trash and 
+nonsense and foolery; I know that. It's all very well for young ladies 
+as can sit in drawing-rooms all their lives, but when a woman has her 
+way to make in the world it's all foolery. And such a hard way too to 
+make as mine is!"
+
+"But it won't be hard now." 
+
+"Won't it? But I think it will. I wish you would try it. Not that I'm 
+going to complain. I never minded work, and as for company, I can put 
+up with anybody. The world's not to be all dancing and fiddling for the 
+likes of me. I know that well enough. But ," and then she paused.
+
+"What's the 'but' about, Amelia?"
+
+"It's like you to ask me; isn't it?" To tell the truth he should not 
+have asked her. "Never mind. I'm not going to have any words with you. 
+If you've been a knave I've been a fool, and that's worse." 
+
+"But I don't think I have been a knave." 
+
+"I've been both," said the girl; "and both for nothing. After that you 
+may go. I've told you what I am, and I'll leave you to name yourself. I 
+didn't think it was in me to have been such a fool. It's that that 
+frets me. Never mind, sir; it's all over now, and I wish you good-bye." 
+
+I do not think that there was the slightest reason why John should have 
+again kissed her at parting, but he did so. She bore it, not struggling 
+with him; but she took his caress with sullen endurance. "It'll be the 
+last," she said. "Good-bye, John Eames." 
+
+"Good-bye, Amelia. Try to make him a good wife and then you'll be 
+happy." She turned up her nose at this, assuming a look of unutterable 
+scorn. But she said nothing further, and then he left the room. At the 
+parlour door he met Mrs Roper, and had his parting words with her.
+
+"I am so glad you came," said she. "It was just that word you said that 
+made Miss Spruce stay. Her money is so ready, you know! And so you've 
+had it all out with her about Cradell. She'll make him a good wife, she 
+will indeed-much better than you've been giving her credit for." 
+
+"I don't doubt she'll be a very good wife." 
+
+"You see, Mr Eames, it's all over now, and we understand each other; 
+don't we? It made me very unhappy when she was setting her cap at you; 
+it did indeed. She is my own daughter, and I couldn't go against 
+her-could I? But I knew it wasn't in any way suiting. Laws, I know the 
+difference. She's good enough for him any day of the week, Mr Eames." 
+
+"That she is-Saturdays or Sundays," said Johnny, not knowing exactly 
+what he ought to say.
+
+"So she is; and if he does his duty by her she won't go astray in hers 
+by him. And as for you, Mr Eames, I am sure I've always felt it an 
+honour and a pleasure to have you in the house; and if ever you could 
+use a good word in sending to me any of your young men, I'd do by them 
+as a mother should; I would indeed. I know I've been to blame about 
+those Lupexes, but haven't I suffered for it, Mr Eames? And it was 
+difficult to know at first; wasn't it? And as to you and Amelia, if you 
+would send any of your young men to try, there couldn't be anything 
+more of that kind, could there? I know it hasn't all been just as it 
+should have been-that is as regards you; but I should like to hear you 
+say that you've found me honest before you went. I have tried to be 
+honest, I have indeed." 
+
+Eames assured her that he was convinced of her honesty, and that he had 
+never thought of impugning her character either in regard to those 
+unfortunate people, the Lupexes, or in reference to other matters. "He 
+did not think," he said, "that any young men would consult him as to 
+their lodgings; but if he could be of any service to her, he would." 
+Then he bade her good-bye, and having bestowed half-a-sovereign on the 
+faithful Jemima, he took a long farewell of Burton Crescent. Amelia had 
+told him not to come and see her when she should be married, and he had 
+resolved that he would take her at her word. So he walked off from the 
+Crescent, not exactly shaking the dust from his feet, but resolving 
+that he would know no more either of its dust or of its dirt. Dirt 
+enough he had encountered there certainly, and he was now old enough to 
+feel that the inmates of Mrs Roper's house had not been those among 
+whom a resting-place for his early years should judiciously have been 
+sought. But he had come out of the fire comparatively unharmed, and I 
+regret to say that he felt but little for the terrible scorchings to 
+which his friend had been subjected and was about to subject himself. 
+He was quite content to look at the matter exactly as it was looked at 
+by Mrs Roper. Amelia was good enough for Joseph Cradell-any day of the 
+week. Poor Cradell, of whom in these pages after this notice no more 
+will be heard! I cannot but think that a hard measure of justice was 
+meted out to him, in proportion to the extent of his sins. More weak 
+and foolish than our friend and hero he had been, but not to my 
+knowledge more wicked. But it is to the vain and foolish that the 
+punishments fall-and to them they fall so thickly and constantly that 
+the thinker is driven to think that vanity and folly are of all sins 
+those which may be the least forgiven. As for Cradell I may declare 
+that he did marry Amelia, that he did, with some pride, take the place 
+of master of the house at the bottom of Mrs Roper's table, and that he 
+did make himself responsible for all Mrs Roper's debts. Of his future 
+fortunes there is not space to speak in these pages.
+
+Going away from the Crescent Eames had himself driven to his office, 
+which he reached just as the men were leaving it, at four o'clock. 
+Cradell was gone, so that he did not see him on that afternoon; but he 
+had an opportunity of shaking hands with Mr Love, who treated him with 
+all the smiling courtesy due to an official bigwig-for a private 
+secretary, if not absolutely a big-wig, is semi-big, and entitled to a 
+certain amount of reverence-and he passed Mr Kissing in the passage, 
+hurrying along as usual with a huge book under his arm. Mr Kissing, 
+hurried as he was, stopped his shuffling feet; but Eames only looked at 
+him, hardly honouring him with the acknowledgment of a nod of his head. 
+Mr Kissing, however, was not offended; he knew that the private 
+secretary of the First Commissioner had been the guest of an earl; and 
+what more than a nod could be expected from him? After that John made 
+his way into the august presence of Sir Raffle, and found that great 
+man putting on his shoes in the presence of FitzHoward. FitzHoward 
+blushed; but the shoes had not been touched by him, as he took occasion 
+afterwards to inform John Eames.
+
+Sir Raffle was all smiles and civility. "Delighted to see you back, 
+Eames: am, upon my word; though I and FitzHoward have got on capitally 
+in your absence; haven't we, FitzHoward?" 
+
+"Oh, yes," drawled FitzHoward. "I haven't minded it for a time, just 
+while Eames has been away." 
+
+"You're much too idle to keep at it, I know; but your bread will be 
+buttered for you elsewhere, so it doesn't signify. My compliments to 
+the duchess when you see her." Then FitzHoward went. "And how's my dear 
+old friend?" asked Sir Raffle, as though of all men living Lord de 
+Guest were the one for whom he had the strongest and the oldest love. 
+And yet he must have known that John Eames knew as much about it as he 
+did himself. But there are men who have the most lively gratification 
+in calling lords and marquises their friends, though they know that 
+nobody believes a word of what they say-even though they know how great 
+is the odium they incur, and how lasting is the ridicule which their 
+vanity produces. It is a gentle insanity which prevails in the outer 
+courts of every aristocracy; and as it brings with itself considerable 
+annoyance and but a lukewarm pleasure, it should not be treated with 
+too keen a severity.
+"And how's my dear old friend?" Eames assured him that his dear old 
+friend was all right, that Lady Julia was all right, that the dear old 
+place was all right. Sir Raffle now spoke as though the "dear old 
+place" were quite well known to him. "Was the game doing pretty well? 
+Was there a promise of birds? "Sir Raffle's anxiety was quite intense, 
+and expressed with almost familiar affection. "And, by the-by, Eames, 
+where are you living at present?"
+
+"Well, I'm not settled. I'm at the Great Western Railway Hotel at this 
+moment." 
+
+"Capital house, very; only it's expensive if you stay there the whole 
+season." Johnny had no idea of remaining there beyond one night, but he 
+said nothing as to this. "By-the-by, you might as well come and dine 
+with us tomorrow. Lady Buffle is most anxious to know you. There'll be 
+one or two with us. I did ask my friend Dumbello, but there's some 
+nonsense going on in the House, and he thinks that he can't get away." 
+Johnny was more gracious than Lord Dumbello, and accepted the 
+invitation. "I wonder what Lady Buffle will be like? "he said to 
+himself, as he walked away from the office.
+
+He had turned into the Great Western Hotel, not as yet knowing where to 
+look for a home; and there we will leave him, eating his solitary 
+mutton-chop at one of those tables which are so comfortable to the eye, 
+but which are so comfortless in reality. I speak not now with reference 
+to the excellent establishment which has been named, but to the nature 
+of such tables in general. A solitary mutton-chop in an hotel 
+coffee-room is not a banquet to be envied by any god; and if the 
+mutton-chop be converted into soup, fish, little dishes, big dishes, 
+and the rest, the matter becomes worse and not better. What comfort are 
+you to have, seated alone on that horsehair chair, staring into the 
+room and watching the waiters as they whisk about their towels? No one 
+but an Englishman has ever yet thought of subjecting himself to such a 
+position as that! But here we will leave John Eames, and in doing so I 
+must be allowed to declare that only now, at this moment, has he 
+entered on his manhood. Hitherto he has been a hobbledehoy-a calf, as 
+it were, who had carried his calfishness later into life than is common 
+with calves; but who did not, perhaps, on that account, give promise of 
+making a worse ox than the rest of them. His life hitherto, as recorded 
+in these pages, had afforded him no brilliant success, had hardly 
+qualified him for the role of hero which he has been made to play. I 
+feel that I have been in fault in giving such prominence to a 
+hobbledehoy, and that I should have told my story better had I brought 
+Mr Crosbie more conspicuously forward on my canvas. He at any rate has 
+gotten to himself a wife-as a hero always should do; whereas I must 
+leave my poor friend Johnny without any matrimonial prospects.
+
+It was thus that he thought of himself as he sat moping over his 
+solitary table in the hotel coffee-room. He acknowledged to himself 
+that he had not hitherto been a man; but at the same time he made some 
+resolution which, I trust, may assist him in commencing his manhood 
+from this date.
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+It was early in June that Lily went up to her uncle at the Great House, 
+pleading for Hopkins-pleading that to Hopkins might be restored all the 
+privileges of head gardener at the Great House. There was some 
+absurdity in this, seeing that he had never really relinquished his 
+privileges; but the manner of the quarrel had been in this wise.
+
+There was in those days, and had been for years, a vexed question 
+between Hopkins and Jolliffe the bailiff on the matter of stable 
+manure. Hopkins had pretended to the right of taking what he required 
+from the farmyard, without asking leave of any one. Jolliffe in return 
+had hinted, that if this were so, Hopkins would take it all. "But I 
+can't eat it," Hopkins had said. Jolliffe merely grunted, signifying by 
+the grunt, as Hopkins thought, that though a gardener couldn't eat a 
+mountain of manure fifty feet long and fifteen high-couldn't eat in the 
+body-he might convert it into things edible for his own personal use. 
+And so there had been a great feud. The unfortunate squire had of 
+course been called on to arbitrate, and having postponed his decision 
+by every contrivance possible to him, had at last been driven by 
+Jolliffe to declare that Hopkins should take nothing that was not 
+assigned to him. Hopkins, when the decision was made known to him by 
+his master, bit his old lips, and turned round upon his old heel, 
+speechless.
+
+"You'll find it's so at all other places," said the squire, 
+apologetically. "Other places!" sneered Hopkins. Where would he find 
+other gardeners like himself? It is hardly necessary to declare that 
+from that moment he resolved that he would abide by no such order. 
+Jolliffe on the next morning informed the squire that the order had 
+been broken, and the squire fretted and fumed, wishing that Jolliffe 
+were well buried under the mountain in question. "If they all is to do 
+as they like," said Jolliffe, "then nobody won't care for nobody." The 
+squire understood than an order if given must be obeyed, and therefore, 
+with many inner groanings of the spirit, resolved that war must be 
+waged against Hopkins.
+
+On the following morning he found the old man himself wheeling a huge 
+barrow of manure round from the yard into the kitchen-garden. Now, on 
+ordinary occasions, Hopkins was not required to do with his own hands 
+work of that description. He had a man under him who hewed wood, and 
+carried water, and wheeled barrows-one man always, and often two. The 
+squire knew when he saw him that he was sinning, and bade him stop upon 
+his road.
+
+"Hopkins," he said, "why didn't you ask for what you wanted, before you 
+took it?" The old man put down the barrow on the ground, looked up in 
+his master's face, spat into his hands, and then again resumed his 
+barrow. "Hopkins, that won't do," said the squire. "Stop where you 
+are." 
+
+"What won't do?" said Hopkins, still holding the barrow from the 
+ground, but not as yet progressing.
+
+"Put it down, Hopkins," and Hopkins did put it down. Don't you know 
+that you are flatly disobeying my orders?"
+
+"Squire, I've been here about this place going on nigh seventy years." 
+
+"If you've been going on a hundred and seventy it wouldn't do that 
+there should be more than one master. I'm the master here, and I intend 
+to be so to the end. Take that manure back into the yard." 
+
+"Back into the yard?" said Hopkins, very slowly.
+
+"Yes; back into the yard." 
+
+"What-afore all their faces?"
+
+"Yes; you've disobeyed me before all their faces?"
+
+Hopkins paused a moment, looking away from the squire, and shaking his 
+head as though he had need of deep thought, but by the aid of deep 
+thought had come at last to a right conclusion. Then he resumed the 
+barrow, and putting himself almost into a trot, carried away his prize 
+into the kitchen-garden. At the pace which he went it would have been 
+beyond the squire's power to stop him, nor would Mr Dale have wished to 
+come to a personal encounter with his servant. But he called after the 
+man in dire wrath that if he were not obeyed the disobedient servant 
+should rue the consequences for ever. Hopkins, equal to the occasion, 
+shook his head as he trotted on, deposited his load at the foot of the 
+cucumber-frames, and then at once returning to his master, tendered to 
+him the key of the greenhouse.
+
+"Master," said Hopkins, speaking as best he could with his scanty 
+breath, "there it is-there's the key; of course I don't want no 
+warning, and doesn't care about my week's wages. I'll be out of the 
+cottage afore night, and as for the work'us, I suppose they'll let me 
+in at once, if your honour'll give 'em a line." 
+
+Now as Hopkins was well known by the squire to be the owner of three or 
+four hundred pounds, the hint about the workhouse must be allowed to 
+have been melodramatic.
+
+"Don't be a fool," said the squire, almost gnashing his teeth. "I know 
+I've been a fool," said Hopkins, "about that 'ere doong; my feelings 
+has been too much for me. When a man's feelings has been too much for 
+him, he'd better just take hisself off, and lie in the work'us till he 
+dies." And then he again tendered the key. But the squire did not take 
+the key, and so Hopkins went on. "I s'pose I'd better just see to the 
+lights and the like of that, till you've suited yourself, Mr Dale. It 
+'ud be a pity all them grapes should go off, and they, as you may say, 
+all one as fit for the table. It's a long way the best crop I ever see 
+on 'em. I've been that careful with 'em that I haven't had a natural 
+night's rest, not since February. There ain't nobody about this place 
+as understands grapes, nor yet anywhere nigh that could be got at. My 
+lord's head man is wery ignorant; but even if he knew ever so, of 
+course he couldn't come here. I suppose I'd better keep the key till 
+you're suited, Mr Dale." 
+
+Then for a fortnight there was an interregnum in the gardens, terrible 
+in the annals of Allington. Hopkins lived in his cottage indeed, and 
+looked most sedulously after the grapes. In looking after the grapes, 
+too, he took the greenhouses under his care; but he would have nothing 
+to do with the outer gardens, took no wages, returning the amount sent 
+to him back to the squire, and insisted with everybody that he had been 
+dismissed. He went about with some terrible horticultural implement 
+always in his hand, with which it was said that he intended to attack 
+Jolliffe; but Jolliffe prudently kept out of his way.
+
+As soon as it had been resolved by Mrs Dale and Lily that the flitting 
+from the Small House at Allington was not to be accomplished, Lily 
+communicated the fact to Hopkins.
+
+"Miss," said he, "when I said them few words to you and your mamma, I 
+knew that you would listen to reason." 
+
+This was no more than Lily had expected; that Hopkins should claim the 
+honour of having prevailed by his arguments was a matter of course.
+
+"Yes," said Lily; "we've made up our minds to stay. Uncle wishes it." 
+
+"Wishes it! Laws, miss; it ain't only wishes. And we all wishes it. 
+Why, now, look at the reason of the thing. Here's this here house-"
+
+"But, Hopkins, it's decided. We're going to stay. What I want to know 
+is this; can you come at once and help me to unpack?
+
+"What! this very evening, as is-"
+
+"Yes, now; we want to have the things about again before they come back 
+from Guestwick." 
+
+Hopkins scratched his head and hesitated, not wishing to yield to any 
+proposition that could be considered as childish; but he gave way at 
+last, feeling that the work itself was a good work. Mrs Dale also 
+assented, laughing at Lily for her folly as she did so, and in this way 
+the things were unpacked very quickly, and the alliance between Lily 
+and Hopkins became, for the time, very close. This work of unpacking 
+and resettling was not yet over, when the battle of the manure broke 
+out, and therefore it was that Hopkins, when his feelings had become 
+altogether too much for him "about the doong," came at last to Lily, 
+and laying down at her feet all the weight and all the glory of his 
+sixty odd years of life, implored her to make matters straight for him. 
+"It's been a killing me, miss, so it has; to see the way they've been a 
+cutting that 'sparagus. It ain't cutting at all. It's just hocking it 
+up-what is fit, and what isn't, all together. And they've been 
+a-putting the plants in where I didn't mean 'em, though they know'd I 
+didn't mean 'em. I've stood by, miss, and said never a word. I'd a died 
+sooner. But, Miss Lily, what my sufferings have been, 'cause of my 
+feelings getting the better of me about that-you know, miss-nobody will 
+ever tell -nobody-nobody-nobody." Then Hopkins turned away and wept.
+
+"Uncle," said Lily, creeping close up against his chair, "I want to ask 
+you a great favour." 
+
+"A great favour. Well, I don't think I shall refuse you anything at 
+present. It isn't to ask another earl to the house-is it?" 
+
+"Another earl!" said Lily.
+
+"Yes; haven't you heard? Miss Bell has been here this morning, 
+insisting that I should have over Lord de Guest and his sister for the 
+marriage. It seems that there was some scheming between Bell and Lady 
+Julia." 
+
+"Of course you'll ask them." 
+
+"Of course I must. I've no way out of it. It'll be all very well for 
+Bell, who'll be off to Wales with her lover; but what am I to do with 
+the earl and Lady Julia, when they're gone? Will you come and help me?" 
+
+In answer to this, Lily of course promised that she would come and 
+help. "Indeed," said she, "I thought we were all asked up for the day. 
+And now for my favour. Uncle, you must forgive poor Hopkins." 
+
+"Forgive a fiddlestick!" said the squire.
+
+"No, but you must. You can't think how unhappy he is." 
+
+"How can I forgive a man who won't forgive me. He goes prowling about 
+the place doing nothing; and he sends me back his wages, and he looks 
+as though he were going to murder some one; and all because he wouldn't 
+do as he was told. How am I to forgive such a man as that?" 
+
+"But, uncle, why not?" 
+
+"It would be his forgiving me. He knows very well that he may come back 
+whenever he pleases; and, indeed, for the matter of that he has never 
+gone away." 
+
+"But he is so very unhappy." 
+
+"What can I do to make him happier?" 
+
+"Just go down to his cottage and tell him that you forgive him." 
+
+"Then he'll argue with me." 
+
+"No; I don't think he will. He is too much down in the world for 
+arguing now." 
+
+"Ah! you don't know him as I do. All the misfortunes in the world 
+wouldn't stop that man's conceit. Of course I'll go if you ask me, but 
+it seems to me that I'm made to knock under to everybody. I hear a 
+great deal about other people's feelings, but I don't know that mine 
+are very much thought of." He was not altogether in a happy mood, and 
+Lily almost regretted that she had persevered; but she did succeed in 
+carrying him off across the garden to the cottage, and as they went 
+together she promised him that she would think of him always-always. 
+The scene with Hopkins cannot be described now, as it would take too 
+many of our few remaining pages. It resulted, I am afraid I must 
+confess, in nothing more triumphant to the squire than a treaty of 
+mutual forgiveness. Hopkins acknowledged, with much self-reproach, that 
+his feelings had been too many for him; but then, look at his 
+provocation! He could not keep his tongue from that matter, and 
+certainly said as much in his own defence as he did in confession of 
+his sins. The substantial triumph was altogether his, for nobody again 
+ever dared to interfere with his operations in the farmyard. He showed 
+his submission to his master mainly by consenting to receive his wages 
+for the two weeks which he had passed in idleness.
+
+Owing to this little accident, Lily was not so much oppressed by 
+Hopkins as she had expected to be in that matter of their altered 
+plans; but this salvation did not extend to Mrs Hearn, to Mrs Crump, 
+or, above all, to Mrs Boyce. They, all of them, took an interest more 
+or less strong in the Hopkins controversy; but their interest in the 
+occupation of the Small House was much stronger, and it was found 
+useless to put Mrs Hearn off with the gardener's persistent refusal of 
+his wages, when she was big with inquiry whether the house was to be 
+painted inside, as well as out. "Ah," said she, "I think I'll go and 
+look at lodgings at Guestwick myself, and pack up some of my beds." 
+Lily made no answer to this, feeling that it was a part of that 
+punishment which she had expected. "Dear, dear," said Mrs Crump to the 
+two girls; "well, to be sure, we should a been lone without 'ee, and 
+mayhap we might a got worse in your place; but why did 'ee go and 
+fasten up all your things in them big boxes, just to unfasten 'em all 
+again?" 
+
+"We changed our minds, Mrs Crump," said Bell, with some severity.
+
+"Yees, I know ye changed your mindses. Well, it's all right for loiks 
+o' ye, no doubt; but if we changes our mindses, we hears of it." 
+
+"So, it seems, do we! "said Lily. "But never mind, Mrs Crump. Do you 
+send us our letters up early, and then we won't quarrel." 
+
+"Oh, letters! Drat them for letters. I wish there weren't no sich 
+things. There was a man here yesterday with his imperence. I don't know 
+where he come from-down from Lun'on, I b'leeve: and this was wrong, and 
+that was wrong, and everything was wrong; and then he said he'd have me 
+discharged the sarvice." 
+
+"Dear me, Mrs Crump; that wouldn't do at all." 
+
+
+"Discharged the sarvice! Tuppence farden a day. So I told 'un to 
+discharge hisself, and take all the old bundles and things away upon 
+his shoulders. Letters indeed! What business have they with 
+post-missusses, if they cannot pay 'em better nor tuppence farden a 
+day?" And in this way, under the shelter of Mrs Crump's storm of wrath 
+against the inspector who had visited her, Lily and Bell escaped much 
+that would have fallen upon their own heads; but Mrs Boyce still 
+remained. I may here add, in order that Mrs Crump's history may be 
+carried on to the farthest possible point, that she was not "discharged 
+the sarvice," and that she still receives her twopence farthing a day 
+from the Crown. "That's a bitter old lady," said the inspector to the 
+man who was driving him.
+
+"Yes, sir; they all says the same about she. There ain't none of 'em 
+get much change out of Mrs Crump." 
+
+Bell and Lily went together also to Mrs Boyce's. "If she makes herself 
+very disagreeable, I shall insist upon talking of your marriage," said 
+Lily.
+
+"I've not the slightest objection," said Bell; "only I don't know what 
+there can be to say about it. Marrying the doctor is such a very 
+commonplace sort of thing." 
+
+"Not a bit more commonplace than marrying the parson," said Lily.
+
+"Oh, yes, it is. Parsons' marriages are often very grand affairs. They 
+come in among county people. That's their luck in life. Doctors never 
+do; nor lawyers. I don't think lawyers ever get married in the country. 
+They're supposed to do it up in London. But a country doctor's wedding 
+is not a thing to be talked about much." 
+
+Mrs Boyce probably agreed in this view of the matter, seeing that she 
+did not choose the coming marriage as her first subject of 
+conversation. As soon as the two girls were seated she flew away 
+immediately to the house, and began to express her very great 
+surprise-her surprise and her joy also-at the sudden change which had 
+been made in their plans. "It is so much nicer, you know," said she, 
+"that things should be pleasant among relatives." 
+
+"Things always have been tolerably pleasant with us," said Bell.
+
+"Oh, yes; I'm sure of that. I've always said it was quite a pleasure to 
+see you and your uncle together. And when we heard about your all 
+having to leave-"
+
+"But we didn't have to leave, Mrs Boyce. We were going to leave because 
+we thought mamma would be more comfortable in Guestwick; and now we're 
+not going to leave, because we've all 'changed our mindses,' as Mrs 
+Crump calls it." 
+
+"And is it true the house is going to be painted?" asked Mrs Boyce.
+
+"I believe it is true," said Lily.
+
+"Inside and out?"
+
+"It must be done some day," said Bell.
+
+"Yes, to be sure; but I must say it is generous of the squire. There's 
+such a deal of wood-work about your house. I know I wish the 
+Ecclesiastical Commissioners would paint ours; but nobody ever does 
+anything for the clergy. I'm sure I'm delighted you're going to stay. 
+As I said to Mr Boyce, what should we ever have done without you? I 
+believe the squire had made up his mind that he would not let the 
+place." 
+
+"I don't think he ever has let it." 
+
+"And if there was nobody in it, it would all go to rack and ruin; 
+wouldn't it? Had your mamma to pay anything for the lodgings she 
+engaged at Guestwick?
+
+"Upon my word, I don't know. Bell can tell you better about that than 
+I, as Dr Crofts settled it. I suppose Dr Crofts tells her everything." 
+And so the conversation was changed, and Mrs Boyce was made to 
+understand that whatever further mystery there might be, it would not 
+be unravelled on that occasion.
+
+It was settled that Dr Crofts and Bell should be married about the 
+middle of June, and the squire determined to give what grace he could 
+to the ceremony by opening his own house on the occasion. Lord de Guest 
+and Lady Julia were invited by special arrangement between her ladyship 
+and Bell, as has been before explained. The colonel also with Lady 
+Fanny came up from Torquay on the occasion, this being the first visit 
+made by the colonel to his paternal roof for many years. Bernard did 
+not accompany his father. He had not yet gone abroad, but there were 
+circumstances which made him feel that he would not find himself 
+comfortable at the wedding. The service was performed by Mr Boyce, 
+assisted, as the County Chronicle very fully remarked, by the Reverend 
+John Joseph Jones, M.A., late of Jesus College, Cambridge, and curate 
+of St. Peter's, Northgate, Guestwick; the fault of which little 
+advertisement was this-that as none of the readers of the paper had 
+patience to get beyond the Reverend John Joseph Jones, the fact of 
+Bell's marriage with Dr Crofts was not disseminated as widely as might 
+have been wished.
+
+The marriage went off very nicely. The squire was upon his very best 
+behaviour, and welcomed his guests as though he really enjoyed their 
+presence there in his halls. Hopkins, who was quite aware that he had 
+been triumphant, decorated the old rooms with mingled flowers and 
+greenery with an assiduous care which pleased the two girls mightily. 
+And during this work of wreathing and decking there was one little 
+morsel of feeling displayed which may as well be told in these last 
+lines. Lily had been encouraging the old man while Bell for a moment 
+had been absent.
+
+"I wish it had been for thee, my darling!" he said; "I wish it had been 
+for thee!
+
+"It is much better as it is, Hopkins," she answered, solemnly.
+
+"Not with him, though," he went on, "not with him. I wouldn't a hung a 
+bough for him. But with t'other one." 
+
+Lily said no word further. She knew that the man was expressing the 
+wishes of all around her. She said no word further, and then Bell 
+returned to them.
+
+But no one at the wedding was so gay as Lily-so gay, so bright, and so 
+wedding-like. She flirted with the old earl till he declared that he 
+would marry her himself. No one seeing her that evening, and knowing 
+nothing of her immediate history, would have imagined that she herself 
+had been cruelly jilted some six or eight months ago. And those who did 
+know her could not imagine that what she then suffered had hit her so 
+hard, that no recovery seemed possible for her. But though no recovery, 
+as she herself believed, was possible for her-though she was as a man 
+whose right arm had been taken from him in the battle, still all the 
+world had not gone with that right arm. The bullet which had maimed her 
+sorely had not touched her life, and she scorned to go about the world 
+complaining either by word or look of the injury she had received. 
+"Wives when they have lost their husbands still eat and laugh," she 
+said to herself, "and he is not dead like that." So she resolved that 
+she would be happy, and I here declare that she not only seemed to 
+carry out her resolution, but that she did carry it out in very truth. 
+"You're a dear good man, and I know you'll be good to her," she said to 
+Crofts just as he was about to start with his bride.
+
+"I'll try, at any rate," he answered.
+
+"And I shall expect you to be good to me too. Remember you have married 
+the whole family; and, sir, you mustn't believe a word of what that bad 
+man says in his novels about mothers-in-law. He has done a great deal 
+of harm, and shut half the ladies in England out of their daughters' 
+houses." 
+
+"He shan't shut Mrs Dale out of mine." 
+
+"Remember he doesn't. Now, good-bye." So the bride and bridegroom went 
+off, and Lily was left to flirt with Lord de Guest.
+
+Of whom else is it necessary that a word or two should be said before I 
+allow the weary pen to fall from my hand? The squire, after much inward 
+struggling on the subject, had acknowledged to himself that his 
+sister-in-law had not received from him that kindness which she had 
+deserved. He had acknowledged this, purporting to do his best to amend 
+his past errors; and I think I may say that his efforts in that line 
+would not be received ungraciously by Mrs Dale. I am inclined, 
+therefore, to think that life at Allington, both at the Great House and 
+at the Small, would soon become pleasanter than it used to be in former 
+days. Lily soon got the Balmoral boots, or, at least, soon learned that 
+the power of getting them as she pleased had devolved upon her from her 
+uncle's gift; so that she talked even of buying the squirrel's cage; 
+but I am not aware that her extravagance led her as far as that.
+
+Lord de Courcy we left suffering dreadfully from gout and ill-temper at 
+Courcy Castle. Yes, indeed! To him in his latter days life did not seem 
+to offer much that was comfortable. His wife had now gone from him, and 
+declared positively to her son-in-law that no earthly consideration 
+should ever induce her to go back again-"not if I were to starve!" she 
+said. By which she intended to signify that she would be firm in her 
+resolve, even though she should thereby lose her carriage and horses. 
+Poor Mr Gazebee went down to Courcy, and had a dreadful interview with 
+the earl; but matters were at last arranged, and her ladyship remained 
+at Baden-Baden in a state of semi-starvation. That is to say, she had 
+but one horse to her carriage.
+
+As regards Crosbie, I am inclined to believe that he did again recover 
+his power at his office. He was Mr Butterwell's master, and the master 
+also of Mr Optimist, and the major. He knew his business, and could do 
+it, which was more, perhaps, than might fairly be said of any of the 
+other three. Under such circumstances he was sure to get in his hand, 
+and lead again. But elsewhere his star did not recover its ascendancy. 
+He dined at his club almost daily, and there were those with whom he 
+habitually formed some little circle. But he was not the Crosbie of 
+former days-the Crosbie known in Belgravia and in St. James's Street. 
+He had taken his little vessel bravely out into the deep waters, and 
+had sailed her well while fortune stuck close to him. But he had 
+forgotten his nautical rules, and success had made him idle. His 
+plummet and lead had not been used, and he had kept no look-out ahead. 
+Therefore the first rock he met shivered his bark to pieces. His wife, 
+the Lady Alexandrina, is to be seen in the one-horse carriage with her 
+mother at Baden-Baden.
+
+
+THE END
+
+The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Small House at Allington
+by Anthony Trollope
+******This file should be named tsllh10.txt or tsllh10.zip******
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+End of The Project Gutenberg Etext of The Small House at Allington
+by Anthony Trollope
+
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+Project Gutenberg's The Small House at Allington, by Anthony Trollope
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+Title: The Small House at Allington
+
+Author: Anthony Trollope
+
+Release Date: October, 2003 [EBook #4599]
+[This file was last updated on November 17, 2002]
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+Edition: 11
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+Language: English
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+Character set encoding: ASCII
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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON ***
+
+
+
+
+This etext was produced by Andrew Turek.
+
+
+
+
+THE SMALL HOUSE AT ALLINGTON
+
+BY ANTHONY TROLLOPE
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE SQUIRE OF ALLINGTON
+
+Of course there was a Great House at Allington. How otherwise should
+there have been a Small House? Our story will, as its name imports,
+have its closest relations with those who lived in the less dignified
+domicile of the two; but it will have close relations also with the
+more dignified, and it may be well that I should, in the first
+instance, say a few words as to the Great House and its owner.
+
+The squires of Allington had been squires of Allington since squires,
+such as squires are now, were first known in England. From father to
+son, and from uncle to nephew, and, in one instance, from second cousin
+to second cousin, the sceptre had descended in the family of the Dales;
+and the acres had remained intact, growing in value and not decreasing
+in number, though guarded by no entail and protected by no wonderful
+amount of prudence or wisdom. The estate of Dale of Allington had been
+coterminous with the parish of Allington for some hundreds of years;
+and though, as I have said, the race of squires had possessed nothing
+of superhuman discretion, and had perhaps been guided in their walks
+through life by no very distinct principles, still there had been with
+them so much of adherence to a sacred law, that no acre of the property
+had ever been parted from the hands of the existing squire. Some futile
+attempts had been made to increase the territory, as indeed had been
+done by Kit Dale, the father of Christopher Dale, who will appear as
+our squire of Allington when the persons of our drama are introduced.
+Old Kit Dale, who had married money, had bought outlying farms--a bit of
+ground here and a bit there--talking, as he did so, much of political
+influence and of the good old Tory cause. But these farms and bits of
+ground had gone again before our time. To them had been attached no
+religion. When old Kit had found himself pressed in that matter of the
+majority of the Nineteenth Dragoons, in which crack regiment his second
+son made for himself quite a career, he found it easier to sell than to
+save--seeing that that which he sold was his own and not the patrimony
+of the Dales. At his death the remainder of these purchases had gone.
+Family arrangements required completion, and Christopher Dale required
+ready money. The outlying farms flew away, as such new purchases had
+flown before; but the old patrimony of the Dales remained untouched, as
+it had ever remained.
+
+It had been a religion among them; and seeing that the worship had been
+carried on without fail, that the vestal fire had never gone down upon
+the hearth, I should not have said that the Dales had walked their ways
+without high principle. For this religion they had all adhered, and the
+new heir had ever entered in upon his domain without other encumbrances
+than those with which he himself was then already burdened. And yet
+there had been no entail. The idea of an entail was not in accordance
+with the peculiarities of the Dale mind. It was necessary to the Dale
+religion that each squire should have the power of wasting the acres of
+Allington--and that he should abstain from wasting them. I remember to
+have dined at a house, the whole glory and fortune of which depended on
+the safety of a glass goblet. We all know the story. If the luck of
+Edenhall should be shattered, the doom of the family would be sealed.
+Nevertheless I was bidden to drink out of the fatal glass, as were all
+guests in that house. It would not have contented the chivalrous mind
+of the master to protect his doom by lock and key and padded chest. And
+so it was with the Dales of Allington. To them an entail would have
+been a lock and key and a padded chest; but the old chivalry of their
+house denied to them the use of such protection.
+
+I have spoken something slightingly of the acquirements and doings of
+the family; and indeed their acquirements had been few and their doings
+little. At Allington, Dale of Allington had always been known as a
+king. At Guestwick, the neighbouring market town, he was a great man--to
+be seen frequently on Saturdays, standing in the market-place, and
+laying down the law as to barley and oxen among men who knew usually
+more about barley and oxen than did he. At Hamersham, the assize town,
+he was generally in some repute, being a constant grand juror for the
+county, and a man who paid his way. But even at Hamersham the glory of
+the Dales had, at most periods, begun to pale, for they had seldom been
+widely conspicuous in the county, and had earned no great reputation by
+their knowledge of jurisprudence in the grand jury room. Beyond
+Hamersham their fame had not spread itself.
+
+They had been men generally built in the same mould, inheriting each
+from his father the same virtues and the same vices--men who would have
+lived, each, as his father had lived before him, had not the new ways
+of the world gradually drawn away with them, by an invisible magnetism,
+the upcoming Dale of the day--not indeed in any case so moving him as to
+bring him up to the spirit of the age in which he lived, but dragging
+him forward to a line in advance of that on which his father had
+trodden. They had been obstinate men; believing much in themselves;
+just according to their ideas of justice; hard to their tenants--but not
+known to be hard even by the tenants themselves, for the rules followed
+had ever been the rules on the Allington estate; imperious to their
+wives and children, but imperious within bounds, so that no Mrs Dale
+had fled from her lord's roof, and no loud scandals had existed between
+father and sons; exacting in their ideas as to money, expecting that
+they were to receive much and to give little, and yet not thought to be
+mean, for they paid their way, and gave money in parish charity and in
+county charity.
+
+They had ever been steady supporters of the Church, graciously
+receiving into their parish such new vicars as, from time to time, were
+sent to them from King's College, Cambridge, to which establishment the
+gift of the living belonged--but, nevertheless, the Dales had ever
+carried on some unpronounced warfare against the clergyman, so that the
+intercourse between the lay family and the clerical had seldom been in
+all respects pleasant.
+
+Such had been the Dales of Allington, time out of mind, and such in all
+respects would have been the Christopher Dale of our time, had he not
+suffered two accidents in his youth. He had fallen in love with a
+lady--who obstinately refused his hand, and on her account he had
+remained single; that was his first accident. The second had fallen
+upon him with reference to his father's assumed wealth. He had supposed
+himself to be richer than other Dales of Allington when coming in upon
+his property, and had consequently entertained an idea of sitting in
+Parliament for his county. In order that he might attain this honour he
+had allowed himself to be talked by the men of Hamersham and Guestwick
+out of his old family politics, and had declared himself a Liberal. He
+had never gone to the poll, and, indeed, had never actually stood for
+the seat. But he had come forward as a liberal politician, and had
+failed; and, although it was well known to all around that Christopher
+Dale was in heart as thoroughly conservative as any of his forefathers,
+this accident had made him sour and silent on the subject of politics,
+and had somewhat estranged him from his brother squires.
+
+In other respects our Christopher Dale was, if anything, superior to
+the average of the family. Those whom he did love he loved dearly.
+Those whom he hated he did not ill-use beyond the limits of justice. He
+was close in small matters of money, and yet in certain family
+arrangements he was, as we shall see, capable of much liberality. He
+endeavoured to do his duty in accordance with his lights, and had
+succeeded in weaning himself from personal indulgences, to which during
+the early days of his high hopes he had become accustomed. And in that
+matter of his unrequited love he had been true throughout. In his hard,
+dry, unpleasant way he had loved the woman; and when at least he
+learned to know that she would not have his love, he had been unable to
+transfer his heart to another. This had happened just at the period of
+his father's death, and he had endeavoured to console himself with
+politics, with what fate we have already seen. A constant, upright, and
+by no means insincere man was our Christopher Dale--thin and meagre in
+his mental attributes, by no means even understanding the fullness of a
+full man, with power of eye-sight very limited in seeing aught which
+was above him, but yet worthy of regard in that he had realised a path
+of duty and did endeavour to walk therein. And, moreover, our Mr
+Christopher Dale was a gentleman.
+
+Such in character was the squire of Allington, the only regular
+inhabitant of the Great House. In person, he was a plain, dry man, with
+short grizzled hair and thick grizzled eyebrows. Of beard, he had very
+little, carrying the smallest possible grey whiskers, which hardly fell
+below the points of his ears. His eyes were sharp and expressive, and
+his nose was straight and well formed--as was also his chin. But the
+nobility of his face was destroyed by a mean mouth with thin lips; and
+his forehead, which was high and narrow, though it forbad you to take
+Mr Dale for a fool, forbad you also to take him for a man of great
+parts, or of a wide capacity. In height, he was about five feet ten;
+and at the time of our story was as near to seventy as he was to sixty.
+But years had treated him very lightly, and he bore few signs of age.
+Such in person was Christopher Dale, Esq, the squire of Allington, and
+owner of some three thousand a year, all of which proceeded from the
+lands of that parish.
+
+And now I will speak of the Great House of Allington. After all, it was
+not very great; nor was it surrounded by much of that exquisite
+nobility of park appurtenance which graces the habitations of most of
+our old landed proprietors. But the house itself was very graceful. It
+had been built in the days of the early Stuarts, in that style of
+architecture to which we give the name of the Tudors. On its front it
+showed three pointed roofs, or gables, as I believe they should be
+called; and between each gable a thin tall chimney stood, the two
+chimneys thus raising themselves just above the three peaks I have
+mentioned. I think that the beauty of the house depended much on those
+two chimneys; on them, and on the mullioned windows with which the
+front of the house was closely filled. The door, with its jutting
+porch, was by no means in the centre of the house. As you entered,
+there was but one window on your right hand, while on your left there
+were three. And over these there was a line of five windows, one taking
+its place above the porch. We all know the beautiful old Tudor window,
+with its stout stone mullions and its stone transoms, crossing from
+side to side at a point much nearer to the top than to the bottom. Of
+all windows ever invented it is the sweetest. And here, at Allington, I
+think their beauty was enhanced by the fact that they were not regular
+in their shape. Some of these windows were long windows, while some of
+them were high. That to the right of the door, and that at the other
+extremity of the house, were among the former. But the others had been
+put in without regard to uniformity, a long window here, and a high
+window there, with a general effect which could hardly have been
+improved. Then above, in the three gables, were three other smaller
+apertures. But these also were mullioned, and the entire frontage of
+the house was uniform in its style.
+
+Round the house there were trim gardens, not very large, but worthy of
+much note in that they were so trim--gardens with broad gravel paths,
+with one walk running in front of the house so broad as to be fitly
+called a terrace. But this, though in front of the house, was
+sufficiently removed from it to allow of a coach-road running inside it
+to the front door. The Dales of Allington had always been gardeners,
+and their garden was perhaps more noted in the county than any other of
+their properties. But outside the gardens no pretensions had been made
+to the grandeur of a domain. The pastures round the house were but
+pretty fields, in which timber was abundant. There was no deer-park at
+Allington; and though the Allington woods were well known, they formed
+no portion of a whole of which the house was a part. They lay away, out
+of sight, a full mile from the back of the house; but not on that
+account of less avail for the fitting preservation of foxes.
+
+And the house stood much too near the road for purposes of grandeur,
+had such purposes ever swelled the breast of any of the squires of
+Allington. But I fancy that our ideas of rural grandeur have altered
+since many of our older country seats were built. To be near the
+village, so as in some way to afford comfort, protection, and
+patronage, and perhaps also with some view to the pleasantness of
+neighbourhood for its own inmates, seemed to be the object of a
+gentleman when building his house in the old days. A solitude in the
+centre of a wide park is now the only site that can be recognised as
+eligible. No cottage must be seen, unless the cottage _orne_ of the
+gardener. The village, if it cannot be abolished, must be got out of
+sight. The sound of the church bells is not desirable, and the road on
+which the profane vulgar travel by their own right must be at a
+distance. When some old Dale of Allington built his house, he thought
+differently. There stood the church and there the village, and, pleased
+with such vicinity, he sat himself down close to his God and to his
+tenants.
+
+As you pass along the road from Guestwick into the village you see the
+church near to you on your left hand; but the house is hidden from the
+road. As you approach the church, reaching the gate of it which is not
+above two hundred yards from the high road, you see the full front of
+the Great House. Perhaps the best view of it is from the churchyard.
+The lane leading up to the church ends in a gate, which is the entrance
+into Mr Dale's place. There is no lodge there, and the gate generally
+stands open--indeed, always does so, unless some need of cattle grazing
+within requires that it should be closed. But there is an inner gate,
+leading from the home paddock through the gardens to the house, and
+another inner gate, some thirty yards farther on, which will take you
+into the farmyard. Perhaps it is a defect at Allington that the
+farmyard is very close to the house. But the stables, and the
+straw-yards, and the unwashed carts, and the lazy lingering cattle of
+the homestead, are screened off by a row of chestnuts, which, when in
+its glory of flower, in the early days of May, no other row in England
+can surpass in beauty. Had any one told Dale of Allington--this Dale or
+any former Dale--that his place wanted wood, he would have pointed with
+mingled pride and disdain to his belt of chestnuts.
+
+Of the church itself I will say the fewest possible number of words. It
+was a church such as there are, I think, thousands in England--low,
+incommodious, kept with difficulty in repair, too often pervious to the
+wet, and yet strangely picturesque, and correct too, according to great
+rules of architecture. It was built with a nave and aisles, visibly in
+the form of a cross, though with its arms clipped down to the trunk,
+with a separate chancel, with a large square short tower, and with a
+bell-shaped spire, covered with lead and irregular in its proportions.
+Who does not know the low porch, the perpendicular Gothic window, the
+flat-roofed aisles, and the noble old grey tower of such a church as
+this? As regards its interior, it was dusty; it was blocked up with
+high-backed ugly pews; the gallery in which the children sat at the end
+of the church, and in which two ancient musicians blew their bassoons,
+was all awry, and looked as though it would fall; the pulpit was an
+ugly useless edifice, as high nearly as the roof would allow, and the
+reading-desk under it hardly permitted the parson to keep his head free
+from the dangling tassels of the cushion above him. A clerk also was
+there beneath him, holding a third position somewhat elevated; and upon
+the whole thing there were not quite as I would have had them. But,
+nevertheless, the place looked like a church, and I can hardly say so
+much for all the modern edifices which have been built in my days
+towards the glory of God. It looked like a church, and not the less so
+because in walking up the passage between the pews the visitor trod
+upon the brass plates which dignified the resting-places of the
+departed Dales of old.
+
+Below the church, and between that and the village, stood the vicarage,
+in such position that the small garden of the vicarage stretched from
+the churchyard down to the backs of the village cottages. This was a
+pleasant residence, newly built within the last thirty years, and
+creditable to the ideas of comfort entertained by the rich collegiate
+body from which the vicars of Allington always came. Doubtless we shall
+in the course of our sojourn at Allington visit the vicarage now and
+then, but I do not know that any farther detailed account of its
+comforts will be necessary to us.
+
+Passing by the lane leading to the vicarage, the church, and to the
+house, the high road descends rapidly to a little brook which runs
+through the village. On the right as you descend you will have seen the
+"Red Lion," and will have seen no other house conspicuous in any way.
+At the bottom, close to the brook, is the post-office, kept surely by
+the crossest old woman in all those parts. Here the road passes through
+the water, the accommodation of a narrow wooden bridge having been
+afforded for those on foot. But before passing the stream, you will see
+a cross street, running to the left, as had run that other lane leading
+to the house. Here, as this cross street rises the hill, are the best
+houses in the village. The baker lives here, and that respectable
+woman, Mrs Frummage, who sells ribbons, and toys, and soap, and straw
+bonnets, with many other things too long to mention. Here, too, lives
+an apothecary, whom the veneration of this and neighbouring parishes
+has raised to the dignity of a doctor. And here also, in the smallest
+but prettiest cottage that can be imagined, lives Mrs Hearn, the widow
+of a former vicar, on terms, however, with her neighbour the squire
+which I regret to say are not as friendly as they should be. Beyond
+this lady's modest residence, Allington Street, for so the road is
+called, turns suddenly round towards the church, and at the point of
+the turn is a pretty low iron railing with a gate, and with a covered
+way, which leads up to the front door of the house which stands there,
+I will only say here, at this fag end of a chapter, that it is the
+Small House at Allington. Allington Street, as I have said, turns short
+round towards the church at this point, and there ends at a white gate,
+leading into the churchyard by a second entrance.
+
+So much it was needful that I should say of Allington Great House, of
+the Squire, and of the village. Of the Small House, I will speak
+separately in a further chapter.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+THE TWO PEARLS OF ALLINGTON
+
+"But Mr Crosbie is only a mere clerk." This sarcastic condemnation was
+spoken by Miss Lilian Dale to her sister Isabella, and referred to a
+gentleman with whom we shall have much concern in these pages. I do not
+say that Mr Crosbie will be our hero, seeing that that part in the
+drama will be cut up, as it were, into fragments. Whatever of the
+magnificent may be produced will be diluted and apportioned out in very
+moderate quantities among two or more, probably among three or four,
+young gentlemen--to none of whom will be vouchsafed the privilege of
+much heroic action.
+
+"I don't know what you call a mere clerk, Lily. Mr Fanfaron is a mere
+barrister, and Mr Boyce is a mere clergyman." Mr Boyce was the vicar of
+Allington, and Mr Fanfaron was a lawyer who had made his way over to
+Allington during the last assizes. "You might as well say that Lord de
+Guest is a mere earl."
+
+"So he is--only a mere earl. Had he ever done anything except have fat
+oxen, one wouldn't say so. You know what I mean by a mere clerk? It
+isn't much in a man to be in a public office, and yet Mr Crosbie gives
+himself airs."
+
+"You don't suppose that Mr Crosbie is the same as John Eames," said
+Bell, who, by her tone of voice, did not seem inclined to undervalue
+the qualifications of Mr Crosbie. Now John Eames was a young man from
+Guestwick, who had been appointed to a clerkship in the Income-tax
+Office, with eighty pounds a year, two years ago.
+
+"Then Johnny Eames is a mere clerk," said Lily; "and Mr Crosbie
+is--After all, Bell, what is Mr Crosbie, if he is not a mere clerk? Of
+course, he is older than John Eames; and, as he has been longer at it,
+I suppose he has more than eighty pounds a year."
+
+"I am not in Mr Crosbie's confidence. He is in the General Committee
+Office, I know; and, I believe, has pretty nearly the management of the
+whole of it. I have heard Bernard say that he has six or seven young
+men under him, and that--but, of course, I don't know what he does at
+his office."
+
+"I'll tell you what he is, Bell; Mr Crosbie is a swell." And Lilian
+Dale was right; Mr Crosbie was a swell.
+
+And here I may perhaps best explain who Bernard was, and who was Mr
+Crosbie. Captain Bernard Dale was an officer in the corps of Engineers,
+was the first cousin of the two girls who have been speaking, and was
+nephew and heir presumptive to the squire. His father, Colonel Dale,
+and his mother, Lady Fanny Dale, were still living at Torquay--an
+effete, invalid, listless couple, pretty well dead to all the world
+beyond the region of the Torquay card-tables. He it was who had made
+for himself quite a career in the Nineteenth Dragoons. This he did by
+eloping with the penniless daughter of that impoverished earl, the Lord
+de Guest. After the conclusion of that event circumstances had not
+afforded him the opportunity of making himself conspicuous; and he had
+gone on declining gradually in the world's esteem--for the world had
+esteemed him when he first made good his running with the Lady
+Fanny--till now, in his slippered years, he and his Lady Fanny were
+unknown except among those Torquay Bath chairs and card-tables. His
+elder brother was still a hearty man, walking in thick shoes, and
+constant in his saddle; but the colonel, with nothing beyond his wife's
+title to keep his body awake, had fallen asleep somewhat prematurely
+among his slippers. Of him and of Lady Fanny, Bernard Dale was the only
+son. Daughters they had had; some were dead, some married, and one
+living with them among the card-tables. Of his parents Bernard had
+latterly not seen much; not more, that is, than duty and a due
+attention to the fifth commandment required of him. He also was making
+a career for himself, having obtained a commission in the Engineers,
+and being known to all his compeers as the nephew of an earl, and as
+the heir to a property of three thousand a year. And when I say that
+Bernard Dale was not inclined to throw away any of these advantages, I
+by no means intend to speak in his dispraise. The advantage of being
+heir to a good property is so manifest--the advantages over and beyond
+those which are merely fiscal--that no man thinks of throwing them away,
+or expects another man to do so. Moneys in possession or in expectation
+do give a set to the head, and a confidence to the voice, and an
+assurance to the man, which will help him much in his walk in life--if
+the owner of them will simply use them, and not abuse them. And for
+Bernard Dale I will say that he did not often talk of his uncle the
+earl. He was conscious that his uncle was an earl, and that other men
+knew the fact. He knew that he would not otherwise have been elected at
+the Beaufort, or at that most aristocratic of little clubs called
+Sebright's. When noble blood was called in question he never alluded
+specially to his own, but he knew how to speak as one of whom all the
+world was aware on which side he had been placed by the circumstances
+of his birth. Thus he used his advantage, and did not abuse it. And in
+his profession he had been equally fortunate. By industry, by a small
+but wakeful intelligence, and by some aid from patronage, he had got on
+till he had almost achieved the reputation of talent. His name had
+become known among scientific experimentalists, not as that of one who
+had himself invented a cannon or an antidote to a cannon, but as of a
+man understanding in cannons and well fitted to look at those invented
+by others; who would honestly test this or that antidote; or, if not
+honestly, seeing that such thin-minded men can hardly go to the proof
+of any matter without some pre-judgment in their minds, at any rate
+with such appearance of honesty that the world might be satisfied. And
+in this way Captain Dale was employed much at home, about London; and
+was not called on to build barracks in Nova Scotia, or to make roads in
+the Punjaub.
+
+He was a small slight man, smaller than his uncle, but in face very
+like him. He had the same eyes, and nose, and chin, and the same mouth;
+but his forehead was better--less high and pointed, and better formed
+about the brows. And then he wore moustaches, which somewhat hid the
+thinness of his mouth.
+
+On the whole, he was not ill-looking; and, as I have said before, he
+carried with him an air of self-assurance and a confident balance,
+which in itself gives a grace to a young man.
+
+He was staying at the present time in his uncle's house, during the
+delicious warmth of the summer--for, as yet, the month of July was not
+all past; and his intimate friend, Adolphus Crosbie, who was or was not
+a mere clerk as my readers may choose to form their own opinions on
+that matter, was a guest in the house with him. I am inclined to say
+that Adolphus Crosbie was not a mere clerk; and I do not think that he
+would have been so called, even by Lily Dale, had he not given signs to
+her that he was a "swell." Now a man in becoming a swell--a swell of
+such an order as could possibly be known to Lily Dale--must have ceased
+to be a mere clerk in that very process. And, moreover, Captain Dale
+would not have been Damon to any Pythias, of whom it might fairly be
+said that he was a mere clerk. Nor could any mere clerk have got
+himself in either at the Beaufort or at Sebright's. The evidence
+against that former assertion made by Lily Dale is very strong; but
+then the evidence as to her latter assertion is as strong, Mr Crosbie
+certainly was a swell. It is true that he was a clerk in the General
+Committee Office. But then, in the first place, the General Committee
+Office is situated in Whitehall; whereas poor John Eames was forced to
+travel daily from his lodgings in Burton Crescent, ever so far beyond
+Russell Square, to his dingy room in Somerset House. And Adolphus
+Crosbie, when very young, had been a private secretary, and had
+afterwards mounted up in his office to some quasi authority and
+senior-clerkship, bringing him in seven hundred a year, and giving him
+a status among assistant secretaries and the like, which even in an
+official point of view was something. But the triumphs of Adolphus
+Crosbie had been other than these. Not because he had been intimate
+with assistant secretaries, and was allowed in Whitehall a room to
+himself with an arm-chair, would he have been entitled to stand upon
+the rug at Sebright's and speak while rich men listened--rich men, and
+men also who had handles to their names! Adolphus Crosbie had done more
+than make minutes with discretion on the papers of the General
+Committee Office. He had set himself down before the gates of the city
+of fashion, and had taken them by storm; or, perhaps, to speak with
+more propriety, he had picked the locks and let himself in. In his
+walks of life he was somebody in London. A man at the West End who did
+not know who was Adolphus Crosbie knew nothing. I do not say that he
+was the intimate friend of many great men; but even great men
+acknowledged the acquaintance of Adolphus Crosbie, and he was to be
+seen in the drawing-rooms, or at any rate on the staircases, of Cabinet
+Ministers.
+
+Lilian Dale, dear Lily Dale--for my reader must know that she is to be
+very dear, and that my story will be nothing to him if he do not love
+Lily Dale--Lilian Dale had discovered that Mr Crosbie was a swell. But I
+am bound to say that Mr Crosbie did not habitually proclaim the fact in
+any offensive manner; nor in becoming a swell had he become altogether
+a bad fellow. It was not to be expected that a man who was petted at
+Sebright's should carry himself in the Allington drawing-room as would
+Johnny Eames, who had never been petted by any one but his mother. And
+this fraction of a hero of ours had other advantages to back him, over
+and beyond those which fashion had given him. He was a tall,
+well-looking man, with pleasant eyes and an expressive mouth--a man whom
+you would probably observe in whatever room you might meet him. And he
+knew how to talk, and had in him something which justified talking. He
+was no butterfly or dandy, who flew about in the world's sun, warmed
+into prettiness by a sunbeam. Crosbie had his opinion on things--on
+politics, on religion, on the philanthropic tendencies of the age, and
+had read something here and there as he formed his opinion. Perhaps he
+might have done better in the world had he not been placed so early in
+life in that Whitehall public office. There was that in him which might
+have earned better bread for him in an open profession.
+
+But in that matter of his bread the fate of Adolphus Crosbie had by
+this time been decided for him, and he had reconciled himself to fate
+that was now inexorable. Some very slight patrimony, a hundred a year
+or so, had fallen to his share. Beyond that he had his salary from his
+office, and nothing else; and on his income, thus made up, he had lived
+as a bachelor in London, enjoying all that London could give him as a
+man in moderately easy circumstances, and looking forward to no costly
+luxuries--such as a wife, a house of his own, or a stable full of
+horses. Those which he did enjoy of the good things of the world would,
+if known to John Eames, have made him appear fabulously rich in the
+eyes of that brother clerk. His lodgings in Mount Street were elegant
+in their belongings. During three months of the season in London he
+called himself the master of a very neat hack. He was always well
+dressed, though never over-dressed. At his clubs he could live on equal
+terms with men having ten times his income. He was not married. He had
+acknowledged to himself that he could not marry without money; and he
+would not marry for money. He had put aside from him, as not within his
+reach, the comforts of marriage. But--We will not, however, at the
+present moment inquire more curiously into the private life and
+circumstances of our new friend Adolphus Crosbie.
+
+After the sentence pronounced against him by Lilian, the two girls
+remained silent for awhile. Bell was, perhaps, a little angry with her
+sister. It was not often that she allowed herself to say much in praise
+of any gentleman; and, now that she had spoken a word or two in favour
+of Mr Crosbie, she felt herself to be rebuked by her sister for this
+unwonted enthusiasm. Lily was at work on a drawing, and in a minute or
+two had forgotten all about Mr Crosbie; but the injury remained on
+Bell's mind and prompted her to go back to the subject." I don't like
+those slang words, Lily."
+
+"What slang words?"
+
+"You know what you called Bernard's friend."
+
+"Oh; a swell. I fancy I do like slang. I think it's awfully jolly to
+talk about things being jolly. Only that I was afraid of your nerves I
+should have called him stunning. It's so slow, you know, to use nothing
+but words out of a dictionary."
+
+"I don't think it's nice in talking of gentlemen."
+
+"Isn't it? Well, I'd like to be nice--if I knew how." If she knew how!
+There is no knowing how, for a girl, in that matter. If nature and her
+mother have not done it for her, there is no hope for her on that head.
+I think I may say that nature and her mother had been sufficiently
+efficacious for Lilian Dale in this respect.
+
+"Mr Crosbie is, at any rate, a gentleman, and knows how to make himself
+pleasant. That was all that I meant. Mamma said a great deal more about
+him than I did."
+
+"Mr Crosbie is an Apollo; and I always look upon Apollo as the
+greatest--you know what--that ever lived. I mustn't say the word, because
+Apollo was a gentleman." At this moment, while the name of the god was
+still on her lips, the high open window of the drawing-room was
+darkened, and Bernard entered, followed by Mr Crosbie.
+
+"Who is talking about Apollo?" said Captain Dale.
+
+The girls were both stricken dumb. How would it be with them if Mr
+Crosbie had heard himself spoken of in those last words of poor Lily's?
+This was the rashness of which Bell was ever accusing her sister, and
+here was the result! But, in truth, Bernard had heard nothing more than
+the name, and Mr Crosbie, who had been behind him, had heard nothing.
+
+"As sweet and musical as bright Apollo's lute, strung with his hair,"
+said Mr Crosbie, not meaning much by the quotation, but perceiving that
+the two girls had been in some way put out and silenced.
+
+"What very bad music it must have made," said Lily; "unless, indeed,
+his hair was very different from ours."
+
+"It was all sunbeams," suggested Bernard. But by that time Apollo had
+served his turn, and the ladies welcomed their guests in the proper
+form.
+
+"Mamma is in the garden," said Bell, with that hypocritical pretence so
+common with young ladies when young gentlemen call; as though they were
+aware that mamma was the object specially sought.
+
+"Picking peas, with a sun bonnet on," said Lily.
+
+"Let us by all means go and help her," said Mr Crosbie; and then they
+issued out into the garden.
+
+The gardens of the Great House of Allington and those of the Small
+House open on to each other. A proper boundary of thick laurel hedge,
+and wide ditch, and of iron spikes guarding the ditch, there is between
+them; but over the wide ditch there is a foot-bridge, and at the bridge
+there is a gate which has no key; and for all purposes of enjoyment the
+gardens of each house are open to the other. And the gardens of the
+Small House are very pretty. The Small House itself is so near the road
+that there is nothing between the dining-room windows and the iron rail
+but a narrow edge rather than border, and a little path made with round
+fixed cobble stones, not above two feet broad, into which no one but
+the gardener ever makes his way. The distance from the road to the
+house is not above five or six feet, and the entrance from the gate is
+shut in by a covered way. But the garden behind the house, on to which
+the windows from the drawing-room open, is to all the senses as private
+as though there were no village of Allington, and no road up to the
+church within a hundred yards of the lawn. The steeple of the church,
+indeed, can be seen from the lawn, peering, as it were, between the
+yew-trees which stand in the corner of the churchyard adjoining to Mrs
+Dale's wall. But none of the Dale family have any objection to the
+sight of that steeple. The glory of the Small House at Allington
+certainly consists in its lawn, which is as smooth, as level, and as
+much like velvet as grass has ever yet been made to look. Lily Dale,
+taking pride in her own lawn, has declared often that it is no good
+attempting to play croquet up at the Great House. The grass, she says,
+grows in tufts, and nothing that Hopkins, the gardener, can or will do
+has any effect upon the tufts. But there are no tufts at the Small
+House. As the squire himself has never been very enthusiastic about
+croquet, the croquet implements have been moved permanently down to the
+Small House, and croquet there has become quite an institution.
+
+And while I am on the subject of the garden I may also mention Mrs
+Dale's conservatory, as to which Bell was strenuously of opinion that
+the Great House had nothing to offer equal to it--"For flowers, of
+course, I mean," she would say, correcting herself; for at the Great
+House there was a grapery very celebrated. On this matter the squire
+would be less tolerant than as regarded the croquet, and would tell his
+niece that she knew nothing about flowers. "Perhaps not, Uncle
+Christopher," she would say. "All the same, I like our geraniums best";
+for there was a spice of obstinacy about Miss Dale--as, indeed, there
+was in all the Dales, male and female, young and old.
+
+It may be as well to explain that the care of this lawn and of this
+conservatory, and, indeed, of the entire garden belonging to the Small
+House, was in the hands of Hopkins, the head gardener at the Great
+House; and it was so simply for this reason, that Mrs Dale could not
+afford to keep a gardener herself. A working lad, at ten shillings a
+week, who cleaned the knives and shoes, and dug the ground, was the
+only male attendant on the three ladies. But Hopkins, the head gardener
+of Allington, who had men under him, was as widely awake to the lawn
+and the conservatory of the humbler establishment as he was to the
+grapery, peach-walls, and terraces of the grander one. In his eyes it
+was all one place. The Small House belonged to his master, as indeed
+did the very furniture within it; and it was lent, not let, to Mrs
+Dale. Hopkins, perhaps, did not love Mrs Dale, seeing that he owed her
+no duty as one born a Dale. The two young ladies he did love, and also
+snubbed in a very peremptory way sometimes. To Mrs Dale he was coldly
+civil, always referring to the squire if any direction worthy of
+special notice as concerning the garden was given to him.
+
+All this will serve to explain the terms on which Mrs Dale was living
+at the Small House--a matter needful of explanation sooner or later. Her
+husband had been the youngest of three brothers, and in many respects
+the brightest. Early in life he had gone up to London, and there had
+done well as a land surveyor. He had done so well that Government had
+employed him, and for some three or four years he had enjoyed a large
+income, but death had come suddenly on him, while he was only yet
+ascending the ladder; and, when he died, he had hardly begun to realise
+the golden prospects which he had seen before him. This had happened
+some fifteen years before our story commenced, so that the two girls
+hardly retained any memory of their father. For the first five years of
+her widowhood, Mrs Dale, who had never been a favourite of the
+squire's, lived with her two little girls in such modest way as her
+very limited means allowed. Old Mrs Dale, the squire's mother, then
+occupied the Small House. But when old Mrs Dale died, the squire
+offered the place rent-free to his sister-in-law, intimating to her
+that her daughters would obtain considerable social advantages by
+living at Allington. She had accepted the offer, and the social
+advantages had certainly followed. Mrs Dale was poor, her whole income
+not exceeding three hundred a year, and therefore her own style of
+living was of necessity very unassuming; but she saw her girls becoming
+popular in the county, much liked by the families around them, and
+enjoying nearly all the advantages which would have accrued to them had
+they been the daughters of Squire Dale of Allington. Under such
+circumstances it was little to her whether or no she were loved by her
+brother-in-law, or respected by Hopkins. Her own girls loved her, and
+respected her, and that was pretty much all that she demanded of the
+world on her own behalf.
+
+And Uncle Christopher had been very good to the girls in his own
+obstinate and somewhat ungracious manner. There were two ponies in the
+stables of the Great House, which they were allowed to ride, and which,
+unless on occasions, nobody else did ride. I think he might have given
+the ponies to the girls, but he thought differently. And he contributed
+to their dresses, sending them home now and again things which he
+thought necessary, not in the pleasantest way in the world. Money he
+never gave them, nor did he make them any promises. But they were
+Dales, and he loved them; and with Christopher Dale to love once was to
+love always. Bell was his chief favourite, sharing with his nephew
+Bernard the best warmth of his heart. About these two he had his
+projects, intending that Bell should be the future mistress of the
+Great House of Allington; as to which project, however, Miss Dale was
+as yet in very absolute ignorance.
+
+We may now, I think, go back to our four friends, as they walked out
+upon the lawn. They were understood to be on a mission to assist Mrs
+Dale in the picking of the peas; but pleasure intervened in the way of
+business, and the young people, forgetting the labours of their elder,
+allowed themselves to be carried away by the fascinations of croquet.
+The iron hoops and the sticks were fixed. The mallets and the balls
+were lying about; and then the party was so nicely made up! "I haven't
+had a game of croquet yet," said Mr Crosbie. It cannot be said that he
+had lost much time, seeing that he had only arrived before dinner on
+the preceding day. And then the mallets were in their hands in a moment.
+
+"We'll play sides, of course," said Lily. "Bernard and I'll play
+together." But this was not allowed. Lily was well known to be the
+queen of the croquet ground; and as Bernard was supposed to be more
+efficient than his friend, Lily had to take Mr Crosbie as her partner.
+"Apollo can't get through the hoops," Lily said afterwards to her
+sister; "but then how gracefully he fails to do it!" Lily, however, had
+been beaten, and may therefore be excused for a little spite against
+her partner. But it so turned out that before Mr Crosbie took his final
+departure from Allington he could get through the hoops; and Lily,
+though she was still queen of the croquet ground, had to acknowledge a
+male sovereign in that dominion.
+
+"That's not the way we played at--" said Crosbie, at one point of the
+game, and then stopped himself.
+
+"Where was that?" said Bernard.
+
+"A place I was at last summer--in Shropshire,"
+
+"Then they don't play the game, Mr Crosbie, at the place you were at
+last summer--in Shropshire," said Lily.
+
+"You mean Lady Hartletop's," said Bernard. Now, the Marchioness of
+Hartletop was a very great person indeed, and a leader in the
+fashionable world.
+
+"Oh! Lady Hartletop's!" said Lily. "Then I suppose we must give in;"
+which little bit of sarcasm was not lost upon Mr Crosbie, and was put
+down by him in the tablets of his mind as quite undeserved. He had
+endeavoured to avoid any mention of Lady Hartletop and her croquet
+ground, and her ladyship's name had been forced upon him. Nevertheless,
+he liked Lily Dale through it all. But he thought that he liked Bell
+the best, though she said little; for Bell was the beauty of the family.
+
+During the game Bernard remembered that they had especially come over
+to bid the three ladies to dinner at the house on that day. They had
+all dined there on the day before, and the girls' uncle had now sent
+directions to them to come again." I'll go and ask mamma about it,"
+said Bell, who was out first. And then she returned, saying, that she
+and her sister would obey their uncle's behest; but that her mother
+would prefer to remain at home. "There are the peas to be eaten, you
+know," said Lily.
+
+"Send them up to the Great House," said Bernard.
+
+"Hopkins would not allow it," said Lily. "He calls that a mixing of
+things. Hopkins doesn't like mixings." And then when the game was over,
+they sauntered about, out of the small garden into the larger one, and
+through the shrubberies, and out upon the fields, where they found the
+still lingering remnants of the haymaking. And Lily took a rake, and
+raked for two minutes; and Mr Crosbie, making an attempt to pitch the
+hay into the cart, had to pay half-a-crown for his footing to the
+hay-makers; and Bell sat quiet under a tree, mindful of her complexion;
+whereupon Mr Crosbie, finding the hay-pitching not much to his taste,
+threw himself under the same tree also, quite after the manner of
+Apollo, as Lily said to her mother late in the evening. Then Bernard
+covered Lily with hay, which was a great feat in the jocose way for
+him; and Lily in returning the compliment, almost smothered Mr
+Crosbie--by accident.
+
+"Oh, Lily," said Bell.
+
+"I'm sure I beg your pardon, Mr Crosbie. It was Bernard's fault.
+Bernard, I never will come into a hayfield with you again." And so they
+all became very intimate; while Bell sat quietly under the tree,
+listening to a word or two now and then as Mr Crosbie chose to speak
+them. There is a kind of enjoyment to be had in society, in which very
+few words are necessary. Bell was less vivacious than her sister Lily;
+and when, an hour after this, she was dressing herself for dinner, she
+acknowledged that she had passed a pleasant afternoon, though Mr
+Crosbie had not said very much.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+THE WIDOW DALE OF ALLINGTON
+
+As Mrs Dale, of the Small House, was not a Dale by birth, there can be
+no necessity for insisting on the fact that none of the Dale
+peculiarities should be sought for in her character. These
+peculiarities were not, perhaps, very conspicuous in her daughters, who
+had taken more in that respect from their mother than from their
+father; but a close observer might recognise the girls as Dales. They
+were constant, perhaps obstinate, occasionally a little uncharitable in
+their judgment, and prone to think that there was a great deal in being
+a Dale, though not prone to say much about it. But they had also a
+better pride than this, which had come to them as their mother's
+heritage.
+
+Mrs Dale was certainly a proud woman--not that there was anything
+appertaining to herself in which she took a pride. In birth she had
+been much lower than her husband, seeing that her grandfather had been
+almost nobody. Her fortune had been considerable for her rank in life,
+and on its proceeds she now mainly depended; but it had not been
+sufficient to give any of the pride of wealth. And she had been a
+beauty; according to my taste, was still very lovely; but certainly at
+this time of life, she, a widow of fifteen years' standing, with two
+grown-up daughters, took no pride in her beauty. Nor had she any
+conscious pride in the fact that she was a lady. That she was a lady,
+inwards and outwards, from the crown of her head to the sole of her
+feet, in head, in heart, and in mind, a lady by education and a lady by
+nature, a lady also by birth in spite of that deficiency respecting her
+grandfather, I hereby state as a fact--mea periculo. And the squire,
+though he had no special love for her, had recognised this, and in all
+respects treated her as his equal.
+
+But her position was one which required that she should either be very
+proud or else very humble. She was poor, and yet her daughters moved in
+a position which belongs, as a rule, to the daughters of rich men only.
+This they did as nieces of the childless squire of Allington, and as
+his nieces she felt that they were entitled to accept his countenance
+and kindness, without loss of self-respect either to her or to them.
+She would have ill done her duty as a mother to them had she allowed
+any pride of her own to come between them and such advantage in the
+world as their uncle might be able to give them. On their behalf she
+had accepted the loan of the house in which she lived, and the use of
+many of the appurtenances belonging to her brother-in-law; but on her
+own account she had accepted nothing. Her marriage with Philip Dale had
+been disliked by his brother the squire, and the squire, while Philip
+was still living, had continued to show that his feelings in this
+respect were not to be overcome. They never had been overcome; and now,
+though the brother-in-law and sister-in-law had been close neighbours
+for years, living as one may say almost in the same family, they had
+never become friends. There had not been a word of quarrel between
+them. They met constantly. The squire had unconsciously come to
+entertain a profound respect for his brother's widow. The widow had
+acknowledged to herself the truth of the affection shown by the uncle
+to her daughters. But yet they had never come together as friends. Of
+her own money matters Mrs Dale had never spoken a word to the squire.
+Of his intention respecting the girls the squire had never spoken a
+word to the mother. And in this way they had lived and were living at
+Allington.
+
+The life which Mrs Dale led was not altogether an easy life--was not
+devoid of much painful effort on her part. The theory of her life one
+may say was this--that she should bury herself in order that her
+daughters might live well above ground. And in order to carry out this
+theory, it was necessary that she should abstain from all complaint or
+show of uneasiness before her girls. Their life above ground would not
+be well if they understood that their mother, in this underground life
+of hers, was enduring any sacrifice on their behalf. It was needful
+that they should think that the picking of peas in a sun bonnet, or
+long readings by her own fire-side, and solitary hours spent in
+thinking, were specially to her mind. "Mamma doesn't like going out."
+
+"I don't think mamma is happy anywhere out of her own drawing-room." I
+do not say that the girls were taught to say such words, but they were
+taught to have thoughts which led to such words, and in the early days
+of their going out into the world used so to speak of their mother. But
+a time came to them before long--to one first and then to the other, in
+which they knew that it was not so, and knew also all that their mother
+had suffered for their sakes.
+
+And in truth Mrs Dale could have been as young in heart as they were.
+She, too, could have played croquet, and have coquetted with a
+haymaker's rake, and have delighted in her pony, ay, and have listened
+to little nothings from this and that Apollo, had she thought that
+things had been conformable thereto. Women at forty do not become
+ancient misanthropes, or stern Rhadamanthine moralists, indifferent to
+the world's pleasures--no, not even though they be widows. There are
+those who think that such should be the phase of their minds. I profess
+that I do not so think. I would have women, and men also, young as long
+as they can be young. It is not that a woman should call herself in
+years younger than her father's family Bible will have her to be. Let
+her who is forty call herself forty; but if she can be young in spirit
+at forty, let her show that she is so.
+
+I think that Mrs Dale was wrong. She would have joined that party on
+the croquet ground, instead of remaining among the pea-sticks in her
+sun bonnet, had she done as I would have counselled her. Not a word was
+spoken among the four that she did not hear. Those pea-sticks were only
+removed from the lawn by a low wall and a few shrubs. She listened, not
+as one suspecting, but simply as one loving. The voices of her girls
+were very dear to her, and the silver ringing tones of Lily's tongue
+were as sweet to her ears as the music of the gods. She heard all that
+about Lady Hartletop, and shuddered at Lily's bold sarcasm. And she
+heard Lily say that mamma would stay at home and eat the peas, and said
+to herself sadly that that was now her lot in life.
+
+"Dear darling girl--and so it should be!" It was thus her thoughts ran.
+And then, when her ear had traced them, as they passed across the
+little bridge into the other grounds, she returned across the lawn to
+the house with her burden on her arm, and sat herself down on the step
+of the drawing-room window, looking out on the sweet summer flowers and
+the smooth surface of the grass before her.
+
+Had not God done well for her to place her where she was? Had not her
+lines been set for her in pleasant places? Was she not happy in her
+girls--her sweet, loving, trusting, trusty children? As it was to be
+that her lord, that best half of herself, was to be taken from her in
+early life, and that the springs of all the lighter pleasures were to
+be thus stopped for her, had it not been well that in her bereavement
+so much had been done to soften her lot in life and give it grace and
+beauty? Twas so, she argued with herself, and yet she acknowledged to
+herself that she was not happy. She had resolved, as she herself had
+said often, to put away childish things, and now she pined for those
+things which she so put from her. As she sat she could still hear
+Lily's voice as they went through the shrubbery--hear it when none but a
+mother's ears would have distinguished the sound. Now that those young
+men were at the Great House it was natural that her girls should be
+there too. The squire would not have had young men to stay with him had
+there been no ladies to grace his table. But for her--she knew that no
+one would want her there. Now and again she must go, as otherwise her
+very existence, without going, would be a thing disagreeably
+noticeable. But there was no other reason why she should join the
+party; nor in joining it would she either give or receive pleasure. Let
+her daughters eat from her brother's table and drink of his cup. They
+were made welcome to do so from the heart. For her there was no such
+welcome as that at the Great House--nor at any other house, or any other
+table!
+
+"Mamma will stay at home to eat the peas." And then she repeated to
+herself the words which Lily had spoken, sitting there, leaning with
+her elbow on her knee, and her head upon her hand.
+
+"Please, ma'am, cook says, can we have the peas to shell?" and then her
+reverie was broken.
+
+Whereupon Mrs Dale got up and gave over her basket. "Cook knows that
+the young ladies are going to dine at the Great House?"
+
+"Yes, ma'am."
+
+"She needn't mind getting dinner for me. I will have tea early." And
+so, after all, Mrs Dale did not perform that special duty appointed for
+her.
+
+But she soon set herself to work upon another duty. When a family of
+three persons has to live upon an income of three hundred a year, and,
+nevertheless, makes some pretence of going into society, it has to be
+very mindful of small details, even though that family may consist only
+of ladies. Of this Mrs Dale was well aware, and as it pleased her that
+her daughters should be nice and fresh, and pretty in their attire,
+many a long hour was given up to that care. The squire would send them
+shawls in winter, and had given them riding habits, and had sent them
+down brown silk dresses from London--so limited in quantity that the due
+manufacture of two dresses out of the material had been found to be
+beyond the art of woman, and the brown silk garments had been a
+difficulty from that day to this--the squire having a good memory in
+such matters, and being anxious to see the fruits of his liberality.
+All this was doubtless of assistance, but had the squire given the
+amount which he so expended in money to his nieces, the benefit would
+have been greater. As it was, the girls were always nice and fresh and
+pretty, they themselves not being idle in that matter; but their
+tire-woman in chief was their mother. And now she went up to their room
+and got out their muslin frocks, and--but, perhaps, I should not tell
+such tales!--She, however, felt no shame in her work, as she sent for a
+hot iron, and with her own hands smoothed out the creases, and gave the
+proper set to the crimp flounces, and fixed a new ribbon where it was
+wanted, and saw that all was as it should be. Men think but little how
+much of this kind is endured that their eyes may be pleased, even
+though it be but for an hour.
+
+"Oh! mamma, how good you are," said Bell, as the two girls came in,
+only just in time to make themselves ready for returning to dinner.
+
+"Mamma is always good," said Lily. "I wish, mamma, I could do the same
+for you oftener," and then she kissed her mother. But the squire was
+exact about dinner, so they dressed themselves in haste, and went off
+again through the garden, their mother accompanying them to the little
+bridge.
+
+"Your uncle did not seem vexed at my not coming?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"We have not seen him, mamma," said Lily. "We have been ever so far
+down the fields, and forgot altogether what o'clock it was."
+
+"I don't think Uncle Christopher was about the place, or we should have
+met him," said Bell.
+
+"But I am vexed with you, mamma. Are not you, Bell? It is very bad of
+you to stay here all alone, and not come."
+
+"I suppose mamma likes being at home better than up at the Great
+House," said Bell, very gently; and as she spoke she was holding her
+mother's hand.
+
+"Well; good-bye, dears. I shall expect you between ten and eleven. But
+don't hurry yourselves if anything is going on." And so they went, and
+the widow was again alone. The path from the bridge ran straight up
+towards the back of the Great House, so that for a moment or two she
+could see them as they tripped on almost in a run. And then she saw
+their dresses flutter as they turned sharp round, up the terrace steps,
+She would not go beyond the nook among the laurels by which she was
+surrounded, lest any one should see her as she looked after her girls.
+But when the last flutter of the pink muslin had been whisked away from
+her sight, she felt it hard that she might not follow them. She stood
+there, however, without advancing a step. She would not have Hopkins
+telling how she watched her daughters as they went from her own home to
+that of her brother-in-law. It was not within the capacity of Hopkins
+to understand why she watched them.
+
+"Well, girls, you're not much too soon. I think your mother might have
+come with you," said Uncle Christopher. And this was the manner of the
+man. Had he known his own wishes he must have acknowledged to himself
+that he was better pleased that Mrs Dale should stay away. He felt
+himself more absolutely master and more comfortably at home at his own
+table without her company than with it. And yet he frequently made a
+grievance of her not corning, and himself believed in that grievance.
+
+"I think mamma was tired," said Bell.
+
+"Hem. It's not so very far across from one house to the other. If I
+were to shut myself up whenever I'm tired--. But never mind. Let's go to
+dinner. Mr Crosbie, will you take my niece Lilian." And then, offering
+his own arm to Bell, he walked off to the dining-room.
+
+"If he scolds mamma any more, I'll go away," said Lily to her
+companion; by which it may be seen that they had all become very
+intimate during the long day that they had passed together.
+
+Mrs Dale, after remaining for a moment on the bridge, went in to her
+tea. What succedaneum of mutton chop or broiled ham she had for the
+roast duck and green peas which were to have beers provided for the
+family dinner we will not particularly inquire. We may, however,
+imagine that she did not devote herself to her evening repast with any
+peculiar energy of appetite. She took a book with her as she sat
+herself down--some novel, probably, for Mrs Dale was not above
+novels--and read a page or two as she sipped her tea. But the book was
+soon laid on one side, and the tray on which the warm plate had become
+cold was neglected, and she threw herself back in her own familiar
+chair, thinking of herself, and of her girls, and thinking also what
+might have been her lot in life had he lived who had loved her truly
+during the few years that they had been together.
+
+It is especially the nature of a Dale to be constant in his likings and
+his dislikings. Her husband's affection for her had been unswerving--so
+much so that he had quarrelled with his brother because his brother
+would not express himself in brotherly terms about his wife; but,
+nevertheless, the two brothers had loved each other always. Many years
+had now gone by since these things had occurred, but still the same
+feelings remained. When she had first come down to Allington she had
+resolved to win the squire's regard, but she had now long known that
+any such winning was out of the question; indeed, there was no longer a
+wish for it. Mrs Dale was not one of those soft-hearted women who
+sometimes thank God that they can love any one. She could once have
+felt affection for her brother-in-law--affection, and close, careful,
+sisterly friendship; but she could not do so now. He had been cold to
+her, and had with perseverance rejected her advances. That was now
+seven years since; and during those years Mrs Dale had been, at any
+rate, as cold to him as he had been to her.
+
+But all this was very hard to bear. That her daughters should love
+their uncle was not only reasonable, but in every way desirable. He was
+not cold to them. To them he was generous and affectionate. If she were
+only out of the way, he would have taken them to his house as his own,
+and they would in all respects have stood before the world as his
+adopted children. Would it not be better if she were out of the way?
+
+It was only in her most dismal moods that this question would get
+itself asked within her mind, and then she would recover herself, and
+answer it stoutly with an indignant protest against her own morbid
+weakness. It would not be well that she should be away from her
+girls--not though their uncle should have been twice a better uncle; not
+though, by her absence, they might become heiresses of all Allington.
+Was it not above everything to them that they should have a mother near
+them? And as she asked of herself that morbid question--wickedly asked
+it, as she declared to herself--did she not know that they loved her
+better than all the world beside, and would prefer her caresses and her
+care to the guardianship of any uncle, let his house be ever so great?
+As yet they loved her better than all the world beside. Of other love,
+should it come, she would not be jealous. And if it should come, and
+should be happy, might there not yet be a bright evening of life for
+herself? If they should marry, and if their lords would accept her
+love, her friendship, and her homage, she might yet escape from the
+deathlike coldness of that Great House, and be happy in some tiny
+cottage, from which she might go forth at times among those who would
+really welcome her. A certain doctor there was, living not very far
+from Allington, at Guestwick, as to whom she had once thought that he
+might fill that place of son-in-law--to be well-beloved. Her quiet,
+beautiful Bell had seemed to like the man; and he had certainly done
+more than seem to like her. But now, for some weeks past, this hope, or
+rather this idea, had faded away. Mrs Dale had never questioned her
+daughter on the matter; she was not a woman prone to put such
+questions. But during the month or two last past, she had seen with
+regret that Bell looked almost coldly on the man whom her mother
+favoured.
+
+In thinking of all this the long evening passed away, and at eleven
+o'clock she heard the coming steps across the garden. The young men
+had, of course, accompanied the girls home; and as she stepped out from
+the still open window of her own drawing-room, she saw them all on the
+centre of the lawn before her.
+
+"There's mamma," said Lily." Mamma, Mr Crosbie wants to play croquet by
+moonlight."
+
+"I don't think there is light enough for that," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"There is light enough for him," said Lily, "for he plays quite
+independently of the hoops; don't you, Mr Crosbie?"
+
+"There's very pretty croquet light, I should say," said Mr Crosbie,
+looking up at the bright moon; "and then it is so stupid going to bed."
+
+"Yes, it is stupid going to bed," said Lily;" but people in the country
+are stupid, you know. Billiards, that you can play all night by gas, is
+much better, isn't it?"
+
+"Your arrows fall terribly astray there, Miss Dale, for I never touch a
+cue; you should talk to your cousin about billiards."
+
+"Is Bernard a great billiard player," asked Bell.
+
+"Well, I do play now and again; about as well as Crosbie does croquet.
+Come, Crosbie, we'll go home and smoke a cigar."
+
+"Yes," said Lily; "and then, you know, we stupid people can go to bed.
+Mamma, I wish you had a little smoking-room here for us. I don't like
+being considered stupid." And then they parted--the ladies going into
+the house, and the two men returning across the lawn.
+
+"Lily, my love," said Mrs Dale, when they were all together in her
+bedroom, "it seems to me that you are very hard upon Mr Crosbie."
+
+"She has been going on like that all the evening," said Bell.
+
+"I'm sure we are very good friends," said Lily.
+
+"Oh, very," said Bell.
+
+"Now, Bell, you're jealous; you know you are." And then, seeing that
+her sister was in some slight degree vexed, she went up to her and
+kissed her. "She shan't be called jealous; shall she, mamma?"
+
+"I don't think she deserves it," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Now, you don't mean to say that you think I meant anything," said
+Lily. "As if I cared a buttercup about Mr Crosbie."
+
+"Or I either, Lily."
+
+"Of course you don't. But I do care for him very much, mamma. He is
+such a duck of an Apollo. I shall always call him Apollo; Phoebus
+Apollo! And when I draw his picture he shall have a mallet in his hand
+instead of a bow. Upon my word I am very much obliged to Bernard for
+bringing him down here; and I do wish he was not going away the day
+after tomorrow."
+
+"The day after tomorrow!" said Mrs Dale. "It was hardly worth coming for
+two days."
+
+"No, it wasn't--disturbing us all in our quiet little ways just for such
+a spell as that--not giving one time even to count his rays."
+"But he says he shall perhaps come again," said Bell.
+
+"There is that hope for us," said Lily. "Uncle Christopher asked him to
+come down when he gets his long leave of absence. This is only a short
+sort of leave. He is better off than poor Johnny Eames. Johnny Eames
+only has a month, but Mr Crosbie has two months just whenever he likes
+it; and seems to be pretty much his own master all the year round
+besides."
+
+"And Uncle Christopher asked him to come down for the shooting in
+September," said Bell.
+
+"And though he didn't say he'd come I think he meant it," said Lily.
+"There is that hope for us, mamma."
+
+"Then you'll have to draw Apollo with a gun instead of a mallet."
+
+"That is the worst of it, mamma. We shan't see much of him or of
+Bernard either. They wouldn't let us go out into the woods as beaters,
+would they?"
+
+"You'd make too much noise to be of any use."
+
+"Should I? I thought the beaters had to shout at the birds. I should
+get very tired of shouting at birds, so I think I'll stay at home and
+look after my clothes."
+
+"I hope he will come, because Uncle Christopher seems to like him so
+much," said Bell.
+
+"I wonder whether a certain gentleman at Guestwick will like his
+coming," said Lily. And then, as soon as she had spoken the words, she
+looked at her sister, and saw that she had grieved her.
+
+"Lily, you let your tongue run too fast," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I didn't mean anything, Bell," said Lily." I beg your pardon."
+
+"It doesn't signify," said Bell. "Only Lily says things without
+thinking." And then that conversation came to an end, and nothing more
+was said among them beyond what appertained to their toilet, and a few
+last words at parting. But the two girls occupied the same room, and
+when their own door was closed upon them, Bell did allude to what had
+passed with some spirit.
+
+"Lily, you promised me," she said, "that you would not say anything
+more to me about Dr Crofts."
+
+"I know I did, and I was very wrong. I beg your pardon, Bell; and I
+won't do it again--not if I can help it."
+
+"Not help it, Lily!"
+
+"But I'm sure I don't know why I shouldn't speak of him--only not in the
+way of laughing at you. Of all the men I ever saw in my life I like him
+best. And only that I love you better than I love myself I could find
+it in my heart to grudge you his--"
+
+"Lily, what did you promise just now?"
+
+"Well; after to-night. And I don't know why you should turn against
+him."
+
+"I have never turned against him or for him."
+
+"There's no turning about him. He'd give his left hand if you'd only
+smile on him. Or his right either--and that's what I should like to see;
+so now you've heard it."
+
+"You know you are talking nonsense."
+
+"So I should like to see it. And so would mamma too, I'm sure; though I
+never heard her say a word about him. In my mind he's the finest fellow
+I ever saw. What's Mr Apollo Crosbie to him? And now, as it makes you
+unhappy, I'll never say another word about him." As Bell wished her
+sister good-night with perhaps more than her usual affection, it was
+evident that Lily's words and eager tone had in some way pleased her,
+in spite of their opposition to the request which she had made. And
+Lily was aware that it was so.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+MRS ROPER'S BOARDING-HOUSE
+
+I have said that John Eames had been petted by none but his mother, but
+I would not have it supposed, on this account, that John Eames had no
+friends. There is a class of young men who never get petted, though
+they may not be the less esteemed, or perhaps loved. They do not come
+forth to the world as Apollos, nor shine at all, keeping what light
+they may have for inward purposes. Such young men are often awkward,
+ungainly, and not yet formed in their gait; they straggle with their
+limbs, and are shy; words do not come to them with ease, when words are
+required, among any but their accustomed associates. Social meetings
+are periods of penance to them, and any appearance in public will
+unnerve them. They go much about alone, and blush when women speak to
+them. In truth, they are not as yet men, whatever the number may be of
+their years; and, as they are no longer boys, the world has found for
+them the ungraceful name of hobbledehoy.
+
+Such observations, however, as I have been enabled to make in this
+matter have led me to believe that the hobbledehoy is by no means the
+least valuable species of the human race. When I compare the
+hobbledehoy of one or two and twenty to some finished Apollo of the
+same age, I regard the former as unripe fruit, and the latter as fruit
+that is ripe. Then comes the question as to the two fruits. Which is
+the better fruit, that which ripens early--which is, perhaps, favoured
+with some little forcing apparatus, or which, at least, is backed by
+the warmth of a southern wall; or that fruit of slower growth, as to
+which nature works without assistance, on which the sun operates in its
+own time--or perhaps never operates if some ungenial shade has been
+allowed to interpose itself? The world, no doubt, is in favour of the
+forcing apparatus or of the southern wall. The fruit comes certainly,
+and at an assured period. It is spotless, speck-less, and of a certain
+quality by no means despicable. The owner has it when he wants it, and
+it serves its turn. But, nevertheless, according to my thinking, the
+fullest flavour of the sun is given to that other fruit--is given in the
+sun's own good time, if so be that no ungenial shade has interposed
+itself. I like the smack of the natural growth, and like it, perhaps,
+the better because that which has been obtained has been obtained
+without favour.
+
+But the hobbledehoy, though he blushes when women address him, and is
+uneasy even when he is near them, though he is not master of his limbs
+in a ball-room, and is hardly master of his tongue at any time, is the
+most eloquent of beings, and especially eloquent among beautiful women.
+He enjoys all the triumphs of a Don Juan, without any of Don Juan's
+heartlessness, and is able to conquer in all encounters, through the
+force of his wit and the sweetness of his voice. But this eloquence is
+heard only by his own inner ears, and these triumphs are the triumphs
+of his imagination.
+
+The true hobbledehoy is much alone, not being greatly given to social
+intercourse even with other hohbledehoys--a trait in his character which
+I think has hardly been sufficiently observed by the world at large. He
+has probably become a hobbledehoy instead of an Apollo, because
+circumstances have not afforded him much social intercourse; and,
+therefore, he wanders about in solitude, taking long walks, in which he
+dreams of those successes which are so far removed from his powers of
+achievement. Out in the fields, with his stick in his hand, he is very
+eloquent, cutting off the heads of the springing summer weeds, as he
+practises his oratory with energy. And thus he feeds an imagination for
+which those who know him give him but scanty credit, and unconsciously
+prepares himself for that latter ripening, if only the ungenial shade
+will some day cease to interpose itself.
+
+Such hobbledehoys receive but little petting, unless it be from a
+mother; and such a hobbledehoy was John Eames when he was sent away
+from Guestwick to begin his life in the big room of a public office in
+London. We may say that there was nothing of the young Apollo about
+him. But yet he was not without friends--friends who wished him well,
+and thought much of his welfare. And he had a younger sister who loved
+him dearly, who had no idea that he was a hobbledehoy, being somewhat
+of a hobbledehoy herself. Mrs Eames, their mother, was a widow, living
+in a small house in Guestwick, whose husband had been throughout his
+whole life an intimate friend of our squire. He had been a man of many
+misfortunes, having begun the world almost with affluence, and having
+ended it in poverty. He had lived all his days in Guestwick, having at
+one time occupied a large tract of land, and lost much money in
+experimental farming; and late in life he had taken a small house on
+the outskirts of the town, and there had died, some two years
+previously to the commencement of this story. With no other man had Mr
+Dale lived on terms so intimate; and when Mr Eames died Mr Dale acted
+as executor under his will, and as guardian to his children. He had,
+moreover, obtained for John Eames that situation under the Crown which
+he now held.
+
+And Mrs Eames had been and still was on very friendly terms with Mrs
+Dale. The squire had never taken quite kindly to Mrs Eames, whom her
+husband had not met till he was already past forty years of age. But
+Mrs Dale had made up by her kindness to the poor forlorn woman for any
+lack of that cordiality which might have been shown to her from the
+Great House. Mrs Eames was a poor forlorn woman--forlorn even during the
+time of her husband's life, but very woebegone now in her widowhood. In
+matters of importance the squire had been kind to her; arranging for
+her little money affairs, advising her about her house and income, also
+getting for her that appointment for her son. But he snubbed her when
+he met her, and poor Mrs Eames held him in great awe. Mrs Dale held her
+brother-in-law in no awe, and sometimes gave to the widow from
+Guestwick advice quite at variance to that given by the squire. In this
+way there had grown up an intimacy between Bell and Lily and the young
+Eames, and either of the girls was prepared to declare that Johnny
+Eames was her own and well-loved friend. Nevertheless, they spoke of
+him occasionally with some little dash of merriment--as is not unusual
+with pretty girls who have hobbledehoys among their intimate friends,
+and who are not themselves unaccustomed to the grace of an Apollo.
+
+I may as well announce at once that John Eames, when he went up to
+London, was absolutely and irretrievably in love with Lily Dale. He had
+declared his passion in the most moving language a hundred times; but
+he had declared it only to himself. He had written much poetry about
+Lily, but he kept his lines safe under double lock and key. When he
+gave the reins to his imagination, he flattered himself that he might
+win not only her but the world at large also by his verses; but he
+would have perished rather than exhibit them to human eye. During the
+last ten weeks of his life at Guestwick, while he was preparing for his
+career in London, he hung about Allington, walking over frequently and
+then walking back again; but all in vain. During these visits he would
+sit in Mrs Dale's drawing-room, speaking but little, and addressing
+himself usually to the mother; but on each occasion, as he started on
+his long, hot walk, he resolved that he would say something by which
+Lily might know of his love. When he left for London that something had
+not been said.
+
+He had not dreamed of asking her to be his wife. John Eames was about
+to begin the world with eighty pounds a year, and an allowance of
+twenty more from his mother's purse. He was well aware that with such
+an income he could not establish himself as a married man in London,
+and he also felt that the man who might be fortunate enough to win Lily
+for his wife should be prepared to give her every soft luxury that the
+world could afford. He knew well that he ought not to expect any
+assurance of Lily's love; but, nevertheless, he thought it possible
+that he might give her an assurance of his love. It would probably be
+in vain. He had no real hope, unless when he was in one of those poetic
+moods. He had acknowledged to himself, in some indistinct way, that he
+was no more than a hobbledehoy, awkward, silent, ungainly, with a face
+unfinished, as it were, or unripe. All this he knew, and knew also that
+there were Apollos in the world who would be only too ready to carry
+off Lily in their splendid cars. But not the less did he make up his
+mind that having loved her once, it behoved him, as a true man, to love
+her on to the end.
+
+One little word he had said to her when they parted, but it had been a
+word of friendship rather than of love. He had strayed out after her on
+to the lawn, leaving Bell alone in the drawing-room. Perhaps Lily had
+understood something of the boy's feelings, and had wished to speak
+kindly to him at parting, or almost more than kindly. There is a silent
+love which women recognise, and which in some silent way they
+acknowledge--giving gracious but silent thanks for the respect which
+accompanies it." I have come to say good-bye, Lily," said Johnny Eames,
+following the girl down one of the paths.
+
+"Good-bye, John," said she, turning round. "You know how sorry we are
+to lose you. But it's a great thing for you to be going up to London."
+
+"Well, yes. I suppose it is. I'd sooner remain here, though."
+
+"What! stay here, doing nothing! I am sure you would not."
+
+"Of course, I should like to do something. I mean--"
+
+"You mean that it is painful to part with old friends; and I'm sure
+that we all feel that at parting with you. But you'll have a holiday
+sometimes, and then we shall see you."
+
+"Yes; of course, I shall see you then. I think, Lily, I shall care more
+about seeing you than anybody."
+
+"Oh, no, John. There'll be your own mother and sister."
+
+"Yes; there'll be mother and Mary, of course. But I will come, over
+here the very first day--that is, if you'll care to see me?"
+
+"We shall care to see you very much. You know that. And--dear John, I do
+hope you'll be happy." There was a tone in her voice as she spoke which
+almost upset him; or, I should rather say, which almost put him up upon
+his legs and made him speak; but its ultimate effect was less powerful.
+
+"Do you?" said he, as he held her hand for a few happy seconds. "And
+I'm sure I hope you'll always be happy. Good-bye, Lily." Then he left
+her, returning to the house, and she continued her walk, wandering down
+among the trees in the shrubbery, and not showing herself for the next
+half hour. How many girls have some such lover as that--a lover who says
+no more to them than Johnny Eames then said to Lily Dale, who never
+says more than that? And yet when, in after years, they count over the
+names of all who have loved them, the name of that awkward youth is
+never forgotten.
+
+That farewell had been spoken nearly two years since, and Lily Dale was
+then seventeen. Since that time, John Eames had been home once, and
+during his month's holidays had often visited Allington. But he had
+never improved upon that occasion of which I have told. It had seemed
+to him that Lily was colder to him than in old days, and he had become,
+if anything, more shy in his ways with her. He was to return to
+Guestwick again during this autumn; but, to tell honestly the truth in
+the matter, Lily Dale did not think or care very much for his coming.
+Girls of nineteen do not care for lovers of one-and-twenty, unless it
+be when the fruit has had the advantage of some forcing apparatus or
+southern wall.
+
+John Eames's love was still as hot as ever, having been sustained on
+poetry, and kept alive, perhaps, by some close confidence in the ears
+of a brother clerk; but it is not to be supposed that during these two
+years he had been a melancholy lover. It might, perhaps, have been
+better for him had his disposition led him to that line of life. Such,
+however, had not been the case. He had already abandoned the flute on
+which he had learned to sound three sad notes before he left Guestwick,
+and, after the fifth or sixth Sunday, he had relinquished his solitary
+walks along the towing-path of the Regent's Park Canal. To think of
+one's absent love is very sweet; but it becomes monotonous after a mile
+or two of a towing-path, and the mind will turn away to Aunt Sally, the
+Cremorne Gardens, and financial questions. I doubt whether any girl
+would be satisfied with her lover's mind if she knew the whole of it.
+
+"I say, Caudle, I wonder whether a fellow could get into a club?" This
+proposition was made, on one of those Sunday walks, by John Eames to
+the friend of his bosom, a brother clerk, whose legitimate name was
+Cradell, and who was therefore called Caudle by his friends.
+
+"Get into a club? Fisher in our room belongs to a club."
+
+"That's only a chess-club. I mean a regular club."
+
+"One of the swell ones at the West End?" said Cradell, almost lost in
+admiration at the ambition of his friend.
+
+"I shouldn't want it to be particularly swell. If a man isn't a swell,
+I don't see what he gets by going among those who are. But it is so
+uncommon slow at Mother Roper's." Now Mrs Roper was a respectable lady,
+who kept a boarding-house in Burton Crescent, and to whom Mrs Eames had
+been strongly recommended when she was desirous of finding a specially
+safe domicile for her son. For the first year of his life in London
+John Eames had lived alone in lodgings; but that had resulted in
+discomfort, solitude, and, alas! in some amount of debt, which had come
+heavily on the poor widow. Now, for the second year, some safer mode of
+life was necessary. She had learned that Mrs Cradell, the widow of a
+barrister, who had also succeeded in getting her son into the
+Income-tax Office, had placed him in charge of Mrs Roper; and she, with
+many injunctions to that motherly woman, submitted her own boy to the
+same custody.
+
+"And about going to church?" Mrs Eames had said to Mrs Roper.
+
+"I don't suppose I can look after that, ma'am," Mrs Roper had answered,
+conscientiously. "Young gentlemen choose mostly their own churches."
+
+"But they do go?" asked the mother, very anxious in her heart as to
+this new life in which her boy was to be left to follow in so many
+things the guidance of his own lights.
+
+"They who have been brought up steady do so, mostly."
+
+"He has been brought up steady, Mrs Roper. He has, indeed."
+
+"And you won't give him a latch-key?"
+
+"Well, they always do ask for it."
+
+"But he won't insist, if you tell him that I had rather that he
+shouldn't have one." Mrs Roper promised accordingly, and Johnny Eames
+was left under her charge. He did ask for the latch-key, and Mrs Roper
+answered as she was bidden. But he asked again, having been
+sophisticated by the philosophy of Cradell, and then Mrs Roper handed
+him the key. She was a woman who plumed herself on being as good as her
+word, not understanding that any one could justly demand from her more
+than that. She gave Johnny Eames the key, as doubtless she had intended
+to do; for Mrs Roper knew the world, and understood that young men
+without latch-keys would not remain with her.
+
+"I thought you didn't seem to find it so dull since Amelia came home,"
+said Cradell.
+
+"Amelia! What's Amelia to me? I have told you everything, Cradell, and
+yet you can talk to me about Amelia Roper!"
+
+"Come now, Johnny--"
+
+He had always been called Johnny, and the name had gone with him to his
+office. Even Amelia Roper had called him Johnny on more than one
+occasion before this.
+
+"You were as sweet to her the other night as though there were no such
+person as L. D. in existence." John Eames turned away and shook his
+head. Nevertheless, the words of his friend were grateful to him. The
+character of a Don Juan was not unpleasant to his imagination, and he
+liked to think that he might amuse Amelia Roper with a passing word,
+though his heart was true to Lilian Dale. In truth, however, many more
+of the passing words had been spoken by the fair Amelia than by him.
+
+Mrs Roper had been quite as good as her word when she told Mrs Eames
+that her household was composed of herself, of a son who was in an
+attorney's office, of an ancient maiden cousin, named Miss Spruce, who
+lodged with her, and of Mr Cradell. The divine Amelia had not then been
+living with her, and the nature of the statement which she was making
+by no means compelled her to inform Mrs Eames that the young lady would
+probably return home in the following winter. A Mr and Mrs Lupex had
+also joined the family lately, and Mrs Roper's house was now supposed
+to be full.
+
+And it must be acknowledged that Johnny Eames had, in certain unguarded
+moments, confided to Cradell the secret of a second weaker passion for
+Amelia. "She is a fine girl--a deuced fine girl!" Johnny Eames had said,
+using a style of language which he had learned since he left Guestwick
+and Allington. Mr Cradell, also, was an admirer of the fair sex; and,
+alas! that I should say so, Mrs Lupex, at the present moment, was the
+object of his admiration. Not that he entertained the slightest idea of
+wronging Mr Lupex--a man who was a scene-painter, and knew the world. Mr
+Cradell admired Mrs Lupex as a connoisseur, not simply as a man. "By
+heavens! Johnny, what a figure that woman has!" he said, one morning,
+as they were walking to their office.
+
+"Yes; she stands well on her pins."
+
+"I should think she did. If I understand anything of form," said
+Cadell, "that woman is nearly perfect. What a torso she has?" From
+which expression, and from the fact that Mrs Lupex depended greatly
+upon her stays and crinoline for such figure as she succeeded in
+displaying, it may, perhaps, be understood that Mr Cradell did not
+understand much about form.
+
+"It seems to me that her nose isn't quite straight," said Johnny Eames.
+Now, it undoubtedly was the fact that the nose on Mrs Lupex's face was
+a little awry. It was a long, thin nose, which, as it progressed
+forward into the air, certainly had a preponderating bias towards the
+left side.
+
+"I care more for figure than face," said Cradell. "But Mrs Lupex has
+fine eyes--very fine eyes."
+
+"And knows how to use them, too," said Johnny.
+
+"Why shouldn't she? And then she has lovely hair."
+
+"Only she never brushes it in the morning."
+
+"Do you know, I like that kind of deshabille," said Cadell. "Too much
+care always betrays itself."
+
+"But a woman should be tidy."
+
+"What a word to apply to such a creature as Mrs Lupex! I call her a
+splendid woman. And how well she was got up last night. Do you know,
+I've an idea that Lupex treats her very badly. She said a word or two
+to me yesterday that--," and then he paused. There are some confidences
+which a man does not share even with his dearest friend.
+
+"I rather fancy it's quite the other way," said Eames.
+
+"How the other way?"
+
+"That Lupex has quite as much as he likes of Mrs L. The sound of her
+voice sometimes makes me shake in my shoes, I know."
+
+"I like a woman with spirit," said Cradell.
+
+"Oh, so do I. But one may have too much of a good thing. Amelia did
+tell me--only you won't mention it."
+
+"Of course, I won't."
+
+"She told me that Lupex sometimes was obliged to run away from her. He
+goes down to the theatre, and remains there two or three days at a
+time. Then she goes to fetch him, and there is no end of a row in the
+house."
+
+"The fact is, he drinks," said Cadell. "By George, I pity a woman whose
+husband drinks--and such a woman as that, too!"
+
+"Take care, old fellow, or you'll find yourself in a scrape."
+
+"I know what I'm at. Lord bless you, I'm not going to lose my head
+because I see a fine woman."
+
+"Or your heart either?"
+
+"Oh, heart! There's nothing of that kind of thing about me. I regard a
+woman as a picture or a statue. I dare say I shall marry some day,
+because men do; but I've no idea of losing myself about a woman."
+
+"I'd lose myself ten times over for--"
+
+"L. D.," said Cradell.
+
+"That I would. And yet I know I shall never have her. I'm a jolly,
+laughing sort of fellow; and yet, do you know, Caudle, when that girl
+marries, it will be all up with me. It will, indeed."
+
+"Do you mean that you'll cut your throat?"
+
+"No; I shan't do that. I shan't do anything of that sort; and yet it
+will be all up with me."
+
+"You are going down there in October--why don't you ask her to have you?"
+
+"With ninety pounds a year!" His grateful country had twice increased
+his salary at the rate of five pounds each year. "With ninety pounds a
+year, and twenty allowed me by my mother!"
+
+"She could wait, I suppose. I should ask her, and no mistake. If one is
+to love a girl, it's no good one going on in that way!"
+
+"It isn't much good, certainly," said Johnny Eames. And then they
+reached the door of the Income-tax Office, and each went away to his
+own desk.
+
+From this little dialogue, it may be imagined that though Mrs Roper
+was as good as her word, she was not exactly the woman whom Mrs Eames
+would have wished to select as a protecting angel for her son. But the
+truth I take to be this, that protecting angels for widows' sons, at
+forty-eight pounds a year, paid quarterly, are not to be found very
+readily in London. Mrs Roper was not worse than others of her class.
+She would much have preferred lodgers who were respectable to those who
+were not so--if she could only have found respectable lodgers as she
+wanted them. Mr and Mrs Lupex hardly came under that denomination; and
+when she gave them up her big front bedroom at a hundred a year, she
+knew she was doing wrong. And she was troubled, too, about her own
+daughter Amelia, who was already over thirty years of age. Amelia was a
+very clever young woman, who had been, if the truth must be told, first
+young lady at a millinery establishment in Manchester. Mrs Roper knew
+that Mrs Eames and Mrs, Cradell would not wish their sons to associate
+with her daughter. But what could she do? She could not refuse the
+shelter of her own house to her own child, and yet her heart misgave
+her when she saw Amelia flirting with young Eames.
+
+"I wish, Amelia, you wouldn't have so much to say to that young man."
+
+"Laws, mother."
+
+"So I do. If you go on like that, you'll put me out of both my lodgers."
+
+"Go on like what, mother? If a gentleman speaks to me, I suppose I'm to
+answer him? I know how to behave myself, I believe." And then she gave
+her head a toss. Whereupon her mother was silent; for her mother was
+afraid of her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+ABOUT L. D.
+
+Apollo Crosbie left London for Allington on the 31st of August,
+intending to stay there four weeks, with the declared intention of
+recruiting his strength by an absence of two months from official
+cares, and with no fixed purpose as to his destiny for the last of
+those two months. Offers of hospitality had been made to him by the
+dozen. Lady Hartletop's doors, in Shropshire, were open to him, if he
+chose to enter them. He had been invited by the Countess de Courcy to
+join her suite at Courcy Castle. His special friend Montgomerie Dobbs
+had a place in Scotland, and then there was a yachting party by which
+he was much wanted. But Mr Crosbie had as yet knocked himself down to
+none of these biddings, having before him when he left London no other
+fixed engagement than that which took him to Allington. On the first of
+October we shall also find ourselves at Allington in company with
+Johnny Eames; and Apollo Crosbie will still be there--by no means to the
+comfort of our friend from the Income-tax Office.
+
+Johnny Eames cannot be called unlucky in that matter of his annual
+holiday, seeing that he was allowed to leave London in October, a month
+during which few chose to own that they remain in town. For myself, I
+always regard May as the best month for holiday-making; but then no
+Londoner cares to be absent in May. Young Eames, though he lived in
+Burton Crescent and had as yet no connection with the West End, had
+already learned his lesson in this respect. "Those fellows in the big
+room want me to take May," he had said to his friend Cadell. "They must
+think I'm uncommon green."
+
+"It's too bad," said Cadell. "A man shouldn't be asked to take his
+leave in May. I never did, and what's more, I never will. I'd go to the
+Board first." Eames had escaped this evil without going to the Board,
+and had succeeded in obtaining for himself for his own holiday that
+month of October, which, of all months, is perhaps the most highly
+esteemed for holiday purposes. "I shall go down by the mail-train
+tomorrow night," he said to Amelia Roper, on the evening before his
+departure. At that moment he was sitting alone with Amelia in Mrs
+Roper's back drawing-room. In the front room Cradell was talking to Mrs
+Lupex; but as Miss Spruce was with them, it may be presumed that Mr
+Lupex need have had no cause for jealousy.
+
+"Yes," said Amelia, "I know how great is your haste to get down to that
+fascinating spot. I could not expect that you would lose one single
+hour in hurrying away from Burton Crescent."
+
+Amelia Roper was a tall, well-grown young woman, with dark hair and
+dark eyes--not handsome, for her nose was thick, and the lower part of
+her face was heavy, but yet not without some feminine attractions. Her
+eyes were bright; but then, also, they were mischievous. She could talk
+fluently enough; but then, also, she could scold. She could assume
+sometimes the plumage of a dove; but then again she could occasionally
+ruffle her feathers like an angry kite. I am quite prepared to
+acknowledge that John Eames should have kept himself clear of Amelia
+Roper; but then young men so frequently do those things which they
+should not do!
+
+"After twelve months up here in London one is glad to get away to one's
+own friends," said Johnny.
+
+"Your own friends, Mr Eames! What sort of friends? Do you suppose I
+don't know?"
+
+"Well, no. I don't think you do know."
+
+"L. D.!" said Amelia, showing that Lily had been spoken of among people
+who should never have been allowed to hear her name. But perhaps, after
+all, no more than those two initials were known in Burton Crescent.
+From the tone which was now used in naming them, it was sufficiently
+manifest that Amelia considered herself to be wronged by their very
+existence.
+
+"L. S. D.," said Johnny, attempting the line of a witty, gay young
+spendthrift. "That's my love; pounds, shillings, and pence; and a very
+coy mistress she is."
+
+"Nonsense, sir. Don't talk to me in that way. As if I didn't know where
+your heart was. What right had you to speak to me if you had an L. D.
+down in the country?" It should be here declared on behalf of poor John
+Eames that he had not ever spoken to Amelia--he had not spoken to her in
+any such phrase as her words seemed to imply. But then he had written
+to her a fatal note of which we will speak further before long, and
+that perhaps was quite as bad--or worse.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Johnny. But the laugh was assumed, and not
+assumed with ease.
+
+"Yes, sir; it's a laughing matter to you, I dare say. It is very easy
+for a man to laugh under such circumstances--that is to say, if he is
+perfectly heartless--if he's got a stone inside his bosom instead of
+flesh and blood. Some men are made of stone, I know, and are troubled
+with no feelings."
+
+"What is it you want me to say? You pretend to know all about it, and
+it wouldn't be civil in me to contradict you."
+
+"What is it I want? You know very well what I want; or rather, I don't
+want anything. What is it to me? It is nothing to me about L. D. You
+can go down to Allington and do what you like for me. Only I hate such
+ways."
+
+"What ways, Amelia?"
+
+"What ways! Now, look here, Johnny: I'm not going to make a fool of
+myself for any man. When I came home here three months ago--and I wish I
+never had;"--she paused here a moment, waiting for a word of tenderness;
+but as the word of tenderness did not come, she went on--"but when I did
+come home, I didn't think there was a man in all London could make me
+care for him--that I didn't. And now you're going away, without so much
+as hardly saying a word to me." And then she brought out her
+handkerchief.
+
+"What am I to say, when you keep on scolding me all the time?"
+
+"Scolding you !--and me too! No, Johnny, I ain't scolding you, and don't
+mean to. If it's to be all over between us, say the word, and I'll take
+myself away out of the house before you come back again. I've had no
+secrets from you. I can go back to my business in Manchester, though it
+is beneath my birth, and not what I've been used to. If L. D. is more
+to you than I am, I won't stand in your way. Only say the word."
+
+L. D. was more to him than Amelia Roper--ten times more to him. L. D.
+would have been everything to him, and Amelia Roper was worse than
+nothing. He felt all this at the moment, and struggled hard to collect
+an amount of courage that would make him free.
+
+"Say the word," said she, rising on her feet before him, "and all
+between you and me shall be over. I have got your promise, but I'd
+scorn to take advantage. If Amelia hasn't got your heart, she'd despise
+to take your hand. Only I must have an answer." It would seem that an
+easy way of escape was offered to him; but the lady probably knew that
+the way as offered by her was not easy to such an one as John Eames.
+
+"Amelia," he said, still keeping his seat.
+
+"Well, sir?"
+
+"You know I love you."
+
+"And about L. D.?"
+
+"If you choose to believe all the nonsense that Cradell puts into your
+head, I can't help it. If you like to make yourself jealous about two
+letters, it isn't my fault."
+
+"And you love me?" said she.
+
+"Of course I love you." And then, upon hearing these words, Amelia
+threw herself into his arms.
+
+As the folding doors between the two rooms were not closed, and as Miss
+Spruce was sitting in her easy chair immediately opposite to them, it
+was probable that she saw what passed. But Miss Spruce was a taciturn
+old lady, not easily excited to any show of surprise or admiration; and
+as she had lived with Mrs Roper for the last twelve years, she was
+probably well acquainted with her daughter's ways.
+
+"You'll be true to me?" said Amelia, during the moment of that
+embrace--"true to me for ever?
+
+"Oh, yes; that's a matter of course," said Johnny Eames. And then she
+liberated him; and the two strolled into the front sitting-room.
+
+"I declare, Mr Eames," said Mrs Lupex," I'm glad you've come. Here's Mr
+Cradell does say such queer things."
+
+"Queer things!" said Cradell. "Now, Miss Spruce, I appeal to you--Have I
+said any queer things?"
+
+"If you did, sir, I didn't notice them," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"I noticed them, then," said Mrs Lurex. "An unmarried man like Mr
+Cradell has no business to know whether a married lady wears a cap or
+her own hair--has he, Mr Eames?"
+
+"I don't think I ever know," said Johnny, not intending any sarcasm on
+Mrs Lupex.
+
+"I dare say not, sir," said the lady. "We all know where your attention
+is riveted. If you were to wear a cap, my dear, somebody would see the
+difference very soon--wouldn't they, Miss Spruce?"
+
+"I dare say they would," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"If I could look as nice in a cap as you do, Mrs Lupex, I'd wear one
+tomorrow," said Amelia, who did not wish to quarrel with the married
+lady at the present moment. There were occasions, however, on which Mrs
+Lupex and Miss Roper were by no means so gracious to each other.
+
+"Does Lupex like caps?" asked Cradell.
+
+"If I wore a plumed helmet on my head, it's my belief he wouldn't know
+the difference; nor yet if I had got no head at all. That's what comes
+of getting married. It you'll take my advice, Miss Roper, you'll stay
+as you are; even though somebody should break his heart about it.
+Wouldn't you, Miss Spruce?"
+
+"Oh, as for me, I'm an old woman, you know," said Miss Spruce, which
+was certainly true.
+
+"I don't see what any woman gets by marrying," continued Mrs Lurex.
+"But a man gains everything. He don't know how to live, unless he's got
+a woman to help him."
+
+"But is love to go for nothing?" said Cradell.
+
+"Oh, love! I don't believe in love. I suppose I thought I loved once,
+but what did it come to after all? Now, there's Mr Eames--we all know
+he's in love."
+
+"It comes natural to me, Mrs Lupex. I was born so," said Johnny.
+
+"And there's Miss Roper--one never ought to speak free about a lady, but
+perhaps she's in love too."
+
+"Speak for yourself, Mrs Lupex," said Amelia.
+
+"There's no harm in saying that, is there? I'm sure, if you ain't,
+you're very hard-hearted; for, if ever there was a true lover, I
+believe you've got one of your own. My !--if there's not Lupex's step on
+the stair! What can bring him home at this hour? If he's been drinking,
+he'll come home as cross as anything." Then Mr Lupex entered the room,
+and the pleasantness of the party was destroyed.
+
+It may be said that neither Mrs Cradell nor Mrs Eames would have placed
+their sons in Burton Crescent if they had known the dangers into which
+the young men would fall. Each, it must be acknowledged, was imprudent;
+but each clearly saw the imprudence of the other. Not a week before
+this, Cradell had seriously warned his friend against the arts of Miss
+Roper.
+
+"By George, Johnny, you'll get yourself entangled with that girl."
+
+"One always has to go through that sort of thing," said Johnny.
+
+"Yes; but those who go through too much of it never get out again.
+Where would you be if she got a written promise of marriage from you?"
+Poor Johnny did not answer this immediately, for in very truth Amelia
+Roper had such a document in her possession.
+
+"Where should I be?" said he. "Among the breaches of promise, I
+suppose."
+
+"Either that, or else among the victims of matrimony. My belief of you
+is, that if you gave such a promise, you'd carry it out."
+
+"Perhaps I should," said Johnny; "but I don't know. It's a matter of
+doubt what a man ought to do in such a case."
+
+"But there's been nothing of that kind yet?"
+
+"Oh dear, no!"
+
+"If I was you, Johnny, I'd keep away from her. It's very good fun, of
+course, that sort of thing; but it is so uncommon dangerous! Where
+would you be now with such a girl as that for your wife?"
+
+Such had been the caution given by Cradell to his friend. And now, just
+as he was starting for Allington, Eames returned the compliment. They
+had gone together to the Great Western station at Paddington, and
+Johnny tendered his advice as they were walking together up and down
+the platform.
+
+"I say, Caudle, old boy, you'll find yourself in trouble with that Mrs
+Lupex, if you don't take care of yourself."
+
+"But I shall take care of myself. There's nothing so safe as a little
+nonsense with a married woman. Of course, it means nothing, you know,
+between her and me."
+
+"I don't suppose it does mean anything. But she's always talking about
+Lupex being jealous; and if he was to cut up rough, you wouldn't find
+it pleasant."
+
+Cradell, however, seemed to think that there was no danger. His little
+affair with Mrs Lupex was quite platonic and safe. As for doing any
+real harm, his principles, as he assured his friend, were too high. Mrs
+Lupex was a woman of talent, whom no one seemed to understand, and,
+therefore, he had taken some pleasure in studying her character. It was
+merely a study of character, and nothing more. Then the friends parted,
+and Eames was carried away by the night mail-train down to Guestwick.
+
+How his mother was up to receive him at four o'clock in the morning,
+how her maternal heart was rejoicing at seeing the improvement in his
+gait, and the manliness of appearance imparted to him by his whiskers,
+I need not describe at length. Many of the attributes of a hobbledehoy
+had fallen from him, and even Lily Dale might now probably acknowledge
+that he was no longer a boy. All which might be regarded as good, if
+only in putting off childish things he had taken up things which were
+better than childish.
+
+On the very first day of his arrival he made his way over to Allington.
+He did not walk on this occasion as he had used to do in the old happy
+days. He had an idea that it might not be well for him to go into Mrs
+Dale's drawing-room with the dust of the road on his boots, and the
+heat of the day on his brow. So he borrowed a horse and rode over,
+taking some pride in a pair of spurs which he had bought in Piccadilly,
+and in his kid gloves, which were brought out new for the occasion.
+Alas, alas! I fear that those two years in London have not improved
+John Eames; and yet I have to acknowledge that John Eames is one of the
+heroes of my story.
+
+On entering Mrs Dale's drawing-room he found Mrs Dale and her eldest
+daughter. Lily at the moment was not there, and as he shook hands with
+the other two, of course, he asked for her.
+
+"She is only in the garden," said Bell. "She will be here directly."
+
+"She has walked across to the Great House with Mr Crosbie," said Mrs
+Dale; "but she is not going to remain. She will be so glad to see you,
+John! We all expected you today."
+
+"Did you?" said Johnny, whose heart had been plunged into cold water at
+the mention of Mr Crosbie's name. He had been thinking of Lilian Dale
+ever since his friend had left him on the railway platform; and, as I
+beg to assure all ladies who may read my tale, the truth of his love
+for Lily had moulted no feather through that unholy liaison between him
+and Miss Roper. I fear that I shall be disbelieved in this; but it was
+so. His heart was and ever had been true to Lilian, although he had
+allowed himself to be talked into declarations of affection by such a
+creature as Amelia Roper. He had been thinking of his meeting with Lily
+all the night and throughout the morning, and now he heard that she was
+walking alone about the gardens with a strange gentleman. That Mr
+Crosbie was very grand and very fashionable he had heard, but he knew
+no more of him. Why should Mr Crosbie be allowed to walk with Lily
+Dale? And why should Mrs Dale mention the circumstance as though it
+were quite a thing of course? Such mystery as there was in this was
+solved very quickly.
+
+"I'm sure Lily won't object to my telling such a dear friend as you
+what has happened," said Mrs Dale. "She is engaged to be married to Mr
+Crosbie." The water into which Johnny's heart had been plunged now
+closed over his head and left him speechless. Lily Dale was engaged to
+be married to Mr Crosbie! He knew that he should have spoken when he
+heard the tidings. He knew that the moments of silence as they passed
+by told his secret to the two women before him--that secret which it
+would now behove him to conceal from all the world. But yet he could
+not speak.
+
+"We are all very well pleased at the match," said Mrs Dale, wishing to
+spare him.
+
+"Nothing can be nicer than Mr Crosbie," said Bell. "We have often
+talked about you, and he will be so happy to know you."
+
+"He won't know much about me," said Johnny; and even in speaking these
+few senseless words--words which he uttered because it was necessary
+that he should say something--the tone of his voice was altered. He
+would have given the world to have been master of himself at this
+moment, but he felt that he was utterly vanquished.
+
+"There is Lily coming across the lawn," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Then I'd better go," said Eames. "Don't say anything about it; pray
+don't." And then, without waiting for another word, he escaped out of
+the drawing-room.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BEAUTIFUL DAYS
+
+I am well aware that I have not as yet given any description of Bell
+and Lilian Dale, and equally well aware that the longer the doing so is
+postponed the greater the difficulty becomes. I wish it could be
+understood without any description that they were two pretty,
+fair-haired girls, of whom Bell was the tallest and the prettiest,
+whereas Lily was almost as pretty as her sister, and perhaps was more
+attractive.
+
+They were fair-haired girls, very like each other, of whom I have
+before my mind's eye a distinct portrait, which I fear I shall not be
+able to draw in any such manner as will make it distinct to others.
+They were something below the usual height, being slight and slender in
+all their proportions. Lily was the shorter of the two, but the
+difference was so trifling that it was hardly remembered unless the two
+were together. And when I said that Bell was the prettier, I should,
+perhaps, have spoken more justly had I simply declared that her
+features were more regular than her sister's. The two girls were very
+fair, so that the soft tint of colour which relieved the whiteness of
+their complexion was rather acknowledged than distinctly seen. It was
+there, telling its own tale of health, as its absence would have told a
+tale of present or coming sickness; and yet nobody could ever talk
+about the colour in their cheeks. The hair of the two girls was so
+alike in hue and texture, that no one, not even their mother, could say
+that there was a difference. It was not flaxen hair, and yet it was
+very light. Nor did it approach to auburn; and yet there ran through it
+a golden tint that gave it a distinct brightness of its own. But with
+Bell it was more plentiful than with Lily, and therefore Lily would
+always talk of her own scanty locks, and tell how beautiful were those
+belonging to her sister. Nevertheless Lily's head was quite as lovely
+as her sister's; for its form was perfect, and the simple braids in
+which they both wore their hair did not require any great exuberance in
+quantity. Their eyes were brightly blue; but Bell's were long, and
+soft, and tender, often hardly daring to raise themselves to your face;
+while those of Lily were rounder, but brighter, and seldom kept by any
+want of courage from fixing themselves where they pleased. And Lily's
+face was perhaps less oval in its formless perfectly oval--than her
+sister's. The shape of the forehead was, I think, the same, but with
+Bell the chin was something more slender and delicate. But Bell's chin
+was unmarked, whereas on her sister's there was a dimple which amply
+compensated for any other deficiency in its beauty. Bell's teeth were
+more even than her sister's; but then she showed her teeth more
+frequently. Her lips were thinner, and, as I cannot but think, less
+expressive. Her nose was decidedly more regular in its beauty, for
+Lily's nose was somewhat broader than it should have been. It may,
+therefore, be understood that Bell would be considered the beauty by
+the family.
+
+But there was, perhaps, more in the general impression made by these
+girls, and in the whole tone of their appearance, than in the absolute
+loveliness of their features or the grace of their figures. There was
+about them a dignity of demeanour devoid of all stiffness or pride, and
+a maidenly modesty which gave itself no airs. In them was always
+apparent that sense of security which women should receive from an
+unconscious dependence on their own mingled purity and weakness. These
+two girls were never afraid of men--never looked as though they were so
+afraid. And I may say that they had little cause for that kind of fear
+to which I allude. It might be the lot of either of them to be ill-used
+by a man, but it was hardly possible that either of them should ever be
+insulted by one. Lily, as may, perhaps, have been already seen, could
+be full of play, but in her play she never so carried herself that any
+one could forget what was due to her.
+
+And now Lily Dale was engaged to be married, and the days of her
+playfulness were over. It sounds sad, this sentence against her, but I
+fear that it must be regarded as true. And when I think that it is
+true--when I see that the sportiveness and kitten-like gambols of
+girlhood should be over, and generally are over, when a girl has given
+her troth, it becomes a matter of regret to me that the feminine world
+should be in such a hurry after matrimony. I have, however, no remedy
+to offer for the evil; and, indeed, am aware that the evil, if there be
+an evil, is not well expressed in the words I have used. The hurry is
+not for matrimony, but for love. Then, the love once attained,
+matrimony seizes it for its own, and the evil is accomplished.
+
+And Lily Dale was engaged to be married to Adolphus Crosbie--to Apollo
+Crosbie, as she still called him, confiding her little joke to his own
+ears. And to her he was an Apollo, as a man who is loved should be to
+the girl who loves him. He was handsome, graceful, clever, and
+self-confident, and always cheerful when she ask him to be cheerful.
+But he had also his more serious moments, and could talk to her of
+serious matters. He would read to her, and explain to her things which
+had hitherto been too hard for her young intelligence. His voice, too,
+was pleasant, and well under command. It could be pathetic if pathos
+were required, or ring with laughter as merry as her own. Was not such
+a man fit to be an Apollo to such a girl, when once the girl had
+acknowledged to herself that she loved him?
+
+She had acknowledged it to herself, and had acknowledged it to him--as
+the reader will perhaps say without much delay. But the courtship had
+so been carried on that no delay had been needed. All the world had
+smiled upon it. When Mr Crosbie had first come among them at Allington,
+as Bernard's guest, during those few days of his early visit, it had
+seemed as though Bell had been chiefly noticed by him. And Bell in her
+own quiet way had accepted his admiration, saying nothing of it and
+thinking but very little. Lily was heart-free at the time, and had ever
+been so. No first shadow from Love's wing had as yet been thrown across
+the pure tablets of her bosom. With Bell it was not so--not so in
+absolute strictness. Bell's story, too, must be told, but not on this
+page. But before Crosbie had come among them, it was a thing fixed in
+her mind that such love as she had felt must be overcome and
+annihilated. We may say that it had been overcome and annihilated, and
+that she would have sinned in no way had she listened to vows from this
+new Apollo. It is almost sad to think that such a man might have had
+the love of either of such girls, but I fear that I must acknowledge
+that it was so. Apollo, in the plenitude of his power, soon changed his
+mind; and before the end of his first visit, had transferred the
+distant homage which he was then paying from the elder to the younger
+sister. He afterwards returned, as the squire's guest, for a longer
+sojourn among them, and at the end of the first month had already been
+accepted as Lily's future husband.
+
+It was beautiful to see how Bell changed in her mood towards Crosbie
+and towards her sister as soon as she perceived how the affair was
+going. She was not long in perceiving it, having caught the first
+glimpses of the idea on that evening when they both dined at the Great
+House, leaving their mother alone to eat or to neglect the peas. For
+some six or seven weeks Crosbie had been gone, and during that time
+Bell had been much more open in speaking of him than her sister. She
+had been present when Crosbie had bid them good-bye, and had listened
+to his eagerness as he declared to Lily that he should soon be back
+again at Allington. Lily had taken this very quietly, as though it had
+not belonged at all to herself; but Bell had seen something of the
+truth, and, believing in Crosbie as an earnest, honest man, had spoken
+kind words of him, fostering any little aptitude for love which might
+already have formed itself in Lily's bosom.
+
+"But he is such an Apollo, you know," Lily had said.
+
+"He is a gentleman; I can see that."
+
+"Oh, yes; a man can't be an Apollo unless he's a gentleman."
+
+"And he's very clever."
+
+"I suppose he is clever." There was nothing more said about his being a
+mere clerk. Indeed, Lily had changed her mind on that subject. Johnny
+Eames was a mere clerk; whereas Crosbie, if he was to be called a clerk
+at all, was a clerk of some very special denomination. There may be a
+great difference between one clerk and another! A Clerk of the Council
+and a parish clerk are very different persons. Lily had got some such
+idea as this into her head as she attempted in her own mind to rescue
+Mr Crosbie from the lower orders of the Government service.
+
+"I wish he were not coming," Mrs Dale had said to her eldest daughter.
+
+"I think you are wrong, mamma."
+
+"But if she should become fond of him, and then--"
+
+"Lily will never become really fond of any man till he shall have given
+her proper reason. And if he admires her, why should they not come
+together?"
+
+"But she is so young, Bell."
+
+"She is nineteen; and if they were engaged, perhaps, they might wait
+for a year or so. But it's no good talking in that way, mamma. If you
+were to tell Lily not to give him encouragement, she would not speak to
+him."
+
+"I should not think of interfering."
+
+"No, mamma; and therefore it must take its course. For myself, I like
+Mr Crosbie very much."
+
+"So do I, my dear."
+
+"And so does my uncle. I wouldn't have Lily take a lover of my uncle's
+choosing."
+
+"I should hope not."
+
+"But it must be considered a good thing if she happens to choose one of
+his liking."
+
+In this way the matter had been talked over between the mother and her
+elder daughter. Then Mr Crosbie had come; and before the end of the
+first month his declared admiration for Lily had proved the correctness
+of her sister's foresight. And during that short courtship all had gone
+well with the lovers. The squire from the first had declared himself
+satisfied with the match, informing Mrs Dale, in his cold manner, that
+Mr Crosbie was a gentleman with an income sufficient for matrimony.
+
+"It would be close enough in London," Mrs Dale had said.
+
+"He has more than my brother had when he married," said the squire.
+"If he will only make her as happy as your brother made me--while it
+lasted!" said Mrs Dale, as she turned away her face to conceal a tear
+that was coming. And then there was nothing more said about it between
+the squire and his sister-in-law. The squire spoke no word as to
+assistance in money matters--did not even suggest that he would lend a
+hand to the young people at starting, as an uncle in such a position
+might surely have done. It may well be conceived that Mrs Dale herself
+said nothing on the subject. And, indeed, it may be conceived, also,
+that the squire, let his intentions be what they might, would not
+divulge them to Mrs Dale. This was uncomfortable, but the position was
+one that was well understood between them.
+
+Bernard Dale was still at Allington, and had remained there through the
+period of Crosbie's absence. Whatever words Mrs Dale might choose to
+speak on the matter would probably be spoken to him; but, then, Bernard
+could be quite as close as his uncle. When Crosbie returned, he and
+Bernard had, of course, lived much together; and, as was natural, there
+came to be close discussion between them as to the two girls, when
+Crosbie allowed it to be understood that his liking for Lily was
+becoming strong.
+
+"You know, I suppose, that my uncle wishes me to marry the elder one,"
+Bernard had said.
+
+"I have guessed as much."
+
+"And I suppose the match will come off. She's a pretty girl, and as
+good as gold."
+
+"Yes, she is."
+
+"I don't pretend to be very much in love with her. It's not my way, you
+know. But, some of these days, I shall ask her to have me, and I
+suppose it'll all go right. The governor has distinctly promised to
+allow me eight hundred a year off the estate, and to take us in for
+three months every year if we wish it. I told him simply that I
+couldn't do it for less, and he agreed with me."
+
+"You and he get on very well together."
+
+"Oh, yes! There's never been any fal-lal between us about love, and
+duty, and all that. I think we understand each other, and that's
+everything. He knows the comfort of standing well with the heir, and I
+know the comfort of standing well with the owner." It must be admitted,
+I think, that there was a great deal of sound, common sense about
+Bernard Dale.
+
+"What will he do for the younger sister?" asked Crosbie; and, as he
+asked the important question, a close observer might have perceived
+that there was some slight tremor in his voice.
+
+"Ah! that's more than I can tell you. If I were you, I should ask him.
+The governor is a plain man, and likes plain business."
+
+"I suppose you couldn't ask him?
+
+"No; I don't think I could. It is my belief that he will not let her go
+by any means empty-handed."
+
+"Well, I should suppose not."
+
+"But remember this, Crosbie--I can say nothing to you on which you are
+to depend. Lily, also, is as good as gold; and, as you seem to be fond
+of her, I should ask the governor, if I were you, in so many words,
+what he intends to do. Of course, it's against my interest, for every
+shilling he gives Lily will ultimately come out of my pocket. But I'm
+not the man to care about that, as you know."
+
+What might be Crosbie's knowledge on this subject we will not here
+inquire; but we may say that it would have mattered very little to him
+out of whose pocket the money came, so long as it went into his own.
+When he felt quite sure of Lily--having, in fact, received Lily's
+permission to speak to her uncle, and Lily's promise that she would
+herself speak to her mother--he did tell the squire what was his
+intention. This he did in an open, manly way, as though he felt that in
+asking for much he also offered to give much.
+
+"I have nothing to say against it," said the squire.
+
+"And I have your permission to consider myself as engaged to her?"
+
+"If you have hers and her mother's. Of course you are aware that I have
+no authority over her."
+
+"She would not marry without your sanction."
+
+"She is very good to think so much of her uncle," said the squire; and
+his words as he spoke them sounded very cold in Crosbie's ears. After
+that Crosbie said nothing about money, having to confess to himself
+that he was afraid to do so. "And what would be the use?" said he to
+himself, wishing to make excuses for what he felt to be weak in his own
+conduct. "If he should refuse to give her a shilling I could not go
+back from it now." And then some ideas ran across his mind as to the
+injustice to which men are subjected in this matter of matrimony. A man
+has to declare himself before it is fitting that he should make any
+inquiry about a lady's money; and then, when he has declared himself,
+any such inquiry is unavailing. Which consideration somewhat cooled the
+ardour of his happiness. Lily Dale was very pretty, very nice, very
+refreshing in her innocence, her purity, and her quick intelligence. No
+amusement could be more deliciously amusing than that of making love to
+Lily Dale. Her way of flattering her lover without any intention of
+flattery on her part, had put Crosbie into a seventh heaven. In all his
+experience he had known nothing like it. "You may be sure of this," she
+had said--"I shall love you with all my heart and all my strength." It
+was very nice--but then what were they to live upon? Could it be that
+he, Adolphus Crosbie, should settle down on the north side of the New
+Road, as a married, man, with eight hundred a year? If indeed the
+squire would be as good to Lily as he had promised to be to Bell, then
+indeed things might be made to arrange themselves.
+
+But there was no such drawback on Lily's happiness. Her ideas about
+money were rather vague, but they were very honest. She knew she had
+none of her own, but supposed it was a husband's duty to find what
+would be needful. She knew she had none of her own, and was therefore
+aware that she ought not to expect luxuries in the little household
+that was to be prepared for her. She hoped, for his sake, that her
+uncle might give some assistance, but was quite prepared to prove that
+she could be a good poor man's wife. In the old colloquies on such
+matters between her and her sister, she had always declared that some
+decent income should be considered as indispensable before love could
+be entertained. But eight hundred a year had been considered as doing
+much more than fulfilling this stipulation. Bell had high-flown notions
+as to the absolute glory of poverty. She had declared that income
+should not be considered at all. If she had loved a man, she could
+allow herself to be engaged to him, even though he had no income. Such
+had been their theories; and as regarded money, Lily was quite
+contented with the way in which she had carried out her own.
+
+In these beautiful days there was nothing to check her happiness. Her
+mother and sister united in telling her that she had done well--that she
+was happy in her choice, and justified in her love. On that first day,
+when she told her mother all, she had been made exquisitely blissful by
+the way in which her tidings had been received.
+
+"Oh! mamma, I must tell you something," she said, coming up to her
+mother's bedroom, after a long ramble with Mr Crosbie through those
+Allington fields.
+
+"Is it about Mr Crosbie?"
+
+"Yes, mamma." And then the rest had been said through the medium of
+warm embraces and happy tears rather than by words.
+
+As she sat in her mother's room, hiding her face on her mother's
+shoulders, Bell had come, and had knelt at her feet.
+
+"Dear Lily," she had said, "I am so glad." And then Lily remembered how
+she had, as it were, stolen her lover from her sister, and she put her
+arms round Bell's neck and kissed her.
+
+"I knew how it was going to be from the very first," said Bell.
+
+"Did I not, mamma?"
+
+"I'm sure I didn't," said Lily. "I never thought such a thing was
+possible."
+
+"But we did--mamma and I."
+
+"Did you?" said Lily.
+
+"Bell told me that it was to be so," said Mrs Dale. "But I could hardly
+bring myself at first to think that he was good enough for my darling."
+
+"Oh, mamma! you must not say that. You must think that he is good
+enough for anything."
+
+"I will think that he is very good."
+
+"Who could be better? And then, when you remember all that he is to
+give up for my sake--"
+
+"And what can I do for him in return? What have I got to give him?"
+
+Neither Mrs Dale nor Bell could look at the matter in this light,
+thinking that Lily gave quite as much as she received. But they both
+declared that Crosbie was perfect, knowing that by such assurances only
+could they now administer to Lily's happiness; and Lily, between them,
+was made perfect in her happiness, receiving all manner of
+encouragement in her love, and being nourished in her passion by the
+sympathy and approval of her mother and sister.
+
+And then had come that visit from Johnny Eames. As the poor fellow
+marched out of the room, giving them no time to say farewell, Mrs Dale
+and Bell looked at each other sadly; but they were unable to concoct
+any arrangement, for Lily had run across the lawn and was already on
+the ground before the window.
+
+"As soon as we got to the end of the shrubbery there were Uncle
+Christopher and Bernard close to us; so I told Adolphus he might go on
+by himself."
+
+"And who do you think has been here?" said Bell. But Mrs Dale said
+nothing. Had time been given to her to use her own judgment, nothing
+should have been said at that moment as to Johnny's visit.
+
+"Has anybody been here since I went? Whoever it was didn't stay very
+long."
+
+"Poor Johnny Eames," said Bell. Then the colour came up into Lily's
+face, and she bethought herself in a moment that the old friend of her
+young days had loved her, that he, too, had had hopes as to his love,
+and that now he had heard tidings which would put an end to such hopes.
+She understood it all in a moment, but understood also that it was
+necessary that she should conceal such understanding.
+
+"Dear Johnny!" she said. "Why did he not wait for me?
+
+"We told him you were out," said Mrs Dale. "He will be here again
+before long, no doubt."
+
+"And he knows--?"
+
+"Yes; I thought you would not object to my telling him."
+
+"No, mamma; of course not. And he has gone back to Guestwick?"
+
+There was no answer given to this question, nor were there any further
+words then spoken about Johnny Eames, Each of these women understood
+exactly how the matter stood, and each knew that the others understood
+it. The young man was loved by them all, but not loved with that sort
+of admiring affection which had been accorded to Mr Crosbie. Johnny
+Eames could not have been accepted as a suitor by their pet. Mrs Dale
+and Bell both felt that. And yet they loved him for his love, and for
+that distant, modest respect which had restrained him from any speech
+regarding it. Poor Johnny! But he was young--hardly as yet out of his
+hobbledehoyhood--and he would easily recover this blow, remembering, and
+perhaps feeling to his advantage, some slight touch of its passing
+romance. It is thus women think of men who love young and love in vain.
+
+But Johnny Eames himself, as he rode back to Guestwick, forgetful of
+his spurs, and with his gloves stuffed into his pocket, thought of the
+matter very differently. He had never promised to himself any success
+as to his passion for Lily, and had, indeed, always acknowledged that
+he could have no hope; but now, that she was actually promised to
+another man, and as good as married, he was not the less broken-hearted
+because his former hopes had not been high. He had never dared to speak
+to Lily of his love, but he was conscious that she knew it, and he did
+not now dare to stand before her as one convicted of having loved in
+vain. And then, as he rode back, he thought also of his other love, not
+with many of those pleasant thoughts which Lotharios and Don Juans may
+be presumed to enjoy when they contemplate their successes. "I suppose
+I shall marry her, and there'll be an end of me," he said to himself,
+as he remembered a short note which he had once written to her in his
+madness. There had been a little supper at Mrs Roper's, and Mrs Lupex
+and Amelia had made the punch. After supper, he had been by some
+accident alone with Amelia in the dining-parlour; and when, warmed by
+the generous god, he had declared his passion, she had shaken her head
+mournfully, and had fled from him to some upper region, absolutely
+refusing his proffered embrace. But on the same night, before his head
+had found its pillow, a note had come to him, half repentant, half
+affectionate, half repellent--"If, indeed, he would swear to her that
+his love was honest and manly, then, indeed, she might even yet--see him
+through the chink of the doorway with the purport of telling him that
+he was forgiven." Whereupon, a perfidious pencil being near to his
+hand, he had written the requisite words. "My only object in life is to
+call you my own for ever." Amelia had her misgivings whether such a
+promise, in order that it might be used as legal evidence, should not
+have been written in ink. It was a painful doubt; but nevertheless she
+was as good as her word, and saw him through the chink, forgiving him
+for his impetuosity in the parlour with, perhaps, more clemency than a
+mere pardon required. "By George! how well she looked with her hair all
+loose," he said to himself, as he at last regained his pillow, still
+warm with the generous god. But now, as he thought of that night,
+returning on his road from Allington to Guestwick, those loose,
+floating locks were remembered by him with no strong feeling as to
+their charms. And he thought also of Lily Dale, as she was when he had
+said farewell to her on that day before he first went up to London. "I
+shall care more about seeing you than anybody," he had said; and he had
+often thought of the words since, wondering whether she had understood
+them as meaning more than an assurance of ordinary friendship. And he
+remembered well the dress she had then worn. It was an old brown
+merino, which he had known before, and which, in truth, had nothing in
+it to recommend it specially to a lover's notice. "Horrid old thing!"
+had been Lily's own verdict respecting the frock, even before that day.
+But she had hallowed it in his eyes, and he would have been only too
+happy to have worn a shred of it near his heart, as a talisman. How
+wonderful in its nature is that passion of which men speak when they
+acknowledge to themselves that they are in love. Of all things, it is,
+under one condition, the most foul, and under another, the most fair.
+As that condition is, a man shows himself either as a beast or as a
+god! And so we will let poor Johnny Eames ride back to Guestwick,
+suffering much in that he had loved basely--and suffering much, also, in
+that he had loved nobly.
+
+Lily, as she had tripped along through the shrubbery, under her lover's
+arm, looking up, every other moment, into his face, had espied her
+uncle and Bernard. "Stop," she had said, giving him a little pull at
+the arm; "I won't go on. Uncle is always teasing me with some
+old-fashioned wit. And I've had quite enough of you today, sir. Mind
+you come over tomorrow before you go to your shooting." And so she had
+left him.
+
+We may as well learn here what was the question in dispute between the
+uncle and cousin, as they were walking there on the broad gravel path
+behind the Great House. "Bernard," the old man had said," I wish this
+matter could be settled between you and Bell."
+
+"Is there any hurry about it, sir?
+
+"Yes, there is hurry; or, rather, as I hate hurry in all things, I
+would say that there is ground for despatch. Mind, I do not wish to
+drive you. If you do not like your cousin, say so."
+
+"But I do like her; only I have a sort of feeling that these things
+grow best by degrees. I quite share your dislike to being in a hurry."
+
+"But time enough has been taken now. You see, Bernard, I am going to
+make a great sacrifice of income on your behalf."
+
+"I am sure I am very grateful."
+
+"I have no children, and have therefore always regarded you as my own.
+But there is no reason why my brother Philip's daughter should not be
+as dear to me as my brother Orlando's son."
+
+"Of course not, sir; or, rather, his two daughters."
+
+"You may leave that matter to me, Bernard. The younger girl is going to
+marry this friend of yours, and as he has a sufficient income to
+support a wife, I think that my sister-in-law has good reason to be
+satisfied by the match. She will not be expected to give up any part of
+her small income, as she must have done had Lily married a poor man."
+
+"I suppose she could hardly give up much."
+
+"People must be guided by circumstances. I am not disposed to put
+myself in the place of a parent to them both. There is no reason why I
+should, and I will not encourage false hopes. If I knew that this
+matter between you and Bell was arranged, I should have reason to feel
+satisfied with what I was doing." From all which Bernard began to
+perceive that poor Crosbie's expectations in the matter of money would
+not probably receive much gratification. But he also perceived--or
+thought that he perceived--a kind of threat in this warning from his
+uncle. "I have promised you eight hundred a year with your wife," the
+warning seemed to say. "But if you do not at once accept it, or let me
+feel that it will be accepted, it may be well for me to change my
+mind--especially as this other niece is about to be married. If I am to
+give you so large a fortune with Bell, I need do nothing for Lily. But
+if you do not choose to take Bell and the fortune, why then--"
+
+And so on. It was thus that Bernard read his uncle's caution, as they
+walked together on the broad gravel path.
+
+"I have no desire to postpone the matter any longer," said Bernard. "I
+will propose to Bell at once, if you wish it."
+
+"If your mind be quite made up, I cannot see why you should delay it."
+
+And then, having thus arranged that matter, they received their future
+relative with kind smiles and soft words.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE BEGINNING OF TROUBLES
+
+Lily, as she parted with her lover in the garden, had required of him
+to attend upon her the next morning as he went to his shooting, and in
+obedience to this command he appeared on Mrs Dale's lawn after
+breakfast, accompanied by Bernard and two dogs. The men had guns in
+their hands, and were got up with all proper sporting appurtenances,
+but it so turned out that they did not reach the stubble-fields on the
+farther side of the road until after luncheon. And may it not be fairly
+doubted whether croquet is not as good as shooting when a man is in
+love?
+
+It will be said that Bernard Dale was not in love; but they who bring
+such accusation against him, will bring it falsely. He was in love with
+his cousin Bell according to his manner and fashion. It was not his
+nature to love Bell as John Eames loved Lily; but then neither would
+his nature bring him into such a trouble as that which the charms of
+Amelia Roper had brought upon the poor clerk from the Income-tax
+Office. Johnny was susceptible, as the word goes; whereas Captain Dale
+was a man who had his feelings well under control. He was not one to
+make a fool of himself about a girl, or to die of a broken heart; but,
+nevertheless, he would probably love his wife when he got a wife, and
+would be a careful father to his children.
+
+They were very intimate with each other now--these four. It was Bernard
+and Adolphus, or sometimes Apollo, and Bell and Lily among them; and
+Crosbie found it to be pleasant enough. A new position of life had come
+upon him, and one exceeding pleasant; but, nevertheless, there were
+moments in which cold fits of a melancholy nature came upon him. He was
+doing the very thing which throughout all the years of his manhood he
+had declared to himself that he would not do. According to his plan of
+life he was to have eschewed marriage, and to have allowed himself to
+regard it as a possible event only under the circumstances of wealth,
+rank, and beauty all coming in his way together. As he had expected no
+such glorious prize, he had regarded himself as a man who would reign
+at the Beaufort and be potent at Sebright's to the end of his chapter.
+But now--
+
+It was the fact that he had fallen from his settled position,
+vanquished by a silver voice, a pretty wit, and a pair of moderately
+bright eyes. He was very fond of Lily, having in truth a stronger
+capability for falling in love than his friend Captain Dale; but was
+the sacrifice worth his while? This was the question which he asked
+himself in those melancholy moments; while he was lying in bed, for
+instance, awake in the morning, when he was shaving himself, and
+sometimes also when the squire was prosy after dinner. At such times as
+these, while he would be listening to Mr Dale, his self-reproaches
+would sometimes be very bitter. Why should he undergo this, he, Crosbie
+of Sebright's, Crosbie of the General Committee Office, Crosbie who
+would allow no one to bore him between Charing Cross and the far end of
+Bayswater--why should he listen to the long-winded stories of such a one
+as Squire Dale? If, indeed, the squire intended to be liberal to his
+niece, then it might be very well. But as yet the squire had given no
+sign of such intention, and Crosbie was angry with himself in that he
+had not had the courage to ask a question on that subject.
+
+And thus the course of love was not all smooth to our Apollo. It was
+still pleasant for him when he was there on the croquet ground, or
+sitting in Mrs Dale's drawing-room with all the privileges of an
+accepted lover. It was pleasant to him also as he sipped the squire's
+claret, knowing that his coffee would soon be handed to him by a sweet
+girl who would have tripped across the two gardens on purpose to
+perform for him this service. There is nothing pleasanter than all
+this, although a man when so treated does feel himself to look like a
+calf at the altar, ready for the knife, with blue ribbons round his
+horns and neck. Crosbie felt that he was such a calf--and the more
+calf-like, in that he had not as yet dared to as a question about his
+wife's fortune. "I will have it out of the old fellow this evening," he
+said to himself, as he buttoned on his dandy shooting gaiters that
+morning.
+
+"How nice he looks in them," Lily said to her sister afterwards,
+knowing nothing of the thoughts which had troubled her lover's mind
+while he was adorning his legs.
+
+"I suppose we shall come back this way," Crosbie said, as they prepared
+to move away on their proper business when lunch was over.
+
+"Well, not exactly!" said Bernard.
+
+"We shall make our way round by Darvell's farm, and so back by
+Gruddock's. Are the girls going to dine up at the Great House today?"
+The girls declared that they were not going to dine up at the Great
+House--that they did not intend going to the Great House at all that
+evening.
+
+"Then, as you won't have to dress, you might as well meet us at
+Gruddock's gate, at the back of the farmyard. We'll be there exactly at
+half-past five."
+
+"That is to say, we're to be there at half-past five, and you'll keep
+us waiting for three-quarters of an hour," said Lily. Nevertheless the
+arrangement as proposed was made, and the two ladies were not at all
+unwilling to make it. It is thus that the game is carried on among
+unsophisticated people who really live in the country. The farmyard
+gate at Farmer Gruddock's has not a fitting sound as a trysting-place
+in romance, but for people who are in earnest it does as well as any
+oak in the middle glade of a forest. Lily Dale was quite in earnest--and
+so indeed was Adolphus Crosbie--only with him the earnest was beginning
+to take that shade of brown which most earnest things have to wear in
+this vale of tears. With Lily it was as yet all rose-coloured. And
+Bernard Dale was also in earnest. Throughout this morning he had stood
+very near to Bell on the lawn, and had thought that his cousin did not
+receive his little whisperings with any aversion. Why should she? Lucky
+girl that she was, thus to have eight hundred a year pinned to her
+skirt!
+
+"I say, Dale," Crosbie said, as in the course of their day's work they
+had come round upon Gruddock's ground, and were preparing to finish off
+his turnips before they reached the farmyard gate. And now, as Crosbie
+spoke, they stood leaning on the gate, looking at the turnips while the
+two dogs squatted on their haunches. Crosbie had been very silent for
+the last mile or two, and had been making up his mind for this
+conversation.
+
+"I say, Dale--your uncle has never said a word to me yet as to Lily's
+fortune."
+
+"As to Lily's fortune! The question is whether Lily has got a fortune."
+
+"He can hardly expect that I am to take her without some thing. Your
+uncle is a man of the world and he knows--"
+
+"Whether or no my uncle is a man of the world, I will not say; but you
+are, Crosbie, whether he is or not. Lily, as you have always known, has
+nothing of her own."
+
+"I am not talking of Lily's own. I'm speaking of her uncle. I have been
+straightforward with him; and when I became attached to your cousin I
+declared what I meant at once."
+
+"You should have asked him the question, if you thought there was any
+room for such a question."
+
+"Thought there was any room! Upon my word, you are a cool fellow."
+
+"Now look here, Crosbie; you may say what you like about my uncle, but
+you must not say a word against Lily."
+
+"Who is going to say a word against her? You can little understand me
+if you don't know that the protection of her name against evil words is
+already more my care than it is yours. I regard Lily as my own."
+
+"I only meant to say, that any discontent you may feel as to her money,
+or want of money, you must refer to my uncle, and not to the family at
+the Small House."
+
+"I am quite well aware of that."
+
+"And though you are quite at liberty to say what you like to me about
+my uncle, I cannot say that I can see that he has been to blame."
+
+"He should have told me what her prospects are."
+
+"But if she have got no prospects! It cannot be an uncle's duty to tell
+everybody that he does not mean to give his niece a fortune. In point
+of fact, why should you suppose that he has such an intention?"
+
+"Do you know that he has not? because you once led me to believe that
+he would give his niece money."
+
+"Now, Crosbie, it is necessary that you and I should understand each
+other in this matter--"
+
+"But did you not?
+
+"Listen to me for a moment. I never said a word to you about my uncle's
+intentions in any way, until after you had become fully engaged to Lily
+with the knowledge of us all. Then, when my belief on the subject could
+make no possible difference in your conduct, I told you that I thought
+my uncle would do something for her. I told you so because I did think
+so--and as your friend, I should have told you what I thought in any
+matter that concerned your interest."
+
+"And now you have changed your opinion?"
+
+"I have changed my opinion; but very probably without sufficient
+ground."
+
+"That's hard upon me."
+
+"It may be hard to bear disappointment; but you cannot say that anybody
+has ill-used you."
+
+"And you don't think he will give her anything?"
+
+"Nothing that will be of much moment to you."
+
+"And I'm not to say that that's hard? I think it confounded hard. Of
+course I must put off my marriage."
+
+"Why do you not speak to my uncle?
+
+"I shall do so. To tell the truth, I think it would have come better
+from him; but that is a matter of opinion. I shall tell him very
+plainly what I think about it; and if he is angry, why, I suppose I
+must leave his house; that will be all."
+
+"Look here, Crosbie; do not begin your conversation with the purpose of
+angering him. He is not a bad-hearted man, but is very obstinate."
+
+"I can be quite as obstinate as he." And, then, without further parley,
+they went in among the turnips, and each swore against his luck as he
+missed his birds. There are certain phases of mind in which a man can
+neither ride nor shoot, nor play a stroke at billiards, nor remember a
+card at whist--and to such a phase of mind had come both Crosbie and
+Dale after their conversation over the gate. They were not above
+fifteen minutes late at the trysting-place, but nevertheless, punctual
+though they had been, the girls were there before them. Of course the
+first inquiries were made about the game, and of course the gentlemen
+declared that the birds were scarcer than they had ever been before,
+that the dogs were wilder, and their luck more excruciatingly bad--to
+all which apologies very little attention was paid. Lily and Bell had
+not come there to inquire after partridges, and would have forgiven the
+sportsmen even though no single bird had been killed. But they could
+not forgive the want of good spirits which was apparent.
+
+"I declare I don't know what's the matter with you," Lily said to her
+lover.
+
+"We have been over fifteen miles of ground, and--"
+
+"I never knew anything so lackadaisical as you gentlemen from London.
+Been over fifteen miles of ground! Why, Uncle Christopher would think
+nothing of that."
+
+"Uncle Christopher is made of sterner stuff than we are," said Crosbie.
+
+"They used to be born so sixty or seventy years ago." And then they
+walked on through Gruddock's fields, and the home paddocks, back to the
+Great House, where they found the squire standing in the front of the
+porch.
+
+The walk had not been so pleasant as they had all intended that it
+should be when they made their arrangements for it. Crosbie had
+endeavoured to recover his happy state of mind, but had been
+unsuccessful; and Lily, fancying that her lover was not all that he
+should be, had become reserved and silent. Bernard and Bell had not
+shared this discomfiture, but then Bernard and Bell were, as a rule,
+much more given to silence than the other two.
+
+"Uncle," said Lily, "these men have shot nothing, and you cannot
+conceive how unhappy they are in consequence. It's all the fault of the
+naughty partridges."
+
+"There are plenty of partridges if they knew how to get them," said the
+squire.
+
+"The dogs are uncommonly wild," said Crosbie.
+
+"They are not wild with me," said the squire; "nor yet with Dingles."
+Dingles was the squire's gamekeeper.
+
+"The fact is, you young men, nowadays, expect to have dogs trained to
+do all the work for you. It's too much labour for you to walk up to
+your game. You'll be late for dinner, girls, if you don't look sharp."
+
+"We're not coming up this evening, sir," said Bell.
+
+"And why not?"
+
+"We're going to stay with mamma."
+
+"And why will not your mother come with you? I'll be whipped if I can
+understand it. One would have thought that under the present
+circumstances she would have been glad to see you all as much together
+as possible."
+
+"We're together quite enough," said Lily. "And as for mamma, I suppose
+she thinks--"
+
+"And then she stopped herself, catching the glance of Bell's imploring
+eye. She was going to make some indignant excuse for her mother--some
+excuse which would be calculated to make her uncle angry. It was her
+practice to say such sharp words to him, and consequently he did not
+regard her as warmly as her more silent and more prudent sister. At the
+present moment he turned quickly round and went into the house; and
+then, with a very few words of farewell, the two young men followed
+him. The girls went back over the little bridge by themselves, feeling
+that the afternoon had not gone off altogether well.
+
+"You shouldn't provoke him, Lily," said Bell.
+
+"And he shouldn't say those things about mamma. It seems to me that you
+don't mind what he says."
+
+"Oh, Lily."
+
+"No more you do. He makes me so angry that I cannot hold my tongue. He
+thinks that because all the place is his, he is to say just what he
+likes. Why should mamma go up there to please his humours?"
+
+"You may be sure that mamma will do what she thinks best. She is
+stronger-minded than Uncle Christopher, and does not want any one to
+help her. But, Lily, you shouldn't speak as though I were careless
+about mamma. You didn't mean that, I know."
+
+"Of course I didn't." Then the two girls joined their mother in their
+own little domain; but we will return to the men at the Great House.
+
+Crosbie, when he went up to dress for dinner, fell into one of those
+melancholy fits of which I have spoken. Was he absolutely about to
+destroy all the good that he had done for himself throughout the past
+years of his hitherto successful life? or rather, as he at last put the
+question to himself more strongly--was it not the case that he had
+already destroyed all that success? His marriage with Lily, whether it
+was to be for good or bad, was now a settled thing, and was not
+regarded as a matter admitting of any doubt. To do the man justice, I
+must declare that in all these moments of misery he still did the best
+he could to think of Lily herself as of a great treasure which he had
+won--as of a treasure which should, and perhaps would, compensate him
+for his misery. But there was the misery very plain. He must give up
+his clubs, and his fashion, and all that he had hitherto gained, and be
+content to live a plain, humdrum, domestic life, with eight hundred a
+year, and a small house, full of babies. It was not the kind of Elysium
+for which he had tutored himself. Lily was very nice, very nice indeed.
+She was, as he said to himself, "by odds, the nicest girl that he had
+ever seen." Whatever might now turn up, her happiness should be his
+first care. But as for his own--he began to fear that the compensation
+would hardly be perfect.
+
+"It is my own doing," he said to himself, intending to be rather noble
+in the purport of his soliloquy, "I have trained myself for other
+things--very foolishly. Of course I must suffer--suffer damnably. But she
+shall never know it. Dear, sweet, innocent, pretty little thing!" And
+then he went on about the squire, as to whom he felt himself entitled
+to be indignant by his own disinterested and manly line of conduct
+towards the niece. "But I will let him know what I think about it," he
+said. "It's all very well for Dale to say that I have been treated
+fairly. It isn't fair for a man to put forward his niece under false
+pretences. Of course I thought that he intended to provide for her."
+And then, having made up his mind in a very manly way that he would not
+desert Lily altogether after having promised to marry her, he
+endeavoured to find consolation in the reflection that he might, at any
+rate, allow himself two years' more run as a bachelor in London. Girls
+who have to get themselves married without fortunes always know that
+they will have to wait. Indeed, Lily had already told him, that as far
+as she was concerned, she was in no hurry. He need not, therefore, at
+once withdraw his name from Sebright's. Thus he endeavoured to console
+himself, still, however, resolving that he would have a little serious
+conversation with the squire that very evening as to Lily's fortune.
+
+And what was the state of Lily's mind at the same moment, while she,
+also, was performing some slight toilet changes preparatory to their
+simple dinner at the Small House?
+
+"I didn't behave well to him," she said to herself; "I never do. I
+forget how much he is giving up for me; and then, when anything annoys
+him, I make it worse instead of comforting him." And upon that she made
+accusation against herself that she did not love him half enough--that
+she did not let him see how thoroughly and perfectly she loved him. She
+had an idea of her own, that as a girl should never show any preference
+for a man till circumstances should have fully entitled him to such
+manifestation, so also should she make no drawback on her love, but
+pour it forth for his benefit with all her strength, when such
+circumstances had come to exist. But she was ever feeling that she was
+not acting up to her theory, now that the time for such practice had
+come. She would un-wittingly assume little reserves, and make small
+pretences of indifference in spite of her own judgment. She had done so
+on this afternoon, and had left him without giving him her hand to
+press, without looking up into his face with an assurance of love, and
+therefore she was angry with herself.
+
+"I know I shall teach him to hate me," she said out loud to Bell.
+
+"That would be very sad," said Bell; "but I don't see it."
+
+"If you were engaged to a man you would be much better to him. You
+would not say so much, but what you did say would be all affection. I
+am always making horrid little speeches, for which I should like to cut
+out my tongue afterwards."
+
+"Whatever sort of speeches they are, I think that he likes them."
+
+"Does he? I'm not all so sure of that, Bell. Of course I don't expect
+that he is to scold me--not yet, that is. But I know by his eye when he
+is pleased and when he is displeased."
+
+And then they went down to their dinner.
+
+Up at the Great House the three gentlemen met together in apparent good
+humour. Bernard Dale was a man of an equal temperament, who rarely
+allowed any feeling, or even any annoyance, to interfere with his usual
+manner--a man who could always come to table with a smile, and meet
+either his friend or his enemy with a properly civil greeting. Not that
+he was especially a false man. There was nothing of deceit in his
+placidity of demeanour. It arose from true equanimity; but it was the
+equanimity of a cold disposition rather than of one well ordered by
+discipline. The squire was aware that he had been unreasonably petulant
+before dinner, and having taken himself to task in his own way, now
+entered the dining-room with the courteous greeting of a host.
+
+"I find that your bag was not so bad after all," he said, "and I hope
+that your appetite is at least as good as your bag."
+
+Crosbie smiled, and made himself pleasant, and said a few flattering
+words. A man who intends to take some very decided step in an hour or
+two generally contrives to bear himself in the meantime as though the
+trifles of the world were quite sufficient for him. So he praised the
+squire's game; said a good-natured word as to Dingles, and bantered
+himself as to his own want of skill. Then all went merry--not quite as a
+marriage bell; but still merry enough for a party of three gentlemen.
+
+But Crosbie's resolution was fixed; and as soon, therefore, as the old
+butler was permanently gone, and the wine steadily in transit upon the
+table, he began his task, not without some apparent abruptness. Having
+fully considered the matter, he had determined that he would not wait
+for Bernard Dale's absence. He thought it possible that he might be
+able to fight his battle better in Bernard's presence than he should do
+behind his back.
+
+"Squire," he began. They all called him squire when they were on good
+terms together, and Crosbie thought it well to begin as though there
+was nothing amiss between them.
+
+"Squire, of course I am thinking a good deal at the present moment as
+to my intended marriage."
+
+"That's natural enough," said the squire.
+
+"Yes, by George! sir, a man doesn't make a change like that without
+finding that he has got something to think of."
+
+"I suppose not," said the squire. "I never was in the way of getting
+married myself, but I can easily understand that."
+
+"I've been the luckiest fellow in the world in finding such a girl as
+your niece--"
+
+"She is exactly everything that a girl ought to be."
+
+"She is a good girl," said Bernard.
+
+"Yes; I think she is," said the squire.
+
+"But it seems to me," said Crosbie, finding that it was necessary to
+dash at once headlong into the water, "that something ought to be said
+as to my means of supporting her properly."
+
+Then he paused for a moment, expecting that the squire would speak. But
+the squire sat perfectly still, looking intently at the empty fireplace
+and saying nothing.
+
+"Of supporting her," continued Crosbie," with all those comforts to
+which she has been accustomed."
+
+"She has never been used to expense," said the squire.
+
+"Her mother, as you doubtless know, is not a rich woman."
+
+"But living here, Lily has had great advantages--a horse to ride, and
+all that sort of thing."
+
+"I don't suppose she expects a horse in the park," said the squire,
+with a very perceptible touch of sarcasm in his voice.
+
+"I hope not," said Crosbie.
+
+"I believe she has had the use of one of the ponies here sometimes, but
+I hope that has not made her extravagant in her ideas. I did not think
+that there was anything of that nonsense about either of them."
+
+"Nor is there--as far as I know."
+
+"Nothing of the sort," said Bernard.
+
+"But the long and the short of it is this, sir!" and Crosbie, as he
+spoke, endeavoured to maintain his ordinary voice and usual coolness,
+but his heightened colour betrayed that he was nervous. "Am I to expect
+any accession of income with my wife?"
+
+"I have not spoken to my sister-in-law on the subject," said the
+squire; "but I should fear that she cannot do much."
+
+"As a matter of course, I would not take a shilling from her," said
+Crosbie.
+
+"Then that settles it," said the squire.
+
+Crosbie paused a moment, during which his colour became very red. He
+unconsciously took up an apricot and ate it, and then he spoke out.
+
+"Of course I was not alluding to Mrs Dale's income; I would not, on any
+account, disturb her arrangements. But I wished to learn, sir, whether
+you intend to do anything for your niece."
+
+"In the way of giving her a fortune? Nothing at all. I intend to do
+nothing at all."
+
+"Then I suppose we understand each other--at last," said Crosbie.
+
+"I should have thought that we might have understood each other at
+first," said the squire.
+
+"Did I ever make you any promise, or give you any hint that I intended
+to provide for my niece? Have I ever held out to you any such hope? I
+don't know what you mean by that word 'at last'--unless it be to give
+offence."
+
+"I meant the truth, sir--I meant this--that seeing the manner in which
+your nieces lived with you, I thought it probable that you would treat
+them both as though they were your daughters. Now I find out my
+mistake--that is all!"
+
+"You have been mistaken--and without a shadow of excuse for your
+mistake."
+
+"Others have been mistaken with me," said Crosbie, forgetting, on the
+spur of the moment, that he had no right to drag the opinion of any
+other person into the question.
+
+"What others?" said the squire, with anger; and his mind immediately
+betook itself to his sister-in-law.
+
+"I do not want to make any mischief," said Crosbie.
+
+"If anybody connected with my family has presumed to tell you that I
+intended to do more for my niece Lilian than I have already done, such
+person has not only been false, but ungrateful. I have given to no one
+any authority to make any promise on behalf of my niece."
+
+"No such promise has been made. It was only a suggestion," said Crosbie.
+
+He was not in the least aware to whom the squire was alluding in his
+anger; but he perceived that his host was angry, and having already
+reflected that he should not have alluded to the words which Bernard
+Dale had spoken in his friendship, he resolved to name no one. Bernard,
+as he sat by listening, knew exactly how the matter stood; but, as he
+thought, there could be no reason why he should subject himself to his
+uncle's ill-will, seeing that he had committed no sin.
+
+"No such suggestion should have been made," said the squire.
+
+"No one has had a right to make such a suggestion. No one has been
+placed by me in a position to make such a suggestion to you without
+manifest impropriety. I will ask no further questions about it; but it
+is quite as well that you should understand at once that I do not
+consider it to be my duty to give my niece Lilian a fortune on her
+marriage. I trust that your offer to her was not made under any such
+delusion."
+
+"No, sir; it was not," said Crosbie.
+
+"Then I suppose that no great harm has been done. I am sorry if false
+hopes have been given to you; but I am sure you will acknowledge that
+they were not given to you by me."
+
+"I think you have misunderstood me, sir. My hopes were never very high;
+but I thought it right to ascertain your intentions."
+
+"Now you know them. I trust, for the girl's sake, that it will make no
+difference to her. I can hardly believe that she has been to blame in
+the matter."
+
+Crosbie hastened at once to exculpate Lily; and then, with more awkward
+blunders than a man should have made who was so well acquainted with
+fashionable life as the Apollo of the Beaufort, he proceeded to explain
+that, as Lily was to have nothing, his own pecuniary arrangements would
+necessitate some little delay in their marriage.
+
+"As far as I myself am concerned," said the squire, "I do not like long
+engagements. But I am quite aware that in this matter I have no right
+to interfere, unless, indeed--"
+
+"I suppose it will be well to fix some day; eh, Crosbie?" said Bernard.
+
+"I will discuss that matter with Mrs Dale," said Crosbie.
+
+"If you and she understand each other," said the squire,
+
+"That will be sufficient. Shall we go into the drawing-room now, or out
+upon the lawn?"
+
+That evening, as Crosbie went to bed, he felt that he had not gained
+the victory in his encounter with the squire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+IT CANNOT BE
+
+On the following morning at breakfast each of the three gentlemen at
+the Great House received a little note on pink paper, nominally from
+Mrs Dale, asking them to drink tea at the Small House on that day week.
+At the bottom of the note which Lily had written for Mr Crosbie was
+added:
+
+"Dancing on the lawn, if we can get anybody to stand up. Of course you
+must come, whether you like it or not. And Bernard also. Do your
+possible to talk my uncle into coming." And this note did something
+towards re-creating good-humour among them at the breakfast-table. It
+was shown to the squire, and at last he was brought to say that he
+would perhaps go to Mrs Dale's little evening-party.
+
+It may be well to explain that this promised entertainment had been
+originated with no special view to the pleasure of Mr Crosbie, but
+altogether on behalf of poor Johnny Eames. What was to be done in that
+matter? This question had been fully discussed between Mrs Dale and
+Bell, and they had come to the conclusion that it would behest to ask
+Johnny over to a little friendly gathering, in which he might be able
+to meet Lily with some strangers around them. In this way his
+embarrassment might be overcome. It would never do, as Mrs Dale said,
+that he should be suffered to stay away, unnoticed by them.
+
+"When the ice is once broken he won't mind it," said Bell. And,
+therefore, early in the day, a messenger was sent over to Guestwick,
+who returned with a note from Mrs Eames, saying that she would come on
+the evening in question, with her son and daughter. They would keep the
+fly and get back to Guestwick the same evening. This was added, as an
+offer had been made of beds for Mrs Eames and Mary.
+
+Before the evening of the party another memorable occurrence had taken
+place at Allington, which must be described, in order that the feelings
+of the different people on that evening may be understood. The squire
+had given his nephew to understand that he wished to have that matter
+settled as to his niece Bell; and as Bernard's views were altogether in
+accordance with the squire's, he resolved to comply with his uncle's
+wishes. The project with him was not a new thing. He did love his
+cousin quite sufficiently for purposes of matrimony, and was minded
+that it would be a good thing for him to marry. He could not marry
+without money, but this marriage would give him an income without the
+trouble of intricate settlements, or the interference of lawyers
+hostile to his own interests. It was possible that he might do better;
+but then it was possible also that he might do much worse; and, in
+addition to this, he was fond of his cousin. He discussed the matter
+within himself, very calmly; made some excellent resolutions as to the
+kind of life which it would behove him to live as a married man;
+settled on the street in London in which he would have his house, and
+behaved very prettily to Bell for four or five days running. That he
+did not make love to her, in the ordinary sense of the word, must, I
+suppose, be taken for granted, seeing that Bell herself did not
+recognise the fact. She had always liked her cousin, and thought that
+in these days he was making himself particularly agreeable.
+
+On the evening before the party the girls were at the Great House,
+having come up nominally with the intention of discussing the
+expediency of dancing on the lawn. Lily had made up her mind that it
+was to be so, but Bell had objected that it would be cold and damp, and
+that the drawing-room would be nicer for dancing.
+
+"You see we've only got four young gentlemen and one ungrown," said
+Lily; "and they will look so stupid standing up all properly in a room,
+as though we had a regular party."
+
+"Thank you for the compliment," said Crosbie, taking off his straw hat.
+
+"So you will; and we girls will look more stupid still. But out on the
+lawn it won't look stupid at all. Two or three might stand up on the
+lawn, and it would be jolly enough."
+
+"I don't quite see it," said Bernard.
+
+"Yes, I think I see it," said Crosbie.
+
+"The unadaptability of the lawn for the purpose of a ball--"
+
+"Nobody is thinking of a ball," said Lily, with mock petulance.
+
+"I'm defending you, and yet you won't let me speak. The unadaptability
+of the lawn for the purpose of a ball will conceal the insufficiency of
+four men and a boy as a supply of male dancers. But, Lily, who is the
+ungrown gentleman? Is it your old friend Johnny Eames?"
+
+Lily's voice became sobered as she answered him.
+
+"Oh, no; I did not mean Mr Eames. He is coming, but I did not mean him.
+Dick Boyce, Mr Boyce's son, is only sixteen. He is the ungrown
+gentleman."
+
+"And who is the fourth adult."
+
+"Dr Crofts, from Guestwick. I do hope you will like him, Adolphus. We
+think he is the very perfection of a man."
+
+"Then of course I shall hate him; and be very jealous, too!" And then
+that pair went off together, fighting their own little battle on that
+head, as turtle-doves will sometimes do. They went off, and Bernard was
+left with Bell standing together over the ha-ha fence which divides the
+garden at the back of the house from the field.
+
+"Bell," he said," they seem very happy, don't they?
+
+"And they ought to be happy now, oughtn't they? Dear Lily! I hope he
+will be good to her. Do you know, Bernard, though he is your friend, I
+am very, very anxious about it. It is such a vast trust to put in a man
+when we do not quite know him."
+
+"Yes, it is; but they'll do very well together. Lily will be happy
+enough."
+
+"And he?"
+
+"I suppose he'll be happy, too. He'll feel himself a little
+straightened as to income at first, but that will all come round."
+"If he is not, she will be wretched."
+
+"They will do very well. Lily must be prepared to make the money go as
+far as she can, that's all."
+
+"Lily won't feel the want of money. It is not that. But if he lets her
+know that she has made him a poor man, then she will be unhappy. Is he
+extravagant, Bernard?"
+
+But Bernard was anxious to discuss another subject, and therefore would
+not speak such words of wisdom as to Lily's engagement as might have
+been expected from him had he been in a different frame of mind.
+
+"No, I should say not," said he." But, Bell--"
+
+"I do not know that we could have acted otherwise than we have done,
+and yet I fear that we have been rash. If he makes her unhappy,
+Bernard, I shall never forgive you."
+
+But as she said this she put her hand lovingly upon his arm, as a
+cousin might do, and spoke in a tone which divested her threat of its
+acerbity.
+
+"You must not quarrel with me, Bell, whatever may happen. I cannot
+afford to quarrel with you."
+
+"Of course I was not in earnest as to that."
+
+"You and I must never quarrel, Bell; at least, I hope not. I could bear
+to quarrel with any one rather than with you." And then, as he spoke,
+there was something in his voice which gave the girl some slight,
+indistinct warning of what might be his intention. Not that she said to
+herself at once, that he was going to make her an offer of his
+hand--now, on the spot; but she felt that he intended something beyond
+the tenderness of ordinary cousinly affection. "I hope we shall never
+quarrel," she said. But as she spoke, her mind was settling
+itself--forming its resolution, and coming to a conclusion as to the
+sort of love which Bernard might, perhaps, expect. And it formed
+another conclusion; as to the sort of love which might be given in
+return.
+
+"Bell," he said, "you and I have always been dear friends."
+
+"Yes; always."
+
+"Why should we not be something more than friends?"
+
+To give Captain Dale his due I must declare that his voice was
+perfectly natural as he asked this question, and that he showed no
+signs of nervousness, either in his face or limbs. He had made up his
+mind to do it on that occasion, and he did it without any signs of
+outward disturbance. He asked his question, and then he waited for his
+answer. In this he was rather hard upon his cousin; for, though the
+question had certainly been asked in language that could not be
+mistaken, still the matter had not been put forward with all that
+fullness which a young lady, under such circumstances, has a right to
+expect.
+
+They had sat down on the turf close to the ha-ha, and they were so near
+that Bernard was able to put out his hand with the view of taking that
+of his cousin within his own. But she contrived to keep her hands
+locked together, so that he merely held her gently by the wrist.
+"I don't quite understand, Bernard," she said, after a minute's pause.
+
+"Shall we be more than cousins? Shall we be man and wife?"
+
+Now, at least, she could not say that she did not understand. If the
+question was ever asked plainly, Bernard Dale had asked it plainly.
+Shall we be man and wife? Few men, I fancy, dare to put it all at once
+in so abrupt a way, and yet I do not know that the English language
+affords any better terms for the question.
+
+"Oh, Bernard! you have surprised me."
+
+"I hope I have not pained you, Bell. I have been long thinking of this,
+but I am well aware that my own manner, even to you, has not been that
+of a lover. It is not in me to smile and say soft things, as Crosbie
+can. But I do not love you the less on that account. I have looked
+about for a wife, and I have thought that if I could gain you I should
+be very fortunate."
+
+He did not then say anything about his uncle, and the eight hundred a
+year; but he fully intended to do so as soon as an opportunity should
+serve. He was quite of opinion that eight hundred a year and the
+good-will of a rich uncle were strong ground for matrimony--were grounds
+even for love; and he did not doubt but his cousin would see the matter
+in the same light.
+
+"You are very good to me--more than good. Of course I know that. But,
+oh, Bernard I did not expect this a bit."
+
+"But you will answer me, Bell! Or if you would like time to think, or
+to speak to my aunt, perhaps you will answer me tomorrow?"
+
+"I think I ought to answer you, now."
+
+"Not if it be a refusal, Bell. Think well of it before you do that. I
+should have told you that, our uncle wishes this match, and that he
+will remove any difficulty there might be about money."
+
+"I do not care for money."
+
+"But, as you were saying about Lily, one has to be prudent. Now, in our
+marriage, everything of that kind would be well arranged. My uncle has
+promised me that he would at once allow us--"
+
+"Stop, Bernard. You must not be led to suppose that any offer made by
+my uncle would help to purchase--Indeed, there can be no need for us to
+talk about money."
+
+"I wished to let you know the facts of the case, exactly as they are.
+And as to our uncle, I cannot but think that you would be glad, in such
+a matter, to have him on your side."
+
+"Yes, I should be glad to have him on my side; that is, if I were
+going--But my uncle's wishes could not influence my decision. The fact
+is, Bernard--"
+
+"Well, dearest, what is the fact?
+
+"I have always regarded you rather as a brother than as anything else."
+
+"But that regard may be changed."
+
+"No; I think not. Bernard, I will go further and speak on at once. It
+cannot be changed. I know myself well enough to say that with
+certainty. It cannot be changed."
+
+"You mean that you cannot love me?"
+
+"Not as you would have me do, I do love you very dearly--very dearly,
+indeed. I would go to you in any trouble, exactly as I would go to a
+brother."
+
+"And must that be all, Bell?"
+
+"Is not that all the sweetest love that can be felt? But you must not
+think me ungrateful, or proud. I know well that you are--are proposing
+to do for me much more than I deserve. Any girl might be proud of such
+an offer. But, dear Bernard--"
+
+"Bell, before you give me a final answer, sleep upon this and talk it
+over with your mother. Of course you were unprepared, and I cannot
+expect that you should promise me so much without a moment's
+consideration."
+
+"I was unprepared, and therefore I have not answered you as I should
+have done. But as it has gone so far, I cannot let you leave me in
+uncertainty. It is not necessary that I should keep you waiting. In
+this matter I do know my own mind. Dear Bernard, indeed it cannot be as
+you have proposed."
+
+She spoke in a low voice, and in a tone that had in it something of
+almost imploring humility; but, nevertheless, it conveyed to her cousin
+an assurance that she was in earnest; an assurance also that that
+earnest would not readily be changed. Was she not a Dale? And when did
+a Dale change his mind? For a while he sat silent by her; and she too,
+having declared her intention, refrained from further words. For some
+minutes they thus remained, looking down into the ha-ha. She still kept
+her old position, holding her hands clasped together over her knees;
+but he was now lying on his side, supporting his head upon his arm,
+with his face indeed turned towards her, but with his eyes fixed upon
+the grass. During this time, however, he was not idle. His cousin's
+answer, though it had grieved him, had not come upon him as a blow
+stunning him for a moment, and rendering him unfit for instant thought.
+He was grieved, more grieved than he had thought he would have been.
+The thing that he had wanted moderately, he now wanted the more in that
+it was denied to him. But he was able to perceive the exact truth of
+his position, and to calculate what might be his chances if he went on
+with his suit, and what his advantage if he at once abandoned it.
+
+"I do not wish to press you unfairly, Bell; but may I ask if any other
+preference--"
+
+"There is no other preference," she answered. And then again they were
+silent for a minute or two.
+
+"My uncle will be much grieved at this," he said at last.
+
+"If that be all," said Bell, "I do not think that we need either of us
+trouble ourselves. He can have no right to dispose of our hearts."
+
+"I understand the taunt, Bell."
+
+"Dear Bernard, there was no taunt. I intended none."
+
+"I need not speak of my own grief. You cannot but know how deep it must
+be. Why should I have submitted myself to this mortification had not my
+heart been concerned? But that I will bear, if I must bear it--". And
+then he paused, looking up at her.
+
+"It will soon pass away," she said.
+
+I will accept it at any rate without complaint. But as to my uncle's
+feelings, it is open to me to speak, and to you, I should think, to
+listen without indifference. He has been kind to us both, and loves us
+two above any other living beings. It's not surprising that he should
+wish to see us married, and it will not be surprising if your refusal
+should be a great blow to him."
+
+"I shall be sorry--very sorry."
+
+"I also shall be sorry. I am now speaking of him. He has set his heart
+upon it; and as he has but few wishes, few desires, so is he the more
+constant in those which he expresses. When he knows this, I fear that
+we shall find him very stern."
+
+"Then he will be unjust."
+
+"No; he will not be unjust. He is always a just man. But he will be
+unhappy, and will, I fear, make others unhappy. Dear Bell, may not this
+thing remain for a while unsettled? You will not find that I take
+advantage of your goodness. I will not intrude it on you again--say for
+a fortnight--or till Crosbie shall be gone."
+
+"No, no, no," said Bell.
+
+"Why are you so eager in your noes? There can be no danger in such
+delay. I will not press you--and you can let my uncle think that you
+have at least taken time for consideration."
+
+"There are things as to which one is bound to answer at once. If I
+doubted myself, I would let you persuade me. But I do not doubt myself,
+and I should be wrong to keep you in suspense. Dear, dearest Bernard,
+it cannot be; and as it cannot he, you, as my brother, would bid me say
+so clearly. It cannot be."
+
+As she made this last assurance, they heard the steps of Lily and her
+lover close to them, and they both felt that it would be well that
+their intercourse should thus be brought to a close. Neither had known
+how to get up and leave the place, and ye each had felt that nothing
+further could then be said.
+
+"Did you ever see anything so sweet and affectionate and romantic?"
+said Lily, standing over them and looking at them.
+
+"And all the while we have been so practical and worldly. Do you know,
+Bell, that Adolphus seems to think we can't very well keep pigs in
+London. It makes me so unhappy."
+
+"It does seem a pity," said Crosbie, "for Lily seems to know all about
+pigs."
+
+"Of course I do. I haven't lived in the country all my life for
+nothing. Oh, Bernard, I should so like to see you rolled down into the
+bottom of the ha-ha. Just remain there, and we'll do it between us."
+
+Whereupon Bernard got up, as did Bell also, and they all went in to tea.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+MRS DALE'S LITTLE PARTY
+
+The next day was the day of the party. Not a word more was said on that
+evening between Bell and her cousin, at least, not a word more of any
+peculiar note; and when Crosbie suggested to his friend on the
+following morning that they should both step down and see how the
+preparations were getting on at the Small House, Bernard declined.
+
+"You forget, my dear fellow, that I'm not in love as you are," said he.
+
+"But I thought you were," said Crosbie.
+
+"No; not at all as you are. You are an accepted lover, and will be
+allowed to do anything--whip the creams, and tune the piano, if you know
+how. I'm only a half sort of lover, meditating a mariage de convenance
+to oblige an uncle, and by no means required by the terms of my
+agreement to undergo a very rigid amount of drill. Your position is
+just the reverse." In saying all which Captain Dale was no doubt very
+false; but if falseness can be forgiven to a man in any position, it
+may be forgiven in that which he then filled. So Crosbie went down to
+the Small House alone.
+
+"Dale wouldn't come," said he, speaking to the three ladies together,
+"I suppose he's keeping himself up for the dance on the lawn."
+
+"I hope he will be here in the evening," said Mrs Dale. But Bell said
+never a word. She had determined, that under the existing
+circumstances, it would be only fair to her cousin that his offer and
+her answer to it should be kept secret. She knew why Bernard did not
+come across from the Great House with his friend, but she said nothing
+of her knowledge. Lily looked at her, but looked without speaking; and
+as for Mrs Dale, she took no notice of the circumstance. Thus they
+passed the afternoon together without further mention of Bernard Dale;
+and it may be said, at any rate of Lily and Crosbie, that his presence
+was not missed.
+
+Mrs Eames, with her son and daughter, were the first to come." It is so
+nice of you to come early," said Lily, trying on the spur of the moment
+to say something which should sound pleasant and happy, but in truth
+using that form of welcome which to my ears sounds always the most
+ungracious.
+
+"Ten minutes before the time named; and, of course, you must have
+understood that I meant thirty minutes after it!" That is my
+interpretation of the words--when I am thanked for coming early. But Mrs
+Eames was a kind, patient, unexacting woman, who took all civil words
+as meaning civility. And, indeed, Lily had meant nothing else.
+
+"Yes; we did come early," said Mrs Eames, "because Mary thought she
+would like to go up into the girls' room and just settle her, hair, you
+know."
+
+"So she shall," said Lily, who had taken Mary by the hand.
+
+"And we knew we shouldn't be in the way. Johnny can go out into the
+garden if there's anything left to be done."
+
+"He shan't be banished unless he likes it," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"If he finds us women too much for his unaided strength--"
+
+John Eames muttered something about being very well as he was, and then
+got himself into an arm-chair. He had shaken hands with Lily, trying as
+he did so to pronounce articulately a little speech which he had
+prepared for the occasion.
+
+"I have to congratulate you, Lily, and I hope with all my heart that
+you will be happy." The words were simple enough, and were not
+ill-chosen, but the poor young man never got them spoken. The word
+"congratulate" did reach Lily's ears, and she understood it all--both
+the kindness of the intended speech and the reason why it could not be
+spoken.
+
+"Thank you, John," she said; "I hope I shall see so much of you in
+London. It will be so nice to have an old Guestwick friend near me."
+She had her own voice, and the pulses of her heart better under command
+than had he; but she also felt that the occasion was trying to her. The
+man had loved her honestly and truly--still did love her, paying her the
+great homage of bitter grief in that he had lost her. Where is the girl
+who will not sympathise with such love and such grief, if it be shown
+only because it cannot be concealed, and be declared against the will
+of him who declares it?
+
+Then came in old Mrs Hearn, whose cottage was not distant two minutes'
+walk from the Small House. She always called Mrs Dale "my dear," and
+petted the girls as though they had been children. When told of Lily's
+marriage, she had thrown up her hands with surprise, for she had still
+left in some corner of her drawers remnants of sugar-plums which she
+had bought for Lily. "A London man, is he? Well, well. I wish he lived
+in the country. Eight hundred a year, my dear?" she had said to Mrs
+Dale. "That sounds nice down here, because we are all so poor. But I
+suppose eight hundred a year isn't very much up in London?"
+
+"The squire's coming, I suppose, isn't he?" said Mrs Hearn, as she
+seated herself on the sofa close to Mrs Dale.
+
+"Yes, he'll be here by-and-by; unless he changes his mind, you know. He
+doesn't stand on ceremony with me."
+
+"He change his mind! When did you ever know Christopher Dale change his
+mind?"
+
+"He is pretty constant, Mrs Hearn."
+
+"If he promised to give a man a penny, he'd give it. But if he promised
+to take away a pound, he'd take it, though it cost him years to get it.
+He's going to turn me out of my cottage, he says."
+
+"Nonsense, Mrs Hearn!"
+
+"Jolliffe came and told me"--Jolliffe, I should explain, was the
+bailiff--"that if I didn't like it as it was, I might leave it, and that
+the squire could get double the rent for it. Now all I asked was that
+he should do a little painting in the kitchen; and the wood is all as
+black as his hat."
+
+"I thought it was understood you were to paint inside."
+
+"How can I do it, my dear, with a hundred and forty pounds for
+everything? I must live, you know! And he that has workmen about him
+every day of the year! And was that a message to send to me, who have
+lived in the parish for fifty years? Here he is." And Mrs Hearn
+majestically raised herself from her seat as the squire entered the
+room.
+
+With him entered Mr and Mrs Boyce, from the parsonage, with Dick Boyce,
+the ungrown gentleman, and two girl Boyces, who were fourteen and
+fifteen years of age. Mrs Dale, with the amount of good-nature usual on
+such occasions, asked reproachfully why Jane, and Charles, and
+Florence, and Bessy, did not come--Boyce being a man who had his quiver
+full of them--and Mrs Boyce, giving the usual answer, declared that she
+already felt that they had come as an avalanche.
+
+"But where are the--the--the young men?" asked Lily, assuming a look of
+mock astonishment.
+
+"They'll be across in two or three hours' time," said the squire.
+
+"They both dressed for dinner, and, as I thought, made themselves very
+smart; but for such a grand occasion as this they thought a second
+dressing necessary. How do you do, Mrs Hearn? I hope you are quite
+well. No rheumatism left, eh?" This the squire said very loud into Mrs
+Hearn's ear. Mrs Hearn was perhaps a little hard of hearing; but it was
+very little, and she hated to be thought deaf. She did not, moreover,
+like to be thought rheumatic. This the squire knew, and therefore his
+mode of address was not good-natured.
+
+"You needn't make me jump so, Mr Dale. I'm pretty well now, thank ye. I
+did have a twinge in the spring--that cottage is so badly built for
+draughts! I wonder you can live in it,' my sister said to me the last
+time she was over. I suppose I should be better off over with her at
+Hamersham, only one doesn't like to move, you know, after living fifty
+years in one parish."
+
+"You mustn't think of going away from us," Mrs Boyce said, speaking by
+no means loud, but slowly and plainly, hoping thereby to flatter the
+old woman. But the old woman understood it all. "She's a sly creature,
+is Mrs Boyce," Mrs Hearn said to Mrs Dale, before the evening was out.
+There are some old people whom it is very hard to flatter, and with
+whom it is, nevertheless, almost impossible to live unless you do
+flatter them.
+
+At last the two heroes came in across the lawn at the drawing-room
+window; and Lily, as they entered, dropped a low curtsy before them,
+gently swelling down upon the ground with her light muslin dress, till
+she looked like some wondrous flower that had bloomed upon the carpet,
+and putting her two hands, with the backs of her fingers pressed
+together, on the buckle of her girdle, she said, "We are waiting upon
+your honours' kind grace, and feel how much we owe to you for favouring
+our poor abode." And then she gently rose up again, smiling, oh, so
+sweetly, on the man she loved, and the puffings and swellings went out
+of her muslin.
+
+I think there is nothing in the world so pretty as the conscious little
+tricks of love played off by a girl towards the man she loves, when she
+has made up her mind boldly that all the world may know that she has
+given herself away to him.
+
+I am not sure that Crosbie liked it all as much as he should have done.
+The bold assurance of her love when they two were alone together he did
+like. What man does not like such assurances on such occasions? But
+perhaps he would have been better pleased had Lily shown more
+reticence--been more secret, as it were, as to her feelings, when others
+were around them. It was not that he accused her in his thoughts of any
+want of delicacy. He read her character too well--was, if not quite
+aright in his reading of it, at least too nearly so to admit of his
+making against her any such accusation as that. It was the calf-like
+feeling that was disagreeable to him. He did not like to be presented,
+even to the world of Allington, as a victim caught for the sacrifice,
+and bound with ribbon for the altar. And then there lurked behind it
+all a feeling that it might be safer that the thing should not be so
+openly manifested before all the world. Of course, everybody knew that
+he was engaged to Lily Dale; nor had he, as he said to himself, perhaps
+too frequently, the slightest idea of breaking from that engagement.
+But then the marriage might possibly be delayed. He had not discussed
+that matter yet with Lily, having, indeed, at the first moment of his
+gratified love, created some little difficulty for himself by pressing
+for an early day. "I will refuse you nothing," she had said to him;
+"but do not make it too soon." He saw, therefore, before him some
+little embarrassment, and was inclined to wish that Lily would abstain
+from that manner which seemed to declare to all the world that she was
+about to be married immediately. "I must speak to her tomorrow," he
+said to himself, as he accepted her salute with a mock gravity equal to
+her own.
+
+Poor Lily! How little she understood as yet what was passing through
+his mind. Had she known his wish she would have wrapped up her love
+carefully in a napkin, so that no one should have seen it--no one but
+he, when he might choose to have the treasure uncovered for his sight.
+And it was all for his sake that she had been thus open in her ways.
+She had seen girls who were half ashamed of their love; but she would
+never be ashamed of hers or of him. She had given herself to him; and
+now all the world might know it, if all the world cared for such
+knowledge. Why should she be ashamed of that which, to her thinking,
+was so great an honour to her? She had heard of girls who would not
+speak of their love, arguing to themselves cannily that there may be
+many a slip between the cup and the lip. There could be no need of any
+such caution with her. There could surely be no such slip! Should there
+be such a fall--should any such fate, either by falseness or misfortune,
+come upon her--no such caution could be of service to save her. The cup
+would have been so shattered in its fall that no further piecing of its
+parts would be in any way possible. So much as this she did not exactly
+say to herself; but she felt it all, and went bravely forward--bold in
+her love, and careful to hide it from none who chanced to see it.
+
+They had gone through the ceremony with the cake and teacups, and had
+decided that, at any rate, the first dance or two should be held upon
+the lawn when the last of the guests arrived.
+
+"Oh, Adolphus, I am so glad he has come," said Lily.
+
+"Do try to like him." Of Dr Crofts, who was the new comer, she had
+sometimes spoken to her lover, but she had never coupled her sister's
+name with that of the doctor, even in speaking to him. Nevertheless,
+Crosbie had in some way conceived the idea that this Crofts either had
+been, or was, or was to be, in love with Bell; and as he was prepared
+to advocate his friend Dale's claims in that quarter, he was not
+particularly anxious to welcome the doctor as a thoroughly intimate
+friend of the family. He knew nothing as yet of Dale's offer, or of
+Bell's refusal, but he was prepared for war, if war should be
+necessary. Of the squire, at the present moment, he was not very fond;
+but if his destiny intended to give him a wife out of this family, he
+should prefer the owner of Allington and nephew of Lord De Guest as a
+brother-in-law to a village doctor--as he took upon himself, in his
+pride, to call Dr Crofts.
+
+"It is very unfortunate," said he, "but I never do like Paragons."
+
+"But you must like this Paragon. Not that he is a Paragon at all, for
+he smokes and hunts, and does all manner of wicked things." And then
+she went forward to welcome her friend.
+
+Dr Crofts was a slight, spare man, about five feet nine in height, with
+very bright dark eyes, a broad forehead, with dark hair that almost
+curled, but which did not come so forward over his brow as it should
+have done for purposes of beauty--with a thin well-cut nose, and a mouth
+that would have been perfect had the lips been a little fuller. The
+lower part of his face, when seen alone, had in it somewhat of
+sternness, which, however, was redeemed by the brightness of his eyes.
+And yet an artist would have declared that the lower features of his
+face were by far the more handsome.
+
+Lily went across to him and greeted him heartily, declaring how glad
+she was to have him there.
+
+"And I must introduce you to Mr Crosbie," she said, as though she was
+determined to carry her point. The two men shook hands with each other,
+coldly, without saying a word, as young men are apt to do when they are
+brought together in that way. Then they separated at once, somewhat to
+the disappointment of Lily. Crosbie stood off by himself, both his eyes
+turned up towards the ceiling, and looking as though he meant to give
+himself airs; while Crofts got himself quickly up to the fireplace,
+making civil little speeches to Mrs Dale, Mrs Boyce, and Mrs Hearn. And
+then at last he made his way round to Bell.
+
+"I am so glad," he said, "to congratulate you on your sister's
+engagement."
+
+"Yes," said Bell;
+
+"We knew that you would be glad to hear of her happiness."
+
+"Indeed, I am glad; and thoroughly hope that she may be happy. You all
+like him, do you not?"
+
+"We like him very much."
+
+"And I am told that he is well off. He is a very fortunate man--very
+fortunate--very fortunate."
+
+"Of course we think so," said Bell.
+
+"Not, however, because he is rich."
+
+"No; not because he is rich. But because, being worthy of such
+happiness, his circumstances should enable him to marry, and to enjoy
+it."
+
+"Yes, exactly," said Bell. "That is just it." Then she sat down, and in
+sitting down put an end to the conversation." That is just it," she had
+said. But as soon as the words were spoken she declared to herself that
+it was not so, and that Crofts was wrong. "We love him," she said to
+herself, "not because he is rich enough to marry without anxious
+thought, but because he dares to marry although he is not rich." And
+then she told herself that she was angry with the doctor.
+
+After that Dr Crofts got off towards the door, and stood there by
+himself, leaning against the wall, with the thumbs of both his hands
+stuck into the armholes of his waistcoat. People said that he was a shy
+man. I suppose he was shy, and yet he was a man that was by no means
+afraid of doing anything that he had to do. He could speak before a
+multitude without being abashed, whether it was a multitude of men or
+of women. He could be very fixed too in his own opinion, and eager, if
+not violent, in the prosecution of his purpose. But he could not stand
+and say little words, when he had in truth nothing to say. He could not
+keep his ground when he felt that he was not using the ground upon
+which he stood. He had not learned the art of assuming himself to be of
+importance in whatever place he might find himself. It was this art
+which Crosbie had learned and by this art that he had flourished. So
+Crofts retired and leaned against the wall near the door; and Crosbie
+came forward and shone like an Apollo among all the guests.
+
+"How is it that he does it?" said John Eames to himself, envying the
+perfect happiness of the London man of fashion.
+
+At last Lily got the dancers out upon the lawn, and then they managed
+to go through one quadrille. But it was found that it did not answer.
+The music of the single fiddle which Crosbie had hired from Guestwick
+was not sufficient for the purpose; and then the grass, though it was
+perfect for purposes of croquet, was not pleasant to the feet for
+dancing.
+
+"This is very nice," said Bernard to his cousin." I don't know anything
+that could be nicer; but perhaps--"
+
+"I know what you mean," said Lily.
+
+"But I shall stay here. There's no touch of romance about any of you.
+Look at the moon there at the back of the steeple. I don't mean to go
+in all night." Then she walked off by one of the paths, and her lover
+went after her.
+
+"Don't you like the moon?" she said, as she took his arm, to which she
+was now so accustomed that she hardly thought of it as she took it.
+
+"Like the moon?--well; I fancy I like the sun better. I don't quite
+believe in moonlight. I think it does best to talk about when one wants
+to be sentimental."
+
+"Ah; that is just what I fear. That is what I say to Bell when I tell
+her that her romance will fade as the roses do. And then I shall have
+to learn that prose is more serviceable than poetry, and that the mind
+is better than the heart, and--and that money is better than love. It's
+all coming, I know; and yet I do like the moonlight."
+
+"And the poetry--and the love?"
+
+"Yes. The poetry much, and the love more. To be loved by you is sweeter
+even than any of my dreams--is better than all the poetry I have read."
+
+"Dearest Lily," and his unchecked arm stole round her waist.
+
+"It is the meaning of the moonlight, and the essence of the poetry,"
+continued the impassioned girl.
+
+"I did not know then why I liked such things, but now I know. It was
+because I longed to be loved."
+
+"And to love."
+"Oh, yes. I would be nothing without that. But that, you know, is your
+delight--or should be. The other is mine. And yet it is a delight to
+love you; to know that I may love you."
+
+"You mean that this is the realisation of your romance."
+
+"Yes; but it most not be the end of it, Adolphus. You most like the
+soft twilight, and the long evenings when we shall be alone; and you
+most read to me the books I love, and you most not teach me to think
+that the world is hard, and dry, and cruel--not yet. I tell Bell so very
+often; but you must not say so to me."
+
+"It shall not be dry and cruel, if I can prevent it."
+
+"You understand what I mean, dearest. I will not think it dry and
+cruel, even though sorrow should come upon us, if you--I think you know
+what I mean."
+
+"If I am good to you."
+
+"I am not afraid of that--I am not the least afraid of that. You do not
+think that I could ever distrust you? But you must not be ashamed to
+look at the moonlight, and to read poetry, and to--"
+
+"To talk nonsense, you mean."
+
+But as he said it, he pressed her closer to his side, and his tone was
+pleasant to her.
+
+"I suppose I'm talking nonsense now?" she said, pouting." You liked me
+better when I was talking about the pigs; didn't you?"
+
+"No; I like you best now."
+
+"And why didn't you like me then? Did I say anything to offend you?"
+
+"I like you best now, because--"
+
+They were standing in the narrow pathway of the gate leading from the
+bridge into the gardens of the Great House, and the shadow of the
+thick-spreading laurels was around them. But the moonlight still
+pierced brightly through the little avenue, and she, as she looked up
+to him, could see the form of his face and the loving softness of his
+eye.
+
+"Because--," said he; and then he stooped over her and pressed her
+closely, while she put up her lips to his, standing on tip-toe that she
+might reach to his face.
+
+"Oh, my love!" she said. "My love! my love!"
+
+As Crosbie walked back to the Great House that night, he made a firm
+resolution that no consideration of worldly welfare should ever induce
+him to break his engagement with Lily Dale. He went somewhat further
+also, and determined that he would not put off the marriage for more
+than six or eight months, or, at the most, ten, if he could possibly
+get his affairs arranged in that time. To be sure, he most give up
+everything--all the aspirations and ambition of his life; but then, as
+he declared to himself somewhat mournfully, he was prepared to do that.
+Such were his resolutions, and, as he thought of them in bed, he came
+to the conclusion that few men were less selfish than he was.
+
+"But what will they say to us for staying away?" said Lily, recovering
+herself.
+
+"And I ought to be making the people dance, you know. Come along, and
+do make yourself nice. Do waltz with Mary Eames--pray, do. If you don't,
+I won't speak to you all night!"
+
+Acting under which threat, Crosbie did, on his return, solicit the
+honour of that young lady's hand, thereby elating her into a seventh
+heaven of happiness. What could the world afford better than a waltz
+with such a partner as Adolphus Crosbie? And poor Mary Eames could
+waltz well; though she could not talk much as she danced, and would
+pant a good deal when she stopped. She put too much of her energy into
+the motion, and was too anxious to do the mechanical part of the work
+in a manner that should be satisfactory to her partner. "Oh! thank
+you--it's very nice. I shall be able to go on again directly." Her
+conversation with Crosbie did not get much beyond that, and yet she
+felt that she had never done better than on this occasion.
+
+Though there were, at most, not above five couples of dancers, and
+though they who did not dance, such as the squire and Mr Boyce, and a
+curate from a neighbouring parish, had, in fact, nothing to amuse them,
+the affair was kept on very merrily for a considerable number of hours.
+Exactly at twelve o'clock there was a little supper, which, no doubt,
+served to relieve Mrs Hearn's ennui, and at which Mrs Boyce also seemed
+to enjoy herself. As to the Mrs Boyces on such occasions, I profess
+that I feel no pity. They are generally happy in their children's
+happiness, or if not, they ought to be. At any rate, they are simply
+performing a manifest duty, which duty, in their time, was performed on
+their behalf. But on what account do the Mrs Hearns betake themselves
+to such gatherings? Why did that ancient lady sit there hour after hour
+yawning, longing for her bed, looking every ten minutes at her watch,
+while her old bones were stiff and sore, and her old ears pained with
+the noise? It could hardly have been simply for the sake of the supper.
+After the supper,
+
+However, her maid took her across to her cottage, and Mrs Boyce also
+then stole away home, and the squire went off with some little parade,
+suggesting to the young men that they should make no noise in the house
+as they returned. But the poor curate remained, talking a dull word
+every now and then to Mrs Dale, and looking on with tantalised eyes at
+the joys which the world had prepared for others than him. I must say
+that I think that public opinion and the bishops together are too hard
+upon curates in this particular.
+
+In the latter part of the night's delight, when time and practice had
+made them all happy together, John Eames stood up for the first time to
+dance with Lily. She had done all she could, short of asking him, to
+induce him to do her this favour; for she felt that it would be a
+favour. How great had been the desire on his part to ask her, and, at
+the same time, how great the repugnance, Lily, perhaps, did not quite
+understand. And yet she understood much of it. She knew that he was not
+angry with her. She knew that he was suffering from the injured pride
+of futile love, almost as much as from the futile love itself. She
+wished to put him at his ease in this; but she did not quite give him
+credit for the full sincerity, and the upright, uncontrolled heartiness
+of his feelings.
+
+At length he did come up to her, and though, in truth, she was engaged,
+she at once accepted his offer. Then she tripped across the room.
+"Adolphus," she said," I can't dance with you, though I said I would.
+John Eames has asked me, and I haven't stood up with him before. You
+understand, and you'll be a good boy, won't you?"
+
+Crosbie, not being in the least jealous, was a good boy, and sat
+himself down to rest, hidden behind a door.
+
+For the first few minutes the conversation between Eames and Lily was
+of a very matter-of-fact kind. She repeated her wish that she might see
+him in London, and he said that of course he should come and call. Then
+there was silence for a little while, and they went through their
+figure dancing.
+
+"I don't at all know yet when we are to be married," said Lily, as soon
+as they were again standing together.
+
+"No; I dare say not," said Eames.
+
+"But not this year, I suppose. Indeed, I should say, of course not."
+
+"In the spring, perhaps," suggested Eames. He had an unconscious desire
+that it might be postponed to some Greek kalends, and yet he did not
+wish to injure Lily.
+
+"The reason I mention it is this, that we should be so very glad if you
+could be here. We all love you so much, and I should so like to have
+you here on that day."
+
+Why is it that girls so constantly do this--so frequently ask men who
+have loved them to be present at their marriages with other men? There
+is no triumph in it. It is done in sheer kindness and affection. They
+intend to offer something which shall soften and not aggravate the
+sorrow that they have caused." You can't marry me yourself," the lady
+seems to say. "But the next greatest blessing which I can offer you
+shall be yours--you shall see me married to somebody else." I fully
+appreciate the intention, but in honest truth, I doubt the eligibility
+of the proffered entertainment.
+
+On the present occasion John Eames seemed to be of this opinion, for he
+did not at once accept the invitation.
+
+"Will you not oblige me so far as that?" she said softly.
+
+"I would do anything to oblige you," said he gruffly; "almost anything."
+
+"But not that?"
+
+"No; not that. I could not do that." Then he went off upon his figure,
+and when they were next both standing together, they remained silent
+till their turn for dancing had again come. Why was it, that after that
+night Lily thought more of John Eames than ever she had thought
+before--felt for him, I mean, a higher respect, as for a man who had a
+will of his own?
+
+And in that quadrille Crofts and Bell had been dancing together, and
+they also had been talking of Lily's marriage. "A man may undergo what
+he likes for himself," he had said, "but he has no right to make a
+woman undergo poverty."
+
+"Perhaps not," said Bell.
+
+"That which is no suffering for a man--which no man should think of for
+himself--will make a hell on earth for a woman."
+
+"I suppose it would," said Bell, answering him without a sign of
+feeling in her face or voice. But she took in every word that he spoke,
+and disputed their truth inwardly with all the strength of her heart
+and mind, and with the very vehemence of her soul." As if a woman
+cannot bear more than a man!" she said to herself, as she walked the
+length of the room alone, when she had got herself free from the
+doctor's arm.
+
+After that they all went to bed.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+MRS LUPEX AND AMELIA ROPER
+
+I should simply mislead a confiding reader if I were to tell him that
+Mrs Lupex was an amiable woman. Perhaps the fact that she was not
+amiable is the one great fault that should be laid to her charge; but
+that fault had spread itself so widely, and had cropped forth in so
+many different places of her life, like a strong rank plant that will
+show itself all over a garden, that it may almost be said that it made
+her odious in every branch of life, and detestable alike to those who
+knew her little and to those who knew her much. If a searcher could
+have got at the inside spirit of the woman, that searcher would have
+found that she wished to go right--that she did make, or at any rate
+promise to herself that she would make, certain struggles to attain
+decency and propriety. But it was so natural to her to torment those
+whose misfortune brought them near to her, and especially that wretched
+man who in an evil day had taken her to his bosom as his wife, that
+decency fled from her, and propriety would not live in her quarters.
+
+Mrs Lupex was, as I have already described her, a woman not without
+some feminine attraction in the eyes of those who like morning
+negligence and evening finery, and do not object to a long nose
+somewhat on one side. She was clever in her way, and could say smart
+things. She could flatter also, though her very flattery had always in
+it something that was disagreeable. And she must have had some power of
+will, as otherwise her husband would have escaped from her before the
+days of which I am writing. Otherwise, also, she could hardly have
+obtained her footing and kept it in Mrs Roper's drawing-room. For
+though the hundred pounds a year, either paid, or promised to be paid,
+was matter with Mrs Roper of vast consideration, nevertheless the first
+three months of Mrs Lupex's sojourn in Burton Crescent was not over
+before the landlady of that house was most anxiously desirous of
+getting herself quit of her married boarders.
+
+I shall perhaps best describe a little incident that had occurred in
+Burton Crescent during the absence of our friend Eames, and the manner
+in which things were going on in that locality, by giving at length two
+letters which Johnny received by post at Guestwick on the morning after
+Mrs Dale's party. One was from his friend Cradell, and the other from
+the devoted Amelia. In this instance I will give that from the
+gentleman first, presuming that I shall best consult my reader's wishes
+by keeping the greater delicacy till the last.
+
+INCOME-TAX OFFICE, September 186-.
+
+MY DEAR JOHNNY--We have had a terrible affair in the Crescent; and I
+really hardly know how to tell you; and yet I must do it, for I want
+your advice. You know the sort of standing that I was on with Mrs
+Lupex, and perhaps you remember what we were saying on the platform at
+the station. I have, no doubt, been fond of her society, as I might be
+of that of any other friend. I knew, of course, that she was a fine
+woman; and if her husband chose to be jealous, I couldn't help that.
+But I never intended anything wrong; and, if it was necessary, couldn't
+I call you as a witness to prove it? I never spoke a word to her out of
+Mrs Roper's drawing-room; and Miss Spruce, or Mrs Roper, or somebody
+has always been there. You know he drinks horribly sometimes, but I do
+not think he ever gets downright drunk. Well, he came home last night
+about nine o'clock after one of these bouts. From what Jemima says
+[Jemima was Mrs Roper's parlour-maid] I believe he had been at it down
+at the theatre for three days. We hadn't seen him since Tuesday. He
+went straight into the parlour and sent up Jemima to me, to say that he
+wanted to see me. Mrs Lupex was in the room and heard the girl summon
+me, and, jumping up, she declared that if there was going to be
+bloodshed she would leave the house. There was nobody else in the room
+but Miss Spruce, and she didn't say a word, but took her candle and
+went upstairs. You must own it looked very uncomfortable. What was I to
+do with a drunken man down in the parlour? However, she seemed to think
+I ought to go." If he comes up here," said she," I shall be the victim.
+You little know of what that man is capable, when his wrath has been
+inflamed by wine?" Now, I think you are aware that I am not likely to
+be very much afraid of any man; but why was I to be got into a row in
+such a way as this? I hadn't done anything. And then, if there was to
+be a quarrel, and anything was to come of it, as she seemed to
+expect--like bloodshed, I mean, or a fight, or if he were to knock me on
+the head with the poker, where should I be at my office? A man in a
+public office, as you and I are, can't quarrel like anybody else. It
+was this that I felt so much at the moment," Go down to him," said
+she," unless you wish to see me murdered at your feet." Fisher says,
+that if what I say is true, they must have arranged it all between
+them. I don't think that; for I do believe that she really is fond of
+me. And then everybody knows that they never do agree about anything.
+But she certainly did implore me to go down to him. Well, I went down;
+and, as I got to the bottom of the stairs, where I found Jemima, I
+heard him walking up and down the parlour." Take care of yourself. Mr
+Cradell," said the girl; and I could see by her face that she was in a
+terrible fright.
+
+At that moment I happened to see my hat on the hall table, and it
+occurred to mc that I ought to put myself into the hands of a friend.
+Of course, I was not afraid of that man in the dining-room; but should
+I have been justified in engaging in a struggle, perhaps for dear life,
+in Mrs Roper's house? I was bound to think of her interests. So I took
+up my hat, and deliberately walked out of the front door." Tell him,"
+said I to Jemima," that I'm not at home." And so I went away direct to
+Fisher's, meaning to send him back to Lupex as my friend; but Fisher
+was at his chess-club.
+
+As I thought there was no time to be lost on such an occasion as this.
+I went down to the club and called him out. You know what a cool fellow
+Fisher is. I don't suppose anything would ever excite him. When I told
+him the story, he said that he would sleep upon it; and I had to walk
+up and down before the club while he finished his game. Fisher seemed
+to think that I might go back to Burton Crescent; but, of course I knew
+that that would be out of the question. So it ended in my going home
+and sleeping on his sofa, and sending for some of my things in the
+morning. I wanted him to get up and see Lupex before going to the
+office this morning. But he seemed to think It would be better to put
+it off, and so he will call upon him at the theatre immediately after
+office hours.
+
+I want you to write to me at once saying what you know about the
+matter, I ask you, as I don't want to lug in any of the other people at
+Roper's. It is very uncomfortable, as I can't exactly leave her at once
+because of last quarter's money, otherwise I should cut and run; for
+the house is not the sort of place either for you or me. You may take
+my word for that, Master Johnny. And I could tell you another thing,
+too about A.R., only I don't want to make mischief. But do you write
+immediately. And now I think of it, you had better write to Fisher, so
+that he can show your letter to Lupex--just saying, that to the best of
+your belief there had never been anything between her and me but mere
+friendship; and that, of course, you, as my friend, must have known
+everything. Whether I shall go back to Roper's to-night will depend run
+what Fisher says after the interview.
+
+Good-bye, old fellow! I hope you are enjoying yourself, and that L.D.
+is quite well--
+
+Your sincere friend,
+
+JOSEPH CRADELL
+
+John Eames read this letter over twice before he opened that from
+Amelia. He had never yet received a letter from Miss Roper; and felt
+very little of that ardour for its perusal which young men generally
+experience on the receipt of a first letter from a young lady. The
+memory of Amelia was at the present moment distasteful to him; and he
+would have thrown the letter unopened into the fire, had he not felt it
+might be dangerous to do so. As regarded his friend Cradell, he could
+not but feel ashamed of him--ashamed of him, not for running away from
+Mr Lupex, but for excusing his escape on false pretences.
+
+And then, at last, he opened the letter from Amelia.
+
+"Dearest John," it began; and as he read the words, he crumpled the
+paper up between his fingers. It was written in a fair female hand,
+with sharp points instead of curves to the letters, but still very
+legible, and looking as though there were a decided purport in every
+word of it.
+
+DEAREST JOHN--it feels so strange to me to write to you in such language
+as this, And yet you are dearest, and have I not a right to call you
+so? And are you not my own, and am not I yours? [Again he crunched the
+paper up in his hand, and, as he did so, he muttered words which I need
+not repeat at length. But still he went on with his letter.] I know
+that we understand each other perfectly, and when that is the case,
+heart should be allowed to speak openly to heart. Those are my
+feelings, and I believe that you will find them reciprocal in your own
+bosom.  Is it not sweet to be loved? I find it so. And, dearest John,
+let me assure you, with open candour, that there is no room for
+jealousy in this breast with regard to you. I have too much confidence
+for that, I can assure you, both in your honour and in my own--I would
+say charms, only you would call me vain. You must not suppose that I
+meant what I said about L. D.
+
+Of course, you wall be glad to see the friends of your childhood; and
+it would be far from your Amelia's heart to begrudge you such
+delightful pleasure. Your friends will. I hope, some day be any
+friends. [Another crunch.] And if there be any one among them, any real
+L. D. whom you have specially liked, I wall receive her to my heart,
+specially also. [This assurance on the part of his Amelia was too much
+for him, and he threw the letter from him, thinking whence he might get
+relief--whether from suicide or from the colonies; but presently he took
+it up again, and drained the bitter cup to the bottom.] And if I seemed
+petulant to you before you went away, you must forgive your own Amelia.
+I had nothing before me but misery for the month of your absence. There
+is no one here congenial to my feelings--of course not. And you would
+not wish me to be happy in your absence--would you? I can assure you,
+let your wishes he what they may, I never can be happy again unless you
+are with me. Write to me one little line, and tell me that you are
+grateful to me for my devotion.
+
+And now, I must tell you that we have had a sad affair in the house;
+and I do not think that your friend Mr Cradell has behaved at all well.
+You remember how he has been always going on with Mrs Lupex. Mother was
+quite unhappy about it, though she didn't like to say anything. Of
+course, when a lady's name is concerned, it is particular. Bur Lupex
+has become dreadful jealous during the last week, and we all knew that
+something was coming. She is an artful woman, but I don't think she
+meant anything bad--only to drive her husband to desperation. He came
+here yesterday in one of his tantrums, and wanted to see Cradell; but
+he got frightened, and took his hat and went off. Now, that wasn't
+quite right. If he was innocent, why didn't he stand his ground and
+explain the mistake? As mother says, it gives the house such a name.
+Lupex swore last night that he'd be off to the Income Tax Office this
+morning, and have Cradell out before the commissioners, and clerks, and
+everybody. If he does that, it will get into the papers, and all London
+will be full of it. She would like it. I know; for all she cares for is
+to be talked about; but only thank what it will be for mother's house.
+I wish you were here; for your high prudence and courage would set
+everything right at once--at least, I think so.
+
+I shall count the minutes till I get an answer to this, and shall envy
+the postman who will have your letter before it will reach me. Do write
+at once. If I do not hear by Monday Morning I shall think that
+something is the matter. Even though you are among your dear old
+friends, surely you can find a moment to write to your own Amelia.
+
+Mother is very unhappy about this affair of the Lupexes. She says that
+if you were here to advise her she should not mind it so much. It is
+very hard upon her, for she does strive to make the house respectable
+and comfortable for everybody. I would send my duty and love to your
+dear mamma, if I only knew her, as I hope I shall do one day, and to
+your sister, and to L. D. also, if you like to tell her how we are
+situated together. So, now, no more from your
+
+        Always affectionate sweetheart,
+
+            AMELIA ROPER.
+
+Poor Eames did not feel the least gratified by any part of this fond
+letter; but the last paragraph of it was the worst. Was it to be
+endured by him that this woman should send her love to his mother and
+to his sister, and even to Lily Dale! He felt that there was a
+pollution in the very mention of Lily's name by such an one as Amelia
+Roper. And yet Amelia Roper was, as she had assured him--his own. Much
+as he disliked her at the present moment, he did believe that he
+was--her own. He did feel that she had obtained a certain property in
+him, and that his destiny in life would tie him to her. He had said
+very few words of love to her at any time--very few, at least, that were
+themselves of any moment; but among those few there had undoubtedly
+been one or two in which he had told her that he loved her. And he had
+written to her that fatal note! Upon the whole, would it not be as well
+for him to go out to the great reservoir behind Guestwick, by which the
+Hamersham Canal was fed with its waters, and put an end to his
+miserable existence?
+
+On that same day he did write a letter to Fisher, and he wrote also to
+Cradell. As to those letters he felt no difficulty. To Fisher he
+declared his belief that Cradell was innocent as he was himself as
+regarded Mrs Lupex. I don't think he is the sort of man to make up to a
+married woman," he said, somewhat to Cradell's displeasure, when the
+letter reached the Income-tax Office; for that gentleman was not averse
+to the reputation for success in love which the little adventure was,
+as he thoughts calculated to give him among his brother clerks. At the
+first bursting of the shell, when that desperately jealous man was
+raging in the parlour, incensed by the fumes both of wine and love,
+Cradell had felt that the affair was disagreeably painful. But on the
+morning of the third day--for he had passed two nights on his friend
+Fisher's sofa--he had begun to be somewhat proud of it, and did not
+dislike to hear Mrs Lupex's name in the mouths of the other clerks.
+When, therefore, Fisher read to him the letter front Guestwick, he
+hardly was pleased with his friend's tone. "Ha, ha, ha," said he,
+laughing." That's just what I wanted him to say. Make up to a married
+woman, indeed. No; I'm the last man in London to do that sort of thing."
+
+"Upon my word, Caudle, I think you are," said Fisher;" the very last
+man."
+
+And then poor Cradell was not happy. On that afternoon he boldly went
+to Burton Crescent, and ate his dinner there. Neither Mr nor Mrs Lupex
+were to be seen, nor were their names mentioned to him by Mrs Roper. In
+the course of the evening he did pluck up courage to ask Miss Spruce
+where they were; but that ancient lady merely shook her head solemnly,
+and declared that she knew nothing about such goings on--no, not she.
+
+But what was John Eames to do as to that letter from Amelia Roper? He
+felt that any answer to it would be very dangerous, and yet that he
+could not safely leave it unanswered. He walked off by himself across
+Guestwick Common, and through the woods of Guestwick Manor, up by the
+big avenue of elms in Lord De Guest's park, trying to resolve how he
+might rescue himself from this scrape. Here, over the same ground, he
+had wandered scores of times in his earlier years, when he knew nothing
+beyond the innocence of his country home, thinking of Lily Dale, and
+swearing to himself that she should be his wife. Here he had strung
+together his rhymes, and fed his ambition with high hopes, building
+gorgeous castles in the air, in all of which Lilian reigned as a queen;
+and though in those days he had known himself to be awkward, poor,
+uncared for by any in the world except his mother and his sister, yet
+he had been happy in his hopes--happy in his hopes, even though he had
+never taught himself really to believe that they would he realised. But
+now there was nothing in his hopes or thoughts to make him happy.
+Everything was black, and wretched, and ruinous. What would it matter,
+after all, even if he should marry Amelia Roper, seeing that Lily was
+to be given to another? But then the idea of Amelia as he had seen her
+that night through the chink in the door came upon his memory, and he
+confessed to himself that life with such a wife as that would be a
+living death.
+
+At one moment he thought that he would tell his mother everything, and
+leave her to write an answer to Amelia's letter. Should the worst come
+to the worst, the Ropers could not absolutely destroy him. That they
+could bring an action against him, and have him locked up for a term of
+years, and dismissed from his office, and exposed in all the
+newspapers, he seemed to know. That might all, however, be endured, if
+only the gauntlet could be thrown down for him by some one else. The
+one thing which he felt that he could not do was, to write to a girl
+whom he had professed to love, and tell her that he did not love her.
+He knew that he could not himself form such words upon the paper; nor,
+as he was well aware, could he himself find the courage to tell her to
+her face that he had changed his mind. He knew that he must become the
+victim of his Amelia, unless he could find some friendly knight to do
+battle in his favour; and then again he thought of his mother.
+
+But when he returned home he was as far as ever from any resolve to
+tell her how he was situated. I may say that his walk had done him no
+good, and that he had not made up his mind to anything. He had been
+building those pernicious castles in the air during more than half the
+time; not castles in the building of which he could make himself happy,
+as he had done in the old days, but black castles, with cruel dungeons.
+into which hardly a ray of life could find its way. In all these
+edifices his imagination pictured to him Lily as the wife of Mr
+Crosbie. He accepted that as a fact, and then went to work in his
+misery, making her as wretched as himself, through the misconduct and
+harshness of her husband. He tried to think, and to resolve what he
+would do; but there is no task so hard as that of thinking, when the
+mind has an objection to the matter brought before it. The mind, under
+such circumstances, is like a horse that is brought to the water, but
+refuses to drink. So Johnny returned to his home, still doubting
+whether or no he would answer Amelia's letter. And if he did not answer
+it, how would he conduct himself on his return to Burton Crescent?
+
+I need hardly say that Miss Roper, in writing her letter, had been
+aware of all this, and that Johnny's position had been carefully
+prepared for him by his affectionate sweetheart.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+SOCIAL LIFE
+
+Mr and Mrs Lupex had eaten a sweetbread together in much connubial
+bliss on that day which had seen Cradell returning to Mrs Roper's
+hospitable board. They had together eaten a sweetbread, with some other
+delicacies of the season, in the neighbourhood of the theatre, and had
+washed down all unkindness with bitter beer and brandy-and-water. But
+of this reconciliation Cradell had not heard; and when he saw them come
+together into the drawing-room, a few minutes after the question he had
+addressed to Miss Spruce, he was certainly surprised.
+
+Lupex was not an ill-natured man nor one naturally savage by
+disposition. He was a man fond of sweetbread and little dinners, and
+one to whom hot brandy-and-water was too dear. Had the wife of his
+bosom been a good helpmate to him, he might have gone through the
+world, if not respectably, at any rate without open disgrace. But she
+was a woman who left a man no solace except that to be found in
+brandy-and-water. For eight years they had been man and wife; and
+sometimes--I grieve to say it--he had been driven almost to hope that she
+would commit a married woman's last sin, and leave him. In his misery,
+any mode of escape would have been welcome to him. Had his energy been
+sufficient he would have taken his scene--painting capabilities off to
+Australia--or to the farthest shifting of scenes known on the world's
+stage. But he was an easy, listless, self-indulgent man; and at any
+moment, let his misery be as keen as might be, a little dinner, a few
+soft words, and a glass of brandy-and-water would bring him round. The
+second glass would make him the fondest husband living; but the third
+would restore to him the memory of all his wrongs, and give him courage
+against his wife or all the world--even to the detriment of the
+furniture around him, should a stray poker chance to meet his hand. All
+these peculiarities of his character were not, however, known to
+Cradell; and when our friend saw him enter the drawing-room with his
+wife on his arm, he was astonished.
+
+"Mr Cradell, your hand," said Lupex, who had advanced as far as the
+second glass of brandy-and-water, but had not been allowed to go beyond
+it. "There has been a misunderstanding between us; let it be forgotten."
+
+"Mr Cradell, if I know him," said the lady, "is too much the gentleman
+to bear any anger when a gentleman has offered him his hand."
+
+"Oh, I'm sure," said Cradell, "I'm quite--indeed, I'm delighted to find
+there's nothing wrong after all." And then he shook hands with both of
+them; whereupon Miss Spruce got up, curtsyed low, and also shook hands
+with the husband and wife.
+
+"You're not a married man, Mr Cradell," said Lurex, "and therefore you
+cannot understand the workings of a husband's heart. There have been
+moments when my regard for that woman has been too much for me."
+
+"Now, Lupex, don't," said she, playfully tapping him with an old
+parasol which she still held.
+
+"And I do not hesitate to say that my regard for her was too much for
+me on that night when I sent for you to the dining-room."
+
+"I'm glad it's all put right now," said Cradell.
+
+"Very glad, indeed," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"And, therefore, we need not say any more about it," said Mrs Lupex.
+
+"One word," said Lupex, waving his hand. "Mr Cradell, I greatly rejoice
+that you did not obey my summons on that night. Had you done so--I
+confess it now--had you done so, blood would have been the consequence.
+I was mistaken. I acknowledge my mistake--but blood would have been the
+consequence."
+
+"Dear, dear, dear," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"Miss Spruce," continued Lurex, "there are moments when the heart
+becomes too strong for a man."
+
+"I dare say," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"Now, Lupex, that will do," said his wife.
+
+"Yes; that will do. But I think it right to tell Mr Cradell that I am
+glad he did not come to me. Your friend, Mr Cradell, did me the honour
+of calling on me at the theatre yesterday, at half-past four; but I was
+in the slings then and could not very well come down to him. I shall be
+happy to see you both any day at five, and to bury all unkindness with
+a chop and glass at the Pot and Poker, in Bow Street.
+
+"I'm sure you're very kind," said Cradell.
+
+"And Mrs Lupex will join us. There's a delightful little snuggery
+upstairs at the Pot and Poker; and if Miss Spruce will condescend to--"
+
+"Oh, I'm an old woman, sir."
+
+"No--no--no," said Lurex, "I deny that. Come, Cradell, what do you
+say--just a snug little dinner for four, you know."
+
+It was, no doubt, pleasant to see Mr Lupex in his present mood--much
+pleasanter than in that other mood of which blood would have been the
+consequence: but pleasant as he now was, it was, nevertheless, apparent
+that he was not quite sober. Cradell therefore, did not settle the day
+for the little dinner; but merely remarked that he should be very happy
+at some future day.
+
+"And now, Lupex, suppose you get off to bed," said his wife. "You've
+had a very trying day, you know."
+
+"And you, ducky?"
+
+"I shall come presently. Now don't be making a fool of yourself, but
+get yourself off. Come--"and she stood close up against the open door,
+waiting for him to pass.
+
+"I rather think I shall remain where I am, and have a glass of
+something hot," said he.
+
+"Lupex, do you want to aggravate me again?" said the lady, and she
+looked at him with a glance of her eye which he thoroughly understood.
+He was not in a humour for fighting, nor was he at present desirous of
+blood; so he resolved to go. But as he went he prepared himself for new
+battles. "I shall do something desperate--I am sure; I know I shall," he
+said, as he pulled off his boots.
+
+"Oh, Mr Cradell," said Mrs Lupex as soon as she had closed the door
+behind her retreating husband, "how am I ever to look you in the face
+again after the events of these last memorable days?" And then she
+seated herself on the sofa, and hid her face in a cambric handkerchief.
+
+"As for that," said Cradell," what does it signify--among friends like
+us, you know?"
+
+"But that it should be known at your office, as of course it is,
+because of the gentleman that went down to him at the theatre--I don't
+think I shall ever survive it."
+
+"You see I was obliged to send somebody, Mrs Lupex."
+
+"I'm not finding fault, Mr Cradell. I know very well that in my
+melancholy position I have no right to find fault, and I don't pretend
+to understand gentlemen's feelings towards each other. But to have had
+my name mentioned up with yours in that way is--Oh! Mr Cradell, I don't
+know how I'm ever to look you in the face again." And again she buried
+hers in her pocket-handkerchief.
+
+"Handsome is as handsome does." said Miss Spruce; and there was that in
+her tone of voice which seemed to convey much hidden meaning.
+
+"Exactly so, Miss Spruce," said Mrs Lurex; "and that's my only comfort
+at the present moment. Mr Cradell is a gentleman who would scorn to
+take advantage--I'm quite sure of that." And then she did contrive to
+look at him over the edge of the hand which held the handkerchief.
+
+"That I wouldn't, I'm sure," said Cradell. "That is to say--"
+
+And then he paused. He did not wish to get into a scrape about Mrs
+Lupex. He was by no means anxious to encounter her husband in one of his
+fits of jealousy. But he did like the idea of being talked of as the
+admirer of a married woman, and he did like the brightness of the
+lady's eyes. When the unfortunate moth in his semi-blindness whisks
+himself and his wings within the flame of the candle, and finds himself
+mutilated and tortured, he even then will not take the lesson, but
+returns again and again till he is destroyed. Such a moth was poor
+Cradell. There was no warmth to be got by him from that flame. There
+was no beauty in the light--not even the false brilliance of unhallowed
+love. Injury might come to him--a pernicious clipping of the wings,
+which might destroy all power of future flight; injury, and not
+improbably destruction, if he should persevere. But one may say that no
+single hour of happiness could accrue to him from his intimacy with Mrs
+Lupex. He felt for her no love. He was afraid of her, and, in many
+respects, disliked her. But to him, in his moth-like weakness,
+ignorance, and blindness, it seemed to be a great thing that he should
+be allowed to fly near the candle. Oh! my friends, if you will but
+think of it, how many of you have been moths, and are now going about
+ungracefully with wings more or less burnt off, and with bodies sadly
+scorched!
+
+But before Mr Cradell could make up his mind whether or no he would
+take advantage of the present opportunity for another dip into the
+flame of the candle--in regard to which proceeding, however, he could
+not but feel that the presence of Miss Spruce was objectionable--the
+door of the room was opened, and Amelia Roper joined the party.
+
+"Oh, indeed; Mrs Lupex," she said. "And Mr Cradell!"
+
+"And Miss Spruce, my dear," said Mrs Lupex, pointing to the ancient
+lady.
+
+"I'm only an old woman," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"Oh, yes; I see Miss Spruce," said Amelia. "I was not hinting anything,
+I can assure you."
+
+"I should think not, my dear," said Mrs Lupex.
+
+"Only I didn't know that you two were quite--That is, when last I heard
+about it, I fancied--But if the quarrel's made up, there's nobody more
+rejoiced than I am."
+
+"The quarrel is made up," said Cradell.
+
+"If Mrs Lupex is satisfied, I'm sure I am," said Amelia.
+
+"Mr Lupex is satisfied," said Mrs Lupex;" and let me tell you, my dear,
+seeing that you are expecting to get married yourself--"
+
+"Mrs Lupex, I'm not expecting to get married--not particularly, by any
+means."
+
+"Oh, I thought you were. And let me tell you, that when you've got a
+husband of your own, you won't find it so easy to keep everything
+straight. That's the worst of these lodgings if there is any little
+thing, everybody knows it. Don't they, Miss Spruce?"
+
+"Lodgings is so much more comfortable than house-keeping," said Miss
+Spruce, who lived rather in fear of her relatives, the Ropers.
+
+"Everybody knows it; does he?" said Amelia. "Why, if a gentleman will
+come home at night tipsy and threaten to murder another gentleman in
+the same house; and if a lady--"
+
+And then Amelia paused, for she knew that the line-of-battle ship which
+she was preparing to encounter had within her much power of fighting.
+
+"Well, miss," said Mrs Lupex, getting on her feet, "and what of the
+lady?"
+
+Now we may say that the battle had begun, and that the two ships were
+pledged by the general laws of courage and naval warfare to maintain
+the contest till one of them should be absolutely disabled, if not
+blown up or sunk. And at this moment it might be difficult for a
+bystander to say with which of the combatants rested the better chance
+of permanent success. Mrs Lupex had doubtless on her side more matured
+power, a habit of fighting which had given her infinite skill, a
+courage which deadened her to the feeling of all wounds while the heat
+of the battle should last, and a recklessness which made her almost
+indifferent whether she sank or swam. But then Amelia carried the
+greater guns, and was able to pour in heavier metal than her enemy
+could use; and she, too, swam in her own waters. Should they absolutely
+come to grappling and boarding, Amelia would no doubt have the best of
+it; but Mrs Lupex would probably be too crafty to permit such a
+proceeding as that. She was, however, ready for the occasion, and
+greedy for the fight.
+
+"And what of the lady?" said she, in a tone of voice that admitted of
+no pacific rejoinder.
+
+"A lady, if she is a lady," said Amelia, "will know how to behave
+herself."
+
+"And you're going to teach me, are you, Miss Roper? I'm sure I'm ever
+so much obliged to you. It's Manchester manners, I suppose, that you
+prefer?"
+
+"I prefer honest manners, Mrs Lupex, and decent manners, and manners
+that won't shock a whole house full of people and I don't care whether
+they come from Manchester or London."
+
+"Milliner's manners, I suppose?
+
+"I don't care whether they are milliner's manners or theatrical, Mrs
+Lupex, as long as they're not downright bad manners--as yours are, Mrs
+Lupex. And now you've got it. What are you going on for in this way
+with that young man, till you'll drive your husband into a madhouse
+with drink and jealousy?"
+
+"Miss Roper! Miss Roper!" said Cradell; "now really--"
+
+"Don't mind her. Mr Cradell," said Mrs Lurex; "she's not worthy for you
+to speak to. And as to that poor fellow Eames, if you've any friendship
+for him, you'll let him know what she is. My dear, how's Mr Juniper, of
+Grogram's house, at Salford? I know all about you, and so shall John
+Eames, too--poor unfortunate fool of a fellow! Telling me of drink and
+jealousy, indeed!"
+
+"Yes, telling you! And now you've mentioned Mr Juniper's name, Mr
+Eames, and Mr Cradell too, may know the whole of it. There's been
+nothing about Mr Juniper that I'm ashamed of."
+
+"It would be difficult to make you ashamed of anything, I believe."
+
+"But let me tell you this, Mrs Lupex, you're not going to destroy the
+respectability of this house by your goings on."
+
+"It was a bad day for me when I let Lupex bring me into it."
+
+"Then pay your bill, and walk out of it," said Amelia, waving her hand
+towards the door. "I'll undertake to say there shan't be any notice
+required. Only you pay mother what you owe, and you're free to go at
+once."
+
+"I shall go just when I please, and not one hour before. Who are you,
+you gipsy, to speak to me in this way?"
+
+"And as for going, go you shall, if we have to call in the police to
+make you."
+
+Amelia, as at this period of the fight she stood fronting her foe with
+her arms akimbo, certainly seemed to have the best of the battle. But
+the bitterness of Mrs Lupex's tongue had hardly yet produced its
+greatest results. I am inclined to think that the married lady would
+have silenced her who was single, had the fight been allowed to
+rage--always presuming that no resort to grappling-irons took place. But
+at this moment Mrs Roper entered the room, accompanied by her son, and
+both the combatants for a moment retreated.
+
+"Amelia, what's all this?" said Mrs Roper, trying to assume a look of
+agonised amazement.
+
+"Ask Mrs Lupex," said Amelia
+
+"And Mrs Lupex will answer," said that lady. "Your daughter has come in
+here, and attacked me--in such language--before Mr Cradell too--"
+
+"Why doesn't she pay what she owes, and leave the house?" said Amelia.
+
+"Hold your tongue," said her brother.
+
+"What she owes is no affair of yours."
+
+"But it's an affair of mine, when I'm insulted by such a creature as
+that."
+
+"Creature!" said Mrs Lurex. "I'd like to know which is most like a
+creature! But I'll tell you, what it is, Amelia Roper--"
+
+Here, however, her eloquence was stopped, for Amelia had disappeared
+through the door, having been pushed out of the room by her brother.
+Whereupon Mrs Lupex, having found a sofa convenient for the service,
+betook herself to hysterics. There for the moment we will leave her,
+hoping that poor Mrs Roper was not kept late out of her bed.
+
+"What a deuce of a mess Eames will make of it if he marries that girl!"
+Such was Cradell's reflection as he betook himself to his own room. But
+of his own part in the night's transactions he was rather proud than
+otherwise, feeling that the married lady's regard for him had been the
+cause of the battle which had raged. So, likewise, did Paris derive
+much gratification from the ten years' siege of Troy.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+LILIAN DALE BECOMES A BUTTERFLY
+
+And now we will go back to Allington. The same morning that brought to
+John Eames the two letters which were given in the last chapter but
+one, brought to the Great House, among others, the following epistle
+for Adolphus Crosbie. It was from a countess, and was written on pink
+paper, beautifully creamlaid and scented, ornamented with a coronet and
+certain singularly-entwined initial. Altogether, the letter was very
+fashionable and attractive, and Adolphus Crosbie was by no means sorry
+to receive it.
+
+Courcy Castle, September 186-.
+
+My dear Mr Crosbie--We have heard of you from the Gazebees, who have
+come down to us, and who tell us that you are rusticating at a charming
+little village, in which, among other attractions, there are wood
+nymphs and water nymphs, to whom much of your time is devoted. As this
+is just the thing for your taste, I would not for worlds disturb you;
+but if you should ever tear yourself away from the groves and fountains
+of Allington, we shall be delighted to welcome you here, though you
+will find us very unromantic after your late Elysium.
+
+Lady Dumbello is coming to us, who I know is a favourite of yours. Or
+is it the other way, and are you a favourite of hers? I did ask Lady
+Hartletop, but she cannot get away from the poor marquis, who is, you
+know, so very infirm. The duke isn't at Gatherum at present, but, of
+course, I don't mean that that has anything to do with dear Lady
+Hartletop coming to us. I believe we shall have the house full, and
+shall not want for nymphs either, though I fear they will not be of the
+wood and water kind. Margaretta and Alexandrina particularly want you
+to come, as they say you are so clever at making a houseful of people
+go off well. If you can give us a week before you go back to manage the
+affairs of the nation, pray do.--Yours very sincerely,
+
+                            Rosina de Courcy.
+
+The Countess de Courcy was a very old friend of Mr Crosbie's; that is
+to say, as old friends go in the world in which he had been living. He
+had known her for the last six or seven years, and had been in the
+habit of going to all her London balls, and dancing with her daughters
+everywhere, in a most good-natured and affable way. He had been
+intimate, from old family relations, with Mr Mortimer Gazebee, who,
+though only an attorney of the more distinguished kind, had married the
+countess's eldest daughter, and now sat in Parliament for the city of
+Barchester, near to which Courcy Castle was situated. And, to tell the
+truth honestly at once, Mr Crosbie had been on terms of great
+friendship with Lady de Courcy's daughters, the Ladies Margaretta and
+Alexandrina--perhaps especially so with the latter, though I would not
+have my readers suppose by my saying so that anything more tender than
+friendship had ever existed between them.
+
+Crosbie said nothing about the letter on that morning; but during the
+day, or, perhaps, as he thought over the matter in bed, he made up his
+mind that he would accept Lady de Courcy's invitation. It was not only
+that he would be glad to see the Gazebees, or glad to stay in the same
+house with that great master in the high art of fashionable life, Lady
+Dumbello, or glad to renew his friendship with the Ladies Margaretta
+and Alexandrina. Had he felt that the circumstances of his engagement
+with Lily made it expedient for him to stay with her till the end of
+his holidays, he could have thrown over the De Courcys without a
+struggle. But he told himself that it would be well for him now to tear
+himself away from Lily; or perhaps he said that it would be well for
+Lily that he should be torn away. He must not teach her to think that
+they were to live only in the sunlight of each other's eyes during those
+months, or perhaps years, which might elapse before their engagement
+could be carried out. Nor must he allow her to suppose that either he or
+she were to depend solely upon the other for the amusements and
+employments of life. In this way he argued the matter very sensibly
+within his own mind, and resolved, without much difficulty, that he
+would go to Courcy Castle, and bask for a week in the sunlight of the
+fashion which would he collected there. The quiet humdrum of his own
+fireside would come upon him soon enough!
+
+"I think I shall leave you on Wednesday, sir," Crosbie said to the
+squire at breakfast on Sunday morning.
+
+"Leave us on Wednesday!" said the squire, who had an old-fashioned idea
+that people who were engaged to marry each other should remain together
+as long as circumstances could be made to admit of their doing so.
+"Nothing wrong, is there?"
+
+"Oh, dear, no! But everything must come to an end some day; and as I
+must make one or two short visits before I get back to town, I might as
+well go on Wednesday. Indeed, I have made it as late as I possibly
+could."
+
+"Where do you go from here?" asked Bernard.
+
+"Well, as it happens, only into the next county--to Courcy Castle." And
+then there was nothing more said about the matter at that
+breakfast-table.
+
+It had become their habit to meet together on the Sunday mornings
+before church, on the lawn belonging to the Small House, and on this
+day the three gentlemen walked down together, and found Lily and Bell
+already waiting for them. They generally had some few minutes to spare
+on those occasions before Mrs Dale summoned them to pass through the
+house to church, and such was the case at present. The squire at these
+times would stand in the middle of the grass-plot, surveying his
+grounds, and taking stock of the shrubs, and flowers, and fruit-trees
+round him; for he never forgot that it was all his own, and would thus
+use this opportunity, as he seldom came down to see the spot on other
+days. Mrs Dale, as she would see him from her own window while she was
+tying on her bonnet, would feel that she knew what was passing through
+his mind, and would regret that circumstances had forced her to be
+beholden to him for such assistance. But, in truth, she did not know
+all that he thought at such times. "It is mine," he would say to
+himself, as he looked around on the pleasant place.
+
+"But it is well for me that they should enjoy it. She is my brother's
+widow, and she is welcome--very welcome," I think that if those two
+persons had known more than they did of each other's hearts and minds
+they might have loved each other better.
+
+And then Crosbie told Lily of his intention, "On Wednesday!" she said,
+turning almost pale with emotion as she heard this news. He had told
+her abruptly, not thinking, probably, that such tidings would affect
+her so strongly.
+
+"Well, yes. I have written to Lady de Courcy and said Wednesday. It
+wouldn't do for me exactly to drop everybody, and perhaps--"
+
+"Oh, no! And, Adolphus, you don't suppose I begrudge your going. Only
+it does seem so sudden; does it not?"
+
+"You see, I've been here over six weeks."
+
+"Yes; you've been very good. When I think of it, what a six weeks it
+has been! I wonder whether the difference seems to you as great as it
+does to me. I've left off being a grub, and begun to be a butterfly."
+
+"But you mustn't be a butterfly when you're married, Lily."
+
+"No; not in that sense. But I meant that my real position in the
+world--that for which I would fain hope that I was created--opened to me
+only when I knew you and knew that you loved me. But mamma is calling
+us, and we must go through to church. Going on Wednesday! There are
+only three days more, then!"
+
+"Yes, just three days," he said, as he took her on his arm and passed
+through the house on to the road.
+
+"And when are we to see you again?" she asked, as they reached the
+churchyard.
+
+"Ah, who is to say that yet? We must ask the Chairman of Committees
+when he will let me go again." Then there was nothing more said, and
+they all followed the squire through the little porch and up to the big
+family--pew in which they all sat. Here the squire took his place in one
+special corner which he had occupied ever since his father's death, and
+from which he read the responses loudly and plainly--so loudly and
+plainly, that the parish clerk could by no means equal him, though with
+tremulous voice he still made the attempt. "T' squire'd like to be
+squire, and parson, and clerk, and everything; so a would," the poor
+clerk would say, when complaining of the ill-usage which he suffered.
+
+If Lily's prayers were interrupted by her new sorrow, I think that her
+fault in that respect would be forgiven. Of course she had known that
+Crosbie was not going to remain at Allington much longer. She knew
+quite as well as he did the exact day on which his leave of absence
+came to its end, and the hour at which it behoved him to walk into his
+room at the General Committee Office. She had taught herself to think
+that he would remain with them up to the end of his vacation, and now
+she felt as a schoolboy would feel who was told suddenly, a day or two
+before the time, that the last week of his holidays was to be taken
+from him. The grievance would have been slight had she known it from
+the first; but what schoolboy could stand such a shock, when the loss
+amounted to two-thirds of his remaining wealth? Lily did not blame her
+lover. She did not even think that he ought to stay. She would not
+allow herself to suppose that he could propose anything that was
+unkind. But she felt her loss, and more than once, as she knelt at her
+prayers, she wiped a hidden tear from her eyes.
+
+Crosbie also was thinking of his departure more than he should have
+done during Mr Boyce's sermon. "It's easy listening to him," Mrs Hearn
+used to say of her husband's successor. "It don't give one much trouble
+following him into his arguments." Mr Crosbie perhaps found the
+difficulty greater than did Mrs Hearn, and would have devoted his mind
+more perfectly to the discourse had the argument been deeper. It is
+very hard, that necessity of listening to a man who says nothing. On
+this occasion Crosbie ignored the necessity altogether, and gave up his
+mind to the consideration of what it might he expedient that he should
+say to Lily before he went. He remembered well those few words which he
+had spoken in the first ardour of his love, pleading that an early day
+might be fixed for their marriage. And he remembered, also, how
+prettily Lily had yielded to him. "Only do not let it be too soon," she
+had said. Now he must unsay what he had then said, he must plead
+against his own pleadings, and explain to her that he desired to
+postpone the marriage rather than to hasten it--a task which, I presume,
+must always be an unpleasant one for any man engaged to be married. "I
+might as well do it at once," he said to himself, as he bobbed his head
+forward into his hands by way of returning thanks fur the termination
+of Mr Boyce's sermon.
+
+As he had only three days left, it was certainly as well that he should
+do this at once. Seeing that Lily had no fortune, she could not in
+justice complain of a prolonged engagement. That was the argument which
+he used in his own mind. But he as often told himself that she would
+have very great ground of complaint if she were left for a day
+unnecessarily in doubt as to this matter. Why had he rashly spoken
+those hasty words to her in his love, betraying himself into all manner
+of scrapes, as a schoolboy might do, or such a one as Johnny Eames?
+What an ass he had been not to have remembered himself and to have been
+collected--not to have bethought himself on the occasion of all that
+might be due to Adolphus Crosbie! And then the idea came upon him
+whether he had not altogether made himself an ass in this matter. And
+as he gave his arm to Lily outside the church-door, he shrugged his
+shoulders while making that reflection. "It is too late now," he said
+to himself; and than turned round and made some sweet little loving
+speech to her. Adolphus Crosbie was a clever man; and he meant also to
+be a true man--if only the temptations to falsehood might not be too
+great for him.
+
+"Lily" he said to her, "will you walk in the fields after lunch?"
+
+Walk in the fields with him! Of course she would. There were only three
+days left, and would she not give up to him every moment of her time,
+if he would accept of all her moments? And then they lunched at the
+Small House, Mrs Dale having promised to join the dinner-party at the
+squire's table, The squire did not eat any lunch, excusing himself on
+the plea that lunch in itself was a bad thing "He can eat lunch at his
+own house," Mrs Dale afterwards said to Bell. "And I've often seen him
+take a glass of sherry." While thinking of this. Mrs Dale made her own
+dinner. If her brother-in-law would not eat at her board, neither would
+she eat at his.
+
+And then in a few minutes Lily had on her hat, in place of that
+decorous, church-going bonnet which Crosbie was wont to abuse with a
+lover's privilege, feeling well assured that he might say what he liked
+of the bonnet as long as he would praise the hat. "Only three days,"
+she said, as she walked down with him across the lawn at a quick pace.
+But she said it in a voice which made no complaint--which seemed to say
+simply this--that as the good time was to be so short, they must make
+the most of it. And what compliment could be paid to a man so sweet as
+that? What flattery could be more gratifying? All my earthly heaven is
+with you; and now, for the delight of these immediately present months
+or so, there are left to me but three days of this heaven! Come, then I
+will make the most of what happiness is given to me. Crosbie felt it
+all as she felt it, and recognised the extent of the debt he owed her.
+"I'll come down to them for a day at Christmas, though it be only for a
+day," he said to himself. Then he reflected that as such was his
+intention, it might be well for him to open his present conversation
+with a promise to that effect.
+
+"Yes, Lily; there are only three days left now. But I wonder whether--I
+suppose you'll all be at home at Christmas?"
+
+"At home at Christmas?--of course we shall be at home. You don't mean to
+say you'll come to us!"
+
+"Well; I think I will, if you'll have me,"
+
+"Oh! that will make such a difference. Let me see. That will only be
+three months. And to have you here on Christmas Day! I would sooner
+have you then than on any other day in the year."
+
+"It will only be for one day, Lily. I shall come to dinner on Christmas
+Eve, and must go away the day after."
+
+"But you will come direct to our house!"
+
+"If you can spare me a room."
+
+"Of course we can. So we could now. Only when you came, you know--"
+
+"When I came, I was the squire's friend and your cousin's rather than
+yours. But that's all changed now."
+
+"Yes; you're my friend now--mine specially. I'm to be now and always
+your own special, dearest friend--eh, Adolphus?" And thus she exacted
+from him the repetition of the promise which he had so often given her.
+
+By this time they had passed through the grounds of the Great House and
+were in the fields. "Lily," said he, speaking rather suddenly, and
+making her feel by his manner that something of importance was to be
+said; "I want to say a few words to you about--business." And he gave a
+little laugh as he spoke the last word, making her fully understand
+that he was not quite at his ease.
+
+"Of course I'll listen. And, Adolphus, pray don't be afraid about me.
+What I mean is, don't think that I can't bear cares and troubles. I can
+bear anything as long as you love me. I say that because I'm afraid I
+seemed to complain about your going. I didn't mean to."
+
+"I never thought you complained, dearest. Nothing can be better than
+you are at all times and in every year. A man would be very hard to
+please if you didn't please him."
+
+"If I can only please you--"
+
+"You do please me in everything. Dear Lily, I think I found an angel
+when I found you. But now about this business Perhaps I'd better tell
+you everything."
+
+"Oh, yes, tell me everything."
+
+"But then you mustn't misunderstand me. And if I talk about money, you
+mustn't suppose that it has anything to do with my love for you."
+
+"I wish for your sake that I wasn't such a little pauper."
+
+"What I mean to say is this, that if I seem to be anxious about money,
+you must not suppose that that anxiety hears any reference whatever to
+my affection for you. I should love you just the same, and look forward
+just as much to my happiness in marrying you, whether you were rich or
+poor. You understand that?"
+
+She did not quite understand him; but she merely pressed his arm, so as
+to encourage him to go on. She presumed that he intended to tell her
+something as to their future mode of life--something which he supposed
+it might not be pleasant for her to hear, and she was determined to
+show him that she would receive it pleasantly.
+
+"You know" said he, "how anxious I have been that our marriage should
+not be delayed. To me, of course, it must be everything now to call you
+my own as soon as possible." In answer to which little declaration of
+love, she merely pressed his arm again, the subject being one on which
+she had not herself much to say.
+
+"Of course I must be very anxious, but I find it not so easy as I
+expected."
+
+"You know what I said, Adolphus. I said that I thought we had better
+wait. I'm sure mamma thinks so. And if we can only see you now and
+then--"
+
+"That will he a matter of course. But, as I was saying--Let me see.
+Yes--all that waiting will be intolerable to me. It is such a bore for a
+man when he has made up his mind on such a matter as marriage, not to
+make the change at once, especially when he is going to take to himself
+such a little angel as you are," and as he spoke these loving words,
+his arm was again put round her waist;" but--and then he stopped. He
+wanted to make her understand that this change of intention on his part
+was caused by the unexpected misconduct of her uncle. He desired that
+she should know exactly how the matter stood; that he had been led to
+suppose that her uncle would give her some small fortune, that he had
+seen disappointed, and had a right to feel the disappointment keenly;
+and that in consequence of this blow to his expectations, he must put
+off his marriage. But he wished her also to understand at the same time
+that this did not in the least mar his love for her; that he did not
+join her at all in her uncle's fault. All this he was anxious to convey
+to her, but he did not know how to get it said in a manner that would
+not be offensive to her personally, and that should not appear to
+accuse himself of sordid motives. He had begun by declaring that he
+would tell her all; but sometimes it is not easy, that task of telling
+a person everything, There are things which will not get themselves
+told.
+
+"You mean, dearest," said she, "that you cannot afford to marry at
+once."
+
+"Yes; that is it. I had expected that I should be able, but--"
+
+Did any man in love ever yet find himself able to tell the lady whom he
+loved that he was very much disappointed on discovering that she had
+got no money? If so, his courage, I should say, was greater than his
+love. Crosbie found himself unable to do it, and thought himself
+cruelly used because of the difficulty. The delay to which he intended
+to subject her was occasioned, as he felt, by the squire, and not by
+himself. He was ready to do his part, if only the squire had been
+willing to do the part which properly belonged to him. The squire would
+not; and, therefore, neither could he--not as yet. Justice demanded that
+all this should be understood but when he came to the telling of it, he
+found that the story would not form itself properly. He must let the
+thing go, and bear the injustice, consoling himself as best he might by
+the reflection that he at least was behaving well in the matter.
+
+"It won't make me unhappy, Adolphus."
+
+"Will it not?" said he. "As regards myself, I own that I cannot bear
+the delay with so much indifference."
+
+"Nay, my love; but you should not misunderstand me," she said, stopping
+and facing him on the path in which they were walking. "I suppose I
+ought to protest, according to the common rules, that I would rather
+wait. Young ladies are expected to say so. If you were pressing me to
+marry at once, I should say so, no doubt. But now, as it is, I will be
+more honest. I have only one wish in the world, and that is, to be your
+wife--to be able to share everything with you. The sooner we can be
+together the better it will be--at any rate, for me. There; will that
+satisfy you?"
+
+"My own, own Lily!"
+
+"Yes, your own Lily, You shall have no cause to doubt me, dearest. But
+I do not expect that I am to have everything exactly as I want it. I
+say again, that I shall not be unhappy in waiting. How can I be unhappy
+while I feel certain of your love? I was disappointed just now when you
+said that you were going so soon; and I am afraid I showed it. But
+those little things are more unendurable than the big things."
+
+"Yes; that's very true."
+
+"But there are three more days, and I mean to enjoy them so much! And
+then you will write to me: and you will come at Christmas. And next
+year, when you have your holiday, you will come down to us again; will
+you not?
+
+"You may be quite sure of that."
+
+"And so the time will go by till it suits you to come and take me. I
+shall not be unhappy."
+
+"I, at any rate, shall be impatient."
+
+"Ah, men always are impatient. It is one of their privileges, I
+suppose. And I don't think that a man ever has the same positive and
+complete satisfaction in knowing that he is loved, which a girl feels.
+You are my bird that I have shot with my own gun; and the assurance of
+my success is sufficient for my happiness."
+
+"You have bowled me over, and know that I can't get up again."
+
+"I don't know about can't. I would let you up quick enough, if you
+wished it."
+
+How he made his loving assurance that he did not wish it, never would
+or could wish it, the reader will readily understand. And then he
+considered that he might as well leave all those money questions as
+they now stood. His real object had been to convince her that their
+joint circumstances did not admit of an immediate marriage; and as to
+that she completely understood him. Perhaps, during the next three
+days, some opportunity might arise for explaining the whole matter to
+Mrs Dale. At any rate, he had declared his own purpose honestly, and no
+one could complain of him.
+
+On the following day they all rode over to Guestwick together--the all
+consisting of the two girls, with Bernard and Crosbie. Their object was
+to pay two visits--one to their very noble and highly exalted ally, the
+Lady Julia de Guest: and the other to their humbler and better known
+friend, Mrs Eames. As Guestwick Manor lay on their road into the town,
+they performed the grander ceremony the first. The present Earl de
+Guest, brother of that Lady Fanny who ran away with Major Dale, was an
+unmarried nobleman, who devoted himself chiefly to the breeding of
+cattle. And as he bred very good cattle, taking infinite satisfaction
+in the employment, devoting all his energies thereto, and abstaining
+from all prominently evil courses, it should be acknowledged that he
+was not a bad member of society. He was a thorough-going old Tory,
+whose proxy was always in the hand of the leader of his party; and who
+seldom himself went near the metropolis, unless called thither by some
+occasion of cattle-showing. He was a short, stumpy man, with red cheeks
+and a round face; who was usually to be seen till dinner-time dressed
+in a very old shooting coat, with breeches, gaiters, and very thick
+shoes. He lived generally out of doors, and was almost as great in the
+preserving of game as in the breeding of oxen, he knew every acre of
+his own estate, and every tree upon it, as thoroughly as a lady knows
+the ornaments in her drawing-room. There was no gap in a fence of which
+he did not remember the exact bearings, no path hither or thither as to
+which he could not tell the why and the wherefore. He had been in his
+earlier years a poor man as regarded his income--very poor, seeing that
+he was an earl. But he was not at present by any means an impoverished
+man, having been taught a lesson by the miseries of his father and
+grandfather, and having learned to live within his means. Now, as he
+was going down the vale of years, men said that he was becoming rich,
+and that he had ready money to spend--a position in which no Lord de
+Guest had found himself for many generations back. His father and
+grandfather had been known as spend-thrifts; and now men said that this
+earl was a miser.
+
+There was not much of nobility in his appearance; but they greatly
+mistook Lord de Guest who conceived that on that account his pride of
+place was not dear to his soul. His peerage dated back to the time of
+King John, and there were but three lords in England whose patents had
+been conferred before his own. He knew what privileges were due to him
+on behalf of his blood, and was not disposed to abate one jot of them.
+He was not loud in demanding them. As he went through the world he sent
+no trumpeters to the right or left, proclaiming that the Earl de Guest
+was coming. When he spread his board for his friends, which he did but
+on rare occasions, he entertained them simply with a mild, tedious,
+old-fashioned courtesy. We may say that, if properly treated, the earl
+never walked over anybody. But he could, if ill-treated, be grandly
+indignant; and if attacked, could hold his own against all the world.
+He knew himself to be every inch an earl, pottering about after his
+oxen with his muddy gaiters and red cheeks, as much as though he were
+glittering with stars in courtly royal ceremonies among his peers at
+Westminster--ay, more an earl than any of those who use their nobility
+for pageant purposes. Woe be to him who should mistake that old coat
+for a badge of rural degradation! Now and again some unlucky wight did
+make such a mistake, and had to do his penance very uncomfortably.
+
+With the earl lived a maiden sister, the Lady Julia. Bernard Dale's
+father had, in early life, run away with one sister, but no suitor had
+been fortunate enough to induce the Lady Julia to run with him,
+Therefore she still lived, in maiden blessedness, as mistress of
+Guestwick Manor; and as such had no mean opinion of the high position
+which destiny had called upon her to fill. She was a tedious, dull,
+virtuous old woman, who gave herself infinite credit for having
+remained all her days in the home of her youth, probably forgetting, in
+her present advanced years, that her temptations to leave it had not
+been strong or numerous. She generally spoke of her sister Fanny with
+some little contempt, as though that poor lady had degraded herself in
+marrying a younger brother. She was as proud of her own position as was
+the earl her brother, but her pride was maintained with more of outward
+show and less of inward nobility. It was hardly enough for her that the
+world should know that she was a De Guest, and therefore she had
+assumed little pompous ways and certain airs of condescension which did
+not make her popular with her neighbours.
+
+The intercourse between Guestwick Manor and Allington was not very
+frequent or very cordial. Soon after the running away of the Lady
+Fanny, the two families had agreed to acknowledge their connection with
+each other, and to let it be known by the world that they were on
+friendly terms. Either that course was necessary to them, or the other
+course, of letting it he known that they were enemies. Friendship was
+the less troublesome, and therefore the two families called on each
+other from time to time, and gave each other dinners about once a year.
+The earl regarded the squire as a man who had deserted his politics,
+and had thereby forfeited the respect due to him as an hereditary land
+magnate; and the squire was wont to belittle the earl as one who
+understood nothing of the outer world. At Guestwick Manor Bernard was
+to some extent a favourite. He was actually a relative, having in his
+veins blood of the De Guests, and was not the less a favourite because
+he was the heir to Allington, and because the blood of the Dales was
+older even than that of the noble family to which he was allied. When
+Bernard should come to be the squire, then indeed there might be
+cordial relations between Guestwick Manor and Allington; unless,
+indeed, the earl's heir and the squire's heir should have some fresh
+cause of ill-will between themselves.
+
+They found Lady Julia sitting in her drawing-room alone, and introduced
+to her Mr Crosbie in due firm. The fact of Lily's engagement was of
+course known at the manor, and it was quite understood that her
+intended husband was now brought over that he might be looked at and
+approved. Lady Julia made a very elaborate curtsy, and expressed a hope
+that her young friend might be made happy in that sphere of life to
+which it had pleased God to call her.
+
+"I hope I shall, Lady Julia," said Lily, with a little laugh; "at any
+rate I mean to try"
+
+"We all try, my dear, but many of us fail to try with sufficient energy
+of purpose. It is only by doing our duty that we can hope to be happy,
+whether in single life or in married."
+
+"Miss Dale means to be a dragon of perfection in the performance of
+hers," said Crosbie.
+
+"A dragon!" said Lady Julia. "No; I hope Miss Lily Dale will never
+become a dragon." And then she turned to her nephew. It may be as well
+to say at once that she never forgave Mr Crosbie the freedom of the
+expression which he had used. He had been in the drawing-room of
+Guestwick Manor for two minutes only, and it did not become him to talk
+about dragons. "Bernard," she said," I heard from your mother
+yesterday. I am afraid she does not seem to be very strong." And then
+there was a little conversation, not very interesting in its nature,
+between the aunt and the nephew as to the general health of Lady Fanny.
+
+"I didn't know my aunt was so unwell" said Bell.
+
+"She isn't ill," said Bernard. "She never is ill; but then she is never
+well."
+
+"Your aunt," said Lady Julia, seeming to put a touch of sarcasm into
+the tone of her voice as she repeated the word--"
+
+"A very long time," said Crosbie, who was not accustomed to be left in
+his chair silent. "You, Dale, at any rate, can hardly remember it."
+
+"But I can remember it," said Lady Julia, gathering herself up. "I can
+remember when my sister Fanny was recognised as the beauty of the
+country. It is a dangerous gift, that of beauty."
+
+"Very dangerous," said Crosbie. Then Lily laughed again, and Lady Julia
+became more angry than ever. What odious man was this whom her
+neighbours were going to take into their very bosom! But she had heard
+of Mr Crosbie before, and Mr Crosbie also had heard of her.
+
+"By-the-by, Lady Julia," said he, "I think I know some very dear
+friends of yours."
+
+"Very dear friends is a very strong word. I have not many very dear
+friends."
+
+"I mean the Gazebees. I have heard Mortimer Gazebee and Lady Amelia
+speak of you."
+
+Whereupon Lady Julia confessed that she did know the Gazebees. Mr
+Gazebee, she said, was a man who in early life had wanted many
+advantages, but still he was a very estimable person. He was now in
+Parliament, and she understood that he was making himself useful. She
+had not quite approved of Lady Amelia's marriage at the time, and so
+she had told her very old friend Lady de Courcy; but"--And then Lady
+Julia said many words in praise of Mr Gazebee, which seemed to amount
+to this; that he was an excellent sort of man, with a full conviction
+of the too great honour done to him by the earl's daughter who had
+married him, and a complete consciousness that even that marriage had
+not put him on a par with his wife's relations, or even with his wife.
+And then it came out that Lady Julia in the course of the next week was
+going to meet the Gazebees at Courcy Castle.
+
+"I am delighted to think that I shall have the pleasure of seeing you
+there," said Crosbie.
+
+"Indeed!" said Lady Julia.
+
+"I am going to Courcy on Wednesday. That, I fear, will be too early to
+allow of my being of any service to your ladyship."
+
+Lady Julia drew herself up, and declined the escort which Mr Crosbie
+had seemed to offer. It grieved her to find that Lily Dale's future
+husband was an intimate friend of her friend's and it especially
+grieved her to find that he was now going to that friends house. It was
+a grief to her, and she showed that it was. It also grieved Crosbie to
+find that Lady Julia was to be a fellow guest with himself at Courcy
+Castle; but he did not show it. He expressed nothing but smiles and
+civil self-congratulation on the matter, pretending that he would have
+much delight in again meeting Lady Julia; but, in truth, he would have
+given much could he have invented any manoeuvre by which her ladyship
+might have been kept at home.
+
+"What a horrid old woman she is," said Lily, as they rode back down the
+avenue. "I beg your pardon, Bernard; for, of course, she is your aunt."
+
+"Yes; she is my aunt; and though I am not very fond of her, I deny that
+she is a horrid old woman. She never murdered anybody, or robbed
+anybody, or stole away any other woman's lover."
+
+"I should think not," said Lily.
+
+"She says her prayers earnestly, I have no doubt," continued Bernard,
+"and gives away money to the poor, and would sacrifice tomorrow any
+desire of her own to her brother's wish. I acknowledge that she is
+ugly, and pompous, and that, being a woman, she ought not to have such
+a long black beard on her upper lip."
+
+"I don't care a bit about her beard," said Lily. But why did she tell
+me to do my duty? I didn't go there to have a sermon preached to me."
+
+"And why did she talk about beauty being dangerous? said Bell." Of
+course, we all knew what she meant."
+
+"I didn't know at all what she meant," said Lily," and I don't know
+now."
+
+"I think she's a charming woman, and I shall be especially civil to her
+at Lady de Courcy's," said Crosbie.
+
+And in this way, saying hard things of the poor old spinster whom they
+had left, they made their way into Guestwick, and again dismounted at
+Mrs Eames's door.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+A VISIT TO GUESTWICK
+
+As the party from Allington rode up the narrow High Street of
+Guestwick, and across the market square towards the small, respectable,
+but very dull row of new houses in which Mrs Eames lived, the people of
+Guestwick were all aware that Miss Lily Dale was escorted by her future
+husband. The opinion that she had been a very fortunate girl was
+certainly general among the Guestwickians, though it was not always
+expressed in open or generous terms. "It was a great match for her,"
+some said, but shook their heads at the same time, hinting that Mr
+Crosbie's life in London was not all that it should be, and suggesting
+that she might have been more safe had she been content to bestow
+herself upon some country neighbour of less dangerous pretensions.
+Others declared that it was no such great match after all. They knew
+his income to a penny, and believed that the young people would find it
+very difficult to keep a house in London unless the old squire intended
+to assist them. But, nevertheless, Lily was envied as she rode through
+the town with her handsome lover by her side.
+
+And she was very happy. I will not deny that she had some feeling of
+triumphant satisfaction in the knowledge that she was envied. Such a
+feeling on her part was natural, and is natural to all men and women
+who are conscious that they have done well in the adjustment of their
+own affairs. As she herself had said, he was her bird, the spoil of her
+own gun, the product of such capacity as she had in her, on which she
+was to live, and, if possible, to thrive during the remainder of her
+life. Lily fully recognised the importance of the thing she was doing,
+and, in soberest guise, had thought much of this matter of marriage.
+But the more she thought of it the more satisfied she was that she was
+doing well. And yet she knew that there was a risk. He who was now
+everything to her might die; nay, it was possible that he might be
+other than she thought him to be; that he might neglect her, desert
+her, or misuse her. But she had resolved to trust in everything, and,
+having so trusted, she would not provide for herself any possibility of
+retreat. Her ship should go out into the middle ocean, beyond all ken
+of the secure port from which it had sailed; her army should fight its
+battle with no hope of other safety than that which victory gives. All
+the world might know that she loved him if all the world chose to
+inquire about the matter. She triumphed in her lover, and did not deny
+even to herself that she was triumphant.
+
+Mrs Eames was delighted to see them. It was so good in Mr Crosbie to
+come over and call upon such a poor, forlorn woman as her, and so good
+in Captain Dale; so good also in the dear girls, who, at the present
+moment, had so much to make them happy at home at Allington! Little
+things, accounted as bare civilities by others, were esteemed as great
+favours by Mrs Eames.
+
+"And dear Mrs Dale? I hope she was not fatigued when we kept her up the
+other night so unconscionably late?" Bell and Lily both assured her
+that their mother was none the worse for what she had gone through; and
+then Mrs Eames got up and left the room, with the declared purpose of
+looking for John and Mary, but bent, in truth, on the production of
+some cake and sweet wine which she kept under lock and key in the
+little parlour.
+
+"Don't let's stay here very long," whispered Crosbie.
+
+"No, not very long," said Lily. "But when you come to see my friends
+you mustn't be in a hurry, Mr Crosbie."
+
+"He had his turn with Lady Julia," said Bell "and we must have ours
+now."
+
+"At any rate, Mrs Eames won't tell us to do our duty and to beware of
+being too beautiful," said Lily.
+
+Mary and John came into the room before their mother returned; then
+came Mrs Eames, and a few minutes afterwards the cake and wine arrived.
+It certainly was rather dull, as none of the party seemed to be at
+their ease. The grandeur of Mr Crosbie was too great for Mrs Eames and
+her daughter, and John was almost silenced by the misery of his
+position. He had not yet answered Miss Roper's letter, nor had he even
+made up his mind whether he would answer it or no. And then the sight
+of Lily's happiness did not fill him with all that friendly joy which
+he should perhaps have felt as the friend of her childhood. To tell the
+truth, he hated Crosbie, and so he had told himself; and had so told
+his sister also very frequently since the day of the party.
+
+"I tell you what it is, Molly," he had said, "if there was any way of
+doing it, I'd fight that man."
+
+"What; and make Lily wretched?"
+
+"She'll never be happy with him. I'm sure she won't. I don't want to do
+her any harm, but yet I'd like to fight that man--if I only knew how to
+manage it."
+
+And then he bethought himself that if they could both be slaughtered in
+such an encounter it would be the only fitting termination to the
+present state of things. In that way, too, there would be an escape
+from Amelia, and, at the present moment, he saw none other.
+
+When he entered the room he shook hands with all the party from
+Allington, but, as he told his sister afterwards, his flesh crept when
+he touched Crosbie. Crosbie, as he contemplated the Eames family
+sitting stiff and ill at ease in their own drawing-room chairs, made up
+his mind that it would be well that his wife should see as little of
+John Eames as might be when she came to London--not that he was in any
+way jealous of her lover. He had learned everything from Lily--all, at
+least, that Lily knew--and regarded the matter rather as a good joke.
+
+"Don't see him too often," he had said to her, "for fear he should make
+an ass of himself." Lily had told him everything--all that she could
+tell; but yet he did not in the least comprehend that Lily had, in
+truth, a warm affection for the young man whom he despised.
+
+"Thank you, no," said Crosbie." I never do take wine in the middle of
+the day."
+
+"But a bit of cake?" And Mrs Eames by her look implored him to do her
+so much honour. She implored Captain Dale, also, but they were both
+inexorable. I do not know that the two girls were at all more inclined
+to eat and drink than the two men; but they understood that Mrs Eames
+would be brokenhearted if no one partook of her delicacies. The little
+sacrifices of society are all made by women, as are also the great
+sacrifices of life. A man who is good for anything is always ready for
+his duty, and so is a good woman always ready for a sacrifice.
+
+"We really must go now," said Bell, "because of the horses." And under
+this excuse they got away.
+
+"You will come over before you go back to London, John?" said Lily, as
+he came out with the intention of helping her mount, from which
+purpose, however, he was forced to recede by the iron will of Mr
+Crosbie.
+
+"Yes, I'll come over again--before I go. Good-bye."
+
+"Good-bye, John," said Bell. "Good-bye, Eames," said Captain Dale.
+Crosbie, as he seated himself in the saddle, made the very slightest
+sign of recognition, to which his rival would not condescend to pay any
+attention. "I'll manage to have a fight with him in some way," said
+Eames to himself as he walked back through the passage of his mother's
+house. And Crosbie, as he settled his feet in the stirrups, felt that
+he disliked the young man more and more. It would be monstrous to
+suppose that there could be aught of jealousy in the feeling; and yet
+he did dislike him very strongly, and felt almost angry with Lily for
+asking him to come again to Allington. "I must put an end to all that,"
+he said to himself as he rode silently out of town.
+
+"You must not snub my friends, sir," said Lily, smiling as she spoke,
+but yet with something of earnestness in her voice. They were out of
+the town by this time, and Crosbie had hardly uttered a word since they
+had left Mrs Eames's door. They were now on the high road, and Bell and
+Bernard Dale were somewhat in advance of them.
+
+"I never snub anybody," said Crosbie, petulantly; "that is unless they
+have absolutely deserved snubbing."
+
+"And have I deserved it? Because I seem to have got it," said Lily.
+
+"Nonsense, Lily. I never snubbed you yet, and I don't think it likely
+that I shall begin. But you ought not to accuse me of not being civil
+to your friends. In the first place I am as civil to them as my nature
+will allow me to be. And, in the second place--"
+
+"Well; in the second place--?
+
+"I am not quite sure that you are very wise to encourage that young
+man's friendship just at present."
+
+"That means, I suppose, that I am very wrong to do so?"
+
+"No, dearest, it does not mean that. If I meant so I would tell you so
+honestly. I mean just what I say. There can, I suppose, be no doubt
+that he has filled himself with some kind of romantic attachment for
+you--a foolish kind of love which I don't suppose he ever expected to
+gratify, but the idea of which lends a sort of grace to his life. When
+he meets some young woman fit to be his wife he will forget all about
+it, but till then he will go about fancying himself a despairing lover.
+And then such a young man as John Eames is very apt to talk of his
+fancies."
+
+"I don't believe for a moment that he would mention my name to any one."
+
+"But, Lily, perhaps I may know more of young men than you do."
+
+"Yes, of course you do."
+
+"And I can assure you that they are generally too well inclined to make
+free with the names of girls whom they think that they like. You must
+not be surprised if I am unwilling that any man should make free with
+your name."
+
+After this Lily was silent for a minute or two. She felt that an
+injustice was being done to her and she was not inclined to put up with
+it, but she could not quite see where the injustice lay. A great deal
+was owing from her to Crosbie. In very much she was bound to yield to
+him, and she was anxious to do on his behalf even more than her duty.
+But yet she had a strong conviction that it would not be well that she
+should give way to him in everything. She wished to think as he thought
+as far as possible, but she could not say that she agreed with him when
+she knew that she differed from him. John Eames was an old friend whom
+she could not abandon, and so much at the present time she felt herself
+obliged to say.
+
+"But, Adolphus--"
+
+"Well, dearest?
+
+"You would not wish me to be unkind to so very old a friend as John
+Eames? I have known him all my life, and we have all of us had a very
+great regard for the whole family. His father was my uncle's most
+particular friend."
+
+"I think, Lily, you must understand what I mean. I don't want you to
+quarrel with any of them, or to be what you call unkind. But you need
+not give special and pressing invitations to this young man to come and
+see you before he goes back to London, and then to come and see you
+directly you get to London. You tell me that he had some kind of
+romantic idea of being in love with you--of being in despair because you
+are not in love with him. It's all great nonsense, no doubt, but it
+seems to me that under such circumstances you'd better--just leave him
+alone."
+
+Again Lily was silent. These were her three last days, in which it was
+her intention to be especially happy, but above all things to make him
+especially happy. On no account would she say to him sharp words, or
+encourage in her own heart a feeling of animosity against him, and yet
+she believed him to be wrong; and so believing could hardly bring
+herself to bear the injury. Such was her nature, as a Dale. And let it
+be remembered that very many who can devote themselves for great
+sacrifices, cannot bring themselves to the endurance of little
+injuries. Lily could have given up any gratification for her lover, but
+she could not allow herself to have been in the wrong, believing
+herself to have been in the right.
+
+"I have asked him now, and he must come," she said.
+
+"But do not press him to come any more."
+
+"Certainly not, after what you have said, Adolphus. If he comes over to
+Allington, he will see me in mamma's house, to which he has always been
+made welcome by her. Of course I understand perfectly--"
+
+"You understand what, Lily?"
+
+But she had stopped herself, fearing that she might say that which
+would be offensive to him if she continued.
+
+"What is it you understand, Lily?"
+
+"Do not press me to go on, Adolphus. As far as I can, I will do all
+that you want me to do."
+
+"You meant to say that when you find yourself an inmate of my house, as
+a matter of course you could not ask your own friends to come and see
+you. Was that gracious?"
+
+"Whatever I may have meant to say, I did not say that. Nor in truth did
+I mean it. Pray don't go on about it now. These are to be our last
+days, you know, and we shouldn't waste them by talking of things that
+are unpleasant. After all poor Johnny Eames is nothing to me; nothing,
+nothing. How can any one be anything to me when I think of you?"
+
+But even this did not bring Crosbie back at once into a pleasant
+humour. Had Lily yielded to him and confessed that he was right, he
+would have made himself at once as pleasant as the sun in May. But this
+she had not done. She had simply abstained from her argument because
+she did not choose to be vexed, and had declared her continued purpose
+of seeing Eames on his promised visit. Crosbie would have had her
+acknowledge herself wrong, and would have delighted in the privilege of
+forgiving her. But Lily Dale was one who did not greatly relish
+forgiveness, or any necessity of being forgiven. So they rode on, if
+not in silence, without much joy in their conversation. It was now late
+on the Monday afternoon, and Crosbie was to go early on the Wednesday
+morning. What if these three last days should come to be marred with
+such terrible drawbacks as these!
+
+Bernard Dale had not spoken a word to his cousin of his suit, since
+they had been interrupted by Crosbie and Lily as they were lying on the
+bank by the ha-ha. He had danced with her again and again at Mrs Dale's
+party, and had seemed to revert to his old modes of conversation
+without difficulty. Bell, therefore, had believed the matter to be
+over, and was thankful to her cousin, declaring within her own bosom
+that the whole matter should be treated by her as though it had never
+happened. To no one--not even to her mother, would she tell it. To such
+reticence she bound herself for his sake, feeling that he would be best
+pleased that it should be so. But now as they rode on together, far in
+advance of the other couple, he again returned to the subject.
+
+"Bell," said he," am I to have any hope?
+
+"Any hope as to what, Bernard?
+
+"I hardly know whether a man is bound to take a single answer on such a
+subject. But this I know, that if a man's heart is concerned, he is not
+very willing to do so."
+
+"When that answer has been given honestly and truly--"
+
+"Oh, no doubt. I don't at all suppose that you were dishonest or false
+when you refused to allow me to speak to you."
+
+"But, Bernard, I did not refuse to allow you to speak to me."
+
+"Something very like it. But, however, I have no doubt you were true
+enough. But, Bell, why should it be so? If you were in love with any
+one else I could understand it."
+
+"I am not in love with any one else."
+
+"Exactly. And there are so many reasons why you, and I should join our
+fortunes together."
+
+"It cannot be a question of fortune, Bernard."
+
+"Do listen to me. Do let me speak, at any rate. I presume I may at
+least suppose that you do not dislike me."
+
+"Oh, no."
+
+"And though you might not be willing to accept any man's hand merely on
+a question of fortune, surely the fact that our marriage would be in
+every way suitable as regards money should not set you against it. Of
+my own love for you I will not speak further, as I do not doubt that
+you believe what I say; but should you not question your own feelings
+very closely before you determine to oppose the wishes of all those who
+are nearest to you?"
+
+"Do you mean mamma, Bernard?"
+
+"Not her especially, though I cannot but think she would like a
+marriage that would keep all the family together, and would give you an
+equal claim to the property to that which I have."
+
+"That would not have a feather's-weight with mamma."
+
+"Have you asked her?"
+
+"No, I have mentioned the matter to no one."
+
+"Then you cannot know. And as to my uncle, I have the means of knowing
+that it is the great desire of his life. I must say that I think some
+consideration for him should induce you to pause before you give a
+final answer, even though no consideration for me should have any
+weight with you."
+
+"I would do more for you than for him--much more."
+
+"Then do this for me, Allow me to think that I have not yet had an
+answer to my proposal; give me to this day month, to Christmas; till
+any time that you like to name, so that I may think that it is not yet
+settled, and may tell Uncle Christopher that such is the case."
+
+"Bernard, it would he useless."
+
+"It would at any rate show him that you are willing to think of it."
+
+"But I am not willing to think of it--not in that way. I do know my own
+mind thoroughly, and I should be very wrong if I were to deceive you."
+
+"And you wish me to give that as your only answer to my uncle?"
+
+"To tell the truth, Bernard, I do not much care what you may say to my
+uncle in this matter. He can have no right to interfere in the disposal
+of my hand, and therefore I need not regard his wishes on the subject.
+I will explain to you in one word what my feelings are about it. I
+would accept no man in opposition to mamma's wishes; but not even for
+her could I accept any man in opposition to my own. But as concerns my
+uncle, I do not feel myself called on to consult him in any way on such
+a matter."
+
+"And yet he is the head of our family."
+
+"I don't care anything about the family.--not in that way."
+
+"And he has been very generous to you all."
+
+"That I deny. He has not been generous to mamma. He is very hard and
+ungenerous to mamma. He lets her have that house because he is anxious
+that the Dales should seem to be respectable before the world; and she
+lives in it, because she thinks it better for us that she should do so.
+If I had my way, she should leave it tomorrow--or, at any rate, as soon
+as Lily is married. I would much sooner go into Guestwick, and live as
+the Eames do."
+
+"I think you are ungrateful, Bell."
+
+"No; I am not ungrateful. And as to consulting; Bernard--I should be
+much more inclined to consult you than him about my marriage. If you
+would let me look on you altogether as a brother, I should think little
+of promising to marry no one whom you did not approve."
+
+But such an agreement between them would by no means have suited
+Bernard's views. He had thought, some four or five weeks back, that he
+was not personally very anxious for this match. He had declared to
+himself that he liked his cousin well enough; that it would be a good
+thing for him to settle himself; that his uncle was reasonable in his
+wishes and sufficiently liberal in his offers; and that, therefore, he
+would marry. It had hardly occurred to him as probable that his cousin
+would reject so eligible an offer, and had certainly never occurred to
+him that he would have to suffer anything from such rejection. He had
+entertained none of that feeling of which lovers speak when they
+declare that they are staking their all upon the hazard of a die, It
+had not seemed to him that he was staking anything, as he gently told
+his tale of languid love, lying on the turf by the ha-ha. He had not
+regarded the possibility of disappointment, of sorrow, and of a
+deeply-vexed mind. He would have felt but little triumph if accepted,
+and had not thought that he could be humiliated by any rejection. In
+this frame of mind he had gone to his work; but now he found, to his
+own surprise, that this girl's answer had made him absolutely unhappy.
+Having expressed a wish for this thing, the very expression of the wish
+made him long to possess it. He found, as he rode along silently by her
+side, that he was capable of more earnestness of desire than he had
+known himself to possess. He was at this moment unhappy, disappointed,
+anxious, distrustful of the future, and more intent on one special toy
+than he had ever been before, even as a boy. He was vexed, and felt
+himself to be sore at heart. He looked round at her, as she sat silent,
+quiet, and somewhat sad upon her pony, and declared to himself that she
+was very beautiful--that she was a thing to be gained if still there
+might he the possibility of gaining her. He felt that he really loved
+her, and yet he was almost angry with himself for so feeling. Why had
+he subjected himself to this numbing weakness? His love had never given
+him any pleasure. Indeed he had never hitherto acknowledged it; but now
+he was driven to do so on finding it to be the source of trouble and
+pain. I think it is open to us to doubt whether, even yet, Bernard Dale
+was in love with his cousin; whether he was not rather in love with his
+own desire. But against himself he found a verdict that he was in love,
+and was angry with himself and with all the world.
+
+"Ah, Bell," he said, coming close up to her, "I wish you could
+understand how I love you." And, as he spoke, his cousin unconsciously
+recognised more of affection in his tone, and less of that spirit of
+bargaining which had seemed to pervade all his former pleas, than she
+had ever found before.
+
+"And do I not love you? Have I not offered to be to you in all respects
+as a sister?"
+
+"That is nothing. Such an offer to me now is simply laughing at me.
+Bell, I tell you what--I will not give you up. The fact is, you do not
+know me yet--not know me as you must know any man before you choose him
+for your husband. You and Lily are not alike in this. You are cautious,
+doubtful of yourself, and perhaps, also, somewhat doubtful of others.
+My heart is set upon this, and I shall still try to succeed."
+
+"Ah, Bernard, do not say that! Believe me, when I tell you that it can
+never be."
+
+"No; I will not believe you. I will not allow myself to be made utterly
+wretched. I tell you fairly that I will not believe you. I may surely
+hope if I choose to hope. No, Bell, I will never give you up--unless,
+indeed, I should see you become another man's wife."
+
+As he said this, they all turned in through the squire's gate, and rode
+up to the yard in which it was their habit to dismount from their
+horses.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+JOHN EAMES TAKES A WALK
+
+John Eames watched the party of cavaliers as they rode away from his
+mother's door, and then started upon a solitary walk, as soon as the
+noise of the horses' hoofs had passed away out of the street. He was by
+no means happy in his mind as he did so. Indeed, he was overwhelmed
+with care and trouble, and as he went along very gloomy thoughts passed
+through his mind. Had he not better go to Australia, or Vancouver's
+Island, or--? I will not name the places which the poor fellow suggested
+to himself as possible terminations of the long journeys which he might
+not improbably be called upon to take. That very day, just before the
+Dales had come in, he had received a second letter from his darling
+Amelia, written very closely upon the heels of the first. Why had he
+not answered her? Was he ill? Was he untrue? No; she would not believe
+that, and therefore fell back upon the probability of his illness. If
+it was so, she would rush down to see him. Nothing on earth should keep
+her from the bedside of her betrothed. If she did not get an answer
+from her beloved John by return of post, she would be down with him at
+Guestwick by the express train. Here was a position for such a young
+man as John Eames! And of Amelia Roper we may say that she was a young
+woman who would not give up her game, as long as the least chance
+remained of her winning it. "I must go somewhere," John said to
+himself, as he put on his slouched hat and wandered forth through the
+back streets of Guestwick. What would his mother say when she heard of
+Amelia Roper? What would she say when she saw her?
+
+He walked away towards the Manor, so that he might roam about the
+Guestwick woods in solitude. There was a path with a stile, leading off
+from the high road, about half a mile beyond the lodges through which
+the Dales had ridden up to the house, and by this path John Eames
+turned in, and went away till he had left the Manor house behind him,
+and was in the centre of the Guestwick woods. He knew the whole ground
+well, having roamed there ever since he was first allowed to go forth
+upon his walks alone. He had thought of Lily Dale by the hour together,
+as he had lost himself among the oak-trees; but in those former days he
+had thought of her with some pleasure. Now he could only think of her
+as of one gone from him for ever; and then he had also to think of her
+whom he had taken to himself in Lily's place.
+
+Young men, very young men--men so young that it may be almost a question
+whether or no they have as yet reached their manhood--are more inclined
+to be earnest and thoughtful when alone than they ever are when with
+others, even though those others be their elders. I fancy that, as we
+grow old ourselves, we are apt to forget that it was so with us; and,
+forgetting it, we do not believe that it is so with our children. We
+constantly talk of the thoughtlessness of youth. I do not know whether
+we might not more appropriately speak of its thoughtfulness. It is,
+however, no doubt, true that thought will not at once produce wisdom.
+It may almost be a question whether such wisdom as many of us have in
+our mature years has not come from the dying out of the power of
+temptation, rather than as the results of thought and resolution. Men,
+full fledged and at their work, are, for the most part, too busy for
+much thought; but lads, on whom the work of the world has not yet
+fallen with all its pressure--they have time for thinking.
+
+And thus John Eames was thoughtful. They who knew him best accounted
+him to be a gay, good-hearted, somewhat reckless young man, open to
+temptation, but also open to good impressions; as to whom no great
+success could be predicated, but of whom his friends might fairly hope
+that he might so live as to bring upon them no disgrace and not much
+trouble. But, above all things, they would have called him thoughtless.
+In so calling him, they judged him wrong. He was ever thinking--thinking
+much of the world as it appeared to him, and of himself as he appeared
+to the world; and thinking, also, of things beyond the world. What was
+to be his fate here and hereafter? Lily Dale was gone from him, and
+Amelia Roper was hanging round his neck like a millstone! What, under
+such circumstances, was to be his fate here and hereafter?
+
+We may say that the difficulties in his way were not as yet very great.
+As to Lily, indeed, he had no room for hope; but, then, his love for
+Lily had, perhaps, been a sentiment rather than a passion. Most young
+men have to go through that disappointment, and are enabled to bear it
+without much injury to their prospects or happiness. And in after-life
+the remembrance of such love is a blessing rather than a curse,
+enabling the possessor of it to feel that in those early days there was
+something within him of which he had no cause to be ashamed. I do not
+pity John Eames much in regard to Lily Dale. And then, as to Amelia
+Roper--had he achieved but a tithe of that lady's experience in the
+world, or possessed a quarter of her audacity, surely such a difficulty
+as that need not have stood much in his way! What could Amelia do to
+him if he fairly told her that he was not minded to marry her? In very
+truth he had never promised to do so. He was in no way bound to her,
+not even by honour. Honour, indeed, with such as her! But men are
+cowards before women until they become tyrants; and are easy dupes,
+till of a sudden they recognise the fact that it is pleasanter to be
+the victimiser than the victim--and as easy. There are men, indeed, who
+never learn the latter lesson.
+
+But, though the cause for fear was so slight, poor John Eames was
+thoroughly afraid. Little things which, in connection with so deep a
+sorrow as his, it is almost ridiculous to mention, added to his
+embarrassments, and made an escape from them seem to him to be
+impossible. He could not return to London without going to Burton
+Crescent, because his clothes were there, and because he owed to Mrs
+Roper some small sum of money which on his return to London he would
+not have immediately in his pocket. He must therefore meet Amelia, and
+he knew that he had not the courage to tell a girl, face to face, that
+he did not love her, after he had once been induced to say that he did
+do so. His boldest conception did not go beyond the writing of a letter
+in which he would renounce her, and removing himself altogether from
+that quarter of the town in which Burton Crescent was situated. But
+then about his clothes, and that debt of his? And what if Amelia should
+in the meantime come down to Guestwick and claim him? Could he in his
+mother's presence declare that she had no right to make such claim? The
+difficulties, in truth, were not very great, but they were too heavy
+for that poor young clerk from the Income-tax Office.
+
+You will declare that he must have been a fool and a coward. Yet he
+could read and understand Shakespeare. He knew much--by far too much--of
+Byron's poetry by heart. He was a deep critic, often writing down his
+criticisms in a lengthy journal which he kept. He could write quickly,
+and with understanding; and I may declare that men at his office had
+already ascertained that he was no fool. He knew his business, and
+could do it--as many men failed to do who were much less foolish before
+the world. And as to that matter of cowardice, he would have thought it
+the greatest blessing in the world to be shut up in a room with
+Crosbie, having permission to fight with him till one of them should
+have been brought by stress of battle to give up his claim to Lily
+Dale. Eames was no coward. He feared no man on earth. But he was
+terribly afraid of Amelia Roper.
+
+He wandered about through the old Manor woods very ill at ease. The
+post from Guestwick went out at seven, and he must at once make up his
+mind whether or no he would write to Amelia on that day. He must also
+make up his mind as to what he would say to her. He felt that he should
+at least answer her letter, let his answer be what it might, Should he
+promise to marry her--say, in ten or twelve years' time? Should he tell
+her that he was a blighted being, unfit for love, and with humility
+entreat of her that he might be excused? Or should he write to her
+mother, telling her that Burton Crescent would not suit him any longer,
+promising her to send the balance on receipt of his next payment, and
+asking her to send his clothes in a bundle to the Income-tax Office? Or
+should he go home to his own mother, and boldly tell it all to her?
+
+He at last resolved that he must write the letter, and as he composed
+it in his mind he sat himself down beneath an old tree which stood on a
+spot at which many of the forest tracks met and crossed each other. The
+letter, as he framed it here, was not a bad letter, if only he could
+have got it written and posted. Every word of it he chose with
+precision, and in his mind he emphasised every expression which told
+his mind clearly and justified his purpose." He acknowledged himself to
+have been wrong in misleading his correspondent, and allowing her to
+imagine that she possessed his heart. He had not a heart at her
+disposal. He had been weak not to write to her before, having been
+deterred from doing so by the fear of giving her pain; but now he felt
+that he was bound in honour to tell her the truth. Having so told her,
+he would not return to Burton Crescent, if it would pain her to see him
+there. He would always have a deep regard for her,"--Oh, Johnny!--
+"and would hope anxiously that her welfare in life might be complete."
+That was the letter, as he wrote it on the tablets of his mind under
+the tree; but the getting it put on to paper was a task, as he knew, of
+greater difficulty. Then, as he repeated it to himself, he fell asleep.
+
+"Young man," said a voice in his ear as he slept. At first the voice
+spoke as a voice from his dream without waking him, but when it was
+repeated, he sat up and saw that a stout gentleman was standing over
+him. For a moment he did not know where he was, or how he had come
+there; nor could he recollect, as he saw the trees about him, hew long
+he had been in the wood. But he knew the stout gentleman well enough,
+though he had not seen him for more than two years." Young man," said
+the voice, "if you want to catch rheumatism, that's the way to do it.
+Why, it's young Eames, isn't it?
+
+"Yes, my lord," said Johnny, raising himself up so that he was now
+sitting, instead of lying, as he looked up into the earl's rosy face.
+
+"I knew your father, and a very good man he was; only he shouldn't have
+taken to farming. People think they can farm without learning the
+trade, but that's a very great mistake. I can farm, because I've
+learned it. Don't you think you'd better get up?" Whereupon Johnny
+raised himself to Ins feet." Not but what you're very welcome to lie
+there if you like it. Only, in October, you know--"
+
+"I'm afraid I'm trespassing, my lord," said Eames." I came in off the
+path, and--"
+
+"You're welcome; you're very welcome. If you'll come up to the house,
+I'll give you some luncheon." This hospitable offer, however, Johnny
+declined, alleging that it was late, and that he was going home to
+dinner.
+
+"Come along," said the earl. "You can't go any shorter way than by the
+house. Dear, dear, how well I remember your father. He was a much
+cleverer man than I am--very much; but he didn't knew how to send a
+beast to market any better than a child. By-the-by, they have put you
+into a public office, haven't they?
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"And a very good thing, too--a very good thing, indeed. But why were you
+asleep in the wood? It isn't warm, you know. I call it rather cold."
+And the earl stopped, and looked at him, scrutinising him, as though
+resolved to inquire into so deep a mystery.
+
+"I was taking a walk, and thinking of something, I sat down."
+
+"Leave of absence, I suppose?"
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"Have you got into trouble? You look as though you were in trouble.
+Your poor father used to be in trouble."
+
+"I haven't taken to farming," said Johnny, with an attempt at a smile.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha--quite right. No, don't take to farming. Unless you learn
+it, you know, you might just as well take to shoemaking--just the same.
+You haven't got into trouble, then; eh?
+
+"No, my lord, not particularly."
+
+"Not particularly! I knew very well that young men do get into trouble
+when they get up to London. If you want any--any advice, or that sort of
+thing, you may come to me; for I knew your father well. Do you like
+shooting?
+
+"I never did shoot anything."
+
+"Well perhaps better not. To tell the truth, I'm not very fond of young
+men who take to shooting without having anything to shoot at.
+By-the-by, now I think of it, I'll send your mother some game." It may,
+however, here be fair to mention that game very often came from
+Guestwick Manor to Mrs Eames. "And look here, cold pheasant for
+breakfast is the best thing I know of. Pheasants at dinner are
+rubbish--mere rubbish. Here we are at the house. Will you come in and
+have a glass of wine?"
+
+But this John Eames declined, pleasing the earl better by doing so than
+he would have done by accepting it. Not that the lord was inhospitable
+or insincere in his offer, but he preferred that such a one as John
+Eames should receive his proffered familiarity without too much
+immediate assurance. He felt that Eames was a little in awe of his
+companion's rank, and he liked him the better for it. He liked him the
+better for it, and was a man apt to remember his likings. "If you won't
+come in, Good-bye," and he gave Johnny his hand.
+
+"Good-evening, my lord," said Johnny.
+
+"And remember this; it is the deuce of a thing to have rheumatism in
+your loins. I wouldn't go to sleep under a tree, if I were you--not in
+October. But you're always welcome to go anywhere about the place."
+
+"Thank you, my lord."
+
+"And if you should take to shooting--but I dare say you won't; and if
+you come to trouble, and want advice, or that sort of thing, write to
+me. I knew your father well." And so they parted, Eames returning on
+his road towards Guestwick.
+
+For some reason, which he could not define, he felt better after his
+interview with the earl. There had been something about the fat,
+good-natured, sensible old man, which had cheered him, in spite of his
+sorrow. "Pheasants for dinner are rubbish--mere rubbish," he said to
+himself, over and over again, as he went along the road; and they were
+the first words which he spoke to his mother, after entering the house.
+
+"I wish we had some of that sort of rubbish," said she.
+
+"So you will, tomorrow"; and then he described to her his interview.
+
+"The earl was, at any rate, quite right about lying upon the ground. I
+wonder you can be so foolish. And he is right about your poor father
+too. But you have got to change your boots; and we shall be ready for
+dinner almost immediately."
+
+But Johnny Eames, before he sat down to dinner, did write his letter to
+Amelia, and did go out to post it with his own hands--much to his
+mother's annoyance. But the letter would not get itself written in that
+strong and appropriate language which had come to him as he was roaming
+through the woods. It was a bald letter, and somewhat cowardly withal.
+
+DEAR AMELIA (the letter ran)--I have received both of yours; and did not
+answer the first because I felt that there was a difficulty in
+expressing what I wish to say; and now it will be better that you
+should allow the subject to stand over till I am back in town. I shall
+be there in ten days from this. I have been quite well, and am so; but
+of course am much obliged by your inquiries. I know you will think this
+very cold; but when I tell you everything, you will agree with me that
+it is best. If I were to marry, I know that we should be unhappy,
+because we should have nothing to live on. If I have ever said anything
+to deceive you, I beg your pardon with all my heart--but perhaps it will
+be better to let the subject remain till we shall meet again in London.
+
+Believe me to be
+
+Your most sincere friend,
+
+And I may say admirer--[Oh, John Eames!]
+
+JOHN EAMES.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+THE LAST DAY
+
+Last days are wretched days; and so are last moments wretched moments.
+It is not the fact that the parting is coming which makes these days
+and moments so wretched, but the feeling that something special is
+expected from them, which something they always fail to produce.
+Spasmodic periods of pleasure, of affection, or even of study, seldom
+fail of disappointment when premeditated. When last days are coming,
+they should be allowed to come and to glide away without special notice
+or mention. And as for last moments, there should be none such. Let
+them ever be ended, even before their presence has been acknowledged.
+
+But Lily Dale had not yet been taught these lessons by her world's
+experience, and she expected that this sweetest cup of which she had
+ever drank should go on being sweet--sweeter and still sweeter--as long
+as she could press it to her lips. How the dregs had come to mix
+themselves with the last drops we have already seen; and on that same
+day--on the Monday evening--the bitter task still remained; for Crosbie,
+as they walked about through the gardens in the evening, found other
+subjects on which he thought it necessary to give her sundry hints,
+intended for her edification, which came to her with much of the savour
+of a lecture. A girl, when she is thoroughly in love, as surely was the
+case with Lily, likes to receive hints as to her future life from the
+man to whom she is devoted; but she would, I think, prefer that such
+hints should be short, and that the lesson should be implied rather
+than declared--that they should, in fact, be hints and not lectures.
+Crosbie, who was a man of tact, who understood the world and had been
+dealing with women for many years, no doubt understood all this as well
+as we do. But he had come to entertain a notion that he was an injured
+man, that he was giving very much more than was to be given to him, and
+that therefore he was entitled to take liberties which might not fairly
+be within the reach of another lover. My reader will say that in all
+this he was ungenerous. Well; he was ungenerous. I do not know that I
+have ever said that much generosity was to be expected from him. He had
+some principles of right and wrong under the guidance of which it may
+perhaps be hoped that he will not go utterly astray; but his past life
+had not been of a nature to make him unselfish. He was ungenerous, and
+Lily felt it, though she would not acknowledge it even to herself. She
+had been very open with him--acknowledging the depth of her love for
+him; telling him that he was now all in all to her; that life without
+his love would be impossible to her: and in a certain way he took
+advantage of these strong avowals, treating her as though she were a
+creature utterly in his power--as indeed she was.
+
+On that evening he said no more of Johnny Eames, but said much of the
+difficulty of a man establishing himself with a wife in London, who had
+nothing but his own moderate income on which to rely. He did not in so
+many words tell her that if her friends could make up for her two or
+three thousand pounds--that being much less than he had expected when he
+first made his offer--this terrible difficulty would be removed; but he
+said enough to make her understand that the world would call him very
+imprudent in taking a girl who had nothing. And as he spoke of these
+things, Lily remaining for the most part silent as he did so, it
+occurred to him that he might talk to her freely of his past life--more
+freely than he would have done had he feared that he might lose her by
+any such disclosures. He had no fear of losing her. Alas! might it not
+be possible that he had some such hope!
+
+He told her that his past life had been expensive; that, though he was
+not in debt, he had lived up to every shilling that he had, and that he
+had contracted habits of expenditure which it would be almost
+impossible for him to lay aside at a day's notice. Then he spoke of
+entanglements, meaning, as he did so, to explain more fully what were
+their nature--but not daring to do so when he found that Lily was
+altogether in the dark as to what he meant. No; he was not a generous
+man--a very ungenerous man. And yet, during all this time, he thought
+that he was guided by principle. "It will be best that I should be
+honest with her," he said to himself. And then he told himself, scores
+of times, that when making his offer he had expected, and had a right
+to expect, that she would not be penniless. Under those circumstances
+he had done the best he could for her--offering her his heart honestly,
+with a quick readiness to make her his own at the earliest day that she
+might think possible. Had he been more cautious, he need not have
+fallen into this cruel mistake; but she, at any rate, could not quarrel
+with him for his imprudence. And still he was determined to stand by
+his engagement and willing to marry her, although, as he the more
+thought of it, he felt the more strongly that he would thereby ruin his
+prospects, and thrust beyond his own reach all those good things which
+he had hoped to win. As he continued to talk to her he gave himself
+special credit for his generosity, and felt that he was only doing his
+duty by her in pointing out to her all the difficulties which lay in
+the way of their marriage.
+
+At first Lily said some words intended to convey an assurance that she
+would be the most economical wife that man ever had, but she soon
+ceased from such promises as these. Her perceptions were keen, and she
+discovered that the difficulties of which he was afraid were those
+which he must overcome before his marriage, not any which might be
+expected to overwhelm him after it. "A cheap and nasty menage would be
+my aversion," he said to her. "It is that which I want to avoid--chiefly
+for your sake." Then she promised him that she would wait patiently for
+his time--"I suppose we shall have to wait two years. And that's a deuce
+of a bore--a terrible bore." And there was that in the tone of his voice
+which grated on her feelings, and made her wretched for the moment.
+
+As he parted with her for the night on her own side of the little
+bridge which led from one garden to the other, he put his arm round her
+to embrace her and kiss her, as he had often done at that spot. It had
+become a habit with them to say their evening farewells there, and the
+secluded little nook amongst the shrubs was inexpressibly dear to Lily.
+But on the present occasion she made an effort to avoid his caress, She
+turned from him--very slightly, but it was enough, and he felt it. "Are
+you angry with me?" he said. "Oh, no! Adolphus; how can I be angry with
+you?" And then she turned to him and gave him her face to kiss almost
+before he had again asked for it. "He shall not at any rate think that
+I am unkind to him--and it will not matter now," she said to herself, as
+she walked slowly across the lawn, in the dark, up to her mother's
+drawing-room window.
+
+"Well, dearest," said Mrs Dale, who was there alone; "did the beards
+wag merry in the Great Hall this evening?" That was a joke with them,
+for neither Crosbie nor Bernard Dale used a razor at his toilet.
+
+"Not specially merry. And I think it was my fault, for I have a
+headache. Mamma, I believe I will go at once to bed."
+
+"My darling, is there anything wrong?
+
+"Nothing, mamma. But we had such a long ride; and then Adolphus is
+going, and of course we have so much to say. Tomorrow will be the last
+day, for I shall only just see him on Wednesday morning; and as I want
+to be well, if possible, I'll go to bed." And so she took her candle
+and went.
+
+When Bell came up, Lily was still awake, but she begged her sister not
+to disturb her. "Don't talk to me, Bell," she said." I'm trying to make
+myself quiet, and I half feel that I should get childish if I went on
+talking. I have almost more to think of than I know how to manage." And
+she strove, not altogether unsuccessfully, to speak with a cheery tone,
+as though the cares which weighed upon her were not unpleasant in their
+nature. Then her sister kissed her and left her to her thoughts.
+
+And she had great matter for thinking; so great, that many hours
+sounded in her ears from the clock on the stairs before she brought her
+thoughts to a shape that satisfied herself. She did so bring them at
+last, and then she slept. She did so bring them, toiling over her work
+with tears that made her pillow wet, with heart-burning and almost with
+heart-breaking, with much doubting, and many anxious, eager inquiries
+within her own bosom as to that which she ought to do, and that which
+she could endure to do. But at last her resolve was taken, and then she
+slept.
+
+It had been agreed between them that Crosbie should come down to the
+Small House on the next day after breakfast, and remain there till the
+time came for riding. But Lily determined to alter this arrangement,
+and accordingly put on her hat immediately after breakfast, and posted
+herself at the bridge, so as to intercept her lover as he came. He soon
+appeared with his friend Dale, and she at once told him her purpose.
+
+"I want to have a talk with you, Adolphus, before you go in to mamma;
+so come with me into the field."
+
+"All right," said he.
+
+"And Bernard can finish his cigar on the lawn. Mamma and Bell will join
+him there."
+
+"All right," said Bernard. So they separated; and Crosbie went away
+with Lily into the field where they had first learned to know each
+other in those haymaking days.
+
+She did not say much till they were well away from the house; but
+answered what words he chose to speak--not knowing very well of what he
+spoke. But when she considered that they had reached the proper spot,
+she began very abruptly.
+
+"Adolphus," she said, "I have something to say to you--something to
+which you must listen very carefully." Then he looked at her, and at
+once knew that she was in earnest.
+
+"This is the last day on which I could say it," she continued; "and I
+am very glad that I have not let the last day go by without saying it.
+I should not have known how to put it in a letter."
+
+"What is it, Lily?"
+
+"And I do not know that I can say it properly; but I hope that you will
+not be hard upon me. Adolphus, if you wish that all this between us
+should be over, I will consent."
+
+"Lily!"
+
+"I mean what I say. If you wish it, I will consent; and when I have
+said so, proposing it myself, you may be quite sure that I shall never
+blame you, if you take me at my word."
+
+"Are you tired of me, Lily?"
+
+"No. I shall never be tired of you--never weary with loving you. I did
+not wish to say so now; but I will answer your question boldly. Tired
+of you! I fancy that a girl can never grow tired of her lover. But I
+would sooner die in the struggle than be the cause of your ruin. It
+would be better--in every way better."
+
+"I have said nothing of being ruined."
+
+"But listen to me. I should not die if you left me--not be utterly
+broken-hearted. Nothing on earth can I ever love as I have loved you.
+But I have a God and a Saviour that will be enough for me. I can turn
+to them with content, if it be well that you should leave me. I have
+gone to them, and--"
+
+But at this moment she could utter no more words. She had broken down
+in her effort, losing her voice through the strength of her emotion. As
+she did not choose that he should see her overcome, she turned from him
+and walked away across the grass. Of course he followed her; but he was
+not so quick after her, but that time had been given to her to recover
+herself. "It is true," she said." I have the strength of which I tell
+you. Though I have given myself to you as your wife, I can bear to be
+divorced from you now--now. And, my love, though it may sound heartless,
+I would sooner be so divorced from you, than cling to you as a log that
+must drag you down under the water, and drown you in trouble and care.
+I would--indeed I would. If you go, of course that kind of thing is over
+for me. But the world has more than that--much more; and I would make
+myself happy--yes, my love, I would be happy. You need not fear that."
+
+"But, Lily, why is all this said to me here today?"
+
+"Because it is my duty to say it. I understand all your position now,
+though it is only now. It never flashed on me till yesterday. When you
+proposed to me, you thought that I--that I had some fortune."
+
+"Never mind that now, Lily."
+
+"But you did. I see it all now. I ought perhaps to have told you that
+it was not so. There has been the mistake, and we are both sufferers.
+But we need not make the suffering deeper than needs be. My love, you
+are free--from this moment. And even my heart shall not blame you for
+accepting your freedom."
+
+"And are you afraid of poverty?" he asked her.
+
+"I am afraid of poverty for you. You and I have lived differently.
+Luxuries, of which I know nothing, have been your daily comforts. I
+tell you I can bear to part with you, but I cannot bear to become the
+source of your unhappiness. Yes; I will bear it; and none shall dare in
+my hearing to speak against you. I have brought you here to say the
+word; nay, more than that--to advise you to say it."
+
+He stood silent for a moment, during which he held her by the hand. She
+was looking into his face, but he was looking away into the clouds;
+striving to appear as though he was the master of the occasion. But
+during those moments his mind was wracked with doubt. What if he should
+take her at her word? Some few would say bitter things against him, but
+such bitter things had been said against many another man without
+harming him. Would it not be well for both if he should take her at her
+word? She would recover and love again, as other girls had done; and as
+for him, he would thus escape from the ruin at which he had been gazing
+for the last week past. For it was ruin--utter ruin. He did love her; so
+he declared to himself. But was he a man who ought to throw the world
+away for love? Such men there were; but was he one of them? Could he be
+happy in that small house, somewhere near the New Road, with five
+children and horrid misgivings as to the baker's bill? Of all men
+living, was not he the last that should have allowed himself to fall
+into such a trap? All this passed through his mind as he turned his
+face up to the clouds with a look that was intended to be grand and
+noble.
+
+"Speak to me, Adolphus, and say that it shall be so."
+
+Then his heart misgave him, and he lacked the courage to extricate
+himself from his trouble; or, as he afterwards said to himself, he had
+not the heart to do it. "If I understand you, rightly, Lily, all this
+comes from no want of love on your own part?
+
+"Want of love on my part? But you should not ask me that."
+
+"Until you tell me that there is such a want, I will agree to no
+parting. "Then he took her hand and put it within his arm.
+
+"No, Lily; whatever may be our cares and troubles, we are bound
+together--indissolubly."
+
+"Are we?" said she; and as she spoke, her voice trembled, and her hand
+shook.
+
+"Much too firmly for any such divorce as that. No, Lily, I claim the
+right to tell you all my troubles; but I shall not let you go."
+
+"But, Adolphus--" and the hand on his arm was beginning to cling to it again.
+
+"Adolphus," said he, "has got nothing more to say on that subject. He
+exercises the right which he believes to be his own, and chooses to
+retain the prize which he has won."
+
+She was now clinging to him in very truth. "Oh, my love!" she said. "I
+do not know how to say it again. It is of you that I am thinking--of
+you, of you!"
+
+"I know you are; but you have misunderstood me a little; that's all."
+
+"Have I? Then listen to me again, once more, my heart's own darling, my
+love, my husband, my lord! If I cannot be to you at once like Ruth, and
+never cease from coming after you, my thoughts to you shall be like
+those of Ruth--if aught but death part thee and me, may God do so to me
+and more also." Then she fell upon his breast and wept.
+
+He still hardly understood the depth of her character. He was not
+himself deep enough to comprehend it all. But yet he was awed by her
+great love, and exalted to a certain solemnity of feeling which for the
+time made him rejoice in his late decision. For a few hours he was
+minded to throw the world behind him, and wear this woman, as such a
+woman should be worn--as a comforter to him in all things, and a strong
+shield against great troubles. "Lily," he said, "my own Lily!
+"Yes, your own, to take when you please, and leave untaken while you
+please; and as much your own in one way as in the other." Then she
+looked up again, and essayed to laugh as she did so." You will think I
+am frantic, but I am so happy. I don't care about your going now;
+indeed I don't. There; you may go now, this minute, if you like it."
+And she withdrew her hand from his. "I feel so differently from what I
+have done for the last few days. I am so glad you have spoken to me as
+you did. Of course I ought to bear all those things with you. But I
+cannot be unhappy about it now. I wonder if I went to work and made a
+lot of things, whether that would help?
+
+"A set of shirts for me, for instance?"
+
+"I could do that, at any rate."
+
+"It may come to that yet, some of these days."
+
+"I pray God that it may." Then again she was serious, and the tears
+came once more into her eyes. "I pray God that it may. To be of use to
+you--to work for you--to do something for you that may have in it some
+sober, earnest purport of usefulness--that is what I want above all
+things. I want to be with you at once that I may be of service to you.
+Would that you and I were alone together, that I might do everything
+for you. I sometimes think that a very poor man's wife is the happiest,
+because she does do everything."
+
+"You shall do everything very soon," said he; and then they sauntered
+along pleasantly through the morning hours, and when they again
+appeared at Mrs Dale's table, Mrs Dale and Bell were astonished at
+Lily's brightness. All her old ways had seemed to return to her, and
+she made her little saucy speeches to Mr Crosbie as she had used to do
+when he was first becoming fascinated by her sweetness. "You know that
+you'll be such a swell when you get to that countess's house that
+you'll forget all about Allington."
+
+"Of course I shall," said he.
+
+"And the paper you write upon will be all over coronets--that is, if
+ever you do write. Perhaps you will to Bernard some day, just to show
+that you are staying at a castle."
+
+"You certainly don't deserve that he should write to you," sad Mrs Dale.
+
+"I don't expect it for a moment--not till he gets back to London and
+finds that he has nothing else to do at his office. But I should so
+like to see how you and Lady Julia get on together. It was quite clear
+that she regarded you as an ogre; didn't she, Bell?"
+
+"So many people are ogres to Lady Julia," said Bell.
+
+"I believe Lady Julia to be a very good woman," said Mrs Dale, "and I
+won't have her abused."
+
+"Particularly before poor Bernard, who is her pet nephew," said Lily.
+"I dare say Adolphus will become a pet too when she has been a week
+with him at Courcy Castle. Do try and cut Bernard out."
+
+From all which Mrs Dale learned that some care which had sat heavy on
+Lily's heart was now lightened, if not altogether removed. She had
+asked no questions of her daughter, but she had perceived during the
+past few days that Lily was in trouble, and she knew that such trouble
+had arisen from her engagement. She had asked no questions, but of
+course she had been told what was Mr Crosbie's income, and had been
+made to understand that it was not to be considered as amply sufficient
+for all the wants of matrimony. There was little difficulty in guessing
+what was the source of Lily's care, and as little in now perceiving
+that something had been said between them by which that care had been
+relieved.
+
+After that they all rode, and the afternoon went by pleasantly. It was
+the last day indeed, but Lily had determined that she would not he sad.
+She had told him that he might go now, and that she would not be
+discontented at his going. She knew that the morrow would be very blank
+to her; but she struggled to live up to the spirit of her promise, and
+she succeeded. They all dined at the Great House, even Mrs Dale doing
+so upon this occasion. When they had come in from the garden in the
+evening, Crosbie talked more to Mrs Dale than he did even to Lily,
+while Lily sat a little distant, listening with all her ears, sometimes
+saying a low-toned word, and happy beyond expression in the feeling
+that her mother and her lover should understand each other. And it must
+be understood that Crosbie at this time was fully determined to conquer
+the difficulties of which he had thought so much, and to fix the
+earliest day which might be possible for his marriage. The solemnity of
+that meeting in the field still hung about him, and gave to his present
+feelings a manliness and a truth of purpose which were too generally
+wanting to them. If only those feelings would last! But now he talked
+to Mrs Dale about her daughter, and about their future prospects, in a
+tone which he could not have used had not his mind for the time been
+true to her. He had never spoken so freely to Lily's mother, and at no
+time had Mrs Dale felt for him so much of a mother's love. He
+apologised for the necessity of some delay, arguing that he could not
+endure to see his young wife without the comfort of a home of her own,
+and that he was now, as he always had been, afraid of incurring debt.
+Mrs Dale disliked waiting engagements--as do all mothers--but she could
+not answer unkindly to such pleading as this.
+
+"Lily is so very young," she said, "that she may well wait for a year
+or so."
+
+"For seven years," said Lily, jumping up and whispering into her
+mother's ear. "I shall hardly be six-and-twenty then, which is not at
+all too old."
+
+And so the evening passed away very pleasantly.
+
+"God bless you, Adolphus!" Mrs Dale said to him, as she parted with him
+at her own door. It was the first time that she had called him by his
+Christian name. "I hope you understand how much we are trusting to you."
+
+"I do--I do," said he, as he pressed her hand. Then as he walked back
+alone, he swore to himself, binding himself to the oath with all his
+heart, that he would be true to those women--both to the daughter and to
+the mother; for the solemnity of the morning was still upon him.
+
+He was to start the next morning before eight, Bernard having
+undertaken to drive him over to the railway at Guestwick. The breakfast
+was on the table shortly after seven; and just as the two men had come
+down, Lily entered the room, with her hat and shawl. "I said I would be
+in to pour out your tea," said she; and then she sat herself down over
+against the teapot.
+
+It was a silent meal, for people do not know what to say in those last
+minutes. And Bernard, too, was there; proving how true is the adage
+which says, that two are company, but that three are not. I think that
+Lily was wrong to come up on that last morning; but she would not hear
+of letting him start without seeing him, when her lover had begged her
+not to put herself to so much trouble. Trouble! Would she not have sat
+up all night to see even the last of the top of his hat?
+
+Then Bernard, muttering something about the horse, went away. "I have
+only one minute to speak to you," said she, jumping up, "and I have
+been thinking all night of what I had to say. It is so easy to think,
+and so hard to speak."
+
+"My darling, I understand it all."
+
+"But you must understand this, that I will never distrust you. I will
+never ask you to give me up again, or say that I could be happy without
+you. I could not live without you; that is, without the knowledge that
+you are mine. But I will never be impatient, never. Pray, pray believe
+me! Nothing shall make me distrust you."
+
+"Dearest Lily, I will endeavour to give you no cause."
+
+"I know you will not; but I specially wanted to tell you that. And you
+will write--very soon?
+
+"Directly I get there."
+
+"And as often as you can. But I won't bother you; only your letters
+will make me so happy. I shall be so proud when they come to me. I
+shall be afraid of writing too much to you, for fear I should tire you."
+
+"You will never do that."
+
+"Shall I not? But you must write first, you know. If you could only
+understand how I shall live upon your letters! And now good-bye. There
+are the wheels. God bless you, my own, my own!" And she gave herself up
+into his arms, as she had given herself up into his heart.
+
+She stood at the door as the two men got into the gig, and, as it
+passed down through the gate, she hurried out upon the terrace, from
+whence she could see it for a few yards down the lane. Then she ran
+from the terrace to the gate, and, hurrying through the gate, made her
+way into the churchyard, from the farther corner of which she could see
+the heads of the two men till they had made the turn into the main road
+beyond the parsonage. There she remained till the very sound of the
+wheels no longer reached her ears, stretching her eyes in the direction
+they had taken. Then she turned round slowly and made her way out at
+the churchyard gate, which opened on to the road close to the front
+door of the Small House.
+
+"I should like to punch his head," said Hopkins, the gardener, to
+himself, as he saw the gig driven away and saw Lily trip after it, that
+she might see the last of him whom it carried.
+
+"And I wouldn't think nothing of doing it; no more I wouldn't," Hopkins
+added in his soliloquy. It was generally thought about the place that
+Miss Lily was Hopkins's favourite, though he showed it chiefly by
+snubbing her more frequently than he snubbed her sister.
+
+Lily had evidently intended to return home through the front door; but
+she changed her purpose before she reached the house, and made her way
+slowly back through the churchyard, and by the gate of the Great House,
+and by the garden at the back of it, till she crossed the little
+bridge. But on the bridge she rested awhile, leaning against the
+railing as she had often leant with him, and thinking of all that had
+passed since that July day on which she had first met him. On no spot
+had he so often told her of his love as on this, and nowhere had she so
+eagerly sworn to him that she would he his own dutiful loving wife.
+
+"And by God's help so I will," she said to herself, as she walked
+firmly up to the house. "He has gone, mamma," she said, as she entered
+the breakfast-room. "And now we'll go back to our work-a-day ways; it
+has been all Sunday for me for the last six weeks."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+MR CROSBIE MEETS AN OLD CLERGYMAN ON HIS WAY TO COURCY CASTLE
+
+For the first mile or two of their journey Crosbie and Bernard Dale
+sat, for the most part, silent in their gig. Lily, as she ran down to
+the churchyard corner and stood there looking after them with her
+loving eyes, had not been seen by them. But the spirit of her devotion
+was still strong upon them both, and they felt that it would not be
+well to strike at once into any ordinary topic of conversation. And,
+moreover, we may presume that Crosbie did feel much at thus parting
+from such a girl as Lily Dale, with whom he had lived in close
+intercourse for the last six weeks, and whom he loved with all his
+heart--with all the heart that he had for such purposes. In those doubts
+as to his marriage which had troubled him he had never expressed to
+himself any disapproval of Lily. He had not taught himself to think
+that she was other than he would have her be, that he might thus give
+himself an excuse for parting from her. Not as yet, at any rate, had he
+had recourse to that practice, so common with men who wish to free
+themselves from the bonds with which they have permitted themselves to
+be bound. Lily had been too sweet to his eyes, to his touch, to all his
+senses for that. He had enjoyed too keenly the pleasure of being with
+her, and of hearing her tell him that she loved him, to allow of his
+being personally tired of her. He had not been so spoilt by his club
+life but that he had taken exquisite pleasure in all her nice country
+ways, and soft, kind-hearted, womanly humour. He was by no means tired
+of Lily. Better than any of his London pleasures was this pleasure of
+making love in the green fields to Lily Dale. It was the consequences
+of it that affrighted him. Babies with their belongings would come; and
+dull evenings, over a dull fire, or else the pining grief of a
+disappointed woman. He would be driven to be careful as to his clothes,
+because the ordering of a new coat would entail a serious expenditure.
+He could go no more among countesses and their daughters, because it
+would be out of the question that his wife should visit at their
+houses. All the victories that he had ever won must be given up. He was
+thinking of this even while the gig was going round the corner near the
+parsonage house, and while Lily's eyes were still blessed with some
+view of his departing back; but he was thinking, also, that moment,
+that there might be other victory in store for him; that it might he
+possible for him to learn to like that fireside, even though babies
+should be there, and a woman opposite to him intent on baby cares. He
+was struggling as best he knew how; for the solemnity which Lily had
+imparted to him had not yet vanished from his spirit.
+
+"I hope that, upon the whole, you feel contented with your visit?" said
+Bernard to him, at last.
+
+"Contented? Of course I do."
+
+"That is easily said; and civility to me, perhaps, demands as much. But
+I know that you have, to some extent, been disappointed."
+
+"Well; yes. I have been disappointed as regards money. It is of no use
+denying it."
+
+"I should not mention it now, only that I want to know that you
+exonerate me."
+
+"I have never blamed you--neither you, nor anybody else; unless, indeed,
+it has been myself."
+
+"You mean that you regret what you've done?"
+
+"No; I don't mean that. I am too devotedly attached to that dear girl
+whom we have just left to feel any regret that I have engaged myself to
+her. But I do think that had I managed better with your uncle things
+might have been different."
+
+"I doubt it. Indeed I know that it is not so; and can assure you that
+you need not make yourself unhappy on that score. I had thought, as you
+well know, that he would have done something for Lily-something, though
+not as much as he always intended to do for Bell. But you may be sure
+of this; that he had made up his mind as to what he would do. Nothing
+that you or I could have said would have changed him."
+
+"Well; we won't say anything more about it," said Crosbie. Then they
+went on again in silence, and arrived at Guestwick in ample time for
+the train.
+
+"Let me know as soon as you get to town," said Crosbie. "Oh, of course.
+I'll write to you before that."
+
+And so they parted. As Dale turned and went, Crosbie felt that he liked
+him less than he had done before; and Bernard, also, as he was driving
+him, came to the conclusion that Crosbie would not be so good a fellow
+as a brother-in-law as he had been as a chance friend. "He'll give us
+trouble, in some way; and I'm sorry that I brought him down." That was
+Dale's inward conviction in the matter.
+
+Crosbie's way from Guestwick lay, by railway, to Barchester, the
+cathedral city lying in the next county, from whence he purposed to
+have himself conveyed over to Courcy. There had, in truth, been no
+cause for his very early departure, as he was aware that all arrivals
+at country houses should take place at some hour not much previous to
+dinner. He had been determined to be so soon upon the road by a feeling
+that it would be well for him to get over those last hours. Thus he
+found himself in Barchester at eleven o'clock, with nothing on his
+hands to do; and, having nothing else to do, he went to church. There
+was a full service at the cathedral, and as the verger marshalled him
+up to one of the empty stalls, a little spare old man was beginning to
+chant the Litany. "I did not mean to fall in for all this," said
+Crosbie, to himself, as he settled himself with his arms on the
+cushion. But the peculiar charm of that old man's voice soon attracted
+him--a voice that, though tremulous, was yet strong; and he ceased to
+regret the saint whose honour and glory had occasioned the length of
+that day's special service.
+
+"And who is the old gentleman who chanted the Litany?" he asked the
+verger afterwards, as he allowed himself to be shown round the
+monuments of the cathedral.
+
+"That's our precentor, sir, Mr Harding. You must have heard of Mr
+Harding." But Crosbie, with a full apology, confessed his ignorance.
+
+"Well, sir; he's pretty well known too, tho' he is so shy like. He's
+father-in-law to our dean, sir; and father-in-law to Archdeacon Grantly
+also."
+
+"His daughters have all gone into the profession, then?"
+
+"Why, yes; but Miss Eleanor--for I remember her before she was married
+at all--when they lived at the hospital--"
+
+"At the hospital?"
+"Hiram's hospital, sir. He was warden, you know. You should go and see
+the hospital, sir, if you never was there before. Well, Miss
+Eleanor--that was his youngest--she married Mr Bold as her first. But now
+she's the dean's lady."
+
+"Oh; the dean's lady, is she?
+
+"Yes, indeed. And what do you think, sir? Mr Harding might have been
+dean himself if he'd liked. They did offer it to him."
+
+"And he refused it?
+
+"Indeed he did, sir."
+
+"Nolo decanari. I never heard of that before. What made him so modest?
+
+"Just that, sir; because he is modest. He's past his seventy now--ever
+so much; but he's just as modest as a young girl. A deal more modest
+than some of them. To see him and his granddaughter together!"
+
+"And who is his granddaughter?"
+
+"Why Lady Dumbello, as will be the Marchioness of Hartletop."
+
+"I know Lady Dumbello," said Crosbie; not meaning, however, to boast to
+the verger of his noble acquaintance.
+
+"Oh, do you, sir?" said the man, unconsciously touching his hat at this
+sign of greatness in the stranger; though in truth he had no love for
+her ladyship. "Perhaps you're going to be one of the party at Courcy
+Castle."
+
+"Well, I believe I am."
+
+"You'll find her ladyship there before you. She lunched with her aunt
+at the deanery as she went through, yesterday; finding it too much
+trouble to go out to her father's, at Plumstead. Her father is the
+archdeacon, you know. They do say--but her ladyship is your friend!"
+
+"No friend at all; only a very slight acquaintance. She's quite as much
+above my line as she is above her father's."
+
+"Well, she is above them all. They say she would hardly as much as
+speak to the old gentleman."
+
+"What, her father?
+
+"No, Mr Harding; he that chanted the Litany just now. There he is, sir,
+coming out of the deanery."
+
+They were now standing at the door leading out from one of the
+transepts, and Mr Harding passed them as they were speaking together.
+He was a little, withered, shambling old man, with bent shoulders,
+dressed in knee-breeches and long black gaiters, which hung rather
+loosely about his poor old legs--rubbing his hands one over the other as
+he went. And yet he walked quickly; not tottering as he walked, but
+with an uncertain, doubtful step. The verger, as Mr Harding passed, put
+his hand to his head, and Crosbie also raised his hat. Whereupon Mr
+Harding raised his, and bowed, and turned round as though he were about
+to speak. Crosbie felt that he had never seen a face on which traits of
+human kindness were more plainly written. But the old man did not
+speak. He turned his body half round, and then shambled back, as
+though ashamed of his intention, and passed on.
+
+"He is of that sort that they make the angels of," said the verger.
+"But they can't make many if they want them all as good as he is. I'm
+much obliged to you, sir." And he pocketed the half-crown which Crosbie
+gave him.
+
+"So that's Lady Dumbello's grandfather," said Crosbie, to himself, as
+he walked slowly round the close towards the hospital, by the path
+which the verger had shown him. He had no great love for Lady Dumbello,
+who had dared to snub him--even him. "They may make an angel of the old
+gentleman," he continued to say; "but they'll never succeed in that way
+with the granddaughter."
+
+He sauntered slowly on over a little bridge; and at the gate of the
+hospital he again came upon Mr Harding. "I was going to venture in,"
+said he, "to look at the place. But perhaps I shall be intruding?
+
+"No, no; by no means," said Mr Harding. "Pray come in. I cannot say
+that I am just at home here. I do not live here--not now. But I know the
+ways of the place well, and can make you welcome. That's the warden's
+house. Perhaps we won't go in so early in the day, as the lady has a
+very large family. An excellent lady, and a dear friend of mine--as is
+her husband."
+
+"And he is warden, you say?"
+
+"Yes, warden of the hospital. You see the house, sir. Very pretty,
+isn't it? Very pretty. To my idea it's the prettiest built house I ever
+saw."
+
+"I won't go quite so far as that," said Crosbie.
+
+"But you would if you'd lived there twelve years, as I did. I lived in
+that house twelve years, and I don't think there's so sweet a spot on
+the earth's surface. Did you ever see such turf as that?
+
+"Very nice indeed," said Crosbie, who began to make a comparison with
+Mrs Dale's turf at the Small House, and to determine that the Allington
+turf was better than that of the hospital.
+
+"I had that turf laid down myself. There were borders there when I
+first came, with hollyhocks, and those sort of things. The turf was an
+improvement."
+
+"There's no doubt of that, I should say."
+
+"The turf was an improvement, certainly. And I planted those shrubs,
+too. There isn't such a Portugal laurel as that in the county."
+
+"Were you warden here, sir?" And Crosbie, as he asked the question,
+remembered that, in his very young days, he had heard of some newspaper
+quarrel which had taken place about Hiram's hospital at Barchester.
+
+"Yes, sir. I was warden here for twelve years. Dear, dear, dear! If
+they had put any gentleman here that was not on friendly terms with me
+it would have made me very unhappy--very. But, as it is, I go in and out
+just as I like; almost as much as I did before they--But they didn't
+turn me out. There were reasons which made it best that I should
+resign."
+
+"And you live at the deanery now, Mr Harding?"
+
+"Yes; I live at the deanery now. But I am not dean, you know. My
+son-in-law, Dr Arabin, is the dean. I have another daughter married in
+the neighbourhood, and can truly say that my lines have fallen to me in
+pleasant places."
+
+Then he took Crosbie in among the old men, into all of whose rooms he
+went. It was an almshouse for aged men of the city, and before Crosbie
+had left him Mr Harding had explained all the circumstances of the
+hospital, and of the way in which he had left it. "I didn't like going,
+you know; I thought it would break my heart. But I could not stay when
+they said such things as that--I couldn't stay. And, what is more, I
+should have been wrong to stay. I see it all now. But when I went out
+under that arch, Mr Crosbie, leaning on my daughter's arm, I thought
+that my heart would have broken." And the tears even now ran down the
+old man's cheeks as he spoke.
+
+It was a long story, and it need not be repeated here. And there was no
+reason why it should have been told to Mr Crosbie, other than this--that
+Mr Harding was a fond garrulous old man, who loved to indulge his mind
+in reminiscences of the past. But this was remarked by Crosbie; that,
+in telling his story, no word was said by Mr Harding injurious to any
+one. And yet he had been injured--injured very deeply. "It was all for
+the best," he said at last; "especially as the happiness has not been
+denied to me of making myself at home at the old place. I would take
+you into the house, which is very comfortable--very, only it is not
+always convenient early in the day, when there's a large family." In
+hearing which, Crosbie was again made to think of his own future
+home and limited income.
+
+He had told the old clergyman who he was, and that he was on his
+way to Courcy. "Where, as I understand, I shall meet a granddaughter of
+yours."
+
+"Yes, yes; she is my grandchild. She and I have got into different
+walks of life now, so that I don't see much of her. They tell me that
+she does her duty well in that sphere of life to which it has pleased
+God to call her."
+
+"That depends," thought Crosbie, "on what the duties of a viscountess
+may be supposed to be." But he wished his new friend good-bye, without
+saying anything further as to Lady Dumbello, and, at about six o'clock
+in the evening, had himself driven up under the portico of Courcy
+Castle.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+COURCY CASTLE
+
+Courcy Castle was very full. In the first place, there was a great
+gathering there of all the Courcy family. The earl was there--and the
+countess, of course. At this period of the year Lady de Courcy was
+always at home; but the presence of the earl himself had heretofore
+been by no means so certain. He was a man who had been much given to
+royal visitings and attendances, to parties in the Highlands, to--no
+doubt necessary--prolongations of the London season, to sojournings at
+certain German watering-places, convenient, probably, in order that he
+might study the ways and ceremonies of German Courts--and to various
+other absences from home, occasioned by a close pursuit of his own
+special aims in life; for the Earl de Courcy had been a great courtier.
+But of late gout, lumbago, and perhaps also some diminution in his
+powers of making himself generally agreeable, had reconciled him to
+domestic duties, and the earl spent much of his time at home. The
+countess, in former days, had been heard to complain of her lord's
+frequent absence. But it is hard to please some women--and now she would
+not always be satisfied with his presence.
+
+And all the sons and daughters were there--excepting Lord Porlock, the
+eldest, who never met his father. The earl and Lord Porlock were not on
+terms, and indeed hated each other as only such fathers and such sons
+can hate. The Honourable George de Courcy was there with his bride, he
+having lately performed a manifest duty, in having married a young
+woman with money. Very young she was not--having reached some years of
+her life in advance of thirty; but then, neither was the Honourable
+George very young; and in this respect the two were not ill-sorted. The
+lady's money had not been very much--perhaps thirty thousand pounds or
+so. But then the Honourable George's money had been absolutely none.
+Now he had an income on which he could live, and therefore his father
+and mother had forgiven him all his sins, and taken him again to their
+bosom. And the marriage was matter of great moment, for the elder scion
+of the house had not yet taken to himself a wife, and the De Courcy
+family might have to look to this union for an heir. The lady herself
+was not beautiful, or clever, or of imposing manners--nor was she of
+high birth. But neither was she ugly, nor unbearably stupid. Her
+manners were, at any rate, innocent; and as to her birth--seeing that,
+from the first, she was not supposed to have had any--no disappointment
+was felt. Her father had been a coal-merchant. She was always called
+Mrs George, and the effort made respecting her by everybody in and
+about the family was to treat her as though she were a figure of a
+woman, a large well-dressed resemblance of a being, whom it was
+necessary for certain purposes that the De Courcys should carry in
+their train. Of the Honourable George we may further observe, that,
+having been a spendthrift all his life, he had now become strictly
+parsimonious. Having reached the discreet age of forty, he had at last
+learned that beggary was objectionable; and he, therefore, devoted
+every energy of his mind to saving shillings and pence wherever pence
+and shillings might be saved. When first this turn came upon him both
+his father and mother were delighted to observe it; but, although it
+had hardly yet lasted over twelve months, some evil results were
+beginning to appear. Though possessed of an income, he would take no
+steps towards possessing himself of a house. He hung by the paternal
+mansion, either in town or country; drank the paternal wines, rode the
+paternal horses, and had even contrived to obtain his wife's dresses
+from the maternal milliner. In the completion of which little last
+success, however, some slight family dissent had showed itself.
+
+The Honourable John, the third son, was also at Courcy. He had as yet
+taken to himself no wife, and as he had not hitherto made himself
+conspicuously useful in any special walk of life his family were
+beginning to regard him as a burden. Having no income of his own to
+save, he had not copied his brother's virtue of parsimony; and, to tell
+the truth plainly, had made himself so generally troublesome to his
+father, that he had been on more than one occasion threatened with
+expulsion from the family roof. But it is not easy to expel a son.
+Human fledglings cannot be driven out of the nest like young birds. An
+Honourable John turned adrift into absolute poverty will make himself
+heard of in the world--if in no other way, by his ugliness as he
+starves. A thorough-going ne'er-do-well in the upper classes has
+eminent advantages on his side in the battle which he fights against
+respectability. He can't be sent to Australia against his will. He
+can't be sent to the poor-house without the knowledge of all the world.
+He can't be kept out of tradesmen's shops; nor, without terrible
+scandal, can he be kept away from the paternal properties. The earl had
+threatened, and snarled, and shown his teeth; he was an angry man, and
+a man who could look very angry; with eyes which could almost become
+red, and a brow that wrinkled itself in perpendicular wrinkles,
+sometimes very terrible to behold. But he was an inconstant man, and
+the Honourable John had learned to measure his father, and in an
+accurate balance.
+
+I have mentioned the sons first, because it is to be presumed that they
+were the elder, seeing that their names were mentioned before those of
+their sisters in all the peerages. But there were four daughters--the
+Ladies Amelia, Rosina, Margaretta, and Alexandrina. They, we may say,
+were the flowers of the family, having so lived that they had created
+none of those family feuds which had been so frequent between their
+father and their brothers. They were discreet, highbred women,
+thinking, perhaps, a little too much of their own position in the
+world, and somewhat apt to put a wrong value on those advantages which
+they possessed, and on those which they did not possess. The Lady
+Amelia was already married, having made a substantial if not a
+brilliant match with Mr Mortimer Gazebee, a flourishing solicitor,
+belonging to a firm which had for many years acted as agents to the De
+Courcy property. Mortimer Gazebee was now member of Parliament for
+Barchester, partly through the influence of his father-in-law. That
+this should be so was a matter of great disgust to the Honourable
+George, who thought that the seat should have belonged to him. But as
+Mr Gazebee had paid the very heavy expenses of the election out of his
+own pocket, and as George de Courcy certainly could not have paid them,
+the justice of his claim may be questionable. Mrs Gazebee was now the
+happy mother of many babies, whom she was wont to carry with her on her
+visits to Courcy Castle, and had become an excellent partner to her
+husband He would perhaps have liked it better if she had not spoken so
+frequently to him of her own high position as the daughter of an earl,
+or so frequently to others of her low position as the wife of an
+attorney. But, on the whole, they did very well together, and Mr
+Gazebee had gotten from his marriage quite as much as he expected when
+he made it.
+
+The Lady Rosina was very religious; and I do not know that she was
+conspicuous in any other way, unless it might be that she somewhat
+resembled her father, in her temper. It was of the Lady Rosina that the
+servants were afraid, especially with reference to that so-called day
+of rest which, under her dominion, had become to many of them a day of
+restless torment. It had not always been so with the Lady Rosina; but
+her eyes had been opened by the wife of a great church dignitary in the
+neighbourhood, and she had undergone regeneration. How great may be the
+misery inflicted by an energetic, unmarried, healthy woman in that
+condition--a woman with no husband, or children, or duties, to distract
+her from her work--I pray that my readers may never know.
+
+The Lady Margaretta was her mother's favourite, and she was like her
+mother in all things--except that her mother had been a beauty. The
+world called her proud, disdainful, and even insolent; but the world
+was not aware that in all that she did she was acting in accordance
+with a principle which had called for much self-abnegation. She had
+considered it her duty to be a De Courcy and an earl's daughter at all
+times; and consequently she had sacrificed to her idea of duty all
+popularity, adulation, and such admiration as would have been awarded
+to her as a well-dressed, tall, fashionable, and by no means stupid
+young woman. To be at all times in something higher than they who were
+manifestly below her in rank--that was the effort that she was ever
+making. But she had been a good daughter, assisting her mother, as best
+she might, in all family troubles, and never repining at the cold,
+colourless, unlovely life which had been vouchsafed to her.
+
+Alexandrina was the beauty of the family, and was in truth the
+youngest. But even she was not very young, and was beginning to make
+her friends uneasy lest she, too, should let the precious season of
+hay-harvest run by without due use of her summer's sun. She had,
+perhaps, counted too much on her beauty, which had been beauty
+according to law rather than beauty according to taste, and had looked,
+probably, for too bounteous a harvest. That her forehead, and nose, and
+cheeks, and chin were well-formed, no man could deny. Her hair was soft
+and plentiful. Her teeth were good, and her eyes were long and oval.
+But the fault of her face was this--that when you left her you could not
+remember it. After a first acquaintance you could meet her again and
+not know her. After many meetings you would fail to carry away with you
+any portrait of her features. But such as she had been at twenty, such
+was she now at thirty. Years had not robbed her face of its regularity,
+or ruffled the smoothness of her too even forehead. Rumour had declared
+that on more than one, or perhaps more than two occasions, Lady
+Alexandrina had been already induced to plight her troth in return for
+proffered love; but we all know that Rumour, when she takes to such
+topics, exaggerates the truth, and sets down much in malice. The lady
+was once engaged, the engagement lasting for two years, and the
+engagement had been broken off, owing to some money difficulties
+between the gentlemen of the families. Since that she had become
+somewhat querulous, and was supposed to be uneasy on that subject of
+her haymaking. Her glass and her maid assured her that her sun shone
+still as brightly as ever; but her spirit was becoming weary with
+waiting, and she dreaded lest she should become a terror to all, as was
+her sister Rosina, or an object of interest to none, as was Margaretta.
+It was from her especially that this message had been sent to our
+friend Crosbie; for, during the last spring in London, she and Crosbie
+had known each other well. Yes, my gentle readers; it is true, as your
+heart suggests to you. Under such circumstances Mr Crosbie should not
+have gone to Courcy Castle.
+
+Such was the family circle of the De Courcys. Among their present
+guests I need not enumerate many. First and foremost in all respects
+was Lady Dumbello, of whose parentage and position a few words were
+said in the last chapter. She was a lady still very young, having as
+yet been little more than two years married. But in those two years her
+triumphs had been many--so many, that in the great world her standing
+already equalled that of her celebrated mother-in-law, the Marchioness
+of Hartletop, who, for twenty years, had owned no greater potentate
+than herself in the realms of fashion. But Lady Dumbello was every inch
+as great as she; and men said, and women also, that the daughter-in-law
+would soon be the greater.
+
+"I'll be hanged if I can understand how she does it, "a certain noble
+peer had once said to Crosbie, standing at the door of Sebright's,
+during the latter days of the last season. "She never says anything to
+any one. She won't speak ten words a whole night through."
+
+"I don't think she has an idea in her head," said Crosbie.
+
+"Let me tell you that she must be a very clever woman," continued the
+noble peer. "No fool could do as she does. Remember, she's only a
+parson's daughter; and as for beauty--"
+
+"I don't admire her for one," said Crosbie.
+
+"I don't want to run away with her, if you mean that," said the peer;
+"but she is handsome, no doubt. I wonder whether Dumbello likes it."
+
+Dumbello did like it. It satisfied his ambition to be led about as the
+senior lacquey in his wife's train. He believed himself to be a great
+man because the world fought for his wife's presence; and considered
+himself to be distinguished even among the eldest suns of marquises, by
+the greatness reflected from the parson's daughter whom he had married.
+He had now been brought to Courcy Castle, and felt himself proud of his
+situation because Lady Dumbello had made considerable difficulty in
+according this week to the Countess de Courcy.
+
+And Lady Julia de Guest was already there, the sister of the other old
+earl, who lived in the next county. She had only arrived on the day
+before, but had been quick in spreading the news as to Crosbie's
+engagement. "Engaged to one of the Dales, is he?" said the countess,
+with a pretty little smile, which showed plainly that the matter was
+one of no interest to herself. "Has she got any money?"
+
+"Not a shilling, I should think," said the Lady Julia.
+
+"Pretty, I suppose?" suggested the countess.
+
+"Why, yes; she is pretty--and a nice girl. I don't know whether her
+mother and uncle were very wise in encouraging Mr Crosbie. I don't hear
+that he has anything special to recommend him--in the way of money I
+mean."
+
+"I dare say it will come to nothing," said the countess, who liked to
+hear of girls being engaged and then losing their promised husbands.
+She did not know that she liked it, but she did; and already had
+pleasure in anticipating poor Lily's discomfiture. But not the less was
+she angry with Crosbie, feeling that he was making his way into her
+house under false pretences.
+
+And Alexandrina also was angry when Lady Julia repeated the same
+tidings in her hearing "I really don't think we care very much about
+it, Lady Julia," said she, with a little toss of her head." That's
+three times we've been told of Miss Dale's good fortune."
+
+"The Dales are related to you, I think?" said Margaretta.
+
+"Not at all," said Lady Julia, bristling up. "The lady whom Mr Crosbie
+proposes to marry is in no way connected with us. Her cousin, who is
+the heir to the Allington property, is my nephew by his mother." And
+then the subject was dropped.
+
+Crosbie, on his arrival, was shown up into his room, told the hour of
+dinner, and left to his devices. He had been at the castle before, and
+knew the ways of the house. So he sat himself down to his table, and
+began a letter to Lily. But he had not proceeded far, not having as yet
+indeed made up his mind as to the form in which he would commence it,
+but was sitting idly with the pen in his hand, thinking of Lily, and
+thinking also how such houses as this in which he now found himself
+would be soon closed against him, when there came a rap at his door,
+and before he could answer the Honourable John entered the room.
+
+"Well, old fellow," said the Honourable John, "how are you?
+Crosbie had been intimate with John de Courcy, but never felt for him
+either friendship or liking. Crosbie did not like such men as John de
+Courcy; but nevertheless, they called each other old fellow, poked each
+other's ribs, and were very intimate.
+
+"Heard you were here," continued the Honourable John "so I thought I
+would come up and look after you. Going to be married, ain't you?
+
+"Not that I know of" said Crosbie.
+
+"Come, we know better than that. The women have been talking about it
+for the last three days. I had her name quite pat yesterday, but I've
+forgot it now. Hasn't got a tanner; has she?" And the Honourable John
+had now seated himself upon the table.
+
+"You seem to know a great deal more about it than I do."
+
+"It is that old woman from Guestwick who told us, then. The women will
+be at you at once, you'll find. If there's nothing in it, it's what I
+call a d---- shame. Why should they always pull a fellow to pieces in
+that way? They were going to marry me the other day!"
+
+"Were they indeed, though?
+
+"To Harriet Twistleton. You know Harriet Twistleton? An uncommon fine
+girl, you know. But I wasn't going to be caught like that. I'm very
+fond of Harriet--in my way, you know; but they don't catch an old bird
+like me with chaff."
+
+"I condole with Miss Twistleton for what she has lost."
+
+"I don't know about condoling. But upon my word that getting married is
+a very slow thing. Have you seen George's wife?"
+
+Crosbie declared that he had not as yet had that pleasure.
+
+"She's here now, you know. I wouldn't have taken her, not if she'd had
+ten times thirty thousand pounds. By Jove, no. But he likes it well
+enough. Would you believe it now?--he cares for nothing on earth except
+money. You never saw such a fellow. But I'll tell you what, his nose
+will be out of joint yet, for Porlock is going to marry. I heard it
+from Colepepper, who almost lives with Porlock. As soon as Porlock
+heard that she was in the family way he immediately made up his mind to
+cut him out."
+
+"That was a great sign of brotherly love," said Crosbie.
+
+"I knew he'd do it," said John; "and so I told George before he got
+himself spliced. But he would go on. If he'd remained as he was for
+four or five years longer there would have been no danger--for Porlock,
+you know, is leading the deuce of a life, I shouldn't wonder if he
+didn't reform now, and take to singing psalms or something of that
+sort."
+
+"There's no knowing what a man may come to in this world."
+
+"By George, no. But I'll tell you what, they'll find no change in me.
+If I marry it will not be with the intention of giving up life. I say,
+old fellow, have you got a cigar here?"
+
+"What, to smoke up here, do you mean?"
+
+"Yes; why not? we're ever so far from the women."
+
+"Not whilst I am occupier of this room. Besides, it's time to dress for
+dinner,"
+
+"Is it? So it is, by George! But I mean to have a smoke first, I can
+tell you. So it's all a lie about your being engaged; eh?"
+
+"As far as I know, it is," said Crosbie. And then his friend left him.
+
+What was he to do at once, now, this very day, as to his engagement? He
+had felt sure that the report of it would be carried to Courcy by Lady
+Julia de Guest, but he had not settled down upon any resolution as to
+what he would do in consequence. It had not occurred to him that he
+would immediately be charged with the offence, and called upon to plead
+guilty or not guilty. He had never for a moment meditated any plea of
+not guilty, but he was aware of an aversion on his part to declare
+himself as engaged to Lilian Dale. It seemed that by doing so he would
+cut himself off at once from all pleasure at such houses as Courcy
+Castle; and, as he argued to himself, why should he not enjoy the
+little remnant of his bachelor life? As to his denying his engagement
+to John de Courcy--that was nothing. Any one would understand that he
+would be justified in concealing a fact concerning himself from such a
+one as he. The denial repeated from John's mouth would amount to
+nothing--even among John's own sisters. But now it was necessary that
+Crosbie should make up his mind as to what he would say when questioned
+by the ladies of the house. If he were to deny the fact to them the
+denial would be very serious. And, indeed, was it possible that he
+should make such denial with Lady Julia opposite to him?
+
+Make such a denial! And was it the fact that he could wish to do
+so--that he should think of such falsehood, and even meditate on the
+perpetration of such cowardice? He had held that young girl to his
+heart on that very morning. He had sworn to her, and had also sworn to
+himself, that she should have no reason for distrusting him. He had
+acknowledged most solemnly to himself that, whether for good or for
+ill, he was bound to her; and could it be that he was already
+calculating as to the practicability of disowning her? In doing so must
+he not have told himself that he was a villain? But in truth he made no
+such calculation. His object was to banish the subject, if it were
+possible to do so; to think of some answer by which he might create a
+doubt. It did not occur to him to tell the countess boldly that there
+was no truth whatever in the report, and that Miss Dale was nothing to
+him. But might he not skilfully laugh off the subject, even in the
+presence of Lady Julia? Men who were engaged did so usually, and why
+should not he? It was generally thought that solicitude for the lady's
+feelings should prevent a man from talking openly of his own
+engagement. Then he remembered the easy freedom with which his position
+had been discussed throughout the whole neighbourhood of Allington, and
+felt for the first time that the Dale family had been almost indelicate
+in their want of reticence." I suppose it was done to tie me the
+faster," he said to himself, as he pulled out the ends of his cravat.
+"What a fool I was to come here, or indeed to go anywhere, after
+settling myself as I have done." And then he went down into the
+drawing-room.
+
+It was almost a relief to him when he found that he was not charged
+with his sin at once. He himself had been so full of the subject that
+he had expected to be attacked at the moment of his entrance, He was,
+however, greeted without any allusion to the matter. The countess, in
+her own quiet way, shook hands with him as though she had seen him only
+the day before. The earl, who was seated in his arm-chair, asked some
+one, out loud, who the stranger was, and then, with two fingers put
+forth, muttered some apology for a welcome. But Crosbie was quite up to
+that kind of thing. "How do, my lord?" he said, turning his face away
+to some one else as he spoke; and then he took no further notice of the
+master of the house. "Not know him, indeed!" Crippled though he was by
+his matrimonial bond, Crosbie felt that, at any rate as yet, he was the
+earl's equal in social importance. After that, he found himself in the
+back part of the drawing-room, away from the elder people, standing
+with Lady Alexandrina, with Miss Gresham, a cousin of the De Courcys,
+and sundry other of the younger portion of the assembled community.
+
+"So you have Lady Dumbello here?" said Crosbie.
+
+"Oh, yes; the dear creature!" said Lady Margaretta. "It was so good of
+her to come, you know."
+
+"She positively refused the Duchess of St Bungay," said Alexandrina. "I
+hope you perceive how good we've been to you in getting you to meet
+her. People have actually asked to come."
+
+"I am grateful; but, in truth, my gratitude has more to do with Courcy
+Castle and its habitual inmates, than with Lady Dumbello. Is he here?
+
+"Oh, yes! he's in the room somewhere. There he is, standing up by Lady
+Clandidlem. He always stands in that way before dinner. In the evening
+he sits down much after the same fashion."
+
+Crosbie had seen him on first entering the room, and had seen every
+individual in it. He knew better than to omit the duty of that
+scrutinising glance; but it sounded well in his line not to have
+observed Lord Dumbello.
+
+"And her ladyship is not down?" said he.
+
+"She is generally last," said Lady Margaretta.
+
+"And yet she has always three women to dress her," said Alexandrina.
+
+"But when finished, what a success it is!" said Crosbie.
+
+"Indeed it is!" said Margaretta, with energy. Then the door was opened,
+and Lady Dumbello entered the room.
+
+There was immediately a commotion among them all. Even the gouty old
+lord shuffled up out of his chair, and tried, with a grin, to look
+sweet and pleasant. The countess came forward, looking very sweet and
+pleasant, making little complimentary speeches, to which the
+viscountess answered simply by a gracious smile. Lady Clandidlem,
+though she was very fat and heavy, left the viscount, and got up to
+join the group. Baron Potsneuf, a diplomatic German of great celebrity,
+crossed his hands upon his breast, and made a low bow. The Honourable
+George, who had stood silent for the last quarter of an hour, suggested
+to her ladyship that she must have found the air rather cold; and the
+Ladies Margaretta and Alexandrina fluttered up with little
+complimentary speeches to their dear Lady Dumbello, hoping this and
+beseeching that, as though the" Woman in White" before them had been
+the dearest friend of their infancy.
+
+She was a woman in white, being dressed in white silk with white lace
+over it, and with no other jewels upon her person than diamonds. Very
+beautifully she was dressed; doing infinite credit, no doubt, to those
+three artists who had, between them, succeeded in turning her out of
+hand. And her face, also, was beautiful, with a certain cold,
+inexpressive beauty. She walked up the room very slowly, smiling here
+and smiling there; but still with very faint smiles, and took the place
+which her hostess indicated to her. One word she said to the countess
+and two to the earl. Beyond that she did not open her lips. All the
+homage paid to her she received! as though it were clearly her due. She
+was not in the least embarrassed, nor did she show herself to be in the
+slightest degree ashamed of her own silence. She did not look like a
+fool, nor was she even taken for a fool; but she contributed nothing to
+society but her cold, hard beauty, her gait, and her dress. We may say
+that she contributed enough, for society acknowledged itself to be
+deeply indebted to her.
+
+The only person in the room who did not move at Lady Dumbello's
+entrance was her husband. But he remained unmoved from no want of
+enthusiasm. A spark of pleasure actually beamed in his eye as he saw
+the triumphant entrance of his wife. He felt that he had made a match
+that was becoming to him as a great nobleman, and that the world was
+acknowledging that he had done his duty. And yet Lady Dumbello had been
+simply the daughter of a country parson, of a clergyman who had reached
+no higher rank than that of an archdeacon. "How wonderfully well that
+woman has educated her," the countess said that evening in her
+dressing-room, to Margaretta. The woman alluded to was Mrs Grantly, the
+wife of the parson and mother of Lady Dumbello.
+
+The old earl was very cross because destiny and the table of precedence
+required him to take out Lady Clandidlem to dinner. He almost insulted
+her, as she kindly endeavoured to assist him in his infirm step rather
+than to lean upon him.
+
+"Ugh!" he said, "it's a bad arrangement that makes two old people like
+you and me be sent out together to help each other."
+
+"Speak for yourself," said her ladyship, with a laugh. "I, at any rate,
+can get about without any assistance,"--which, indeed, was true enough.
+
+"It's well for you!" growled the earl, as he got himself into his seat.
+
+And after that he endeavoured to solace his pain by a flirtation with
+Lady Dumbello on his left. The earl's smiles and the earl's teeth, when
+he whispered naughty little nothings to pretty young women, were
+phenomena at which men might marvel. Whatever those naughty nothings
+were on the present occasion, Lady Dumbello took them all with
+placidity, smiling graciously, but speaking hardly more than
+monosyllables.
+
+Lady Alexandrina fell to Crosbie's lot, and he felt gratified that it
+was so. It might be necessary for him, as a married man, to give up
+such acquaintances as the De Courcys, but he should like, if possible,
+to maintain a friendship with Lady Alexandrina. What a friend Lady
+Alexandrina would be for Lily, if any such friendship were only
+possible! What an advantage would such an alliance confer upon that
+dear little girl--for, after all, though the dear little girl's
+attractions were very great, he could not but admit to himself that she
+wanted a something--a way of holding herself and of speaking, which some
+people call style. Lily might certainly learn a great deal from Lady
+Alexandrina; and it was this conviction, no doubt, which made him so
+sedulous in pleasing that lady on the present occasion.
+
+And she, as it seemed, was well inclined to be pleased. She said no
+word to him during dinner about Lily; and yet she spoke about the
+Dales, and about Allington, showing that she knew in what quarters he
+had been staying, and then she alluded to their last parties in
+London--those occasions on which, as Crosbie now remembered, the
+intercourse between them had almost been tender. It was manifest to him
+that at any rate she did not wish to quarrel with him. It was manifest,
+also, that she had some little hesitation in speaking to him about his
+engagement. He did not for the moment doubt that she was aware of it.
+And in this way matters went on between them till the ladies left the
+room.
+
+"So you're going to be married, too," said the Honourable George, by
+whose side Crosbie found himself seated when the ladies were gone.
+Crosbie was employing himself upon a walnut, and did not find it
+necessary to make any answer.
+
+"It's the best thing a fellow can do," continued George; "that is, if
+he has been careful to look to the main chance--if he hasn't been caught
+napping, you know. It doesn't do for a man to go hanging on by nothing
+till he finds himself an old man."
+
+"You've feathered your own nest, at any rate."
+
+"Yes; I've got something in the scramble, and I mean to keep it. Where
+will John be when the governor goes off the hooks? Porlock wouldn't
+give him a bit of bread and cheese and a glass of beer to save his
+life--that is to say, not if he wanted it."
+
+"I'm told your elder brother is going to be married."
+
+"You've heard that from John. He's spreading that about everywhere to
+take a rise out of me. I don't believe a word of it. Porlock never was
+a marrying man--and, what's more, from all I hear, I don't think he'll
+live long."
+
+In this way Crosbie escaped from his own difficulty; and when he rose
+from the dinner-table had not as yet been driven to confess anything to
+his own discredit.
+
+But the evening was not yet over. When he returned to the drawing-room
+he endeavoured to avoid any conversation with the countess herself,
+believing that the attack would more probably come from her than from
+her daughter. He, therefore, got into conversation first with one and
+then with another of the girls, till at last he found himself again
+alone with Alexandrina.
+
+"Mr Crosbie," she said, in a low voice, as they were standing together
+over one of the distant tables, with their backs to the rest of the
+company, "I want you to tell me something about Miss Lilian Dale."
+
+"About Miss Lilian Dale!" he said, repeating her words.
+
+"Is she very pretty?
+
+"Yes she certainly is pretty."
+
+"And very nice, and attractive, and clever--and all that is delightful?
+Is she perfect?
+
+"She is very attractive," said he; "but I don't think she's perfect."
+
+"And what are her faults?
+"That question is hardly fair, is it? Suppose any one were to ask me
+what were your faults, do you think I should answer the question?
+
+"I am quite sure you would, and make a very long list of them, too. But
+as to Miss Dale, you ought to think her perfect. If a gentleman were
+engaged to me, I should expect him to swear before all the world that I
+was the very pink of perfection."
+
+"But supposing the gentleman were not engaged to you?
+
+"That would be a different thing."
+
+"I am not engaged to you," said Crosbie. "Such happiness and such
+honour are, I fear, very far beyond my reach. But, nevertheless, I am
+prepared to testify as to your perfection anywhere."
+
+"And what would Miss Dale say?"
+
+"Allow me to assure you that such opinions as I may choose to express
+of my friends will be my own opinions, and not depend on those of any
+one else."
+
+"And you think, then, that you are not bound to be enslaved as yet? How
+many more months of such freedom are you to enjoy?"
+
+Crosbie remained silent for a minute before he answered, and then he
+spoke in a serious voice." Lady Alexandrina," said he, "I would beg
+from you a great favour."
+
+"What is the favour, Mr Crosbie?
+
+"I am quite in earnest. Will you be good enough, kind enough, enough my
+friend, not to connect my name again with that of Miss Dale while I am
+here?
+
+"Has there been a quarrel?
+
+"No; there has been no quarrel. I cannot explain to you now why I make
+this request; but to you I will explain it before I go."
+
+"Explain it to me!!"
+
+"I have regarded you as more than an acquaintance--as a friend. In days
+now past there were moments when I was almost rash enough to hope that
+I might have said even more than that. I confess that I had no warrant
+for such hopes, but I believe that I may still look on you!! as a
+friend?
+
+"Oh, yes, certainly," said Alexandrina, in a very low voice, and with a
+certain amount of tenderness in her tone. "I have always regarded you
+as a friend."
+
+"And therefore I venture to make the request! The subject is not one on
+which I can speak openly, without regret, at the present moment. But to
+you, at least, I promise that I will explain it all before I leave
+Courcy."
+
+He at any rate succeeded in mystifying Lady Alexandrina. "I don't
+believe he is engaged a bit," she said to Lady Amelia Gazebee that
+night.
+
+"Nonsense, my dear. Lady Julia wouldn't speak of it in that certain way
+if she didn't know. Of course he doesn't wish to have it talked about."
+
+"If ever he has been engaged to her, he has broken it off again," said
+Lady Alexandrina.
+
+"I dare say he will, my dear, if you give him encouragement" said the
+married sister, with great sisterly good-nature.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+LILY DALE'S FIRST LOVE-LETTER
+
+Crosbie was rather proud of himself when he went to bed. He had
+succeeded in baffling the charge made against him, without saying
+anything as to which his conscience need condemn him. So, at least, he
+then told himself. The impression left by what he had said would be
+that there had been some question of an engagement between him and
+Lilian Dale, but that nothing at this moment was absolutely fixed. But
+in the morning his conscience was not quite so clear. What would Lily
+think and say if she knew it all? Could he dare to tell her, or to tell
+any one the real state of his mind?
+
+As he lay in bed, knowing that an hour remained to him before he need
+encounter the perils of his tub, he felt that he hated Courcy Castle
+and its inmates. Who was there, among them all, that was comparable to
+Mrs Dale and her daughters? He detested both George and John. He
+loathed the earl. As to the countess herself, he was perfectly
+indifferent, regarding her as a woman whom it was well to know, but as
+one only to be known as the mistress of Courcy Castle and a house in
+London. As to the daughters, he had ridiculed them all from time to
+time--even Alexandrina, whom he now professed to love. Perhaps in some
+sort of way he had a weak fondness for her--but it was a fondness that
+had never touched his heart. He could measure the whole thing at its
+worth--Courcy Castle with its privileges, Lady Dumbello, Lady
+Clandidlem, and the whole of it. He knew that he had been happier on
+that lawn at Allington, and more contented with himself, than ever he
+had been even under Lady Hartletop's splendid roof in Shropshire. Lady
+Dumbello was satisfied with these things, even in the inmost recesses
+of her soul; but he was not a male Lady Dumbello. He knew that there
+was something better, and that that something was within his reach.
+
+But, nevertheless, the air of Courcy was too much for him. In arguing
+the matter with himself he regarded himself as one infected with a
+leprosy from which there could be no recovery, and who should,
+therefore, make his whole life suitable to the circumstances of that
+leprosy. It was of no use for him to tell himself that the Small House
+at Allington was better than Courcy Castle. Satan knew that heaven was
+better than hell; but he felt himself to be fitter for the latter
+place. Crosbie ridiculed Lady Dumbello, even there among her friends,
+with all the cutting words that his wit could find; but, nevertheless,
+the privilege of staying in the same house with her was dear to him. It
+was the line of life into which he had fallen, and he confessed
+inwardly that the struggle to extricate himself would be too much for
+him. All that had troubled him while he was yet at Allington, but it
+overwhelmed him almost with dismay beneath the hangings of Courcy
+Castle.
+
+Had he not better run from the place at once? He had almost
+acknowledged to himself that he repented his engagement with Lilian
+Dale, but he still was resolved that he would fulfil it. He was bound
+in honour to marry "that little girl," and he looked sternly up at the
+drapery over his head, as he assured himself that he was a man of
+honour. Yes; he would sacrifice himself. As he had been induced to
+pledge his word, he would not go back from it. He was too much of a man
+for that!
+
+But had he not been wrong to refuse the result of Lily's wisdom when
+she told him in the field that it would be better for them to part? He
+did not tell himself that he had refused her offer merely because he
+had not the courage to accept it on the spur of the moment. No. "He had
+been too good to the poor girl to take her at her word." It was thus he
+argued on the matter within his own breast. He had been too true to
+her; and now the effect would be that they would both be unhappy for
+life! He could not live in content with a family upon a small income.
+He was well aware of that. No one could be harder upon him in that
+matter than was he himself. But it was too late now to remedy the ill
+effects of an early education.
+
+It was thus that he debated the matter as he lay in bed--contradicting
+one argument by another over and over again; but still in all of them
+teaching himself to think that this engagement of his was a misfortune.
+Poor Lily! Her last words to him had conveyed an assurance that she
+would never distrust him. And she also, as she lay wakeful in her bed
+on this the first morning of his absence, thought much of their mutual
+vows. How true she would be to them! How she would be his wife with all
+her heart and spirit! It was not only that she would love him--but in
+her love she would serve him to her utmost; serve him as regarded this
+world, and if possible as regarded the next.
+
+"Bell," she said, "I wish you were going to be married too."
+
+"Thank'ye, dear," said Bell," Perhaps I shall some day."
+
+"Ah; but I'm not joking. It seems such a serious thing. And I can't
+expect you to talk to me about it now as you would if you were in the
+same position yourself. Do you think I shall make him happy?"
+
+"Yes, I do, certainly."
+
+"Happier than he would be with any one else that he might meet? I dare
+not think that. I think I could give him up tomorrow, if I could see
+any one that would suit him better." What would Lily have said had she
+been made acquainted with all the fascinations of Lady Alexandrina de
+Courcy?
+
+The countess was very civil to him, saying nothing about his
+engagement, but still talking to him a good deal about his sojourn at
+Allington. Crosbie was a pleasant man for ladies in a large house.
+Though a sportsman, he was not so keen a sportsman as to be always out
+with the gamekeepers. Though a politician, he did not sacrifice his
+mornings to the perusal of blue-books or the preparation of party
+tactics. Though a reading man, he did not devote himself to study.
+Though a horseman, he was not often to be found in the stables. He
+could supply conversation when it was wanted, and could take himself
+out of the way when his presence among the women was not needed.
+Between breakfast and lunch on the day following his arrival he talked
+a good deal to the countess, and made himself very agreeable. She
+continued to ridicule him gently for his prolonged stay among so
+primitive and rural a tribe of people as the Dales, and he bore her
+little sarcasm with the utmost good-humour.
+
+"Six weeks at Allington without a move! Why, Mr Crosbie, you must have
+felt yourself to be growing there."
+
+"So I did--like an ancient tree. Indeed, I was so rooted that I could
+hardly get away."
+
+"Was the house full of people all the time?"
+
+"There was nobody there but Bernard Dale, Lady Julia's nephew."
+"Quite a case of Damon and Pythias. Fancy your going down to the shades
+of Allington to enjoy the uninterrupted pleasures of friendship for six
+weeks."
+
+"Friendship and the partridges."
+
+"There was nothing else, then?"
+
+"Indeed there was. There was a widow with two very nice daughters,
+living, not exactly in the same house, but on the same grounds."
+
+"Oh, indeed. That makes such a difference; doesn't it? You are not a
+man to bear much privation on the score of partridges, nor a great
+deal, I imagine, for friendship. But when you talk of pretty girls--"
+
+"It makes a difference, doesn't it?
+
+"A very great difference. I think I have heard of that Mrs Dale before.
+And so her girls are nice?
+
+"Very nice indeed."
+
+"Play croquet, I suppose, and eat syllabubs on the lawn? But, really,
+didn't you get very tired of it?
+
+"Oh dear, no. I was happy as the day was long."
+
+"Going about with a crook, I suppose?"
+
+"Not exactly a live crook; but doing all that kind of thing. I learned
+a great deal about pigs."
+
+"Under the guidance of Miss Dale?"
+
+"Yes; under the guidance of Miss Dale."
+
+"I'm sure one is very much obliged to you for tearing yourself away
+from such charms, and coming to such unromantic people as we are. But
+I fancy men always do that sort of thing once or twice in their
+lives--and then they talk of their souvenirs. I suppose it won't go
+beyond a souvenir with you."
+
+This was a direct question, but still admitted of a fencing answer. "It
+has, at any rate, given me one," said he," which will last me my life!"
+
+The countess was quite contented. That Lady Julia's statement was
+altogether true she had never for a moment doubted. That Crosbie should
+become engaged to a young lady in the country, whereas he had shown
+signs of being in love with her daughter in London, was not at all
+wonderful. Nor, in her eyes, did such practice amount to any great sin.
+Men did so daily, and girls were prepared for their so doing. A man in
+her eyes was not to be regarded as safe from attack because he was
+engaged. Let the young lady who took upon herself to own him have an
+eye to that. When she looked back on the past careers of her own flock,
+she had to reckon more than one such disappointment for her own
+daughters. Others besides Alexandrina had been so treated. Lady de
+Courcy had had her grand hopes respecting her girls, and after them
+moderate hopes, and again after them bitter disappointments. Only one
+had been married, and she was married to an attorney. It was not to be
+supposed that she would have any very high-toned feelings as to Lily's
+rights in this matter.
+
+Such a man as Crosbie was certainly no great match for an earl's
+daughter. Such a marriage, indeed, would, one may say, be but a poor
+triumph. When the countess, during the last season in town, had
+observed how matters were going with Alexandrina, she had cautioned her
+child, taking her to task for her imprudence. But the child had been at
+this work for fourteen years, and was weary of it. Her sisters had been
+at the work longer, and had almost given it up in despair. Alexandrina
+did not tell her parent that her heart was now beyond her control, and
+that she had devoted herself to Crosbie for ever; but she pouted,
+saying that she knew very well what she was about, scolding her mother
+in return, and making Lady de Courcy perceive that the struggle was
+becoming very weary. And then there were other considerations. Mr
+Crosbie had not much certainly in his own possession, but he was a man
+out of whom something might be made by family influence and his own
+standing. He was not a hopeless, ponderous man, whom no leaven could
+raise. He was one of whose position in society the countess and her
+daughters need not be ashamed. Lady de Courcy had given no expressed
+consent to the arrangement, but it had come to be understood between
+her and her daughter that the scheme was to be entertained as
+admissible.
+
+Then came these tidings of the little girl down at Allington. She felt
+no anger against Crosbie. To be angry on such a subject would be
+futile, foolish, and almost indecorous. It was a part of the game which
+was as natural to her as fielding is to a cricketer. One cannot have it
+all winnings at any game. Whether Crosbie should eventually become her
+own son-in-law or not it came to her naturally, as a part of her duty
+in life, to howl down the stumps of that young lady at Allington. If
+Miss Dale knew the game well and could protect her own wicket, let her
+do so.
+
+She had no doubt as to Crosbie's engagement with Lilian Dale, but she
+had as little as to his being ashamed of that engagement. Had he really
+cared for Miss Dale he would not have left her to come to Courcy
+Castle. Had he been really resolved to marry her, he would not have
+warded all questions respecting his engagement with fictitious answers.
+He had amused himself with Lily Dale, and it was to be hoped that the
+young lady had not thought very seriously about it. That was the most
+charitable light in which Lady de Courcy was disposed to regard the
+question.
+
+It behoved Crosbie to write to Lily Dale before dinner. He had promised
+to do so immediately on his arrival, and he was aware that he would be
+regarded as being already one day beyond his promise. Lily had told him
+that she would live upon his letters, and it was absolutely necessary
+that he should furnish her with her first meal. So he betook himself to
+his room in sufficient time before dinner, and got out his pen, ink,
+and paper.
+
+He got out his pen, ink, and paper, and then he found that his
+difficulties were beginning. I beg that it may be understood that
+Crosbie was not altogether a villain. He could not sit down and write a
+letter as coming from his heart, of which as he wrote it he knew the
+words to be false, He was an ungenerous, worldly, inconstant man, very
+prone to think well of himself, and to give himself credit for virtues
+which he did not possess; but he could not be false with premeditated
+cruelty to a woman he had sworn to love. He could not write an
+affectionate, warm-hearted letter to Lily, without bringing himself, at
+any rate for the time, to feel towards her in an affectionate,
+warmhearted way. Therefore he now sat himself to work, while his pen
+yet remained dry in his hand, to remodel his thoughts, which had been
+turned against Lily and Allington by the craft of Lady de Courcy. It
+takes some time before a man can do this. He has to struggle with
+himself in a very uncomfortable way, making efforts which are often
+unsuccessful. It is sometimes easier to lift a couple of hundredweights
+than to raise a few thoughts in one's mind which at other moments will
+come galloping in without a whistle,
+
+He had just written the date of his letter when a little tap came at
+his door, and it was opened.
+
+"I say, Crosbie," said the Honourable John, "didn't you say something
+yesterday about a cigar before dinner?
+
+"Not a word," said Crosbie, in rather an angry tone.
+
+"Then it must have been me," said John." But bring your case with you,
+and come down to the harness-room, if you won't smoke here. I've had a
+regular little snuggery fitted up there; and we can go in and see the
+fellows making up the horses."
+
+Crosbie wished the Honourable John at the mischief.
+
+"I have letters to write," said he. "Besides, I never smoke before
+dinner."
+
+"That's nonsense. I've smoked hundreds of cigars with you before
+dinner. Are you going to turn curmudgeon, too, like George and the rest
+of them? I don't know what's coming to the world! I suppose the fact
+is, that little girl at Allington won't let you smoke."
+
+"The little girl at Allington--" began Crosbie; and then he reflected
+that it would not be well for him to say anything to his present
+companion about that little girl.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is," said he.
+
+"I really have got letters to write which must go by this post. There's
+my cigar-case on the dressing-table."
+
+"I hope it will be long before I'm brought to such a state," said John,
+taking up the cigars in his hand.
+
+"Let me have the case back," said Crosbie.
+
+"A present from the little girl, I suppose?" said John.
+
+"All right, old fellow! you shall have it."
+
+"There would be a nice brother-in-law for a man," said Crosbie to
+himself, as the door closed behind the retreating scion of the De
+Courcy family. And then, again, he took up his pen. The letter must be
+written, and therefore he threw himself upon the table, resolved that
+the words should come and the paper be filled.
+
+COURCY CASTLE, October, 186-.
+
+DEAREST LILY--This is the first letter I ever wrote to you, except those
+little notes when I sent you my compliments discreetly--and it sounds so
+odd. You will think that this does not come as soon as it should; but
+the truth is that after all I only got in here just before dinner
+yesterday. I stayed ever so long at Barchester, and came across such a
+queer character. For you most know I went to church, and afterwards
+fraternised with the clergyman who did the service; such a gentle old
+soul--and, singularly enough, he is the grandfather of Lady Dumbello,
+who is staying here. I wonder what you'd think of Lady Dumbello, or how
+you'd like to be shut up in the same house with her for a week?
+
+But with reference to my staying at Barchester, I most tell you the
+truth now, though I was a gross impostor the day that I went away. I
+wanted to avoid a parting on that last morning, and therefore I started
+much sooner than I need have done. I know you will be very angry with
+me; but open confession is good for the soul. You frustrated all my
+little plan by your early rising; and as I saw you standing on the
+terrace, looking after us as we went, I acknowledged that you had been
+right, and that I was wrong. When the time came, I was very glad to
+have you with me at the last moment.
+
+My own dearest Lily, you cannot think how different this place is from
+the two houses at Allington, or how much I prefer the sort of life
+which belongs to the latter. I know that I have been what the world
+calls worldly, but you will have to cure me of that. I have questioned
+myself very much since I left you, and I do not think that I am quite
+beyond the reach of a cure. At any rate, I will put myself trustingly
+into the doctor's hands. I know it is hard for a man to change his
+habits; but I can with truth say this for myself, that I was happy at
+Allington, enjoying every hour of the day, and that here I am _ennuye_
+by everybody and nearly by everything. One of the girls of the house
+I do like; but as to other people, I can hardly find a companion among
+them, let alone a friend. However, it would not have done for me to
+have broken away from all such alliance too suddenly.
+
+When I get up to London--and now I really am anxious to get there--I can
+write to you more at my ease, and more freely than I do here. I know
+that I am hardly myself among these people--or rather, I am hardly
+myself as you know me, and as I hope you always will know me. But,
+nevertheless, I am not so overcome by the miasma but what I can tell
+you how truly I love you. Even though my spirit should be here, which
+it is not, my heart would be on the Allington lawns. That dear lawn and
+that dear bridge!
+
+Give my kind love to Bell and your mother. I feel already that I might
+almost say my mother. And Lily, my darling, write to me at once. I
+expect your letters to me to be longer, and better, and brighter than
+mine to you. But I will endeavour to make mine nicer when I get back to
+town.
+
+God bless you.
+
+Yours, with all my heart,
+
+A. C.
+
+As he waxed warm with his writing he had forced himself to be
+affectionate, and, as he flattered himself, frank and candid.
+Nevertheless, he was partly conscious that he was preparing for himself
+a mode of escape in those allusions of his to his own worldliness; if
+escape should ultimately be necessary. "I have tried," he would then
+say; "I have struggled honestly, with my best efforts for success; but
+I am not good enough for such success." I do not intend to say that he
+wrote with a premeditated intention of thus using his words; but as he
+wrote them he could not keep himself from reflecting that they might be
+used in that way.
+
+He read his letter over, felt satisfied with it, and resolved that he
+might now free his mind from that consideration for the next
+forty-eight hours. Whatever might he his sins he had done his duty by
+Lily! And with this comfortable reflection he deposited his letter in
+the Courcy Castle letter-box.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIX
+
+THE SQUIRE MAKES A VISIT TO THE SMALL HOUSE
+
+Mrs Dale acknowledged to herself that she had not much ground for
+hoping that she should ever find in Crosbie's house much personal
+happiness for her future life. She did not dislike Mr Crosbie, nor in
+any great degree mistrust him; but she had seen enough of him to make
+her certain that Lily's future home in London could not be a home for
+her. He was worldly, or, at least, a man of the world. He would be
+anxious to make the most of his income, and his life would be one long
+struggle, not perhaps for money, but for those things which money only
+can give. There are men to whom eight hundred a year is great wealth,
+and houses to which it brings all the comforts that life requires. But
+Crosbie was not such a man, nor would his house be such a house. Mrs
+Dale hoped that Lily would be happy with him, and satisfied with his
+modes of life, and she strove to believe that such would be the case;
+but as regarded herself she was forced to confess that in such a
+marriage her child would be much divided from her. That pleasant abode
+to which she had long looked forward that she might have a welcome
+there in coming years should be among fields and trees, not in some
+narrow London street. Lily must now become a city lady; but Bell would
+still be left to her, and it might still be hoped that Bell would find
+for herself some country home.
+
+Since the day on which Lily had first told her mother of her
+engagement, Mrs Dale had found herself talking much more fully and more
+frequently with Bell than with her younger daughter. As long as Crosbie
+was at Allington this was natural enough. He and Lily were of course
+together, while Bell remained with her mother. But the same state of
+things continued even after Crosbie was gone. It was not that there was
+any coolness or want of affection between the mother and daughter, but
+that Lily's heart was full of her lover, and that Mrs Dale, though she
+had given her cordial consent to the marriage, felt that she had but
+few points of sympathy with her future son-in-law. She had never said,
+even to herself, that she disliked him; nay, she had sometimes declared
+to herself that she was fond of him. But, in truth, he was not a man
+after her own heart. He was not one who could ever be to her as her own
+son and her own child.
+
+But she and Bell would pass hours together talking of Lily's
+prospects." It seems strange to me," said Mrs Dale," that she of all
+girls should have been fancied by such a man as Mr Crosbie, or that she
+should have liked him. I cannot imagine Lily living in London."
+
+"If he is good and affectionate to her she will be happy wherever he
+is," said Bell.
+
+"I hope so--I'm sure I hope so. But it seems as though she will be so
+far separated from us. It is not the distance, but the manner of life
+which makes the separation. I hope you'll never be taken so far from
+me."
+
+"I don't think I shall allow myself to be taken up to London," said
+Bell, laughing. "But one can never tell. If I do you must follow us,
+mamma."
+
+"I do not want another Mr Crosbie for you, dear."
+
+"But perhaps I may want one for myself. You need not tremble quite yet,
+however. Apollos do not come this road every day."
+
+"Poor Lily! Do you remember when she first called him Apollo? I do,
+well. I remember his corning here the day after Bernard brought him
+down, and how you were playing on the lawn, while I was in the other
+garden. I little thought then what it would come to."
+
+"But, mamma, you don't regret it?"
+
+"Not if it's to make her happy. If she can be happy with him, of course
+I shall not regret it; not though he were to take her to the world's
+end away from us. What else have I to look for but that she and you
+should both be happy?"
+
+"Men in London are happy with their wives as well as men in the
+country."
+
+"Oh, yes; of all women I should be the first to acknowledge that."
+
+"And as to Adolphus himself, I do not know why we should distrust him."
+
+"No, my dear; there is no reason. If I did distrust him I should not
+have given so ready an assent to the marriage. But, nevertheless--"
+
+"The truth is, you don't like him, mamma."
+
+"Not so cordially as I hope I may like any man whom you may choose for
+your husband."
+
+And Lily, though she said nothing on the subject to Mrs Dale, felt that
+her mother was in some degree estranged from her. Crosbie's name was
+frequently mentioned between them, but in the tone of Mrs Dale's voice,
+and in her manner when she spoke of him, there was lacking that
+enthusiasm and heartiness which real sympathy would have produced. Lily
+did not analyse her own feelings, or closely make inquiry as to those
+of her mother, but she perceived that it was not all as she would have
+wished it to have been. "I know mamma does not love him," she said to
+Bell on the evening of the day on which she received Crosbie's first
+letter.
+
+"Not as you do, Lily; but she does love him."
+
+"Not as I do! To say that is nonsense, Bell; of course she does not
+love him as I do. But the truth is she does not love him at all. Do you
+think I cannot see it?"
+
+"I'm afraid that you see too much."
+
+"She never says a word against him; but if she really liked him she
+would sometimes say a word in his favour. I do not think she would ever
+mention his name unless you or I spoke to him before her. If she did
+not approve of him, why did she not say so sooner?
+
+"That's hardly fair upon mamma," said Bell, with some earnestness. "She
+does not disapprove of him, and she never did. You know mamma well
+enough to be sure that she would not interfere with us in such a matter
+without very strong reason. As regards Mr Crosbie, she gave her consent
+without a moment's hesitation."
+
+"Yes, she did."
+
+"How can you say, then, that she disapproves of him?"
+"I didn't mean to find fault with mamma. Perhaps it will come all
+right."
+
+"It will come all, right." But Bell, though she made this very
+satisfactory promise, was as well aware as either of the others that
+the family would be divided when Crosbie should have married Lily and
+taken her off to London.
+
+On the following morning Mrs Dale and Bell were sitting together. Lily
+was above in her own room, either writing to her lover, or reading his
+letter, or thinking of him, or working for him. In some way she was
+employed on his behalf, and with this object she was alone. It was now
+the middle of October, and the fire was lit in Mrs Dale's drawing-room.
+The window which opened upon the lawn was closed, the heavy curtains
+had been put back in their places, and it had been acknowledged as an
+unwelcome fact that the last of the summer was over. This was always a
+sorrow to Mrs Dale; but it is one of those sorrows which hardly admit
+of open expression.
+
+"Bell," she said, looking up suddenly; "there's your uncle at the
+window. Let him in." For now, since the putting up of the curtains, the
+window had been bolted as well as closed. So Bell got up, and opened a
+passage for the squire's entrance. It was not often that he came down
+in this way, and when he did do so it was generally for some purpose
+which had been expressed before.
+
+"What! fires already?" said he. "I never have fires at the other house
+in the morning till the first of November. I like to see a spark in the
+grate after dinner."
+
+"I like a fire when I'm cold," said Mrs Dale. But this was a subject on
+which the squire and his sister-in-law had differed before, and as Mr
+Dale had some business in hand, he did not now choose to waste his
+energy in supporting his own views on the question of fires.
+
+"Bell, my dear," said he, "I want to speak to your mother for a minute
+or two on a matter of business. You wouldn't mind leaving us for a
+little while, would you?" Whereupon Bell collected up her work and went
+upstairs to her sister. "Uncle Christopher is below with mamma," said
+she, "talking about business. I suppose it is something to do with your
+marriage." But Bell was wrong. The squire's visit had no reference to
+Lily's marriage.
+
+Mrs Dale did not move or speak a word when Bell was gone, though it was
+evident that the squire paused in order that she might ask some
+question of him. "Mary," said he, at last, "I'll tell you what it is
+that I have come to say to you." Whereupon she put the piece of
+needlework which was in her hands down upon the work-basket before her,
+and settled herself to listen to him.
+
+"I wish to speak to you about Bell."
+
+"About Bell?" said Mrs Dale, as though much surprised that he should
+have anything to say to her respecting her eldest daughter.
+
+"Yes, about Bell. Here's Lily going to be married, and it will be well
+that Bell should be married too."
+
+"I don't see that at all," said Mrs Dale. "I am by no means in a hurry
+to be rid of her."
+
+"No, I dare say not. But, of course, you only regard her welfare, and I
+can truly say that I do the same. There would be no necessity for hurry
+as to a marriage for her under ordinary circumstances, but there may be
+circumstances to make such a thing desirable, and I think that there
+are." It was evident from the squire's tone and manner that he was very
+much in earnest; but it was also evident that he found some difficulty
+in opening out the budget with which he had prepared himself. He
+hesitated a little in his voice, and seemed to be almost nervous. Mrs
+Dale, with some little spice of ill-nature, altogether abstained from
+assisting him. She was jealous of interference from him about her
+girls, and though she was of course bound to listen to him, she did so
+with a prejudice against and almost with a resolve to oppose anything
+that he might say. When he had finished his little speech about
+circumstances, the squire paused again; but Mrs Dale still sat silent,
+with her eyes fixed upon his face.
+
+"I love your children very dearly;' said he, "though I believe you
+hardly give me credit for doing so."
+
+"I am sure you do," said Mrs Dale, "and they are both well aware of it."
+
+"And I am very anxious that they should be comfortably established in
+life. I have no children of my own, and those of my two brothers are
+everything to me."
+
+Mrs Dale had always considered it as a matter of course that Bernard
+should be the squire's heir, and had never felt that her daughters had
+any claim on that score. It was a well-understood thing in the family
+that the senior male Dale should have all the Dale property and all the
+Dale money. She fully recognised even the propriety of such an
+arrangement. But it seemed to her that the squire was almost guilty of
+hypocrisy in naming his nephew and his two nieces together, as though
+they were the joint heirs of his love. Bernard was his adopted son, and
+no one had begrudged to the uncle the right of making such adoption.
+Bernard was everything to him, and as being his heir was bound to obey
+him in many things. But her daughters were no more to him than any
+nieces might be to any uncle. He had nothing to do with their disposal
+in marriage; and the mother's spirit was already up in arms and
+prepared to do battle for her own independence, and for that of her
+children. "If Bernard would marry well," said she, "I have no doubt it
+would be a comfort to you,"--meaning to imply thereby that the squire
+had no right to trouble himself about any other marriage.
+
+"That's just it," said the squire. "It would be a great comfort to me.
+And if he and Bell could make up their minds together, it would, I
+should think, be a great comfort to you also."
+
+"Bernard and Bell!" exclaimed Mrs Dale. No idea of such a union had
+ever yet come upon her, and now in her surprise she sat silent. She had
+always liked Bernard Dale, having felt for him more family affection
+than for any other of the Dale family beyond her own hearth. He had
+been very intimate in her house, having made himself almost as a
+brother to her girls. But she had never thought of him as a husband for
+either of them.
+
+"Then Bell has not spoken to you about it," said the squire.
+
+"Never a word."
+
+"And you had never thought about it?"
+
+"Certainly not."
+
+"I have thought about it a great deal. For some years I have always
+been thinking of it. I have set my heart upon it, and shall be very
+unhappy if it cannot be brought about. They are both very dear to
+me--dearer than anybody else. If I could see them man and wife, I should
+not much care then how soon I left the old place to them."
+
+There was a purer touch of feeling in this than the squire had ever
+before shown in his sister-in-law's presence, and more heartiness than
+she had given him the credit of possessing. And she could not but
+acknowledge to herself that her own child was included in this
+unexpected warmth of love, and that she was bound at any rate to
+entertain some gratitude for such kindness.
+
+"It is good of you to think of her," said the mother;" very good."
+
+"I think a great deal about her," said the squire." But that does not
+much matter now. The fact is, that she has declined Bernard's offer."
+
+"Has Bernard offered to her?"
+
+"So he tells me; and she has refused him. It may perhaps be natural
+that she should do so, never having taught herself to look at him in
+the light of a lover. I don't blame her at all. I am not angry with
+her."
+
+"Angry with her! No. You can hardly be angry with her for not being in
+love with her cousin."
+
+"I say that I am not angry with her. But I think she might undertake to
+consider the question. You would like such a match, would you not?"
+
+Mrs Dale did not at first make any answer, but began to revolve the
+thing in her mind, and to look at it in various points of view. There
+was a great deal in such an arrangement which at the first sight
+recommended it to her very strongly. All the local circumstances were
+in its favour. As regarded herself it would promise to her all that she
+had ever desired. It would give her a prospect of seeing very much of
+Lily; for if Bell were settled at the old family house, Crosbie would
+naturally be much with his friend. She liked Bernard also; and for a
+moment or two fancied, as she turned it all over in her mind, that,
+even yet, if such a marriage were to take place, there might grow up
+something like true regard between her and the old squire. How happy
+would be her old age in that Small House, if Bell with her children
+were living so close to her!
+
+"Well?" said the squire, who was looking very intently into her face.
+
+"I was thinking," said Mrs Dale. "Do you say that she has already
+refused him?"
+
+"I am afraid she has; but then you know--"
+
+"It must of course be left for her to judge."
+
+"If you mean that she cannot be made to marry her cousin, of course we
+all know she can't."
+
+"I mean rather more than that."
+
+"What do you mean, then?
+
+"That the matter must be left altogether to her own decision; that no
+persuasion must be used by you or me. If he can persuade her, indeed--"
+"Yes, exactly. He must persuade her. I quite agree with you that he
+should have liberty to plead his own cause. But look you here, Mary--she
+has always been a very good child to you--"
+
+"Indeed she has."
+
+"And a word from you would go a long way with her--as it ought. If she
+knows that you would like her to marry her cousin, it will make her
+think it her duty--"
+
+"Ah I but that is just what I cannot try to make her think."
+
+"Will you let me speak, Mary? You take me up and scold me before the
+words are half out of my mouth. Of course I know that in these days a
+young lady is not to be compelled into marrying anybody--not but that,
+as far as I can see, they did better than they do now when they had not
+quite so much of their own way."
+
+"I never would take upon myself to ask a child to marry any man."
+
+"But you may explain to her that it is her duty to give such a proposal
+much thought before it is absolutely refused. A girl either is in love
+or she is not. If she is, she is ready to jump down a man's throat; and
+that was the case with Lily."
+
+"She never thought of the man till he had proposed to her fully."
+
+"Well, never mind now. But if a girl is not in love, she thinks she is
+bound to swear and declare that she never will be so."
+
+"I don't think Bell ever declared anything of the kind."
+
+"Yes, she did. She told Bernard that she didn't love him and couldn't
+love him--and, in fact, that she wouldn't think anything more about it.
+Now, Mary, that's what I call being headstrong and positive. I don't
+want to drive her, and I don't want you to drive her. But here is an
+arrangement which for her will be a very good one; you must admit that.
+We all know that she is on excellent terms with Bernard. It isn't as
+though they had been falling out and hating each other all their lives.
+She told him that she was very fond of him, and talked nonsense about
+being his sister, and all that."
+
+"I don't see that it was nonsense at all."
+
+"Yes, it was nonsense--on such an occasion. If a man asks a girl to
+marry him, he doesn't want her to talk to him about being his sister. I
+think it is nonsense. If she would only consider about it properly she
+would soon learn to love him."
+
+"That lesson, if it be learned at all, must be learned without any
+tutor."
+
+"You won't do anything to help me then?"
+
+"I will, at any rate, do nothing to mar you. And, to tell the truth, I
+must think over the matter fully before I can decide what I had better
+say to Bell about it. From her not speaking to me--"
+
+"I think she ought to have told you."
+"No, Mr Dale. Had she accepted him, of course she would have told me.
+Had she thought of doing so she might probably have consulted me. But
+if she made up her mind that she must reject him--"
+
+"She oughtn't to have made up her mind."
+
+"But if she did, it seems natural to me that she should speak of it to
+no one. She might probably think that. Bernard would be as well pleased
+that it should not be known."
+
+"Psha--known!--of course it will be known. As you want time to consider
+of it, I will say nothing more now. If she were my daughter, I should
+have no hesitation in telling her what I thought best for her welfare."
+
+"I have none; though I may have some in making up my mind as to what is
+best for her welfare. But, Mr Dale, you may be sure of this; I will
+speak to her very earnestly of your kindness and love for her. And I
+wish you would believe that I feel your regard for her very strongly."
+
+In answer to this he merely shook his head, and hummed and hawed. "You
+would be glad to see them married, as regards yourself?" he asked.
+
+"Certainly I would," said Mrs Dale. "I have always liked Bernard, and I
+believe my girl would be safe with him. But then, you see, it's a
+question on which my own likings or dislikings should not have any
+bearing."
+
+And so they parted, the squire making his way back again through the
+drawing-room window. He was not above half pleased with his interview;
+but then he was a man for whom half-pleasure almost sufficed. He rarely
+indulged any expectation that people would make themselves agreeable to
+him. Mrs Dale, since she had come to the Small House, had never been a
+source of satisfaction to him, but he did not on that account regret
+that he had brought her there. He was a constant man; urgent in
+carrying out his own plans, but not sanguine in doing so, and by no
+means apt to expect that all things would go smooth with him. He had
+made up his mind that his nephew and his niece should be married, and
+should he ultimately fail in this, such failure would probably embitter
+his future life--but it was not in the nature of the man to be angry in
+the meantime, or to fume and scold because he met with opposition. He
+had told Mrs Dale that he loved Bell dearly. So he did, though he
+seldom spoke to her with much show of special regard, and never was
+soft and tender with her. But, on the other hand, he did not now love
+her the less because she opposed his wishes. He was a constant,
+undemonstrative man, given rather to brooding than to thinking; harder
+in his words than in his thoughts, with more of heart than others
+believed, or than he himself knew; but, above all, he was a man who
+having once desired a thing would desire it always.
+
+Mrs Dale, when she was left alone, began to turn over the question in
+her mind in a much fuller manner than the squire's presence had as yet
+made possible for her. Would not such a marriage as this be for them
+all, the happiest domestic arrangement which circumstances could
+afford? Her daughter would have no fortune, but here would be prepared
+for her all the comforts which fortune can give. She would be received
+into her uncle's house, not as some penniless, portionless bride whom
+Bernard might have married and brought home, but as the wife whom of
+all others Bernard's friends had thought desirable for him. And then,
+as regarded Mrs Dale herself, there would be nothing in such a marriage
+which would not be delightful to her. It would give a realisation to
+all her dreams of future happiness.
+
+But, as she said to herself over and over again, all that must go for
+nothing. It must be for Bell, and for her only, to answer Bernard's
+question. In her mind there was something sacred in that idea of love.
+She would regard her daughter almost as a castaway if she were to marry
+any man without absolutely loving him--loving him as Lily loved her
+lover, with all her heart and all her strength.
+
+With such a conviction as this strong upon her, she felt that she could
+not say much to Bell that would be of any service.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XX
+
+DR CROFTS
+
+If there was anything in the world as to which Isabella Dale was quite
+certain, it was this--that she was not in love with Dr Crofts. As to
+being in love with her cousin Bernard, she had never had occasion to
+ask herself any question on that head. She liked him very well, but she
+had never thought of marrying him; and now, when he made his proposal,
+she could not bring herself to think of it. But as regards Dr Crofts,
+she had thought of it, and had make up her mind--in the manner above
+described.
+
+It may be said that she could not have been justified in discussing the
+matter even within her own bosom, unless authorised to do so by Dr
+Crofts himself. Let it then be considered that Dr Crofts had given her
+some such authority. This may be done in more ways than one; and Miss
+Dale could not have found herself asking herself questions about him,
+unless there had been fitting occasion for her to do so.
+
+The profession of a medical man in a small provincial town is not often
+one which gives to its owner in early life a large income. Perhaps in
+no career has a man to work harder for what he earns, or to do more
+work without earning anything. It has sometimes seemed to me as though
+the young doctors and the old doctors had agreed to divide between them
+the different results of their profession--the young doctors doing all
+the work and the old doctors taking all the money. If this be so it may
+account for that appearance of premature gravity which is borne by so
+many of the medical profession. Under such an arrangement a man may be
+excused for a desire to put away childish things very early in life.
+
+Dr Crofts had now been practising in Guestwick nearly seven years,
+having settled himself in that town when he was twenty-three years old,
+and being at this period about thirty. During those seven years his
+skill and industry had been so fully admitted that he had succeeded in
+obtaining the medical care of all the paupers in the union, for which
+work he was paid at the rate of one hundred pounds a year. He was also
+assistant-surgeon at a small hospital which was maintained in that
+town, and held two or three other similar public positions, all of
+which attested his respectability and general proficiency. They,
+moreover, thoroughly saved him from any of the dangers of idleness;
+but, unfortunately, they did not enable him to regard himself as a
+successful professional man. Whereas old Dr Gruffen, of whom but few
+people spoke well, had made a fortune in Guestwick, and even still drew
+from the ailments of the town a considerable and hardly yet decreasing
+income. Now this was hard upon Dr Crofts--unless there was existing some
+such well-understood arrangement as that above named.
+
+He had been known to the family of the Dales long previous to his
+settlement at Guestwick, and had been very intimate with them from that
+time to the present day. Of all the men, young or old, whom Mrs Dale
+counted among her intimate friends, he was the one whom she most
+trusted and admired. And he was a man to be trusted by those who knew
+him well.
+
+He was not bright and always ready, as was Crosbie, nor had he all the
+practical worldly good sense of Bernard Dale. In mental power I doubt
+whether he was superior to John Eames--to John Eames, such as he might
+become when the period of his hobbledehoyhood should have altogether
+passed away. But Crofts, compared with the other three, as they all
+were at present, was a man more to be trusted than any of them. And
+there was, moreover, about him an occasional dash of humour, without
+which Mrs Dale would hardly have regarded him with that thorough liking
+which she had for him. But it was a quiet humour, apt to show itself
+when he had but one friend with him, rather than in general society.
+Crosbie, on the other hand, would be much more bright among a dozen,
+than he could with a single companion. Bernard Dale was never bright;
+and as for Johnny Eames--but in this matter of brightness, Johnny Eames
+had not yet shown to the world what his character might be.
+
+It was now two years since Crofts had been called upon for medical
+advice on behalf of his friend Mrs Dale. She had then been ill for a
+long period--some two or three months, and Dr Crofts had been frequent
+in his visits at Allington. At that time he became very intimate with
+Mrs Dale's daughters, and especially so with the eldest. Young
+unmarried doctors ought perhaps to be excluded from homes in which
+there are young ladies. I know, at any rate, that many sage matrons
+hold very strongly to that opinion, thinking, no doubt, that doctors
+ought to get themselves married before they venture to begin working
+for a living. Mrs Dale, perhaps, regarded her own girls as still merely
+children, for Bell, the elder, was then hardly eighteen; or perhaps she
+held imprudent and heterodox opinions on this subject; or it may be
+that she selfishly preferred Dr Crofts, with all the danger to her
+children, to Dr Gruffen, with all the danger to herself. But the result
+was that the young doctor one day informed himself, as he was riding
+back to Guestwick, that much of his happiness in this world would
+depend on his being able to marry Mrs Dale's eldest daughter. At that
+time his total income amounted to little more than two hundred a year,
+and he had resolved within his own mind that Dr Gruffen was esteemed as
+much the better doctor by the general public opinion of Guestwick, and
+that Dr Gruffen's sandy-haired assistant would even have a better
+chance of success in the town than himself, should it ever come to pass
+that the doctor was esteemed too old for personal practice. Crofts had
+no fortune of his own, and he was aware that Miss Dale had none. Then,
+under those circumstances, what was he to do?
+
+It is not necessary that we should inquire at any great length into
+those love passages of the doctor's life which took place three years
+before the commencement of this narrative. He made no declaration to
+Bell; but Bell, young as she was, understood well that he would fain
+have done so, had not his courage failed him, or rather had not his
+prudence prevented him. To Mrs Dale he did speak, not openly avowing
+his love even to her, but hinting at it, and then talking to her of his
+unsatisfied hopes and professional disappointments.
+
+"It is not that I complain of being poor as I am," said he "or at any
+rate, not so poor that my poverty must be any source of discomfort to
+me; but I could hardly marry with such an income as I have at present."
+
+"But it will increase, will it not?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"It may some day, when I am becoming an old man," he said. "But of what
+use will it be to me then?"
+
+Mrs Dale could not tell him that, as far as her voice in the matter
+went, he was welcome to woo her daughter and marry her, poor as he was,
+and doubly poor as they would both be together on such a pittance. He
+had not even mentioned Bell's name, and had he done so she could only
+have bade him wait and hope. After that he said nothing further to her
+upon the subject. To Bell he spoke no word of overt love; but on an
+autumn day, when Mrs Dale was already convalescent, and the repetition
+of his professional visits had become unnecessary, he got her to walk
+with him through the half-hidden shrubbery paths, and then told her
+things which he should never have told her, if he really wished to bind
+her heart to his. He repeated that story of his income, and explained
+to her that his poverty was only grievous to him in that it prevented
+him from thinking of marriage.
+
+"I suppose it must," said Bell.
+
+"I should think it wrong to ask any lady to share such an income as
+mine," said he. Whereupon Bell had suggested to him that some ladies
+had incomes of their own, and that he might in that way get over the
+difficulty.
+
+"I should be afraid of myself in marrying a girl with money," said he;
+"besides, that is altogether out of the question now." Of course Bell
+did not ask him why it was out of the question, and for a time they
+went on walking in silence.
+
+"It is a hard thing to do," he then said--not looking at her, but
+looking at the gravel on which he stood.
+
+"It is a hard thing to do, but I will determine to think of it no
+further. I believe a man may be as happy single as he may
+married--almost."
+
+"Perhaps more so," said Bell. Then the doctor left her, and Bell, as I
+have said before, made up her mind with great firmness that she was not
+in love with him. I may certainly say that there was nothing in the
+world as to which she was so certain as she was of this.
+
+And now, in these days, Dr Crofts did not come over to Allington very
+often. Had any of the family in the Small House been ill, he would have
+been there of course. The squire himself employed the apothecary in the
+village, or if higher aid was needed, would send for Dr Gruffen. On the
+occasion of Mrs Dale's party, Crofts was there, having been specially
+invited; but Mrs Dale's special invitations to her friends were very
+few, and the doctor was well aware that he must himself make occasion
+for going there if he desired to see the inmates of the house. But he
+very rarely made such occasion, perhaps feeling that he was more in his
+element at the workhouse and the hospital.
+
+Just at this time, however, he made one very great and unexpected step
+towards success in his profession. He was greatly surprised one morning
+by being summoned to the Manor House to attend upon Lord De Guest. The
+family at the Manor had employed Dr Gruffen for the last thirty years,
+and Crofts, when he received the earl's message, could hardly believe
+the words.
+
+"The earl ain't very bad," said the servant, "but he would be glad to
+see you if possible a little before dinner."
+
+"You're sure he wants to see me?" said Crofts.
+
+"Oh, yes; I'm sure enough of that, sir."
+
+"It wasn't Dr Gruffen?
+
+"No, sir; it wasn't Dr Gruffen. I believe his lordship's had about
+enough of Dr Gruffen. The doctor took to chaffing his lordship one day."
+
+"Chaffed his lordship--his hands and feet, and that sort of thing?"
+suggested the doctor.
+
+"Hands and feet!" said the man.
+
+"Lord bless you, sir, he poked his fun at him, just as though he was
+nobody. I didn't hear, but Mrs Connor says that my lord's back was up
+terribly high." And so Dr Crofts got on his horse and rode up to
+Guestwick Manor.
+
+The earl was alone, Lady Julia having already gone to Courcy Castle.
+
+"How d'ye do, how d'ye do?" said the earl.
+
+"I'm not very ill, but I want to get a little advice from you. It's
+quite a trifle, but I thought it well to see somebody." Whereupon Dr
+Crofts of course declared that he was happy to wait upon his lordship.
+
+"I know all about you, you know," said the earl.
+
+"Your grandmother Stoddard was a very old friend of my aunt's. You
+don't remember Lady Jemima?"
+
+"No," said Crofts.
+
+"I never had that honour."
+
+"An excellent old woman, and knew your grandmother Stoddard well. You
+see, Gruffen has been attending us for I don't know how many years; but
+upon my word" and then the earl stopped himself.
+
+"It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good," said Crofts, with a
+slight laugh.
+
+"Perhaps it'll blow me some good, for Gruffen never did me any. The
+fact is this; I'm very well, you know--as strong as a horse."
+
+"You look pretty well."
+
+"No man could be better--not of my age. I'm sixty, you know."
+
+"You don't look as though you were ailing."
+
+"I'm always out in the open air, and that, I take it, is the best thing
+for a man."
+
+"There's nothing like plenty of exercise, certainly."
+
+"And I'm always taking exercise," said the earl.
+
+"There isn't a man about the place works much harder than I do. And,
+let me tell you, sir, when you undertake to keep six or seven hundred
+acres of land in your own hand, you must look after it, unless you mean
+to lose money by it."
+
+"I've always heard that your lordship is a good farmer."
+
+"Well, yes; wherever the grass may grow about my place, it doesn't grow
+under my feet. You won't often find me in bed at six o'clock, I can
+tell you."
+
+After this Dr Crofts ventured to ask his lordship as to what special
+physical deficiency his own aid was invoked at the present time.
+
+"Ah, I was just coming to that," said the earl.
+
+"They tell me it's a very dangerous practice to go to sleep after
+dinner."
+
+"It's not very uncommon at any rate," said the doctor.
+
+"I suppose not; but Lady Julia is always at me about it. And, to tell
+the truth, I think I sleep almost too sound when I get to my arm-chair
+in the drawing-room. Sometimes my sister really can't wake me--so, at
+least, she says."
+
+"And how's your appetite at dinner?"
+
+"Oh, I'm quite right there. I never eat any luncheon, you know, and
+enjoy my dinner thoroughly. Then I drink three or four glasses of port
+wine--"
+
+"And feel sleepy afterwards?"
+
+"That's just it," said the earl.
+
+It is not perhaps necessary that we should inquire what was the exact
+nature of the doctor's advice; but it was, at any rate, given in such a
+way that the earl said he would be glad to see him again.
+
+"And look here, Doctor Crofts, I'm all alone just at present. Suppose
+you come over and dine with me tomorrow; then, if I should go to sleep,
+you know, you'll be able to let me know whether Lady Julia doesn't
+exaggerate. Just between ourselves, I don't quite believe all she says
+about my--my snoring, you know."
+
+Whether it was that the earl restrained his appetite when at dinner
+under the doctor's eyes, or whether the mid-day mutton chop which had
+been ordered for him had the desired effect, or whether the doctor's
+conversation was more lively than that of the Lady Julia, we will not
+say; but the earl, on the evening in question, was triumphant. As he
+sat in his easy-chair after dinner he hardly winked above once or
+twice; and when he had taken the large bowl of tea, which he usually
+swallowed in a semi-somnolent condition, he was quite lively.
+
+"Ah, yes," he said, jumping up and rubbing his eyes; "I think I do feel
+lighter. I enjoy a snooze after dinner; I do indeed; I like it; but
+then, when one comes to go to bed, one does it in such a sneaking sort
+of way, as though one were in disgrace! And my sister, she thinks it a
+crime--literally a sin, to go to sleep in a chair. Nobody ever caught
+her napping! By-the-by, Dr Crofts, did you know that Mr Crosbie whom
+Bernard Dale brought down to Allington? Lady Julia and he are staying
+at the same house now."
+
+"I met him once at Mrs Dale's."
+
+"Going to marry one of the girls, isn't he?"
+
+Whereupon Dr Crofts explained that Mr Crosbie was engaged to Lilian
+Dale.
+
+"Ah, yes; a nice girl I'm told. You know all those Dales are
+connections of ours. My sister Fanny married their uncle Orlando. My
+brother-in-law doesn't like travelling, and so I don't see very much of
+him; but of course I'm interested about the family."
+
+"They're very old friends of mine," said Crafts.
+
+"Yes, I dare say. There are two girls, are there not?"
+
+"Yes, two."
+
+"And Miss Lily is the youngest. There's nothing about the elder one
+getting married, is there?
+
+"I've not heard anything of it."
+
+"A very pretty girl she is, too. I remember seeing her at her uncle's
+last year. I shouldn't wonder if she were to marry her cousin Bernard.
+He is to have the property, you know; and he's my nephew."
+
+"I'm not quite sure that it's a good thing for cousins to marry," said
+Crofts.
+
+"They do, you know, very often; and it suits some family arrangements.
+I suppose Dale must provide for them, and that would take one off his
+hands without any trouble."
+
+Dr Crofts didn't exactly see the matter in this light, but he was not
+anxious to argue it very closely with the earl.
+
+"The younger one," he said, "has provided for herself."
+
+"What; by getting a husband? But I suppose Dale must give her
+something. They're not married yet, you know, and, from what I hear,
+that fellow may prove a slippery customer. He'll not marry her unless
+old Dale gives her something. You'll see if he does. I'm told that he
+has got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle."
+
+Soon after this, Crofts took his horse and rode home, having promised
+the earl that he would dine with him again before long.
+
+"It'll be a great convenience to me if you'd come about that time,"
+said the earl, "and as you're a bachelor perhaps you won't mind it.
+You'll come on Thursday at seven, will you? Take care of yourself. It's
+as dark as pitch. John, go and open the first gates for Dr Crofts." And
+then the earl took himself off to bed.
+
+Crofts, as he rode home, could not keep his mind from thinking of the
+two girls at Allington.
+
+"He'll not marry her unless old Dale gives her something." Had it come
+to that with the world, that a man must be bribed into keeping his
+engagement with a lady? Was there no romance left among mankind--no
+feeling of chivalry?
+
+"He's got another string to his bow at Courcy Castle," said the earl;
+and his lordship seemed to be in no degree shocked as he said it. It
+was in this tone that men spoke of women nowadays, and yet he himself
+had felt such awe of the girl he loved, and such a fear lest he might
+injure her in her worldly position, that he had not dared to tell her
+that he loved her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXI
+
+JOHN EAMES ENCOUNTERS TWO ADVENTURES, AND DISPLAYS GREAT COURAGE IN BOTH
+
+Lily thought that her lover's letter was all that it should be. She was
+not quite aware what might be the course of post between Courcy and
+Allington, and had not, therefore, felt very grievously disappointed
+when the letter did not come on the very first day. She had, however,
+in the course of the morning walked down to the post-office, in order
+that she might be sure that it was not remaining there.
+
+"Why, miss, they all be delivered; you know that," said Mrs Crump, the
+post-mistress.
+
+"But one might be left behind, I thought."
+
+"John Postman went up to the house this very day, with a newspaper for
+your mamma. I can't make letters for people if folks don't write them."
+
+"But they are left behind sometimes, Mrs Crump. He wouldn't come up
+with one letter if he'd got nothing else for anybody in the street."
+
+"Indeed but he would then. I wouldn't let him leave a letter here no
+how, nor yet a paper. It's no good you're coming down here for letters,
+Miss Lily. If he don't write to you, I can't make him do it." And so
+poor Lily went home discomforted.
+
+But the letter came on the next morning, and all was right. According
+to her judgment it lacked nothing, either in fulness or in affection.
+When he told her how he had planned his early departure in order that
+he might avoid the pain of parting with her on the last moment, she
+smiled and pressed the paper, and rejoiced inwardly that she had got
+the better of him as to that manoeuvre. And then she kissed the words
+which told her that he had been glad to have her with him at the last
+moment. When he declared that he had been happier at Allington than he
+was at Courcy, she believed him thoroughly, and rejoiced that it should
+be so. And when he accused himself of being worldly, she excused him,
+persuading herself that he was nearly perfect in this respect as in
+others. Of course a man living in London, and having to earn his bread
+out in the world, must be more worldly than a country girl; but the
+fact of his being able to love such a girl, to choose such a one for
+his wife--was not that alone sufficient proof that the world had not
+enslaved him?
+
+"My heart is on the Allington lawns," he said; and then, as she read
+the words, she kissed the paper again.
+
+In her eyes, and to her ears, and to her heart, the letter was a
+beautiful letter. I believe there is no bliss greater than that which a
+thorough love-letter gives to a girl who knows that in receiving it she
+commits no fault--who can open it before her father and mother with
+nothing more than the slight blush which the consciousness of her
+position gives her. And of all love-letters the first must be the
+sweetest! What a value there is in every word! How each expression is
+scanned and turned to the best account! With what importance are all
+those little phrases invested, which too soon become mere phrases, used
+as a matter of course. Crosbie had finished his letter by bidding God
+bless her; "and you too," said Lily, pressing the letter to her bosom.
+
+"Does he say anything particular?" asked Mrs Dale.
+
+"Yes, mamma; it's all very particular."
+
+"But there's nothing for the public ear."
+
+"He sends his love to you and Bell."
+
+"We are very much obliged to him."
+
+"So you ought to be. And he says that he went to church going through
+Barchester, and that the clergyman was the grandfather of that Lady
+Dumbello. When he got to Courcy Castle Lady Dumbello was there."
+
+"What a singular coincidence!" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I won't tell you a word more about his letter," said Lily. So she
+folded it up, and put it in her pocket. But as soon as she found
+herself alone in her own room, she had it out again, and read it over
+some half-a-dozen times.
+
+That was the occupation of her morning--that, and the manufacture of
+some very intricate piece of work which was intended for the adornment
+of Mr Crosbie's person. Her hands, however, were very full of work--or,
+rather, she intended that they should be full. She would take with her
+to her new home, when she was married, all manner of household gear,
+the produce of her own industry and economy. She had declared that she
+wanted to do something for her future husband, and she would begin that
+something at once. And in this matter she did not belie her promises to
+herself, or allow her good intentions to evaporate unaccomplished. She
+soon surrounded herself with harder tasks than those embroidered
+slippers with which she indulged herself immediately after his
+departure. And Mrs Dale and Bell--though in their gentle way they
+laughed at her--nevertheless they worked with her, sitting sternly to
+their long tasks, in order that Crosbie's house might not be empty when
+their darling should go to take her place there as his wife.
+
+But it was absolutely necessary that the letter should be answered. It
+would in her eyes have been a great sin to have let that day's post go
+without carrying a letter from her to Courcy Castle--a sin of which she
+felt no temptation to be guilty. It was an exquisite pleasure to her to
+seat herself at her little table, with her neat desk and small
+appurtenances for epistle-craft, and to feel that she had a letter to
+write in which she had truly much to say. Hitherto her correspondence
+had been uninteresting and almost weak in its nature. From her mother
+and sister she had hardly been yet parted; and though she had other
+friends, she had seldom found herself with very much to tell them by
+post. What could she communicate to Mary Eames at Guestwick, which
+should be in itself exciting as she wrote it? When she wrote to John
+Eames, and told "Dear John" that mamma hoped to have the pleasure of
+seeing him to tea at such an hour, the work of writing was of little
+moment to her, though the note when written became one of the choicest
+treasures of him to whom it was addressed.
+
+But now the matter was very different. When she saw the words "Dearest
+Adolphus" on the paper before her, she was startled with their
+significance.
+
+"And four months ago I had never even heard of him," she said to
+herself, almost with awe. And now he was more to her, and nearer to
+her, than even was her sister or her mother! She recollected how she
+had laughed at him behind his back, and called him a swell on the first
+day of his coming to the Small House, and how, also, she had striven,
+in her innocent way, to look her best when called upon to go out and
+walk with the stranger from London. He was no longer a stranger now,
+but her own dearest friend.
+
+She had put down her pen that she might think of all this--by no means
+for the first time--and then resumed it with a sudden start as though
+fearing that the postman might be in the village before her letter was
+finished.
+
+"Dearest Adolphus, I need not tell you how delighted I was when your
+letter was brought to me this morning." But I will not repeat the whole
+of her letter here. She had no incident to relate, none even so
+interesting as that of Mr Crosbie's encounter with Mr Harding at
+Barchester. She had met no Lady Dumbello, and had no counterpart to
+Lady Alexandrina, of whom, as a friend, she could say a word in praise.
+John Eames's name she did not mention, knowing that John Eames was not
+a favourite with Mr Crosbie; nor had she anything to say of John Eames,
+that had not been already said. He had, indeed, promised to come over
+to Allington; but this visit had not been made when Lily wrote her
+first letter to Crosbie. It was a sweet, good, honest love-letter, full
+of assurances of unalterable affection and unlimited confidence,
+indulging in a little quiet fun as to the grandees of Courcy Castle,
+and ending with a promise that she would be happy and contented if she
+might receive his letters constantly, and live with the hope of seeing
+him at Christmas.
+
+"I am in time, Mrs Crump, am I not?" she said, as she walked into the
+post-office.
+
+"Of course you be--for the next half-hour. T' postman--he bain't stirred
+from t' ale'us yet. Just put it into t' box wull ye?"
+
+"But you won't leave it there?"
+
+"Leave it there! Did you ever hear the like of that? If you're afeared
+to put it in, you can take it away; that's all about it, Miss Lily."
+And then Mrs Crump turned away to her avocations at the washing-tub.
+Mrs Crump had a bad temper, but perhaps she had some excuse. A separate
+call was made upon her time with reference to almost every letter
+brought to her office, and for all this, as she often told her friends
+in profound disgust, she received as salary no more than "tuppence
+farden a day. It don't find me in shoe-leather; no more it don't." As
+Mrs Crump was never seen out of her own house, unless it was in church
+once a month, this latter assertion about her shoe-leather could hardly
+have been true.
+
+Lily had received another letter, and had answered it before Eames made
+his promised visit to Allington. He, as will be remembered, had also
+had a correspondence. He had answered Miss Roper's letter, and had
+since that been living in fear of two things; in a lesser fear of some
+terrible rejoinder from Amelia, and in a greater fear of a more
+terrible visit from his lady-love. Were she to swoop down in very truth
+upon his Guestwick home, and declare herself to his mother and sister
+as his affianced bride, what mode of escape would then be left for him?
+But this she had not yet done, nor had she even answered his cruel
+missive.
+
+"What an ass I am to be afraid of her!" he said to himself as he walked
+along under the elms of Guestwick manor, which overspread the road to
+Allington. When he first went over to Allington after his return home,
+he had mounted himself on horseback, and had gone forth brilliant with
+spurs, and trusting somewhat to the glories of his dress and gloves.
+But he had then known nothing of Lily's engagement. Now he was
+contented to walk; and as he had taken up his slouched hat and stick in
+the passage of his mother's house, he had been very indifferent as to
+his appearance. He walked quickly along the road, taking for the first
+three miles the shade of the Guestwick elms, and keeping his feet on
+the broad greensward which skirts the outside of the earl's palings.
+
+"What an ass I am to be afraid of her!" And as he swung his big stick
+in his hand, striking a tree here and there, and knocking the stones
+from his path, he began to question himself in earnest, and to be
+ashamed of his position in the world.
+
+"Nothing on earth shall make me marry her," he said; "not if they bring
+a dozen actions against me. She knows as well as I do, that I have
+never intended to marry her. It's a cheat from beginning to end. If she
+comes down here, I'll tell her so before my mother." But as the vision
+of her sudden arrival came before his eyes, he acknowledged to himself
+that he still held her in great fear. He had told her that he loved
+her. He had written as much as that. If taxed with so much, he must
+confess his sin.
+
+Then, by degrees, his mind turned away from Amelia Roper to Lily Dale,
+not giving him a prospect much more replete with enjoyment than that
+other one. He had said that he would call at Allington before he
+returned to town, and he was now redeeming his promise. But he did not
+know why he should go there. He felt that he should sit silent and
+abashed in Mrs Dale's drawing-room, confessing by his demeanour that
+secret which it behoved him now to hide from every one. He could not
+talk easily before Lily, nor could he speak to her of the only subject
+which would occupy his thoughts when in her presence. If indeed, he
+might find her alone But, perhaps that might be worse for him than any
+other condition.
+
+When he was shown into the drawing-room there was nobody there.
+
+"They were here a minute ago, all three," said the servant girl. "If
+you'll walk down the garden, Mr John, you'll be sure to find some of
+'em." So John Eames, with a little hesitation, walked down the garden.
+
+First of all he went the whole way round the walks, meeting nobody.
+Then he crossed the lawn, returning again to the farther end; and
+there, emerging from the little path which led from the Great House, he
+encountered Lily alone.
+
+"Oh, John," she said, how d'ye do? I'm afraid you did not find anybody
+in the house. Mamma and Bell are with Hopkins, away in the large
+kitchen-garden."
+
+"I've just come over," said Eames, "because I promised. I said I'd come
+before I went back to London."
+
+"And they'll be very glad to see you, and so am I. Shall we go after
+them into the other grounds? But perhaps you walked over and are tired."
+
+"I did walk," said Eames; "not that I am very tired." But in truth he
+did not wish to go after Mrs Dale, though he was altogether at a loss
+as to what he would say to Lily while remaining with her. He had
+fancied that he would like to have some opportunity of speaking to her
+alone before he went away--of making some special use of the last
+interview which he should have with her before she became a married
+woman. But now the opportunity was there, and he hardly dared to avail
+himself of it.
+
+"You'll stay and dine with us," said Lily.
+
+"No, I'll not do that, for I especially told my mother that I would be
+back."
+
+"I'm sure it was very good of you to walk so far to see us. If you
+really are not tired, I think we will go to mamma, as she would be very
+sorry to miss you."
+
+This she said, remembering at the moment what had been Crosbie's
+injunctions to her about John Eames. But John had resolved that he
+would say those words which he had come to speak, and that, as Lily was
+there with him, he would avail himself of the chance which fortune had
+given him.
+
+"I don't think I'll go into the squire's garden," he said.
+
+"Uncle Christopher is not there. He is about the farm somewhere."
+
+"If you don't mind, Lily, I think I'll stay here. I suppose they'll be
+back soon. Of course I should like to see them before I go away to
+London. But, Lily, I came over now chiefly to see you. It was you who
+asked me to promise."
+
+Had Crosbie been right in those remarks of his? Had she been imprudent
+in her little endeavour to be cordially kind to her old friend?
+
+"Shall we go into the drawing-room?" she said, feeling that she would
+be in some degree safer there than out among the shrubs and paths of
+the garden. And I think she was right in this. A man will talk of love
+out among the lilacs and roses, who would be stricken dumb by the
+demure propriety of the four walls of a drawing-room. John Eames also
+had some feeling of this kind, for he determined to remain out in the
+garden, if he could so manage it.
+
+"I don't want to go in unless you wish it," he said.
+
+"Indeed, I'd rather stay here. So, Lily, you're going to be married?"
+And thus he rushed at once into the middle of his discourse.
+
+"Yes," said she, "I believe I am."
+
+"I have not told you yet that I congratulated you."
+
+"I have known very well that you did so in your heart. I have always
+been sure that you wished me well."
+
+"Indeed I have. And if congratulating a person is hoping that she may
+always be happy, I do congratulate you. But, Lily--"And then he paused,
+abashed by the beauty, purity, and woman's grace which had forced him
+to love her.
+
+"I think I understand all that you would say. I do not want ordinary
+words to tell me that I am to count you among my best friends."
+
+"No, Lily; you don't understand all that I would say. You have never
+known how often and how much I have thought of you; how dearly I have
+loved you."
+
+"John, you must not talk of that now."
+
+"I cannot go without telling you. When I came over here, and Mrs Dale
+told me that you were to be married to that man--"
+
+"You must not speak of Mr Crosbie in that way," she said, turning upon
+him almost fiercely.
+
+"I did not mean to say anything disrespectful of him to you. I should
+hate myself if I were to do so. Of course you like him better than
+anybody else?"
+
+"I love him better than all the world besides."
+
+"And so do I love you better than all the world besides." And as he
+spoke he got up from his seat and stood before her.
+
+"I know how poor I am, and unworthy of you; and only that you are
+engaged to him, I don't suppose that I should now tell you. Of course
+you couldn't accept such a one as me. But I have loved you ever since
+you remember; and now that you are going to be his wife, I cannot but
+tell you that it is so. You will go and live in London; but as to my
+seeing you there, it will be impossible. I could not go into that man's
+house."
+
+"Oh, John."
+
+"No, never; not if you became his wife. I have loved you as well as he
+does. When Mrs Dale told me of it, I thought I should have fallen. I
+went away without seeing you because I was unable to speak to you. I
+made a fool of myself, and have been a fool all along. I am foolish now
+to tell you this, but I cannot help it."
+
+"You will forget it all when you meet some girl that you can really
+love."
+
+"And have I not really loved you? Well, never mind. I have said what I
+came to say, and I will now go. If it ever happens that we are down in
+the country together, perhaps I may see you again; but never in London.
+Good-bye, Lily." And he put out his hand to her.
+
+"And won't you stay for mamma?" she said.
+
+"No. Give her my love, and to Bell. They understand all about it. They
+will know why I have gone. If ever you should want anybody to do
+anything for you, remember that I will do it, whatever it is." And as
+he paced away from her across the lawn, the special deed in her favour
+to which his mind was turned--that one thing which he most longed to do
+on her behalf-was an act of corporal chastisement upon Crosbie. If
+Crosbie would but ill-treat her--ill-treat her with some anti-nuptial
+barbarity--and if only he could be called in to avenge her wrongs! And
+as he made his way back along the road towards Guestwick, he built up
+within his own bosom a castle in the air, for her part in which Lily
+Dale would by no means have thanked him.
+
+Lily when she was left alone burst into tears. She had certainly said
+very little to encourage her forlorn suitor, and had so borne herself
+during the interview that even Crosbie could hardly have been
+dissatisfied; but now that Eames was gone her heart became very tender
+towards him. She felt that she did love him also--not at all as she
+loved Crosbie, but still with a love that was tender, soft, and true.
+If Crosbie could have known all her thoughts at that moment, I doubt
+whether he would have liked them. She burst into tears, and then
+hurried away into some nook where she could not be seen by her mother
+and Bell on their return.
+
+Eames went on his way, walking very quietly, swinging his stick and
+kicking through the dust, with his heart full of the scene which had
+just passed. He was angry with himself, thinking that he had played his
+part badly, accusing himself in that he had been rough to her, and
+selfish in the expression of his love; and he was angry with her
+because she had declared to him that she loved Crosbie better than all
+the world besides. He knew that of course she must do so--that at any
+rate it was to be expected that such was the case. Yet, he thought, she
+might have refrained from saying so to him.
+
+"She chooses to scorn me now," he said to himself; "but the time may
+come when she will wish that she had scorned him." That Crosbie was
+wicked, bad, and selfish, he believed most fully. He felt sure that the
+man would ill-use her and make her wretched. He had some slight doubt
+whether he would marry her, and from this doubt he endeavoured to draw
+a scrap of comfort. If Crosbie would desert her, and if to him might be
+accorded the privilege of beating the man to death with his fists
+because of this desertion, then the world would not be quite blank for
+him. In all this he was no doubt very cruel to Lily--but then had not
+Lily been very cruel to him?
+
+He was still thinking of these things when he came to the first of the
+Guestwick pastures. The boundary of the earl's property was very
+plainly marked, for with it commenced also the shady elms along the
+roadside, and the broad green margin of turf, grateful equally to those
+who walked and to those who rode. Eames had got himself on to the
+grass, but, in the fulness of his thoughts, was unconscious of the
+change in his path, when he was startled by a voice in the next field
+and the loud bellowing of a bull. Lord de Guest's choice cattle he knew
+were there, and there was one special bull which was esteemed by his
+lordship as of great value, and regarded as a high favourite. The
+people about the place declared that the beast was vicious, but Lord de
+Guest had often been heard to boast that it was never vicious with him.
+
+"The boys tease him, and the men are almost worse than the boys," said
+the earl; "but he'll never hurt any one that has not hurt him." Guided
+by faith in his own teaching the earl had taught himself to look upon
+his bull as a large, horned, innocent lamb of the flock.
+
+As Eames paused on the road, he fancied that he recognised the earl's
+voice, and it was the voice of one in distress. Then the bull's roar
+sounded very plain in his ear, and almost close--upon hearing which he
+rushed on to the gate, and, without much thinking what he was doing,
+vaulted over it, and advanced a few steps into the field.
+
+"Halloo!" shouted the earl. "There's a man. Come on." And then his
+continued shoutings hardly formed themselves into intelligible words;
+but Eames plainly understood that he was invoking assistance under
+great pressure and stress of circumstances. The bull was making short
+runs at his owner, as though determined in each run to have a toss at
+his lordship; and at each run the earl would retreat quickly for a few
+paces, but he retreated always facing his enemy, and as the animal got
+near to him, would make digs at his face with the long spud which he
+carried in his hand. But in thus making good his retreat he had been
+unable to keep in a direct line to the gate, and there seemed to be
+great danger lest the bull should succeed in pressing him up against
+the hedge.
+
+"Come on!" shouted the earl, who was fighting his battle manfully, but
+was by no means anxious to carry off all the laurels of the victory
+himself.
+
+"Come on, I say!" Then he stopped in his path, shouted into the bull's
+face, brandished his spud, and threw about his arms, thinking that he
+might best dismay the beast by the display of these warlike gestures.
+
+Johnny Eames ran on gallantly to the peer's assistance, as he would
+have run to that of any peasant in the land. He was one to whom I
+should be perhaps wrong to attribute at this period of his life the
+gift of very high courage. He feared many things which no man should
+fear; but he did not fear personal mishap or injury to his own skin and
+bones. When Cradell escaped out of the house in Burton Crescent, making
+his way through the passage into the outer air, he did so because he
+feared that Lupex would beat him or kick him, or otherwise ill-use him.
+John Eames would also have desired to escape under similar
+circumstances; but he would have so desired because he could not endure
+to be looked upon in his difficulties by the people of the house, and
+because his imagination would have painted the horrors of a policeman
+dragging him off with a black eye and a torn coat. There was no one to
+see him now, and no policeman to take offence. Therefore he rushed to
+the earl's assistance, brandishing his stick, and roaring in emulation
+of the bull.
+
+When the animal saw with what unfairness he was treated, and that the
+number of his foes was doubled, while no assistance had lent itself on
+his side, he stood for a while, disgusted by the injustice of humanity.
+He stopped, and throwing his head up to the heavens, bellowed out his
+complaint.
+
+"Don't come close!" said the earl, who was almost out of breath.
+
+"Keep a little apart. Ugh! ugh! whoop, whoop!" And he threw up his arms
+manfully, jobbing about with his spud, ever and anon rubbing the
+perspiration from off his eyebrows with the back of his hand.
+
+As the bull stood pausing, meditating whether under such circumstances
+flight would not be preferable to gratified passion, Eames made a rush
+in at him, attempting to hit him on the head.
+
+The earl, seeing this, advanced a step also, and got his spud almost up
+to the animal's eye. But these indignities the beast could not stand.
+He made a charge, bending his head first towards John Eames, and then,
+with that weak vacillation which is as disgraceful in a bull as in a
+general, he changed his purpose, and turned his horns upon his other
+enemy. The consequence was that his steps carried him in between the
+two, and that the earl and Eames found themselves for a while behind
+his tail.
+
+"Now for the gate," said the earl.
+
+"Slowly does it; slowly does it; don't run!" said Johnny, assuming in
+the heat of the moment a tone of counsel which would have been very
+foreign to him under other circumstances.
+
+The earl was not a whit offended.
+"All right," said he, taking with a backward motion the direction of
+the gate. Then as the bull again faced towards him, he jumped from the
+ground, labouring painfully with arms and legs, and ever keeping his
+spud well advanced against the foe. Eames, holding his position a
+little apart from his friend, stooped low and beat the ground with his
+stick, and as though defying the creature. The bull felt himself
+defied, stood still and roared, and then made another vacillating
+attack.
+
+"Hold on till we reach the gate," said Eames.
+
+"Ugh! ugh! Whoop! whoop!" shouted the earl. And so gradually they made
+good their ground.
+
+"Now get over," said Eames, when they had both reached the corner of
+the field in which the gate stood.
+
+"And what'll you do?" said the earl.
+
+"I'll go at the hedge to the right." And Johnny as he spoke dashed his
+stick about, so as to monopolise, for a moment, the attention of the
+brute. The earl made a spring at the gate, and got well on to the upper
+rung. The bull seeing that his prey was going, made a final rush upon
+the earl and struck the timber furiously with his head, knocking his
+lordship down on the other side. Lord de Guest was already over, but
+not off the rail; and thus, though he fell, he fell in safety on the
+sward beyond the gate. He fell in safety, but utterly exhausted. Eames,
+as he had purposed, made a leap almost sideways at a thick hedge which
+divided the field from one of the Guestwick copses. There was a fairly
+broad ditch, and on the other side a quickset hedge, which had,
+however, been weakened and injured by trespassers at this corner, close
+to the gate. Eames was young and active and jumped well. He jumped so
+well that he carried his body full into the middle of the quickset, and
+then scrambled through to the other side, not without much injury to
+his clothes, and some damage also to his hands and face.
+
+The beast, recovering from his shock against the wooden bars, looked
+wistfully at his last retreating enemy, as he still struggled amidst
+the bushes. He looked at the ditch and at the broken hedge, but he did
+not understand how weak were the impediments in his way. He had knocked
+his head against the stout timber, which was strong enough to oppose
+him, but was dismayed by the brambles which he might have trodden under
+foot without an effort How many of us are like the bull, turning away
+conquered by opposition which should be as nothing to us, and breaking
+our feet, and worse still, our hearts, against rocks of adamant. The
+bull at last made up his mind that he did not dare to face the hedge;
+so he gave one final roar, and then turning himself round, walked
+placidly back amidst the herd.
+
+Johnny made his way on to the road by a stile that led out of the
+copse, and was soon standing over the earl, while the blood ran down
+his cheeks from the scratches. One of the legs of his trousers had been
+caught by a stake, and was torn from the hip downward, and his hat was
+left in the field, the only trophy for the bull.
+
+"I hope you're not hurt, my lord," he said.
+
+"Oh dear, no; but I'm terribly out of breath. Why, you're bleeding all
+over. He didn't get at you, did he?"
+
+"It's only the thorns in the hedge," said Johnny, passing his hand over
+his face.
+
+"But I've lost my hat."
+
+"There are plenty more hats," said the earl.
+
+"I think I'll have a try for it," said Johnny, with whom the means of
+getting hats had not been so plentiful as with the earl.
+
+"He looks quiet now." And he moved towards the gate.
+
+But Lord de Guest jumped upon his feet, and seized the young man by the
+collar of his coat.
+
+"Go after your hat!" said he.
+
+"You must be a fool to think of it. If you're afraid of catching cold,
+you shall have mine."
+
+"I'm not the least afraid of catching cold," said Johnny.
+
+"Is he often like that, my lord?" And he made a motion with his head
+towards the bull.
+
+"The gentlest creature alive; he's like a lamb generally--just like a
+lamb. Perhaps he saw my red pocket-handkerchief." And Lord de Guest
+showed his friend that he carried such an article.
+
+"But where should I have been if you hadn't come up?"
+
+"You'd have got to the gate, my lord."
+
+"Yes; with my feet foremost, and four men carrying me. I'm very
+thirsty. You don't happen to carry a flask, do you?"
+
+"No, my lord, I don't."
+
+"Then we'll make the best of our way home, and have a glass of wine
+there." And on this occasion his lordship intended that his offer
+should be accepted.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXII
+
+LORD DE GUEST AT HOME
+
+The earl and John Eames, after their escape from the bull, walked up to
+the Manor House together.
+
+"You can write a note to your mother, and I'll send it by one of the
+boys," said the earl. This was his lordship's answer when Eames
+declined to dine at the Manor House, because he would be expected home.
+
+"But I'm so badly off for clothes, my lord," pleaded Johnny. "I tore my
+trousers in the hedge."
+
+"There will be nobody there beside us two and Dr Crofts. The doctor
+will forgive you when he hears the story; and as for me, I didn't care
+if you hadn't a stitch to your back. You'll have company back to
+Guestwick, so come along."
+
+Eames had no further excuse to offer, and therefore did as he was
+bidden. He was by no means as much at home with the earl now as during
+those minutes of the combat. He would rather have gone home, being
+somewhat ashamed of being seen in his present tattered and bare-headed
+condition by the servants of the house; and moreover, his mind would
+sometimes revert to the scene which had taken place in the garden at
+Allington. But he found himself obliged to obey the earl, and so he
+walked on with him through the woods.
+
+The earl did not say very much, being tired and somewhat thoughtful. In
+what little he did say he seemed to be specially hurt by the
+ingratitude of the bull towards himself.
+
+"I never teased him, or annoyed him in any way."
+
+"I suppose they are dangerous beasts?" said Eames.
+
+"Not a bit of it, if they're properly treated. It must have been my
+handkerchief, I suppose. I remember that I did blow my nose."
+
+He hardly said a word in the way of thanks to his assistant.
+
+"Where should I have been if you had not come to me?" he had exclaimed
+immediately after his deliverance; but having said that he didn't think
+it necessary to say much more to Eames. But he made himself very
+pleasant, and by the time he had reached the house his companion was
+almost glad that he had been forced to dine at the Manor House.
+
+"And now we'll have a drink," said the earl. "I don't know how you
+feel, but I never was so thirsty in my life."
+
+Two servants immediately showed themselves, and evinced some surprise
+at Johnny's appearance.
+
+"Has the gentleman hurt hisself, my lord?" asked the butler, looking at
+the blood upon our friend's face.
+
+"He has hurt his trousers the worst, I believe," said the earl. "And if
+he was to put on any of mine they'd be too short and too big, wouldn't
+they? I am sorry you should be so uncomfortable, but you mustn't mind
+it for once."
+
+"I don't mind it a bit," said Johnny.
+
+"And I'm sure I don't," said the earl.
+
+"Mr Eames is going to dine here, Vickers."
+
+"Yes, my lord."
+
+"And his hat is down in the middle of the nineteen acres. Let three or
+four men go for it."
+
+"Three or four men, my lord!"
+
+"Yes--three or four men. There's something gone wrong with that bull.
+And you must get a boy with a pony to take a note into Guestwick, to
+Mrs Eames. Oh dear, I'm better now," and he put down the tumbler from
+which he'd been drinking.
+
+"Write your note here, and then we'll go and see my pet pheasants
+before dinner."
+
+Vickers and the footman knew that something had happened of much
+moment, for the earl was usually very particular about his
+dinner-table. He expected every guest who sat there to be dressed in
+such guise as the fashion of the day demanded; and he himself, though
+his morning costume was by no means brilliant, never dined, even when
+alone, without having put himself into a suit of black, with a white
+cravat, and having exchanged the old silver hunting-watch which he
+carried during the day tied round his neck by a bit of old ribbon, for
+a small gold watch, with a chain and seals, which in the evening always
+dangled over his waistcoat. Dr Gruffen had once been asked to dinner at
+Guestwick Manor.
+
+"Just a bachelor's chop," said the earl; "for there's nobody at home
+but myself." Whereupon Dr Gruffen had come in coloured trousers--and had
+never again been asked to dine at Guestwick Manor. All this Vickers
+knew well; and now his lordship had brought young Eames home to dine
+with him with his clothes all hanging about him in a manner which
+Vickers declared in the servants' hall wasn't more than half decent.
+Therefore, they all knew that something very particular must have
+happened.
+
+"It's some trouble about the bull, I know," said Vickers--"but bless
+you, the bull couldn't have tore his things in that way!"
+
+Eames wrote his note, in which he told his mother that he had had an
+adventure with Lord de Guest, and that his lordship had insisted on
+bringing him home to dinner.
+
+"I have torn my trousers all to pieces," he added in a postscript, "and
+have lost my hat. Everything else is all right." He was not aware that
+the earl also sent a short note to Mrs Eames.
+
+DEAR MADAM (ran the earl's note)--Your son has, under Providence,
+probably saved my life. I will leave the story for him to tell. He has
+been good enough to accompany me home, and will return to Guestwick
+after dinner with Dr Crofts, who dines here. I congratulate you on
+having a son with so much cool courage and good feeling.
+
+Your very faithful servant,
+
+DE GUEST.
+
+GUESTWICK MANOR,
+
+Thursday, October, 186-
+
+And then they went to see the pheasants.
+
+"Now, I'll tell you what," said the earl.
+
+"I advise you to take to shooting. It's the amusement of a gentleman
+when a man chances to have the command of game."
+
+"But I'm always up in London."
+
+"No, you're not. You're not up in London now. You always have your
+holidays. If you choose to try it, I'll see that you have shooting
+enough while you're here. It's better than going to sleep under the
+trees. Ha, ha, ha! I wonder what made you lay yourself down there. You
+hadn't been fighting a bull that day?"
+
+"No, my lord. I hadn't seen the bull then."
+
+"Well; you think of what I've been saying. When I say a thing, I mean
+it. You shall have shooting enough, if you have a mind to try it." Then
+they looked at the pheasants, and pottered about the place till the
+earl said it was time to dress for dinner.
+
+"That's hard upon you, isn't it?" said he. "But, at any rate, you can
+wash your hands, and get rid of the blood. I'll be down in the little
+drawing-room five minutes before seven, and I suppose I'll find you
+there."
+
+At five minutes before seven Lord de Guest came into the small
+drawing-room, and found Johnny seated there, with a book before him.
+The earl was a little fussy, and showed by his manner that he was not
+quite at his ease, as some men do when they have any piece of work on
+hand which is not customary with them. He held something in his hand,
+and shuffled a little as he made his way up the room. He was dressed,
+as usual, in black; but his gold chain was not, as usual, dangling over
+his waistcoat.
+
+"Eames," he said, "I want you to accept a little present from me--just
+as a memorial of our affair with the bull. It will make you think of it
+sometimes, when I'm perhaps gone."
+
+"Oh, my lord--"
+
+"It's my own watch, that I have been wearing for some time; but I've
+got another--two or three, I believe, somewhere upstairs. You mustn't
+refuse me. I can't bear being refused. There are two or three little
+seals, too, which I have worn. I have taken off the one with my arms,
+because that's of no use to you, and it is to me. It doesn't want a
+key, but winds up at the handle, in this way," and the earl proceeded
+to explain the nature of the toy.
+
+"My lord, you think too much of what happened today," said Eames,
+stammering.
+
+"No, I don't; I think very little about it. I know what I think of. Put
+the watch in your pocket before the doctor comes. There; I hear his
+horse. Why didn't he drive over, and then he could have taken you back?"
+
+"I can walk very well."
+
+"I'll make that all right. The servant shall ride Crofts' horse, and
+bring back the little phaeton. How d'you do, doctor? You know Eames, I
+suppose? You needn't look at him in that way. His leg is not broken;
+it's only his trousers." And then the earl told the story of the bull.
+
+"Johnny will become quite a hero in town," said Crofts.
+
+"Yes; I fear he'll get the most of the credit; and yet I was at it
+twice as long as he was. I'll tell you what, young men, when I got to
+that gate I didn't think I'd breath enough left in me to get over it.
+It's all very well jumping into a hedge when you're only
+two-and-twenty; but when a man comes to be sixty he likes to take his
+time about such things. Dinner ready, is it? So am I. I quite forgot
+that mutton chop of yours today, doctor. But I suppose a man may eat a
+good dinner after a fight with a bull?"
+
+The evening passed by without any very pleasurable excitement, and I
+regret to say that the earl went fast to sleep in the drawing-room as
+soon as he had swallowed his cup of coffee. During dinner he had been
+very courteous to both his guests, but towards Eames he had used a
+good-humoured and, almost affectionate familiarity. He had quizzed him
+for having been found asleep under the tree, telling Crofts that he
+had looked very forlorn.
+
+"So that I haven't a doubt about his being in love," said the earl. And
+he had asked Johnny to tell the name of the fair one, bringing up the
+remnants of his half-forgotten classicalities to bear out the joke.
+
+"If I am to take more of the severe Falernian," said he, laying his
+hand on the decanter of port,
+
+"I must know the lady's name. Whoever she be, I'm well sure you need
+not blush for her. What! you refuse to tell! Then I'll drink no more."
+And so the earl had walked out of the dining-room; but not till he had
+perceived by his guest's cheeks that the joke had been too true to be
+pleasant. As he went, however, he leaned with his hand on Eames's
+shoulder, and the servants looking on saw that the young man was to be
+a favourite.
+
+"He'll make him his heir," said Vickers.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder a bit if he don't make him his heir." But to this
+the footman objected, endeavouring to prove to Mr Vickers that, in
+accordance with the law of the land, his lordship's second cousin, once
+removed, whom the earl had never seen, but whom he was supposed to
+hate, must be his heir.
+
+"A hearl can never choose his own heir, like you or me," said the
+footman, laying down the law.
+
+"Can't he though really, now? That's very hard on him; isn't it?" said
+the pretty housemaid.
+
+"Psha," said Vickers: "you know nothing about it. My lord could make
+young Eames his heir tomorrow; that is, the heir of his property. He
+couldn't make him a hearl, because that must go to the heirs of his
+body. As to his leaving him the place here, I don't just know how
+that'd be; and I'm sure Richard don't."
+
+"But suppose he hasn't got any heirs of his body?" asked the pretty
+housemaid, who was rather fond of putting down Mr Vickers.
+
+"He must have heirs of his body," said the butler. "Everybody has 'em.
+If a man don't know 'em himself, the law finds 'em out." And then Mr
+Vickers walked away, avoiding further dispute.
+
+In the meantime, the earl was asleep upstairs, and the two young men
+from Guestwick did not find that they could amuse themselves with any
+satisfaction. Each took up a book; but there are times at which a man
+is quite unable to read, and when a book is only a cover for his
+idleness or dulness. At last, Dr Crofts suggested, in a whisper, that
+they might as well begin to think of going home.
+
+"Eh; yes; what?" said the earl, "I'm not asleep." In answer to which
+the doctor said that he thought he'd go home, if his lordship would let
+him order his horse. But the earl was against fast bound in slumber,
+and took no further notice of the proposition.
+
+"Perhaps we could get off without waking him," suggested Eames, in a
+whisper.
+
+"Eh; what?" said the earl. So they both resumed their books, and
+submitted themselves to their martyrdom for a further period of fifteen
+minutes. At the expiration of that time, the footman brought in tea.
+
+"Eh, what? tea!" said the earl.
+
+"Yes, we'll have a little tea. I've heard every word you've been
+saying." It was that assertion on the part of the earl which always
+made Lady Julia so angry.
+
+"You cannot have heard what I have been saying, Theodore, because I
+have said nothing," she would reply.
+
+"But I should have heard it if you had," the earl would rejoin,
+snappishly. On the present occasion neither Crofts nor Eames
+contradicted him, and he took his tea and swallowed it while still
+three parts asleep.
+
+"If you'll allow me, my lord, I think I'll order my horse," said the
+doctor.
+
+"Yes; horse--yes--" said the earl, nodding.
+
+"But what are you to do, Eames, if I ride?" said the doctor.
+
+"I'll walk," whispered Eames, in his very lowest voice.
+
+"What--what--what?" said the earl, jumping up on his feet.
+
+"Oh, ah, yes; going away, are you? I suppose you might as well, as sit
+here and see me sleeping. But, doctor--I didn't snore, did I?"
+
+"Only occasionally."
+
+"Not loud, did I? Come, Eames, did I snore loud?
+
+"Well, my lord, you did snore rather loud two or three times."
+
+"Did I?" said the earl, in a voice of great disappointment.
+
+"And yet, do you know, I heard every word you said."
+
+The small phaeton had been already ordered, and the two young men
+started back to Guestwick together, a servant from the house riding the
+doctor's horse behind them.
+
+"Look here, Eames," said the earl, as they parted on the steps of the
+hall door.
+
+"You're going back to town the day after tomorrow, you say, so I shan't
+see you again?"
+
+"No, my lord", said Johnny.
+
+"Look you here, now. I shall be up for the Cattle-show before
+Christmas. You must dine with me at my hotel, on the twenty-second of
+December, Pawkins's, in Jermyn Street; seven o'clock, sharp. Mind you
+do not forget, now. Put it down in your pocket-book when you get home.
+Good-bye, doctor; good-bye. I see I must stick to that mutton chop in
+the middle of the day." And then they drove off.
+
+"He'll make him his heir for certain," said Vickers to himself, as he
+slowly returned to his own quarters.
+
+"You were returning from Allington, I suppose," said Crofts, "when you
+came across Lord de Guest and the bull?"
+
+"Yes: I just walked over to say good-bye to them."
+
+"Did you find them all well?"
+
+"I only saw one. The other two were out"
+
+"Mrs Dale, was it?"
+
+"No; it was Lily."
+
+"Sitting alone, thinking of her fine London lover, of course. I suppose
+we ought to look upon her as a very lucky girl. I have no doubt she
+thinks herself so."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said Johnny.
+
+"I believe he's a very good young man," said the doctor; but I can't
+say I quite liked his manner."
+
+"I should think not," said Johnny.
+"But then in all probability he did not like mine a bit better, or
+perhaps yours either. And if so it's all fair."
+
+"I don't see that it's a bit fair. He's a snob," said Eames "and I
+don't believe that I am." He had taken a glass or two of the earl's
+"severe Falernian," and was disposed to a more generous confidence, and
+perhaps also to stronger language, than might otherwise have been the
+case.
+
+"No; I don't think he is a snob," said Crofts.
+
+"Had he been so, Mrs Dale would have perceived it."
+
+"You'll see," said Johnny, touching up the earl's horse with energy as
+he spoke.
+
+"You'll see. A man who gives himself airs is a snob; and he gives
+himself airs. And I don't believe he's a straightforward fellow. It was
+a bad day for us all when he came among them at Allington."
+
+"I can't say that I see that."
+
+"I do. But mind, I haven't spoken a word of this to any one. And I
+don't mean. What would be the good? I suppose she must marry him now?"
+
+"Of course she must."
+
+"And be wretched all her life. Oh-h-h-h!" and he muttered a deep groan.
+
+"I'll tell you what it is, Crofts. He is going to take the sweetest
+girl out of this country that ever was in it, and he don't deserve her."
+
+"I don't think she can be compared to her sister," said Crofts slowly.
+
+"What; not Lily?" said Eames, as though the proposition made by the
+doctor were one that could not hold water for a minute.
+
+"I have always thought that Bell was the more admired of the two," said
+Crofts.
+
+"I'll tell you what," said Eames.
+
+"I have never yet set my eyes on any human creature whom I thought so
+beautiful as Lily Dale. And now that beast is going to marry her! I'll
+tell you what, Crofts; I'll manage to pick a quarrel with him yet."
+Whereupon the doctor, seeing the nature of the complaint from which his
+companion was suffering, said nothing more, either about Lily or about
+Bell.
+
+Soon after this Eames was at his own door, and was received there by
+his mother and sister with all the enthusiasm due to a hero.
+
+"He has saved the earl's life!" Mrs Eames had exclaimed to her daughter
+on reading Lord de Guest's note.
+
+"Oh, goodness!" and she threw herself back upon the sofa almost in a
+fainting condition.
+
+"Saved Lord de Guest's life!" said Mary.
+
+"Yes--under Providence," said Mrs Eames, as though that latter fact
+added much to her son's good deed.
+
+"But how did he do it?"
+
+"By cool courage and good feeling--so his lordship says. But I wonder
+how he really did do it?"
+
+"Whatever way it was, he's torn all his clothes and lost his hat," said
+Mary.
+
+"I don't care a bit about that," said Mrs Eames.
+
+"I wonder whether the earl has any interest at the Income-tax. What a
+thing it would be if he could get Johnny a step. It would be seventy
+pounds a year at once. He was quite right to stay and dine when his
+lordship asked him. And so Dr Crofts is there. It couldn't have been
+anything in the doctoring way, I suppose."
+
+"No, I should say not; because of what he says of his trousers." And so
+the two ladies were obliged to wait for John's return.
+
+"How did you do it, John?" said his mother, embracing him, as soon as
+the door was opened.
+
+"How did you save the earl's life?" said Mary, who was standing behind
+her mother.
+
+"Would his lordship really have been killed, if it had not been for
+you?" asked Mrs Eames.
+
+"And was he very much hurt?" asked Mary.
+
+"Oh, bother," said Johnny, on whom the results of the day's work,
+together with the earl's Falernian, had made some still remaining
+impression. On ordinary occasions, Mrs Eames would have felt hurt at
+being so answered by her son; but at the present moment she regarded
+him as standing so high in general favour that she took no offence.
+
+"Oh, Johnny, do tell us. Of course we must be very anxious to know it
+all."
+
+"There's nothing to tell, except that a bull ran at the earl, as I was
+going by; so I went into the field and helped him, and then he made me
+stay and dine with him."
+
+"But his lordship says that you saved his life," said Mary.
+
+"Under Providence," added their mother.
+
+"At any rate, he has given me a gold watch and chain," said Johnny,
+drawing the present out of his pocket.
+
+"I wanted a watch badly. All the same, I didn't like taking it."
+
+"It would have been very wrong to refuse," said his mother.
+
+"And I am so glad you have been so fortunate. And look here, Johnny:
+when a friend like that comes in your way, don't turn your back on
+him." Then, at last, he thawed beneath their kindness, and told them
+the whole of the story. I fear that, in recounting the earl's efforts
+with the spud, he hardly spoke of his patron with all that deference
+which would have been appropriate.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIII
+
+MR PLANTAGENET PALLISER
+
+A week passed over Mr Crosbie's head at Courcy Castle without much
+inconvenience to him from the well-known fact of his matrimonial
+engagement. Both George de Courcy and John de Courcy had in their
+different ways charged him with his offence, and endeavoured to annoy
+him by recurring to the subject; but he did not care much for the wit
+or malice of George or John de Courcy. The countess had hardly alluded
+to Lily Dale after those few words which she said on the first day of
+his visit, and seemed perfectly willing to regard his doings at
+Allington as the occupation natural to a young man in such a position.
+He had been seduced down to a dull country house, and had, as a matter
+of course, taken to such amusements as the place afforded. He had shot
+the partridges and made love to the young lady, taking those little
+recreations as compensation for the tedium of the squire's society.
+Perhaps he had gone a little too far with the young lady; but then no
+one knew better than the countess how difficult it is for a young man
+to go far enough without going too far. It was not her business to make
+herself a censor on a young man's conduct. The blame, no doubt, rested
+quite as much with Miss Dale as with him. She was quite sorry that any
+young lady should be disappointed; but if girls will be imprudent, and
+set their caps at men above their mark, they must encounter
+disappointment. With such language did Lady de Courcy speak of the
+affair among her daughters, and her daughters altogether agreed with
+her that it was out of the question that Mr Crosbie should marry Lily
+Dale. From Alexandrina he encountered during the week none of that
+raillery which he had expected. He had promised to explain to her
+before he left the castle all the circumstances of his acquaintance
+with Lily, and she at last showed herself determined to demand the
+fulfilment of this promise; but, previous to that, she said nothing to
+manifest either offence or a lessened friendship. And I regret to say,
+that in the intercourse which had taken place between them, that
+friendship was by no means less tender that it had been in London.
+
+"And when will you tell me what you promised?" she asked him one
+afternoon, speaking in a low voice, as they were standing together at
+the window of the billiard-room, in that idle half-hour which always
+occurs before the necessity for dinner preparation has come. She had
+been riding and was still in her habit, and he had returned from
+shooting. She knew that she looked more than ordinarily well in her
+tall straight hat and riding gear, and was wont to hang about the
+house, walking skilfully with her upheld drapery, during this period of
+the day. It was dusk, but not dark, and there was no artificial light
+in the billiard-room. There had been some pretence of knocking about
+the balls, but it had been only pretence.
+
+"Even Diana," she had said, "could not have played billiards in a
+habit. "Then she had put down her mace, and they had stood talking
+together in the recess of a large bow-window.
+
+"And what did I promise?" said Crosbie.
+
+"You know well enough. Not that it is a matter of any special interest
+to me; only, as you undertook to promise, of course my curiosity has
+been raised."
+
+"If it be of no special interest" said Crosbie, "you will not object to
+absolve me from my promise."
+
+"That is just like you," she said. "And how false you men always are.
+You made up your mind to buy my silence on a distasteful subject by
+pretending to offer me your future confidence; and now you tell me that
+you do not mean to confide in me."
+
+"You begin by telling me that the matter is one that does not in the
+least interest you."
+
+"That is so false again! You know very well what I meant. Do you
+remember what you said to me the day you came? and am I not bound to
+tell you after that, that your marriage with this or that young lady is
+not matter of special interest to me? Still, as your friend--"
+
+"Well, as my friend!"
+
+"I shall be glad to know--But I am not going to beg for your confidence;
+only I tell you this fairly, that no man is so mean in my eyes as a man
+who fights under false colours."
+
+"And am I fighting under false colours?"
+
+"Yes, you are." And now, as she spoke, the Lady Alexandrina blushed
+beneath her hat; and dull as was the remaining light of the evening,
+Crosbie, looking into her face, saw her heightened colour.
+
+"Yes, you are. A gentleman is fighting under false colours who comes
+into a house like this, with a public rumour of his being engaged, and
+then conducts himself as though nothing of the kind existed. Of course,
+it is not anything to me specially; but that is fighting under false
+colours. Now, sir, you may redeem the promise you made me when you
+first came here--or you may let it alone."
+
+It must be acknowledged that the lady was fighting her battle with much
+courage, and also with some skill. In three or four days Crosbie would
+be gone; and this victory, if it were ever to be gained, must be gained
+in those three or four days. And if there were to be no victory, then
+it would be only fair that Crosbie should be punished for his
+duplicity, and that she should be avenged as far as any revenge might
+be in her power. Not that she meditated any deep revenge, or was
+prepared to feel any strong anger. She liked Crosbie as well as she had
+ever liked any man. She believed that he liked her also. She had no
+conception of any very strong passion, but conceived that a married
+life was more pleasant than one of single bliss. She had no doubt that
+he had promised to make Lily Dale his wife, but so had he previously
+promised her, or nearly so. It was a fair game, and she would win it if
+she could. If she failed, she would show her anger; but she would show
+it in a mild, weak manner--turning up her nose at Lily before Crosbie's
+face, and saying little things against himself behind his back. Her
+wrath would not carry her much beyond that.
+
+"Now, sir, you may redeem the promise you made me when you first came
+here--or you may let it alone." So she spoke, and then she turned her
+face away from him, gazing out into the darkness.
+
+"Alexandrina!" he said.
+
+"Well, sir? But you have no right to speak to me in that style. You
+know that you have no right to call me by my name in that way!"
+
+"You mean that you insist upon your title?"
+
+"All ladies insist on what you call their title, from gentlemen, except
+under the privilege of greater intimacy than you have the right to
+claim. You did not call Miss Dale by her Christian name till you had
+obtained permission, I suppose?"
+
+"You used to let me call you so."
+
+"Never! Once or twice, when you have done so, I have not forbidden it,
+as I should have done. Very well, sir, as you have nothing to tell me,
+I will leave you. I must confess that I did not think you were such a
+coward." And she prepared to go, gathering up the skirts of her habit,
+and taking up the whip which she had laid on the window-sill.
+
+"Stay a moment, Alexandrina," he said;
+
+"I am not happy, and you should not say words intended to make me more
+miserable."
+
+"And why are you unhappy?"
+
+"Because I will tell you instantly, if I may believe that I am telling
+you only, and not the whole household."
+
+"Of course I shall not talk of it to others. Do you think that I cannot
+keep a secret?"
+
+"It is because I have promised to marry one woman, and because I love
+another. I have told you everything now; and if you choose to say again
+that I am fighting under false colours I will leave the castle before
+you can see me again."
+
+"Mr Crosbie!"
+
+"Now you know it all, and may imagine whether or no I am very happy. I
+think you said it was time to dress--suppose we go?" And without further
+speech the two went off to their separate rooms.
+
+Crosbie, as soon as he was alone in his chamber, sat himself down in
+his arm-chair, and went to work striving to make up his mind as to his
+future conduct. It must not be supposed that the declaration just made
+by him had been produced solely by his difficulty at the moment. The
+atmosphere of Courcy Castle had been at work upon him for the last week
+past. And every word that he had heard, and every word that he had
+spoken, had tended to destroy all that was good and true within him,
+and to foster all that was selfish and false. He had said to himself a
+dozen times during that week that he never could be happy with Lily
+Dale, and that he never could make her happy. And then he had used the
+old sophistry in his endeavour to teach himself that it was right to do
+that which he wished to do. Would it not be better for Lily that he
+should desert her, than marry her against the dictates of his own
+heart? And if he really did not love her, would he not be committing a
+greater crime in marrying her than in deserting her? He confessed to
+himself that he had been very wrong in allowing the outer world to get
+such a hold upon him, that the love of a pure girl like Lily could not
+suffice for his happiness. But there was the fact, and he found himself
+unable to contend against it. If by any absolute self-sacrifice he
+could secure Lily's well-being, he would not hesitate for a moment. But
+would it be well to sacrifice her as well as himself?
+
+He had discussed the matter in this way within his own breast, till he
+had almost taught himself to believe that it was his duty to break off
+his engagement with Lily; and he had also almost taught himself to
+believe that a marriage with a daughter of the house of Courcy, would
+satisfy his ambition and assist him in his battle with the world. That
+Lady Alexandrina would accept him he felt certain, if he could only
+induce her to forgive him for his sin in becoming engaged to Miss Dale.
+How very prone she would be to forgiveness in this matter, he had not
+divined, having not as yet learned how easily such a woman can forgive
+such a sin, if the ultimate triumph be accorded to herself.
+
+And there was another reason which operated much with Crosbie, urging
+him on in his present mood and wishes, though it should have given an
+exactly opposite impulse to his heart. He had hesitated as to marrying
+Lily Dale at once, because of the smallness of his income. Now he had a
+prospect of considerable increase to that income. One of the
+commissioners at his office had been promoted to some greater
+commissionership, and it was understood by everybody that the secretary
+at the General Committee Office would be the new commissioner. As to
+that there was no doubt. But then the question had arisen as to the
+place of secretary. Crosbie had received two or three letters on the
+subject, and it seemed that the likelihood of his obtaining this step
+in the world was by no means slight. It would increase his official
+income from seven hundred a year to twelve, and would place him
+altogether above the world. His friend, the present secretary, had
+written to him, assuring him that no other probable competitor was
+spoken of as being in the field against him. If such good fortune
+awaited him, would it not smooth any present difficulty which lay in
+the way of his marriage with Lily Dale? But, alas, he had not looked at
+the matter in that light! Might not the countess help him to this
+preferment? And if his destiny intended for him the good things of this
+world--secretaryships, commissionerships, chairmanships, and such like,
+would it not be well that he should struggle on in his upward path by
+such assistance as good connections might give him?
+
+He sat thinking over it all in his own room on that evening. He had
+written twice to Lily since his arrival at Courcy Castle. His first
+letter has been given. His second was written much in the same tone;
+though Lily, as she had read it, had unconsciously felt somewhat less
+satisfied than she had been with the first. Expressions of love were
+not wanting, but they were vague and without heartiness. They savoured
+of insincerity, though there was nothing in the words themselves to
+convict them. Few liars can lie with the full roundness and
+self-sufficiency of truth; and Crosbie, bad as he was, had not yet
+become bad enough to reach that perfection. He had said nothing to Lily
+of the hopes of promotion which had been opened to him; but he had
+again spoken of his own worldliness--acknowledging that he received an
+unsatisfying satisfaction from the pomps and vanities of Courcy Castle.
+In fact he was paving the way for that which he had almost resolved
+that he would do, now he had told Lady Alexandrina that he loved her;
+and he was obliged to confess to himself that the die was cast.
+
+As he thought of all this, there was not wanting to him some of the
+satisfaction of an escape. Soon after making that declaration of love
+at Allington he had begun to feel that in making it he had cut his
+throat. He had endeavoured to persuade himself that he could live
+comfortably with his throat cut in that way; and as long as Lily was
+with him he would believe that he could do so; but as soon as he was
+again alone he would again accuse himself of suicide. This was his
+frame of mind even while he was yet at Allington, and his ideas on the
+subject had become stronger during his sojourn at Courcy. But the
+self-immolation had not been completed, and he now began to think that
+he could save himself. I need hardly say that this was not all triumph
+to him. Even had there been no material difficulty as to his desertion
+of Lily--no uncle, cousin, and mother whose anger he must face--no vision
+of a pale face, more eloquent of wrong in its silence than even uncle,
+cousin, and mother, with their indignant storm of words--he was not
+altogether heartless. How should he tell all this to the girl who had
+loved him so well; who had so loved him, that, as he himself felt, her
+love would fashion all her future life either for weal or for woe?
+
+"I am unworthy of her, and will tell her so," he said to himself. How
+many a false hound of a man has endeavoured to salve his own conscience
+by such mock humility? But he acknowledged at this moment, as he rose
+from his seat to dress himself, that the die was cast, and that it was
+open to him now to say what he pleased to Lady Alexandrina.
+
+"Others have gone through the same fire before," he said to himself, as
+he walked downstairs, "and have come out scatheless." And then he
+recalled to himself the names of various men of high repute in the
+world who were supposed to have committed in their younger days some
+such little mistake as that into which he had been betrayed.
+
+In passing through the hail he overtook Lady Julia de Guest, and was in
+time to open for her the door of the drawing-room. He then remembered
+that she had come into the billiard-room at one side, and had gone out
+at the other, while he was standing with Alexandrina at the window. He
+had not, however, then thought much of Lady Julia; and as he now stood
+for her to pass by him through the door-way, he made to her some
+indifferent remark.
+
+But Lady Julia was on some subjects a stern woman, and not without a
+certain amount of courage. In the last week she had seen what had been
+going on, and had become more and more angry. Though she had disowned
+any family connection with Lily Dale, nevertheless she now felt for her
+sympathy and almost affection. Nearly every day she had repeated
+stiffly to the countess some incident of Crosbie's courtship and
+engagement to Miss Dale--speaking of it as with absolute knowledge, as a
+thing settled at all points. This she had done to the countess alone,
+in the presence of the countess and Alexandrina, and also before all
+the female guests of the castle. But what she had said was received
+simply with an incredulous smile.
+
+"Dear me! Lady Julia," the countess had replied at last,
+
+"I shall begin to think you are in love with Mr Crosbie yourself; you
+harp so constantly on this affair of his. One would think that young
+ladies in your part of the world must find it very difficult to get
+husbands, seeing that the success of one young lady is trumpeted so
+loudly." For the moment, Lady Julia was silenced; but it was not easy
+to silence her altogether when she had a subject for speech near her
+heart.
+
+Almost all the Courcy world were assembled in the drawing-room as she
+now walked into the room with Crosbie at her heels. When she found
+herself near the crowd she turned round, and addressed him in a voice
+more audible than that generally required for purposes of drawing-room
+conversation.
+
+"Mr Crosbie," she said, "have you heard lately from our dear friend,
+Lily Dale?" And she looked him full in the face, in a manner more
+significant, probably, than even she had intended it to be. There was,
+at once, a general hush in the room, and all eyes were turned upon her
+and upon him.
+
+Crosbie instantly made an effort to bear the attack gallantly, but he
+felt that he could not quite command his colour, or prevent a sudden
+drop of perspiration from showing itself upon his brow.
+
+"I had a letter from Allington yesterday," he said.
+
+"I suppose you have heard of your brother's encounter with the bull?
+
+"The bull!" said Lady Julia. And it was instantly manifest to all that
+her attack had been foiled and her flank turned.
+
+"Good gracious! Lady Julia, how very odd you are!" said the countess.
+
+"But what about the bull?" asked the Honourable George.
+
+"It seems that the earl was knocked down in the middle of one of his
+own fields."
+
+"Oh, dear!" exclaimed Alexandrina. And sundry other exclamations were
+made by all the assembled ladies.
+
+"But he wasn't hurt," said Crosbie.
+
+"A young man named Eames seems to have fallen from the sky and carried
+off the earl on his back."
+
+"Ha, ha, ha, ha!" growled the other earl, as he heard of the
+discomfiture of his brother peer.
+
+Lady Julia, who had received her own letters that day from Guestwick,
+knew that nothing of importance had happened to her brother; but she
+felt that she was foiled for that time.
+
+"I hope that there has not really been any accident," said Mr Gazebee,
+with a voice of great solicitude.
+
+"My brother was quite well last night, thank you," said she. And then
+the little groups again formed themselves, and Lady Julia was left
+alone on the corner of a sofa.
+
+"Was that all an invention of yours, sir?" said Alexandrina to Crosbie.
+
+"Not quite. I did get a letter this morning from my friend Bernard
+Dale--that old harridan's nephew; and Lord de Guest has been worried by
+some of his animals. I wish I had told her that his stupid old neck had
+been broken."
+
+"Fie, Mr Crosbie!"
+
+"What business has she to interfere with me?
+
+"But I mean to ask the same question that she asked, and you won't put
+me off with a cock-and-bull story like that." But then, as she was
+going to ask the question, dinner was announced.
+
+"And is it true that De Guest has been tossed by a bull?" said the
+earl, as soon as the ladies were gone. He had spoken nothing during
+dinner except what words he had muttered into the ear of Lady Dumbello.
+It was seldom that conversation had many charms for him in his own
+house; but there was a savour of pleasantry in the idea of Lord de
+Guest having been tossed, by which even he was tickled.
+"Only knocked down, I believe," said Crosbie.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" growled the earl; then he filled his glass, and allowed
+some one else to pass the bottle. Poor man! There was not much left to
+him now in the world which did amuse him.
+
+"I don't see anything to laugh at," said Plantagenet Palliser, who was
+sitting at the earl's right hand, opposite to Lord Dumbello.
+
+"Don't you?" said the earl.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!"
+
+"I'll be shot if I do. From all I hear De Guest is an uncommon good
+farmer. And I don't see the joke of tossing a farmer merely because
+he's a nobleman also. Do you?" and he turned round to Mr Gazebee, who
+was sitting on the other side. The earl was an earl, and was also Mr
+Gazebee's father-in-law. Mr Plantagenet Palliser was the heir to a
+dukedom. Therefore, Mr Gazebee merely simpered, and did not answer the
+question put to him. Mr Palliser said nothing more about it, nor did
+the earl; and then the joke died away.
+
+Mr Plantagenet Palliser was the Duke of Omnium's heir--heir to that
+nobleman's title and to his enormous wealth; and, therefore, was a man
+of mark in the world. He sat in the House of Commons, of course. He was
+about five-and-twenty years of age, and was, as yet, unmarried. He did
+not hunt or shoot or keep a yacht, and had been heard to say that he
+had never put a foot upon a race-course in his life. He dressed very
+quietly, never changing the colour or form of his garments; and in
+society was quiet, reserved, and very often silent. He was tall,
+slight, and not ill-looking; but more than this cannot be said for his
+personal appearance--except, indeed, this, that no one could mistake him
+for other than a gentleman. With his uncle, the duke, he was on good
+terms--that is to say, they had never quarrelled. A very liberal
+allowance had been made to the nephew; but the two relatives had no
+tastes in common, and did not often meet. Once a year Mr Palliser
+visited the duke at his great country seat for two or three days, and
+usually dined with him two or three times during the season in London.
+Mr Palliser sat for a borough which was absolutely under the duke's
+command; but had accepted his seat under the distinct understanding
+that he was to take whatever part in politics might seem good to
+himself. Under these well-understood arrangements, the duke and his
+heir showed to the world quite a pattern of a happy family.
+
+"So different to the earl and Lord Porlock!" the people of West
+Barsetshire used to say. For the estates, both of the duke and of the
+earl, were situated in the western division of that county.
+
+Mr Palliser was chiefly known to the world as a rising politician. We
+may say that he had everything at his command, in the way of pleasure,
+that the world could offer him. He had wealth, position, power, and the
+certainty of attaining the highest rank among, perhaps, the most
+brilliant nobility of the world. He was courted by all who could get
+near enough to court him. It is hardly too much to say that he might
+have selected a bride from all that was most beautiful and best among
+English women. If he would have bought race-horses, and have expended
+thousands on the turf, he would have gratified his uncle by doing so.
+He might have been the master of hounds, or the slaughterer of
+hecatombs of birds. But to none of these things would he devote
+himself. He had chosen to be a politician, and in that pursuit he
+laboured with a zeal and perseverance which would have made his fortune
+at any profession or in any trade. He was constant in committee-rooms
+up to the very middle of August. He was rarely absent from any debate
+of importance, and never from any important division. Though he seldom
+spoke, he was always ready to speak if his purpose required it. No man
+gave him credit for any great genius--few even considered that he could
+become either an orator or a mighty statesman. But the world said that
+he was a rising man, and old Nestor of the Cabinet looked on him as one
+who would be able, at some far future day, to come among them as a
+younger brother. Hitherto he had declined such inferior offices as had
+been offered to him, biding his time carefully; and he was as yet tied
+hand and neck to no party, though known to be liberal in all his
+political tendencies. He was a great reader--not taking up a book here,
+and another there, as chance brought books before him, but working
+through an enormous course of books, getting up the great subject of
+the world's history--filling himself full of facts--though perhaps not
+destined to acquire the power of using those facts otherwise than as
+precedents. He strove also diligently to become a linguist--not without
+success, as far as a competent understanding of various languages. He
+was a thin-minded, plodding, respectable man, willing to devote all his
+youth to work, in order that in old age he might be allowed to sit
+among the Councillors of the State.
+
+Hitherto his name had not been coupled by the world with that of any
+woman whom he had been supposed to admire; but latterly it had been
+observed that he had often been seen in the same room with Lady
+Dumbello. It had hardly amounted to more than this; but when it was
+remembered how undemonstrative were the two persons concerned--how
+little disposed was either of them to any strong display of
+feeling--even this was thought matter to be mentioned. He certainly
+would speak to her from time to time almost with an air of interest;
+and Lady Dumbello, when she saw that he was in the room, would be
+observed to raise her head with some little show of life, and to look
+round as though there were something there on which it might be worth
+her while to allow her eyes to rest. When such innuendoes were abroad,
+no one would probably make more of them than Lady de Courcy. Many, when
+they heard that Mr Palliser was to be at the castle, had expressed
+their surprise at her success in that quarter. Others, when they
+learned that Lady Dumbello had consented to become her guest, had also
+wondered greatly. But when it was ascertained that the two were to be
+there together, her good-natured friends had acknowledged that she was
+a very clever woman. To have either Mr Palliser or Lady Dumbello would
+have been a feather in her cap; but to succeed in getting both, by
+enabling each to know that the other would be there, was indeed a
+triumph. As regards Lady Dumbello, however, the bargain was not fairly
+carried out; for, after all, Mr Palliser came to Courcy Castle only for
+two nights and a day, and during the whole of that day he was closeted
+with sundry large blue-books. As for Lady de Courcy, she did not care
+how he might be employed. Blue-books and Lady Dumbello were all the
+same to her. Mr Palliser had been at Courcy Castle, and neither enemy
+nor friend could deny the fact.
+
+This was his second evening; and as he had promised to meet his
+constituents at Silverbridge at one p.m. on the following day, with the
+view of explaining to them his own conduct and the political position
+of the world in general; and as he was not to return from Silverbridge
+to Courcy, Lady Dumbello, if she made any way at all, must take
+advantage of the short gleam of sunshine which the present hour
+afforded her. No one, however, could say that she showed any active
+disposition to monopolise Mr Palliser's attention. When he sauntered
+into the drawing-room she was sitting, alone, in a large, low chair,
+made without arms, so as to admit the full expansion of her dress, but
+hollowed and round at the back, so as to afford her the support that
+was necessary to her. She had barely spoken three words since she had
+left the dining-room, but the time had not passed heavily with her.
+Lady Julia had again attacked the countess about Lily Dale and Mr
+Crosbie, and Alexandrina, driven almost to rage, had stalked off to the
+farther end of the room, not concealing her special concern in the
+matter.
+
+"How I do wish they were married and done with," said the countess;
+"and then we should hear no more about them."
+
+All of which Lady Dumbello heard and understood; and in all of it she
+took a certain interest. She remembered such things, learning thereby
+who was who, and regulating her own conduct by what she learned. She
+was by no means idle at this or at other such times, going through, we
+may say, a considerable amount of really hard work in her manner of
+working. There she had sat speechless, unless when acknowledging by a
+low word of assent some expression of flattery from those around her.
+Then the door opened, and when Mr Palliser entered she raised her head,
+and the faintest possible gleam of satisfaction might have been
+discerned upon her features. But she made no attempt to speak to him;
+and when, as he stood at the table, he took up a book and remained thus
+standing for a quarter of an hour, she neither showed nor felt any
+impatience. After that Lord Dumbello came in, and he stood at the table
+without a book. Even then Lady Dumbello felt no impatience.
+
+Plantagenet Palliser skimmed through his little book, and probably
+learned something. When he put it down he sipped a cup of tea, and
+remarked to Lady de Courcy that he believed it was only twelve miles to
+Silverbridge.
+
+"I wish it was a hundred and twelve," said the countess.
+
+"In that case I should be forced to start to-night," said Mr Palliser.
+
+"Then I wish it was a thousand and twelve," said Lady de Courcy.
+
+"In that case I should not have come at all," said Mr Palliser. He did
+not mean to be uncivil, and had only stated a fact.
+
+"The young men are becoming absolute bears," said the countess to her
+daughter Margaretta.
+
+He had been in the room nearly an hour when he did at last find himself
+standing close to Lady Dumbello: close to her, and without any other
+very near neighbour.
+
+"I should hardly have expected to find you here," he said.
+
+"Nor I you," she answered.
+
+"Though, for the matter of that, we are both near our own homes."
+
+"I am not near mine."
+
+"I meant Plumstead; your father's place."
+
+"Yes; that was my home once."
+
+"I wish I could show you my uncle's place. The castle is very fine, and
+he has some good pictures."
+
+"So I have heard."
+
+"Do you stay here long?"
+
+"Oh, no. I go to Cheshire the day after tomorrow. Lord Dumbello is
+always there when the hunting begins."
+
+"Ah, yes; of course. What a happy fellow he is; never any work to do!
+His constituents never trouble him, I suppose?
+
+"I don't think they ever do, much."
+
+After that Mr Palliser sauntered away again, and Lady Dumbello passed
+the rest of the evening in silence. It is to be hoped that they both
+were rewarded by that ten minutes of sympathetic intercourse for the
+inconvenience which they had suffered in coming to Courcy Castle.
+
+But that which seems so innocent to us had been looked on in a
+different light by the stern moralists of that house.
+
+"By Jove!" said the Honourable George to his cousin, Mr Gresham,
+
+"I wonder how Dumbello likes it."
+
+"It seems to me that Dumbello takes it very easily."
+
+"There are some men who will take anything easily," said George, who,
+since his own marriage, had learned to have a holy horror of such
+wicked things.
+
+"She's beginning to come out a little," said Lady Clandidlem to Lady de
+Courcy, when the two old women found themselves together over a fire in
+some back sitting-room.
+
+"Still waters always run deep, you know."
+
+"I shouldn't at all wonder if she were to go off with him," said Lady
+de Courcy.
+
+"He'll never be such a fool as that," said Lady Clandidlem.
+
+"I believe men will be fools enough for anything," said Lady de Courcy.
+
+"But, of course, if he did, it would come to nothing afterwards. I know
+one who would not be sorry. If ever a man was tired of a woman, Lord
+Dumbello is tired of her."
+
+But in this, as in almost everything else, the wicked old woman spoke
+scandal. Lord Dumbello was still proud of his wife, and as fond of her
+as a man can be of a woman whose fondness depends upon mere pride.
+
+There had not been much that was dangerous in the conversation between
+Mr Palliser and Lady Dumbello, but I cannot say the same as to that
+which was going on at the same moment between Crosbie and Lady
+Alexandrina. She, as I have said, walked away in almost open dudgeon
+when Lady Julia recommenced her attack about poor Lily, nor did she
+return to the general circle during the evening. There were two huge
+drawing-rooms at Courcy Castle, joined together by a narrow link of a
+room, which might have been called a passage, ha it not been lighted by
+two windows coming down to the floor, carpeted as were the
+drawing-rooms, and warmed with a separate fireplace. Hither she betook
+herself, and was soon followed by her married sister Amelia.
+
+"That woman almost drives me mad," said Alexandrina, as they stood
+together with their toes upon the fender.
+
+"But, my dear, you of all people should not allow yourself to be driven
+mad on such a subject."
+
+"That's all very well, Amelia."
+
+"The question is this, my dear--what does Mr Crosbie mean to do?"
+
+"How should I know?"
+
+"If you don't know, it will be safer to suppose that he is going to
+marry this girl; and in that case--"
+
+"Well, what in that case? Are you going to be another Lady Julia? What
+do I care about the girl?"
+
+"I don't suppose you care much about the girl; and if you care as
+little about Mr Crosbie, there's an end of it; only in that case,
+Alexandrina--"
+
+"Well, what in that case?
+
+"You know I don't want to preach to you. Can't you tell me at once
+whether you really like him? You and I have always been good friends."
+And the married sister put her arm affectionately round the waist of
+her who wished to be married.
+
+"I like him well enough."
+
+"And has he made any declaration to you?"
+
+"In a sort of a way he has. Hark, here he is!" And Crosbie, coming in
+from the larger room, joined the sisters at the fireplace.
+
+"We were driven away by the clack of Lady Julia's tongue," said the
+elder.
+
+"I never met such a woman," said Crosbie.
+
+"There cannot well be many like her," said Alexandrina. And after that
+they all stood silent for a minute or two. Lady Amelia Gazebee was
+considering whether or no she would do well to go and leave the two
+together. If it were intended that Mr Crosbie should marry her sister,
+it would certainly be well to give him an opportunity of expressing
+such a wish on his own part. But if Alexandrina was simply making a
+fool of herself, then it would be well for her to stay.
+
+"I suppose she would rather I should go," said the elder sister to
+herself; and then, obeying the rule which should guide all our actions
+from one to another, she went back and joined the crowd.
+
+"Will you come on into the other room?" said Crosbie.
+"I think we are very well here," Alexandrina replied.
+
+"But I wish to speak to you--particularly," said he.
+
+"And cannot you speak here?"
+
+"No. They will be passing backwards and forwards." Lady Alexandrina
+said nothing further, but led the way into the other large room. That
+also was lighted, and there were in it four or live persons. Lady
+Rosina was reading a work on the millennium, with a light to herself in
+one corner. Her brother John was asleep in an arm-chair, and a young
+gentleman and lady were playing chess. There was, however, ample room
+for Crosbie and Alexandrina to take up a position apart.
+
+"And now, Mr Crosbie, what have you got to say to me? But, first, I
+mean to repeat Lady Julia's question, as I told you that I should
+do.--When did you hear last from Miss Dale?"
+
+"It is cruel in you to ask me such a question, after what I have
+already told you. You know that I have given to Miss Dale a promise of
+marriage."
+
+"Very well, sir. I don't see why you should bring me in here to tell me
+anything that is so publicly known as that. With such a herald as Lady
+Julia it was quite unnecessary."
+
+"If you can only answer me in that tone I will make an end of it at
+once. When I told you of my engagement, I told you also that another
+woman possessed my heart. Am I wrong to suppose that you knew to whom I
+alluded?"
+
+"Indeed, I did not, Mr Crosbie. I am no conjuror, and I have not
+scrutinised you so closely as your friend Lady Julia."
+
+"It is you that I love. I am sure I need hardly say so now."
+
+"Hardly, indeed--considering that you are engaged to Miss Dale."
+
+"As to that I have, of course, to own that I have behaved
+foolishly--worse than foolishly, if you choose to say so. You cannot
+condemn me more absolutely than I condemn myself. But I have made up my
+mind as to one thing. I will not marry where I do not love." Oh, if
+Lily could have heard him as he then spoke!
+
+"It would be impossible for me to speak in terms too high of Miss Dale;
+but I am quite sure that I could not make her happy as her husband."
+
+"Why did you not think of that before you asked her?" said Alexandrina.
+But there was very little of condemnation in her tone.
+
+"I ought to have done so; but it is hardly for you to blame me with
+severity. Had you, when we were last together in London--had you been
+less--"
+
+"Less what?"
+
+"Less defiant," said Crosbie, "all this might perhaps have been
+avoided."
+
+Lady Alexandrina could not remember that she had been defiant; but,
+however, she let that pass.
+
+"Oh, yes; of course it was my fault."
+
+"I went down there to Allington with my heart ill at ease, and now I
+have fallen into this trouble. I tell you all as it has happened. It is
+impossible that I should marry Miss Dale. It would be wicked in me to
+do so, seeing that my heart belongs altogether to another. I have told
+you who is that other; and now may I hope for an answer?"
+
+"An answer to what?"
+
+"Alexandrina, will you be my wife?"
+
+If it had been her object to bring him to a point-blank declaration and
+proposition of marriage, she had certainly achieved her object now. And
+she had that trust in her own power of management and in her mother's,
+that she did not fear that in accepting him she would incur the risk of
+being served as he was serving Lily Dale. She knew her own position and
+his too well for that. If she accepted him she would in due course of
+time become his wife--let Miss Dale and all her friends say what they
+might to the contrary. As to that head she had no fear. But
+nevertheless she did not accept him at once. Though she wished for the
+prize, her woman's nature hindered her from taking it when it was
+offered to her.
+
+"How long is it, Mr Crosbie," she said, "since you put the same
+question to Miss Dale?"
+
+"I have told you everything, Alexandrina--as I promised that I would do.
+If you intend to punish me for doing so--"
+
+"And I might ask another question. How long will it be before you put
+the same question to some other girl?"
+
+He turned round as though to walk away from her in anger but when he
+had gone half the distance to the door he returned.
+
+"By heaven!" he said, and he spoke somewhat roughly, too, "I'll have an
+answer. You at any rate have nothing with which to reproach me. All
+that I have done wrong, I have done through you, or on your behalf. You
+have heard my proposal. Do you intend to accept it?"
+
+"I declare you startle me. If you demanded my money or my life, you
+could not be more imperious."
+
+"Certainly not more resolute in my determination."
+
+"And if I decline the honour?"
+
+"I shall think you the most fickle of your sex."
+
+"And if I were to accept it?"
+
+"I would swear that you were the best, the dearest, and the sweetest of
+women."
+
+"I would rather have your good opinion than your bad, certainly," said
+Lady Alexandrina. And then it was understood by both of them that that
+affair was settled. Whenever she was called on in future to speak of
+Lily, she always called her, "that poor Miss Dale;" but she never again
+spoke a word of reproach to her future lord about that little adventure.
+
+"I shall tell mamma, to-night," she said to him, as she bade him
+good-night in some sequestered nook to which they had betaken
+themselves. Lady Julia's eye was again on them as they came out from
+the sequestered nook, but Alexandrina no longer cared for Lady Julia.
+
+"George, I cannot quite understand about that Mr Palliser. Isn't he to
+be a duke, and oughtn't he to be a lord now?" This question was asked
+by Mrs George de Courcy of her husband, when they found themselves
+together in the seclusion of the nuptial chamber.
+
+"Yes; he'll be Duke of Omnium when the old fellow dies. I think he's
+one of the slowest fellows I ever came across. He'll take deuced good
+care of the property, though."
+
+"But, George, do explain it to me. It is so stupid not to understand,
+and I am afraid of opening my mouth for fear of blundering."
+
+"Then keep your mouth shut, my dear. You'll learn all those sort of
+things in time, and nobody notices it if you don't say anything."
+
+"Yes, but, George--I don't like to sit silent all the night. I'd sooner
+be up here with a novel if I can't speak about anything."
+
+"Look at Lady Dumbello. She doesn't want to be always talking."
+
+"Lady Dumbello is very different from me. But do tell me, who is Mr
+Palliser?
+
+"He's the duke's nephew. If he were the duke's son, he would be the
+Marquis of Silverbridge."
+
+"And will he be plain Mister till his uncle dies?"
+
+"Yes, a very plain Mister."
+
+"What a pity for him. But, George--if I have a baby, and if he should be
+a boy, and if--"
+
+"Oh, nonsense; it will be time enough to talk of that when he comes.
+I'm going to sleep."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIV
+
+A MOTHER-in-law AND A FATHER-in-law
+
+On the following morning Mr Plantagenet Palliser was off upon his
+political mission before breakfast--either that, or else some private
+comfort was afforded to him in guise of solitary rolls and coffee. The
+public breakfast at Courcy Castle was going on at eleven o'clock, and
+at that hour Mr Palliser was already closeted with the Mayor of
+Silverbridge.
+
+"I must get off by the train," said Mr Palliser.
+
+"Who is there to speak after me?
+
+"Well, I shall say a few words; and Growdy--he'll expect them to listen
+to him. Growdy has always stood very firm by his grace, Mr Palliser."
+
+"Mind we are in the room sharp at one. And you can have a fly, for me
+to get away to the station, ready in the yard. I won't go a moment
+before I can help. I shall be just an hour and a half myself. No, thank
+you, I never take any wine in the morning." And I may here state that
+Mr Palliser did get away by the 3.45 train, leaving Mr Growdy still
+talking on the platform. Constituents must be treated with respect;
+but time has become so scarce nowadays that that respect has to be
+meted out by the quarter of an hour with parsimonious care.
+
+In the meantime there was more leisure at Courcy Caste. Neither the
+countess nor Lady Alexandrina came down to breakfast, but their absence
+gave rise to no special remark. Breakfast at the castle was a morning
+meal at which people showed themselves, or did not show themselves, as
+it pleased them. Lady Julia was there looking very glum, and Crosbie
+was sitting next to his future sister-in-law Margaretta, who already
+had placed herself on terms of close affection with him. As he finished
+his tea she whispered into his ear,
+
+"Mr Crosbie, if you could spare half an hour, mamma would so like to
+see you in her own room." Crosbie declared that he would be delighted
+to wait upon her, and did in truth feel some gratitude in being
+welcomed as a son-in-law into the house. And yet he felt also that he
+was being caught, and that in ascending into the private domains of the
+countess he would be setting the seal upon his own captivity.
+
+Nevertheless, he went with a smiling face and a light steps Lady
+Margaretta ushering him the way.
+
+"Mamma," said she, "I have brought Mr Crosbie up to you. I did not know
+that you were here, Alexandrina, or I should have warned him."
+
+The countess and her youngest daughter had been breakfasting together
+in the elder lady's sitting-room, and were now seated in a very
+graceful and well-arranged deshabille. The tea-cups out of which they
+had been drinking were made of some elegant porcelain, the teapot and
+cream-jug were of chased silver and as delicate in their sway. The
+remnant of food consisted of morsels of French roll which had not even
+been allowed to crumble themselves in a disorderly fashion, and of
+infinitesimal pats of butter. If the morning meal of the two ladies had
+been as unsubstantial as the appearance of the fragments indicated, it
+must be presumed that they intended to lunch early. The countess
+herself was arrayed in an elaborate morning wrapper of figured silk,
+but the simple Alexandrina wore a plain white muslin peignoir, fastened
+with pink ribbon. Her hair, which she usually carried in long rolls,
+now hung loose over her shoulders, and certainly added something to her
+stock of female charms. The countess got up as Crosbie entered and
+greeted him with an open hand; but Alexandrina kept her seat, and
+merely nodded at him a little welcome.
+
+"I must run down again," said Margaretta, "or I shall have left Amelia
+with all the cares of the house upon her."
+
+"Alexandrina has told me all about it," said the countess, with her
+sweetest smile, "and I have given her my approval. I really do think
+you will suit each other very well."
+
+"I am very much obliged to you," said Crosbie.
+
+"I'm sure at any rate of this--that she will suit me very well."
+
+"Yes; I think she will. She is a good sensible girl."
+
+"Psha, mamma; pray don't go on in that Goody Twoshoes sort of way."
+
+"So you are, my dear. If you were not it would not be well for you to
+do as you are going to do. If you were giddy and harum-scarum, and
+devoted to rank and wealth and that sort of thing, it would not be well
+for you to marry a commoner without fortune. I'm sure Mr Crosbie will
+excuse me for saying so much as that."
+
+"Of course I know," said Crosbie, "that I had no right to look so high."
+
+"Well; we'll say nothing more about it," said the countess.
+
+"Pray don't," said Alexandrina.
+
+"It sounds so like a sermon."
+
+"Sit down, Mr Crosbie," said the countess, "and let us have a little
+conversation. She shall sit by you, if you like it. Nonsense,
+Alexandrina--if he asks it!"
+
+"Don't, mamma--I mean to remain where I am."
+
+"Very well, my dear--then remain where you are. She is a wilful girl, Mr
+Crosbie; as you will say when you hear that she has told me all that
+you told her last night." Upon hearing this, he changed colour a
+little, but said nothing.
+
+"She has told me," continued the countess, "about that young lady at
+Allington. Upon my word, I'm afraid you have been very naughty."
+
+"I have been foolish, Lady de Courcy."
+
+"Of course; I did not mean anything worse than that. Yes, you have been
+foolish--amusing yourself in a thoughtless way, you know, and, perhaps,
+a little piqued because a certain lady was not to be won so easily as
+your Royal Highness wished. Well, now, all that must be settled, you
+know, as quickly as possible. I don't want to ask any indiscreet
+questions; but if the young lady has really been left with any idea
+that you meant anything, don't you think you should undeceive her at
+once?"
+
+"Of course he will, mamma."
+
+"Of course you will; and it will be a great comfort to Alexandrina to
+know that the matter is arranged. You hear what Lady Julia is saying
+almost every hour of her life. Now, of course, Alexandrina does not
+care what an old maid like Lady Julia may say; but it will be better
+for all parties that the rumour should be put a stop to.
+
+"If the earl were to hear it, he might, you know--" And the countess
+shook her head, thinking that she could thus best indicate what the
+earl might do, if he were to take it into his head to do anything.
+
+Crosbie could not bring himself to hold any very confidential
+intercourse with the countess about Lily; but he gave a muttered
+assurance that he should, as a matter of course, make known the truth
+to Miss Dale with as little delay as possible. He could not say exactly
+when he would write, nor whether he would write to her or to her
+mother; but the thing should be done immediately on his return to town.
+
+"If it will make the matter easier, I will write to Mrs Dale," said the
+countess. But to this scheme Mr Crosbie objected very strongly.
+
+And then a few words were said about the earl. "I will tell him this
+afternoon," said the countess; "and then you can see him tomorrow
+morning. I don't suppose he will say very much, you know; and perhaps he
+may think--you won't mind my saying it, I'm sure--that Alexandrina might
+have done better. But I don't believe that he'll raise any strong
+objection. There will be something about settlements, and that sort of
+thing, of course." Then the countess went away, and Alexandrina was left
+with her lover for half an hour. When the half-hour was over, he felt
+that he would have given all that he had in the world to have back the
+last four-and-twenty hours of his existence. But he had no hope. To jilt
+Lily Dale would, no doubt, be within his power, but he knew that he
+could not jilt Lady Alexandrina de Courcy.
+
+On the next morning at twelve o'clock he had his interview with the
+father, and a very unpleasant interview it was. He was ushered into the
+earl's room, and found the great peer standing on the rug, with his
+back to the fire, and his hands in his breeches pockets.
+
+"So you mean to marry my daughter?" said he. "I'm not very well, as you
+see; I seldom am."
+
+These last words were spoken in answer to Crosbie's greeting. Crosbie
+had held out his hand to the earl, and had carried his point so far
+that the earl had been forced to take one of his own out of his pocket,
+and give it to his proposed son-in-law.
+
+"If your lordship has no objection. I have, at any rate, her permission
+to ask for yours."
+
+"I believe you have not any fortune, have you? She's got none; of
+course you know that?"
+
+"I have a few thousand pounds, and I believe she has as much."
+
+"About as much as will buy bread to keep the two of you from starving.
+It's nothing to me. You can marry her if you like; only, look here,
+I'll have no nonsense. I've had an old woman in with me this
+morning--one of those that are here in the house--telling me some story
+about some other girl that you have made a fool of. It's nothing to me
+how much of that sort of thing you may have done, so that you do none
+of it here. But--if you play any prank of that kind with me, you'll find
+that you've made a mistake."
+
+Crosbie hardly made any answer to this, but got himself out of the room
+as quickly as he could.
+
+"You'd better talk to Gazebee about the trifle of money you've got,"
+said the earl. Then he dismissed the subject from his mind, and no
+doubt imagined that he had fully done his duty by his daughter.
+
+On the day after this, Crosbie was to go. On the last afternoon,
+shortly before dinner, he was waylaid by Lady Julia, who had passed the
+day in preparing traps to catch him.
+
+"Mr Crosbie," she said, "let me have one word with you. Is this true?"
+
+"Lady Julia," he said, "I really do not know why you should inquire
+into my private affairs."
+
+"Yes, sir, you do know, you know very well. That poor young lady who
+has no father and no brother, is my neighbour, and her friends are my
+friends. She is a friend of my own, and being an old woman, I have a
+right to speak for her. If this is true, Mr Crosbie, you are treating
+her like a villain."
+
+"Lady Julia, I really must decline to discuss the matter with you."
+
+"I'll tell everybody what a villain you are; I will, indeed--a villain
+and a poor weak silly fool. She was too good for you; that's what she
+was." Crosbie, as Lady Julia was addressing to him the last words,
+hurried upstairs away from her, but her ladyship, standing on a
+landing-place, spoke up loudly, so that no word should be lost on her
+retreating enemy.
+
+"We positively must get rid of that woman," the countess, who heard it
+all, said to Margaretta. "She is disturbing the house and disgracing
+herself every day."
+
+"She went to papa this morning, mamma."
+
+"She did not get much by that move," said the countess.
+
+On the following morning Crosbie returned to town, but just before he
+left the castle he received a third letter from Lily Dale.
+
+"I have been rather disappointed at not hearing this morning," said
+Lily, "for I thought the postman would have brought me a letter. But I
+know you'll be a better boy when you get back to London, and I won't
+scold you. Scold you, indeed! No; I'll never scold you, not though I
+shouldn't hear for a month."
+
+He would have given all that he had in the world, three times told, if
+he could have blotted out that visit to Courcy Castle from the past
+facts of his existence.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXV
+
+ADOLPHUS CROSBIE SPENDS AN EVENING AT HIS CLUB
+
+Crosbie, as he was being driven from the castle to the nearest station,
+in a dog-cart hired from the hotel, could not keep himself from
+thinking of that other morning, not yet a fortnight past, on which he
+had left Allington; and as he thought of it he knew that he was a
+villain. On this morning Alexandrina had not come out from the house to
+watch his departure, and catch the last glance of his receding figure.
+As he had not started very early she had sat with him at the breakfast
+table; but others also had sat there, and when he got up to go, she did
+no more than smile softly and give him her hand. It had been already
+settled that he was to spend his Christmas at Courcy; as it had been
+also settled that he was to spend it at Allington. Lady Amelia was, of
+all the family, the most affectionate to him, and perhaps of them all
+she was the one whose affection was worth the most. She was not a woman
+endowed with a very high mind or with very noble feelings. She had
+begun life trusting to the nobility of her blood for everything, and
+declaring somewhat loudly among her friends that her father's rank and
+her mother's birth imposed on her the duty of standing closely by her
+own order. Nevertheless, at the age of thirty-three she had married her
+father's man of business, under circumstances which were not altogether
+creditable to her. But she had done her duty in her new sphere of life
+with some constancy and a fixed purpose; and now that her sister was
+going to marry, as she had done, a man much below herself in social
+standing, she was prepared to do her duty as a sister and a
+sister-in-law.
+
+"We shall be up in town in November, and of course you'll come to us at
+once. Albert Villa, you know, in Hamilton Terrace, St. John's Wood. We
+dine at seven, and on Sundays at two; and you'll always find a place.
+Mind you come to us, and make yourself quite at home. I do so hope you
+and Mortimer will get on well together."
+
+"I'm sure we shall," said Crosbie. But he had had higher hopes in
+marrying into this noble family than that of becoming intimate with
+Mortimer Gazebee. What those hopes were he could hardly define to
+himself now that he had brought himself so near to the fruition of
+them. Lady de Courcy had certainly promised to write to her first
+cousin who was Under-Secretary of State for India, with reference to
+that secretaryship at the General Committee Office; but Crosbie, when
+he came to weigh in his mind what good might result to him from this,
+was disposed to think that his chance of obtaining the promotion would
+be quite as good without the interest of the Under-Secretary of State
+for India as with it. Now that he belonged, as we may say, to this
+noble family, he could hardly discern what were the advantages which he
+had expected from this alliance. He had said to himself that it would
+be much to have a countess for a mother-in-law; but now, even already,
+although the possession to which he had looked was not yet garnered, he
+was beginning to tell himself that the thing was not worth possessing.
+
+As he sat in the train, with a newspaper in his hand, he went on
+acknowledging to himself that he was a villain. Lady Julia had spoken
+the truth to him on the stairs at Courcy, and so he confessed over and
+over again. But he was chiefly angry with himself for this--that he had
+been a villain without gaining anything by his villany; that he had
+been a villain, and was to lose so much by his villany. He made
+comparison between Lily and Alexandrina, and owned to himself, over and
+over again, that Lily would make the best wife that a man could take to
+his boom. As to Alexandrina, he knew the thinness of her character. She
+would stick by him, no doubt; and in a circuitous, discontented,
+unhappy way, would probably be true to her duties as a wife and mother.
+She would be nearly such another as Lady Amelia Gazebee. But was that a
+prize sufficiently rich to make him contented with his own prowess and
+skill in winning it? And was that a prize sufficiently rich to justify
+him to himself for his terrible villany? Lily Dale he had loved; and he
+now declared to himself that he could have continued to love her
+through his whole life. But what was there for any man to love in
+Alexandrina de Courcy?
+
+While resolving, during his first four or five days at the castle, that
+he would throw Lily Dale overboard, he had contrived to quiet his
+conscience by inward allusions to sundry heroes of romance. He had
+thought of Lothario, Don Juan, and of Lovelace; and had told himself
+that the world had ever been full of such heroes. And the world, too,
+had treated such heroes well; not punishing them at all as villains,
+but caressing them rather, and calling them curled darlings. Why should
+not he be a curled darling as well as another? Ladies had ever been
+fond of the Don Juan character, and Don Juan had generally been popular
+with men also. And then he named to himself a dozen modern
+Lotharios--men who were holding their heads well above water, although
+it was known that they had played this lady false, and brought that
+other one to death's door, or perhaps even to death itself. War and
+love were alike, and the world was prepared to forgive any guile to
+militants in either camp.
+
+But now that he had done the deed he found himself forced to look at it
+from quite another point of view. Suddenly that character of Lothario
+showed itself to him in a different light, and one in which it did not
+please him to look at it as belonging to himself. He began to feel that
+it would be almost impossible for him to write that letter to Lily,
+which it was absolutely necessary that he should write. He was in a
+position in which his mind would almost turn itself to thoughts of
+self-destruction as the only means of escape. A fortnight ago he was a
+happy man, having everything before him that a man ought to want; and
+now--now that he was the accepted son-in-law of an earl, and the
+confident expectant of high promotion--he was the most miserable,
+degraded wretch in the world!
+
+He changed his clothes at his lodgings in Mount Street and went down to
+his club to dinner. He could, at any rate, do nothing that night. His
+letter to Allington must, no doubt, be written at once; but, as he
+could not send it before the next night's post, he was not forced to
+set to work upon it that evening. As he walked along Piccadilly on his
+way to St. James's Square, it occurred to him that it might be well to
+write a short line to Lily, telling her nothing of the truth--a note
+written as though his engagement with her was still unbroken, but yet
+written with care, saying nothing about that engagement, so as to give
+him a little time. Then he thought that he would telegraph to Bernard
+and tell everything to him. Bernard would, of course, be prepared to
+avenge his cousin in some way, but for such vengeance Crosbie felt that
+he should care little. Lady Julia had told him that Lily was without
+father or brother, thereby accusing him of the basest cowardice.
+
+"I wish she had a dozen brothers," he said to himself. But he hardly
+knew why he expressed such a wish.
+
+He returned to London on the last day of October, and he found the
+streets at the West End nearly deserted. He thought, therefore, that he
+should be quite alone at his club, but as he entered the dinner room he
+saw one of his oldest and most intimate friends standing before the
+fire. Fowler Pratt was the man who had first brought him into
+Sebright's, and had given him almost his earliest start on his
+successful career in life. Since that time he and his friend Fowler
+Pratt had lived in close communion, though Pratt had always held a
+certain ascendancy in their friendship. He was in age a few years
+senior to Crosbie, and was in truth a man of better parts. But he was
+less ambitious, less desirous of shining in the world, and much less
+popular with men in general. He was possessed of a moderate private
+fortune on which he lived in a quiet, modest manner, and was unmarried,
+not likely to marry, inoffensive, useless, and prudent. For the first
+few years of Crosbie's life in London he had lived very much with his
+friend Pratt, and had been accustomed to depend much on his friend's
+counsel; but latterly, since he had himself become somewhat noticeable,
+he had found more pleasure in the society of such men as Dale, who were
+not his superiors either in age or wisdom. But there had been no
+coolness between him and Pratt, and now they met with perfect
+cordiality.
+
+"I thought you were down in Barsetshire," said Pratt.
+
+"And I thought you were in Switzerland."
+
+"I have been in Switzerland," said Pratt.
+
+"And I have been in Barsetshire," said Crosbie. Then they ordered their
+dinner together.
+
+"And so you're going to be married?" said Pratt, when the waiter had
+carried away the cheese.
+
+"Who told you that?"
+
+"Well, but you are? Never mind who told me, if I was told the truth."
+
+"But if it be not true?"
+
+"I have heard it for the last month," said Pratt, "and it has been
+spoken of as a thing certain; and it is true; is it not?
+
+"I believe it is," said Crosbie, slowly.
+
+"Why, what on earth is the matter with you, that you speak of it in
+that way? Am I to congratulate you, or am I not? The lady, I'm told, is
+a cousin of Dale's."
+
+Crosbie had turned his chair from the table round to the fire, and said
+nothing in answer to this. He sat with his glass of sherry in his hand,
+looking at the coals, and thinking whether it would not be well that he
+should tell the whole story to Pratt. No one could give him better
+advice; and no one, as far as he knew his friend, would be less shocked
+at the telling of such a story. Pratt had no romance about women, and
+had never pretended to very high sentiments.
+
+"Come up into the smoking-room and I'll tell you all about it," said
+Crosbie. So they went off together, and, as the smoking-room was
+untenanted, Crosbie was able to tell his story.
+
+He found it very hard to tell--much harder than he had beforehand
+fancied.
+
+"I have got into terrible trouble," he began by saying. Then he told
+how he had fallen suddenly in love with Lily, how, he had been rash and
+imprudent, how nice she was--" infinitely too good for such a man as I
+am," he said--how she had accepted him, and then how he had repented.
+
+"I should have told you beforehand," he then said, "that I was already
+half engaged to Lady Alexandrina de Courcy." The reader, however, will
+understand that this half engagement was a fiction.
+
+"And now you mean that you are altogether engaged to her?"
+
+"Exactly so."
+
+"And that Miss Dale must be told that, on second thoughts, you have
+changed your mind?"
+
+"I know that I have behaved very badly," said Crosbie.
+
+"Indeed you have," said his friend.
+
+"It is one of those troubles in which a man finds himself involved
+almost before he knows where he is."
+
+"Well; I can't look at it exactly in that light. A man may amuse
+himself with a girl, and I can understand his disappointing her and not
+offering to marry her--though even that sort of thing isn't much to my
+taste. But, by George, to make an offer of marriage to such a girl as
+that in September, to live for a month in her family as her affianced
+husband, and then coolly go away to another house in October, and make
+an offer to another girl of higher rank--"
+
+"You know very well that that has had nothing to do with it."
+
+"It looks very like it. And how are you going to communicate these
+tidings to Miss Dale?"
+
+"I don't know," said Crosbie, who was beginning to be very sore.
+
+"And you have quite made up your mind that you'll stick to the earl's
+daughter?"
+
+The idea of jilting Alexandrina instead of Lily had never as yet
+presented itself to Crosbie, and now, as he thought of it, he could not
+perceive that it was feasible.
+
+"Yes," he said, "I shall marry Lady Alexandrina--that is, if I do not
+cut the whole concern, and my own throat into the bargain."
+
+"If I were in your shoes I think I should cut the whole concern. I
+could not stand it. What do you mean to say to Miss Dale's uncle?
+
+"I don't care a ---- for Miss Dale's uncle," said, Crosbie.
+
+"If he were to walk in at that door this moment, I would tell him the
+whole story, without--"
+
+As he was yet speaking, one of the club servants opened the door of the
+smoking-room, and seeing Crosbie seated in a lounging-chair near the
+fire, went up to him with a gentleman's card. Crosbie took the card and
+read the name.
+
+"Mr Dale, Allington."
+
+"The gentleman is in the waiting-room," said the servant.
+
+Crosbie for the moment was struck dumb. He had declared that very
+moment that he should feel no personal disinclination to meet Mr Dale,
+and now that gentleman was within the walls of the club, waiting to see
+him!
+
+"Who's that?" asked Pratt. And then Crosbie handed him the card.
+
+"Whew-w-w-hew," whistled Pratt.
+
+"Did you tell the gentleman I was here?" asked Crosbie.
+
+"I said I thought you were upstairs, sir."
+
+"That will do," said Pratt.
+
+"The gentleman will no doubt wait for a minute." And then the servant
+went out of the room.
+
+"Now, Crosbie, you must make up your mind. By one of these women and
+all her friends you will ever be regarded as a rascal, and they of
+course will look out to punish you with such punishment as may come to
+their hands. You must now choose which shall be the sufferer."
+
+The man was a coward at heart. The reflection that he might, even now,
+at this moment, meet the old squire on pleasant terms--or at any rate
+not on terms of defiance, pleaded more strongly in Lily's favour than
+had any other argument since Crosbie had first made up his mind to
+abandon her. He did not fear personal ill-usage--he was not afraid lest
+he should be kicked or beaten; but he did not dare to face the just
+anger of the angry man.
+
+"If I were you," said Pratt,
+
+"I would not go down to that man at the present moment for a trifle."
+
+"But what can I do?"
+
+"Shirk away out of the club. Only if you do that it seems to me that
+you'll have to go on shirking for the rest of your life."
+
+"Pratt, I must say that I expected something more like friendship from
+you."
+
+"What can I do for you? There are positions in which it is impossible
+to help a man. I tell you plainly that you have behaved very badly. I
+do not see that I can help you."
+
+"Would you see him?"
+
+"Certainly not, if I am to be expected to take your part."
+
+"Take any part you like--only tell him the truth."
+
+"And what is the truth?
+
+"I was part engaged to that other girl before; and then, when I came to
+think of it, I knew that I was not fit to marry Miss Dale. I know I
+have behaved badly; but, Pratt, thousands have done the same thing
+before."
+
+"I can only say that I have not been so unfortunate as to reckon any of
+those thousands among my friends."
+
+"You mean to tell me, then, that you are going to turn your back on
+me?" said Crosbie.
+
+"I haven't said anything of the kind. I certainly won't undertake to
+defend you, for I don't see that your conduct admits of defence. I will
+see this gentleman if you wish it, and tell him anything that you
+desire me to tell him."
+
+At this moment the servant returned with a note for Crosbie. Mr Dale
+had called for paper and envelope, and sent up to him the following
+missive--" Do you intend to come down to me? I know that you are in the
+house."
+
+"For heaven's sake go to him," said Crosbie.
+
+"He is well aware that I was deceived about his niece--that I thought he
+was to give her some fortune. He knows all about that, and that when I
+learned from him that she was to have nothing--"
+
+"Upon my word, Crosbie, I wish you could find another messenger."
+
+"Ah! you do not understand," said Crosbie in his agony.
+
+"You think that I am inventing this plea about her fortune now. It
+isn't so. He will understand. 'We have talked all this over before, and
+he knew how terribly I was disappointed. Shall I wait for you here, or
+will you come to my lodgings? Or I will go down to the Beaufort, and
+will wait for you there." And it was finally arranged that he should
+get himself out of this club and wait at the other for Pratt's report
+of the interview.
+
+"Do you go down first," said Crosbie.
+
+"Yes: I had better," said Pratt.
+
+"Otherwise you may be seen. Mr Dale would have his eye upon you, and
+there would be a row in the house." There was a smile of sarcasm on
+Pratt's face as he spoke which angered Crosbie even in his misery, and
+made him long to tell his friend that he would not trouble him with
+this mission--that he would manage his own affairs himself; but he was
+weakened and mentally humiliated by the sense of his own rascality, and
+had already lost the power of asserting himself, and of maintaining his
+ascendancy. He was beginning to recognise the fact that he had done
+that for which he must endure to be kicked, to be kicked morally if not
+materially; and that it was no longer possible for him to hold his head
+up without shame.
+
+Pratt took Mr Dale's note in his hand and went down into the stranger's
+room. There he found the squire standing, so that he could see through
+the open door of the room to the foot of the stairs down which Crosbie
+must descend before he could leave the club. As a measure of first
+precaution the ambassador closed the door; then he bowed to Mr Dale,
+and asked him if he would take a chair.
+
+"I wanted to see Mr Crosbie," said the squire.
+
+"I have your note to that gentleman in my hand," said he.
+
+"He has thought it better that you should have this interview with
+me--and under all the circumstances perhaps it is better."
+
+"Is he such a coward that he dare not see me?"
+
+"There are some actions, Mr Dale, that will make a coward of any man.
+My friend Crosbie is, I take it, brave enough in the ordinary sense of
+the word, but he has injured you."
+
+"It is all true, then?"
+
+"Yes, Mr Dale; I fear it is all true."
+
+"And you call that man your friend! Mr--; I don't know what your name
+is."
+
+"Pratt-Fowler Pratt. I have known Crosbie for fourteen years--ever since
+he was a boy; and it is not my way, Mr Dale, to throw over an old
+friend under any circumstances."
+
+"Not if he committed a murder."
+
+"No; not though he committed a murder."
+
+"If what I hear is true, this man is worse than a murderer."
+
+"Of course, Mr Dale, I cannot know what you have heard. I believe that
+Mr Crosbie has behaved very badly to your niece, Miss Dale; I believe
+that he was engaged to marry her, or, at any rate, that some such
+proposition had been made."
+
+"Proposition! Why, sir, it was a thing so completely understood that
+everybody knew it in the county. It was so positively fixed that there
+was no secret about it. Upon my honour, Mr Pratt, I can't as yet
+understand it. If I remember right, its not a fortnight since he left
+my house at Allington--not a fortnight. And that poor girl was with him
+on the morning of his going as his betrothed bride. Not a fortnight
+since! And now I've had a letter from an old family friend telling me
+that he is going to marry one of Lord de Courcy's daughters! I went
+instantly off to Courcy, and found that he had started for London. Now,
+I have followed him here; and you tell me it's all true."
+
+"I am afraid it is, Mr Dale; too true."
+
+"I don't understand it; I don't, indeed. I cannot bring myself to
+believe that the man who was sitting the other day at my table should
+be so great a scoundrel. Did he mean it all the time that he was there?"
+
+"No; certainly not. Lady Alexandrina de Courcy was, I believe, an old
+friend of his--with whom, perhaps, he had had some lover's quarrel. On
+his going to Courcy they made it up, and this is the result."
+
+"And that is to be sufficient for my poor girl?"
+
+"You will, of course, understand that I am not defending Mr Crosbie.
+The whole affair is very sad--very sad, indeed. I can only say, in his
+excuse, that he is not the first man who has behaved badly to a lady."
+
+"And that is his message to me, is it? And that is what I am to tell my
+niece? You have been deceived by a scoundrel. But what then? You are
+not the first! Mr Pratt, I give you my word as a gentleman, I do not
+understand it. I have lived a good deal out of the world, and am,
+therefore, perhaps; more astonished than I ought to be."
+
+"Mr Dale, I feel for you--"
+
+"Feel for me! What is to become of my girl? And do you suppose that I
+will let this other marriage go on; that I will not tell the De
+Courcys, and all the world at large, what sort of a man this is--that I
+will not get at him to punish him? Does he think that I will put up
+with this?"
+
+"I do not know what he thinks; I must only beg that you will not mix me
+up in the matter--as though I were a participator in his offence."
+
+"Will you tell him from me that I desire to see him?"
+
+"I do not think that that would do any good."
+
+"Never mind, sir; you have brought me his message; will you have the
+goodness now to take back mine to him?"
+
+"Do you mean at once--this evening--now?"
+
+"Yes, at once--this evening--now--this minute."
+
+"Ah; he has left the club; he is not here now; he went when I came to
+you."
+
+"Then he is a coward as well as a scoundrel." In answer to which
+assertion, Mr Fowler Pratt merely shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"He is a coward as well as a scoundrel. Will you have the kindness to
+tell your friend from me that he is a coward and a scoundrel--and a
+liar, sir."
+
+"If it be so, Miss Dale is well quit of her engagement."
+
+"That is your consolation, is it? That may be all very well nowadays;
+but when I was a young man, I would sooner have burnt out my tongue
+than have spoken in such a way on such a subject. I would, indeed.
+Good-night, Mr Pratt. Pray make your friend understand that he has not
+yet seen the last of the Dales; although, as you hint, the ladies of
+that family will no doubt have learned that he is not fit to associate
+with them." Then, taking up his hat, the squire made his way out of the
+club.
+
+"I would not have done it," said Pratt to himself, "for all the beauty,
+and all the wealth, and all the rank that ever were owned by a woman."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVI
+
+LORD DE COURCY IN THE BOSOM OF HIS FAMILY
+
+Lady Julia De Guest had not during her life written many letters to Mr
+Dale of Allington, nor had she ever been very fond of him. But when she
+felt certain how things were going at Courcy, or rather, as we may say,
+how they had already gone, she took pen in hand, and set herself to
+work, doing, as she conceived, her duty by her neighbour.
+
+MY DEAR MR DALE (she said)--I believe I need make no secret of having
+known that your niece Lilian is engaged to Mr Crosbie, of London. I
+think it proper to warn you that if this be true Mr Crosbie is behaving
+himself in a very improper manner here. I am not a person who concern
+myself much in the affairs of other people; and under ordinary
+circumstances, the conduct of Mr Crosbie would be nothing to me--or,
+indeed, less than nothing; but I do to you as I would wish that others
+should do unto me. I believe it is only too true that Mr Crosbie has
+proposed to Lady Alexandrina de Courcy, and been accepted by her. I
+think you will believe that I would not say this without warrant, and
+if there be anything in it, it may be well, for the poor young lady's
+sake, that you should put yourself in the way of learning the truth.
+
+Believe me to be yours sincerely,
+
+    JULIA DE GUEST.
+
+COURCY CASTLE, Thursday.
+
+The squire had never been very fond of any of the De Guest family, and
+had, perhaps, liked Lady Julia the least of them all. He was wont to
+call her a meddling old woman--remembering her bitterness and pride in
+those now long bygone days in which the gallant major had run off with
+Lady Fanny. When he first received this letter, he did not, on the
+first reading of it, believe a word of its contents.
+
+"Cross-grained old harridan," he said out loud to his nephew.
+
+"Look what that aunt of yours has written to me." Bernard read the
+letter twice, and as he did so his face became hard and angry.
+
+"You don't mean to say you believe it?" said the squire.
+
+"I don't think it will be safe to disregard it."
+
+"What! you think it possible that your friend is doing as she says."
+
+"It is certainly possible. He was angry when he found that Lily had no
+fortune."
+
+"Heavens, Bernard And you can speak of it in that way?"
+
+"I don't say that it is true; but I think we should look to it. I will
+go to Courcy Castle and learn the truth."
+
+The squire at last decided that he would go. He went to Courcy Castle,
+and found that Crosbie had started two hours before his arrival. He
+asked for Lady Julia, and learned from her that Crosbie had actually
+left the house as the betrothed husband of Lady Alexandrina.
+
+"The countess, I am sure, will not contradict it, if you will see her,"
+said Lady Julia. But this the squire was unwilling to do. He would not
+proclaim the wretched condition of his niece more loudly than was
+necessary, and therefore he started on his pursuit of Crosbie. What was
+his success on that evening we have already learned.
+
+Both Lady Alexandrina and her mother heard of Mr Dale's arrival at the
+castle, but nothing was said between them on the subject. Lady Amelia
+Gazebee heard of it also, and she ventured to discuss the matter with
+her sister.
+
+"You don't know exactly how far it went, do you?"
+
+"No; yes--not exactly, that is," said Alexandrina.
+
+"I suppose he did say something about marriage to the girl?"
+
+"Yes, I'm afraid he did."
+
+"Dear, dear! It's very unfortunate. What sort of people are those
+Dales? I suppose he talked to you about them."
+
+"No, he didn't; not very much. I daresay she is an artful, sly thing!
+It's a great pity men should go on in such a way."
+
+"Yes, it is," said Lady Amelia.
+
+"And I do suppose that in this case the blame has been more with him
+than with her. It's only right I should tell you that."
+
+"But what can I do?"
+
+"I don't say you can do anything; but it's as well you should know."
+
+"But I don't know, and you don't know; and I can't see that there is
+any use talking about it now. I knew him a long while before she did,
+and if she has allowed him to make a fool of her, it isn't my fault."
+
+"Nobody says it is, my dear."
+
+"But you seem to preach to me about it. What can I do for the girl? The
+fact is, he don't care for her a bit, and never did."
+
+"Then he shouldn't have told her that he did."
+
+"That's all very well, Amelia; but people don't always do exactly all
+that they ought to do. I suppose Mr Crosbie isn't the first man that
+has proposed to two ladies. I dare say it was wrong, but I can't help
+it. As to Mr Dale coming here with a tale of his niece's wrongs, I
+think it very absurd--very absurd indeed. It makes it look as though
+there had been a scheme to catch Mr Crosbie, and it's my belief that
+there was such a scheme."
+
+"I only hope that there'll be no quarrel."
+"Men don't fight duels nowadays, Amelia."
+
+"But do you remember what Frank Gresham did to Mr Moffat when he
+behaved so badly to poor Augusta?"
+
+"Mr Crosbie isn't afraid of that kind of thing. And I always thought
+that Frank was very wrong--very wrong indeed. What's the good of two men
+beating each other in the street?
+
+"Well; I'm sure I hope there'll be no quarrel. But I own I don't like
+the look of it. You see the uncle must have known all about it, and
+have consented to the marriage, or he would not have come here."
+
+"I don't see that it can make any difference to me, Amelia."
+
+"No, my dear, I don't see that it can. We shall be up in town soon, and
+I will see as much as possible of Mr Crosbie. The marriage, I hope,
+will take place soon."
+
+"He talks of February."
+
+"Don't put it off, Alley, whatever you do. There are so many slips, you
+know, in these things."
+
+"I'm not a bit afraid of that," said Alexandrina, sticking up her head.
+
+"I dare say not; and you may be sure that we will keep an eye on him.
+Mortimer will get him up to dine with us as often as possible, and as
+his leave of absence is all over, he can't get out of town. He's to be
+here at Christmas, isn't he?"
+
+"Of course he is."
+
+"Mind you keep him to that. And as to these Dales, I would be very
+careful, if I were you, not to say anything unkind of them to any one.
+It sounds badly in your position." And with this last piece of advice
+Lady Amelia Gazebee allowed the subject to drop.
+
+On that day Lady Julia returned to her own home. Her adieux to the
+whole family at Courcy Castle were very cold, but about Mr Crosbie and
+his lady-love at Allington she said no further word to any of them.
+Alexandrina did not show herself at all on the occasion, and indeed had
+not spoken to her enemy since that evening on which she had felt
+herself constrained to retreat from the drawing-room.
+
+"Good-bye," said the countess.
+
+"You have been so good to come, and we have enjoyed it so much."
+
+"I thank you very much. Good-morning," said Lady Julia, with a stately
+courtesy.
+
+"Pray remember me to your brother. I wish we could have seen him; I
+hope he has not been hurt by the--the bull." And then Lady Julia went
+her way.
+
+"What a fool I have been to have that woman in the house," said the
+countess, before the door was closed behind her guest's back.
+"Indeed you have," said Lady Julia, screaming back through the passage.
+Then there was a long silence, then a suppressed titter, and after that
+a loud laugh.
+
+"Oh, mamma, what shall we do?" said Lady Amelia.
+
+"Do!" said Margaretta, "why should we do anything? She has heard the
+truth for once in her life."
+
+"Dear Lady Dumbello, what will you think of us?" said the countess,
+turning round to another guest, who was also just about to depart.
+
+"Did any one ever know such a woman before?
+
+"I think she's very nice," said Lady Dumbello, smiling.
+
+"I can't quite agree with you there," said Lady Clandidlem.
+
+"But I do believe she means to do her best. She is very charitable, and
+all that sort of thing."
+
+"I'm sure I don't know," said Rosina.
+
+"I asked her for a subscription to the mission for putting down the
+Papists in the west of Ireland, and she refused me point-blank."
+
+"Now, my dear, if you're quite ready," said Lord Dumbello, coming into
+the room. Then there was another departure; but on this occasion the
+countess waited till the doors were shut, and the retreating footsteps
+were no longer heard.
+
+"Have you observed," said she to Lady Clandidlem, "that she has not
+held her head up since Mr Palliser went away?"
+
+"Indeed I have," said Lady Clandidlem.
+
+"As for poor Dumbello, he's the blindest creature I ever saw in my
+life."
+
+"We shall hear of something before next May," said Lady de Courcy,
+shaking her head; "but for all that she'll never be Duchess of Omnium."
+
+"I wonder what your mamma will say of me when I go away tomorrow," said
+Lady Clandidlem to Margaretta, as they walked across the hall together.
+
+"She won't say that you are going to run away with any gentleman," said
+Margaretta.
+
+"At any rate not with the earl," said Lady Clandidlem.
+
+"Ha, ha, ha! Well, we are all very good-natured, are we not? The best
+is that it means nothing."
+
+Thus by degrees all the guests went, and the family of the De Courcys
+was left to the bliss of their own domestic circle. This, we may
+presume, was not without its charms, seeing that there were so many
+feelings in common between the mother and her children. There were
+drawbacks to it, no doubt, arising perhaps chiefly from the earl's
+bodily infirmities.
+
+"When your father speaks to me," said Mrs George to her husband, "he
+puts me in such a shiver that I cannot open my mouth to answer him."
+
+"You should stand up to him," said George.
+
+"He can't hurt you, you know. Your money's your own; and if I'm ever to
+be the heir, it won't be by his doing."
+
+"But he gnashes his teeth at me."
+
+"You shouldn't care for that, if he don't bite. He used to gnash them
+at me; and when I had to ask him for money I didn't like it; but now I
+don't mind him a bit. He threw the peerage at me one day, but it didn't
+go within a yard of my head."
+
+"If he throws anything at me, George, I shall drop upon the spot."
+
+But the countess had a worse time with the earl than any of her
+children. It was necessary that she should see him daily, and necessary
+also that she should say much that he did not like to hear, and make
+many petitions that caused him to gnash his teeth. The earl was one of
+those men who could not endure to live otherwise than expensively, and
+yet was made miserable by every recurring expense. He ought to have
+known by this time that butchers, and bakers, and corn-chandlers, and
+coal-merchants will not supply their goods for nothing; and yet it
+always seemed as though he had expected that at this special period
+they would do so. He was an embarrassed man, no doubt, and had not been
+fortunate in his speculations at Newmarket or Homburg; but,
+nevertheless, he had still the means of living without daily torment;
+and it must be supposed that his self-imposed sufferings, with regard
+to money, rose rather from his disposition than his necessities. His
+wife never knew whether he were really ruined, or simply pretending it.
+She had now become so used to her position in this respect, that she
+did not allow fiscal considerations to mar her happiness. Food and
+clothing had always come to her--including velvet gowns, new trinkets,
+and a man-cook--and she presumed that they would continue to come. But
+that daily conference with her husband was almost too much for her. She
+struggled to avoid it; and, as far as the ways and means were
+concerned, would have allowed them to arrange themselves, if he would
+only have permitted it. But he insisted on seeing her daily in his own
+sitting-room; and she had acknowledged to her favourite daughter,
+Margaretta, that those half-hours would soon be the death of her.
+
+"I sometimes feel," she said, "that I am going mad before I can get
+out." And she reproached herself, probably without reason, in that she
+had brought much of this upon herself. In former days the earl had been
+constantly away from home, and the countess had complained. Like many
+other women, she had not known when she was well off. She had
+complained, urging upon her lord that he should devote more of his time
+to his own hearth. It is probable that her ladyship's remonstrances had
+been less efficacious than the state of his own health in producing
+that domestic constancy which he now practised; but it is certain that
+she looked back with bitter regret to the happy days when she was
+deserted, jealous, and querulous.
+
+"Don't you wish we could get Sir Omicron to order him to the German
+Spas?" she had said to Margaretta. Now Sir Omicron was the great London
+physician, and might, no doubt, do much in that way.
+
+But no such happy order had as yet been given; and, as far as the
+family could foresee, paterfamilias intended to pass the winter with
+them at Courcy. The guests, as I have said, were all gone, and none but
+the family were in the house when her ladyship waited upon her lord one
+morning at twelve o'clock, a few days after Mr Dale's visit to the
+castle. He always breakfasted alone, and after breakfast found in a
+French novel and a cigar what solace those innocent recreations were
+still able to afford him. When the novel no longer excited him and when
+he was saturated with smoke, he would send for his wife. After that,
+his valet would dress him.
+
+"She gets it worse than I do," the man declared in the servants' hall,
+"and minds it a deal more. I can give warning, and she can't."
+
+"Better? No, I ain't better," the husband said, in answer to his wife's
+inquiries. "I never shall be better while you keep that cook in the
+kitchin."
+
+"But where are we to get another if we send him away?"
+
+"It's not my business to find cooks. I don't know where you're to get
+one. It's my belief you won't have a cook at all before long. It seems
+you have got two extra men into the house without telling me."
+
+"We must have servants, you know, when there is company. It wouldn't do
+to have Lady Dumbello here, and no one to wait on her."
+
+"Who asked Lady Dumbello? I didn't."
+
+"I'm sure, my dear, you liked having her here."
+
+"Lady Dumbello!" and then there was a pause. The countess had no
+objection whatsoever to the above proposition, and was rejoiced that
+that question of the servants was allowed to slip aside, through the
+aid of her ladyship.
+
+"Look at that letter from Porlock," said the earl; and he pushed over
+to the unhappy mother a letter from her eldest son. Of all her children
+he was the one she loved the best; but him she was never allowed to see
+under her own roof. "I sometimes think that he is the greatest rascal
+with whom I ever had occasion to concern myself," said the earl.
+
+She took the letter and read it. The epistle was certainly not one
+which a father could receive with pleasure from his son; but the
+disagreeable nature of its contents was the fault rather of the parent
+than of the child. The writer intimated that certain money due to him
+had not been paid with necessary punctuality, and that unless he
+received it, he should instruct his lawyer to take some authorised
+legal proceedings. Lord de Courcy had raised certain moneys on the
+family property, which he could not have raised without the
+co-operation of his heir, and had bound himself, in return for that
+co-operation, to pay a certain fixed income to his eldest son. This he
+regarded as an allowance from himself; but Lord Porlock regarded it as
+his own, by lawful claim. The son had not worded his letter with any
+affectionate phraseology.
+
+"Lord Porlock begs to inform Lord de Courcy" Such had been the
+commencement.
+
+"I suppose he must have his money; else how can he live? said the
+countess, trembling.
+
+"Live!" shouted the earl.
+
+"And so you think it proper that he should write such a letter as that
+to his father!"
+
+"It is all very unfortunate," she replied.
+
+"I don't know where the money's to come from. As for him, if he were
+starving, it would serve him right. He's a disgrace to the name and the
+family. From all I hear, he won't live long."
+
+"Oh, De Courcy, don't talk of it in that way"
+
+"What way am I to talk of it? If I say that he's my greatest comfort,
+and living as becomes a nobleman, and is a fine healthy man of his age,
+with a good wife and a lot of legitimate children, will that make you
+believe it? Women are such fools. Nothing that I say will make him
+worse than he is."
+
+"But he may reform."
+
+"Reform! He's over forty, and when I last saw him he looked nearly
+sixty. There--you may answer his letter; I won't."
+
+"And about the money?"
+
+"Why doesn't he write to Gazebee about his dirty money? Why does he
+trouble me? I haven't got his money. Ask Gazebee about his money. I
+won't trouble myself about it."
+
+Then there was another pause, during which the countess folded the
+letter, and put it in her pocket.
+
+"How long is George going to remain here with that woman?" he asked.
+
+"I'm sure she is very harmless," pleaded the countess.
+
+"I always think when I see her that I'm sitting down to dinner with my
+own housemaid. I never saw such a woman. How he can put up with it! But
+I don't suppose he cares for anything."
+
+"It has made him very steady."
+
+"Steady!"
+
+"And as she will be confined before long it may be as well that she
+should remain here. If Porlock doesn't marry, you know--"
+
+"And so he means to live here altogether, does he? I'll tell you what
+it is--I won't have it. He's better able to keep a house over his own
+head and his wife's than I am to do it for them, and so you may tell
+them. I won't have it. D'ye hear? "Then there was another short pause.
+"D'ye hear?" he shouted at her.
+
+"Yes; of course I hear. I was only thinking you wouldn't wish me to
+turn them out, just as her confinement is coming on."
+
+"I know what that means. Then they'd never go. I won't have it; and if
+you don't tell them I will." In answer to this Lady de Courcy promised
+that she would tell them, thinking perhaps that the earl's mode of
+telling might not be beneficial in that particular epoch which was now
+coming in the life of Mrs George.
+
+"Did you know," said he, breaking out on a new subject, "that a man had
+been here named Dale, calling on somebody in this house?" In answer to
+which the countess acknowledged that she had known it.
+
+"Then why did you keep it from me?" And that gnashing of the teeth took
+place which was so specially objectionable to Mrs George.
+
+"It was a matter of no moment. He came to see Lady Julia de Guest."
+
+"Yes; but he came about that man Crosbie."
+
+"I suppose he did."
+
+"Why have you let that girl be such a fool? You'll find he'll play her
+some knave's trick."
+
+"Oh dear, no."
+
+"And why should she want to marry such a man as that?"
+
+"He's quite a gentleman, you know, and very much thought of in the
+world. It won't be at all bad for her, poor thing. It is so very hard
+for a girl to get married nowadays without money."
+
+"And so they're to take up with anybody. As far as I can see, this is a
+worse affair than that of Amelia."
+
+"Amelia has done very well, my dear."
+
+"Oh, if you call it doing well for your girls, I don't. I call it doing
+uncommon badly; about as bad as they well can do. But it's your affair.
+I have never meddled with them, and don't intend to do it now."
+
+"I really think she'll be happy, and she is devotedly attached to the
+young man."
+
+"Devotedly attached to the young man!" The tone and manner in which the
+earl repeated these words were such as to warrant an opinion that his
+lordship might have done very well on the stage had his attention been
+called to that profession.
+
+"It makes me sick to hear people talk in that way. She wants to get
+married, and she's a fool for her pains--I can't help that; only
+remember that I'll have no nonsense here about that other girl. If he
+gives me trouble of that sort, by I'll be the death of him. When is the
+marriage to be?
+
+"They talk of February."
+
+"I won't have any tomfoolery and expense. If she chooses to marry a
+clerk in an office, she shall marry him as clerks are married."
+
+"He'll be the secretary before that, De Courcy."
+
+"What difference does that make? Secretary, indeed! What sort of men do
+you suppose secretaries are? A beggar that came from nobody knows
+where! I won't have any tomfoolery--d'ye hear?" Whereupon the countess
+said that she did hear, and soon afterwards managed to escape. The
+valet then took his turn; and repeated, after his hour of service, that
+"Old Nick" in his tantrums had been more like the Prince of Darkness
+than ever.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVII
+
+"ON MY HONOUR, I DO NOT UNDERSTAND IT"
+
+In the meantime Lady Alexandrina endeavoured to realise to herself all
+the advantages and disadvantages of her own position. She was not
+possessed of strong affections, nor of depth of character, nor of high
+purpose; but she was no fool, nor was she devoid of principle. She had
+asked herself many times whether her present life was so happy as to
+make her think that a permanent continuance in it would suffice for her
+desires, and she had always replied to herself that she would fain
+change to some other life if it were possible. She had also questioned
+herself as to her rank, of which she was quite sufficiently proud, and
+had told herself that she could not degrade herself in the world
+without a heavy pang. But she had at last taught herself to believe
+that she had more to gain by becoming the wife of such a man as Crosbie
+than by remaining as an unmarried daughter of her father's house. There
+was much in her sister Amelia's position which she did not envy, but
+there was less to envy in that of her sister Rosina. The Gazebee house
+in St. John's Wood Road was not so magnificent as Courcy Castle; but
+then it was less dull, less embittered by torment, and was moreover her
+sister's own.
+
+"Very many do marry commoners," she had said to Margaretta.
+
+"Oh, yes, of course. It makes a difference, you know, when a man has a
+fortune."
+
+Of course it did make a difference. Crosbie had no fortune, was not
+even so rich as Mr Gazebee, could keep no carriage, and would have no
+country house. But then he was a man of fashion, was more thought of in
+the world than Mr Gazebee, might probably rise in his own
+profession--and was at any rate thoroughly presentable. She would have
+preferred a gentleman with L5,000 a year; but then as no gentleman with
+L5,000 a year came that way, would she not be happier with Mr Crosbie
+than she would be with no husband at all? She was not very much in love
+with Mr Crosbie, but she thought that she could live with him
+comfortably, and that on the whole it would be a good thing to be
+married.
+
+And she made certain resolves as to the manner in which she would do
+her duty by her husband. Her sister Amelia was paramount in her own
+house, ruling indeed with a moderate, endurable dominion, and ruling
+much to her husband's advantage. Alexandrina feared that she would not
+be allowed to rule, but she could at any rate try; She would do all in
+her power to make him comfortable, and would be specially careful not
+to irritate him by any insistence on her own higher rank. She would be
+very meek in this respect; and if children should come she would be as
+painstaking about them as though her own father had been merely a
+clergyman or, a lawyer. She thought also much about poor Lilian Dale,
+asking herself sundry questions, with an idea of being high-principled
+as to her duty in that respect. Was she wrong in taking Mr Crosbie away
+from Lilian Dale? In answer to these questions she was able to assure
+herself comfortably that she was not wrong. Mr Crosbie would not, under
+any circumstances, marry Lilian Dale. He had told her so more than
+once, and that in a solemn way. She could therefore be doing no harm to
+Lilian Dale. If she entertained any inner feeling that Crosbie's fault
+in jilting Lilian Dale was less than it would have been had, she
+herself not been an earl's daughter--that her own rank did in some.
+degree extenuate her lover's falseness--she did not express it in words
+even to herself.
+
+She did not get very much sympathy from her own family.
+
+"I'm afraid he does not think much of his religious duties. I'm told
+that young men of that sort seldom do," said Rosina.
+
+"I don't say you're wrong," said Margaretta.
+
+"By no means. Indeed I think less of it now than I did when Amelia did
+the same thing. I shouldn't do it myself, that's all." Her father told
+her that he supposed she knew her own mind. Her mother, who endeavoured
+to comfort and in some sort to congratulate her, nevertheless, harped
+constantly on the fact that the was marrying a man without rank and
+without a fortune, Her congratulations were apologetic, and her
+comfortings took the guise of consolation.
+
+"Of course you won't be rich, my dear; but I really think you'll do
+very well. Mr Crosbie may be received anywhere, and you never need be
+ashamed of him." By which the countess implied that her elder married
+daughter was occasionally called on to be ashamed of her husband. "I
+wish he could keep a carriage for you, but perhaps that will come some
+day." Upon the whole Alexandrina did not repent, and stoutly told her
+father that she did know her own mind.
+
+During all this time Lily Dale was as yet perfect in her happiness.
+That delay of a day or two in the receipt of the expected letter from
+her lover had not disquieted her. She had promised him that she would
+not distrust him, and she was firmly minded to keep her promises.
+Indeed no idea of breaking it came to her at this time. She was
+disappointed when the postman would come and bring no letter for
+her--disappointed, as the husbandman when the longed--for rain does not
+come to refresh the parched earth; but she was in no degree angry.
+
+"He will explain it," she said to herself. And she assured Bell that
+men never recognised the hunger and thirst after letters which women
+feel when away from those whom they love.
+
+Then they heard at the Small House that the squire had gone away from
+Allington. During the last few days Bernard had not been much with
+them, and now they heard the news, not through their cousin, but from
+Hopkins.
+
+"I really can't undertake to say, Miss Bell, where the master's gone
+to. Its not likely the master'd tell me where he was going to; not
+unless it was about seeds, or the likes of that."
+
+"He has gone very suddenly," said Bell.
+
+"Well, miss, I've nothing to say to that. And why shouldn't he go
+sudden if he likes? I only know he had his gig, and went to the
+station. If you was to bury me alive I couldn't tell you more."
+
+"I should like to try," said Lily as they walked away.
+
+"He is such a cross old thing. I wonder whether Bernard has gone with
+my uncle." And then they thought no more about it.
+
+On the day after that Bernard came down to the Small House, but he said
+nothing by way of accounting for the squire's absence.
+
+"He is in London, I know," said Bernard.
+
+"I hope he'll call on Mr Crosbie," said Lily. But on this subject
+Bernard said not a word. He did ask Lily whether she had heard from
+Adolphus, in answer to which she replied, with as indifferent a voice
+as she could assume, that she had not had a letter that morning.
+
+"I shall be angry with him if he's not a good correspondent," said Mrs
+Dale, when she and Lily were alone together.
+
+"No, mamma, you mustn't be angry with him. I won't let you be angry
+with him. Please to remember he's my lover and not yours."
+
+"But I can see you when you watch for the postman."
+
+"I won't watch for the postman any more if it makes you have bad
+thoughts about him. Yes, they are bad thoughts. I won't have you think
+that he doesn't do everything that is right."
+
+On the next morning the postman brought a letter, or rather a note, and
+Lily at once saw that it was from Crosbie. She had contrived to
+intercept it near the back door, at which the postman called, so that
+her mother should not watch her watchings, nor see her disappointment
+if none should come.
+
+"Thank you, Jane," she said, very calmly, when the eager, kindly girl
+ran to her with the little missive; and she walked off to some
+solitude, trying to hide her impatience. The note had seemed so small
+that it amazed her; but when she opened it the contents amazed her
+more. There was neither beginning nor end. There was no appellation of
+love, and no signature. It contained but two lines.
+
+"I will write to you at length tomorrow. This is my first day in
+London, and I have been so driven about that I cannot write." That was
+all, and it was scrawled on half a sheet of note-paper. Why, at any
+rate, had he not called her his dearest Lily? Why had he not assured
+her that he was ever her own? Such expressions, meaning so much, may be
+conveyed in a glance of the pen.
+
+"Ah," she said, "if he knew how I hunger and thirst after his love!"
+
+She had but a moment left to her before she must join her mother and
+sister, and she used that moment in remembering her promise.
+
+"I know it is all right," she said to herself.
+
+"He does not think of these things as I do. He had to write at the last
+moment--as he was leaving his office." And then with a quiet, smiling
+face, she walked into the breakfast-parlour.
+
+"What does he say, Lily?" asked Bell.
+
+"What would you give to know?" said Lily.
+
+"I wouldn't give twopence for the whole of it," said Bell.
+
+"When you get anybody to write to you letters, I wonder whether you'll
+show them to everybody?"
+
+"But if there's any special London news, I suppose we might hear it,"
+said Mrs Dale.
+
+"But suppose there's no special London news, mamma. The poor man had
+only been in town one day, you know: and there never is any news at
+this time of the year."
+
+"Had he seen Uncle Christopher?"
+
+"I don't think he had; but he doesn't say. We shall get all the news
+from him when he comes. He cares much more about London news than
+Adolphus does." And then there was no more said about the letter.
+
+But Lily had read her two former letters over and over again at the
+breakfast-table; and though she had not read them aloud, she had
+repeated many words out of them, and had so annotated upon them that
+her mother, who had heard her, could have almost re-written them. Now,
+she did not even show the paper; and then her absence, during which she
+had read the letter, had hardly exceeded a minute or two. All this Mrs
+Dale observed, and she knew that her daughter had been again
+disappointed.
+
+In fact that day Lily was very serious, but she did not appear to be
+unhappy. Early after breakfast Bell went over to the parsonage, and Mrs
+Dale and her youngest daughter sat together over their work.
+
+"Mamma," she said, "I hope you and I are not to be divided when I go to
+live in London."
+
+"We shall never be divided in heart, my love."
+
+"Ah, but that will not be enough for happiness, though perhaps enough
+to prevent absolute unhappiness. I shall want to see you, touch you,
+and pet you as I do now." And she came and knelt on the cushion at her
+mother's feet.
+
+"You will have some one else to caress and pet--perhaps many others."
+
+"Do you mean to say that you are going to throw me off, mamma?"
+
+"God forbid, my darling. It is not mothers that throw off their
+children. What shall I have left when you and Bell are gone from me?"
+
+"But we will never be gone. That's what I mean. We are to be just the
+same to you always, even though we are married. I must have my right to
+be here as much as I have it now; and, in return, you shall have your
+right to be there. His house must be a home to you--not a cold place
+which you may visit now and again, with your best clothes on. You know
+what I mean, when I say that we must not be divided."
+
+"But Lily--"
+
+"Well, mamma?"
+
+"I have no doubt we shall be happy together--you and I."
+
+"But you were going to say more than that."
+
+"Only this--that your house will be his house, and will be full without
+me. A daughter's marriage is always a painful parting."
+
+"Is it, mamma?"
+
+"Not that I would have it otherwise than it is. Do not think that I
+would wish to keep you at home with me. Of course you will both marry
+and leave me. I hope that he to whom you are going to devote yourself
+may be spared to love you and protect you." Then the widow's heart
+became too full, and she put away her child from her that she might
+hide her face.
+
+"Mamma, mamma, I wish I was not going from you."
+
+"No, Lily; do not say that. I should not be contented with life if I
+did not see both my girls married. I think that it is the only lot
+which can give to a woman perfect content and satisfaction. I would
+have you both married. I should be the most selfish being alive if I
+wished otherwise."
+
+"Bell will settle herself near you, and then you will see more of her
+and love her better than you do me."
+
+"I shall not love her better."
+
+"I wish she would marry some London man, and then you would come with
+us, and be near to us. Do you know, mamma I sometimes think you don't
+like this place here."
+
+"Your uncle has been very kind to give it to us."
+
+"I know he has; and we have been very happy here. But if Bell should
+leave you--"
+
+"Then should I go also. Your uncle has been very kind, but I sometimes
+feel that his kindness is a burden which I should not be strong enough
+to bear solely on my own shoulders. And what should keep me here, then?"
+Mrs Dale as she said this felt that the "here" of which she spoke
+extended beyond the limits of the home which she held through the
+charity of her brother-in-law. Might not all the world, far as she was
+concerned in it, be contained in that here? How was she to live if both
+her children should be taken away from her? She had already realised
+the fact that Crosbie's house could never be a home to her--never even a
+temporary home. Her visits there must be of that full-dressed nature to
+which Lily had alluded. It was impossible that she could explain this
+to Lily. She would not prophesy that the hero of her girl's heart would
+be inhospitable to his wife's mother; but such had been her reading of
+Crosbie's character. Alas, alas, as matters were to go, his hospitality
+or inhospitality would be matter of small moment to them.
+
+Again in the afternoon the two sisters were together, and Lily was
+still more serious than her wont. It might almost have been gathered
+from her manner that this marriage of hers was about to take place at
+once, and that she was preparing to leave her home.
+
+"Bell," she said,
+
+"I wonder why Dr Crofts never comes to see us now?"
+
+"It isn't a month since he was here, at our party."
+"A month! But there was a time when he made some pretext for being here
+every other day."
+
+"Yes, when mamma was ill."
+
+"Ay, and since mamma was well, too. But I suppose I must not break the
+promise you made me give you. He's not to be talked about even yet, is
+he?"
+
+"I didn't say he was not to be talked about. You know what I meant,
+Lily; and what I meant then, I mean now."
+
+"And how long will it be before you mean something else? I do hope it
+will come some day--I do indeed."
+
+"It never will, Lily. I once fancied that I cared for Dr Crofts, but it
+was only fancy. I know it, because--" She was going to explain that her
+knowledge on that point was assured to her, because since that day she
+had felt that she might have learned to love another man. But that
+other man had been Mr Crosbie, and so she stopped herself.
+
+"I wish he would come and ask you himself."
+
+"He will never do so. He would never ask such a question without
+encouragement, and I shall give him none. Nor will he ever think of
+marrying till he can do so without--without what he thinks to be
+imprudence as regards money. He has courage enough to be poor himself
+without unhappiness, but he has not courage to endure poverty with a
+wife. I know well what his feelings are."
+
+"Well, we shall see," said Lily.
+
+"I shouldn't wonder if you were married first now, Bell. For my part
+I'm quite prepared to wait for three years."
+
+Late on that evening the squire returned to Allington, Bernard having
+driven over to meet him at the station. He had telegraphed to his
+nephew that he would be back by a late train, and no more than this had
+been heard from him since he went. On that day Bernard had seen none of
+the ladies at the Small House. With Bell at the present moment it was
+impossible that he should be on easy terms. He could not meet her alone
+without recurring to the one special subject of interest between them,
+and as to that he did not choose to speak without much forethought. He
+had not known himself, when he had gone about his wooing so lightly,
+thinking it a slight thing, whether or no he might be accepted. Now it
+was no longer a slight thing to him. I do not know that it was love
+that made him so eager; not good, honest, downright love. But he had
+set his heart upon the object, and with the wilfulness of a Dale was
+determined that it should be his. He had no remotest idea of giving up
+his cousin, but he had at last persuaded himself that she was not to be
+won without some toil, and perhaps also some delay.
+
+Nor had he been in a humour to talk either to Mrs Dale or to Lily. He
+feared that Lady Julia's news was true--that at any rate there might be
+in it something of truth; and while thus in doubt he could not go down
+to the Small House. So he hung about the place by himself, with a cigar
+in his mouth, fearing that something evil was going to happen, and when
+the message came for him, almost shuddered as he seated himself in the
+gig. What would it become him to do in this emergency if Crosbie had
+truly been guilty of the villany with which Lady Julia had charged him?
+Thirty years ago he would have called the man out, and shot at him till
+one of them was hit. Nowadays it was hardly possible for a man to do
+that; and yet what would the world say of him if he allowed such an
+injury as this to pass without vengeance?
+
+His uncle, as he came forth from the station with his travelling-bag in
+his hand, was stem, gloomy, and silent. He came out and took his place
+in the gig almost without speaking. There were strangers about, and
+therefore his nephew at first could ask no question, but as the gig
+turned the corner out of the station-house yard he demanded the news.
+
+"What have you heard?" he said.
+
+But even then the squire did not answer at once. He shook his head, and
+turned away his face, as though he did not choose to be interrogated.
+
+"Have you seen him, sir?" asked Bernard.
+
+"No, he has not dared to see me."
+
+"Then it is true?
+
+"True?--yes, it is all true. Why did you bring the scoundrel here? It
+has been your fault."
+
+"No, sir; I must contradict that. I did not know him for a scoundrel."
+
+"But it was your duty to have known him before you brought him here
+among them. Poor girl! how is she to be told?"
+
+"Then she does not know it?"
+
+"I fear not. Have you seen them?
+
+"I saw them yesterday, and she did not know it then; she may have heard
+it today."
+
+"I don't think so. I believe he has been too great a coward to write to
+her. A coward indeed! How can any man find the courage to write such a
+letter as that?"
+
+By degrees the squire told his tale. How he had gone to Lady Julia, had
+made his way to London, had tracked Crosbie to his club, and had there
+learned the whole truth from Crosbie's friend, Fowler Pratt, we already
+know.
+
+"The coward escaped me while I was talking to the man he sent down,"
+said the squire.
+
+"It was a concerted plan, and I think he was right. I should have
+brained him in the hall of the club." On the following morning Pratt
+had called upon him at his inn with Crosbie's apology.
+
+"His apology!" said the squire.
+
+"I have it in my pocket. Poor reptile; wretched worm of a man! I cannot
+understand it. On my honour, Bernard, I do not understand it. I think
+men are changed since I knew much of them. It would have been
+impossible for me to write such a letter as that." He went on telling
+how Pratt had brought him this letter, and had stated that Crosbie
+declined an interview.
+
+"The gentleman had the goodness to assure me that no good could come
+from such a meeting. 'You mean,' I answered, that I cannot touch pitch
+and not be defiled!' He acknowledged that the man was pitch. Indeed, he
+could not say a word for his friend."
+
+"I know Pratt. He is a gentleman. I am sure he would not excuse him."
+
+"Excuse him! How could any one excuse him? Words could not be found to
+excuse him." And then he sat silent for some half mile.
+
+"On my honour, Bernard, I can hardly yet bring myself to believe it. It
+is so new to me. It makes me feel that the world is changed, and that
+it is no longer worth a man's while to live in it."
+
+"And he is engaged to this other girl?
+
+"Oh, yes; with the full consent of the family. It is all arranged, and
+the settlements, no doubt, in the lawyer's hands by this time. He must
+have gone away from here determined to throw her over. Indeed, I don't
+suppose he ever meant to marry her. He was just passing away his time
+here in the country."
+
+"He meant it up to the time of his leaving."
+
+"I don't think it. Had he found me able and willing to give her a
+fortune he might, perhaps, have married her. But I don't think he meant
+it for a moment after I told him that she would have nothing. Well,
+here we are. I may truly say that I never before came back to my own
+house with so sore a heart."
+
+They sat silently over their supper, the squire showing more open
+sorrow than might have been expected from his character.
+
+"What am I to say to them in the morning?" he repeated over and over
+again.
+
+"How am I to do it? And if I tell the mother, how is she to tell her
+child?"
+
+"Do you think that he has given no intimation of his purpose?"
+
+"As far as I can tell, none. That man Pratt knew that he had not done
+so yesterday afternoon. I asked him what were the intentions of his
+blackguard friend, and he said that he did not know--that Crosbie would
+probably have written to me. Then he brought me this letter. There it
+is," and the squire threw the letter over the table; "read it and let
+me have it back. He thinks probably that the trouble is now over as far
+as he is concerned."
+
+It was a vile letter to have written--not because the language was bad,
+or the mode of expression unfeeling, or the facts falsely stated--but
+because the thing to be told was in itself so vile. There are deeds
+which will not bear a gloss--sins as to which the perpetrator cannot
+speak otherwise than as a reptile; circumstances which change a man and
+put upon him the worthlessness of vermin. Crosbie had struggled hard to
+write it, going home to do it after his last interview on that night
+with Pratt. But he had sat moodily in his chair at his lodgings, unable
+to take the pen in his hand. Pratt was to come to him at his office on
+the following morning, and he went to bed resolving that he would write
+it at his desk. On the next day Pratt was there before a word of it had
+been written.
+
+"I can't stand this kind of thing," said Pratt.
+
+"If you mean me to take it, you must write it at once." Then, with
+inward groaning, Crosbie sat himself at his table, and the words at
+last were forthcoming. Such words as they were!
+
+"I know that I can have no excuse to make to you--or to her. But,
+circumstanced as I now am, the truth is the best. I feel that I should
+not make Miss Dale happy; and, therefore, as an honest man, I think I
+best do my duty by relinquishing the honour which she and you had
+proposed for me." There was more of it, but we all know of what words
+such letters are composed, and how men write when they feel themselves
+constrained to write as reptiles.
+
+"As an honest man!" repeated the squire.
+
+"On my honour, Bernard, as a gentleman, I do not understand it. I
+cannot believe it possible that the man who wrote that letter was
+sitting the other day as a guest at my table."
+
+"What are we to do to him?" said Bernard, after a while.
+
+"Treat him as you would a rat. Throw your stick at him, if he comes
+under your feet; but beware, above all things, that he does not get
+into your house. That is too late for us now."
+
+"There must be more than that, uncle."
+
+"I don't know what more. There are deeds for committing which a man is
+doubly damned, because he has screened himself from overt punishment by
+the nature of his own villany. We have to remember Lily's name, and do
+what may best tend to her comfort. Poor girl! poor girl!"
+
+Then they were silent, till the squire rose and took his bed candle.
+
+"Bernard," he said, "let my sister-in-law know early tomorrow that I
+will see her here, if she will be good enough to come to me after
+breakfast. Do not have anything else said at the Small House. It may be
+that he has written today."
+
+Then the squire went to bed, and Bernard sat over the dining-room fire,
+meditating on it all. How would the world expect that he should behave
+to Crosbie? and what should he do when he met Crosbie at the club?
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXVIII
+
+THE BOARD
+
+Crosbie, as we already know, went to his office in Whitehall on the
+morning after his escape from Sebright's, at which establishment he
+left the Squire of Allington in conference with Fowler Pratt. He had
+seen Fowler Pratt again that same night, and the course of the story
+will have shown what took place at that interview.
+
+He went early to his office, knowing that he had before him the work of
+writing two letters, neither of which would run very glibly from his
+pen. One was to be his missive to the squire, to be delivered by his
+friend; the other, that fatal epistle to poor Lily, which, as the day
+passed away, he found himself utterly unable to accomplish. The letter
+to the squire he did write, under certain threats; and, as we have
+seen, was considered to have degraded himself to the vermin rank of
+humanity by the meanness of his production.
+
+But on reaching his office he found that other cares awaited him--cares
+which he would have taken much delight in bearing, had the state of his
+mind enabled him to take delight in anything. On entering the lobby of
+his office, at ten o'clock, he became aware that he was received by the
+messengers assembled there with almost more than their usual deference.
+He was always a great man at the General Committee Office; but there
+are shades of greatness and shades of deference, which, though quite
+beyond the powers of definition, nevertheless manifest themselves
+clearly to the experienced ear and eye. He walked through to his own
+apartment, and there found two official letters addressed to him lying
+on his table. The first which came to hand, though official, was small,
+and marked private, and it was addressed in the handwriting of his old
+friend, Butterwell, the outgoing secretary.
+
+"I shall see you in the morning, nearly as soon as you get this," said
+the semi-official note; "but I must be the first to congratulate you on
+the acquisition of my old shoes. They will be very easy in the wearing
+to you, though they pinched my corns a little at first. I dare say they
+want new soling, and perhaps they are a little down at the heels; but
+you will find some excellent cobbler to make them all right, and will
+give them a grace in the wearing which they have sadly lacked since
+they came into my possession. I wish you much joy with them," etc., etc.
+He then opened the larger official letter, but that had now but little
+interest for him. He could have made a copy of the contents without
+seeing them. The Board of Commissioners had had great pleasure in
+promoting him to the office of secretary, vacated by the promotion of
+Mr Butterwell to a seat at their own Board; and then the letter was
+signed by Mr Butterwell himself.
+
+How delightful to him would have been this welcome on his return to his
+office had his heart in other respects been free from care! And as he
+thought of this, he remembered all Lily's charms. He told himself how
+much she excelled the noble scion of the De Courcy stock, with whom he
+was now destined to mate himself; how the bride he had rejected
+excelled the one he had chosen in grace, beauty, faith, freshness, and
+all feminine virtues. If he could only wipe out the last fortnight from
+the facts of his existence! But fortnights such as those are not to be
+wiped out--not even with many sorrowful years of tedious scrubbing.
+
+And at this moment it seemed to him as though all those impediments
+which had frightened him when he had thought of marrying Lily Dale were
+withdrawn. That which would have been terrible with seven or eight
+hundred a year, would have been made delightful with twelve or
+thirteen. Why had his fate been so unkind to him? Why had not this
+promotion come to him but one fortnight earlier? Why had it not been
+declared before he had made his visit to that terrible castle?' He even
+said to himself that if he had positively known the fact before Pratt
+had seen Mr Dale, he would have sent a different message to the squire,
+and would have braved the anger of all the race of the De Courcys. But
+in that he lied to himself, and he knew that he did so. An earl, in
+his imagination, was hedged by so strong a divinity, that his treason
+towards Alexandrina could do no more than peep at what it would. It had
+been considered but little by him, when the: project first offered
+itself to his mind, to jilt the niece of a small rural squire; but it
+was not in him to jilt the daughter of a countess.
+
+That house full of babies' in St. John's Wood appeared to him now
+under a very different guise from that which it wore as he sat in his
+room at Courcy Castle on the evening of his arrival there. Then such an
+establishment had to him the flavour of a graveyard. It was as though
+he were going to bury himself alive. Now that it was out of his reach,
+he thought of it as a paradise upon earth. And then he considered what
+sort of a paradise Lady Alexandrina would make for him. It was
+astonishing how ugly was the Lady Alexandrina, how old, how graceless,
+how destitute of all pleasant charm, seen through the spectacles which
+he wore at the present moment.
+
+During his first hour at the office he did nothing. One or two of the
+younger clerks came in and congratulated him with much heartiness. He
+was popular at his office, and they had got a step by his promotion.
+Then he met, one or two of the elder clerks, and was congratulated with
+much less heartiness.
+
+"I suppose it's all right," said one bluff old gentleman. "My time is
+gone by, I know. I married too early to be able to wear a good coat
+when I was young, and I never was acquainted with any lords or lords'
+families." The sting of this was the sharper because Crosbie had begun
+to feel how absolutely useless to him had been all that high interest
+and noble connection which he had formed. He had really been promoted
+because he knew more about his work than any of the other men, and Lady
+de Courcy's influential relation at the India Board had not yet even
+had time to write a note upon the subject.
+
+At eleven Mr Butterwell came into Crosbie's room, and the new secretary
+was forced to clothe himself in smiles. Mr Butterwell was a pleasant,
+handsome man of about fifty, who had never yet set the Thames on fire,
+and had never attempted to do so. He was perhaps a little more civil to
+great men and a little more patronising to those below him than he
+would have been had he been perfect. But there was something frank and
+English even in his mode of bowing before the mighty ones, and to those
+who were not mighty he was rather too civil than either stern or
+supercilious. He knew that he was not very clever, but he knew also how
+to use those who were clever. He seldom made any mistake, and was very
+scrupulous not to tread on men's corns. Though he had no enemies, yet
+he had a friend or two; and we may therefore say of Mr Butterwell that
+he had walked his path in life discreetly. At the age of thirty-five he
+had married a lady with some little fortune, and now he lived a
+pleasant, easy, smiling life in a villa at Putney. When Mr Butterwell
+heard, as he often did hear, of the difficulty which an English
+gentleman has of earning his bread in his own country, he was wont to
+look back on his own career with some complacency. He knew that he had
+not given the world much; yet he had received largely, and no one had
+begrudged it to him.
+
+"Tact," Mr Butterwell used to say to himself, as he walked along the
+paths of his Putney villa. "Tact. Tact. Tact."
+
+"Crosbie," he said, as he entered the room cheerily, "I congratulate
+you with all my heart. I do, indeed. You have got the step early in
+life, and you deserve it thoroughly--much better than I did when I was
+appointed to the same office."
+
+"Oh, no," said Crosbie, gloomily.
+
+"But I say, Oh, yes. We are deuced lucky to have such a man, and so I
+told the commissioners."
+
+"I'm sure I'm very much obliged to you."
+
+"I've known it all along--before you left even. Sir Raffle Buffle had
+told me he was to go to the Income-tax Office. The chair is two
+thousand there, you know; and I had been promised the first seat at the
+Board."
+
+"Ah--I wish I'd known," said Crosbie.
+
+"You are much better as you are," said Butterwell.
+
+"There's no pleasure like a surprise! Besides, one knows a thing of
+that kind, and yet doesn't know it. I don't mind saying now that I knew
+it--swearing that I knew it--but I wouldn't have said so to a living
+being the day before yesterday. There are such slips between the cups
+and the lips. Suppose Sir Raffle had not gone to the Income Tax!"
+
+"Exactly so," said Crosbie.
+
+"But it's all right now. Indeed I sat at the Board yesterday, though I
+signed the letter afterwards. I'm not sure that I don't lose more than
+I gain."
+
+"What! with three hundred a year more and less work?"
+
+"Ah, but look at the interest of the thing. The secretary sees
+everything and knows everything. But I'm getting old, and, as you say,
+the lighter work will suit me. By-the-by, will you come down to Putney
+tomorrow? Mrs Butterwell will be delighted to see the new secretary.
+There's nobody in town now, so you can have no ground for refusing."
+
+But Mr Crosbie did find some ground for refusing. It would have been
+impossible for him to have sat and smiled at Mrs Butterwell's table in
+his present frame of mind. In a mysterious, half-explanatory manner, he
+let Mr Butterwell know that private affairs of importance made it
+absolutely necessary that he should remain that evening in town.
+
+"And indeed," as he said, "he was not his own master just at present."
+
+"By-the-by--of course not. I had quite forgotten to congratulate you on
+that head. So you're going to be married? Well; I'm very glad, and hope
+you'll be as lucky as I have been."
+
+"Thank you," said Crosbie, again rather gloomily.
+
+"A young lady from near Guestwick, isn't it; or somewhere in those
+parts?"
+
+"N-no," stammered Crosbie.
+"The lady comes from Barsetshire."
+
+"Why, I heard the name. Isn't she a Bell, or Tait, or Ball, or some
+such name as that?"
+
+"No." said Crosbie, assuming what boldness he could command. "Her name
+is De Courcy."
+
+"One of the earl's daughters?"
+
+"Yes," said Crosbie.
+
+"Oh. I beg your pardon. I'd heard wrong. You're going to be allied to a
+very noble family, and I am heartily glad to hear of your success in
+life." Then Butterwell shook him very cordially by the hand--having
+offered him no such special testimony of approval when under the belief
+that he was going to marry a Bell, a Tait, or a Ball. All the same, Mr
+Butterwell began to think that there was something wrong. He had heard
+from an indubitable source that Crosbie had engaged himself to a niece
+of a squire with whom he had been staying near Guestwick--a girl without
+any money; and Mr Butterwell, in his wisdom, had thought his friend
+Crosbie to be rather a fool for his pains. But now he was going to
+marry one of the De Courcys! Mr Butterwell was rather at his wits' ends.
+
+"Well; we shall be sitting at two, you know, and of course you'll come
+to us. If you're at leisure before that I'll make over what papers I
+have to you. I've not been a Lord Eldon in my office, and they won't
+break your back."
+
+Immediately after that Fowler Pratt had been shown into Crosbie's room,
+and Crosbie had written the letter to the squire under Pratt's eye.
+
+He could take no joy in his promotion. When Pratt left him he tried to
+lighten his heart. He endeavoured to throw Lily and her wrongs behind
+him, and fix his thoughts on his advancing successes in life; but he
+could not do it. A self-imposed trouble will not allow itself to be
+banished. If a man lose a thousand pounds by a friend's fault, or by a
+turn in the wheel of fortune, he can, if he be a man, put his grief
+down and trample it under foot; he can exercise the spirit of his
+grievance, and bid the evil one depart from out of his house. But such
+exorcism is not to be used when the sorrow has come from a man's own
+folly and sin--especially not if it has come from his own selfishness.
+Such are the cases which make men drink; which drive them on to the
+avoidance of all thought; which create gamblers and reckless prodigals;
+which are the promoters of suicide. How could he avoid writing this
+letter to Lily? He might blow his brains out, and so let there be an
+end of it all. It was to such reflections that he came, when he sat
+himself down endeavouring to reap satisfaction from his promotion.
+
+But Crosbie was not a man to commit suicide. In giving him his due I
+must protest that he was too good for that. He knew too well that a
+pistol-bullet could not be the be-all and the end-all here, and there
+was too much manliness in him for so cowardly an escape. The burden
+must be borne. But how was he to bear it? There he sat till it was two
+o'clock, neglecting Mr Butterwell and his office papers, and not
+stirring from his seat till a messenger summoned him before the Board.
+The Board, as he entered the room, was not such a Board as the public
+may, perhaps, imagine such Boards to be. There was a round table, with
+a few pens lying about, and a comfortable leathern arm-chair at the
+side of it, farthest from the door Sir Raffle Buffle was leaving his
+late colleagues, and was standing with his back to the fire-place,
+talking very loudly. Sir Raffle was a great bully, and the Board was
+uncommonly glad to be rid of him; but as this was to be his last
+appearance at the Committee Office, they submitted to his voice meekly.
+Mr Butterwell was standing close to him, essaying to laugh mildly at
+Sir Raffle's jokes. A little man, hardly more than five feet high, with
+small but honest-looking eyes, and close-cut hair, was standing behind
+the arm-chair, rubbing his hands together, and longing for the
+departure of Sir Raffle, in order that he might sit down. This was Mr
+Optimist, the new chairman, in praise of whose appointment the Daily
+Jupiter had been so loud, declaring that the present Minister was
+showing himself superior to all Ministers who had ever gone before him,
+in giving promotion solely on the score of merit. The Daily Jupiter, a
+fortnight since, had published a very eloquent article, strongly
+advocating the claims of Mr Optimist, and was naturally pleased to find
+that its advice had been taken. Has not an obedient Minister a right to
+the praise of those powers which he obeys?
+
+Mr Optimist was, in truth, an industrious little gentleman, very well
+connected, who had served the public all his life, and who was, at any
+rate, honest in his dealings. Nor was he a bully, such as his
+predecessor. It might, however, be a question whether he carried guns
+enough for the command in which he was now to be employed. There was
+but one other member of the Board, Major Fiasco by name, a
+discontented, brokenhearted, silent man, who had been sent to the
+General Committee Office some few years before because he was not
+wanted anywhere else. He was a man who had intended to do great things
+when he entered public life, and had possessed the talent and energy
+for things moderately great. He had also possessed to a certain extent
+the ear of those high in office; but, in some way, matters had not gone
+well with him, and in running his course he had gone on the wrong side
+of the post. He was still in the prime of life, and yet all men knew
+that Major Fiasco had nothing further to expect from the public or from
+the Government. Indeed, there were not wanting those who said that
+Major Fiasco was already in receipt of a liberal income, for which he
+gave no work in return; that he merely filled a chair for four hours a
+day four or five days a week, signing his name to certain forms and
+documents, reading, or pretending to read, certain papers, but, in
+truth, doing no good. Major Fiasco, on the other hand, considered
+himself to be a deeply injured individual, and he spent his life in
+brooding over his wrongs. He believed now in nothing and in nobody. He
+had begun public life striving to be honest, and he now regarded all
+around him as dishonest. He had no satisfaction in any man other than
+that which he found when some event would show to him that this or that
+other compeer of his own had proved himself to be self-interested,
+false, or fraudulent.
+
+"Don't tell me, Butterwell," he would say--for with Mr Butterwell he
+maintained some semi-official intimacy, and he would take that
+gentleman by the button-hole, holding him close.
+
+"Don't tell me. I know what men are. I've seen the world. I've been
+looking at things with my eyes open. I knew what he was doing." And
+then he would tell of the sly deed of some official known well to them
+both, not denouncing it by any means, but affecting to take it for
+granted that the man in question was a rogue. Butterwell would shrug
+his shoulders, and laugh gently, and say that, upon his word, he didn't
+think the world so bad as Fiasco made it out to be.
+
+Nor did he; for Butterwell believed in many things. He believed in his
+Putney villa on this earth, and he believed also that he might achieve
+some sort of Putney villa in the world beyond without undergoing
+present martyrdom. His Putney villa first, with all its attendant
+comforts, and then his duty to the public afterwards. It was thus that
+Mr Butterwell regulated his conduct; and as he was solicitous that the
+villa should be as comfortable a home to his wife as to himself, and
+that it should be specially comfortable to his friends, I do not think
+that we need quarrel with his creed.
+
+Mr Optimist believed in everything, but especially he believed in the
+Prime Minister, in the Daily Jupiter, in the General Committee Office,
+and in himself. He had long thought that everything was nearly right;
+but now that he himself was chairman at the General Committee Office,
+he was quite sure that everything must be right. In Sir Raffle Buffle,
+indeed, he had never believed; and now it was, perhaps, the greatest
+joy of his life that he should never again be called upon to hear the
+tones of that terrible knight's hated voice.
+
+Seeing who were the components of the new Board, it may be presumed
+that Crosbie would look forward to enjoying a not uninfluential
+position in his office. There were, indeed, some among the clerks who
+did not hesitate to say that the new secretary would have it pretty
+nearly all his own way. As for "old Opt," there would be, they said, no
+difficulty about him. Only tell him that such and such a decision was
+his own, and he would be sure to believe the teller. Butterwell was not
+fond of work, and had been accustomed to lean upon Crosbie for many
+years. As for Fiasco, he would be cynical in words, but wholly
+indifferent in deed. If the whole office were made to go to the
+mischief, Fiasco, in his own grim way, would enjoy the confusion.
+
+"Wish you joy, Crosbie," said Sir Raffle, standing up on the rug,
+waiting for the new secretary to go up to him and shake hands. But Sir
+Raffle was going, and the new secretary did not indulge him.
+
+"Thank ye, Sir Raffle," said Crosbie, without going near the rug.
+
+"Mr Crosbie, I congratulate you most sincerely," said Mr Optimist.
+"Your promotion has been the result altogether of your own merit. You
+have been selected for the high office which you are now called upon to
+fill solely because it has been thought that you are the most fit man
+to perform the onerous duties attached to it. Hum-hum-ha. As, regards
+my share in the recommendation which we found ourselves bound to submit
+to the Treasury, I must say that I never felt less hesitation in my
+life, and I believe I may declare as much as regards the other members
+of the Board." And Mr Optimist looked around him for approving words.
+He had come forward from his standing ground behind his chair to
+welcome Crosbie, and had shaken his hand cordially. Fiasco also had
+risen from his seat, and had assured Crosbie in a whisper that he had
+feathered, his nest uncommon well. Then he had sat down again.
+
+"Indeed you may, as far as I am concerned," said Butterwell.
+
+"I told the Chancellor of the Exchequer," said Sir Raffle, speaking
+very loud and with much authority, "that unless he had some first-rate
+man to send from elsewhere I could name a fitting candidate. 'Sir
+Raffle,' he said, 'I mean to keep it in the office, and therefore shall
+be glad of your opinion.' 'In that case, Mr Chancellor,' said I, 'Mr
+Crosbie must be the man.' 'Mr Crosbie shall be the man,' said the
+Chancellor. And Mr Crosbie is the man."
+
+"Your friend Sark spoke to Lord Brock about it," said Fiasco. Now the
+Earl of Sark was a young nobleman of much influence at the present
+moment, and Lord Brock was the Prime Minister. "You should thank Lord
+Sark."
+
+"Had as much to do with it as if my footman had spoken," said Sir
+Raffle.
+
+"I am very much obliged to the Board for their good opinion," said
+Crosbie, gravely. "I am obliged to Lord Sark as well-and also to your
+footman, Sir Raffle, if, as you seem to say, he has interested himself
+in my favour."
+
+"I didn't say anything of the kind," said Sir Raffle.
+
+"I thought it right to make you understand that it was my opinion,
+given, of course, officially, which prevailed with the Chancellor of
+the Exchequer. Well, gentlemen, as I shall be wanted in the city, I
+will say good-morning to you. Is my carriage ready, Boggs?" Upon which
+the attendant messenger opened the door, and the great Sir Raffle
+Buffle took his final departure from the scene of his former labours.
+
+"As to the duties of your new office"--and Mr Optimist continued his
+speech, taking no other notice of the departure of his enemy than what
+was indicated by an increased brightness of his eye and a more
+satisfactory tone of voice--" you will find yourself quite familiar with
+them."
+
+"Indeed he will," said Butterwell.
+
+"And I am quite sure that you will perform them with equal credit to
+yourself, satisfaction to the department, and advantage to the public.
+We shall always be glad to have your opinion on any subject of
+importance that may come before us; and as regards the internal
+discipline of the office, we feel that we may leave it safely in your
+hands. In any matter of importance you will, of course, consult us, and
+I feel very confident that we shall go on together with great comfort
+and with mutual confidence." Then Mr Optimist looked at his brother
+commissioners, sat down in his arm-chair, and taking in his hands some
+papers before him, began the routine business of the day.
+
+It was nearly five o'clock when, on this special occasion, the
+secretary returned from the board-room to his own office. Not for a
+moment had the weight been off his shoulders while Sir Raffle had been
+bragging or Mr Optimist making his speech. He had been thinking, not of
+them, but of Lily Dale; and though they had not discovered his
+thoughts, they had perceived that he was hardly like himself.
+
+"I never saw a man so little elated by good fortune in my life," said
+Mr Optimist.
+
+"Ah, he's got something on his mind," said Butterwell. He's going to be
+married, I believe."
+
+"If that's the case, it's no wonder he shouldn't be elated," said Major
+Fiasco, who was himself a bachelor.
+
+When in his own room again, Crosbie at once seized on a sheet of
+note-paper, as though by hurrying himself on with it he could get that
+letter to Allington written. But thought the paper was before him, and
+the pen in his hand, the letter did not, would not, get itself written.
+With what words was he to begin it? To whom should it be written? How
+was he to declare himself the villain which he had made himself? The
+letters from his office were taken away every night shortly after six,
+and at six o'clock he had not written a word.
+
+"I will do it at home to-night," he said, to himself, and then, tearing
+off a scrap of paper, he scratched those few lines which Lily received,
+and which she had declined to communicate to her mother or sister.
+Crosbie, as he wrote them, conceived that they would in some way
+prepare the poor girl for the coming blow--that they would, at any rate,
+make her know that all was not right; but in so supposing he had not
+counted on the constancy of her nature, nor had he thought of the
+promise which, she had given him that nothing should make her doubt
+him. He wrote the scrap, and then taking his hat walked off through the
+gloom of the November evening up Charing Cross and St. Martin's Lane,
+towards the Seven Dials and Bloomsbury into regions of the town with
+which he had no business, and which he never frequented. He hardly knew
+where he went or wherefore. How was he to escape from the weight of the
+burden which was now crushing him? It seemed to him as though he would
+change his position with thankfulness for that of the junior clerk in
+his office, if only that junior clerk had upon his mind no such
+betrayal of trust as that of which he was guilty.
+
+At half-past seven he found himself at Sebright's, and there he dined.
+A man will dine, even though his heart be breaking. Then he got into a
+cab, and had himself taken home to Mount Street. During his walk he had
+sworn to himself that he would not go to bed that night till the letter
+was written and posted. It was twelve before the first words were
+marked on the paper, and yet he kept his oath. Between two and three,
+in the cold moonlight, he crawled out and deposited his letter in the
+nearest post-office.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXIX
+
+JOHN EAMES RETURNS TO BURTON CRESCENT
+
+John Eames and Crosbie returned to town on the same day. It will be
+remembered how Eames had assisted Lord de Guest in the matter of the
+bull, and how great had been the earl's gratitude on the occasion. The
+memory of this, and the strong encouragement which he received from his
+mother and sister for having made such a friend by his gallantry, lent
+some slight satisfaction to his last hours at home. But his two
+misfortunes were too serious to allow of anything like real happiness.
+He was leaving Lily behind him, engaged to be married to a man whom he
+hated, and he was returning to Burton Crescent, where he would have to
+face Amelia Roper--Amelia either in her rage or in her love. The
+prospect of Amelia in her rage was very terrible to him; but his
+greatest fear was of Amelia in her love. He had in his letter declined
+matrimony; but what if she talked down all his objections, and carried
+him off to church in spite of himself!
+
+When he reached London and got into a cab with his portmanteau, he
+could hardly fetch up courage to bid the man drive him to Burton
+Crescent.
+
+"I might as well go to an hotel for the night," he said to himself,
+"and then I can learn how things are going on from Cradell at the
+office." Nevertheless, he did give the direction to Burton Crescent,
+and when it was once given felt ashamed to change it. But, as he was
+driven up to the wellknown door, his heart was so low within him that
+he might almost be said to have lost it. When the cabman demanded
+whether he should knock, he could not answer; and when the maid-servant
+at the door greeted him, he almost ran away.
+
+"Who's at home?" said he, asking the question in a very low voice.
+
+"There's missus," said the girl, "and Miss Spruce, and Mrs Lupex. He's
+away somewhere, in his tantrums again; and there's Mr--"
+
+"Is Miss Roper here?" he said, still whispering.
+
+"Oh, yes! Miss Mealyer's here," said the girl, speaking in a cruelly
+loud voice. "She was in the dining-room just now, putting out the
+table. Miss Mealyer!" And the girl, as she called out the name, opened
+the dining-room door. Johnny Eames felt that his knees were too weak to
+support him.
+
+But Miss Mealyer was not in the dining-room. She had perceived the
+advancing cab of her sworn adorer, and had thought it expedient to
+retreat from her domestic duties, and fortify herself among her brushes
+and ribbons. Had it been possible that she should know how very weak
+and cowardly was the enemy against whom she was called upon to put
+herself in action, she might probably have fought her battle somewhat
+differently, and have achieved a speedy victory, at the cost of an
+energetic shot or two. But she did not know. She thought it probable
+that she might obtain power over him and manage him; but it did not
+occur to her that his legs were so weak beneath him that she might
+almost blow him over with a breath. None but the worst and most
+heartless of women know the extent of their own power over men--as none
+but the worst and most heartless of men know the extent of their power
+over women. Amelia Roper was not a good specimen of the female sex, but
+there were worse women than her.
+
+"She ain't there, Mr Eames; but you'll see her in the drawenroom," said
+the girl.
+
+"And it's she'll be glad to see you back again, Mr Eames." But he
+scrupulously passed the door of the upstairs sitting-room, not even
+looking within it, and contrived to get himself into his own chamber
+without having encountered anybody.
+
+"Here's yer 'ot water, Mr Eames," said the girl, coming up to him after
+an interval of half-an-hour, "and dinner'll be on the table in ten
+minutes. Mr Cradell is come in, and so is missus's son."
+
+It was still open to him to go out and dine at some eating-house in the
+Strand. He could start out, leaving word that he was engaged, and so
+postpone the evil hour. He had almost made up his mind to do so, and
+certainly would have done it, had not the sitting-room door opened as
+he was on the landing-place. The door opened, and he found himself
+confronting the assembled company. First came Cradell, and leaning on
+his arm, I regret to say, was Mrs Lupex--Egyptia conjux! Then there came
+Miss Spruce with young Roper; Amelia and her mother brought up the rear
+together. There was no longer question of flight now; and poor Eames,
+before he knew what he was doing, was carried down into the dining-room
+with the rest of the company. They were all glad to see him, and
+welcomed him back warmly, but he was so much beside himself that he
+could not ascertain whether Amelia's voice was joined with the others.
+He was already seated at table, and had before him a plate of soup,
+before he recognised the fact that he was sitting between Mrs Roper and
+Mrs Lupex. The latter lady had separated herself from Mr Cradell as she
+entered the room.
+
+"Under all the circumstances perhaps it will be better for us to be
+apart," she said. "A lady can't make herself too safe; can she, Mrs
+Roper? There's no danger between you and me, is there, Mr
+Eames--specially when Miss Amelia is opposite?" The last words, however,
+were intended to be whispered into his ear.
+
+But Johnny made no answer to her; contenting himself for the moment
+with wiping the perspiration from his brow. There was Amelia opposite
+to him, looking at him--the very Amelia to whom he had written,
+declining the honour of marrying her. Of what her mood towards him
+might be, he could form no judgment from her looks. Her face was simply
+stern and impassive, and she seemed inclined to eat her dinner in
+silence. A slight smile of derision had passed across her face as she
+heard Mrs Lupex whisper, and it might have been discerned that her
+nose, at the same time, became somewhat elevated; but she said not a
+word.
+
+"I hope you've enjoyed yourself, Mr Eames, among the vernal beauties of
+the country," said Mrs Lupex.
+
+"Very much, thank you," he replied.
+
+"There's nothing like the country at this autumnal season of the year.
+As for myself, I've never been accustomed to remain in London after the
+breaking up of the beau monde. We've usually been to Broadstairs, which
+is a very charming place, with most elegant society, but now--"and she
+shook her head, by which all the company knew that she intended to
+allude to the sins of Mr Lupex.
+
+"I'd never wish to sleep out of London for my part," said Mrs Roper.
+
+"When a woman's got a house over her head, I don't think her mind's
+ever easy out of it."
+
+She had not intended any reflection on Mrs Lupex for not having a house
+of her own, but that lady immediately bristled up.
+
+"That's just what the snails say, Mrs Roper. And as for having a house
+of one's own, it's a very good thing, no doubt, sometimes; but that's
+according to circumstances. It has suited me lately to live in
+lodgings, but there's no knowing whether I mayn't fall lower than that
+yet, and have--" but here she stopped herself, and looking over at Mr
+Cradell nodded her head.
+
+"And have to let them," said Mrs Roper.
+
+"I hope you'll be more lucky with your lodgers than I have been with
+some of mine. Jemima, hand the potatoes to Miss Spruce. Miss Spruce, do
+let me send you a little more gravy? There's plenty here, really." Mrs
+Roper was probably thinking of Mr Todgers.
+
+"I hope I shall," said Mrs Lupex.
+
+"But, as I was saying, Broadstairs is delightful. Were you ever at
+Broadstairs, Mr Cradell?"
+
+"Never, Mrs Lupex. I generally go abroad in my leave. One sees more of
+the world, you know. I was at Dieppe last June, and found that very
+delightful--though rather lonely. I shall go to Ostend this year; only
+December is so late for Ostend. It was a deuced shame my getting
+December, wasn't it, Johnny?"
+
+"Yes, it was," said Eames.
+
+"I managed better."
+
+"And what have you been doing, Mr Eames?" said Mrs Lupex, with one of
+her sweetest smiles.
+
+"Whatever it may have been, you've not been false to the cause of
+beauty, I'm sure." And she looked over to Amelia with a knowing smile.
+But Amelia was engaged upon her plate, and went on with her dinner
+without turning her eyes either on Mrs Lupex or on John Eames.
+
+"I haven't done anything particular," said Eames.
+
+"I've just been staying with my mother."
+
+"We've been very social here, haven't we, Miss Amelia?" continued Mrs
+Lupex.
+
+"Only now and then a cloud comes across the heavens, and the lights at
+the banquet are darkened." Then she put her handkerchief up to her
+eyes, sobbing deeply, and they all knew that she was again alluding to
+the sins of her husband.
+
+As soon as dinner was over the ladies with young Mr Roper retired, and
+Eames and Cradell were left to take their wine over the dining-room
+fire--or their glass of gin and water, as it might be.
+
+"Well, Caudle, old fellow," said one.
+
+"Well, Johnny, my boy," said the other.
+
+"What's the news at the office?" said Eames.
+
+"Muggeridge has been playing the very mischief." Muggeridge was the
+second clerk in Cradell's room.
+
+"We're going to put him into Coventry and not speak to him except
+officially. But to tell you the truth, my hands have been so full here
+at home, that I haven't thought much about the office. What am I to do
+about that woman?
+
+"Do about her? How do about her?"
+
+"Yes; what am I to do about her? How am I to manage with her? There's
+Lupex off again in one of his fits of jealousy."
+
+"But it's not your fault, I suppose?"
+
+"Well; I can't just say. I am fond of her, and that's the long and the
+short of it; deuced fond of her."
+
+"But, my dear Caudle, you know she's that man's wife."
+
+"Oh, yes, I know all about it. I'm not going to defend myself. It's
+wrong, I know--pleasant, but wrong. But what's a fellow to do? I suppose
+in strict morality I ought to leave the lodgings. But, by George, I
+don't see why a man's to be turned out in that way. And then I couldn't
+make a clean score with old mother Roper. But I say, old fellow, who
+gave you the gold chain?"
+
+"Well; it was an old family friend at Guestwick; or rather, I should
+say, a man who said he knew my father."
+
+"And he gave you that because he knew your governor! Is there a watch
+to it?
+
+"Yes, there's a watch. It wasn't exactly that. There was some trouble
+about a bull. To tell the truth, it was Lord de Guest; the queerest
+fellow, Caudle, you ever met in your life; but such a trump. I've got
+to go and dine with him at Christmas." And then the old story of the
+bull was told.
+
+"I wish I could find a lord in a field with a bull," said Cradell. We
+may, however, be permitted to doubt whether Mr Cradell would have
+earned a watch even if he had had his wish.
+
+"You see," continued Cradell, reverting, to the subject on which he
+most delighted to talk,
+
+"I'm not responsible for that man's ill-conduct."
+
+"Does anybody say you are?
+
+"No; nobody says so. But people seem to think so. When he is by I
+hardly speak to her. She is thoughtless and giddy as women are, and
+takes my arm, and that kind of thing, you know. It makes him mad with
+rage, but upon my honour I don't think she means any harm."
+"I don't suppose she does," said Eames.
+
+"Well; she may or she mayn't. I hope with all my heart she doesn't."
+
+"And where is he now?"
+
+"This is between ourselves, you know; but she went to find him this
+afternoon. Unless he gives her money she can't stay here, nor, for the
+matter of that, will she be able to go away. If I mention something to
+you, you won't tell any one?"
+
+"Of course I won't."
+
+"I wouldn't have it known to any one for the world. I've lent her seven
+pounds ten. It's that which makes me so short with mother Roper."
+
+"Then I think you're a fool for your pains."
+
+"Ah, that's so like you. I always said you'd no feeling of real
+romance. If I cared for a woman I'd give her the coat off my back."
+
+"I'd do better than that," said Johnny.
+
+"I'd give her the heart out of my body. I'd be chopped up alive for a
+girl I loved; but it shouldn't be for another man's wife."
+
+"That's a matter of taste. But she's been to Lupex today at that house
+he goes to in Drury Lane. She had a terrible scene there. He was going
+to commit suicide in the middle of the street, and she declares that it
+all comes from jealousy. Think what a time I have of it--standing
+always, as one may say, on gunpowder. He may turn up here any moment,
+you know. But, upon my word, for the life of me I cannot desert her. If
+I were to turn my back on her she wouldn't have a friend in the world.
+And how's L. D.? I'll tell you what it is--you'll have some trouble with
+the divine Amelia."
+
+"Shall I?"
+
+"By Jove, you will. But how's L. D. all this time?"
+
+"L. D. is engaged to be married to a man named Adolphus Crosbie," said
+poor Johnny, slowly.
+
+"If you please, we will not say any more about her."
+
+"Whew-w-w! That's what makes you so down in the mouth! L. D. going to
+marry Crosbie! Why, that's the man who is to be the new secretary at
+the General Committee Office. Old Huffle Scuffle, who was their chair,
+has come to us, you know. There's been a general move at the GC, and
+this Crosbie has got to be secretary. He's a lucky chap, isn't he?"
+
+"I don't know anything about his luck. He's one of those fellows that
+make me hate them the first time I look at them. I've a sort of a
+feeling that I shall live to kick him some day."
+
+"That's the time, is it? Then I suppose Amelia will have it all her own
+way now."
+
+"I'll tell you what, Caudle. I'd sooner get up through the trap-door,
+and throw myself off the roof into the area, than marry Amelia Roper."
+
+"Have you and she had any conversation since you came back?"
+
+"Not a word."
+
+"Then I tell you fairly you've got trouble before you. Amelia and
+Maria--Mrs Lupex, I mean--are as thick as thieves just at present, and
+they have been talking you over. Maria--that is, Mrs Lupex--lets it all
+out to me. You'll have to mind where you are, old fellow."
+
+Eames was not inclined to discuss the matter any further, so he
+finished his toddy in silence. Cradell, however, who felt that there
+was something in his affairs of which he had reason to be proud, soon
+returned to the story of his own very extraordinary position.
+
+"By Jove, I don't know that a man was ever so circumstanced," he said.
+
+"She looks to me to protect her, and yet what can I do?"
+
+At last Cradell got up, and declared that he must go to the ladies.
+"She's so nervous, that unless she has some one to countenance her she
+becomes unwell."
+
+Eames declared his purpose of going to the divan, or to the theatre, or
+to take a walk in the streets. The smiles of beauty had no longer
+charms for him in Burton Crescent.
+
+"They'll expect you to take a cup of tea the first night," said
+Cradell; but Eames declared that they might expect it.
+
+"I'm in no humour for it," said he. "I'll tell you what, Cradell, I
+shall leave this place, and take rooms for myself somewhere. I'll never
+go into a lodging-house again."
+
+As he so spoke, he was standing at the dining-room door; but he was not
+allowed to escape in this easy way. Jemima, as he went out into the
+passage, was there with a three-cornered note in her hand.
+
+"From Miss Mealyer," she said. "Miss Mealyer is in the back parlour all
+by herself."
+
+Poor Johnny took the note, and read it by the lamp over the front door.
+
+"Are you not going to speak to me on the day of your return? It cannot
+be that you will leave the house without seeing me for a moment. I am
+in the back parlour."
+
+When he had read these words, he paused in the passage, with his hat
+on. Jemima, who could not understand why any young man should hesitate
+as to seeing his lady-love in the back parlour alone, whispered to him
+again, in her audible way,
+
+"Miss Mealyer is there, sir; and all the rest on 'em's upstairs!" So
+compelled, Eames put down his hat, and walked with slow steps into the
+back parlour.
+
+How was it to be with the enemy? Was he to encounter Amelia in anger,
+or Amelia in love? She had seemed to be stern and defiant when he had
+ventured to steal a look at her across the dining-table, and now he
+expected that she would turn upon him with loud threatenings and
+protestations as to her wrongs. But it was not so. When he entered
+the-room she was standing with her back to him, leaning on the
+mantel-piece, and at the first moment she did not essay to peak. He
+walked into the middle of the room and stood there, waiting for her to
+begin.
+
+"Shut the door!" she said, looking over her shoulder. "I suppose you
+don't want the girl to hear all you've got to say to me!"
+
+Then he shut the door; but still Amelia stood with her back to him,
+leaning upon the mantelpiece.
+
+It did not seem that he had much to say, for he remained perfectly
+silent.
+
+"Well!" said Amelia, after a long pause, and she then again looked over
+her shoulder. "Well, Mr Eames!"
+
+"Jemima gave me your note, and so I've come," said he.
+
+"And is this the way we meet!" she exclaimed, turning suddenly upon
+him, and throwing her long black hair back over her shoulders. There
+certainly was some beauty about her. Her eyes were large and bright,
+and her shoulders were well turned. She might have done as an artist's
+model for a Judith, but I doubt whether any man, looking well into her
+face, could think that she would do well as a wife.
+
+"Oh, John, is it to be thus, after love such as ours?" And she clasped
+her hands together, and stood before him.
+
+"I don't know what you mean," said Eames.
+
+"If you are engaged to marry L. D., tell me so at once. Be a man, and
+speak out, sir."
+
+"No," said Eames; "I am not engaged to marry the lady to whom you
+allude."
+
+"On your honour?"
+
+"I won't have her spoken about. I'm not going to marry her, and that's
+enough."
+
+"Do you think that I wish to speak of her? What can L. D. be to me as
+long as she is nothing to you? Oh, Johnny, why did you write me that
+heartless letter?" Then she leaned upon his shoulder--or attempted to do
+so.
+
+I cannot say that Eames shook her off, seeing that he lacked the
+courage to do so; but he shuffled his shoulder about so that the
+support was uneasy to her, and she was driven to stand erect again.
+
+"Why did you write that cruel letter?" she said again.
+
+"Because I thought it best, Amelia. What's a man to do with ninety
+pound a year, you know?"
+
+"But your mother allows you twenty."
+"And what's a man to do with a hundred and ten?"
+
+"Rising five pounds every year," said the well-informed Amelia. "Of
+course we should live here, with mamma, and you would just go on paying
+her as you do now. If your heart was right, Johnny, you wouldn't think
+so much about money. If you loved me--as you said you did--" Then a
+little sob came, and the words were stopped. The words were stopped,
+but she was again upon his shoulder. What was he to do? In truth, his
+only wish was to escape, and yet his arm, quite in opposition to his
+own desires, found its way round her waist. In such a combat a woman
+has so many points in her favour!
+
+"Oh, Johnny," she said again, as soon as she felt the pressure of his
+arm.
+
+"Gracious, what a beautiful watch you've got," and she took the trinket
+out of his pocket.
+
+"Did you buy that?"
+
+"No; it was given to me."
+
+"John Eames, did L. D. give it you?"
+
+"No, no, no," he shouted, stamping on the floor as he spoke.
+
+"Oh, I beg your pardon," said Amelia, quelled for the moment by his
+energy.
+
+"Perhaps it was your mother."
+
+"No; it was a man. Never mind about the watch now."
+
+"I wouldn't mind anything, Johnny, if you would tell me that you loved
+me again. Perhaps I oughtn't to ask you, and it isn't becoming in a
+lady; but how can I help it, when you know you've got my heart. Come
+upstairs and have tea with us now, won't you?"
+
+What was he to do? He said that he would go up and have tea; and as he
+led her to the door he put down his face and kissed her. Oh, Johnny
+Eames! But then a woman in such a contest has so many points in her
+favour.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXX
+
+IS IT FROM HIM?
+
+I have already declared that Crosbie wrote and posted the fatal letter
+to Allington, and we must now follow it down to that place. On the
+morning following the squire's return to his own house Mrs Crump, the
+post-mistress at Allington, received a parcel by post directed to
+herself. She opened it, and found an enclosure addressed to Mrs Dale,
+with a written request that she would herself deliver it into that
+lady's own hand at once. This was Crosbie's letter.
+
+"It's from Miss Lily's gentleman," said Mrs Crump, looking at the
+handwriting. "There's 'something up, or he wouldn't be writing to her
+mamma in this way." But Mrs Crump lost no time in putting on her
+bonnet, and trudging up with the letter to the Small House.
+
+"I must see the missus herself," said Mrs Crump. Whereupon Mrs Dale was
+called downstairs into the hail, and there received the packet. Lily
+was in the breakfast-parlour, and had seen the post-mistress arrive--had
+seen also that she carried a letter in her hand. For a moment she had
+thought that it was for her, and imagined that the old woman had
+brought it herself from simple good-nature. But Lily, when she heard
+her mother mentioned, instantly withdrew and shut the parlour door. Her
+heart misgave her that something was wrong, but she hardly tried to
+think what it might be. After all, the regular postman might bring the
+letter she herself expected. Bell was not yet downstairs, and she stood
+alone over the tea-cups on the breakfast-table, feeling that there was
+something for her to fear. Her mother did not come at once into the
+room, but, after a pause of a moment or two, went again upstairs. So
+she remained, either standing against the table, or at the window, or
+seated in one of the two arm-chairs, for a space of ten minutes, when
+Bell entered the room.
+
+"Isn't mamma down yet?" said Bell.
+
+"Bell," said Lily, "something has happened. Mamma has got a letter."
+
+"Happened! What has happened? Is anybody ill? Who is the letter from?"
+And Bell was going to return through the door in search of her mother.
+
+"Stop, Bell," said Lily. "Do not go to her yet. I think it's
+from--Adolphus."
+
+"Oh, Lily, what do you mean?"
+
+"I don't know, dear. We'll wait a little longer. Don't look like that,
+Bell." And Lily strove to appear calm, and strove almost successfully.
+
+"You have frightened me so," said Bell.
+
+"I am frightened myself. He only sent me one line yesterday, and now he
+has sent nothing. If some misfortune should have happened to him! Mrs
+Crump brought down the letter herself to mamma, and that is so odd, you
+know."
+
+"Are you sure it was from him?"
+
+"No; I have not spoken to her. I will go up to her now. Don't you come,
+Bell. Oh! Bell, do not look so unhappy." She then went over and kissed
+her sister, and after that, with very gentle steps, made her way up to
+her mother's room.
+
+"Mamma, may I come in?" she said.
+
+"Oh! my child!"
+
+"I know it is from him, mamma. Tell me all at once."
+
+Mrs Dale had read the letter. With quick, glancing eyes, she had made
+herself mistress of its whole contents, and was already aware of the
+nature and extent of the sorrow which had come upon them. It was a
+sorrow that admitted of no hope. The man who had written that letter
+could never return again; nor if he should return could he be welcomed
+back to them. The blow had fallen, and it was to be borne. Inside the
+letter to herself had been a very small note addressed to Lily.
+
+"Give her the enclosed," Crosbie had said in his letter, "if you do not
+now think it wrong to do so. I have left it open, that you may read
+it." Mrs Dale, however, had not yet read it, and she now concealed it
+beneath her handkerchief.
+
+I will not repeat at length Crosbie's letter to Mrs Dale. It covered
+four sides of letter-paper, and was such a letter that any man who
+wrote it must have felt himself to be a rascal. We saw that he had
+difficulty in writing it, but the miracle was, that any man could have
+found it possible to write it.
+
+"I know you will curse me," said he; "and I deserve to be cursed. I
+know that I shall be punished for this, and I must bear my punishment.
+My worst punishment will be this--that I never more shall hold up my
+head again." And then, again, he said--"My only excuse is my conviction
+that I should never make her happy. She has been brought up as an
+angel, with pure thoughts, with holy hopes, with a belief in all that
+is good, and high, and noble. I have been surrounded through my whole
+life by things low, and mean, and ignoble. How could I live with her,
+or she with me? I know now that this is so; but my fault has been that
+I did not know it when I was there with her. I choose to tell you all,"
+he continued, towards the end of the letter, "and therefore I let you
+know that I have engaged myself to marry another woman. Ah! I can
+foresee how bitter will be your feelings when you read this: but they
+will not be so bitter as mine while I write it. Yes; I am already
+engaged to one who will suit me, and whom I may suit. You will not
+expect me to speak ill of her who is to be near and dear to me. But she
+is one with whom I may mate myself without an inward conviction that I
+shall destroy all her happiness by doing so. Lilian," he said, "shall
+always have my prayers; and I trust that she may soon forget, in the
+love of an honest man, that she ever knew one so dishonest as--Adolphus
+Crosbie."
+
+Of what like must have been his countenance as he sat writing such
+words of himself under the ghastly light of his own small, solitary
+lamp? Had he written his letter at his office, in the day-time, with
+men coming in and out of his room, he could hardly have written of
+himself so plainly. He would have bethought himself that the written
+words might remain, and be read hereafter by other eyes than those for
+which they were intended. But, as he sat alone, during the small hours
+of the night, almost repenting of his sin with true repentance, he
+declared to himself that he did not care who might read them. They
+should, at any rate, be true. Now they had been read by her to whom
+they had been addressed, and the daughter was standing before the
+mother to hear her doom.
+
+"Tell me all at once," Lily had said; but in what words was her mother
+to tell her?
+
+"Lily," she said, rising from her seat, and leaving the two letters on
+the couch; that addressed to the daughter was hidden beneath a
+handkerchief, but that which she had read she left open and in sight.
+She took both the girl's hands in hers as she looked into her face, and
+spoke to her.
+
+"Lily, my child!" Then she burst into sobs, and was unable to tell her
+tale.
+
+"Is it from him, mamma? May I read it? He cannot be--"
+
+"It is from Mr Crosbie."
+
+"Is he ill, mamma? Tell me at once. If he is ill I will go to him."
+
+"No, my darling, he is not ill. Not yet--do not read it yet. Oh, Lily!
+It brings bad news; very bad news."
+
+"Mamma, if he is not in danger, I can read it. Is it bad to him, or
+only bad to me?"
+
+At this moment the servant knocked, and not waiting for an answer half
+opened the door.
+
+"If you please, ma'am, Mr Bernard is below, and wants to speak to you."
+
+"Mr Bernard! ask Miss Bell to see him."
+
+"Miss Bell is with him, ma'am, but he says that he specially wants to
+speak to you."
+
+Mrs Dale felt that she could not leave Lily alone. She could not take
+the letter away, nor could she leave her child with the letter open.
+
+"I cannot see him," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Ask him what it is. Tell him I cannot come down just at present." And
+then the servant went, and Bernard left his message with Bell.
+
+"Bernard," she had said, "do you know of anything? Is there anything
+wrong about Mr Crosbie?" Then, in a few words, he told her all, and
+understanding why his aunt had not come down to him, he went back to
+the Great House. Bell, almost stupefied by the tidings, seated herself
+at the table unconsciously, leaning upon her elbows.
+
+"It will kill her," she said to herself.
+
+"My Lily, my darling Lily! It will surely kill her."
+
+But the mother was still with the daughter, and the story was still
+untold.
+
+"Mamma," said Lily, "whatever it is, I must, of course, be made to know
+it. I begin to guess the truth. It will pain you to say it. Shall I
+read the letter?"
+
+Mrs Dale was astonished at her calmness. It could not be that she had
+guessed the truth, or she would not stand like that, with tearless eyes
+and unquelled courage before her.
+
+"You shall read it, but I ought to tell you first. Oh, my child, my own
+one!" Lily was now leaning against the bed, and her mother was standing
+over her, caressing her.
+
+"Then tell me," said she.
+
+"But I know what it is. He has thought it all over while away from me,
+and he finds that it must not be as we have supposed. Before he went I
+offered to release him, and now he knows that he had better accept my
+offer. Is it so, mamma?" In answer to this Mrs Dale did not speak, but
+Lily understood from her signs that it was so.
+
+"He might have written it to me, myself," said Lily very proudly.
+"Mamma, we will go down to breakfast. He has sent nothing to me, then?"
+
+"There is a note. He bids me read it, but I have not opened it. It is
+here."
+
+"Give it me," said Lily, almost sternly. "Let me have his last words to
+me" and she took the note from her mother's hands.
+
+"Lily," said the note, "your mother will have told you all. Before you
+read these few words you will know that you have trusted one who was
+quite untrustworthy. I know that you will hate me. I cannot even ask
+you to forgive me. You will let me pray that you may yet be happy.--A.C."
+
+She read these few words, still leaning against the bed. Then she got
+up, and walking to a chair, seated herself with her back to her mother.
+Mrs Dale moving silently after her stood over the back of the chair,
+not daring to speak to her. So she sat for some five minutes, with her
+eyes fixed upon the open window, and with Crosbie's note in her hand.
+
+"I will not hate him, and I do forgive him," she said at last,
+struggling to command her voice, and hardly showing that she could not
+altogether succeed in her attempt. "I may not write to him again, but
+you shall write and tell him so. Now we will go down to breakfast." And
+so saying, she got up from her chair.
+
+Mrs Dale almost feared to speak to her, her composure was so complete,
+and her manner so stern and fixed. She hardly knew how to offer pity
+and sympathy, seeing that pity seemed to be so little necessary, and
+that even sympathy was not demanded. And she could not understand all
+that Lily had said. What had she meant by the offer to release him? Had
+there, then, been some quarrel between them before he went? Crosbie had
+made no such allusion in his letter. But Mrs Dale did not dare to ask
+any questions.
+
+"You frighten me, Lily," she said. "Your very calmness frightens me."
+
+"Dear mamma!" and the poor girl absolutely smiled a she embraced her
+mother.
+
+"You need not be frightened by my calmness. I know the truth well. I
+have been very unfortunate--very. The brightest hopes of my life are all
+gone--and I shall never again see him whom I love beyond all the world!"
+Then at last she broke down, and wept in her mother's arms.
+
+There was not a word of anger spoken then against him who had done all
+this. Mrs Dale felt that she did not dare to speak in anger against
+him, and words of anger were not likely to come from poor Lily. She,
+indeed, hitherto did not know the whole of his offence, for she had not
+read his letter.
+
+"Give it me, mamma," she said at last. "It has to be done sooner or
+later."
+
+"Not now, Lily. I have told you all--all that you need know at present."
+
+"Yes; now, mamma," and again that sweet silvery voice became stern. "I
+will read it now, and there shall be an end." Whereupon Mrs Dale gave
+her the letter and she read it in silence. Her mother, though standing
+somewhat behind her, watched her narrowly as she did so. She was now
+lying over upon the bed, and the letter was on the pillow, as she
+propped herself upon her arm. Her tears were running, and ever and
+again she would stop to dry her eyes. Her sobs too were very audible,
+but she went on steadily with her reading till she came to the line on
+which Crosbie told that he had already engaged himself to another
+woman. Then her mother could see that she paused suddenly, and that a
+shudder slightly convulsed all her limbs.
+
+"He has been very quick," she said, almost in a whisper; and then she
+finished the letter. "Tell him, mamma," she said, "that I do forgive
+him, and I will not hate him. You will tell him that--from me; will you
+not?" And then she raised herself from the bed.
+
+Mrs Dale would give her no such assurance. In her present mood her
+feelings against Crosbie were of a nature which she herself hardly
+could understand or analyse. She felt that if he were present she could
+almost fly at him as would a tigress. She had never hated before as she
+now hated this man. He was to her a murderer, and worse than a
+murderer. He had made his way like a wolf into her little fold, and
+torn her ewe-lamb and left her maimed and mutilated for life. How could
+a mother forgive such an offence as that, or consent to be the medium
+through which forgiveness should be expressed?
+
+"You must, mamma; or, if you do not, I shall do so. Remember that I
+love him. You know what it is to have loved one single man. He has made
+me very unhappy; I hardly know yet how unhappy. But I have loved him,
+and do love him. I believe, in my heart, that he still loves me. Where
+this has been there must not be hatred and unforgiveness."
+
+"I will pray that I may become able to forgive him," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"But you must write to him those words. Indeed you must, mamma! 'She
+bids me tell you that she has forgiven you, and will not hate you.'
+Promise me that!"
+
+"I can make no promise now, Lily. I will think about it, and endeavour
+to do my duty."
+
+Lily was now seated, and was holding the skirt of her mother's dress.
+
+"Mamma," she said, looking up into her mother's face, "you must be very
+good to me now; and I must be very good to you. We shall be always
+together now. I must be your friend and counsellor; and be everything
+to you, more than ever. I must fall in love with you now;" and she
+smiled again, and the tears were almost dry upon her checks.
+
+At last they went down to the breakfast-room, from which Bell had not
+moved. Mrs Dale entered the room first, and Lily followed, hiding
+herself for a moment behind her mother. Then she came forward boldly,
+and taking Bell in her arms, clasped her close to her bosom.
+
+"Bell," she said, "he has gone."
+
+"Lily! Lily! Lily!" said Bell, weeping.
+
+"He has gone! We shall talk it over in a few days, and shall know how
+to do so without losing ourselves in misery. Today we will say no more
+about it. I am so thirsty, Bell; do give me my tea" and she sat herself
+down at the breakfast-table.
+
+Lily's tea was given to her, and she drank it. Beyond that I cannot say
+that any of them partook with much heartiness of the meal. They sat
+there, as they would have sat if no terrible thunderbolt had fallen
+among them, and no word further was spoken about Crosbie and his
+conduct. Immediately after breakfast they went into the other room, and
+Lily, as was her wont, sat herself immediately down to her drawing. Her
+mother looked at her with wistful eyes, longing to bid her spare
+herself, but she shrank from interfering with her. For a quarter of an
+hour Lily sat over her board, with her brush or pencil in her hand, and
+then she rose up and put it away.
+
+"It is no good pretending," she said. "I am only spoiling the things;
+but I will be better tomorrow. I'll go away and lie down by myself,
+mamma." And so she went.
+
+Soon after this Mrs Dale took her bonnet and went up to the Great
+House, having received her brother-in-law's message from Bell.
+
+"I know what he has to tell me," she said; "but I might as well go. It
+will be necessary that we should speak to each other about it." So she
+walked across the lawn, and up into the hail of the Great House.
+
+"Is my brother in the book-room?", she said to one of the maids; and
+then knocking at the door, went in unannounced.
+
+The squire rose from his arm-chair, and came forward to meet her.
+
+"Mary," he said, "I believe you know it all."
+
+"Yes," she said.
+
+"You can read that," and she handed him Crosbie's letter.
+
+"How was one to know that any man could be so wicked as that?"
+
+"And she has heard it?" asked the squire.
+
+"Is she able to bear it?"
+"Wonderfully! She has amazed me by her strength. It frightens me; for I
+know that a relapse must come. She has never sunk for a moment beneath
+it. For myself, I feel as though it were her strength that enables me
+to bear my share of it." And then she described to the squire all that
+had taken place that morning.
+
+"Poor child!" said the squire.
+
+"Poor child! What can we do for her? Would it be good for her to go
+away for a time? She is a sweet, good, lovely girl, and has deserved
+better than that. Sorrow and disappointment come to us all; but they
+are doubly heavy when they come so early."
+
+Mrs Dale was almost surprised at the amount of sympathy which he showed.
+
+"And what is to be his punishment?" she asked.
+
+"The scorn which men and women will feel for him; those, at least,
+whose esteem or scorn are matters of concern to any one. I know no
+other punishment. You would not have Lily's name brought before a
+tribunal of law?"
+
+"Certainly not that."
+
+"And I will not have Bernard calling him out. Indeed, it would be for
+nothing; for in these days a man is not expected to fight duels."
+
+"You cannot think that I would wish that."
+
+"What punishment is there, then? I know of none. There are evils which
+a man may do, and no one can punish him. I know of nothing. I went up
+to London after him, but he continued to crawl out of my way. What can
+you do to a rat but keep clear of him?"
+
+Mrs Dale had felt in her heart that it would be well if Crosbie could
+be beaten till all his bones were sore. I hardly know whether such
+should have been a woman's thought, but it was hers. She had no wish
+that he should be made to fight a duel. In that there would have been
+much that was wicked, and in her estimation nothing that was just. But
+she felt that if Bernard would thrash the coward for his cowardice she
+would love her nephew better than ever she had loved him. Bernard also
+had considered it probable that he might be expected to horsewhip the
+man who had jilted his cousin, and, as regarded the absolute bodily
+risk, he would not have felt any insuperable objection to undertake the
+task. But such a piece of work was disagreeable to him in many ways. He
+hated the idea of a row at his club. He was most desirous that his
+cousin's name should not be made public. He wished to avoid anything
+that might be impolitic. A wicked thing had been done, and he was quite
+ready to hate Crosbie as Crosbie ought to be hated; but as regarded
+himself, it made him unhappy to think that the world might probably
+expect him to punish the man who had so lately been his friend. And
+then he did not know where to catch him, or how to thrash him when
+caught. He was very sorry for his cousin, and felt strongly that
+Crosbie should not be allowed to escape. But what was he to do?
+
+"Would she like to go anywhere?" said the squire again, anxious, if he
+could, to afford solace by some act of generosity. At this moment he
+would have settled a hundred a year for life upon his niece if by so
+doing he could have done her any good.
+
+"She will be better at home," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Poor thing. For a while she will wish to avoid going out."
+
+"I suppose so;" and then there was a pause.
+
+"I'll tell you what, Mary; I don't understand it. On my honour I don't
+understand it. It is to me as wonderful as though I had caught the man
+picking my pence out of my pocket. I don't think any man in the
+position of a gentleman would have done such a thing when I was young.
+I don't think any man would have dared to do it. But now it seems that
+a man may act in that way and no harm come to him. He had a friend in
+London who came to me and talked about it as though it were some
+ordinary, everyday transaction of life. Yes; you may come in, Bernard.
+The poor child knows it all now."
+
+Bernard offered to his aunt what of solace and sympathy he had to
+offer, and made some sort of half-expressed apology for having
+introduced this wolf into their flock.
+
+"We always thought very much of him at his club," said Bernard.
+
+"I don't know much about your London clubs nowadays," said his uncle,
+"nor do I wish to do so if the society of that man can be endured after
+what he has now done."
+
+"I don't suppose half-a-dozen men will ever know anything about it,"
+said Bernard.
+
+"Umph!" ejaculated the squire. He could not say that he wished
+Crosbie's villany to be widely discussed, seeing that Lily's name was
+so closely connected with it. But yet he could not support the idea
+that Crosbie should not be punished by the frown of the world at large.
+It seemed to him that from this time forward any man speaking to
+Crosbie should be held to have disgraced himself by so doing.
+
+"Give her my best love," he said, as Mrs Dale got up to take her leave;
+"my very best love. If her old uncle can do anything for her she has
+only to let me know. She met the man in my house, and I feel that I owe
+her much. Bid her come and see me. It will be better for her than
+moping at home. And Mary"--this he said to her, whispering into her
+ear--"think of what I said to you about Bell."
+
+Mrs Dale, as she walked back to her own house, acknowledged to herself
+that her brother-in-law's manner was different to her from anything
+that she had hitherto known of him.
+
+During the whole of that day Crosbie's name was not mentioned at the
+Small House. Neither of the girls stirred out, and Bell spent the
+greater part of the afternoon sitting, with her arm round her sister's
+waist, upon the sofa. Each of them had a book; but though there was
+little spoken, there was as little read. Who can describe the thoughts
+that were passing through Lily's mind as she remembered the hours which
+she had passed with Crosbie, of his warm assurances of love, of his
+accepted caresses, of her uncontrolled and acknowledged joy in his
+affection? It had all been holy to her then; and now those things which
+were then sacred had been made almost disgraceful by his fault. And yet
+as she thought of this she declared to herself over and over again that
+she would forgive him--nay, that she had forgiven him.
+
+"And he shall know it, too," she said, speaking almost out loud.
+"Lily, dear Lily," said Bell, "turn your thoughts away from it for a
+while, if you can."
+
+"They won't go away," said Lily. And that was all that was said between
+them on the subject.
+
+Everybody would know it! I doubt whether that must not be one of the
+bitterest drops in the cup which a girl in such circumstances is made
+to drain. Lily perceived early in the day that the parlour-maid well
+knew that she had been jilted. The girl's manner was intended to convey
+sympathy; but it did convey pity; and Lily for a moment felt angry. But
+she remembered that it must be so, and smiled upon the girl, and spoke
+kindly to her. What mattered it? All the world would know it in a day
+or two.
+
+On the following day she went up, by her mother's advice, to see her
+uncle.
+
+"My child," said he, "I am sorry for you. My heart bleeds for you."
+
+"Uncle," she said, "do not mind it. Only do this for me--do not talk
+about it--I mean to me."
+
+"No, no; I will not. That there should ever have been in my house so
+great a rascal--"
+
+"Uncle! uncle! I will not have that! I will not listen to a word
+against him from any human being--not a word! Remember that!" And her
+eyes flashed as she spoke.
+
+He did not answer her, but took her hand and pressed it, and then she
+left him.
+
+"The Dales were ever constant!" he said to himself, as he walked up
+and down the terrace before his house. "Ever constant!"
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXI
+
+THE WOUNDED FAWN
+
+Nearly two months passed away, and it was now Christmas time at
+Allington. It may be presumed that there was no intention at either
+house that the mirth should be very loud. Such a wound as that received
+by Lily Dale was one from which recovery could not be quick, and it was
+felt by all the family that a weight was upon them which made gaiety
+impracticable. As for Lily herself it may be said that she bore her
+misfortune with all a woman's courage. For the first week she stood up
+as a tree that stands against the wind, which is soon to be shivered to
+pieces because it will not bend. During that week her mother and sister
+were frightened by her calmness and endurance. She would perform her
+daily task. She would go out through the village, and appear at her
+place in church on the first Sunday. She would sit over her book of an
+evening, keeping back her tears; and would chide her mother and sister
+when she found that they were regarding her with earnest anxiety.
+
+"Mamma, let it all be as though it had never been," she said.
+
+"Ah, dear! if that were but possible!"
+
+"God forbid that it should be possible inwardly," Lily replied.
+
+"But it is possible outwardly. I feel that you are more tender to me
+than you used to be, and that upsets me. If you would only scold me
+because I am idle, I should soon be better." But her mother could not
+speak to her as she perhaps might have spoken had no grief fallen upon
+her pet. She could not cease from those anxious tender glances which
+made Lily know that she was looked on as a fawn wounded almost to death.
+
+At the end of the first week she gave way.
+
+"I won't get up, Bell," she said one morning, almost petulantly.
+
+"I am ill--I had better lie here out of the way. Don't make a fuss about
+it. I'm stupid and foolish, and that makes me ill."
+
+Thereupon Mrs Dale and Bell were frightened, and looked into each
+other's blank faces, remembering stories of poor broken-hearted girls
+who had died because their loves had been unfortunate--as small wax
+tapers whose lights are quenched if a breath of wind blows upon then
+too strongly. But then Lily was in truth no such slight taper as that.
+Nor was she the stem that must be broken because it will not bend. She
+bent herself to the blast during that week of illness, and then arose
+with her form still straight and graceful, and with her bright light
+unquenched.
+
+After that she would talk more openly to her mother about her
+loss--openly and with a true appreciation of the misfortune which had
+befallen her; but with an assurance of strength which seemed to
+ridicule the idea of a broken heart.
+
+"I know that I can bear it," she said, "and that I can bear it without
+lasting unhappiness. Of course I shall always love him, and must feel
+almost as you felt when you lost my father." In answer to this Mrs Dale
+could say nothing. She could not speak out her thoughts about Crosbie,
+and explain to Lily that he was unworthy of her love. Love does not
+follow worth, and is not given to excellence--nor is it destroyed by
+ill-usage, nor killed by blows and mutilation. When Lily declared that
+she still loved the man who had so ill-used her, Mrs Dale would he
+silent. Each perfectly understood the other, but on that matter even
+they could not interchange their thoughts with freedom.
+
+"You must promise never to be tired of me, mamma," said Lily.
+
+"Mothers do not often get tired of their children, whatever the
+children may do of their mothers."
+
+"I'm not so sure of that when the children turn out old maids. And I
+mean to have a will of my own, too, mamma; and a way also, if it be
+possible. When Bell is married I shall consider it a partnership, and I
+shan't do what I'm told any longer."
+
+"Forewarned will be forearmed."
+
+"Exactly--and I don't want to take you by surprise. For a year or two
+longer, till Bell is gone, I mean to be dutiful; but it would be very
+stupid for a person to be dutiful all their lives."
+
+All of which Mrs Dale understood thoroughly. It amounted to an
+assertion on Lily's part that she had loved once and could never love
+again; that she had played her game, hoping, as other girls hope, that
+she might win the prize of a husband; but that, having lost, she could
+never play the game again. It was that inward conviction on Lily's part
+which made her say such words to her mother. But Mrs Dale would by no
+means allow herself to share this conviction. She declared to herself
+that time would cure Lily's wound, and that her child might yet be
+crowned by the bliss of a happy marriage. She would not in her heart
+consent to that plan in accordance with which Lily's destiny in life
+was to be regarded as already fixed. She had never really liked Crosbie
+as a suitor, and would herself have preferred John Eames, with all the
+faults of his hobbledehoyhood on his head. It might yet come to pass
+that John Eames' love might be made happy.
+
+But in the meantime Lily, as I have said, had become strong in her
+courage, and recommenced the work of living with no lackadaisical
+self-assurance that because she had been made more unhappy than others,
+therefore she should allow herself to be more idle. Morning and night
+she prayed for him, and daily, almost hour by hour, she assured herself
+that it was still her duty to love him. It was hard, this duty of
+loving, without any power of expressing such love. But still she would
+do her duty.
+
+"Tell me at once, mamma," she said one morning, "when you hear that the
+day is fixed for his marriage. Pray don't keep me in the dark."
+
+"It is to be in February," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"But let me know the day. It must not be to me like ordinary days. But
+do not look unhappy, mamma; I am not going to make a fool of myself. I
+shan't steal off and appear in the church like a ghost." And then,
+having uttered her little joke, a sob came, and she hid her face on her
+mother's bosom. In a moment she raised it again.
+
+"Believe me, mamma, that I am not unhappy," she said.
+
+After the expiration of that second week Mrs Dale did write a letter to
+Crosbie:
+
+
+I suppose (she said) it is right that I should acknowledge the receipt
+of your letter. I do not know that I have aught else to say to you. It
+would not become me as a woman to say what I think of your conduct, but
+I believe that your conscience will tell you the same things. If it do
+not, you must, indeed, be hardened. I have promised my child that I
+will send to you a message from her. She bids me tell you that she has
+forgiven you, and that she does not hate you. May God also forgive you,
+and may you recover his love.
+
+MARY DALE.
+
+I beg that no rejoinder may be made to this letter, either to myself or
+to any of my family.
+
+
+The squire wrote no answer to the letter which he had received, nor did
+he take any steps towards the immediate punishment of Crosbie. Indeed
+he had declared that no such steps could be taken, explaining to his
+nephew that such a man could be served only as one serves a rat.
+
+"I shall never see him," he said once again; "if I did, I should not
+scruple to hit him on the head with my stick; but I should think ill of
+myself to go after him with such an object."
+
+And yet it was a terrible sorrow to the old man that the scoundrel who
+had so injured him and his should escape scot-free. He had not forgiven
+Crosbie. No idea of forgiveness had ever crossed his mind. He would
+have hated himself had he thought it possible that he could be--induced
+to forgive such an injury.
+
+"There is an amount of rascality in it--of low meanness, which I do not
+understand," he would say over and over again to his nephew. And then
+as he would walk alone on the terrace he would speculate within his own
+mind whether Bernard would take any steps towards avenging; his
+cousin's injury. "He is right," he would say to himself; "Bernard is
+quite right. But when I was young I could not have stood it. In those
+days a gentleman might have a fellow out who had treated him as he has
+treated us. A man was satisfied in feeling that he had done something.
+I suppose the world is different nowadays." The world is different; but
+the squire by no means acknowledged in his heart that there had been
+any improvement.
+
+Bernard also was greatly troubled in his mind. He would have had no
+objection to fight a duel with Crosbie, had duels in these days been
+possible. But he believed them to be no longer possible at any rate
+without ridicule. And if he could not fight the man, in what other way
+was he to punish him? Was it not the fact that for such a fault the
+world afforded no punishment? Was it not in the power of a man like
+Crosbie to amuse himself for a week or two at the expense of a girl's
+happiness for life, and then to escape absolutely without any ill
+effects to himself?
+
+"I shall be barred out of my club lest. I should meet him," Bernard
+said to himself, "but he will not be barred out." Moreover, there was a
+feeling within him that the matter would be one of triumph to Crosbie
+rather than otherwise. In having secured for himself the pleasure of
+his courtship with such a girl as Lily Dale, without encountering the
+penalty usually consequent upon such amusement, he would be held by
+many as having merited much admiration. He had sinned against all the
+Dales, and yet the suffering arising from his sin was to fall upon the
+Dales exclusively. Such was Bernard's reasoning, as he speculated on
+the whole affair; sadly enough--wishing to be avenged, but not knowing
+where to look for vengeance. For myself I believe him to have been
+altogether wrong as to the light in which he supposed that Crosbie's
+falsehood would be regarded by Crosbie's friends. Men will still talk
+of such things lightly, professing that all is fair in love as it is in
+war, and speaking almost with envy of the good fortunes of a practised
+deceiver. But I have never come across the man who thought in this way
+with reference to an individual case. Crosbie's own judgment as to the
+consequences to himself of what he had done was more correct than that
+formed by Bernard Dale. He had regarded the act as venial as long as it
+was still to do while it was still within his power to leave it undone;
+but from the moment of its accomplishment it had forced itself upon his
+own view in its proper light. He knew that he had been a scoundrel, and
+he knew that other men would so think of him. His friend Fowler Pratt,
+who had the reputation of looking at women simply as toys, had so
+regarded him. Instead of boasting of what he had done, he was as afraid
+of alluding to any matter connected with his marriage as a man is of
+talking of the articles which he has stolen. He had already felt that
+men at his club looked askance at him; and, though he was no coward as
+regarded his own skin and bones, he had an undefined fear lest some day
+he might encounter Bernard Dale purposely armed with a stick. The
+squire and his nephew were wrong in supposing that Crosbie was
+unpunished.
+
+And as the winter came on he felt that he was closely watched by the
+noble family of De Courcy. Some of that noble family he had already
+learned to hate cordially. The Honourable John came up to town in
+November, and persecuted him vilely: insisted on having dinners given
+to him at Sebright's, of smoking throughout the whole afternoon in his
+future brother-in-law's rooms, and on borrowing his future
+brother-in-law's possessions; till at last Crosbie determined that it
+would be wise to quarrel with the Honourable John--and he quarrelled
+with him accordingly, turning him out of his rooms, and telling him in
+so many words that he would have no more to do with him.
+
+"You'll have to do it, as I did," Mortimer Gazebee had said to him; "I
+didn't like it because of the family, but Lady Amelia told me that it
+must be so." Whereupon Crosbie took the advice of Mortimer Gazebee.
+
+But the hospitality of the Gazebees was perhaps more distressing to him
+than even the importunities of the Honourable John. It seemed as though
+his future sister-in-law was determined not to leave him alone.
+Mortimer was sent to fetch him up for the Sunday afternoons, and he
+found that he was constrained to go to the villa in St. John's Wood,
+even in opposition to his own most strenuous will. He could not quite
+analyse the circumstances of his own position, but he felt as though he
+were a cock with his spurs cut off--as a dog with his teeth drawn. He
+found himself becoming humble and meek. He had to acknowledge to
+himself that he was afraid of Lady Amelia, and almost even afraid of
+Mortimer Gazebee. He was aware that they watched him, and knew all his
+goings out and comings in. They called him Adolphus, and made him tame.
+That coming evil day in February was dinned into his ears. Lady Amelia
+would go and look at furniture for him, and talked by the hour about
+bedding and sheets.
+
+"You had better get your kitchen things at Tomkins'. They're all good,
+and he'll give you ten per cent. off if you pay him ready money--which,
+of course, you will, you know!" Was it for this that he had sacrificed
+Lily Dale?--for this that he had allied himself with the noble house of
+De Courcy?
+
+Mortimer had been at him about the settlements from the very first
+moment of his return to London, and had already bound him up hand and
+foot. His life was insured, and the policy was in Mortimer's hands. His
+own little bit of money had been already handed over to be tied up with
+Lady Alexandrina's little bit. It seemed to him that in all the
+arrangements made the intention was that he should die off speedily,
+and that Lady Alexandrina should be provided with a decent little
+income, sufficient for St. John's Wood. Things were to be so settled
+that he could not even spend the proceeds of his own money, or of hers.
+They were to go, under the fostering hands of Mortimer Gazebee in
+paying insurances. If he would only die the day after his marriage,
+there would really be a very nice sum of money for Alexandrina, almost
+worthy of the acceptance of an earl's daughter. Six months ago he would
+have considered himself able to turn Mortimer Gazebee round his finger
+on any subject that could be introduced between them. When they chanced
+to meet Gazebee had been quite humble to him, treating him almost as a
+superior being. He had looked down on Gazebee from a very great height.
+But now it seemed as though he were powerless in this man's hands.
+
+But perhaps the countess had become this greatest aversion. She was
+perpetually writing to him little notes in which she gave him
+multitudes of commissions, sending him about as though he had been her
+servant. And she pestered him with advice which was even worse than her
+commissions, telling him of the style of life in which Alexandrina
+would expect to live, and warning him very frequently that such an one
+as he could not expect to be admitted within the bosom of so noble a
+family without paying very dearly for that inestimable privilege. Her
+letters had become odious to him, and he would chuck them on one side,
+leaving them for the whole day unopened. He had already made up his
+mind that he would quarrel with the countess also, very shortly after
+his marriage; indeed, that he would separate himself from the whole
+family if it were possible. And yet he had entered into this engagement
+mainly with the view of reaping those advantages which would accrue to
+him from being allied to the De Courcys! The squire and his nephew were
+wretched in thinking that this man was escaping without punishment, but
+they might have spared themselves that misery.
+
+It had been understood from the first that he was to spend his
+Christmas at Courcy Castle. From this undertaking it was quite out of
+his power to enfranchise himself: but he resolved that his visit should
+be as short as possible. Christmas Day unfortunately came on a Monday,
+and it was known to the De Courcy world that Saturday was almost a
+dies non at the General Committee Office. As to those three days there
+was no escape for him; but he made Alexandrina understand that the
+three Commissioners were men of iron as to any extension of those three
+days.
+
+"I must be absent again in February, of course," he said, almost making
+his wail audible in the words he used, "and therefore it is quite
+impossible that I should stay now beyond the Monday." Had there been
+attractions for him at Courcy Castle I think he might have arranged
+with Mr Optimist for a week or ten days.
+
+"We shall be all alone," the countess wrote to him, "and I hope you
+will have an opportunity of learning more of our ways than you have
+ever really been able to do as yet." This was bitter as gall to him.
+But in this world all valuable commodities have their price; and when
+men such as Crosbie aspire to obtain for themselves an alliance with
+noble families, they must pay the market price for the article which
+they purchase.
+
+"You'll all come up and dine with us on Monday," the squire said to Mrs
+Dale, about the middle of the previous week.
+
+"Well, I think not," said Mrs Dale, "we are better, perhaps, as we are."
+
+At this moment the squire and his sister-in-law were on much more
+friendly terms than had been usual with them, and he took her reply in
+good part, understanding her feeling. Therefore, he pressed his
+request, and succeeded.
+
+"I think you're wrong," he said, "I don't suppose that we shall have a
+very merry Christmas. You and the girls will hardly have that whether
+you eat your pudding here or at the Great House. But it will be better
+for us all to make the attempt. It's the right thing to do. That's the
+way I look at it."
+
+"I'll ask Lily," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Do, do. Give her my love, and tell her from me that, in spite of all
+that has come and gone, Christmas Day should still be to her a day of
+rejoicing. We'll dine about three, so that the servants can have the
+afternoon."
+
+"Of course we'll go," said Lily; "why not? We always do. And we'll have
+blind-man's-buff with all the Boyces, as we had last year, if uncle
+will ask them up." But the Boyces were not asked up for that occasion.
+
+But Lily, though she put on it all so brave a face, had much to suffer,
+and did in truth suffer greatly. If you, my reader, ever chanced to
+slip into the gutter on a wet day, did you not find that the sympathy
+of the bystanders was by far the severest part of your misfortune? Did
+you not declare to yourself that all might yet be well, if the people
+would only walk on and not look at you? And yet you cannot blame those
+who stood and pitied you; or, perhaps, essayed to rub you down, and
+assist you in the recovery of your bedaubed hat. You, yourself, if you
+see a man fall, cannot walk by as though nothing uncommon had happened
+to him. It was so with Lily. The people of Allington could not regard
+her with their ordinary eyes. They would look at her tenderly, knowing
+that she was a wounded fawn, and thus they aggravated the soreness of
+her wound. Old Mrs Hearn condoled with her, telling her that very
+likely she would be better off as she was. Lily would not lie about it
+in any way.
+
+"Mrs Hearn," she said, "the subject is painful to me." Mrs Hearn said
+no more about it, but on every meeting between them she looked the
+things she did not say.
+
+"Miss Lily!" said Hopkins, one day, "Miss Lily!"--and as he looked up
+into her face a tear had almost formed itself in his old eye "I knew
+what he was from the first. Oh, dear! oh, dear! if I could have had him
+killed!"
+
+"Hopkins, how dare you?" said Lily. "If you speak to me again in such a
+way, I will tell my uncle." She turned away from him but immediately
+turned back again, and put out her little hand to him.
+
+"I beg your pardon," she said. "I know how kind you are, and I love you
+for it." And then she went away.
+
+"I'll go after him yet, and break the dirty neck of him," said Hopkins
+to himself, as he walked down the path.
+
+Shortly before Christmas Day she called with her sister at the
+vicarage. Bell, in the course of the visit, left the room with one of
+the Boyce girls, to look at the last chrysanthemums of the year. Then
+Mrs Boyce took advantage of the occasion to make her little speech.
+
+"My dear Lily," she said, "you will think me cold if I do not say one
+word to you."
+
+"No, I shall not," said Lily, almost sharply, shrinking from the finger
+that threatened to touch her sore. "There are things which should never
+be talked about."
+
+"Well, well; perhaps so," said Mrs Boyce. But for a minute or two she
+was unable to fall back upon any other topic, and sat looking at Lily
+with, painful tenderness. I need hardly say what were Lily's sufferings
+under such a gaze; but she bore it, acknowledging to herself in her
+misery that the fault did not lie with Mrs Boyce. How could Mrs Boyce
+have looked at her otherwise than tenderly?
+
+It was settled, then, that Lily was to dine up at the Great House on
+Christmas Day, and thus show to the Allington world that she was not to
+be regarded as a person shut out from the world by the depth of her
+misfortune. That she was right there can, I think, be no doubt; but as
+she walked across the little bridge, with her mother and sister, after
+returning from church she would have given much to be able to have
+turned round, and have gone to bed instead of to her uncle's dinner.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXII
+
+PAWKINS'S IN JERMYN STREET
+
+The show of fat beasts in London took place this year on the twentieth
+day of December, and I have always understood that a certain bullock
+exhibited by Lord de Guest was declared by the metropolitan butchers to
+have realised all the possible excellences of breeding, feeding, and
+condition. No doubt the butchers of the next half-century will have
+learned much better, and the Guestwick beast, could it be embalmed and
+then produced, would excite only ridicule at the agricultural ignorance
+of the present age; but Lord de Guest took the praise that was offered
+to him, and found himself in a seventh heaven of delight.
+
+He was never so happy as when surrounded by butchers; graziers, and
+salesmen who were able to appreciate the work of his life, and who
+regarded him as a model nobleman.
+
+"Look at that fellow," he said to Eames, pointing to the prize bullock,
+Eames had joined his patron at the show after his office hours, looking
+on upon the living beef by gaslight. "Isn't he like his sire? He was
+got by Lambkin, you know."
+
+"Lambkin," said Johnny, who had not as yet been able to learn much
+about the Guestwick stock.
+
+"Yes, Lambkin. The bull that we had the trouble with. He has just got
+his sire's back and fore-quarters. Don't you see?"
+
+"I dare say," said Johnny, who looked very hard, but could not see.
+
+"It's very odd," exclaimed the earl, "but do you know, that bull has
+been as quiet since that day--as quiet as--as anything. I think it must
+have been my pocket-handkerchief."
+
+"I dare say it was," said Johnny "or perhaps the flies."
+
+"Flies!" said the earl, angrily. "Do you suppose he isn't used to
+flies? Come away. I ordered dinner at seven, and it's past six now. My
+brother-in-law, Colonel Dale, is up in town, and he dines with us." So
+he took Johnny's arm, and led him off through the show, calling his
+attention as he went to several beasts which were inferior to his own.
+
+And then they walked down through Portman Square and Grosvenor Square,
+and across Piccadilly to Jermyn Street. John Eames acknowledged to
+himself that it was odd that he should have an earl leaning on his arm
+as he passed along through the streets. At home, in his own life, his
+daily companions were Cradell and Amelia Roper, Mrs Lupex and Mrs
+Roper. The difference was very great, and yet he found it quite as easy
+to talk to the earl as to Mrs Lupex. "You know the Dales down at
+Allington, of course," said the earl.
+
+"Oh, yes, I know them."
+
+"But, perhaps, you never met the colonel."
+
+"I don't think I ever did."
+
+"He's a queer sort of fellow--very well in his way, but he never does
+anything. He and my sister live at Torquay, and as far as I can find
+out, they neither of them have any occupation of any sort. He's come up
+to town now because we both had to meet our family lawyers and sign
+some papers, but he looks on the journey as a great hardship. As for
+me, I'm a year older than he is, but I wouldn't mind going up and down
+from Guestwick every day."
+
+"It's looking after the bull that does it," said Eames.
+
+"By George! you're right, Master Johnny. My sister and Crofts may tell
+me what they like, but when a man's out in the open air for eight or
+nine hours every day, it doesn't much matter where he goes to sleep
+after that. This is Pawkins's--capital good house, but not so good as it
+used to be while old Pawkins was alive. Show Mr Eames up into a bedroom
+to wash his hands."
+
+Colonel Dale was much like his brother in face, but was taller, even
+thinner, and apparently older. When Eames went into the sitting-room,
+the colonel was there alone, and had to take upon himself the trouble
+of introducing himself. He did not get up from his arm-chair, but
+nodded gently at the young man.
+
+"Mr Eames, I believe? I knew your father at Guestwick, a great many
+years ago;" then he turned his face back towards the fire and sighed.
+
+"It's got very cold this afternoon," said Johnny, trying to make
+conversation.
+
+"It's always cold in London," said the colonel.
+
+"If you had to be here in August you wouldn't say so."
+
+"God forbid," said the colonel, and he sighed again, with his eyes
+fixed upon the fire. Eames had heard of the very gallant way in which
+Orlando Dale had persisted in running away with Lord de Guest's sister,
+in opposition to very terrible obstacles, and as he now looked at the
+intrepid lover, he thought that there must have been a great change
+since those days. After that nothing more was said till the earl came
+down.
+
+Pawkins's house was thoroughly old-fashioned in all things, and the
+Pawkins of that day himself stood behind the earl's elbow when the
+dinner began, and himself removed the cover from the soup tureen. Lord
+de Guest did not require much personal attention, but he would have
+felt annoyed if this hadn't been done. As it was he had a civil word to
+say to Pawkins about the fat cattle, thereby showing that he did not
+mistake Pawkins for one of the waiters. Pawkins then took his
+lordship's orders about the wine and retired.
+
+"He keeps up the old house pretty well," said the earl to his
+brother-in-law. "It isn't like what it was thirty years ago, but then
+everything of that sort has got worse and worse."
+
+"I suppose it has," said the colonel. "I remember when old Pawkins had
+as good a glass of port as I've got at home--or nearly. They can't get
+it now, you know."
+
+"I never drink port," said the colonel. "I seldom take anything after
+dinner, except a little negus."
+
+His brother-in-law said nothing, but made a most eloquent grimace as he
+turned his face towards his soup-plate. Eames saw it, and could hardly
+refrain from laughing. When, at half-past nine o'clock, the colonel
+retired from the room, the earl, as the door was closed, threw up his
+hands, and uttered the one word "negus!" Then Eames took heart of grace
+and had his laughter out.
+
+The dinner was very dull, and before the colonel went to bed Johnny
+regretted that he had been induced to dine at Pawkins's. It might be a
+very fine thing to be asked to dinner with an earl; and John Eames had
+perhaps received at his office some little accession of dignity from
+the circumstance, of which he had been not unpleasantly aware; but, as
+he sat at the table, on which there were four or five apples and a
+plate of dried nuts, looking at the earl, as he endeavoured to keep his
+eyes open, and at the colonel, to whom it seemed absolutely a matter of
+indifference whether his companions were asleep or awake, he confessed
+to himself that the price he was paying was almost too dear. Mrs
+Roper's tea-table was not pleasant to him, but even that would have
+been preferable to the black dinginess of Pawkins's mahogany, with the
+company of two tired old men, with whom he seemed to have no mutual
+subject of conversation. Once or twice he tried a word with the
+colonel, for the colonel sat with his eyes open looking at the fire.
+But he was answered with monosyllables, and it was evident to him that
+the colonel did not wish to talk. To sit still, with his hands closed
+over each other on his lap, was work enough for Colonel Dale during his
+after-dinner hours.
+
+But the earl knew what was going on. During that terrible conflict
+between him and his slumber, in which the drowsy god fairly vanquished
+him for some twenty minutes, his conscience was always accusing him of
+treating his guests badly. He was very angry with himself, and tried to
+arouse himself and talk. But his brother-in-law would not help him' in
+his efforts; and even Eames was not bright in rendering him assistance.
+Then for twenty minutes he slept soundly, and at the end of that he
+woke himself with one of his own snorts.
+
+"By George!" he said, jumping up and standing on the rug, "we'll have
+some coffee"; and after that he did not sleep any more.
+
+"Dale," said he, "won't you take some more wine?
+
+"Nothing more," said the colonel, still looking at the fire, and
+shaking his head very slowly.
+
+"Come, Johnny, fill your glass." He had already got into the way of
+calling his young friend Johnny, having found that Mrs Eames generally
+spoke of her son by that name.
+
+"I have been filling my glass all the time," said Eames, taking the
+decanter again in his hand as he spoke.
+
+"I'm glad you've found something to amuse you, for it has seemed to me
+that you and Dale haven't had much to say to each other. I've been
+listening all the time."
+
+"You've been asleep," said the colonel.
+
+"Then there's been some excuse for my holding my tongue," said the earl.
+
+"By-the-by, Dale, what do you think of that fellow Crosbie?"
+
+Eames's ears were instantly on the alert, and the spirit of dullness
+vanished from him.
+
+"Think of him?" said the colonel. "He ought to have every bone in his
+skin broken," said the earl.
+
+"So he ought," said Eames, getting up from his chair in his eagerness,
+and speaking in a tone somewhat louder than was perhaps becoming in the
+presence of his seniors. "So he ought, my lord. He is the most
+abominable rascal that ever I met in my life. I wish I was Lily Dale's
+brother." Then he sat down again, remembering that he was speaking in
+the presence of Lily's uncle, and of the father of Bernard Dale, who
+might be, supposed to occupy the place of Lily's brother.
+
+The colonel turned his head round, and looked at the young man with
+surprise.
+
+"I beg your pardon, sir," said Eames, "but I have known Mrs Dale and
+your nieces all my life."
+
+"Oh, have you?" said the colonel.
+
+"Nevertheless it is, perhaps, as well not to make too free with a young
+lady's name. Not that I blame you in the least, Mr Eames."
+
+"I should think not," said the earl.
+
+"I honour him for his feeling. Johnny, my boy, if ever I am unfortunate
+enough to meet that man, I shall tell him my mind, and I believe you
+will do the same." On hearing this John Eames winked at the earl, and
+made a motion with his head towards the colonel, whose back was turned
+to him. And then the earl winked back at Eames.
+
+"De Guest," said the colonel, "I think I'll go upstairs; I always have
+a little arrowroot in my own room."
+
+"I'll ring the bell for a candle," said the host. Then the colonel
+went, and as the door was closed behind him, the earl raised his two
+hands and uttered that single word, "negus!" Whereupon Johnny burst out
+laughing, and coming round to the fire, sat himself down in the
+arm-chair which the colonel had left.
+
+"I've no doubt it's all right," said the earl; "but I shouldn't like to
+drink negus myself, nor yet to have arrowroot up in my bedroom."
+
+"I don't suppose there's any harm in it."
+
+"Oh dear, no; I wonder what Pawkins says about him. But I suppose they
+have them of all sorts in an hotel."
+
+"The waiter didn't seem to think much of it when he brought it."
+
+"No, no. If he'd asked for senna and salts, the waiter wouldn't have
+showed any surprise. By-the-by, you touched him up about that poor
+girl."
+
+"Did I, my lord? I didn't mean it."
+
+"You see he's Bernard Dale's father, and the question is, whether
+Bernard shouldn't punish the fellow for what he has done. Somebody
+ought to do it. It isn't right that he should escape. Somebody ought to
+let Mr Crosbie know what a scoundrel he has made himself."
+
+"I'd do it tomorrow, only I'm afraid--"
+
+"No, no, no," said the earl; "you are not the right person at all. What
+have you got to do with it? You've merely known them as family friends,
+but that's not enough."
+
+"No, I suppose not," said Eames, sadly.
+
+"Perhaps it's best as it is," said the earl. "I don't know that any
+good would be got by knocking him over the head. And if we are to be
+Christians, I suppose we ought to be Christians."
+
+"What sort of a Christian has he been?"
+
+"That's true enough; and if I was Bernard, I should be very apt to
+forget my Bible lessons about meekness."
+
+"Do you know, my lord, I should think it the most Christian thing in
+the world to pitch into him; I should, indeed. There are some things
+for which a man ought to be beaten black and blue."
+
+"So that he shouldn't do them again?"
+
+"Exactly. You might say it isn't Christian to hang a man."
+
+"I'd always hang a murderer. It wasn't right to hang men for stealing
+sheep."
+
+"Much better hang such a fellow as Crosbie," said Eames.
+
+"Well, I believe so. If any fellow wanted now to curry favour with the
+young lady, what an opportunity he'd have."
+
+Johnny remained silent for a moment or two before he answered.
+
+"I'm not so sure of that," he said; mournfully, as though grieving at
+the thought that there was no chance of currying favour with Lily by
+thrashing her late lover.
+
+"I don't pretend to know much about girls," said Lord de Guest; "but I
+should think it would be so. I should fancy that nothing would please
+her so much as hearing that he had caught it, and that all the world
+knew that he'd caught it." The earl had declared that he didn't know
+much about, girls, and in so saving, he was no doubt right.
+
+"If I thought so," said Eames," I'd find him out tomorrow."
+
+"Why so? what difference does it make to you?" Then there was another
+pause, during which Johnny looked very sheepish.
+
+"You don't mean to say that you're in love with Miss Lily Dale?"
+
+"I don't know much about being in love with her," said Johnny, turning
+very red as he spoke. And then he made up his mind, in a wild sort of
+way, to tell all the truth to his friend. Pawkins's port wine may,
+perhaps, have something to do with the resolution. "But I'd go through
+fire and water for her, my lord. I knew her years before he had ever
+seen her, and have loved her a great deal better than he will ever love
+any one. When I heard that she had accepted him, I had half a mind to
+cut my own throat--or else his."
+
+"Highty tighty," said the earl.
+
+"It's very ridiculous, I know," said Johnny, "and, of course, she would
+never have accepted me."
+
+"I don't see that at all."
+
+"I haven't a shilling in the world."
+
+"Girls don't care much for that."
+
+"And then a clerk in the Income-tax Office! It's such a poor thing."
+
+"The other fellow was only a clerk in another office."
+
+The earl living down at Guestwick did not understand, that the
+Income-tax Office in the city, and the General Committee Office at
+Whitehall, were as far apart as Dives and Lazarus and separated by as
+impassable a gulf.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Johnny; "but his office is another kind of thing, and
+then he was a swell himself."
+
+"By George, I don't see it," said the earl.
+
+"I don't wonder a bit at her accepting a fellow like that. I hated him
+the first moment I saw him; but that's no reason she should hate him.
+He had that sort of manner, you know. He was a swell, and girls like
+that kind of thing. I never felt angry with her, but I could have eaten
+him." As he spoke he looked as though he would have made some such
+attempt had Crosbie been present.
+
+"Did you ever ask her to have you?" said the earl.
+
+"No; how could I ask her, when I hadn't bread to give her?"
+
+"And you never told her that you were in love with her, I mean, and all
+that kind of thing."
+
+"She knows it now," said Johnny;
+
+"I went to say good-bye to her the other day when I thought she was
+going to be married. I could not help telling her then."
+
+"But it seems to me, my dear fellow, that you ought to be very much
+obliged to Crosbie--that is to say, if you've a mind to--"
+
+"I know what you mean, my lord. I am not a bit obliged to him. It's my
+belief that all this will about kill her. As to myself, if I thought
+she'd ever have me--"
+
+Then he was again silent, and the earl could see that the tears were in
+his eyes.
+
+"I think I begin to understand it," said the earl, "and I'll give you a
+bit of advice. You come down and spend your Christmas with me at
+Guestwick."
+
+"Oh, my lord!"
+
+"Never mind my-lording me, but do as I tell you. Lady Julia sent you a
+message, though I forgot all about it till now. She wants to thank you
+herself for what you did in the field."
+
+"That's all nonsense, my lord."
+
+"Very well; you can tell her so. You may take my word for this, too--my
+sister hates Crosbie quite as much as you do. I think she'd pitch into
+him, as you call it, herself, if she knew how. You come down to
+Guestwick for the Christmas, and then go over to Allington and tell
+them all plainly what you mean."
+
+"I couldn't say a word to her now."
+
+"Say it to the squire, then. Go to him, and tell him what you
+mean--holding your head up like a man. Don't talk to me about swells.
+The man who means honestly is the best swell I know. He's the only
+swell I recognise. Go to old Dale, and say you come from me--from
+Guestwick Manor. Tell him that if he'll put a little stick under the
+pot to make it boil, I'll put a bigger one. He'll understand what that
+means."
+
+"Oh, no, my lord."
+
+"But I say, oh, yes;" and the earl, who was now standing on the rug
+before the fire, dug his hands deep down into his trousers' pockets.
+"I'm very fond of that girl, and would do much for her. You ask Lady
+Julia if I didn't say so to her before I ever knew of your casting a
+sheep's-eye that way. And I've a sneaking kindness for you too, Master
+Johnny. Lord bless you, I knew your father as well as I ever knew any
+man; and to tell the truth, I believe I helped to ruin him. He held
+land of me, you know, and there can't be any doubt that he did ruin
+himself. He knew no more about a beast when he'd done, than--than--than
+that waiter. If he'd gone on to this day he wouldn't have been any
+wiser." Johnny sat silent, with his eyes full of tears. What was he to
+say to his friend?
+
+"You come down with me," continued the earl, "and you'll find we'll
+make it all straight. I dare say you're right about not speaking to the
+girl just at present. But tell everything to the uncle, and then to the
+mother. And, above all things, never think that you're not good enough
+yourself. A man should never think that. My belief is that in life
+people will take you very much at your own reckoning. If you are made
+of dirt, like that fellow Crosbie, you'll be found out at last, no
+doubt. But then I don't think you are made of dirt."
+
+"I hope not."
+
+"And so do I. You can come down, I suppose, with me the day after
+tomorrow?"
+
+"I'm afraid not. I have had all my leave."
+
+"Shall I write to old Buffle, and ask it as a favour?"
+"No," said Johnny; "I shouldn't like that. But I'll see tomorrow, and
+then I'll let you know. I can go down by the mail train on Saturday, at
+any rate."
+
+"That won't be comfortable. See and come with me if you can. Now,
+good-night, my dear fellow, and remember this--when I say a thing I mean
+it. I think I may boast that I never yet went back from my word."
+
+The earl as he spoke gave his left hand to his guest, and looking
+somewhat grandly up over the young man's head, he tapped his own breast
+thrice with his right hand. As he went through the little scene, John
+Eames felt that he was every inch an earl.
+
+"I don't know what to say to you, my lord."
+
+"Say nothing--not a word more to me. But say to yourself that faint
+heart never won fair lady. Good-night, my dear boy, good-night. I dine
+out tomorrow, but you can call and let me know at about six."
+
+Eames then left the room without another word, and walked out into the
+cold air of Jermyn Street. The moon was clear and bright, and the
+pavement in the shining light seemed to be as clean as a lady's hand.
+All the world was altered to him since he had entered Pawkins's Hotel.
+Was it then possible that Lily Dale might even yet become his wife?
+Could it be true that he, even now, was in a position to go boldly to
+the Squire of Allington, and tell him what were his views with
+reference to Lily? And how far would he be justified in taking the earl
+at his word? Some incredible amount of wealth would be required before
+he could marry Lily Dale. Two or three hundred pounds a year at the
+very least! The earl could not mean him to understand that any such sum
+as that would be made up with such an object! Nevertheless he resolved
+as he walked home to Burton Crescent that he would go down to
+Guestwick, and that he would obey the earl's behest. As regarded Lily
+herself he felt that nothing could be said to her for many a long day
+as yet.
+
+"Oh, John, how late you are!" said Amelia, slipping out from the back
+parlour as he let himself in with his latch key.
+
+"Yes, I am very late," said John, taking his candle, and passing her by
+on the stairs without another word.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIII
+
+"THE TIME WILL COME"
+
+"Did you hear that young Eames is staying at Guestwick Manor?"
+
+As these were the first words which the squire spoke to Mrs Dale as
+they walked together up to the Great House, after church, on Christmas
+Day, it was clear enough that the tidings of Johnny's visit, when told
+to him, had made some impression.
+
+"At Guestwick Manor!" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Dear me! Do you hear that, Bell? There's promotion for Master Johnny!"
+
+"Don't you remember, mamma," said Bell, "that he helped his lordship in
+his trouble with the bull?"
+
+Lily, who remembered accurately all the passages of her last interview
+with John Eames, said nothing, but felt, in some sort, sore at the idea
+that he should be so near her at such a time.
+
+In some unconscious way she had liked him for coming to her and saying
+all that he did say. She, valued him more highly after that scene than
+she did before. But now, she would feel herself injured and hurt if he
+ever made his way into her presence under circumstances as they existed.
+
+"I should not have thought that Lord de Guest was the man to show so
+much gratitude for so slight a favour," said the squire.
+
+"However, I'm going to dine there tomorrow."
+
+"To meet young Eames?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Yes--especially to meet young Eames. At least, I've been very specially
+asked to come, and I've been told that he is to be there."
+
+"And is Bernard going?"
+
+"Indeed I'm not," said Bernard, "I shall come over and dine with you."
+
+A half-formed idea flitted across Lily's mind, teaching her to imagine
+for a moment that she might possibly be concerned in this arrangement.
+But the thought vanished as quickly as it came, merely leaving some
+soreness behind it. There are certain maladies which make the whole
+body sore. The patient, let him be touched on any point--let him even be
+nearly touched--will roar with agony as though his whole body had been
+bruised. So it is also with maladies of he mind. Sorrows such as that
+of poor Lily leave the heart sore at every point, and compel the
+sufferer to be ever in fear of new wounds. Lily bore her cross bravely
+and well; but not the less did it weigh heavily upon her at every turn
+because she had the strength to walk as though she did not bear it.
+Nothing happened to her, or in her presence, that did not in some way
+connect itself with her misery. Her uncle was going over to meet John
+Eames at Lord de Guest's. Of course the men there would talk about her,
+and all such talking was an injury to her.
+
+The afternoon of that day did not pass away brightly. As long as the
+servants were in the room the dinner went on much as other dinners. At
+such times a certain amount of hypocrisy must always be practised in
+closely domestic circles. At mixed dinner-parties people can talk
+before Richard and William the same words that they would use if
+Richard and William were not there. People so mixed do not talk
+together their inward home thoughts. But when close friends are
+together, a little conscious reticence is practised till the door is
+tiled. At such a meeting as this that conscious reticence was of
+service, and created an effect which was salutary. When the door was
+tiled, and when the servants were gone, how could they be merry
+together? By what mirth should the beards be made to wag on that
+Christmas Day?
+
+"My father has been up in town," said Bernard.
+
+"He was with Lord de Guest at Pawkins's."
+
+"Why didn't you go and see him?" asked Mrs Dale.
+
+"Well, I don't know. He did not seem to wish it. I shall go down to
+Torquay in February. I must be up in London you know, in a fortnight,
+for good." Then they were all silent again for a few minutes. If
+Bernard could have owned the truth, he would have acknowledged that he
+had not gone up to London, because he did not yet know how to treat
+Crosbie when he should meet him. His thoughts on this matter threw some
+sort of shadow across poor Lily's mind, making her feel that her wound
+was again opened.
+
+"I want him to give up his profession altogether," said the squire,
+speaking firmly and slowly. "It would be better, I think, for both of
+us that he should do so."
+
+"Would it be wise at his time of life," said Mrs Dale, "and when he has
+been doing so well?"
+
+"I think it would be wise. If he were my son it would be thought better
+that he should live here upon the property, among the people who are to
+become his tenants, than remain up in London, or perhaps be sent to
+India. He has one profession as the heir of this place, and that, I
+think, should he enough."
+
+"I should have but an idle life of it down here," said Bernard.
+
+"That would be your own fault. But if you did as I would have you, your
+life would not be idle." In this he was alluding to Bernard's proposed
+marriage, but as to that nothing further could be said in Bell's
+presence. Bell understood it all, and sat quite silent, with demure
+countenance--perhaps even with something of sternness in her face.
+
+"But the fact is," said Mrs Dale, speaking in a low tone, and having
+well considered what she was about to say, "that Bernard is not exactly
+the same as your son."
+
+"Why not?" said the squire. "I have even offered to settle the property
+on him if he will leave the service."
+
+"You do not owe him so much as you would owe your son--and, therefore,
+he does not owe you as much as he would owe his father."
+
+"If you mean that I cannot constrain him, I know that well enough. As
+regards money, I have offered to do for him quite as much as any father
+would feel called upon to do for an only son."
+
+"I hope you don't think me ungrateful," said Bernard.
+
+"No, I do not; but I think you unmindful. I have nothing more to say
+about it, however--not about that. If you should marry--"And then he
+stopped himself, feeling that he could not go on in Bell's presence.
+
+"If he should marry," said Mrs Dale, "it may well be that his wife
+would like a house of her own."
+
+"Wouldn't she have this house?" said the squire, angrily. "Isn't it
+big enough? I only want one room for myself, and I'd give up that if it
+were necessary."
+
+"That's nonsense," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"It isn't nonsense," said the squire.
+
+"You'll be squire of Allington for the next twenty years," said Mrs
+Dale. "And as long as you are the squire, you'll be master of this
+house; at least, I hope so. I don't approve of monarchs abdicating in
+favour of young people."
+
+"I don't think Uncle Christopher would look at all well like Charles
+the Fifth," said Lily.
+
+"I would always keep a cell for you, my darling, if I did," said the
+squire, regarding her with that painful, special tenderness. Lily, who
+was sitting next to Mrs Dale, put her hand out secretly and got hold of
+her mother's, thereby indicating that she did not intend to occupy the
+cell offered to her by her uncle; or to look to him as the companion of
+her monastic seclusion. After that there was nothing more then said as
+to Bernard's prospects.
+
+"Mrs Hearn is dining at the vicarage, I suppose?" asked the squire.
+
+"Yes; she went in after church," said Bell.
+
+"I saw her go with Mrs Boyce."
+
+"She told me she never would dine with them again after dark in
+winter," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"The last time she was there, the boy let the lamp blow out as she was
+going home, and she lost her way. The truth was, she was angry because
+Mr Boyce didn't go with her."
+
+"She's always angry," said the squire.
+
+"She hardly speaks to me now. When she paid her rent the other day to
+Jolliffe, she said she hoped it would do me much good; as though she
+thought me a brute for taking it."
+
+"So she does," said Bernard.
+
+"She's very old, you know," said Bell.
+
+"I'd give her the house for nothing, if I were you, uncle," said Lily.
+
+"No, my dear; if you were me you would not. I should be very wrong to
+do so. Why should Mrs Hearn have her house for nothing, any more than
+her meat or her clothes? It would be much more reasonable were I to
+give her so much money into her hand yearly; but it would be wrong in
+me to do so, seeing that she is not an object of charity--and it would
+be wrong in her to take it."
+
+"And she wouldn't take it," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I don't think she would. But if she did, I'm sure she would grumble
+because it wasn't double the amount. And if Mr Boyce had gone home with
+her, she would have grumbled because he walked too fast."
+
+"She is very old," said Bell, again.
+
+"But, nevertheless, she ought to know better than to speak
+disparagingly of me to my servants. She should have more respect for
+herself." And the squire showed by the tone of his voice that he
+thought very much about it.
+
+It was very long and very dull that Christmas evening, making Bernard
+feel strongly that he would be very foolish to give up his profession,
+and tie himself down to a life at Allington. Women are more accustomed
+than men to long, dull, unemployed hours; and, therefore, Mrs Dale and
+her daughters bore the tedium courageously. While he yawned, stretched
+himself, and went in and out of the room, they sat demurely, listening
+as the squire laid down the law on small matters, and contradicting him
+occasionally when the spirit of either of them prompted her specially
+to do so.
+
+"Of course you know much better than I do," he would say.
+
+"Not at all," Mrs Dale would answer.
+
+"I don't pretend to know anything about it. But--"So the evening wore
+itself away; and when the squire was left alone at half-past nine, he
+did not feel that the day had passed badly with him. That was his style
+of life, and he expected no more from it than he got. He did not look
+to find things very pleasant, and, if not happy, he was, at any rate,
+contented.
+
+"Only think of Johnny Eames being at Guestwick Manor!" said Bell, as
+they were going home.
+
+"I don't see why he shouldn't be there," said Lily.
+
+"I would rather it should be he than I, because Lady Julia is so
+grumpy."
+
+"But asking your Uncle Christopher especially to meet him!" said Mrs
+Dale.
+
+"There must be some reason for it." Then Lily felt the soreness come
+upon her again, and spoke no further upon the subject.
+
+We all know that there was a special reason, and that Lily's soreness
+was not false in its mysterious forebodings. Eames, on the evening
+after his dinner at Pawkins's, had seen the earl, and explained to him
+that he could not leave town till the Saturday evening; but that he
+could remain over the Tuesday. He must be at his office by twelve on
+Wednesday, and could manage to do that by an early train, from
+Guestwick.
+
+"Very well, Johnny," said the earl, talking to his young friend with
+the bedroom candle in his hand, as he was going up to dress.
+
+"Then I'll tell you what; I've been thinking of it. I'll ask Dale to
+come over to dinner on Tuesday; and if he'll come, I'll explain the
+whole matter to him myself. He's a man of business, and he'll
+understand. If he won't come, why then you must go over to Allington,
+and find him, if you can, on the Tuesday morning; or I'll go to him
+myself, which will be better. You mustn't keep me now, as I am ever so
+much too late."
+
+Eames did not attempt to keep him, but went away feeling that the whole
+matter was being arranged for him in a very wonderful way. And when he
+got to Allington he found that the squire had accepted the earl's
+invitation. Then he declared to himself that there was no longer any
+possibility of retractation for him. Of course he did not wish to
+retract. The one great longing of his life was to call Lily Dale his
+own. But he felt afraid of the squire--that the squire would despise him
+and snub him, and that the earl would perceive that he had made a
+mistake when he saw how his client was scorned and snubbed. It was
+arranged that the earl was to take the squire into his own room for a
+few minutes before dinner, and Johnny felt that he would be hardly able
+to stand his ground in the drawing-room when the two old men should
+make their appearance together.
+
+He got on very well with Lady Julia, who gave herself no airs, and made
+herself very civil. Her brother had told her the whole story, and she
+felt as anxious as he did to provide Lily with another husband in place
+of that horrible man Crosbie.
+
+"She has been very fortunate in her escape," she said to her brother;
+"very fortunate." The earl agreed with this, saying that in his opinion
+his own favourite Johnny would make much the nicer lover of the two.
+But Lady Julia had her doubts as to Lily's acquiescence.
+
+"But, Theodore, he must not speak to Miss Lilian Dale herself about it
+yet a while."
+
+"No," said the earl, "not for a month or so."
+
+"He will have a better chance if he can remain silent for six months,"
+said Lady Julia.
+
+"Bless my soul! somebody else will have picked her up before that,"
+said the earl.
+
+In answer to this Lady Julia merely shook her head.
+
+Johnny went over to his mother on Christmas Day after church, and was
+received by her and by his sister with great honour. And she gave him
+many injunctions as to his behaviour at the earl's table, even
+descending to small details about his boots and linen. But Johnny had
+already begun to feel at the Manor that, after all, people are not so
+very different in their ways of life as they are supposed to be. Lady
+Julia's manners were certainly not quite those of Mrs Roper; but she
+made the tea very much in the way in which it was made at Burton
+Crescent, and Eames found that he could eat his egg, at any rate on the
+second morning, without any tremor in his hand, in spite of the coronet
+on the silver egg-cup. He did feel himself to be rather out of his
+place in the Manor pew on the Sunday, conceiving that all the
+congregation was looking at him; but he got over this on Christmas Day,
+and sat quite comfortably in his soft corner during the sermon, almost
+going to sleep. And when he walked with the earl after church to the
+gate over which the noble peer had climbed in his agony, and inspected
+the hedge through which he had thrown himself, he was quite at home
+with his little jokes, bantering his august companion as to the mode of
+his somersault. But be it always remembered that there are two modes in
+which a young man may he free and easy with his elder and superior--the
+mode pleasant and the mode offensive. Had it been in Johnny's nature to
+try the latter, the earl's back would soon have been up, and the play
+would have been over. But it was not in Johnny's nature to do so, and
+therefore it was that the earl liked him.
+
+At last came the hour of dinner on Tuesday, or at least the hour at
+which the squire had been asked to show himself at the Manor House.
+Eames, as by agreement with his patron, did not come down so as to show
+himself till after the interview. Lady Julia, who had been present at
+their discussions, had agreed to receive the squire; and then a servant
+was to ask him to step into the earl's own room. It was pretty to see
+the way in which the three conspired together, planning and plotting
+with an eagerness that was beautifully green and fresh.
+
+"He can be as cross as an old stick when he likes it," said the earl,
+speaking of the squire, "and we must take care not to rub him the wrong
+way."
+
+"I shan't know what to say to him when I come down," said Johnny.
+
+"Just shake hands with him and don't say anything," said Lady Julia.
+
+"I'll give him some port wine that ought to soften his heart," said the
+earl, "and then we'll see how he is in the evening."
+
+Eames heard the wheels of the squire's little open carriage and
+trembled. The squire, unconscious of all schemes, soon found himself
+with Lady Julia, and within two minutes of his entrance was walked off
+to the earl's private room.
+
+"Certainly," he said, "certainly"; and followed the man-servant. The
+earl, as he entered, was standing in the middle of the room, and his
+round rosy face was a picture of good humour.
+
+"I'm very glad you've come, Dale," said he.
+
+"I've something I want to say to you."
+
+Mr Dale, who neither in heart nor in manner was so light a man as the
+earl, took the proffered hand of his host, and bowed his head slightly,
+signifying that he was willing to listen to anything.
+
+"I think I told you," continued the earl, "that young John Eames is
+down here; but he goes back tomorrow, as they can't spare him at his
+office. He's a very good fellow--as far as I am able to judge, an
+uncommonly good young man. I've taken a great fancy to him myself."
+In answer to this Mr Dale did not say much. He sat down, and in some
+general terms expressed his good-will towards all the Eames family.
+
+"As you know, Dale, I'm a very bad hand at talking, and therefore I
+won't beat about the bush in what I've got to say at present. Of course
+we've all heard of that scoundrel Crosbie, and the way he has treated
+your niece Lilian."
+
+"He is a scoundrel--an unmixed scoundrel. But the less we say about that
+the better. It is ill mentioning a girl's name in such a matter as
+that."
+
+"But, my dear Dale, I must mention it at the present moment. Dear young
+child, I would do anything to comfort her! And I hope that something
+may be done to comfort her. 'Do you know that that young man was in
+love with her long before Crosbie ever saw her?"
+
+"What--John Eames!"
+
+"Yes, John Eames. And I wish heartily for his sake that he had won her
+regard before she had met that rascal whom you had to stay down at your
+house."
+
+"A man cannot help these things, De Guest," said the squire.
+
+"No, no, no! There are such men about the world, and it is impossible
+to know them at a glance. He was my nephew's friend, and I am not going
+to say that my nephew was in fault. But I wish--I only say that I
+wish--she had first known what are this young man's feelings towards
+her."
+
+"But she might not have thought of him as you do."
+
+"He is an uncommonly good-looking young fellow; straight made, broad in
+the chest, with a good, honest eye, and a young man's proper courage.
+He has never been taught to give himself airs like a dancing monkey;
+but I think he's all the better for that."
+
+"But it's too late now, De Guest."
+
+"No, no; that's just where it is. It mustn't be too late! That child is
+not to lose her whole life because a villain has played her false. Of
+course she'll suffer. Just at present it wouldn't do, I suppose, to
+talk to her about a new sweetheart. But, Dale, the time will come; the
+time will come--the time always does come."
+
+"It has never come to you and me," said the squire, with the slightest
+possible smile on his dry cheeks. The story of their lives had been so
+far the same; each had loved, and each had been disappointed, and then
+each had remained single through life.
+
+"Yes, it has," said the earl, with no slight touch of feeling and even
+of romance in what he said.
+
+"We have retricked our beams in our own ways, and our lives have not
+been desolate. But for her--you and her mother will look forward to see
+her married some day."
+
+"I have not thought about it."
+
+"But I want you to think about it. I want to interest you in this
+fellow's favour; and in doing so, I mean to be very open with you. I
+suppose you'll give her something?"
+
+"I don't know, I'm sure," said the squire almost offended at an inquiry
+of such a nature.
+
+"Well, then, whether you do or not, I'll give him something," said the
+earl.
+
+"I shouldn't have ventured to meddle in the matter had I not intended
+to put myself in such a position with reference to him as would justify
+me in asking the question." And the peer as he spoke drew himself up to
+his full height.
+
+"If such a match can be made, it shall not be a bad marriage for your
+niece in a pecuniary point of view. I shall have pleasure in giving to
+him; but I shall have more pleasure if she can share what I give."
+
+"She ought to be very much obliged to you," said the squire.
+
+"I think she would be if she knew young Eames. I hope the day may come
+when she will be so. I hope that you and I may see them happy together,
+and that you too may thank me for having assisted in making them so.
+Shall we go in to Lady Julia now?" The earl had felt that he had not
+quite succeeded; that his offer had been accepted somewhat coldly, and
+had not much hope that further good could be done on that day, even
+with the help of his best port wine.
+
+"Half a moment," said the squire.
+
+"There are matters as to which I never find myself able to speak
+quickly, and this certainly seems to be one of them. If you will allow
+me I will think over what you have said, and then see you again."
+
+"Certainly, certainly."
+
+"But for your own part in the matter, for your great generosity and
+kind heart, I beg to offer you my warmest thanks." Then the squire
+bowed low, and preceded the earl out of the room.
+
+Lord de Guest still felt that he had not succeeded. We may probably
+say, looking at the squire's character and peculiarities, that no
+marked success was probable at the first opening--out of such a subject.
+He had said of himself that he was never able to speak quickly in
+matters of moment; but he would more correctly have described his own
+character had he declared that he could not think of them quickly. As
+it was, the earl was disappointed; but had he been able to read the
+squire's mind, his disappointment would have been less strong. Mr Dale
+knew well enough that he was being treated well, and that the effort
+being made was intended with kindness to those belonging to him; but it
+was not in his nature to be demonstrative and quick at expressions of
+gratitude. So he entered the drawing-room with a cold, placid face,
+leading Eames, and Lady Julia also, to suppose that no good had been
+done.
+
+"How do you do, sir?" said Johnny, walking up to him in a wild sort of
+manner--going through a premeditated lesson, but doing it without any
+presence of mind.
+
+"How do you do, Eames?" said the squire, speaking with a very cold
+voice. And then there was nothing further said till the dinner was
+announced.
+
+"Dale, I know you drink port," said the earl when Lady Julia left them.
+
+"If you say you don't like that, I shall say you know nothing about it."
+
+"Ah! that's the '20," said the squire, tasting it.
+
+"I should rather think it is," said the earl. I was lucky enough to get
+it early, and it hasn't been moved for thirty years. I like to give it
+to a man who knows it, as you do, at the first glance. Now there's my
+friend Johnny there; it's thrown away upon him."
+
+"No, my lord, it is not. I think it's uncommonly nice."
+
+"Uncommonly nice! So is champagne, or ginger-beer, or lollipops--for
+those who like them. Do you mean to tell me you can taste wine with
+half a pickled orange in your mouth?"
+
+"It'll come to him soon enough," said the squire.
+
+"Twenty port won't come to him when he is as old as we are," said the
+earl, forgetting that by that time sixty port will be as wonderful to
+the then living seniors of the age as was his own pet vintage to him.
+
+The good wine did in some sort soften the squire; but, as a matter of
+course, nothing further was said as to the new matrimonial scheme. The
+earl did observe, however, that Mr Dale was civil, and even kind, to
+his own young friend, asking a question here and there as to his life
+in London, and saying something about the work at the Income-tax Office.
+
+"It is hard work," said Eames.
+
+"If you're under the line, they make a great row about it, send for
+you, and look at you as though you'd been robbing the bank; but they
+think nothing of keeping you till five."
+
+"But how long do you have for lunch and reading the papers?" said the
+earl.
+
+"Not ten minutes. We take a paper among twenty of us for half the day.
+That's exactly nine minutes to each; and as for lunch, we only have a
+biscuit dipped in ink."
+
+"Dipped in ink!" said the squire.
+
+"It comes to that, for you have to be writing while you munch it."
+
+"I hear all about you," said the earl;
+
+"Sir Raffle Buffle is an old crony of mine."
+
+"I don't suppose he ever heard my name as yet" said Johnny.
+
+"But do you really know him well, Lord de Guest?"
+
+"Haven't seen him these thirty years; but I did know him."
+
+"We call him old Huffle Scuffle."
+
+"Huffle Scuffle! Ha, ha, ha! He always was Huffle Scuffle; a noisy,
+pretentious, empty-headed fellow. But I oughtn't to say so before you,
+young man. Come, we'll go into the drawing-room."
+
+"And what did he say?" asked Lady Julia, as soon as the squire was gone.
+
+There was no attempt at concealment, and the question was asked in
+Johnny's presence.
+
+"Well, he did not say much. And coming from him, that ought to be taken
+as a good sign. He is to think of it, and let me see him again. You
+hold your head up, Johnny, and remember that you shan't want a friend
+on your side. Faint heart never won fair lady."
+
+At seven o'clock on the following morning Eames started on his return
+journey, and was at his desk at twelve o'clock--as per agreement with
+his taskmaster at the Income-tax Office.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIV
+
+THE COMBAT
+
+I have said that John Eames was at his office punctually at twelve; but
+an incident had happened before his arrival there very important in the
+annals which are now being told--so important that it is essentially
+necessary that it should be described with some minuteness of detail.
+
+Lord de Guest, in the various conversations which he had had with Eames
+as to Lily Dale and her present position, had always spoken of Crosbie
+with the most vehement abhorrence.
+
+"He is a damned blackguard," said the earl, and the fire had come out
+of his round eyes as he spoke. Now the earl was by no means given to
+cursing and swearing, in the sense which is ordinarily applied to these
+words. When he made use of such a phrase as that quoted above, it was
+to be presumed that he in some sort meant what he said; and so he did,
+and had intended to signify that Crosbie by his conduct had merited all
+such condemnation as was the fitting punishment for blackguardism of
+the worst description.
+
+"He ought to have his neck broken," said Johnny.
+
+"I don't know about that," said the earl.
+
+"The present times have become so pretty behaved that corporal
+punishment seems to have gone out of fashion. I shouldn't care so much
+about that, if any other punishment had taken its place. But it seems
+to me that a blackguard such as Crosbie can escape now altogether
+unscathed."
+
+"He hasn't escaped yet," said Johnny.
+
+"Don't you go and put your finger in the pie and make a fool of
+yourself," said the earl. If it had behoved any one to resent in any
+violent fashion the evil done by Crosbie, Bernard Dale, the earl's
+nephew, should have been the avenger. This the earl felt, but under
+these circumstances he was disposed to think that there should be no
+such violent vengeance..
+
+"Things were different when I was young," he said to himself. But Eames
+gathered from the earl's tone that the earl's words were not strictly
+in accordance with his thoughts, and he declared to himself over and
+over again that Crosbie had not yet escaped.
+
+He got into the train at Guestwick, taking a first-class ticket,
+because the earl's groom in livery was in attendance upon him. Had he
+been alone he would have gone in a cheaper carriage. Very weak in him,
+was it not? little also, and mean? My friend, can you say that you
+would not have done the same at his age? Are you quite sure that you
+would not do the same now that you are double his age? Be that as it
+may, Johnny Eames did that foolish thing, and gave the groom in livery
+half-a-crown into the bargain.
+
+"We shall have you down again soon, Mr John," said the groom, who
+seemed to understand that Mr Eames was to be made quite at home at the
+manor.
+
+He went fast to sleep in the carriage, and did not awake till the train
+was stopped at the Barchester Junction.
+
+"Waiting for the up-train from Barchester, sir," said the guard.
+"They're always late." Then he went to sleep again, and was aroused in
+a few minutes by some one entering the carriage in a great hurry. The
+branch train had come in, just as the guardians of the line then
+present had made up their minds that the passengers on the main line
+should not be kept waiting any longer. The transfer of men, women, and
+luggage was therefore made in great haste, and they who were now taking
+their new seats had hardly time to look about them. An old gentleman,
+very red about the gills, first came into Johnny's carriage, which up
+to that moment he had shared with an old lady. The old gentleman was
+abusing everybody, because he was hurried, and would not take himself
+well into the compartment, but stuck in the doorway, standing on the
+step.
+
+"Now, sir, when you're quite at leisure," said a voice behind the old
+man, which instantly made Eames start up in his seat.
+
+"I'm not at all at leisure," said the old man; "and I'm not going to
+break my legs if I know it."
+
+"Take your time, sir," said the guard.
+
+"So I mean," said the old man, seating himself in the corner nearest to
+the open door, opposite to the old lady. Then Eames saw plainly that it
+was Crosbie who had first spoken, and that he was getting into the
+carriage.
+
+Crosbie at the first glance saw no one but the old gentleman and the
+old lady, and he immediately made for the unoccupied corner seat. He
+was busy with his umbrella and his dressingbag, and a little flustered
+by the pushing and hurrying. The carriage was actually in motion before
+he perceived that John Eames was opposite to him: Eames had,
+instinctively, drawn up his legs so as not to touch him. He felt that
+he had become very red in the face, and to tell the truth, the
+perspiration had broken out upon his brow. It was a great
+occasion--great in its imminent trouble, and great in its opportunity
+for action. How was he to carry himself at the first moment of his
+recognition by his enemy, and what was he to do afterwards?
+
+It need hardly be explained that Crosbie had also been spending his
+Christmas with a certain earl of his acquaintance, and that he too was
+returning to his office. In one respect he had been much more fortunate
+than poor Eames, for he had been made happy with the smiles of his lady
+love. Alexandrina and the countess had fluttered about him softly,
+treating him as a tame chattel, now belonging to the noble house of De
+Courcy, and in this way he had been initiated into the inner
+domesticities of that illustrious family. The two extra men-servants,
+hired to wait upon Lady Dumbello, had vanished. The champagne had
+ceased to flow in a perennial stream. Lady Rosina had come out from her
+solitude, and had preached at him constantly. Lady Margaretta had given
+him some lessons in economy. The Honourable John, in spite of a late
+quarrel, had borrowed five pounds from him. The Honourable George had
+engaged to come and stay with his sister during the next May. The earl
+had used a father-in-law's privilege, and had called him a fool. Lady
+Alexandrina had told him more than once, in rather a tart voice, that
+this must be done, and that that must be done; and the countess had
+given him her orders as though it was his duty, in the course of
+nature, to obey every word that fell from her. Such had been his
+Christmas delights; and now, as he returned back from the enjoyment of
+them, he found himself confronted in the railway carriage with Johnny
+Eames.
+
+The eyes of the two met, and Crosbie made a slight inclination of the
+head. To this Eames gave no acknowledgment whatever, but looked
+straight into the other's face. Crosbie immediately saw that they were
+not to know each other, and was well contented that it should be so.
+Among all his many troubles, the enmity of John Eames did not go for
+much. He showed no appearance of being disconcerted, though our friend
+had shown much. He opened his bag, and taking out a book, was soon
+deeply engaged in it, pursuing his studies as though the man opposite
+was quite unknown to him. I will not say that his mind did not run away
+from his book, for indeed there were many things of which he found it
+impossible not to think; but it did not revert to John Eames. Indeed,
+when the carriages reached Paddington, he had in truth all but
+forgotten him; and as he stepped out of the carriage, with his bag in
+his hand, was quite free from any remotest trouble on his account.
+
+But it had not been so with Eames himself. Every moment of the journey
+had, for him been crowded with thought as to what he would do now that
+chance had brought his enemy within his reach. He had been made quite
+wretched by the intensity of his thinking; and yet, when the carriages
+stopped, he had not made up his mind. His face had been covered with
+perspiration ever since Crosbie had come across him, and his limbs had
+hardly been under his own command. Here had come to him a great
+opportunity, and he felt so little confidence in himself that he
+almost knew that he would not use it properly. Twice and thrice he had
+almost flown at Crosbie's throat in the carriage, but he was restrained
+by an idea that the world and the police would be against him if he
+did such a thing in the presence of that old lady.
+
+But when Crosbie turned his back upon him, and walked out, it was
+absolutely necessary that he should do something. He was not going to
+let the man escape, after all that he had said as to the expediency of
+thrashing him. Any other disgrace would be preferable to that. Fearing,
+therefore, lest his enemy should be too quick for him, he hurried out
+after him, and only just gave Crosbie time to turn round and face the
+carriages, before he was upon him.
+
+"You confounded scoundrel!" he screamed out.
+
+"You confounded scoundrel!" and seized him by the throat, throwing
+himself upon him, and almost devouring him by the fury of his eyes.
+
+The crowd upon the platform was not very dense, but there were quite
+enough of people to make a very respectable audience for this little
+play. Crosbie, in his dismay, retreated a step or two, and his retreat
+was much accelerated by the weight of Eames's attack. He endeavoured to
+free his throat from his foe's grasp; but in that he failed entirely.
+For the minute, however, he did manage to escape any positive blow,
+owing his safety in that respect rather to Eames's awkwardness than to
+his own efforts. Something about the police he was just able to utter,
+and there was, as a matter of course, an immediate call for a supply of
+those functionaries. In about three minutes three policemen, assisted
+by six porters, had captured our poor friend Johnny; but this had not
+been done quick enough for Crosbie's purposes. The bystanders, taken by
+surprise, had allowed the combatants to fall back upon Mr Smith's
+book-stall, and there Eames laid his foe prostrate among the
+newspapers, falling himself into the yellow shilling-novel depot by the
+over fury of his own energy; but as he fell, he contrived to lodge one
+blow with his fist in Crosbie's right eye--one telling blow; and Crosbie
+had, to all intents and purposes, been thrashed.
+
+"Con-founded scoundrel, rascal, blackguard!" shouted Johnny, with what
+remnants of voice were left to him, as the police dragged him off.
+
+"If you only knew what he's done." But in the meantime the policemen
+held him fast.
+
+As a matter of course the first burst of public sympathy went with
+Crosbie. He had been assaulted, and the assault had come from Eames. In
+the British bosom there is so firm a love of well-constituted order,
+that these facts alone were sufficient to bring twenty knights to the
+assistance of the three policemen and the six porters; so that for
+Eames, even had he desired it, there was no possible chance of escape.
+But he did not desire it. One only sorrow consumed him at present. He
+had, as he felt, attacked Crosbie, but had attacked him in vain. He had
+had his opportunity, and had misused it. He was perfectly unconscious
+of that happy blow, and was in absolute ignorance of the great fact
+that his enemy's eye was already swollen and closed, and that in
+another hour it would be as black as his hat.
+
+"He is a con-founded rascal!" ejaculated Eames, as the policemen and
+porters hauled him about.
+
+"You don't know what he's done."
+
+"No, we don't," said the senior constable; "but we know what you have
+done. I say, Bushers, where's that gentleman? He'd better come along
+with us."
+
+Crosbie had been picked up from among the newspapers by another
+policeman and two or three other porters, and was attended also by the
+guard of the train, who knew him, and knew that he had come up from
+Courcy Castle. Three or four hangers-on were standing also around him,
+together with a benevolent medical man who was proposing to him an
+immediate application of leeches. If he could have done as he wished,
+he would have gone his way quietly, allowing Eames to do the same. A
+great evil had befallen him, but he could in no way mitigate that evil
+by taking the law of the man who had attacked him. To have the thing as
+little talked about as possible should be his endeavour. What though he
+should have Eames locked up and fined, and scolded by a police
+magistrate? That would not in any degree lessen his calamity. If he
+could have parried the attack, and got the better of his foe; if he
+could have administered the black eye instead of receiving it, then
+indeed he could have laughed the matter off at his club, and his
+original crime would have been somewhat glozed over by his success in
+arms. But such good fortune had not been his. He was forced, however,
+on the moment to decide as to what he would do.
+
+"We've got him here in custody, sir," said Bushers, touching his hat.
+It had become known from the guard that Crosbie was somewhat of a big
+man, a frequent guest at Courcy Castle, and of repute and station in
+the higher regions of the Metropolitan world.
+
+"The magistrates will be sitting at Paddington, now, sir--or will be by
+the time we get there."
+
+By this time some mighty railway authority had come upon the scene and
+made himself cognisant of the facts of the row--a stern official who
+seemed to carry the weight of many engines on his brow; one at the very
+sight of whom smokers would drop their cigars, and porters close their
+fists against sixpences; a great man with an erect chin, a quick step,
+and a well-brushed hat powerful with an elaborately upturned brim. This
+was the platform--superintendent, dominant, even over the policemen.
+
+"Step into my room, Mr Crosbie," he said. "Stubbs, bring that man in
+with you." And then, before Crosbie had been able to make up his mind
+as to any other line of conduct, he found himself in the
+superintendent's room, accompanied by the guard, and by the two
+policemen who conducted Johnny Eames between them.
+
+"What's all this?" said the superintendent, still keeping on his hat,
+for he was aware how much of the excellence of his personal dignity was
+owing to the arrangement of that article; and as he spoke he frowned
+upon the culprit with his utmost severity.
+
+"Mr Crosbie, I am very sorry that you should have been exposed to such
+brutality on our platform."
+
+"You don't know what he has done," said Johnny. "He is the most
+confounded scoundrel living. He has broken"--But then he stopped
+himself. He was going to tell the superintendent that the confounded
+scoundrel had broken a beautiful young lady's heart; but he bethought
+himself that he would not allude more specially to Lily Dale in that
+hearing.
+
+"Do you know who he is, Mr Crosbie?" said the superintendent.
+
+"Oh, yes," said Crosbie, whose eye was already becoming blue.
+
+"He is a clerk in the Income-tax Office, and his name is Eames. I
+believe you had better leave him to me."
+
+But the superintendent at once wrote down the words "Income-tax
+Office--Eames," on his tablet. "We can't allow a row like that to take
+place on our platform and not notice it. I shall bring it before the
+directors. It's a most disgraceful affair, Mr Eames--most disgraceful."
+
+But Johnny by this time had perceived that Crosbie's eye was in a state
+which proved satisfactorily that his morning's work had not been thrown
+away, and his spirits were rising accordingly. He did not care two
+straws for the superintendent or even for the policemen, if only the
+story could be made to tell well for himself hereafter. It was his
+object to have thrashed Crosbie, and now, as he looked at his enemy's
+face, he acknowledged that Providence had been good to him.
+
+"That's your opinion," said Johnny.
+
+"Yes, sir, it is," said the superintendent; "and I shall know how to
+represent the matter to your superiors, young man."
+
+"You don't know all about it," said Eames; "and I don't suppose you
+ever will. I had made up my mind what I'd do the first time I saw that
+scoundrel there; and now I've done it. He'd have got much worse in the
+railway carriage, only there was a lady there."
+
+"Mr Crosbie, I really think we had better take him before the
+magistrates."
+
+To this, however, Crosbie objected. He assured the superintendent that
+he would himself know how to deal with the matter--which, however, was
+exactly what he did not know. Would the superintendent allow one of the
+railway servants to get a cab for him, and to find his luggage? He was
+very anxious to get home without being subjected to any more of Mr
+Eames's insolence.
+
+"You haven't done with Mr Eames's insolence yet, I can tell you. All
+London shall hear of it, and shall know why. If you have any shame in
+you, you shall be ashamed to show your face."
+
+Unfortunate man! Who can say that punishment--adequate punishment--had
+not overtaken him? For the present, he had to sneak home with a black
+eye, with the knowledge inside him that he had been whipped by a clerk
+in the Income-tax Office; and for the future--he was bound over to marry
+Lady Alexandrina de Courcy!
+
+He got himself smuggled off in a cab, without being forced to go again
+upon the platform--his luggage being brought to him by two assiduous
+porters. But in all this there was very little balm for his hurt pride.
+As he ordered the cabman to drive to Mount Street, he felt that he had
+ruined himself by that step in life which he had taken at Courcy
+Castle. Whichever way he looked he had no comfort.
+
+"D--- the fellow!" he said, almost out loud in the cab; but though he did
+with his outward voice allude to Eames, the curse in his inner thoughts
+was uttered against himself.
+
+Johnny was allowed to make his way down to the platform, and there find
+his own carpet-bag. One young porter, however, came up and fraternised
+with him.
+
+"You guve it him tidy just at that last moment, sir. But, laws, sir,
+you should have let out at him at fust. What's the use of clawing a
+man's neck-collar?"
+
+It was then a quarter past eleven, but, nevertheless, Eames appeared at
+his office precisely at twelve.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXV
+
+VAE VICTIS
+
+Crosbie had two engagements for that day; one being his natural
+engagement to do his work at his office, and the other an engagement,
+which was now very often becoming as natural, to dine at St. John's
+Wood with Lady Amelia Gazebee. It was manifest to him when he looked at
+himself in the glass hat he could keep neither of these engagements.
+
+"Oh, laws, Mr Crosbie," the woman of the house exclaimed when she saw
+him.
+
+"Yes, I know," said he. "I've had an accident and got a black eye.
+What's a good thing for it?"
+
+"Oh! an accident!" said the woman, who knew well that that mark had
+been made by another man's fist. "They do say that a bit of raw beef is
+about the best thing. But then it must be held on constant all the
+morning."
+
+Anything would be better than leeches, which tell long-enduring tales,
+and therefore Crosbie sat through the greater part of the morning
+holding the raw beef to his eye. But it was necessary that he should
+write two notes as he held it, one to Mr Butterwell at his office, and
+the other to his future sister-in-law. He felt that it would hardly be
+wise to attempt any entire concealment of the nature of his
+catastrophe, as some of the circumstances would assuredly become known.
+If he said that he had fallen over the coal-scuttle, or on to the
+fender, thereby cutting his face, people would learn that he had
+fibbed, and would learn also that he had had some reason for fibbing.
+Therefore he constructed his notes with a phraseology that bound him to
+no details. To Butterwell he said that he had had an accident--rather a
+row--and that he had come out of it with considerable damage to his
+frontispiece. He intended to be at the office on the next day, whether
+able to appear decently there or not. But for the sake of decency he
+thought it well to give himself that one half-day's chance. Then to the
+Lady Amelia he also said that he had had an accident, and had been a
+little hurt.
+
+"It is nothing at all serious, and affects only my appearance, so that
+I had better remain in for a day. I shall certainly be with you on
+Sunday. Don't let Gazebee trouble himself to come to me, as I shan't be
+at home after today." Gazebee did trouble himself to come to Mount
+Street so often, and South Audley Street, in which was Mr Gazebee's
+office, was so disagreeably near to Mount Street, that Crosbie inserted
+this in order to protect himself if possible. Then he gave special
+orders that he was to be at home to no one, fearing that Gazebee would
+call for him after the hours of business--to make him safe and carry him
+off bodily to St. John's Wood.
+
+The beefsteak and the dose of physic and the cold-water application
+which was kept upon it all night was not efficacious in dispelling that
+horrid, black-blue colour by ten o'clock on the following morning.
+
+"It certainly have gone down, Mr Crosbie; it certainly have," said the
+mistress of the lodgings, touching the part affected with her finger.
+
+"But the black won't go out of them all in a minute; it won't indeed.
+Couldn't you just stay in one more day?"
+
+"But will one day do it, Mrs Phillips?"
+
+Mrs Phillips couldn't take upon herself to say that it would. "They
+mostly come with little red streaks across the black before they goes
+away," said Mrs Phillips, who would seem to have been the wife of a
+prize-fighter, so well was she acquainted with black eyes.
+
+"And that won't be till tomorrow," said Crosbie, affecting to be
+mirthful in his agony.
+
+"Not till the third day--and then they wears themselves out, gradual. I
+never knew leeches do any good."
+
+He stayed at home the second day, and then resolved that he would go to
+his office, black eye and all. In that morning's newspaper he saw an
+account of the whole transaction, saying how Mr C-- of the office of
+General Committees, who was soon about to lead to the hymeneal altar the
+beautiful daughter of the Earl de C--, had been made the subject of a
+brutal personal attack on the platform of the Great Western Railway
+Station, and how he was confined to his room from the injuries which he
+had received. The paragraph went on to state that the delinquent had,
+as it was believed, dared to raise his eyes to the same lady, and that
+his audacity had been treated with scorn by every member of the noble
+family in question.
+
+"It was, however, satisfactory to know," so said the newspaper, "that
+Mr C-- had amply avenged himself, and had so flogged the young man in
+question, that he had been unable to stir from his bed since the
+occurrence."
+
+On reading this Crosbie felt that it would be better that he should
+show himself at once, and tell as much of the truth as the world would
+he likely to ascertain at last without his telling. So on that third
+morning he put on his hat and gloves, and had himself taken to his
+office, though the red-streaky period of his misfortune had hardly even
+yet come upon him. The task of walking along the office passage,
+through the messengers' lobby, and into his room, was very
+disagreeable. Of course everybody looked at him, and, of course, he
+failed in his attempt to appear as though he did not mind it.
+
+"Boggs," he said to one of the men as he passed by, "just see if Mr
+Butterwell is in his room," and then, as he expected, Mr Butterwell
+came to him after the expiration of a few minutes.
+
+"Upon my word, that is serious," said Mr Butterwell, looking into the
+secretary's damaged face.
+
+"I don't think I would have come out if I had been you."
+
+"Of course it's disagreeable," said Crosbie; "but it's better to put up
+with it. Fellows do tell such horrid lies if a man isn't seen for a day
+or two. I believe it's best to put a good face upon it."
+
+"That's more than you can do just at present, eh, Crosbie?" And then Mr
+Butterwell tittered.
+
+"But how on earth did it happen? The paper says that you pretty well
+killed the fellow who did it."
+
+"The paper lies, as papers always do. I didn't touch him at all."
+
+"Didn't you, though? I should like to have had a poke at him after
+getting such a tap in the face as that."
+
+"The policemen came, and all that sort of thing. One isn't allowed to
+fight it out in a row of that kind as one would have to do on Salisbury
+heath. Not that I mean to say that I could lick the fellow. How's a man
+to know whether he can or not?"
+
+"How, indeed, unless he gets a licking--or gives it? But who was he, and
+what's this about his having been scorned by the noble family?"
+
+"Trash and lies, of course. He had never seen any of the De Courcy
+people."
+
+"I suppose the truth is, it was about that other--eh, Crosbie? I knew
+you'd find yourself in some trouble before you'd done."
+
+"I don't know what it was about, or why he should have made such a
+brute of himself. You have heard about those people at Allington?
+
+"Oh, yes; I have heard about them."
+
+"God knows, I didn't mean to say anything against them. They knew
+nothing about it."
+
+"But the young fellow knew them? Ah, yes, I see all about it. He wants
+to step into your shoes. I can't say that he sets about it in a bad
+way. But what do you mean to do?"
+
+"Nothing."
+
+"Nothing! Won't that look queer? I think I should have him before the
+magistrates."
+
+"You see, Butterwell, I am bound to spare that girl's name. I know I
+have behaved badly."
+
+"Well, yes; I fear you have."
+
+Mr Butterwell said this with some considerable amount of decision in
+his voice, as though he did not intend to mince matters, or in any way
+to hide his opinion. Crosbie had got into a way of condemning himself
+in this matter of his marriage, but was very anxious that others, on
+hearing such condemnation from him, should say something in the way of
+palliating his fault. It would be so easy for a friend to remark that
+such little peccadilloes were not altogether uncommon, and that it
+would sometimes happen in life that people did not know their own
+minds. He had hoped for some such benevolence from Fowler Pratt, but
+had hoped in vain. Butterwell was a good-natured, easy man, anxious to
+stand well with all about him, never pretending to any very high tone
+of feeling or of morals; and yet Butterwell would say no word of
+comfort to him. He could get no one to slur over his sin for him, as
+though it were no sin--only an unfortunate mistake; no one but the De
+Courcys, who had, as it were, taken, possession of him and swallowed
+him alive.
+
+"It can't be helped now," said Crosbie.
+
+"But as for that fellow who made such a brutal attack on me the other
+morning, he knows that he is safe behind her petticoats. I can do
+nothing which would not make some mention of her name necessary."
+"Ah, yes; I see," said Butterwell.
+
+"It's very unfortunate; very. I don't know that I can do anything for
+you. Will you come before the Board today?"
+
+"Yes; of course I shall," said Crosbie, who was becoming very sore. His
+sharp ear had told him that all Butterwell's respect and cordiality
+were gone--at any rate for the time. Butterwell, though holding the
+higher official rank, had always been accustomed to treat him as though
+he, the inferior, were to be courted. He had possessed, and had known
+himself to possess, in his office as well as in the outside world, a
+sort of rank much higher than that which from his position he could
+claim legitimately. Now he was being deposed. There could be no better
+touchstone in such a matter than Butterwell. He would go as the world
+went, but he would perceive almost intuitively how the world intended
+to go.
+
+"Tact, tact, tact," as he was in the habit of saying to himself when
+walking along the paths of his Putney villa. Crosbie was now secretary,
+whereas a few months before he had been simply a clerk; but,
+nevertheless, Mr Butterwell's instinct told him that Crosbie had
+fallen. Therefore he declined to offer any sympathy to the man in his
+misfortune, and felt aware, as he left the secretary's room, that it
+might probably be some time before he visited it again.
+
+Crosbie resolved in his soreness that henceforth he would brazen it
+out. He would go to the Board, with as much indifference as to his
+black eye as he was able to assume, and if any one said aught to him
+he would be ready with his answer. He would go to his club, and let him
+who intended to show him any slight beware of him in his wrath. He
+could not turn upon John Eames, but he could turn upon others if it
+were necessary.
+
+He had not gained for himself a position before the world, and held it
+now for some years, to allow himself to be crushed at once because he
+had made a mistake. If the world, his world, chose to go to war with
+him, he would be ready for the fight. As for Butterwell-Butterwell the
+incompetent, Butterwell the vapid--for Butterwell, who in every little
+official difficulty had for years past come to him, he would let
+Butterwell know what it was to be thus disloyal to one who had
+condescended to be his friend. He would show them all at the Board that
+he scorned them, and could be their master. Then, too, as he was making
+some other resolves as to his future conduct, he made one or two
+resolutions respecting the De Courcy people. He would make it known to
+them that he was not going to be their very humble servant. He would
+speak out his mind with considerable plainness; and if upon that they
+should choose to break off this "alliance," they might do so; he would
+not break his heart. And as he leaned back in his arm chair, thinking
+of all this, an idea made its way into his brain--a floating castle in
+the air, rather than the image of a thing that might by possibility be
+realised; and in this castle in the air he saw himself kneeling again
+at Lily's feet, asking her pardon, and begging that he might once more
+be taken to her heart.
+
+"Mr Crosbie is here today," said Mr Butterwell to Mr Optimist.
+
+"Oh, indeed," said Mr Optimist, very gravely; for he had heard all
+about the row at the railway station.
+
+"They've made a monstrous show of him."
+
+"I am very sorry to hear it. It's so-so-so- If it were one of the
+younger clerks, you know, we should tell him that it was discreditable
+to the department."
+
+"If a man gets a blow in the eye, he can't help it, you know. He didn't
+do it himself, I suppose," said Major Fiasco.
+
+"I am well aware that he didn't do it himself," continued Mr Optimist;
+"but I really think that, in his position, he should have kept himself
+out of any such encounter."
+
+"He would have done so if he could, with all his heart," said the major.
+
+"I don't suppose he liked being thrashed any better than I should."
+
+"Nobody gives me a black eye," said Mr Optimist.
+
+"Nobody has as yet," said the major.
+
+"I hope they never will," said Mr Butterwell. Then, the hour for their
+meeting having come round, Mr Crosbie came into the Board-room.
+
+"We have been very sorry to hear of this misfortune," said Mr Optimist,
+very gravely.
+
+"Not half so sorry as I have been," said Crosbie, with a laugh.
+
+"It's an uncommon nuisance to have a black eye, and to go about looking
+like a prize-fighter."
+
+"And like a prize-fighter that didn't win his battle, too," said Fiasco.
+
+"I don't know that there's much difference as to that, said Crosbie.
+
+"But the whole thing is a nuisance, and, if you please, we won't say
+anything more about it."
+
+Mr Optimist almost entertained an opinion that it was his duty to say
+something more about it. Was not he the chief Commissioner, and was not
+Mr Crosbie secretary to the Board? Ought he, looking at their
+respective positions, to pass over without a word of notice such a
+manifest impropriety as this? Would not Sir Raffle Buffle have said
+something had Mr Butterwell, when secretary, come to the office with a
+black eye? He wished to exercise all the full rights of a chairman;
+but, nevertheless, as he looked at the secretary he felt embarrassed,
+and was unable to find the proper words.
+
+"H-m, ha, well; we'll go to business now, if you please," he said, as
+though reserving to himself the right of returning to the secretary's
+black eye, when the more usual business of the Board should be
+completed. But when the more usual business of the Board had been
+completed, the secretary left the room without any further reference to
+his eye.
+
+Crosbie, when he got back to his own apartment, found Mortimer Gazebee
+waiting there for him.
+
+"My dear fellow," said Gazebee, "this is a very nasty affair."
+
+"Uncommonly nasty," said Crosbie; so nasty that I don't mean to talk
+about it to anybody."
+
+"Lady Amelia is quite unhappy." He always called her Lady Amelia, even
+when speaking of her to his own brothers and sisters. He was too well
+behaved to take the liberty of calling an earl's daughter by her plain
+Christian name even though that earl's daughter was his own wife. She
+fears that you have been a good deal hurt."
+
+"Not at all hurt; but disfigured, as you see."
+
+"And so you beat the fellow well that did it?
+
+"No, I didn't," said Crosbie very angrily.
+
+"I didn't beat him at all. You don't believe everything you read in the
+newspapers; do you?"
+
+"No, I don't believe everything. Of course I didn't believe about his
+having aspired to an alliance with Lady Alexandrina. That was untrue,
+of course." Mr Gazebee showed by the tone of his voice that imprudence
+so unparalleled as that was quite incredible.
+
+"You shouldn't believe anything; except this--that I have got a black
+eye."
+
+"You certainly have got that. Lady Amelia thinks you would be more
+comfortable if you would come up to us this evening. You can't go out,
+of course; but Lady Amelia said, very good-naturedly, that you need not
+mind with her."
+
+"Thank you, no; I'll come on Sunday."
+
+"Of course Lady Alexandrina will be very anxious to hear from her
+sister; and Lady Amelia begged me very particularly to press you to
+come."
+
+"Thank you, no; not today."
+
+"Why not?"
+
+"Oh, simply because I shall be better at home."
+
+"How can you be better at home? You can have anything that you want.
+Lady Amelia won't mind, you know."
+
+Another beefsteak to his eye, as he sat in the drawing-room, a
+cold-water bandage, or any little medical appliance of that sort--these
+were the things which Lady Amelia would, in her domestic good nature,
+condescend not to mind!
+
+"I won't trouble her this evening," said Crosbie.
+
+"Well, upon my word, I think you're wrong. All manner of stories will
+get down to Courcy Castle, and to the countess's ears; and you don't
+know what harm may come of it. Lady Amelia thinks she had better write
+and explain it; but she can't do so till she has heard something about
+it from you."
+
+"Look here, Gazebee. I don't care one straw what story finds its way
+down to Courcy Castle."
+
+"But if the earl were to hear anything, and be offended?
+
+"He may recover from his offence as he best likes."
+
+"My dear fellow; that's talking wildly, you know."
+
+"What on earth do you suppose the earl can do to me? Do you think I'm
+going to live in fear of Lord de Courcy all my life, because I'm going
+to marry his daughter? I shall write to Alexandrina myself today, and
+you can tell her sister so. I'll be up to dinner on Sunday, unless my
+face makes it altogether out of the question."
+
+"And you won't come in time for church?"
+
+"Would you have me go to church with such a face as this?"
+
+Then Mr Mortimer Gazebee went and when he got home, he told his wife
+that Crosbie was taking things with a high hand.
+
+"The fact is, my dear, that he's ashamed of himself, and therefore
+tries to put a bold face upon it. It was very foolish of him throwing
+himself in the way of that young man--very; and so I shall tell him on
+Sunday. If he chooses to give himself airs to me, I shall make him
+understand that he is very wrong. He should remember now that the way
+in which he conducts himself is a matter of moment to all our family."
+
+"Of course he should," said Mr Gazebee.
+
+When the Sunday came the red-streaky period had arrived, but had by no
+means as yet passed away. The men at the office had almost become used
+to it; but Crosbie, in spite of his determination to go down to the
+club, had not yet shown himself elsewhere. Of course he did not go to
+church, but at five he made his appearance at the house in St. John's
+Wood. They always dined at five on Sundays, having some idea that by
+doing so they kept the Sabbath better than they would have done had
+they dined at seven. If keeping the Sabbath consists in going to bed
+early, or is in any way assisted by such a practice, they were right.
+To the cook that semi-early dinner might perhaps be convenient, as it
+gave her an excuse for not going to church in the afternoon, as the
+servants' and children's dinner gave her a similar excuse in the
+morning. Such little, attempts at goodness--proceeding half the way, or
+perhaps, as in this instance, one quarter of the way, on the
+disagreeable path towards goodness, are very common with respectable
+people, such as Lady Amelia. If she would have dined at one o'clock,
+and have eaten cold meat one perhaps might have felt that she was
+entitled to some praise.
+
+"Dear, dear, dear; this is very sad, isn't it, Adolphus?" she said on
+first seeing him.
+
+"Well, it is sad, Amelia," he said. He always called her Amelia,
+because she called him Adolphus; but Gazebee himself was never quite
+pleased when he heard it. Lady Amelia was older than Crosbie, and
+entitled to call him anything she liked; but he should have remembered
+the great difference in their rank.
+
+"It is sad, Amelia," he said.
+"But will you oblige me in one thing?"
+
+"What thing, Adolphus?"
+
+"Not to say a word more about it. The black eye is a bad thing, no
+doubt, and has troubled me much; but the sympathy of my friends has
+troubled me a great deal more. I had all the family commiseration from
+Gazebee on Friday, and if it is repeated again, I shall lie down and
+die."
+
+"Shall 'oo die Uncle Dolphus, 'cause 'oo've got a bad eye? asked De
+Courcy Gazebee, the eldest hope of the family, looking up into his face.
+
+"No, my hero," said Crosbie, taking the boy up into his arms, "not
+because I've got a black eye. There isn't very much harm in that, and
+you'll have a great many before you leave school. But because the
+people will go on talking about it."
+
+"But Aunt Dina on't like 'oo, if oo've got an ugly bad eye."
+
+"But, Adolphus," said Lady Amelia, settling herself for an argument,
+"that's all very well, you know--and I'm sure I'm very sorry to cause
+you any annoyance--but really one doesn't know how to pass over such a
+thing without speaking of it. I have had a letter from mamma."
+
+"I hope Lady de Courcy is quite well."
+
+"Quite well, thank you. But as a matter of course she is very anxious
+about this affair. She had read what has been said in the newspapers,
+and it may be necessary that Mortimer should take it up, as the family
+solicitor."
+
+"Quite out of the question," said Adolphus.
+
+"I don't think I should advise any such step as that," said Gazebee.
+
+"Perhaps not; very likely not. But you cannot be surprised, Mortimer,
+that my mother under such circumstances should wish to know what are
+the facts of the case."
+
+"Not at all surprised," said Gazebee.
+
+"Then once for all, I'll tell you the facts. As I got out, of the train
+a man I'd seen once before in my life made an attack upon me, and
+before the police came up, I got a blow in the face. Now you know all
+about it."
+
+At that moment dinner was announced.
+
+"Will you give Lady Amelia your arm?" said the husband.
+
+"It's a very sad occurrence," said Lady Amelia with a slight toss of
+her head, "and, I'm afraid, will cost my sister a great deal of
+vexation."
+
+"You agree with De Courcy, do you, that Aunt Dina won't like me with an
+ugly black eye"
+
+"I really don't think it's a joking matter," said the Lady Amelia. And
+then there was nothing more said about it during the dinner.
+
+There was nothing more said about it during the dinner, but it was
+plain enough from Lady Amelia's countenance, that she was not very well
+pleased with her future brother-in-law's conduct. She was very
+hospitable to him, pressing him to eat; but even in doing that she made
+repeated little references to his present unfortunate state. She told
+him that she did not think fried plum-pudding would be bad for him, but
+that she would recommend him not to drink port wine after dinner.
+
+"By-the-by, Mortimer, you'd better have some claret up," she remarked.
+
+"Adolphus shouldn't take anything that is heating."
+
+"Thank you," said Crosbie.
+
+"I'll have some brandy-and-water, if Gazebee will give it me."
+
+"Brandy-and-water!" said Lady Amelia. Crosbie in truth was not given to
+the drinking of brandy-and-water; but he was prepared to call for raw
+gin, if he were driven much further by Lady Amelia's solicitude.
+
+At these Sunday dinners the mistress of the house never went away into
+the drawing-room, and the tea was always brought into them at the table
+on which they had dined. It was another little step towards keeping
+holy the first day of the week. When Lady Rosina was there, she was
+indulged with the sight of six or seven solid good books which were
+laid upon the mahogany as soon as the bottles were taken off it. At her
+first prolonged visit she had obtained for herself the privilege of
+reading a sermon; but as on such occasions both Lady Amelia and Mr
+Gazebee would go to sleep--and as the footman had also once shown a
+tendency that way--the sermon had been abandoned. But the master of the
+house, on these evenings, when his sister-in-law was present, was
+doomed to sit in idleness, or else to find solace in one of the solid
+good books. But Lady Rosina just now was in the country, and therefore
+the table was left unfurnished.
+
+"And what am I to say to my mother?" said Lady Amelia, when they were
+alone.
+
+"Give her my kindest regards," said Crosbie. It was quite clear both to
+the husband and to the wife, that he was preparing himself for
+rebellion against authority.
+
+For some ten minutes there was nothing said. Crosbie amused himself by
+playing with the boy whom he called Dicksey, by way of a nickname for
+De Courcy.
+
+"Mamma, he calls me Dicksey. Am I Dicksey? I'll call oo old Cross and
+then Aunt Dina on't like 'oo."
+
+"I wish you would not call the child nicknames, Adolphus. It seems as
+though you would wish to cast a slur upon the one which he bears."
+
+"I should hardly think that he would feel disposed to do that," said Mr
+Gazebee.
+
+"Hardly, indeed," said Crosbie.
+
+"It has never yet been disgraced in the annals of our country by being
+made into a nickname," said the proud daughter of the house. She was
+probably unaware that among many of his associates her father had been
+called Lord de Curse'ye, from the occasional energy of his language.
+
+"And any such attempt is painful in my ears. I think something of my
+family, I can assure you, Adolphus, and so does my husband."
+
+"A very great deal," said Mr Gazebee.
+
+"So do I of mine," said Crosbie.
+
+"That's natural to all of us. One of my ancestors came over with
+William the Conqueror. I think he was one of the assistant cooks in the
+king's tent."
+
+"A cook!" said young De Courcy.
+
+"Yes, my boy, a cook. That was the way most of our old families were
+made noble. They were cooks, or butlers to the kings--or sometimes
+something worse."
+
+"But your family isn't noble?
+
+"No--I'll tell you how that was. The king wanted this cook to poison
+half-a-dozen of his officers who wished to have a way of their own; but
+the cook said, 'No, my Lord King; I am a cook, not an executioner.' So
+they sent him into the scullery, and when they called all the other
+servants barons and lords, they only called him Cookey. They've changed
+the name to Crosbie since that, by degrees."
+
+Mr Gazebee was awestruck, and the face of the Lady Amelia became very
+dark. Was it not evident that this snake, when taken into their
+innermost bosoms that they might there Warm him, was becoming an adder,
+and preparing to sting them? There was very little more conversation
+that evening, and soon after the story of the cook, Crosbie got up and
+went away to his own home.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVI
+
+SEE THE CONQUERING HERO COMES
+
+John Eames had reached his office precisely at twelve o'clock, but when
+he did so he hardly knew whether he was standing on his heels or his
+head. The whole morning had been to him one of intense excitement, and
+latterly, to a certain extent, one of triumph. But he did not at all
+know what might be the results. Would he be taken before a magistrate
+and locked up? Would there be a row at the office? Would Crosbie call
+him out, and, if so, would it be incumbent on him to fight a duel with
+pistols? What would Lord de Guest say--Lord de Guest, who had specially
+warned him not to take upon himself the duty of avenging Lily's wrongs?
+What would all the Dale family say of his conduct? And, above all, what
+would Lily say and think? Nevertheless, the feeling of triumph was
+predominant; and now, at this interval of time, he was beginning to
+remember with pleasure the sensation of his fist as it went into
+Crosbie's eye.
+
+During his first day at the office he heard nothing about the affair,
+nor did he say a word of it to any one. It was known in his room that
+he had gone down to spend his Christmas holiday with Lord de Guest, and
+he was treated with some increased consideration accordingly. And,
+moreover, I must explain, in order that I may give Johnny Eames his
+due, he was gradually acquiring for himself a good footing among the
+income-tax officials. He knew his work, and did it with some manly
+confidence in his own powers, and also with some manly indifference to
+the occasional frowns of the mighty men of the department. He was,
+moreover, popular--being somewhat of a radical in his official
+demeanour, and holding by his own rights, even though mighty men should
+frown In truth, he was emerging from his hobbledehoyhood and entering
+upon his young manhood, having probably to go through much folly and
+some false sentiment in that period of his existence, but still with
+fair promise of true manliness beyond to those who were able to read
+the signs of his character.
+
+Many questions on that first day were asked him about the glories of
+his Christmas, but he had very little to say on the subject. Indeed
+nothing could have been much more commonplace than his Christmas visit
+it not been for the one great object which had taken him down to that
+part of the country, and for the circumstance with which his holiday
+had been ended. On neither of these subjects was he disposed to speak
+openly; but as he walked home to Burton Crescent with Cradell, he did
+tell him of the affair with Crosbie.
+
+"And you went in at him on the station?" asked Cradell, with admiring
+doubt.
+
+"Yes I did. If I didn't do it there, where was I to do it? I'd said I
+would and therefore when I saw him I did it." Then the whole affair was
+told as to the black eye, the police, and the superintendent.
+
+"And what's to come next?" asked our hero.
+
+"Well, he'll put it in the hands of a friend, of course; as I did with
+Fisher in that affair with Lupex. And, upon my word, Johnny, I shall
+have to do something of the kind again. His conduct last night was
+outrageous; would you believe--"
+
+"Oh, he's a fool."
+
+"He's a fool you wouldn't like to meet when he's in one of his mad
+fits, I can tell you that. I absolutely had to sit up in my own bedroom
+all last night. Mother Roper told me that if I remained in the
+drawing-room she would feel herself obliged to have a policeman in the
+house. What could I do, you know? I made her have a fire for me of
+course."
+
+"And then you went to bed."
+
+"I waited ever so long, because I thought that Maria would want to see
+me. At last she sent me a note. Maria is so imprudent, you know. If he
+had found anything in her writing, it would have been terrible, you
+know--quite terrible. And who can say whether Jemima mayn't tell?
+
+"And what did she say?"
+
+"Come; that's tellings, Master Johnny. I took very good care to take it
+with me to the office this morning, for fear of accidents."
+
+But Eames was not so widely awake to the importance of his friend's
+adventures as he might have been had he not been weighted with
+adventures of his own.
+
+"I shouldn't care so much," said he, "about that fellow Crosbie, going
+to a friend, as I should about his going to a police magistrate."
+
+"He'll put it in a friend's hands, of course," said Cradell with the
+air of a man who from experience was well up in such matters.
+
+"And I suppose you'll naturally come to me. It's a deuced bore to a man
+in a public office, and all that kind of thing, of course. But I'm not
+the man to desert my friend. I'll stand by you, Johnny, my boy."
+
+"Oh, thank you," said Eames, "I don't think that I shall want that."
+
+"You must be ready with a friend, you know."
+
+"I should write down to a man I know in the country, and ask his
+advice, said Eames; "an older sort of friend, you know."
+
+"By Jove, old fellow, take care what you are about. Don't let them say
+of you that you show the white feather. Upon my honour, I'd sooner have
+an thing said of me than that. I would, indeed--anything."
+
+"I'm not afraid of that," said Eames, with a touch of scorn in his
+voice.
+
+"There isn't much thought about white feathers nowadays--not in the way
+of fighting duels."
+
+After that, Cradell managed to carry back the conversation to Mrs Lupex
+and his own peculiar position, and as Eames did not care to ask from
+his companion further advice in his own matters, he listened nearly in
+silence till they reached Burton Crescent.
+
+"I hope you found the noble earl well," said Mrs Roper to him, as soon
+as they were all seated at dinner."
+
+"I found the noble earl pretty well, thank you," said Johnny.
+
+It had become plainly understood by all the Roperites that Eames's
+position was quite altered since he had been honoured with the
+friendship of Lord de Guest. Mrs Lupex, next to whom he always sat at
+dinner, with a view to protecting her as it were from the dangerous
+neighbourhood of Cradell, treated him with a marked courtesy. Miss
+Spruce always called him "sir." Mrs Roper helped him the first of the
+gentlemen, and was mindful about his fat and gravy, and Amelia felt
+less able than she was before to insist upon the possession of his
+heart and affections. It must not be supposed that Amelia intended to
+abandon the fight, and allow the enemy to walk off with his forces; but
+she felt herself constrained to treat him with a, deference that was
+hardly compatible with the perfect equality, which should attend any
+union of hearts.
+
+"It is such a privilege to be on visiting terms with the nobility,"
+said Mrs Lupex. When I was a girl, I used to be very intimate--"
+
+"You ain't a girl any longer, and so you'd better not talk about it,"
+said Lupex. Mr Lupex had been at that little shop in Drury Lane after
+he came down from his scene-painting.
+
+"My dear, you needn't be a brute to me before all Mrs Roper's company.
+If, led away by feelings which I will not now describe, I left my
+proper circles in marrying you, you need not before all the world
+teach me how much I have to regret." And Mrs Lupex, putting down her
+knife and fork, applied her handkerchief to her eyes.
+
+"That's pleasant for a man over his meal, isn't it? said Lupex,
+appealing to Miss Spruce. I have plenty of that kind of thing and you
+can't think how I like it."
+
+"Them whom God has joined together, let no man put asunder," said Miss
+Spruce.
+
+"As for me myself, I'm only an old woman."
+
+This little ebullition threw a gloom over the dinner-table, and nothing
+more was said on the occasion as to the glories of Eames's career. But,
+in the course of the evening, Amelia heard of the encounter which had
+taken place at the railway station, and at once perceived that she
+might use the occasion for her own purposes.
+
+"John," she whispered to her victim, finding an opportunity for coming
+upon him when almost alone, "what is this I hear? I insist upon
+knowing. Are you going to fight a duel?"
+
+"Nonsense," said Johnny.
+
+"But it is not nonsense. You don't know what my feelings will be, if I
+think that such a thing is going to happen. But then you are so
+hardhearted!"
+
+"I ain't hardhearted a bit, and I'm not going to fight a duel."
+
+"But is it true that you beat Mr Crosbie at the station?"
+
+"It is true. I did beat him."
+
+"Oh, John! not that I mean to say you were wrong, and indeed I honour
+you for the feeling. There can be nothing so dreadful as a young man's
+deceiving a young woman; and leaving her after he has won her
+heart--particularly when she has had promise in plain words, or,
+perhaps, even in, black and white." John thought of that horrid,
+foolish, wretched note which he had written.
+
+"And a poor girl, if she can't right herself by a breach of promise,
+doesn't know what to do, Does she, John?"
+
+"A girl who'd right herself that way wouldn't be worth having."
+
+"I don't know about that. When a poor girl is in such a position she
+has to be said by her friends. I suppose, then, Miss Lily Dale won't
+bring a breach of promise against him."
+
+This mention of Lily's name in such a place was sacrilege in the ears
+of poor Eames.
+
+"I cannot tell," said he, "what may be the intention of the lady of
+whom you speak. But from what I know of her friends, I should not think
+that she will be disgraced by such a proceeding."
+
+"That may be all very well for Miss Lily Dale--" Amelia said, and then
+she hesitated. It would not be well, she thought, absolutely to
+threaten him as yet--not as long as there was any possibility that he
+might be won without a threat.
+
+"Of course I know all about it," she continued. She was your L. D.,
+you know. Not that I was ever jealous of her. To you she was no more
+than one of childhood's friends. Was she, Johnny?"
+
+He stamped his foot upon the floor, and then jumped up from his seat.
+"I hate all that sort of twaddle about childhood's friends, and you
+know I do. You'll make me swear that I'll never come into this room
+again."
+
+"Johnny!"
+
+"So I will. The whole thing makes me sick. And as for that Mrs Lupex--"
+
+"If this is what you learn, John, by going to a lord's house, I think
+you had better stay at home with your own friends."
+
+"Of course I had much better stay at home with my own friends. Here's
+Mrs Lupex, and at any rate I can't stand her." So he went off, and
+walked round the Crescent, and down to the New Road and almost into the
+Regent's Park, thinking of Lily Dale and of his own cowardice with
+Amelia Roper.
+
+On the following morning he received a message, at about one o'clock by
+the mouth of the Board-room messenger informing him that his presence
+was required in the Board-room.
+
+"Sir Raffle Buffle has desired your presence, Mr Eames."
+
+"My presence, Tupper! what for?" said Johnny, turning upon the
+messenger, almost with dismay.
+
+"Indeed I can't say, Mr Eames; but Sir Raffle Buffle has desired your
+presence in the Board-room."
+
+Such a message as that in official life always strikes awe into the
+heart of a young man. And yet, young men generally come forth from such
+interviews without having received any serious damage and generally
+talk about the old gentlemen whom they have encountered with a good
+deal of light-spirited sarcasm--or chaff as it is called in the slang
+phraseology of the day. It is that same "majesty which doth hedge a
+king" that does it. The turkey-cock in his own farmyard is master of
+the occasion and the thought of him creates fear. A bishop in his lawn,
+a judge on the bench, a chairman in the big room at the end of a long
+table, or a policeman with his bull's-eye lamp upon his beat, can all
+make themselves terrible by means of those appanages of majesty which
+have been vouchsafed to them. But how mean is the policeman in his own
+home, and how few thought much of Sir Raffle Buffle as he sat asleep
+after dinner in his old slippers. How well can I remember the terror
+created within me by the air of outraged dignity with which a certain
+fine old gentleman, now long since gone, could rub his hands slowly,
+one on the other, and look up to the ceiling, slightly shaking his
+head, as though lost in the contemplation of my iniquities! I would
+become sick in my stomach, and feel as though my ankles had been
+broken. That upward turn of the eye unmanned me, so completely that I
+was speechless as regarded any defence. I think that that old man could
+hardly have known the extent of his own power.
+
+Once upon a time a careless lad, having the charge of a bundle of
+letters addressed to the King--petitions, and such like, which in the
+course of business would not get beyond the hands of some
+Lord-in-waiting's deputy assistant--sent the bag which contained them to
+the wrong place; to Windsor perhaps, if the Court were, in London; or
+to St. James's, if it were at Windsor. He was summoned; and the great
+man of the occasion contented himself with holding his hands up to the
+heavens as he stood up from his chair, and, exclaiming twice, "Mis-sent
+the Monarch's pouch! Mis-sent the Monarch's pouch!" That young man
+never knew how he escaped from the Board-room; but for a time he was
+deprived of all power of exertion, and could not resume his work till
+he had had six months' leave of absence, and been brought round upon
+rum and asses' milk. In that instance the peculiar use of the word
+Monarch had a power which the official magnate had never contemplated.
+The story, is traditional; but I believe that the circumstance happened
+as lately as in the days of George the Third.
+
+John Eames could laugh at the present chairman of the Income-tax Office
+with great freedom, and call him old Ruffle Scuffle and the like; but
+now that he was sent for, he also, in spite of his radical
+propensities, felt a little weak about his ankle joints. He knew, from
+the first hearing of the message, that he was wanted with reference to
+that affair at the railway station. Perhaps there might be a rule, that
+any clerk should be dismissed who used his fists in any public place;
+there were many rules entailing the punishment of dismissal for many
+offences--and he began to think that he did remember something of such a
+regulation. However he got up, looked once round him upon his friends,
+and then followed Tupper into the Board-room.
+
+"There's Johnny been sent for by old Scuffles," said one clerk.
+
+"That's about his row with Crosbie," said another. The Board can't do
+anything to him for that."
+
+"Can't it?" said the first. "Didn't young Outonites have to resign
+because of that row at the Cider Cellars though his cousin, Sir
+Constant Outonites, did all that he could for him?"
+
+"But he was regularly up the spout with accommodation bills."
+"I tell you that I wouldn't be in Eames's shoes for a trifle. Crosbie
+is secretary at the Committee Office, where Scuffles was chairman
+before he came here; and of course they're as thick as thieves. I
+shouldn't wonder if they didn't make him go down and apologise."
+
+"Johnny won't do that," said the other. In the meantime John Eames was
+standing in the August presence. Sir Raffle Buffle was throned in his
+great oak armchair at the head of a long table in a very large room;
+and by him, at the corner of the table, was seated one of the assistant
+secretaries of the office. Another member of the Board was also at work
+upon the long table; but he was reading and signing papers at some
+distance from Sir Raffle, and paid no heed whatever to the scene. The
+assistant secretary, looking on, could see that Sir Raffle was annoyed
+by this want of attention on the part of his colleague, but all this
+was lost upon Eames.
+
+"Mr Eames?" said Sir Raffle speaking with a peculiarly harsh voice, and
+looking at the culprit through a pair of goldrimmed glasses, which he
+perched for the occasion upon his big nose.
+
+"Isn't that Mr Eames?"
+
+"Yes," said the assistant secretary, "this is Eames."
+
+"Ah!"--and then there was a pause.
+
+"Come a little nearer, Mr Eames, will you?" and Johnny drew nearer
+advancing noiselessly over the Turkey carpet. "Let me see; in the second
+class, isn't, he? Ah! Do you know, Mr Eames, that I have received a
+letter from the secretary to the Directors of the Great Western Railway
+Company, detailing circumstances which--if truly stated in that
+letter--redound very much to your discredit?"
+
+"I did get into a row there yesterday, sir."
+
+"Got into a row! It seems to me that you have got into a very serious
+row and that I must tell the Directors of the Great Western Railway
+Company that the law must be allowed to take its course."
+
+"I shan't mind that, sir, in the least," said Eames, brightening up a
+little under this view of the case.
+
+"Not mind that, sir!" said Sir Raffle--or rather, he shouted out the
+words at the offender before him. I think that he overdid it, missing
+the effect which a milder tone might have attained. Perhaps there was
+lacking, to him some of that majesty of demeanour and dramatic
+propriety--of voice which had been so efficacious in the little story as
+to the King's bag of letters. As it was Johnny gave a slight jump, but
+after his jump he felt better than he had been before.
+
+"'Not mind, sir, being dragged before the criminal tribunals of your
+country, and being punished as a felon--or rather as a misdemeanour--for
+an outrage committed on a public platform! Not mind it! What do you
+mean, sir?"
+
+"I mean, that I don't think the magistrate would say very much about
+it, sir. And I don't think Mr Crosbie would come forward."
+
+"But Mr Crosbie must come forward, young man. Do you suppose that an
+outrage against the peace of the Metropolis is to go unpunished because
+he may not wish to pursue the matter? I'm afraid you must be very
+ignorant, young man."
+
+"Perhaps I am," said Johnny.
+
+"Very ignorant indeed--very ignorant indeed. And are you aware, sir,
+that it would become a question, with the Commissioners of this Board
+whether you could be retained in the service of this department if you
+were publicly punished by a police magistrate for such a disgraceful
+outrage as that?"
+
+Johnny looked round at the other Commissioner, but that gentleman did
+not raise his face from his papers.
+
+"Mr Eames is a very good clerk," whispered the assistant secretary, but
+in a voice which made his words audible to Eames "one of the best young
+men we have" he added in a voice which was not audible.
+
+"Oh--ah; very well. Now, I'll tell you what, Mr Eames. I hope this will
+be a lesson to you--a very serious lesson".
+
+The assistant secretary, leaning in his chair so as to be a little
+behind the head of Sir Raffle, did manage to catch the eye of the other
+Commissioner. The other Commissioner, barely looking round, smiled a
+little and then the assistant secretary smiled also. Eames saw this,
+and he smiled too.
+
+"Whether any ulterior consequences may still await the breach of the
+peace of which you have been guilty, I am not yet prepared to say,"
+continued Sir Raffle. "You may go now." And Johnny returned to his own
+place, with no increased reverence for the dignity of the chairman.
+
+On the following morning one of his colleagues showed him with great
+glee the passage in the newspaper which informed the world that he had
+been so desperately beaten by Crosbie that he was obliged to keep his
+bed at this present time in consequence of the flogging that he had
+received. Then his anger was aroused, and he bounced about the big room
+of the Income-tax Office regardless of assistant secretaries,
+head-clerks and all other official grandees whatsoever, denouncing the
+iniquities of the public press, and declaring his opinion that it would
+be better to live in Russia than in a country which allowed such
+audacious falsehoods to be propagated.
+
+"He never touched me, Fisher; I don't think he ever tried; but, upon my
+honour, he never touched me."
+
+"But, Johnny, it was bold in you to make up to Lord de Courcy's
+daughter," said Fisher.
+
+"I never saw one of them in my life."
+
+"He's going it altogether among the aristocracy now, said another; I
+suppose you wouldn't look at anybody under a viscount?"
+
+"Can I help what that thief of an editor puts into his paper? Flogged!
+Huffle Scuffle told me I was a felon, but that wasn't half so bad as
+this fellow;" and Johnny kicked the newspaper across the room.
+
+"Indict him for a libel," said Fisher.
+
+"Particularly for saying you wanted to marry a countess's daughter,"
+said another clerk.
+
+"I never heard such a scandal in my life," declared a third; "and then
+to say that the girl wouldn't look at you."
+
+But not the less was it felt by all in the office that Johnny Eames was
+becoming a leading man among them, and that he was one with whom each
+of them would be pleased to be intimate.
+
+And even among the grandees this affair of the railway station did him
+no real harm. It was known that Crosbie had deserved to be thrashed
+and known that Eames had thrashed him. It was all very well for Sir
+Raffle Buffle to talk of police magistrates and misdemeanours, but all
+the world at the Income Tax Office knew very well that Eames had come
+out from that affair with his head upright and his right foot foremost.
+
+"Never mind about the newspaper," a thoughtful old senior clerk said to
+him. "As he did get the licking and you didn't, you can afford to laugh
+at the newspaper."
+
+"And you wouldn't write to the editor?"
+
+"No, no; certainly not. No, one thinks of defending himself to a
+newspaper except an ass--unless it be some fellow who wants to have his
+name puffed. You may write what's as true as the gospel, but they'll
+know how to make fun of it."
+
+Johnny, therefore, gave up his idea of an indignant letter to the
+editor but he felt that he was bound to give some explanation of the
+whole matter to Lord de Guest. The affair had happened as he was coming
+from the earl's house, and all his own concerns had now been made so
+much a matter of interest to his kind friend, that he thought that he
+could not with propriety leave the earl to learn from the newspapers
+either the facts or the falsehoods. And, therefore, before he left his
+office he wrote the following letter:--
+
+INCOME-tax OFFICE, December 29, 186-.
+
+MY LORD--
+
+He thought a good deal about the style in which he ought to address the
+peer, never having hitherto written to him. He began,
+
+"My dear Lord," on one sheet of paper, and then put it aside, thinking
+that it looked over-bold.
+
+MY LORD--As you have been so very kind to me, I feel that I ought to
+tell you what happened the other morning at the railway station, as I
+was coming back from Guestwick. That scoundrel Crosbie got into the
+same carriage with me at the Barchester Junction, and sat opposite to
+me all the way up to London. I did not speak a word to him, or he to
+me; but when he got out at the Paddington Station, I thought I ought
+not to let him go away, so I--I can't say that I thrashed him as I
+wished to do but I made an attempt, and I did give him a black eye. A
+whole quantity of policemen got round us, and I hadn't a fair chance. I
+know you will think that I was wrong, and perhaps I was; but what could
+I do when he sat opposite to me there for two hours, looking as though
+he thought himself the finest fellow in all London?
+
+They've put a horrible paragraph into one of the newspapers saying that
+I got so "flogged" that I haven't been able to stir since. It is an
+atrocious falsehood, as is all the rest of the newspaper account. I was
+not touched. He was not nearly so bad a customer as the bull and seemed
+to take it all very quietly. I must acknowledge, though, that he didn't
+get such a beating as he deserved.
+
+Your friend Sir R. B. sent for me this morning, and told me I was a
+felon. I didn't seem to care much for that, for he might as well have
+called me a murderer or a burglar, but I shall care very much indeed if
+I have made you angry with me. But what I most fear is the anger of
+some one else--at Allington.
+
+Believe me to be, my Lord,
+
+Yours very much obliged and most sincerely,
+
+JOHN EAMES.
+
+"I knew he'd do it if ever he got the opportunity," said the earl when
+he had read his letter; and he walked about his room striking his hands
+together, and then thrusting his thumbs into his waistcoat-pockets. "I
+knew he was made of the right stuff" and the earl rejoiced greatly in
+the prowess of his favourite. "I'd have done it myself if I'd seen him.
+I do believe I would." Then he went back to the breakfast-room and told
+Lady Julia.
+
+"What do you think?" said he; "Johnny Eames has come across Crosbie,
+and given him a desperate beating."
+
+"No!" said Lady Julia, putting down newspaper and spectacles, and
+expressing by the light of her eyes anything but Christian horror at
+the wickedness of the deed.
+
+"'But he has though. I knew he would if he saw him."
+
+"Beaten him! Actually beaten him!"
+
+"Sent him home to Lady Alexandrina with two black eyes."
+
+"Two black eyes! What a young pickle! But did he get hurt himself?"
+
+"Not a scratch he says."
+
+"And what'll they do to him?"
+
+"Nothing. Crosbie won't be fool enough to do anything. A man becomes an
+outlaw when he plays such a game as he has played. Anybody's hand may
+be raised against him with impunity. He can't show his face, you
+know. He can't come forward and answer questions as to what he has
+done. There are offences which the law can't touch but which outrage
+public feeling so strongly that any one may take upon himself the
+duty of punishing them. He has been thrashed, and that will stick to
+him till he dies."
+
+"Do tell Johnny from me that I hope he didn't get hurt," said Lady
+Julia. The old lady could not absolutely congratulate him on his feat
+of arms, but she did the next thing to it.
+
+But the earl did congratulate him with a full open assurance of his
+approval.
+
+"I hope," he said "I should have done the same at your age, under
+similar circumstances, and I'm very glad that he proved less difficult
+than the bull. I'm quite sure you didn't want any one to help you with
+Master Crosbie. As for that other person at Allington, if I understand
+such matters at all, I think she will forgive you." It may, however, be
+a question whether the earl did understand such matters at all. And
+then he added in a postscript:
+
+"When you write to me again--and don't be long first, begin your letter
+'My dear Lord De Guest'--that is the proper way."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVII
+
+AN OLD MAN'S COMPLAINT
+
+"Have you been thinking again of what I was saying to you, Bell?"
+Bernard said to his cousin one morning.
+
+"Thinking of it, Bernard? Why should I think more of, it? I had hoped
+that you had forgotten it yourself."
+
+"No," he said; "I am not so easy-hearted as that. I cannot look on such
+a thing as I would the purchase of a horse, which I could give up
+without sorrow if I found that the animal was too costly for my purse.
+I did not tell you that I loved you till I was sure of myself, and
+having made myself sure I cannot change at all."
+
+"And yet you would have me change."
+
+"Yes, of course I would. If your heart be free now, it must of course
+be changed before you come to love any man. Such change as that is to
+be looked for. But when you have loved, then it will not be easy to
+change you."
+
+"But I have not."
+
+"Then I have a right to hope. I have been hanging on here, Bell, longer
+than I ought to have done, because, I could not bring myself to leave
+you without speaking of this again. I did not wish to seem to you to be
+importunate."
+
+"If you could only believe me in what I say."
+
+"It is not that I do not believe. I am not a puppy or a fool to flatter
+myself that you must be in love with me. I believe you well enough. But
+still it is possible that your mind may alter."
+
+"It is impossible."
+
+"I do not know whether my uncle or your mother have spoken to you about
+this."
+
+"Such speaking would have no effect."
+
+In fact her mother had spoken to: her, but she truly said that such
+speaking would have no effect. If her cousin could not win the battle
+by his own skill, he might have been quite sure, looking at her
+character as it was known to him, that he would not be able to win it
+by the skill of others.
+
+"We have all been made very unhappy," he went on to say, by this
+calamity which has fallen on poor Lily.
+
+"And because she has been deceived by the man she did love, I am to
+make matters square by marrying a man I--" and then she paused.
+
+"Dear Bernard, you should not drive me to say words which will sound
+harsh to you."
+
+"No words can be harsher than those which you have already spoken. But
+Bell, at any rate, you may listen to me."
+
+Then he told her how desirable it was with reference to all the
+concerns of the Dale family that she should endeavour to look
+favourably on his proposition. It would be good for them all, he said,
+especially for Lily, as to whom at the present moment their uncle felt
+so kindly. He, as Bernard pleaded, was so anxious at heart for this
+marriage, that he would do anything that was asked of him if he were
+gratified. But if he were not gratified in this he would feel that he
+had ground for displeasure.
+
+Bell, as she had been desired to listen, did listen very patiently. But
+when her cousin had finished, her answer was very short.
+
+"Nothing that my uncle can say, or think, or do can make any difference
+in this" said she.
+
+"You will think nothing, then, of the happiness of others."
+
+"I would not marry a man I did not love, to ensure any amount of
+happiness to others--at least I know I ought not to do so. But I do not
+believe I should ensure any one's happiness by this marriage. Certainly
+not yours."
+
+After this Bernard had acknowledged to himself that the difficulties in
+his way were great.
+
+"I will go away till next autumn," he said to his uncle. "If you would
+give up your profession and remain here, she would not be so perverse."
+
+"I cannot do that, sir. I cannot risk the well-being of my life on such
+a chance." Then his uncle had been angry with him as well as with his
+niece. In his anger he determined that he would go again to his
+sister-in-law, and, after some unreasonable fashion he resolved that it
+would become him to be very angry with her also, if she declined to
+assist him with all her influence as a mother.
+
+"Why should they not both marry?" he said to himself. Lord de Guest's
+offer as to young Eames had been very generous.
+
+As he had then declared, he had not been able to express his own
+opinion at once; but on thinking over what the earl had said, he had
+found himself very willing to heal the family wound in the manner
+proposed if any such healing might be possible. That however could not
+be done quite as yet. When the time should come, and he thought it
+might come soon--perhaps in the spring, when the days should be fine and
+the evenings again long--he would be willing to take his share with the
+earl in establishing that new household. To Crosbie he had refused to
+give anything, and there was upon his conscience a shade of remorse in
+that he had so refused. But if Lily could be brought to love this other
+man, he would be more open-handed. She should have her share as though
+she was in fact his daughter. But then, if he intended to do so much
+for them at the Small House should not they in return do something also
+for him? So thinking, he went again to his sister-in-law determined to
+explain his views, even though it might be at the risk of some hard
+words between them. As regarded himself, he did not much care for hard
+words spoken to him. He almost expected that people's words should be
+hard and painful. He did not look for the comfort of affectionate soft
+greetings, and perhaps would not have appreciated them had they come to
+him. He caught Mrs Dale walking in the garden, and brought her into his
+own room, feeling that he had a better chance there than in her own
+house. She with an old dislike to being lectured in that room had
+endeavoured to avoid the interview but had failed.
+
+"So I met John Eames at the manor," he had said to her in the garden.
+
+"Ah, yes; and how did he get on there? I cannot conceive poor Johnny
+keeping holiday with the earl and his sister. How did he behave to
+them, and how did they behave to him?"
+
+"I can assure you he was very much at home there."
+
+"Was he, indeed? Well, I hope it will do him good. He is, I'm sure a
+very good young man; only rather awkward."
+
+"I didn't think him awkward at all. You'll find, Mary, that he'll do
+very well-a great deal better than his father did."
+
+"I'm sure I hope he may." After that Mrs Dale made her attempt to
+escape; but the squire had taken her prisoner, and led her captive into
+the house.
+
+"Mary," he said, as soon as he had induced her to sit down, it is time
+that this should be settled between my nephew and niece."
+
+"I am afraid there will be nothing to settle."
+
+"What do you mean--that you disapprove of it?"
+
+"By no means--personally. I should approve of it very strongly. But that
+has nothing to do with the question."
+
+"Yes, it has. I beg your pardon, but it must have, and should have a
+great deal to do with it. Of course, I am not saying that anybody
+should now ever be compelled to marry anybody."
+
+"I hope not."
+
+"I never said that they ought, and never thought so, But I do think
+that the wishes of all her family should have very great weight with a
+girl that has been well brought up."
+
+"I don't know whether Bell has been well brought up; but in such a
+matter as this nobody's wishes would weigh a leather with her; and,
+indeed, I could not take upon myself even to express a wish. To you I
+can say that I should have been very happy if she could have regarded
+her cousin as you wish her to do."
+
+"You mean that you are afraid to tell her so?"
+
+"I am afraid to do what I think is wrong, if you mean that."
+
+"I don't think it would be wrong, and therefore I shall speak to her
+myself."
+
+"You must do as you like about that, Mr Dale; I can't prevent you. I
+shall think you wrong to harass her on such a matter, and I fear also
+that her answer will not be satisfactory to you. If you choose to tell
+her your opinion, you must do so. Of course I shall think you wrong,
+that's all."
+
+Mrs Dale's voice as she said this was stern enough, and so was her
+countenance. She could not forbid the uncle to speak his mind to his
+niece, but she specially disliked the idea of any interference with her
+daughter. The squire got up and walked about the room, trying to
+compose himself that he might answer her rationally, but without anger.
+
+"May I go now?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"May you go? Of course you may go if you like it. If you think that I
+am intruding upon you in speaking to you of the welfare of your two
+girls, whom I endeavour to regard as my own daughters--except in this,
+that I know they have never been taught to love me--if you think that it
+is an interference on my part to show anxiety for their welfare, of
+course you may go."
+
+"I did not mean to say anything to hurt you, Mr Dale."
+
+"Hurt me! What does it signify whether I am hurt or not? I have no
+children of my own, and of course my only business in life is to
+provide for my nephews and nieces. I am an old fool if I expect that
+they are to love me in return, and if I venture to express a wish I am
+interfering and doing wrong I It is hard--very hard. I know well that
+they have been brought up to dislike me, and yet I am endeavouring to
+do my duty by them."
+
+"Mr Dale, that accusation has not been deserved. They have not been
+brought up to dislike you. I believe that they have both loved and
+respected you as their uncle; but such love and respect will not give
+you a right to dispose of their hands."
+
+"Who wants to dispose of their hands?"
+
+"There are some things in which I think no uncle--no parent--should
+interfere, and of all such things this is the chief. If after that you
+may choose to tell her your wishes, of course you can do so."
+
+"It will not be much good after you have set her against me."
+
+"Mr Dale, you have no right to say such things to me, and you are very
+unjust in doing so. If you think that I have set my girls against you,
+it will be much better that we should leave Allington altogether. I
+have been placed in circumstances which have made it difficult for me
+to do my duty to my children; but I have endeavoured to do it, not
+regarding my own personal wishes. I am quite sure, however, that it
+would be wrong in me to keep them here, if I am to be told by you that
+I have taught them to regard you unfavourably. Indeed, I cannot suffer
+such a thing to be said to me."
+
+All this Mrs Dale said with an air of decision, and with a voice
+expressing a sense of injury received, which made the squire feel that
+she was very much in earnest.
+
+"Is it not true," he said, defending himself, "that in all that relates
+to the girls you have ever regarded me with suspicion?"
+
+"No, it is not true." And then she corrected herself, feeling that
+there was something of truth in the squire's last assertion.
+
+"Certainly not with suspicion," she said.
+
+"But as this matter has gone so far, I will explain what my real
+feelings have, been. In worldly matters you can do much for my girls,
+and have done much."
+
+"And wish to do more," said the squire.
+
+"I am sure you do. But I cannot on that account give up my place as
+their only living parent. They are my children, and not yours. And even
+could I bring myself to allow you to act as their guardian and natural
+protector, they would not consent to such an arrangement. You cannot
+call that suspicion."
+
+"I can call it jealousy."
+
+"And should not a mother be jealous of her children's love?"
+
+During all this time the squire was walking up and down the room with
+his hands in his trousers pockets. And when Mrs Dale had last spoken,
+he continued his walk for some time in silence.
+
+"Perhaps it is well that you should have spoken out," he said.
+
+"The manner in which you accused me made it necessary."
+
+"I did not intend to accuse you, and I do not do so now; but I think
+that you have been, and that you are, very hard on me--very hard indeed.
+I have endeavoured to make your children, and yourself also, sharers
+with me in such prosperity as has been mine. I have striven to add to
+your comfort and to their happiness. I am most anxious to secure their
+future welfare. You would have been very wrong had you declined to
+accept this on their behalf; but I think that in return for it you need
+not have begrudged me the affection and obedience which generally
+follows from such good offices."
+
+"Mr Dale, I have begrudged you nothing of this."
+
+"I am hurt--I am hurt," he continued. And she was surprised by his look
+of pain even more than by the unaccustomed warmth of his words.
+
+"What you have said has, I have known, been the case all along. But
+though I had felt it to be so, I own that I am hurt by your open words."
+
+"Because I have said that my own children must ever be my own?"
+
+"Ah, you have said more than that. You and the girls have been living
+here, close to me, for--how many years is it now?--and during all those
+years there has grown up for me no kindly feeling. Do you think that I
+cannot hear, and see, and feel? Do you suppose that I am a fool and do
+not know? As for yourself you would never enter this house if you did
+not feel yourself constrained to do so for the sake of appearances. I
+suppose it is all as it should be. Having no children of my own, I owe
+the duty of a parent to my nieces; but I have no right to expect from
+them in return either love, regard, or obedience. I know I am keeping
+you here against your will, Mary. I won't do so any longer." And he
+made a sign to her that she was to depart.
+
+As she rose from her seat her heart was softened towards him. In these
+latter days he had shown much kindness to the girls--a kindness that was
+more akin to the gentleness of love than had ever come from him before.
+Lily's fate had seemed to melt even his sternness, and he had striven
+to be tender in his words and ways. And now he spoke as though he had
+loved the girls, and had loved them in vain. Doubtless he had been a
+disagreeable neighbour to his sister-in-law, making her feel that it
+was never for her personally that he had opened his hand. Doubtless he
+had been moved by an unconscious desire to undermine and take upon
+himself her authority with her own children. Doubtless he had looked
+askance at her from the first day of her marriage with his brother. She
+had been keenly alive to all this since she had first known him, and
+more keenly alive to it than ever since the failure of those efforts
+she had made to live with him on terms of affection, made during the
+first year or two of her residence at the Small House. But,
+nevertheless, in spite of all, her heart bled for him now. She had
+gained her victory over him, having fully held her own position with
+her children; but now, that he complained that he had been beaten in
+the struggle, her heart bled for him.
+
+"My brother," she said, and as she spoke she offered him her hands, "it
+may be that we have not thought as kindly of each other as we should
+have done."
+
+"I have endeavoured," said the old man. "I have endeavoured--". And then
+he stopped, either hindered by some excess of emotion, or unable to
+find the words which were necessary for the expression of his meaning.
+
+"Let us endeavour once again--both of us."
+
+"What, begin again at near seventy! No, Mary, there is no more
+beginning again for me. All this shall make no difference to the girls.
+As long as I am here they shall have the house. If they marry, I will
+do for them what I can. I believe Bernard is much in earnest in his
+suit, and if Bell will listen to him, she shall still be welcomed here
+as mistress of Allington. What you have said shall make no
+difference--but as to beginning again, it is simply impossible."
+
+After that Mrs Dale walked home through the garden by herself. He had
+studiously told her that that house in which they lived should be lent,
+not to her, but to her children, during his lifetime. He had positively
+declined the offer of her warmer regard. He had made her understand
+that they were to look on each other almost as enemies; but that she,
+enemy as she was, should still be allowed the use of his munificence,
+because he chose to do his duty by his nieces!
+
+"It will be better for us that we shall leave it," she said to herself
+as she seated herself in her own arm-chair over the drawing-room fire.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXVIII
+
+DOCTOR CROFTS IS CALLED IN
+
+Mrs Dale had not sat long in her drawing-room before tidings were
+brought to her which for a while drew her mind away from that question
+of her removal.
+
+"Mamma," said Bell, entering the room, "I really do believe that Jane
+has got scarlatina." Jane, the parlour-maid, had been ailing for the
+last two days, but nothing serious had hitherto been suspected.
+
+Mrs Dale instantly jumped up. "Who is with her?" she asked.
+
+It appeared from Bell's answer that both she and Lily had been with the
+girl, and that Lily was still in the room. Whereupon Mrs Dale ran
+upstairs, and there was on the sudden a commotion in the house. In an
+hour or so the village doctor was there, and he expressed an opinion
+that the girl's ailment was certainly scarlatina. Mrs Dale, not
+satisfied with this, sent off a boy to Guestwick for Dr Crofts, having
+herself maintained an opposition of many years' standing, against the
+medical reputation of the apothecary, and gave a positive order to the
+two girls not to visit poor Jane again. She herself had had scarlatina,
+and might do as she pleased. Then, too, a nurse was hired.
+
+All this changed for a few hours the current of Mrs Dale's thoughts:
+but in the evening she went back to the subject of her morning
+conversation, and before the three ladies went to bed, they held
+together an open council of war upon the subject. Dr Crofts had been
+found to be away from Guestwick, and word had been sent on his behalf
+that he would be over at Allington early on the following morning. Mrs
+Dale had almost made up her mind that the malady of her favourite maid
+was not scarlatina, but had not on that account relaxed her order as to
+the absence of her daughters from the maid's bedside.
+
+"Let us go at once," said Bell, who was even more opposed to any
+domination on the part of her uncle than was her mother. In the
+discussion which had been taking place between them the whole matter of
+Bernard's courtship had come upon the carpet. Bell had kept her
+cousin's offer to herself as long as she had been able to do so; but
+since her uncle had pressed the subject upon Mrs Dale, it was
+impossible for Bell to remain silent any longer.
+
+"You do not want me to marry him, mamma; do you?" she had said, when
+her mother had spoken with some show of kindness towards Bernard. In
+answer to this, Mrs Dale had protested vehemently that she had no such
+wish, and Lily, who still held to her belief in Dr Crofts, was almost
+equally animated. To them all, the idea that their uncle should in any
+way interfere in their own views of life, on the strength of the
+pecuniary assistance which they had received from him, was peculiarly
+distasteful. But it was especially distasteful that he should presume
+to have even an opinion as to their disposition in marriage. They
+declared to each other that their uncle could have no right to object
+to any marriage which either of them might contemplate as long as their
+mother should approve of it. The poor old squire had been right in
+saying that he was regarded with suspicion. He was so regarded. The
+fault had certainly been his own, in having endeavoured to win the
+daughters without thinking it worth his while to win the mother. The
+girls had unconsciously felt that the attempt was made, and had
+vigorously rebelled against it. It had not been their fault that they
+had been brought to live in their uncle's house, and made to ride on
+his ponies, and to eat partially of his bread. They had so eaten, and
+so lived, and declared themselves to be grateful. The squire was good
+in his way, and they recognised his goodness; but not on that account
+would they transfer to him one jot of the allegiance which as children
+they owed to their mother. When she told them her tale, explaining to
+them the words which their uncle had spoken that morning, they
+expressed their regret that he should be so grieved; but they were
+strong in assurances to their mother that she had been sinned against,
+and was not sinning.
+
+"Let us go at once," said Bell.
+
+"It is much easier said than done, my dear."
+
+"Of course it is, mamma; else we shouldn't be here now. What I mean is
+this--let us take some necessary first step at once. It is clear that my
+uncle thinks that our remaining here should give him some right over
+us. I do not say that he is wrong to think so. Perhaps it is natural.
+Perhaps, in accepting his kindness, we ought to submit ourselves to
+him. If that be so, it is a conclusive reason for our going."
+
+"Could we not pay him rent for the house," said Lily, "as Mrs Hearn
+does? You would like to remain here, mamma, if you could do that?"
+
+"But we could not do that, Lily. We must choose for ourselves a smaller
+house than this, and one that is not burdened with the expense of a
+garden. Even if we paid but a moderate rent for this place, we should
+not have the means of living here."
+
+"Not if we lived on toast and tea?" said Lily, laughing.
+
+"But I should hardly wish you to live upon toast and tea and indeed I
+fancy that I should get tired of such a diet myself."
+
+"Never, mamma," said Lily. "As for me, I confess to a longing after
+mutton chops; but I don't think you would ever want such vulgar things."
+
+"At any rate, it would be impossible to remain here," said Bell.
+
+"Uncle Christopher would not take rent from mamma; and even if he did,
+we should not know how to go on with our other arrangements after such
+a change. No; we must give up the dear old Small House."
+
+"It is a dear old house," said Lily, thinking, as she spoke, more of
+those late scenes in the garden, when Crosbie had been with them in the
+autumn months, than of any of the former joys of her childhood.
+
+"After all, I do not know that I should be right to move," said Mrs
+Dale, doubtingly.
+
+"Yes, yes," said both the girls at once.
+
+"Of course you will be right, mamma; there cannot be a doubt about it,
+mamma. If we can get any cottage, or even lodgings, that would be
+better than remaining here, now that we know what Uncle Christopher
+thinks of it."
+
+"It will make him very unhappy," said Mrs Dale.
+
+But even this argument did not in the least move the girls. They were
+very sorry that their uncle should be unhappy. They would endeavour to
+show him by some increased show of affection that their feelings
+towards him were not unkind. Should he speak to them they would
+endeavour to explain to him that their thoughts towards him were
+altogether affectionate. But they could not remain at Allington
+increasing their load of gratitude, seeing that he expected a certain
+payment which they did not feel themselves able to render.
+
+"We should be robbing him, if we stayed here," Bell declared--"wilfully
+robbing him of what he believes to be his just share of the bargain."
+
+So it was settled among them that notice should be given to their uncle
+of their intention to quit the Small House of Allington.
+
+And then came the question as to their new home. Mrs Dale was aware
+that her income was at any rate better than that possessed by Mrs
+Eames, and therefore she had fair ground for presuming that she could
+afford to keep a house at Guestwick.
+
+"If we do go away, that is what we must do," she said.
+
+"And we shall have to walk out with Mary Eames, instead of Susan
+Boyce," said Lily.
+
+"It won't make so much difference after all."
+
+"In that respect we shall gain as much as we lose," said Bell.
+
+"And then it will be so nice to have the shops," said Lily, ironically.
+
+"Only we shall never have any money to buy anything," said Bell.
+
+"But we shall see more of the world," said Lily.
+
+"Lady Julia's carriage comes into town twice a week, and the Miss
+Gruffens drive about in great style. Upon the whole, we shall gain a
+great deal; only for the poor old garden. Mamma, I do think I shall
+break my heart at parting with Hopkins; and as to him, I shall be
+disappointed in mankind if he ever holds his head up again after I am
+gone."
+
+But in truth there was very much of sadness in their resolution, and to
+Mrs Dale it seemed as though she were managing matters badly for her
+daughters and allowing poverty and misfortune to come upon them through
+her own fault. She well knew how great a load of sorrow was lying on
+Lily's heart, hidden beneath those little attempts at pleasantry which
+she made. When she spoke of being disappointed in mankind, Mrs Dale
+could hardly repress an outward shudder that would betray her thoughts.
+And now she was consenting to take them forth from their comfortable
+home, from the luxury of their lawns and gardens, and to bring them to
+some small dingy corner of a provincial town--because she had failed to
+make herself happy with her brother-in-law. Could she be right to give
+up all the advantages which they enjoyed at Allington--advantages which
+had come to them from so legitimate a source--because her own feelings
+had been wounded? In all their future want of comfort, in the
+comfortless dowdiness of the new home to which she would remove them,
+would she not always blame herself for having brought them to that by
+her own false pride? And yet it seemed to her that she now had no
+alternative. She could not now teach her daughters to obey their
+uncle's wishes in all things. She could not make Bell understand that
+it would be well that she should marry Bernard because the squire had
+set his heart on such a 'marriage. She had gone so far that she could
+not now go back.
+
+"I suppose we must move at Lady-day?" said Bell, who was in favour of
+instant action.
+
+"If so, had you not better let Uncle Christopher know at once?"
+
+"I don't think that we can find a house by that time."
+
+"We can get in somewhere," continued Bell.
+
+"There are plenty of lodgings in Guestwick, you know." But the sound of
+the word lodgings was uncomfortable in Mrs Dale's ears.
+
+"If we are to go, let us go at once," said Lily.
+
+"We need not stand much upon the order of our going."
+
+"Your uncle will be very much shocked," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"He cannot say that it is your fault," said Bell.
+
+It was thus agreed between them that the necessary information should
+be at once given to the squire, and that the old, well-loved house
+should be left for ever. It would be a great fall in a worldly point of
+view--from the Allington Small House to an abode in some little street
+of Guestwick. At Allington they had been county people--raised to a
+level with their own squire and other squires by the circumstance of
+their residence; but at Guestwick they would be small even among the
+people of the town. They would be on an equality with the Eames'es, and
+much looked down upon by the Gruffens. They would hardly dare to call
+any more at Guestwick Manor, seeing that they certainly could not
+expect Lady Julia to call upon them at Guestwick. Mrs Boyce no doubt
+would patronise them, and they could already anticipate the condolence
+which would be offered to them by Mrs Hearn. Indeed such a movement on
+their part would be tantamount to a confession of failure in the full
+hearing of so much of the world as was known to them.
+
+I must not allow my readers to suppose that these considerations were a
+matter of indifference to any of the ladies at the Small House. To some
+women of strong mind, of highly-strung philosophic tendencies, such
+considerations might have been indifferent. But Mrs Dale was not of
+this nature, nor were her daughters. The good things of the world were
+good in their eyes, and they valued the privilege of a pleasant social
+footing among their friends. They were by no means capable of a wise
+contempt of the advantages which chance had hitherto given to them.
+They could not go forth rejoicing in the comparative property of their
+altered condition. But then, neither could they purchase those luxuries
+which they were about to abandon at the price which was asked for them.
+
+"Had you not better write to my uncle?" said one of the girls. But to
+this Mrs Dale objected that she could not make a letter on such a
+subject clearly intelligible, and that therefore she would see the
+squire on the following morning.
+
+"It will be very dreadful," she said, "but it will soon be over. It is
+not what he will say at the moment that I fear so much, as the bitter
+reproaches of his face when I shall meet him afterwards." So, on the
+following morning, she again made her way, and now without invitation,
+to the squire's study.
+
+"Mr Dale," she began, starting upon her work with some confusion in her
+manner, and hurry in her speech, "I have been thinking over what we
+were saying together yesterday, and I have come to a resolution which I
+know I ought to make known to you without a moment's delay."
+
+The squire also had thought of what had passed between them, and had
+suffered much as he had done so; but he had thought of it without
+acerbity or anger. His thoughts were ever gentler than his words, and
+his heart softer than any exponent of his heart that he was able to put
+forth. He wished to love his brother's children, and to be loved by
+them; but even failing that, he wished to do good to them. It had not
+occurred to him to be angry with Mrs Dale after that interview was
+over. The conversation had not gone pleasantly with him; but then he
+hardly expected that things would go pleasantly. No idea had occurred
+to him that evil could come upon any of the Dale ladies from the words
+which had then been spoken. He regarded the Small House as their abode
+and home as surely as the Great House was his own. In giving him his
+due, it must be declared that any allusion to their holding these as a
+benefit done to them by him had been very far from his thoughts. Mrs
+Hearn, who held her cottage at half its real value, grumbled almost
+daily at him as her landlord; but it never occurred to him that
+therefore he should raise her rent, or that in not doing so he was
+acting with special munificence. It had ever been to him a grumbling,
+cross-grained, unpleasant world; and he did not expect from Mrs Hearn,
+or from his sister-in-law, anything better than that to which he had
+ever been used.
+
+"It will make me very happy," said he, "if it has any bearing on Bell's
+marriage with her cousin."
+
+"Mr Dale, that is out of the question. I would not vex you by saying so
+if I were not certain of it; but I know my child so well!"
+
+"Then we must leave it to time, Mary."
+
+"Yes, of course; but no time will suffice to make Bell change her mind.
+We will, however, leave the subject. And now, Mr Dale, I have to tell
+you of something else--we have resolved to leave the Small House."
+
+"Resolved on what?" said the squire, turning his eyes full upon her.
+
+"We have resolved to leave the Small House."
+
+"Leave the Small House!" he said, repeating her words; "and where on
+earth do you mean to go?"
+
+"We think we shall go into Guestwick."
+
+"And why?"
+
+"Ah, that is so hard to explain. If you would only accept the fact as I
+tell it to you, and not ask for the reasons which have guided me!"
+
+"But that is out of the question, Mary. In such a matter as that I must
+ask your reasons; and I must tell you also that, in my opinion, you
+will not be doing your duty to your daughters in carrying out such an
+intention, unless your reasons are very strong indeed."
+
+"But they are very strong," said Mrs Dale; and then she paused.
+
+"I cannot understand it," said the squire.
+
+"I cannot bring myself to believe that you are really in earnest. Are
+you not comfortable there?"
+
+"More comfortable than we have any right to be with our means."
+
+"But I thought you always did very nicely with your money. You never
+get into debt."
+
+"No; I never get into debt. It is not that, exactly. The fact is, Mr
+Dale, we have no right to live there without paying rent; but we could
+not afford to live there if we did pay rent."
+
+"Who has talked about rent?" he said, jumping up from his chair.
+
+"Some one has been speaking falsehoods of me behind my back." No gleam
+of the real truth had yet come to him. No idea had reached his mind
+that his relatives thought it necessary to leave his house in
+consequence of any word that he himself had spoken. He had never
+considered himself to have been in any special way generous to them,
+and would not have thought it reasonable that they should abandon the
+house in which they had been living, even if his anger against them had
+been strong and hot.
+
+"Mary," he said, "I must insist upon getting to the bottom of this. As
+for your leaving the house, it is out of the question. Where can you be
+better off, or so well? As to going into Guestwick, what sort of life
+would there be for the girls? I put all that aside as out of the
+question; but I must know what has induced you to make such a
+proposition. Tell me honestly--has any one spoken evil of me behind my
+back?"
+
+Mrs Dale had been prepared for opposition and for reproach; but there
+was a decision about the squire's words, and an air of masterdom in his
+manner, which made her recognise more fully than she had yet done the
+difficulty of her position. She almost began to fear that she would
+lack power to carry out her purpose.
+
+"Indeed, it is not so, Mr Dale."
+
+"Then what is it?"
+
+"I know that if I attempt to tell you, you will be vexed, and will
+contradict me."
+
+"Vexed I shall be, probably."
+
+"And yet I cannot help it. Indeed, I am endeavouring to do what is
+right by you and by the children."
+
+"Never mind me; your duty is to think of them."
+
+"Of course it is; and in doing this they most cordially agree with me."
+
+In using such argument as that, Mrs Dale showed her weakness, and the
+squire was not slow to take advantage of it.
+
+"Your duty is to them," he said; "but I do not mean by that that your
+duty is to let them act in any way that may best please them for the
+moment. I can understand that they should be run away with by some
+romantic nonsense, but I cannot understand it of you."
+
+"The truth is this, Mr Dale. You think that my children owe to you that
+sort of obedience which is due to a parent, and as long as they remain
+here, accepting from your hands so large a part of their daily support,
+it is perhaps natural that you should think so. In this unhappy affair
+about Bell--"
+
+"I have never said anything of the kind," said the squire, interrupting
+her.
+
+"No; you have not said so. And I do not wish you to think that I make
+any complaint. But I feel that it is so, and they feel it. And,
+therefore, we have made up our minds to go away."
+
+Mrs Dale, as she finished, was aware that she had not told her story
+well, but she had acknowledged to herself that it was quite out of her
+power to tell it as it should be told. Her main object was to make her
+brother-in-law understand that she certainly would leave his house,
+and to make him understand this with as little pain to himself as
+possible. She did not in the least mind his thinking her foolish, if
+only she could so carry her point as to be able to tell her daughters
+on her return that the matter was settled. But the squire, from his
+words and manners, seemed indisposed to give her this privilege.
+
+"Of all the propositions which I ever heard," said he "it is the most
+unreasonable. It amounts to this, that you are too proud to live
+rent-free in a house which belongs to your husband's brother, and
+therefore you intend to subject yourself and your children to the great
+discomfort of a very straitened income. If you yourself only were
+concerned I should have no right to say anything; but I think myself
+bound to tell you that, as regards the girls, everybody that knows you
+will think you to have been very wrong. It is in the natural course of
+things that they should live in that house. The place has never been
+let. As far as I know, no rent has ever been paid for the house since
+it was built. It has always been given to some member of the family,
+who has been considered as having the best right to it. I have
+considered your footing there as firm as my own here. A quarrel between
+me and your children would be to me a great calamity, though, perhaps,
+they might be indifferent to it. But if there were such a quarrel it
+would afford no reason for their leaving that house. Let me beg you to
+think over the matter again."
+
+The squire could assume an air of authority on certain occasions, and
+he had done so now. Mrs Dale found that she could only answer him by a
+simple repetition of her own intention; and, indeed, failed in making
+him any serviceable answer whatsoever.
+
+"I know that you are very good to my girls," she said.
+
+"I will say nothing about that," he answered; not thinking at that
+moment of the Small House, but of the full possession which he had
+desired to give to the elder of all the privileges which should belong
+to the mistress of Allington--thinking also of the means by which he was
+hoping to repair poor Lily's shattered fortunes. What words were
+further said had no great significance, and Mrs Dale got herself away,
+feeling that she had failed. As soon as she was gone the squire arose,
+and putting on his great-coat, went forth with his hat and stick to the
+front of the house. He went out in order that his thoughts might be
+more free, and that he might indulge in that solace which an injured
+man finds in contemplating his injury. He declared to himself that he
+was very hardly used--so hardly used, that he almost began to doubt
+himself, and his own motives. Why was it that the people around him
+disliked him so strongly--avoided him and thwarted him in the efforts
+which he made for their welfare? He offered to his nephew all the
+privileges of a son--much more indeed 'than the privileges of a
+son--merely asking in return that he would consent to live permanently
+in the house which was to be his own. But his nephew refused.
+
+"He cannot bear to live with me," said the old man to himself sorely.
+He was prepared to treat his nieces with more generosity than the
+daughters of the House of Allington had usually received from their
+fathers; and they repelled his kindness, running away from him, and
+telling him openly that they would not be beholden to him. He walked
+slowly up and down the terrace, thinking of this very bitterly. He did
+not find in the contemplation of his grievance all that solace which a
+grievance usually gives, because he accused himself in his thoughts
+rather than others. He declared to himself that he was made to be
+hated, and protested to himself that it would be well that he should
+die and be buried out of memory, so that the remaining Dales might have
+a better chance of living happily; and then as he thus discussed all
+this within his own bosom, his thoughts were very tender, and though he
+was aggrieved, he was most affectionate to those who had most injured
+him. But it was absolutely beyond his power to reproduce outwardly,
+with words and outward signs, such thoughts and feelings.
+
+It was now very nearly the end of the year, but the weather was still
+soft and open. The air was damp rather than cold, and the lawns and
+fields still retained the green tints of new vegetation. As the squire
+was walking on the terrace Hopkins came up to him, and touching his
+hat, remarked that they should have frost in a day or two.
+
+"I suppose we shall," said the squire.
+
+"We must have the mason to the flues of that little grape-house, sir,
+before I can do any good with a fire there."
+
+"Which grape-house?" said the squire, crossly.
+
+"Why, the grape-house in the other garden, sir. It ought to have been
+done last year by rights." This Hopkins said to punish his master for
+being cross to him. On that matter of the flues of Mrs Dale's
+grape-house he had, with much consideration, spared his master during
+the last winter, and he felt that this ought to be remembered now.
+
+"I can't put any fire in it, not to do any real good, till something's
+done. That's sure."
+
+"Then don't put any fire in it," said the squire.
+
+Now the grapes in question were supposed to be peculiarly fine, and
+were the glory of the garden of the Small House. They were always
+forced, though not forced so early as those at the Great House, and
+Hopkins was in a state of great confusion.
+
+"They'll never ripen; sir; not the whole year through."
+"Then let them be unripe," said the squire, walking about.
+
+Hopkins did not at all understand it. The squire in his natural course
+was very unwilling to neglect any such matter as this, but would be
+specially unwilling to neglect anything touching the Small House. So
+Hopkins stood on the terrace, raising his hat and scratching his head.
+
+"There's something wrong amongst them," said he to himself, sorrowfully.
+
+But when the squire had walked to the end of the terrace and had turned
+upon the path which led round the side of the house, he stopped and
+called to Hopkins.
+
+"Have what is needful done to the flue," he said.
+
+"Yes, sir; very well, sir. It'll only be re-setting the bricks. Nothing
+more ain't needful, just this winter."
+
+"Have the place put in perfect order while you're about it." said the
+squire, and then he walked away.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XXXIX
+
+DOCTOR CROFTS IS TURNED OUT
+
+"Have you heard the news, my dear, from the Small House?" said Mrs
+Boyce to her husband, some two or three days after Mrs Dale's visit to
+the squire. It was one o'clock, and the parish pastor had come in from
+his ministrations to dine with his wife and children.
+
+"What news?" said Mr Boyce, for he had heard none.
+
+"Mrs Dale and the girls are going to leave the Small House; they're
+going into Guestwick to live."
+
+"Mrs Dale going away; nonsense!" said the vicar. "What on earth should
+take her into Guestwick? She doesn't pay a shilling of rent where she
+is."
+
+"I can assure you it's true, my dear. I was with Mrs Hearn just now,
+and she had it direct from Mrs Dale's own lips. Mrs Hearn said she'd
+never been taken so much aback in her whole life. There's been some
+quarrel, you may be sure of that."
+
+Mr Boyce sat silent, pulling off his dirty shoes preparatory to his
+dinner. Tidings so important, as touching the social life of his
+parish, had not come to him for many a day, and he could hardly bring
+himself to credit them at so short a notice.
+
+"Mrs Hearn says that Mrs Dale spoke ever so firmly about it, as though
+determined that nothing should change her."
+
+"And did she say why?"
+
+"Well, not exactly. But Mrs Hearn said she could understand there had
+been words between her and the squire. It couldn't be anything else,
+you know. Probably it had something to do with that man, Crosbie."
+
+"They'll be very pushed about money," said Mr Boyce, thrusting his feet
+into his slippers.
+
+"That's just what I said to Mrs, Hearn. And those girls have never been
+used to anything like real economy. What's to become of them I don't
+know;" and Mrs Boyce, as she expressed her sympathy for her dear
+friends, received considerable comfort from the prospect of their
+future poverty. It always is so, and Mrs Boyce was not worse than her
+neighbours.
+
+"You'll find they'll make it up before the time comes," said Mr Boyce,
+to whom the excitement of such a change in affairs was almost too good
+to be true.
+
+"I am afraid not," said Mrs Boyce; "I'm afraid not. They are both so
+determined. I always thought that riding and giving the girls hats and
+habits was injurious. It was treating them as though they were the
+squire's daughters, and they were not the squire's daughters."
+
+"It was almost the same thing."
+
+"But now we see the difference," said the judicious Mrs Boyce.
+
+"I often said that dear Mrs Dale was wrong, and it turns out that I was
+right. It will make no difference to me, as regards calling on them and
+that sort of thing."
+
+"Of course it won't."
+
+"Not but what there must be a difference, and a very great difference
+too. It will be a terrible come down for poor Lily, with the loss of
+her fine husband and all."
+
+After dinner, when Mr Boyce had again gone forth upon his labours, the
+same subject was discussed between Mrs Boyce and her daughters, and the
+mother was very careful to teach her children that Mrs Dale would be
+just as good a person as ever she had been, and quite as much a lady,
+even though she should live in a very dingy house at Guestwick; from
+which lesson the Boyce girls learned plainly that Mrs Dale, with Bell
+and Lily, were about to have a fall in the world, and that they were to
+be treated accordingly.
+
+From all this, it will be discovered that Mrs Dale had not given way
+to the squire's arguments, although she had found herself unable to
+answer them. As she had returned home she had felt herself to be almost
+vanquished, and had spoken to the girls with the air and tone of a
+woman who hardly knew in which course lay the line of her duty. But
+they had not seen the squire's manner on the occasion, nor heard his
+words, and they could not understand that their own purpose should be
+abandoned because he did not like it. So they talked their mother into
+fresh resolves, and on the following morning she wrote a note to her
+brother-in-law, assuring him that she had thought much of all that he
+had said, but again declaring that she regarded herself as bound in
+duty to leave the Small House. To this he had returned no answer, and
+she had communicated her intention to Mrs Hearn, thinking it better
+that there should be no secret in the matter.
+
+"I am sorry to hear that your sister-in-law is going to leave us," Mr
+Boyce said to the squire that same afternoon.
+
+"Who told you that?" asked the squire, showing by his tone that he by
+no means liked the topic of conversation which the parson had chosen.
+
+"Well, I had it from Mrs Boyce, and I think Mrs Hearn told her."
+
+"I wish Mrs Hearn would mind her own business, and not spread idle
+reports."
+
+The squire said nothing more, and Mr Boyce felt that he had been very
+unjustly snubbed.
+
+Dr Crofts had come over and pronounced as a fact that it was
+scarlatina. Village apothecaries are generally wronged by the doubts
+which are thrown upon them, for the town doctors when they come always
+confirm what the village apothecaries have said.
+
+"There can be no doubt as to its being scarlatina," the doctor
+declared; "but the symptoms are all favourable."
+
+There was, however, much worse coming than this. Two days afterwards
+Lily found herself to be rather unwell. She endeavoured to keep it to
+herself, fearing that she should be brought under the doctor's notice
+as a patient; but her efforts were unavailing, and on the following
+morning it was known that she had also taken the disease. Dr Crofts
+declared that everything was in her favour. The weather was cold. The
+presence of the malady in the house had caused them all to be careful,
+and, moreover, good advice was at hand at once. The doctor begged Mrs
+Dale not to be uneasy, but he was very eager in begging that the two
+sisters might not be allowed to be together.
+
+"Could you not send Bell, into Guestwick--to Mrs Eames's?" said he. But
+Bell did not choose to be sent to Mrs Eames's, and was with great
+difficulty kept out of her mother's bedroom, to which Lily as an
+invalid was transferred.
+
+"If you will allow me to say so," he said to Bell, on the second day
+after Lily's complaint had declared itself, "you are wrong to stay here
+in the house."
+
+"I certainly shall not leave mamma, when she has got so much upon her
+hands," said Bell.
+
+"But if you should be taken ill she would have more on her hands,"
+pleaded the doctor.
+
+"I could not do it," Bell replied.
+
+"If I were taken over to Guestwick, I should be so uneasy that I should
+walk back to Allington the first moment that I could escape from the
+house."
+
+"I think your mother would be more comfortable without you."
+
+"And I think she would be more comfortable with me. I don't ever like
+to hear of a woman running away from illness; but when a sister or a
+daughter does so, it is intolerable." So Bell remained, without
+permission indeed to see her sister, but performing various outside
+administrations which were much needed.
+
+And thus all manner of trouble came upon the inhabitants of the Small
+House, falling upon them as it were in a heap together. It was as yet
+barely two months since those terrible tidings had come respecting
+Crosbie; tidings which, it was felt at the time, would of themselves be
+sufficient to crush them; and now to that misfortune other misfortunes
+had been added--one quick upon the heels of another. In the teeth of the
+doctor's kind prophecy Lily became very ill, and after a few days was
+delirious. She would talk to her mother about Crosbie, speaking of him
+as she used to speak in the autumn that was passed. But even in her
+madness she remembered that they had resolved to leave their present
+home; and she asked the doctor twice whether their lodgings at
+Guestwick were ready for them.
+
+It was thus that Crofts first heard of their intention. Now, in these
+days of Lily's worst illness, he came daily over to Allington,
+remaining there, on one occasion, the whole night. For all this he
+would take no fee--nor had he ever taken a fee from Mrs Dale.
+
+"I wish you would not come so often," Bell said to him one evening, as
+he stood with her at the drawing-room fire, after he had left the
+patient's room; "you are overloading us with obligations." On that day
+Lily was over the worst of the fever, and he had been able to tell Mrs
+Dale that he did not think that she was now in danger.
+
+"It will not be necessary much longer," he said; "the worst of it is
+over."
+
+"It is such a luxury to hear you say so. I suppose we shall owe her
+life to you; but nevertheless--"
+
+"Oh, no; scarlatina is not such a terrible thing now as it used to be."
+
+"Then why should you have devoted your time to her as you have done? It
+frightens me when I think of the injury we must have done you."
+
+"My horse has felt it more than I have," said the doctor, laughing.
+
+"My patients at Guestwick are not so very numerous." Then, instead of
+going, he sat himself down.
+
+"And it is really true," he said, "that you are all going to leave this
+house?"
+
+"Quite true. We shall do so at the end of March, if Lily is well enough
+to be moved."
+
+"Lily will be well long before that, I hope; not, indeed, that she
+ought to be moved out of her own rooms for many weeks to come yet."
+
+"Unless we are stopped by her we shall certainly go at the end of
+March." Bell now had also sat down, and they both remained for some
+time looking at the fire in silence.
+
+"And why is it, Bell?" he said, at last.
+
+"But I don't know whether I have a right to ask."
+
+"You have a right to ask any question about us," she said
+
+"My uncle is very kind. He is more than kind; he is generous. But he
+seems to think that our living here gives him a right to interfere with
+mamma. We don't like that, and, therefore, we are going."
+
+The doctor still sat on one side of the fire, and Bell still sat
+opposite to him; but the conversation did not form itself very freely
+between them.
+
+"It is bad news," he said, at last.
+
+"At any rate, when we are ill you will not have so far to come and see
+us."
+
+"Yes, I understand. That means that I am ungracious not to congratulate
+myself on having you all so much nearer to me; but I do not in the
+least. I cannot bear to think of you as living anywhere but here at
+Allington. Dales will be out of their place in a street at Guestwick."
+
+"That's hard upon the Dales, too."
+
+"It is hard upon them. It's a sort of offshoot from that very
+tyrannical law of noblesse oblige. I don't think you ought to go away
+from Allington, unless the circumstances are very imperative."
+
+"But they are very imperative."
+"In that case, indeed!" And then again he fell into silence.
+
+"Have you never seen that mamma is not happy here?" she said, after
+another pause.
+
+"For myself, I never quite understood it all before as I do now; but
+now I see it."
+
+"And I have seen it--have seen at least what you mean. She has led a
+life of restraint; but then, how frequently is such restraint the
+necessity of a life? I hardly think that your mother would move on that
+account."
+
+"No. It is on our account. But this restraint, as you call it, makes us
+unhappy, and she is governed by seeing that. My uncle is generous to
+her as regards money; but in other things--in matters of feeling--I think
+he has been ungenerous."
+
+"Bell," said the doctor; and then he paused.
+
+She looked up at him, but made no answer. He had always called her by
+her Christian name, and they two had ever regarded each other as close
+friends. At the present moment she had forgotten all else besides this,
+and yet she had infinite pleasure in sitting there and talking to him.
+
+"I am going to ask you a question which perhaps I ought not to ask,
+only that I have known you so long that I almost feel that I am
+speaking to a sister."
+
+"You may ask me what you please," said she.
+
+"It is about your cousin Bernard."
+
+"About Bernard!" said Bell.
+
+It was now dusk; and as they were sitting without other light than that
+of the fire, she knew that he could not discern the colour which
+covered her face as her cousin's name was mentioned. But, had the light
+of day pervaded the whole room, I doubt whether Crofts would have seen
+that blush, for he kept his eyes firmly fixed upon the fire.
+
+"Yes, about Bernard? I don't know whether I ought to ask you."
+
+"I'm sure I can't say," said Bell; speaking word of the nature of which
+she was not conscious.
+
+"There has been a rumour in Guestwick that he and you--"
+
+"It is untrue," said Bell; "quite untrue. If you hear it repeated, you
+should contradict it. I wonder why people should say such things."
+
+"It would have been an excellent marriage--all your friends must have
+approved it."
+
+"What do you mean, Dr Crofts? How I do hate those words, 'an excellent
+marriage'. In them is contained more of wicked worldliness than any
+other words that one ever hears spoken. You want me to marry my cousin
+simply because I should have a great house to live in, and a coach. I
+know that you are my friend, but I hate such friendship as that."
+
+"I think you misunderstand me, Bell. I mean that it would have been an
+excellent marriage, provided you had both loved each other."
+
+"No, I don't misunderstand you. Of course it would be an excellent
+marriage, if we loved each other. You might say the same if I loved the
+butcher or the baker. What you mean is, that it makes a reason for
+loving him."
+
+"I don't think I did mean that."
+
+"Then you mean nothing."
+
+After that, there were again some minutes of silence during which Dr
+Crofts got up to go away.
+
+"You have scolded me very dreadfully," he said, with a slight smile,
+"and I believe I have deserved it for interfering."
+
+"No; not at all for interfering."
+
+"But at any rate you must forgive me before I go."
+
+"I won't forgive you at all, unless you repent of your sins, and alter
+altogether the wickedness of your mind. You will become very soon as
+bad as Dr Gruffen."
+
+"Shall I?"
+
+"Oh, but I will forgive you; for after all, you are the most generous
+man in the world."
+
+"Oh, yes; of course I am. well-good-bye."
+
+"But, Dr Crofts, you should not suppose others to be so much more
+worldly than yourself. You do not care for money so very much--"
+
+"But I do care very much."
+
+"If you did, you would not come here for nothing day after day."
+
+"I do care for money very much. I have sometimes nearly broken my heart
+because I could not get opportunities of earning it. It is the best
+friend that a man can have--"
+
+"Oh, Dr Crofts!"
+
+"--the best friend that a man can have; if it be honestly come by. A
+woman can hardly realise the sorrow which may fall upon a man from the
+want of such a friend."
+
+"Of course a man likes to earn a decent living by his profession; and
+you can do that."
+
+"That depends upon one's ideas of decency."
+
+"Ah! mine never ran very high. I've always had a sort of aptitude for
+living in a pigsty;--a clean pigsty, you know, with nice fresh bean
+straw to lie upon. I think it was a mistake when they made a lady of
+me. I do, indeed."
+
+"I do not," said Dr Crofts.
+
+"That because you don't quite know me yet. I've not the slightest
+pleasure in putting on three different dresses a day. I do it very
+often because it comes to me to do it, from the way in which we have
+been taught to live. But when we get to Guestwick I mean to change all
+that; and if you come in to tea, you'll see me in the same brown frock
+that I wear in the morning--unless, indeed, the morning work makes the
+brown frock dirty. Oh, Dr Crofts! you'll have it pitch-dark riding home
+under the Guestwick elms."
+
+"I don't mind the dark," he said; and it seemed as though he hardly
+intended to go even yet.
+
+"But I do," said Bell,
+
+"And I shall ring for candles." But he stopped her as she put her hand
+out to the bell-pull.
+
+"Stop a moment, Bell. You need hardly have the candles before I go, and
+you need not begrudge my staying either, seeing that I shall be all
+alone at home."
+
+"Begrudge your staying!"
+
+"But, however, you shall begrudge it, or else make me very welcome." He
+still held her by the wrist, which he had caught as he prevented her
+from summoning the servant.
+
+"What do you mean?" said she..
+
+"You know you are welcome to us as flowers in May. You always were
+welcome; but now, when you have come to us in our trouble. At any rate,
+you shall never say that I turn you out."
+
+"Shall I never say so?" And still he held her by the wrist. He had
+kept his chair throughout, but she was standing before him--between him
+and the fire. But she, though he held her in this way, thought little
+of his words, or of his action. They had known each other with great
+intimacy, and though Lily would still laugh at her, saying that Dr
+Crofts was her lover, she had long since taught herself that no such
+feeling as that would ever exist between them.
+
+"Shall I never say so, Bell? What if so poor a man as I ask for the
+hand that you will not give to so rich a man as your cousin Bernard?"
+
+She instantly withdrew her arm and moved back very quickly a step or
+two across the rug. She did it almost with the motion which she might
+have used had he insulted her; or had a man spoken such words who would
+not, under any circumstances, have a right to speak them.
+
+"Ah, yes! I thought it would be so," he said. "I may go now, and may
+know that I have been turned out."
+
+"What is it you mean, Dr Crofts? What is it you are saying? Why do you
+talk that nonsense, trying to see if you can provoke me?"
+"Yes; it is nonsense. I have no right to address you in that way, and
+certainly should not have done it now that I am in your house in the
+way of my profession. I beg your pardon." Now he also was standing, but
+he had not moved from his side of the fireplace.
+
+"Are you going to forgive me before I go?
+
+"Forgive you for what?" said she.
+
+"For daring to love you; for having loved you almost as long as you can
+remember; for loving you better than all beside. This alone you should
+forgive; but will you forgive me for having told it?"
+
+He had made her no offer, nor did she expect that he was about to make
+one. She herself had hardly yet realised the meaning of his words, and
+she certainly had asked herself no question as to the answer which she
+should give to them. There are cases in which lovers present themselves
+in so unmistakable a guise, that the first word of open love uttered by
+them tells their whole story, and tells it without the possibility of a
+surprise. And it is generally so when the lover has not been an old
+friend, when even his acquaintance has been of modern date. It had been
+so essentially in the case of Crosbie and Lily Dale. When Crosbie came
+to Lily and made his offer, he did it with perfect ease and thorough
+self-possession, for he almost knew that it was expected. And Lily,
+though she had been flurried for a moment, had her answer pat enough.
+She already loved the man with all her heart, delighted in his
+presence, basked in the sunshine of his manliness, rejoiced in his wit,
+and had tuned her ears to the tone of his voice. It had all been done,
+and the world expected it. Had he not made his offer, Lily would have
+been ill-treated--though, alas, alas, there was future ill-treatment, so
+much heavier, in store for her! But there are other cases in which a
+lover cannot make himself known as such without great difficulty, and
+when he does do so, cannot hope for an immediate answer in his favour.
+It is hard upon old friends that this difficulty should usually fall
+the heaviest upon them. Crofts had been so intimate with the Dale
+family that very many persons had thought it probable that he would
+marry one of the girls. Mrs Dale herself had thought so, and had almost
+hoped it. Lily had certainly done both. These thoughts and hopes had
+somewhat faded away, but yet their former existence should have been in
+the doctor's favour. But now, when he had in some way spoken out, Bell
+started back from him and would not believe that he was in earnest. She
+probably loved him better than any man in the world, and yet, when he
+spoke to her of love, she could not bring herself to understand him.
+
+"I don't know what you mean, Dr Crofts; indeed I do not," she said.
+
+"I had meant to ask you to be my wife; simply that. But you shall not
+have the pain of making me a positive refusal. As I rode here today I
+thought of it. During my frequent rides of late I have thought of
+little else. But I told myself that I had no right to do it. I have not
+even a house in which it would be fit that you should live."
+
+"Dr Crofts, if I loved you--if I wished to marry you--" and then she
+stopped herself.
+
+"But you do not?"
+
+"No; I think not. I suppose not. No. But in any way no consideration
+about money has anything to do with it."
+
+"But I am not that butcher or that baker whom you could love?"
+
+"No," said Bell; and then she stopped herself from further speech, not
+as intending to convey all her answer in that one word, but as not
+knowing how to fashion any further words.
+
+"I knew it would be so," said the doctor.
+
+It will, I fear, be thought by those who condescend to criticise this
+lover's conduct and his mode of carrying on his suit, that he was very
+unfit for such work. Ladies will say that he wanted courage, and men
+will say that he wanted wit. I am inclined, however, to believe that he
+behaved as well as men generally do behave on such occasions, and that
+he showed himself to be a good average lover. There is your bold
+lover, who knocks his lady-love over as he does a bird, and who would
+anathematise himself all over, and swear that his gun was distraught,
+and look about as though he thought the world was coming to an end, if
+he missed to knock over his bird. And there is your timid lover, who
+winks his eyes when he fires, who has felt certain from the moment in
+which he buttoned on his knickerbockers that he at any rate would kill
+nothing, and who, when he hears the loud congratulations of his
+friends, cannot believe that he really did bag that beautiful winged
+thing by his own prowess. The beautiful winged thing which the timid
+man carries home in his bosom, declining to have it thrown into a
+miscellaneous cart, so that it may never be lost in a common crowd of
+game, is better to him than are the slaughtered hecatombs to those who
+kill their birds by the hundred.
+
+But Dr Crofts had so winked his eye, that he was not in the least aware
+whether he had winged his bird or no. Indeed, having no one at hand to
+congratulate him, he was quite sure that the bird had flown away
+uninjured into the next field. "No" was the only word which Bell had
+given in answer to his last sidelong question, and No is not a
+comfortable word to lovers. But there had been that in Bell's No which
+might have taught him that the bird was not escaping without a wound,
+if he had still had any of his wits about him.
+
+"Now I will go," said he. Then he paused for an answer, but none came.
+"And you will understand what I meant when I spoke of being turned out."
+
+"Nobody turns you out." And Bell, as she spoke, had almost descended to
+a sob.
+
+"It is time, at any rate, that I should go; is it not? And, Bell, don't
+suppose that this little scene will keep me away from your sister's
+bedside. I shall be here tomorrow, and you will find that you will
+hardly know me again for the same person." Then in the dark he put out
+his hand to her.
+
+"Good-bye," she said, giving him her hand. He pressed hers very
+closely, but she, though she wished to do so, could not bring herself
+to return the pressure. Her hand remained passive in his, showing no
+sign of offence; but it was absolutely passive.
+
+"Good-bye, dearest friend," he said.
+
+"Good-bye," she answered--and then he was gone.
+
+She waited quite still till she heard the front-door close after him,
+and then she crept silently up to her own bedroom, and sat herself down
+in a low rocking-chair over the fire. It was in accordance with a
+custom already established that her mother should remain with Lily till
+the tea was ready downstairs; for in these days of illness such dinners
+as were provided were eaten early. Bell, therefore, knew that she had
+still some half-hour of her own, during which she might sit and think
+undisturbed.
+
+And what naturally should have been her first thoughts? That she had
+ruthlessly refused a man who, as she now knew, loved her well, and for
+whom she had always felt at any rate the warmest friendship? Such were
+not her thoughts, nor were they in any way akin to this. They ran back
+instantly to years gone by--over long years, as her few years were
+counted, and settled themselves on certain halcyon days, in which she
+had dreamed that he had loved her, and had fancied that she had loved
+him. How she had schooled herself for those days since that, and taught
+herself to know that her thoughts had been over-bold! And now it had
+all come round. The only man that she had ever liked had loved her.
+Then there came to her a memory of a certain day, in which she had been
+almost proud to think that Crosbie had admired her, in which she had
+almost hoped that it might be so; and as she thought of this she
+blushed, and struck her foot twice upon the floor.
+
+"Dear Lily," she said to herself--"poor Lily!" But the feeling which
+induced her then to think of her sister had had no relation to that
+which had first brought Crosbie into her mind.
+
+And this man had loved her through it all--this priceless, peerless
+man--this man who was as true to the backbone as that other man had
+shown himself to be false; who was as sound as the other man had proved
+himself to be rotten. A smile came across her face as she sat looking
+at the fire, thinking of this. A man had loved her, whose love was
+worth possessing. She hardly remembered whether or no she had refused
+him or accepted him. She hardly asked herself what she would do. As to
+all that it was necessary that she should have many thoughts, but the
+necessity did not press upon her quite immediately. For the present, at
+any rate, she might sit and triumph--and thus triumphant she sat there
+till the old nurse came in and told her that her mother was waiting for
+her below.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XL
+
+PREPARATIONS FOR THE WEDDING
+
+The fourteenth of February was finally settled as the day on which Mr
+Crosbie was to be made the happiest of men. A later day had been at
+first named, the twenty-seventh or twenty-eighth having been suggested
+as an improvement, over the first week in March; but Lady Amelia had
+been frightened by Crosbie's behaviour on that Sunday evening, and had
+made the countess understand that there should be no unnecessary delay.
+
+"He doesn't scruple at that kind of thing," Lady Amelia had said in one
+of her letters, showing perhaps less trust in the potency of her own
+rank than might have been expected from her. The countess, however, had
+agreed with her, and when Crosbie received from his mother-in-law a
+very affectionate epistle, setting forth all the reasons which would
+make the fourteenth so much more convenient a day than the
+twenty-eighth, he was unable to invent an excuse for not being made
+happy a fortnight earlier than the time named in the bargain. His first
+impulse had been against yielding, arising from some feeling which made
+him think that more than the bargain ought not to be exacted. But what
+was the use to him of quarrelling? What the use, at least, of
+quarrelling just then? He believed that he could more easily
+enfranchise himself from the De Courcy tyranny when he should be once
+married than he could do now. When Lady Alexandrina should be his own
+he would let her know that he intended to be her master. If in doing so
+it would be necessary that he should divide himself altogether from the
+De Courcys, such division should be made. At the present moment he
+would yield to them, at any rate in this matter. And so the fourteenth
+of February was fixed for the marriage.
+
+In the second week in January Alexandrina came up to look after her
+things; or, in more noble language, to fit herself with becoming bridal
+appanages. As she could not properly do all this work alone, or even
+under the surveillance and with the assistance of a sister, Lady de
+Courcy was to come up also. But Alexandrina came first, remaining with
+her sister in St. John's Wood till the countess should arrive. The
+countess had never yet condescended to accept of her son-in-law's
+hospitality, but always went to the cold, comfortless house in Portman
+Square--the house which had been the De Courcy town family mansion for
+many years, and which the countess would long since have willingly
+exchanged for some abode on the other side of Oxford Street; but the
+earl had been obdurate; his clubs and certain lodgings which he had
+occasionally been wont to occupy, were on the right side of Oxford
+Street; why should he change his old family residence? So the countess
+was coming up to Portman Square, not having been even asked on this
+occasion to St. John's Wood.
+
+"Don't you think we'd better," Mr Gazebee had said to his wife, almost
+trembling at the renewal of his own proposition.
+
+"I think not, my dear," Lady Amelia had answered.
+
+"Mamma is not very particular; but there are little things, you know--"
+
+"Oh, yes, of course," said Mr Gazebee; and then the conversation had
+been dropped. He would most willingly have entertained his august
+mother-in-law during her visit to the metropolis, and yet her presence
+in his house would have made him miserable as long as she remained
+there.
+
+But for a week Alexandrina sojourned under Mr Gazebee's roof, during
+which time Crosbie was made happy with all the delights of an expectant
+bridegroom. Of course he was given to understand that he was to dine at
+the Gazebees' every day, and spend all his evenings there; and, under
+the circumstances, he had no excuse for not doing so. Indeed, at the
+present moment, his hours would otherwise have hung heavily enough upon
+his hands. In spite of his bold resolution with reference to his eye,
+and his intention not to be debarred from the pleasures of society by
+the marks of the late combat, he had not, since that occurrence,
+frequented his club very closely; and though London was now again
+becoming fairly full, he did not find himself going out so much as had
+been his wont. The brilliance of his coming marriage did not seem to
+have added much to his popularity; in fact, the world--his world--was
+beginning to look coldly at him. Therefore that daily attendance at St.
+John's Wood was not felt to be so irksome as might have been expected.
+
+A residence had been taken for the couple in a very fashionable row of
+buildings abutting upon the Bayswater Road, called Princess Royal
+Crescent. The house was quite new, and the street being unfinished had
+about it strong smell of mortar, and a general aspect of builders'
+poles and brickbats; but nevertheless, it was acknowledged to be a
+quite correct locality. From one end of the crescent a corner of Hyde
+Park could be seen, and the other abutted on a very handsome terrace
+indeed, in which lived an ambassador--from South America--a few bankers'
+senior clerks, and a peer of the realm. We know how vile is the sound
+of Baker Street, and how absolutely foul to the polite ear is the name
+of Fitzroy Square. The houses, however, in those purlieus are
+substantial, warm, and of good size. The house in Princess Royal
+Crescent was certainly not substantial, for in these days
+substantially-built houses do not pay. It could hardly have been warm,
+for, to speak the truth, it was even yet not finished throughout; and
+as for the size, though the drawing-room was a noble apartment,
+consisting of a section of the whole house, with a corner cut out for
+the staircase, It was very much cramped in its other parts, and was
+made like a cherub, in this respect, that it had no rear belonging to
+it.
+
+"But if you have no private fortune of your own, you cannot have
+everything," as the countess observed when Crosbie objected to the
+house because a closet under the kitchen-stairs was to be assigned to
+him as his own dressing-room.
+
+When the question of the house was first debated, Lady Amelia had been
+anxious that St. John's Wood should be selected as the site, but to
+this Crosbie had positively objected.
+
+"I think you don't like St. John's Wood," Lady Amelia had said to him
+somewhat sternly, thinking to awe him into a declaration that he
+entertained no general enmity to the neighbourhood. But Crosbie was not
+weak enough for this.
+
+No; I do not," he said.
+
+"I have always disliked it. It amounts to a prejudice, I dare say. But
+if I were made to live here I am convinced I should cut my throat in
+the first six months."
+
+Lady Amelia had then drawn herself up, declaring her sorrow that her
+house should be so hateful to him.
+
+"Oh, dear, no," said he.
+
+"I like it very much for you, and enjoy coming here of all things. I
+speak only of the effect which living here myself would have upon me."
+
+Lady Amelia was quite clever enough to understand it all; but she had
+her sister's interest at heart, and therefore persevered in her
+affectionate solicitude for her brother-in-law, giving up that point as
+to St. John's Wood. Crosbie himself had wished to go to one of the new
+Pimlico squares down near Vauxhall Bridge and the river, actuated
+chiefly by consideration of the enormous distance lying between that
+locality and the northern region in which Lady Amelia lived; but to
+this Lady Alexandrina had objected strongly. If, indeed, they could
+have achieved Eaton Square, or a street leading out of Eaton Square--if
+they could have crept on to the hem of the skirt of Belgravia--the bride
+would have been delighted. And at first she was very nearly being taken
+in with the idea that such was the proposal made to her. Her
+geographical knowledge of Pimlico had not been perfect, and she had
+nearly fallen into a fatal error. But a friend had kindly intervened.
+
+"For heaven's sake, my dear, don't let him take you anywhere beyond
+Eccleston Square!" had been exclaimed to her in dismay by a faithful
+married friend. Thus warned, Alexandrina had been firm, and now their
+tent was to be pitched in Princess Royal Crescent, from one end of
+which the Hyde Park may be seen.
+
+The furniture had been ordered chiefly under the inspection, and by the
+experience, of the Lady Amelia. Crosbie had satisfied himself by
+declaring that she at any rate could get the things cheaper than he
+could buy them, and that he had no taste for such employment.
+Nevertheless, he had felt that he was being made subject to tyranny and
+brought under the thumb of subjection. He could not go cordially into
+this matter of beds and chairs, and, therefore, at last deputed the
+whole matter to the De Courcy faction. And for this there was another
+reason, not hitherto mentioned. Mr Mortimer Gazebee was finding the
+money with which all the furniture was being bought. He, with an honest
+but almost unintelligible zeal for the De Courcy family; had tied up
+every shilling on which he could lay his hand as belonging to Crosbie,
+in the interest of Lady Alexandrina. He had gone to work for her,
+scraping here and arranging there, strapping the new husband down upon
+the grindstone of his matrimonial settlement, as though the future
+bread of his, Gazebee's, own children were dependent on the validity of
+his legal workmanship. And for this he was not to receive a penny, or
+gain any advantage, immediate or ulterior. It came from his zeal--his
+zeal for the coronet which Lord de Courcy wore. According to his mind
+an earl and an earl's belongings were entitled to such zeal. It was the
+theory in which he had been educated, and amounted to a worship which,
+unconsciously, he practised. Personally, he disliked Lord de Courcy,
+who ill-treated him. He knew that the earl was a heartless, cruel, bad
+man. But as an earl he was entitled to an amount of service which no
+commoner could have commanded from Mr Gazebee. Mr Gazebee, having thus
+tied up all the available funds in favour of Lady Alexandrina's
+seemingly expected widowhood, was himself providing the money with
+which the new house was to be furnished.
+
+"You can pay me a hundred and fifty a year with four per cent, till it
+is liquidated," he had said to Crosbie; and Crosbie had assented with a
+grunt. Hitherto, though he had lived in London expensively, and as a
+man of fashion, he had never owed any one anything. He was now to begin
+that career of owing. But when a clerk in a public office marries an
+earl's daughter, he cannot expect to have everything his own way.
+
+Lady Amelia had bought the ordinary furniture--the beds, the
+stair-carpets, the washing-stands, and the kitchen things. Gazebee had
+got a bargain of the dinner-table and sideboard. But Lady Alexandrina
+herself was to come up with reference to the appurtenances of the
+drawing-room. It was with reference to matters of costume that the
+countess intended to lend her assistance--matters of costume as to which
+the bill could not be sent in to Gazebee, and be paid for by him with
+five per cent, duly charged against the bridegroom. The bridal
+trousseau must be produced by De Courcy's means, and, therefore, it was
+necessary that the countess herself should come upon the scene.
+
+"I will have no bills, d'ye hear?" snarled the earl, gnashing and
+snapping upon his words with one specially ugly black tooth. "I won't
+have any bills about this affair." And yet he made no offer of ready
+money. It was very necessary under such circumstances that the countess
+herself should come upon the scene. An ambiguous hint had been conveyed
+to Mr Gazebee, during a visit of business which he had lately made to
+Courcy Castle, that the milliner's bills might as well be pinned on to
+those of the furniture-makers, the crockerymongers, and the like. The
+countess, putting it in her own way, had gently suggested that the
+fashion of the thing had changed lately, and that such an arrangement
+was considered to be the proper thing among people who lived really in
+the world. But Gazebee was a clear-headed, honest man; and he knew the
+countess. He did not think that such an arrangement could be made on
+the present occasion. Whereupon the countess pushed her suggestion no
+further, but made up her mind that she must come up to London herself.
+
+It was pleasant to see the Ladies Amelia and Alexandrina, as they sat
+within a vast emporium of carpets in Bond Street, asking questions of
+the four men who were waiting upon them, putting their heads together
+and whispering, calculating accurately as to extra twopences a yard,
+and occasioning as much trouble as it was possible for them to give. It
+was pleasant because they managed their large hoops cleverly among the
+huge rolls of carpets, because they were enjoying themselves
+thoroughly, and taking to themselves the homage of the men as clearly
+their due. But it was not so pleasant to look at Crosbie, who was
+fidgeting to get away to his office, to whom no power of choosing in
+the matter was really given, and whom the men regarded as being
+altogether supernumerary. The ladies had promised to be at the shop by
+half-past ten, so that Crosbie should reach his office at eleven--or a
+little after. But it was nearly eleven before they left the Gazebee
+residence, and it was very evident that half-an-hour among the carpets
+would be by no means sufficient. It seemed as though miles upon miles
+of gorgeous colouring were unrolled before them; and then when any
+pattern was regarded as at all practicable, it was unrolled backwards
+and forwards till a room was nearly covered by it. Crosbie felt for the
+men who were hauling about the huge heaps of material; but Lady Amelia
+sat as composed as though it were her duty to inspect every yard of
+stuff in the warehouse.
+
+"I think we'll look at that one at the bottom again." Then the men went
+to work and removed a mountain.
+
+"No, my dear, that green in the scroll-work won't do. It would fly
+directly, if any hot water were spilt." The man, smiling ineffably,
+declared that that particular green never flew anywhere. But Lady
+Amelia paid no attention to him, and the carpet for which the mountain
+had been removed became part of another mountain.
+
+"That might do," said Alexandrina, gazing upon a magnificent crimson
+ground through which rivers of yellow meandered, carrying with them in
+their streams an infinity of blue flowers. And as she spoke she held
+her head gracefully on one side, and looked down upon the carpet
+doubtingly. Lady Amelia poked it with her parasol at though to test its
+durability, and whispered something about yellows showing the dirt.
+Crosbie took out his watch and groaned.
+
+"It's a superb carpet, my lady, and about the newest thing we have. We
+put down four hundred and fifty yards of it for the Duchess of South
+Wales, at Cwddglwlch Castle, only last month. Nobody has had it since,
+for it has not been in stock." Whereupon Lady Amelia again poked it,
+and then got up and walked upon it. Lady Alexandrina held her head a
+little more on one side.
+
+"Five and three?" said Lady Amelia.
+
+"Oh, no, my lady; five and seven; and the cheapest carpet we have in
+the house. There is twopence a yard more in the colour; there is,
+indeed."
+
+"And the discount?" asked Lady Amelia.
+
+"Two and a half, my lady."
+
+"Oh dear, no," said Lady Amelia. "I always have five per cent. for
+immediate payment--quite immediate, you know." Upon which the man
+declared the question must be referred to his master. Two and a half
+was the rule of the house. Crosbie, who had been looking out of the
+window, said that upon his honour he couldn't wait any longer.
+
+"And what do you think of it, Adolphus?", asked Alexandrina.
+
+"Think of what?"
+
+"Of the carpet--this one, you know!"
+
+"Oh--what do I think of the carpet? I don't think I quite like all these
+yellow bands; and isn't it too red? I should have thought something
+brown with a small pattern would have been better. But, upon my word, I
+don't much care."
+
+"Of course he doesn't," said Lady Amelia. Then the two ladies put their
+heads together for another five minutes, and the carpet was
+chosen--subject to that question of the discount.
+
+"And now about the rug," said Lady Amelia. But here Crosbie rebelled,
+and insisted that he must leave them and go to his office.
+
+"You can't want me about the rug," he said.
+
+"Well, perhaps not," said Lady Amelia. But it was manifest that
+Alexandrina did not approve of being thus left by her senior attendant.
+
+The same thing happened in Oxford Street with reference to the chairs
+and sofas, and Crosbie began to wish that he were settled, even though
+he should have to dress himself in the closet below the kitchen-stairs.
+He was learning to hate the whole household in St. John's Wood, and
+almost all that belonged to it. He was introduced there to little
+family economies of which hitherto he had known nothing, and which were
+disgusting to him, and the necessity for which was especially explained
+to him. It was to men placed as he was about to place himself that
+these economies were so vitally essential--to men who with limited means
+had to maintain a decorous outward face towards the fashionable world.
+Ample supplies of butchers' meat and unlimited washing-bills might be
+very well upon fifteen hundred a year to those who went out but seldom,
+and who could use the first cab that came to hand when they did go out.
+But there were certain things that Lady Alexandrina must do, and
+therefore the strictest household economy became necessary. Would Lily
+Dale have required the use of a carriage, got up to look as though it
+were private, at the expense of her husband's beefsteaks and clean
+shirts? That question and others of that nature were asked by Crosbie
+within his own mind, not unfrequently.
+
+But, nevertheless, he tried to love Alexandrina, or rather to persuade
+himself that he loved her. If he could only get her away from the De
+Courcy faction, and especially from the Gazebee branch of it, he would
+break her of all that. He would teach her to sit triumphantly in a
+street cab, and to cater for her table with a plentiful hand. Teach
+her! at some age over thirty; and with such careful training as she had
+already received! Did he intend to forbid her ever again to see her
+relations, ever to go to St. John's Wood, or to correspond with the
+countess and Lady Margaretta? Teach her, indeed! Had he yet to learn
+that he could not wash a blackamoor white? that he could not have done
+so even had he himself been well adapted for the attempt, whereas he
+was in truth nearly as ill adapted as a man might be? But who could
+pity him? Lily, whom he might have had in his bosom, would have been no
+blackamoor.
+
+Then came the time of Lady de Courcy's visit to town, and Alexandrina
+moved herself off to Portman Square. There was some apparent comfort in
+this to Crosbie, for he would thereby be saved from those daily dreary
+journeys up to the north-west. I may say that he positively hated that
+windy corner near the church, round which he had to walk in getting to
+the Gazebee residence, and that he hated the lamp which guided him to
+the door, and the very door itself. This door stood buried as it were
+in a wall, and opened on to a narrow passage which ran across a
+so-called garden, or front yard, containing on each side two iron
+receptacles for geraniums, painted to look like Palissy ware, and a
+naked female on a pedestal. No spot in London was, as he thought, so
+cold as the bit of pavement immediately in front of that door. And
+there he would be kept five, ten, fifteen minutes, as he
+declared--though I believe in my heart that the time never exceeded
+three--while Richard was putting off the trappings of his work and
+putting on the trappings of his grandeur.
+
+If people would only have their doors opened to you by such assistance
+as may come most easily and naturally to the work! I stood lately for
+some minutes on a Tuesday afternoon at a gallant portal, and as I waxed
+impatient a pretty maiden came and opened it. She was a pretty maiden,
+though her hands and face and apron told tales of the fire-grates.
+
+"Laws, sir," she said, "the visitors' day is Wednesday; and if you
+would come then, there would be the man in livery!" She took my card
+with the corner of her apron, and did just as well as the man in
+livery; but what would have happened to her had her little speech been
+overheard by her mistress?
+
+Crosbie hated the house in St. John's Wood, and therefore the coming of
+the countess was a relief to him. Portman Square was easily to be
+reached, and the hospitalities of the countess would not be pressed
+upon him so strongly as those of the Gazebees. When he first called he
+was shown into the great family dining-room, which looked out towards
+the back of the house. The front windows were, of course, closed, as
+the family was not supposed to be in London. Here he remained in the
+room for some quarter of an hour, and then the countess descended upon
+him in all her grandeur. Perhaps he had never before seen her so grand.
+Her dress was very large, and rustled through the broad doorway, as if
+demanding even a broader passage. She had on a wonder of a bonnet, and
+a velvet mantle that was nearly as expansive as her petticoats. She
+threw her head a little back as she accosted him, and he instantly
+perceived that he was enveloped in the fumes of an affectionate but
+somewhat contemptuous patronage. In old days he had liked the countess,
+because her manner to him had always been flattering. In his
+intercourse with her he had been able to feel that he gave quite as
+much as he got, and that the countess was aware of the fact. In all the
+circumstances of their acquaintance the ascendancy had been with him,
+and therefore the acquaintance had been a pleasant one. The countess
+had been a good-natured, agreeable woman, whose rank and position had
+made her house pleasant to him; and therefore he had consented to shine
+upon her with such light as he had to give. Why was it that the matter
+was reversed, now that there was so much stronger a cause for good
+feeling between them? He knew that there was such change, and with
+bitter internal upbraidings he acknowledged to himself that this woman
+was getting the mastery over him. As the friend of the countess he had
+been a great man in her eyes--in all her little words and looks she had
+acknowledged his power; but now, as her son-in-law, he was to become a
+very little man--such as was Mortimer Gazebee!
+
+"My dear Adolphus," she said, taking both his hands, "the day is coming
+very near now; is it not?"
+
+"Very near, indeed," he said.
+
+"Yes, it is very near. I hope you feel yourself a happy man."
+
+"Oh, yes, that's of course."
+
+"It ought to be. Speaking very seriously, I mean that it ought to be a
+matter of course. She is everything that a man should desire in a
+wife. I am not alluding now to her rank, though of course you feel what
+a great advantage she gives you in this respect."
+
+Crosbie muttered something as to his consciousness of having drawn a
+prize in the lottery; but he so muttered it as not to convey to the
+lady's ears a proper sense of his dependent gratitude.
+
+"I know of no man more fortunate than you have been," she continued
+"and I hope that my dear girl will find that you are fully aware that
+it is so. I think that she is looking rather fagged. You have allowed
+her to do more than was good for her in the way of shopping."
+
+"She has done a good deal, certainly," said Crosbie.
+
+"She is so little used to anything of that kind! But of course, as
+things have turned out, it was necessary that she should see to these
+things herself."
+
+"I rather think she liked it," said Crosbie.
+
+"I believe she will always like doing her duty. We are just going now
+to Madame Millefranc's, to see some silks--perhaps you would wish to go
+with us?"
+
+Just at this moment Alexandrina came into the room, and, looked as
+though she were in all respects a smaller edition of her mother. They
+were both well-grown women, with handsome large figures, and a certain
+air about them which answered almost for beauty. As to the countess,
+her face, on close inspection, bore, as it was entitled to do, deep
+signs of age; but she so managed her face that any such close
+inspection was never made; and her general appearance for her time of
+life was certainly good. Very little more than this could be said in
+favour of her daughter.
+
+"Oh dear, no, mamma," she said, having heard her mother's last words.
+"He's the worst person in a shop in the world. He likes nothing, and
+dislikes nothing. Do you, Adolphus?"
+
+"Indeed I do. I like all the cheap things, and dislike all the dear
+things."
+
+"Then you certainly shall not go with us to Madame Millefranc's," said
+Alexandrina.
+
+"It would not matter to him there, you know, my dear," said the
+countess, thinking perhaps of the suggestion she had lately made to Mr
+Gazebee.
+
+On this occasion Crosbie managed to escape, simply promising to return
+to Portman Square in the evening after dinner.
+
+"By-the-by, Adolphus," said the countess, as he handed her into the
+hired carriage which stood at the door,
+
+"I wish you would go to Lambert's, on Ludgate Hill, for me. He has had
+a bracelet of mine for nearly three months. Do, there's a good.
+creature. Get it if you can, and bring it up this evening."
+
+Crosbie, as he made his way back to his office, swore that he would not
+do the bidding of the countess. He would not trudge off into the city
+after her trinkets. But at five o'clock, when he left his office, he
+did go there. He apologised to himself by saying that he had nothing
+else to do, and bethought himself that at the present moment his lady
+mother-in-law's smiles might be more convenient than her frowns. So he
+went to Lambert's, on Ludgate Hill, and there learned that the bracelet
+had been sent down to Courcy Castle full two months since.
+
+After that he dined at his club, at Sebright's. He dined alone, sitting
+by no means in bliss with his half-pint of sherry on the table before
+him. A man now and then came up and spoke to him, one a few words, and
+another a few, and two or three congratulated him as to his marriage;
+but the club was not the same thing to him as it had formerly been. He
+did not stand in the centre of the rug, speaking indifferently to all
+or any around him, ready with his joke, and loudly on the alert with
+the last news of the day. How easy it is to be seen when any man has
+fallen from his pride of place, though the altitude was ever so small,
+and the fall ever so slight. Where is the man who can endure such a
+fall without showing it in his face, in his voice, in his step, and in
+every motion of every limb? Crosbie knew that he had fallen, and showed
+that he knew it by the manner in which he ate his mutton chop.
+
+At half-past eight he was again in Portman Square, and found the two
+ladies crowding over a small fire in a small back drawing-room. The
+furniture was all covered with brown holland, and the place had about
+it that cold comfortless feeling which uninhabited rooms always
+produce. Crosbie, as he had walked from the club up to Portman Square,
+had indulged in some serious thoughts. The kind of life which he had
+hitherto led had certainly passed away from him. He could never again
+be the pet of a club, or indulged as one to whom all good things were
+to be given without any labour at earning them on his own part. Such
+for some years had been his good fortune, but such could be his good
+fortune no longer. Was there anything within his reach which he might
+take in lieu of that which he had lost? He might still be victorious at
+his office, having more capacity for such victory than others around
+him. But such success alone would hardly suffice for him. Then he
+considered whether he might not even yet be happy in his own
+home--whether Alexandrina, when separated from her mother, might not
+become such a wife as he could love. Nothing softens a man's feelings
+so much as failure, or makes him turn so anxiously to an idea of home
+as buffetings from those he meets abroad. He had abandoned Lily because
+his outer world had seemed to him too bright to be deserted. He would
+endeavour to supply her place with Alexandrina, because his outer world
+had seemed to him too harsh to be supported. Alas! alas! a man cannot
+so easily repent of his sins, and wash himself white from their stains!
+
+When he entered the room the two ladies were sitting over the fire, as
+I have stated, and Crosbie could immediately perceive that the spirit
+of the countess was not serene. In fact there had been a few words
+between the mother and child on that matter of the trousseau, and
+Alexandrina had plainly told her mother that if she were to be married
+at all she would be married with such garments belonging to her as were
+fitting for an earl's daughter. It was in vain that her mother had
+explained with many circumlocutional phrases, that the fitness in this
+respect should be accommodated rather to the plebeian husband than to
+the noble parent. Alexandrina had been very firm, and had insisted on
+her rights, giving the countess to understand that if her orders for
+finery were not complied with, she would return as a spinster to
+Courcy, and prepare herself for partnership with Rosina.
+
+"My dear," said the countess, piteously, "you can have no idea of what
+I shall have to go through with your father. And, of course, you could
+get all these things afterwards."
+
+"Papa has no right to treat me in such a way. And if he would not give
+me any money himself, he should have let me have some of my own."
+
+"Ah, my dear, that was Mr Gazebee's fault."
+
+"I don't care whose fault it was. It certainly was not mine. I won't
+have him to tell me"--"him" was intended to signify Adolphus
+Crosbie--"that he had to pay for my wedding-clothes."
+
+"Of course not that, my dear."
+
+"No; nor yet for the things which I wanted immediately. I'd much rather
+go and tell him at once that the marriage must be put off."
+
+Alexandrina of course carried her point, the countess reflecting with a
+maternal devotion equal almost to that of the pelican, that the earl
+could not do more than kill her. So the things were ordered as
+Alexandrina chose to order them, and the countess desired that the
+bills might be sent in to Mr Gazebee. Much self-devotion had been
+displayed by the mother, but the mother thought that none had been
+displayed by the daughter, and therefore she had been very cross with
+Alexandrina.
+
+Crosbie, taking a chair, sat himself between them, and in a very
+good-humoured tone explained the little affair of the bracelet.
+
+"Your ladyship's memory must have played you false," said he, with a
+smile.
+
+"My memory is very good," said the countess; "very good indeed. If
+Twitch got it, and didn't tell me, that was not my fault." Twitch was
+her ladyship's lady's-maid. Crosbie, seeing how the land lay, said
+nothing more about the bracelet.
+
+After a minute or two he put out his hand to take that of Alexandrina.
+They were to be married now in a week or two, and such a sign of love
+might have been allowed to him, even in the presence of the bride's
+mother. He did succeed in getting hold of her fingers, but found in
+them none of the softness of a response.
+
+"Don't," said Lady Alexandrina, withdrawing her hand; and the tone of
+her voice as she spoke the word was not sweet to his ears. He
+remembered at the moment a certain scene which took place one evening
+at the little bridge at Allington and Lily's voice, and Lily's words,
+and Lily's passion, as he caressed her: "Oh, my love, my love, my love!"
+
+"My dear," said the countess, "they know how tired I am. I wonder
+whether they are going to give us any tea." Whereupon Crosbie rang the
+bell, and, on resuming his chair, moved it a little farther away from
+his lady-love.
+
+Presently the tea was brought to them by the housekeeper's assistant,
+who did not appear to have made herself very smart for the occasion,
+and Crosbie thought that he was de trop. This, however, was a mistake
+on his part. As he had been admitted into the family, such little
+matters were no longer subject of care. Two or three months since, the
+countess would have fainted at the idea of such a domestic appearing
+with a tea-tray before Mr Crosbie. Now, however, she was utterly
+indifferent to any such consideration. Crosbie was to be admitted into
+the family, thereby becoming entitled to certain privileges--and thereby
+also becoming subject to certain domestic drawbacks. In Mrs Dale's
+little household there had been no rising to grandeur; but then, also,
+there had never been any bathos of dirt. Of this also Crosbie thought
+as he sat with his tea in his hand.
+
+He soon, however, got himself away. When he rose to go Alexandrina also
+rose, and he was permitted to press his nose against her cheekbone by
+way of a salute.
+
+"Good-night, Adolphus," said the countess, putting out her hand to him.
+
+"But stop a minute; I know there is something I want you to do for me.
+But you will look in as you go to your office tomorrow morning."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLI
+
+DOMESTIC TROUBLES
+
+When Crosbie was making his ineffectual inquiry after Lady de Courcy's
+bracelet at Lambert's, John Eames was in the act of entering Mrs
+Roper's front door in Burton Crescent.
+
+"Oh, John, where's Mr Cradell?" were the first words which greeted him,
+and they were spoken by the divine Amelia. Now, in her usual practice
+of life, Amelia did not interest herself much as to the whereabouts of
+Mr Cradell.
+
+"Where's Caudle?" said Eames, repeating the question.
+
+"Upon my word, I don't know. I walked to the office with him, but I
+haven't seen him since. We don't sit in the same room, you know."
+
+"John!" and then she stopped.
+
+"What's up now?" said John.
+
+"John! That woman's off and left her husband. As sure as your name's
+John Eames, that foolish fellow has gone off with her."
+
+"What, Caudle? I don't believe it."
+
+"She went out of this house at two o'clock in the afternoon, and has
+never been back since." That, certainly, was only four hours from the
+present time, and such an absence from home in the middle of the day
+was but weak evidence on which to charge a married woman with the great
+sin of running off with a lover. This Amelia felt, and therefore she
+went on to explain. "He's there upstairs in the drawing-room, the very
+picture of disconsolateness."
+
+"Who--Caudle?"
+
+"Lupex is. He's been drinking a little, I'm afraid; but he's very
+unhappy, indeed. He had an appointment to meet his wife here at four
+o'clock, and when he came he found her gone. He rushed up into their
+room, and now he says she has broken open a box he had and taken off
+all his money."
+
+"But he never had any money."
+
+"He paid mother some the day before yesterday."
+
+"That's just the reason he shouldn't have any today."
+
+"She certainly has taken things she wouldn't have taken if she'd merely
+gone out shopping or anything like that, for I've been up in the room
+and looked about. She'd three necklaces. They weren't much account; but
+she must have them all on, or else have got them in her pocket."
+
+"Caudle has never gone off with her in that way. He may be a fool--"
+"Oh, he is, you know. I've never seen such a fool about a woman as he
+has been."
+
+"But he wouldn't be a party to stealing a lot of trumpery trinkets, or
+taking her husband's money. Indeed, I don't think he has anything to do
+with it." Then Eames thought ever the circumstances of the day, and
+remembered that he had certainly not seen Cradell since the morning. It
+was that public servant's practice to saunter into Eames's room in the
+middle of the day, and there consume bread and cheese and beer--in spite
+of an assertion which Johnny had once made as to crumbs of biscuit
+bathed in ink. But on this special day he had not done so.
+
+"I can't think he has been such a fool as that," said Johnny.
+
+"But he has," said Amelia. "It's dinner-time now, and where is he? Had
+he any money left, Johnny?"
+
+So interrogated, Eames disclosed a secret confided to him by his friend
+which no other circumstances would have succeeded in dragging from his
+breast.
+
+"She borrowed twelve pounds from him about a fortnight since,
+immediately after quarter-day. And she owed him money, too, before
+that."
+
+"Oh, what a soft!" exclaimed Amelia; "and he hasn't paid mother a
+shilling for the last two months!"
+
+"It was his money, perhaps, that Mrs Roper got from Lupex the day
+before yesterday. If so, it comes to the same thing as far as she is
+concerned, you know."
+
+"And what are we to do now?" said Amelia, as she went before her lover
+upstairs. "Oh, John, what will become of me if ever you serve me in
+that way? What should I do if you were to go off with another lady?"
+
+"Lupex hasn't gone off," said Eames, who hardly knew what to say when
+the matter was brought before him with so closely personal a reference.
+
+"But it's the same thing," said Amelia. "Hearts is divided. Hearts that
+have been joined together ought never to be divided; ought they?" And
+then she hung upon his arm just as they got to the drawing-room door.
+
+"Hearts and darts are all my eye," said Johnny. "My belief is that a
+man had better never marry at all. How d'you do, Mr Lupex? Is anything
+the matter?"
+
+Mr Lupex was seated on a chair in the middle of the room, and was
+leaning with his head over the back of it. So despondent was he in his
+attitude that his head would have fallen off and rolled on to the
+floor, had it followed the course which its owner seemed to intend that
+it should take. His hands hung down also along the back legs of the
+chair, till his fingers almost touched the ground, and altogether his
+appearance was pendent, drooping, and woebegone. Miss Spruce was seated
+in one corner of the room, with her hands folded in her lap before her,
+and Mrs Roper was standing on the rug with a look of severe virtue on
+her brow,--of virtue which, to judge by its appearance, was very severe.
+Nor was its severity intended to be exercised solely against Mrs Lupex.
+Mrs Roper was becoming very tired of Mr Lupex also, and would not have
+been unhappy if he also had run away--leaving behind him so much of his
+property as would have paid his bill.
+
+Mr Lupex did not stir when first addressed by John Eames, but a certain
+convulsive movement was to be seen on the back of his head, indicating
+that this new arrival in the drawing-room had produced a fresh
+accession of agony. The chair, too, quivered under him, and his fingers
+stretched themselves nearer to the ground and shook themselves.
+
+"Mr Lupex, we're going to dinner immediately," said Mrs Roper. "Mr
+Eames, where is your friend, Mr Cradell?
+
+"Upon my word I don't know," said Eames.
+
+"But I know," said Lupex, jumping up and standing at his full height,
+while he knocked down the chair which had lately supported him.
+
+"The traitor to domestic bliss! I know. And wherever he is, he has that
+false woman in his arms. Would he were here!" And as he expressed the
+last wish he went through a motion with his hands and arms which seemed
+intended to signify that if that unfortunate young man were in the
+company he would pull him in pieces and double him up, and pack him
+close, and then despatch his remains off, through infinite space, to
+the Prince of Darkness. "Traitor," he exclaimed, as he finished the
+process. "False traitor! Foul traitor! And she too!" Then, as he
+thought of this softer side of the subject, he prepared himself to
+relapse again on to the chair. Finding it on the ground he had to pick
+it up. He did pick it up, and once more flung away his head over the
+back of it, and stretched his finger-nails almost down to the carpet.
+
+"James," said Mrs Roper to her son, who was now in the room, "I think
+you'd better stay with Mr Lupex while we are at dinner. Come, Miss
+Spruce, I'm very sorry that you should be annoyed by this kind of
+thing."
+
+"It don't hurt me," said Miss Spruce, preparing to leave the room. "I'm
+only an old woman." "Annoyed!" said Lupex, raising himself again from
+his chair, not perhaps altogether disposed to remain upstairs while the
+dinner, for which it was intended that he should some day pay, was
+being eaten below. "Annoyed! It is a profound sorrow to me that any
+lady should be annoyed by my misfortunes. As regards Miss Spruce, I
+look upon her character with profound veneration."
+
+"You needn't mind me; I'm only an old woman," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"But, by heavens, I do mind!" exclaimed Lupex; and hurrying forward he
+seized Miss Spruce by the hand. "I shall always regard age as
+entitled--" But the special privileges which Mr Lupex would have
+accorded to age were never made known to the inhabitants of Mrs Roper's
+boarding-house, for the door of the room was again opened at this
+moment, and Mr Cradell entered.
+
+"Here you are, old fellow, to answer for yourself," said Eames.
+
+Cradell, who had heard something as he came in at the front door, but
+had not heard that Lupex was in the drawing-room, made a slight start
+backwards when he saw that gentleman's face. "Upon my word and honour,"
+he began--but he was able to carry his speech no further. Lupex,
+dropping the hand of the elderly lady whom he reverenced, was upon him
+in an instant, and Cradell was shaking beneath his grasp like an aspen
+leaf--or rather not like an aspen leaf, unless an aspen leaf when shaken
+is to be seen with its eyes shut, its mouth open, and its tongue
+hanging out.
+
+"Come, I say," said Eames, stepping forward to his friend's assistance;
+"this won't do at all, Mr Lupex. You've been drinking. You'd better
+wait till tomorrow morning, and speak to Cradell then."
+
+"Tomorrow morning, viper," shouted Lupex, still holding his prey, but
+looking back at Eames over his shoulder. Who the viper was had not been
+clearly indicated. "When will he restore to me my wife? When will he
+restore to me my honour?"
+
+"Upon--on--on--on my--" It was for the moment in vain that poor Mr Cradell
+endeavoured to asseverate his innocence, and to stake his honour upon
+his own purity as regarded Mrs Lupex. Lupex still held to his enemy's
+cravat, though Eames had now got him by the arm, and so far impeded his
+movements as to hinder him from proceeding to any graver attack.
+
+"Jemima, Jemima, Jemima!" shouted Mrs Roper. "Run for the police; run
+for the police!". But Amelia, who had more presence of mind than her
+mother, stopped Jemima as she was making to one of the front windows.
+"Keep where you are," said Amelia.
+
+"They'll come quiet in a minute or two. And Amelia no doubt was right.
+Calling for the police when there is a row in the house is like
+summoning the water-engines when the soot is on fire in the kitchen
+chimney. In such cases good management will allow the soot to burn
+itself out, without aid from the water-engines. In the present instance
+the police were not called in, and I am inclined to think that their
+presence would not have been advantageous to any of the party.
+
+"Upon--my--honour--I know nothing about her," were the first words which
+Cradell was able to articulate, when Lupex, under Eames's persuasion,
+at last relaxed his hold.
+
+Lupex turned round to Miss Spruce with a sardonic grin. "You hear his
+words--this enemy to domestic bliss--Ha, ha! man, tell me whither you
+have conveyed my wife!"
+
+"If you were to give me the Bank of England I don't know," said Cradell.
+
+"And I'm sure he does not know," said Mrs Roper, whose suspicions
+against Cradell were beginning to subside. But as her suspicions
+subsided, her respect for him decreased. Such was the case also with
+Miss Spruce, and with Amelia, and with Jemima. They had all thought him
+to be a great fool for running away with Mrs Lupex, but now they were
+beginning to think him a poor creature because he had not done so. Had
+he committed that active folly he would have been an interesting fool.
+But now, if, as they all suspected, he knew no more about Mrs Lupex
+than they did, he would be a fool without any special interest whatever.
+
+"Of course he doesn't," said Eames.
+
+"No more than I do," said Amelia.
+
+"His very looks show him innocent," said Mrs Roper.
+
+"Indeed they do," said Miss Spruce.
+
+Lupex turned from one to the other as they thus defended the man whom
+he suspected, and shook his head at each assertion that was made. "And
+if he doesn't know who does?" he asked. "Haven't I seen it all for the
+last three months? Is it reasonable to suppose that a creature such as
+she, used to domestic comforts all her life, should have gone off in
+this way, at dinnertime, taking with her my property and all her
+jewels, and that nobody should have instigated her; nobody assisted
+her! Is that a story to tell to such a man as me! You may tell it to
+the marines!" Mr Lupex, as he made this speech, was walking about the
+room, and as he finished it he threw his pocket-handkerchief with
+violence on to the floor. "I know what to do, Mrs Roper," he said. "I
+know what steps to take. I shall put the affair into the hands of my
+lawyers tomorrow morning." Then he picked up his handkerchief and
+walked down into the dining-room.
+
+"Of course you know nothing about it?" said Eames to his friend, having
+run upstairs for the purpose of saying a word to him while he washed
+his hands.
+
+"What--about Maria? I don't know where she is, if you mean that."
+
+"Of course I mean that. What else should I mean? And what makes you
+call her Maria?"
+
+"It is wrong. I admit it's wrong. The word will come out, you know."
+
+"Will come out! I'll tell you what it is, old fellow, you'll get
+yourself into a mess, and all for nothing. That fellow will have you up
+before the police for stealing his things--"
+
+"But, Johnny--"
+
+"I know all about it. Of course you have not stolen them, and of course
+there was nothing to steal. But if you go on calling her Maria you'll
+find that he'll have a pull on you. Men don't call other men's wives
+names for nothing."
+
+"Of course we've been friends," said Cradell, who rather liked this
+view of the matter.
+
+"Yes--you have been friends! She's diddled you out of your money, and
+that's the beginning and the end of it. And now, if you go on showing
+off your friendship, you'll be done out of more money. You're making an
+ass of yourself. That's the long and the short of it."
+
+"And what have you made of yourself with that girl? There are worse
+asses than I am yet, Master Johnny." Eames, as he had no answer ready
+to this counter attack, left the room and went downstairs. Cradell soon
+followed him, and in a few minutes they were all eating their dinner
+together at Mrs Roper's hospitable table.
+
+Immediately after dinner Lupex took himself away, and the conversation
+upstairs became general on the subject of the lady's departure.
+
+"If I was him I'd never ask a question about her, but let her go," said
+Amelia.
+
+"Yes; and then have all her bills following you, wherever you went,"
+said Amelia's brother.
+
+"I'd sooner have her bills than herself," said Eames.
+
+"My belief is, that she's been an ill-used woman," said Cradell. "If
+she had a husband that she could respect and have loved, and all that
+sort of thing, she would have been a charming woman."
+
+"She's every bit as bad as he is," said Mrs Roper.
+
+"I can't agree with you, Mrs Roper," continued the lady's champion.
+"Perhaps I ought to understand her position better than any one here,
+and--"
+
+"Then that's just what you ought not to do, Mr Cradell," said Mrs
+Roper. And now the lady of the house spoke out her mind with much
+maternal dignity and with some feminine severity.
+
+"That's just what a young man like you has no business to know. What's
+a married woman like that to you, or you to her; or what have you to do
+with understanding her position? When you've a wife of your own, if
+ever you do have one, you'll find you'll have trouble enough then
+without anybody else interfering with you. Not but what I believe
+you're innocent as a lamb about Mrs Lupex; that is, as far as any harm
+goes. But you've got yourself into all this trouble by meddling, and
+was like enough to get yourself choked upstairs by that man. And who's
+to wonder when you go on pretending to be in love with a woman in that
+way, and she old enough to be your mother? What would your mamma say if
+she saw you at it?"
+
+"Ha, ha, ha!" laughed Cradell.
+
+"It's all very well your laughing, but I hate such folly. If I see a
+young man in love with a young woman, I respect him for it;" and then
+she looked at Johnny Eames. "I respect him for it--even though he may
+now and then do things as he shouldn't. They most of 'em does that. But
+to see a young man like you, Mr Cradell, dangling after an old married
+woman, who doesn't know how to behave herself; and all just because she
+lets him to do it--ugh!--an old broomstick with a petticoat on would do
+just as well! It makes me sick to see it, and that's the truth of it. I
+don't call it manly; and it ain't manly, is it, Miss Spruce?"
+
+"Of course I know nothing about it," said the lady to whom the appeal
+was thus made. "But a young gentleman should keep himself to himself
+till the time comes for him to speak out--begging your pardon all the
+same, Mr Cradell."
+
+"I don't see what a married woman should want with any one after her
+but her own husband," said Amelia.
+
+"And perhaps not always that," said John Eames.
+
+It was about an hour after this when the front-door bell was rung, and
+a scream from Jemima announced to them all that some critical moment
+had arrived. Amelia, jumping up, opened the door, and then the rustle
+of a woman's dress was heard on the lower stairs.
+
+"Oh, laws, ma'am, you have given us sich a turn," said Jemima. "We all
+thought you was run away."
+
+"It's Mrs Lupex," said Amelia. And in two minutes more that ill-used
+lady was in the room.
+
+"Well, my dears," said she, gaily, "I hope nobody has waited dinner."
+
+"No; we didn't wait dinner," said Mrs Roper, very gravely.
+
+"And where's my Orson? Didn't he dine at home? Mr Cradell, will you
+oblige me by taking my shawl? But perhaps you had better not. People
+are so censorious; ain't they, Miss Spruce? Mr Eames shall do it; and
+everybody knows that that will be quite safe. Won't it, Miss Amelia?"
+
+"Quite, I should think," said Amelia. And Mrs Lupex knew that she was
+not to look for an ally in that quarter on the present occasion. Eames
+got up to take the shawl, and Mrs Lupex went on.
+
+"And didn't Orson dine at home? Perhaps they kept him down at the
+theatre. But I've been thinking all day what fun it would be when he
+thought his bird was flown."
+
+"He did dine at home," said Mrs Roper "and he didn't seem to like it.
+There wasn't much fun, I can assure you."
+
+"Ah, wasn't there, though? I believe that man would like to have me
+tied to his button-hole. I came across a few friends--lady friends, Mr
+Cradell, though two of them had their husbands; so we made a party, and
+just went down to Hampton Court. So my gentleman has gone again, has
+he? That's what I get for gadding about myself, isn't it, Miss Spruce?"
+
+Mrs Roper, as she went to bed that night, made up her mind that,
+whatever might be the cost and trouble of doing so, she would lose no
+further time in getting rid of her married guests.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLII
+
+LILY'S BEDSIDE
+
+Lily Dale's constitution was good, and her recovery was retarded by no
+relapse or lingering debility; but, nevertheless, she was forced to
+keep her bed for many days after the fever had left her. During all
+this period Dr Crofts came every day. It was in vain that Mrs Dale
+begged him not to do so; telling him in simple words that she felt
+herself bound not to accept from him all this continuation of his
+unremunerated labours now that the absolute necessity for them was
+over. He answered her only by little jokes, or did not answer her at
+all; but still he came daily, almost always at the same hour, just as
+the day was waning, so that he could sit for a quarter of an hour in
+the dusk, and then ride home to Guestwick in the dark. At this time
+Bell had been admitted into her sister's room, and she would always
+meet Dr Crofts at Lily's bedside; but she never sat with him alone,
+since the day n which he had offered her his love with half-articulated
+words, and she had declined it with words also half articulated. She
+had seen him alone since that, on the stairs, or standing in the hall,
+but she had not remained with him, talking to him after her old
+fashion, and no further word of his love had been spoken in speech
+either half or wholly articulate.
+
+Nor had Bell spoken of what had passed to any one else. Lily would
+probably have told both her mother and sister instantly; but then no
+such scene as that which had taken place with Bell would have been
+possible with Lily. In whatever way the matter might have gone with
+her, there would certainly have been some clear tale to tell when the
+interview was over. She would have known whether or no she loved the
+man, or could love him, and would have given him some true and
+intelligible answer. Bell had not done so, but had given him an answer
+which, if true, was not intelligible, and if intelligible was not true.
+And yet, when she had gone away to think over what had passed--she had
+been happy and satisfied, and almost triumphant. She had never yet
+asked herself whether she expected anything further from Dr Crofts, nor
+what that something further might be--and yet she was happy!
+
+Lily had now become pert and saucy in her bed, taking upon herself the
+little airs which are allowed to a convalescent invalid as compensation
+for previous suffering and restraint. She pretended to much anxiety on
+the subject of her dinner, and declared that she would go out on such
+or such a day, let Dr Crofts be as imperious as he might. "He's an old
+savage, after all," she said to her sister, one evening after he was
+gone, "and just as bad as the rest of them."
+
+"I do not know who the rest of them are," said Bell, "but at any rate
+he's not very old."
+
+"You know what I mean. He's just as grumpy as Dr Gruffen, and thinks
+everybody is to do what he tells them. Of course, you take his part."
+
+"And of course you ought, seeing how good he has been."
+
+"And of course I should, to anybody but you. I do like to abuse him to
+you."
+
+"Lily, Lily!"
+
+"So I do. It's so hard to knock any fire out of you, that when one does
+find the place where the flint lies, one can't help hammering at it.
+What did he mean by saying that I shouldn't get up on Sunday? Of course
+I shall get up if I like it."
+
+"Not if mamma asks you not?"
+
+"Oh, but she won't, unless he interferes and dictates to her. Oh, Bell,
+what a tyrant he would be if he were married!"
+
+"Would he?"
+
+"And how submissive you would be, if you were his wife! It's a thousand
+pities that you are not in love with each other--that is, if you are
+not."
+
+"Lily, I thought that there was a promise between us about that."
+
+"Ah! but that was in other days. Things are all altered since that
+promise was given,--all the world has been altered." And as she said
+this the tone of her voice was changed, and it had become almost sad.
+"I feel as though I ought to be allowed to speak about anything I
+please."
+
+"You shall, if it pleases you, my pet."
+
+"You see how it is, Bell; I can never again have anything of my own to
+talk about."
+
+"Oh, my darling, do not say that."
+
+"But it is so, Bell; and why not say it? Do you think I never say it to
+myself in the hours when I am all alone, thinking over it--thinking,
+thinking, thinking. You must not--you must not grudge to let me talk of
+it sometimes."
+
+"I will not grudge you anything--only I cannot believe that it must be
+so always."
+
+"Ask yourself, Bell, how it would be with you. But I sometimes fancy
+that you measure me differently from yourself."
+
+"Indeed I do, for I know how much better you are."
+
+"I am not so much better as to be ever able to forget all that. I know
+I never shall do so. I have made up my mind about it clearly and with
+an absolute certainty."
+
+"Lily, Lily, Lily! pray do not say so."
+
+"But I do say it. And yet I have not been very mopish and melancholy;
+have I, Bell? I do think I deserve some little credit, and yet, I
+declare, you won't allow me the least privilege in the world."
+
+"What privilege would you wish me to give you?"
+
+"To talk about Dr Crofts."
+
+"Lily, you are a wicked, wicked tyrant." And Bell leaned over her, and
+fell upon her, and kissed her, hiding her own face in the gloom of the
+evening. After that it came to be an accepted understanding between
+them that Bell was not altogether indifferent to Dr Crofts.
+
+"You heard what he said, my darling," Mrs Dale said the next day, as
+the three were in the room together after Dr Crofts was gone. Mrs Dale
+was standing on one side of the bed, and Bell on the other, while Lily
+was scolding them both. "You can get up for an hour or two tomorrow,
+but he thinks you had better not go out of the room."
+
+"What would be the good of that, mamma? I am so tired of looking always
+at the same paper. It is such a tiresome paper. It makes one count the
+pattern over and over again. I wonder how you ever can live here."
+
+"I've got used to it, you see."
+
+"I never can get used to that sort of thing; but go on counting, and
+counting, and counting. I'll tell you what I should like; and I'm sure
+it would be the best thing, too."
+
+"And what would you like?" said Bell.
+
+"Just to get up at nine o'clock tomorrow, and go to church as though
+nothing had happened. Then, when Dr Crofts came in the evening, you
+would tell him I was down at the school."
+
+"I wouldn't quite advise that," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"It would give him such a delightful start. And when he found I didn't
+die immediately, as of course I ought to do according to rule, he would
+be so disgusted."
+
+"It would be very ungrateful, to say the least of it," said Bell.
+
+"No, it wouldn't, a bit. He needn't come, unless he likes it. And I
+don't believe he comes to see me at all. It's all very well, mamma,
+your looking in that way; but I'm sure it's true. And I'll tell you
+what I'll do, I'll pretend to be bad again, otherwise the poor man will
+be robbed of his only happiness."
+
+"I suppose we must allow her to say what she likes till she gets well,"
+said Mrs Dale, laughing. It was now nearly dark, and Mrs Dale did not
+see that Bell's hand had crept under the bed-clothes, and taken hold of
+that of her sister. "It's true, mamma," continued Lily, "and I defy her
+to deny it. I would forgive him for keeping me in bed if he would only
+make her fall in love with him."
+
+"She has made a bargain, mamma," said Bell, "that she is to say
+whatever she likes till she gets well."
+
+"I am to say whatever I like always; that was the bargain, and I mean
+to stand to it."
+
+On the following Sunday Lily did get up, but did not leave her mother's
+bedroom. There she was, seated in that half-dignified and
+half-luxurious state which belongs to the first getting up of an
+invalid, when Dr Crofts called. There she had eaten her tiny bit of
+roast mutton, and had called her mother a stingy old creature, because
+she would not permit another morsel; and there she had drunk her half
+glass of port wine, pretending that it was very bad, and twice worse
+than the doctor's physic; and there, Sunday though it was, she had
+fully enjoyed the last hour of daylight, reading that exquisite new
+novel which had just completed itself, amidst the jarring criticisms of
+the youth and age of the reading public.
+
+"I am quite sure she was right in accepting him, Bell," she said,
+putting down the book as the light was fading, and beginning to praise
+the story.
+
+"It was a matter of course," said Bell. "It always is right in the
+novels. That's why I don't like them. They are too sweet."
+
+"That's why I do like them, because they are so sweet. A sermon is not
+to tell you what you are, but what you ought to be, and a novel should
+tell you not what you are to get, but what you'd like to get."
+
+"If so, then, I'd go back to the old school, and have the heroine
+really a heroine, walking all the way up from Edinburgh to London, and
+falling among thieves; or else nursing a wounded hero, and describing
+the battle from the window. We've got tired of that; or else the people
+who write can't do it nowadays. But if we are to have real life, let it
+be real."
+
+"No, Bell, no," said Lily. "Real life sometimes is so painful." Then
+her sister, in a moment, was down on the floor at her feet, kissing her
+hand and caressing her knees, and praying that the wound might be
+healed.
+
+On that morning Lily had succeeded in inducing her sister to tell her
+all that had been said by Dr Crofts. All that had been said by herself
+also, Bell had intended to tell; but when she came to this part of the
+story, her account was very lame. "I don't think I said anything," she
+said. "But silence always gives consent. He'll know that," Lily had
+rejoined.
+
+"No, he will not; my silence didn't give any consent; I'm sure of that.
+And he didn't think that it did."
+
+"But you didn't mean to refuse him?"
+
+"I think I did. I don't think I knew what I meant; and it was safer,
+therefore, to look no, than to look yes. If I didn't say it, I'm sure I
+looked it."
+
+"But you wouldn't refuse him now?" asked Lily.
+
+"I don't know," said Bell. "It seems as though I should want years to
+make up my mind; and he won't ask me again."
+
+Bell was still at her sister's feet, caressing them, and praying with
+all her heart that that wound might be healed in due time, when Mrs
+Dale came in and announced the doctor's daily visit.
+
+"Then I'll go," said Bell.
+
+"Indeed you won't," said Lily. "He is coming simply to make a morning
+call, and nobody need run away. Now, Dr Crofts, you need not come and
+stand over me with your watch, for I won't let you touch my hand except
+to shake hands with me;" and then she held her hand out to him."
+
+"And all you'll know of my tongue you'll learn from the sound."
+
+"I don't care in the least for your tongue."
+
+"I dare say not, and yet you may some of these days. I can speak out if
+I like it; can't I, mamma?"
+
+"I should think Dr Crofts knows that by this time, my dear."
+
+"I don't know. There are some things gentlemen are very slow to learn.
+But you must sit down, Dr Crofts, and make yourself comfortable and
+polite; for you must understand that you are not master here any
+longer. I am out of bed now, and your reign is over."
+
+"That's the gratitude of the world, all through," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Who is ever grateful to a doctor? He only cures you that he may
+triumph over some other doctor, and declare, as he goes by Dr Gruffen's
+door, 'There, had she called you in, she'd have been dead before now;
+or else would have been ill for twelve months.' Don't you jump for joy
+when Dr Gruffen's patients die?"
+
+"Of course I do--out in the market-place, so that everybody shall see
+me," said the doctor.
+
+"Lily, how can you say such shocking things?" said her sister.
+
+Then the doctor did sit down, and they were all very cosy together over
+the fire, talking about things which were not medical, or only half
+medical in their appliance. By degrees the conversation came round to
+Mrs Eames and to John Eames. Two or three days since Crofts had told
+Mrs Dale of that affair at the railway station, of which up to that
+time she had heard nothing. Mrs Dale, when she was assured that young
+Eames had given Crosbie a tremendous thrashing--the tidings of the
+affair which had got themselves substantiated at Guestwick so described
+the nature of the encounter--could not withhold some meed of applause.
+
+"Dear boy!" she said, almost involuntarily. "Dear boy! it came from the
+honestness of his heart!" And then she gave special injunctions to the
+doctor--injunctions which were surely unnecessary--that no word of the
+matter should be whispered before Lily.
+
+"I was at the manor, yesterday," said the doctor, "and the earl would
+talk about nothing but Master Johnny. He says he's the finest fellow
+going." Whereupon Mrs Dale touched him with her foot, fearing that the
+conversation might be led away in the direction of Johnny's prowess.
+
+"I am so glad," said Lily. "I always knew that they'd find John out at
+last."
+
+"And Lady Julia is just as fond of him," said the doctor.
+
+"Dear me!" said Lily. "Suppose they were to make up a match!"
+
+"Lily, how can you be so absurd?"
+
+"Let me see; what relation would he be to us? He would certainly be
+Bernard's uncle, and Uncle Christopher's half brother-in-law. Wouldn't
+it be odd?"
+
+"It would rather," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I hope he'll be civil to Bernard. Don't you, Bell? Is he to give up
+the Income-tax Office, Dr Crofts?"
+
+"I didn't hear that that was settled yet." And so they went on talking
+about John Eames.
+
+"Joking apart," said Lily, "I am very glad that Lord de Guest has taken
+him by the hand. Not that I think an earl is better than anybody else,
+but because it shows that people are beginning to understand that he
+has got something in him. I always said that they who laughed at John
+would see him hold up his head yet." All which words sank deep into Mrs
+Dale's mind. If only, in some coming time, her pet might be taught to
+love this new young hero! But then would not that last heroic deed of
+his militate most strongly against any possibility of such love!
+
+"And now I may as well be going," said the doctor, rising from his
+chair. At this time Bell had left the room, but Mrs Dale was still
+there.
+
+"You need not be in such a hurry, especially this evening," said Lily.
+
+"Why especially this evening?"
+
+"Because it will be the last. Sit down again, Dr Crofts. I've got a
+little speech to make to you. I've been preparing it all the morning,
+and you must give me an opportunity of speaking it."
+
+"I'll come the day after tomorrow, and I'll hear it then."
+
+"But I choose, sir, that you should hear it now. Am I riot to be obeyed
+when I first get up on to my own throne? Dear, dear Dr Crofts, how am I
+to thank you for all that you have done?"
+
+"How are any of us to thank him?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I hate thanks," said the doctor. "One kind glance of the eye is worth
+them all, and I've had many such in this house."
+
+"You have our hearts' love, at any rate," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"God bless you all!" said he, as he prepared to go.
+
+"But I haven't made my speech yet," said Lily. "And to tell the truth,
+mamma, you must go away, or I shall never be able to make it. It's very
+improper, is it not, turning you out, but it shall only take three
+minutes." Then Mrs Dale, with some little joking word, left the room;
+but, as she left it, her mind was hardly at ease. Ought she to have
+gone, leaving it to Lily's discretion to say what words he might think
+fit to Dr Crofts? Hitherto she had never doubted her daughters--not even
+their discretion; and therefore it had been natural to her to go when
+she was bidden. But as she went downstairs she had her doubts whether
+she was right or no.
+
+"Dr Crofts," said Lily, as soon as they were alone. "Sit down there,
+close to me. I want to ask you a question. What was it you said to Bell
+when you were alone with her the other evening in the parlour?"
+
+The doctor sat for a moment without answering, and Lily, who was
+watching him closely, could see by the light of the fire that he had
+been startled--had almost shuddered as the question was asked him.
+
+"What did I say to her?" and he repeated her words in a very low voice.
+
+"I asked her if she could love me, and be my wife."
+
+"And what answer did she make to you?"
+
+"What answer did she make? She simply refused me."
+
+"No, no, no; don't believe her, Dr Crofts. It was not so--I think it was
+not so. Mind you, I can say nothing as coming from her. She has not
+told me her own mind. But if you really love her, she will be mad to
+refuse you."
+
+"I do love her, Lily; that at any rate is true."
+
+"Then go to her again. I am speaking for myself now. I cannot afford to
+lose such a brother as you would be. I love you so dearly that I cannot
+spare you. And she--I think she'll learn to love you as you would wish
+to be loved. You know her nature, how silent she is, and averse to talk
+about herself. She has confessed nothing to me but this--that you spoke
+to her and took her by surprise. Are we to have another chance? I know
+how wrong I am to ask such a question. But, after all, is not the truth
+the best?"
+
+"Another chance!"
+
+"I know what you mean, and I think she is worthy to be your wife. I do,
+indeed; and if so, she must be very worthy. You won't tell of me, will
+you now, doctor?"
+
+"No; I won't tell of you."
+
+"And you'll try again?"
+
+"Yes; I'll try again."
+
+"God bless you, my brother! I hope--I hope you'll be my brother." Then,
+as he put out his hand to her once more, she raised her head towards
+him, and he, stooping down, kissed her forehead.
+
+"Make mamma come to me," were the last words she spoke as he went out
+at the door.
+
+"So you've made your speech," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Yes, mamma."
+
+"I hope it was a discreet speech."
+
+"I hope it was, mamma. But it has made me so tired, and I believe I'll
+go to bed. Do you know I don't think I should have done much good down
+at the school today?"
+
+Then Mrs Dale, in her anxiety to repair what injury might have been
+done to her daughter by over-exertion, omitted any further mention of
+the farewell speech.
+
+Dr Crofts as he rode home enjoyed but little of the triumph of a
+successful lover.
+
+"It may be that she's right," he said to himself; "and, at any rate,
+I'll ask again." Nevertheless, that "No" which Bell had spoken, and had
+repeated, still sounded in his ears harsh and conclusive. There are men
+to whom a peal of noes rattling about their ears never takes the sound
+of a true denial, and others to whom the word once pronounced, be it
+whispered ever so softly, comes as though it were an unchangeable
+verdict from the supreme judgment-seat.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIII
+
+FIE, FIE!
+
+Will any reader remember the loves--no, not the loves; that word is so
+decidedly ill-applied as to be incapable of awakening the remembrance
+of any reader; but the flirtations--of Lady Dumbello and Mr Plantagenet
+Palliser? Those flirtations, as they had been carried on at Courcy
+Castle, were laid bare in all their enormities to the eye of the
+public, and it must be confessed that if the eye of the public was
+shocked, that eye must be shocked very easily.
+
+But the eye of the public was shocked, and people who were particular
+as to their morals said very strange things. Lady de Courcy herself
+said very strange things indeed, shaking her head, and dropping
+mysterious words; whereas Lady Clandidlem spoke much more openly,
+declaring her opinion that Lady Dumbello would be off before May. They
+both agreed that it would not be altogether bad for Lord Dumbello that
+he should lose his wife, but shook their heads very sadly when they
+spoke of poor Plantagenet Palliser. As to the lady's fate, that lady
+whom they had both almost worshipped during the days at Courcy
+Castle,--they did not seem to trouble themselves about that.
+
+And it must be admitted that Mr Palliser had been a little
+imprudent--imprudent, that is, if he knew anything about the rumours
+afloat--seeing that soon after his visit at Courcy Castle he had gone
+down to Lady Hartletop's place in Shropshire, at which the Dumbellos
+intended to spend the winter, and on leaving it had expressed his
+intention of returning in February. The Hartletop people had pressed
+him very much--the pressure having come with peculiar force from Lord
+Dumbello. Therefore it is reasonable to suppose that the Hartletop
+people had at any rate not heard of the rumour.
+
+Mr Plantagenet Palliser spent his Christmas with his uncle, the Duke of
+Omnium, at Gatherum Castle. That is to say, he reached the castle in
+time for dinner on Christmas eve, and left it on the morning after
+Christmas day. This was in accordance with the usual practice of his
+life, and the tenants, dependants, and followers of the Omnium interest
+were always delighted to see this manifestation of a healthy English
+domestic family feeling between the duke and his nephew. But the amount
+of intercourse on such occasions between them was generally trifling.
+The duke would smile as he put out his right hand to his nephew, and
+say--"Well, Plantagenet--very busy, I suppose?"
+
+The duke was the only living being who called him Plantagenet to his
+face, though there were some scores of men who talked of Planty Pal
+behind his back. The duke had been the only living being so to call
+him. Let us hope that it still was so, and that there had arisen no
+feminine exception, dangerous in its nature and improper in its
+circumstances.
+
+"Well, Plantagenet," said the duke, on the present occasion, "very
+busy, I suppose?
+
+"Yes, indeed, duke," said Mr Palliser.
+
+"When a man gets the harness on him he does not easily get quit of it."
+
+The duke remembered that his nephew had made almost the same remark at
+his last Christmas visit.
+
+"By-the-by," said the duke, "I want to say a word or two to you before
+you go."
+
+Such a proposition on the duke's part was a great departure from his
+usual practice, but the nephew of course undertook to obey his uncle's
+behests.
+
+"I'll see you before dinner tomorrow," said Plantagenet.
+
+"Ah, do," said the duke. "I'll not keep you five minutes." And at six
+o'clock on the following afternoon the two were closeted together in
+the duke's private room.
+
+"I don't suppose there is much in it," began the duke, "but people are
+talking about you and Lady Dumbello."
+
+"Upon my word, people are very kind." And Mr Palliser bethought himself
+of the fact--for it certainly was a fact--that people for a great many
+years had talked about his uncle and Lady Dumbello's mother-in-law.
+
+"Yes; kind enough; are they not? You've just come from Hartlebury, I
+believe." Hartlebury was the Marquis of Hartletop's seat in Shropshire.
+
+"Yes, I have. And I'm going there again in February."
+
+"Ah, I'm sorry for that. Not that I mean, of course, to interfere with
+your arrangements. You will acknowledge that I have not often done so,
+in any matter whatever."
+
+"No; you have not," said the nephew, comforting himself with an inward
+assurance that no such interference on his uncle's part could have been
+possible.
+
+"But in this instance it would suit me, and I really think it would
+suit you too, that you should be as little at Hartlebury as possible.
+You have said you would go there, and of course you will go. But if I
+were you, I would not stay above a day or two."
+
+Mr Plantagenet Palliser received everything he had in the world from
+his uncle. He sat in Parliament through his uncle's interest, and
+received an allowance of ever so many thousand a year which his uncle
+could stop tomorrow by his mere word. He was his uncle's heir, and the
+dukedom, with certain entailed properties, must ultimately fall to him,
+unless his uncle should marry and have a son. But by far the greater
+portion of the duke's property was unentailed; the duke might probably
+live for the next twenty years or more; and it was quite possible that,
+if offended, he might marry and become a father. It may be said that no
+man could well be more dependent on another than Plantagenet Palliser
+was upon his uncle; and it may be said also that no father or uncle
+ever troubled his heir with less interference. Nevertheless, the nephew
+immediately felt himself aggrieved by this allusion to his private
+life, and resolved at once that he would not submit to such
+surveillance.
+
+"I don't know how long I shall stay," said he; "but I cannot say that
+my visit will be influenced one way or the other by such a rumour as
+that."
+
+"No; probably not. But it may perhaps be influenced by my request." And
+the duke, as he spoke, looked a little savage.
+
+"You wouldn't ask me to regard a report that has no foundation."
+
+"I am not asking about its foundation. Nor do I in the least wish to
+interfere with your manner in life." By which last observation the duke
+intended his nephew to understand that he was quite at liberty to take
+away any other gentleman's wife, but that he was not at liberty to give
+occasion even for a surmise that he wanted to take Lord Dumbello's
+wife. "The fact is this, Plantagenet. I have for many years been
+intimate with that family. I have not many intimacies, and shall
+probably never increase them. Such friends as I have, I wish to keep,
+and you will easily perceive that any such, report as that which I have
+mentioned, might make it unpleasant for me to go to Hartlebury, or for
+the Hartlebury people to come here." The duke certainly could not have
+spoken plainer, and Mr Palliser understood him thoroughly. Two such
+alliances between the two families could not be expected to run
+pleasantly together, and even the rumour of any such second alliance
+might interfere with the pleasantness of the former one.
+
+"That's all," said the duke.
+
+"It's a most absurd slander," said Mr Palliser.
+
+"I dare say. Those slanders always are absurd; but what can we do? We
+can't tie up people's tongues." And the duke looked as though he wished
+to have the subject considered as finished, and to be left alone.
+
+"But we can disregard them," said the nephew, indiscreetly.
+
+"You may. I have never been able to do so. And yet, I believe, I have
+not earned for myself the reputation of being subject to the voices of
+men. You think that I am asking much of you; but you should remember
+that hitherto I have given much and have asked nothing. I expect you to
+oblige me in this matter."
+
+Then Mr Plantagenet Palliser left the room, knowing that he had been
+threatened. What the duke had said amounted to this--If you go on
+dangling after Lady Dumbello, I'll stop the seven thousand a year which
+I give you. I'll oppose your next return at Silverbridge, and I'll make
+a will and leave away from you Matching and The Horns--a beautiful
+little place in Surrey, the use of which had been already offered to Mr
+Palliser in the event of his marriage; all the Littlebury estate in
+Yorkshire, and the enormous Scotch property. Of my personal goods, and
+money invested in loans, shares, and funds, you shall never touch a
+shilling, or the value of a shilling. And, if I find that I can suit
+myself, it may be that I'll leave you plain Mr Plantagenet Palliser,
+with a little first cousin for the head of your family.
+
+The full amount of this threat Mr Palliser understood, and, as he
+thought of it, he acknowledged to himself that he had never felt for
+Lady Dumbello anything like love. No conversation between them had ever
+been warmer than that of which the reader has seen a sample. Lady
+Dumbello had been nothing to him. But now--now that the matter had been
+put before him in this way, might it not become him, as a gentleman, to
+fall in love with so very beautiful a woman, whose name had already
+been linked with his own? We all know that story of the priest, who, by
+his question in the confessional, taught the ostler to grease the
+horses teeth. "I never did yet," said the ostler, "but I'll have a try
+at it." In this case, the duke had acted the part of the priest, and Mr
+Palliser, before the night was over, had almost become as ready a pupil
+as the ostler. As to the threat, it would ill become him, as a Palliser
+and a Plantagenet, to regard it. The duke would not marry. Of all men
+in the world he was the least likely to spite his own face by cutting
+off his own nose; and, for the rest of it, Mr Palliser would take his
+chance. Therefore he went down to Hartlebury early in February, having
+fully determined to be very particular in his attentions to Lady
+Dumbello.
+
+Among a houseful of people at Hartlebury, he found Lord Porlock, a
+slight, sickly, worn-out looking man, who had something about his eye
+of his father's hardness, but nothing in his mouth of his father's
+ferocity.
+
+"So your sister's going to be married?" said Mr Palliser.
+
+"Yes. One has no right to be surprised at anything they do, when one
+remembers the life their father leads them."
+
+"I was going to congratulate you."
+
+"Don't do that."
+
+"I met him at Courcy, and rather liked him."
+
+Mr Palliser had barely spoken to Mr Crosbie at Courcy, but then in the
+usual course of his social life he seldom did more than barely speak to
+anybody.
+
+"Did you?" said Lord Porlock. "For the poor girl's sake I hope he's not
+a ruffian. How any man should propose to my father to marry a daughter
+out of his house, is more than I can understand. How was my mother
+looking?"
+
+"I didn't see anything amiss about her."
+
+"I expect that he'll murder her some day." Then that conversation came
+to an end.
+
+Mr Palliser himself perceived--as he looked at her he could not but
+perceive--that a certain amount of social energy seemed to enliven Lady
+Dumbello when he approached her. She was given to smile when addressed,
+but her usual smile was meaningless, almost leaden, and never in any
+degree flattering to the person to whom it was accorded. Very many
+women smile as they answer the words which are spoken to them, and most
+who do so flatter by their smile. The thing is so common that no one
+thinks of it. The flattering pleases, but means nothing. The impression
+unconsciously taken simply conveys a feeling that the woman has made
+herself agreeable, as it was her duty to do--agreeable, as far as that
+smile went, in some very infinitesimal degree. But she has thereby made
+her little contribution to society. She will make the same contribution
+a hundred times in the same evening. No one knows that she has
+flattered anybody; she does not know it herself; and the world calls
+her an agreeable woman. But Lady Dumbello put no flattery into her
+customary smiles. They were cold, unmeaning, accompanied by no special
+glance of the eye, and seldom addressed to the individual. They were
+given to the room at large; and the room at large, acknowledging her
+great pretensions, accepted them as sufficient. But when Mr Palliser
+came near to her she would turn herself slightly, ever so slightly, on
+her seat, and would allow her eyes to rest for a moment upon his face.
+Then when he remarked that it had been rather cold, she would smile
+actually upon him as she acknowledged the truth of his observation. All
+this Mr Palliser taught himself to observe, having been instructed by
+his foolish uncle in that lesson as to the greasing of the horses'
+teeth.
+
+But, nevertheless, during the first week of his stay at Hartlebury, he
+did not say a word to her more tender than his observation about the
+weather. It is true that he was very busy. He had undertaken to speak
+upon the address, and as Parliament was now about to be opened, and as
+his speech was to be based upon statistics, he was full of figures and
+papers. His correspondence was pressing, and the day was seldom long
+enough for his purposes. He felt that the intimacy to which he aspired
+was hindered by the laborious routine of his life; but nevertheless he
+would do something before he left Hartlebury, to show the special
+nature of his regard. He would say something to her, that should open
+to her view the secret of--shall we say his heart? Such was his resolve,
+day after day. And yet day after day went by, and nothing was said. He
+fancied that Lord Dumbello was somewhat less friendly in his manner
+than he had been, that he put himself in the way and looked cross; but,
+as he declared to himself, he cared very little for Lord Dumbello's
+looks.
+
+"When do you go to town?" he said to her one evening.
+
+"Probably in April. We certainly shall not leave Hartlebury before
+that."
+
+"Ah, yes. You stay for the hunting."
+
+"Yes; Lord Dumbello always remains here through March. He may run up to
+town for a day or two."
+
+"How comfortable! I must be in London on Thursday, you know."
+
+"When Parliament meets, I suppose?
+
+"Exactly. It is such a bore; but one has to do it."
+
+"When a man makes a business of it, I suppose he must."
+
+"Oh, dear, yes; it's quite imperative." Then Mr Palliser looked round
+the room, and thought he saw Lord Dumbello's eye fixed upon him. It was
+really very hard work. If the truth must be told, he did not know how
+to begin. What was he to say to her? How was he to commence a
+conversation that should end by being tender? She was very handsome
+certainly, and for him she could look interesting; but for his very
+life he did not know how to begin to say anything special to her. A
+liaison with such a woman as Lady Dumbello--platonic, innocent, but
+nevertheless very intimate--would certainly lend a grace to his life,
+which, under its present circumstances, was rather dry. He was
+told--told by public rumour, which had reached him through his
+uncle--that the lady was willing. She certainly looked as though she
+liked him; but how was he to begin? The art of startling the House of
+Commons and frightening the British public by the voluminous accuracy
+of his statistics he had already learned; but what was he to say to a
+pretty woman?
+
+"You'll be sure to be in London in April?" This was on another occasion.
+
+"Oh, yes; I think so."
+
+"In Carlton Gardens, I suppose."
+
+"Yes; Lord Dumbello has got a lease of the house now."
+
+"Has he, indeed? Ah, it's an excellent house. I hope I shall be allowed
+to call there sometimes."
+
+"Certainly--only I know you must be so busy."
+
+"Not on Saturdays and Sundays."
+
+"I always receive on Sundays," said Lady Dumbello. Mr Palliser felt
+that there was nothing peculiarly gracious in this. A permission to
+call when all her other acquaintances would be there, was not much; but
+still, perhaps, it was as much as he could expect to obtain on that
+occasion. He looked up and saw that Lord Dumbello's eyes were again
+upon him, and that Lord Dumbello's brow was black. He began to doubt
+whether a country house, where all the people were thrown together, was
+the best place in the world for such manoeuvring. Lady Dumbello was
+very handsome, and he liked to look at her, but he could not find any
+subject on which to interest her in that drawing-room at Hartlebury.
+Later in the evening he found himself saying something to her about the
+sugar duties, and then he knew that he had better give it up. He had
+only one day more, and that was required imperatively for his speech.
+The matter would go much easier in London and he would postpone it till
+then. In the crowded rooms of London private conversation would be much
+easier, and Lord Dumbello wouldn't stand over and look at him. Lady
+Dumbello had taken his remarks about the sugar very kindly, and had
+asked for a definition of an ad valorem duty. It was a nearer approach
+to a real conversation than he had ever before made; but the subject
+had been unlucky, and could not, in his hands, be brought round to
+anything tender; so he resolved to postpone his gallantry till the
+London spring should make it easy, and felt as he did so that he was
+relieved for the time from a heavy weight.
+
+"Good-bye, Lady Dumbello," he said, on the next evening. "I start early
+tomorrow morning."
+
+"Good-bye, Mr Palliser."
+
+As she spoke she smiled ever so sweetly, but she certainly had not
+learned to call him Plantagenet as yet. He went up to London and
+immediately got himself to work. The accurate and voluminous speech
+came off with considerable credit to himself--credit of that quiet,
+enduring kind which is accorded to such men. The speech was
+respectable, dull, and correct. Men listened to it, or sat with their
+hats over their eyes, asleep, pretending to do so; and the Daily
+Jupiter in the morning had a leading article about it, which, however,
+left the reader at its close altogether in doubt whether Mr Palliser
+might be supposed to be a great financial pundit or no. Mr Palliser
+might become a shining light to the moneyed world, and a glory to the
+banking interests; he might be a future Chancellor of the Exchequer.
+But then again, it might turn out that, in these affairs, he was a mere
+ignis fatuus, a blind guide--a man to be laid aside as very respectable,
+but of no depth. Who, then, at the present time, could judiciously risk
+his credit by declaring whether Mr Palliser understood his subject or
+did not understand it? We are not content in looking to our newspapers
+for all the information that earth and human intellect can afford; but
+we demand from them what we might demand if a daily sheet could come to
+us from the world of spirits. The result, of course, is this--that the
+papers do pretend that they have come daily from the world of spirits;
+but the oracles are very doubtful, as were those of old.
+
+Plantagenet Palliser, though he was contented with this article, felt,
+as he sat in his chambers in the Albany, that something else was
+wanting to his happiness. This sort of life was all very well. Ambition
+was a grand thing, and it became him, as a Palliser and a future peer,
+to make politics his profession. But might he not spare an hour or two
+for Amaryllis in the shade? Was it not hard, this life of his? Since he
+had been told that Lady Dumbello smiled upon him, he had certainly
+thought more about her smiles than had been good for his statistics. It
+seemed as though a new vein in his body had been brought into use, and
+that blood was running where blood had never run before. If he had seen
+Lady Dumbello before Dumbello had seen her, might he not have married
+her? Ah! in such case as that, had she been simply Miss Grantly, or
+Lady Griselda Grantly, as the case might have been, he thought he might
+have been able to speak to her with more ease. As it was, he certainly
+had found the task difficult, down in the country, though he had heard
+of men of his class doing the same sort of thing all his life. For my
+own part, I believe, that the reputed sinners are much more numerous
+than the sinners.
+
+As he sat there, a certain Mr Fothergill came in upon him. Mr
+Fothergill was a gentleman who managed most of his uncle's ordinary
+affairs--a clever fellow, who knew on which side his bread was buttered.
+Mr Fothergill was naturally anxious to stand well with the heir; but to
+stand well with the owner was his business in life, and with that
+business he never allowed anything to interfere. On this occasion Mr
+Fothergill was very civil, complimenting his future possible patron on
+his very powerful speech, and predicting for him political power with
+much more certainty than the newspapers which had, or had not, come
+from the world of spirits. Mr Fothergill had come in to say a word or
+two about some matter of business. As all Mr Palliser's money passed
+through Mr Fothergill's hands, and as his electioneering interests were
+managed by Mr Fothergill, Mr Fothergill not infrequently called to say
+a necessary word or two. When this was clone he said another word or
+two, which might be necessary or not, as the case might be.
+
+"Mr Palliser," said he, "I wonder you don't think of marrying. I hope
+you'll excuse me."
+
+Mr Palliser was by no means sure that he would excuse him, and sat
+himself suddenly upright in his chair in a manner that was intended to
+exhibit a first symptom of outraged dignity. But, singularly enough, he
+had himself been thinking of marriage at that moment. How would it have
+been with him had he known the beautiful Griselda before the Dumbello
+alliance had been arranged? Would he have married her? Would he have
+been comfortable if he had married her? Of course he could not marry
+now, seeing that he was in love with Lady Dumbello, and that the lady
+in question, unfortunately, had a husband of her own; but though he had
+been thinking of marrying, he did not like to have the subject thus
+roughly thrust before his eyes, and, as it were, into his very lap by
+his uncle's agent. Mr Fothergill, no doubt, saw the first symptom of
+outraged dignity, for he was a clever, sharp man. But, perhaps, he did
+not; in truth much regard it. Perhaps he had received instructions
+which he was bound to regard above all other matters.
+
+"I hope you'll excuse me, Mr Palliser, I do, indeed; but I say it
+because I am half afraid of some--some--some diminution of good feeling,
+perhaps, I had better call it, between you and your uncle. Anything of
+that kind would be such a monstrous pity."
+
+"I am not aware of any such probability."
+
+This Mr Palliser said with considerable dignity; but when the words
+were spoken he bethought himself whether he had not told a fib.
+
+"No; perhaps not. I trust there is no such probability. But the duke is
+a very determined man if he takes anything into his head--and then he
+has so much in his power."
+
+"He has not me in his power, Mr Fothergill."
+
+"No, no, no. One man does not have another in his power in this
+country--not in that way; but then you know, Mr Palliser, it would
+hardly do to offend him; would it?"
+
+"I would rather not offend him, as is natural. Indeed, I do not wish to
+offend any one."
+
+"Exactly so; and least of all the duke, who has the whole property in
+his own hands. We may say the whole, for he can marry tomorrow if he
+pleases. And then his life is so good. I don't know a stouter man of his
+age, anywhere."
+
+"I'm very glad to hear it."
+
+"I'm sure you are, Mr Palliser. But if he were to take offence, you
+know?"
+
+"I should put up with it."
+
+"Yes, exactly; that's what you would do. But it would be worth while to
+avoid it, seeing how much he has in his power."
+
+"Has the duke sent you to me now, Mr Fothergill?
+
+"No, no, no--nothing of the sort. But he dropped words the other day
+which made me fancy that he was not quite--quite--quite at ease about
+you. I have long known that he would be very glad indeed to see an heir
+born to the property. The other morning--I don't know whether there was
+anything in it--but I fancied he was going to make some change in the
+present arrangements. He did not do it, and it might have been fancy.
+Only think, Mr Palliser, what one word of his might do! If he says a
+word, he never goes back from it." Then, having said so much, Mr
+Fothergill went his way.
+
+Mr Palliser understood the meaning of all this very well. It was not
+the first occasion on which Mr Fothergill had given him advice--advice
+such as Mr Fothergill himself had no right to give him. He always
+received such counsel with an air of half-injured dignity, intending
+thereby to explain to Mr Fothergill that he was intruding. But he knew
+well whence the advice came; and though, in all such cases, he had made
+up his mind not to follow such counsel, it had generally come to pass
+that Mr Palliser's conduct had more or less accurately conformed itself
+to Mr Fothergill's advice. A word from the duke might certainly do a
+great deal! Mr Palliser resolved that in that affair of Lady Dumbello
+he would follow his own devices. But, nevertheless, it was undoubtedly
+true that a word from the duke might do a great deal!
+
+We, who are in the secret, know how far Mr Palliser had already
+progressed in his iniquitous passion before he left Hartlebury. Others,
+who were perhaps not so well informed, gave him credit for a much more
+advanced success. Lady Clandidlem, in her letter to Lady de Courcy,
+written immediately after the departure of Mr Palliser, declared that,
+having heard of that gentleman's intended matutinal departure, she had
+confidently expected to learn at the breakfast-table that Lady Dumbello
+had flown with him. From the tone of her ladyship's language, it seemed
+as though she had been robbed of an anticipated pleasure by Lady
+Dumbello's prolonged sojourn in the halls of her husband's ancestors.
+"I feel, however, quite convinced," said Lady Clandidlem, "that it cannot
+go on longer than the spring. I never yet saw a man so infatuated as Mr
+Palliser. He did not leave her for one moment all the time he was here.
+No one but Lady Hartletop would have permitted it. But, you know, there
+is nothing so pleasant as good old family friendships."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIV
+
+VALENTINE'S DAY AT ALLINGTON
+
+Lily had exacted a promise from her mother before her illness, and
+during the period of her convalescence often referred to it, reminding
+her mother that that promise had been made, and must be kept. Lily was
+to be told the day on which Crosbie was to be married. It had come to
+the knowledge of them all that the marriage was to take place in
+February. But this was not sufficient for Lily. She must know the day.
+
+And as the time drew nearer--Lily becoming stronger the while, and less
+subject to medical authority--the marriage of Crosbie and Alexandrina
+was spoken of much more frequently at the Small House. It was not a
+subject which Mrs Dale or Bell would have chosen for conversation; but
+Lily would refer to it. She would begin by doing so almost in a
+drolling strain, alluding to herself as a forlorn damsel in a
+play-book; and then she would go on to speak of his interests as a
+matter which was still of great moment to her. But in the course of
+such talking she would too often break down, showing by some sad word
+or melancholy tone how great was the burden on her heart. Mrs Dale and
+Bell would willingly have avoided the subject, but Lily would not have
+it avoided. For them it was a very difficult matter on which to speak
+in her hearing. It was not permitted to them to say a word of abuse
+against Crosbie, as to whom they thought that no word of condemnation
+could be sufficiently severe; and they were forced to listen to such
+excuses for his conduct as Lily chose to manufacture, never daring to
+point out how vain those excuses were.
+
+Indeed, in those days Lily reigned as a queen at the Small House.
+ill-usage and illness together falling into her hands had given her
+such power, that none of the other women were able to withstand it.
+Nothing was said about it; but it was understood by them all, Jane and
+the cook included, that Lily was for the time paramount. She was a
+dear, gracious, loving, brave queen, and no one was anxious to
+rebel--only that those praises of Crosbie were so very bitter in the
+ears of her subjects. The day was named soon enough, and the tidings
+came down to Allington. On the fourteenth of February, Crosbie was to
+be made a happy man. This was not known to the Dales till the twelfth,
+and they would willingly have spared the knowledge then, had it been
+possible to spare it. But it was not so, and on that evening Lily was
+told.
+
+During these days, Bell used to see her uncle daily. Her visits were
+made with the pretence of taking to him information as to Lily's
+health; but there was perhaps at the bottom of them a feeling that, as
+the family intended to leave the Small House at the end of March, it
+would he well to let the squire know that there was no enmity in their
+hearts against him. Nothing more had been said about their
+moving--nothing, that is, from them to him. But the matter was going on,
+and he knew it. Dr Crofts was already in treaty on their behalf for a
+small furnished house at Guestwick. The squire was very sad about
+it--very sad indeed. When Hopkins spoke to him on the subject, he
+sharply desired that faithful gardener to hold his tongue, giving it to
+be understood that such things were not to be made matter of talk by
+the Allington dependants till they had been officially announced. With
+Bell during these visits he never alluded to the matter. She was the
+chief sinner, in that she had refused to marry her cousin, and had
+declined even to listen to rational counsel upon the matter. But the
+squire felt that he could not discuss the subject with her, seeing that
+he had been specially informed by Mrs Dale that his interference would
+not be permitted; and then he was perhaps aware that if he did discuss
+the subject with Bell, he would not gain much by such discussion. Their
+conversation, therefore, generally fell upon Crosbie, and the tone in
+which he was mentioned in the Great House was very different from that
+assumed in Lily's presence.
+
+"He'll be a wretched man," said the squire, when he told Bell of the
+day that had been fixed.
+
+"I don't want him to be wretched," said Bell. "But I can hardly think
+that he can act as he has done without being punished."
+
+"He will be a wretched man. He gets no fortune with her, and she will
+expect everything that fortune can give. I believe, too, that she is
+older than he is. I cannot understand it. Upon my word, I cannot
+understand how a man can be such a knave and such a fool. Give my love
+to Lily. I'll see her tomorrow or the next day. She's well rid of him;
+I'm sure of that--though I suppose it would not do to tell her so."
+
+The morning of the fourteenth came upon them at the Small House, as
+comes the morning of those special days which have been long
+considered, and which are to be long remembered. It brought with it a
+hard, bitter frost--a black, biting frost--such a frost as breaks the
+water-pipes, and binds the ground to the hardness of granite. Lily,
+queen as she was, had not yet been allowed to go back to her own
+chamber, but occupied the larger bed in her mother's room, her mother
+sleeping on a smaller one.
+
+"Mamma," she said, "how cold they'll be!" Her mother had announced to
+her the fact of the black frost, and these were the first words she
+spoke.
+
+"I fear their hearts will be cold also," said Mrs Dale. She ought not
+to have said so. She was transgressing the acknowledged rule of the
+house in saying any word that could be construed as being inimical to
+Crosbie or his bride. But her feeling on the matter was too strong, and
+she could not restrain herself.
+
+"Why should their hearts be cold? Oh, mamma, that is a terrible thing
+to say. Why should their hearts be cold?"
+
+"I hope it may not be so."
+
+"Of course you do; of course we all hope it. He was not cold-hearted,
+at any rate. A man is not cold-hearted, because he does not know
+himself. Mamma, I want you to wish for their happiness."
+
+Mrs Dale was silent for a minute or two before she answered this, but
+then she did answer it. "I think I do," said she. "I think I do wish
+for it."
+
+"I am very sure that I do," said Lily.
+
+At this time Lily had her breakfast upstairs, but went down into the
+drawing-room in the course of the morning.
+
+"You must be very careful in wrapping yourself as you go downstairs,"
+said Bell, who stood by the tray on which she had brought up the toast
+and tea. "The cold is what you would call awful."
+
+"I should call it jolly," said Lily, "if I could get up and go out. Do
+you remember lecturing me about talking slang the day that he first
+came?
+
+"Did I, my pet?
+
+"Don't you remember, when I called him a swell? Ah, dear! so he was.
+That was the mistake, and it was all my own fault, as I had seen it
+from the first."
+
+Bell for a moment turned her face away, and beat with her foot against
+the ground. Her anger was more difficult of restraint than was even her
+mother's--and now, not restraining it, but wishing to hide it, she gave
+it vent in this way.
+
+"I understand, Bell. I know what your foot means when it goes in that
+way; and you shan't do it. Come here, Bell, and let me teach you
+Christianity. I'm a fine sort of teacher, am I not? And I did not quite
+mean that."
+
+"I wish I could learn it from some one," said Bell. "There are
+circumstances in which what we call Christianity seems to me to be
+hardly possible."
+
+"When your foot goes in that way it is a very unchristian foot, and you
+ought to keep it still. It means anger against him, because he
+discovered before it was too late that he would not be happy--that is,
+that he and I would not be happy together if we were married."
+
+"Don't scrutinise my foot too closely, Lily."
+
+"But your foot must bear scrutiny, and your eyes, and your voice. He
+was very foolish to fall in love with me. And so was I very foolish to
+let him love me, at a moment's notice--without a thought as it were. I
+was so proud of having him, that I gave myself up to him all at once,
+without giving him a chance of thinking of it. In a week or two it was
+done. Who could expect that such an engagement should be lasting?"
+
+"And why not? That is nonsense, Lily. But we will not talk about it."
+
+"Ah, but I want to talk about it. It was as I have said, and if so, you
+shouldn't hate him because he did the only thing which he honestly
+could do when he found out his mistake."
+
+"What; become engaged again within a week!"
+
+"There had been a very old friendship, Bell; you must remember that.
+But I was speaking of his conduct to me, and not of his conduct to--"
+And then she remembered that that other lady might at this very moment
+possess the name which she had once been so proud to think that she
+would bear herself. "Bell," she said, stopping her other speech
+suddenly, "at what o'clock do people get married in London?"
+
+"Oh, at all manner of hours--any time before twelve. They will be
+fashionable, and will be married late."
+
+"You don't think she's Mrs Crosbie yet, then?
+
+"Lady Alexandrina Crosbie," said Bell, shuddering.
+"Yes, of course; I forgot. I should so like to see her. I feel such an
+interest about her. I wonder what coloured hair she has. I suppose she
+is a sort of Juno of a woman--very tall and handsome. I'm sure she has
+not got a pug-nose like me. Do you know what I should really like, only
+of course it's not possible--to be godmother to his first child."
+
+"Oh, Lily!"
+
+"I should. Don't you hear me say that I know it's not possible? I'm not
+going up to London to ask her. She'll have all manner of grandees for
+her godfathers and godmothers. I wonder what those grand people are
+really like."
+
+"I don't think there's any difference. Look at Lady Julia."
+
+"Oh, she's not a grand person. It isn't merely having a title. Don't
+you remember that he told us that Mr Palliser is about the grandest
+grandee of them all. I suppose people do learn to like them. He always
+used to say that he had been so long among people of that sort, that it
+would be very difficult for him to divide himself off from them. I
+should never have done for that kind of thing; should I?"
+
+"There is nothing I despise so much as what you call that kind of
+thing."
+
+"Do you? I don't. After all, think how much work they do. He used to
+tell me of that. They have all the governing in their hands, and get
+very little money for doing it."
+
+"Worse luck for the country."
+
+"The country seems to do pretty well. But you're a radical, Bell. My
+belief is, you wouldn't be a lady if you could help it."
+
+"I'd sooner be an honest woman."
+
+"And so you are--my own dear, dearest, honest Bell--and the fairest lady
+that I know. If I were a man, Bell, you are just the girl that I should
+worship."
+
+"But you are not a man; so it's no good."
+
+"But you mustn't let your foot go astray in that way; you mustn't,
+indeed. Somebody said, that whatever is, is right, and I declare I
+believe it."
+
+"I'm sometimes inclined to think, that whatever is, is wrong."
+
+"That's because you're a radical. I think I'll get up now, Bell; only
+it's so frightfully cold that I'm afraid."
+
+"There's a beautiful fire," said Bell.
+
+"Yes; I see. But the fire won't go all around me, like the bed does. I
+wish I could know the very moment when they're at the altar. It's only
+half-past ten yet."
+
+"I shouldn't be at all surprised if it's over."
+"Over! What a word that is! A thing like that is over, and then all the
+world cannot put it back again. What if he should be unhappy after all?"
+
+"He must take his chance," said Bell, thinking within her own mind that
+that chance would be a very bad one.
+
+"Of course he must take his chance. well-I'll get up now." And then she
+took her first step out into the cold world beyond her bed. "We must
+all take our chance. I have made up my mind that it will be at
+half-past eleven."
+
+When half-past eleven came, she was seated in a large easy chair over
+the drawing-room fire, with a little table by her side, on which a
+novel was lying. She had not opened her book that morning, and had been
+sitting for some time perfectly silent, with her eyes closed, and her
+watch in her hand.
+
+"Mamma," she said at last, "it is over now, I'm sure."
+
+"What is over, my dear?
+
+"He has made that lady his wife. I hope God will bless them, and I pray
+that they may be happy." As she spoke these words, there was an
+unwonted solemnity in her tone which startled Mrs Dale and Bell.
+
+"I also will hope so," said Mrs Dale. "And now, Lily, will it not be
+well that you should turn your mind away from the subject, and
+endeavour to think of other things?"
+
+"But I can't, mamma. It is so easy to say that; but people can't choose
+their own thoughts."
+
+"They can usually direct them as they will, if they make the effort."
+
+"But I can't make the effort. Indeed, I don't know why I should. It
+seems natural to me to think about him, and I don't suppose it can be
+very wrong. When you have had so deep an interest in a person, you
+can't drop him all of a sudden." Then there was again silence, and
+after a while Lily took up her novel. She made that effort of which her
+mother had spoken, but she made it altogether in vain. "I declare,
+Bell," she said, "it's the greatest rubbish I ever attempted to read."
+This was specially ungrateful, because Bell had recommended the book.
+"All the books have got to be so stupid! I think I'll read Pilgrim's
+Progress again."
+
+"What do you say to Robinson Crusoe?" said Bell.
+
+"Or Paul and Virginia?" said Lily. "But I believe I'll have Pilgrim's
+Progress. I never can understand it, but I rather think that makes it
+nicer."
+
+"I hate books I can't understand," said Bell. "I like a book to be
+clear as running water, so that the whole meaning may be seen at once."
+
+"The quick seeing of the meaning must depend a little on the reader,
+must it not? "said Mrs Dale.
+
+"The reader mustn't be a fool, of course," said Bell.
+"But then so many readers are fools," said Lily. "And yet they get
+something out of their reading. Mrs Crump is always poring over the
+Revelations, and nearly knows them by heart. I don't think she could
+interpret a single image, but she has a hazy, misty idea of the truth.
+That's why she likes it--because it's too beautiful to be understood;
+and that's why I like Pilgrim's Progress." After which Bell offered to
+get the book in question.
+
+"No, not now," said Lily. "I'll go on with this, as you say it's so
+grand. The personages are always in their tantrums and go on as though
+they were mad. Mamma, do you know where they're going for the
+honeymoon?"
+
+"No, my dear."
+
+"He used to talk to me about going to the lakes." And then there was
+another pause, during which Bell observed that her mother's face became
+clouded with anxiety. "But I won't think of it any more," continued
+Lily; "I will fix my mind to something." And then she got up from her
+chair. "I don't think it would have been so difficult if I had not been
+ill?"
+
+"Of course it would not, my darling."
+
+"And I'm going to be well again now, immediately. Let me see: I was
+told to read Carlyle's History of the French Revolution, and I think
+I'll begin now." It was Crosbie who had told her to read the book, as
+both Bell and Mrs Dale were well aware. "But I must put it off till I
+can get it down from the other house."
+
+"Jane shall fetch it, if you really want it," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Bell shall get it, when she goes up in the afternoon; will you, Bell?
+And I'll try to get on with this stuff in the meantime." Then again she
+sat with her eyes fixed upon the pages of the book. "I'll tell you
+what, mamma--you may have some comfort in this: that when today's gone
+by, I shan't make a fuss about any other day."
+
+"Nobody thinks that you are making a fuss, Lily."
+
+"Yes, but I am. Isn't it odd, Bell, that it should take place on
+Valentine's day? I wonder whether it was so settled on purpose, because
+of the day. Oh, dear, I used to think so often of the letter that I
+should get from him on this day, when he would tell me that I was his
+valentine. Well; he's got another-valen-tine-now." So much she said
+with articulate voice, and then she broke down, bursting out into
+convulsive sobs, and crying in her mother's arms as though she would
+break her heart. And yet her heart was not broken, and she was still
+strong in that resolve which she had made, that her grief should not
+overpower her. As she had herself said, the thing would not have been
+so difficult, had she not been weakened by illness.
+
+"Lily, my darling; my poor, ill-used darling."
+
+"No, mamma, I won't be that." And she struggled grievously to get the
+better of the hysterical attack which had overpowered her. "I won't be
+regarded as ill-used; not as specially ill-used. But I am your darling,
+your own darling. Only I wish you'd beat me and thump me when I'm such
+a fool, instead of pitying me. It's a great mistake being soft to
+people when they make fools of themselves. There, Bell; there's your
+stupid book, and I won't have any more of it. I believe it was that
+that did it." And she pushed the book away from her.
+
+After this little scene she said no further word about Crosbie and his
+bride on that day, but turned the conversation towards the prospect of
+their new house at Guestwick.
+
+"It will be a great comfort to be nearer Dr Crofts; won't it, Bell?"
+
+"I don't know," said Bell.
+
+"Because if we are ill, he won't have such a terrible distance to come?"
+
+"That will be a comfort for him, I should think," said Bell, very
+demurely.
+
+In the evening the first volume of the French Revolution had been
+procured, and Lily stuck to her reading with laudable perseverance;
+till at eight her mother insisted on her going to bed, queen as she was.
+
+"I don't believe a bit, you know, that the king was such a bad man as
+that," she said.
+
+"I do," said Bell.
+
+"Ah, that's because you're a radical. I never will believe that kings
+are so much worse than other people. As for Charles the First, he was
+about the best man in history."
+
+This was an old subject of dispute; but Lily on the present occasion
+was allowed her own way--as being an invalid.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLV
+
+VALENTINE'S DAY IN LONDON
+
+The fourteenth of February in London was quite as black, and cold, and
+as wintersome as it was at Allington, and was, perhaps, somewhat more
+melancholy in its coldness. Nevertheless Lady Alexandrina de Courcy
+looked as bright as bridal finery could make her, when she got out of
+her carriage and walked into St. James's church at eleven o'clock on
+that morning.
+
+It had been finally arranged that the marriage should take place in
+London. There were certainly many reasons which would have made a
+marriage from Courcy Castle more convenient. The De Courcy family were
+all assembled at their country family residence, and could therefore
+have been present at the ceremony without cost or trouble. The castle
+too was warm with the warmth of life, and the pleasantness of home
+would have lent a grace to the departure of one of the daughters of the
+house. The retainers and servants were there, and something of the rich
+mellowness of a noble alliance might have been felt, at any rate by
+Crosbie, at a marriage so celebrated.
+
+And it must have been acknowledged, even by Lady de Courcy, that the
+house in Portman Square was very cold--that a marriage from thence would
+be cold--that there could be no hope of attaching to it any honour and
+glory, or of making it resound with fashionable clat in the columns of
+the Morning Post. But then, had they been married in the country, the
+earl would have been there; whereas there was no probability of his
+travelling up to London for the purpose of being present on such an
+occasion.
+
+The earl was very terrible in these days, and Alexandrina, as she
+became confidential in her communications with her future husband,
+spoke of him as of an ogre, who could not by any means be avoided in
+all the concerns of life, but whom one might shun now and again by some
+subtle device and careful arrangement of favourable circumstances.
+Crosbie had more than once taken upon himself to hint that he did not
+specially regard the ogre, seeing that for the future he could keep
+himself altogether apart from the malicious monster's dominions.
+
+"He will not come to me in our new home," he had said to his love, with
+some little touch of affection. But to this view of the case Lady
+Alexandrina had demurred. The ogre in question was not only her parent,
+but was also a noble peer, and she could not agree to any arrangement
+by which their future connection with the earl, and with nobility in
+general, might be endangered. Her parent, doubtless, was an ogre, and
+in his ogreship could make himself very terrible to those near him; but
+then might it not be better for them to be near to an earl who was an
+ogre, than not to be near to any earl at all? She had therefore
+signified to Crosbie that the ogre must be endured.
+
+But, nevertheless, it was a great thing to be rid of him on that happy
+occasion. He would have said very dreadful things--things so dreadful
+that there might have been a question whether the bridegroom could have
+borne them. Since he had heard of Crosbie's accident at the railway
+station, he had constantly talked with fiendish glee of the beating
+which had been administered to his son-in-law. Lady de Courcy in taking
+Crosbie's part, and maintaining that the match was fitting for her
+daughter, had ventured to declare before her husband that Crosbie was a
+man of fashion, and the earl would now ask, with a loathsome grin,
+whether the bridegroom's fashion had been improved by his little
+adventure at Paddington. Crosbie, to whom all this was not repeated,
+would have preferred a wedding in the country. But the countess and
+Lady Alexandrina knew better.
+
+The earl had strictly interdicted any expenditure, and the countess had
+of necessity construed this as forbidding any unnecessary expense. "To
+marry a girl without any immediate cost was a thing which nobody could
+understand," as the countess remarked to her eldest daughter.
+
+"I would really spend as little as possible," Lady Amelia had answered.
+"You see, mamma, there are circumstances about it which one doesn't
+wish to have talked about just at present. There's the story of that
+girl--and then that fracas at the station. I really think it ought to be
+as quiet as possible." The good sense of Lady Amelia was not to be
+disputed, as her mother acknowledged. But then if the marriage were
+managed in any notoriously quiet way, the very notoriety of that quiet
+would be as dangerous as an attempt at loud glory. "But it won't cost
+as much," said Amelia. And thus it had been resolved that the wedding
+should be very quiet.
+
+To this Crosbie had assented very willingly, though he had not relished
+the manner in which the countess had explained to him her views.
+
+"I need not tell you, Adolphus," she had said, "how thoroughly
+satisfied I am with this marriage. My dear girl feels that she can be
+happy as your wife, and what more can I want? I declared to her and to
+Amelia that I was not ambitious, for their sakes, and have allowed them
+both to please themselves."
+
+"I hope they have pleased themselves," said Crosbie.
+
+"I trust so; but nevertheless--I don't know whether I make myself
+understood?
+
+"Quite so, Lady de Courcy. If Alexandrina were going to marry the
+eldest son of a marquis, you would have a longer procession to church
+than will be necessary when she marries me."
+
+"You put it in such an odd way, Adolphus."
+
+"It's all right so long as we understand each other. I can assure you I
+don't want any procession at all. I should be quite contented to go
+down with Alexandrina, arm in arm, like Darby and Joan, and let the
+clerk give her away."
+
+We may say that he would have been much better contented could he have
+been allowed to go down the street without any encumbrance on his arm.
+But there was no possibility now for such deliverance as that.
+
+Both Lady Amelia and Mr Gazebee had long since discovered the
+bitterness of his heart and the fact of his repentance, and Gazebee had
+ventured to suggest to his wife that his noble sister-in-law was
+preparing for herself a life of misery.
+
+"He'll become quiet and happy when he's used to it," Lady Amelia had
+replied, thinking, perhaps, of her own experiences.
+
+"I don't know, my dear; he's not a quiet man. There's something in his
+eye which tells me that he could be very hard to a woman."
+
+"It has gone too far now for any change," Lady Amelia had answered.
+
+"Well; perhaps it has."
+
+"And I know my sister so well; she would not hear of it. I really think
+they will do very well when they become used to each other."
+
+Mr Gazebee, who also had had his own experiences, hardly dared to hope
+so much. His home had been satisfactory to him, because he had been a
+calculating man, and having made his calculation correctly was willing
+to take the net result. He had done so all his life with success. In
+his house his wife was paramount--as he very well knew. But no effort on
+his wife's part, had she wished to make such effort, could have forced
+him to spend more than two-thirds of his income. Of this she also was
+aware, and had trimmed her sails accordingly, likening herself to him
+in this respect. But of such wisdom, and such trimmings, and such
+adaptability, what likelihood was there with Mr Crosbie and Lady
+Alexandrina?
+
+"At any rate, it is too late now," said Lady Amelia, thus concluding
+the conversation.
+
+But nevertheless, when the last moment came, there was some little
+attempt at glory. Who does not know the way in which a lately married
+couple's little dinner-party stretches itself out from the pure
+simplicity of a fried sole and a leg of mutton to the attempt at clear
+soup, the unfortunately cold dish of round balls which is handed about
+after the sole, and the brightly red jelly, and beautifully pink cream,
+which are ordered, in the last agony of ambition, from the next
+pastry-cook's shop?
+
+"We cannot give a dinner, my dear, with only cook and Sarah."
+
+It has thus begun, and the husband has declared that he has no such
+idea. "If Phipps and Dowdney can come here and eat a bit of mutton,
+they are very welcome; if not, let them stay away. And you might as
+well ask Phipps's sister; just to have some one to go with you into the
+drawing-room."
+
+"I'd much rather go alone--because then I can read,"--or sleep, we may
+say.
+
+But her husband has explained that she would look friendless, in this
+solitary state, and therefore Phipps's sister has been asked. Then the
+dinner has progressed down to those costly jellies which have been
+ordered in a last agony. There has been a conviction on the minds of
+both of them that the simple leg of mutton would have been more jolly
+for them all. Had those round balls not been carried about by a hired
+man; had simple mutton with hot potatoes been handed to Miss Phipps by
+Sarah, Miss Phipps would not have simpered with such 'unmeaning
+stiffness when young Dowdney spoke to her. They would have been much
+more jolly. "Have a bit more mutton, Phipps; and where do you like it?"
+How pleasant it sounds! But we all know that it is impossible. My young
+friend had intended this, but his dinner had run itself away to cold
+round balls and coloured forms from the pastrycook. And so it was with
+the Crosbie marriage.
+
+The bride must leave the church in a properly appointed carriage, and
+the postboys must have wedding favours. So the thing grew; not into
+noble proportions, not into proportions of true glory, justifying the
+attempt and making good the gala. A well-cooked rissole, brought
+pleasantly to you, is good eating. A gala marriage, when everything is
+in keeping, is excellent sport. Heaven forbid that we should have no
+gala marriages. But the small spasmodic attempt, made in opposition to
+manifest propriety, made with an inner conviction of failure--that
+surely should be avoided in marriages, in dinners, and in all affairs
+of life.
+
+There were bridesmaids and there was a breakfast. Both Margaretta and
+Rosina came up to London for the occasion, as did also a first cousin
+of theirs, one Miss Gresham, a lady whose father lived in the same
+county. Mr Gresham had married a sister of Lord de Courcy's, and his
+services were also called into requisition. He was brought up to give,
+away the bride, because the earl--as the paragraph in the newspaper
+declared--was confined at Courcy Castle by his old hereditary enemy, the
+gout. A fourth bridesmaid also was procured, and thus there was a bevy,
+though not so large a bevy as is now generally thought to be desirable.
+There were only three or four carriages at the church, but even three
+or four were something. The weather was so frightfully cold that the
+light-coloured silks of the ladies carried with them a show of
+discomfort. Girls should be very young to look nice in light dresses on
+a frosty morning, and the bridesmaids at Lady Alexandrina's wedding
+were not very young. Lady Rosina's nose was decidedly red. Lady
+Margaretta was very wintry, and apparently very cross. Miss Gresham was
+dull, tame, and insipid; and the Honourable Miss O'Flaherty, who filled
+the fourth place, was sulky at finding that she had been invited to
+take a share in so very lame a performance.
+
+But the marriage was made good, and Crosbie bore up against his
+misfortunes like a man. Montgomerie Dobbs and Fowler Pratt both stood
+by him, giving him, let us hope, some assurance that he was not
+absolutely deserted by all the world--that he had not given himself up,
+bound hand and foot, to the De Courcys, to be dealt with in all matters
+as they might please. It was that feeling which had been so grievous to
+him--and that other feeling, cognate to it, that if he should ultimately
+succeed in rebelling against the De Courcys, he would find himself a
+solitary man.
+
+"Yes; I shall go," Fowler Pratt had said to Montgomerie Dobbs. "I
+always stick to a fellow if I can. Crosbie has behaved like a
+blackguard, and like a fool also; and he knows that I think so. But I
+don't see why I should drop him on that account. I shall go as he has
+asked me."
+
+"So shall I," said Montgomerie Dobbs, who considered that he would be
+safe in doing whatever Fowler Pratt did, and who remarked to himself
+that after all Crosbie was marrying the daughter of an earl.
+
+Then, after the marriage, came the breakfast, at which the countess
+presided with much noble magnificence. She had not gone to church,
+thinking, no doubt, that she would be better able to maintain her good
+humour at the feast, if she did not subject herself to the chance of
+lumbago in the church. At the foot of the table sat Mr Gresham, her
+brother-in-law, who had undertaken to give the necessary toast and make
+the necessary speech. The Honourable John was there, saying all manner
+of ill-natured things about his sister and new brother-in-law, because
+he had been excluded from his proper position at the foot of the table.
+But Alexandrina had declared that she would not have the matter
+entrusted to her brother. The Honourable George would not come, because
+the countess had not asked his wife.
+
+"Maria may be slow, and all that sort of thing," George had said; "but
+she is my wife. And she had got what they haven't. Love me, love my
+dog, you know." So he had stayed down at Courcy--very properly as I
+think.
+
+Alexandrina had wished to go away before breakfast, and Crosbie would
+not have cared how early an escape had been provided for him; but the
+countess had told her daughter that if she would not wait for the
+breakfast, there should be no breakfast at all, and in fact no wedding;
+nothing but a simple marriage. Had there been a grand party, that going
+away of the bride, and bridegroom might be very well; but the countess
+felt that on such an occasion as this nothing but the presence of the
+body of the sacrifice could give any reality to the festivity. So
+Crosbie and Lady Alexandrina Crosbie heard Mr Gresham's speech, in
+which he prophesied for the young couple an amount of happiness and
+prosperity almost greater than is compatible with the circumstances of
+humanity. His young friend Crosbie, whose acquaintance he had been
+delighted to make, was well known as one of the rising pillars of the
+State. Whether his future career might be parliamentary, or devoted to
+the permanent Civil Service of the country, it would be alike great,
+noble, and prosperous. As to his dear niece, who was now filling that
+position in life which was most beautiful and glorious for a young
+woman--she could not have done better. She had preferred genius to
+wealth--so said Mr Gresham--and she would find her fitting reward. As to
+her finding her fitting reward, whatever her preferences may have been,
+there Mr Gresham was no doubt quite right. On that head I myself have
+no doubt whatever. After that Crosbie returned thanks, making a much
+better speech than nine men do out of ten on such occasions, and then
+the thing was over. No other speaking was allowed, and within half an
+hour from that time, he and his bride were in the post-chaise, being
+carried away to the Folkestone railway station; for that place had been
+chosen as the scene of their honeymoon. It had been at one time
+intended that the journey to Folkestone should be made simply as the
+first stage to Paris, but Paris and all foreign travelling had been
+given up by degrees.
+
+"I don't care a bit about France--we have been there so often,"
+Alexandrina said.
+
+She had wished to be taken to Naples, but Crosbie had made her
+understand at the first whispering of the word, that Naples was quite
+out of the question. He must look now in all things to money. From the
+very first outset of his career he must save a shilling wherever a
+shilling could be saved. To this view of life no opposition was made by
+the De Courcy interest. Lady Amelia had explained to her sister that
+they ought so to do their honeymooning that it should not cost more
+than if they began keeping house at once. Certain things must be done
+which, no doubt, were costly in their nature. The bride must take with
+her a well-dressed lady's-maid. The rooms at the Folkestone hotel must
+be large, and on the first floor. A carriage must be hired for her use
+while she remained; but every shilling must be saved the spending of
+which would not make itself apparent to the outer world. Oh, deliver us
+from the poverty of those who, with small means, affect a show of
+wealth! There is no whitening equal to that of sepulchres whited as
+they are whited!
+
+By the proper administration of a slight bribe Crosbie secured for
+himself and his wife a compartment in the railway carriage to
+themselves. And as he seated himself opposite to Alexandrina, having
+properly tucked her up with all her bright-coloured trappings, he
+remembered that he had never in truth been alone with her before. He
+had danced with her frequently, and been left with her for a few
+minutes between the figures. He had flirted with her in crowded
+drawing-rooms, and had once found a moment at Courcy Castle to tell her
+that he was willing to marry her in spite of his engagement with Lilian
+Dale. But he had never walked with her for hours together as he had
+walked with Lily. He had never talked to her about government, and
+politics, and books, nor had she talked to him of poetry, of religion,
+and of the little duties and comforts of life. He had known the Lady
+Alexandrina for the last six or seven years; but he had never known
+her--perhaps never would know her--as he had learned to know Lily Dale
+within the space of two months.
+
+And now that she was his wife, what was he to say to her? They two had
+commenced a partnership which was to make of them for the remaining
+term of their lives one body and one flesh. They were to be all-in-all
+to each other. But how was he to begin this all-in-all partnership? Had
+the priest, with his blessing, done it so sufficiently that no other
+doing on Crosbie's own part was necessary? There she was, opposite to
+him, his very actual wife--bone of his bone; and what was he to, say to
+her? As he settled himself on his seat, taking over his own knees a
+part of a fine fur rug trimmed with scarlet, with which he had covered
+her other mufflings, he bethought himself how much easier it would have
+been to talk to Lily. And Lily would have been ready with all her ears,
+and all her mind, and all her wit, to enter quickly upon whatever
+thoughts had occurred to him. In that respect Lily would have been a
+wife indeed--a wife that would have transferred herself with quick
+mental activity into her husbands mental sphere. Had he begun about his
+office Lily would have been ready for him, but Alexandrina had never
+yet asked him a single question about his official life. Had he been
+prepared with a plan for to-morrows happiness Lily would have taken it
+up eagerly, but Alexandrina never cared for such trifles.
+
+"Are you quite comfortable?" he said, at last.
+
+"Oh, yes, quite, thank you. By-the-by, what did you do with my
+dressing-case?"
+
+And that question she did ask with some energy.
+
+"It is under you. You can have it as foot-stool if you like it."
+
+"Oh, no; I should scratch it. I was afraid that if Hannah had it, it
+might be lost." Then again there was silence, and Crosbie again
+considered as to what he would next say to his wife.
+
+We all know the advice given us of old as to what we should do under
+such circumstances; and who can be so thoroughly justified in following
+that advice as a newly-married husband? So he put out his hand for hers
+and drew her closer to him.
+
+"Take care of my bonnet," she said, as she felt the motion of the
+railway carriage when he kissed her. I don't think he kissed her again
+till he had landed her and her bonnet safely at Folkestone. How often
+would he have kissed Lily, and how pretty would her bonnet have been
+when she reached the end of her journey, and how delightfully happy
+would she have looked when she scolded him for bending it! But
+Alexandrina was quite in earnest about her bonnet; by far too much in
+earnest for any appearance of happiness.
+
+So he sat without speaking, till the train came to the tunnel.
+
+"I do so hate tunnels," said Alexandrina.
+
+He had half intended to put out his hand again, under some mistaken
+idea that the tunnel afforded him an opportunity. The whole journey was
+one long opportunity, had he desired it; but his wife hated tunnels,
+and so he drew his hand back again. Lily's little fingers would have
+been ready for his touch. He thought of this, and could not help
+thinking of it.
+
+He had The Times newspaper in his dressing-bag. She also had a novel
+with her. Would she be offended if he took out the paper and read it?
+The miles seemed to pass by very slowly; and there was still another
+hour down to Folkestone. He longed for his Times, but resolved at last,
+that he would not read unless she read first. She also had remembered
+her novel; but by nature she was more patient than he, and she thought
+that on such a journey any reading might perhaps be almost improper. So
+she sat tranquilly, with her eyes fixed on the netting over her
+husband's head.
+
+At last he could stand it no longer, and he dashed off into a
+conversation, intended to be most affectionate and serious.
+
+"Alexandrina," he said, and his voice was well-tuned for the tender
+serious manner, had her ears been alive to such tuning. "Alexandrina,
+this is a very important step that you and I have taken today."
+
+"Yes; it is, indeed," said she.
+
+"I trust we shall succeed in making each other happy."
+
+"Yes; I hope we shall."
+
+"If we both think seriously of it, and remember that that is our chief
+duty, we shall do so."
+
+"Yes, I suppose we shall. I only hope we shan't find the house very
+cold. It is so new, and I am so subject to colds in my head. Amelia
+says we shall find it very cold; but then she was always against our
+going there."
+
+"The house will do very well," said Crosbie. And Alexandrina could
+perceive that there was something of the master in his tone as he spoke.
+
+"I am only telling you what Amelia said," she replied.
+
+Had Lily been his bride, and had he spoken to her of their future life
+and mutual duties, how she would have kindled to the theme! She would
+have knelt at his feet on the floor of the carriage, and, looking up
+into his face, would have promised him to do her best--her best--her very
+best. And with what an eagerness of inward resolution would she have
+determined to keep her promise. He thought of all this now, but he knew
+that he ought not to think of it. Then, for some quarter of an hour, he
+did take out his newspaper, and she, when she saw him do so, did take
+out her novel.
+
+He took out his newspaper, but he could not fix his mind upon the
+politics of the day. Had he not made a terrible mistake? Of what use to
+him in life would be that thing of a woman that sat opposite to him?
+Had not a great punishment come upon him, and had he not deserved the
+punishment? In truth, a great punishment had come upon him. It was not
+only that he had married a woman incapable of understanding the higher
+duties of married life, but that he himself would have been capable of
+appreciating the value of a woman who did understand them. He would
+have been happy with Lily Dale; and therefore we may surmise that his
+unhappiness with Lady Alexandrina would be the greater. There are men
+who, in marrying such as Lady Alexandrina de Courcy, would get the
+article best suited to them, as Mortimer Gazebee had done in marrying
+her sister. Miss Griselda Grantly, who had become Lady Dumbello, though
+somewhat colder and somewhat cleverer than Lady Alexandrina, had been
+of the same sort. But in marrying her Lord Dumbello had got the article
+best suited to him--if only the ill-natured world would allow him to
+keep the article. It was in this that Crosbie's failure had been so
+grievous--that he had seen and approved the better course, but had
+chosen for himself to walk in that which was worse. During that week at
+Courcy Castle--the week which he passed there immediately after his
+second visit to Allington--he had deliberately made up his mind that he
+was more fit for the bad course than for the good one. The course was
+now before him, and he had no choice but to walk in it.
+
+It was very cold when they got to Folkestone, and Lady Alexandrina
+shivered as she stepped into the private-looking carriage which had
+been sent to the station for her use.
+
+"We shall find a good fire in the parlour at the hotel," said Crosbie.
+
+"Oh, I hope so," said Alexandrina, "and in the bedroom too."
+
+The young husband felt himself to be offended, but he hardly knew why.
+He felt himself to be offended, and with difficulty induced himself to
+go through all those little ceremonies the absence of which would have
+been remarked by everybody. He did his work, however, seeing to all her
+shawls and wrappings, speaking with good-nature to Hannah, and paying
+special attention to the dressing-case.
+
+"What time would you like to dine?" he asked, as he prepared to leave
+her alone with Hannah in the bedroom.
+
+"Whenever you please; only I should like some tea and bread-and-butter
+presently."
+
+Crosbie went into the sitting-room, ordered the tea and
+bread-and-butter, ordered also the dinner, and then stood himself up
+with his back to the fire, in order that he might think a little of his
+future career.
+
+He was a man who had long since resolved that his life should be a
+success. It would seem that all men would so resolve, if the matter
+were simply one of resolution. But the majority of men, as I take it,
+make no such resolution, and very many men resolve that they will be
+unsuccessful. Crosbie, however, had resolved on success, and had done
+much towards carrying out his purpose. He had made a name for himself,
+and had acquired a certain fame. That, however, was, as he acknowledged
+to himself, departing from him. He looked the matter straight in the
+face, and told himself that his fashion must be abandoned; but the
+office remained to him. He might still rule over Mr Optimist, and make
+a subservient slave of Butterwell. That must be his line in life now,
+and to that, line he would endeavour to be true. As to his wife and his
+home--he would look to them for his breakfast, and perhaps his dinner.
+He would have, a comfortable arm-chair, and if Alexandrina should
+become a mother he would endeavour to love his children; but above all
+things he would never think of Lily. After that he stood and thought of
+her for half an hour.
+
+"If you please, sir, my lady wants to know at what time you have
+ordered dinner."
+
+"At seven, Hannah."
+
+"My lady says she is very tired, and will lie down till dinnertime."
+
+"Very well, Hannah. I will go into her room when it is time to dress. I
+hope they are making you comfortable downstairs?"
+
+Then Crosbie strolled out on the pier in the dusk of the cold winter
+evening.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVI
+
+JOHN EAMES AT HIS OFFICE
+
+Mr Crosbie and his wife went upon their honeymoon tour to Folkestone in
+the middle of February, and returned to London about the end of March.
+Nothing of special moment to the interests of our story occurred during
+those six weeks, unless the proceedings of the young married couple by
+the sea-side may be thought to have any special interest. With regard
+to those proceedings I can only say that Crosbie was very glad when
+they were brought to a close. All holiday-making is hard work, but
+holiday-making with nothing to do is the hardest work of all. At the
+end of March they went into their new house, and we will hope that Lady
+Alexandrina did not find it very cold.
+
+During this time Lily's recovery from her illness was being completed.
+She had no relapse--nor did anything occur to create a new fear on her
+account. But, nevertheless, Dr Crofts gave it as his opinion that it
+would be inexpedient to move her into a fresh house at Lady-day. March
+is not a kindly month for invalids; and therefore with some regret on
+the part of Mrs Dale, with much impatience on that of Bell, and with
+considerable outspoken remonstrance from Lily herself, the squire was
+requested to let them remain through the month of April. How the squire
+received this request, and in, what way he assented to the doctor's
+reasoning, will be told in the course of a chapter or two.
+
+In the meantime John Eames had continued his career in London without
+much immediate satisfaction--to himself, or to the lady who boasted to
+be his heart's chosen queen. Miss Amelia Roper, indeed, was becoming
+very cross and in her ill-temper was playing a game that was tending to
+create a frightful amount of hot water in Burton Crescent. She was
+devoting herself to a flirtation with Mr Cradell, not only under the
+immediate eyes of Johnny Eames, but also under those of Mrs Lupex. John
+Eames, the blockhead, did not like it. He was above all things anxious
+to get rid of Amelia and her claims; so anxious, that on certain, moody
+occasions he would threaten himself with diverse tragical terminations
+to his career in London. He would enlist. He would go to Australia. He
+would blow out his brains. He would have "an explanation" with Amelia,
+tell her that she was a vixen, and proclaim his hatred. He would rush
+down to Allington and throw himself in despair at Lily's feet. Amelia,
+was the bugbear of his life. Nevertheless, when she flirted with
+Cradell, he did not like it, and was ass enough to speak to Cradell
+about it.
+
+"Of course I don't care," he said, "only it seems to me that you are
+making a fool of yourself."
+
+"I thought you wanted to get rid of her."
+
+"She's nothing on earth to me; only it does, you know--"
+
+"Does do what?" asked Cradell.
+
+"Why, if I was to be fal-lalling with that married woman, you wouldn't
+like it. That's all about it. Do you mean to marry her?"
+
+"What!--Amelia?"
+
+"Yes; Amelia."
+"Not if I know it."
+
+"Then if I were you I would leave her alone. She's only making a fool
+of you."
+
+Eames's advice may have been good, and the view taken by him of
+Amelia's proceedings may have been correct; but as regarded his own
+part in the affair, he was not wise. Miss Roper, no doubt, wished to
+make him jealous; and she succeeded in the teeth of his aversion to her
+and of his love elsewhere. He had no desire to say soft things to Miss
+Roper. Miss Roper, with all her skill, could not extract a word
+pleasantly soft from him one a week. But, nevertheless, soft words to
+her and from her in another quarter made him uneasy. Such being the
+case, must we not acknowledge that John Eames was still floundering in
+the ignorance of his hobbledehoyhood?
+
+The Lupexes at this time still held their ground in the Crescent,
+although repeated warnings to go had been given them. Mrs Roper, though
+she constantly spoke of sacrificing all that they owed her, still
+hankered, with a natural hankering, after her money. And as each
+warning was accompanied by a demand for payment, and usually produced
+some slight subsidy on account, the thing went on from week to week;
+and at the beginning of April Mr and Mrs Lupex were still boarders at
+Mrs Roper's house.
+
+Eames had heard nothing from Allington since the time of his Christmas
+visit, and his subsequent correspondence with Lord de Guest. In his
+letters from his mother he was told that game came frequently from
+Guestwick Manor, and in this way he knew that he was not forgotten by
+the earl. But of Lily he had heard not a word--except, indeed, the
+rumour, which had now become general, that the Dales from the Small
+House were about to move themselves into Guestwick. When first he
+learned this he construed the tidings as favourable to himself,
+thinking that Lily, removed from the grandeur of Allington, might
+possibly be more easily within his reach; but, latterly, he had given
+up any such hope as that, and was telling himself that his friend at
+the Manor had abandoned all idea of making up the marriage. Three
+months had already elapsed since his visit. Five months had passed
+since Crosbie had surrendered his claim. Surely such a knave as Crosbie
+might be forgotten in five months! If any steps could have been taken
+through the squire, surely three months would have sufficed for them!
+It was very manifest to him that there was no ground of hope for him at
+Allington, and it would certainly be well for him to go off to
+Australia. He would go to Australia, but he would thrash Cradell first
+for having dared to interfere with Amelia Roper. That, generally, was,
+the state of his mind during the first week in April.
+
+Then there came to him a letter from the earl which instantly effected
+a great change in all his feelings; which taught him to regard
+Australia as a dream, and almost put him into a good humour with
+Cradell. The earl had by no means lost sight of his friend's interests
+at Allington; and, moreover, those interests were now backed by an
+ally, who in this matter must be regarded as much more powerful than
+the earl. The squire had given in his consent to the Eames alliance.
+
+The earl's letter was as follows :--
+
+
+GUESTWICK MANOR, April , 18-.
+
+MY DEAR JOHN--I told you to write to me again, and you haven't done it.
+I saw your mother the other day, or else you might have been dead for
+anything I knew. A young man always ought to write letters when he is
+told to do so.
+
+[Eames, when he had got so far, felt himself rather aggrieved by this
+rebuke, knowing that he had abstained from writing to his patron simply
+from an unwillingness to intrude upon him with his letters. "By Jove,
+I'll write to him every week of his life, till he's sick of me," Johnny
+said to himself when he found himself thus instructed as to a young
+man's duties.]
+
+And now I have got to tell you a long story, and I should like it much
+better if you were down here, so that I might save myself the trouble;
+but you would think me ill-natured if I were to keep you waiting. I
+happened to meet Mr Dale the other day, and he said that he should be
+very glad if a certain young lady would make up her mind to listen to a
+certain young friend of mine. So I asked him what he meant to do about
+the young lady's fortune, and he declared himself willing to give her a
+hundred a year during his life, and to settle four thousand pounds upon
+her after his death. I said that I would do as much on my part by the
+young man; but as two hundred a year, with your salary, would hardly
+give you enough to begin with, I'll make mine a hundred and fifty.
+You'll be getting up in your office soon, and with five hundred a year
+you ought to be able to get along; especially as you need not insure
+your life, I should live somewhere near Bloomsbury Square at first,
+because I'm told you can get a house for nothing. After all, what's
+fashion worth? You can bring your wife down here in the autumn, and
+have some shooting. She won't let you go to sleep under the trees, I'll
+be bound.
+
+But you must look after the young lady. You will understand that no one
+has said a word to her about it; or, if they have, I don't know it.
+You'll find the squire on your side. That's all. Couldn't you manage to
+come down this Easter? Tell old Buffle, with my compliments, that I
+want you. I'll write to him if you like it. I did know him at one time,
+though I can't say I was ever fond of him. It stands to reason that you
+can't get on with Miss Lily without seeing her; unless, indeed, you
+like better to write to her, which always seems to me to be very poor
+sort of fun. You'd much better come down, and go a-wooing in the
+regular old-fashioned way. I need not tell you that Lady Julia will be
+delighted to see you. You are a prime favourite with her since that
+affair at the railway station. She thinks a great deal more about that
+than she does about the bull.
+
+Now, my dear fellow, you know all about it, and I shall take it very
+much amiss of you if you don't answer my letter soon.
+
+Your very sincere friend,
+
+DE GUEST.
+
+
+When Eames had finished this letter, sitting at his office-desk, his
+surprise and elation were so great that he hardly knew where he was or
+what he ought to do. Could it be the truth that Lily's uncle had not
+only consented that the match should be made, but that he had also
+promised to give his niece a considerable fortune? For a, few minutes
+it seemed to Johnny as though all obstacles to his happiness were
+removed, and that there was no impediment between him and an amount of
+bliss of which he had hitherto hardly dared to dream. Then, when he
+considered the earl's munificence, he almost cried. He found that he
+could not compose his mind to think, or even his hand to write. He did
+not know whether it would be right in him to accept such pecuniary
+liberality from any living man, and almost thought that he should feel
+himself bound to reject the earl's offer. As to the squire's money,
+that he knew he might accept. All that comes in the shape of a young
+woman's fortune may be taken by any man.
+
+He would certainly answer the earl's letter, and that at once. He would
+not leave the office till he had done so. His friend should have cause
+to bring no further charge against him of that kind. And then again he
+reverted to the injustice which had been done to him in the matter of
+letter-writing--as if that consideration were of moment in such a state
+of circumstances as was now existing. But at last his thoughts brought
+themselves to the real question at issue. Would Lily Dale accept him?
+After all, the realisation of his good fortune depended altogether upon
+her feelings; and, as he remembered this, his mind misgave him sorely.
+It was filled not only with a young lover's ordinary doubts--with the
+fear and trembling incidental to the bashfulness of hobbledehoyhood-but
+with an idea that that affair with Crosbie would still stand in his
+way. He did not, perhaps, rightly understand all that Lily had
+suffered, but he conceived it to be probable that there had been wounds
+which even the last five months might not yet have cured. Could it be
+that she would allow him to cure these wounds? As he thought of this he
+felt almost crushed to the earth by an indomitable bashfulness and
+conviction of his own unworthiness. What had he to offer worthy of the
+acceptance of such a girl as Lilian Dale?
+
+I fear that the Crown did not get out of John Eames an adequate return
+for his salary on that day. So adequate, however, had been the return
+given by him for some time past, that promotion was supposed throughout
+the Income-tax Office to be coming in his way, much to the jealousy of
+Cradell, Fisher, and others, his immediate compeers and cronies. And
+the place assigned to him by rumour was one which was, generally
+regarded as a perfect Elysium upon earth in the Civil Service world. He
+was, so rumour said, to become private secretary to the First
+Commissioner. He would be removed by such a change as this from the
+large uncarpeted room in which he at present sat; occupying the same
+desk with another man to whom he had felt himself to be ignominiously
+bound, as dogs must feel when they are coupled. This room had been the
+bear-garden of the office. Twelve or fourteen men sat in it. Large
+pewter pots were brought into it daily at one o'clock, giving it an air
+that was not aristocratic. The senior of the room, one Mr Love, who was
+presumed to have it under his immediate dominion, was a clerk of the
+ancient stamp, dull, heavy, unambitious, living out on the farther side
+of Islington, and unknown beyond the limits of his office to any of his
+younger brethren. He was generally regarded as having given a bad tone
+to the room. And then the clerks in this room would not unfrequently be
+blown up--with very palpable blowings up--by an official swell, a certain
+chief clerk, named Kissing, much higher in standing though younger in
+age than the gentleman of whom we have before spoken. He would hurry
+in, out of his own neighbouring chamber, with quick step and nose in
+the air, shuffling in his office slippers, looking on each occasion as
+though there were some cause to fear that the whole Civil Service were
+coming to an abrupt termination, and would lay about him with hard
+words, which some of those in the big room did not find it very easy to
+bear. His hair was always brushed straight up, his eyes were always
+very wide open--and he usually carried a big letter--book with him,
+keeping, in it a certain place with his finger. This book was almost
+too much for his strength, and he would flop it down, now on this man's
+desk and now on that man's, and in along career of such floppings had
+made himself to be very much hated. On the score of some old grudge he
+and Mr Love did not speak to each other; and for this reason, on all
+occasions of fault-finding, the blown-up young man would refer Mr
+Kissing to his enemy.
+
+"I know nothing about it," Mr Love would say, not lifting his face from
+his desk for a moment.
+
+"I shall certainly lay the matter before the Board,"--Mr Kissing would
+reply, and would then shuffle out of the room with the big book.
+
+Sometimes Mr Kissing would lay the matter before the Board, and then
+he, and Mr Love, and two or three delinquent clerks would be summoned
+thither. It seldom led to much. The delinquent clerks would be
+cautioned. One Commissioner would say a word in private to Mr Love, and
+another a word in private to Mr Kissing. Then, when left alone, the
+Commissioners would have their little jokes; saying that Kissing, they
+feared, went by favour; and that Love should still be lord of all. But
+these things were done in the mild days, before Sir Raffle Buffle came
+to the Board.
+
+There had been some fun in this at first; but of late John Eames had
+become tired of it. He disliked Mr Kissing, and the big book out of
+which Mr Kissing was always endeavouring to convict him of some
+official sin, and had got tired of that joke setting Kissing and Love
+by the ears together. When the Assistant Secretary first suggested to
+him that Sir Raffle had an idea of selecting him as private secretary,
+and when he remembered the cosy little room, all carpeted, with a
+leathern arm-chair and a separate washing-stand, which in such case
+would be devoted to his use, and remembered also that he would be put
+into receipt of an additional hundred a year, and would stand in the
+way of still better promotion, he was overjoyed. But there were certain
+drawbacks. The present private secretary-who had been private secretary
+also to the late First Commissioner-was giving up his Elysium because
+he could not endure the tones of Sir Raffle's voice. It was understood
+that Sir Raffle required rather more of a private secretary, in the way
+of obsequious attendance, than was desirable, and Eames almost doubted
+his own fitness for the place.
+
+"And why should he choose me?" he had asked the Assistant Secretary.
+
+"Well, we have talked it over together, and I think that he prefers you
+to any other that has been named."
+
+"But he was so very hard upon me about the affair at the railway
+station."
+
+"I think he has heard more about that since; I think that some message
+has reached him from your friend, Earl de Guest."
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said Johnny, beginning to comprehend what it was to have
+an earl for his friend. Since his acquaintance with the nobleman had
+commenced, he had studiously avoided all mention of the earl's name at
+his office; and yet he received almost daily intimation that the fact
+was well known there, and not a little considered.
+
+"But he is so very rough," said Johnny.
+
+"You can put up with that," said his friend the Assistant Secretary
+"His bark is worse than his bite, as you know, and then a hundred a
+year is worth having."
+
+Eames was at that moment inclined to take a gloomy view of life in
+general, and was disposed to refuse the place, should it be offered to
+him. He had not then received the earl's letter; but now, as he sat
+with that letter open before him, lying in the drawer beneath his desk
+so that he could still read it as he leaned back in his chair, he was
+enabled to look at things in general through a different atmosphere. In
+the first place, Lilian Dale's husband ought to have a room to himself,
+with a carpet and an arm-chair; and then that additional hundred a year
+would raise his income at once to the sum as to which the earl had made
+some sort of stipulation. But could he get that leave of absence at
+Easter? If he consented to be Sir Raffle's private secretary, he would
+make that a part of the bargain.
+
+At this moment the door of the big room was opened, and Mr Kissing
+shuffled in with very quick little steps. He shuffled in, and coming
+direct up to John's desk, flopped his ledger down upon it before its
+owner had had time to close the drawer which contained the precious
+letter.
+
+"What have you got in that drawer, Mr Eames?"
+
+"A private letter, Mr Kissing."
+
+"Oh--a private letter!" said Mr Kissing, feeling strongly convinced
+there was a novel hidden there, but not daring to express his belief.
+"I have been half the morning, Mr Eames, looking for this letter to the
+Admiralty, and you've put it under S!" A bystander listening to Mr
+Kissing's tone would have been led to believe that the whole Income-tax
+Office was jeopardised by the terrible iniquity thus disclosed.
+
+"Somerset House," pleaded Johnny.
+
+"Psha--Somerset House! Half the offices in London--"
+
+"You'd better ask Mr Love," said Eames. "It's all done under his
+special instructions." Mr Kissing looked at Mr Love; and Mr Love looked
+steadfastly at his desk. "Mr Love knows all about the indexing,"
+continued Johnny. "He's index master general to the department."
+
+"No, I'm not, Mr Eames," said Mr Love, who rather liked John Eames, and
+hated Mr Kissing with his whole heart. "But I believe the indexes, on
+the whole, are very well done in this room. Some people don't know how
+to find letters."
+
+"Mr Eames," began Mr Kissing, still pointing with a finger of bitter
+reproach to the misused S, and beginning an oration which was intended
+for the benefit of the whole room, and for the annihilation of old Mr
+Love, "if you have yet to learn that the word Admiralty begins with A
+and not with S, you have much to learn which should have been acquired
+before you first came into this office. Somerset House is not a
+department." Then he turned round to the room at large, and repeated
+the last words, as though they might become very useful if taken well
+to heart--"Is not a department. The Treasury is a department; the Home
+Office is a department; the India Board is a department--"
+
+"No, Mr Kissing, it isn't," said a young clerk from the other end of
+the room.
+
+"You know very well what I mean, sir. The India Office is a department."
+
+"There's no Board, sir."
+
+"Never mind; but how any gentleman who has been in the service three
+months--not to say three years--can suppose Somerset House to be a
+department, is beyond my comprehension. If you have been improperly
+instructed--"
+
+"We shall know all about it another time," said Eames. "Mr Love will
+make a memorandum of it."
+
+"I shan't do anything of the kind," said Mr Love.
+
+"If you have been wrongly instructed--" Mr Kissing began again, stealing
+a glance at Mr Love as he did so; but at this moment the door was again
+opened, and a messenger summoned Johnny to the presence of the really
+great man. "Mr Eames to wait upon Sir Raffle." Upon hearing this Johnny
+immediately started, and left Mr Kissing and the big book in possession
+of his desk. How the battle was waged, and how it raged in the large
+room, we cannot stop to hear, as it is necessary that we should follow
+our hero into the presence of Sir Raffle Buffle.
+
+"Ah, Eames--yes," said Sir Raffle, looking up from his desk when the
+young man entered; "just wait half a minute, will you?" And the knight
+went to work at his papers, as though fearing that any delay in what he
+was doing might be very prejudicial to the nation at large. "Ah,
+Eames--well--yes," he said again, as he pushed away from him, almost with
+a jerk, the papers on which he had been writing. "They tell me that you
+know the business of this office pretty well."
+
+"Some of it, sir," said Eames.
+
+"Well, yes; some of it. But you'll have to understand the whole of it
+if you come to me. And you must be very sharp about it too. You know
+that FitzHoward is leaving me?"
+
+"I have heard of it, sir."
+
+"A very excellent young man, though perhaps not--. But we won't mind
+that. The work is a little too much for him, and he's going back into
+the office. I believe Lord de Guest is a friend of yours; isn't he?"
+
+"Yes; he is a friend of mine, certainly. He's been very kind to me."
+
+"Ah, well. I've known the earl for many years--for very many years; and
+intimately at one time. Perhaps you may have heard him mention my name?"
+
+"Yes, I have, Sir Raffle."
+
+"We were intimate once, but those things go off, you know. He's been
+the country mouse and I've been the town mouse. Ha, ha, ha! You may
+tell him that I say so. He won't mind that coming from me."
+
+"Oh, no; not at all," said Eames.
+
+"Mind you tell him when you see him. The earl is a man for whom I've
+always had a great respect--a very great respect--I may say regard. And
+now, Eames, what do you say to taking FitzHoward's place? The work is
+hard. It is fair that I should tell you that. The work will, no doubt,
+be very hard. I take a greater share of what's going than my
+predecessors have done; and I don't mind telling you that I have been
+sent here, because a man was wanted who would do that." The voice of
+Sir Raffle, as he continued, became more and more harsh, and Eames
+began to think how wise FitzHoward had been "I mean to do my duty, and
+I shall expect that my private secretary will do his. But, Mr Eames, I
+never forget a man. Whether he be good or bad, I never forget a man.
+You don't dislike late hours, I suppose."
+
+"Coming late to the office you mean? Oh, no, not in the least."
+
+"Staying late--staying late. Six or seven o'clock if necessary--putting
+your shoulder to the wheel when the coach gets into the mud. That's
+what I've been doing all my life. They've known what I am very well.
+They've always kept me for the heavy roads. If they paid, in the Civil
+Service, by the hour, I believe I should have drawn a larger income
+than any man in it. If you take the vacant chair in the next room
+you'll find it's no joke. It's only fair that I should tell you that."
+
+"I can work as hard as any man," said Eames.
+
+"That's right. That's right. Stick to that and I'll stick to you. It
+will be a great gratification to me to have by me a friend of my old
+friend De Guest. Tell him I say so. And now you may as well get into
+harness at once. FitzHoward is there. You can go in to him, and at
+half-past four exactly I'll see you both. I'm very exact, mind--very--and
+therefore you must be exact." Then Sir Raffle looked as though he
+desired to be left alone.
+
+"Sir Raffle, there's one favour I want to ask of you," said Johnny.
+
+"And what's that?"
+
+"I am most anxious to be absent for a fortnight or three weeks, just at
+Easter. I shall want to go in about ten days."
+
+"Absent for three weeks at Easter, when the parliamentary work is
+beginning! That won't do for a private secretary."
+
+"But it's very important, Sir Raffle."
+
+"Out of the question, Eames; quite out of the question."
+
+"It's almost life and death to me."
+
+"Almost life and death. Why, what are you going to do?" With all his
+grandeur and national importance, Sir Raffle would be very curious as
+to little people.
+
+"Well, I can't exactly tell you, and I'm not quite sure myself."
+
+"Then don't talk nonsense. It's impossible that I should spare my
+private secretary just at that time of the year. I couldn't do it. The
+service won't admit of it. You're not entitled to leave at that season.
+Private secretaries always take their leave in the autumn."
+
+"I should like to be absent in the autumn too, but--"
+
+"It's out of the question, Mr Eames."
+
+Then John Eames reflected that it behoved him in such an emergency to
+fire off his big gun. He had a great dislike to firing this big gun
+but, as he said to himself, there are occasions which make a big gun
+very necessary. "I got a letter from Lord de Guest this morning,
+pressing me very much to go to him at Easter. It's about business,"
+added Johnny. "If there was any difficulty, he said, he should write to
+you."
+
+"Write to me," said Sir Raffle, who did not like to be approached too
+familiarly in his office, even by an earl.
+
+"Of course I shouldn't tell him to do that. But, Sir Raffle, if I
+remained out there, in the office," and Johnny pointed towards the big
+room with his head, "I could choose April for my month. And as the
+matter is so important to me, and to the earl--"
+
+"What can it be?" said Sir Raffle.
+
+"It's quite private," said John Eames.
+
+Hereupon Sir Raffle became very petulant, feeling that a bargain was
+being made with him. This young man would only consent to become his
+private secretary upon certain terms! "Well; go in to FitzHoward now. I
+can't lose all my day in this way."
+
+"But I shall be able to get away at Easter?"
+
+"I don't know. We shall see about it. But don't stand talking there
+now." Then John Eames went into FitzHoward's room, and received that
+gentleman's congratulations on his appointment. "I hope you like being
+rung for, like a servant, every minute, for he's always ringing that
+bell. And he'll roar at you till you're deaf. You must give up all
+dinner engagements, for though there is not much to do, he'll never let
+you go. I don't think anybody ever asks him out to dinner, for he likes
+being here till seven. And you'll have to write all manner of lies
+about big people. And, sometimes, when he has sent Rafferty out about
+his private business, he'll ask you to bring him his shoes." Now
+Rafferty was the First Commissioner's messenger.
+
+It must be remembered, however, that this little account was given by
+an outgoing and discomfited private secretary. "A man is not asked to
+bring another man his shoes," said Eames to himself, "until he shows
+himself fit for that sort of business." Then he made within his own
+breast a little resolution about Sir Raffle's shoes.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVII
+
+THE NEW PRIVATE SECRETARY
+
+INCOME-tax OFFICE, April 8, 18-.
+
+MY DEAR LORD DE GUEST--I hardly know how to answer your letter, it is so
+very kind--more than kind. And about not writing before--I must explain
+that I have not liked to trouble you with letters. I should have seemed
+to be encroaching if I had written much. Indeed it didn't come from not
+thinking about you. And first of all, about the money--as to your offer,
+I mean. I really feel that I do not know what I ought to say to you
+about it, without appearing to be a simpleton. The truth is, I don't
+know what I ought to do, and can only trust to you not to put me wrong.
+I have an idea that a man ought not to accept a present of money,
+unless from his father, or somebody like that. And the sum you mention
+is so very large that it makes me wish you had not named it. If you
+choose to be so generous, would it not be better that you should leave
+it me in your will?
+
+"So that he might always want me to be dying," said Lord de Guest, as
+he read the letter out loud to his sister.
+
+"I'm sure he wouldn't want that," said Lady Julia. "But you may live
+for twenty-five years, you know."
+
+"Say fifty," said the earl. And then he continued the reading of his
+letter.
+
+But all that depends so much upon another person, that it is hardly
+worth while talking about it. Of course I am very much obliged to Mr
+Dale--very much indeed--and I think that he is behaving very handsomely
+to his niece. But whether it will do me any good, that is quite another
+thing. However, I shall certainly accept your kind invitation for
+Easter, and find out whether I have a chance or not. I must tell you
+that Sir Raffle Buffle has made me his private secretary, by which I
+get a hundred a year. He says he was a great crony of yours many years
+ago, and seems to like talking about you very much. You will understand
+what all that means. He has sent you ever so many messages, but I don't
+suppose you will care to get them. I am to go to him to-morrow and from
+all I hear I shall have a hard time of it.
+
+"By George, he will," said the earl. "Poor fellow!"
+
+"But I thought a private secretary never had anything to do," said Lady
+Julia.
+
+"I shouldn't like to be private secretary to Sir Raffle, myself. But
+he's young, and a hundred a year is a great thing. How we all of us
+used to hate that man. His voice sounded like a bell with a crack in
+it. We always used to be asking for some one to muffle the Buffle. They
+call him Huffle Scuffle at his office. Poor Johnny!" Then he finished
+the letter:--
+
+I told him that I must have leave of absence at Easter, and he at first
+declared that it was impossible. But I shall carry my point about that.
+I would not stay away to be made private secretary to the Prime
+Minister; and yet I almost feel that I might as well stay away for any
+good that I shall do.
+
+Give my kind regards to Lady Julia, and tell her how very much obliged
+to her I am. I cannot express the gratitude which I owe to you. But
+pray believe me, my dear Lord de Guest, always very faithfully yours,
+
+JOHN EAMES.
+
+It was late before Eames had finished his letter. He had been making
+himself ready for his exodus from the big room, and preparing his desk
+and papers for his successor. About half-past five Cradell came up to
+him, and suggested that they should walk home together.
+
+"What! you here still?" said Eames. "I thought you always went at
+four." Cradell had remained, hanging about the office, in order that he
+might walk home with the new private secretary. But Eames did not
+desire this. He had much of which he desired to think alone, and would
+fain have been allowed to walk by himself.
+
+"Yes; I had things to do. I say, Johnny, I congratulate you most
+heartily; I do, indeed."
+
+"Thank you, old fellow!"
+
+"It is such a grand thing, you know. A hundred a year all at once! And
+then such a snug room to yourself--and that fellow, Kissing, never can
+come near you. He has been making himself such a beast all day. But,
+Johnny, I always knew you'd come to something more than common. I
+always said so."
+
+"There's nothing uncommon about this; except that Fitz says that old
+Ruffle Scuffle makes himself uncommon nasty."
+
+"Never mind what Fitz says. It's all jealousy. You'll have it all your
+own way, if you look sharp. I think you always do have it all your own
+way. Are you nearly ready?"
+
+"Well-not quite. Don't wait for me, Caudle."
+
+"Oh, I'll wait. I don't mind waiting. They'll keep dinner for us if we
+both stay. Besides, what matters? I'd do more than that for you."
+
+"I have some idea of working on till eight, and having a chop sent in,"
+said Johnny. "Besides--I've got somewhere to call, by myself."
+
+Then Cradell almost cried. He remained silent for two or three minutes,
+striving to master his emotion; and at last, when he did speak, had
+hardly succeeded in doing so. "Oh, Johnny," he said, "I know what that
+means. You are going to throw me over because you are getting up in the
+world. I have always stuck to you, through everything; haven't I?"
+
+"Don't make yourself a fool, Caudle."
+
+"Well; so I have. And if they had made me private secretary, I should
+have been just the same to you as ever. You'd have found no change in
+me."
+
+"What a goose you are. Do you say I'm changed, because I want to dine
+in the city?"
+
+"It's all because you don't want to walk home with me, as we used to
+do. I'm not such a goose but what I can see. But, Johnny--I suppose I
+mustn't call you Johnny, now."
+
+"Don't be such a con-founded--" Then Eames got up, and walked about the
+room. "Come along," said he, I don't care about staying, and don't mind
+where I dine." And he bustled away with his hat and gloves, hardly
+giving Cradell time to catch him before he got out into the streets. "I
+tell you what it is, Caudle," said he, "all that kind of thing is
+disgusting."
+
+"But how would you feel," whimpered Cradell, who had never succeeded in
+putting himself quite on a par with his friend, even in his own
+estimation, since that glorious victory at the railway station. If he
+could only have thrashed Lupex as Johnny had thrashed Crosbie; then
+indeed they might have been equal--a pair of heroes. But he had not done
+so. He had never told himself that he was a coward, but he considered
+that circumstances had been specially unkind to him. "But how would you
+feel," he whimpered, "if the friend whom you liked better than anybody
+else in the world, turned his back upon you?"
+
+"I haven't turned my back upon you; except that I can't get you to walk
+fast enough. Come along, old fellow, and don't talk confounded
+nonsense. I hate all that kind of thing. You never ought to suppose
+that a man will give himself airs, but wait till he does. I don't
+believe I shall remain with old Scuffles above a month or two. From all
+that I can hear that's as much as any one can bear."
+
+Then Cradell by degrees became happy and cordial, and during the whole
+walk flattered Eames with all the flattery of which he was master. And
+Johnny, though he did profess himself to be averse to "all that kind of
+thing," was nevertheless open to flattery. When Cradell told him that
+though FitzHoward could not manage the Tartar knight, he might probably
+do so; he was inclined to believe what Cradell said. "And as to getting
+him his shoes," said Cradell, "I don't suppose he'd ever think of
+asking you to do such a thing, unless he was in a very great hurry, or
+something of that kind."
+
+"Look here, Johnny," said Cradell, as they got into one of the streets
+bordering on Burton Crescent, "you know the last thing in the world I
+should like to do would be to offend you."
+
+"All right, Caudle," said Eames, going on, whereas his companion had
+shown a tendency towards stopping.
+
+"Look here, now; if I have vexed you about Amelia Roper, I'll make you
+a promise never to speak to her again."
+
+"D--- Amelia Roper," said Eames, suddenly stopping himself and stopping
+Cradell as well. The exclamation was made in a deep angry voice which
+attracted the notice of one or two who were passing. Johnny was very
+wrong--wrong to utter any curse--very wrong to ejaculate that curse
+against a human being; and especially wrong to fulminate it against a
+woman--a woman whom he had professed to love! But he did do so, and I
+cannot tell my story thoroughly without repeating the wicked word.
+
+Cradell looked up at him and stared. "I only meant to say," said
+Cradell, "I'll do anything you like in the matter."
+
+"Then never mention her name to me again. And as to talking to her, you
+may talk to her till you're both blue in the face, if you please."
+
+"Oh--I didn't know. You didn't seem to like it the other day."
+
+"I was a fool the other day--a confounded fool. And so I have been all
+my life. Amelia Roper! Look here, Caudle; if she makes up to you this
+evening, as I've no doubt she will, for she seems to be playing that
+game constantly now, just let her have her fling. Never mind me; I'll
+amuse myself with Mrs Lupex, or Miss Spruce."
+
+"But there'll be the deuce to pay with Mrs Lupex. She's as cross as
+possible already whenever Amelia speaks to me. You don't know what a
+jealous woman is, Johnny." Cradell had got upon what he considered to
+be his high ground. And on that he felt himself equal to any man. It
+was no doubt true that Eames had thrashed a man, and that he had not;
+it was true also that Eames had risen to very high place in the social
+world, having become a private secretary; but for a dangerous,
+mysterious, overwhelming, life-enveloping intrigue--was not he the
+acknowledged hero of such an affair? He had paid very dearly, both in
+pocket and in comfort, for the blessing of Mrs Lupex's society; but he
+hardly considered that he had paid too dearly. There are certain
+luxuries which a man will find to be expensive; but, for all that, they
+may be worth their price. Nevertheless as he went up the steps of Mrs
+Roper's house he made up his mind that he would oblige his friend, The
+intrigue might in that way become more mysterious, and more
+life-enveloping; whereas it would not become more dangerous, seeing
+that Mr Lupex could hardly find himself to be aggrieved by such a
+proceeding.
+
+The whole number of Mrs Roper's boarders were assembled at dinner that
+day. Mr Lupex seldom joined that festive board, but on this occasion he
+was present, appearing from his voice and manner to be in high
+good-humour. Cradell had communicated to the company in the
+drawing-room the great good fortune which had fallen upon his friend,
+and Johnny had thereby become the mark of a certain amount of
+hero-worship.
+
+"Oh, indeed!" said Mrs Roper. "An 'appy woman your mother will be when
+she hears it. But I always said you'd come down right side uppermost."
+
+"Handsome is as handsome does," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"Oh, Mr Eames!" exclaimed Mrs Lupex, with graceful enthusiasm, "I wish
+you joy from the very depth of my heart. It is such an elegant
+appointment."
+
+"Accept the hand of a true and disinterested friend," said Lupex. And
+Johnny did accept the hand, though it was very dirty and stained all
+over with paint.
+
+Amelia stood apart and conveyed her congratulations by glance--or, I
+might better say, by a series of glances. "And now--now will you not be
+mine," the glances said; "now that you are rolling in wealth and
+prosperity? "And then before they went downstairs she did whisper one
+word to him. "Oh, I am so happy, John--so very happy."
+
+"Bother!" said Johnny, in a tone quite loud enough to reach the lady's
+ear. Then making his way round the room, he gave his arm to Miss
+Spruce. Amelia, as she walked downstairs alone, declared to herself
+that she would wring his heart. She had been employed in wringing it
+for some days past, and had been astonished at her own success. It had
+been clear enough to her that Eames had been piqued by her overtures to
+Cradell, and she had therefore to play out that game.
+
+"Oh, Mr Cradell," she said, as she took her seat next to him. "The
+friends I like are the friends that remain always the same. I hate your
+sudden rises. They do so often make a man upsetting."
+
+"I should like to try, myself, all the same," said Cradell.
+
+"Well, I don't think it would make any difference in you; I don't
+indeed. And, of course, your time will come too. It's that earl as has
+done it--he that was worried by the bull. Since we have known an earl we
+have been so mighty fine." And Amelia gave her head a little toss, and
+then smiled archly, in a manner which, to Cradell's eyes, was really
+very becoming. But he saw that Mrs Lupex was looking at him from the
+other side of the table, and he could not quite enjoy the goods which
+the gods had provided for him.
+
+When the ladies left the dining-room Lupex and the two young men drew
+their chairs near the fire, and each prepared for himself a moderate
+potation. Eames made a little, attempt at leaving the room, but he was
+implored by Lupex with such earnest protestations of friendship to
+remain, and was so weakly fearful of being charged with giving himself
+airs, that he did as he was desired.
+
+"And here, Mr Eames, is to your very good health," said Lupex, raising
+to his mouth a steaming goblet of gin-and-water, and wishing you many
+years to enjoy your official prosperity."
+
+"Thank ye," said Eames. "I don't know much about the prosperity, but
+I'm just as much obliged."
+
+"Yes, sir; when I see a young man of your age beginning to rise in the
+world, I know he'll go on. Now look at me, Mr Eames. Mr Cradell, here's
+your very good health, and may all unkindness be drowned in the flowing
+bowl. Look at me, Mr Eames. I've never risen in the world. I've never
+done any good in the world, and never shall."
+
+"Oh, Mr Lupex, don't say that."
+
+"Ah, but I do say it. I've always been pulling the devil by the tail,
+and never yet got as much as a good hold on to that. And I'll tell you
+why; I never got a chance when I was young. If I could have got any big
+fellow, a star, you know, to let me paint his portrait when I was your
+age--such a one, let us say, as your friend Sir Raffle--"
+
+"What a star!" said Cradell.
+
+"Well, I suppose he's pretty much known in the world, isn't he? Or Lord
+Derby, or Mr Spurgeon. You know what I mean. If I'd got such a chance
+as that when I was young, I should never have been doing jobs of
+scene-painting at the minor theatres at so much a square yard. You've
+got the chance now, but I never had it."
+
+Whereupon Mr Lupex finished his first measure of gin-and-water.
+
+"It's a very queer thing--life is," continued Lupex; and, though he did
+not at once go to work boldly at the mixing of another glass of toddy,
+he began gradually, and as if by instinct, to finger the things which
+would be necessary for that operation. "A very queer thing. Now,
+remember, young gentlemen, I'm not denying that success in life will
+depend upon good conduct--of course it does; but, then, how often good
+conduct comes from success! Should I have been what I am now, do you
+suppose, if some big fellow had taken me by the hand when I was
+struggling to make an artist, of myself? I could have drunk claret and
+champagne just as well as gin-and-water, and worn ruffles to my shirt
+as gracefully as many a fellow who used to be very fond of me, and now
+won't speak to me if he meets me in the streets. I never got a
+chance--never."
+
+"But it's not too late yet, Mr Lupex," said Eames.
+
+"Yes, it is, Eames--yes, it is." And now Mr Lupex had grasped the
+gin-bottle. "It's too late now. The game's over, and the match is lost.
+The talent is here. I'm as sure of that now as ever I was. I've never
+doubted my own ability--never for a moment. There are men this very day
+making a thousand a year off their easels who haven't so good and true
+an eye in drawing as I have, or so good a feeling in colours. I could
+name them; only I won't."
+
+"And why shouldn't you try again?" said Eames.
+
+"If I were to paint the finest piece that ever delighted the eye of
+man, who would come and look at it? Who would have enough belief in me
+to come as far as this place and see if it were true? No, Eames; I know
+my own position and my own ways, and I know my own weakness. I couldn't
+do a day's work now, unless I were certain of getting a certain number
+of shillings at the end of it. That's what a man comes to when things
+have gone against him."
+
+"But I thought men got lots of money by scene-painting?"
+
+"I don't know what you may call lots, Mr Cradell; I don't call it lots.
+But I'm not complaining. I know who I have to thank; and if ever I blow
+my own brains out I shan't be putting the blame on the wrong shoulders.
+If you'll take my advice,"--and now he turned round to Eames--"you'll
+beware of marrying too soon in life."
+
+"I think a man should marry early, if he marries well," said Eames.
+
+"Don't misunderstand me," continued Lupex. "It isn't about Mrs L. I'm
+speaking. I've always regarded my wife as a very fascinating woman."
+
+"Hear, hear, hear!" said Cradell, thumping the table.
+
+"Indeed she is," said Eames.
+
+"And when I caution you against marrying, don't you misunderstand me.
+I've never said a word against her to any man, and never will. If a man
+don't stand by his wife, whom will he stand by? I blame no one but
+myself. But I do say this; I never had a chance--I never had a
+chance--never had a chance." And as he repeated the words, for the third
+time, his lips were already fixed to the rim of his tumbler.
+
+At this moment the door of the dining-room: was opened, and Mrs Lupex
+put in her head.
+
+"Lupex," she said, "what are you doing?"
+
+"Yes, my dear. I can't say I'm doing anything at the present moment. I
+was giving a little advice to these young gentlemen."
+
+"Mr Cradell, I wonder at you. And, Mr Eames, I wonder at you, too--in
+your position! Lupex, come upstairs at once." She then stepped into the
+room and secured the gin-bottle.
+
+"Oh, Mr Cradell, do come here," said Amelia, in her liveliest tone, as
+soon as the men made their appearance above. "I've been waiting for you
+this half-hour. I've got such a puzzle for you." And she made way for
+him to a chair which was between herself and the wall. Cradell looked
+half afraid of his fortunes as he took the proffered seat; but he did
+take it, and was soon secured from any positive physical attack by the
+strength and breadth of Miss Roper's crinoline.
+
+"Dear me! Here's a change," said Mrs Lupex, out loud.
+Johnny Eames was standing close, and whispered into her ear, "Changes
+are so pleasant sometimes! Don't you think so? I do."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLVIII
+
+NEMESIS
+
+Crosbie had now settled down to the calm realities of married life, and
+was beginning to think that the odium was dying away which for a week
+or two had attached itself to him, partly on account of his usage of
+Miss Dale, but more strongly in consequence of the thrashing which he
+had received from John Eames. Not that he had in any way recovered his
+former tone of life, or that he ever hoped to do so. But he was able to
+go in and out of his club without embarrassment. He could talk with his
+wonted voice, and act with his wonted authority at his office. He could
+tell his friends, with some little degree of pleasure in the sound,
+that Lady Alexandrina would be very happy to see them. And he could
+make himself comfortable in his own chair after dinner, with his
+slippers and his newspaper. He could make himself comfortable, or at
+any rate could tell his wife that he did so.
+
+It was very dull. He was obliged to acknowledge to himself, when he
+thought over the subject, that the life which he was leading was dull.
+Though he could go into his club without annoyance, nobody there ever
+thought of asking him to join them at dinner. It was taken for granted
+that he was going to dine at home; and in the absence of any
+provocation to the contrary, he always did dine at home. He had now
+been in his house for three weeks, and had been asked with his wife to
+a few bridal dinner-parties, given chiefly by friends of the De Courcy
+family. Except on such occasions he never passed an evening out of his
+own house, and had not yet, since his marriage, dined once away from
+his wife. He told himself that his good conduct in this respect was the
+result of his own resolution; but, nevertheless, he felt that there was
+nothing else left for him to do. Nobody asked him to go to the
+theatre. Nobody begged him to drop in of an evening. Men never asked
+him why he did not play a rubber. He would generally saunter into
+Sebright's after he left his office, and lounge about the room for half
+an hour, talking to a few men. Nobody was uncivil to him. But he knew
+that the whole thing was changed, and he resolved, with some wisdom, to
+accommodate himself to his altered circumstances.
+
+Lady Alexandrina also found her new life rather dull, and was sometimes
+inclined to be a little querulous. She would tell her husband that she
+never got out, and would declare, when he offered to walk with her,
+that she did not care for walking in the streets. "I don't exactly see,
+then, where you are to walk," he once replied. She did not tell him
+that she was fond of riding, and that the Park was a very fitting place
+for such exercise; but she looked it, and he understood her. "I'll do
+all I can for her," he said to himself; "but I'll not ruin myself."
+
+"Amelia is coming to take me for a drive," she said another time. "Ah,
+that'll be very nice," he answered. "No; it won't be very nice," said
+Alexandrina. "Amelia is always shopping and bargaining with the
+tradespeople. But it will be better than being kept in the house
+without ever stirring out."
+
+They breakfasted nominally at half-past nine; in truth, it was always
+nearly ten, as Lady Alexandrina found it difficult to get herself out
+of her room. At half-past ten punctually he left his house for his
+office. He usually got home by six, and then spent the greatest part of
+the hour before dinner: in the ceremony of dressing. He went, at least,
+into his dressing-room, after speaking a few words to his wife: and
+there remained pulling things about, clipping his nails, looking over
+any paper that came in his way, and killing the time. He expected his
+dinner punctually at seven, and began to feel a little cross if he were
+kept waiting. After dinner, he drank one glass of wine in company with
+his wife, and one other by himself, during which latter ceremony he
+would stare at the hot coals, and think of the thing he had done. Then
+he would go upstairs, and have, first a cup of coffee, and then a cup
+of tea. He would read his newspaper, open a book or two, hide his face
+when he yawned, and try to make believe that he liked it. She had no
+signs or words of love for him. She never sat on his knee, or caressed
+him. She never showed him that any happiness had come to her in being
+allowed to live close to him. They thought that they loved each
+other--each thought so; but there was no love, no sympathy, no warmth.
+The very atmosphere was cold--so cold that no fire could remove the
+chill.
+
+In what way would it have been different had Lily Dale sat opposite to
+him there as his wife, instead of Lady Alexandrina? He told himself
+frequently that either with one or with the other life would have been
+the same; that he had made himself for a while unfit for domestic life,
+and that he must cure himself of that unfitness. But though he declared
+this to himself in one set of half-spoken thoughts, he would also
+declare to himself in another set, that Lily would have made the whole
+house bright with her brightness; that had he brought her home to his
+hearth, there would have been a sun shining on him every morning and
+every evening. But, nevertheless, he strove to do his duty, and
+remembered that the excitement of official life was still open to him.
+From eleven in the morning till five in the afternoon he could still
+hold a position which made it necessary that men should regard him with
+respect, and speak to him with deference. In this respect he was better
+off than his wife, for she had no office to which she could betake
+herself.
+
+"Yes," she said to Amelia, "it is all very nice, and I don't mind the
+house being damp; but I get so tired of being alone."
+
+"That must be the case with women who are married to men of business."
+
+"Oh, I don't complain. Of course I knew what I was about. I suppose it
+won't be so very dull when everybody is up in London."
+
+"I don't find the season makes much difference to us after Christmas,"
+said Amelia; "but no doubt London is gayer in May. You'll find you'll
+like it better next year; and perhaps you'll have a baby, you know."
+
+"Psha!" ejaculated Lady Alexandrina; "I don't want a baby, and don't
+suppose I shall have one."
+
+"It's always something to do, you know."
+
+Lady Alexandrina, though she was not of an energetic temperament, could
+not but confess to herself that she had made a mistake. She had been
+tempted to marry Crosbie because Crosbie was a man of fashion, and now
+she was told that the London season would make no difference to her--the
+London season which had hitherto always brought to her the excitement
+of parties, if it had not given her the satisfaction of amusement. She
+had been tempted to marry at all because it appeared to her that a
+married woman could enjoy society with less restraint than a girl who
+was subject to her mother or her chaperon; that she would have more
+freedom of action as a married woman; and now she was told that she
+must wait for a baby before she could have anything to do. Courcy
+Castle was sometimes dull, but Courcy Castle would have been better
+than this.
+
+When Crosbie returned home after this little conversation about the
+baby, he was told by his wife that they were to dine with the Gazebees
+on the next Sunday. On hearing this he shook his head with vexation. He
+knew, however, that he had no right to make complaint, as he had been
+only taken to St. John's Wood once since they had come home from their
+marriage trip. There was, however, one point as to which he could
+grumble. "Why, on earth, on Sunday?"
+
+"Because Amelia asked me for Sunday. If you are asked for Sunday, you
+cannot say you'll go on Monday."
+
+"It is so terrible on a Sunday afternoon. At what hour?"
+
+"She said half-past five."
+
+"Heavens and earth! What are we to do all the evening?"
+
+"It is not kind of you, Adolphus, to speak in that way of my relations."
+
+"Come, my love, that's a joke; as if I hadn't heard you say the same
+thing twenty times. You've complained of having to go up there much
+more bitterly than I ever did. You know I like your sister, and, in his
+way, Gazebee is a very good fellow; but after three or four hours, one
+begins to have had enough of him."
+
+"It can't be much duller than it is--" but Lady Alexandrina stopped
+herself before she finished her speech.
+
+"One can always read at home, at any rate," said Crosbie.
+
+"One can't always be reading. However, I have said you would go. If you
+choose to refuse, you must write and explain."
+
+When the Sunday came the Crosbies of course did go to St. John's Wood,
+arriving punctually at that door which he so hated at half-past five.
+One of the earliest resolutions which he made when he first
+contemplated the De Courcy match, was altogether hostile to the
+Gazebees. He would see but very little of them. He would shake himself
+free of that connection. It was not with that branch of the family that
+he desired an alliance. But now, as things had gone, that was the only
+branch of the family with which he seemed to be allied. He was always
+hearing of the Gazebees. Amelia and Alexandrina were constantly
+together. He was now dragged there to a Sunday dinner; and he knew that
+he should often be dragged there--that he could not avoid such
+draggings. He already owed money to Mortimer Gazebee, and was aware
+that his affairs had been allowed to fall into that lawyer's hands in
+such a way that he could not take them out again. His house was very
+thoroughly furnished, and he knew that the bills had been paid; but he
+had not paid them; every shilling had been paid through Mortimer
+Gazebee.
+
+"Go with your mother and aunt, De Courcy," the attorney said to the
+lingering child after dinner; and then Crosbie was left alone with his
+wife's brother-in-law. This was the period of the St. John's Wood
+purgatory which was so dreadful to him. With his sister-in-law he could
+talk, remembering perhaps always that she was an earl's daughter. But
+with Gazebee he had nothing in common. And he felt that Gazebee, who
+had once treated him with great deference, had now lost all such
+feeling. Crosbie had once been a man of fashion in the estimation of
+the attorney, but that was all over. Crosbie, in the attorney's
+estimation, was now simply the secretary of a public office--a man who
+owed him money. The two had married sisters, and there was no reason
+why the light of the prosperous attorney should pale before that of the
+civil servant, who was not very prosperous. All this was understood
+thoroughly by both the men.
+
+"There's terrible bad news from Courcy," said the attorney, as soon as
+the boy was gone.
+
+"Why; what's the matter?"
+
+"Porlock has married--that woman, you know."
+
+"Nonsense."
+
+"He has. The old lady has been obliged to tell me, and she's nearly
+broken-hearted about it. But that's not the worst of it to my mind. All
+the world knows that Porlock had gone to the mischief. But he is going
+to bring an action against his father for some arrears of his
+allowance, and he threatens to have everything out in court, if he
+doesn't get his money."
+
+"But is there money due to him?
+
+"Yes, there is. A couple of thousand pounds or so. I suppose I shall
+have to find it. But, upon my honour, I don't know where it's to come
+from; I don't, indeed. In one way or another, I've paid over fourteen
+hundred pounds for you."
+
+"Fourteen hundred pounds!"
+
+"Yes, indeed--what with the insurance and the furniture, and the bill
+from our house for the settlements. That's not paid yet, but it's the
+same thing. A man doesn't get married for nothing, I can tell you."
+
+"But you've got security."
+
+"Oh, yes; I've got security. But the thing is the ready money. Our
+house has advanced so much on the Courcy property, that they don't like
+going any further; and therefore it is that I have to do this myself.
+They'll all have to go abroad--that'll be the end of it. There's been
+such a scene between the earl and George. George lost his temper and
+told the earl that Porlock's marriage was his fault. It has ended in
+George with his wife being turned out."
+
+"He has money of his own."
+
+"Yes, but he won't spend it. He's coming up here, and we shall find him
+hanging about us. I don't mean to give him a bed here, and I advise you
+not to do so either. You'll not get rid of him if you do."
+
+"I have the greatest possible dislike to him."
+
+"Yes; he's a bad fellow. So is John. Porlock was the best, but he's
+gone altogether to ruin. They've made a nice mess of it between them;
+haven't they?"
+
+This was the family for whose sake Crosbie had jilted Lily Dale! His
+single and simple ambition had been that of being an earl's son-in-law.
+To achieve that it had been necessary that he should make himself a
+villain. In achieving it he had gone through all manner of dirt and
+disgrace. He had married a woman whom he knew he did not love. He was
+thinking almost hourly of a girl whom he had loved, whom he did love,
+but whom he had so injured, that, under no circumstances, could he be
+allowed to speak to her again. The attorney there--who sat opposite to
+him, talking about his thousands of pounds with that disgusting assumed
+solicitude which such men put on, when they know very well what they
+are doing--had made a similar marriage. But he had known what he, was
+about. He had got from his marriage all that he had expected. But what
+had Crosbie got?
+
+"They're a bad set--a bad set," said he in his bitterness.
+
+"The men are," said Gazebee, very comfortably.
+
+"H-m," said Crosbie. It was manifest to Gazebee that his friend was
+expressing a feeling that the women, also, were not all that they
+should be, but he took no offence, though some portion of the censure
+might thereby be supposed to attach to his own wife.
+
+"The countess means well," said Gazebee. "But she's had a hard life of
+it--a very hard life. I've heard him call her names that would frighten
+a coalheaver. I have, indeed. But he'll die soon, and then she'll be
+comfortable. She has three thousand a year jointure."
+
+He'll die soon, and then she'll be comfortable! That was one phase of
+married life. As Crosbie's mind dwelt upon the words, he remembered
+Lily's promise made in the fields, that she would do everything for
+him. He remembered his kisses; the touch of her fingers; the low
+silvery laughing voice; the feel of her dress as she would press close
+to him. After that he reflected whether it would not be well that he
+too should die, so that Alexandrina might be comfortable. She and her
+mother might be very comfortable together, with plenty of money, at
+Baden Baden!
+
+The squire at Allington, and Mrs Dale, and Lady Julia de Guest, had
+been, and still were, uneasy in their minds because no punishment had
+fallen upon Crosbie--no vengeance had overtaken him in consequence of
+his great sin. How little did they know about it! Could he have been
+prosecuted and put into prison, with hard labour, for twelve months,
+the punishment would not have been heavier. He would, in that case, at
+any rate, have been saved from Lady Alexandrina.
+
+"George and his wife are coming up to town; couldn't we ask them to
+come to us for a week or so?" said his wife to him, as soon as they
+were in the fly together, going home.
+
+"No," shouted Crosbie; "we will do no such thing." There was not
+another word said on the subject--nor on any other subject till they got
+home. When they reached their house Alexandrina had a headache, and
+went up to her room immediately. Crosbie threw himself into a chair
+before the remains of a fire in the dining-room, and resolved that he
+would cut the whole De Courcy family together. His wife, as his wife,
+should obey him. She should obey him--or else leave him and go her way
+by herself, leaving him to go his way. There was an income of twelve
+hundred a year. Would it not be a fine thing for him if he could keep
+six hundred for himself and return to his old manner of life. All his
+old comforts of course he would not have--nor the old esteem and regard
+of men. But the luxury of a club dinner he might enjoy. Un-embarrassed
+evenings might be his--with liberty to him to pass them as he pleased.
+He knew many men who were separated from their wives, and who seemed to
+be as happy as their neighbours. And then he remembered how ugly
+Alexandrina had been this evening, wearing a great tinsel coronet full
+of false stones, with a cold in her head which had reddened her nose.
+There had, too, fallen upon her in these her married days a certain
+fixed dreary dowdiness. She certainly was very plain! So he said to
+himself, and then he went to bed. I myself am inclined to think that
+his punishment was sufficiently severe.
+
+The next morning his wife still complained of headache, so that he
+breakfasted alone. Since that positive refusal which he had given to
+her proposition for inviting her brother, there had not been much
+conversation between them. "My head is splitting, and Sarah shall bring
+some tea and toast up to me, if you will not mind it."
+
+He did not mind it in the least, and ate his breakfast by himself, with
+more enjoyment than usually attended that meal.
+
+It was clear to him that all the present satisfaction of his life must
+come to him from his office work. There are men who find it difficult
+to live without some source of daily comfort, and he was such a man. He
+could hardly endure his life unless there were some page in it on which
+he could look with gratified eyes. He had always liked his work, and he
+now determined that he would, like it better than ever. But in order
+that he might do so it was necessary that he should have much of his
+own way. According to the theory of his office, it was incumbent on him
+as Secretary simply to take the orders of the Commissioners, and see
+that they were executed; and to such work as this his predecessor had
+strictly confined himself. But he had already done, more than this, and
+had conceived the ambition of holding the Board almost under his thumb.
+He flattered himself that he knew his own work and theirs better than
+they knew either, and that by a little management he might be their
+master. It is not impossible that such might have been the case had
+there been no fracas at the Paddington station; but, as we all know,
+the dominant cock of the farmyard must be ever dominant. When he shall
+once have had his wings so smeared with mud as to give him even the
+appearance of adversity, no other cock will ever respect him again. Mr
+Optimist and Mr Butterwell knew very well that their secretary had been
+cudgelled, and they could not submit themselves to a secretary who had
+been so treated.
+
+"Oh, by-the-by, Crosbie," said Butterwell, coming into his room, soon
+after his arrival at his office on that day of his solitary breakfast,
+"I want to say just a few words to you." And Butterwell turned round
+and closed the door, the lock of which had not previously been
+fastened. Crosbie, without much thinking, immediately foretold himself
+the nature of the coming conversation.
+
+"Do you know--" said Butterwell, beginning.
+
+"Sit down, won't you?" said Crosbie, seating himself as he spoke. If
+there was to be a contest, he would make the best fight he could. He
+would show a better spirit here than he had done on the railway
+platform. Butterwell did sit down and felt as he did so, that the very
+motion of sitting took away some of his power. He ought to have sent
+for Crosbie into his own room. A man, when he wishes to reprimand
+another, should always have the benefit of his own atmosphere.
+
+"I don't want to find any fault," Butterwell began.
+
+"I hope you have not any cause," said Crosbie.
+
+"No, no; I don't say that I have. But we think at the Board--"
+
+"Stop, stop, Butterwell. If anything unpleasant is coming, it had
+better come from the Board. I should take it in better spirit; I
+should, indeed."
+
+"What takes place at the Board must be official."
+
+"I should not mind that in the least. I should rather like it than
+otherwise."
+
+"It simply amounts to this--that we think you are taking a little too
+much on yourself. No doubt, it's a fault on the right side, and arises
+from your wishing to have the work well done."
+
+"And if I don't do it, who will?" asked Crosbie.
+
+"The Board is very well able to get through all that appertains to it.
+Come, Crosbie, you and I have known each other a great many years, and
+it would be pity that we should have any words. I have come to you in
+this way because it would be disagreeable to you to have any question
+raised officially. Optimist isn't given to being very angry, but he was
+downright angry yesterday. You had better take what I say in good part,
+and go along a little quieter."
+
+But Crosbie was not in a humour to take anything quietly. He was sore
+all over, and prone to hit out at everybody that he met. "I have done
+my duty to the best of my ability, Mr Butterwell," he said, "and I
+believe I have done it well. I believe I know my duty here as well as
+any one can teach me. If I have done more than my share of work, it is
+because other people have done less than theirs". As he spoke, there
+was a black cloud upon his brow, and the Commissioner could perceive
+that the Secretary was very wrathful.
+
+"Oh! very well," said Butterwell, rising from his chair. "I can only,
+under such circumstances, speak to the Chairman, and he will tell you
+what he thinks at the Board. I think you're foolish; I do, indeed. As
+for myself, I have only meant to act kindly by you." After that, Mr
+Butterwell took himself off.
+
+On the same afternoon, Crosbie was summoned into the Board-room in the
+usual way, between two and three. This was a daily occurrence, as he
+always sat for about an hour with two out of the three Commissioners,
+after they had fortified themselves with a biscuit and a glass of
+sherry. On the present occasion, the usual amount of business was
+transacted, but it was done in a manner which made Crosbie feel that
+they did not all stand together on their usual footing. The three
+Commissioners were all there. The Chairman gave his directions in a
+solemn, pompous voice, which was by no means usual to him when he was
+in good humour. The Major said little or nothing; but there was agleam
+of satisfied sarcasm in his eye. Things were going wrong at the Board,
+and he was pleased.
+
+Mr Butterwell was exceedingly civil in his demeanour, and rather more
+than ordinarily brisk. As soon as the regular work of the day was over,
+Mr Optimist shuffled about on his chair, rising from his seat, and then
+sitting down again. He looked through a lot of papers close to his
+hand, peering at them over his spectacles. Then he selected one, took
+off his spectacles, leaned back in his chair, and began his little
+speech.
+
+"Mr Crosbie," he said, "we are all very much gratified--very much
+gratified, indeed--by your zeal and energy in the service."
+
+"Thank you, sir," said Crosbie; "I am fond of the service."
+
+"Exactly, exactly; we all feel that. But we think that you--if I were to
+say take too much upon yourself, I should say, perhaps, more than we
+mean."
+
+"Don't say more than you mean, Mr Optimist." Crosbie's eyes, as he
+spoke, gleamed slightly with his momentary triumph; as did also those
+of Major Fiasco.
+
+"No, no, no," said Mr Optimist; "I would say rather less than more to
+so very good a public servant as yourself. But you, doubtless,
+understand me?"
+
+"I don't think I do quite, sir. If I have not taken too much on me,
+what is it that I have done that I ought not to have done?"
+
+"You have given directions in many cases for which you ought first to
+have received authority. Here is an instance," and the selected paper
+was at once brought out.
+
+It was a matter in which the Secretary had been manifestly wrong
+according to written law, and he could not defend it on its own merits.
+
+"If you wish me," said he, "to confine myself exactly to the positive
+instructions of the office, I will do so; but I think you will find it
+inconvenient."
+
+"It will be far the best" said Mr Optimist.
+
+"Very well," said Mr Crosbie, "it shall be done." And he at once
+determined to make himself as unpleasant to the three gentlemen in the
+room as he might find it within his power to do. He could make himself
+very unpleasant, but the unpleasantness would be as much to him as to
+them.
+
+Nothing would now go right with him. He could look in no direction for
+satisfaction. He sauntered into Sebright's, as he went home, but he
+could not find--words to speak to any one about the little matters of
+the day. He went home, and his wife, though she was up, complained
+still of her headache.
+
+"I haven't been out of the house all day," she said, "and that has made
+it worse."
+
+"I don't know how you are to get out if you won't walk," he answered.
+
+Then there was no more said between them till they sat down to their
+meal.
+
+Had the squire at Allington known all, he might, I think, have been
+satisfied with the punishment which Crosbie had encountered.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XLIX
+
+PREPARATIONS FOR GOING
+
+"Mamma, read that letter."
+
+It was Mrs Dale's eldest daughter who spoke to her, and they were alone
+together in the parlour at the Small House. Mrs Dale took the letter
+and read it very carefully. She then put it back into its envelope and
+returned it to Bell.
+
+"It is, at any rate, a good letter, and, as I believe, tells the truth."
+
+"I think it tells a little more than the truth, mamma. As you say, it
+is a well-written letter. He always writes well when he is in earnest.
+But yet--"
+
+"Yet what, my dear?"
+
+"There is more head than heart in it."
+
+"If so, he will suffer the less; that is, if you are quite resolved in
+the matter."
+
+"I am quite resolved, and I do not think he will suffer much. He would
+not, I suppose, have taken the trouble to write like that, if he did
+not wish this thing."
+
+"I am quite sure that he does wish it, most earnestly; and that he will
+be greatly disappointed."
+
+"As he would be if any other scheme did not turn out to his
+satisfaction; that is all."
+
+The letter, of course, was from Bell's cousin Bernard, and containing
+the strongest plea he was able to make in favour, of his suit for her
+hand. Bernard Dale was better able to press such a plea by letter than
+by spoken words. He was a man capable of doing anything well in the
+doing of, which a little time for consideration might be given to him;
+but he had not in him that power of passion which will force a man to
+eloquence in asking for that which he desires to obtain. His letter on
+this occasion was long, and well argued. If there was little in it of
+passionate love, there was much of pleasant flattery. He told Bell how
+advantageous to both their families their marriage would be; he
+declared to her, that his own feeling in the matter had been rendered
+stronger by absence; he alluded without boasting to his past career of
+life as her best guarantee for his future conduct; he explained to her
+that if this marriage could be arranged there need then, at any rate,
+be no further question as to his aunt removing with Lily from the Small
+House; and then he told her that his affection for herself was the
+absorbing passion of his existence. Had the letter been written with
+the view of obtaining from a third person a favourable verdict as to
+his suit, it would have been a very good letter indeed; but there vas
+not a word in it that could stir the heart of such a girl as Bell Dale.
+
+"Answer him kindly," Mrs Dale said.
+
+"As kindly as I know how," said Bell. "I wish you would write the
+letter, mamma."
+
+"I fear that would not do. What I should say would only tempt him to
+try again."
+
+Mrs Dale knew very well-had known for some months past--that Bernard's
+suit was hopeless. She felt certain, although the matter had not been
+discussed between them, that whenever Dr Crofts might choose to come
+again and ask for her daughter's hand he would not be refused. Of the
+two men she probably liked Dr Crofts the best; but she liked them both,
+and she could not but remember that the one, in a worldly point of
+view, would be a very poor match, whereas the other would, in all
+respects, be excellent. She would not, on any account, say a word to
+influence her daughter, and knew, moreover, that no word which she
+could say would influence her; but she could not divest herself of some
+regret that it should be so.
+
+"I know what you would wish, mamma," said Bell.
+
+"I have but one wish, dearest, and that is for your happiness. May God
+preserve you from any such fate as Lily's. When I tell you to write
+kindly to your cousin, I simply mean that I think him to have deserved
+a kind reply by his honesty."
+
+"It shall be as kind as I can make it, mamma; but you know what the
+lady says in the play--how hard it is to take the sting from that word
+'no.'" Then Bell walked out alone for a while, and on her return got
+her desk and wrote her letter. It was very firm and decisive. As for
+that wit which should pluck the sting "from such a sharp and waspish
+word as 'no,'" I fear she had it not. "It will be better to make him
+understand that I, also, am in earnest," she said to herself; and in
+this frame of mind she wrote her letter. "Pray do not allow yourself to
+think that what I have said is unfriendly," she added, in a postscript.
+"I know how good you are, and I know the great value of what I refuse;
+but in this matter it must be my duty to tell you the simple truth."
+
+It had been decided between the squire and Mrs Dale that the removal
+from the Small House to Guestwick was not to take place till the first
+of May. When he had been made to understand that Dr Crofts had thought
+it injudicious that Lily should be taken out of their present house in
+March, he had used all the eloquence of which he was master to induce
+Mrs Dale to consent to abandon her project. He had told her that he had
+always considered that house as belonging, of right, to some other of
+the family than himself; that it had always been so inhabited, and that
+no squire of Allington had for years past taken rent for it. "There is
+no favour conferred--none at all," he had said; but speaking
+nevertheless in his usual sharp, ungenial tone.
+
+"There is a favour, a great favour, and great generosity," Mrs Dale had
+replied. "And I have never been too proud to accept it; but when I tell
+you that we think we shall be happier at Guestwick, you will not,
+refuse to let us go. Lily has had a great blow in that house, and Bell
+feels that she is running counter to your wishes on her behalf-wishes
+that are so very kind!''
+
+"No more need be said about that. All that may come right yet, if you
+will remain where you are."
+
+But Mrs Dale knew that "all that" could never come right, and
+persisted. Indeed, she would hardly have dared to tell her girls that
+she had yielded to the squire's entreaties. It was just then, at that
+very, time, that the squire was, as it were, in treaty with the earl
+about Lily's fortune; and he did feel it hard that, he should be
+opposed in such a way by his own relatives at the moment when he was
+behaving towards them with so much generosity. But in his arguments
+about the house he said nothing of Lily, or her future prospects.
+
+They were to move on the first of May, and one week of April was
+already past. The squire had said nothing further on the matter after
+the interview with Mrs Dale to which allusion has just been made. He
+was vexed and sore at the separation, thinking that he was ill-used,
+by the feeling, which was displayed by this refusal. He had done his
+duty by them, as he thought; indeed more than his duty, and now they
+told him that they were leaving him because they could no longer bear
+the weight of an obligation conferred by his hands. But in truth he did
+not understand them; nor did they understand him. He had been hard in
+his manner, and had occasionally domineered, not feeling that his
+position, though it gave him all the privileges of a near and a dear
+friend, did not give him the authority of a father or a husband. In
+that matter of Bernard's proposed marriage he had spoken as though Bell
+should have considered his wishes before she refused her cousin. He had
+taken upon himself to scold Mrs Dale, and had thereby given offence to
+the girls, which they at the time had found it utterly impossible to
+forgive.
+
+But they were hardly better satisfied in the matter than was he; and
+now that the time had come, though they could not bring themselves to
+go back from their demand, almost felt that they were treating the
+squire with cruelty. When their decision had been made--while it had
+been making--he had been stern and hard to them. Since that he had been
+softened by Lily's misfortune, and softened also by the anticipated
+loneliness which would come upon him when they should be gone from his
+side. It was hard upon him that they should so treat him when he was
+doing his best for them all! And they also felt this, though they did
+not know the extent to which he was anxious to go in serving them. When
+they had sat round the fire planning the scheme of their removal, their
+hearts had been hardened against him, and they had resolved to assert
+their independence. But now, when the time for action had come, they
+felt that their grievances against him had already been in a great
+measure assuaged. This tinged all that they did with a certain sadness;
+but still they continued their work.
+
+Who does not know how terrible are those preparations for
+house-moving--how infinite in number are the articles which must be
+packed, how inexpressibly uncomfortable is the period of packing, and
+how poor and tawdry is the aspect of one's belongings while they are
+thus in a state of dislocation? Nowadays people who understand the
+world, and have money commensurate with their understanding, have
+learned the way of shunning all these disasters, and of leaving the
+work to the hands of persons paid for doing it. The crockery is left in
+the cupboards, the books on the shelves, the wine in the bins, the
+curtains in their poles, and the family that is understanding goes for
+a fortnight to Brighton. At the end of that time the crockery is
+comfortably settled in other cupboards, the books on other shelves, the
+wine in other bins, the curtains are hung on other poles, and all is
+arranged. But Mrs Dale and her daughters understood nothing of such a
+method of moving as this. The assistance of the village carpenter in
+filling certain cases that he had made was all that they knew how to
+obtain beyond that of their own two servants. Every article had to pass
+through the hands of some one of the family; and as they felt almost
+overwhelmed by the extent of the work to be done, they began it much
+sooner than was necessary, so that it became evident as they advanced
+in their work, that they would have to pass a dreadfully dull, stupid,
+uncomfortable week at last, among their boxes and cases, in all the
+confusion of dismantled furniture.
+
+At first an edict had gone forth that Lily was to do nothing. She was
+an invalid, and was to be petted and kept quiet. But this edict soon
+fell to the ground, and Lily worked harder than either her mother or
+her sister. In truth she was hardly an invalid any longer, and would
+not submit to an invalid's treatment. She felt herself that for the
+present constant occupation could alone save her from the misery of
+looking back--and she had conceived an idea that the harder that
+occupation was, the better it would be for her. While pulling down the
+books, and folding the linen, and turning out from their old
+hiding-places the small long-forgotten properties of the household, she
+would be as gay as ever she had been in old times. She would talk over
+her work, standing with flushed cheek and laughing eyes among the dusty
+ruins around her, till for a moment her mother would think that all was
+well within her. But then at other moments, when the reaction came, it
+would seem as though nothing were well. She could not sit quietly over
+the fire, with quiet rational work in her hands, and chat in a rational
+quiet way. Not as yet could she do so. Nevertheless it was well with
+her--within her own bosom. She had declared to herself that she would
+conquer her misery--as she had also declared to herself during her
+illness that her misfortune should not kill her--and she was in the way
+to conquer it. She told herself that the world was not over for her
+because her sweet hopes had been frustrated. The wound had been deep
+and very sore, but the flesh of the patient had been sound and healthy,
+and her blood pure. A physician having knowledge in such cases would
+have declared, after long watching of her symptoms, that a cure was
+probable. Her mother was the physician who watched her with the closest
+eyes; and she, though she was sometimes driven to doubt, did hope, with
+stronger hope from day to day, that her child might live to remember
+the story of her love without abiding agony.
+
+That nobody should talk to her about it--that had been the one
+stipulation which she had seemed to make, not sending forth a request
+to that effect among her friends in so many words, but showing by
+certain signs that such was her stipulation. A word to that effect she
+had spoken to her uncle--as may be remembered, which word had been
+regarded with the closest obedience. She had gone out into her little
+world very soon after the news of Crosbie's falsehood had reached
+her--first to church and then among the people of the village, resolving
+to carry herself as though no crushing weight had fallen upon her. The
+village people had understood it all, listening to her and answering
+her without the proffer of any outspoken parley.
+
+"Lord bless ee," said Mrs Crump, the postmistress--and Mrs Crump was
+supposed to have the sourest temper in Allington--"whenever I look at
+thee, Miss Lily, I thinks that surely thee is the beautifulest young
+'ooman in all these parts."
+
+"And you are the crossest old woman," said Lily, laughing, and giving
+her hand to the postmistress.
+
+"So I be," said Mrs Crump. "So I be." Then Lily sat down in the cottage
+and asked after her ailments. With Mrs Hearn it was the same. Mrs
+Hearn, after that first meeting which has been already mentioned,
+petted and caressed her, but spoke no further word of her misfortune.
+When Lily called a second time upon Mrs Boyce, which she did boldly by
+herself, that lady did begin one other word of commiseration. "My
+dearest Lily, we have all been made so unhappy--" So far Mrs Boyce got,
+sitting close to Lily and striving to look into her face; but Lily,
+with a slightly heightened colour, turned sharp round upon one of the
+Boyce girls, tearing Mrs Boyce's commiseration into the smallest
+shreds. "Minnie," she said, speaking quite loud, almost with girlish
+ecstasy, "what do you think Tartar did yesterday? I never laughed so
+much in my life." Then she told a ludicrous story about a very ugly
+terrier which belonged to the squire. After that even Mrs Boyce made no
+further attempt. Mrs Dale and Bell both understood that such was to be
+the rule--the rule even to them. Lily would speak to them occasionally
+on the matter--to one of them at a time, beginning with some almost
+single word of melancholy resignation, and then would go on till she
+opened her very bosom before them; but no such conversation was ever
+begun by them. But now, in these busy days of the packing, that topic
+seemed to have been banished altogether.
+
+"Mamma," she said, standing on the top rung of a house-ladder, from
+which position she was handing down glass out of a cupboard, "are you
+sure that these things are ours? I think some of them belong to the
+house."
+
+"I'm sure about that bowl at any rate, because it was my mother's
+before I was married."
+
+"Oh, dear, what should I do if I were to break it? Whenever I handle
+anything very precious I always feel inclined to throw it down and
+smash it. Oh! it was as nearly gone as possible, mamma; but that was
+your fault."
+
+"If you don't take care you'll be nearly gone yourself. Do take hold of
+something."
+
+"Oh, Bell, here's the inkstand for which you've been moaning for three
+years."
+
+"I haven't been moaning for three years; but who could have put it up
+there?
+
+"Catch it," said Lily; and she threw the bottle down on to a pile of
+carpets.
+
+At this moment a step was heard in the hall, and the squire entered
+through the open door of the room. "So you're all at work," said he.
+
+"Yes, we're at work," said Mrs Dale, almost with a tone of shame. "If
+it is to be done it is as well that it should be got over."
+
+"It makes me wretched enough," said the squire. "But I didn't come to
+talk about that. I've brought you a note from Lady Julia de Guest, and
+I've had one from the earl. They want us all to go there and stay the
+week after Easter."
+
+Mrs Dale and the girls, when this very sudden proposition was made to
+them, all remained fixed in their place, and, for a moment, were
+speechless. Go and stay a week at Guestwick Manor! The whole family!
+Hitherto the intercourse between the Manor and the Small House had been
+confined to morning calls, very far between. Mrs Dale had never dined
+there, and had latterly even deputed the calling to her daughters. Once
+Bell had dined there with her uncle, the squire, and once Lily had gone
+over with her uncle Orlando. Even this had been long ago, before they
+were quite brought out, and they had regarded the occasion with the
+solemn awe of children. Now, at this time of their flitting into some
+small mean dwelling at Guestwick, they had previously settled among
+themselves that that affair of calling at the Manor might be allowed to
+drop. Mrs Eames never called, and they were descending to the level of
+Mrs Eames. "Perhaps we shall get game sent to us, and that will be
+better," Lily had said. And now, at this very moment of their descent
+in life, they were all asked to go and stay a week at the Manor! Stay a
+week with Lady Julia! Had the Queen sent the Lord Chamberlain down to
+bid them all go to Windsor Castle it could hardly have startled them
+more at the first blow. Bell had been seated on the folded carpet when
+her uncle had entered, and now had again sat herself in the same place.
+Lily was still standing at the top of the ladder, and Mrs Dale was at
+the foot with one hand on Lily's dress. The squire had told his story
+very abruptly, but he was a man who, having a story to tell, knew
+nothing better than to tell it out abruptly, letting out everything at
+the first moment.
+
+"Wants us all!" said Mrs Dale. "How many does the all mean?" Then she
+opened Lady Julia's note and read it, not moving from her position at
+the foot of the ladder.
+
+"Do let me see, mamma," said Lily; and then the note was handed up to
+her. Had Mrs Dale well considered the matter she might probably have
+kept the note to herself for a while, but the whole thing was so sudden
+that she had not considered the matter well.
+
+My dear Mrs Dale (the letter ran)--I send this inside a note from my
+brother to Mr Dale. We particularly want you and your two girls to come
+to us for a week from the seventeenth of this month. Considering our
+near connection we ought to have seen more of each other than we have
+done for years past, and of course it has been our fault. But it is
+never too late to amend one's ways; and I hope you will receive my
+confession in the true spirit of affection in which it is intended, and
+that you will show your goodness by coming to us. I will do all I can
+to make the house pleasant to your girls, for both of whom I have much
+real regard.
+
+I should tell you that John Eames will be here for the same week. My
+brother is very fond of him, and thinks him the best young man of the
+day. He is one of my heroes, too, I must confess.
+
+Very sincerely yours,
+
+JULIA DE GUEST.
+
+
+Lily, standing on the ladder, read the letter very attentively. The
+squire meanwhile stood below speaking a word or two to his
+sister-in-law and niece. No one could see Lily's face, as it was turned
+away towards the window, and it was still averted when she spoke. "It
+is out of the question that we should go, mamma--that is, all of us."
+
+"Why out of the question?" said the squire.
+
+"A whole family!" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"That is just what they want," said the squire.
+
+"I should like of all things to be left alone for a week," said Lily,
+"if mamma and Bell would go."
+
+"That wouldn't do at all," said the squire. "Lady Julia specially wants
+you to be one of the party."
+
+The thing had been badly managed altogether. The reference in Lady
+Julia's note to John Eames had explained to Lily the whole scheme at
+once, and had so opened her eyes that all the combined influence of the
+Dale and De Guest families could not have dragged her over to the Manor.
+
+"Why not do? "said Lily. "It would be out of the question a whole
+family going in that way, but it would be very nice for Bell."
+
+"No, it would not," said Bell.
+
+"Don't be ungenerous about it, my dear," said the squire turning to
+Bell; "Lady Julia means to be kind. But, my darling," and the squire
+turned again towards Lily, addressing her, as was his wont in these
+days, with an affection that was almost vexatious to her; "but, my
+darling, why should you not go? A change of scene like that will do you
+all the good in the world, just when you are getting well. Mary, tell
+the girls they ought to go."
+
+Mrs Dale stood silent, again reading the note, and Lily came down from
+the ladder. When she reached the floor she went directly up to her
+uncle, and taking his hand turned him round with herself towards one of
+the windows, so that they stood with their backs to the room. "Uncle,"
+she said, "do not be angry with me. I can't go;" and then she put up
+her face to kiss him.
+
+He stooped and kissed her and still held her hand. He looked into her
+face and read it all. He knew well, now, why she could not go; or,
+rather, why she herself thought that she could not go. "Cannot you, my
+darling?" he said.
+
+"No, uncle. It is very kind--very kind; but I cannot go. I am not fit to
+go anywhere."
+
+"But you should get over that feeling. You should make a struggle."
+
+"I am struggling, and I shall succeed; but I cannot do it all at once.
+At any rate I could not go there. You must give my love to Lady Julia,
+and not let her think me cross. Perhaps Bell will go."
+
+What would be the good of Bell's going--or the good of his putting
+himself out of the way, by a visit which would of itself be so tiresome
+to him, if the one object of the visit could not be carried out? The
+earl and his sister had planned the invitation with the express
+intention of bringing Lily and Eames together. It seemed that Lily was
+firm in her determination to resist this intention; and, if so, it
+would be better that the whole thing should fall to the ground. He was
+very vexed, and yet he was not angry with her. Everybody lately had
+opposed him in everything. All his intended family arrangements had
+gone wrong. But yet he was seldom angry respecting them. He was so
+accustomed to be thwarted that he hardly expected success. In this
+matter of providing Lily with a second lover, he had not come forward
+of his own accord. He had been appealed to by his neighbour the earl,
+and had certainly answered the appeal with much generosity. He had been
+induced to make the attempt with eagerness, and a true desire for its
+accomplishment; but in this, as in all his own schemes, he was met at
+once by opposition and failure.
+
+"I will leave you to talk it over among yourselves," he said. "But,
+Mary, you had better see me before you send your answer. If you will
+come up by-and-by, Ralph shall take the two notes over together in the
+afternoon." So saying, he left the Small House, and went back to his
+own solitary home.
+
+"Lily, dear," said Mrs Dale, as soon as the front door had been closed,
+"this is meant for kindness to you--for most affectionate kindness."
+
+"I know it, mamma; and you must go to Lady Julia, and must tell her
+that I know it. You must give her my love. And, indeed, I do love her
+now. But--"
+
+"You won't go, Lily?" said Mrs Dale, beseechingly.
+
+"No, mamma; certainly I will not go." Then she escaped out of the room
+by herself, and for the next hour neither of them dared to go to her.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER L
+
+MRS DALE IS THANKFUL FOR A GOOD THING
+
+On that day they dined early at the Small House, as they had been in
+the habit of doing since the packing had commenced. And after dinner
+Mrs Dale went through the gardens, up to the other house, with a
+written note in her hand. In that note she had told Lady Julia, with
+many protestations of gratitude, that Lily was unable to go out so soon
+after her illness, and that she herself was obliged to stay with Lily.
+She explained also, that the business of moving was in hand, and that,
+therefore, she could not herself accept the invitation. But her other
+daughter, she said, would be very happy to accompany her uncle to
+Guestwick Manor. Then, without closing her letter, she took it up to
+the squire in order that it might be decided whether it would or would
+not suit his views. It might well be that he would not care to go to
+Lord de Guest's with Bell alone.
+
+"Leave it with me," he said; "that is, if you do not object."
+
+"Oh dear, no!"
+
+"I'll tell you the plain truth at once, Mary. I shall go over myself
+with it, and see the earl. Then I will decline it or not, according to
+what passes between me and him. I wish Lily would have gone."
+
+"Ah! she could not."
+
+"I wish she could. I wish she could. I wish she could." As he repeated
+the words over and over again, there was an eagerness in his voice that
+filled Mrs Dale's heart with tenderness towards him.
+
+"The truth is," said Mrs Dale, "she could not go there to meet John
+Eames."
+
+"Oh, I know," said the squire: "I understand it. But that is just what
+we want her to do. Why should she not spend a week in the same house
+with an honest young man whom we all like."
+
+"There are reasons why she would not wish it."
+
+"Ah, exactly; the very reasons which should make us induce her to go
+there if we can. Perhaps I had better tell you all. Lord de Guest has
+taken him by the hand, and wishes him to marry. He has promised to
+settle on him an income which will make him comfortable for life."
+
+"That is very generous; and I am delighted to hear it--for John's sake."
+
+"And they have promoted him at his office."
+
+"Ah! then he will do well."
+
+"He will do very well. He is private secretary now to their head man.
+And, Mary, so that she, Lily, should not be empty--handed if their
+marriage can be arranged, I have undertaken to settle a hundred a year
+on her--on her and her children, if she will accept him. Now you know it
+all. I did not mean to tell you; but it is as well that you should have
+the means of judging. That other man was a villain. This man is honest.
+Would it not be well that she should learn to like him? She always did
+like him, I thought, before that other fellow came down here among us."
+
+"She has always liked him--as a friend."
+
+"She will never get a better lover."
+
+Mrs Dale sat silent, thinking over it all. Every word that the squire
+said was true. It would be a healing of wounds most desirable and
+salutary; an arrangement advantageous to them all; a destiny for Lily
+most devoutly to be desired--if only it were possible. Mrs Dale firmly
+believed that if her daughter could be made to accept John Eames as her
+second lover in a year or two all would be well. Crosbie would then be
+forgotten or thought of without regret, and Lily would become the
+mistress of a happy home. But there are positions which cannot be
+reached, though there be no physical or material objection in the way.
+It is the view which the mind takes of a thing which creates the sorrow
+that arises from it. If the heart were always malleable and the
+feelings could be controlled, who would permit himself to be tormented
+by any of the reverses which affection meets? Death would create no
+sorrow, ingratitude would lose its sting; and the betrayal of love
+would do no injury beyond that which it might entail upon worldly
+circumstances. But the heart is not malleable; nor will the feelings
+admit of such control.
+
+"It is not possible for her," said Mrs Dale. "I fear it is not
+possible. It is too soon."
+
+"Six months," pleaded the squire.
+
+"It will take years--not months," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"And she will lose all her youth."
+
+"Yes; he has done all that by his treachery. But it is done, and we
+cannot now go back. She loves him yet as dearly as she ever loved him."
+
+Then the squire muttered certain words below his breath--ejaculations
+against Crosbie, which were hardly voluntary; but even as involuntary
+ejaculations were very improper. Mrs Dale heard them, and was not
+offended either by their impropriety or their warmth. "But you can
+understand," she said, "that she cannot bring herself to go there." The
+squire struck the table with his fist, and repeated his ejaculations.
+If he could only have known how very disagreeable Lady Alexandrina was
+making herself, his spirit might, perhaps, have been less vehemently
+disturbed. If, also, he could have perceived and understood the light
+in which an alliance with the De Courcy family was now regarded by
+Crosbie, I think that he would have received some consolation from that
+consideration. Those who offend us are generally punished for the
+offence they give; but we so frequently miss the satisfaction of
+knowing that we are avenged! It is arranged, apparently, that the
+injurer shall be punished, but that the person injured shall not
+gratify his desire for vengeance.
+
+"And will you go to Guestwick yourself?" asked Mrs Dale.
+
+"I will take the note," said the squire, "and will let you know
+tomorrow. The earl has behaved so kindly that every possible
+consideration is due to him. I had better tell him the whole truth, and
+go or stay, as he may wish. I don't see the good of going. What am I to
+do at Guestwick Manor? I did think that if we had all been there it
+might have cured some difficulties."
+
+Mrs Dale got up to leave him, but she could not go without saying some
+word of gratitude for all that he had attempted to do for them. She
+well knew what he meant by the curing of difficulties. He had intended
+to signify that had they lived together for a week at Guestwick the
+idea of flitting from Allington might possibly have been abandoned. It
+seemed now to Mrs Dale as though her brother-in-law were heaping coals
+of fire on her head in return for that intention. She felt half-ashamed
+of what she was doing, almost acknowledging to herself that she should
+have borne with his sternness in return for the benefits he had done to
+her daughters. Had she not feared their reproaches she would, even now,
+have given way.
+
+"I do not know what I ought to say to you for your kindness."
+
+"Say nothing--either for my kindness or unkindness; but stay where you
+are, and let us live like Christians together, striving to think good
+and not evil." These were kind, loving words, showing in themselves a
+spirit of love and forbearance; but they were spoken in a harsh,
+unsympathising voice, and the speaker, as he uttered them, looked
+gloomily at the fire. In truth the squire, as he spoke, was
+half-ashamed of the warmth of what he said.
+
+"At any rate I will not think evil," Mrs Dale answered, giving him her
+hand. After that she left him, and returned home. It was too late for
+her to abandon her project of moving and remain at the Small House; but
+as she went across the garden she almost confessed to herself that she
+repented of what she was doing.
+
+In these days of the cold early spring, the way from the lawn into the
+house, through the drawing-room window, was not as yet open, and it was
+necessary to go round by the kitchen-garden on to the road, and thence
+in by the front door; or else to pass through the back door, and into
+the house by the kitchen. This latter mode of entrance Mrs Dale now
+adopted; and as she made her way into the hall Lily came upon her, with
+very silent steps, out from the parlour, and arrested her progress.
+There was a smile upon Lily's face as she lifted up her finger as if in
+caution, and no one looking at her would have supposed that she was
+herself in trouble. "Mamma," she said, pointing to the drawing-room
+door, and speaking almost in a whisper, "you must not go in there; come
+into the parlour."
+
+"Who's there? Where's Bell?" and Mrs Dale went into the parlour as she
+was bidden. "But who is there?" she repeated.
+
+"He's there!"
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Oh, mamma, don't be a goose! Dr Crofts is there, of course. He's been
+nearly an hour. I wonder how he is managing, for there is nothing on
+earth to sit upon but the old lump of a carpet. The room is strewed
+about with crockery, and Bell is such a figure! She has got on your old
+checked apron, and when he came in she was rolling up the fire-irons in
+brown paper. I don't suppose she was ever in such a mess before.
+There's one thing certain--he can't kiss her hand."
+
+"It's you are the goose, Lily."
+
+"But he's in there certainly, unless he has gone out through the
+window, or up the chimney."
+
+"What made you leave them?"
+
+"He met me here, in the passage, and spoke to me ever so seriously.
+Come in, I said, and see Bell packing the pokers and tongs. I will go
+in, he said, but don't come with me. He was ever so serious, and I'm
+sure he had been thinking of it all the way along."
+
+"And why should he not be serious?"
+
+"Oh, no, of course he ought to be serious; but are you not glad, mamma?
+I am so glad. We shall live alone together, you and I; but she will be
+so close to us! My belief is that he'll stay there for ever unless
+somebody does something. I have been so tired of waiting and looking
+out for you. Perhaps he's helping her to pack the things. Don't you
+think we might go in; or would it be ill-natured?
+
+"Lily, don't be in too great a hurry to say anything. You may be
+mistaken, you know; and there's many a slip between the cup and the
+lip."
+
+"Yes, mamma, there is," said Lily, putting her hand inside her mother's
+arm, "that's true enough."
+
+"Oh, my darling, forgive me," said the mother, suddenly remembering
+that the use of the old proverb at the present moment had been almost
+cruel.
+
+"Do not mind it," said Lily, "it does not hurt me, it does me good;
+that is to say, when there is nobody by except yourself. But, with
+God's help, there shall be no slip here, and she shall be happy. It is
+all the difference between one thing done in a hurry, and another done
+with much thinking. But they'll remain there for ever if we don't go
+in. Come, mamma, you open the door."
+
+Then Mrs Dale did open the door, giving some little premonitory notice
+with the handle, so that the couple inside might be warned of
+approaching footsteps. Crofts had not escaped, either through the
+window or up the chimney, but was seated in the middle of the room on
+an empty box, just opposite to Bell, who was seated upon the lump of
+carpeting. Bell still wore the checked apron as described by her
+sister. What might have been the state of her hands I will not pretend
+to say; but I do not believe that her lover had found anything amiss
+with them. "How do you do, doctor?" said Mrs Dale, striving to use her
+accustomed voice, and to look as though there were nothing of special
+importance in his visit. "I have just come down from the Great House."
+
+"Mamma," said Bell, jumping up, "you must not call him doctor any more."
+
+"Must I not? Has any one undoctored him?"
+
+"Oh, mamma, you understand," said Bell.
+
+"I understand," said Lily, going up to the doctor, and giving him her
+cheek to kiss, "he is to be my brother, and I mean to claim him as such
+from this moment. I expect him to do everything for us, and not to call
+a moment of his time his own."
+
+"Mrs Dale," said the doctor, "Bell has consented that it shall be so,
+if you will consent."
+
+"There is but little doubt of that," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"We shall not be rich--" began the doctor.
+
+"I hate to be rich," said Bell. "I hate even to talk about it. I don't
+think it quite manly even to think about it; and I'm sure it isn't
+womanly."
+
+"Bell was always a fanatic in praise of poverty," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"No; I'm no fanatic. I'm very fond of money earned. I would like to
+earn some myself if I knew how."
+
+"Let her go out and visit the lady patients," said Lily. "They do in
+America."
+
+Then they all went into the parlour and sat round the fire talking as
+though they were already one family. The proceeding, considering the
+nature of it--that a young lady, acknowledged to be of great beauty and
+known to be of good birth, had on the occasion been asked and given in
+marriage--was carried on after a somewhat humdrum fashion, and in a
+manner that must be called commonplace. How different had it been when
+Crosbie had made his offer! Lily for the time had been raised to a
+pinnacle--a pinnacle which might be dangerous, but which was, at any
+rate, lofty. With what a pretty speech had Crosbie been greeted! How it
+had been felt by all concerned that the fortunes of the Small House
+were in the ascendant--felt, indeed, with some trepidation, but still
+with much inward triumph. How great had been the occasion, forcing Lily
+almost to lose herself in wonderment at what had occurred! There was no
+great occasion now, and no wonderment. No one, unless it was Crofts,
+felt very triumphant. But they were all very happy, and were sure that
+there was safety in their happiness. It was but the other day that one
+of them had been thrown rudely to the ground through the treachery of a
+lover, but yet none of them feared treachery from this lover. Bell was
+as sure of her lot in life as though she were already being taken home
+to her modest house in Guestwick. Mrs Dale already looked upon the man
+as her son, and the party of four as they sat round the fire grouped
+themselves as though they already formed one family.
+
+But Bell was not seated next to her lover. Lily, when she had once
+accepted Crosbie, seemed to think that she could never be too near to
+him. She had been in no wise ashamed of her love, and had shown it
+constantly by some little caressing motion of her hand, leaning on his
+arm, looking into his face, as though she were continually desirous of
+some palpable assurance of his presence. It was not so at all with
+Bell. She was happy in loving and in being loved, but she required no
+overt testimonies of affection. I do not think it would have made her
+unhappy if some sudden need had required that Crofts should go to India
+and back before they were married. The thing was settled, and that was
+enough for her. But, on the other hand, when he spoke of the expediency
+of an immediate marriage, she raised no difficulty. As her mother was
+about to go into a new residence, it might be as well that that
+residence should be fitted to the wants of two persons instead of
+three. So they talked about chairs and tables, carpets and kitchens, in
+a most unromantic, homely, useful manner! A considerable portion of the
+furniture in the house they were now about to leave belonged to the
+squire--or to the house rather, as they were in the habit of saying. The
+older and more solid things--articles of household stuff that stand the
+wear of half a century--had been in the Small House when they came to
+it. There was, therefore, a question of buying new furniture for a
+house in Guestwick--a question not devoid of importance to the possessor
+of so moderate an income as that owned by Mrs Dale. In the first month
+or two they were to live in lodgings, and their goods were to be stored
+in some friendly warehouse. Under such circumstances would it not be
+well that Bell's marriage should be so arranged that the lodging
+question might not be in any degree complicated by her necessities?
+This was the last suggestion made by Dr Crofts, induced no doubt by the
+great encouragement he had received.
+
+"That would be hardly possible," said Mrs Dale. "It only wants three
+weeks--and with the house in such a condition!"
+
+"James is joking," said Bell.
+
+"I was not joking at all," said the doctor.
+
+"Why not send for Mr Boyce, and carry her off at once on a pillion
+behind you?" said Lily. "It's just the sort of thing for primitive
+people to do, like you and Bell. All the same, Bell, I do wish you
+could have been married from this house."
+
+"I don't think it will make much difference," said Bell.
+
+"Only if you would have waited till summer we would have had such a
+nice party on the lawn. It sounds so ugly, being married from lodgings;
+doesn't it, mamma?"
+
+"It doesn't sound at all ugly to me," said Bell.
+
+"I shall always call you Dame Commonplace when you're married," said
+Lily.
+
+Then they had tea, and after tea Dr Crofts got on his horse and rode
+back to Guestwick.
+
+"Now may I talk about him?" said Lily, as soon as the door was closed
+behind his back.
+
+"No; you may not."
+
+"As if I hadn't known it all along! And wasn't it hard to bear that you
+should have scolded me with such pertinacious austerity, and that I
+wasn't to say a word in answer!"
+
+"I don't remember the austerity," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Nor yet Lily's silence," said Bell.
+
+"But it's all settled now," said Lily, "and I'm downright happy. I
+never felt more satisfaction--never, Bell!"
+
+"Nor did I," said her mother; "I may truly say that I thank God for
+this good thing."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LI
+
+JOHN EAMES DOES THINGS WHICH HE OUGHT NOT TO HAVE DONE
+
+John Eames succeeded in making his bargain with Sir Raffle Buffle. He
+accepted the private secretaryship on the plainly expressed condition
+that he was to have leave of absence for a fortnight towards the end of
+April. Having arranged this he took an affectionate leave of Mr Love,
+who was really much affected at parting with him, discussed valedictory
+pots of porter in the big room, over which many wishes were expressed
+that he might be enabled to compass the length and breadth of old
+Ruffle's feet, uttered a last cutting joke at Mr Kissing as he met that
+gentleman hurrying through the passages with an enormous ledger in his
+hands, and then took his place in the comfortable arm-chair which
+FitzHoward had been forced to relinquish.
+
+"Don't tell any of the fellows," said Fitz, "but I'm going to cut the
+concern altogether. My governor wouldn't let me stop here in any other
+place than that of private secretary."
+
+"Ah, your governor is a swell," said Eames.
+
+"I don't know about that," said FitzHoward. "Of course he has a good
+deal of family interest. My cousin is to come in for St. Bungay at the
+next election, and then I can do better than remain here."
+
+"That's a matter of course;" said Eames. "If my cousin were Member for
+St Bungay, I'd never stand anything east of Whitehall."
+
+"And I don't mean," said FitzHoward. "This room, you know, is all very
+nice; but it is a bore coming into the City every day. And then one
+doesn't like to be rung for like a servant. Not that I mean to put you
+out of conceit with it."
+
+"It will do very well for me," said Eames. "I never was very
+particular."
+
+And so they parted, Eames assuming the beautiful arm-chair and the
+peril of being asked to carry Sir Raffle's shoes, while FitzHoward took
+the vacant desk in the big room till such time as some member of his
+family should come into Parliament for the borough of St. Bungay.
+
+But Eames, though he drank the porter, and quizzed FitzHoward, and
+gibed at Kissing, did not seat himself in his new arm-chair without
+some serious thoughts. He was aware that his career in London had not
+hitherto been one on which he could look back with self-respect. He had
+lived, with friends whom he did not esteem; he had been idle, and
+sometimes worse than idle; and he had allowed himself to be hampered by
+the pretended love of a woman for whom he had never felt any true
+affection, and by whom he had been cozened out of various foolish
+promises which even yet were hanging over his head. As he sat with Sir
+Raffle's notes before him, he thought almost with horror of the men and
+women in Burton Crescent. It was now about three years since he had
+first known Cradell, and he shuddered as he remembered how very poor a
+creature was he whom he had chosen for his bosom friend. He could not
+make for himself those excuses which we can make for him. He could not
+tell himself that he had been driven by circumstances to choose a
+friend, before he had learned to know what were the requisites for
+which he should look. He had lived on terms of closest intimacy with
+this man for three years, and now his eyes were opening themselves to
+the nature of his friend's character. Cradell was in age three years
+his senior. "I won't drop him," he said to himself; "but he is a poor
+creature." He thought, too, of the Lupexes, of Miss Spruce, and of Mrs
+Roper, and tried to imagine what Lily Dale would do if she found
+herself among such people. It would be impossible that she should ever
+so find herself. He might as well ask her to drink at the bar of a gin
+shop as to sit down in Mrs Roper's drawing-room. If destiny had in
+store for him such good fortune as that of calling Lily his own, it was
+necessary that he should altogether alter his mode of life.
+
+In truth his hobbledehoyhood was dropping off from him, as its old skin
+drops from a snake. Much of the feeling and something of the knowledge
+of manhood was coming on him, and he was beginning to recognise to
+himself that the future manner of his life must be to him a matter of
+very serious concern. No such thought had come near him when he first
+established himself in London. It seems to me that in this respect the
+fathers and mothers of the present generation understand but little of
+the inward nature of the young men for whom they are so anxious. They
+give them credit for so much that it is impossible they should have,
+and then deny them credit for so much that they possess! They expect
+from them when boys the discretion of men--that discretion which comes
+from thinking; but will not give them credit for any of that power of
+thought which alone can ultimately produce good conduct. Young men are
+generally thoughtful--more thoughtful than their seniors; but the fruit
+of their thought is not as yet there. And then so little is done for
+the amusement of lads who are turned loose into London at nineteen or
+twenty. Can it be that any mother really expects her son to sit alone
+evening after evening in a dingy room drinking bad tea, and reading
+good books? And yet it seems that mothers do so expect--the very mothers
+who talk about the thoughtlessness of youth! O ye mothers who from year
+to year see your sons launched forth upon the perils of the world, and
+who are so careful with your good advice, with under flannel shirting,
+with books of devotion and tooth-powder, does it never occur to you
+that provision should be made for amusement, for dancing, for parties,
+for the excitement and comfort of women's society? That excitement your
+sons will have, and if it be not provided by you of one kind, will
+certainly be provided by themselves of another kind. If I were a mother
+sending lads out into the world, the matter most in my mind would be
+this--to what houses full of nicest girls could I get them admission, so
+that they might do their flirting in good company.
+
+Poor John Eames had been so placed that he had been driven to do his
+flirting in very bad company, and he was now fully aware that it had
+been so. It wanted but two days to his departure for Guestwick Manor,
+and as he sat breathing a while after the manufacture of a large batch
+of Sir Raffle's notes, he made up his mind that he would give Mrs Roper
+notice before he started, that on his return to London he would be seen
+no more in Burton Crescent. He would break his bonds altogether
+asunder, and if there should be any penalty for such breaking he would
+pay it in what best manner he might be able. He acknowledged to himself
+that he had been behaving badly to Amelia, confessing, indeed, more sin
+in that respect than he had in truth committed; but this, at any rate,
+was clear to him, that he must put himself on a proper footing in that
+quarter before he could venture to speak to Lily Dale.
+
+As he came to a definite conclusion on this subject the little handbell
+which always stood on Sir Raffle's table was sounded, and Eames was
+called into the presence of the great man.
+
+"Ah," said Sir Raffle, leaning back in his arm-chair, and stretching
+himself after the great exertions which he had been making--" Ah, let me
+see! You are going out of town the day after tomorrow."
+
+"Yes, Sir Raffle, the day after tomorrow."
+
+"Ah! it's a great annoyance--a very great annoyance. But on such
+occasions I never think of myself. I never have done so, and don't
+suppose I ever shall. So you're going down to my old friend De Guest?"
+
+Eames was always angered when his new patron Sir Raffle talked of his
+old friendship with the earl, and never gave the Commissioner any
+encouragement. "I am going down to Guestwick," said he.
+
+"Ah! yes; to Guestwick Manor? I don't remember that I was ever there. I
+dare say I may have been, but one forgets those things."
+
+"I never heard Lord de Guest speak of it."
+
+"Oh, dear, no. Why should his memory be better than mine? Tell him,
+will you, how very glad I shall be to renew our old intimacy. I should
+think nothing of running down to him for a day or two in the dull time
+of the year--say in September or October. It's rather a coincidence our
+both being interested about you--isn't it?
+
+"I'll be sure to tell him."
+
+"Mind you do. He's one of our most thoroughly independent noblemen, and
+I respect him very highly. Let me see; didn't I ring my bell? What was
+it I wanted? I think I rang my bell."
+
+"You did ring your bell."
+
+"Ah, yes; I know. I am going away, and I wanted my would you tell
+Rafferty to bring me--my boots?" Whereupon Johnny rang the bell--not the
+little handbell, but the other bell. "And I shan't be here tomorrow,"
+continued Sir Raffle. "I'll thank you to send my letters up to the
+square; and if they should send down from the Treasury--but the
+Chancellor would write, and in that case you'll send up his letter at
+once by a special messenger, of course."
+
+"Here's Rafferty," said Eames, determined that he would not even sully
+his lips with speaking of Sir Raffle's boots.
+
+"Oh, ah, yes; Rafferty, bring me my boots."
+
+"Anything else to say?" asked Eames.
+
+"No, nothing else. Of course you'll be careful to leave everything
+straight behind you."
+
+"Oh, yes; I'll leave it all straight." Then Eames withdrew, so that he
+might not be present at the interview between Sir Raffle and his boots.
+"He'll not do," said Sir Raffle to himself. "He'll never do. He's not
+quick enough--has no go in him. He's not man enough for the place. I
+wonder why the earl has taken him by the hand in that way."
+
+Soon after the little episode of the boots Eames left his office, and
+walked home alone to Burton Crescent. He felt that he had gained a
+victory in Sir Raffle's room, but the victory there had been easy. Now
+he had another battle on his hands, in which, as he believed, the
+achievement of victory would be much more difficult. Amelia Roper was a
+person much more to be feared than the Chief Commissioner. He had one
+strong arrow in his quiver on which he would depend, if there should
+come to him the necessity of giving his enemy a death-wound. During the
+last week she had been making powerful love to Cradell, so as to
+justify the punishment of desertion from a former lover. He would not
+throw Cradell in her teeth if he could help it; but it was incumbent on
+him to gain a victory, and if the worst should come to the worst, he
+must use such weapons as destiny and the chance of war had given him.
+
+He found Mrs Roper in the dining-room as he entered, and immediately
+began his work. "Mrs Roper," he said, "I'm going out of town the day
+after tomorrow."
+
+"Oh, yes, Mr Eames, we know that. You're going as a visitor to the
+noble mansion of the Earl de Guest."
+
+"I don't know about the mansion being very noble, but I'm going down
+into the country for a fortnight. When I come back--"
+
+"When you come back, Mr Eames, I hope you'll find your room a deal more
+comfortable. "I know it isn't quite what it should be for a gentleman
+like you, and I've been thinking for some time past--"
+
+"But, Mrs Roper, I don't mean to come back here any more. It's just
+that that I want to say to you."
+
+"Not come back to the crescent!"
+
+"No, Mrs Roper. A fellow must move sometimes, you know; and I'm sure
+I've been very constant to you for a long time."
+
+"But where are you going, Mr Eames?"
+
+"Well; I haven't just made up my mind as yet. That is, it will depend
+on what I may do--on what friends of mine may say down in the country.
+You'll not think I'm quarrelling with you, Mrs Roper."
+
+"It's them Lupexes as have done it," said Mrs Roper, in her deep
+distress.
+
+"No, indeed, Mrs Roper, nobody has done it."
+
+"Yes, it is; and I'm not going to blame you, Mr Eames. They've made the
+house unfit for any decent young gentleman like you. I've been feeling
+that all along; but it's hard upon a lone woman like me, isn't it, Mr
+Eames?
+
+"But, Mrs Roper, the Lupexes have had nothing to do with my going."
+
+"Oh, yes, they have; I understand it all. But what could I do, Mr
+Eames? I've been giving them warning every week for the last six
+months; but the more I give them warning, the more they won't go.
+Unless I were to send for a policeman, and have a row in the house--"
+
+"But I haven't complained of the Lupexes, Mrs Roper."
+
+"You wouldn't be quitting without any reason, Mr Eames. You are not
+going to be married in earnest, are you, Mr Eames?"
+
+"Not that I know of."
+
+"You may tell me; you may, indeed. I won't say a word--not to anybody.
+It hasn't been my fault about Amelia. It hasn't really."
+
+"Who says there's been any fault?"
+
+"I can see, Mr Eames. Of course it didn't do for me to interfere. And
+if you had liked her, I will say I believe she'd have made as good a
+wife as any young man ever took; and she can make a few pounds go
+farther than most girls. You can understand a mother's feelings; and if
+there was to be anything, I couldn't spoil it; could I, now?"
+
+"But there isn't to be anything."
+
+"So I've told her for months past. I'm not going to say anything to
+blame you; but young men ought to be very particular; indeed they
+ought." Johnny did not choose to hint to the disconsolate mother that
+it also behoved young women to be very particular, but he thought it.
+"I've wished many a time, Mr Eames, that she had never come here;
+indeed I have. But what's a mother to do? I couldn't put her outside
+the door." Then Mrs Roper raised her apron up to her eyes, and began to
+sob.
+
+"I'm very sorry if I've made any mischief," said Johnny.
+
+"It hasn't been your fault," continued the poor woman, from whom, as
+her tears became uncontrollable, her true feelings forced themselves
+and the real outpouring of her feminine nature. "Nor it hasn't been my
+fault. But I knew what it would come to when I saw how she was going
+on; and I told her so. I knew you wouldn't put up with the likes of
+her."
+
+"Indeed, Mrs Roper, I've always had a great regard for her, and for you
+too."
+
+"But you weren't going to marry her. I've told her so all along, and
+I've begged her not to do it--almost on my knees I have; but she
+wouldn't be said by me. She never would. She's always been that wilful
+that I'd sooner have her away from me than with me. Though she's a good
+young woman in the house--she is, indeed, Mr Eames--and there isn't a
+pair of hands in it that works so hard; but it was no use my talking."
+
+"I don't think any harm has been done."
+
+"Yes, there has; great harm. It has made the place not respectable.
+It's the Lupexes is the worst. There's Miss Spruce, who has been with
+me for nine years--ever since I've had the house--she's been telling me
+this morning that she means to go into the country. It's all the same
+thing. I under stand it. I can see it. The house isn't respectable, as
+it should be; and your mamma, if she were to know all, would have a
+right to be angry with me. I did mean to be respectable, Mr Eames; I
+did indeed."
+
+"Miss Spruce will think better of it."
+
+"You don't know what I've had to go through. There's none of them pays,
+not regular--only she and you. She's been like the Bank of England, has
+Miss Spruce."
+
+"I'm afraid I've not been very regular, Mrs Roper."
+
+"Oh, yes, you have. I don't think of a pound or two more or less at the
+end of a quarter, if I'm sure to have it some day, The butcher--he
+understands one's lodgers just as well as I do--if the money's really
+coming, he'll wait; but he won't wait for such as them Lupexes, whose
+money's nowhere. And there's Cradell; would you believe it, that fellow
+owes me eight-and-twenty pounds!"
+
+"Eight and twenty pounds!"
+
+"Yes, Mr Eames, eight-and-twenty pounds! He's a fool. It's them Lupexes
+as have had his money. I know it. He don't talk of paying, and going
+away. I shall be just left with him and the Lupexes on my hands; and
+then the bailiffs may come and sell every stick about the place. I
+won't say nay to them." Then she threw herself into the old horsehair
+armchair, and gave way to her womanly sorrow.
+
+"I think I'll go upstairs, and get ready for dinner," said Eames.
+
+"And you must go away when you come back?" said Mrs Roper.
+
+"Well, yes, I'm afraid I must. I meant you to have a month's warning
+from today. Of course I shall pay for the month."
+
+"I don't want to take any advantage; indeed, I don't. But I do hope
+you'll leave your things. You can have them whenever you like. If
+Chumpend knows that you and Miss Spruce are both going, of course he'll
+be down upon me for his money." Chumpend was the butcher. But Eames
+made no answer to this piteous plea. Whether or no he could allow his
+old boots to remain in Burton Crescent for the next week or two, must
+depend on the manner in which he might be received by Amelia Roper this
+evening.
+
+When he came down to the drawing-room, there was no one there but Miss
+Spruce. "A fine day, Miss Spruce," said he.
+
+"Yes, Mr Eames, it is a fine day for London; but don't you think the
+country air is very nice?"
+
+"Give me the town," said Johnny, wishing to say a good word for poor
+Mrs Roper, if it were possible.
+
+"You're a young man, Mr Eames; but I'm an old woman. That makes a
+difference," said Miss Spruce.
+
+"Not much," said Johnny, meaning to be civil. "You don't like to be
+dull any more than I do."
+
+"I like to be respectable, Mr Eames. I always have been respectable, Mr
+Eames." This the old woman said almost in a whisper, looking anxiously
+to see that the door had not been opened to other listening cars.
+
+"I'm sure Mrs Roper is very respectable."
+
+"Yes; Mrs Roper is respectable, Mr Eames; but there are some here
+that--Hush-sh-sh!" And the old lady put her finger up to her lips. The
+door opened and Mrs Lupex swam into the room.
+
+"How d'ye do, Miss Spruce? I declare you're always first. It's to get a
+chance of having one of the young gentlemen to yourself, I believe.
+What's the news in the city today, Mr Eames? In your position now of
+course you hear all the news."
+
+"Sir Raffle Buffle has got a new pair of shoes. I don't know that for
+certain, but I guess it from the time it took him to put them on."
+
+"Ah! now you're quizzing. That's always the way with you gentlemen when
+you get a little up in the world. You don't think women are worth
+talking to then, unless just for a joke or so."
+
+"I'd a great deal sooner talk to you, Mrs Lupex, than I would to Sir
+Raffle Buffle."
+
+"It's all very well for you to say that. But we women know what such
+compliments as those mean--don't we, Miss Spruce? A woman that's been
+married five years as I have--or I may say six--doesn't expect much
+attention from young men. And though I was young when I married--young
+in years, that is--I'd seen too much and gone through too much to be
+young in heart." This she said almost in a whisper; but Miss Spruce
+heard it, and was confirmed in her belief that Burton Crescent was no
+longer respectable.
+
+"I don't know what you were then, Mrs Lupex," said Eames; "but you're
+young enough now for anything."
+
+"Mr Eames, I'd sell all that remains of my youth at a cheap rate--at a
+very cheap rate, if I could only be sure of--"
+
+"Sure of what, Mrs Lupex?"
+
+"The undivided affection of the one person that I loved. That is all
+that is necessary to a woman's happiness."
+
+"And isn't Lupex--"
+
+"Lupex! But hush, never mind. I should not have allowed myself to be
+betrayed into an expression of feeling. Here's your friend Mr Cradell.
+Do you know I sometimes wonder what you find in that man to be so fond
+of him." Miss Spruce saw it all, and heard it all, and positively
+resolved upon moving herself to those two small rooms at Dulwich.
+
+Hardly a word was exchanged between Amelia and Eames before dinner.
+Amelia still devoted herself to Cradell, and Johnny saw that that
+arrow, if it should be needed, would be a strong weapon. Mrs Roper they
+found seated at her place at the dining-table, and Eames could perceive
+the traces of her tears. Poor woman! Few positions in life could be
+harder to bear than hers! To be ever tugging at others for money that
+they could not pay; to be ever tugged at for money which she could not
+pay; to desire respectability for its own sake, but to be driven to
+confess that it was a luxury beyond her means; to put up with
+disreputable belongings for the sake of lucre, and then not to get the
+lucre, but be driven to feel that she was ruined by the attempt! How
+many Mrs Ropers there are who from year to year sink down and fall
+away, and no one knows whither they betake themselves! One fancies that
+one sees them from time to time at the corners of the streets in
+battered bonnets and thin gowns, with the tattered remnants of old
+shawls upon their shoulders, still looking as though they had within
+them a faint remembrance of long-distant respectability. With anxious
+eyes they peer about, as though searching in the streets for other
+lodgers. Where do they get their daily morsels of bread, and their poor
+cups of thin tea--their cups of thin tea, with perhaps a pennyworth of
+gin added to it, if Providence be good! Of this state of things Mrs
+Roper had a lively appreciation, and now, poor woman, she feared that
+she was reaching it, by the aid of the Lupexes. On the present occasion
+she carved her joint of meat in silence, and sent out her slices to the
+good guests that would leave her, and to the bad guests that would
+remain, with apathetic impartiality. What was the use now of doing
+favour to one lodger or disfavour to another? Let them take their
+mutton--they who would pay for, it and they who would not. She would not
+have the carving of many more joints in that house if Chumpend acted up
+to all the threats which he had uttered to her that morning.
+
+The reader may, perhaps, remember the little back room behind the
+dining parlour. A description was given in some former pages of an
+interview which was held between Amelia and her lover. It was in that
+room that all the interviews of Mrs Roper's establishment had their
+existence. A special room for interviews is necessary in all households
+of a mixed nature. If a man lives alone with his wife, he can have his
+interviews where he pleases. Sons and daughters, even when they are
+grown up, hardly create the necessity of an interview-chamber, though
+some such need may he felt if the daughters are marriageable and
+independent in their natures. But when the family becomes more
+complicated than this, if an extra young man be introduced, or an aunt
+comes into residence, or grown up children by a former wife interfere
+with the domestic simplicity, then such accommodation becomes quite
+indispensable. No woman would think of taking in lodgers without such a
+room; and this room there was at Mrs Roper's, very small and dingy, but
+still sufficient--just behind the dining parlour and opposite to the
+kitchen stairs. Hither, after dinner, Amelia was summoned. She had just
+seated herself between Mrs Lupex and Miss Spruce, ready to do battle
+with the former because she would stay, and with the latter because she
+would go, when she was called out by the servant girl.
+
+"Miss Mealyer, Miss Mealyer-sh-sh-sh! "And Amelia, looking round, saw a
+large red hand beckoning to her. "He's down there," said Jemima, as
+soon as her young mistress had joined her, "and wants to see you most
+partic'lar."
+
+"Which of 'em? "asked Amelia, in a whisper.
+
+"Why, Mr Heames, to be sure. Don't you go and have anythink to say to
+the other one, Miss Mealyer, pray don't; he ain't no good; he ain't
+indeed."
+
+Amelia stood still for a moment on the landing, calculating whether it
+would be well for her to have the interview, or well to decline it. Her
+objects were two--or, rather, her object was in its nature twofold. She
+was, naturally, anxious to drive John Eames to desperation; and anxious
+also, by some slight added artifice, to make sure of Cradell if Eames's
+desperation did not have a very speedy effect. She agreed with Jemima's
+criticism in the main, but she did not go quite so far as to think that
+Cradell was no good at all. Let it be Eames, if Eames were possible;
+but let the other string be kept for use if Eames were not possible.
+Poor girl! in coming to this resolve she had not done so without agony.
+She had a heart, and with such power as it gave her, she loved John
+Eames. But the world had been hard to her; knocking her about hither
+and thither unmercifully; threatening, as it now threatened, to take
+from her what few good things she enjoyed. When a girl is so
+circumstanced she cannot afford to attend to her heart. She almost
+resolved not to see Eames on the present occasion, thinking that he
+might be made the more desperate by such refusal, and remembering also
+that Cradell was in the house and would know of it.
+
+"He's there a-waiting, Miss Mealyer. Why don't yer come down?" and
+Jemima plucked her young mistress by the arm.
+
+"I am coming," said Amelia. And with dignified steps she descended to
+the interview.
+
+"Here she is, Mr Heames," said the girl. And then Johnny found himself
+alone with his lady-love.
+
+"You have sent for me, Mr Eames," she said, giving her head a little
+toss, and turning her face away from him. "I was engaged upstairs, but
+I thought it uncivil not to come down to you as you sent for me so
+special."
+
+"Yes, Miss Roper, I did want to see you very particularly."
+
+"Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, and he understood fully that the exclamation
+referred to his having omitted the customary use of her Christian name.
+
+"I saw your mother before dinner, and I told her that I am going away
+the day after tomorrow."
+
+"We all know about that--to the earl's, of course!" And then there was
+another chuck of her head.
+
+"And I told her also that I had made up my mind not to come back to
+Burton Crescent."
+
+"What! leave the house altogether!"
+
+"Well; yes. A fellow must make a change sometimes, you know."
+
+"And where are you going, John?"
+
+"That I don't know as yet."
+
+"Tell me the truth, John; are you going to be married? Are you--going--to
+marry--that young woman--Mr Crosbie's leavings? I demand to have an
+answer at once. Are you going to marry her?"
+
+He had determined very resolutely that nothing she might say should
+make him angry, but when she thus questioned him about "Crosbie's
+leavings" he found it very difficult to keep his temper. "I have not
+come," said he, "to speak to you about any one but ourselves."
+
+"That put-off won't do with me, sir. You are not to treat any girl you
+may please in that sort of way--oh, John!" Then she looked at him as
+though she did not know whether to fly at him and cover him with
+kisses, or to fly at him and tear his hair.
+
+"I know I haven't behaved quite as I should have done," he began.
+
+"Oh, John!" and she shook her head. "You mean, then, to tell me that
+you are going to marry her?"
+
+"I mean to say nothing of the kind--I only mean to say that I am going
+away from Burton Crescent."
+
+"John Eames, I wonder what you think will come to you! Will you answer
+me this; have I had a promise from you--a distinct promise, over and
+over again, or have I not?"
+
+"I don't know about a distinct promise--"
+
+"Well, well! I did think that you was a gentleman that would not go
+back from your word. I did think that. I did think that you would never
+put a young lady to the necessity of bringing forward her own letters
+to prove that she is not expecting more than she has a right! You don't
+know! And that, after all that has been between us! John Eames!" And
+again it seemed to him as though she were about to fly.
+
+"I tell you that I know I haven't behaved well. What more can I say?"
+
+"What more can you say? Oh, John! to ask me such a question! If you
+were a man you would know very well what more to say. But all you
+private secretaries are given to deceit, as the sparks fly upwards.
+However, I despise you--I do, indeed. I despise you."
+
+"If you despise me, we might as well shake hands and part at once. I
+dare say that will be best. One doesn't like to be despised, of course;
+but sometimes one can't help it." And then he put out his hand to her.
+
+"And is this to be the end of all?" she said, taking it.
+
+"Well, yes; I suppose so. You say I'm despised."
+
+"You shouldn't take up a poor girl in that way for a sharp word--not
+when she is suffering as I am made to suffer. If you only think of
+it--think what I have been expecting!" And now Amelia began to cry, and
+to look as though she were going to fall into his arms.
+
+"It is better to tell the truth," he said; "isn't it?"
+
+"But it shouldn't be the truth."
+
+"But it is the truth. I couldn't do it. I should ruin myself and you
+too, and we should never be happy."
+
+"I should be happy--very happy indeed." At this moment the poor girl's
+tears were unaffected, and her words were not artful. For a minute or
+two her heart--her actual heart was allowed to prevail.
+
+"It cannot be, Amelia. Will you not say good-bye?"
+
+"Good-bye," she said, leaning against him as she spoke.
+
+"I do so hope you will be happy," he said. And then, putting his arm
+round her waist, he kissed her; which he certainly ought not to have
+done.
+
+When the interview was over, he escaped out into the crescent, and as
+he walked down through the squares--Woburn Square, and Russell Square,
+and Bedford Square--towards the heart of London, he felt himself elated
+almost to a state of triumph. He had got himself well out of his
+difficulties, and now he would be ready for his love-tale to Lily.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LII
+
+THE FIRST VISIT TO THE GUESTWICK BRIDGE
+
+When John Eames arrived at Guestwick Manor, he was first welcomed by
+Lady Julia. "My dear Mr Eames," she said, "I cannot tell you how glad
+we are to see you." After that she always called him John, and treated
+him throughout his visit with wonderful kindness. No doubt that affair
+of the bull had in some measure produced this feeling; no doubt, also,
+she was well disposed to the man who she hoped might be accepted as a
+lover by Lily Dale. But I am inclined to think that the fact of his
+having beaten Crosbie had been the most potential cause of this
+affection for our hero on the part of Lady Julia. Ladies--especially
+discreet old ladies, such as Lady Julia de Guest--are bound to entertain
+pacific theories, and to condemn all manner of violence. Lady Julia
+would have blamed any one who might have advised Eames to commit an
+assault upon Crosbie. But, nevertheless, deeds of prowess are still
+dear to the female heart, and a woman, be she ever so old and discreet,
+understands and appreciates the summary justice which may be done by
+means of a thrashing. Lady Julia, had she been called upon to talk of
+it, would undoubtedly have told Eames that he had committed a fault in
+striking Mr Crosbie; but the deed had been done, and Lady Julia became
+very fond of John Eames.
+
+"Vickers shall show you your room, if you like to go upstairs; but
+you'll find my brother close about the house if you choose to go out; I
+saw him not half an hour since." But John seemed to be well satisfied
+to sit in his arm-chair over the fire, and talk to his hostess; so
+neither of them moved.
+
+"And now that you're a private secretary, how do you like it?"
+
+"I like the work well enough; only I don't like the man, Lady Julia.
+But I shouldn't say so, because he is such an intimate friend of your
+brother's."
+
+"An intimate friend of Theodore's!--Sir Raffle Buffle!"
+
+Lady Julia stiffened her back and put on a serious face, not being
+exactly pleased at being told that the Earl de Guest had any such
+intimate friend.
+
+"At any rate he tells me so about four times a day, Lady Julia. And he
+particularly wants to come down here next September."
+
+"Did he tell you that, too?"
+
+"Indeed he did. You can't believe what a goose he is! Then his voice
+sounds like a cracked bell; it's the most disagreeable voice you ever
+heard in your life. And one has always to be on one's guard lest he
+should make one do something that is--is--that isn't quite the thing for
+a gentleman. You understand--what the messenger ought to do."
+
+"You shouldn't be too much afraid of your own dignity."
+
+"No, I'm not. If Lord de Guest were to ask me to fetch him his shoes,
+I'd run to Guestwick and back for them and think nothing of it--just
+because he's my friend. He'd have a right to send me. But I'm not going
+to do such things as that for Sir Raffle Buffle."
+
+"Fetch him his shoes!"
+
+"That's what FitzHoward had to do, and he didn't like it."
+
+"Isn't Mr FitzHoward nephew to the Duchess of St Bungay?"
+
+"Nephew, or cousin, or something."
+
+"Dear me!" said Lady Julia, "what a horrible man!" And in this way John
+Eames and her ladyship became very intimate.
+
+There was no one at dinner at the Manor that day but the earl and his
+sister and their single guest. The earl when he came in was very warm
+in his welcome, slapping his young friend on the back, and poking jokes
+at him with a goodhumoured if not brilliant pleasantry.
+
+"Thrashed anybody lately, John?"
+
+"Nobody to speak of," said Johnny.
+
+"Brought your nightcap down for your out-o'-doors nap?"
+
+"No, but I've got a grand stick for the bull," said Johnny.
+
+"Ah! that's no joke now, I can tell you," said the earl. "We had to
+sell him, and it half broke my heart. We don't know what had come to
+him, but he became quite unruly after that--knocked Darvel down in the
+straw-yard! It was a very bad business--a very bad business, indeed!
+Come, go and dress. Do you remember how you came down to dinner that
+day? I shall never forget how Crofts stared at you. Come, you've only
+got twenty minutes, and you London fellows always want an hour."
+
+"He's entitled to some consideration now he's a private secretary,"
+said Lady Julia.
+
+"Bless us all! yes; I forgot that. Come, Mr Private Secretary, don't
+stand on the grandeur of your neck--tie today, as there's nobody here
+but ourselves. You shall have an opportunity tomorrow."
+
+Then Johnny was handed over to the groom of the chambers, and exactly
+in twenty minutes he re-appeared in the drawing-room.
+
+As soon as Lady Julia had left them after dinner, the earl began to
+explain his plan for the coming campaign. "I'll tell you now what I
+have arranged," said he. "The squire is to be here tomorrow with his
+eldest niece--your Miss Lily's sister, you know."
+
+"What, Bell?"
+
+"Yes, with Bell, if her name is Bell. She's a very pretty girl, too. I
+don't know whether she's not the prettiest of the two, after all."
+
+"That's a matter of opinion."
+
+"Just so, Johnny; and do you stick to your own. They're coming here for
+three or four days. Lady Julia did ask Mrs Dale and Lily. I wonder
+whether you'll let me call her Lily?"
+
+"Oh, dear! I wish I might have the power of letting you."
+
+"That's just the battle that you've got to fight. But the mother and
+the younger sister wouldn't come. Lady Julia says it's all right--that,
+as a matter of course, she wouldn't come when she heard you were to be
+here. I don't quite understand it. In my days the young girls were
+ready enough to go where they knew they'd meet their lovers, and I
+never thought any the worse of them for it."
+
+"It wasn't because of that," said Eames.
+
+"That's what Lady Julia says, and I always find her to be right in
+things of that sort. And she says you'll have a better chance in going
+over there than you would here, if she were in the same house with you.
+If I was going to make love to a girl, of course I'd sooner have her
+close to me--staying in the same house. I should think it the best fun
+in the world. And we might have had a dance, and all that kind of
+thing. But I couldn't make her come, you know."
+
+"Oh, no; of course not."
+
+"And Lady Julia thinks that it's best as it is. You must go over, you
+know, and get the mother on your side, if you can. I take it, the truth
+is this--you mustn't be angry with me, you know, for saying it."
+
+"You may be sure of that."
+
+"I suppose she was fond of that fellow, Crosbie. She can't be very fond
+of him now, I should think, after the way he has treated her; but
+she'll find a difficulty in making her confession that she really likes
+you better than she ever liked him. Of course that's what you'll want
+her to say."
+
+"I want her to say that she'll be my wife--some day."
+
+"And when she has agreed to the some day, then you'll begin to press
+her to agree to your day--eh, sir? My belief is you'll bring her round.
+Poor girl! why should she break her heart when a decent fellow like you
+will only be too glad to make her a happy woman?" And in this way the
+earl talked to Eames till the latter almost believed that the
+difficulties were vanishing from out of his path. "Could it be
+possible," he asked himself, as he went to bed, "that in a fortnight's
+time Lily Dale should have accepted him as her future husband?" Then he
+remembered that day on which Crosbie, with the two girls, had called at
+his mother's house, when in the bitterness of his heart, he had sworn
+to himself that he would always regard Crosbie as his enemy. Since then
+the world had gone well with him; and he had no longer any bitter
+feeling against Crosbie. That matter had been arranged on the platform
+of the Paddington Station. He felt that if Lily would now accept him he
+could almost shake hands with Crosbie. The episode in his life and in
+Lily's would have been painful; but he would learn to look back upon
+that without regret, if Lily could be taught to believe that a kind
+fate had at last given her to the better of her two lovers. "I'm afraid
+she won't bring herself to forget him," he had said to the earl.
+"She'll only be too happy to forget him," the earl had answered, "if
+you can induce her to begin the attempt. Of course it is very bitter at
+first--all the world knew about it; but, poor girl, she is not to be
+wretched for ever, because of that. Do you go about your work with some
+little confidence, and I doubt not but what you'll have your way. You
+have everybody in your favour--the squire, her mother, and all." While
+such words as these were in his ears how could he fail to hope and to
+be confident? While he was sitting cosily over his bedroom fire he
+resolved that it should be as the earl had said. But when he got up on
+the following morning, and stood shivering as he came out of his bath,
+he could not feel the same confidence. "Of course I shall go to her,"
+he said to himself, "and make a plain story of it. But I know what her
+answer will be. She will tell me that she cannot forget him." Then his
+feelings towards Crosbie were not so friendly as they had been on the
+previous evening.
+
+He did not visit the Small House on that, his first day. It had been
+thought better that he should first meet the squire and Bell at
+Guestwick Manor, so he postponed his visit to Mrs Dale till the next
+morning.
+
+"Go when you like," said the earl. "There's the brown cob for you to do
+what you like with him while you are here."
+
+"I'll go and see my mother," said John; "but I won't take the cob
+today. If you'll let me have him tomorrow, I'll ride to Allington." So
+he walked off to Guestwick by himself.
+
+He knew well every yard of the ground over which he went, remembering
+every gate and stile and greensward from the time of his early boyhood.
+And now as he went along through his old haunts, he could not but look
+back and think of the thoughts which had filled his mind in his earlier
+wanderings. As I have said before, in some of these pages, no walks
+taken by the man are so crowded with thought as those taken by the boy.
+He had been early taught to understand that the world to him would be
+very hard; that he had nothing to look to but his own exertions, and
+that those exertions would not, unfortunately, be backed by any great
+cleverness of his own. I do not know that anybody had told him that he
+was a fool; but he had come to understand, partly through his own
+modesty, and partly, no doubt, through the somewhat obtrusive
+diffidence of his mother, that he was less sharp than other lads. It is
+probably true that he had come to his sharpness later in life than is
+the case with many young men. He had not grown on the sunny side of the
+wall. Before that situation in the Income-tax Office had fallen in his
+way, very humble modes of life had offered themselves--or, rather, had
+not offered themselves for his acceptance. He had endeavoured to become
+an usher at a commercial seminary, not supposed to be in a very
+thriving condition; but he had been, luckily, found deficient in his
+arithmetic. There had been some chance of his going into the
+leather--warehouse of Messrs Basil and Pigskin, but those gentlemen had
+required a premium, and any payment of that kind had been quite out of
+his mother's power. A country attorney, who had known the family for
+years, had been humbly solicited, the widow almost kneeling before him
+with tears, to take Johnny by the hand and make a clerk of him; but the
+attorney had discovered that Master Johnny Eames was not supposed to be
+sharp, and would have none of him. During those days, those gawky,
+gainless, unadmired days, in which he had wandered about the lanes of
+Guestwick as his only amusement, and had composed hundreds of rhymes in
+honour of Lily Dale which no human eye but his own had ever seen, he
+had come to regard himself as almost a burden upon the earth. Nobody
+seemed to want him. His own mother was very anxious; but her anxiety
+seemed to him to indicate a continual desire to get rid of him. For
+hours upon hours he would fill his mind with castles in the air,
+dreaming of wonderful successes in the midst of which Lily Dale always
+reigned as a queen. He would carry on the same story in his imagination
+from month to month, almost contenting himself with such ideal
+happiness. Had it not been for the possession of that power, what
+comfort could there have been to him in his life? There are lads of
+seventeen who can find happiness in study, who can busy themselves in
+books and be at their ease among the creations of other minds. These
+are they who afterwards become well-informed men. It was not so with
+John Eames. He had never been studious. The perusal of a novel was to
+him in those days a slow affair; and of poetry he read but little,
+storing up accurately in his memory all that he did read. But he
+created for himself his own romance, though to the eye a most
+unromantic youth; and he wandered through the Guestwick woods with many
+thoughts of which they who knew him best knew nothing. All this he
+thought of now as, with devious steps, he made his way towards his old
+home--with very devious steps, for he went backwards through the woods
+by a narrow path which led right away from the town down to a little
+water-course, over which stood a wooden foot-bridge with a rail. He
+stood on the centre of the plank, at a spot which he knew well, and
+rubbing his hand upon the rail, cleaned it for the space of a few
+inches of the vegetable growth produced by the spray of the water.
+There, rudely carved in the wood, was still the word LILY. When he cut
+those letters she had been almost a child. "I wonder whether she will
+come here with me and let me show it to her," he said to himself. Then
+he took out his knife and cleared the cuttings of the letters, and
+having done so, leaned upon the rail, and looked down upon the running
+water. How well things in the world had gone for him! How well! And yet
+what would it all be if Lily would not come to him? How well the world
+had gone for him! In those days when he stood there carving the girl's
+name everybody had seemed to regard him as a heavy burden, and he had
+so regarded himself. Now he was envied by many, respected by many,
+taken by the hand as a friend by those high in the world's esteem.
+When he had come near the Guestwick Mansion in his old walks--always,
+however, keeping at a great distance lest the grumpy old lord should.
+be down upon him and scold him--he had little dreamed that he and the
+grumpy old lord would ever be together on such familiar terms, that he
+would tell to that lord more of his private thoughts than to any other
+living being; yet it had come to that. The grumpy old lord had now told
+him that that gift of money was to be his whether Lily Dale accepted
+him or no. "Indeed, the thing's done," said the grumpy lord, pulling
+out from his pocket certain papers, "and you've got to receive the
+dividends as they become due." Then, when Johnny had expostulated--as,
+indeed, the circumstances had left him no alternative but to
+expostulate--the earl had roughly bade him hold his tongue, telling him
+that he would have to fetch Sir Raffle's boots directly he got back to
+London. So the conversation had quickly turned itself away to Sir
+Raffle, whom they had both ridiculed with much satisfaction. "If he
+finds his way down here in September, Master Johnny, or in any other
+month either, you may fit my head with a foolscap. Not remember,
+indeed! Is it not wonderful that any man should make himself so mean a
+fool?" All this was thought over again, as Eames leaned upon the bridge.
+He remembered every word, and remembered many other words--earlier
+words, spoken years ago, filling him with desolation as to the
+prospects of his life. It had seemed that his friends had united in
+prophesying that the outlook into the world for him was hopeless, and
+that the earning of bread must be for ever beyond his power. And now
+his lines had fallen to him in very pleasant places, and he was among
+those whom the world had determined to caress. And yet, what would it
+all be if Lily would not share his happiness? When he had carved that
+name on the rail, his love for Lily had been an idea. It had now become
+a reality which might probably be full of pain. If it were so--if such
+should be the result, of his wooing--would not those old dreamy days
+have been better than these--the days of his success?
+
+It was one o'clock by the time that he reached his mother's house, and
+he found her and his sister in a troubled and embarrassed state. "Of
+course you know, John," said his mother, as soon as their first
+embraces were over," that we are going to dine at the Manor this
+evening?" But he did not know it, neither the earl nor Lady Julia
+having said anything on the subject. "Of course we are going," said Mrs
+Eames, "and it was so very kind. But I've never been out to such a
+house for so many years, John, and I do feel in such a twitter. I dined
+there once, soon after we were married; but I never have been there
+since that."
+
+"It's not the earl I mind, but Lady Julia," said Mary Eames.
+
+"She's the most good-natured woman in the world," said Johnny.
+
+"Oh, dear; people say she is so cross!"
+
+"That's because people don't know her. If I was asked who is the
+kindest-hearted woman I know in the world, I think I should say Lady
+Julia de Guest. I think I should."
+
+"Ah! but then they're so fond of you," said the admiring mother. "You
+saved his lordship's life--under Providence."
+
+"That's all bosh, mother. You ask Dr Crofts. He knows them as well as I
+do."
+
+"Dr Crofts is going to marry Bell Dale," said Mary; and then the
+conversation was turned from the subject of Lady Julia's perfections,
+and the awe inspired by the earl.
+
+"Crofts going to marry Bell!" exclaimed Eames, thinking almost with
+dismay of the doctor's luck in thus getting himself accepted all at
+once, while he had been suing with the constancy almost of a Jacob.
+
+"Yes," said Mary; "and they say that she has refused her cousin
+Bernard, and that, therefore, the squire is taking away the house from
+them. You know they're all coming into Guestwick."
+
+"Yes, I know they are. But I don't believe that the squire is taking
+away the house."
+
+"Why should they come then? Why should they give up such a charming
+place as that?"
+
+"Rent-free!" said Mrs Eames.
+
+"I don't know why they should come away; but I can't believe the squire
+is turning them out; at any rate not for that reason." The squire was
+prepared to advocate John's suit, and therefore John was bound to do
+battle on the squire's behalf.
+
+"He is a very stern man," said Mrs Eames, and they say that since that
+affair of poor Lily's he has been more cross than ever with them. As
+far as I know, it was not Lily's fault."
+
+"Poor Lily!" said Mary. "I do pity her. If I was her. I should hardly
+know how to show my face; I shouldn't, indeed."
+
+"And why shouldn't she show her face?" said John, in an angry tone.
+"What has she done to be ashamed of? Show her face indeed! I cannot
+understand the spite which one woman will sometimes have to another."
+
+"There is no spite, John; and it's very wrong of you to say so," said
+Mary, defending herself.
+
+"But it is a very unpleasant thing for a girl to be jilted. All the
+world knows that she was engaged to him."
+
+"And all the world knows--" But he would not proceed to declare that all
+the world knew that also Crosbie had been well thrashed for his
+baseness. It would not become him to mention that even before his
+mother and sister. All the world did know it; all the world that cared
+to know anything of the matter--except Lily Dale herself. Nobody had
+ever yet told Lily Dale of that occurrence at the Paddington Railway
+Station, and it was well for John that her friends and his had been so
+discreet.
+
+"Oh, of course you are her champion," said Mary. "And I didn't mean to
+say anything unkind. Indeed I didn't. Of course it was a misfortune."
+
+"I think it was the best piece of good fortune that could have happened
+to her, not to marry a d----- scoundrel like--"
+
+"Oh, John!" exclaimed Mrs Eames.
+
+"I beg your pardon, mother. But it isn't swearing to call such a man as
+that a d----- scoundrel."
+
+And he particularly emphasised the naughty word, thinking that thereby
+he would add to its import, and take away from its naughtiness. "But we
+won't talk any more about him. I hate the man's very name. I hated him
+the first moment that I saw him, and knew that he was a blackguard from
+his look. And I don't believe a word about the squire having been cross
+to them. Indeed I know he has been the reverse of cross. So Bell is
+going to marry Dr Crofts!"
+
+"There is no doubt on earth about that," said Mary. "And they say that
+Bernard Dale is going abroad with his regiment."
+
+Then John discussed with his mother his duties as private secretary,
+and his intention of leaving Mrs Roper's house. "I suppose it isn't
+nice enough for you now, John," said his mother.
+
+"It never was very nice, mother, to tell you the truth. There were
+people there-- But you mustn't think I am turning up my nose because I'm
+getting grand. I don't want to live any better than we all lived at Mrs
+Roper's; but she took in persons that were not agreeable. There is a Mr
+and Mrs Lupex there." Then he described something of their life in
+Burton Crescent, but did not say much about Amelia Roper. Amelia Roper
+had not made her appearance in Guestwick, as he had once feared that
+she would do; and therefore it did not need that he should at present
+make known to his mother that episode in his life.
+
+When he got back to the Manor House he found that Mr Dale and his niece
+had arrived. They were both sitting with Lady Julia when he went into
+the morning room, and Lord de Guest was standing over the fire talking
+to them. Eames as he came among them felt terribly conscious of his
+position, as though all there were aware that he had been brought down,
+from London on purpose to make a declaration of love--as, indeed, all of
+them were aware of that fact. Bell, though no one had told her so in
+direct words, was as sure of it as the others.
+
+"Here comes the prince of matadores," said the earl.
+
+"No, my lord; you're the prince. I'm only your first follower." Though
+he could contrive that his words should be gay, his looks were
+sheepish, and when he gave his hand to the squire it was only by a
+struggle that he could bring himself to look straight into the old
+man's face.
+
+"I'm very glad to see you, John," said the squire, "very glad indeed."
+
+"And so am I," said Bell. "I have been so happy to hear that you have
+been promoted at your office, and so is mamma."
+
+"I hope Mrs Dale is quite well," said he--"and Lily." The word had been
+pronounced, but it had been done with so manifest an effort that all in
+the room were conscious of it, and paused as Bell prepared her little
+answer.
+
+"My sister has been very ill, you know--with scarlatina. But she has
+recovered with wonderful quickness, and is nearly well again now. She
+will be so glad to see you if you will go over."
+
+"Yes; I shall certainly go over," said John.
+
+"And now shall I show you your room, Miss Dale?" said Lady Julia. And
+so the party was broken up, and the ice had been broken.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIII
+
+LOQUITUR HOPKINS
+
+The squire had been told that his niece Bell had accepted Dr Crofts,
+and he had signified a sort of acquiescence in the arrangement, saying
+that if it were to be so, he had nothing to say against Dr Crofts. He
+spoke this in a melancholy tone of voice, wearing on his face that look
+of subdued sorrow which was now habitual to him. It was to Mrs Dale
+that he spoke on the subject. "I could have wished that it might have
+been otherwise," he said, "as you are well aware. I had family reasons
+for wishing that it might be otherwise. But I have nothing to say
+against it. Dr Crofts, as her husband, shall be welcome to my house."
+Mrs Dale, who had expected much worse than this, began to thank him for
+his kindness, and to say that she also would have preferred to see her
+daughter married to her cousin. "But in such a matter the decision
+should be left entirely to the girl. Don't you think so?
+
+"I have not a word to say against her," he repeated. Then Mrs Dale left
+him, and told her daughter that her uncle's manner of receiving the
+news had been, for him, very gracious.
+
+"You were his favourite, but Lily will be so now," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I don't care a bit about that--or, rather, I do care, and think it will
+be in every way better. But as I, who am the naughty one, will go away,
+and as Lily, who is the good one, will remain with you, doesn't it
+almost seem a pity that you should be leaving the house?"
+
+Mrs Dale thought it was almost a pity, but she could not say so now.
+"You think Lily will remain," she said.
+
+"Yes, mamma; I feel sure she will."
+
+"She was always very fond of John Eames--and he is doing so well."
+
+"It will be of no use, mamma. She is fond of him--very fond. In a sort
+of a way she loves him--so well, that I feel sure she never mentions his
+name without some inward reference to her old childish thoughts and
+fancies. If he had come before Mr Crosbie it would have all been well
+with her. But she cannot do it now. Her pride would prevent her, even
+if her heart permitted it. Oh! dear; it's very wrong of me to say so,
+after all that I have said before; but I almost wish you were not
+going. Uncle Christopher seems to be less hard than he used to be; and
+as I was the sinner, and as I am disposed of--"
+
+"It is too late now, my dear."
+
+"And we should neither of us have the courage to mention it to Lily,"
+said Bell.
+
+On the following morning the squire sent for his sister-in-law, as it
+was his wont to do when necessity came for any discussion on matters of
+business. This was perfectly understood between them, and such sending
+was not taken as indicating any lack of courtesy on the part of Mr
+Dale. "Mary," he said, as soon as Mrs Dale was seated, "I shall do for
+Bell exactly what I have proposed to do for Lily. I had intended more
+than that once, of course. But then it would all have gone into
+Bernard's pocket; as it is, it shall make no difference between them.
+They shall each have a hundred a year--that is, when they marry. You had
+better tell Crofts to speak to me."
+
+"Mr Dale, he doesn't expect it. He does not expect a penny."
+
+"So much the better for him; and, indeed, so much the better for her.
+He won't make her the less welcome to his home because she brings some
+assistance to it."
+
+"We have never thought of it--any of us. The offer has come so suddenly
+that I don't know what I ought to say."
+
+"Say--nothing. If you choose to make me a return for it--but I am only
+doing what I conceive to be my duty, and have no right to ask for a
+kindness in return."
+
+"But what kindness can we show you, Mr Dale?"
+
+"Remain in that house." In saying these last words he spoke as though
+he were again angry--as though he were again laying down the law to
+them--as though he were telling her of a duty which was due to him and
+incumbent on her. His voice was as stern and his face as acid as ever.
+He said that he was asking for a kindness; but surely no man ever asked
+for kindness in a voice so peremptory. "Remain in that house." Then he
+turned himself in towards his table as though he had no more to say.
+
+But Mrs Dale was beginning, now at last, to understand something of his
+mind and real character. He could be affectionate and forbearing in his
+giving; but when asking, he could not be otherwise than stern. Indeed,
+he could not ask; he could only demand.
+
+"We have done so much now," Mrs Dale began to plead.
+
+"Well, well, well. I did not mean to speak about that. Things are
+unpacked easier than they are packed. But, however-- Never mind. Bell is
+to go with me this afternoon to Guestwick Manor. Let her be up here at
+two. Grimes can bring her box round, I suppose."
+
+"Oh, yes: of course."
+
+"And don't be talking to her about money before she starts. I had
+rather you didn't--you understand. But when you see Crofts, tell him to
+come to me. Indeed, he'd better come at once, if this thing is to go on
+quickly."
+
+It may easily be understood that Mrs Dale would disobey the injunctions
+contained in the squire's last words. It was quite out of the question
+that she should return to her daughters and not tell them the result of
+her morning's interview with their uncle. A hundred a year in the
+doctor's modest household would make all the difference between plenty
+and want, between modest plenty and endurable want. Of course she told
+them, giving Bell to understand that she must dissemble so far as to
+pretend ignorance of the affair.
+
+"I shall thank him at once," said Bell; "and tell him that I did not at
+all expect it, but am not too proud to accept it."
+
+"Pray don't, my dear; not just now. I am breaking a sort of promise in
+telling you at all--only I could not keep it to myself. And he has so
+many things to worry him! Though he says nothing about it now, he has
+half broken his heart about you and Bernard." Then, too, Mrs Dale told
+the girls what request the squire had just made, and the manner in
+which he had made it. "The tone of his voice as he spoke brought tears
+into my eyes. I almost wish we had not done anything."
+
+"But, mamma," said Lily, "what difference can it make to him? You know
+that our presence near him was always a trouble to him. He never really
+wanted us. He liked to have Bell there when he thought that Bell would
+marry his pet."
+
+"Don't be unkind, Lily."
+
+"I don't mean to be unkind. Why shouldn't Bernard be his pet? I love
+Bernard dearly, and always thought it the best point in Uncle
+Christopher that he was so fond of him. I knew, you know, that it was
+no use. Of course I knew it, as I understood all about somebody else.
+But Bernard is his pet."
+
+"He's fond of you all, in his own way," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"But is he fond of you?--that's the question," said Lily. "We could have
+forgiven him anything done to us, and have put up with any words he
+might have spoken to us, because he regards us as children. His giving
+a hundred a year to Bell won't make you comfortable in this house if he
+still domineers over you. If a neighbour be neighbourly, near
+neighbourhood is very nice. But Uncle Christopher has not been
+neighbourly. He has wanted to be more than an uncle to us, on condition
+that he might be less than a brother to you. Bell and I have always
+felt that his regard on such terms was not worth having."
+
+"I almost feel that we have been wrong," said Mrs Dale; "but in truth I
+never thought that the matter would be to him one of so much moment."
+
+When Bell had gone, Mrs Dale and Lily were not disposed to continue
+with much energy the occupation on which they had all been employed for
+some days past. There had been life and excitement in the work when
+they had first commenced their packing, but now it was grown wearisome,
+dull, and distasteful. Indeed so much of it was done that but little
+was left to employ them, except those final strappings and fastenings,
+and that last collection of odds and ends which could not be
+accomplished till they were absolutely on the point of starting. The
+squire had said that unpacking would be easier than packing, and Mrs
+Dale, as she wandered about among the hampers and cases, began to
+consider whether the task of restoring all the things to their old
+places would be very disagreeable. She said nothing of this to Lily,
+and Lily herself, whatever might be her thoughts, made no such
+suggestion to her mother.
+
+"I think Hopkins will miss us more than any one else," she said.
+"Hopkins will have no one to scold."
+
+Just at that moment Hopkins appeared at the parlour window, and
+signified his desire for a conference.
+
+"You must come round," said Lily. "It's too cold for the window to he
+opened. I always like to get him into the house, because he feels
+himself a little abashed by the chairs and tables; or, perhaps, it is
+the carpet that is too much for him. Out on the gravel-walks he is such
+a terrible tyrant, and in the greenhouse he almost tramples upon one!"
+
+Hopkins, when he did appear at the parlour door, seemed by his manner
+to justify Lily's discretion. He was not at all masterful in his tone
+or bearing, and seemed to pay to the chairs and tables all the
+deference which they could have expected.
+
+"So you be going in earnest, ma'am," he said, looking down at Mrs
+Dale's feet.
+
+As Mrs Dale did not answer him at once, Lily spoke--"Yes, Hopkins, we
+are going in a very few days, now. We shall see you sometimes, I hope,
+over at Guestwick."
+
+"Humph!" said Hopkins. "So you be really going! I didn't think it'd
+ever come to that, miss; I didn't indeed--and no more it oughtn't; but
+of course it isn't for me to speak."
+
+"People must change their residence sometimes, you know," said Mrs
+Dale, using the same argument by which Eames had endeavoured to excuse
+his departure to Mrs Roper.
+
+"Well, ma'am; it ain't for me to say anything. But this I will say,
+I've lived here about t squire's place, man and boy, just all my life,
+seeing I was born here, as you knows, Mrs Dale; and of all the bad
+things I ever see come about the place, this is a sight the worst."
+
+"Oh, Hopkins!"
+
+"The worst of all, ma'am; the worst of all! It'll just kill t' squire!
+There's ne'ery doubt in the world about that. It'll be the very death
+of t' old man."
+
+"That's nonsense, Hopkins," said Lily.
+
+"Very well, miss. I don't say but what it is nonsense; only you'll see.
+There's Mr Bernard--he's gone away; and by all accounts he never did
+care very much for the place. They say all he's a-going to the Hingies.
+And Miss Bell is going to be married--which is all proper, in course:
+why shouldn't she? And why shouldn't you, too, Miss Lily?"
+
+"Perhaps I shall, some day, Hopkins."
+
+"There's no day like the present, Miss Lily. And I do say this, that
+the man as pitched into him would be the man for my money." This, which
+Hopkins spoke in the excitement of the moment, was perfectly
+unintelligible to Lily, and Mrs Dale, who shuddered as she heard him,
+said not a word to call for any explanation. "But," continued Hopkins,
+"that's all as it may be, Miss Lily, and you be in the hands of
+Providence--as is others."
+
+"Exactly so, Hopkins."
+
+"But why should your mamma be all for going away? She ain't going to
+marry no one. Here's the house, and there's she, and there's t'squire;
+and why should she be for going away? So much going away all at once
+can't be for any good. It's just a breaking up of everything, as though
+nothing wasn't good enough for nobody. I never went away, and I can't
+abide it."
+
+"Well, Hopkins; it's settled now," said Mrs Dale, "and I'm afraid it
+can't be unsettled."
+
+"Settled--well. Tell me this: do you expect, Mrs Dale, that he's to live
+there all alone by hisself without any one to say a cross word
+to--unless it be me or Dingles; for Jolliffe's worse than nobody, he's
+so mortial cross hisself. Of course he can't stand it. If you goes
+away, Mrs Dale; Mister Bernard, he'll be squire in less than twelve
+months. He'll come back from the Hingies, then, I suppose?"
+
+"I don't think my brother-in-law will take it in that way, Hopkins."
+
+"A, ma'am, you don't know him--not as I knows him--all the ins and outs
+and crinks and crannies of him. I knows him as I does the old
+apple-trees that I've been a-handling for forty year. There's a deal of
+bad wood about them old cankered trees, and some folk say they ain't
+worth the ground they stand on; but I know where the sap runs, and when
+the fruit-blossom shows itself I know where the fruit will be the
+sweetest. It don't take much to kill one of them old trees--but there's
+life in 'm yet if they be well handled."
+
+"I'm sure I hope my brother's life may be long spared to him," said Mrs
+Dale.
+
+"Then don't be taking yourself away, ma'am, into them gashly lodgings
+at Guestwick. I says they are gashly for the likes of a Dale. It is not
+for me to speak, ma'am, of course. And I only came up now just to know
+what things you'd like with you out of the greenhouse."
+
+"Oh, nothing, Hopkins, thank you," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"He told me to put up for you the best I could pick, and I means to do
+it;" and Hopkins, as he spoke, indicated by a motion of his head that
+he was making reference to the squire.
+
+"We shan't have any place for them," said Lily.
+
+"I must send a few, miss, just to cheer you up a bit. I fear you'll be
+very dolesome there. And the doctor--he ain't got what you can call a
+regular garden, but there is a bit of a place behind."
+
+"But we wouldn't rob the dear old place," said Lily.
+
+"For the matter of that what does it signify? T'squire'll be that
+wretched he'll turn sheep in here to destroy the place, or he'll have
+the garden ploughed. You see if he don't. As for the place, the place
+is clean done for, if you leave it. You don't suppose he'll go and let
+the Small House to strangers. T'squire ain't one of that sort any ways."
+
+"Ah me!" exclaimed Mrs Dale, as soon as Hopkins had taken himself off.
+
+"What is it, mamma? He's a dear old man, but surely what he says cannot
+make you really unhappy."
+
+"It is so hard to know what one ought to do. I did not mean to be
+selfish, but it seems to me as though I were doing the most selfish
+thing in the world."
+
+"Nay, mamma; it has been anything but selfish. Besides, it is we that
+have done it; not you."
+
+"Do you know, Lily, that I also have that feeling as to breaking up
+one's old mode of life of which Hopkins spoke. I thought that I should
+be glad to escape from this place, but now that the time has come I
+dread it."
+
+"Do you mean that you repent?"
+
+Mrs Dale did not answer her daughter at once, fearing to commit herself
+by words which could not be retracted. But at last she said, "Yes,
+Lily; I think I do repent. I think that it has not been well done."
+
+"Then let it be undone," said Lily.
+
+The dinner-party at Guestwick Manor on that day was not very bright,
+and yet the earl had done all in his power to make his guests happy.
+But gaiety did not come naturally to his house, which, as will have
+been seen, was an abode very unlike in its nature to that of the other
+earl at Courcy Castle. Lady de Courcy at any rate understood how to
+receive and entertain a houseful of people, though the practice of
+doing so might give rise to difficult questions in the privacy of her
+domestic relations. Lady Julia did not understand it; but then Lady
+Julia was never called upon to answer for the expense of extra
+servants, nor was she asked about twice a week who the ---- was to pay
+the wine-merchant's bill? As regards Lord de Guest and the Lady Julia
+themselves, I think they had the best of it; but I am bound to admit,
+with reference to chance guests, that the house was dull. The people
+who were now gathered at the earl's table could hardly have been
+expected to be very sprightly when in company with each other. The
+squire was not a man much given to general society, and was unused to
+amuse a table full of people. On the present occasion he sat next to
+Lady Julia, and from time to time muttered a few words to her about the
+state of the country. Mrs Eames was terribly afraid of everybody there,
+and especially of the earl, next to whom she sat, and whom she
+continually called "my lord," showing by her voice as she did so that
+she was almost alarmed by the sound of her own voice. Mr and Mrs Boyce
+were there, the parson sitting on the other side of Lady Julia, and the
+parson's wife on the other side of the earl. Mrs Boyce was very
+studious to show that he was quite at home, and talked perhaps more
+than any one else; but in doing so she bored the earl most exquisitely,
+so that he told John Eames the next morning that she was worse than the
+bull. The parson ate his dinner, but said little or nothing between the
+two graces. He was a heavy, sensible, slow man, who knew himself and
+his own powers. "Uncommon good stewed beef," he said, as he went home;
+"why can't we have our beef stewed like that?" "Because we don't pay
+our cook sixty pounds a year," said Mrs Boyce. "A woman with sixteen
+pounds can stew beef as well as a woman with sixty," said he; "she only
+wants looking after." The earl himself was possessed of a sort of
+gaiety. There was about him a lightness of spirit which often made him
+an agreeable companion to one single person. John Eames conceived him
+to be the most sprightly old man of his day--an old man with the fun and
+frolic almost of a boy. But this spirit, though it would show itself
+before John Eames, was not up to the entertainment of John Eames's
+mother and sister, together with the squire, the parson, and the
+parson's wife of Allington. So that the earl was over-weighted and did
+not shine on this occasion at his own dinner-table. Dr Crofts, who had
+also been invited, and who had secured the place which was now
+peculiarly his own, next to Bell Dale, was no doubt happy enough; as,
+let us hope, was the young lady also; but they added very little to the
+general hilarity of the company. John Eames was seated between his own
+sister and the parson, and did not at all enjoy his position. He had a
+full view of the doctor's felicity, as the happy pair sat opposite to
+him, and conceived himself to be hardly treated by Lily's absence.
+
+The party was certainly very dull, as were all such dinners at
+Guestwick Manor. There are houses, which, in their everyday course, are
+not conducted by any means in a sad or unsatisfactory manner--in which
+life, as a rule, runs along merrily enough; but which cannot give a
+dinner-party; or, I might rather say, should never allow themselves to
+be allured into the attempt. The owners of such houses are generally
+themselves quite aware of the fact, and dread the dinner which they
+resolved to give quite as much as it is dreaded by their friends. They
+know that they prepare for their guests an evening of misery, and for
+themselves certain long hours of purgatory which are hardly to be
+endured. But they will do it. Why that long table, and all those
+supernumerary glasses and knives and forks, if they are never to be
+used? That argument produces all this misery; that and others cognate
+to it. On the present occasion, no doubt, there were excuses to be
+made. The squire and his niece had been invited on special cause, and
+their presence would have been well enough. The doctor added in would
+have done no harm. It was good-natured, too, that invitation given to
+Mrs Eames and her daughter. The error lay in the parson and his wife.
+There was no necessity for their being there, nor had they any ground
+on which to stand, except the party-giving ground. Mr and Mrs Boyce
+made the dinner-party, and destroyed the social circle. Lady Julia knew
+that she had been wrong as soon as she had sent out the note.
+
+Nothing was said on that evening which has any bearing on our story.
+Nothing, indeed, was said which had any bearing on anything. The earl's
+professed object had been to bring the squire and young Eames together;
+but people are never brought together on such melancholy occasions.
+Though they sip their port in close contiguity, they are poles asunder
+in their minds and feelings. When the Guestwick fly came for Mrs Eames,
+and the parson's pony-phaeton came for him and Mrs Boyce, a great
+relief was felt; but the misery of those who were left had gone too far
+to allow of any reaction on that evening. The squire yawned, and the
+earl yawned, and then there was an end of it for that night.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIV
+
+THE SECOND VISIT TO THE GUESTWICK BRIDGE
+
+Bell had declared that her sister would be very happy to see John Eames
+if he would go over to Allington, and he had replied that of course he
+would go there. So much having been, as it were, settled, he was able
+to speak of his visit as a matter of course at the breakfast table, on
+the morning after the earl's dinner-party. "I must get you to come
+round with me, Dale, and see what I am doing to the land," the earl
+said. And then he proposed to order saddle-horses. But the squire
+preferred walking, and in this way they were disposed of soon after
+breakfast.
+
+John had it in his mind to get Bell to himself for half an hour, and
+hold a conference with her; but it either happened that Lady Julia was
+too keen in her duties as a hostess, or else, as was more possible,
+Bell avoided the meeting. No opportunity for such an interview offered
+itself, though he hung about the drawing-room all the morning. "You had
+better wait for luncheon, now," Lady Julia said to him about twelve.
+But this he declined; and taking himself away hid himself about the
+place for the next hour and a half. During this time he considered much
+whether it would be better for him to ride or walk. If she should give
+him any hope, he could ride back triumphant as a field-marshal. Then
+the horse would be delightful to him. But if she should give him no
+hope--if it should be his destiny to be rejected utterly on that
+morning--then the horse would be terribly in the way of his sorrow.
+Under such circumstances what could he do but roam wide across the
+fields, resting when he might choose to rest, and running when it might
+suit him to run. "And she is not like other girls," he thought to
+himself. "She won't care for my boots being dirty." So at last he
+elected to walk.
+
+"Stand up to her boldly, man," the earl had said to him. "By George,
+what is there to be afraid of? It's my belief they'll give most to
+those who ask for most. There's nothing sets' em against a man like
+being sheepish." How the earl knew so much, seeing that he had not
+himself given signs of any success in that walk of life, I am not
+prepared to say. But Eames took his advice as being in itself good, and
+resolved to act upon it. "Not that any resolution will be of any use,"
+he said to himself, as he walked along. "When the moment comes I know
+that I shall tremble before her, and I know that she'll see it; but I
+don't think it will make any difference in her."
+
+He had last seen her on the lawn behind the Small House, just at that
+time when her passion for Crosbie was at the strongest. Eames had gone
+thither impelled by a foolish desire to declare to her his hopeless
+love, and she had answered him by telling him that she loved Mr Crosbie
+better than all the world besides. Of course she had done so, at that
+time; but, nevertheless, her manner of telling him had seemed to him to
+be cruel. And he also had been cruel. He had told her that he hated
+Crosbie--calling him "that man," and assuring her that no earthly
+consideration should induce him to go into "that man's house." Then he
+had walked away moodily wishing him all manner of evil. Was it not
+singular that all the evil things which he, in his mind, had meditated
+for the man, had fallen upon him. Crosbie had lost his love! He had so
+proved himself to be a villain that his name might not be so much as
+mentioned! He had been ignominiously thrashed! But what good would all
+this be if his image were still dear to Lily's heart? "I told her that
+I loved her then," he said to himself, "though I had no right to do so.
+At any rate I have a right to tell her now."
+
+When he reached Allington he did not go in through the village and up
+to the front of the Small House by the cross street, but turned by the
+church gate and passed over the squire's terrace, and by the end of the
+Great House through the garden. Here he encountered Hopkins. "Why, if
+that b'aint Mr Eames!" said the gardener. "Mr John, may I make so
+bold!" and Hopkins held out a very dirty hand, which Eames of course
+took, unconscious of the cause of this new affection.
+
+"I'm just going to call at the Small House, and I thought I'd come this
+way."
+
+"To be sure; this way, or that way, or any way, who's so welcome, Mr
+John? I envies you; I envies you more than I envies any man. If I could
+a got him by the scuff of the neck, I'd a treated him jist like any
+wermin--I would, indeed! He was wermin! I ollays said it. I hated him
+ollays! I did indeed, Mr John, from the first moment when he used to be
+nigging away at them foutry balls, knocking them in among the
+rhododendrons, as though there weren't no flower blossoms for next
+year. He never looked at one as though one were a Christian; did he, Mr
+John?"
+
+"I wasn't very fond of him myself, Hopkins."
+
+"Of course you weren't very fond of him. Who was?--only she, poor young
+lady. She'll be better now, Mr John, a deal better. He wasn't a
+wholesome lover--not like you are. Tell me, Mr John, did you give it him
+well when you got him? I heard you did--two black eyes, and all his face
+one mash of gore!" And Hopkins, who was by no means a young man,
+stiffly put himself into a fighting attitude.
+
+Eames passed on over the little bridge, which seemed to be in a state
+of fast decay, unattended to by any friendly carpenter, now that the
+days of its use were so nearly at an end; and on into the garden,
+lingering on the spot where he had last said farewell to Lily. He
+looked about as though he expected still to find her there; but there
+was no one to be seen in the garden, and no sound to be heard. As every
+step brought him nearer to her whom he was seeking, he became more and
+more conscious of the hopelessness of his errand. Him she had never
+loved, and why should he venture to hope that she would love him now?
+He would have turned back had he not been aware that his promise to
+others required that he should persevere. He had said that he would do
+this thing, and he would be as good as, his word. But he hardly
+ventured to hope that he might be successful. In this frame of mind he
+slowly made his way up across the lawn.
+
+"My dear, there is John Eames," said Mrs Dale, who had first seen him
+from the parlour window.
+
+"Don't go, mamma."
+
+"I don't know; perhaps it will be better that I should."
+
+"No, mamma, no; what good can it do? It can do no good. I like him as
+well as I can like any one. I love him dearly. But it can do no good.
+Let him come in here, and be very kind to him; but do not go away and
+leave us. Of course I knew he would come, and I shall be very glad to
+see him."
+
+Then Mrs Dale went round to the other room, and admitted her visitor
+through the window of the drawing-room. "We are in terrible confusion,
+John, are we not?
+
+"And so you are really going to live in Guestwick?"
+
+"Well, it looks like it, does it not? But, to tell you a secret--only it
+must be a secret; you must not mention it at Guestwick Manor; even Bell
+does not know--we have half made up our minds to unpack all our things
+and stay where we are."
+
+Eames was so intent on his own purpose, and so fully occupied with the
+difficulty of the task before him, that he could hardly receive Mrs
+Dale's tidings with all the interest which they deserved. "Unpack them
+all again," he said. "That will be very troublesome. Is Lily with you,
+Mrs Dale?"
+
+"Yes, she is in the parlour. Come and see her." So he followed Mrs Dale
+through the hall, and found himself in the presence of his love.
+
+"How do you do, John?" "How do you do, Lily?" We all know the way in
+which such meetings are commenced. Each longed to be tender and
+affectionate to the other--each in a different way; but neither knew how
+to throw any tenderness into this first greeting. "So you're staying at
+the Manor House," said Lily.
+
+"Yes; I'm staying there. Your uncle and Bell came yesterday afternoon."
+
+"Have you heard about Bell?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Oh, yes; Mary told me. I'm so glad of it. I always liked Dr Crofts
+very much. I have not congratulated her, because I didn't know whether
+it was a secret. But Crofts was there last night, and if it is a secret
+he didn't seem to be very careful about keeping it."
+
+"It is no secret," said Mrs Dale. "I don't know that I am fond of such
+secrets." But as she said this, she thought of Crosbie's engagement,
+which had been told to every one, and of its consequences.
+
+"Is it to be soon?" he asked.
+
+"Well, yes; we think so. Of course nothing is settled."
+
+"It was such fun," said Lily. "James, who took, at any rate, a year or
+two to make his proposal, wanted to be married the next day
+afterwards."
+
+"No, Lily; not quite that."
+
+"Well, mamma, it was very nearly that. He thought it could all be done
+this week. It has made us so happy, John! I don't know anybody I should
+so much like for a brother. I'm very glad you like him--very glad. I
+hope you'll be friends always." There was some little tenderness in
+this--as John acknowledged to himself.
+
+"I'm sure we shall--if he likes it. That is, if I ever happen to see
+him. I'll do anything for him I can if he ever comes up to London.
+Wouldn't it be a good thing, Mrs Dale, if he settled himself in London?
+
+"No, John; it would be a very bad thing. Why should he wish to rob me
+of my daughter?"
+
+Mrs Dale was speaking of her eldest daughter; but the very allusion to
+any such robbery covered John Eames's face with a blush, made him hot
+up to the roots of his hair, and for the moment silenced him..
+
+"You think he would have a better career in London?" said Lily,
+speaking under the influence of her superior presence of mind.
+
+She had certainly shown defective judgment in desiring her mother not
+to leave them alone; and of this Mrs Dale soon felt herself aware. The
+thing had to be done, and no little precautionary measure, such as this
+of Mrs Dale's enforced presence, would prevent it. Of this Mrs Dale was
+well aware; and she felt, moreover, that John was entitled to an
+opportunity of pleading his own cause. It might be that such
+opportunity would avail him nothing, but not the less should he have it
+of right, seeing that he desired it. But yet Mrs Dale did not dare to
+get up and leave the room. Lily had asked her not to do so, and at the
+present period of their lives all Lily's requests were sacred. They
+continued for some time to talk of Crofts and his marriage; and when
+that subject was finished, they discussed their own probable--or, as it
+seemed now, improbable--removal to Guestwick. "It's going too far,
+mamma," said Lily, "to say that you think we shall not go. It was only
+last night that you suggested it. The truth is, John, that Hopkins came
+in and discoursed with the most wonderful eloquence. Nobody dared to
+oppose Hopkins. He made us almost cry; he was so pathetic."
+
+"He has just been talking to me, too," said John, "as I came through
+the squire's garden."
+
+"And what has he been saying to you?" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Oh, I don't know; not much." John, however, remembered well, at this
+moment, all that the gardener had said to him. Did she know of that
+encounter between him and Crosbie? and if she did know of it, in what
+light did she regard it?
+
+They had sat thus for an hour together, and Eames was not as yet an
+inch nearer to his object. He had sworn to himself that he would not
+leave the Small House without asking Lily to be his wife. It seemed to
+him as though he would be guilty of falsehood towards the earl if he
+did so. Lord de Guest had opened his house to him, and had asked all
+the Dales there, and had offered himself up as a sacrifice at the cruel
+shrine of a serious dinner-party, to say nothing of that easier and
+lighter sacrifice which he had made in a pecuniary point of view, in
+order that this thing might be done. Under such circumstances Eames was
+too honest a man not to do it, let the difficulties in his way be what
+they might.
+
+He had sat there for an hour, and Mrs Dale still remained with her
+daughter. Should he get up boldly and ask Lily to put on her bonnet and
+come out into the garden? As the thought struck him, he rose and
+grasped at his hat. "I am going to walk back to Guestwick," said he.
+
+"It was very good of you to come so far to see us."
+
+"I was always fond of walking," he said. "The earl wanted me to ride,
+but I prefer being on foot when I know the country, as I do here."
+
+"Have a glass of wine before you go."
+
+"Oh, dear, no. I think I'll go back through the squire's fields, and
+out on the road at the white gate. The path is quite dry now."
+
+"I dare say it is," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Lily, I wonder whether you would come as far as that with me." As the
+request was made Mrs Dale looked at her daughter almost beseechingly.
+"Do, pray do," said he; "it is a beautiful day for walking."
+
+The path proposed lay right across the field into which, Lily had taken
+Crosbie when she made her offer to let him off from his engagement.
+Could it be possible that she should ever walk there again with another
+lover? "No, John," she said; "not today, I think. I am almost tired,
+and I had rather not go out."
+
+"It would do you good," said Mrs Dale.
+
+"I don't want to be done good to, mamma. Besides, I should have to come
+back by myself."
+
+"I'll come back with you," said Johnny.
+
+"Oh, yes; and then I should have to go again with you. But, John,
+really I don't wish to walk today." Whereupon John Eames again put down
+his hat.
+
+"Lily," said he; and then he stopped. Mrs Dale walked away to the
+window, turning her back upon her daughter and visitor. "Lily, I have
+come over here on purpose to speak to you. Indeed, I have come down
+from London only that I might see you."
+
+"Have you, John?"
+
+"Yes, I have. You know well all that I have got to tell you. I loved
+you before he ever saw you; and now that he has gone, I love you better
+than I ever did. Dear Lily!" and he put out his hand to her.
+
+"No, John; no," she answered.
+
+"Must it be always no?"
+
+"Always no to that. How can it be otherwise? You would not have me
+marry you while I love another!"
+
+"But he is gone. He has taken another wife."
+
+"I cannot change myself because he is changed. If you are kind to me
+you will let that be enough."
+
+"But you are so unkind to me!"
+
+"No, no; oh, I would wish to be so kind to you! John, here; take my
+hand. It is the hand of a friend who loves you, and will always love
+you. Dear John, I will do anything--everything for you but that."
+"There is only one thing," said he, still holding her by the hand, but
+with his face turned from her.
+
+"Nay; do not say so. Are you worse off than I am? I could not have that
+one thing, and I was nearer to my heart's longings than you have ever
+been. I cannot have that one thing; but I know that there are other
+things, and I will not allow myself to be broken-hearted."
+
+"You are stronger than I am," he said.
+
+"Not stronger, but more certain. Make yourself as sure as I am, and
+you, too, will be strong. Is it not so, mamma?"
+
+"I wish it could be otherwise--I wish it could be otherwise! If you can
+give him any hope--"
+
+"Mamma!"
+
+"Tell me that I may come again--in a year," he pleaded.
+
+"I cannot tell you so. You may not come again--not in this way. Do you
+remember what, I told you before, in the garden; that I loved him
+better than all the world besides? It is still the same. I still love
+him better than all the world. How, then, can I give you any hope?"
+
+"But it will not be so for ever, Lily."
+
+"For ever! Why should he not be mine as well as hers when that for ever
+comes? John, if you understand what it is to love, you will say nothing
+more of it. I have spoken to you more openly about this than I have
+ever done to anybody, even to mamma, because I have wished to make you
+understand my feelings. I should be disgraced in my own eyes if I
+admitted the love of another man, after--after--. It is to me almost as
+though I had married him. I am not blaming him, remember. These things
+are different with a man."
+
+She had not dropped his hand, and as she made her last speech was
+sitting in her old chair with her eyes fixed upon the ground. She spoke
+in a low voice, slowly, almost with difficulty; but still the words
+came very clearly, with a clear, distinct voice which caused them to be
+remembered with accuracy, both by Eames and Mrs Dale. To him it seemed
+to be impossible that he should continue his suit after such a
+declaration. To Mrs Dale they were terrible words, speaking of a
+perpetual widowhood, and telling of an amount of suffering greater even
+than that which she had anticipated. It was true that Lily had never
+said so much to her as she had now said to John Eames, or had attempted
+to make so clear an exposition of her own feelings. "I should be
+disgraced in my own eyes if I admitted the love of another man!" They
+were terrible words, but very easy to be understood. Mrs Dale had felt,
+from the first, that Eames was coming too soon, that the earl and the
+squire together were making an effort to cure the wound too quickly
+after its infliction; that time should have been given to her girl to
+recover. But now the attempt had been made, and words had been forced
+from Lily's lips, the speaking of which would never be forgotten by
+herself.
+
+"I knew that it would be so," said John.
+
+"Ah, yes; you know it, because your heart understands my heart. And you
+will not be angry with me, and say naughty, cruel words, as you did
+once before. We will think, of each other, John, and pray for each
+other; and will always love one another. When we do meet let us be glad
+to see each other. No other friend shall ever be dearer to me than you
+are. You are so true and honest! When you marry I will tell your wife
+what an infinite blessing God has given her."
+
+"You shall never do that."
+
+"Yes, I will. I understand what you mean; but yet I will."
+
+"Good-bye, Mrs Dale," he said.
+
+"Good-bye, John. If it could have been otherwise with her, you should
+have had all my best wishes in the matter. I would have loved you
+dearly as my son; and I will love you now." Then she put up her lips
+and kissed his face.
+
+"And so will I love you," said Lily, giving him her hand again. He
+looked longingly into her face as though he had thought it possible
+that she also might kiss him: then he pressed her hand to his lips, and
+without speaking any further farewell, took up his hat and left the
+room.
+
+"Poor fellow!" said Mrs Dale.
+
+"They should not have let him come," said Lily. "But they don't
+understand. They think that I have lost a toy, and they mean to be
+good-natured, and to give me another." Very shortly after that Lily
+went away by herself, and sat alone for hours; and when she joined her
+mother again at tea-time, nothing further was said of John Eames's
+visit.
+
+He made his way out by the front door, and through the churchyard, and
+in this way on to the field through which he had asked Lily to walk
+with him. He hardly began to think of what had passed till he had left
+the squire's house behind him. As he made his way through the
+tombstones he paused and read one, as though it interested him. He
+stood a moment under the tower looking up at the clock, and then pulled
+out his own watch, as though to verify the one by the other. He made,
+unconsciously, a struggle to drive away from his thoughts the facts of
+the late scene, and for some five or ten minutes he succeeded.
+
+He said to himself a word or two about Sir Raffle and his letters, and
+laughed inwardly as he remembered the figure of Rafferty bringing in
+the knight's shoes. He had gone some half mile upon his way before he
+ventured to stand still and tell himself that he had failed in the
+great object of his life.
+
+Yes; he had failed: and he acknowledged to himself, with bitter
+reproaches, that he had failed, now and for ever. He told himself that
+he had obtruded upon her in her sorrow with an unmannerly love, and
+rebuked himself as having been not only foolish but ungenerous. His
+friend the earl had been wont, in his waggish way, to call him the
+conquering hero, and had so talked him out of his common sense as to
+have made him almost think that he would be successful in his suit.
+Now, as he told himself that any such success must have been
+impossible, he almost hated the earl for having brought him to this
+condition. A conquering hero, indeed! How should he manage to sneak
+back among them all at the Manor House, crestfallen and abject in his
+misery? Everybody knew the errand on which he had gone, and everybody
+must know of his failure. How could he have been such a fool as to
+undertake such a task under the eyes of so many lookers-on? Was it not
+the case that he had so fondly expected success, as to think only of
+his triumph in returning, and not of his more probable disgrace? He had
+allowed others to make a fool of him, and had so made a fool of himself
+that now all hope and happiness were over for him. How could he escape
+at once out of the country--back to London? How could he get away
+without saying a word further to any one? That was the thought that at
+first occupied his mind.
+
+He crossed the road at the end of the squire's property, where the
+parish of Allington divides itself from that of Abbot's Guest in which
+the earl's house stands, and made his way back along the copse which
+skirted the field in which they had encountered the bull, into the high
+woods which were at the back of the park. Ah, yes; it had been well for
+him that he had not come out on horseback. That ride home along the
+high road and up to the Manor House stables would, under his present
+circumstances, have been almost impossible to him. As it was, he did
+not think it possible that he should return to his place in the earl's
+house. How could he pretend to maintain his ordinary demeanour under
+the eyes of those two old men? It would be better for him to get home
+to his mother--to send a message from thence to the Manor, and then to
+escape back to London.
+
+So thinking, but with no resolution made, he went on through the woods,
+and down from the hill back towards the town till he again came to the
+little bridge over the brook. There he stopped and stood a while with
+his broad hand spread over the letters which he had cut in those early
+days, so as to hide them from his sight. "What an ass I have
+been--always and ever!" he said to himself.
+
+It was not only of his late disappointment that he was thinking, but of
+his whole past life. He was conscious of his hobbledehoyhood-of that
+backwardness on his part in assuming manhood which had rendered him
+incapable of making himself acceptable to Lily before she had fallen
+into the clutches of Crosbie. As he thought of this he declared to
+himself that if he could meet Crosbie again he would again thrash
+him--that he would so belabour him as to send him out of the world, if
+such sending might possibly be done by fair beating, regardless whether
+he himself might be called upon to follow him. Was it not hard that for
+the two of them--for Lily and for him also--there should be such
+punishment because of the insincerity of that man? When he had thus
+stood upon the bridge for some quarter of an hour, he took out his
+knife, and, with deep rough gashes in the wood, cut out Lily's name
+from the rail.
+
+He had hardly finished, and was still looking at the chips as they were
+being carried away by the stream, when a gentle step came close up to
+him, and turning round, he saw that Lady Julia was on the bridge. She
+was close to him, and had already seen his handiwork. "Has she offended
+you, John?" she said.
+
+"Oh, Lady Julia!"
+
+"Has she offended you?"
+
+"She has refused me, and it is all over."
+
+"It may be that she has refused you, and that yet it need not be all
+over. I am sorry that you have cut out the name. John. Do you mean to
+cut it out from your heart?"
+
+"Never. I would if I could, but I never shall."
+
+"Keep to it as to a great treasure. It will be a joy to you in after
+years, and not a sorrow. To have loved truly, even though you shall
+have loved in vain, will be a consolation when you are as old as I am.
+It is something to have had a heart."
+
+"I don't know. I wish that I had none."
+
+"And, John--I can understand her feeling now; and, indeed, I thought all
+through that you were asking her too soon; but the time may yet come
+when she will think better of your wishes."
+
+"No, no; never. I begin to know her now."
+
+"If you can be constant in your love you may win her yet. Remember how
+young she is; and how young you both are. Come again in two years'
+time, and then, when you have won her, you shall tell me that I have
+been a good old woman to you both."
+
+"I shall never win her, Lady Julia." As he spoke these last words the
+tears were running down his cheeks, and he was weeping openly in
+presence of his companion. It was well for him that she had come upon
+him in his sorrow. When he once knew that she had seen his tears, he
+could pour out to her the whole story of his grief; and as he did so
+she led him back quietly to the house.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LV
+
+NOT VERY FIE FIE AFTER ALL
+
+It will perhaps be remembered that terrible things had been foretold as
+about to happen between the Hartletop and Omnium families. Lady
+Dumbello had smiled whenever Mr Plantagenet Palliser had spoken to her.
+Mr Palliser had confessed to himself that politics were not enough for
+him, and that Love was necessary to make up the full complement of his
+happiness. Lord Dumbello had frowned latterly when his eyes fell on the
+tall figure of the duke's heir; and the duke himself--that potentate,
+generally so mighty in his silence--the duke himself had spoken. Lady de
+Courcy and Lady Clandidlem were, both of them, absolutely certain that
+the thing had been fully arranged. I am, therefore, perfectly justified
+in stating that the world was talking about the loves--the illicit
+loves--of Mr Palliser and Lady Dumbello.
+
+And the talking of the world found its way down to that respectable
+country parsonage in which Lady Dumbello had been born, and from which
+she had been taken away to those noble halls which she now graced by
+her presence. The talking of the world was heard at Plumstead Episcopi,
+where still lived Archdeacon Grantly, the lady's father; and was heard
+also at the deanery of Barchester, where lived the lady's aunt and
+grandfather. By whose ill-mannered tongue the rumour was spread in
+these ecclesiastical regions it boots not now to tell. But it may be
+remembered that Courcy Castle was riot far from Barchester, and that
+Lady de Courcy was not given to hide her lights under a bushel.
+
+It was a terrible rumour. To what mother must not such a rumour
+respecting her daughter be very terrible? In no mother's ears could it
+have sounded more frightfully than it did in those of Mrs Grantly. Lady
+Dumbello, the daughter, might be altogether worldly; but Mrs Grantly
+had never been more than half worldly. In one moiety of her character,
+her habits, and her desires, she had been wedded to things good in
+themselves--to religion, to charity, and to honest-hearted uprightness.
+It is true that the circumstances of her life had induced her to serve
+both God and Mammon, and that, therefore, she had gloried greatly in
+the marriage of her daughter with the heir of a marquis. She had
+revelled in the aristocratic elevation of her child, though she
+continued to dispense books and catechisms with her own hands to the
+children of the labourers of Plumstead Episcopi. When Griselda first
+became Lady Dumbello the mother feared somewhat lest her child should
+find herself unequal to the exigencies of her new position. But the
+child had proved herself more than equal to them, and had mounted up to
+a dizzy height of success, which brought to the mother great glory and
+great fear also. She delighted to think that her Griselda was great
+even among the daughters of marquises; but she trembled as she
+reflected how deadly would be the fall from such a height--should there
+ever be a fall!
+
+But she had never dreamed of such, a fall as this! She would have
+said--indeed, she often had said--to the archdeacon that Griselda's
+religious principles were too firmly fixed to be moved by outward
+worldly matters; signifying, it may be, her conviction that that
+teaching of Plumstead Episcopi had so fastened her daughter into a
+groove, that all the future teaching of Hartlebury would not suffice to
+undo the fastenings. When she had thus boasted no such idea as that of
+her daughter running from her husband's house had ever come upon her;
+but she had alluded to vices of a nature kindred to that vice--to vices
+into which other aristocratic ladies sometimes fell, who had been less
+firmly grooved; and her boastings had amounted to this--that she herself
+had so successfully served God and Mammon together, that her child
+might go forth and enjoy all worldly things without risk of damage to
+things heavenly. Then came upon her this rumour. The archdeacon told
+her in a hoarse whisper that he had been recommended to look to it,
+that it was current through the world that Griselda was about to leave
+her husband.
+
+"Nothing on earth shall make me believe it," said Mrs Grantly. But she
+sat alone in her drawing-room afterwards and trembled. Then came her
+sister, Mrs Arabin, the dean's wife, over to the parsonage, and in
+half-hidden words told the same story. She had heard it from Mrs
+Proudie, the bishop's wife. "That woman is as false as the father of
+falsehoods," said Mrs Grantly. But she trembled the more; and as she
+prepared her parish work, could think of nothing but her child. What
+would be all her life to come, what would have been all that was past
+of her life, if this thing should happen to her? She would not believe
+it; but yet she trembled the more as she thought of her daughter's
+exaltation, and remembered that such things had been done in that world
+to which Griselda now belonged. Ah! would it not have been better for
+them if they had not raised their heads so high! And she walked, out
+alone among the tombs of the neighbouring churchyard, and stood over
+the grave in which had been laid the body of her other daughter. Could
+be it that the fate of that one had been the happier.
+
+Very few words were spoken on the subject between her and the
+archdeacon, and yet it seemed agreed among them that something should
+be done. He went up to London, and saw his daughter--not daring,
+however, to mention such a subject. Lord Dumbello was cross with him,
+and very uncommunicative. Indeed both the archdeacon and Mrs Grantly
+had found that their daughter's house was not comfortable to them, and
+as they were sufficiently proud among their own class they had not
+cared to press themselves on the hospitality of their son-in-law. But
+he had been able to perceive that all was not right in the house in
+Carlton Gardens. Lord Dumbello was not gracious with his wife, and
+there was something in the silence, rather than in the speech, of men,
+which seemed to justify the report which had reached him.
+
+"He is there oftener than he should be," said the archdeacon. "And I am
+sure of this, at least, that Dumbello does not like it."
+
+"I will write to her," said Mrs Grantly at last. "I am still her
+mother--I will write to her. It may be that she does not know what
+people say of her."
+
+And Mrs Grantly did write.
+
+
+PLUMSTEAD, April, 186-.
+
+DEAREST GRISELDA--It seems sometimes that you have been moved so far
+away from me that I have hardly a right to concern myself more in the
+affairs of your daily life, and I know that it is impossible that, you
+should refer to me for advice or sympathy, as you would have done had
+you married some gentleman of our own standing. But I am quite sure
+that my child does not forget her mother, or fail to look back upon her
+mother's love; and that she will allow me to speak to her if she be in
+trouble, as I would to any other child whom I had loved and cherished.
+I pray God that I may be wrong in supposing that such trouble is near
+you. If I am so you will forgive me my solicitude.
+
+Rumours have reached us from more than one quarter that--Oh! Griselda, I
+hardly know in what words to conceal and yet to declare that which I
+have to write. They say that you are intimate with Mr Palliser, the
+nephew of the duke, and that your husband is much offended. Perhaps I
+had better tell you all, openly, cautioning you not to suppose that I
+have believed it. They say that it is thought that you are going to put
+yourself under Mr Palliser's protection. My dearest child, I think you
+can imagine with what agony I write these words--with what terrible
+grief I must have been oppressed before I could, have allowed myself to
+entertain the thoughts which have produced them. Such things are said
+openly in Barchester, and your father, who has been in town and has
+seen you, feels himself unable to tell me that my mind may be at rest.
+
+I will not say to you a word as to the injury in a worldly point of
+view which would come to you from any rupture with your husband. I
+believe that you can see what would be the effect of so terrible a step
+quite as plainly as I can show it you. You would break the heart of
+your father and send your mother to her grave--but it is not even on
+that that I may most insist. It is this--that you would offend your God
+by the worst sin that a woman can commit, and cast yourself into a
+depth of infamy in which repentance before God is almost impossible,
+and from which escape before man is not permitted.
+
+I do not believe it, my dearest, dearest child--my only living daughter;
+I do not believe what they have said to me. But as a mother I have not
+dared to leave the slander unnoticed. If you will write to me and say
+that it is not so, you will make me happy again, even though you should
+rebuke me for my suspicion.
+
+Believe that at all times, and under all circumstances, I am still your
+loving mother, as I was in other days.
+
+SUSAN GRANTLY.
+
+
+We will now go back to Mr Palliser as he sat in his chambers at the
+Albany, thinking of his love. The duke had cautioned him, and the
+duke's agent had cautioned him; and he, in spite of his high feeling of
+independence, had almost been made to tremble. All his thousands a year
+were in the balance, and perhaps everything on which depended his
+position before the world. But, nevertheless, though he did tremble, he
+resolved to persevere. Statistics were becoming dry to him, and love,
+was very sweet. Statistics, he thought, might be made as enchanting as
+ever, if only they could be mingled with, love. The mere idea of loving
+Lady Dumbello had seemed to give a salt to his life of which he did not
+now know how to rob himself. It is true that he had not as yet enjoyed
+many of the absolute blessings of love, seeing that his conversations
+with Lady Dumbello had never been warmer than those which have been
+repeated in these pages; but his imagination had been at work; and now
+that Lady Dumbello was fully established at her house in Carlton
+Gardens, he was determined to declare his passion on the first
+convenient opportunity. It was sufficiently manifest to him that the
+world expected him to do so, and that the world was already a little
+disposed to find fault with the slowness of his proceedings.
+
+He had been once at Carlton Gardens since the season had commenced, and
+the lady had favoured him with her sweetest smile. But he had only been
+half a minute alone with her, and during that half-minute had only time
+to remark that he supposed she would now remain in London for the
+season.
+
+"Oh, yes," she had answered, "we shall not leave till July." Nor could
+he leave till July, because of the exigencies of his statistics. He
+therefore had before him two, if not three, clear months in which to
+manoeuvre, to declare his purposes, and prepare for the future events
+of his life. As he resolved on a certain morning that he would say his
+first tender word to Lady Dumbello that very night, in the drawing-room
+of Lady de Courcy, where he knew that he should meet her, a letter came
+to him by the post. He well knew the hand and the intimation which it
+would contain. It was from the duke's agent, Mr Fothergill, and
+informed him that a certain sum of money had been placed to his credit
+at his banker's. But the letter went further, and informed him also
+that the duke had given his agent to understand that special
+instructions would be necessary before the next quarterly payment could
+be made. Mr Fothergill said nothing further, but Mr Palliser understood
+it all. He felt his blood run cold round his heart; but, nevertheless,
+he determined that he would not break his word to Lady de Courcy that
+night.
+
+And Lady Dumbello received her letter, also on the same morning. She
+was being dressed as she read it, and the maidens who attended her
+found no cause to suspect that anything in the letter had excited her
+ladyship. Her ladyship was not often excited, though she was vigilant
+in exacting from them their utmost cares. She read her letter, however,
+very carefully, and as she sat beneath the toilet implements of her
+maidens thought deeply of the tidings which had been brought to her.
+She was angry with no one--she was thankful to no one. She felt no
+special love for any person concerned in the matter. Her heart did not
+say, "Oh, my lord and husband!" or "Oh, my lover!" or "Oh, my mother,
+the friend of my childhood!" But she became aware that matter for
+thought had been brought before her, and she did think. "Send my love
+to Lord Dumbello," she said, when the operations were nearly completed,
+"and tell him that I shall be so glad to see him if he will come to me
+while I am at breakfast."
+
+"Yes, my lady." And then the message came back: "His lordship would be
+with her ladyship certainly."
+
+"Gustavus," she said, as soon as she had seated herself discreetly in
+her chair, "I have had a letter from my mother, which you had better
+read;" and she handed to him the document. "I do not know what I have
+done to deserve such suspicions from her; but she lives in the country,
+and has probably been deceived by ill-natured people. At any rate you
+must read it, and tell me what I should do."
+
+We may predicate from this that Mr Palliser's chance of being able to
+shipwreck himself upon that rock was but small, and that he would, in
+spite of himself, be saved from his uncle's anger. Lord Dumbello took
+the letter and read it very slowly, standing, as he did so, with his
+back to the fire. He read it very slowly, and his wife, though she
+never turned her face directly upon his, could perceive that he became
+very red, that he was fluttered and put beyond himself, and that his
+answer was not ready. She was well aware that his conduct to her during
+the last three months had been much altered from his former usages;
+that he had been rougher with her in his speech when alone, and less
+courteous in his attention when in society; but she had made no
+complaint or spoken a word to show him that she had marked the change.
+She had known, moreover, the cause of his altered manner, and having
+considered much, had resolved that she would live it down. She had
+declared to herself that she had done no deed and spoken no word that
+justified suspicion, and therefore she would make no change in her
+ways, or show herself to be conscious that she was suspected. But
+now--having her mother's letter in her hand--she could bring him to an
+explanation without making him aware that she had ever thought that he
+had been jealous of her. To her, her mother's letter was a great
+assistance. It justified a scene like this, and enabled her to fight
+her battle after her own fashion. As for eloping with any Mr Palliser,
+and giving up the position which she had won--no, indeed! She had been
+fastened in her grooves too well for that! Her mother, in entertaining
+any fear on such a subject, had shown herself to be ignorant of the
+solidity of her daughter's character.
+
+"Well, Gustavus," she said at last. "You must say what answer I shall
+make, or whether I shall make any answer.." But he was not even yet
+ready to instruct her. So he unfolded the letter and read it again, and
+she poured out for herself a cup of tea.
+
+"It's a very serious matter," said he.
+
+"Yes, it is serious; I could not but think such a letter from my mother
+to be serious. Had it come from any one else I doubt whether I should
+have troubled you; unless, indeed, it and been from any as near to you
+as she is to me. As it is, you cannot but feel that I am right"
+
+"Right! Oh, yes, you are right--quite right to tell me; you should tell
+me everything. D--- them!" But whom he meant to condemn he did not
+explain.
+
+"I am above all things averse to cause you trouble," 'she said. "I have
+seen some little things of late--"
+
+"Has he ever said anything to you?"
+
+"Who--Mr Palliser? Never a word."
+
+"He has hinted at nothing of this kind?"
+
+"Never a word. Had he done so. I must have made you understand that he
+could not have been allowed again into my drawing-room." Then again he
+read the letter, or pretended to do so.
+
+"Your mother means well," he said.
+
+"Oh, yes, she means well. She has been foolish to believe the
+tittle-tattle that has reached her--very foolish to oblige me to give
+you this annoyance."
+
+"Oh, as for that, I'm not annoyed. By Jove, no. Come, Griselda, let us
+have it all out; other people have said this, and I have been unhappy.
+Now, you know it all."
+
+"Have I made you unhappy?"
+
+"Well, no; not you.. Don't be hard upon me when I tell you the whole
+truth. Fools and brutes have whispered things that have vexed me. They
+may whisper till the devil fetches them, but they shan't annoy me
+again. Give me a kiss, my girl." And he absolutely put out his arms and
+embraced her. "Write a good-natured letter to your mother, and ask her
+to come up for a week in May. That'll be the best thing; and then
+she'll understand; By Jove, it's twelve o'clock. Goodbye."
+
+Lady Dumbello was well aware that she had triumphed, and that her
+mother's letter had been invaluable to her. But it had been used, and
+therefore she did not read it again. She ate her breakfast in quiet
+comfort, looking over a milliner's French circular as she did so; and
+then, when the time for such an operation had fully come, she got to
+her writing-table and answered her mother's letter.
+
+
+DEAR MAMMA (she said)--I thought it best to show your letter at once to
+Lord Dumbello. He said that people would be ill-natured, and seemed to
+think that the telling of such stories could not be helped. As regards
+you, he was not a bit angry, but said that you and papa had better come
+to us for a week about the end of next month. Do come. We are to have
+rather a large dinner-party on the 23rd. His Royal Highness is coming,
+and I think papa would like to meet him. Have you observed that those
+very high bonnets have all gone out: I never, liked them; and as I had
+got a hint from Paris, I have been doing my best to put them down. I do
+hope nothing will prevent your coming.
+
+Your affectionate daughter
+
+CARLTON GARDENS, Wednesday.         G. DUMBELLO
+
+
+Mrs Grantly was aware, from the moment in which she received the
+letter, that she had wronged her daughter by her suspicions. It did not
+occur to her to disbelieve a word that was said in the letter, or an
+inference that was implied. She had been wrong, and rejoiced that it
+was so. But nevertheless there was that in the letter which annoyed and
+irritated her, though she could not explain to herself the cause of her
+annoyance. She had thrown all her heart into that which she had
+written, but in the words which her child had written not a vestige of
+heart was to be found. In that reconciling of God and Mammon which Mrs
+Grantly had carried on so successfully in the education of her
+daughter, the organ had not been required, and had become withered, if
+not defunct, through want of use.
+
+"We will not go there, I think" said Mrs Grantly, speaking to her
+husband.
+
+"Oh dear, no; certainly not. If you want to go to town at all, I will
+take rooms for you. And as for his Royal Highness I have a great
+respect for his Royal Highness, but I do not in the least desire to
+meet him at Dumbello's table."
+
+And so that matter was settled, as regarded the inhabitants of
+Plumstead Episcopi.
+
+And whither did Lord Dumbello betake himself when he left his wife's
+room in so great a hurry at twelve o'clock? Not to the Park, nor to
+Tattersall's, nor to a Committee-room of the House of Commons, nor yet
+to the bow-window of his club. But he went straight to a great
+jeweller's in Ludgate Hill, and there purchased a wonderful green
+necklace, very rare and curious, heavy with green sparkling drops, with
+three row's of shining green stones embedded in chaste gold--a necklace
+amounting almost to a jewelled cuirass in weight and extent. It had
+been in all the exhibitions, and was very costly and magnificent. While
+Lady Dumbello was still dressing in the evening this was brought to her
+with her lord's love, as his token of renewed confidence; and Lady
+Dumbello, as she counted the sparkles, triumphed inwardly, telling
+herself that she had played her cards well.
+
+But while she counted the sparkles produced by her full reconciliation
+with her lord, poor Plantagenet Palliser was still trembling in his
+ignorance. If only he could have been allowed to see Mrs Grantly's
+letter, and the lady's answer, and the lord's present! But no such
+seeing was vouchsafed to him, and he was carried off in his brougham to
+Lady de Courcy's house, twittering with expectant love, and trembling
+with expectant ruin. To this conclusion he had come at any rate, that
+if anything was to be done, it should be done now. He would speak a
+word of love, and prepare his future in accordance with the acceptance
+it might receive.
+
+Lady de Courcy's rooms were very crowded when he arrived there. It was
+the first great crushing party of the season, and all the world had
+been collected into Portman Square. Lady de Courcy was smiling as
+though her lord had no teeth, as though her eldest son's condition was
+quite happy, and all things were going well with the De Courcy
+interests. Lady Margaretta was there behind her, bland without and
+bitter within; and Lady Rosina also, at some further distance,
+reconciled to this world's vanity and finery because there was to be no
+dancing. And the married daughters of the house were there also,
+striving to maintain their positions on the strength of their undoubted
+birth, but subjected to some snubbing by the lowness of their absolute
+circumstances. Gazebee was there, happy in the absolute fact of his
+connection with an earl, and blessed with the consideration that was
+extended to him as an earl's son-in-law. And Crosbie, also, was in the
+rooms--was present there, though he had sworn to himself that he would
+no longer dance attendance on the countess, and that he would sever
+himself away from the wretchedness of the family. But if he gave up
+them and their ways, what else would then be left to him? He had come,
+therefore, and now stood alone, sullen in a corner, telling himself
+that all was vanity. Yes; to the vain all will be vanity; and to the
+poor of heart all will be poor.
+
+Lady Dumbello was there in a small inner room, seated on a couch to
+which she had been brought on her first arrival at the house, and on
+which she would remain till she departed. From time to time some very
+noble or very elevated personage would come before her and say a word,
+and she would answer that elevated personage with another word; but
+nobody had attempted with her the task of conversation. It was
+understood that Lady Dumbello did not converse--unless it were
+occasionally with Mr Palliser.
+
+She knew well that Mr Palliser was to meet her there. He had told her
+expressly that he should do so, having inquired, with much solicitude,
+whether she intended to obey the invitation of the countess. "I shall
+probably be there," she had said, and now had determined that her
+mother's letter and her husband's conduct to her should not cause her
+to break her word. Should Mr Palliser "forget" himself, she would know
+how to say a word to him as she had known how to say a word to her
+husband. Forget himself! She was very sure that Mr Palliser had been
+making up his mind to forget himself for some months past.
+
+He did come to her, and stood over her, looking unutterable things. His
+unutterable things, however, were so looked, that they did not
+absolutely demand notice from the lady. He did not sigh like a furnace,
+nor open his eyes upon her as though there were two suns in the
+firmament above her head, nor did he beat his breast or tear his hair.
+Mr Palliser had been brought up in a school which delights in
+tranquillity, and never allows its pupils to commit themselves either
+to the sublime or to the ridiculous. He did look an unutterable thing
+or two; but he did it with so decorous an eye, that the lady, who was
+measuring it all with great accuracy, could not, as yet, declare that
+Mr Palliser had "forgotten himself."
+
+There was room by her on the couch, and once or twice, at Hartlebury,
+he had ventured so to seat himself. On the present occasion, however,
+he could not do so without placing himself manifestly on her dress. She
+would have known how to fill a larger couch even than that--as she would
+have known, also, how to make room--had it been her mind to do so. So he
+stood still over her, and she smiled at him. Such a smile! It was cold
+as death, flattering no one, saying nothing, hideous in its unmeaning,
+unreal grace. Ah! how I hate the smile of a woman who smiles by rote!
+It made Mr Palliser feel very uncomfortable--but he did not analyse it,
+and persevered.
+
+"Lady Dumbello," he said, and his voice was very low, "I have been
+looking forward to meeting you here."
+
+"Have you, Mr Palliser? Yes; I remember that you asked me whether I was
+coming."
+
+"I did. Hm--Lady Dumbello!" and he almost trenched upon the outside
+verge of that schooling which had taught him to avoid both the sublime
+and the ridiculous. But he had not forgotten himself as yet, and so she
+smiled again.
+
+"Lady Dumbello, in this world in which we live, it is so hard to get a
+moment in which we can speak." He had thought that she would move her
+dress, but she did not.
+
+"Oh, I don't know," she said; "one doesn't often want to say very much,
+I think."
+
+"Ah, no; not often, perhaps. But when one does want! How I do hate
+these crowded rooms!" Yet, when he had been at Hartlebury he had
+resolved that the only ground for him would be the crowded drawing-room
+of some large London house. "I wonder whether you ever desire anything
+beyond them?"
+
+"Oh, yes," said she; "but I confess that I am fond of parties."
+
+Mr Palliser looked round and thought that he saw that he was
+unobserved. He had made up his mind as to what he would do, and he was
+determined to do it. He had in him none of that readiness which enables
+some men to make love and carry off their Dulcineas at a moment's
+notice, but he had that pluck which would have made himself disgraceful
+in his own eyes if he omitted to do that as to the doing of which he
+had made a solemn resolution. He would have preferred to do it sitting,
+but, faute de mieux, seeing that a seat was denied to him, he would do
+it standing.
+
+"Griselda," he said--and it must be admitted that his tone was not bad.
+The word sank softly into her ear, like small rain upon moss, and it
+sank into no other ear. "Griselda!"
+
+"Mr Palliser!" said she--and though she made no scene, though she merely
+glanced upon him once, he could see that he was wrong.
+
+"May I not call you so?"
+
+"Certainly not. Shall I ask you to see if my people are there?" He
+stood a moment before her hesitating. "My carriage, I mean." As she
+gave the command she glanced at him again, and then he obeyed her
+orders.
+
+When he returned she had left her seat; but he heard her name announced
+on the stairs, and caught a glance of the back of her head as she made
+her way gracefully down through the crowd. He never attempted to make
+love to her again, utterly disappointing the hopes of Lady de Courcy,
+Mrs Proudie, and Lady Clandidlem.
+
+As I would wish those who are interested in Mr Palliser's fortunes to
+know the ultimate result of this adventure, and as we shall not have
+space to return to his affairs in this little history, I may, perhaps,
+be allowed to press somewhat forward, and tell what Fortune did for him
+before the close of that London season. Everybody knows that in that
+spring Lady Glencora MacCluskie was brought out before the world, and
+it is equally well known that she, as the only child of the late Lord
+of the Isles, was the great heiress of the day. It is true that the
+hereditary possession of Skye, Staffa, Mull, Arran, and Bute went, with
+the title, to the Marquis of Auldreekie, together with the counties of
+Caithness and Ross-shire. But the property in Fife, Aberdeen, Perth,
+and Kincardineshire, comprising the greater part of those counties, and
+the coal-mines in Lanark, as well as the enormous estate within the
+city of Glasgow, were unentailed, and went to the Lady Glencora. She
+was a fair girl, with bright blue eyes and short wavy flaxen hair, very
+soft to the eye. The Lady Glencora was small in stature, and her happy
+round face lacked, perhaps, the highest grace of female beauty. But
+there was ever a smile upon it, at which it was very pleasant to look;
+and the intense interest with which she would dance, and talk, and
+follow up every amusement that was offered her, was very charming. The
+horse she rode was the dearest love--oh! she loved him so dearly! And
+she had a little dog that was almost as dear as the horse. The friend
+of her youth, Sabrina Scott, was--oh, such a girl! And her cousin, the
+little Lord of the Isles, the heir of the marquis, was so gracious and
+beautiful that she was always covering him with kisses. Unfortunately
+he was only six, so that there was hardly a possibility that the
+properties should be brought together.
+
+But Lady Glencora, though she was so charming, had even in this, her
+first outset upon the world, given great uneasiness to her friends, and
+caused the Marquis of Auldreekie to be almost wild with dismay. There
+was a terribly handsome man about town, who had spent every shilling
+that anybody would give him, who was very fond of brandy, who was
+known, but not trusted, at Newmarket, who was said to be deep in every
+vice, whose father would not speak to him--and with him the Lady
+Glencora was never tired of dancing. One morning she had told her
+cousin the marquis, with a flashing eye--for the round blue eye could
+flash--that Burgo Fitzgerald was more sinned against than sinning. Ah
+me! what was a guardian marquis, anxious for the fate of the family
+property, to do under such circumstances as that?
+
+But before the end of the season the marquis and the duke were both
+happy men, and we will hope that the Lady Glencora also was satisfied.
+Mr Plantagenet Palliser had danced with her twice, and had spoken his
+mind. He had an interview with the marquis, which was preeminently
+satisfactory, and everything was settled. Glencora no doubt told him
+how she had accepted that plain gold ring from Burgo Fitzgerald, and
+how she had restored it; but I doubt whether she ever told him of that
+wavy lock of golden hair which Burgo still keeps in his receptacle for
+such treasures.
+
+"Plantagenet," said the duke, with quite unaccustomed warmth, "in this,
+as in all things, you have shown yourself to be everything that I could
+desire. I have told the marquis that Matching Priory, with the whole
+estate, should be given over to you at once. It is the most comfortable
+country-house I know. Glencora shall have The Horns as her wedding
+present."
+
+But the genial, frank delight of Mr Fothergill pleased Mr Palliser the
+most. The heir of the Pallisers had done his duty, and Mr Fothergill
+was unfeignedly a happy man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVI
+
+SHOWING HOW MR CROSBIE BECAME AGAIN A HAPPY MAN
+
+It has been told in the last chapter how Lady de Courcy gave a great
+party in London in the latter days of April, and it may therefore be
+thought that things were going well with the De Courcys; but I fear the
+inference would be untrue. At any rate, things were not going well with
+Lady Alexandrina, for she, on her mother's first arrival in town, had
+rushed to Portman Square with a long tale of her sufferings.
+
+"Oh, mamma! you would not believe it; but he hardly ever speaks to me."
+
+"My dear, there are worse faults in a man than that."
+
+"I am alone there all the day. I never get out. He never offers to get
+me a carriage. He asked me to walk with him once last week, when it was
+raining. I saw that he waited till the rain began. Only think, I have
+not been out three evenings this month--except to Amelia's; and now he
+says he won't go there any more, because a fly is so expensive. You
+can't believe how uncomfortable the house is."
+
+"I thought you chose it, my dear."
+
+"I looked at it, but, of course, I didn't know what a house ought to
+be. Amelia said it wasn't nice, but he would have it. He hates Amelia.
+I'm sure of that, for he says everything he can to snub her and Mr
+Gazebee. Mr Gazebee is as good as he, at any rate. What do you think?
+He has given Richard warning to go. You never saw him, but he was a
+very good servant. He has given him warning, and he is not talking of
+getting another man. I won't live with him without somebody to wait
+upon me."
+
+"My dearest girl, do not think of such a thing as leaving him."
+
+"But I will think of it, mamma. You do not know what my life is in that
+house. He never speaks to me--never. He comes home before dinner at
+half-past six, and when he has just shown himself he goes to his
+dressing-room. He is always silent at dinner-time, and after dinner he
+goes to sleep. He breakfasts always at nine, and goes away at half-past
+nine, though I know he does not get to his office till eleven. If I
+want anything, he says that it cannot be afforded. I never thought
+before that he was stingy, but I am sure now that he must he a miser at
+heart."
+
+"It is better so than a spendthrift, Alexandrina."
+
+"I don't know that it is better. He could not make me more unhappy than
+I am. Unhappy is no word for it. What can I do, shut up in such a house
+as that by myself from nine o'clock in the morning till six in the
+evening? Everybody knows what he is, so that nobody will come to see
+me. I tell you fairly, mamma, I will not stand it. If you cannot help
+me, I will look for help elsewhere."
+
+It may, at any rate, be said that things were not going well with that
+branch of the De Courcy family. Nor, indeed, was it going well with
+some other branches. Lord Porlock had married, not having selected his
+partner for life from the choicest cream of the aristocratic circles,
+and his mother, while endeavouring to say a word in his favour, had
+been so abused by the earl that she had been driven to declare that she
+could no longer endure such usage. She had come up to London in direct
+opposition to his commands, while he was fastened to his room by gout;
+and had given her party in defiance of him, so that people should not
+say, when her back was turned, that she had slunk away in despair.
+
+"I have borne it," she said to Margaretta, "longer than any other woman
+in England would have done. While I thought that any of you would
+marry--"
+
+"Oh, don't talk of that, mamma," said Margaretta, putting a little
+scorn into her voice. She had not been quite pleased that even her
+mother should intimate that all her chance was over, and yet she
+herself had often told her mother that she had given up all thought of
+marrying.
+
+"Rosina will go to Amelia's," the countess continued; "Mr Gazebee is
+quite satisfied that it should be so, and he will take care that she
+shall have enough to cover her own expenses. I propose that you and I,
+dear, shall go to Baden-Baden."
+
+"And about money, mamma?"
+
+"Mr Gazebee must manage it. In spite of all that your father says, I
+know that there must be money. The expense will be much less so than in
+our present way."
+
+"And what will papa do himself?"
+
+"I cannot help it, my dear. No one knows what I have had to bear.
+Another year of it would kill me. His language has become worse and
+worse, and I fear every day that he is going to strike me with his
+crutch."
+
+Under all these circumstances it cannot be said that the De Courcy
+interests were prospering.
+
+But Lady de Courcy, when she had made up her mind to go to Baden-Baden,
+had by no means intended to take her youngest daughter with her. She
+had endured for years, and now Alexandrina was unable to endure for six
+months. Her chief grievance, moreover, was this--that her husband was
+silent. The mother felt that no woman had a right to complain much of
+any such sorrow as that. If her earl had sinned only in that way, she
+would have been content to have remained by him till the last!
+
+And yet I do not know whether Alexandrina's life was not quite as hard
+as that of her mother. She barely exceeded the truth when she said that
+he never spoke to her. The hours with her in her new comfortless house
+were very long--very long and very tedious. Marriage with her had by no
+means been the thing that she had expected. At home, with her mother,
+there had always been people around her, but they had not always been
+such as she herself would have chosen for her companions. She had
+thought that, when married, she could choose and have those about her
+who were congenial to her: but she found that none came to her. Her
+sister, who was a wiser woman than she, had begun her married life with
+a definite idea, and had carried it out; but this poor creature found
+herself, as it were, stranded. When once she had conceived it in her
+heart to feel anger against her husband--and she had done so before they
+had been a week together--there was no love to bring her back to him
+again. She did not know that it behoved her to look pleased when he
+entered the room, and to make him at any rate think that his presence
+gave her happiness. She became gloomy before she reached her new house,
+and never laid her gloom aside. He would have made a struggle for some
+domestic comfort, had any seemed to be within his reach. As it was, he
+struggled for domestic propriety, believing that he might so best
+bolster up his present lot in life. But the task became harder and
+harder to him, and the gloom became denser and more dense. He did not
+think of her unhappiness, but of his own; as she did not think of his
+tedium, but of hers. "If this be domestic felicity!" he would say to
+himself, as he sat in his arm-chair, striving to fix his attention upon
+a book.
+
+"If this be the happiness of married life!" she thought, as she
+remained listless, without even the pretence of a book, behind her
+teacups. In truth she would not walk with him, not caring for such
+exercise round the pavement of a London square; and he had resolutely
+determined that she should not run into debt for carriage hire. He was
+not a curmudgeon with his money; he was no miser. But he had found that
+in marrying an earl's daughter he had made himself a poor man, and he
+was resolved that he would not also be an embarrassed man.
+
+When the bride heard that her mother and sister were about to escape to
+Baden-Baden, there rushed upon her a sudden hope that she might be able
+to accompany the flight. She would not be parted from her husband, or
+at least not so parted that the world should suppose that they had
+quarrelled. She would simply go away and make a long visit--a very long
+visit. Two years ago a sojourn with her mother and Margaretta at
+Baden-Baden would not have offered to her much that was attractive; but
+now, in her eyes, such a life seemed to be a life in Paradise. In
+truth, the tedium of those hours in Princess Royal Crescent had been
+very heavy.
+
+But how could she contrive that it should be so? That conversation with
+her mother had taken place on the day preceding the party, and Lady de
+Courcy had repeated it with dismay to Margaretta.
+
+"Of course he would allow her an income," Margaretta had coolly said.
+
+"But, my dear, they have been married only ten weeks."
+
+"I don't see why anybody is to be made absolutely wretched because they
+are married," Margaretta answered. "I don't want to persuade her to
+leave him, but if what she says is true, it must be very uncomfortable."
+
+Crosbie had consented to go to the party in Portman Square, but had not
+greatly enjoyed himself on that festive occasion. He had stood about
+moodily, speaking hardly a word to any one. His whole aspect of life
+seemed to have been altered during the last few months. It was here, in
+such spots as this that he had been used to find his glory. On such
+occasions he had shone with peculiar light, making envious the hearts
+of many who watched the brilliance of his career as they stood around
+in dull quiescence. But now no one in those rooms had been more dull,
+more silent, or less courted than he; and yet he was established there
+as the son-in-law of that noble house. "Rather slow work; isn't it?"
+Gazebee had said to him, having, after many efforts, succeeded in
+reaching his brother-in-law in a corner. In answer to this Crosbie had
+only grunted. "As for myself," continued Gazebee, "I would a deal
+sooner be at home with my paper and slippers. It seems to me these sort
+of gatherings don't suit married men." Crosbie had again grunted, and
+had then escaped into another corner.
+
+Crosbie and his wife went home together in a cab--speechless both of
+them. Alexandrina hated cabs--but she had been plainly told that in such
+vehicles, and in such vehicles only, could she be allowed to travel. On
+the following morning he was at the breakfast-table punctually by nine,
+but she did not make her appearance till after he had gone to his
+office. Soon after that, however, she was away to her mother and her
+sister; but she was seated grimly in her drawing-room when he came in
+to see her, on his return to his house. Having said some word which
+might be taken for a greeting, he was about to retire; but she stopped
+him with a request that he would speak to her.
+
+"Certainly," said he. "I was only going to dress. It is nearly the
+half-hour."
+
+"I won't keep you very long, and if dinner is a few minutes late it
+won't signify. Mamma and Margaretta are going to Baden-Baden."
+
+"To Baden-Baden, are they?"
+
+"Yes; and they intend to remain there--for a considerable time." There
+was a little pause, and Alexandrina found it necessary to clear her
+voice and to prepare herself for further speech by a little cough. She
+was determined to make her proposition, but was rather afraid of the
+manner in which it might be first received.
+
+"Has anything happened at Courcy Castle?" Crosbie asked.
+
+"No; that is, yes; there may have been some words between papa and
+mamma; but I don't quite know. That, however, does not matter now.
+Mamma is going, and purposes to remain there for the rest of the year."
+
+"And the house in town will be given up."
+
+"I suppose so, but that will be as papa chooses. Have you any objection
+to my going with mamma?"
+
+What a question to be asked by a bride of ten weeks standing! She had
+hardly been above a month with her husband in her new house, and she
+was now asking permission to leave it, and to leave him also, for an
+indefinite number of months--perhaps for ever. But she showed no
+excitement as she made her request. There was neither sorrow, nor
+regret, nor hope in her face. She had not put on half the animation
+which she had once assumed in asking for the use, twice a week, of a
+carriage done up to look as though it were her own private possession.
+Crosbie had then answered her with great sternness, and she had wept
+when his refusal was made certain to her. But there was to be no
+weeping now. She meant to go--with his permission if he would accord it,
+and without it if he should refuse it. The question of money was no
+doubt important, but Gazebee should manage that--as he managed all those
+things.
+
+"Going with them to Baden-Baden?" said Crosbie. "For how long?"
+
+"Well: it would be no use unless it were for some time."
+
+"For how long a time do you mean, Alexandrina? Speak out what you
+really have to say. For a month?"
+
+"Oh, more than that."
+
+"For two months, or six, or as long as they may stay there?"
+
+"We could settle that afterwards, when I am there." During all this
+time she did not once look into his face, though he was looking hard at
+her throughout.
+
+"You mean," said he, "that you wish to go away from me."
+
+"In one sense it would be going away, certainly."
+
+"But in the ordinary sense? is it not so? When you talk of going to
+Baden-Baden for an unlimited number of months, have you any idea of
+coming back again?"
+
+"Back to London, you mean?"
+
+"Back to me--to my house--to your duties as a wife! Why cannot you say at
+once what it is you want? You wish to be separated from me?"
+
+"I am not happy here--in this house."
+
+"And who chose the house? Did I want to come here? But it is not that.
+If you are not happy here, what could you have in any other house to
+make you happy?"
+
+"If you were left alone in this room for seven or eight hours at a
+time, without a soul to come to you, you would know what I mean. And
+even after that, it is not much better. You never speak to me when you
+are here."
+
+"Is it my fault that nobody comes to you? The fact is, Alexandrina,
+that you will not reconcile yourself to the manner of life which is
+suitable to my income. You are wretched because you cannot have
+yourself driven round the Park. I cannot find you a carriage, and will
+not attempt to do so. You may go to Baden-Baden, if you please--that is,
+if your mother is willing to take you."
+
+"Of course I must pay my own expenses," said Alexandrina. But to this
+he made no answer on the moment. As soon as he had given his permission
+he had risen from his seat and was going, and her last words only
+caught him in the doorway. After all, would not this be the cheapest
+arrangement that he could make? As he went through his calculations he
+stood up with his elbow on the mantelpiece in his dressing-room. He had
+scolded his wife because she had been unhappy with him; but had he not
+been quite as unhappy with her? Would it not be better that they should
+part in this quiet, half-unnoticed way--that they should part and never
+again come together? He was lucky in this, that hitherto had come upon
+them no prospect of any little Crosbie to mar the advantages of such an
+arrangement. If he gave her four hundred a year, and allowed Gazebee
+two more towards the paying off of encumbrances, he would still have
+six on which to enjoy himself in London. Of course he could not live as
+he had lived in those happy days before his marriage, nor,
+independently of the cost, would such a mode of life be within his
+reach. But he might go to his club for his dinners; he might smoke his
+cigar in luxury; he would not be bound to that wooden home which, in
+spite of all his resolutions, had become almost unendurable to him. So
+he made his calculations, and found that it would be well that his
+bride should go. He would give over his house and furniture to Gazebee,
+allowing Gazebee to do as he would about that. To be once more a
+bachelor, in lodgings, with six hundred a year to spend on himself,
+seemed to him now such a prospect of happiness that he almost became
+light-hearted as he dressed himself. He would let her go to Baden Baden.
+
+There was nothing said about it at dinner, nor did he mention the
+subject again till the servant had left the tea-things on the
+drawing-room table. "You can go with your mother if you like it," he
+then said.
+
+"I think it will be best," she answered.
+
+"Perhaps it will. At any rate you shall suit yourself."
+
+"And about money?"
+
+"You had better leave me to speak to Gazebee about that."
+
+"Very well. Will you have some tea?" And then the whole thing was
+finished.
+
+On the next day she went after lunch to her mother's house, and never
+came back again to Princess Royal Crescent. During that morning she
+packed up those things which she cared to pack herself, and sent her
+sisters there, with an old family servant, to bring away whatever else
+might be supposed to belong to her. "Dear, dear," said Amelia, "what
+trouble I had in getting these things together for them, and only the
+other day. I can't but think she's wrong to go away."
+
+"I don't know," said Margaretta. "She has not been so lucky as you have
+in the man she has married. I always felt that she would find it
+difficult to manage him."
+
+"But, my dear, she has not tried. She has given up at once. It isn't
+management that was wanting. The fact is that when Alexandrina began
+she didn't make up her mind to the kind of thing she was coming to. I
+did. I knew it wasn't to be all party-going and that sort of thing. But
+I must own that Crosbie isn't the same sort of man as Mortimer. I don't
+think I could have gone on with him. You might as well have those small
+books put up; he won't care about them." And in this way Crosbie's
+house was dismantled.
+
+She saw him no more, for he made no farewell visit to the house in
+Portman Square. A note had been brought to him at his office: "I am
+here with mamma, and may as well say good-bye now. We start on Tuesday.
+If you wish to write, you can send your letters to the housekeeper
+here. I hope you will make yourself comfortable, and that you will be
+well. Yours affectionately, A. C." He made no answer to it, but went
+that day and dined at his club.
+
+"I haven't seen you this age," said Montgomerie Dobbs.
+
+"No. My wife is going abroad with her mother, and while she is away I
+shall come back here again."
+
+There was nothing more said to him, and no one ever made any inquiry
+about his domestic affairs. It seemed to him now as though he had no
+friend sufficiently intimate with him to ask him after his wife or
+family. She was gone, and in a month's time he found himself again in
+Mount Street--beginning the world with five hundred a year, not six. For
+Mr Gazebee, when the reckoning came, showed him that a larger income at
+the present moment was not possible for him. The countess had for a
+long time refused to let Lady Alexandrina go with her on so small a
+pittance as four hundred and fifty--and then were there not the
+insurances to be maintained?
+
+But I think he would have consented to accept his liberty with three
+hundred a year--so great to him was the relief.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVII
+
+LILIAN DALE VANQUISHES HER MOTHER
+
+Mrs Dale had been present during the interview in which John Eames had
+made his prayer to her daughter, but she had said little or nothing on
+that occasion. All her wishes had been in favour of the suitor, but she
+had not dared to express them, neither had she dared to leave the room.
+It had been hard upon him to be thus forced to declare his love in the
+presence of a third person, but he had done it, and had gone away with
+his answer. Then, when the thing was over, Lily, without any communion
+with her mother, took herself off, and was no more seen till the
+evening hours had come on, in which it was natural that they should be
+together again.
+
+Mrs Dale, when thus alone, had been able to think of nothing but this
+new suit for her daughter's hand. If only it might be accomplished! If
+any words from her to Lily might be efficacious to such an end! And
+yet, hitherto, she had been afraid almost to utter a word.
+
+She knew that it was very difficult. She declared to herself over and
+over that he had come too soon--that the attempt had been made too
+quickly after that other shipwreck. How was it possible that the ship
+should put to sea again at once, with all her timbers so rudely
+strained? And yet, now that the attempt had been made, now that Eames
+had uttered his request and been sent away with an answer, she felt
+that she must at once speak to Lily on the subject, if ever she were to
+speak upon it. She thought that she understood her child and all her
+feelings. She recognised the violence of the shock which must be
+encountered before Lily could be brought to acknowledge such a change
+in her heart. But if the thing could be done, Lily would be a happy
+woman. When once done it would be in all respects a blessing. And if it
+were not done, might not Lily's life be blank, lonely, and loveless to
+the end? Yet when Lily came down in the evening, with some light,
+half-joking word on her lips, as was usual to her, Mrs Dale was still
+afraid to venture upon her task.
+
+"I suppose, mamma, we may consider it as a settled thing that
+everything must be again unpacked, and that the lodging scheme will be
+given up."
+
+"I don't know that, my dear."
+
+"Oh, but I do--after what you said just now. What geese everybody will
+think us!"
+
+"I shouldn't care a bit for that, if we didn't think ourselves geese,
+or if your uncle did not think us so."
+
+"I believe he would think we were swans. If I had ever thought he would
+be so much in earnest about it, or that he would ever have cared about
+our being here, I would never have voted for going. But he is so
+strange. He is affectionate when he ought to be angry, and ill-natured
+when he ought to be gentle and kind."
+
+"He has, at any rate, given us reason to feel sure of his affection."
+
+"For us girls, I never doubted it. But, mamma, I don't think I could
+face Mrs Boyce. Mrs Hearn and Mrs Crump would be very bad, and Hopkins
+would come down upon us terribly when he found that we had given way.
+But Mrs Boyce would be worse than any of them. Can't you fancy the tone
+of her congratulations?"
+
+"I think I should survive Mrs Boyce."
+
+"Ah, yes; because we should have to go and tell her. I know your
+cowardice of old, mamma; don't I? And Bell wouldn't care a bit, because
+of her lover. Mrs Boyce will be nothing to her. It is I that must bear
+it all. Well, I don't mind; I'll vote for staying if you will promise
+to be happy here. Oh, mamma, I'll vote for anything if you will be
+happy."
+
+"And will you be happy?"
+
+"Yes, as happy as the day is long. Only I know we shall never see Bell.
+People never do see each other when they live just at that distance.
+It's too near for long visits, and too far for short visits. I'll tell
+you what; we might make arrangements each to walk half-way, and meet at
+the corner of Lord de Guest's wood. I wonder whether they'd let us put
+up a seat there. I think we might have a little house and carry
+sandwiches and a bottle of beer. Couldn't we see something of each
+other in that way?"
+
+Thus it came to be the fixed idea of both of them that they would
+abandon their plan of migrating to Guestwick, and on this subject they
+continued to talk over their tea-table; but on that evening Mrs Dale
+ventured to say nothing about John Eames.
+
+But they did not even yet dare to commence the work of reconstructing
+their old home. Bell must come back before they would do that, and the
+express assent of the squire must be formally obtained. Mrs Dale must,
+in a degree, acknowledge herself to have been wrong, and ask to be
+forgiven for her contumacy.
+
+"I suppose the three of us had better go up in sackcloth, and throw
+ashes on our foreheads as we meet Hopkins in the garden," said Lily,
+"and then I know he'll heap coals of fire on our heads by sending us an
+early dish of peas. And Dingles would bring us in a pheasant, only that
+pheasants don't grow in May."
+
+"If the sackcloth doesn't take an unpleasanter shape than that, I
+shan't mind it."
+
+"That's because you've got no delicate feelings. And then Uncle
+Christopher's gratitude!"
+
+"Ah! I shall feel that."
+
+"But, mamma, we'll wait till Bell comes home. She shall decide. She is
+going away, and therefore she'll be free from prejudice. If uncle
+offers to paint the house--and I know he will-then I shall be humbled to
+the dust."
+
+But yet Mrs Dale had said nothing on the subject which was nearest to
+her heart. When Lily in pleasantry had accused her of cowardice, her
+mind had instantly gone off to that other matter, and she had told
+herself that she was a coward. Why should she be afraid of offering her
+counsel to her own child? It seemed to her as though she had neglected
+some duty in allowing Crosbie's conduct to have passed away without
+hardly a word of comment on it between herself and Lily. Should she not
+have forced upon her daughter's conviction the fact that Crosbie had
+been a villain, and as such should be discarded from her heart? As it
+was, Lily had spoken the simple truth when she told John Eames that she
+was dealing more openly with him on that affair of her engagement than
+she had ever dealt, even with her mother. Thinking of this as she sat
+in her own room that night, before she allowed herself to rest, Mrs
+Dale resolved that on the next morning she would endeavour to make Lily
+see as she saw and think as she thought.
+
+She let breakfast pass by before she began her task, and even then she
+did not rush at it at once. Lily sat herself down to her work when the
+teacups were taken away, and Mrs Dale went down to her kitchen as was
+her wont. It was nearly eleven before she seated herself in the
+parlour, and even then she got her work-box before her and took out her
+needle.
+
+"I wonder how Bell gets on with Lady Julia," said Lily.
+
+"Very well, I'm sure."
+
+"Lady Julia won't bite her, I know, and I suppose her dismay at the
+tall footmen has passed off by this time."
+
+"I don't know that they have any tall footmen."
+
+"Short footmen then--you know what I mean; all the noble belongings.
+They must startle one at first, I'm sure, let one determine ever so
+much not to be startled. It's a very mean thing, no doubt, to be afraid
+of a lord merely because he is a lord; yet I'm sure I should be afraid
+at first, even of Lord de Guest, if I were staying in the house."
+
+"It's well you didn't go then."
+
+"Yes, I think it is. Bell is of a firmer mind, and I dare say she'll
+get over it after the first day. But what on earth does she do there? I
+wonder whether they mend their stockings in such a house as that."
+
+"Not in public, I should think."
+
+"In very grand houses they throw them away at once, I suppose. I've
+often thought about it. Do you believe the Prime Minister ever has his
+shoes sent to a cobbler?
+
+"Perhaps a regular shoemaker will condescend to mend a Prime Minister's
+shoes."
+
+"You do think they are mended then? But who orders it? Does he see
+himself when there's a little hole coming, as I do? Does an archbishop
+allow himself so many pairs of gloves in a year?"
+
+"Not very strictly, I should think."
+
+"Then I suppose it comes to this, that he has a new pair whenever he
+wants them. But what constitutes the want? Does he ever say to himself
+that they'll do for another Sunday? I remember the bishop coming here
+once, and he had a hole at the end of his thumb. I was going to be
+confirmed, and I remember thinking that he ought to have been smarter."
+
+"Why didn't you offer to mend it?"
+
+"I shouldn't have dared for all the world."
+
+The conversation had commenced itself in a manner that did not promise
+much assistance to Mrs Dale's project. When Lily got upon any subject,
+she was not easily induced to leave it, and when her mind had twisted
+itself in one direction, it was difficult to untwist it. She was now
+bent on a consideration of the smaller social habits of the high and
+mighty among us, and was asking her mother whether she supposed that
+the royal children ever carried halfpence in their pockets, or
+descended so low as fourpenny-bits.
+
+"I suppose they have pockets like other children," said Lily. But her
+mother stopped her suddenly--"Lily, dear, I want to say something to you
+about John Eames."
+
+"Mamma, I'd sooner talk about the Royal Family just at present."
+
+"But, dear, you must forgive me if I persist. I have thought much about
+it, and I'm sure you will not oppose me when I am doing what I think to
+be my duty."
+
+"No, mamma; I won't oppose you, certainly."
+
+"Since Mr Crosbie's conduct was made known to you, I have mentioned his
+name in your hearing very seldom."
+
+"No, mamma, you have not. And I have loved you so dearly for your
+goodness to me. Do not think that I have not understood and known how
+generous you have been. No other mother ever was so good as you have
+been. I have known it all, and thought of it every day of my life, and
+thanked you in my heart for your trusting silence. Of course, I
+understand your feelings. You think him bad and you hate him for what
+he has done."
+
+"I would not willingly hate any one, Lily."
+
+"Ah, but you do hate him. If I were you, I should hate him; but I am
+not you, and I love him. I pray for his happiness every night and
+morning, and for hers. I have forgiven him altogether, and I think that
+he was right. When I am old enough to do so without being wrong, I will
+go to him and tell him so. I should like to hear of all his doings and
+all his success, if it were only possible. How, then, can you and I
+talk about him? It is impossible. You have been silent and I have been
+silent--let us remain silent."
+
+"It is not about Mr Crosbie that I wish to speak. But I think you ought
+to understand that conduct such as his will be rebuked by all the
+world. You may forgive him, but you should acknowledge--"
+
+"Mamma, I don't want to acknowledge anything--not about him. There are
+things as to which a person cannot argue." Mrs Dale felt that this
+present matter was one as to which she could not argue. "Of course,
+mamma," continued Lily, "I don't want to oppose you in anything, but I
+think we had better be silent about this."
+
+"Of course I am thinking only of your future happiness."
+
+"I know you are; but pray believe me that you need not be alarmed. I do
+not mean to be unhappy. Indeed, I think I may say I am not unhappy; of
+course I have been unhappy--very unhappy. I did think that my heart
+would break. But that has passed away, and I believe I can be as happy
+as my neighbours. We're all of us sure to have some troubles, as you
+used to tell us when we were children."
+
+Mrs Dale felt that she had begun wrong, and that she would have been
+able to make better progress had she omitted all mention of Crosbie's
+name. She knew exactly what it was that she wished to say--what were the
+arguments which she desired to expound before her daughter; but she did
+not know what language to use, or how she might best put her thoughts
+into words. She paused for a while, and Lily went on with her work as
+though the conversation was over. But the conversation was not over.
+
+"It was about John Eames, and not about Mr Crosbie, that I wished to
+speak to you."
+
+"Oh, mamma!"
+
+"My dear, you must not hinder me in doing what I think to be a duty. I
+heard what he said to you and what you replied, and of course I cannot
+but have my mind full of the subject. Why should you set yourself
+against him in so fixed a manner?"
+
+"Because I love another man." These words she spoke out loud, in a
+steady, almost dogged tone, with a certain show of audacity--as though
+aware that the declaration was unseemly, but resolved that, though
+unseemly, it must be made.
+
+"But, Lily, that love, from its very nature, must cease; or, rather,
+such love is not the same as that you felt when you thought that you
+were to be his wife."
+
+"Yes, it is. If she died, and he came to me in five years time, I would
+still take him. I should think myself constrained to take him."
+
+"But she is not dead, nor likely to die."
+
+"That makes no difference. You don't understand me, mamma."
+
+"I think I do, and I want you to understand me also. I know how
+difficult is your position; I know what your feelings are; but I know
+this also, that if you could reason with yourself, and bring yourself
+in time to receive John Eames as a dear friend--"
+
+"I did receive him as a dear friend. Why not? He is a dear friend. I
+love him heartily--as you do."
+
+"You know what I mean?"
+
+"Yes, I do; and I tell you it is impossible."
+
+"If you would make the attempt, all this misery would soon be
+forgotten. If once you could bring yourself to regard him as a friend,
+who might become your husband, all this would be changed--and I should
+see you happy!"
+
+"You are strangely anxious to be rid of me, mamma!"
+
+"Yes, Lily--to be rid of you in that way. If I could see you put your
+hand in his as his promised wife, I think that I should be the happiest
+woman in the world."
+
+"Mamma, I cannot make you happy in that way. If you really understood
+my feelings, my doing as you propose would make you very unhappy. I
+should commit a great sin--the sin against which women should be more
+guarded than against any other. In my heart I am married to that other
+man. I gave myself to him, and loved him, and rejoiced in his love.
+When he kissed me I kissed him again, and I longed for his kisses. I
+seemed to live only that he might caress me. All that time I never felt
+myself to be wrong--because he was all in all to me. I was his own. That
+has been changed--to my great misfortune; but it cannot be undone or
+forgotten. I cannot be the girl I was before he came here. There are
+things that will not have themselves buried and put out of sight, as
+though they had never been. I am as you are, mamma-widowed. But you
+have your daughter, and I have my mother. If you will be contented, so
+will I." Then she got up and threw herself on her mother's neck.
+
+Mrs Dale's argument was over now. To such an appeal as that last made
+by Lily no rejoinder on her part was possible. After that she was
+driven to acknowledge to herself that she must be silent. Years as they
+rolled on might make a change, but no reasoning could be of avail. She
+embraced her daughter, weeping over her--whereas Lily's eyes were dry.
+"It shall be as you will," Mrs Dale murmured.
+
+"Yes, as I will. I shall have my own way; shall I not? That is all I
+want; to be a tyrant over you, and make you do my bidding in
+everything, as a well-behaved mother should do. But I won't be stern in
+my orderings. If you will only be obedient, I will be so gracious to
+you! There's Hopkins again. I wonder whether he has come to knock us
+down and trample upon us with another speech."
+
+Hopkins knew very well to which window he must come, as only one of the
+rooms was at the present time habitable. He came up to the dining-room,
+and almost flattened his nose against the glass.
+
+"Well, Hopkins," said Lily, "here we are." Mrs Dale had turned her face
+away, for she knew that the tears were still on her cheek.
+
+"Yes, miss, I see you. I want to speak to your mamma, miss."
+
+"Come round," said Lily, anxious to spare her mother the necessity of
+showing herself at once. "It's too cold to open the window; come round,
+and I'll open the door."
+
+"Too cold!" muttered Hopkins, as he went. "They'll find it a deal
+colder in lodgings at Guestwick." However, he went round through the
+kitchen, and Lily met him in the hall.
+
+"Well, Hopkins, what is it? Mamma has got a headache."
+
+"Got a headache, has she? I won't make her headache no worse. It's my
+opinion that there's nothing for a headache so good as fresh air. Only
+some people can't abear to be blowed upon, not for a minute. If you
+don't let down the lights in a greenhouse more or less every day,
+you'll never get any plants--never--and it's just the same with the
+grapes. Is I to go back and say as how I couldn't see her?"
+
+"You can come in if you like; only be quiet, you know."
+
+"Ain't I ollays quiet, miss? Did anybody ever hear me rampage? If you
+please, ma'am, the squire's come home.'
+
+"What, home from Guestwick? Has he brought Miss Bell?
+
+"He ain't brought none but hisself, cause he come on horseback; and
+it's my belief he's going back almost immediate. But he wants you to
+come to him, Mrs Dale."
+
+"Oh, yes, I'll come at once."
+
+"He bade me say with his kind love. I don't know whether that makes any
+difference."
+
+"At any rate, I'll come, Hopkins."
+
+"And I ain't to say nothing about the headache?"
+
+"About what? "said Mrs Dale.
+
+"No, no, no," said Lily. "Mamma will be there at once. Go and tell my
+uncle, there's a good man," and she put up her hand and backed him out
+of the room.
+
+"I don't believe she's got no headache at all," said Hopkins,
+grumbling, as he returned through the back premises. "What lies
+gentlefolks do tell! If I said I'd a headache when I ought to be out
+among the things, what would they say to me? But a poor man mustn't
+never lie, nor yet drink, nor yet do nothing." And so he went back with
+his message.
+
+"What can have brought your uncle home? "said Mrs Dale.
+
+"Just to look after the cattle, and to see that the pigs are not all
+dead. My wonder is that he should ever have gone away."
+
+"I must go up to him at once."
+
+"Oh, yes, of course."
+
+"And what shall I say about the house?"
+
+"It's not about that--at least I think not. I don't think he'll speak
+about that again till you speak to him."
+
+"But if he does?"
+
+"You must put your trust in Providence. Declare you've got a bad
+headache, as I told Hopkins just now; only you would throw me over by
+not understanding. I'll walk with you down to the bridge." So they went
+off together across the lawn.
+
+But Lily was soon left alone, and continued her walk, waiting for her
+mother's return. As she went round and round the gravel paths, she
+thought of the words that she had said to her mother. She had declared
+that she also was widowed. "And so it should be," she said, debating
+the matter with herself.
+
+"What can a heart be worth if it can be transferred hither and thither
+as circumstances and convenience and comfort may require? When he held
+me here in his arms"--and, as the thoughts ran through her brain, she
+remembered the very spot on which they had stood--"oh, my love!" she had
+said to him then as she returned his kisses--"oh, my love, my love, my
+love!" "When he held me here in his arms, I told myself that it was
+right, because he was my husband. He has changed, but I have not. It
+might be that I should have ceased to love him, and then I should have
+told him so. I should have done as he did." But, as she came to this,
+she shuddered, thinking of the Lady Alexandrina. "It was very quick,"
+she said, still speaking to herself; "very, very. But then men are not
+the same as women." And she walked on eagerly, hardly remembering where
+she was, thinking over it all, as she did daily; remembering every
+little thought and word of those few eventful months in which she had
+learned to regard Crosbie as her husband and master. She had declared
+that she had conquered her unhappiness; but there were moments in which
+she was almost wild with misery. "Tell me to forget him!" she said. "It
+is the one thing which will never be forgotten."
+
+At last she heard her mother's step coming down across the squire's
+garden, and she took up her post at the bridge.
+
+"Stand and deliver," she said, as her mother put her foot upon the
+plank. "That is, if you've got anything worth delivering. Is anything
+settled?"
+
+"Come up to the house," said Mrs Dale, "and I'll tell you all."
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LVIII
+
+THE FATE OF THE SMALL HOUSE
+
+There was something in the tone of Mrs Dale's voice, as she desired her
+daughter to come up to the house, and declared that her budget of news
+should be opened there, which at once silenced Lily's assumed
+pleasantry. Her mother had been away fully two hours, during which Lily
+had still continued her walk round the garden, till at last she had
+become impatient for her mother's footstep. Something serious must have
+been said between her uncle and her mother during those long two hours.
+The interviews to which Mrs Dale was occasionally summoned at the Great
+House did not usually exceed twenty minutes, and the upshot would be
+communicated to the girls in a turn or two round the garden; but in the
+present instance Mrs Dale positively declined to speak till she was
+seated within the house.
+
+"Did he come over on purpose to see you, mamma?"
+
+"Yes, my dear, I believe so. He wished to see you, too; but I asked his
+permission to postpone that till after I had talked to you."
+
+"To see me, mamma? About what?"
+
+"To kiss you, and bid you love him; solely for that. He has not a word
+to say to you that will vex you."
+
+"Then I will kiss him, and love him, too."
+
+"Yes, you will when I have told you all. I have promised him solemnly
+to give up all idea of going to Guestwick. So that is over."
+
+"Oh, oh! And we may begin to unpack at once? What an episode in one's
+life!"
+
+"We may certainly unpack, for I have pledged myself to him; and he is
+to go into Guestwick himself and arrange about the lodgings."
+
+"Does Hopkins know it?"
+
+"I should think not yet."
+
+"Nor Mrs Boyce! Mamma, I don't believe I shall be able to survive this
+next week. We shall look such fools! I'll tell you what we'll do--it
+will be the only comfort I can have--we'll go to work and get everything
+back into its place before Bell comes home, so as to surprise her."
+
+"What! in two days?"
+
+"Why not? I'll make Hopkins come and help, and then he'll not be so
+bad. I'll begin at once and go to the blankets and beds, because I can
+undo them myself."
+
+"But I haven't half told you all; and, indeed, I don't know how to make
+you understand what passed between us. He is very unhappy about
+Bernard; Bernard has determined to go abroad, and may be away for
+years."
+
+"One can hardly blame a man for following up his profession."
+
+"There was no blaming. He only said that it was very sad for him that,
+in his old age, he should be left alone. This was before there was any
+talk about our remaining. Indeed he seemed determined not to ask that
+again as a favour. I could see that in his eye, and I understood it
+from his tone. He went on to speak of you and Bell, saying how well he
+loved you both; but that, unfortunately, his hopes regarding you had
+not been fulfilled."
+
+"Ah, but he shouldn't have had hopes of that sort."
+
+"Listen, my dear, and I think that you will not feel angry with him. He
+said that he felt his house had never been pleasant to you. Then there
+followed words which I could not repeat, even if I could remember them.
+He said much about myself, regretting that the feeling between us had
+not been more kindly. But my heart, he said, has ever been kinder than
+my words. Then I got up from where I was seated, and going over to him,
+I told him that we would remain here."
+
+"And what did he say?"
+
+"I don't know what he said. I know that I was crying, and that he
+kissed me. It was the first time in his life. I know that he was
+pleased--beyond measure pleased. After a while he became animated, and
+talked of doing ever so many things. He promised that very painting of
+which you spoke."
+
+"Ah, yes, I knew it; and Hopkins will be here with the peas before
+dinner-time to-morrow, and Dingles with his shoulders smothered with
+rabbits. And then Mrs Boyce! Mamma, he didn't think of Mrs Boyce; or,
+in very charity of heart, he would still have maintained his sadness."
+
+"Then he did not think of her; for when I left him he was not at all
+sad. But I haven't told you half yet."
+
+"Dear me, mamma; was there more than that?"
+
+"And I've told it all wrong; for what I've got to tell now was said
+before a word was spoken about the house. He brought it in just after
+what he said about Bernard. He said that Bernard would, of course, be
+his heir."
+
+"Of course he will."
+
+"And that he should think it wrong to encumber the property with any
+charges for you girls."
+
+"Mamma, did any one ever--"
+
+"Stop, Lily, stop; and make your heart kinder towards him if you can."
+
+"It is kind; only I hate to be told that I'm not to have a lot of
+money, as though I had ever shown a desire for it. I have never envied
+Bernard his man-servant, or his maid-servant, or his ox, or his ass, or
+anything that is his. To tell the truth I didn't even wish it to be
+Bell's, because I knew well that there was somebody she would like a
+great deal better than ever she could like Bernard."
+
+"I shall never get to the end of my story."
+
+"Yes, you will, mamma, if you persevere."
+
+"The long and the short of it is this, that he has given Bell three
+thousand pounds, and has given you three thousand also."
+
+"But why me, mamma?" said Lily, and the colour of her cheeks became red
+as she spoke. There should if possible be nothing more said about John
+Eames; but whatever might or might not be the necessity of speaking, at
+any rate, let there be no mistake.
+
+"But why me, mamma?"
+
+"Because, as he explained to me, he thinks it right to do the same by
+each of you. The money is yours at this moment--to buy hair-pins with,
+if you please. I had no idea that he could command so large a sum."
+
+"Three thousand pounds! The last money he gave me was half-a-crown, and
+I thought that he was so stingy! I particularly wanted ten shillings. I
+should have liked it so much better now if he had given me a nice new
+five-pound note."
+
+"You'd better tell him so."
+
+"No; because then he'd give me that too. But with five pounds I should
+have the feeling that I might do what I liked with it--buy a
+dressing-case, and a thing for a squirrel to run round in. But nobody
+ever gives girls money like that, so that they can enjoy it."
+
+"Oh, Lily; you ungrateful child!"
+
+"No, I deny it. I'm not ungrateful. I'm very grateful, because his
+heart was softened--and because he cried and kissed you. I'll be ever so
+good to him! But how I'm to thank him for giving me three thousand
+pounds, I cannot think. It's a sort of thing altogether beyond my line
+of life. It sounds like something that's to come to me in another
+world, but which I don't want quite yet. I am grateful, but with a
+misty, hazy sort of gratitude. Can you tell me how soon I shall have a
+new pair of Balmoral boots because of this money? If that were brought
+home to me I think it would enliven my gratitude."
+
+The squire, as he rode back to Guestwick, fell again from that
+animation, which Mrs Dale had described, into his natural sombre mood.
+He thought much of his past life, declaring to himself the truth of
+those words in which he had told his sister-in-law that his heart had
+ever been kinder than his words. But the world, and all those nearest
+to him in the world, had judged him always by his words rather than by
+his heart. They had taken the appearance, which he could not command or
+alter, rather than the facts, of which he had been the master. Had he
+not been good to all his relations?--and yet was there one among them
+that cared for him? "I'm almost sorry that they are going to stay," he
+said to himself--"I know that I shall disappoint them." Yet when he met
+Bell at the Manor House he accosted her cheerily, telling her with much
+appearance of satisfaction that that flitting into Guestwick was not to
+be accomplished.
+
+"I am so glad," said she. "It is long since I wished it."
+
+"And I do not think your mother wishes it now."
+
+"I am sure she does not. It was all a misunderstanding from the first.
+When some of us could not do all that you wished, we thought it
+better--" Then Bell paused, finding that she would get herself into a
+mess if she persevered.
+
+"We will not say any more about it," said the squire. "The thing is
+over, and I am very glad that it should be so pleasantly settled. I was
+talking to Dr Crofts yesterday."
+
+"Were you, uncle?
+
+"Yes; and he is to come and stay with me the day before he is married.
+We have arranged it all. And we'll have the breakfast up at the Great
+House. Only you must fix the day. I should say some time in March. And,
+my dear, you'll want to make yourself fine; here's a little money for
+you. You are to spend that before your marriage, you know." Then he
+shambled away, and as soon as he was alone, again became sad and
+despondent. He was a man for whom we may predicate some gentle sadness
+and continued despondency to the end of his life's chapter.
+
+We left John Eames in the custody of Lady Julia, who had overtaken him
+in the act of erasing Lily's name from the railing which ran across the
+brook. He had been premeditating an escape home to his mother's house
+in Guestwick, and thence hack to London, without making any further
+appearance at the Manor House. But as soon as he heard Lady Julia's
+step, and saw her figure close upon him, he knew that his retreat was
+cut off from him. So he allowed himself to be led away quietly up to
+the house. With Lady Julia herself he openly discussed the whole
+matter--telling her that his hopes were over, his happiness gone, and
+his heart half-broken. Though he would perhaps have cared but little
+for her congratulations in success, he could make himself more amenable
+to consolation and sympathy from her than from any other inmate in the
+earl's house. "I don't know what I shall say to your brother," he
+whispered to her, as they approached the side door at which she
+intended to enter.
+
+"Will you let me break it to him? After that he will say a few words to
+you of course, but you need not be afraid of him."
+
+"And Mr Dale?" said Johnny. "Everybody has heard about it. Everybody
+will know what a fool I have made myself." She suggested that the earl
+should speak to the squire, assured him that nobody would think him at
+all foolish, and then left him to make his way up to his own bedroom.
+When there he found a letter from Cradell, which had been delivered in
+his absence; but the contents of that letter may best be deferred to
+the next chapter. They were not of a nature to give him comfort or to
+add to his sorrow.
+
+About an hour before dinner there was a knock at his door, and the earl
+himself, when summoned, made his appearance in the room. He was dressed
+in his usual farming attire, having been caught by Lady Julia on the
+first approach to the house, and had come away direct to his young
+friend, after having been duly trained in what he ought to say by his
+kind-hearted sister. I am not, however, prepared to declare that he
+strictly followed his sister's teaching in all that he said upon the
+occasion.
+
+"Well, my boy," he began, "so the young lady has been perverse."
+
+"Yes, my lord. That is, I don't know about being perverse. It is all
+over."
+
+"That's as may be, Johnny. As far as I know, not half of them accept
+their lovers the first time of asking."
+
+"I shall not ask her again."
+
+"Oh, yes, you will. You don't mean to say you are angry with her for
+refusing you."
+
+"Not in the least. I have no right to be angry. I am only angry with
+myself for being such a fool, Lord de Guest. I wish I had been dead
+before I came down here on this errand. Now I think of it, I know there
+are so many things which ought to have made me sure how it would be."
+
+"I don't see that at all. You come down again--let me see--it's May now.
+Say you come when the shooting begins in September. If we can't get you
+leave of absence in any other way, we'll make old Buffle come too.
+Only, by George, I believe he'd shoot us all. But never mind; we'll
+manage that. You keep up your spirits till September, and then we'll
+fight the battle in another way. The squire shall get up a little party
+for the bride, and my lady Lily must go then. You shall meet her so;
+and then we'll shoot over the squire's land. We'll bring you together
+so; you see if we don't. Lord bless me! Refused once! My belief is,
+that in these days a girl thinks nothing of a man till she has refused
+him half-a-dozen times."
+
+"I don't think Lily is at all like that."
+
+"Look here, Johnny. I have not a word to say against Miss Lily. I like
+her very much, and think her one of the nicest girls I know. When she's
+your wife, I'll love her dearly, if she'll let me. But she's made of
+the same stuff as other girls, and will act in the same way. Things
+have gone a little astray among you, and they won't right themselves
+all in a minute. She knows now what your feelings are, and she'll go on
+thinking of it, till at last you'll be in her thoughts more than that
+other fellow. Don't tell me about her becoming an old maid, because at
+her time of life she has been so unfortunate as to come across a
+false-hearted man like that. It may take a little time; but if you'll
+carry on and not be down-hearted, you'll find it will all come right in
+the end. Everybody doesn't get all that they want in a minute. How I
+shall quiz you about all this when you have been two or three years
+married!"
+
+"I don't think I shall ever be able to ask her again; and I feel sure,
+if I do, that her answer will be the same. She told me in so many
+words; but never mind, I cannot repeat her words."
+
+"I don't want you to repeat them; nor yet to heed them beyond their
+worth. Lily Dale is a very pretty girl; clever, too, I believe, and
+good, I'm sure; but her words are not more sacred than those of other
+men or women. What she has said to you now, she means, no doubt; but
+the minds of men and women are prone to change, especially when such
+changes are conducive to their own happiness."
+
+"At any rate I'll never forget your kindness, Lord de Guest."
+
+"And there is one other thing I want to say to you, Johnny. A man
+should never allow himself to be cast down by anything--not outwardly,
+to the eyes of other men."
+
+"But how is he to help it?
+
+"His pluck should prevent him. You were not afraid of a roaring bull,
+nor yet of that man when you thrashed him at the railway station.
+You've pluck enough of that kind. You must now show that you've that
+other kind of pluck. You know the story of the boy who would not cry
+though the wolf was gnawing him underneath his frock. Most of us have
+some wolf to gnaw us somewhere; but we are generally gnawed beneath our
+clothes, so that the world doesn't see; and it behoves us so to bear it
+that the world shall not suspect. The man who goes about declaring
+himself to be miserable will be not only miserable, but contemptible as
+well."
+
+"But the wolf hasn't gnawed me beneath my clothes; everybody knows it."
+
+"Then let those who do know it learn that you are able to bear such
+wounds without outward complaint. I tell you fairly that I cannot
+sympathise with a lackadaisical lover."
+
+"I know that I have made myself ridiculous to everybody. I wish I had
+never come here. I wish you had never seen me."
+
+"Don't say that, my dear boy; but take my advice for what it is worth.
+And remember what it is that I say; with your grief I do sympathise,
+but not with any outward expression of it--not with melancholy looks,
+and a sad voice, and an unhappy gait. A man should always be able to
+drink his wine and seem to enjoy it. If he can't, he is so much less of
+a man than he would be otherwise--not so much more, as some people seem
+to think. Now get yourself dressed, my dear fellow, and come down to
+dinner as though nothing had happened to you."
+
+As soon as the earl was gone John looked at his watch and saw that it
+still wanted some forty minutes to dinner. Fifteen minutes would
+suffice for him to dress, and therefore there was time sufficient for
+him to seat himself in his arm-chair and think over it all. He had for
+a moment been very angry when his friend had told him that he could not
+sympathise with a lackadaisical lover. It was an ill-natured word. He
+felt it to be so when he heard it, and so he continued to think during
+the whole of the half-hour that he sat in that chair. But it probably
+did him more good than any word that the earl had ever spoken to him--or
+any other word that he could have used. "Lackadaisical! I'm not
+lackadaisical," he said to himself, jumping up from his chair, and
+instantly sitting down again. "I didn't say anything to him. I didn't
+tell him. Why did he come to me?" And yet, though he endeavoured to
+abuse Lord de Guest in his thoughts, he knew that Lord de Guest was
+right, and that he was wrong. He knew that he had been lackadaisical,
+and was ashamed of himself; and at once resolved that he would
+henceforth demean himself as though no calamity had happened to him.
+"I've a good mind to take him at his word, and drink wine till I'm
+drunk." Then he strove to get up his courage by a song.
+
+    If she be not fair for me,
+    What care I how--
+
+"But I do care. What stuff it is a man writing poetry and putting into
+it such lies as that! Everybody knows that he did care--that is, if he
+wasn't a heartless beast."
+
+But nevertheless, when the time came for him to go down into the
+drawing-room he did make the effort which his friend had counselled,
+and walked into the room with less of that hang-dog look than the earl
+and Lady Julia had expected. They were both there, as was also the
+squire, and Bell followed him in less than a minute.
+
+"You haven't seen Crofts to-day, John, have you?" said the earl.
+
+"No; I haven't been anywhere his way!"
+
+"His way! His ways are every way, I take it. I wanted him to come and
+dine, but he seemed to think it improper to eat two dinners in the same
+house two days running. Isn't that his theory, Miss Dale?"
+
+"I'm sure I don't know, Lord de Guest. At any rate, it isn't mine."
+
+So they went to their feast, and before his last chance was over John
+Eames found himself able to go through the pretence of enjoying his
+roast mutton.
+
+There can, I think, be no doubt that in all such calamities as that
+which he was now suffering, the agony of the misfortune is much
+increased by the conviction that the facts of the case are known to
+those round about the sufferer. A most warmhearted and
+intensely-feeling young gentleman might, no doubt, eat an excellent
+dinner after being refused by the girl of his devotions, provided that
+he had reason to believe that none of those in whose company he ate it
+knew anything of his rejection. But the same warm-hearted and
+intensely-feeling young gentleman would find it very difficult to go
+through the ceremony with any appearance of true appetite or
+gastronomic enjoyment, if he were aware that all his convives knew all
+the facts of his little misfortune. Generally, we may suppose, a man in
+such condition goes to his club for his dinner, or seeks consolation in
+the shades of some adjacent Richmond or Hampton Court. There he
+meditates on his condition in silence, and does ultimately enjoy his
+little plate of whitebait, his cutlet and his moderate pint of sherry.
+He probably goes alone to the theatre, and, in his stall, speculates
+with a somewhat bitter sarcasm on the vanity of the world. Then he
+returns home, sad indeed, but with a moderated sadness, and as he puffs
+out the smoke of his cigar at the open window--with perhaps the comfort
+of a little brandy-and-water at his elbow--swears to himself that, "By
+Jove, he'll have another try for it." Alone, a man may console himself,
+or among a crowd of unconscious mortals; but it must be admitted that
+the position of John Eames was severe. He had been invited down there
+to woo Lily Dale, and the squire and Bell had been asked to be present
+at the wooing. Had it all gone well, nothing could have been nicer. He
+would have been the hero of the hour, and everybody would have sung for
+him his song of triumph. But everything had not gone well, and he found
+it very difficult to carry himself otherwise than lackadaisically. On
+the whole, however, his effort was such that the earl gave him credit
+for his demeanour, and told him when parting with him for the night
+that he was a fine fellow, and that everything should go right with him
+yet.
+
+"And you mustn't be angry with me for speaking harshly to you," he said.
+
+"I wasn't a bit angry."
+
+"Yes, you were; and I rather meant that you should be. But you mustn't
+go away in dudgeon."
+
+He stayed at the Manor House one day longer, and then he returned to
+his room at the Income-tax Office, to the disagreeable sound of Sir
+Raffle's little bell, and the much more disagreeable sound of Sir
+Raffle's big voice.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LIX
+
+JOHN EAMES BECOMES A MAN
+
+Eames, when he was half way up to London in the railway carriage took
+out from his pocket a letter and read it. During the former portion of
+his journey he had been thinking of other things; but gradually he had
+resolved that it would be better for him not to think more of those
+other things for the present, and therefore he had recourse to his
+letter by way of dissipating his thoughts. It was from Cradell, and ran
+as follows:--
+
+INCOME-tax OFFICE, May, 186-.
+
+MY DEAR JOHN--I hope the tidings which I have to give you will not make
+you angry, and that you will not think I am untrue to the great
+friendship which I have for you because of that which I am now going to
+tell you. There is no man--[and the word man was underscored]--there is
+no man whose regard I value so highly as I do yours; and though I feel
+that you can have no just ground to be displeased with me after all
+that I have heard you say on many occasions, nevertheless, in matters
+of the heart it is very hard for one person to understand the
+sentiments of another, and when the affections of a lady are concerned,
+I know that quarrels will sometimes arise.
+
+Eames, when he had got so far as this, on the first perusal of the
+letter, knew well what was to follow. "Poor Caudle!" he said to
+himself; "he's hooked, and he'll never get himself off the hook again."
+
+But let that be as it may, the matter has now gone too far for any
+alteration to be made by me; nor would any mere earthly inducement
+suffice to change me. The claims of friendship are very strong, but
+those of love are paramount. Of course I know all that has passed
+between you and Amelia Roper. Much of this I had heard from you before,
+but the rest she has now told me with that pure-minded honesty which is
+the most remarkable feature in her character. She has confessed that at
+one time she felt attached to you, and that she was induced by your
+perseverance to allow you to regard her as your fiancy. [Fancy-girl he
+probably conceived to be the vulgar English for the elegant term which
+he used.] But all that must be over between you now. Amelia has
+promised to be mine--[this also was underscored]--and mine I intend that
+she shall be. That you may find in the kind smiles of L. D. consolation
+for any disappointment which this may occasion you, is the ardent wish
+of your true friend,
+
+JOSEPH CRADELL.
+
+P.S.--Perhaps I had better tell you the whole. Mrs Roper has been in
+some trouble about her house. She is a little in arrears with her rent,
+and some bills have not been paid. As she explained that she has been
+brought into this by those dreadful Lupexes I have consented to take
+the house into my own hands, and have given bills to one or two
+tradesmen for small amounts. Of course she will take them up, but it
+was the credit that was wanting. She will carry on the house, but I
+shall, in fact, be the proprietor. I suppose it will not suit you now
+to remain here, but don't you think I might make it comfortable enough
+for some of our fellows; say half-a-dozen, or so? That is Mrs Roper's
+idea, and I certainly think it is not a bad one. Our first efforts must
+be to get rid of the Lupexes. Miss Spruce goes next week. In the
+meantime we are all taking our meals up in our own rooms, so that there
+is nothing for the Lupexes to eat. But they don't seem to mind that,
+and still keep the sitting-room and best bedroom. We mean to lock them
+out after Tuesday, and send all their boxes to the public-house.
+
+
+Poor Cradell! Eames, as he threw himself back upon his seat and
+contemplated the depth of misfortune into which his friend had fallen,
+began to be almost in love with his own position. He himself was, no
+doubt, a very miserable fellow. There was only one thing in life worth
+living for, and that he could not get. He had been thinking for the
+last three days of throwing himself before a locomotive steam-engine,
+and was not quite sure that he would not do it yet; but, nevertheless,
+his place was a place among the gods as compared to that which poor
+Cradell had selected for himself. To be not only the husband of Amelia
+Roper, but to have been driven to take upon himself as his bride's
+fortune the whole of his future mother-in-law's debts! To find himself
+the owner of a very indifferent lodging-house--the owner as regarded all
+responsibility, though not the owner as regarded any possible profit!
+And then, above and almost worse than all the rest, to find himself
+saddled with the Lupexes in the beginning of his career! Poor Cradell
+indeed!
+
+Eames had not taken his things away from the lodging-house before he
+left London, and therefore determined to drive to Burton Crescent
+immediately on his arrival, not with the intention of remaining there,
+even for a night, but that he might bid them farewell, speak his
+congratulations to Amelia, and arrange for his final settlement with
+Mrs Roper. It should have been explained in the last chapter that the
+earl had told him before parting with him that his want of success with
+Lily would make no difference as regarded money. John had, of course,
+expostulated, saying that he did not want anything, and would not,
+under his existing circumstances, accept anything; but the earl was a
+man who knew how to have his own way, and in this matter did have it.
+Our friend, therefore, was a man of wealth when he returned to London,
+and could tell Mrs Roper that he would send her a cheque for her little
+balance as soon as he reached his office.
+
+He arrived in the middle of the day--not timing his return at all after
+the usual manner of Government clerks, who generally manage to reach
+the metropolis not more than half an hour before the moment at which
+they are bound to show themselves in their seats. But he had come back
+two days before he was due, and had run away from the country as though
+London in May to him were much pleasanter than the woods and fields.
+But neither had London nor the woods and fields any influence on his
+return. He had gone down that he might throw himself at the feet of
+Lily Dale--gone down, as he now confessed to himself, with hopes almost
+triumphant, and he had returned because Lily Dale would not have him at
+her feet. "I loved him--him, Crosbie--better than all the world besides.
+It is still the same. I still love him better than all the world."
+
+Those were the words which had driven him back to London; and having
+been sent away with such words as those, it was little matter to him
+whether he reached his office a day or two sooner or later. The little
+room in the city, even with the accompaniment of Sir Raffle's bell and
+Sir Raffle's voice, would be now more congenial to him than Lady
+Julia's drawing-room. He would therefore present himself to Sir Raffle
+on that very afternoon, and expel some interloper from his seat. But he
+would first call in Burton Crescent and say farewell to the Ropers.
+
+The door was opened for him by the faithful Jemima. "Mr Heames, Mr
+Heames! ho dear, ho dear!" and the poor girl, who had always taken his
+side in the adventures of the lodging-house, raised her hands on high
+and lamented the fate which had separated her favourite from its
+fortunes. "I suppose you knows it all, Mister Johnny? "Mister Johnny
+said that he believed he did know it all, and asked for the mistress of
+the house. "Yes, sure enough, she's at home. She don't dare stir out
+much, 'cause of them Lupexes. Ain't this a pretty game? No dinner and
+no nothink! Them boxes is Miss Spruce's. She's agoing now, this minute.
+You'll find 'em all upstairs in the drawen-room." So upstairs into the
+drawing-room he went, and there he found the mother and daughter, and
+with them Miss Spruce, tightly packed up in her bonnet and shawl.
+"Don't, mother," Amelia was saying; "what's the good of going on in
+that way? If she chooses to go, let her go."
+
+"But she's been with me now so many years," said Mrs Roper, sobbing;
+"and I've always done everything for her! Haven't I, now, Sally
+Spruce?" It struck Eames immediately that, though he had been an inmate
+in the house for two years, he had never before heard that maiden
+lady's Christian name. Miss Spruce was the first to see Eames as he
+entered the room. It is probable that Mrs Roper's pathos might have
+produced some answering pathos on her part had she remained unobserved,
+but the sight of a young man brought her back to her usual state of
+quiescence. "I'm only an old woman," said she; "and here's Mr Eames
+come back again."
+
+"How d'ye do, Mrs Roper? how d'ye do, Amelia?--how d'ye do, Miss
+Spruce?" and he shook hands with them all.
+
+"Oh, laws," said Mrs Roper, "you have given me such a start!"
+
+"Dear me, Mr Eames; only think of your coming back in that way," said
+Amelia.
+
+"Well, what way should I come back? You didn't hear me knock at the
+door, that's all. So Miss Spruce is really going to leave you?"
+
+"Isn't it dreadful, Mr Eames? Nineteen years we've been together--taking
+both houses together, Miss Spruce, we have, indeed." Miss Spruce, at
+this point, struggled very hard to convince John Eames that the period
+in question had in truth extended over only eighteen years, but Mrs
+Roper was authoritative, and would not permit it. "It's nineteen years
+if it's a day. No one ought to know dates if I don't, and there isn't
+one in the world understands her ways unless it's me. Haven't I been up
+to your bedroom every night, and with my own hand given you--" But she
+stopped herself, and was too good a woman to declare before a young man
+what had been the nature of her nightly ministrations to her guest.
+
+"I don't think you'll be so comfortable anywhere else, Miss Spruce,"
+said Eames.
+
+"Comfortable! of course she won't," said Amelia. "But if I was mother I
+wouldn't have any more words about it."
+
+"It isn't the money I'm thinking of, but the feeling of it," said Mrs
+Roper. "The house will be so lonely like. I shan't know myself; that I
+shan't. And now that things are all settled so pleasantly, and that the
+Lupexes must go on Tuesday--I'll tell you what, Sally; I'll pay for the
+cab myself, and I'll start off to Dulwich by the omnibus tomorrow, and
+settle it all out of my own pocket. I will indeed. Come; there's the
+cab. Let me go down, and send him away."
+
+"I'll do that," said Eames. "It's only sixpence, off the stand," Mrs
+Roper called to him as he left the room. But the cabman got a shilling,
+and John, as he returned, found Jemima in the act of carrying Miss
+Spruce's boxes back to her room. "So much the better for poor Caudle,"
+said he to himself. "As he has gone into the trade it's well that he
+should have somebody that will pay him."
+
+Mrs Roper followed Miss Spruce up the stairs and Johnny was left with
+Amelia. "He's written to you, I know," said she, with her face turned a
+little away from him. She was certainly very handsome, but there was a
+hard, cross, almost sullen look about her, which robbed her countenance
+of all its pleasantness. And yet she had no intention of being sullen
+with him.
+
+"Yes," said John. "He has told me how it's all going to be."
+
+"Well?" she said.
+
+"Well?" said he.
+
+"Is that all you've got to say?"
+
+"I'll congratulate you, if you'll let me."
+
+"Psha--congratulations! I hate such humbug. If you've no feelings about
+it, I'm sure that I've none. Indeed I don't know what's the good of
+feelings. They never did me any good. Are you engaged to marry L. D.?"
+
+"No, I am not."
+
+"And you've nothing else to say to me?"
+
+"Nothing--except my hopes for your happiness. What else can I say? You
+are engaged to marry my friend Cradell, and I think it will be a happy
+match."
+
+She turned away her face further from him, and the look of it became
+even more sullen. Could it be possible that at such a moment she still
+had a hope that he might come back to her?
+
+"Good-bye, Amelia," he said, putting out his hand to her.
+
+"And this is to be the last of you in this house!"
+
+"Well, I don't know about that. I'll come and call upon you, if you'll
+let me, when you're married."
+
+"Yes," she said, "that there may be rows in the house, and noise, and
+jealousy--as there have been with that wicked woman upstairs. Not if I
+know it, you won't! John Eames, I wish I'd never seen you. I wish we
+might have both fallen dead when we first met. I didn't think ever to
+have cared for a man as I have cared for you. It's all trash and
+nonsense and foolery; I know that. It's all very well for young ladies
+as can sit in drawing-rooms all their lives, but when a woman has her
+way to make in the world it's all foolery. And such a hard way too to
+make as mine is!"
+
+"But it won't be hard now."
+
+"Won't it? But I think it will. I wish you would try it. Not that I'm
+going to complain. I never minded work, and as for company, I can put
+up with anybody. The world's not to be all dancing and fiddling for the
+likes of me. I know that well enough. But ," and then she paused.
+
+"What's the 'but' about, Amelia?"
+
+"It's like you to ask me; isn't it?" To tell the truth he should not
+have asked her. "Never mind. I'm not going to have any words with you.
+If you've been a knave I've been a fool, and that's worse."
+
+"But I don't think I have been a knave."
+
+"I've been both," said the girl; "and both for nothing. After that you
+may go. I've told you what I am, and I'll leave you to name yourself. I
+didn't think it was in me to have been such a fool. It's that that
+frets me. Never mind, sir; it's all over now, and I wish you good-bye."
+
+I do not think that there was the slightest reason why John should have
+again kissed her at parting, but he did so. She bore it, not struggling
+with him; but she took his caress with sullen endurance. "It'll be the
+last," she said. "Good-bye, John Eames."
+
+"Good-bye, Amelia. Try to make him a good wife and then you'll be
+happy." She turned up her nose at this, assuming a look of unutterable
+scorn. But she said nothing further, and then he left the room. At the
+parlour door he met Mrs Roper, and had his parting words with her.
+
+"I am so glad you came," said she. "It was just that word you said that
+made Miss Spruce stay. Her money is so ready, you know! And so you've
+had it all out with her about Cradell. She'll make him a good wife, she
+will indeed--much better than you've been giving her credit for."
+
+"I don't doubt she'll be a very good wife."
+
+"You see, Mr Eames, it's all over now, and we understand each other;
+don't we? It made me very unhappy when she was setting her cap at you;
+it did indeed. She is my own daughter, and I couldn't go against
+her--could I? But I knew it wasn't in any way suiting. Laws, I know the
+difference. She's good enough for him any day of the week, Mr Eames."
+
+"That she is--Saturdays or Sundays," said Johnny, not knowing exactly
+what he ought to say.
+
+"So she is; and if he does his duty by her she won't go astray in hers
+by him. And as for you, Mr Eames, I am sure I've always felt it an
+honour and a pleasure to have you in the house; and if ever you could
+use a good word in sending to me any of your young men, I'd do by them
+as a mother should; I would indeed. I know I've been to blame about
+those Lupexes, but haven't I suffered for it, Mr Eames? And it was
+difficult to know at first; wasn't it? And as to you and Amelia, if you
+would send any of your young men to try, there couldn't be anything
+more of that kind, could there? I know it hasn't all been just as it
+should have been--that is as regards you; but I should like to hear you
+say that you've found me honest before you went. I have tried to be
+honest, I have indeed."
+
+Eames assured her that he was convinced of her honesty, and that he had
+never thought of impugning her character either in regard to those
+unfortunate people, the Lupexes, or in reference to other matters. "He
+did not think," he said, "that any young men would consult him as to
+their lodgings; but if he could be of any service to her, he would."
+Then he bade her good-bye, and having bestowed half-a-sovereign on the
+faithful Jemima, he took a long farewell of Burton Crescent. Amelia had
+told him not to come and see her when she should be married, and he had
+resolved that he would take her at her word. So he walked off from the
+Crescent, not exactly shaking the dust from his feet, but resolving
+that he would know no more either of its dust or of its dirt. Dirt
+enough he had encountered there certainly, and he was now old enough to
+feel that the inmates of Mrs Roper's house had not been those among
+whom a resting-place for his early years should judiciously have been
+sought. But he had come out of the fire comparatively unharmed, and I
+regret to say that he felt but little for the terrible scorchings to
+which his friend had been subjected and was about to subject himself.
+He was quite content to look at the matter exactly as it was looked at
+by Mrs Roper. Amelia was good enough for Joseph Cradell--any day of the
+week. Poor Cradell, of whom in these pages after this notice no more
+will be heard! I cannot but think that a hard measure of justice was
+meted out to him, in proportion to the extent of his sins. More weak
+and foolish than our friend and hero he had been, but not to my
+knowledge more wicked. But it is to the vain and foolish that the
+punishments fall--and to them they fall so thickly and constantly that
+the thinker is driven to think that vanity and folly are of all sins
+those which may be the least forgiven. As for Cradell I may declare
+that he did marry Amelia, that he did, with some pride, take the place
+of master of the house at the bottom of Mrs Roper's table, and that he
+did make himself responsible for all Mrs Roper's debts. Of his future
+fortunes there is not space to speak in these pages.
+
+Going away from the Crescent Eames had himself driven to his office,
+which he reached just as the men were leaving it, at four o'clock.
+Cradell was gone, so that he did not see him on that afternoon; but he
+had an opportunity of shaking hands with Mr Love, who treated him with
+all the smiling courtesy due to an official bigwig--for a private
+secretary, if not absolutely a big-wig, is semi-big, and entitled to a
+certain amount of reverence--and he passed Mr Kissing in the passage,
+hurrying along as usual with a huge book under his arm. Mr Kissing,
+hurried as he was, stopped his shuffling feet; but Eames only looked at
+him, hardly honouring him with the acknowledgment of a nod of his head.
+Mr Kissing, however, was not offended; he knew that the private
+secretary of the First Commissioner had been the guest of an earl; and
+what more than a nod could be expected from him? After that John made
+his way into the august presence of Sir Raffle, and found that great
+man putting on his shoes in the presence of FitzHoward. FitzHoward
+blushed; but the shoes had not been touched by him, as he took occasion
+afterwards to inform John Eames.
+
+Sir Raffle was all smiles and civility. "Delighted to see you back,
+Eames: am, upon my word; though I and FitzHoward have got on capitally
+in your absence; haven't we, FitzHoward?"
+
+"Oh, yes," drawled FitzHoward. "I haven't minded it for a time, just
+while Eames has been away."
+
+"You're much too idle to keep at it, I know; but your bread will be
+buttered for you elsewhere, so it doesn't signify. My compliments to
+the duchess when you see her." Then FitzHoward went. "And how's my dear
+old friend?" asked Sir Raffle, as though of all men living Lord de
+Guest were the one for whom he had the strongest and the oldest love.
+And yet he must have known that John Eames knew as much about it as he
+did himself. But there are men who have the most lively gratification
+in calling lords and marquises their friends, though they know that
+nobody believes a word of what they say--even though they know how great
+is the odium they incur, and how lasting is the ridicule which their
+vanity produces. It is a gentle insanity which prevails in the outer
+courts of every aristocracy; and as it brings with itself considerable
+annoyance and but a lukewarm pleasure, it should not be treated with
+too keen a severity.
+
+"And how's my dear old friend?" Eames assured him that his dear old
+friend was all right, that Lady Julia was all right, that the dear old
+place was all right. Sir Raffle now spoke as though the "dear old
+place" were quite well known to him. "Was the game doing pretty well?
+Was there a promise of birds? "Sir Raffle's anxiety was quite intense,
+and expressed with almost familiar affection. "And, by-the-by, Eames,
+where are you living at present?"
+
+"Well, I'm not settled. I'm at the Great Western Railway Hotel at this
+moment."
+
+"Capital house, very; only it's expensive if you stay there the whole
+season." Johnny had no idea of remaining there beyond one night, but he
+said nothing as to this. "By-the-by, you might as well come and dine
+with us tomorrow. Lady Buffle is most anxious to know you. There'll be
+one or two with us. I did ask my friend Dumbello, but there's some
+nonsense going on in the House, and he thinks that he can't get away."
+Johnny was more gracious than Lord Dumbello, and accepted the
+invitation. "I wonder what Lady Buffle will be like? "he said to
+himself, as he walked away from the office.
+
+He had turned into the Great Western Hotel, not as yet knowing where to
+look for a home; and there we will leave him, eating his solitary
+mutton-chop at one of those tables which are so comfortable to the eye,
+but which are so comfortless in reality. I speak not now with reference
+to the excellent establishment which has been named, but to the nature
+of such tables in general. A solitary mutton-chop in an hotel
+coffee-room is not a banquet to be envied by any god; and if the
+mutton-chop be converted into soup, fish, little dishes, big dishes,
+and the rest, the matter becomes worse and not better. What comfort are
+you to have, seated alone on that horsehair chair, staring into the
+room and watching the waiters as they whisk about their towels? No one
+but an Englishman has ever yet thought of subjecting himself to such a
+position as that! But here we will leave John Eames, and in doing so I
+must be allowed to declare that only now, at this moment, has he
+entered on his manhood. Hitherto he has been a hobbledehoy--a calf, as
+it were, who had carried his calfishness later into life than is common
+with calves; but who did not, perhaps, on that account, give promise of
+making a worse ox than the rest of them. His life hitherto, as recorded
+in these pages, had afforded him no brilliant success, had hardly
+qualified him for the role of hero which he has been made to play. I
+feel that I have been in fault in giving such prominence to a
+hobbledehoy, and that I should have told my story better had I brought
+Mr Crosbie more conspicuously forward on my canvas. He at any rate has
+gotten to himself a wife--as a hero always should do; whereas I must
+leave my poor friend Johnny without any matrimonial prospects.
+
+It was thus that he thought of himself as he sat moping over his
+solitary table in the hotel coffee-room. He acknowledged to himself
+that he had not hitherto been a man; but at the same time he made some
+resolution which, I trust, may assist him in commencing his manhood
+from this date.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER LX
+
+CONCLUSION
+
+It was early in June that Lily went up to her uncle at the Great House,
+pleading for Hopkins--pleading that to Hopkins might be restored all the
+privileges of head gardener at the Great House. There was some
+absurdity in this, seeing that he had never really relinquished his
+privileges; but the manner of the quarrel had been in this wise.
+
+There was in those days, and had been for years, a vexed question
+between Hopkins and Jolliffe the bailiff on the matter of stable
+manure. Hopkins had pretended to the right of taking what he required
+from the farmyard, without asking leave of any one. Jolliffe in return
+had hinted, that if this were so, Hopkins would take it all. "But I
+can't eat it," Hopkins had said. Jolliffe merely grunted, signifying by
+the grunt, as Hopkins thought, that though a gardener couldn't eat a
+mountain of manure fifty feet long and fifteen high--couldn't eat in the
+body--he might convert it into things edible for his own personal use.
+And so there had been a great feud. The unfortunate squire had of
+course been called on to arbitrate, and having postponed his decision
+by every contrivance possible to him, had at last been driven by
+Jolliffe to declare that Hopkins should take nothing that was not
+assigned to him. Hopkins, when the decision was made known to him by
+his master, bit his old lips, and turned round upon his old heel,
+speechless.
+
+"You'll find it's so at all other places," said the squire,
+apologetically. "Other places!" sneered Hopkins. Where would he find
+other gardeners like himself? It is hardly necessary to declare that
+from that moment he resolved that he would abide by no such order.
+Jolliffe on the next morning informed the squire that the order had
+been broken, and the squire fretted and fumed, wishing that Jolliffe
+were well buried under the mountain in question. "If they all is to do
+as they like," said Jolliffe, "then nobody won't care for nobody." The
+squire understood than an order if given must be obeyed, and therefore,
+with many inner groanings of the spirit, resolved that war must be
+waged against Hopkins.
+
+On the following morning he found the old man himself wheeling a huge
+barrow of manure round from the yard into the kitchen-garden. Now, on
+ordinary occasions, Hopkins was not required to do with his own hands
+work of that description. He had a man under him who hewed wood, and
+carried water, and wheeled barrows--one man always, and often two. The
+squire knew when he saw him that he was sinning, and bade him stop upon
+his road.
+
+"Hopkins," he said, "why didn't you ask for what you wanted, before you
+took it?" The old man put down the barrow on the ground, looked up in
+his master's face, spat into his hands, and then again resumed his
+barrow. "Hopkins, that won't do," said the squire. "Stop where you
+are."
+
+"What won't do?" said Hopkins, still holding the barrow from the
+ground, but not as yet progressing.
+
+"Put it down, Hopkins," and Hopkins did put it down. Don't you know
+that you are flatly disobeying my orders?"
+
+"Squire, I've been here about this place going on nigh seventy years."
+
+"If you've been going on a hundred and seventy it wouldn't do that
+there should be more than one master. I'm the master here, and I intend
+to be so to the end. Take that manure back into the yard."
+
+"Back into the yard?" said Hopkins, very slowly.
+
+"Yes; back into the yard."
+
+"What--afore all their faces?"
+
+"Yes; you've disobeyed me before all their faces?"
+
+Hopkins paused a moment, looking away from the squire, and shaking his
+head as though he had need of deep thought, but by the aid of deep
+thought had come at last to a right conclusion. Then he resumed the
+barrow, and putting himself almost into a trot, carried away his prize
+into the kitchen-garden. At the pace which he went it would have been
+beyond the squire's power to stop him, nor would Mr Dale have wished to
+come to a personal encounter with his servant. But he called after the
+man in dire wrath that if he were not obeyed the disobedient servant
+should rue the consequences for ever. Hopkins, equal to the occasion,
+shook his head as he trotted on, deposited his load at the foot of the
+cucumber-frames, and then at once returning to his master, tendered to
+him the key of the greenhouse.
+
+"Master," said Hopkins, speaking as best he could with his scanty
+breath, "there it is--there's the key; of course I don't want no
+warning, and doesn't care about my week's wages. I'll be out of the
+cottage afore night, and as for the work'us, I suppose they'll let me
+in at once, if your honour'll give 'em a line."
+
+Now as Hopkins was well known by the squire to be the owner of three or
+four hundred pounds, the hint about the workhouse must be allowed to
+have been melodramatic.
+
+"Don't be a fool," said the squire, almost gnashing his teeth. "I know
+I've been a fool," said Hopkins, "about that 'ere doong; my feelings
+has been too much for me. When a man's feelings has been too much for
+him, he'd better just take hisself off, and lie in the work'us till he
+dies." And then he again tendered the key. But the squire did not take
+the key, and so Hopkins went on. "I s'pose I'd better just see to the
+lights and the like of that, till you've suited yourself, Mr Dale. It
+'ud be a pity all them grapes should go off, and they, as you may say,
+all one as fit for the table. It's a long way the best crop I ever see
+on 'em. I've been that careful with 'em that I haven't had a natural
+night's rest, not since February. There ain't nobody about this place
+as understands grapes, nor yet anywhere nigh that could be got at. My
+lord's head man is wery ignorant; but even if he knew ever so, of
+course he couldn't come here. I suppose I'd better keep the key till
+you're suited, Mr Dale."
+
+Then for a fortnight there was an interregnum in the gardens, terrible
+in the annals of Allington. Hopkins lived in his cottage indeed, and
+looked most sedulously after the grapes. In looking after the grapes,
+too, he took the greenhouses under his care; but he would have nothing
+to do with the outer gardens, took no wages, returning the amount sent
+to him back to the squire, and insisted with everybody that he had been
+dismissed. He went about with some terrible horticultural implement
+always in his hand, with which it was said that he intended to attack
+Jolliffe; but Jolliffe prudently kept out of his way.
+
+As soon as it had been resolved by Mrs Dale and Lily that the flitting
+from the Small House at Allington was not to be accomplished, Lily
+communicated the fact to Hopkins.
+
+"Miss," said he, "when I said them few words to you and your mamma, I
+knew that you would listen to reason."
+
+This was no more than Lily had expected; that Hopkins should claim the
+honour of having prevailed by his arguments was a matter of course.
+
+"Yes," said Lily; "we've made up our minds to stay. Uncle wishes it."
+
+"Wishes it! Laws, miss; it ain't only wishes. And we all wishes it.
+Why, now, look at the reason of the thing. Here's this here house--"
+
+"But, Hopkins, it's decided. We're going to stay. What I want to know
+is this; can you come at once and help me to unpack?
+
+"What! this very evening, as is--"
+
+"Yes, now; we want to have the things about again before they come back
+from Guestwick."
+
+Hopkins scratched his head and hesitated, not wishing to yield to any
+proposition that could be considered as childish; but he gave way at
+last, feeling that the work itself was a good work. Mrs Dale also
+assented, laughing at Lily for her folly as she did so, and in this way
+the things were unpacked very quickly, and the alliance between Lily
+and Hopkins became, for the time, very close. This work of unpacking
+and resettling was not yet over, when the battle of the manure broke
+out, and therefore it was that Hopkins, when his feelings had become
+altogether too much for him "about the doong," came at last to Lily,
+and laying down at her feet all the weight and all the glory of his
+sixty odd years of life, implored her to make matters straight for him.
+"It's been a killing me, miss, so it has; to see the way they've been a
+cutting that 'sparagus. It ain't cutting at all. It's just hocking it
+up--what is fit, and what isn't, all together. And they've been
+a-putting the plants in where I didn't mean 'em, though they know'd I
+didn't mean 'em. I've stood by, miss, and said never a word. I'd a died
+sooner. But, Miss Lily, what my sufferings have been, 'cause of my
+feelings getting the better of me about that--you know, miss--nobody will
+ever tell--nobody--nobody--nobody." Then Hopkins turned away and wept.
+
+"Uncle," said Lily, creeping close up against his chair, "I want to ask
+you a great favour."
+
+"A great favour. Well, I don't think I shall refuse you anything at
+present. It isn't to ask another earl to the house--is it?"
+
+"Another earl!" said Lily.
+
+"Yes; haven't you heard? Miss Bell has been here this morning,
+insisting that I should have over Lord de Guest and his sister for the
+marriage. It seems that there was some scheming between Bell and Lady
+Julia."
+
+"Of course you'll ask them."
+
+"Of course I must. I've no way out of it. It'll be all very well for
+Bell, who'll be off to Wales with her lover; but what am I to do with
+the earl and Lady Julia, when they're gone? Will you come and help me?"
+
+In answer to this, Lily of course promised that she would come and
+help. "Indeed," said she, "I thought we were all asked up for the day.
+And now for my favour. Uncle, you must forgive poor Hopkins."
+
+"Forgive a fiddlestick!" said the squire.
+
+"No, but you must. You can't think how unhappy he is."
+
+"How can I forgive a man who won't forgive me. He goes prowling about
+the place doing nothing; and he sends me back his wages, and he looks
+as though he were going to murder some one; and all because he wouldn't
+do as he was told. How am I to forgive such a man as that?"
+
+"But, uncle, why not?"
+
+"It would be his forgiving me. He knows very well that he may come back
+whenever he pleases; and, indeed, for the matter of that he has never
+gone away."
+
+"But he is so very unhappy."
+
+"What can I do to make him happier?"
+
+"Just go down to his cottage and tell him that you forgive him."
+
+"Then he'll argue with me."
+
+"No; I don't think he will. He is too much down in the world for
+arguing now."
+
+"Ah! you don't know him as I do. All the misfortunes in the world
+wouldn't stop that man's conceit. Of course I'll go if you ask me, but
+it seems to me that I'm made to knock under to everybody. I hear a
+great deal about other people's feelings, but I don't know that mine
+are very much thought of." He was not altogether in a happy mood, and
+Lily almost regretted that she had persevered; but she did succeed in
+carrying him off across the garden to the cottage, and as they went
+together she promised him that she would think of him always--always.
+The scene with Hopkins cannot be described now, as it would take too
+many of our few remaining pages. It resulted, I am afraid I must
+confess, in nothing more triumphant to the squire than a treaty of
+mutual forgiveness. Hopkins acknowledged, with much self-reproach, that
+his feelings had been too many for him; but then, look at his
+provocation! He could not keep his tongue from that matter, and
+certainly said as much in his own defence as he did in confession of
+his sins. The substantial triumph was altogether his, for nobody again
+ever dared to interfere with his operations in the farmyard. He showed
+his submission to his master mainly by consenting to receive his wages
+for the two weeks which he had passed in idleness.
+
+Owing to this little accident, Lily was not so much oppressed by
+Hopkins as she had expected to be in that matter of their altered
+plans; but this salvation did not extend to Mrs Hearn, to Mrs Crump,
+or, above all, to Mrs Boyce. They, all of them, took an interest more
+or less strong in the Hopkins controversy; but their interest in the
+occupation of the Small House was much stronger, and it was found
+useless to put Mrs Hearn off with the gardener's persistent refusal of
+his wages, when she was big with inquiry whether the house was to be
+painted inside, as well as out. "Ah," said she, "I think I'll go and
+look at lodgings at Guestwick myself, and pack up some of my beds."
+Lily made no answer to this, feeling that it was a part of that
+punishment which she had expected. "Dear, dear," said Mrs Crump to the
+two girls; "well, to be sure, we should a been lone without 'ee, and
+mayhap we might a got worse in your place; but why did 'ee go and
+fasten up all your things in them big boxes, just to unfasten 'em all
+again?"
+
+"We changed our minds, Mrs Crump," said Bell, with some severity.
+
+"Yees, I know ye changed your mindses. Well, it's all right for loiks
+o' ye, no doubt; but if we changes our mindses, we hears of it."
+
+"So, it seems, do we! "said Lily. "But never mind, Mrs Crump. Do you
+send us our letters up early, and then we won't quarrel."
+
+"Oh, letters! Drat them for letters. I wish there weren't no sich
+things. There was a man here yesterday with his imperence. I don't know
+where he come from--down from Lun'on, I b'leeve: and this was wrong, and
+that was wrong, and everything was wrong; and then he said he'd have me
+discharged the sarvice."
+
+"Dear me, Mrs Crump; that wouldn't do at all."
+
+"Discharged the sarvice! Tuppence farden a day. So I told 'un to
+discharge hisself, and take all the old bundles and things away upon
+his shoulders. Letters indeed! What business have they with
+post-missusses, if they cannot pay 'em better nor tuppence farden a
+day?" And in this way, under the shelter of Mrs Crump's storm of wrath
+against the inspector who had visited her, Lily and Bell escaped much
+that would have fallen upon their own heads; but Mrs Boyce still
+remained. I may here add, in order that Mrs Crump's history may be
+carried on to the farthest possible point, that she was not "discharged
+the sarvice," and that she still receives her twopence farthing a day
+from the Crown. "That's a bitter old lady," said the inspector to the
+man who was driving him.
+
+"Yes, sir; they all says the same about she. There ain't none of 'em
+get much change out of Mrs Crump."
+
+Bell and Lily went together also to Mrs Boyce's. "If she makes herself
+very disagreeable, I shall insist upon talking of your marriage," said
+Lily.
+
+"I've not the slightest objection," said Bell; "only I don't know what
+there can be to say about it. Marrying the doctor is such a very
+commonplace sort of thing."
+
+"Not a bit more commonplace than marrying the parson," said Lily.
+
+"Oh, yes, it is. Parsons' marriages are often very grand affairs. They
+come in among county people. That's their luck in life. Doctors never
+do; nor lawyers. I don't think lawyers ever get married in the country.
+They're supposed to do it up in London. But a country doctor's wedding
+is not a thing to be talked about much."
+
+Mrs Boyce probably agreed in this view of the matter, seeing that she
+did not choose the coming marriage as her first subject of
+conversation. As soon as the two girls were seated she flew away
+immediately to the house, and began to express her very great
+surprise--her surprise and her joy also--at the sudden change which had
+been made in their plans. "It is so much nicer, you know," said she,
+"that things should be pleasant among relatives."
+
+"Things always have been tolerably pleasant with us," said Bell.
+
+"Oh, yes; I'm sure of that. I've always said it was quite a pleasure to
+see you and your uncle together. And when we heard about your all
+having to leave--"
+
+"But we didn't have to leave, Mrs Boyce. We were going to leave because
+we thought mamma would be more comfortable in Guestwick; and now we're
+not going to leave, because we've all 'changed our mindses,' as Mrs
+Crump calls it."
+
+"And is it true the house is going to be painted?" asked Mrs Boyce.
+
+"I believe it is true," said Lily.
+
+"Inside and out?"
+
+"It must be done some day," said Bell.
+
+"Yes, to be sure; but I must say it is generous of the squire. There's
+such a deal of wood-work about your house. I know I wish the
+Ecclesiastical Commissioners would paint ours; but nobody ever does
+anything for the clergy. I'm sure I'm delighted you're going to stay.
+As I said to Mr Boyce, what should we ever have done without you? I
+believe the squire had made up his mind that he would not let the
+place."
+
+"I don't think he ever has let it."
+
+"And if there was nobody in it, it would all go to rack and ruin;
+wouldn't it? Had your mamma to pay anything for the lodgings she
+engaged at Guestwick?
+
+"Upon my word, I don't know. Bell can tell you better about that than
+I, as Dr Crofts settled it. I suppose Dr Crofts tells her everything."
+And so the conversation was changed, and Mrs Boyce was made to
+understand that whatever further mystery there might be, it would not
+be unravelled on that occasion.
+
+It was settled that Dr Crofts and Bell should be married about the
+middle of June, and the squire determined to give what grace he could
+to the ceremony by opening his own house on the occasion. Lord de Guest
+and Lady Julia were invited by special arrangement between her ladyship
+and Bell, as has been before explained. The colonel also with Lady
+Fanny came up from Torquay on the occasion, this being the first visit
+made by the colonel to his paternal roof for many years. Bernard did
+not accompany his father. He had not yet gone abroad, but there were
+circumstances which made him feel that he would not find himself
+comfortable at the wedding. The service was performed by Mr Boyce,
+assisted, as the County Chronicle very fully remarked, by the Reverend
+John Joseph Jones, M.A., late of Jesus College, Cambridge, and curate
+of St. Peter's, Northgate, Guestwick; the fault of which little
+advertisement was this--that as none of the readers of the paper had
+patience to get beyond the Reverend John Joseph Jones, the fact of
+Bell's marriage with Dr Crofts was not disseminated as widely as might
+have been wished.
+
+The marriage went off very nicely. The squire was upon his very best
+behaviour, and welcomed his guests as though he really enjoyed their
+presence there in his halls. Hopkins, who was quite aware that he had
+been triumphant, decorated the old rooms with mingled flowers and
+greenery with an assiduous care which pleased the two girls mightily.
+And during this work of wreathing and decking there was one little
+morsel of feeling displayed which may as well be told in these last
+lines. Lily had been encouraging the old man while Bell for a moment
+had been absent.
+
+"I wish it had been for thee, my darling!" he said; "I wish it had been
+for thee!
+
+"It is much better as it is, Hopkins," she answered, solemnly.
+
+"Not with him, though," he went on, "not with him. I wouldn't a hung a
+bough for him. But with t'other one."
+
+Lily said no word further. She knew that the man was expressing the
+wishes of all around her. She said no word further, and then Bell
+returned to them.
+
+But no one at the wedding was so gay as Lily--so gay, so bright, and so
+wedding-like. She flirted with the old earl till he declared that he
+would marry her himself. No one seeing her that evening, and knowing
+nothing of her immediate history, would have imagined that she herself
+had been cruelly jilted some six or eight months ago. And those who did
+know her could not imagine that what she then suffered had hit her so
+hard, that no recovery seemed possible for her. But though no recovery,
+as she herself believed, was possible for her--though she was as a man
+whose right arm had been taken from him in the battle, still all the
+world had not gone with that right arm. The bullet which had maimed her
+sorely had not touched her life, and she scorned to go about the world
+complaining either by word or look of the injury she had received.
+"Wives when they have lost their husbands still eat and laugh," she
+said to herself, "and he is not dead like that." So she resolved that
+she would be happy, and I here declare that she not only seemed to
+carry out her resolution, but that she did carry it out in very truth.
+"You're a dear good man, and I know you'll be good to her," she said to
+Crofts just as he was about to start with his bride.
+
+"I'll try, at any rate," he answered.
+
+"And I shall expect you to be good to me too. Remember you have married
+the whole family; and, sir, you mustn't believe a word of what that bad
+man says in his novels about mothers-in-law. He has done a great deal
+of harm, and shut half the ladies in England out of their daughters'
+houses."
+
+"He shan't shut Mrs Dale out of mine."
+
+"Remember he doesn't. Now, good-bye." So the bride and bridegroom went
+off, and Lily was left to flirt with Lord de Guest.
+
+Of whom else is it necessary that a word or two should be said before I
+allow the weary pen to fall from my hand? The squire, after much inward
+struggling on the subject, had acknowledged to himself that his
+sister-in-law had not received from him that kindness which she had
+deserved. He had acknowledged this, purporting to do his best to amend
+his past errors; and I think I may say that his efforts in that line
+would not be received ungraciously by Mrs Dale. I am inclined,
+therefore, to think that life at Allington, both at the Great House and
+at the Small, would soon become pleasanter than it used to be in former
+days. Lily soon got the Balmoral boots, or, at least, soon learned that
+the power of getting them as she pleased had devolved upon her from her
+uncle's gift; so that she talked even of buying the squirrel's cage;
+but I am not aware that her extravagance led her as far as that.
+
+Lord de Courcy we left suffering dreadfully from gout and ill-temper at
+Courcy Castle. Yes, indeed! To him in his latter days life did not seem
+to offer much that was comfortable. His wife had now gone from him, and
+declared positively to her son-in-law that no earthly consideration
+should ever induce her to go back again--"not if I were to starve!" she
+said. By which she intended to signify that she would be firm in her
+resolve, even though she should thereby lose her carriage and horses.
+Poor Mr Gazebee went down to Courcy, and had a dreadful interview with
+the earl; but matters were at last arranged, and her ladyship remained
+at Baden-Baden in a state of semi-starvation. That is to say, she had
+but one horse to her carriage.
+
+As regards Crosbie, I am inclined to believe that he did again recover
+his power at his office. He was Mr Butterwell's master, and the master
+also of Mr Optimist, and the major. He knew his business, and could do
+it, which was more, perhaps, than might fairly be said of any of the
+other three. Under such circumstances he was sure to get in his hand,
+and lead again. But elsewhere his star did not recover its ascendancy.
+He dined at his club almost daily, and there were those with whom he
+habitually formed some little circle. But he was not the Crosbie of
+former days--the Crosbie known in Belgravia and in St. James's Street.
+He had taken his little vessel bravely out into the deep waters, and
+had sailed her well while fortune stuck close to him. But he had
+forgotten his nautical rules, and success had made him idle. His
+plummet and lead had not been used, and he had kept no look-out ahead.
+Therefore the first rock he met shivered his bark to pieces. His wife,
+the Lady Alexandrina, is to be seen in the one-horse carriage with her
+mother at Baden-Baden.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Small House at Allington, by Anthony Trollope
+
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